Red House
William Morris’s experiment in how to live beautifully—designed by his friend Philip Webb in 1859—Red House reads like an Arts & Crafts manifesto built in brick. It’s modest in scale but rich in intention: hand-made details, honest materials, rooms conceived as a total work of art. Guided visits and a calm garden make this less a ‘tick-list’ house and more a slow look at ideas that later transformed British design.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Webb’s ‘Honest’ Architecture
Birthplace of Arts & Crafts principlesAsymmetry, local brick, deep eaves—nothing is showy; everything serves life inside the house.
📍 Exterior and ground floor circuit
Morris & Burne-Jones Wall Paintings
Early experiments by a future design firmSketchy, lyrical figures surfaced from beneath later paint layers—studio work done at home.
📍 Stair hall / principal rooms (guided access)
Total Design, Room by Room
Architecture, furniture and ornament as one ideaEven with losses, you can read the ‘whole house’ concept: built-in settles, purposeful light, humane scale.
📍 Parlour, dining room, bedrooms
Garden as an Extension of the House
Nature completes the interiorFruit trees, workaday borders and sightlines turn the garden into another ‘room’.
📍 Rear lawns, orchard paths
Inspire your Friends
- Red House was designed in 1859 by Philip Webb for his friend William Morris and is widely cited as the first true Arts & Crafts house.
- Conservation work revealed Morris and Edward Burne-Jones’s early wall paintings hidden under later paint—rare survival of their ‘at-home’ experiments.
- Ideas forged at Red House fed directly into Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (founded 1861), the workshop that reshaped Victorian interiors.
