Leicester

Letter set (1)

Little things can make a big difference. When it comes to architecture, one of those little things is the quality of the lettering used in signs, inscriptions, date stones, and the rest. Here's an example that caught my eye: the name and date stone on a chapel in the centre of Leicester. To harmonize with the classicism of the building the person who cut this inscription used what Alan Bartram, authority on lettering on buildings, calls the English letter. What he means is a letter form in which there is quite a big difference between the thick and thin strokes and in which the change from thick to thin in, for example, the curving bowl of the C here, or the P, can be quite sudden. On the whole the thick strokes are verticals. The serifs (the tiny protrusions at the ends of the main strokes) are generally bracketed, in other words the main stroke flows into them. But in this particular example the bracketing is quite subtle in some of the letters.

You can find English letters all over Bath, where they are used for the street names, which are carved directly into the stone walls. Elsewhere they pop up in all kinds of places, and are often, as here, to be found when you look up. They vary quite a bit in style –some have less heavy thick strokes than these. Many have fuller serifs. But if the letters are well proportioned and evenly spaced, they are all satisfying. Especially in the sun.

Bridgnorth, Shropshire

Bricks of Bridgnorth

This Wesleyan chapel of 1853 clings to the hillside just off the High Street in the middle of Bridgnorth. It caught my eye because of its strong Classical façade and as I squinted at it through the rain on a darkening afternoon I thought its front wall was painted grey between the white pilasters. But the grey is actually the purplish grey of the bricks themselves, which have been used to striking effect here.

As with most nonconformist chapels, the emphasis is on the entrance front, a grand version of a common formula for dissenting chapels, with pitched roof, pediment, round-headed windows, and central doorway. The sides are much plainer, but the builder took the trouble to mirror the shape of the front windows in a series of blind arches, the first of which can just be glimpsed in my photograph.

The chapel’s front does have its oddities, it’s true – the curious moulding above the name stone towards the top and the little circular opening higher still. But its frontage shows a nice, and I think quite unusual, use of grey bricks, which are generally reserved for engineering projects such as bridges and viaducts. Even in the rain, they look good.