Bridge Postcards of 2020

For some reason 2020 hasn’t been a great year for exploring and photographing bridges and it’s not been much better for acquiring postcards.  Gatherings of elderly postcard obsessives would make the perfect playground for the Coronavirus - as the collectors succumbed the world would be left with mountains of unsold and unwanted postcards. All of which makes this selection of the best bridge postcards much smaller than usual. There are two swing bridges - Cherbourg and Littlehampton. The Littlehampton bridge opened in 1908 and was notable for its elevated control cabin. It was replaced in the 1980s with a pedestrian retractable bridge which does the same job (with difficulty) while offering nothing to delight the eye. The Pont Gisclard is an elegant suspension bridge that carries a  single track railway across a dramatic gorge in Southern France. It also opened in 1908 but in a tragic footnote, bridge designer Albert Gisclard was killed along with 5 others when a load test led to an accident on his own bridge the following year. The Kingsferry vertical lift bridge in Kent links the Isle of Sheppey with the rest of Kent and carries both road and rail. Built in 1960, its concrete towers resemble gigantic Brutalist clamps and convey a sense of strength. There’s an account here of 2020’s single bridge visit (Cannington Viaduct in East Devon) and every hope that number might be exceeded in 2021.

 

Blaise Hamlet

The north-west fringe of Bristol is the type of place that J G Ballard might have invented. It includes the vast and depressing acreage of Cribbs Causeway Shopping Centre, the M5 and M49 motorways, Filton Airfield and the tiny bucolic enclave of Blaise Hamlet, a curious place of pilgrimage for lovers of the extreme picturesque. Nine compact cottages were built around the meandering perimeter of a village green, every detail calculated to give the most intense impression of studied irregularity. The informal layout was intended to convey a sense of timeless theatricality. Building began almost exactly two hundred years ago in 1810. On completion their fame spread rapidly as Blaise Hamlet became an essential stopping point on any civilised tour of the West Country.



John Nash, with the assistance of George Repton, was the architect. The client was a Quaker banker, J S Harford and the brief was to provide a select group of retirement homes for his former employees. Steeply pitched hipped and half-hipped roofs covered in tile or thatch, over-height diamond and cylindrical chimney stacks with cut and faceted brickwork, oriel and bow windows with both rectangular and diagonal leaded lights and gabled porches combine to produce an almost manic quality of the picturesque. The hamlet was concealed behind high stone walls to protect the dignity of the occupants as recipients of charity. The stylistic details were faithfully transcribed into thousands of pattern books and widely imitated wherever there was a demand for the picturesque. A new generation of architectural clichés was born.



The current occupants are tenants of the National Trust who own and manage the hamlet. The modest dimensions of the internal spaces have to be balanced against the pleasure of living in such distinctive surroundings. It would be difficult to maintain an acquisitive lifestyle. Each cottage is Grade I listed so there’s no chance of a loft conversion, conservatory or uPVC double-glazing. No gnomes or decking in the garden, no satellite dish or wind turbine. Only two hundred years of calm seclusion amid the raucous turbulence of city life.

Edward Everard's Printing Works

A recent visit to Bristol brought us face to face with this polychromed architectural treasure at 37 Broad Street. Built in 1900-01 to house the Everard Printing Works, it boasts a spectacular ceramic facade designed by William J Neatby and manufactured by Doulton that radiates Victorian pride in the ancient and sacred craft of printing. In best Victorian fashion, religious imagery was employed to add benediction to commerce and while the figure of Light and Truth looks down from the gable, the resplendent Spirit of Light, absorbed in reading, spreads her wings over the window arches. Johannes Gutenberg and William Morris representing the Founding Fathers are portrayed, engaged in honest toil. The flamboyant Art Nouveau font in which the company name is lettered was designed by Everard himself. The printing works closed in 1967 and the building narrowly escaped demolition. It is now II* listed, follow this link to read the English Heritage description. Nothing of the original interior survives and the current occupant is the nation's favourite pantomime villain, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). UK taxpayers are the proud owners of more than 60% of RBS. It follows that between us we own 60% of this very fine building.