Almost forgotten: the Commonwealth Institute

There are builder’s boards up around the Commonwealth Institute at the moment which means that it’s not quite forgotten. Since 2009 it has been intended that the Design Museum should move into the building and we know that 2014 is the planned opening date. But it was touch and go for a while. In 2006 it was announced that the government’s intention was to de-list and demolish the Grade 2* building. So it nearly became a forgotten building.

In a way we’ve already forgotten it. It closed in 2002. The tranquil spell of decay was hanging over it when I took these photos in 2009. Nothing is quite so still as a recently abandoned building. That grass is much longer now and the impression of neglect is stronger.

I never visited it when it was a going concern. I had to ask my wife who went there several times as a teenager, once even by choice, about what it was like as a museum. An interesting interior design especially the stairs and ramps she said, but curiously flat and static displays. This was before museums went interactive. No buttons to press.

In 1962 when the Institute was opened it was a brave new venture. Here’s an architectural model:

And here it is under construction with daring workers strolling around on the dramatic copper roof:

The finished article was hailed as a triumph of modern design.

The main building is distinctively sixties in character, especially the concrete buttress and the ornamental pond.

The Administration block on the other hand looks like any numbers of hospital or university buildings from the period. Take the cars away and you could have any 60s building from the northern hemisphere. Imagine it in an episode of the Sweeney with Regan and Carter interviewing a suspect, or even a David Cronenberg film as one of his strange academic institutions

The most interesting images of the building are interiors.

The lady on the central platform looks a little lost. She’s consulting a guide to the Institute, which was deliberately designed to allow visitors to wander at random up and down the staircases and ramps. Here’s the Canadian section:

There’s an impressive map, and I like the trees, but the stuffed wolf looks out of place. A closer view of the roof from the inside:

You can see the intricate wooden beams at the top level. But although the overall effect is striking I can’t help being reminded of a high tech 60s department store rather than a museum.

Can’t you see dining room furniture, televisions and three piece suites being sold just out of sight in this picture? I think I’d have been quite keen to visit a store like this if I’d been a young homeowner in the early sixties.

Whatever its merits as a visitor attraction, the Institute survived forty years. Fast forward to 2004 to one of those autumn days when traffic and pedestrians alike went past the building without a second glance. We had almost forgotten it.

Here’s that lawn again a couple of days ago.

And the best shot I could get of the main building:

The Commonwealth Institute building will survive, and enjoy a second lease of life. The plan calls for a number of six-storey housing blocks to be built on the site including one in front of the man building so it will never look quite like this again. However successful the new venture we should still remember the bold new building as it was when new, poised on the edge of Holland Park like a kite about to take off:

 

 

Kate at the Pageant: 1908

The photographs in the Games for May post of the Chelsea Pageant (see link opposite) by Kate Pragnell were from the deleted scenes menu. When I looked into the official guides and souvenirs of the Pageant I found a great many more. A little research into Miss Pragnell herself showed that she was pretty remarkable. At the time of the Pageant she was one of only two women professional photographers in London, and the only one who regularly photographed men as well as women. She had a woman assistant who eventually took over the business and only worked with female technicians who she trained herself. As it says in the advertisement above which is from the programme she was the Pageant’s official photographer, with access to all areas as we would say today.

The Pageant involved hundreds of people and looks like it must have lasted for hours. Hence the need for refreshments of the kind seen above. Misspelling well known words is still seen as a way of indicating that something is ancient and traditional. The Pageant was divided into ten episodes so there is enough material for more than one post on the subject. So we can come back a couple of times..

The episodes range from the historically plausible to the unlikely. Episode one deals with the Roman Army fording the Thames at Chelsea, which might be perfectly possible but these scenes remind me of inaccurate 1940s historical films.

A group photos of the lads in Caesar’s army. Why do men in costume always look much less convincing than women? Is it that most of these guys suspect that they might look a little silly?

A studio shot of a woman I take to be a British chieftain’s wife, or a Boudicca type. She’s taking it much more seriously. The girl on the left is pictured several times. To me she has the look of one of the young heroines of an E Nesbitt fantasy. (This era seems to have spawned a good many of the fantasy archetypes that lasted us throughout the 20^th century) Here are the two of them in context off to the right of the picture:

The bearded man is captioned as the Herald Bard. There seems to be a mixture of costumes in this scene but I’m most intrigued by the man with the archaic musical instrument and the robed figure next to him we can’t quite see. When I look at strange old photographs I want to write my own stories about them rather than stick to what I know and you could certainly make something of this.

Episode 2 was about the Synod of Chelsea for me a quite obscure theological event, but it does give me a chance to include another picture of some women dressed as nuns, which is a very popular internet search term (for some reason).

These are Grey Nuns as you can see by the caption, as opposed to the nuns dressed in black featured in Games for May. I don’t know if these ladies changed their habits for the later episode (the Funeral of Anne of Cleves) or if these were an entirely different group of women dressed as nuns. Or if this group later turned up in the eighteenth century as Ranelagh revellers. One thing we can be sure of is that a large number of people played parts in the Pageant and if there was an after show party it would have been worth attending.

Episode 3 was called May Day in Chelsea Fields 1500 and seems to have been put in to bridge a gap between the ancient and medieval scenes and the Tudor episodes, when the proper history began. The episode was mostly music and dancing. May Day is one of those semi-pagan Merrie England kind of things. Imagine the first scenes of Powell and Pressberger’s A Canterbury Tale.

Or looking at this picture, imagine an all female folk rock band from the 1970s. This could be the inside of the gatefold sleeve, for those of you who remember LPs. Just put in guitars, a mandolin, a fiddle etc. Just think of a name like the Silbury Angels, or Hexagram…

Or the Galliard Dancers:

And here is the Galliard Dance:

There were also gypsy dancers:

This is another studio portrait. Miss Pragnell like many photographers of the time took a lot of trouble over the backgrounds to studio shots, and in posing the subject in a convincing way as in this excellent study.

The candid shots are also pretty good. Look at this one of the children in the May Day episode:

Look at the boy in the group of four on the left wearing the same costume as the girls. He looks like he’s thinking how on earth did I let them persuade me to do this? The tall girl behind him has the look of a much put upon teenager also wishing she was somewhere else. Perhaps she looked at Kate the photographer and decided she should get a job like that when she was older.

We’ll be coming back to the Chelsea Pageant again to those warn and innocent June days at the beginning of the 20^th century.

 

Other posts about the Chelsea Historical Pageant:

Kate at the Pageant 2: Tudor dreams

Kate at the Pageant 3: an adventure at Ranelagh

The secret world of Marianne Rush

Marianne Rush died in 1814. She was interred in a burial ground which has been cleared of all its tombstones. I think she painted these pictures, although they have been attributed to another lady at times in their history. She created a place which is half real and half imagined, a special country made out of her imagination. The places she painted all existed but it is not certain whether she had seen them all. You can identify most of them and research them but you can’t quite pin them down. You could call her a naive painter, or an amateur. But her vision is clear. This is the secret world of Marianne Rush.

Let me tell you a story. Here is an old half fallen wall. The gate is open.

Follow the path through the banks of flowers to Lady Walpole’s grotto.

You can pass under the arches without being seen from the house.

Take note of the pattern on the floor. Do not look out of the window. You cannot be sure what you will see. The trees ahead have formed a passage through which you must go quietly. Cross the lawn and enter the greenhouse.

But don’t step into the shadow of the gate.

You can collect some fruit but only one from each tree. Keep them in separate pockets. Hold one in your left hand. At the end of the gallery you will find a staircase. Ascend and wait in the upper room.

It has a curious ceiling. Colonel Despard held his meetings here. There was a miniature guillotine on the mantelpiece but Dr Mead cleared the room. Most of the rooms here are empty. The current inhabitants don’t need furniture. Try the fireplace. There may be something worth keeping in the ashes. Squeeze the juice from one of the fruits into the ash. Does the smell disturb you? Close your eyes. Do you remember this place?

Did you select the middle passage?

Who is this who is coming?

Open your eyes. There is a key in your hand. Slip out of the window. You can climb down the ivy. Follow the river path to the summer house.

You can use the key. Enter.

Is there writing on base of the bust? Or is there a set of pages torn from the Gentleman’s Magazine? Pick them up. You need to leave quickly. Go through the trees. Stay close to the river. As the trees thin out can you see a building?

Remember this place. We will come back soon when it’s safe. But there is somewhere else to go first. Back to the machine, before it gets dark.

I’ll tell you more about what I know of Marianne Rush another time.

But you can always tell your own stories about her.

Regal memories: Royal occasions in the Royal Borough

Queen Victoria comes to St Mary Abbott’s Church, just a short trip from Kensington Palace where she received the news that she had become Queen sixty years before. It’s June 28^th 1897, the year of her Diamond Jubilee. To get to a diamond jubilee of course you have to go through a few other significant dates.

A royal entrance to Kensington for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. Go through the arch and look back and this is what you would have seen:

As the procession moves eastwards look at the building on the right with the letters VR on it. It was a bank then, built in a stylised gothic style which the Survey of London calls “pungently Burgundian” (the Survey occasionally goes in for memorable phrases and this is my favourite). There is an Indian restaurant on the ground floor now.

Back to 1897:

Another view of the High Street.

Other parts of the modern Royal Borough were also celebrating. In Chelsea, the Conservative Club:

And the Town Hall:

Victoria’s reign lasted  three more years.

The new King and Queen were in Kensington the following year.

Look at a detail of the crowd:

If you don’t mind pausing for a note on fashion see that every man woman and child is wearing a hat. It was a special occasion of course but it wouldn’t have been too different on a normal day. Look at the two girls holding on to their mother on the left of the picture. They might well have lived another sixty years to see a world where no one wore a hat, even to watch a royal arrival.

In 1935 there was a Silver Jubilee:

Another monarch, George V came to Kensington Town Hall with Queen Mary to celebrate a jubilee.

Now we go forward to 1953, and another grand entrance to Kensington in honour of the new Queen:

Here is the Queen herself driving through Kensington passing the Princess Louise Hospital:

A closer view of the cheering crowd:

So that’s the beginning of the reign of a Queen who has just equalled Queen Victoria’s achievement and may yet surpass it. The final picture takes us back to 1947 when she was still Princess Elizabeth:

At Chelsea Barracks the Colonel of The Grenadier Guards sits with some of her officers.

Did she imagine her Diamond Jubilee?