The art of the shop front

 

High Street (pictured, top) is a beautiful children's book from 1938 illustrated with lithographs by Eric Ravillious with text by architectural historian J. M. Richards. Even back then, Richards bemoans the homogeneity of the high street with its bland chain stores taking over, and goods being factory-produced.

Ravillious' shops were actual London shops (and amazingly, two are actually still around) – not all found on the same street but dotted around the capital. Some were already obsolete when the book was published: Coach Builder, Harness Maker, Naturalist and Submarine Engineer are unfortunately no longer found on the extremely boring British high street (shops in foreign cities seem to have retained some individuality). Ravillious made his shops look as enticing and exotic as possible with lovely architectural features, dramatic lighting, quirky details and rich patterns and textures.

The 1950s were a heyday for British illustration, with the talents of teachers and students from the Royal College of Art largely leading the way. High Street sort of set the template for how shop illustrations should look. Barbara Jones (Croydon opticians, middle) and John Griffiths (deli, bottom) both drew shop fronts in the 1950s and they both studied at the RCA; Jones was taught by Ravillious. The influence is obvious but both have their own wonderful style. Jones' opticians picture was included in her 1951 book, The Unsophisticated Arts, which chronicled the vernacular of British life, from fairgrounds and tattoo parlours to seaside piers and high street shops. In 1959, issue three of the art magazine Motif carried Griffith's illustrations of quirky shopfronts.

And the tradition continues: last year illustrator Eleanor Crow (who also, incidentally, illustrated Pebbles on the Beach, which I read last year) released her book Shopfronts of London, which beautifully records London's cafes and food shops. Her criteria for a good shopfront wouldn't be that different from Ravillious' some eighty years ago: “great typography and signage, striking colours, nice tiles, lots of good architectural detail.” Unfortunately yet typically, many of the businesses have closed down in the decade Crow has worked on the project.

(I've written about the death of the high street previously, so won't dwell on it here. Interestingly, though, there's been a revival of the art of the hand-painted shop sign. Unsurprisingly, it seems to be mainly in London's East End, where hipster types love all things authentic, traditional and handmade. Nevertheless, I take it as a good sign. Both The Guardian and Eye magazine had features on handpainted signs in 2015.)

Further reading / looking
• Blog Quad Royal has posts about both John Griffiths and several about Barbara Jones.
• The Unsophisticated Genius of Barbara Jones is at James Russell's blog.
• Motif magazine: The World Made Visible by Rick Poymor in Design Observer.
• The always excellent Spitalfields Life has photos of boarded-up East End shop fronts from 1988 here and here, and also featured Eleanor Crow's pictures of cafes back in 2013.

Previously on Barnflakes
Verve magazine, 1937-1960
Illustrated children's books (for parents)
Not for all the tea in China
Death of the High Street
Proud to Serve

Cinema in Crystal Palace finally to reopen

After eight years of campaigning by local residents, there is finally to be a cinema in Crystal Palace, the first time for over fifty years. The Rialto on Church Road first opened in the 1920s, closing in the 1960s to become a bingo hall. More recently it's been a Christian centre. The Everyman chain of cinemas put in a bid earlier in the year, which was accepted. It will open as a four-screen cinema towards the end of the year.

Time Out has some pictures of what it's going to look like.

My image above contains all the iconic Crystal Palace landmarks: Transmitter tower, Sphinxes, dinosaur, subway and statue from the Great Exhibition.

Now all Crystal Palace needs is some chain stores. I've had with the cafes and vintage shops; there's nowhere for me to buy me a pair of pants or socks. Give me an M&S!

Nearby, the West Norwood Picturehouse is also due to open this year.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The lost art of the double bill
In the Crystal Palace subway
The dinosaurs of Crystal Palace
Random film review: The Pleasure Garden 
London through its charity shops: Crystal Palace, SE19
Double bill me

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:
Crystal Palace Flickr album

The seven fabled noses of Soho

Not to be sniffed at: three of the seven Soho noses

I followed my nose through the streets, picking my way through the hoards of tourists in the rain, searching for the seven noses of Soho. They were here somewhere, and if I found all seven (which I didn't; I gave up after three) I was promised great wealth. I put my nose to the grindstone but they were hard to find, roughly at shoulder height yet hidden in plain view, and the size of a nose. The rain got heavier, my boon companions found a pub, and I was happy enough with my three (I nose when to give up).

The story goes that in 1997, in protest against the proliferation of CCTV cameras in the UK and inspired by the Situationist movement, artist Rick Buckley anonymously stuck 35 plaster casts of his nose to various buildings in London. Even though he painted them the same colour as the walls he stuck them on, so they would be fairly inconspicuous, most of the protrusions were found and removed. Fourteen years passed until Buckley admitted he was the guerrilla artist responsible for them, by which time the remaining Soho noses had reached mythical proportions, inspiring all kinds of fantastic tales (which you can read about here if you want), including the one about fabulous wealth coming to those who find all seven, a difficult task seeing as at least one is located outside of Soho.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The Chewing Gum Artist Vs The Admen

I know I'm back in Brixton when...

I'm standing outside the pub for five minutes having a smoke and get offered a carrier bag full of steaks for £10; home-produced music CDs with hand written labels; three people trying to bum cigarettes off me; an elderly, well-spoken old lady asking for 40p to get back to Slough ("You'd have to pay me not to go", quipped my Catalan – "not Spanish!" – companion); and an elderly black woman asking me if I'm having a good evening.

I was actually rather offended not to be offered any drugs. When I was younger, I was constantly being offered them down Cold Harbour Lane. Either Brixton has become too gentrified and the drug dealers have moved away, or I'm just looking too old to score drugs. Maybe a bit of both.

Previously on Barnflakes:

Diversity deficit

Fire

In St Pancras Old Churchyard

Supposedly one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Europe, dating back to the fourth century, St Pancras Old Church is located five minutes away from St Pancras train station in Somers Town on Pancras Road. The churchyard is a curious place, part park and dotted with ancient trees and interesting tombs with fascinating stories.

The most striking aspect of the churchyard is the famous Hardy tree (pictured, top) – named after the Wessex writer Thomas Hardy – where hundreds of gravestones are piled around an ash tree in a circular pattern with the tree roots intertwined around them. As a young man, Hardy trained as an architect in London, and one of his unenviable tasks was to dig up and relocate body remains in the churchyard to Finchley to make way for the expansion of St Pancras train station. With the remaining gravestones, the young Hardy made a rather artful arrangement of them around a tree in the churchyard.

Also in the churchyard is architect Sir John Soane's mausoleum (pictured, bottom) for himself and his wife, Eliza, who died, according to Soane, after the shock of discovering their son's negative reviews of his father's work. Soane never forgave his son, and never got over the death of his wife. If the design of the tomb looks familiar, that's because it was supposedly the inspiration for architect Giles Gilbert Scott's iconic red phone box.

Though her body has been moved (to Bournemouth), the tomb of Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, remains. When her daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, was planning an elopement with poet Percy Shelley, they used to meet at night to discuss their plans at her mother's grave.

Charles Dickens used to wander around the churchyard, and it's mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities. It also features on William Blake's mythical map of London. Somewhat later, in 1968, The Beatles posed for publicity photos in the porch of the church whilst promoting their White Album.

Previously on Barnflakes:
William Blake's vision of angels in Peckham
Notes on Gilbert George Scott

Battle of the Brutalists

There has never been more interest in brutalist architecture – numerous books are published on the subject; plates and tea towels are adorned with brutalist imagery; there are hundreds of websites and Instagram accounts dedicated to what the French coined raw concrete, béton brut (unfortunately we translated the word rather brutally). Brutalism is the new iconic (iconic once used to refer to Russian icons; now it's bandied around and any celebrity, building, artwork, film or photo can be instantly iconic), a word tossed around to describe any concrete monstrosity.

Its popularity has come at a time, paradoxically perhaps, when many brutalist council estates and buildings are being knocked down. In a 2016 speech former Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to spend £140 million demolishing or  regenerating 100 sink estates (which sounds a lot of money but to my rusty maths only equates to £1.4 million per estate). The speech coincided with a bill aiming to reduce the amount of social housing in the country.

Cameron went on to say: "Decades of neglect have led to gangs and anti-social behaviour. And poverty has become entrenched, because those who could afford to move have understandably done so... The mission here is nothing short of social turnaround... I believe we can tear down anything that stands in our way."

There are some brutalist success stories. Flats in the maze-like Barbican estate cost over £1m. The Park Hill estate in Sheffield had a recent award-winning overhaul. But generally what seems to be happening is council estates are being deliberately neglected and then demolished, residents are being moved out of London, and luxury, overpriced (and generally very ugly) apartment blocks are being built on the land, sold to Chinese/Russian/Arab investors for large sums of money and remaining empty most of the time. This is the bizarre solution to the housing crisis? When there's a waiting list of at least 1.5m people for social housing?

The mission here, it seems to me, is social cleansing and making as much money as possible at the expense of the residents of these demolished blocks. As as one ex-resident from the now-demolished Heygate estate said, "We have literally been sold out by our own council". That some residents had lived their entire lives in the area, had family and social networks and jobs in the community seemed to be of no consequence. Many of the residents were forced to move out of London (meaning they'll never be able to afford to move back) to cities as far flung as Birmingham. Of the 2,535 new homes built where the Heygate estate was, only 79 were allocated for social renting.

This doesn't seem to concern any of the brutalist websites, bloggers or Instagrammers. Brutalism is cool. Goldfinger and Le Corbusier are hip. On tea towels and mugs, in books, in moody black and white photos. When it was announced the Robin Hood Gardens estate was to be demolished, news that the V&A were to acquire a three-storey section of the block received far more press than the future of the estate's residents. Considering brutalism is usually public housing, it seems strange that the residents are usually completely absent from any imagery.

During consultations (which admittedly I'd take with a pinch of salt), 75% of residents in the Robin Hood Gardens estate said they wanted it demolished, whilst at the same time, the 20th Century Society and high-profile architects including Richard Rogers, the late Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito and Robert Venturi petitioned to save it from the bulldozers. Britain's "most important" post-war social housing development, enthused Richard Rogers, presumably not having spent more than half an hour on the block (a half-hearted Twitter storm erupted when residents invited him to spent the night on the estate; Rogers said he would, but never did). Residents variously described the 'streets in the sky' estate as a "prison" and "not a home" as the Building Design website were calling it "seminal".

The brutalist debate is a tough one. The buildings have become trendy, but not for most of the residents who live on them and have to endure the crime and neglect. I'm never one to agree with demolition – once it's gone, there's no bringing it back. I certainly prefer most brutalist buildings to the hideous new luxury apartments springing up all over the UK. I say we should keep brutalist estates but invest in them, regenerate them, give them proper lighting, give them a lick of paint (or a mural of a dog)! I lived on one for years, the Alton estate in Roehampton. It wasn't that bad. And Grade II listed, so hopefully it won't be demolished, though the library, which isn't listed, may well face the wrecking ball.

Previously on Barnflakes
The regeneration game
Death of the high street
Modern architecture is rubbish
Alton blues

Elsewhere on the web
dezeen.com is my favourite online architecture magazine.

The Camberwell submarine

I'd of course heard of the Camberwell carrot but the Camberwell submarine was a recent discovery. Located at Akerman Road, London SW9, for a while its purpose was something of a mystery. Nuclear bunker? Brutalist monument to sailors lost during the war? It must be said, since it had its chimneys raised by four metres several years ago, it looks far more imposing and much less than a submarine. Anyway, its purpose is fairly prosaic – it houses the boiler plants for the local housing estates; something which is fairly obvious when you walk alongside it and receive blasts of hot air.

Top ten London staircases

London libraries #6: Carnegie Library, Herne Hill

I can almost bear the concept of library plus coffee shop (though not really), but library plus gym, even if it's a "bookish gym" (Lambeth's phrase)? That's a huge WTF?

That is the plan being put through by Lambeth Council. Meanwhile, the library has been closed for over a year (costing nearly as much keeping it closed as being open). There were protests earlier in the year by 'Defend the 10', the group trying to keep open the ten libraries in Lambeth that are threatened with closure.

Carnegie Library was built in 1907 with funds from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (most famous for his eponymous Hall in New York City). It's a striking and beautiful brick and terracotta Grade II listed building, apparently well-loved before it was closed in March last year. It currently stands empty and locked up, with leaves in the entrance and overgrown plants in the front. Posted all around the railing are quotes from famous authors on the importance of books and librarians.

Previously on Barnflakes:
London libraries #1-6

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:
The best photo ever, ever, ever taken in Herne Hill

Alton estate of mind – the book

The Alton estate of mind book(let) is finally finished. It's a personal and architectural guide to the Grade II listed Alton estate in Roehampton, where I lived many years ago. The text is mainly the same as on this very blog (see here); some of the photos are on Flickr. But there's nothing like  holding a book (or going to an exhibition). You know, the physical, tactile thing. I still have to get it printed, mind. Watch this space (again).

William Blake's vision of angels in Peckham

Top: possible oak tree planted in honour of Blake; bottom: Blake mural at Goose Green

It takes almost as much imagination as artist and poet William Blake had to picture him, aged 7 or 8, walking to Peckham Rye on his own and having his first (of many) vision of angels there, but that's how the story goes: "A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars". Around 1765 the boy William, not liking built-up central London where he lived, liked nothing more than to walk seven miles or more (sometimes as far afield as Croydon) to the common at Peckham Rye. One Blake scholar says these formative walks had a strong influence on future poems such as Songs of Experience.

Locating the actual tree is impossible now; for one thing the common was a lot larger than it is now, for another, even if it's still there, does it actually matter? We had enough trouble tracking down the small oak tree that was planted in 2011 by artist John Hartley in honour of William Blake (there's no plaque or sign, and we had only had a vague map of the park with a red cross where the tree is. It was a case of not being able to see the tree for the trees). Nearby, on Goose Green, there's a mural to Blake's vision of angels, painted in 1993 as a community project.

(Did we see any angels? was the inevitable question asked us when we returned from our wanderings. Well, actually yes. I thought I spotted one on the common, but it was a dead tree. But we saw them on the mural, and then in Nunhead cemetery, our next stop.)

Around Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

From top to bottom: the new Cabinet gallery; Ashley Bickerton Bali painting; staircase, Newport Street gallery; Pacman Ghost on side of pub, Lambeth High Street; terracotta and glazed tiles, Southbank House

The last time the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens contained any kind of pleasure – of a legal, civilised kind anyway – was round about 1850. Since then it’s fallen into despair but, lo and behold, the area is being regenerated. We visited on a fine afternoon, the day before St George's Day, and there was a St George's festival on and it felt like a village fete, with a Punch and Judy show, sword fighters and stalls. There were donkeys on display, come from Vauxhall City Farm on the other side of the gardens. Old style jazz was billowing out of the lovely Tea House Theatre cafe (which blissfully doesn't serve coffee), where a slice of their stale cake sets you back £5 (worth having once for the experience).

I’d been earlier in the week to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to visit Cabinet, the gallery having recently moved from east London and now residing below offices in a purpose-built structure on the corner of the gardens. Though I was none too inspired by Pierre Guyotat's childlike sketches of figures with huge dicks, it's nice to see another gallery in the area. Five minutes walk out of the park in a converted Victorian building, once a school, is Beaconsfield Contemporary Art gallery on Newport Street. We popped in to see their current exhibition, Meditations on the Anthropocene, which consists of huge black and white screens in large dark rooms, slowly animating, with discordant, creepy music. In other words, a Disney horror movie shot by Tarkovsky (perhaps). There's a nice vegan cafe downstairs.

Damien Hirst's Newport Street gallery is at the other end of the road. My usual stock response to being asked about his gallery is the staircases are better than any of the art, but I thoroughly enjoyed the playful new Ashley Bickerton exhibition. The shark in a strait jacket on the exhibition’s website homepage does no justice to Bickerton’s work which encompasses sculpture, photography, sculpture and graphic design. My daughter naturally preferred the scary monster heads with bird of paradise flower tentacles coming out of their heads, but I loved the lurid Bali paintings with their ornate wooden frames depicting traditional Balinese life, whilst the painting themselves show a kind of psychedelic modern Bali.

An interesting interview with Bickerton by Paul Theroux (how has his talentless son, Louis, eclipsed his father, one of the best travel writers of his generation? Oh yes, because pa writes books and son is on TV. Louis' recent film, My Scientology Movie, is a Nick Broomfield-esque textbook documentary about failing to make the documentary you intended; Tickled, by contrast, a recent documentary about competitive tickling, is a fascinating piece of investigative journalism where both you and the filmmaker start off thinking it's going to be about one thing, only to discover it's about something else entirely) can be read on the Guardian website.

On the corner of Lambeth High Street and Black Prince Road is the spectacular Southbank House, the only remaining example of the Doulton pottery complex in the area. This Grade-II listed building is being turned into flats, of course, but the ornate exterior will presumably remain. The outside is covered with reliefs, glazed tiles, moulded terracotta and polychromy, all to show off how great Doulton were at pottery (read a better description here, with photos). Nearby is the huge art deco Fire Brigade Headquarters on Albert Embankment, which has fine reliefs. A quick look at White Hart dock, across the road, concluded our tour. The dock was made around 1868, and used as an emergency water supply during the Second World War. Anyway, we were hungry by now and went to get lunch in a nearby cafe.

Really, I enjoy London's art and parks more than anything else in the city. I quite like the area around Newport Street – there's hardly any people or cars compared to the mayhem around Vauxhall.

A tale of two chapels

In this age of mass inequality of wealth, property developers demolishing history to make way for soulless luxury flats and big business ruling our lives, it seems that profit comes before everything else. So it warms the cockles of my heart that two small, beautiful London hospital chapels have been saved from demolition and restored.

The most recent is the Fitzrovia Chapel, now part of the £700m Fitzroy development. When the Middlesex hospital was closed in 2005, then demolished in 2008, the grade II* listed hospital chapel was the only part of the hospital to survive. Aerial photos of the lone chapel surrounded by wasteland for years made for a sad and poignant image:

The Fitzroy development – the usual bland assortment of offices, restaurants and shops – was finally completed last year, and the first opportunity to see the completed and restored chapel was for Open House last September. And what a delight it is, its sumptuous interior adorned with gold mosaics and marble on the walls and ceiling.

Designed by the Gothic Revivalist architect John Loughborough Pearson, who also created the Truro cathedral in Cornwall, the chapel was completed by his son, Frank, and opened in 1929. Frank added many of the flourishes for which it is famous today, including lavish marble and mosaic, in the style of Italian Gothic and Romanesque.

Ceiling of Fitzrovia chapel

St Christopher's Chapel in Great Ormond Street Hospital is another unexpected delight – and so described by Oscar Wilde as "the most delightful private chapel in London". In the 1980s, the old hospital was demolished and the entire chapel had to be physically moved by placing a concrete rafter underneath it and sliding it to a new location. It was officially re-opened by Princess Diana on Valentine's Day, 1994.

As befits a chapel built for the young (it's devoted to the patron saint of children), imagery of children, flowers, owls, squirrels and mythical beasts adorn the interior, with stained glass windows, paintings and murals depicting child-related scenes from the Bible (and quite probably Alice in Wonderland). Most charmingly (and heartbreakingly), though, are all the soft toys on the window sills and behind the alter (referred to as the teddy bear choir).

St Christopher's chapel

The small size of the chapel, built in the Byzantine style in 1875, creates an intimate and jewel-like atmosphere, making it feel a very special place for worship and contemplation. It was designed by Edward Middleton Barry whose father designed the Houses of Parliament.

Large churches can often be overwhelming and intimating (that's partly the point of them – to be awe inspiring) but I far prefer a small chapel – they feel more intimate, personal and, perhaps, closer to God.

Top ten London creatures

1. Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

Seriously, they're the main reason I moved there.

2. Elephant at Elephant and Castle

3. Albino Bat at Natural History Museum

4. Catford Cat

The best thing about Catford.

5. Camel at The Camel & Artichoke, Waterloo

6. Crystal Palace Sphinxes

Second reason I moved there.

7. Brick Lane Space Invader

8. Kentish Town Camel

9. Hampton Court Panther

10. Pacman Ghost on The Windmill Pub, Lambeth High St

Previously on Barnflakes:
Dick Whittington's Cat
Giro the Nazi Dog

London Libraries #5: John Harvard, Southwark

The coffee sign bigger – and more prominent – than the library sign

Because of the nice weather I hadn't been to my nearest library to work for some time. It was raining on a recent lunchtime so I nipped in. I was in a shock but in a way it sums up what I dislike most about the inevitability of modern life in general and London specifically. I never liked the library that much to start with; it feels pokey and claustrophobic. But there's now a cafe with canteen-style wooden benches which takes up about a quarter of the library. There's a rug on the wooden floorboards, retro over-hanging lamps, ambient-type music playing (in a library! And people talking! It's meant to be a place of study and silence – like a church) and a few books here and there; there's a general feel to it of being cool, vintage. Obviously, I hate it. But what really struck me was the people. In place of the old-timers, weirdos, out of work Poles and general layouts are stock image looking youth folk laughing over lattes and croissants. WTF? Where did they come from? What's happened to the old regulars? About a quarter of the library is now a lifestyle cafe, leaving less room for sitting down and actually... well, reading. I've bemoaned previously that books and reading are now low down in a library's list of priorities – internet, TV and DVDs are certainly higher up on the list, but this takes it to another level. I actually quite like the combination of coffee and books but this is money-making lifestyle nonsense. And like the nearby demolished Heygate estate where, one day, all of sudden, all the residents just vanished, to be replaced by sparkly new rich people, so the library has zapped the old regulars. Where do they go now? How do they fill their days? It's a mystery, and a sad one.

Previously there was a library around the corner at 56 Southwark Bridge Road, a beautiful tall Victorian building with lots of windows (it's now – shudder – a media training centre). The likewise lovely old Newington library on nearby Walwoth Road is now permanently closed (along with the Cuming museum), due to a fire in 2013. There's now a temporary library called, er, Newington temporary library.

The John Harvard library is named after the Southwark clergyman John Harvard (1607-1638), who went to Massachusetts and founded Harvard University. The library stands on the site of the infamous Marshalsea prison, featured in several Dickens' novels (his father was imprisoned there; and Charles was too, aged 12) and run privately for profit, as most prisons were up until the 19th century. Inmates consisted mainly of debtors, as was the case of the majority of prisons at the time, as well as a healthy dose of pirates, smugglers and those accused of sedition. Sounds great, though I wouldn't have lasted a day. The only part of the prison that remains is a wall adjacent to the library.

Surrounding the rest of the building is a new development (and opposite – new luxury apartments being built) – looks nice, spacious and comfy inside; at first I thought it was a library extension. Wishful thinking, no – it's going to be The Office Group, who 'provide design-led flexible offices in fantastic locations'. Currently cased in scaffolding with childlike illustrations of happy, simple looking-people happily going about their work – including one guy mooning on a photocopier. Do people still do that?

Previously on Barnflakes:
London Bridge Lunches
Cross Bones Graveyard, Southwark