The Motor House

The Motor House in North Yorkshire is a place where several major traditions in the making of art in Britain are grounded, coming together in a unique form. It is a place of making and collaboration, focussed on experimental and innovative work, and has been established as a working space for artists for over 40 years. 

In practice it embodies the work of Miles Richmond and David Seaton, and in heritage the work of David Bomberg, William Morris, Philip Webb, and John Ruskin. It is a place of singular importance, holding threads of uniquely pressurised concerns for the arts.

The Motor House is one of the most important surviving buildings at Rounton. Designed by Philip Webb’s assistant and successor to Webb’s practice George Jack, The Motor House originally housed the cars for the Bell family. On the ground floor are 6 garages, 5 of which have been converted into studio space. There are spacious outbuildings, an adjoining Fowl House, (part of the original Rounton Grange and which was remodelled as stabling by Philip Webb) which now serves as workshop space, coupled with extensive outdoor space. The house was designed with living premises for the chauffeur and his family on the first floor. It is a well-crafted and unique building.  

In the early 1980s The Motor House was repurposed as studios by Miles and Susanna Richmond and their extended family, notably David Seaton. The first workshop held at The Motor House in 1982 was conducted by Harry Thubron. Since the early 1980s The Motor House has been host to many visiting groups of artists, and has worked with a wide variety of universities and independent groups to provide space for artists to work at scale and in all media. It has been a catalyst for creativity for many artists and some of our working partners to date include The University of Hertfordshire, Teesside University and The Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

The Bells of the North

In 1866 Lowthian Bell purchased an estate at Rounton, 12 miles south of Middlesbrough. He had already employed Philip Webb to design alterations to Washington New Hall in County Durham, for the design of Red Barns at Redcar for his son Hugh Bell, for works offices at Port Clarence, and for the principal offices of Bell Brothers in Middlesbrough.  On Philip Webb’s return to London following his first site visit to Rounton he sketched an entirely new house to replace the existing Rounton Grange, a design to which Lowthian Bell agreed. Philip Webb’s Rounton Grange began construction in 1872 and was completed in 1876. 

Rounton Grange was latterly the home of Hugh and Florence Bell and also of Gertrude Bell, traveller, archaeologist, and founder of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. On her death in 1926 the family moved from Rounton Grange to the nearby former Carthusian monastery Mount Grace Priory, which had been acquired on the advice of William Morris and Philip Webb, and formed part of the estate. During the war Rounton Grange was used as a military hospital and in the early 1950s the house was demolished. On the 15th of February 1877, whilst visiting the newly completed house, Philip Webb wrote in his diary, “I longed to be a stonebreaker rather than a setter-up of stones.” Notwithstanding this, Lowthian Bell and Philip Webb remained lifelong friends.

Rounton in the present day retains some of the finest examples of Arts & Crafts architecture in the country, with many of the original Philip Webb and George Jack buildings, including the extensive walled gardens, now home to thriving new ventures.

The firm of Bell Brothers originated as Losh, Wilson and Bell, a manufacturing company founded in 1809  at Walker in Newcastle by the partners William Losh, Thomas Wilson, and Thomas Bell.

In 1818 George Stephenson’s original wooden wagonway was completely relaid with cast-iron edge-rails made in collaboration between Stephenson, who owned the patent, and Losh, Wilson and Bell. The other key figure in the company was Lowthian Bell, son of Thomas Bell, who became perhaps the best known ironmaster in England.

Losh, Wilson and Bell manufactured the castings for the Newcastle High Level Bridge in 1852, and as Bell Brothers produced extensive iron and steel for large-scale industry and railways. Later incorporated with Dorman Long the firm constructed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle.

Bell Brothers expanded rapidly, from two furnaces in 1854, to eight by 1865, to twelve in 1875. The firm made significant contributions to blast furnace practice, with Lowthian Bell (a metallurgical chemist) pioneering advances in furnace design and practice and developing supporting plant and equipment. Bell Brothers’ site at Port Clarence on the north bank of the river Tees was the largest iron and steel-making plant. Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone visited Middlesbrough and described it as a “remarkable place – the youngest child, as I may call it – of England’s enterprise… an Infant Hercules.”

The Richmond family

In 1906 Herbert Richmond and Elsa Bell married at East Rounton church. In the Richmond family a crucial tradition in British art is brought to light as successive generations of the family were all noted artists of their time. The son of the miniature-painter Thomas Richmond (1771–1837) was George Richmond (1809-1896), he was one of William Blake’s pupils in the small group of young artists called ‘The Ancients’. George Richmond and John Ruskin met in Rome in 1840 and they became lifelong friends. George, in a letter to his wife Julia wrote, “Mr Ruskin from Oxford called on me today, he seems a very delicate subject indeed.” In 1878 George’s son, William Blake Richmond, became Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University, succeeding John Ruskin. 

Miles and Susanna Richmond,

David Bomberg & The Borough Group

Bob Richmond’s parents, Miles and Susanna Richmond, were both pupils and friends of David Bomberg. It was Bomberg’s unique power to find the balance between modernity and tradition in the tremendously disoriented, and disorienting, currents of twentieth century history and culture. 

Miles and Susanna worked and studied with Bomberg at the Borough Polytechnic in south London in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and then lived beside David and Lilian Bomberg at Ronda in southern Spain until his death in 1957. Miles and Susanna then remained in southern Spain until 1977 when they returned to England.

Through their work and close collaborations with Bomberg, Miles and Susanna Richmond brought an important tradition of art to The Motor House, from Bomberg himself and also from the time of Bomberg’s tuition in London in the early years of the C20th by Henry Tonks at the Slade, and by Walter Sickert, through to William Lethaby, Philip Webb’s biographer who in 1896 became the founder of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.

The Motor House today

The Motor House is now in the process of being formed as a new charitable body in order to continue this legacy of working in the arts, and to maintain it for future generations, in collaborative partnership with other foundations and working arts organisations.

We welcome all dialogue around collaborative practice, at local, national, and international levels.

If you have any plans you’d like to discuss with us do get in touch, we’re assembling our programme for 2025 and we welcome all contributors.