tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42280817224874743232024-03-18T03:02:46.195+00:00English BuildingsMeetings with remarkable buildingsPhilip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.comBlogger1570125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-30876883450501959132024-03-12T09:25:00.000+00:002024-03-12T09:25:13.738+00:00Hereford<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4U6blLi41QdfJ3THvfoDUoIh9v7xm2T60d8xkziAscxeZdBIzrukRIFm8038lwcmSQ_VCsCcHX4NW_fR21nSJBYBWsUsE8pVRNXLbsNNInoZ8He8JPIRKf6zjQsTd8zkbzIjZBAayfaWRMKMb-swzwT1OB3-1pmdceLPyqzeOCQEikuxfFIQeVxJQ7lA/s657/Hereford%20The%20Fosse.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="624" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_4U6blLi41QdfJ3THvfoDUoIh9v7xm2T60d8xkziAscxeZdBIzrukRIFm8038lwcmSQ_VCsCcHX4NW_fR21nSJBYBWsUsE8pVRNXLbsNNInoZ8He8JPIRKf6zjQsTd8zkbzIjZBAayfaWRMKMb-swzwT1OB3-1pmdceLPyqzeOCQEikuxfFIQeVxJQ7lA/w380-h400/Hereford%20The%20Fosse.jpeg" width="380" /></a></div><br /><b>Over the moat </b><br /><br />This is house is another recent discovery for me in a city I thought I knew. It’s called The Fosse, ‘fosse’, meaning ditch, because it was built near the moat of Hereford Castle, itself now long gone. From the outside, at least, it’s a stunning house of 1825, attributed to the architect Sir Robert Smirke. Smirke is best known as a neoclassicist, but he was highly versatile, just as happy with Gothic or Tudor revival, and apparently comfortable whether designing a grand house or a railway station, a prison or the British Museum. <br /><br />The Fosse has elements of Jacobean (the chimney stacks, the parapet with its circles, the ogee roof to the little tower). The entrance arch has a Roman feel to it. The fancy glazing bars and the conservatory are very much of their time – as, taken as a whole, is the entire mixture. There’s a lot going on architecturally, then, but the building hangs together visually, and that’s what drew me to it and drew my admiration. <br /><br />Researching the house in reference books and online I came across a rather sad story about a woman who lived there, Eunice Parker, and her love for a young man called Lawrence (Larry) Wilmot, who went off to fight in World War I. He returned, but traumatized by his experience of the war – he was gassed and lost three brothers in the conflict. Apparently he was unable to marry; Eunice did not marry either and lived what must have been a sad life in The Fosse, dying in 1979. War leaves a long shadow.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-10983988969412125312024-03-02T08:00:00.001+00:002024-03-02T08:00:00.143+00:00Hereford<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5BB_Z-lu8YrwqydpxgF-23UfCl2ScSiYCn5HQgQBuBHq6LMXKJkrocdrocAfJZKlV0-iZDf8ao4VIQ0ynnIKjpd5chTJgk8OMpxcHsVKmRTfsUMfLevyeNhZCZQyF2DlhUC-nOi6EOnIsxQG9lcZavKpwX7IsDiIC8cve0FerBLWcZfNqxt-Jl3mraTJl/s640/Hereford%20Venn%20arch.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="567" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5BB_Z-lu8YrwqydpxgF-23UfCl2ScSiYCn5HQgQBuBHq6LMXKJkrocdrocAfJZKlV0-iZDf8ao4VIQ0ynnIKjpd5chTJgk8OMpxcHsVKmRTfsUMfLevyeNhZCZQyF2DlhUC-nOi6EOnIsxQG9lcZavKpwX7IsDiIC8cve0FerBLWcZfNqxt-Jl3mraTJl/w355-h400/Hereford%20Venn%20arch.jpeg" width="355" /></a></div><p></p><b>Aid for the industrious</b><br /><br />Wondering along an unfamiliar street in Hereford, I came across this arch, looking like a Jacobean relic stranded in the modern city. A little research soon revealed that it’s neither Jacobean nor stranded. It’s actually Victorian – the Victorians revived virtually every earlier British style of architecture, Jacobean included and they knew that the flattened arch, scrolls, finials, curvaceous gable and pediment would evoke the kind of architecture popular on grand country houses and other buildings from around the year 1600. <br /><br />The arch makes a grand entrance to a cemetery, and its grandeur is to commemorate a once-famous Hereford man, whose charitable works helped the city’s poor. Rev. John Venn was vicar of a parish in an impoverished part of the city. Working with his sister Emelia, he founded the Society for Aiding the Industrious. Among the Venns’ and the Society’s projects were a soup kitchen to feed the hungry, a dispensary, and allotments enabling people to grow their own food. They founded a school and a children’s home, and their initiatives to provide employment included a corn mill and a model farm. <br /><br />The arch harks back to a time – the Tudor and Jacobean periods – which the Victorians saw as a period of British greatness. It was the era when British explorers laid the foundation of the empire that brought the Victorians much of their wealth. So much the better that they recognised the work of a couple who focused on helping those who accrued no wealth or power from the empire, bringing education, nourishment, useful work, and better living conditions to people who needed them most.<br />Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-804117818534666782024-02-27T11:27:00.000+00:002024-02-27T11:27:00.284+00:00Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvug9DW8j_Dj6yelpcd-Rs3Vzm095ByrUK_ebMikuVruxneFJLfio8U7dG8wPYnRRM-frhAn6DzoT3NomaMTBH7LJG18bS44VUzQRNcVtovL31EPcr1FGEe2Xeh1TLfgbW9sJMe6jKjorNwf3powcgnuAajhlejuEc-8fud3-eCtzez5MOcqcBv0BDNpcZ/s756/Mill%20Lower%20Slaughter.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="567" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvug9DW8j_Dj6yelpcd-Rs3Vzm095ByrUK_ebMikuVruxneFJLfio8U7dG8wPYnRRM-frhAn6DzoT3NomaMTBH7LJG18bS44VUzQRNcVtovL31EPcr1FGEe2Xeh1TLfgbW9sJMe6jKjorNwf3powcgnuAajhlejuEc-8fud3-eCtzez5MOcqcBv0BDNpcZ/w300-h400/Mill%20Lower%20Slaughter.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><p></p><b>Local industry</b><br /><br />Many people visit the Cotswolds, and most of them come to see quaint limestone cottages and medieval churches, and to walk in the hills along the many waymarked footpaths, taking in stunning views of vale and hill as they go. They come for rural beauty and tranquility, but many of them end up in the most popular showcase towns and villages, from Chipping Campden to Lower Slaughter.* They find find what they’re looking for, but also sometimes what they don’t expect, like surviving evidence of past industry, from cloth-weaving to corn milling, for Cotswold sheep produced wool from which cloth was made and Cotswold people needed flour to make bread. The area is crisscrossed by fast-flowing streams that provided water power for some of these industries. <br /><br />So it was at Lower Slaughter, which is mainly a stone village that also contains this former corn mill, built partly of brick. There was a corn mill here at the time of Domesday Book, drawing water power from the local stream, the River Eye. In the 18th century, the mill was rebuilt partly in brick, and at some point steam power must have taken over from water, hence the chimney. The millstones turned to grind corn into flour until 1958, when it closed, no doubt unable to compete with larger mills elsewhere. From the late 20th century until the very recently, the mill was a tourist attraction, with displays showing the history of the village and its mill and where visitors could still see the round stones that ground the corn and the other mill machinery. <br /><br />Although according to online sources, corn ceased to be ground in the 1950s, I’m sure I remember visiting the mill in around 1997 or 1998 and buying a bag of flour ground there. Perhaps the flour was ground at another site belonging to the then owners? Maybe one of my readers could enlighten me. There was certainly a shop and tea room on the premises until recently. <br /><br />However, the mill is now closed to tourists and its future is uncertain. But at least visitors can still see its impressive chimney and water wheel, evidence that for centuries, there was more to the Cotswolds than agriculture and quaintness. I hope the building finds new owners who can find a use for it and preserve it. <br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* The name Slaughter has no macabre origins. It comes from an Old English word for ‘wet land’.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-74113244549237544372024-02-17T11:22:00.001+00:002024-02-17T11:24:29.010+00:00Ewelme, Oxfordshire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaoua3I2df4NXFLDAC_cVdoxe8ipwk9Kc6BzvFSrsAEU1p8r3Kry0P3kfVndy3mtRLCZRysmPBnS-ZlfqvzihKzW86KVuSyn9J6E4XJl0b_Xjdu69oQfmqloCtjmLpj4LEQWj9CzhGa4stHYEreCE_kMaXHKZ4PYwDGSOzFNBXEjv1sumPCYDzEMarv6uO/s633/Ewelme%20sign.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="633" data-original-width="567" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaoua3I2df4NXFLDAC_cVdoxe8ipwk9Kc6BzvFSrsAEU1p8r3Kry0P3kfVndy3mtRLCZRysmPBnS-ZlfqvzihKzW86KVuSyn9J6E4XJl0b_Xjdu69oQfmqloCtjmLpj4LEQWj9CzhGa4stHYEreCE_kMaXHKZ4PYwDGSOzFNBXEjv1sumPCYDzEMarv6uO/w359-h400/Ewelme%20sign.jpg" width="359" /></a></div><br /><b>Take notice</b> <br /><br />There has been a lot in the news recently about the polluted state of many of Britain’s rivers. The River Wye, for example, is undergoing an ecological crisis due to the levels of phosphates in its waters, a state of affairs that has been attributed to run-off from the many intensive poultry farms near its banks.* Other rivers have enormous amounts of untreated sewage dumped into them, because Britain’s sewerage system cannot cope with the demands placed on it by an increasing population and climate change. This is a situation that needs urgent attention. <br /><br />I was reminded of this by an old sign I spotted in Ewelme, when my mind was on other things (the church, the almshouses, and so on). Its message: don’t dump things in the local river, and don’t allow anything ‘injurious to health’ to run into the water from your home or business (please click on the picture for improved legibility). I don’t know how old this sign is – I’d go for a vague estimate of something like ‘early-20th century’, though it could be older. It certainly goes back to the era of admirable hand-painted lettering, which is what drew me to it before I even read what it says. Looking at it as a piece of craftsmanship, I like its bold heading and the careful italic script of the main message. I admire the trouble people took with painted signs when there weren’t computerised versions that are easy to produce – although ease of use should not be confused with the ability to come up with a visually pleasing result. <br /><br />But I’ll resist getting dewy-eyed about the past. At least since the industrial revolution, people have been large-scale polluters, and there need to be both exacting laws and proper enforcement to prevent damage to the environment. The people of Ewelme, clearly, tried hard to protect their brook. Perhaps the sign was enough to make a few local malefactors think before taking the easy way with waste material. Now we need a more national, and more hard-hitting, effort to deal with our rivers and with those who pollute them. And this needs to happen soon. <br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* See for example <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/20/its-like-pea-soup-poultry-farms-turn-wye-into-wildlife-death-trap" target="_blank">this newspaper report</a>. <br /><br />† See <a href="https://www.sas.org.uk/water-quality/water-quality-facts-and-figures/" target="_blank">this</a>, from Surfers Against Sewage. Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-35464541026643040352024-02-12T09:08:00.000+00:002024-02-12T09:08:20.473+00:00Ewelme, Oxfordshire<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaCOvnvGpiEqMvKGZulAXUZxSy3TZ0p7ti480Cmzr1zNf-4YWZB6aoSUVHF17MyXnnSqCP0G_uHNn_DqZ8IvsmRg7NalI-AY4Be8rnNZBfVVkTISR71J9PuvgGhxz73IodhURhXtqCJPYzqXkKhb3gAynbtz7wOGWwoaAtanME3huiadJYP7XBFhsPsK77/s605/God's%20House%20in%20Ewelme%201.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="605" data-original-width="454" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaCOvnvGpiEqMvKGZulAXUZxSy3TZ0p7ti480Cmzr1zNf-4YWZB6aoSUVHF17MyXnnSqCP0G_uHNn_DqZ8IvsmRg7NalI-AY4Be8rnNZBfVVkTISR71J9PuvgGhxz73IodhURhXtqCJPYzqXkKhb3gAynbtz7wOGWwoaAtanME3huiadJYP7XBFhsPsK77/w300-h400/God's%20House%20in%20Ewelme%201.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><p></p><b>God’s House</b><br /><br />Alice de la Pole (1404–75), granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer and Countess of Salisbury then Duchess of Suffolk, was a member of England’s rich and powerful upper class, who had several homes. Her favourite was at Ewelme, in Oxfordshire. Her house has gone, but the church, school, and almshouse she built remain, standing in a tight cluster above the river valley where the village grew up. The almshouse is one of the most beautiful medieval domestic buildings, consisting of dwellings for 13 residents (originally all men), who, in return for their accommodation, were tasked with praying for the souls of Alice and her family, thereby easing their benefactors’ passage through Purgatory into Heaven. In other words, this foundation was a chantry. Henry VIII abolished chantries, but in this case, although the prayers for Alice’s soul ceased, the almshouses themselves remained.<br /><br />The dwellings are arranged around a quadrangle, which can be entered through several doors, one close to the church, others giving access to the gardens. My first photograph shows a magnificent brick doorway, complete with stepped gable, gothic cusped arch, and buttresses. Its a grand piece of architecture, reminding one of the building’s importance to Alice de la Pole and evoking its serious purpose as a chantry, but the houses themselves, visible to the left, are architecturally quite modest.<br /><br />This combination of modesty and elaboration is also seen in the quadrangle (below). Here the structure of the building is revealed as a timber framework with brick infill, with access to the individual doors via a lean-to covered cloister onto which the nearby church tower looks down. In the middle of each range is an opening leading to the central cobbled courtyard, and lovely carved wooden Gothic arches top each of these openings, an appealing bit of decoration and visual punctuation. The resulting combination of the domestic and the holy is summed up in the name of the building: God’s House. It’s worth a pilgrimage.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifGk5xnZHCDUrGOKmozxTCUH-BvFnKr9c6VJxtpLpznYMw5PJljexLhdxKZlm_mV9fTHmaSEf85Qk8XlfFE53w8AEoQrP7XGoR3PC7nCM3tUQtkLM-wQrOpqoNw_kbInFrwP_55QGR73Gr8PDWJ9X4RP5rkBWecHvexChnCYMMUtbWyJj-RutVYmr-frZ3/s605/God's%20House%20in%20Ewelme%202.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="605" data-original-width="454" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifGk5xnZHCDUrGOKmozxTCUH-BvFnKr9c6VJxtpLpznYMw5PJljexLhdxKZlm_mV9fTHmaSEf85Qk8XlfFE53w8AEoQrP7XGoR3PC7nCM3tUQtkLM-wQrOpqoNw_kbInFrwP_55QGR73Gr8PDWJ9X4RP5rkBWecHvexChnCYMMUtbWyJj-RutVYmr-frZ3/w300-h400/God's%20House%20in%20Ewelme%202.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-15532122240441083762024-02-03T08:00:00.001+00:002024-02-03T08:00:00.255+00:00Wissington, Suffolk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7a81bskhjV-DTkdRhLyzu_jgh0fxIGH_HqBD3__VmgiUObwWzN_rB9mTfFtZYFWtDZkdCcm8bSANXPJcjp16FGe9rBx7S5cFUY0CZ62285MFIYEl92EyUpgGJ0t4w6SmTGI-1YdFZ_y_NWNPViUktu7FDrVtjs68avLN6GzDdhECNkqTiswV6l5i1DWM/s765/Wissington%20dragon.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="547" data-original-width="765" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7a81bskhjV-DTkdRhLyzu_jgh0fxIGH_HqBD3__VmgiUObwWzN_rB9mTfFtZYFWtDZkdCcm8bSANXPJcjp16FGe9rBx7S5cFUY0CZ62285MFIYEl92EyUpgGJ0t4w6SmTGI-1YdFZ_y_NWNPViUktu7FDrVtjs68avLN6GzDdhECNkqTiswV6l5i1DWM/w400-h286/Wissington%20dragon.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>Emerging from the mere</b> <br /><br />Almost the first thing you see when entering the church of St Mary at Wissington* is a large wall painting of a dragon, high on the north wall. It’s dated to the 14th century and may relate to an account in a chronicle of 1405 by the monk Henry de Blaneford of St Albans Abbey. Henry tells how a dragon appeared from a mere or marshy area near Bures. It was a creature with a long body and tail, a crested head, and saw-like teeth. It was said to have killed a herd of sheep near Bures and its hard skin repelled the arrows of those who gathered to try and kill it. The chronicler goes on: <br /><br /><blockquote>The servants of Sir Richard Waldegrave who owns the land haunted by the dragon came forth to shoot it with arrows which sprang back from its ribs as if they were metal of [or?] hard stone and from the spines of its back with a jangling as if they were hitting bronze plates, and flew far away because its skin was impenetrable. Almost the whole county was summoned to slaughter it but when it saw that it was to be shot at again, it fled into the marsh, hid in the reeds and was seen no more. </blockquote><br /><br />Some say that the village of Wormingford near Bures may have taken its name from the dragon or worm (the latter being an old word for a serpent or dragon).† It’s certainly true that the association of the beast with the local area has not gone away. In 2012, the Jubilee year of Queen Elizabeth II, the figure of a large dragon was cut into a hillside near Bures. <br /><br />The dragon in medieval Christianity is a symbol of destructive evil, particularly the evil associated with paganism. He also represents Satan. You often find the dragon represented with <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2013/09/broughton-buckinghamshire.html" target="_blank">St George</a>, as part of the story in which the saint kills the evil creature. St Margaret of Antioch is another saint associated with a dragon – she escaped after being swallowed by the creature. <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2022/03/othery-somerset.html" target="_blank">St Michael</a> is another dragon-slaying saint. Sometimes the dragon is seen alone as a warning against evil. The position of the creature in this painting, high up and quite near the roof, made me doubt at first that he was originally accompanied by one of the dragon-slaying saints. There is no obvious evidence of a figure near the beast, and the background of the image is confused because it seems to have been painted over an early picture. Given the legend about the Bures dragon, however, the painting carries a strong local, as well as a more general Christian, resonance. <br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* Also known as Wiston <br /><br />† It was originally Widermund’s or Withermund’s ford, but it’s possible that the change to Wormingford may have been due, in whole or in part, to the legend of the dragon. Ronald Blythe, who lived near Wormingford, was one advocate of the derivation from the dragon – see the excellent selection of his writings, <i>Next to Nature</i> (2022). Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-14404008189925794182024-01-27T08:00:00.001+00:002024-01-27T08:00:00.139+00:00Oxford<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvyzUrc0LjB-1LInGT346VfAgLK7FV-cVnpw8PQm0aLpwn3MM-gDKhrfYoiLv6wQHaxbPcV84k5VJ-QWsUOKGWfZNcslfGbT2ifOlRgrRrOLeKJlIzhyphenhyphen8LJEEOPUvhu_8FYfkWYcyIZNy31-hQ32596Pkb-KFLYr62MVtSL-sN4u8N1SanxjcIfwxBDVz/s794/Oxford%201912%20window.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="794" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvyzUrc0LjB-1LInGT346VfAgLK7FV-cVnpw8PQm0aLpwn3MM-gDKhrfYoiLv6wQHaxbPcV84k5VJ-QWsUOKGWfZNcslfGbT2ifOlRgrRrOLeKJlIzhyphenhyphen8LJEEOPUvhu_8FYfkWYcyIZNy31-hQ32596Pkb-KFLYr62MVtSL-sN4u8N1SanxjcIfwxBDVz/w400-h328/Oxford%201912%20window.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><b>Magic flutes</b><br /><br />A few weeks ago I found myself talking to another author about the demise of second hand bookshops (victims of internet sales and the now-common shops that sell used books for charity) and the similar disappearance of music shops. Since we were near Oxford at the time, we spoke of a couple of music shops in the city that had disappeared. As I’d forgotten their names, my interlocutor put me right. ‘There was Taphouse’s in Magdalen street, and Russell Acott in the High Street,’ he reminded me. ‘And even a stall selling second hand records in the covered market,’ I added. <br /><br />Later, I remembered that I’d actually taken some photographs of the shop front of Russell Acott’s in the High Street, because of its charming carved decoration.* How could one not taken a second, or third, look at carved musical putti blowing flutes† and playing other instruments such as the horn or the lyre? Especially when some of them are accompanied by tiny scrolls inscribed with the date of the frontage: 1912. And when they are surrounded by crisply carved foliage. And when the carver has made the putti more animated and distinctive by giving them a strong three-dimensional quality – look how the knees are set forward, the hands stick out from the surface of the carving, and the feet break out of the space between the arches.<br /><br />If you’ve read this far, you’ll get the impression that I really like this kind of thing. I particularly admire the quality of the craftsmanship, the way in which the carvings fit the kind of business, the fact that this sort of thing is strictly unnecessary but the shop owner wanted their facade to be especially elegant, and the way in which the carving combines advertising with a kind of generosity – the public street was enhanced by this bit of whimsy. In my opinion, it still is. <br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* This shopfront was created by Acott’s, who merged with another music business, Russell’s, in 1950. The company traded from this shop until 1998, when they moved to an out-of-town location. Russell Acott finally ceased trading in 2011, competition from online sellers meaning that when the owners retired, the business closed for good. <br /><br />† Or are they piccolos? Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-3832705837305461032024-01-22T08:00:00.001+00:002024-01-22T08:00:00.189+00:00Lavenham, Suffolk<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDsx0VB4dfNoiBS4FFoTJN9qCZBmtgGcZHrDRPYVRBR6raOA058rNP3ghD95hFFwPPj1uUWPHSVE969LCSq1qFnZ7uPLM73qJJb2G4AZKRpGwbjvA9IuyQQpVbZyzQkp5or2vnND_oXRUU8rz53GuDxHcehW0_6-pEIa61mJnJu9f2fCvGQnMlz4DTccPD/s643/Lavenham%20Guildhall%20daisywheel.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="482" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDsx0VB4dfNoiBS4FFoTJN9qCZBmtgGcZHrDRPYVRBR6raOA058rNP3ghD95hFFwPPj1uUWPHSVE969LCSq1qFnZ7uPLM73qJJb2G4AZKRpGwbjvA9IuyQQpVbZyzQkp5or2vnND_oXRUU8rz53GuDxHcehW0_6-pEIa61mJnJu9f2fCvGQnMlz4DTccPD/w300-h400/Lavenham%20Guildhall%20daisywheel.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><b>In plain sight</b><br /><br />Back in 2015 I read Matthew Champion’s fascinating book <i>Medieval Graffiti</i> and was alerted to the interesting array of ‘unofficial’ marks and inscriptions in English churches. This has inspired at least two posts on this bog – one on <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2017/07/shorncote-gloucestershire.html" target="_blank">overlapping Vs</a>, said to refer to the Virgin Mary (‘Virgo Virginum’, Virgin of virgns), another illustrating the outline of a <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2021/06/little-comberton-worcestershire_01602434935.html" target="_blank">human hand</a> and some initials within a shield. A further common motif used in church graffiti is what is now widely known as the daisywheel, a series of arcs drawn within a circle, which combine to create an image resembling a six-petalled flower. When staying in Lavenham, Suffolk, just before Christmas, I was intrigued to come across such a daisywheel not in a church but on a wooden beam above a fireplace at Lavenham Guildhall. <br /><br />The usual interpretation. of such marks is that they provide protection from evil spirits. In churches they are often placed near doorways or arches, suggesting that they prevent or discourage evil spirits form entering the building. Drawing a ritual protection mark above a fireplace suggests that it stops such spirits entering the building down the chimney. <br /><br />Fireplaces are of course important places in a building – they’re the source of heat for comfort and cooking, of course, but in addition are focal points and symbols of the house and home, and of the people who live in the building or use it. For these reasons as well as the fact that the chimney offers a potential way in for evil forces, they’re a place to look out for protection marks in secular buildings. The famous <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2022/10/bretforton-worcestershire.html" target="_blank">‘witch marks’</a> I have seen in a Worcestershire pub are also located in fireplaces – in this case on the hearth itself. <br /><br />While the pub’s ‘witch marks’ consist of white circles made with chalk, daisywheels are usually incised into the wood or plaster. Matthew Champion suggests that they were made using the points of shears, a tool much used in the late Middle Ages when it’s thought many of these marks were made. He has tried making them with shears himself, with successful results. For centuries these marks were unregarded because they are easy to miss when one is not looking for them. Now scholars such as Champion have alerted us to their presence, more and more are being rediscovered, hiding as it were in plain sight.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-6791323212173166162024-01-17T08:00:00.003+00:002024-01-17T08:00:00.132+00:00Fulham High Street, London<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYbk64dRmWUqOK5nr-eRu49rzjBEmhHjTiOp22jkyi1p4YvHyXnvX1w0FoVaxxE97jUEZnYOPI1x3JllEh8RtGN56nkcGuW3xjIU6lPtm5KMjye7Q7Gqy0372GKF2Mkv-oU6W3-jkBYpzvR1w9awVuDmvRGLtU49lwkeIj9KYNiuY3LChzg0hIU_51jwgd/s850/Temperance%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="850" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYbk64dRmWUqOK5nr-eRu49rzjBEmhHjTiOp22jkyi1p4YvHyXnvX1w0FoVaxxE97jUEZnYOPI1x3JllEh8RtGN56nkcGuW3xjIU6lPtm5KMjye7Q7Gqy0372GKF2Mkv-oU6W3-jkBYpzvR1w9awVuDmvRGLtU49lwkeIj9KYNiuY3LChzg0hIU_51jwgd/w400-h280/Temperance%202.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><b>Still going on</b><br /><br />Writing about Hadleigh’s Coffee Tavern in my previous post brought to mind the host of buildings that owe their existence to the temperance movement of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Coffee Taverns, ‘pubs’ selling Bovril, temperance billiards rooms. And I was reminded that more than a decade ago I’d done a post on this blog about such a building in West London. I re-read my post and thought it was interesting enough for a repost. It’s about the former temperance billiards rooms in Fulham High Street, London, and here’s what I wrote about it in 2012:<br /><br /><blockquote>It must have been in the 1970s, when Philip Larkin’s Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse came out, that I first read and was moved by a poem by P J Kavanagh called ‘The Temperance Billiards Rooms’. In it, the poet remembers how he used to walk past the Temperance Billiards Rooms with his wife, who died tragically young. Aged just 33, the poet salutes the Billiards Rooms alone. He makes the building stand for continuity, in this moving poem about carrying on after a disaster: ‘it just goes on, as I do too I notice’. But it’s also fragile (‘something so uneconomical’s sure to come down’) and so is the grieving poet. It’s a touching poem, and Kavanagh’s description of the place, ‘in red and green and brown, with porridge-coloured stucco in between and half a child’s top for a dome…it’s like a Protestant mosque!’ has a melancholy humour.<br /><br />I wonder if this is Kavanagh’s building. It’s now a pub (The Temperance), is repainted a rather sorry dark grey and is offering special deals on cocktails. There’s still a dome, still bits of stucco decoration, still stained glass in red and green, still the hall to the right which must have contained the billiard tables. If it’s not the building in the poem, it’s one very like it. Designed in 1910 by Norman Evans, it was one of several such buildings, built for Temperance Billiard Halls Ltd in northern England and the suburbs of London. Their art nouveau glass and decoration, and the chance of a game of billiards, were meant to attract punters away from the temptations of the demon drink, part of a movement that began in the middle decades of the 19th century and saw a late resurgence in 1900–1910. As late as 1908 there was a bill in Parliament to reduce the number of licenses to sell alcohol and ban the employment of women in pubs, a bill that was vigorously supported by temperance campaigners, and equally loudly decried by others, especially those, such as the Barmaids’ Political Defence League, who stood up for the barmaids who were to lose their jobs. The bill was defeated in the end, and the temperance movement declined.<br /><br />This billiards hall, at any rate, is still there, although the dark paint spoils what looks it had. It’s also fiendishly difficult to photograph, hemmed in by road signs, wires, aerials, railings, and continuous traffic along the Fulham High Street. The best I could do was to include one of the most interesting vehicles that went past as I stood outside, a Mercedes Benz 280SL that takes us just about back to the 1960s, when Kavanagh wrote his poem. Like him, I’m glad the building is still there, although I cannot, like the poet, say that there are, ‘for all I know men playing billiards temperately in there’.</blockquote><br /><br />To which I’d add that a quick look at Google Earth shows that the building still has its dark grey exterior paintwork. Although the colour is far from ideal as a replacement for the ‘porridge’ of Kavanagh’s poem, at least the new use (yes, still a pub called the Temperance, how absurdly wonderful is that?) means the building is still there. To use Kavanagh’s language, I salute the Temperance Billiards Rooms. I salute those who restore and maintain beautiful bits of machinery like the Mercedes 280SL in my photograph. And I salute those who, like the poet, have suffered a bereavement, find themselves going on, and manage to make art in the face of their loss. I’ll drink to that.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />For more about architecture and temperance, see Andrew Davison’s essay ‘”Worthy of the Cause”: The Buildings of the Temperance Movement’ in Geoff Brandwood (ed), <i>Living, Leisure and Law</i> (Spire Books, 2010).<br /><br />For P J Kavanagh’s account of his loss, see P J Kavanagh, <i>The Perfect Stranger</i> (1966)<div><br /></div><div>The picture at the top of this post may be a little clearer if you click on it to enlarge it.</div>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-6508144841945822312024-01-13T08:00:00.001+00:002024-01-13T08:00:00.292+00:00Hadleigh, Suffolk<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioBqyJr0B-HdEib81G42UCNLJOamNHHRzboJq7fFB4QFh0pZ1VNp_FMpmrVFEKk6pePj5SWIETkuGNFXZ-wFvk9YalEPZdC2qo7RlIHaaow97XhaYP_yahVnSNE66QQS9r8BUA9MsLrj8L_SHMVSpKRriKUhB1q28KCezL84pHYhZL7S_3G43SMSkKSCyo/s765/Tavern%20revised.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="765" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioBqyJr0B-HdEib81G42UCNLJOamNHHRzboJq7fFB4QFh0pZ1VNp_FMpmrVFEKk6pePj5SWIETkuGNFXZ-wFvk9YalEPZdC2qo7RlIHaaow97XhaYP_yahVnSNE66QQS9r8BUA9MsLrj8L_SHMVSpKRriKUhB1q28KCezL84pHYhZL7S_3G43SMSkKSCyo/w400-h300/Tavern%20revised.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><b>Anyone for coffee?</b><br /><br />One last post from the fascinating Suffolk town of Hadleigh, before I move on… <br /><br />Having enjoyed seeing Hadleigh’s church, Deanery Tower, and Market Hall complex, we moved on to the High Street in search of a coffee, and found…the coffee tavern. This is a building of the 1670s and, when one pauses to look at it, it’s a stunner. It’s actually timber-framed, but plastered over so that the framework is not immediately obvious. The upper floor, with its magnificent row of original 17th-century windows, together with the dormered and overhanging roof, are typical of the period. The windows especially are outstanding, featuring arched central lights with elaborate leadwork and a carved head in the middle – high-class woodwork and design reminiscent of the more famous Sparrowe’s House in Ipswich. The cornice and series of dentil-like brackets helping to support the roof are impressive too.<br /><br />The upper floor overhangs the ground floor slightly, and would originally have overhung more. However, in the 19th century a series of new ground-floor frontages were built under the overhang to create the shop fronts we see today. Did the building originally house shops? It may well have done, given its setting on the Hight Street, but today the structure is usually referred to as the Coffee Tavern. ‘Coffee tavern’ is a term usually used for places of refreshment set up in the late-19th century as part of the temperance movement. In an attempt to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed (drunkenness was said to lead to crime and violence), some groups set up temperance cafés, hotels, and billiard halls. Non-alcoholic drinks were served. All or part of the building was used for this purpose in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. One record from around 1900 describes both a coffee tavern and a printing office on the site. At some point the coffee tavern closed, but among the current occupiers are a printer and a coffee shop. The tradition goes on. We enjoyed both our coffee and the architecture.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-69861936562831102862024-01-09T18:18:00.003+00:002024-01-09T18:18:34.105+00:00Hadleigh, Suffolk<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hlMn2hexd5L0SsBpo9AnXUFLhm_OfVQsEYWaQvR62pvqEsRX2nI9kiL-v39KGk12ruS_V5v6RxPGBZcLfPHuWEsrCeAMWX1N3uWHca73xu97g8l9ya7CoJlcKc-zINBb2CyCkGdaSdnNnUgTpnewcokDT1ZhZtgm31ka6TYF0QqgayURhJrjtP-_epzP/s680/Hadleigh%20doorway.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hlMn2hexd5L0SsBpo9AnXUFLhm_OfVQsEYWaQvR62pvqEsRX2nI9kiL-v39KGk12ruS_V5v6RxPGBZcLfPHuWEsrCeAMWX1N3uWHca73xu97g8l9ya7CoJlcKc-zINBb2CyCkGdaSdnNnUgTpnewcokDT1ZhZtgm31ka6TYF0QqgayURhJrjtP-_epzP/w300-h400/Hadleigh%20doorway.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><p></p><b>Clinging on</b><br /><br />I do like an old wall. Walls around the gardens of town houses, kitchen garden walls, churchyard walls, <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2022/06/pershore-worcestershire.html" target="_blank">crinkle-crankle walls</a> in orchards. A 19th-century brick wall marks the western edge of the churchyard at Hadleigh. Pleasant enough in itself, this wall seems to have offered the chance for an interesting bit of antiquarianism – two late-medieval stone doorways and some very decayed niches from the same period are incorporated into the brickwork. My photograph shows the doorway nearest to the Deanery Tower featured in my <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2024/01/hadleigh-suffolk.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>. It has a later, Gothic-style door leading to the land adjacent to the tower and its stone surround is now very worn. Above the arch, one can just about make out a row of seven carved quatrefoils. The arch itself has carefully carved mouldings.<br /><br />I don’t know where this bit of medieval masonry came from. Was it part of the Deanery that William Pykenham was building when he died, of which the tower is the survivor? Was it a doorway in the nearby church that was later replaced? Did it come from some other vanished structure? Who knows? But I’m glad the 19th-century builders, so often too eager to replace rather than preserve, spared this doorway and the other architectural fragments in this wall. Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-31834742183654664032024-01-02T14:49:00.000+00:002024-01-02T14:49:04.899+00:00Hadleigh, Suffolk<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMsIqAGBVf6D6x4tL5-TT1m1xpytHo-XwaJSp1BTDao1h-wFWFgsAxmxjPVc5MT61XqNL5SsnbZ6YLCT-yoDcLWGvKkpGS5MU6_vP7135d1fPXguliHffZ7wkNyt4kiBO0b5uGhga3Lt_K2zNcIm8e1yWQJS4dqg4oU6gs4BNzOWVaEPG2-krgEyBfJqwU/s831/Hadliegh%20gatehouse.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="624" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMsIqAGBVf6D6x4tL5-TT1m1xpytHo-XwaJSp1BTDao1h-wFWFgsAxmxjPVc5MT61XqNL5SsnbZ6YLCT-yoDcLWGvKkpGS5MU6_vP7135d1fPXguliHffZ7wkNyt4kiBO0b5uGhga3Lt_K2zNcIm8e1yWQJS4dqg4oU6gs4BNzOWVaEPG2-krgEyBfJqwU/w300-h400/Hadliegh%20gatehouse.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><p></p><b>Showpiece</b><br /><br />This spectacular building of 1495 overlooks the churchyard at Hadleigh, no distance at all from the Guildhall-Town Hall complex in my previous post. Where the latter is a striking timber-framed vernacular building, this gatehouse is a highly elaborate piece of architecture built by someone who wanted to assert their status. That person was William Pykenham, who held the senior ecclesiastical offices of Dean and Rector of Hadliegh and Archdeacon of Suffolk in the late-15th century. It was to be the entrance to a palatial residence which was never completed because Pakenham died shortly after the tower was built. The adjoining building is the 19th-century Deanery House. <br /><br />Known as the Deanery Tower, Pykenham’s gatehouse is brick-built and the brickwork was produced with the kind of virtuoso craftsmanship that one associates with grand East Anglian buildings such as Oxburgh Hall. The lovely red brick is complemented by diaper (i.e. diamond) patterns in dark, almost black brick, running up the wall on either side of the main windows. The stand-out features of the tower are the polygonal turrets at each corner, adorned with cusped arches, quatrefoils, and very fancy battlements. There are also very showy tall chimneys with spiral brickwork in the Elizabethan style, but these are 19th-century additions. Some of the other adornments have gone – the tower is said to have borne the initials W. P. to identify its owner and carvings of fish – very likely pike – as punning symbols of the owner’s surname. All in all, although at 43 feet tall it is dwarfed by the nearby church spire, it is an outstanding architectural vanity project that wears its age well.*<br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* An interesting aspect of the Deanery’s history is that a meeting held here in July 1833 led to the start of the Oxford Movement, which set the agenda for the 19th-century developments, especially in the use of ritual, that shaped the Church of England in the 19th century. <br />Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-4146631439803279172023-12-28T14:54:00.002+00:002023-12-28T14:54:44.971+00:00Hadleigh, Suffolk<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAM4m6DB0fL9bwqoAE2-r9WDOyN658yQyRAsKmF-dpKvaZaInPaBsTSbLN8AvrNKKQxmpoy2LKR1u8qa5EpoiZusXmLhjt-TFGunu4fDXlFhc-EdQYDSbZ1_4AfTjcuLPHvhbklyscr2eunQYZ7rHgWK3xdwZ1gLLAsjRrzHEa68Oc5aw2cqUGCo3TJb7h/s629/Hadliegh%20Guildhall%20etc%20.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="624" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAM4m6DB0fL9bwqoAE2-r9WDOyN658yQyRAsKmF-dpKvaZaInPaBsTSbLN8AvrNKKQxmpoy2LKR1u8qa5EpoiZusXmLhjt-TFGunu4fDXlFhc-EdQYDSbZ1_4AfTjcuLPHvhbklyscr2eunQYZ7rHgWK3xdwZ1gLLAsjRrzHEa68Oc5aw2cqUGCo3TJb7h/w396-h400/Hadliegh%20Guildhall%20etc%20.jpeg" width="396" /></a></div><p></p><b>Local colour</b><br /><br />How could it be? I’d been to Suffolk several times and looked around so many of its towns – Aldeburgh, Southwold, Lavenham, Sudbury, Stowmarket… How had I not been to Hadleigh? This time, the Resident Wise Woman and I resolved to correct this omission, and quite early one December morning two weeks before Christmas, we arrived in Hadleigh, wandered around, and were very impressed. There is so much for the building-fancier to see, and so much of it is good. <br /><br />It wasn’t long before we found the churchyard, and it was not only the church that caught our eye. Along one side of God’s acre is the conglomeration of brickwork, timber-framing and ochre-coloured plaster in my photograph. It’s now known as the Guildhall-Town Hall complex and the rooms inside are available to the local community for various uses. The earliest part is the timber-framed section in the middle, which was constructed in the mid-15th century. This was built as a market hall, with shops below and other rooms on the jettied storeys above. Behind this is the Guildhall, built as a wing projecting from the back of the market hall – a tiny portion of this is visible near the left-hand edge of my photograph.* The two-storey wings on either side of the timber-framed market hall are later.<br /><br />The complex has had a variety of uses since the Middle Ages. It was the administrative centre when Hadleigh was a borough in the 17th century; until 1834, part of the building was used as the parish workhouse; more than one school had been based here; part of the structure was once almshouses; and in the early-20th century it was partly used as a corset factory. There’s something admirable about a building that’s in part almost 600 years old and has been used in so many ways – and is still an asset to the town. It’s also admirable that it has fulfilled these uses while keeping much of its ancient beauty. <br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* Guildhalls were the headquarters of guilds, associations of tradesman or merchants, formed for various reasons including religious (for example, paying for prayers for the souls of the dead) and charitable (for example, providing for the surviving families of deceased members).Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-38696465691913232052023-12-21T21:39:00.003+00:002023-12-21T21:39:19.058+00:00Huish Episcopi, Somerset<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtQ9yUnwI1aaW69hlNRxaNsczbKSwgkkCS5I61Xq9HzWjyy8_ucf34oQ8A3Sz6lVqRkl2pgGOKFrPpMT8_kLvIdX8r95WL-L9ITyJIXewGy_3r-Bd7BxlSTz1zz7meLfhYi0FA9w6VVYJ0TuzOXLLa20MYb7DqS1oehlhyphenhyphen5CrKAvsUECF72AhndmLZkle3/s613/Huish%20Episcopi.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="567" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtQ9yUnwI1aaW69hlNRxaNsczbKSwgkkCS5I61Xq9HzWjyy8_ucf34oQ8A3Sz6lVqRkl2pgGOKFrPpMT8_kLvIdX8r95WL-L9ITyJIXewGy_3r-Bd7BxlSTz1zz7meLfhYi0FA9w6VVYJ0TuzOXLLa20MYb7DqS1oehlhyphenhyphen5CrKAvsUECF72AhndmLZkle3/w370-h400/Huish%20Episcopi.JPG" width="370" /></a></div><p></p><b>With my best wishes</b><br /><br />Casting around for something seasonal to post, I found this picture in my files. I’ve actually posted it before, but so long ago that I doubt anyone reading this now will remember it from back then. It’s a stained glass window designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made in the workshop of William Morris and it shows the Nativity scene in the stable at Bethlehem. As well as being a prominent member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Burne-Jones was also a founder member of Morris’s firm and the window is one of many wonderful examples of their bringing together of art, craft and design. <br /><br />The host of angels, crowding beneath the roof of the stable and into the foreground, focus their gaze on Mary and Jesus. Mary is recumbent, as she often is in ancient images of the scene, and so she and the child form a long centre band across the window, with angels above and below. On the left-hand side of the picture, the Magi wait to present their gifts. I like everything about this window, from the colours and the composition to the tenderness with which the mother holds her baby and the way in which the heads of the figures in the side panels lean in towards the holy family. I hope you like it too. <br /><br />Have a happy Christmas and may the new year bring peace, not least to the part of the world where this scene took place.<br /><div><br /></div><div>- - - - - </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Note</b> You may be able to see a little more detail if you click on the photograph.</div>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-84995079411297274152023-12-16T08:00:00.001+00:002023-12-16T08:00:00.139+00:00Boxford, Suffolk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoAnAnoH1CfWTHnD1MF8da_MnCMwGuTm00Ymj5MigZLXTE_fh9TDF6XcMhLzZ0TuKUzWn5AZ0bOtj8kvJz4b4GsWDXD_mjxau5J9iH_xu1o2hr3J-S3M-c2X4ucEN9nvCClbDhIpfVwQ97GqFI2GKISrAxTuL2HmRG8DMF7nK3akiaUdL-YkKgCg6urg_R/s581/Boxford.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="510" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoAnAnoH1CfWTHnD1MF8da_MnCMwGuTm00Ymj5MigZLXTE_fh9TDF6XcMhLzZ0TuKUzWn5AZ0bOtj8kvJz4b4GsWDXD_mjxau5J9iH_xu1o2hr3J-S3M-c2X4ucEN9nvCClbDhIpfVwQ97GqFI2GKISrAxTuL2HmRG8DMF7nK3akiaUdL-YkKgCg6urg_R/w351-h400/Boxford.jpeg" width="351" /></a></div><br /><b>Sign of the times </b><br /><br />It’s 1839 and you are building a new house (or perhaps refronting an old one) in the middle of Boxford, Suffolk. Queen Victoria came to throne two years ago and was popular at the beginning of her reign. So you decide to name the house after the young monarch: Victoria Cottage. Perhaps the building was completed at the beginning of the year, because as 1839 went on, Victoria’s popularity was dealt a blow when she was implicated in spreading false rumours about one of her mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Or perhaps the house’s owner was staunchly patriotic. Who knows? Both the name, inscribed over the arches above the lower windows, and the date of construction, above the windows of the upper floor, remain. The inscriptions are certainly an individual touch and a far cry from the small house name signs or date stones more often seen on modest town houses. <br /><br />The frontage is classically plain – the arches, round-topped windows, parapet, and Gothic glazing bars are all reminiscent of the late-Georgian period, but fashions were often slow to change in the provinces and, in style as in inscriptions, individual taste is often in play in domestic architecture. The bricks are the pale colour so often found in East Anglia and featuring also in the building in my <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2023/12/boxford-suffolk.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>. Pale bricks, often called ‘whites’, but often pale yellow or cream in colour, are made with clay that contains more lime than usual, a feature of clays in many parts of eastern England. They can look very handsome, sometimes easy to mistake for stone when one is looking at a big country house from a distance, but here are unmistakably brick and none the worse for that.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-62983272866864428202023-12-12T08:00:00.001+00:002023-12-12T08:00:00.149+00:00Boxford, Suffolk<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkQC9bQRuER8gRXdgZ-t-vGKkkL7VIh48DOw-peGoieaCgOXs_4ExagKQ_HzR9EQucmDEOUmJOFAP0MIs6gjw25_8B__SjDuCWpWtv3jl_vWMUEXVCP7Bnx0TQPE1nDoe2ul26uhZ1KNu7Ii2C9_cXTbpYx4BH2MlU1LgyyiBGUPOSYNtUXyg_p6SMvn1L/s624/Boxford%20lock-up.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="624" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkQC9bQRuER8gRXdgZ-t-vGKkkL7VIh48DOw-peGoieaCgOXs_4ExagKQ_HzR9EQucmDEOUmJOFAP0MIs6gjw25_8B__SjDuCWpWtv3jl_vWMUEXVCP7Bnx0TQPE1nDoe2ul26uhZ1KNu7Ii2C9_cXTbpYx4BH2MlU1LgyyiBGUPOSYNtUXyg_p6SMvn1L/w400-h334/Boxford%20lock-up.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><b>Preserve, re-use, re-use again</b><br /><br />In Boxford primarily to look at the church, my eye of course was caught in addition by other things. This small building in the middle of the village made me scratch my head. What is it? The date, 1838, took my mind back to the era of village lock-ups, and this seems to have been the answer. Two stout wooden doors would have originally provided security for a two-celled mini-prison, where wrongdoers were kept, usually just for a short period before they were either released or taken to court. Drunks would be left until they were sober, two people who had got into a fight could be locked up and separated by a solid brick wall, those suspected of more serious misdemeanours would be locked up until they went before a justice or magistrate. <br /><br />Lock-ups usually featured simple and functional architecture, but here the builders allowed themselves a couple of four-centred arches and a generous brick gable to make the structure look imposing.* The bricks are the pale ones seen widely in East Anglia. When no longer needed as a lock-up, the building was used to store the village fire engine (it would have been a small, hand-pumped device). Today it’s used simply as a shelter, a nice example of an antiquated building finding a new use that makes it worth preserving as something more than a mere eye-catcher – although it certainly fulfils that function too. <br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* Although we are a fair distance from the sort of chunk prison architecture that is sometimes seen; for an example, see this one here in <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2020/06/bewdley-worcestershire.html" target="_blank">Bewdley, Worcestershire.</a>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-35299995678266396442023-12-08T19:37:00.001+00:002023-12-08T19:37:27.853+00:00Shrewton, Wiltshire<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkAU-4ZIkKpArhGkOk2ThqVs9_Y3c8-3ehXy0_zN0waRuxJiYw4GhqlqQWEMR0xHXL1X8kgP9hOlbe34yR92_Q65wXwzo13tYDS0icqRCtBxofgLDxclNgIdYvvJ27LjVzo_nktrGyRwIHu8Cql4FSDGaMZggD1dTe2JboVlFhzwmMyLrkO1jNdaneHyIo/s765/Shrewton%20The%20Lodge.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="765" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkAU-4ZIkKpArhGkOk2ThqVs9_Y3c8-3ehXy0_zN0waRuxJiYw4GhqlqQWEMR0xHXL1X8kgP9hOlbe34yR92_Q65wXwzo13tYDS0icqRCtBxofgLDxclNgIdYvvJ27LjVzo_nktrGyRwIHu8Cql4FSDGaMZggD1dTe2JboVlFhzwmMyLrkO1jNdaneHyIo/w400-h275/Shrewton%20The%20Lodge.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><b>Earthy</b><br /><br />Looking through my pictures the other day for something else, I found this picture that I took years ago and probably meant to blog. It’s the gate lodge to an adjacent manor house and stands proud and white near a road junction (near where the <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2011/11/shrewton-wiltshire.html" target="_blank">village lock-up</a> is also to be found), a very effective architectural signpost, as it were, to the gate to the larger dwelling. It’s built of cob, a material consisting of earth, water, sand, and straw. Cob is associated most closely with Devon, Cornwall, and Norfolk, although it’s also found in Wiltshire (and in Buckinghamshire, where it’s known as wychert). The walls are likely to be quite thick (about 2 ft) and offer good heat insulation, but need a well maintained overhanging roof to keep them dry. This one has a hipped roof of thatch to do the job.<br /><br />The Gothic windows suggest a late-18th century date, which is what is suggested in the official listing description of this building. The house looks substantial, and also has a modern extension, part of which is just visible in my photograph, so would provide accommodation for someone who worked for the owners of the manor house, together with their family. I’ve written blog posts about several lodges before,* including a number with thatched roofs, because these are often striking, ornamental buildings. I was glad to find this one again among my pictures, and looking at it has made me resolve to return to Shrewton one day – according to the revised Pevsner volume for Wiltshire, there’s a cob crinkle-crankle wall somewhere nearby, which I missed. When you visit a place once, there’s nearly always something else to see when you retiurn.<br /><br />- - - - -<br /><br />* For more, click the word ‘lodge’ in the list of topics in the right-hand column.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-89729573833379640172023-12-01T12:27:00.000+00:002023-12-01T12:27:18.182+00:00Birlingham, Worcestershire<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl2JaD8CiY8DUy_IfI6BOae3WO0iwQ7n4CMbdQqSLPNGwrVgNoUppv_0xD7ZEhhTK7UYrCMrmFBct-_MfKVYRSMWKlBwNM3bVuZ7KdLD-_yS9XQoet0rTeS6Uf5-IAvh4qMxmmhYNTeJ3Xw9zqve7YacFf8IKlYFl3L7AkLec9uqlcDK_7SXSc4-sMSHJV/s595/Birlingham.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="595" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl2JaD8CiY8DUy_IfI6BOae3WO0iwQ7n4CMbdQqSLPNGwrVgNoUppv_0xD7ZEhhTK7UYrCMrmFBct-_MfKVYRSMWKlBwNM3bVuZ7KdLD-_yS9XQoet0rTeS6Uf5-IAvh4qMxmmhYNTeJ3Xw9zqve7YacFf8IKlYFl3L7AkLec9uqlcDK_7SXSc4-sMSHJV/w400-h396/Birlingham.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><b>Recycling</b><br /><br />Many English churches were built in the Victorian period. Lots of these served new parishes, created to serve a population that was growing faster than ever before. But some were replacements of older buildings, churches that had deteriorated structurally, or were too small for current needs, or just had the misfortune to have been built in a way that offended Victorian sensibilities. When this was the case, one cannot help but wonder what the original building was like, and whether it was really necessary to knock it down. <br /><br />Sometimes there are clues in old watercolours or engravings, or written accounts by antiquarians. Occasionally, there are architectural fragments of the old building sill to be seen. This is the case in the village of Birlingham, where the Norman chancel arch of the old church (rebuilt in 1871–72 by Benjamin Ferrey with the exception of the tower) was reused as the gateway to the churchyard. So what could have become a heap of rubble has been turned into a rather grand ceremonial entrance. It does, of course, contain much 19th-century workmanship (‘much renewed by Ferrey’ is Pevsner’s comment), but it gives us an idea of the old arch, and forms a pleasant focal point (not to mention a talking-point) in the centre of the village. Here’s to recycling.<br /><br />Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-76810532972230794702023-11-20T12:05:00.003+00:002023-11-20T12:09:38.472+00:00Launceston, Cornwall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ebzxnuhRrV4uLdr6P010QjOj7nbLEAAH1_28L2_ZMbhfqLN77CGJ0HYRTi8Nq2hu9b1_meCamkT9vFEdAtOM4hDtUsUadcEinQFCZDbj3FrPzcaZTq08ahvbquMOZVsp5hyphenhyphen3-IWiAXkIqeXtnb7H_9rXcBOI3KyNi_vpeUzFqHyzHEiD7xlCc5u3-ERa/s805/Launceston%20carvings.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="517" data-original-width="805" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ebzxnuhRrV4uLdr6P010QjOj7nbLEAAH1_28L2_ZMbhfqLN77CGJ0HYRTi8Nq2hu9b1_meCamkT9vFEdAtOM4hDtUsUadcEinQFCZDbj3FrPzcaZTq08ahvbquMOZVsp5hyphenhyphen3-IWiAXkIqeXtnb7H_9rXcBOI3KyNi_vpeUzFqHyzHEiD7xlCc5u3-ERa/w400-h258/Launceston%20carvings.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>Music for a long while </b><br /><br />On several occasions when exploring English buildings I’ve come across ancient carvings of musicians. Blog posts from years ago have featured a <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2015/06/altarnun-cornwall_17.html" target="_blank">bagpiper</a> in Cornwall and a player of a medieval woodwind instrument called a <a href="https://englishbuildings.blogspot.com/2020/10/elkstone-gloucestershire.html" target="_blank">rackett</a> in Gloucestershire. Some years ago in Cornwall again, visiting St Mary Magdalene’s church at Launceston, I found a whole band of musicians carved into the stone of the outside walls.<br /><br />Launceston church, like many in Cornwall, is built of local granite, one of the hardest of all stones and difficult, for that reason, to carve. Yet the stonemasons of Launceston, rebuilding the church in around 1511, were determined to decorate it as ornately as any other. In fact I can’t think of another English parish church so richly encrusted with carvings – Pevsner says that the building is decorated with ‘barbarous profuseness’. I’d not use such loaded language. I find the carvings fascinating, and I’m awed by the masons who could carve this intractable material, even though the granite’s hard surface means that they could not carve with the depth or detail that they might have achieved in, for example, limestone. <br /><br />Amongst the decorative profusion – leaves, ferns, roses, thistles, pomegranates, heraldry – are several relief carvings showing musicians (in the upper left part of my photograph: click it for an enlargement). In the photograph are a fiddler, a lutenist, and a harpist, forming a kind of procession led by an official or cleric with a chain around his neck. Other panels show a bagpiper and a shawm player. Some or all the musicians are probably members of a group called the <i>Confratrie Ministralorum Beate Marie Magdalene</i> (the Brotherhood of Minstrels of Blessed Mary Magdalene), and so were almost certain to have played in St Mary Magdalene’s church.* Some scholars believe that, this being the case, the carvings of the instruments would have been quite realistic, unlike carvings of instrumentalists on gargoyles, for example, which were more likely to have been caricatures, and unlike angels carved in roofs, where ‘realism’ has to be aided by imagination and where the instruments may be generic. Alas! the wear and tear of time, together with the granite’s toughness, have scuppered our chances of making out much detail today. <br /><br />Nevertheless, one of the joys of visiting old churches is the evidence they give of the activities of the past generations who built and used them. It’s good to find these musicians here and to think about the kinds of sounds they might have made in a market town in Cornwall some 500 years ago.<div><br /></div><div>- - - - - <br /><div><br /></div><div>* St Mary herself, resting with her pot of ointment, is visible to the right of the musicians.</div></div>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-21286299414807178672023-11-14T08:51:00.001+00:002023-11-14T08:51:34.872+00:00Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZbU3z2xFDgvX2I-5N5FAfcSvagQbbXEJRU9DkbXcYkuMuuZH9fSSfHASeqDBlVBev2dmNabP_qtOat30o4dhzX90EqeIym0HuXl0phIPNZmvHeh9-e4EJqDj8FLnexwzcX6qJpABKK9uSXNHTb0A6vUwd-AbUOw9sKOMQkwSG_nO7GNP-y8ugFEVd_trj/s624/Campden%20cart%20wash.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="624" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZbU3z2xFDgvX2I-5N5FAfcSvagQbbXEJRU9DkbXcYkuMuuZH9fSSfHASeqDBlVBev2dmNabP_qtOat30o4dhzX90EqeIym0HuXl0phIPNZmvHeh9-e4EJqDj8FLnexwzcX6qJpABKK9uSXNHTb0A6vUwd-AbUOw9sKOMQkwSG_nO7GNP-y8ugFEVd_trj/w400-h300/Campden%20cart%20wash.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><b>Clean-up time</b><br /><br />Beside the street opposite Chipping Campden’s 17th-century almshouses is this unusual feature. It now looks like a stretch of paved road that dips below the normal street level and it was originally full of water. This is a cart wash, and it dates to the early-19th century. Back then, mud could build up badly on cart wheels – not only on carts that had been in the fields, but on those hauled along rough and sometimes rutted roads or tracks. So the idea of a public cart wash was to enable carters to clean the mud off their wheels before entering the centre of town. <br /><br />There was another use of the cart wash and this was to stand the vehicle in it for a while, to give the wheels a good soaking. Old-fashioned horse-drawn carts had wooden wheels protected by metal tyres around the rims. If the wheels got too dry, the tyres could loosen and fall off. Soaking the wheels was a way of making them expand a little, to tighten the tyres and keep the wooden wheels properly protected. <br /><br />The world of horse-drawn carts and their maintenance seems remote now, but it’s not that long ago. I never knew my great uncle, whose business involved carting goods around rural north Lincolnshire, although my mother remembered him fondly. Just over a century ago, such people played an important role in rural communities, as did the men who built and repaired their carts. <i>The Wheelwright’s Shop</i>, George Sturt’s evocative 1923 account of this world of craftsmanship and toil, is well worth reading. Seeing Chipping Campden’s Cotswold stone cart wash brings it all back.<br />Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-57520876136181560862023-11-08T09:50:00.000+00:002023-11-08T09:50:09.805+00:00Ledbury, Herefordshire<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGhzFCM-h6thoa6VVZr4qtFIx3QdVPS3NX2n2padf_sv_LqlJCyYMWLzgN29e2yuUk3doOJ11g5FMDuEw62Ma-xOJfTUWDakGV3GEE9dVhRtYabGgCc66m4zZV0qeMh5S0DYCPYUia781pDpR304xp_TFq8BSBnO0Br5m7F8cF_coNm26qQE7tS-ybFCzA/s1020/Ledbury%20Confectioner.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1020" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGhzFCM-h6thoa6VVZr4qtFIx3QdVPS3NX2n2padf_sv_LqlJCyYMWLzgN29e2yuUk3doOJ11g5FMDuEw62Ma-xOJfTUWDakGV3GEE9dVhRtYabGgCc66m4zZV0qeMh5S0DYCPYUia781pDpR304xp_TFq8BSBnO0Br5m7F8cF_coNm26qQE7tS-ybFCzA/w400-h248/Ledbury%20Confectioner.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Sweet</b> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br />This beautiful sign in Ledbury has a special resonance for me, because I had a much-loved relative who was a confectioner. R, a cousin of my mother’s, could do the lot, from chocolate work to making boiled sweets, from seaside rock to luxurious coconut ice or fudge. For a while he had a shop next to a venue – a combined cinema and theatre – where famous stars performed. Many of them dropped in for something sweet and some came back whenever they were performing next door. The demise of live gigs there was a blow, and he moved on. <br /><br />His wares were good enough to sell without advertisement, and his shop didn’t have a wonderful glass sign like this. But what a joy it is.* That graceful lettering with its gradually widening and narrowing stroke widths is a delight: how difficult it must have been to do that in glass. Just as good is the crazy-paving style background, made up of glass so richly coloured it reminds me of Fruit Gums.¶ I know, I know: there weren’t blue Fruit Gums. But the raspberry red, lemon yellow, lime green, and orange seem to fit the part. <br /><br />Not knowing for sure the date of this glazing, I’m going to suggest a vague ‘early 20th century’. I like to imagine glazing like this lit from behind on a dark night, so that the colours glow. Bulbs placed behind the sign could also shine their light downwards, to illuminate the goods in the window, drawing the eyes of passers-by, making their mouths water, and luring them inside. Delicious! <br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* It will be even clearer if you click on the picture to enlarge it. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">¶ Rowntree’s Fruit Gums: fruit sweets that were part of my childhood and which turn out to be still available, in the UK at least. <br /><br /></div><p></p><p><br /></p>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-41647751048924661772023-11-02T08:00:00.002+00:002023-11-02T21:40:12.322+00:00Strand, London<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6mx1gbe8IzlLGc9uRYxcSns5JyuO7ucXIboKuSpdgcvgZ1RHrs5oq_3q9Qbsz5FUKNO5BddTVIVFiAOCMYv145y60PEYEgNVEzwZWZby3wdj3_LZRrqp2i17GqPaBBMRjDGsYinu0v4P9y72qdkZQ2SKgfZdeBMRN8uECm2RndHPouiXN1iJLlkGjJWcc/s850/London%20Twining's.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="850" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6mx1gbe8IzlLGc9uRYxcSns5JyuO7ucXIboKuSpdgcvgZ1RHrs5oq_3q9Qbsz5FUKNO5BddTVIVFiAOCMYv145y60PEYEgNVEzwZWZby3wdj3_LZRrqp2i17GqPaBBMRjDGsYinu0v4P9y72qdkZQ2SKgfZdeBMRN8uECm2RndHPouiXN1iJLlkGjJWcc/w400-h331/London%20Twining's.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><b>Tea break</b> <br /><br />The last few months have seen me wind down my paid work as part of my preparation for retirement. This process has involved saying farewell to my time as a teacher of courses – I did my last in August – and I have just done what is probably the last of my various talks and lectures. I’ve enjoyed this activity hugely. One of the drawbacks of life as an author is that writing is a solitary activity. Getting out and speaking and teaching means I get out and meet people, mostly people I’d never have met otherwise. I’ll miss that, but I’ll not be sorry to give up the travelling. In the past, driving to a venue to teach or speak has had the bonus of taking me to new places and countryside too. But increasingly it is feeling like hard work. <br /><br />My last talk happens to be one I call ‘Great British Brands’, a brief introduction to the history of a number of famous food and drink brands, a subject that caught my interest when I wrote a book about the history ofd shops and shopping, years ago. Among the companies featured in the talk is Twining’s, one of the most celebrated British tea brands, which has been going strong for more than 300 years, albeit these days as a part of a larger conglomerate. So here’s a picture of the entrance to Twining’s premises in London’s Strand, the site where the founder, Thomas Twining, set up Tom’s Coffee House in 1706. <br /><br />Tom, who was from a family of Gloucestershire weavers, came with his family to London to find work, did his weaver’s apprenticeship, but decided that he’d prefer to work for one of London’s merchants instead. The merchant was handling shipments of tea, and Tom eventually went it alone in the tea trade. He succeeded because tea was newly fashionable and because he sold dry tea to women, who were not allowed into conventional coffee houses in London, which were men-only. This doorway is later than the original coffee house, and was built for Tom’s grandson, Richard Twining, in 1787. The two men in Chinese dress refer to the source of the tea and the lion symbolises Twining’s dry tea and coffee shop, which was known as the Golden Lion. <br /><br />And so you see even a talk on food brands has been an excuse to show people memorable bits of architecture and design – from Cadbury’s factory at Bournville to shop signs advertising Hovis bread. For now, I’m not retiring from sharing similar things on this blog, for those who are interested enough to look and read about them over a cup of tea, and, I hope, go and see for themselves.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-11996995219649886992023-10-29T08:00:00.001+00:002023-10-29T08:00:00.153+00:00Walford, Herefordshire<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh152AkfeFNXl9SkNC7zFxkLKCSLzXAq6XPY6L-388fPnCYjknnXr7v-7wzoBUJZWopA1jdp5dt_xI_PLqhvfbJWjIgK4XERNoNJcKwor0oNZX7dQO5QhyW7aMAw_YeDv8DXCPmZ2Snzxe3SHWGwjAwwOnVLoRaYCEq28LnSRd9Mns4SYNomBUJlXiCT7Zw/s765/Walford%20Methodist.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="765" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh152AkfeFNXl9SkNC7zFxkLKCSLzXAq6XPY6L-388fPnCYjknnXr7v-7wzoBUJZWopA1jdp5dt_xI_PLqhvfbJWjIgK4XERNoNJcKwor0oNZX7dQO5QhyW7aMAw_YeDv8DXCPmZ2Snzxe3SHWGwjAwwOnVLoRaYCEq28LnSRd9Mns4SYNomBUJlXiCT7Zw/w400-h359/Walford%20Methodist.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><b>Not so primitive, 2</b><br /><br />Spotted on the same day as the chapel in my previous post, this building is in Walford, between Brampton Bryan and Leintwardine in far northwest Herefordshire. It’s another Primitive Methodist chapel and, like the one in Weobley, it’s a brick building with a pitched roof and stone dressings around the windows and doors. And yet it looks very different from the Weobley chapel because it’s in the Gothic style – all the openings are pointed and those at the front have some extra elaboration in the form of carved terminations to the hood moulds over the windows and doorway. There’s also a charming quatrefoil-shaped opening in the gable, the frame of which contains the inscription, ‘Primitive Methodist Chapel 1866’. <br /><br />The wing to the right was built as a schoolroom. Its glazing bars have a simpler pattern than those at the front of the chapel, but are still probably original. Both roofs are enhanced by curvaceous bargeboards of a kind I associate more with large suburban villas than Primitive Methodist Chapels, but why should the devil have all the good carpentry?<br /><br />As can be seen from the signage, the chapel, the building is not longer used for worship, housing instead a gallery where drawings are exhibited. Chapels can make good gallery spaces, and this seems a dream use for such a building that is no longer required for its original purpose. Someone said that the latest art galleries, designed by starry architects and filled with works that are designed to shock or awe, are the cathedrals of our time. But I appreciate this chapel-gallery too.*<br /><br />- - - - - <br /><br />* See the <a href="https://thedrawinggallery.co.uk" target="_blank">gallery’s website</a> for information about The Drawing Gallery and its exhibitions.Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-41124511127916678642023-10-24T08:00:00.001+01:002023-10-24T08:00:00.139+01:00Weobley, Herefordshire<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNGNJL5IElv9RcrKpQoLDS1FtGU4xkDz2cmM-eP8sTG7w_2GCQrCkK5_T9LYe7rMNy9HT1qU1VpNzkTKEe-6bfFjCDxQyyzTFQhcRIGrup9YpWLR6sMNW9Nkm5vqpj3VIG7E86orN-C03jggp2SPximBAoEzUu8h9hnW54GDbrgyRcwVD5G8Gg4CNBLlc/s624/Weobley%20Methodist.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="597" data-original-width="624" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNGNJL5IElv9RcrKpQoLDS1FtGU4xkDz2cmM-eP8sTG7w_2GCQrCkK5_T9LYe7rMNy9HT1qU1VpNzkTKEe-6bfFjCDxQyyzTFQhcRIGrup9YpWLR6sMNW9Nkm5vqpj3VIG7E86orN-C03jggp2SPximBAoEzUu8h9hnW54GDbrgyRcwVD5G8Gg4CNBLlc/w400-h383/Weobley%20Methodist.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>Not so primitive, 1</b> <br /><br />Following on from my previous post, here is another building in Weobley that I missed on my first visit. It’s the Methodist chapel, built in 1861, originally for the Primitive Methodists. The Primitive Methodists were a group founded in the early-19th century, who sought to focus on the core ideas of Methodism, which they felt that many Methodists were ignoring. They stressed in particular the role of the laity, worked to preach to the rural poor, and did not shy away from the political relevance of Christian ideas; they also adopted simple forms of worship and, often, of chapel architecture. <br /><br />My mental picture of a Primitive Methodist chapel is a very plain building, perhaps built of brick, with a front comprising a pair of windows and a central door, topped with a hipped roof. However, the Primitives were not above a little architectural sophistication. This chapel has the simple brick front with two windows and a door, but this is elaborated with stone quoins plus rusticated stone blocks around the windows and doorway. These details succeed, in my opinion, in lifting the building above the mundane without indulging in what some of its early worshippers might have seen as Gothic flights of fancy. I find the result visually pleasing, and it’s pleasing, too, to see that the windows have retained their original glazing bars. No doubt the light they let in is a real asset when it comes to reading hymn books and Bibles – the chapel still used for worship, unlike at least two others I spotted in Herefordshire on my visit the other day.<p></p>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-2294673508469854622023-10-19T08:00:00.001+01:002023-10-19T08:00:00.150+01:00Weobley, Herefordshire<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPCcY0y_XDpkjEqTEXDDIVyyaRgKrSPyTGleqzXrCj51tywbCcLFhQ4qrfvEN0JEudtFan0ThL1iOVUOYiiEaU8VOwWAXi6sK7BV72eZic1aqT9CDGGhqEj04xKozHezznJXD7ogDCAWRRqS0hm9qKeAvHdVm9s3T9sNFro3LsD7eMiRBt9_0fEZLbKdFM/s756/Weobley%20Grammar%201.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="567" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPCcY0y_XDpkjEqTEXDDIVyyaRgKrSPyTGleqzXrCj51tywbCcLFhQ4qrfvEN0JEudtFan0ThL1iOVUOYiiEaU8VOwWAXi6sK7BV72eZic1aqT9CDGGhqEj04xKozHezznJXD7ogDCAWRRqS0hm9qKeAvHdVm9s3T9sNFro3LsD7eMiRBt9_0fEZLbKdFM/w300-h400/Weobley%20Grammar%201.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><p></p><b>An educational legacy<br /></b><br />I’d been to Weobley, one of Herefordshire’s best ‘black and white’ villages, before, but I’d somehow managed to miss the street that contains both the Methodist chapel and this, the Old Grammar School. This was a major omission on my part, for this building alone. It was erected in 1659 to accommodate a grammar school for boys that was founded in the same year by William Crowther, who left in his will not only money to build the school, but enough for an annuity to pay the master’s salary. <br /><br />The building would have had one large room on the ground floor, where the lessons took place. Upstairs was a dormitory in which the pupils slept (there were 25 of them in the early-18th century), plus rooms for the master. It’s well built, with the vertical timbers set close together (a design known as ‘close-studding’) and plenty of pleasant touches – carved brackets, a couple of decorative heads (see the photograph below), turned shafts in the openings on each side of the porch, and the founder’s coat of arms above the entrance. The quality of the work has led some to suggest the renowned Herefordshire carpenter John Abel as the builder, although this, so far as I know, is speculation.<br /><br />The building had a long life in educational use, which only came to an end in 1888. At this point it was sold as a house, which it still seems to be. So no more schoolboys intoning Latin declensions, no more the noise of 20-odd pairs of feet making there way upstairs to bed or downstairs to the schoolroom, no longer the experience (novel to us) of lessons in the building made of wood, wattle and daub. Just another timber-framed house of which Weobley can be more than proud.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin5ji10K17YP0zRvV05V3v0TlrAbsuF87gmTbH3IDag04-Xc3TxMm5PUb9bj_8xkTKCsOGfWKDjJOZYwIvBkN6vN9aQbPL8vJ4hQwC-A-b2ZEHJCxl4jVw5Cqf1p3iJ06AnoEF3aWsCm1MeZQEoZ33KQ6QL13li4cbXJTpxHKI-01T6a1jw7PPpEBNAYLW/s600/Weobley%20Grammar%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="595" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin5ji10K17YP0zRvV05V3v0TlrAbsuF87gmTbH3IDag04-Xc3TxMm5PUb9bj_8xkTKCsOGfWKDjJOZYwIvBkN6vN9aQbPL8vJ4hQwC-A-b2ZEHJCxl4jVw5Cqf1p3iJ06AnoEF3aWsCm1MeZQEoZ33KQ6QL13li4cbXJTpxHKI-01T6a1jw7PPpEBNAYLW/w396-h400/Weobley%20Grammar%202.jpg" width="396" /></a></div><i>Detail of carvings above the doorway, Old Grammar School, Weobley</i><br /><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Philip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.com0