7 November 2017

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Mary Medd (née Crowley and sometimes called Mary Crowley) built this house, Sewell’s Orchard at Tewin in Hertfordshire, in 1934, when she was 27; some details here (when it was for sale) and lots more here. ‘Having built three residential homes, Mary Medd pursued a career in the public sector, designing school buildings for the government. This made for a career well away from the public eye and may explain why she is not as well known today as she deserves to be. Yet Mary Medd was one of Britain’s pioneering Modernist architects. She worked with Erno Goldfinger, who had great respect for her work: his Willow Road houses (1939) share the square window motif seen at the rear of Mary Medd’s house.’