Yesterday's Open House tally was eight.
Here's a quick summary.
• The one where the organiser glared at me for walking through the door at 10am because she wasn't ready yet.
• The one which eventually degenerated into a local nostalgia reminiscence nodding session.
• The one where there was nobody on the front desk and I spent ten minutes wondering if I was trespassing around the building.
• The one with free tea and cake afterwards, but the tour stopped elsewhere so nobody went.
• The one where I scarpered before the vicar launched into a long lecture.
• The one where the bloke on the front desk had done his own information sheet but spelt 'Cubitt' wrong in two different ways.
• The one with the bottled aphrodisiacs and sponges.
• The one that smelled of relentless butchery.
Let's do four of those in more detail (not necessarily in the above order).
Sometimes when checking through the Open House building list you stop and think "really? ooh!" In this case the trigger was the possibility of entering the private world of Smithfield meat market, not just walking between the impressive painted ironwork of Grand Avenue. "There will be a tour route setup up through the East side of the building that visitors can walk through on their own", it said, with the choice of peeking in on Friday or Saturday from 4pm, after hours. Nobody turned up to give a spiel or dish out information, we just pushed through the flapping plastic strips and entered the private world of the fleshmongers.
Smithfield's East and West Market Halls were designed by Sir Horace Jones, opened in 1868 and are of course Grade II* listed. Each building is about 90m long with a central passageway called Buyers Walk, and shielded beneath a high ribbed ceiling supported on iron columns. To either side are moppable bays and refrigerated counters, each belonging to a long-established family business specialising in the wholesale meat trade: Absalom & Tribe, Warman & Gutteridge, Gee & Webb, Reeve & Co, take your pick.
It certainly reeks of meat, like a particularly potent high street butchers, even on a non-trading day after everything's been scrubbed down. Glass fronted counters lie empty, heavy trolleys sit idle and rolls of plastic wrap await Monday's custom. The larger units have little kiosks where the cashier sits (We Do Not Take Amex), some emblazoned with seriously retro posters for Scotch Lamb, Danish Crown and Cole Valley Bacon. I spotted a discarded receipt for £44 of beef on a bloodstained plastic tray, also a nameless chunk of meat inert on the concrete floor.
But all this is merely front of house. Each of the 22 units has a longer bay behind leading to a service corridor along the side of the building for easy access. Just one of these had its shutter up, clearly revealing a strip-lit room with carcasses hanging from individual steel hooks attached to some kind of pulley system on the ceiling. I think the meat was pork, also the bagged haunch ready-wrapped on the table, but I'm not an expert on identifying skinned animals fresh from the back of a lorry.
To be fair anyone can buy meat, poultry and provisions at Smithfield, it's open to the public by Charter, not just for Open House. Trading starts at 2am and they recommend arriving before 7am, partly because the whole range of stalls is open and partly because that's when the Congestion Charge kicks in. But the market's days are numbered after the City of London announced its intention to close the halls by 2028, no longer with any proposed replacement out at Dagenham. The traders will still sell game and mutton elsewhere and the buildings will be transformed into a "cultural and commercial hub" of some kind, yet to be determined, to complement the adjacent London Museum. They've suggested a focus on food so it could be Spitalfields on steroids, or worse, but I'm glad I saw it when it was a down-to-earth flogger of meat, no airs, no graces. [10 photos]
Students at Guy's Hospital (officially King's College London GKT School of Medical Education) have access to a splendid little repository of bones and belljars tucked away round the back of the Memorial Gardens. It was partitioned from the main library in 2007 but is rammed with so many wooden cases that it looks every inch an Edwardian original. I was expecting human body parts for medical teaching but the specimens are animals of all kinds, from armadillos to bottled Spanish Fly beetles and from penguins to an extinct marsupial wolf. Pharmaceuticals also get a look-in, notably a very early batch of insulin, plus a rare French 3D plaster model labelled Do Not Touch The Snail.
It's all a bit higgledy, so case 45 with the boa constrictor isn't necessarily anywhere near case 46 with the midwife toad. But the curator knows where everything is, indeed I was desperately impressed when she identified the species of the baby elephant skeleton purely from the shape of the ridges on its teeth. She also said the university's lucky to have a collection of this size because it'd be nigh impossible to assemble it today, especially after the end of an informal arrangement they once had with London Zoo. Be sure to sign the Visitors Book on the way out.
These two sumptuous mansions bookend Belgravia Square, Romania at number 1 and Argentina across the road at number 49. One's an ambassadorial residence and the other a cultural institute, so don't bring your visa request to either.
Argentina's is the finer building, a detached villa entered via an octagonal hall beneath a flapping blue and white flag. Downstairs is used for entertaining with a cream-panelled dining room and two loungier spaces, all fully chandeliered, complete with a blazing fire and a fully-stocked spirits collection. It was easy to imagine diplomatic shenanigans on the comfy chairs, also just a bit special to be swanning around freely like you were an important guest.
Over in Romania the focus was art, not negotiation, with two contemporary exhibitions gracing the walls and a piano recital ready to begin in the salon upstairs. The building looked more interesting though, sorry, especially the gorgeous swirling staircase climbing three duck-egg-blue storeys beneath an elliptical skylight. As with many other properties hereabouts it was originally a private residence, the Romanians arriving in 1936 and the ambassador moving out to Kensington in 2005. But at least here you could easily tell which country was being celebrated, whereas the Argentine residence seemingly had more nods to London and classical Europe than to the land of beef and tango.
I'll tell you about the other four venues later, also those I hope to visit today. Meanwhile this year's Open House album on Flickr is now up to 58 photos, and to help you out I've put the newest at the start.
Before this weekend's final Open House visits, two I sneaked to yesterday.
Open House:HTA Design (Hackney Wick) The One To Blame
Someone has to design the buildings and public realm we live in and for a lot of modern projects that's HTA Design, a 12 year-old architectural practice. Eden Dock at Canary Wharf is one of theirs, also Kidbrooke Park and Cane Hill, not to mention masterplanning Greenford Quay and Meridian Water. Three years ago they moved into new premises at 75 Wallis Road in at Hackney Wick, an iconic location because the main building was once a factory for making Parkesine, the world's first manufactured plastic. Brick and timber are more their thing these days, you'll be pleased to hear.
Last night they opened up their doors for Open House, technically after hours although some employees were still at their workstations polishing projects or finishing their online shopping. We did a circuit through their four knocked-through sheds, admiring the original brickwork and plentiful natural daylight through original windows. We climbed to the mezzanine, passed umpteen mini models and landscapes in progress. We observed the 3D printers, which one employee appeared to have used to make small dinosaurs in contravention of the clear desk policy, and descended to the sustainably well-used cycle store. And we ended in the capacious canteen where next week's free-to-employees vegetarian-focused menu kicks off with Leek & Potato Soup and Lemon & Herb Salmon.
It's always good to be reminded what a modern workplace looks like, also reassuring that a company which designs buildings has done such a good job of their own. I thought I'd best keep quiet about what I thought of Elephant Park, though.
It's always suspicious when an Open House venue is listed every day of the week as well as the adjacent weekends, suggesting the building's always open to the public and they're merely trying to increase visitor numbers. So it is here at Hounslow House, the six year-old council office and library complex, where the target is merely a display of 28 photographs on the first floor by the librarian's desk.
They're of seven locations around the borough, half old photos from 60-odd years ago, half much more recent. Think Chiswick Bus Works/Chiswick Park Campus, also Isleworth's United Biscuits Factory/Sky TV HQ. Feltham must be a tad dull because the only place of interest they could find was the shopping centre. And it's all worth a look, especially if you're local, but it's in situ for a month then on tour around the borough for a month, also easily reproducible as a pdf, so hardly worthy of its Open House listing. I'm hoping for better today.
The only equinoctial square in London, indeed the only street called Equinox Something, is Equinox Square in Poplar. It's quite recent, quite bland and tells us a lot about the direction of inner London housing.
A quick history of the site:Originally bounded by Charles Street and Cordelia Street (part of a dense grid of Victorian terraced houses). During WW2, half-destroyed by bomb damage. After WW2, Charles Street was renamed Scurr Street (after a former Mayor of Poplar and MP for Mile End). In the 1950s, just north of the Lansbury neighbourhood (much celebrated at the Festival of Britain). In the 1960s, the remaining houses were levelled and replaced by a sparse horseshoe of two-storey flats. In 2012, demolished by Poplar Harca to be replaced by a new highrise development called Equinox.
Tell us about Equinox: A Bellway Homes project. 273 apartments split across four buildings – Eclipse, Pisces, Jupiter and Kepler. The tallest block has 13 storeys. Includes a row of a dozen townhouses. A mixed tenure of market value, shared ownership and social rented flats. Prices ranged from £233,950 to £352,950. Described on the hoardings as A New Dawn In London Living. Everyone got an open plan kitchen with a Zanussi Stainless steel electric oven. And then the marketing suite packed up and left.
12 years later the development is firmly embedded in the local urbanscape. Folk stare in fron the bus stop opposite or wander through the alleyway beside the dental practice. Someone's dumped a freezer, bed and chest of drawers on the pavement beneath the car park enforcement sign. Chairs and washing are spread across umpteen glass-fronted balconies. A tabby cat sits on the front windowsill at number 6 above the scrap of front garden. You'll look in vain for a streetsign because the Equinox name lives on only above the communal keypads. The paltry fenced-off playground must have ticked sufficient boxes in the initial planning application. The only item of architectural interest, admittedly a cracker, is a ribbed concrete wall left over from the postwar flats, originally part of the staircase to the upper walkway.
Many residents of Equinox Square currently have an excellent view of Canary Wharf across the development site that used to mark the northern fringe of Chrisp Street Market. That'll be disappearing soon as yet more flats go up, the cycle of densification and upthrust continuing, maybe even another micro-square around some central courtyard.
And this is why Tower Hamlets has far more Squares than any other London borough, almost 50 more than second-placed Westminster.
Harr
2
Barn
20
Enf
8
Hari
6
WFor
7
Redb
10
Hav
6
Hill
11
Eal
9
Bren
5
Cam
53
Isl
50
Hack
35
B&D
11
Hou
12
H&F
22
K&C
45
West
66
City
23
Tow
114
New
32
Rich
11
Wan
32
Lam
25
Sou
61
Lew
12
Grn
26
Bex
9
King
14
Sut
4
Mer
7
Cro
7
Bro
15
It's all down to modern private developments. Over 75% of Tower Hamlets' Squares are private streets "not maintainable at public expense", whereas in Westminster it's 40% and in old-school Kensington & Chelsea more like 20%. A lot of new estates include segmented spaces or gated courtyards with road access only for residents, and many of these get called Squares despite not traditionally being such. The fastest-growing borough in the country continues to expand, and Squares are a fine way to pack them in.
