Is this the face of Thomas Wright?

Front doors are often an eye-catching feature of a Georgian house and Bell House is no exception. The handsome doorcase, six-panelled door and intricate fanlight are decorative enough to hold their own, even against the octagonal panes of the beautiful Venetian window above. 

Listed Grade II* and one of the top 8% of listed buildings nationally, Bell House is of particular historic importance and any restoration work must be expertly done. Rick is restoring the front door at the moment and as he painstakingly removes the accumulated paint and dirt of 250 years the exquisite detail of this Georgian gem is coming into focus.

Speaking architecturally, Heritage England refer to ‘the open modillioned pediment supported on carved consoles, alternate block sides and archivolt with masked keystone’. For me, that ‘masked keystone’ is the most intriguing feature. The face, placed centrally above the front door, has long been thought to be Thomas Wright himself, the man who built Bell House in 1767.

We know what Thomas Wright looked like as there are two surviving portraits of him: Thomas Wright miniature (LMA) and portrait (Stationers' Company) So, is the face presiding over the front door of Bell House its first resident? Comparing it with these portraits I think we can agree it’s probably not. So, who was it? Was it a memorial to Thomas Wright’s father, who died when Thomas was just four years old? Was it the builder? Or is it just a generic face chosen from a ‘pattern-book’, those widely-used style guides that gave detailed instructions on how to get the Georgian look. Whoever it was, his newly-restored features are nearly ready to preside over the house for the next 250 years.

As an aside, this is not the only masked keystone in Dulwich as North Dulwich station, built a century after Bell House, has one over each of its three entrance arches.

Faces above the three entrance arches of North Dulwich station

London Almanac for the year of Christ 1794

Almanacs began to be published annually in London from the 1600s but became wildly popular in the following century, were still produced into Victorian times and survive today in the form of Old Moore’s or Whitaker’s Almanack. However, the very first almanacs were produced in the second millennium BC in the Near East, providing information such as favourable and unfavourable days and how to deal with each of them.

London Almanack 1794 recently acquired for Bell House collection.

Early English almanacs were sold either as a broadsheet, the precursor of the modern calendar, or as a pocket almanac like this one. They contained astronomical data such as the number of days of the full moon (useful for travelling in the days before street lighting) and used that data to produce weather forecasts which were vital for both agriculture and commerce (aiding decisions such as the movement of ships). They then began to be aimed at different groups such as farmers who got planting data, or Londoners who received municipal information such as lists of City officials and public holidays, and so they became very important to the economy.

Our example is tiny, at 3cm square it is smaller even than a matchbox. It has a burgundy leather cover with a metal clasp, although the leather flap fastener is missing. There is a metal plate under the fastener with enough space for someone’s initials, though ours is not engraved. Inside there are twenty gilt-edged leaves plus text pasted to the reverse of the front and rear marble endpapers. There is a tiny pocket inside the upper cover. 

Engraved throughout, the title page contains the arms of the livery company of Stationers with a second coat of arms on the reverse of the second leaf with a handwritten note: ‘T.W for E.W’.

The tiny almanac measuring just 3cm square.

The data inside includes a month by month summary of 1794 with festivals and sun/moon rising/setting times. Following this is a fascinating table of kings and queens which describes the Tudor line as ‘The families united’ and the Stuart line as ‘The union of the two crowns’. 

Details of past Lord Mayors and sheriffs follow and here Thomas Wright is represented in both lists. 

Finally we have a list of annual holidays and a table of current coins by weight. It is possible Thomas Wright printed this almanac as Wright and Gill derived a large part of their income from printing almanacs and he was an eminent member of the Stationers’ Company, for whom this almanac was printed, having been their first lord mayor for over thirty years when he was inaugurated in 1785.

Railings at Bell House and the ha-ha

Everyone seems very happy about the opening up of the front of Bell House which has exposed the ha-ha.  As Wikipedia explains, a ha-ha is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond.  This is probably the only ha-ha in Dulwich and was originally intended to keep out animals while giving a view from the house across fields towards what is now College Gardens and, beyond that, to Belair Park. Clearing out the depression in front of the ha-ha has been a major task - we have found vast quantities of bottles, cans, old bits of cars and general litter but we have now removed all that rubbish, much of it half-buried, and strimmed down the brambles . Our plan for this outside area is to increase the number of bluebells and wild flowers.  

Railings being installed behind the the ha-ha.

This clearance at the front of Bell House has of course left a security gap between the gates so we have erected a long set of railings which have just been completed.  We used a local welding company, run by Ian Cullingford, who put up railings that minimised any damage to the original wall. The railings may look as if they are drilled into the wall but in fact they are supported from behind the wall and just rest on the wall.  Ian has also protected the limestone curves at each end by making a curved frame for the railings. Ian mostly specialises in fire escapes but we knew he would do our railings brilliantly as he has been taking on these engineering challenges for over 30 years - http://www.fireescape.co.uk

The railings discreetly supported from behind so as not to damage the original wall.

At either side of the railings there are gateways where we plan to install matching gates but before we can do that the leaning wall on the left will have to be rebuilt - that work is planned for later in the summer but certainly before the end of 2017 - the 250th anniversary of the wall and of Bell House itself.

Artists at Bell House

BELL HOUSE, 27 COLLEGE ROAD, DULWICH – ARTISTS’ OPEN HOUSE

13 & 14 May 2017, 11am to 6pm

PICTURE THIS…   

An exhibition of works on paper by artists who identify as being dyslexic

Curated by Kim Thornton

For the first time Bell House in Dulwich will open its doors to the public to take part in the Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House showing work by artists who indentify as being dyslexic.  Referencing the history of the house, commissioned in 1767 by Thomas Wright a poor warehouse worker who started his own lucrative publishing business, the works from Lucy Bainbridge, Sophie Eade, Jane Higginbottom, Alice Irwin, Valeriya N-Georg and Lucy Soni will be on paper.

Both Lucy Soni and Alice Irwin throw off the constraints of the structured world drawing on children’s play and everyday chance in their work.  In contrast, Valeriya N-Georg turns to quantum physics to investigate the boundaries between the human body and the inner self.  

Lucy Bainbridge, Jane Higginbottom and Sophie Eade are all creating their own realities through their study of the environment they live in.  Lucy Bainbridge tries to pause time with her softened city prints whilst Sophie Eade eradicates urbanity and words from the magazine pages that purport to extol rural life.  Jane Higginbottom studies the environment and measures time through nature.

Bell House will also host an artist in residence in a doll’s house, The Sophie Croxton Doll House Gallery.  The project is conceived and curated by Sophie Eade and Lucy Soni. who have awarded the Picture This… residency to painter Clare Price.

The origin of the word ‘dyslexia’ comes from the German dys- ‘difficult’ and the Greek word lexis ‘speech’.  Although this difficulty with words that affects reading, spelling and writing, defines the dyslexic learning process, dyslexia is really about information processing.  People with dyslexia have a different way of thinking, often thinking in pictures rather words.  As a result they frequently have strong visual and creative skills. Click to Events for artist details.

Bell House and Dulwich Picture Gallery

Bell House has had associations with the Dulwich Picture Gallery over a long period and there were even plans to store the DPG paintings at the house during the war to protect them from bombing, although in the end other arrangements were made.  Bell House and the Gallery have been part of the Dulwich Estate for many years and the freeholds were owned by the Dulwich Estate from 1767, when Bell House was built, until 1992 when the house was sold to a private owner.

Recently the Dulwich Picture Gallery has been very energetically managed and is in the process or organising a pavilion for the summer of 2017. Bell House supported the planning application for this creative experiment and is enthusiastic about the community involvement that this will bring.

Bell House has another special link with the Gallery as the Deputy Director of the Gallery, Andrew Macdonald, was a boarder at Bell House when it was a junior boarding house for Dulwich College.  He has recently revisited and gave a graphic description of what life was like for a young boy sleeping in the dormitories and walking up to the main school for lessons and sports.

The Picture Gallery has recently appointed a new chair of trustees (Prof Evelyn Welch) and a new director - Jennifer Scott who plans to "develop the gallery as the perfect place for people to experience the inspirational potential of art."  We hope that Bell House will be able to work with the Picture Gallery to develop an appreciation for art and to provide courses that are not easily available elsewhere.   Also, events at Bell House could compliment what the Picture Gallery already does - perhaps concentrating on photography, film and local artists.  Indeed Bell House has recently organised an exhibition of local artists with themes of paper and dyslexia as part of the Dulwich Festival.     

image courtesy of Dulwich Picture Gallery