Blog Category: Arts (3 posts)

Guy Fairbank | 14th September 2023 | Guy the London Guide

200 miles north of London, near the cathedral city of Ripon, lies Newby Hall. It’s a handsome house, originally built by Sir Christopher Wren and enlarged and improved by John Carr of York and Robert Adam. It was once owned by the Weddell family, and later became the home of the Marquesses of Ripon. Today it’s owned by the Compton family, who are descendants of the family and who have maintained its beautiful gardens. They’ve even installed a miniature railway (and Gyles Brandreth’s collection of teddy bears). Walk around the extensive grounds and aside from the herbaceous borders, an enchanting rock garden and the gentle River Ure, you’ll find a weatherbeaten equestrian statue and a rusty old door, leading nowhere. Look at them more closely and you’ll discover they both have City of London connections. The man on the horse looks quite the worse for wear, but when you learn of his history, you can understand. He’s travelled all the way from Livorno in Italy, once known as Leghorn. Originally the figure represented John III Sobieski, King of Poland from 1674 to 1696. He was a notable soldier, who most famously led the army that defeated the Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. The city had been besieged for two months, until the combined armies of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, under the command of Sobieski, broke the siege and scattered the Ottoman forces. The Pope saw Sobieski as the saviour of Western European civilisation, which explains the original erection of his statue in Italy. The statue is made from Carrara marble, while the reins are made from bronze. It stands on an ashlar plinth, which was added later. Looking majestic, the Polish king is seen holding the reins, staff in hand, as the horse tramples on the cowering figure of a Turk, his left hand raised to protect him - except the figures are no longer of a Pole and a Turk. Instead, they were changed to represent Charles II and Oliver Cromwell. How t...

Guy Fairbank | 31st December 2021 | General Articles

Kew Green is one of the delights of west London. Around its picturesque cricket field lie a number of very attractive 18th- and 19th-century houses, where a number of famous people made their homes. Its history goes back to the medieval period, not least because there was a ferry crossing where the bridge now lies. Kew Pond, whose history may well date as far back as 996, was used as a fish pond for centuries. We know Kew was a hamlet in the 1300s, then called ‘Cayho’, which was derived from the Old English word ‘hoh’, meaning spur. In the 16th century Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and brother-in-law of Henry VIII held estates here but it was the arrival of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1702-1751) and his wife Augusta who transformed the area into a place of royal patronage. They lived in the White House, long gone but once sited in the present Kew Gardens. Frederick was a popular prince, despised by his parents but admired by the British public, who found him friendly and approachable. He loved cricket and once captained a Prince of Wales XI team against a Duke of Marlborough's XI, here on Kew Green (cricket has been played here since the early 1700s). Legend says he died from being hit by a cricket ball but it was a blood clot that finished him off. His wife Augusta was instrumental in founding the botanical gardens. She employed William Aiton to design a 9-acre botanic garden and William Chambers to build its famous pagoda and classical temples. Her son George III enlarged the gardens and made Kew Palace his preferred home. In the 19th century Queen Victoria made the gardens public, with father and son directors William and Joseph Hooker instrumental in making the gardens what they are today. Both Hookers and Aiton are buried in the churchyard of St Anne’s. This church was founded by Queen Anne in 1714 and was gradually enlarged over the next two centuries. George III, who lived nearby at Kew Palace, often used it as his local c...

fairbankguy | 26th June 2017 | Guy the London Guide

The City of London is not well-known for its 1930s buildings. Between the Daily Express and Daily Telegraph buildings on Fleet Street, the impressive Ibex House in the Minories and the delightful Fox Fine Wines shop in Moorgate (formerly the Fox umbrella shop) you could be stumped trying to think of any more modernist monuments within the Square Mile. Walk out of Cannon Street Station, however, and look for the small Nii Haw sushi bar straight ahead of you. Before it fed local office workers with dim sum this cute and curvaceous outlet was a branch of TM Lewin. But 80 years ago 115 Cannon Street - to give its correct address - was the Mortimer Gall Electrical Centre showroom. The previous building had had a traditional shop front, and perhaps because they were after a contemporary look that reflected the state-of-the-art products they sold, the retailer commissioned the architects E. Maxwell Fry and Walter Gropius to design something more eye-catching. The result: a sleek combination of glass and metal, and a rare example of Bauhaus architecture in London, or indeed Britain. Fry and Gropius chose to use Vitrolite, a shiny glass material that first appeared in Britain in 1930 and was widely used as cladding for shopfronts and fascias at that time Vitrolite can be best seen on that gem of Art Deco architecture, the Daily Express building (Owen Williams 1930-32). Its white version even featured in operating theatres, since it was easy to clean and impervious to water. The first thing you notice when you see Maxwell Fry and Gropius’s shop is the striking way the black glass and wide, clear windows curve inwards at an angle, away from the street, with the entrance door set into the side. The plain glass doors are made from stainless steel and given a satin finish: the long cellulosed pull handles and neat locks complete the utilitarian look. Below the broad windows runs a course of glass bricks that form the stall-riser, while to th...