Andrew Ashdown
LONDON NOW:
An Oyssey Through the Nation's Capital
1. VICTORIA
A tall glass block seen from a taxi window, no longer associable – perhaps displaced from another location on the journey in question and resolved by my childish brain into something comprehensible - a cubic form, curtain wall, alternating bands of glass and black panel.
No such building exists or ever existed along the A4 from Victoria Station to Heathrow. Could I have been looking at the Portland Building? But that monster is all grey precast, flanged like its progenitor in New York, the unloved Panam Building (now ‘Metlife’) and standing foursquare in Stag Place, all 334 feet of it, obliterating the view from the station. The architects were Howard Fairbairn & Partners, the date 1956-62, the contractor, Sir Robert McAlpine. What grey dismal Seventies skies that name evokes! For many years this was the first sight of London for disembarking continental and international travellers – no longer, with the move to St. Pancras (→ 15 Camden; n.b. get used to these arrows, forever making ‘connections’ – I have a thing about that, as you’ll perhaps soon tire of appreciating).
So then, perhaps, just perhaps, my own first experience of the Metropolis. Subliminal, confused, frantic. We were headed for Heathrow, a family of three, embarkation point Victoria, the just-opened BOAC terminal at the back of the endless platforms. From there, a journey into the unknown, as exotic as could be imagined: we might as well have been going to the moon. Years later, when these events had been consigned to the edges of memory, we would more prosaically embark for the South Coast and our grandparents, refuge from the chaos we had fled all those years ago. And still later, much later, would come to welcome the old station’s venerable embrace after holidays that took us all the length and breadth of Europe, beginning with a grand tour courtesy of the Inter-Rail pass, whose facility, however, was acknowledged only once we had left these shores, since, in the bucolic setting of British Rail Wolverton, North Bucks, the exotic permit drew a blank and, had it not been for a serendipitous combination of lethargy and benign indifference on the part of the official in question, I should never have embarked. Then, what would I know of the Campo Santo or the Uffizi, the Palazzo dei Priori in Perugia, the ancient steps and crumbling frescos of Assisi? For here, under this terminal’s clutter of utilitarian glass, began my architectural voyage: to Ruskin’s Venice and through the tunnel, the crisp Alpine air, to the Stephensdom and Karlskirche. Combing the Rhine, we found the Kölnerdom and quaffed beakers of unexpectedly potent lager under the netted roofs of the Olympiastadion in München. All this would have remained undiscovered had that official demurred and I should have spent my year before university traipsing to and from Wolverton collecting the dolorous dole.
And – at the station – I met them – Herr Dr. Fegg et al ...
Beyond here, picture also Victoria Coach Station – 1931, Wallis Gilbert & Partners – the hub of coach-bound peregrinations of later, university years.
BTW the justification for the term ‘Victoria’ (I hear you ask)? As I’ve already said, boundaries overlap and so forth but here its simply this: the station so dominates as to eviscerate all other sub-strata, enfolding the entirity of Pimlico and lower Westminster in its sway; well, at least in the mind of this wanderer – way back when - and ever afterward.
Let us then linger, as John Betjeman would surely have done, as he was want to do at railway termini and stations up and down the country, sipping a Lipton’s in the platform café, say in Liverpool or Baker Street, remarking upon the Italianate arches at Shoreham or exotic destinations incised into the rusticated pilasters at Blackfriars, between kneeling in churches or rummaging in Blackwell’s in The Broad. Let us, with him, absorb the brickwork, glazing, sense of space, firm sense of place, of salad days spent in adventure and escape, the Orient Express and Brighton Belle, whiff of salt sea air and hope of real sun .... before we head outside to where the ‘sunny Broad’ is here Victoria Street, beyond the station’s triple frontage, relic of competing rail concerns.
If we turn to face it then, there, to our left, the ‘Continental Side’, which was the old South East & Chatham Railway (SECR, formerly LCDR London, Chatham & Dover Railway) with lines into Kent – Fowler’s shed, segmental tied arch, in two spans, 127ft by 455ft, 129ft by 385ft - the original front still round the corner in Wilton Road, three storey yellow Italianate brick with pedimented windows, including one Venetian, 1860-62. Then, on the corner, golden stone Edwardian: Arthur Blomfield with Fehr’s exotic sculpture; and in the middle, Baroque red brick and Portland stone for the ‘Brighton Side’ (LBSCR - London Brighton South Coast Railway), socially superior (at least where retrieved handbags are concerned). Finally, on the right-hand corner, the Italianate Grosvenor Hotel under its grey-tiled 2nd Empire domical pavilion roofs, all mansarded – with yet more sculpture.
However, all this is hard to grasp from the canopied forecourt – the realm of Boris Buses. In any case, for better or worse, more development is underway: The Peak, aka Abford House, by Sheppard Robson, demure in scale but the advance party for the coming invasion of Victoria Transport Interchange Project (‘VTI’) – more glassy bulk to feed the unquenchable lust for change of the Metropolis.
Ah! Here too, normally, is Little Ben, delightful preview of what lies just ahead but will take some coming to.
My hands you may retard or may advance
My heart beats true for England as for France.
Indeed, it’s time to go – to head into the mêlée. Amidst the blackened brick and peeling plaster, the tawdry railings and ribbed bollards, signage and hoardings, the grind of traffic and press of tourists, office workers, latter-day costermongers, which is to say, hawkers, vendors, chuggers, importuning leafletteers pedalling 'charities' of every sort.
Catch, if you can the New Victoria Cinema, Art Deco, 1929-30, where horizontal bands of cream, delineated by projecting lines of lintel, race round corners with evenly spaced, rectangular panes of glass, like stamps mounted in an album ..... Also, subliminally, the old Dover Side of the station, in Italianate brick along Wilton Road. Momentary distractions as we continue into the main thoroughfare ....
We push at the throng: vagabonds, raggermuffians and scrags, the guttling, sandwich chomping, i-Pad toting suits and hoods that would make this a modern-day Alsatia (that too we’ll presently find → 6.Holborn). Behind and above scowls the Portland Building, seeming to rise as we retreat, omnipotent despite Eland House and the brutal arching form of Cardinal Place which at least opens a new axis through to Buckingham Gate: no bad thing. Both are by EPR, who did much else here, indeed elsewhere.
And now we stop - where we should have begun. It’s off the road but quite apparent, courtesy of the parted seas of glass and stone aggregate of the former Ashdown and BP Houses (revamped by Aukett Fitzroy Robinson), commercial entities providentially divided to frame the apparition, this fantastical confection - of orange and cream, brick and Portland stone, in striped profusion, replete with turrets and pepper-pot domes. A thickly-mullioned ’Diocletian’ peers above the complexity of buttress and arch; an immense finger of campanile defies its own horizontal stripes to soar and finally throw a ring of buttresses around its crowning pepper-pot. All plain to see from here, in this unexpected atrium. An immense arch (a nod to Gothic portals) beckons. And we enter ...
Westminster Cathedral
Darkness. Not the kind that fades when eyes become accustomed, although a glimmering of untold riches begins to pierce the gloom. No, this really is stygian, yet .... like a penny dropping in a well, the scrape of a chair echoing off a wall calibrates the immensity of intervening space. We are drawn in. More sounds and murmurs help define the void. Gradually, emerging in the sepulchral stillness, appear the outlines of piers and arches, in lustrous veined marble and travertine while, all above, the darkness remains, enfolding its womblike embrace. If we’re lucky, the familiar intoning of the Mass echoes through the vaulted space, with a whiff of incense and tinkle of communion bell. The electroliers glow, adding warmth while the mesmeric chant of responses calls forth a blast form the organ, rumbling and echoing across the endless chambers.
And, with the world once more saved, we sit in silence with the many who pray or simply contemplate, gazing into the unsolicited generosity of riches.
Let’s talk history. 1896, foundations complete; 1902 (Ascension Day), divine liturgy commenced. Cardinal Vaughan - you have to get this man to get the cathedral - but there’s no time (as Beethoven said of Bach’s fugues) - go read a book! Sufficient to state he was the key mover and shaker, singly behind the decision to build a new cathedral, to write the architect's brief. Of ancient Recusant pedigree, brothers all bishops, sisters nuns, he founded the Catholic Truth Society and St. Bede’s College, turning his head against ecumenism. His Requiem the first major event in the cathedral.
But what of the architect? Bentley died a year earlier, in March 1902, the year the cathedral, or rather its shell, was complete and the day before he was due to receive the RIBA Gold Medal. Alas! Mortlake, a place of many endings, as we shall see. So, it was designed for Vaughan; but what were the models? Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, San Vitale, Ravenna. One follows Tatton-Brown, Watkin, Howell and Sutton, and Curl to avoid transgression, amend solecism; but by these stripes is revealed Norman Shaw, his New Scotland Yard, just up the road (→ 2.Westminster). The Byzantine influence too was Shaw, or rather his pupil, Lethaby. Bentley was normally a Gothicist – Church of the Holy Rood at Watford - but Vaughan wanted to avoid competition with the Abbey, and to be big enough yet affordable - by allowing the decoration to be put in later. There’s also some Renaissance influence, and Art and Crafts. Bentley's competition winning bands of Portland stone and orange brick achieved crypsis with the surrounding Dutch-gabled mansion blocks, it must be said.
Start with the exterior. Of course, as we’ve seen, with the Ashdown-BP development, the view has been opened up, something never envisaged by the architect (an unforseen fate which befell some Wren churches). What one now sees was intended for inspection at close range, from below, not afar - again, as per Wren. Despite this, all works admirably. Here is the complex massing of diverse elements, piled up, one upon another, receding, projecting, rising until releasing the single slender campanile, at 284 feet above the pavement, erupting in a complexity of buttresses around a dainty pepper-pot. Not unlike Sienna. The Diocletian window peeking above the porch perhaps a reference to Maderna’s St. Peters; even, perhaps, the Basilica of Constantine.
This is the largest brick church in existence: 12½ million headers and stretchers. Okay, others have their claim: Albi, say, or the huge Frauenkirch in Munich, not to mention St. Martins Landshut with a tower of 427 ft; or, again, the Backsteingotik brick churches of North Germany which achieved marvels in the inventive use of brickwork. But then, you see, we have a closer analogue, much closer, not a cathedral except in the wider meaning of the word, and purportedly the largest brick building of any kind in Europe. I speak of Battersea Power Station, to which we come anon (→ 26.South Bank). Designed by the grandson of the most prolific exponent of the High Victorian Gothic Revival, of whom we will see perhaps rather too much hereon, starting at the big one up the road. Conversely, ironically, Scott Junior’s Liverpool Cathedral is a sort of power station, as are, well, practically all his buildings (William Booth Memorial Training College → 29.South, to take one example).
Some quick data: the nave is the highest (109 ft) and widest (60 ft) in England. The arches on which the domes rest (via pendentives) are 90 ft high while the saucer domes reach 117 ft above the floor (Betjeman, in his intro my three shilling guide, mistakenly said the sanctuary was ‘higher’; 'Consider what I knew of High and Low!'). The exterior total width is 160 feet, the length 360 ft, the campanile 284 ft.
All of which makes for a cavernous interior, a railway station, of unmatched width and height. Nothing like it had ever been attempted and the anxiety, in the end, got to Bentley. Tragically.
The hollowing darkness, under the procession of saucer domes, hides the richly seductive marbles and stone facings in column, lintel and cornice, the marbled altars veined in green and brown, pale gold. Against the stygian gloom, light filters from a ring of openings in the shallow dome over the sanctuary - a sort of Edwardian version of B&Q ‘spots’ - to illuminate a wealth of exquisite furnishings while pyx, crucifix and candles of heavy sterling silver glitter softly in the more muted, trembling lambency of ornate cast iron chandeliers. Eventually, the whole caboodle will be sheathed in gold mosaic, à la San Marco, so the effect we see is serendipitous; an atmospheric space, suited to prayer and contemplation, the intoning of Mass.
Hence, at the prospect of glittering, glistering tiles, some apprehension.
Great play is made of the uninterrupted flow of arches of the arcade resulting from the rectangular plan. The screening of the transepts is a sleight of hand that both the three shilling guide and 1994 Pitkin fail to elucidate. But it’s quite straightforward: the arcade continues unchanged across the transepts, using two arches. Hagia Sophia, pure and simple. Play is also made of the interior buttresses creating side chapels between, but for this we do not have to look far. Instead of Catalonia try Chichester, a short ride by Southern from Victoria.
The true power, though, is in the materials. All these polished, expensive marbles, over 100 different varieties (126 ‘at the last count’, crows the official website). The interior looks as if someone has been given a set of marbling ink and let free, the piers and columns providing the viscous surface for the inks and paints, in endless variety of pattern and colour, like a catalogue of endpapers or book covers. Not, you understand (as at Somerset House, Leeds Town Hall, Kedleston) Scagliola, replicating marble and travertine. No. Nor is it the ersatz Frosterley or Purbeck of the Anglican persuasion. This is veined marble, pure and undefiled. The efefct is of an endless stream of intermingling, richly stained and hued liquids. The sea with its cream backwash foam striated within as it laquers the surface of the rocks and breaks upon the beach. That metaphor comes to life in St. Andrew’s Chapel with its floor panels of ‘swirling purple and white Arni fantastico’, surrounding waves of green Connemara and Iona.
The genius here is William Brindley, stone carver at the Derbyshire firm of William Farmer (who did the Albert Memorial for G.G. Scott). When both Farmer and Scott died, Brindley went off to look at marbles in Italy and, indeed, throughout Southern Europe and Asia Minor. He was chosen by Bentley and his first action was to dispute Cardinal Vaughan’s desire for onyx on the baldachin, predicting that it would crack in transit - it did.
Rome was the goal of English cathedral builders – at Westminster Abbey we shall see Henry III imported Italian craftsmen, applying marble around the altar and tomb of the Confessor, and his own before that. Then, at Canterbury's Trinity Chapel, the pairs of roseate columns and thence the ubiquitous application of Purbeck and Frosterley which was duly given its boost at Westminster - influencing the Angel Choir at Lincoln in the 1280s. And so on. Enough!
The general scheme employs three marbles:
columns: verde antico from Thessaly in Greece
piers in-between them: smaller Greek cipillino from the Island of Estria
larger Cork Red from Middleton nr. Cork
capitals of white Carrara marble – complex designs took a month each to carve
Inlays of lapis lazuli, pearl and gold in the sumptuous chapels and their fittings; the baldachin columns of butterscotch marble from Verona; Porphyry flooring; the west end twin columns of dark red Swedish granite, symbolizing the Precious Blood of the cathedral’s dedication, their bases of grey Norwegian Larvikite, with iridescent flecks of silvery mica.
But the real treasure, the hidden bounty of this cornucopia, lies deep within - inside the chapels. The Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament - mosaic peacock by Boris Anrep; St. Patrick and the Saints of Ireland - floor of huge slabs from Connemara, blind arcade from Cork, altar black fossil, other marbles cut from antique blocks and columns; Chapel of St. Andrew – aside from the watery floor – Byzantine mosaic, the altar Scottish granite of three kinds, wall marbles Greek including a black variety from the island of Skyros (where Rupert Brooke lies) and inlaid ebony stalls by Ernest Gimson; at the Chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury, the altar thick slabs of verde antico; the other CofE dedication, St. George, the altar steps of Greek pentelic hewn from the quarries of the Parthenon, the altarpiece itself bearing a bas relief by Eric Gill 'Christ with Thomas Moore and John Fisher' (his last work); St. Joseph - a west wall revetment with the largest panels of Greek cipollino in the cathedral; The Holy Souls (with St Gregory) - the only chapel where the scheme of marbles can be safely attributed to Bentley; the Lady Chapel richest of all, mosaics by Anning Bell and Gilbert Pownell.
And mosaics - that uniformity of glittering gold that may one day cover every surface and leave us with a San Marco della Pimlico ....
Mosaic will feature again (and again) as we head round the metropolis, a kind of emblem, a key, to all we see. One too easily associates it with the La Serenissima and those interiors and squares which once beguiled in an exotic past.
Finally, at the Pulpit, a variation on mosiac, ‘Our Lady of Walsingham’, hymns the art of opus sectile, tiles shaped freely to their subject – by John Trinick. Built to accommodate the Archbishop’s attendant canons, MC and cross bearer, given by Cardinal Bourne in 1934 to commemorate the resumption of pilgrimages to Walsingham (hence the opus sectile).
In fact, when it comes to fixtures and fittings, the scale is gargantuan – in keeping with the building yet one is neither shocked nor overpowered: the Altar a single block of Scottish granite, the Crucifix 30 ft high – the architect’s own design, painted by Christian Symons; the Font again Bentley, nine feet across; the Baldachin or ciborium (canopy) as already mentioned, eight yellow marble columns from Verona (the onyx which broke in transit). The Cathedra, or archiepiscopal throne, replicates that in St. John Lateran n.b. the papal throne itself is up behind the high altar. The Stations of the Cross usher a different -and perhaps welcome - accent, in plain Hopton Wood limestone carved by Eric Gill – fourteen panels attached to the nave piers, his finest work.
Do not overlook the lighting, though not conceived by Bentley, the design a series of plain iron rings hung from iron chains, reminiscent of Hagia Sophia. Last, but by no means least, the organ, Henry Willis III’s ‘crowning achievement’ of 1922-32, restored by the obligatory Harrison & Harrison in 1984 and again in 1996. We do not see pipes but through this immense cavorting depths of space a hidden organist may send ‘reedy notes to flute around’ the marbled surfaces.
Ears! Hear again the waldhorn, vox humana, Suabe and Rohr Flute, bombarde, bourdon and dulciana - diapason Nazard, Tierce, Cor de Nuit and Contra Bombarde ..... Dupré, Vierne and Thalben-Ball - all have given recitals; and to the blind Louis Vierne a nervous Willis whistled the chimes of Big Ben - back-to-front, thus prompting the well-known tintinnabulatory organ fantasia.
And all this - this feast of aesthetic delight, this numinosity, spiritual largesse - is more than architectural. The BBC4 programme ‘Catholics’ brought the matter to life. It focussed upon the women who visit and pray or work in the cathedral. The main protagonist, a marvel who worked virtually non-stop ensuring the smooth running of the place (the unending masses), catching a breather where she could, gave her story. And this was, simply - the beauty of the place. The tranquillity, the sense of welcome. It came over again and again: all the women interviewed had their own version. And these were not always conventional, orthodox believers, though they were not there by accident. They had their difficulties - with the teachings on abortion, for example - but humanity overcame doctrine. A priest was helpful after a divorce, lives were rebuilt, prayers said. All these characters – wordly-wise, well-travelled, well-heeled in some cases - intelligent, educated - came here, to this building, to find among its quiet, secluded spaces – the chapels, prayer rooms and confessionals - some kind of catharsis. This sacred and numinous place, warm, welcoming, friendly and – open. Yes, that! A point made by the lady at the information desk. She had come over from Ireland, headed straight here, to this building – not to a particular town or city, hotel, or hostel ... even friends. No; just here. Nowhere else could afford this welcome; sense of home.
Thus we must view this building. It is, perhaps, the last sanctuary of the believer in England; the only place which anywhere captures the sense of purpose unique to the Roman Catholic hegemony, an adherence to tradition yet questioning, not fanatical. The reverence for beauty tied utterly to faith and meaning - imbued therewith. A certainty about things unseen. It is the arresting difference Ruskin beheld at San Marco. And it is a rare instance of a Roman Catholic Church outdoing the C of E in the architectural stakes.
The cathedral may also hold an architectural lesson. Take, for example, the similarly scaled and stylistically entrepreneurial Coventry. Embattled places addressing a modern world. Yet Coventry is but a museum, an art gallery, an extension of the Heritage, entertainment, corporate, politically correct world of the modern urban shtick. Though both architects took personal responsibility for the details – the design and choice of materials, the furnishings and fittings – while Spence was unable to curb the headstrong egotism of his worldly artists, ’the world pursuing, by the world pursued', Bentley, though prevented from seeing his plans through by an untimely death (which particularly affected the mosaics, bequeathed something utterly in tune with, subsumed into the overriding gestalt and purpose, of the faith. In the Lady Chapel, as I say, you could be in St. Mark’s.
Coming outside into the (now blinding) light, the imagery of modernity immediately jars. Brings one back to earth. My namesake offices now take on the appearance of a pile of stacked boxes, curiously evocative of Moshe Safdie’s ‘Habitat’ at the 1967 Montreal World Fair, itself with primitive roots: the Dogon dwellings at Bandiagara.
And so, thus revived, we continue.
Just off the thoroughfare, it’s worth a moment to seek out the Ministry of Justice, former Home Office, 50 Queen Ann’s Gate, with its mullioned surface and beehive top (see also the so-named New Zealand Parliament House Exec Wing) – reminds one of those contemporary late seventies buildings in Kuala Lumpur. It’s Basil Spence, uncharacteristically (not his trademark red brick), with this sad concrete ‘cowl’ in the manner of Birmingham Reference Library or Thames House (→ below). New York references are unavoidable - the whole area is New York – the ‘beehive’ tops of 60 Wall Street and 425 Lexington Avenue. Oh beehive, Austin!
It deliberately contested the ziggurat pile of Broadway House, Holden’s magnum opus, the perpetually blackened Portland stone icon, hulking over its unforgiveable podium yielding now heritage Art Deco interiors and fittings. Further on, the undistinguished Passport Office in Petty France – scene of many a long queue, for those Inter-rail and other Continental jaunts ....
To this, interpose the Asticus Building, 21 Palmer Street (Foggo and Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands), a totemic cylindrical form of cut glass, faceted diamond elegance, occupying the site formerly part of Caxton Hall, old Westminster Town Hall, scene of celebrity weddings: 1878, William Smith & F.J. Smith, red brick and terracotta ‘Francis I’.
Back into our American artery. The drab anonymity of Sixties’ New Scotland Yard (betraying the influence of the American archietcts SOM - more of them in due course) and Westminster City Hall, Burnet Tait & Partners, 1960-66. And other blocks which cram the north side, making, with the opposing wall of Ashdown House and old Army & Navy (all by the architects of Cardinal Place and Eland House) an unwelcome canyon, albeit relieved by colonnades and that opening to the Cathedral.
PIMLICO
Time to nip in off the main road again, this time southward, in behind the Cathedral. Into this hidden area - bet you never go there? You’re one to stick to the shops and bus routes? Well, come with me!
I would ask you to bear with me when it comes to these labels – ‘Westminster’, ‘Pimlico’ – forgive me; where, after all, are the borders, except in the mind? Some will say Vauxhall Bridge Road. So be it! But there are such very discrete environments here, hemming themselves in behind perimeter walls, below parapets or simply towering eminences that serve as walls and the wider geography is soon forgotten.
The essence of the place, the accepted image, is ECCLESTON SQUARE, the posh ‘Stuccoville’ built by Thomas Cubitt (statue coming up ↓) after he’d done with Belgravia & Bloomsbury (Chapters → 18 and → 25 ahead).
But then ... there’s so much else.
We start with whimsy, aberration: Channel Four Television Headquarters, Horseferry Road, by Richard Rogers (can’t you tell?). A sudden panicky sensation of finding one has driven onto the docks at Felixstowe with the containers stacked all about. Shouty, polychromatic; ‘socially aware, willing to take risks’ runs the rubric. Perhaps. Something of a vogue with these organisations (The Televison Studios → 15.Camden).
Close by (and just behind the cathedral) a gear-shift in place and time is wrought by St. Stephens, Rochester Row loftily spired, High Victorian, built by the Coutts banking family (important hereabouts), hence lavish. Benjamin Ferrey, pupil of Pugin, employed the Decorated the style: ‘Flowing’, ‘Second Pointed’ - but within all is white and waits around for cleaning, much of Ferrey’s decoration lost, distempered over, including some on the clustered piers of polished red granite (when last viewed). One expert finds hardness, sharp details, smooth surfaces, anticipating Butterfield (see All Saints, Margaret St → 18.West End).
Next door, as it were, Westminster Kingsway College, Vincent Square - H.S. Goodhart-Rendel 1951-3, 1955-7, expressing clearly the original 1937 steel frame (a la Chicago School) in yellow stock brickwork but with decorative features – pierced parapet and red diaper patterns, diamond-paned glazing, green slate entrance and the identifying semi-circular stair turret. Jamie Oliver, Ainsley Harriott, Anthony Worrall Thompson .... were here.
Then, a discombobulating experience: the Royal Horticultural Society Halls, Vincent Square. Out of place here, one would think. Two large halls, one introducing the catenary shaped concrete arches which I first saw at the indoor market in Nairobi (with the occasional moran in one-legged vigil). An engineering solution, like the St. Louis Arch. And, while we’re at it, one should mention the Agricultural Hall in Islington (→ 12. NE Wedge). The architects here, E.J. Stebbs, 1904 and Easton & Robertson, 1923-8.
We come to VINCENT SQUARE itself, London’s largest, if the definition is allowed to stretch a little, a little too untidy round the edges for a proper square; relaxed, perhaps. Crossing it brings us into narrow, well-built streets: private offices, studios, pied-a terres. An impressively secure tennis-court - scholars at play. Look out for a display of Oriels down one street - and Peel House too.
Out onto the thoroughfare that (as aforementioned) divides the two localities and change gear again, to the 1960s and the pioneering Lillington Gardens Estate - Darbourne & Darke, red brick, exposed concrete, interlocking balconies around courts laid to lawn and all so low, low, and spreading, rather again as Habitat Montreal 1967 but with the texture of Spence or, come to think of it, Richard Sheppard’s Churchill College Cambridge (we’ll meet another Chuchill in just a moment). Whatever the case, it must have influenced Ashdown and BP Houses. And I’m quite sure the Ashdowns had something to do with it, unless it was merely admiration. For there we were in 1970, on the cusp, the fulcral moment, en route to the Crown Agents in our dark blue, rubber-lined wind-cheaters ....
Smack in the middle of it all – and dictating the materials, one assumes - is the Church of St. James-the-Less, G.E. Street’s magnum opus and one of the Holy Nonet (or Dectet) of Victorian and Edwardian churches in London (see BOX → 31.South). The exterior of red and black brick with yellow Morpeth stone dressings and blue-slate roofs, severe tower with pyramidal roof “perhaps the finest Ruskinian steeple ever to rise in Victorian England”. Within, a mass of wall created by the high ratio of surface to opening, notably in the spandrels of the low sprung arcades and consequent immense space over the chancel arch onto which G. F. Watts’ ‘Doom’ mosaic in Venetian glass. Polychromatic, patterned brickwork and floor tiles. The Tractarian font rich with in elaborate ironwork (canopy displayed at the 1861 Exhibition).
We must cut through now back to ECCLESTON SQUARE and find:
St. Gabriel’s, Warwick Square High Anglo-Catholic, 1851-53 Thos Cundy II (with son Thos Cundy III) – part of Cubitt’s development, Cundy his assistant.
Near here also, at 95 Cambridge Street, a blue plaque to record Jomo Kenyatta’s residence, 1933-37. The story of exiles in London would make a worthy book, I’m sure. That earnest bearded figure in the BM Reading Room, for one, dutifully showing his library card while planning the overthrow of western civilsation as we know it. Gandhi. Cetshwayo (Melbourne’s nemesis, victor of Isandlwana) ....
In Denbigh Street, reassurance: the altogether contextually sound figure of Thomas Cubitt.
We come now to the behemoths:
Churchill Gardens (there, I said we'd meet the great man soon) 1950-62, Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya (more of them when we get to the City): 6500 people, 1600 homes, 32 blocks – ‘mixed development’, underground car park, shops, slabs all in line, perpendicular to the river (letting in the light), recycled waste product ...
and
Dolphin Square, of Admirals and scandalised residents, some 1250 flats this time, the largest single block in Europe, a claim that beggars a survey of certain former Soviet bloc metropoli .... see also the Heygate Estate (→ 32.South) and Merit House (→ 14a North-West)
and again, until recently:
Pimlico Academy, comprehensive School as was. The old Brutalist campus now gone. A loss? There are those – with the new fondness for ‘60s Brutalism - who would say so, have said so. It was a joint effort by the GLC, W.J. Simms, Son & Cook and John Bancroft of ILEA, 1967-70. McKean & Jestico draw an instructive comparison with its contemporary, the American School (→ 22.Regents Park), noting the symmetrically opposite treatment of light (exclusion there vs. openness here ) and space (open plan here, traditional classrooms there). Nicholas Taylor’s memorable caption in Betjeman (1972) echoes the growing impatience with the genre: ‘conflicts with everything around it’. Set that against the panegyrics of today! Demolished 2010 (despite Jonathan Meades or Lord Rogers of the River).
Time to head out onto the EMBANKMENT and, if you have legs, begin at the farthest point to gain full advantage – else, with the mind’s eye and gift of cerebral aviation, come with me ....
We cross ST. GEORGE’s S SQUARE GARDEN with, at the top end, St. Saviours Church by Cundy III which Jones & Woodward feel obliged to point out faces the wrong way (in relation to the square). True, but it goes well on the corner. As an aside here, Howard Colvin, editing Sir John Summerson’s magnum opus, was moved to add a footnote to record his disagreement with the great man over the quality of Cundy’s Pimlico churches, instancing St. Barnabas, Pimlico – a rather fine church which is nonetheless the other side of the tracks and so dealt with under → 26.Chelsea).
So on along, behind the burgeoning Thameside apartments – more Habitat style ziggurats and The Panoramic, a glassy, half-hearted POMO renovation by Halpern which does guard duty for the bridge (a theme we address in due course!)
Next, take in Chelsea College of Art & Design, Imperial Baroque and French Renaissance by John Henry Townsend and Wilfred Ainslie, formerly the Royal Army Medical College. Wonderful superimposed stories of Doric and Ionic colonnades open up the Wrennaissance front, further enhanced by ironwork balconies and enlivened by pepper pot domes of Portland stone. The Arts College achieved fame under the likes of Sutherland, Moore, Frick (see also Camberwell College, London College of Fashion, Central St. Martin’s, you name it). In 2005 Allies & Morrison made additions, sensitive yet robust, to the venerable old thing.
The main event here is, of course, Tate Britain - as so awkwardly and cloyingly termed, merely to lend further credence to the equally crass ‘Modern’. Like the Horniman, Imperial War or Wallace, a little too far flung for its own good and one only ventures occasionally on a free preview with a card-holding 'friend'. It was erected as the gift of Sir Henry Tate, on the site of Thomas Hardwick's Millbank Penitentiary, of which more in just a mo. Third Empire style or Beaux Arts – what do you think? All portico: six columns with the outer pair together and low containing walls, it has the unfulfilled look of the Methodist Central Hall (coming up shortly, → 2.Westminster). n.b. we’ll come to portico terminology anon – too much of a mouthful here – meantime I recommend Sir John Summerson’s ‘The Classical Language of Architecture’.
The ammonite staircase, centre piece of the renovation by Caruso St. John opened in 2013, of ‘monochrome terrazzo’ to mimic the original mosaics, better than Stirling’s Clore, by all accounts. The shape of the treads is as per the Nautilus shell which in cutaway reveal a logarithmic spiral of cells .... a theme that re-emerges all through the metropolis - if you pay close attention ....
Time to approach the soaring form that dominates this area, the iconic Vickers Building. Turquoise, angular, gleaming, it epitomises the sixties, welded by memory to the turquoise seats and orange cushions of British Rail from Dover, red plastic geometry set from Smiths, the ‘New Seekers’ and ‘Foundations’ - utterly beguiling to the adolescent mind along with its contemporaries such as the Hilton (→19. Mayfair), Post Office and Euston Towers ( → 16.Bloomsbury), Centre Point (→17. Covent Garden) and Britannic House (→ 10.City). Such newness and bravado but, looking now, with the benefit of age and experience, the clues to its enduring success quite apparent: the masterly handling of diverse forms- the tower alternating convex and concave sides (diabolo form, according to one), a realisation of Miesian ideals (Lake Point Tower, Chicago), defying restraint, correctly ‘waisted’ above its podium by the intervening Lever House type mezzanine – all features in common with the suave Hilton but, where that is cosseted in cream facia, this is all blue-green glass rising pencil-slim and high, very high, at least perceptibly – still unfazed at being left behind by certain recent upstarts. It looks tall, and not merely because of its relative isolation and juxtaposition with Victoria Tower (→ coming up). It has that bearing.
Beyond it, Westminster House, 7 Millbank and a whole gamut of Edwardian and Victorian revivalist office buildings: indistinguishable, evanescent, transient - under the developer’s cosh. It’s where the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) now hides .... for the moment.
Continuing on, Thames House and Imperial Chemical House, haunt of MI5 is by Sir Frank Baines of HM Office of Works, 1929-30, on land cleared after the 1928 Thames flood. ‘Imperial neo-classical tradition of Lutyens’ say Wiki; perhaps, but rather moderne and certainly not Edwardian Baroque. In scale, Manchester Town Hall Extension (E. Vincent Harris of the Ministry of Defence building → 3.Whitehall) but the brutal roof – ‘cover’ better describes it - recalls Birmingham Central Library - whose fate continues ot hang in the balance. There are in fact three buildings here: to the north, across Horseferry Road, Imperial Chemical House, built for ICI; to the south, the remaining two blocks linked by a vast, fortress-like coffered archway, intimidating and prison-like.
That 1970 trip saw us at the gates of the citadel, the Former Offices of The Crown Agents, Millbank. Sir John William Simpson (1858-1933) architect of the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley - for which knighted - as well as, incidentally, some buildings at Lancing College in Sussex – 'Fields', 'Gibbs' and the Masters Tower - and Roedean School in toto.
And where one Ashdown senior came one grim windswept afternoon in search of a job in Malawi. Or some such fantasy.
Behind here – we might have come at it earlier - the old 1970s travertine & granite – ‘créme et brun’ (a term to be elaborated upon in due course) Abell & Cleland House, once HM Prison Service HQ, now gone. Another chapter ended in the history of this troubled corner site, once the Milbank Penitentiary, no less, Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’ of 1828, actually to a plan by William Williams adapted by Thomas Hardwick, then John Harvey, then Robert Smirke .... and demolished 1903, another circular solution so favoured by the metropolis. Now, apartments, jacuzzis, all that, by DSDHA (Deborah Saunt & David Hills).
A tantalising vision in white screened in the verdure beckons and we nip though to St. John’s, Smith Square. Thomas Archer also did St. Philip’s Birmingham but this is altogether more whimsical with its four corner towers, belfries - Queen Vic's 'upturned footstool'. The rationale? Subsidence. Needed to weigh the corners down and hold firm, much in the manner, come to think of it, of the medieval masons’ cathedral buttresses. It’s a concert hall, of course, and the demands of broadcasting obliterate the subtle interplay of forms, the implied lines of flexible Baroque space. One bows to Sir Hugh Casson’s magisterial description (unsourced) in Wiki.
Discombobulation of another kind follows. The chequerboard prison blocks of the Grosvenor Estate. Hardly believable (nor entirely avoidable) here. Alice in Wonderland or Twin Peaks. Kokotcha. Lutyens at his most perverse, a combination of whimsy and arrogance.
We have touched down on the subliminal chess board of Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Below it, in Horseferry Road, Great Minster House, a postmodern block by T.P. Bennett Partnership, 1988-92 and recently revamped into apartments by EPR. Probably not worth diverting to ...
Better the New Home Office in Marsham Street, on the site of the Eric Bedford’s ‘toast rack’ 1970s Department of Environment which drew Heseltine’s quip about the best view in London (because from there you couldn’t see it). There are three buildings to this complex by the Farrells - glass canopy, open plan use of colour, &c., nice street frontage with metal cut-outs and horizontal louvers.
Well, we’ve been in Westminster for a while now, so let’s make it official .... next chaptert please.