Return to Prince Street, Hull

click photo to enlarge
Like many photographers, when I find a subject that appeals to me I try to secure the best photograph of it that I possibly can. However, if you have only a single occasion on which to get your shot, then you have to put up with the light, weather, season and other circumstances that prevail at the time. Consequently the end result can be disappointing because you don't achieve the possibilities that you can see in the subject.

But, where the subject is one that you can photograph with reasonable frequency the opportunity exists to improve on your earlier efforts. If you look through this blog you will find several photographs where this has been my motivation. The Humber Bridge is one such example in this blog - see here for the deep rich colours of winter, here for a dull, damp winter view, and here for a contre jour shot with people for scale. Today's post is another example of a trying to get a better shot of a subject.

I first photographed Prince Street in Hull in the 1970s and 1980s. The view from the Market Place through the archway to the curving line of three-storey, multicoloured, terraced houses of the 1770s is quite appealing. I'd more recently tried again with the subject at the end of November 2012. On that last occasion the flat lighting and the line of rubbish bins waiting to be emptied detracted from the shot. The weather on our recent visit was much more promising, and as we walked through this part of the Old Town I tried again and produced a shot that I like much better. The contrast between the deep shadows of the arch and trees with the bright, sunlit buildings works very nicely, and the silhouette of the wall-mounted street light adds a welcome detail.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm (56mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6 Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Defacing buildings the modern way

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The terrace of houses known as Wood View, in Bourne, Lincolnshire, can never have been wonderful architecture. Though it is not without interest, and its scale certainly catches the eye, it was probably built down to a cost by a speculative builder. The main elevation is flat and uses stock bricks, with the only decorative embellishment being bands of orange brick that contrast with the buff of the walls, lintels and sills. What does stand out, however, is the chimneys. They are stepped, use similar bricks to the walls, and are very big.The dormers also catch the eye. Were they always there or are they added? I imagine the former. The whole terrace has been refurbished with new roof tiles, windows, doors, gutters and drainpipes. Any presence the buildings had and has comes from the long, straight row of almost identical dwellings surmounted by the rank of dominant chimneys.

But today the terrace has been defaced in the usual modern way, firstly by chimney-sited aerials and then by wall-mounted satellite dishes. The only blessing is that the roofs don't lend themselves to solar PV panels. Stick a few of those on and the row's disfigurement would be complete. As I travel about the country these three excrescences frequently scream out at me. The appearance of buildings good bad and indifferent is dragged down by aerials, dishes and panels (especially the latter), and the building in turn drags down its area. It's not impossible to have loft mounted aerials (ours is), and better locations (or solutions) for dishes are available. Moreover, we can't be far off the time when PV cells are built into roof tiles and panels can be phased out. Of course, the great danger with such devices festooning buildings is that eventually we stop seeing them. At that point we forget what we've lost.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 85mm (127mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The dignified terrace

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Between about 1725 and 1735 the building speculator, John Simmons, erected a row of seven houses along the east side of Grosvenor Square, London. They were designed in such a way that the central house was larger than the others with a pediment and rusticated quoins. The house at each end of the row was also emphasised, but to a lesser extent. The result was that the terrace looked like a single, large and expensive building. This idea was then developed by the builder/architect, Edward Shepeard, on the north side of the square. His row of houses had the appearance of a fashionable, Palladian villa. At the same time, in Bath, John Wood the Elder (1704-1754) surpassed these efforts with a grand design on the north side of Queen Square. It too had a central pediment, but also a rusticated ground floor, a piano nobile emphasised by Corinthian pilasters, and embellished end blocks. It looked every bit the grand Palladian house of the sort that was appearing on country estates throughout the British Isles. This idea was expanded by Wood, his son and other architects with fine crescents and circuses, and soon such developments - long facades composed as a piece but actually subdivided into a row of dwellings - were appearing all over the country. The basic idea had been taken from Italian Renaissance designs, but these British architects made it very much their own.

Though buildings composed in this way were generally associated with prestigious developments such as those found in the London squares, humbler efforts began to appear too. In fact, as the grand terrace was adapted to a less wealthy clientele, the utilitarian, working- and middle-class terrace was often elevated to the point where the trajectories of the two forms met. I came across one such example a while ago in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire. The terrace of four houses at 22-28 Market Street were built around 1820. The composition is symmetrical with the carriage archway marking the centre point. Four arched doorways indicate the four dwellings, and it is quite obvious which windows belong to which house, with the exception of those over the central arch. Presumably the dwellings to the left and right of this are slightly larger than those at each end: the possession of four first storey windows and an extra dormer window compared with the three of the others proclaim this. Looking at the chimneys it appears that each property has a full stack and half a stack, though the leftmost gable stack has been removed.

This facade is very much a, later, middling cost, provincial essay in the terrace as a single composition. It lacks the grandeur of the examples cited above, and there is a certain awkwardness to its proportions. The first floor windows seem too squashed together to me and I'd like to see the outer doors not quite so close to the edge of the facade. In fact, I'm surprised that the main elevation wasn't visually "closed" by pilasters on the extreme left and right. It's a device that was popular at this time, is evident on a few buildings in the street (see smaller photograph), and would help here. The panelling of the doors themselves is very odd, not to say clumsy, as is their rather skimped surrounds and the inelegant fanlights above. And yet I can't help but feel that though the terrace is the work of a builder rather than an architect, the row does have a certain style, presence and interest that adds a slightly decayed, artisan grace to the street in which it stands.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On