04 May 2017
Hidden Gems
A short London walk with detours.
By Lynda Goetz
I lived in London for eleven years, but when I visit these days it is as an outsider; not a tourist exactly, but definitely a visitor. As a visitor, I often like to walk. Walking re-familiarizes and brings me into closer contact with areas that have changed so much in the many years since I left. Last week I walked from Gloucester Place NW1 to Percy Street W1, about a half-an-hour’s walk (without detours). Nowadays, of course, one does not have to peer at a pocket-sized A-Z, trying both to read miniature street names and to work out the best route, as most of us own those all-purpose pieces of technology still called phones, which allow us to follow the route suggested by Google maps using GPS. Although detractors will perhaps argue that this means we walk heads down peering at our phone, this is no more true than suggesting that we had constantly to look at the A-Z. There is time to look around.
Looking around in any capital city is always rewarding. There is architecture, there is history and there are people; all fascinating, particularly so in a city that used to be home and workplace. As a tourist one makes a conscious effort to see the sights. In one’s hometown they are seen but not always noticed. Although I used to make a particular effort to look rather than simply see, time was frequently lacking for anything other than a fairly cursory glance. Returning as a visitor one can linger a little longer, observe and ‘call in’ rather than glance and pass on by. My stroll last Friday took me past St. Marylebone Parish Church, an imposing Anglican church on Marylebone High Street. I realised that in all those years I had lived in London I had never managed to go inside. So I did and was pleased to have done so.
The church was built to the designs of one Thomas Hardwicke, apparently a founder member of The Architects’ Club, between 1813 and 1817. Construction was almost complete before it was decided that this church should become the parish church and elements of the exterior were made more grandiose; on the north side facing Regent’s Park, and giving onto what was then the new Marylebone Road, a Corinthian portico (six columns wide and two deep, based on that of the Pantheon in Rome) replaced the four-column ionic portico of the original plans. The cupola of the original design gave way to a steeple. The interior, which nowadays is light, airy and quite ornate with white stucco and marble mosaic floors, a marble pulpit and carved wooden pews, was not altered at the time, although modifications were made in the 1880s. The bonus for me was that there is currently an art exhibition in the crypt, Colour a Kind of Bliss*, featuring six contemporary painters ‘concerned with different approaches to the use of intense energy and luminous qualities of colour’. Should you enjoy contemporary art and its focus on colour then this is worth dropping in on.
On the other side of the road from the parish church is The Royal Academy of Music, one of the leading conservatoires in the world and a constituent college of the University of London. A large part of the façade is currently protected by hoardings, as the buildings are being renovated and upgraded to improve the facilities offered to the country’s most promising young musicians. The façade of the Royal Academy of Music Museum, previously known as the York Gate Collections (a reference to the location of the museum in a building designed by John Nash as part of the main entrance to Regent’s Park), is not so hidden and a detour into this small museum is well worth it, even if you are not a musician.
The entry to the museum is free, and currently available to visit are: the History of the Academy on the ground floor, including a Timeline wall (the Academy was founded in 1822); The Spencer Collection, a temporary exhibition (until March 2018) of instruments, manuscripts, printed music and curiosities donated to the museum by the family of the late Robert Spencer (1932-1997) ‘talented guitarist, lutenist, scholar and teacher’ whose collection displays his fascination with early music in all its aspects; and the Strings Gallery on the first floor. The Piano Gallery on the second floor was closed on the day I visited due to classes taking place. If it is this you particularly wish to see, you should ring ahead to check if classes are being held. I was quite happy to visit the ground and first floor galleries, to listen to the music (which I am ashamed to say I was not able to identify) and view beautifully crafted instruments in their glass cases as I did so. These include violas and violins made by the famous Cremonese makers Stradivari and Amati. There is the ‘Archinto’ 1696 viola by Stradivari and a cello dating back to 1695 made by Francesco Rugeri. In our throwaway age, it is awe-inspiring to think of craftsmen making instruments which can not only be viewed, but which are still occasionally played and produce a beautiful sound over three hundred years later.
My final destination on this walk was 14 Percy Street in Fitzrovia. Fitzrovia is an area which, according to its neighbourhood website fitzrovia.org, lies about a mile (1.6km) north of Trafalgar Square and has the 189m BT tower (formerly known as the Post Office tower) pretty much at its centre. ‘It is a proper quartier – a city district with a dense mix of residential, business, retail, education, healthcare and more recently art galleries’. After making my way through areas like Wimpole Street and Devonshire Place, where it seemed quite normal to see healthcare professionals (complete with identification badges) popping across from one beautiful façade to another (behind which God-knows-how-many personal dramas were being played out), I arrived in Charlotte Street, an area brimming with restaurants serving almost every kind of food imaginable from elegant French to street Mexican. From here I turned into Percy Street, a quieter street, at the Tottenham Court Road end of which lay No 14, home of Gallery Different. This gallery space is available for hire and someone had told me that I could view some paintings by contemporary artist Robi Walters in a pop up exhibition, Morphosis, by West-Contemporary, which was on until 29th April. It was a good way to end my afternoon walk, and Liam West, founder of West Contemporary, couldn’t have been more helpful when I contacted him to ask about the exhibition and when I turned up to have a look around. Although I had gone to see the Robi Walters
paintings, which are fantastic firework splashes of colour, worked of card petals spiralling outwards from the centre of the picture, I was also really taken by Carne Griffiths’ three paintings on display; essentially beautiful ink portraits splurged over with acrylic, whiskey and tea turning them into abstracts with titles such as The Union, the largest and my favourite. Jim Threapleton, whom I personally had heard of only as a filmmaker, also had some impressive oil paintings in this exhibition, Nightwatch (Studies III, IV and V). Liam told me that his work is already a part of many art collections both in the UK and abroad. West Contemporary will be featuring Robi Walters in an exhibition in the autumn. Keep an eye out, and if you live or work in Fitzrovia, remember it is not simply full of clinics, restaurants and shops.
* On until 30th June, see AllEvents.in London
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