Tag Archives: conservation

The silent screen

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HOBSON STREET IN the heart of Cambridge is one way and is used by traffic avoiding the pedestrianised section of Sidney Street. Hobson Street is lined with buildings of various ages. One of these, which has always attracted me, is a disused cinema whose facade has Art Deco features.

Built in about 1930 to replace an earlier cinema constructed in 1921, it was The Central Cinema. Its white tiled facade has Egyptian and Art Deco details.

In 1972, the cinema closed and was converted, as many other old cinemas have been, into a bingo hall. This establishment thrived until 2009 when the British government banned smoking in public places. Apart from three days when the building was occupied by squatters for 3 days, the old cinema has been boarded up and disused.

Various plans have been proposed for its future use, but none of them have been carried out. One of the problems is that because it is a protected edifice, any future plans have to preserve its original features. And as most of the new ideas for the old cinema involve adding windows, and adding them would infringe the protection order, all of the new plans have had to be abandoned. The protection order has saved the building but hindered its future development.

The elephant in the …

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THE ELEPHANT IN the room is something about which we prefer not to speak. This is not the case for the herd of over one hundred elephants that can be found in London’s Green Park today. This is not a change in the creatures’ habitat caused by global warning, because the elephants are not real. They are life-size models of the creatures, constructed with strips of Lantana camara, an invasive weed that thrives in the tropics. Despite being made of strips of this woody material, each one is a fine representation of an elephant. From afar, the sculptures look quite lifelike. Some of the elephants have models of birds found in the UK perched on their backs.

The elephants, so we were informed by a helpful volunteer from Goa who is working for an organisation called Coexistence, are manufactured by local craftsmen living the district of Gudalur in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu state in the south of India. By using the Lantana, the craftsmen not only create the models but also clear deleterious plants from their land.

Apart from looking great, the model pachyderms have arrived with a message. Known as the ‘Coexistence Herd’, the beasts have arrived:

“… at a unique moment in time when a global reduction in human activity has had a positive effect on wildlife. Elephants may be giants but they tread softly. This 100-strong herd reminds us that when we lighten our footprint, wildlife bounces back.” (https://elephant-family.org/coexistence/)⁠⁠

So, it seems that the herd has not arrived merely to enhance our enjoyment of Green Park but also to heighten our awareness of the desirability of humans living in harmony with the rest of the animal kingdom.

Green Park is not the only site in London where these elephants from India can be spotted. There are others currently on display at places such as Berkeley Square and St James Park. The elephants are all for sale. The proceeds of the sales:

“…will be directed to grass-roots organisations across India that allow people and wildlife to live together more peacefully.” (https://coexistence.org/elephant-shop/).

Whether or not you are concerned about the message that is supposed to be conveyed by these superb models of elephants, it unlikely that you will be disappointed by seeing them.

In a while crocodile

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THE CROCODILE LYING LAZILY in the hot sunshine with its teeth lined jaws wide open lay motionless as we and many other visitors gaped at it with amazement.

We reached the Crocodile Bank at Semencheri (near Mahabalipuram) after a two hour drive northwards from Pondicherry along the East Coast Road (ECR), which as its name suggests runs close to the east coast of India. We drove through flat terrain with luxuriant vegetation. The road passes many picturesque backwaters and other water bodies, some covered with flowering waterlilies. We also passed a small collection of saltpans, alongside which there were small piles of white salt. This salt gathering area was on a much smaller scale than can be seen at the south eastern edge of Kutch. The road is dotted with numerous hatcheries for edible crustaceans such as shrimps and scampi.

The Crocodile Bank was established in 1976 by Romulus Whitaker and is now being run by his ex-wife, our friend Zai. It was started to breed cricodiles and other reptiles in captivity in order to counter the reduction of their populations in the wild. It is now an important centre for herpetology, education , wildlife conservation, and breeding reptiles. It is open to the public, who gain great enjoyment from seeing and learning about the reptiles.

We first visited the Crocodile Bank about five years ago. When we entered, my first impression was of looking at a sea of grey logs. On closer examination, these ‘logs ‘ were motionless crocodiles. We learnt that crocodiles and aligators are very somnolent unless they are hungry. Therefore, they tend to lie about motionless, basking in the sun or keeping cool in shallow water.

During our first visit, we saw a pair of beautifully coloured iguanas, which Zai and her colleagues were hoping would mate. She told us that they did produce a clutch of eggs eventually, and that some of the baby iguanas were enjoying life at the Crocodile Bank.

We were pressed for time on our visit in February 2020. So, we did not have a chance to have a good look around. On our first visit, Zai arranged for one of her team to give us what turned out to be a very informative tour.

I can strongly recommend a visit to Crocodile Bank. It is not far from the superb archaeological remains at Mahabalipuram and provides an interesting contrast to them. Instead of stones of historic interest, you can enjoy seeing creatures that have survived the passage of time even longer than the ruins.

A theatre resurrected…

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Early in November 2018, I saw the opening performance of a new production of “Love Lies Bleeding” by Don de Lillo, which was premiered in 2005, at the Print Room in London’s Notting Hill Gate. The play deals with the question of euthanasia in a situation of a person with persistent vegetative state. The playwright deals with moral and other questions relating to this in a sensitive way. As with most Print Room productions I have seen, the acting was superb, at times gripping.

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The Print Room theatre began its life in 2010 in a converted printers’ warehouse in Hereford Road, close to Westbourne Grove. We attended several excellent performances there, seated on not very comfortable chairs. In summer the warehouse, which was poorly ventilated, could become very hot. I remember watching “The Kingdom of the Earth” by Tennessee Williams one hot May evening. The heat in the theatre complimented the seediness of the characters. A year or two ago, the Print Room shifted to the Coronet in Notting Hill Gate.

When I began living near this place, the Coronet was a cinema. It was the last cinema in London to permit smoking in the auditorium. Smokers had to sit in the balcony seats, not in the stalls below them. The cinema had two screens, the larger of which was in what looked like an Edwardian theatre. Indeed, the Coronet started life as a theatre when it was opened in late 1898 (see: http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/CoronetTheatreNottingHillGate.htm).    It was designed by a theatre architect WGR Sprague (1863-1933). Eighteen years later, the theatre began to be used as a cinema. Many of its original features were retained. By 1923 it became a full-time cinema.

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In 1972, the Coronet was threatened with demolition. It was saved and made subject to conservation regulations following local residents’ successful protests. In 1993, when I first came to live close to the Coronet, the cinema looked run down but romantically picturesque. The local Kensington Temple Church bought the Coronet in 2004, planning to use it as a place of worship (as has happened with so many former cinemas in London). As a digression, it is interesting to note that cinemas in London have been converted to churches, whereas in Communist Albania the reverse was true during its period of official atheism.

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The Kensington Temple spruced up and restored the Coronet, but kept it running as a cinema. They used it occasionally as a place where their congregation could listen to preachers. Once on a Sunday morning I passed the Coronet, whose doors were open, and looked into the auditorium where a very enthusiastic clergyman was rousing his lively audience.

The Coronet cinema closed in 2014. It had been bought by the Print Room, which had shifted from Hereford Road. Thus, the Coronet became a theatre once more. The Print room have preserved many of the decorative features of the original theatre but have made some major internal modifications. A new stage has been built to cover the space where the original lower level stalls were once. This stage extends to the lower level of the raked seating that had formerly been the original theatre’s Dress Circle. The seats in this Circle have become the new auditorium. Although much has been done to preserve original features, the theatre has been decorated to give its walls a fashionable distressed appearance. The place reminds me a little of what I remember of the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris when I saw it in the 1970s soon after the British director Peter Brook re-opened it.

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Although the theatre and its productions are wonderful, the bar must not be missed. It is located beneath the new stage in the space where once the stalls were located. Its concave floor reflects the raking of the seats that were once affixed to it. A grand piano serves as the bar where drinks are sold. The dimly lit bar is decorated quirkily with all manner of bric-a-brac, largely chosen by the staff and, no doubt, sourced from the nearby Portobello and Golborne markets. The bar is open an hour before and an hour after a performance. It is closed during performances because its ceiling is the theatre stage. Even if you cannot manage a play, a visit to the Coronet’s bar is a treat.