Your Places or Mine

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Send us Fan MailIn this episode Clive unveils some new research. It’s the result of a coffee shared with his guest in today’s podcast, Nicholas Boys-Smith. Nicholas founded Create Streets, a social enterprise, think tank and urban design consultancy in 2012. The coffee shop was on a schizophrenic part of the street, half of it being Victorian terrace — brick built, repeating classical windows, a lot of variety in the modest shops and cafes as street level — the opposite side of the street having been rebuilt not so long ago in a Modern style of unornamented grey walls and window openings without mouldings.  Nicholas commissioned Deltapoll to conduct a visual preference survey, showing a randomly chosen group of over 2,000 people of all ages, backgrounds, ethnicity and geographical location within the UK which they preferred of two options: 1, the street as it is. 2, a photoshop of the street with Modern section replaced by a copy of the 19th-century terrace.  The result was conclusive.  Only 17% of the sample chose the Modern image, 83% preferred the Victorian one. People say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder but that’s not quite right.  There are a lot of aesthetic matters on which most people agree.  They would prefer to live in neighbourhoods built as they were in the past, with variety and interest, rather than a Modern development that seems bleak and unfriendly. The results of the survey can be found on the Create Streets website www.createstreets.com.  Importantly, this was not a chance result but entirely predictable (indeed he did predict it).  Create Streets have undertaken numerous similar projects and the outcome is always the same.This shines a spotlight on new development. How are developers ever going to convince the public that it is a good thing, when so many people are instinctively opposed to it?  The subject stirred in Clive’s mind when he visited the sublime landscape garden of Rousham in Oxfordshire, laid out by William Kent in the 1720s and 1730s. His client General Sir James Dormer was a friend Alexander Pope, himself a keen landscape gardener.  The views from it are now threatened by the proposal to build an enormous housing development nearby. What can be done to save it?

Send us Fan MailWorcester Cathedral rises above the banks of the River Severn as one of England's great medieval buildings, its honey-coloured stone and soaring central tower dominating the city's skyline much as they have for over nine centuries.  Who better to discuss its architecture and history than John Goodall?Founded in 680 as a monastic community, the earliest fabric of the cathedral dates from a rebuilding begun in 1084 under Bishop Wulfstan, the only English-born bishop to retain his see after the Norman Conquest and later canonised as a saint. His original crypt survives intact, a rare and atmospheric example of Norman architecture that still forms part of the working cathedral.Yes, yes – we know that during the following four centuries the building was steadily transformed, absorbing Gothic additions in the Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular styles, so that a walk through its nave and choir amounts to a tour through the evolution of English medieval architecture. But what about the cathedral’s TWO royal tombs?  One is that of King John, whose effigy is one of the earliest depicting an English monarch.  John died at Newark but chose to be buried here between the shrines of two Worcester saints, Wulfstan and Oswald. Nearby lies the exquisite Prince Arthur's Chantry Chapel, built for Henry VIII's elder brother, whose early death in 1502 unexpectedly cleared the path to the throne for the future Henry VIII.  As Prince of Wales, Arthur had been at Ludlow, the centre of administration for Wales.Beyond its royal connections, Worcester Cathedral is celebrated for its cloisters, chapter house, and the peaceful green of College Green, as well as for its role as one of the three cathedrals hosting the Three Choirs Festival, the oldest music festival in the world. Its bells, stained glass, and Victorian restorations by Sir George Gilbert Scott add further layers to a building that has survived civil war, Reformation upheaval, and the passage of nearly a thousand years.What riches for a podcast with John and Clive.

Send us Fan MailEverybody in the world has heard of Buckingham Palace. The official London residence of the British monarch, it stands at the western end of St James’s Park, very near St James’s Palace.  As well as being used for great occasions of State, accompanied by the daily ritual of the changing of the guard, it was also somewhere that successive kings and queens lived when they were in town.  Now the decision has been made for HM the King to move out, giving Clive and John the excuse to consider its evolution as a work of architecture and changing taste.  The architectural story begins in 1703 when the Duke of Buckingham commissioned a house from the soldier-architect William Winde.  Winde’s design for Buckingham House, published in Vitruvius Britannicus, would prove highly influential on the development of later Georgian country houses.  Little remains to be seen of it now but it set the scale for what came later.  In 1761 George III acquired Buckingham House as a private retreat for Queen Charlotte, to which he added several libraries for his famous collection of books: the foundation of the British Library.  George IV turned the house into a palace, persuading Parliament to commission John Nash for the purpose.  Nash produced a scheme that was both characteristically elegant in concept and slapdash in execution.  The old brick building was clad in Bath stone, doubled in size towards the garden front, provided with wings to either side of a central courtyard, whose termination was a triumphal arch – later moved to the top of Park Lane and called the Marble Arch.  Nash was by then an old man and the project ran hopelessly over budget.  By the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, it also looked impractical: there were too few bedrooms and nurseries.  Edward Blore to close the courtyard with a new East Front facing the Mall.  When Victoria died in 1901, after a long reign and with the British Empire at its zenith, a fund was established to remember her.  This not only produced the sculptural composition of the Queen Victoria Memorial by the sculptor Sir Thomas Brock on a ronde-point (roundabout) in front of the palace but a revamp of The Mall culminating in Admiralty Arch by Sir Aston Webb – a set piece of imperial town planning.  There was even enough money to reface the east front of the palace – work that amazingly was carried out in three months while George V was at Balmoral.  Central is the most famous balcony in the world, on which successive generations of the royal family stood to wave to the crowd.Presumably there will be less waving now, given the palace’s change of function – which is all the more reason to consider it as a work of architecture and art.

Send us Fan MailThe Monument, rising above the streets near London Bridge, is one of the City of London's most striking historical landmarks - a soaring Doric column erected to commemorate the Great Fire of London of 1666. Begun in 1671 and completed in 1677, it stands 202 feet tall, a height chosen deliberately: the distance from its base to the spot on Pudding Lane where the fire is believed to have started.But who designed it?  The candidates are Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke - Clive and John weigh their respective contributions in the light of new scholarship, discussing what it meant to design a building (with your name on it) in the 17th and 18th centuries.What a structure it is. Built from Portland stone, the column is topped with a gilded urn of flames, symbolising the fire itself. Inside, a narrow spiral staircase of 311 steps winds upward to a viewing platform, offering visitors panoramic views across London - a reward that has drawn sightseers since the 18th century. At its base, elaborate inscriptions in Latin recount the devastation of the fire, which destroyed much of medieval London, gutting over 13,000 houses and 87 parish churches, while a sculpted relief by Caius Gabriel Cibber depicts the City's destruction and subsequent restoration.The Monument was more than a memorial. In its early years it also served a scientific purpose: Hooke and Wren designed the structure as a giant zenith telescope, with a hollow central shaft intended for astronomical and gravitational experiments, though vibrations from passing traffic ultimately made such precise observations impractical.Standing at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, the column remains a quiet but powerful reminder of destruction and renewal at the very heart of the City.

Send us Fan MailAs a great expert on the English castle, John has been thinking about one of the great icons of England: Warwick Castle.  This extraordinary building, created over centuries, has come down to us intact, not having been slighted after the Civil War in the 17th century – something exceptional. Equally remarkable is the mythology that surrounds the place, including the medieval legends attached to Guy of Warwick, after whom one of the castle’s famous towers is named.  Although Guy may never have existed, his story was revered by the Earls of Warwick as their foundation myth.  In an attempt to contain the Earl of the day, Henry I took away a portion of his earldom from the Earl of the day and bestowed it on a favourite, who built Kennilworth Castle, only five miles away.   The result was a rivalry that lasted through the Middle Ages, which was conclusively ended when Kennilworth was reduced to the ruin that it is now.Founded by William the Conqueror, when travelling to Yorkshire to inflict the vengeful punishment known as the Harrying of the North, Warwick Castle occupied a powerful position at the heart of the country, overlooking the river Avon.  The 16th Earl of Warwick became known as  Warwick the Kingmaker, from his ability to tilt the scales of the Wars of the Roses in favour of the side he supported at the time.  Later centuries associated Warwick Castle with the England of Shakespeare, who was born in Warwickshire.  It was arguably the first building to have been copied in recognisable form during the early Gothic Revival.  A visit to Warwick Castle still stirs the imagination.  Listen to John’s account and you’ll see it with fresh eyes.

Send us Fan MailClive has taken the riverboat to Greenwich, one of the most spectacular sites of London.  ‘Good Duke’ Humphrey, brother of Henry V, built a retreat here in the 15th century, which Henry VII developed into a palace.  This was where Henry VIII jousted in his early years, and where his armour was made.  To the early Stuarts Greenwich’s was important from its position at the mouth of the Thames: this was where foreign ambassadors landed on their way to the court: Inigo began a revolutionary building for James I’s Queen, Anne of Denmark, and finished it for Henrietta Maria who was married to Charles I.  The Queen’s House, as this structure became known, was where Charles kept some of the best of his art collection – alas, dispersed by the Civil War. After the palace was roughly treated after the Civil War, it was earmarked to become once more a palace for Charles II.  He succeeded in building only one block before the money ran out.   Instead of a palace, the Royal Observatory arose at the top of a hill, as a place to study the heavens away from the smoke that was already obscuring the skies of London.  The terrible carnage of the Dutch wars of the 1660s and 1670s, fought at sea, touched the heart of the future Queen Mary, who would ascend the throne with her husband William III, Prince of Orange.  As a result, Greenwich became home to the Royal Naval Hospital, in a magnificent parade of buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren.  They include the Painted Hall, a masterpiece of the artist Sir James Thornhill, and a chapel that was redecorated in the 1780s by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart after a fire.   The complex that Vanbrugh built for his family on Maze Hill, next to Greenwich Park, also survives..A generation ago, Greenwich – no longer a hospital but a naval college – was difficult for the public to see. Now it houses a university and a music school, and a dazzling restoration of the Painted Hall has proved, literally, a revelation – previously invisible details have been brought to light, such as the figure of Louis XIV who appears beneath William III’s foot in the ceiling.  John is as much enraptured as Clive.

Send us Fan MailDoddington Hall in Lincolnshire is one of those country houses you find only in Britain.  The attics are full of old toys, military headgear, unwanted commodes and a giant figure of the White Rabbit, left over from an Alice in Wonderland-themed event.  A collection of Roman antiquities, some found on the estate, is displayed in the downstairs lavatory, along with a child’s pedal-operated aeroplane with patriotic RAF roundels.  From the roof, you can see Lincoln cathedral on a good day.  Built around 1600, Doddington has hardly been changed outside, and in half a millennium, it has never been sold.Best of all are the tapestries.   Due to the antiquarian tastes of its 18th-century owner John Hussey Delaval, the Georgian revamp was old-fashioned for the 1760s, and included bedrooms close-hung with tapestries in the manner of the William and Mary era.  The Doddington tapestries are now a rare survival, although not perhaps for the reason that might be imagined.  They are not of the first quality, but relatively workaday– and which is exactly the sort that have most commonly perished.  Clive and John are both enthralled by this house, which – thanks to the conversation of the stables to a shopping experience – is going through something of a golden age.   It was where Clive first rode an electric bike.

Send us Fan MailClive and John have both been to Stansted Park, outside Chichester, though at different times.  Clive remembers it from the time he helped the owner Eric Bessborough revise a book in the 1980s, whereas John’s connection is more recent.  They both find it an astonishing example of an economic revival, apparently inspired by the Covid years when the public was desperate for open space.  As a result, the house and park are beautifully maintained, while estate buildings have been well developed as a retail experience.  Stansted has a long and colourful history, which ushers a glittering array of characters onto the stage.  Owners have ranged from kings to wine merchants, Dukes to the remarkable Lewis Way, who made it a seminary for converted Jews who were supposed to go out to the Holy Land and spread Christianity.  This enterprise was not successful but the poet John Keats attended the dedication of the chapel, made from a fragment of a Tudor building.   The main house was destroyed by fire in 1900 and rebuilt by a member of the Blomfield dynasty. In the 1920s it was bought by the 9th Earl of Bessborough, a Governor General of Canada, who furnished it with the contents of the family’s Irish country house, Bessborough House, in County Kilkenny, which had been removed before Bessborough was burnt during the Troubles.  Today, Stansted still looks out over a well-treed landscape with avenues created during the Baroque period.Few country houses have such a varied history or have been so happily revived.  Clive and John are enchanted.

Send us Fan MailJohn has been to Cambridge to see the castle, the mound of which still survives.  Although a graduate of Peterhouse and now a Visiting Professor of Architecture, associated with the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Downing College, Clive comes new to this early history but many stories of more recent times.  Together the pair mull over the development of this remarkable city, famous for one of the most beautiful ensembles of buildings in England.  The castle reminds those who might have forgotten – or never knew – how important this fenland settlement was to William the Conqueror in the Norman period.  Scholars arrived from Oxford in the 13th century, to establish what became the university.  It rose to glory under the patronage of Henry VII, his mother Lady Margaret Beauford and his son Henry VIII.  King’s College Chapel was finished in this era; Trinity College, St John’s College and Christ’s College were all founded.  It is not only the buildings that give Cambridge its character but the open landscape of the Backs, one of the triumphs of the Picturesque. Today Cambridge is a boom town, thanks to the knowledge economy associated with the university’s record in scientific and mathematical research.   There has been rapid growth in housing, served by two new railway stations, Cambridge North and Cambridge South.  Can the qualities for which Clive and John love the place survive the pressure?