Ludlow, Shropshire

 

Mermaids revisited

One morning recently the Resident Wise Woman and I, finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere in northern Herefordshire, realised we were not far from Ludlow. Lunchtime was looming so we decided to make our way there for refreshment. It was a no-brainer to pay a visit to St Laurence’s church, one of the largest and best in the country bordering Wales, while we were there. We’d visited this church before, but we knew there was more than enough there to make another visit rewarding.

I headed for the chancel, where the choir stalls have a lovely set of misericords, those seats that tip up to provide a ledge to lean on during the long periods of standing required during the medieval liturgy. Beneath the seats, invisible when they’re in the ‘down’ position, are delightful carvings, many of which are designed to make a moral point in an amusing or entertaining way. One of my favourites is a carving of a mermaid, the subject of my previous post about church graffiti.*

The Ludlow mermaid is in generally excellent condition. (Click on the picture to see her more clearly.) Nearly all the standard features of a medieval mermaid are intact – her long hair, exposed breasts, scaly, fishy tail, and the mirror she holds in her right hand. Only her left arm has gone, together with what it held, which would have been a comb. The mirror, though, is enough to remind the viewer that in the Middle Agers the mermaid was a symbol of vanity, and of the way she was said to use her physical attraction to lure men into the sea. A moral lesson in a visual form, carved with care and vigour – those tresses, those scales.

This misericord is also a reminder of the fascination of the sea. The mermaid was not the only monster to lurk there – think gigantic krakens ‘battening on huge sea-worms’,† sea-serpents, sirens, all threatening, rumoured presences, coming to get the unwary sailor or preying on one another, as Shakespeare said that monsters of the deep were wont to do.§ The pair of supporting carvings on either side of the Ludlow mermaid are chunky toothed fish who look as if they’d willingly chew on a mariner’s foot. ‘Stay away from the fishes’ realm,’ they seem to say. Yet their fascination, and that of the mermaid, endures.

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* On such graffiti, see also Matthew Champion, Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England’s Churches (Ebury Press, 2015)

† See Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Kraken’ (‘There he hath lain for ages, and will lie | Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep…’)

§ King Lear, Act IV, Scene ii (‘Humanity must perforce prey on itself, | Like monsters of the deep.’)

Ludlow, Shropshire

Looking up, looking down

St Laurence’s, Ludlow, is a large parish church (the largest in Shropshire) and its tall crossing tower is a fitting crown for the building and the beautiful town where it stands. And yet Ludlow’s tightly packed streets make the rest of the church difficult to see in the town centre, and hard to photograph. A good view is to be had from within the castle, from which the way the tower dominates the surrounding countryside is clear. It’s also clear that the architecture of the tower is 15th century, in what was fittingly called the Perpendicular style by 19th-century antiquarian Thomas Rickman and those who followed him. The quality of verticality is embodied not only in the sheer height and the upward-pointing corner pinnacles, but also in the perpendicular mouldings that cast shadows across he middle part of the tower wall and the mullions of the windows, which stretch from the bottom of the window almost to the very top, rather than getting interrupted by complex patterns of tracery as they usually did in 14th-century architecture.

The interior is high, airy, and full of windows in the same style. But one feature that has engaged me on several visits to this outstanding church is the carving of the misericord seats. Looking through some of the very few photographs I have kept from before the digital era, I see that shadows and backache seem to have prevented me from getting decent images of many of them – when visiting churches it is just as important to look down as to look up, but this can be a painful business! This is a shame since there’s a rich array of medieval carving in these stalls, from satirical images such as the fox preaching to the geese, through bits of everyday life, to heraldic designs, such as the falcon and fetterlock badge of Richard Duke of York, lord of Ludlow. Here is a rather splendidly leonine king to give readers who’ve not seen the originals an idea of the quality of the carving. I must return when I can, and see if the churchwardens still allow photography.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Hurrah for Jesse Boot!

When searching among my Ludlow pictures a couple of days ago, I came across this one, the mark of one of the most familiar names on the UK High Street. Jesse Boot was an exemplary businessmen of the 19th century. In an age of quack medicine and dodgy ingredients, he sought to sell only pharmaceuticals that were made of pure ingredients and that had the effect that was claimed for them. In a period when it was common for bosses not to care about staff conditions and wellbeing, he made these things a priority. At a time when many were driven (as when are people not?) to accumulate a huge fortune and use it for selfish ends, he gave away vast sums on education and workers’ welfare. He worked hard, and drove himself so hard that he risked seriously damaging his health – but was saved by a forced holiday…on which he managed to meet Florence, the love of his life, who became equally influential in the business they built together.

Among the many things, it is said, that Jesse did was to design his company’s logo, the distinctive wordmark with ‘Boot’s’ in a flowing script, usually enclosed in an oval. That symbol, dating from 1883, is recognised all over the country. Like any good logo, it has been used everywhere, from invoices to shop signs, advertisements to paper bags. Here it is below the window of a Boot’s premises in Ludlow, made, for a change, in mosaic. This method was often used to attach the shop name indelibly to an entrance, on the ground in front of the door. Here it works just as well on the narrow strip (the stall riser, in archi-speak) beneath the window. Making a sign of such durable materials, and ones needing a craftsman and plenty of time to produce, is a testimony to the way companies like Boot’s took a long view of their business. A shop with a sign like this was not going to be here today but gone tomorrow. Nor was it gong to reinvent itself every five minutes, in the way businesses have wanted to do more recently. Boot’s developed, to be sure, but it was still Boot’s. And to millions of shoppers, sick and healthy alike, that spoke volumes.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Building out of the box

No apologies in these travel-restricted times for going back to my archive once again to look at another place I’ve posted about a few times before: Ludlow, a small town with enough food shops and decent restaurants to satisfy the hungriest of visitors, and about 500 listed buildings as well. This time it’s the Angel, a building on Broad Street (where virtually every building is listed and quite a few, like this one, are timber-framed magpie structures from the 17th century or thereabouts. This one is 17th century too. It is basically a wooden box-framed building and has plenty of carved and enriched bits of old timber in it to interest even the most casual building-fancier.

But in many ways the stand-out feature is among the later modifications. The facade boasts a number of 18th- and 19th-century sash windows that would make any purist of early timber-framed buildings wince. Strictly, a building like this should have casement windows, not sashes.* But if my head questioned their presence here, my heart was won over by the two first-floor oriel windows, semi-circular and resting on rather Georgian-looking moulded bases, topped with leaded roofs, and sporting sets of sash windows that are curved to fit the rounded shape.

Adding features like this must have taken a lot of effort and skill – attaching the weighty structure to the timber frame, forming the bases, and doing the joinery to make the curved sashes. The result was a front that looked perhaps a little incongruous, but spoke of the owner’s awareness of current fashion, and of a desire to make the interior lighter and perhaps more airy. I’ll settle for that.†

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* Sash windows came in during the late-17th century, but this would be a precocious provincial building if it had them installed originally.

† The building has had various uses over the years. I think it is currently a restaurant, although an online search also reveals a hairdressers at the same address. One hopes that these businesses will survive the current troubled times.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Clifton-Taylor’s English towns: In the marches

My short armchair travel series concludes for now with another of my favourite English towns – Ludlow – in a further programme from Alec Clifton-Taylor’s 1978 series. He begins with the Norman castle that gave the place its reason for being, and with a wonderful aerial shot of the castle and the town. A helicopter shot really helps one to understand Ludlow – not just the layout of the castle but also the town's grid plan, which is a notable example of medieval town planning.

Further joys unroll thereafter, including Ludlow’s fine parish church (especially its carved misericords) and the carving on the town’s timber-framed houses (the Feathers, above, best of all). If these were built on the prosperity that came from wool, the profits from the new industry of glove-making helped the Georgians improve the town in the 18th century, when it also became a notable social centre. Bigwigs’ mansions and the smaller houses of Georgian merchants offer further delights. The house with eight Venetian windows brought a smile to Clifton-Taylor ’s face, as it did to mine.

Entertaining diversions involve bad graveyard materials (e. g. ’nauseating crème de menthe chips’, luckily absent here) and the ‘de-blacking’ of timber framing. The whole programme is entertaining and an admiring portrait of this lovely town, still one of the gems of the west of England.

Martock, Somerset

Edward, Edward…

The first time I went through Martock, I paused for just long enough to notice the bold black lettering painted around the curving corner of the Post Office. It looked like a nice touch in a small town that seemed proud to have retained this key local service when so many places have lost their Post Offices since email replaced letter-writing for so many people and some of the services provided by Post Offices moved elsewhere or declined in popularity. My eye having been caught by this strong lettering, I started to look at it a little more closely (noticing how that final ‘E’ looks a little cramped, and how the effect varies slightly as you move around and the curve) and then realised I soon needed to be somewhere else. So I took a swift photograph, jumped in the car, and drove away.

Later, looking at the photograph, I kicked myself for not examining more closely the post box to the left of the door. The splash of red with a white plate above told me that it must be a Ludlow – a type of box, distinguished by this white enamelled plate, the lack of a rain hood over the slot, and, if one could see how it’s made inside, a wooden inner body. I’ve noticed Ludlow boxes (named for their manufacturer) before. Months later, I was talking to someone who knew a lot about the history of post boxes and she mentioned this box in Martock as an uncommon example of one made and installed in 1936 with the monogram of King Edward VIII, who was king so briefly that he was not even crowned. When I was passing near Martock more recently, I stopped again and saw that there’s an ‘E R’, in a very curvaceous, ornate letterform. 

But which Edward does this monogram refer to? Now, I’m no expert in the minutiae of post-box design. This ‘E R’ is certainly different from the plainer, more classical one used in connection with a Roman number ‘II’, on the boxes marked with the monogram of the current queen, Elizabeth II. However, the curvy letterform on the Martock box is similar to that on some boxes said to be of the earlier Edward VII period, whereas most Edward VIII pillar boxes have a still more curly E made up of two loops. Online sources seem to disagree about all this. But it’s a charming bit of lettering anyway, and worth a pause. I’m pleased I managed to go back and see it.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Local colour

On a somewhat unproductive day, I thought I'd go through my photographs of some of the places I've visited recently and was quickly reminded of Ludlow. The Feathers, a dazzling timber-framed house turned inn, is a building I've written about before and admired on many occasions. However often I go past, I always take a look at its carved timberwork, but what raised my spirits this time was the display of hanging baskets. I suppose if you'd asked me beforehand, I'd have said that the Feathers, in all its jazzy Jacobean glory, hardly needed baskets of flowers to add to its attractions. Isn't all that carved oak enough on its own? Well, at one level it is, but at another, a few splashes of colour do complement the monochrome patterns of the woodwork. The building's carvings (mustachioed faces, scrolls, leaves, miniature arches), patterned glazing bars, and lozenges of golden glass are set off wonderfully by this floral display.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Dazzler

One of my readers asked me, in response to the previous post about a building in Buckinghamshire, whether I had any thoughts on regional variations in timber-framed buildings. Just a few, so I thought I'd do a group of posts about such structures in different parts of England.

One of the most rewarding places to look at this type of building is in the west Midlands and the counties that mark England's border with Wales. In this area Shropshire and Cheshire in particular stand out: one of the features of the local architecture here is a tendency towards highly ornate timberwork in which the frame is made up of many small square sections, themselves embellished with additional woodwork in the form of a multitude of diagonal braces, quatrefoils, small arches and the like. Carved bargeboards, brackets, and ornamental heads add to the effect on the most elaborate buildings. A town in which all these details can be seen is Ludlow, and perhaps the most magnificent timber-framed building in Ludlow is The Feathers, built in 1619 as a house for a Welsh lawyer, Rees Jones, and as dazzling a display of conspicuous wealth as you'll see on an English street. The building became an inn in about 1670.

This is high-status architecture. There are many buildings in this region with much plainer woodwork. But for rich merchants, lawyers, and landowners who wanted houses that stand out on a crowded street, Shropshire's carpenters had the skill to fit the bill.

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I've posted before about Shropshire's dazzling timberwork here and here.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Treasure trove

In a recent post I hinted that I would add something more about Rickards, the ironmonger's shop in Ludlow that i visited at the beginning of the month. There has been an ironmonger's business on this site for more than 200 years. In the late-18th century the tenant was Edward Egginton, ironmonger, and there was still an Egginton there in 1861. But later in the 1860s, one James Rickards, and soon afterwards his son, Heber Rickards, owned the building.  Heber became successful in the business and a prominent citizen of Ludlow, and the business stayed in his family for over 80 years.

 Rickards of Ludlow: business name in Victorian gilded lettering over the door

Name mosaic, possibly from interwar period, in doorway floor

The premises is a fascinating architectural hotchpotch that bears the imprint of several generations. The two shop fronts, with their narrow glazing bars, look 19th century – the one on the left is probably early-19th century, The gilded lettering over one door may well date from the time of Heber Rickards, while a doorway mosaic may brave been added between the two World Wars. The lettering on the fascia seems to owe something to the Festival of Britain style and I would guess that it dates form the 1950s.

Interior: 19th-century drawers and 20th-century advertisements

As if those details were not riches enough, the interior is a revelation. Rows of wooden draws run along the back walls of both shops. One set of drawers may well date back to the beginning of the 19th century, before the first Rickards took over the business; the other set may date form the time of the Rickards' arrival in the mid-1860s. The array of old advertising posters and cards stuck on these drawers, promoting mothaks, turpentine, and devices to improve your television signal, is a small treasure trove of the history of advertising. The business's 19th-century cash desk, protected by a tiny sliding glass window, is also intact in the middle of the shop.

In short, this place is a marvel – both as a monument to the history of the high street and as a living business serving the people of Ludlow and the surrounding area with everything from kettles to balls of string, bars of beeswax to watering cans. If to me the shop represents a rich slice of history, to local people it must be an invaluable resource, a lifeline even. We owe thanks to the people who, through the thick and thin and economic ups and downs, keep it going.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Still bright, still sharp

"Built to last" is something people like to say about architecture, and buildings are usually seen as enduring structures. Nearly all the buildings I post about are considerably older than I am, and some of them are 1000 years old or more. But I also like now and then to notice the ephemeral bits and bobs that get attached to buildings. Notices and advertising signs especially: old signs and posters pointing us towards camera film, wagonettes, elastic glue, beer, tea… Most of these weren't meant to be permanent, but somehow they cling on to walls and windows, against all the odds and against ideas that tell us that advertising has to keep up with the times, keep reinventing itself.

I saw two more examples at the weekend, stuck to the windows of an ironmonger's shop, Rickard's in Ludlow, a building of which I took many more photographs that I will no doubt share with you eventually. Two stick-on advertisements, one on either side of the shop door, still hanging on, and hanging in.

First, a vibrant sign for Atlas Lamps, which caught my eye because it's so colourful. Atlas lamps were in existence by the 1930s – in 1932 or 1933 Jules Thorn, the founder of the Thorn electrical company, started as a lighting manufacturer by buying up the Atlas Works, in Edmonton, London, where Atlas Lamps were produced. The "For staying power" slogan was in use in the 1940s and 1950s – I've seen it in newspaper advertisements of 1949 and 1950, both using the same distinctive typeface for "ATLAS" that appears on this shop sign. Thorn was still using the Atlas name in the 1960s and 1970s, after which the range was absorbed into the Thorn catalogue. This sign may date from the 1950s, as 1960s Atlas items I've seen online use bold lower-case type for the brand name.

Second, a sign for garden tools made by Wilkinson's. Beginning in the late-18th century as gunmakers, Wilkinson's started producing swords and bayonets in the early-19th century, building up a reputation for producing strong, good quality blades. Diversification into razors (1890) and garden shears (1920) followed. At various points the company produced bicycles, motorcycles, typewriters, and other items too. I've no idea how old this sign is – the style has a late-1950s or early-1960s feel to my eyes, but this is little more than the guesswork of someone trying to cast his mind back many years.

And I like the way these signs take the mind back, though my pleasure in them is more than just nostalgic. I'm interested too in the way that artists and designers presented brands in different ways – from the larky drawing of a modern Atlas lifting a light bulb to Wilkinson's more purposeful twin swords. The use of colour is a big contrast too, Atlas's bright, cheerful, appropriately well illuminated, Wilkinson's more subtle, with its mottled background like an old terrazzo floor and its hint of gold. A lot to think about on either side of this shop doorway, before you even step inside.

Ludlow, Shropshire

The Buttercross, before...

Last time I was in Ludlow, which was last year, I noticed the way the stone of the Buttercross, a building I’d long admired, was glowing in the sun, and took the photograph above. This building, part market, part Town Hall, was built in 1743–4 to designs by William Baker (1705–71), an architect who was busy in Shropshire, Staffordshire, and neighbouring counties in the middle of the 18th century. Pevsner, describing the architecture of the building, says while it is “not polished, [it] has an attractive robustness”. The classical portico with its four Tuscan columns is offset by less formal details, such as the semicircular window and the clock turret, with its lovely cupola. The whole thing is a worthy centrepiece to this part of the town centre, and looks good from Broad Street, where I took the picture.

Since last year, the builders have been in, doing major works to the roof. Then, in November, disaster struck in the form of falling chunks of plaster from one of the ceilings. Further internal problems have since been discovered and Ludlow’s council have a much bigger and more complex restoration project on their hands. The plaster seems to have come down without much provocation. According to the Shropshire Star, Ludlow’s Mayor, Martin Taylor-Smith, said, “We think the initial fall was when the clock-winder went up, just from the vibration.”

Now the Town Council, which used the upper part of the building, has found alternative accommodation, work has begun on finding a new use for the Butter Cross. An application in underway to turn the building into an education and interpretation centre, where, for example, traditional building skills might be shown. Here’s hoping the extra funding can be found to make the repairs and preserve this landmark.

Upton on Severn, Worcestershire

A Ludlow in Worcestershire

The previous post about pillar boxes seemed to attract a lot of interest, so, although I’ve not managed to pass an Edward VIII post box recently, here’s a letter box with the monogram of his brother, George VI.

There have been wall boxes, post boxes set into the walls of Post Offices or into all kinds of other walls in the countryside, since Victorian times, and I don’t normally give them too much attention. But this one caught my eye because of the unusual enamel plate. Jonathan Glancey’s good little book Pillar Boxes (1989) tells me that this is what’s known as a Ludlow box, manufactured by James Ludlow of Birmingham, a company that supplied non-standard wall boxes from the late-19th century until the firm closed in 1965. Their boxes have a white enamel plate and no rain hood over the letter slot. The body of the box is not cast iron, like most post boxes, but is made of wood with a covering of sheet metal.

Perhaps the lighter body and the tendency for the enamel plates to come away from the front have made Ludlow boxes slightly less durable than their cast-iron counterparts. But it was good to find this one, still accepting mail and still catching the eye with its businesslike enamel panel.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Wooden world (2)

The west of England (especially the West Midlands, Shropshire, and Cheshire) are full of the glories of English wooden building, timber-framed houses that are as bright and flashy as magpies. I could devote many posts to the delights of buildings such as Chester’s marvellous Rows or the dazzling Little Moreton Hall, whose structure I remember creaking like a leaky old fishing smack as I walked around it. But few places are as rewarding to the admirer of England’s ‘black and white’ buildings as Ludlow.

With most ‘black and white’ buildings the timber was used for the structural framework. It was the province of the joiner, whose skill was principally to make everything fit together properly, and who often incorporated ornament in the form of ogee cross-braces, quatrefoils, and similar designs with their roots in the Gothic architecture of churches and cathedrals.

In Ludlow, though, the timber is often also the province of the carver. And some of this carving is seriously high-status stuff, like this example, high on a building in the very centre of the town. The detail on this bargeboard and finial is simply stunning, the kind of thing that in the Middle Ages would have adorned the alabaster tomb of a grandee. On this urban building it seems to speak of the prosperity of a merchant, a member of the rising middle classes.

But it speaks too of the sheer flair and hard work of the craftsman, who could be bothered to go to all these lengths to create a riot of quatrefoils, spirals, stylized flowers, and snaking borders that could hardly be appreciated without the binoculars or telephoto lens of an age to come. In Ludlow’s world of wood, it is very close to the top of the tree.

Ludlow, Shropshire

The Venetian window, also known as the serliana, after the Italian architect Sebastiano Serlio, was an invention of the Italians that first appeared in English buildings in the 17th century. This kind of window has three lights, the central one being wider than the other two and arched, to give a pleasing symmetrical design. Such a window often formed a centrepiece to a façade. There would usually be just one, in the middle of the main storey, generally the first floor where the grand reception rooms were. A Venetian window gave a sense of balance, focus, and sophistication to the front of many a Stuart and Georgian house.

On a really large country house front, with side wings, an architect might include three Venetian windows. It wasn’t quite the done thing to have a whole façade-full of them, as here in Ludlow. But whoever lived here clearly couldn’t have enough of them. Or perhaps they were trying to set some sort of record. And why not, for once? The interiors must be beautifully light and the exterior has that sense of difference, that disregard for the norm, that makes some English buildings stand out.

Ludlow, Shropshire

ORDER, ORDER (1)
You know the Orders, the modes, as it were, of Classical architecture? Doric, with its fluted columns topped with square abaci, Ionic with its spiral volute capitals, Corinthian, with its gorgeous bunches of acanthus leaves? The Orders were designed to provide builders with a complete architectural vocabulary, a set of standard designs for the key bits of a building – columns, with capitals on top of them, and entablatures on top of them. Everything standardized. Everything in order.

It was never quite like that, of course. The ancient Greeks rang changes on the orders and the Romans introduced two others (Tuscan and Composite). But there was still a sense of correctness, of decorum, to use a Classical word, about how to use these bits of architectural vocabulary. When English builders get their hands on the orders, though, quite different and bizarre things sometimes happen. What, for example, if you were to combine the idea of a Classical Order, with its column, capital, and entablature, with the pointed-arched Gothic style of the Middle Ages?

What you get is this Gothic doorcase of 1768 on the Guildhall in Ludlow. It’s all there – column, capital, entablature, but the columns are slender triple shafts, and the entablature is adorned with little quatrefoils, details straight from the visual vocabulary of the medieval parish church. And so between the columns is a doorway topped not with a flat Classical lintel but with a gently curving arch above which is a pointed Gothic arch. It’s a delightful combination, architecturally incorrect and very English. Capital!