Month: March 2023

Categories
Art Design

Ormeau Bakery Belfast + 1965 to 1966 Recipe Book

Red Brick University of Baking 

The Sunday Times has declared Ormeau to be Belfast’s best neighbourhood. The name is synonymous with the bakery which closed in 2004. The Ormeau Bakery red brick landmark building on the Ormeau Road was converted to shops with apartments above. Robert Wilson founded the company in 1875 and popularised such Ulster specialities as farls (soda, potato and apple potato), wheaten bread and of course a myriad types of traybakes. Long before recipe books were quite so fashionable as nowadays, Ormeau Bakery produced one which was literally a work of art – or rather works of art.

Categories
Art People

Pink Magnolia + Kensington London

Trees We Can See

“That would make such a beautiful picture,” says art lover Astrid Bray, pointing to the palm trees and pink magnolia hanging over Melbury Road. On the far side of Kensington High Street, more pink magnolia is in full bloom on Edwardes Square along from The Scarsdale Tavern. New pink magnolia trees have been planted by the Council on the pavements too. Like American singer-songwriter Amy Grant’s new song, Trees We’ll Never See, the full bloom of these trees will be enjoyed by the next generation.

Artist restorer Denise Cook says, “Magnolia trees are very primitive plants. They are closely related to other primitive plants such as buttercup flowers and water lilies. Magnolia is one of the most ancient of trees. It was food for dinosaurs. That’s why so many of the species are so tall and carry leaves high up their branches. They existed before the continents drifted apart and are found in a band around the earth from Asia to the Americas. There’s a really lovely magnolia tree from the US in the Chelsea Physic Garden.”

Categories
Art Luxury People

Lavender’s Blue + Butlers Catering

Simply the Best

Only at an Irish Georgian party in a Victorian building in London would you be eating Elizabethan orange pudding. Of course it wasn’t just desserts when Celia Butler is doing the catering.

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Architects Architecture Developers People Town Houses

North Great George’s Street Dublin +

Say More Things

“Dublin is so rich in neoclassical Georgian architecture, overblown and exuberant in its ‘costly magnificence’. The American Federal style was also inspired by the richness of the Irish interior architecture and the boldness of its 18th century furniture. Many fine examples can be found on the East Coast from Boston to Philadelphia.” American art collector and international tastemaker Charles Plante lives and works on either side of the Atlantic.

North Great George’s Street, north of the River Liffey in Dublin, is all about overblown scale architecture and exuberant interior plasterwork. And the owners of the houses would agree it costs a lot to look this magnificent. Since the 1970s, this street has boasted a remarkable group of owners, not least Ireland’s foremost heritage architect John O’Connell. Former Chairman of the Irish bookshop chain Eason and conservationist Harold Clarke lived on the street from the 1960s until the 1980s. The distinguished antiques dealer Willie Dillon was his neighbour at that time.

Thomas McKeown, Chairman of The North Great George’s Street Preservation Society, lives on the street with his wife Adelaide. “In 1767 Sarah Archdall began selling sites to individuals who wanted to build houses on what was then the Mount Eccles Estate. Building started shortly afterwards and North Great George’s Street was essentially completed by about 1800. Then came the Act of Union in 1801 and the relocation of the centre of fashion to the proximity of Leinster House marked the beginning of a slow decline. Indeed, by the early 1900s a group calling themselves the ‘Georgian Society’ was formed to make a historic record of the fine buildings that were apparently already doomed to destruction. This was prophetic and many of the buildings that are documented in their work have long since disappeared.”

“By the beginning of the 20th century a large part of the street was already in multi family tenements and by the mid 1960s some of the houses had been demolished. At this time there was also an increased awareness of the inherent value of our Georgian heritage. On North Great George’s Street, fine houses, needing major restoration, were available for the price of a suburban semi detached. This was recognised by a number of starry eyed individuals who saw the chance to live in a great house – this prize came at the price of much effort, often in the face of official indifference.”

“The result – appreciated by more and more people – is there to see and would probably not have succeeded if a group had not joined forces to form The North Great George’s Street Preservation Society. One of our main objectives has been to have the street designated an Architectural Conservation Area by Dublin City Council. This would prevent excessive development, particularly of the mews lanes. The reinstatement of damaged pavements and the removal of utility wires and cables on the façades is another.”

“The houses on the street are not going to revert to single family homes any time soon, but hopefully there will be a mix of good quality apartments with a limited commercial element that will maintain the vibrancy that has made it the best place in the city centre to live. The Society will continue to strive to attain these objectives and above all preserve the integrity of the street’s great architecture.”

Senator David Norris, renowned James Joyce authority, bought his house in 1978. “What initially attracted me to purchasing a Georgian house was the sense of space and the way in which light poured in through the great windows. I adore the 18th century plasterwork which decorates some of the ceilings. On top of all this, North Great George’s Street is smack bang in the middle of the city. Along the way I suppose the greatest challenge has been finance. In the beginning none of us had any great deal of money and that is when the Society proved a great support. The other thing was finding appropriate craftsmen who were capable of dealing with an 18th century building.”

Architect John Hanley and sculptor John Aboud bought their house in 1987. “Over the next 30 years we gradually turned the house around. We have always enjoyed living here, even in the early years when winter gales would sweep through the rooms. The space and the light, together with the decorative details and the views to the garden, are a constant source of pleasure. The street itself, rising in stately terraces towards Belvedere House, is a magnificent backdrop to our everyday life. And of equal importance is the fact that here we have a close knit village in the midst of the city, where we are surrounded by neighbours and friends who share our pleasure in living here, and our commitment to its future.” The North Great George’s Street Preservation Society celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019.

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Architecture Art Luxury People Town Houses

Desirée Shortt + 38 North Great George’s Street Dublin

China in Her Hands

“I’m a 20th century girl,” breathes Desirée Shortt. She spent the closing quarter of that century as Ireland’s most successful china restorer. Before that she worked abroad including in America and Britain. “Los Angeles was my love affair. London was my friend. And Dublin is my marriage.”

“I’m a Dub. I’m from Dublin 4.” She is sitting next to a roaring fire in her elegant raised ground floor drawing room. “My grandparents owned Montrose which then became the RTÉ television centre. The original house was built by the Earls of Pembroke in the 19th century. I grew up a couple of miles from there in a big house on Anglesea Road. I saw a lot of my grandparents – we went for lunch on Sundays and for Christmas and Easter. I was privileged.”

Desirée reminisces, “All I wanted as a child was food – extra jelly and cream! I remember the lunches with the butler Byrne and his wife Mrs Byrne who was the cook and two standing footmen and three housemaids and the chauffeur who drove the Rolls Royce. To me a garden meant greenhouses and five gardeners. Folie de grandeur!”

“I was spoiled! I ruled the house from the age of six. What I wanted I got. My father was 20 years older than my mother. He was 53 when I was born, she was 33; my only brother was eight years older than me so I don’t remember him very well as a child. The males didn’t really figure in my early life as far I was concerned. I was my mother’s pet lamb! I was mostly brought up by women – I went to Catholic convent schools.”

The fire continues to roar; seagulls are howling on the street beyond the two tall sash windows. Desirée suggests it was both a good start and maybe a bad start. “I had a privileged upbringing but a hard learning curve lay ahead of me. I had to go out into the real world. I was one of the first of my lot to go to London. And from London I went to the US. I arrived in New York and rode the Greyhound bus to LA. The timing was right – I lived in California for three years. Lot of sunshine, lots of yachts, lots of men!”

Ireland called her back. “My mother had died, and my father was ill. He was a very nice man – he died aged 87. And I thought now I’m free! I was so excited about going to Brussels to work in the Common Market. I was a secretary there but it wasn’t a great success. They all spoke English so I didn’t improve my French. I’d a French nanny growing up so I used to understand when my aunt and mother talked about me in French. ‘Très mauvais. Très très mauvais!’”

“Then reality struck. I needed to settle down – with a house not a husband.” Ireland called her back, this time for good. Desirée relates, “I was 34 and I didn’t want to get married. To me marriage is a cage. Someone opens the door and then the door is locked on you. I just wanted freedom. I didn’t want to pretend to be a good cook with five screaming kids and a boring husband and a mortgage and locked in a cage. Best thing I ever did was not get married. In those days married people were very suspicious of single women. Wives thought you were after their husbands.”

“My godfather Patrick Glynn was an eminent solicitor and he said to me, ‘You need to buy a nice new two bed apartment. Ladies do not buy houses on North Great George’s Street.’ So of course I bought this house the next day. I had friends who lived across the road. There was an elite group of us – we were hedonistic and had parties. One of them kept saying, ‘Why don’t you buy the house?’ It had been up for sale for five years. And I looked over at this place and there seemed endless people coming in and out and of course there were – 27 of them!”

“It was up for sale for five years. I thought, me? No! Go on. Me? No. So I woke up that morning and thought I’m going to buy it. I paid 8,000 punts and wrote a cheque.” That was in 1974. She says, “There were 27 sitting tenants. It took me 17 years to get them out.” The fire roars a little more. “Relationships were not good – they hated me. ‘That one – who does she think she is?’ I knocked on their doors and deliberately collected the rents once a week. Rent was 40 pence; the income for the house was 415 punts per annum. Somebody once said, ‘There are no flies on Desirée and if there are they’re paying rent!’”

An Irish Georgian Society grant helped pay towards restoration of the roof and repointing the brickwork: she is a great supporter of the Society. “Otherwise, the house was actually in quite good condition,” Desirée admits. “It was just tired. Decorating it was a huge job. I would finish work and spend all evening painting the rooms myself on a ladder. Even the three storey staircase hall with its six flights. I couldn’t afford a decorator. I painted the dining room with six coats and then a semi-lacquer coat.” At the end of the return is her kitchen. “That’s my nest, not that I cook.” And beyond that an exquisite town garden. “It’s all green and wonderful in the summer. I’m very keen on mirrors in gardens.” Climbers grow across the basement area.

“I now have five one bed apartments on the other floors. Rent is a bit more than it used to be. No flies! I’m a very good landlord and they are very good tenants. We respect each other and are very courteous. They have security of tenure. I live in the raised ground floor and first floor and the return and have the garden.” Georgian Dublin houses are built on a gigantic scale. Desirée’s reception rooms with their 4.3 metre high ceilings are more like state rooms. She explains, “My memory was very definitely dependent on that memory of all the rooms being big at Montrose. So in a funny way 100 years later I wanted to live in a big house! Of course, I didn’t realise you don’t live in a big house for free.” So she made the house work even harder, all 560 square metres of it.

“Greatly to my surprise I launched a restoration china studio in my basement. I hadn’t a clue about china – I didn’t know the difference between a cup and saucer! Just before that, I went to London and saw a sign at the V+A for ‘China Restoration’, and I thought why not? So I did the six week course and came back to Dublin and set up as a professional. I don’t like metal and I don’t like glass. But china grabbed me, I just felt the texture. The dealers soon knew I was special and the studio just took off. Dealers would buy something at an auction with a missing finger or missing head or missing something. And I saw the market for china restoration.”

Her past professional experience came in useful: “In California I had worked for McCann Erickson who were the top ad agency in the world. They had staff of 300 and that was just in one office. I knew I had to sell. I did the china restoration for 25 years – I had a staff of 28 and trained a total of 283 students.” The house was working hard but not hard enough: there were still flies on the principal two floors. “Location agencies started taking an interest in the house. They would ring me and say, ‘We have some American film clients at the airport. Could we come and have a look?’ So 36 films were set here.”

Desirée confides, “Stephen Fry was my favourite – I had lunch with him. He was dressed in full 19th century costume for a film about Oscar Wilde. And of course we had something in common straight away. The interesting thing is that this house was the home of Professor John Pentland Mahaffy, Oscar Wilde’s tutor. We had that discussion – he’s a brilliant conversationalist. I’m not too bad myself.” The builder and first occupant of the house was another distinguished Dubliner. Stuccodore Charles Thorpe [Thorp?} built the house in 1785; he would become Lord Mayor of Dublin 15 years later.

“I also hired out my reception rooms for dinner parties; when the Foreign Office had conferences what could they do with the wives? So the wives would come here – I could seat 40 in my dining room. I didn’t do the cooking, I left myself free. I hate cooking! I would buy in the wine and I had a team of waiters and caterers. I was free to wander around pretending to be the hostess and again amusing them. That was a huge success. I had big companies and small companies dine here too. I would say 10,000 people a year came through this house over four decades. Every room in this house works for a living.”

One evening, Desirée’s two occupations of china restoration and playing hostess clashed. “In 1985 the famous Chinese Warriors from Xi’an came to Dublin. There was a huge party of 400 guests at Royal Hospital Kilmainham. I went to the opening with an American house guest. That was fine. I came back home. I was giving a dinner party afterwards, as one did in those days. And the phone rang. ‘Two of the warriors have got broken, you must come to the museum now.’ It was a government minister. ‘I can’t, I’m having a dinner party,’ I replied. ‘We’ll pick you up in 10 minutes.’”

“My American house guest took over as host of the dinner party which he thought was great fun. He had a great time entertaining his pals in the house for the next three days. The taxi arrived and I spent three days at the museum representing the Irish Government. Scaffolding used for putting up lighting had collapsed hitting two of the figures and they were originals, not fakes. A Chinese professor arrived, not a word of English of course, we both smoked, we understood each other perfectly. All thanks to body language … and smoke rings!”

She recalls, “Because it was the Government, 10 workmen arrived in about four seconds. They built a support round the broken terracotta warriors. A full size horse head had come off one. When it was fixed and it came to having the support removed, that was the nastiest moment. ‘Please don’t let the head come off!’ After the restoration was complete I asked could I publish this and the Government said no, it would be too embarrassing. No publicity and I thought, fair enough. So I picked up the phone, picked my people, and within 20 minutes the whole of Dublin knew exactly what had happened. That was great fun and about four years later I was lucky enough to go to China. And I went to Xi’an which was fascinating, absolutely fascinating, and I swear one of the warriors winked at me! I’m probably the only European who has ever been allowed to touch them.” In 38 North Great George’s Street, the fire is still roaring.

Desirée Shortt, a 20th century girl still enjoying life in the 21st century. “I’m lucky I have my own little bubble – somebody cooks for me, somebody drives for me, and I’ve very good friends.” And a very good 18th century house in the city she loves most.

Categories
Architecture Design Developers People Town Houses

Mountjoy Square Dublin +

Sureness of Style

“Is there a good house on Mountjoy Square?” Desirée Shortt asks mischievously. She qualifies herself, “It’s a rhetorical question!” She is talking about the condition of the houses, not the architecture. Ireland’s greatest living china restorer lives a safe block away in the genteel North Great George’s Street. Her neighbours include Senator David Norris and Grade I Conservation Architect John O’Connell. “Dublin is a very beautiful city,” Desirée qualifies herself even further. “Edinburgh is the only comparable city.”

It doesn’t help that Mountjoy Square shares its name with a fairly infamous prison. Slowly, though, the four terraces facing the green are shedding their shady past and early signs of gentrification are shining through on a sunny winter’s morning. There’s something more impressive about Georgian Dublin townhouses than their London counterparts. The brick is redder, the fanlights wider, the first floor windows taller, the basement areas deeper. It’s all about scale: bigger really is better. Everything’s looking up.

John Heagney writes in The Georgian Squares of Dublin, 2006, “Developed by the Gardiner Estate, Mountjoy Square was laid out in 1791 and built between 1793 and 1818. It has the distinction of being Georgian Dublin’s only true square since each of its four sides measures 140 metres in length. Mountjoy Square earned this tribute from contemporary commentators Warburton, Whitelaw and Walsh: ‘This square, which is now completely finished, is neat, simple and elegant, its situation elevated and healthy … the elevation of the houses, the breadth of the streets, so harmonise together, as to give pleasure to the eye of the spectator, and add to the neatness, simplicity, and regularity everywhere visible, entitling the square to rank high among the finest in Europe.’”

He continues, “But perhaps more than Dublin’s other Georgian squares, Mountjoy Square has suffered the depredations of time: after the 1800 Act of Union, it went into decline and many of its fine buildings became tenement dwellings, while a period of protracted neglect during the 20th century led to extensive loss of houses on the west and south sides of the square. The survival of the north and east sides is due largely to the heroic determination of individuals and families who pledged themselves to its continued existence and have laid the foundations for the future renaissance of Mountjoy Square, while a renewed interest in rescuing and cherishing Georgian Dublin bodes well for the future of this important part of the city’s streetscape.”

A driver’s experience is of a cohesive set piece of urban planning and architecture. A streetwalker’s experience is of the finer grain. Cut granite flags, moulded granite paving plinths, cut stone half arches spanning basement areas, cast iron boot scrapers and lantern standards. And those fanlight doorcases with their leaded umbrella like-spokes, miniature glass lanterns, sidelights, columns and friezes. The typical three bay five storey house on Mountjoy Square has 590 square metres of floorspace. Size matters.

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Uncategorized

Dover Castle Kent +

Well Kept

For the guts of a millennium, Dover Castle has dominated the Calais-facing Kent coastline. The Normans erected a castle at Dover soon after William the Conqueror’s victory at Hastings in the neighbouring county of East Sussex. But it was Henry II, the first of the ruling Plantagenets, who built the Great Tower of Dover Castle in the latter half of the 12th century. This keep stands 25 metres tall with corner towers rising a further 3.7 metres. The walls are up to 6.5 metres thick. Strips of white Caen stone contrast with grey Kentish ragstone to create a striking visual effect. A precursor to Arts and Crafts architecture no doubt. Stripy architecture like Richard Norman Shaw’s 1880s New Scotland Yard building on Victoria Embankment in London would follow. In 2009 the Great Tower was given the full English Heritage treatment. The King’s Hall, The King’s Chamber and other rooms were decorated to suggest the royal and his court are still in residence but have popped out for full English breakfast.

The castle is a vast compound of organic architectural growth down the ages. Two concentric rings of defence – an inner and an outer bailey – are dotted with gatehouses and towers. A ruinous Roman lighthouse and a restored Anglo Saxon church on Castle Hill are some of the oldest structures on the site. One of the last additions to the built form is the Officers’ Quarters and Mess overlooking a cliffside modern carpark. This two and three storey range, faced with polygonal rubble and limestone dressings, was built to the design of Anthony Salvin in the 1850s. The architect was an expert in medieval buildings; he specialised in restoring country houses and churches. His work at the castle is in the Tudor Gothic Revival vein with appropriately detailed battlements. The patina of age ensures the various styles of architecture at Dover Castle don’t jar but harmoniously sit cheek by jowl, keep by lodge.

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Architects Architecture Design Luxury Restaurants

The Atrium + The Westin Hotel Dublin

Gotta Lovett

The opening years of the 21st century were prime time for Dublin. A flurry of new five star hotel arrivals welcomed rich locals and richer tourists. Converted out of a cluster of 11 buildings including a banking hall on a prominent city centre corner overlooking Trinity College, The Westin Hotel opened in 2001. Henry J Lyons were the architects for the conversion. The Atrium is a new space hollowed out of the built form, rising six storeys to a glazed roof. Internal bedroom windows look down onto a lounge area. Fun columns – never to be mistaken for Sir Edward Lovett Pierce’s work – support first floor bedroom balconies. There’s an even more fun Bossi style chimneypiece. There are lots of books for fireside reading (The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy, Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Modern Materialism and Emergent Revolution by William McDougall and so on).

“Too many repro paintings,” critiqued Damian O’Brien, Marketing Director of the Irish Tourist Board, referring to the interior. Fortunately, the non original art in The Atrium has been replaced by panels of hand painted Chinese wallpaper. If you want your very own Bossi chimneypiece (named after Pietro Bossi, an Italian craftsman who worked in Dublin for the last two decades of the 18th century and developed a very distinctive colourful style), M+D Lewis Antiques on King’s Road in London are selling a fine example for £545,000.

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Architects Architecture Country Houses Design Developers People

Camden Park Road + Yester Park Chislehurst Kent

Roll Over Country Life

Long time resident and Secretary of the Chislehurst Residents’ Association from 1966 to 1974, Mary Holt was committed to the architectural research of her local area. In 1991 her definitive study of Chislehurst Conservation Area was published. Two of the most beautiful gated roads in this leafy location are Camden Park Road and Yester Park, both lined with villas designed to induce envy. The former borders Chislehurst Golf Club while the latter forks away to straddle a ridge. This is outer suburbia at its finest.

Mary’s introduction states, “Indeed Chislehurst grew up as a scattered village centred around its various commons, surrounded by large country estates, and did not outgrow its hilltop site until mid Victorian times. After the construction of the railway in 1865, however, it became a fashionable suburb for London businessmen, while in 1870 the French Imperial Court took up residence in exile at Camden Place. Sadly, World War II left its mark on Chislehurst: a surprising number of Victorian buildings and earlier properties were destroyed or damaged by bombs, thus providing the opportunity for more intensive development.”

She comments, “The special character of Camden Park Road lies in the contrast between the undeveloped park-like nature of the golf course to the north and the largely built up backcloth of substantial houses to the south. The road is developed for the major part of its length with substantial detached houses, but on the northern side of the road frontage development stops at No.23. The edge of the golf course is well treed, giving this part of the road a very rural appearance although the housing development continues on the other side of the road. The road has an attractive character of a high class residential area in which the landscaping forms a prominent and important part of the street scene.”

In the part of Camden Park Road closest to the golf course which was developed first, “Most of the houses here, in the Arts and Crafts style, were built by William Willett Junior who purchased Camden Place in 1890; the architect for several was Ernest Newton, working in conjunction with Amos Faulkner, and reveal the wide range of Newton’s talent.” The Arts and Crafts architect Ernest Newton was a protégé of Richard Norman Shaw. He excelled at residential architecture of ‘near-symmetry’ where the massing is balanced but a window or chimney stack or some other feature will be placed off-centre.

The Architectural Outsiders, a 1984 publication edited by Roderick Brown, includes Ernest Newton. The editor explains it is a study of “outsiders in the sense of being outside the body of designers who have been adequately studied”. Richard Morrice writes the chapter on Ernest Newton, discussing many of his suburban and country houses although Chislehurst isn’t mentioned. He states that the architect’s domestic work demonstrated “the ultimate interchangeability of vernacular and neo Georgian, almost reducing thereby the question of style to irrelevance”.

And on the elevated road: “Yester Park leads off to the west from the upper end of Yester Road through a brick and wrought iron gateway, flanked on one side by Walden Lodge which dates from about 1850. It is a small tree-lined road of interwar years development with large houses, some in contrasting styles on the lower side of the road, set in mature landscaped gardens. The house on the upper side are more uniform, mock Tudor in character with generally open plan front gardens.”

Chislehurst Conservation Area illustrates how the architecture of prominent late 19th century architects like George Devey, Richard Norman Shaw and Philip Webb flowed into the rising industry of premium housebuilding. If there is a common detail that ties most of the half century or so of houses together, it would be black and white Tudor style half-timber boarding.