DOES any decade get a worse press than the 1970s? These were the years that
spawned the Bay City Rollers, Terry and June and truly horrible
fashion mistakes. Footballers had perms, girls wore hot pants, and
platform-soled shoes cracked many an ankle.
As for homes – think Abigail’s Party and Dralon. There were
patterns everywhere, sofas were huge and if you were just that little bit
arty you’d have stools and pillows scattered around a low wicker table.
That, at any rate, is the way that we like to remember homes in the
Seventies. What was the reality?
“If you examine the period carefully you will find that the 1970s was, in
fact, a very exciting decade in architecture,” says Jack Pringle, the
president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
“It was a time of great change. Architects suddenly realised that tower blocks
– streets in the sky – were not the way forward. We gave up trying to build
Le Corbusier-style buildings without either the funding or the weather to
make them work. The 1970s brought in low-rise buildings and courtyards.
Wonderful, intimate scale developments such as Lillington Gardens in
Pimlico, London.”
Suburbia changed for ever. There was a bright and breezy American influence
borrowed from imported television series. The best housing estates were
landscaped, with manicured verges; homes were on fairly large plots,
reflecting the price of land and everyone wanted a garage. People aspired to
light-filled open-plan living rooms, with a separate dining area at one end.
Big windows were a must; only the real trendsetters as yet lived in homes
with en suites but most new homes had ground-floor lavatories.
David Daw, who has designed hundreds of individual houses, mainly in the West
Country but also throughout the UK and abroad, looks back fondly on the
decade. “The 1970s saw architects put aside ‘ego’, ” he says. “Instead of
working to a predetermined philosophy we built for the client. I would spend
hours getting to know a client and trying to work out his needs. Then I’d
sketch an idea, discuss it and carry on the design process room by room like
that.”
One of the best examples of a Daw house is Pinetree Lodge in Stoke Bishop,
Bristol. This dramatic piece of architecture, with its distinctive, rounded
turret in one corner, was made for the musician Michael Watson. Daw
discovered that Watson liked to play his guitar with small groups of fellow
musicians and that he was fond of parties. He designed the entrance hall
with a minstrels’ gallery so that he could play to small groups if he wished
or, if he threw open the doors to rooms leading off this area, create a
mini-auditorium. Although Watson has long since sold the house, it has
worked well for its present owners, Brian and Viv Swindell.
“We have always liked the wood in the hall and dining room,” says Brian. “But
over the years we have taken out the more dated 1970s fixtures and fittings,
such as the avocado bathroom downstairs and the bright orange en suite
bathroom, to say nothing of the lime-green and orange floor tiles in the
kitchen and the crazy-paving-look chimney breast. Had we not done so someone
would have slapped a Grade II listing on us.”
The Swindells have spent more than £40,000 updating Pinetree Lodge. Apart from
bringing the bathrooms into the new millennium, their biggest job was
knocking the kitchen into the boiler room to make it a kitchen/family room.
It’s typical of the sort of renovation to which 1970s houses throughout the
UK lend themselves. In Cornwall, the estate agent Ian Lillicrap finds that
1970s houses are some of his most sought-after for just this reason. “The
big, open rooms have a ‘beachy’ feel,” he says. “Their rooms are easily
knocked into one another and the cedar or pine that you often find inside
can be covered with a coat of white paint to create the New England look
that so many of our buyers want now.”
But hardcore 1970s aficionados are perfectly happy with their original
interiors. Carys Webb’s home was built to her specifications at the
beginning of the decade. It is a four-bedroom, glass-fronted, split-level
house, cleverly stepped back into the hillside with wonderful views over the
Dyfi estuary in Cardiganshire. Think Californian cliff-top pad in one of
those James Garner detective movies, then minimise it in scale, add a shade
of Mid-Wales cloud and you have it. Webb, who is aged 83, has now decided to
sell her house. “I remember going to the Ideal Home exhibition in 1970 and
being really taken with the idea for the shelves to either side of the
fireplace,” she says. “The stone fireplace was all the rage in those days.
I still like the arch into the dining room, and the sliding glass doors to the
patio were state of the art at the time.”
Some may mock 1970s interiors but they have a cult following now. “I think
some Seventies pieces are really interesting,” says Simon Donald, the
television pundit and former editor of the satirical magazine Viz,
who is an avid collector of furniture and ornaments from the last century.
“You can’t write it all off. I have some lovely lava lamps and old vinyl
record players. It’s just things like wallpaper that were dreadful. For some
reason designers believed that making colours clash hideously was somehow a
good idea.”
Is that it? Will 1970s homes be remembered solely for their swirling posthippy
designs and kitsch? “It’s far more important than that,” says Pringle. “This
was the decade when towering figures such as Foster, Rogers and Grimshaw
were working hard in little offices to get their work accepted. We saw the
first attempts to be energy-conscious in our housing; solar heating was used
for the first time. It was a hugely significant decade.”
Carys Webb’s home is for sale for £599,000 with Sanderson, 01654 712685, sandersonestateagents.co.uk
CHECKLIST
Are you living in the Seventies? Tick the boxes below as appropriate:
Turquoise or avocado bathrooms Wooden cladding
Stone fireplaces Artex ceilings and walls
Psychedelic wallpaper Shag-pile carpets
Wicker tables Egg-shaped chairs
“Colour schemes” in brown, orange and cream G-Plan
furniture
White globe lampshades Lava lamps
Chunky pottery coffee sets Teak sideboards
Leather, suede, animal fur, velvet or corduroy covers Big windows
Large modular sofas Long living rooms divided by arches or glass doors
Bright-coloured kitchen tiles Swirly-patterned carpets
SCORE
Less than five ticks you have slight Seventies tendencies
Five to ten ticks you probably have shoulder-length hair
More than ten ticks you are in serious New Avengers territory ANDREW
RILEY
