Bath, Somerset

Water is best

I go to Bath quite often and almost always, when I’m there, I admire the Georgian architecture that has made the place famous, but also look out for buildings and details that are either not Georgian or otherwise not typical of the city. Recently, walking along Walcot Street, the Resident Wise Woman and I spotted this small marvel. It’s a drinking fountain that once supplied water for humans and, via the trough to the right, for animals too, appropriately enough since it once served the city’s cattle market. Water, of course, was the thing that made Bath famous before the Georgian period, when the healing spa brought the Romans here. “Water is best” as it says on the walls of the Pump Room,* extolling the life-giving liquid.

Water once came to Walcot Street not in a classical pump room or a Roman bath, but via this Victorian fountain. It’s a Victorian creation, erected in 1860 by one Major Charles Davis, who was appointed city architect and surveyor a couple of years later.† By the look of it he’d been studying the work of John Ruskin, whose books, especially The Stones of Venice, are illustrated with the author’s beautiful drawings showing just this kind of architectural detail. What Ruskin admired in the architecture of Venice (especially its Gothic architecture) was the combination of craftsmanship and visual beauty. He drew arches sometimes with patterns carved into the surface of the stone, as in the outer arch here; sometimes with a zigzag pattern in two colours, as in the drinking fountain’s lower arch; often with shafts (miniature columns) in different materials, also as here. In 1860, bright, shining, and new, the arch would have gleamed, catching the eye with this combination of varied geology and delicate carving. The sound of running water would have added to the appeal.

It’s a shame that the fountain has seen better days – the weeds in the trough seem well established (was it once used as a planter?) and, because the structure is on the side of the road where there are no shops, few people walk along this bit of pavement to notice. Looking it up online, I found an article about restoring the fountain, but I’m not sure the date of this. I hope some cleaning and conservation work is possible, even if the fountain can no longer be connected to a water supply. Though the trickle of water would be an added attraction too.

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* This motto is actually in ancient Greek, as it’s a quotation from the poet Pindar, put there, I believe, by temperance campaigners to encourage people to choose water over intoxicating liquors.

† Davis did a lot of work in the city, from the redevelopment of the Roman Baths to the building of the Empire Hotel. He would have needed to cultivate versatility to produce these diverse works, and the tiny project of designing the drinking fountain shows another string to his bow – Ruskinian Venetian design to add to his classical works in the Baths and the more generic Gothic and Norman that he needed for his church restorations.

Nailsworth, Gloucestershire

 

Sign of which times?

It’s always worth looking out for old signs on shops – not just the sign bearing the shop name or owner’s name, but also signs that advertise goods once sold there. There are still quite a few Hovis bread signs on buildings that are no longer bakers, and during years of blogging I’ve posted signs advertising goods such as Kodak film, Ariel motorcycles, Ty-Phoo tea and Ever-Ready batteries. Walking along the main street in Nailsworth a little while ago, another example caught me eye – this Cadbury’s chocolate sign above the door of a hairdresser’s.

I was particularly struck by this sign because it seems a cut above the usual stick-on plastic ones: separate letters clearly delineated in what looks to me a rather Art Deco (i.e. 1920s or 1930s) letter form, from a time before the familiar Cadbury’s script logo (with its curly ‘C’ and artfully joined ‘db’) appeared in around 1951. In the sign in my photograph, the word ‘chocolate’, with its capitals that diminish in size, also feels true to the 1920s. Looking online, I could find only few versions of this design among the many different Cadbury’s logos and packs that appear when you Google this subject. Online sources give dates as varied as 1906 and 1920. Whatever the exact date, I think this sign in Nailsworth is rather unusual. I wonder if any of my readers know of others like it still in their original setting?

Rock, Worcestershire

Watcher, cock, or, Odd things in churches (18)

For many of us, weathercocks are almost synonymous with churches. It was back in the 9th century that Pope Nicholas I decreed that a cockerel should be displayed at the uppermost point of every parish church, a reminder of the fateful triple crowing of the cock that signalled Peter’s betrayal of Christ. The practice of putting a rooster on every church long ago fell into neglect (if it was ever universal), but hundreds of churches still have weathercocks, combining the function of symbol with that of practical use. Know the wind direction and you’re part of the way to forecasting the weather. ‘If that cock’s pointing down the street and there’s a dark cloud over the hill,’ said an old gardener from our neighbourhood, ‘It’ll be raining here in an hour.’ He was right, and such knowledge is useful not only to gardeners but also to the farmers and farm workers who were for centuries the mainstays of the rural economy.

Nothing odd, then, about weathercocks on churches. But a weathercock inside a church is decidedly odd. And yet, what do you do with a rooster that has to be taken down from the tower? Throw him away or send him for scrap metal to be melted down? Maybe there’s a better way. Doesn’t it make sense to set him up inside the church, where his symbolic function survives and he represents a bit of church history? Or perhaps you should keep him safe, against the day when funds can be found to re-erect him on the tower, where he belongs.

Whatever the motivation for keeping this weathercock indoors, I was pleased to see him here, where he provided a few minutes’ distraction from Romanesque carvings and other delights in the church at Rock. Close-up, in spite or perhaps because of the repairs, bolts and rivets, he’s revealed as an appealing bit of folk sculpture, perhaps the proud work of a local blacksmith. The details of the head are sketched by way of telling cuts in the metal: eye, bill, comb, crest. The body is surprisingly slim, making me wonder if weathercocks (and maybe actual roosters) got plumper in more recent years. The tail is splendidly broad, its pattern of holes suggesting feathers and presumably leaving enough metal to catch the wind. In a collection of folk art like the wonderful one at Compton Verney, this would be a star exhibit. Here, in its rightful local setting, it’s a delight.