Whitefriars, Llanfairfechan

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Link to French translationWhitefriars was designed by Herbert Luck North and built in 1933 for a retired seaman, Captain Bertram McPherson Bibby, and his wife Jane Stanenought Bibby. They had married in Birkenhead in 1908.

Photo of Whitefriars in 1933Whitefriars, a small cottage in the Arts and Crafts style, cost £1,000. It had one large and one small guest bedroom and a small servants’ room downstairs. The lounge, going from front to rear, is panelled in oak. There was a garage at the rear of the cottage.

This was still the Bibbys’ home in early 1950 but they were living near Plymouth when Bertram died in 1951. The next occupants of Whitefriars were John Addie and his wife Irene Valerie Addie. He died after a short illness in 1952. Irene remarried and became Mrs Rigby-Jones.

She and her husband asked the architectural practice North and Padmore to make alterations to the house. By then the practice was run by Percival Mitchell Padmore, son-in-law of Herbert North (who had died in 1941). He continued the North ethos in his works in Llanfairfechan.

He oversaw the building of a large garage at the rear of Whitefriars, with a chauffeur/handyman’s flat above. The house was expanded by the building of a gable upstairs, removal of the servants’ room and joining of the original garage to be a room off the kitchen.

Since those alterations, the house has stayed the same and has a particularly pretty aspect to the north, facing the sea. The neat garden – another aspect of housing which Herbert North felt strongly about – isn’t open to the public, but please enjoy the view from the path.

With thanks to Andrew Hinchliff, Pam Phillips and Gary Jones

Postcode: LL33 0BP    View Location Map

Navigation next buttonTo continue the HL North Arts & Crafts tour, walk a short way east along the coast path. The next QR code is on a white garden fence
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