Online Talk: 30th October 2026, 6pm
In the heyday of the Arts and Crafts movement before the First World War, there were three star architects: C.R. Mackintosh, C.F.A. Voysey, and M.H. Baillie Scott. Baillie Scott’s work is the least well known, even though he was the most productive of the three.
Baillie Scott (1865-1945) was an outsider. In 1892, after very scanty training, he began architectural practice in isolation on the Isle of Man, but he quickly became internationally famous through a series of articles in The Studio magazine. After moving to England in 1901 he kept a low profile, seldom meeting other architects and never joining the SPAB or Art Workers’ Guild. But he designed about 300 houses and wrote two books and numerous articles.
He was exclusively a domestic architect – ‘so-called, not, as the title seems to suggest, because he is a kind of family pet in contradistinction to his fierce and untamed brethren of the wild, but because he is primarily a designer of houses and cottages for people to live in and to provide a comfortable and inviting setting for their domestic life ’ (Houses and Gardens, 1933). No detail of domestic life or its setting was too small for Baillie Scott’s perceptive attention.
The talk will present Baillie Scott’s designs, both architectural and decorative, and outline his career which was founded on deeply held Arts and Crafts principles, but pursued in his own unique way.
The new book Baillie Scott: Architect and Author, by Diane Haigh and William Fawcett, will be published on 18th September 2026 to coincide with the opening of a Baillie Scott exhibition at Blackwell in the Lake District, the only Baillie Scott house that is open to the public.
William Fawcett is an architect who worked in practice for over forty years with Diane Haigh (1949-2022). They renovated six Baillie Scott houses, and Diane was also project architect for the restoration of Blackwell with Allies and Morrison architects. Diane wrote the acclaimed book Baillie Scott: the Artistic House in 1995, and William has compiled and edited a revised and expanded edition, Baillie Scott: Architect and Author. William is also chair of the consultancy Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd.
This talk is organised by the Friends of the Gordon Russell Design Museum, and profits will help to support the continuing work of the Museum. www.gordonrusselldesignmuseum.org
What’s on at the GRDM: www.gordonrusselldesignmuseum.org/online-events/