Andrew Ashdown

LONDON NOW:

An Oyssey Through the Nation's Capital

 

6 HOLBORN cont'd

 

HOLBORN VIADUCT & HOLBORN CIRCUS

We’ve reached it. That other Holborn. Skirting the boundaries of the buried Fleet and Holborne, under the upraised Viaduct. The ragged edge, frayed hem of the west end as it meets and intersects, like a Venn Diagram, the ancient City. A wedge-like intrusion of disorder and chaos, disrupting the coherence of the two centres.

 

This northern axis - parallel to the Strand-Fleet Street-Ludgate Hill ceremonial route (axis, axle, chassis) - so familair, comfortable, secluded, historical, charismatic, evolved) - replicates yet is worlds apart. The difference between Oxford and Oxford Met (Cambridge and UEA), Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, Richmond and Kingston, Harrow and Watford ... Lancing and Brighton College. Depressing, discombobulating only because the one mimics the other, ersatz aping the authentic, the implied (desperate) comparison. Like the long-awaited Christmas present – hopes dashed as the Hornby is revealed as Thomas the Tank; the Airfix ‘Ark Royal’ a snap-fit ‘Illustrious’ (no aircraft).

 

Brutal is the slash of the scythe down Faringdon along the Fleet and Holebourne to Holborn Circus, dividing, far more dramatically than Nash’s Regent Street, the affluent and aesthetically rich from the impoverished prosaic; the fascinating from the merely dull. On one side, the metropolitan fabric of the ‘centre’- order and wealth, sense of place; on tthe other, sub-urban, ‘inner city’ decay. The press barons and lawyers were safe from the tailors and shopkeepers, mill-owners and butchers. Of course, now they've fled altogether. We will anon take the line of this ancient buried stream, to Highgate Ponds. But for now we must perforce deal with what’s here.

 

First dispose of Mid City Place High Holborn, Kohn Pederson Fox, with its curved-over football stadium roof, another Wellcome Institute or .... well, numerous examples but this is black, has some annoying tension rods and neat blue glazing strips on the sides. The global portfolio of this firm is so overwhelming in scale and sheer bravura one doesn’t want to carp. It is a bit heavy-handed, however. Pop in here for some kimchee and/or bulgogi - if you can get a seat. And, backing Soane’s Museum (↑), the former Pearl Assurance 252 High Holborn, 166 foot domed colossus which reminds one of the contemporary and also former Hudson’s Bay House in Bishopsgate (→ 10a.City 2) and is now the Chancery Court Hotel. It’s 1914 H. Percy Mockton.

 

English Heritage:

Central block, 1912-19 by C Newman; east block, 1929-30 by P Moncton; south-east extension, 1954-6 by Bates & Sinning; west block, 1959-60 by Bates & Sinning. Portland stone with granite, rusticated podium. Edwardian Baroque style. Engaged Ionic columns and pilasters rise through 2nd-4th floors carrying entablature. 2 stage tower above with leaded dome carried by Ionic engaged columns. End bays with smaller leaded domes.

 

Thence along to 150 Holborn – another MAKEover with, in this case, the original concrete frame retained and, re-clad in what is described as a ‘puffer jacket’ of insulation, finished in glazed faience and patina’d metal to align and blend with what’s next .... Alfred Waterhouse (and son Paul)’s Prudential Assurance building, in trademark fiery red brick and stucco (Law Courts, Liverpool, Refuge Assurance, Manchester and which Webb appears to have copied in Birmingham). The sumptuousness derives from the deep hue and, though it doesn't need any more, gets it: Dutch stepped central tower, ornate friezes, oriels supported by Peter Parleresque vaults and stepped blank lancets in the gables resonant of North German Backsteingotik. You see how one has typographically succumbed to this overhwelming aesthetic. Here stood Furnival’s Inn where Dickens penned David Copperfield.

 

Next door, a crass, blocky thing and here, between Leather Lane and Hatton Garden, stood Gamages – built 1878 demolished 1972, now British Telkom. Those were the days! Waring & Gillow, Swan & Edgar, Marshall & Snelgrove, Bourne & Hollingsworth (more of this when we come to → 18.West End).

 

Also look out for the City boundary marker.

 

This, incidentally, is the architects' zone, their Temple or Harley Street. Just off Hatton Garden (Conservation Area), is Kirby Place, with various slick renovations, makeovers. Thus, a former De Beers Factory and Offices, now student accommodation (with another of those over-sailing roofs). At Nos. 8-30 a mixed use development by Buckley Gray Yeoman (based in Shoreditch) and also Nos. 16-18, same firm, ‘silicon fixed flush-faced glazing .... projecting picture frames’, white cubism of the ‘30s allied to smart materials: the result, a sleek entity yet somehow synthetic, impervious.

 

And here too, unexpected and unprepossessing, between the Circus and the fly-over, a grouping, cluster - happening, coincidence - of architectural and historical diversity and interest – all attainable within the shortest of ambles. The area is alive with medieval resonance ........

 

ELY PLACE presents a remarkable and welcome cul-de-sac, a walk into a provincial Georgian suburb or spa town, perhaps, and then, an unbelievable sight –

 

St. Etheldreda’s Church. A Gothic, believably medieval marvel! And it’s all true. A two-storey affair with crypt and the largest stained glass window in London.

 

This was the Bishop of Ely’s chapel, part of the Palace, his London pad, long gone, an extraordinary remnant, authentic C13th 'Dec' propelling and telescoping us back, via its dark crypt and turning stairs, vast traceried windows (not helped by modern glass) through the centuries. Could this be the basis of some restoration project, in some dark and unimaginable future, where London at last achieves apotheosis as a medieval theme park? With a restored London Bridge?

 

Some historical background; we must be quick now, feet tiring, wings drooping ...

 

673 St. Etheldreda founded double monastery of monks and nuns at Ely ... became centre of pilgrimage ... a C15th pilgrim badge recently found on the Thames foreshore near Billingsgate ... Bishops were key advisers and officials to Kings ... Henry III and Edward I ..... 1250 oratory founded on land owned by St. Pauls from which the palace grew ... 1381 John of Gaunt moved after Palace of the Savoy destroyed by Wat Tyler’s men (as we saw in the last chapter → 5.Strand).

 

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

 

(Speech from Ely Palace, Richard II Act II Sc I)

 

And (more facts):

Henry VIII & the Carthusians .... John Houghton & martyrs .... Thomas Moore & Fisher ... Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, Count of Gondomar, Spanish Ambassador to James I .... Fr. William Lockhart, friend and disciple of Newman and Manning ..... bought Ely Chapel in 1874 for the Rosminians & was Rector until death .... even Fanny Burney ...

 

nota bena: Gothic screen designed by 'our architect' J.F. Bentley.

 

Right next door, down another alley, ELY COURT, is ‘Ye Olde Mitre Tavern’ – at long last, the watering hole at the heart of Ye Olde Londone Towne we’ve been looking for with Fuller’s London Pride, Adnams Broadside and Caledonian Deuchars IPA. All with the blessing of My Lord the Bishop of Ely.

 

Keble College, Rugby School, All Saints Margaret Street (→ 16.Bloomsbury) – these Butterfield icons stand not alone. Here, well up from here, in fact, polychromatism and diaper-work comes with saddlebacked St. Alban the Martyr, 1863, bombed ‘41, rebuilt, reconsecrated (1961), faithful, self-effacing work by young Adrian of the Gilbert Scott dynasty. Later, we will see another saddleback, St. Matthias, Highbury Fields (→12.NE Wedge) and then St. Barnabas, Pimlico’s Clergy House (→ 26.Chelsea) before the exotic coda of St. Augustine, Queen’s Gate (→ 27.South Kensington). According to the ‘Eritage, site restrictions forced a blank east wall and the entrance is via the south transept, a small chapel where Jesus is raised from the dead by Hans Feibusch who inside dignifies that blank wall and scorns Scott’s caution with 'The Trinity in Glory', an astonishing 30 x 50 feet of mural, all Windsor & Newton oils, plus Stations of the Cross to complete two by Sir Ninny. There’s glass by Kempe too and attached the inevitable ‘80s Church Centre in pale brick with blue window-frames by Gordon Fleming.

 

St Andrew, Holborn escaped the Fire but was already in need of attention so was rebuilt by Wren in 1687 - his largest parish church, the exterior re-clad with marble, a large emphatic tower, plain below bar the angle buttressing and taken up by a complex window in the lantern stage which features a round inset window surround to a louvered bell-hole under its own broken, segmental pediment and a complex rich effect of insets in the jambs. The two-storied elevations are simple, with round-headed openings at both the upper ‘clerestory’ (actually lighting the galleries) dominant. Bombed in the war it was saved form demolition and rebuilt in the 1960s entire and to Wren’s original designs. The segmental barrel vault is repainted in pale turquoise or sea green and white with much gilding e.g. on the capitals of the unfluted Corinthian columns under their block entablatures. The festoons in the spandrels are a bit OTT but the plentiful warm wood panelling lends reassurance.

 

City Temple No, not Mormon, Masonic or even Jewish – Congregationalist i.e. Nonconformist Evangelical. The sense of déjà vu hits with this swipe at St. Paul’s (with just one tower its more Birmingham City Art Gallery) but this 1870s Victorian portico, Lockwood & Mawson, is just about all that remains as, behind (as you can well see) is the 1950s work of Lord Mottistone, more office than church and, indeed, offices there are within, akin to corporate cinema boxes (which is, come to think of it, a better description – cinema, I mean, like the ‘Kenya’ (under Marble Arch →24. Mayfair & Park Lane). The story is associated with Cromwell , Goodwin, Parker, a roll call of theological firebrands and the much misconstrued Leslie D. Weatherhead.(see also Hinde St Meth Church → 21.M’bone)

 

Holborn Viaduct Station closed in 1990. It once had a magnificent hotel in the manner of Charing Cross by Lewis Isaacs in ‘florid Renaissance’ style[ii]. It is now something to do with the Thameslink service but, hey, this is too, too boorish. Far more rewarding is Holborn Viaduct itself, a nice bit of Victorian ironwork with statuary and staircases hidden in the adjacent ‘houses’. Curious the fact that there is also a Snow Hill Station in Birmingham (and a tunnel).

 

I should now refer you now to a wonderful map in Peter Ackroyd's book (coffee table version).

 

We’re at SMITHFIELD but this we will come to – well, ages hence (→10.City 2). Meantime, back to HOLBORN CIRCUS: The green curving excrescence of Foster’s Sainsbury’s – hard to avoid. Behind it (we mentioned at Barnard’s Inn ↑) Buchanan’s Distillery Fetter lane – Henry J Treadwell & Leonard Martin, 1902. Rare Art Nouveau (‘with Tudor & Baroque elements’ according to Kenyon) to oppose the Art Deco in these parts (see also Townshend’s work → 10.City 2).

 

Here was the Daily Mirror - Owen Williams 1957-60 - all red fascia as befits the celebrated red-top, where Maxwell fiddled while Labour burned - replaced by the unspeakable (Foster) on behalf of the, well, perfectly edible.

 

But, as for the original, a suave block of great ingenuity, externally intersecting with its podium a display of industry’s finest, at the narrow ends vast proficient expanses of concrete by Williams and on the longer sides, curtain wall glazing by the firm of Anderson, Forster & Wilcox, all screening the internal structural acrobatics to accommodate presses below and offices above. 

 

And I would deliver news releases about IBA transmitters being opened on Thurrock Moor, or wherever ... Maxwell came to No.25 Westbury Lane when seeking our vote in local MP days .... good ol Cap’n Bob. The Times, Financial Times, Observer, Press Association, Reuters - when drafted in as errand boy in my jack-of-all-trades role at the IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority) at the top of Brompton Road, opposite Harrods (the building’s gone, but no loss) I used to look about to find the Fourth Estate.

 

Next door to Foster and across from Waterhouse is a building (it’s in front of said Buchanan’s Distillery) now occupied by HSBC which has a turreted corner topped by one of those peculiar copper green fishing reels you see in Sweden (most famously atop the Stockholm City Hall. Behind it the New Fetter Lane development thrusts a strangely beckoning prow of glass and steel. New Street Square – Bennetts Associates, 2008 - a triumph of urban planning according to Powell, a million square feet of blocks it yet preserves the old alleyways and courts. The 18-storey fin breaks all the Feng-shui rules but is soon lost as we re-focus into the pedestrian areas. This is a high class piece of urban development – one thinks of Mies ‘s Federal Center in Chicago – into which one walks unexpectedly thanks to the narrow entrances to be confronted by a ‘Green Wall’ in fact a small block elevated à la Cranfield College of Aeronautics Boardroom! But now, as I say, draped in verdure: it too had its teething troubles. Otherwise the usual mix of retail, eateries, offices but realised in a variety of forms.

 

76 Little New Street, aka the International Press Centre, Shoe Lane another ‘70s nondescript, medium height (eight storey) tower to add to the list, its pre-cast units make authorship easy - it’s R Seifert, 'The Colonel' - of whom so much more anon.

 

Bulking up, the Goldman Sachs HQ (no longer) of Peterborough Court (odd name) a horrendous flunky hi-tech art deco echo, crushing the narrow lanes and alleyways, Kohn Pederson Fox (again) with EPR (exec architects), the ‘giant flat segmented gable’[viii] a rather chilling resurgence of those other convex contortions: Globe House (GMW → 5.Strand), Charing Cross Station (Farrell → 5.Strand), Alban Gate (Farrell → 10.City 2), America Square (→ 10.City 2).

 

Down an alley past The Cheshire Cheese, a famous network of Betjemanesque ‘intersecting lanes’ to Dr. Johnson’s House No.17 Gough Square, uniquely surviving Georgian home of the ‘harmless drudge’s with Boswell opposite. So very inviting you feel the sequestered alleyways could lead anywhere ... the past takes hold and one can imagine the bowed, jam-jar paned windows muffling the clamour of clerks, scriveners, officers of court, magistrates, Bow Street Runners, landlords, gossips, Fleet Street hacks, publicans and felons .... the chatter of the coffee house distilled in aromatic pungency .....

We wake and head back out to FLEET STREET. Yes, we're back out on the old artery again. The Daily Telegraph Prima facie a much duller enterprise but has stuffed its mouth with gold. Another stop on my dleivery round.  

 

Daily Express Whizzing black Art Deco curves –and silver whizzing lines, like a ‘30s Bakelite radio – or a Dualit toaster come to think of it (Retro Deco in Lewis’s), there’s also one in Manchester, of course, where once I sat across an enormous desk from an editor under his green visor and spoke of linotype and red-tops .... The Press Association & Reuters – their headquarters are standard corporate Lutyens. Some of these concerns are now in King’s Place (near King’s Cross → 15.Camden). Lutyens’ whimsical games with convex and circular forms on the roof remind one of the work of Le Corbusier; hard to believe these are contemporary, they could, should be a millennium apart.

 

ALSATIA

Villains and con-men of Elizabethan Alsatia (the area between the Temple and Blackfriars) taken from:

GLINERT, Ed: The London Compendium: a street-by-street exploration of the hidden metropolis – Penguin, 2004, p.49

 

Abram Men or Tom o’Bedlams

Anglers

Dommerars

Fencing cullies

Fraters

Patricios or Strollers priests

Polliards or clapperdodgeons

Priggers or prancers

Quire birds

Rufflers

Strowling morts

Toppin cove

Upright man

Whip Jack

 

Down another alley opposite the press citadels and we enter Pepys purlieus. Born in Salisbury Court, Christened in St. Bride’s, educated St. Paul’s, a momentary hop over the boundary to marry in St. Margaret’s (→ 2.Westminster) and burial in St. Olave, Hart Street ... (→ 10.City 2)

 

Pepys’s pointillist method of biographical sketching (as described by Claire Tomalin) is infectious - the use of snatches of conversation to bring out character rather than try to portray ....

 

Still very much in Alsatia:

Magpie Alley – off Bouverie Street with the most unpropitious of entrances in .... building location of the White Friars, the Carmelite Friars also a nice display of Fleet Street printing history. Magpie, black and white ... get it?

 

BRIDEWELL COURT

Henry VIII’s Bridewell Palace 1515-23 was here – hospital, workhouse and prison (see also Savoy → 5. Strand – three for the price of one?) now only plain Bridewell Gatehouse - James Lewis 1805 - classical channelled Portland stone, arched openings, Doric pilasters, pediment with coat of arms in tympanum above, Henry VIII in keystone below. Within, a barrel vaulted passage (originally to a courtyard) opens staircases marble fireplace, cameos, delicate plaster cornices.

 

The journos’ church, St. Bride’s - Wren 1670-84. The tower square pilastered with segmental pediment, then the diminishing octagons like a car spanner set and rising to 226 (original 234) second only to St. Paul’s. Restored by Godfrey Allen after the war and under threat as we speak (the Inspire Appeal). The interior is sumptuous, with a barrel vault on arches on denticulate blocked entablatures on paired columns – plenty of scope for gilding. The galleries replaced by screens of sorts, Glyn Jones’s trompe l’oeil apsidal fresco and the stained glass in the reredos not to Betjeman’s liking. The only downer is the possibility of meeting Grub Street hacks or even the odd historian turning the hallowed space into a TV prop. Such is the price of success.

 

Former St. Bride’s Rectory – 2 Bridewell Place - Basil Champneys, trademark exquisite C17th style red brick and white wood, neat dovetailed surrounds, swags, foliage in the door spandrels, oeil-de-boeuf.

 

In DORSET RISE, Michael Sandle’s St. George & The Dragon guards the Premier Inn.

 

Sion College 1887 Arthur Blomfield – warm red brick and Bath stone Tudor Gothic[i] , another nice little perk for the poor Anglican clergy (see also St. Pauls Deanery → 7.St. Pauls)

 

In stark contrast, the former City of London School as ignored and under-reported as it is ubiquitously photographed – by reason of its visual proximity to St. Paul’s. It has the garments of a provincial guildhall or rather, Hôtel de Ville – Davis and Emmanuel (not Pevsner, as Wiki still have it!), 1881-2, by Davis and Emmanuel; 'Northern renaissance manner' as th'Eritage have it. The main feature undoubtedly the hipped slate roof above the Ionic and Corinthian orders and lunettes, with corner pavilions, cupolas and the lantern. 

 

And so, Unilever the elevated, sweeping curve of colonnade on its rustic base – Greek or Roman inspiration? No doubt drew some inspiration from the gentler, partially columned curve its doomed predecessor, De Keyser’s Hotel, built by Sir Polydore and opened in 1874. The convex camber and raised portico in antis must have influenced its successor. It arguably outdoes the Piccadilly Hotel and Selfridge’s. By James Lomax in a neo-classical Art Deco, 1932 and still the company HQ. Sixteen unfluted Ionic columns, thirty-four feet high, reach across the fourth to sixth floors in a massive convexity. Sculpture by Sir William Reid Dick, mermaid and merman by Gilbert Ledward. Magnifique – but were it Paris, Berlin, Wien there would be opposite its mirror, symmetrically, to frame the approach. Instead, we have Blackfriars Station. In any case, it’s a facade now. Facadism. A glass atrium the whole height ..., open plan, .... transparency, flexibility, responsiveness. Yeah, and environmental: a roof garden by Kohn Pedersen Fox. The wasp syndrome, digging out the inside, laying its eggs ...

 

SOUTH SIDE REDEVELOPMENT

The wholesale redevelopment of the area mirrora New Street Square off the north side of Fleet Street, notably No.21 Tudor Street, ‘intricately detailed’, Harper Mackay Architects, 2003; in fact it’s a bit like the C17 houses at Nos.41-2 Cloth Fair (→ 10. City 2)

and

No.1 Tudor Street - T.P. Bennett, 2011,’minimalist blue-tinted glass box’ [Alec Forshaw pp.127-29]60 Victoria Embankment, J.P. Morgan HQ (the back of the City of London School ‘French chateau’) – BDP 1991, Forshaw describes as ‘POMO’ or ‘Chicago Classical’. Of course, this all includes the Unilever brood parasitism just described.