projects

When the children were little and we lived for six years in Germany and Belgium, we used to come back to England for holidays and to see family. There wasn’t enough room for the five of us to stay with grandparents, so we’d book a Landmark Trust property (no TV, radio, washing-machine, no fragile ornaments to break or pale settees to get dirty, but lots of books and places for games of hide-and-seek, ie perfect for young children) and invited others to visit and stay with us.

[Alton Station, LT photo]

The very first LT place we stayed in was Alton Station in Staffordshire, and it turned out to be amazing (apart from the minor issue of nine-month old Phoebe’s aim of getting ever closer to the platform edge). We could just come out of the station master’s house front door and cycle straight off down the lovely Churnet Valley Railway path. But the best discovery was the concept of the LT log book (every property has one or more). These are not just for people to write “thanks for a great stay”, “didn’t disappoint” and the inevitable “we will be back”. Instead they are for suggestions, discoveries, recommendations, and are the first thing to look at when you arrive and need to know asap where to find the best pub/fish and chips/pies/walk/market/butterflies (true). The Alton Station log books also taught me a very valuable lesson: that the sleepiest, quietist, apparently empty place can be full of interest. I still remember the entry written by someone who had counted all the wildflowers along a short section of the old railway track - I think there were 40-odd in their list - and this was a huge revelation. Not only did I have no idea that hedgerows could be so exciting, but also that, even though wildflower-identification is not my thing, I had been underestimating the riches to be enjoyed in even the most unprepossessing locations.

[Cambridge: as far as I go with naming wildflowers]

This little epiphany has stayed with me (but I’m still no better at spotting navelwort or tufted vetch), and I’m regularly reminded that it is possible to extract a huge amount from a little jaunt, a new place, a return visit to a place which may not be mind-blowing but which has enough to provide a refill of pleasure. It may be somewhere outside the front door, just down the road, or further afield. You really don’t have to go far.

[The Art School Project, photography by Matthew Cornford]

This is what I’ve been doing again recently. We went to Loughborough, not somewhere which has ever been on my must-visit list, to see the Art School Project exhibition at the university and to a talk by the co-curators and creators of this brilliant project. Before that, though, I wanted to see the Charnwood Museum mainly because it’s housed in the old red-brick Victorian swimming-baths, and who doesn’t want to imagine they are standing over the pool basin or in the old changing rooms, and imagining the fun and noise levels of happy swimmers - with the added bonus of discovering that Loughborough was once famous for hosiery, Sanatogen, and Ladybird Books. (Also, nice 1936 Odeon cinema facade, impressive former School of Art built in 1934, now with cafe, extremely impressive Loughborough University sports facilities & elite athletes everywhere, which made me feel it was just as well I never thought of applying there.)

But to go back to the art schools. This is right up my street. A joy to see so many fascinating - and varied - versions of buildings to house not just fine art education, but also graphic design, illustration, printing, bookbinding, ceramics. sculpture etc etc plus skills for a town’s traditional trades. Some are empty or derelict or for sale, some no longer exist, some have been repurposed, and a few are still actual schools of art.

[Instead of wall labels, John Beck and Matthew Cornford have produced a huge, beautifully designed and printed guide to the display]

I’ve noticed these buildings in the past in a rather lazy, haphazard way, but there is something wonderfully pleasing, positive and, yes, train-spotterish, about this methodical gathering, recording, and collecting of art schools. Of course, it’s the same impulse and curiosity that drives the lister of wild flowers. What you do with the information is something else entirely, but there’s a lot to be said for doing it for the sake of it. Something will emerge as a result. (Beck and Cornford are clear that they are being ‘literal-minded’ and agenda-less, and instead are creating the basis for discussion, and goodness me there is plenty to discuss about the value of art schools.)

One school of art which is still in a purpose-built school of art and calls itself a School of Art (more and universities are realising the wealth of cultural associations which go with the name, and are reverting) is Cambridge School of Art. Hidden away behind the modern parts of ARU is the fantastic old building with enormous windows, skylights, large studios with sinks and wooden towel rails in the corners, massive radiators, parquet floors, washable green tiles, pot plants on windowsills. Everything you’d expect in a classic art school, in fact, which makes me wish I’d done a foundation course at eighteen and learned to let go and express some inner wildness (unlikely - I would have just wanted to be in those light-filled rooms with my clean, dry, small-scale knitting and weaving, playing at being an art student). This was the first time I’d been inside; my new-found curiosity just happened to coincide with the degree show.

[Gresham Almshouses, Brixton]

If I had one, my own buildings project would be the Almshouse Project, as I’m discovering just how many and varied there are. Together with railway stations and stained glass windows, they form a good template for making discoveries.

[Longland Almshouses, photo taken in 1950 by Eric de Maré, nothing has changed]

I had a look this week at the two rows of almshouses in the churchyard in Henley, the elegant, white Longland Almshouses (rebuilt 1830) and the long terrace of low, red-brick Messenger and Newberry Almshouses (rebuilt 1846) which bear more than a passing resemblance to a series of Victorian brick garden sheds.

And I’ve been on quest to Brixton which is rich in almshouses. Photographer Jim Grover has been behind the blue doors of the Trinity Homes (1822) and has a created a fascinating exhibition (and book) at the Lambeth Archives -

[Roger’s Almshouses, Brixton]

fascinating precisely because for the most part we only see the exteriors of almshouses and rarely see inside.

Brixton also has three more sets of almshouses on a single site which makes for a gratifyingly high strike rate for the collector. But, and it’s a big but, I’m now realising there’s a real skill to taking good photographs of buildings, and it’s not one I have yet acquired. First of all you need good light so sunshine helps - just look at John Cornford’s photos of art schools and you’d think it never rained or was cloudy in the Midlands - otherwise it all turns out looking very dull. So it’s either a teach-myself-architectural-photography, move to black-and-white, or just wait for the sun to come out. Some hope.

On Wednesday I combined stations and almshouses when I stopped in Clare to have a cup of tea whilst sitting in the sun on the platform of the old station (very ‘Adlestrop’), and then found that the smallest town in Suffolk also has some of the smallest almshouses in Suffolk. (Clare station is apparently the only one in the world to be built in the bailey of a castle. Food for thought whilst enjoying one of the cafe’s warm Eccles cakes after a walk along the old track, lots of wildflowers, can’t name them.)

When not looking at and reading about almshouses, I’ve made a LOT of raspberry jam (much easier to photograph) using with fruit bought in bulk at Saffron Walden market,

and I’ve read Clara lit Proust (2022, translated as Clara Reads Proust) which is delicate and funny and clever, and a wonderful examination of how Proust can change your life - but it’s far better than the book of that name, because it captures the essence of what it’s actually like to read Proust. You don’t have to have read Proust to enjoy it, as it’s all done with a very light touch. It may make you want to, though.

Happy Sunday!