HISTORY
Debenham House was designed and built c.1906 by Halsey Ricardo FRIBA, together
with William de Morgan who manufactured the tiles, and assisted by Ernest Gimson
who designed the ornate plasterwork ceilings, on the site of three former
houses, for Ernest Ridley Debenham of Bladen, Dorset, Chairman of the department
store Debenham & Freebody and a Director of Lloyds Bank.
The house illustrates two of the pivotal aims of his work,
firstly to express his architectural concepts in terms of
colour and secondly to create a fabric durable against the
(then) destructive influences of a city environment.
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To meet these aims, the exterior of the house is faced in
Doulton Carraraware brickwork, of a pale terracotta shade,
with panels of glazed brick, by the Burmantofts branch of
the Leeds Fireclay Co., variously in green, to reflect the
colour of nearby foliage, and in blue, to reflect the sky.
The roofs are covered in green tiles from Provence.
Glazed tiles are also used extensively inside the house. The
tiles are wonderfully varied, depicting peacocks, eagles,
flowers, galleons and mythical beasts. Many are reputed to
have come from an assignment originally commissioned for the
Czar’s yacht Livadia, built in the late 1870’s,
and from another assignment for six P&O liners. The domed
and galleried hall, at the centre of the house, includes brilliant
mosaics, added later, to a design by Gaetano Meo and executed
under his supervision. The design includes mythical and legendary
figures, signs of the Zodiac and small portraits of the Debenhams
and their children. The cupola itself is of leaves and branches
in green and gold.
While most of the main rooms of the house include noteworthy
and original decorative features, the library is quite exceptional.
It is fitted throughout in mahogany and the shelving is decorated
with mother-of-pearl and inlays of various woods. The horizontal
band under the top shelf shows pansies and moths, a word play
on the French ‘pensee’ meaning both pansy and
thought. Small winged hour-glasses in ivory, at the top of
the vertical divisions, indicate the flight of time in the
company of books.
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