[BITList] Fwd: Betjeman Takes A Train OR The Love of the Landscape & the Power of Observation

[John Feltham]

 Betjeman Takes A Train OR The Love of the Landscape & the Power of Observation

I have great enthusiasm for John Betjeman's output. Not so much for his poetry, though I enjoy it, as for his prose, simple, direct and engaging. Also elegant and covering a range of his own enthusiasms : architecture, including railway and church architecture, trains, the Irish peerage (why? I'll tell you one day!), box pews, small towns, Victorian Gothic, conservation of buildings and landscape and many other things. Below are two excerpts (he is writing about  proposals to demolish the Albert Bridge and the Tower Bridge both of which were finally dropped) :

Tower Bridge, London, England
 


Tower Bridge, London, England

Tower Bridge & Planners

from the Spectator, 20 Dec 1957

An MP said in Parliament last week that the Tower Bridge would have to be taken down in twenty or thirty years and that he personally would like to see it demolished tomorrow. I wonder how far we are right, whatever our aesthetic opinions, in taking down something that is a landmark to millions of people and part of their lives. The Tower Bridge to millions means London and the Pool of London. It was designed by dear old Sir Horace Jones in 1886 - 94, and he was so fat that a crescent had to be carved out of the council table of the RIBA (Royal Inst of Brit Architects) when he was president of that institution. Sir Horace had long dreamed of a bascule bridge at this point and in Sir John Wolfe Barry he found the engineer to realise his vision. The Tower Bridge may dwarf the Tower of London, its pinnacled Gothic (recently, alas, shorn of the ironwork weather vanes and miniature fleches which gave an elegant finish to the design) may be coarse and incorrect, but the Tower Bridge has guts and outline and real grandeur. At dawn or sunset it is unforgettable, the real gateway to the greatest city in the world. I cannot believe that a new bridge further down or up stream cannot relieve some of the traffic. Who is this pseudo-progressive MP who wants to interfere with London? I wish I could remember his name. When Sir Horace was designing the bridge his chief draughtsman, the father of Sir Frank Brangwyn, had spent most of his life in Belgium, which may account for the Flemish look of its towers.



The Albert Bridge

Spectator, 17 May 1957

I cannot believe that the London County Council decision to reconstruct the Albert Bridge, Chelsea, means that it is to be destroyed and that we will never see its graceful outlines again. Shining with electric lights to show the way to Festival Garden, or grey and airy against the London sky, it is one of the beauties of the London river and far more handsome than its neighbouring bridges from Westminster to Wandsworth. Its engineer, R.M.Ordish, also designed it on his patent straight chain suspension system which he employed for the Franz Joseph bridge over the Moldau at Prague. For the Albert Bridge, which was opened in 1873, Ordish had a French engineer as partner, Le Feuvre. An original feature of the bridge is that the twentyfive foot carriage way and the eight foot foot=paths are slung between the four towers. Two years after the bridge was opened Ordish designed with Grover the roof of the Albert Hall, and in his youth he made all the working drawings for the cast iron of the Crystal Palace. I hope the LCC will make it quite clear that in any reconstruction of the bridge they are not going to destroy the towers and chains which make it the most attractive suspension bridge in London.

Well, here are some documentaries featuring JB at his best. You can see  thathis speech (prose) is often like poetry and he was in his element when describing landscape and architecture (he edited the Architectural Reviw for several years).
John Betjeman Goes by Train

John Betjeman Goes By Train (1962) by British Transport Films in association with BBC TV East Anglia. John Betjeman (not yet in '62 knighted nor yet poet laureate) takes a journey from the town of King's Lynn to the seaside resort of Hunstanton during which he discusses the special pleasures to be found by travelling on a branch line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk_roklB4OE

John Betjeman on the architecture of Bath

This one is brilliant. And brilliantly funny is the way Betjeman rails against the indifference to staely architecture (eg : at a little after 6 mins 30 secs there is a reference to "the vital buttocks of construction", rather a good notion that,  he was, of course, referring to modern, concrete blocks!

John Betjeman in The West Country was filmed in 1962 and thought lost until re-discovered in the 90s and broadcast as The Lost Betjemans. Here, Betjeman takes on the persona of a property developer to satirically critique the architectural trends taking hold in the 60s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie0JDWzWAWo

Journey into the Weald of Kent


A wonderful meander through the hop fields of Kent, narrated by Sir John Betjeman. This film was used by BBC2 as a Trade Test Film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0N0Zf6C4b8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npFCsEflmYg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c17SoQsiwZk





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