Recorded Talk Series: Victorian and Edwardian Women in Architecture
Victorian and Edwardian Women in Architecture
Organised by Lynne Walker
The winter lecture series provides the opportunity to engage with recent, path-breaking research by leading experts which gives a fresh perspective on women’s diverse roles in nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture as designers, patrons, clients, philanthropists, and businesswomen, as well as their emergence as professional architects by 1900. In the broad context of Victorian society, this series considers themes and issues which both facilitated and limited women’s agency and contribution in a male-dominated world, most notably, family, social and political networks, widowhood and wealth.
Buy tickets for all 7 recorded talks for the price of 6. You can watch recordings of the talks at a time which suits you.
Victorian and Edwardian Women in Architecture: An Introduction
Recorded Wed 29 January 2025
Forty years after the first historical exhibition about the work of British women architects, the role and the richness of their participation and achievement remain largely unknown. Lynne Walker introduces a series of lectures that will extend our knowledge not only of women in architecture but the Victorian period and its architectural and social history.
Lynne Walker, a member of the Victorian Society since 1970, is an IHR Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London and an HonFRIBA. She has published widely on women in architecture and design and curated the foundational exhibitions ‘Women Architects: Their Work’ (1984) at the RIBA and ‘Drawing on Diversity: Women, Architecture and Practice’ (1997) in the RIBA Heinz Gallery. Most recently, she has contributed a review article on women in global architecture to Architectural History, 2023.
Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, ‘House Decorators, Cabinet Makers, and Designers of all the Details of Household Furniture and Upholstery’: the History of a Business, 1874–1905,
by Elizabeth Crawford
Recorded Tue 4 February 2025
Agnes (1845–1935) and Rhoda (1841–82) Garrett were the first women to run a professional interior design business. Thinking it essential to have a training, they served a three-year apprenticeship with the architect J. M. Brydon before embarking on an enterprise that, despite Rhoda’s early death, continued into the 20th century.
Elizabeth Crawford is the author of numerous articles and books, including Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their Circle (2002), which describes in detail the work of R. and A. Garrett – and that of their female friends and relations who did so much to transform the lives of women.
‘Girls are Much Easier Managed than Boys’: A.W. N. Pugin and Women
by Rosemary Hill
Recorded Wed 12 February 2025
Pugin’s biographer explores the role women played in both Pugin’s personal and professional life and in particular his relationships with his mother, Catherine Welby, and three wives, Anne Garnet, Louisa Burton and Jane Knill.
Rosemary Hill’s prize-winning biography, God’s Architect, A Life of the Gothic Revival Architect A. W. N Pugin was published in 2007. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Society of Antiquaries, a former trustee of the Victorian Society, a trustee of the Pugin Society and a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Victorian chatelaine: Emily Meynell Ingram of Temple Newsam and Hoar Cross
by James Lomax
Recorded Tue 18 February 2025
Emily Meynell Ingram (1840–1904) was one of the wealthiest independent women of her age. A childless widow for three decades, she ruled over and beautified two great country houses; built several churches, including Bodley and Garner’s masterpiece at Hoar Cross, Staffordshire; sailed her yacht; and became a cult figure to her heirs and dependants. The lecture will explore the life and legacy of a major female architectural patron.
James Lomax is a retired decorative art curator who worked under Emily’s long shadow at Temple Newsam, Yorkshire, for thirty years. His biography of her was published in 2016.
‘Hang drawing!! I must go and help people’: Octavia Hill, John Ruskin, and Victorian Society
by William Whyte
Recorded Wed 5 March 2025
Best remembered now as one of the founders of the National Trust, Octavia Hill (1838–1912) devoted her life to improving the housing and living conditions of the urban poor. As William Whyte explains, her approach to social work was not just generally but very particularly shaped by her understanding of art and architecture, which can be traced back to her early years as a protégé of Ruskin.
Professor of Social and Architectural History at the University of Oxford since 2014, William Whyte is a historian specialising in the architecture of British churches, schools and universities. He contributed two chapters on Hill’s involvement with art and architecture to Octavia Hill, Social Activism and the Remaking of British Society, edited by Elizabeth Baigent and Ben Cowell (2016).
‘Clotilde Brewster: a life in perspective: the journey of the first female international architect’,
by Laura Fitzmaurice
Recorded Tue 11 March 2025
Described by the composer Ethel Smyth as brilliant, sociable, amusing and utterly original, Clotilde Brewster (1874–1937) defied all the odds by becoming the first woman to work internationally as an architect. Her story offers a glimpse into elite professional life in Victorian Britain and Europe during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, highlighting the largely unknown role of women in architecture.
Laura Fitzmaurice earned her Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and currently works in high-end residential design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to her design work, Laura researches and writes about early women architects. Her book Clotilde Brewster: Pioneering Woman Architect was published by Lund Humphries in November 2024.
Marion Mahony Griffin: ‘Stage 1’ of a remarkable career’,
by Anna Rubbo
Recorded Tue 18 March 2025
Marion Mahony Griffin (1871–1961) had a career which spanned 50 years over three continents: the USA, Australia and India. ‘Stage 1’ includes her environmentalism and engagement with progressive ideas in Chicago, work with Frank Lloyd Wright, and her collaboration with Walter Burley Griffin on the international design competition for Canberra. The Stage 1 story ends with the Griffins’ arrival in Australia in 1914, and the publication of two articles by Marion on ‘Democratic Architecture’.
Anna Rubbo is a Research Scholar at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development in the Climate School at Columbia University, New York. Previously Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney, she has published extensively on Mahony Griffin, and in 2016 co-developed the exhibition Marion Mahony Griffin: In Her Own Right for the Elmhurst Historical Museum in Chicago.