ON the night of May 10, 1941, the City of London was the object of the last large-scale air raid of the Blitz. Among the architectural casualties was Carpenters’ Hall, which was gutted when the gas mains on London Wall were ignited by a ‘land mine’. Fortunately, most of the Company’s treasures had been stored for safety in the vaults of the building and survived the blaze. The Victorian hall, designed in an Italian Renaissance style by the architect and liveryman of the Company, William Wilmer Pocock, and begun in 1876, was otherwise left a roofless ruin. It was only the second hall to have stood on this site since the 15th century, its much-adapted medieval predecessor having been damaged by fire in 1849.
The halls of the City Livery Companies suffered badly during the war and more than 30 were seriously damaged or destroyed. Repairing them was complicated by the shortage of materials, the byzantine operations of the War Damage Commission (which paid for war damage less dilapidations) and a licensing system for construction managed by the Ministry of Works. Even so, in some ways, these Livery Company rebuilding projects led the field in the post-war resurgence of London, just as they had done after the Great Fire in 1666.
Carpenters’ Hall is one of the best and most intriguing examples of this generation of buildings, being at once historically informed yet consciously contemporary. It occupies the shell of Pocock’s building, but without attempting to re-create it. This treatment creates striking juxtapositions of old and new and is in contrast to the mainstream of restored Livery Halls, most of which opted for reinstatement or complete reconstruction. No less remarkable, however, is the manner in which Carpenters’ Hall seeks to celebrate in architecture the spirit of the Company’s craft.
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Denne historien er fra March 02, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
