Sinuous

One of the joys of my travels around England is going somewhere to visit one building and finding some other structure that gives me as much pleasure, or more, than what I was originally looking for. In Bramfield, south of Halesworth in Suffolk, I found something, if a bit less absorbing than the medieval church I was seeking, something still of interest, and right opposite the churchyard too. Even before I pulled up, I saw it, this long stretch of sinuous brick wall, a crinkle-crankle wall as it’s called, undulating its way into the distance.

I’ve noticed another such wall before on this blog, in Worcestershire, much nearer my home patch. But Suffolk is the true heartland of the crinkle-crankle wall (the very name is said to be Suffolk dialect for sinuous), so a ’native specimen’ was something to be noticed, especially one of such good length. For those who don’t know, the usual explanation for such a curvaceous wall is that it saves bricks. The wall gains its strength from the curves and so can be built with a single layer of brickwork, whereas a straight wall needs two layers (and sometimes buttresses) to stay up.*

Crinkle-crankle walls became popular in Suffolk in the 18th century and I’ve seen those that date from the 19th and even 20th centuries. This one is probably late-18th or early-19th century and marks the northern boundary of the grounds of Bramfield Hall. It’s impressive, and nicely begins with a gateway built in the contrasting materials of dark flint pebbles and pale white brickwork, also traditional Suffolk materials. Most people find these serpentine walls very attractive – curves have an appeal, especially in a context where we’d normally expect a straight line. Visual appeal is of course is another reason why you might build a wall in this unusual way, its repeated curves complementing the rounded arch of the gateway in the foreground.

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* Of course a curving wall is longer than a straight one, but the number of bricks required is apparently still smaller.

They have their exits and their entrances

I don’t often go to London’s Euston station, because my travels don’t take me along the line that terminates there and the station itself has little to attract me architecturally. Indeed among people interested in historic architecture one of the main points of interest is something it lacks, the great monumental gateway or propylaeum, popularly known as the Euston Arch,* that formed the entrance of the station but was demolished in the redevelopment of 1962. On the face of it, a grand gateway in the classical style might seem to have little to do with a world of tracks, points, locomotives and big iron engine sheds – classical architecture seems a world away, in fact. And yet Philip Hardwick, the architect of the arch, knew that it could be powerfully suggestive. This was a grand gateway not just to a major railway station, but to all the places to which you could travel – Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and so on. The grandest of entrances thus formed the beginning of a world of travel possibilities, all reached at a speed that was impossible by horse-drawn transport. Only the most monumental architecture, the classical style and especially the Doric order, was a worthy symbol of something of such import and amplitude. The arch was not only a symbol but also an advertisement for and a signpost to this array of journeys and destinations.

The demolition was controversial from the start – there was a campaign to save it, spearheaded by experts and enthusiasts including John Betjeman. But the campaign was unsuccessful and Philip Hardwick’s grand entrance of 1837 was removed. The tortuous story of the various attempts to save the arch, either in situ or reconstructed elsewhere, have often been recounted.† But, even though the demolition contractor numbered all the stones so that the arch could be rebuilt, there was no stay of execution, no rebuilding. More recently, campaigners have put plans in place to rebuild the arch if and when Euston is again reconstructed as the terminus of the HS2 line, but the redevelopment of the station has been delayed.

Meanwhile…I discovered when cutting through the station to get to Drummond Street the other day that there’s a pub in the station complex called the Doric Arch, complete with a sign commemorating the vanished monumental gateway. It’s not a bad image of it, as pub signs go.¶ There it is, with its fluted Doric columns, its architrave bearing the name of the station, its frieze with its pattern of triglyphs, its triangular pediment. The huge size of the gateway is made clear by the way it dwarfs the cabs that pass through it. ‘This railway,’ it seems to say, ‘is really something’ – as it was in the 1830s, when the ability to travel at speed for tens or hundreds of miles was nothing short of astounding. The inn sign is modest compared to the piece of architecture it represents, but it too is both advertisement and symbol. Look on my works, ye mighty…

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* It’s not, strictly, an arch. An arc h is usually made up of a number of wedge-shaped stones or bricks held together in compression to form a curve (although it is also possible to build a horizontal arch). The Euston entrance, like other classical structures, is made up of straight vertical sides bridged by a horizontal lintel. And yet, the designation ‘Euston Arch’ has stuck, and I do not shy away from it in this blog post.

† See, for example, the Wikipedia entry and this blog post.

¶ I can’t see the gates, though.

Aid for the industrious

Wondering along an unfamiliar street in Hereford, I came across this arch, looking like a Jacobean relic stranded in the modern city. A little research soon revealed that it’s neither Jacobean nor stranded. It’s actually Victorian – the Victorians revived virtually every earlier British style of architecture, Jacobean included and they knew that the flattened arch, scrolls, finials, curvaceous gable and pediment would evoke the kind of architecture popular on grand country houses and other buildings from around the year 1600.

The arch makes a grand entrance to a cemetery, and its grandeur is to commemorate a once-famous Hereford man, whose charitable works helped the city’s poor. Rev. John Venn was vicar of a parish in an impoverished part of the city. Working with his sister Emelia, he founded the Society for Aiding the Industrious. Among the Venns’ and the Society’s projects were a soup kitchen to feed the hungry, a dispensary, and allotments enabling people to grow their own food. They founded a school and a children’s home, and their initiatives to provide employment included a corn mill and a model farm.

The arch harks back to a time – the Tudor and Jacobean periods – which the Victorians saw as a period of British greatness. It was the era when British explorers laid the foundation of the empire that brought the Victorians much of their wealth. So much the better that they recognised the work of a couple who focused on helping those who accrued no wealth or power from the empire, bringing education, nourishment, useful work, and better living conditions to people who needed them most.