Art and Industry in East London – new improved version!

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Clock Mill Bromley-by-Bow at low tide

One of the joys, and sometimes frustrations, of walking in London is the speed of change as new buildings go up or hoardings come down and new views are exposed.  The ‘same’ walk can change subtly or significantly over a few months.  My Art and Industry in East London walk never disappoints.  Even the start at Pudding Mill DLR station usually  offers some change as work on Crossrail, or the Elizabeth Line as I suppose I should try to get into the habit of calling it, nears completion.

The former Lock Keeper’s Cottage at City Mill Lock, sold a couple of years ago, is now dwarfed by the new wraparound developments either side.

City Mill Lock
Former lock keeper’s cottage at City Mill Lock

Although work has begun to re-open the off-road path that links to the Greenway it is not yet open, but cutting back to the road gives a great view of the old Yardley box factory.

Former Yardley Box Factory Stratford
The Lavender Seller

Pre-walking the route for the first time this summer there was one change to which I was looking forward very much!  Thanks to the new ramp up from the River Lea up to Twelvetrees Crescent Bridge we can continue along the towpath all the way from Three Mills to Memorial Park with no need for the noisy road diversion along the Northern Approach to the Blackwall Tunnel!

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Gas holders still dominate the skyline on the approach to Memorial Park, but planning notices herald huge changes with the proposed re-development by Berkeley Homes of the old Parcelforce site. Berkeley Homes have recently submitted a hybrid planning application including over 1,000 residential units, retail, business and leisure space, new bridges and a new secondary school.

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Gas Holders Bromley-by-Bow

Heavy pollarding of nearby trees reveals the previously secluded former offices of the Gas, Light & Coke Company and gives a glimpse from the road of the company’s memorial to the employees who lost their lives in two world wars.

Back on the towpath, past Abigail Fallis’s shopping trolley sculpture, ironically close to the Sainsbury ‘online fulfilment centre’ there are no more changes until we arrive at the wonderful green oasis of Cody Dock where there is always something new!

If you want to explore this fascinating area why not join me on Saturday 22nd July?  Advance booking through Eventbrite

Beautifying Bermondsey

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Ada Salter with her favourite flowers
Ada Salter with her favourite flowers  © Oonagh Gay

Oonagh Gay of Crouch End Walks and I were joined by a very interesting group of walkers for our Ada Salter – Beautifying Bermondsey walk for Open Garden Squares on Saturday afternoon.  Instead of our usual circular route that takes in all aspects of Ada’s fascinating life in Bermondsey, we concentrated on her horticultural achievements.

For the first time since we started the walks in the Spring we were able to use the grasp in Ada’s left hand, carefully crafted by sculptor Diane Gorvin, for some of her favourite dahlias.  These long-stemmed imports, though are not as hardy as the seed-grown, single flowered Coltness variety favoured by Bermondsey Council nurseries in the 1920s that provided the Borough’s famously colourful displays in parks and window boxes.  Bermondsey’s planting was rightly famous and Mr Johns, Superintendent of Gardens had three new strains of dahlia confirmed by the Royal Horticultural Society:  Coltness Purple, Yellow and Salmon.  The salmon-coloured was renamed Bermondsey Gem and the yellow, Rotherhithe Gem.  Coltness mixed dahlia seeds are available from many suppliers – but I haven’t been able to track down any Bermondsey or Rotherhithe Gems.

Mr Johns’ favourite street tree was the flowering cherry and we saw cherries in abundance.

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Cherry Gardens Bermondsey Wall   © Oonagh Gay

The Cherry Gardens of Samuel Pepys day are long gone, but the present Cherry Gardens, a small stretch of garden between River and housing on Bermondsey Wall marks a tussle between the local community and developers that Ada would surely have approved.  Originally ear-marked by the local authority for low-density housing the land was compulsorily purchased in the 1980s by the London Dockland Development Corporation who threatened to obscure the River view and access with high rise blocks.  Cherry Gardens today is part of the compromise reached when local people won out against the LDDC and Southwark Council regained half the land.

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Joyce Salter fishing  © Oonagh Gay

I don’t think the sculptor intended Ada and Alfred’s daughter Joyce to be embellished but when we visited on Saturday she was shaded from the sun by a distinctly contemporary baseball cap and fishing with the local lads. On a previous visit she was listening to music in a way unforeseen at the time of her tragically early death in 1910.

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Joyce Salter with headphones  © Sue McCarthy

And further along the river wall at Providence Square, as Oonagh and I made our way back after visiting the wonderful floating gardens at Garden Barge Square, we met another young person fishing.  This Banksy is much faded and it’s hard now  to see the syringe on the end of his line.

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Banksy’s Fishing Child Bermondsey Wall © Sue McCarthy

And if you would like the full version of this walk, Oonagh is leading the next one on 9th July.  You can book here 

 

Beautifying Bermondsey 

It was pretty windy when Oonagh led the first of our Ada Salter walks in Bermondsey last week, but that didn’t put off the group who all enjoyed the mix of Garden estate, old warehouses and sunning Thames views upriver. Ada’s trees, planted as part of the Beautification programme should look even better next Saturday with more in leaf. Why not join us and enjoy the Salters’ legacy?

The next walk is on Saturday 13th May at 11am. Click here to book.

New Walks for 2017

After a couple of months of hibernation and planning I’m shall be starting to offer a regular programme of walks again from March. I’m excited  to announce new walks for 2017 about two women I admire  very much.

Ada Salter: Beautifying Bermondsey

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This year Capital Walks  ventures south of the River to Bermondsey celebrating the life and achievements of  Ada Salter; socialist, pacifist, environmentalist, youth-worker and Quaker.  Ada was the first female Mayor in London and the first Labour woman mayor in the British Isles. Ada loved singing and plants; with her husband,  local doctor and MP Dr Alfred Salter, she made a significant impact on health, housing, employment and labour relations.  The Garden Suburb she created and the tree planting she championed can still be seen today.  Oonagh Gay, of Crouch End Walks, and I have put a route together that explores her achievements and the ethical socialism that underpinned them.

Book Now 13th May 2017

Dorothy L Sayers Bloomsbury

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Back in Bloomsbury, I have been indulging  long-held enthusiasm for the writing of Dorothy L Sayers and developing a walk around some of DLS’s haunts along with those of her alter ego Harriet Vane and other familiar characters from the novels.  See where Peter Wimsey broke his collarbone, where Harriet lived, where her fictional lover Philip Boyes imbibed Strong Poison and find out more about the woman who brought them all to life.

An evening walk at 18:30 on 25th April and for DL Sayers birthday weekend 14:00 on 11th June

The Garretts of Gower Street – an adventure story for girls

No 2 Gower Street
No 2 Gower Street

Behind this door between the 1870s to the 1930s, four women of one remarkable family were making their mark upon the world though only one, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, is named on the plaque. So how did it begin?

Apparently, her mother Louisa told this story of how two of her daughters decided upon their careers.  One evening at the family home in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Elizabeth and Milly and Elizabeth’s friend Emily were brushing their hair by the fire, discussing the inequalities facing women and what they might do to advance women’s cause. Emily (aged 29) said women needed an education and she would open the universities to women, Elizabeth (aged 23) argued that women also needed an income so she would open up the professions, starting with medicine, and Milly (aged 13) was allocated the task of winning the Parliamentary vote.  (Emily Davies co-founded  Girton College Cambridge.)

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who did indeed go on to lead the constitutional campaign for women’s suffrage, has long been one of my heroes.  Her peaceful and persistent campaigning for women to get the vote began almost fifty years earlier than the direct violent action of the Women’s Political and Social Union (WSPU) so graphically depicted in last autumn’s film Suffragette. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), of which Millicent became President, continued to campaign for gender equality in different guises and, now as The Fawcett Society, celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.

 

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital  – now part of Unison  Euston Road

Millicent’s older sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson didn’t live in Gower Street but she did open up the medical profession. Elizabeth Garrett, became the first woman to qualify as a physician in Britain.  She went on to found the New Hospital for Women (later the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital), was Dean of the London School of Medicine for Women and the first woman in Britain to be elected Mayor when she was elected Mayor of Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1908.

Part of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital building is now incorporated into the offices of the trade union Unison and houses the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery

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London School of Medicine for Women

Elizabeth’s daughter, Louisa Garrett Anderson, trained as a doctor at the London School of Medicine for Women and in 1915 established the Endell Street Military Hospital with her companion Dr Flora Murray.

From the 1870s, long before Millicent moved in, No 2 Gower Street was the home and workplace of the firm of A&R Garrett House Decorators.  A&R  were the architectural decorators Agnes and Rhoda , (sister and cousin of Millicent and Elizabeth) and strictly speaking, the neat brass plate on the door that advertised their business contravened the terms of their Bedford Estate lease.

After a formal apprenticeship with the architect John McKean Brydon (who designed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and the London School of Medicine for Women) the two cousins became the first women  professional house decorators, They designed carpets, textiles, furniture and wallpaper, exhibited in Paris and published a design book that ran to several editions.   The composer Sir Hubert Parry employed them and they successfully tendered for interior design of the New Hospital for Women.

A&R Garrett Laburnum Wallpaper
Garrett ‘Laburnum’ Wallpaper
Agnes garrett Fireplace EGA Hosp
Fireplace by Agnes Garrett

Millicent moved in with her sister Agnes in the 1880s after the death of her husband, the academic and Liberal MP Henry Fawcett and their cousin Rhoda.  Millicent’s daughter Phillippa Fawcett lived here and from here set off for Newnham College (of which her mother had been one of the founders) where she made history and newspaper headlines with her success in the mathematics finals, when she was placed “above the senior wrangler”.  In plain English, she was better than any of the men!

If you would like to find out more why not join my Garretts of Gower Street walk on Saturday afternoon 10th December.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some London Cats

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Laura Ford Cats 1 & 2

I recently stumbled across Camden-based, Laura Ford’s 2012 work Cats 1&2.  Situated at the end of Bishopsgate, appropriately close to the junction of Leadenhall Street with Whittington Avenue, these two anxious and distracted larger-than-life size cats are part of a series called Days of Judgement. Ford was inspired by Masaccio’s fresco, The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, but instead of Adam and Eve, she gives us these tall, thin, distracted and abject creatures.

I started to think about the other London cat statues I know, all of whom serve either to emphasise their human companion’s humanity or serve as a memorial to the humans with whom they are connected.

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Image ©PAUL FARMER and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Hodge, Dr Johnson’s  “very fine cat indeed”, portrayed in Jon Bickley’s 1997 statue with one of the oysters he favoured, gazes out in a very proprietorially feline attitude across Gough Square from his position on a copy of Johnson’s famous dictionary. He is also at good height for visitors to the Square to stroke or drape an arm round.

IMG_1531Trim, Matthew Flinders seagoing”close companion” looks as though he has his own interests but seems content to stay close by in the busyness of the Euston Station concourse.

 

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Image by By Jim Linwood (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Image by By Jim Linwood (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
These two Bloomsbury cats were indeed real and local. Humphry, on top, used to live in Queen Square (the statue, that is) but was relocated to the Alf Barrett children’s playground in nearby Old Gloucester Street.  Humphrey, the real cat, lived at the Mary Ward Adult Education Centre the Square. He was named after Humphry Ward, husband of the centre’s founder Mary Augusta (Mrs Humphry) Ward, the Victorian social reformer and novelist.  Humphry is the first and only sculpture completed by Marcia Solway who attended sculpture classes at the Centre and lived nearby. Sadly, Marcia died of epilepsy aged only 34 in 1992. The statue was donated by her mother Carole Solway.

Sam, portrayed jumping down from a wall in a corner of Queen Square, lived with a active local resident Patricia Penn (Penny).  Penny was a nurse,  actively engaged in the local residents association and a campaigner for the preservation of the area’s historic buildings.  The sculpture by John Fuller, was erected in 2002 and funded by local people to commemorate Penny’s life.  The current version is mark two as the original was stolen in 2007. However, Sam won’t be able to jump down from the wall this time as the new sculpture is fixed to the brickwork with steel rods!

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Image by Stephen Craven [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
The cat in the Salter family grouping at Bermondsey returned  to the embankment wall in 2014 after a spell in protective custody with Southwark Council. Although daughter Joyce and her pet cat were unharmed, the statue of her father, local GP and Labour MP, Dr Alfred Salter was stolen in 2011.  Happily, a fundraising campaign meant that sculptor Diane Gorvin, who created the original trio in 1991, was able to make a new statue of Alfred and  to complete the family grouping with a statue of Ada Salter.  Ada, who had been omitted from the original commission was the first Labour woman mayor in Britain and the  first female mayor in London. An ethical socialist, she successfully campaigned for improved housing and the greening of London through Deptford’s Beautification Committee.

You may like to read more about Trim and Matthew Flinders

London Labyrinths

Kings Cross Labyrinth

King’s Cross Labyrinth Mural, Varnishers Yard N1

Eagle-eyed readers may notice that a detail from this installation is pictured on my website.  Labyrinths have played quite a large part in my life since my partner developed a deep interest in all things labyrinthine some years ago. A quick glance round our living room reveals several labyrinth artefacts. On the mantelpiece alone I can see a small lace labyrinth, a photograph of a labyrinth made from sand on a beach and an invitation to a labyrinth gathering in Texas. Casting my eye around further, I spot the cover of the yellow paperback edition of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Dans le labyrinth, an A1-size conference poster about labyrinth initiatives hiding unsuccessfully behind a chair, and a wooden chest in the window bay that contains plastic and wood finger labyrinths, a small fabric labyrinth and other bits of labyrinth kit.

Much of the last few days have been spent checking the index to my partner’s forthcoming book about … (yes, of course it is about labyrinths!) and so much in need of fresh air and exercise I set out for a long walk, but the labyrinth doesn’t let me go…

Phillip O'Reilly Kings X labyrinth

King’s Cross Labyrinth mural detail

 

Tucked away in the Regent Quarter between Caledonian Road, York Way and Pentonville Road; Phillip O’Reilly’s ceramic installation can be found on the wall of Varnishers Yard. The glazed tiles that make up the seven metre by seven metre mural were hand made in the artist’s Peckham studio and use images of local industry, films, novels and plants. So if you peer closely you might just make out trains, barges and local parks.  The labyrinth is one of two Wall-Works commissioned from O’Reilly by P&O Estates.

Fen Court 2
 

Fen Court

 

The labyrinth on Fen Court, just off Fenchurch Avenue in the City, aims to provide a space for quiet contemplation in the midst of the hustle and bustle of City life.  Fen Court is the site of the old graveyard of St Gabriel Fenchurch, destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666 and never rebuilt.

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Fen Court

 

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Fen Court, EC3

 

Unlike many of the City’s squares and gardens, Fen Court is often far from tranquil.  It is a busy thoroughfare with  several doors opening onto it and smokers from nearby offices making good use of a strategically placed ash tray. Only at the weekend is it possible to get clear sight of the 5-circuit paved path and for a pigeon to enjoy the space undisturbed by human feet.

The labyrinth in front of the entrance to The Warren Playground on Whitfield Street in Fitzrovia is also paved and not especially conspicuous.  Indeed I had stood on it more than once without realising that the pattern of the pavers at my feet was a labyrinth.

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The Warren Playground Labyrinth

 

As with Fen Court it is not ideally suited to the contemplative walker as it provides the link between road and playground, but it is a good size for children to race around its square seven-circuit path based on a medieval pattern.  Presumably the existence of a labyrinth and the name of the playground both play homage to nearby Warren Street.

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Warren Street tile motif

 

The tiling on the Victoria Line platforms of Warren Street station depicts a warren.  Not the single twisting, turning, though essentially unimpeded path of the labyrinth, but the tricks and dead ends of a maze – designed to confound. I’ve always enjoyed the bold pattern and bright colours of these tiles, but the link is erroneous as Warren Street takes it’s name from Anne Warren, wife of Charles Fitzroy, first Baron Southampton who laid out Warren Street’s houses in 1799.

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Labyrinth at Warren Street

 

Though of course there is a labyrinth on this as on all tube stations – part of Labyrinth, Mark Wallinger’s artwork celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Tube with 270 individual vitreous enamel artworks echoing the Tube’s roundel logo.

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Labyrinth of Light – St Giles Cripplegate

 

Not all labyrinths are permanent, nor can all be seen during the day.  One of London most impressive labyrinths of the last few weeks has been landscape artist, Jim Buchanan’s stunning Labyrinth of Light cast onto the ground in front of St Giles Cripplegate and overlooked by the Barbican Centre across the water.

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Installing the light labyrinth

The pattern is projected from the roof of St Giles Cripplegate each evening between dusk and about 10pm. But if you want to see it you need to hurry, as the installation is only for Lent and will finish on Wednesday 23rd March.

Matthew Flinders – the man who named Australia

Matthew Flinders statue euston

Mark Richards’ bronze statue of Matthew Flinders has been on the concourse of Euston station for almost two years but seldom gets the attention it deserves. Much of the time it is almost hidden among  passengers waiting  for trains who hardly notice what they rest their coffee cup on or where they perch to eat a sandwich and send a text message.  The modern traveller’s concentration on our contemporary tools of navigation and communication is mirrored  by the statue.  Matthew Flinders looks down, dividers in hand, concentrating only on his charts and making calculations with the tools of his own time.

Matthew Flinders & Trim 2

Later in the evening, when the crowds have died away and the rubbish has been cleared, Captain Flinders and Trim, his feline companion, are still hard at work. But now we can see what the work is. The chart is Australia. Although Flinders is not well known in his native country, his name (and that of his cat) are household words in Australia.

Matthew Flinders was a Lincolnshire lad, born on 16th March 1774. He went to sea with the Navy at 15, sailed with Captain Bligh to Tahiti and became a passionate and talented cartographer.  Flinders made three voyages to the Southern Ocean.  On the second, with his friend and colleague George Bass, he discovered that Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) was a separate island rather than part of the mainland.  On the third he became the first person to circumnavigate the Australia and to identify it as a continent. In fact we owe the name Australia to Matthew Flinders who was the first to apply it specifically to the continent and who popularised it in his book Voyage to Terra Australis. 

Returning home from his final voyage, Flinders became caught up in the wars between France and England, was arrested as a spy and detained in Ile de France (Mauritius) for more than six years.

Flinders Plaque Fitzroy Street
52 Fitzroy Street

During this time he was able to make notes for Voyage to Terra Australis and on his return in 1810 he settled in London, renting rooms in Soho and Fitzrovia to afford the access to the Admiralty and to his patron Sir Joseph Banks that he needed in order to complete his book and an atlas of his maps.  London was expensive; he did not receive the promotion he hoped for and was living on half pay.  His health was poor and he lived only another four years, just long enough to see publication of his book and dying at the age of forty.

Books seem to have played a large part in Matthew Flinders’ life, and he clearly made time for fiction.  As a boy, he had been inspired to seek a Naval career after reading the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Trim the cat was named after Uncle Toby’s manservant in Tristram Shandy on account of his ‘great fidelity and affection’. Trim was a ship’s cat born in the South Seas.  He circumnavigated Australia, survived shipwreck and was the subject of a biographical tribute written by Flinders when he was detained in Mauritius.

But what are Flinders and Trim doing on Euston Station?  Sadly, the answer relates to  Matthew Flinders’ death.  When Flinders died he was buried at St James Church, Hampstead Road, London. When the burial ground was closed to burials in the mid-nineteenth century and later opened as a public garden, part of the land was lost to the development of the railway.  It is said that Matthew Flinders’ final resting place may lie beneath what is now platforms 12-15 of Euston Station.

Something of Matthew Flinders’ flair and methodological approach seems to have passed down the generations. Matthew’s only child Anne, was the mother of Flinders Petrie, the pioneering Egyptologist whose extensive collection of Egyptian antiquities now resides a stone’s throw from Euston in UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Petrie’s  brain (and head), deposited with the Royal College of Surgeons  in nearby Lincoln’s Inn Fields, were reputedly brought back by his widow in a hatbox from Jerusalem where his body is buried.

The Garretts of Gower Street – an adventure story for girls

No 2 Gower Street
No 2 Gower Street

Just up from the Georgian charms of Bedford Square and around the corner from the swish new World Conservation & Exhibition Centre of the British Museum, the number 73 bus rumbles down Gower Street and on into Bloomsbury Street.  As it stops at the lights, an observant passenger might spot the blue London County Council plaque to the left of the matching blue door of number 2 Gower Street.

Behind this door between the 1870s to the 1930s, four women of one remarkable family were making their mark upon the world though only one, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, is named on the plaque. So how did it begin?

Apparently, her mother Louisa told this story of how two of her daughters decided upon their careers.  One evening at the family home in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Elizabeth and Milly and Elizabeth’s friend Emily were brushing their hair by the fire, discussing the inequalities facing women and what they might do to advance women’s cause. Emily (aged 29) said women needed an education and she would open the universities to women, Elizabeth (aged 23) argued that women also needed an income so she would open up the professions, starting with medicine, and Milly (aged 13) was allocated the task of winning the Parliamentary vote.  (Emily Davies co-founded  Girton College Cambridge.)

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who did indeed go on to lead the constitutional campaign for women’s suffrage, has long been one of my heroes.  Her peaceful and persistent campaigning for women to get the vote began almost fifty years earlier than the direct violent action of the Women’s Political and Social Union (WSPU) so graphically depicted in last autumn’s film Suffragette. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), of which Millicent became President, continued to campaign for gender equality in different guises and, now as The Fawcett Society, celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.

 

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital  – now part of Unison  Euston Road

Millicent’s older sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson didn’t live in Gower Street but she did open up the medical profession. Elizabeth Garrett, became the first woman to qualify as a physician in Britain.  She went on to found the New Hospital for Women (later the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital), was Dean of the London School of Medicine for Women and the first woman in Britain to be elected Mayor when she was elected Mayor of Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1908.

Part of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital building is now incorporated into the offices of the trade union Unison and houses the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery

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London School of Medicine for Women

Elizabeth’s daughter, Louisa Garrett Anderson, trained as a doctor at the London School of Medicine for Women and in 1915 established the Endell Street Military Hospital with her companion Dr Flora Murray.

From the 1870s, long before Millicent moved in, No 2 Gower Street was the home and workplace of the firm of A&R Garrett House Decorators.  A&R  were the architectural decorators Agnes and Rhoda , (sister and cousin of Millicent and Elizabeth) and strictly speaking, the neat brass plate on the door that advertised their business contravened the terms of their Bedford Estate lease.

After a formal apprenticeship with the architect John McKean Brydon (who designed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and the London School of Medicine for Women) the two cousins became the first women  professional house decorators, They designed carpets, textiles, furniture and wallpaper, exhibited in Paris and published a design book that ran to several editions.   The composer Sir Hubert Parry employed them and they successfully tendered for interior design of the New Hospital for Women.

A&R Garrett Laburnum Wallpaper
Garrett ‘Laburnum’ Wallpaper
Agnes garrett Fireplace EGA Hosp
Fireplace by Agnes Garrett

Millicent moved in with her sister Agnes in the 1880s after the death of her husband, the academic and Liberal MP Henry Fawcett and their cousin Rhoda.  Millicent’s daughter Phillippa Fawcett lived here and from here set off for Newnham College (of which her mother had been one of the founders) where she made history and newspaper headlines with her success in the mathematics finals, when she was placed “above the senior wrangler”.  In plain English, she was better than any of the men!

If you would like to find out more why not join my Garretts of Gower Street walk on Saturday afternoon 5th March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dorothy Annan’s Technology Mural

Much as I love the Barbican  it can seem pretty bleak, especially in the late afternoon of a grey February day. So it is always a pleasure to plan a route to the library that takes me past Dorothy Annan’s joyful celebration of British technology in the 1960s.

Dorothy Annan mural Speed Highwalk Barbican Estate
 

Dorothy Annan Mural Speed Highwalk, Barbican London 

 

Now to be found on the Speed Highwalk between Speed House and the Barbican Centre, these nine beautifully crafted ceramic panels celebrate the “white heat” of 1960s communications technology.

Dorothy Annan Radio Communications and Television, Mural Speed Highwalk, Barbican Estate London
 

Radio Communications & Television

 

The murals were commissioned in 1960 (at £300 a panel) by the Ministry of Public Building and Works to “add interest at street level” to the Farringdon Street side of the Fleet Building.  So named because of the subterranean River Fleet flowing beneath, the thirteen-storey  glass and concrete block  was built to house the Central Telegraph Office.  Designed under the supervision of the GPO’s Chief Architect Eric Bedford (who later designed the longer-lasting Post Office (now BT) Tower) this was London’s largest telephone exchange boasting 12,000 subscriber lines and employing 600 staff.

Dorothy Annan took her inspiration from the new communications technology. She researched her subject thoroughly, visiting Post Office buildings across London and photographing physical elements of the new technology to incorporate into her designs.

Power & Generators Dorothy Annan Mural Speed High walk Barbican, London
 

Power and Generators

 

The stylised and abstract panels representing the hardware of communications technology at the cutting edge: cables, pylons, aerials, generators, power lines, is softened by the muted colour palette.

Lines over the countryside Dorothy Annan Mural Speed HIghwalk Barbican, London
 

Lines over the Countryside

 

Each one of the nine panels is a unique work of art and the influence of her contemporaries including Ben Nicholson, Paul Klee and Joan Miro is evident.

Impressions derived from the patternsproduced by cathode ray oscilligraphs used in testing Dorothy Annan mural Speed Highwalk Barbican London
 

Impressions derived from the Patterns Produced by Cathode Ray Oscilligraphs used in Testing

 

The panels are each made up of forty biscuit-ware tiles, each roughly thirty by forty-six centimetres and manufactured by Hathernware Ltd of Loughborough.  Dorothy Annan hand scored each of the 360 wet clay tiles to her own design in the Hathernware studios and, after the first firing, she decorated, glazed and fired them in her own London studio.

detail from Cable Chamber with Cables Entering from the Street Dorothy AnnanMural Speed Highwalk Barbican, London

Detail from Cable Chamber with Cables Entering

Dorothy Annan (1908-1983) was a ceramist and a painter and is now best known for her murals. Politically left-wing, she was a member of the Artists International Association (along with Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson and Frank Auerbach) whose aim was the “unity of artists for peace, democracy and cultural development. The AIA saw travelling exhibitions and murals as a means of promoting wider access to art. Many functional and utilitarian post-war public buildings like the Fleet Building were brightened up by murals.

Overseas Communication showing cable bouys Dorothy Annan Mural Speed Highwalk Barbican, London
Overseas Communication showing cable buoys

 

Sadly very few survive, Dorothy Annan’s largest work, Expanding Universe at the Bank of England was destroyed in 1997. Her only other surviving work in London – a London County Council commission for Caley Street school in Tower Hamlets – was happily rediscovered in 2008.  The Fleet Building mural was heading for the same fate. The building had been in a state of near dereliction for many years after computerisation superseded telegraph and Telex, and Goldman Sachs  – who had acquired the site to build their new £350m European HQ  – did not initially see merit in the work.

 

Fleet Building Faringdon Street
Fleet Building Farringdon Street © Copyright Thomas Nugent and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

But thanks to a campaign by 20th Century Society and Tile and Architectural Ceramics Society among others, the mural (though not the building to which it was affixed) was awarded Grade II listing by English Heritage in 2011.  In 2013, with agreement of the Corporation of the City of London and a dowry of £100,000 from Goldman Sachs the panels were relocated to Speed Highwalk preserving them for posterity and “adding interest” at highwalk level.

Dorothy Annan mural Speed highwalk Barbican, London
Dorothy Annan mural – looking back from the end

 

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