Whitby, Yorkshire

Postcards from England: 5. Prospects for Whitby

It's a long time since I've been to Whitby, and climbed dozens of steps to the church, and realised that it could be reached much more easily from the nearby abbey, and stood amazed at the extraordinary interior, with its a winning combination of medieval walls and Georgian pews and galleries, but I remember the place with some affection. I was pleased to see, when looking it up in Pevsner as a preliminary to writing this post, that the great man loved it too and that he at least thought I got it right by approaching the building the hard way:

It was assumed just now that one would visit the church from and after the abbey. That is a mistake. One should look at it as part of the fishing and shipping town and reach it from below, i.e. not by car, but by the winding 199 steps. There it is then, when the exertion is over, in a splendid position, low and spreading and battlemented, a wonderful jumble of medieval and Georgian when one walks round it, hard to believe and impossible not to love.

My postcard shows some of the wonderful jumble: the galleries that have colonised most of the upper spaces, the Cholmondeley pew (the bit elevated on twisted columns) that cuts right across the chancel arch, the wooden ceiling that seems a bit too low, the enormous pulpit rising through the middle of it all. It shouldn't work, but it does, somehow, from the finials on the pews to the curlicues on the pulpit, from the twisty columns to the clock on the gallery front, redolent of long sermons on winter evenings. Pevsner had his thoughts on other things than sermons when admiring the box pews: they "positively invite games of hide and seek," he wrote.

It was certainly worth the climb, and the church stands magnificently on its cliff top. But there's the rub. The churchyard, which features in Bram Stoker's Dracula, is eroding away. Some more chunks fell off recently, landing soil and bones on the beach below. "Whitby landslip exposes human bones at 'Draclua graveyard'," shouted BBC News, finding it unable to resist the Stoker connection. The bones are regathered and reinterred. Engineers, apparently, are working on the problem of stabilising the cliff and the church, for now, is not said to be under threat. I hope the prospects remain good.

Gloucester Road, London

A note from underground

On the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, a brief tribute to one of its architects.

In 1903 Leslie Green was appointed architect to the Underground Electric Railway Company of London. His job was to design stations for the Bakerloo, Piccadilly, and Northern lines, to make these stations work within the demanding engineering requirements that resulted from building a complex railway network beneath a great city, and to devise a distinctive but consistent style that would make them recognisable. Over the next five years he designed more than 50 stations, creating a visual style, with the now-familiar ox-blood coloured tiles, that became synonymous with the Underground. My photograph shows the sun catching some of the gold lettering on the tiles of Gloucester Road station. Green's design style, with Arts and Crafts arches, semi-circular windows, and the ubiquitous tiles, was a success – in developing it, Green could be called one of the fathers of the idea of the corporate identity, and its importance is acknowledged by the fact that many of his stations are now listed. Sadly, Green did not go on to yet more successful architectural projects. He died in 1908, still in his thirties.

Northampton

Letter set (4)

To complete my short series about letters on buildings, here's an example of a fourth kind of lettering, the sort known generally and unflatteringly as the grotesque. These letters are distinguished by their total lack of serifs, the little end strokes that adorn Egyptian, Clarendon, classical and "English" letters† and in the world of print and type this class of letter is known simply as "sans serif".

At first glance you could almost believe that some gigantic stamping device has been at work to create this example beneath the pediment of the former Northamptonshire Union Bank in Northampton, but this is stone not concrete and it must have taken a lot of chiselling to incise the these large grotesque capitals. Their unadorned, businesslike quality contrasts with the more delicate carving of the composite capitals below them and the phoenix, with its flames and logs, above. In this context (classical architecture, classical mythology) one might have expected more classical or "English" letterforms, like the ones on Roman inscriptions perhaps, but these plainer ones certainly get the message across. Alan Bartram, whose short book, Street Name Lettering in the British Isles (1978)§, has been a useful guide for me, describes the grotesque letter as "in reality, an Egyptian without serifs", going on to remark that it's an adaptable form that can be used at a wide range of different weights.

These Northampton examples are nicely proportioned letters, although the P is rather high-waisted, making its bowl somewhat small and confined. On a modern inscription the letter would probably have a much fuller bowl. But this bank was built in 1841 and in those days that was often how they made, to adapt Shakespeare's phrase, their great Ps.

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† Readers who would like to see examples of these other classes of lettering can see my other posts on Egyptians in Stroud, Clarendons in Devizes, and "English" letters in Leicester.

§ The companion volumes, Fascia Lettering in the British Isles and Tombstone Lettering in the British Isles are also both worth seeking out via ABE or used book stores.

Devizes, Wiltshire

Letter set (3)

Back before Christmas, I was finding examples of the various kinds of letters found on English buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries. My last example, inspired by a recent visit to Stroud in Gloucestershire, was of the Egyptian letter, with its slab serifs. Here's another type, the clarendon, in which which those serifs are linked to the main strokes with a little curve, to make the whole letter less blocky. These huge letters on the sign of the Bear Hotel in Devizes are some of the biggest I've sen recently – there is absolutely no mistaking the identity of this building, and the huge size of the sign means that I can blow it up with ease so that you can see the little curves clearly on the T, E, and L.

Clarendons also work well on a much smaller scale and are often used on the cast metal signs bearing the names of streets. Although thousands of these old cast signs have been replaced by less attractive plastic ones (on the grounds of saving repainting costs, presumably), there are quite a few still around. SIgns on the gigantic scale of the Bear Hotel, forming a stripe right across the front of the building, are also quite unusual these days, although the Victorians had a liking for them, often covering commercial buildings with big signs of all sorts. The proliferation of advertising and similar signs is nothing new – but at least painted signs like this one show more care and flair than modern plastic ones.

Great West Road, London

Standing out again

By the early-1930s, a new generation of industry was establishing itself around the edges of Britain's towns and cities. This wasn't the heavy industry that had probably first come to mind when people thought of manufacturing in the 19th century. This was modern, light industry and it was producing all kinds of things – domestic appliances, personal-grooming products, and items connected with the growing car industry. I've posted before about some of the 1930s factories that survive along the main roads of West London –  especially Western Avenue and the Great West Road.

These buildings have gleaming white Art Deco fronts (containing offices, mostly) with larger, plainer, but well-lit workshops or warehouses behind. The fronts acted as advertisements, presenting a modern image on behalf of the owners and their companies. This example on the Great West Road began as the Coty cosmetics factory. Its white walls and strip windows speak of cleanliness and the latest decorative fashion of 1932. The building lacks the brightly coloured flourishes that appear on many Art Deco factories, but there are several telling details that show the architects, Wallis Gilbert and Partners, balancing decorative touches – their design is basically about setting up a rhythm of straight lines (windows, glazing bars, uprights) and then introducing just enough curves, steps, and diagonals to play variations on the grid. The stepped profile of the top of the facade and the detailing (both curves and verticals) around the entrance are key decorative elements. The way the glazing goes all the way up to the corners and the little angled detail on the lower edge of the corner windows is another telling touch.

It's interesting that this kind of building, now surrounded by office blocks of the 1980s and 1990s in various, mostly postmodern, styles (with much mirror glazing and colourful cladding), now looks almost restrained. Apparently cared for and well used, these buildings of the 1930s have found a new way to stand out.

Wyck Rissington, Gloucestershire

Three ways  

In the bleak midwinter, with rain on rain in this part of the world, here's a photograph to remind us of last summer's sun, warming up the Cotswold stone at Wyck Rissington, northeast of Bourton-on-the-Water.  Aside from the obvious charm of this stone building in its tree-lined churchyard, I'm attracted to this building for various reasons. Here are three things that interest me about it; three ways of looking at a building, if you like.

First, the architecture. Although this is a small church, built by unknown masons and added to over the centuries in what looks like a haphazard way (look at the miscellaneous selection of window styles), it has had architectural pretensions, especially with regard to the chancel (in the foreground of the photograph). This small part of an obscure church represents a moment in English architectural history. It dates from the mid-13th century and the end wall, with its two pairs of lancet windows and small corner buttresses with pointed tops, is very much of its period. So is the surviving single lancet on the side wall (the larger windows are later; originally there would have been more lancets along this side). This was the period when English builders were beginning to group lancet windows together and add smaller openings (circles, trefoils, quatrefoils) above them to create windows with tracery – the window on the side wall next to the drain pipe is an example from a later phase of building. In the end wall, the two concave-sided lozenge-shaped openings above the pairs of lancets, and the plainer diamond opening above them, create a kind of proto-tracery, as if the masons were feeling their way towards this idea but not quite getting there yet: fascinating.

Next, what has happened to the building recently, for all old buildings need care and repair, and how this is done affects both their survival and their appearance. On my visit in the summer, the church architect happened to be there making an inspection, and we talked both about the 13th-century architecture of the chancel and about the recent work on the church roof. As you can see, the nave roof has been completely recovered in new Cotswold stone "slates". Some of the old slates were still in good enough condition to be recycled, as were quite a few on the chancel roof. So when the nave roof was finished, the chancel roof was redone with the best of the old slates. Both roofs are now good for many years, and the new slates on the nave roof will eventually darken in colour, attract lichen, and match the older ones on the chancel. 

Finally, a historical association, because the people who use old buildings are frequently just as interesting as the buildings themselves. In the early 1890s, the 17-year-old  Gustav Holst got his first job here, as church organist. He soon added a similar position at nearby Bourton-on-the-Water and this work helped to sustain the young composer until he got a scholarship to the Royal College of Music a couple of years later. Holst, who was born in Cheltenham, spent most of his adult life in London, but always loved the Cotswolds. One of his more ambitious works is his Cotswolds Symphony, the beautiful slow movement of which is subtitled "In memoriam William Morris". Perhaps his most familiar work, though, is one that many do not realise is by him, the tune called Cranham (named for another Cotswold village) which is the most popular music for the carol "In the Bleak Midwinter". Here it is, sung by that great British ensemble, The Sixteen.* Season's Greetings to you all.

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*Or there it was. The video I originally attached to this post has been removed from YouTube. There are plenty of other versions online, though, including one from the choir of Gloucester Cathedral, here.

Stroud, Gloucestershire

Letter set (2)

Having finished the book recommendations that have occupied the last few posts, I return to buildings – but without leaving the world of books and words behind completely, because the other weekend I went to a talk in Stroud by Phil Baines, who is a professor at Central St Martin's School of Art in London. He has written two excellent books on the design history of Penguin books (Penguin By Design and Puffin By Design) and is also an expert on all things to do with type and lettering. I had encountered him a few years ago when he led a tour of central London on an antique Routemaster bus, pointing out interesting bits of lettering as we went.

During the course of the talk he mentioned that he had seen the Stroud Subscription Rooms (a 19th-century classical building by Basevi with its name high up in the frieze), and admired the lettering on them, which is a good example of a form of letter generally known as the Egyptian. In Egyptian letters the proportions are very similar to those of the English letter (see my earlier post on this), but the letters have slab serifs – rectangular, square-cut terminating strokes. The strokes often have a fairly even thickness, but if the letters are very chunky, the strokes can have some variation in thickness. Phil Baines encouraged us to go to the Subscription Rooms in Stroud, admire these letters, and pay special attention to the fine letter R. The letters stand out beautifully from the stone wall and Phil Baines was right, of course, to mention this letter; it has a lovely curve to the leg, which bends elegantly to avoid the large slab serif at the base of the descender. The two big slab serifs on the U, which nearly join together in the middle, and the big, generous D are attractive too. But the R is especially good, and in pointing it out, Professor Baines was showing us that he knows his Rs from his elbow.