Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions:7) Wembley Empire Stadium

My TARDIS of the imagination really seems to have a mind of its own. Not only does it  steadfastly refuse to leave London, but this time it’s taken me to a building that I did actually see for myself on many occasions, and even attended an FA Cup Final replay in it. This is Wembley Stadium.

Or rather, I should say, Wembley Empire Stadium. It was built in 1923 for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924. Well, if you read yesterday’s post about the Imperial Institute you’ll know my feelings about that. Still, the Stadium hosted its first footballing event before the exhibition, the 1923 FA Cup Final, and it will be remembered as the home of English football. Not least because it was the scene of England’s only World Cup win in 1966. Sadly I was only two years old at the time and have no memory of this.

The Stadium was also the main venue for the 1948 Olympic Games. In its time London has had 3 Olympic Stadia – the 1908 White City Stadium was demolished in the 1980s, the Empire Stadium was demolished in 2002, and only the London Stadium from the 2012 Olympics remains.

Sketchpedition Through Time and Relative Dimensions 6) Imperial Institute

My TARDIS of the imagination still stubbornly refuses to leave London and makes a short hop of a couple of miles and about fifty years back into the past to the next place I’d like to sketch.

This is the Imperial Institute in South Kensington. It was opened in 1893 by Queen Victoria. The institute was a direct product of Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, and was designed to showcase industrial and commercial products and developments of countries which were part of the British Empire.

I have to be honest, I tend to think that empires are not, by and large, a good thing for the majority of their peoples, and so I will be totally honest and say it’s the building that I’m interested in, and not the purpose or the contents. I know that some people do get quite upset about this but my personal feeling is that Brits (like me) need to be able to discuss our Imperial past honestly and not try to bury it all under the carpet with the argument that it all happened a long time ago. Yes, let’s be proud of what’s worth being proud of, but let’s be honest and critical where it’s deserved too.

From the start of the 20^th century this building was associated with the University of London, which took over approximately half of the building’s space. That interests me since I’m an alumnus of London University, although Goldsmith’s rather than Imperial College. The purposes of the Institute changed and developed, but with the Commonwealth Act of 1958 the Imperial Institute became the Commonwealth Institute and it was decided that a new permanent home would be built. The only part of the building saved from demolition was the Queen’s Tower – seen on the left hand side of my sketch, while everything else was demolished to make way for the expansion of Imperial College – at the time part of London University, but now independent. The preservation of the tower came about through pressure from the Royal Fine Arts Commission and the poet John Betjeman.

This particular part of London, South Kensington isn’t exactly badly off for striking public buildings, what with the nearby Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum buildings, and the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall are only a short walk away. Nonetheless, as an example of Heavy Late Victorian Gothic you’d have to have gone a long way to have beaten it.  

Out of interest the new Commonwealth Institute moved into a striking modern building between Kensington High Street and Holland Park. I visited it in the late 70s and found that the displays were interesting, but on the whole it did feel just like another museum. Public funding ended at the turn of the last century and the building closed in the early noughties.  The building now houses the Design Museum.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions:5) The Festival of Britain Skylon and the Dome of Discovery

 My TARDIS of the imagination seems loath to leave London at the moment. Instead it moves me forward in time some 60 years, to 1951 to be precise, and the Festival of Britain on the South Bank of the Thames.

My previous sketch was of Waterloo Bridge. It’s ironic that a politician who was heavily involved in the decisions to demolish the bridge, the London County Council’s Herbert Morrison, was the prime mover behind the Festival of Britain. By the end of the second world war Morrison, having been Home Secretary during the wartime coalition, had become Lead of the House of Commons in the Labour Government that followed, often deputising for Clement Atlee. Morrison picked up on the 1943 proposal from the Arts Council to hold an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Great Exhibition.

This didn’t become a world’s fair or expo – of which the Great Exhibition is often said to be the first – because post war Britain couldn’t afford it. The festival, then, as the name suggests, had no international or Commonwealth aspect to it, but was envisaged as a symbol of a Britain starting to recover from the devastation of the second world war.

There were Festival of Britain events staged in every country of the UK, but the focus was on the South Bank complex, and this is what my sketch represents. The two most visible symbols of the Festival in the sketch were the Skylon, a strange, needle-like construction that seemingly balanced in mid-air, and the Dome of Discovery.

In terms of sheer numbers the Festival was a great success, with 10 million tickets sold to events. In terms of architectural legacy though it’s a little more difficult to quantify. Very little of what was built for the Festival remained there for long after the Festival ended. The Royal Festival Hall is a grade I listed building, although to be honest it’s far from one of my favourite London buildings if I’m honest. However the Festival did promote contemporary British architecture and surely influenced some of the interesting buildings of the 50s and early 60s in the UK.

The Festival did little to help the Labour Government, mind you. The Government called a snap election in the hope of increasing their majority from the 1950 election. Despite winning more votes than any other party, the vagaries of the British electoral system meant that the Conservative Party won a working majority of seats, and Winston Churchill, who thought that the Festival of Britain had been a ridiculous idea became Prime Minister again.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions 4: Waterloo Bridge

We stay in 1890’s London for our next sketch. In fact, if Sydenham wasn’t such a beggar to get to and from I would probably have ditched my time machine of the imagination just for today. However as it is I make a short hop of just a few miles, to the Strand. From here we can easily walk to our next objective, the original Waterloo Bridge. I freely admit that I have a thing about bridges, and after Old London Bridge and Tower Bridge, I think that this is possibly the most beautiful ever to span the Thames in central London.

The Bridge was designed by John Rennie, who would also design the 1831 London Bridge which now stands (sort of) across Lake Havasu in the USA. (I say sort of because the original stones of the bridge are actually a facing over a modern concrete base structure.)

Waterloo Bridge was built between 1807 and 1810. Since the battle of Waterloo didn’t actually take place until 5 years after it was opened, its original name was the Strand Bridge.

I was tempted to bring the time machine forward to 1900, in order to possibly catch the impressionist painter Claude Monet painting the bridge. He loved it and made forty one paintings of it. Mind you, by the time he painted it Waterloo Bridge it was showing signs of wear and tear. 80 years of being scoured by the fast flowing river caused damage to the piers which saw subsidence which needed some hasty repair work in the 1920s. In the early 1930s the London County Council decided that the bridge had to be replaced. It was closed in 1934, and demolished by 1936. It was replaced by the current nondescript concrete bridge designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, although this was not completed until after he end of World War 2.

I think that you have to see the demolition of Waterloo Bridge in context. I’ve seen it cited as an act which first began to bring the whole issue of London’s architectural heritage to public consciousness. The context was different to the context in which the Euston Arch was demolished, though. That was shown not to be necessary. The fact is that Waterloo Bridge, as beautiful as it was, was designed and built more than a century before motorised traffic became a factor in cross-river traffic. It simply wasn’t designed to cope, and even if it had been repaired this would not have made it any more suitable. Remember too that this was in the middle of the Great Depression as well.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions: 3rd destination

For my next sketch I didn't need to move my time machine of the imagination far in space, only a few miles to the south east. As for time, I pushed the reset button to 1890.

In 1851 the Crystal Palace was erected in Hyde Park as the home for the Great Exhibition. It was designed by Joseph Paxton, the head gardener of the Duke of Devonshire's Chatsworth so that no tree would have to be cut down, and it could be built in a very short space of time. You can see that the design owes more than a little to great Victorian palm houses.

The Great Exhibition was a resounding success. The story goes that the building was christened the Crystal Palace by Douglas Jerrold of Punch magazine, and that the nickname stuck. I have to admit that the temptation was to take the time machine back to the opening day in Hyde Park, but no.

When the six months of the Exhibition were over, the cast iron and glass building was taken down. It was bought by a consortium of businessmen, including 2 directors of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, and re-erected in Sydenham, and this is where I'd love to have seen it. 

It has to be said that the Palace was not a great success when it opened in Sydenham in 1854. The Park was closed to visitors on a Sunday, yet this was the only day that working people would have time to visit. This was rectified in 1860, and over the next five decades the Palace hosted many shows and exhibitions. I was interested to read that at one stage it held a circus, where Ealing resident and famous tightrope walker Charles Blondin performed. After the first world war, the Palace also became the first home of the Imperial War Museum. 

Ironically, under the watchful eye of Sir Henry Buckland, the Palace was carefully renovated during the 1920s and started making profit again. I'm sure that my Nan said she visited it once. 

The building burned down in November 1936, and this being the Great Depression there was no chance of it being rebuilt. Crystal Palace Park is still well worth a visit. You can clearly see where the Palace stood, and its well worth a look since when you see the building's footprint you get an idea of just how massive it was, and how impressive it would have been. I first took a visit when I was under 10, when my parents took me and my two brothers to see the dinosaurs in the park. We used red bus rover tickets - remember them? Didn't think so. As I recall the journey lasted about 3 weeks. Well, here's the sketch. The water tower on the far left was not part of the original palace, and was built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel - there was another on the other side too. 

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions: 2nd destination

 2) Old London Bridge

This one really wasn’t a near miss. Old London Bridge, the first London Bridge to be built out of stone, was begun in 1176, and finally finished in 1209. For long periods during this time England’s wealth was being directed to fund Richard the Lionheart’s crusade and his wars.

I don’t remember when I first learned anything bout the bridge with the houses on it. However I do remember that in 1982 I first walked over the high walkways on Tower Bridge, which at he time held an exhibition which said quite a bit about Old London Bridge, and filing it away in the corner of my brain earmarked for interesting stuff to find out about in the future.

I latched onto the fact that there were houses on the bridge, as far as we can tell right from the start. This really wasn’t so uncommon when the bridge was built. Many bridges had buildings on heir superstructure. In fact a great many medieval bridges had chapels on them. The building of London Bridge itself was directed by the parish priest of St. Mary Colechurch, one Peter de Colechurch. The chapel, not quite halfway across the bridge from the City side was dedicated to Thomas Becket, who had been canonized in 1173. Peter de Colechurch had been the Beckets’ parish priest.

Wary of earning the displeasure of King Henry VIII, the chapel would be rededicated to St. Thomas the Apostle. It didn’t change much – Henry had it completely rebuilt and it remained as residential and commercial premises until all the buildings were demolished in the mid 18^th century.

London Bridge certainly saw life in its more than 6 centuries of existence. In the reign of Richard II the revolting peasants of the Peasants Revolt threatened to burn it down unless they were allowed to pass over it. In the same reign the Bridge saw a joust between the champion knights of England and Scotland. And yes I’m afraid that it’s true that the heads of ‘traitors’ were often displayed on poles on the bridge. The first person to receive this honour, as far as we know, was William Wallace, the subject of the film ‘Braveheart’. A little way from the Southwark end of the bridge there used to be a drawbridge, which only worked for very brief periods in the early years of the bridge. This had its own fortified gateway where heads used to be displayed – if you look on the sketch you can just about see this in the bottom right hand corner.

The sketch shows the bridge as it would have been around about the middle of the 17^th century. The building in the middle with the distinctive onion domes if Nonesuch House, a prefabricated building whose constituent pieces were floated down the Thames before being erected on the bridge.

The city end of the bridge was gutted by fire more than once. The most serious wasn’t actually the Great Fire of London in 1666, which left the bridge relatively intact, but it was badly damaged in the fire of 1633.

And still there’s more to say about the bridge. It was decided to remove the houses from the superstructure of the bridge and this happened by 1761. Incidentally, the tradition of driving to the left in the UK supposedly began at this time on London Bridge. The two central arches were combined into one great arch, and in the last years of the Bridge’s existence HMS Beagle, minus masts, was floated through it to participate in William IV’s coronation celebrations. Then there’s the Frost Fairs. The narrow arches, 19 in total, made it possible for sections of the Thames above and below it to freeze over in severe cold weather. The last of these occurred in 1814, and the damage caused to the Bridge by blocks of fast moving ice when the thaw came hastened the bridge’s end. Although it took a long time for the design and details of the new bridge to be decided upon, work eventually began a little downstream on the replacement in 1824. The new bridge, nicknamed Rennie’s Bridge after the architect who designed it, John Rennis, opened in 1831, and Old London Bridge was immediately closed and demolition took place.

Hailed as a masterpiece in 1831, Rennie’s Bridge was overwhelmed by the amount of traffic it had to cope with in just a few decades and was showing signs of subsidence by he early 1900s. Even the construction of nearby Tower Bridge in the 1890s didn’t solve the problems. Eventually the decision was taken to replace the bridge with the current London Bridge, and Rennie’s Bridge was sold to Robert P. McCullough, and eventually shipped to Lake Havasu, USA where it remains to this day. Well, bits of the original bridge do.

When I was about five or six my Mum and Dad took me and my two brothers on a sightseeing bus trip, and we went over London Bridge. Now, I was 8 when the current bridge opened in 1972, so I can confidently state that I crossed London Bridge while the previous one was being demolished and the current one being built. So I did experience Rennie’s Bridge.

I have to finish on a personal note. Remember that I said I had filed away old London Bridge as something I would learn more about in the future? Well I did in the early noughties when I read Patricia Pierce’s wonderful book “Old London Bridge”. Being an obsessive quizzer, I filed it away in my mind as a potential Mastermind subject. I 2007 I reached the final of the series, and my specialist subject was Old London Bridge. Yes, I won, and that’s why this is an incredibly special place to me, and would be the place I’d visit if I did invent a Time Machine but it was only good for one return trip.

Sketchpedition through Time and Relative Dimensions

So that was Christmas. Very nice too. Now, the problem with this time of year is that it’s terrible for sketching. With a little time on my hands this morning I decided to go on a sketching trip, without leaving my sofa at home. Making the sketch of the West Pier as it used to be the other day led me to thinking about places I’d love to go and sketch if I had a time machine, places which are no longer there in real life. Then I realised that I do have a time machine, a time machine of the imagination. If you’re reading this, then so do you. It’s the internet. So I invite you to come with me, and we’ll sketch some of the buildings which will be on the itinerary when I finally get round to inventing a real life TARDIS.

1)   The Doric Arch – Euston – c. 1890

Yes, we’re going to start in my home town, good Old London Town. If you’re only familiar with the depressing 1960s building which stands on the site now, you might be surprised at my choice of first port of call. I grant you, the current station building does resist all attempts to tart it up an make it look more inoffensive. However Euston has only been like this for about 60 years.

The original Euston was the first terminus to be built north of the River Thames and construction began in 1837. Putting this into perspective, this was the same year that Queen Victoria came to the throne. London Bridge station, south of the River, had opened the year before. 1837 was a mere 8 years after the opening of the world’s first inter-city railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

By the time that the reference photograph I used to help with this sketch was taken Euston was already over half a century old. It’s tempting to imagine the awe that visitors exiting the station in those first decades must have felt .

The first threat to the arch came in the late 1930s when a radical plan to rebuild the station was drawn up, which would have involved moving the arch at the very least. The second world war put paid to this, however it only turned out to be a stay of execution. Despite the fact that both station and arch were grade II listed, the plan for the current station wee put forward in about 1960, and nobody in officialdom showed any appetite whatsoever for moving the arch to a new home. The London County Council balked at the cost, and Transport Minister Ernie Marples said all options for not demolishing the arch had been carefully examined and rejected. This was the same Ernie Marples whose company built motorways – not that he was at all biased, you understand. Pleas from great men such as Sir John Betjeman to be given time to raise the money to meet the cost of removing the arch and storing it until such time as a new home could be found for it were ignored.

Contrary to how it might seem from what I’ve just written, I do appreciate that you cannot keep things just because they have been there a long time. Otherwise we’d all be living in Bronze Age roundhouses.  But I do think that there was a very strong case for keeping the Euston Arch and I point my finger at those who made the decision and rushed to demolition, and am happy to say that you have let down the people you were working for and sold all our birthright for a mess of concrete.

Of all the places we’ll be visiting in our time machine, this one is really a ‘near miss’. The arch and the original station were demolished in 1962, just 2 years before I was born.

Brighton Piers

It might not be the most popular seaside location in the UK – well, there’s no maybe about it, Blackpool deservedly owns that title – but there’s something about Brighton. I first visited on a day trip in the mid 1970s and I’ve always enjoyed it ever since. After all, where else in the UK can boast a building quite as wonderful – and mad - as George IV’s Royal Pavilion?

Last weekend I went to Worthing. My mother and step-dad live there, having moved from Tottenham 11 years ago. They live a few doors down from my older brothers. I go most years to take the Christmas presents down and pick up those for my lot. While I was there last Saturday my brother popped in and asked if I wanted to go for a coffee in Brighton. Coffee – good, Brighton – good. While I was there I took a couple of photographs of the rather sad partial skeleton of the West Pier.

I always liked the west Pier, even though I never got to walk along it. The first time I visited would have been a year or two after it closed. It’s a shame. I always thought it had a real beauty to it. Far more so than the nearby Palace Pier. The Palace Pier, which is now called Brighton Pier, is still going strong, and I’ve sketched it and painted it several years ago (two coats of whitewash, guvnor) – see below.

So here’s the sketch of the pier as it is now. The other sketch is based on a photograph taken, I would imagine, in the late 70s or the 80s, and shows the West Pier as I remember it.