C Churston Development Company Ltd

DATE: 1933-1958

LEVEL: SubFonds

Company records of the Churston Development Company Ltd, gathered by the firm's managing director, Dr William K Slater. Churston was started in March 1933 by management staff of Staverton Builders Ltd with the financial support of the trustees of Dartington Hall. Records include brochures and publicity, directors' meeting minutes, company reports and property valuations. Also financial papers, legal records and correspondence, personnel files of senior employees, and design correspondence with the principal architect employed at Churston, William Lescaze. Because Lescaze worked from New York and Philadelphia, all questions devolved into writing, and the correspondence provides minute detail about house designs and other aspects of the project.

Additonal correspondence is from directors of the company including Fred Gwatkin, secretary Eric Porter, and on-site architects Colin Penn and Robert Hening. The series also includes correspondence with Sir James Milne of the Great Western Railway, a few letters of Lord Churston, landowner of Churston Ferrers and Broadsands, Torbay, and planning permission correspondence with officials of the Paignton and Totnes Urban District Councils.

With minor exceptions there are no architectural plans existing at Dartington for Lescaze's Churston houses, nor for the hotel which he designed for the Churston site. A colour illustrated promotional booklet (1935) provides floor plans and conveys a sense of the modernist landscaping intended for the development by Beatrix Farrand. There are also publicity brochures for later homes designed for the Churston Estate by Louis de Soissons who assumed architectural direction of the development after Lescaze left the project in 1935.

The Churston Development Company was started by the Dartington Hall Trustees and Staverton Builders Ltd as an experimental housing development in Devon. It was the largest of Staverton's interwar estates in Devon, the others being St James Priory, Exeter, Dittisham Court, and the Cliff Park estate in Paignton. The Churston project reflected the progressive aims of the Trustees of Dartington Hall. William Lescaze was contracted as architect, with site planning by Henry Wright and landscape design by Beatrix Farrand. Home economists were consulted in planning 'ideal' kitchens. About 500 houses were intended for sea front land purchased from the 4th Baron Churston. The new community would have shops, petrol stations, beaches, a private lido and club, and a luxury hotel designed by Lescaze. As such it may well have been one of the most ambitious modernist housing developments in Britain.

The American connection and particularly the architecture may have been largely responsible for the project's failure. Lescaze continued to work from New York and Philadelphia. British architects Colin Penn and Robert Hening were brought in to interpret Lescaze's drawings on site. The transatlantic design process complicated matters. Six houses were completed to Lescaze's designs by 1935. Only one house sold immediately. Four more houses were completed in a modified form in 1936. By then Lescaze had been removed from the project. Ahead of its time, the Churston Development Company promoted rational modern architecture and community planning, but at prices above those of traditional 1930s suburban estates. The market responded better to thatched roofs than flat roofs and, according to Dartington trustee Fred Gwatkin, the British middle class wanted little to do with the neighbours, planned or not. William Lescaze's grand design for the Elberry Hotel collapsed when a proposed partnership with the Great Western Railway fell through.

After 1935, architect Louis de Soissons worked on the Churston development. He was joined in 1958 by Oswald Milne and together they populated Churston with pitched rather than flat roofs.

Information for Researchers

All papers belonging to The Dartington Hall Trust Archive (with the exclusion of Dartington Hall School pupils individual records) are held at the Devon Record Office. All enquiries relating to research should be made to Devon Records Office, Great Moor House, Bittern Road, Sowton, Exeter, Devon EX2 7NL
+44 (0)1392 384253
+44 (0)1392 384256
devrec@devon.gov.uk
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