Kew Gardens

I have a blind spot about botany, probably because I spent my Sheffield childhood in smoky, sulphurous 1950s Attercliffe, where the only indigenous flowers were dandelions and the only plants my mother could grow in her window box were nasturtiums.

Spending a Sunday recently at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew was instructive, because every time I looked at a plant I had to read the label. So I found out what tamarind, the distinctive ingredient of Sheffield’s favourite condiment, Henderson’s Relish, looks like, dug into my smartphone dictionary to discover that ‘symbiotic’ means, in effect, a win-win relationship between different organisms, and learned that bamboo is in fact giant-sized grass.

To describe Kew Gardens as world-class is a simple statement of fact. It sits at the heart of an international network of organisations that through research and education foster the study and conservation of plants, seeds and fungi, alongside an enormous collection of botanical books and illustrations.

There have been royal residences south of the River Thames around Kew since the Middle Ages. Sheen Palace (1299), a favourite residence of sovereigns from Edward I to Richard II, was reconstructed by Henry V in 1414. After the timber palace burnt down in 1497, Henry VII rebuilt it and changed its name to the title he had derived from the Yorkshire town – Richmond.

The estate became a favourite retreat of the Hanoverian royal family at the start of the eighteenth century.

When Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707-1751), the son of George II and father of George III, lived there, the poet Alexander Pope gave him a puppy which wore a collar engraved with the couplet –

I am His Highness’ dog at Kew.

Pray, tell me Sir, whose dog are you?

Frederick’s widow, the Dowager Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1719-1772), was responsible for embellishing the gardens with a plethora of ornamental buildings, mostly now lost, by the Swedish-Scottish architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1796), of which the largest is the Great Pagoda (1761).

Chambers’ buildings are mostly straight-faced Neoclassical, but at Kew he had the opportunity to design for enjoyment. Unusually for his generation, he had travelled in China, and his pagoda is the epitome of Chinoiserie, ten storeys high, rising to 163ft, built in brick embellished with eighty fearsome dragons, originally enamel.

Horace Walpole, who lived at Strawberry Hill across the river, was impressed when the huge ornament went up in six months flat, writing to a friend – “…the Pagoda at Kew begins to rise above the trees and soon you will see it from Yorkshire”.

The whole structure was lovingly restored in 2018. The dragons on the first level are carved wood by Tim Crawley, Head of Historic Carving at the City and Guilds of London Art School. Those higher up, to lighten the load on the structure, are 3D-printed nylon: How we brought dragons back to Kew | Kew Palace | Historic Royal Palaces (hrp.org.uk).

After Kew was designated the national botanic garden in 1840 the pleasure buildings gave place to functional structures to house and nurture the collections. The architect Decimus Burton (1800-1881) collaborated with the Irish iron-founder Richard Turner (1798-1881) to devise the wrought-iron Palm House (1844-48), 362 feet long, with hand-blown curved-glass roofs extending to 62 feet in height. It’s a memorable space to wander in, with opportunities to ascend the spiral staircases for a bird’s-eye view of the palms and the building itself.

Decimus Burton subsequently collaborated with the Director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), in designing the Temperate House (1859-62), which is longer (628 feet), lower and less elegant than the Palm House. For practical reasons, to moderate indoor temperature in hot weather, the glass is entirely straight and the window-sashes are wood so they can be opened.

From the outset these serious, scientific structures admitted the general public, and Key Gardens remains one of London’s most popular tourist attractions.

Even a botanical ignoramus like me needs more than one whole-day visit to sample all its attractions: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew | Kew.

Street’s favourite church

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All Saints' Church, Denstone, Staffordshire: font — All Saints’ Church, Denstone, Staffordshire: font

There’s a story about the great Victorian architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) hopping off a train in a provincial town, marching down the street to a partly-built Gothic church and entering the site and giving orders, until the clerk of works approached and said, “Excuse me, Mr Scott. This is Mr Street’s church. Yours is further down the road.”

Both these architects were busy men.

Mr Street was George Edmund Street (1824-1881), who was one of Scott’s pupils for five years and established his own practice in 1849. He was predominantly a church architect, but is best known for his Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand in London (1873-82).

One of Street’s finest designs – All Saints’ Church, Denstone (1860-62) – is in Staffordshire, a county rich in fine Gothic churches by the best Victorian architects.

All Saints’ was financed by the patron of the living, Sir Thomas Percival Heywood, Bt (1823-1897), who had retired from his father’s Manchester bank and abandoned his Unitarian faith to join the Church of England. Sir Percival wished to establish a new parish with a church reflecting Anglo-Catholic architecture and worship in an area still dominated by Evangelical practice.

He retired to his family’s country home, Dove Leys, which he enlarged, endowed the nearby village of Denstone with the parish church (1860-62), the vicarage and the school (1866), all of them, together with the lychgate and churchyard cross, designed by George Edmund Street.

At All Saints’ Street was responsible not only for the exterior, a composition of nave, taller apsidal chancel and circular north tower with its conical cap, but also for its opulent interior. The entire church, inside and out, is characterised by structural polychromy, the cream Hollington stone highlighted by bands of pink stone.

All the original interior fittings were designed by Street: the font, reredos, organ case and pulpit were all carved by Thomas Earp (1828-1893), and the floor-tiles were manufactured by Mintons of Stoke-on-Trent. The stained glass was manufactured by the newly-established Clayton & Bell company. Derbyshire marble and alabaster are freely applied to give richness to the interior.

The windows are of varying designs, intended to bring daylight where it was most needed: the south aisle has two traceried windows, in contrast to the narrow lancets in the north aisle. There is a single rose window above the font in the north-west corner of the nave. So that the chancel could be lit by tall windows, the walls are significantly higher than the nave.

Street regarded All Soul’s, Denstone as his favourite church and it is undoubtedly one of his finest compositions. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, in The Buildings of England: Staffordshire (1974), remarked, “…here indeed is young Street at his very best”.

Denstone is very close to Alton Towers and only a few miles from A W N Pugin’s masterpiece, St Giles’ Catholic Church, Cheadle (1841-46). Less than twenty miles away is Holy Angels, Hoar Cross (1872-1901), one of the best churches of another master of English Gothic Revival, George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907), who was another of Scott’s early pupils.

These leaders of their profession were more than nodding acquaintances. Bodley attended two London churches – All Saints’, Margaret Street, where Street was churchwarden, and St Alban’s, Holborn, where Scott also worshipped.

Foxton Inclined Plane

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Foxton Inclined Plane, Grand Union Canal, Leicestershire

Sir Edward Leader Williams’ Anderton Boat Lift (1875) in Cheshire successfully enabled canal boats to move between the River Weaver and the Trent & Mersey Canal, a vertical distance of fifty feet. Despite problems with maintenance it worked efficiently for over a century, and after a radical overhaul in 2000-02 it’s now likely to operate for another hundred years.

A completely different, less fortunate engineering solution to the same difficulty was tried in the Midlands, on the border between Leicestershire and Northamptonshire near Market Harborough.

The engineers who built the old Grand Union Canal at the beginning of the nineteenth century faced a similar situation at Foxton, where their main line climbed 75ft from a junction with a branch canal to Market Harborough up to the summit level.

The solution was a staircase of ten locks, opened in 1813, which took narrow boats forty-five minutes to travel. At the other end of the summit pound, at Watford Gap, another flight of locks dropped 54ft 1in.

In 1894 the Grand Junction Canal company amalgamated with the old Grand Union and the Leicestershire & Northamptonshire canals to operate the trunk route between Leicestershire and London as a single entity.

It still seemed practical at the end of the nineteenth century to compete with the railways for bulk, non-urgent freight traffic, using broad barges, provided the bottlenecks at the narrow locks at Foxton and Watford were eliminated.

The Grand Junction engineer Gordon Cale Thomas devised and patented a steam-powered lift that drew tanks, called caissons, laterally up a ramp between the top and bottom of the old locks: Foxton Inclined Plane – Foxton Inclined Plane – Wikipedia.

This device, which opened in 1900, had numerous advantages: each caisson could carry two wide barges between the two levels in twelve minutes and, whereas canal locks lose a lockful of water whenever a boat passes up or down, the lift lost hardly any water at all.

The disadvantages were that the winding engines had to be kept constantly in steam whether there was traffic or not, and there turned out to be insufficient traffic to justify the ongoing cost.

Perversely, the canal company chose to rebuild the Watford locks as narrow locks, simply moving the bottleneck further south and leaving the Foxton incline underused. A boat lift at Watford would have speeded up traffic dramatically, and may have yielded better cost benefits.

Because the main carrier, Fellows Morton & Clayton, demanded twenty-four-hour working, Foxton Locks was rebuilt, also as narrow locks, in 1909 and the incline was mothballed after ten years. It was used intermittently when the locks needed repair until it was scrapped in 1928.

Its site was abandoned for nearly half a century until it was scheduled as an ancient monument in 1973, and the Foxton Inclined Plane Trust was founded in 1980.

Nowadays the site of the ramp is cleared and the scale of this sophisticated piece of Victorian canal engineering is apparent to visitors. The reconstructed boiler-house is a museum which explains the vanished incline and the Trust intends eventually to restore the lift.

It won’t happen any time soon, but the Trust is actively curating the site and maintaining public awareness of a fascinating corner of the canal network: https://www.fipt.org.uk/copy-of-about-fipt.

Anderton Boat Lift

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In the early 1970s, the time when I learnt about industrial archaeology from the Arkwright Society based in Cromford, there was a sense of urgency about witnessing, if not safeguarding, relics of the Industrial Revolution that were deteriorating and going out of use.

The Arkwright Society had among its members Leslie Bradley (1902-2004), formerly headmaster of Derby School from 1942 to 1961, who led a succession of canal day-trips which were themselves an education. Leslie knew his way around the canal system because he had, like Tom Rolt, converted a narrow boat to a leisure craft before many other people took to the idea.

In 1973 Leslie ran a trip including potentially a last chance to experience taking a boat through the Anderton Boat Lift. This unique survivor was built in 1875, rebuilt in 1906-08, and was clearly nearing the end of its useful life.

It was built to provide a more efficient link between the Weaver Navigation which served the Cheshire salt beds and the Trent & Mersey Canal, which connected with the industrial heart of the Midlands and the waterways of northern England.

The Lift replaced the collection of chutes, cranes and inclined planes dating from the end of the eighteenth century that transhipped freight up and down the fifty-foot vertical distance between the two waterways.

It was designed by Sir Edward Leader Williams (1828-1901), the chief engineer of the North Staffordshire Railway which owned the Trent & Mersey Canal, as a development of the lifts designed by James Green (1781-1849) for the Grand Western Canal in Devon. Sir Edward proposed an iron tower containing two caissons, side by side, to lift and lower floating narrow boats, powered by hydraulic rams assisted when necessary by a steam engine.

The Weaver Navigation Act (1872) empowered the river trustees to construct the lift, which opened to canal traffic on July 26th 1875. Boats gain access from the river at the base of the lift which stands on an island in the middle of the river, like Williams’ later Barton Swing Aqueduct (1893). At the top of the structure an iron aqueduct leads vessels into the canal on its embankment.

The polluted canal water that powered the hydraulics repeatedly caused difficulties with the machinery over the following three decades. The trustees were advised by their engineer Colonel John Arthur Saner (1864-1952) to install a system of electric motors and counterweights which would be cheaper and easier to maintain and had the advantage that the caissons could operate independently rather than in tandem. However, the full 252-ton weight of the water-filled caissons was no longer cushioned by the rams, so Colonel Saner reinforced the structure with steel A-girders to support pulleys that led the wire ropes which bore the load.

The conversion from hydraulic to electric power took place within two years, 1906-08, and operated efficiently until the 1970s, despite increasing doubts about the effect of atmospheric pollution on the integrity of the structure. A 1983 inspection revealed such severe corrosion that the Lift was closed immediately.

Fortunately, it had been listed as a Scheduled Monument in 1976, so there was no likelihood it would be dismantled, but it stood idle until an admirable £7,000,000 restoration programme brought it back to life in 2000-02.

The Lift is now once more hydraulic-powered using oil, and the redundant A-frames and pulleys remain to show how the structure looked for most of its working life. The heavy counterweights were not replaced, and now form a maze in the grounds of the two-storey visitor centre.

Now the traffic is no longer salt but people – leisure boaters and day visitors.

I’m glad to think that Leslie Bradley lived long enough to know of the restoration. It was industrial-archaeology pioneers like him who helped to save for future generations a priceless legacy of mementos of British industrial genius.

Ralph Dutton of Hinton Ampner

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Hinton Ampner, Hampshire: entrance hall

Ralph Dutton – his first name always pronounced ‘Rafe’ – was born in 1898, in the right place at the right time.

His parents were wealthy – his father a descendant of the 2nd Baron Shelborne with an estate at Hinton Ampner in Hampshire, his mother a daughter of a Bristol banker.

Ralph progressed from West Downs School to Eton, leaving in 1917 without taking his School Certificate. He was rejected for military service because of his eyesight and instead served as a clerk in the Foreign Office. In 1919 he was admitted to Oxford University on the strength of a letter from his mother to the Dean of Christ Church, and left two years later without taking a degree. During his second year at Oxford his father asked him how he was getting on at Cambridge.

This path through education gave him a priceless legacy of friends, young men who became luminaries in British life and culture – Anthony Eden, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, Christopher Hussey, Beverley Nichols, Sacheverell Sitwell.

To the end of his life he gave no hint to anyone of his political views, his religious persuasion or his sexuality.

He knew that sooner or later he would inherit Hinton Ampner and, apart from taking a course at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, he spent his time and money on broadening his mind, travelling, and becoming adept at collecting fine art and furniture.

He acquired such treasures as a fireplace from Hamilton House near Motherwell, paintings by Jacob de Wit, Francesco Fontebasso and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini and ceiling roundels by Angelica Kaufman.

He loathed his father’s house, a Victorian remodelling of a late-eighteenth century hunting lodge, and when eventually it became his in 1935 he lost no time in remodelling it in neo-Georgian style. His architects were his friend Lord Gerald Wellesley (from 1943 7th Duke of Wellington) and Trenwith Wells.

At the same time he began to write about the aesthetic interests that gave him joy, beginning with The English Country House (1935) and The English Garden (1937), and after the War resumed producing books about architecture and fine art until the early 1960s.

He filled the house with the paintings, furniture and books that he’d accumulated, and when he took up residence in August 1939 he entertained only one guest, his friend Charlotte Bonham-Carter, before the property was requisitioned to accommodate the girls of Portsmouth High School at the start of World War II.

When peace returned Ralph gradually brought the house and garden to a state that satisfied him, so that he could entertain his wide circle of friends in comfort and luxury – the biographer James Pope-Hennessy, the art critic Raymond Mortimer, the diplomat and politician Harold Nicolson and the novelist L P Hartley.

A serious fire in 1960 destroyed part of the house and disfigured the rest. Ralph Dutton’s immediate reaction was to call back Trenwith Wells (because Lord Wellesley was by this time fully occupied being Duke of Wellington) and his favourite decorator Ronald Fleming, and they not only restored the house but improved it, making good deficiencies that had only been recognised when it was lived in after the war.

He inherited the title 8th Baron Shelborne in 1982, three years before his death. He had no direct heir, so the title died with him.

He had bequeathed the estate to the National Trust in the 1960s, soon after the house was rebuilt. This caused some embarrassment to the Trust, who did not habitually take on properties before the paint was dry. They were grateful for the gardens and grounds, but only agreed to open the house to the public after his death.

I’m glad they did, because it’s a beguiling place to visit. The volunteer room-stewards are notably welcoming, and Ralph Dutton’s rooms are exquisite.

It’s not an easy place to find, and really needs more signage in the surrounding area, but it’s worth putting aside a day to relax and savour some of the comforts its owner wanted guests to experience: Hinton Ampner | Hampshire | National Trust.

St Cecilia’s Apartments

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At long last, the attractive parish church of St Cecilia, Parson Cross, Sheffield is sure of a secure future after years of redundancy and the threat of demolition.

It was built at the same time as the surrounding council estate and consecrated in 1939, designed by a little-known architect called Kenneth Mackenzie.

The church community thrived into the post-war period, led by clergy provided by the Anglo-Catholic Kelham Fathers, but in later decades the congregation shrank until they were forced to abandon the building for the smaller church of St Bernard, Southey Green.

The problem of disposing of St Cecilia’s after the church was closed in 2011 dragged on for several years, which I chronicled in a series of blog-articles: St Cecilia’s – starting a new chapter | Mike Higginbottom Interesting Times.

Sheffield City Council insisted that the only possible reuse would be residential, and eventually a developer came forward with a practical scheme, completed in 2024.

St Cecilia’s still looks like a church, even to the carved crosses on the gables, though it’s been converted into seventeen modern apartments shoehorned into the space within: 2 bedroom apartment for rent in Flat 9 102 Chaucer Close, Sheffield, S5 (rightmove.co.uk).

I wish that the UPVC glazing had been black or dark grey instead of stark white, and it’s a shame that Kenneth Mackenzie’s Gothic tracery had to go, but I’m pleased that this charming building survives within its circle of surrounding houses in an area of north Sheffield which has lost some of the few landmark buildings that were built in the 1930s, such as St Hilda’s Parish Church, Shiregreen and the Ritz Cinema, Parson Cross.

Local people who knew and loved St Cecilia’s Church will be bewildered if they set foot inside now. Necessarily, its spaciousness has been sacrificed by the insertion of a mezzanine floor and multiple internal partitions, and though the arches of the nave arcades provide decorative features in individual first-floor apartments, the need to preserve the external fenestration has required compromises in the height of the window apertures.

Demolishing St Cecilia’s didn’t bear thinking about, not only because it’s an attractive and substantial building, but the closeness of the adjacent houses meant that it would have had to be taken down expensively brick by brick, which would have been an extended nightmare for local residents.

As it is, the former church can earn its keep and repay the investment in redevelopment. And the exterior looks immaculate.

It remains a quiet, unobtrusive presence in the midst of the Parson Cross estate, and it’s a witness to the energy of the Kelham Fathers and the optimism of the worshippers who arrived from dismal inner-city areas at the end of the Thirties, only to face the upheaval of war and the uncertainties of the decades that followed.

The spirit of harmless eccentricity

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When I was at university in the late 1960s, the first social landmark of the academic year was the Fresher’s Bazaar – a recruitment fair in which new students could enrol in societies and clubs as diversions from their studies.

Here was a panorama of extra-curricular talent – sports societies (naturally), various cultural groups (predictably), religious, political and hobby groups.

The University newspaper, Torchlight, recruited reporters (one of whom would have been Chris Mullin, who rose to be its editor and later became an MP).

There was a Winnie-the-Pooh Society which, I was later informed, under the pretence of activities with Pooh-sticks planned to overthrow the government.

Best of all was the Apathy Society which left a single sheet of paper on a bare trestle table where innocents could disqualify themselves from membership by summoning the energy to sign their name. The Apathy Soc were notorious for never clearing their pigeon-hole.

On this analogy, you might think a society called the Folly Fellowship would be the destination of fools, but it’s quite the opposite.

Its members are knowledgeable, enjoyable individuals who take an interest in a cornucopia of architectural genres: What is a folly? – The Folly Fellowship (follies.org.uk).

I came across them when Jonathan Holt bought a back copy of my handbook for a 2009 Derbyshire-based tour, Taking the Waters: the story of spas and hydros.

He made admirable use of it to include out-of-the-way wells and spas that are largely unknown, such as the Royal Well at Matlock Bath, Quarndon Spa and the Stoney Middleton Bath Houses in his article in the Foundation’s magazine Follies, No 118 (Summer 2024), pp 10-14.

He also gave me a generous shout-out at the end of his article and invited me to join the group on their Derbyshire tour.

Because I already had a commitment on the Saturday I arranged to meet the Folly Fellowship members at Chatsworth on Sunday lunchtime for a tour of the house and the freedom of the gardens.

Chatsworth is full of garden features and buildings without a purpose other than to entertain guests, from the Tudor Queen Mary’s Bower to the grand Victorian engineering of the Emperor Fountain, the ingenious Willow Tree Fountai n to Dame Elisabeth Frink’s War Horse.

I chose to go looking for the one item on Jonathan’s list that I couldn’t identify, the Moorish Summerhouse. It’s not marked on any of the maps, and I had to ask a garden guide at the ticket-kiosk how to find it.

Six of us tramped up the slope, past the Case and the Kitchen Garden, and up a serpentine path until we came upon it.

The Moorish Summerhouse, otherwise called the Saracen’s Shelter, is a fine structure, sited on a level with Thomas Archer’s Cascade House, exquisitely designed in Moorish style. It seats six and would make an impressive bus shelter.

We chatted idly and then people wandered off to look at other things. There are far worse ways of spending a Sunday afternoon.

I can find nothing about the Summerhouse online or in Pevsner, but that doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of the spirit of harmless eccentricity that it embodies.

There’s an invitation to join the Folly Fellowship at The Folly Fellowship (follies.org.uk).

Destination station

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The Schlesisches Tor station on Berlin’s U1 elevated railway is spectacular – much more than a place to catch a train.

It formed part of Berlin’s first overground electric rail service, built to the designs of the architects Hans Grisebach (1848-1904) and Georg Dinklage (1849-1926) by the construction company Siemens & Halske, pioneers of electric traction. Heinrich Giesecke (1862-1937) was responsible for the architectural decoration which included elaborately carved stonework, wrought-ironwork and an onion-dome turret.

Its opulent historicist style gave it prestige, and the street-level facilities were generous – several shops, including a pastry shop, and a restaurant named Torkrug.

Named after a former entrance to the city, the Silesian Gate, it was opened in 1902.

It suffered a direct hit in an Allied air raid on March 11th-12th 1945, but services continued until the power supply failed, putting the entire network out of action on April 22nd.

For a time after the end of the War Schlesisches Tor became a terminus until the through service was restored in April 1947. It was interrupted again, briefly during an uprising in 1953, and ultimately when the Berlin Wall divided the city in 1961. The through service was eventually reopened in 1995.

Even before reunification the station was recognised as a historic monument. The former restaurant was occupied by a retail store, the Kaufhaus am Tor (commonly shortened to Kato). The name Kato was perpetuated by a club which took over the space after 1981. From 2012 Kato was succeeded by a night-club, Bi Nuu.

The station was listed in 1980 and renovated for the International Building Exhibition in 1984 and the 750th anniversary of the city of Berlin in 1987.

A commemorative plaque honours Alfred Flatow (1869-1942), a Jewish gymnast who won three gold and one silver medals in the 1896 Olympic Games. He and his colleagues were suspended by the national gymnastics governing body Deutsche Turnerschaft which regarded the Games as “unGerman”. Alfred and his cousin Gustav (1875-1945), who himself won two gold medals in 1896, were among the founders of the Judische Turnerschaft in 1903. Both perished in the Holocaust – Alfred at the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp and Gustav in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Both cousins are commemorated in the naming of the Flatow-Sporthalle nearby, the renaming of the Reichssportsfeld Strasse [street of the National Sports Complex] as Flatowallee [Flatow Boulevard]. They are also illustrated on one of a set of four stamps issued by Deutsche Post to celebrate the centenary of the 1896 Olympic Games.

Appleton Water Tower

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Accounts of the nineteenth-century “Sanitary Question” – the controversy over how to resolve the environmental problems of water-supply, sewerage and disposal of the dead – usually focus on the rapidly expanding, densely-populated towns and cities and their poor, unhealthy and undernourished populations of the time.

In fact, the crises of public health and limited medical knowledge cost the lives of individuals in all levels of society.

The best-known example of a prominent life cut short by avoidable disease in this period is Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819-1861). He died, after several weeks’ illness, at Windsor on December 9th 1861, probably of typhoid, leaving a shocked nation and a bereft widow.

His accumulating personal woes would have undoubtedly lowered his spirits and sapped his physical strength – several years of discomfort from stomach cramps, a near-death experience in a carriage accident, the death of his mother-in-law, concern over his eldest son’s liaison with an Irish actress and the strain of being involved in a diplomatic skirmish, the Trent affair.

However, it was the fetid drains under Windsor Castle that almost certainly did for him.

He was not alone. In the same few weeks of 1861, typhoid swept through the Portuguese royal family, who were Prince Albert’s young cousins,– the Infante Ferdinand (15) on November 6th, his brother King Pedro V (24) on November 11th and another brother, Infante João, Duke of Beja (19) on December 27th.

A decade later, by which time the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII (1841-1910), had married, raised a family and acquired the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, he himself contracted typhoid while staying with the Earl of Londesborough at Scarborough. A fellow guest, the 7th Earl of Chesterfield, and the Prince of Wales’ groom died of the disease, but His Royal Highness recovered.

It seems that the drains at Londesborough Lodge were no better than those at Windsor Castle.

The Prince quickly enlisted the experienced civil engineer Robert Rawlinson (1810-1898) and a sanitary specialist James Mansergh (1834-1905) to ensure that the newly completed Sandringham House was safely supplied with water and properly drained.

The nearest supply, a chalk spring about a mile away, was twenty feet lower in altitude than the ground floor of the house, and the highest point on the estate was only five feet higher than the roof.

Not only did the supply require pumping, but a greater head of water was needed for fire-fighting.

The solution was to construct a sixty-foot-high water tower, surmounted by a 32,000-gallon tank, overlooking the surrounding landscape and visible for miles.

James Mansergh designed an elegant brick structure in a style he called “neo-Byzantine” in polychrome brick and local stone.

Its two lower storeys provided accommodation for a caretaker, and the second floor, accessible by a private staircase, was reserved for the occasional entertainment of royal house parties who could, if they wished, climb to the top of the tank to enjoy the view.

The chimney flues from the fireplaces ran through the centre of the tank to prevent the water freezing in heavy frosts.

The four foundation stones were laid on July 4th 1877 by Alexandra, Princess of Wales, her brother Prince Waldemar of Denmark, and the Wales’s two young sons, Princes Albert Victor and George (later King George V).

When the water-supply system was completed the following year, the hydrants surrounding Sandringham House were tested by a personal friend of the Prince of Wales, the celebrated Chief of the London Fire Brigade, Captain Sir Eyre Massey Shaw KCB (1830-1908), “to his entire satisfaction”.

The water-supply system was maintained first by the Sandringham estate and later by the local water authority until 1963. Four years later the Tower was leased to the Landmark Trust which cleared away the surrounding outbuildings and converted the first three storeys into a memorable holiday let [Holiday at Appleton Water Tower, Sandringham | The Landmark Trust], receiving its first visitors exactly a hundred years after the foundation stones were laid.

156 years of continuing prayer

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St Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church, Attercliffe, Sheffield

When I run my annual Heritage Open Days Walk Round Attercliffe we visit one of only two remaining Christian places of worship in the Lower Don Valley. It’s also the only historic place of worship in the Valley that has been in continuous use since it was built.

The Roman Catholic Church of St Charles Borromeo was consecrated in 1868 to provide a home for a congregation that had been meeting since 1864.

This was the time when the flat rural meadows and gardens of the Lower Don Valley were being replaced by huge steelworks served by rail and canal.

Housing for the workers, many of whom came from surrounding counties and as far away as Ireland, had to be within walking distance of the works because public transport was inadequate and expensive.

The church was the gift of Mr William Wake of Osgathorpe, and partly financed by gifts of £500 each from the Duke of Norfolk and from Mrs Wake and her family. The eventual cost was £4,700.

The dedication commemorates the Wakes’ son, Charles, who drowned while skating on the Serpentine in Regent’s Park in January 1867.

The building was designed by Charles John Innocent (1837-1901) and Thomas Brown (c1845-1881), who went on to design nineteen out of the twenty-two schools built by the Sheffield School Board from 1873 onwards.

Initially only the nave and the presbytery were constructed. Charles Innocent returned in 1887 to oversee the lengthening of the nave and the construction of the baptistery and two porches to the west and the chancel, Lady Chapel and sacristy to the east. These extensions, costing £2,400, were the gift of the Duke of Norfolk and Mr and Mrs Wade.

The interior is spacious and light, with a hammerbeam roof. The screens, choir stalls and pulpit were designed by C J Innocent and carved by the sculptor Harry Hems of Exeter (1842-1916). The organ is by the Norwich builder Norman & Beard, and dates from 1911.

The adjacent brick-built school was originally built in 1871 and rebuilt in 1929 in memory of the first rector of the parish, Father Joseph Hurst, who served from 1866 to 1905. It was remodelled in 1964 by Hadfield, Cawkwell & Davidson, and closed because of falling rolls in 1981.

After some years of use for Youth Training Scheme activities it became the Diocese of Hallam Pastoral Centre, opening on June 27th 1990.

Alongside the Centre, regular services continue in the church of St Charles, as they have done since 1868.

St Charles Borromeo Church is a destination on Mike Higginbottom’s Heritage Open Days A Walk Round Attercliffe which takes place on Friday September 6th 2024 from 10am to 12.30pm, starting and finishing at the Attercliffe tram stop.

Call 07946-650672 or e-mail mike@mikehigginbottominterestingtimes.co.uk to book.

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