40 C O N T E X T 1 2 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 2 Apparently the Duke did not step to shelter Vanbrugh from ‘such intolerant treatment’. Vanbrugh was not reinstated. By the 1730s Sarah was haranguing another man,William Townesend, a stonemason responsible for work at the palace itself and also, under the guidance of Lord Herbert, responsible for the erection of the Victory Column at Blenheim. Sarah’s detailed involvement in the design of various elements of the work can be seen in her letters, written between 1727 and 1731, to Townesend. In one letter she states that ‘I have been in search of marble ever since I saw you and am now promised to have it to my Satisfaction. I send you a plan of the dado which shows the sizes of the marble and the manner in which the pieces are to be put together…The superfices of the dado of the Pedestal is 710 feet, but allowing for an Inch for the Groveing of the Joynts together, will make 733 feet superficial of statuary Slab, 3 Inches thick.’² In October 1732 Sarah again wrote to Mr Townesend. ‘You would oblige me very much if you wou’d yourself go to Blenheim House and make me a drawing very exact of the ChimneyPiece that is in the bow-window room and make figures upon every part of it, that I may easily see how thick the marble is in every part.’ Bess of Hardwick and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, prove that women were involved in building; and not just in the commissioning of architecture but in the detailed design phases too. However, while men began to be recognised as architects from the mid-17th century, many talented women were excluded from the profession until as late as the early 20th century. One of the first women in the world to be officially licensed as an architect was the American, Marion Mahoney Griffin. She worked silently as a power-house in the practice of Frank Lloyd Wright for years and was his first-ever employee. Marion graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894, joining Wright’s studio in 1895. There she worked for nearly 15 years, completing many of Wright’s unfinished designs and leading on architectural features such as lead glass, murals and mosaics for his buildings. In 1911 she married fellow architect Walter Burley Griffin and the two set up an architectural partnership lasting 28 years. In 1914 they moved to Australia to oversee the building of Australia’s new capital city, Canberra. It was Marion’s award-winning drawings that had led to them win this once-in-a-lifetime prized commission. Despite being hidden behind her male associates and husband, Marion contributed greatly to the careers of several men, being responsible for more than half of Frank Lloyd Wright’s drawings and co-architect of many of his designs. By 1920 there were still only around 200 women practicing as architects in America. In England the situation was no better. The RIBA, founded in 1834, refused to admit women until as late as 1898 when Ethel Charles, who was already practising in the office of George and Peto, was finally admitted as a professional architect. Her sister Bessie Charles followed closely behind her, being admitted in 1900. In 1893 both sisters had been barred from the Architectural Association, which remained steadfast in its refusal to admit women until 1917. Despite the Charles sisters’ breakthrough into the RIBA, very few women followed in their footsteps. Those who did were confined to small-scale, domestic projects and were kept well away from prestigious, large-scale urban projects of the time. Such larger, commercial commissions were considered unsuitable for women, and were jealously retained by male architects. This refusal to accept women into a ‘male’ profession was not limited to architecture, but was probably intensified at this time by the insistence on a traditional role for women, which had arisen in response to the suffragette movement. It was not until after the first world war that more women became architects, several being taken on by well-known architectural practices such as CPA Voysey, Reginald Blomfield and Lutyens, who had already formed an unusually forward-thinking working relationship for the time: his partnership with Gertrude Jekyll, the landscape architect. However, most practices remained opposed to the inclusion of women. It was only with the introduction of formal architectural education, rather than apprenticeships, that this began to be overturned. Even then, female architects tended to emanate from progressive middle-class families who believed in education for women and who perhaps had architects as relatives. One such woman was Elizabeth Scott (1898–1972), the niece of the iconic architect Sir Gilbert Scott. Elizabeth achieved a great breakthrough for women in architecture in 1928 when she won the international design competition for the first Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon (listed in 1980), at a time when women her age did not even have the vote. This success, reported widely in the press, was seen as a giant step forward for women in achieving the larger public commissions, away from the more acceptable domestic sphere. By 1932 some progress had been made and a women’s committee was established at RIBA. This provided a voice for RIBA’s female members, who were still very much in the minority. One does not have to look very far to discover that there were several great women architects, both at home and abroad, working within some of the best-known and revered architectural practices in history. It would be interesting to know just how many well-known designs and famous buildings have been either wholly, or even completely wrongly, attributed to the better-known male architects of the same firms, when the credit should have fallen elsewhere or at least been shared. Women’s contribution to historic architecture has traditionally gone unnoticed and unrecorded. It does not have to remain that way. Male or female: credit where credit’s due. Carole Fry, a director of AHC Consultants ¹ HM Colvin, The Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840, 4th edition ² Berkshire Record Office, D/ES/V (B) F 30/1
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