Nellie's Flat

Last weekend was Open House weekend in Dublin.  For anyone who doesn't know, Open House happens in cities all over the world around this time of year and, for one weekend, buildings that are normally closed to the public open their doors.  This year, there was only one building I really wanted to see: the Iveagh Trust Museum Flat in Dublin's Liberties.

The flat is in a building complex owned by the Iveagh Trust, a philanthropic body set up by the Guinness family in the late 19th century to build social housing for the poor of London and Dublin.  I've always been a bit fascinated by these distinctive red brick apartment blocks in one of the oldest parts of the city (sandwiched between the two cathedrals, just up from the old Viking settlement) so when I heard one of the flats had been preserved as a museum, I waited for the opportunity to visit.  Thank you Open House!  

Henry and Anne Molloy moved into Flat 3B in 1915, having previously rented two other flats in the building.  Their daughter Nellie was born in one of those flats in 1907 and lived in 3B from 1915 to her death in 2002.  There's a film on the Iveagh Trust site all about Nellie - and a photograph of her is one of the first things you see when you enter the flat.

When Nellie died, her family agreed with the Trustees that the flat should be preserved as a museum - a reminder of how these flats looked and how people lived here in the past.  

The flat has three rooms: a general living room and two bedrooms.  The original design provided for four flats accessed from the same landing to share two toilets and a big sink.  Although other flats in the complex have been modernised over the years, Nellie resisted offers to add a bathroom or a proper kitchen.  When you look at these photos, please consider: at one time there were EIGHT people living here.  Six children sharing one bedroom, their parents the other, with the third room serving as living room, dining room, kitchen.  And this would have been considered a pretty good standard of living at the time.  

No space in the living room is unused.  In a space about 9m2 there is a range set into the fireplace, a kind of pantry/cupboard in the corner,

a long leather sofa, a table with four chairs, two easy chairs, another folding table, a sideboard and sundry photos, holy pictures, ornaments.

Oh, and a piano.  Did I mention the piano?

One of the bedrooms has space for two twin beds, some hooks and a chest of drawers.  The second now only has one brass bed, but this is where, once upon a time, the six children would have slept.  You can still see a curtain rail running across the ceiling - a curtain was used to divide the boys' side of the room from the girls' side.

Tucked behind the door was a small, slightly more modern, stove.

The washing facilities:

What struck me most about the flat was not the size (although it's hard to imagine how it worked when everyone was at home - squeezing past the piano, taking it in shifts to eat meals ...), nor the decor (though you have never seen such a range and variety of holy pictures and memorabilia) but the  quality of light which gilded everything like in a Dutch Golden Age painting.  While I'm sure the atmosphere in the flat wasn't always as serene and lovely as it was last Saturday afternoon, I think I can understand why Nellie might have wanted to keep it as it was - a kind of illuminated shrine to her family.

Visiting the flat can be arranged by appointment, by contacting the Iveagh Trust.

The Poetical Walls of Leiden

For the past year or so, I've been working on a project in beautiful Leiden, home of the oldest university  in the Netherlands.

A couple of weeks ago, we went out for an evening stroll along the canal and I spotted this house.

I assumed the residents were just big Shakespeare fans.  Why NOT paint Sonnet XXX on the side of your house?  Good idea.

But then I also saw this house and realised that it wasn't just a once off, but a project to transform buildings into outsized pages of poetry.

And here's another one.

It turns out these 'wall poems' are part of an ongoing project, and rather than being temporary, they remain for everyone to find and enjoy.

Lovely idea, no?

If you should find yourself in Leiden, the project website has a full list of the poems (107 and counting) and a map, so you can design your own walking tour.

Looking Up: the Blue Mosque

It is interesting how different three women can look when they're wearing head scarves.  In this case, my sisters, 

and my mother.

We were wearing scarves, as all women are asked to do, because we were in the Sultan Ahmet Mosque - or, as it usually known, the Blue Mosque.  Blue scarves and blue - draperies? - are handed out at the entrance to those who haven't brought their own or whose skirts are deemed to be that little bit too short …

Surely it's not coincidence that the fabric matches perfectly the blue flowers of the carpet?

Inside the Blue Mosque we, like almost everybody else there, spent most of our time looking up at the tiles and decorations that have given the Mosque its nickname.

Interesting how the putting on of special garments puts you in a different mood, a different mindset. All the better, perhaps, to appreciate the space.

Overseen: Oslo City Hall

I have a weakness for the socialist realist style of building adornment: all those stern, chiselled-jawed men and valiant, banner-wielding women.  So I was very appreciative of the decoration on Oslo City Hall - a mostly 1930s building, though some parts weren't completed until after World War II.

There is something of a gender bias in the sculptures, though.

These men are hard at work,

while these women seem altogether more frivolous.

Men build, women adorn?

Here at least is some equal-opportunity frolicking - 

while this stout fellow keeps watch below.

The Lutyens Youth Hostel

Everything is connected.  Inspired by my visit to Lambay, I did some more reading about Lutyens' work in Ireland and discovered that a hunting lodge he designed in Donegal was now a youth hostel. A youth hostel just a stone's throw from the place I spent every summer as a child - and, as chance would have it, had planned to visit the week after Lambay.  Strangely, though I'd passed it a hundred times, I'd never been inside the youth hostel.  Obviously, this was the moment to make good on that.

This is not the youth hostel.  This is the rather striking sculptural arrangement of abandoned lorries sitting in front of it.  

This is the youth hostel - and once I saw it, I could see the connection between this and other Lutyens buildings.  Those sweeping, slightly curved, cross between pagoda- and chalet-inspired roofs.

Though I suspect that the accommodation is somewhat basic, you do have stunning views over the Atlantic Ocean - and a rather lovely porch wrapping around the house from which to appreciate them.

Montsalvat

The grey, gloomy and inescapable November-ness of today prompted me to dig out these photos from last month - photos that have an unmistakable air of spring about them.  (My upside-down, topsy-turvy travelling ways have given me so far this year: two winters, one and a half autumns, one and a half springs, one summer.)  

Just before I left Melbourne in October, my lovely friend Georgie suggested visiting Montsalvat, an artist's colony out in Eltham, on the edge of the city.  As it turned out, I had been here nearly ten years ago for a wedding, but didn't remember.  Anyway, I was glad we went back, because it is BEAUTIFUL.  

Founded by the fantastically Scanwegian-named Justus Jorgensen in the 1930s, Montsalvat was planned to resemble a French Provencal (or provincial - it's not entirely clear which) village.  Personally, I think it looks like an architect took one part Arts and Crafts design manual, one part 1930s cutting edge taste and put it into a Disney blender ....

Montsalvat is still an artist's colony, with little cottages housing workshops and studios.  There is also a good restaurant, a gallery and beautiful gardens.  Because there was an event happening the day we went and therefore access to some spaces was limited, we got in for free, which was really very kind of them.  All in all a perfect get-away-from-the-city springtime excursion.  It's just a shame that it's a little too far from my current location for a blast of spring loveliness.

Canberra Sci-Fi

I continue to find Canberra fascinating, in a science experiment kind of way.  It's all so planned, so neat, so very much a mid-century vision of a city.  In fact, it looks like the set of a 1950s B-Grade sci fi movie.

See? (View from the National Museum of Australia.)

Auckland Afternoon

Trying to work out if Auckland is (whisper it!) a bit sleepy or if it was just me, I took an alternative route back to my hotel, bypassing Queen St and turning onto High St. This was much more like it.

Lots of deco buildings, some promising-looking bars and an excellent bookshop.

Unity Books turned up trumps with a copy of How Did You Get This Number? by Sloane Crosley whose book I Was Told There’d Be Cake was one of my favourite 30^th birthday presents.

I liked this example of gardening-meets-art with imaginative use of moss,

and (being how lady voters and lady travellers share a common aim of female independence) appreciated this memorial to the advent of women’s suffrage in New Zealand in 1893.