McMorran and Whitby

     The other Saturday my latest ebay purchase arrived in the post. A monograph on the post-war classical architects McMorran and Whitby. Obscure, perhaps. Except British readers will have seen their work, and in particular one work, on television many times. That work is the extension to the Old Bailey, and for some, particularly the late historian and critic Gavin Stamp, it is their greatest work. I like it but am not wholly convinced. Neither, for that matter, am I wholly convinced by his description of McMorran and Whitby as 'progressive classicists' or that it's full of reverences to Lutyens and Vanburgh. Indeed I have to say that I find their work uneven, sometimes bland, occasionally rebarbative, but at their best these buildings have a quiet satisfying lyricism. 

This monograph forms part of series on 20th century British Architects published by the RIBA in collaboration with the Twentieth Century Society and English Heritage. Inclusion of McMorran and Whitby in the series perhaps indicates a change of attitude, among some historians and critics at least, towards contemporary classical architecture for in the years between the War and the advent of Post-Modernism, and in the early 70s the collapse of Modernism, the profession, critics and architectural press in the UK were dogmatically Modernist to the point of totalitarianism. As a result the profession came to be seen as aloof and arrogant. Look upon it as one of those strange paroxysms that British architecture is occasionally subject too when the doctrinaire has the ascendancy. Very few, such as Sir John Betjeman, stood against this, though the weight of popular opinion sided with the likes of Sir John and not the professionals. And for that lonely stand alone, regardless of the quality of their work, the likes of McMorran & Whitby, and Raymond Erith, deserve, and need, to be remembered. It was not an easy furrow to plough, as I can testify as a classically inclined student at Kingston Polytechnic School of Architecture in the late 80s. Not an experience I would want to repeat. On occasion it was close to bullying. I dropped out.

     McMorran & Whitby's historical context established, I think I should also make clear at this point that we are really talking about the work of McMorran here. Whatever the role of Whitby in the practice McMorran was the source of designs discussed here and in the book. There is one building designed by George Whitby illustrated in the book and that is the formidable, if not outright domineering, Plashet Girls School, East Ham, 1952-54. Not the sort of design one would normally associate with children's education.

     Donald McMorran, (1905-1965), spent a number of years before the Second World War in the office of Vincent Harris. At his best Harris was the designer of some great buildings, such as the Manchester Library and the City Hall in Sheffield, but at his worst could be unspeakably dull. Like Harris McMorran came to specialise in public buildings both housing and offices, and like Harris he was heavily influenced by that early twentieth century master Sir Edwin Lutyens. The final thing that McMorran designed in Harris's office was his master's house (10 Fitzroy Place, Highgate). It is an almost uncompromising brick box, the hipped roof hidden behind a parapet, mouldings superfluous. The redeeming feature, its one element of domesticity, is the (drawing room?) bay window dropped into the composition in an almost post-modern manner. Overall it is a hard and cold design, displaying all those things I would hate if it was a Modernist building. And rightly too. It is a Modern, but not Modernist, design. And it leaves me cold. Perhaps that was what Gavin Stamp meant by 'Progessive Classicism'. Be that as it may, McMorran's work is in continuity with that of the previous generation, that is it is essentially Neo-Georgian. And I suppose like the majority of post-War Modernism it, on the whole, just isn't that exciting. British architecture of either stripe had sunk low since its Edwardian heyday.

     Enough of this negativity. There are perhaps six buildings that really are excellent: (in chronological order) The Police Station, Hammersmith, 1938-9; The Lammas Green Estate, Forest Hill, 1953-7, Devon County Hall 1954-63; Cripps Hall, The University of Nottingham, 1957-9; The City Police Station, Wood St, The City of London, 1959-66; The County Library, Bury St Edmunds, 1965. In them McMorran overcame the economic strictures of Post-War Britain, with its sluggish economy, to produce lucid, intelligently designed Classical buildings. Humane buildings, sensitive to context and their place in a complex hierarchy of history, place and purpose. All are worth investigating, studying, existing within their time and yet part of the long British Classical tradition. Perhaps even timeless.

McMorran & Whitby

RIBA Publishing

London, 2009