Oundle

   A fortnight ago I went to Oundle, a particularly attractive small market town in Northamptonshire, about 10 miles or so west of Peterborough, in the valley of the Nene.  What makes it attractive is the visual unity.  There isn't necessarily unity of style - the streetscape is pretty varied, but there's nothing too extreme as all of the architecture - Victorian and after architecture - is well-mannered and polite. There is however unity of scale, and lastly and most importantly there is unity of materials.  Everything, well almost everything, is built of stone.  Limestone.  Including the roofs, which are of Collyweston Slate - a limestone that is very fissile and can be cleaved like slate. There are a few grand houses, but again like so many small places in England there is nothing really extraordinary about the architecture.  There is nothing as consistently 'architectural' about Oundle as there is about Stamford.  Judging by the architecture, I would guess that Oundle's heyday was probably in the 17th century.  The rather imposing Talbot Inn in New Street, for instance, dates from 1626.
   One of things, however, that does help give Oundle character and individuality is the presence of a large 19th century public school, and whereas at Oakham, Uppingham or Stamford the schools are quite nucleated, here in Oundle the school is more diffuse in the urban structure.  In certain parts of the town school buildings tend to predominate, but visually they are good neighbours being well mannered Gothic Revival.  The parish Church, St Peter, has a beautiful tower and spire - a very suave piece of Decorated Gothic.  The Roman Catholic church a the far end of West Street, which is by Arthur Blomfield, 1878-9, started off belonging to another denomination ('The Buildings of England' does mention which one), and like the school buildings is a well-mannered piece of Gothic Revival.  A satisfying design, in fact, from a less than front-rank Gothic designer.

The Talbot Inn, the elegant War Memorial to the left looks, to me, as though it's by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

The Usher Gallery, Lincoln

   To Lincoln yesterday on a rattletrap bus. A lovely late summer's day.  I thought I'd share these pictures of the Usher Gallery, Lincoln, and Lincolnshire's, most important gallery.  I think you could say that it holds the county's collection of art.

  There's a good collection of applied arts: porcelain, clocks and watches.  It holds one important Piper oil, an atmospheric watercolour by Andrew Wyeth and some lovely work by Clausen - his small oil of an orchard is particularly fine.  I surprised I should like that sort of thing - I usually find much of British Post-Impressionism sentimental. There is also a really good collection of Peter De Wints (1784 - 1849) and other 18th & 19th century watercolourists connected with county.
   The building was erected in 1924, a design of Sir Reginald Blomfield.  One of his better buildings, I think - I'm not great fan of his work - it is compact and well detailed, influenced both by English Baroque and early French Neo-classicism.

   From an Arts and Crafts beginning Blomfield, like Lutyens and many others, went on to design in the Grand Manner on a large scale, of which the Usher Gallery is a well-mannered and bijou example.  (I do love Victorian and Edwardian architecture, but I often find the overblown scale of some it, for instance in the work of Sir Richard Norman Shaw, really off-putting.  It's just too overpowering.)   Blomfield in his later career produced some really monstrous buildings like the Quadrant, Regent St (albeit he did have to incorporate the rear façade of Shaw's elephantine Piccadilly Hotel) and the Headrow Leeds.  And there are his proposals for Carlton House Terrace overlooking the Mall, in London.  Thankfully the Nash Terraces survive...
   The odd thing is that architects like Blomfield, a Classicist, could be such a vandal, while early-Modernists like J M Richards such committed conservationists.  Another blot on Blomfield's copy-book is his partial responsibility for the (British) electricity pylon!  (Look closely at one; it's actually an obelisk...) 

   That said The Usher Gallery is a rather fine building. And he didn't like English Neo-Palladianism.  So he evidently got some things right.

Addendum

I forgot to mention that Blomfield was a prolific writer on architecture, producing a number of histories on English and French architecture.  He is perhaps, however, best remembered for his seminal book 'The Formal Garden' with its ravishing pen and ink illustrations by Francis Inigo Thomas.  I like them almost as much as I like the work of FL Griggs.  Thomas was no mean garden designer himself; he was designer of the exquisite Arts and Crafts gardens at Athelhampton.