Happy New Year

Living off one’s fat

‘Are you living off your fat?’ No, that’s not a remark about over-indulgence at the Christmas dinner table. It’s a question a friend asked me in a Zoom session the other week. He was referring to a comment of my own about how I was coping with the restrictions placed on us all by Covid 19. I said that I have been coping quite well, but it’s frustrating not being able to get out and look at buildings so much, and that this poses limitations on blogging. As a result, many of my 2020 posts have been about buildings in my immediate neighbourhood, while others feature photographs from my archives that had been set aside for possible use one day – in other words, yes, I’ve been living off my fat.

There’s quite a lot of material to choose from, but how will I approach this blog in the coming months, which promise to be at least as uncertain as the last few? I’ll aim to carry on in the same vein, I think, because enough people tell me that they enjoy the blog, and because writing at least one post a week (actually, it more often turns out to be two posts) gives me some satisfaction. John Naughton, who writes about the internet in The Observer, mentioned in a recent column a remark of Dr Johnson's that resonates with journalists and authors generally: ‘No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.’ Maybe so. And yet high-profile writers like Naughton and less widely known authors like me carry on blogging for the simple reason that we enjoy doing it. 

Putting aside such selfish reasons, I’m more aware than ever that putting information and images online that give people pleasure and help them appreciate the visual qualities of what is around them is worthwhile in times when the internet is filling up with bile, wilful misinformation, or anxiety. Much as I sympathise with the anxious – sometimes I share their anxiety – I feel I’m one of those who can offer something different. I can’t do this as effectively on Twitter or Instagram: their platforms don’t quite fit the format of three or four paragraphs of text plus one or two images that I find natural.* So blogging, for me, continues to seem worthwhile. 

Onwards, then, into 2021. May we all look forward, as this new year goes on, to better, safer, and happier  lives than most of us had in the last one.

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* I do have an Instagram account, however. So if you would like to see a few more of my pictures, go to Instagram @philipbuildings

Photograph Porcine portrait in ceramic tiles, Jesse Smith, Butcher, Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

 

A folly, but not entirely

Earl Bathurst, 18th-century lord of Cirencester and shape of its enormous park, clearly responded to the architectural fashions of the time. As well as classical buildings like the one in my previous post, Bathurst also included several Gothic ones in his park. This, probably the largest, is called Ivy Lodge. It looks over the park’s famous polo field so that its eccentric architecture can entertain spectators who feel they’ve endured one chukka too many. It’s easy to shrug buildings like this off as simply follies – bits of architectural nonsense that rich people liked to put up to indulged a whimsy. Of course, the design is whimsical – that very classical central upper window looks eccentric above Gothic openings and beneath faux-medieval battlements. But it’s also a building with a purpose. It’s actually a house that adjoins a series of farm buildings – barn, cart shed, granary, etc – some of which are attached to Ivy Lodge, some standing separately nearby. It’s all much plainer round the back.

Observant readers will have noticed that the windows on the left-hand part of the facade are blind. A side view (below) shows why. That part of the facade is just facade – its main purpose is to make the frontage symmetrical and to screen the farm buildings from view. That’s the kind of care that Earl Bathurst took when building the structures in his park. Many had a practical purpose, but all were meant to enhance the view. I’d be the last person to take issue with this care for visual things. The whole ensemble makes me happy – and that backdrop of trees makes me happier still. Looking at this picture makes me want to get my walking shoes on and go and look at it all again, very soon.

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I have posted previously on another building in Cirencester Park, Pope’s Seat, here. 

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Framed by trees 

Cirencester Park is one of the most remarkable ornamental landscapes in England. It’s one of the few surviving large-scale 18th-century parks laid out before the fashion for the less formal landscape garden developed with such success by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. At Cirencester, a large tract of countryside was transformed by Lord Bathurst. Essentially it is a wooded landscape into which a series of avenues has been cut. The longest of these avenues stretches some five miles, from the park gates in the town to a distant vanishing point. This broad grassy ride is one avenue of many, some of which are much narrower. They are arranged at different angles and intersect with others at clearings, and at strategic places Bathurst placed monuments and buildings, to provide visual focal points and in some cases to enable walkers to take shelter, or to pause and rest. 

My photograph shows one such building, the Hexagon, a six-sided stone shelter. Visual interest is provided by the way the design emphasises the stones that surround each of the six arches. Not only do these stones stand slightly proud of the rest of the structure, they’re also pitted and roughened in a treatment known as vermiculation, a word meant to suggest that the surface resembles something that has been eaten away by worms. The plain roof topped with a ball finial is effective enough, but Bathurst at one point intended to make the little building still more striking with a cupola. My use of the phrase ‘Bathurst intended’ was deliberate – the earl was the designer of this building, dabbling in architecture to some purpose, like numerous nobles ands gentlemen of the day.  

For many, the main joy of Cirencester Park is the opportunity it gives to walk through stretches of landscape, admiring the mature trees and enjoying the chutzpah of landowners like Bathurst who created what were in effect vast works of land art using the medium of woodland and greensward. The earl’s penchant for classical pavilions, statue-bearing columns, and faux-medieval fortifications is an added bonus. To which one can add gratitude to the current earl, who opens the park throughout the year, so that anyone can walk there, without charge, in return for the observance of a few sensible rules. It’s a gesture worthy of his extravagant 18th-century predecessor.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Above standard

I thought this building, just a couple of streets away from the timber-gabled, tile-hung pub in my previous post, would make a good follow-up to it. This is the former offices of the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard newspaper.* It’s almost the same age as the pub – 1904 rather than 1902 in the case of the Brewer’s Arms – and also has timbered gables. But there the resemblance ends. The ground floor is in a sort of Cotswold Renaissance revival style – the mullioned window, Elizabethan-looking pilasters, and carved capitals would be at home in any Cotswold town, Painswick, Chipping Campden or Cirencester itself. But above, things change gear and the whole frontage is timber-framed, with big oriel windows and very fancy woodwork, from carved beams studded with Tudor roses to elaborate bargeboards. The upper floor is also jettied out to overhang the street.

This fine and rather surprising† building is the work of a Cirencester architect called Vincent Alexander Lawson, who worked in the town between 1885 and 1928. This example of his work is clearly very assured. He designed plenty of other buildings in the town and round about, and civil engineering work (he was a qualified civil engineer) as well as a lot of more straightforward Cotswold revival buildings. This striking office structure shows him exploring styles a bit more widely, if not wildly.

“Photograph it before it goes!” exclaimed the Resident Wise Woman, and she was right. The building is for sale, and though I’m sure the frontage will be preserved, the signage should be protected as well as the structure. The building is listed, and the signs are mentioned in the listing text, so there’s hope. That’s good because signs are often what go first from an old town-centre building, and the former newspaper office has not only some good lettering above the door and window but also a lovely hanging sign. This is shield-shaped, well lettered, and suspended from a very lively wrought-iron bracket with a touch of Art Nouveau in its curves. Information, craftsmanship, and enjoyment in one small package. Worth holding the front page for, I’d say.

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* The building only ceased to be used by the newspaper in 2017, and for much of its life combined the editorial office at the front with a print works at the rear. 

† Surprising, that is, in the context of Cirencester, where one might expect that a fine building of this period would be built entirely out of stone.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Rebus inspector

This is a pub that certainly stands out. Most of its neighbouring buildings in Cricklade Street in Cirencester are built of Cotswold limestone, which is also the dominant material in Cirencester as a whole. The Brewer’s Arms, on the other hand, is a resplendent concoction of 1902 with timbered gables at the top and red tile cladding on the middle floor – plus some red brick with bands of stone on the ground floor just visible in my photograph. The records show that a pub with the same name was here in the 1840s, so this must have been a rebuild, and the design was by William Drew & Son, from Swindon. The Drews threw everything at this facade, rather in the manner that the great brewery architect William Bradford liked to throw everything at a brewery, combining many different materials in a single structure, something he did most memorably perhaps at Hook Norton.

It’s no accident that the architects came from Swindon, because in 1869 the Brewer’s Arms became an Arkell’s pub, and Arkell’s brew their beer in the great railway town. No doubt the beer travelled from Swindon to Cirencester along the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway, which was built precisely to connect Cirencester to the GWR ‘capital’. The pub still serves Arkell’s beer, and it’s not just the big painted sign that tells us this. The facade also bears one of Arkell’s charming ceramic plaques with its boat and the date of the brewery’s foundation, 1843. It’s not just a boat, of course, but an ark, for this is a rebus: Ark + L = Arkell. The idea came from one of Arkell’s directors and the prototype was made by Heber Matthews in 1948, and went into production in 1952.* As with several other brewery plaques or ‘house marks’, the manufacturer was Doulton.† It’s just the sort of long-lasting marker of commercial distinctiveness that I admire.

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* I’m indebted to the website Defunctimissive for information about the date and designer of the plaque.

† I’ve previously posted examples of the West Country Breweries and Morland plaques.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Day in the life

Passing through Cirencester, we spot a large temporary yellow sign telling us that there’s an exhibition of Lucienne Day’s textile designs at the New Brewery Arts Centre.* We have time to spare, so pull in, to find a single, very pleasing room of the work of one of Britain’s best, best loved, and most influential designers of the second half of the 20th century.

Lucienne Day specialised in textile design at the Royal College of Art, met her husband, the furniture designer Robin Day there, and left college in 1940. With the world at war, there wasn’t much work for a textile designer, so she taught for a few years, starting as a freelance designer after the war ended. Widespread recognition came with the 1951 Festival of Britain, when she created her Calyx fabric design for two of the Festival pavilions that contained work by her and Robin. She also sold the design to Heal’s, although their fabrics director Tom Worthington didn’t think it would sell so only gave her half her usual fee. Calyx was a lasting success and was followed by many others – around 70 designs for Heal’s alone.

Calyx (two colourways of which are on the rear wall in my photograph, which can be enlarged by clicking on it) draws on Day’s love of modern art: it seems to speak of the paintings of Paul Klee and Joan Miro  and perhaps the mobiles of Alexander Calder too. It’s a far cry from the old floral prints that people were used to, but it’s not aggressively modern. It combines newness and bright colours with a certain charm. It’s also rooted in stylised natural forms (parts of flowers, seed heads – Day was a keen gardener). This use of natural motifs (albeit abstracted or transformed) is one reason for the exhibition’s title, Lucienne Day: Living Design.

The main display in my photograph shows a selection of Day’s fabrics. In the foreground, Flotilla (1952) is similar in spirit to Calyx and draws on the appearance of buoys floating at sea. Magnetic (1957) is based on a repeated horseshoe magnet motif and is shown here in a particularly vibrant colourway; it was roller-printed and so cheaper than most of the fabrics, which were screen-printed. Dandelion Clocks (1953) is another design drawing on abstracted natural motifs – dandelion seeds and seed heads. Then come Spectators (1953) with its stylised human figures, the tree-based Larch (1961), and another colourway of Calyx.† 

The exhibition also includes smaller pieces of fabric, artwork, and images of room sets (some also featuring Robin Day’s furniture). It makes up an engaging and informative picture of the work of a fine designer, someone who helped to create the style we now think of as mid-century modern and had a huge influence on the look of British interiors from the 1950s onwards. 

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* Lucienne Day: Living Design is at the New Brewery Arts Centre, Cirencester, until 20 May 2018.

† As it is difficult to see Larch and Spectators in my picture, I have provided links to the site of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation, where there is much information about the designers’ work.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Tiles revealed

As a pendant to my previous post about my favourite Art Nouveau shop front in Cirencester, here’s a detail from another shop in the same town that I noticed recently. The tiles were revealed to me when I looked at this frontage closely for the first time. Again, the style of the tiles seems influenced by the Art Nouveau movement – the curvy forms, drawing on leaves, stalks, and perhaps flowers or sepals are typical of the period just after the year 1900.They form a lovely touch, probably not noticed by many, but they add a welcome a splash of colour and pattern to an already quite ornate frontage.

As you can see, even from my photograph of this small detail, the shop front has some elaborate woodwork – that carved pendant inside an openwork box resting on a scroll console, top right, is especially ornate. The window frame, too, features some impressive carpentry, including the curved and moulded glazing bars in the top part of the window, just visible in the upper left area of the photograph. More winning details on a little-noticed facade at the end of a busy shopping street. And the reflection in the window doubles the decoration – here’s to added value!

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Bonne année, art nouveau!

Some of my happiest half-hours have been spent in secondhand bookshops. It’s not just the possibility of picking up a bargain (though that appeals), nor the prospect of being among the most covetable stock in trade,* but above all the serendipity – you never know just what you are going to pick up, and the accidents of discovery in secondhand shops are so much more frequent and more surprising than in the usual shop selling new books, where you come across – surprise, surprise – what’s new, newly published, recently reviewed. A good secondhand bookshop can help you find books you didn’t know existed, didn’t know you wanted. Alan Hancox of Cheltenham, Thornton’s of Oxford, the old warehouse-like shop in Greenwich near the market: all were part of my education as well as perpetual sources of pleasure. And they are all gone now, and the world is diminished by their loss.

Secondhand bookselling is, of course, thriving online, and it’s a marvellous resource. But you search for things online, you tend not to find them accidentally. A small mercy (though they had their role in the demise of the other shops) are charity bookshops. If I’m in Cirencester, I always make for the Oxfam shop. It’s small, but I’ve made some good purchases there and these make me go back; I even sometimes donate books to them. I also like the architecture of this shop’s frontage. It’s wood, early-20th century, and in the Art Nouveau style.

To my mind the best features of this shop front are the lovely pane of curved glass on the left-hand end of the window, sweeping towards the door, and the slender glazing bars at the tops of the main panes. These glazing bars do curvaceous things in the very upper portion of the window where, in a Victorian shop window, there would be a horizontal band of frosted glass with lights concealed behind it. In fact, the irregularly shaped panes in the top part of this window probably were glazed differently – look at the two left-hand ones, which seem to have a milky-looking kind of glass in them. Perhaps the lighting in the window was arranged with bulbs just behind the pairs of half-roundels. However it worked, it’s splendid that the window survives, and that the shop it fronts is being put to such good use. Happy New Year!

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* Somebody (Melvyn Bragg?) compared the situation of secondhand booksellers to that of the vintners in Omar Khayam: Why would they want to sell their books at all? What more desirable things would they buy with the money they made?

London, Bristol, and more...

Tile round-up

One reader's enthusiasm for my previous post on an Edwardian tiled pub facade made me think how many posts I've done on tiling from this period. Builders and architects in the late-19th and early-20th century used tiles on all kinds of buildings, and did so for a variety of reasons – because tiles are colourful and eye-catching; because they can be used to create ornate decoration relatively cheaply; because their wipe-down surface makes them hygienic; because all these advantages helped to make them fashionable; because this fashion generated a ready supply. Tiles were popular in the interwar period too, but I thought I would post a series of links to a dozen or so previous posts that together give an impression of the colourful variety of Victorian and Edwardian tiles.   

Everard's Printing Works, Bristol: tiles depicting printers Gutenberg and Morris, designed by W J Neatby and made by Doulton

More tiles by Neatby creating an exotic effect on Leicester's Turkey Café

Still more Neatby tiles, including striking art nouveau lettering, at the Fox and Anchor pub, Smithfield, London

Doulton tiles, this time by John H McLennan, used indoors, in the Strand, London to create a phantasmagoria of flying fish

Tiles with religious imagery inside All Saints' Margaret Street, London

Tiles in the oriental style, for a former Turkish bath, London

Pork butcher's shop featuring pictorial tiles with piggy portrtaits, Cirencester

More butcher's animal tiles, King's Lynn

Enormous words built up from tiles: lettering in Kettering

Tiles for advertising at Leicester Square Underground Station, London

Maida Vale Underground Station, London, showing a typical tile-clad design in the style developed by the architect by Leslie Green: tiles that create a corporate identity

Ceramic lettering on another Underground station in London

A dazzling tile-clad former nurses' home, also shown above, in London

The pub in Gloucester that started me looking back at these posts

It strikes me that there are things missing from this list. I've not said much on the blog, for example, about terracotta, the widely used unglazed ceramic material that is usually brick-red and was seized upon by Victorian. Arts and Crafts, and Edwardian architects to clad buildings decoratively. Terracotta sunflowers, scrolls, leaves, patterns: they are all over the place and I'll be looking out for some to share with you soon.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

The English pig

Going back a few years from my previous post and we reach around 1910 and the golden age for English tiled shopfronts, when the architectural ceramicists were still being influenced by the swirls and curls of the Art Nouveau style, and before World War I banished jollity. Welcome, then, to the premises of Jesse Smith, butcher of Cirencester, a company that has hung on to a lovely Edwardian shopfront and interior, one with tiles that beautifully celebrate the pig and what a butcher can do with it.

 It begins before we even get inside the shop, with a pig portrait in one door reveal and, low down in another (above: almost obscured by some barbecuing equipment last time I passed) a legend in curvaceous Art Nouveau lettering designed to make the pig fancier’s mouth water: Pickled tongues. The design on the right of this image, with its sinuous lines and mysterious semicircles (Do they evoke stylised flowers or seed heads?) would not look out of place in Vienna. The Secession comes to the Cotswolds for a short break.

Inside, porcine eyes follow you round the room as you contemplate cuts of pork and home-made pies. Around and above them swirl the arabesques so typical of Art Nouveau design, scrolls of foliage and tendrils that curl this way and that, describing those two-way “whiplash” curves that turn-of-the-century designers so loved. Was there ever a pig so jaunty as the specimen to the right of the interior wall in my top photograph, with nose upturned, one ear up and one ear down? It’s a characterful beast, but the one on the left (and enlarged in my photograph above) seems to me a more convincing specimen of pigginess: this is an animal, after all, that’s built to look down towards the ground and rootle.

As I come out clutching my pork pie, I reflect that I know few better architectural celebrations of the English pig. But I also reflect that the French know a thing or two too. Wasn’t Paris a cradle of Art Nouveau? And don’t they say that Tout est bon dans le cochon?

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Exit, pursued by a hare, or, Odd things in churches (5)

It started with cows. The first CowParade was held in Chicago in 1999. Artists – established or unknown, amateur or professional, young or old – decorated fibreglass cows, which were then placed at strategic places in the city. After a time on display, the cows were corralled in one place and auctioned, funds being donated to charity. Since then there have been CowParade events in many cities all over the world, from New York City to Prague, Istanbul to Rio.

CowParade, a brand owned by CowParade Holdings Corporation, has raised more than $20 million for charity through the auction of cows bearing the work of more than 5,000 artists. Cows are much liked and, with their gentle curves and generous flanks, have proved fulfilling artistic canvases. But there have also been local endeavours, quite separate from CowParade but very much in its spirit. Bath, taking its cue from the presence of the pig in its foundation myth, held an event called King Bladud’s Pigs in 2008. Now comes Cirencester, with hares. Hares because there’s a wonderful hare on a Roman mosaic discovered on a dig in the town in 1971 – it’s now the symbol of the excellent Corinium Museum. The March Hare Festival is not on a huge scale, but Cirencester is no Chicago – 25 hares are scattered around the town, their decoration ranging from ancient Egyptian in style to modernist-inspired, and hare-spotting has become a favourite pastime for locals and tourists alike. Promoting tourism, indeed, is one of the aims of the project, but money from the eventual sale of the hares will be used for environmental and educational projects in and around the town.

So that’s how this hare comes to be in Cirencester’s glorious late-medieval parish church. This particular hare was decorated by the designer and television personality Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. At first glance, it seems as if the flamboyant Mr Llewelyn-Bowen has produced a rather muted design, in a restrained palate. But look more closely (click on the image to enlarge it) and one discovers that the découpé images applied to the hare are somewhat provocative. More redolent of the boudoir than the church, they’ll cause a few raised eyebrows – and even more smiles. Sonnez la cloche!

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Pope's seat

Allen, 1st Earl Bathurst (1684–1775) was part of the circle at the heart of English high culture in the 18th century. He was a friend of the poet Alexander Pope, and the fact that one of Pope's celebrated poems is the Epistle to Bathurst has ensured him a place in the history of poetry. One thing that helped cement the friendship of Pope and Bathurst was an interest in gardening and the layout of country parks.

Next to his house in Cirencester, Bathurst laid out a remarkable park – the first park in which long straight rides extend through trees, crossing at rond points like the directional lines engraved on old maps and charts. The whole thing goes on for miles, with the ranks of mature trees stretching into the distance and the rides leading to distant vistas – the central ride aligns perfectly with the tall medieval tower of Cirencester parish church.

The current Earl Bathurst keeps this extraordinary place open to the public, so that walkers and horse riders can enjoy the landscape. Dotted here and there are interesting structures – a lodge with a round tower, a monument to Queen Anne with the monarch's statue atop a tall column, a hexagonal pavilion, and this tiny classical building, Pope's seat.

Pope's seat is at first glance a fairly standard bit of Georgian classicism with pediment, niches, and urns. But just as Pope's poetry, apparently so demure in its couplets, can leave seemliness and predictability far behind, so this little building bucks the trend somewhat. Those rusticated stones breaking into the bottom of the pediment; the irregular urns; the rather jazzy banded masonry all make this building stand out. It was just the thing to give shelter to a poet who wanted to rest and admire the view. Just the thing for us too.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

A substantial world

Having in 1848 got the job of running book stalls on the stations of the London & North-Western Railway, W H Smith have a claim to be England’s first retail chain. Their move on to the High Streets of Britain came rather later – there was a major expansion at the end of the Victorian period, some further growth in the first decade of the 20th century, and a series of outstanding shop makeovers between the two world wars.

By this time Smith’s were well known for their combination of news, books, stationery, and other sales, together with lending libraries at some stores, and their shops stood out. Window frames in light oak and careful decorative details (including even distinctive rainwater goods) were their hallmarks, along with this lovely newsboy hanging sign. There are still a few of these signs around. This is one I pass regularly, a small landmark in the Cotswold town of Cirencester. Peter Ashley, chronicler of Unmitigated England, spotted another at Hull’s poetically named Paragon station.

So many of the telling details of Smith’s interwar shops have vanished. A number bore literary quotations in ornamental lettering. A favourite was Shakespeare’s line from Titus Andronicus, ‘Come and take choice of all my library,’ and in my infancy my local W H Smith shop was emblazoned with Wordsworth: ‘Dreams, Books are each a World and Books we know are a substantial World both pure and good.’ Amen to that.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Investment product (2)

I first came across the word ‘tontine’ (see previous post) when I saw this building. It’s in the Cotswold town of Cirencester on the wonderful Cecily Hill, one of the most beautiful streets in the town. Cecily Hill is a wide street, full of houses – Georgian here, Regency Gothick there, Cotswold vernacular elsewhere – in the local creamy stone, and ends in iron gates that lead into the grounds of Cirencester Park and the longest avenue of trees in England. Tontine Buildings is a row of houses, and it’s said that Earl Bathurst ‘won’ it as the last surviving investor.

It’s a very plain and simple building, a terrace of ten small houses with a flat, cliff-like frontage topped by a very retrained – some might even say mean – cornice. But I like its restraint, and the elegant touches, such as the curved central carriage arch and the oval cartouche containing the name, that give the row an air of quality. Not the most ornate building on Cecily Hill, then, but a worthy complement to the more showy houses on the street. And a fitting backdrop to the most impressive collection of planters in the town.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

One of the old school

I’m not exactly snow-bound, but the weather and the need to catch up with work after New Year mean I’m not going far in search of buildings right now. So here’s a building in a local town that I particularly like.

Cirencester is one of the essential towns of England. Its many old buildings in creamy limestone, its winding streets, its Roman remains, its vast medieval church, its adjoining great house and park (the park hospitably open to the public), add up not only to the essence of a Cotswold town but to the essence of many periods of English history. There is so much here that the place could sustain a buildings blog of its own.

Although it’s a Roman town, and the Romans loved straight lines, Cirencester’s streets curve continuously, opening up and closing vistas as one moves along them, object lessons in townscape, each bend bringing visual and historical surprises. This building is sited where a road bends and meets another, so if you are driving past and not dodging other dashing objects, you are hit between the eyes by this extraordinary end wall.

And the doorway and widow, with their larger-than-life surrounds of stone blocks (exaggerated Gibbs surrounds in archispeak), not to mention that roundel at the top, are guaranteed to grab the eye. It’s Powell’s School, originally the Yellow School, opened in 1740 and named in honour of its founder, Mrs Rebecca Powell. No doubt the roundel originally bore and inscription to tell us as much. It’s on this narrow end wall because this is where most passers-by would see it, although the main façade, on the quieter road, is handsome too.

In the mid-18th century when this building went up, there were no state schools, only independent foundations like this one. They are sometimes understated pieces of architecture, but occasionally had a grandeur, like this one, that both commemorated the founder and, one hopes, inspired the pupils. Schools are important enough to be given decent buildings, it seems to say. Here’s to that.