SIX PACK

Travelling without my laptop, so what to do with a few hours to spare? Let’s see what I can do with my phone.

http://grevity.blogspot.com/2014/11/six-of-best.html

Six London churches by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Previous analysis from 2014.
This time I visited them all in a single day, mostly for the second or third time. Fresh in my memory. Let’s combine the floor plans into a single image (Pixlr) and do another type of analysis (Autodesk SketchBook Pro on a Samsung Note 8)

 

Red is the Altar (East) blue = galleries (servant class) Yellow = stairs to those galleries. Green = main entrance, cyan = servant access point. How do you get your head around the different world that people lived in 300 years ago? What can it teach us about the fundamental changes that are happening around us today?
 

Same six churches in same order. Capitals. Mostly from the entrance portico. Tuscan with Triglyph. (Greenwich) Limehouse is quirky: composite with no scrolls + bulging upside-down a Acanthus frieze. Spitalfields = bold & overscaled Tuscan. Wapping (St George in the East) understated Ionic, St Mary’s Woolnoth (Bank) an outrageous fat and banded... Tuscan? Finishing with a conventional composite (Bloomsbury: rear Facade, upper tier)

Take each church in turn. What diversity of material and style? Greenwich has wood and stone. Simple robust, Tuscan on the outside, contrasts with an inventive take on the Corinthian order internally.

Limehouse : plasterer’s Composite order, wood-carvers Ionic and a couple of inventions by the stonemasons. I will call them “scroll-free composite“ and “egg&dart Tuscan“ Hawksmoor being simultaneously bold, cost-conscious and perversely Baroque. Dare to be different.

Christchurch, Spitalfields. The master plasterers take on the Composite order is here again. Was it the same artisan? A clearer image here of the delicate detail. No rubber moulds in those days so all the more impressive the way the leaves come to life. And in rich dark wood, the Roman Doric. Not 100% sure this is Hawksmoor, but once again I am enjoying the contrast of style and material.

In Wapping he almost dispenses with classical columns entirely. Just hinting at Tuscan with mouldings wrapped around square piers. Then, tucked away in the shadows of the side entrances... a strange hybrid, part Doric triglyph, part inventive capital. What was it like to have a mind like Nicholas Hawksmoor, 300 years ago? I guess that will always be an open question.

St Mary Woolnoth, close to the Bank of England. This church would have been built while the Bank was still in rented rooms at the Grocer’s Hall. This time the Composite order is in stone, which makes the modelling a bit stiffer. Also, just a single row of Acanthus leaves in this version. Also in stone, a niche with Ionic columns and Hawksmoor showing off his Baroque chops. Inside the plasterers have been assigned a luxuriant Corinthian, and the carpenters who built the gallery seating have incorporated the quirky Corinthian goblet that we saw in Greenwich. Only this time there are 8 leaves and 8 lauliculi, as opposed to the more unusual 4 from St Alfege.

The galleries were removed from most of these churches, probably with declining attendance and the virtual disappearance of domestic servants. Modern restorations have restored them, but not here. This explains the floating “suicide door” floating high up on a splayed wall in the corner. The spiral stairs behind must continue up to give access to the Bell Tower.

Bloomsbury. Upper middle class from day one. This is the most inventive of Hawksmoor’s plans, and too radical apparently even for the artistic minds who gravitated to this chic suburb. They rebelled, moved his altar to the North, (opposite the entrance) and demolished the gallery in that zone. His version has been restored now and again we see the Corinthian plaster, & wooden goblet, very much as used at the Bank. More Corinthian outside, and finely modelled too. Perhaps a different stone carver?

Will I ever get around to developing full-blown Revit models of these 6 churches? My previous exploration used highly simplified geometry to represent them in urban context, each one a generic family. .

Perhaps someone else will step in, who knows ?  But I enjoyed this little comparitve study done on my mobile phone while staying with my cousin.

Keep looking, keep asking questions, arranging images, sharing, looking again, reconsidering. Always something new to learn.

LONDON POSTSCRIPT

  An addendum to my London trip. The day after Pitzhanger I visited two Soane churches to try to get inside.

St Peter’s Walworth. It was great to be shown around by the vicar, see some of the details close up and listen to stories of people and events. This shows the access stairs to the galleries where the servant class would sit, with typical Soane railings & yellow tinted glass.

 
At Bethnal Green the vicar was on holiday so I could only get into the crypt. There was a poster for classes in stained glass and stone carving. Didn’t spot the acroterion on the S. E. Corner last time. Typical Soane, stripped down classicism. The brackets and Anthemion frieze are from Walworth.

I spotted the wonderful egg-shaped archway amidst the groin vaults in the crypt of Bethnal Green. The receding arches and swirling rosette are Walworth. The card in my hand shows a rosette from Pitzhanger and was given to me by the guys at London Stone Carving who I visited after Walworth.

We talked through the process of modelling in clay from sketches, then using a pointing machine to check “xyz coordinates” as the carving proceeds.

Pointing machine images from the Internet. Waiting for lunch at Soane’s kitchen. An atmospheric photo of St George in the East represents the sense of stepping back in time that accompanied this trip.

Just talking to a group of stone carvers for a couple of hours made the process more real in my minds eye and walking around the city next day I was overwhelmed by both the quantity and quality of hand carved detail on view at every turn.

Thousands upon thousands of person-hours spent bringing architects sketches to life, contributing to the personality of the buildings in ways that rarely happen today. It’s not that today’s artisans are lacking in dexterity, experience, creativity. It’s just that the nature of the contribution they are required to make, tends to preclude artistic expression.

Last morning, and I planned a walking route to pick up as many city churches as I could that I haven’t visited before. St Botolph is the patronsaint of travellers and has a church at 4 of the city gates. I started with the one at Aldgate. By Dance the elder, the father of Soane’s mentor, a man whose career overlapped that of Hawksmoor. It’s great to start to feel the continuity of successive generations as I learn more about these buildings

An exhausting walk, topped off by a vegan Ethiopian platter and a train ride back to Basingstoke. A mixed bag of impressions swirling round my head as I watched my grandsons in the playground that evening.

In the image below: One of the pictures Jack drew on my phone using Autodesk SketchBook. The locked doors of St Peters Cornhill, one of many I couldn’t enter this time round. And three of my progeny playing football. Next week I head north.

That was going to be the end of the post, but on Sunday we went to Winchester. We visited before, in freezing weather, and I was inspired to do a massing model of the cathedral when I got back to Dubai. Soon after that, Notre Dame caught fire and I had the confidence to try another Gothic exploration. So I feel that I have come full circle, and see things afresh after investigating Gothic cathedrals with my BIM pencil.

I’m noticing the access routes. When I climbed the spiral stair at St Anne’s Limehouse I didn’t really know where I was. Just going round in circles. So I looked back at earlier photos and spotted the vertical slots, with a round window at the top. Rufus made me admire the view of the river, although I was feeling a little giddy by then.

Similar slots in several places around Winchester Cathedral betray the locations of similar stairs.

Along the west front there are access galleries with stone balustrades, similar to Notre Dame. I didn’t spot these last time. We tend to see what we are looking for.

There is an arch through the buttress to connect these galleries and there must be a few steps inside the archway to handle the difference in levels. I haven’t seen this but I’m sure it’s there.

Another snippet from Limehouse showing Hawksmoor’s bold inventiveness. A capital with Acanthus leaves but no scrolls, just an egg & dart mould. Don’t know what to call it, not really Corinthian or composite.

But the frieze above is even more unusual. Upside down Acanthus in a continuous band. His use of carved ornament is sparse but daring. I like it!

Sunday finished with a splendid meal in the garden of a village pub, with my grandsons playing boisterously on the grass around us. The word idyllic comes to mind

ROAD SHOW DIARY

Week one of my expedition to the UK. A family barbecue and the most nerve biting cricket match in history. Then up and about my travels on Monday morning.

I met up with Lee Saunders in Salisbury and had a great chat about anything and everything, but especially the “Heritage Business” and the danger that the people with the trade skills and experience to do the physical work and more importantly perhaps to pass that knowledge and wisdom on to coming generations… (long sentence) the danger that they get sidelined.

Walking through Salisbury Cathedral with a keener eye, now that I’ve studied a Gothic building with my BIM pencil. What is that Grey stone, used for free-standing colonettes? Admiring the carving of the crocket capitals. The lancet windows and less compact massing of Early English compared to Notre Dame. Salisbury Museum is a domestic building, dating back to medieval times with exhibits stretching back much further into deep history. 

Train to London. Wake up next morning and walk across to St George in the East. I did a BIM study of the 6 Hawksmoor London churches in 2014. 

https://grevity.blogspot.com/2014/11/six-of-best.html 

First time inside St George. The insertion of a 60s concrete frame within a bombed-out baroque shell is more successful than you might expect. Just me standing below the tower in this pic. DLR to Greenwich. First time inside St Alfege also. Freehand plaster scrolls: to a common theme, but all different. The recessed East end seems a perfect solution next to a busy road, but was that a factor in 1720?  Wood carving by Grinling Gibbons? Didn’t photograph well in the dim light, so the Corinthian here is from Bloomsbury Different material but similar delicacy.

https://grevity.blogspot.com/2014/12/wool-gathering.html

DLR to Bank, the updated displays in the museum were slightly disappointing but that’s a post on its own. Walk across to St Mary Woolnoth. Hadn’t planned to go in, but it was worth it. 

That distinctive wooden version of Corinthian I saw at St Alphege is here again, but still too dark to focus properly. The plaster rose is from Bloomsbury I think. He must have used a superb artisan for the fibrous plaster there. The wood carving on the pulpit does pick up nicely. What material is used for the keystone scrolls and the Corinthian capitals I wonder. Is it lime plaster? Doesn’t look like gypsum to me, but what do I know? 

Central line to Bloomsbury and I’m starting to realise that I can fit in all 6 churches today. Spiral handrail termination, and here’s that wooden Corinthian vase motif again. Finally a picture worth sharing. Both capital and shafts are highly original to my eye. Did Hawksmoor invent this, or was there another source? The plaster running ornament here takes me back to my Revit explorations earlier this year, before Notre Dame took over my life. Managed to get inside the back yard and take some shots from new angles. 

https://grevity.blogspot.com/2014/11/more-hawksmoor-churches.html


Liverpool Street then walk to Christchurch Spitalfields. The last frame shows the Composite capitals of the interior. How many different takes on the Acanthus leaf did I see during this week? Define infinity. 

And finally on to my 6pm meeting at St Anne’s Limehouse. Rufus Frampton was the perfect host. His commitment to stabilising the condition of this neglected church is quite humbling. Another fantastic conversation as we climbed the spiral stair into the roof void, then beyond to watch the pendulum clock trigger the chimes for 7pm. Sadly I was too gobsmacked to record a video. Bonding of the quoins of the groin vaults in the crypt caught my eye. Some running ornament and the timber suports to the half-dome above the portico (lead-covered ). Rufus thinks this shows the marks of ships carpenters which sounds plausible for the location.

Next morning, walking out past old warehouses and through St Katherine’s Docks. A running garland carved into the curved stone corbel below an oriel window on the corner of Leman Street. The shard sprouting from the parapets of “the Tower”. And the copper spire of All Hallows, Tower Hill. Superb 

Gothic and classical intertwined. Wren’s mock-gothic spire survived the bombs, but the medieval church was gutted. The skeleton embraces a picturesque grotto /garden that would have delighted Soane. A quick peek inside the Pattern makers guild church, classical Wren box with a medieval style spire. Then on to the main event of the day. 

Pitzhanger Manor, Soane’s Country House and Gardens. Recently reopened. yellow light from above reminds me of Dulwich. Triumphal arch themed façade seems to echo Lothbury Court, while the conservatory at the rear reminds me of the projecting porch of his townhouse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. On the corner of the parapet above, a leaf vase which reinterprets the motif in wood that I struggled to photograph the day before. 

Materials, coarse and fine. Physicality. Fired clay. A fragment of Roman pavement, tile hanging, Flemish Bond and yet another version of Soane’s simple brick soldiers that evoke the distilled essence of a doric freize. But the dominant materials on my mind are stone, wood and plaster.  The stone of the Banker Mason, providing the structural mass and the weathering surface that has stood for 300 years  The carved stone detail in all its variety, both gothic and classical, but so often inspired by foliage.  The carved delicacy of wood, its warmth and suitability for wall linings and doors.  And the wonderful adaptability of plasterwork, whether lime or gypsum based.  

These trades contributed so much to buildings over the centuries.  Not just labour, but also detail, practical know-how and artisitic invention. If the architect was a conductor, they were musicians of the old school who could improvise on a theme.  I fear we have lost most of that with our hundreds of sheets of contract drawings, the litigation and the "value engineering"


So many impressions, sometimes disjointed, sometimes intertwined. What a start to my journey..