I went to a memorial service this afternoon for Lisa von Clemm, a grand stalwart of the bookbinding community who we first met in the summer of 1988 on an island off the coast of Maine (her husband, Michael, was responsible for Canary Wharf). The service was held in St. George’s, Campden Hill, a bit of Victorian Torcello in Notting Hill, designed by Enoch Bassett Keeling, a so-called ‘rogue architect, in a style which was known as ‘eclectic gothic’, with good polychromatic brickwork on leafy Aubrey Walk:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
I really enjoy it when you post something that leads me to google the subject of the post and find out all sorts of things. I’ve just read a piece by Lisa von Clemm’s god daughter recalling living with the von Clemm’s and working for Michael von Clemm in London getting on for 40 years ago. What an extraordinary couple. The wikipedia entry on Michael von Clemm is also fascinating. I’ve always found it interesting that the FT journalist Gillian Tett was originally an anthropologist and I see that Michael von Clemm also started in life via that academic route. Maybe I should encourage my children to consider studying anthropology!
Thank you for pointing me in the direction of the online memoir by her goddaughter (abodystory.com). She was a remarkable person, as was her husband, as the memoir effectively conveys. Charles
Many years ago Bassett Keeling’s grandson gave me a copy of an article about his grandfather, by James Stevens Curl and John Sambrook, which quoted the verdict on St. George’s, by Building News, as “one of the most successful attempts of the modern school of Eclectic Gothic and, although perhaps a little free in treatment, evidences an appreciation of…….continental Gothic which is not too common.”
The article then goes on to say “Today the personal character of the church is barely discernible. The brickwork has been whitened and the black and blue bricks painted red, the cast iron columns have been encased and the apse has been demolished. The interior is no longer ‘exceedingly beautiful and original.’ ”
It concludes by saying – “It is perhaps time that scholars reassessed the work of this strangely original and intelligent architect before his last buildings vanish.”
I think it must have been at least half restored, although the spire went in the war, because the polychromatic brickwork is clearly visible, as are the muscular columns. He was appreciated by Goodhart Rendel as a rogue architect, so is not unloved.