Last year, for no especially good reason, I visited lots of London's Town Halls for Open House. This year, for even less of a good reason, I visited lots of non-Town halls. And what a lot of different non-Town halls there were.
Freemasons' Hall: That's New Thames House, the MI5 HQ, if you watch Spooks. Or it's the centre of UK Freemasonry, the United Grand Lodge of England, if you're a man with a trowel. Blimey, what a building. A tall white Art Deco masterpiece on the edge of Covent Garden, with lofty belltower and towering columns. On Saturday those columns were plastered with car-related sponsorship, thanks to a London Fashion Week event that was taking place inside. At the side entrance waited a queue of uber-trendy dolled-up wannabes, for whom blown-back hair and unfeasible footwear were de rigueur. Meanwhile at the front entrance, beside a promotional Vauxhall, a trickle of less well-dressed Open Housers arrived for a scout inside. The interior is magnificent, as you might expect from an organisation nominally dedicated to the building trade. First up are three vestibules, blessed with stained glass windows and ornate spiky ceilings. These lead through bronze doors to the Grand Temple, which is essentially a rectangular-ish auditorium topped by a stunning painted roof [photo]. Here many visitors sat down to soak in the splendour of the azure blue mosaic cornice, or perhaps to wonder what strange trouser-rolling ceremonies might have taken place before the Grand Master's throne. Careful eyes would have spotted the Square and Compasses motif everywhere, perhaps atop a pillar, perhaps in the supports of a footbridge. The official route passed through the Library, open to the public as part of the Museum of Freemasonry, should you fancy a look around some non-Open-House day. And then a winding route back to the street, past mysterious rooms full of tapping fashion journalists, and beautifully coiffured stylists, and workmen lugging lighting equipment. Most peculiar, quite surreal, when three worlds collide. Great Queen Street, opened 1933
Methodist Central Hall: In a prime position opposite the entrance to Westminster Abbey, yet often overlooked, is a large religious building with an impressive history. Central Hall was built to commemorate John Wesley's centenary, and comprises a mixture of spaces for worship, meetings and show. At its heart is a theatre-like Methodist chapel beneath a massive concrete dome, with a colour-changing organ dominating the front wall. It's a very flexible space, used for services and community activities, and also the location of the first ever meeting of the United Nations in 1946. Various major public enquiries are held in the lecture hall downstairs - indeed it was very much busier here before the giant Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre was built alongside. And if you've ever wondered precisely where the World Cup was when it was stolen in 1966, it was here. Understated, and they like it that way, yet a key London building for almost a century. Storey's Gate, opened 1912
Conway Hall: Next a gathering place that's definitely not religious. Conway Hall was built as the headquarters of a humanist group called the South Palace Ethical Society, to be somewhere they could come to discuss and orate and think. It's tucked away in the corner of a Holborn square, partly resembling an Art Deco cinema and partly a 1930s church hall [photo]. The brick facade seems narrow but shields a larger irregular site behind. It's like stepping back in time, walking in through the entrance hall, with a solid yet mundane aesthetic that's comfortingly pre-war. The main hall is off to the right, with the three-sided balcony accessed up a winding staircase, and acoustics to die for. On the stage here you might listen to an anti-racism speech, or lead an interestingconference, or attend the regular Sunday evening concert (they've been going since 1887 and are reputedly the longest running series of concerts anywhere in the world). "To thine own self be true" reads the inscription above the boards, which is a phrase from Hamlet, not that you're likely to find the Bard's works in the Library. Think more leatherbound psychology, back copies of The Skeptic and anything by Richard Dawkins. You have to admire the collective resilience that's kept this building functioning over the decades, and it's definitely somewhere to consider if you ever need to host anything uplifting, worthy and non-commercial. Red Lion Square, opened 1929
Drapers' Hall: A short bus ride into the Square Mile, a dramatic contrast. The Worshipful Company of Drapers is one of the three most important livery companies in the City, because people have always wanted to wear wool. The company's longevity has amassed it a great fortune, and some of that is on display as part of the sumptuous ornamentation throughout the building. Nothing here's older than the Great Fire, and they've had two, while most of the excess decoration date back to Victorian times. Never leave a plain surface when it could be heavily patterned, appears to been the motto of the various architects. All the rooms are stunning, especially the LiveryHall with its marble pillars, ceiling frescos and ring of golden arches. One lady guide remembered attending the Coronation Ball here - an epic evening of dancing in this gilded bubble until breakfast was served the following morning. There's money in sheep, and this place proves it. Carpenters' Hall: What a difference a bomb makes. While Drapers Hall survived WW2 almost completely intact, Carpenters' Hall was destroyed when a gas main exploded along London Wall. The interior was completely rebuilt, slowly, gradually, throughout the 1950s, to create a modern twist on a traditional City HQ. Almost every surface and additional feature is made of wood, be that a panelled wall, a carved sculpture or a curving banister. Essentially the building allowed the Company's master craftsmen to show off, in teak or mahogany. The overall look may now be a little dated, but one careless flame is all it would take to spark a complete modern revamp. Chartered Accountants' Hall: There are several non-medieval Livery Companies, one of which belongs to the official overseer of Britain's numbercrunchers. The exterior along Moorgate Place may look Georgian, yet much of the interior is terribly modern. There are comfy-chaired alcoves where you can imagine being schmoozed by a client, plus a large bland conference hall where there must have been so many one-day seminars on tax legislation. But take a few steps to the original wing and there's a magnificent classicalreception with parallel murals rising to a skylit dome[photo], and a library with a Venetian bridge across the centre. Not everything about accountancy is grey and predictable. Throgmorton Street (or thereabouts)
If you've ever been to the toilet north of the Thames, anywhere between Acton and Bow, then you've contributed a little to the history of this building. The Abbey Mills Pumping Station is an essential link in London's sewage system, built in the 1870s by Sir Joseph Bazalgette and designed to speed millions of gallons of unpleasant liquids downstream. The pumps within raise the brownwater by forty feet into the Northern Outfall Sewer, thence slowly downhill for release into the Thames at Beckton. And the station still functions, despite being superseded by a more modern pumping station nextdoor, such was the genius nature of Victorian infrastructure. Courtesy of Open House, Thames Water allowed a handful of consumers inside the building this weekend, and we all enjoyed a fascinating two hour tour.
It's a magnificent building, entirely unnecessarily so [photo]. The Victorians had a habit of embellishing public projects, and Abbey Mills is no exception [photo]. The lantern on top earned the pumping station the nickname "the Mosque in the marsh", back in the days when nobody else lived anywhere nearby. Four Byzantine towers provide access to the roof, with rows of glazed tiles and carved limestone flora beneath to provide additional artistic flourishes. The building was originally cruciform in shape, before two additional boiler houses were added (only one of which survives). There were also twoenormous chimneys topped by minarets, although those came down at the start of the Second World War when they were decreed a toppling hazard. A railway line brought in coal to keep the plant working 24 hours a day, and key employees were housed in a row of cottages close by so that they were always on call. The building is sometimes known as the Cathedral of Sewage, and it's easy to see why [photo].
Inside (oh yes, the tour went inside), the view's justasamazing. High ceilings, rising to the lantern's symmetrical windowlight at the centre [photo]. A raised level of intricate ironwork, originally installed to access a series of beam engines, until these were replaced by electric pumps in the 1930s [photo][photo]. The replacements look like Daleks guarding the four corners of the building, and have recently been restored to provide several more years of service. Gaping holes in the floor lead down to thick pipes in chambers below, a curious mixture of old and very new. Around the walls are various dials and scales and chunky electronic cabinets, all now superfluous but part of the charm of the interior [photo][photo]. Nobody works inside any more, not unless something here goes wrong. In normal circumstances, as and when, the entire station now runs automatically, controlled from elsewhere.
In truth the old Victorian building doesn't need to function too often. A new aluminium-clad pumping station was opened in 1997, and only a couple of times a month does this still need support from its ancestor. There are eight pumping stations here in total, each lettered from A to I (but no G) and all of slightly different vintage. The original's A, boosted by B a few years later, then rather-largeC built to disgorge excess greywater direct into the Channelsea River. The Channelsea still suffers when too much sewage needs to escape, which is why the Lee Tunnel is being built between here and Beckton to reduce the environmental impact on the Thames. Its pumping station will be wholly underground, leaving virtually no visible footprint, unlike the other tumbledown buildings we observed during our tour of the site. I'd never realised there was quite so much here at Abbey Mills, but now I'll look down from the Greenway with a completely new eye.
The tour was excellent, thanks not least to our guide who delivered all the facts with humour and a knowing smile. He was accompanied by two Thames Water employees in hi-vis jackets, one of whom is the company's archivist and who later took us down to his repository. The room is stuffed full of files of plans, blueprints, photographic plates and manhole cover locations. On the shelves are some fantastically old volumes detailing all the original plans of London's Victorian sewers - giant leatherbound tomes labelled "Hammersmith to Bow" or "Counters Creek to Old Ford" or whatever - which are still referred to whenever developers want to build something new on top. The other employee works down the sewers, attempting to keep them clear and unblocked, and recently helped dig out a huge plug of cooking fatunder Leicester Square. You wouldn't want to do it, but be damned glad that someone does, and that Bazalgette's supreme sewage solution survives.
When I was small, my parents took me to the Commonwealth Institute. Or maybe it was the cubs. Or maybe I went with school. It was that sort of place - worthy, educational, dark - and not a building you'd visit for a wild day out. Outside stood an entire forest of fluttering flagpoles, while the inside was filled with a variety of exhibits relating to our former Empire. Some Rhodesian shields, some Inuit clothes, several garments made from beads and a lot of other ethnic bits from somewhere. But school trips can't sustain an underfunded exhibition, so eventually the Commonwealth Institute died. It closed its doors as recently as 2002, with all the exhibits relocated to Bristol and the structure abandoned to decay. Fret not, there may just be a happy ending.
The Commonwealth Institute is one of London's greatest modern buildings [photo], deemed second in importance only to the Royal Festival Hall. It was built in the early 1960s to replace the Imperial Institute (a drum-banging tribute to colonial superiority since replaced by an extension to Imperial College). The new building on Kensington High Street was a precursor of the Big Society - underfunded by government and therefore reliant on voluntary donations. The hardwood floors were made from timber from Nigeria and the like, whereas the copper for the roof came from what's now called Zambia. And it's the roof that makes this building special, and without which it would have knocked down for housing a decade ago. Officially the roof is a hyperbolic paraboloid, although you'd more likely describe it as saddle-shaped. It was terribly advanced for its time, some would say over-ambitious, and proceeded to leak every time it rained. That's since been fixed, but what to do with the interior has been a headache ever the building was listed.
The future has arrived courtesy of the Design Museum, which has outgrown its former banana warehouse in Shad Thames and plans to relocate to the edge of Holland Park in 2014. There's a lot of work to be done before then, which'll involve ripping out most of the interior and filling it in with new bits. Let's not dwell on that for now, and instead rejoice that for one weekend only the old Commonwealth Institute has reopened for Londoners to pay their last respects. The Design Museum's directors have been more than keen to showcase the building's shell for Open House, and were perhaps surprised that there weren't queues forming around the block to look inside. Last chance to reminisce, last chance to see.
Entry from Kensington High Street is beneath a peeling covered walkway[photo]. This won't survive the renewal - one of three new apartment blocks is due to be squeezed-in here to surround the 1960s survivor. Let's not dwell on that for now, and instead let's head inside through the main entrance. It still says Welcome to the Commonwealth Institute on a colourful board inside the door, and then there's a lovely relief map highlighting our sister countries on the wall in the foyer. Bet that won't survive either. And then up the stairs (there are a lot of stairs, and no lifts - there was no disability access legislation in the 1960s) to enter the building proper.
Wow. It didn't look quite this open last time I was here, because the galleries were filled with cases and exhibits and head-dresses and stuff. Now, however, there's nothing but an empty shell plus two layered galleries encircling a great void [photo]. Museum visitors entered via a central marble platform, with steps leading off in all directions to give equality of choice [photo]. We got a welcoming chat and the chance to stare, before being ushered up to the next level to hear more from the volunteers. It all ran a little quick, with relatively short speeches at each location, many of which repeated what we'd already been told. Feel free to take photos, they said, then rushed us on before there was much opportunity to take anything at all. I took several, only to return home and discover they were almost all awful. Grainy, speckly exposures, my camera straining in the interior gloom, which is not really what you want on a unique unrepeatable last-chance encounter. [photo]
It was great to walk around the former galleries, taking care on the decaying hardwood floors, and staring out and across and down and up. The roof is indeed a marvellous structure, comprising a twisted surface of concrete blocks between parallel wooden struts [photo]. The giant saddle hangs heavy across one diagonal, and I was pleased to hear this upper level should survive the refit. The museum's permanent collection will be displayed around the upper level, permitting approximately three times the space afforded in the existing Shad Thames venue. But staff were a little cagier about what might appear in the lower two-thirds of the building. We should expect much of this to be boxed in, definitely for offices on the ground floor, but also for other unmentioned facilities elsewhere. There'll be a cafe, obviously, and a shop, and probably several big rooms they can hire out to make money. Architect John Pawson has been given the task of repurposing the existing building for practical modern functionality, and will no doubt create a completely different kind of 'wow', but the days of the Commonwealth Institute as a single open space are over. [36 lovely photos]
By 2014, if all goes to plan, the New Design Museum will open its doors and you'll be able to see the end results of the Institute's imminent transformation. But thisweekend it's an old friend on the cusp of transition, and there really ought to be queues round the block to say goodbye.
Freemasons' Hall: That's New Thames House, the MI5 HQ, if you watch Spooks. Or it's the centre of UK Freemasonry, the United Grand Lodge of England, if you're a man with a trowel. Blimey, what a building. A tall white Art Deco masterpiece on the edge of Covent Garden, with lofty belltower and towering columns. On Saturday those columns were plastered with car-related sponsorship, thanks to a London Fashion Week event that was taking place inside. At the side entrance waited a queue of uber-trendy dolled-up wannabes, for whom blown-back hair and unfeasible footwear were de rigueur. Meanwhile at the front entrance, beside a promotional Vauxhall, a trickle of less well-dressed Open Housers arrived for a scout inside. The interior is magnificent, as you might expect from an organisation nominally dedicated to the building trade. First up are three vestibules, blessed with stained glass windows and ornate spiky ceilings. These lead through bronze doors to the Grand Temple, which is essentially a rectangular-ish auditorium topped by a stunning painted roof [photo]. Here many visitors sat down to soak in the splendour of the azure blue mosaic cornice, or perhaps to wonder what strange trouser-rolling ceremonies might have taken place before the Grand Master's throne. Careful eyes would have spotted the Square and Compasses motif everywhere, perhaps atop a pillar, perhaps in the supports of a footbridge. The official route passed through the Library, open to the public as part of the Museum of Freemasonry, should you fancy a look around some non-Open-House day. And then a winding route back to the street, past mysterious rooms full of tapping fashion journalists, and beautifully coiffured stylists, and workmen lugging lighting equipment. Most peculiar, quite surreal, when three worlds collide.
Methodist Central Hall: In a prime position opposite the entrance to Westminster Abbey, yet often overlooked, is a large religious building with an impressive history. Central Hall was built to commemorate John Wesley's centenary, and comprises a mixture of spaces for worship, meetings and show. At its heart is a theatre-like Methodist chapel beneath a massive concrete dome, with a colour-changing organ dominating the front wall. It's a very flexible space, used for services and community activities, and also the location of the first ever meeting of the United Nations in 1946. Various major public enquiries are held in the lecture hall downstairs - indeed it was very much busier here before the giant Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre was built alongside. And if you've ever wondered precisely where the World Cup was when it was stolen in 1966, it was here. Understated, and they like it that way, yet a key London building for almost a century.
Drapers' Hall: A short bus ride into the Square Mile, a dramatic contrast. The Worshipful Company of Drapers is one of the three most important livery companies in the City, because people have always wanted to wear wool. The company's longevity has amassed it a great fortune, and some of that is on display as part of the sumptuous ornamentation throughout the building. Nothing here's older than the Great Fire, and they've had two, while most of the excess decoration date back to Victorian times. Never leave a plain surface when it could be heavily patterned, appears to been the motto of the various architects. All the rooms are stunning, especially the Livery Hall with its marble pillars, ceiling frescos and ring of golden arches. One lady guide remembered attending the Coronation Ball here - an epic evening of dancing in this gilded bubble until breakfast was served the following morning. There's money in sheep, and this place proves it.
If you've ever been to the toilet north of the Thames, anywhere between Acton and Bow, then you've contributed a little to the history of this building. The Abbey Mills Pumping Station is an essential link in London's sewage system, built in the 1870s by Sir Joseph Bazalgette and designed to speed millions of gallons of unpleasant liquids downstream. The pumps within raise the brownwater by forty feet into the Northern Outfall Sewer, thence slowly downhill for release into the Thames at Beckton. And the station still functions, despite being superseded by a more modern pumping station nextdoor, such was the genius nature of Victorian infrastructure. Courtesy of Open House, Thames Water allowed a handful of consumers inside the building this weekend, and we all enjoyed a fascinating two hour tour.
Inside (oh yes, the tour went inside), the view's just as amazing. High ceilings, rising to the lantern's symmetrical windowlight at the centre [photo]. A raised level of intricate ironwork, originally installed to access a series of beam engines, until these were replaced by electric pumps in the 1930s [photo] [photo]. The replacements look like Daleks guarding the four corners of the building, and have recently been restored to provide several more years of service. Gaping holes in the floor lead down to thick pipes in chambers below, a curious mixture of old and very new. Around the walls are various dials and scales and chunky electronic cabinets, all now superfluous but part of the charm of the interior [photo] [photo]. Nobody works inside any more, not unless something here goes wrong. In normal circumstances, as and when, the entire station now runs automatically, controlled from elsewhere.
When I was small, my parents took me to the Commonwealth Institute. Or maybe it was the cubs. Or maybe I went with school. It was that sort of place - worthy, educational, dark - and not a building you'd visit for a wild day out. Outside stood an entire forest of fluttering flagpoles, while the inside was filled with a variety of exhibits relating to our former Empire. Some Rhodesian shields, some Inuit clothes, several garments made from beads and a lot of other ethnic bits from somewhere. But school trips can't sustain an underfunded exhibition, so eventually the Commonwealth Institute died. It closed its doors as recently as 2002, with all the exhibits relocated to Bristol and the structure abandoned to decay. Fret not, there may just be a happy ending.
The future has arrived courtesy of the Design Museum, which has outgrown its former banana warehouse in Shad Thames and plans to relocate to the edge of Holland Park in 2014. There's a lot of work to be done before then, which'll involve ripping out most of the interior and filling it in with new bits. Let's not dwell on that for now, and instead rejoice that for one weekend only the old Commonwealth Institute has reopened for Londoners to pay their last respects. The Design Museum's directors have been more than keen to showcase the building's shell for Open House, and were perhaps surprised that there weren't queues forming around the block to look inside. Last chance to reminisce, last chance to see.
Wow. It didn't look quite this open last time I was here, because the galleries were filled with cases and exhibits and head-dresses and stuff. Now, however, there's nothing but an empty shell plus two layered galleries encircling a great void [photo]. Museum visitors entered via a central marble platform, with steps leading off in all directions to give equality of choice [photo]. We got a welcoming chat and the chance to stare, before being ushered up to the next level to hear more from the volunteers. It all ran a little quick, with relatively short speeches at each location, many of which repeated what we'd already been told. Feel free to take photos, they said, then rushed us on before there was much opportunity to take anything at all. I took several, only to return home and discover they were almost all awful. Grainy, speckly exposures, my camera straining in the interior gloom, which is not really what you want on a unique unrepeatable last-chance encounter. [photo]
