Wellington Place, London

Taxi!

Most of my friends read a lot, and quite a few of them write books too. One of the most frequent mustn’t-grumble-glass-half-full-look-on-the-bright-side remarks I’ve heard from them since the virus made itself felt and we began to face up to time in isolation is along the lines of, ‘Well, at least I have lots of books to read’. Thinking about this the other day, I glanced along some of my shelves to reassure myself – as if anyone with thousands of books needed any reassurance – that there’s plenty that I’d like to read or re-read. At one point in this process, I looked at the handful of books I have by the journalist and travel writer H. V. Morton.¶ One, The Nights of London, fell open at a page describing a visit to a cabmen’s shelter. Of course! Something else I’d not got round to blogging about.

Green, wooden, and topped with rather fancy half-hipped roofs with a central ventilation louvre, cabmen’s shelters are easy to recognise – a small but distinguished building type that works, looks good, and is distinctive without sticking out like a sore thumb. They’ve existed since 1875, when the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund* was set up to build them, the purpose being to supply refreshments to cab drivers – originally the drivers of horse-drawn Hansom cabs – who could not park outside pubs and go inside without paying someone to mind the cab while they ate.

The size of the shelters was limited – they’re not supposed to be larger than a horse and cart, so as not to pose too much of an obstruction on the roads. In all, 61 were built, although now only 13 remain. The first was in St John’s Wood, not this one, which stands near St John’s Wood High Street, but in Acacia Road, to the northwest. The idea was that the shelters were for the use of cab drivers only – they only have room for ten or a dozen people inside – and I have never been inside one.§ My friend Peter Ashley, who can charm his way into all kinds of interesting situations, once got invited inside one, finding it both welcoming and cosy.†

Cab drivers are among the many groups whose work is ebbing away as a result of the virus. There are already plenty of examples of them helping the community. One hopes that they will continue to receive the support pioneered by organisations such as the admirable Cabmen’s Shelter Fund.

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¶ Morton was famous as the first journalist to report the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and for driving around Britain in a bull-nosed Morris and writing about what he saw in newspaper columns and books.

* Their initials, CSF, are usually visible in the decoration under the eaves.

§ I think some have occasionally been open on London Open House Weekends. The one in my photograph is apparently now a café open to all, but I didn't realise this as I photographed it early in the morning when it was closed for business.

† See his book London Peculiars (ACC Art Books, 2019). Peter also posts his beautiful photographs on Instagram: @unmitigatedpete

From Bloomsbury to the Downs

Celebrating Batsford books

Bradley Thomas Batsford opened his doors as a London bookseller in 1843 and by the end of the century was one of this country’s most prominent publishers. B. T. Batsford was a family firm, steered in those early decades by its founder and his three sons, who built up a reputation as general publishers with a particular strength in architecture and the arts. These were the subjects that they became particularly known for, although their list was strong in other areas, from science to theology (many of the early customers in the bookshop were clergymen). The expertise in selecting and reproducing illustrations that they developed for their books on the arts continued to grow in the 20th century, when they produced many striking and popular illustrated books on history, arts, crafts, architecture, and, at the junction of all these subjects, the heritage of the British Isles.*

Batsford was also notable for producing series of books that readers wanted to collect – the Batsford Heritage Series (begun in the 1930s) and the Face of Britain Series (starting during World War II) were pivotal. Batsford chose knowledgeable and often excellent authors for the books – in the Face of Britain Series you can find W. G. Hoskins writing about Midland England, M. W. Barley on Lincolnshire and the Fens, and Richard Wyndham on Southeast England. Another Batsford favourite of mine, is John Russell’s Shakespeare’s Country – it wasn’t published under the banner ‘The Face of Britain’ but is similar in format.

These series were instantly recognisable because they had covers illustrated in colour (in itself a stand-out feature back then) with distinctive cover artwork by Brian Cook, Bradley Thomas Batsford’s grandson and therefore the third generation in the family firm.† Brian Cook created a style that was boldly simple, and brightly coloured: were any book jackets back then as bright and colourful as his? Very few, I’d guess. To print them, he used the Jean Berté process, which employs water-based colours and rubber printing plates, one per colour, into which the artist cuts the design.§ In the right hands, the results are stunning, and books with Cook’s jackets are prized by collectors. I have a whole shelf of them, but most of mine are quite badly faded (as this was a watercolour process, the inks fade in the light). Catching sight of one that has preserved its originally vivid palette is like being warmed by a ray of sunshine from another age.¶

The long history of Batsford, from those beginnings as a bookseller to the name’s current life as an imprint of Pavilion Books (still producing good books, in artistic and historical subjects especially) is charted in a small exhibition currently in Holborn Library, Theobalds Road. It’s good to see the imprint commemorated in this way and if you’re near that part of London the exhibition is worth a look.‡

There have been other celebrations. A notable one, which also marks 80 years since the outbreak of World War II, is a reprint of one of the Face of Britain series with a Brian Cook illustration on the cover. This is the volume originally called Southeastern Survey, by Richard Wyndham. It has been reissued this year with a new title, Sussex, Kent & Surrey 1939, with an introduction by Peter Ashley. Wyndham’s text is one of the better ones in the series and, written in 1939 and published in 1940, it marks that moment when the war began and people increasingly reached for books about the Britain they were fighting for. All of Britain was vulnerable of course, but these counties close to London felt that vulnerability as much as any. And books about England had another urgency. The war made foreign travel impossible for most, and few inland journeys were undertaken lightly. Authors like Wyndham reminded people what they’d got, and what, on these brief journeys, they might see.

The author, designer and photographer Peter Ashley, who’ll be no stranger to many readers of this blog, is an excellent person to introduce the book. Peter is a Batsford collector and is knowledgeable both about England’s places and the books that have described them. I’ll certainly be shelving a brightly covered copy next to my faded first edition of the book: it’s a worthy companion.

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* Quite early in my life I realised that the books on English historic architecture I was taking out of the local library to inform and develop my new interest were published by Batsford: in the 1960s, they were dominating the field.

† Brian Cook changed his name to Brian Batsford Cook, adopting his mother’s maiden name to emphasize his family connection to the firm.

§ The French printer Jean Berté (1883–1981) patented his method in 1926, so Cook was on to something quite new when he started using the Jean Berté process soon after 1930.

¶ For more on the early history of Batsford, see Hector Bolitho, A Batsford Century (B. T. Batsford, 1943)

‡ Batsford: 175 Years of a Bloomsbury Publisher is at Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Holborn Library, Theobalds Road, until 28 June.

The top image is Brian Cook’s depiction of Kersey, Suffolk, for The Villages of England (Batsford, 1932).

Stockerston, Leicestershire

Stockerston Hall

You step into a field near the church, walk a few yards and watch the parting clouds that shift to let the sun warm up the brickwork. Thanks to a fence, a wall, a ditch, more brickwork, the house keeps you at arm's length and ensures the owners keep their privacy, as they have done, no doubt, since 1792.

It's simple really: brick walls, low-pitched roof, a Tuscan porch, four bays of blank arcading, framed by pale quoins and shaded by dark trees. It's likely a replacement for an older house (there's a mullioned window in a cellar somewhere, says Pevsner, giving us the gist; on Medbourne Road, two gate piers, 1700†).

I'm thankful for these bits of hidden England.Thanks to the friend who showed this one to me, P. Ashley of Unmitigated England, who posted here about the nearby church.

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† Please see the comments section for an update.

Hingham, Norfolk

Hunting the hart

Spotting my recent posts on unusual inn signs, and anticipating that I’d soon be moving on to post a three-dimensional sign, Peter Ashley of Unmitigated England sent me this picture of the White Hart at Hingham. Hingham is known for its fine collection of Georgian houses, built apparently when local gentry moved in to reduce their reliance on the area’s inadequate roads during the winter, giving them elegant town houses and Hingham itself the nickname ‘Little London’. The White Hart sign is a real winner, a visual asset where a conventional hanging sign, or maybe a row of wooden letters attached to the wall, would have been expected. I like the way that Peter’s photograph catches the beast as if it is just becoming aware of the pursuing hunter – a hunter equipped of course with a weapon no more deadly than a Leica.

When not wielding his Leica, incidentally, Peter Ashley has had his paintbrushes out. The result is a rather lovely capriccio depicting a selection of the most notable buildings in the town of Stamford in Lincolnshire. It’s an artful image, containing lovely examples of architecture from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, plus a number of picturesque inclusions, from a railway train (steam-hauled, naturally) to street furniture. Prints of the image have been made and some of the proceeds from their sale will go to the Stamford Civic Society. You can find out more about the prints here and there’s a short film about them here.

Peter Ashley, Unmitigated Stamford

Horton, Dorset

Vantage point

This tall brick tower, which dominates high ground near Chalbury Common in Dorset, is the kind of thing I normally leave to Peter Ashley, chronicler of Unmitigated England and connoisseur of bizarre and wonderful towers. But so memorable was my encounter with this building that I feel compelled to blog about it here. I could see the tower from the village, where I was visiting the strange, Vanbrugh-ish church, and made my way in its direction, soon realising that it must be some distance from the road. At first I could see no path to it, but then discovered that what I’d taken to be someone’s drive was actually the bridleway leading in the tower’s direction. So I was soon striding through bushes and trees following the sound of slowly moving hooves.

And then, once I was past the trees and the riders and into the bright spring sunshine, there it was: 140 feet of stunning mid-18th-century brickwork surrounded by sheep and lambs. Coming upon it like this, when my earlier view of it had been from some way off, confronted me instantly with its huge height and bulk, so the building was a surprise again, even though I’d seen it from afar, looking much smaller, only a few minutes before.

The tower was built by Humphrey Sturt, lord of the manor of Horton and MP for Dorset, and may have been intended as an observatory or to provide views of the local hunt making its way across the landscape. It’s so tall, and so bizarre with its combination of turrets and octagonal top, that it became known as Sturt’s folly. But let’s be grateful to Sturt for building this tower, which both enhances the view by its presence and gives us a pleasant, extra shock when we get up close to it and realise how big it really is. I for one am grateful that Mr Sturt wanted a good view, across the land or into the heavens.

Wool, Dorset

ARCHITEXTS: THINGS WRITTEN ON BUILDINGS (5)
They don’t take any nonsense in Dorset. You damage this bridge and you’re out, understand? It’s been here since the 16th century and we want it to stay that way. Not that there’s any room for misunderstanding with all this typographical shouting (‘guilty of FELONY’, ‘TRANSPORTED FOR LIFE’), which reminds one of the barely suppressed menace of old income tax forms (‘if you are a MARRIED MAN’). It all looks like zero tolerance, a century before anyone thought of the term. I don’t think they’ll put you on a slow boat to the antipodes any more if you damage this bridge, wilfully or not. But you’d better behave. Just in case. OK?

Many thanks for the picture of the bridge sign at Wool to Peter Ashley, who blogs about England’s glories and eccentricities here.