page_title: Percy Richard Morley Horder
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Percy Richard Morley Horder / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Glimpse of Court House from footpath
context_page_description: Percy Richard Morley Horder was an English architect who worked from offices in London. His work included the designing of new country houses or partially rebuilding existing houses. He also designed country house gardens and is noted for laying out Highfields Park, Nottingham together with the adjacent Nottingham University Campus. His early work was in the Arts and Crafts style, but after the First World War his buildings were increasingly in the Neo-Georgian fashion. He undertook architectural work in many parts of the British Isles including Ireland and at Thurso in Caithness. He is probably best remembered for the Trent Building in the University of Nottingham. and for design of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His work at Upton House, Warwickshire for Viscount Bearsted is notable, but it is his work for Jesse Boot, both the Boot’s the Chemists stores, but most importantly the Trent Building and the laying out of the Nottingham University Campus, which influenced design at other English universities, for which he must take the greatest credit.
context_section_description: He was born in Torquay, the son of the Congregationalist minister William Garrett Horder.
  The Horder family lived at 6 (now 18) Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood and his daughter Barbara Morley Horder (1898–1986) became a noted actress.
  In 1927 Morley Horder acquired the Court House at East Meon in Hampshire. This was a country residence of the bishops of Winchester. It was in a badly dilapidated state and he set about restoring the building.  Of this residence, the great hall, a solar, and a garderobe block survive largely intact. The Court House is remarkable for its fine state of preservation. It was commissioned by the bishop, William of Wykeham  and built by his master mason William Wynford, one of the greatest of 14th-century architects, who remodelled the nave of Winchester Cathedral and designed Winchester College and New College, Oxford.  Morley Horder added a north wing, joining the medieval house to the 18th century thatched cottage on the roadside, and he laid out the gardens between the house and the 18th century thatched barn on what had become a farmyard. Morley Horder also bought and restored a number of thatched cottages in the village. An account of Morley Horder's restoration work is given in a Country Life article.
  Horder appears to have been eccentric, with a domineering character: "To his pupils he was "Holy Murder" (a Spoonerism on his name); according to his daughter, "he was most charming... and most awful"... "pushing artistic temperament to its limits, [he] looked and behaved like a cantankerous Old Testament prophet."
caption: Court House, East Meon
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