City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN
SKY LINE
I am sorry to see that the 'Dutch gables' have been removed from the tops of those late Vic- torian blocks of flats in Prince of Wales Drive, Battersea. Whether this has been done on grounds of expense or out of a rather old- fashioned yearning for 'clean modern lines' it is inexcusable. The flats now present a woeful sky line such as St. Pancras Hotel would show without its pinnacles or the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, without its turrets. But if London disregards its sky line, Canada takes trouble. Last month the Canadian Works Minister, Mr. Green, saved the west block of the Parliamentary Buildings in Ottawa from de- struction. These buildings, in rich Victorian Gothic and of local stone, are now a century old. The silhouette is famous beyond Canada with its delicate ironwork on roofs and spires and towers.
TALL BRICK
Before it is too late it would be a very good idea if someone made an illustrated study of those often splendid features of the English industrial landscape, factory chimneys. I suppose the best collection is in Halifax, where great ingenuity and delicacy of design in tall brick chimneys have been displayed. Some are octagonal, some round and some square. Some taper gracefully. Halifax would be a dull place without them—except, of course, for Sir Charles Barry's magnificent Town Hall, in his most florid Italianate manner. Much lip service is paid to the outlines of con- densers and chimneys on new power stations, but these are dull things compared with their Vic- torian ancestors. Does anyone really think that the chimneys of Battersea Power Station are as grand a piece of architecture as the tall tower by the pumping station at Grosvenor Bridge on the opposite bank? And who designed the water towers at Brentford, Hornsey and Campden Hill? London would be poorer without these unre- garded works of a great age of civil engineering. They belong to the days before professionalism turned architecture into 'Art' and engineering into 'Science.' Men like Brunel, Telford and their followers were artists as well as engineers, and considered the setting, proportions, outline and colour of what they built.
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