SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: The Croydon Camera Club, the Writers’ Circle and even a masonic lodge all found a warm welcome at the Edridge Road home of a family of artists, as DAVID MORGAN explains
Frieze frame: American-born Cyril Spackman was a noted and influential artist in Croydon for much of the 20th Century
The building of the Croydon Flyover in the 1960s required the demolition of many properties; No1 Edridge Road was one of them.
It had been a hub of creativity for more than 30 years. Cyril and Ada Spackman lived there. He was an internationally recognised painter, etcher and sculptor. She was a talented musician. As well as developing and fostering their own skills, they also provided a base for local photographers and writers.
Spackman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887, the son of a Welsh methodist minister who had emigrated to America. Initially studying architecture in Cleveland under Henry Kellar, Rev John Spackman’s son later came to King’s College, London, to study architecture under TE Lidiard James.
Trouble was, young Spackman wanted to be a painter, rather than an architect. And that’s what he set out to do when he left university.
He exhibited his first work at the Royal Academy in 1913.
Settling in Croydon, Spackman was living at 19 Blake Road, where he was producing not only paintings and etchings, but woodcuts, too.
Crickhowell Bridge: Spackman drew, etched and painted many scenes from Wales
Because of his Welsh heritage, he used many locations in Wales as inspiration for his work. The Museum of Art in Cleveland was the recipient of seven etchings and aquatints of Welsh panoramas which were donated by Spackman in memory of his father. They included “Cabinwein Monmouthshire” and “Early Morning in Wales”. He completed a woodcut of Brecon Bridge in 1918.
Spackman was making waves in the artistic world. An article in the US-published World of Art journal of June 1918 described his art as “essentially American, being modern, vital, forceful and sincere”. It was believed at the time that he was the only American who had been made a fellow of the Royal Society of British Artists.
Newsworthy: Spackman welcomed journalists into his artist’s studio
It was in oil painting where Spackman’s reputation was really flourishing. In the 1919 Autumn Exhibition of the Royal Institute of British Artists, held at Burlington House, Spackman contributed two pictures, “Crickhowell Bridge” and “A Dream Garden”. Both were very well received.
Spackman married Ada Sadler in 1922 at St Matthew’s Church, South Croydon. In the 1921 census Ada was described as a piano and violin teacher, living locally with her parents.
After the wedding, Cyril and Ada Spackman lived on Addiscombe Road.
Their son, Ralph, was born in 1929 and the family moved to Edridge Road in 1932. They also had a daughter, Joan.
The family move to Edridge Road opened up a new chapter in their lives. Spackman designed the art studio there with great skylights, and had a greenhouse installed in the back garden where some of his messiest artistic jobs were undertaken.
During his time in Edridge Road, Spackman began to carve. Great slabs of Derbyshire limestone, marble and rough sections of trees were among many deliveries to his door so that he could turn them into new creations.
A visit to his studio would see every surface covered in white dust, with stone chippings on the floor. A completed alabaster statue, carved from a three hundredweight block, stood finished in the greenhouse.
Winter landscape: during his career, Spackman often painted snowy scenes
Spackman was visited by a newspaper journalist in late 1958. Spackman, by now aged 71, impressed the reporter with his strength in being able to control the use of his hammer and chisel on solid material. The chipping and cutting of the wood needed less strength but still required a deftness of touch.
The reporter likened the white dust which was created by Spackman’s carving to snow scenes. Apparently, Spackman had almost lost his life in a blizzard when he was a youngster in Ohio. The experience hadn’t prevented him from drawing wintry scenes, but they were always about their gentle beauty and not the horrors of a blizzard or an avalanche.
One critic from the local paper praised Spackman’s carvings, saying that his work gave an extraordinary impression of force being held in check, resulting in his pieces having a brooding stillness.
Sculpture: Spackman had a ‘penchant for spectacular female torsos’ according to one camera club member
In March 1933, the Croydon Camera Club began a long-lasting partnership with Spackman, renting his studio for their meetings. The secretary of the club received a letter from him inviting them to rent his studio on a Wednesday evening.
He offered them 1,400sq ft of studio space, plus use of the dark room at any time. The Croydon Camera Club’s annual photographic exhibition could also be held there for one week each year.
The rent, which included heating, lighting and cleaning, initially for a three-year period, was agreed at £52 a year. The camera club continued to meet at Edridge Road for the next 31 years.
Members of the club certainly enjoyed meeting in the studio. Works of art hung on the walls, while sculptures adorned the pedestals. One club memeber noted how Spackman had a “penchant for spectacular female torsos”. And there was a licensed bar, too.
In June 1945, Spackman offered his studio to another group. This time it was the Croydon Writers’ Circle, who had just been formed. WC Berwick Sayers, the chief librarian of Croydon, became the society’s first chairman and they began their meetings in Edridge Road with more than 30 members.
Spackman was also a Freemason. His father-in-law, Richard Sadler, was a committed and enthusiastic mason. In 1919, the masons had launched a Masonic Memorial Million Fund to pay for a memorial to commemorate those masons who were killed in the Great War. It was decided that contributions by lodges and individuals should be recognised by the award of a commemorative jewel. A competition was held to design the jewel with a prize of £75. Spackman won the prize.
The Hall Stone design of the jewel was made into cloth badges or medals, which masons could wear.
In the late 1930s, Spackman and his father-in-law founded a new lodge in Croydon, the Beaux Arts Lodge, No 5707. They, too, would meet in Spackman’s studio.
In 1950, Spackman carved a bust of the Duke of Devonshire to exhibit at the winter exhibition of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. The Duke had been the Freemasons’ Grand Master from 1947 to 1950, so Spackman presented the bust to the Grand Lodge in London.
Wray Common Windmill: works by Spackman regularly come up for auction
As well as his art and his masonic commitments, Spackman still found time to support many Croydon groups. He was chair of the Croydon University Extension Committee, was on the committee of the Writers’ Circle, was a vice-president of the Camera Club and an Honorary Vice-President of the Croydon Symphony Orchestra.
When Ashburton Secondary Modern School was opened in 1952, a carved relief sculpture by Spackman was placed in the entrance.
An altar screen made and painted by Spackman can be seen today in St Nicholas Parish Church in Grosmont, Monmouthshire. This splendid triptych shows Mary with the baby Jesus, Christ being crucified and Christ ascending into heaven. A similar painting of Christ on the cross hung in Spackman’s studio for a while.
On May 16, 1963, at his home on Edridge Road, Cyril Spackman died of a heart attack. He was 76. Ada Spackman continued to live in Edridge Road until she died three years later.
The Spackmans’ son Ralph became the test pilot of the Beagle Aircraft Company, based in Shoreham. Ralph Spackman was killed in 1964 when his plane crashed in Surrey.
Describing himself as “a mongrel” because of his mixed roots, Spackman had lost all trace of any American accent after his many years in Croydon. Enjoying a drink of black tea with sugar in his studio, he would read with aid of a monocle, affecting the look of an English gent.
His studio must have been a fascinating place. As well as his artworks and the societies which met there, Spackman also used the space to teach art and sculpture. One of his pupils was Margaret Hind, the miniaturist painter, who attended Woodford House School in Croydon as a girl.
Spackman’s works regularly come up for sale at auctions. “A Moorland Path”, a signed oil painting, sold for £65 in 2024. Look out to see if any items come up in future sales.
Perhaps they have “Made in Croydon” stamped on them!
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- The man who made shopping at Kennards feel a bit magical
- When shopping required a visit to the Harrods of south London
- For those in peril on the sea: HMS Racehorse’s Manx legacy
- Archbishop Lanfranc and the Norman Conquest of Croydon
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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