Blood cooling corner

[Penners]

I'd love to see it for real though.

Oh, me too! Judging from the model, it would have been magnificent, and the sheer scale of it would have been breathtaking.

I confess I'm not a fan of the wigwam. I've never been inside, but I have driven past it on a couple of occasions. I just think it's rather drab.

Your links on the crypt are very interesting - particularly the first one that shows the barrel vaulting brickwork being carried out.

I'm ashamed that I never knew anything about this subject. Thank you for a fascinating insight.

 

[Penners]

May I continue the game a little longer, and see if anyone knows where this is?

Uh-oh... another opportunity to display my ignorance.

It looks like a reconstructed Roman villa... which presumably means it's not. Unless of course you're pulling a double-bluff and it actually is.

Dunno.

 

[inwood]

Thought this might amuse - I hope the structural engineer got his calcs right and yes it is what it looks like - an office on a pillar of concrete! ( sorry about the picture quality - phone camera)

It's in

 

[Penners]

Nah - that's a hot air balloon, just about to take off.

 

[Nemesis]

Is that not in the process of demolition?

 

[piper]

It looks like a reconstructed Roman villa... which presumably means it's not. Unless of course you're pulling a double-bluff and it actually is.

"Up to a point.." you're partly right, but it's not a real reconstruction. It's a genuine and beautiful old house built in "imaginative" imitation of a Roman house which supposedly once existed in another country, and it's a wonderful hybrid of styles - look carefully under the colonade for more clues.

 

[Penners]

look carefully under the colonade for more clues.

Can I see some windows? No help I'm afraid.

 

[piper]

Can I see some windows?

A closeup - not windows, but perhaps the giveaway clue to country and region?

 

[Nemesis]

Little bit mentioning Liverpool from the latest newsletter of the Society of Architectural Historians:

http://www.sahgb.org.uk/UserFiles/File/SAH_Newsletter_Vol_93.pdf

Gavin Stamp: The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme
(Profile Books, hardback ed. 2006, paperback ed. 2007,
224pp., 32 figs, £8.99, ISBN: 101861978960 and ISBN:
139781861978967)
Erected 75 years ago, the extraordinary war memorial at
Thiepval is a just, though not obvious, inclusion for a series
of books titled ‘Wonders of the World’. This Lutyens
masterpiece is the subject of a rare piece of sustained
architectural scrutiny – if there is one British structure of
the twentieth century which everyone (not just
architectural historians) should visit, it is this synthesis of
forms and mourning on the bleak plains of northern
France.
The only precedent for a government determined to
use the best architect available for a national memorial
would be Vanbrugh at Blenheim – with the difference that
he was employed by a grateful nation to build a private
palace while Lutyens’ role was to commemorate the worst
military catastrophe in British history. At the same time,
and on a minor scale, Lutyens also commemorated 375,000
horses killed in France – but that memorial outside St
Jude’s Church in Hampstead Garden Suburb has already
been stolen twice and has now been replaced by an
interior plaque. The drama in France means domestic
memorials can be overlooked if not forgotten.
Despite liberal photographs, plans, sketches and the
fullest context for the location, trench-warfare and the
commissioning process, another acute commentator on
this memorial, Geoff Dyer, has rightly described Thiepval
as unphotographable: the sense of natural and controlled
space along with the freight of 73,000 names of soldiers
whose bodies were never found is a combination nearly
impossible to depict let alone imagine.We can learn of the
series of apparently simple interlocking arches, which, like
the Cenotaph in Whitehall, reveal complex geometries
and subtle recesses but, quite unlike London, nothing can
show us the scale or the emotional effect of this
architectural wizardry along with the 16 massive slabs of
names. This approaches an architectural sublime, which
had only previously been evoked by visionary French
architects like Ledoux or Boullée. Stamp notes several
ironies: the fact that the summit of design by L’Ecole des
Beaux Arts was claimed by an English architect and the
fact that one of the very best English structures of the last
century is located in France.
Stamp also points out that war memorials are not well
served by publishers despite, or possibly because, they are
so ubiquitous.There are more than 5,000 free-standing in
the UK so the very thorough bibliography for one of the
best needs to be supplemented by the vast online
database of the UK National Inventory of War
Memorials [www.ukniwm.org.uk ]. What was erected
after 1918 has now, 80 years later, been finally defined
though many remain unlisted. This mapping goes well
beyond the many memorials maintained by the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, most of which
are outside the UK.
Lutyens himself built over 40 war memorials but
Thiepval, apart from being the greatest, is also one of the
best clues we have to his greatest structure, Liverpool
Cathedral, which would have enclosed the same unique
system of arches to create a church far surpassing any in
Christendom.IAN LEITH

[Open Image] [Hosted by PhotoGalaxy.com]

 

[DaveBrigg]

Piper - your villa looks to have Islamic influences too. My guess would be Southern Spain.

 

[Penners]

Piper - your villa looks to have Islamic influences.

Yes - that latest phot showing all the intricate mosaic/tile work does look Islamic.

Dave's suggestion Spain sounds a good one. Or maybe Turkey?

 

[piper]

Piper - your villa looks to have Islamic influences too. My guess would be Southern Spain.

Well done, Dave. It's the Casa de Pilates in Seville.
I quote:
"The first Marquis of Tarifa departed on a Grand Tour of Europe and the Holy Land in 1518. Two years later he returned, enraptured by the architectural and decorative wonders of High Renaissance Italy. He spent the rest of his life fashioning a new aesthetic, which was very influential. His palace in Seville was called the House of Pilate because it was thought to resemble Pontius Pilate's home in Jerusalem and later became a luxurious showcase for the new style.
Subsequent owners have contributed to the building over time and it is currently the residence of the Dukes of Medinaceli and still one of the finest palaces in Seville. The marble portal was commissioned by the Marquis in 1529 from Genoan craftsmen, while the courtyard is typically Mudejar in style and decoration with tile work and intricate plasterwork. This is surrounded by irregularly spaced arches capped with delicate Gothic balustrades. In the corners are three Roman statues, depicting Minerva, a dancing muse and Ceres, and a fourth statue, a Greek original of Athena, dating from the 5th century BC"
I suspect my photo is the Greek Athena, so I've labelled it wrong. Apologies to all fellow pedants.

http://www.andalucia.com/cities/seville/casadepilates

 

[Gareth Hughes]

No comment...

 

[Nemesis]

Here's one for piper:


[Open Image] [Hosted by PhotoGalaxy.com]

 

[piper]

That's wonderful, Nemesis. I guess it's a late Roman mosaic. I don't know where it is, but it's an unusual representation of a hydraulos - the water-organ. Used in the amphitheatre to accompany things like throwing Christians to the lions, and for musical accompaniment to all sorts of sinful debauchery in Constantinople, which is why Christians took almost a thousand years to accept organs in churches, and the Eastern Orthodox Church still won't have them. For reasons more to do with "Popery", some Scottish Puritan called the instrument a Damned Kist o'Whistles, and so in the Wee Free churches of the Hebrides unaccompanied singing is still the norm.
Here's a wonderful example of what your Roman machine developed into. (Seville again)

 

[Nemesis]

Nennig, Germany - and yes, accompanying muzak for contests of a barbaric sort. Music apparently doesn't always soothe the savage etc.

And of course the upstart organ (to be played by a female...) v traditional music debate was played out (groan) in Thomas Hardy's 'Under the Greenwood Tree' .

 

[Gareth Hughes]

and here's the windmill enthusiast's version:

 

[Nemesis]

Inside yer average church though, I think bellows were more reliable. (Although I suspect many amongst the congegation thought possibly the vicar a reasonable source of wind, maybe it wasn't easy to harness it.)

On Sunday mornings I had the unpaid job of pumping the bellows for the Church Organ. I had to sit in a small room at the back of the Organ. Facing me was a wooden wall through which was a large wooden handle which could be pulled up and down, attached to the other end of the handle was the Bellows I suppose, because by pumping the handle up and down air was supplied to the Organ. To the one side of the handle was a small hole through which a piece of twine appeared. On the end of the twine was a small brass weight, and the weight went up and down according to how full the bellows were. There was two markers on the wall, and my job was to keep the weight somewhere between the top and bottom marker. I would have a rest as the weight gradually dropped lower and lower towards the bottom marker, and then pump like mad to get the weight up somewhere close to the top marker.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/98/a4888498.shtml

Some muzak:

http://www.crumhorn-labs.com/

 

[piper]

Although I suspect many amongst the congegation thought possibly the vicar a reasonable source of wind, maybe it wasn't easy to harness it.

Organs work better with COLD air.

On the subject of "Under the Greenwood Tree" and another Hardy story "Absentmindedness in a Parish Choir", the irony with regard to the Puritan and Orthodox rejection of organs as the devil's work, is that the Hardy vicar wanted an organ because it was MORE holy than the old church band (or at least more reliable, and less likely to get drunk...)

 

[Nemesis]

He possibly had a point... Miss Fancy Day wasn't liable to spend a great deal of her time in the ale house, unlike some members of the Mellstock Quire. At least, not until after she was wed.

UNDER the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,

More muzak (not the same Mellstock Quire wot Hardy wrote about...):

http://www.forest-tracks.co.uk/folk_music_pages/folk_music_mellstocktracks.html