78 Derngate
Northhampton, England
John McAslan + Partners

John Mcaslan rescues a forgotten work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh for a rare house-museum with an adjacent gallery

© Richard Bryant / Arcaid

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Northampton, a large industrial market town in the English Midlands, is the traditional center of the English shoemaking industry. It is well off `the tourist trail, despite being only an hour by train from London. Yet recently it has become an unlikely destination for architectural pilgrims, who come by the thousands to see a rediscovered curio––a tiny row house, 78 Derngate, just restored by architects John McAslan + Partners. The last known built work of the Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 78 Derngate has an importance far outweighing its modest size. Though Mackintosh was a near-contemporary of both Frank Lloyd Wright and Sir Edwin Lutyens and reflects the influence of both, he was the first of the three to die, at age 60 in 1928, and never built another project after this.

Inside, Mackintosh turned the conventional straight-ahead staircase 90 degrees to divide the house crossways. Despite being no more than 16 feet wide, the front lounge hall is a tour de force, finished in black, with a stenciled pattern of yellow triangles representing a grove of trees, and stained-glass inserts in a similar pattern. The ground-floor rear dining room, though more conventional, features a wall of Mackintosh’s built-in furniture and lamps, incorporating a fireplace in white and pale green tiles. Upstairs, in the guest bedroom, an Op Art pattern of narrow fabric stripes runs up the wall, across the ceiling, down the curtains, and back along the bed covers.

The 78 Derngate Trust, a voluntary organization that created the house-museum, also bought the town houses at 80 and 82 Derngate to provide circulation, display, and administration space for the Mackintosh building. The group also hired the architect John McAslan, Glasgow-born and Edinburgh-trained, who has long been an enthusiast of Mackintosh’s work—which is why his large and successful London practice took on this small but highly significant project. At this point, McAslan has completed the restoration of 78 and extensive remodeling of 80 Derngate, while funds are being raised for 82 to provide offices and more visitor facilities, such as a café.

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Formal name of Project:
78 Derngate

Location:
Northhampton, England

Gross square footage:
6,500 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$1.77 million

Owner:
The 78 Derngate Northhampton Trust
www.78derngate.org.uk

Architect:
John McAslan + Partners
49 Princes Place
London W11 4QA
Telephone: 020 7727 2663
Facsimile: 020 7221 8835
mailbox@mcaslan.co.uk
www.mcaslan.co.uk