Norman Jewson, sketch by Sir John Rothenstein, Far Oakridge, 1911

Norman Jewson, a generation, thirty years, younger, working very much in the SPAB tradition, soon became an invaluable member of the group, as pupil, friend and close companion of Gimson in his later years. Gimson became Jewson's own miglior fabbro, his better craftsman as master and guide, and Jewson was in turn Gimson's greatest follower (Ernest Gimson, Leicester Exhibition Catalogue, Leicester Museums and Art Gallery, 1969).

Jewson describes how, as part of his training under Gimson, he was encouraged to draw a different wild flower every day from nature, reducing it to its essential characteristics and adapting it to a formal pattern for design work. He supervised much of Gimson's architectural and repair work, like the dovecote at Fiddington. He was

my greatest friend, and very much more. He was the most inspiring man I ever met, and not to me only. Professor Lethaby has called him "the inspiration of England".

He writes that he admired in Gimson an assured distinction, traditional in the use of the best craftsmanship and materials, where in design grace of form was combined with simplicity; these are the qualities of his own best architectural work. His credo was clear:

My own buildings I wanted to have the basic qualities of the best old houses of their locality, built in the local traditional way in the local materials, but not copying the details which properly belonged to the period in which they were built... I hoped that my buildings would at least have good manners and be able to take their natural place in their surroundings without offence.

Ruskin had taught in the Lamp of Truth, working by hand was working with joy. And in accordance with Ruskin's advice to Sedding (1876), Jewson always had either pencil or chisel in his hand, acutely involved in the simple craft processes, skills and trades of Cotswold building and adornment, experimenting and practising with delight and modesty, familiarizing himself with the qualities of tested materials, tools and methods, rediscovering, reviving the fabrics, textures and disciplines of traditional construction, from drystone walling in the Cotswolds, and cob, which he used, as Gimson had done, with success on his own summer house at Lane End, Kilve, in the Quantocks, to twisted gut in a weather clock set wittily above a row of simple almshouses.

He rented a cottage in Far Oakridge and in 1911 he married Ernest Barnsley's daughter, Mary, converting a group of cottages at Bachelor's Court in Sapperton from which they never moved.

Norman Jewson: drawing of his cottage at Bachelor's Court, Sapperton

Rodmarton Manor chapel, completed by Jewson 1929

He worked in partnership with Gimson and set up in practice on his own in Cirencester in 1919 (the year of Gimson's early death). He soon gained a reputation for the sympathetic conservation and adaptation of old buildings. It was as a repairer as much as an original architect that Jewson achieved lasting success and satisfaction. He was a dedicated member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) and worked under William Weir, one of the most skilful exponents of its philosophy of conservative repair as opposed to restoration, who had worked in Webb's office. Early repair jobs included work to the fifteenth-century church at Salle, in Norfolk and, on behalf of the SPAB, to the fourteenth-century Priest's House at Muchelney Abbey, Somerset, as well as Magdalene College, Oxford.

He also assisted his father-in-law, Ernest Barnsley, supervising the completion of Rodmarton Manor when Barnsley died in 1925, most notably the chapel (1929). Rodmarton was Ernest Barnsley's most important work;"probably", Jewson wrote, "the last house of its size to be built in the old leisurely way, with all its timber grown from local woods, sawn on the pit and seasoned before use."

He engaged a team of craftsmen, employing them, as Sedding had taught, as direct labour. They are photographed at the steps of the garden. Many of them were from the Bisley area and had trained under Ernest Gimson or Detmar Blow, another Arts and Crafts architect who practised locally. As Sedding had recommended,

the real architect ... must be his own clerk of works, his own carver ... the familiar spirit of the structure.

The craftsmen were supervised to the last detail of feature and flourish in which he delighted: traditional pargework of the Tetbury area in a scalloped design made by the plasterer's hawk to the window jamb surrounds;  diapered patterns of nailheads on the battens of the boarded doors; the laying of a floor as Gimson had taught, according to A.R. Powys, with the butt ends reversed, so that the boards taper with the bole of the tree, head to tail, a classic example of randomness and care, of economy, beauty and use coming together; the swept valleys of the roofs, with proper galetting; graded stone 'slats' with their quaint local names, like bachelors and long nines, cocks, wivots and cussoms. He removed the ivy which festooned the whole building, limewashed the exterior rendering and, ever the architectural gardener, shaped and trimmed the formal yews. 

He took great care to preserve its textures, all that was resonant and subtle in its fabric: lime-based techniques many of us employ again today, then in survival as much as revival, and the conservative practice advocated by the SPAB of "repair by building" and tile repair (e.g., to the hood-moulds), adding to and preserving as much as possible of the original fabric. He used hand-made nails, clouts and spikes (he was proud of these on his own door). He sought out the sources of the best traditional materials -- timber (he said) from the Uley village sawmill; Cotswold freestone, rubble and roofing tiles; ox hair, and drift from the deep and dusty lanes that were carved into the valley bottom.

Team of workmen at Owlpen, repairs 1925-6

Back row: Fred White, Tom Coles, Jack Fern, Reg Kilby, Reg Gardiner.

Middle row: Harry Drinkwater, Charlie White, Ted Hunt, Ray Parsloe, Frank Hogan, Herbert Howley, Bill Chappell.

Front row:  Leslie Brown, Bill Woodward (foreman), Wilf Hunt (motorcycle).

Brass 'carnation' pattern sconce at Owlpen

He allowed himself much invention as well as intervention, adding new work in his own distinctive and experimental style, always reversible, to his buildings. He designed metalwork, in the manner of Gimson, in all his houses. Here the ironwork was wrought by Gimson's smith, Alfred Bucknell, of Waterlane, with the help of Fred Baldwin of Rodmarton. There are forged arrow-head and cockspur hinges and Norfolk latches, rat-tail casement stays and bow fasteners, as well as a brass firescreen, a briar rose grille (to the cellar), and his snakeshead fritillary sconces.

Jewson designed cast architectural leadwork for scalloped spouts and the rainwater hopper heads, with more owls and defining dates. Again, this, with his mannered naturalistic designs, is something of a hallmark.

Plaster decoration by Ernest Gimson at Owlpen Manor

Gimson had learnt modelled plasterwork with George Bankart [1866-1929], who had also been articled to Isaac Barradale in Leicester, and then with the leading London firm of Whitcombe and Priestley. He extolled the simple, hand-modelled work at houses like Wilderhope (Shropshire), Speke Hall (Merseyside), Chastleton (Oxfordshire) and Haddon Hall (Derbyshire).

Gimson describes the treatment of flowers at Knole House in Kent:

The modelling is very simple. There are no sharp lines, no quick curves, no undercutting, none of those tricks of the modern plaster-worker for making his designs 'sparkle'; but instead, dull lines, gentle curves, and little variety of relief ... though it may lack something of realism, it expresses the freshness and healthy growth which is the most vital quality in the natural flower.

Plaster trail by Norman Jewson

Jewson had been early struck by the "unusual beauty very local in character" of Gimson's modelled plaster ceilings. W.R. Lethaby describes Gimson's work as "quite original and modern, but as good, every bit, as old work, and yet as simple as piecrust."

Jewson's favoured additions, in metalwork, leadwork and plasterwork, are never allowed to descend to reproduction, but always original designs, always reversible, with variations in each building, inspired by but not imitating the best sixteenth- and seventeenth-century work. The old is always recognisably distinct from the new, as at Gimson's famous repair in timber of the freestone window at Whaplade Church in Lincolnshire, so that the repair is honest and visible, and the house should assume, reinterpret, as near as possible its original beauty.

Plaster flower design at Owlpen

Woodcarving was another craft he enjoyed, turning his hand to details such as finials and newels. Various projected designs were never carried out: sketches for an owl newel survive; although he did bequeath his woodcarving chisels, as much as to say, "Go, and do likewise..."  

He would design simple furniture and fittings; cupboards, a bookcase and an elm kitchen dresser, apparently made by Peter van der Waals of Chalford.

The various accretions of social history are preserved. As James Lees-Milne has remarked, at Owlpen he retained the slight Georgian layer of architectural development -- sash windows and panelling -- which many architects restoring early houses in the 1920s might have suppressed through some zealous but misguided purism.

Jewson's discovery and subsequent purchase and repair of Owlpen was to be possibly his most enduring achievement. When the work was worthily done, he took some pride in having saved the building, describing it diffidently in a letter to Nina Griggs in 1944: 

I have never been ambitious in the ordinary sense to satisfy myself of wanting to be 'somebody'.  I have always been ambitious to satisfy myself (or my own standards).  I suppose I got nearest to it at Owlpen than at any other time. 

Stone inscription recording repairs to Owlpen:

This House, the greater part of which had not been inhabited for many years & had fallen into decay, in 1925 became the property of Norman Jewson by whom it was repaired & again made habitable 1925-26.

Grille in Great Hall, briar rose design

Architectural works

Jewson's other major essay in architectural repair was at Campden House [1934] outside Chipping Campden, where he demolished some untidy Victorian additions and domestic offices, unifying with the skilled use of detail and materials a cluttered design of various dates to form a pleasing and comfortable house, with terraced garden and summerhouse. Griggs described the project as the creation of "a smaller and far more beautiful house, with all that is of historical interest or architectural worth retained."

Jewson became securely established as a well-known "gentleman's architect" in the Cotswolds between the Wars, repairing, resuscitating, a number of distinguished Cotswold manor houses and farmhouses. They include: Charlton Abbots (Winchcombe); Cotswold Farm (Duntisbourne Abbots) for the Birchall family, which he completed for Sidney Barnsley with modelled plasterwork in the library and his most extensive garden added in 1936, on a hillside; Doughton Manor (Tetbury); Hidcote House (1924); Little Wolford Manor (Shipston-on-Stour); Nutbeam Farm (Duntisbourne Leer); Southrop Manor (Lechlade); Shipton Oliffe Manor (Andoversford); Swalcliffe Park (Oxfordshire); Painswick Lodge (1928); and (in the Bisley area) Iles Farm (Far Oakridge) for Sir William Rothenstein, Sydenhams Farm, Lower Througham, and Througham Slad (for William Cadbury). Llysgennydd was his sole house at St David's in Pembrokeshire for his Cambridge friend, Kenneth Pringle.

Alvescot Lodge (Oxfordshire), Battledown Manor and work at Glenfall House (both at Charlton Kings), the latter for the brewer Arthur Mitchell, also a patron of both Waals and Griggs, Eycot House (Rendcomb) (c. 1930), Grey Walls (Preston) (1927), Ready Token (Paulton) (1929), Warren's Gorse (Daglingworth) (1929), and two houses at Coates, were largely new works.

He worked confidently in a more classical idiom in his country houses, when necessity or the spirit of place demanded it, as Shaw and Lutyens and, in the Cotswolds, Guy Dawber had done. The Lindens, Eaton (Norwich) (1921), and The Garden House, Westonbirt (1939), are some of his most successful essays in a whimsical, vernacular classicism, with characteristically fine plasterwork  detail and restrained use of mouldings. The latter David Verey describes as one of his best works, "slightly more William and Mary, with an Italianate touch in the form of a deep loggia with Tuscan columns facing the garden", with mullioned and transomed windows and hipped roofs to its flanking bays, either side of a pedimented central doorway.

In the inter-War years he designed and repaired a good deal of low-cost housing, cottages for landowners and charities, including cottages at Climperwell, Foxcote, Painswick Lodge, South Cerney, Swalcliffe, Westonbirt ("splendidly stout" rubble chimneys, remarks Verey) and Withington. He worked for the Cirencester Rural District Council designing competent examples of  simple but sturdy social housing schemes, such as the Bowley Armshouses, Cirencester (1927 and 1934), or Siddington Reading Room, often relieved by some humorous detail.

It is fitting that he supervised the building of the village hall at Kelmscott as a memorial to Morris in 1933. His designs for gateways, memorials, inscriptions, headstones, finials and lettering are found all over the Cotswolds and beyond.

He executed a good deal of church repair work. Christ Church, Chalford, near Stroud (c. 1937), was one of his most ambitious re-orderings, and it contains a remarkably complete scheme of Arts and Crafts furnishings by the Cotswold group, including altar rails, pulpit, lecturn and font by him.

A number of furniture designs are strikingly successful, from the fine piano-case with marquetry inlay, made by Waals, which he designed for Mrs Clegg of Wormington Grange, to the sturdy child's chair with back splats showing humorous carvings of village characters which he made and painted himself, as well as a number of toys, for his daughters.

Jewson did little professional work after 1940, and felt increasingly at odds with Modernism and the historical-artistic developments of the post-War period, deprecating the Muppets, which had strayed into his life, as compared with the puppets of his friend William Simmonds.

He wrote two books: By Chance I did Rove has become established as a minor classic of Cotswold life before the First World War, chronicling the background to the Gimson group and appearing in three editions, and The Little Book of Architecture (1940) is a useful beginner's guide to English architectural styles.

Waterclour of Owlpen by Norman Jewson, 1926

Child's rocking horse by Jewson, sketch at Owlpen

Christ Church, Chalford, reordered by Norman Jewson, 1937

Norman Jewson in old age

In the case of Owlpen, the "very rude" cottagy chapel, with its early Georgian preaching-church plan, high box pews, squire's pew "like a little room", double-decker reading desk and commandment boards, had been obliterated by Piers St Aubyn's ecclesiological scheme, with elaborate neo-Byzantine mosaics and tiles by James Powell & Sons of 1887 and 1912, Italianate, altogether lacking the scholarly inspiration of Sidney Barnsley's Church of the Wisdom of God [1890-2] at Lower Kingswood [Surrey].

He would talk of the Arts and Crafts in all their forms and of the people he had known, and advise tenderly on new projects of conservation and adaptation. He told how Ernest Barnsley would berate his brother, Sidney's, workmanship by pushing pennies through the gaps between the back boards of his high-backed settle. When he died he bequeathed the settle, which had belonged to Gimson at Pinbury, to Owlpen, as well as his Barnsley work table, and sketch-books and verses, and the diaries he kept of his Continental travels.