Saturday 17th September
Round two, three very different venues. Avoiding central London today due to the crowds expected for the Queen’s lying-in-state & The Queue.
Brentford Canal Toll House & Gauging Lock
You could visit this place any time but for Open House the Toll Office was open with a display inside and helpful Canal & River Trust people on site to explain how the Gauging Lock worked if you didn’t already know. Despite family connections to the area (according to Grandad my Gran was born somewhere the other side of the bridge nearby) I’d never been to the lock. Google maps has the location on the wrong side of the bridge but the volunteers had put signs up pointing the right way. I did learn about the great Brentford flood of 16th January 1841 so every day is a school day.
Colet House
Near Baron’s Court station on Talgarth Road are a number of Victorian artist studios which I had walked by these in 2021 on a previous Open House visit but in this post-plague year one of them, Colet House was open to look around. Two large airy studios on the ground floor and a third much larger one on the first floor are all now used for activities of The Study Society. Originally built for and used by many artists, notable Sir Edward Burne-Jones RA, it later became a ballet school, the studios form an impressive and practical space - you could fit a cricket pitch in the first floor apparently.
Greenside Primary School
I’ll admit to a penchant for modernist buildings, and post-war-rebuilding era ones particularly. So a walk from Talgarth Rd. up to this example of a system built school designed by Erno Goldfinger was going to be on my list. It’s mostly not messed about with and has a mural by Gordon Cullen to boot. A 20th century arts fair was taking place in the hall but more importantly there was tea. The guided tour was run by one of the school parents - who freely admitted to knowing about the building only what was on his sheet of A4 but added much about the past, current, and future developments of the school itself. It was also a rare opportunity to take pictures of such a building without risking arrest.
Some thoughts on Open House Festival 2022
Open House Festival is a great chance to get into places that you couldn’t normally do so or wouldn’t have thought of doing so. The number of listings is huge, 699 entries on the web site. The web site on the other hand is a problem. Unbelievably there is no search function so if you know where you want to go, or want to find somewhere that you’ve previously found you need to narrow the listings down by date, borough, event type etc. and then scroll down until you find it. There’s a map but pretty much the same applies. I have included links to the listing for each place I visited but who knows for how long the links will be valid.
This year the festival was spread out over two weekends instead of one giving opportunity for more visits which was a plus for those having to travel in to London.
The unfortunate co-incidence of the festival this year with the death of Queen Elizabeth II meant some plans had to change. Communication of late changes was not handled well, which was supposedly one of the reasons you had to register an account and email address to book visits.
Still looking forward to the next one though.
