Geddes Hyslop

P[aul] Geddes Hyslop (died 1989) was a 20th-century British architect, trained at the British School in Rome. Linked with the Bloomsbury set, his work, mostly in the classical style, was fashionable amongst the British upper classes and intelligentsia in the years immediately surrounding World War II. He is remembered today as a restorer of country houses, a designer of knowledgeable pastiches rather than as an innovative architect.

Hyslop began his architectural career during the early 1930s. His connections with the Bloomsbury Set and a circle of friends, which included such Victoria Sackville-West, Harold Nicholson and James Lees-Milne, ensured his access to the leading society patrons and aesthetes of the day.

One of his earliest works, in 1933, was on the St. Helier estate, a new planned community, extending Morden, Surrey to the south and east. Geddes designed the community's modernistic brick Bishop Andrewe's Church, Wigmore Road.

In 1934, The 2nd Lord Faringdon employed Hyslop to remodel Buscot Park and restore it to an approximation of an 18th-century appearance. This was achieved by removing the 19th century extensions and alterations which obscured the clean and simple lines of the neoclassical house. To restore some of the space lost by the demolition of a large wing, Hyslop created two flanking pavilions in a classical style, "which suit the house to perfection", John Julius Norwich observed, with temple fronts to the south and north. The pavilions and house were given a unified composition by linking high box hedging, complete with topiary pilasters. The interior of the mansion received a similar treatment: Victorian decoration was removed and 18th century ceilings, fireplaces and motifs were acquired and installed. Small rooms were merged to accentuate the sense of light and space needed to accommodate Lord Faringdon's large political houseparties.

At Buscot, and in smaller neo-Georgian settings, Hyslop introduced actual Georgian fittings. At Great Swifts, a neo-Georgian house that Hyslop designed c. 1935, he installed an early 18th-century staircase from Tangier House, Taunton, and brought in fine wall panelling from Ashley Park, Walton-on-Thames, and a rococo chimnneypiece from a house at Blackheath, London.

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