Category: Design

Asamhaus + Asamkirche Munich

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 22, 2023

The Maximalists

It’s amazing what Cosmas Damian and Egid Quirin Asam managed to pack into just 176 square metres of Munich cityspace. Visual feast … aesthetic wonder … treasure trove … dusting nightmare … phrases fail to fully describe the interior of Asamkirche. This is late baroque at its most brilliant. Built as a private chapel adjoining Asamhaus, their home next door, after popular demand the brothers opened it to the public.

Cosmas Damian and Egid Quirin were two of the nine children of Hans Georg Asam, the wealthy resident painter of Benediktbeuem Abbey in Upper Bavaria. The brothers were apprentices under their father. Their talents were perfectly complementary: Cosmas Damian worked as a painter and sculptor; Egid Quirin, as architect, stuccodore and sculptor. The pair took on many public commissions but it is at Asamkirche, which they dedicated to St John of Nepomuk, that they had free rein to go wild. And wild they went.

The façade of Asamhaus can be seen along Sendlingerstrasse but Asamkirche is today shrouded in scaffolding. That makes the interior come as an even bigger surprise. It’s a 1740s visual tornado of painted cherubs and gold plated skeletons and barley twist columns, stuccoed and frescoed and marbleised to within a square millimetre of its life. Words don’t do it justice, but Gesamtkunstwerk goes some way.

Tags asamhaus, asamkirche munich, cosmas damian asam, egid quirin asam, hans georg asam, lavenders blue, st john nepomuk, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Art Design People

St Ursula’s Church Munich + August Thiersch

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 19, 2023

The Greatest Quadriptych

It’s called the “Cathedral of Schwabing”. This late 19th century building is a prime example of Rundbogenstil, the German round arch historic revival style which combines Byzantine, Renaissance and Romanesque architecture. St Ursula’s is a basilica in brick. A treasure house of ancient and contemporary ecclesiastical art, not least Spanish artist Pepe Vives’ mixed media on wood quadriptych Grabchristus (2020). The only guidebook is written in German by Sibylle Appuhn-Radtke so over to an online auto translation:

“In the 19th century, Schwabing experienced a rapid change from a village to a city. The village centre around the old St Ursula Church at the English Garden (today St Sylvester) expanded to the west and north. Industrial plants such as the Maffei machine factory partially replaced the previous agricultural economy, and workers moved to Schwabing. The barren fields and pastures west of today’s Leopoldstrasse became building land which was masterplanned with a road network. As the university and the art academy on the northern border of Munich became more important, the population rose in just a few decades from 1,667 (1885) to over 11,500 (1890). The boom led to Schwabing’s short term status as an ‘indirect city’ (1887 to 1890). It was then incorporated into Munich and became one of the most popular districts.”

“The small village church couldn’t keep up with the crowds. After calls for a new building had already been made in the 1860s, the initiative took shape in 1879: the Schwabing masterbuilder Josef Vasek drew the first plan for a new building on the site of the former St Nikolai Infirmary. When this was rejected by the Royal Building Authority, the young architecture professor August Thiersch was brought in to ‘improve’ it in 1880. The order marked the beginning of difficult planning that lasted more than a decade with different designs and submission. Only when Dr Peter Erlacher, Priest of St Ursula’s (1886 to 1920), acquired an undeveloped piece of land in 1888, was Thiersch able to design his building on Kaiserplatz: a north facing church with symmetrical annexes that were to be connected to the church by porticos. The Munich Planning Office under Theodor Fischer responded to these plans by laying out the north south route of Friedrichstrasse in such a way that it enabled a distant view of the façade if St Ursula’s. The church thus became a defining focal point for the new Schwabing.”

“The architect August Thiersch (1843 to 1917) came from well known family in Bavaria. His grandfather Fredrich had been President of the Academy of Sciences in Munich under King Ludwig I. The young August, who spent his last years of school in Munich, received a humanistic education based on classical ideals. After studying at the Polytechnic and Engineering Schools, the two forerunners of today’s Technical University of Munich, he initially worked as an engineer and then developed a particular interest in new construction techniques. He completed his architecture studies in 1872 while working as an assistant for the architect Gottfried von Neureuther.”

“Among Thiersch’s publications, his renowned Handbook of Architecture (1883) stands out. Following in the footsteps of architectural theorists of the 15th and 16th centuries, he searched for the foundations of harmony in architecture and found them in clear numerical relationships and formal analogies. His largest church building, St Ursula’s, is based on the 1:2 ratio. The church is a built model of Thiersch’s theory of proportions and is therefore of great importance for architectural theory at the transition to modernity. In this point it surpasses Thiersch’s other churches in Augsburg, Berchtesgaden, Eichstatt and Zürich.”

“At the laying of the foundation stone on 23 September 1894 a perspective was published showing Thiersch’s vision of the future Kaiserplatz. The church was planned as a triple aisled cross shaped basilica with a porch, crossing dome and freestanding tower. To the west and east were to be cubic two storey residential buildings connected to the church via open arcades. The proportions of these buildings were carefully determined according to Thiersch’s theory of proportions so that they should result in a harmonious ensemble. However the execution only partially corresponded to these plans: only the east annex building, the rectory was built; the western one fell victim to austerity measures. The long unused buildings site to the west was leased in 1959 and a student residence, Pater Rupert Mayer Home, was built on it. the open façade on the east side was changed to a closed corridor with individual rooms off it. As a result of these interventions, the open symmetrical and cheerful planned square suffered greatly. However the route emphasising the central axis and the bordering of the church square counteract this shortcoming.”

“Before the completion of the church construction (it was consecrated on 10 October 1897), two structural problems had to be overcome: the construction of the crossing dome and the belltower. After Thiersch had considered various construction techniques for the dome, he decided on the most innovative solution: a double shell tambor dome made of two different concrete masses. The inner dome was made of aerated concrete; the outer dome which is visible from a distance was made of harder saturated concrete material. The attached lantern is a small domed structure made of sandstone. Red roof tiles laid on the outer dome shell are reminiscent of the dome of the Florentine Cathedral.”

“In 1933 damage occurred to the roof and dome shells, so ring anchors were installed at the base of the dome and another layer of concrete added to the roof. These measures led to further damage over the course of the 20th century – deformation of the carbonated concrete shells and the formation of cracks – so that they were undone in an extensive restoration from 2011 to 2018. First the lantern was dismantled, then the concrete layer from 1933 removed, the cracks filled, and the other dome shell reinforced with a new concrete layer connected to the old. A new tiled roof on a slatted frame was attached to the dome.”

“The slender 64 metre high belltower was originally intended to be freestanding in the style of an Italian campanile. Apparently though during construction, concerns arose about its stability. That is why a bridge room was built between its ground floor and the transept. The tower was so endangered because of its construction materials (unplastered bricks with sandstone cornices), the concrete staircase and the heavy steel bells hung in 1948 that during the early 21st century restoration a steel skeleton had to be installed to stabilise the walls and support the steps. At the same time, the Perner Bell Foundry in Passau manufactured four new lighter bronze bells which were mounted in the reconstructed wooden belfry. Instead of the two bell hood initially planned by Thiersch, the tower has a pyramidal pointed helmet. Thiersch took the church of Santo Spirito in Florence as a model.”

“When you walk along Freidrichstrasse towards St Ursula’s, the brick red dome and the slender campanile catch your eye from afar; as you get closer, the elegant two storey façade of the basilica made of exposed brick with sandstone components catches your eye. Standing on Kaiserplatz, you can see that the central axis of the façade, which is framed by pilasters, is decorated with Christian imagery. The pediment contains a mosaic by Karl Ule (1858 to before 1939) designed by the painter Wilhelm Volz (1855 to 1901). It shows the Lamb of God in a wreath carried by angels. Below, a stone statue of Christ by Balthasar Schmitt (1858 to 1942) is enthroned in a shell niche. There are also tiny scenes on vases in the pilaster reliefs of the parables of the Good Samarian (Luke 10:25 to 37) and the Return of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11 to 32). The busts are of the prophets Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Two portico and steps are now popular places for sun seeking residents. Events also often taken place on this ‘stage’.”

“If you walk around the church to the east, you first pass the simple rectory and parish office and in its garden is one of the removed bells. Walk along the wall of the parish garden and you reach the east transept. This elevation is classically structured with a pediment and oculus, and a large round window reminiscent of an ancient thermal bath window in a semicircular flat niche. The tympanum, which was executed by Heinrich Waderé (1865 to 1950), contains figures of the Madonna adored by the old Simeon and Hanna. The low cross shaped sacristy, which is to the northeast between the choir and the transept, has its own apse with arched windows. The west side of the church is largely blocked by the student dormitory building, but you can see the upper parts of the transept front. Before you end the outside tour stand again in front of the steps to the south and you can see the walled up portal on the west wall of the church above the courtyard entrance. This was supposed to lead to the unexecuted colonnade connecting the western annex to the church.”

“If you enter the church through the east vestibule you first stand in the staircase hall to the organ gallery. You case the last completed stained glass window executed by Ludwig Kirchmayr in 1897. Next to the door is a memorial plaque to the architect August Thiersch. If you continue to the left into the nave, you get the first impression of the long axis of the space. The nave is separated by the aisles by arched arcades on composite columns. Above this are arched windows which original had coloured borders. Like its inspiration Santo Spirito, the colours are very reserved.”

“In the south wall you enter the former baptismal chapel through an elaborate wooden grille. It was converted into a prayer room by architect Helmut Rudolf in 2005. The room had lost its original function because the baptismal font had been moved to the southeast crossing column decades ago. The baptismal font, sculpted in early Renaissance forms, dates from 1898. The circular altar island rises over three steps in the centre of the crossing. It was built in 1979 to accommodate the powerful celebration altar by Thomas Otto Munz (1929 to 2011). Associated with the altar is the gilded wooden cross by Maria Munz-Natterer (2008), a highly abstracted crucifix that shows Christ as King with huge stigmata.”

Tags architect august thiersch, balthasar schmitt, ernst pfeifer, gottfried von neureuther, heinrich wadere, josef vasek, king ludwig i, lavenders blue, ludwig kirchmayr, maria munz natterer, pepe vives grabchristus, peter erlacher, schwabing cathedral, sibylle appuhn radtke, st ursulas church munich, stuart blakley, theodor fischer, thomas otto munz, wilhelm volz

Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Luxury People

Residenzpost + Louis Vuitton Espace Munich

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 12, 2023

Suited and Rebooted

There’s more to Louis Vuitton than branded suitcases. In 2014 the Fondation Louis Vuitton opened in Bois de Boulogne Paris. This is a major cultural and artistic institution embodying the company’s philanthropic commitment to support the arts. Gallery offshoots of the Fondation are springing up in world cities. Hot on the high heels of Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and Venice comes Espace Munich.

“While all Espaces follow a shared global vision, they are tightly intertwined with their local context,” explains Chairman and CEO Michael Burke. Espace Munich is set behind the retained façade of the Palais Toerring-Jettenbach. Designed by Bavarian court architect Leo von Klenze, this neoclassical building was badly hit in World War II. The rebuilt arcaded and frescoed façade provides an architectural punctuation stop to the west end of Maximilianstrasse (“millionaires’ street”!). The current exhibition is As Slow As Possibles by American film artist Sarah Morris.

An architectural model of Fondation Louis Vuitton is on display in the lobby linking the gallery to the store. Michael explains, “This magnificent ‘vessel’ in the Jardin d’Acclimatation Park was designed by the Pritzker Prize winning architect Frank Gehry. It is a technological feat that pushes the boundaries of architecture with its 12 glass sails enveloping ‘icebergs’ on a vast reflecting pool.” The store reassuringly still contains branded suitcases.

Tags fondation louis vuitton paris, frank gehry, lavenders blue, leo von klenze, louis vuitton espace munich, palais toerring jettenbach, residenzpost, sarah morris, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Country Houses Design Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Sigi Schelling Werneckhof + Werneckstrasse Munich

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 10, 2023

Her Namesake

A German restaurant serving German food, it is named after its Chef Patron and address. Sigi Schelling is the Chef Patron. Werneckstrasse is the address. It’s one of the classiest streets in one of the classiest areas of Munich: Schwabing. And it turns out to be one of the classiest restaurants in the city. Werneckstrasse is a quiet leafy street off the quite lively Feilitzschstrasse. The walled miniature estate of Suresnes Schlöss dominates the northern part of the street. This castle was built in 1718 for the aristocratic Cabinet Secretary Franz von Wilhelm. It is now a conference venue owned by the Catholic Academy of Bavaria. A sunny yellow façade and Mediterranean shuttered windows can be glimpsed through the cast iron entrance gates and screens.

At the southern end of the street set among townhouses and wooded gardens is Sigi Schelling Werneckhof. A metal sign projecting from the facade and an inset porch with a table of flowers and a stack of business cards in olive green, damson blue and plum red heralds the culinary destination’s presence. The restaurant occupies the ground floor of a traditional mixed use block also painted sunny yellow. A small lobby leads into two adjoining dining rooms. The kitchen is out of sight behind a sliding mirrored door.

Sigi explains, “Cooking is my life. My dishes combine originality, sophistication and lightness. For me, perfection on the plate means straightforwardness in harmony with accompanying elements. All masterfully prepared. Our menus reflect love, passion, experience and appreciation for authentic high quality products. It is a pleasure for my team and me to present you with an unforgettable experience. Nice to have you here!” Later, the waitress will add, “Each day Sigi is the first one in and the last to leave at night.”

The five course tasting menu on a Saturday evening is easily adapted to pescatarian needs. “The Chef is going to make you sole,” the waitress confirms, replacing the venison course. And this being a Michelin starred restaurant, cutting and deboning the sole is a performance carried out by no fewer than three staff in the middle of the dining room. Amuse bouches and canapés bracket the meal but not before fennel infused Don’t Mix the Drugs Gin is served with Thomas Henry of Palatine Tonic Water. Cuvée Excellence Blanc 2019 from Rhône accents the five courses.

The tasting menu is a classic that could match the orders. The original simplicity of Doric: Bretonic Lobster (marinated garden tomatoes, yuzu, bergamot). The organic fluidity of Ionic: Char (pumpkin, pumpkin seed oil, buttermilk). The refinement of Corinthian: Brill (shrimps, gnocchi, cauliflower, Thai curry anise sauce). The structural simplicity of Tuscan: Sole (quince, chestnut, mushroom). The richness of Composite: Curd Cheese (goat’s cheese soufflé, marinated blueberries, poppy seeds, plum, sour cherry ice cream). Saturday dinner is a lively four hour affair.

Tags elector von wilhelm, feilitzschstrasse, lavenders blue, sigi schelling werneckhof werneckstrasse munich, stuart blakley, suresnes schloss

Art Design Restaurants Town Houses

Kaisergarten Bar + Restaurant Munich

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 7, 2023

Bavarian Nights

For 100 years an Art Nouveau house on the corner of Kaiserplatz and Kaiserstrasse opposite St Ursula’s Church has been an hospitable hotspot of Schwabing. Kaisergarten’s interior (think dried flowers and chopped logs) overlooks a chestnut tree filled beer garden. Cheers everyone to the Kaiser!

Tags kaisergartern munich, lavenders blue, st ursulas church schwabing, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

Stapleford Park Hotel + St Mary Magdalene Church Melton Mowbray Leicestershire

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date October 7, 2023

Making a Splash

It was 35 years ago and there was no escaping Stapleford Park in the print media. American entrepreneur Bob Payton knew how to make a splash. Instead of hiring only interior designers to decorate the bedrooms of his newly converted country house hotel, he threw a shirtmaker, a porcelain company and a perfumier amongst many others into the mix. It caught the press and public’s attention. Eight years later, another media savvy entrepreneur, this time Englishman Peter de Savary, took over Stapleford Park and opened it as one of his Carnegie Club outpost adding not least the Knot Garden in front of the main entrance door. Cue double page spreads in the supplements once more. Skibo Castle in Dornoch, the home of the Victorian philanthropic industrialist Andrew Carnegie, continues to be a Carnegie Club. His portrait hangs in the gents’ bathroom at Stapleford Park. Just when we thought life couldn’t get any more glamorous, we find ourselves pottering about the Wedgwood Room of the hotel, weighing up a walk in the Capability Brown designed parkland of heaven verging fields versus tea on the terrace. Happy camping. We do both.

Bob Payton bought the house and its 200 hectare estate from Lord Gretton for £600,000 and spent a further £4 million rejuvenating and opening it as a hotel and leisure resort. We’re privileged to exclusively share his last recorded interview before he died in a car crash in 1994: “I first saw Stapleford Park from the back of a horse riding nearby in rolling countryside. Stapleford has been for many centuries a sporting lodge with riding, shooting and lavish entertainment all part of its heritage. It is our endeavour to keep that same style for many years to come. So interesting is the history of Stapleford Park and fascinating its architecture that the house was open to the public for several decades. Walking through the house and around the grounds is like going on a magical mystery tour. Through each and every doorway, there is another adventure. Set in 500 acres of woodland and parkland, the house provides breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside from every room.”

“Our approach to life in the country is that of a relaxed, comfortable, casual existence. We’ve replaced the servants and butlers if the old days with a team of people who are dedicated to making sure you enjoy our home and all it has to offer. We hope you like our approach to hospitality. To complement the eclectic architectural style of this most unusual house I invited several famous names to design bedrooms based on their own image of life at Stapleford Park. Signature bedrooms have been created by Tiffany, Wedgwood, Lindka Cierach, Lady Jane Churchill, Crabtree and Evelyn, Nina Campbell, Liberty, Max Pike and many others. We’re thrilled that these folks found Stapleford Park such an exciting challenge.”

“The dining room is decorated with ornate and intricate woodwork accredited to the most famous of all English carvers, Grinling Gibbons. In these luxurious surroundings, we serve traditional English cuisine with the occasional flair of old fashioned American cooking. You can enjoy the food that Stapleford’s guests have enjoyed over the centuries and much much more. As for sport, the surrounding Leicestershire countryside is most famous for its equestrian links. We offer most kinds of equestrian pursuits including carriage driving and riding instruction. There is clay shooting on the property and game shooting can be arranged. You can fish on the lake in front of the house or at nearby Rutland Water. If that’s not enough, there’s tennis, croquet and basketball, as well as walks through and around the property in this most lovely of settings.”

“Come and discover a truly great undiscovered part of England. Stapleford Park is in reality most people’s fantasy of the quintessential English countryside. Let me tell you about Edward Prince of Wales. His mother wouldn’t let him buy Stapleford Park because she felt that his morals might be corrupted by the Leicestershire hunting society. Well that was 100 years ago. Fortunately the Royal Family settled at Sandringham so that all of us may now enjoy the pleasures of this most idyllic estate.” The Royal Family are still happily ensconced at Sandringham and we are even more happily enjoying life at Stapleford Park.

The house glows a golden hue in afternoon sunshine and shimmers a mysterious grey in morning mist. Poet Mary Oliver writes in her essay Wordsworth’s Mountain (Upstream Collected Essays, 2016), “This is to say nothing against afternoons, evenings, or even midnight. Each has its portion of the spectacular. But dawn – dawn is a gift.” Every elevation and wing is a piece of architecture in itself and together they form a visual whole in material only. Crunchie the ginger cat (technically the neighbour’s but wise enough to hang out on the estate) matches the ashlar stone. One minute Stapleford Park is a Jacobean manor house; turn a corner, the next minute it’s a Queen Anne stately home; turn another corner, a Jacobethan hunting lodge; one more, a Loire château. As for the entrance front facing the quiet waters of the lake, the nine bay string coursed perfection is as symmetrical as a supermodel’s face. No big name architects are recorded (unlike the landscape and panelling!) but two owners have added their name for posterity in stone carvings on the exterior of a wing: “William Lord Sherard Baron of Letrym Repayred This Building Anno Domini 1633”. Underneath there’s a postscript: “And Bob Payton Esq. Did His Bit Anno Domini 1988”.

Indoors the eclecticism continues thanks partly to the layering of six or so centuries and partly to the aforementioned cohorts of dreamers and designers let loose on the fabric and fabrics. The main block is laid out around two vast double height top lit spaces: the Staircase Hall and adjacent Saloon. Public and private lounging and dining ebbs and flows throughout the ground floor. The Morning Room (with its mullioned bay window). The Harborough Room (crimson Gainsborough silk wallpaper). Billiard Room (converted games table). The Orangery (windows galore). The Grinling Gibbons Dining Room (festooned panelling by his namesake). The Old Kitchen (stone vaulted ceiling). Formal dinner is served in the Grinling Gibbons Dining Room: Baron De Beaupre Champagne; pea, goat’s curd, mint pistou tartlet and crispy onions; butter roasted cod, fennel and leak cream, new potatoes, sea herbs. Stapleford Park is a bread roll’s throw from Melton Mowbray and its Stilton Creamery so a generous cheese board offering is called for: Beacon Fell, Bingham Blue, Pitchfork Cheddar, Ribblesdale Goat’s, Tuxford and Tebbut Stilton. Five tall sash windows frame the descent of darkness. Mary Oliver again, “Poe claimed he could hear the night darkness as it poured, in the evening, into the world.”

The first floor is filled to the ceiling roses with the Grand Rooms: Savoir Beds, Crabtree and Evelyn, Wedgwood, Lady Jane Churchill, Baker, Turnbull and Asser, Flemish Tapestries, Amanda by Today Interiors, Campion Bell, Sanderson, Eleanor, Lyttle, Lady Gretton, Zoffany, Warner. We’re in the Wedgwood Room, one of the very grandest, with views across the green pastures. Below a Waterford Crystal chandelier and over a Wilton carpet everything is iconic Wedgwood blue and white from the wallpaper to soap dish. Life and Works of Wedgwood, a book by Eliza Meteyard (1865) in the library, praises the entrepreneurial potter, “His name lives in the industrial history of the country he loved so well, and so enriched by the bounties of his art and the example of his worthy life.” Ah, on the table that’s just what we like: a handwritten welcome note. And sash windows that open fully.

The second floor is filled to the rafters with the Slightly Less Grand Rooms: Panache, Wishing Well, Haddon, Treetops, Bloomsbury, Savonerie, Sanderson, Molly, Peacock, Lake View, Game Larder, Burley, Early, Green Gables, Melody, Max. A row of servants’ bells in the corridor reveals the more prosaic original room names, “First Floor: No.1 Bedroom, No.1 Dressing Room, No.2 Bedroom, No.2 Dressing Room, Bathroom, No.3 Bedroom, No. 4 Bedroom, No.5 Bedroom, Bathroom, No.6 Bedroom, No.6 Dressing Room, No.7 Bedroom, No.8 Bedroom. Second Floor: No.1 Bedroom, No.2 Bedroom, Bathroom, No.3 Bedroom, No.4 Bedroom, No. 5 Bedroom, No.6 Bedroom, Dark Room, No.7 Bedroom, No.8 Bedroom, Front Door, Luggage Room, Tradesmen.” Windows are open to the sights and sounds of birdlife: cooing pigeons, flying geese, scarpering pheasants.

Beyond the exquisitely manicured formal and semiformal and informal suite of gardens, the former stable block turned spa matches the house in both material (ironstone rubble with ashlar dressings) and style (baroque revival). There’s a named architect and exact construction date: Peter Dollar, 1899. The Oxfordshire born London based architect Peter Dollar is best known for his Majestic Picturedrome on London’s Tottenham Court Road. In contrast to the historicist appearance of Stapleford stable block, the cinema was an Edwardian looking brick and rendered four storey with attics building. Opened in 1912, it was demolished just 65 years later. His fine stable block has fared rather better. The stalls are occupied by beauty treatment salons and are labelled after racehorses: Apple-Jack, Black Beauty, Red Rum and so on. There’s also a thatched roof theme running through the estate secondary buildings from the gatelodge to cottages and contemporary houses for hire.

The parish and estate church, St Mary Magdalene, is an architectural and acoustic marvel. Again there’s a named architect and exact construction date: George Richardson, 1763. Ashlar with ashlar dressings retains the material theme but the style is high Gothick. The architect trained as a draughtsman under James Adam. Across the west end of the nave is the galleried family pew. A chimneypiece kept the chills at bay in winter.

Lord Nelson’s Prayer at Trafalgar dated 21 October 1805 is framed and nailed to a post in the nave: “May the Great God whom I serve grant to my Country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious Victory; and may no misconduct in anyone tarnish it; and may humanity after Victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just case which is entrusted me to defend.” At the afar end of the nave, on the pulpit lectern the Bible lies open at Psalm 23.

It’s a family church. Literally. Or rather families church. Heraldic shields are displayed on the elevations between the windows and buttresses. On the long south facing nave elevation: Cave, Hill, Noel, Verney, Pedley, Faireax, Denton, Calverly, Christopher, Bennet, Bury, Brow, Folville. On the gabled east facing chancel elevation: Branchester, Bruley, Danvers, Bisett, Mosley. On the long north facing nave elevation: Brabazon, Woodfort, Burges, Fitz-Maxilion, Consull, St Hillary, Clare, Lacy, Verdon, Hauberk, Eyton, Melville, Woodville. And on the west facing towered entrance front: Roberts, Hearst, Sherard, Reeve. It is Sherard that takes pride of place: this family owned the estate for half a millennium.

But it is a servant’s gravestone which is positioned closest to the entrance pathway: “Sacred To the Memory of Mary Carnaby who departed this life the 13th Day of January 1799; aged 59 Years. The daughter of Mrs Drake of Woolsthorpe, and Granddaughter of John and Ann Peele of Cockermouth in the County of Cumberland. She was Housekeeper to the Earl of Harborough for 17 years, which employment She discharged with uprightness and fidelity, becoming the imitation of posterity. Earthly Cavern to thy keeping, We commit our Sister’s dust. Keep it safely, softly sleeping, Till our Lord demand thy trust. Erected by her Aunt Tarn of Cockermouth.” Bless Aunt Tarn.

The sense of family intensifies even more in the chancel. Facing each other are impressive monuments. In the northern recess is a memorial to the 1st Earl and Countess of Harborough (in 1719 they were upgraded from 3rd Lord and Lady Sherard by George I) and their young son (all wearing Roman clothing) in white marble by the Flemish born sculptor Michael Rysback in 1732. A Sherard family memorial predating this church occupies the southern recess: effigies of Sir William and Lady Abigail and their 11 children. An even older memorial salvaged from the demolished church on this site is a brass engraving dedicated to Geoffrey and Joan Sherard and their 14 children dated 1490 and set in the nave floor. All three memorials highlight the commonplace nature of the once infant mortality.

The inscription on the plinth of the Harborough memorial reads: “To the Memory of Bennet 1st Earl of Harborough, only surviving son and heir of Bennet Lord Sherard of Stapleford, Baron of Letrim in the Kingdom of Ireland. By Elizabeth daughter and coheir of Sir Robert Christopher of Alford in the County of Lincoln Knight. He married Mary Daughter and Coheir of Sir Henry Calverley of Ariholme in the Bishoprick of Durham Knight. By whom he had issue one son, who died an infant. He was many years to the time of his death Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the County of Rutland, Lord Warden of Justice in Eyre North of Trent. He died the 16th day of October in the year of our Lord 1732, aged 55.”

A plaque on the wall over the Sherard memorial reads: “William Lord Sherard, third Sonne of Francis Sherard Esquire, Had Issue seaven Sonnes, Bennet, Philip, George, Francis, William, Henry, John, foure Daughters, Emelin, Abigail, Anne, Elizabeth, By his Wife Abigail eldest Daughter of Cicil Cave Esquire, third Sonne of Roger Cave of Stanford, in the County of Northampton Esquire. And this hee most affectionately dedicated to his Memory for him, herselfe, and their Children.” Doesn’t “seaven” look better spelt to emphasise it rhymes with “heaven”? Another inscription is set into the plinth below: “Here lies interred the Body of Sir William Sherard, Lord Sherard Baron of Letrime in Ireland, His most singular. Piety, Bounty, Courtesy, Humanity, Hospitality, Charity, Crown’d his mortall life, which (after he had enjoyed LII years) he changed for that which is immortall, the first day of April in the yeare of our Lord God MDCXL. Whose coming he here expectes.” During our stay we come across several spellings of the Irish county of “Leitrim”.

Australian entrepreneur David Fam, CEO of Dreamr Hotels, has owned Stapleford Park since 2022 and is instilling his expertise in “wellness, healing and ancient wisdom” into the hotel. “One can roam all day, constantly finding new works of art and hidden rooms in this labyrinth of style,” wrote Luc Quisenaerts in his guide Hotel Gems in Great Britain and Ireland, 1997. We do, we do. Mary Oliver one final time, “How wonderful that the universe is beautiful in so many places and in so many ways.” We could dwell in this house forever.

Architecture Art Design Fashion People

Design Museum London + Alexander McQueen + Rebel Show

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date September 28, 2023
12 Comments on Design Museum London + Alexander McQueen + Rebel Show

Rebels With a Cause

The John Pawson redesigned monument to minimalism has taken on a whole new splash of colour and pattern. Making waves at the Design Museum is Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion sponsored by Alexander McQueen. Dynamic, daring and determinedly rebellious, this show invites visitors to get on a Septemberfest rollercoaster of a ride. The press breakfast (avo prods and fruit torpedoes – fashionistas need to keep trim) – is full of everybody one should know on the elite fashion circuit.

Tim Marlow, Chief Executive of the Design Museum, shares with us, “We’re delighted to be collaborating with the British Fashion Council to showcase and explore the youthful energy, creative vision and rebellious spirit that is so central to their NewGen programme. Visitors are going to be stunned by many of the instantly recognisable fashion items on show. We hope they’ll also be captivated by the breadth, depth, diversity and world class talent that has emerged from the London fashion scene in the past three decades.” Caroline Rush, Chief Executive of the British Fashion Council, reciprocates, “We’re thrilled to be collaborating with the Design Museum to celebrate our wonderful NewGen initiative and its influence and legacy over the last 30 years.”

And stunned we are – what a show! All 300 or so designers who benefitted from the rightly celebrated NewGen grant funding programme are referenced. Lee Alexander McQueen was the standout talent from the first NewGen cohort. Archive pieces and photomontages give insights into his – to put it mildly – nonconformist work. ‘Art Show’ celebrates London’s art education establishments and features more talented alumni. But this is no passive exhibition. It’s full on interactive. ‘Backstage’ is all about artificial reality sponsored by Snapchat. Before long we’ve donned designer motorcycle helmets, had our faces painted and entered a cyber world of fun. That’s before shaking our booties to Eric Martin (Technotronic) in the ‘Club’ inspired by those 90s temples of decadent dance, Heaven and Turnmills.

Next comes ‘Runway’ where dozens of mannequins are frozen in time mid strut. Collections by J W Anderson, Wales Bonner, Craig Green, Christopher Kane, Meadham Kirchhoff, Sinéad O’Dwyer line the catwalk. Wait, there’s more! ‘Changemakers’ celebrates NewGen designers doing just that since 1993 – confronting the norms, fighting against stereotypes – in performance and politics. Sarah Mower, British Fashion Council Ambassador, tells us more, “It’s impossible to underestimate the influence London has on Britain’s fashion talent. It’s a city that produces wave after wave of young designers who value originality, wearing what you believe in, and tackling social issues to make a better world. The city’s art schools, clubs and catwalks are brought to life like never before.” Marjan Pejoski’s Swan Dress is one of many eye catching pieces never before on display in London. Born in Macedonia, the designer studied at Central Saint Martins before unveiling his first show in 2001. That same year, Icelandic singing sensation Björk famously wore the dress to the Oscars.

‘Colour Explosion’ revels in just that. Clements Ribeiro recalls, “Colour was massively unfashionable at the time. Everything was grey, downbeat, raw edged or minimal. We decided to go against it with colour, cashmere stripes, clashing prints and luxury. We called it ‘clumsy couture’. Colour turned out to be our superpower.” Fellow designer Craig Lawrence created huge knitted colourful forms in materials such as sweetie papers. He reflects, “My Ribbons Jumper and Leggings are like a big creamy strawberry marshmallow. That summer I was an ice cream man in Ipswich. Somehow, the extreme lollipop colours, stripes and bobbly bits sort of seeped into my Central Saint Martins holiday project.”

We’re at the Rebel press preview with another super talented member of the Martin family. Carrying on the fearless rebel tradition, Eric Martin’s sister, fashion artist Mary Martin, says, “I’m the middle child, the seventh of 13 children. We’re all very creative. I’m loving this show – it’s absolutely fabulous! I studied fashion at the University of East London and launched my label Mary Martin London in 2018. It’s fascinating to see this record of rebelliousness at the heart of London fashion. I like to see my clothes as carrying on that tradition, flying the flag.” Literally – one of Mary’s early dresses was a reworking of the Union Jack. We check out Russell Sage’s upcycled Union Jack jacket which Kate Moss modelled for a Vogue cover back in the day. Then it’s on to the next show. The waves haven’t stopped rolling in the capital.

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Pavlo + Mayfair London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date September 27, 2023

A Muse in a Mews

Parees is on her way from Paris (via Calais of course) so today it’s all about Ukraine’s Next Top Model. In between shows (it’s London Fashion Week) Pavlo strikes poses, works his angles and delivers for the lens.

Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design People

Parkstead House + University of Roehampton London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date September 26, 2023

Quotation Marks

Architectural historian Joan Alcock wrote an authoritative guide to the architecture of Parkstead House in 1980: “The main block, which faces Richmond Park, was built by Sir William Chambers as Parkstead House in the 1760s for William, 2nd Earl of Bessborough: this building is illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus and described in the principal histories of Surrey. The Earl used the building as a country house, but on the marriage of his son Frederick, Viscount Duncannon, to Henrietta, daughter of Earl Spencer, he allowed the young couple to live there. Bessborough House, later Parkstead House, became the centre of their social and political life and this continued after Frederick had succeeded to his father’s title in 1793 and had inherited the principal residence in Cavendish Square.” The third Lady Bessborough’s scandalous daughter Caroline would marry William Lamb before pursuing Lord Byron. The 5th Earl sold the property and after a time as a Jesuit college it has been in educational use ever since.

She explains, “The design of Parkstead is based on the Palladian villa. The prototypes appear to be Colen Campbell’s Mereworth and Isaac Ware’s villa which he built in 1754 for the financier, Bourchier Cleeve, at Foots Cray, Kent, which was a severer version of Mereworth. The first design for the façade lacks an attic storey but its row of Ionic columns and arrangements of windows on the first floor was clearly inspired by Foots Cray. The drawing of the house in Vitruvius Britannicus reveals only two windows on the attic floor. In this case the centre front room would be lit entirely by skylights. One circular skylight still survives, having its original decoration round the rim. The room, however, is a large one and the skylight is needed to give extra light to the rear. The façade certainly has more attractive proportions without the windows, which appear to be rather uncomfortably situated above the portico but they are functionally necessary and were probably part of the original design.”

Joan sums up Parkstead House, “The treatment of the façade is strictly in accordance with Palladian principles as laid down by Lord Burlington and Colen Campbell. If anything, Chambers was more severe, reducing his ornament to a minimum.” Only the façade overlooking the parkland is faced in stone: all other elevations are of dark grey brickwork with stone quoins. Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner record in The Buildings of South London (1983), “It was the first of several Palladian villas designed by Chambers in the early 1760s. They belong to the second generation of Palladian houses in England … The prototype for the façade appears to have been Bourchier Cleeve’s Foots Cray, built in imitation of the Villa Rotunda circa 1756; but the obvious inspiration for a villa in the London countryside, that is a relatively modest rural retreat rather than a full scale country house, was of course Chiswick House … In the garden is a circular entablature from the portico of a circa 18th century garden temple (the rest in store).” The simple plan of the piano nobile is replicated on the bedroom floor above. A central three bay room behind the portico is flanked by single bay rooms. These three rooms are three bays deep with shallower rooms to the rear. A square staircase hall is behind the portico room.

Nobody is better qualified to critique Sir William Chambers’ work than architect John O’Connell. One of his many professional achievements was brilliantly restoring the Casino Marino in Dublin, arguably Ireland’s greatest neoclassical building. This distinguished design may appear as a single bay single storey structure but as Jeremy Musson, architectural historian for Country Life, enlightens: “Casino Marino is a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Depending how you count them, there are some 13 rooms inside.”

John declares, “Sir William Chambers’ work at Parkstead House is about refinement, rebooted Palladianism. There is a real sensitivity and finesse at play. The elevations need a parapet though as there is a certain squatness without one. Everything has been sacrificed for the pediment and the fully expressed portico. The ironwork is painted Somerset House blue. That was his first essay in town planning. It is devalued now being away from the River Thames where once it was rather like a Venetian palace. The Embankment cutting it off from the river was the solution to water stagnation.”

Indoors he observes the plasterwork in one room, “That is a very correct cornice and four fantastic urns. It’s so delicately handled.” In another, “The frieze isn’t right and speaks of later Edwardian modillions. There’s a solecism – the garland should be central.” And as a whole, “This house demonstrates a commitment to good materials following the French noble material hierarchy, from the state rooms on the piano nobile to the rustic rooms in the raised basement. The house as temple on a robust scale.” A framed sign dated 1980 on a corridor wall sets out:

“Parkstead built as a Palladian villa or summer residence by Sir William Chambers for the 2nd earl of Bessborough. The 3rd Earl lived here for much of his life until the death of his wife Henrietta in 1821.
The 3rd Earl leased the house to a banker, Abraham Robarts, who made it his permanent home until his death in 1858. Robarts made many improvements, including constructing a well and pump to provide a water supply.
The 5th Earl sold the house and estate to the Conservative Land Society for division into smallholdings. However, it was eventually sold, in conditions of some secrecy, to the Society of Jesus for use as their Noviciate.
The Jesuits moved in and this began the occupancy which was to last for nearly 100 years. The name of the house was changed to Manresa in commemoration of the place in Spain where the founder of the Society, St Ignatius Loyola, composed the Spiritual Exercises which form the basis of the Jesuit rule. Many additions were made to the house during this period leaving it much as it can be seen today.
The Society left Manresa and among their reasons for doing so were the invasion of their privacy by high rise flats and the compulsory purchase of much of their land by the Greater London Council. The house now became part of Battersea College of Domestic Science and it was officially opened by the Right Honourable Shirley Williams MP, who also signed the order for its subsequent closure in 1979.
Manresa became jointly occupied by Garnett College and the Putney Adult Education Institute. In the early days, Lady Bessborough had run a small school here for local Roehampton children. The house has been associated with education for the best part of 200 years.”

Lady Bessborough’s educational legacy continues to seep through the walls of Parkstead House: it is now part of the University of Roehampton.

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McCausland’s Hotel + Malmaison Hotel Belfast

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date September 20, 2023

Intercontinental

Two decades ago Belfast’s first boutique hotel disappeared. McCausland’s – the scene of lively lunches for a few years – may be missed but thankfully from its ashes arose the phoenix that is Malmaison. But hey, halcyon days are back to stay, today’s the future’s heyday. Malmaison’s trademark extensive use of black allows the architecture to speak. And speak it does. Dropping a consonant (remember the amusing Lost Consonants cartoon in the Saturday Guardian when it used to come with a shelf load of supplements?) between editions, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society published Marcus Patton’s Central Belfast A Historical Gazetteer in 1993 and 22 years later Central Belfast An Historical Gazetteer. Going with the earlier version:

“1867 to 1868 by William Hastings with sculpture by Thomas Fitzpatrick. A pair of four storey stone warehouses built as a pair but with varied detail to suit the two clients: the rival seed merchants John Lytle and Sons and Samuel McCausland. Lytle’s warehouse has a five bay ground floor with arches springing from columns with varied capitals and standing birds at the springing of the arches; a massive rope moulding forms a cil course to the second floor windows, which are grouped as a triple light flanked by duples, with red granite colonettes and freely carved almost Celtic arches and keystones; over the third floor windows, grotesque heads with long tongues form corbels for the cornice brackets which are interspersed with strapwork panels; at the centre of the parapet is a little pediment over a crown and harp (Lytle’s trademark).”

Malmaison is really a pair of semi detached warehouses forming one architectural composition. Looking up from Victoria Street, the lefthand five bays are Lytle’s; the righthand six bays, McCausland’s. Round the corner on Marlborough Street, over a carriageway entrance into Lytle’s warehouse is a carved Chinaman stone head. Complete with coolie hat, drooping moustache and pigtail he is very Fu Manchu. An African stone head rescued from nearby demolished sugar stores forms an unusual talking piece in Malmaison reception.

But it’s McCausland’s warehouse which really goes to town, shouting out its international credentials. Peering over the top of the five ground floor piers along Victoria Street are carved stone heads placed above clusters of fruit and vegetables. They represent the five continents, a conscious and highly visible display linking this business to the great trading houses of the past, demonstrating global trading connections and pride in the Empire. Africa has wavy hair and wears earrings. Asia is turbaned. Oceania is the only female. Europe is whiskered. America wears a feathered headdress.

For two decades before McCausland’s Hotel opened, Belfast’s loudest façade almost disappeared. It was blighted as part of one of the city’s many unexecuted 20th century road widening schemes.

Tags fu manchu, lavenders blue, lytles warehouse, malmaison hotel belfast, marcus patton, mccauslands hotel, mccauslands warehouse, stuart blakley, thomas fitzpatrick sculptor, ulster architectural heritage society, william hastings architect

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Café Parisien + Robinson + Cleaver Belfast

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date September 10, 2023

Starboard Home

An English visitor to Northern Ireland recently remarked to us how two of Belfast’s key tourism drivers are based on tragedies: Titanic and the Troubles. On a downbeat note, we do miss all the Edwardian department stores in the city that disappeared decades ago: Robinson and Cleaver, Brands and Normans, Anderson and McAuley. On an upbeat note, the thriving city has since become a foodie destination. Manchester, with a population almost twice the size of Belfast, has one restaurant with a Michelin star. Belfast has three. Famously, Robinson and Cleaver had a grand sweeping Sicilian marble staircase with a mezzanine arch leading into a silvery tearoom. Maids in their monochromatic finery served coffee in individual pots. Infamously, the staircase was auctioned and shipped off to the late entrepreneur Eddie Haughey’s Ballyedmond Castle in County Down.

Fortunately the former department store is still intact on the outside. The six storey stone building with its distinctive copper cupolas began life in 1886 as the Royal Irish Linen Warehouse designed by Young and Mackenzie. All is not lost inside. Café Parisien is a two storey restaurant occupying the frontage overlooking Belfast City Hall. Taking its name from one of the eateries on the doomed ocean liner, the restaurant is all saloon class and no steerage.

Tags anderson mcauley, ballyedmond castle rostrevor, brands normans, cafe parisien belfast, edward haughey, lavenders blue, robinson cleaver, stuart blakley, young mackenzie architects

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Dumpling Library + St Anne’s Square Belfast

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date September 2, 2023
33 Comments on Dumpling Library + St Anne’s Square Belfast

Deep Love

Sunday morning opens with a cacophony of hymns on the drawing room family piano deep in the wild west. Things can only get better, as the Belfast singer D:Ream famously once hoped. Eucharist is just sliding into memory at Belfast Cathedral by the time we glide up to the east coast bright lights. Sunday lunch is just a block away in St Anne’s Square. Dumpling Library is a gourmet rather than literary experience. Gucci clad model Janice Blakley joins us for lunch.

Covering most Oriental bases our waitress confirms, “The Dumpling Library is Asian, Canton, Chinese and Malaysian fusion. Sundays are our busiest day.” A solitary unbusy unhurried diner sitting at an island table is reading Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss under a crimson heart dangling from the ceiling. Fried spinach wontons, Japanese tofu, prawn avocado tempura, salt chilli tofu, sweet potato chips … we’re on a (kimchi) roll at our window table.

Pastiche. Yawn. The most unoriginal cliché. An architectural criticism crime. Every glass building is a Meisian copy you might as well say. Neo Geo is neo Geo is neo Geo which sounds dogmatically Gertrude Steinian and rightly so. An accusation of pastiche – and St Anne’s Square has had more than its unjust desserts – is about as original as claiming somewhere has been “restored to its former glory”. What glory? When? Really? The only glory left is in knickerbocker glory. Jonathan Meades gets it spot on as always in his essay France in the collection Pedro and Ricky Come Again, 2020, “… worldwide scream of accusatory architects: ‘Pastiche!’ The architectural doxa decrees that pastiche is a Very Bad Thing Indeed. The collective convention forgets the history of architecture is the history of pastiche and theft: von Klenze’s Walhalla above the Danube is based on the Parthenon; G G Scott’s St Pancras borrows from Flemish cloth halls; Arras’s great squares are imitations of themselves.”

The brilliant critic rants on in his essay Obituaries in the same collection, “Architecture like poetry is founded in copyism and plagiarism – both vertical, looting the past; and horizontal, stealing from the present. The obscure past, of course, and the geographically distant present.” St Anne’s Square has proved an easy target for lazy uneducated reviewers. Completed in 2010, it is Taggarts Architects’ Portland stone and red brick clad with whimsically oversized foray into late postmodernist neo Georgianism. Giant quoins have form in this quarter: Sir Charles Lanyon’s Northern Bank, Thomas Jackson’s Scottish Amicable Life Building and Corn Exchange Building all belong to the bigger is better school. Funky, not fashionable. The buildings of St Anne’s Square are just tall enough and wide enough to create an intimate public realm with a floorplate gap perfectly framing the chamfered ambulatory of the cathedral and its 2007 stainless steel spirelet. Dumpling Library is one of several ground floor courtyard facing restaurants below apartments. This mixed use development also includes a 168 bedroom Ramada Hotel.

At least St Anne’s Cathedral has never been accused of being pastiche. Ever since Belfast architects Thomas Drew and William Henry Lynn drew up its Romanesque origins in 1868, this building evolved over the next 139 years into something quite unique, slightly hard to place yet paradoxically somehow of its place and time(s). Idiosyncratic, not imitative. “The cathedral is a huge moment,” declares Ireland’s leading neoclassical architect John O’Connell. In another church in another country in another discipline Dr Rowan Williams, Lord Oystermouth, tells us at Westminster Cathedral, “The deepest of the gifts to exchange is love.” We’re loving the new Belfast, especially the next generation murals.

Tags charles Lanyon, chris voss, d ream singer, dumpling library st annes square london, gertrude stein, jonathan meades, lavenders blue, ramada hotel, rowan williams, rowan williams lord oystermouth, st annes cathedral, stuart blakley, taggarts architects, thomas drew, thomas jackson, westminster cathedral, william henry lynn

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Luminair Bar Double Tree by Hilton Amsterdam +

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 31, 2023

Leef Met Je Kop Omhoog

We’re knocking it out of the park with Our Tribe. Here comes Missy ridin’ that train. Such a doll. Fancy illuminating Luminair? There’ll be a bit of sport on the cards with that offer. Multiplicity for the multihyphenates. Now we’re talking. Sometimes The Weekend really is plain sailing. We’re off to the boat races.

Soon, it will all seem so long ago.

Tags lavenders blue, luminair bar double tree hilton amsterdam, stuart blakley

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Eastern Docklands Amsterdam + Aaron Betsky

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 30, 2023
4 Comments on Eastern Docklands Amsterdam + Aaron Betsky

Nether Regions

Way back in 2005 we visited a snow covered Amsterdam to report on the newly redeveloped Eastern Docklands for Ulster Architect. The following year historian Jaap Evert Abrahamse published Eastern Docklands District Amsterdam: Urbanism and Architecture. He summarises, “The transformation of the Eastern Harbour District in Amsterdam was completed in 2003. More than 8,000 dwellings have definitively taken over from hangars, transhipment installations, rails, contains and goods trains. All of the Netherlands’ top architects have built here, as well as a large number of renowned foreigners.” So a revisit is long overdue. Particularly on a breezily sunny day.

Just about every city with a river running through it seeks to capitalise on its docklands with varying degrees of success. Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Cork, Dublin and Düsseldorf have all jumped on the bandwagon. Planning students of the late Nineties were treated to lectures and tours on the topic. The Netherlands, the country that gave us Van Dyke and Van Gogh and Van Rijn, now gives us fine art of another kind: housing.

Oostelijk Havengebied, the regenerated Eastern Docklands of Amsterdam, is built on four slim former island wharves. A €10 ride from Centraal Station, each island, or rather peninsula, is planned as a neighbourhood relying on an urban design strategy to provide a sense of local identity. Density averages 100 dwellings per hectare. If that all sounds like, well, first year undergrad palaver, go see the results. This is town planning progressing beyond glossy booklets and pushy press launches.

First, there’s KSNM Island. The initials stand for the Royal Dutch Steamship Company, the previous occupier of the site. It now accommodates 1,250 dwellings. Rows of harbour scale apartment blocks straddle the quaysides. Cars are confined to an arterial route which dissects the central strip of parkland. The plan is a result of collaboration between Amsterdam City Council planners and architect Jo Coenen.

Next comes Java Island, a former industrial area. It’s mixed use now: 1,350 dwellings and 500 square metres of commercial floorspace. Architect Sjoerd Soeter’s plan is like a photo negative of KSNM. Quayside roads encircle a cliff face of nine storey blocks that soars above pedestrian friendly courtyards.

Borneo Sporenburg is the third island. It’s really a pair of interconnected peninsulae linked by call girl red pedestrian bridges designed by Adriaan Geuze. A former railway shunting area, it has been engulfed by a sea of 2,500 three storey houses and apartments interrupted by three high rise blocks. Again, the public sector collaborated with private consultants, this time Rudy Uytenhaak and Adriaan Geuze and his firm West 8. The smaller units are designed by hip architects like Bjarne Mastenbrock, Christian Rapp, Dick van Gameren and Heren 5.

Hoop, Liefde en Fortun is one of the three high rise pieces of architectural eye candy. Designed by Rudy Uytenhaak, it’s a cascading ski slope of a building, clad on the north side with a gargantuan hole punched Norwegian marble screen produced in cooperation with the artist Willem Oorebeek. This multipurpose block is named after three windmills that once occupied the site: Hope, Love and fortune.

Anglo Swedish architect Ralph Erskine who died earlier this year could easily have had Borneo Sporenburg in mind when he wrote, “Architecture, like the shaft of an axe, must beautifully and precisely symbolise its own good reasons for its necessary existence. Insight and sincerity will tell you which reasons are good.”

Amsterdam has the funkiest street names of any European capital. You don’t have to spend the afternoon in a brown café either to appreciate them. Try Kattenburgerstraat, Regulierdwarstraat and Voorplein Spaarneziekenhuis for a start. Borneo Sporenburg continues the trippy tradition. Scheepstimmermanstraat is the name of the main drag. Lined with domestic temples to Mondrian modernity, it’s become something of a household name in planning circles.

Architect Sebastian Kaal from Dick van Gameren informs us, “West 8’s masterplan called for three storey terraced units. This usually results in a streetscape dominated by parked cars. Here the section has been reversed to create an internal street with garages. Patios have been slung on top of the garages so that even the north facing houses can enjoy the sun.”

Each plot is 30 to 50 percent void. Juliet balconies, car lifts, courtyards and roof gardens … they’re all here. Plots are a standard 16 metres deep, 4.2 to six metres wide and a maximum height of 9.5 metres. A delectable Dutch trend – that of impossibly high ground floor ceiling heights – is adhered to. Even the leggy Dutch moving around in their living quarters framed by double height windows look like The Borrowers.

Dick van Gameren has punctuated the corner of Scheepstimmermanstraat and Stuurmankade with nothing short of a translucent on white visual exclamation mark. Drawing on simple geometrical forms in a far from doctrinaire manner, coloured glass modules suspended mid air increase the cubic capacity of the apartments without encroaching on the footprint.

Innovative design is matched by avant garde materials. Take Kavel 37 on Scheepstimmermanstraat, designed by Heren 5. It lifts the Dutch townhouse to a whole new level, taking the concept of an Amsterdam vernacular and blowing it out of the water. “The rusted steel façade is in harmony with the surroundings of brick and the former harbour identity,” explains architect Jan Klomp. “Transparency and bringing the daylight inside is typical for Dutch canalside houses and also for Heren 5.” Glass floors in the upper apartment allow daylight to flow down to the ground floor and illuminate the entrance from above.

We spoke to Aaron Betsky, the recently appointed Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, about his views on Borneo Sporenburg. The former Architecture and Design Curator of San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, Aaron is one of the big players in contemporary design discourse. His CV – architect, author, critic, curator and lecturer – has guaranteed him that position.

“As Director of the NAI, I oversee and coordinate the many different aspects of this active centre for architecture,” he says. “It’s the second largest architecture museum in the world and is the archive of all Dutch architecture post 1800.” Meanwhile, Aaron’s literary output includes: The Best Buildings by Young Architects in the Netherlands, Experimental Architecture in Los Angeles, Why Dutch Design is So Good, Zaha Hadid The Complete Buildings and Projects. The list goes on, 40 Amazon.co.uk hits to be precise.

Born in Montana USA, but raised in the Netherlands, Aaron reckons, “There’s no one correct way to approach docklands regeneration. Given the situation in the Eastern Docklands, this was a very inventive and productive planning strategy.” He believes, “West 8 have tried to make the new look familiar and the familiar new which is exactly what architecture should do. Many of the compositions, materials and proportions are based on traditional Amsterdam housing types, but they have opened up, recombined, slid apart and otherwise messed with them, to allow completely new constellations of living to appear.”

“The building at the end of island by Dick van Gameren,” Aaron confirms is his favourite. “I especially like the way the whole is decomposed into the open spaces of the River Ij. But it’s the variety, rather than one particular building, that is the great contribution of Borneo Sporenburg to the city of Amsterdam. The point is that all the buildings play with Dutch variations and discover new spaces within very tight economic and physical straitjackets.”

Is it perfect? Not quite. “I would have made the streets of Borneo Sporenburg less strong. As built, they tend to become wind tunnels that overemphasise the traditional 19th century slum layout that is the point West 8, I believe, were trying to make.” Finally, we ask Aaron if he would like to live in Borneo Sporenburg. “Absolutely!” he exclaims. “Especially if I could afford a house designed by Masterbroek or Van Gameren. What about Jan? “Oh yes, I’d like to live there. Along the watersides would be great.”

In 2023, Scheepstimmermanstraat continues to be the standout street in the Eastern Docklands. It is aging gracefully: the private amenity spaces of the 60 freehold adjoining sites are well used and planted. A couple descend from their canalside living quarters in the middle of the terrace into a speedboat for an afternoon’s riding the waves of the River Ij.

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St Aengus Catholic Church Burt Donegal + Liam McCormick

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 23, 2023
4 Comments on St Aengus Catholic Church Burt Donegal + Liam McCormick

The Unbroken Circle

It’s one of the most photographed churches in Ireland. Dr Paul Larmour, who lectured in architecture at Queen’s University Belfast, is the latest to publish a review of Burt Church in County Donegal. His 2022 publication Architects of Ulster 1920s to 1970s features 21 architects – Liam McCormick is the best known one. Paul states, “McCormick was eventually converted to the Modernist cause during a college trip to Paris in 1937 to see the World’s Fair. There he was impressed by the various national pavilions in modern style, notably those representing Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia. The most rewarding experiences of his Parisian trip, as he later recalled, were a visit to Le Corbusier’s Pavilion Suisse at the Cité Universitaire and a visit to Beaudouin and Lods’ school at Suresnes.”

He adds, “The church of St Aengus at Burt in County Donegal (1964 to 1967) brought unprecedented fame to McCormick. Its circular plan was a new and original concept in Ireland at the time, and it stands as a landmark not only in its physical setting but also in the development of modern Irish church architecture.” The building is high enough on a hillside off the Derry City to Letterkenny road to allow traffic to disappear into a fold in the topography like a giant haha. The isolation of the church is appropriate: St Aengus was famous for his love of solitude.

The ancient round tower, that most enigmatic of Irish structures, had long provided inspiration to ecclesiastical architects. St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Church in Jordanstown, County Antrim, by William Henry Lynn (1876) is a prime example with its 22 metre tall round tower next to the entrance porch. Liam McCormick looked to another enigmatic Irish structure and one to hand – the ancient circular fort. Grianán of Aileach was just such a fort, located higher up the hill from what become the site of Burt Church. As in his other Donegal churches, the stained glass is by Helen Moloney and the sculptures by Oisin Kelly.

In the 2011 Annual of the County Donegal Historical Society 2011 Liam McLaughlin writes, “The Church of St Aengus at Burt (1965 to 1967) is among the earliest of the new churches built in Ireland in response to the changes in the Liturgy initiated by the Second Vatican Council. Beautifully situated on an elevated site selected by the architect, it has panoramic views of sweeping countryside, Lough Swilly and the Inishowen hills. It appears at once bold and assured, and very much at ease with the landscape. This is achieved by its form and materials: the colour and texture of its natural stone wall of Claudy schist, rounded and battered in sympathy with the character of the ancient fort, and the spired copper clad roof that appears to float over a band of clerestory glazing encircling the building.” The white interior resembles a cave – again appropriate for the hermetic leanings of St Aengus.

Many, many circular churches in Ireland would follow, some by Liam, some by lesser mortals. Liam McCormick was a pioneer of indigenous design.

Tags county donegal histrocial society, grianan aileach, helen moloney, henry william lynn, liam mccormick, oisin kelly, paul larmour, st aengus church burt donegal, st patricks church jordanstown, stuart blakley

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Spring Restaurant Somerset House The Strand London + Skye Gyngell

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 17, 2023
2 Comments on Spring Restaurant Somerset House The Strand London + Skye Gyngell

Summer at Spring

Breaking the fourth wall, to use Housewives of New York franchise parlance, this article originally recorded the first visit to the restaurant eight years ago. The Park Lane ambassadress is now an Ascot lady of leisure, the Green Park restaurateur is taking Riyadh by sandstorm and the Beverly Hills realtor is still selling Sunset Boulevard dreams. This second visit focuses on an architecture and food photoshoot – and a decent excuse to enjoy Thursday lunch.

The set menu isn’t daylight robbery: three courses for £33. And it’s hyper seasonal having been just launched today never mind being pescatarian to perfection. Salt baked beetroot with crème fraîche and herbs. Grilled mackerel with slow cooked fennel and salsa rossa. Lemon verbena with rye shortbread and blackcurrant sauce. Lunch for under £100 (including obligatory Viognier and even a £5 donation to the Felix Project food charity)! We’re full again and so is Spring. There’s deflation for you. Rewinding back nearly a decade …

At a Lavender’s Blue dinner with a Park Lane ambassadress, a Green Park restaurateur and a Beverly Hills realtor, the conversation naturally turned to Lisa Vanderpump. But it was the combination of the interior and food – good taste and tastes good – that proved the hot topic in the cool surroundings of Spring. Even if Ruby Wax was within earshot of our table. Spring is the best of the six dining rooms in the people’s palace of London, Somerset House on The Strand. That’s why it’s full and we’re full on a Monday night.

Somerset House has a surprisingly coherent architecture considering Sir William Chambers’ 1770s masterpiece has been tinkered with ever since he laid the cornerstone. James Wyatt to Sir Robert Smirke to Sir Albert Richardson have all had a go at it. Five wings spread out from the Strand Block like a cyclopean crustacean (crab with nduja and yellow polenta £16 or grilled lobster with curry leaves, tomato and bhatura £34). Spring is in the New Wing. Newness is relative – it was designed by James Pennethorne in 1849. The restaurant is chef Skye Gyngell’s latest enterprise in London. Australian born Skye was previously head chef of Petersham Nurseries, the restaurant with a garden centre attached.

Horses for courses although we’d prefer not for main course (halibut with spinach, chilli and preserved lemon dressing £32) and course after course at Spring is not coarse of course but rather seasonal – and sensational. Crisp but not autumnal (fritto misto of prawns with lemon pinwheels and foraged herbs £16). Cold but not wintry (rhubarb and rye tart with crème fraîche £8). Pantaloon and stripy sweater clad waiters resemble – dare we say – Venetian robbers. Perhaps later they’ll find a gondola to steal away home down the Thames.

Tags james pennethorne, james wyatt, lavenders blue, lisa vanderpump, petersham nurseries, ruby wax, sir albert richardson, sir robert smirke, sir william chambers, skye gyngell, spring restaurant london, spring somerset house, strand spring restaurant, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Art Design People Restaurants Town Houses

Frederic Leighton + Leighton House Kensington London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 9, 2023
8 Comments on Frederic Leighton + Leighton House Kensington London

Lordship Lane

A lunchtime private tour one week, a drinks soirée the next. Restored, revived, renewed, Leighton House is Kensington’s largest one bedroom residence. It was built as a place for partying and painting; one of those activities continues apace. A cigar brown sitting room; a peacock blue staircase hall. Beauty is the absolute priority. Opulence evokes emotions. The original studio house was enlarged through four edits, all succumbing to the allure of aestheticism. A commercial architect, George Aitchison, was chosen to give the owner maximum design input. That owner, Frederic Leighton, following Victorian polite society tradition, operated At Home from 3pm to 5pm. Those hours have been widely extended these days.

Scarborough born Lord Leighton, Baron of Stretton, was a leading artist of his time. His portraits speak of love and connection. His landscapes speak of devotion to experience of the setting, portraying a palpable sense of play, often studying Mediterranean light. So very evocative. His sketches carry a sense of abandonment, a loose spontaneity. This solitary socialite undertook solo travel to Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Spain, Syria. Leighton House was in a group of celebrity artist owned studio houses known as The Holland Park Circle. The other names, save for architect William Burges, have faded into the mists of time. Sir Samuel Luke Fildes, Colin Hunter, Valentine Cameron Prinsep, Sir James Jebusa Shannon, Herbert Schmalz, Marcus Stone, the Thornycrofts, George Frederic Watts.

There’s a new edit. Kensington and Chelsea Council, who now own the house, have replaced the brick with punched windows undercroft of the Winter Studio with a fully glazed café spilling onto a garden terrace. It slots nicely between the cast iron columns supporting the Winter Studio, augmenting the transparency of this wing in comparison to the solidity of the Arab Hall at the far end of the building. Restored, revived, renewed – that’s the visitor experience too.

Tags colin hunter, frederic leighton, george frederic watts, herbert schmalz, holland park circle, kensington chelsea council, leighton house kensington london, marcus stone, sir james jebusa shannon, sir samuel luke fildes, stuart blakley, thornycrofts, valentine cameron prinsep

Architects Architecture Design People Restaurants

Swatragh Londonderry + Joseph Welland

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 3, 2023
8 Comments on Swatragh Londonderry + Joseph Welland

Lowe Country

The best place names in Ireland are derived from Gaelic. Swatragh is an anglicisation of Baile an tSuaitrigh meaning “townland of the billeted solder”. On the edge of the Sperrin Mountains, this village is a cluster of buildings lining the Carthill Road leading to Garvagh to the north and Maghera to the south. A little piece of (mid) Victorian architecture and a little piece of (very late) Georgian architecture greet motorists at either entrance to the village. One architect designed, one vernacular.

Killelagh Parish Church stands above a field at the southern entrance to Swatragh. This Church of Ireland building is well documented: architect Joseph Welland’s drawings dated February 1852 are archived in the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin. The black ink elevation drawings include such details as the chancel arch jamb. Joseph was born in Midleton, County Cork, in 1798. His father was agent to the 4th Viscount Midleton whose brother was Archbishop of Cashel. This connection introduced Joseph as an assistant John Bowden architect to the Board of First Fruits. Joseph would become his master’s successor. He designed over 100 new churches and took over finishing St Stephen’s on Mount Street Crescent, the ‘pepper pot church’, in Dublin, after his master had died.

In contrast to the Greek Revivalism of St Stephen’s, Killelagh Parish Church is gothic. The neat compact rough and cut stone architecture is all about high pitched gables, pointed arches, buttresses and a small square tower supporting an even smaller octagonal tower topped by a spirelet. A stone family gravestone opposite the entrance porch is inscribed: “Erected in memory of Robert Lowe who died 20 May 1872 aged 68 years. Also his wife Mary who died 5 May 1878 aged 75 years. Also their son Robert who died 10 February 1866 aged 30 years. Samuel Lowe who died 14 December 1892 aged 62 years.”

Friel’s Bar and Restaurant stands close to Carthill Road at the northern entrance to Swatragh. It is of a similar style to the townhouses of the County Down towns of Hillsborough and Moira. Basalt rough stone walls, red brick camber headed and quoined window surrounds, 12 pane sash windows, pitched natural slate roof … a familiar picturesque provincial composition. The entrance door with plain sidelights and an oblong fanlight is set in a white painted rendered arched recess. A symmetrical five bay single storey block appears as a floating villa partly balancing over a lower floor wedged into the sloping ground. Built in 1835, the coaching inn was later used for various purposes before being bought by John Friel in 1903. Dermot and Caitriona, the fifth generation of the Friel family, run the bar and restaurant.

Tags caitriona friel, carthll road, friels bar restaurant, joseph welland architect, killelagh parish church, lavenders blue, lowe family gravestone, st stephens church mount street crescent dublin, stuart blakley dermot friel, swatragh derry londonderry

Architecture Art Country Houses Design

Derek Hill + Glebe House Church Hill Donegal

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 30, 2023
10 Comments on Derek Hill + Glebe House Church Hill Donegal

Following a Pattern

A townhouse in Hampstead London and a country retreat in Church Hill County Donegal. The reclusive socialite had it all. The 20th century artist Derek Hill, whether painting the Duke of Abercorn at Baronscourt or teaching the Tory Island Painters including King Patsy Dan Rodgers, was versatile. In 1988 the artist commented on his rural idyll, “The house was built as a glebe in 1826 and later became a small fishing hotel for gentlemen until I bought it from the last proprietor. In 1953 I paid £1,000 for the hotel and the 20 acres of lakeside land surrounding it. I felt I was meant to live there having noticed, three years previously, the house’s superb position surrounded by great trees and the Donegal hills on every side. It was also on a tongue of land jutting out onto the water, and I love to be near water.”

Glebe House, the two storey former rectory of St Columba’s Church of Ireland, represents the zenith of undemonstrative domestic architecture. The north facing entrance front, the east facing lake front and the south facing garden front are all three bays wide. A fanlight arches over the entrance door and sidelights. Trellis in the ground floor central bay of the other two principal elevations creates the effect of a fanlight and doorcase. The reddish burnt terracotta painted roughcast walls lend the house a Mediterranean air while the grassland falling down to the 2.7 kilometre long Gartan Lough heightens a sense of the bucolic.

Built in 1826, Glebe House could easily be a half century older or newer. Beautiful as it is, the architecture of Glebe House is not unique. Au contraire, it is a type that can be seen throughout Ireland decades before and after. Other three bay fronted roughcast examples with a central fanlight over the doorcase in the north of Ireland include The Rectory, Aghalee, County Armagh (1826); Willowbank, Keady, County Armagh (1834); The Old Rectory, Killyleagh, County Down (1815); and St Elizabeth’s Court, Dundonald, County Down (1819). Minus a fanlight over the doorcase are The Glebe, Finvoy, County Antrim (1820) and The Grange, Salter’s Grange, County Armagh (1781). The Rectory and The Grange both have lower first floors with six pane bedroom windows. Glebe House is slightly different as it is a three bay square in shape – most are only two bays deep.

Maurice Craig’s seminal work Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size, 1976, summarises the genre: “The glebe houses of the (formerly established) Church of Ireland are an important category of house, because of their ubiquity, their charm, and the influence which they undoubtedly had on other buildings. According to Donald Akenson, following the Reverend Daniel Augustus Beaufort’s Memoir of a Map of Ireland, there were only 354 glebe houses in 1787, and 829 in 1832. This programme was in large part financed by Parliament – first the Irish Parliament, after 1800 that of the United Kingdom – through the Board of First Fruits, and went pari passu with a programme of church building. The years of the greatest government assistance were 1810 to 1816.”

Plate 11 from the Reverend John Payne’s 12 Designs for Country Houses published in Dublin in 1757 is of a three bay two storey hipped roof detached house with small first floor windows similar to Aghalee Rectory and The Grange. Pattern books were a great source of reference for architects and surveyors ranging from James Gibbs’ 1728 publication to Sir Richard Morrison’s a century later. Scottish landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon (1783 to 1843) topped them all with his encyclopaedic 1,100 page doorstopper of a manual. No building form was safe from his diktats from doghouses to limekilns. Nothing was too detailed to warrant his attention from kitchens of country inns to sliding fire screens for drawing rooms.

John Claudius Loudon’s ambition was “to improve the dwellings of the great mass of society”. Illustrations 458, 459 and 460 portray three versions of a three bay two storey hipped roof house. The façade of 458 is plain; 459 has quoins; and 460 has full height pilasters between each bay and at the elevation corners. Illustration 1449 (they go up to 2038!) is a grander three bay two storey hipped roof villa with a miniature portico and lower single bay wings. While these prototypes are not specifically glebe houses, the Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture was so widely distributed and read it influenced all types and sizes throughout the British Isles.

Dr Michael O’Neill wrote an article A Roof Over Clerical Heads: Visual Insight to Glebe House Drawing in 2017 for the Representative Church Body Library. It goes into historical detail: “A glebe house is a residence provided in each parish (or parish union) for the clergy man or woman and his or her family. In the past glebe land (farmland) was also provided for the rector/vicar/curate of rural parishes, the clergyman up to the late 19th century was often also a farmer or leased out farmland. The poverty of much of the clergy of the established church led to Queen Anne setting up the Board of First Fruits in Ireland in 1711. This initiative (similar to the Queen Anne’s Bounty of 1704 for the Church of England) redirected first fruits or annates (the first year’s income of a clergyman to any new post due to the Crown) into a fund for building new churches, glebes and glebe houses.”

He adds, “In the first 70 years or so the Board of First Fruits purchased glebe land worth £3,500. It also assisted building 45 glebe houses with gifts worth £4,000. Annual parliamentary grants during the period 1791–1803 allowed the Board to spent £55,600 towards building 88 churches and 116 glebe houses. Significantly larger grants in the 20 years following the Act of Union meant a total of £807,648 was paid out in grants to purchases glebe lands in 193 benefices, building 550 glebe houses, and building, rebuilding and enlargement of 697 churches. By 1832 some 829 glebe houses had been built. Small wonder then that hall and tower ‘First Fruits’ churches and glebe houses are such a prominent feature of the Irish rural landscape.”

So what’s the modern equivalent of the pattern book? Volume housebuilders such as Taylor Wimpey have their own standard house types but these are company guides and not for wider use. Perhaps the Daily Mail Book of Home Plans was the last vestige of the pattern book? Back to Glebe House and the last words go to Derek Hill, “So often people say, ‘Don’t you get lonely when you are over in Donegal?’ Remembering Emily Dickinson’s letter to a friend whose sons had died in which she wrote: ‘One can never be alone with a thronged heaven above’, I feel it is the same with a house.”

Tags baronscourt, daniel augu, duke of abercorn, gartan lough, glebe house churchill donegal, john claudius loudon, king patsy dan rodgers, king patsy dan rogers, lavenders blue, maurice craig classic irish houses middle size, michael oneill, representative church body library, reverend john payne, sir richard morrison, stuart blakley, taylor wimpey, tory island painters

Art Design People

Victoria Embankment Gardens Temple Section London + Statues

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 19, 2023
7 Comments on Victoria Embankment Gardens Temple Section London + Statues

Midday in the Garden of Good

In the days when people were good, statues were erected in their honour. Next to London’s joint quietest Tube Station (it shares that honour with Pimlico), the Temple Section of Victoria Embankment Gardens is a strip of welcome verdancy. A mere 40 by 100 metres, it still manages to accommodate a trio of statues dedicated to the good of Victorian times. Educator William Edward Foster stands closest to Temple Tube Station. At the far end, thinker John Stuart Mill appears to float as encroaching greenery has all but hidden his plinth. In the middle of the parklet is a memorial to temperance promoter Lady Henry Somerset. It takes the form of a girl holding out what looks like a begging bowl. Her arms outstretched, she bears a passing resemblance to the Bird Girl statue of Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah. Through the trees can be glimpsed a contemporary statue balanced high on a pedestal outside British American Tobacco’s Globe House. Perhaps the patron saint of smoking?

Tags british american tobacco globe house, john stuart mill, lady henry somerset, lavenders blue, midnight garden good evil, savannah, stuart blakley, victoria embankment temple section london, william edward foster

Architects Architecture Design Luxury People Restaurants

Aldwych House + Roka Restaurant Aldwych London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 9, 2023

Kon’nichiwa

Roka first opened on Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia. It’s a Japanese restaurant aiming to provide a pure experience serving classic robatayaki dishes. The authentic elegance of the menu is reflected in the interior with its generous use of Japanese wood and natural materials. Another Roka soon opened on North Audley Street in Mayfair. This was followed by one in Aldwych at the top of The Strand. Zuma on Raphael Street, Knightsbridge, is a sister restaurant.

The parent company Azumi was founded by Rainer Becker at the start of the new millennium. Born in Germany, he is a chef by training and is now a passionate restaurateur. A massive international drive is underway. Zuma Bangkok has just opened and pop ups are appearing in Barcelona, Ibiza, Mallorca, Mauritius and Mykonos this summer. Roka is in Riyadh and has just opened in Jeddah. The latest London addition is on Canada Square in Canary Wharf. The name is a portmanteau of “robata” (the charcoal grill which originates from the fishermen of the northern coastal waters of Japan) and “ka” (warm surrounding energy).

Shokuji to sābisu wa subarashīdesu.

Roka Aldwych is on the ground floor of a grand sweep of Edwardian stone architecture. Ed Glinert’s 2003 London Compendium records, “Aldwych, the street which takes the form of a crescent at the southern end of Kingsway, dates back only as far as 1905, but the name is considerably older, Via de Aldewych being the name by which Drury Lane was known in 1398 when the surrounding area was called Aldwic, ‘the old settlement’.” This part of London, lower key and less touristy than neighbouring Covent Garden, is still discreetly cultural hosting significant players such as the Courtauld Institute, London School of Economics and St Mary le Strand Church. Art, education, religion and Japanese fine dining – Aldwych has them all.

Tags aldwych house, courtauld institute, ed glinert Ldondon compendium, lavenders blue, london school economics, rainer becker, roka japanese restaurant aldwych london, st mary strand church, stuart blakley, zuma

Architects Architecture Design Developers Luxury People Restaurants

The Clockspire Restaurant Milborne Port Somerset + Set Menu

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 7, 2023

Stretched Portmanteau in Milborne Port

Where once there were chalkboards now there are menu boards. In place of attendance lists are wine lists. After 115 years as the local school, the building closed in 1979 before being reinvigorated as a restaurant opening in 2019. The clock tower popping up from the roof and topped by a spirelet was restored. This former school was built by Sir William Medlycott of nearby Ven House and designed by Henry Hall. It’s faced with yellowy Bath stone. The entrance is set in a cloister style colonnade supported by Norman style columns is symmetrically terminated by gabled projections. Large gabled dormers above the colonnade flood the interior which is open to the rafters with natural light.

Mike Fisher, building owner and Creative Director of Studio Indigo, explains, “The creation of The Clockspire has been a thrilling and rewarding experience. This significant village landmark has been beautifully restored and now sits proudly once again at the heart of the village. New employment has been provided in the village and a new destination restaurant has been created in this part of Somerset. The village is enormously proud of this restoration project and the restaurant has been a tremendous success in a very short time.”

Mike founded his practice in 2005 with the aim to provide a holistic approach to architecture and interior design from yachts to townhouses. A recent project was the design of Mandarin Oriental Mayfair in Hanover Square London. His office of 40 staff is based on Lots Road, Chelsea Wharf London. He lives on the edge of the picturesque town of Milborne Port in the magnificent mansion of Ven House.

The set menu available at lunch and dinner has three choices for each course including the following. Starter: cod croquette, smoked cod’s roe, cucumber and apple salad. Main: Cornish pollock, summer vegetables chowder, seaweed sauce. Pudding: strawberry tart, chilled elderflower custard, honeycomb. An optional wine flight is available. Plate presentation by Head Chef Luke Sutton is as artistic as the restaurant’s address: Gainsborough. The Michelin inspector sums it up as, “Attractively presented modern British cooking using the local larder to good effect. Service is personalised and it feels as through they really care.” They do: General Manager Massimilanio Mannella sees to that. Restaurateur Alessandro Fasoli’s other establishment is The Woodspeen in Newbury, Berkshire, also recommended by Michelin.

Tags alessandro fasoli, architect henry hall, bentley, clockspire restaurant milborne port somerset, lavender's blue, london, luke sutton, mandarin oriental mayfair, mike fisher studio indigo, sir william medlycott, ven house, woodspeen restaurant newbury

Design

Kincasslagh Donegal +

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 6, 2023

Near Fallen Heights

Sand dunes and scattered development define Kincasslagh, a seaside village in the Gaeltacht, the Gaelic speaking region of northwest Ireland. There’s a tiny harbour and a tinier lookout tower and that’s about it. Kincasslagh is best known as the home of singer Daniel O’Donnell. Another musical connection down the road in Meenaleck is Leo’s Tavern which is owned by musician Enya’s family. The village centre is The Cope. A cooperative formed in 1906 to bring enterprise to County Donegal, there are Cope foodstores in Annagry, Falcarragh and Kincasslagh, and a large multipurpose store in Dungloe. An ominous sign in the beach car park warns visitors, “This beach is dangerous for bathing at all times.” A few kilometres away, Donegal International Airport links this far flung area to the wider world.

Tags annagry, cope shop, daniel odonnell, dungloe, enya, falcarragh, fallen heights, gaeltacht, kincasslagh donegal, lavenders blue, leos tavern, meenacleck, stuart blakley

Architecture Design Hotels

Bunbeg Beach Donegal + Sunset

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 1, 2023

The End of Day at Magheraclogher Bay

Thinker John Mack begs this question: “One may enjoy the beach from one of three positions: feet dry on the shore, where one observes the ocean’s current; standing in the water, where one feels the current’s tug; floating in the water, where one is oblivious to the current. Given today’s currents, where might you be positioned with regard to see level?” Overlooked by a deserted hotel, the wreckage of a boat on the neverending golden strand of Bunbeg is like a beached whale carcass one moment, a drowned one the next. Fast waters. The sea level is deep. So is the Mackian see level. Soon it will be time to meet on that beautiful shore.

Tags bad eddies boat, bunbeg beach donegal, john mack thinker, lavenders blue, magheraclogher bay, ostan gweedore hotel, stuart blakley

Art Design Luxury People Restaurants

Royal Hospital Chelsea + Treasure House Fair London 2023

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date June 29, 2023
10 Comments on Royal Hospital Chelsea + Treasure House Fair London 2023

Back to Life

A menagerie of larger than life size bronze animals from Sladmore, some standing on the David Hockney swimming pool blue entrance floor, greets visitors to this inaugural show.

“London is the city of Europe, even the city of the world. It is still the second most important global art market and it needs a great interdisciplinary art fair.” Harry Van der Hoorn should know. He and Thomas Woodham-Smith co founded Masterpiece, the world renowned fair that ran for 13 years starting in 2010. Masterpiece almost immediately became a firm fixture of The Season. But at the beginning of this year Swiss owners MCH Group, who had secured a controlling stake in 2017, determined the fair wasn’t commercially viable. That created the unimaginable scenario that The Season – while still hosting gardening, cricket, racing, rowing, tennis and opera – would be missing art.

Deep sighs of relief could be heard echoing through the gilded postcodes when the duo launched Treasure House. Like Masterpiece, it’s in a temporary pavilion in the parkland setting of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Unlike Masterpiece, its orientation and circulation correctly face the 17th century brick building rather than the Embankment. Thomas explains, “Our choice of title reflects the wide range of disciplines and masterpieces of the fair, each piece a treasure in its own right. From my perspective as a Dutchman, ‘Treasure’ is a word that is understood throughout the world and ‘House’ is a mark of respect to the Grosvenor House Fair, a fair that inspired so many of us over the years.”

Out of the 55 exhibitors occupying 2,500 square metres of floorspace, 43 previously appeared at Masterpiece. There are 10 overseas dealers plus four that are only partly based in London. Comfortingly familiar sights include the Ventura Riva yacht this year fitted out by Gucci. The Ballyfin style transport of golf buggies through the hospital grounds has gone but the more direct pedestrian route is easy on the Louboutins. Timing has been pulled forward to the penultimate week in June which does mean the preview clashes with Glyndebourne and Ascot Ladies’ Day. Petertide is a busy time for everyone. Next year, Treasure House Fair is programmed to go back to the last week of June.

In place of Le Caprice restaurant and two Scott’s bars is Table and Candle restaurant, Robuchon Deli and Oysters and Champagne Bar. Different operators, equally good offer, same buzzy guests. Everyone is fabulously sociable, nobody is sartorially challenged. To quote the 20th century photographer Slim Aarons, it’s all about “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places”. Life is rosé at the Whispering Angel Bar. The restaurant overlooks the courtyard. The bar (Irish Ostra Regal, Jersey and Madlon oysters; Laurent-Perrier Champagne) is half indoors half in the courtyard to accommodate both the alabaster and sallow skinned.Oil on canvas is represented from Post Impressionism (Sir Stanley Cursiter at Richard Green) to Expressionistic figurative art (Frank Auerbach at Osborne Samuel). A masterpiece from the Emerald Isle is the silver gilt sideboard dish for sale by Koopman. Made by James Fray of Dublin in 1828, it was presented to Thomas 1st Baron Manners, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by the Officers of the Court of Chancery. At 69 centimetres diameter, the sideboard dish has plenty of space for canapés.

Fine art dealer Charles Plante has been involved in the fair world for over three decades, from stalls at Chelsea Town Hall to full room displays at Grosvenor House and Olympia Fairs. He has mounted exhibitions at Stair and Co in London and Mallett’s in London and New York. Last year he held a major sale at Dreweatts featuring many items from his townhouse and country house. Star pieces included architectural drawings by Henry Holland and Thomas Sandby. Charles’ bestselling publications are Inside Out: Interiors and Exteriors 1770 to 1870 (2000), Gilt Bronze Objects 1814 to 1830 (2002) and Tools of the Trade (2006). He has since relocated his business to the US concentrating on San Francisco, selling to “upper class Americans” who buy half a dozen of his drawings or paintings at a time to create French style salons.

“I am astonished how my friend Thomas along with Harry put this fair together in four months,” comments Charles. “They have really pulled if off! I like how the pavilion faces the most famous Wren building after St Paul’s Cathedral. There’s such attention to detail: the walls suspended to a few centimetres off the floor to give the illusion of skirting boards, space age canted ceilings and uplighting set in columns. The decorative approach is avant garde and progressive. There are dealers I love here like Wartski the royal jewellers.”

Treasure House may be smaller than Masterpiece but it is a refined version with a more curatorial vision, and like its forerunner is still larger than life.

Architects Architecture Design People

Chapel of Ease + Church of the Sacred Heart Poisoned Glen Dunlewey Donegal

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date June 18, 2023
8 Comments on Chapel of Ease + Church of the Sacred Heart Poisoned Glen Dunlewey Donegal

Lilies for Mourning

In a tale of two ecclesiastical offerings with very different endings, the Anglican Chapel of Ease and the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, both in the depths of the Poisoned Glen, appear hewn out of the landscape, as dramatic in sculpted form as the powerful backdrop of Mount Errigal. Poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh calls Mount Errigal “A sacred mountain”. The Anglican chapel was erected in 1844 by Jane Russell as a memorial to her late husband James Russell, landlord of the Dunlewey Estate. It is built of local white marble and blue quartzite. The entrance is via a centrally positioned square tower. Lord George Augustus Hill, another County Donegal landlord, was a travel writer and recorded, “In addition to the romantic scenery in the neighbourhood, of which the conical Mountain of Arigle [sic] is the leading feature. The new Church at Dunlewey – built of white and grey marble, from quarries in the immediate vicinity – forms an object of much interest and attractions.” A later landlord William Augustine Ross erected the Catholic church in 1877. Designed by Belfast architect Timothy Hevey, it is built of rock faced basalt rubble trimmed with bands of grey stone and the same local white marble as the chapel. An offset round tower is redolent of ancient Hibernian tradition. The architect died the following year aged 33.

Tinged with tragedy, the Poisoned Glen is nonetheless as romantic as its name. John Conal Boyd, a local history enthusiast campaigned to have the remains of the Chapel of Ease stabilised after it was abandoned in the 1950s. He considered at least with the roof off everyone could enter the space open to the heavens above. When John died in 2006 aged 53, he was one of the first people to be buried in the reopened graveyard. His tombstone of rough stone is laid horizontally to respect the setting of the chapel. It points towards Dunlewey Lough, and, lifting up on the wings of an eagle, onwards to Bunbeg Harbour where he lived.

Tags anglican chapel ease dunlewey, architect timothy hevey, bunbeg harbour, cathal o searcaigh, dunlewey lough, james russell, jane russell, john conal boyd, lavenders blue, lord george augustus hill, mount errigal, poisoned glen, sacred heart catholic church, stuart blakley, william augustine ross

Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Collon House Louth +

For You Have Been Our Refuge

“You will enjoy Collon and the arresting parterre garden,” predicts Ireland’s foremost neoclassicist John O’Connell.

Maurice Craig wrote an article in Country Life, 1949, Some Smaller Irish Houses, “Most of the great houses of Ireland have received some descriptive attention, first from the Irish Georgian Society, and more recently from Country Life. At the other end of the social scale the Irish cottage has interested field geographers and anthropologists such as Dr Estyn Evans (Irish Heritage, 1942). But in between there are, in Ireland as in England, a number of those ‘middling’ houses which are the backbone of vernacular architecture. Social cleavages in the great building age were sharper in Ireland than in England, so that the middle class and its monuments were less numerous than in England. But they existed nonetheless, in both town and country, and their houses are not without distinctive qualities which repay study. Neither ‘big houses nor ‘cabins’, they range from farmhouses to gentlemen farmhouses.”

In the same publication 27 years later, John Cornforth worried in an article Tourism and Irish Country Houses, “With planning and preservation arrangements in town and country still in their infancy, there is nothing to stop a purchaser buying a historic demesne for its land, splitting it up, developing it and abandoning the house.” From earls and girls in pearls to manners and manors, cut to 2022 and the current Architectural Editor of Country Life, Jeremy Musson tells us, “I’m a curious house guest, writing about Irish country houses for a British magazine, Country Life. It’s a personal odyssey. The tall walls, owners with a disarming sense of humour … Irish country houses have a special flavour. I rarely get to bed before midnight! Country Life’s publication of Irish houses is an erratic study. Country Life was established in 1897; Powerscourt House in County Wicklow was published two years later. The magazine’s founder Edward Hudson is reported to have said, ‘Lismore Castle in County Waterford I believe is very photographable.’ Mount Stewart in County Down was featured in 1935.”

Jeremy relates, “Irish houses had far larger numbers of servants than English ones and greater hospitality. The complexity of servants’ basements contrasts with the simplicity of the layout of the main rooms above. Lissadell in County Sligo is a classic example of this arrangement. My first Country Life article was Russborough in County Wicklow. I covered Farmleigh in Dublin in 1999 and Killadoon in County Kildare in 2004. I also wrote up Castle Leslie in County Monaghan in 1999. Sir Jack Leslie loved going to the local disco – he said ‘Dancing shakes up the liver!’ I remember a dinner at Drenagh in County Londonderry. Mid course, cattle invaded the lawn so we all ran outside to chase the cows away!” Somewhere needs a haha. “In 2015 I covered Kilboy House in County Tipperary, probably the most ambitious Irish country house project in recent times. Country Life is the recording angel of the Irish country house and it continues to beguile.”

Another architectural historian, Roger White, shared with us this year, “The aristocracy and gentry in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice novel had limitless leisure hours, filling some of them by visiting country houses.” And that brings us rather nicely to sitting in the music room of Collon House, County Louth. We’re guests of owners John Bentley-Dunne and Michael McMahon. “Collon House is actually three houses around a courtyard which I inherited in 1995,” explains John. “The interiors were Victorianised so we wanted to bring them back to their original Georgian appearance. The restoration took 10 years. We reinserted correct glazing bars and shutters for the windows.”

Collon House is not quite a big house and certainly not a cabin. It’s a large middling size house. “I am not sure why Anthony Foster, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, ended up building a house in this village location in 1740. His son John was the last Speaker of the Irish Commons until its dissolution by The Act of Union in 1800. It is an example of an Irish ‘long house’. The Speaker’s descendants recently came from England to visit the house.” John O’Connell says, “‘Speaker’ Foster built Mount Oriel Temple a few kilometres north of Collon. Its pedimented portico was inspired by The Temple of the Winds. The house had a room with a series of grisaille paintings by Peter de Gree which I believe ended up at Luttrellstown Castle outside Dublin.” Mount Oriel Temple is much altered and under the ownership of Cistercian monks.

“It all started with an overspill at Tankardstown House in neighbouring County Meath,” intrigues John. “The owners asked if we could take some staying guests as they were full. The rest is history.” Canopy Room, Chinese Room, Speaker Foster’s Room, French Room, Massereene Room … there’s accommodation for 22 guests at Collon House. Modern conveniences are discreet: those one metre deep walls and oversized landings come in handy for adding en suite bathrooms.

We join our distinguished fellow guests from Richmond, Virginia, for a candlelit and evening sunlit dinner of Irish country house portions and Irish country house hotel standard in the dining room. Starter is seafood cocktail wrapped in smoked salmon in seafood sauce followed by pea and coriander soup. Limoncello with lemon shavings forms the palate cleanser. When in Rome! Smoked salmon, butter mash, baby tomatoes, baby carrots and broccoli are something of the national tricolour on a plate. Lemon continues as a theme with sorbet pudding. Michael serves; John is busy in the kitchen. Coffee and chocolates are enjoyed in the music room across the staircase hall and garden hall lobby. Just in time to look out across the sunken parterre garden. Box edged flowerbeds are filled with asters, delphinium, helenium and phlox. The planting is so complementary to the tulips and hosta surrounding the fountain in the courtyard.

We enjoyed Collon and the arresting parterre garden.

Architects Architecture Design Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

No.3 Wine Bar + Restaurant Collon Louth

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date June 12, 2023

You Have Given Us the Heritage

It’s Ireland’s most fulfilling crossroads. All worldly and spiritual needs are catered for where Kells Road and Main Street crisscross with Ardee Street and Church Street. No box goes unticked. Afternoon wine? Donegan’s Pub to the north of the crossroads. Evening wine? No.3 Wine Bar to the south. Dinner with wine? No.3 Restaurant, still south. Nightcap wine and four poster bed? Collon House to the northeast. Sunday morning service? Collon Church of Ireland to the southwest.

Donegan’s arrived on the Collon scene in 1870 as a pub and grocery shop. Not an unusual combination a century and a half ago – often there was an undertaker’s added into the mix to make such establishments one stop shops so to speak (“a stiff drink” takes on a whole new double entendre in rural Ireland). The fire is lit, the racing is on the telly, and the craic is almighty. A 20 paned tripartite window frames glorious bursts of sunshine one minute and torrential downpours of rain the next.

Mother and son team Martina and Wayne Fitzpatrick established No.3 Wine Bar and restaurant a mere seven years ago and have been racking up national, province and county level plaudits ever since: 11 awards and seven recommendations to date. You can eat and drink outdoors, indoors ground floor or mezzanine. The menu is illustrated in Gatsbyesque style. Jay Gatsby, sorry the dapper Wayne Fitzpatrick, explains, “We grow our own organic fruit and vegetables on site in our kitchen garden. Silverskin onions, beetroot, gooseberries and blueberries are just some of our home produce.” The Jazz Age is alive and kicking in No.3 although thankfully there’s no prohibition. Just plenty of fanciable flappers.

Ah, Collon House: that’s somewhere to write home about.

And so to church. Or maybe not, as Collon Church of Ireland is currently closed for restoration. The Foster family, local landed gentry who lived on the other side of the crossroads in Collon House, built the first Anglican church in 1764 before the current building replaced it half a century later. The impressive Tudor Gothic church was designed by the incumbent priest Daniel Augustus Beaufort. Not bad going for an amateur architect. He also published a Memoir of Ireland, a sort of academic 19th century Lonely Planet guide. And he was a founder of the Royal Irish Academy. Quite the multihyphenate life. The Reverend Beaufort’s father was a French Huguenot refugee who became Pastor of the Huguenot Church in Spitalfields, London. That building, known as Hanbury Hall, is now the Church Hall of Christ Church Spitalfields. A circularity of Anglicanism is at play. Daniel Augustus Beaufort sure knew a thing or two about creating a catchy silhouette.

“‘Wine makes me feel all tingly, doesn’t it you?’ chattered Miss Masters gaily,” writes Frances Scott Fitzgerald in O Russet Witch, his 1922 Tale of the Jazz Age. “‘I love you too, Merlin,’ she answered simply. ‘Shall we have another bottle of wine?’ ‘Yes,’ he cried, his heart beating at a great rate. ‘Do you mean –’ ‘To drink to our engagement,’ she interrupted bravely. ‘May it be a short one!’ ‘No!’ he almost shouted, bringing his fist fiercely down upon the table. ‘May it last forever!’ ‘What?’ ‘I mean – oh I see what you mean. You’re right. May it be a short one.’”

Tags collon church ireland, collon house louth, donegans pub, great gatsby jazz age, hanbury hall christ church spitalfields, lavenders blue, martina fitzpatrick, no 3 restaurant collon, number three restaurant, reverend daniel augustus beaufort, royal irish academy, russet witch, stuart blakley, wayne fitzpatrick

Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Shelbourne Hotel + The Grill Room Dublin

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date June 12, 2023

From the Ends of the Earth

At the dawn of the new Carolean Area we’ve returned to the second city of the Lost Empire.

“Believe you me I’ve lived with a person – all my life.”

“It’s incredibly together and very uncluttered.”

“He has an absolute eye.”

What did Caroline Walsh writing in 1989 for the Irish Heritage Series have to say about the hotel? “Fiercely proud, Shelbourne staff will vie with one another to tell visitors their memories of favoured guests from the Dalai Lama to the Queen of Tonga for whom they had to make a special bed, and whose entourage included two cooks so that everything she ate was cooked to her satisfaction. They will talk of Laurel and Hardy, Richard Burton, James Cagney, John Wayne and of Peter O’Toole. Most of all they will talk of Princess Grace of Monaco; of her early morning walks in the Green, and of how the press were always after her and of how they were devastated when she died.”

What would the Anglo Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen have to say about this evening’s dinner establishment? Rather a lot. She wrote The Shelbourne in 1951. “The Shelbourne faces south, over Stephen’s Green [skipping a sainthood] – said to be the largest square in Europe. Tall as a cliff, but more genial, the hotel overhangs the ornamental landscape of trees, grass, water; overtopping all other buildings round it. It gains by having this open space in front; row upon row of windows receive sunshine, reflect sky, gaze over towards the Dublin mountains. The red brick façade, just wider than it is high, is horizontally banded with cream stucco; there are cream window mouldings. Ample bays, two floors deep, project each side of the monumental porch – above, all the rest of the way up, the frontage is absolutely flat. Along the top, a light coloured parapet links up the windows of the mansards; from the centre of the roof rises a flagpole.” Accelerate to the last line of her book, “It is any hour you like of a Shelbourne day …” Or night.

Tags caroline walsh irish heritage series, charles iii coronation, dalai lama, elizabeth bowen, james cagney, john wayne, laurel hardy, lavenders blue, peter otoole, princess grace of monaco, queen tonga, richard burton, shelbourne hotel grill room dublin, st stephens green

Architects Architecture Art Design Luxury People Town Houses

St Stephen’s Green + Kildare Street Club Dublin

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date June 12, 2023

Fulfil Our Vows Day After Day

Dublin’s most exclusive club is the only place to watch sundown over St Stephen’s Green. The Kildare Street Club of course isn’t on Kildare Street or at least hasn’t been since the war. Ireland’s most spirited architect John O’Connell joins us. “My first essay was the green leather bar. And I am responsible for the mirrored jib door on the staircase landing. Nobody interrupted me in my work. The ceiling is painted pewter as invented by Robert Adam.” That’s the bar sorted. We’re off on a tour. “You have to have life in the building. There should never be crewelwork in such an interior. I love festoons! My ladies’ windows!”

Tags architect john occonnell, kildare street club st stephens green dublin, lavenders blue, robert adam, stuart blakley

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