Launceston, Cornwall

Almost perfect…

It’s almost a perfect Georgian town house, the sort of residence that a prominent citizen of a provincial town might build. The citizen in this case was Coryndon Carpenter, attorney, twice mayor of Launceston and Constable of Launceston castle, a member of a prominent local family, and his house is at once conveniently central, tucked away from the busy shopping area, and near one of the gates to the castle. In form it’s the classic 1760s detached house with hipped slate roof, red brick walls with prominent quoins and a centre portion breaking forward under a pediment adorned with urns. The basement, which would have contained service rooms, is distinguished from the two main floors by being rendered in stucco, which is rusticated (formed with grooves to give the impression of blocks of masonry) – a common term for such rusticated basements where the servants worked was ‘the rustic’.

But Coryndon Carpenter’s house is a cut above the already impressive Georgian norm. There’s a carved figure at the centre point of the pediment, looking out over the town. I don’t know who it’s supposed to be: ‘a Grecian style figure’ says the listing description, laconically. The round window in the pediment, the gate piers with their eagles and iron gates and railings are additional stand-out features. The central porch is a later addition, classical, rusticated, and columned, so as to be in the overall style of the rest of the house but failing somehow to look anything more than an added extra.

Even so, this is a delightful building (it’s now in fact a hotel) and if not quite perfect is near enough to please all but the Georgian ultra-purist. The people who compiled the official listing for this protected building gave it a prestigious II* grade, confirming its importance. Long may it be cherished.

St Cleer, Cornwall

A quoit and its context

Cornwall is known for some of Britain’s most striking prehistoric remains, notably quoits, stone structures consisting of a number of vertical slabs enclosing a chamber and roofed with another slab of stone; the stone chamber was almost certainly originally covered over with an earth mound. Quoits date to around 3500 to 2500 BCE – the early or middle Neolithic period – and are generally associated with human remains. However, archaeologists believe that they might well have been more than just tombs, perhaps combining the roles of mausoleum and place of worship.

Trevethy Quoit, on the southern edge of Bodmin Moor, is probably the most impressive of all Cornish quoits. Its five upright stones must weigh several tonnes each and the enormous capstone has been estimated to have a weight of around 20 tonnes. All six stones must have been dragged here from a site about 2 kilometres away, one of those feats of effort and engineering that seem impressive even with modern machinery, awesome with the rudimentary technology available in the Neolithic. And the task was not just getting the stones to the site but also manhandling them into position, where they have remained for several millennia. However, the stones, with the capstone poised as a very steep angle, are not in exactly their original position. They have shifted a little, making the capstone tilt more dramatically, producing a visual effect that is even more astonishing to modern eyes.

An air of mystery surrounds prehistoric structures like Trevethy Quoit. Back in 2019, an excavation was carried out to attempt to shine more light on the structure’s history and use. When a geophysical survey of the area around the quoit showed a number of anomalies, archaeologists dug numerous test pits. The most remarkable thing they found was a large stone platform, now hidden beneath the soil, at the western end of the monument. The area covered by the platform is around 20 x 12 metres, and the platform itself is made up of an enormous amount of greenstone, which had probably been quarried from an outcrop to the east of the quoit. Hundreds of tonnes of this greenstone were carefully laid, large stones towards the bottom and small ones at the top, originally forming the surface of the platform.

No one knows how this platform was used – for assemblies or ceremonies, perhaps – but its size is once more testimony to the amount of effort that went into creating this monument and the corresponding importance of the site for its creators and users. As so often, studying the context of a prehistoric structure – the objects in the immediate vicinity, such as the stone platform – helps to fill in the picture, while also posing more questions. One hopes that more research will be done into these enigmatic and fascinating monuments.

Minions, Cornwall

Lost industry

In eastern Cornwall the other week, and driving towards the Devon border and the house of friends we were to visit, it occurred to us that we’d not actually stopped to have a look at one of the many old engine houses that are scattered across the landscape. We’d previously passed through the village of Minions and knew there was one thereabouts, so made a short diversion…as the mist descended and the wind got up. So we looked as closely as we could, and my photographs of what was once the Houseman’s Shaft engine house at the South Phoenix mine show it as a grey eminence seen through an atmosphere as much water vapour as the air we breathe.

Buildings like this housed steam engines that were used to pump water out mines and to haul the excavated material to the surface. Cornish engine houses are generally built out of local stone – usually granite, which is as hard as nails. Thick walls of granite, with corners made extra strong by being built with carefully cut stone quoins, can give a lot of support to the heavy and constantly moving mechanism of a large steam engine – some people see the building as the steam engine’s exoskeleton. Most engine houses have one wall that’s stronger and thicker than the others. This, known in Cornwall as the bob wall, supports the iron beam of the engine, which projects out of the engine house and connects with the mine shaft below ground.

Further information would no doubt have been available in the adjacent building if it had been open, but one can’t expect such facilities so be open all the time, let alone on a wet Sunday morning in October. So we looked, admired the chunky masonry and the tall chimney, and reflected that such engine houses are reminders of an enormous mining industry, extracting copper, tin, arsenic, and other materials. There were once between 2,000 and 3,000 engine houses in Cornwall and western Devon; now some 300 are left in varying degrees of ruination. The workings below the ground near Minions opened in the 1830s (Wheal Prosper was the mine’s original name) before a series of amalgamations and changes of ownership. It was originally a copper mine, and when the copper began to run out, tin was also extracted. The mine closed for good in 1911.

So this engine house saw only a short period of activity in the long history of Cornish metal mining, which began in prehistoric times, had heydays under the Romans, in the Middle Ages, and in the 16th century, before reaching its most productive era in the 19th century. Competition from overseas led to the decline of the industry in the 20th century.* Since the engines have gone, many visitors are unaware of how extensive the industry once was, and how much of a blow to Cornwall’s prosperity its decline represented – just as much of a blow, in its way, as the later closure of coal mines was to communities from Yorkshire to South Wales. Tourism helps, but it’s a seasonal business. Few visitors want to visit and admire Cornwall’s striking beauty and rich history in a rainy October. I’m glad, though, we made that choice on this occasion. Granite in the rain has its beauty, and still carries its powerful message of a great industry long gone.

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* Other mining industries, the extraction of kaolin, for example, and the quarrying of roadstone and slate, do continue in the area.

Cotehele, Cornwall

The business end

Cotehele is a wonderful house (see previous posts about our visit last month) but I want to pay tribute to one aspect that visitors in a hurry (and Cotehele is not a place to hurry) might miss. It raises an interesting point about country houses and their estates. We are apt to think of these enormous houses as the retreats of a privileged class, isolated from the lives of the lower orders, who toil away in workshops or factories or on farms, places far removed from the life of ease lived in places like Cotehele. There’s much truth in that, but it’s a simplification. The countryside has always been a place of work – not just the hard toil of the farm, but also of the mill and the mine – and some of this activity is surprisingly near the local country house.

Beautiful Cotehele is itself close to industry. There is a mill on the estate and within walking distance of the house is Cotehele Quay, the place where vessels on the River Tamar could moor and unload or load their cargo. There were several local industries – mining for tin, copper or arsenic; lime burning, and market gardening. All of these were busy in the 19th century, bringing much traffic to the quay. The remains of limekilns can still be seen a stone’s throw from the water. Mines were nearby (the old Cotehele Consols mine was the nearest) and brought much wealth to the area until the late-19th century saw a decline that accelerated with the effects of the two World Wars. Market gardens produced apples, cherries, strawberries, and daffodils.

The surviving buildings on the quay include the limekilns and the warehouse in my photograph, now housing an exhibition about the history of the quay and its boats and industries. This was known in the early-20th century as Captain Bill’s Store, after Bill Martin, skipper of the Myrtle, whose main job was to carry grain for Cotehele flour mill, another bit of the area’s industrial history. The Myrtle’s working life came to an end when she was commandeered during World War II and blown up by one of the many bombs dropped on Plymouth. Cotehele Quay is a backwater now, but an essential part of the history of the area that most visitors find out about because of the big house.

Cotehele, Cornwall

The beauties of imperfection

Modern window glass is almost perfectly flat, flatter than any pancake. It also has few if any internal imperfections, making it perfectly transparent, and it can be manufactured in large pieces, making sizeable uninterrupted shop windows possible. Old glass, especially pre-19th century glass, is full of imperfections and generally came in quite small pieces. It was often made by blowing a cylinder of glass, which the glass-blower then cut along one side and flattened out to make a sheet. Another method was to spin a mass of molten glass, producing a disc, which the glass-maker then cut up into small usable sections. Windows from the stained-glass one in medieval churches to the small panes in Tudor or Georgian windows, are glazed with glass made by hand in these ways.

Most of the time, people don’t notice the imperfections in old glass windows. But if you look closely you’ll see that their surfaces have a pleasant and characterful unevenness – which also distorts slightly what we see through them. The ancient house of Cotehele in Cornwall was built in the Tudor period; the interiors were modified in the 17th century and the building remains Tudor and Jacobean in character. Many of its windows retain their early glazing. You can see how, in my photograph, the imperfections – a series of curved and linear unevennesses or more random patterns – can be made out by looking at the shadows they cast on nearby walls and window reveals. These effects vary according to the light’s direction and intensity, but are wonderfully clear in the photograph that I took on a recent October afternoon.

The architectural character of a building is often very obvious, but sometimes reveals itself in subtle ways, catching us by surprise when a particular feature, like this window, has its time in the sun.

 

Cotehele, Cornwall

An ancient place

Cotehele is one of the most romantically beautiful houses in the care of the National Trust.* It was built by three generations of the Edgcumbe family during the Tudor period† and its interiors were upgraded in the 1650s. However, in 1547–53, when Cotehele was still unfinished, the family built another dwelling, Mount Edgcumbe House, about 12 miles away.§ Mount Edgcumbe became their main home, Cotehele was second in importance. Mount Edgcumbe was remodelled in the 18th century and its old, now unfashionable furnishings, were moved to Cotehele, where they have been ever since. As a result, Cotehele gives the impression of a rambling Tudor and Jacobean house, full of tapestries, oak furniture and four-poster beds, a perfect and apparently untouched upper-class country house of its period.

In fact there were later alterations, notably in 1862, when Cotehele became the home of the Victorian owner’s widowed mother. But these were done in harmony with the Tudor fabric. The right-hand end of the east range (lower photograph), dates to 1862, but you’d hardly know. It’s a house of local granite walls and chimneys, a mixture of tiny windows and large mullioned ones, of courtyards and towers. It covers a large footprint with architecture on a modest scale – there are no grand entrances or big architectural gestures. Even the towers are low-rise and only the hall has a high ceiling. The setting – terraced gardens, a steeply sloping valley garden, old orchards – is perfect. Inside and out, the place is uniquely atmospheric.

Cotehele seems a world apart from modernity or business, let alone industry. But it’s near the River Tamar, once a great highway for Devon and Cornwall, the counties of which it forms the border. The varied fruits of market gardening and mining were not far away. Perhaps that story will be the subject of another post.

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* The house passed to the Trust in 1947. They do, it seems to me, a fine job in looking after it and presenting it to the public. Electric light is kept to a minimum, which presumably helps preserve the contents and enhances the atmosphere. The volunteers who stand in each room are particularly enthusiastic and helpful in answering queries. There’s information, but nothing is over-interpreted. I’m indebted to the Trust’s guidebook for details about the house’s history.

† Specifically 1485–c. 1560

§ I’m not sure why they built this second house so close. More research is needed.

Cotehele, the east range, with 19th-century addition at the far end

Callington, Cornwall

Built to last

I didn’t want to leave Dupath well, the subject of my previous post, before commenting on the stone it’s built of – large blocks of hard, intractable Cornish granite. Although difficult to work (and punishing to the chisel) because of its hardness, granite is the material of many Cornish buildings, because in many places it is the most easily obtainable stone. In the Middle Ages, local stone was usually relatively cheap. What did cost a lot was transport: stone is heavy, roads were poor, and even river transport was laborious. So masons accepted the huge effort needed to shape granite into usable pieces and to smooth it enough to make an acceptably flat surface.

When you look at granite masonry closely, though, in the right light, its surfaces are rarely very smooth at all. Attracted by the view, I raised my camera to take the photograph above and paused to take in the rough stone. Each piece is a miniature landscape of lumps and bumps and irregular edges, the very opposite of the almost perfectly flat surfaces that can be obtained when a skilled mason works a piece of limestone in my native Cotswolds.

And yet, what character! It’s extraordinary stuff, this stone, and seems to embody physical strength. It may be a far cry from the immaculately smooth ashlar of most cathedrals, but when you look at the wall of this tiny chapel, it has a distinctive character of its own and certainly looks as if it has been built to last.

Callington, Cornwall

Well hidden

To a dedicated church-visitor like me, Cornwall is full of evidence of ancient piety. Not only are there many medieval churches, but these are often dedicated to local saints, obscure figures who are little known outside the country. There are also many holy wells, tiny structures erected near or over springs, which were built or maintained by the medieval church and whose water was said to have healing properties. One of the most beautiful of these small buildings is the Dupath well east of Callington.

It was built almost entirely of local granite – even the roof is made of granite slabs – in the early-16th century, and the shallow arch of the doorway is typical of the period. Its architecture is made more elaborate by pinnacles at each corner and the striking structure, topped by a cluster of pinnacles, above the entrance. This is a small bellcote, an unusual feature of a well house, but perhaps there because the well house performed some of the functions of a church – according to certain accounts, the building was sometimes used for baptisms. Most pilgrims came here for the water’s healing qualities, however. Inside the well house is a trough into which the water flows, suggesting that visitors might have bathed in it, rather than drinking the sacred fluid.

Holy wells were among the institutions (like monasteries and chantries) that were suppressed by Henry VIII in the 1530s. The working life of this well might therefore have been very short. But the building survived and spring water does not stop flowing at the whim of monarchs. So it may be that those who believed in the water’s healing properties (it was said to cure or ease whooping cough, for example) still came here.

Travel was slow and difficult in the Middle Ages. To get here, you’d have had to walk or possessed a horse. Even now it seems remote, and part of the charm of the place for today’s travellers is the approach and the setting. You park in a farmyard – the farmer apologised for the amount of mud in the yard and joked that there hadn’t been enough rain to wash it away. Across the yard there’s a sign and a very short track to the well, which stands against a background of trees and fields. It’s a magical spot, we might say today, and no doubt medieval believers felt it was magical too.

Launceston, Cornwall

Music for a long while

On several occasions when exploring English buildings I’ve come across ancient carvings of musicians. Blog posts from years ago have featured a bagpiper in Cornwall and a player of a medieval woodwind instrument called a rackett 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.

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.

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 Confratrie Ministralorum Beate Marie Magdalene (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.

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.

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* St Mary herself, resting with her pot of ointment, is visible to the right of the musicians.

Launceston, Cornwall

Glances and gazes

I sometimes get odd looks from passers-by when I am standing looking at some building that probably seems at best unremarkable to them. Several times, walking around the centre of Launceston contemplating shop fronts, banks, pubs, backs of houses, and similar sights, I was aware of quizzical looks. I wasn’t long in the town (the chief architectural object of my visit to Cornwall was to see some country churches), but as well as walking around I seized the opportunity to pause and sit in the Square and see how much had changed since the John Piper illustration and photograph I posted some years ago.

One object of my gaze hadn’t changed much at all: this building, done in Victorian Gothic and dominating one corner of the Square. Details such as the rows of pointed arches and the occasional quatrefoils reminded me a little of the sort of architecture that Osbert Lancaster poked gentle fun at in his exemplary cartoon histories of architecture: his ‘Municipal Gothic’ just about fitted the bill.

This isn’t a municipal building but a bank, and the 1870s or 1880s Gothic, the work of the somewhat Gothically named Launceston architect Otho Bathurst Peter, seems to fit the bill well. Both the banded, two-colour stone of the arches (showing the influence of Ruskin’s studies of Venetian building no doubt) and the multi-coloured stone of the walls are satisfying. I like this masonry, the restrained ornament (those quatrefoils above the door and the ground-floor windows) and the simple, plain-speaking way the building turns the corner.

I spent a while taking all this in, puzzling away at the colourful decoration above the middle row of windows. It’s tiled, I think, although if so the tiles are laid very close, so that the joins are hard to see. As I looked, and waited for the traffic to pass so that I could take a relatively uncluttered photograph, a passing woman caught my eye. ‘Yes, it’s rather good, isn’t it?’ she said, with an approving nod. Which is true, and shows me that not all these passing glances are quizzical.

Bodmin, Cornwall

Stonework

Approached via the canopied entrance front on the left of my first photograph, the Town Museum and Public Rooms in Bodmin is a fairly standard piece of late-Victorian free Gothic verging on Elizabethan revival: rather plain mullioned windows, tall chimneys, shields. But the long side elevation is something else: inventive and so full of interesting details that it’s easy to forget that this is essentially a symmetrical frontage (a gable at either end, a row of five big windows in the middle). One end has an oriel window, the other a stone balcony above a pair of narrow windows and below some plate tracery and a banded arch – there's a circular niche still higher up. There are further variations in the openings at the lowermost level, to take into account the sloping site.

You can see, in this interesting facade, the West Country architects, Ralling and Tonar of Exeter, expressing the interior uses of the building (part hall for meetings and shows, plus a smaller hall, service rooms, and a museum on the lower ground floor) and flexing their muscles stylistically. It’s 1891. Architects in London such as Norman Shaw have been developing free Tudor and ‘Queen Anne’ styles for some time. Building styles are getting freer in all kinds of ways. But the builders of Bodmin had another card up their sleeve that was lacking in leafy Queen Anne suburbs like London’s brick-built Bedford Park.

Stone. Lots of it, in great variety of colour and texture. Quite a lot of it is slatestone or killas, a local stone much used in Bodmin; there is also another local stone, elvan. These account for much of the multi-coloured grey to russet walls. There are also granite and Ham stone dressings. Put together, this mix makes for a shimmering fabric that reveals its full beauty in sunlight but is impressive on a cloudy day too.

Altarnun, Cornwall

Doodle-sack*

I’ve been looking at a lot of church woodwork recently, cricking my neck to examine carved angels in roofs, and clicking my knees to get down and peer at the images on bench ends. I’ve been struck, as I’ve done this, by the variety of musical instruments being played, especially by carved angels (there were far more than harps in medieval heaven, clearly), and down on ground level too. Altarnun’s superb set of bench ends features a couple of musicians, one playing some kind of fiddle, and this bagpiper, who gives a fair indication of the folkish nature of the art, and also, presumably, of the music to be heard hereabouts in the late Middle Ages, when these bench ends were carved.

In the United Kingdom we tend to think of bagpipes as Scottish. The Scottish pipes skirl in military parades, at royal occasions, and I’ve even seen buskers, wearing the kilt and taking the chance with their pipes on the streets of London. We should know better, of course, than to think the Scots have the monopoly. There are Irish pipes, Northumbrian small pipes, all kinds of bagpipes. They’re all over Europe too. I was thrilled during my travels in Central Europe to find the bagpiping centre of Strakonice in the Czech Republic. And there is the opera Schwanda the Bagpiper,† and so on and on.

There are plenty of references to early pipes and bagpipes in Cornwall, including a number of carvings in churches. These instruments are interesting in that, unlike many bagpipes, they have two chanters – the pipes with holes on which one plays the melody – which must open up harmonic possibilities denied to players of bagpipes with a single chanter.

The carving of the figure is simple but bold, and it is badly worn. But one still gets an impression of the vigorous style – in the folds of the costume, the modelling of the bag, the extraordinary hat, even the little dog. John Betjeman said that a church should bring one to one’s knees. Peering at this bagpiper got me kneeling to look closely – not quite the kind of prayerful kneeling that Betjeman had in mind. But Betjeman also encouraged us all to use our eyes. And I’m glad I got down, and peered.

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* I am playing here on Dudelsack (the sack on which one tootles), the wonderful German word for bagpipes.
† Švanda dudák in Czech, Schwanda der Dudelsackpfeiffer in German, by the composer Jaromir Weinberger and based on a play by the Czech writer Josef Kajetán Tyl.

Altarnun, Cornwall

Local hero

I visited Altarnun primarily to see the parish church (which is late-medieval, beautiful, and packed with interest, including an outstanding set of 16th-century bench ends that I'll post about soon), but also found this simple but interesting building. It’s a former chapel, and is small, with just two sash windows (6 x 6 panes) lighting the front wall of what was the main chapel and a low bottom storey that was originally given over to storage and stables. The most striking feature is a bust of John Wesley above the door.

This bust is interesting for several reasons. It gives us a date, 1836, which is apparently the date of an extension to the building, not the year of its original construction: one should always beware of datestones. That date also caught my eye because of the lettering. The 3 and 6 take a rather odd form but the overall impression is emphatic and impactful.

More memorable is the carving of the founder of Methodism, shown in profile and sticking well out, so that it’s not so much a relief as three-quarters of a bust. The sculptor was Neville Northey Burnard, who was born in one of the adjoining houses, carved the bust when he was 16, and went on to work widely in London as well as in his home county. The carving has a vigour that helps to explain how Burnard became a successful portrait sculptor – although the success didn’t last because he turned to drink after the death of his daughter, and went into a decline, living for years as a tramp. It’s good so see his early portrait of Wesley, remaining in place even after the chapel it adorns has been converted for residential use.

Launceston, Cornwall

Architectural notes

The volumes in the Buildings of England series, written originally by Nikolaus Pevsner and added to and revised  by later scholars, are invaluable, one of the greatest works of cultural history and commentary ever produced. The recent edition of the Cornwall volume (a revision and expansion by Peter Beacham of the very first volume in the series, issued originally in 1951) is exemplary: packed with information, building on the original work, fillings gaps in it, updating it, and adding something of its own: a real sense of Cornwall as a distinctive place. And yet sometimes, in towns especially, I like to wander without Pevsner in my hand, noticing things for myself, and occasionally missing things of course, and seeing what my own eyes lead me to.

So it was that I stood and admired this small stone plaque in High Street, Launceston, boggling that it was just plonked there, apparently (with a later bit of shop front plonked in turn over part of the left-hand scroll). An angel playing the lute while another helpfully holds a scroll bearing a stave. What religious purpose could this angel-adorned building have had? I looked, admired the carved faces and feathery wings, tried unsuccessfully to work out whether there was any actual music on the stave, photographed the curiosity and walked on.
 

Round the corner in Church Street, finding a full blown and very architectural shop front, I dug out Pevsner from my bag and read the details. A shop of c. 1870, designed by James Hine in a sophisticated Italianate style as – the inscription makes it clear – Hayman’s Pianoforte Warehouse. That inscription is a striking piece of work, as are the front’s arches, keystones, capitals, and other details, though I was prevented from taking satisfactory pictures by the presence of a large van that was parked there, very close to the facade, for the whole of my time in the town.

Pevsner, what’s more, explains that Hayman’s premises went right through to the High Street, where there’s a relief of angel musicians. Mystery solved. The angels don’t signpost a religious building at all. Like the wonderful lettering on the shop front, they advertise a business where the Victorians could buy pianos (grand or upright, depending on budget and available space) and no doubt harps too and perhaps even lutes (although 1870 is rather early for the early music revival). Advertising built to last.

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Postscript Having years ago written about another musical building adorned with angels – or with putti at least – I should have known.

St Endellion, Cornwall

Sun-up

There is much to like* about the church of St Endelienta, at St Endellion, Cornwall, and the interest begins before you get inside the door. Many parish churches have sundials near the entrance – churchgoers need to know whether it’s time for mass, or communion, or whatever term they use, and anyway church doors often face south. This one was put up by (or in memory of) churchwardens Jonathan George and Digory Gray in 1826.

The sundial is a lovely mishmash of motifs, from Ionic columns to the sun itself. At first glance, you could dismiss those columns as rustic Ionic – a simple version of the real thing. But actually, they’re not bad. The columns are fluted, the spiral volutes on the capitals are carefully cut and there is a hint of egg and dart decoration between the spirals. The carver has even included the abacus – the bit just above the capital. When you look closely the sundial has all kinds of other winning details: the row of stylized acanthus leaves marking the top of the square ‘frame’; the tiny interlaced semicircles just below them (just about visible if you click on the detail image above); the designs that fill the quadrants at bottom left and bottom right and look as if they’ve been taken from patterns for part of a plaster ceiling by Robert Adam. The Sun, complete with face, keeps watch above all, and he is set in a panel that’s not arched, not triangular to fit the line of the roof above, but scalloped, another Regency touch. Best of all, the numerals are confidently cut with lots of contrast between the thick and thin strokes – a feature that was highlighted for me as the sun appeared from behind white clouds, transforming a chilly morning and bringing out the best in the carving. Good timing.

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*As is my wont, I’ve concentrated on a single detail. This church also boats beautiful roofs, carved angels and bench ends, and more. Plus a notable music festival, associated particularly with the conductor Richard Hickox and continuing after his death.

Polperro, Cornwall

Postcards from England: 2. Shells suit

The next in my series of postcards of buildings is the Shell House in Polperro. Originally a 19th-century fisherman's cottage, the building was decorated – with thousands of shells from all over the world – between 1937 and 1942 by seaman Samuel Puckey. There's a long tradition of using shells in decoration – numerous country houses have shell grottoes in their gardens, and occasionally shells have been used to decorate the outsides of buildings. But this building is rather different, not the knowing jeu d'esprit of some sophisticate, but a piece of folk art, lovingly created over the years. Its decoration has been preserved and repaired in places, as the detail photograph below, more recent than my post-war postcard, shows. The Shell House deserves such care, and deserves too to be remembered by visitors, long after their memories of piskies and ice creams fade away.

The copyright on this image is owned by Chris Downer and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

The Shell House is available as a holiday let; there are details here.

Launceston, Cornwall

Colour in buildings

Working on the book of the series Turn Back Time: The High Street last year focused my mind all too clearly on the plight of the British High Street today. Not simply the fallout from the global economic crisis but also the more chronic erosion of distinctiveness and character in the wake of the rise and rise of multiple retailers, with their standardized, and often tacky, approach to shop-front design. I was reminded of this once more by something that happened the other day, when a friend generously gave me a heap of copies of the Architectural Review from the 1940s.

These journals make fascinating reading, and among the first things in them to catch my eye was a series of pieces by John Piper dealing with subject of colour in buildings. These articles are illustrated with a number of drawings by Piper, and the words and pictures alike raise some interesting issues, as relevant today as they were in 1948. Piper’s main point is that the colour of buildings, although generally ignored, makes a huge contribution to the character and distinctiveness of our surroundings, especially town centres. We would do well, says Piper, to look at and look after local architectural colour. Already, in the 1940s, it was being threatened by the standardized colours and designs of chain shop fronts.

Launceston is one of Piper’s examples. It is a town he, says, ‘part granite, part brick, part colour wash’. Granite is represented by the churches (you can see a slender spire and a tower poking up above the shop fronts in Piper’s drawing), the castle (a Norman motte and bailey design rebuilt in stone in the 13th century), and the war memorial. I think the Gothic building to the right of the war memorial (it’s now a bank and maybe was when Piper drew it too) is also granite. There are several brick shops, picked out by Piper in pink, including the turreted building on the left (a Co-op in the drawing, now a Boots), and the tall building four doors along with its two imposing round-headed windows on the upper floor (another bank). Most of the other shops have upper floors colour washed in cream, with the exception of the café next to the Co-op, which has a white art deco frontage, the most outwardly modern thing there in Piper’s time.

A recent photograph (below) shows that the brick fronts, stone bank, and art deco café sign remain. Most of the cream colour-washed walls have been redone in white or, in one case, refaced with modern brick. The older structures – churches, castle, war memorial – survive. At street level, the shop windows and signs are mostly recent. So Launceston has lost some of its mid-century character – the colour wash, the shop fronts – but is still recognisably itself. It could be still more itself if Piper’s advice about standardized shop fronts had been heeded and if some of the expanses of white were broken up by the cream wash of the 19040s. It’s remarkable that familiar complaints about clone towns and standardized high streets should have been made more than sixty years ago. If only we had listened more carefully then.

Photograph John Baker
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