Andrew Ashdown
LONDON NOW: An Odyssey Through the Nation's Capital
10. The City 2
10c. The End of The City Reached
Now, where was I? In trouble at Goldsmiths! Oh yes! Well, I mean, I’ll never forget the British Council Moscow inviting us all to their spanking new taxpayer-funded pad overlooking the Moskva and then – this is at dinner time (after a long day of visits) - handing out shrivelled prawn, dried sausage rolls and Walkers crisps on paper plates. This is in Russia, after all! Not an aperitif in sight! The same – or equivalent - happened in Beijing – well, everywhere. The meanness of British hospitality knows no bounds. Forebear it to mention for comparison the American approach – the Bush stopover in China for an early meeting with new Premier Jiang Zemin – chequered table cloths and nee-ha girls in cowboy outfits and banjos, the kiss-curled thigh-booted Jolenes cavorting on the table tops. The Chinese has proffered the usual 100-course banquet in the Hall of the People, on specially commissioned gold plated Imperial-style service, the guests attended by expressionless waitresses silent on high-heeled clogs, draped in gold laced kimonos of Imperial yellow, shooting with .... élan of conjurors rare herbal teas from those copper long-spouted pots, the first of many starters hand-fed into the mouths of the pop-eyed delegates, perfumed, desiccated petals of sub-Alpine flowers, pastries carved with the individuality of works of art ..... And that was just the start. But no-one can compete with that – Beijing 2008 requires an alternative response that attempting the impossible. And we did alright there! But that American kitsch at least had spirit. At the British Embassy bash for a certain university’s recently graduated students (each of whom had poured a life’s saving into their course including in some cases selling the family home) the offering was similar to what you might find at a Chinese take-away in Soho .. certainly in the context of what is available in the capital. If you’re going to muck it up, do it good and proper and add insult to injury! No wonder the Chinese think civilisation ends at a line extending from the Great Wall to the Himalayas and Tiger Leaping Gorge and along the Pearl River to Hong Kong. They like their gold too, the Chinese, so they might just tolerate the fare on offer.
This is all as to the world in general and not sui generis. No offence to the Goldsmiths – I hear the canapés and the sandwiches, not to mention those little crispy parcels, are to die for. And the Staircase Hall – shallow dome with lunettes between pendentives.
directly opp Goldsmiths, north side:
Offices, 25 Gresham Street Grimshaw 2003 – the front end is suspended[ii] a concept to the layman somewhat lost; what you do see is this recessed canted form in glass and slate panel strips echoing the cascading garden terraces which look retractable.
Somewhat overwhelmed by Goldsmiths
Wax Chandlers HallSixth on the site since 1525[iii] an unprepossessing brick box, the rusticated base all that’s left after the war of Fowler’s 1850s work, the upper part, with verdigris copper mansard, Seeley & Paget post war. Re-ordered and much improved interior 2004-07 by FLACQ.
passing the grey granite anonymity between we come at last back to where we begun, almost
The Guildhall (→ 8.City 1) - not going there again.
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Now part of this vast hospital development with Royal London (see St. Barts & Royal London Hospitals Redevelopment → 9.East) . Note the Gibbs courtyard and gate by Philip Hardwick of 1834. Rahere. Here, here.
St. Bartholomew-the-Great a C12th Augustinian Priory, most venerable of the ancient churches in the City and only matched by the Abbey and Southwark. The Norman ambulatory a rare sight but heavily restored C19th by Webb – dignified cylinders with scalloped capitals, supporting the tribune or gallery with groups of four opening sunder a relieving arch. Later (C13th or C14th) style clerestory. Rahere’s tomb is here, C16th. The half-timbered gateway from Smithfield is really the key here – keyhole, really – 1595 but nicely re-imagined by Aston Webb including the founder’s statue we pass under – the double bluff is the stone arch, the actual doorway whose extra arcade right suggests a blind arcaded front . We’re through the passage and into another world – a time shift to - site of the old cloister. The tower disappoints, a plain rectangle. There is one bay of nave where the pulpitum stood – and the signal feature of the later oriel (to guard the tomb of Rahere – it has his rebus. However, all this is not for me. On entering one was stopped dead by a voice from hell demanding payment. Demanding. I pointed out that as a matter of principle I did not pay where it was compulsory – except when faced no alternative and in dire need of the loo – and that in any case I was dismayed at the tone in the House of God. I did not take up the issue of wanting a space for quiet prayer else get into the Brecon story here ....
Well, shall I?
Maybe later.
Outside I sought solace in the small raised churchyard and entered Cloth Fair in search of the Poet Laureate but ‘Betjeman’s’ Cafe had gone and we might have been anywhere. Anywhere Georgian, that is. And small and secluded and erotically esoteric. Like the Man himself. What went on in that house. Ooh you are awful!
St. Bartholomew-the-Less is also here, pre-Fire; 1789, G Dance Jnr;
C19th Inigo Jones born in Smithfield, the son of a clothworker, christened here.
Hence also Cloth Fair and, perhaps, why Betjeman chose to live here. It's opposite Smithfield and just along from St. Bart’s. Nos. 41-42 1597-1614 oldest in the City, having survived the Fire; they have two-storied wooden-bayed windows above a rather solecistic ground floor arcade; the brown brick with peach render and natural wood mullions gives it all a strangely contemporary look yet that is perhaps better than the white framed ‘Shaw Queen Ann’ before. s noted earlier, rather reminiscent of No.21 Tudor Street, off Fleet Street (→ 6.Holborn): ‘intricately detailed’. OK, here it is: Betjeman lived at No.43, a more conventional sash-windowed and stock brick affair, now a quaintie olde tearoom behind the requisite small window panes. No.2 is euphoniously the Esther Benjamin’s Trust for Nepalese children and must therefore involve a celebrity of some sort – not Patsy though.
Founders Hall 1986 & 1990, Jeremy Sampson Lloyd, its gables jetties a nod to the old streetscape (but oddly concordant with Broadgate) is worth a butchers, as is Farmers & Fletchers Hall in Cloth Street off Long Lane, 1987 Michael Twigg Brown and also Butchers Hall in a neat square at nearby Bartholomew Close – stone-faced neo-Georgian 1959-60 Howard Kelly & Partners, re-imagined inside by Algernon Asprey - crystal chandeliers, John Hutton etched glass ‘Four Seasons’ (Coventry Cathedral).
And back on out to:
Smithfield Market In reality a complex of buildings including as Pevsner states most impressively the subterranean goods station for the Metropolitan[iv]. Four copper domes set on the corners, of the Harrods, House of Fraser type, on cupolas with lucarnes (dormers) and a modern concrete paraboloid dome over the later part, 225 x 125 feet but not strictly domical – there is a further, proper dome to the west. It may not be class iron work or perfectly contoured; it’s not Liverpool Street station but, as the last surviving wholesale market in London, Horace Jones, (see also Leadenhall and Billingsgate → 8.City) has left a crucial legacy. At the centre of yet another ongoing battle between the Heritage lobby and thuggish developers, one cannot foresee how the eventual outcome will be other than a facsimile Covent Garden of repainted ironwork in service to twee shops, bijou offices, conference venues, flexible display space and a token museum. For now, the Grand Avenue provides perhaps the last sense of real urban scape and soul in the warren of excluding, anonymous glass blocks, wherein the mass of mute, inanimate blob-headed, coffee-drip fed, after-shaven, i-pad wielding, biz-niz execs, weight-challenged, whey-faced, gender deficient, sexually repressed, ethnicity-cleansing, opinion-phobic, politically correct, health and safety wise, IT dependent, cyber-spatial, multi-tasking, plastic-wielding, culturally vacuous, fad-subservient, risk-averse, extreme sports intoning, celebrity hob-nobbing, small ‘c’ catholic conservative, robotic automatons.
What a relief to deal with the back slang of the traders and stallmen immortalised (preserved) by BBC 2! “Come back on Saturday!” bellowsthe meat-cutter to a stroppy customer. “Are you open Saturdays?” “No!” - a perfectly concealed pay-off. Nice bit of lamb there madam, and some sausages please, Arthur.
We end at WEST SMITHFIELD, the Market’s ‘Circle’. Just note the warehousey brick and Portland facade that secretes Haberdashers Hall by Michael Hopkins, 2002 – American oak slatted roof, steel tie-rods. A bit Scando. Rather good. Exterior unpropitious - RatTrad, but with glorious huge roof-tiles.
Yes, Smithfield. I've labored about all this already - the railway station analogy - the sense of being on the City's edge. The circle too is emblematic of our journey (you will be only too aware by now - it's hardly subtle). A virtual, if not virtuous, helical turn. Invoke Olafur Eliasson 'Umschreibung' (taht too is needed - one goes on and on rewriting). Penrose, Escher, Rostiger Nagel.
So, on we go - with trepidation, into places as unfamiliar if now not altogther unknown to yours truly ....