The Guildhall Testimonial Stop this folly Most major public buildings and their Stop this folly interiors are familiar from photographs. Marcus Binney Courts are different. President of SAVE The Pugin interiors of the Houses of the magnificent interiors with building legislation what sort of Parliament have been restored with furniture and fittings of the highest precedent will be created? No fine infinite care and pride over more than quality supplied to the specification interior will be safe from similar 20 years. Yet just across Parliament of the original architects. special pleading. Square the Department of Constitutional Affairs is proposing to The majority of these photographs If the Law Lords wish to deliberate in strip out Gothic Revival interiors of were taken in difficult circumstances a minimalist modern ambiance let equal quality and completeness for by Mr James Mortimer who was them commission a new building the proposed new Supreme Court. allowed little more than an hour to which can hold its own with the other The vandalism is the greater as the photograph three of the finest handsome and impressive supreme building in question, the Middlesex Edwardian interiors in England. courts around the world. Britain, as Guildhall, is far from redundant and No time was allowed to even tidy the the leading common law country in in intensive use as one of London’s rooms. But we must be thankful that the world, deserves nothing less. busiest criminal courts, the purpose we have been able to take these for which it was designed. photographs at all. SAVE is determined to challenge the Government, English Heritage and It was restored, modernised and With these photographs come a Westminster Council all the way in reopened by the Lord Chancellor in series of testimonials from leading this disgraceful matter. On the last 1989. What the present Lord authorities on Edwardian page we list ways in which you can Chancellor proposes is a disgrace, an architecture, interior design and support our campaign. example of needless destruction and furniture. They make it crystal clear waste which no other owner of a that the interiors of the Guildhall are Only very recently SAVE fought an listed building, public or private, of the very highest quality both in almost lone campaign to prevent the would be allowed to contemplate. terms of craftsmanship and artistic destruction of a masterpiece of distinction and completeness. Edwardian engineering – Span Four The “statement of importance” by in Paddington Station, brilliantly English Heritage on August 26, 2004 No other owner of a Grade II* listed designed to match the original work classed the three main Court interiors building would be allowed to strip by Brunel; one of the greatest as “unsurpassed by any other out interiors of this quality on the engineering geniuses of all time. courtroom of the period in terms of basis of a vague promise to display a That, too, looked a lost cause, but the quality and completeness of their few key pieces in the basement and Network Rail issued a statement in fittings”. find a home for the rest in some July 2006 withdrawing its proposals to other building not yet designed or demolish and announcing repair Most major public buildings and their built. works to the structure. interiors are of course familiar from photographs. Courts are different as a All the Government planning Please help us stop this madness, blanket prohibition of photography of guidance on listed buildings lays which will never be more than a court proceedings has been down a presumption in favour of temporary stop-gap solution. interpreted as a prohibition of all continuing the original use of a photography inside court buildings. historic building. So why make an exception for the highest court in the The first purpose of this SAVE report, land? If the Lord Chancellor and the like so many others before it, is to Law Lords can drive a proverbial show the quality of what is at stake – coach and horses through the listed The throne of Court 1 with its intricately carved coat of arms. Art Deco influences can be seen in the treatment of the ogee arches and their spandrels The main staircase illustrates the quality of the ironwork, fittings and fixtures. The walls are stucco imitating stone Middlesex Guildhall was the crowning Testimonials: achievement of the career of James Glen Sivewright Gibson, one of the most original Architecture architects of the late Victorian and Edwardian times. DAVID WALKER In partnership with Samuel Bridgman and the still more gifted Frank Chief inspector of historic buildings Scotland Russell, also from Wallace’s office, he Peyton Skipwith, who was 1976-1993, expert adviser to the National had a remarkable run of success in responsible for so much of the Heritage Memorial Fund 1980-99, competitions in the 1890s, notably at superb detail, inside and out, at the Professor of Art History in the University of the County Offices in Wakefield in Middlesex Guildhall. St Andrews 1994- , Director of University of 1894, West Ham Technical College in St Andrews Dictionary of Scottish Architects 1995 and Hull Library, only narrowly Middlesex Guildhall differs from project 2002-. missing Edinburgh North Bridge and Gibson’s other work in being gothic Cardiff City Hall where they came rather than baroque as at Walsall Middlesex Guildhall was the crowning second. Municipal Buildings and Debenham achievement of the career of James and Freebody’s in Wigmore Street. In Glen Sivewright Gibson, one of the All of these were brilliant freestyle its sheer originality of composition most original architects of the late designs developing themes from and detail it is the secular equivalent Victorian and Edwardian times. Born Collcutt. In 1900 he went on to a still of Giles Gilbert Scott’s Liverpool in Arbroath in 1861, sheer brilliance more successful phase in partnership Cathedral, and although a much took him from those unpromising with first Wallace and then with his smaller building it should be treated offices in Dundee to those of William associate Walter Symington Athol with exactly the same respect. British Wallace and most importantly Gordon, a pupil of the Beaux Arts - parallels outwith the mostly Thomas Edward Collcutt in London. trained Frank Worthington Simon, unrealised designs of Harry Wilson Court 2, lit by powerfully designed electroliers and large windows facing a light well, remains a busy court room that imparts the full majesty of the law are hard to suggest. One has to think of the interior ensembles and their the leading Glasgow firm, Wylie & more in terms of the work of the good state of preservation was a Lochhead, who were associated with American Bertram Grosvenor revelation (like most Londoners I was the greatest days of Glasgow Goodhue: the Guildhall is quite familiar with the sophisticated and prosperity, employing distinguished simply a building of international rewarding late Gothic Revival exterior). designers such as E. A. Taylor, George importance in early twentieth century Logan, John Ednie. Already in 1882 gothic revival work, and the notion of Clearly there have been practical they had 1,700 employees. forming a museum of some of the interventions, particularly in the best interior work in that context is infilling of courtyards. But there has I was for over 23 years in the quite unacceptable: the building was been very little damage at all to the Furniture & Woodwork Department of designed as courts and it is hard to original interiors. All the components the Victoria & Albert Museum, ending see why the Law Lords cannot adapt of these grand ensembles, carved up as its Curator, before spending five to what exists. They would have had stone, plasterwork, oak roofs, years as Director of the Fitzwilliam to if Soane’s courts had survived, and panelling and furniture, tiles, stained Museum in Cambridge, and then Gibson’s building should not be glass, electroliers, and numerous seven years as Director of Historic treated any differently because it is details from door furniture to clothes Buildings of the National Trust. I Edwardian. It is not less important. hooks, constitute a paradigm of the continue active in retirement. I am ability of the final generation of shortly to serve as a Senior Research Gothic Revival architects to achieve Fellow at the Center for Advanced SIMON SWYNFEN JERVIS V.P.S.A congruity without monotony, Study in the Visual Arts, which is part supported by an extremely of the National Gallery of Art in On 7th August Mr Laverick showed me accomplished cast of builders, Washington. There, ironically, I shall round the Crown Court at the craftsmen, suppliers etc. I was, be a stone’s throw from the United Middlesex Guildhall. As I had not been naturally, particularly impressed by States Supreme Court, housed in a inside the building before, the quality the excellent woodwork, executed by great purpose-built monument. How sad if its British equivalent were to be set up in a make-shift conversion, involving the vandalising of a distinguished Grade II* building. The proposals involved the flattening out and reorientation of the former Council Chamber, the gutting of one excellently preserved court into a library, and the other into a committee room. I gather that a token and pathetic act of reparation would involve the retention of odd selected elements in a basement ‘museum’. Surely the obvious answer is for the Supreme Court to be housed elsewhere and for the present sympathetic use of the building to continue. Minor adjustments could JGS Gibson 1861-1951 Giant columns and Gibbs surrounds of windows are still permitted, but the turret and cupola shapes for instance are In the early 1880s Gibson moved to London, to the without any period precedent.