Tag Archives: black

Black and white housing

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WHEN DRIVING HOME after leaving our vacuum cleaner for repair at a small shop in Ealing, we passed a tidy estate consisting of houses and blocks of flats, all decorated with mock half-timbering painted in black and white. Near to West Ealing Underground station, this housing colony is called Hanger Hill Garden Estate.

During the period between the two World Wars, much residential building work was undertaken in London’s suburbs. Often, estates were built with features that mimicked rusticity. The idea was that the commuters, who lived there, might imagine that they were enjoying a village atmosphere, without being far away from the inner city, where many of them worked. To create this illusion, house builders adorned their constructions with decorative features that were supposed to make them seem older and more traditional than they were. The use of mock half-timbering on external walls was a commonly used decorative trick designed to evoke suggestions of ‘ye olde England’.

At Hanger Hill Garden Estate, there is a uniformity of style, which makes the use of half-timbering eye-catching rather than suggestive of rustic traditions. Interestingly, the mock half-timbering does not extend to cover the dull, pebble-dashed rear walls of some of the blocks of flats. These surfaces are less easy to see from the roads than the mock half-timbering. Overall, the result is attractive. When I first saw this well-maintained estate with neat gardens, I thought of early 20th century garden suburbs rather than old country villages, which are often delightful because they lack uniformity in their layouts.

The opening of the branch of the Central Line, which runs from Shepherds Bush to Ealing Broadway, in 1920, and especially the opening of West Acton Station three years later, were the stimuli for the construction of residential estates in the area. In 1925, the first bit of land was acquired by Hanger Hill Garden Estate Ealing Limited. The estate was built between 1928 and about 1932. The buildings, flats and houses, were all designed by the architectural practice of Douglas Smith & Barley. The resulting layout has considerable uniformity, and is attractive without being monotonous. A good feature in the estate’s design is that the blocks of flats stand in spacious lawns.

The Residents Association’s website has a good history of the place (www.hhgera.com). It noted that in the 1930s:

“…times were clearly pleasant and peaceful ones for all the tenants on the Estate. Occupiers of some of the four-bedroomed houses employed a maid, the fourth bedroom having been designed with this in mind. Whilst all the houses and many of the flats had garages, only a small number of people on the Estate owned cars … These were the days when goods were delivered to the home. Tradesmen were not allowed to call at the front doors of the houses or flats, but had to call at back doors using the service roads. Bakers, butchers, fish salesmen and greengrocers all called weekly, some attending earlier in the day or week to take orders. In the parking bays behind the flats, vans from Harrods, Dickens & Jones and the like, were to be seen drawing up.”

However, life on the estate was not free from regulations:

“Tenancies of flats were refused to people who had young children. No animals were allowed to be kept in the flats … House tenants were allowed to hang out washing only on Mondays and Tuesdays; flat tenants were not permitted to hang out washing at all.”

Currently, so two friendly residents informed us, the estate is subject to strict conservation regulations. This is a good thing because it would be a shame to spoil the appearance of this charming and unusual enclave of residential accommodation in this part of west London.

READ more about west London in Adam Yamey’s book “BEYOND MARYLEBONE AND MAYFAIR: EXPLORING WEST LONDON”, which can be bought from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/BEYOND-MARYLEBONE-MAYFAIR-EXPLORING-LONDON/dp/B0B7CR679W/

The Black Chapel in the park

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EVERY SUMMER SINCE 2000 except for the year 2020, the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens has hosted a special event. On each of these years between June and October, a temporary pavilion has been erected near to the original Serpentine Gallery (now known as Serpentine South). No two pavilions have looked the same. However, what they have in common is that each one of them is the first ever completed structure erected in England by the pavilion’s designer/architect.  

This year (2022), the pavilion, called “Black Chapel”, was designed by the American artist Theaster Gates (born in Chicago in 1973). In the past, we have seen exhibitions of his works hosted in the White Cube Galleries at both Masons Yard and in Bermondsey. Many of his exciting artworks have impressed us greatly. So, it was with high expectations that we went to see his pavilion.

At first sight, we were disappointed by the Black Chapel. It is a huge black cylinder with three apertures. Two of them are entrances and the third is a circular orifice in the centre of the tall structure’s circular, domed ceiling. A segment of the cylinder is walled off and serves as a café servery. Benches line the lower parts of the wall of the rest of the building. Seven large, flat rectangular, metallic paintings (or plates) are attached to a part of the internal wall, and there is a large bell just outside one of the pavilion’s two entrances.

Today, many people like to have art explained to them. For me, it is my visceral reaction to an artwork that is more important than its intended meaning or the artist’s intentions. The ‘meaning’ of a work of art is, for me, secondary to the way I am affected by it. For those, who seek meaning in art, this is what the Serpentine’s website has to say about the pavilion:

“The structure, realised with the support of Adjaye Associates, references the bottle kilns of Stoke-on-Trent, the beehive kilns of the Western United States, San Pietro and the Roman tempiettos, and traditional African structures, such as the Musgum mud huts of Cameroon, and the Kasubi Tombs of Kampala, Uganda. The Pavilion’s circularity and volume echo the sacred forms of Hungarian round churches and the ring shouts, voodoo circles and roda de capoeira witnessed in the sacred practices of the African diaspora.”

Interesting as this might be, it neither increases nor diminishes my appreciation of the Black Chapel. Theaster Gates’s Black Chapel is less exciting visually than some of the past pavilions. Although our initial impressions of this seemingly simple structure were not particularly favourable, after spending a little time in it, the place grew on us and now we hope to visit it again.

Black and white beneath your feet

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WHEN WALKING IN central Funchal, it is worth looking down at the pavements. Like those in Lisbon and other towns in Portugal, their surfaces are covered with small black and white stones arranged to create pleasing patterns. I imagine that these compositions created using irregularly sized stones must be laid by hand rather than by using a machine.

Funchal

Often the stones are laid on the pavements as well as on large open spaces in such a way that fascinating optical effects are achieved. By making such lovely places on which to walk, the cities and towns become beautiful in whichever direction you look.