Title: C Churston
Level: Series
RefNo: C/CDC
Vol: 11 boxes
Dates: 1933-1958

History: The Churston Development Company was started by the Dartington Hall Trustees and Staverton Builders Ltd as an experiment in housing development in Devon. It was the largest of Staverton's interwar estate projects in Devon. William Lescaze was contracted as architect, with site planning by Henry Wright and landscaping by Beatrix Farrand. About 400 houses were intended for sea front land purchased from the 4th Baron Churston. The community would have shops and beaches, a club and a luxury hotel designed by Lescaze. As such it was one of the most ambitious International Modernist housing developments in Britain.

Lescaze worked from New York where he was building a townhouse at 211 E 48th Street on the strength of his Dartington contracts. He and assistant architect, George Daub, sent plans and instructions by steamship. English architects Colin Penn and Robert Hening were brought in to interpret Lescaze's drawings on site. The transatlantic design process complicated matters. The American connection and the uncompromising architecture created resistance. Six houses were completed to Lescaze's designs by 1935. Only one sold immediately. Four more houses were completed in 1936, but by then Lescaze had left the project.

Ahead of its time, the Churston Development Company promoted rational modern architecture and community planning, but at prices substantially above those of traditional 1930s suburban estates. The market responded better to thatched roofs than flat roofs and the British middle class wanted little to do with the neighbours, planned or not. William Lescaze's grand vision for the Elberry Hotel at Churston collapsed when partnership with the Great Western Railway fell through.

After 1935, architect Louis de Soissons worked on the Churston development. He was joined in 1958 by Oswald Milne and together they surrounded Churston with pitched rather than flat roofs.

Description: Records of the Churston Development Company Ltd, gathered by the firm's managing director, Dr William K Slater. Records include brochures and publicity, directors' meeting minutes, company reports and property valuations. Also financial papers, legal records and correspondence, files of senior employees, and correspondence with the principal architect employed at Churston, William Lescaze. Because Lescaze worked from New York and Philadelphia, all questions devolved into writing, leaving extensive written records.

For more information search the online catalogue reference C/CDC.