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Another View Harlow
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The Gibberd House & Garden
Sir Frederick Gibberd prepared the master plan for Harlow New Town in 1946 and a year later was appointed its Consultant Architectural Planner. In 1957 he bought the Marsh Lane property on the edge of Harlow, situated in the Green Belt, and, despite the fact that he had planned the new town, was denied permission to demolish the 1907 house and replace it with one of his own design. So he embarked on a radical transformation of the original building. This included the addition of a large, full height living room with picture windows overlooking the garden. The library and archive are now available for genuine research purposes and are the basis of the Gibberd Rooms which are open to the public. All the furniture and fittings are authentic and there are models and drawings of some of his work. The present garden covers 16 acres and Gibberd's opinion was that, `Garden design is an art of space, like architecture and town design. The space, to be a recognizable design, must be contained and the plants and walls enclosing it then become part of the adjacent spaces. The garden has thus become a series of rooms each with its own character, from small intimate spaces to large enclosed prospects.' His second wife was, like him, a 'hands on' gardener and her knowledge and choice of sculpture worked alongside his own endeavors. It is an individual creation sited on a small valley, sloping downhill to the Pincey Brook. In conception there are planned vistas and a series of planned rooms. As president of the Concrete Society he was an enthusiast for that medium and laid down much of the garden's hard landscaping himself. Into this setting some 80 items of sculpture, ceramic pots and architectural salvage were introduced. To stroll through the garden is to enter another world of the imagination where some rooms are like stage-sets with, for instance, a pair of columns from the south façade of Coutts Bank when Sir Frederick was restoring that building. The columns were not needed so he bought them for his garden setting. A bust of Queen Victoria, looking very serious, has a wine rack tucked behind her in an enclosed space. Many of the sculptures were made by very talented artists but alongside were many pieces to bring a smile. Materials varied from concrete to wood, mild steel to bronze and stainless steel to fibreglass. The planting everywhere was very special, with the familiar mixed alongside the rare and wonderful colour combinations. Hugh Johnson, author of books on wine and gardening said - 'I keep coming back to this wonderful place for inspiration; to look for ideas or just to feel the buzz of a great designer at work. You can refresh your fancy, test practicality, learn economy or just let yourself drift in this theatre of a garden. You can never be bored.' |
The Civic Centre
With a full day ahead our first visit was to the Civic Centre to see the Gibberd Gallery which is run by the Harlow Art Trust, a charity formed in 1953, which also commissions and purchases sculpture for the town. |
The Water Gardens & St Paul's Church
Stepping outside, just a few yards from the front of the Civic Centre, there is the pleasure of a delightful Water Garden with sculptures by Rodin, Frink and Moore and mosaics by William Mitchell. |
New Towns & Harlow
Any look at post-war housing and national planning policy leaves one impressed. Given the consequences of war, not least the utter depletion of resources, the determination to improve living conditions and legislate accordingly is evident. With housing, it was not only massive war damage, particularly in London, which prompted radical and urgent action; it was also the legacy of unfit dwellings, a problem which Britain had struggled with for 20 years before 1939. The 1951 Census revealed that out of 12.4 million dwellings in England and Wales, 1.9 million had only 3 rooms or less, 4.8 million had no fixed bath and nearly 2.8 million lacked the exclusive use of a toilet. There was an awareness of the scale of the problem before the shock of the 1951 Census and so, among other measures, the New Towns Act of 1946 and the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. More than in any of the new towns, Harlow became associated with its master-planner: Frederick Gibberd, architect, landscape architect and town planner. His ideals and commitment are firmly established in Harlow, particularly his emphasis on open space and landscape and his belief in the value of art in the community. |
Harlow lies immediately to the south of a railway - connection to London Liverpool Street 30 minute - and, not far to the east, is the M11. The New Town area includes the old township but this is well to the east of the new centre, around which residential ‘neighbourhoods’ were developed. While three radial roads serve the centre there is also planned provision for orbital movement. Typically progressive for its time, an extensive cycle-way network was planned and built within this system. |
Newhall
The plan was to visit the Stirling Prize shortlisted houses by Alison Brooks. I was not prepared for the wonderful variety of house designs that we saw as soon as we entered Newhall. It was explained that there are six principles underpinning their approach: |
Newhall Be
“The development consists of five apartment buildings containing six, seven or eight flats each; fourteen Villas; twenty-nine courtyard houses and seven terraced houses. Twenty-six per cent of the homes are affordable. Alison Brooks has created some striking houses using a restrained pallette of materials which seems to echo the local vernacular of Essex black barns. I thought that they looked very smart, certainly dramatic, reflecting a modern attitude to lifestyle in architecture - and marketing. |