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Seabird Restaurant + Vale + Valerian Lodge + Liverpool Lawn Ramsgate Kent

Beyond The Vale

The seaside town of Ramsgate in the southeast of England is incredibly distinguished: it has the largest Wetherspoon’s in England. It also has the only Royal Harbour in the country. In a neat linguistic loop the vast tavern occupies the Royal Victoria Pavilion which overlooks the regally moored yachts. Wetherspoon’s verandah is the perfect place to view the golden sands over a preprandial pint. Moving a few blocks inland, Seabird has indoor and outdoor seating – and cooking. Civilised lunch on the terrace is straight from the en plein air grill. Unmissable delights are fennel, feta, cucumber, olive and lemon followed by buttermilk and vanilla pannacotta with brandy soaked Victoria plums.

Gosh so many houses so little time. The domestic architecture of Ramsgate is a rich melange of all the best bits of the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of it is frayed round the edges – this town is genteel rather than gentrified, chilled instead of cool, warm and friendly not hot and trendy. Away from the scale and grandeur of the cliff houses, selected highlights, and not just on an alliterative nomenclature basis, are Vale, Valerian Lodge and Liverpool Lawn.

Close to Seabird, Vale is an impressive triple fronted end of terrace square building split into two semi detached villas. The three storey (with attic and basement) pair share a five bay end elevation: the middle bay is a blind window. A vast scrolled pediment concealing the setback top floor has the word Vale (in upper case) raised on a central panel. The two unshared elevations comprise three wider bays. Rather charmingly, the stucco to the ‘front’ house is painted bright grey; the ‘back’ house is in its natural darker grey pigment free stucco state. Like twin girls but one is wearing makeup. Vale was most likely built by the developer William Saxby in the 1840s.

Valerian Lodge on Grange Road is further up the hill from Seabird on the way to Ramsgate Railway Station. It’s a rather elegant Regency or very early Victorian house set in a miniature 0.2 hectare walled estate filled with holm oak, turkey oak, horse chestnut and sycamore. The house is a long low two storey (over basement) rectangular block: one of the short two elevations faces the road. A tented balcony with trellised piers linking two of the five first floor bedrooms peers over the brick and flint boundary wall. Except for render above the balcony, walls are pale brown brick. In 2015, a single storey garden room in matching style linked by a glazed lobby was added to the short elevation facing away from the road. It was designed by Margate architects Duncan and Graham. Valerian Lodge has the tallest chimneypots in Kent – or at least on Grange Road.

Not far from Wetherspoon’s, Liverpool Lawn was built by James Crisford between 1827 and 1836. A crescent and various straight terraces face a triangular green (that Lawn!). Liverpool Villa and Liverpool House are a pair of three storey brown brick houses: flat fronted facing the Lawn and two full height bow windows on the other principal elevation. These townhouses are aptly of a scale and appearance (especially the painted ground floor lintels) popular in Liverpool. Numbers 20, 21 and 23 form a stuccoed two storey terrace. Number 20 has a three bay façade on the short elevation and is just one bay deep facing the Lawn. Numbers 21 and 22 have identical three bay façades (actually three and a bit bay: they share a central first floor blind window) facing the Lawn. Liverpool Lawn is developer led residential use at its finest.

In 2013, Liverpool Lawn was extended by seven townhouses next to Liverpool Villa and Liverpool House. Built by developer Kentish Projects, designer Anthony Browne of Chelsea Consultants explains, “The houses were designed to mimic neighbouring bow fronted Grade II Listed Georgian properties, while also adapting interior contemporary elements. The houses at the end of the terrace were finished in a contrasting white castellated style. The development utilises hand cut Flemish bond brickwork, lime mortar and stone Gothic window arches. The bespoke wooden windows, doors and railings were crafted to original standards.”

Harriet Kean writes in the October 2024 edition of Tatler, “Wetherspoon’s are the cornerstones of society where everyone comes together. These days everybody’s at the pub. Why go to The Surprise in Chelsea when there’s an Earl of Mulgrave approved Wetherspoon’s: The Montagu Pyke? Everyone who’s anyone is currently mourning The Asparagus: the famed ’Spoon’s in Battersea that to the despair of socialites everywhere closed this year and then reopened as a bougie pub with craft beers. But The Asparagus did have its heyday, attracting everyone from the Morgan-Gileses to Old Marlburian Charlie Girardot.” Fear not: Ramsgate Wetherspoon’s is but a Tube and train ride away from Sloane Square.

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Architects Architecture People

Ryculff Square Blackheath London + Sir Albert Richardson

Paragon of Virtuous Planning

Rycullf Square Southeast London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Sometimes you just gotta hunt a little harder, dig a little deeper, look a little longer, to see the wood and the trees. Beauty isn’t always served up on a plate, not even in glorious Blackheath. Its Georgian terraces and Regency villas facing the Heath are on full display for all to admire but, to employ a military analogy, the army that is architecture can’t be just about majors. Lieutenants are required too. Where is the hidden charm, the understated elegance, the stuff that scenery is made of? Ryculff Square.

Apartment Blocks Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

But first, a race through literature celebrating the neoclassical, the Georgian, the neo Georgian and the hooley. Deputy Chief Architect to the Ministry of Health Housing Department Manning Robertson, who owned Huntington Castle in County Carlow, penned Everyday Architecture in 1924. He states in his preface, “The necessity for economy is forcing us into honest expression, and the new style, although based upon past tradition and especially upon Georgian work, is not a mere copy, but bears the stamp of the present day; we are in fact continuing the sequence of English architecture from the point where it was rudely interrupted by the industrial materialism of the last century. More and more we rely for our effects upon good plain brick and tile work, of pleasing texture and varied colour, and upon the elusive quality of proportion emphasised by the play of shadows.”

Lawn Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Rycullf Square Blackheath London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Apartment Block Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Manning Robertson wasn’t the only 20th century Anglo Irish gentleman author. Lord Kilbracken, who owned Killegar House in County Leitrim, was a Tatler columnist. His 1960 book Shamrocks and Unicorns is an amusing array of essays meandering from The Night of the Hooley and A Ghostly Encounter to Bog for Sale and Wanderlust. Arthur Trystan Edwards upholds the merits of the Georgian style in his 1946 book Good and Bad Manners in Architecture: “The period of domestic architecture from which for all others we have most to learn is the Georgian. The essential modernity of the ‘Georgian’ style should be fully recognised… The sedate and comely form of the 18th century houses are a perfect embodiment of the social spirit. They belong to the community, they are born of the discovery that in domestic architecture individuality is best securely established when houses defer to a common cultural standard.”

Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Ryculff Square once more. The scheme is about as streamlined neo Georgian as is possible. Sir Albert Richardson designed a series of apartment blocks placed around leafy green squares. Completed in 1954, plain brick elevations are subtly relieved by string courses and mildly projecting porches. Low pitched concrete tile roofs rest on deep eaves. Almost 65 years after its first brick was laid, Ryculff Square remains largely unspoiled. The plethora of plastic framed double glazing and galaxy of satellite dishes are both reversible. A few kilometres south of the Heath, Lourdes Close is the latest residential development in Blackheath. Designed by Thrive Architects, the nine townhouses are neo Georgian.

Doorcase Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Sir Albert Richardson lived in the Georgian gem of Avenue House in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. Gavin Stamp lamented the sale and dispersal of its contents in 2013 while extolling the architect’s virtues in Apollo Magazine. “Richardson may have adopted a pose in Ampthill – refusing to install electric light, dressing up in Georgian clothes and being carried through the streets in a sedan chair – but he was a seriously good modern architect,” Professor Stamp argued. “He began by promoting the Edwardian rediscovery of neoclassicism and the works of people like Soane and Cockerell. After the First World War he intelligently adapted the abstracted classical language of Schinkel and other neoclassicists…” Avenue House was bought by Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection, and garden designer Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, who are restoring the house to its future glory.

Flower Rycullf Square Blackheath © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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Architecture

St Mary’s Cemetery Battersea London + Pique

Necropolis in the Megalopolis  

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Chapels © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

It’s a sculpture park in a wild garden. What’s not to love? St Mary’s Cemetery in Battersea may run parallel with the busy shopping street of Northcote Road but it’s an elevated world away, a sanctuary of foxes and squirrels running amok among the crumbling statues and long grass. A place of reflection, one can almost hear Montserrat Caballé’s Prayer floating through the dense foliage. It’s also the perfect setting for a Savannah style picnic provided by local supplier Pique. Named by Tatler as one of “London’s most luxurious readymade picnic hamper companies”, Pique is based beside the former Von Essen Hotel Verta at Battersea Heliport.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Gravestones © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Trees © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Branches © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Roses © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Gravestone © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Lancet Gravestone © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Angel © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Rose © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Urn © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Wild Garden © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Figure © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Tombstones © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Grave © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Nameplate © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Columns © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

St Mary’s Cemetery was laid out in 1860 to 1861 on part of the Bolingbroke Grove House estate which had been sold two years earlier. Burials had ceased in the churchyard of St Mary’s which is situated two kilometres away along the Thames next to Montevetro. Parish surveyor Charles Lee was appointed to lay out the ground and design two chapels and lodge.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Cross © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Survey of London Volume 49 edited by Andrew Saint states, “The little twin mortuary chapel range remains the chief feature of the cemetery, a building of simple charm and quiet Gothic details. The chapels, one for Anglicans, one for other denominations, are placed on either side of a tall pointed archway, above which sits a meagre bellcote. Each chapel is lit by a lancet at one gabled end and a rose window at the other, but these are switched round so that the east and west elevations are asymmetrical.” The Church of England chapel and the ecumenical chapel each have a gross external area of 39 square metres.

St Mary's Cemetery Battersea London Name © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley