Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

 

Occasional haunts, 2

I often stroll around Cheltenham, admiring its Regency architecture (terraces, crescents and squares of stone or stucco-clad houses especially). This heritage reflects a heyday in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, when people flocked to the town to visit its several spas and take the waters in the hope of curing a variety of ills. However, the town remained prosperous in the Victorian period, when health tourism was supplemented by education (Cheltenham became home to several public schools) and by its popularity as a place to which to retire (it was a favourite of army officers, colonial administrators and their families). The public schools were not for everyone, and many local-authority schools were built in the late-19th century.

One of these, now converted to apartments, was All Saints’ School, built in hard, mass-produced brick with Dutch gables and big windows, in the style of many a London board school. The architecture is enlivened by architectural terracotta – i.e. clay cast to produce decorative or other designs, a material that was becoming very popular when the school was built in 1890–91. By this time, terracotta faces, sunflowers and foliage were appearing all over fashionable houses. On the school, this material was used to produce signs denoting the separate entrances for boys and girls (photograph below), and for highlights such as capitals atop the brick pilasters that ran up the building, enlivening the expanses of brickwork (above).

My favourite piece of terracotta decoration on this building combines acanthus leaves and scrolls with human faces and vases of flowers. Ornaments like this could be bought from stock from manufacturers in certain towns where bricks were produced – Ruabon, Tamworth and Loughborough, for example. Elaborate bespoke ornaments could be ordered individually, but examples like this, where the architect and builders would have been working to a tight budget, would probably have been selected from a manufacturer’s catalogue, just like those used on many streets of middle-class housing. Perfect for a lesson in the interest of looking up, even at a familiar building.

Saltaire, West Yorkshire

Well schooled

The industrialist Titus Salt planned his workers’ village with public buildings that were both visually impressive and well designed for their intended purpose. If they proved less than adequate, Salt and his descendants tried to put things right, something that’s exemplified by one of the most impressive of all the village’s structures, the school on Victoria Road, built in 1869. From the outside, the architecture is palatial – there’s a statement being made here about the importance of eduction. Inside, the classrooms were well appointed and there was space for 750 pupils, with the older girls and boys taught separately in rooms on either side of the building and ‘mixed infants’ in a room in the middle, in accordance with the ideas of the time.

The Italianate architecture is kitted out with a full complement of columned loggias, round-headed windows, overhanging eaves, and an imposing bell turret (with a rather small but no doubt effective school bell). What’s more, this structure is richly carved. The central section displays Salt’s coat of arms within a roundel surrounded by laurel leaves and scrolls; to left and right of these elements are relief carvings of woolly creatures. These are alpacas, a reminder that Salt was one of the first in Britain to work with alpaca wool, creating alpaca cloth that became much sought-after. The use of this wool was the key to Salt’s success. No wonder he wanted to celebrate the Peruvian creatures, but in doing so he was providing an instant lesson for the school’s pupils – that’s where the wool comes from, that’s what gives your father employment, that’s why you live here. The bell turret is also richly carved – a boy, a girl, and a globe can be made out beneath its roof.

This imposing building with its lovely carvings was soon outgrown by Saltaire’s burgeoning population. The Salt family lobbied for a new school, and by 1878 a new one had been built, not as magnificent architecturally, but big enough to cope with the demand. The original school remains in use and is now part of Shipley College.

Saltaire school, detail of bell turret and pediment

Weobley, Herefordshire

An educational legacy

I’d been to Weobley, one of Herefordshire’s best ‘black and white’ villages, before, but I’d somehow managed to miss the street that contains both the Methodist chapel and this, the Old Grammar School. This was a major omission on my part, for this building alone. It was erected in 1659 to accommodate a grammar school for boys that was founded in the same year by William Crowther, who left in his will not only money to build the school, but enough for an annuity to pay the master’s salary.

The building would have had one large room on the ground floor, where the lessons took place. Upstairs was a dormitory in which the pupils slept (there were 25 of them in the early-18th century), plus rooms for the master. It’s well built, with the vertical timbers set close together (a design known as ‘close-studding’) and plenty of pleasant touches – carved brackets, a couple of decorative heads (see the photograph below), turned shafts in the openings on each side of the porch, and the founder’s coat of arms above the entrance. The quality of the work has led some to suggest the renowned Herefordshire carpenter John Abel as the builder, although this, so far as I know, is speculation.

The building had a long life in educational use, which only came to an end in 1888. At this point it was sold as a house, which it still seems to be. So no more schoolboys intoning Latin declensions, no more the noise of 20-odd pairs of feet making there way upstairs to bed or downstairs to the schoolroom, no longer the experience (novel to us) of lessons in the building made of wood, wattle and daub. Just another timber-framed house of which Weobley can be more than proud.

Detail of carvings above the doorway, Old Grammar School, Weobley

Hastings, Sussex

Ragged girls

Before the 1870 Education Act, education for children in England was patchy. Some areas had free schools run by charities or by the church, but many did not, so those who could not afford to pay for education saw their children missing out. One notable movement of the 1840s aimed to address this problem by providing free elementary schools for children aged between five and twelve in areas that lacked provision. These schools were aimed specifically at poor families and the people who set them up provided additional help such as food and clothing for families who were in the most desperate financial straits. Because of the worn clothes in which many of the pupils turned up, these charitable free schools became known as ‘ragged schools’; the name stuck.

Probably the first body to use the term ‘ragged schools’ officially was the London City Mission, which founded five schools in East London in the 1840s. I passed the one in my photograph when I was in Hastings recently. Although its Gothic architecture, with pointed windows and fancy bargeboards, is far from untidy, it was apparently a girls’ ragged school founded in 1863. It was opened on 29 October that year, a boys’ school having been established elsewhere in the town about three months earlier. The school was designed for 80 children, although the average attendance was closer to sixty – an indication probably not so much of a shortage of poor children as of varying attendance in families in which one crisis or another prevented children from going to school every day. After the 1870 Education Act, the ragged school would have continued, eventually being absorbed into the system of state-funded schools.

No longer used as a school, the building seems to have recently been restored and the sign at the entrance repainted. I have not been inside, but through the window I could glimpse the large, high schoolroom in which children would have sat in rows, often divided into groups under the supervision of ‘monitors’, older pupils who were sometimes charged with overseeing a group of younger ones while they completed tasks. I hope someone has found a use for the building, so that this bit of architectural history can remain.

Hoarwithy, Herefordshire

Well schooled

By far the most outstanding building in Hoarwithy, a village near the River Wye between Ross and Hereford, is the church of St Catherine, a glorious Italianate structure designed by Victorian master J. P. Seddon.¶ Each time I’ve visited it, I’ve glanced up at a neighbouring building, which is called Church House. It’s in the same red local sandstone and I imagined it was a former vicarage, built at the same time as church and also designed by Seddon. I was only partly right. The house is by Seddon, and was built in 1868* and designed as a school and master’s house. Both church and school were built for the long serving vicar William Poole, who was responsible for the parish from 1854 to 1901.

The photograph represents my usual view of Church House, showing its east front – if I’d paid more attention to the south wall, I’d have seen the large window that lights the school room that occupies the left-hand part of the building. The part to the right is the master’s house, its large windows suggesting large rooms within. Oddly, the canted parts of the bays have no windows – if they had, the rooms would have been lighter. The central doorway has a pair of trefoil-headed arches. The right-hand arch conceals the front door of the house; the left-hand one leads to a staircase going up to the schoolroom. Above is a pretty sexfoil window with a pivoting central opening section that I find curiously satisfying. This and the other windows have patterned glazing bars – another satisfying detail.

Readers sometimes ask me if I get inside the buildings I post. For houses, the answer is usually ‘no’: my appreciation is generally that of an informed passer-by. If I’d like to see the interior of this building, it’s because I’ve been tantalised by an online description that refers not only to the schoolroom’s attractive roof timbers but also to its frieze, which has painted panels of animals, birds, and flowers.† Hoarwithy church, impressive from the outside, is beautifully decorated within; clearly architect and client had the same aspirations for the school. As a reader of authors such as Charles Dickens, I am apt to be scathing about Victorian eduction,§ but at least the environment provided for this village’s children seems to have been pleasant. I hope the teaching was similarly inspired.

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¶ Seddon worked quite a lot in Wales (for example on Llandaff Cathedral and the university buildings at Aberystwyth). Although Hoarwithy church is in a sort of Romanesque-Byzantine style, Seddon, like so many of his contemporaries, was generally an advocate of Gothic. Like Pugin, and no doubt influencing his pupil C. F. A. Voysey, he liked to design furniture and fittings for his buildings.

* The precise dates of Seddon’s work on the church are unknown, but the buildings must be roughly contemporary.

† There’s an image of part of it on this site.

§ But one should not generalise. Not all schools were like Dotheboys Hall or the hideous fact-factory in Hard Times, or Charlotte Brontë’s Lowood, and with a good master a church school could provide a sound basic education in a humane environment.

Chew Magna, Somerset

For ales

On my way to visit the parish church of Chew Magna, I couldn't help but notice this building, right next to the churchyard gate. It was signposted as the Old Schoolroom, but I wondered, looking at it, if it was actually a medieval church house, and so it proved to be. A church house was roughly the medieval equivalent of the village or church hall. It was used for certain secular activities held on behalf of the church, especially fundraising events called church ales. As their name suggests, church ales involved a lot of drinking, together with entertainments such as dancing, plays, or sports. As many people in the Middle Ages seem to have had few inhibitions about using the church building for a range of secular activities, church ales and similar events were sometimes (perhaps often) held in the church itself. However, in some parts of the country, for example the southwestern countries of Devon and Somerset, parishes often built church houses for the purpose.

Most church houses are late medieval. This one once bore a date, 1510. This had led some people to believe that church houses became widespread when parish churches were fitted out with permanent pews in the later Middle Ages, rendering the buildings useless for activities like dancing, eating, or drinking. In any case, many clergy objected to these secular uses of church buildings, and no doubt ushered them out of the church into a more suitable building if they could. But not every church had a church house, and the cost of building one but have been considerable – the basic requirements were for a large room (often upstairs) for the festivities plus additional space for the storage and preparation of food and the brewing of beer.

The building at Chew Magna looks well built and impressive. There are plenty of windows, and a doorway with a pleasant, but not overstated, ogee head. There's a small sculpture in a niche high up, with Pevsner believes to have been St Michael killing the dragon, although this is hard to make out, plus a shield bearing the arms of the prominent local St Loe family.* The building must have been a valued social centre, although when the Puritans banned such enjoyable events as church ales, it, like others, was put to new uses – a lock-up, poorhouse, and, if the sign is to be believed, a school. Anyone wanting ale would have had to repair to one of Chew's pubs, which are still mercifully in evidence. 

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* A 15th-century St Loe has an impressive monument in the church.

Ilmington, Warwickshire

Old school ties

On the day of my recent visit to Ilmington the sun was quite strong and while this brought out the wonderful colour of the church’s stone walls, other buildings were plunged into shadow. I had to work quite hard to get a clear picture of this building, Old School House. The house immediately struck me, with its geometric pattern of white glazing bars making diamonds and hexagons in the pointed Gothic windows. Then there’s the trefoil-arched entrance porch, another characterful touch in this house of the 1840s.

At first, the light being less clear than it looks in the photograph, I hardly noticed the masonry except to note that it’s the local butterscotch-coloured marlstone. The walls are mostly coursed and squared blocks, but not as finely finished as ashlar, except for the window surrounds, which are altogether neater. But look at the corner. Some of the quoin stones are whoppers, giving an impression of great if discreet solidity, even though the walls are strengthened these days by some X-ended tie-rods.

The Ordnance Survey map of 1885 shows a school to the northwest of the church, next to this house. So presumably this was the school-master’s house, and if it was built in the 1840s, that was well before compulsory state-funded elementary education – whoever paid for it did the teacher proud.

Potterhanworth, Lincolnshire

Bits of history

To Lincolnshire, in search of the Resident Wise Woman’s ancestors. Our journey took us to Potterhanworth, southeast of Lincoln, where her grandmother Betsy was brought up and went to the village school. We took with us the Betsy’s typescript memoirs of her early life in this Lincolnshire village with her grandparents* – her grandfather (the RWW’s great great grandfather), the wonderfully named John George Pepperdine Salter¶ was the first stationmaster at Potterhanworth station. We found the old station house, where they lived, and visited the village school, whose head was very happy with the gift of a copy of the memoirs and rewarded us, quite unexpectedly, with the sight of their author’s name in the school register, inscribed in a copperplate hand in 1901.

The most remarkable building in Potterhanworth is this water tower (now converted to a house). I can’t remember when I last saw such an impressive one in a village. It was built in 1903 with funds provided by Christ’s Hospital (a Lincoln charity with a lasting link to the village); the coat of arms of Richard Smith, founder of Christ’s Hospital in Lincoln are on the side of the turret. As well as supplying water (which it did until the 1970s), the building was a useful public meeting place – the Parish Council and Men’s Institute met in the rooms in the brick tower that supports the enormous tank. Now it’s a substantial house with an unusual history in a place that means a lot to those close to me, and now to me too. 

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* So we are talking about a person born in the Victorian period brought up by her grandparents, who were old enough to remember the early years of Victoria’s reign – a long historical vista.

¶ I have a great fondness for names like this, in which it’s unclear where the forename ends and the surname beings; compare the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor and the photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. 

Burford, Oxfordshire

Old school ties

In 1571 a group of merchants in the Cotswold town of Burford founded a grammar school. Their leader was the appropriately named Simon Wysdom, whose name features in an inscription over the doorway of the old school building, which still exists, a solid-looking structure of Cotswold stone in the centre of the town. The masonry is quite high quality – coursed squared rubble blocks, one step away from the super-smooth ashlar of the very highest status buildings.

However, the structure is perhaps not as quite solid as it seems. At some stage there has been some instability and tie rods have been installed to stop the walls bulging outwards. These ties are metal rods that pass all the way through a building from one exterior wall to the other, fixed on the outside with bars or discs that hold the wall in like a corset. Often the rods are heated up immediately before they are inserted and the outer bars or discs fixed on, so that they contract as they cool down, ensuring the tightest fit.

The bars on the outside can take various forms. One of the most common is a large X-shape, so that the containing effect is spread across a large surface of wall. Here, there’s an added touch: instead of Xs, the rods end in the three initials B, G, and S, for Burford Grammar School. As well as holding in the wall they act as a bit of advertisement. Structural, educational, promotional, and ingenious in one.

Kettering, Northamptonshire

Local hero

Regular readers will known that I sometimes amuse friends and acquaintances by announcing that I have visited, for pleasure, places they’d not normally associate with tourism. St Austell before the Eden Project, say, or Kidderminster more recently.* Why go there when you can visit the oodles of beautiful towns and villages, stuffed with listed buildings and interpreted for our delight by dedicated heritage-wallahs? Well, I visit my share of such places too, but there are many towns, off the tourist map or lacking the stereotypical array of picturesque streets or quaint shops and houses, that offer rewards to the curious. It was with such thoughts in my mind that I ignored the snorts of laughter and made my way to Kettering.

I recently posted about a lovely cooperative building in the town, which grew in the Victorian period as a result of the Northamptonshire shoe industry. Very close to the centre one finds streets of 19th-century brick-built terraced houses next door to factories of the same period. None of these factories are huge, so there’s no sense of conflicting scales. Some of them still make shoes – the celebrated Loake’s shoes are still produced in Kettering, for example. The town also has some wonderful schools. One of the best is Stamford Street School (actually in Montagu Street), which is in a red brick Tudor-revivalish style with this stand-out tower.

The relief carving and openwork on this tower is truly jaw-dropping, a cut or two or three above what’s usual for  board-school architecture, which is generally purposeful and functional, with sometimes to odd bit of carving or terracotta decoration here and there, depending on the local budget and the commitment (or not) to produce a building that reflects civic pride and gives the inmates something to inspire them. The huge roundel on this tower is extraordinary: was it meant to be a clock face? Was it ever used as such? There seem to be no vestiges of painted numerals or holes for the hands. As for the elaborate openwork, I’d taken it to be intended to allow the sound of a bell to be audible. But the recent revised Pevsner Northamptonshire volume describes this as a chimney tower, so presumably it’s to do with heating and ventilation. It’s functional, then, but you’d rarely see anything so ornate adorning a locally funded school – even considering that the date is 1892, taking us back to a period in which architectural ornament was enjoying a burgeoning heyday.

The firm of architects responsible for this wonder was local practice Gotch and Saunders.† I’ve known of John Alfred Gotch for years because he wrote books¶ about historic architecture, especially Elizabeth and Jacobean architecture, so it was a pleasure to find his work dotted all over this town. He was prominent in his profession, serving as President of the Architectural Association and of the RIBA, the first provincial architecture to be honoured by the latter post. A local hero, then, who did well by his town, helping an outwardly unassuming place to shine.

Notes
* Kidderminster still has several striking former carpet factories, about one of which I posted here.
† The practice continues locally as Gotch, Saunders and Surridge (GSS Architecture)
¶ Gotch’s books include Early Renaissance Architecture in England (1914), The Architecture of the Renaissance in England (1894), and The Growth of the English House (1909).

Pershore, Worcestershire

Two ways with brick

‘What can that be?’ asks the Resident Wise Woman, pointing across the square at a couple of buildings that stick out, more than somewhat, from Pershore’s Georgian townscape.
‘Something civic?’ I say.
‘Or something educational?’ she responds.
Something religious, we suppose, as we approach and discover the place to be festooned with posters issued by the Baptists. It’s actually something educational and religious: a Baptist schoolroom.

Hidden behind this building, it turns out, is Pershore’s Baptist chapel, a structure of 1839–40 by S. W. Daukes. Here in front are two newcomers in brick. To the right, the 1860s polychrome brickwork of the manse and earlier schoolroom, as jazzy and different from Pershore’s prevailing sober Georgian red brick as you could get using nominally the same material. To the left, the freer Tudor-cum-Gothic schoolroom of 1888, with shields bearing appropriate virtues to which pupils might aspire (faith, hope, charity, peace) and big windows to admit light by which the Word might be read. The architects were Ingall and Son, and they did a better job, it seems to me, than whoever designed the jazzy manse. I especially like the line of the gable and the way its pointed protrusions reflect the shape of the dripstone over the window. The lower part of the facade is perhaps a bit busy and unbalanced, but if it's busy it's also businesslike.

And if both buildings stick out rather, in this civil Georgian town, the schoolroom, at least, does it with some style. Is it so bad, after all, to proclaim your differences and to announce values such as charity and peace? ’Tis the season for it.

Westville Road, London

A mural restored

 I’ve posted before about the architectural illustrator and writer Gordon Cullen, whose books Townscape and The Concise Townscape had a big impact on me when I discovered them in the 1970s and have helped to educate probably hundreds of thousands of architects and planners. In the 1950s and 1960s, Cullen was very influential, not just because of the Townscape books but also because his drawings were everywhere – in the architectural press, in advertisements, in books. At the weekend I had the chance to experience another aspect of Cullen’s work, when I went to Greenside School in West London to see the mural he did for the building unveiled after restoration.

Greenside School is itself an interesting building of the early 1950s, designed with great flair by Ernö Goldfinger and opened in 1952. Goldfinger had designed a structural system for schools, with a reinforced concrete frame, that was intended to be rolled out widely, but only Greenside and one other school were built using the system. When the architect wanted a mural for the school’s entrance hall, he turned to Cullen, with whom he’d worked on a number of exhibitions that had been sent to the troops during World War II. Cullen wrote in a notebook a sentence that seemed to mark a starting point and a challenge: 'Mural. To undulate and intrigue. How?' His response to the challenge was brilliant: a series of colourful vignettes on a range of subjects: history (a medieval castle), the sea (an ocean liner), geography (a world map), the solar system (with a sun like a vast egg yolk), railways, and natural history (a composition of leaves and birds). Brightly coloured, simple, but full of interesting detail, they were clearly designed to appeal to young people and to inspire. Entering the foyer is a bit like stepping into a Picture Puffin book, and one can imagine children responding enthusiastically and teachers incorporating the images into lesson plans.

But the mural wasn’t always popular with the staff. I suppose it began to seem old-fashioned, with its images of the de Havilland Comet airliner (the first commercial jet) and the Britannia steam locomotive that was commissioned by the British Railways Board, both of which came into service in 1951. The current staff, however, are enthusiastic, and see the potential of the mural – as an inspiration in lessons, as an uplifting sight when you enter the school, as something to be proud of.

So a group of parents, staff, and school governors got together to ‘rehabilitate, restore, appreciate, protect and celebrate the Gordon Cullen Mural in the context of the Ernö Goldfinger building to the benefit of the whole school community and enrich the Learning Environment’. Or, as a spokesperson said at the unveiling, ‘simply to love it again’. Now the restoration is complete and colours sing once more, illuminated by natural light coming down from Goldfinger’s cunningly concealed clerestory window above. Warm applause as Jacqueline Cullen, the artist’s widow (top photograph), cut the ribbon to mark the mural’s unveiling, confirmed the project’s success, as well as the appreciation and love that people have for this very unusual* work of art.

Appreciation was also I think, typified by the reaction of one young child looking at the mural afterwards with a small group of us. ‘Which part do you like the best”?’ asked one of the adults. ‘Oh, I like the Fried Egg,’ she replied, with emphasis, looking at the image of the solar system. The knowing expression on her face suggested that she was very well aware of the painting’s real subject.

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*Although unusual, the Gordon Cullen mural is part of a bigger picture, which is that quite a number of schools built in post-war Britain had distinguished decorative artwork of various kinds, much of which has now either vanished or is under threat. A research project under the title The Decorated School has led to greater awareness of these works, and one of the fruits of this project is a book, Catherine Burke, Jeremy Howard, and Peter Cunningham (eds), The Decorated School (Black Dog Publishing, 2013). I hope to return to this fascinating book when it reaches the top of my ‘to read’ heap.

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

One of the old school

I’m not exactly snow-bound, but the weather and the need to catch up with work after New Year mean I’m not going far in search of buildings right now. So here’s a building in a local town that I particularly like.

Cirencester is one of the essential towns of England. Its many old buildings in creamy limestone, its winding streets, its Roman remains, its vast medieval church, its adjoining great house and park (the park hospitably open to the public), add up not only to the essence of a Cotswold town but to the essence of many periods of English history. There is so much here that the place could sustain a buildings blog of its own.

Although it’s a Roman town, and the Romans loved straight lines, Cirencester’s streets curve continuously, opening up and closing vistas as one moves along them, object lessons in townscape, each bend bringing visual and historical surprises. This building is sited where a road bends and meets another, so if you are driving past and not dodging other dashing objects, you are hit between the eyes by this extraordinary end wall.

And the doorway and widow, with their larger-than-life surrounds of stone blocks (exaggerated Gibbs surrounds in archispeak), not to mention that roundel at the top, are guaranteed to grab the eye. It’s Powell’s School, originally the Yellow School, opened in 1740 and named in honour of its founder, Mrs Rebecca Powell. No doubt the roundel originally bore and inscription to tell us as much. It’s on this narrow end wall because this is where most passers-by would see it, although the main façade, on the quieter road, is handsome too.

In the mid-18th century when this building went up, there were no state schools, only independent foundations like this one. They are sometimes understated pieces of architecture, but occasionally had a grandeur, like this one, that both commemorated the founder and, one hopes, inspired the pupils. Schools are important enough to be given decent buildings, it seems to say. Here’s to that.

Abthorpe, Northamptonshire

The long view

To build is to be optimistic. You are investing time, money, and effort in an unknown future. To build during a time of war entails an extra dose of optimism, of bravery even. Relatively few major buildings (big houses, churches, and so on) were put up during the English Civil War, and those that were are still pointed out and cherished.

Hats off, then (tall, Puritan hats or saucy feathered Cavalier titfers) to Northamptonshire spinster Jane Leeson, who built a school for the children of her village of Abthorpe in 1642, as the first phase of the Civil War began. She nailed her colours to the mast, placing this inscription on the front of the building:

1642 FEARE GOD
HONOVR YE KING
IANE LEESON HATH BVILDED THIS HOVSE FOR A FREE SCHOOLE FOR EVER

That round and optimistic declaration was placed smack in the middle of the facade beneath the dormer window. Here it remains, although it's not in the middle any more because the right-hand portion of the building, with its big gable, is a later, harmonious, addition.

The lovely two-tone stripes of local stone have worn well so far, justifying Miss Leeson’s confidence, the warm, toffee-coloured marlstone and paler oolite combining well as in so many villages of southern Northamptonshire. The stone-mullioned windows too help make this building an adornment to its end of the village. The building is not a school any more, but, used as a village hall, its service to the community continues.

Frome, Somerset

Blue boys and asylum maids

This striking structure is in the charming Somerset town of Frome, a place where the gaze is often diverted from important things like the architecture to such distractions as shops selling a diverting range of local produce, and the stream that runs down the middle of the main street. But here’s one building that caught my eye.

There was an almshouse here from the 1460s onwards, but in 1728 a free school was added to the charitable institution, and this very upright, look-at-me, town-hall-like Georgian building was put up to house it. It’s known as the Blue House, because the boys wore blue coats, as charitable schoolboys often did in those days, and the façade has statues of both an almswoman and a schoolboy.

To one side there are two other statues depicting women, which come from the Keyford Asylum, which was pulled down in 1956. So now this corner of Frome is a repository of local history, a symbol of charitable pride – as well as still providing flats for the elderly. None of which can be a bad thing, especially when housed in such an uplifting building.


The maids from the asylum

Uffington, Oxfordshire*

Chalk, pale and friable, seems an unlikely building material, but it’s the local stone on the Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset Downs, on the Chilterns, on the North and South Downs, in parts of Cambridgeshire, and on the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds. In many of these areas you can find traditional buildings constructed of blocks of chalk. Builders liked this material because it is easy to shape, but they had to use it wisely if it was to last.

The village of Uffington is famous for the chalk figure of a horse, cut into the turf of the nearby hillside and best viewed from the air. The place has a number of old chalk buildings too, notably this schoolhouse, which dates form the Jacobean period as wears its 400 years well. Like many chalk buildings it stands on a base of stronger stone. It’s interesting to contrast the quality of the masonry of the upper and lower portions of the building. The tougher stone is rougher of surface and laid in irregular, rubble-like pieces. The chalk has been cut into larger blocks laid in regular courses, neatly jointed. This soft stone was much easier to cut finely and joint precisely, and masons no doubt liked the neat finish they could achieve with it.

A cottage in the same village shows the traditional roof for a chalk building – thick thatch with a generous overhang. The stone base and thatch covering give the house, in the old phrase, ‘a good hat and a good pair of shoes’, so relatively little rain gets to the chalk in between. Well constructed and cared for, this house has lasted for centuries in spite of the soft and yielding material of its walls.

*Postscript: To me, Uffington is still in Berkshire, and it is to be found in the Berkshire volume of Pevsner's Buildings of England series, which still adheres to the old county boundaries, praise be.

Staunton and Snig's End, Gloucestershire

Chartism was a movement for social change that began in 1838 as a working-class reaction to the 1832 Reform Act, which had given the vote to many members of the middle classes but excluded the lower social orders. The movement began with a document called the People’s Charter, which demanded half a dozen political and electoral reforms (universal suffrage for men over 21, equal-sized constituencies, voting by secret ballot, an end to the property qualification for MPs, pay for MPs, and annual parliamentary elections). Two waves of protests and riots followed in the Chartists’ cause, culminating in 1848 in a mass meeting on London’s Kennington Common, but after 1848 the movement lost momentum. Even so, all but the last of its aims eventually became law, with a much-increased franchise in 1867 and the secret ballot introduced in 1872.

So what does all this have to do with English buildings? Another issue espoused by the Chartists was the lower classes’ access to land. Chartists believed that one solution to the well-being of working people was to give them access to land that they could cultivate. The Chartist Co-operative Land Company was formed and five estates of bungalows were built, each dwelling set in a 2- to 4-acre plot, and allocated to applicants chosen by lot. One such development was at Staunton. Although the land company was short-lived and the bungalows were sold off, many of the original buildings survive, and their design – two wings on either side of a central, gabled section, is unmistakeable. The kitchen was in the middle, with the bedroom and sitting room on either side. The photograph below shows one of the bungalows looking rather like it must have done when built – many of the others have been rendered and some have been extended. Nearby was another Chartist settlement, Snig’s End, where the focal point was an impressive school, above, with classrooms on either side of a gabled centre section. It’s a pub now, but its brickwork still glows.