Open House Day at Harlaxton Manor

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Harlaxton Manor

Harlaxton Manor

Harlaxton Manor is an exciting place to visit, yet most travellers only glimpse it as an astonishing vista to the south of the A607 Grantham-Melton Mowbray road.

Harlaxton is an exceptionally exciting building, designed between 1831 and 1837 by Anthony Salvin and William Burn for the eccentric bachelor Gregory Gregory (1786-1854), whose name is commemorated in Nottingham’s Gregory Boulevard, developed on one of his six landed estates.

Gregory Gregory’s intention in building such a huge house seems to have been first, to house his extensive art collection, and second to spite his heir, a distant cousin.  The result is a fascinating mixture of dramatic baroque interiors such as the Great Hall and Cedar Staircase and Victorian ingenuity – hidden doors so that the servants literally appeared out of the woodwork and an indoor railway viaduct to deliver coal by gravity to each floor.

In the spirit of the baroque theme, illusions abound.  The Cedar Staircase is nowhere near as high as it looks, and materials are not what they seem – wood turns out to be plaster, and what looks like solid plaster actually moves.  Room stewards will be available on Open House Day to explain the history of this strange building.

I’ve taken numerous groups to Harlaxton over the past twenty-three years, including one group of jaded teachers on a Friday-night near-the-end-of-term mystery tour.  As the coach trundled across the park in the summer evening, it seemed as if every window of the Manor glowed.  One lady (not a historian) thought she was at Disneyland.

Harlaxton Manor is well cared for by the University of Evansville, Indiana, who use it as their British campus.  The college website is at http://www.ueharlax.ac.uk/about_us/index.cfm.

Harlaxton Manor features in Mike Higginbottom’s lecture English Country Houses – not quite what they seem.  For further details, please click here.

The 40-page, A4 handbook for the 2010 tour Country Houses of Lincolnshire, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  It contains chapters on Boothby Pagnell Manor House, Ellys Manor House, Belton House, Grimsthorpe Castle, Fulbeck Hall, Fulbeck Manor, Leadenham House, Harlaxton Manor and Stoke Rochford Hall.  To view sample pages click here. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Royal relief

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Gentlemen's lavatory, King William III statue, Market Place, Old Town, Hull

Gentlemen’s lavatory, King William III statue, Market Place, Old Town, Hull

Queen Mary’s advice to her eldest son was (reputedly) – “Take every opportunity to take the weight off your feet and to relieve yourself.”

It’s widely known in Hull that if you seek relief in the city centre it’s a good idea to head for a royal statue.

There are two, and they’re very fine indeed – one beneath the fine Scheemakers statue of King William III (1734) on the Market Place and the other beneath the H C Fehr’s 1903 monument to Queen Victoria in Queen Victoria Square.

Both are listed Grade II.  The King William III gents was designed by the City Engineer, W H Lucas, at a time when such creations were a matter of pride.  It has fittings by Finch & Co of Lambeth dating from c1900, including marble-and-glass cisterns, faience Ionic columns and original doors with leaded lights.  The Queen Victoria lavatories are later than the statue, dating from c1925 when the Ferens Art Gallery was under construction:  again the gents has its original earthenware fittings.

There’s an account of the local pride in these magnificent facilities, told by the people who care for them, at http://static.hullcc.gov.uk/hullinprint/archive/october2002/a_right_royal.php.

The Hull historian, Paul Gibson, includes in his website a lengthy account of the history of Hull’s public lavatories:  http://www.paul-gibson.com/history/public-toilets.php.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Room at the top in Beverley Minster

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Beverley Minster

Beverley Minster

Photo:  Harriet Buckthorp

One of the highlights of the Humber Heritage (September 17th-20th 2010) tour will be a roof-tour of Beverley Minster, one of the most beautiful churches in England.  The Minster came into being as a shrine of St John of Beverley, who was canonised in 1037, and rose from two disasters within a generation, the Great Fire of Beverley in 1188 and the collapse of the central tower around 1213.

You can stand outside the church and see exactly how it grew over the centuries:  the east end and transepts are mid-thirteenth century;  most of the nave is mid-fourteenth century but construction was interrupted by the Black Death in 1349 and the west front and towers date mainly from the fifteenth century.

It’s called a minster because, though never a monastery or a cathedral, it was run by a college of clergymen up to the time of the Reformation.  In Henry VIII’s reign it became simply a huge parish church, partly maintained by funds provided by Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.

By the early eighteenth century maintenance had fallen back so much that the gable of the north transept leaned four feet outwards from the perpendicular.  That the church is still standing is to the credit of the architect William Thornton (c1670-1721) who, in 1719, built a huge timber scaffold against the leaning wall and screwed it back into the fabric of the building.

To appreciate the scale of the building, and to recognise the strength of Thornton’s work, it’s worth taking the roof tour, which involves a steep stair-climb but isn’t vertiginous, to look through the great rose window, to see how each wing of the building has distinctive roof-architecture, and to see close up the largest architectural treadwheel in England.

Thornton was understandably nervous about the stability of the central crossing, which had been a cause for concern for centuries, and which Nicholas Hawksmoor surmounted with a dome, now demolished.  From inside it’s clear that the stubby central tower is built of eighteenth-century brick, and incorporates a giant treadwheel that acted as a crane to bring materials to roof level.

It still works, and lifts the central boss from the crossing vault, providing a vertiginous and securely fenced view down on to the floor below.

It’s one of the most memorable experiences for miles around:  http://beverleyminster.org.uk/visit-us/tours.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Whistle-stop at Heckington

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Heckington Windmill, Lincolnshire

Heckington Windmill, Lincolnshire

When my friend Elisabeth, who is one of the ladies who lunch, suggested stopping at Heckington during a drive round Lincolnshire, the tea-shop was our priority.  In fact, the tea-shop she had in mind was closed, but we found a new one, the Mill House Tearoom – a work in progress by Michaela Spenger and Ian Yardley who provide excellent pots of tea and pastries with a Viennese accent.

Alongside stands the unique eight-sailed Heckington Windmill [http://www.heckingtonwindmill.org.uk/products.html], which was built in 1830 with five sails, and uprated (as one would say of a motor-car) to eight sails in 1890 when the Mill House was built.  Commercial milling stopped in 1946, and the mill was restored to working order in 1986.  Eight sails means that this mill keeps grinding when others run out of wind.  Visitors are invited to climb through its five flours, and can buy Heckington Windmill flour to take home.

Alongside the windmill is a railway level-crossing, for the village has a full train-service between Nottingham and Skegness.  At least once an hour traffic stops as the signalman manhandles the gates, and the signal box works in the traditional way:  for everything you could want to know about this, see http://www.signalbox.org/gallery/e/heckington.htm.

The original 1859 Great Northern Railway station building was saved from demolition by the Heckington Village Trust in 1975, and now houses the Heckington Village Trust Railway Museum built around the layouts of the HVT Model Railway Club.  For £1.00 you can chat about trains and use the station loo.  Opening times are at http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/popiOrgVenue.asp?vid=2109.

And, as Elisabeth and I found, you might see the arrival of a huge train from Nottingham too long for the platform, so that the rear carriages block the level crossing and Heckington grinds to a halt.

No pun intended.

For more illustrations of the windmill and the signal-box (though, oddly, not the station), see http://www.urban75.org/photos/england/heckington.html.

For the story of the Mill House Tearoom see http://www.sleafordstandard.co.uk/news/Tourists-to-get-more-at.5468333.jp and http://www.sleafordstandard.co.uk/news/Heckington-Mill-House-project-takes.5485289.jp.

 

Catafalque burial

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Anglican Chapel, colonnade, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

Anglican Chapel, colonnade, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

The Cemeteries & Sanitation:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness (June 18th-24th 2015) tour provides three opportunities – Brompton Cemetery, Highgate Cemetery and West Norwood Cemetery – to see Victorian catacombs.  Here, in lead-lined coffins, the Victorian dead lie awaiting the Second Coming.  A third site, Kensal Green Cemetery, also has a fine set of catacombs, though these are currently being restored.  Indeed, it is still possible to be buried in the catacombs at Kensal Green:  according to the Friends’ website [http://www.kensalgreen.co.uk], “both private loculi and shelves or vaults for family groups” are still available.

A catafalque is the raised base on which a coffin rests before and during a funeral service.  In the Anglican Chapel at Kensal Green, the catafalque acts as a lift, lowering coffins into the catacombs below.  The original mechanism, installed in or soon after 1837, was based on the cider press, and proved difficult to operate with decorum:  the two sides had to be screwed at exactly the same speed or the catafalque tilted and jammed.

The engineering company of Bramah & Robinson provided an improved coffin-lift design for West Norwood Cemetery in 1839, using smooth and silent hydraulic power to give the deceased a dignified exit through the floor.  The proprietors of Kensal Green Cemetery were so impressed that they replaced their original lift with a Bramah & Robinson hydraulic lift in 1844 for £200, half the cost of the original.

Highgate Cemetery [http://www.highgate-cemetery.org] also used a hydraulic lift to lower coffins from the south chapel to a tunnel into the East Cemetery to save the cortège crossing the public road, Swains Lane.

The West Norwood coffin lift is unusable, but is beautifully illustrated at
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/w/west_norwood_cemetery/index.shtml.  The Kensal Green lift was restored to working order by the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery in 1997:  http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/cemetery/index4.html.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Victorian Cemeteries, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2015 Cemeteries and Sewerage:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Victorian values

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Brompton Cemetery, London

Brompton Cemetery, London

Victorian governments hated nationalisation.  The upper-class Lords and Commons, Liberals and Conservatives alike, believed in their different ways in what we’d now call “small government”.  Every possible public service in the emerging urban society – roads, railways, utilities – was operated by private joint-stock companies authorised at arm’s length by Parliament.  Almost all operations that were government-controlled were directed in the name of the Crown – the armed services, police, the Royal Mail and even the Ordnance Survey.  Perhaps this is what Margaret Thatcher meant when she referred to “Victorian values”.

Brompton Cemetery [http://www.brompton-cemetery.org] in West London is an unusual and unequivocal example of Victorian nationalisation.

It was constructed in 1836-40 – in the same decade as Kensal Green, Highgate and Nunhead Cemeteries – on a flat site between the Fulham and Brompton Roads, to a design by Benjamin Baud that suggested an open-air cathedral with a magnificent central avenue leading to the chapel, based on St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, at the east end.  The approach to the chapel is embraced by twin colonnades, suggesting Bernini’s great piazza.

Baud’s scheme proved over-ambitious, and the cemetery company’s shareholders became increasingly restless, so that when the Metropolitan Interments Act of 1850 closed the insanitary London churchyards and provided for government purchase of company cemeteries, they jumped at the chance to offload the liability of the cemetery’s shaky finances.

Ironically, a further Metropolitan Burials Act of 1852 effectively reversed government policy by obliging local authorities to set up municipal cemeteries, but by that time the negotiations over Brompton had passed the point of no return, and so the place has remained the only government-owned cemetery in the UK.  As such it is part of the Crown Estate, and is administered by the Royal Parks.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Victorian Cemeteries, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2015 Cemeteries and Sewerage:  the Victorian pursuit of cleanliness tour, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Madeleine moment

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Theatre, Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire

Theatre, Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire

My Isle of Man host-with-the-most John has provided further details of the Wurlitzer organ at Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire, which, as I mentioned in the previous blog, was bought second-hand from the Madeleine Theatre in Paris in 1937 for Sir Julien Cahn’s private theatre attached to his house.

The organ came, not from the Madeleine Theatre (1924), which still exists in the Rue de Surene [http://www.theatremadeleine.com/index-historique.html], but from another Madeleine Theatre, which is now an opticians, designed entirely as a cinema by Marcel Oudin in 1918, at 14 Boulevard de la Madeleine .  The Wurlitzer – one of only two French Wurlitzers – was installed by the then owners, Loew Inc, in 1926.  According to Ken Roe’s contribution to http://cinematreasures.org/theater/23874/ the cinema subsequently became the Gaumont Madeleine and showed films until at least the mid-1970s.

The website http://www.theatreorgans.com indicates this Wurlitzer was repossessed at some point after installation.  This modest instrument was an ideal purchase for Sir Julien’s 352-seat theatre – “une salle élégante“, as the French account has it.

The knobs and bells and whistles of the Wurlitzer have a more elegant tone when described in French:  les clochettes de traîneau [sleigh bells], les sabots de cheval [horses’ hooves], les vagues [waves], les oiseaux [birdsong], la corne d’auto [car hooter], le gong d’incendie [fire-alarm], le sifflet de bateau à vapeur [steamboat whistle], la sirène [siren], le tam-tam [gong], et la sonnerie de porte [doorbell].

Among his many talents, John is a church organist and confessed, many years ago, to an ambition to play a Wurlitzer like the Blackpool Tower Ballroom.  My influence in Blackpool runs nowhere near that far, but I managed to give him the opportunity to play the Stanford Hall Wurlitzer.

Sometime in the late 1980s I ran a WEA day-visit to country houses in south Nottinghamshire, and smuggled John into the orchestra pit of the Stanford Hall Theatre – then part of the Co-operative College – with an arrangement that when at the end of my tour I brought the group into the back of the auditorium and said, “And this is the private theatre…” John would press the lift-button on the console and rise from the pit playing ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’.

Which would have worked perfectly if John had realised how far up the lift goes, or I’d been aware that he suffers from vertigo.  It’s quite difficult to keep a grip when you’re playing with both hands and both feet.  I suppose buttock-clenching is the only resort and I’ve never liked to ask.

Certainly John’s performance had a certain bravura quality, and we’ve both dined out on the story ever since.

 

Security-minded millionaire

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Theatre, Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire

Theatre, Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire

Sir Julien Cahn (1882-1944), the millionaire owner of the Nottingham Furnishing Company, lived from 1928 until his death at Stanford Hall, near Loughborough, which he transformed to suit his distinctive lifestyle – part English country house, part Hollywood.

He employed Queen Mary’s decorator, White, Allom Ltd, to install pastiche historical interiors and modern Art Deco schemes including at least four bathrooms (Sir Julien’s in black and white, Lady Cahn’s in blue and white, a guest bathroom in tortoiseshell and another – which survives – in salmon pink marble).  He built an indoor badminton court with trellis-work, trompe l’oeil privet and a birdcage in the corner.

Apart from hunting and philanthropy Sir Julien had two major hobbies, cricket and magic, in neither of which – according to contemporary accounts – he particularly excelled, but both of which he took extremely seriously.

To provide a venue for charity performances, Sir Julien commissioned a sumptuous 352-seat private theatre with a Wurlitzer organ bought second-hand from the Madeleine Theatre in Paris.  Above the auditorium Sir Julien provided a wing of bedrooms for the visiting cricket stars who took part in the Sir Julien Cahn Cricket XI.

Below the auditorium is the most extraordinary feature of all – a capacious gas-proof air-raid shelter easily capable of accommodating the entire household, with decontamination facilities and an escape-tunnel extending thirty-six feet beyond the building line in case the entire building collapsed above.

The Cahns left their mark in the grounds too.  There was an open-air swimming-pool, which eventually cost £60,000, nearly as much as the theatre, and for his fifty-fifth birthday Lady Cahn bought her husband some sea-lions (their names were Charlie, Aqua, Freda and Ivy) and a suitable pool was duly constructed.

After Sir Julien’s death in 1944 Stanford Hall became the Co-operative College until 2001.

 

Security-minded aristocrat

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Peckforton Castle, Cheshire

Peckforton Castle, Cheshire

John, 1st Baron Tollemache (1805-1890) was not a figure to argue with.  Robust, traditional, solid character, full of vigour and strength, he lived life according to his own principles and died at the age of 85 from the effects of driving his trap through wintry weather.

He commissioned Anthony Salvin, one of the most versatile of Victorian architects, to build Peckforton Castle on his 26,000-acre Cheshire estate in the form of a fully equipped Edwardian castle (Edward I, that is,) complete with drawbridge and battlements, on top of a steep hill looking across to the genuinely medieval ruin of Beeston Castle on the adjacent hill.

If any Victorian architect could design a full-size thirteenth-century castle to be habitable by large-as-life nineteenth-century occupants, Salvin could.  Tough, gloomy, irredeemably masculine, the brand-new house had every modern convenience of its day, though some of them were in unlikely places.  All the spaces a Victorian aristocrat would expect in his house were provided, such as a billiard room, a library and a drawing room.  The main staircase is pentagonal.  The floor of the octagonal dining room sits on the central pillar of the annular wine cellar below.  There is also a long gallery, which is technically neither a medieval nor a Victorian feature.

Why did Lord Tollemache insist that his residence should be defensible against a thirteenth-century army?  Its dates are significant – 1845-50.  It seems that the baron, characteristically generous to his own tenants, feared an invasion of the Cheshire plain from the starving workers of the Lancashire cotton towns.  An Edwardian castle, quite as sturdy as Caernarfon or Conwy, could protect not only his family and his household, but also his tenants and, if necessary, their livestock.

The threat was virtually over by the time the place was finished.  But that didn’t make it any less real at the time it was started.

It seems unlikely that anyone other Lord Tollemache himself could have lived in the Castle with enthusiasm.  Descriptions of the house in the twentieth century suggest a plaintive attempt to soften and warm the interiors.  The Tollemache family never returned after the Second World War, and the entire contents were auctioned in 1953.

For years the place struggled to find a use:  it was invaluable as a film set;  at one point it was a venue for live-action role-playing games.  Since the early 1990s it has operated as a hotel.  It’s a particularly spectacular place to get married.

The Peckforton Castle website is at http://www.peckfortoncastle.co.uk.  Beeston Castle is in the care of English Heritage [http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/beeston-castle-and-woodland-park].  It’s a particularly steep climb to the top of the motte.  There is a charge for car parking.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Survivals & Revivals:  past views of English architecture, please click here.

 

The man who invented the playground

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Wilderspin National School, Barton-on-Humber

Wilderspin National School, Barton-on-Humber

Samuel Wilderspin (1791-1866) was the pioneer of education for children as young as two.  He recognised that the ages 2-7 were a vital period of child development, and advocated systematic schooling that was active, varied and enjoyable.  He opposed the regimented monitorial system of Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), in which the younger pupils were taught by older pupils, who in the modern parlance “cascaded” information from the schoolmaster.

Wilderspin developed a classroom-design with a stepped gallery, so that pupils could be taught directly by their teacher, as well as a flat floor with posts around which monitorial groups could gather.

He further encouraged the development of the playground – “the uncovered classroom” – with equipment for structured, active play:  he regarded play as part of learning and development, rather than something children did when they were not learning.

His principles were extended to older age-groups and spread beyond the United Kingdom.

By the time Samuel Wilderspin, with his wife and daughter, came to live in Barton-on-Humber he was already a “household name in his own lifetime”, and he became involved in establishing and designing a National School which opened in 1845.  The brick, neo-Tudor buildings have survived, as has the extensive playground for boys, girls and infants.

There was a period of neglect after the children moved to a modern building in 1978.  This rare survival has restored as a small and evocative museum of childhood and education [http://www.wilderspinschool.org.uk/default.htm].

Reminiscences, for visitors of any age, are powerful within these walls because, as the ladies on reception point out, schooldays are an experience that almost everyone shares in common, regardless of their background and upbringing.

For teachers, who may wonder how four hundred pupils were crammed into these spaces, there’s a reminder that innovation is not new, and a memorial to a man who believed that education must, first and foremost, be enjoyable.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.