Pheeling Filosophical
Early Sunday morning bliss: mushroom filo pastry and Dimello coffee from Food Filosophy, an upmarket Greek café turned deli on the corner of Ebury Street and Lower Belgrave Street.
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Tag: lavender’s blue
Paragon of Virtuous Planning
Sometimes you just gotta hunt a little harder, dig a little deeper, look a little longer, to see the wood and the trees. Beauty isn’t always served up on a plate, not even in glorious Blackheath. Its Georgian terraces and Regency villas facing the Heath are on full display for all to admire but, to employ a military analogy, the army that is architecture can’t be just about majors. Lieutenants are required too. Where is the hidden charm, the understated elegance, the stuff that scenery is made of? Ryculff Square.
But first, a race through literature celebrating the neoclassical, the Georgian, the neo Georgian and the hooley. Deputy Chief Architect to the Ministry of Health Housing Department Manning Robertson, who owned Huntington Castle in County Carlow, penned Everyday Architecture in 1924. He states in his preface, “The necessity for economy is forcing us into honest expression, and the new style, although based upon past tradition and especially upon Georgian work, is not a mere copy, but bears the stamp of the present day; we are in fact continuing the sequence of English architecture from the point where it was rudely interrupted by the industrial materialism of the last century. More and more we rely for our effects upon good plain brick and tile work, of pleasing texture and varied colour, and upon the elusive quality of proportion emphasised by the play of shadows.”
Manning Robertson wasn’t the only 20th century Anglo Irish gentleman author. Lord Kilbracken, who owned Killegar House in County Leitrim, was a Tatler columnist. His 1960 book Shamrocks and Unicorns is an amusing array of essays meandering from The Night of the Hooley and A Ghostly Encounter to Bog for Sale and Wanderlust. Arthur Trystan Edwards upholds the merits of the Georgian style in his 1946 book Good and Bad Manners in Architecture: “The period of domestic architecture from which for all others we have most to learn is the Georgian. The essential modernity of the ‘Georgian’ style should be fully recognised… The sedate and comely form of the 18th century houses are a perfect embodiment of the social spirit. They belong to the community, they are born of the discovery that in domestic architecture individuality is best securely established when houses defer to a common cultural standard.”
Ryculff Square once more. The scheme is about as streamlined neo Georgian as is possible. Sir Albert Richardson designed a series of apartment blocks placed around leafy green squares. Completed in 1954, plain brick elevations are subtly relieved by string courses and mildly projecting porches. Low pitched concrete tile roofs rest on deep eaves. Almost 65 years after its first brick was laid, Ryculff Square remains largely unspoiled. The plethora of plastic framed double glazing and galaxy of satellite dishes are both reversible. A few kilometres south of the Heath, Lourdes Close is the latest residential development in Blackheath. Designed by Thrive Architects, the nine townhouses are neo Georgian.
Sir Albert Richardson lived in the Georgian gem of Avenue House in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. Gavin Stamp lamented the sale and dispersal of its contents in 2013 while extolling the architect’s virtues in Apollo Magazine. “Richardson may have adopted a pose in Ampthill – refusing to install electric light, dressing up in Georgian clothes and being carried through the streets in a sedan chair – but he was a seriously good modern architect,” Professor Stamp argued. “He began by promoting the Edwardian rediscovery of neoclassicism and the works of people like Soane and Cockerell. After the First World War he intelligently adapted the abstracted classical language of Schinkel and other neoclassicists…” Avenue House was bought by Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection, and garden designer Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, who are restoring the house to its future glory.
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The Golden Fringe of the South Downs
Long before Milton Keynes, there was Eastbourne. “Planned new towns” may possess more than a lingering whiff of the late 20th century but over 100 years before that, four hamlets – Bourne, South Bourne, Meads and Sea Houses – were engulfed by the major landowner 7th Duke of Devonshire’s masterplan. Drawn up by His Grace’s architect Henry Currey in 1859, this blueprint for a seaside resort would develop over half a century. Earlier Italianate stuccoed terraces contrast with later red brick Edwardian buildings. A new railway branch line from London to the south coast acted as a catalyst for the development. Promenades and esplanades and parades and a pier portray coastal town planning at its finest. While the Duke of Devonshire was the main promoter of the resort in the 19th century, a second landowner Carew Davies Gilbert built an eponymous housing estate inland to the north of the railway station. The 1880s Queen’s Hotel on Marine Parade, still splendid despite losing its original verandahs wrapping around each floor, is Henry Currey’s largest building in the town. The hotel furniture was supplied by Maples of Tottenham Court Road, London: walnut on the first and second floors; pine on the third; and oak on the top two floors. A hot food dining room and a cold food dining room were in the basement. The double entry Grade II* Listing of the earlier Burlington Hotel and Claremont Hotel on Grand Parade affirms, “This is the best series of buildings in Eastbourne.” Dating from the mid 19th century, the seafront stuccoed terrace now hotels, with its giant Ionic columns framing the first and second floors of the central nine bays, is a very late flowering of the Regency style.
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The Shock of the Newness
It’s amazing how an 85 year old building can look so modern, so contemporary, so now yet of its time. Vast swathes of void, bold expanses of solid, and that epic bow window bulging seaward combine to form one forceful architectural statement. Architects Erich Mendelsohn + Serge Chermayeff won a design competition championed by the 9th Earl de la Warr, Bexhill-on-Sea’s Mayor in the 1930s. It was on engineer Felix Samuely’s advice that the frame was changed from concrete to become the first welded steel public building in Britain. Not only is the structure groundbreaking; so is the architecture. De La Warr Pavilion is one of the highlights of early International Modernism. Unsurprisingly, the building is Listed Grade I.
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The Angry Whelk
There’s more to Bexhill-on-Sea than the De La Warr Pavilion, y’know. Yes, the Modernist masterpiece might reign supreme but don’t forget about the string of red brick Dutch gabled bay windowed Queen Anne on speed beauties lacing the coast and the Little Athens promenade pearls. What would Lady Sybil Grant have to say? Writing in her 1912 literary curio Samphire: “Provided that we are a star we should not trouble about the relative importance of our position in the heavens.” And more to the point, “Yes, today will be fine.”
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Cooden Beach East Sussex +
The Steady Path to Abstraction
It may not be as obscure as Donegal’s Murder Hole Beach but Cooden Beach is certainly lower profile than its better known Sussex coast neighbours Bexhill-on-Sea and Eastbourne. The Cooden Beach Hotel, a half timbered Tudoresque pile on a butterfly plan with wings, takes pride of place along the seafront. Set back on a grass bank also overlooking the shale beach is a row of white painted timber beach huts. Some have names: “Seagulls”; “Shanti”; “Tilly”. Quintessential English seaside. On a late spring day, Cooden Beach is as defined as a Mondrian, displaying tripartite horizontality under an endless sky.
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Bexhill-on-Sea + The Doors
Hummingbird Throated Shirts Plus Jean Barthet Saucer Hats
Lady Cybil Grant, 1879 to 1955, was the daughter of the 5th Earl of Roseberry. She was a voracious writer and determined designer of ceramics. In later life, she spent much of her time in a caravan or up a tree, communicating with her butler through a megaphone.
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Knots Landing
In a fleeting moment between The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni we find ourselves in Glyndebourne country.
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Zelda Blakley+ Lavender’s Blue
A Night on the Tiles
All dressed up and somewhere to go. Sometimes, all a girl wants to do is party.
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Necropolis in the Megalopolis
It’s a sculpture park in a wild garden. What’s not to love? St Mary’s Cemetery in Battersea may run parallel with the busy shopping street of Northcote Road but it’s an elevated world away, a sanctuary of foxes and squirrels running amok among the crumbling statues and long grass. A place of reflection, one can almost hear Montserrat Caballé’s Prayer floating through the dense foliage. It’s also the perfect setting for a Savannah style picnic provided by local supplier Pique. Named by Tatler as one of “London’s most luxurious readymade picnic hamper companies”, Pique is based beside the former Von Essen Hotel Verta at Battersea Heliport.
St Mary’s Cemetery was laid out in 1860 to 1861 on part of the Bolingbroke Grove House estate which had been sold two years earlier. Burials had ceased in the churchyard of St Mary’s which is situated two kilometres away along the Thames next to Montevetro. Parish surveyor Charles Lee was appointed to lay out the ground and design two chapels and lodge.
The Survey of London Volume 49 edited by Andrew Saint states, “The little twin mortuary chapel range remains the chief feature of the cemetery, a building of simple charm and quiet Gothic details. The chapels, one for Anglicans, one for other denominations, are placed on either side of a tall pointed archway, above which sits a meagre bellcote. Each chapel is lit by a lancet at one gabled end and a rose window at the other, but these are switched round so that the east and west elevations are asymmetrical.” The Church of England chapel and the ecumenical chapel each have a gross external area of 39 square metres.
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Hinterland Sound
The fashion pictures. Urban chic in the country. Military cool in the city. Mary Martin wears versatility on her sleeve. “It was all very grand and very mad,” Nancy Mitford once purred.
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The City Four Square
Kennington has some of the best Georgian architecture in London. And some of the best neo Georgian. Take the Duchy of Cornwall’s estate in Kennington. In 1911, architect Stanley Adshead was commissioned to design this residential scheme. He partnered up with fellow architect Stanley Ramsey.
Prince Charles is a fan of his family’s commission: “Courtenay Square – a subtle reinterpretation of a Regency square, carried out in a ‘progressive spirit’ to use King George V’s own description. The architects Adshead + Ramsey were renowned pioneers of ‘planning’ in this country. They created a civilised architecture employing the simplest of means. The houses in Courtenay Square of around 1914 are not of the finest materials, nor richly decorated, nor on a grand scale. The Square works because of its proportions and straightforward detailing.”
A pair of three storey red brick apartment blocks mark the entrance to the estate off Kennington Road. Each has a concave quadrant angle gracefully gesturing towards the two storey yellow stock brick terraced houses beyond. The apartment blocks are more flamboyant than the understated terraces, with an ensemble of Roman cement dressings. Prince of Wales’ feathers feature in the capitals of the apartment block pedimented porches and the mid terrace attic pediments. Each terraced house is treated to a delicate timber trellis porch topped by a swept lead hood. A Greek key patterned Roman cement first floor cill band wraps around the terraces.
Architectural historian Andrew Saint observed in his 2018 European Commission Lecture, “The persistence of classicism continued throughout the 20th century. In 1900 it was there and is still going today.” Studying Courtenay Square it’s as if Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts never happened. Adshead + Ramsey didn’t rest on their Grecian laurels or stick to their neo Georgian guns though. In the 1930s they designed the Romanesque St Anselm’s Church in Kennington and the modernist block of flats John Scurr House in Limehouse.
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Absolutely Fabulous
Of course it’s sheer Joanne Lumley actress territory. Completely the ‘hood of the real Patsy Stone. Lesser known south of the Thames. Swap a consonant in Kensington and you get real London. Welcome to Kennington. The Park. Prince Albert’s Model Cottage marks the entrance. Over to Patsy:
“I know what you’re feeling, darling, but really, I don’t even care.”
“Are you mad? I’ve got nothing to wear on public transport!”
“Whatever I choose is cool because I am cool.”
“Just a smidge…’
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Valley of Dashes
One valley, two villages. Meon. Like The Great Gatsby, there’s an East and a West. Let’s go waste the most poignant moments of the night and life and capture on celluloid one of the villages in the valley. As Nick Carraway narrates in The Great Gatsby, “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge.”
“The Court House led a quiet life down the centuries,” remarks George Bartlett, who lives with his wife Claire in the medieval building plonked in the middle of East Meon. “In the first half of the 20th century the house was restored by the architect Percy Morley Horder who bought the house for himself. He designed many country houses.” George reassures, “He added a very discreet wing to the Court House. It’s wonderfully unassertive. A lovely piece of add on architecture.”
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Model Behaviour
Lavender’s Blue caught up with the inimitably monocled magnificently manicured Carmen Dell’Orefice when she recently stayed in a Diane von Furstenberg designed hotel suite (where else?) in London. She was fresh – very fresh indeed – off the runways at New York Fashion Week where she stole the show walking for Norisol Ferrari.
Those cheekbones sharp enough to slice bread with… the thoroughbred aquiline nose… the gunshot grey and lilac hooded eyelids… the supremely elegant arch of her back… that majestic mane of silvery white hair… Her legendary beauty has been captured on countless occasions by the great and the good of the photographic world. But in the flesh she is even more enticing, more exquisite, more natural and best of all armed with a wicked sense of humour that celluloid could never capture. We fell about laughing as she exaggeratedly demonstrated some of her more extreme model poses. The secret of her suppleness? One hour’s stretching exercises in the morning, she confided. Over to Carmen:
“I have worked with all the best photographers long before digital photography came along. Back then, photographers talked a different language. I don’t consider images taken of me belong to me. They are the products of the photographers who are mental and spiritual sculptors. I don’t think about the labels people give me. I’m too busy. Have the passion to live. I never chose to be in my profession. I learnt to achieve. Life is worth living. Do some good when no one is looking.” Inspirational isn’t a strong enough adjective.
“I am still thinking of who I am. Think of who you are and where your passions lie. When young guys like you tell me I’m inspiring I know there’s hope for the future of this world. The idea is from 80 to 100 to slow down but quite sure how I’m not sure yet. I may be the last link to a golden age and I’m going out with my heels on. I love being silent. Take life seriously.” And with that, she burst out laughing.
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Baroque and Roll
You know you really have achieved celebrity status as an architect if you are still a household name three centuries after your death. Or your surname is adopted for a revival of your architectural style a couple of hundred years posthumously. Sir Christopher Wren and the Wrenaissance. St Paul’s Cathedral in the City, central London, may be his most famous ecclesiastical building but at the opposite end of the scale spectrum is Boone’s Chapel in Lee, southeast London.
Or at least Boone’s Chapel is attributed to Sir Christopher Wren. It certainly exhibits many of the trademarks of the master: chunky modillion cornices; boldly rusticated quoins; scroll key blocks; a rather delicate timber cupola crowning its pitched roof; and more oeils de boeuf than a farmer’s field. Beefcake architecture. A study in red (bricks and rooftiles). Originally part of an almshouses complex, Boone’s Chapel has found a new use that is staggeringly appropriate. It’s become an architects’ office.
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Suite Success
Over the course of multiple visits – breakfasts and brunches, dates and dinners, walks and weekends – Lavender’s Blue cover and discover and rediscover London’s best Eighties development. Back in the day, Astrid Bray was Director of Sales and Marketing at the Conrad London (as Chelsea Harbour Hotel was originally named). She recalls various Chelsea Harbour restaurants, “There was Ken Lo’s Memories of China and Viscount Linley’s Deals. Marco Pierre White’s The Canteen was owned by Michael Caine, a great friend of ours. Deals was opposite The Canteen on the same side as Ken Lo’s. There was a pool table bar called Fisher’s. We would bring pop groups like Westlife through the loading bay to get to the bar!” A shortage of celebrities was never an issue. “Robbie Williams bought an apartment in The Belvedere opposite the hotel. Take That and Tina Turner stayed in the Conrad. We had a lot of fun there. One night I sat on the grand piano in the bar while Lionel Richie played and sang! There’s nothing in life that isn’t slightly mad!”
Chelsea Harbour, all seven hectares of it, is a defining development of late 20th century London. Despite its Thameside location, the former industrial site had been poorly connected and blighted by infrastructure proposals. Architect Ray Moxley of Moxley + Jenner won a competition organised by landowner British Railways Property Board to design a mixed use scheme. “It seemed obvious to excavate the old harbour, rebuild the lock, repair the walls and form a new yacht harbour,” Ray remembered. “Harbours are always pleasant to watch and enjoy and property values are higher on the waterfront.” Honfleur provided inspiration. That town in northern France has houses and shops and bars and studios grouped around a lock on the mouth of the River Seine.
The triple level penthouse of The Belvedere merited its own brochure in the original marketing of Chelsea Harbour. Designed by Mary Fox Linton, the “interior of contrasts” included Seguso urns in the entrance hall and Hurel furniture in the reception room. “Fine views of the Thames on one side and upstream towards Richmond on the other” were rightfully recorded. The kitchen was fitted out by Bulthaup and the “warm intimate” guest bedroom had an Alvar Aalto table and 18th century chairs. Apropos to a flagship scheme, Ms Linton’s rejected chintz for eclectic minimalism.
Grouping is key to Chelsea Harbour’s aura of containment. The marina is tightly ringed by the hotel, Chelsea Harbour Design Centre and apartment blocks. Ray’s genius was to create a sense of place. The tallest apartment block, the 20 storey Belvedere, next to where the marina flows into the river, is topped by a whimsical witch’s hat roof. A maquette version of this roof tops the security pagoda entrance to Chelsea Harbour. Ray excelled at roofscapes sculpting a cornucopia of pyramids, swan necked pediments and mansards.
The architect was also adept at architectural playfulness, from reinterpreted Trafalgar balconies to oversized industrial metal window frames. The Design Centre is lit by tall glazed domes, ogee roofed conservatories and outsized neo Georgian windows topped by fanlights. Chunky columns and bulky balustrades add to the sense of gargantuan scale. Ray Moxley died in 2014 aged 91. Architectural practice APT is now encasing more of the original mall in glass to form an internal street. Lead architect Robin Partington enthuses, “We have the best jobs in the world. It’s all about curating, whether designing the interiors of an office development or masterplanning a scheme.”
Chelsea Harbour Hotel is shaped like half a butterfly, with two wings hugging the marina in an architectural embrace. The top of the tips of the wings culminate in oriels in the sky. Undulating waves of balconies swirl and curl their way across the elevations. The hotel looks like a grounded ocean liner. Earl Snowdon’s eatery Deals, which he launched in 1988 with his cousin Lord Lichfield, may have long gone but there’s always Chelsea Riverside Brasserie on the raised ground floor of the hotel. And yes, the view lives up to its name. The Canteen is also confined to history and memory. Its à la carte menu for October 1997 priced starters (featuring frivolity of smoked salmon and caviar) from £6.95 to £8.50 and mains (such as escalope of salmon with stir fried Asian greens, ginger and soya dressing) were all £12.95. These days, Chelsea Harbour Hotel room suite service caters for midnight munchies. Hand dived scallop ceviche at 2am? Yes please. Chelsea Harbour Hotel is the only all suite five star hotel in London.
The cruise ship inspiration wasn’t just confined to the exterior: it flowed indoors too. “David Hicks designed the hotel interiors in 1993,” explains Astrid. “It was all about a ship. He believed, ‘Themes are always intriguing.’ The mezzanine stairs were modelled on a cruise liner. The ground floor meeting room was called The Compass Rose. There were lots of blues and light ash wood in the interiors.” It was a real era catcher. One of David’s best known earlier works was his colourful revamp of Baronscourt, the Duke and Duchess of Abercorn’s seat in County Tyrone. Wallpaper by his designer son Ashley Hicks is for sale in Chelsea Harbour Design Centre.
Chelsea Harbour is the private members’ club of the marina world with a record breaking six year minimum waiting list. The luckily berthed include: Achill Sound; Ariadne; Christanian II: Ella Rose; Esperance; Honey Rider; and (guess which actor’s?) The Italian Job. A four bedroom Lamoure yacht is currently for sale at £249,000. Back on dry land, the range of properties on the 2020 market include: a two bedroom duplex penthouse (92 square metres) in Carlyle Court for £1,000,000 | a two bedroom third floor apartment (90 square metres) in King’s Quay for £1,200,000 | a two bedroom duplex penthouse (112 square metres) in Carlyle Court for £1,250,000 | a three bedroom 14th floor apartment (194 square metres) in The Belvedere for £3,200,000 | a four bedroom ninth floor apartment (186 square metres) in The Belvedere for £3,300,000. Splashing the cash is one sure way to make a visit permanent.
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It’s Enough to Get the Dopaminergic Neurons of Your Ventral Tegmental Area Stimulated Into Overdrive
A little over 22 years since the quadruple page spread was published in Ulster Architect (for decades Ireland’s leading architectural magazine published and edited by Anne Davey Orr), it seems like an opportune moment to revisit Montevetro. It truly was the trailblazing residential scheme that set alight the southwest bank. It’s hard to imagine that Battersea hasn’t always been fashionable but back then it was a backwater (no pun). Montevetro was the architectural lovechild of Taylor Woodrow, one of the largest housebuilding and construction companies in Britain, and architects Richard Rogers Partnership. A mere eight years after Ulster Architect published this seminal piece, Taylor Woodrow merged with its rival George Wimpey, to form the nation’s leading housebuilder. Taylor Wimpey Central London sprung up as the capital’s developer arm of the plc, attracting some of the hottest talent in the property industry. Swapping CGIs for photographic art, the wordage remains more or less the same in this replication of the original feature. Here goes.
“Everyone is raving about it – planners refer to it as ‘sustainable housing’ and developers call it ‘New York style studio living’ – that is, the late 20th century phenomenon of inner city redevelopment. Rising like a shining phoenix from the grey ashes of urban desolation in London is Montevetro, a contemporary block of pied-à-terres along the River Thames opposite Chelsea Harbour. Designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, it is one of the most arresting examples of inner city redevelopment to date.
Lord Rogers: “At the time Wren rebuilt St Paul’s, he didn’t replicate the old cathedral but designed something of its own day. Montevetro is a building for our era, but it respects its setting, not be deference but by sensitivity, to the context.”
When Richard Rogers Partnership took a critical look at the southwest bank site for what was to become Montevetro, the shortcomings of the existing buildings there became obvious. The old flour mills could have been converted to residential use but as lead project architect Marco Goldschmied says, “the drawbacks were apparent – an awkward plan and inconvenient layout would have deprived a third of the apartments of any river view and prevented the possibility of creating a significant new public space along the Thames.”
The site was typical of many along the river: it had great potential but in reality it was fairly depressing. The redundant industrial buildings, objects of no beauty, formed an impenetrable barrier between the river and the neighbouring streets. Extending to the very banks of the Thames, they also blocked the path of the river walk (a popular public amenity gradually extended in recent years) and overshadowed Battersea’s ancient parish church – Listed Grade I.
The Rogers strategy was to capitalised on the riverside setting and to insist that every apartment in the scheme had a view of the river. The new building reflects that strategy. At first glance it resembles a slender wedge, its river frontage entirely glazed to maximise the views from the large reception rooms. At the rear are the bedrooms behind a more solid façade – a practical device but one which allows the building to reflect the mature of the surrounding streets, with their interesting mixture of architecture dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries. A building or buildings? Montevetro is really the latter: a linked group of buildings which step up from three storeys close to the church, to a sensational 20 storeys at the northern tip of the development. “Respecting the setting of the church was a key consideration,” says Marco. “It is a rare survival but it had been treated with scant respect in the past. We spent a lot of time studying the impact of the development on views of it from along and across the river. The result will be that its impact will be much enhanced.”
Lord Rogers: “I’ve lived in London for 40 years and I’ve come to realise that the Thames is the real heart of London. Unfortunately, much of the river is virtually invisible to even those who live close to it – shut off by decaying industry and dereliction and frustratingly inaccessible.”
The Rogers team was keen to achieve a scale appropriate for the Thames. Small suburban scale buildings would have looked insignificant along its broad banks. Montevetro has grandeur which is tempered by a concern to be neighbourly. The apartments are pulled back from Battersea Church Road, where the residential leisure suite respects the proportions of nearby houses. Marco shares Richard Rogers’ concern for public space. The new development provides a spacious public garden which reads as an extension of the adjacent churchyard and creates a new context for the church. “A complex like this has to balance the interest of the residents, who naturally want privacy and security, with those of the public,” says Marco. Residents can enjoy their own shared private garden, set back from the river and slightly elevated above the public park.
Lord Rogers: “It isn’t just buildings which make a city – public spaces matter just as much. The Pompidou Centre in Paris, for example, is linked to a great piazza which teems with life.”
The Rogers team gave prolonged thought to the issue of materials. At Montevetro, the mix is sophisticated. The strict grid which is central to the design is used to carry a system of panels, infilled with terracotta on the eastern elevation, giving the required solid effect. The futuristic penthouses are highly transparent, with view on both sides from lofty studios. The contrast between surrounding sturdy Victorian brick and the airy lightweight grace of Montevetro will add a sexy new dimension to the riverside scene.
Lord Rogers: “Living in the city is a vote for the city. Fortunately, lots of younger people are voting for the city and living there so that they can spend time enjoying life and not battling with the chore of commuting.”
Richard Rogers Partnership believe that their new development is not a simplistic statement but rather is an intricate piece of urban design – a carefully considered vertical village to address immediate and wider contexts. Marco Goldschmied is convinced that it meets the needs of a particular social group: affluent, highly mobile, cosmopolitan in outlook and not content to decamp to the suburbs. “In contrast to other countries, we expect people to decamp to the suburbs to live in conventional houses when they achieve a certain position in life,” he comments. “Montevetro is a belated recognition that there are plenty of people who have ‘made it’ but actually want to live in the heart of London, with all the amenities that the city offers in easy reach.”
Whether or not you actually like Montevetro is, of course, a matter of personal taste. To us, striking arrangement as it is, we can’t help thinking that from a distance it vaguely looks like a group of Docklands offices. On closer inspection, its residential purpose becomes totally apparent as the tiers of towering terraces come into view. Maybe it is just a question of adjusting our view of the form domestic architecture should take. After all, the Lloyd’s Building readjusted most people’s perception of what a white collar workplace could look like. Montevetro – it’s certainly a cutting edge architecture and concept.”
Montevetro is aging well. Incredibly well. Like a good Malbec or a high cheek boned former model. City centre apartment living is no longer novel. Quite the opposite. And on the publishing front, if anything, today’s photographic art outsells yesterday’s CGIs. The narrative has become more augmented. Somehow the sharp contrast between the high tech architecture and neoclassical church has mellowed with time. And as for the area’s fashion status: a Russian oligarch has snapped up Old Battersea House, a smooth pebble’s throw from the scheme; the future king goes to St Thomas’s School round the corner; and on a sunny Friday evening you’ll find the best photographers and writers and planners and models in town chilling in Battersea Square. That’s how it is.
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A Hymn to the Lost Pastoral World of the Anglo Irish
Top Irish architect John O’Connell knows Cushendun well. “Clough Williams-Ellis represents his era correctly,” he affirms, “using a fine palette. His architecture is so reticent. There is an early German flavour to it. He was blessed with a prudent patron at Cushendun.” Clough was a strong believer in contextualism, commenting, “How often one may see new houses that are like swaggering strangers… that have insolently plunked themselves down on the edge of a cosy little gossip party and been properly left out in the cold. They have made no gesture of salutation, no concessions, no effort to make themselves agreeable to the architectural traditions of the place, and in return the old village just will not, cannot, know them.”
Belfast based architectural historian James Curl wrote a seminal feature on Cushendun titled “Antrim’s Discreet Holiday Resort” for Country Life in 1976. “The area known as The Glynnes, or Glens, of Antrim comprises the northeasternmost part of Northern Ireland. This article will describe the character and development of Cushendun, a small village on the shore at the eastern end of Glendun, one of The Nine Glens of Antrim. The coastal regions of The Glens are in sight of Kintyre and Islay, and from the earliest times there has been a close relationship with the lands across the Moyle. Yet The Glens are essentially Irish in character. Gaelic was spoken in the valleys until comparatively recently, and the area is rich in its own legends and history. From these glaciated valleys an adventurous people set out to establish rule over much of what is now Argyll, and the first kingdom of Dalriada was established. The hardy, independent nature of the Glensmen ensured prolonged resistance to Elizabeth’s generals in the 16th century, while the territories’ isolated position left language and religion relatively intact.
Taken as a whole, The Glens contain some of the most beautiful scenery in Ireland. While each has its own champions, Glendun inspires its own partisans, for it has a gentle charm quite unlike its more spectacular sisters. To the west, it is narrow and wooded, where its river tumbles over dark stones seta mong mosses, heathers, and ferns. It widens at its eastern end, and becomes a lush landscape of small fields with hedges that in summer are aglow with wild fuchsia.
Until just over a century ago, Glendun was one of the most inaccessible of The Glens, but this was dramatically changed when the Royal Military Road was constructed in 1833 to 1834. This road brought tourists to the fashionably romantic landscapes, and, ultimately, to enjoy the newly approved bathing in the wide and lovely bay that joins Glendun to the sea. Thus, from the reign of William IV, Cushendun developed as a discreet holiday resort, in a landscape of ravishing beauty. In 1817, R S Dobbs could describe the hamlet of Cushendun as ‘handsome’ and having ‘some very romantic spots in it’, including the curious caves of conglomerate rock that lie south of the village proper, and through which access may be had to the Caves House, formerly the home of the Crommelin family. Although tiny, Cushendun is the nearest port to Great Britain in Ireland, and it was this that prompted the Crommelins in 1830 to commission a design from John Rennie for a harbour known as Port Crommelin. However this scheme never materialised. Today, there is a modest harbour at the mouth of the river, and the natural features give us a clue to the name ‘Cushendun’, for the Irish Cois-abhann-Duine means ‘the end of the brown river’. The stone bridge at the western end of harbour was constructed in 1860 and recently has been inelegantly widened…
The building of the churches, the opening of The Glens, the fashion for sea bathing, and peace helped Cushendun to prosper, and sturdy dwellings replaced the humbler huts of the past. The architecture of Cushendun is mostly of a traditional 19th century vernacular type usual in Irish villages. The main street of Cushendun leading from the bridge to the parish church has its post office and shop, while McBride’s Pub, near the river, provides a convivial focus…
To the west of Main Street is the first group of outstanding character. This is known as The Square, and consists of two storeyed terraces planned symmetrically around a courtyard garden that is entered between massive gate piers. The terraces are linked by arches at the corners. An elliptical slate tablet in the central gable is inscribed with a date and the initials ‘RMcN’ and ‘MMcN’ commemorating Ronald McNeill and his wife Maud who were largely responsible for the appearance of modern Cushendun. Maud was Cornish and ‘loved The Glens’, according to her tombstone under a Celtic cross in the Parish courtyard, and it was largely through her that Clough Williams-Ellis was commissioned to enhance the village, starting with The Square, built in 1912.
After the ‘bathing lodge’ was burned down, Williams-Ellis designed and built Glenmona House in 1923 for the McNeills in a pastiche Regency style. The architect then added Maud Cottages, by the Green, in 1925. These consist of two storey terrace houses, with the upper part slate hung in the manner of Cornish coastal villages. The contribution of the architect and the McNeills to the beauties of Cushendun cannot be overestimated.
Main Street, the church, Glenmona House, and the cottages are all to the north of the river. To the south is a range of hotels. Following the war years, the future of Cushendun caused concern. It was recognised that the village and its surrounding area were of great beauty and importance, and so in 1954 some 62 acres of Cushendun north of the river were acquired by the National Trust through the Ulster Land Fund, and further acres adjoining the beach were purchased in 1965 with the aid of Enterprise Neptune Funds. There is a considerable problem with erosion of the beach, not only through over-use by holidaymakers but through farmers removing sand for agricultural purposes. Boating interests are encouraged by the Trust with improvements to the harbour, while grazing rights on surrounding lands are leased on the conacre system.
The Trust, mindful of the desirability of encouraging a traditional way of life, lets cottages to local people rather than to persons requiring holiday homes. There were problems in upgrading the existing houses to comply with modern standards, but generally this has been achieved with little damage to architectural character. The Trust, by means of covenants, ensures that properties are adequately maintained, and more care than is usual in Northern Ireland has been taken over the design of 24 new dwellings for public housing. While covenants appear to work in the Trust’s own lands, proper conservation policies for Cushendun as a whole are necessary. A Conservation Area should include the Caves, the hotels, and the whole of the village, and enhancement of this national treasure should be the goal.”
So there it was and here it is. Four years after James Curl’s Country Life plea, the village and surrounding lands of Cushendun were designated a Conservation Area. The Caves have found new fame as a Game of Thrones destination. And yet, and yet. Randal McDonnell, Viscount Dunluce, son of the 14th Earl of Antrim, recently captured the underlying issue, “This is an extremely remote location hemmed in by The Glens.” He should know: his family used to own 133,000 hectares of Country Antrim: “Basically the top half.” A melancholic peace has descended upon Cushendun, these days a not so much discreet as forgotten holiday resort. The The National Trust’s Glenmona House is a little frayed round the edges. Cushendun Hotel and its once hospitable neighbours facing the harbour stand forlornly empty, the only visitor a grazing goat sporting a high viz yellow jacket.
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The Free State | Her Bright Materials
Over numerous cups of coffee in her first floor kitchen, much laughter, and more than a few facetime calls with her numerous celebrity pals (putting the M into M People), the award winning fashion designer and creative extraordinaire shares her innermost thoughts with Lavender’s Blue.
“I’m Mary Martin London. Welcome to Maryland. My work is like an image of myself: a bit eccentric, a bit crazy, but sophisticated. It’s me, it’s my personality, it’s what I feel inside. A lot of passion goes into what I’m doing. I inhabit a world called Maryland. My inspiration is God. You know, my mother and father were ministers and I thought to myself: the first thing I learnt in the church was in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and basically God made us in his image. So I figured if God is the creator of heaven and earth, and he’s made us in his image, I am a creator as well. God is my creator and my inspiration.
Now my latest collection which I’ve done is called Blood Sweat and Tears and it’s really been blood sweat and tears and I wanted to dedicate this collection to the slaves because they worked hard for us to be here now. And you know you have to give a salute to those slaves who worked and were beaten and killed. You know we are still fighting the racism and everything else so I think to myself – I always have to remember where I came from: my ancestors were from Africa. This men’s collection is actually a salute! I did a screen print for my men’s collection called Slaves in the Field. You see the eyes coming through the trees. People are looking for them so I put the army print on the back.
Reclaiming Urban Jungle is one of my fabric patterns. It is inspired by the Amazon Rainforests. In current times we have become more aware of the effects of fast fashion on climate change. The beauty of nature of this print takes the form of abstract art in nature and surrealism. Reclaiming Urban Jungle represents the marriage of surrealism and the tropical rainforest. The lion is the King of the Jungle but in the jungle there are no crowns so the lion has a crown of bananas. I built up the leaves drawing them in layers and used special paint for screen printing.
The first collection I actually put together which was called the Fairytale Collection was big fluffy dresses. I did it all by hand couture. The reason I did it by hand was it was very therapeutic. So basically, I was working with my hands and it was helping me get through things. It was really really helping me and I thought, ok, make it the Fairytale Collection! I actually went to Ghana to do the Mercedes Fashion Week. I did the show over there and it was like – wow! – everybody was so in shock at the clothes I had brought, and that was the start. That was the key for me.
My favourite colour is actually blue. My mum’s favourite colour was blue because she always loved The Queen and The Queen’s mother and she always used to wear a lot of blue and that’s the reason I like blue. It was the only colour I used to see growing up. My mother and father came over to England in the Fifties and basically my mother wanted to be an actress and my father was an antiques dealer and he used to go around and come back with old clothes. We had a 10 bedroom house on the river and in the top of the attic my mother had a room full of beautiful dresses. I used to love the clothes up there. Me and my sister – we used to jump up and down for joy! It was like an in-house fashion show up in the attic.
Nobody knew me and my sister used to go up there and try on all the clothes and all the shoes. We loved dressing up; we loved glamour. They were big for us but we loved the clothes, the shoes. And that’s when I fell in love with fashion! Next year, now that I’m graduated, I want to celebrate and you know I really want to show people what I care about inside me. I want to show people what a show is all about. Just look out for the Mary Martin London brand!
Melba Moore is my favourite singer in the whole world.”
A few days later, over smashed avo at BFI Bar + Kitchen on London’s Southbank, following the première of her friend Director Stephan Pierre Mitchell’s film Deleted, Mary Martin shares more of her innermost thoughts with Lavender’s Blue. The fashion designer is cutting a dash rocking head-to-toe military combo gear complemented by one of her own tops. Working the asymmetric for sure.
“I just made this top this morning. It has a mustard coloured velvet sleeve and a khaki lurex sleeve. The sleeves contrast with the gold and black stretch cotton bodice. I work with the fabric – I create and just surprise myself! I see myself as a fashion artist. I’m gearing up for a solo exhibition and a catwalk show. I’m seeing tulle hanging from the ceiling and my screen prints framed as art on the walls. I’ll do my collections the way they should be. And I’ve dreamt of the dress of all dresses. All the lights will be on it. This dress is going to be magnificent!”
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Good Natured
Of course, the drawing room mantelpiece has some rather fetching garniture. A pair of Staffordshire dogs are very on period. Books on steeplechasing ride high over the piano under a painting of ‘Beef or Salmon’, a past winner of the equine Hennessy Gold Cup. Framed like a moving triptych by the sliding panes of the canted bay window, ginger Freddie, one of three cats, nonchalantly meanders across the lawn paying scant attention to the chicken coop. Welcome to Oranmore House, a country estate in miniature.
Every Irish city or town has one: the best address. Dublin has Ailesbury Road; Belfast boasts Malone Road; Omagh’s got Hospital Road; Ballymena’s is Galgorm Road. Oranmore House is one of the late 19th century gentleman and lady’s residences flowering Galgorm Road. But with its single storey symmetrical frontage, it could just as easily be one of those low lying seaside villas in Monkstown or Killiney, south County Dublin. A taller two storey ancillary wing nicely inverts the usual architectural order of things. The drawing room is one of two principal reception rooms with deep coved ceilings flanking the entrance hall. There are two guest bedrooms on the ground floor and eight other guest bedrooms scattered across the first floor and a converted stable block to the rear.
Oranmore House has opened to paying guests, fast becoming a byword for sumptuous hospitality. The social scene of Ballymena rotates round Oranmore House on a Saturday evening. Birthday parties fill the major and minor dining rooms; the drawing room reverberates to the sound of clinking glasses and guests’ laughter. Outside, beyond the pools of light cast by the tall sash windows, a red squirrel energetically scrambles up the Victorian monkey puzzle tree.
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Dockers and Carters
Once a place to leave, not to live, never mind visit, least of all for a luxury travel experience, how times have changed. The east coast of Northern Ireland (Counties Antrim and Down with Belfast sitting over their boundary) not only has Game of Thrones backdrops like the Dark Hedges and Ballintoy Harbour – it now offers thriving upmarket hospitality for the discerning visitor. County Antrim’s coastline is rugged; County Down’s is greener. There are plenty of scenic moments from the candy coloured Victorian villas of Whitehead to the crashing waves of Whitepark Bay.
As old as the island itself, Northern Ireland’s original God given tourist attraction has received a manmade upgrade. The Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim is a spear’s throw from Ballintoy Harbour. It’s a geological wonder of around 40,000 polygonal basalt columns rising from the splashed edge of the Atlantic. A visitor centre designed by award winning architects Heneghan Peng is formed of rectangular basalt columns propping up a grass roof. Architecture as land art. Nearby, Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge is a popular walk (not for the fainthearted) over a 30 metre deep oceanic chasm.
“Welcome to the Emerald Isle!” beams Hammy Lowe, founder of Spectrum Cars, a family owned executive chauffeur service based in the historic walled town of Carrickfergus north of Belfast. “Spectrum Cars was formed in 1997 to meet demand from visiting business executives for reliable and security conscious transfers for corporate clients,” explains Hammy, “including big hitters like the Bank of England. We swiftly adapted to the burgeoning tourism market and added driver guided tours of the 50 kilometre long Causeway Coast. Recently we added Game of Thrones tours. The jewel in our crown is that we are the approved transport provider for the five star Merchant Hotel in Belfast.”
Spectrum Cars’ new collaboration is the Toast The Coast tour led by World Host Food Ambassador Portia Woods stopping off for culinary delicacies in County Antrim seaside resorts. It starts with brunch in The Bank House, Whitehead. All the brunch courses are local produce from traditional soda bread (given a sharp twist with chili and pepper) to Irish black butter (darkened with brandy and liquorice). Tapas and gin tasting follow at Ballygally Castle Hotel, a haunted building dating back to 1625. Several of the world’s biggest music and film stars have travelled in Spectrum Cars but Hammy is the soul of discretion. When pushed, he confides, “A clue to our most famous client is she is the female lead role in the movie Mamma Mia!”
Hammy notes, “The development of the Titanic Museum in Belfast at a cost of almost £100 million has been a tremendous boost to the Northern Ireland tourist economy.” Next to the museum, the shipyard drawing office, the birthplace of many a ‘floating hotel’, is now a hotel itself. Belfast boasts three restaurants with a Michelin star – no mean feat for a smallish city with a rocky past. It’s become something of a foodie destination. Local chef Michael Deane has no fewer than six eateries including the Michelin starred Eipic, named after the Greek philosopher Epicurus who rated pleasure highly. True to form, the hef declares, “Fish, to taste right, must swim three times: in water, in olive oil and in Champagne!”
CNN Travel Reporter Maureen O’Hare who hails from Northern Ireland reckons “the food scene is really good in Belfast”. Michelin starred Ox overlooks the River Lagan. “Ox is my favourite restaurant,” Maureen shares. “It’s pure quality and class on every level.” The interior has a reclaimed industrial aesthetic. Art is reserved for the plates, not the walls. Oscar + Oscar designed the interior of Ox as well as Ox Cave, the bar next door. Architect Orla Maguire says, “We’re very proud of both – we have been lucky to work with some extremely talented clients. Ox Cave is one my favourite places to go in the city… its Comté with honey truffle is amazing.” Oscar + Oscar were also responsible for the interior of Il Pirata, a rustic Italian restaurant in east Belfast’s most fashionable urban village, Ballyhackamore.
The best view of Belfast can be captured from the Observatory, a lounge and bar on the 23rd floor of Grand Central Hotel. St Anne’s Cathedral (which has been gradually constructed over the last 100 years) and City Hall (an Edwardian architectural masterpiece) are two of the landmarks visible far below. The owners of the luxurious Galgorm Spa and Golf Resort in Ballymena, County Antrim, have opened Café Parisien opposite the City Hall. History buffs will recognise the name: Café Parisien on the Titanic was its inspiration. Oranmore House is an elegant country house with just 10 guest bedrooms on the outskirts of Ballymena. Montalto House is one of the grandest country houses in County Down set in 160 hectares of rolling parkland. Distinguished Irish architect John O’Connell and his team have restored the 18th century mansion and designed new neoclassical buildings. The gardens are open to the public and Montalto House is available for parties and weddings.
Northern Ireland may be the least populated of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom, but that hasn’t hindered the rise of some 100 golf courses. Hammy believes, “Northern Ireland is like paradise for golfers. Many of them are keen to visit Holywood Golf Club where US Open champion Rory McIlroy honed his skills.Royal Portrush is a must for a round on a links course and was the 2019 venue for the British Open. Equally attractive is Royal County Down with a most unique setting between sea and mountains. Try it on a windy day! A lesser known but recommended course is Royal Belfast with its 19th century clubhouse.” From golf to gastrotourism, urban culture to country estates, Northern Ireland’s east coast is finally a luxury travel destination.
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Categories
Deal + The Doors
The Importance of Being Very Earnest
Douglas isn’t just the capital of the Isle of Man. But Deal sure is the capital of Kent.
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Ox + Ox Cave Belfast
Strength and Honour
We’re talking lunch and dinner in the same restaurant but not on the same day. Four flights; two meals. Throw in a couple of winter storms and it’s all about dedication to the cause. Ox is one of three restaurants in Northern Ireland’s capital to be sprinkled with Michelin stardust. Just in case you didn’t get the memo, a mini Michelin man patrols the drinks trolley beside the entrance door.
The menu (printed on recycled crispy brown paper which looks good enough to eat) reads: “Ox is committed to developing close relationships with local suppliers; menus are created around the best available seasonal produce. As a result, each dish leaving the kitchen is thoughtfully designed so every element on the plate has an integral role in showcasing winter’s larder.” What’s in this season’s larder then? It’s well filled to include: Black Garlic | Blood Orange | Butternut Squash | Cabbage | Carrot | Celeriac | Celery | Chestnut | Chocolate| Coconut | Curry | Fig | Golden Beetroot | Halibut | Jasmin| Jerusalem Artichoke | Mustard | Onion | Passion Fruit | Pine Nut | Prawn | Rhubarb | Salsify | Truffle.
And what about winter cocktails? Exiles + Elderflower (Exiles, St Germain, Killahora apple, lemon juice) and Symphonie of Apples (Symphonia No.2 Apple Gin, Drambuie, lemon, sparkling apple) are two that jump off the drinks menu. “Winter Wines from Interesting Places” include Cypriot and Hungarian elixirs. The Irish theme comes into its own with gin and soft drinks. Images of rambling country houses are conjured up by Bertha’s Revenge of Ballyvolane House in County Cork and Shortcross from Rademon Estate, County Down. Equally evocative are Kombucha from The Bucha’s Dog in County Antrim and Poacher’s Wild Elderflower Tonic Water from County Wicklow. As for the winter tasting menu with matching wines dinner:
- Fig, Earl Grey canapés
- Gougère, Coolattin cheddar, beer
- Sourdough, Cuinneog butter
- Celeriac velouté, chestnut, truffle
- (Furmint 2017, Pajzos Tokaj, Hungary)
- Salt baked beetroot, pine nut, St Tola
- (Blanc de Blanc, Château Ksara 2018, Lebanon)
- Halibut, butternut squash, burned lemon, curry
- (Villa Blanche 2018, Calmel + Joseph, Languedoc, France)
- Sprouting broccoli, salsify, persillade
- (Pasas Jumilla 2017, Monastrell, Spain)
- Baked brown sugar, coconut, ginger
- Chocolate, blood orange, Jerusalem artichoke ice cream
- (Cabidos 2012, Petit Manseng, France)
- Passionfruit, sablé, miso caramel petit fours
There are lots of Michelin signifiers: a generous staff to customer ratio; industrious napkin folding; coloured and crackled textured plates; heavy cutlery; amuse gueules intervals; sweet versus savoury surprises; and foam. And course after course of course of edible art. The menu is honest and concise. It knows what it’s doing and what it’s using to do what it’s doing. Lunch highlights include lightly toasted soda bread (the recycled crispy brown paper making another appearance), cheese dill cappuccino with purple beetroot and passionfruit sorbet with salt caramel. Sommelier recommended accompanying wines range from lemonish Japanese Grace to full bodied French Viognier.
The interior is as now as the menu. Both Ox and its neighbour, the bar Ox Cave, have a stripped back industrial aesthetic. There’s a strong sense of materiality from the exposed pipes and brick walls to the tiles (gunpowder grey in Ox; duck egg blue in Ox Cave) and timber floors. Art is reserved for the customers’ fashion plates. It’s a no nonsense approach that suits Belfast. The interiors are by Oscar and Oscar. Established in 2011 by Martin Barrett and Orla Maguire, Oscar and Oscar is an interior design and architecture studio based in Belfast. “We’re very proud of Ox and Ox Cave,” says Orla. “We have been lucky to work with some extremely talented clients.”
Martin explains, “Ox dining room is designed to be a relatively mute backdrop to the cooking of co-owner and Chef Stephen Toman. That being the case, it needed to be as characterful and complementary as the crockery that would contain the food itself. The character contains a palette of materials, warm and rich and confident in its simplicity. The space itself strikes a confident note by making both the kitchen and the city view the centre of attention. The dining room, as the space between these resonating notes, holds this tension and blends it in a delicate and respectful balance.”
“Ox Cave provides the space for Ox to let its hair down,” notes Orla, “and is an informal setting for wines carefully selected by co-owner Alain Kerloc’h to be enjoyed without self consciousness and pretence. Ox Cave can be enjoyed either after dinner or as an evening out in its own right. It is the more extrovert of the pair of spaces yet is both warm and totally unpretentious. Ox Cave is Belfast’s nod to the Parisian ‘zinc bar’.” Orla finishes, “Deep rooted in our values is the belief that good design can make us all a little happier.” We’re more than a little happy to lunch and dine at Ox with postprandial sipping in Ox Cave.
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A Dawning of Clarity Upon Complexity
Braving Storm Ciara, on a blustery photogenic winter’s day, architect John O’Connell and his client Managing Director David Wilson lead a two-to-two private tour of Montalto Estate: The Big House; The Carriage Rooms; and the most recent addition, The Courtyard. It’s an extraordinary tale of the meeting of minds, the combining of talents, a quest for the best and the gradual unveiling and implementation of an ambitious informed vision that has transformed one of the great estates of Ulster into an enlightening major attraction celebrating old and new architecture, art and landscape, history and modernity. And the serving of rather good scones in the café.
Philip Smith has just completed the latest book in the architectural series of the counties of Ulster started by the late Sir Charles Brett. Buildings of South County Down includes Montalto House: “Adding a storey to a house by raising the roof is a relatively common occurrence that can be found on dwellings of all sizes throughout the county and beyond. But the reverse, the creation of an additional floor by lowering the ground level, is a much rarer phenomenon. This, however, is what happened at Montalto, the original mid 18th century mansion assuming its present three storey appearance in 1837, when then owner David Stewart Ker ‘caused to be excavated round the foundation and under the house, thus forming an under-storey which is supported by numerous arches and pillars’. Ker did a quite successful job, and although the relative lack of front ground floor fenestration and a plinth appears somewhat unusual, it is not jarring, and without knowledge of the building’s history one would be hard pressed to discern the subterranean origin of this part of the house.”
The author continues, “Based on the internal detailing, Brett has suggested that William Vitruvius Morrison may have had a hand in the scheme, but evidence recently uncovered by Kevin Mulligan indicates the house remodelling was at least in part the work of Newtownards builder architect Charles Campbell, whose son Charles in September 1849 ‘came by his death in consequence of a fall which he received from a scaffold whilst pinning a wall at Montalto House.’”
Rewind a few decades and Mark Bence-Jones’ threshold work A Guide to Irish Country Houses describes Montalto House as follows, “A large and dignified three storey house of late Georgian aspect; which, in fact was built mid 18th century as a two storey house by Sir John Rawdon, 1st Earl of Moira; who probably brought the stuccodore who was working for him at Moira House in Dublin to execute the ceiling here; for the ceiling which survives in the room known as the Lady’s Sitting Room is pre 1765 and of the very highest quality, closely resembling the work of Robert West; with birds, grapes, roses and arabesques in high relief. There is also a triple niche of plasterwork at one end of the room; though the central relief of a fox riding in a curricle drawn by a cock is much less sophisticated that the rest of the plasterwork and was probably done by a local man.”
Some more: “In the 1837 ground floor there is an imposing entrance hall, with eight paired Doric columns, flanked by a library and a dining room. A double staircase leads up to the piano nobile, where there is a long gallery running the full width of the house, which may have been the original entrance hall. Also on the piano nobile is the sitting room with the splendid 18th century plasterwork. Montalto was bought circa 1910 by the 5th Earl of Clanwilliam, whose bride refused to live at Gill Hall, the family seat a few miles to the west, because of the ghosts there. In 1952, the ballroom and a service wing at the back were demolished.”
Books aside, back on the tour, David Wilson considers, “You need to stay on top of your game in business. Montalto House was our family home – we still live on the estate. It’s personal. You have to maintain the vision all the time.” John O’Connell explains, “The baseless Doric columns of the entrance hall draw the exterior in – they are also an external feature of the porch. The order is derived from the Temple of Neptune at Paestum. Due to the ground floor originally being a basement it is very subservient to the grandeur upstairs. There are a lot of structural arches supporting ceilings.” A watercolour of the Temple of Neptune over the entrance hall fireplace emphasises the archaeological connection.
Upstairs, John’s in mid flow: “And now we enter a corridor of great grace and elegance.” The walls are lined, like all the internal spaces, with fine art, much of it Irish. David points to a Victorian photograph of the house: “It used to be three times as large as it is now!” The house is still pretty large by most people’s standards. Three enigmatic ladies in ankle length dresses guard the entrance door in the photograph. Upstairs, in the Lady’s Sitting Room which is brightly lit by the canted bay window over the porch, David relates, “the plasterwork reflects the original owners’ great interest in flora and fauna”. John highlights “the simple beauty of curtains and walls being the same colour”. Montalto House can be let as a whole for weddings and parties.
Onward and sideward – it’s a leisurely walk, at least when a storm isn’t brewing – to The Carriage Rooms. While John has restored Montalto House, finessing its architecture and interiors, The Carriage Rooms is an entirely new building attached to a converted and restored former mill. “In the 1830s the Ker family made a huge agricultural investment in Montalto,” states David. “They had the insight to turn it into a productive estate. The Kers built the mill and stables and powered water to create the lake.” White painted rendered walls distinguish John’s building from the rough stone older block. The Carriage Rooms are tucked in a fold in the landscape and are reached by a completely new avenue lined with plantation trees.
“I didn’t want to prettify this former industrial building,” records John. “It needed a certain robustness. The doors and windows have Crittall metal frames. Timbers frames would not be forceful enough. The stone cast staircase is a great achievement in engineering terms – and architectural terms too! The new upper floor balcony design was inspired by the architecture of the Naples School of Art. Horseshoe shaped insets soften the otherwise simple balustrade.” In contrast the orangery attached to the rear of The Carriage Rooms is a sophisticated symmetrical affair. “It’s where two worlds meet. This gives great validity to the composition,” John observes. Much of the furniture is bespoke: architect Anna Borodyn from John’s office designed a leaf patterned mobile copper bar. A formal garden lies beyond glazed double doors. The Carriage Rooms can be let as a whole for parties and weddings.
Justifiably lower key is the design of The Courtyard, a clachan like cluster of single and double storey buildings containing a café, shop and estate offices. It’s next to the 19th century stable yard. John’s practice partner Colin McCabe was the mastermind behind The Courtyard. Unpainted roughcast walls, casement rather than sash windows, polished concrete floors and most of all large glazed panels framed by functioning sliding shutters lend the complex an altogether different character to The Big House or even The Carriage Rooms. The Courtyard harks back to the Kers’ working estate era. “We wanted to create a sense of place using a magical simple vocabulary,” confirms John, “and not some bogus facsimile”. A catslide roof provides shelter for a barbeque. An unpretentious pergola extends the skeleton of the built form into the garden.
“We have over 10,000 visitors a month and employ 80 people,” beams David. The 160 hectares of gardens and woodlands have entered their prime. A new timber temple – a John O’Connell creation of course – overlooks the lake. Contemporary neoclassicism is alive and very well. The Beautiful. The Sublime. The Picturesque. As redefined for the 21st century. Montalto Estate hits the high note for cultural tourism in Ireland, even mid storm.
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A Penchant for the Peculiar
There are two distinguished Georgian houses along the Causeway Coast with unusual fenestration. Rockport Lodge just beyond Cushendun appears to have missing windows on the canted flanks of its outer bay windows on the south elevation. Mount Druid high above Ballintoy appears to have the middle windows missing in its two bay windows on the north elevation. Forget the wild weather resistance of yore: a modern sensibility would be to capture from all angles such a view sweeping down to the incredibly untouched Ballintoy Harbour. Mount Druid’s mildly idiosyncratic face to the world (the entrance front is actually the more regular five bay south elevation looking into the hill) is austere – an attribute noted by writers as being highly suitable to this bare landscape. White painted walls against the dark hill add to the stark grandeur of Mount Druid. Waves lap up to the white painted walls of Rockport Lodge. It too has a more conventional entrance front, four bays facing westwards inland.
Sir Charles Brett includes both houses in Buildings of County Antrim. On Rockport Lodge, the once Belfast based full time solicitor part time architectural writer records, “According to Boyle, in 1835, the house ‘the summer residence of Major General O’Neill is a modern two storey edifice, and very commodious’. It was valued on 9 August 1834 at £20.13.0 of which £2 was added ‘for vicinity to sea, being a good situation for sea bathing’… soon after the name of General O’Neill was struck out, and that of Matilda Kearns substituted. Her name in turn was struck out in 1868, when Nicholas Crommelin moved here from The Caves, the house being valued then at £38.”
Five Big Houses of Cushendun is a smaller book written by Sir Charles Brett. It includes Rockport Lodge: “The handsome white painted house, hugging the shoreline, can be dated with some accuracy to 1813. It does not appear on William Martin’s conscientiously detailed map of 1811 to 1812; but Ann Plumptre, who was here in the summer of 1814, wrote that Cushendun ‘is an excellent part of the country for game; on which account Lord O’Neill, the proprietor of Shane’s Castle’ [in fact, his younger brother] ‘has built a little shooting box very near the shore, whither in the season he often comes to shoot’. It stands between Castle Carra and the sea. The south front facing across the broad curve to the village, consists of three canted bays, set in a zigzag under the wide eaves, leaving triangular recesses in between: five 16 pane windows on the ground floor; three more, and two oculi, in the upper floor. The entrance front, of four bays, has wide Georgian glazed windows and a pleasing and unusual geometrical glazing pattern in the recessed porch.”
The entry for Mount Druid in Buildings of County Antrim reads, “A remarkable house, on an extraordinarily prominent (and exposed) hillside, looking out due north across the North Channel to the cliffs of Oa on Islay. The house is of two storeys, on a generous basement, with tiny attic windows in the gables; in principle, seven bays wide, with generous canted bays facing north – but the central face of each bay is blank – as Girvan says, ‘giving a very bleak effect, not inappropriate to the inhospitable position.’ Between the bays, a tall round headed window lights the upper part of the staircase, an oculus above and below. The remaining windows are 15 pane Georgian glazed. There are six chimneypots on each stack; the doorcase in the square porch in the entrance front facing south is modern.”
There’s more: “The vestry minute book for the parish contains the following uncommonly useful entry: ‘There was 40 acres granted by Alexander Thomas Stewart Esq of Acton to Reverend Robert Traill and his successors, Rectors of Ballintoy, in perpetuity, for a glebe, in the townland of Magherabuy on the ninth of August 1788. Rent £25.5.0. In May 1789 Mr Traill began to build a Glebe House and got possession of it on the 14th November 1791 – changing the name of the place from Magherabuy to Mount Druid, on account of the Druid’s Temple now standing on the Glebe.’ Unfortunately, despite this wealth of documentation, there is nothing to say what builder, mason, carpenter or architect was involved: no payments appear in the vestry book since Mr Traill evidently paid for the house out of his own pocket.” The similarities between the two houses may not be entirely coincidental. Charlie wondered if Rockport Lodge could be the work of the same architect or skilled builder as Mount Druid?
