Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts

Saturday 5 November 2022

Save Plumpton Terrace-From Liverpool City Council.

Along Everton Road.

There is a tall grand terrace. 
A long brick structure, a row with its principles of Georgian design almost intact. 

With remnents of its doorway fanlight faded glory. It stands there tall in defiance.

I will not be moved it says to me, in the autumn sunshine.

 I will not fall down, no matter what you do. 


Built 1824. there are a few alterations and a bit of work could be put right.

Generally I hate mock Georgian. The proportions don't work because the ceiling heights are usually reduced. This is the real thing. 

Looking smaller than its three storeys in pictures, than its true scale. 

It stands there as if it has been left behind and in another timezone.

Liverpool in the 1980's.

You could almost put its faded elegance to a UB40 soundtrack and without too much effort, imagine what it was like in the late seventies in post war decline Liverpool, managed decline. Thatcher decline. 

When the mantra was to manage that decline because Liverpool was dying in front of our eyes.

I saw it in spray can graffiti before grafitti became fashionable.

Will the last person to leave Liverpool switch off the lights'.

It was a distress call. A pleading. 

Vandalism in protest.

I know because I have done it too.

Declaring that Lady Doreen and Sir Trevor Jones in my opinion were “Partners in Slime”.

The terrace plus the adjoining row which are in good order were mentioned in 'Buildings of Liverpool'...saying they were needing attention.

That book was published by Liverpool City Council in 1978.

Just how can this be allowed to happen to such an imposing row of beautiful proportioned dwellings?

It is owned by Liverpool City Council, thats how.

A labour council who behave like Tories. 

Where Mayor Joe Anderson and his Head of Regeneration were arrested, alledgedly as partners in slime. 

They and the council were probably waiting for it to get in a worst state so they can do us all a favour.

 And knock it out to one of the “Cosy” developers that they fed with our land, that we the citizens of Liverpool own.

Plumpton Terrace was alive when I was young.




Everton Road leads into St Domingo Road and thats where I was born in Wye Street almost next to Everton Library that is still standing.

Just about.

It may receive some attention soon.

Or is that another empty Liverpool heritage promise?




Across the road is the beautiful and historic Grade I listed St Georges Church. 

Which was my church of St Georges infant school, where we were led to pray before I discovered the untruths contained within religion. 

I walk through its gatepost entrance, that I once climbed and clung to, and threw confetti over my neighbour in celebration as he walked through it, beneath me with his bride, on his marriage day.

It is easy for you to imagine yourself in the countryside.

At the top of Beacon lane.

St Georges platau has always been an important place.

Feel the craftsman cut 18th century script in the historic stones, that all tell a story, in the graveyard and you can feel the history through your fingertips



I got quite emotional there today. Maybe I was remembering sitting inside looking up at the majesty of its architecture when as a six year old, not knowing that this was a Rickman design but knowing that it was special. 
Or maybe it was recalling my mothers funeral service that was held there recently. I dont know, but I do know that the sense of place that I still feel to this area is within my soul.

There is a bit of, a new, mad looking Acadamy heading back to Plumpton Terrace. The place where as a child I once went to the Red Triangle club. That was a long time before the Kung Fu fighting Bruce Lee craze took hold. 

This is where another neighbour of mines brother, Steve, older than me, trained. He went to compete at the Olympics. The Red Triangle has trained some good people. 

And kept many young Liverpudlians off the street. Maybe gave them some pride.

This area has had its ups and downs and most of it is on the up.

We need to Save Plumpton Terrace-From Liverpool City Council.

While there are fortunes going into new build shoe boxes, we need to respect the past, where we come from.

This building, or buildings need to be saved.



So what could it be, well as I remember those dark Boys from the Blackstuff days.

I can also remember how I felt proud to have a certiificate, a City and Guilds certificate. That showed that I had trained as a proper apprentice. 

That I had served my time, not inside, where poverty wants to grab you and take you down to.

But as a carpenter. “You will never be out of work” I was told.

Now Liverpool needs more trademen. Good lads and now ladies, who will feel the same pride as I did.

Like the mythical plasterer written into Alan Bleasdales script who signed his name on the corner of his wall because he was so proud of his work. 

Yes I remember him too.

Everton needs to rekindle its pride and look after its youth and give it hope and a new future.

Plumpton Terrace could just be the place to do that.

Save Plumpton Terrace-From Liverpool City Council who have let it decline and will let it fall down.


If we let them. They Are Guilty  

Liverpool The City That Knocked The Cavern Down And Then Called Itself Beatles Town.


SAVE EVERTON LIBRARY TOO


Living In Liverpool Its too hard to bear sometimes

Tuesday 30 November 2021

Harry Clarke Stained Glass Windows. St Mary's Nantwich Cheshire UK

I was first introduced to the work of Harry Clarke by a lady, who one day entered my shop and made friends with me. 

A very interesting person, she was a maker of stained glass who had completed several commissions, in stained glass, for religious buildings in Perth Australia, where she was living. 

She had been born in Liverpool, but like many had emigrated with her parents at an early age.

She showed me his techniques and I was fascinated by his palette of colours.

We became good friends.




I purchased a first edition of Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Falling under a spell.

This was not cheap at the time. Though it looks so now.

It was illustrated by Harry Clarke and I was taken by those illustrations that had the colours of Arabian nights with a Dublin Hue.

 Many were in black and white showing the Aubrey Beardsley inheritance of all illustrators at this juncture in time.


They had an aggressive stylisation with a feminine touch.

 (No I can't work that one out myself either).



I then stumbled across some information that he had been commissioned for stained glass at St Mary's Nantwich in Cheshire. I had to go.

Its probably fifteen years since I first saw them.

I had thought about going for a day out but it always seemed a long way off the motorway, when I would see the signs for the town.

I did get a chance during a recent visit to Nantwich to pick up a Joseph Hoffman glass vase.

I was taken by the whole setting of the church and the respect it retains in the centre of the market town. 
I have become used to seeing historic structures trashed in Liverpool as the clowns who ran the city ruined the listed buildings by allowing innapropriate development.
But not here, in Nantwich. They want their history.



I wanted to see if I could make out the difference.
In the way that the light plays on the stained glass and the feeling that is within, and from several different centuries.
 I played 'Spot The Harry Clarke' and in no time at all I found them.
 It was dull day but the light came shining through the pale pinks and lilacs, and his unmistakable style finally became apparant in the drab light. 
It is at first glance, another stained glass window, in another church. but the more you look, the more you see. You can identify its him by his palette.
So I did a little video that I would like to share.
This was a Harry Clarke alright with all the usual symbolism and hidden meanings that I now associate with his remarkable way of seeing the world. Completed in 1919. The eyes have it.
And through his eyes you can journey into a distant place. 
Of Chivalric Knights and dragons breath and mythical places that feel real in your own imagination. 
That awake when you venture into Harry's thoughts.
This was a window commissioned in sad times but it has a glory in its melancholy.
Richard Coeur de Lion was as bold as I recall.  There is an atmosphere.

There is more than stained glass on view.
The Church is wonderful with its history evident for all to see. 
I won't put it all down here.
You can find more information here. St Mary's Nantwich. 




There are some remarkable carvings inside and on the outside of this medieval sandstone church that was restored in the 19th Century by George Gilbert Scott. 
I know the work of the family well. 
Growing up with the imposing Anglican Cathedral of Liverpool by Giles Gilbert Scott, also in sandstone.













There are a series of Misericords. I love that word.
A misericord is a small wooden structure formed on the underside of a folding seat in a church which, when the seat is folded up, is intended to act as a shelf to support a person in a partially standing position during long periods of prayer.
There are so many beutiful artifacts and historical features that I will have to go back again.
 In another fifteen years maybe?




 

Friday 3 July 2020

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. His Gothic Ideal Is All Around Us.


 I still recall how I wandered around the war torn streets thinking that everywhere was damaged and forlorn, and covered in a thick black patina, from the smog that frequently fell. Like a stone.
That at times, made even circumnavigating the other side of the street impossible.
The first church that I attended, was attached to our school. That was St Georges, and is a Grade I listed building of 1812. St Georges is one of the earliest buildings to be constructed by metal skeleton. Leaving it light and allowing the architecture to float in in its Georgian Gothic splendour. The decoration hanging on its Rickman designed cast iron frame.

I would not know the name Pugin, it would mean nothing to me until I started to feed the thirst for knowledge that I started developing while still in short pants.
Gothic was born of Rickmans work and was championed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.
The first time I looked up at the heavenly architecture of st Georges that was heightened and was shimmering in tinted colours, like a magic lantern slide. I wandered into a world of why. As the light from the only stained glass windows that escaped the Luftwaffe, pierced the pulpit during the services that I had to endure. My mind would wander. http://www.stgeorgeseverton.com/
It was built on the site of the old Liverpool lighthouse and Beacon lane fed up to its plateau. This was the old welsh town of Liverpool.
There were numerous massive buildings that I recall, that would either fall down or be demolished and the architecture of the firm of Pugin and Pugin, I would later find out, filled the streets around my home with Gothic pearls.
Our Lady Immaculate with the ambitious foundations of the Chancel Chapel on St Domingo Road. That would never be more than that. The plans to build a Majestic Cathedral, at the top of our street had never been able to to be realized. For lack of finances.
I could feel those ambitions all around me, enveloping my senses.
Decades later I would become a specialist in the restoration of listed buildings and then move into the world of antiques.
But I will never forget the way it made me feel to live in such a place with its monumental faded Gothic glory at every turn.
So now, when I may, understand the esoteric's of design, I try to keep on furthering my knowledge by the continual feeding of that seed. That grew out of those bombed out buildings that I played in as a child.
There were three Pugin and Pugin buildings in stones throw from, our house.

I want to explore here, a little more about The Great Gothic Master of Design.

Augustus Northmore Welby Pugin (Born 1812) wrote a scathing attack on British Georgian architecture. He called it an abomination.
CONTRASTS was written by Pugin when he was 25 and he does not hold back in his thought. The Industrial revolution of the 1830's had saw huge civil unrest.
A strong moral leadership was called for. But it was not there.
The country was burdened with George IV. Who did fancy himself as a patron of the arts.
He wanted to work on Buckingham Palace and the kings favourite architect John Nash who was a master of disguise was employed.
This work showed what we call Facadism where a building is cloaked in a Stucco fronting.
Pugin was an angry young man. He thought he would cleanse the immorality of this Georgian style. In 'Gothic' he asks the questions of the reasons of the demise of architecture.
Even though we now look at Georgian as an example of style that is admired, he thought Gothic was the way forward. Believing classicism to be false to a higher ideal.
St Giles in Staffordshire was an attempt to turn the tide of immorality through architecture. In his eyes Medieval fusion would be controlled into a channel of heavenly paradise. To him, the Gothic revival was devoutly christian. This was his brave new world......of looking back.
His mother Catherine Welby and August Charles had fled the french revolution and they settled in Bloomsbury. As a direct result of Catherine's inheritance. They were wealthy. The young Pugin never really went to school. His father supplemented their income by doing architectural drawing. At five years of age his parents took him to Lincoln Cathedral. He was struck by the genius of the prizmatic light dousing the building in contrasting colour's, that was built 700 years before.
He admired the honesty, and how the building was made.
Its skeleton was on show, there for all to see.
His father ran a drawing school and he and the pupils were taken to Northern France. Rouen Cathedral entranced him.
There is a drawing in the national archives entitled My first design at 9 years old.
He learnt about the engineering. How buildings held up. How they were built.
He was shown them the bones of how they were constructed. He would feel them.
Many Cathedrals were looted during the revolution. Many with sculptures were defaced. He noted this.
He would collect and would study fragments of medieval glass.

Low church services were held in preaching boxes in small chapels and his mother supported Edward Irving who was a sort of evangelist of the day.
He began to loathe the low style of service and turned to the theatre.
The Theatre Royale Richmond, entranced him at 15 years old, he saw the scenery flying on and off the stage. As if by magic. He began to study in three dimensions and in 1831 he designed quite lavishly for Henry VIII.
He gained a sense of the dramatic, with the immorality of the theatre.

Ann was 5 months pregnant when Pugin married her. He did the right thing and they seemed happy, until Ann died, shortly after childbirth. Then his mother died. And at the age of 21 he was a single parent. He was shattered by events and buried himself in the wreckage of his life and his Gothic ideal.


Contrasts won him the friendship of John Talbot the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury and his money gave him the capital for amongst others St Giles in Cheadle.
Cheadle, my perfect Cheadle he declared in later life. Picture The west doors of St Giles
At the consecration of his Gothic masterpiece of St Giles, Archbishops were present. He had come a long way. It was a national event. He wanted to capture a spirit something he felt and it all went into his ideas for Gothic.
Talbot's stately home is now Alton Towers.
He had converted to catholicism while writing 'Contrasts'. He adored the playing out of the service with all theatrical theatrical manner, he adored.
George Myers was his prefered builder, a Yorkshire man. They struck a chord, he had a understanding what Pugin wanted. Though on one project he was not involved in, the Bellfry fell down.
He would design wallpapers and Mintons took the decision to reinstate the practice of making encaustic tiles around his designs.
His friend John Hardman would make his metalwork and stained glass.

'The True Principle Of Pointed Architecture' was his second book. Published in 1841 it laid down six principles for building in the Gothic style.
Pugin believed good architecture is good society and it lays down all the principles of how to achieve this. A vision. Detail must have meaning. If it is constructed it can be decorated.
In his work he puts the hinge in full view showing exactly how the door is opening. A hidden hinge was imoral he thought.
He declared classicism was wrong and truth and honesty was Gods work.
'God will see if you skimp on hidden parts of the building' he would declare. This inspired a new generation of architects such a s George Gilbert Scott.
Who would say after reading Pugin.
'I felt as if I had awoken from my slumbers'.
The whole landscape of Britain would subsequently change through the thoughts and writings of the man'.
Though some people claim that modern buildings such as the Pompidou or Lloyds of London hold true. This is stupid thinking. They may hold the twisted principles dear but these have been, shall we say, stretched by the architects for good PR.

The Palace of Westminster burnt down and the rebuilding of the corrupt place would be replaced by Pugins moral ideal. Charles Barry had classic training, but Pugin overshadowed him. The towers were definatly Pugin which led but the heraldic interior, combining the work of John Hardman, that showed an ideal to an almost heavenly enlightenment of the mind.

We take for granted today the interiors of the chamber because we see it almost every day on TV. But it was made to overawe everyone who came in contact. And from his thousand drawings, he aimed for perfection. He was a man posessed. Working tirelessly.
The Soveriegns Throne is an example encompassed. The medieval view in revival form, evoked history and with a linear heritage from days gone by.
Though Barry was the architect, Pugin, in 1834 had designed an imaginary college and by co-incidence the year the Houses of Parliment burnt down.
It is almost the same building.
He was subsequently, unfairly written out of the final finished scheme. Barry claiming it all. While Pugin was working, he had no idea of the PR that was playing out around him.
Pugin worked because he wanted to. Barry got £25,000 while Pugin got £800.

Pugin had entered the debate surrounding wallpaper which was now entering into more mainstream consciousness after the Great Exhibition by designing a series of two dimensional papers. These were mostly heradic motifs for The Palace of Westminister. He would design a hundred different styles. There is a wonderful book showing his pattern designs from 1851-1859 in the V&A. Of course the best place to see them would be in place, on the walls. Of those hundred different wallpaper designs that were commissioned many were lost but his inspiration would seep into the public. I picked hand blocked Pugin wallpaper for my hall that is still available today if you know where to look. Though most of his designs would be too bold for most domestic settings. This debate be continued by Morris and Co.
His work then strangely dried up. This was his time, and he wasn't there.
Louisa his second wife of 5 children then died and at 32 he would struggle to cope with his paranoair.
He then wrote another book in Ramsgate.
An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England. He explains as best he can under the pressure of his developing illness and proclaims Gothic should be on every detail as what was in The Grange, that he designed for himself. It is.....Gothic to the core. Designed from the inside out and not the other way round, as of most architects of the day seemed to do. Rooms were arranged in the need for movement he was absorbed in theatrical vibrancy of its interiors.
Trefoiled escutcheons and Gothic handles with inscriptions declaring his love of patrons, family and places. It's as if he wanted to surround himself in a cocoon.
He married a third time.
He would stay at the Grange for the rest of his life.
He would exhibit at the 1851 Exhibition, a medieval court. It was acclaimed at all levels. Though he never won a prize for manufacture as a designer.
He then built a church next to the Grange. St Augustin's. Of napped flint, sandwiched between horizontal lines and courses of stone. This was a new departure in architecture for him. This building has recently been restored. His finances suffered.
It encapsulated his faith. £14,000 of his own money and he couldnt afford the spire.
It was all becoming too much. He was having blackouts.
The Westminister clock tower hadn't been built and Barry turned to Pugin who was ill with piles, worms and strange visions.
The finished article is said to be a masterpiece in delicacy reaching for the heavens.
He never made the opening of his design after a mental breakdown.
Consigned to Bedlam and in 1852 at the age of 40 he died. His tomb in St Augustin's decorated with carvings of his family.
He died at the same time as The Duke of Wellington and his death was relegated to the back pages of the periodicals. This maybe a metaphor or a symbol of his whole life. His son E.W Pugin would continue his work.
It took a hundred years for his recognition to come to the fore.
Half French, as was Brunel. They both were largely forgotten.
They, in time would both become greats.
In working on his book Gothic revival published 1928 Kenneth Clarke found it hard to believe that a man so little known was actually so important.
But still Pugin needs to be explored because what he created was more than buildings it was an ideal, a movement.
There are not many who could do that. And Pugin is one of the greats.

I will always remember the lightness of the cast iron framed architecture of St Georges. I visited there recently. The side entrance to the back of the church still has the same atmosphere and smell from decades past.
Looking at old photographs, I also remember the stolid Victorian remnants of the Victorian buildings of the era I grew up in. Most of it is heavy, over adorned, over engineered and self apposing.
I think this is why I love the lightness of the Georgians at their best..... and the freshness and the feel of the best of French Art Deco.
Though I do declare I love the work and appreciate the ideals of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.


Friday 12 June 2020

Liverpool The City That Knocked The Cavern Club Down, Then Called Itself Beatles Town.


I was born just off St Domingo Road in Everton, though it was nearer to the hallowed turf of Anfield. 
The proximity to Anfield is what provided me with my pocket money.
 I would mind cars on match day.
 It was great running up and down the street “Can I mind your car Sir”.
I would put my Liverpool scarf on early in the morning and we would have a little bit of territory in our cobbled street with which to work.
People were kind.

 It was a friendly gesture rewarded for the effort and enthusiasm. 
The drivers in would get out in their red and white scarves. They didn't have to give you a few coppers but I think it heightened match day for them.
There would be no cars in our street of a normal day. There wasn't anybody living there whose income could afford to run one.
 It showed you that if you tried a bit and were pleasant, you could earn a little bit. Which in turn made your life a bit better.
 Mainly in the ability to buy football cards that you could collect into an album. I can still remember the team goalkeeper was Tommy Lawrence, right up to Peter Thompson on the left wing. The beginning of collecting, maybe.
It was a friendly place, we knew everyone in the street. I still today can recall most of our neighbours names.
 The surrounding streets were pockmarked with missing houses that had been bombed during the war looking like missing teeth within a pretty girls smile. Other houses were shored up with timber.
We played war games amongst the debris and in the abandoned houses with broken window pains.
Around a similar time I was once showed how to throw a brick at a church window by an older lad.
 It was covered in a grill and made a great noise. I hadn't realised why my so called mentor was running away, until a white collared clergyman came out from a side door running towards me shaking his first. I learnt how to run that day. 
And how to keep away from this tearaway who fell about in stitches laughing.
I didn't think it funny at all especially when a knock on the door came and there he was reporting me to my mother. You grow up quick in the school of hard knocks.
The church was two streets away, the other side of Sir Thomas White Gardens which was quickly becoming a failed experiment into social housing. Its no longer there. Either is the church that became our playground. I used to run errands having made friends with the people inside. 
I never picked up a stone in anger again and soon realized why the beautiful glass windows were covered up.
At that time in Liverpool there was a different mentality, Protestants and Catholics were enemies, or so we were taught. 
We played football matches when we found someone with a ball. The teams were usually picked by religion. I thought whats all this about.
I soon grew up and realized, just as I had been shown to throw a stone, that I was not to listen to my elders, not to be guided by the wrong people.
To form my own judgments by study.

Decades later whilst driving past, I found the same church in disrepair and about to be demolished so I removed some of the fittings before the bulldozers destroyed them and put them in my stores to re use. Then shortly after, while reading Freddy O'Conners “It All Came Tumbling Down” I found a picture of my street, and a picture of a church that was designed by Pugin, well the firm of E.W Pugin. I was a property developer by this time. I then realized that there were several Pugin buildings in the vicinity and I also realized I had felt the gravity of the history in the humble little street that was condemned by the city council as a slum and we were sent to a modern house in the suburbs.
I always regretted the move. The wash house, that steamy place where the washer women gathered to chit chat away was in fact a Pugin building.
If you are born poor you dont know anything else.
My first BBC appearance was for a documentary about slum housing and I was nominated for interview by the headmaster of my school St Georges. 
I recall in my past memory that I was talking about growing up and there and some shots walking home from school with my friend.


I must have only been six years of age. We did not have a TV and had to go to a neighbours house to watch it. I have tried to find it in the BBC archives but I fear its lost.

 It showed a happy little child growing up and attending a school with its Grade I listed St Georges church, walking home through Everton Library, also a listed building that had escaped the blitz.
https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/search?q=st+georges I wrote about St Georges some time ago.
Not long after being cleared out to the new Metro-land. A concrete jungle. I missed the sturdy security of my poor working class background and the way the people stood together and helped each other. 
People who had nothing would share their last bit of food with you, not knowing if there would be any money with which to buy more for themselves.
 Boot boys and football hooliganism appeared. Things rather dramatically in the coming years. When I started going the match it had become a dangerous place.



Now I understand that that church was in fact The Chancel Chapel erected to be the beginning of the building of a new Cathedral of such gigantic proportions that it would rival St Peters in Rome. The Church never got the necessary finances required and after war decimated Liverpool a free site was given to the Catholic Church near the city centre. This would see The new Metropolitan Cathedral Of Christ The King, or Paddy's Wigwam built. 
I was an apprentice watching this new space rocket erupt on the plateau opposite the Anglican Cathedral by Giles Gilbert Scott. I did not like it.
Later I got angry with what was happening to my city and how it's historical buildings were being targeted for redevelopment in the new era that was bringing a new prosperity...with little respect for my past.
I had become a vociferous heritage campaigner as Liverpool became a World Heritage City it began to destroy the Pier Head. 
The famous Three Graces had escaped The Luftwaffe and then the city planners set about destroying the majesty of Liverpool's waterfront.
Now I was negotiating with Unesco to save its soul as we watched the corrupt city council planners destroying my city that I had been so proud of, yes proud, even with all its tatty edges and incongruities,
It was my town. And they were knocking it down.
I would be as vocal as I could with some great success I gained a respect for my opinions and believed I could shape the argument of how to keep what was the essence of the city yet bring it into the modern times.
This is the city that knocked The Cavern down and then called itself Beatles Town.
Liverpool became European Capital of Culture and some argued that the only culture they could find was in the yougurt, in the fridge, in the Kwik Save, in Old Swan.

They built without respect, on and on, higher and higher, the World Heritage Site was becoming a architectural mess.
https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2019/06/liverpool-threatened-with-world.html I tried to inform the public. What happens if the econony shifts? I said.
I would be asked my opinion many times.
 One request was to the merit of The Metropolitan Cathedral by the Editor of the Liverpool Daily Post where I was careful not to throw stones at it, but give it a conseintious view built up by years of experience, questioning.
The lack of knowledge in the city for its heritage assets was apparent, especially that of the Editor of both the Daily Post Mark Thomas and the Liverpool Echo which had sunk to an all time low under Alaistair Machray.
It was in the Lutyens Crypt within the Metropolitan Cathedral that I made my Antiques Roadshow debut where I was invited to become a specialist on the longest running factual programme in the history of the BBC. https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2014/09/antiques-roadshow-what-amazing.html This was the programme I had loved since discovering it one Sunday night a long time ago. Those stories those objects, It lit up my life like a beacon.


Hopefuly I was invited to become part of the show because I understand the meaning of how important the past is to our future.
How we need history, the stories and meanings of the past.
How we use objects as a vessel to discover who we are.
And more importantly how to objectively look at everything without believing what you are told. To question and not be ordered how to think.
I believe that lad who taught me how to throw a brick made me think, and I formed the opinion that we should never trust in those who appear to be in a superior position.

And now I own a 19th century Grade II listed slate built Chapel where I will open my new gallery soon. I spent the summer restoring it and phase one is nearly completed and I realize that those who live in ecclesiastical buildings should not throw stones, yes I have learnt a lot.....................oops, I have just realized I started off writing about the designer architect who brought Gothic architecture back to the fore and in doing so changed forever the shape of our cities. Augustus Northmore Welby Pugin.
I will now have make that my next post I got a bit carried away there.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2020/07/augustus-welby-northmore-pugin-his.html

Tuesday 10 March 2020

Church of St Mark Brithdir-One Of My Favourite Things.


I was recently asked if I knew about an Arts and Crafts Church, in a village that I had been driving past for some time and unfortunatly I had to declare I not seen it. 
I was told that it was hidden back from the road behind some Rhododendrums. 
So I decided to make more of an effort. I almost felt guilty that I had not seen it.
Its not everyones cup of tea, that is spending time, studying architecture but it keeps me out of trouble and its something I have done since I was young.
I stopped the car and opened a stop gate designed to let a single file of people enter, and keep sheep out, and there it was. 
My first thought was whats all the fuss about though it had an interesting bellfry and a rather heavy overhang. 
Then I notice the rather unimposing door was rather small so it is obvious the entrance was round the back...or the front as the road entrance was not the main.
The first thing I notice is the brackets for the gutters being wrought out of two pieces of iron, twisted, leaving a patterned heart as decoration.
The heart was a symbol of the Arts and Crafts period that is forever linked to C.F.A Voysey but was adopted by the legions of architects and designers around the late Victorian and early Edwardian period.
Built of a heavy local stone its long roof with Aberllefenni slate gently slopes down to just above your head as you enter the gates of the porch. It reminds me of the signature roof style of Herbert Lucknorth who designed many houses in North Wales.









Pulling and twisting a delightful wrought iron handle the door opens to reveal a Font right in front of you, almost in the way. Its obvious that the siting of the church is now slightly out of sync with the modern interaction, which is that it is owned by The Friends of Friendless Churches. I think that explains a lot. The Font is unpolished copper, I test it for sound and noticing the wall decoration and the intricate pannelled door I turn to see the most amazing Alter.....made of copper a blaze in the midday sun at the far end of my entrance. Then there is a pulpit, made of copper.
The colour of the walls is a mediteanean terracotta which in the sun seems to transport you to another clime.
I turn back to the double doors facing my entrance which are oak inlaid with what appears to be Macassar Ebony and Abalone shell. The benches or pews are carved with playfull animals Rabbit, mice and owls are but a few. The SM stands for St Marks.
The Church was built in 1895-98 for Louisa Tooth in memory of her second husband Charles who was the Chaplain of St Marks English church in Florence. Her first husband Richard Richards of Caerynwch bequeathed her the land in Merionedd and she was wealthy enough to adopt a style that pleased her.
The architect she picked was Henry Wilson (1898-1934) who was Master of The Artworkers Guild in 1917 and Editor of The Architectural Review. He designed the metalwork for Holy Trinity Church in Sloane Street that John Betjamin called “The Cathedral of Arts and Crafts”. He later turned his hand to silversmithing and designed jewellry.
He said of Mrs Tooths agent, Mr Williams who he had to liase with that “he knew no more than a cat” and it seemed there was plenty of disagreements.
Wilson wanted the stone left rugged but Mr Williams made it smooth.
Wilson believed that “the chief merit of Brithdir is that it is personal”.
I think in that he achieved great success.
He also said that “what has come out of Brithdir must live, because it has come out of my own life”. He wanted a simple beautiful setting and a beautiful altar. In this he achieved a great thing. The altar is lined with copper beaten into a beautiful realism with skill and attention that could only be done by a master.
It was claimed that the work was in fact hammered in parts, in repouse by Wilson himself along with John Paul Cooper.
The small boy, winged, with lillies in his hand is overshadowd by the figures who seem to welcome him or look over him. He seems to be kneeling in front of a hedge of thorns with various inscriprions, hammered from behind.
I believe there could be several different interpretations of this and I will leave people to make their own mind up. But to me it is a lament in copper and as the blade of sun shone across it I saw more and more detail unfolding like a poem before my eyes. It lit up my day.
I really will have to go again as I only had a limited amount of time and as I left I was still noticing further details. On the way out I noticed what must be an ancient stone structure perhaps the original place of worship. Covered in moss the stones were erected in the round. The symbol of an ancient structure that now has a little brook running through it shone in the winter sun. the graveyard is slightly overgrown with large crosses carved from the same stone that stand tall. There is a path that must be the orinal way for procession. It was silent and calm.
I will be back. To study in more detail, When I have some more time,
It made my day. I am so glad I stopped.
I took a little video. Click above.

Two days later I purchase a Copper beaten plate or plaque with Voysey hearts and grapes that could have come right out of The Church of St Mark.


Friday 30 June 2017

Liverpool's World Heritage Site Status-In Ruins.

UNESCO have now decided that the city of Liverpool does not understand the concept of looking after its best asset, it's World Heritage Site. They meet this week to discuss whether Liverpool should be removed from the World Heritage list.
They have asked repeatedly that Liverpool provide them with provisions of how to manage its world heritage site.
No such undertakings have been received.
The United Nations cultural arm have expected a city that has a world heritage site would have people in place who would understand its cultural significance in terms of world importance and they would protect it against planning blight, and we get Joe Anderson, before him Mike Storey and in between the both of them Warren Bradley.
Unesco World Heritage Committee meet in Krakow high on the agenda is Liverpool.



In view of the above analysis, it is recommended that the Committee expresses its deep concern that the projects already approved as well as those approved in outline have actual and potential highly adverse and irreversible impacts on the OUV of the property. 
Therefore, it is also recommended that the Committee retain the property on the List of World Heritage in Danger but consider its deletion from the World Heritage List at its 42nd session in 2018, if the State Party does not reverse course and stop the granting of planning permissions which have a negative impact on the OUV of the property, provide substantive commitments to limitation on the quantity, location and size of allowable built form, link the strategic city development vision to a regulatory planning document, and lastly provide a DSOCR and corrective measures that could be considered for adoption by the Committee.


Read it yourself here.


I have been forced to watch as my cherished views have been destroyed by these consecutive city council leaders who seem blind to seeing what I used to be able to see, my history, my culture.
  Both pictures here are of the same view before and after note the cupola of the Port of Liverpool Building...now obscured.
For over ten years now I have been campaigning vigorously to stop the continual erosion of the majesty that once was Liverpool.
They have taken away my pride.
They have stolen it from me.
I have fought hard, really I have fought hard but the power that these people possess has surprised even me.
Civic vandalism is too tame a description of the sheer destruction of the soul of the city that in places has been stripped bare of all historic meaning.
Capital of Culture became Culture of Capital.
It was easy to pull the wool over the eyes of a lazy electorate.
Yes strong words but true.
Shame on all those who could see what was happening, but did nothing, often as with the guardians of our museums they had the brains........but were in on it. They destroyed Manchester Dock which pre-dated The Albert Dock by 60 years......to build a new museum.
The directors and curators busy making their names and furthering their own careers.
Yes you at Liverpool Museums you know who you are.
There were others who also had opinions. 
See Ptolemy Dean video describing on a programme entitled Britain's Vanishing Views.
I don't claim easily that the brain drain that happened in Liverpool in the 1960's has left us with a foolish breed of poorly educated architects without morals. But its true.
So what of these architects of disaster who sold themselves short for wages. Sold, well our soul really.
And of English Heritage whose ill conceived Chairmen such as Sir Neil Cossons and consecutive Chief Executives have to share most of the blame, allowing their operatives to be in on the deals.
I met with two Unesco reactive monitoring missions and asked Ron Van Oers of Unesco face to face, “Why did you allow them to destroy the Pier Head”
“With English Heritage supporting the developments there was nothing we could do”, was his reply.
Now we can't expect people from The United Nations to save a city from itself or understand the way Liverpool's forever corrupted regimes work the planning system.
Its really not their fault the blame lies elsewhere. 
You cant blame the barometer for the weather.
There are third world country World Heritage Sites to look after, surely they can't believe that a country such as the UK, as member of the G7 would behave like the Taliban in destroying its own heritage sites. 
Though instead of blowing them up with TNT they destroy them with planning blight.
Some historic buildings, listed, now look alien in their own environment because of what was allowed to be built around them.
Liverpool was placed on the Unesco 'World Heritage In Danger' List at the same World Heritage Committee meeting that saw Aleppo and the Palmyra Temple added, that was subsequently blown up by ISIS.
I feel like I have wasted so much time now, but for years I have been fighting for Liverpool's historic buildings, fighting against the odds, with planners, turning up to argue at planning committee meetings in my own time, those committees that had carefully politically placed members who had already taken the decision to pass the very plans that have now done the damage, thus denying me and other objectors, a democracy of fairness.
It's as if those with the power are walking round with welders goggles on, oblivious to the beauty that the forebears had left us, unable to see. Or are taking liberties for their own gain, they have just let it happen.
Frustration has become a way of life for me.
But now, Liverpool having been on the Unesco register for quite some time, it appears that we are at the last chance saloon, before we as a city, lose the title of World Heritage Site.
How can so many be let down by so few.


UPDATE 12.1.2022

LIVERPOOL HAS NOW LOST ITS WORLD HERITAGE SITE STATUS

THE MAYOR JOE ANDERSON AND OTHERS HAS BEEN ARRESTED ON FRAUD AND BRIBERY CHARGES AND ARE AWAITING CHARGE.

LIVERPOOL-THE CITY THAT GETS WORLD HERITAGE SITE STATUS AND THEN GIVES IT AWAY.

Wednesday 18 March 2015

St Georges Everton.



St Georges Everton.

Everton was once a suburb of Liverpool and in the 1820's hat had a setting of what we would now think of as picture postcard.
Thomas Rickman, St Georges architect did not start out as an architect he had a journey that led him to design buildings that was quite unusual.
He was a pharmacist and a surgeon and also worked in the corn trade.
When he lent money to a friend who could not pay it back, he left his home town of Maidenhead and came to Liverpool looking for work in 1807.
After his second wife and their daughter died he seems to have been free to drift into different studies. Weather, geology, gas lighting, steam boats and drawing all got his attention. He may have been what we would now say, on the autistic spectrum, he was a meticulous accounts keeper. He painted and catalogued a whole army of toy soldiers probably lead.
Collecting engravings he began to study architecture and he studied and recorded Gothic churches and their ruined state.
In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures and was elected professor of architecture at the Liverpool Academy.
His friend Thomas Cragg owned the Mersey Iron Foundry and waxed lyrical about the use of cast iron in architecture.
Rickman sketched architectural details such as windows door frames and balustrades for him.
As simply as two friends talking Rickman began to draw a cast iron church, they were kindred spirits in design. His designs at this stage it could be said were not quite top work and were stiff in design. This was an early stage of iron construction.
Mr Atherton had promised £12,000 for the building of a church on the site of the old Liverpool lighthouse and on 29th December 1812 a public meeting was called.
Rickman attended the meeting only to be shocked and astonished that Cragg was submitting a design of Rickmans own sketches.
This proved a master stroke as Mr Atherton gave the commission to the pair on the understanding that the exterior be built in stone and the interior be erected in cast iron.
This enabled them to pre fabricate the structure and bolt it together on-site.
One commentator stated that the structure 'exhibited a very marked advance upon anything previously attempted in Liverpool-the tone character and motif of every part being derived from a careful study of ancient examples'.
Gothic architecture at the time had a wide breadth ranging from Norman to Henry VIII.
Architects could do what they liked with it.
Some Gothic structures were a derision of classical wrapped up in a confused fusion of many differing styles.
Iron was cutting edge at the time and when we analyse it, there appears to be that the medieval oak and stone ribs of ancient times were being replaced by slender columns of iron.
With an ease of construction this was being explored well ahead of Ruskin's eloquent dissecting of Iron's pros and cons and how it would fit into the modern forms of construction in his Seven Lamps of Architecture.
The challenge in the blending of the old with the new is something we now take for granted as it all looks old now but the debate would be intense.
Rickman began to publish papers in Liverpool showing his understanding of his work that were to be inspiring to others.
An attempt to discriminate the styles of English architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation, proceeded by a sketch of the Grecian and Roman Orders, with notes on nearly 500 English Buildings was published in 1817.
Years later Ferguson was to write ' by a simple and easy classification Rickman reduced to order what before was simple chaos to all minds'.
So the Gothic was born of Rickmans work and was championed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.
Cragg also built St Micheals in 1814 with even more iron used. Many of the mouldings were from St Georges. The exterior is of brick. Parapets and finials of iron. It was called “the cast iron church”. St Philips in Hardman Street followed in 1816. From these three buildings stems the seed of the prefabricated cast iron church and the onset of mass production so from this little acorn of an idea buildings were shipped all over the world. Some sections could be replicated over and over again, and from a single mould.
At a time of great expansions in cities nationwide it came at a very convenient time to produce quickly churches for the masses. This need was combined by the “Million pound Act” to get ecclesiastical buildings erected quickly to educate the masses coming in from the fields no doubt.
Rickman worked with John Foster junior on a commission for St Martins which is no longer standing.
Foster was not a purveyor of the Gothic style.

I did not realise when as a young boy, along with the rest of the class, as we were led into the church like little lambs, silent lambs, from the side directly adjacent to the school of St Georges how important it was.
It was a solid building that wrapped around you with protective care, friendly and self assured, we didn't know we were poor.
As a small child born into a two up two down, the first sight of a church interior is awe inspiring. The scale those uprights supporting the roof were like giant pines reaching for the heavens.
The play of light through the bejewelling of the stained glass with its storytelling panels was always designed to bring you to a subservient situation. The torch of coloured beams searching, and finding you, in between the columns of pews. I still remember to this day my first sighting of the interior of St Georges with the angelic sound of choristers raising your spirit, bringing you closer to what you were told to believe in. Those pointed arches and the fine and light decorated tracery. I did not know I was in one of the most important churches in the country. I remember my neighbour staring up at me and winking to me as I showered him and his newly married wife with a handful of confetti from the roof of the exterior porch. I remember the christening of my cousins and the crying over the font when touched with that holy water from within.
I don't know if these memories that are torched into my mind are what made me understand that even in poverty you can still look up to the stars, and even though we were poor we were in the middle of an area of St Georges plateau that had great care and fine workmanship bestowed upon it.
I would often stop at Everton Library on the way home, that is still standing and hopefully will be restored soon. Unfortunately The Luftwaffe didn't understand the maintenance programme of our architectural stock, and blitzed the gubbings out of it.
Most of the stained glass was destroyed in the Second World War survivor is a window dated 1863 by A. Gibbs. The glass in the east window dates from 1952 and is by Shrigley and Hunt.
The original chair frame bell was made by Ainsworth of Warrington. It was restored in 1937 by George Eccles but vandalised in the late 1960s. The present clock was made by Smiths of Clerkenwell and installed in 1973.
In the next street to our humble abode was Our Lady's, the beginnings of the church that was to rival St Peters in Rome. The chancel chapel was built, it was going to be massive. It was demolished in the 80's, how sad. It was a Pugin and Pugin design. This was the original site for what Arthur Dooley christened Paddy's Wigwam. St Georges may have been the most prominent structure on Liverpool's skyline prior to Gilbert Scott's Anglican sandstone Cathedral being built. How mariners will have been thankful to see the sight knowing they were safely home. Probably having been press ganged in the Baltic Triangle area, which was renowned for this form of kidnap to keep the seas highways safe for the British Empire.
There were other Pugin buildings that had fallen into disrepair, the wash house was a hive of soapy gargling conversation spun together by the washerwomen within. It was a social thing.
I would sometimes get a treat and be given a tanner and go over to the cubicle d public baths where someone in the next bathtub would sing “My name is Jack and I live in the Bath” as a take on the hit of the day.
The smell was a slightly carbolic one, that of cleanliness and running hot water was a luxury we did not have, nor an inside loo.
Mr Tyson the builder used to run a boys club in one of the buildings behind the steaming wash house.
I did not know we relied on charity and philanthropists. A caged football pitch was built in between the school and the house, on St Domingo Road, as somewhere the kids could play and we played 9 a side football, that was sometimes a little light on one side depending on how many turned up.
The Prodi dogs against the Cats we would all have enough incentive.
It was stupid I know now. How pathetic it seems now that there was such a monumental battle still ranging amongst the Popery and King Billy's lot.
It raged all around you people tried to indoctrinate you at an early age.
Though it did not take long for me to see through all that religious none-sense
And my church, my lovely little church was part of that too.