Spalding II: from the Town Bridge south

     I was back in Spalding yesterday.  It was market day and the place was busy with shoppers. Apart from a few bargains I was in search of architecture, Georgian architecture to be precise and Spalding is not a place to disappoint even if its charms are not at all that apparent. Persevere. The river Welland flows through the heart of the heart of the town and both sides of the river are lined with Georgian houses and in addition, below the Town Bridge, warehouses. There is a lot to see, so I have divided the town into two. This post concentrates on what is above the Town Bridge with the exception of Ayscoughfee Hall which really deserves a post of its own.

Own work: Life Drawing XXXIX

Own work: Life Drawing XXXVIII

   Life drawing classes resumed last Thursday after the Easter holiday.  I've continued with using watercolour.

Own Work: St Firmin, Thurlby

   A sketch I did the other week, and which I feel vaguely pleased with.....

Back in Birmingham II

   Domesticity dominated the second half of our day in Birmingham.
   Just down the road from the Barber is Winterbourne House, also owned by the University.  This as an Arts and Crafts House dating from 1903 built by the local architect Joseph Lancaster Ball (1852-1929) for the Nettlefold family - Birmingham manufacturers and Unitarians. It too is very good.  Bequeathed to the University in 1944 the garden which is vast, with formal and informal sections, subsequently became the University Botanic Garden, and the house a museum and conference venue. In the outbuildings are a gallery, second hand bookshop and press.  The garden shelter looks as though it was influenced by the Elizabethan bell cage at East Bergholt. A gate in the garden fence lead to a most miraculous place: a great lake with views across to Edgbaston Golf Club. Lucky golfers. Hard to image we were in the midst of the vast West Midlands conurbation.

   Mid afternoon and we were on Hurst St heading for the Gay Village when we suddenly came across a group of Georgian Houses, their good proportions deeply striking in what is, it has to be said, a street of very vulgar buildings.  It took us a few seconds to work out that this was the 'Back-to-Backs' owned by the National Trust.  Back-to-Back housing was a feature of working class housing in the great cities of Industrial Revolution England.  Most now have been replaced.  While in cities such as Leeds they formed uniform terraces, in Birmingham they formed courts, with the houses divided along their spine walls to form two dwellings only one room deep looking out either inwards on to the court or outwards on to the street but sharing common sanitary provision in the court.  As now conserved the 'exterior' houses have been turned into holiday lets, while the 'interior' ones have been furnished as they would at various stages of their occupation, based on information gleaned from contemporary sources such as the Census.  Fascinating they are too.  Squalid they are not, for, though cramped and unsanitary, they were occupied by skilled artisans.  The kitchen/parlours actually had a lot of charm, far removed from the rather self-conscious life at Winterbourne.  The bedrooms at the top of the each house were, however, not places to linger.  Over time many of the houses ceased to be residential and industrial/artisanal use took over. One house is presented in this way; a tailor's shop that continued in use, I think, until the 1980s.  The owner had come from the West Indies in the 1950s/1960s and had established a successful business by a lot of hard and work and shear will power.  In all it was quite touching.  Guided tours only.
   The evening was spent in the Jewellry Quarter; pre-dinner drinks at the quirky 'Ana Rocha Bar and Restaurant' on Frederick St., and dinner itself at 'The Viceroy', a rather stylish Indian restaurant on Iknield St. The Murogh Chicken Livers were fabulous!

Back in Birmingham I

   The bf and I sent part of this week visiting my family in the West Midlands.  On Wednesday we had a full day in Birmingham.  We started with a visit to the university and specifically 'The Barber Institute for the Fine Arts', which was founded in 1932 by Dame Martha Barber after the death of her husband Henry Barber, the Birmingham solicitor and property developer.  The University campus is visually a mess, but at its centre is a great hemicycle of buildings designed by Sir Aston Webb (1849-1930) in an amazingly eclectic style - part Byzantine, part Perpendicular Gothic, part Flemish.  Wholly original.  Wonderfully detailed - like all buildings of that date.  Red brick suitably enough predominates.

     Opened in 1938 the Barber is also a building is hard to nail down stylistically - part Classical, part Art Deco, part Viennese Secession.  The architect was Robert Atkinson (1883-1952).  The best things on the exterior are the strange ventilation towers.  Worth comparing too with the Aston Webb buildings to see the change in taste in little more than a generation.  The interior is full of lovely details, though everything seems curiously flat but very refined; the third dimension is somehow conspicuously lacking.  Anyway at the heart of the building is an auditorium, while wrapped around that central space is, at second floor level, an art gallery with a small(ish) permanent collection that is really very good.