Taking a pasting: William Morris wallpaper. Photograph: Andreas Von Einsiedel/The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
Why have recent plans announced by Waltham Forest Borough Council to curtail public opening of the William Morris Gallery caused so much alarm amongst Morris's admirers? First, because this is a completely unique gallery, first stop on any journey towards the understanding of Morris and his work. Second, because partial closure could so easily edge into total closure, redeployment of the gallery's specialist curators and dispersal of its collections of Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts design.
The William Morris Gallery is, in the best sense, a local gallery. Morris was born and brought up in Walthamstow. The Gallery is housed in the former Water House, a handsome partly moated 18th century building where Morris spent his teenage years. You can still see the window seat in the upper hall where the dreamy, rather disaffected boy would lounge around and read. The house itself gives you a sense of the evolving personality of one of the very greatest of Victorians, a highly original political theorist, a revolutionary socialist, a writer of poetry and magic narratives and, in many people's view, the most brilliantly prolific designer of pattern who has ever lived.
Since the then Prime Minister Clement Atlee opened the gallery in 1950 the collections have been carefully and expertly built up. There are other fine collections of William Morris's work. But the V&A, for instance, can only give the gist of it. The Walthamstow collection is a much more personal and concentrated one, showing not just finished works but original designs and woodblocks for the famous Morris & Co. wallpapers. Here you can follow the creative evolution of Morris's design.
Works by his Pre-Raphaelite colleagues and his followers - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Philip Webb, Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and the Century Guild - give a fascinating insight into the 19th century artistic milieu he inhabited. The gallery's curator Peter Cormack, who has been at Walthamstow for almost thirty years, is one of the most respected Morris experts on the international circuit, particularly specialising in stained glass. In terms of original research the Walthamstow exhibitions have been exceptional for a local gallery. Especially revealing was Cormack's marvellous show on 19th and early 20th century women stained glass artists. With the closure of the gallery all this accumulation of knowledge and expertise would go.
The gallery has always been hospitable to researchers. I spent some time there working on my biography of William Morris, which is why I know the place so well. But just as important has been the easy access for local people from what is now an ethnically diverse area of London with an especially high ratio of Pakistani households. Amongst the delights of working there were the sudden influxes of local Waltham Forest school parties, the children settling down to copy Morris patterns in the hall - living proof of Morris's belief that the instinct for pattern and design is a shared experience, uniting people of all nationalities. Current plans for limiting gallery opening to Saturdays and Sundays would jeopardise school visits, along with so much else.
It is terribly ironic that Waltham Forest seeks to divest itself of Morris when his reputation as an early prophet in defence of the environment has never been so high. There is what seems to me a wilful misunderstanding by the Borough of the ideals and achievements of its most famous son, epitomized by the Chief Executive herself when she commented publicly "he's just a white imperialist". White imperialist indeed! I can picture William Morris turning on these idiotic Councillors in one of his great rages and calling them "Damn'd pigs! Damn'd fools!"
