The White House 

The White House in Clarendon Park is one of Leicester’s most distinctive houses and is Grade II listed. It was the second villa designed and built by Ernest Gimson in the city’s southern suburbs in 1896 and is a good example of an Arts and Crafts Movement domestic building. 

A black cast-iron rainwater hopper with heart motifs on a white brick wall at The White House in Leicester, featuring a small ventilation grille and sharp sunlight shadows.

The client and the site 

Arthur Gimson, a successful businessman in his forties, had just become a director of Gimson & Co. in 1896. He was a married man; he and his wife Alice already had a large family. He acquired a plot of land on North Avenue, an awkwardly-shaped site but one that was close to the amenities of Victoria Park and the town centre, and asked his half-brother Ernest Gimson to design a house for him. The house had to be placed quite tightly within the narrower part of the plot because of building restrictions. This however allowed for a substantial garden and a tennis court to be fitted into the wider section and inspired Gimson to design the three-sided gable end at an angle to the road. This unusual, dramatic and windowless feature juts out almost like the prow of a ship. 

The design and construction 

By 1896 Gimson had been living in the south Cotswold countryside for three years and his observation of and admiration for the stone-built farmhouses in local villages influenced the design of The White House. The intention was for the building to be lime-washed annually; this technique was traditionally used in the Cotswolds and elsewhere to disinfect and waterproof the exterior of rural buildings. The house is now painted with masonry paint but it remains white and the beam ends and wire-cut bricks are still visible through the paint. It is this aspect that gave the house its name and ensures that it still stands out from the largely contemporaneous surrounding houses in red brick with mock Tudor detailing. 

The garden front features a pair of two-storey bays each with a panel modelled in Keene’s cement, a type of rough-cast plaster (plaster with the addition of gravel) suitable for exterior use, featuring the client’s initials ‘A J G’, a tree and various leaf and fruit sprigs within a diaper pattern designed by Gimson. The work was executed by George Bankart, Gimson’s friend who had trained with him in Isaac Barradale’s architectural office. Bankart went on to specialise in plasterwork but he may well have taken a hands-on role in overseeing the building work in Gimson’s absence. Other decorative features are the lead rainwater hoppers decorated with hearts and flowers which were made to Gimson’s design by a local company, F. W. Haskard & Co. who were based in St George’s Buildings, Halford Street, Leicester. The firm obviously hoped that Gimson’s designs would bring them additional work as they produced postcards that feature photographs of the cast lead hoppers and pipework.i There is no evidence however of these designs being used elsewhere.  

The interior 

The interior layout of The White House was not typical of the late 19th century. The accepted norm was for the drawing room to face the afternoon sun to the south and west and the kitchen to face the north or east. The tight plot made this impossible – instead the drawing room looks out towards the entrance path while the dining and breakfast rooms look north onto the garden and tennis court. Another unconventional feature was that one had to walk through the dining room to gain access to the drawing room. This followed the medieval plan of passing from one reception room into another without a corridor, a tradition which had been revived by Gimson’s friend and mentor Philip Webb in his design of Red House in Bexleyheath, Kent for William Morris in 1856. This obviously proved awkward for a family home where a lot of entertaining took place and in 1900 Arthur Gimson submitted a plan that was accepted to add a corridor and relocate the entrance. A coal house was also added in 1902 by the Leicester architect Arthur H. Hallam. 

Inside The White House Gimson designed plaster ceilings and friezes in the dining and drawing rooms which he himself executed with Bankart’s help. One of the most attractive features is the wooden staircase, designed by Gimson and executed by Richard Harrison, the wheelwright in the village of Sapperton nearby Gimson’s Cotswold home. This is an early example of the use of handwork in Gimson’s architecture – the grain of the wood is clearly visible and the uprights and balustrade are attractively chamfered with a draw knife – all features of country woodworking. Otherwise the overall interior was very plain, with wooden floors, simple stone fire surrounds and in the drawing room, austere wood panelling with curtains by Morris & Co. Arthur Gimson subsequently bought some furniture from Gimson and his friend Sidney Barnsley for the house but it was by no means exclusively furnished with Arts and Crafts pieces.  

The occupants of The White House 

Arthur Gimson’s family – husband and wife and five children – had three live-in servants according to the census in 1901. Christopher Gimson, one of Arthur and Alice’s sons, was over six-foot tall and in about 1904-6, when he was nearly 20 years old, they commissioned an extra-long single bed for him from Ernest Gimson. The bed was made in Gimson’s Daneway Workshops near Cirencester and remained in The White House until 1988 when the then owner, the architect Douglas Smith, donated it to Leicester Museums (D2 1988). By the early 1920s The White House was owned by the Leicester stockbroker C. Victor Smith. He was particularly keen on the style of Arts and Crafts furniture developed by Gimson who had died in 1919 and he commissioned a number of pieces from Gimson’s friend Sidney Barnsley, Sidney’s son Edward whose workshop was at Froxfield, near Petersfield in Hampshire, and Gimson’s former foreman Peter Waals who established his own workshop at Chalford, Gloucestershire after Gimson’s death. Some of these pieces were subsequently acquired by the local hosiery manufacturer Sidney Pick and then donated to Leicester Museums (Oak sideboard by Sidney Barnsley 114.1974, oak dining table by Peter Waals 115.1974).