Bungay, Suffolk

 

Oddly enough…

On our recent visit to Bungay in Suffolk we found much to satisfy our architectural curiosity – medieval churches, a market cross, a castle (closed and with the builders in at the time of our visit). But as usual, a casual stroll around the town threw up many less spectacular pleasures. Even so, it was a last-minute impulse that sent me down Chaucer Street, and I’m glad it did, because I found this building in the full-blown polychrome brick style that was popular in the 1860s and 1870s. In that period of architectural showing-off, even a minor building could be as jazzy and eye-boggling as a shopfront from the 1960s.

The frontage bears a large sign saying ‘Masonic Rooms’, giving no doubt about its current purpose. Freemasons have met in Bungay since 1862, when the warrant for the local lodge was issued. Most of us are used to thinking of the Freemasons as a secretive group (though that is much less the case today than it used to be), but the secrecy does not extend to their architecture. In this case, the building stands out proudly from its rather plain red brick and painted brick neighbours. It would be difficult to miss, with its striped archers and patterned stretches of wall in three shades of brick – red, buff, and the shade of grey known in bricky circles as ‘blue’. There’s some stone too, in the gable especially, to add to the rich mix, and the roof is covered in pantiles of two colours. The stone roundel in the gable encloses an octofoil that framed a symbol (perhaps a hand or a coat of arms) that has now worn away.

This building was a small surprise to me, but a bigger surprise ensued when I looked it up in the Suffolk: East volume of Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England series. According to Pevsner, the structure was ‘apparently built for the Oddfellows in 1910, but its exuberant polychromy looking a good forty years earlier’. So this building, not originally masonic at all, was put up when the architectural fashion was for the curves, swirls and plant motifs of Art Nouveau. Who cares now, though, that the building was behind the times? A big ‘thank you’ to the Oddfellows for being exuberant and colourful.

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Revisiting: Cheltenham’s Masonic Hall

The way I organise my life means that I’m quite often out of the country in September at the time of Heritage Open Days, the weekend when the owners of many historic buildings normally closed to the public throw open their doors and let the rest of us inside. This year has been different, and I’ve been taking the opportunity to take a close look at some of the buildings I’m familiar with as an outsider. One such is the Masonic Hall in Cheltenham, a building with a truly grand exterior combining Roman arches with partly sloping walls in the ancient Egyptian style, that regular readers of this blog may recall from an earlier post.

By any standards this is an impressive building. Its architect, George Allen Underwood, had been a pupil of Sir John Soane, and it shows – the classical proportions, the rhythm of niches, columns, and surfaces on this virtually windowless structure, the monumental effect, would have impressed the master. Back in the 1820s, when it was new, the building would have looked even better against a backdrop of trees and greenery – although very close to the town centre it was not hemmed in by shops and houses then.

Cheltenham Masonic Hall: Lodge Room

Inside, it is impressive too, but in a different way. Underwood was himself a freemason, so clearly understood what was needed, and delivered. Downstairs, the Dining Room is panelled in dark wood, lightened with painted Gothic arches – it originally had a roof painted to resemble a tent of the Knights Templar, but this has long gone. Upstairs is the Lodge Room, a more ceremonial space, with its elegant furniture (outstanding Chippendale, some of it), boards with lists of Masters of the various lodges, and forest of masonic symbols.

Cheltenham Masonic Hall: balcony railings
The decorative scheme is a winning combination of Regency classicism and Masonic symbolism. Classical anthemion ornament frames a blue ceiling starred liked the heavens.† The balcony ironwork combines the heart motif, common in Regency Cheltenham, with the square and compasses. Ionic columns are enriched with red paint and gilding and topped with terrestrial and celestial globes. One of the most amazing things about this building is the way it mixes styles like this. That everything works in harmony owes much to the skill of the architect – and, he would no doubt have said, to the fact that freemasonry and the arts of building have much in common anyway. And the winning blend of styles is something one can only truly appreciate by seeing the building’s interior. So I’m very grateful to Cheltenham’s masons for allowing us in, to marvel and admire.§

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† Various parallels have been noticed for these ceiling stars, from designs of the great Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to the stars on the underside of the canopy (called ‘the heavens’) in the Shakespearean theatre.

§ A note on the photograph. One of my photographs, inevitably in the circumstances, shows other visitors to the building. If you recognise yourself here and would rather not have your likeness online, please contact me using the comment button below, and I’ll remove the picture. 

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Bursting from the shadows

In 1818 Cheltenham architect George Allen Underwood was elected to his local Masonic Lodge. Two years later, work began on the Lodge's new hall, near the centre of the town, and Underwood was the designer. Underwood was a pupil of John Soane, and Soane would have been impressed, I think, with this building – the confident niches, the mix of carving and stretches of plain wall, the way it looks massive although it's not much bigger than a couple of three-storey houses, the fact that the facade manages to work even though it has virtually no windows. The way it stands there like a rock amongst the pale stuccoed facades and delicate iron balconies that its neighbours present to the world is also remarkable. I have been admiring this exterior for years, and others agree: "probably the finest of the early purpose-built Masonic halls," says Pevsner, and John Russell in his Shakespeare's Country calls it a masterpiece of occasional architecture.

One day, not the day on which I took this picture showing the building bursting out of the shadow that envelops its lower portion, but on another occasion when the light was more even, I loitered across the road for a while, admiring the building and watching the passers-by. There were quite a lot of people walking past because a couple of hundred yards to the right is a large car park and a couple of hundred yards the other way is the centre of the town. Not one person appeared to pay any attention to the building at all. Of course these were probably busy men and women with work to go to or shopping to do. But is was still interesting that a building that is so assertive, a design that is very much in the Regency style but has little of the delicacy or gentility of much of Regency Cheltenham, a structure that would, I'd have thought, divide opinion quite strongly, inspired hardly a glance. Presumably none of those passers-by reads this blog.