It's Open House weekend again - the 30th year of unlocking London's buildings for public exploration.
The 650-strong programme is a welcome bounce back after last year's understandably limited menu but still not exactly normal. A lot more buildings are asking for pre-booking to keep numbers under control. The event's been stretched across two weekends for the first time, with some buildings also opening on the weekdays inbetween. And there isn't a published guide or app this year so everyone's had to rely on interrogating the website. It's not been entirely straightforward.
i) When searching the listings, the filters provided don't include the ability to search by date. You can search by borough, architectural type or period, and some quite odd things like whether there's a bookshop, whether refreshments are available and whether photography is not permitted. But you can't search by date, which is particularly frustrating when the 650 events are spread across nine possible days but closed on most of them. If all you want to know is what's open today, Sunday 5th September, it's impossible to slim the list down. Functionality fail.
ii) I like to search by borough because this helps me build up focused itineraries. But on my laptop screen the alphabetical dropdown menu only displays as far as Hillingdon and won't scroll down further because of the way it's been coded. I have to shrink the size of the text down to 67% if I want to reach Newham, and 50% if I want to get all the way to Westminster, then enlarge back up to normal size to be able to read the resulting list.
iii) I much prefer a document to scan rather than an atomised reveal, because in a digital brantub it's all too easy to miss something. For example this year I missed one really intriguing property when I was clicking through on day of release and kicked myself later when I saw it was now fully booked. 180 places had been up for grabs to tour the warren of buildings surrounding Baker Street station, and the title in the database hadn't been enough to draw me in. Opportunity lost.
iv) Every time I tried to book a visit this year, be it back on launch day or yesterday morning, I got an error message. It was always the same error message - "Sorry, that was too quick! Please resubmit." - and I never got past it. I wondered if my browser might be at fault, or perhaps it was because I refused to tick the "I consent to receiving email updates" box, but the error message made no sense in either case. I'd have loved to have gone on a tour round that special site or got a place in the ballot to go up that tall building, but this year I didn't manage to get the chance.
My Open House exploits have therefore been a bit lacklustre in 2021, which may also be because this is my 20th consecutive year and I've been to lots of the best places already. But I went out anyway, selecting three locations which appeared to suggest pre-booking was required. But despite not being on anybody's guest list all three venues let me in, I suspect because a lot of the pre-booked visitors never turned up so there was plenty of space (in one case 50% spare capacity). It pays to take a punt.
1)Queen Mary's Victorian History
That's Queen Mary University of London, not a member of actual royalty, specifically the main campus facing Mile End Road. Our tour guide was Professor Nadia Valman, an expert on the social evolution of East London, and she led us around four pertinent locations starting on the front lawn by the clocktower. I'd not previously fully realised the history of the site, which started out as almshouses in a leafy rural setting before being redeveloped in the 1880s as a "People's Palace" to educate and entertain the local masses. The complex was so huge that only philanthropic money could have funded it, and so significant that Queen Victoria came to open it. But a fire devoured the majority in 1931, after which Queen Mary College took over and rebuilt behind the facade, and most of the campus today is of 1980s vintage. Which contains this...
This is a SephardicJewishcemetery, the second largest of its kind in England, incongruously slotted between the library and the chemistry block. It used to be five times larger but the pre-19th century burials were swept off to a new site in Brentwood when the university arrived. Daniel Mendoza, famed All England Bare-knuckle Boxing Champion 1794-1795, was one of those transported. The low-level layout is because only flat gravestones are used, ensuring that no soul stands out. Student walkways now encircle the cemetery expanse, along with a stretch of the original brick wall, but a short copper staircase provides access to the site should any freshers choose to drop in.
We ended the tour inside QMUL's other historic treasure, the Octagon, a lofty room encircled by two layers of reference books and the busts of eight illustrious wordsmiths. This hugely impressive library building was the Idea Store of its day, apparently with a funicular railway to bring requested volumes of from the stacks, but alas only lasted 14 years before the money to run it ran out. The current owners earn dosh by hiring it out for banquets, receptions and conferences, or if you're an undergraduate you might end up (in normal times) sitting your exams beneath its Gothic dome. It was a proper treat to get inside.
2) Holy Trinity Church/HAC
This 200 year-old church near Tredegar Square became redundant in 1984 and found its way onto the Heritage At Risk list relatively soon after. Now an architect and the Pentecostal congregation who've taken over the church hall want to turn the entire building - a truly cavernous space - into a community-focused facility specialising in heritage and arts events. They're already working through their first lottery grant but there's much more to be done, not least attempting to add step-free access through the front entrance. Various exhibitions and the odd concert have already taken place within. Gaining artistic momentum is going to be quite a challenge, but the surrounding streets house some of Bow's most middle class residents so there's every chance of a cultural hub eventually taking off.
3)Location Number Three
This was brilliant, but I can't specify precisely where it was because only three people turned up and you might have been one of the other two. As with so many Open House properties I've walked past it many times and always wondered what was inside and whether it lived up to the architectural promise of its age, and it totally did. The attention to detail afforded by the original architects was impressive, with function genuinely inspiring form, and often beautifully crafted too. I particularly liked the ceramics and other surfaces, the clarity of the circulatory space and the creative variety delivered across all corners of the site. It must be a delight to work in a building like this, and the employees who led us round definitely exemplified the enthusiasm such construction inspires. If you should ever end up dropping by, you'll see why I heartily recommend a visit.
