Three Norwich Women

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts

Decades before female emancipation, Elizabeth Fry, Amelia Opie and Harriet Martineau – all born into a city with a long history of dissent – managed to bring their ideas to national attention.

Elizabeth Fry on the £5 note – legal tender only until May 5th 2017

Between the early C12th and the early C15th a succession of charters gave Norwich an uncommon degree of self-government, allowing the city to appoint its own mayor and for civic matters to be conducted in a general assembly [1]. In a fine example of Norfolk’s resentment of external interference (county motto ‘Do different’), Robert Kett led 16,000 men in a rebellion against the enclosure of land and laid siege to royalist forces in the city [2]. Later, during the Civil War, the city was far from loyal to the monarchy, famously contributing the ‘Maiden Troop’ of Ironsides to Cromwell’s New Model Army [3]. In the centuries that followed, this sense of independence and political radicalism was accompanied by a rise in dissent against the established church. Indeed, by the early C18th 20% of the population were Protestant dissenters [4]. It was into this free-thinking climate that Fry, Opie and Martineau emerged.

Liz Fry Rd.jpg

Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) was born in Gurney’s Court off Magadalen Street.

Gurney’s Court, off Magdalen Street, Norwich

Plaque in a gated alleyway leading to Gurney House (above)

Elizabeth’s childhood home was not, however, in Norwich-over-the-water but a few miles outside the city in Earlham Hall, which currently houses the University of East Anglia’s School of Law.

Earlham Rd Earlham Hall north front [0632] 1935-08-10.jpg

Earlham Hall, north front 1935. (c) georgeplunkett.co.uk

Elizabeth came from banking stock [5]. Her mother Catherine was a Barclay, from the family who established Barclay’s Bank on Bank Plain (now OPEN Youth Trust). Her father, John, became a partner in Gurneys Bank, founded by a cousin – Barclays and Gurneys banks eventually merging in 1896. For generations the Gurneys had been financial middle-men in Norwich’s cloth trade [6] and by the C19th they were sufficiently wealthy that one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s characters in the opera Trial by Jury could be described, “as rich as the Gurneys” [see 7].

In 1800 Elizabeth married John Fry at the Friends Meeting House in Goat Lane (replaced by the ‘new’ meeting house in 1826).

The ‘new’ Friends Meeting House (1826), Lower Goat Lane, by the otherwise unknown Norwich surveyor JT Patience. To left and right can be seen four almshouses built for poor Quakers.

Elizabeth was greatly influenced by the writing of American Quaker William Savery, leading her to take on the cause of prisoners, the sick and the poor. After moving to London she began to visit women and their children in Newgate Prison where she was appalled by what she saw. This led to her forming the first national women’s association in the country – the British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Women Prisoners. She gave evidence to parliament on prison reform; she also instigated a training school for nurses that is said to have been the inspiration for Florence Nightingale’s mission in the Crimea [5, 6]. In rejecting the external authority and mystery of the Anglican church in favour of a personal examination of moral and religious matters, Quakers – like other Dissenters – incurred the displeasure of the establishment. In consequence, Quakers were disbarred from holding certain civil offices and from attending university. The identifiable otherness of non-conformists during this period was brought home to me by an advertisement in The Norwich Mercury (Sat December 2nd 1837) that offered insurance specifically for ‘Protestant Dissenters’. It is therefore remarkable that a dissenting woman …

(a) portly matron with ten children … gatecrashed into public life, into an exclusively male preserve, when the very idea was unthinkable [6].

Elizabeth Fry’s soberly coloured costume in, perhaps surprisingly expensive grosgrain silk. The waist measures 71 inches (180cm). http://norfolkmuseumscollections.org/collections/objects/object-3741928732.html

Amelia Opie (1769-1853) was also born into a Quaker family, at a house in Colegate (demolished) [5]. Her father James was a physician and her mother (also Amelia) was known locally as a leading proponent of the abolition of slavery. Out of this union emerged a spirited young girl who became a prolific writer, writing novels, poems and plays; by the age of 18 she had already published (anonymously) a novel entitled The Dangers of Coquetry. In her early years Amelia attended the Octagon Chapel along the road from her house. Completed in 1756 by architect Thomas Ivory, this elegantly simple building was the first of its kind in England and one of the first Methodist chapels in the world [8].

The Octagon Chapel, Colegate, Norwich (1756)

In London, Amelia met the fashionable painter John Opie and they married in 1798 – the year he painted her portrait.

Amelia Opie by John Opie 1798. © National Portrait Gallery

In London, Amelia was part of a literary circle that included Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth and Sheridan. During this period she wrote her best known book, the romantic novel Adeline Mowbray (1804), which she was encouraged to write by her friend Mary Wollstonecraft [9] – another of John Opie’s sitters. Wollstonecraft was famous for having written A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) in which she argued that women were not inferior to men, just less well educated [9]. After John Opie’s early death in 1807 Amelia returned to live with her father in Norwich where she was encouraged to join the Quakers by Elizabeth Fry and her brother Joseph John Gurney. On becoming a Friend Amelia stopped writing and in 1825 adopted the clothing of the ‘Plain’ Quakers. This meant that she shunned the fine clothes that had attracted her as a girl [10] and wore instead drab gowns and plain bonnets; it is in this form of dress that she is depicted on her statue in Opie Street [11]. Currently, this artificial stone statue is uniformly coated in a matt-cream stone-paint. This may seem brutal to those who can remember the purple-painted cloak from over 20 years ago although it does seem more appropriate to Quaker ideals.

Statue of Amelia Opie, placed above what was the Leicester Building Society in Opie St in 1956. Made by Norwich men, architect JP Chaplin and sculptor Z Leon (1956) [12]

Amelia Opie may have lived further up Opie Street, at the junction with Castle Meadow.

opie diptych2.jpg

As a Quaker, Amelia began to campaign against the slave trade and, together with Anna Gurney, set up the Norwich branch of a national network of female anti-slavery societies. A few years after the Slavery Abolition Act was passed (1833) Amelia attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London (1840). Shamefully, Haydon’s painting of the event does not depict leading female activists like Lucy Townsend [13] but it does at least acknowledge the key role of female campaigners by including some, such as Amelia Opie seen on the right in her high, black Quaker bonnet.

The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840, by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Oil on canvas 1841 (c) National Portrait Gallery, London

The distinctive Quaker bonnet can be seen again, in Norwich Castle Museum, in a fascinating exhibition case containing artefacts about the Anti-Slavery Movement.

Display of abolitionist material featuring a bust of Amelia Opie by David D’Angers. (c) Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery

Amelia Opie died aged 84 and is buried by the side of her father in the Quaker Burial Ground in Gildencroft, off St Augustine’s Street. The Gurneys congregate in the far corner.

martineau ulane.jpg

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was born into a family of Norwich Unitarians. Unitarians were Dissenters who rejected the concept of god as a trinity in favour of a less dogmatic religion in which individual conscience plays an important part. The family – of French Huguenot descent – is commemorated by Martineau Lane near County Hall. However, this is named for Harriet’s uncle Dr Philip Meadows Martineau who owned nearby Bracondale Hall and Carrow Abbey [14]. The name is also displayed on the Martineau Memorial Hall and Sunday School in Colegate but refers to Harriet’s younger brother James (1805-1900) who established the school, next door to the Unitarian Octagon Chapel. Harriet, however, eventually came to renounce religion; she espoused Darwin’s ideas and called herself a secularist.

Martineau school.jpg

Harriet’s own name can just be glimpsed though the bars of the gated alleyway to Gurney House in Magdalen Street where, earlier, Elizabeth Fry had been born.

Harriet Martineau.jpg

Frys plaque.jpg

At home, Harriet and her three sisters were educated to the same level as their four brothers except the young men then went out into the world while the young women were expected to stay at home – an injustice that Harriet addressed in an article ‘On Female Education‘ in the Unitarian Monthly Repository [5, 15]. She had been a sensitive and sickly child; she was deaf from age twelve and used an ear trumpet throughout her life. In her twenties – after her father died – Harriet was forced to earn a living, which she eventually achieved through her writing. In 1832 she moved to London where she was lionised by the city’s intellectual circles, meeting economist Malthus, geologist Lyell, philosopher JS Mill, mathematician Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin’s brother Erasmus, and novelists Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot. In the capital she published enormously popular economic parables in Illustrations of Political Economy, which ran to 25 volumes and outsold several of Dickens’ novels [15]. This was followed by Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated and Illustrations of Taxation [15,16].

Harriet Martineau by Richard Evans 1834 ©National Portrait Gallery

Perhaps surprisingly for someone who had been a sensitive child, Harriet Martineau spent two years travelling in the 1830s. Furthermore, instead of enjoying the civilised amenities of Europe she decided to ‘rough it’ by observing the new democracy of the United States [16]. Her experiences in the new world were published in Society in America (1837) in which she was outspoken in her call for racial equality and – concerned about the lack of education for American women – female rights. Harriet Martineau was a radical whose relentless activism led Charles Dickens to say of her that she was,”grimly bent upon the enlightenment of mankind”[see 17]. This burning concern for social reform ranged widely over what have become separate disciplines. Nowadays she is recognised as the first female sociologist and a pioneer of that field of study [see 15]. She is also considered to be one of the first women journalists, having earned her living by her pen since her twenties and joining the staff of The Daily News in 1852 [17]. In later life, after an argument with her brother, she moved to Ambleside in the Lake District. She died in 1876 and was buried in the Martineau family grave in Birmingham [18].

Isn’t it time that the dissenting city recognised one of its heroines by commemorating Harriet Martineau’s name in her own right? If Thetford can have a Harriet Martineau Close …

© Reggie Unthank 2017

Sources

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/constituencies/norwich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kett’s_Rebellion
http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/social-innovation/norwich-in-the-civil-war.htm
Wilson, Kathleen (1995). The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 17-15-1785. Pub: Cambridge University Press.
Chandler, Michael (2016). Historical Women of Norfolk. Pub: Amberley Publishing, Stroud.
Rose, June (2007). Elizabeth Fry. Pub: Tempus Pub Ltd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurney’s_Bank_(Norwich)
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichoctagon/norwichoctagon.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft
http://spartacus-educational.com/Amelia_Opie.htm
http://www.literarynorfolk.co.uk/Norwich/amelia_opie.htm
http://sculpturefornorwich.co.uk/NorwichSculpture.php?id=214
http://spartacus-educational.com/Lucy_Townsend.htm
http://www.literarynorfolk.co.uk/Norwich/harriet_martineau.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Martineau
http://martineausociety.co.uk/the-martineaus/harriet-martineau/
https://unbound.com/books/encounters-with-harriet-martineau/excerpt
http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/whos-who/harriet-martineau.htm

Thanks to Lisa Little and Samantha Johns of the Norfolk Museums Service for their kind assistance.

The flamboyant Mr Skipper

15 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by reggie unthank in Art Nouveau, Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 15 Comments

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Cosseyware, George Skipper, Hotel de Paris Cromer, James Minns, Jarrolds Norwich, Poppyland

Two architects changed the face of Victorian Norwich: Edward Boardman and George Skipper. Boardman sketched out the quiet fabric of a post-medieval city but it was Skipper who provided the firecrackers.

The son of a Dereham builder, Skipper (1856-1948), spent a year at Norwich School of Art studying art and – probably at his father’s insistence – architecture [1]. He did, of course, follow the architectural path but – as the Norwich Mercury wrote in 1906 – he was known for his ‘artistic temperament’ and he expressed this side of his personality in the exuberance of his buildings. He is reputed to have said, you “need an artist for a first rate building” [1a]. However, one of his early buildings (1890), for which he and his brother Frederick won the commission, was the “modestly ‘Queen Anne’ town hall” of Cromer [2] that gave little idea of the fireworks to come.

CromerTown Hall.JPG This project is important, though, for introducing the association between Skipper and the ‘carver’ James Minns, who was responsible for the decorative brickwork from Gunton Bros’ Brickyard at Costessey [3].

In addition to the decorative shields, James Minns sculpted the tableau in the pediment depicting the discovery of Iceland by local sailor Robert Bacon [4]

In the late 1880s Clement Scott’s column ‘Poppyland‘ in the Daily Telegraph extolled the virtues of the North Norfolk coast, particularly around Overstrand [5,6]. The book based on these articles, The Poppyland Papers, proved very popular and this, combined with the arrival of the Great Eastern Railway in 1887, transformed nearby Cromer from a quiet fishing village to a fashionable watering place for the wealthy.

Not everyone succumbed to the bracing pleasures of Cromer, including the young and homesick Winston Churchill who wrote to his mother: “I am not enjoying myself very much”.

The comfortable middle and upper middle classes came to see the coastal attractions and they needed suitable accommodation [5]. This triggered a wave of hotel building and Skipper was engaged by a consortium of Norwich businessmen to design several of them [6]. After The Grand Hotel he built The Metropole, which is said to have shown signs of Skipper’s flair and exuberance [1] but both hotels were demolished, as was another of his hotels, The Imperial.

The last vestige of the Hotel Metropole

A survivor was Skipper’s best known project, the Hotel de Paris (1896). Its frontage, which borrows features from the late medieval palace at Chambord, disguised the previous Regency buildings. Marc Girouard thought the result was cruder but jollier than Skipper’s other hotels [2].

The hotel demonstrates one of Skipper’s favourite tropes of using turrets and cupolas to provide interest at the skyline [6]. He used the same device to disguise an ugly lift heading at Sandringham [7].

Sandringham House. Skipper’s is the taller of the two cupolas. http://www.tournorfolk.co.uk/sandringham

Further along the clifftop at Cromer is another of Skipper’s hotels – The Cliftonville – with decorative ‘Cosseyware’ (fancy brickware) by Guntons of Costessey near Norwich [8]. Skipper was responsible for modifying the hotel originally designed by another Norwich architect, AF Scott [6]. The Cliftonville was transformed into an example of the Arts and Crafts style showing the influence of the French Renaissance as well as the C19th Queen Anne Revival.

Trevor Page & Co of Norwich provided the soft furnishings [6]. The company was a partnership between Henry Trevor (who made great use of Cosseyware seconds in creating the Plantation Garden in Norwich) and his stepson John Page. Much of the ‘hard’ interior decoration survives.

Clockwise from top left: Turret with octagonal cupola; stained glass peacock panel; Guntons terracotta panel; dining room doors referencing ‘Poppyland’; fireplace in the dining room.

Skipper designed several private houses in Cromer. St Bennet’s at 37 Vicarage Road, built in 1893, is one of the most impressive. Freely decorated in red brick panels it is said to have been carved by James Minns [6].

St Bennets, Cromer, designed by Skipper 1893; brick carving attributed to Minns

Skipper’s first offices (1880) in Norwich were in Opie Street but by 1891 he was employing about 50 people and in 1896 he moved to 7 London Street. At that time, architects were not allowed to advertise their services but, flying close to the regulatory wind, he commissioned Guntons to sculpt terracotta plaques depicting Skipper, on site, examining the work of sculptors and as the architect discussing plans with a client.

Carved brick tableaux at No 7 London Street. Upper centre: Skipper, with family to the left, inspecting sculpted work. Lower centre: Skipper showing work to clients.

I suspect the figure presenting Skipper the plaque in the upper panel could be James Minns himself – the ‘carver’ for Guntons. Although about 68 at the time Minns was still sculpting to a high standard for one year later he successfully submitted a carved wooden panel to the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy [9].

Minns Duo.jpg

Skipper’s designs draw on a variety of sources. The French Renaissance style of his early years (enriched by Flemish influences from his visit to Belgium as a student) were to give way to the more weighty Neo-Classical Palladian buildings – buildings such as the Norfolk and Norwich Savings Bank (now Barclays Bank) in Red Lion St, the Norwich and London Accident Assurance Association (now the St Giles House Hotel in St Giles’ St) and his most expensive and sumptuous project, Surrey House for Norwich Union Life Insurance Society. But around the turn of the century he still found time for more playful ventures, embarking on ‘the mildest flirtation with British Art Nouveau'[7]. The Royal Arcade – covered in a previous blog [10] – is one such ‘transitional adventure’ although the credit for this Art Nouveau gem must surely go to the head of Doulton Pottery’s Architectural Department,WJ Neatby, who designed the jewel-like surfaces.

In a post on decorative tiles [11], I noted the close similarity between Neatby’s design for the young woman holding a disc in the spandrels of the arcade’s central crossing and a self-portrait by the Brooklyn photographer Zaida Ben-Yusuf. But, drawing various threads together, it seems likely that both artists were borrowing from the work of Alphonse Mucha whose well-known posters illustrate young women holding very similar poses [see 10 for a fuller discussion].

Left: Zodiac figure by WJ Neatby (1899); right ‘The Odor of Pomegranates’ (ca 1899) by Zaida Ben-Yusuf

Hints of Art Nouveau were also to be seen in the turrets and domes of the Norfolk Daily Standard offices (1899-1900) on St Giles Street. This riotously decorated building survived the bombing of the adjacent building in the Blitz (1942) but later lost some of its features during a conversion to a Wimpy Bar.

Art nouveau touches can be seen on the spandrels above the first floor windows and on the Dutch/Flemish gables. The copper-domed turret is a familiar Skipper motif.

It was to ‘exuberant’ buildings such as these that Poet Laureate John Betjeman was referring when he made his well-known quotation comparing Skipper to Antonio Gaudi of Barcelona [7, 12].

Frontispiece to the catalogue of the Norwich School of Art’s exhibition on Skipper, 1975 [12]

A more convincing Art Nouveau building is the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club at Lowestoft. Skipper’s competition-winning design from 1902 is stripped of the decoration and frenetic eclecticism of his other projects to produce a building using “the vocabulary of British Art Nouveau … with more than a sidelong look at CFA Voysey” [7]. The plain stucco walls – one of Voysey’s signatures – and sloped buttresses are relieved by circular and semi-circular windows and topped by a copper dome. This puritanical excursion was a one-off for Skipper.

broadlandmemories.co.uk

Back in Norwich Skipper designed Commercial Chambers in Red Lion Street (1901-3), wedged into a narrow site between another of his projects (the Norfolk and Norwich Savings Bank 1900-3) and John Pollock’s veterinary premises designed by his great competitor, Edward Boardman (1901-2). Even on a such a narrow building Skipper manages to create interest at the skyline by using moulded cornice, statuary, a finial and a campanile that just sneaks above Boardman’s adjacent Dutch gable by the height of its copper dome.

Left, Boardman’s building for Pollock; centre, Skipper’s Commercial Chambers; right, Skipper’s Norfolk and Norwich Savings Bank.

Because Commercial Chambers was built for the accountant Charles Larking [7] you would be forgiven for thinking that the robed figure at the top of the building, making entries into a ledger, was Larking himself but it is clearly the self-publicist Skipper.

skipper montage.jpg

Between 1896 and 1925 [6] Skipper remodelled, in stages, the frontage of his neighbour’s department store on London and Exchange Streets. Original plans show that Skipper had also planned a dome to surmount the semi-circular bay – “rather like a tiered wedding cake” [1] – at the corner of Jarrolds department store. But at the end of this long project no copper-clad dome materialised [1].

Work began first on the London Street side whose second floor facade is punctuated by a series of Royal Doulton plaques bearing the names of authors first published by Jarrold Printing [7]. The one shown below commemorates Anna Sewell who wrote Black Beauty while she lived in Old Catton just outside Norwich.

On another project, Skipper’s plans for a dome were again frustrated. In 1907 Skipper completed the London and Provincial Bank (now GAP {and now The Ivy brasserie, 2018}) a little further along London Street. Architectural interest was created by breaking the flat symmetry of the classical facade with a fourth bay containing a curved two-storey bay window [7]: the deeply recessed cylinder even broaches the massive cornice that caps the building. This is explained by the fact that Skipper originally planned to top the fourth bay with a trademark cupola whose circular section would have echoed the curved segment of the cornice. In the event, the cupola was abandoned because it would have infringed a neighbouring property’s ‘right of light’ [7].

Just before the First World War, Skipper had planned to retire but loss of his savings in the East Kent Coal Board meant he had to keep working. After the war his work in Norwich seems largely confined to humble plans for roads and sewerage required to open up that part of the Golden Triangle around Heigham Park and College Road (he also designed neo-Georgian buildings in that road) [13]. Further afield, he designed various buildings in Norfolk, Kent and London and in 1926 built a second extension to the University Arms Hotel in Cambridge. Here – perhaps harking back to his heyday – he did successfully add two cupolas: it was, “an unmistakable Skipper gesture, but in this case somewhat incongruous” [7].

University Arms Hotel as proposed after the fire in 2013. Painting by Chris Draper. johnsimpsonarchitects.com

During the Second World War Skipper had kept his London Street offices open while his son Edward, a fellow architect, was on active service [7]. Edward could not, however, afford to keep the offices open and in 1946 sold the building to Jarrolds. Skipper died in 1948 when he was nearly 92.

skipper cupolas2.jpg

Sources

Summers, David (2009). George Skipper: Norfolk Architect. In, Powerhouses of provincial architecture 1837-1914 (Ed, Kathryn Ferry). Chapter 6 pp 75-83. Pub: The Victorian Society. Ref1a http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/whos-who/george-skipper.htm
Girouard, Marc (1977). Sweetness and Light: The Queen Anne Movement 1860-1900. Pub: Yale University Press.
James Minns, Carver of Norwich. http://www.thenorwichsociety.org.uk/copy-of-norwich-history. Mentioned also in previous blog [9]:
http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=1132
http://jermy.org/poppy02.html
Hitchings, Glenys and Branford, Christopher (2015). ‘George John Skipper, The Man Who Created Cromer’s Skyline’. Pub: Iceni Print and Products. Available from Jarrolds and from City Bookshop, Norwich.
Jolly, David and Skipper, Edward (1980). Celebrating Skipper 100: 1880-1980. Booklet produced by Edward Skipper and Associates; foreword by Edward Skipper with posthumous contribution from David Jolly [see 11]. Available at Norwich Library Heritage Centre, Cat No. C720.9 [OS].
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/05/05/fancy-bricks/
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/08/18/angels-in-tights/
http://wp.me/p71GjT-1C1
Jolly, David (1975). Architect Exuberant: George Skipper 1856-1948. Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at The Norwich School of Art, Norwich, 24th Nov.-13th Dec., 1975
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/09/29/decorative-tiles/
Clive Lloyd (2017). Colonel Unthank and the Golden Triangle. Pub: Clive Lloyd. ISBN 978-1-5272-1576-4 (Available from Jarrolds, Norwich and City Bookshop, Norwich).

Jeckyll and the Japanese wave

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Aesthetic Movement, Decorative Arts, Norwich history

≈ 11 Comments

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Arts and Crafts, Barnard Bishop and Barnards, James McNeill Whistler, Japonisme, Thomas Jeckyll

Thomas Jeckyll’s ‘Sunflower’ andirons – emblems of the Aesthetic Movement. (c) The Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington DC USA. Photo: Neil Greentree

He was a key figure in the Aesthetic Movement who helped spread an esoteric fascination with japonisme to the nation, yet Thomas Jeckyll was an unsung local hero who died in a Norwich lunatic asylum. In previous posts [1,2, 3] I discussed how this son of a clergyman from Wymondham, Norfolk joined the set of London aesthetes including Whistler, Swinburne, Rosetti and fellow Norfolkman Frederick Sandys. This influenced his work back home in Norfolk where his designs for Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ Norwich Iron Works advertised the Anglo-Japanese Movement on an industrial scale.

Thomas Jeckyll with his father George in the 1860s ((c) Picture Norfolk. Norfolk County Council)

Jeckyll’s first national success was with the Norwich Gates that he designed for Barnards in 1859 [4]. They took three years to manufacture and, when exhibited in the 1862 International Exhibition in London, were awarded a medal for craftsmanship; Jeckyll – who received ecstatic critical acclaim – was elevated to national attention. The people of Norfolk and Norwich bought the gates by public subscription and presented them to the Prince and Princess of Wales on their marriage in 1863. The gates can still be seen at Sandringham.

Norwich Gates, Sandringham, Norfolk (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

But Jeckyll’s continuing reputation was shaped by events on the other side of the world. In 1853-4 US Admiral Perry used gunboat diplomacy to force Japan out of its self-imposed isolation, opening trade with the west. The woodblock prints that emerged had an immediate impact on western art: the works of Manet, Monet, van Gogh, Vuillard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Cassat all showed the signs of Japanese influence, often being occidental versions of original oriental themes [5]. The unusual (to western eyes) cropping of the image, flattened shapes and planes composed of few subtle colours changed the direction of French art in the latter half of the C19th.

‘Mlle Marcelle Lender en buste’ by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1895); bust of the waitress Okita of the Naniwaya teahouse by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806)

James McNeill Whistler, who was an avid collector of Japanese prints and pottery, is said to have been the first to bring back japonisme to this country after his return from Paris in 1860. The art dealer Murray Marks said that the artist had “invented blue and white in London” [5]. The mania for things Japanese could attract a certain preciousness; after Oscar Wilde said he was finding it hard to live up to his blue china, George du Maurier – one of Jeckyll’s London circle – pricked the bubble with this Punch cartoon:

The Six Mark Teapot (c) Punch

Aesthetic Bridegroom: “It is quite consummate is it not?”

Intense Bride: “It is indeed! Oh, Algernon, let us live up to it!”

Whistler’s own painting was changed by his exposure to Japanese art. His well known nocturne of Old Battersea Bridge certainly borrowed strongly from Hiroshige’s print of Kyobashi Bridge, part of his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (as Tokyo was called).

Utagawa Hiroshige, Kyobashi Bridge 1857: James McNeill Whistler, Old Battersea Bridge 1859

While the fashion for things oriental was originally confined to a metropolitan elite, where it developed out of their interest in the fine arts, it soon became a widespread phenomenon of the applied arts [5]. The influential decorative arts designer Lewis F Day recognised that Jeckyll’s work was amongst the first to show this Japanese influence [4]. Art dealer Gleeson White wrote that Jekyll was:

the first to design original work with Japanese principles assimilated – not imitated [6]

As designer for Barnards at their Norwich foundry, Jeckyll was able to spread japonisme and he did this largely via the Great British Fireplace (coming soon to BBC1). From ca 1870 Barnard Bishop and Barnards produced numerous japonaise designs into which Jeckyll skilfully introduced cranes, cherry blossom, chrysanthemums, sunflowers etc.

Designed by Thomas Jeckyll From Barnards’ 1884 catalogue. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

Japanese heraldic roundels or mon also became a recurring motif in Jeckyll’s designs, providing a ready shorthand for japonisme.

Jeckylll fireplace (c) The Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

Jeckyll designed numerous pieces of metalwork for the fireside, including perhaps his best-known items: andirons or firedogs in the form of the sunflowers that were to become emblematic of The Aesthetic Movement [7,2]. These sunflowers fenced in Jeckyll’s Pagoda that once stood in Chapelfield Gardens and – in reproduction form – now decorate the gates to these Gardens and to Heigham Park (see previous post [2])

Barnard Bishop and Barnards catalogue 1884. (c) Museum of Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

But it was this fender – seen in the apartment of Jeckyll’s friend, the Norfolk painter Frederick Sandys – that impressed a leading figure of the Anglo-Japanese Movement, E.W. Godwin. Indeed, Whistler insisted on having one of these fenders in his own apartment even though Godwin, who was refurbishing it, could have supplied fenders in his own designs [4].

EW Godwin’s sketch of the ‘Sandys fender’ (c) Victorian and Albert Museum, London

This fender can be glimpsed in part of a larger sketch made in Charles Barnard’s home ‘Greyfriars’, Norwich (demolished). Jeckyll’s sunflower andirons are also illustrated.

Firedogs. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

These were not prototypes made just for friends, for the fender must have been sold in fair numbers through Barnards’ catalogues and showrooms. Barnards’ Norwich showroom was on Gentleman’s Walk next to the market. By the 1930s the Hope Brothers had taken over the shop but it was still possible to see on the second floor the balcony railings that Jeckyll designed.

(c) Picture Norfolk. Norfolk Museums Service

Barnards also had a showroom in Queen Victoria Street, London.

Barnards London showroom (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

Below, we can see the fender advertised in the London showroom – the photograph providing a glimpse of the mishmash of Japanese, Chinese and even medieval influences available to the rising middle classes wanting to establish their Aesthetic credentials.

Barnard, Bishop and Barnards London showroom in the latter part of the C19. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

The scalloped pattern, which became one of Jeckyll’s most frequently used motifs, was based on a Japanese design. For the fender, Jeckyll had used a single layer of semi-circles as the main motif but it is clear from his other work that this had been extracted from the larger seigaiha (blue ocean wave) design.

Seigaiha pattern on a kimono. (c) SmithjackJapan on Etsy

The overlapping waves were also used on cast-iron garden benches.

Barnards catalogue 1884. (c) Museum of Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service

A local application of the seigaiha design can be seen on the gates at Sprowston Manor Hotel on the outskirts of Norwich.

Jeckyll also used the wave design independently of the work he did with Barnards. Here it is seen in a terracotta plaque on the garden wall of High House, Thorpe St Andrew (left) and on a quadrant from the ceiling of the Boileau Memorial Fountain (right, demolished) that once stood at the junction of Newmarket and Ipswich Roads near the old Norfolk and Norwich Hospital (see previous post on the fountain [1]).

Left, Jeckyll plaque at High House, possibly made at the Costessey Brickworks. Right, a quadrant of the ceiling from the Boileau Fountain [1]

Fabric is not always durable but in this case the japonaise embroidery, made to Jeckyll’s designs, outlived the Chapelfield Pagoda that was dismantled in 1949. Fortunately, the hangings that decorated the pagoda at international exhibitions are conserved in Norwich Castle Study Centre –the seigaiha design bottom right.

Left: The Chapelfield Pagoda. Right: Jeckyll’s hangings used to decorate the structure when it was exhibited internationally. (c) Norfolk Museums Service

Jeckyll was an inventive designer who was certainly not restricted to one design or material. He had previously collaborated with the sculptor Sir J Edgar Boehm on the Boileau memorial Fountain and when Boehm sculpted the monument to Juliana, Countess of Leicester for the estate church at Holkham Hall it is highly likely that Jeckyll designed the japonaise base [4].

Base of the monument to Lady Leicester in the church of St Withburga, Holkham Estate, Norfolk, which is attributed to Thomas Jeckyll

Sources

https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/04/15/thomas-jeckyll-the-boileau-family/
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/01/06/jeckyll-and-the-sunflower-motif/
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2015/12/26/two-bs-or-not-tw…s-thomas-jeckyll/
Soros, Susan Weber and Arbuthnott, Catherine (2003). Thomas Jeckyll: Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. Yale University Press.
Ives, Colta Feller (1974). The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Cult of Beauty (2011). Eds Stephen Calloway and Lynn Feder Orr. V&A Publishing
The Aesthetic Movement (1973). Ed, Charles Spencer. Academy Editions, London.‎

Thanks to: Hannah Henderson, Museum of Norwich, Bridewell Alley for showing me the Jeckyll collection; to Michael Innes for allowing me to photograph the Jeckyll terracotta at his house; to Mary Parker, warden of Ketteringham Church for providing the photograph of the ceiling in the Boileau Memorial; to Lisa Little of Norwich Castle Study Centre, Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service, Shirehall,for showing me the Jeckyll hangings and to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk for permissions.

Visit the display of Barnards’ work and Jeckyll’s designs in The Museum of Norwich, Bridewell Alley, Norwich

The Norwich Society helps people enjoy and appreciate the history and character of Norwich. Visit: www.thenorwichsociety.org.uk

Decorative tiles

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, Norwich history

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Alphonse Mucha, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Doulton tiles, George Skipper, Norwich architecture, William de Morgan

There are so few art nouveau buildings in this country but many homes around 1900 would have possessed beautiful examples of the art in the form of ceramic tiles. I used to collect them. They were used as inserts in fireplaces, as splash backs on washstands, panels in doorways and even as teapot stands. Tiles provided a relatively cheap and easy access to designers of the day such as William Morris, Walter Crane, Leon Solon and William de Morgan. The fourth tile below is a favourite, designed by Lewis F Day, a prominent member of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Tiles 1 and 3 are by JH Barratt (1904); tiles 2 and 4 are by Pilkington’s (ca 1895) and designed by Lewis Foreman Day – the fourth bearing his raised initials.

Similar tiles can be seen as decorative panels in porches around the Golden Triangle. Whitehall Road and Kingsley Road have good examples.

New2porches.001.jpeg

The Norwich foundry of Barnard Bishop and Barnards was internationally recognised for its Aesthetic Movement fireplaces for which Thomas Jeckyll had designed the japonaise motifs cast into the surface of their products. But by the time Jeckyll died in 1881 fashions had moved on and tiled inserts had become a major decorative element.

A selection of tiles offered by Barnard Bishop and Barnards at their London showroom, 1884. Courtesy, Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell.

William de Morgan designed his most popular tile for Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ Norwich Ironworks. The fanned carnation is known as the BBB design in recognition of the fact that Barnards had given him his first large order for tiles to be placed in their cast-iron fireplaces [1].

Wm de Morgan’s ‘BBB’ tiles (left) and one of his designs (right). In production from 1898. (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Great Yarmouth’s wonderful Hippodrome (1903) displayed these Art Nouveau letter tiles [9].

Yarmouth Hippodrome2.jpg

Similar tiles can be found in Norwich’s Haymarket Chambers, built by George Skipper (1901-2); these are incorporated into the facade above the narrow entrance to the Lamb Inn, situated in the courtyard behind.

It is not known who made the tiles but a few years earlier Skipper commissioned Doulton’s WJ Neatby – of Harrod’s Food Hall fame – to produce these art nouveau tiles for The Royal Arcade (see previous article).

Neatby decorated the spandrels of the central crossing of the arcade with tiles depicting a young woman who, in preliminary drawings, was intended to be holding a sign of the zodiac. In Brooklyn, at about the same time as the arcade was built (1899), Zaida Ben-Yusuf produced what appears to be a self-portrait of a woman contemplating a pomegranate. The similarities are striking.

Left: Zodiac figure by WJ Neatby (1899); right: ‘The Odor of Pomegranates’ 1899 by Zaida Ben-Yusuf (ca 1899).

But recently, I saw this pressed leather panel decorating a cupboard in a junk shop. The figure is based on the 1896 Zodiac poster by Alphonse Mucha, surely the original inspiration for the models above?

The 2016 exhibition at Tate Britain, ‘Painting with Light’ [3] examined the cross-referencing between early photographs and painting. In it, Ben-Yusuf’s photograph was compared with Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s painting of ‘Proserpine’, Empress of Hades(1874). Jupiter agreed to release Proserpine back to Earth provided she hadn’t tasted Hades’ fruit: but she had eaten a single seed. As the exhibition notes suggest, Rosetti may have been examining his feelings for his muse Jane, the wife of his friend William Morris, the model for his painting and his soon-to-be lover.

Proserpine 1874 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05064. Creative Commons

Patterns on tiles can be made in several ways. Raised outlines can be impressed on the blank during manufacture but tube-lining depends on the direct hand of the artist. For this, semi-liquid clay is squeezed through a nozzle onto a blank tile to form a raised outline and the areas between are then painted with coloured glazes before firing.

Cabinet by Shapland and Petter of Barnstaple with tube-lined tile containing a Dutch scene; such scenes were popular ca 1900-1910.

The Norwich Heritage Open Days 2016 gave access to two tiled fireplaces not normally seen by the public. The first is in Carrow Abbey. The C12th abbey was founded as a Benedictine nunnery and was considerably renovated (1899-1909) for mustard magnate J J Colman by Edward Boardman, who had married into the Colman family.

Carrow Priory Prioress' parlour [3416] 1940-05-16.jpg

Carrow Abbey, prioress’ parlour (1940). Courtesy www.georgeplunkett.co.uk

This neo-Gothic fireplace has been decorated with beautiful, large, raised tiles in the Iznik style that had such an influential effect on William de Morgan during his ‘Persian’ phase. However, these tiles are not flat but embossed and there is nothing to indicate that de Morgan produced such moulded tiles.

Fireplace, Carrow Abbey. Courtesy Andy Maule.

A prolonged trawl through the internet produced a tile in the identical pattern and colourway [4]. The labels says it is a Qajar Iznik-style tile, origin Iran, ca C19th. So, not by de Morgan but direct from his source of inspiration.

The second ‘Heritage Day’ fireplace is in Curat’s House (for online tour see [5]). The house at numbers 3-4 Haymarket – once Back’s pub and wine bar, now Fatface – is a well-preserved timber-framed medieval building secreted behind a later facade.

The late C15th-early C16th house was home to John Curat, mercer. Curat’s House was built on the site of an earlier house with a vaulted crypt that had been part of the Old Jewry – the Jewish quarter since the arrival of the Normans [6]. The overhanging jetties of the timber building are now disguised at ground floor level by the C20th shopfront and the upper floors by Georgian brickwork.

Curats House Norwich.jpg

The Delft tiles in the first floor fireplace are described as ‘original’ but tin-glazed blue and white tiles have been made ever since the C16th, first in The Netherlands then in England. Delftware can be difficult to date with accuracy, as the tile below demonstrates…

‘Gilbert and George’ tile made in Spitalfields 1985 by Simon Pettet [7].

Another hidden gem: to the side of the covered courtyard in the ancient Maid’s Head Hotel in Tombland is a small, panelled Jacobean bar. It was supposed to have been the innkeeper’s snug and contains this lovely Dutch-tiled fireplace.

Maids Head.jpg

In contrast to ceramic tiles, where the decoration is painted as a surface glaze, encaustic tiles were made by pressing a pattern into wet clay then filling the impression with different-coloured liquid clays, or by compressing clay dusts under high pressure. Encaustic tiles had been around since the medieval period but their popularity peaked in the second half of the C19th, during the Gothic Revival. A fine example can be seen at the chapel of the former Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, designed by Thomas Henry Wyatt and Edward Boardman in 1879-84.

NN chapel.jpg

Two identical marble tile mosaics, one in the Guildhall (left) and the other in the Norwich Technical Institute (later the School of Art, now Norwich University of the Arts, right), are thought to have been made around 1900 by craftsmen from the Italian community living in Ber Street. The two City Arms are identical but the backgrounds are different. The 28 bees could reasonably represent the busy students of the Technical Institute but what was meant by the 22 shrimp-like motifs in the Guildhall (anyone?).

Mosaic .jpg

About a decade later (1912), the School of Art at Great Yarmouth was designed by JW ‘Concrete’ Cockrill. Just before the restoration of this proto-modernist building in 2010 this fine tiled facade had been obliterated with white paint [8]. In contrast to the Art Nouveau curlicues on the Yarmouth Hippodrome [9], built by his son RS Cockrill in 1903, these tiles form an austerely geometric pattern reminiscent of the Viennese Secession.

Thanks to: Hannah Henderson (Museum of Norwich at The Bridewell), Andy Maule (for the Carrow Abbey photo) and Michelle Ivimey and Steve Ryan (of RMG Ltd, for access to the old N&N chapel).

The Norwich Society helps people enjoy and appreciate the history and character of Norwich. Visit: www.thenorwichsociety.org.uk

Sources

Stained Glass: Arts & Crafts to Art Nouveau

08 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Arts and Crafts, Decorative Arts, Norwich history

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Art Nouveau, Stained Glass

After writing about medieval church glass in a few posts this article is about the stained glass that decorated secular buildings in the late C19th/early C20th century (plus a few latecomers).

Fanlight in office on All Saints’ Green, Norwich

But first, why the three hundred year gap in glass making until its revival in the mid-C19th? Norwich was once an important centre for medieval glass painting [1, 2]]. The kaleidoscopic appearance of this window, with a feathered angel playing a lute and a reflection of a disembodied hand doing the same above, suggests it was salvaged after one of the waves of destruction that followed the Protestant Reformation (C16-C17).

C15th Norwich School painted glass from All Saints Bale, Norfolk [3]

Medieval glass was almost exclusively religious. These C16th Norwich School roundels are refreshing for depicting non-biblical characters at work (plus a king enjoying the fruits of their labours)[4].

Four (of eight) ‘Labours of the Months’ roundels ca 1500-1525, attributed to John Wattock [4]. Clockwise from top left: ‘Pruning’, ‘A King Feasting’, ‘Harvesting Grapes’, ‘Sheltering from a Storm’.(c) Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

Painted vs stained glass. ‘Painted glass’ refers to the process of painting the pattern with a solution of metallic salts (e.g. silver nitrate) before firing, as in the medieval glass above. ‘Stained glass’ also includes pieces of coloured glass arranged in a pattern and held together by strips of lead.

After the puritanical rampage there was little ecclesiastical glass-making until the great religious revival of the C19th. In 1861, William Morris founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co with his Pre-Raphaelite friends, including Rosetti, Ford Madox Brown and Burne-Jones. The company initially focused on church glass but some of their patterns were applicable to the home. Taste-makers were keen to bring something of the Gothic/Arts and Crafts Revivals into their houses and the fashion for domestic stained glass can largely be traced to Morris & Co, for whom Edward Burne-Jones was a main designer [5].

‘Penelope’, stained and painted glass panel, designed for Morris & Co by Edward Burne-Jones – a major designer for the firm ca 1864. (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This large house in Eaton, Norwich was built in 1905 as a late example of the English Domestic Revival style. The large window on the half-landing contains a series of nine painted-glass roundels based on the ‘Signs of the Zodiac’.

The remaining three signs of the zodiac are fitted into a round window to the side.

The hand-painted glass below is very much in the Arts and Crafts tradition. It is in the 1852 Heigham house built by Robert Tillyard, a leather merchant and one of the founders of the Norvic shoe factory [6, and previous post].

Stylistically, these paintings resemble Aesthetic Movement portraits of the 1870s-1880s. ‘Juliet’s’ strong chin, below, is reminiscent of Morris’ wife, Jane.

The top figure is unlabelled; the lower pair bear the names Juliet and Elaine. Could these be a romanticised version of Tillyard’s wife Julia and his daughter Ellen?

In contrast to the unique paintings of Tillyard’s family, the coloured glass panels that decorated so many late Victorian doors were made in large quantities. Realistically-painted birds and flowers are typical of domestic glass of this period.

Late Victorian stained glass door panels in the Golden Triangle, Norwich. The inset shows the left-hand panel containing painted bird and flowers.

Front door panel in a 1900 house Cecil Road, Norwich

Below, the flowers in the vase are not painted but assembled from individual pieces of coloured glass. The sinuous line of the leadwork and the move to abstraction anticipates the arrival of Art Nouveau.

Door panels in a house on Unthank Road

The house with the Arts and Crafts ‘Signs of the Zodiac’ glass (above) also has stained glass (below) containing the stylised Mackintosh rose of the Glasgow School (ca 1905). This nicely illustrates how glass design developed: from its early Arts and Crafts origins through to the Art Nouveau that persisted in some form until the First World War.

The highly stylised, and less sinuous, Mackintosh rose – the more muscular version of Scottish art nouveau.

Comparison between Victorian-looking stained glass and the new designs of the early C20th shows the simplification that occurred once Art Nouveau struck: patterns were less fussy and designs tended towards the abstract.

Left, a window from George Skipper’s Hotel de Paris, Cromer (1895) and, right, an Art Nouveau door panel from Unthank Road (ca 1910) illustrate different ways of handling a similar theme: the design on the left is mostly painted, the right is a mosaic of coloured glass set in lead.

The upper window lights around the dining room in the Hotel de Paris offer a scenic tour around Cromer. The glass paintings appear to have been skilfully copied from photographs.

Hotel de Paris Cromer dining room has painted roundels depicting sights around the area; here, the town itself

By contrast, Art Nouveau-influenced glass is hardly representational; flowers, for instance, were not necessarily identifiable, just generically floral.

Stained glass fanlight and door panel on Christchurch Road

Two panels, bearing stylised flowers, and a fanlight in stained glass, Park Lane, Norwich

As part of this simplification the lead itself became an intrinsic part of the overall pattern. Of practical importance, the relatively small amount of stained glass allowed more light into the hallway.

The colours here are subdued. Valentine Street, Norwich

Larger houses ca 1900 had room for six-panel windows on the half-landing. Mile End Road, Norwich

Front door panel from an Arts and Crafts house (built 1904) on Lindley Street, Norwich

Upper lights in a bay window of the same house on Lindley Street

Hall window of Lindley Street house showing opalescent glass panels

George Skipper’s Royal Arcade (see previous post) is the city’s most expressive Art Nouveau building. This semi-circular stained glass panel above the east entrance contains birds flying amongst trees bearing stylised daisy-like flowers.

East end of Royal Arcade 1899

The Royal Arcade, with Art Nouveau tiles designed by WJ Neatby of Doulton Lambeth, is decorated with peacocks. In this large stained glass window the repeated motifs resemble the eyes of peacocks’ feathers.

Back of The Royal Arcade, first floor Jamie’s Italian (not accessible to the public)

After the First World war, and the demise of Art Nouveau, stained glass door panels often depicted cosy, reassuring images, as in these adjoining houses in Cecil Road.

Door panels from adjoining houses ca 1920-30

Although the glaziers of the interwar years rejected a return to the pared down geometry of the Art Nouveau, they were content to use other, more representational images from around 1900, like the sailing ship (see post on The Sailing Ship as an Arts and Crafts Motif).

Left: interwar house on Kett’s Hill; St Stephen’s Road ca 1905.

The Gatehouse PH (subject of previous post) was built in 1934. This turreted building also looks back to the Arts and Crafts style, with cartoon-like medieval glass to match.

Montage of cameos from The Gatehouse PH, Dereham Road.

The Owl2.jpg

The benefits of reading. Above entrance of Mile Cross Branch Library, Aylsham Road, Norwich 1931

The benefits of drinking. Advertising glass at The Ribs of Beef PH at Fye Bridge,Norwich

The Norwich Society helps people enjoy and appreciate the history and character of Norwich. More details on their website www.thenorwichsociety.org.uk

Thanks to Keith Roberts, Grant Young and Gareth Lewis and all who let me photograph their glass.

Sources

Woodforde, Christopher (1950). The Norwich School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century. Pub: Oxford University Press.
See previous post on Norfolk’s stained glass angels http://wp.me/p71GjT-t
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/bale/bale.htm
Vance, Francesca (2013). Stained Glass Roundels: the Labours of the Months.

In, Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia, exhibition catalogue (ed Ian Collins) SCVA.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O8452/panel-morris-marshall-faulkner/
Holmes, Frances and Michael (2013). The Story of the Norwich Boot and Shoe Trade. Pub: http://www.norwich-heritage.co.uk.

Angels in tights

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts, Stained Glass

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

angels in tights, Barton Turf, Booton church, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, James Minns, Knapton church, Norfolk churches, Norwich buildings, Norwich stained glass, Ranworth church, roof angels, Stained Glass, Stained glass angels

Angels aren’t as common as they used to be. Five hundred years ago, before the Reformation, church was where most people would see artistic representations. The subject matter was strictly religious with angels playing important parts. Angels were ubiquitous and could be seen painted on rood screens, or as wooden roof angels, on wall paintings, painted glass and carved in stone. The way that angels were represented in these religious contexts may, however, have borrowed something from less strictly religious mystery plays.

Archangel Gabriel wears a feather suit. C15th Norwich School glass, from St Peter’s Ringland.

In medieval mystery plays the angels would wear – in addition to wings – feathers that covered the body, ending neatly at neck and ankle. These costumes are variously described as ‘feather tights'[1] or feather-covered ‘pyjama suits’[2]. The roof angel below is covered with only few ‘feathers’ but this probably reflects the case that such body suits may have been covered with scale-like flaps of cloth or leather to represent feathers [1].

Roof angel, St Agnes Cawston, Norfolk, adorned in relatively few large flaps painted as feathers. The Cawston angels are unique in standing upright on the hammer beams. Charles Rennie Mackintosh was fascinated by them (below).

In the early C13th, Pope Innocent III became so concerned about the growing popularity of clergy in these mystery plays that he banned them from appearing. The dramas were taken over by town guilds who courted popularity by dispensing with Latin and adding comic scenes [3]. Such performances were known to have taken place at York, Coventry and Norwich. From Norwich, one play survived: this was performed by the Grocer’s Guild and named Paradyse [3] or The Fall of Adam and Eve [4]. The text of the Norwich Stonemasons’ play, ‘Cain and Abel’ is lost [4]. The Norwich guilds are likely to have mounted their parts of the cycle in a pageant, which involved elaborate ‘pageant wagons’ [2], staged on the early summer feast of Corpus Christi [5]. This C19th engraving of the Coventry mystery pageant gives an idea of what such events looked like.

Coventry-mystery-pageant-thomas-sharp-david-gee-1825.jpg

Coventry Mystery Pageant, engraved by David Gee (1793-1872). Source: Beinecke Library

There were nine orders of angels, ranked in order of importance [6]. Chief were the seraphim, with three pairs of wings (often depicted in red): one pair for shielding their eyes from God, one pair for flying and the third pair for covering their feet in respect. However, some say the latter were for covering their genitals, representing base instincts, and this is how they can appear in medieval images.

Six-winged angel at St Peter, Ketteringham, Norfolk. Norwich School painted glass late C15th

Cherubim had four wings, usually depicted in blue. Then, after Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers and Principalities we come to the more familiar Archangels who transmitted messages from God as Gabriel is doing in the first image above. Last were Angels – intermediaries between heaven and earth. Clarence was James Stewart’s guardian angel in “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

Clarence Odbody (Angel Second Class). From “It’s a Wonderful Life” RKO 1946

Some of the most beautiful medieval images of feathered angels in the country can be seen in Norfolk’s rood screens. Two stunning examples are at Ranworth and Barton Turf. Below, one of the Archangels, the “debonair and fantastical” [7] Michael, slays a many-headed dragon. The dragon probably represents Satan, who – according to Milton in Paradise Lost – was wounded by Michael in personal combat [6A].

Archangel St Michael from the church of St Helen, Ranworth, Norfolk. (C15th).

While most of the 12 screen panels in Ranworth represent saints, the equally beautiful rood screen at Barton Turf offers a rare depiction of The Angel Hierarchy. The painting can be dated to the late C15th based on the detailing on the armour [7].

Cherubim (left) have gold feathers, two pairs of wings and are typically covered with eyes. To the right is one of the Principalities. At St Michael and All Angels, Barton Turf, Norfolk

Left, Archangel Raphael – the leader of the Powers (usually depicted in their armour) – with a chained demon beneath his foot. The face on the devil’s belly denotes base appetites. Right, one of the Virtues.

Left: one of the Thrones holding scales, presumably for weighing souls. (This Throne has six wings normally used to depict Seraphim [6]). Right: an Archangel in late C15th plate armour. Note the fashionable late C15th turban.

During the Reformation then the Civil War the iconoclasts, who were most active in East Anglia, destroyed countless idolatrous and superstitious images so it is surprising that so much of the Barton Turf masterpiece survives intact. Only two of the panels were defaced.

The Dominion (left) and Seraphim (right) were probably defaced because of their papist tiara and incense-containing censer, respectively.

Curiously, the feathered angels swinging censers in the spandrels of the west doorway at Salle [8]– less than 20 miles from Barton Turf – were untouched by the iconoclasts.

St Peter and St Paul, Salle, Norfolk

Angels were commonly depicted playing musical instruments. A favourite is this beautiful painting of an angel playing a harp at All Saints East Barsham. The glass was probably painted in the latter part of the C15th by the Norwich workshop of John Wighton [9] (see my first blog post on Norfolk’s Stained Glass Angels).

The harpist wears a fashionable turban. The ‘ears of barley’ at the bottom are typical of the Norwich School’s way of depicting wood grain.

Another harp player at St Peter and St Paul, Salle.

At St Mary’s North Tuddenham this angel plays the lute…

… and at St Peter Hungate, Norwich – bagpipes

One of the glories of East Anglia is the large number of angel roofs, 84% of which are found in this region [13]. David Rimmer has examined two explanations for this. The first focuses on the Lollard heresy. (The name derives from their mumbling at prayer [from Middle Dutch lollaert = mutter]). Lollards were followers of John Wycliffe who – over a hundred years before the Protestant Reformation – objected to the pomp, imagery and idolatry of the Catholic Church. Their first martyr, who was burnt at the stake in London 1401, had been priest at St Margaret’s King’s Lynn. Lynn’s church of St Nicholas was the site of East Anglia’s first angel roof (1405-9) [13] suggesting that the large number of angels in East Anglia could be a counterblast to the Lollardism that was rife throughout this region. In Norwich, men and women were burnt in Lollards Pit, a chalk pit once used for digging the foundations of the cathedral.

Lollards’ Pit pub near Bishop Bridge, Norwich

Another hypothesis involves the Royal Carpenter Hugh Herland who had created the first angel roof at Westminster Hall in 1398. Herland and his craftsmen came to make the new harbour at Great Yarmouth and it is argued that his influence spread throughout the region (although the first datable angel roof was in Kings Lynn [then Bishops Lynn] rather than Great Yarmouth).

Norwich has five angel roofs: St Mary Coslany, St Michael at Plea, St Peter Hungate, St Giles and St Peter Mancroft [13]. St Peter Mancroft Norwich has a particularly fine mid C15th angel roof, said by Michael Rimmer to be “virtuoso medieval carpentry” [13]. The Perpendicular fan vaulting in wood masks hammerbeams whose free ends are capped by angels.

St Peter Mancroft, Norwich

Cawston, north of Norwich, has one of the finest angel roofs. As well as the demi-angels with spread wings, forming a frieze around the wall plate, man-size angels stand vertically at the ends of each hammer beam as if ready to dive.

Single hammer beam roof at St Peter and St Paul Knapton, Norfolk

Thrust from the heavy roof tends to splay the walls outwards. Opposite walls can be held together by tie braces that span the width of the church but in hammerbeam roofs, the force is deflected downwards onto the jutting hammerbeams beams that only project partway into the volume. Cawston has a single row of these hammerbeams. Below, Knapton has double hammerbeams, allowing an ‘amazing’ span of 70 feet [7]. Double-deckered angels at the ends of these beams, together with two rows on the wall plate, result in a total of 138 angels.

The roof was added to C14th Knapton church in 1503. This probably dates the earliest angels [7] although some clearly derive from later restorations – the lower rank from the 1930s [10]. Note that the post-medieval angels no longer appear to wear feather tights.

One of the lower Knapton angels, dating from the restoration of the 1930s

Charles Rennie Mackintosh is associated with East Anglia by the pencil and watercolour drawings he made when he and wife Margaret stayed in Walberswick, Suffolk, in 1914. But he had previously visited Knapton, Norfolk, in 1896/7.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Knapton roof angels. Creative Commons. Source: Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections 1897 [11]

According to the Hunterian Gallery’s archive in Glasgow, Mackintosh had toured Norfolk with fellow architects Alfred Greig and John Stewart, ‘possibly’ in 1896. This is his sketch of a Cawston angel standing at the end of a hammerbeam.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh pencil drawing. Roof truss St Agnes Cawston 1896? (c) The Hunterian Museum Art Gallery, University of Glasgow 2016.[14]

Booton St Michael was enthusiastically but eccentrically revived in Victorian Gothic Revival style by Reverend Whitwell Elwin, a local man who claimed to be a descendant of the North American Indian princess Pocahontas [12]. Completed in 1891, his updating of the medieval church gets a mixed reception from various commentators: Simon Jenkins thought the interior was “blighted by the customary Victorian frigidity” although architect Edwin Lutyens concluded it was “very naughty but built in the right spirit” [12]. But Lutyens had a vested interest since he married one of the ‘Blessed Girls’ – the seemingly numerous young beauties whose portraits appear in the tracery glass [12, 13].

Most agree that the stained glass and roof angels made up for other misjudgements. The local master carpenter James Minns carved this hovering roof angel at Booton [13].

James Minns is also credited with designing the bull’s head emblem for Colman’s mustard [13].

Left to the end: how Jeremiah James Colman made his money [15]

** STOP PRESS. WHO WAS JAMES MINNS? **

Just as I was finishing this article, Costessey resident Peter Mann responded to a previous blog article on Gunton’s brickworks by naming all the workers (below) at the Costessey brickyard. Excitingly, he identified the arrowed figure as James Minns with John Minns seated on his right. Both were labelled as “Carvers of Norwich”, consistent with census returns giving their occupations as ‘carver’ (or, once for James, ‘sculptor’). The entry for Minns [16] on the Mapping of Sculpture website gives his full name as James Benjamin Shingles Minns (ca 1828-1904). James was sufficiently confident of his skill to submit (successfully) a carved wooden panel of ‘A Happy Family’ to the 1897 Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy; he had also carved the mantelpiece and panelling for Thomas Jeckyll’s commission for the Old Library at Carrow Abbey (1860-1) [17]. The presence of this highly skilled sculptor and (I presume) his son at the Costessey Brickyard strongly suggests that they carved the moulds for the ornate ‘fancy’ bricks and panels for which Guntons were locally renowned. From his independent status as ‘Carver’ it seems possible that “James Minns of Heigham” [17] might have been freelance rather than a full-time employee, especially since his address was ca. five miles away from the Costessey Brickyard. Minns@Guntons.jpg

Employees of the Guntons Brickyard Costessey. James Minns is arrowed (white) with his son John, arrowed red. Pre-1904. (c) Ernest Gage Collection at Costessey Town Council

Norwich is a small city and its many lines of history are interwoven. A previous blog focused on the Boileau Memorial Fountain once sited at the junction of Newmarket and Ipswich Roads. James Minns collaborated again with architect Thomas Jeckyll by carving this coat of arms in the tympanum of the fountain [17].

“Minns of Heigham” [17] carved this plaque for the Boileau Fountain formerly at the Newmarket/Ipswich Road junction. (C) Norfolk Library and Information Service: Picture Norfolk

Back at Booton and another angel – the statue of St Michael above the porch … Richard Cocke [18] has suggested that Minns could have sculpted the model for Archangel Michael.

Church of St Michael Booton. A rather stern St Michael sheaths his sword, with a bemused Jabberwockian dragon at his feet. Attributed to sculptor James Minns.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather_tights
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O7802/panel-norwich-school/
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mystery_play
http://gildencraft.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-norwich-stonemasons-play-by-gail.html
http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/medieval/mystery_plays.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_angelology Ref 6A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel)#Art_and_literature
Mortlock, D.P. and Roberts, C.V. (1981). The Popular Guide to Norfolk Churches; I. North-East Norfolk. Pub: Acorn Editions, Fakenham.
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/salle/salle.htm
King, David. (2004). Glass Painting. In, Medieval Norwich eds C. Rawcliffe and R.Wilson. Pub, Hambledon and London. pp121-136.
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/knapton/knapton.htm
http://www.gsaarchives.net/archon/?p=collections/findingaid&id=459&rootcontentid=10386
Jenkins, Simon(2000). England’s Thousand Best Churches. Pub: Penguin.
http://www.angelroofs.com/images-2
http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch_Mackintosh/DetailedResults.fwx?SearchTerm=53014/11&reqMethod=Link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_James_Colman
http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=ann_1283258555
Soros, Susan Weber and Arbuthnott, Catherine (2003). Thomas Jeckyll: Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. Pub: BGC, Yale.
http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=1065

Thanks to Peter Mann for identifying James Minns; Brian Gage for giving permission to reproduce an image from the Ernest Gage Collection at Costessey Town Council; Paul Cooper for providing the new photograph of the Guntons workers; Jocelyn Grant of the Glasgow School of Art for assistance with Mackintosh’s (K)Napton angels; Michael Rimmer of angelroofs.com for his help with the Norwich angels; and Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk.

Four brilliant sites

For Norfolk churches visit : http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk
For roof angels see: http://www.angelroofs.com
For an interactive search of Norfolk’s stained glass visit: http://www.norfolkstainedglass.co.uk/Norfolk/home.shtm
And for photographs of old Norfolk visit: https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk

Norwich’s pre-loved buildings

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts, Norwich buildings

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Edward Boardman, George Skipper, Norwich architecture, Norwich shoe industry, Norwich textile industry, Norwich University of the Arts, Norwich weaving

Who, at this Victorian horse market outside Norwich Castle, would have predicted that motor vehicles would displace horses from the city’s streets or that a shopping mall with space for over 1000 cars would be excavated where they once stood? This post is about once-vibrant buildings, such as stables, corn halls, weaving sheds and leather boot and shoe manufactories, that outlived their original purpose and had to be reinvented in order to survive.

Norwich horse market on site of former cattle market ca 1900. (c) Norfolk County Council

It is still possible to catch glimpses of life in the horse-drawn era.The words above this arch (shoeing, forge, livery, stable) in Orford Yard off Red Lion Street are a reminder of John Pollock’s veterinary surgery and livery stables. The date on the building’s Dutch gable gives the date of this Edward Boardman building as 1902. Boardman turns out to be a major figure in this post. Looses Norwich.jpg The yard now accommodates Loose’s Cookshop and Chez Denis cafe and brasserie. Until 1998 the owner of Chez Denis had a previous business here, Cafe des Amis, the name of which can just be made out above the central arch in the photograph below.

Red Lion St Orford Yard former stables [7536] 1998-03-10.jpg

Former stables 1998, Orford Yard (c) georgeplunkett.co.uk

By 1840 Norwich’s weaving industry had been in decline for some years. Its hand-loom weavers were unable to compete with the steam-powered mills of the north whose better transport and production of popular cotton goods affected the sale of Norfolk’s more traditional worsteds [1]. As a consequence the shoe industry, which had been active for centuries, assumed a more dominant role. In the middle of the C20th there were about thirty boot and shoe manufacturers in Norwich that, together with allied trades, employed over 10,000 people. Now there is only one major shoe-maker, Van-Dal. This wall is all that remains of the Co-op Shoe Factory in Mountergate, and was only allowed to remain “as a baffle against traffic noise for Parmentergate Court” [2]. Coop factory.jpg

Above the gate, the last vestige of ‘Norwich Cooperative Industrial Society Limited’?

While the grander C19th public buildings tended to adhere to the binary choice between Classical or (particularly in the north of England) Gothic styles, the popularity of Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace of the 1851 Great Exhibition introduced a further option. Cast-iron was cheap and strong and, being able to support large expanses of glass on thin glazing bars, opened up new possibilities in which brick and stone were no longer the major players. In 1863, Holmes and Sons – who manufactured and sold agricultural machinery – built this showroom on Rose Lane. Now it is known as Crystal House and home to Warings furniture store.

The elegant facade of Crystal House (1863) – a great favourite of mine.

Haldinstein’s began making shoes in the early C19th and up until the early 1960s their Boot and Shoe Manufactory occupied seven blocks of buildings between Queen Street and Princes Street [1, 1a]. In the 1930s the firm went into partnership with the Swiss shoe company Bally but by the time shoe production stopped in 1999 only Bally remained [1]. The building at 2-4 Queen Street was renamed Seebohm House and now contains several businesses. The factory is dated ‘1872’ on the rain heads and, like Edward Boardman’s Colegate shoe factory of the same period (1876, see further below), is distinctly ‘modern’ and quite unlike Gothic Revival buildings of that period. However, the building does not appear to have been listed as one of Boardman’s despite his offices being only a few yards further down Queen Street in Old Bank of England Court.

The last remnant of the Haldinstein and Bally factory at 2-4 Queen Street

While the upper floors appear to look forward to C20th modernism – rejecting Neo-Gothic and Classical motifs – the appearance of the Gothic arch at the entrance is confusing and backward looking. The door grille, on the other hand, appears to anticipate the Art Deco period. Seebohm House2.jpg

Clarification lies in the Norfolk Record Office whose files reveal that Boardman did design the Haldinstein building. His original plan shows that the doorway shared the same shallow (and decidedly non-Gothic) arch as the ground and first floor windows. The files also contain other plans by the Boardman practice, dated June 18th 1946, for “Proposed Alteration to Ground Floor”. These relate to a reorganisation of rooms but since this was the year that George Haldinstein sold his 51% share to Bally [1] it strongly suggests that the Gothic entrance was a post-war addition as was the ground floor’s patterned stucco .

Boardman’s plan for Haldinstein’s Queen Street factory, with Philip Haldinstein’s signature over the sixpenny stamp. Note the original door and its surround. (c) Norfolk Record Office BR35/2/23/10/1-43

In 1870, Foster’s Elementary Education Act decreed that towns would build Board Schools in which the teaching of religion was to be strictly regulated [3]. Funded by the local rates these were amongst the first public institutions to be open to both sexes. Thousands of such schools were built throughout the country. For Norwich’s own Board School in Duke Street, JH Brown designed a Higher Grade School that was opened in 1888. It was built by J Youngs and Sons (now a part of the RG Carter Group).

The Norwich Board School in Duke Street with the city’s coat of arms to the left, surmounting “Literature, Science and Art”.

Probably following London’s influential board schools the Duke Street school was built in the contemporary and progressive Queen Anne Revival style (see previous post). The school therefore has the Flemish, high-gabled silhouette with small-paned upper lights and tall casement windows typical of many of this country’s schools [3]. Recently, the building was extensively refurbished by the Norwich University of the Arts – not a major leap from its original purpose but a reflection of current trends in higher education. Duke St School.jpg

Counterbalancing the image of the Victorians’ high moral purpose is the former skating rink in Bethel Street, where fun could be had by gaslight. Built as a roller-skating rink in 1876 it was then used for ten years (1882-1892) by the Salvation Army as their Citadel (see previous blog). The Citadel was entered from St Giles Street via the iron gates adjacent to the Army’s present building that was once Mortimer’s Hotel. I remember the skating rink towards the end of its 100 year occupancy by Lacey and Lincoln, builders’ merchants, before it was refurbished by the present owners in the 1980s. Now, Country and Eastern (below) is a spectacular eastern bazaar that – reflecting the owners’ interest in oriental culture – also contains a small museum of South Asian arts and crafts.

country and eastern.jpg

This factory-like building in St George’s Street was constructed in 1914 as premises for Guntons builders’ and plumbers’ merchants. At one time it was owned by Gunton and Havers – the latter being a relative of the actor Nigel Havers. Now the Gunton Building is another addition to the Norwich’s expanding University of the Arts. Guntons Building.jpg

The Gunton & Havers building in St Georges Street, Norwich 25th March 1967 (c) Archant/EDP Library

St Giles House (41-45 St Giles Street) – one of George Skipper’s big, Baroque and slightly overblown buildings – should dominate the street but it is set parallel to the road and difficult for the passerby to see face-on. It was built in 1904-6 for the Norwich and London Accident Insurance Association just after the opening of another of Skipper’s projects, Surrey House, for rivals Norwich Union: in fact, it has been described as “the Norwich Union in miniature” [4]. Its first rebirth was as a telephone exchange and is sometimes referred to as Telephone House. George Plunkett described it as “Municipal offices until 1938. Education and Treasurer’s departments.” Now it is a luxury hotel, St Giles House. St Giles Hotel.jpg

In 1770-5, the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital was built just outside St Stephen’s Gate by the architect William Ivory. However, the facade of the old hospital that we see today was the result of Edward Boardman’s makeover a century later. His pedimented Dutch gables and rather municipal clock tower do make it look like a town hall [4]. In 2001 a new hospital was built in the suburb of Colney and the old hospital was converted to apartments. NN hospital.jpg

Another building designed by Boardman architects (father EB and son ETB) was for the Norwich Electric Light Company. In 1892 they converted the old Duke’s Palace Ironworks to a site where coal-fired boilers generated electricity that, by 1913, lit over 1750 street lamps around the city. Only 13 years later, superseded by the power station at Thorpe, the over-worked Duke Street site was converted to offices [5]. Now the offices are used by car-sharing company Liftshare. Duke St electric offices2.jpg

The offices of the electricity works are dated 1913. Norwich City’s coat of arms is above the door.

Duke St 4 Electricity works floodlit [1633] 1937-05-13.jpg

Decorations on the floodlit electricity works celebrating the coronation of George VI (1937) (c) George Plunkett

Prolific Boardman had more effect on the appearance of Norwich than perhaps any other architect. His name lives on in Boardman House – the Church Rooms he designed along with the Congregational Chapel in 1879. In 2015 this building in Princes Street was imaginatively refurbished by Norwich University of the Arts to house the School of Architecture. Church Rooms.jpg

Boardman House, interior. 2016.

In the latter part of the C19th Edward Boardman spearheaded Norwich’s expansion, from church rooms to factories – the very diversity of his projects underlining “his aesthetic flexibility”[6]. Howlett and White’s shoe factory (later the Norvic Shoe Co Ltd) became the largest in Britain and between 1876 and 1909 Boardman & Son designed various additions for the expanding enterprise [1]. By the 1930s Norvic occupied virtually all of the land from the river to Colegate and from Duke Street to St George’s Street. But in 1981 the business was in receivership after being asset-stripped of its shops after a takeover in the 1970s [1]. Now the former factory contains offices, apartments, The Last Winebar (a punning reference to its previous incarnation) and, since 2014, The Jane Austen Free School.

Part of Howlett & White’s ‘Norvic’ shoe factory. Edward Boardman designed right of the tower in 1876 and left in 1895.

In the face of competition from mills in the north of England, the mayor Samuel Bignold (son of the founder of Norwich Union) tried to bolster Norwich’s textile trade by establishing the Norwich Yarn Company. The company’s plaque – dated 1839 – can just be seen below the dome of St James’ Mill, built on the site of a C13th Carmelite monastery. Norwich Yarn Co.jpg

Ian Nairn of The Observer, who could be fierce in his architectural reviews, loved this building and called it “the noblest of all English Industrial Revolution Mills” [4]. Its engine-powered looms were not, however, sufficient to avert the threat to Norwich weaving. St James’ Mill was subsequently used by the chocolate manufacturers Caley’s and, until a few years ago, as Jarrold’s Printing Works. Currently, the mill houses private offices. Visit the John Jarrold Printing Museum,which is situated in a riverside building behind St James Mill. Jarrolds Mill.jpg

As a county town Norwich benefitted considerably from the agricultural wealth of the surrounding countryside for which it was the trading centre. In 1882 this was recognised in the inauguration of the Norfolk and Norwich Agricultural Hall, designed for once by an architect other than Edward Boardman: JB Pearce. The opening ceremony was performed by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) as Patron of the wonderfully named Norfolk and Norwich Fat Cattle Show Association [7]. It is not recorded what the cattlemen thought of Oscar Wilde’s lecture on “The House Beautiful”given at the Hall some two years later. The building now houses Anglia TV’s offices and studios. Agriclrl Hall.jpg

Pearce’s sombre public building is made of local red brick faced with a deep red and alien Cumberland sandstone [4]. Further decoration is provided by moulded Cosseyware (see previous post) from Guntons’ brickyard in nearby Costessey. The keystones above the ground floor doors and windows are decorated with heads or emblems. The Prince of Wales feathers refer not only to the prince himself but to the adjoining Prince of Wales road that connects Thorpe railway station with the former cattle market on Castle Hill. One of several heads is shown below; it is evidently a portrait but the identities of these agricultural worthies are no longer known. The reference to the bull’s head seems more straightforward but since JJ Colman was Vice-Chairman of the Agricultural Hall Company might this also allude to what had been Colman’s trademark since 1855? [8].

Sources

Holmes, Frances and Holmes, Michael (2013). The Story of the Norwich Boot and Shoe Trade. Pub: Norwich Heritage Projects http://www.norwich-heritage.co.uk Ref 1a: Burgess, Edward and Wilfred (1904). Men Who Have Made Norwich.
http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/Industrial%20Architecture/Mountergate%20Coop%20shoe%20factory%20wall%20[7530]%201998-03-01.jpg
Girouard, Marc (1984). Sweetness and Light: “Queen Anne” Movement, 1860-1900. Yale University Press.
Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wilson, Bill (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1. Yale University Press.
http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF61834-Duke’s-Palace-Ironworks-and-Norwich-Electric-Lighting-Company&Index=53786&RecordCount=56542&SessionID=071f84aa-3266-4621-85cc-d97a40c30c46
http://hbsmrgateway2.esdm.co.uk/norfolk/DataFiles/Docs/AssocDoc6824.pdf
http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/industrial-innovation/agricultural-hall.htm
http://www.mustardshopnorwich.co.uk/history-of-colmans-pgid15.html

Thanks. For permission to reproduce images I thank Jonathan Plunkett from the Plunkett archive; to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk and to Siofra Connor of the Archant/EDP Library. I am also grateful to Frances Holmes, Philip Tolley and Diana Smith for their assistance.

Flint buildings

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts, Norwich buildings

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Flint buildings, Norwich architecture, Norwich buildings

“Very flat, Norfolk”. (Noel Coward. Private Lives)

“No place in England was further away from good building stone”. (Stefan Muthesius [1])

“The geology of Norfolk in eastern England largely consists of … sedimentary rocks of marine origin…” [2]

These three statements are, of course, related. Much of Norfolk is based on chalk derived from the skeletons of countless marine organisms that rained down upon the seabed some 60-95 million years ago when the sea level was much higher. In places, these layers of chalk are 300 metres (1000 feet) deep [3]. Quarry stone is therefore hard to find.

To build Norwich Cathedral the Normans brought in limestone from Caen in Normandy. Pulls Ferry (below), which was built later, is the medieval watergate that marks the route by which the stone was diverted from the River Wensum to the building site. However, despite this logistical triumph the core of the cathedral was still based on flint for the ashlar limestone is just a facing [2A].

Pulls Ferry, Norwich, which marks the entrance by which building stone was shipped into the cathedral precincts

Flint and chalk are found together. Skeletons of some marine organisms provided the calcium carbonate that formed the chalk strata: others – like this diatom – provided the silicon dioxide (silica) from which the nodules of flint were formed. I estimate this diatom to be ca. 15-20 millionths of a metre in diameter, giving some idea of the staggering number of organisms required just to make one flint nodule, let alone the blizzard of marine life needed to deposit 300 metre layers of chalk.

Arachnoidiscus sp.– a diatom (c) Zeiss Microscopy

It is thought that holes formed by sea creatures burrowing through the gelatinous ooze at the bottom of the seabed provided the right sort of chemical environment for dissolved silicon – released from exoskeletons – to recrystallise, growing the irregular flint nodules around the holes [4].

A hole through a flint nodule – a probable reminder of the burrow made by a Cretacean sea creature.

In a wonderful piece of inorganic chemistry in action, this metamorphosis of sludge on the seabed produced flint nodules; their ‘organic’ shapes fascinated C20th artists – as did the holes. In the 1930s, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth holidayed at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast [5]. In 1931, apparently based on the Happisburgh flints, Barbara Hepworth created one of the first sculptures with a hole through it for non-representational purposes (Pierced Form. Lost in the war). And Henry Moore’s sculptures are famously “lumpy and bumpy and sometimes have holes right through them.”

Barbara Hepworth. Sea Form (Atlantic) 1964 at St George’s Green (outside Norwich Playhouse)

One idea why there are so many round-towered flint churches in East Anglia is that the lack of stone to make the quoins or cornerstones meant it was easier (and cheaper) to build circular towers from knobbly flints set in mortar [6] . Another idea is that the Anglo-Saxons introduced round towers as protection against the Danes but this seems to have been discredited by the finding that many towers are post-Norman Conquest [7]. Geology does seem to provide the answer for while continental invaders spread far further than Norfolk only five round tower churches escaped the confines of the East Anglian chalklands compared to the 126 made in Norfolk [6].

Norwich had one church for every week of the year and one pub for every day.

The actual number of churches appears to have been about 57, of which 31 are still in existence. I haven’t yet visited all the medieval churches but would guess that virtually all are built of flint – even the stone-clad St Peter Mancroft contains flint. However, not many of Norwich’s churches are round-towered. One was St Benedict’s church but this was bombed in the Baedecker raids of 1942 and only the tower, which is made of unknapped flint, survives.

Only the tower of St Benedict’s church remained after the bombing of 1942.

St Benedict's south side from church alley [0140] 1934-06-28

St Benedict’s Church in 1934. (c) georgeplunkett.co.uk

Well shaped flints occur on Norwich’s Guildhall, which is “the largest surviving medieval civic building in the country after London“[7]. It was built as a result of a royal charter of 1404 that gave the city the right of self-government. The east end (below) – rebuilt in the C16th with a clock turret added in the C19th – is a glorious example of diaper flushwork, where alternating diamonds of dark flint and light limestone form a smooth (i.e., ‘flush’) surface. The black and white chequerboard pattern may be a reference to the Guildhall’s use as an exchequer [8] in which a squared cloth was used for counting money.

East end of Norwich Guildhall C15th

In places, the Guildhall walls contain unshaped stones surrounded by shims of flint – a byproduct of knapping. Pushing flakes into the spaces around the flints – or galleting – filled the gaps and protected the exposed mortar. The selection of flints that would leave large gaps seems to have been deliberate since it allowed swirls of galleting to become a decorative feature in its own right.

‘Decorative’ galleting on the Guildhall

By contrast, parts of the east wall have been expertly squared up. Not only was the external face of these flints made smooth but four other sides were also square-knapped with such skill that the flints could be laid in regular courses without the need for galleting or, indeed, any visible mortar.

Coursed flints on the east wall of the Guildhall

Another civic building famous for the quality of its square-knapped wall is the Bridewell, which was built about 1370 as a private house and became a prison for minor offenders nearly 200 years later. It was named after St Bride’s Well, the first such institution in London.

North wall of the Bridewell, Norwich

The north wall of the Norwich Bridewell has claim to being “the finest specimen of faced flint work in the country” [9]. But the knappers seem to have been less constrained here by a requirement for perfect squareness. The square-knapping is not as precise as on parts of the Guildhall and the flints are of variable size. But this honesty with which a difficult material has been handled contributes to the beauty of the wall. Bridewell 2.jpg Flushwork was a speciality of Norfolk and Suffolk and was at its most inventive during the Perpendicular Period (1330-1530) [7, 10]. St Michael (often contracted to St Miles) Coslany is a famously exuberant example. The artist John Sell Cotman claimed that the flushwork on the south side was “one of the finest examples of flint work in the kingdom” [11]. Parts of the church were rebuilt in the C19th. Here on the east end, restored in the 1880s, the flushwork mimics the tracery in the Perpendicular-style window next to it. This fits the general rule that representational designs were made in stone with flint in-fills while non-representational examples were in flint on a stone background [10].

Replica window motif at St Michael (Miles) Coslany

The church of St Andrew in St Andrew’s Street, Norwich, was completely rebuilt in 1506. It also has tracery flushwork but just as fascinating is the re-set frieze of shields beneath the chancel window – the only survivor from the previous church [12]. These can be easily examined as you trudge up St Andrew’s Hill after leaving Cinema City. Kent and Stephenson [11] devoted an entire chapter to this frieze. Three of the thirteen shields (below) represent: the arms of Bishop Dispenser; Richard Fitzalan the Earl of Arundel; and possibly Thomas Mowbray who was later to become Duke of Norfolk.

Tracery flush work beneath the chancel window of St Andrews. Above this is a frieze of shields inherited from the previous church.

According to Stephen Hart [7] “the earliest positively datable example” of flushwork is on St Ethelbert’s gate of Norwich Cathedral (1316). The date is known with some certainty because of the events surrounding its construction. In 1272, conflicts between the cathedral and the citizens led to the torching of the Anglo-Saxon church of St Ethelbert together with the main gate to the monastery. Thirteen citizens were killed in the riots and thirty rioters were hanged [13]. (The man fighting a dragon in the spandrels above the gate may refer to this conflict – see 13A). The king decreed that the citizens should rebuild St Ethelbert’s gate. In 1815 this C14th gateway was restored by William Wilkins [7, 11] but although he generally followed the original pattern of three circular motifs Wilkins made significant changes to the flushwork. These circles are referred to as replica ‘rose windows’ [7] or ‘flushwork wheels’ [13A].

R Cattermole’s engraving of St Ethelbert’s Gate to Norwich Cathedral (right) [14] shows that Wilkins’ 1815 restoration modified the pattern of the flushwork on the parapet. (Courtesy of Norfolk Heritage Centre. Norfolk County Council Library & Information Service).

Another decorative technique, proudwork, was in contrast to the flatness of flushwork [7]. St Gregory’s provides a rare example in Norwich. In this case, the ashlar in tracery design stands proud of the flint.

Proudwork on the single-stage parapet of St Gregory’s church tower

It should not be surprising that Norwich, as a major centre of East Anglian flint-building, had its own brand of flushwork. In the Norwich style [7], vertical stone strips divided the flintwork beneath parapet crenellations into zones into which stone motifs were inset. This can be seen on the tower of St Clement’s Church in Colegate (near Fye Bridge), on which lozenges are decorated with blank shields indicating that God is shielding the building. The smaller lozenges appear to be recent restorations.

St Clement’s Colegate

In serial flushwork, letters or motifs are repeated in a frieze. A good example can be found at All Saints, East Tuddenham – a few miles west of Norwich. Above the porch is the inscription in Lombardic script (Italian lettering of the early Middle Ages): GLORIATIBITR (Gloria Tibi Trinitas, or ‘Glory be to you Oh Trinity’ [15]). The letters are crowned when referring to god, saints and martyrs but never donors [16].

Serial flushwork at East Tuddenham made of crowned Lombardic lettering

Seen here on the porch of St Michael at Plea (below) the Norwich workshop gave St Michael a crowned M as well as a crowned sword. The crowned sword can be seen following the first M but “over-zealous pointing” seems to have obliterated subsequent swords [16].

St Michael at Plea, Norwich. Crowned ‘M’ and (one) sword in serial flushwork above porch.

In 1671 the diarist John Evelyn wrote that Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich had told him that “they had lost the art of squaring the flints, in which they so much once excell’d, and of which the churches, best houses, and walls, are built...”[11]. The quality of the Victorian restoration at the east end of St Miles Coslany provided one example that the art of square knapping had not been lost; this men’s lavatory of 1892 is another – an example of a different kind of flushwork.

Men’s lavatory, St Andrew’s Plain, no longer in use

Square-knapped flint, dated 1892

Sources

Muthesius, Stefan. (1984). Norwich in the Nineteenth Century. Ed, C. Berringer. Chapter 4, pp94-117.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Norfolk [Ref 2A. http://nhbg.org.uk/getmedia/952a6b94-eced-411a-bb63-b508d00f6220/Newsletter-No-23-web.aspx].
http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/flint_formation_fossils.htm
http://www.northfolk.org.uk/_cretaceous%20leaflet.pdf
http://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/view/NCC081889. This links to excellent notes by Nicholas Thornton on an exhibition held in Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, in 2009: Moore/Hepworth/Nicholson. A nest of gentle artists in the 1930s.
Round Tower Churches Society. http://www.roundtowers.org.uk/about-round-tower-churches/
Hart, Stephen. 2000. Flint Architecture of East Anglia. Giles de la Mare Pub Ltd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_Guildhall
http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF607-Norwich-Bridewell-Museum-Bridewell-Alley&Index=603&RecordCount=56881&SessionID=81a31ae1-509a-4c77-9cbe-4c9325a00b0d
Talbot, Margaret. 2004. Medieval Flushwork of East Anglia and its Symbolism. Poppyland Publishing.
Kent, Arnold and Stephenson, Andrew. (1948). Norwich Inheritance. Pub: Jarrold and Sons Ltd., Norwich.
http://www.cvma.ac.uk/publications/digital/norfolk/sites/norwichstandrew/history.html
https://norwichchurches.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/st-ethelberts-chapel-and-the-riots-of-1272.pdf. [Ref 13A Summers, Dominic John (2011) Norfolk Church Towers of the Later Middle Ages. PhD UEA].
Britton, John (1816). The History and Antiquities of the See and Cathedral of Norwich. Pub: Longman et al. London.
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/easttuddenham/easttuddenham.htm
Blatchly, John and Northeast, Peter (2005). Decoding Flint Flushwork on Suffolk and Norfolk Churches.

Thanks to Jonathan Plunkett for permission to use an image from the George Plunkett archive http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk. I also thank the Norfolk Heritage Centre for their help.

Entrances and Exits (Doors II)

16 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Art Nouveau, Georgian doors, Norwich architecture, Norwich buildings, Norwich history

In the previous post I covered Kent and Stephenson’s [1] selection of twenty Tudor-to-Georgian doorways still standing after the war (1948). In walking around Norwich I photographed many more doorways; here is my own selection of twenty (plus one from Great Yarmouth).

In 1871 Thomas Jeckyll, a leading light in the Japanese-influenced Aesthetic Movement, designed an extension for High House, Thorpe St Andrew. The brackets supporting the canopy were carved in a loose Jacobean Revival style [2] but perhaps of greater interest to Jeckyllites are the terracotta panels above the door – probably of Cosseyware from Gunton’s Brickyard in nearby Costessey (covered in a recent post). The rectangular panel contains the initials of client Thomas Birkbeck while Jeckyll’s own initials are transformed in a Chinese-inspired roundel to the right.

No 1 High House, Thorpe St Andrew, Norwich

This house below was designed in Queen Anne Revival style around the turn of the C19th/20th. Like other Arts and Crafts houses in the city built in the QAR style this house has characteristic smaller panes at the tops of the windows. However, this house is distinguished by the quality of its doorway with hooded canopy carried on carved brackets and slim columns.

34 St Stephens Road, Norwich

Until recently, the magnificent shop front in Upper St Giles belonged to an unmodernised chemist’s. It dwarfs the small Georgian-style doorway to the side whose mystery is enhanced by the purple paintwork (Purpleheart 188 by Little Greene).

76A Upper St Giles, Norwich

The frontage for the Salvation Army on St Giles Street may appear to be hewn from granite but in reality is composed of Coade Stone – a weather-proof ceramic invented by Eleanor Coade (b 1733). The rusticated appearance is produced by cut-back joints and the worm-like tracks on the vermiculated surface (vermiculi = little worms; vermicelli = tastes like little worms). The head on the keystone is thought to be “classically-inspired”; suggestions include Bacchus or perhaps a Greek philosopher.

Salvation Army. 36 St Giles Street, Norwich

The frontage of the Citadel was originally built in 1892 as Mortimer’s Hotel. Around 1900 it was known as the Opera House Hotel probably because it was used by performers from the Grand Opera House opposite (now the site of St Giles car park).

St Giles' St 34 former Mortimer's Hotel [5278] 1969-08-16.jpg

34-36 St Giles Street, Norwich (c) George Plunkett Archive. Photographed 1969. The gates beneath the white-painted single bay to the left were the entrance to their Citadel before the Salvation Army also bought the five-bayed Mortimer’s Hotel .

Princes Street is full of gems. At first glance Numbers 16 and 18 appear to be identical twins but 18 is slimmer. The alternating blocks on the architrave to the sides of the doors, and the blockiness of the wedge-shaped voussoirs and keystone above, are typical of the so-called Gibbs surround.

16-18 Princes Street, Norwich.

This fine, painted house is at the bottom of Cow Hill at the junction with Pottergate. The Georgian doorway, with its simple triangular pediment supported on scrolled brackets, is – in Norfolk dialect – seriously ‘on the huh‘. Of course, this is part of its considerable charm.

95 Pottergate

Number 168 King Street is part of a row of C17 houses that formerly contained the Ship Inn. Above the partly blocked alleyway is a lintel on which is carved ‘Princes In’. It is thought this was re-cycled from the inn of that name that once stood in Princes Street, off Tombland.

168 King Street

The building below was once the home of John Harvey who, over the late 18th/early 19th centuries, became Sheriff, Mayor and High Sheriff. Norwich was famed for its shawl weaving, which is said to have been introduced to the city by Harvey in 1791. The rear of the building has a fine central bay whose three floors are rhythmically related. The ‘blind’ arch of the three-part Venetian door on the ground floor is mirrored in the Venetian window above (where the arched central light is typically the taller of three), and is topped by the semi-circular Diocletian window on the third floor.

Gladstone House (rear), 28 St Giles Street

The rear doorway of Gladstone House (above) is – with the exception of the Venetian lights – relatively plain, with scrolled Ionic capitals supporting an open pediment. The Georgian front door, opening onto St Giles Street, is more imposing (below). The open base of the triangular pediment allows the intrusion of a nine-petalled fanlight of identical design to the one illustrated in the previous post for Thomas Ivory’s 13 All Saints’ Green. The break in the base of the open pediment leaves two floating parts to the cornice, which are carried on consoles; these console cornices are, in turn, supported by two fluted and banded columns, the whole being more decorative than the door to the rear.

Gladstone House (front), 28 St Giles Street

13 All Saints’ Green. Identical to the fanlight on Gladstone House

In about 1330, John Page built a hall house in King Street; one hundred years later the wool merchant Robert Toppes remodelled it to make the entire first floor his trading hall [3]. Then it was known as Splytts, now we know it as Dragon Hall. Toppes became a man of influence in the city. To ensure his spiritual wellbeing, or perhaps to celebrate his status as mayor and member of parliament, Toppes sponsored the stained glass ‘Toppes Window’ in the east end of St Peter Mancroft. My first post showed Toppes and female members of his family depicted in the donor panel of this medieval masterpiece. Part of Toppes’ C15th remodelling of Page’s house involved adding an “expensive stone surround” to the C14th ogee doorway [3], explaining the ‘door-within-a-door’ below.

Dragon Hall, Norwich

The fanlight at 25 St George’s Street is a reminder of times when the word ‘cosie’ could be used unironically. The lettering, sentiment and use of stained glass suggest a date in the early part of the C20th.

25 St George’s Street, Norwich

Jenny Lind (‘The Swedish Nightingale’) was enormously popular in the mid C19th. The profits from three concerts she gave in Norwich helped provide for an infirmary for sick children. The original playground in Pottergate was bombed in the Second World War while children were in the bomb shelter yards away. In 1972 the 70-year-old gate was moved to a new playground in Union Street near the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. The owner of the nearby Littlehaven Coffee Co remembers being one of a line of children recovering in bed after having their adenoids taken out in the Jenny Lind Wing. But the re-siting of the hospital from Newmarket Road to Colney in 2001 left the gateway marooned. Still, it is a fine monument. The classically-influenced stone arch is decorated with blue and green mosaic; the Art Nouveau gates, complete with ‘spade’ cut-outs, were made by Boulton and Paul of Norwich – another target of German bombs.

Jenny Lind gateway 2016

The Jenny Lind gate when in Pottergate 1902-1972. (c) Picture Norfolk

Another commemorative arch is at the entrance to the James Stuart Garden at Recorder Road/St Faith’s Lane, off the bottom of Prince of Wales Road. The gardens were laid out by the Norwich architect Edward Boardman in 1922 in memory of James Stuart, Privy Councillor, of Carrow Abbey (d 1913). It would have been built sooner but for the First World War. The coat of arms on the fascia of the memorial gate is that of the Stewart clan; the Scottish connection is underlined by the thistle in the left-hand spandrel, echoed by the English rose on the opposite side. The renaissance style and use of botanical swags suggests this to be a late example of the English Domestic Revival style.

Politics aside, this is one of my favourite doorways, not for the door itself – which is unexceptional – but for the Art Nouveau surround which elides into the magnificent Royal Arcade around the corner, designed by George Skipper. The Parian Ware tiles were designed by W J Neatby at Doulton’s Lambeth Pottery.

Royal Arcade, Norwich

Despite stumbling around Norwich for many years I had never come across Crown Road, behind the Agricultural Hall, off Market Avenue. The proximity to the former major cereal trading house seems to account for the name – Cereal House – emblazoned on the door itself and, hammering home the point, the sculpture of three wheat-sheaves above the door. This sculpture, apparently cast in bronze, is notable but appears at the expense of the heavily-carved Georgian doorcase that was still present in the 1960s (see further below).

Cereal House, 33-34 Crown Road

Crown Rd 34 Georgian doorway 1962-09-08.jpg

34 Crown Road 1962 (c) georgeplunkett.co.uk

Number 2 Cathedral Close was built by Thornagh Gurdon who wrote a history of Norwich Castle. The house is set inside the cathedral precincts on Almary Green. The ‘Mary’ part of this name could be misleading since it is a corruption of Almonry Green, a reference to the place where the almoner once doled out bread and alms. The entrance to this mid-C18th house is imposing since you have to ascend the stone staircase required to rise above the basement. Given the size of the doorway overall the scrolled Ionic columns are rather slim, set against a rusticated surround. According to Pevsner and Wilson [4] the rounded segmental pediment is “a rarity in Norwich”. (‘Segmental’ in this context means based on a segment of a circle).

No 2 Cathedral Close, Norwich

Numbers 2 and 3 Cow Hill were built in the late C17th as a single range beneath six gables [4]. The architectural detailing and decoration are unified, except for the key features of the front elevation – the doors. The differences in door style are relatively minor (e.g., one has fluted columns, the other fluted pilasters) but it is the size of No 3’s doorway that stands out. Yes, it is further down the hill, requiring extra steps up to the threshold but then the doorway shoots up beyond its neighbour so that the triangular pediment breaches the string course. From the base of the first step to the apex of the pediment the door is less than half the total height.

Numbers 2 and 3 Cow Hill, Norwich

Samson and Hercules House in Tombland is thought to have been built in 1657 [4] on the site of an earlier building made for Sir John Fastolf (the presumed inspiration for Shakespeare’s Falstaff). The Georgian-style porch is supported by the two heroes, Samson (left) and Hercules (right). Samson holds the jawbone of an ass in one hand and in the other a small animal, which looks like a lamb or a kid although closer inspection reveals a bushy tail that could not have belonged to either. The animal is a fox and alludes to the biblical story that Samson caught 300 foxes (probably jackals) and tied their tails together in pairs so that they could trail a burning torch between them (Judges 15:4). Those of us concerned about advertising a lobster restaurant by painting historical figures lobster red can extract some consolation from knowing that the figures are replicas – the original C17th figures having been replaced in 1999. Even so …

Samson and Hercules House, Tombland, Norwich

Showing one Falstaffian house provides the excuse for showing another – a favourite of mine. In a previous blog I mentioned Fastolff House in Great Yarmouth, a striking art nouveau building designed by the local architect ‘Concrete’ Cockrill. The patina’ed bronze door does look like the entrance to a mausoleum.

Fastolff House, Regent Street, Great Yarmouth

Norwich is so rich in historic buildings that I could have selected many other ancient doorways. Most are prized and well-maintained but a significant number are unloved. For example, 41 All Saints’ Green is a large five-bayed merchant’s house built in the late C18th [4]. In 2010 the Norwich Evening News reported that this building had been empty for some time since last used as a dental practice. It is still empty and the fine Doric doorcase is showing signs of neglect. In 2016 the building appears on the Norwich City Council’s Heritage at Risk Register. The Norwich Preservation Trust, who have a fine record of intervention in such cases, is also keeping a watchful eye.

41 All Saints’ Green, Norwich

Number 33 Bethel Street has one of the city’s finest Georgian doorways with an impressive Doric entablature containing martial arms on the frieze. Unfortunately, there appear to be no plans to restore this building, which is described on the council’s at-risk register as “Poor condition. Long-term vacant building”. Shame!

33 Bethel Street, Norwich

Next post: Flint buildings (Sign up for free email alerts)

Sources

Kent, Arnold and Stephenson, Andrew (1948). Norwich Inheritance. Pub: Jarrold and Sons Ltd., Norwich
Susan Weber Soros and Catherine Arbuthnott (2003). Thomas Jeckyll, Architect and Designer, 1827-1881. The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York. Pub: Yale University Press.
Matthews, Richard.(2013). Robert Toppes. Medieval Mercer of Norwich. Pub: The Norfolk and Norwich Heritage Trust.
Pevsner, Nikloaus and Wilson, Bill (1997 ). The Buildings of England. Norfolk I: Norwich and North-East.Pub: Yale University Press.

I thank Jonathan Plunkett for permission to reproduce three images from the George Plunkett archive. I am also grateful to Clare Everitt for permission to reproduce the image from Picture Norfolk. Thanks, also, to Richard Matthew for information about the Dragon Hall doorway.

Early doors: Tudor to Georgian

26 Thursday May 2016

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Doric doorways, Georgian doors, Norwich architecture, Norwich buildings, Tudor doors

“Fine medieval, Tudor and Georgian doorways once abounded in Norwich, but they are rapidly disappearing.“(Kent & Stephenson, 1948).

In 1948, Kent and Stephenson published a book of photographs of ancient buildings celebrating our ‘Norwich Inheritance’ [1]. Close to the Second World War it was surprising that they didn’t dwell on losses to enemy bombing. Instead, they wanted to record what remained, to show how easy and elegant Norwich once looked and perhaps might look again. But they seemed to have had little confidence in post-war renewal, suspecting that there was a, “danger of throwing away this heritage … for a commercial conglomeration of humdrum mediocrity”. You be the judge.

Kent and Stephenson worried that little would remain in 50 years time. Almost 70 years later, I thought I would try to find the 20 doors illustrated in their section on ‘The Doorways of Norwich’.

1. The Old Bridewell Entrance, St Andrew’s Hill. This four-plank door, with joints covered by fillets, is a replacement for the 5/6-plank door illustrated by Kent and Stephenson [1]. The head of the Tudor door with carved spandrels survives; the Gothic grille is hanging on but needs repair. George Plunkett [2] said it was the oldest of its kind in the city, dating it to ca. 1490 (early Tudor). The history of the Gothic arch is of a gradual flattening, from the steeply pointed lancet windows of the Early English style to the Perpendicular/Tudor phase where the four-centred arch produced a flatter profile.

The Old Bridewell Entrance, St Andrew’s Hill. The Tudor arch is still noticeably pointed in this early doorway but gets flatter throughout this period.

No 2. Bacon’s House 31 Colegate (now numbered 35). This house was built for Henry Bacon, a wealthy worsted merchant who was mayor and sheriff in the mid 1500s. The several rectangles of newer wood set into the Tudor door replaced the letterboxes and other door furniture described by Kent and Stephenson as ‘a disfigurement’. There is a separate ‘wicket’ door within this door with its own spandrels.

Henry Bacon’s House, Colegate.

No 3. Bayfield’s Court, Stump Cross. This Tudor doorway is no longer in existence, a possible victim of the 1960s inner link road and flyover that aimed (and missed by a country mile) to have minimal impact on medieval Magdalen Street. Thankfully, in 1935 George Plunkett recorded this Tudor doorway with its carved spandrels bearing the date and owner’s name (not Bayfield who was a C19th owner).

Magdalen St Bayfield's Yard Tudor archway [0515] 1935-05-05.jpg

Bayfield Court (demolished) [George Plunkett archive, 1935]

No 4. Shaw’s Yard, Colegate. Shaw’s Yard is described by Kent and Stephenson [1] as being “by the side of the Labour Exchange”, but the building is no longer used for that purpose. The date (1570) in the right-hand spandrel is said to mark the second mayoralty of John Aldrich. In George Plunkett’s post-war survey of more than 150 old doorways [2], he calls this Shave’s (not Shaw’s) Yard.

Shaw’s or (Shave’s Yard), Colegate.

No 5. 29 Magdalen Street. Twenty nine Magdalen Street was the house of Thomas Shipdham whose initials may be those in the right-hand spandrel. He was a rich mercer who became sheriff then, in 1631, the mayor. Although the date of 1612 in the left-hand spandrel places it outside the Tudor dynasty (1485-1603) this well-preserved doorway is clearly in the Tudor style.

29 Magdalen Street

No 6. Tudor doorway at Thorpe Lodge, Thorpe Road. This is no longer in existence. Instead, here is a medieval doorway that would not have been known by Kent and Stephenson for it was only uncovered about 2010 when repairing the render at the side of Roaches Yard off Elm Hill. The frame of the simple three-plank door has a Tudor four-centred arch with plain spandrels.

Roaches Court, to the side of No 36 Elm Hill.

No 7. Garsett House, St. Andrew’s Plain. The preceding Tudor style (1485-1603) had its roots in the Gothic but by the middle of the C18th Georgian architecture was heavily influenced by Neoclassicism. In this revival of interest in ancient Greek and Roman architecture, proportion and symmetry were central as was the ‘order’ or style of column used. Most of the following Norwich doorways were based on the Greek Doric order – the simplest order characterised by fluted (sometimes plain) columns topped with a plain capital. Another typical Doric feature was the cricket-wicket-like triglyph (III) that decorated the frieze or middle layer of the horizontal entablature. This can be seen at Garsett House, which was the first Georgian doorway described by Kent and Stephenson [1]. The medieval timber-framed house was modernised by adding this Classical portico. Above the six-panelled door is a rectangular transom light to illuminate the otherwise gloomy entrance hall. As the C18th progressed this style of light tended to be superseded by the semi-circular fanlight.

Garsett House

No 8. 17 Pottergate. Unfluted columns support a large and rusticated (projecting) keystone entablature. This stone doorway was said in 1948 [1] to be “in poor condition and suffering from a rash of bells”: the rash is gone.

17 Pottergate

No 9. 46 St Giles. St Giles Street is Norwich’s finest Georgian street filled with the houses of the rich mercantile class. This Georgian doorway at No 46 is being renovated in 2016. The door furniture has not survived but the six-panelled door, fanlight and fluted columns appear to be as they were in 1948. Situated above the transom is a sun-ray fanlight. Fanlights added height to the doorway but the increase in overall size tended to be counteracted by their delicacy when finely cast in metal. Here, the horizontal entablature increases height further – as do the three doorsteps – but in adding width (and grandeur) the fluted columns restore proportion.

46 St Giles’ Street

No 10. 48 St Giles. The Reverend Robert Parr built the house in 1792 [1]. In May 2016, number 48 St Giles is shrouded in scaffolding but at least this wonderful portico survived the war and the post-war renewal. In 1948 Kent and Stephenson complained that the decorated Doric frieze was obscured by a badly placed YMCA sign [1]: today, despite the netting and scaffold poles, the entablature and fanlight are at least visible.

48 St Giles’ Street

No 11. Harvey’s House, 18 Colegate. Thomas Harvey (1710-1772), merchant, Mayor and Sheriff of Norwich, was born in this house. The doorway has fluted Ionic pillars capped by the angled scrolls or volutes that are characteristic of this order. George Plunkett [2] remembered coming across a note stating that a number of pillared doorways in Norwich were based on designs by Thomas Ivory – the city’s pre-eminent Georgian architect. Plunkett could find no supporting evidence but hoped that the best of the doorways were inspired by Ivory. Here he specifically named the next two doorways, 18 Colegate and 44 Magdalen Street. In these examples there is no fanlight. Instead, the solution for allowing light into a dark entrance hall was to glaze the top panels of the door itself, although this may have been done later. The door may be a replacement but considering the importance of this doorway the door furniture and signage are quite out of keeping. This probably explains the pained look on the keystone’s face above.

Harvey’s House 18 Colegate

No 12. 44 Magdalen Street. This is the other of George Plunkett’s two ‘best’ Norwich doorways.

44 Magdalen Street.

Magdalen Street, one of Norwich’s most celebrated medieval-to-Georgian streets largely survived the war but not the peace. The decision to bisect it with a flyover did not, as was anticipated, save the street but blighted it. Little thrives beneath the concrete and the surrounding post-war buildings are mostly derelict and an eyesore. However, look closely and it is still possible to pick out gems, like the Tudor and Georgian doorways illustrated here.

The frieze is classical Greek Doric with raised decoration between the triglyphs

No 13. All Saints’ Green. Ivory House was built in 1771-2 to a design by the well-known Norwich architect, Thomas Ivory. Kent and Stephenson [1] knew this building as ‘Artillery Barracks’ although I have seen it referred to as Militia Barracks. The horizontal joints of the columns are cut back to produce the rusticated banding. Pevsner and Wilson [4] liked “the good nine-vaned fanlight.’

Ivory House, All Saints’ Green

No 14. Gurney’s Court. This doorway survives more or less as illustrated by Kent and Stephenson although the fine Georgian lamp has been replaced [1]. The carved canopy seems to be Baroque rather than Classical and could be a remnant of a previous doorway. The plaque to the left celebrates the fact that two notable Norwich women – Elizabeth Fry and Harriet Martineau – were born in this house

14 Gurney’s Court, Magdalen Street

No 15. St Catherine’s Court, All Saints’ Green. This Adam-style porch with its genteel swags was – even in 1948 – a plaster replica. Possibly, the original was damaged in the bombing raid that destroyed porticos in adjacent Surrey Street (see No19).

St Catherine’s Court

No 16. 79 King Street. Like Magdalen Street, King Street has suffered much since the war but, fortunately, this Georgian doorway remains as does the Venetian window above. The fanlight based on overlapping Gothic arches differs from the more usual variations on radiating sun rays. Contrast this doorway with No 9. (46 St Giles) whose height is exaggerated by a fanlight quite separate from the entablature above. Here at 79 King Street the triangular pediment is open at the base, allowing the fanlight to intrude into the entablature. In the second half of the C18th the open pediment allowed doorways to be less tall and grandiose (e.g., where dictated by an entrance hall of limited height).

79 King Street

No 17 20 Colegate. This is an early C17th house with a Georgian doorway that, unusually for Norwich, is made of stone. The temple-like doorway has a Doric entablature and unfluted columns.

20 Colegate

No 18. Churchman House, 68 St Giles (now 71 Bethel Street). Churchman House, built in the early C18th for Alderman Thomas Churchman, has been described as ‘possibly the best Georgian provincial townhouse in England’[3]. The Churchmans were worsted weavers, underlining the point that when Norwich was the nation’s second city its wealth was largely derived from the wool trade. Although the wooden entablature and the triangular pediment are very similar to the stone version above, the overall effect here is less squat since the height of the doorway is stretched by inclusion of steps as well as fanlight. Inside, the rooms are proportionately tall. I was witness at a wedding here when it was Norfolk Register Office: now you have to get wed at the Castle.

Churchman House

No 19. 25 and 27 Surrey Street (demolished). This terrace is said to have been designed by Thomas Ivory. The projecting Doric entablature, supported by fluted pilasters and free-standing columns, provided the entrance to two houses, each having a fine door and rising-sun fanlight.

Surrey St 25 to 27 Georgian portico [2187] 1938-03-21.jpg

25-27 Surrey St 1938. (c) George Plunkett

The double portico was amongst the finest in Norwich but was destroyed by an enemy bomb in 1940 [2]. The house itself was pulled down in 1963. The wartime photograph below shows fluted columns and the rest of the portico lying in the road. George Plunkett [2] said that this revealed various pencilled dates on the woodwork, including 1692 and 1740. Another inscription read: “James Rump carpenter and joiner … Norwich made this portico in the year 1821”. It is possible that older pieces of wood were incorporated into the structure. Pevsner and Wilson [4] date the houses to 1761-2 with later porches.

25 and 27 Surrey Street. Inspecting the bomb damage, 1940. Source: Picture Norfolk

In the photo below the war-damaged 25 and 27 Surrey Street are the furthest right of the three double porticos, but the other two survive today.

Surrey St 25 to 35 [0588] 1935-05-19.jpg

Surrey Street 25-35 (c) George Plunkett. Photographed in 1935. The two houses/porticos left and centre survived the bombing.

The photographs below are of 35 and 33 Surrey Street (the double portico on the left in the photo above). George Plunkett [2] wrote that the replacement of the square pillars on No35 by round marble columns with ornate Corinthian capitals had been done “with great lack of taste”. This “unhappy” [1] substitution was already visible in the 1935 photograph, prior to the war. I remember reading the damage was caused by a motor accident but cannot trace the reference – can you?

35 and 33 Surrey Street

No 20. 31 and 33 St Giles. These houses were originally built in the late C16th – early C17th and refaced in the late C18th [5]. The houses were not, therefore, built with Palladian proportions in mind so the late Georgian doorway would have been retrofitted to a less generous floor-plan. Spanning two doors with a common fanlight above the entablature required structural ingenuity since a semi-circular fanlight of that diameter would have been too tall for the hallways it was intended to illuminate. Instead, height was reduced by: using a narrow segment from a very large circle as a template for the fanlight (and confusing the radial spokes of the fanlight in the process); reducing the entablature to just the supporting architrave – no decorative frieze; and ensuring that the columns did not extend above the head of the door.

31 and 33 St Giles’ Street

The fact that 17 out of the 20 selected doorways [1] can still be seen today might seem to be cause for optimism. However, the selection was made from those still standing after the war. George Plunkett’s [2] much larger survey included doorways known to be present before the war and shows just how many fine buildings and doorways fell victim, not just to the war, but to C20th modernisation. As Joni Mitchell sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

Next post: “Entrances and Exits (Doors II)”. Sign up for free email alerts.

Sources

Kent, Arnold and Stephenson, Andrew (1948). Norwich Inheritance. Pub: Jarrold and Sons Ltd., Norwich
Plunkett, George (1945). Old Norwich doorways. Norfolk Archaeology vol 28, pp39-70.
Nierop-Reading, Vic. (2006). Visit to Churchman House. In, Norfolk Historic Buildings Group Newsletter No 12. pp 8-9.
Pevsner, Nikloaus and Wilson, Bill (1997 ). The Buildings of England. Norfolk I: Norwich and North-East.Yale University Press.
Norfolk Heritage Explorer. NHER Number:26186.

I am grateful to Jonathan Plunkett for allowing me to reproduce photographs from the George Plunkett archive (http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Website/) and to Clare Everitt for permission to reproduce images from Picture Norfolk.

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Jeckyll and the Japanese wave

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Norwich’s pre-loved buildings

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Entrances and Exits (Doors II)

Early doors: Tudor to Georgian

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