Tag: ian nairn

St Catherine of Alexandria’s Church + St Mary the Virgin’s Church Littlehampton West Sussex

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 30, 2020
4 Comments on St Catherine of Alexandria’s Church + St Mary the Virgin’s Church Littlehampton West Sussex

Larks Ascending

Both are named after female Christian saints. Both are Grade II Listed. They are separated by a 300 metre distance as the dove flies. They are separated by more or less six decades of history. One is built of rubblestone with ashlar dressings. The other is built of purplish brick with sharp stone dressings. Elizabeth Williamson, Tim Hudson, Jeremy Musson and Ian Nairn record in The Buildings of England Sussex West, 2019, “Littlehampton is pleasant, but, like most West Sussex seaside towns, disjointed. The joy of it is in the landscape of river and beach.” Between said port and resort lie the Roman Catholic Church of St Catherine of Alexandria and the Anglican Church of St Mary the Virgin, two of Littlehampton’s rather discrete charms.

St Catherine’s was founded by Minna, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, in memory of her husband Henry, the 14th Duke, who had died in 1860. It is one of five churches founded by the Dowager to commemorate the Five Holy Wounds. Architectural historian Dr Roderick O’Donnell explains, “St Catherine’s was designed by Matthew Ellison Hadfield and is one of the most prominent Roman Catholic churches on the south coast. Augustus Welby Pugin compliments the architect in 1843 and 1850.” The architectural style is, of course, Gothic Revival.

The church forms a very attractive pairing with its priest’s house by the same architect. The modulations of the slate roofs are particularly remarkable, from a stonking big bellcote to a thoroughly traceried gablet of timber framed trefoils and quatrefoils. Later additions include St Joseph’s Chapel and a sanctuary extension, both carried out by Pugin and Pugin, the practice established by Augustus Welby Pugin and continued by his descendants. St Catherine’s Church and Presbytery retain their architectural integrity, providing a dignified focal point to the mainly residential suburb of Beach Road.

Further inland on Church Street is the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin. Originally a Georgian Gothick church designed by George Draper in 1826, architect William Randoll Blacking transformed the building in the 1930s. The result is a robust piece of loosely Tudor Revival architecture: a simple, bold, geometric composition. Various elements of earlier incarnations have been retained in the structure, such as stained glass from the 14th and 19th centuries, but the overall effect is a solid and coherent piece of early 20th century ecclesiastical architecture. A striking copper roof, hidden at ground level by a parapet, highlights its cruciform shape from a dove’s eye view. St Mary’s Cemetery drapes a welcome green apron around the church.

Tags augustus welby pugin, buildings of england sussex west, dr roderick o’donnell, elizabeth williamson, george draper, henry 14th duke, ian nairn, jeremy musson, matthew ellison hadfield, minna dowager duchess of norfolk, st catherine alexandria church, st josephs chapel, st mary virgin church littlehampton, tim hudson, william randoll blacking

Architecture Developers People

The Spell + Roupell Street London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date May 7, 2020
3 Comments on The Spell + Roupell Street London

A Street Named Desire

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Aerials View © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Gazing at a house on Roupell Street, any house, lucky number seven, luckless number 13, before a visit to The King’s Arms (crammed Monday to Friday; only the fireside cat for company at the weekend), after a visit to The King’s Arms, summer and smoke, makes us think of that part in Alan Hollingsworth’s novel The Spell when, in the grips of his first ecstasy experience, Robin Woodfield realises why house music is so called: “Because you want to live in it.” Or there’s the picture of a house in the photographic journal Camera Lucida which Roland Barthes captions, simply and perfectly, “I want to live there.” It’s a shortcut to The Cut; thespians acting at the Old Vic, acting up at the New Vic.

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Chimneys © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

A grid, a toast rack, a tightknit urban grain, a bacchanalian bout of Augustan nostalgia, a traditional survival in an otherwise redeveloped postcode. Roupell Street runs parallel with both Theed Street and Whittlesey Street to the north and Brad Street to the south – all traversed by Windmill Walk. The early 19th century terraced houses, once unremarkable by their compact ubiquity, now listed for their intact rarity, a lesson in brick for planners and architects and citizens. The original artisan workers have long gone, replaced by harrumphing gazumping bankers, boorish bourgeoning bourgeois, collars swapped from blue to white. Modest houses bought with immodest bonuses. All too apropos, the property developer Mr Roupell moonlighted as a gold refiner.

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Gables © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Ian Nairn where else but in Nairn’s London wrote: “Here is true architectural purity… nothing but yellow London brick and unselfconscious self respect. Whittlesey Street is… two storeys made into three with a blind attic window concealing a monopitch roof of pantiles. Roupell Street answers with a wavy pattern. On one level there is no finer architectural effect in London.” Stock brick darkened by soot over the passage of time, closer in colour now to the Welsh roof slates – accidental homogeneity. Originally the frames of the timber sash windows holding mouth blown hand spun glass would’ve been painted black; they’re all white now. Solid to void relationships are perpendicularly predictable, correctly so. A pleasing wallage to window is maintained.

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Bollards © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Terrace © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Wittlesey Street © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Roupell Street Waterloo © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley_edited-1

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Theed Street © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Flank © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Shopfront © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London House © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Who says repetition is monotonous? Who says repetition is monotonous? It creates rhythm. And order. Strength and safety in numbers, arithmetical progression. Ah… the terrace. That arrangement of buildings enjoying continuity intimacy, expressing conscious couplings by the noblest concepts of civic design. The two bay houses of Roupell Street coincidentally correspond to the height and width of the arches of the massive railway viaduct which ponderously plods its elephantine progress across this patch, carrying wistful commuters longing to live in this coveted corner of SE1. Each house has a butterfly roof with two pitches nosediving into a central valley gutter that drains to the rear. The gables on the grander three bay Theed Street and Whittlesey Street houses are hidden behind one continuous high, no make that very high, stone coped parapet with three blind mice windows. Mono pitched roofs descend into cat-on-a-hot-tin-slide returns.

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Yard © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Character is derived from uniformity and regularity of appearance. Regimented form contributes to cohesive sense of place, place having lost its definite article. Come closer. Character is also derived from the quiet details. Draw nearer. Stucco cornices and pediments, arches over openings, half moon fanlights, iron knockers, tall chimneys holding slender pots shrouded in a spider’s web of aerials, striped bollards guarding granite kerbs like Lilliputian lighthouses.

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Door © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“The period of domestic architecture from which of all others we have most to learn is the Georgian,” ponders Trystan Edwards in his textbook Architectural Style. “The essential modernity of the Georgian style should be widely recognised. If we do not derive full benefits from this tradition, the failure will certainly be justified by the extremely disputable suggestion that such a manner of building is unsuitable to our present social circumstances. Its reliance on the virtue and dignity of proportions only, and its rare bursts of exquisite detail, all expressed as no other style has done, that indifference to self advertisement, that quiet assumption of our own worth, and that sudden vein of lyric affection, which have given us our part in civilisation.” Houses built to last. Roupell Street – so Georgian; so English; so reticent, gentlemanly and polite; abstracted; understated classical authority; so not suburban; so not Poundbury; so real. Hark, it’s the architecture’s Camino Way to Santa Barbara.

Roupell Street Conservation Area Waterloo London Bootscraper © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Tags alan hollingsworth spell, architectural style, camera lucida, camino way santa barbara, ian nairn, kings arms, nairns london, poundbury, robin woodfield, roland barthes, roupell street conservation area, stuart blakley, trystan edwards, waterloo london

Architecture Art Fashion Hotels Luxury People

Hôtel Charles V + St Paul Le Marais Paris

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date November 27, 2019
2 Comments on Hôtel Charles V + St Paul Le Marais Paris

De Temps en Temps

Continuing the bookending theme of a year well spent: Easter in George V, Christmas in Charles V. The former, westward upstream of Notre Dame; the latter, eastward downstream. One, extrovert art deco; the other, discreet Swedish rococo. Charles V Hôtel is in St Paul, a village embedded in the city between the River Seine and Rue St Antoine. It’s on the site of Hôtel St Pol built by Charles the Wise in the 14th century. Even back then, St Paul was super fashionable. Later hôtels particuliers there are aplenty. Within a polished stone’s throw of Hôtel Charles V are Hôtel d’Aumont (now offices), Hôtel de Sens (now a library) and Hôtel Hénault de Cantobre (now European House of Photography). Next door to Hôtel Charles V is La Mâle d’Effeenne, fashion designer and visual consultant Nico Thibault Francioni’s treasure trove of a shop. Nico calls it a “univers de choix”. Ian Nairn wrote in his eponymous guide to the French Capital: “Paris is a collective masterpiece, perhaps the greatest in the world.” St Paul is a sophisticated slice of that masterpiece. Hôtel Charles V (petit boutique five storeys with just two to six bedrooms per floor) adds some fairy dust. Bises de Paris.