How city’s answer to Gaudi left his mark on resort

HOME SWEET HOME: Farrago, built by David Reynard Robinson in Hornsea. Pictures by Joan Venus-Evans

Now & Then, a column by Angus Young

The remarkable legacy of builder David Reynard Robinson

What famous architect Antonio Gaudi is to Barcelona, David Reynard Robinson is to Hull and Hornsea.

“David who?” you might well ask. It’s a good question.

While the late Victorian era builder’s talents might not be as well known as those of the Spanish designer behind the Sagrada Familia church and other stunning landmarks in the Catalan city, the two share a similar legacy.

However, while most of Gaudi’s striking eclectic works have survived and now collectively form a UNESCO World Heritage site, the highlight of Robinson’s very individual approach to design is tucked away down a relatively anonymous seaside street on the Yorkshire coast.

Even so, comparisons between the two are inevitable from the moment you first set eyes on the remarkable retirement home he built for himself in Hornsea in 1908.

The house – awarded Grade II listed building status by Historic England in 1985 – survives as a testimony to the man who designed and built it. Inside and out, it’s a riot of imagination courtesy of thousands of decorative tiles and glazed bricks creating a dizzying whirlwind of chaotic colour.

He obviously loved it but not everyone was impressed. A neighbour later built a high wall just to block out the view.

Some of Robinson’s other more traditional work can still be seen in Hull today.

Sometimes mistakenly given sole credit for Hull City Hall and Beverley Road Baths, he instead worked as subcontractor on both projects with his expertise in decorative tilework being fully deployed.

Similarly, he was also responsible for the glazed tiled walls of the now sadly closed underground toilets in Market Place.

Other notable projects he contributed to include the Sisters of Mercy convent in Beverley Road, the White Harte pub in Alfred Gelder Street, the now demolished St Jude’s Church in Spring Bank and the former East Hull Baths in Holderness Road.

Born in Skirlaugh in 1843 and brought up by his grandparents, Robinson served a seven-year apprenticeship before becoming a master builder and by 1875 was living in some style in West Parade in Hull. At the time, it was a grand thoroughfare between Spring Bank and Anlaby Road with only eight large detached houses along its route.

His address was no accident. Robinson was based right in the centre of a boom area for house-building as Hull’s rapidly expanding population edged westwards from the city centre with new streets being laid out either side of Spring Bank.

As well as building many of them, most would also feature his fashionable tilework in their doorways and on their internal fireplaces.

His passion even extended to his main yard in Freehold Street off Spring Bank, where tiles were laid in abstract designs on the walls, ceilings and floors.

The yard and the houses on the south side of the street no longer exist but those on the north side remain and, here and there, an occasional doorway is still flanked by original tiles fixed into place nearly 140 years ago.

However, Robinson’s personal passion for ceramics would be unleashed in full after buying some land in Hornsea to build a series of houses, including one property unlike any other.

At the time, the town was regarded as a desirable place to live because of its seaside location and direct rail link to Hull.

Around 1890 Robinson started to speculatively develop a site in Wilton Road close to the railway station, building and living in the first completed property before going on to construct a second house next door.

He called the first Migma – the Greek word for mixture – almost certainly in a nod to its blend of eclectic design details, from tiled panels to pilastered window surrounds and Italian-style decorative stonework.

Like Migma, the second – bearing the more conservative name of Albany House – was furnished with extensive internal tilework dominating the internal walls and floors.

For the third, a detached three-storey villa, Robinson settled on the perfect name – Farrago – and set about physically translating its meaning by laying thousands of tiles throughout the property in a deliberately confusing and hotchpotch fashion.

They include many high-quality handmade Spanish and Dutch tiles. It was Robinson’s way of showcasing alternatives to the much cheaper and thinner machine-made English pressed tiles that were dominating the market at the time.

Covered in meandering zigzags and blocks of coloured tiles, the front exterior contains a few clues as to what lies inside. There’s also a tiled picture of a Scottish loch framed by Art Nouveau tiles set within a pediment. Elsewhere, a Biblical scene decorates a gable wall with some of the tiles fitted upside down.

Patterned tiles are also used as cladding to a first-floor bathroom which projects outwards from the house above a gazebo and supported by glazed sewer pipes.

Above the front door are two alphabet tiles featuring the letters R and T. An arty in-joke by someone who used tiles as an artistic tool? Probably.

As authors Nickolas Psvener and David Neave noted in their classic architectural guide Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, some of Farrago’s internal floors are “made up of broken and cut tiles broken up haphazardly in a kaleidoscopic pattern that is comparable to similar work by Gaudi”.

Shirley Scotney of the East Yorkshire Local History Society also drew a direct comparison with Gaudi’s Barcelona works on her visit to Farrago in 2012.

“Each design contains something illogical – a patterned tile where one might expect plain, a bright green tile in a block of pale green ones,” she wrote afterwards.

“The bathroom facade and gazebo interior are completely covered in multi- coloured tiles, some forming recognisable patterns, others apparently selected at random.

“The (first-floor) dining room is tiled from floor to ceiling with a magnificent display of geometric pattern and subtle colour.

“Tiles of all types and colours are placed in apparently symmetrical blocks but on closer inspection deliberate changes in the design become clear – a block edged with blue tiles has red tiles on the fourth, a tile of a completely different design is inserted into a row of matching tiles and patterned blocks are pushed into corners leaving complete blocks of plain tiles.”

RESTING PLACE: Robinson’s grave in Skirlaugh. Picture by Philip Hampel

It’s believed some panels in the house are from an original curved mosaic wall in Robinson’s Freehold Street yard, almost certainly pre-dating Gaudi’s most notable work by several years.

Ironically, the house owes its listing as a building of national historic importance to Robinson’s pioneering use of a bolted steel frame to construct the property and the laying of concrete floors rather than its extraordinary tilework.

The design also includes another nod to Robinson’s slightly eccentric nature in the shape of a large space on the ground floor originally laid out as an enormous garage.

The oddity is that not only did he not drive but the lack of turning space outside would have made it virtually impossible to get a car in and out anyway.

Current owner Josie Adams started a painstaking restoration project in 1975 when she moved into the property, slowly revealing original tiles hidden behind wallpaper, polystyrene and paint applied over the decades and adding her own which mirror the hand-painted designs favoured by Robinson.

She also managed to salvage a pair of fireplace panels destined for a skip from a house refurbishment in Hull to replace the originals which had been ripped out in the 1960s.

As a former art gallery curator and a founder of The Tile and Architectural Ceramics Society, her personal devotion to Farrago is obvious, but Robinson’s own thoughts and records of his remarkable work were lost courtesy of a fire long ago which destroyed all his personal papers.

The man who built Farrago died there in 1913, aged 70. At his funeral, his coffin was carried by 13 members of the local branch of the Master Builders Association as a sign of respect.

Fittingly, his stone tomb in the churchyard at St. Augustine’s Church in Skirlaugh is lined with decorative tiles on all four sides.