Category: Urban sketch

View from Chequer Street EC1

Braithwaite House, on the left, is having its cladding removed. Here’s the quote from Islington Council website (viewed today, 2 July 2017):

Cllr Diarmaid Ward, Islington Council’s executive member for housing and development, said:  “As a landlord, safety is our number one priority and we will do whatever it takes to ensure people are safe in our estates.
“Last night (Thurs June 22) we received results of tests on cladding on the side of Braithwaite House, and they have confirmed the presence of Aluminium Composite Material (ACM).
“We’re arranging to have the cladding, which is only on the sides of the building, removed as soon as we possibly can by a specialist contractor.
“We’re also stepping up safety measures in the block immediately, with fire safety patrols taking place day and night from today until the panels are removed.
“Our housing staff were at Braithwaite House last night to carry out fire checks and clear any obstructions in communal areas.  We’re also taking advice from London Fire Brigade and will follow all their recommendations.

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In the background, the other side of Bunhill Row is “The Featherstone”. The notice says:

“Hill are working with Southern Housing to create 65 new homes for affordable rent, shared ownership and private sale on the former Moorfields School Site.”

In the distance, the building with round windows is “White Collar Factory” on the Old Street Roundabout. No notice on the outside and a bit dark on the inside and it was unclear if you can just walk in. It was a Sunday and I didn’t feel like being challenged, so I didn’t walk in. Their website is hard to decipher. What are they exactly? The bit I understood says:

When it opens at the end of 2016, White Collar Factory will house one of London’s most exciting and diverse working communities.

So they are a shared occupancy building. It looked to me like there might be a café in there too.

Drawn and coloured on location, in the shade until the sun came around. 1hr 30min roughly. Kids playing in the paygound, trying to get a ball somewhere, perhaps in a net. They called “concrete”, or “stone” which was perhaps the intended destination of the ball. One kid called out “Hey, you hurt my eye”. The other kid said “No!”. Then he remembered himself and said, in a clear and respectful tone, “Did I? I’m sorry. Are you OK?”

From Holborn Circus

This sketch shows the new “Fleet Building” under construction on the Farringdon Road, towering over the quaint Vicarage and Court House of St Andrews Holborn.

fullsizeoutput_17b4The Vicarage and Court House are Victorian, designed by Samuel Teulon as part of the remodelling of St Andrews to accommodate the Holborn Viaduct, 1860s and 70s. Notices on the gate announce the St Andrews Church Foundation and Associated Charities. The Court House is the building with the turret, No 7 St Andrews Street. It just has a large “7” on the door.

The pinkish coloured building on the right is currently the offices of “Rosenblatt” and “Convex Capital.”

The Fleet Building is designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. It is Goldman Sachs’ “840 000 sq ft London campus”. To build it they demolished the old Telephone exchange. The murals by Dorothy Annan that were on the Telephone Exchange are now in the Barbican.

An article in a property magazine “CoStar” dated 4 Jan 2013 reads:

Goldman’s plans previously suffered a setback when the government gave Grade II listed status to 1960s murals on the front of Fleet Building, which used to be London’s largest telephone exchange.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport followed advice from English Heritage that the nine ceramic tile murals by Dorothy Annan, which depict pylons, cables, telegraph poles and generators, were of “historic interest” to the telecoms industry and had “relative rarity as surviving works of 1960s mural art”.
Goldman had opposed the listing of the murals and relocating them could be costly and time-consuming. However, as part of the conditions of the planning consent, Goldman must meet all “reasonable costs” incurred with their removal.

 About 1 hour. Drawn and coloured on location. Very hot sun. Atmosphere of vanilla scented Vape Cloud. Fire alarm on Lloyds Bank ticking intermittantly.

Master’s Garden, The Charterhouse

20 June 2017 (colour)

This shows the Preacher’s House. The wall on the right is next to the Clerkenwell Road. Behind the fence on the right there were bee-hives with very active bees.

About 3 hours. Drawn and coloured on location.

Here’s what it looked like before the colour went on:

20 June 2017 (pen only)

 

The Charterhouse, Chapel from the Roof Terrace

This is looking South-East from the roof terrace.

13 June 2017

Thank you to the Preacher of Charterhouse, Robin Isherwood, for arranging my access to the roof terrace. This is the view looking across a wide green space in the Queen Mary College campus, towards the Chapel and offices of The Charterhouse.  The building in the foreground is part of Charterhouse, restored in the 1950s. The restoration architects were Seely and Paget, the people behind the restoration of Eltham Palace.

Newcastle Central Station

This is a drawing from the Costa Coffee at Newcastle railway station, waiting for the train to London Kings Cross, 268 miles away.

 

 

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Newcastle Central Station was opened in 1850.

Architect: John Dobson
Engineers: TE Harrison and Robert Stephenson
Contractor: Mackay and Woodstock

The structure in the distance with the flag is the 13th century Newcastle Castle Keep, restored 2011 to 2015 using Heritage Lottery Funds.

This drawing took about an hour, drawn and coloured on location. Some colour and shadows added at home.

Here is work in progress:

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Charterhouse, Pensioners’ Court

This is from a doorway on Pensioners’ Court, which is the court beyond Preacher’s Court. The Building with the four archways is part of the Brothers’ realm: the infirmary above and the coffee room below. I don’t know what the turret is, very intriguing.
The gardens were magnificent. In front of me was that huge magnolia tree. It moved in the wind and contained darkness much darker than I have drawn it.

I enjoyed the two towers: Barbican and Charterhouse, and the way the view was bracketed by the tree on the right and the lamp-post on the left.

One hour 45 minutes, drawn and coloured on location. The day was overcast and threatened rain. Round me, a gardener was watering the borders.
It should be “Pensioners’” court (plural).

Great Hall, The Charterhouse

Those chimneys are hard to draw. They are not simple rectangles, but a complicated geometric shape, a square put at an angle to another square, difficult to see in the light and shadow.

The crest of the roof is not straight. It goes downwards at quite an alarming angle, as drawn. The windows are not in a straight line with each other, which makes me wonder exactly where the floor is, inside.

I drew this from under the shade of the new building, the “Admiral Ashmore Building”. While I was drawing, the gardeners were making the window boxes, and crushed the geranium leaves. The place smelt of geranium, and earth and water.

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I like it that you can see the Barbican towers beyond. I made this observation to a Brother who paused to chat. He told me that these brutalist towers are not popular with certain of the Brothers. They have identified a place in the garden where you can sit, so that the towers are obscured by a tree.

About 2 hours (those chimneys!!), drawn and coloured on location.

Here is what it looked like before the colour went on:IMG_0105

Willen House EC1

Corner of Galway St and Bath Street, EC1. Willen House is on the right, then in the background is Galway House in the Pleydell Estate. The LSO St Luke’s monument is just visible.

An old man said, “Ah. You are drawing. All little houses, there used to be. I’ve lived here all my life. You know what that [Willen House] used to be? The Income Tax. That primary school? Used to be a pub. Round the corner here, we got bombed out during the war. I’m giving away my age now! And that place – down there – Argos? – you look across the road and what do you see? A bus stop. And that building behind it? Used to be a school. I went there. The man there, conducted during the Cup Final. “Abide With Me”. All dressed in white he was.”

Mostly I did this drawing standing up, leaning on the wall of the “Institute of Ophthalmology, 11-43 Bath Street”. While I was doing the colouring I had to sit down. Two women approached. “You’re drawing,” she told me. Then, “I’m a Community Police Officer”. One of them showed me her badge, in a little case: a metal low-relief sculpture on a blue cloth background. They both admired my drawing, and looked at the view. I said “It’s OK to sit here?” She said, “Oh yes. It’s just, you’ve got your things all round you. Want to be careful you don’t get them swiped. You aren’t in a position to run after them.”. Which was a good point. I moved my bag until I was leaning on it, squeezing it onto the wall behind me.

Willen House is now Student residence, and also home of NTS Fashion Ltd, on the ground floor. I could see their racks of clothes through the window.

About an hour, drawn and coloured on location. The car moved.

The Post Office Tower from Lloyd Street WC1

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A quick sketch on location, wash done at home later.

I stood in front of Bethany House, built 1882-4 for the Sisters of Bethany, and now a hostel for homeless women.

Lloyd Street constructed 1830s. Post Office Tower (now the BT Tower) completed 1964.