Piguenit and the Australian landscape

William Charles Piguenit (1836-1914) might have had a grim life in Australia since he was born in Hobart Town to a convict-father who had been transported to the Tasmanian penal colony. Instead, young William was fortunate that his mother valued education. She set up a school for middle class girls where she taught the most important subjects - French, music and drawing.

William lived and was educated in Hobart, and spent 22 years working in the Dep­artment of Lands survey office as a draught­sman. The only formal connections he had to art were a] lessons from a Scottish painter living in Hobart and b] doing lithographic illustrations as part of the survey work.

In 1872 Piguenit resigned from his career as a public servant in the Survey Office to devote himself to landscape painting - he began making sketching and photography trips to remote mountainous regions in inland Tasmania. For a largely self-taught artist, Pig­uenit started to exhibit his works in the annual Sydney and Melbourne academy shows. But giving up his day job was a brave thing to do, even for an unmarried man - he didn't sell many of his paintings until 1887 when the government bought six of his works on the western highlands, now in the Hobart Art Gallery.

Piguenit’s impressive work Mount Olympus, Lake St Clair, Tasmania, source of the Derwent (69 x 107cm) was one of many pieces in which he painted the state’s natural landscape. His romantic goal was to evoke the sublime majesty through a combin­at­ion of earth, water and sky writ large, and human activity writ small. [Actually I mention Mount Olympus because it was the first work by an Australian-born artist to be acq­uir­ed, in 1875, by the Art Gallery of NSW. Not because I loved it the most].

Walk to the West was a book published in 1993 by The Royal Society of Tasman­ia to celebrate the walk to the West Coast of Tasmania under­taken by William Piguenit, James Backhouse Walker and others. They left Hobart in 1887. The book was based on the diary by Walker, with careful explanations of Tasmania’s conditions and environment. The text was interspersed with plates from Piguenit's paintings, made along the trip. And a map provided information of the West Coast landscape in the 1880s.

W.C. Piguenit, 1881
On the Nepean, New South Wales
[Hawkesbury River with Figures in Boat] 

107 x 92 cm 

National Gallery of Art, Canberra

In 1889 Piguenit joined an artists and photographers camp in the Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains. And the very next year Piguenit was living in Sydney. Continued patronage by the Gallery in Sydney enabled him to tour NSW and Tasmania, providing fresh inspir­ation for his grand, sweeping landscapes. The Flood in the Darling 1890 (see lower photo) was one of the enormous works painted by Piguenit when heavy rains half flooded inland New South Wales that year. Like any good Rom­an­t­ic artist, Piguenit loved comb­ining the destructive yet sublime powers of nature. This artist could have depicted the loss of animals, human life and rural architecture, yet he chose the post-storm calm. He depicted the vast expanse of sky, land and water as a celebration of the natural world and its elements.

I'm perfectly aware that not every art historian thought that Piguenit had a very important place in Australian art of the later 19th century. Christopher Allen  believed that while the paintings were apparently about vastness, distance and sublime grandeur, they were in fact completely flat. They had no depth, no space and no rigour. Allen thought this criticism was even more evident when comparing Piguenit to his Heidelberg School contemporaries in Melbourne.

But did the Heidelbergers make Piguenit look old fashioned and provincial, largely because of the older man’s lack of formal education in art composition? I think not. If we had to reject paintings because of a lack of rigour, half the religious, historical and portrait paintings of the last 2000 years would be gone. In any case, Piguenit starred in two important elements: his magic silvery light and his glassy bodies of water.

Despite being in his 60s, Piguenit continued his successful career into the C20th. In 1898 and 1900 he visited Europe, exhibiting at London & Paris. Back home he won Australia’s most prestigious landscape award, the 1901 Wynne Prize, for Thunder Storm on the Darling. Then he was commissioned by the National Gallery of New South Wales trustees to paint Mount Kosciusko 1903 (179 x 262 cm). This was a majestic depiction of the continent’s tallest mountain. It was a perfect symbol for the importance of Australia’s Federation, just two years earlier. He died in 1914.

W.C. Piguenit, 1890

The Flood in the Darling, 

123 x 199 cm,

Art Gallery of NSW 

A Passion for Nature: William Charles Piguenit: the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery Collection, by Sue Backhouse et al, was published by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 2012. This exhibition shows the paintings and prints from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the largest body of the artist’s work in any collect­ion.

And it is well worth viewing the Catalogue Raisonne published by Tony Brown in December 2012 for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery of Hobart.

World Fair, London 1862

A few articles have drawn my mind back to The Second London Exhibition of 1862. The International Exhibition of 1862 was cited by The Victorianist and Alexandra Palace London. And my post references Robert Wilson as my guide for the 1862 London Exhibition.

Although the English had already put on an extravaganza performance in 1851, within a decade they already felt it was their turn again. And because of the first success, support was immediate; the original 1851 commissioners granted land in South Kensington. Henry Cole again led the drive to appoint an architect and engineer.

The design of the building echoed the interior decoration of the building – intricate and Renaissance in taste. Gone were the gaudiness and over-decoration of 1851. In its place was the restrained style that Wilson called High Victorian.

There was only one problem. As everyone noted at the time, and since, it was a terrible shame that Prince Albert died just six months before the grand opening. Queen Victoria and all her court went into full blown mourning.

Illustrated London News, 1862

Otherwise the timing of the 1862 exhibition was perfect, given that the pavilions displayed big changes in style and technology. Steam power in agriculture, the electric telegraph and developments in photography mingled with Japanese inspired furniture and pre-Raphaelite paintings. Ernst Leuteritz first created his designs for Meissen vases in 1856, and in 1862 they were selected as some of the key pieces in London. Minton and Josiah Wedgwood Companies were delighted to use Christopher Dresser’s designs, and both companies exhibited his porcelain at the 1862 exhibition. Bohemian glass was very popular and Lobmeyr of Vienna sent engraved work that was highly praised. The greatest glory went to a Minton majolica fountain, designed by John Thomas. St George slaying the dragon was on the top of this mammoth 11 ms structure.

The Queen's representative made a speech. "We heartily join in the prayer that the International Exhibition of 1862, beyond largely conducing to present enjoyment and instruction, will be hereafter recorded as an important link in the chain of International Exhibitions, by which the nations of the world may be drawn together in the noblest rivalry, and from which they may derive the greatest advantages."

Minton fountain with St George

The procession then passed along the north side of the nave to the eastern dome, where the special and truly memorable musical performances took place. The music, specially composed for this occasion, consisted of a grand overture by Meyerbeer ; a chorale by Dr. Sterndale Bennett; and a grand march by Auber. The orchestra, consisting of 2,000 voices and 400 instrumentalists, was presided over by Mr. Costa, except during the performance of Dr. Sterndale Bennett's music, which was conducted by M. Sainton.

By the close of the exhibition, attendances exceeded 6 million and the small deficit was met by the building contractor for the royal commissioners. So successful was the 1862 effort that the Irish were not to be outdone. They held the International Exhibition of Arts and Industry in Dublin in 1865, building an enormous complex called The Winter Palace that contained restaurants, an art gallery and everything that opened and shut.

Daniel Libeskind's museum in San Francisco

It was important for me to read Celebrating the Contemporary Jewish Museum, written by Connie Wolf and published by Rizzoli in 2008. This book tells the story of how the Jessie Street Pacific Gas & Electric Power Substation was built in San Francisco in 1881 and later enlarged twice, in 1883 and 1892. And then, after the 1906 earthquake, there was frantic rebuilding going on all across the city.

The Pacific Gas & Electric Power Co hired architect Willis Polk (1867-1924) to expand and redesign its damaged plant. Polk chose a classical revival style, associated with the City Beautiful Movement which focused on public buildings and urban infrastructure. The building’s commanding presence was intended to inspire the community’s confidence and to suggest the comfort and prosperity that PG&E could bring to California. The Polk structure was completed by 1909 and remained as a working utilities substation until 1968.

front entrance

Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco

Daniel Libeskind,

reopened 2008

lobby

In the 1970s, most of the surrounding buildings in San Francisco's South of Market Street neighbourhood were being razed to the ground, to clear the way for the development of Yerba Buena Centre. Only two buildings escaped destruction – the Jessie St Power Substation and its next door neighbour, St Patrick’s Catholic Church.

In 1995 the Jewish Museum was invited by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency to develop the long-abandoned Jessie Street Pacific Gas & Electric Power Substation building. Only one requirement was made explicit: to actively showcase Willis Polk’s beautiful brick façade.

Of all the architects around, why did the Jewish Museum Board in San Francisco select Polish-born,  American-trained, Berlin-based architect Daniel Libeskind (born 1946)? I am assuming it was because of his work on the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabrück in Lower Saxony Germany, near Hanover. The new Museum was built as an extension to Osnabrück’s Cultural History Museum and was dedicated to Felix Nussbaum, the Jewish artist who was born in Osnabrück in 1904 and exterminated in Auschwitz in 1944. The building was completed in mid 1998 and at that stage was Daniel Libeskind’s ONLY completed museum. The San Francisco board particularly liked Libeskind’s Osnabrück museum because the new components were linked, via a bridge, to the old museum.

Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabrück

Daniel Libeskind

completed 1998

Characteristic of Libeskind's designs, the structural addition to the original substation was filled with symbolism. Inspired by the Hebrew phrase To Life, the architect based the extension's conceptual organising principles on symbolic Hebrew letters. Libeskind created a dynamic contemporary design intimately connected to the museum-going experience. His design ensured a conversation between the old and the new, a conversation based on the belief that Jewish life was not isolated. Rather it was informed by, and in turn contributed to, the broader Californian community.

Nowhere was this two-way conversation seen better than in the Jewish Museum’s exhibition called The Beat Generation: photographs of Allen Ginsburg (1926–1997). The original Beat Generation writers, eg Jack Kerouac, William S Burroughs, Lucien Carr, Herbert Huncke, Peter Orlovsky and other young men, met in New York but by the mid-1950s, the key members were all living in San Francisco. One famous San Francisco moment occurred when Ginsburg's epic poem Howl was first read in October 1955 at the Six Gallery.

 

The Beat Generation: the photographs of Allen Ginsburg

at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco
Ending in Sept 2013.

The district has become one of the densest museum-areas in the USA with 12 cultural institutions located within a smallish area. The neighbourhood has been made even more cultured with the development of the new public Jessie Square, a landscaped community space in front of the building.

For a review of Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, but not his museum in San Francisco, read "Building Stories" in The Jerusalem Report, 29th July 2013. The take-home message of this review is that Libeskind treated architecture as a kind of narrative, particularly museum architecture.

Saving an Ottoman-era railway station in Jerusalem

The German Colony in Jerusalem was established by members of the Tem­ple Society which was founded in Germany in 1858. They soon moved to Pal­estine to escape religious persecution at home, and to put their religious beliefs into practice: that is, to establish colonies in the Holy Land where they could prepare for Messianic salvation.

The idea to build a railway linking the coast with the Jerusalem was first raised by Dr Conrad Schick, a German archaeologist-architect-city engineer who had been part of the German community in Jerus­al­em. It was considered a great idea, so French engineers went ahead and conducted an extensive survey in 1874–75. This was a truly co­op­erative project between Catholic French, Protestant Germans, Jewish Jerusalemites and Muslim Ottomans.

The man who in 1885 won the franchise from the Ottoman government to construct the railroad was Joseph Navon, a Jewish banker who lived in Jerusalem. Navon had spent three years in Constantinople to pro­mote the project and to obtain a permit from the Ottoman auth­or­ities. His chief partners were Ottomans and Greeks, in conjunction with mostly French investors. Yet due to financial difficulties, he had to sell the franchise to a French company, Société du Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem.

Jerusalem Railway Station, opened in 1892
Photo credit: FirstStation.co.il

The railway was the largest civil engineering project in Palestine at the time, using local and Egyptian labourers. The original Jerusalem station was a symmetrical Turkish-Templer st­ruct­ure containing the station offices, ticket hall and a concourse – two storeys high in the centre and one storey high on each of the two wings. The original building was identical to the Jaffa Railway Station (see photo below) which had been built in 1891, except that Jerusalem used limestone and Jaffa used the local sandstone. Perhaps both of these stations were also similar to the Sirkeci Terminal in Istanbul that had been built in 1890. 

Israel might be the narrowest country on the planet, but it had once taken donkeys hours to travel from Jaffa on the Mediterranean Sea to the hills of Jerusalem. Once the Jerusalem station was ready September 1892, the first train arrived from Jaffa in the presence of enormous crowds and every important and unimportant official in the entire city. The train brought the two sides of the country, and the two centres of population, closer together.

The triangular arches on the roof of the first floor, on both sides of the ticket hall, were built in early 1920s by the British-run Palestine Railway, who managed the railway during the British Mandate of Palestine. The building underwent many renovations over the years, but its basic shape has not changed since 1920.

The station operated almost continuously until 1948, when traffic stopped on the Jaffa–Jerusalem line due to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Following an armistice agreement, it was agreed that Jordan would hand the control of the railway back to Israel, in order to enable Israel Railways to service Jerusalem once again. The service on the line resumed in August 1949.

The old Jerusalem Railway Station, pre-renovation

Despite the tragic look, you can see the triangular arches that were added during the British Mandate.

In 1959 the railway tracks to Jerusalem underwent extensive ren­ov­at­ions, but the number of passengers using the line decreased in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. For most years until the line was finally closed, there was only once or twice daily service to Tel Aviv South Railway Station or Haifa Central Railway Station. During the 1990s, due to the inadequate level of work done on the tracks, there were many minor incidents. In August 1998 the last train service left the station which was then closed, presumably for ever. After its clos­ure, the station was sadly neglected.

A massive ($9.3 million) refurbishment was fin­an­ced by the Jerusalem Mun­icipality and the Jerusalem Development Authority, and in May 2013, this neglected heritage site reopened as The First Station. The railway lines have been covered over in gorgeous timber decking, food stalls, umbrella-topped vendor carts and a 7 ks bike path that links the station to the Train Track Park. Several restaurants and pubs have opened in the area, and an exhibition of historic photo­graphs can be viewed by visitors inside the building. The station is already hosting musical and other cultural events.

Many thanks to the First Station Homepage for the technical information. For a discussion on the role of the First Station combating relig­ious intolerance in Jerusalem, read Renee Ghert-Zand’s paper in The Jerusalem Report (9th Sep 2013).

First Station Jerusalem, 2013

Outdoor restaurants

You can see where the rails were covered with timber decking

Photo credit: 100% Jerusalem

Jaffa railway station opened in 1891 and closed in 1948.
Recently Jaffa was also restored and converted to an entertainment-leisure venue called The Station.

Red Lion Brewery (gone), Red Lion Hotel (extant)

Ever since writing and lecturing about The Festival of Britain in 1951, I feel I have to go back to see what architecture had been lost (as well as examining what architecture had been gained). We know that Royal Festival Hall, that opened to the public in 1951, stood on the site of Red Lion Brewery.

The Red Lion Brewery is a new book written by Victoria Hutchings, to be published by Calder Walker Associates in late 2013. The publishers say the book provides a history of the Red Lion Brewery, estab­lish­ed in the C16th, and owned for over 100 years by the bank­ers Hoare's from 1802-1933. Although the name Red Lion Brewery was chang­ed to Hoare and Co in 1924, it remains as one of Britain’s oldest brew­eries and pioneered many brewing developments. Note that Hoare and Co, brewers of Wapping, acquired 11 public houses throughout Britain’s south east, at the same time. The book is meticulously researched from inside the family archives and from Hoare's Bank.

So let us go back to 1802 when the brewery came into the hands of the Hoare family. Since that time, the business has passed down from one generation of the family to the next without outside intervention. The Red Lion Brewery must have been enormous, consisting of a large range of buildings facing the River Thames, and covering 3 acres. 

Red Lion Brewery and shot tower, from the Thames River

Note the lion above the roof line. Image credit: Dictionary of Victorian London

The malthouse was the oldest part of the complex, displaying thick crossbeams and joists, and old staircases with broad landings. Like many other London breweries, the Red Lion Brewery was supplied with the purest water by means of a deep well. This well had a diameter of 5’ to the depth of 100’, below which it was carried by two bore-holes 300’ down to the chalk. A further supply of water was obtained from the London Clay by their lesser wells i.e those that were only used in summer when the Thames water was not cold enough for supplying the refrigerators. The peculiar flavour of dark Porter Beer gave rise to an opinion that only Thames water could produce good Porter.

The main building facing the river was of five storeys built in brick, with stucco work on the river and back elevations. The river front had Roman Doric columns which extended through the upper floors and carried an entablature. The podium, which extended below the wings at each side, had recessed semicircular headed windows and doorways. Above the entablature was a lion made of Coade stone which stood on a substantial base incised BREWERY. This lion statue could clearly be seen on both sides of the Thames.

The rear elevation also had a rusticated podium with a slight projection at the centre. This projection had coupled Doric pilasters supporting a pediment. The roof of the main building was designed to act as a large shallow tank for the storage of water. It was formed of cast-iron plates, which extended up to form parapets. The street and courtyard elevations of the subsidiary buildings and the arched entrance from Belvedere Road were also stuccoed. The buildings, all with cornices below the parapets, were of three storeys.

Royal Festival Hall and shot tower, opened 1951

Photo taken from the same vantage point across the Thames.

Only the tower remained in place.

Red Lion’s buildings ceased to be used as a brewery in 1924 but were not demolished until 1949, to prepare the South Bank site of the 1951 Festival of Britain. In the mid 1950s the stone lion was saved and placed outside Waterloo station on a high plinth, then painted red as the sym­bol of British Rail. Initials of the sculptor William Wooding­ton and the 1837 date were accidentally discovered under one of its paws. Later the red paint was stripped off to reveal the fine Coade stone surface below. In 1966, the statue was moved from to its current location on Westminster Bridge, and has since been protected by British Heritage.

The Shot Tower, which you can see in the first two images, was to create the shot needed for projectiles in weapons and had nothing to do with beer. Used for its purpose from 1826 until 1949, the shot tower might have gone the way of the brewery before the 1951 Festival of Britain. But it was kept as a Thames landmark for Festival goers and was not demolished until 1967, to make way for the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

**

The Red Lion Hotel, set at the foot of the Henley Bridge, also over­looks the River Thames. Emerging in the 16th century as a coaching inn on the road between London and Oxford, the hotel has been offering beer-based hospitality for many centuries. The brick façade was added in Georgian times. Alterations in 1889 included the addition of a porch on which a red lion was placed.

Many of the hotel rooms are identified by the names important people who, at some stage in the hotel’s history, used those rooms. Dr Samuel Johnson and Mr James Boswell stayed there in 1776. King George II was a frequent visitor to Henley and was familiar with the Red Lion from his boyhood days. He certainly visited in 1788, accompanied by Queen Charlotte and two princesses. The Prince Regent, later King George IV, was another visitor.

Red Lion Hotel, Henley-on-Thames

Note the red lion.

Readers might enjoy reading "The Lambeth Waterworks and the Lion Brewery", in British History On Line.

India needed a new capital city post-Partition - Chandigarh

Edwin Lutyens was invited by India’s colonial masters to lay out the central administrative area of New Delhi in the 1920s and 1930s. All of the important public buildings (old Viceroy's House, the King's Way linking up with India Gate, Connaught Place and the official home of the national President, the Secretariat Building for governmental ministries, Parliament House, large churches) were carefully planned between sweeping roads and green parkland.

Pre-Partition, New Delhi looked wonderful and was well accepted. But would another pre-planned European-style garden city with low rise buildings be welcomed, AFTER India gained independence from Britain? I was not sure.

With the partition of the sub­continent in 1947, the previous capital of the Punjab (Lahore) now found itself within Pakistan; thus the new East Punjab in India had no capital. After the trauma of partition, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, believed a new capital city could be built in optimism and modernity.

Roads designed to smooth the flow of Chandigarh's traffic

To select a suitable site, a Committee assessed the existing Punjabi towns for redev­el­opment, but all were unsuitable. The present site of Chandigarh was selected in 1948, partially because of its location in centre of the state and its wonderful location in the Himalayas foothills. Fortunately the new city would be only 240 kms north of New Delhi.

The American company of Albert Mayer was commissioned in 1950 to prepare the master plan that would have cluster housing, self–contained neighbour­hoods, curvilin­ear roads, markets and central­ly located open spaces. Then the work was given to European architects led by Le Corbusier (1887–1965) in 1951. Le Corbusier’s master plan included the Capital Complex and the main buildings for government employees, schools, shopping centres, hospitals and a university. A rectangular grid pattern was introduced to speed up the traffic.

Le Corbusier’s master plan was to be realised in sections, depending on the city's population and its future growth rate. Each neigh­bour­hood would be self-sufficient, having shops, school, health centres, centres of worship and recreational facilities. The shops would be located along the major shopping street that would extend from one neighbourhood to the next. Green parks would stretch across the entire city; a lake and reflecting pools would further soften the feel of the city.

 

Chandigarh Rock Garden

Thus Chandigarh became the first, pre-planned, garden city in post-Partition India.  Since then The Beautiful City, as it is called, has become the seat of three governments, gaining in land, population and political importance. The trend towards population growth was particularly noticeable throughout the 1960s, so the land allocated to each family had to be reduced in size. Despite an initial promise not to have high rise buildings, the administ­rat­ion eventually had no choice; they had to provide multi-storeyed flats and other medium density housing alternatives for 1 million residents. Nonetheless it has been clever urban planning and a clean break from Britain’s colonial rule.

The Market Square concept was introduced for the first time and the facades had more glass in place of old fashioned local materials. The area set aside for commercial activities grew, with special emphasis on service indus­tries such as hotels, banks, private nursing homes and shopping centres.
And like Lutyens in New Delhi, Le Corbusier placed his signature build­ings in the centre of Chandigarh. The Capitol Complex has the Secretariat for government offices, the Parliament building and the High Court.

Le Corbusier's contribution is still celebrated in a number of important ways today. The Le Corbusier Centre tells the history of the city in photos, exhibits and models. And consider the Chandigarh Architecture Museum. Then visit New York’s Museum of Modern Art exhib­ition "Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes" (June-Sep 2013). He had proposed plans for many cities, beginning in Paris in the 1920s, that were never taken up. So Chandigarh was the crowning achievement of his professional life.

Wide, tree lined streets and free standing houses in Chandigarh

One element was not thought of until after Le Corbusier retired and was only inaugurated as a public space in 1976. The Rock Garden of Chandigarh has winding pathways, ponds, waterfalls and rather special sculptural displays made of old ceramic pieces.

Australians at the Western Front - Fromelles 1916

Fromelles: the Final Chapters was written by police officer Tim Lycett and genealogist Sandra Playle, and published by Penguin in 2013.

On 19th July 1916 Australian lads "went over the top" in Fromelles where the German machine guns decimated their ranks - 5533 young men were killed or wounded in this part of Northern France. Yet until the dedication in 2008 of a statue at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, the name Fromelles did not appear on any memorial on Australian soil. The authors stressed that the concept of Fromelles being a battle in its own right was carefully avoided by the military auth­orities, presumably to downplay its devastating outcome and to raise the moral of troops abroad and of the parents at home. Even Aust­ral­ians very familiar with the Western Front, including Lone Pine, Passchendaele and Villers Bretonneux, did not know of Fromelles.

I looked at my normal atlas and could not find these small towns in Northern France and Southern Belgium. If this excellent book is reprinted, I suggest that the Western Front be carefully mapped by Lycett and Playle.

The book by Lycett and Playle, 2013

Of the lads who died in the Australian trenches in France, most were indent­if­ied and buried in battlefield cemeteries with respectful headstones. But the vast majority of Australians who died in the Fromelles battle did so either in no-man’s-land or behind German lines. Even if their bodies could be recovered, they could not be identified and their parents, siblings and girlfriends would never known what happened to their beloved soldiers.

The only information available to families was a stone memorial wall, built by the Imperial War Graves Commission with 1299 names of Australians unaccounted for. Families at home were told their sons could be missing, captured by the Germans, in a hospital somewhere or perhaps dead. And in any case, by 1923 the search for British Empire soldiers in the mass, unmarked graves had stopped.

In 2002, when the grandchildren of the WW1 soldier were themselves in their 60s, pressure on the government started up again to identify the bodies of 410 young men buried at a Fromelles site called Pheasant Wood. In June 2005 the government finally convened a Panel of Investigation.

Careful digging started apace in the mass graves in France in June 2008. Red Cross documentation was examined, whenever it was available. And at home, the researchers prepared family trees for the soldiers, in order to identify descendants who could be used in DNA tests. It was not easy since so many teenage soldiers died before they could marry and have children of their own. So newspaper articles from 1916 were scoured, as were soldiers' letters and records from town hall farewell ceremonies. Historians went to Bavaria to search for German military records that dealt with dead Australian soldiers in France.

The dead ends were relentless, the falsified names were confusing and the need for confidentiality was sometimes overwhelming. But the work was successful. Eventually.

The new Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Mil­it­ary Cemetery, dedicated in 2010.
Photo credit: The Australian Newspaper

WW1 had a devastating impact on Australia, for the soldiers who fought and also for their families and loved ones at home. It devastated the rural economy, overwhelmed health care services and housing, and greatly reduced young women’s chances of finding a spouse. But this Fromelles project at least brought peace to some families. At the time of writing, 124 soldiers’ bodies had been identified, all of them Australians. The dedication ceremony of the new Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Mil­it­ary Cemetery took place in July 2010 in the presence of the Aust­ralian Governor General. Every headstone has been personally identified and carved with respect.

Battlegrounds on the Western Front, France and Belgium
Particularly significant from 1915 until 1917

The Cultural and Literary History of Rectories

In a topic close to my heart, I wrote that village rectories, the traditional family homes of Anglican ministers, have a sad history. Although rectories have had their ups and downs since the early C18th, the period since the early C20th has posed perhaps the greatest challenge for protectors of church heritage. Real estate agents are, however, delighted. Old vicarages, all the defrocked plant of the Church of England, are in hot demand - these substantial and elegant homes propose permanence, stability and an evocative past.

The old romantic images return. For many the archetypal Georgian rectory nestling beside an ancient church evokes a scene from Jane Austen. For others it conjures up something much darker and elemental, such as the parsonage on the Yorkshire Moors where the Brontë sisters led such confined yet creative lives. In more modern times, we might think of Vikram Seth at the Old Rectory near Salisbury, where George Herbert lived, or Edmund de Waal growing up in the Chancery at Lincoln, home to the very creative Benson family a century earlier. In general we agree that these village homes exude serenity, restraint, civility and continuity; values that have a particular resonance in an age of anxiety and dislocation – and the romance endures, despite the clerical incumbents moving on.

Sir John Betjeman's former home in  Farnborough, Berkshire 

had been built as a vicarage in the mid 18th century.

Now a book has come out that talks not about the rectories’ archit­ecture and financial values, but about the long association rectories have had with writers in Britain. Deborah Alun-Jones wrote The Wry Romance of the Literary Rectory (Thames and Hudson, 2013). For her, as for most Anglicans probably, the British rural idyll was epitomised by the iconic mellow walls of the rectory. Sir John Betjeman's home (photo below) was even voted best parsonage by Country Life magazine for its exceptional architecture, beautifully-kept gardens and spectacular views over the Berkshire Downs.

Deborah Alun-Jones paired up eight English rectories with the authors who lived in them. Each chapter offered an architectural history of each rectory and a biography of each writer’s fam­ily. The authors were: 1] Sydney Smith, 2] Alfred Tennyson, 3] Dorothy Sayers, 4] Rupert Brooke, 5] John Betjeman, 6] RS Thomas, 7] George Herbert and 8] the Benson and de Waal families. Each chapter expl­ored the life of the writers during the time they lived at a particular rectory and the effect it had on them.

Life in the rectory was often creative and supportive, but sometimes the residents had to overcome great adversity eg parental psychosis. And the bitter, unrelenting cold. Nonetheless there was a common experience that created and nurtured talent. It says a great deal about the place of religion in English life, about the cultural consequences of having an educated and married clergy, and about the effect on the imagination of being simultaneously privileged and isolated, well-connected and poor.

I am not sure where the impact of the rectory was greater. Perhaps it was where the writer had been a child who grew up in a rectory with his/her clerical father (eg Tennyson, Sayers). Or was it where the adult writer chose to live in an old rectory (eg Brooke, Betjeman), perhaps because of the values that these houses symbolised. The Old Rectory in Berkshire certainly spread its magic on John Betjeman. He ran a campaign to revive and sustain local parish life.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson lived in his father's rectory in Somersby Lincs. 

It was built in the early C18th

In either case, it must have worked. Deborah Alun-Jones showed that the serene exterior of the rectory did indeed prod­uce a golden age of literature. Eight Poet Laureates, presumably the greatest writers and poets in the English language, were brought up such homes. The Bensons were clearly impacted! Their father EW Benson became Archbishop of Canterbury later in his career, and in the meantime the four children all grew up to be writers.

One reviewer remained unconvinced about whether Alun-Jones achieved her goal of proving that “these structures mirrored the stereotype of the national psyche: the cool, calm exterior concealing the turbulence and drama of the inner self.” Surely that was true of most homes, Lee Randall said; life inside a rectory was only as rich and varied, as good and as bad, and as creatively inspiring as life in any other dwelling? Probably true, but I still wept when reading of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s really horrible childhood.

In 1842 Charlotte & Emily Brontë went to Brussels, boarding at the pensionnat run by Claire Zoë Parent and Constantin Heger. An unpublished homework essay by Charlotte, in French, on the subject of  L'Amour Filial/the love of a child for her parents was marked by her teacher, Constantin Heger, who left his corrections and comments. Hand-writing analysis has since confirmed the identity of the author.

What is the connection with rectories? A fund was raised on behalf of the Brontë Society from three different sources, paying £50,000 for the essay in December 2012. The essay's future home will be at the Bronte vicarage-museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire where everyone will be able to see the document on public display.

In June 1913 Constantin's son, Paul Heger, donated the four surviving letters Charlotte wrote to his father to the British Museum.