Recording Britain -- Great Bardfield

It's rather bad form to buy oneself a Christmas present, but I'm afraid that, while I was searching the far corners of eBay for suitably esoteric collectibles for my nearest and dearest, I couldn't resist a bargain-priced set of the four volumes of Recording Britain.

Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield by Michael Rothenstein

When war broke out in 1939 Sir Kenneth Clark (though he probably wasn't yet a Sir) decided to send artists out across England, Wales and Scotland to make a record of the places that make up the visual fabric of our country. It was a clever kind of propaganda exercise (by which I don't mean to imply any sort of disapproval) -- to show us one of the reasons why the war was worth fighting: the potential destruction of so much we held dear. The V & A now hold the collection of original paintings and drawings of places in England and Wales (the Scottish works are in the Museum Collections Unit at the University of St. Andrews). This page on the V & A website will tell you much more about the whole project.
     Clark intended the scheme to be a help to artists, as much as anything else, for with the outbreak of war the market for art became dramatically depressed. He raised enough money to be able to pay his team of recorders a modest sum as they toured the country. The criterion for their choice of subject matter was not simply to find places that might be destroyed by bombs; it was also to key into the more nebulous but pervasive anxiety people felt then (particularly then but, of course, ever since too) about the passing of a whole way of life: modernisation and urbanisation were, it was felt, riding roughshod over 'old England', trampling people, buildings and landscapes as endless terraced houses were thrown up and factories replaced smithies and craftsmen's workshops. 

A more recent selection from the 1500 originals is in this book by Gill Saunders

     When the four books arrived, I have to confess I was a little disappointed. Just a little. The books were published between 1946 and 1949, immediately after the end of the war, when the country was still suffering from terrible deprivation. On a quick glance through, the printing seemed rather insipid with many of the images in dull sepia tones. On the V & A website, by contrast, the paintings appear in clear, natural colours -- much nicer. Gill Saunders' 2011 book about the project seems to have colour reproductions of the originals and I can see I'll probably have to get it as well. But it feels good to own the four books that represent the project in its original form. I'm only showing a very few images this time, but there are paintings by many wonderful artists from the first half of the twentieth century who I absolutely love: Kenneth Rowntree, John Piper (though seemingly rather uninspired and keeping his genius in check for some reason -- perhaps because the commission was to record not interpret), Barbara Jones, Ruskin Spear, Rowland Hilder) and others new to me but certainly to be added to the list of cherished artists: Phyllis Dimond, Stanley Anderson are just two I've noticed so far. I haven't yet had time to really sit down and go through the four books lingeringly. In fact the more I look, the more treasures I'm finding. I will have to blog about them in more detail later, I think.

The Shelter, Bedford Square by Phyllis Dimond

The Cuckmere at Litlington by Rowland Hilder

35 Beaumont Street, Oxford by Stanley Anderson

Wooden House, Wrythe Greene byBarbara Jones

Tithe Barn, Great Coxwell by John Piper

I wonder how many of the scenes recorded did actually meet the fate that was feared, how many are no longer there? Happily the conservation lobby also got the wind in its sails at about the same time and many precious buildings and vistas have been preserved, despite fears to the contrary. Certain the Gibraltar Mill at Great Bardfield (seen in the first picture above) still stands in its fields, even if it's been converted into a dwelling now:

Gibraltar Mill, Great Bardfield as seen on Google Street View

The reason I looked up Great Bardfield (in Essex) is that it was the home of so many wonderful artists, including Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, but neither of these artists' work features in the four books -- due, no doubt, to the fact that they both served as official war artists, Ravilious, sadly, never returning.

Ravilious' house at Castle Hedingham, nr Great Bardfield

Of all the paintings made during wartime and which served -- and serve -- to remind us why it was worth fighting to preserve our freedom, the one that most moves me is The Cornfield by John Nash (painted in 1918):

Click on this link tothe Tate website to listen to a poem by John Burnside inspired by this painting.