Back from the Association for Industrial Archaeology conference on the University of Sussex campus at Falmer, now just across the roaring A27 from the Brighton & Hove Albion ground. The sun shone, the Downs looked tempting – so here’s a photo of the University’s boiler house! The campus, designed by Basil Spence over a period of years, is fascinating. Two stand-out buildings are Falmer House, all arches and views through, and the Meeting House, a spectacular white concrete (I think) circular-ish building with masses of panes of coloured glass lighting the upper chapel. The rather less noticed boiler house is also a real success, an industrial take on the themes running through the campus, and reminiscent of Tate Modern in its brickwork. I hope the prospective students and their parents packing the campus for open day last Saturday enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks to all the conference organisers, and whoever arranged the barrel of Harveys Best in the bar!
Tag: stained glass
A window into another world
Here’s another for the small collection of stained glass windows showing industrial scenes. It shows a Dundee jute factory with a mill girl – in fact Mary Slessor, who went on to be a missionary in Africa – along with a pretty correct depiction of the machinery, line shafting and all. It dates from 1923 and was designed by William Aikman as a memorial to Slessor; it can be found in the café at the McManus Gallery in Dundee. Great excuse to pop in for a coffee…. though I just paid a flying visit (almost literally) while in the city to take a photo of the massive and very wonderful Cox’s Stack out at the Camperdown Works. It is a polychromatic chimney which could be straight out of Rawlinson’s 1850s chimney design monograph. Now stands rather sadly in a ‘leisure park’ where various efforts have been made to copy its polychromy.
A brewer’s memorial
Just finished my presentation for the Northern Architectural History Society meeting next week. Was considering using this pic, which is the memorial window of brewer Henry Boddington (1813-86) at St Ann’s Church in Manchester, but disappointingly (though not unusually) it has no brewing-related imagery. The window was part of a c1890 scheme by artist Frederic Shields on the theme of the good shepherd, all carried out by the firm Heaton, Butler & Bayne. Boddington’s Strangeways Brewery closed in 2005 and was demolished all but its iconic chimney stack, which hung on until 2010 when it too was lost.
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