I love the church at Cley: a monument to the prosperity of Norfolk in the thirteenth century when Cley was a port until the plague arrived in 1349 and the port silted up.  Like a mini-cathedral-by-the-sea:-

Knowing that Old Town Clothing is due to close by the end of the year, I have been planning a last trip – a pilgrimage – to Holt to pay my respects to Marie Willey and Will Brown who have supplied me with clothes for the last, roughly thirty years, ever since I came upon their first shop in Elm Hill in Norwich. 

I went today.

They have had enough.  Hardly surprising.  They’ve been doing it a long time and it’s hard work running a small business, taking orders, getting things made, not using a factory, but local machinists.  It’s become harder to find people with the necessary skills.  They have insisted on everything being done to the highest standards.  That’s the whole point.

I have been disappointed how little interest there has been in maintaining these craft skills, encouraging the training of the next generation, the idea of rural industry.  In Japan, they would be living national treasures.  But here I’m not sure we recognise, let alone esteem, the intersection between craft and small-scale industrial production:-

By chance, I am travelling across London on the Elizabeth Line shortly after it has – deservedly – won the 2024 Stirling Prize.  Hundreds of people transported smoothly on long distances, opening up parts of London, including Woolwich and Abbey Wood, which were previously unreachable: on a scale and with a level of civic and national ambition which presumably knocked out the competition.

https://www.dezeen.com/2024/10/16/stirling-prize-winner-2024-london-elizabeth-line/

A repousséd silver hand reliquary, c.1300:-

A Visigothic belt buckle:-

Georges Vantongerloo 1948:-

Magritte 1928:-

Galileo Chini, Self-Portrait, 1933:-

Alighiero Boetti:-

Doris Salcedo, Untitled, 2023:-

Magnolia shaped teapot, c.1735:-

Iizuka Rōkansai:-

Egyptian alabasters:-

Egyptian wood arm, c.2000BC:-

Park Seo-Bo, Scripture No. 911104:-

Beatrice Caracciolo:-

We were close to East Hatley today, so called in on its church, hard to find, up a footpath off the only street, looked after by Friends of Friendless Churches and restored in 1874 by William Butterfield, when he was already well known, had been offered and turned down the RIBA Gold Medal.

It was completely neglected in 2002:-

It has now been put back into reasonable order by the Friends of Friendless Churches, helped by a grant from the Culture Recovery Fund:-

Inside one sees survivals of Butterfield’s decoration:-

As I say in the accompanying article, I was prompted to write about Canary Wharf by bicycling through it last summer and finding it vastly much busier and alive than the City – the river banks and wharf-side bars all packed.

I read endlessly that Canary Wharf is suffering whereas the City is thriving.  I wondered if perhaps the truth is the other way round.

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-us-city-on-the-banks-of-the-thames/

Reading Nicholas Olsberg’s excellent new book on William Butterfield (I am reviewing it for The Critic) prompted me to visit: a noble, if austere, mission church in the back streets of what must have been a suburb, built at the behest of Robert Brett, a local doctor, who was a close friend of Butterfield and had already got him the commission for St. Augustine’s College, Canterbury:-

The film of the exhibition:-

https://mailchi.mp/3dff8af3e598/a-short-film-of-romillys-exhibition-at-edmund-de-waals-studio?e=9dc0f9b85b

I have booked myself in for a tour of the newly developed Norton Folgate, an area which has historically been highly contentious.  Meanwhile, I walked past it this afternoon and was interested by how it tries to manage the relationship between new build and the surviving historic warehouses:-