Finials on Washing Lines ...

Father Basil Jellicoe (1899 – 1935) was a clergyman in the Church of England, a housing reformer best known for his housing work, which started when he was a Missioner at the Magdalen Mission in Somers Town, London.

Somers Town street

 It was here, west of the British Library, that Jellicoe founded the St Pancras House Improvement Society (as it was originally known) and several other housing associations in London, Sussex and Cornwall.

Somers Town is the area between the three mainline north London railway termini: Euston (1838), St Pancras (1868) and Kings Cross (1852, together with the Midland Railway Somers Town Goods Depot (1887) next to St Pancras, where the British Library now stands.

St Pancras Railway Station

When I was visiting my mother at St Pancras Hospital I would walk up through the Somers Town housing estate, past Old St Pancras Churchyard where Mary Shelley was originally buried, and where the Hardy Tree is to be found ...

... in the mid 1860s, the young Thomas Hardy was in charge of the excavation of part of the graveyard, in the course of the construction of the Midland Railway’s London terminus, he placed the gravestones around the sapling – now known as the Hardy Tree.

Thomas Hardy tree, Old St Pancras churchyard

Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, their daughter Mary Shelley, the architect Sir John Soane, and Charles Dickens, as a child, amongst others have lived within the auspices of Somers Town.

Over the years from the late 1780s when the first housing appealed to middle class people fleeing the French Revolution, new housing continued to be built amongst the fields, brick works and market gardens on the northern fringes of 1780s London, marking Somers Town (pre the railways) as a good neighbourhood.

Wyvern Finial - c/o
An Urban Veg Patch blog
York Rise, Somers Town

Within a hundred years the houses were multiple occupation, and overcrowding was severe with whole families sometimes living in one room, as confirmed by the social surveys of Charles Booth and Irene Barclay.

Jellicoe’s St Pancras and Humanist Housing Association wanted to prove that the poorest tenants could live in good quality homes: where the properties were more than just housing ... there could be plenty of outside space for gardening, leisure, works of art and sculpture.

The sculptor Gilbert Bayes (1872 – 1953) is remembered for his interest in colour, his association with the Royal Doulton Company, and his work in polychrome ceramics and enamelled bronze.

Thistle Finial for
washing line post c/o
Urban Veg Patch blog

Bayes was commissioned to decorate the courtyards and gardens in the new housing developments being created in the 1930s.  Bayes and Jellicoe were inspired by folklore, the Bible and medieval romances ... so many of the streets are named after saints, and any sculptures and art works reflected these interests.

Ceramic finials were created by Bayes to decorate the top of washing-line posts ... and the British Library had allocated a tiny (well large pillar base!) plinth  to remind us of the Humanist Housing Association’s aspirations of the 1930s for their community housing – this, I found, near the British Library’s cloakrooms!

The tiny display at the British Library
c/o Phillip Dawson Flickriver photos

Here I found my inspiration for this post to remind us of days gone by ... Somers Town cut through by the railways, 20^th and 21^st century roads and developments ... the new St Pancras International station is here ...

... yet being remembered for the fine New Sculpture movement sculptures that tied in with the changes being encountered through the Art Nouveau period and enlightened thinkers of the early 1900s.

Rose Finial c/o
Urban Veg Patch blog

Jellicoe and his associates wanted the slum housing conditions to be improved, and ... if suitably desirable ... then perhaps the residents would take greater care of their properties and area.

The 20^th century saw other changes in Somers Town, some good some bad – as is to be expected, now with our more ‘enlightened’ approach to life Somers Town has retained its diverse cultural communities.

Dolphin Pub in Somers Town

Jellicoe’s concern for social improvement in housing and living conditions, while his connections with philanthropic patrons and artists during his life, enabled an area of London to develop a uniqueness that we see today in the district ...

... and one that is fortunately available to us via a minute display that I found downstairs at the British Library with extra information via modern technology that is the internet.

Washing Lines will never look the same again ...

Flickriver photos of Somerstown by Phillip Dawson

My post on Mary Wollstonecraft

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories