THE construction of Castle Drogo was a task of daunting complexity. As we heard last week, Lutyens conceived a gargantuan modern castle for his client, Julius Drewe, on a remote and exposed site (Fig 1). The original plans were considerably reduced in ambition, but the project still required scores of masons, carpenters and labourers for 20 years. Considering that four of those coincided with the First World War, the miracle is that it was ever finished. In this, the hero of the piece is John Walker, Drewe’s agent on site, without whom Drogo would not have been built.
A Yorkshireman, Walker had previously been Clerk of Works at various country houses, including Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, which, from 1905, was being rebuilt after a fire. He appears at Drogo in 1912 and his work over the next 17 years can be followed through the copies of his letters kept in the castle. Each time Walker wrote to Drewe, Lutyens or a supplier, he put his freshly handwritten letter in a press that took a faint copy by a chemical reaction on very thin paper—a
