Iron can be wrought into the most delightful staircase balustrades. John Goodall chooses some favourites from Country Life’s outstanding archive.
Every Thursday, we look back into the Country Life architecture archives — this week, we’ve revisited a retrospective on some of the most beautiful staircases ever to appear in the pages of Country Life Magazine, as originally chosen by our architecture editor John Goodall back in 2017.
The staircase at 42, Cheyne Walk, London SW3, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1933 for Guy Liddell and his wife, the Hon Calypso Baring. Lutyens delighted in abstracted visual figures that created repeatable patterns and the effect of continuous movement. ©Country Life Picture Library
The forecourt of High Head Castle, Cumbria, in 1921 with its ironwork of the 1740s. The building was devastated by fire in 1956. ©Country Life Picture Library
The spectacular inlaid staircase of Claydon, Buckinghamshire, designed after 1757 by Luke Lightfoot. ©Country Life Picture Library
The pulpit stair at Lichfield. Skidmore’s virtuosic ironwork for the cathedral of 1859–63 is strikingly coloured. The quality and interest of church ironwork is often overlooked. ©Country Life Picture Library
The head smith and his boy at Thornham, Norfolk, in 1900. Country Life published a feature on this Arts-and-Crafts enterprise, which produced fine wrought iron for Sandringham. ©Country Life Picture Library
The black-and-white staircase hall of Gledstone Hall, North Yorkshire, in a photograph of 1935. The house was built in 1923–26 for Sir Amos Nelson by Sir Edwin Lutyens. ©Country Life Picture Library
Soane’s balustrade at Moggerhanger, Bedfordshire, 1809–11, is lent interest by restrained asymmetry. It encloses an oculus that lights the central tribune of the house. ©Country Life Picture Library
Maison Jansen of Paris created this stair in an 18th-century French manner at Craigengillan, Ayrshire after 1901. ©Country Life Picture Library
Detail of the stair at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, probably by the local smith Robert Bakewell. ©Country Life Picture Library
A detail of the stair at Weston Park, added in 1899 by the practice of John MacVicar Anderson. ©Country Life Picture Library
Strong lighting artfully amplifies the effect of the ironwork in the British Embassy in Washington D.C., USA, by Sir Edwin Lutyens in this photograph of 1939. The pattern is probably adapted from an eccentric Georgian chair-back design. ©Country Life Picture Library
This 1931 photograph shows Rex Whistler’s paintings for Capt Euan Wallace in Hill Street, W1. The foliage in the balustrade echoes the outdoor setting of the paintings. ©Country Life Picture Library
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