Finella, Mansfield Forbes, Raymond McGrath, and ... - Fritz Haeg

Finella, Mansfield Forbes, Raymond McGrath,
and Modernist Architecture in Britain
Elizabeth Darling
On 15 July 1936, the sale took place of the contents of Finella, a
house that stood, and still stands, in Queen’s Road, Cambridge.
The “exquisitely modern and antique furnishings” that the sale
catalogue listed give some idea of the character of a house that had undergone
a dramatic transformation only eight years before (figs. 1 and 2). 1 Among the
389 lots, antique occasional chairs and a collection of oriental china jostled for
the attention of bidders alongside a tubular-steel-framed easy chair, several Ferranti
electric radiators, an “Acme New World Regulo” gas cooker, and copious
amounts of plate glass.
The auction had been occasioned by the death of Finella’s owner, Mansfield
Duval Forbes (1889–1936), an English don at Clare College, who had died suddenly
the previous January. He had intended the house to be both his home and
a site where all those who shared his interest in the development of modern culture
in Cambridge and elsewhere could come together and meet. To this end, he had
commissioned a phantasmagorical interior from the young architect Raymond
McGrath (1903–77), which, when shown to the press in the autumn of 1929,
was immediately understood as a site of significance for the development of a
Elizabeth Darling is senior lecturer in the history of art at Oxford Brookes University. Her research
focuses on the history of architectural modernism in interwar Britain, with a particular interest in the
arenas in which progressive ideas about design were fostered in the 1920s, and the work and life of
the architect Wells Wintemute Coates (1895–1958). The author is grateful to the Paul Mellon Centre
for British Art for the grant that allowed her to consult the papers of Raymond McGrath and Mansfield
Forbes. Thanks are also due to Colum O’Riordan and his colleagues at the Irish Architectural Archives;
Elizabeth Stratton, archivist of Clare College; James Cox and Eleanor Harding at Gonville and Caius
College Archives; the archivists at the Lilly Library, Indiana; Jennifer O’Donovan for permission to
reproduce work by her father Raymond McGrath, and Richard Shymansky of Hills and Saunders for
permission to reproduce their “before” photographs of Finella; Louise Campbell, Ben Campkin, Matthew
Craske, Jane Geddes, Michael Hatt, Richard Hornsey, Steven Matthews, and assorted anonymous
reviewers for their comments and advice on the article; and Professor Robin Holloway for showing
the author around the present-day Finella.
1
Sale catalogue for Finella, July 1936, box 8, Raymond McGrath Papers (RMP), Irish Architectural
Archives, Dublin.
Journal of British Studies 50 (January 2011): 125–155
2011 by The North American Conference on British Studies.
All rights reserved. 0021-9371/2011/5001-0007$10.00
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