Categories
Architects Architecture People

Ryculff Square Blackheath London + Sir Albert Richardson

Paragon of Virtuous Planning

Rycullf Square Southeast London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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.

Apartment Blocks Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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.”

Lawn Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Rycullf Square Blackheath London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Apartment Block Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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.”

Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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.

Doorcase Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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.

Flower Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Architecture

St Mary’s Cemetery Battersea London + Pique

Necropolis in the Megalopolis  

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Chapels © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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 Battersea London Gravestones © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Trees © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Branches © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Roses © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Gravestone © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Lancet Gravestone © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Angel © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Rose © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Urn © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Wild Garden © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Figure © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Tombstones © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Grave © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Nameplate © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Columns © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Cross © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Name © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Art Design Luxury People Restaurants

Scott’s Restaurant + Sexy Fish Mayfair London

The Way We Live Now

Sexy Fish Restaurant Menu and Doorman © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The only thing better than octopus, squid and creamed spinach at Scott’s is octopus, squid and creamed spinach at Scott’s followed by matcha and ginger marble cake at Sexy Fish. Oh yes, that essential October invite to Sexy Fish. The restaurant with the name(s) attached. Nobu meets Chiltern Firehouse. So hip it hurts. Owner Richard Caring reputedly forked out £30 million on the Martin Brudnizki designed interior. Shell and hardcore. Newport Street Gallery meets Bilbao-on-sea. Damian Hirst mermaids; Frank Gehry crocodiles. Sexy Fish. Names, names. Trinny, Saatchi, Tatler, dining on an Esmeralda onyx floor under Vanity Fair’s style editor-at-large Michael Roberts’ seaweedy ceiling. Everyone Everything is larger than life. Restaurant as nightclub. Kitchen as theatre. Loo as black marble mirrored narcissist-friendly sanctuary. Model staff | model guests | model behaviour. Mostly. This is Lavender’s Blue.

Sexy Fish Restaurant Mayfair © Mark Brumell @ Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley