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Building of the month

January 2025 - Lanternhouse, Ulverston, Cumbria

Lanternhouse, Ulverston, Cumbria – Francis Roberts, 1998

Lanternhouse, Ulverston, Cumbria
Francis Roberts, 1998

In November 1999, Francis Roberts described himself in a letter to the Managing Editor of Architecture Today as ‘a rather traditional Roman Catholic architect.’ The King (writing as Prince of Wales in his 1989 volume A Vision of Britain) described Roberts’ work as ‘unusually sympathetic and reassuring.’ But he is perhaps most widely known for his one-man revival of the Arts and Crafts tradition in English architecture in the 1980s, although he has argued that he could be described as a frustrated modernist – having previously been at BDP. His own home in the Preston suburb of Penwortham, designed to accommodate his growing young family, would most certainly have been termed a modern house upon its completion.

A proud Welshman, by birth if not dialect, Roberts was born in North Wales in 1930 and was inspired throughout his life by the castles and traditional Welsh architecture of his youth. Another influence came in the form of the 19th and early 20th century Chester architect, John Douglas, who designed over 500 buildings across North Wales and northwest England during his long career. The architecture and writing of Viollet-le-Duc, the great restorer of France’s medieval castles and cathedrals, also played a major part in Roberts’ thinking over the years. Appropriate then that he spent a good deal of time working with churches and cathedrals, such as the repair, re-ordering and re-decoration of St Peter’s Cathedral in Lancaster. The project, completed in September 1995, received an RIBA Award in 1996 and was published the same year in Church Building, which lauded Roberts as ‘an architect who understands the fin de siècle architectural mind not only in an extremely thorough, but also practical way. He can actually create buildings in that design-language; the rest of us can only talk about it.’

Lanternhouse (or Lantern House as it started out) stands on The Ellers in the centre of Ulverston in Cumbria and is converted from a National School building of 1834. National Schools were schools founded during the 19th century by the National Society for Promoting Religious Education to provide elementary education, in line with the teachings of the Church of England, to the children of the poor. Along with the less numerous British Schools of the nonconformist British and Foreign School Society, they provided the first widespread system of elementary education in England and Wales. With a previous life in teaching and religion, it is perhaps therefore fitting that the building was eventually acquired by Welfare State International – a somewhat unorthodox arts collective established in 1968 with a focus on the celebration of rites of passage and education through art. The organisation was led by the charismatic artist, John Fox, who described Lanternhouse as the National Creation Centre.

Roberts was selected from four architects who were invited to produce detailed submissions, following a process where eight were interviewed out of the 15 who responded to an initial invitation sent to 25 practices nationally. After three tenders, Leck Construction started on site in late 1997 and the whole thing took just over two years from appointing Roberts in October 1996 to practical completion in December 1998, with the build itself taking just twelve months at a total cost of £960,000 – up from an initial estimate of £850,000. As the project neared completion, Roberts wrote that he believed his architecture to be ‘distinctive and decorative and always sensitive to the context.’ The statement is certainly true of Lanternhouse.

The street frontage is so superbly well adapted and extended that the casual passer-by would be hard-pushed to tell new from old. In fact, apart from a slightly cramped porch squashed between the gateposts and restricted in size by the narrow strip of land in front, one could mistake the whole thing for a nineties newbuild. The ground and first floor windows are joined together within oversized surrounds; the upper floor sills are dispensed with entirely. These pleasingly match the surrounds to the windows of a new visiting artists’ accommodation block, although these bring together three floors in roughly the same height as the two of the original school building.

Roberts always preferred to design buildings that could be constructed using traditional techniques and built by competent local tradesmen. Lanternhouse is no exception, with all new build elements of the scheme raised in masonry with a rendered finish and the artists’ block accessed from the main building across a simple covered bridge, quite unintentionally reminiscent of New England. The driveway passes under the bridge and leads to a large theatre workshop, incorporating green oak cruck frames from a previous project, which takes up half of the former playground to the rear. Either side of the driveway are full-height curving walls, originally attractively picked out in a colour one might regard on a sunny day as salmon (a subtle shade or two apart from the fashionable terracotta of the decade).

The right-hand curve forms a corner of the artists’ block and the left-hand rises into a circular tower, topped out with a sculptural blue lattice spire by artist Jamie McCullough – a memorial of sorts, as he died shortly after the project was completed. Next to this, a rooftop extension creates a satisfying horizontal termination to the verticality of the lower windows and is fully glazed on the north side to maximise interior daylight. When Lanternhouse won an RIBA Award, displayed externally at the base of the tower, the citation concluded that ‘the building was a joy to visit’.

Unfortunately, Welfare State International’s enterprise at Ulverston closed on 1st April 2006, when it was sadly no April Fool as John Fox stepped down as the Artistic Director to pursue his peripatetic cultural provocation and personal creative journey free from the stress of running an arts organisation. A closely related arts charity based at the building, simply named Lanternhouse, ran thereafter until Arts Council funding cuts forced the organisation’s unexpected closure in early 2012.

Luckily, the building has regained a use since the charity’s departure. Software company Citrus-Lime, a large regional employer, took over the premises in 2016. True, the joyous salmon-coloured exterior has been replaced with a drab grey by the new occupants. But as Roberts himself recently remarked, ‘It’s only paint.’

Andrew Jackson (@atwjackson) is a C20 Trustee and Co-Chair of Civic Voice.

Building of the Month is edited by Joe Mathieson; an Architectural Adviser at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, writer and C20 volunteer.

For pitches, or to discuss ideas for entries, please contact: joe@c20society.org.uk

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