Jordans, Buckinghamshire

Sneck

Sneck? Sneck: noun. A latch on a door or window (chiefly Scottish and northern English).*

When I was a small boy, I went each summer with my parents to see my grandparents in rural Lincolnshire. Where we lived, the doors had conventional knobs that you turned, but in my grandparents’ tiny house, in the middle of a field in the marshy area between Louth and the sea, the internal doors had latches like the one above. This particular example was photographed in a house in Jordans, Buckinghamshire, but it was in Lincolnshire that I first saw these latches, with on one side of the door a handle and thumb plate that opened the latch when pressed, and on the other side a downward-curving lever that you raised to unfasten the door.

I found that I didn’t need to be shown how to use this ingenious device. When someone (my grandmother?) said to me: ‘Open the door – you grandad’s coming in with two buckets of coal – can you reach the sneck?’ I instinctively knew what was meant and what to do; I didn’t need anyone to tell me that a northern word for door latch was being used. Another word was added to my four-year-old vocabulary, soon to be extended further by such terms as ‘copper’ (the tank where water for washing was heated), ‘dyke’ (the big ditches that drained the fields hereabouts – they looked like rivers to me), and ‘plum bread’ (fruit loaf, which I liked and still do). Soon I would discover (from my Lincolnshire farming relatives) that the ‘crew’ was a yard where cattle were kept, and that ‘beasts’ were not just any animals but very specifically cattle, especially beef cattle, and what’s more that in Lincolnshire the word ‘beasts’ had two syllables (‘BEE-usts’). I was getting an early lesson in local distinctiveness.

We’ve become more aware of door fastenings in the last few months. Do they need sanitizing? Yes, they very likely do. As a recent article in Apollo makes clear, they have been the concern of designers and architects for centuries. Whether it’s fancy porcelain Victorian door knobs, curvaceous Art Nouveau latches, or the sleekest modernist versions in stainless steel, designers have always produced the door furniture that’s required, items, as Pevsner would have said, that reflect the Zeitgeist. The latch in my photograph, with its heart-shapes, is reminiscent of the work of the great Arts and Crafts architect C. F. A. Voysey, but really it’s just a pleasant version of the old-fashioned sneck. Such a design may not look as sleek as a ‘less is more’ doorknob by Mies or Gropius, but it’s just as efficient, and rather simpler. It works, is easy to use and understand (literally, easy to grasp), and is virtually unbreakable. Here’s to the sneck.

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* Online enquiries have also turned up the term Suffolk latch for this piece of door furniture.

Jordans, Buckinghamshire

The archetypal meeting house

From their origins in the 1640s until the late 1680s, the Quakers were persecuted in England. Many Quakers were imprisoned (usually on charges either of blasphemy or of causing a disturbance). Their meetings, like those of other dissenters, were outlawed. But continue to meet they did. Things changed in 1687, when King James II issued a Declaration of Indulgence, a measure that was followed by the Toleration Act, passed in 1689 under James's successors, the joint monarchs William and Mary. One group of Quakers, who had met at a house known as Old Jordans not far from Beaconsfield, moved quickly once the Declaration had been issued, building a meeting house by their burial ground. They called the building New Jordans, and Quakers still meet there today. This brick, hipped-roofed building of the late-1680s is for many the archetypal Quaker meeting house.

Architecturally, the meeting house looks modest – the Quakers eschewed the grandiose architecture and ornament of Anglican or Catholic places of worship just as they eschewed the churches' hierarchies and rituals. But the building is full of wonderful touches. The brickwork has a dappled effect because dark, vitreous bricks are used between the red ones – but the effect is not too dark because only the headers (the short ends) of the dark bricks show, whereas we see the stretchers (the long sides) of the red ones. The curving eaves cornice in white and the shuttered windows are also details that make the building stand out. Inside, it's no less impressive. The main room was panelled in the 18th century, and this woodwork and the plain benches set the tone of the interior. Miraculously, all this survived when the building suffered a major fire in 2005.

Jordans Meeting House, interior

But, as usual, this place is about much more than the architecture, It is steeped in history. George Fox worshipped at Old Jordans: he died in early 1691 when the meeting house was still new. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, is buried in the graveyard at Jordans, one of a number of early Quakers who are remembered with small stones right in front of the Meeting House. Thomas Ellwood (friend of Milton and inspirer of Paradise Regained), John Bellers (writer on education and early advocate of a national system of hospitals), and Isaac Pennington (writer and great defender of the Quaker movement) were other notable early Friends associated with Jordans. Their work, ideas, and beliefs have had an influence that has spread beyond this small place far across the world.

Jordans Meeting House, brickwork detail

Jordans, Buckinghamshire

Friends' houses

Walls built of small bricks, laid in Flemish bond and with a lovely uneven colour palette ranging from sandy red to raspberry. Low eaves, dormer windows, white-painted casements, sashes, and gates, tall chimneys. The houses of Jordans Village, arranged around a rectangular green, are of a piece, and have a timeless quality. Some could almost be Tudor; or Arts and Crafts houses of the end of the 19th century; or early 20th century outposts of Hampstead Garden Suburb. The last is nearest the truth. Jordans Village was planned in 1915–16 and built as a Quaker community, mostly in the 1920s, not far from the 17th-century Jordans Meeting House (the subject of a future post, I expect) and in part to shield this venerable building from speculative builders, who were eyeing up the neighbourhood because it is within striking distance of the railway line into London's Marylebone Station.

The architect of the village was Fred Rowntree, himself a Quaker and a relative of the famous family of confectioners. He produced something with more beauty and character than the spec builders would probably have done. The houses, with their painstaking details like the brick column on this example, look beautiful against a background of greenery and snow – I suspect they would look even better on a sunny day. I visited Jordans with friends who have a longstanding connection to the village, and I can say that the success was not only aesthetic. Jordans was and remains a true community, which not only retains control over the village's buildings (they are owned by Jordans Village Ltd, a Friendly Society) but fosters a network of families and friends that is supportive and sustaining. Some of the light and warmth of the Quakers shone through on the cold winter day of our visit. Friends indeed.