Your Places or Mine

• Chim-Chiminee: The History of the Chimney

  Send us a textThis is the time of year when thoughts turn to mince pies, Christmas shopping, mulled wine – and chimneys, whether it is to settle around a roaring hearth or hope that Father Christmas pays a visit.  So John and Clive are turning their attention to the development of this architectural form, beginning with the appearance of walled fireplaces in the Norman period.  Chimneys reached a zenith of fantasy under the Tudors, when astounding feats of decoration were achieved by means of the novel building material of brick.  The invention of more efficient grates in the Georgian period led to another kind of design challenge, while the Victorians capped the countless chimneys which spread coal smoke over cities such as London with a myriad of pots and cowls. Which type of chimney is Santa’s favourite?   As this episode of ypompod reveals, he is spoilt for choice.

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• Vanbrugh at 300: Celebrating The Life and Times of Sir John Vanbrugh (With Charles Saumarez Smith)

  Send us a textIn today's episode of Your Places or Mine, John is joined by the inimitable Charles Saumarez Smith who divulges all he knows about the architect Sir John Vanbrugh in anticipation of the 300th anniversary of his death. Discover the remarkable life and legacy of Sir John Vanbrugh — playwright, architect, and one of the most unconventional figures of the English Baroque. From his daring comedies to his groundbreaking designs like Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, John and Charles explore how Vanbrugh’s bold imagination reshaped both the stage and the skyline. Join us as we uncover the wit, ambition, and controversies behind a man who refused to live—or build—by the rules.

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• Journalists and Gentlemen: How the Georgian Group Saved London

  Send us a textThe founding of the Georgian Group in 1937 was a milestone in the movement to save beautiful architecture.  With an anniversary around the corner, Clive and John discuss how the Group emerged from the parent organisation, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and why it was needed.  They reveal the extraordinary extent to the destruction inflicted on Georgian London after the First World War.  Not even town palaces, Georgian square or the works of the Adam Brothers, notably the Adelphi, were spared.Whereas SPAB’s interests were principally medieval and rural, the Georgian Group’s were metropolitan and post-1714.  It required a heroic effort to get it going.   The idea originated with the much put upon journalist Douglas Goldring, before catching the imagination of various grandees, including Lord Derwent; Robert Byron served as a brilliant propagandist.  Clive shares some of his own experience as the Founding Hon.Secretary of the Twentieth Century Society (the called the Thirties Society) to illuminate some of the issues.  The Georgian Group was a media success – but demolition on a scale previously unimagined came, courtesy of the Luftwaffe, during the Blitz.  With new challenges after the Second World War.  

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• The Tale of Parliament Part 2 - The House of Lords

  Send us a textLast week’s Your Places of Mine celebrated the rebuilding of the House of Commons after the original interior was bombed during one of the last raids of the Blitz. This week, Clive and John consider the Palace of Westminster, otherwise known as the Houses of Parliament, as a whole.  After the old Palace had been all but destroyed by fire in 1834, Charles Barry won the competition to rebuild it, producing a building that may have shortened his life but is surely one of the herculean achievements of the Victorian age.  With the help of the superb designer of Gothic ornament, AWN Pugin, he produced a building that is both deeply traditional in its style and iconography and intensely modern in the technology that underpinned it.  The glorious, theatrical composition of turrets, pinnacles, and rich tracery purposefully evokes the virtues of an idealised medieval past, in the hope of inspiring the legislators of the present day.Only two years before the fire, the Great Reform Act had been passed.  Until that point much of the governance of the country had taken place in the splendid homes of the aristocracy, so the state of the Houses of Parliament may not have concerned them unduly.  The new building would be equipped with all the amenities that Parliamentarians could find in their London clubs.   It was at the same time more sumptuous and more middle class.Innumerable statues and paintings of saints, heroes and kings reminded post-Reform politicians of the standards they were expected to live up to.  The Lords chamber was always richer than that of the Commons – a contrast made all the greater when the Commons was toned down after the Second World War.  But the greatest richness of all was reserved for the monarch. What does it mean?  How was it all done?  What does the future hold in store?  The subject is almost endless but Clive and John manage to do it justice in just an hour!

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• The Tale of Parliament Part 1 - The House of Commons

  Send us a textOn May 10, 1941, an incendiary bomb destroyed the seat of British democracy, the chamber of the House of Commons.  This was not the first time fire had struck the Palace of Westminster: most of it had already been rebuilt after a disastrous fire of 1834, caused not by enemy action but the burning of obsolete tally sticks – a medieval system of accounting which symbolised the antiquated nature of the place.  Seventy-five years ago the House of Commons reopened, and John has joined the celebrations that are marking the anniversary. This could have been an opportunity to reshape the Commons entirely, making it obviously modern.  That was not the approach favoured by Sir Winston Churchill.  In particular, he wanted the chamber to remain, as it had been before, slightly too small.  This meant that it would still be crowded when important debates were held, heightening the drama and sense of occasion.  The architect chosen for the work was Sir Giles Scott, famous for the Anglican cathedral at Liverpool as well as Battersea Power Station, the University Library in Cambridge and red telephone kiosks.  Scott designed the chamber we have today in a simplified version of Gothic with modern elements, whose practical if not workaday character heightens the contrast with the House of Lords, where Pugin’s ornament drips with gold.

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