Currently undergoing restoration, this Georgian confection has to be one of the most bizarrely beautiful doorways I've seen. The arch takes rubbed headers and stretchers to extreme lengths of absurdity and yet still works. Even the tiny details are lovely, like the little cubes at the corners of the door panels.
Spiffy.
13 comments:
Beautiful. I'd love to see behind those doors, as I'm curious as to why there is a skylight shared between them?
Shared skylights are actually not that uncommon, Vic. There's an inner structure behind it that separates the two houses so the shared external light is merely decorative. I suppose it makes the place look a little grander.
That's why I would love to look inside. Is it a divieder that goes straight up the guts? A toilet-wall style seperator? To me that seems to make the best use of available light but a really crap internal feature?
Hee hee, Vic. I know what you mean. In this case, however (as you can see by the inset doorway) the whole front wall under the arch is set back about a foot and a half, so the shared fanlight is simply an add-on decoration thrust forward of the wall.
The actual individual fanlights above the doors are stained glass in hardwood frames.
Ah, okay. I get it. Sorry, I'm in a twat of a mood after lifting a hell of a lot of sewer manhole lids for some client who wants to keep his costs down and use an existing line to at the Uni to double their accomodation capacity. Nothing except beer is making sense to me right now!
Ah, one of my least favourite surveying jobs. That's back-breaking work. I managed to persuade my boss to fork out a few pounds for a portable tripod and winch to lift those things, but I still had to smack the hell out of them with a lump hammer to get them to open (the fun part).
Enjoy your beer!
Our guys have come up with a lifter than crack a particularly difficult seal, lift, and swing it off to the side. Great thing when it's back at the office and the client is on site and pops the request at you. Back to the old crowbar swing!
Here's stupid for you - a surveyor and assistant locating manholes, with a crowbar to open them, a GPS that no longer functions because we're in thick bush now, both trying to get the flashlight function on their smartphones to work because the hole is too deep and dark to read a pipe diametre. Technology sucks.
Health and safety legislation never works when you need it. When I first started we were given a set of manhole keys, a hammer and a crowbar and left to fuck up our spines any way we wanted. Seems like you're in the same boat.
Love those skinny, stretched and rubbed bricks. We only have copycat Georgian around here.
It is a lovely and unusual doorway. How old is the building? Would the insides of the houses be as charming as the doorway?
Neetzy, you only have copycat Gerorgian because you kicked out George the turd. What you have is equally beautiful but I have no idea what to call it.
Ms.M, these houses are mediæval at the back, sitting on 13th century undercrofts (the north side of St.Giles' St.) but the fronts you see are from the 1770s and were added to the old buildings to suit contemporary fashion.
The set-back of the doors indicates where (as on buildings to either side) the original wall line of the timber-framed house sat. The upper storeys were jettied out to where the main wall now sits.
The insides will indeed be charming, though not ideal for modern living. Luckily buildings such as these are "Listed" here, which protects them from having their insides ripped out and awful modern crap put in. Living in a place like this means putting up with small, dark rooms and tiny kitchens and basic sanitation (no ensuite bathrooms or massive kitchen-diners, just a six by nine foot cooking and washing space and a tiny bathroom in an outshot at the back). But then who cares, when you can fill the place with old furniture, books and paintings and pretend to be Jane Austen?
Thank you for your excellent explanation! The history is fascinating. I don't know that I'd make a good Jane Austen, but I'd take the paintings and books, and some of the old furniture. :-)
We have historic preservation lists here, too. I don't know if ours are more or less protective than yours.
Yay for historic preservation lists! I just wish ours had even more power.
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