TOWER AMONG THE WINDS AND CLOUDS

If the name of Sir Thomas is largely forgotten, the intellectual legacy of the Tower is remembered through names that resonate strongly today: William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Among the first of the tenants, following Sir Thomas’s departure, was Cormell Price – known as ‘Crom’ Price. In 1863 Crom had taken up a teaching post at Haileybury College, and in 1866 he took the joint tenancy of the Tower (with a friend, C. J. Stone) paying £9 (approximately £1,100 today) to have the premises repaired and redecorated.

As an Oxford undergraduate, Crom was part of a group that identified itself as ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ and included artists and writers such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Formally organised in 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (or ‘PRB’ as it was styled) wanted to return to the late mediaeval, early Renaissance art of detailed, intense colouring and complex compositions, which preceded the High Renaissance – the art before Raphael (who died in 1520). The Pre-Raphaelites therefore drew much criticism with their emphasis on everyday scenes, in contrast to the classical, elegant compositions of Raphael.

Many of ‘the Brotherhood’ and their friends would become familiar with ‘Crom’s Tower’. As Morris wrote in a letter in the summer of 1876, ‘I am up at Crom Price’s Tower among the winds and the clouds’.

Facsimile of a postcard sent to Cormell Price at Broadway Tower by Edwards Burne-Jones.