William Morris and Frederick Henry Evans had shared interests in typography, literature and architecture. Evans was a talented photographer and had supplied Morris with lantern slides for his lectures on architecture. In 1896 Morris invited Evans to photograph Kelmscott Manor, his country home in Oxfordshire. Morris and his wife Jane shared the house with the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti from 1871 to 1874, and it remained a country retreat for Morris and the artists and intellectuals in his circle until his death in 1896.
Evans was a skilled architectural photographer, in this series he captures the unspoiled craftsmanship and organic feel that first attracted Morris to Kelmscott. After Morris’s death he assembled a number of these images in a memorial portfolio.
This view (from the north) shows the lane leading up to the main garden entrance of the house from the village. The building on the right is one of the barns to the south of the house. The pollarded trees in the distance and the eattle fence (on the left) are on the land farmed by the Hobbs family, Morris’s landlords.
