London's 100 Most Extraordinary Buildings (eBook)

David Long (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
The History Press (Verlag)
978-0-7524-8030-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Delve into London's architectural curiositites and discover the unexpected gems waiting around every corner. London is full of extraordinary, enigmatic and, above all, unexpected buildings: a pirate castle in Camden, an art gallery made of shipping containers, underground ghost stations, and much more. Here David Long reveals the very best of the capital's extraordinary buildings, some of which are passed by every day, hidden in plain sight.

Well-received by reviewers and readers alike, DAVID LONG's engaging, imaginative and well-informed books reflect an unquenchable thirst for those events and personalities that illuminate the past. An author and writer since leaving university, his work has appeared on TV and radio, as well as in The Times, countless magazines and London's Evening Standard. As well as being an award-winning ghostwriter, he has written a number of books on London, including London's 100 Strangest Places, London's 100 Most Extraordinary Buildings, London's Secret Square Mile, When Did Big Ben First Bong?, and the highly successful The Little Book of London.

Textauszug

EISENHOWER’S
WARTIME BUNKER

NORTH CRESCENT, CHENIES STREET, WC1

On some Georgian brickwork in Lord North Street, just off Smith Square in Westminster, one can still discern a painted sign giving directions to a nearby air-raid shelter. It’s a nice reminder of grimmer times, an authentic bit of Dad’s Army if you like, but once you start looking around central London for curious bits of Second World War memorabilia, such things pop up everywhere.

By far the most obvious are what remains of HM Government’s network of deep-level shelters, not just because the excavations are so vast but also because the above-ground parts are so monolithic, so stark and ugly, and just so plain odd that it’s a mystery why more passers-by don’t notice them or wonder what they are. Ten were planned and eight built, one underneath Chancery Lane tube station, the rest beneath seven Northern Line stations, each comprising a pair of parallel tunnels an incredible 1,200ft in length with the accommodation spread over two levels. Work on numbers nine and ten was begun but then halted, the first because it was thought to be threatening the fabric of St Paul’s and the second, at Kennington Oval, because its proximity to the River Effra made it liable to flood.

Of the eight, four – at Camden, Clapham North and South, and Belsize Park – were intended for civilian use during air-raids and, equipped with latrines, first aid posts and so on, could each accommodate up to 8,000 people. The others, however, were secret citadels for government use: Stockwell providing emergency accommodation for the US military; those at Clapham Common and Chancery Lane set aside for the civil authorities in the event of an attack by V1 or V2 rockets; and the one beneath Goodge Street (opposite) fitted out as General Eisenhower’s West End headquarters.

This last one is historically therefore the most interesting; the future US president in his role as Supreme Allied Commander used it as his main command and control centre for all D-Day communications. Indeed, this one even enjoyed the benefit of a direct link to Churchill’s famous Cabinet War Rooms, using a Lamson pneumatic tube of the sort one routinely saw employed in department stores until the 1970s.

Plans were drawn up after the war to link them together into a new high-speed tube line, but sadly nothing came of this. Instead Chancery Lane was incorporated into the giant Kingsway telephone exchange, 100ft beneath street level, while the remainder were eventually offered to commercial organisations for use as secure, archival storage. (Interestingly, the lease agreements allow for these to be rapidly reoccupied by the authorities should the need arise; in the meantime the Goodge Street one has been used by Channel 4 to store copies of its programmes.)

Today, spotting where the others are is easy enough, for several of the giant, circular, almost gasometer-like blockhouses which formed the entrances are visible from the A3 as it runs through south London to Clapham. The best is in Chenies Street, however, between Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street, where a pair of linked concrete blockhouses – one like a circular pillbox, the other a slightly taller octagon – tower over a war memorial and completely dominate North Crescent.

Now it is called The Eisenhower Centre, another entrance being in Tottenham Court Road, by the Whitfield Memorial Church. Bizarrely, at some point in the recent past the flat roof of this one was railed in to provide a safe play area for the nearby Fitzrovia Children’s Centre. But evidence of its true purpose is still there to be seen in the scratchy remains of a painted sign: —D Property —trance strictly —ohibited —out authority.

STAPLE INN

1–3 HIGH HOLBORN, WC1

Today just four Inns of Court survive – Lincoln’s, Gray’s, and Middle and Inner Temple – but, originally called the Inns of Chancery, they were at one time far more numerous. Their original function has never been entirely understood, nor indeed is the derivation of the name clear, although it is thought that they may in earlier times have been involved in the training of medieval Chancery clerks who were charged with preparing the writs in the King’s court.

In about 1530, however, a process of consolidation started as the previously named quartet began to exercise a greater degree of control over the many smaller Honourable Societies. Including Barnard’s, Clement’s, Clifford’s, Furnival’s, Lyon’s, New and Staple, these smaller entities had by this time become little more than preparatory schools for those wishing to read for the law. Denied the right to call their own students to the Bar, each had over many years witnessed a gradual leaking away of student numbers as would-be lawyers enrolled instead with the main four.

Whatever its original purpose, it is known that Staple Inn was founded in 1378. It took its name from the building’s previous function as a weighing-place and warehouse for wool, and as an important meeting place for merchants involved with the valuable wool trade. As a legal entity, though, it was eventually absorbed into Gray’s Inn (which had acquired the freehold of the site in 1529), leaving a range of buildings still more or less intact behind this spectacular sixteenth-century façade of shops and offices. As such it remains by far the most impressive example of a half-timbered structure in London, this despite being much altered and restored over the years by a succession of new owners.

A portion of it, for example, was sold off by Gray’s Inn in 1884 and went to house the Patent Office, while the Prudential spent £68,000 acquiring the majority which it restored over the next two to three years. At this time it was let to the Institute of Actuaries, but in 1944 much of the Prudential’s work was undone by a German V1 which fell into the adjacent gardens. This necessitated an almost total rebuild, completed by Sir Edward Maufe in 1952, prompting some architectural historians to dismiss it as merely pastiche, a picturesque if somewhat unreliable example of Tudor urban building.

Nevertheless, the overall effect today is still striking and, with its oriel windows and jettied upper storeys overhanging a busy modern thoroughfare, it certainly manages to convey an image of a centuries-old London streetscape. An attractive evocation of what entire streets must have looked like nearly 500 years ago, nothing in London can quite match it.

THE BEEFSTEAK CLUB

9 IRVING STREET, WC2

In almost every regard, the architecturally modest Beefsteak is the Athenaeum’s polar opposite (see SW1, p. 129). In place of Athene’s grand temple to academic eminence, it has just a single dining table in a long, panelled, cream-coloured room above a shop. Similarly, while in areas of the Athenaeum conversation is frowned upon or even forbidden, at the Beefsteak it is the very point of the club. Finally, in Waterloo Place the overwhelming sense is one of imperial greatness, academic rigour and quiet self-importance, but the Beefsteak has its origins in the so-called ‘thunder and lightning room’ above the old Covent Garden Theatre.

There the dissimilarities end, however, for in terms of their intellectual achievements, social status and professional distinction, the members of the Beefsteak give nothing away to the Athenaeum or indeed to any other club. For a while, indeed, election to the Beefsteak was so exclusive – restricted to just two dozen members – that as Prince of Wales, even the future George IV was obliged to bide his time until a vacancy occurred.

Founded by Hogarth and his friends in 1730, the original club failed after 137 years but was born again in 1876, since when it has rarely looked back. The membership is still only a few hundred, although with no bar at which to foregather (and only twenty able to sit down at a time) it is probable that many members have never actually met. In recent decades, these have included the dukes of Beaufort and Devonshire, the Harolds Macmillan and Nicolson, and Sir Osbert Lancaster, as well as such literary giants as Kipling, Betjeman and Thomas Hardy, which might explain why, as the late Anthony Sampson was candid enough to admit, ‘many of the junior members like me are too frightened actually to go there.’

Sadly, whether courageous or fearful, no member is any longer obliged to wear the club’s picturesque uniform of blue coats and buff waistcoats (with buttons bearing the legend ‘Beef & Liberty’). Many equally old traditions are maintained, however, including the habit of addressing all servants as ‘Charles’ to avoid confusion, and beefsteaks are naturally always on the menu.

For all that, the current building is no great shakes externally: it is an exercise in fake Jacobean, or what has been called ‘theatreland Lycean’. Designed by Frank Verity, the son of a noted cinema designer, it is indeed by far the most modest of the leading clubs – with the possible exception of Pratt’s. But while Pratt’s (q.v.) is a basement dive, it at least has a respectable address in St James’s. By contrast the Beefsteak is, to say the least, more than a little seedy: a modest doorway opening on to a nondescript pedestrian street running into central London’s least smart square.

All of which lends credence to the most celebrated Beefsteak anecdote, namely that, after observing a succession of old men entering premises opposite a strip joint and emerging a couple of hours later looking...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.11.2011
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Regional- / Landesgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
• Themenwelt: Reisen ► Bildbände
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Architektur
• Schlagworte: Chelsea • Kensington • London • London history • london's architecture • London's buildings • pirate castle camden • pirate castle camden, shippig container art gallery, underground ghost stations, unexpected buildings, london • shippig container art gallery • spectacular vernacular • strange buildings • underground ghost stations • unexpected buildings
• ISBN-10: 0-7524-8030-8 / 0752480308
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7524-8030-5 / 9780752480305