Shaldon, Devon

Foxy

Shaldon, a small settlement across the estuary from Teignmouth, was originally busier and much more important than it is now – it was a centre for ship-building, but was eclipse by Teignmouth when the Shaldon side of the river silted up. So by the 19th century, Teignmouth was increasing in size, becoming the town it is today. Meanwhile, Shaldon turned into something of a backwater, although popular as a quiet place to which people retired or visited to enjoy the sea air. This new role of Shaldon saw the building in the early-19th century of a number of houses in the. cottage orné style, often with thatched roofs and Gothic windows with ornate patterns of glazing bars.

Houses like this projected an image of a kind of idealised rural life, and were occasionally decoratively over the top. Hunter’s Lodge is an example of this trend. Visitors will be foxed by the sign giving the date of ‘c. 1650’. While there may have been a house on this site in 1650, what we see today looks like a cottage orné of around 1800. The pointed windows and doorway and the elaborate glazing with its pattern of tiny hexagonal and diamond panes, point in that direction. So too do the large quoins, which, like the similar blocks around the doorway are made of Eleanor Coade’s artificial stone, which was popular in the Regency period and lent itself to the production of multiple copies of the same three-dimensional image.

The decorative piece de résistance, however, is the horizontal band with its repeated fox heads (below), which may too be made of Coade stone. I have to say, these fox faces inspired whoops of joy when the Resident Wise Woman and I first spotted them laid out in a row like more traditional architectural ornamental patterns, from Greek keys to medieval ‘stiff leaf’. Whatever you think about fox-hunting — and the views on this subject are diverse – how can one not find these foxes charming?

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*For more about Coade stone, see an earlier post from this blog, here.

Ipswich, Suffolk

King of the beasts

The white hart in my previous post is a prelude to this animal sign, from the Golden Lion Hotel in Ipswich, another picture sent to me by my reader Bob Kindred, and received with many thanks. The lion occupies an appropriate place for the king of the beasts, as high as is feasible on a little stone plinth above cornice level. Mr Kindred reports that years ago the lion was golden in fact as well as name, but in a regilding exercise about 20 years ago some kind of gold paint was used, which has now worn away, leaving the lion looking the worse for wear. And yet, if properly regilded, he could look magnificent again, and would make a striking and eye-catching sign for the hotel whose building he surmounts.

He looks a characterful beast, and a fitting emblem for the 18th and 19th-century structure of the hotel, which also has tiny lion heads on the guttering. But I don’t know whether he’s a one-off or a mass produced lion, perhaps made in Coade Stone, the artificial stone produced in Lambeth, London, and widely used in the Georgian and Regency periods. There are many lions on buildings around the country, but I don’t recall seeing one exactly like him. I wonder if any of my other readers have seen a lion cast from the same mould?

Lyme Regis, Dorset

 Which former glory?

Finding myself in Lyme Regis recently, I decided to try to find Belmont, a house that was familiar to me as the home first of Eleanor Coade, manufacturer of Coade Stone (a successful artificial material used widely for casting architectural ornaments and statues) and later of the novelist John Fowles, author of such major works as The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman. I found the house easily enough, but when I got there I found that the Landmark Trust, who have owned the building for the past few years, had the builders in, making it difficult to photograph it and preventing access.

Belmont, entrance front detail showing Coade Stone blocks, keystones, and banding

Looking at the entrance front, Belmont is a detached house built some time before 1784 with a symmetrical classical front. What is outstanding about this front is the decoration. The blocks and keystones around the door and windows, the horizontal band running across at first floor level, and the frieze are all made of Eleanor Coade's artificial stone. The heads of Neptune and Amphitrite in the keystones and the decorative horizontal band are quite delicately detailed; the blocks around the windows are mostly formed to give a rough surface effect usually known as vermiculation. A few of these (the impost blocks) bear reliefs of sea creatures, reminding us that this is a house near the sea – a maritime villa in the language of the 18th century. Around the back are later additions, including an observatory tower, presumably giving the inhabitants stunning views from this already elevated site (the house is not called Belmont for nothing) over the sea.

As part of their restoration, the Landmark Trust have received permission to demolish the later additions at the back of the house, returning the building to its 18th-century form and preserving the observatory as a free-standing tower. There will be a permanent exhibition about the history of the house and its owners in the stables, while the main building will be conserved and let for holidays like the rest of the Landmark Trust's impressive collection of historic properties. Belmont will therefore get back some of its integrity as a Georgian villa, while losing a slice of its history. This plan has proved controversial, but there's a decision here that has to be made by many people working on old buildings. The media talk airily of bring a building 'back to its former glory', but this phrase begs the question, 'Which former glory?' The gem of a villa lived in by Mrs Coade? The rambling 19th century house of residents such as Dr Bangay, who lived in the house in the 1880s and 1890s? Or the much loved home of John Fowles? And how can one best address the issues of how the building will be used while repairing and conserving the fabric?

The changes to the house, planned after much research, have gone through the planning process but the campaign for funding is still ongoing. The Landmark Trust website contains information on the history of the house and the Trust's appeal for funds; an article here outlines some of the controversy surrounding the project; another article describes proposals to incorporate a centre for young writers into the building, though it's not clear how this squares with the Trust's stated aim for holiday accommodation and a museum. Meanwhile, as discussions continue and passers-by like me stand at the gate and squint at the ornate front of Belmont, the fundraising continues.

Bath, Somerset

Heraldic Coade

I was admiring a neoclassical shop front near Bath's Pulteney Bridge when my eye was caught by the royal arms above the shop window. The shop has been a chemist's since 1828, but the arms are those of Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, who visited Bath in 1817, the year before she died. So they must refer to royal patronage of some earlier business based here or hereabouts. The highly complex heraldry combines the arms of the British royal family with those of her father, who was Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The amount of detail on these three-dimensional arms is staggering – all those harps, bulls' heads, fleurs de lys and so on in low relief, and the extraordinary garland of flowers around the central panel. The lion and unicorn are real characters, the former astonished, long-maned and well fanged, the latter realistically equine.

Beneath the lion, the inscription, "COADE LONDON" tell us that this coat of arms is made in Coade Stone, an artificial, stone-like ceramic material produced at Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory in Lambeth, London. This business, founded by Eleanor Coade (always known as Mrs Coade, although she was unmarried) in around 1770. Mrs Coade developed the material, which she called Lithodipyra (from the Greek for "stone fired twice"), a ceramic composition in which flint, quartz, grog (a mix of silica, alumina, and other elements), and crushed glass were mixed with the clay. It was generally found to be hard and weather-resistant, and was easy to mould into complex shapes. These qualities made Coade stone popular for statuary and architectural ornaments between 1770 and the 1830s. Just the material, in other words, for moulding harps, lions, and tiny flowers.