Saltaire, West Yorkshire

Salt’s way

In the middle of the 19th century, Bradford textile manufacturer Titus Salt decided to move his factory away from the city centre to a new site. This move helped Salt, already rich from the production of good quality woollen cloth, to build not just a vast new mill but also an entire village to house his workers. This village was named Saltaire, after Salt and the River Aire, near which the settlement stands. Salt was the exemplary Victorian paternalist, who wanted to accommodate his workers well, in the conviction that this was both the right thing to do and likely to make them healthier and more productive. So Saltaire was provided with facilities that were well above standard for the time – not just a church, but also a school, institute (for adult education), baths, a park and a hospital.

The whole place was designed in an Italianate style by Bradford architects Lockwood and Mawson. The houses were impressive for the time. Salt did not want to provide the less than basic back-to-back houses that were increasingly the norm for workers’ housing.* Back-to-backs usually shared three of their four walls with neighbouring houses, which meant they were poorly ventilated, dark and insanitary. By contrast, Saltaire’s 800-plus terraced houses are pleasantly designed with classical details and have front flower beds and small rear yards, plus alleyways at the back. This gives a sense of space, as well as windows front and rear, meaning proper ventilation and a decent amount of natural light inside.

The day I visited Saltaire happened to be rubbish collection day, so I was instantly aware of the continuing usefulness of the alleys. I saw too how these utilitarian walkways, a little wider than they need to be, also open up the streetscape, making the housing slightly less dense, and offering views of the distant hills. Hill views probably weren’t at the top of Salt’s list of priorities. He must have been more preoccupied with transport links – river, canal and railway all pass close by. However, you’re never far from trees and patches of greenery in Saltaire and the sense of nearby nature is as exceptional as the Italianate architecture. Salt was a true pioneer in creating this kind of enlightened industrial village.† Where he went, the Cadbury (Bournville) and Lever (Port Sunlight) families followed. Today the mill’s transport links bring tourists rather than wool, and Saltaire, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, still repays appreciation.

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* Back-to-backs were especially widespread in Leeds and Bradford, so Salt would have been aware of them and their drawbacks.

† Although Salt was not the first to build decent workers’ housing, the thoroughness and scale of his development was unique for the time.

Edmondthorpe, Leicestershire

Mouthwatering

This blog is, of course, supposed to be an account of my encounters with buildings, but I’ll include something else occasionally if it seems to me buildings-related or has an architectural quality to it – gate piers, pillar boxes, milestones and the like have all featured here. Hence this village pump, which caught my eye for its obelisk-like form, its puzzling inscription, and its impressive dragon spout. The pump is made of iron – cast iron for the casing and spout, wrought for the handle, I believe.

Whose idea could it have been to erect such an eyecatcher for the village water supply? Presumably the bearer of the initials W.A.P. who, according to an online source, was William Ann Pochin (1844–1901), Lord of the Manor of Bourne Abbots, although he lived in Edmondthorpe Hall. He is said to have restored a number of houses in the village. The houses remain, although the hall burned down in 1943. As to the striking design of the spout, the Pochin coat of arms is the sign near the school just behind the pump, and I couldn’t see anything resembling a dragon in it. However, makers of pumps and those who channel natural springs do sometimes make spouts in the form of such beasts – I’ve seen dragon- or serpent-heads before with water rather than fire spurting out of them. The people of the village were no doubt pleased to have a reliable water supply. This passer-by was delighted to come across such a visual amenity.

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* This structure is a listed ‘building’ and the listing text confirms the material. Foolishly, I did’t strike it when I was there, to see what sound it made. It’s often worth tapping or hitting structures as the dull sound of wood is very different from the knock or ring of metal. Beware, though – if you hit too hard you can come off badly in the endeavour!

Stanton, Gloucestershire

Neighbouring sights

One more post from a trip only a mile or two from home, to remind us all that even the shortest journey can yield up wonders.

Stanton is one of the most picture-postcard beautiful of Cotswold villages. It takes it beauty from an outstanding collection of limestone cottages kept in beautiful condition. They got to be so immaculate in the early-20th century because the village acquired a new lord of the manor, and one rather different from usual. He was Philip Stott, an architect from Oldham, who bought the village in 1906 and devoted most of the rest of his life to restoring its houses, ensuring they were well maintained, and seeing through public works such as the digging of a reservoir to provide a proper water supply.

Stott seems to have been one of those people influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, who cared deeply about keeping buildings maintained using traditional materials and methods, while also realising that people need the basics of modern life like a village hall and clean drinking water. His legacy has lasted many decades since he died in 1937. This house is typical of the region: stone walls, stone slates on the roof, stone mullioned windows, stone chimneys. It has both varieties of dormer windows that are seen hereabouts: two small ones set quite high in the roof and a larger, lower one with a front wall that’s a continuation of the wall below. Both types set a challenge to the roofer when the dormer roof meets the main slope at an angle. This can be managed either with careful slate cutting and installation of leadwork beneath, or with bespoke angle tiles at the join.

The village cross, in shadow but unmistakeable on the left, is a mixture, no doubt put together by Stott. The base and shaft are medieval; the block that tops the shaft and holds a sundial is 17th-century; I’m not sure about the ball finial and cross. Whatever the answer, pains were taken in the 20th century, but the result looks timeless. We were privileged to have this view to ourselves, the day we passed through. The people who live here are likewise lucky, though on sunny summer days when the place fills up with admiring tourists they may reflect that their luck has its price. Such are the drawbacks of paradise.

Combrook, Warwickshire

A well for all seasons?

Before leaving Combrook, the parish church of which featured in my previous post, I want to share this less obvious feature of the village. It’s one of two well heads, built around the same time as the church and I’d guess designed by the same architect, John Gibson. It has an ogee arch, the double-curved design that is characteristic of the 14th-century Gothic that inspired the church’s west front, and if you look very closely at this opening you can see that it’s decorated with ballflowers, another 14th-century motif.

I take this well head to be more evidence of the care that the landlord was bestowing on this village in the 19th century. The church, two well heads, the former village school (it’s now the village hall) and several of the houses were built or rebuilt in this period. Along with the houses, the water supply was the most important facility of all, and giving the well this kind of ornate gable in white lias and limestone (complete with coat of arms, now worn away) is an indication of that care. One hopes that there was also originally some sort of cover, to keep out inquisitive infants and falling leaves so that it could indeed be a well for all seasons.

Buckingham Place, London

Number one, and Number Six

Pevsner classifies the houses of Buckingham Place, in the little enclave between Buckingham Palace and Victoria Station, as neo-Georgian. This isn't a style that normally catches my eye, but No 1 Buckingham Place, with its ornate door case, transcends the blandness of much neo-Georgian, harking back to the very beginning of the 18th century. The architect, L Stanley Crosbie, and his craftsmen really let rip with those scrolling brackets, little heads, acanthus leaves, and the rest.

That's the architectural bit. But there's more. What draws me to this building is the fact that as a boy in 1967, I sat in front of the television one September evening and watched an opening sequence that has haunted me ever since…

A storm is gathering. We hear thunder, a roar that turns into the sound of a jet engine. A Lotus 7 speeds along what looks like an airfield runway or a straight road in the middle of nowhere. The same car drives through Westminster, past the Houses of Parliament, around a corner, into an underground car park. The driver, the actor Patrick McGoohan, gets out, walks purposefully – angrily – through doors marked "WAY OUT", up a corridor, and enters an office where a man sits at a desk in front of a world map. McGoohan harangues the man (we can't hear what he says, as the theme music has now taken over the soundtrack), throws his resignation letter on to the desk, hammers the desk with his fist, and walks out. We are aware of a funereal black car following the Lotus as McGoohan drives home to No 1 Buckingham Place, where he packs his suitcase. Is he preparing to go away on holiday? The mysterious photographs he drops into the suitcase suggest something else. But we have no time to ponder this, because his pursuer from the black car pumps gas into the room, rendering him unconscious. McGoohan wakes, a prisoner, in a village by the sea.

British readers of a certain age will probably realise that the sequence I'm describing comes from the opening of The Prisoner, a TV drama series that sees its protagonist – McGoohan, the secret agent who has resigned – trapped in the mysterious Village where the inhabitants are assigned numbers instead of their names. Our hero (now known as Number Six, although he rejects this dehumanizing convention) tries to escape, while also attempting to find out whether the Village is being run by his own former employers or their enemies; the authorities of the Village, meanwhile, try to pump the prisoner for information. It is all very haunting and enigmatic (and, Kafkaesque as it is, has proved so for those who grew up on the eastern side of the iron curtain as well as those in the west).

For many people, the architectural interest of The Prisoner lies largely in the scenes set in the Village, which were mostly filmed in Portmeirion, the fantastic Italianate architectural ensemble on the coast of North Wales designed by Clough-Williams Ellis. But because I sometimes like to show my readers the buildings that aren't usually in the limelight, the ornate doorcase of No 1 Buckingham Place – in shot for a split-second – seemed to fit the bill.

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The Portmeirion village website is here. It also contains more information about The Prisoner.

Badmin's England (2)

As a follow-up to my previous post about the book Village and Town, written and illustrated by S R Badmin, here is one more of his evocative illustrations. This is "A limestone village", Badmin's portrayal of the architecture of the limestone belt that sweeps up England from Somerset, through Gloucestershire, parts of Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland, to the eastern part of Lincolnshire. From this broad band of stone country, Badmin has set his imaginary stone village in the Cotswolds – it is all rolling hills and golden walls.

The houses have the rows of parapetted gables typical of the region, together with the stone-mullioned windows and tall chimneys mostly placed at the gable ends. A church tower, reminiscent of the one at Chipping Campden, looks down on the scene, and the field in the foreground has a drystone wall. To the right is a large stone barn (based loosely on the barn at Bradford on Avon on the fringes of the Cotswolds in Wiltshire), on which the Cotswold stone "slates" are laid in the traditional way, large stones at the bottom of the slope near the eaves, smaller ones at the top, near the apex.

As with other illustrations in Village and Town, Badmin has brought together buildings and objects from different places to create his village scene. And not just the buildings. That cart in the foreground looks like something Badmin had spotted and drew and couldn't wait to incorporate into a bigger picture. (In the same way he incorporated a wonderful crane into a woodland logging scene in his Shell Guide to Trees and Shrubs.) But made-up as it is, this Limestone Village scene is convincing in terms of both architecture and landscape.

But does this scene represent an idealized view of England? It certainly looks very neat and tidy – neater and tidier than the Cotswolds I remember from my boyhood a couple of decades after the picture was made. Back then there was much poverty, houses were often badly maintained, and you were more likely to meet a heard of cows than a traffic jam. Now everything is tidier and in better repair, but there are cars everywhere.*

To be fair to Badmin, he does show us that this is a working place. The barn is in use; the cart stands ready; chickens are scratching around (it all becomes clearer if you click on the image to enlarge it). In the distance is the farmland that kept people alive in Badmin's time and brought prosperity to this area in the Middle Ages, making possible all this upmarket stone building. A mixture of cornfields and sheep pasture extends into the distance, over the hills, between the woods, and towards the far horizon.

*And it sometimes feels as if you have to have the income of a movie star to live here.

Cornwell, Oxfordshire

Village vision

My foggy morning visit to Great Rollright (see previous post) was followed by a brief stop in Cornwell on the other side of the A44. This is a tiny estate village full of typical Cotswold stone houses, all limestone walls, mullioned windows, and stone ‘tiled’ roofs. As you look, though, you detect that Cornwell is slightly different from the scores of other limestone villages on the Cotswolds. It’s not that most of it is gated off the main thoroughfare with ‘Private Road’ signs. The place just seems to have more than its fair share of whimsical details – gate posts with big ball finials, and, as on the cottage in the picture, lovely door canopies with curvy stone brackets and big chunky buttresses.

The reason is that the village was restored in the 1930s by the self-styled ‘architect errant’ Clough Williams-Ellis. Williams-Ellis, whose work ranges from the famous and fantastical Welsh village Portmeirion to a filling station in the form of a pagoda (long gone, alas) in Cheltenham, was a largely self-taught architect, an enthusiast of the baroque and of architectural fun, a committed proponent of conservation, an advocate of higher standards in town planning, and a persuasive writer (England and the Octopus) often in collaboration with his wife, Amabel. For Cornwell, the he designed an extraordinary centrepiece, the village hall, with its apsidal end and towering bell turret, and made a delightful feature out of the stream that flows through the village centre, over and under the cobbles of the street. Williams-Ellis worked on the big house in the village too, continuing the aqueous theme with a water garden. The whole place looks very much as it must have been when he left it, only the television aerials betraying the continuing modern life within the cottages. I almost expected a cart to go by, rather than the passing Land Rover, and even it seemed quieter than usual, as if its engine was muffled by the mist.

Barton on the Heath, Warwickshire

Village greens are amongst our most cherished public spaces. A village green can be the site of a cross, well, pump, seat, or bus shelter, the setting for cricket matches and informal gatherings, the summer extension of the local pub. The trees that often grow around the green provide welcome shade, shelter, and visual focus. The occasional structures that lurk amongst them can be interesting too.

Near the trees and limestone cottages of the green at Barton on the Heath is this surprising and intelligent piece of design. It’s a water fountain, donated to the village by Major and Mrs R W Bird in memory of their son, who died on 12 July 1874. No doubt it was a valued water source when it was first installed. Now it’s appreciated as a landmark, valued as a bit of visual punctuation.

The fountain is rather too small to be a building, but with its little dome and trio of columns, it is undoubtedly architectural. It finds its place here because such miniature structures have an impact beyond their size. Prominently placed, Classical in style, and simply pretty, structures like this fountain bring a bit of country house style to the village green, a touch of the palace to the people. And that means us all.