Visit to the Guildhall and 78 Derngate, Northampton

E.W. Godwin was 28 years old when he won the competition for Northampton’s Guildhall in 1861. This was his first major architectural commission and it displays Godwin’s early ‘Ruskinian Gothic’ style rather than the Japonisme for which he was later so much better known. As with all his other works Godwin designed not only the building but the interiors and their fittings. The same totality of approach also characterised C.R. Mackintosh’s work. The remodelling of a small terraced house, 78 Derngate, for the model railway manufacturer W.J. Bassett-Lowke in 1916 is one of the architect’s last interiors and has recently been beautifully restored.