Castle Aching

[sem34090]

I am pretty certain that picture has been incorrectly described for, if James is to believed (which he is - trust him! He's a Lawyer!) that is most definitely Castle Aching Drill Hall...

[Shadow]

Brilliant, thanks, and very helpful.

If you look at the third link (search listings) shows some from the side and rear.

[Edwardian]

If you look at the third link (search listings) shows some from the side and rear.

 

Excellent

 

Very useful, thanks.

 

Sadly its demolition photographs are quite useful:  The one shows the full width of the Norwich hall: https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/PICNOR/BIBENQ/83986312/2219934,13?FMT=IMG

 

And, as you say, an image of the back, as to the appearance of which I had had no clue: https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/PICNOR/BIBENQ/83986312/2219931,16?FMT=IMG and here https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/PICNOR/BIBENQ/83986312/2207431,22?FMT=IMG

[Shadow]

Excellent

 

Very useful, thanks.

 

Sadly its demolition photographs are quite useful:  The one shows the full width of the Norwich hall: https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/PICNOR/BIBENQ/83986312/2219934,13?FMT=IMG

 

And, as you say, an image of the back, as to the appearance of which I had had no clue: https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/PICNOR/BIBENQ/83986312/2219931,16?FMT=IMG and here https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/PICNOR/BIBENQ/83986312/2207431,22?FMT=IMG

 

No problem, all part of the CART HORSE's job to help carry this project.

 

Castle

Aching

Research

Team

 

Honourary

On-line

Re-

Search

Executives

[sem34090]

Does that make me a 

 

Castle

Aching

Reasearch

Team

 

Locomotive

And

Drawing

Supervisor?

[Edwardian]

Does that make me a 

 

Castle

Aching

Reasearch

Team

 

Locomotive

And

Drawing

Supervisor?

 

Well, a potential one!

[Nearholmer]

Official

Designer

Of

Outlandish

Line

Initiating

Grand

Hotel

Traffic

[Annie]

Nasty people shouldn't be allowed to demolish things.  

[sem34090]

Case in point...

[Annie]

Absolutely shocking vandalism by British Railways.  I hope those responsible for the destruction of Euston will be shovelling out the ashpits down in Hell for a very long time.

[St Enodoc]

     There's been a rumour going around that, with Euston requiring a rebuild in the next ten years or so, to improve the appearance, and also to keep the aesthetics in line with the other stations along Euston Rd, the Doric arch is being retrieved from the Regent's Canal, or at least what can be found, restored and missing parts replaced. Because the columns were hollow, they will be built around steel structures which will house lift shafts going up into the peak, which will be a restaurant, and then down below road level to a nightclub.

 

     http://eustonarch.blogspot.com/

 

     I shan't sully the thread with another source (the ever-unreliable Daily Fail) but the same notions are iterated in that article, too.

People have been talking about that for over 20 years, ever since some of the stones were located.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euston_Arch#Reconstruction_plans

 

I'm not holding my breath.

[Hroth]

     There's been a rumour going around that, with Euston requiring a rebuild in the next ten years or so, to improve the appearance, and also to keep the aesthetics in line with the other stations along Euston Rd, the Doric arch is being retrieved from the Regent's Canal, or at least what can be found, restored and missing parts replaced. Because the columns were hollow, they will be built around steel structures which will house lift shafts going up into the peak, which will be a restaurant, and then down below road level to a nightclub.

 

     http://eustonarch.blogspot.com/

 

     I shan't sully the thread with another source (the ever-unreliable Daily Fail) but the same notions are iterated in that article, too.

It'll be cost-evaluated down to a new airport-style barn with a low-relief retro portico glued onto the front in the style of a faux Georgian housing estate.

People have been talking about that for over 20 years, ever since some of the stones were located.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euston_Arch#Reconstruction_plans

 

I'm not holding my breath.

Nurse!!!  Oxygen!!!!

[Nearholmer]

They could always make a cardboard portico, and wallpaper it with reproductions of the finishes of the original, obtained by correcting the perspective etc in old colour photos .......

 

Whether they'd be able obtain the correct reproduction railings to go with it, is of course, another matter.

[TheQ]

You can see from NearHolmer's picture with the carriages one of the reasons why it was knocked down, Imagine that small entrance with modern traffic.

Edited June 7, 2018 by TheQ

[Edwardian]

They could always make a cardboard portico, and wallpaper it with reproductions of the finishes of the original, obtained by correcting the perspective etc in old colour photos .......

 

Whether they'd be able obtain the correct reproduction railings to go with it, is of course, another matter.

[Adams442T]

Wonderful!   "Euston, we have a problem........"   

[runs as required]

1

Betjeman rated the Euston Arch the noblest essay of the Greek Revival in London (even in its final state, almost shorn of its lodges) "nobler even than St Pancras Church, or the British Museum or the Hyde Park Screen" - p78 'First and Last Loves'; John Murray, London 1952

2

It was demolished while I was a British Railways architectural assistant. The battle raged internally: the BR(LM) CCE's at Stephenson House argued it had to go (to move 16 coach trains further south from the foot of Camden Bank for starting - it didn't; if you compare on NLoS maps it could have been left triumphant before the bland south elev of the concourse. It was the Col Seifert (of Centrepoint fame) office block property development that actually replaced the Arch fronting the Euston Road..

Our own BR(E) CCE's had a stormy meeting in the office off Kings Cross platform 1 - where we were told bluntly by our Regional architect Harry Powell that Harold Macmillan had personally incisted on the demolition. I can't imagine Ernie Marples diagreeing.

"Heat History was in the very Sod" in 1961 London.

dh

 

PS

I should have mentioned that St Pancras/Kings Cross were rumoured to be being worked at this time on by a small working group for simultaneous demolilion and replacement by a big Roma Termini style station  - as well as Liverpool St/Broad Street for a replacement with a full office block deck over - a la the subterranean New St. Birmingham.

I'd say Norwich got away lightly with its Ring Road replacing the City wall in the 1960s

Edited June 7, 2018 by runs as required

[Hroth]

Quite a few architects/designers around then seemed to take as their Mission Statement; "Complete what the Luftwaffe failed to do".

 

Not just in London, but in Birmingham, Liverpool.....

[Nearholmer]

I'm about to speak the unspeakable, but having commuted through Euston for a very long time, including at some the bad times, like during the railway network meltdown after Hatfield, I have to defend the "new" station: it might look deeply uninspiring, but as a station it functions well.

 

It's now overloaded, but that has only become the case in the past c15 years, the way that it has been 'gated' for revenue protection has messed-up pedestrian flows in a couple of places, and the recent addition of a mezzanine has created gloomy places that didn't exist originally, but I think RaR and his colleagues did a good job in many respects.

 

The former jumble-sale of architectural wonders would have been a nightmare under present loading, and it wasn't a 'great space', within which flexibility existed, like StP.

[Hroth]

However, facades could have been retained and given a good cleaning to front new and improved passenger facilities.  However the mindset of the period was "Scorched Earth"/"Clean Sheet" and many architectural monstrosities were committed in the name of Modernity back then.

 

Not that we do much better nowadays.

[Annie]

The old problem of what is practical versus aesthetics.  There was a horrible tendency to knock down everything that was old during the 1960's, - it happened here in New Zealand too, - and many treasures wee lost during that time.  I'm not surprised that Harold Macmillan was involved though as such activities as selling grandmothers for sixpence and selling souls to the devil come to mind whenever that name pops up in history.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Annie

[Edwardian]

The reference to MacMillan is, I think, telling.

 

He was of the Our Age generation of which Noel Annan wrote, and who tended to dominate all walks of public and institutional life in the immediate post-war decades.  Although by the time their day was done they were typically derided as old-fashioned patricians, this is ironic, as many were possessed of a self-conscious modernism that, in the architectural field, led to them committing far more damage than the Luftwaffe had ever managed.  

 

As for Marples, ghastly spiv!

[Nearholmer]

Another irrelevant fact coming up, which probably ought to go in a thread about LBSCR E4 class ......

 

McMillan lived at 'Brich Grove', near the Bluebell Railway, where the loco of the same name is preserved. I once saw him at Victoria Station, sometime in the early 1980s, getting off of a train from Haywards Heath. Very ancient and frail, tall, but stooping a bit. I'd only ever seen old photos of him from donkeys years before, and thought he was long-dead, so was convinced I'd seen a ghost until I checked that he was still extant.

[Regularity]

Weren’t the MacMillan family major shareholders in the GWR?

[runs as required]

Weren’t the MacMillan family major shareholders in the GWR?

But pre-eminently the Publishers, now part of Palgrave Macmillan, an American publishing behemoth that have hoovered up almost every professional journal (eg Butterworths)  as well as many printing houses.

And you are all spelling him wrong - Harold Macmillan, the old rascal, was married to Lady Dorothy, daughter of the Duke of Devonshire (who once gave out the prizes at my wife's Buxton Cavendish school(pronounced Bextun Cevendish school for gels - now an estate of bungalows beside the surviving LNW side of Paxtons fine station.