City and Suburban
BY JOHN BETJEMAN N O modest building in any main street of any old English town is safe today. The Red Lion Hotel, half- way up the High Street of Guildford, is threatened with destruction. It presents a pleasant whitewashed façade of about 1840 to the street. It is not one of those buildings which become listed as ancient monuments, yet to the delightful High Street of Guildford it is essential. It is a focal point, like that tree between Queen's College and All Souls in the High Street at Oxford, and it gives character and pro- portion to the whole street, reminding one that Guildford, besides having the dignity of a county town, is still in appear- ance a country market town. What matters in our old country towns is not just single buildings listed here and there as 'ancient monuments,' but whole groups of buildings, some of which may even be as late as Victorian. But in our own generation, Burton the Tailor of Taste, with his merciless façades, or Dorothy Perkins with her black glass and green tiles, the Co-operatives with their universal hideousness, can murder a whole street with a single building if they are not kept under control. What is so encouraging about the Red Lion at Guildford is that the Town Council itself has put a preservation order on the hotel. This must be one of the first recorded instances of a town council coming to the aid of its more modest architecture. I like to think that it is a turning point in the battle against the shoddy craftsmanship and glittering arrogance of so many of the big firms.
HEAT-WAVE FASHION NOTE
During the hot weather I have been wearing a straw boater and a bow ,tie in London. In Bond Street the glances of the women and men were so contemptuous at this ageing Teddy Boy that I had to take off my hat and expose my bald head to the sun. But in the City old faces beamed with joy to see a straw boater again, and two strangers stopped me to ask where I had bought it. I can't tell you because that would be advertising, but the hat is cheap and cool.
COBBLEDEHOY
To enjoy a town you don't only have to look at eye-level but also at the toor-scape.' What is more attractive than sun- light shining on the cobbles of an inn yard after rain? What keeps Merton Street, Oxford, so free from needless traffic? —the cobbles, brown and rounded along its uneven route. A famous cobbled street, the Warren in the Cornish fishing port of Polperro, is about to be asphalted by the Cornwall County Council, because this will be cheap, will make it smooth- running for the prams of the kiddiz, and a nice little car park for motor-bikes and Austin Sevens. These seem poor argu- ments to put forward for the destruction of one of the most charming havens of quiet in a much-visited 'beauty spot.'
THE CONCRETE HORSE
The Westbury White Horse, in Wiltshire, is being repaired with concrete instead of chalk. Whether this way of repairing the old chalk figures of our downs is the most practical. I can- not say. It is obviously cheap and does not sound attractive. Mr. Nevill Coghill has made up this little rhyme : Ride a cock-horse To Westbury Gorse,
To help them put concrete Upon a White Horse. Chromium mane and chromium toes, And Ferrocrete belly wherever he goes!
THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION
suppose all my readers will have heard this story before. When it was first told to me, it was ascribed to the Rev. Austin Farrer, Fellow and Chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford. He was preaching a sermon in the chapel, and said that as he was coming into Oxford he saw an advertisement which seemed to him to describe the average Englishman's idea of religion. It ran : Tor Ladles. For Uplift. For General Support.' 1 have since heard it ascribed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but this seems unlikely; and to the Dean of St. Paul's, which is a little more probable but not much more. Who invented it?
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