I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
“Live the questions now.” Rainer Maria Rilke
Thank you for visiting this page. I’m Julia, and I work as a psychodynamic psychotherapist, relationship counsellor, and clinical supervisor. I’ve been in private practice in the City of London and in south-west London for the past three years; for the decade before that, I worked as a specialist psychotherapist for working age adults in the NHS (where I’ve also run staff groups).
This is where you will find the posts on my London-based blog, which I update constantly through the week, almost as a stream of consciousness. It reflects my interests, including psychotherapy, and my weekly experience outside – though not divorced from – my work. It’s a contemporary version of the commonplace book – one where the thoughts, responses, and comments of others are welcome.
Fulham Palace Road, London W6
From a Conservation Report by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham:
“5.53 This sub-area forms the eastern boundary to the northern part of the conservation area. It is characterised by the mixed use of office, retail and residential. It is noticeably noisier than the main body of the conservation area, as is the nature of a major road. Fulham Palace Road is the main connection north/south between Hamersmith and Putney.
5.54 Brandenburgh House is a former Nurses’ Home, No. 116 Fulham Palace Road, and is listed Grade 11. Built in 1905, it was designed by A Saxon Snell.
There is a pedestrian tunnel running under Fulham Palace Road that previously linked the property with the Charing Cross Hospital site. Built of brick it has roughcast to the second floor and pediment and a slate roof with heavy bracketed eaves and irregular chimneys. The first and second floor windows are timber sashes and there are timber mullion and transom casements to the ground floor.
5.55 Keir Hardie House to the south is a five storey block of flats with the Fulham Coat of arms at first floor level. It retains the original railings to the boundary and balconies.
5.57 The Melcombe Primary and Mints’ School (Grade 11) in Fulham Palace Road was designed by T J Bailey in 1901 and is an example of Bailey’s late school work. It is of red brick, buff terracotta and has a red tiled roof It is unusually elaborate and well preserved with the centre block flanked by square towers with pyramidal roofs. There is an unfortunate modern extension though this has caused limited physical damage to the main building. The LCC Coat of Arms and the inscription ‘Fulham Palace Road School AD1901’ can be found on the front elevation (see main image). It is of landmark quality and is evident in views along Fulham Palace Road and northward from Rosedew Road.”
Duke of Cornwall, 46&48 Fulham Palace Road, London W6
From: L. B. HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM CONSERVATION AREA No. 44 HAMMERSMITH ODEON CHARACTER PROFILE:
“46 & 48 FULHAM PALACE ROAD
5.14 On the corner of York Place are Nos. 46 & 48, a public house built in 1933 as the Duke of Cornwall to a design by architects F. J. Fisher & Sons, which replaced an earlier one known in 1851 as the Duke of York. It has a symmetrical front elevation of three storeys in red brick with a parapet raised in the centre, which originally supported the name letters, and features a tall central flagpole. Three wide bands of stone at window level continue across the side elevation. There are four painted timber sliding sash windows with continuous soldier arch lintels acting as string courses, a feature repeated at parapet level. The ground floor retains its original polished grey and black granite Art Deco pub-front comprising stall-risers, pilasters, and fascia with a broad shallow pediment. It still has its original central double doors and painted timber frames with metal windows within, some on the side elevation still with their Art Deco zig-zag metal glazing bars in the top lights. There is a large projecting swan neck bracket and lantern over the main entrance.”
“And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master.”*
*Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.
From: Vera (1921), by Elizabeth Von Arnim:
“Sometimes he said, ‘Would you like -?’ and if she didn’t like, and answered truthfully, as she answered at first before she learned not to, there was trouble. Silent trouble. A retiring of Wemyss into a hurt aloofness, for his question was only decorative, and his little Love should instinctively, he considered, like what he liked; and there outside this aloofness, after efforts to get at him with fond and anxious questions, she sat like a beggar in patient distress, waiting for him to emerge and be kind to her.
Of course as far as the minor wishes and preferences of every day went it was all quite easy, once she had grasped the right answer to the question, ‘Would you like?’ She instantly did like. ‘Oh yes – very much!’ she hastened to assure him; and then his face continued content and happy instead of clouding with aggrievement. But about the big things it wasn’t easy, because of the difficulty of getting the right flavour of enthusiasm into her voice, and if she didn’t get it in he would put his finger under her chin and turn her to the light and repeat the question in a solemn voice – precursor, she had learned, of the beginning of the cloud on his face.
How difficult it was sometimes. When he said to her, ‘You’ll like the view from your sitting room at The Willows,’ she naturally wanted to cry out that she wouldn’t, and ask him how he could suppose she would like what was to her a view forever associated with death? Why shouldn’t she be able to cry out naturally if she wanted to, to talk to him frankly, to get his help to cure herself of what was so ridiculous by laughing at it with him? She couldn’t laugh all alone, though she was always trying to; with him she could have, and so have become quite sensible. For he was so much bigger than she was, so wonderful in the way he had triumphed over diseased thinking, and his wholesomeness would spread over her too, a purging, disinfecting influence, if only he would let her talk, if only he would help her to laugh. Instead, she found herself hurriedly saying in a small, anxious voice, ‘Oh yes – very much!’
‘Is it possible,’ she thought, ‘that I am abject?’
Yes, she was extremely abject, she reflected, lying awake at night considering her behaviour during the day. Love had made her so. Love did make one abject, for it was full of fear of hurting the beloved…
…What must it be like, she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things difficult for her, but how much, much more difficult for him. And how wonderful the way his sensitiveness had developed since marriage. There had been no sign of it before.
Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let anything she said or did spoil his birthday, to forgive her, to understand. And at the back of her mind, quite uncontrollable, quite unauthorised, ran beneath these other thoughts this thought: ‘I am certainly abject.’”
College Court, 22 Queen Caroline St, London W6
From L. B. HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM CONSERVATION AREA No. 44 CHARACTER PROFILE:
“5.30 This is a large impressive group of five adjoining mansion blocks on the corner of Queen Caroline Street and Sussex Place that form the north western gateway to the conservation area. They are included in the Council’s local list of Buildings of Merit. The buildings were built between 1897 and 1900, in the grounds of College House, a Georgian building now demolished. They are of five storeys, basements and attics, brown brick with stone cills and string courses, and massive brick chimney stacks with terracotta pots. They have steep slate roofs with overhanging eaves, and a corner octagonal turret with a tall slate spirelet roof with eaves brackets. On 3 December 1940 the buildings suffered bomb damage at the rear and on the Queen Caroline Street frontage requiring substantial restoration.
5.31 The main elevation onto Sussex Place has more elaborate detailing than the others. At roof level is a symmetrical brick and stone feature of paired sashes in a gable, flanked by sashes with pediments, all surmounted by ball finials. This elevation also has delicate stone oriel windows on the first and second floors in place of the larger brick bays from basement to second floors on the Queen Caroline Street elevation. All are surmounted by open loggia with Tuscan columns and entablature at third floor level, the cornice of which continues around the buildings. The original basement area railings, third floor balcony and turret balcony railings largely remain intact. The entrance doors are reached via a flight of steps and heavy round headed stone porches supported on either side by groups of four tiny Tuscan columns.
5.32 Unfortunately, since 1973 three of the loggia have been removed, as has the balcony railing and supporting brackets around the third floor of the corner turret. Also two balconies now have plainer replacement railings. These changes have detracted from the overall quality of the buildings and the reinstatement of missing details would be encouraged.”
Bradmore House, Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, London W6
From the Historic England entry:
“Bradmore House is listed for the following principal reasons:
- Architectural and historic interest: while much restored, the facade is a very good example of English Baroque domestic architecture; its re-erection, at considerable effort, in 1913 was a remarkable response at a time when the concept of preserving such buildings was barely nascent; * Interior: fine-quality early-C18 panelling and carved decoration salvaged from the original house, installed in 2002.
History
Bradmore House originated as an early-C18 extension to a large C16 mansion known as Butterwick House. The extension was built onto the north side of the house and may have been a remodelling of an existing wing. It was almost certainly built by Henry Ferne, Receiver General of Her Majesty’s Customs, who purchased Butterwick House in 1700 and lived there until his death in 1723. According to the late-C18 historian Daniel Lysons, the new wing was intended for Ferne’s mistress, Mrs Anne Oldfield (1683-1730), the leading actress of the day. This liaison is alluded to in Oldfield’s memoirs and probably began after 1712, but there is little else to authenticate the connection with Ferne’s house.
In 1739 Butterwick House was bought by Elijah Impey, merchant, father to Sir Elijah Impey, Chief Justice of Bengal. It appears that Impey divided the main house and wing into two, the latter becoming a school for several decades. Butterwick House was demolished in 1836. In 1913 the site was bought by the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) and redeveloped as a garage.
At the behest of the London County Council (LCC), the fine baroque elevation, which faced east onto the garden, was dismantled and re-erected as the façade of the new LGOC offices fronting the garage, now facing west rather than east. The facade was jacked up to allow headroom for buses, with a large vehicle entrance in each of the wings leading to a shed behind. Also retained were two panelled first-floor rooms, the larger of which was incorporated into the new offices as a billiard room; this in turn was relocated to Trinity House Almshouses, Mile End, in the 1950s. The smaller room was installed in part at the Geffrye Museum, along with a brick alcove from the external stair on the north side which remains at the Museum. The garage closed in 1983.
Bradmore House was rebuilt in the baroque style in 1994 as part of the Hammersmith Broadway development, incorporating the restored early-C18 façade. The panelled room from the Geffrye Museum was installed at Bradmore House in 2002.
Although Bradmore House was long thought to be the work of Thomas Archer, one of the foremost architects of the English Baroque, there is no documentary evidence to support this attribution.”
From Survey of London: Volume 6, Hammersmith. Originally published by London County Council, London (1915):
“The London General Omnibus Company, at the suggestion and with the help of the London County Council, resolved to preserve the main architectural features, and were successful in reerecting the brick and stone front as the facade of their new offices. It now faces west instead of east, but the fine workmanship is visible to the public in Queen Street in place of being hidden in a private garden. The building has been set somewhat higher than originally, and the windows of the wings on the ground floor have been omitted to allow of the entrance doors. The fine decorative woodwork of the principal room has been refixed in the billiard-room, which was specially built to receive it. This woodwork is the property of the London County Council, and, in accordance with an agreement between the Council and the company, arrangements have been made for the public to have free access to the room on the first Monday of every month between the hours of 10 a.m. and noon. The brick niche has been carefully removed by the Council, and re-erected in Geffrye’s Garden, Kingsland Road, and the panelling of the second room has been refixed in its entirety in the Geffrye Museum.”
Tough crowd in Clapham
I have just learned that if I “work” on a computer (not sure if that includes a mobile phone) for more than an hour, I’ll have to top my bill up to £5. Nice tea, but I suddenly feel distinctly undecorative.
I have smuggled these pictures out.
Boston Manor Station, Boston Manor Road, Brentford, Middlesex
From the Historic England entry:
“Piccadilly Line Underground station. 1933-34 by Charles Holden, with earlier fabric at platform level dating from 1883.
HISTORY: Boston Manor Station was opened on 1st May 1883 as part of the District Railway extension to Hounslow Barracks. It was taken over by the Piccadilly Line extension, wholly rebuilt at upper levels, and re-opened on 25th March 1934; the old station was demolished late in 1932. Occupying a narrow site because of the approach to the adjoining depot, the station was built out over the tracks. The distinctive tower feature, strongly influenced by contemporary Dutch and German architecture, was intended to create a landmark building amid this area of low-rise suburban housing. A highly characteristic example of Charles Holden’s much-admired Modern Movement designs for London Underground.
Brown brick facing, reinforced concrete structure. Glazed ceramic tiles with enamelled London Underground logo on tower; vertical strip of glass bricks forming lighting feature along upper stages of tower. EXTERIOR: Single storey structure on girders over railway bridge: booking hall to right, lit with clerestory; projecting shop unit to left with curved picture window. Flat roofs of concrete now with safety rails to edge (added recently). INTERIOR: Ticket Hall modernised in 1980s but retains ticket office kiosk with banded tile decoration. Modern steel doors. PLATFORM LEVEL: Reached via stairs with cast iron balustrades, remaining from the original station. Each platform retains fretted wooden awning from the earlier District Railway station of 1883, with part-glazed timber roof carried on cast iron roof trusses, supported on cast iron columns with capitals and octagonal bases. Metal-framed windows at western ends of platforms date from 1933-34 rebuilding.”
Thomas Nowell Parr, and his son John
Above: The Viaduct, 221 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, London W7.
From Wikipedia:
“Thomas Henry Nowell Parr FRIBA (1864 – 23 September 1933) was a British architect, best known for designing pubs in west London. Many of these were built while Parr was “house architect” for Fuller’s Brewery. Parr designed various buildings in Brentford while he was surveyor and then architect to the Council from 1894 to 1907.
While still working for Brentford Council, Parr began undertaking work as a pub architect. He worked for both Fuller’s Brewery, Chiswick and the Royal Brewery, Brentford.
Parr started to work independently in about 1900, while still employed by Brentford UDC. He later went into partnership with fellow architect A. E. Kates, and was also joined by his son, John Nowell Parr (died 1975). He was made a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1925…
…The first inn on crossing the River Brent is “The Viaduct”, which is on the north side. Named after the Wharncliffe Viaduct, its original name was the “Coach and Horses”. At the back of the pub, some of the original stable building can be seen, dating to about 1730. Early in the 20th century, The Viaduct received a new faïence façade, which Nikolaus Pevsner succinctly described as “a jolly tiled Edwardian pub”.
(Janet McNamara, a Hounslow Heritage Guide, dates Nowell Parr’s design to 1913.)
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-wharncliffe-viaduct-178782
The Wharncliffe Viaduct is a brick-built viaduct that carries the Great Western Main Line railway across the Brent Valley, between Hanwell and Southall, Ealing, UK, at an elevation of 20 metres (66 ft). The viaduct, built in 1836–7, was constructed for the opening of the Great Western Railway (GWR). It is situated between Southall and Hanwell stations, the latter station being only a very short distance away to the east.
The viaduct was the first major structural design by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the first building contract to be let on the GWR project, and the first major engineering work to be completed. It was also the first railway viaduct to be built with hollow piers, a feature much appreciated by a colony of bats which has since taken up residence within.”
From the website of the Brewery History Society:
“Viaduct, 221 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, London W7: A Fuller, Smith & Turner Ltd pub since 1828. The front part was rebuilt in the early 20c, and has a good faience and brown-tiled projecting frontage with Fuller’s lettering on the parapet.”
From the Hidden London website:
“Hanwell, Ealing, (is) a likeable west London suburb, connected with Ealing to its east via the Uxbridge Road…
…In 1836 Isambard Kingdom Brunel built the Wharncliffe viaduct for the Great Western Railway and Hanwell station opened two years later. An oft-repeated story has it that Queen Victoria used to halt the royal train on the viaduct so that she could admire the view towards St Mary’s…”
Dr Emily Cole, architectural historian, writes in The Urban and Suburban Public House in Inter-War England, 1918-1939:
“…As a group, Nowell Parr’s inter-war pubs do not survive especially well: those much altered include the Pottery Arms, Brentford (1922), the Manor Tavern (later the Devonshire Arms), Chiswick (1924), the Royal Hotel, Hanwell (1924),
and the Rose and Crown, Kew Green (1928),
while the Golden Lion, Hillingdon (1932), has been demolished. Although a number of Nowell Parr’s inter-war pubs were investigated as part of this project, only two were shortlisted for further investigation: the Angel and the Duke of York, Chiswick, also of 1926 (see section 12.17). The others were found to have been altered or entirely demolished – and this was also found to be the case with the pubs designed by Nowell Parr and Son, such as the Dover Patrol, Blackheath (demolished), the Princess Victoria, Rotherhithe (demolished), the Plough, Northolt (destroyed by fire), the Seven Stars, Fulham (converted to flats),
and the Yacht, Bexleyheath (internally altered)…”
Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, London W6
From the website of the Theatres Trust:
“The Gaumont Palace, Hammersmith, which assumed its present name in 1999, opened in 1932. It was originally commissioned for the Davis Company, which explains why the architect was Robert Cromie, who had designed their massive Davis Cinema in Croydon (1928). However, the scheme was taken over by Gaumont in 1930, before construction began. The cinema’s preservation as a single auditorium, complete with full stalls seating, has been due to its use as a live venue for pop concerts since the 1960s, and this has evolved under Apollo’s management into its refurbishment as a full-time theatre. The stage has been extended over the organ (which has been in store since 1996) and the orchestra pit. A bar has been inserted into the curved tea room that ran over the entrance to the building, blocking the first-floor windows, and some light fittings were taken in about 1980 to the State Cinema in Grays, Thurrock, but the building is otherwise completely intact.
The exterior has always been noted for its tremendous width of 57.9m (190ft), served by nine pairs of double doors. This width is the secret to its very logical plan, excellent sight lines and ease of circulation. Foyers run on two levels along the full width of this front, with staircases at either end, and give directly on to the auditorium. The tremendous width of the circle is also the cause of the massive capacity. It is 51.8m (170ft) wide at the rear, and achieves its high capacity without overhanging the stalls by more than a dozen rows. The largest steel girder across the balcony front weighs 56 tons, yet the building was noted for its economical use of steel by combining steel framing with load-bearing brick. Apollo report that its great structural strength has enabled exceptionally heavy sets and gantries to be installed successfully. The stage has a 19.21m (63ft) proscenium and a depth of 9.41m (31ft).
The art-deco mouldings of the shallow aedicules on the walls are typical of Cromie’s work, and are repeated at his Regal Cinema, Kingston;
but other elements of the design are typical of the Gaumont circuit, especially the use of deep ceiling coves and the murals by Newbury A Trent in the entrance hall. There are some good light fittings in the auditorium and on the staircases. Other unusual features are the way in which the projection box is concealed behind the deep elliptical skylight above the circle, 12.2m (40ft) in advance of the back of the auditorium (another Gaumont conceit), and the positioning of the organ chamber above the stage. Organ chambers were sometimes placed below the stage in Britain, but their positioning above it is very rare, and allows no space for an elaborate proscenium arch. Instead the effect of a decorative proscenium was given by curtains (long gone), which repeated the aediculed motifs of the surrounding walls. The curved upper foyer, reached by an imperial staircase to each side, is a particularly strong architectural space, with a line of columns that formerly separated it from the tea room to one side and a central lightwell that corresponds with a deeply coved ceiling above.
Robert Cromie worked for Bertie Crewe between 1910 and 1914 and so had an excellent training in theatre planning. The demolition of the Davis in 1959 has left the Apollo as his finest surviving work. In a special issue of Architectural Design and Construction, published in March 1938, Cromie wrote that cinemas had a special place in society because they were ‘very human milestones in our domestic history – temples to the passing hour – to Peace, not merely to prosperity.
‘Of all buildings none are more fascinating to design, more difficult to construct nor more unsatisfying when built. The architect’s job is so much of a struggle to squeeze a quart into a pint, a week into a day, to make a hundred pounds produce a lot. But there is no reason why cinema building should not present in plan and form something of the comfortable elegance and repose of our best domestic work.’
In 2013 the venue received a £5m refurbishment which restored the original colour scheme and uncovered many hidden architectural features.”
“…Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-/ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.’”*
* “from ‘No Worst, There Is None’, one of a group of sonnets the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) wrote when he was suffering from depression in the 1880s, while living in Ireland. These are known as the ‘Terrible Sonnets’ because of the terrible fits of misery and despair which inspired them.” (Dr. Oliver Tearle)
From Vera (1921), by Elizabeth Von Arnim:
“Her father. Dead. For ever.
She said the words over to herself. They meant nothing.
She was going to be alone. Without him. Always.
She said the words over to herself. They meant nothing.
Up in that room with its windows wide open, shut away from her with the two village women, he was lying dead. He had smiled at her for the last time, said all he was ever going to say to her, called her the last of the sweet, half-teasing names he loved to invent for her. Why, only a few hours ago they were having breakfast together and planning what they would do that day. Why, only yesterday they drove together after tea towards the sunset, and he had seen, with his quick eyes that saw everything, some unusual grasses by the road-side, and had stopped and gathered them, excited to find such rare ones, and had taken them back with him to study, and had explained them to her and made her see profoundly interesting, important things in them, in these grasses which, till he touched them, had seemed just grasses. That is what he did with everything – touched it into life and delight. The grasses lay in the dining-room now, waiting for him to work on them, spread out where he had put them on some blotting-paper in the window. She had seen them as she came through on her way to the garden; and she had seen, too, that the breakfast was still there, the breakfast they had had together, still as they had left it, forgotten by the servants in the surprise of death. He had fallen down as he got up from it.
Dead. In an instant. No time for anything, for a cry, for a look.
Gone. Finished. Wiped out.
What a beautiful day it was; and so hot. He loved heat. They were lucky in the weather…”
Julia Upton 