Built to impress

click photo to enlarge
The first two houses that we bought and lived in suffered from a problem that many buildings have suffered from down the ages - more money was spent on the front than on the back and sides. One was built in the early 1900s and the other in the 1930s. In each case the quality of the bricks on the main elevation was better than those elsewhere. Ornament in the form of stone/concrete arches, oriel windows, and large bays appeared on the front, but not on the back, or where they did, in simpler, more pared down form. The fact is, those houses and many other buildings had relatively more money spent at the front for a reason that is obvious - to impress the buyer and passers-by. Interestingly, and refreshingly, this wasn't so pronounced in a house we bought that was built in the late 1970s. Our current house, part of which is oldish and part relatively recent uses the same quality materials throughout but has a much more "composed" facade.

Constraints of this sort did not affect the affluent builders of the country houses of the Georgian period - all elevations aimed to impress. At Belton House the main (south) facade and the rear (north) elevation are almost the same. The east elevation is composed with symmetry in mind, is flusher than either north or south, but then doesn't have the main entrances that those feature. Only on the west, where stables, courtyards and other ancillary buildings are found does the main house lose something of its imposing appearance. And here this is compensated for by those subsidiary buildings being large, ornate and monumental.Today's photograph shows Belton House's plainer east elevation from one side of the wide avenue of trees that frame it. Incidentally, my composition was prompted by the desire to find a composition that was a little different, that emphasised the building's setting, but also by a desire to minimise the featureless blue sky.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen


Photo Title: Belton House, Lincolnshire
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 42mm (84mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Painted building facade, King's Cross

click photo to enlarge
The UK is pretty reticent when it comes to painting the outside of buildings. Traditionally render has been painted, usually white or cream though sometimes branching out into drab pink, blood red, a shade or two of green, and sometimes blue or yellow. In recent years quite a few new housing developments have been built that make use of colour. There are regions, often highland areas, where farms and isolated houses in the countryside are sometimes painted white to make them more visible. However, the place where colour is most readily accepted on the exterior of a building is the seaside town. Here terraces are frequently colour-washed one or many colours. Blue and white - nautical colours - are favoured, but others can be seen too.

During the last quarter of the twentieth century painted facades with a humorous or artistic intention, sometimes like graffiti writ large, began to proliferate. I have mixed feelings about such buildings. Sometimes they are fun, but too often they are eyesores, a garish flash of colour that detracts from the locality rather than adding to it. Frequently the intention is to prolong the life of a run-down structure, though the fading paint soon contributes to the air of dereliction. The example in today's photograph is near King's Cross railway station in London. The paintwork doesn't acknowledge the building at all, but treats it as a flat canvas with shapes and lines continuing across windows and pilasters as though they didn't exist. This distinguishes it from most such work. It's the sort of treatment that I feel I should dislike but I don't, and I can't quite put my finger on what it is that appeals to me. Perhaps it's because, in its location, it isn't so garish that it demands to be looked at. But more than that, the combination of colours and the strong diagonals are very much to my taste.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Painted Building, King's Cross, London
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 90mm (180mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5.5
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:320
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Facades, fanlights and foliage

click photo to enlarge
The house shown in this photograph, a detached building on the High Street of the village of Billingborough, Lincolnshire, has puzzled me for a while. It has a symmetrical facade with a centrally placed, panelled front door flanked by a fluted doorcase, traceried fanlight with a semi-circular head above, single glazing-bar sash windows (with extra margin lights) either side, and three similar windows at the first floor level. A parapet hides the double ridge roof. There are gable-end chimney stacks, and the front of the house is finished in light-coloured stock brick, whilst the remainder is red brick. Two things have baffled me about the building: its date, and whether or not the fanlight is original.

Everything about the unembellished front of the house says early 1800s - the plainness of door and windows combined with symmetry, the spare-looking parapet, the colour of the facing brick, the absence of surface ornament. It looks to belong to the period when Georgian proper was giving way to the Regency-style: that is to say, about 1815. My researches show that it is indeed early nineteenth century. But what about the fanlight? My guess was that the almost Art Nouveau curves were late nineteenth century - that it replaced an earlier, more fan-like fanlight. But I appear to have been wrong. I find that designs in both cast-iron and wood, incorporating tear drops, curves and circles of the type seen here, were not uncommon in the early 1800s. And, on subsequent trips, I have come across more examples exactly like this one, and others that are similar, in houses of the same date.

So, that explains my interest in this facade as architecture. However, I probably wouldn't have photographed it for blog-posting purposes had it not been for the sensitive symmetrical planting of Pyracantha, Senecio greyii and potted dwarf conifers around the door. Combined with the restrained architecture they produce a very appealing combination of colours and textures. Even the more recent use of tiles for the steps adds to the charm of this attractive composition.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On