BUS TRIP KING

 

Did my bus trip today. I think there is only time for one this trip. Took the no 32 heading for Newbury and got off at Kingsclere. The church was wonderful, deserves a separate post. I wanted to walk around the village a bit but needed a sit down and a toilet break so I treated myself to a latte and a goats cheese toastie. Good to get a feel for the locals also. Couple of nice dogs.

I always love an old oak-framed house with walls at crazy angles to the vertical. This one has the cantilevered upper floor also. What I know as "jettying" a term that spellcheck abhors.

By way of contrast a decidedly Georgian entrance porch. Well proportioned Tuscan columns and a shallow dentil course. Topped off with substantial lead flashings.

Finally, a house built in header bond with blue bricks. String course and quoins in soft red bricks and reverting to English Bond. The whole thing is unusual. You would expect the stronger brick on the corners and header bond is mostly found in curved walls. Nothing wrong here but it leaves me wondering if there was a rationale for these choices.

I couldn't see it.

 

St Mary's Kingsclere. I shared my first-pass massing model of this church a couple of weeks ago. It's still substantially Norman with a later chancel. I bumped into a a local guy while photographing the timber frame house posted yesterday. He suggested the church has been spoilt by later renovations.

I didn't quite understand this at first but having bought the relevant Pevsner guide on the way back, it starts to make sense. "The Flint-faced exterior is the result of ferocious restoration by Thomas Hellyer in 1848" Apparent old drawings show an ashlar exterior, similar to the interior finish.

The carved chevrons and crosses around the round entrance arches are original and typically Norman. The tower parapet is not. The Perpendicular window is from the South transept which has been arranged as a small chapel with modern seating. The stained glass is a nativity triptych.

So a very fruitful visit but many layers of this onion still await.

 

Interior views of St Mary, Kingsclere. The crossing is ashlar stone finish, but the nave walls are plastered. I'm guessing that the original finish in say 1150 was bare stone throughout.

The organ balcony must be fairly modern. The door up to this area was locked. Some might say that this whole wooden insertion is out of place but I quite enjoy the quirkyness of it in contrast to the cold, stark Norman geometry. Then there's the carpet, the heating system(s) and the electric lighting.

Imagine how many human beings have contributed to this building over the centuries, from monks and masons to 19th century architects and 20th century subbies. It's a complete hodge-podge in a way, but also quite magnificent as a living testament to English history and culture. Somehow a memory of the Norman era lives on here, and embellished at regular intervals en-route to modernity and beyond.

 

Wolverton was the last stop on my bus trip on Monday. It was a bit of a walk uphill from the bus stop, along a country lane and past a gate lodge to the high ground where the church is built. A very different location compared to Kingsclere. No sign of a village, no mower keeping the churchyard neatly cropped, no coffee shop across the street, no other humans in sight, no entry into the church interior.

It's an odd building. The tower is quite splendid but out of proportion to the rest of the church which has been very strangely altered by insensitive hands over the years. Once again Pevsner talks of the nave as a "re-casing" and implies this was done by a builder without architectural oversight. The tower is from 1717, so contemporary with Hawksmoor's London churches.

 

He talks of a medieval timber roof to the nave, so it seems this was a Gothic church. Perhaps there was no tower or maybe it collapsed. But I'm guessing this was the first element to acquire an English Baroque character, guided by a now forgotten architect. Then we are left to imagine the nave being recased some time later in matching brick, but without the architect's input and further modified in Victorian times.

From one corner of the graveyard you can glimpse the Georgian mansion through the trees, with rolling parkland all around in stark contrast to the neglected churchyard. I'm thinking of Mr and Mrs Pevsner towing their little caravan up the lane. She putting the kettle on while he roams the churchyard scribbling furiously in his notebook.

A far cry from my lone bus trip with Samsung Note in a shoulder bag. Or is it?

 

COMPARATIVE METHOD

 

The first 17 church models set up for comparison. This is where the decision to create these in the family environment comes into it's own. Lightweight and taggable, laid out in a grid, they will update as further refinements are made. They can be scheduled as data fields are added and populated.

 

 

So much still to be done, but you can start to see where this is going. Can I classify them in various ways. Type and position of bell tower /turret. Single cell/double cell /cruciform. Aisles or not. Porch, Vestry. Main material for roofing and walls.

 

 

They are already tagged by period /style and name of architect if applicable. But some of those groupings could be more precise, although this is tricky for the medieval work which is almost always phased over three or four centuries, with some early English remnants and a couple of perpendicular /Tudor windows elsewhere in the fabric.

For now I just need to crack on I think. But this was useful to get an overview of progress.

 

Entrances, old and new. I always enjoy catching the building process half-way through. I think it's taught me at least as much as reading books, even the ones crammed with section details. My advice to students when I used to teach was "keep your eyes open and ask probing questions. Why was it built like that? What is the sequence of trades? Can you hold it in your mind's eye and make a sketch when you get home?"

It's great to see a porch addition making the effort to match the house. Not the only way to approach the problem, but probably the right one in this case. I love the plinth bricks at the transition from brick and a half pier to sturdy timber post. Notice how the door has taken a bit of weathering over the years.

The stone capping over 3 brick pier in English Bond at the entrance to the War Memorial Park always catches my eye. Is this all one piece? Quite a mighty lump!

Finally the wooden fence and gate. Oak? Pretty chunky, classical in spirit and making a nod to masonry with the keystone motif. Is that fakery? Should we get all moralistic? I think not. For me it's just so much fun to come across all this variety and skilled craftsmanship on my daily exercise routines.

 

 

Wolverton to Basingstoke

 St Catherine's Wolverton. A Georgian church of 1771 with Victorian restoration, associated with Wolverton Park. The manor was in royal ownership from Norman times until the 1200s, passing to the Fitz Herberts and much later to the Duke of Wellington.

The Victorian restoration changed the windows quite radically which explains why they don't look at all Georgian. I'm guessing they were much more like the louvred openings of the upper tower in character.

 

I'm not sure what to make of the "Dutch Gable" treatments, it would help if we had a drawing or painting of the Georgian church as it was before the renovation. I'm suspecting that at least the transept ends were modified in the 19th century.

All in all it adds variety to my dataset. Some 17 churches modeled to a similar level now I think. Just a small dent on the total number included on the map sheets, but definitely a useful sample.

 

I am taking short walks to break up the day and guard against sitting down and staring at screens for too long. Sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes 20, always interesting. There has been strong wind, rain showers and also bright sunshine.

Brickwork is always a favourite. I'm guessing at a bit more than a century old for these walls. There is a two-brick pier in English Bond, a gatepost that I have noticed before. A yellow brick, overburnt to a purple-blue at times and heavily aged with soot and grime. What caught my attention here is the white on blue enamel number. I don't think this is original, but it goes so well. Splatters of a white mould or lichen also. I don't think it's efflorescence in a wall of this age.

Around the corner and down the passage, garden walls. Green moss on spalling red brickwork. Once again, beautiful to my eye. Then there's the coping, a half round brick special. The ground is rising steadily here, so the wall steps, necessitating a roll and mitre detail. This is so drenched in memories for me.

My bricklaying teacher Mr Cox demonstrated how to do this 50 years ago. I was enthralled. Ten years later I set it as an exercise for my own students at the University of Zimbabwe. Mature teachers who were upgrading to degree level. The drawing which I did by hand one evening was an exercise for working in pairs, as most brickwork is done.

 

I noted conkers (horse chestnuts) on the ground the other day. This time it's acorns. I have missed these signs of the passing seasons. Looking up I spotted crab apples. It's just a term for semi-wild apples really. Trees that have reverted to a smaller, less sweet fruit.

The other two images are over ageing and weathered details. Sometimes this can happen in a picturesque way that appeals to my eye as in the previous post. But sometimes it goes beyond that. The porch roof might be fun to draw or paint, but it's dangerously close to failure. I have mixed feelings about that one.

The stained brickwork from an overflowing gutter is not even picturesque. Just a eyesore to me. Signs of some kind of creeper involved in the problem, now removed. How subjective is my take on these situations? Not sure, but I suspect we all draw a line somewhere between ageing gracefully and ugly mess.

 

 

 

HAMPSHIRE RAIN

 

St Peter's Church, Headley. Red brick with blue brick and stone banding. Victorian Gothic Revival by Edwin Doby 1868. I have mistaken the bell turret for a chimney based on low rest images and the fact that chimneys are commonly found over vestries.

Modelling the vestry roof was an interesting challenge. Remember that this work is all done inside Revit's family editor, so I can't use the roof tools found in the project environment. It was a good reminder to set up reference planes and name them for best results in RFA world.

I'm not sure why brick was used here. Cheaper than flint perhaps. It's fair-face work inside and out apparently. No internal images available at the moment, just the description on English Heritage. There is a bus stop close by. The no 32 to Newbury. Definitely a journey for the near future.

 

Headley is a triangular village in racehorse training territory South-East of Newbury. The ruler of Dubai, my home for 21 years has a stable not too far away. Dubai is far from perfect, but it's been a godsend to me thanks to my job at GAJ.

St Peter's church is quite modest, built for a small dispersed community during the 1860s when so many churches were being built and restored across the nation. For me it's a huge privilege to be able to visit these buildings, make digital models based on Internet research and gain some insight into the world of my great, great grandparents. Add a couple more greats to hit adults from the time when this church was built.

I'm hoping to get on the 32 bus from Basingstoke next week and see this building in the flesh, along with Kingsclere, maybe Newtown (or Wolverton, not yet modeled)

 

Back in blighty. Slight jetlag but it's a crisp sunny day and I've unpacked all my bags ( mostly books) and taken my first trip in to Sainsburys to restock the larder.

There are a few paintings along with the books. Product of a creative splurge during covid. How quickly that madness has receded in the rear view mirror. I called in at the medical centre to inquire into continuity of my prostate cancer injections. Still a slight uncertainty there, but inching forward.

I had half an hour to kill waiting for the bus back, hence the toastie and latte. The manhole cover is from the bus station. Must be 50 years old at a guess. Nothing spectacular and there's been some differential settlement, but at least someone cared about matching through the joint alignments.

 

Later on the same day. Heavy rain showers. Conkers on the ground. Rainbow against dark clouds as grandson no 2 plays football. Spicy Tadka afterwards with the full UK branch of my immediate family. Saag Paneer and a couple of chipatis, half eaten, half packed for leftovers. Got to keep the weight in check for a healthy retirement.

UK visits always bring out memories and emotions from the distant past. So much has changed but so much remains if only as a shadow. People are trying to remain hopeful but there is a sadness in the air, a certain sense of foreboding.

I try to see it as a challenge. Surely much worse problems have come and gone before. Let the British spirit and heritage shine through again. Cast off the worst of this weak kneed introspection. Forget the finger pointing. What an invigorating first day. (and English cricketers delivered such a crushing victory that the highlights couldn't do it justice 🤣🤣🤣)