Philip Webb
b. Oxford, 1831;
d. Worth, Sussex, 1915.1

Philip Webb - As close friend of William Morris, friend and mentor to W. R. Lethaby, the chief technical adviser and instructor to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the designer of a relatively few but hugely influential major houses Webb became the principal instrument through which the Arts & Crafts movement developed and promulgated its architectural ideas to the following generation. Webb was educated at Aynho in Northamptonshire, and did articles with a firm of builder-architects in Reading after which he moved to London and was employed by G. E. Street, eventually becoming his senior assistant. In this capacity he met and befriended William Morris, who joined the firm for a year. Morris commissioned Webb to design the Red House at Bexleyheath for his own occupancy, and this commission was followed by other houses. Webb insisted on undertaking no more than one commission at a time, and his approach to the design issue was to enter the spirit and object of building as entirely as possible. His work represented a disciplined secularizing of Gothic Revival principles.

Major buildings / works:
Red House, Bexleyheath, 1859.
Arisaig, Inverness-shire, 1862.
Smeaton Manor, Yorks., 1874.
Clouds House, Wilts., 1879-86.
Standen, East Grinstead, Sussex, 1892.
Rounton Grange, Yorks., 1898.

Bibliography:
W R. Lethaby, Philip Webb and His Work, 1935 (London, 1979).