Charles Henry Holden Litt. D, FRIBA, MRTPI, RDI was a Bolton-born English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s. He also created many war cemeteries in Belgium and northern France for the Imperial War Graves Commission. His early buildings were influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, but for most of his career he championed an unadorned style. After the First World War he increasingly simplified his style and his designs became pared-down and modernist.
About Charles Holden in brief
Charles Henry Holden Litt. D, FRIBA, MRTPI, RDI was a Bolton-born English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s. He also created many war cemeteries in Belgium and northern France for the Imperial War Graves Commission. His early buildings were influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, but for most of his career he championed an unadorned style based on simplified forms and massing. After the First World War he increasingly simplified his style and his designs became pared-down and modernist, influenced by European architecture. He was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1936 and was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 1943. Many of his buildings have been granted listed building status, protecting them from unapproved alteration. He twice declined the offer of a knighthood. He is buried at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, with his wife Margaret Steadman, a nurse and midwife, and their three children. The couple had no children together, though they lived a simple life, with no strenuous activity for the betterment of the better and no hot water on the table; no hot food in the fridge. They were introduced by Holden’s older sister, Alice, and became friends through their common interest in Whitman. Around 1906, they moved to Harmer Green near Welwyn, where Holden designed a house for them. The Holdens lived as a married couple and lived in suburban Norbiton, Surrey, until 1902.
They later moved to Codicote in Hertfordshire, where they lived in a simple house and had a son, Janet Ashbee Holden, who was born in 1906. Holden referred to her as a tutor because of her husband’s alcoholism and abuse and they never divorced, even after James Steadman’s death in 1930. In April 1892 he was articled to Manchester architect Everard W. Leeson and, while training with him, also studied at the Manchester School of Art and Manchester Technical School. He briefly had jobs as a laboratory assistant and a railway clerk in St Helens. In 1897, he entered the competition for the RIBA’s prestigious Soane Medallion for student architects. Of fourteen entries, Holden’s submission for the competition’s subject, a \”Provincial Market Hall\”, came third. Holden described the design as being inspired by the work of John Belcher, Edgar Wood and Arthur Beresford Pite. In 1895 and 1896 Holden submitted designs to Building News Designing Club competitions using the pseudonym \”The Owl\”. Although the number of competing submissions made was not always large, from nine competition entries, he won five first places, three second places and one third place. His station designs for London Underground became the corporation’s standard design influencing designs by all architects working for the organisation in the 1930s, and he was awarded a Royal Gold medal in 1936 for his design of the University of London’s Senate House.
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