Oaks' for students to 'enjoy pictures & books & the setting of a
HOME & have chamber music in the evenings.'
45
Ede signed the lease to Kettle's Yard on 27 May 1957. For months
previously he had stood opposite the cluster of slum cottages, named
after an 18th-century Mr Kettle, and imagined its interior. Assisted
by the architect Rowland de Winton Aldridge, he designed new bay
windows, a small extension for a bathroom, a spiral staircase and a
bridge to join three cottages to the fourth. By August he told David
Jones, 'So far it's all holes, skeleton floors, dismantled chimneys –
I begin (in mind) to hang pictures, to place a goblet here & a flower
there'.
46
As at Whitestone II, Ede modified white paint, this time with
grey, almost imperceptibly to darken the progression from dining
room to bedroom to bathroom, thus exaggerating the perspective
seen from the hall.
47
He gathered paintings that had been scattered
over years of travelling, and carefully positioned tiles, plates, pebbles
and goblets. The first visits by undergraduate students began in
January 1958.
45 Ede to Dorothy Elmhirst, 10 December 1956,
Devon Archives, quoted in Freeman, pp. 169–170.
46 Ede to David Jones, 18 August 1957, Kettle's Yard
Archive, KY/EDE/1/8/1, quoted in Freeman, p.232.
47 Freeman, p.233.
Lower extension with Henry Moore.
Photograph Mark Dalton 2025.
© Courtesy Kettle's Yard.
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