Earl's Court, London

Time machine

Why can you never find a policeman when you want one? It was in part to provide a solution to this old question that London’s Metropolitan Police Force began to adopt ‘police boxes’ in the late-1920s. Police boxes contained a public telephone (accessible from outside the box via a small door), as well as a large door to admit a police officer and to give them access to a chair, a small table, writing equipment, an electric heater, and other bits of kit. Such boxes enabled an officer to contact his local police station to summon help. A flashing light on top of the box acted as a signal to a passing officer to contact his local station. These lines of communication were invaluable in the era before personal radios (let along mobile phones), when the only other way an officer could try to get help was to blow a whistle.

The design of the box used in London was the work of Gilbert Mackenzie Trench, surveyor to the Metropolitan force. These chunky boxes, taller and larger than standard telephone boxes and made of concrete with wooden doors,* became quickly familiar, although they were not the first of their kind. The idea of a police box was first taken up in Glasgow, where tall hexagonal boxes, painted red, were used from 1891 onwards. They became ubiquitous on the capital’s streets (and in some towns outside London), until the use of personal radios became the norm in the 1960s and 1970s. The boxes had slipped from my consciousness until the other week, walking around the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea with a friend, I was surprised to find this one outside Earls Court underground station.

Because of the use of such a box as the portal to a time machine in the British TV programme Dr Who, the design is still well known, so I wasn’t entirely amazed that at least the occasional box has been preserved to pay tribute to television history as well as to the history of policing and design. However, the Earl’s Court box is actually a reproduction – according to online sources it dates to 1996. I was nevertheless still pleased to have my memory jogged. Objects that remind us of past times are time machines in their own way, taking us back…but also bringing us forward to a time when communications are easier, when they work.†

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* The original design specified a wooden structure with a concrete roof, but concrete walls were adopted for durability.

† For my musings on a mobile phone dysfunction, see this blog post.

Beverley, East Yorkshire

Independent

When my mother was a young girl, she thought all telephone boxes were cream in colour. This is because she spent her first years in the city of Hull and did not travel far beyond its boundaries, except to nearby villages and the market town of Beverley, just a few miles away. When World War II began and the then great port of Hull was subject to regular bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, my grandfather found another job and my Mum and her parents moved across the River Humber to the comparative safety of rural Lincolnshire – where the phone boxes, to her surprise, were red. ‘But they’re all red,’ said my grandmother. ‘Except for the ones in and around Hull.’

The reason for this anomaly lies in the history of British telecommunications. In the early decades of the telephone in Britain, lines and exchanges were operated by various local and national companies; some 13 town and city councils also owned their own local telephone systems. By the early-20th century, all these local-authority systems had been sold either to the National Telephone Company or the Post Office – with the exception of the one operating in Hull. So when, eventually, the Post Office took over the whole nation’s telephone system, Hull remained independent and when the Post Office adopted the standard red colour for their telephone kiosks (to match their post boxes), Hull’s retained their own shade of cream.

To those unfamiliar with this particular part of East Yorkshire, Hull’s cream phone boxes come as a surprise. As more and more boxes are removed because, now that almost everyone has a mobile phone, they are not much used, these rare cream boxes become even scarcer than they originally were. And there’s less chance for people to notice other different details – the use of a different, sans serif, letterform for the word ‘TELEPHONE”, for example, and the lack of a crown (symbolic of the Post Office) above this lettering. However, a number of cream boxes are now listed, preventing this rare breed from becoming completely extinct, so that we continue to be reminded of this particular bit of Yorkshire independence.

Needham Market, Suffolk

House move

As I approached Needham Market on my Suffolk trip late last year, this house caught my eye and once I’d got my bearings I went back to have a look at it. With its big thatched roof and squarish proportions it reminded me of certain toll houses, built to act as landmarks and to be easily spotted on the road. Except that this house was set back from the road, not at all a good position for a toll house. So I supposed it was probably simply a cottage orné, an example of that rustic and decorative kind of house that became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries.

However, the history of what is now called the Mustard Pot is not quite as simple as that. It turns out that it was built as a toll house, and the gatekeeper must have sheltered under the generous eaves hundreds of times when it was pouring with rain. But when it fulfilled this function, it was not on its current site. It originally stood at Brockford, not far from Mendlesham, by the road that is now the A140. When the A140 was widened in 1972, the house was threatened with demolition, so a Mr Sniechowski of Ipswich, who thought it was worth preserving, had it taken down and moved to Needham Market.*

The roof was removed in one piece – thatch, timbers and all – put on a trailer and driven, very slowly, to the new site. Then the walls were dismantled – they are timber-framed structures beneath the external plaster – taken to the new site and reassembled. The original idea was for the building to be used by fishermen who were angling at the nearby Needham Lake, but Mr Sniechowski died soon after the house’s re-erection and apparently this idea was not taken up. The building served as a dwelling before being taken over by a veterinary practice, which is still its use today. Moving entire houses is a very unusual practice in the UK, most often undertaken by the various open-air museums whose mission it is to preserve unused historic buildings. It’s good that Mr Sniechowski had the vision to move this small house, ensuring the survival of a useful and picturesque building.

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* My thanks to the Stowe Veterinary Centre’s website for information about this unusual house move.

Wilmcote, Warwickshire

 

Beauty of holiness

My interest provoked by hints in Pevsner that the church at Wilmcote might be eccentric or beautiful or possibly both, I crossed the road opposite Mary Arden’s Farm, walked back to the main street, and walked along the usefully named Church Road. There I found a small Gothic Revival church of c. 1840 designed by Harvey Eginton. The kind of Gothic chosen by the architect is Early English, the first phase of Gothic on these islands, sometimes chosen by early Victorians as representing the ‘purest’ form of the style with its simple lancet windows and plain but elegant deeply moulded arches.

On entering, though, it was clear that something unusual was up. This church is very highly decorated inside with wall paintings, lavishly supplied with statues of saints and of the Crucifixion, and altogether rather ornate – far from plain and simple, in fact. This was indeed one of the first churches to be built and decorated under the influence of the Tractarians, that group of clergymen and scholars (many originally based in Oxford and Cambridge), who believed that a church should be highly embellished, that the clergy should wear colourful robes, and that such ritual accompaniments as incense should be used. Worship in ‘the beauty of holiness’* was the aim, in sharp contrast to the plain style of the previous few generations. The person behind this aspect of St Andrew’s, Wilmcote was the Rev. Edward Bowes Knottesford Fortescue, a keen Tractarian who knew many of the movement’s leaders. However, it’s said that a later clergyman, the Rev. F W Doxat, may have been responsible for some parts of the decorative scheme.

The chancel glows in green and gold, its walls painted with stylised flowers and leaves. The decoration, if overwhelming, also does an excellent job of defining the chancel as the most sacred space. The nave is much darker, but when one’s eye adjusts, its possible to make out very different wall decoration: a series of paintings, mainly monochrome compositions showing saints, scenes from the life of Christ, and religious texts. Close examination reveals that these are actually done on panels that have been attached to the walls – in fact, they are on sheets of zinc, a material I don’t recall seeing used for church murals before. I’d been led to this church by the description in Pevsner’s Warwickshire volume in the Buildings of England series, and I’m indebted to the book for the information it contains. But it did not prepare me for the amazement I experienced inside. Such surprises are what keep me looking – and recording here what I find.

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* This phrase is a rewording of the verse in Acts 2:4, describing the scene at Pentecost. The King James Bible gives, ‘And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost…’. For an excellent account of this change in Victorian worship and architecture, see William Whyte, Unlocking the Church, which I reviewed here.

Wilmcote, Warwickshire

 

Whose farm is it anyway?

Many decades ago, when I was in my early teens and starting to study Shakespeare seriously, my father took me on a visit to all the Shakespeare-related buildings in and near Stratford. As well as the poet’s birthplace, Ann Hathaway’s Cottage, and Hall’s Croft (the house of Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna and her husband John Hall), we visited the farmhouse at Wilmcote then known as Mary Arden’s House. Mary Arden was Shakespeare’s mother and her parents were farmers, and the house sits next to a cluster of farm buildings.

The building in my photograph is the house we visited. What a glorious building it is – a mixture of a close-studded timber frame and a diagonally strutted section at the right-hand end, its wooden structure charmingly warped in places, in spite of the fact that it sits on a substantial stone plinth. As far as I can recall, the house was filled with period furniture and the ceilings, especially upstairs, were very low. Back then, the outbuildings housed a large collection of old (pre-20th century) farm machinery ranging from carts to seed drills. This collection, nothing to do with Shakespeare, engaged us for some time. I don’t think the exhibits could have been labelled, because I remember that we had a good time working out what some of them were.

If the farm machinery had little to do with Shakespeare, neither, it turns out, did the house. Later research has revealed that the young Mary Arden and her parents actually lived in the house next door, a less impressive looking building, although it incorporates a timber frame that has been dendrochronologically dated to the early-16th century. These days the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which owns both properties, calls the whole site, both the houses and the farm buildings behind them, Mary Arden’s Farm.* Currently, it’s not open to the public, but is used as a site that primary school children can visit and learn about Shakespeare and the life of country people during his period. So now children still younger than I was all those years ago get to enjoy this lovely house and learn from it and, much as I’d have liked it to be open to adults too, that has to be a good thing.

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* Separately, the house where Mary actually lived is known as Glebe Farm, while the house in my photograph is referred to as Palmer’s Farm.

Great Malvern, Worcestershire

Health resort

To Malvern (again) for coffee, book browsing, exercise, and architectural appreciation. Malvern is one of my favourite nearby places, and not just for its magnificent hilly scenery. It keeps on giving me food for thought architecturally, with everything from medieval tiles to a rare Bini dome. It is, as they say in the trade, ‘well bookshopped’, boasting shops selling new books, a good vendor of second hand books, and a couple of charity bookshops. And its hilly terrain means getting around gives me good exercise.

It was ever thus, or has at least been thus for a long time. Malvern is, famously, a spa town. The health-giving qualities of the water at Malvern Wells were discovered in the 16th century, but the place really began to grow in the period around 1810, in part at least as a result of the great success of the spa at Cheltenham. Various wells were exploited, hotels were built – and more. Those who came to take the waters needed other things to do to. Cheltenham offered circulating libraries, a harp and pianoforte warehouse, assembly rooms, and so on. So in Malvern, next to the pump room and baths, the grand Royal Library was built.

The library is on a corner site, and turns the corner with some style. This corner is actually a junction at which two side roads meet the main Worcester Road towards the summit of the town centre’s hill. The setting gives the end of the library great prominence, and the architect, John Deykes, exploited this to the full with a full height semi-circular bow in the classical style of 1818, when he drew up his plans. The main ground floor, actually raised slightly above the ground because the land falls away so sharply, is particularly splendid. Tall, 9-over-9 sash windows are separated by Ionic columns that support a balcony above with a balustrade of pump uprights. Above this, the upper-floor windows are set back, but echo the semi-circular shape. It’s a striking composition, and must have impressed visitors as they slogged their way up the hill.

The library building was part of the same structure as the assembly rooms, so inside it was not all about the books. As well as a reading room and an extensive lending library there was also a music library, a billiards room, and a room for card playing. The building also contained a bazaar where, according to an information board down the street, ‘anything from a Bible to a firescreen could be purchased’. All this, together with increasing numbers of shops, gave the spa visitors plenty to do, and served the town well through the Regency and Victorian heyday of the spa. When I visit today, walking, browsing, and imbibing, not to mention admiring the architecture, I feel I’m following in those 19th-century footsteps.

Chiltern Open Air Museum, Buckinghamshire

 

Woodworkers

If you read one of those books about traditional English crafts by authors such as Dorothy Hartley or James Fox, you’ll probably find a section about the chair-makers of the Chilterns.* Some of these craftsmen were based in the local woodlands, where they made entire chairs. Others specialised in producing turned chair legs using a hand-operated pole lathe. They worked next to the trees that provided their raw material, and the chair legs they made would be sold to a wooden-chair manufacturer. Buckinghamshire was a centre of furniture-making and towns such as High Wycombe were famous for their wooden chairs, particularly Windsor chairs. Chair-makers like James Elliott and Son added hand-turned chair legs to wooden seats and other components to produce comfortable, elegant chairs that were popular and long-lasting. James Elliott and Son built their factory in High Wycombe in 1887 and ran their business there until 1974, making Windsor chairs there for the whole period except for the two World Wars, when they branched out into aeroplane wings (World War I) and furniture for the Royal Navy (World War II).

When their factory came to the end of its working life, the building was taken apart and rebuilt at the Chiltern Open Air Museum. Brick on the ground floor, wooden boards over a timber frame above, the building is roofed in slate. Its two floors are connected by exterior staircases that free up the space inside and provide an easy way of manoeuvring unwieldy chairs and raw materials in and out of the building. There are large windows, so the factory is very light inside, creating good conditions for the meticulous work of assembling chairs that workers and owners could be proud of. Today, a collection of chairs, other wooden products, and wood-workers’ tools are displayed inside.

Looking very neat in its shiny green paintwork, the furniture factory is an asset to the museum, preserving a building linked to an important industry in the area. It’s also one of a number of wooden buildings in the museum – Buckinghamshire is not rich in good building stone, so pavilions, workshops, houses, barns and all kinds of other farm buildings were often made by constructing a timber frame and cladding it with boards. The museum has several of these, and the furniture factory is one of the most striking.

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* See, for example, Dorothy Hartley, Made in England (first published in 1939; reprinted by Little Toller Books, 2018) and James Fox, Craftland (The Bodley Head, 2025). James Fox’s book is an excellent place to start, is beautifully written, and is one of the best books I read last year.