FEBRUARY 2009 INFORMATION

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Some History

The Motor House has had its doors open to artists of all kinds for more than twenty years. It was set up in the early 1980s as a centre for the arts by the painter Miles Richmond (see http://milesrichmond.co.uk/), along with his friend Harry Thubron and Miles’ son-in-law David Seaton. It has flourished for many years as a place where people have been able to find a place to work, live and make in a rewarding and uplifting environment.

The house was originally built to accommodate the family of the chauffeur, and the cars, for the Bell family who were ironmasters in Middlesbrough. The Bells were great patrons of the arts and their most famous daughter was the explorer and Egyptologist Gertrude Bell, who laid out the gardens of Rounton Grange, a large house designed by Philip Webb and decorated throughout by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Gertrude, as is well documented, travelled extensively in the East and lived and died in Baghdad, where she was working at the time (see http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/). One of her last and most important works (out of many, of which there is not time to go into here) was the establishment of the Archaeological Museum in Baghdad. Rounton Grange itself was demolished in the 1950s but all the buildings around it survive more or less intact. It is one of the largest surviving groups of Arts & Crafts buildings in the country.

There’s more information on the Rounton estate in the article by Peter Burman through this link: http://www.tu-cottbus.de/lookingforwards/pdf/18burman.pdf

When Miles Richmond returned from having lived in Spain for over 30 years, at the beginning of the 80s, The Motor House was almost in ruins, having been abandoned for many years. Now it is standing and in pretty good shape and is still keeping the doors open to all those who share a belief in the pursuit of a dynamic creative endeavour. Yet also to those people simply wanting a place of quiet in which to be themselves.

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