Harrogate, Yorkshire

Hotel town (3)

Seasoned visitors to this blog will know about my liking for three-dimensional inn signs and for swans. These two interests have collided at several places (including Wells and Leighton Buzzard†). Here they are again in Harrogate, in the form of this beautiful 3D sign, nicely posed and modelled. I don’t know how old the sign is: it stands on a post well distanced from the facade and most ‘vintage’ images of the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate zoom in close and miss out the sign completely.

The inn itself goes back at least to 1777, but much of the current building probably dates from a remodelling during Harrogate’s boom years in the late-19th century. This was when the hotel was upgraded as the Harrogate Hydro and fitted with Turkish baths and other luxuries. Today, as the Old Swan, it looks very spruce and more welcoming than the rearing swan on its sign which, feathers up and bill at the ready, still pleases the swan-loving bystander.

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† This avian combination makes me wish that the village of Hanley Swan in Worcestershire had a Buzzard Inn; alas it does not.

Poole, Dorset

Carter's cavalcade (4): Showpiece

Here’s one last piece of outstanding tiling from my recent visit to Poole, and in many ways, it is the greatest star of them all. The Swan Inn is a pub of 1906, built to designs by the architect C T Miles, who had a long-established practice in Bournemouth (in which he was soon joined by his son, S C Miles). The facade would be a fairly standard turn-of-the-century design, were it not for the tile cladding, which covers the entire ground floor level.

The Swan is one of three surviving late-Victorian tiled pubs in Poole and is the most decorative. That is thanks not just to the strong tiled lettering giving the names of the brewery (Marston’s) and the pub, in brown on a cream background, not just for the two-tone green of the wall tiles, not even for the telling details such as egg and dart moulding or the little dolphin in the keystone of arch, but above all for the pair of beautiful swans to each side of the entrance archway. Each bird’s cloud of plumage floats among lakeside plants and its beak holds one end of a swag, the other end of which is tied to one of the letters of the pub’s name. This bit of whimsy links the realistic drawing of the swan and its setting to the graphic world of the lettering. That lettering itself has an element of whimsy – the ornate capitals and overlapping strokes recall the sort Art Nouveau lettering I noticed on another Carter’s panel.

This building has been empty for a while. A few years ago a proposal was made to demolish it and redevelop the site, citing a ‘statement of significance’ that declared it to be of ‘little historic or architectural interest’. Fortunately this has been overruled (after objections from the Victorian Society, among others), and the frontage will be retained. The building’s historical value is clear – it’s an outstanding pre-World War I tiled pub facade, a stone’s throw away from the works where the tiles were made. It is also of architectural interest in the way the architecture and ceramics are artfully integrated. You can’t separate the architecture of this period from its decoration. The architectural work of designing spaces, creating plans, and visualising elevations was done, in a building of this type, with the architect collaborating closely with the decorators. The architect, C T Miles, would have liaised closely with Carter’s and their artist over the layout and appearance of the tiles, just as architect George Skipper did with ceramic artist W J Neatby of Doulton when designing the great Royal Arcade in Norwich. That lovely swan means much more here, in the place it was designed for, than it would in a museum.

Workers from Carter’s and Poole Pottery must have passed this pub every day, and many of them no doubt drank here. Managers could bring clients here and say, ‘This is the sort of thing we do’. They were probably proud of the examples of their firm’s work that they saw here and on other buildings around Poole. And if they were proud, they were right to be.

Clare, Suffolk

A sign of old times

It is, as they used to say, February fill-dyke. Here in Gloucestershire dark days predominate, deadlines loom, and there seems little chance of going very far in search of interesting architecture – or at any rate mot much chance of seeing anything very clearly or photographing it if one does venture out. So I am looking back over pictures of some of my recent haunts, to find something of interest to share on the blog. To start with, a bird that’s at home in the wet…

This beautiful sign adorns the Swan in Clare, Suffolk. It’s carved on a piece of oak about 10 feet long, and is full of interesting detail. The bird itself is a beautiful combination of curves (the breast, wings, and neck) and feathery traces still visible beneath a few coats of paint. On the left are the arms of Mortimer and de Burgh quartered; on the right is a shield with the royal arms of France and England. The sign also includes the crescent and star, both royal badges, and the swan itself has a collar in the form of a crown. This is a royal swan, then, and the theory is that the carving came originally from Clare Castle, which was held by Elizabeth de Clare (who was married to a de Burgh) and then by the Mortimer family. In the castle the sign must have formed the base of an oriel window, probably at the time when Henry Prince of Wales was guardian of the young nobleman Edmund Mortimer (1391–1425), so dates to some time in the early-15th century.*

Many are the Swan Inns of England† and they often have fine signs, but there are few to beat this one.

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* Edmund was in custody during the latter part of the reign of Henry IV because of his rival claim to the throne and his family's part in efforts to depose Henry. When Henry died and his son Henry V became king in 1413, Mortimer was freed, made a Knight of the Bath, and became a loyal counsellor of the young king. Edmund founded a college of canons at Stoke-by-Clare in 1414.

† I have previously admired the Swan at Wells and the Three Swans at Market Harborough.

Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire

Swan, up

I’m always telling people to look up, an activity that, on the streets of Leighton Buzzard on Sunday, was somewhat perilous. Because there was lots going on, the place was very crowded, and anyone glancing upwards for a moment risked colliding with fellow passers-by. I just about avoided major impacts, and the wrath of the queue for the ice-cream van, to take this picture of the swan, high up at parapet level, on the eponymous hotel in the High Street.

I was impressed by this swan, red-beaked and footed, wings lifted, and feathers delineated, although it’s not a white as it might be. It reminded me of the lovely swan in Boston, Lincolnshire, marking the building that was once Anderson’s (later Fogarty’s) feather factory. Leighton’s Swan Hotel is an imposing building of the early-to-mid-19th century but there was a Swan Inn or Hotel there long before this, stopping place for coaches, source of much hospitality, and place where numerous auction sales and market deals took place.

It seems the facade has looked spick and span since the Wetherspoon’s chain took it over a few years ago, and it’s good to see its neat pale plasterwork and red lettering proclaiming its name and still, above the courtyard access to one side, advertising it as a ‘posting house’. It would be even better if the owners could get someone up there to remove the green growths and make looking up at the swan more rewarding still.