Clifton, Bristol

In the vanguard

I like to wander around towns and cities, finding interesting buildings, rather than relying too slavishly on guidebooks, but before our most recent visit to Clifton I did consult the excellent Pevsner city guide to Bristol, to check whether there was anything I should be looking out for. The guide sent me to the memorable 1960s church of All Saints and hinted that there was a late-Victorian baroque garage nearby. Even the book’s enthusiastic description did not quite prepare me for this modest but highly ornate building.

Catching sight of it from some distance, I could make out the combination of brick, bands of stone, shallow arches and fancy finials that told me that I was approaching something special in that distinctive, rather frantic baroque style that was popular from the end of the 19th century into the Edwardian period. Getting closer, and taking in the elaborate decoration above the central entrance, I could appreciate the full effect: scrolls, face masks, cornices, circular window, pediment with extra large mouldings, and foliage draping down and springing up everywhere. Mr E. Edwards (his name lettered in clear, plain capitals but with a hint of the raffish in the curved crosspiece of the ‘A’) must have been proud of his premises. His architects, Drake & Pizey,* did him proud,

Remarkably, this building is dated 1898: that’s about a decade on from the German petrol engines of engineers Daimler and Benz that enabled the earliest vehicles we’d recognise as motor cars, but only three or four years after the first cars were seen on British roads.† The firm of Edwards, who both sold and maintained motor vehicles, were pioneers. Their building was in two parts: showroom on the left, workshop on the right. There are photographs from little more than 20 years ago that show the workshop still in use (as an MoT test centre). The showroom section is still used to display cars. Few late-19th century automotive buildings have outlasted the Daimlers and de Dion Boutons, the Lanchesters and Austins, that were sold or serviced there in the 1890s and early-1900s.

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* A Bristol partnership who also designed a baroque bank in Bristol, which I must also seek out.

† The National Transport Museum now awards the honour of the first car in Britain to a vehicle produced in 1895, but stresses that there are many conflicting contenders. It also depends what you mean by a car. But the point is that cars were very few in these early years and Edwards were true pioneers.

Malvern Link, Worcestershire

Art and nature

Malvern Link is an area to the north and east of Great Malvern, adjoining a swathe of land called Link Common. Development began after the railway arrived in the 1850s, and continued through the second half of the 19th century into the 20th. Along the main artery, Worcester Road, many of the houses , especially those near or overlooking the common, were built as substantial middle-class homes; there were also several hotels catering for Malvern’s role as a fashionable spa.

This is an example of the former, an attractive house of the very late-19th or early-20th century, glimpsed through the trees and bushes fringing the front garden. Attracted by the winning combination of red brick, white woodwork, tiles, and windows with small panes in the upper sashes, I began to think of Bedford Park, the west London garden suburb that was a product of the 1880s and hugely influential. I think, from looking at old Ordnance Survey maps, that these are slightly later, but in a similar mode.

My eye was drawn especially to the ornamental panels running across the middle of the bay. The subject is stylised foliage and flowers of a fairly standard sort, of course: just what you’d expect on a house of some pretension in a prosperous area. Often such panels are in terracotta, a material popular during the fashion for ‘Queen Anne’ architecture from the 1870s onwards. Architectural ceramics companies had a repertoire of foliage, flowers, curlicues, and various other ornamental details, and builders drew on them widely. Terracotta was usually brick-red but was also available in a less common buff shade that resembled stone. Often it is hard to tell the difference between stone and terracotta, and I am having this difficulty with these Malvern Link examples. But whatever their material, they provide a pleasing touch, now complemented by the living greenery, which, having arrived more recently than the house, seems to be imitating art.

Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire

Leaves, Wilts

I wanted to visit the parish church of St Mary at Bishops Cannings because I’d read it was an interesting example of Early English Gothic, the style of architecture that became fashionable at the end of the 12th century and remained current for much of the 13th century. And, with its array of lancet windows and stone vaulted chancel, the church certainly is a wonderful example of the style. But, as is often the way, something different caught my eye. This bit of carving, worn but still enjoyable, is on the entrance to the porch. Its leaves are typical not of the 13th but of the 14th century – the kind of architecture the Victorians called Decorated, and that was characterized by, amongst other things, lovely naturalistic carvings of foliage. Below the leaves, there are also some ballflowers, of the type I noticed recently at Ledbury, although the ones in my picture are so eroded it’s difficult to make them out at first.

So the people of Bishops Cannings, having built a substantial and elegant church in the 13th century, carried on improving it and adding to it in the next century, these leaves being among the results. They could afford to do this because the church was at the heart of a large and rich parish held by the bishops of Salisbury. It’s even possible that some of the masons who had built Salisbury Cathedral also worked here – the main body of the cathedral was built between 1220 and 1258, with the famous tower and spire completed later, around 1330. Whoever was responsible for them, these graceful carvings form a delightful addition to the building.