The Bloomsbury Scheme of Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens

The University of London is a curious institution that these days no one really knows quite what to do with. At its zenith it was an imperial giant, validating the degrees of institutions from Gower Street to the very ends of the earth.

University College was founded — as “London University” — by the rationalist faction in 1826, prompting the supporters of the Anglican church to establish King’s College with royal approval in 1829.

Neither institution had the right to grant degrees, which led to the overarching University of London being created in 1836 with the power to grant degrees to the students of both colleges — and the further colleges and schools that would be founded later or come within its remit.

The University was run from the Imperial Institute in South Kensington but soon outgrew its quarters within that complex. The 1911 Royal Commission on University Education concluded that the University of London “should have for its headquarters permanent buildings appropriate in design to its dignity and importance, adequate in extent and specially constructed for its purpose”. But where?

Lord Haldane, the commission’s chairman, preferred Bloomsbury. University College was already there, as was the British Museum, and the Dukes of Bedford as the local landowners were happy to provide sufficient space to build a proper centre for the institution.

Charles Fitzroy Doll, the Duke’s own surveyor, designed a rather heavy classical scheme for academic buildings on the site north of the Museum but no progress was made before the Great War erupted.

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A disappearing remnant of 1960s Gaullist optimism in London

While elegant proportions and a certain timeless yet modern style might sound like some bavard’s evocation of a French woman, it seems most appropriate when describing French Railways House.

180 Piccadilly was designed by the architects Shaw & Lloyd to house the main London office of the SNCF, France’s state railway, and incorporated their sales desks and information bureau for tourists on the ground floor.

With interiors by Charlotte Perriand (left) and signage lettered by Ernő Goldfinger (right) — the architect so despised by Ian Fleming that he named a Bond villain after him — the excellent proportions of this little modernist gem exude the optimistic confidence of the Gaullist Fifth Republic.

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There are precious few suitable uses for former church buildings.

At the worst end of the spectrum is nightclub, though bar or restaurant often doesn’t fall terribly far behind either. To my mind, I can hardly think of a more suitable use for an elegant and beautiful former church than to be turned into a library.

An example: the former Anglican parish church of St Philip, Stepney, in Whitechapel. Designed by Arthur Cawston, of whom I know little, it reminds me of J.L. Pearson’s Little Venice church for the eccentric “Catholic Apostolic Church”.

St Philip’s was declared redundant in 1979, at which time the neighbouring London Hospital still had its own medical school. This has since merged with that of St Bartholomew’s into “Barts and the London” or “Barts” or “BL”, under the auspices of Queen Mary University of London.

As St Philip’s sat pretty much smack dab in the middle of the campus of the London Hospital (augmented to the Royal London Hospital from 1990) and the college was surviving in cramped accommodation, it was decided to restore the fabric of the church and convert it to a library and study centre. The crypt of the church was adapted to house computer, teaching, and storage rooms as well as the museum of the Royal London Hospital.

Rather than preserve it in aspic, the medical school decided to keep this as a living building by commissioning eight new stained-glass windows to replace plain glass. They are completed along rather forthright German modernist designs and are dedicated to such themes as Gastroenterology and Molecular Biology. They will not be to everyone’s taste, but it is admirable for a medical school to commission stained glass windows at the turn of the millennium.

The Survey of London’s Whitechapel Project has a typically thorough entry on QMUL’s Whitechapel Library / the former church, including these applaudable photographs the Survey commissioned from Derek Kendall.

The Architecture Association is renowned as the most pedantic of training schools for the profession. Housed as it is in an immaculate set of Georgian townhouses in Bedford Square, its students are rigorously trained to avoid anything that might be beautiful, expressive of the inherited tradition of millennia, or pleasing to the human condition.

Nonetheless, I love architectural models, and the AA is having an exhibition of a handful of models of the various places in which the Warburg Institute has been housed across its peripatetic and tumultuous history until it found its thus-far permanent home in Woburn Square in Bloomsbury.

“Architecture and interiors were crucial for Aby Warburg’s interrogation of culture,” the AA opaquely tells us.

“Between 1923 and 1958, designs were commissioned for buildings, interiors, and exhibitions, as the Warburg Library and Institute moved through a series of homes, first in Hamburg and then in London,” they more helpfully inform.

“This exhibition, an itinerant archive of models and drawings that portray the seven different spaces the Warburg Institute has occupied, sheds new light on Warburg’s involvement with architecture.”

Connectedly, the University of London is hosting an exhibition looking at Charles Holden’s masterplan for that institution’s Bloomsbury campus.

This show “celebrates the architect’s vision of what a modern university could be through displays of detailed architectural models, archival documents, photo albums, and other mixed media”.

Senate House is an amazing building but I think we can be glad the full scale of its original plan — stretching all the way up towards Gordon Square — was never completed.

What could be more mundane than the Country Bus Services Map? Not when you put the design in the hands of Max Gill. Younger brother to the more famous (but controversial) Eric Gill, Lesilei Macdonald “Max” Gill was a polymathic artist: cartographer, designer, sculptor, painter, and letterer.

In 1914, Frank Pick, inventor of the London Underground brand, hired Max Gill to create the Wonderground Map. Each Underground station had a copy of this map with its inventive and amusing illustrations, such as the two figures hurling hams at Hurlingham. As one newspaper said when it was introduced, ‘People spend so long looking at this map – they miss their trains yet go on smiling.’

The Country Bus Services Map dates from 1928 and depicts London as a great crammed and crowded fortress city from which bus services flow forth to allow the citizens to escape its walls and experience the rustic beauty of the surrounding countryside.

St Paul’s Cathedral looms large between shields depicting the arms of the City and County of London, with the Monument, the Port of London Authority, and the Tower cuddling up to it.

Lambeth Palace and the Oval at Kennington are the only features south of the river that make it into Gill’s walled metropolis.

In more recent years, the designer and typographer Adam Hayes decided to issue a cheeky update entitled ‘London (After Max Gill)’ (available as a print as well).

Choked by smoggy traffic, the Shard now looms large, while a cheese grater represents the Cheesegrater. Tree stumps are joined by fussy signs instructing NO THIS and NO THAT and CCTV cameras are omnipresent.

‘Wonderground’ and the Country Bus Services Map were not the limits of Max Gill’s work for London Underground. The London Transport Museum holds many examples of his work within there collection, some of which have been digitised and are viewable online — though irritatingly not in any sufficiently zoomable detail.

Wren’s post-Fire St Paul’s Cathedral was an icon of resistance to German aggression and an emblem of survival during the Blitz, but while the dome survived the church did suffer damage: A bomb fell threw the roof of the east end on the evening of 10 October 1940, tumbling masonry and destroying the high altar.

Despite the reredos remaining largely intact, as can be seen in the photograph above, it was decided to remove it and rebuild the High Altar under a baldacchino as Sir Christopher Wren had intended.

In 1958 the new High Altar, designed by W Godfrey Allen and Steven Dykes Bower, was dedicated with an American Memorial Chapel behind it.

This was proposed by the Dean of St Paul’s and General Eisenhower volunteered to raise money for it in the United States.

The Dean turned down the Supreme Commander’s offer, saying that this would be paid for by Britons as an appreciation of the American sacrifice during our common struggle.

A roll of honour lists the names of the 28,000 Americans who gave their lives while stationed from Great Britain.

Perhaps more intriguing than either view is the one below of the interior of St Paul’s before the Victorian scheme for the High Altar was executed.

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, at a time of great uncertainty in Europe, St George’s in Southwark was opened solemnly by Bishop Wiseman — writes the Cathedral Archivist Melanie Bunch. The ceremony was attended by thirteen other bishops in all their finery, of whom four were foreign. Hundreds of clergy of all ranks were in the procession and many of the Catholic aristocracy of England were present. The music was magnificent, the choir including professional singers.

Pugin’s neo-Gothic church was impressive but not finished, and it was not to be a cathedral for another four years. Dr Wiseman, who was both the chief celebrant and the preacher, was bishop of a titular see, as the Catholic dioceses of England and Wales did not yet exist. Nonetheless the opening marked a significant stage in the revival of the Catholic Church in this region. The spur had been the spiritual needs of the poor Irish who had long formed settled communities in parts of London and other cities. The plans for the church had been drawn up in 1839 – before the severity of the famine in Ireland, which began in 1845, could have been foreseen. Some had considered the size of the new church unnecessary, but it turned out to be providential, as immigration from Ireland to this locality and elsewhere was reaching a peak at this time.

The extraordinary turmoil in Europe that had started early in the year in Sicily could not be ignored. In February Louis-Philippe was dethroned in France. There was anxiety that revolution might cross the Channel. Pugin decided that he should obtain muskets to defend his church of St Augustine under construction in Ramsgate. Revolution spread to German and Italian states and countries under Austrian rule. For four days in late June, there was a brief and bloody civil uprising in Paris.

While Europe was ablaze, London was calm, and the opening went ahead. In his homily, Wiseman praised God for all his mercies to this country. From our perspective, we might have expected that he would have spoken about the dark days of persecution, or at least the struggles of the recent past to get such a large church built, constantly hampered by lack of funds. Rev. Dr Thomas Doyle, whom we honour as the founder of the Cathedral, was present and assisting at the Mass, but his courage, faith, and dogged persistence over many years were not acknowledged on this occasion.

We might remember that a Catholic event like this had not been witnessed in England since the Reformation, seemingly prompting Wiseman to take the opportunity to explain to the non-Catholics present that the ceremony and display of the Catholic Church came from a desire to show greater respect for God. To the foreign bishops he said that their presence proved the unity and diversity of the Church. At the end of his homily, Wiseman caused a sensation by reading out a letter from the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Affre, regretting that he could not attend the opening. By then it was known that he had already died from wounds received on the barricades while he was trying to mediate with the rebels. Wiseman called him a martyr.

Among others who never saw the opening are some who served St George’s mission with Thomas Doyle at the earlier chapel in London Road. Three of them had died before their time, only a few years before, from diseases endemic among their flock. We remember them and all who have served the Cathedral with gratitude. At the time of the opening, St George’s was the largest Catholic church in London, and for the next fifty years was to be the centre of Catholic life in the metropolis. Much has changed since, including the rebuilding of the Cathedral, but we give thanks to Almighty God who continues to sustain it. (more…)

“FORTUNATE IS SOUTHWARK in her possessions,” Sir Albert Richardson wrote, “for she holds in this fragment a key to the aspect of her many vanished inns…”

The George Inn features largely in the deep psychogeography of Southwark, ours the most ancient of boroughs. Here is the greatest living remnant of the coaching inns of old, even if much reduced in form. The current structure dates from the 1670s but we know an inn on this site was well established by the 1580s. It is now in the possession of the National Trust, but is a functioning Greene King pub where you can find a good pint.

Up and down our High Street, for centuries merchants, travellers, traders, and revellers would slake their thirst in a procession of pubs, inns, and taverns. English pilgrims heading to Canterbury would start off here, and recent arrivals to London from the Continent would make their first acquaintance with England’s capital by arriving at “The” Borough after journeying from the Channel ports.

“One enters the inn yard with pleasurable anticipation,” Sir Albert continues in his 1925 volume, The English Inn, Past and Present; A Review of Its History and Social Life.

“There is fortunately sufficient of the old building remaining to carry the mind back to the days of its former prosperity. There are the sagging galleries, the heavily-sashed windows and the old glass in the squares. The rooms are panelled. In the dining-room are the pews, and the bar is typical.”

In Richardson’s time, just a century ago, these rooms would have often been full of hop growers from Kent and the hop merchants who traded with them, though they are all gone now.

And yet, some things have not changed:

“Here we can obtain old English fare, and, heedless of the beat of London, commune with ghostly frequenters to whom the place was at one time a reality.” (more…)

Wanderers in central London who find themselves in the whereabouts of Piccadilly Circus or Soho of a Tuesday evening can avail themselves of the devotions offered by the Guild of Our Lady of Warwick Street.

Every week, the Rosary is said along with other prayers at this statue in Warwick Street Church. They conclude with the rather beautiful and moving ‘Night Litany for London’ imploring God’s mercy upon the many inhabitants of our capital city.

Its original form is believed to have been composed by the Rev’d H.A. Wilson, vicar of the Protestant parish of St Augustine in Haggerston. Msgr Graham Leonard — in the days when he was Anglican Bishop of London — also published a version through the Church Literature Association (a High Church body) with an introduction he wrote himself.

The version used at Warwick Street is included here:

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This little enclave is one of the best-kept secrets of London. I used to live just around the corner from Bonnington Square and walking into it was like entering a secret world.

Just steps from the gritty urban world of the Vauxhall gyratory there is a verdant realm where a good coffee can be had and where many neighbours actually know eachothers’ names.

Built to house railway workers, the whole square was compulsorily purchased by that archetype of grim 1970s misery, the Inner London Education Authority, to be demolished as a sports ground for the neighbouring school.

Within a decade, however, no demolition had been approved and the squatters had moved in — in this case organising a cooperative, building a community garden, and running a shop. They managed to negotiate the purchase of their homes from the Greater London Council and Bonnington Square was saved.

Gardeners have turned its streets into one of the most lushly verdant corners of central London, and now this five-bedroom house is up for grabs. If you have £1.9 mil going spare it would be a nice place to live.

For an ardent sun-lover like me the roof terrace — with barbecue artfully inserted into the old chimney breast — is the best feature, along with the proximity to the excellent Italo Deli.

Sir Basil Spence’s unbuilt Notting Hill theatre

Sir Basil Spence was just about the last (first? only?) British modernist who was any good. His British Embassy in Rome is hated by some but combines a baroque grandeur appropriate to the Eternal City with the crisp brutalism of modernity that makes it true to its time.

In 1963, Spence accepted the commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Ballet Rambert for a London venue to host the performances of both bodies.

The poet, playwright, and theatre manager Ashley Dukes had died in 1959, leaving a site across Ladbroke Road from his tiny Mercury Theatre (in which his wife Marie Rambert’s ballet company performed) for the building of a new hall.

The design moves from the sweeping curve of the street frontage up to a series of angular concoctions and finally the large fly-space above the stage itself.

It made the most of a highly constricted site and would have housed 1,100-1,600 patrons (historical sources vary on this figure). This was a big step up from the old Mercury Theatre which housed 150 at a push.

Ultimately, the plan failed. London County Council was worried there wasn’t enough parking in the area, and the Royal Shakespeare Company was tempted away by the City of London Corporation which was building the Barbican Centre.

General James C. McConville, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, dropped into London this week to meet with General Sir Patrick Sanders, who will take over as his British opposite number (Chief of the General Staff) later this year.

Both are the head of their countries’ respective armies and subordinate to overall defence chiefs, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the US and the Chief of the Defence Staff here in the United Kingdom.

General McConville was welcomed to the official Army Headquarters at Horse Guards, Whitehall, by the Major General Commanding the Household Division, Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika.

A contingent from the Coldstream Guards and the Band of the Irish Guards put together a ceremonial display and Gen. McConville took the salute.

Gen. McConville will also deliver the Kermit Roosevelt Lecture at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst this week.

The general’s visit provided a chance to show off the US Army’s new service uniform — modelled on the popular old pinks and greens.

This provides a much welcome alternative to the Dress Blues which, to my mind, make soldiers look like glorified policemen.

As I wrote when discussing similar changes in Peru, it’s not turning the clock back: it’s choosing a better future.

There are almost as many Londons as there are Londoners. There’s Shakespeare’s London, Pepys’s London, Johnson’s London — even fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes have their own London.

The city of Saint Thomas More takes form in a representation made by the excellent map designer Mike Hall, Harlow-born but now based in Valencia.

This map was commissioned from Hall by the Centre for Thomas More Studies in Texas and the designer based the view and the colour scheme on Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg’s map of London from their 1617 Civitates Orbis Terrarum

From his birthplace in Milk Street to the site of his execution, all the sites from the great points of More’s life are here in this map.

The future Lord Chancellor was educated at the school founded by the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony, one of the best in the City of London, and when he finished at Oxford returned to London to study law at New Hall and Lincoln’s Inn.

Crosby Place, the house that he bought in 1523 is not far from St Anthony’s School though its surviving remnant was moved brick by brick to Cheyne Walk in 1910 — a site close to More’s Chelsea residence of Beaufort House.

The chapel of Ely Place — town palace of the Bishop of Ely — still survives as St Etheldreda’s, the only mediæval church in London now in use as a Catholic parish.

God’s own Borough of Southwark gets a look in as well, with the Augustinian priory of St Mary Overs (now the Protestant cathedral of Southwark) and the town palace of the bishops of Winchester. Remnants of the great hall of Winchester Palace remains standing to this day.

As is the mapmaker’s privilege, Mr Hall has taken some liberties: in order to fit Lambeth Palace — the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury (and Primate of All England) he’s shifted it a bit north of its actual spot.

I wish he’d kept the Rose and Globe theatres which he included in his initial sketch for the map — Southwark was the theatre district of its day.

Hall also completed a sketch of Beaufort House as it would have appeared during St Thomas More’s lifetime. The house was demolished in 1740, and today’s Beaufort Street runs the line of the main drive leading up to it.

The Church of All Saints at Chelsea (now known as Chelsea Old Church) is at the bottom of the sketch and is where the More family burial vault is. His severed head is believed to be entombed there to this day.

AS THE MOST ANCIENT of boroughs — and right across the bridge from the City of London itself — Southwark is presumed to have had at least a small Jewish community before the Edict of Expulsion in 1290. Records show the existence of a merchant and moneylender named ‘Isaac of Southwark’ who defended fellow Jews before the Exchequer of the Jews, the special court that dealt with Jewish taxes, fines, and legal cases.

Before 1290, it seems likely any Jews in the Borough would have crossed London Bridge to worship in the Great Synagogue in Old Jewry. After the Edict was rescinded in the seventeenth century, Jewish communities sprang up slowly. Pepys in his diary records a visit to the small Sephardic synagogue in Creechurch Lane in 1663, and by 1690 a new Great Synagogue had opened in the City for Ashkenazi Jews.

Jews in the Borough had their first known place of worship thanks to Mr Nathan Henry (born c. 1764). As a boy, Henry heard the mad Lord George Gordon speak in St George’s Fields (where your humble and obedient scribe is currently situated typing this) which provoked the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots. By a strange twist of fate, that Scottish nobleman ended up converting to Judaism and died in Newgate Prison styling himself Yisrael bar Avraham.

Around 1799, Nathan Henry fitted out a room as a synagogue in his house at No. 2, Market Street near the junction with Newington Causeway. (Market Street was later renamed Dantzic Street after the Baltic city, and is now Keyworth Street after a First World War winner of the Victoria Cross.) Later he roofed over the whole of the yard behind the house with entry gained through the shop at the front, and two rows of gallery seating above for ladies (entered through a bedroom).

Henry’s house-synagogue was small and crowded: it could fit a hundred people in uncomfortable circumstances, but those hundred were not always happy. The proprietor, having built the synagogue, considered himself the sole authority with the right to appoint wardens and office-holders. In 1823 a group of worshippers seceded and found new premises in which to worship in Prospect Place, the south side of what is now St George’s Road. The two synagogues continued in friendly relations and Nathan Henry was largely considered the head of the Jews of the Borough until his death in 1853, after which his house-synagogue shut up shop.

But by the 1860s the need for a new place of worship was apparent. For one thing, the lease on Prospect Place was coming up, and as Rabbi Rosenbaum put it the building was “incommodious, dilapidated, and unsightly, and was not even protection against inclement weather, for the roof admitted the rain and the raising of umbrellas during divine worship was no unusual occurrence”.

A building committee was put together, funds raised (more slowly than anticipated), and a site found in Albion Place, Walworth — soon to become Heygate Street. On 7 April 1867, the Borough New Synagogue was consecrated in a ceremony attended by almost all the Jewish clergy of London. In the evening, many of the congregation repaired to Radley’s Hotel in Bridge Street for a great big hooley to celebrate. The synagogue was accompanied by a boys’ school and a girls’ school both located next door. (more…)

The Spanish & Portuguese synagogue at Bevis Marks in the City of London is well worth a visit. The last time my parents were in town we went for a tour given by an ebullient guide who was a big fan of Ben Disraeli and who taught us the story of the congregation and the building.

In Apollo magazine, Sharman Kadish has written a good summary of the ongoing threat to Bevis Marks from proposed overbearing office developments. (Dr Kadish also wrote a 2004 article on “The ‘Cathedral Synagogues’ of England” in Jewish Historical Studies.)

One planning application which would have almost completely cut off the synagogue’s natural light has been rejected but others loom on the horizon, one recommended for approval by the City’s planning czars.

London blog ‘Ian Visits’ visited Bevis Marks in 2019.

The synagogue is now temporarily closed to visitors for renovations but shabbat services continue to take place. Visiting information otherwise can be found on the congregation’s website.

Incidentally — given that November is the month of the dead — the name carved above the entrance of the synagogue is Kahal Kadosh Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, or ‘Holy Congregation of the Gates of Heaven’ which mirrors the Catholic cemetery where two of my grandparents are buried. (more…)

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