Two of my fave bloggers have decided to rest from venting their spleen on their very different, but riveting, subjects. The first is Totally-Un PC, that Gene Hunt reincarnation, whose lust for life comes through every post; who loves and hates his job in equal measure, who behind the uniform, tan, shouty personality and grey hair is so very… human. Its as bad as Gene Hunt hanging up his camel hair overcoat and selling the Cortina and the Quattro and buying an early 90’s Skoda. Although (I believe) I have nothing whatsoever in common with TUPC, I would very much like to join him for an evening have a good, down to earth rant and a shout about the world in general over a pint or two of good beer in a noisy, sweaty, battered Victorian pub.
The second is Norman Blogster and Part IV, that commentator on architecture, life and everything; which I like to read when I am bored to tears with my own tiny little architectural gene pool. His understanding and insight are many levels above mine, due I expect to his gliding on snow white wings high above the sea of architecture rather than grovelling around on the bottom, like me. Occasionally I lift my primeval snout from the sediment and peer upwards, in wonder, at the world of architecture beyond loo extensions and filthy surveys. After an evening with TUPC, I could spend the day with Norm, whilst he explained the wonders of Starchitecture to me over a glass of perspective in a suitably lit and artistic wine bar.
I will miss these two and hope they haven’t given up entirely.
I, too, have very good reasons to discontinue this blog, but for now? I’m thinking about it!
25 March 2008
14 March 2008
Mystery
I met my new client in his drive. It was a lovely sunny day, and as my car drew up, he opened the front door and walked towards me, beaming all over his face. I shook his hand and couldn’t help beaming back. ‘Come and see the place!’ he said, gesturing towards the door, at the same time as gripping my hand in a very enthusiastic handshake.
The house was a range of converted outbuildings, which once belonged to the adjoining rectory. They were low, long, mellow brick, with steeply pitched, slightly uneven roofs of various angles, there were a couple of little porches under catslide roofs over the entrance doors and a dinky little scrabble of open cart lodges bordering the shingled drive. A high, old brick wall separated the house and garden from its neighbour, with vines and Virginia creeper, beginning to turn that lovely shade of red, covering large areas of brickwork.
We walked around the house to the rear, where a long, shady lawn, with some huge mature beech trees, stretched down to the river bank, where there were reeds, water lilies and willows. The afternoon sun turned everything golden and the little man beside me chatted away, telling me about the move from the other side of the country to be near his grown up children. It was very pleasant.
He introduced me to his wife, a tired looking but friendly woman. She walked with a limp and had a bent back. Her husband told me she was disabled, and my brief was to make some adaptations to the house to enable her to use it.
As we toured the building, I began to wonder why he had bought it. He was quite elderly, a retired vet, and from the sounds of his wheezing breath, I thought he either had asthma or emphysema. The house was charming, but the garden was huge, and would take a great deal of maintenance, just to keep the lawns in check. The rooms were not all on one level, there were little steps in every doorway; in one corridor you took three steps up, turned a very tight corner and took two steps down. The kitchen was in a tiny lean to, most inconvenient and several rooms away from the dining room. One bedroom was in the roof space, up a dog-leg of a staircase and you had to duck to miss the tie beam stretching across the landing. There was only one bathroom, in a most inconvenient place. From the main bedroom, you would have to go down the stairs, then up another separate staircase to reach it.
There was a vast conservatory in poor repair, which would be cold in the winter, but obscured the view from the sitting room. There was a hallway with no natural light, and a huge study overlooking the drive, which could only be reached through the kitchen.
I very gently suggested that this house would take a lot of altering to suit his wife, and it would not be possible to do some of the things he might wish.
‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘You’re an architect! I’m sure you will come up with something!’. Well, I tried. I prepared a sketch showing some alterations, which he was very pleased with. What concerned him more than anything else was putting a door onto the open cart lodges. He became quite obsessed with it, sending me stacks of brochures of different (and wildly unsuitable) doors. I couldn’t get cross with him, he was so cheerful.
He and his wife left for his old house to prepare it for sale. While they were away, I did a little more work and emailed him, but heard nothing.
After a couple of weeks, his wife rang me. He had gone for a walk in the local woods and hanged himself. She was distraught. No note, no nothing.
Why?
The house was a range of converted outbuildings, which once belonged to the adjoining rectory. They were low, long, mellow brick, with steeply pitched, slightly uneven roofs of various angles, there were a couple of little porches under catslide roofs over the entrance doors and a dinky little scrabble of open cart lodges bordering the shingled drive. A high, old brick wall separated the house and garden from its neighbour, with vines and Virginia creeper, beginning to turn that lovely shade of red, covering large areas of brickwork.
We walked around the house to the rear, where a long, shady lawn, with some huge mature beech trees, stretched down to the river bank, where there were reeds, water lilies and willows. The afternoon sun turned everything golden and the little man beside me chatted away, telling me about the move from the other side of the country to be near his grown up children. It was very pleasant.
He introduced me to his wife, a tired looking but friendly woman. She walked with a limp and had a bent back. Her husband told me she was disabled, and my brief was to make some adaptations to the house to enable her to use it.
As we toured the building, I began to wonder why he had bought it. He was quite elderly, a retired vet, and from the sounds of his wheezing breath, I thought he either had asthma or emphysema. The house was charming, but the garden was huge, and would take a great deal of maintenance, just to keep the lawns in check. The rooms were not all on one level, there were little steps in every doorway; in one corridor you took three steps up, turned a very tight corner and took two steps down. The kitchen was in a tiny lean to, most inconvenient and several rooms away from the dining room. One bedroom was in the roof space, up a dog-leg of a staircase and you had to duck to miss the tie beam stretching across the landing. There was only one bathroom, in a most inconvenient place. From the main bedroom, you would have to go down the stairs, then up another separate staircase to reach it.
There was a vast conservatory in poor repair, which would be cold in the winter, but obscured the view from the sitting room. There was a hallway with no natural light, and a huge study overlooking the drive, which could only be reached through the kitchen.
I very gently suggested that this house would take a lot of altering to suit his wife, and it would not be possible to do some of the things he might wish.
‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘You’re an architect! I’m sure you will come up with something!’. Well, I tried. I prepared a sketch showing some alterations, which he was very pleased with. What concerned him more than anything else was putting a door onto the open cart lodges. He became quite obsessed with it, sending me stacks of brochures of different (and wildly unsuitable) doors. I couldn’t get cross with him, he was so cheerful.
He and his wife left for his old house to prepare it for sale. While they were away, I did a little more work and emailed him, but heard nothing.
After a couple of weeks, his wife rang me. He had gone for a walk in the local woods and hanged himself. She was distraught. No note, no nothing.
Why?
04 March 2008
Medieval Manoevers in the Dark Ages
Just before one in the morning, a few days ago, a rumbling sound awoke me. ‘Blasted Air Force’ I thought – there had been numerous very large transport aircraft coming over earlier, flying low enough for me to shake hands with the pilot if I felt so inclined. Actually, after the fourth or fifth of these things nearly took my chimney pots with them, I felt more inclined to punch his lights out. I digress. It was not an aircraft of course, it was The Earthquake – the biggest thing to hit Market Raison since… well, ever. The rumble grew louder, then all the crockery in the dresser began to rattle – ‘chingchingchingching’ – and my bed trembled. I lay awake in wonder at this fundamental force, more primitive than even the weather, emerging from the very bowels of our planet.
The next morning I had a quick check around the house – no damage. We are quite some way from the epicentre, and apart from a few smashed chimneys in Market Raison, and shrieking from the press, that was it.
Market Raison is in Lincolnshire, a flat, dull county for the most part, with a grid of windswept arable fields defined by deep, water filled dykes to drain what was once marshland. Nothing much happens in Lincolnshire (relatively speaking). A few illegal immigrants are occasionally arrested for illegal cauliflower cutting - and that's all there is. They might have a decent branch of Sainsbury's, but nothing to set the world on fire. Lincoln itself is very slightly more exciting – a small city built on what used to be an island in the surrounding swamp. The island is now a very steep hill, surrounded by a flat plain.
Some time ago, when I was a very immature and wet-behind-the-ears student, our tutor took a group of us to visit Lincoln cathedral. After a long and boring drive through vast flat lands with no hedges and acre upon acre of indeterminate leafy crops, the minibus toiled up the immensely steep hill and halted not far from the top. Crowning the hill was the most enormous, gob-smackingly vast Gothic cathedral I had ever seen (and even by then, I had seen quite a few). It can be seen for miles around, and dwarfs everything around it. As you can see, it is a mountain of ornate carved stone and glass, gigantic flying buttresses arching out like tentacles to anchor themselves deep in the surrounding lawn or on top of an impossibly slender wall; pinnacled, frilled and decorated stone towers reaching over two hundred and seventy feet into the air; vast glittering fields of glass in thousands of separate pieces, each uniquely shaped, set into tiny tracks of lead. Inside, the giddy height of the nave leads to a highly decorative vaulted choir, the light sparkling through the vast windows, light and shadow showing off the richly moulded, huge piers supporting the stone arches, all weighing thousands of tons but seeming as light as air. I could go on and on. Oh, it was beautiful.
The next morning I had a quick check around the house – no damage. We are quite some way from the epicentre, and apart from a few smashed chimneys in Market Raison, and shrieking from the press, that was it.
Market Raison is in Lincolnshire, a flat, dull county for the most part, with a grid of windswept arable fields defined by deep, water filled dykes to drain what was once marshland. Nothing much happens in Lincolnshire (relatively speaking). A few illegal immigrants are occasionally arrested for illegal cauliflower cutting - and that's all there is. They might have a decent branch of Sainsbury's, but nothing to set the world on fire. Lincoln itself is very slightly more exciting – a small city built on what used to be an island in the surrounding swamp. The island is now a very steep hill, surrounded by a flat plain.
Some time ago, when I was a very immature and wet-behind-the-ears student, our tutor took a group of us to visit Lincoln cathedral. After a long and boring drive through vast flat lands with no hedges and acre upon acre of indeterminate leafy crops, the minibus toiled up the immensely steep hill and halted not far from the top. Crowning the hill was the most enormous, gob-smackingly vast Gothic cathedral I had ever seen (and even by then, I had seen quite a few). It can be seen for miles around, and dwarfs everything around it. As you can see, it is a mountain of ornate carved stone and glass, gigantic flying buttresses arching out like tentacles to anchor themselves deep in the surrounding lawn or on top of an impossibly slender wall; pinnacled, frilled and decorated stone towers reaching over two hundred and seventy feet into the air; vast glittering fields of glass in thousands of separate pieces, each uniquely shaped, set into tiny tracks of lead. Inside, the giddy height of the nave leads to a highly decorative vaulted choir, the light sparkling through the vast windows, light and shadow showing off the richly moulded, huge piers supporting the stone arches, all weighing thousands of tons but seeming as light as air. I could go on and on. Oh, it was beautiful.
Something like that, of course, is not built in a day, or even a few years. It took several hundred years to create the building we see now. Just look at the west front. Something not quite right? Does something look odd? See those great, masculine, round arches? Why the change to the much more feminine, smaller pointed arches? Did the architect die in the middle of the site works?
In 1092 the foundation was dug, and a smaller, but still impressive building with the three arches was partly completed and in use 50 years or so later, built in the style of the time known as ‘Romanesque’.
One of the numerous British earthquakes struck Lincoln in 1185. Not only was it strong enough to demolish a few chimneys, it damaged the cathedral so badly the whole lot had to be taken down and rebuilt, all apart from the three arches of the western entrance, which was so massive it withstood the shaking. In less than 100 years, the new ‘Gothic’ style of architecture had overtaken that old fashioned Romanesque. It is the medieval equivalent of our putting a modern glass and concrete box onto a Victorian rectory. Is it still beautiful, or an architectural mess?
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