Shandy Hall, Coxwold, and Jonathan Meades

I visited Shandy Hall in Coxwold, North Yorkshire for the first time this weekend. I was particularly privileged to do so. My brother had bought me tickets for Jonathan Meades’ Laurence Sterne lecture, which turned out to comprise a walking tour of Coxwold, ending at Shandy Hall.

 Meades was celebrating the publication of his new book, Museum without Walls. Fraternal kindness enabled me to acquire a copy, signed by the man himself. It is a collection of Meades’ essays, mainly on place and architecture. It starts:

We are surrounded by the greatest of free shows. Places. Most of them made by man, remade by man. Deserted streets, seething boulevards, reeming beaches, empty steppes, black reservoirs, fields of agricultural scrap, cute villages and disappearing points which have an unparalleled capacity to promote hope (I am thinking of the aspect north up rue Paradis in Marseilles).

And so it continues: deep intellectual theorising about place, expressed often in seemingly random lists, and paragraphs that alight suddenly on specific vantage points that trigger particular memories in the author’s mind.

 

Meades’s talk was a suitably Sternian digressive ramble, seemingly taken from an as yet unpublished memoir. Starting at the church we heard of a childhood love for a girl from the Indian subcontinent; moving to the garden in the village we heard of radical French politics of the 1970s; moving back to Sterne’s gravestone we heard of the manufacture and use of LSD in the 1950s.

Finally at Shandy Hall itself we heard Meades reflect once again on his lost childhood love. I’m not sure what any of it meant, except that there were certainly glancing references to Sterne at various points.

Shandy Hall itself was a delight – we stepped into Sterne’s study, soaked in the atmosphere of a Georgian vicar’s home, and perused the collection of experimental novels. The garden featured an installation about self-publishing, fittingly given the way that Museum without Walls has been published.  I am looking forward to watching more Meades (a good selection is on YouTube), and trying to read Tristram Shandy in time for the tercentenary of Sterne's birth next year

A walking tour of Octavia Hill's Southwark

The Octavia Hill conference ended with a walking tour of Southwark, to visit the houses associated with Hill and others. We were led by William Whyte of the University of Oxford. Here are some images from the tour.

Plaque to Octavia Hill at Red Cross Cottages

William Whyte outside Cromwell Buildings (1864). Designed by Sydney Waterlow for the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company.

Red Cross Cottages (1887).

The Hall at Red Cross Cottages. Walter Crane was commissioned to do nine mural paintings inside.

Red Cross Cottages are  now overlooked by the Shard.

White Cross Cottages, next to Red Cross, also built by Elijah Hoole for Octavia Hill.

Ilfracombe Buildings (1888) for the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company

Gable Cottages (1889) by Elijah Hoole for Revd. T. Bastow.

Morrow and Ripley - LCC housing by RM Taylor. Hill's influence can still be seen - just - in these early council houses (note the flowers)

Blackfriars' Estate (1871) - Henry Darbishire for the Peabody Trust.

Conference delegates on the tour

Sutton House, Hackney and Octavia Hill

I’m having a very enjoyable two days at Sutton House in Hackney, which is hosting a conference dedicated to exploring the life and times of Octavia Hill. Hill died one hundred years ago this year, and the conference is a chance to reflect on her many achievements, which include being one of the founders of the National Trust.

Sutton House, Hackney

Sutton House is an excellent venue for it too. This 16^th-century house was built by RalphSadleir, an associate of Thomas Cromwell who is well known to us today thanks to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. The House is one of the oldest buildings still standing in this corner of Hackney, and one of the few National Trust places in East London.

Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust gave us a hugely entertaining account of her own involvement at Sutton House. She had been a member of the Trust’s regional committee back in the mid-1980s, long before she took up her role at the helm of the organisation (which was 12 years ago).

In the 80s, a battle raged over Sutton House when the sitting tenants (Clive Jenkins’ trade union the ASTMS) suddenly moved out. Left with an empty building, the Trust proposed to develop it as private apartments. Meanwhile a local activist group set about to ensure that the place was preserved as a museum and community resource.

The conflict made the pages of the Guardian (thanks to Patrick Wright, who writes about it in A Journey Through Ruins), and was resolved in favour of re-opening the house as a educational and community resource. It became a venue for music, drama, art exhibitions, dance and much else once it opened in 1994.

Breakers Yard: site of a new community garden space adjacent to Sutton House

This would surely have been Octavia Hill’s preference too. Although she devoted a large part of her life to housing, her world view, as we have been hearing, was much more holistic. Shelter and food alone were not enough, as people also needed the life-enhancing experiences derived from access to art and nature. Not for nothing did she write about the need to bring ‘colour, space and music’ to the people.

The papers from the conference have been varied – addressing topics as diverse as Octavia Hill’s work for her sister’s Kyrle Society, her portraiture, her involvement at RedCross Garden, her writings on open spaces and landscape, and her relationship with Ruskin and art. 

But some clear themes are emerging too: her determination to act, and with urgency, rather than simply analyse or theorise; her embracing of such a wide range of issues and concerns, all linked by a unifying world view; her deep spiritual feeling and Christian Socialism; her energy and skill at building networks and achieving political influence.

By the end of her life, though, her views were increasingly outmoded. She was not a socialist as such, despite her associations with Morris and also with figures like GeorgeLansbury, future leader of the Labour Party. Lansbury served with her on the Royal Commission on the Poor Law 1905-1909, although the two of them were on different sides when the commission concluded by publishing two different reports, one calling for reform of the poor law system, the other its complete replacement with a new system of state welfare. 

Lansbury went on to become first commissioner of works in Ramsay Macdonald’s Government of 1929-31, where he surprised many civil servants by revealing a great personal passion for the historic buildings, monuments and parks in his care. (Lansburys Lido, for example, was his radical reinterpretation of how the Serpentine in Hyde Park should be re-used.) In 1936 Lansbury, by then a vice-president of the National Trust was one of the supporters of the acquisition of Sutton House by the Trust.

To have had such a radical figure as Lansbury so closely involved in the work of the National Trust in the 1920s and 30s still comes as a surprise to some. The Octavia Hill conference is reminding us, however, of the Trust’s quite radical roots. 

Chris Cleeve from Sutton House leads a tour, watched over by Robert Whelan from Civitas and Gillian Darley, Octavia Hill's biographer