A Liverpool Exemplar - Sir Lancelot Herman Keay

 

Lancelot Keay was born on the 3rd of August 1883 at 1 Clarence Villa, Enys Road, Eastbourne, the second son of Henry William Keay, bookseller and seven times mayor of Eastbourne, and his wife, Annie Maria Merrick, née Head. Educated at Eastbourne College and Brighton School of Art, he served his articles in the architectural department of the City of Norwich and eventually became head of the Department. One of his most interesting works there was the restoration of the ancient Guildhall. He served in the Royal Engineers from 1916 to 1921 in France and Egypt, and on his return to England obtained appointment as chief architectural assistant to the City of Birmingham. At Birmingham, he was responsible for the erection of 16,000 new homes between 1921 and 1925.

The Bullring

Gerrard Gardens

In 1925 he was selected from a very large number of applicants to undertake similar duties for the city of Liverpool. He was possibly John Brodie's most critical contribution to Liverpool’s housing history when appointing him as his chief architectural assistant. 'Poached' from Birmingham, Lancelot was acting director on Brodie's retirement and then Director of Housing from 1929 becoming the leading municipal architect of his day and one of the most influential advocates of multi-storey solutions. He had moved to Liverpool as a traditionalist, believing in 'fine building' rather than visions of glass and steel. In 1935 he received the honorary degree of Master of Architecture at Liverpool and in 1938 he became, in addition, City Architect. During his 25 years as Director of Housing more than 35,000 new homes were built across the city and four large-scale redevelopment schemes implemented. His sympathies were with large-scale and rationally conceived re-planning, to meet housing and economic need whilst creating a quality and scale of architecture which befitted Liverpool's ambitions of a civic-minded building in a more welfare-inflected era. With flats at the centre of Liverpool's inter-war re-housing programme, both the city and Lancelot Keay rose to some degree of national prominence in the 1930s, as part of the ongoing professional and political debate on municipal housing in general and flats versus houses in particular. He was invited to sit on Ministry of Health committees that helped shape policy on the issue and numerous foreign delegations visited Liverpool's schemes. Liverpool's flats attempted to create environments that were more than just superficially modern, drawing inspiration from the communal social and recreational facilities of some European schemes Lancelot visited. His appointment in 1931 of a bright young graduate from the Liverpool School of Architecture, John Hughes, already a recognised exponent of modernist-style flat design, consolidated the Council’s commitment and capability in the field. Whilst working on the slum clearance schemes in the city, John Hughes produced the building he is perhaps most famous for, St. Andrews Gardens, know locally as The Bullring. This breakthrough scheme was from a design by John Hughes in 1932 and completed in 1935. Also Gerard Gardens, a tenement block in Liverpool city centre, was designed and built by Lancelot Keay with the inspiration behind the design being the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna. Completed in 1930, it was visited by a delegation from Liverpool Corporation looking for ideas for social housing. They even copied the idea of statues over the arch.

Karl Marx Hof Building

Keay's ambitions ran larger than the mere provision of housing, however. The internal facilities of the flats were relatively conventional, though improved by the insistence that a bath – and later a hand basin – be included within a designated bathroom rather than scullery but he also believed that their denser development allowed recreational space with the inclusion of amenities not possible in the cottage suburbs. Writing in 1939 he proudly enumerated the facilities of Caryl Gardens; 'rest gardens for aged tenants', 'playgrounds with a liberal supply of gymnastic equipment for both infants and juniors', 'a boys' club and a girls' club in the blocks', 'a gas-heated drying room (for which no charge is made)' and, last but not least (for its recognition of the reality of the lives and deaths of Corporation tenants), 'a House of Rest which was erected for the reception of the dead pending burial'. These dwellings housed the poorer working class that councils up and down the country had found difficult to house affordably and Lancelot and Liverpool deserve credit for the achievement. Other notable achievements were the creation of the social housing estates of Dovecot, Norris Green and Speke as part of the large-scale clearance of slum housing in the city, which became models for self-contained municipal housing estates throughout the world.

He served as Director of Housing in Liverpool until 1948 and was also president of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1946 to 1948, the first president to come from that new kind of professional, the local authority salaried architect. Rightly recognised for his flair and innovation in housing development, Lancelot was rewarded for his contribution to public housing when he received a knighthood in 1947 before retiring on the 2nd of March 1954. During his retirement he became a fan of wrestling and infamously wrote several letters complaining about it's coverage on ITV.
Sir Lancelot died in 1974 at the age of 91 in Paddington, London. He is buried with his wife, Iris and his daughter, Jacqueline in Ocklynge Cemetary, Eastbourne, East Sussex. Although Sir Lancelot Herman Keay spent his entire life in the public sector little is acknowledged of him for his work, but few architects can claim to be responsible for building 30,000 homes.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/03/a-liverpool-exemplar-annie-garvey.html