Robert Lewis Roumieu

Robert Lewis Roumieu, otherwise R.L. Roumieu, was a Victorian architect best known for 33-35 Eastcheap, London EC3.

Born in 1814, Roumieu was of Huguenot descent and his middle name is occasionally spelled "Louis". His forebears were "an illustrious Huguenot family - the Roumieus of Languedoc." The name "Roumieu" has been listed among those Huguenot refugees who settled in Great Britain and Ireland during the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1714).

With his partner Alexander Dick Gough (1804–71), Roumieu completed some notable projects in what are now the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington, including Milner Square in Islington, and the Islington Literary and Philosophical Institute (now the Almeida Theatre), a stuccoed classical work of in 1837.

Early life, training and FRIBA

R.L. Roumieu's grandfather was Abraham Roumieu (1734-1780). For 22 years his address was 10 Lancaster Place, Strand, London (1845–77). Prior to that he was at 8 Regent's Square, St Pancras, London (1845) and after that period at 7 St George's Terrace, Regent's Park, London (1877, the year he died).

Until 1831, when he was 17 years of age, R.L. Roumieu was articled to Benjamin Dean Wyatt (1755-1852).

RIBA Fellowship

On 15 December 1845 R.L. Roumieu qualified as FRIBA (Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects), having been proposed by H L Keys, E M Foxhall, and H E Kendall. All three of Roumieu's proposers had become Fellows of the Institute a year after its foundation, in 1835.

• Henry Lant Keys was born in 1800 or 1801.
• Edward Martin Foxhall (1733-1862), a District Surveyor of St George's Hanover Square and was articled to Sir John Soane (1753-1831).
• Establishing the identity of Henry Edward Kendall is problematic, for there are two identically named, father and son. H E Kendall (1776-1875) was from 1823, District Surveyor for St Martin in the Fields. His son, Henry Edward Kendall Jr (1805–55) received his FRIBA in 1842. It seems likely that the Kendall who proposed Roumieu was Kendall Sr. As a possible former pupil of John Nash he may have carried some weight, and he had also proposed Foxhall as a Fellow.

Career

From 1836-1848 R.L. Roumieu was partner of Alexander Dick Gough. It appears to have been a close relationship, inasmuch as Gough named his architect son "Hugh Roumieu Gough".

Milner Square, Islington

Roumieu and Gough's Milner Square, Islington, has been taken as "an early example of his [Roumieu's] talent for strangeness and distortion."

33-35 Eastcheap

The two distinctive high gables make 33-35 Eastcheap instantly recognisable as "one of the maddest displays in London of Victorian Gothic" - or is it a masterpiece?

During the Middle Ages, Eastcheap was a market street. By the mid-19th century, it largely reflected the rise of offices and warehousing. In 1868 R L Roumieu designed 33-35 Eastcheap at a cost of £8,170 as a vinegar warehouse for Hill & Evans. It has been seen as "crazy and dazzling" and one of the City of London's most original commercial façades.

Ian Nairn characterises it as "truly demoniac" - "the scream you wake on at the end of a nightmare". Nairn concludes that the building, however terrifyingly Gothic, should be preserved as an element of the human temperament not often found in architecture. Stamp and Amery praise the originality with which

the high gables broke through the standard cornice line and the confident canopies gave tremendous vigour to the façade.

Hailing it as "the City's masterpiece of polychromatic Gothic self-advertisement", Pevsner notes its

Red brick with blue brick bands...dressed in Tisbury stone with Devonshire marble columns, all organized into a frenzy of sharp gables, a shaft resting on top of a gable, others starting on corbels. Strictly symmetrical...twin three-bay outer sections narrow as they rise, exposing a recessed centre with a dormer in the steep roof."

The roofline is accentuated with iron foliage finials. At street level, the arcading and iron gates date from 1987. Above the two lights of the central Gothic window Roumieu placed an animal carving in a medallion recalling the celebrated Boar's Head tavern.

Other work

Aside from the works mentioned above, Roumieu's corpus, as listed in his obituary, comprised:

• restoration and additions to "Franks", Kent and of Kensworth Church, Hertfordshire
• St Mark's Church and Parsonage, Tunbridge Wells
• Manor Park Estate, Streatham, London
• Victoria Ironworks, Isle of Dogs (this is the Docklands area of London)
• the French Protestant Hospital, Victoria Park, Hackney, 1866. Described in John Timbs' Curiosities of London as "in the pure French domestic style of the early sixteenth century".
• St Michael's Church, Islington
• the Prudential Assurance office, Ludgate Hill, City of London
• chambers in 10 Old Broad Street, City of London
• Victoria Wharf, Upper Thames Street, City of London
• Messrs Woodall's Carriage Factory, Orchard Street, London
• East St Pancras Schools
• 34 Eastcheap (the building now known as 33-35 Eastcheap)
• additions to Brookshill, Harrow Weald; to Itchel Manor House, Itchel, Hampshire; and to Whitbourne Hall, near Worcester
• "The Lymes", Stanmore, Middlesex
• "The Cedars," Harrow Weald, Middlesex
• additions to "The Priory" (Sir James Knight Bruce), Roehampton, and "The Priory," Wimbledon

Roumieu also built several warehouses for the vinegar-makers Crosse & Blackwell, and stables for the same firm in Crown Street, Soho, London. These were on the site of Charing Cross Road (subsequently converted to offices).

Additionally, Roumieu was surveyor to the Gas, Light and Coke Company's Estate at Beckton, the French Hospital Estate, St Luke's, and several other estates in and near London.

Reginald St Aubyn Roumieu

R.L. Roumieu's son, Reginald St Aubyn Roumieu (1854-1921) had an architectural practice with Alfred Aitchison at his father's premises of 10 Lancaster Place, near the Strand. Roumieu and Aitchison completed R.L. Roumieu's designs for Charing Cross Road, (a warehouse for Crosse and Blackwell), following his demise in 1877.

Additionally, R. St A. Roumieu reflected the family's origins in becoming President of the Huguenot Society in London. In this capacity, he unveiled a memorial in 1911 to Wandsworth Huguenots.

He maintained his father's association with the French Hospital, as seen by the inscribed bowl presented to him by the Directors of the French Hospital on 13 January 1921. It was recently sold by the auction firm Bonhams in Edinburgh for £2,500.

A Derby connection

The Roumieu family appear to have owned land in Derby which was bought back from them for council housing. It is recorded that 76 acres (310,000 m²) of land on Osmaston Park Road "were bought in 1914 from R St Aubyn Roumieu, R L Roumieu (and others) for £8000 averaging £104 per acre".

References

• Bradley, Simon, and Nikolaus Pevsner. London 1: The City of London. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997.
• Bottrell, Catherine. Council Houses in Derby: Bastions of Hope and Security. Online text, accessed 29 September 2007
• The Builder, vol. 35. London: July 7, 1877.
• Directory of British Architects, 1834-1914. London & New York: Continuum, 2001. Compiled by British Architecture Library, Royal Institute of British Architects , Bal, RIBA.
• Dixon, Roger, and Stefan Muthesius. Victorian Architecture. Thames & Hudson, 1993. Originally published 1978.
• Hitchcock, Henry Russell. Early Victorian Architecture in Britain, vol. 1. London: Architecture Press, 1954.
• Orbach, Julian. Victorian Architecture in Britain. (Blue Guide) 1987.
• Stamp, Gavin, and Colin Amery. Victorian Buildings of London, 1837-1887: An Illustrated Guide. London: Architecture Press, 1980.
• Walford, Edward. Old and New London, vol. 2 (1878) on British History Online, accessed 24 September 2007.