After sketching the Tin Tabernacle in Esher West End, I walked into the town centre to sketch another St George’s: St George’s Old Church.
St George’s, Esher, Old Church. Sketched February 2024 in Sketchbook 14
Here is the notice by the door:
ST GEORGE ESHER This church is cared for by The Churches Conservation Trust. Although no longer needed for regular worship, it remains a consecrated building, a part of England’s history, maintained for the benefit of this and future generations.
Here is the notice hanging from a post by the gate:
Welcome to ST. GEORGE’S CHURCH
Esher’s oldest public building and one of the earliest Anglican churches. Most of the structure is 16th Century Tudor Two 18th Century features of te Church are a 3-decker pulpit and the Newcastle chamber pew designed by Sir John Vanburgh for Thomas Pelham., Duke of Newcastle and his brother Henry: both served as Prime Minister. Princess Charlotte – heir to George IV – and Prince Leopold – who became the first King of the Belgians – worshipped here when they lived at Claremont after their marriage in 1816. Queen Victoria, Leopold’s niece attended services when visiting her uncle and later came with Prince Albert. When Christ Church was completed in 1854 St George’s ceased to be the Parish Church. Restored by the community in 1965 it remains a consecrated building now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Several services are held each year. It is also a venue for music and the arts.
I sketched it from the graveyard, as the sun set. So many angles and views! It has been altered and added to and mended, yet is graceful and somehow perfect.
Behind the church there were crocuses.
A wonderful place! Tranquillity just off the main road.
Here’s a map. I walked here from the St Georges West End, along the route marked with a red line on the map: a half hour’s walk, just over a mile.
Here is work in progress on the drawing.
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Beside the green on the West side of Esher stands this iron church, St George’s West End.
St George’s West End, Esher. Sketched on location February 2024, in Sketchbook 14
It has a single bell in its small bell tower, and a fence made in a particular way, which I tried hard to show. I wondered if it is intentionally in the shape of a line of crosses, appropriate for a Christian church.
This is one of dozens of “tin tabernacles” or iron churches across the UK. Wikipedia has a whole list. Some of them are strikingly similar to this one.
They were built in the late 19th century, in response to expanding demand, using the new technology of corrugated iron. Many of them, including this one, were pre-fabricated.
According to a 2004 article on this church by Angela Stockbridge the land was donated by Queen Victoria in 1878. “A need was felt to make provision for “the spiritual wants of the “Aged, Poor and Infirm of West End”” and to spare them from the steep and often muddy climb into Esher” she writes. It was intended to be a temporary church. 145 years later, here it is, still standing, and still hosting services.
The church is dedicated to St George. Above the porch is a stained glass window, evidently showing the Knight slaughtering the Dragon. I could just make him out standing on the stirrups of his white horse. The church was closed when I visited, but I hope to go inside on a future occasion. I am told that inside it is cladded with white-painted wood panelling.
I sketched the church from the village green opposite. It was damp and muddy. When I’d had enough, I retreated to the “Prince of Wales” for some lunch. Then I went on to sketch the church in Esher town centre: another St George’s.
Esher is to the West of London, with a main line railway station in to Waterloo.
“They do tend to heat up in summer and stay cold in winter, and the rain makes a noise on their roofs, but they have proved remarkably sturdy. As one commentator writes, “Tin Tabernacles are an important if brief and overlooked episode in the history of church architecture,” and have a claim to “be recognised as listed buildings, particularly as examples of prefabrication” (Dopson 204-05).” Dopson, Laurence. “Tin Tabernacles.” Words from “The Countryman”. Ed. Valerie Porter. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 2007. 204-05.
Here is the church of St Edmund, Kessingland, seen from the south.
Church of St Edmund, Kessingland. Sketched 11 February 2024, 12:30 in Sketchbook 14
I was a guest of the bell ringers, who kindly invited me to their loft. There are six bells. I witnessed their splendid peals, which made the tower shake slightly under my feet. This was a surprise to me, as the walls of the tower are about three foot thick. But apparently it’s perfectly normal. Then I went outside and sketched the church from the south.
It was a beautiful place to stand and sketch: a peaceful country churchyard. The gravestone in front of me, in the foreground in the picture, carried stone carved flowers, and cushions of moss.
view from the bell ringers’ loft
This tower is very old. According to the Historic England listing, the tower is from the 15th century and Grade I listed. There is neat flint work, in a chequerboard pattern higher up and in vertical lines lower down, with a horizontal border at ground level. The nave is thatched! It has recently received new thatch, in a glowing russet colour which you can just see to the right of the tower.
The church is about half a mile from the sea. There is a stained glass window, dated 2007, by Nicola Kantorowicz, dedicated to the “Glory of God and the memory of Kessingland driftermen, ‘where ever they may rest'”. It was given by G. Jack Strowger in memory of his wife Katherine. There is a ship’s wheel on the wall, and another on a low pulpit. An anchor hangs from the wall, “in loving memory of Jack and Mary Smith”.
The nave of the Church of St Edmund, Kessingland, looking east.
It’s well worth a visit if you are in the area.
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I was expecting the hidden alleyway to be deserted on a Tuesday lunchtime, and so it was for the first hour. But then it became suddenly busy. A small ambulance backed carefully down the alleyway in front of me and parked. Its doors opened and two paramedics went round to the back of the car. They lifted out their equipment and walked calmly off down the alley. After that excitement, a certain calm returned to the alley, insofar as calm is possible a few hundred metres from Kings Cross.
I carried on sketching, now working on the beer barrels to the left of the picture. But the calm did not last long. Two cars arrived and people dressed in orange hi-vis vests scrambled out. They unlocked a gate off the picture to the left, and went in, leaving their car on the pavement. Then a van arrived, it parked directly in front of me, and a further person in a hi-vis outfit got out. He looked across the bonnet of his van and saw me sketching. “Oh, sorry,” he said, “Am I in your way?” I said that yes, he kind of was. I stood ready, however, to concede the space to him, as he looked important and determined in his bright orange overalls and hard hat. But to my surprise he grinned at me, “Ten minutes! I’ll be just ten minutes!”. He rushed off through the gate where the other people had gone. I abandoned the beer barrels and worked on the roofs.
The roofs were quite a challenge, and they productively occupied the 8 minutes until the driver came rushing back out, looking triumphant, accompanied by a selection of the people who’d arrived earlier. “I told this woman I’d be ten minutes,” he explained to his entourage. He raised a hand to me in greeting, got into his car and rumbled off, leaving the other people standing on the cobbles. I asked them what they were working on. “The bridge,” they said. Oh yes, I was standing on a bridge. The train lines were below.
Annotated Google map of the location.
It’s in a labyrinth of roads and railway lines just to the east of Kings Cross mainline station.Here are some maps to show the location. Walk east from Kings Cross, about 10 minutes.
On the maps, the blue line represents the River Fleet, which is alongside the Kings Cross Road, underground. It flows from left to right across the map (West to East) and then heads South down to join the Thames beneath Blackfriars Bridge.
The river Fleet, before it became an underground sewer in 1825, flowed along the western side of Pancras Road and then eastward along the south side of the common, crossing the old highway (now Gray’s Inn Road) north of St. Chad’s Place.
‘Battle Bridge Estate’, in Survey of London: Volume 24, the Parish of St Pancras Part 4: King’s Cross Neighbourhood, ed. Walter H Godfrey and W McB. Marcham (London, 1952), pp. 102-113. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol24/pt4/pp102-113 [accessed 7 February 2024].
St Chad’s Place slopes down towards the River Fleet. This area was once the location of St Chad’s Well, a spring said to have health-giving properties. It operated from about 1815 to 1860. I found a picture in the London Picture Archives, reproduced below with their permission.
A river, a bridge, a well, a passage and a music venue. It’s amazing what you find.
Looking east from where I was sketching. Street art in St Chad’s PlaceIn St Chad’s Place, looking North towards the Kings Cross Road.North entrance of St Chad’s Place. The cyclist is coming out of St Chad’s Place and into the Kings Cross Road.Street name in the Kings Cross Road
Here is work in progress on the sketch:
The colours are:
For the sky and pavement – a special new colour, Schminke Horadam “Random grey” – “formulated each year from surplus pigments”. This is the 2022 edition.
Rose madder permanent – also on the pavement
Mars Yellow
Ultramarine Blue
Green Serpentine Genuine
Buff Titanium
Fired Gold Ochre in the brickwork
Burnt Umber
Arches Aquarelle paper in a sketchbook made by Wyvern Bindery (Sketchbook 14).
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“The House they left Behind”, 27 Ropemakers Fields, London E14 8BX, sketched in Sketchbook 14 28th Jan 2024 at 2pm (Image copyright JaneSketching.com)
The London Inheritance article shows a 1986 photo taken by the author’s father. Painted on the side of the building was the sign:
THE HOUSE THEY LEFT BEHIND BUILT 1857 RESTORED 1985
The sign has now been painted over. The wall, which is on the left of my drawing, is now completely white. But the name lives on and appears on current maps. Here is a map showing where the house is.
The building is now residential, but was previously a pub. It was “left behind” by the bombs dropped on London by the Luftwaffe in the 1939-45 conflict. The website “Layers of London” provides maps of bomb damage in London. Here is the area.
Map showing bomb damage. Classified from Total Destruction (Black), through Seriously Damaged (Dark Red) to Clearance Areas (Green). credit: https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/overlays/bomb-damage-1945 Map provided by London Metropolitan Archives. Geo-referenced with the support of the National Library of Scotland
The map is based on 1:2500 Ordnance Survey sheets originally published in 1916. The bomb damage was recorded on these maps by hand soon after it happened. The circle represents where a V2 rocket landed. The red area shows buildings that were classified as “seriously damaged – doubtful if repairable”. As you see, the pub, labelled “P.H.”and outlined in red, is shown as undamaged.
I found more information on Bomb Damage Maps from a National Geographic article on a book about the maps. This article also provides a detailed key to the colours on the map. The book is “The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps” by Laurence Ward.
“A diary entry included in the book, from architect Andrew Butler on April 20, 1941, gives an idea of what the work was like:
For the block I have started on—eight floors high with two flats on each floor—has had its whole face ripped off … I found it possible to stand on part of the roof. So, clutching a broken chimney, I surveyed the damage there. My notebook became very messy. What with the dust and soot, wet filth and the perspiration of fluster on my hands, it was difficult to read what I wrote. The notes served their purpose however when, after drying the book, I had to transcribe them into a report.”
Here is my work in progress on the sketch. Thank you to the author of “A London Inheritance” for providing the stimulus for this expedition. Thank you also to the friends and family of local resident David Newell-Smith, on whose memorial bench I completed the sketch. His dates are given as 1937-2017. He would have been a boy when the bombs were falling.
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Here is the Market Café, sketched from the “Cat and Mutton Bridge” on 19th January 2024.
Market Café, 2 Broadway Market, London E8. Sketched 19th January 2024, 15:30, in Sketchbook 14.
As you see, this building is the former pub, the “Sir Walter Scott”. A pub was on this site in 1836. The wording on the building says “rebuilt 1909”. It closed as a pub in 1999 according to “pubhistory.com”. The Market Café now operates from the ground floor.
The website of Broadway Market gives a history of this area. In the early 19th century, the canal was the major means of freight transport, until the coming of the railways in the 1840s.
In 1812 “The Regent Canal Act” was passed and the Regent’s Canal constructed. This final link was direct into the River Thames at Limehouse, completing the passageway of heavy freight to Birmingham Manchester and the entire industrial North. (It should be noted that this was at the time of horse-drawn stage coaches and ox-laden wagons).
The new Regents Canal became a central pivot for industry and supplies. Timber warehouses grew, Gas light and Coke companies were established and this once rural backwater had become a major hub of enterprise.
This “once rural backwater” evidently needed a pub. Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish historian, novelist, poet, and playwright. He died in 1832, which must have been around the time this pub was named and the area was growing in population and importance.
The National Library of Scotland provides a wonderful side-by-side map, so you can see how the area looked previously, alongside a modern map. Click the image below to go to their marvellous site. You can shift the images around and expand them: both maps change at once. It’s fascinating.
I had a look at an 1870 OS map. The Public House “P.H.” existed here in 1870. The road currently called Broadway Market was called “Pritchards Road” then. You can see the rows of terraced houses along the canal, gone now, and the “Coal Wharf” and “Wood Wharf” which used to be on the south side of the canal.
Broadway Market is now a street of modern coffee shops and small enterprises, with a street market of stalls down the middle. The jeweller William Cheshire has a workshop at the south end of the street. Climpson Coffee are further up. There are bakers, grocers, greengrocers and an opticians. At the North end, Broadway Market gives onto London Fields, a lovely park, with a lido.
It’s a great area to explore.
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Rheidol Rooms is a café in Islington, just North of the Regent’s Canal. I sketched it on a bright cold day.
Rheidol Rooms, 16 Rheidol Terrace, London N1 sketched 3pm 10 January 2024 in Sketchbook 14
The tree cast its image onto the café. The twigs is the shadow were so sharply defined that it was hard to distinguish the shadow from the tree.
Despite that bright blue sky, the temperature was 2 degrees C and there was a wind. I froze, and walked across to the café. Sadly, it was closed, but it looked like a really good café and I will go back. I finished the drawing at my desk.
The colours in the picture are:
Mars Yellow
Ultramarine Blue
Burnt Umber
Serpentine Genuine (green, for the window frames)
The grey and black is made from a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber
The café is at the junction of St Peter’s Street and Rheidol Terrace. It is in a 19th century row of terraced houses. “British History Online” indicates that this terrace was constructed in 1848-52.
Sketch map location of the Rheidol RoomsMap (c) OpenStreetMap contributors
Reference: British History Online: the history of this area is here: A P Baggs, Diane K Bolton and Patricia E C Croot, ‘Islington: Growth, South-east Islington’, in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 8, Islington and Stoke Newington Parishes, ed. T F T Baker and C R Elrington (London, 1985), pp. 20-24. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp20-24 [accessed 11 January 2024].
“….the block bounded by St. Peter’s Street, Rheidol Terrace, and Cruden Street as far as the backs of houses in Queen’s Head Lane, with provision for 14 semi-detached and 74 terraced houses, was taken by James and Thomas Ward and built up by James Ward and sublessees. Leases for nos. 7-21 St. Peter’s Street, pairs of stuccoed villas originally called Angell Terrace after the Clothworkers’ surveyor, Samuel Angell, who probably laid out the estate, were granted in 1848 and for the rest of the block from 1848 to 1852.”
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An old brick building stands amongst the new-build. The paint on its window frames is flaking, and its brickwork is dark from the smoke of a previous age, yet it retains its dignity: a grandmother of a building.
15 Lamb’s Passage, London EC1, sketched 5th January 2024 in Sketchbook 14, 4pm, 6 degrees C
This is the former St Joseph’s School, built in 1901, which ceased operation as a school in 1977. On its roof you can see the wire netting which once must have surrounded a playground or netball court.
St Joseph’s Church is in the basement, accessed by the porch you can just see to the right of my drawing behind the furthest lamppost.
The area in front of the building is a quiet garden, in memory of Basil Hume, an English Catholic bishop. Sometimes the gate is open and you can go in. It has been arranged so that, even in this tiny space, it is possible to walk some kind of small pilgrimage, along a path, across a ditch, past a tree, and so round a corner to rest in the shaded hut. On the way you encounter a splendid birch tree with white bark, which I have seen grow from a sapling.
BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD
This quiet garden is dedicated to the memory of BASIL HUME monk and shepherd 1923-1999
Number 15 Lamb’s Buildings hosts several organisations now. The City Photographic Society uses the Church Hall in this building. It is also the registered office of the Catholic Herald. I have often heard music as I pass by, so it might also be used as a rehearsal space. There is ballroom dancing on Mondays. The smaller building to the south, on the left of my drawing, hosts a pregnancy advice centre. So this is a set of buildings is in use, actively serving the community despite the flaking paint.
I made this drawing quickly as the light faded on a cold and windy evening. After the pen, I retreated back to my desk to apply the colour.
This church stands on Fleet Street, near the Royal Courts of Justice. It is set a little back from the road, so I had not really noticed it. But it is remarkable in many ways.
St Dunstan-in-the-West, 186a Fleet Street, sketched 31 Dec 2023, in Sketchbook 14
For one thing, the architect has used every possible ornate contrivance. It was impossible for this urban sketcher to do justice to the extraordinary details. The crocheted spires! The castellations! The geometry! The lacy top! The stonework above the door!
The geometry is interesting because the tower starts as a squarish-type shape at ground level, and then higher up there is an arrangement of planes which slice off the corners, turning it into an octagon at the top. At the higher part of the tower, the stonework is open so the sky is visible between the fine arches and spires.
Then there are the clocks. There are two clocks on the tower, both showing the correct time. And there is another clock, also showing the correct time, suspended on a substantial wooden bracket below a little covered stage. Inside the stage are two muscular wooden figures, and two bells. The figures strike the bells every quarter hour. The little stage is described as an “aedicule” in Pevsner, who tells me that the clock was made in 1671.
The clock and the small covered stage (aedicule”), with wooded figures.
At ground level there is a rather austere monument: the bust of a man, on a plain triangular plinth, labelled simply “Northcliffe MDCCCLXV MCMXXII”. And behind that, above a door, a dusty statue, evidently very old, of Queen Elizabeth the First.
Northcliffe memorial. (Lord Northcliffe 1865-1922)Elizabeth statue (Queen Elizabeth I 1533-1603)
To the left of the church door there is a font set in to the fence. Round the edge, barely legible, it says “The gift of Sir James Duke Bart MP Ald of this ward”.
Next to the church, on its left, is a beautiful building, which is mysteriously empty and boarded up. This is 187 Fleet Street. It also has a clock, but this one did not show the correct time.
Another mystery: St Dunstan-in-the-West burial ground is some distance away to the north, on Breams Buildings, see map above.
St Dunstan-in-the-West Burial Ground, entrance on Breams BuildingsSt Dunstan-in-the-West Burial Ground
“IanVisits” has an article on the Burial Ground published in 2020. When he visited it was clearly in a better condition than it is now. On my visit, December 2023, the burial ground was litter-strewn and neglected, overshadowed by a building site to the East, and defiled by plastic advertising hoardings flapping on its north fence.
The current St Dunstan-in-the-West church was constructed in 1830-1832 to the designs of John Shaw senior, and completed by his son, also John Shaw. This building replaced a much older one. The church website says:
“It is not known exactly when the original church was built, but it was between 988 and 1070 AD. It is not impossible that St Dunstan himself, or priests who knew him well, decreed that a church was needed here.”
It is an active Anglican church, open during the week, with services on Sundays, according to the notice on the door. The building also hosts the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Northcliffe, it turns out, was quite a character. He was a press baron, founder of the Daily Mail, and promoter of popular journalism. He launched the Daily Mail in 1876. At a time when newspapers were mostly intended to be serious reading, Northcliffe realised the potential of offering “entertainment” and “diversion”:
Hamilton Fyfe, a trusted contributor [to the Daily Mail], recalled that ‘the Chief’ wanted the Daily Mail to ‘touch life at every point … He saw that very few people wanted politics, while a very large number wanted to be entertained, diverted, relieved a little while from the pressure or tedium of their everyday affairs.’
Northcliffe gradually built up his empire, acquiring the The Times and other newspapers. By 1914 he controlled 40% of the morning newspaper circulation, 45% of the evening and 15% of the Sunday circulation in Britain (Wikipedia). A fascinating article by Jessica Kelly of Cardiff University says that, due to Northcliffe’s influence, “politicians of the age sought his approval and support during this most uncertain and unpredictable of times”. Northcliffe publications advocated war against Germany. Once war was declared, they were a “solidifier of British public opinion behind a total war”. The author of this article makes a striking comparison between Rupert Murdoch today, and Northcliffe in the Edwardian era.
Lutyens designed the obelisk for the Northcliffe Memorial in St Dunstan-in-the-West, and the bust is by Kathleen Scott. (Pevsner)
I sketched the church standing on the other side of Fleet Street, near the office of C Hoare and Co, bankers. The church was closed when I visited, but I shall certainly go back and have a look inside during its opening hours.
References
“The Buildings of England, London 1: The City of London, by Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner (1999 edition)” page 214
Here is The Canal Building, at the north end of Shepherdess Walk, sketched yesterday from the junction with Eagle Wharf Road.
Canal Building, Shepherdess Walk, London N1, sketched 29 December 2023 in Sketchbook 14
The building overhanging, in the top right of the drawing is part of Angel Wharf, 164 Shepherdess Walk. Shepherdess Walk leads over the Regents Canal, the bridge is just behind the cars in the picture. The buildings you see above the cars are on the other sidee of the canal. On the left is the “Wenlock Brewery”.
There is a tiny object on the roof of the Canal Building, next to the flagpole. It was hard to see what it was, but it looked like a wooden owl.
The Canal Building is a former 1930s Art Deco warehouse. In 2000, it was converted into apartments and commercial space to the design of the architects Child Graddon Lewis. This building gained the architects a place amongst the finalists for the 2023 Architecture Today Awards, in the category “Mixed Use and Retail”. There are 35 new apartments, 45 live/work units and 1100 sq metres of commercial space. Here are photos of the building from the canal side.
I did the pen on location and added the colour at my desk later. It was cold outside and I was sitting on a damp stone wall. Many people were out and about in the area, and two of them stopped to say hello and look at the drawing.
Pen doneDamp mossy wall…my sketchbook…coffee
There are just three main colours in the sketch: Buff Titanium, Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue.
Buff Titanium for the Canal Building
All greys and blacks are Ultramarine Blue plus Burnt Umber
Ultramarine Blue for the blue car, the blue notice, and in the sky
The trees are Burnt Umber
And that’s it! There is a bit of Mars Yellow for the car number plate.
All colours are Daniel Smith except the blue, which is Schminke Horadam.
This is my first sketch in a new sketchbook!
Sketchbook 14
Here are some other sketches I’ve done in Shepherdess Walk:
Here is The Eagle. This is a very old pub, located at a significant junction on City Road. In the picture above, the alley on the right of the pub is called “Shepherdess Place”. It leads to a police car park, and several…
Here is Plumage House, 106 Shepherdess Walk, London N1. This was a feather factory. According to Spitalfields Life this operated until 1994. The building is now rather shabby, though in a dignified way. I wonder what will happen to it? In the drawing,…
Jane Sketching 