Holiday IV: The Nelson Column, Great Yarmouth

   Great Yarmouth sits on a spit of land, with the North Sea on the east and the river Yare on the west and south.  Towards the southern tip of the peninsular, amongst industrial units and workshops and parked cars stands the Nelson Column.  It is in the strictest Neo-classicism; erected in 1817 by the County of Norfolk to commemorated the county's most famous son, at 144 feet it is a foot shorter than the much more famous column erected to Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square.  It possesses an austere, masculine beauty, that is perhaps contrasted by the upper stage of graceful caryatids.  Looking again at the photos as I write this post I am struck by the funereal feel of the architecture; as though the steps in the lower picture lead not a spiral staircase but a burial chamber with a gleaming granite sarcophagus.  Having said that, everything about this structure is, as one would expect from  Neo-classicism, impeccable - from the lettering of the inscriptions down to the blue painted railings.  Superb.  It should be better known.  When built the column sat in the midst of open land - land owned by the Admiralty, so it was thought a fitting place.  In the summer it is open to the public.

Holiday V: St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth

     I thought I'd give this church a post all it's own.  I think there's some debate as to whether this is the largest parish church in England or not.  Either way it's a huge building, a big boned sort of thing.  It sits in a sort of hollow, kind of tucked away, below the level of the surrounding streets, so that for all its bulk it isn't that prominent in the townscape.  Like the town around it St Nicholas's was badly damaged in World War II.  It was rebuilt under the guidance of Stephen Dykes Bower, and he did a brilliant job, though sadly the spire on the central tower was not rebuilt.  Stephen Dykes Bower has been called the last Gothic Revivalist, and he certainly carried the torch forward through the twentieth century.  I've always thought of him as somewhat thwarted because in a lot of the things he did, particularly the rebuilding of war damaged churches, he was hampered by the general lack of cash in post-war Britain.  He ploughed a lonely furrow too, as architectural tastes in Britain turned toward Modernism.

     The West Front.  It reminds me of the Heiligen Geist Hospital in Lübeck, but the similarity must be purely coincidental. Surely?

     To unify the interior Dykes Bower reduced the number of piers in the nave arcades designing new ones in Transitional Gothic.  The nave is narrower than the aisles.  Note the pale colours, the light fittings and the boarded ceilings; all very Dykes Bower.

     Dykes Bower designed a whole range of fittings for the church, the most prominent is the organ case in the north transept, and my favourite the wrought iron rejas of the south chancel chapel.  The wooden things such as the pews, and altar rails are of limed oak.  The colour is concentrated at the east end, where the ceilings are coloured and gilded and there is colour too from contemporary stained glass and the damask of the altar cloths

Holiday III Great Yarmouth

   A bitterly cold day, as I remember it, with occasional heavy showers.  A day in which I was never quite warm or dry; or so I remember it.  We started the day with a walk to the beach to watch the seals - it was calving season and there were plenty of white pups about.  After breakfast we drove south through sprawling seaside development to....well, firstly the scanty remains of the Roman fort at Caister on Sea, and then to the later fortifications at Caister Castle, the home of Sir John Falstoff (one time owner of Blickling, and model for Falstaff in 'Henry V')

   And then Great Yarmouth, a bustling port and seaside resort, with a down-at-heal air.  Architecturally there is a lot to see - the heart of the town is, or was Medieval, and there are Georgian merchants houses lining the quayside.  There is an enormous Market Place, and an incredible, severest Neo-Classical honorific column erected to commemorate one of Britain's greatest military heroes Admiral Lord Nelson. But like the majority of Britain's larger towns the 20th & 21st centuries have been unkind. Yarmouth was bombed in the last War, and then underwent a series of, perhaps, well meant redevelopments that have scarred the ancient core of the town.  It must have been very beautiful at one time, alas a lot of the historic properties, particularly the mighty houses on South Quay were in semi derelict condition.  The one bright spot was the former St George's church which had been derelict for some time and has now found a new lease of life as a theatre.  One of the reasons I wanted to visit was to pay a return visit to the ancient parish church, St Nicholas, but more of that in my next post. 

   Being a seaside town we had walk along the prom, eat fish and chips (very good) and buy rock.  We really had to.  Really. There was good early Victorian architecture in places too along the prom, in what is in effect a separate town.

White Horse Plain

Houses on Church Plain

The Fisherman's Almshouses (1702) on Church Plain

The Tolhouse

St George, St George's Plain

   That evening we watched 'Les Biches' a film by Claude Chabrol, starring his wife Stephane Audran.  The reason for watching this for me was Audran; I have been quietly fascinated by her for years.  I first remember seeing her in Granda TV's superlative adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited' where she played Lord Marchmain's mistress 'Cara'.  I next saw her in 'Babette's Feast'.  Audran possessed a remarkable and striking beauty, and an almost other-worldly acting style.  Her performance in this film did not disappoint either; written by her husband and Paul Gegauf it is the story of a strange, disturbing relationship between Frederique (Audran), the younger enigmatic Why (Jacqueline Sassard) and the architect Paul Thomas played by Jean-Louis Trintignant.  The film itself had this slightly distanced feel hard to capture in words.  Initially set in Paris, where the stylish, dominant  Frederique picks up Why on the Pont des Arts, things begin to go awry when Frederique brings the younger, seemingly ingenue, woman south with her to her villa in Provence where they encounter Paul and a sort of three way relationship develops.  The denouement, a 'sort of denouement' really as it throws up all sorts of questions, occurs back in Paris.

Les Biches

1968

Producer                Andres Genoves
Director                  Claude Chabrol
Cinematographer  Jean Rabier