I love this octopus chair [via @injculbard] | related: The Squid Hunter [via #longreads] | all you need to know about cannibalistic squid [indirectly via @edstern] | Sew A Squid | light from under the sea | Calamari de L'Amour | related: Mark Stafford's Largely Unseen exhibition at Orbital Comics |

squid cartoon by Mark Stafford

The main reason to visit Bexhill is the De La Warr Pavilion, the modernist icon built in 1935 by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff. It's a lovely building; light and airy, even on a cloudy day, with a small but decent gallery space (currently showing a Joseph Beuys exhibition, on until September 27), and a nice comfortable-looking cafe (that we didn't actually try, as we'd brought a picnic lunch). The restoration has been done with a great attention to detail, making it feel simultaneously classically art deco and instantly contemporary — as all the best modernist spaces are. Like many seaside buildings, it sometimes feels like being on a boat — albeit a landlocked one — with its long balconies and a huge open sun deck.

There are some funny little temple-like seaside shelters in front of it, almost arcadian-looking. They seemed to be from an earlier time, but somehow don't clash at all with the Pavilion.

The same can't really be said for the eccentric terraces of houses nearby along the Marina, which are a wonderfully bizarre architectural mish-mash of Moorish minarets and classical English staidness. One terrace is clearly wealthier than the other, with a row of gardens facing the sea — this struck us as optimistic as we walked headfirst into a strong wind; especially the one with the overly manicured lawn. The other terrace is more rundown, and a quick peer into their courtyard showed lots of peeling paint and crumbling walls. There are also other different features between the two terraces, like the bay windows and mullions on the wealthier houses, and the social club and abandoned businesses on the poorer side.¹

Is that an urn with the dog's ashes in or what?

Notable things to glimpse from the bus were a cafe called The Coffee Pot with a badly-painted sign of a floating tablecloth on the gable wall, a gatepost painted to look like Toad of Toad Hall and, down on the seafront, a statue of two people either grappling or making love — the bus went by quickly, so it was hard to tell. We got off outside Marine Court, another example of 1930s seaside modernism that looks a bit like a boat. In this case, it looms like an ocean liner on the skyline, which comes as no surprise because it was actually modelled on that grand dame of ocean-liners, the Queen Mary, back when she was a young lady (as it were).

It's certainly a rather striking building, perhaps best observed from a bit of a distance (e.g. across the road), but when seen from the Hastings end you'll find it has a weird sense of perspective, where the bottom half veers away into the distance and the top half looms towards you. Beneath it is a rather sad and tawdry row of neglected shops that makes one almost long for the days when it must have been the height of glamour, especially when one considers that the kind of regeneration a place like that would get these days is to fill it with chains like Costa Coffee and Tesco Express, which would do the building no favours at all.

We wandered along the seafront and stopping to admire some lovely shelters and the Hastings weather station, which has some great cartoon illustrations on the barometer [click here to see all of them together in their full-size glory]

Hastings does have a pier, but it's currently closed to the public, awaiting restoration, so we veered off from the seafront and took to exploring some of Hastings' side streets, where we discovered a corner that could easily have been Manhattan in the early 1980s.

This insalubrious corner is in fact right next to Hastings Public Library, housed in the Brassey Institute, opened in in 1881 as a reference library by local MP Thomas Brassey. It's a rather nice example of High Victorian Arts and Crafts Gothic, although also in need of a bit of care. It would be great to see these wall frescoes restored to their full glory. (And I still don't know who Walter was; does anyone else know?) Close nearby is a rather odd-looking church and a truly hideous drinking-fountain. Also some shops and cafes, some of which still have some original features of the earlier businesses, liked curved windows and painted ceilings, which are rather nice.

On first glance, the centre of Hastings seems to have no character, being full of the same high street shops and chuggers as every town centre, but a little attention rewards you with a lot of interesting details.

Hastings Old Town has much more obvious character. We managed to arrive just in time to catch the last cliff train up West Hill (whoooosh!) to have a look at Hastings Castle, although it seemed to be closed, so we walked back down the hill and headed off to look at the fishing boats and drying houses at Rock-A-Nore.

This was the only part of Hastings that I remembered from our previous trip there when I was seven years old, and it didn't seem to have changed too much, except for the addition of a museum. That's all set to change very soon, though, with a couple of new developments going up: a new hotel building which looks intrusively out of place in the location, judging by the projected images on the hoardings (sorry no pics, I forgot to take one); and the rather more locally infamous Jerwood Project, which is the subject of quite a lot of local dissent. (It's unfortunate that the campaign website is so ugly it's not going to win over any of the design-conscious arty types that the Jerwood tends to collect, because some of their arguments are actually worth a look, especially the one that points out that they're not saying no to it all together, just in that specific location.) The location is, of course, currently home to the local fishing industry, and while it could be argued that it's not just Labour policy that's killing it (despite how the locals might feel), there's going to be a lot of bad feeling about any development which doesn't take that into consideration. (I'm curious what some of the architecture bloggers have to say about it, Owen in particular.)

For the time being it's a perfect photographic playground for someone like me, full of intriguing corners and a rich patina of weathering and grime. My camera battery was dying by that point, so it was a simple case of pointing and clicking instead of taking the time to focus on small details, but I managed to get a few wide shots that give a good idea of the atmosphere.

pic of Rock-A-Nore

Fish-and-chips by the sea is an essential part of the experience, so we headed off to the Blue Dolphin, as recommended by my friend Fiona, and excellent fish and chips they were too. It's easy to see why they're regularly touted as the best in town.

Then a stroll up the High Street for some window shopping (I remembered my phone has a camera that'll do in a pinch), where I discovered one shop selling furniture covered in Marvel comics, like this fantastic Fantastic Four one:

And finally, a horribly rain-sodden dash to the station to catch our train back to London, where I tried not to let the fact that I was forced to sit in sopping wet jeans ruin a lovely day (they were so wet, I left a puddle in the waiting room!). Hopefully it won't take me so long between visits next time.

More photos and anecdotes here.

In the middle of the lake is a funny little grotto. It's rather remarkable, although a very difficult structure to photograph. It sits on a tiny island in the middle of the lake — or rather in the island, as part of it acts as a sort of cave-bridge, with the lake running beneath it — filled with stalactite crystals that show up as all sorts of pretty colours when photographed. It was damaged by Canadian soldiers billeted at Painshill during WW2 and left to fall into further neglect after that, but is now being painstakingly restored, using limestone from the Cotswolds, fitting the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. There's an on-site workshop at the top, where you can see people carving up huge chunks of limestone and trying to fit them together.

The grotto is only open at weekends, but there are still enough places where you can peer inside, and parts where you can stand and be surrounded by walls. It's a slightly eery experience, as it looks like a cross between a natural cave and an ossuary. The pieces of holey limestone look a lot like bones, and in many places almost like skulls. It seems to serve as the nightmarish counterpart to the fairy-tale dreaminess of the two hillside pinnacles, and it's not hard to imagine some sort of witchy goings-on happening there. I also discovered, looking at this picture on my computer later, that there are all sorts of funny faces to be found in the rock (link to them here because the image doesn't seem to show up when it's embedded)

There were two pretty bridges connecting Grotto Island with the mainland. The Chinese Bridge (above) has already been replaced, but the five-arch Palladian bridge that was made of wood and plaster rendered to look like stone has yet to be rebuilt, and the bridge that stands there at the moment is wholly unremarkable.

A popular design in folly-building is the sham ruin, and Painshill has two of them, both of which have the ironic history of having been built as a fake ruin, left to fall into neglect, and been partly restored. One is a ruined Roman Mausoleum, which really could do with a full restoration, to return the arch which joined the two pieces together. As it stands, it's not a very interesting building at the moment, but could be quite pretty if it more resembled the ruined triumphal arch that was originally there — even if the votive spaces could no longer be filled with Italian antiquities, as they were during Hamilton's time.

Following the path westwards takes you to a nice cast-iron Bramah waterwheel, which is still in working order. It was installed installed by a later owner of Painshill, William Cooper, High Sheriff of Surrey. (He also employed Bramah to build a suspension bridge over nearby Portsmouth Road.) The waterwheel sits by a lovely-smelling timbered shed, looking incongruously modern compared to the pastorally romantic visuals of the other structures; although it wasn't in use when we were there.

At the other side of the lake, The Turkish Tent (designed by Henry Keene) looks like something from a fairy-tale; with its white drapes and golden finial nestling in all the greenery, it looks far too exotic to appear in such eminently English surroundings. It's also reminiscent of a medieval tent, and one could almost imagine it to be possible to look out of it and see people jousting below (which is highly unlikely, as the lake is right underneath it).

The tent is — and always has been — a solid building with additional drapes. The original drapes were made of canvas and papier-mâché, but have been replaced with fibreglass to last longer, although they still look exactly like a tarpaulin. Like the Gothic Temple, the Turkish Tent sits on the tip of a hill, and and the view from it is rather lovely, with a long vista across the lake, with the Gothick Temple and the Grotto in sight below.

Leaving the Turkish Tent, we crossed the Elysian Plain, which is a peaceful garden, full of amazing colourful flowerbeds, to find the site of the Temple of Bacchus. Originally, this contained a statue of Bacchus that stood two metres high. There are no remains of the temple at the moment, but you can see what it looked like here. Although there's no structure at the moment, there is a spectacular hilltop view across the Surrey countryside. From there, we discovered a long walk to the Gothic prospect tower. It's not the most exciting building, but it was a nice surprise to suddenly come across it, looming out of the trees unexpectedly. (It's also the only site apart from the visitor centre which has toilets, which were much-needed by that point!)

There's a 99-step walk up the narrow spiral staircase to the very top, which can seem a little daunting after walking so far already. There's a small room on the third floor with a little exhibition about the tower, which suggests that, although built in imitation of a medieval watchtower, it was never used as one, and was probably used to house artwork from Hamilton's collection. It was accidentally burned out by some reckless schoolboys in 1974, and finally restored with the help of local artisans 15 years later. There are some nice views of the Alpine Valley from the top, although one side is less pastoral as it's filled with pylons marching across the countryside. I like the structure of pylons, though, so that was okay with me. Out on the roof you can't see so much because of the high castellations which protect you from falling off, which is a good thing, because it's a long way down. It would make a very nice private roof terrace if you lived in the building, though. In fact it would be a nice little building to live in, if it wasn't for the A3 motorway thundering past right outside, or all the steps, which weren't a problem to climb, so much as they made me slightly dizzy when I was going back down in circles.

We didn't make it to the Hermitage, which is quite nearby, but photos show it to be a tiny wooden cabin, barely big enough to live in. During Hamilton's time, it was briefly home to a real hermit who was contracted to stay there for seven years with "a Bible, optical glasses, a mat for his feet, a hassock for his pillow, an hourglass for his timepiece, water for his beverage, and food from the house. He must wear a camel robe, and never, under any circumstances, must he cut his hair, beard, or nails, stray beyond the limits of Mr. Hamilton's grounds, or exchange one word with the servants."

For this hardship, said hermit was engaged at £700 a year (a fairly enormous sum at the time), but was caught sneaking off to the village inn, and the contract was severed.¹

The last folly we did make it to was the ruined abbey, right next to the vineyard we'd seen when we first set out on our perambulations. It's the second of the sham ruins which has been restored, and as a result works better at a distance, as the white exterior is too bright and new-looking to work convincingly with the ruined edges, and it's a bit disappointing to see the supporting brickwork on the interior wall, because it reminds one too easily that the whole thing is a fake (which was a problem with the Roman Mausoleum, too).

Perhaps by this point, we'd also become a bit jaded by seeing so many wonders, or just tired from walking so far. Also, to be honest, after the magical romance of the Gothick Temple and the creepy mystery of the grotto, everything else felt a tiny bit like a letdown. (Which is not to say I didn't enjoy seeing them all, and all the lovely views, because I did!)

We managed to make it back to the visitor's centre just in time to order something before the cafe closed, and had a lovely restorative cream tea with a generously huge portion of clotted cream, and a handsome red-eyed pheasant wandering around the tables. A charming end to a charming afternoon.

More photos here and here.

¹It turns out that someone else tried to live in the Hermitage recently; in 2004 artist David Blandy spent two weeks living there as part of his Barefoot Lone Pilgrim project. He even created a minicomic!²

²Speaking of Painshill and minicomics, I got a nice comment on my first Painshill Park post, from someone I met at Caption who said they worked on restoration of the grotto — but I have no idea who it was! Do you?

Lots of the plants in the walled garden are American, because the original garden had been planted with seeds sent by John Bartram, a farmer and plant collector from Philadelphia, who sent subscribers boxes of mystery seeds at a cost of five-guineas (you can't do that anymore!). There were several mysterious plants in the walled garden that we didn't recognise, like this odd berry plant — anyone know what it is? It looks a bit like buddleia, but with berries instead of flowers. It caught my eye, because the berries look like beads.

The route from walled garden takes you through a peaceful meadow and past a vineyard on a sloping hill overlooking a large lake. This lake is the centrepiece of the estate, which Hamilton himself created artificially, although it's been suggested that he may have had the the help of Batty Langley, who advertised that he could provide "Engines for raising Water in any Quantity to any height required, for the service of Noblemen's Seats, Cities Towns &c."¹ The lake was created with an elaborate series of locks and waterwheels that brought in water from the River Mole, although these are all now redundant as the lake has become a natural one that can sustain itself through rainfall and surface drainage.

Past the vineyard, you come out into the Amphitheatre, which isn't a theatre at all, but a manicured lawn, based on a plan by the map-maker John Roque, surrounded by trees and shrubbery beds bordered with round box hedges. (These border hedges appear all over the estate, often in long, attractive lines, but there's something comical and cartoonish about them, too.) The Amphitheatre is rather pretty, resembling a semi-formal garden, with lots of layers of green shapes to look at, and a couple of elegant cedar trees.

At the other end of the lawn is the delightful Gothick Temple, also attributed to Batty Langley. Although called the Gothick Temple, it has a distinctly Moorish feel, largely due to the colour and pattern of the interior, especially the pretty lotus design on the ceiling.

It's an utterly charming little pavilion, right on the tip of a hill, with carefully framed views stretching across the valley to the tip of the Turkish Tent which sits on a hill at the other side of the lake (more on that in a later post). It's the perfect place for a fairy-tale wedding, or perhaps for a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It's also a good place to stop and ponder the view:

¹This information came from Headley & Meulenkamp's Directory of Follies; other information found via the BBC's Long View, here and here.

Painshill Park has one of the UK's largest collections of folly buildings all in one place, and had long been on my list of places to visit (along with many other intriguing places). Earlier this year, I mentioned to Nikki that I wanted to see some of these follies, and discovered she wanted to visit some, too, so we put together a list of places to see. We tried to see a couple on the day we had lunch at the Fat Duck, but both of them are no longer accessible to the general public, so we came away disappointed. Thankfully, Painshill Park is open to the public daily, for the reasonable price of £6.60, and we discovered that it's absolutely delightful, although it's fairly well-named, as there are quite a few hills and they are a pain — especially if you have a pushchair with a heavy baby in it, as Nikki did!

The park was the 35 year project of the Hon. Charles Hamilton, ninth (youngest) son of the Earl of Abercorn. Like many of his contemporaries, Charles made a Grand Tour of Europe, and returned in 1738 with equally grand ideas of recreating in reality the sort of pastoral landscapes that had been popularised by artists of the day, such as Nicolas Poussin. He bought 200 acres of unpromising land at Cobham in Surrey and spent the next 35 years turning it into one of the finest gardens in England, until the age of 71 when he was forced to sell the estate, having been crippled by debts and arthritis. The estate was split up after WW2, and neglected until 1981 when Elmbridge Borough Council managed to buy up 158 acres of the original estate, and set up Painshill Park Trust to restore the estate to much of its original glory. The restoration work is still ongoing.

The entire historic route between all the follies is about two and a half miles long, but feels like more, because of the aforementioned hills. None of them are very high, but most of them are very steep, and paths wind in a meandering manner, and some of the distances between follies seem very long indeed. The Gothic prospect tower at the far end of the estate — which you can see from the motorway as it overlooks the A3 — is much further away from everything else than it looks on the map they provide when you buy your ticket, and the route is all uphill. However, there are some stunning high views across the Surrey countryside; one at the top of the prospect tower and one at the site of the Temple of Bacchus (which is just as well at that point, because there isn't much else to see just there). You certainly need a few hours to really appreciate everything — we were there for about five hours and we still missed seeing the Hermitage and the Keyhole Plantation.

As there are so many things to see, and writing about them all will take time, I'm going to break it up into separate posts. Look for more on Painshill Park tomorrow! In the meantime, I'll leave you with some photos (I haven't uploaded them all yet):

¹ I've had my copy since the most recent printing came out in 2003, although most of the information dates back to 1999, and some seems to date back even further to the previous edition from 1986, which means some of the information is out of date now, but I still recommend picking up a copy if you can find one. For more information, check out the Folly Fellowship, too.

They all have their own distinct character, and it made me wonder about all the stories behind them. Some of them look like they must be caricatures of famous personalities of the time (usually not at all flattering!), some of them are obviously the product of fevered imagination, and some just seem to pop up in the most unlikely locations.

These satyric corbels, with their eyecatchingly ostentatious gilding, prop up the porch of a house right next to one of Oxford's most famous churches.

The door between them is rather striking, too.

These two chaps at the Bodliean Library are both obviously of great significance, given their prominent positioning over doorways, rather than near the top of the walls, but the second one looks like he comes from more recent times, which made him stand out because all the other faces over the doors look more like the first one.

The Bodliean is covered in a wide variety of funny faces, although I'm not sure if these ones come from there or one of the other because almost all of those are covered in faces, too.

(More pics here.)

Wondering about all their stories also made me wonder whether there was a good website which could tell me more about them, but so far I've not found one. Pity.

"I think there’s at least a decent chance that tomorrow actually could be better than today, and science and technology could still help it along. That idea’s not really a book. 'WHTTWOT' became a book when I realized that society’s shift from optimism to cynicism was a lot like a character arc in a story. In particular, it sounded to me like the arc of a parent-child relationship. Young children idolize their parents as the infallible centers of their universe. Later, as teens, they realize their parents are ordinary flawed people and the relationship can turn dark and angry.”

[via cityofsound]