List of works by Charles Holden

Charles Holden by Benjamin Nelson, 1910

Charles Holden (12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960) was an English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s. Other notable designs were Bristol Central Library, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London's headquarters at 55 Broadway and the University of London's Senate House. Many of his buildings have been granted listed building status, indicating that they are considered to be of architectural or historical interest and protecting them from unapproved alteration. He also designed over 60 war cemeteries and two memorials in Belgium and northern France for the Imperial War Graves Commission from 1920 to 1928.

Holden's early architectural training was in Bolton and Manchester where he worked for architects Everard W. Leeson and Jonathan Simpson before moving to London. After a short period with Arts and Crafts designer Charles Robert Ashbee, he went to work for Henry Percy Adams in 1899. He became Adams' partner in the firm in 1907 and remained with it for the rest of his career.

Buildings

Holden's early buildings were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, but for most of his career he championed an unadorned style based on simplified forms and massing that was free of what he considered to be unnecessary decorative detailing. He believed strongly that architectural designs should be dictated by the intended functions of buildings. After the First World War he increasingly simplified his style and his designs became pared-down and modernist, influenced by continental European architecture. This list includes all buildings for which Holden was commissioned to produce designs.

The Arts and Crafts design for the Belgrave Hospital for Children, Kennington, was inspired by Philip Webb and Henry Wilson.
Holden's competition-winning Tudor Revival design for Bristol Central Library was described by Andor Gomme as "one of the great masterpieces of the early Modern Movement".
A typical Edwardian façade for the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, carried out with W. L. Newcombe.
The series of sculptures commissioned from Jacob Epstein for the British Medical Association Building, Strand, Westminster were highly controversial and calls were made in the newspapers to have them removed.
For the Bristol Royal Infirmary, King Edward VII Memorial wing, Holden designed simplified abstract façades of white Portland stone.
Clifton College Memorial Arch, Bristol was constructed in a Gothic style using limestone and gritstone to match the college buildings.
South Wimbledon station, Merton, demonstrates the modernist glazed "folded screen" design that Holden developed for the seven new stations of the City and South London Railway's extension to Morden.
The cruciform plan of the Underground Group's headquarters at 55 Broadway, Westminster, maximised the daylight entering the building without using light wells. It was the first British office building to be planned in this way.
European architecture inspired a new style for the Piccadilly line described by Holden as "brick boxes with concrete lids". Sudbury Town station, Sudbury, was the first of these.
The single-storey Southgate station, Enfield, features a canopied roof supported on a single central column above a band of clerestory windows that is topped by an illuminated glass and bronze feature.
The designs for new buildings for the University of London, Bloomsbury, were gradually revised and cut back due to a shortage of funds. The 19-storey, 210-foot (64 m) tall Senate House is the only part that was completed and was the tallest office building in London for 20 years.

Cemeteries

Holden worked on the designs for 69 cemeteries for the dead of the First World War as part of his work for the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC, now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)) between 1918 and 1928. Up until 1920, he worked as senior design architect and his designs are thought to include two of the initial cemetery designs built at Forceville and Louvencourt where Reginald Blomfield was named as the principal architect. In 1920, he became one of the four principal architects for the cemeteries on the Western Front.

The entrance pavilion at Dadizeele New British Cemetery, Moorslede, Belgium shows the simple style Holden used for the first of his war cemeteries. The Reginald Blomfield designed Cross of Sacrifice is a feature of all IWGC cemeteries.
Landscaping and horticulture, seen at Messines Ridge British Cemetery, Messines, Belgium, are key features of all IWGC cemeteries. Edwin Lutyens' Stone of Remembrance features in larger cemeteries.
Holden enclosed the irregularly placed graves in the battlefield Cemetery at Polygon Wood, Zonnebeke, Belgium with a low wall of local stone capped with Portland stone. The grass path links it to the adjacent Buttes New British Cemetery.
The extremely simplified Portland stone buildings and memorial at Buttes New British Cemetery, Zonnebeke, Belgium are representative of Holden's later war cemeteries.

Memorials

Holden designed two memorials for the missing dead of the First World War as part of his work for the Imperial War Graves Commission between 1920 and 1928. Both are memorials to the missing from the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. They are located in Belgium and are within cemeteries also constructed to his design.

Linked pavilions and colonnades of the New Zealand Memorial, Buttes New British Cemetery, Zonnebeke, Belgium.

Notes

References

Bibliography

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