Louth, Lincolnshire

Indoors, outdoors

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that one of the pleasures of blogging is receiving additional information about the buildings in my posts. Here is a case in point. When I posted a picture of these almshouses in Louth, back in 2014, I mentioned that a great aunt of mine had lived in one of them at the end of her life. So these are buildings I recall seeing as a small boy, before I knew anything about their architect – the prolific Fowler of Louth, lover of the Gothic style, restorer of churches, and builder of hospitals and schools as well as houses. In my post, I expressed the hope that these tiny Bede Houses (they’re apartments, really) had by now been modernised, as the accommodation they offered was very basic. 

Not so long ago, a reader found this post and left a comment, telling me that his aunt had been a warden for the Bede Houses in the late-1970s and that the accommodation was indeed modernised at around that time. A major part of this was the provision of modern bathrooms, in most cases added in an extension at the back of the building, and also by the removal of one dwelling to give room for some bathrooms that wouldn’t fit in the extension. It’s great to learn that the charm of the Victorian buildings has been preserved while also giving the occupants much better facilities. I have friends who are trustees of almshouses in another old building, and I know how difficult it can be to modernise while maintaining architectural integrity and character. 

Another thing I recall from visits to my great aunt long ago, was that in the summer, quite a bit of the life of the occupants was lived outdoors. There were benches in the courtyard, and plenty of space for those who wanted to get some fresh air and chat to their neighbours. It is good too, looking at my photographs, that there still seem to be pleasant flowerbeds as well as space for sitting and exercise. Here’s hoping that it won’t be too long before outdoor socialising will be possible once more.

Eye-opener

Readings and rereadings (3): John Betjeman, First and Last Loves

Since the lockdown began and I’ve been indulging myself by rereading some favourite books, I’ve been intending to reread something by John Betjeman. His work means a lot to me – especially his prose (I like some of the poems a lot too, but not all of them), particularly because he was one of the authors who first stimulated my interest in architecture. Years ago, the introduction to his Collins Guide to English Parish Churches helped me towards both an appreciation of church architecture and to a basic understanding of the history of church buildings – how the way they’re used has effected their fabric and furnishings. Later, his book on railway stations introduced me to another branch of architecture, and his essays on Victorian architects opened up still greater vistas. All of these subjects, and more, were also illuminated by Betjeman’s numerous television programmes, films that let him use his good nose for places – their character, landscape, history, and people.

A book that’s rich with the taste of all these preoccupations is First and Last Loves, a collection of essays that Betjeman had written in the 1930s and 1940s and gathered together in 1952. In many ways, it represents, in just 244 pages, the essence of Betjeman. Three essays on churches (Blisland in Cornwall, Mildenhall in Wiiltshire, and St Mark’s Swindon) are highly evocative, describing the setting, history, and furnishings of these churches as well as their architecture. There are also pieces that do something similar for Victorian architecture, nonconformist chapels, and London railway stations. When he’s writing about railway architecture, for example, we learn a lot about the stations’ histories, but Betjeman also conjures up a picture of the kind of people that typically use each one – from the army men and high-ranking civil servants travelling from Waterloo to the lower ranks of the civil service on the Metropolitan line to Rickmansworth or Northwood.

An old favourite of mine is the piece called ‘Antiquarian Prejudice’, in which the author makes fun of the blinkered views of antiquarians who will only take something seriously if it’s old, and take many old things (such as aumbries and piscinas in churches) much too seriously. Some of this is written with great wit.* But there’s also a seriousness behind it – if we don’t use our eyes and realise the aesthetic value of things, they’ll be gone, and all we’ll have will be supercinemas, dull office blocks, concrete lampposts, and telegraph wires – and everywhere will look the same as everywhere else.† Already, he notes in another piece, we’re losing piers, bandstands, music halls, and other undervalued bits of popular architecture so that only funfairs remain of this kind of thing.

Best of all are the essays that describe favourite places. These places can be large towns, such as Cheltenham or Aberdeen, or smaller settlements, especially but not only seaside ones: Lyndhurst or Port Isaac, Sidmouth or Highworth. These pieces are full of classic Betjeman perceptions: the sadness of closed amusement parks out of season; the manifold scents of the New Forest (you can smell the place before you can see it); the ‘tangible’ climate of Sidmouth and its glorious flowers; the colours of Cornish slate; the vital importance of exploring every alley in Highworth (and everywhere else). This stuff is full of pure joy, and packed with personal reminiscence: of seeing St Endellion’s church and realising it looks like a crouched hare; of the different routes into Padstow; of unrequited love in Weymouth; and of New Forest ponies invading the quiet streets of Lyndhurst (one wonders whether they are back there again now).

This is not nostalgia, even if it’s sometimes expressed with a certain wistfulness. Betjeman was aware, writing in the 1930s and 1940s, of a sense of urgency: he had to write about these things, now, because tomorrow might be too late: developers with wrecking balls might be moving in. To say that he dislikes planners with no sense of place, or people who knock down good historic buildings for no reason except to make money, or antiquarians who won’t look, is an understatement. He loathes them, exuding a quality that I think of as ‘regulated hatred’.¶ Hatred of this kind is sometimes necessary. But it is nothing without its obverse quality, love, and when Betjeman is using his own eyes and writing about places he loves – about Port Isaac or Highworth, say, he’s revelatory, and makes one want to get out and open one’s own eyes. One day, soon, I hope.

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* Betjeman’s talk of blinkered professor-doctors has been taken as a swipe at his friend and occasional rival, Nikolaus Pevsner. There is something in that, but I think Betjeman might also be thinking of the dons who sent him down from Oxford without a degree.

† There are odd and haunting pre-echoes of Ian Nairn here.

¶ I have appropriated this term from the literary critic D. W. Harding, who used it in an article called ‘Regulated Hatred: an Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen’. 

Balham Hill, London

Light exercise

Sometimes I deliberately get off at the wrong tube station. But it’s not what you think. I’m neither covering up my geographical incompetence with the cloak of deliberation, nor am I on a ruthless quest for exercise. I get off and walk because you never know what you might see on the way. So one fine day, en route to visit friends who live near Balham underground station, I get off at Clapham South instead, and schlep my bag southwards, along Balham Hill.

I’ve not gone far before this hoves into view. ‘Of course,’ I think. ‘I’ve seen this in books. Books about cinema architecture.’ It’s the former Balham Odeon,* was designed by the Odeon’s house architect, George Coles, and opened in 1938 with the film Blondes for Danger. If the title of that film is very much of its time, so is the architecture of the cinema: large and tiled, with curved corners and a rather chunky tower. It’s Art Deco, but not the highly ornate Deco of some examples, certainly not with any hint of the historicising decoration of cinemas like the one in Essex Road or the extraordinary interior of the Granada, Tooting, which was the nearest big cinema to this one. The Balham Odeon is just huge, 1930s-modern, and rather lumpish.§

But to think of it simply as a lump is to miss its point. It was designed to be seen at its best at night, when film-goers would turn up to be greeted by bands of neon stretching horizontally along the facade and vertically up the tower. The name ODEON was lit up in neon too and the lights make the building look much less lumpen than it seems by day. Its hilly location and illuminated tower meant that it could be seen for miles too – an effective if brazen advertisement for the cinematic joys within.† There are, I know, people who will think that its night-time illumination is insufficient excuse for the daytime appearance of this building. I have a certain sympathy for this opinion, but I offer the after-dark view as a reminder that things are not always, 24/7, what they seem. And that there is more than one way to look at a building.

Balham Odeon at night. Photograph © English Heritage

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* The name of Oscar Deutsch’s company, Odeon, derives from an ancient Greek word for theatre. It was only after the company had adopted it that a clever member of the firm’s publicity department realised that its letters could provide the initials of a catchy slogan: Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation.

§ And encumbered with telecommunications equipment. Only connect.

† There are no longer neon lights and the building’s front of house, in normal times, is given over to the useful business of selling wine; there are apartments to the rear.

Frampton on Severn, Gloucestershire

Aide memoire

Going through my photographs to pull out some to share, I came across the first digital photograph I took, or at any rate the first I thought at all fit to preserve. As you will see straight away, it’s far from an ideal picture, an ‘over the wall’ job, showing what can be seen of a building on private land from a public road. The building in question is the orangery at Frampton Court, Gloucestershire, and when I took the picture it was to jog my memory to go back on one of the occasions when the grounds of Frampton Court are open and it’s possible to see the this building – and the impressive architecture of the main house – clearly. Years later, I’ve still not made this visit, so the image above remains my only photograph of the orangery. Carpe diem.

Over the wall we see the building from the side, almost end-on but at a slight angle. Viewed from the front, it’s symmetrical and consists of a pair of matching octagons with ogee windows all round, joined in the middle and complemented by a central octagonal turret. In my picture the two matching octagons and turret can be seen, the turret topped by a tiny cupola. Pinnacles and crenellations crown the skyline, ogee-topped windows with glazing in a pattern of hexagons and diamonds dominate the walls. Indeed the walls, made of very high quality ashlar, are minimal, so many and so large are the windows. The stonework is finely detailed, with lovely curvy hoodmoulds. If you click on the picture, it might just be possible to make out tripartite ‘skirts’ beneath the window sills, carved in very shallow relief.

Reference books tell us that this building’s exquisite Gothick* architecture dates from the late 1740s and may be the work of William Halfpenny, who drew heavily on drawings in Gothic Architecture Improved (1747) by Batty Langley.§ This filigree architecture is in marked contrast to the Baroque and Palladian cocktail of the main house. It must make a wonderful garden feature – and is likewise enchanting if tantalizing when viewed, as in my photograph, over the garden wall. A future visit will be something to look forward to…

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* I use the 18th-century faux-archaic spelling for this fanciful 18th-century version of Gothic architecture.

§ Halfpenny was probably based mainly in Richmond, Surrey, or London, but spent some time in Bristol. He was both an architect and the author of numerous architectural pattern books that showed a strong interest in the Gothick style as well as in Chinoiserie. William Halfpenny, Batty Langley: mid-18th century building could be both architecturally and onomastically lively!

Wellington Place, London

Taxi!

Most of my friends read a lot, and quite a few of them write books too. One of the most frequent mustn’t-grumble-glass-half-full-look-on-the-bright-side remarks I’ve heard from them since the virus made itself felt and we began to face up to time in isolation is along the lines of, ‘Well, at least I have lots of books to read’. Thinking about this the other day, I glanced along some of my shelves to reassure myself – as if anyone with thousands of books needed any reassurance – that there’s plenty that I’d like to read or re-read. At one point in this process, I looked at the handful of books I have by the journalist and travel writer H. V. Morton.¶ One, The Nights of London, fell open at a page describing a visit to a cabmen’s shelter. Of course! Something else I’d not got round to blogging about.

Green, wooden, and topped with rather fancy half-hipped roofs with a central ventilation louvre, cabmen’s shelters are easy to recognise – a small but distinguished building type that works, looks good, and is distinctive without sticking out like a sore thumb. They’ve existed since 1875, when the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund* was set up to build them, the purpose being to supply refreshments to cab drivers – originally the drivers of horse-drawn Hansom cabs – who could not park outside pubs and go inside without paying someone to mind the cab while they ate.

The size of the shelters was limited – they’re not supposed to be larger than a horse and cart, so as not to pose too much of an obstruction on the roads. In all, 61 were built, although now only 13 remain. The first was in St John’s Wood, not this one, which stands near St John’s Wood High Street, but in Acacia Road, to the northwest. The idea was that the shelters were for the use of cab drivers only – they only have room for ten or a dozen people inside – and I have never been inside one.§ My friend Peter Ashley, who can charm his way into all kinds of interesting situations, once got invited inside one, finding it both welcoming and cosy.†

Cab drivers are among the many groups whose work is ebbing away as a result of the virus. There are already plenty of examples of them helping the community. One hopes that they will continue to receive the support pioneered by organisations such as the admirable Cabmen’s Shelter Fund.

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¶ Morton was famous as the first journalist to report the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and for driving around Britain in a bull-nosed Morris and writing about what he saw in newspaper columns and books.

* Their initials, CSF, are usually visible in the decoration under the eaves.

§ I think some have occasionally been open on London Open House Weekends. The one in my photograph is apparently now a café open to all, but I didn't realise this as I photographed it early in the morning when it was closed for business.

† See his book London Peculiars (ACC Art Books, 2019). Peter also posts his beautiful photographs on Instagram: @unmitigatedpete

A way of seeing

Readings and rereadings (2): Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside

I’ve spent quite a lot of my life writing about buildings, especially old buildings, from castles to cathedrals. But I also have an abiding interest in the architecturally out-of-the-way – a term that suggests for me everything from buildings that did not even get built to the architecturally small, neglected, and apparently insignificant. It’s the second category that’s a major preoccupation of this blog – shacks, lock-ups, telephone boxes, outside privies: regular readers will know what I mean. People sometimes ask me how I became interested in this sort of thing. One answer is that I seem to be naturally disposed to favour underdogs of all sorts. Another reason is the influence of certain books, and one of these books might strike you as surprising.

Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside* is not an architecture book at all. In a bookshop you’d find it in the Natural History section – it chronicles the author’s explorations of edgelands, wastelands, and other bits of urban land that turn out to be havens for wildlife of all sorts. This unofficial countryside includes old gravel pits, canals, railway sidings, vacant lots, and rubbish tips, while also embracing golf courses, parks, gardens, and graveyards. In observing the plants, birds, and animals that colonise these spaces, Mabey develops a distinctive way of seeing, with all the naturalist’s usual alertness, curiosity, and sensitivity to place applied to a new and, it turns out, fascinating set of habitats.†

Mabey’s descriptions of the rich bird life to be seen in flooded gravel pits, of resourceful birds making nests out of wire in industrial sites, of botanising expeditions to rubbish tips and the ‘rough’ around golf courses, are all gripping. His explorations of the relationships between humans and kestrels, foxes, blue tits, and ‘weeds’ like thorn apple, are fascinating. And his enthusiasm for the places and their plant and animal inhabitants is infectious; all the more so, I think, because he doesn’t romanticise things, and knows that some of these habitats are by definition ephemeral.

This way of seeing things, this looking with an inquisitive interest at the apparently marginal and generally neglected, suggested to me a way of approaching my own areas of interest, buildings in particular. There are actually hints in The Unofficial Countryside of a relevance to architecture, for example when Mabey points out that buildings and plants have things in common, especially that both exist in a context; or when he writes about parish churches as bat roots, or ledges on buildings as gathering-places for pigeons, or temporary sandbanks on construction sites being taken over for a season by nesting sand martins.

I’d urge anyone with an interest in natural history, or with curiosity about places, or who just likes really good non-fiction writing, to read The Unofficial Countryside. The photograph of the book’s cover above is of the 1990s paperback copy on my shelves, but enterprising and on-the-ball publishers Little Toller Books have reprinted the book in a handsome new edition. I see that the Little Toller edition has a new introduction by Iain Sinclair, another writer about places who has influenced me.¶ What I have to say about him must wait for another post. Meanwhile, confined mainly to my house and garden, I have noticed that there seems to be more birdsong audible in these quiet times.§ Nature, places, open eyes and alert ears: they all offer consolations.

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* Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside, first published 1973; further reprints subsequently.

† The stream of now-fashionable books about urban edgelands hadn’t started in 1973, when Mabey ’s book came out.

¶ Newcomers to Iain Sinclair should be warned that his fiction is often challenging to read. His non-fiction is more accessible, however, and excellent. A good place to start might be Lights Out For the Territory (1997).

§ Wood pigeons, a blackbird, and a thrush have been at it while I wrote this, and other birds I can’t identify. Perhaps the birds were singing as much all along, but now, my locked-down ears are more attuned to their music.

Longborough, Gloucestershire

Dazzled

The huge southern window at Longborough featured in my previous post makes the church’s south transept gloriously light, especially on a sunny day like the one when I last visited. The downside is that this makes the two monuments placed beneath the window very difficult to photograph. My image shows the older of the two, a medieval knight, whose armour dates him to around 1325, when this part of the church was built. Could he have been the patron who paid for the extension to the building? Perhaps.

His image is very stylized and there’s not a lot of detail. It’s not – or at least not in its present state – outstanding sculpture in the way that the south window (see my previous post) is outstanding stonework. So when I aimed my camera at it, I went for atmosphere rather than detail, and made the image as contrasty as I could.