For Open House Day Two I could have gone anywhere but I stuck to Hackney. My Sunday safari resembled one of my big lockdown walks but with the added novelty of actually going inside four buildings along the way. They proved a diverse quartet, each "come in and have a look" rather than "exclusive tour for the pre-booked". As usual you won't now be able to visit any of them, and as usual that's the point, in my 20th annual nudge to remind you to get involved next year.
1)Chats Palace
What to do with a closed library isn't a new problem - residents of Homerton faced it in the 1970s when a modern replacement opened at the foot of Chatsworth Road. This left vacant premises up by the hospital at one of the UK's 660 Carnegie Libraries, which'll be why the exterior looks more like a squished classical temple. The community swiftly banded together to nab it as an arts centre, very much of the "empowering the marginalised" school of thought, which it remains to this day. They called it Chats Palace half in honour of Joan Littlewood's vision of a People's Palace and half as a nod to the street it sits on.
The bar that faces you on entering used to be the children's library, while the adult library beyond has been split by a mezzanine to form a studio and a rehearsal space. For Open House the larger upstairs room was laid out with silk screenposters duplicated in the Chats Printshop (Nothing Racist Or Sexist Undertaken), each a gloriouslycolourful reminder of right-on events from more radical days. A typical month in 1982 included Under 17's Night, a Hackney CND meeting, Sunday afternoon jazz, the Rational Theatre Company performing in 'Chicken Tikka', the Homervision Song Contest and Cabaret Night with the Flying Pickets. That's a lovely glass roof too, because libraries used to be built to last.
2)Round Chapel
What to do with a closed church can be even more troublesome, especially when said church was built to meet an expanding Victorian congregation. Members of Clapton's United Reformed Church threw in the towel in the 1980s when maintenance costs spiralled out of reach of their dwindling number, and their Grade II* listed building was only saved through the diligence of the Hackney Historic Buildings Trust. Today it's known simply as the Round Chapel, even though technically it's very much horseshoe-shaped with one rounded end. From outside on Lower Clapton Road it's hard to prepare yourself for the overwhelming theatricality of the space when you walk in.
It feels more auditorium than church, with a pulpit and organ framed in the arch where you might expect the stage to be. The U-shaped upper gallery is supported atop iron columns which continue towards the roof and splay out in a burst of latticework. Thousands could have fitted in to hang on the preacher's every word, and 800 might now cram in for a classical concert or other cultural event to help keep finances ticking over. If you fancy seeing Secret Affair headline a Bank Holiday all-dayer you can book now for the Mods Mayday event next year, or instead hire the chapel for a wedding with wow. The URC's current congregation alas merely hang out in the converted school buildings out back, which are nowhere near as impressive but much easier to support.
3)St Barnabas', Shacklewell
From outside this church is quite hard to spot, tucked away behind a rim of housing, because the site was originally a meagre mission hall. Then in 1910 the Merchant Taylors funded an upgrade to a proper church, designed by architect Charles Herbert Reilly who considered this his finest work. Officially it's deemed Byzantine, although to me it felt like stepping inside a grimy railway viaduct, and I mean that in a good way. I initially assumed it must be Roman Catholic, given the glitzy cross-topped rood screen, whereas it was originally high church... and the current congregation are more the sort who sit, strum and chat. For Open House they'd laid on a tableful of cake and a brief choral recital, but I most enjoyed the chance to wander behind the altar and explore all the secret spaces.
Ian Nairn loved it.
The inside is the best church of its date in London, sure in its domed and barrel-vaulted spaces, incredibly fresh in its detail, concrete and exposed yellow brick. England could so easily have stepped across to modern architecture from here, instead of relapsing into an eclectic fog. This is the kind of quintessential classical composition that Lutyens tried for and never had the integrity to achieve.
I wouldn't have gushed quite that much, but St B's is very much not your average Dalston church.
4)Yorkton Workshops
And finally it's that proper Open House staple, a brand new building attended by the architect, the client and an employee. The location is a row of former workshops off Hackney Road, at the City Farm end of Haggerston Park, which was bought by a small furniture design company for their new studios. Originally the intention was to demolish and start again, but the better climate-friendly option was to retain as much of the original structure as possible. The endresult is a modern-Victorian hybrid, the two older halves bridged by a central staircase and a small outdoor garden terrace. All the Open House visitors liked the smart red staircase.
The client told me how the form of the new building was partly dictated by the neighbours, with no windows permitted facing any residential building which means the skylights receive no direct sun after October. The employee left off demonstrating his table legs to confirm that before the staircase was added he could only reach the upstairs studio by climbing a ladder. And the architect beamed as visitors admired the recycled steel and timbers incorporated in his rich, industrial aesthetic. Open House isn't just about those big heritage buildings in the centre, it's equally about the emerging architecture further out.
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.
