Just enough to annoy

On my travels around the archdeaconry there are sometimes links with Haileybury.

I have noted before the (pre amalgamation) Haileybury arms in one of the stained glass windows of S James's church Muswell Hill.

Goodenough College is a hall of residence for graduates in the University of London on my patch. The building is by Sir Herbert Baker who was the designer of the Hall at Haileybury. The tables and benches in the dining hall at Goodenough are by Robert Thompson, signed with the carved mouse, just as at school. It is a strange experience to be in a place which is so similar, but so different.

Baker also worked at Downing College Cambridge where he completed the North Range of the college buildings, which were by William Wilkins, who was responsible for the Quad and Terrace at Haileybury. I know Wikipedia is a dangerous thing, but the article there on Baker reports the unattributed remark that Baker's work at Downing 'changed the original design just enough to annoy.'

All this allows me to quote from what remains my favourite book about Haileybury, Wilfred Blunt's Haileybury Buildings. Blunt tells us that Baker's first plan for the Memorial Dining Hall was for

"a Hall at right angles to the Terrace block at the corner opposite Bradby Hall. His design, although it continued in the Portland stone ionic character of the facade, and performed a useful function by obscuring the Bradby [which Blunt hated], proclaimed its superiority to Wilkins too loudly, and it was wisely decided to use the site behind Clock House."

Hirsute Growth

The Haileybury Buildings by Wlfrid Blunt is a source of wondrous pleasure. This paragraph, introducing an architectural discussion of the Bradby Hall is a gem.

This is in fact the staff in 1875. Bradby (with vast beard) sits third from the left. Butler is second from the left. Dundreary Whiskers are worn by Rev H Walford, third from the left in the back row.

"A photograph of the staff, taken in 1872 and preserved in the Library, is a fine field of study for those interested in hirsute growth. There may be found the Dundreary whisker, the Mutton chop, the trimmed beard, and finally the untamed natural variety rioting with a luxuriance which would be the envy of an Athos monk: and in the centre, King beaver par excellence as it were, we see the majestic figure of Dr. Bradby. It was an age of great beards and great Headmasters. Yet great though they were, they knew how to unbend; for is it not recorded of Mr. Butler that watching a rugger match on one occasion a light suddenly gleamed in his eye and his nostrils dilated like those of a war horse scenting battle, that he flung of his mortarboard, gown and coat even, and in an immaculate shirt and a pair of pillar-box red brace hurled himself into the scrum? And was not the sedate Dr. Bradby seen to fling his top-hat sky-high after the miraculous victory over Wellington in 1872; did he not watch his august spouse tobogganing with the boys in full term-time in the Quad itself, balanced precariously on something suspiciously like a common teatray?"

Ugly?

Many of you may know Wilfrid Blunt's marvelous little book The Haileybury Buildings. It is now long out of print but Amazon may throw up a copy.

He describes the Chapel as follows, suggesting that the best word to use would be "Romanesque."

"It is usually referred to as Byzantine; this is, however, wrong. The exterior comes nearer to the Romanesque than to any other known style, and in particular to the north Italian or Lombardic Romanesque. The general external form of the building appears to be a Lombardic version of the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione at Todi, while the dome resembles fairly closely that of Duomo nuovo at Brescia. Into the interior more of the Renaissance had crept; the capitals were Corinthian and composite (though the bases were Ionic), the general decoration was geometrical, the general impression unspeakable." 

That was of course before the redecoration took place!

Blunt's book on the Haileybury Buildings could be updated now if we had someone who combined his precision of description, deep knowledge of architecture and acerbic  wit. He finishes his remarks on Blomfield's chapel by saying: "It is sometimes assumed that architectural ugliness is usually the result of economy. This is fallacious. It generally takes quite a lot of money to make a building really ugly, as the Chapel showed."

I hope he would be kind to the new Modern Languages building, but what he would have said of the Sports Hall and - even more - of the Tennis Academy is probably best left unconsidered!