The Jewish Museum

Raymond Burton House
129-131 Albert Street
London NW1 7NB

Tuesday August 11 2014

In a slightly counter-intuitive move and because the venue and timing suited those of us with other commitments we opted to visit London's Jewish Museum located in a beautiful 19^th Century terrace on the surprisingly quiet Albert Street , which is just off parkway in Camden - Mary and I arrived via the Northern Line at Camden alongside the hordes heading for the markets, while Jo bicycled. The Museum does not have dedicated bicycle racks so she had to make do with a piece of street furniture. 

Once inside the building you lose sight of the 19^th century facade. The Museum moved here in 1994 but was only opened in this much more spacious format in 2010 – a disused piano factory had given the Museum space to expand and on our visit today we really only covered two floors.  There is a plan to move the Jewish Military Museum here quite soon and there is also space for special exhibitions, usually on the ground floor where there are also toilets a café and shop, and one of their prize exhibits a ritual bath (Mikva) rescued from Milk Street. The cloakroom happily takes bags. 

Mary opted to start with the 2^nd floor, which is a more intimate space devoted to the religion of Judaism. She also attracted the attention of one of the several volunteer room guides who was keen to enlighten her about the detail of Jewish beliefs and rituals. I was left largely to my own devices either because I was making notes or they assumed I must know some of it…only partly true. Talking of enlightenment, the centre pieces of this space are a range of beautiful specifically religious light fittings from round the world. We were very impressed with the labelling and displays within the museum, there seemed to be an ideal balance between artefacts/context and robust inter-active explanations and enhancements.  For instance there are short videos of young Jews explaining the various customs pertaining the celebrations and rituals of birth, marriage, death etc. Walking seven times round the groom – symbolic for the journeys to make a home. Stamping on the glass – to remember that there are difficult times as well as happy during a marriage and to remember the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. There are significant amounts of polished silver for candelabra and the handles which hold the holy scrolls – the Torah. More unusually there was a swaddling cloth to hold the male infant’s legs during circumcision – at which point Mary got into a discussion with one of the museum volunteers, who it seemed was a retired doctor… there was also an example of an elaborately calligraphed Ketubah, otherwise known as a ‘pre-nup’. Another grand exhibit is the upright chest, beautifully decorated walnut wood, made to hold the scrolls and found  in 1932 being used as a boot cupboard – probably bought in Italy by some well -heeled Englishman doing the ‘Grand Tour’.

Touring and moving on is of course key to the Jews’ story and it is no different for those in UK; the Jewish arrivals from the time of William the Conqueror in 1066 are where England’s particular time-line begins. They came as the money (lending) men behind the invaders and stayed to be merchants, settling undisturbed for some 200 years. First expulsions came during the reign of Edward I and he also introduced the system of ‘badge-wearing’ shaped like the 2 tablets rather than a star of David.    And expelled they stayed except for a few who perhaps ‘hid’ their religion as nicely represented by a single candle burning in a window.  You can listen to Anthony Sher talking about Shakespeare’s representations of Jews and his own experiences growing up in South Africa.

Oliver Cromwell, who had some tolerance for minority religions (and needed some independent cash backers) allowed the Jews back in and again they settled in our larger cities. Walk through Lincoln for example and you will find the corner named as ‘Old Jewry’. Once the Jewish community became well established in the UK there a range of artefacts showing Jews following a range of occupations form peddler to politician (there are some who might think these two sides of the same coin – peddling trifles or peddling lies?) of whom Montefiore and of course Disraeli were the most famous. A large section is devoted to memories from the old East End – the Jews like refugees/arrivals/immigrants before and after them settled in the streets round Whitechapel and the Commercial Road. This theme – life, work and play in the East End – is handled really well, which is not surprising as the Museum was originally founded to preserve evidence of this way of life before the buildings, fittings and folk disappeared. You can hear ‘testament’ from different generations of the Jews who formed part of the mass migrations from Eastern Europe bringing with them their skills, foods and Yiddish language – a mixture of largely old German, Slavic and Hebrew. Tailoring is looked at in some detail as is membership of trade unions, and indeed political parties. 

Like all ‘arrivals’ they were greeted with suspicion and fear – an excellent display shows a range of ‘press cuttings’ over several centuries pointing out the ‘perceived threats’ posed by the incomers showing how little ignorant  public opinion has changed over the years.

The role of Jewish  servicemen  during both world wars is covered briefly (we had missed the special WW1 exhibition which rather to our surprise had already been taken down) and this aspect of Jewish History will undoubtedly be covered in more detail when the Military Museum moves here at a later stage. Highlighted is the poet Isaac Rosenberg, killed in France in 1915, and a serving sailor. 

Probably less well known is the sizeable contribution Jewish fighters made during the Spanish Civil war, and on home ground to the Union movement generously  illustrated by a range of exhibits. The years between the two wars saw the rise of Zionism and the campaign for a safe haven for Jews in the Palestine, while Europe saw the growth of the right wing anti-semitism that would eventually become the destructive Nazi regime leading to the most infamous episode in Jewish history; both the stories of those who survived the camps and Holocaust and those who were able to flee are told through moving testament. Never an easy listen or visit but an essential part, and here a very proportionate part of the Jewish history in the UK.

Today the Museum felt calm allowing the visit to be contemplative of what is anything but a calm and quiet history; this may be a very different experience during term time but certainly today we had a full and informative visit.

28/8/2014 PS
Upcoming, and clearly not to be missed the Jewish Museum will be having a special exhibition of the work of Abram Games as previewed in this 'Observer' feature.

The Chapter House of Westminster Abbey

Monday 11 August 2014

As we left the Jewel Tower, the charming person on duty in the tiny cafe mentioned to us that English Heritage also controls the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, so we could see that without paying the £18.00 that it costs to see the whole Abbey.  (we shall do that, of course, when we have more time...)

She also pointed out that we could avoid the enormous queues for the Abbey itself by going through Deans Yard.  

So we did.  At the door, we were given yellow passes to show when challenged (we weren't) and headed round the Cloisters, pausing briefly to admire a couple of memorials.  These included one to James Cook, with rather lovely blue enamel sea

Passing what claims to be the oldest door in Britain, dating from about 1050, we came to the Chapter House, which was looking rather fine as the sunshine came through the stained glass windows.  These date from the 1950s, the originals having sustained damage during the Blitz.

We admired the renovated vaulting, as well as the medieval pictures on one of the walls.  

These showed scenes from the Apocalypse, though the Kamyl and the Dromedary did not appear to bothered by the end of all things. These painting were commissioned by John of Northampton in the 15th century.

It is also possible to see some of the floor tiles, as they have been left exposed in the centre of the durable carpet which protects much of the floor.

 As part of the Abbey's commemoration of the Great War, three pictures by Hughie O'Donohue RA called The Measure of all Things.  They were of men dressed in modern clothes, but lying in cruciform shapes, possibly on a battlefield.  The artist explains here.

By the time we left the Chapter House we felt sated, although our yellow passes would have got us into the Abbey Museum and the Pyx Chamber as well.  But it was time time to go, just in time to catch the next heavy rain shower.

The Jewel Tower

Monday 11 August 2014

As Linda mentioned, we had been intending to visit Apsley House as a follow up to the Wellington Arch but, as has happened several times before, we had not checked the website. Indeed, it had not occurred to us that a major, publicly owned tourist attraction in London would be taking a day off.


So instead we headed for another English Heritage place, the Jewel Tower in Westminster. This started life in the reign of Edward III, who needed all the wealth he could get for his wars in France.

So the first use of the Tower was the storage of valuables.  There were a few examples but, at least as interesting, was a bit of audio about returning some plate which had been to Eltham Palace for the Easter feasting.  Although the number of dishes in the list was correct, one of them was clearly wrong, as it weighed more than it should have done.




Which brings us to another use of the Tower across the years, namely the place where the standard weights and measures of the Imperial system were housed and used.  Linda broke into a quick chorus of 'I love you A bushel and a peck' and we also saw the master measures for a grain and a scruple.


There were very clear information boards around the place, but the attempts at interactives were less successful:  the Baker's scales probably needed adjustment as they were a bit sticky.

The weights and measures had to be moved when traffic vibration from the road outside upset the delicate checking processes.  

The third use of the Tower was as storage for Parliamentary papers.  The scrolls were kept in large pigeon holes. presumably by date, though we thought that the apparent post-it notes in the display were not nineteenth century.  Several very important documents survive today because they were stored here and not in the House Of Commons when it burned down in 1834. These documents include the death warrant for CharlesI, though only a replica is on display now. Luckily, the next time the House of Commons was destroyed, papers were not lost.




All in all, we enjoyed our brief visit to the Tower;  it was very quiet, unlike the rest of historic Westminster, which was solid with tourists of all kinds.

The Wellington Arch

Hyde Park Corner

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Monday August 11^h 2014

We, that is Roger, Linda and Jo, had planned a Wellington morning – the Duke not the boots that is – but in the event we only completed Part 1, which was to visit the Arch, owing to not having noticed that his house across the road is not actually open on Mondays.  Never mind: the Arch itself is both imposing and interesting, once planned as a grand entrance to Green Park and Buckingham Palace, now the centre of one of London’s scariest roundabouts.  Previous plans for an arch and grand entrance to West London, by well-established architects such as Robert Adam (as in Kenwood) or Sir John Soane (as in Bank of England) had been abandoned on cost grounds but following naval and military successes in the Napoleonic Wars it was felt that a triumphal arch could double as a Victory monument and an entrance statement.  In the end the go-ahead was given to Sir Decimus (yes he really was the tenth child of his parents) Burton whose original plans were rather more ornate than what you see today. This time the budget for remodelling Buckingham Palace had over run so corners were cut on the Arch, or in fact arches were cut on the arch.  

As visitors to this monument, if you take the lift to the First Floor this history of the Arch from plan to execution is well displayed. The next controversy was about the specific memorial to Wellington, to whom had already been given nearby Apsley House.  The 1^st floor gallery has some excellent cartoons of the day showing how ridiculous the equestrian statue of Wellington looked atop the Arch and it was eventually sent down  to Aldershot and replaced by the Quadriga you see today. This last co-incided with the whole Arch being moved to its present site because of heavy traffic,  generated mainly by the recent opening of Victoria Station. The replacement statue of four horses pulling a chariot conducted by a young boy with Peace hovering over his shoulder was another expensive commission but a private donor and subsidy from the sculptor made a viable option – interestingly Adrian Jones, the artist, had actually worked with horses during his own military career and it probably accounts for the liveliness of the steeds.  These were finally unveiled in 1912.

The First World War clearly marks the transition from the 19^th century preoccupation with triumph and glorious commanders to memorials of loss and remembrance showing the ‘ordinary Tommy.'

The current exhibition on the 3^rd Floor is entitled ‘We Will Remember Them’ and is dedicated to looking in detail at London’s great War memorials, particularly those in the care of English Heritage. There is an accompanying brochure and to coincide with all the other events to commemorate the losses of war, this exhibition is timely, moving and altogether manageable as it focuses on six quite different approaches to  and examples of memorial art.

•   Earl Haig, even now a controversial figure, is fittingly somewhat ‘old school’ and is shown on horseback, a horse the widow insisted by a real likeness of the Earl’s ‘Poperinghe’.
  
•  Also traditional is the statue of Edith Cavell.  Royalty apart there are few public statues of women.
  
•           For us the least known memorial English Heritage showcased in the exhibition was the ‘Belgian Gratitude memorial’ located opposite Cleopatra’s Needle on the Victoria Embankment and given in recognition of the UK offering a home for many Belgian refugees and entering the war on their behalf (something of a simplification).
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•           Most memorable probably is the Machine Gun Corps memorial depicting a very beautiful nude ‘David’ in true Renaissance style alongside the weapons of death. Interestingly the sculptor, Dewent Wood also helped the wounded with facial reconstructions.
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•           The Cenotaph, so well -known it needs no introduction, but admirable nevertheless. Sir Edwin Lutyens was probably better known for  his country houses but the simple stele has more than stood the test of time
•           For me the most moving of the memorial sculptors is Charles Sargeant Jagger’s Royal Artillery Memorial; here is the man who captures the ‘universal soldier’ be he exhausted and at rest , the caped driver, or as at Paddington Station, reading a letter from home.
  

The memorials are set in a context of how the artists were chosen, and even more important how the words were chosen interspersed with the stories of certain individuals whose names can then be traced on the grand memorial such as Thiepval (Lutyens again) or range of village memorials from round the country.

Climbing to the platform of the Arch you can have an excellent view (although a bit tree-obscured  in some directions at this time of year), not just down into the Palace gardens, but also over many other memorials that cluster here – the Canadian, the Australian, the New Zealand (when trees are less leafy)  and Commonwealth memorials are innovative and reflect their own cultures whereas the Bomber Command one, already controversial , does not compete favourably and seem to hark back to a different era.

Talking of a different era the rooms now used for exhibitions used to house the Met’s ‘smallest police force’ who were stationed here complete with cat and this is about the most frivolous exhibit in what is both a memorial in in its own right, a great London landmark and a worthwhile temporary exhibition. 

Hampton Court Palace Gardens

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Monday August 4^th 2014

If it’s August it must be bedding plants… We had decided to split our day at Hampton Court into two as it’s such a large site to visit and would not fit into our 90 minutes rule, so after a pleasant picnic interrupted only by the passage of some magnificent carthorses pulling a double wagon we started following the ‘garden route.’ Both of us are pretty familiar with Hampton Court from childhood onwards and I have an old photo of earnest school girls posed by a conical tree (Very Versailles we thought) dating from an Upper Third (Year 7) end-of -year outing. Those were the days when your ticket had to be punched at each ‘feature’ till you finished with more holes than card. 

Enough with the nostalgia. I let Jo write up the house on the basis that her history is way more sophisticated than mine though my horticulture is not that hot either. Talking of hot what catches the eye in the ‘Fountain Gardens’, which is where we started, is the number of hot – that is red and red-and-pink and orange – beds, when the word garish might spring to mind. There is actually only one fountain of the original many remaining but it is in the centre. It also offers a wonderful foreground to the West façade. Wren has already featured strongly in our visits thus far – the Royal Hospital and Kensington Gardens – and now his palace for William and Mary here. Most of the gardens date from that time.

The later monarchs also transformed Henry VIII’s Privy Garden – at the far end of the paths there is a riot of gold, not an intricate climbing plant but Tijou’s wrought iron fantasia of gates, so ornate they present a  conservator's nightmare and like the headman’s axe are probably in their third or fourth incarnation. Nowadays you can wander alongside outside on the Thames Path (one of its more memorable bits it has to be said) but I wonder whether that was the case back when they were first erected. I am always amazed when viewing the luxury of former rulers that England never had a revolution a la Française.

From here we could have sneaked through the hornbeam tunnel but instead went along the wall.

The Pond Gardens, so called as they were the original fishponds for Henry VIII (and presumably Wolsey too as the rules about fish eating were pretty strict in those days), had dried out so Queen Mary, who seems to have been something of a driving force horticulturally speaking, had this sunken area planted up with her exotics. Today the ‘Exoticks’ are closer to the Orangery though the shelter allows for a wall of espaliered fruit trees surrounding a tranquil grassy area allowing your eyes to ‘cool’ before the next colour rush.

The Pond Gardens taper somewhat leading you to the pristine earthy patch which represents the area of the great Vine’s root system. Back in 1959 when the Great Vine was a compulsory stop on the school itinerary I remember being desperately unimpressed. Today everything looked very neat and well-tended and sure enough there were enough bunches of red grapes to make you believe it really is a great vine. We were pleased to see an old photo of a previous ‘gardener’, complete with her Horrockses frock (see the entry for the Textile Museum) snipping away genteelly whilst precariously balanced on her high heels.

Back in front of the Orangery which now houses the Mantegna ‘strip cartoon’ are Queen Mary’s ‘exoticks’ including a small crop of lemons and a gardener diligently clipping, not quite with nail scissors but very small tools, the box surround. We hoped he was making his way towards the Knot Garden , which looked slightly fuzzy and in need of a trim . Here are a few designs if you wish to ‘try this at home’ as you really don’t need a lot of space but quite a lot of patience. 

I notice looking at my handy map that we actually missed a couple of items, namely the 20^th century, formerly Apprentices’ garden, and we did not go into the Banqueting House either.

You cannot actually get round to the front of the Palace this way (small matter of a river being in the way) so we walked back through the various courtyards and out the front. We had already seen the Wilderness, very pleasant but better viewed in Spring when the bulbs are out, on our original toilet trip so went straight to the Rose Garden , which is exactly that. Some were very fragrant, many delicately pastel shades, and several varieties were past their best.

Our last and probably most interesting garden was the kitchen one, recently re-opened after replanting following the 1736 John Roque’s plans. Better known for his maps of London he and his brother (like Tijou, Hugenot refugees) were also garden designers. Dodging the sprinkler which seemed to be on rather erratic circles we enjoyed identifying (or not) the different crops, which are charmingly labelled with script on upturned terracotta pots.  A bit stumped by a something called ‘scurvy grass’, which is actually a low lying nondescript weedy (in both senses) looking thing, we asked the gardeners what was what. Scurvy grass, they told us, is very high in Vitamin C (it tastes like horseradish or wasabi) and used to be eaten as salad leaves by sailors back from a spell at sea. This we had muddled with the neighbouring Hartshorn Plantain which looked decorative rather than delicious.

Under the shelter to one side of the garden is a list of all the gardeners and their specialties and it struck us that this is one of those occupations (yes there are electric lawn mowers and hedge cutters but by and large it is a hands-on job) that has changed little over the centuries so it was nice to see previous generations remembered.

The entrance price for Hampton Court is high but you need to bear in mind the costs of conservation within the palace and the labour intensive nature of gardening to see where your money has been spent. The visitor needs to invest his time to get his or her money’s worth, as we more than did.

Hampton Court Palace

Monday 4 August 2014

A sunny Monday, and Linda and I were off to Hampton Court, gearing up, I suppose, for Bring up the Bodies.  

So why are the first two pictures of the excellent bench outside Foyles in Waterloo Station? Well, arriving in good time for the 09.36 to Hampton Court, we we disappointed to see the word 'cancelled' on the indicator;  we were assured that the 10.42 to Surbiton would get us to a bus shuttle service, but when that, too was delayed, we opted for a train to Richmond and a nostalgic trip on the R68 bus.  This meant we arrived exactly an hour later than we had intended, at 11.15.

For both of us, it had been a long time since our last visit and so, bearing in mind King George's sage remarks about lavatories ('go when you can, not when you must') we headed on a long detour to find the loos, little knowing that once we got inside, we should find such conveniences round almost every corner.  Those we did find were camouflaged in a bosky dell, with three of the five wash basins out of order.... Hmm.

And so to the Palace, which was busy with visitors, including youth groups of various nations, but is big enough to accommodate them all without discomfort.  The paperwork offers several different visitor routes, after each of which you can return to the Base Court.

Around the Palace and the grounds, the 1914 centenary is being marked by brief lives of people associated with Hampton Court, who died in the Great War.  They were predominantly sons of gardeners, plumbers etc attached to the Palace and so living here, and were, as you might expect, pretty moving.  I had hoped to find them all on the HRP website, but no.

Linda and I started, socially speaking, at the bottom, with a tour of Henry VIII's kitchens.  They had done some good set dressing, with large lumps of meat, and real fire for the spits and, of course, lots of pies and bread in those pre-potato days.  Not much sign of the 5 a day, though.

Then we visited the Chapel Royal, before jumping a quarter of a century to the Fountain Court and the reign of William and Mary

The chocolate kitchens had recently been opened, so we paused there to admire fine silverware, and a video about the preparation of the expensive drink:  lots of grinding and sieving and stirring, as opposed to simply opening a sachet.

Then it was up the Grand Staircase to William III's apartments.  When we were at Kensington Palace, we had thought about the amazing spinning that turns an armed invasion by foreign troops into some kind of victory for liberty, and now we also reflected on what fun monarchy could be if the spouse of the monarch, with no shred of dynastic entitlement, always took over.


The rooms are as you might expect.  I am just back from a modest chateau-crawl in the Loire Valley, where the French have massively improved the presentation of their stately homes since we were last there 20ish years ago.  This meant that I was only slightly impressed with the flower arrangements here, and found the 'conservation' level of lighting a little dreary.  But a number of the pictures had wonderful Grinling Gibbons carved surrounds, and the views of the gardens were lovely.


The various Presence Chambers, Privy Chambers and Bed Chambers finished at the King's Stool Room, complete with, er, a stool for his stools.

 
 Next we made our way along the long gallery to a suite of slightly more domestic sized rooms, with a drawing room and dining room that one could imagine living in.  

As we got back to the Base Court for our next foray, we noted some Tudor ladies, who put us in the mood for the Henry VIII apartments route.  The Great Hall and the Great Watching Chamber both had impressive tapestries and fine ceilings.

At this stage, one can go into the gallery of the Royal Chapel, where they are also displaying a replica of Henry VIII's crown.  This was destroyed by the new government in 1649 as a political statement, which is interesting, since most of the rest of the crown jewels were sold by the Royalists to raise funds for their war effort.

By now, as 1.00pm approached, we were in need of sustenance, so went into the gardens to eat our sandwiches, before going to see Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar.  Because of the extensive renovation works around the place, access is only through the gardens.  And you need to walk the length of the gallery before starting to look, in order to get the procession in the right order.  Otherwise you feel like a Tour de France moto overtaking the whole peloton from the back.  The pictures are fairly interesting, though dim and dimly lit.  The commentary, which is on head phones attached to the benches, explains that from the start they were overpainted (to repair shipping damage) and cleaned and generally messed about with.  But they stand both as a statement of Henry VIII's 'Renaissance Prince' ambitions, and as his vision of himself as someone who might again divide Gaul into three parts.

All in all, this is a remarkable place and well worth a visit, preferably in sunny weather so that you can appreciate the gardens, about which Linda will write.