A REST AT SUNDIAL HOUSE

I am delighted to be back on my blog after a little enforced interlude. I am currently sitting in the window of the beautiful Sundial house in Lyme Regis listening to the sea crashing on the shore line and have a gammon cooking in the Aga. Things are looking up!

This amazing house was the built and designed by the gifted English Arts and Crafts architect Arnold Mitchell (1864–1944). He began his practice in 1886, specializing in parish-halls, houses, and schools. His best works include St Felix School, Southwold, Suffolk (1902), the School of Agriculture, Cambridge (1909–10), and University College School, Frognal, Hampstead, London (1905–7). His domestic works include the fine 1 Meadway Close (1910) and 34 and 36 Temple Fortune Lane (1908), Hampstead Garden Suburb, and the outstanding houses in Basil Street, Brompton, London (1900s), with long ranges of mullioned and transomed windows and tall gables (mutilated in the 1939–45 war). When I was student at Westfield College living in Kidderpore Avenue I really admired the wonderful houses lining the streets on my walks into Hampstead. Perhaps some were designed by Arnold Mitchell himself!