Historic England

{On both ends:}In memoriam C. G. 1886 {On both sides:}Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association

Backward glance (6): Miss Barlow and Doulton's womenAnother backward glance, this time at the work of Doulton's ceramics factory in Lambeth, London.In Victorian England, Doulton pottery was everywhere. Doulton of Lambeth made drainpipes, sanitary ware, fireplaces, and all kinds of other practical wares. They also developed an enormous range of art pottery, employing men and women who trained at the nearby Lambeth School of Art to decorate jugs, vases, plates, and everything else you could make out of clay. Doulton artists and craftworkers also produced architectural ceramics, cladding and decorating the walls of factories, offices, hotels, and hospitals. The whole enterprise was a typically Victorian marriage of art and industry.Only part of their Lambeth headquarters remains, and the highlight of the building is this tympanum celebrating the artistic side of the Doulton ethos. While Henry Doulton (the seated figure towards the right) explains what goes on in the studios, two of his top artists are on hand to show what they do. On the left, seated and working on a pot, is Hannah Barlow, who specialized in incised line drawings of animals. Her pet cat is just visible under her chair; she had a pet fox, too, but he didn’t live at work. The bearded figure in the centre, holding a large urn, is George Tinworth, the virtuoso sculptor in clay who created this panel. His long and successful career for Doulton, producing figures, reliefs (often of Biblical subjects), decorated pots, and more, makes him famous among collectors. Tinworth Street, honouring his memory, is a couple of blocks away.The Lambeth works closed in 1956, but there is still a lot of Doulton ware around on English buildings from the mid-Victorian period to the 1930s. Their terracotta panels often show Victorian decorative art at its best, their tiles sometimes give expression to the swirling rhythms of the Art Nouveau – and their brewery plaques occasionally still point the way towards a good pint. Here’s to art and industry.* * *Hannah Barlow (1851–1916) was Doulton's first female employee. She came to Doulton's in 1871 after her time at art school because her family had fallen on bad times financially and she needed to support herself. Among the jobs open to a young middle-class woman with artistic talent, one in the Lambeth studios of Doulton fitted the bill. Barlow was a trailblazer. She was soon joined by two of her sisters, Florence and Lucy (although I think Lucy did not stay long) – together with many other young women, some of whom stayed for many years, some of whom left the factory to get married. Several of Doulton's "star" decorators were women, and collectors still prize the work of Eliza Simmance, Edith Lupton, the Barlow sisters, and many others. Florence specialized in beautifully detailed colour images of birds, Hannah's forte was her incised line drawings. When John Ruskin visited the factory, he was enthusiastic about Hannah's work, and came away with a piece decorated with one of her illustrations of pigs. Doulton's were obviously proud of her work, and she earned her place on this relief panel above the entrance to their building.

From the first annual meeting of the Ladies Sanitary Association, 21 July 1859:The Earl of SHAFTESBURY upon the reading of this report, said that, although he had been honoured with a request to preside on this public occasion, the ladies who had established this association made it one of their rules that no gentleman should interfere in this business, and he thought they were right; for this was peculiarly the women's work, and they should keep the management of their affairs in their own hands. ... Although general measures of sanitary reform might be promoted by boards of health and other institutions administered by men, the details of the subject could only be dealt with by women. It was only they who could visit the families of the poor to give them advice and instruction upon various matters, which, homely and simple as they were, vitally concerned the health and safety of the whole population. The weaning of infants, the "evils of wet-nursing", the "evils of tight-lacing", and the "evils of perambulators", such matters as these were discussined in the publications of this association, and were fitly explained to the wmoen of the working classes by the ladies who had combined together to promote this most useful and benevolent design. It was evident that they might thus do a great deal not only to obviate the spread of epidemic disease, and to diminish the sickness and mortality which afflicted the families of the poor, but also to prevent those painful cases of deformity, crookedness and crippling of their offpsring which so frequently occurred, as the result of mismanagement in nursing. ... He would take this opportunity to make his solemn protest against perambulators, as they were commonly used at present. He did not object to them as a means of conveying children from one place to another, but he protested as their being used as cages for the poor children, who ought to be sprawling about and playing on the grass; he had seen them in the park shut up in a perambulator like rabbits in a hutch, while their nursemaids were walking, reading, gossipping or flirting. He was also much impressed with the mischief caused by the use of Godfrey's cordial and similar narcotics; he had known cases in which a child was left with a piece of flannel steeped in laudanum, put into its mouth, for many hours, while its mother went away to her work. Surely, if mothers and nurses were made aware that, by such conduct, they were laying the foundation for dreadful disorders or premature death of the children committed to their care, they would adopt a more salutary treatment. He remembered that, some years ago, in connexion with the dispensary established in the adjoining parishes of St. James and St. George, a small sum was laid out upon whitewashing and ventilation amongst the poor houses in some of the most crowded and unhealthy streets in that neighbourhood, and the ersult was that the number of cases from that district applying to the dispensary for relief was reduced in one year by no fewer than 800. This showed what might be done by means of sanitary reform. ... Great results had been obtained, or might be obtained, from legislative intervention, and compulsory measures of drainage, the widening of streets for ventilation, the improvement of towns and dwelling-houses and the establishment of public parks and playgronuds for recreation and exercise. But a great deal must always depend upon women, since they had almost absolute control over every human being for the first few years of his life. Wives and mothers were, after all, the most valuable and eficient agentsi n this great work. The diffusion of good sanitary knowledge he regarded as auxiliary to the extension of the Gospel itself; for he was convinced there would be no surer way of reaching the hearts of the people than by conveying to their homes, along with the lessons of Christianity, the teaching which would promote their physical comfort, health and deceny, and all the

{On the main body of the monument:}Sacred to the memory of the dead interred in the ancient church & churchyard of St John the Baptist upon Walbrook during four centuries. The formation of the District Railway having necessitated the destruction of the greater part of the churchyard all the human remains contained therein were carefully collected and reinterred in a vault beneath this monument AD 1884. {Lower down:}Rev. Lewis Borrett White, DD, RectorJohn R. W. Luck, Edward White - Church wardens

{On the front of the plinth:}Field Marshal The Viscount Alanbrooke {Right side of plinth:}Chief of the Imperial General Staff, KF, GCB, OM, GOVO, DSO {Front of shallow lower plinth:}Master of Strategy {Left side of plinth:}Master Gunner, St James's Park, 1946 - 1956 {Inscribed into the base of the statue:}Ivor Roberts-Jones, CBE, RACast by Meridian London

Over a thousand white cups and saucers are laid out on five long tables. Actually, that's not quite accurate: some saucers are all alone, their cups missing. Those empty saucers are worth a closer look, because each bears a good deed. This is Exchange, the Foundling Museum's exhibition by artist Clare Twomey. Each day, ten random visitors are given a token which they can exchange for a cup. However, there's a price: in taking a cup, you agree to undertake the good deed printed on its base and on the saucer below. You can't peep, and you can't change your mind - if you're not willing to do the deed, you put the cup back and go away empty-handed. The installation is inspired by the ideas of philanthropy, good deeds and exchange which underpinned the Foundling Hospital. It took in children whose parents were unable to look after them, acting as both orphanage and school; among the exhibits in the museum are little tokens left by mothers so that they could identify and reclaim their child if circumstances improved. Artistic supporters including Hogarth and Handel used their talents to encourage others to support the institutionThe modern good deeds have been suggested by former pupils of the Foundling Hospital as well as other schools, charities, and supporters of the museum. I was one of the lucky ten visitors on the day of my visit, and duly picked my cup. It was a nerve-wracking moment, because some of the deeds already uncovered would have been beyond me. (For example, some required a car, and one a garden, neither of which I have.) I'm not sure that the deed I did select is terribly well-suited to my talents, but I'm committed and shall have to do my best!So, I have undertaken to 'sew something for charity'. My sewing is pretty bad - let's just say that when I suggested I charge £1 to sew on a button or £2 not to sew on a button, my mum thought it would be lucrative! Any more productive ideas as to how best to achieve this challenge are therefore very welcome.

Backward glance (5): A tall house near the GateThis backward glance focuses on an area of London in which I lived for a while. Its patterns of change and development still fascainte me.Clanricarde Gardens, just off Notting Hill Gate, is a street of very tall, narrow houses built between 1869 and 1873 by a pair of West London builders, Thomas Good and William White. It was a speculative development, consisting of 51 of these houses, together with a row of six houses with shops below, just around the corner in Notting Hill Gate itself. The tall houses were intended for large Victorian families with servants, and the developers were probably successful in finding buyers because soon after they finished these, they embarked on another similar development nearby. The houses were convenient for town but in the 1870s very near the edge of London too, and no doubt appealed to professionals with one eye on the city and one on the countryside. Spacious, light rooms with big windows, elegant classical details on the facades, and sizeable service basements probably appealed, too. Among the early occupants were the Beerbohms and their young son, Max, the writer and artist to be. Max remembered that when he was a small boy the houses seemed as tall as skyscrapers to him. But a few decades after Max grew up, these houses were nearly all subdivided into flats. Perhaps endless stairs without a lift, not to mention close proximity to the noisy Gate, meant that they lost their appeal to the well-heeled. Or perhaps owners just saw a way to make a fast buck out of multiple rents. The stairs were certainly a challenge, as I remember very well, having shared a flat at the top of this very house in the early-1980s. By then, many of the houses were labyrinths of multi-occupied flats and rooms whose occupants spoke a babel of languages – something that gave the place a wonderfully cosmopolitan atmosphere while also making the whole area a challenge to a friend who was employed on organizing the 1981 population census. I remember big, airy rooms, the continuous background roar of traffic, the squawk of gulls perching on the balustrade outside the upper windows, and a hot summer with many windows open and a hint of hashish pervading the air from neighbouring houses. “Ah, the scent of the orient!” a visiting elderly relative who had spent many of her early years in “the east” observed with relish. It was something that John Lennon relished too: there is a story that the Beatle smoked his first joint in this street. It was all more like the Notting Hill of Samuel Selvon† than the Notting Hill of Hugh Grant. And none the worse for that. * * *†Author of The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending, fine novels describing the lives of West Indian immigrants to London.* * *Living in London, as I did in the 1980s and 1990s, one could not but be aware of constant alterations to the built environment: not just the continuous additions to it in the form of the occasional good building amid the mass of new sub-architecture but also the cycles of change to older structures. This Clanricarde Gardens house brought these changes literally home to me – a grand house subdivided to provide more basic, but still very comfortable, accommodation for individuals, couples, and nuclear families. Some of the houses in the street had sunk yet lower, split into bedsits separated by flimsy partition walls and let to the very poor. One of these bedsit-houses caught fire while I lived in the street, with tragic results. Nowadays, the street seems to have been gentrified (regentrified, I suppose). The flats into which the houses are divided are more luxurious than in my day and command impressive price tags. The cars in the street number many BMWs and their more modestly badged cousins, Minis. Residents with the money to afford it have realised the attractions of living here, in a relatively quiet spot near the heart of a great city. The cycle of change goes on.

29 & 30 College StreetPresented to the Worshipful Company of Innholders by Walter Daniel Cronin, Master, 1920 - 21 & John Wylde, Renter Warden 1920 - 21, this building was erected by the Company in 1958.Bryan N. Gibbs, MBE, Master

The mansion blocks that line Edgware Road are seedy now, bearing the scars of decades of low-cost maintenance and lazy workers installing cables for phones, security systems and lights.But they were high status back in the 1930s when they were built, as shown by the trouble the developers took over the entrance to the flats above Evelyn Court.The doorway is surrounded with a delicate beaded string and given emphasis with a carved lintel. It is very Moderne, with no frivolous ornament - ironically, as the piece is itself an ornament.The Marble Arch at the centre is stripped of all its classical flimflam, the bus climbing up the hill in the background is streamlined and sleek, and the houses have randomly-placed windows implying a 'formfollowsfunction' ideology. The sky is paved.Trees are the only living things in this landscape.

I've taken the train through Marc and Isambard Brunel's Thames Tunnel many times; on one memorable evening I even walked through it. However, I've always entered through an East London Line station. The thousands of Victorian pedestrians who were its first users took a rather different route down to it. Before the Brunels' tunnellers could dig horizontally below the Thames riverbed, they first had to dig vertically from surface level. They did so by building a caisson at Rotherhithe - a heavy brick cylinder atop an iron cutting edge, which sank into the ground under its own weight. The earth inside could then be dug out, leaving a nice, neat vertical shaft. This process was later repeated at the Wapping end of the tunnel. When the tunnel was completed, the shafts at each end formed convenient entrance halls, lined with spiraling staircases. (The original plan was to add two much larger shafts, holding gentle ramps, so that horses and carts could transport ships' cargoes through the tunnel. However, the money ran out before these could be built.)The tunnel was not a great financial success. Never able to take the horse-drawn commercial traffic which might have made it profitable, it was reduced to collecting pennies from pedestrians. When the tunnel lost its novelty and became a sleazy, dangerous place it was reinvented as a fairground, before finding its vocation as a railway tunnel in 1869. The original Wapping entrance was later incorporated into the station building; at Rotherhithe, it was simply closed.Then the East London Line was upgraded and reopened as part of London Overground in 2010. That created an opportunity for the neighbouring Brunel Museum, which tells the story of the tunnel. The contractors put a concrete floor into the upper part of the shaft (the lower part has railway lines running through it), the Museum was given use of it, and the possibility of entering the space for the first time in a century and a half was created. Indeed, that's just what I was able to do recently, as tours were offered during Open Garden Squares weekend. (This is not as odd as it sounds: the top of the shaft is now a lovely herb garden and sometimes cocktail bar.) It's not the easiest visit to make, involving a slightly precarious clamber down assorted steps before the visitor stoops or crawls through a narrow - but thankfully short - tunnel, ready for the final descent down temporary stairs. However, it's worth the effort as the space is quite special. It's large, cool, dimly-lit and almost empty of furnishings, but filled with murmurs of voices from above, the rumble of trains below, and its own slightly echoing acoustic. The walls still bear the scars of those earlier stairs down which Victorian sightseers descended. The Museum hopes to raise the money to open this shaft as a permanent space for exhibitions and events. In the meantime, it offers tours and concerts. I would recommend a visit - there are more details on the Museum website.I also visited Park Crescent with its Nursemaids' Tunnel, and Garden Barge Square.