Ludgate Circus in Illustration and Postcard

This unsigned illustration comes from an Ernest Nister illustrated children’s book, The Scrapbook of Trains (c.1900). An atmospheric rendering of a busy Victorian street scene populated by some unconvincing rigid figures. When the railway bridge in these views was constructed in 1865 there was a storm of protest from the Victorian public angry at losing the view of St Paul’s up Ludgate Hill. All to enable the London, Chatham & Dover Railway to extend its services into the City of London. The line formed a link with the Metropolitan Railway near Farringdon and much later was used by Thameslink for cross-London services. Ludgate was one of the 6 gates in Roman London’s city wall. The bridge came down in 1990 when the Thameslink tunnel was completed, thus restoring the lost view of St. Paul’s after 125 years.

The King Lud pub (left) opened in 1870 and would finally close after various changes of identity in 2005 - the building remains and the ground floor is occupied by a Leon restaurant. Among a number of reminiscences on the Closed Pubs website is a recollection of a lively performance by the famous Blues piano player Champion Jack Dupree. A minority of the many postcard views have chosen to capture the scene at ground level but most opted for an aerial view from the upper floors of neighbouring buildings - a few waited for a train to pass over the bridge. Businesses come and go, advertising signs are repainted while horse drawn buses are replaced by petrol driven vehicles. An archive search of commercial and property directories might enable them to be assembled in chronological order. To nobody’s surprise, when the bridge was demolished, for every voice greeting the newly restored sightline to St. Pauls, another was deploring the loss of a ‘much loved’ bridge.

There’s a fine contemporary diatribe quoted below that John Ruskin would have been proud of.

Of all the eyesores of modern London, surely the most hideous is the Ludgate Hill Viaduct– that enormous flat iron that lies across the chest of Ludgate Hill like a bar of metal on the breast of a wretch in a torture-chamber.

Let us hope that a time will come when all designs for City improvements will be compelled to endure the scrutiny and win the approval of a committee of taste. The useful and the beautiful must not for ever be divorced. The railway bridge lies flat across the street, only eighteen feet above the roadway, and is a miracle of clumsy and stubborn ugliness, entirely spoiling the approach to one of the finest buildings in London.

The five girders of wrought iron cross the street, here only forty-two feet wide, and the span is sixty feet, in order to allow of future enlargement of the street. Absurd lattice-work, decorative brackets, bronze armorial medallions, and gas lanterns and standards, form a combination that only the unsettled and imitative art of the ruthless nineteenth century could have put together. Think of what the Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs did with granite! and observe what we Englishmen of the present day do with iron. Observe this vulgar daubing of brown paint and barbaric gilding, and think of what the Moors did with colour in the courts of the Alhambra!

A viaduct was necessary, we allow, but such a viaduct even the architect of the National Gallery would have shuddered at. The difficulties, we however allow, were great. The London, Chatham, and Dover, eager for dividends, was bent on wedding the Metropolitan Railway near Smithfield; but how could the hands of the affianced couple be joined? If there was no viaduct, there must be a tunnel.

Now, the bank of the river being a very short distance from Smithfield, a very steep and dangerous gradient would have been required to effect the junction. Moreover, had the line been carried under Ludgate Hill, there must have been a slight detour to ease the ascent, the cost of which detour would have been enormous. The tunnel proposed would have involved the destruction of a few trifles –such, for instance, as Apothecaries' Hall, the churchyard adjoining, the Times printing office– besides doing injury to the foundations of St. Martin's Church, the Old Bailey Sessions House, and Newgate.

Moreover, no station would have been possible between the Thames and Smithfield. The puzzled inhabitants, therefore, ended in despair by giving evidence in favour of the viaduct. The stolid hammermen went to work, and the iron nightmare was set up in all its Babylonian hideousness."

 

Insel Sylt

Sylt is the most northerly island off Germany’s North Sea coast, accessible only by trains that run along the Hindenburgdamm causeway built in 1927 to connect with the mainland. Its landmass is 38 sq. miles in area, a little larger than the Isle of Sheppey off the Kent Coast (36 sq. miles) but with less than half the population. It has a long history as a resort, noted for its extensive sandy beaches and a bracing summer climate. Through trains run from Westerland to Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin and Köln. Based on the address of the postcard publisher, we can assume that this is a group of holidaymakers photographed on their arrival at Westerland on an unseasonably wet day. Resolutely cheerful, most seem determined to make the best of things. The only clue as to the date of the image is the absence of Nazi insignia or symbols on the station that might indicate the years 1927 to 1933.

During the Third Reich, Sylt marketed itself as the first German resort to be declared Judenfrei (free of all Jews). Hermann Göring had a palatial beachside holiday home on Sylt. It seems the spirit of Aryan suprematism lingered longer on the island than elsewhere. In 1951 the voters of Westerland elected a new Mayor with a dark past as a member of the Waffen SS. During the war Heinz Reinefarth rose to the rank of Gruppenführer and troops under his command were responsible for innumerable atrocities in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Reinefarth escaped retribution by offering his services to US military intelligence and returned to civilian life as a local politician and lawyer. Only last year a video emerged featuring a group of affluent young residents of Sylt chanting anti-immigrant slogans. Widespread condemnation followed but the suspicion remains that the breezy, sunny air of Sylt continues to carry the stain of right wing extremism.

 

Coldstones Cut

 

Coldstones Quarry is a North Yorkshire limestone quarry almost entirely concealed inside a hill (Greenhow Hill) and unobservable from passing roads. In 2006 Heidelberg, the operators commissioned a public artwork from artist Andrew Sabin to provide a trio of spectacular viewpoints of the quarry activity. It was constructed and opened in 2010. Access is from the B6265 between Pately Bridge and Skipton. Follow this link for otherwise unobtainable views of the totality of the scheme. A strong wind blew in our faces as we made the short but steep path from the car park to the summit where it intensified. Limestone dust particles sand blasted our faces as we struggled to hold a cameraphone while the wind threatened to whip our glasses off. The narrow approach to the viewpoint is a classic piece of compression, arrow straight between walls of massive stone blocks. About two thirds along the way there are branches to left and right offering a spiral climb to elevated platforms. Arrival at the viewing apron brings panoramic views over the entire quarry workings. And all the special pleasure of observing the exposed limestone terracing and heavy machinery in action.  Sabin’s sculpture work is often highly coloured with a biomorphic presence and doesn’t immediately connect with what we see here until we consider his interest in containment and release along with the organic spiral forms. Aerial views with the viewing platform at the base echo the phallic presence of the Cerne Abbas Giant. Only 15 to 20 years of reserves remain after which it is planned that the quarry will revert to its ‘natural state’.

Postcard of the Day No. 115, Saintes, Passarelle du Passage à Niveau

Saintes is a small town in Charente-Maritime on the railway linking La Rochelle with Bordeaux. A local postcard photographer has succumbed to the charms of robust displays of structural steel near the town station and, on a gloomy winter day, aimed a camera at the footbridge and level crossing that both join and separate the two halves of the town. For some this would have been seen as a modern intrusion into a traditional townscape, for others it was a minor wonder of the age. A trio of curious youngsters, with wheelbarrow and a passing facteur, with bicycle, have paused to witness what happens. In a drowsy town, any break with routine is welcomed. Especially if there's a chance of seeing their likenesses in print. The original photographic plate would have recorded much more detailed visual information than the limitations of the printed card would permit, but the enlarged details with all their imperfections have a charm of their own.

 

Bourneville 1925 Transport

Another Cadbury brochure published to explain the business of chocolate manufacturing to the general public, based on the notion that the public appetite for geography and economics was as great as the appetite for chocolate. A hundred years have passed since Frank Newbould was commissioned to provide the illustrations - a perfect choice given his expertise in transport and industrial process. Newbould’s cover combines road, rail and maritime traffic into a single composition, enhanced by an elevated viewpoint. Designed to impress with the unstoppable energy of commerce, Newbould has omitted any distracting details to focus on the triumph of mechanisation. There’s a map to show us the global presence of Cadbury, drawing in raw materials from every continent via a network of commercial shipping - what we would now call the mysteries of the supply chain. Export cargoes were nailed into wooden packing cases requiring enormous supplies of raw timber from Russia and Scandinavia, moved by rail to Bourneville to be machined in the company saw mills. Cocoa beans, sugar and hazel nuts were stuffed into sacks, that in turn were lashed into nets to be craned on and off mixed cargo ships.  Newbould shows an early stage in the travels of the cocoa bean where local labour loads heavy sacks into small boats that rendezvous out at sea with cargo liners too large to enter the port.  A fair weather vision of breezy skies and surf in which hard labour looks effortless.

Equally idyllic is Newbould’s bucolic vision of a canal-side milk processing factory built in a restrained vernacular, barges and narrow-boats serenely chugging by. In a double page illustration across the centre pages, Newbould’s attention turns to the Bourneville factory in an aerial view that attempts to balance the vastness of raw industrial power with the sense of the factory cosily enveloped by the splendour of a verdant English countryside in high summer. To finish, Newbould observes the end of the process when the boxed finished products are loaded on to trains by sack truck and trolley.  The facility has all the features of a conventional station minus the passengers. Once again we are invited to admire the scale and complexity of operations thanks to Newbould’s control of colour to create a perfect sense of clarity. Cadbury invested heavily in a wide output of promotional publishing from collectors’ cards and albums to factory guides and brochures like this. Newbould was re-employed in 1927 and dispatched to Trinidad where he made a varied portfolio of location images that featured in Bourneville 1927, Cocoa Story. It can be seen in my post from August 2010.

 

Berlin - Die Weltstadt Im Licht

A beautifully printed and presented volume of recently rediscovered photographs of Weimar Berlin - the illuminated city by night. Taken between 1925 and 1932 by Martin Höhlig (1882 - 1948). Höhlig was a versatile Berlin based commercial photographer who built a career as an accomplished portrait photographer in the 1920s. An interest in architecture led him into architectural and urban photography and a key event in his development was the Berlin Im Licht week in October 1928 - a citywide festival of architectural illumination dominated by powerful commercial messages sponsored by AEG, Osram, Siemens, Bewag and Telefunken designed to tell the world how German industry was being transformed by electrical energy. Höhlig was engaged to record the event and published a series of albums that were issued as promotional items by all the sponsors which are the source of this selection of photos. The tonal balance and the framing of the images is perfect. In the Third Reich, Höhlig’s career went into decline - as an affiliate photographer to the Association for the History of Berlin his membership was terminated in 1937 when Jewish members were expelled. Whether by resignation or expulsion is not known. After the war Höhlig found it impossible to rebuild his practice and he took his own life in 1948.  His reputation as an outstanding recorder of interwar Berlin is now secure alongside others such as Sasha Stone, Marco von Bucovich, Willy Römer and Max Missmann. 

For the traumatised war veterans desperate for work and the war weary public enduring rampant inflation and economic instability, the dazzle and glitter of decadent hedonism in Weimar Berlin was at best a remote and undignified spectacle and at worst a crude insult to public propriety. It would inspire the sense of popular resentment that opened the doors to the Nazis. When this blaze of luminescence was finally extinguished in 1939, the Nazified nation was propelled into 6 years of brutal conflict and genocide.  Which adds another layer to the experience of viewing these photos. There’s the aesthetic pleasure from the inventive exuberance of the visual dynamics on show but there’s also the foreshadowing of the dark days ahead and the part that this version of Berlin played in the process.

ISBN: 9783 942115 865

Published by Bussert & Stadeler, 2019