Clifton, Bristol

In the vanguard

I like to wander around towns and cities, finding interesting buildings, rather than relying too slavishly on guidebooks, but before our most recent visit to Clifton I did consult the excellent Pevsner city guide to Bristol, to check whether there was anything I should be looking out for. The guide sent me to the memorable 1960s church of All Saints and hinted that there was a late-Victorian baroque garage nearby. Even the book’s enthusiastic description did not quite prepare me for this modest but highly ornate building.

Catching sight of it from some distance, I could make out the combination of brick, bands of stone, shallow arches and fancy finials that told me that I was approaching something special in that distinctive, rather frantic baroque style that was popular from the end of the 19th century into the Edwardian period. Getting closer, and taking in the elaborate decoration above the central entrance, I could appreciate the full effect: scrolls, face masks, cornices, circular window, pediment with extra large mouldings, and foliage draping down and springing up everywhere. Mr E. Edwards (his name lettered in clear, plain capitals but with a hint of the raffish in the curved crosspiece of the ‘A’) must have been proud of his premises. His architects, Drake & Pizey,* did him proud,

Remarkably, this building is dated 1898: that’s about a decade on from the German petrol engines of engineers Daimler and Benz that enabled the earliest vehicles we’d recognise as motor cars, but only three or four years after the first cars were seen on British roads.† The firm of Edwards, who both sold and maintained motor vehicles, were pioneers. Their building was in two parts: showroom on the left, workshop on the right. There are photographs from little more than 20 years ago that show the workshop still in use (as an MoT test centre). The showroom section is still used to display cars. Few late-19th century automotive buildings have outlasted the Daimlers and de Dion Boutons, the Lanchesters and Austins, that were sold or serviced there in the 1890s and early-1900s.

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* A Bristol partnership who also designed a baroque bank in Bristol, which I must also seek out.

† The National Transport Museum now awards the honour of the first car in Britain to a vehicle produced in 1895, but stresses that there are many conflicting contenders. It also depends what you mean by a car. But the point is that cars were very few in these early years and Edwards were true pioneers.

Newport, Shropshire

Gilded glamour

The time-honoured advice to ‘look up’ when walking down a street in a town or city seems spot-on for the centre of Newport, Shropshire, where one can see good quality Georgian and earlier buildings standing proud above much later shop fronts. It’s also worth pausing to look at the shop fronts, though. This is one of the best. I don’t know its exact date, or what the business was that put it there, but I’d say it’s 1880s or 1890s, and the building’s listing descriptions concurs, with an estimate of ‘late 19th century’. By the end of the Victorian period, many High Street shops were being fitted with quite lavish fronts, as retailing became highly competitive and shopkeepers vied to catch the eye of everyone who passed by. Increasingly too, shopping was becoming a leisure activity for the middle classes and, as some of this leisure was window-shopping, the people behind the counter liked to put on a good show to lure the window-shoppers inside. Part of this tendency was also about glamour or exclusivity – a fine shop front projected an upmarket image.

The designer of this shop front was given the scope to produce something outstanding. Polished pink granite, a popular material in the 1880s and afterwards, was used for the pilaster running up the front on the left – the stoneworker added vertical flutes to the upper part for extra visual interest and an elaborate cartouche design above with scrolls and a green oval. Polished grey stone lines the sloping stall riser (the strip beneath the bottom of the windows) and the windows themselves are large and lined with only slender metal columns. The panes would have been smaller in the 19th century – the big sheets of plate glass that we see today are modern.

The really special part of the front is the central section, with a dark wooden glazed door and a stunning panel above. This panel with its gilded scrolls and putti, plus the ironwork, also partially gilded, beneath, oozes quality. I wonder if this was a jeweller’s shop, or if it belonged to a seller of some other type of luxury goods. My photograph of this centrepiece also shows another telling detail., The ceiling of the entrance lobby has a dark wooden frame holding four pieces of mirror glass. This was a cunning trick to make the doorway a little lighter, while also giving those entering the odd sensation of seeing the reflection of the tops of their heads. I’ve seen this trick at least once before, above the entrances to what was originally the big ‘flagship’ store of Boot’s the Chemist in Nottingham. In combination with the gilded putti and scrolls, this makes a stunning shopfront that must have impressed the people of Newport in the 1890s and still impresses me today.

The complete frontage: Georgian above, Victorian below

Peckforton, Cheshire

Elephant and castle

The image of an elephant with a castle on its back is an ancient one. The Romans famously used war elephants that could carry soldiers and medieval manuscripts show elephants with howdahs that take the form of castles, with turrets and narrow windows. Few Europeans back then had actually seen an elephant and some of the illustrations are very fanciful, but the 13th-century English king Henry III had an elephant in his collection of animals at the Tower of London, a gift from his French counterpart Louis IX. Today, we’re most likely to know the Elephant and Castle from the signs of pubs and from the name of the eponymous area of South London, with its pub sign, shopping centre, and underground station.

Inn signs bearing elephants with castles would have been found in the 19th century too, and antiquarians would have been familiar with their use in heraldry. Uses like these may have given the Victorian stonemason John Watson the inspiration for the large stone elephant and castle that he carved in Peckforton, Cheshire. The first documentary evidence for this carving comes from 1860 and says that the work was made about two years before. Why did he carve it? Did it have any practical use? What was the inspiration? No one knows the answer to these questions. There’s a story that the castle was originally a beehive, but this seems highly unlikely – any beekeeper would find it hard to climb up and get the honey and the windows were originally glazed, making access difficult for keeper and bees alike. I think it’s just a rather large garden ornament that could have been inspired by a coat of arms or an inn sign – or perhaps by the carving of the same subject in the choir stalls of Chester Cathedral.

There’s something joyous about the sheer size of this garden sculpture. I wonder how many people turn off the A534 to find it in the village of Peckforton? I’m rather glad that I did.

Wells, Somerset

Wells, wells

I’ve peeped through the entrance archway to the bishop’s palace at Wells more than once, but never visited the palace itself or its garden. The other day, it seemed high time I had a closer look, and I was confident that there would be architectural as well as horticultural interest within. Not least fascinating to me were such things as the back view of the palace and the defensive walls. On an altogether smaller scale, I was drawn to this rose-covered stone building. As I spotted it in the distance, I wondered what it might be, quickly ruling out a gazebo (the windows seemed too small) or a posh potting shed (not in the right place).

A helpful interpretation board enlightened me. It’s all about water management. An underground channel from the well pool in the grounds fills a sizeable tank, and the resulting head of water creates enough pressure to feed the water supply for the palace and an outlet in the city’s market place, providing a fresh water supply for local residents. That, at least, was how it worked in 1451, when the then Bishop of Bath and Wells, Thomas Beckynton or Beckington, granted this boon to the town. Nowadays, the people of Wells get their water through pipes to each house, just like the rest of us. Back then, it must have been a huge benefit to both convenience and health to have a supply of fresh, clean water a short, bucket-carrying walk away from your house. The wells of Wells being prolific, there was often enough surplus water for the butchers on the market place to flush away the sanguinary drippings of their trade.

Naturally, the bishop provided a seemly home for the water tank, so it didn’t intrude too much into his garden. A simple square building with a hint of the ornamental to the cusped windows has done the job for centuries. Those with sharp eyes (click on the image to enlarge it) will spot the ornamental finial at the apex of the roof. It’s said to depict the bishop’s favourite hunting dog.

Lower Brockhampton, Herefordshire

Belt and braces

Looking at the timber-framed late-medieval gatehouse at Lower Brockhampton (see previous post), I was struck by the number of burn marks on the framework. These marks, variously described as tear-shaped or tadpole-shaped, were once said to have arisen from candles or tapers used for lighting. These lights, held on brackets or ‘prickets’ (spiked fittings stuck into the wood), scorched the timber, so it was said. Recent researchers question this. Putting a candle near a piece of timber does not seem to produce a mark of this shape.* There are no holes made by prickets, no fittings for missing shelves or brackets near these marks. What’s more, many burn marks are in places where you’d be unlikely to place a light – on the back of a door, the outside of a wooden shutter, on roof timbers, and so on. In addition, to make a mark of this shape, so experimental archaeologists have found, it’s necessary to hold the taper at a 45-degree angle to the wall. All of these reasons make it unlikely that these burn marks were the accidental side-effects of lighting, and more likely that they were deliberately made.

A convincing explanation is that burn marks are protective – some sources describe such marks as ways of protecting a place from fire. There are also traditions that fire can ward off evil spirits. The frequent location of burn marks near fireplaces and hearths, or adjacent to doors and windows, seems to align with these ideas. We are, once again, in the realm of ritual protection marks, as we are with incised ‘daisywheel’ designs and other motifs. A gatehouse, as at Brockhampton, is just the kind of place where you’d expect to find such protective marks. Whereas the water of the moat might be used in attempts to put out a fire if one broke out, protective burn marks might, if was believed, prevent one starting in the first place. Belt and braces.

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* In this very brief account I’m indebted to the excellent recent book by James Wright, Historic Building Mythbusting, which I hope to review here very soon.

Burn marks on timber, Lower Brockhampton

Lower Brockhampton, Herefordshire

 

Good manors

The other day the Resident Wise Woman and I visited the Brockhampton estate, the National Trust property near Bromyard in Herefordshire, to look at the delightful 15th- and 16th-century timber-framed manor house. Few late-medieval houses are as picturesque or enjoy such a beautiful setting, as this one. It’s not a large building by manor house standards, but it’s full of interest. From the outside, the house is almost completely surrounded by a moat lush with plants. The moat must originally have completely surrounded the house, but now, just beyond the point where the gatehouse bridges the water, the moat ends. It would never have been able to withstand much of an attack, since the wooden gatehouse would have been easy for an enemy to take. But the watery barrier and gatehouse did presumably form a barrier to burglars. Perhaps more importantly, moats and gatehouses were marks of lordship, rather like the battlements sometimes seen on stone manor houses that were never intended to withstand a siege. A moat, in other words, was a status symbol.

The left-hand part of the main house contains the double-height hall, the heart of any medieval dwelling. To its right is a cross-wing, which would have contained a private room (known as the solar) for the owners on the upper floor, with service rooms below. In the 17th century the service wing was extended to the rear in a mixture of materials – stone below, timber frame with brick infill above. This extension is just visible in my photograph. Other modifications include the two substantial brick chimneys, also dating to the 17th century,.

How to furnish and display an old house is a recurrent question for custodians such as the National Trust. Sometimes there’s an obvious heyday, as with a great house like Hardwick Hall, where the story of its remarkable and charismatic builder, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury (aka Bess of Hardwick), demands to be told. Sometimes the emphasis is more likely to fall on a later period in a house that evolved over centuries. In the case of Lower Brockhampton, the decision has been made to make different rooms evoke different periods in the long history of the house. The historical spread extends from a 17th-century bedroom, through the Georgian and Victorian periods, to a living room arranged as it was in the 1950s, when the last private owners stayed on as tenants after giving the estate to the Trust. To my mind the success of this is mixed, but it does bring to our attention some of the people who have lived at Brockhampton. Particularly poignant are a room furnished as the bedroom of a young man about to set off for the trenches of World War I and, in another room, a 20th-century owner’s diary, open at a page where he records news from Europe of the gathering storm that would result in World War II – a protest to the League of Nations about Germany’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland is noted. It’s an obvious point, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that old houses of beauty and architectural interest could not exist without people, and that without some of those people some of us might very well not be here.