Birmingham’s Catholic Cathedral

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St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham – viewed from the old Snow Hill Station (1977)

St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham – viewed from the old Snow Hill Station (1977)

Birmingham’s Catholic St Chad’s Cathedral was conceived in a white-heat enthusiasm following the Emancipation of Britain’s Catholics in 1829.

It was the first major work of the architect August Welby Northmore Pugin, built 1839-41 for around £20,000.

Pugin himself gave an “ancient German carved oak figure of the Blessed Virgin and Child…said to have been the first image of the Blessed Virgin exposed for public veneration in England since the Reformation”.

John, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury gave £1,000 towards the construction-costs and a fifteenth-century brass lectern from Louvain, along with an elaborate set of High Mass vestments.

It was one of the first Pugin churches in which he installed, despite opposition from Cardinal Wiseman, one of the rood screens about which he quickly became notoriously obsessive.

Pugin’s total plan was only fully complete when the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor was constructed to a design by Sebastian Pugin Powell in 1933.

St Chad’s became a cathedral on October 27th 1850.  Edward Ilsley, who had been bishop since 1879, became the first archbishop when the see was elevated in 1911.

During the Birmingham blitz, on November 22nd 1941, an incendiary bomb penetrated the south-aisle roof and burnt a radiator which extinguished it.  This remarkable incident is commemorated in the replacement roof-panel, which is marked “Deo Gratias”.

This romantic North German structure once towered above Birmingham’s Gun Quarter until 1960, when the surrounding buildings including Pugin’s Bishop’s House across Water Street were demolished to make way for a bleak stretch of the inner-ring road.

In 1967 the rood-screen was taken down and transferred to the Anglican church of Holy Trinity, Reading and in the same remodelling the lectern given by Lord Shrewsbury was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of New York for £105,000:  https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/471867.

St Chad’s is still an awe-inspiring place, but it’s no longer seen as Pugin visualised it.

The 56-page, A4 handbook for the 2019 ‘Pugin and the Gothic Revival’ tour, with text, photographs and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £15.00 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.

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

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

Birmingham’s Anglican Cathedral

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St Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham

St Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham

The parish church of St Philip was designed by Thomas Archer in 1709 and consecrated in 1715.  It was intended to serve the new northern streets, then called High Town, away from the ancient parish church of St Martin in the Bull Ring.

Archer was an interesting character, brought up in Henley-in-Arden, the son of the MP for Warwick, and as Groom Porter to Queen Anne he effectively held a patent to tax gambling across the nation.

St Philip’s was his first attempt at church-design and he went on to build St John’s, Smith Square, in London (1712-30) and St Paul’s, Deptford (1714-28).

He gave up architectural work when he was appointed Controller of Customs at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1715.  He died in May 1743 worth £100,000, which he bequeathed to his youngest nephew, Henry Archer, MP for Warwick.

As well as knowing the right people to make a lot of money, he was an exceptional designer.  Sir Nikolaus Pevsner & Alexandra Wedgwood point out that St Philip’s was “the first English church since St Paul Covent Garden to be designed by an architect who had seen for himself major Continental buildings”.

Its form is rectangular yet subtly varied and makes lively use of Doric and Corinthian orders.

The tower, which was not completed until 1725, is immediately recognisable by its scrolls and octagonal dome and may have inspired Cuthbert Brodrick’s tower for Leeds Town Hall (1853-8).

Archer’s original plan was to surmount his tower with a large cross, but this was replaced by a boar’s-head weathervane to acknowledge Sir Richard Gough’s influence in obtaining the £600 donation from King George I that enabled the lantern to be finished.

Money talks.

The Victorian architect J A Chatwin (1830-1907) extended the original chancel, adding extra Corinthian columns and a stepped entablature in white and gold to Archer’s square piers and round arches.  Ian Nairn described Chatwin’s work as “grand-slam Classical”.

Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1838-1898), who was born at Bennett’s Hill a short walk away and had been baptised in the church, designed for the three windows of Chatwin’s apse a triptych of the Nativity, Crucifixion and Ascension in William Morris glass, and subsequently gifted the design for the West Window which represents the Last Judgement.

St Philip’s became the cathedral when the Anglican Diocese was formed in 1905.

Incendiary bombs destroyed the roof in 1941, and the Cathedral was restored in 1947-8 by Philip and Anthony Chatwin, the son and great-nephew of J A Chatwin.

This must be one of the most intimate and welcoming of all the English cathedrals.

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

Electric Palace

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Electric Palace, Harwich, Essex

Electric Palace, Harwich, Essex

The survival of the Electric Palace, Harwich is an example of serendipity approaching the miraculous.

This tiny 308-seat picture house, opened on November 29th 1911, was one of hundreds built across Britain in response to the requirements of the Cinematograph Act (1910), which outlawed travelling picture shows and dangerous conversions of pre-existing premises in order to prevent fires and panic.

Designed by the 26-year-old Harold Ridley Hooper of Ipswich, it was commissioned by the East Anglian showman, Charles Thurston.

Built on a backstreet plot vacated by a recent fire, its most prosperous days were 1914-18, when Harwich was a teeming naval base surrounded by army camps.

Thereafter the Palace struggled against bigger and more modern rivals and an inter-war shift of population away from the docks into new housing in Dovercourt.

When it converted to sound films with The Singing Fool on March 10th 1930 the Palace gained a Western Electric system that was superior to those used at the Regent and the Empire cinemas in Dovercourt.

Though it never fully recovered from the damage caused by the 1953 East Coast Flood, it was the entertainment tax, particularly punitive for a small auditorium, that drove the Palace out of business.

It closed on the night of Saturday November 3rd 1956.  Its lessee, Major Bostock, instructed the manager simply “to lock the door and leave it locked”.

And so it remained, vandalised and stripped of anything of value, colonised by stinking feral cats but still with the tickets in the paybox machine, until it was discovered in 1972 by Gordon Miller, a Kingston Polytechnic lecturer running a field-study programme in Harwich.

He enlisted the support of Mrs Winifred Cooper, chairman of the Harwich Society, and one of his former students, David Atwell, who was then in the midst of writing Cathedrals of the Movies (1980), the first serious textbook about cinema architecture in Britain.

The nascent Harwich Electric Palace Trust gained as its first patron Sir John Betjeman, which no doubt helped things along.

To the fury of Harwich Borough Council, who wanted the site for a car park, Gordon Miller’s campaign got the Palace listed, and with increasingly powerful support and favourable media attention the building was cleaned up, restored and reopened as a cinema on its seventieth anniversary, November 29th 1981.

It was one of the very first cinema-preservation projects in Britain, and it remains a delight to visit:  http://www.electricpalace.com.

The Cinema Theatre Association’s magazine, Picture House No 37 (2012) reproduces Gordon Miller’s extensive survey and historical account of the Palace, written in 1972 to support the application for listing.  It’s a bulky read, but fascinating and copiously illustrated:  http://www.cinema-theatre.org.uk/pichouse.htm.

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

 

Pleasure Beach

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Casino, Pleasure Beach, Blackpool, Lancashire

Casino, Pleasure Beach, Blackpool, Lancashire

Apart from being great fun, the Pleasure Beach has a long, proud history as part of Blackpool’s entertainment culture and as a hugely successful business dedicated, in the words of its former director, Leonard Thomson, to “separating the public from their money as painlessly and pleasurably as possible”.

Leonard Thomson was the son-in-law of one of the co-founders of the Pleasure Beach, William George Bean, who brought an American Hotchkiss Bicycle Railway to Blackpool’s South Shore in 1895 and collaborated with a Yorkshire meat-trader, John W Outhwaite, to import other rides from Coney Island to set up a permanent fairground on what had previously been a gypsy encampment.

Their ambition was to create, in the words of W G Bean, “…an American Style Amusement Park, the fundamental principle of which is to make adults feel like children again and to inspire gaiety of a primarily innocent character”.

In 1906 they contracted for an electricity supply from the Tramways Department, which meant that the rides could operate into the evening, which in turn increased the traffic on the tramway.

When the Corporation widened the Promenade across the site in 1913, Bean and Outhwaite secured an advantageous agreement that no amusement facilities or tram services would be permitted further south for fifteen years.

Their price for varying this agreement when the trams were extended to Starr Gate in 1926 was that all trams made a compulsory stop at the Pleasure Beach, and those trams terminating there showed the destination “Pleasure Beach” rather than “South Shore” – providing free advertising that continues to this day.

When Leonard Thompson died in 1976 his widow Doris became Chairman and their son, Geoffrey Thompson, Managing Director.  Mrs Thompson made a point of testing each new ride as recently as 2002 when, aged 99, she rode the Spin Doctor.

Geoffrey Thompson ran the company until his death at the age of 67 in June 2004:  his mother died, aged 101, shortly after her son’s funeral.

The company is now operated by Geoffrey’s children, Amanda and Nicholas Thompson.

The Pleasure Beach website is at Blackpool Pleasure Beach: UK’s Most ICONic Theme Park.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on seaside architecture, Away from it all:  the heritage of holiday resorts, Beside the Seaside:  the architecture of British coastal resorts, Blackpool’s Seaside Heritage and Yorkshire’s Seaside Heritage, please click here.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2013 Lancashire’s Seaside Heritage tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  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 Chester

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Chester Cathedral Refectory

Chester Cathedral Refectory

It’s hard work being a tourist.  You need to eat and drink.

When my mate Richard and I explored Chester recently, we had reasonable coffee in splendid surroundings at the Queen Hotel, directly opposite the railway station:  http://www.feathers.uk.com/premier-queen-hotel.

At lunchtime we had a pit-stop at a branch of Patisserie Valerie on Bridge Street:  http://www.patisserie-valerie.co.uk/chester-cafe.aspx.  This is a dependable food-chain experience, very French – so French, in fact, that I felt compelled to text my Francophone friend John to find out that ‘framboises’ means ‘raspberries’.  It’s a male thing, not liking to ask.

By teatime we’d reached Chester Cathedral.  We both take exception on principle to having to pay admission to a place of worship, but we’re more than happy to pay good money for superb cakes, tea and coffee in the Refectory Café:  http://www.chestercathedral.com/chester-cathedral-refectory-cafe-opening-hours.htm.

Richard is adept at real-beer research, so by 5pm opening-time we were at the door of The Albion [http://www.albioninnchester.co.uk], where we put away a couple of pints of a beer called Flying Scotsman (“hints of raisiny spiciness and toasty dryness. Fresh, slightly citrus tang with a rich rounded finish” – http://www.caledonianbeer.com/flyingscotsman.htm) while gazing at evocative enamelled advertisements for Colman’s Starch “sold in cardboard boxes”, the Public Benefit Boot Co [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~publicbenefit] and one with the reassuring strapline that “Craven ‘A’ will not affect your throat”.

For our evening meal we hiked back towards the station to the canal-side Old Harkers Arms [http://www.brunningandprice.co.uk/harkers], named after the chandler whose warehouse became a pub in the late 1980s.  Here we drank Great Orme Celtica (“full of citrus taste and aroma – http://www.greatormebrewery.co.uk/cask_cd.htm) and I ate an excellent steak-and-ale suet pudding.

We saw some buildings too.

The 48-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Historic Chester tour, with text, photographs, and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  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.

The Yorkshire Lutyens 1

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The Principal's House, King's Manor, York

The Principal’s House, King’s Manor, York

When people think of the wealth of architecture and history in York, the Victorian period isn’t prominent.  Yet much of present-day York owes its appearance to the Victorians.

After all, it was in the Victorian age that York became a great railway centre and a major chocolate producer.

When I joined a Victorian Society South Yorkshire Group walk around York, the leader, Philip Wright, pointed out the Principal’s House (1900) at the King’s Manor, built when the site was occupied by the Yorkshire School for the Blind by Walter Henry Brierley (1862-1926).

Glancing at it, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was built in the seventeenth century, like some of the buildings around it – such is the subtlety and good manners of Brierley’s design.

Like John Carr of York and Francis Johnson of Bridlington, Brierley chose to practise in his home area, where he designed around four hundred buildings in the course of his career.

The reason he was labelled “the Yorkshire Lutyens” is obvious from his very last building, Goddards, completed in 1928 for Noel Goddard Terry of the chocolate dynasty.

From the summer of 2012 it’s possible to visit Goddards, now that the National Trust has moved some of its administration away from the building.  Opening times and visiting arrangements are at http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/goddards.

The Principal’s House and the other buildings at the King’s Manor are used by the University of York and are not open to the public.

The 44-page, A4 handbook for the 2009 Historic York tour, with text, photographs, and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £7.50 including postage and packing.  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.

Exploring Sydney: Waverley Cemetery

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Waverley Cemetery, Bronte, Sydney, Australia

Waverley Cemetery, Bronte, Sydney, Australia

Sydney is an attractive city and its finest amenity is its coastline.

Even the deceased can lie within sight of the sea, and for the bereaved, visiting loved ones can be an uplifting experience.

Waverley Cemetery is lies in the south-east of the city, in a suburb called Bronte (sic, without a diaeresis) not far from Bondi Beach on a magnificent cliff-top site.

It’s a classic example of a Victorian commercial cemetery, funded by the sale and maintenance of burial plots, established in 1877.

However, unlike the major British company-cemeteries – Kensal Green, Highgate and the rest – Waverley was established by the local council, backed by the government of New South Wales.

And unlike British municipal cemeteries, it’s financially supported by an independent sinking fund to insulate it from the vagaries of public-authority finances.

As such it continues to provide a service and pay its way:  http://www1.waverley.nsw.gov.au/cemetery.

 

Exploring Sydney: Rookwood Cemetery

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Site of Cemetery Station No 1, Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, Austrralia

Site of Cemetery Station No 1, Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, Austrralia

As your train leaves Sydney Central Station, you may spot on the right-hand side an elaborate Gothic building.

This was the Mortuary Station, designed by the Colonial Architect, James Johnstone Barnet (1827-1904), opened in 1869 and later named Regent Street [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent_Street_railway_station].  It was the terminus for funeral trains to Rookwood Cemetery (1868) at Lidcombe to the north of the city, Woronora General Cemetery (1894) at Sutherland to the south-west, and – if Wikipedia is to be believed – Sandgate Cemetery (1881) in Newcastle, a hundred miles up the coast.

Whether the name Rookwood was chosen in reference to the English Brookwood Cemetery is unclear.  Rookwood Cemetery is so vast, nearly 750 acres, that today it has its own bus service.

Originally, funeral trains terminated at the very fine Haslam’s Creek Cemetery Station, otherwise known by a variety of names including Cemetery Station No 1, also by James Barnett (1867):  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rookwood_000016.jpg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rookwood_003903.jpg].

The line was further extended, to Mortuary Terminus (1897), later Cemetery Station No 3, and then to the eventual terminus at Cemetery Station No 4 (1908).  Between Nos 1 and 3, the Roman Catholic Platform, latterly Cemetery Station No 2, was opened in 1901.

The line through Rookwood Cemetery closed in 1948, though its alignment is clearly visible on Google Earth, branching south-east of Lidcombe Station.  The site of Cemetery Station No 1 is in the middle of Necropolis Circuit.

The building itself was badly vandalised and damaged by fire, and was eventually dismantled and transplanted in 1958 to Canberra, where it now serves as All Saints’ Parish Church, Ainslie.

In the course of rebuilding the bell-tower was moved to the liturgical south of the building.  It is now fitted with a locomotive bell presented by the Australian Railway Historical Society.

The church has two English stained-glass windows, the War Memorial east window from St Clement’s Parish Church, Newhall, Sheffield, and another from St Margaret’s Church, Bagendon, Gloucestershire.

Sleeping cars

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Railway Square YHA, Central Station, Sydney, Australia

Railway Square YHA, Central Station, Sydney, Australia

On one of my rail trips out of Sydney Central Station during my lecture-tour for the Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Societies, I gazed across the platforms and noticed a group of obviously ancient passenger carriages.  I couldn’t tell from my viewpoint whether they were parked at a couple of platforms or grounded.

They belong to the Railway Square YHA, one of many Sydney bases for backpackers and people visiting a city on a budget.

Its website http://www3.yha.com.au/Hostels/NSW/Sydney-Surrounds/Railway-Square invites prospective guests to “stay in one of the funky railway carriages on the former Platform Zero or one of the comfy rooms in the historic 1904 main building, now converted into contemporary accommodation.”

It’s apparent from the reviews that it’s a noisy night’s stay – if the other guests don’t disturb you with lively conversation, the trains on the adjacent platforms will.

That said, there are far, far worse places to rest your head in Sydney.

 

Upstairs, downstairs

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Central Station approach, Sydney, Australia

Central Station approach, Sydney, Australia

New South Wales suburban and outer-suburban trains are double-deckers, built to the generous Australian loading-gauge, based on the pre-war French prototype, the Voiture État à deux étages.

The doorways at the end of each carriage lead to a mezzanine level, which is used by passengers with pushchairs or wheeled luggage, and stairs lead up and down to the two central compartments.

It’s an odd sensation to sit so high above rail-level on the top deck, and even odder to sit below-decks with the platform edge skimming the windows.

Double-deck carriages twenty metres long carry nearly 50% more passengers than single-deck rolling stock of equivalent length, saving the huge expense of lengthening station platforms.

To allow for the low-slung centre section, designers had to move as much electrical and mechanical equipment as possible on to the roof above the entrances.

The first of double-deck trailer cars were introduced in 1964, followed by double-deck motor cars four years later.  Interurban double-deck trains, with an additional burden of air-conditioning units, followed in 1970.

Travelling to outer Sydney, with little idea of direction let alone distance, I was anxious to know what level of creature comforts my train would provide.

I quizzed the travel-information officer about on-board lavatories in my best Pommie accent.  He replied, “You’re in the wrong country mate.”

Ask a silly question.