Wells, Arthur Randall

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Wells, Arthur Randall (1877–1942). English Arts-and-Crafts architect. As Clerk of Works for Lethaby's Church of All Saints, Brockhampton, Herefordshire (1902), he absorbed much of the elder man's style, as is clear from his own Church of St Edward the Confessor and St Mary, Kempley, Gloucestershire, with its charming Rood and exquisite furnishings (1904). He built Voewood (later Home Place), Kelling, near Holt, Norfolk (1903–4), and St Andrew's. Roker, Sunderland, Co. Durham (1906–7—arguably the finest church of the Arts-and- Crafts movement), for E. S. Prior. Both buildings employed concrete structure, in the case of the church reinforced, and at the house mass-concrete faced with flints and thin tile-like bricks (there are also areas where the in situ concrete is simply left with the board-marks of the form-work exposed as the finish, many years earlier than fashionable Brutalism). Wells also designed a prize-winning cottage for Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire.

Bibliography

Garnham (1995);
A. S. Gray (1985);
Me. Miller (1989);
Pevsner (ed.) Buildings of England, Co. Durham (1985) and Gloucestershire 2 (2002)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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Wells, Arthur Randall

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