VOYSEY, Charles Francis Annesley 1857-1941. Architect. Charles Voysey moved to Dulwich at the age of 13 when his father was deprived of his living as an Anglican clergyman in East Yorkshire for preaching a form of theism which was deemed to be heretical. Young Charles, who had hitherto been educated at home and may have been mildly dyslexic, was enrolled at Dulwich College, where he spent eighteen unhappy months and was regarded as an unsatisfactory pupil, leaving before his 16th birthday to continue his education privately. When he began working at an architect's office at the age of 17, he was living with his parents and five siblings at Camden House which, with its neighbour Plasgwyn in Dulwich Village, was bombed during World War Two and is now the site of a row of neo-Georgian town houses. By 1885 Voysey was married, living in Bedford Park, and beginning to establish his career. It reached its apogee in the 1890s when he designed some of his greatest houses, such as Broadleys and Moorcrag in the Lake District.
By Hilary Rosser