Open House 2024 (9): 1 Quality Court

1 QUALITY COURT, , CHANCERY LANE, WC2A 1HR

Open House website says:

Entry to 1 Quality Court is an alley with Victorian tiles and is now built over by a modern building with Tudor accents. The court was built up around 1700 . 1 Quality Court was originally the Patent Office .

A short ride on the Central Line from Bank to Chancery Lane followed by a walk brought me to the entrance to Quality Court, past which I’d previously walked and wondered what was down there?

 

 The answer was that the covered passage opened into a long narrow courtyard between tall 18th century buildings with the door to No.1 being at the far end. Affixed to the door intercom with sticky tape was a handwritten notice saying “dial 1 for entry for Open House” and in front of it was a young lady who had already done so to no avail. While we were wondering if everyone had gone home some more potential visitors arrived and an OWM took over and tried calling again. While I was explaining to him that he’d dialled 11 not 1 the lady inside opened the door and we were in with the instruction “feel free to look around the ground floor, basement level, and help yourself to refreshments”. This was more like it.

 

 In what was once the Patent Office before they moved is now a multi-tenanted office space with a mix of businesses. The central atrium has four storeys with modern steel galleries running round the upper three and a spiral stair to basement level. The walls on three sides are faced with white glazed bricks including the window and door reveals. Hanging down into the space are many light bulbs, unfortunately on a dusk sensor which couldn’t be overridden but must be great when it’s dark.

 

 There was little else to see since the offices off the landings belonged to tenant businesses so were off-limits but more importantly that bean-to-cup machine in the basement level common area was on free vend and the coffee was excellent. In discussion with the office manager and another visitor I found out that I wasn’t the only one that was reminded of a Victorian gaol by the glazed brick tiling and overhanging landings. I a good way I hasten to add 😀

 

 And having finished my coffee and thanked the office manager for showing us round that concluded my Open House London 2024 visits.

There are more photos in my Open House 2024 Flickr Album

I shall no doubt be going through the listings in 2025 when they’re announced to find anything else that I fancy nosing around.

 

 

Open House 2024 (7 and 8): St Margaret Pattens Guild Church and Intermission

 St Margaret Pattens Guild Church

ROOD LANE, EASTCHEAP, EC3M 1HS

Open House Website says:

Take a guided tour of a beautiful example of a Wren church with unique features.

Despite which you could also just drop in for a look around. I hadn’t planned to but since I was passing the door on the way to another venue I dropped in anyway.

 

 It’s a big airy, light-filled Wren church of the sort built in the city after the Great Fire. Two small vestries in the corner with wood panelling, one much older than the other. A collection of parish boundary markers high on the vestry wall. The vicar was happy to chat with visitors. Post-war glass in the windows thanks to the attentions of the Luftwaffe. A discussion as to whether the windows were previously stained glass but no one was sure. A glass case with examples of pattens - wooden or metal platforms fixed under your soles to keep your shoes/dress hem out of the horse shit in the streets of old London - since this is the church of the Pattenmakers’ Company.

 

 I was glad the I decided to pop in.

There are more photos in my Open House 2024 Flickr Album

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Intermission

INTERMISSION / GOFF COURTNEY, 29 ROYAL EXCHANGE, THREADNEEDLE STREET

Open House website says:

Architectural showspace on the first floor of a duplex unit in the City’s Royal Exchange (the ground floor houses clothing boutique, GOFF COURTNEY, which also sells accessories, visual books & magazines. INTERMISSION is exhibiting three-dimensional artworks by architect Misha Stefan and RE:PLACE – proposing alternative, more inclusive destinations for three prominent gateway sites in the City.

 This is where I was going when I dropped into the church above. Up a narrow staircase above the boutique on the north side of the Royal Exchange was a small, and I mean small, gallery with some wall-hung mixed media 3d artworks and some architectural models for proposed redevelopments of sites in the city - bizarrely also hung vertically on the walls. There was a little information about the latter, mostly architect-bolx, while the only labels on the former were the er, aspirational price tickets. It would have probably been much better had the artist(s) been present to explain what the works were about. Time taken <10 minutes. Photos taken = 0

I could have skipped this one and not felt I’d missed anything important. 

Open House 2024 (6): Bakers' Hall

BAKERS HALL, 7 HARP LANE, EC3R 6DP

Open House web site says:

There has been a Bakers' Hall on our current site since 1505. The current incarnation dates from 1964, and is a unique collaboration of old and new. The hall was originally designed by Trehearne and Norman, Preston and Partners in conjunction with Past Master William Newcome- Wright) and is the first of the post-war [World War II] livery halls in a Modernist idiom.

After stopping for a picnic lunch in Cleary Gardens I walked from Painters’ Hall to the rather different Bakers’ Hall. The Worshipful Company of Bakers has owned the site of Bakers’ Hall since 1505 and has lost lost three previous Halls to fire, the first during the Great Fire of London which allegedly started in a bakery in the nearby Pudding Lane. The current modernist Hall is from 1964 and replaces the one lost during the little disagreement of 1939-1945. 2024 was the first year they had opened up for Open House.

 

 Inside there’s still wood panelling and stained glass but in a modern style. They’d laid out some old baking-related books from their collection and you could wander about looking at the silverware and the weighing scales but better than that they had volunteers doing guided tours so I tagged along on one of those and very good it was too.

 

 Downstairs is the Court Room which is where they conduct their official meetings. The Worshipful Company of Bakers’ formerly acted as an early trading standards organisation with powers to punish or even put out of business transgressors (three strikes and we come round and smash up your ovens, sunshine) so the Court Room resembles very much that of a law court. These days the company is still closely connected to the baking industry through educational works as well as carrying out charitable functions similar to other livery companies. Most members are associated with the trade but as the guide said membership is open and anyone with an interest in baking can apply.

 

 I was only a little disappointed that there were no free samples 😀 Although paid-for refreshments were on offer they weren’t overly inspiring and didn’t seem to have many takers.

 

There are more photos in my Open House 2024 Flickr Album

 

 

Open House 2024 (5): Painters' Hall

9 LITTLE TRINITY LANE, EC4V 2AD

 

Open House website says:

Acquired in 1532 and rebuilt in 1670 after the Great Fire, the Hall was partially destroyed in 1941 by enemy action and rebuilt in a Neo-Georgian style in 1960. The original charter, portraiture and stained glass are of particular interest.

 

I walked across Southwark Bridge and along Upper Thames Street to find the entrance to Painters’ Hall tucked away up Little Trinity Lane. On the outside it’s an unremarkable building that I’d likely have passed by but for the big flag and the Open House signs.

 

 

 

 It’s not the original Painters’ Hall, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, nor its replacement, which was destroyed by fire in the Blitz of 1941. This one opened after a rebuild in 1961 but contains bits of the earlier hall that survived the bombing. Appropriately the Arms of the Painters and Stainers Company incorporates a Phoenix. Inside it’s what you’d expect a livery hall to be. Wood panelling, decorated plaster ceilings, antique furniture, chandeliers, stained glass. In this case because it’s home to the Painter-Stainers’ Company it’s the setting for an impressive collection of paintings dating from the 17th to the 21st centuries. There are also a number of the company’s ancient documents framed and on display.

 

 

 

 The walls of the Painted Chamber are decorated to look like wood panelling and covered by paintings on wooden panels including one called Twenty Kinds of Fish in a Landscape although I couldn’t find all twenty.

 

 

 

 Up in the main hall filled with light from its large windows are the paintings of the royals, including an unconvincing one of the late Queen Elizabeth II and all three Charles’s, albeit the current one as a young Prince of Wales in RAF uniform. 

 

 

 

 A visit to a livery company’s hall is always a good part of Open House and the Painters-Stainers’ is no exception.

 

There are more photos in my Open House 2024 Flickr Album

 

Open House 2024 (4): Kirkaldy's Testing Works

99 SOUTHWARK STREET, SE1 0JF

Open House Website says;

Proudly carved over the door are the words ‘Facts not Opinions’. Inside, the authentic sight - and smell - of Kirkaldy’s Testing and Experimenting Works is a unique and direct link with an ingenious age of engineering.

I’ve long wanted to visit this unique bit of Victorian engineering heritage in Southwark but never managed to align available time and their opening days. The works own website at https://www.testingworks.org.uk/about gives the whole story of David Kirkaldy and his pioneering work of testing structural materials in a standardised and scientific way. The works remained in his family until 1965 and continued to operate under new ownership until 1974. A museum trust was set up in 1983 to retire and maintain the machines and the works and in 2014 the works and the huge Universal Testing Machine are listed at Grade II*.

 

Stepping through the front door of the Victorian building you are confronted by the almost 50 foot long Universal Testing Machine which dominates the room. Using water hydraulic pressure and a mechanical linkage the machine can exert a load of 440 tons on the material to be tested and it’s big enough to test large building components. There are numerous examples of iron, steel. and other material test pieces displayed that have been tested to breaking point. The museum volunteers are happy to explain how the beast functions, the history of the works, and what they’ve needed to do to restore the machine to working order. 

 

 As well as the Universal Testing Machine the museum has a collection of other testing machines of varying vintages - nearly all of which are old enough to be pre-metric so visiting students first need to be introduced to pounds, inches, and pounds per square inch and the conversion factors to change them into the SI units they’re more familiar with. There are machines to test seemingly everything from the tensile strength of parachute cord and webbing to the hardness of stone samples.

 

It’s a very un-museum-like space, very much a works building and since this is filled with old oily machinery from a time when mechanism guards were not considered necessary and which was operated by people who knew what they were doing you are reminded to watch where you’re putting your fingers 😀 

It’s a fascinating place, particularly if you are interested in machines, run by very nice people and I really need to get back on one of the premium tours when they actually run the machine and break stuff!

There are more photos in my Open House 2024 Flickr Album.

More info including opening times on the Kirkaldy’s Testing Works website 

 

 

 

Open House 2024 (3): The Victorian Society

 

1 PRIORY GARDENS, BEDFORD PARK, CHISWICK , W4 1TT

Open House web site says:

 Part of the original Bedford Park development restored by the Victorian Society and used as their headquarters since the 1970s. Picturesque style; 3-storeys, Red and yellow brick; Dutch gable; oriel windows. Dated 1880, designed by E. J. May.

What better place for the society which works to protect Victorian and Edwardian buildings from demolition and destruction than a very 1880s house on a corner of a Victorian suburban development. 

 

 It's mostly used as offices now and for Open House they'd put up some displays explaining what they do and were doing a bit of low intensity recruiting. Tea and cake was available but I gave it a miss as they appeared only to have chocolate cake left.

There are some nice original features but to be honest I've worked in any number of similar houses converted to offices.

Which I suppose is rather the point, these Victorian places are well built and can be adapted to new uses rather than being knocked down and replaced by buildings with a shorter designed life expectancy.

The entry on the Open House programme listing gives a more detailed description of the house and the work of the society. While I was there the local press photographer turned up to get some shots of people enjoying their Open House visit so you never know, my "Peoples Republic of Middlesex" tee shirt might find fame in the Chiswick Herald, the Hounslow & Chiswick Guardian, or on some other clickbaity local news website 😄

I enjoyed the walk there from Mortlake via the Thames at Barnes. The unexpected walk back to Mortlake due to the almost inevitable early termination of the E3 bus I enjoyed a bit less but I made it in time to catch my train.

There are more photos in my Open House 2024 Flickr Album

Open House 2024 (2): Burton Mausoleum

 

ST MARY MAGDALEN'S RC CHURCH, 61 NORTH WORPLE WAY, MORTLAKE, SW14 8PR

Open House web site says:

 Grade II* listed mausoleum in the form of a Bedouin tent carved to resemble draping canvas. The mausoleum houses the coffins of Sir Richard and Lady Isabel Burton. The interior is painted with religious imagery and decorated with camel bells, lamps, and dried flowers.

It really does look like an old tent. Helped by the stone's acquiring since 1890 a  covering of grime, lichen and moss. You have to get fairly close before it becomes apparent that the fabric is sandstone and not canvas.

This is the final resting place of Richard Burton. No, not that one. Sir Richard Burton the explorer, writer, scholar, and military officer. The one who translated One Thousand and One Nights, published the Kama Sutra in English, and tried to locate the source of the Nile. That Richard Burton. He travelled extensively in the Middle East and studied the region's culture and religion, controversially (even more so in modern eyes) disguised himself as an Afghan Sheik and performed the Hajj, the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca.  

 

 The mausoleum also contains Lady Isabel Burton, his wife, who designed the structure incorporating Middle Eastern symbolism and that of her own Roman Catholic faith. Why a tent? Burton is recorded as having said to Isabel that when they died, ‘I should like us both to be in a tent, side by side’. And so they are. 

At the rear there is a skylight window, incorporated because Burton was said to be afraid of the dark. I suppose no one was going to tell him that he wouldn't need to worry about that given that he had a bit of a scary reputation. It was originally of stained glass but some nerk put that in during the 60s or 70s when vandalism also resulted in the doorway being sealed shut to protect the interior. The stained glass was replaced by thick clear glass which means that by climbing a short, sturdy vertical ladder fixed into the ground on the east side you can see the interior. The fancier coffin is Richard's, the plainer one Isabel's, and the decor does have a slight 1970s hippy look about it 😀

Habitat and Heritage look after the mausoleum and plans (funded I think they said) are underway to re-open the door to allow better access. Until then according to the link above access to the outside is usually available 0900 to 1500 daily. Although you won't benefit from having the enthusiastic and knowledgeable guides present for Open House. That page also gives a lot more info on both of the Burtons.

It's not somewhere I'd have stumbled upon without the pointer from Open House though and even if I had probably wouldn't have climbed the ladder lest someone shout at me, there being nothing to indicate that it is allowed.

There's more photos in my Open House 2024 Flickr Album