Context 153 - March 2018

C O N T E X T 1 5 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 8 43 PETER KELLY Armitage Rigby, the overlooked architect While Baillie Scott is the architect best known for his association with the Isle of Man, Armitage Rigby (1864 –1910) deserves to be celebrated for his wide range of buildings in a short career. The Isle of Man was never blessed with an indigenous population of architects. Instead, architects were brought to the island by their patrons: George Steuart to design the Castle Mona for the Duke of Athol and John Pinch Junior to designThe Nunnery for the Goldie-Taubman family. Occasionally an architect from Liverpool or elsewhere would sojourn to the island on speculation and take out an advertisement in the local newspapers to advise that they could be contacted at this lodging house or that, and were prepared to take on commissions for surveys of land or design of buildings. The construction of the Loch Promenade at Douglas, the capital, in 1875 saw architects gravitating to this up- and-coming seaside resort to design hotels, dancehalls, theatres and, indeed, terraced houses for the spreading urban mass, and also at the northern town of Ramsey. One architect came towards the end of the 1880s not to set up practice but to retire from architecture at the age of only 24. Armitage Rigby was born in 1864, the year before Baillie Scott. His parents were John and Sarah Rigby of Altringham, Cheshire. His father was co-founder of the cotton manufacturing business of Armitage and Rigby of Ancoats, Manchester andWarrington. At the age of 17, he became articled to J MedlandTaylor, an architect in Manchester. He attended construction classes at Manchester Technical School and at the end of his five years articles he spent two weeks in NewYork ‘studying local methods of construction’. He continued as an assistant toTaylor for another year before spending eight weeks study touring Germany, Holland and Belgium. Returning to England, he worked for a year in the London office of Milne and Hall. Joseph Hall had been educated at King William’s College in the Isle of Man and was articled to Medland Taylor a year before Rigby. In 1887, Rigby returned to Altringham to work as a drawing-office manager for his cousin Faulkner Armitage, who had a well-established architectural practice there. Faulkner Armitage was the principal of Barry Parker who, after serving his articles with him, joined up with Raymond Unwin. Rigby’s pair of cottage houses at Little Switzerland. He intended this design to be repeated on small housing estates at Ramsey and Port Erin, but this was the only pair to be built.The two small windows on the front elevation let light into an inglenook.The distinctive curved porch was not used by any other architect on the island. (Photo: Fiona Newton) Portrait photo of Armitage Rigby (Image: Mrs EM Rigby) Billown Mansion Malew was Rigby’s largest commission. In addition to the mansion house, his brief included a model farm, lodges, motor garage and estate houses. The scheme was so large by local standards that two Castletown builders, Coopers and Corrins, had to combine forces to complete it.