Victorian & Georgian architecture appreciation thread

[Florence Locomotive Works]

3 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

I had an office in this building at one time. Hazlewood House, Hunton Bridge, now an hotel, at one time home to  Haile Selaisse after he had to leave home and go into exile after the Germans invaded.

Bernard.

That looks like one of the RAF house used in Foyle's War, funnily enough.

[Johann Marsbar]

11 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

I had an office in this building at one time. Hazlewood House, Hunton Bridge, now an hotel, at one time home to  Haile Selaisse after he had to leave home and go into exile after the Germans invaded.

 

 

I think you will find it was the Italians, rather than the Germans......

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, Johann Marsbar said:

 

I think you will find it was the Italians, rather than the Germans......

Sorry, you are correct. It is just that I am so used to German invaders.

Bernard

[phil_sutters]

A couple of buildings in Southwark Street which runs from near London Bridge Station towards Waterloo. Southwark was once the centre of the English hop trade with hops traded there from as far afield as Kent and Herefordshire. The Kirkcaldy Testing Works tested materials and calibrated testing machines. Two distinctly different styles.

[melmerby]

How about more from Birmingham?

Victoria Law Courts, opened 1891 (Grade 1 listed)

 

[melmerby]

On the opposite side of the road built to compliment it is the (former) Methodist Central Hall but is jut post Victoria as it was opened in 1903/4 (Grade 2* listed)

The shops were always there and some still have their original frontages.

 

[monkeysarefun]

Back in my very young days, school holiday train trips into Sydney had to be done sitting on the left hand side of the carriage so I could see the Mortuary station as we slowed into  Central station . 

 

Long derelict and boarded up until restored in the eighties, its always  had a strong fascination with  me, with its Victorian-gothic architecture and slightly morbid reason for being - funeral trains to Rookwood, Sutherland and Newcastle cemeteries left form there until the 1930's when  road traffic took over. 

 

Once restored it became a pancake restaurant for a while, but once again stands  unused other than occasional special trains or functions - its room layout  and heritage classification makes it difficult to find an ongoing practical use for it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bernard Lamb]

A group of 9 villas in total with a railway connection. Dating from 1835/6 they were built at Boxmoor for senior management of the London and Birmingham Railway. The first phase of this line was built out from Euston as far as here. They include cellars, stables and carriage houses and are now listed and highly sought after, Unfortunately the connecting path to the station has been blocked up so thy are not suitable for commuters.

Bernard

[phil_sutters]

On 23/07/2020 at 16:52, Nearholmer said:

Bernard,

 

There's another rare-survival in the form of a couple of streets in the lee of Waterloo East station, which I think you would like. When you consider how heavily that area was first blitzed, then redeveloped they are a miracle. IIRC, one of them is called Roupell Street.

 

Worth remembering also that a lot of "architecture" in the periods under discussion was truly awful jerry-building, and/or simply over-decorated nonsense, the sort of thing that can only be afforded by one form of exploitation or another.

 

One thing that surprised me during the ten years that I spent overseeing the engineering of London Underground stations was how incredibly dodgy the building standards of the Victorians were. A great deal of money time and effort was spent making sure that buildings on flimsy foundations and with utterly bizarre load-paths remained standing. Building collapses weren't unknown in Victorian times, and the lessons of fire safety were learned the hard way (and then forgotten again recently).

 

Kevin

 

 

Your Roupell Street houses have cousins, which would have been behind the Bricklayers' Arms Station in Pages Walk, Bermondsey. The retention of the wooden shutters is something rarely seen, but makes sense in a fairly secluded backstreet that was in a roughish area, just off Old Kent Road, until the gentrification mob got in there. I like the rather naive decoration above the doorways. The other photo shows a less attractive building which I expect was part of the station complex.

[phil_sutters]

If you want to compare models with 12"/1ft - this model was photographed in the Borough Architect's office a few doors along from the actual building, the former Bermondsey Library. I am not sure when the fancy top in the centre of the building went, but as the Town Hall building next door was bombed in WW2, it could have been then.

Edited August 4, 2020 by phil_sutters
Additional info

[J. S. Bach]

I want it for my layout!

[phil_sutters]

17 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

I want it for my layout!

I am not sure what scale it is. If my memory serves me right, it was about 3ft. high. So it's not going to fit in your cake-box or on a Billy plank!

[phil_sutters]

This is one bit of Victorian architecture that has been lost recently - in the rebuilding of London Bridge Station - 

[Ohmisterporter]

Can that frontage not be taken down and rebuilt brick by brick at another site?

[Reorte]

Wouldn't be so bad if "bland and souless" was the best that could be described on anything new - the British obsession with the past IMO is largely down to the failures of the present architecturally.

 

[phil_sutters]

3 hours ago, Ohmisterporter said:

Can that frontage not be taken down and rebuilt brick by brick at another site?

The caption on the photo was written back in about 2010, I think, when there was still several groups lobbying for its retention. I don't know its fate except that it can't be seen there now. There is just one long sweeping featureless wall.

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

This is one bit of Victorian architecture that has been lost recently - in the rebuilding of London Bridge Station - 

 

If EH were so disapproving of it's proposed demolition why didn't they list it?

[chris p bacon]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

If EH were so disapproving of it's proposed demolition why didn't they list it?

 

There has to be a very good reason for listing,  If the building is not of exceptional or special interest the attempt to list can be challenged.

The rules that planning work to are just guidelines, set by central government with the default being approval for a scheme, unless there can be shown to be good reason why it should be  refused.  If the application could show that the doorway was in the way, then sadly it goes.

[iL Dottore]

On 23/07/2020 at 17:52, Nearholmer said:

...One thing that surprised me during the ten years that I spent overseeing the engineering of London Underground stations was how incredibly dodgy the building standards of the Victorians were. A great deal of money time and effort was spent making sure that buildings on flimsy foundations and with utterly bizarre load-paths remained standing. Building collapses weren't unknown in Victorian times, and the lessons of fire safety were learned the hard way (and then forgotten again recently)....

TBH, Kevin, I'm not all surprised. Most of what was built was either quickly erected buildings - built to a low price and sold on a very good margin (so-called "speculators rubbish"), or commercial properties (such as Railway Stations) never expected to be kept in service for so long. I am certain that had WWI and WWII not claimed so much men, material and treasure (as Historians would put it), these building would have been torn down and replaced (or rebuilt) more than a few times. The post-war "make do and mend" extended far beyond the domestic...

 

Having said that, whilst a lot was not built well, most of it was built to a high aesthetic standard (Jacobethan, Renaissance Revival, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne Revival, Scots Baronial, British Arts and Crafts, Gothic Revival etc.) - which is more than can be said for much modern (i.e. post 1950s) architecture and house design.

 

Mrs iD is a great fan of Grand Designs (I enjoy it as well), but whenever the presenter - Kevin McCloud - starts talking about "innovative", "ground breaking" and "exciting" - you can tell without glancing at the TV screen that the house in question will be a big box, with lots of glass, steel and concrete, a flat roof and open plan everything (cynical? Moi?)

[phil_sutters]

Three buildings in Camberwell  - a flat in the Brunswick Park group was I think the previous address of the current occupants of No. 10 Downing Street.  Haven't wheely bins added a delightful element to the modern street scene!

Edited August 6, 2020 by phil_sutters

[Reorte]

9 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Having said that, whilst a lot was not built well, most of it was built to a high aesthetic standard (Jacobethan, Renaissance Revival, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne Revival, Scots Baronial, British Arts and Crafts, Gothic Revival etc.) - which is more than can be said for much modern (i.e. post 1950s) architecture and house design.

 

It sometimes feels that whilst a lot wasn't exactly brilliantly built (my own house stands testament to that) there was a certain level of building standards with the methods and materials of the day that meant that a reasonable level of quality of building was necessary to produce something that would last more than a few years at all. Admittedly we're probably seeing a degree of survivor's bias in that, the ones where they happened to fling the stuff together by in a way that lasted this long by chance (in the same way as the hosepipe in the garage tying the lawnmower to the bicycles is only doing it by chance, to pinch a Terry Pratchett image).

[melmerby]

8 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

  Haven't wheely bins added a delightful element to the modern street scene!

 

Better than just chucking your rubbish out of the window into the street

 

(I believe this is still the accepted way in some "sink" estates)

[J. S. Bach]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

 ...snip... most of it was built to a high aesthetic standard ...snip...

The same can be said of the audio equipment coming from (mainly) Japan from the 60s through the early 80s as opposed to today's current crop of black plastic.

[J. S. Bach]

21 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Better than just chucking your rubbish out of the window into the street

Gardyloo!

[monkeysarefun]

Many inner city Victorian era terrace housing here had a local addition in the form of  balconies out the front to battle the summer heat, even the more humble workers examples.

(Found some with wheely bins for Phil S!)

 

During the 20th century many of these balconies were filled in with fibro and louvre windows to give extra living space, and the 'iron lace' disappeared from many, I think to help the war effort, and were later often replaced with cheaper plain iron or aluminium pool-fence style railings,  timber or fibro panels.

 

The more well-off had better details and larger buildings but still the same essential idea.

 

 

As shown above, Italianate was a  craze for a while, and spread to even the most humble of single storey cottages

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most  inner city examples have now been gentrified, a process that is infesting more and more suburbs as the demand for housing grows. Even run-down ones now command a motza, such as this one in Surry Hills near Central station. Described as 'unliveable' (which being inner city trendy territory may just mean theres no hipster  cafe within 5 minutes walk...)  it went for $2m.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by monkeysarefun