Vanburgh in Lincolnshire

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Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire: north front

Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire: north front

It’s curious how the flat lands of Lincolnshire produce architectural surprises.  Tattershall Castle can be seen from miles away, but Grimsthorpe Castle, though it’s visible from the main road, is a sudden revelation.

The show front is unmistakably the work of Sir John Vanburgh, the architect of Castle Howard (1699-1726), Blenheim Palace (1705 onwards) and Seaton Delaval Hall (c1720-8).

Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus Volume III (1725) shows three elevations, dated 1722, respectively for the north, south and west or east sides of the house.  These façades were intended to mask rather than entirely replace the earlier fabric behind, as at Vanburgh’s Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire (1707-9).

Vanburgh was commissioned by the first Duke of Ancaster who died in August 1723, but he was almost immediately summoned by the heir, Peregrine, 2nd Duke, to begin construction which was under way before Vanburgh’s death in 1726.

Once the north front and forecourt were completed, possibly under the supervision of Nicholas Hawksmoor, around 1730 the project abruptly stopped.

Walking round the four sides of this huge courtyard house shows that it is in fact a palimpsest:  though the facades were tidied up in 1811, it’s obvious that the fabric grew over centuries:  the earliest identifiable fragment dates from the twelfth century.

It’s one of the English country houses that developed in interesting ways during the twentieth century.

When Gilbert, 2nd Earl of Ancaster, inherited Grimsthorpe Castle in 1910, he and his American wife, Eloise, brought in the architects Detmar Blow and Fernand Billerey and the decorators Lenygon & Company to modernise the house and built a service wing in the courtyard.

After wartime military occupation, the estates and titles passed in 1951 to the 2nd Earl’s son, James, 3rd Earl of Ancaster and 27th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, who with his countess, Phyllis Astor, employed the architect R J Page and the decorator John Fowler to alter and improve the house, replacing the Edwardian service block with a single-storey kitchen range and turning the riding school into a garage.

Now Grimsthorpe Castle belongs to the third Earl’s daughter, Jane Marie Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby.

It’s one of the finest country-house experiences for miles around.  It deserves a whole day:  there’s plenty to see, do, eat and drink.

Of all the entertainments on offer at Grimsthorpe, the ranger-led Park Tour by minibus is particularly good value:  http://www.grimsthorpe.co.uk/index.php?ID=15.

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.

Eat your way round Todmorden

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Former Todmorden Industrial & Co-operative Society Limited branch, Todmorden, West Yorkshire

Former Todmorden Industrial & Co-operative Society Limited branch, Todmorden, West Yorkshire

When I’m hungry in Todmorden, on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border, I head for the old-fashioned Co-op.  It’s not a co-op any more, though it retains its splendid iron-and-glass two-storey shop front emblazoned with the title ‘Todmorden Industrial & Co-operative Society Limited’.  The building dates from the 1860s, and was refurbished when the Co-operative Society took it over as its haberdashery department in 1910.

Now it’s the Bear Café [http://www.bearco-op.com/cafe], a vehemently wholefood shop and café bringing the very finest local produce in conjunction with the food hub Incredible Edible Todmorden Unlimited:  http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk.

Sometimes you simply can’t get a seat at the Bear Café, so next door is Bramsche Bar [http://www.bramsche.co.uk/about], a little more relaxed and slightly less purist, offering alcohol and meat for those who’re so inclined.  I had eggs Benedictine, which is a combination of the ham and spinach components of Benedict and Florentine.

There used to be a nice little café with interesting posters in the loo which has now been transformed into Hanuman Thai & 3 Wise Monkeys Pub [http://www.hanuman-thai.com/?q=node/1] which might be worth a look.

And that’s just for starters.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2012 Yorkshire Mills & Mill Towns tour, with text, photographs and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here.  Please send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Barnsley’s stately home

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Cannon Hall, South Yorkshire

Cannon Hall, South Yorkshire

Visiting Cannon Hall, at Cawthorne near Barnsley, is a game of two halves.

The extensive park, which includes a farm and a garden centre, is a magnet for visitors.  The house, which was the seat of the Spencer-Stanhope family until 1951, opened as Barnsley’s municipal museum six years later.

Barnsley Borough Council acquired a completely empty house:  the contents have been collected since 1957 and so the visitor sees an elegant eighteenth-century house, substantially as it was designed by John Carr of York, with a late-Victorian ballroom wing added, and elegant eighteenth-century furniture that doesn’t necessarily belong.

That needn’t detract from the enjoyment of the place.  It’s not a house-that-time-forgot, like nearby Brodsworth Hall, nor is it a fully displayed glass-case museum like the Doncaster museum at Cusworth Hall.

The best way to enjoy the country-house aspects of this particular country house is to join a guided tour, when curatorial staff can explain and explore the furniture and bring to life the lifestyle of the family of Walter Stanhope (1750-1821), who commissioned Carr, the plasterer James Henderson of York, and “the most eminent Cabinet Makers” whose original items have long since been scattered.

The other historical interest of Cannon Hall lies in the family associations with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The younger son of Walter Spencer-Stanhope’s heir John Spencer-Stanhope (1787-1873) was the artist John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope (1829-1908).  A dreamy video of his work can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQYZq3DCB2g&list=PLvIwNyf0RZgMPgydtjejzTLjQxZ62W3He&index=10.

Two of Roddam’s nieces were Gertrude Spencer-Stanhope (1857-1944) and Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919).  Three of Gertrude’s bronze sculptures belong to the Cannon Hall collection.

Many of Evelyn’s paintings belong to the De Morgan Foundation, a collection gathered by Evelyn’s sister Wilhelmina, the formidable Mrs A M W Stirling (1865-1965).  The De Morgan Centre is housed adjacent to Wandsworth Museum:  http://www.demorgan.org.uk.

The 56-page, A4 handbook for the 2014 tour Country Houses of South Yorkshire, with text, photographs, maps, a chronology and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  It includes chapters on Aston Hall, Brodsworth Hall, Cannon Hall, Cusworth Hall, Hickleton Hall, Renishaw Hall, Wentworth Castle, Wentworth Woodhouse and Wortley Hall.  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.

Nellie’s

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White Horse, Beverley, East Yorkshire

White Horse, Beverley, East Yorkshire

When I was an undergraduate at Hull University in the late 1960s, what passed for debauchery was a trip on the train to Nellie’s at Beverley.

Once I’d ascertained that Nellie’s was in fact a pub – I was mindful of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row (1945), which tells of men who went to the Bear Flag Restaurant for a sandwich – it became, and remains, a favourite.

This famous and memorable hostelry has medieval timbering but has been radically altered in and since the eighteenth century.  It belonged to St Mary’s Church (which stands at the opposite end of the street) probably from 1585, and had become an inn by 1666.

It seems to have changed little since the tenancy was taken on by a sadler, Francis Collinson, in 1887.  Mr Collinson bought the inn in 1927, and after his death it was run by his son, William, and after his death by three of William’s sisters, Nellie (after whom it is now popularly known), Ada and Dorothy, who maintained the ancient tradition of opening their private kitchen to drinkers during the evening, serving from a table beside the hand pumps and washing up with hot water from the coal-fired range.

After the three sisters died in rapid succession during 1975-6 the White Horse was sold to Samuel Smiths of Tadcaster:  under this new ownership the nineteenth-century fittings and gas lighting are lovingly preserved, but not the brick wall that served as the original gents’ lavatory.

There is a grandiose website at http://www.nellies.co.uk/abt.htm.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Fun Palaces:  the history and architecture of the entertainment industry please click here.

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.

The Elwells of Beverley

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45 North Bar Without, Beverley, East Yorkshire (detail)

45 North Bar Without, Beverley, East Yorkshire (detail)

Just outside Beverley’s North Bar stands a riotously decorated black-and-white revival house 4-6 North Bar Without, loaded with dormers and turrets, statues, mottoes and coats of arms, and two endearing carved caricatures of Gladstone and Disraeli, dating c1890.

This is the work of the Beverley carver James Edward Elwell, whose fine carvings can be found in churches, public buildings and houses across the East Riding.

In Beverley he executed, among much else, Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Gothic organ screen in the Minster (1878-80) and John Oldrid Scott’s reredos at St Mary’s Parish Church (1880-1).

He also provided carvings at his own house at 43 North Bar Without (Oak House) (Smith & Brodrick 1880) and the house next door, 45 North Bar Without, which he designed himself (1894).

He died in 1926 aged  ninety:  his work, much of it for the architects Temple Moore and F S Brodrick, dates from the 1880s to around 1910.

His son was Frederick William Elwell (1870-1958), a painter with a national reputation who chose to live most of his life in Beverley with his artist wife Mary Dawson, née Bishop, (1874-1952).

His portrait-subjects included King George V, whose lying-in-state he also painted, and the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, and he painted numerous civic leaders in Hull and the East Riding.  He is now most celebrated for his genre-paintings of local life, including several of the kitchen-staff at the Beverley Arms Hotel, such as ‘Preparations’ and ‘Three Maids’ (both c1940-45), which are displayed on weather-proof panels around the streets of Beverley.

By this means Beverley is embellished by the talents of both father and son.

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

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.

Beverley’s medieval carvings

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St Mary's Church, Beverley, East Yorkshire

St Mary’s Church, Beverley, East Yorkshire

Though Beverley is famous first for its magnificent minster its parish church of St Mary is well worth visiting, not least for its carvings.

After the tower collapsed into the nave during Divine Service on April 29th 1520, killing many of the inhabitants, the generous donations that paid for its rebuilding were commemorated in the north arcade of the nave:  the merchant John Crossley and his wife gave “two pillars and a half” and the “good Wyffes of Beverley…gave two pillars – God reward them”.

Most enjoyable of all, the “Maynstrells” gave the easternmost pier, on which five of them, including their robed and badged president, appear.

Indeed, St Mary’s church and Beverley Minster between them contain a quite unparalleled collection of medieval carvings of musicians and their instruments – pipes and tabors, viols, rebecs, bombardes, shawms, citterns, hautboys, bagpipes, twin horns and nakers – no doubt because the town was the headquarters of the Northern Guild of Minstrels.

St Mary’s has other notable carvings including the Beverley Imp (arguably more frightening than the one at Lincoln) and a so-called Pilgrim Rabbit which is supposed to be the inspiration for the White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

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.

Beverley Friary

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Old Friary, Beverley, East Yorkshire

Old Friary, Beverley, East Yorkshire

It’s a pity that the George and Dragon pub on Highgate in Beverley was renamed the “Monks’ Walk” because while medieval Beverley may have been black with vicars, crawling with canons and full of friars, the monks remained firmly in their monasteries.

The Dominican friars, who came to Beverley by 1210, were based at what is now called the Old Friary.  The site of its church was intersected by the railway line in 1846, but the surviving building contains religious wall-paintings which date from shortly before or soon after the Reformation.

When the factory buildings surrounding it were cleared in the 1980s, the Old Friary was converted into a Youth Hostel:  http://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/beverley-friary.

The result is a beautifully tactful extension, which is clearly modern and entirely appropriate.

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.

What all the world desires

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Soho Foundry, Smethwick, West Midlands

Soho Foundry, Smethwick, West Midlands

At the very start of the partnership between Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) and James Watt (1736-1819) in 1776 Boulton told James Boswell, “I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have – POWER.”

Boulton and Watt made their fortunes but realised that when their patent expired in 1800 they must build complete engines, rather than fabricate engine-parts and draw royalties on the invention.

Boulton’s Soho Manufactory was unsuitable for full-scale engine construction, so they established the Soho Foundry, about a mile away alongside the Birmingham Canal in Smethwick in 1796.

Their eventual third partner, William Murdoch (1754-1839), developed the manufacture of gas-lighting equipment at the Foundry.

The original partners passed on the business, Boulton, Watt & Co, to their respective sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton (1770-1842) and James Watt Jnr (1769-1848).  After James Watt Jnr’s death the company became James Watt & Co and continued to build steam engines almost to the end of the nineteenth century.

The Soho Foundry built the screw engines for Brunel’s SS Great Eastern (1859), and the ornate pumping-engines that are preserved at the Papplewick Pumping Station, Nottinghamshire (1884).

In 1895 the site was taken over by the weighing-machine maker, W & T Avery, whose successor, Avery Weight-Tronix, continues to innovate and manufacture on the site.

Though actual casting ended in 1954, the site has remained a key location for the development of digital weighing equipment of many kinds.

The ground is rich in archaeology, much of which remains to be uncovered.  The gatehouse block houses the fascinating Avery Historical Museum.

And high on a gable in the surviving Forge buildings is the name ‘James Watt & Co’, linking back to the dour Scotsman whose genius transformed the world.

There can’t be many industrial sites in Britain that have worked continuously since the late eighteenth century.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s Birmingham’s Heritage lecture, please click here.

Crucible of the Industrial Revolution

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Soho House, Handsworth, Birmingham

Soho House, Handsworth, Birmingham

The poet Robert Southey declared in 1807, “Probably in no other age or country was there ever such an astonishing display of human ingenuity as may be found in Birmingham.”

If any one location within the city epitomises this display of ingenuity it is three stops up the Metro tram-route from Snow Hill, where stood the Soho Manufactory, an integrated workshop, powered at first by water:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soho_Manufactory_ca_1800.jpg.

This was the work-base of a manufacturing genius, Matthew Boulton (1728-1908), initially a “toy” manufacturer, producing not playthings but miscellaneous small metal articles ranging from buttons and buckles to high-quality decorative products in steel, ormolu, Sheffield plate and precious metals.

Boulton is best remembered for his partnership with the Scottish inventor, James Watt, because between them they made possible the production and sale of stationary steam-engines for use in mines and mills.  As Boulton explained to James Boswell, “I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have – POWER.”

The steam engines were eventually prefabricated at the Soho Foundry, opened in 1796, while Boulton developed the Soho Mint (1788) to manufacture coinage resistant to counterfeiting.

He was also primarily responsible for establishing the Birmingham Assay Office (1773), the New Street Theatre (1774) and the town’s first hospital and dispensary.

He lived in elegant surroundings at Soho House (Samuel Wyatt 1766), a building full of surprises.

The exterior is not stone, but slate cladding covered with sand-dredged paint.  The glazing bars, some of which survive, were of “Eldorado”, an experimental metal supplied by James Keir, a Lunar Society member.

Boulton installed a practical steam-heated indoor bathroom and was supplied with a Bramah patent water closet in 1787. Evidence of the warm-air circulating central-heating system, installed c1810, can still be seen in the cellars, on the stairs and in one of the upstairs rooms.

Though the parkland surrounding Soho House has long since been built on, the main block of the house survives and is beautifully restored.

Its interpretation makes it easy to recreate the exciting, welcoming atmosphere of the eighteenth-century equivalent of Silicon Valley.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s Birmingham’s Heritage lecture, please click here.

Exploring New South Wales: Newcastle Cathedral

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Cathedral Church of Christ the King, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

Cathedral Church of Christ the King, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

Every major Australian and New Zealand city possesses at least one, usually two, fine cathedrals, many of them started in the Gothic Revival style in the early years of settlement.  Some, such as St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Perth and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland, were completed to newer, cheaper, more practical designs;  others such as William Wilkinson Wardell’s magnificent St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, and St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, were eventually completed as the original architect intended.

The Cathedral Church of Christ the King, Newcastle, New South Wales, begun in 1869, is a superb essay in Gothic Revival style by the Canadian-born architect John Horbury Hunt (1838-1904), who designed (among much else) Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton (1881-4), St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral, Armidale (1871) and rebuilt the charming little church of St James, Morpeth after a fire (1874-7) – all three in New South Wales.

The original design by the architects Leonard Terry (1825–1884) and Robert Speechly (1840-1884) proved unworkable, and John Horbury Hunt provided a new design in 1882.  It has the signature of this talented, often controversial architect – an uncompromising choice of materials, in this case brick, and a forthright acceptance of asymmetry.  The building as it stands is not exactly as John Horbury Hunt intended:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/uon/4128635375/in/photostream.

Construction stalled in 1893 in a flurry of litigation over contracts and costs, and resumed in 1900 under the supervision of the Sydney architect John Hingeston Buckeridge (1857-1934), so that the nave and crossing could be brought into use in 1902.

Thereafter, a succession of architects progressively extended the building:  Frederick George & A C Castleden designed the Warrior’s Chapel (1924) at the east end, using Buckeridge’s plans, and the nave was completed with a roof unlike Hunt’s intention in 1928.

E C Sara of the practice Castleden & Sara added the Columbarium in 1955.  Eventually, in 1979, the transepts and tower were completed, largely according to Hunt’s intentions, by E C Sara’s son John.

The only omission from the spirit of Hunt’s design was the spire, which is almost certainly for the best, because the Cathedral was damaged in the 1989 earthquake, and the repairs that took place in 1995-1997 were only practicable because of the quality of the original structure:  http://www.newcastlecathedral.org.au/earthquake.html.

The result is a magnificent, remarkably harmonious essay in Gothic architecture, completed in the 1970s and rescued in the 1990s.  At the time of its consecration in 1983 it had been in use for eighty years.

I was fortunate to be shown round by Bronwyn Orrock, who has inventorised the cathedral’s many treasures, including sixty stained-glass windows by Kempe & Co and one, the Dies Domini window of 1907, by Edward Burne-Jones and Morris & Co.

The font and the bishop’s throne are by William Douglas Caroe (1857-1938);  the pulpit is by the German-born artist Frederick Burnhardt  Menkens (1855-1910);  in the Warriors’ Chapel are fourteen terracotta panels designed by the Doulton ceramicist George Tinworth (1843-1913).

The Cathedral is the parent church of Toc H in Australia and is rich in war memorials, from Gallipoli, Flanders, Singapore, Korea, Malaya and Vietnam.

Newcastle is, perhaps, off the tourist beat, yet Christ Church Cathedral is one of the most memorable buildings I’ve so far seen in this vast and varied country.

The Cathedral website is at www.newcastlecathedral.org.au.

Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Gothic Down Under:  English architecture in the Antipodes explores the influence of British architects, and British-trained architects, on the design of churches and other buildings in the emerging communities of Australia and New Zealand.  For details, please click here.