The last of my Poplar sights is the Catholic church of St. Mary and St. Joseph, which is said by Pevsner to be at odds with the picturesque surroundings of the Lansbury estate (‘the mannered modernistic Gothic detail is totally at odds with the character of the surroundings’). It is by Adrian Gilbert Scott, grandson of Sir Gilbert Scott, younger brother to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and architect of the Anglican cathedral in Cairo and, to my eyes at least, is an effective marrying of Scandinavian modernist brickwork with robust French gothic massing:
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Balfron Tower
I was castigated yesterday for having limited my Poplar excursion to Robin Hood Gardens and not having included the nearby Balfron Tower, Ernö Goldfinger’s monumental, if bleak, tower block which overlooks the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel. I was told it was particularly fine in its relationship to its setting. I don’t see this. It’s not quite my style, but I can see that it’s impressive:
St. Anne’s, Limehouse
As it was such a sunny day, I called in at St. Anne’s, Limehouse to see the light on the great sculptural mass of the first of Hawksmoor’s east end churches and, at least in its exterior, one of the noblest and best preserved, like the mast of a ship as the boats came up the Thames:
Poplar
Poplar always looks and feels as if it was heavily bombed, without any relics of its seventeenth-century shipyards and consisting mainly of large 1930s and 1950s estates. At its heart is St. Matthias, which contains within its mid-Victorian ragstone casing the original chapel of the East India Company which first opened in the early 1650s:
Robin Hood Gardens
A trip to the local off licence made it possible for me to see what is happening to Robin Hood Gardens (or not), following the decision to demolish it by Margaret Hodge, supported by the Commissioners of English Heritage, in spite of it being one of the more important surviving examples of post-war housing and designed by Alison and Peter Smithson. The answer is that it is still there, with an eastern European air of neglect, but full of what look like architectural students, still with its original sculptural sweep and no more gloomy – in fact, much less so – than the rest of Poplar:
Winfield House
I went for drinks on Tuesday to Winfield House, the residence of the US ambassador in Regent’s Park. It was assumed that I would know its architectural history, but didn’t. It’s on the site of Hertford Villa, designed by Decimus Burton for the third Marquess of Hertford, known as the ‘Caliph of Regent’s Park’. He is said to have used the house for orgies. The original villa was damaged by fire in 1936 and the following year sold to Barbara Hutton, heiress to Woolworths. A large neo-Georgian house replaced it. It was designed by Leonard Rome Guthrie, a Scottish architect, who was the son of a Master Decorator and trained at Glasgow School of Art. In 1925, he had joined the firm of Wimperis & Simpson, which had won the competition to design Fortnum & Mason, and in the 1930s he did work for the BBC, designing transmitter stations with art deco façades.
31, Old Burlington Street
I was tipped off at a meeting earlier in the week that no. 31, Old Burlington Street, just north of Burlington Gardens, is Grade 1 listed. So, I stopped to study it, having passed it a thousand times and never identified it as having particular historical and architectural significance. The reason for its importance is owing to the fact that it dates to the time of the third Earl of Burlington’s development of the streets on the land to the north of Burlington House, including Old Burlington Street, Savile Row (named after his wife) and Cork Street (his secondary title). The Scottish architect, Colen Campbell, who had been responsible for the publication of Vitruvius Britannicus in 1715, oversaw the design of the first houses to be built, which included 31-34, Old Burlington Street, between 1718 and 1723, and no. 31 was lived in during the 1720s by the waspish Lord Hervey and, from 1730, by Stephen Fox, later Lord Ilchester. It is apparently still owned by Fox’s descendants:
Life Room
We had a party the night before last in the Life Room of the Royal Academy Schools. I found myself trying to explain what is special about it. It’s nothing to do with the architecture of the space, which is utilitarian mid-Victorian, part of the undercroft of the Royal Academy. It is more due to its continuous use, the generations of students who have been taught to draw from the living model. It is also due to the absence of any self-conscious reverence for the room’s history: it has been battered and used by generations of students. This is increasingly rare in historic interiors. They are preserved and protected and coddled, but not used. And then there is the ghost of previous studios: the time when the drawing studio was in the dome of the National Gallery; before that, in Somerset House; before that, in Pall Mall; and originally, in an alleyway off St. Martin’s Lane. The room contains the memory of previous students, flicking bread at one another, and of previous spaces, back to Bologna and the Academy of St. Luke’s in Rome.
47, Maddox Street
I was walking down Maddox Street on my way to a meeting the day before yesterday which gave me a chance to admire the façade of Browns, the restaurant, all in the most brilliant faience by Burmantofts. I’ve been trying to work out its history. It was apparently designed by an architect called Walter Williams for a Messrs Lawrence, a tailors and was later owned by Wells and Company who cut suits for Winston Churchill.
Gieves and Hawkes
I have been puzzling over the fact that Gieves and Hawkes has two different dates – 1771 and 1785 – prominently displayed on its main façade. How come ? The answer is that Thomas Hawkes, having previously worked for a Mr. Moy, who supplied velvet hats on Swallow Street, set up shop in Brewer Street in 1771, selling clothing to the military. He moved to No. 17, Piccadilly where, in 1793, he was described as ‘Helmet, Hat and Capmaker to the King’. The company later developed not only the shako, but the solar topee, before merging with Gieve in 1974. The date of 1785 relates to the date of foundation of Gieve. This may be wrong. James Watson Gieve, who gave his name to the firm, was born in 1820. He was apprenticed to Augustus Meredith, who ran a firm of military tailors at 73, High Street, Portsmouth. Meredith’s father, Melchizedek, had apparently established the firm in 1784, kitting out naval officers, including Nelson. Gieve became a partner in the firm in 1852. So, by my reckoning, it should say 1784:
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