Yesterday's Open House tally was five.
Here's a quick summary.
• The busy one with 50 on the tour, so you couldn't hang around trying to get the ideal photo because ten other people were trying that too.
• The one where the usual Sunday morning clientele hadn't left yet so I ducked out after 30 seconds.
• The one where large tour groups kept trying to pass each other on entirely inappropriate stairs.
• The one that wasn't anywhere near as old as it looked.
• The one with the grinniest smiliest tour guide ever.
• The one with a free Golden Jubilee badge.
• The two with lovely volunteers doing important things.
The fiefdom of Dulwich College covers an extraordinarily large portion of SE21, the school's turrety silhouette rising in the distance behind acres of sport. But for Open House they unlocked the gates and welcomed allcomers on a lengthy tour, primarily to show off three buildings... which likely wasn't quite what visitors had been expecting.
The spectacular main building was built in the 1860s to replace Edward Alleyn's much older college in Dulwich Village. It was designed by Charles Barry Junior whose father was responsible for the Houses of Parliament, hence the familiar sequence of tower, lantern and clock tower at roof level. There's a lot of terracotta and a lot of fussy detail, all utterly resplendent on a bright sunny morning. Inside is just as imposing with a grand stone staircase climbing to the Great Hall on the first floor, its roof beams carved with wyverns and generations of Oxbridge admissions commemorated in gold leaf on the walls. Pupils get to soak up its Gothic ambience during assemblies, whereas they probably haven't seen Edward Alleyn's original fireplace in the staff library, nor the two murals above which are allegedly from Queen Elizabeth I's royal barge. This way please...
A large fee-paying school can always use a third science block, especially if the original was destroyed by a direct hit from a V1 in 1944. The end result is The Laboratory, designed ten years ago by the late Nicholas Grimshaw, a stack of labs faced in glass and terracotta to reflect and echo Barry's original alongside. What's extraordinary is the main circulation space which has a sailing boat in the middle of it, this the actual James Caird from Ernest Shackleton's heroic polarrescue mission to Elephant Island in 1916. Against all the odds everyone survived, the boat eventually ending up at Shackleton's alma mater via yet another convoluted story... which the college tells on free tours every Friday, should you fancy a look.
At this point in the tour the guide switched from a lilac-jacketed ex-schoolmaster to a old boy who's now an architect. His practice had been given the job of rebuilding the Lower School Library so we all trooped down there, past various teaching blocks that might have graced a more ordinary comprehensive. He enthused about the Passivhaus rating and thermally enhanced facades, then led us up the spiral staircase to see the IT labs, and several of those present who'd been anticipating a nosey historical jolly probably questioned how they'd ended up looking at glulam timbers in a year-old corridor. How fascinating to have seen behind the scenes at a top public school, however, especially when it might be where the next Prime Minister learned his debating skills.
Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian spiritual scientist who founded a quasi-Christian movement calld Anthroposophy in the early years of the 20th century. Architecturally speaking he was very much against the right angle, hence his Goetheanum HQ in Switzerland was all curves and swooshes with not a square or rectangle in sight. He died in 1925, the same year his followers started work on a similarly themed homebase just north of Baker Street, now recognised as London's only truly Expressionist building. You get some idea of the rationale from outside - the porthole glass and buxom wooden doorway - but only get the full force from within, most notably the adorably sinuous stairwell.
There's been a tin tabernacle beside Bowes Park station since the 1890s but not this one. The building passed from a church hall to a Temperance Society then in 1977 to the North London Samaritans, who didn't really have the money to maintain it. In 2011 they planned a replacement building funded by three new flats but locals wouldn't have it so instead they pivoted to rebuilding the original corrugated structure in modern materials and using it as offices and a community hall. A lottery grant helped fund the transformation, which unlike the tempestuous bureaucratic overture was all completed in eight months flat. The end result is a micro-triumph and has been transforming lives since 2018.
The interior is a gabled space with plain walls and arched windows, and is regularly booked out for yoga, pilates and children's parties. The bookings manager reckoned there isn't a youngster locally who hasn't come to a celebratory do at Shaftesbury Hall. Out the back, behind the kitchen and the loos, is a private office for Samaritans staff with three booths for the important work of answering calls, which these days could come from anywhere across the country not just the North London region. The bookings manager has a separate office outside, ensuring confidentiality, in the corner of a fast-maturing garden. For obtuse reasons the nameplate of a Pendolino named Chad Varah is on the wall - he the founder of the Samaritans and the train still operational but no longer under the Virgin brand.
When Alexandra Palace opened in 1873 so did a convenient station alongside, just round the back, as the terminus of a short spur curling off from Highgate through Muswell Hill. The line was only intermittently popular despite serving residential heights, and closed an incredible five times before closing for good in 1954. But the yellowbrickstation building at Ally Pally survived, also the seriously broad staircase that would once have funnelled visitors up towards what are now firmly locked gates on the North Terrace. The building briefly became a British Rail research laboratory before falling into disrepair, then in the mid-1980s was offered to a group of local volunteers called Community Use For the Old Station (or CUFOS for short) who hire it out as a much needed local space.
Children's parties are popular, as evidenced by the pink flamingo and Spiderman helium balloons bobbing at the ceiling, also therapeutic art, phonics classes and kickboxing. London Metropolitan Brass like to rehearse in the L-shaped waiting room because it's far enough away from local housing that they can play at loud volume before any complaints come in, whereas the Men's Circle tend to hide away in the former waiting room alongside. It's no hi-tech hub but plainly well used and much loved, and all courtesy of the lovely volunteers who keep the whole place ticking over. So much good work is done in small venues around the capital and one of the joys of Open House is the ability to admire, say thankyou and wonder if perhaps you ought to be volunteering more yourself.
This year's Open House album on Flickr is now up to 74 photos.
Anyone else go anywhere interesting for Open House over the weekend?
