Christmas Lunch: Edgar Wood’s legacy in Middleton

Saturday 2nd December 2023 – ‘Edgar Wood’s legacy in Middleton’

Venue: The Arts and Crafts Church and Edgar Wood Rooms (formerly known as the Long Street Methodist Church and Schools in Middleton), Lever Street, Middleton M24 5UE.

Cost: £55.00 per head. All details on attached booking form and menu.

Booking: complete attached booking form and send by email to Julia Jewels at [email protected] (alternative postal address on form). Payment details on booking form. Closing date for bookings: 12 November 2023

The Christmas lunch and talk will feature the legacy of the pioneering architect Edgar Wood (1860-1935). Born into a Middleton mill-owning family, he was expected to enter the family business. However, despite initial parental opposition, he was articled to the Manchester architectural firm of Mills and Murgatroyd. On becoming an associate of the RIBA he set up his own practice in Middleton undertaking commissions from family, friends and associates. He later moved his office to Manchester and had a flourishing practice designing houses for wealthy clients mainly in Lancashire, Cheshire and West Yorkshire. He also undertook a small number of innovative schemes for schools and churches. Following the death of his father in 1909 he was released from the need to earn a living and retired to Italy in 1922 to pursue his first love, painting. He died there in 1935. Despite a substantial legacy of buildings, he is not more widely known and little has been published since John Archer’s article in the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society in1963-4 and David Morris’s 2012 article for the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library. The Victorian Society have recently commissioned Richard Fletcher to address this deficit and produce a monograph on Edgar Wood in their architects’ series. The Manchester Group is delighted that Richard has agreed to give the talk at our Christmas lunch at Long Street Methodist Church and School. The school buildings together with some of Wood’s domestic buildings in Middleton benefitted from the HLF Townscape Heritage Initiative between 2011 and 2018 which preserved a significant legacy of Wood’s work. Richard Fletcher’s talk is titled - “Edgar Wood - A New Chapter" "The year 2022 saw the deaths of two major figures in the world of Edgar Wood scholarship - the Manchester academic, John Archer, and the Chair of the Edgar Wood Society, David Morris. This talk will set out the implications for the Edgar Wood Society and future research.

Programme

10.30 Tea and coffee

11.00 Talk by Richard Fletcher- Edgar Wood- A new Chapter

12.00 Tour of the church & domestic buildings by Edgar Wood on Long Street

13.15 Christmas lunch