Category Archives: Architecture

Architecture, Urban environment

Laughing Shark Yard!

Kettering is not a bad place and it tries very hard.

It is full of proper, hard working people and has a proud industrial, non-conformist and anti-slavery history.

They got a bit carried away in the 1960’s when town planning, which had just been invented, got out of hand and they knocked down lots of buildings that they shouldn’t have.

There is still a beautiful parish church appreciated by the nesting peregrine falcons that live in the spire.

There are still some fine Victorian buildings and some earlier ironstone cottages and alms houses.

The Victorians also used some local ironstone, but mainly red brick.

Here is an elegant example, squeezed in next to a neoclassical bank building where shoe barons discussed investments with a bewhiskered bank manager. On the other side is a mid-twentieth century cinema, until recently an illicit cannabis farm, putting the “high” back in the High Street..

Here is the Royal Hotel — erstwhile commercial hub in the town’s heyday, where deals were negotiated for leather and shoes and more recently, probably marijuana.

Can you see someone at a first floor window, he gave me a friendly wave — one of the 40 people to whom the Royal now gives asylum. Despite the objections of the county council and police, Kettering seems to be surviving.

Development money has been spent regenerating the centre. There is the hint of a developing cafe culture.

A lot has been spent on new planters — the gardens have always been well tended.

Today I discovered the Yards, described as a cool, laid back, shopping area with lots of small, independent traders (I’m all for that). The old fire station calls itself “A low impact regeneration project”. I’d call it alternative — there is a terrific clothes shop with a clever buyer sourcing stylish, quality garments at low prices. There are shops, a food bank and cafes and places to hang out — and there are murals — large murals.

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Architecture, Art, British history

Looking Back

Sometimes an image will transport you to another time.

The carved bench ends of St Winnow’s Church in Cornwall take you straight back to 1520!

The same place, the Fowey estuary, but 500 years ago. A Tudor boat, like the ones they saw from the church yard, but in a heavy sea, blown by the wind god.

Local craftsmen will have been carving what they knew. Images and icons of the time, emblems, armorial bearings, monograms or, maybe an allusion to a sponsor, perhaps a guild. They were artists so there is more to the work than Christian symbolism — they capture the essence of the time.

According to Todd Gray, A Gazetteer of Ancient Bench Ends in Cornwall’s Parish Churches, these carvings of tools are images of the Passion (above is a hammer and pincers, pillar with cord and 2 whips). With my artisan’s hat on I wonder if they represent carpenters and the ceremonial truncheons — the marks of authority of maybe the constable and the two keepers of the poor-house.

You will note that some of these bench ends are better preserved than others — the church was renovated in 1874 and care was taken to preserve the ancient bench ends at that time.

This is supposed to be the symbol of the martyr Saint Catherine but her wheel should have impaling spikes to inflict her horrible death and be broken by the power of her holy spirit. Could it actually be a nod to the wheelwright who financed this particular bench end? Did he sit here?

As I get older I realise how short is a lifespan. How near we are to 1520 — how nothing changes. Here is the bench end that confirms this. Have you noticed how the archaeologists on TV are obsessed with ritual — I always look for practical explanations — is this chap a sinner or just marking the brewer’s bench?

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Architecture, Birds, British history, History

We get more than we bargained for!

Stonehenge 10.04.2022

On our way to Cornwall we stopped off at Stonehenge — free for National Trust members so we thought we ought to get our money’s worth! Both of us had last visited more than half a century ago and were sure we would hate the modernisations.

You park miles away and take a shuttle bus — very quick and restful — especially as you can see all the walkers striding out on the horizon — forging their way across Salisbury Plain to the ancient monument.

Bill was slightly appeased for the loss of birding time by the receptionist at the monument:

Large rook meeting and greeting the shuttle bus.

But what is this — marching to meet us?

Is it a goose? ‘It’s a wild turkey’, an American lad informs me. Oh no it isn’t — it’s only one of the rarest bird in Britain!

Recently re-introduced to a secret location on Salisbury Plain nearly 200 years after the last British bird was shot in 1832. This one has been named Gertrude by Stonehenge staff and has been making personal appearances since 2016. Nobody had told us so we were surprised and delighted, no one more than Bill who travelled to Hungary in 2019 to see their bustards who were very shy and only to be viewed though high powered lenses!

And the 4-5 thousand year monument… Since we last visited you can no longer touch the stones and some of the stones have been re-erected giving a better idea of how it might once have been. The circulation of visitors has been changed so that you can get the full visual impact without people getting in your way.

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Architecture, Travel

Berwick-upon-Tweed

The town on the eastern end of the border between England and Scotland was fought over for centuries.

The old road bridge

With the eventual peace (I hope I don’t speak too soon) a road Bridge was started in 1610 by order of James I of England (VI of Scotland) and finished in 14 years. It cost £15,000 and was to carry the Great North Road, later the A1, between London and Edinburgh and it still carries traffic, albeit one-way but was closed for repairs when we visited recently.

Jacobean Bridge having its parapet repointed.
Looking on is the new road bridge — doing extra work while the old girl is indisposed!
Under her arches her structure is there for all to inspect.

Beyond the two road bridges you can just see the rail bridge — all are quiet as Scotland is only just opening up again after lock-down. The A1 now by-passes the town and crosses the Tweed up river of the town.
Fortified from its years of conflict the town has a sturdy wall along which you can walk.
This was a guard house but not redundant — now a heritage centre.
These beautiful town houses built along the wall look out to sea.
Along the wall you can see the emplacements for the many cannons that guarded the mouth of the Tweed
The other way they guard the harbour, everywhere there is a military air.
But the town hall represents another aspect of this fascinating place — the thriving economic heart of an important border crossing.
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Architecture

“Ideal” Places — Richelieu and Grantown-on-Spey

I don’t know if it is because I spent a lot of my childhood in Welwyn Garden City but I really like towns that have been designed as ideal towns — one man’s dream — models of social engineering. I sense it the moment I enter — the street lay-out, the civic pride — the avenues of trees — the fountains!

The Coronation Fountain, Parkway, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.

Welwyn Garden City was the brainchild of Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928). He founded the Garden City movement that spawned Letchworth and WGC, probably in an ornamental pond surrounded by flowering cherries! He had a utopian vision — people living happily in harmony with nature, tamed by an enlightened municipal workforce — that is pretty well how I remember it as I grew up there.

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) also had a vision (I don’t know enough to examine his motives), but I wonder if Ebenezer ever visited the cardinal’s hometown in Indre-et-Loire, France. The moment we blundered into the small town which carries his name, we knew it was no ordinary place.

Richelieu — a planned town with wide boulevards and squares and a magnificent market hall — the biggest oak framed building I have ever seen.

It reflects the social order of its time — there was a massive palace nearby that was demolished by 1805 when times had changed. The town though survives with its surrounding canals servicing the artisans dwellings and the centrally placed town houses built for the bourgeoisie (currying favour with Richelieu, the man). He was Louis XIII’s first minister — cardinal, politician, patron of the arts — a very powerful man who died of tuberculosis at the age of 57.

The fortified gate to Richelieu (Wikipedia).

I am reminded of all this by our recent sojourn, birdwatching, in Grantown on Spey. As we drove into the town along its wide central vista with its impressive central buildings I thought “this is an ideal town!” And it was.

Grantown on Spey founded in 1765, by Sir James Grant “Good Sir James”. At that time poverty was rife in the Highlands.

Sensibly he started with a linen mill to provide employment — this thrived and bought other trades and services to the town. By 1860 when Queen Victoria visited and stayed, as we did, at the Grant Arms, the population was about 1300. With the advent of the railway the town became a centre for tourists visiting the Highlands, made popular by the Queen.

If I couldn’t live in the country or a walled medieval hotchpotch, I think I might like to live in an “ideal” town.

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Architecture

A Tale of Two Loos!

You can tell a lot about a place when you visit its more intimate corners.

I was recently caught short at Braemar Castle in the Highlands of Scotland.

Overlooking a magnificent stretch of the River Dee one could imagine a member of the royal family fly fishing in these beautiful waters. Location, location, location! The 17th century interiors were closed to us due to Covid but the downstairs, outside loo had kindly been left open by the community charity which leases the building from the Farquharson clan leader and works to maintain its fabric. They must all work very hard — in lots of places the rendering is parting from the underlying higgledy-piggledy masonry which is crumbling in the elements — one can feel the old place sucking up all the money and efforts of the volunteers that tend it!

The state of the loo said it all!

Down in Fife in the town of my ancestors (and Bill’s youth) we visited the museum and public library.

Here we enjoyed the magnificently renovated basement lavatories with their tactile, sensuous mahogany seats and splendid door furniture. All resplendent in an aura of chlorine and civic pride.

The gents was equally spectacular though my companion was reluctant to photograph the facilities. The librarian swelled with pride as we congratulated her and admitted that because it is a listed building it had been a meticulous and very expensive refurbishment (£2,500,000 from Fife Council).

Well done Kirkcaldy!

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Architecture, Art, Humour

Excited about Architecture

‘It’s the building with the huge golden knob on the top,’ said the handsome soldier recruiting in Victoria Square.  He had real leadership potential — I found it immediately — the Library of Birmingham.

He could have said, ‘the three tier cake with squiggly icing, or ‘the Spirograph Building,’ that would have found it too.

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You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover and neither can you judge a library from the outside.  Judge the inside for yourself–

Tiered circular balconies
illuminated escalarors
Central suspended escalators
Looking out at traditional cityscape
From a circular mezzanine

And at the very top, the golden knob illuminates the whole — the hole in the bibliographic doughnut.

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Next to this enormous roof-light is the Shakespeare Memorial Library, remember we are near to the birthplace of the bard.  This has travelled through time and space and been given new life on the roof of this iconic building, designed by Francine Houben of Mecanoo Architecten and opened in 2013.

Shakespeare Memorial Library
Original stained glass roof of Shakespeare Memorial Library
Farsighted sons survey cityscape
There’s the bard
Birmingham’s civic pride

Nothing is perfect though: the glass lift was out of order, to the great relief of my lift-phobic friend, and the route to the top was through a warren of corridors, the ceiling of which I could easily touch — two meters perhaps.

‘Why so low?’ asked friend (her son is 6’8” tall).

‘Mistake!’ said I (having run out of head-room in our barn conversion), ‘Still, at least there are no beams!’

 

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