Beneath the rose

Campion Hall, Oxford, part I: The task of creating a Jesuit hall in Oxford in the 1930s was eagerly assumed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. In the first of two articles, Clive Aslet reveals the story of this remarkable building

-  Clive Aslet

WHY not ask me?' enquired Sir Edwin Lutyens, when Father Martin D'Arcy needed an architect for Campion Hall in Oxford. It was 1934 and Lutyens was then in his mid sixties, knighted and the most famous architect in the country, whose oeuvre ran to some 550 buildings. 'But, Ned, D'Arcy replied, 'you have the reputation of being most appallingly expensive.' Lutyens assured him that his fees would be minimal and that he would keep an eye on the cost. He thus entered the esoteric, socially glamorous world of Jesuit Oxford, where architectural austerity would be combined with high art to form a haunt for, among others, Evelyn Waugh. Lutyens told Sir John Rothenstein that he considered Campion Hall his best building.