Internet Curtains

Nottingham to the Sea: Trent Lane Depot

2011-05-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Trent Lane Depot, Nottingham

Trent Lane Depot was Nottingham's ambitious attempt to connect with the trade of the North Sea during the inter war years of the twentieth century. During that time the Corporation of Nottingham took over management of the Nottingham - Newark stretch of the river. This was when the city was seeking to continue the diversification of its economy, especially since the local monopoly of the lace trade was then clearly at an end. But the corporation was also seeking permission from central government to extend the city boundary from beyond this very location (the eastern end of Sneinton) and eastward into Colwick. Any ambitious project on a national scale was sure to bring the city kudos at a time when it was struggling to shake off a reputation for slums. At first central government refused, on the grounds that the city had yet to clean up its social problems, and so the corporation solicited the help of local architect TC Howitt and begun building a series of 'garden suburbs' of both private and public housing. Nearby council houses off Colwick Road, are witness to this early stage of council house building in Notttingham. It is perhaps no co-incidence that TC Howit's civic centre, which was complete in 1929, was named 'The Council House'. Three years later the boundary was extended.

Corporation of Nottingham c.1930

The warehouses on Trent Lane were constructed of reinforced concrete and at the time they were proudly considered by the corporation to be among the best in the UK. With a total of 9 floors for loading and discharging materials such as timber, metal, chemicals and manufactured goods. These would be carried by barge to and from Hull, where any international trade could then be transferred onto ships. The 1937 Nottingham handbook proudly states that during the previous year over 230,000 tons had been carried on the Trent and that Nottingham had successfully created a major inland port, boasting "from Nottingham to the sea". Although this is somewhat less than the two or three million tons carried by an international port such as Hull, it is still quite an achievement for a landlocked city.

Second warehouse and dock entrance

In the post war years, petrol was also carried down the Trent to a new depot at Colwick further down stream. It was the growth of the combustion engine coupled with the gradual silting up of the Trent at Stoke Bardolph, which was to bring about the end of Trent Lane by the 1980s. Of recent years there have been attempts to regenerate this area with waterside luxury apartments, although with the onset of the credit crunch, the planned demolition of this site appears to have been put on hold. When I was commissioned to do this walk by Hinterland in 2006, it seemed as though this landscape was going to become another symbol of a laissez-faire era dominated by finance and property. Instead, we are now returning to some traditional ideas set deep with the rotting concrete of Trent Lane: social housing and industry.

--

References:
J. Giggs, Housing, Population and Transport, in J. Becket, (ed.), A Centenary History of Nottingham pp.435 – 462.
Nottingham City Council, The City of Nottingham Official Handbook, (Nottingham, 1937).

Originally written for Hinterland Projects Publication 2 (2009)

Boston, Holland

2011-05-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

Finally, finally got round to writing my own blog post on one of Britain's lessor known towns: Boston, in the Part of Holland, Lincolnshire. This is via Jones the Planner - a collaborative blog between me and the urban designer Adrian Jones. You can also check out our Flickr Sets. Hope you enjoy it.

CLASP School Open Day

2010-10-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

"You could see out beautfully, so that you were part of the outdoor environment - though it was poorly insulated." (Janet Wilson, former teacher, Larkfields Infants)   

Having discoverd that my first school was a 1971/2 CLASP build, (complete with steel frame, timber panels and hung tiles), I decided to pay a visit and venture inside - curbing the CRB madness by using relatives and former neighbours to gain access after school hours.

I was more than aware that that my poor aesthetic heart would be broken by the UPVC and security fencing, so I thought it best to interview my former teacher Janet Wilson for some level headed realities about what it was like to work here. This I hoped, would stop me straying into too much post-war modernist nostalgia and waxing on about Eames, Lyons, the Bauhaus and all the rest of it. Interestingly the conversation revealed more than I had bargend for.

Like me, Janet comes from a local family with a history of Methodism and mining, complete with laissez-faire horror stories passed down to us about times before welfare and compulsary education. To my surprise, the nearby Nuthall Methodist Church built in 1966 had some similar modernist aesthetics and principles to CLASP: it was built on rafts to withstand mining subsidence, it didn't worry about tradition or facing east, but instead focused on what was practical. Coincidentally many of my teachers here were also Methodist, yet this was by no means a religious school.

Both the church and this school were built during the post-war suburban expansion of council houses and private housing into old Nuthall, which had hitherto been an aristocratic parish with very few residents. Thanks to the draconian laws of settlement in the nineteenth century, most of the labouring poor had been squashed up and fighting for survival in either pit village or town slum. Through the centre of Nuthall D. H. Lawrence’s tram car in Tickets Please plunged and jerked on its way from hilly soot stained Eastwood ‘till at last the city looms beyond, the fat gasworks, the narrow factories draw near’.

Today this upper working/lower middle class suburb stunts the growth of the city boundary and is known by the press as marginal voting country or the ‘home of motorway man’: Nottingham for your industrial estate address and the shire for your home.

Both RIBA & the Pevsner guides lament the loss of the unique Temple, which could easily have been a National Trust property if it were not under Junction 26 of the M1. However, the aristocratic decline in the area did allow Basford District Council to become the principle landowner and this allowed Larkfields to became generously endowed with a vast playing field: complete with both running track and football field in an Eric Lyons inspired piece of landscaping. It was so large that all the feeder schools for Kimberley Comprehensive would come here and compete in a district sports day.

The open plan building of Larkfields Infants was centred on play, reflecting the education ethos of the time and making it a malleable place in which to work. However as time progressed the tiles fell, the roof leaked and the fire hazard in the ceiling cavity fanned the flames of concern.

I enjoyed this brief study of my old school but I have to admit that it's taken me nearly a year to pluck up the courage - due simply to the hysteria associated with adults wondering school property. What is also troubling is that the local authority architects of these schools had originally designed these education centres to be accessible to local people of all ages. It is as though schools have now become enclosed spaces: caving into demagogic television and tabloid hysteria. As a former newspaper lad on Coronation Road I know that some of those tardily delivered and rain sodden newspapers are partly to blame.

N. B. This piece of work was commissioned by YH485 Press.

Structure & the City: Station to Art Gallery

2010-09-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

The folowing is a visual study of a pedestrian route between a city's train station and contemporary art gallery. How will people visually experience this walk? Some of the abstract terms used are those taken from Christian Leborg's Visual Grammar.

Structure and the City

N.B. The above is just a small experiment as part of my London College of Communication coursework, so I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing here but with any help it may develop into something.

Nottingham View Points 1: Mapperley Top

2010-08-15T13:45:00.001-07:00

Woodthorpe Court and Winchester Court

This is partly in response to Sheffield Publicity Department's recent series of guides to local view points, which are accessible to the public. But it is also in awarenewss that civic vistas play an important role in town planning and a recent local study has correctly identified a few of these in my home town but alas, not all. So I intend to add to the list with my own series of Nottingham View Points and first up is Mapperley Top, where the Keupar Marl Clay lowlands of the Midlands meet the undulating sandstone hills of the North. At 400ft above sea level this is the most elevated part of the city and a painfully steep area which is relieved only by the excellent Bread and Bitter public house. Incidentally, I currently have five complete Castle Rock reward cards squirreled away!

Facing South East: Towards the Trent

There are hardly any views on Mapperley Top itself and it is only when you begin to descend what is simply a huge ridge, that you are met with an impressive panorama. The two sides of the ridge are different: one faces south east and the alluvial flood plain of the Trent Valley, while the other faces the undulating sandstone hills of Sherwood Forest and the coalfields of the north west.

Porchester Rd, Thorneywood

Looking down the steep Porchester Road you are met with the lush green and blue horizon of the Trent Valley. Notice how the council housing does little to add to this sense of place, though it is perhaps fair to suggest that these buildings certainly appeared more bucolic when they were first built.

Ransom Drive, St Ann's

From here you can see how the city has grown from its original site as the principle crossing point of the Trent. Yet despite this view being sited on land owned by the local authority the view is only accessible via a small grassy knoll. It's also feared that the council may be selling off some of this property for cheap housing development.

Kent Road, Porchester

Here the Keupar Marl contorts into peculiar steep little valleys, which populate the Porchester Estate. Like parts of Hyson Green, this housing estate begun life as a series of allotment plots developed by Nottingham workers and according to Geoffrey Oldfield the shape of some of the plots are still visible, while the streets were named after the original committee members:

The Porchester Estate, with its 800 gardens, subscribed for by instalments paid over 10 years, with the patronage of Ald. Bennett, Sir John Robinson, and Messrs. Whittingham, Haywood, and others, is a valuable institution, showing the power of self-help, of co-operation, of thrift, of the desire to live in quietness with healthy garden surroundings. These gardens were inspected by Lord Salisbury, the prime minister, when in 1889 he on a visit to Nottingham took occasion to announce free education.
(Robert Mellors Historical Articles 1914).

In those days Nottingham was surrounded by allotments, not in their hundreds but in their tens of thousands, and the great Dean Hole…estimated that in his day, about a hundred years ago, there were some 20,000 of them scattered around what was then an important town but not yet a city, and the home of under 200,000 people - an allotment for about every third family.
(Harry Wheatcroft, My life with Roses, 1959)

From Carlton Forum Park you can get a good impression of the hidden valley of the Porchester Estate. To the right of the picture is Mapperley Top and the hospital, while to the left the land slopes towards the Trent. The background and foreground show how the valley dips into a hidden crevice - I think it is safe to guess that this is one of the first of a series of dumbles which mold the clay lands east of the city.

Facing North West: Towards Sherwood Forest

Sherwood Vale, Sherwood

From this escarpment we are no longer met with a lush valley of clay and alluvium but rather the dark and looming heathland of Sherwood Forest.

Nearby on Morley Avenue (a street name which lured me in for numerous historical reasons) is one of the last remaining Nottingham lace factories originally built out of a clay pit from a nearby brick works. It is important to remember the phrase 'Nottingham was built on Mapperley Hills' and indeed so is St Pancras Station.

Breckhill Park, Woodthorpe Drive

brekka Old Norse, for 'slope' is fairly common in Lancashire and of very occasional appearance in some other northern counties
(Margaret Gelling, Place-Names in the the Landscape, 1984, p.129)

Woodthorpe Grange Park

One of my favourite parks in the city was given via the varied actions of a string of liberal industrialists which reads like a Who's Who of early twentieth century Nottingham: the eccentric Julien Cahn, Gripper the brick maker, methodist & chemist Jesse Boot, the railway builder Edward Parry and Henry Ashwell J.P., who ran a dyeing company and was an early member of the Thoroton Society. There are many stories of interest here which will have to wait for another time, not least is the Nottingham Suburban Railway, which was again thanks to those civic conscious industrialists. In the distance is Daybrook and the central sandstone watershed of Nottinghamshire.

Woodthrope Grange Park (towards Winchester St)

Woodthorpe and Winchester Court tower blocks overlook the Leen Valley and out towards Sherwood Forest. I think it is safe to assume that these are the same postwar standard 1001/6 Wimpey build as those on Manvers Street in Sneinton; brick walls, concrete panels and square balconies. Neither inspiring nor tasteless, though unlike Sneinton the design is flattered with a rolling public park.

Woodthrope Grange Park

According to the British Association for the Advancement of Science Nottingham is the most geologically complex city in the UK, save for Bristol. Some of this varied topography will be revealed in future views of the eastern clay lands, the Trent Valley, the western coalfields and the sandstone hills of the north, though I may struggle to find a view on the thinly veiled Limestone escarpment. I have previously regurgitated R. M. Butler's Thoroton article on how the modern city's street layout owes much to its geology and medieval field system but this will be a chance to follow a more aesthetic dérive. It is certainly exciting to think that the city has such an interesting topography on which to develop (or grow), though it is perhaps upsetting that it is not always realised.

River Leen: Cycle and Pedestrian Route

2010-07-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

River Leen: Access and Biodiversity Study

This latest town planning study is looking to create a new cycle and pedestrian route along the River Leen and is largely the work of Keith Morgan and the transport planning department at Nottingham City Council. It's basically extending the already successful Big Track idea. I will be creating a historical and visual guide book of sorts and looking for other peoples' responses to the route. Feel free to add your ideas and comments below. Ta.

Colwick Industrial Estate

2010-03-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

This follows part of a group bike ride from Stoke Bardoph Lock to Colwick Industrial Estate, along a newly relayed Trentside path. I have to thank Sneinton Bikers for their patience, as I must have tired then with my insistence on meandering along Sillitoe's tape worm artery of the Trent - stopping at rotting industrial heritage and contemporary manufacturing units.

In 1915 the Corporation of Nottingham took over the entire stretch of river from the city to Newark in an ambitious plan to increase the volume of traffic carried via the Trent. Hitherto the rate of traffic had been in decline; in 1898 the river carried over 400,000 tons per year but by 1915 it had declined below 300,000. By building new locks in the 1920s, such as this one at Stoke Bardolph, and with an extensive river dredging and deepening programme, the corporation successfully doubled tonnage on the Trent to over 650,000 by 1939. But it doesn't end there either, oh no, in 1978 the city had plans to develop the Trent further and build a major European port at Colwick for ocean going ships!

(A. C. Wood, A History of Trade and Transport on the River Trent, in Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 1950, Vo. 54), pp. 1-45.)

Today the river is mainly used for recreation and the 1920s plantation of trees which surround the lock provide an attractive haven for wildlife and a suitable spot for a foraging picnic, which dare I say it in such plain English: is a very nice place! A calming spot to sit and watch an autumn sunset. This can be a positive side of Britain's decline in industrial prowess - good footpaths, nature reserves, public recreation and wildlife. Not luxury riverside apartments inhabited briefly by dodgy football managers - as we shall see further up stream.

Next to the picnic tables is a wildlife guide powered by hand - also notice the bat carving on the corner.

Between the lock and viaduct a cycle path has been relayed alongside the river, which is abutted by Radcliff-on-Trent. No need to explain the Anglo Saxon terminology. Also notice the white bands of gypsum, a feature which rendered the Trent Valley as a centre of medieval alabaster carving, Pale Ale and British Gypsum. Illusive, familiar, moderate, bitter and flowery. It covers the cracks, the faulty joints and the dividing lines.

Unfortunately encased in concrete by British Rail in 1981 but the attempt to strengthen the crossing could have been worse. The bridge was originally built by the Ambergate Railway company - one of those many speculative and imaginative endeavours from the age of steam; this particular fantastical dream was to link Boston with Manchester but didn't get as far as Nottingham. It was eventually bought out by one of oldest of the big six railway companies: The Great Northern, which originated in Stevenson's North East and terminated at King's Cross. But this was Midland Railway country - the fourth of the big six, which originated in The Erewash and terminated at St Pancras. At least private railway competition was real back then, not the botched excuse it is now. Can anyone today seriously imagine each company with their own competing station in every town, or First Great Western sabotaging East Midlands Trains? But this is what happened here, back then in 1852.

By controlling the Grantham to Nottingham line, the Great Northern had a connection to the Erewash coalfields and the MR heartland. The MR retaliated by kidnapping the first GNR locomotive to arrive in Nottingham and it wasn't released for another 7 months following a long winded court case known as the 'battle of Nottingham'. The despute was settled by the GNR agreeing to pay a 10 year lease to the Midland for the use of their property until the they built their own station. It was in lieu of this that the GNR employed one of Nottingham's finest architects in TC Hine to decorate their new line with his then modish Jacobean and Italianate architecture: Nottingham GNR Station, the GNR Warehouse, Aslockton, Bingham, Colwick and Bottesford have the best surviving fragments. Nearby, Netherfield became a Great Northern Railway town with one of the biggest railway sidings in Midland country but was largely disbanded since post war nationalisation. This is one of those moments where Ray Gosling's observation about Nottingham can ring true, as a place 'where the Midlands meets the North'. Though I don't know if it is always a friendly meeting but sometimes more of an actual tension. The line also splits in two here - with another concrete viaduct which until 1993 was a mineral line to Cotgrave Colliery.

At evening by the lights of Netherfield-Dubovka
Walk similar embankments and announce their love
To rivers snaking over peacetime faces.
Alan Sillitoe A falling out of love and other poems (1964)

The Clayton Shuttleworth & Co. is credited with manufacturing the ironwork for this bridge - a Lincolnshire engineering company which made various machines for agriculture; threshing, ploughs, portable steam engines and so on. It is understandable why this company had a clear interest in the Ambergate Railway - connecting the Lincolnshire farmlands with the north midland coalfields. Boosted with the sales from the Great Exhibition, by 1857 the company was described as having machines all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with factories in both Vienna and Budapest. Despite the overwhelming success of the 1850s, by the turn of the century British agricultural machinery had lost out to American developments in reaping and binding technology. The post 1870 agricultural depression hadn't helped either when British farmers struggled amid growing international competition. There is a common tension thoughout these tales of British rise and decline; at one end proud complacency and at the other increasing international growth.

(The Market and the Development of the Mechanical Engineering Industries in Britain, 1860-1914, by S. B. Saul © 1967 Economic History Society .)

Cycling east to west, Park Logistics is one of the first firms you encounter at Colwick Industrial Estate.

One of the other major sites is Wastecycle, a private refuse collection and recycling company.

Trent Concrete has been here since 1919 and is one of the largest prefabricated concrete businesses in the United Kingdom, with a staff of nearly 150 people. Its most significant project of recent years has been the precast concrete panels for Nottingham Contemporary using technology developed at Derby University.

Armitage Brothers has a Royal Warrant for the manufacture and supply of pet food, priding itself on being the largest companies of its kind in Europe. It is over 200 years old and has had its main factory and distribution centre based in Colwick since the conception of the industrial estate during the interwar period. The writer Wayne Burrows worked here for a short time until he moved on to better things at the McCain Chip factory in Grantham.

The estate was originally conceived as an inland port to Hull and eventually the North Sea. It was generally considered a success by the 1960s but twenty years later this function had declined due to a combination of reasons, some of which include: the silting up of the Trent at Stoke Bardloph, an increase in road traffic and I think also the piping of north sea oil to Colwick - though as yet I can find no further information about the inland piping of refined oil.

Access to water traffic was a valuable asset for the import of raw sugar. Perhaps the oldest building on the estate is the Sugar Beet Factory - an industry which was established in England between 1912 and 1928 and one which was more predominant in the flat lands of East Anglia. Colwick was therefore of marginal importance in the industry, being developed out of speculative corporate decisions rather than locational necessity. There were and still are a small number of sugar beet factories in the UK, although Colwick is no longer one of them. This was an industry which appears to have developed out of Britain's decline in its international standing: in the nineteenth century it had relied on imports via empire and the continental dumping of sugar - hence the Victorian origins of Tate & Lyle. All this changed in the early years of the twentieth century when the dumping of sugar in Europe was restricted by international agreement and new customs duties were imposed on the material. The site is now used by Kitchen World and the grounds as depot for Leec - manufactures of medical and mortuary equipment.

(The Location of the Beet-Sugar Industry in England and Wales, 1912-36, by H. D. Watts © 1971 The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).)

Since the dredging of the River in the 1920s, this was a place where oil could be distributed from Hull via the Trent to the petroleum depot at Colwick - an important distrubution centre for the East Midlands. The oil drums are still an impressive site from the Colwick Loop Road, but it is now a shadow of its former self - at one time the site was home to Texaco, Esso and Total but it appears that only the latter remains - the adjacent site of the former occupants have been cleared for redevelopment.
(The Inland Waterways of the United Kingdom in the 1960s Author(s): H. D. Watts Source: Economic Geography, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 303-313)

ROL is an international retail fixture suppliers which has offices in Italy, Denmark, Sweeden, Holland, Spain, France, Brazil, USA and Thailand. It is not suprising that its UK headquaters are based here given the city's history in commerical manufacture - especially Boots. World-wide ROL employs over 500 people.

It is perhaps fair to suggest that the quality of architecture at Colwick has declined since the 1970s and this building marks the last attempt at industrial aesthetics, in this case a muted Scandinavian modernism. Manufacturing is still a vital part of the economy, but its relative neglect compared to finance and business is evident in nearly every industrial estate I have been to in Nottingham. Business Parks at Ruddington, Pheonix Park, NG2 and Assarts Farm have pine plantations, good roads and new builds - many of which are empty. Yet manufacturing estates such as Glaisdale Drive, Lenton, Bulwell, Dunkirk, Radford, Stapleford, Basford and Eastwood are left to rot; with huge potholes and a regular diet of dodgy burger vans. This is the unit which my Dad rents for engineering here. Bio City and the Science Park are notable exceptions, though they are not built for mechanical engineers or manufacturers.

Notice the potholes. In 1907 textiles was the largest single branch of engineering in the UK and a dominant force in world trade. Earnest Jardine was one of its major players with a highly successfuly lace machine making company based in Nottingham. Colwick Industrial Estate was originally conceived in the 1920s and financed by Jardine's ambitious plans to make way for the city's expansion and make money in industrial real estate. It is perhaps testament to his forward planning that some of the original occupants are still here, though it is also a little endemic of the lace machine markers' complacency that companies such as Jardines are no longer with us. But all this is sometimes just provincial English self depreciation, which hides the fact that since the 1980s, central government has often done little to help industry in the regions. Since the spectacular crash of the finance and property driven economy in 2008, we are supposedly seeing a return of industrial interventionism by government. I will believe it when I see it on the banks of the Trent.

Candle Meadow estate with the hill of Bakersfield in the distance in an Eric Lyons style prefabricated modernism, though without the same middle class wealth or sensitivity to landscape. This could have perhaps had a better relation to lakes of Colwick Park but instead they are enclosed by the busy Colwick Road on one side and flood embankments on the other. Having said all that they do have a fair bit of public green space in the back alleys - which provides a separate pedestrian walkway from the road.

Highwalking in London 1

2010-03-06T05:48:00.000-08:00

I don't know really what I'm doing here but I enjoyed it; it's a look at typography and architecture in a highwalk. I'm following a project set by London College of Communication, which has asked for some research by walking and collecting stuff as you go and so on. Though I found I was not so interested in the leterforms in this location (which do reveal a quite a bit about the area's changing history) but I was interested in the actual experience. For the uninitiated, Highwalks or Pedways are an elevation of pedestrians above the level of traffic - popular with Corbusian modernists - they creates a feeling of being in a computer game - say Flashback or Doom. I began at Moorgate and went west to the Barbican and then end up in circular route, including (briefly) the Museum of London and London Wall (aka Route XI).

N.B. The crude and less erudite comments are entirely my own.

Finsbury Pavement House on the east corner [of Moorgate], by R, Seifert & Partners, 1971-2, has aggregate faced floors and the trademark Y-shaped pier. (Pevsner, p. 566)

"Most large buildings designed in the 1960s and early 1970s therefore make provision for the walkway" Pevsner, p. 131.

"A large complex by Leo Hannen Associates, completed 1973. Seven storey slab to the street, its grey floor panels with jagged relief pattern. On the ground floor shops and the new Moorgate station entrance. Balcony-like abutment for an unbuilt extension of the ped-way." Pevsner, p. 561.

"Lots of pubs and shops were provided at podium level, in anticipation of the rebrith of pedestrian life on the upper level. The ensemble can still be appreciated, though its windswept upper level will appeal to few and the balance of buildings was upset by replacements from the mid 1980s." Pevsner, p. 131.

"Escalators lead to a paved upper court made over the station platforms connecting with the walkway along London Wall." (Pevsner , 561).

That jagged relief pattern.

"Slightly lower west slab with gloomy passage to a narrower court" (Pevsner , 561).

I think this is the Leo Hannen Associates build which has been recently (?) disconnected from Tenter House by some redevelopment.

London Wall high walk on the side of Fore Street.

I think this is a new build which replaced the 1961-2 Austral House by Gunton & Gunton, which was an attractive modernist built with green curtain walling, serpetine marbling and yellow-tinted glazing above the street entrance.

!!
Those ridiculous London prices - another world - run back to the Midlands! But hold on, is that a dehumidifier is the bottom left hand corner?

I think this is the 1993-5 Pentagram signage?

"There is nothing quite like the Barbican Estate in all of British Architecture. It combines two favourite concepts of radical postwar planning: the traffic free housing precinct linked by elevated walkways, and the giant multi-functional 'megastructure', to use the jargon of the time...
(Pevsner, p. 281).

"The name Barbican records a seperate outlying fortification, demolished in 1267 after the Barons' Wars..."
(Pevsner, p. 286).

"The Barbican Hall is a pleasant space.... The Theatre is more innovative... complex access foyers to either side take the place of aisles"
(Pevsner, p. 285).

"Here, the combination of immensely high apartment blocks (at forty-three storeys they were the tallest in Europe) and enjoyable and usable open space really seemed to work." Inwood, p. 831.

The idea of precincts - as old as Cathedral precincts - was first worked out, in modern planning terms, in 1942, by Alker Trip.... In a small book, 'Town Planning and Road Traffic', Trip extended into the city the principle... of 'limited segragation' of the various classes of traffic.
(Edward Carter, 'The Future of London', p.158.)

Such boldness was made possible by wasteland left north of Gresham street by the Blitz, which allowed one to walk for half a mile without passing a single struture, and by the City's readiness to finance the costly new housing and building for the arts, which did not falter in the quater century from conception to completion (1956 - 81). "
(Pevsner, p. 281).

"the present, more monumental system, depended on the raw mass of in situ reinforced concrete.."
(Pevsner, p. 281).

Fairly recent signage designed by Cartlidge Levene and Studio Myerscough.

"More rounded forms in the cascade spout..."
(Pevsner, p. 283).

"The local entertainment was provided by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the London Symphony Orchestra and the well healed residents were there because they wanted to be, not because there was no where else to put them."
(S. Inwood, A History of London, p.832.)

"It was an estate, in short, on which even architects and town planners would have been prepared to live". (S. Inwood, A History of London, p.832)

"In the 28 acres of the [post war] plan, generous provision was made for the gardens and open spaces, in which remains of the city wall were displayed."
(Pevsner, p. 542).

"...the Museum of London completes the [1960s] sequence of tower on the north side (of London Wall)"
(Pevsner, p. 544).

"The roundabout by London Wall is closed off on the west side by Fitzroy Robinson Partnership's tall, boldly patterned and stagey development (No. 200 Clifford Chance) , proposed in 1983 and built in modified form in 1991-2. Two stepped blocks at right angles, the north one rising taller behind. An atrium floor joins the blocks with glazing stepped down ziggurat-wise from on high... The scheme erased a warren of small courts and side streets."
(Pevsner, p. 415).

This does perhaps resemble an old corner of the historic London wall, but I find the effect physically and mentally choking - especially when I have been at street level on the busy roundabout.

"Part of the [Alban Gate] development is the low residential west block, with playful, rather over articulated fronts of pleasent orange-red brick patterned with stone dressing. The struts decending diagonally where the walkway continues west teasingly suggest a giant drawbridge, as if the flats were a barbican to the main ' keep' behind."
(Pevsner, p. 544).

No real ale. Tut.

"The commercial part of the Barbican development, along London Wall, was less well received."
(S. Inwood A History of London, p. 832)

The second tower on London Wall is St Alphaege House, by Maurice Sanders Associates, 1960-2, very similar to Moor House, but with stilts around a recessed lower floor.
(Pevsner, p. 543).

"Now for the cuckoo in the nest: the enormous Alban Gate, two continguous towers by Terry Farrel Partnership (engineer Ove Arup & Partners) built for the MEP in 1988 - 92. The inspiration for its setbacks and broken profiles, no less than for the striped pink and grey stone cladding, is the Postmodern interpretation of the American interway skyscraper by Michael Graves (the architect also insists that it also derives from the idea for a giant gatehouse). The concept was to replace one tower block (Lee House, by Bernard Gold & Parters, 1961 -2) and to extend its envelope south west, bridging the cross roads of Wood Street and London Wall. The awkward juncture between the two alignments is the weakest feature. The best is the selectively dramatic structure: huge segmental arches bridge London Wall, their tympana filled in by glazed-in pedestrian suspended on raking steel rods."
(Pevsner, p. 544).

"So much for the unquestioning confidence of the 50s and 60s. Since then London Wall's planning and architecture have fallen mightily from favour. The anticipated rebirth of pedestrian life high up never happened, and the kiosks and upper entrances are mostly disused."
(Pevsner, p. 542).

The Margins of Medieval Art: Wiggenhall, Norfolk

2010-01-02T14:53:00.000-08:00

Garogoyle, St Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall

Medieval marginalia is an academic term for all the lude gargoyles, masturbating sheila-na-gigs and the everyday scenes depicted on the margins of medieval buildings, manuscripts and furniture. It is not a popular subject for serious minded medievalists, but there are many pioneers in the subject who every so often change the way we look at the past. One of those was Michael Camille. [1]

Camille revealed that marginalia wasn't simply 'unconscious scribbling', which had hitherto been thought, but rather a critical commentary on religious orthodoxy, social conventions, national politics and regional problems. Sometimes marginalia wasn't critical at all, but an 'aide memoire', by using rude puns to learn the lengthy psalms. Or marginalia could help the religious tone, reminding people what sin actually looked like. One of the most famous subjects of Camille's analysis was the Luttrell Psalter, which has some of the finest works of mid-late medieval marginalia.

Hybrid beasts from ancient Greece used for memorising text: The Menticorn and Cockatrice depicting the fear of lying tongues mentioned in the above Psalm 109, in The Howard Psalter - a medieval Wiggenhall book.

Historically, this was a new development and which presented the Middle Ages as something which could be culturally complex, humorous and really quite odd - almost totally foreign. So I wanted to find out what medieval life was like on the margins and how this was depicted culturally; in a book, building and on the furniture. I looked through various medieval manuscript directories to find a medieval book which had some marginalia and where the provenance was known.[2] I then flicked through numerous Pevsner guides to see if the original location of these manuscripts had something physically which matched the book roughly in date and aesthetics. This was a tall order as there is so much which is unknown and lost about the past - take the relative lack of medieval church relics in London compared to Norwich as an example. But I eventually found that the best location for this was the village of Wiggenhall, north west Norfolk - five miles south of Lynn on the Great Ouse. Here was a group of mid-late medieval churches (c13 - c16), with late c15 early c16 wood carvings, an early c14 manuscript and a set of early c14 documents.

Looking south along the Great Ouse from the tower of Wiggenhall St Germans - notice how the river is higher than the fields.

The small township of Wiggenhall St Germans

This is still today a very unique and marginal village, partly due to its location in the flat marshlands of the wash; an endless horizontal horizon where an overbearing sky meets a grid of black peat, green growth, drains, roads and more drains and more roads. In his novel Waterland, Graham Swift wrote a number of observations about the region:

"Every fenman suffers now and then that the land he walks over is not there"[3]

Maintenance work on a drainage sluice, Wiggenhall

Wiggenhall St Germans and the River Great Ouse from the North

For a complete history of the area there is none better than H. C. Darby's work, [4] as Darby carefully charted (and with good prose) how the region grew in the late Middle Ages after the land had been reclaimed from the sea. This process was accentuated in the seventeenth acentury when the region was drained and enclosed by the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden. This created an agricultural powerhouse for the monarchy and aristocracy but with a major environmental drawback: the flat fens were in constant danger. Firstly from freshwater flooding, which meant fresh water coming from the Midlands had to be pumped out to sea, which sinks the landscape to below sea level. This is dangerously exacerbated by the second problem: the constant threat of salt water flooding. On television, Jonathan Meades presented a contemporary vision of the location's clear relationship with the Netherlands: a modern depopulated and highly industrial agriculture sinking ever deeper and perhaps one day into the sea. But despite also being a byword for all that is backward and incestuous, this region is almost unique in the sheer number, scale and detail of its mid-late medieval architecture:

"The hundreds of churches are trying hard or not so hard to keep going. Churchyards grow crops of nettles unmatched in their profusion. Struggling vicars rush in their second hard cars from one of their churches to the other to arrive in time for the next service. Their congregations are small and scattered and often live away from when the church was built, long before the black death or an improving c18 squire had removed the original village. There is plenty of change and disturbing change under the grandiose, ever-changing and yet eternal East Anglian sky." [Pevsner]

Wiggenhall St Germans

Wiggenhall St Peter

Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin

Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen

Wiggenhall is unique in that it is a village with four large medieval churches; St Germans, St Mary the Virgin, St Mary Magdalen, and the ruin of St Peter. Medieval churches are a good barometer of town's wealth at that time; Norwich had about 30, London had nearly 100, while Nottingham had only 3 and Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester had even less. So for a village to have four medieval churches is quite something. Another barometer of wealth are tax records, which reveal that the Hundred of Freebridge Marshland was the most wealthy region in Norfolk, partly because this is a landscape which contains some of the most fertile soil in England.

A map of late medieval wealth in Norfolk , from H. C. Darby 'The Medieval Fenland'

According to Pevsner, the medieval benches of Wiggenhall St Mary and St Germans are the best in Norfolk.[5] Benches from this period are very rare, as most people in the Middle Ages would have experienced going to church while standing or sitting on a stoney cold (though straw strewn) floor. The weakest went to the wall. These benches are sometimes complete with central depictions of saints, though this is contrasted with the crude marginal carvings of beasts and medieval sinners.

Bench ends from the front showing various creatures from the Greek Bestiary

Bench ends from the back - you can just see a sinner in the mouth of hell

Ibis and Dragon

Many of these mythical beasts were taken from the bestiary - a series of ancient animal tales which originated in ancient Greece, but were often appropriated by the medieval church to interpret Christian stories which may have had a relevance to certain parishes. Take the above image of the Ibis, a creature which appears three times in the Wiggenhall churches. This was a creature that was given a mythical story about how it lived close to the water's edge and fed on dead creatures and eels because it was afraid to enter the water.[6] In the late Middle Ages Wiggenhall was frequently flooded by changes in the course of the Great Ouse.

Old course flowed past Wisbeach - new 14th Century course flowed past Wiggenhall and Lynn. From H. C. Darby 'The Medieval Fenland'

That diversion from Wisbech to Lynn in more detail

In the Norfolk archives are a series of fourteenth century records for the draining and embanking of the Great Ouse at Wiggenhall.[7] This was a place which like the Ibis lived dangerously close to the water's edge, with frequent floods and a constant need to embank and create new drains to control the flow of water. Beasts in the Middle Ages were often used to personify weather and landscape.[8]

St Germans butresses: supporting a church built on reclaimed land

In the Howard Psalter - a manuscript which was made for use in the church of St Germans in Wiggenhall - there is a more 'everyday' graphic interpretation of life in the late medieval marshlands.[9] This was religious book commissioned by Lord Howard (a descendant of the infamously powerful Dukes of Norfolk) - for the religious well-being of his church, which as Lord of the Manor, he was expected to maintain.

The Howard Psalter f.14

The Howard Psalter f.14 (detail)

The above image shows a fowling scene, which was a major industry in medieval Norfolk and an important part of the local diet. Thomas of Ely wrote in the twelfth century:

"At mid winter, or when the brids moult their quills, I have seen them caught by the hundred, and even by the three hundreds, more or less. Sometimes they are taken in nets and snares as well as by the bird-lime."[10]

The fowling scene in the Howard Psalter shows the use of birdlime which lured the birds in to sticky pole using an owl as a decoy. This is mentioned in the thirteenth century English poem, 'The Owl and the Nightingale':

"In woodlands where the boughs grow thick
To help hunters lure, then snatch,
The little birds they like to catch" Lines 1625-1628 [11]

Why a local bird hunting scene? Birds have a long association with thoughts and memories because it was believed that birds like memories, needed to be hunted down and stored in a cage or a coup.[11] The Middle Ages was a highly mnemonic culture. The Bullfinch and the Jay illustrated on the right of the page are 'notable and ear deceiving mimics',[12] who like the medieval reader learned their psalms through imitating songs and the chattering of others. It is interesting that the very locality of the reader was also seen as an important aide memoire.

The Howard Psalter f.40 v (detail)

Another important local connection is the dipiction of an ape with an eel spear on folio 40 v. There are a number of different eel speers in the Wisbech museum with a similar design. Eels were another important part of the local diet and the area is synonymous with the creature, Ely taking its name from the Old Anglian language meaning 'Eel district'.[13] In the English vernacular 'apes and owls' was a common analagy for the absurd and is featured in medieval literature such as Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale:[14]

"For visions are but fantasies and japes.
Men dream, why, every day, of owls and apes"

--

[1] M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London, 1992).
[2] L. F. Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts. A Survey of Manuscripts illuminated in the British Isles 1285 - 1385 vol. II (Oxford, 1986).
[3] G. Swift, Waterland (1983).
[4] H. C. Darby, The Medieval Fenland (Cambridge, 1940). See also, H. C. Darby Draining of the Fens (Cambridge 1969).
[5] N. Pevsner, North West Norfolk (London, 1962).
[6] M. W. Tisdall, Gods Beasts: Identify and understand animals in church carving (Plymouth, 1988), p. 148.
[7] Owen, A. E. B., The Records of a Commission of Sewers for Wiggenhall 1319 - 1324 (Norwich, 1981).
[8] W. Cahn, 'Medieval Landscape and the Encyclopaedic Tradition', in Contexts: Styles and Values in Medieval Art and Literature (Yale, 1991), p. 13.
[8] The Howard Psalter British Library MS Arundel 83 I (c.1310)
[9] Thomas of Ely, 'Liber Eliensis, p. 232, cited in Darby The Medieval Fenland, p. 36.
[10] B. Radice, (ed.), The Owl and the Nightingale / Cleannes / St Erkenwald (London, 1988), p. 238.
[11] M. J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1992), p. 246,
[12] R. Jellis, Bird Sounds and their Meaning (London, 1977), p. 179.
[13] The English Place-Name Society A Key to English Place-Names (Nottingham, 2009).
[14] C. L . Shaver, 'Chaucer's "owls and apes"', in Modern Language Notes (Oxford, 1943, p. 105 - 107.

I know this city!

2009-10-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

The following is a series of extracts from BS Johnson's The Unfortunates, an experimental novel which for the most part was set in Nottingham - a city Johnson had visited on a number of occasions in the late 50s and early 60s. The following photographs are also from the same period and I have carefully matched some of his psychogeographic descriptions to what I believe are the exact locations. Well almost - there were no photos of the City Ground from this period which were suitable and so the following photo of Meadow Lane was more apt. Especially given the current fiasco. Why have I done this? Why I have ruined your imagination? Well, look away now if you don't want to see of course, but these descriptions, feelings, ramblings, observations, associations or whatever, are quite acute - that is all. Many thanks to Emily Kawasaki & James Forster for drawing my attention to this book some years ago - though I took my time getting round to it as per usual. Also thanks to Emily Wilczek for lending me the damn thing last summer. The photos are from here.

Covered courtyard, taxis, take a taxi, always take a taxi in a strange city, but no, I know this city! The mind circles, at random, does not remember, from one moment to another, other things interpose themselves, the mind's The station exit on a bridge, yes, of course, and the blackened gantries rise like steel gibbets above the Midland red wall opposite. I should turn right, right, towards the city centre, yes, ah, and that pub! On one visit here I came from this station sullen with depression, savage at myself for some reason I found it hard to define, isolate: and went into that pub, the nearer, on the corner, green glass, leaded panes, ordinary, for relief, which was a green shield Worthington, as I remember, if I remember.

Southwell, the Chapter House, the delicate, convoluted carving on the capitals, foliage is it, yes, leaves, the book The Leaves of Southwell, now I think of it, though I did not know of it at the time, but June did, she knew the cathedral was important for at least this, that was perhaps the main reason why we visited it, when was it, fairly late in our friendship, for I had begun to take a great deal of interest in architecture, at the same time they moved to Lincoln, but how could it be, for they had the car, we went by car, their little blue Austin, which I had picked up for them, yes how the mind arranges itself, tried to sort things in orders, is perturbed if things are not sorted, are not in the right order, nags away. Southwell, said to June it was a useful place to bring children, to show them differences, for the nave was Norman, the choir EE, and the Chapter House, octagonal, best of all was Dec. The carving I was marvelously impressed with, appropriately, from a technical point of view the depth under the leaves, at such angles, but did not see the point of representing natural things thus, why, it is all tied up with truth, with things being what they are, and so on and so forth.

After we were well away from the village, they were guiding me on a ride, a journey. Tony took over, drove well enough, all he needed was experience, he passed his test not so very long after this. The mining villages around this city, I had not seen them before this first journey in their car. The fields around, just fields, no slagheaps that I remember, and suddenly the great wheels at the pithead on the skyline round the bend, classically, as if not industrial, not black country visual clichés. We had a drink somewhere, near a new bridge here, on the way back, it was dark by then, though summer, and in the car park there was some incident, I think someone was backing into Tony's path, and he kept going, they both kept going, and I was supposed to be the one looking out for a learner, but I could not reach the brake as it was the other side of Tony, farther from me, and all I could do was to push the horn button, to touch the horn ring, did it have one, that model, and the other man stopped in time.

When shall I see a ground all of one piece, a new ground, all the English grounds I've seen are so piecemeal, are never designed as a whole, except for Wembley, and in most ways that's an even worse disaster than this one, which seems to have four sides developed at random, at different times, yet there has been, is an enormous amount of money in football, thousands of pounds a game, hundreds of thousands a season, the number of people who go, and the players who don't get it, were very badly treated until recently, still are in some respects, it must have been the directors, the owners, who just siphoned off all the money but for what they had to leave to keep the things running, and even though they have to give their players something nearer their due, now, they still don't have to spend money on these buildings, they see, the swine, still have corrugated iron sheds and charge extra for that, let the men on the terraces, their chief supporters , the sixpences of the masses, stand out in all weathers, and they do, the stupid bastards! Yet these buildings show them up for what they are, the directors and the profiteers of the clubs, there is yet honesty in this: the buildings proclaim that they are cheapjacks, charlatans, who might as it pack their bags overnight and leave, because in the buildings they would be leaving behind them the very minimum that could be left, which would, which does, corrode, disintegrate, rot to pieces every few years. So this ground, the usual mess of badly-shutted concrete badly finished, the scruffy collection of huts which are the turnstiles, fletton-backed stand beyond them, the unpleasantness of this brick in such circumstances, ah, why waste anything of me with these things that disgust me, where's the Press entrance, let's get on with the bloody job.

Yates's is friendly, the first impression going in, the first time I have felt that kind of warmth since I came to this city this morning, an alien city, though I know it, really, I keep telling myself, friendly here, a relief, a great relief! Nearly full, push my way through, here it was I spoke to that Russian seamen so long ago, without Tony then, where was Tony, what was I doing on my own? Now there was a group there discussing football, they must be going later on, yes, what time is it, the to one, yes time for a good drink and then lunch, noticed a restaurant underneath as I came in, nearby, looked okay, shall go there, perhaps when I have finished here, what shall I have now, a wide range indeed, in Yates's, imported beverages of all descriptions, Commonwealth ports and sherries, Australian White and Red, very cheap, remarkably good value, no doubt, but I'll have Marsala, I think for no other reasons, but that I need something thick and sweat and comforting, I need comforting, why do I need comforting?

This pub, then, what signs of venerableness does it bear, to be seen, claiming to be one of the oldest in England? Black beams, low ceilings, but preserved in various ways, varnish, worm repellent, that detract from the seeing of age, prevent me from venerating it. Which leaves me with only association. This room, yes I recognise instantly as being one where Tony and June and Wendy and I sat, yes, but why should that seem remarkable, as it was only a few years ago, the memory is not that bad, I am overdramatizing this, his death, this place, these occasions. But this is still a place for students where the four of us sat then years ago, was it, something like that, rexine seats, life goes on, ha, bring Fortinbras and cart the corpses off. Cast iron garden tables, look original, not found, the old built-in kicked cupboard, brass fittings, most this looks Victorian, older in one sense than the eighteenth and earlier, the rooms cared from the friable sandstone, that is now to me a cliché, everything is reducible to a cliché, the action of carbonic acid on limestone. I'll have another sherry, I used to drink beer then but do not now, so much there’s another change, it's meaningless, though, it all is, this wallowing in recollection, stupid even, as well, I mean, where does it all lead, there we were students then, there these still are, students now, and so?

Cast parapet, pierced rondel design, the canal oiling its way under, under, and the great letters on the end wall of a warehouse BRITISH WATERWAYS, weathered, flaking, the midland red brick sound, it appears, the red strong enough to come through that amount of blackening, of discoloration, and the buses, I remember, great green and cream buses, and yes, they have trolleybuses in this city, too, the disfiguring lines overhead, quaint even, now, how long is it since they were running in London, remember them taking down the supports, masts would they be called, poles, the relief of the clearing of the air, literally, in certain streets, King Street Hammersmith, for one place, which seemed so much less oppressive once the overhead lines had gone.

This visit it must have been we made the journey to Newstead Abbey, yes, we went by bus, they did not have their car at that time, no, and walking the mile or more up the long rhododendron-lined drive, towards the house, the Abbey, that Byron so loved, and sold, the house buttered up against the single standing west front Abbey, so arrogantly intimate with it, EE, though late, I thought, as I remember, transitional. June went and sat beside the upper lake, pregnant, taking a book, having been here several times before. Tony and I paid to walk round the dead house, not lived in, saw Byron's skull cap, or did we, had it previously been re-interred, a dueling sword, yes, his bedroom, so ordinary now, like a film set, uncomfortable, un-lived in, obviously. The dead things the dead leave behind them as well as the living things. But in the gardens, grounds, the poem to Boatswain cut on a monument was still living, and inside the house, of course the relevant part of that tree, dead now but curiously alive, that Byron cut his and Augusta's names into that two-trunked sapling springing from the same roots.

The Castle too, a round of visits obviously, on either the Saturday, or more probably the Sunday. Wendy, her hair windblown across her face, the view across this city, the museum, the posters and displays commemorating labour troubles, this was some sort of centre for nineteenth-century resistance against the exploiters. Pubs in the evening, particularly two very good ones, students, locals, good drinking. Talking again, always, Tony was hardly interested in drinking, but only in the talk which accompanied it, only in the company he could hold converse with.

Their new flat. Either Sunday or the Saturday afternoon we went to see the new flat they were about to take on or hoping to take on. It was in a superior area of the city, the Estate or something like that, great houses built during the boom in the lace industry, whenever that was, nineteenth century some time, late probably, large red brick mansions, no two alike but somehow all alike, set square into the steep sides of a series of small valleys, green spaces between, wide private roads, No Thoroughfare, gates at all entrances. We all four went there. It must have been for Sunday tea, yes, tea with the old woman who was to be their landlady, very welcome she made us , we two strangers as well. Tea in the drawing room, looking out through French windows on to a lawn, sloping to the floor of one of the small valleys, and, yes, there was a dog, she loved dogs, Wendy, and this was a spirited dog, perhaps it was still young, would rush about indefinitely with her, making those rushes and last-second deviations, which some dogs are given to, I have noticed, perhaps with them it is a form of organised sport, with its own rules, etiquette. I joined in, as I remember, joined in with her, to participate, rather than with the dog, to show that I was spirited, gamey, too, would not be left out, would make her share everything of hers as I made her share everything of mine. That was the way I wanted it. That was the way I went out to get it. And where I went wrong.

At dinner, in Hall, top table on the same occasion, discussing with Tony Barker and Tony the interesting man who worked in the kitchens there, a refuge, who had written and published at his own expense a treatise on the ills of the world, and his own proposed cures, and had given copies to both of them. Sometimes Tony's enthusiasms were too extreme, I thought, too indiscriminate, in this case, for instance, as I remember. The new Hall of Residence, neo-gothic, architecturally sterile, aping the Oxbridge dead.

Myths of War: The War Memorial, Victoria Embankment

2009-10-09T02:38:00.001-07:00

Fig 1. Triumphant War Memorial. Portland stone with intricate iron detailing.

Between Wilford and Trent Bridge, the riverside was embanked and landscaped as a place of Edwardian recreation. The suspension bridge, the playing fields and the embankment were all created in an effort to improve local amenities for recreation during the industrial revolution. This was funded by the city and local liberal philanthropist Jesse Boot, who contributed to public works such as the war memorial and gardens. The memorial is undoubtedly well designed, built and maintained, but does this structure perhaps looks a little like a triumphant arch? Of course it does, Pevsner says so but that's all he says.[i] This may be a moot point, but it is worth remembering how the seeds of the Second World War were sown during the aftermath of the Great War. At The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 France and Britain acted victoriously and with vendetta by severely punishing Germany with reparations.[ii] In so doing this left Europe's biggest country with a fragile interwar economy and created a breading ground for extremists. The guilt of war laid on Germany at Versailles was a frequent theme is Hitler's mad mouth foaming speeches. Belligerence breeds belligerence. While much is done to remember the ‘Glorious Dead’,[iii] perhaps more could be achieved by remembering Versailles with equal ~~Daily Mail pomp~~ publicity? Nonetheless, this is still an attractive structure which relates well to the riverside and garden location, and we are lucky Boot had the good taste not to commission a corpse, a Portland stone artillery gun or a lion trampling a snake.[iv] Nottingham’s nationalist hoodwinking is thankfully a little more subdued and this could be attributed to the patron and city architect.

Fig 2. Boots’ modernist gate house, Beeston.

The Jesse Boot story is a real rags to riches tale of a local druggist who built a pharmacy empire from a small Victorian terrace shop on Goose Gate. Like Woolworths, Boots soon discovered that the largest potential market was to be found in the rising incomes of the working class - the populist taste of the proletariat which is now universal law. Also known as drugs, fags, bikes, booze and a bit of fashion. Before his death Boot sold his business to the American United Drugs Company, who were more aware of this market and dedicated their new site at Beeston to Detroit style production lines and industry friendly modernism. A marked change from Jesse's paternalist liberal taste. It is perhaps a shame that the architecture of the Boots estate is restricted from public gaze and as of 2008 the company allegedly no longer pays any tax in the UK. According to the Guardian, under new owner Stefano Pessina (one of the 500 richest people in the world), the Boots headquarters are now based ~~on a Pirate ship~~ in Zug, Switzerland.[v] For Jesse Boot however, his company was always based in Nottingham and he gave liberally to his home city. Alongside this memorial and the adjacent gardens, his gifts were numerous, including Highfields Park for the University of Nottingham and the rebuilding of the Albert Hall in 1909. But the style of those gifts is telling. According to Eric Hobsbawn, the industrialists of England were always very different to those on the continent, primarily because their society had never undergone social upheaval and so they often complied to social hierarchy with the aim of entering the society of gentleman.[vi]

“It was Lloyd George who made provincial towns into ‘cities of dreadful knights’. The absorption of the sons of grocers and cotton-spinners into the aristocracy was a consequence of the loss of impetus in British business, not its cause…”[vii]

Boot achieved his elevation with flying colours; he was knighted in 1909, created a baronet in 1917 and finally became Lord Trent in 1929. In light of this it is not surprising that his favored architectural style was classical - the architecture of hierarchy and tradition, with little respect for the then current social rebellion of continental modernism.[viii] Boot’s chosen architect was T. Wallis Gordon, the city architect who was also T.C. Howitt’s boss and both had similar civic gestures to Luytens and Vincent Harris. For Howitt and Gordon, interwar Nottingham was being recast as a European city, but in the classical tradition, Howitt of course had been on his own 'Grand Tour' during his formative years as an architect.[ix]

Fig 3. T. Wallis Gordon's triumphal arch.

This triumphant Portland Stone arch complies with the Liberal Prime Minister Lloyd George’s view of the war as a costly victory over a war hungry Germany, rather than an unprecedented waste of life created by a long-term Victorian nationalist myth, imperialism, industrial ignorance and the short-term conflicts of a European aristocracy. Like Lloyd George’s commissioned Cenotaph, it may speak of ‘death, duty well done and remembrance’,[x] but promises nothing in creating a brave new world.

“It's a devise for making the unacceptable tolerable. A big euphemism. Certainly in the marshal life death is close at hand, or rather, the dead are - which is different. The way they got to be dead - the cause of the greatest physical mutation - is forgotten. The dead are the dead. The literally vital precondition of being dead, the fact of being alive, is forgotten. The indignity of having life extinguished is forgotten. Death is forgotten. The enormity of its belligerent causes ignored. The dead get an arcadia to sleep in. They get a bit of respect when really it's too late. If only they could have lived in such peace.”[xi]

^[i]Pevsner, Nottinghamshire, p. 374

^[ii]S. Marks, ‘1918 and After: The Postwar Era’, in, G. Martel, (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered (London, 1999), pp. 13 – 37.

[iii] Allan Greenberg is polemic in his praise for the Cenotaph. See, A. Greenberg, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 5 - 23.

[iv] Nicolas Penny is more critical than Greenberg but still fails to see the wider historical context. See, N. Penny, ‘English Sculpture and the First World War’, in, Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 4, No. 2, Sculpture (Nov., 1981), pp. 36 - 42.

^[v]The Guardian, 9^th February 2009, From the High Street to a Tax Haven.

[vi] E. Hobsbawn, Industry and Empire, (London, 1999), p. 161.

^[vii] E. Hobsbawn, Industry and Empire, p. 163.

[viii] N. Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (London, 1972), pp. 404 – 435.

[ix] E. R. Scoffham, A Vision of the City: The Architecture of T.C. Howitt (Nottingham, 1992).

[x] A. Greenberg, ‘Lutyens's Cenotaph’, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 5-23.

[xi] Jonathan Meades, Brick and Mortars Part2/3 2mins.

CLASP: Nottingham modernism as heritage?

2009-08-21T09:36:00.001-07:00

The award winning Nottinghamshire CLASP infants school in Milan, 1960.

On further investigation into CLASP, it turns out that Nottinghamshire County Council have recently undertaken a (unpublished, although available on request) report into the historical significance of CLASP (K. Jugins, Post-War Schools, 2008?). It is only a historical introduction but the contents and academic references are useful nonetheless. It is also interesting that such buildings are now considered important as 'heritage' and there are perhaps some parallels here with the English Heritage/Park Hill debacle in Sheffield - although it is hoped that this won't be a similar balls up. Unfortunately the report does lack a definitive glossary of all CLASP buildings in the county and understandably this would be a huge undertaking on both time and resources. It is estimated that there were at least 50 such buildings going up in the county between 1957-1970 (M. Dudek Architecture of Schools: The New Learning, London, 2006, p. 79). The effort to document, accurately classify and criticise is perhaps worth a mind numbing PhD thesis or even an entire academic career spent in social isolation.

Charles and Ray Eames: Similar prefabraicted consumer modernism - more individually stylish but less easily reproducible than CLASP

So what the bloody hell am I doing meddling in such things? I'll give four half baked reasons: Well, firstly I admit that until recently I was ignorant of their significance despite the fact that most of my educational and recreational life has been lived in these community buildings; nursery, infants, juniors, secondary, college, fire station, leisure centre, library, clinic, miners welfare, social services, council offices, old people's home and community centres. Nearly everything from a failing a 5 metre swimming badge to learning how to smoke at the youth club. In the sleave notes to Donkeys 92-97, Tindersticks dedicated 'For Those' to the CLASP Gedling Miners Welfare.

One of the principle features of CLASP schools is that they were built as community centres; alongside leisure centres and close to the town centre. Some of the architects were even imagining that this could bring about the end of compulsory education - people would just pop in when they needed a bit of education. Secondly, I think that some of these CLASP structures, when 'In skillful hands... can produce buildings of considerable architectural distinction' (C. Ward, British School Buildings, 1976, p.x). I can't pretend that they are all beautiful either, but for the most part they work well and are true to their social context. They are definatley not aspirational lifestyle living bollocks either - they have a function for a local community. There were also a number of mistakes - from small faults such as leaky roofs and noise to more troubling problems of fire hazard and asbestos. Thirdly, it is still open to debate as to which post-war CLASP buildings will be saved or bulldozed and the report specified that this would depend largely on critical acclaim (such as Pevsner) and their current rate of use within the community. So some half-wit with a blog might just have an influence! Or maybe not. Finally, I work as a lowly in-house graphic designer at a technical college and so you could say that this is a small attempt to redress the social stigma of pubic sector design.

The CLASP frame, Toot Hill Comprehensive, Bingham, Notts.

Before I retrace my school years and then undergo some CLASP psychogeography further afield (although I’m slightly concerned by the prospect of wondering around school buildings with a camera) it is perhaps a good idea to give some definition as to what it is I'm banging on about. The story goes like this: in 1944 the age at which children had to go to school was raised to 15, which not only defined the contemporary split between primary and secondary education but was also designed to tackle the problem of a lack of skilled labour. This meant that there was a glut of state schools which was made worse by the post war baby boom. The problem was particularly urgent in Hertfordshire where the county architects soon discovered that the best way to tackle this was through conveyor belt prefabrication, because reinforced concrete was 'literally sinking' both schools and budgets (K. Perkins, Post-War Schools, p.8). In the late 1950s Gibson, Lacy and Swain became county architects at Nottinghamshire, where there was a similar shortage of schools. This was made more complex by the affects of mining subsidence, which would physically shake buildings - often resulting in cracked brickwork and smashed windows. In order to solve this problem Gibson and co modified their prefabricated steel frames with loaded springs. In short, many of Nottinghamshire's buildings are built like Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout. Fantastic. To some easily excited designers, this was preparation for future generations who would travel to the moon:

"The task and responsibility of the new men will be to build in sufficient quantity and therefore at an industrial rate, schools first, but not just school buildings but schools for real children, and children who later will travel to the moon..."
(Jean Prouve, ‘Prefabrication’,, in V, Huber & J. Steinegger (eds), 'Structures and Elements', (London, 1971), sited in M. Dudek, Architecture of Schools: The New Learning Environments, London, 2006, p. 79).

Local Authority building consortia

This prefabricated system (with or without the springs) was called CLASP, which not only denoted a type of structure, but also a way of co-operatively pooling resources among local authorities. In the 1960s the results were award wining and the design was repeated over many parts of the country, with some local authorities developing their own building systems from the CLASP template. In terms of fabric they were built with either concrete panels, red tiles, brick, timber or as a mixture. The choice of cladding was often related to the pre-existing local vernacular, such as the folk weaved tile hanging, which could ‘move like the scales of a fish when the building itself moved’ (Seaborne & Lowe The English School: Its Architecture and Organisation Vol II, 1977, p. 163). There are also five different types of CLASP builds, as the design developed between the 1950s and the late 1980s; from modernist to more traditional tastes. Today, CLASP is now going under the name of SCAPE and there appears to be a variety of different structures still using the steel frame system; curved roof, pitched, flat etc. They look like well thought out technological structures (certainly better than this) but so far I am struggling to find the aesthetic sensibilities that were present in the late 50s to the early 80s. Also, many new (and recently some of the old) schools are fenced off from local communities in fear of you know what. Have the links with Eames and the brave new world been sadly lost to the IKEA & Daily Mail generation? I hope I'm wrong, but I have a sneaky feeling that design based on a social ethos, no matter how humble, has been on the back foot for the past thirty years.

A County Divided: County Hall Nottinghamshire

2009-08-13T08:54:00.000-07:00

N. B. Following article is an ongoing research project on CLASP design. Comments and references welcome. Sorry for the footnote links not working correctly.

Fig 1. Two County Halls bonding ‘awkwardly’. While the modernist half relates to the riverbank, the neo Georgian predecessor seems more in-tune with the South.
Politically Nottinghamshire is a divided county and this is in someway reflected in the architecture of County Hall. The Trent generally marks the severing point between those more inclined to vote Labour or Tory; in general terms, north and west are the more collectivist coal fields and in the south and east are a conservative cluster of agricultural villages. Elections are historically decided in the West Midlands, although the East Midlands and particularly Nottinghamshire is also a region where polling day has been closely fought. More interestingly it is also a home to moderates - those on either side of the political divide who have sympathies with their counterparts. Historically, the economics of consumer manufacturing in Nottingham was of course very different from the heavy industries of the North, or the small industrial specialties of London.[i]

For free market fundamentalists or militant socialists, Nottingham has an unfavorable reputation. The Tory Ken Clarke's pro Europe views have landed him unfavorable headlines in the right wing press. While the local miners' history of strike-breaking has often overshadowed their will to support non militant action and negotiation.[ii] Although the reputation of moderates doesn't always illicit such antagonistic responses; A J Mundella and the lace and hosiery workers were pioneers of arbitration and class conciliation.[iii]

Fig 2. County Hall part I by E Vincent Harris: Civic conservatism and difficult to photograph.

County Hall also comes in two parts and it is worth remembering at this point how Labour became a stronger party in the new Nottinghamshire coalfields after the nationalisation of mines reduced the influence of the neighboring aristocracy in the post war period.[iv] The first part of the Hall is the grand, incomplete and piecemeal 1930s NeoGeorgian grandeur by Emanuel Vincent Harris, who was famous for his inter-war civic gestures; Sheffield City Hall, Leeds Civic Hall, Bristol County Hall and Manchester Central Library. The second part of Nottingham County Hall is the modest and functional prefabricated steel and concrete post-war modernism. Elaine Harwood rightly states that these two buildings ‘bond awkwardly',[v] while the architectural historian Nicholas Pevsner is in no doubt about his own preference, describing the Georgian half as "dead as mutton", while he praises the 1960s extension.[vi].

Fig 3. County Hall part I by E Vincent Harris: Statue of ~~homoerotic~~ miners.

Fig 4. County Hall part I by E Vincent Harris: The entrance, built with Portland Stone and Winchester brick, which gives it an appearance more often associated with the south of England.

Fig 5. County Hall part II by CLASP: Overhead walkways – built for the camera.

The modernist half was designed by The Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme (CLASP) and County Architects, this particular CLASP design predates the widely acclaimed York University Building. To some, post war British state school building was among the best in Europe - the most famous example being Hunstanton Comprehensive in Norfolk. Nottinghamshire CLASP buildings won RIBA awards, and were noted for schools such as New Ollerton and Sutton in Ashfield, which were spring loaded in order to withstand mining subsidence and to function as community centers. These designs were later adopted in other mining areas and countries prone to earthquakes.[vii] Considered by critics as a non-idealistic consumer modernism (how very Nottingham),[viii] these CLASP designs won the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale in 1960.[ix] Similar to the prefabs of Charles and Ray Eames, although less individually stylish, they were more easily reproducible - almost straight off the conveyor belt. Is this what Caruso St John are referring to with Nottingham Contemporary’s concrete panels? Maybe not but the fact that production line modernism is built in Nottingham is significant. It must be said that aesthetics of these schools are somewhat modest and over the years they have been poorly subsidised in comparison to their private rivals (Nottingham High or Loughborough Endowed) but they have always been socially and educationally more vital to local communities.[x]

Fig 6. County Hall part II by CLASP: Prefabricated concrete and steel frame, which was replicated throughout Nottinghamshire’s public sector buildings; such as fire stations, schools and offices.

Fig 7. County Hall part II by CLASP: Similar to Alva Alto’s Scandinavian modernism.

[i] P. Hall, ‘England circa 1900’, in H. C. Darby, (ed.), A New Historical Geography of England After 1600 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 374 – 446.

[ii] Andrew Taylor, The NUM and British Politics 1969 – 1995 (London, 2005) p.191.

[iii] W. H. G. Armytage, 'A. J. Mundella as Vice-President of the Council, and the Schools Question, 1880-1885', in The English Historical Review, Vol. 63, No. 246 (London, 1948), pp. 52-82.

[iv] Robert J. Waller., The Dukeries Transformed : The Social and Political Development of a Twentieth Century Coalfield (Oxford, 1983).

^[v] E. Harwood, Nottingham, (London, 2008), p. 161

^[vi]N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, Nottinghamshire, (London, 1979), p. 248.

^[vii]A. Blanc, M. McEvoy and R. Plank, Architecture and Construction in Steel (London, 1993), p.170

^[viii] N. Whitely, Rayner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future, (London, 2003) p. 152.

[ix] The Independent, 11^th January 2002, Henry Swain, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/henry-swain-729659.html

^[x] Pevsner, Nottinghamshire, p. 75.

Six English Towns, by Alec Clifton Taylor

2009-07-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

"Sir Alec is civil, prodigiously knowledgeable, an excellent social as well as architectural historian; and he talks well and clearly — if anyone doesn’t know what vermicular rustication is they will find out. He has the good manners to explain himself as he goes along. His programmes have no resort to gimmickry — no artily self-conscious photography, no awful electronic music."

Jonathan Meades

Cromford

2009-06-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

In memory of Penny Gallon

1. Arkwright's Mill

"It was at Cromford that Richard Arkwright started the first successful cotton spinning mill worked by water power...The buildings of c.1790 along the road have no windows along the lower floors and suggest a defence against industrial spies and rioters...It looks rather grim now and must always have been foreboding. Bray tells us that 200 would have been employed, 'chiefly children, they work by turns night and day'."*

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 157-8.

2. Carboniferous Limestone

"South of the millstone grit area of the Dark Peak is the carboniferous limestone of the White Peak, or the Derbyshire Dales, as it is known...Limestone has fissures and is slightly soluble in water, therefore the rivers have been able to carve deep narrow valleys, which has resulted in some of the most spectacular riverside scenery."*

*E. Burkinshaw, 'Historic Walks in Derbyshire', (2003), p. 14.

3. Cromford Mill Shops

"Cromford's relatively poor communications led to the end of textile production in Cromford around 1840. The building was used for a variety of industries including brewing, cheese warehousing and finally in the early twentieth century for the production of colour pigments, paints and dyes... In 1999 it opened as a working textile museum and shopping village"*

*E. Burkinshaw, 'Historic Walks in Derbyshire', (2003), p. 184.

4. Gardens

Will I grow tomatoes like me grandparents? Will I walk a pig through Kimberley?

"the first custom built industrial community, which became a model for others throughout the world..."*

*E. Burkinshaw, 'Historic Walks in Derbyshire', (2003), p. 182.

5. Bookshop

"Between the two mils, the dramatic break through the limestone rocks, which is called Scarthin Nick. Behind this, away from the river, to the s, Cromford Village, the settlement created by Arkwright around his mill."*

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 158.

6. Gate

7. Framework Knitting Workshops

Similar to what you might find in Nottingham and Leicester, except they're made out of Limestone instead of brick.

"SE of the marketplace is North Street, a complete street of housing built in 1771-6 by Arkwright for his employees. Two three story terraces with mullioned windows, originally larger in the attics, which were intended as framework knitting rooms"*

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 158.

9. Modernism

1970s modernist houses? Local limestone? Perhaps. Clean lines, designed on a grid and modest.

10. Quarry

"Mineral extraction, particularly of lead had been important to the White Peak for centuries... The Cromford Sough, which ran from a Wirksworth lead mine by the river Derwent, was later used by Richard Arkwright to power his mill at Cromford."*

"Following the collapse of the lead mining industry in the nineteenth century... Limestone quarrying followed , which did provide employment but [nearby] Wirksworth became badly affected by the resultant dust, dirt and noise..."**

*E. Burkinshaw, 'Historic Walks in Derbyshire', (2003), p. 24.
**Burkinshaw, p. 165.

11. Sheep

Never attempt to read a map while walking through a sheep pasture, because you will be certain to tread in shit.

12. Arkwirght's Mansion

Willersley Castle was built as Sir Richard Arkwright's residence in 1789-90 by William Thomas of London. Arkwright died before he could move in. It is an ambitious seven bay stone structure of two and a half storeys, with lower side wings fronting the sheer face of the cliff across the sloping lawn and across the river. The house is entirely classical in construction but is romanticised by battlements and by semicircular turrets at the angles of the wings. Torrington in 1790 called it 'an effort in inconvenient ill taste'..." *

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 159-60.

13. High Peak Railway

"The construction of the Cromford and High Peak Railway was considered an engineering masterpiece, which later attracted railway enthusiasts from all over he world...steam powered beam engines to haul wagons up the steep inclines...horses replaced by locomotives in 1832 but it was still an arduous 16 hour journey to compete the 33 miles, including the steepest gradient of any British railway, the 1 in 14 Hopton Incline."*

*E. Burkinshaw, 'Historic Walks in Derbyshire', (2003), p. 183-4.

14. Catch Pit

"Associated with the railway at the bottom of sheep pasture incline is a railway repair workshops, the bottom pulley wheel pit of the incline, and the water tank used by locomotives. Further up, a catch pit to catch [runaway] railway trucks, and on the main road the Loco and Agent's Houses, an early nineteenth century pair."*

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 160.

15. Pump House

"At High Peak Junction... is a group of buildings belonging to the transhipment point between the High Peak Railway and the canal. There are two major architectural monuments: ... the pump houe to pump water from the river [Derwent], to the canal, a tall, narrow, rock faced stone structure with pediments voussoird arched windows and a tall elegant chimney with cast iron capping ..." *

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 160.

16. Cromford Viaduct

"...[and] the Canal Aquaduct over the Derwent , 1792 by Jessop, ashlar, a beautiful single span bridge with wide elliptical arch, rebuilt at the engineer's own expense after the first one collapsed." *

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 160.

17. Cromford Canal

"It was the success of the new factory system that stimulated the demand for more efficient communications, which lead Arkwright and others to promote construction of the Cromford Canal, which was completed in 1794. The engineer was William Jessop in partnership with Benjamin Outram and the total cost of the project was £80,000. The canal provided a vital artery into the national canal network and was the first part of a link from the Midlands to the North West...latterly carrying mainly coal and limestone."*

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 158.

18. Cromford Wharf

"The water [for the mill] was supplied partly by the Bonsall Stream and and partly by and adit for draining mines called the Cromford Mear Sough...The same stream is the chief source of the Cromford Canal... Just past the mill is it's Derbyshire terminus at Cromford Wharf. One of the two warehouses still has a overhead canopy." *

*N. Pevsner & E. Williamson, 'Buildings of England: Derbyshire', (2002), p. 158.

Fat Man on a Beach

2009-06-20T14:38:00.000-07:00

East German Design

2009-05-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

Again, thanks to Chaffe, for this link.

Robert Welch & Old Hall Tableware

2009-05-27T02:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Tomas Chaffe for pointing out this tableware designed by Robert Welch for Old Hall in the West Midlands.

David Mellor Cutlery

2009-05-26T08:29:00.001-07:00

Not the plate - that's Denby - the cutlery, which is by Sheffield lad David Mellor. This is thanks to Albam and this obituary.

Leeds

2009-05-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

"Until the 1870s the only open space in the congested town was Woodhouse Moor”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 28.

“It’s highlight [of The University of Leeds] , and the core of the plan, is the Rodger Stevens Building (1967-70) containing communal lecture theatres whose design acted as a prototype for Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's Barbican theatre in London.”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p.34.

“Across the main axis is the E. C. Stoner Building, for physics, much the longest of the spine ranges; fourteen irregular bays long (mainly five stories high with vents); its elegance shows the hand of Geoffry Powell.”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 181.

“Across the main axis is the E. C. Stoner Building, for physics, much the longest of the spine ranges; fourteen irregular bays long (mainly five stories high with vents); its elegance shows the hand of Geoffry Powell.”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 181.

"In 1877, with Alfred Waterhouse's plans for Owen’s College Manchester, to hand, Yorkshire College appointed him as architect."
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 176

"A fund raising campaign yielded only £20,000 of a hoped for £60,000 and building was made possible only by the munificence of the Clothworkers’ Company of London, anxious to improve the scientific basis of their industry after the Paris exhibition of 1861.”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 176

"...a limited competition was held in 1926 to bring belated civic dignity to the [university] institution… the winners were Lanchester, Lucas & Lodge. “
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p.178

“To maintain a link between their expanding campus and the city, the University lobbied successfully for the sinking of a new inner ring road (in truth an inner city motorway), opened in 1964…”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 34

"The long awaited decision to provide the money for a tower was only made in 1856 as consequence in a growing pride in the building as it progressed and a realization, as it was claimed in the laying of the foundation stone, that it was going to be a display of 'the wealth and growing importance of the town'. At that time Leeds was actively campaigning to be appointed the West Riding Assize town, in opposition to the claims of Sheffield and Wakefield"
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 63.

“…the Henry Moore Institute of 1993 by Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones with BDP…dramatically refaced the gable end to Victoria Street with igneous rock with crenelated parapet and fissure like entrance passage.”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 166.

"...one of the most beautiful interiors in the city. T-plan, 394ft long, and glowing with exuberant decoration in marble, mosaic and Burmantofts faience, all symbols of the city's wealth and confidence."
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 159.

Luis Vuitton shop.

"The central dome, over the crossing, dipicts figures representing Leeds' industries."
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 159.

“…the well named Dark Arches, a line of mightily red brick groined vaults covering an access tunnel beneath the railway… The richly atmospheric gloom is animated by the sounds and smells of the Aire..”
--
S. Wetherall, 'Pevsner Architectural Guides: Leeds' (2005), p. 63.

Hello Little Car

2009-05-21T03:33:00.001-07:00

Nissan Figaro

Fiat 500

Seat 850

St Pancras

2009-05-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

Origin & Fabric
In the 1960s, the historian Jack Simmons played an important role in the salvation of St Pancras Station through his extensive research. He wrote, “St Pancras was the child of the Midland Railway...the character, form and scale can be understood only in light of the company that built it”.[1] John Betjemn felt that Simmons’ book St Pancras Station was, ‘readable, learned and inspiring’.[2]
Created from a confederacy of colliery owners in the Erewash Valley,[3] the Midland Railway was based in Derby, with lines concentrated between Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester and Leeds. St Pancras was, a trade display by the industries of the East Midlands, which influenced it’s very fabric, function and construction. The same company built an almost carbon copy of the station - Manchester Central - which has now been refurbished as a conference centre.

Eric Robinson from The Geological Society states that St Pancras, “offers us the widest range of rock types of any Victorian building in London”.[4] Featuring Leicestershire slates and granites, Nottinghamshire sandstone, limestone from Lincolnshire and Rutland, and of course, iron from Derbyshire. The manufacture and erection of the iron roof was completed in 1867 by The Butterley Company from Derbyshire, who were major customers of the M.R. (Midland Railway). Further still, the 50,000,000 red bricks which make up the shed and hotel, were specially fired from a supply of Keupar Marl Clay in Mapperley, Nottingham by Mr Gripper. The M.R. had branch lines running out to all these major quarries, brick yards, works and not to mention collieries.

Function & Construction
The chief engineer of the station shed William Henry Barlow explained how not only the construction of the lower floor was influenced by Burton Beer, but also the impressive station roof :

That it was determined by the directors to devote the whole area to traffic purposes...The special purpose for which this lower floor has been arranged is for Burton Beer traffic; and in order to economise the space to the utmost, it was determined to use columns & girders, instead of brick piers and arches, making the distances between the columns the same as those of the warehouses, which were expressly arranged for beer traffic. This, in point of fact, the length of a beer barrel became the unit of measure, upon which all the arrangements of the floor were based. This decision led to a reconstruction of the question of roofing the station. It became obvious that, if intermediate columns were employed, they must be carried down through the lower floor...on the other hand, it was seen that the floor girders across the station formed a ready made tie sufficient for an arched roof crossing the station in one span...the weight of the roof was carried on the floor line and did not rest on the tops of the walls... [5]

Decline & Renewal
By 1935 when the Midland Grand Hotel was closed and the reputation of St Pancras had sunk to it’s lowest depths. Victorian architecture was seen as over elaborate and superfluous and modernist critics failed to see how St Pancras was in fact a functional design built before the age of steel. As road transport became increasingly popular there were plans by British Rail to demolish the site and in 1975 the M.R.’s Somers Town Goods Depot (now the site of the British Library) was closed. The revival begun in 1994, when the government announced St Pancras would be the best option for a new Eurostar terminus in order to connect a larger portion of the UK to the continent, than was previously allowed at Waterloo. London & Continental Railways - a consortium of engineering, transport and financial businesses - won the bidding to develop this new enterprise. In order to accommodate the Eurostar, the old Burton Beer undercroft was opened up by laying concrete on top of the wrought iron beams, which enabled breaks in the structural grid to be made. A new flat north lit roof across all platforms was designed by Foster & Partners alongside leed architect Alistair Lansley. This provided natural light and cover for the 18 carriage long Eurostar, while trains from the Midlands had a new extension. Although British Rail’s fromer chief architect Nick Derbyshire wanted at least one Midland train to arrive in Barlow’s shed, perhaps a symbolic gesture of the station’s origins, these diesel trains were deemed to filthy for the restored station.6

--

Footnotes
1. J. Simmons, St Pancras Station, (Leicester, 1968) p.13.
2. J. Betjemn, London’s Historic Railway Stations (1972), p. 15
3. E.G. Barnes, The Rise of the Midland Railway 1844 – 74 Vol II (London, 1966), p. 1.
4. E. Robinson, London: Illustrated Geological Walks: Book 2 (Edinburgh, 1985), p.132.
5. ‘Minutes of the Proceedings of Civil Engineers’, cited in J. Simmons, St Pancras Station, p. 35-6.
6. R. Thorne, ‘St Pancras Revived’, in J. Simmons, St Pancras Station, (London, 2000) p.

Lexie Mountain Boys

2009-05-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

Margaret Gelling (obituary)

2009-05-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/may/04/obituary-margaret-gelling

Lincoln (in declivio)

2009-05-02T04:52:00.001-07:00

"...the hill to the north of the river provided a comanding position for the principal military base for the control of eastern England in the Roman period."

M. J. Jones, 'Roman Lincoln', in N. Pevsner & J. Harris, 'The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire' (1985)

"A new and controversial interpretation of the origins of the cathedral has recently been expounded by Richard Gem. He convincingly suggests that the west front was originally fortified."

N. Pevsner & J. Harris, 'The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire' (1985).

"Soon after William the Conqueror became King of England, there was a general order that many of the bishops' seats should be moved from their present sites (often villages) to major [walled] towns in the various diocese. The new Norman Bishop of Dorchestor, Remigius moved to Lincoln to counter the advances of the Archbishop of York, who had claims in Lindsey".

A. Rodgers, 'A History of Lincolnshire' (1970).

"..for the Bishop's Palace is indeed, as Leland says, 'hanging in declivio'.* This difficult topography called for bold use at different levels.."

N. Pevsner & J. Harris, 'The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire' (1985)

*declivio (m) n. declivity, slope, descent

Vicar's Court, Lincoln. Note the local oolitic Limestone used in buildings thoughout Lincoln.

Lincoln City lamp, Greestone stairs.

"In fact Greestone is a mutilation too. It was Greesen Place, Greesen being the plural of gree, meaning step".

N. Pevsner & J. Harris, 'The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire' (1985).

"The street by which one should approach it [the Cathedral] is justly called Steep Hill. Another approach is by Greestone stairs. The hill rises steeply only from the south."

N. Pevsner & J. Harris, 'The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire' (1985).

The Collection, (2005) a new museum by Panter Hudspith Architects.

Dury Lane (?), Lincoln.

Christopher Wordsworth: nephew of the famous poet, and Bishop of Lincoln during the most part of the nineteeenth century. Note also, the distinctive Lincoln street sign.

"When the nineteenth century began it had become a backwater with a population of only 7,000... But it seized the advantage that the railways offered and developed a new commercial importance as a centre of manufacturing industry, especially of agricultural machinery."

J. Simmons, 'A Selective Guide to England' (1979).