Title
Mr & Mrs Goddard talk about their modernist house
Subject
Housing
Description
Mr & Mrs Goddard talk about the influences behind their modernist house on Avenue Road in Leicester
Creator
East Midlands Oral History Archive
Source
EMOHA Ref: 1822, EM/108/A/B
Publisher
East Midlands Oral History Archive
Date
1950s
Rights
You may use this item in accordance with the licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/
Format
.mp3
Language
English
Type
Oral history
Duration
1min 23sec
Transcription
Q: What made the two of you decide you’d quite like a Bauhaus-influenced house?
A: We had known for ten years that we had wanted to build. Well, it took us ten years to get to the stage where it was the right moment and we could afford to do so. And in that ten years we subscribed to the Architectural Review, which was the main architectural journal in this country and we’d studied it pretty carefully, so that we sort of knew what was happening and what, in the end, what we wanted. Mies van der Rohe and Gropius… and other houses in Scandinavia and Germany.
Q: What was the local people’s reaction to it? I mean, you’d grown up in this area, you knew a lot of…
A: I don’t know, but I don’t think they liked it. Well, no one was rude about it but it wasn’t – you know, it was so different and so unlike traditional house building in this country, that…
Q: You mentioned a remark someone made…
A: About coming in and saying, ‘It’s so nice to see the inside of your house Mr Goddard, because it does look like a public lavatory outside! We’ve laughed about that for years.
A: We had known for ten years that we had wanted to build. Well, it took us ten years to get to the stage where it was the right moment and we could afford to do so. And in that ten years we subscribed to the Architectural Review, which was the main architectural journal in this country and we’d studied it pretty carefully, so that we sort of knew what was happening and what, in the end, what we wanted. Mies van der Rohe and Gropius… and other houses in Scandinavia and Germany.
Q: What was the local people’s reaction to it? I mean, you’d grown up in this area, you knew a lot of…
A: I don’t know, but I don’t think they liked it. Well, no one was rude about it but it wasn’t – you know, it was so different and so unlike traditional house building in this country, that…
Q: You mentioned a remark someone made…
A: About coming in and saying, ‘It’s so nice to see the inside of your house Mr Goddard, because it does look like a public lavatory outside! We’ve laughed about that for years.
Interviewer
Colin Hyde
Interviewee
Mr & Mrs Goddard
Location
Avenue Road, Leicester
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