National Gutters Day : Penarth

Today is National Gutters Day 2021, which has motivated me finally to write another post for this blog, to share these photos of some gutters in the Victorian seaside town of Penarth, in south Wales.

 Built originally between 1889 and 1891, then rebuilt in 1926 after a devastating fire, All Saints Church sits in a tree-filled green space in central Penarth. As you see from the photo above, its gutters are not dated so I’m not sure if they date from the late 19th century or from the more recent reconstruction.

 

Here’s another dating mystery. This gutter hopper adorns the Mortuary Chapel at Penarth Cemetery. The building itself does not appear to be listed, and a search of the Welsh newspaper archives failed to turn up any information on the building of the chapel, though I did discover that the first burial in the cemetery was in 1903. I’ve also not turned up any information on the Glaswegian foundry that made this item.
 

As you can see, this gutter on the old building at Stanwell School has not been well maintained so it’s difficult to make out its surface decoration. An article in the Weekly Mail of 23 January 1897 reported on the recent opening of Penarth Intermediate School which, though it has since changed its name and been much expanded, continues to serve the education needs of local community in the 21st century.
 

Headland School was originally the Penarth Hotel, built in 1868 by the Taff Vale Railway Company, when Penarth docks handled a lot of the exports of coal pouring down from the valley of the River Taff. The building was repurposed after World War One, when it was purchased by the widow of a war casualty, one Major J.A. Gibbs. In the Major’s memory, his wife gifted the building to the authorities who ran the National Children’s Homes, who used it from July 1921 as a nautical training school.

Penarth : Church of the Holy Nativity

Another day, another anniversary, this time of the laying of the foundation stone for one of the local places of Christian worship, the Church of the Holy Nativity. It sounds like the event was quite a do – the local Lord and Lady did the honours, there was a procession, complete with brass band, and in the evening a social gathering was held. Here’s part of the report, and some sketches, from the Barry Dock News, 4 August 1893:

THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY NATIVITY, COGAN.
LAYING THE MEMORIAL STONE BY LORD AND LADY WINDSOR.
SERVICE CONDUCTED BY THE BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE.
  

The little township of Cogan, near Penarth, was considerably enlivened on Thursday afternoon, the 27th instant, with bunting and other decorations in honour of the visit of Lord and Lady Windsor to lay the memorial stone of the new Church of Holy Nativity, which is in course of erection (on a suitable site between Cogan and Penarth) to meet the spiritual requirements of the churchpeople of the parishes of Llandough, Leckwith, and Cogan. The weather being favourable, there was a large gathering of the public, amongst those in attendance during the proceedings being the Right Hon. Lord Windsor (the lord lieutenant) and Lady Windsor, the Lord Bishop of Llandaff, Rev Canon Edwards. M. A. (St. Andrew's Rectory, who acted as the Bishop's chaplain) and Miss Edwards, Rev Canon Allen, M.A., rector of Barry ...

The new building has been attractively designed in what is known as the perpendicular style of architecture. It will accommodate over 300 worshipers, and the structure will consist of nave, transepts, chancel, south porch, heating chamber, vestries, and organ chamber. The material used is local limestone, lined with Cattybrook brick in bands. At the west-end there will be a bell-cote to hold two bells of pretty design, carried on an arch spring off buttresses. The total cost of the church will be about £2,500, including the boundary walls. Lord Windsor, the Lord Lieutenant of the county, has generously given the site, and his Lordship, together with Lady Windsor, graciously consented to perform the ceremony of laying the memorial stone. The silver trowel and mallet, with which this interesting work was performed, were of a handsome description, designed by Mr Fowler and supplied by Mr Tainsh, of High-street, Cardiff. The trowel bore the following inscription:--
“Cogan Mission Church of the Holy Nativity. The memorial stone was set by the Right Hon. Lord Windsor, 27th July, 1893."

The church sits in a prominent position on the approach road to Penarth and, although the article refers to the church being in Cogan, the boundaries between Penarth and Cogan have almost disappeared over the years and the church is now officially part of the parish of Penarth and Llandough.

The parish website reports that the church’s nave was ‘burnt out by incendiary bombs on 4 March 1941. The Chancel arch was filled in with bricks and the congregation worshipped in the Chancel until the restoration. The building was re-consecrated on 25 February 1952.’

Like many churches these days, this one is locked much of the time so I haven't seen the interior. I also couldn't locate the foundation stone so I presume it is inside the church.

Above, one of the side windows and the entrance porch. Below, the bell tower.

East Sussex: Priory Park, Lewes

Mention ‘ruins’ and, in the blink of an eye, my camera bag is packed, and I’m in the car, ready to go! So, when Jill suggested we visit the site of an old priory, I said yes immediately (and, even better, it’s in a public park, so no entrance fee).

This from the signboard at the entrance:

The Priory of St Pancras, founded about 1078, was one of the largest and most powerful monasteries in England. It was of international importance as the first Priory in England linked to the influential Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, France. What you see today are the ruins of this once magnificent establishment. After nearly 500 years most of it was deliberately destroyed in 1538 during the Reformation on the orders of Henry VIII.

As the sign goes on to say, it’s difficult now to imagine how grand and imposing the whole site must have been in its heyday – there were approximately 100 monks living and worshipping here in the 12th and 13th centuries, though there were only 24 at the time of its demise – but the frequent signboards around the site do a good job of helping the visitor imagine how the huge buildings once dominated this landscape (like the image below).

As  well as the enormous Priory church and its cloister, and the lodgings, a huge kitchen and the refectory for the monks, there was also a guesthouse, an infirmary and accompanying physic garden (and there’s still a small herb garden to give you an idea of what the monks used for their herbal remedies) and, of course, a reredorter (I love this fancy word for the toilet block), as well as a water mill and brewhouse, granary and bakery, forge and stables.

Though it is certainly difficult to imagine the grandeur, archaeological evidence shows that the church walls were decorated with frescoes, the floors were clad with fine glazed tiles, and the ceiling soared to grand heights under enormous curved stone arches.

Also on the site is a monument, unveiled on the occasion of the 700th anniversary, to commemorate the Battle of Lewes, fought on 14 May 1264. The English barons, led by Simon de Montfort, were fed up with the extravagance and bad governance of King Henry III, and fought to have England ruled by a council rather than the king – very forward-thinking of them! The barons won the battle and forced the king to sign the Mise of Lewes, a treaty restricting his authority, but, as history shows, royal power was later restored.

Designed by Enzo Plazzotta and perfectly sited to view the Lewes Castle tower through the facial slits, the helmet sculpture is a very impressive and very appropriate artwork, and there is something rather haunting about its empty shell. When engineers were building a new railway line through Lewes in 1845 (sadly, right through the northern part of the site!), they uncovered the burials of hundreds who died in the Battle of Lewes, so it’s fitting that those early pioneers of democracy be remembered here for their courage.

There is a mound near the entrance to the park, which, when climbed, provides wonderful views over the Priory ruins, some of Lewes township and across the surrounding countryside. Though we didn’t have time to explore on this occasion, Lewes itself looked old and interesting so that’s on my list for a future visit to East Sussex.

Wisconsin: Downtown De Pere

During my recent short visit to Wisconsin I was staying with friends in De Pere, officially a suburb of Green Bay but a town with an interesting history and rich heritage. Native Americans had long been settled on this idyllic spot. by a series of shallow rapids on the Fox River, when the first European, Jean Nicolet, sailed his canoe here from Montreal in 1634, though modern De Pere didn't really begin to develop until around 1829, when one William Dickinson, anticipating the power potential of the river water, developed the De Pere Manufacturing Coy. That water is still being utilised today, by the huge paper mill that sits on the western river bank in the centre of town.

I was particularly fascinated by the nineteenth-century commercial buildings in downtown De Pere, in the streets surrounding Broadway on the eastern side of the river, and my friend Trudey and I spent a few hours one very hot July afternoon on a photowalk around this area.

According to the De Pere community website  

The South Broadway Historic District contains the most intact concentration of nineteenth century commercial buildings on the east side of the river. By 1882, small, mostly wooden commercial buildings lined the 100 and 200 blocks of N. and S. Broadway. On the night of April 23, a devastating fire destroyed all of the buildings on both sides of the 100 and 200 blocks of S. Broadway. Work on their replacements began almost as soon as the ashes were cold and by the end of the year, five of the District's six contributing buildings were ready for their first occupants. These consist of one and two-story cream brick-clad buildings that all face west onto the 100 block of South Broadway.

The unusual circumstances surrounding their construction can still be discerned by the way the facade of one building blends seamlessly with the one adjacent to it. Normally, buildings like these display clear dividing lines that show where one building ends and the other begins, but in this case, since almost all of these buildings were under construction at the same time and their builders were all using the same cream brick to build them, the results were buildings whose main facades have no visible edges.

As many buildings have subsequently been painted, this seamlessness is not as apparent as perhaps it once was, though you can see from the above images how well some of the buildings fit together.

Notice how wonky this building is - no straight lines here!

It’s the brickwork, in particular, that I admired. The patterns created by those inventive bricklayers are intricate and praiseworthy.

The Julius Krause Store Building (left) is one that was built after the 1882 fire destroyed the previous building on the site. Krause once operated a shoe store in the building but it now the superbly maintained premises of a local photographer.

Not all the buildings date from 1882. The C.A. Lawton building (below) dates from 1880. This firm of ‘Engineers & Patternmakers. Founders and Machinists’ has been ‘casting solutions since 1879’. 

Fortunately, the building was rescued from demolition in the 1990s and has since been converted into a 70-unit complex of apartments, lofts and townhouses. 

According to their website, ‘the original foundry building and subsequent additions follow the Astylistic Utilitarian industrial design of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’ It certainly looks like a nice place to live.

The J. Steckart & J. Falck double block (above) was constructed by Joseph LeClair in 1888, in the more elaborate High Victorian Italianate style, using both cream- and orange-coloured bricks to create the polychromatic appearance. Apparently, ‘Each of the two halves of the building originally contained two stores in the first story and five apartments in the second. John Steckart operated a meat market in one of the stores in his half, while Jacob Falck operated a saloon and liquor store in one of the stores in his half.’

The Robert McGeehan building (above) was also built in 1888 and shows the same two-colour brick decorating style in the façade as the Steckart and Falck block. It was particularly interesting looking at the side view of this building, where a careful inspection revealed the changes to the structure over the years, with various additions, alterations and repairs, and windows filled in. An architectural historian would have a field day examining a building like this.

The 1903 John Baeten Store harks back to the one-colour brick buildings built twenty years previously but has a lovely decorative garland frieze running along the top. I also liked the inset porch with its three entrance doors.

The other aspect of these buildings that fascinated Trudey and I was the ‘ghost signage’: the often faint traces of the advertisements for businesses that had previously operated within. But that’s a subject for another day, another blog. I’ve just added a couple of photos here (above and below) to show you what I mean.

Happy National Gutters Day!

Today is National Gutters Day here in the United Kingdom. Fascinating, right? Right?

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I frequently develop ‘fascinations’ about things – see, for example, my recent blogs on Weathervanes, wind vanes and weathercocks and Turret toppings, amongst others.

Exeter Cathedral

Well, during my holiday here in the UK last summer, my insatiable curiosity led me to photograph the many and various designs of guttering, downpipes and hopper heads (those funnel- or box-shaped receptacles at the top of the downpipes) I noticed on the numerous historic buildings I visited. Now I’ve discovered this annual celebration of gutters so what better day to regale you with the engrossing details of these incredibly necessary objects and to share the photos I’ve gathered.

One of the lovely buildings at Port Sunlight

Left: Lyme Park; centre: John Rylands Library, Manchester; right: Chirk Castle

Guttering is, of course, a very practical invention – buildings do not survive long without the means to rapidly and effectively jettison rainwater – and it was the Romans who first brought the notion of good water management to Britain. They even had a goddess of the sewers, Cloacina (who, not surprisingly I suppose, also protected sexual intercourse in marriage!).

Following their successful invasion of England in 1066, the Normans instigated the construction of huge numbers of castles, manor houses, churches and more, throughout the land, and these buildings, with their stone roofs, towers and turrets, required gutters and gargoyles to throw the water clear of their walls. Though unverified, it is thought that the first downpipe was erected in Britain in 1240, to protect the newly whitewashed walls of the Tower of London.

Left: Tower of London,; centre: Dunham Massey; right: Westminster Abbey

The destruction of church buildings that began in 1536 after Henry VIII’s decree for the Dissolution of the Monasteries was, amazingly, a good thing for gutters because large quantities of lead became available. This lead was repurposed and reshaped into hopper heads for use on England’s many great houses, and the hopper heads were decorated with designs and dates, a fashion that continued when the use of cast iron replaced lead in the late 1700s.

Cast iron was cheaper and more plentiful than lead so gutters, downpipes and hopper heads became commonplace on smaller houses and the fact that the iron was cast meant it could also be patterned. During the Victorian period, hopper heads became rather ornate, their designs more detailed, and downpipes might have embossed motifs or barley-twist patterns. 

Battle Abbey

All Hallows by the Tower Church, London

Sadly, this fashion died out in the mid 20th century when cheap plastic guttering began to replace cast iron, and guttering is now mostly plain and angular, with no ornamentation. Fortunately, there are still some craftsmen manufacturing replica guttering for the refurbishment and restoration of historic buildings, and they maintain the old tradition of adding ornamentation and dates to their work, as can be seen from the more recent dates in some of my photos.

National Gutters Day does, of course, have a more practical purpose than simply celebrating the gutters of the past. The day came into being in 2002 and was the brainchild of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB). It is the finale of National Maintenance Week, ‘an awareness campaign designed to encourage everyone who owns or looks after a building to take a few simple steps at the beginning of winter to ensure that their property is ready for anything that the season can throw at them, especially in these increasingly wet, windy and unpredictable days’.

Left: Hailsham Parish Church; centre: Church of St Peter and St Paul, Hellingly; right: Sidmouth Parish Church

All Hallows by the Tower Church, London

It’s an eminently sensible cause. For me, though, today is about paying tribute to the craftsmen who created all the wonderful designs to be found on the hopper heads of Britain’s glorious old buildings and celebrating the ornate guttering of centuries past. Happy National Gutters Day!

St Mary and All Saints Church, Great Budworth

St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, London