Colin and Renata Hume: Our House
This is the entry from the original prospectus. The house was built by a firm in Hitchin — the nearest large town to Letchworth. It had two rooms downstairs (front and back, the front room the full width of the house and the back room narrower to allow for a W.C.) and three bedrooms upstairs (the front room the full width of the house and the two back rooms side-by-side). The two back bedrooms and the scullery were served by a central chimney; the living room and the main bedroom were served by a chimney on the left-hand side as you face the house.
Letchworth was the world's first Garden City, founded by Ebenezer Howard in 1903, and in its centenary year of 2003 it was officially renamed “Letchworth Garden City”. It was one of the strongholds of the Arts and Crafts movement when our house was built as part of the Cheap Cottages Exhibition in 1905. This Exhibition was set up to prove that houses could be built using materials other than bricks and mortar (which is what the law demanded at that time). It really put Letchworth on the map — people came from far and wide to see the new ideas — and it led to a change in the law a few years later. The houses had to be built for a maximum of £150, and our deeds show that this is what it was first sold for in 1905. Our house is on the far right in this photo, probably taken in 1905 — you can recognise the white barge-board at the bottom of the roof, and we assume the walls were left as red brick (as the ground floor of the house next door still is) rather than being covered with a white render. Our house in fact was built of conventional materials, but separated from us by a pair of semi-detached houses is the first house in England to be built from concrete blocks — the light-coloured one near the centre of the photograph.
Here it is in September 2009 — not quite from the same viewpoint because there's now a hedge in the way. Our house was extended on one side in the 1970s and the other in the 1980s (it was originally just the middle section of the top photograph, with an open porch), and when we bought it in 1999 the decor was very poor quality and quite out of keeping with the original style of the house. We removed all the carpets, curtains, wallpaper, tiles, niches, cornices, an arch and two bathroom suites, put in a new wall in one room and a new floor in another, had damp-proof treatment, and plastered over the artex ceilings. Renata worked hard in the large garden and I discovered an unexpected talent with a crow-bar. At the time Renata wanted to be an Interior Designer, so she had all sorts of interesting ideas, and I think I adjusted well to them.
After finishing the interior we turned to the garden (which is probably why Renata chose the house in the first place). Having been given the run-around by builders for over a year we got a book on bricklaying out of the library, ordered various tools and supplies, and started building steps and retaining walls in the back garden. Progress was hampered by snow and rain but it was eventually finished, including an access slope at the side of the pond — so that I can still get into the garden even when I'm in my wheel-chair. Unfortunately I damaged my back at the end of August 2001 while mixing and laying concrete for this, and my leg was very painful for a couple of years since then — when I flew to Holland in December I actually needed a wheelchair!
In the photo labelled “Our wall and steps” you can also see a lamp which we rescued from the Spirella Building — one of the landmarks of Letchworth which was being renovated in 1998 for £11 million. We acquired a new drive and revamped front garden — no, we didn't do the drive ourselves, though it was such hard work supervising the men and arguing with the boss that it still exhausted us. However, having seen the way the experts removed two large trees, I bought myself a chain-saw and demolished a tree which was in danger of falling over and landing on the Guide Hall just behind our back garden. The next skill I acquired was wood-carving, to add some Mackintosh roses to an oak dining table we've had made — a copy of (half of) the dining room table from his “House for an Art Lover”. I bought some tools, borrowed another book from the library, and you can see the results below. We moved large quantities of earth from a garden in Hitchin to our greatly extended plot in the front garden, and Renata was forced to visit even more garden centres to fill it with plants. We also made the picket fence at the front and on the right-hand side, and some trellis on the left-hand side.
We bought a new shed to replace the two we removed, and had a new fence built down one side of the back garden. Renata redesigned the lawn to be a row of three circles (see the photo just below), and a gardener/builder levelled all the circles, added brick surrounds and steps between them, and covered the lawns with new turf. After that we erected a hexagonal greenhouse at the bottom of the garden, so I see even less of Renata than before!
I had thought the hard landscaping was finished, but we still had a lot of bricks left over, so Renata then made a raised vegetable bed outside the summer-house at the bottom of the garden — and I even had to help her with a car-load of horse manure to prepare the soil. What a come-down for an international caller and his new BMW! After that, Renata was the one with the bad back.
By 2004 the wall in the front garden (built with the cheapest bricks available by the people who did the drive) was deteriorating — the bricks in the top row were starting to split — so we covered the wall in pebble-dash and painted it white — it looks much better. Renata was concerned to do this before the plants started growing, and she was also very worried because she'd agreed to open the garden to the public (along with a number of others in Letchworth) to raise money for charity and was concerned that everything should be perfect. I'm pleased to report that on Sunday 27th June 2004 she had 432 visitors, received many enthusiastic comments, and was totally exhausted for the next few days! The next Open Garden day was on Sunday 25th June 2006, and this time I was around to check people's tickets as they arrived (since that was the job which did not demand any knowledge of gardening). The next one was on June 29th 2008 and Renata was complaining that now she was earning a living as a gardener she didn't have time to get her own garden ready, though several people asked her how many helpers she had and were amazed to discover that on the contrary she helps other people.
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Renata in the front room with “The Willow Windows” — pictures by Stewart Johnson inspired by the mirrors which Mackintosh designed for The Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.
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Part of the pond and most of the back garden, seen from the upper floor of the house. |
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Our wall and steps
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The craftsman at work
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Close-up
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Mr & Mrs Hume at table
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The holes, one with a container |
The brick edging complete 
The end result 
Now both replaced by one larger pond |
Related web sites
Renata's website, CyclamenGardens.comCharles Rennie Mackintosh Society
The Willow Tea Rooms
The Spirella Building
Our area from above
