Almorah Crescent - 175 years old
Almorah Crescent
175 years old
Almorah Crescent, a terrace of houses which dominates St Helier's skyline, celebrated its 175th birthday in 2019, an occasion marked by architectural historian and author Marcus Binney with this article, first published in the Jersey Evening Post
Crescents are one of the glories of British architecture. Indeed, the crescent can be claimed as a British invention and, like the leafy London Square, as one of the masterstrokes of British town planning.
Most famous is the first, the Royal Crescent in Bath, a magnificent sweep of 30 houses completed in 1774.
Spas and seaside towns
Crescents became a particular feature of spas and seaside resorts. The crescent as Buxton was built by the Dukes of Devonshire and Brighton's Royal Crescent was intended to impress the Prince of Wales.
Edinburgh has a glorious run of crescents in the New Town - half-circles, half-moons and half-ellipses - and they are more than a match for the finest in London.
St Helier's Almorah Crescent, dating from the 1840s, represents the climax of this fashion for crescent building and in the felicitous words of historian Joan Stevens 'has a commanding position above the town and catches every ray of sunshine there is'.
Almorah Crescent comes as the crowning glory of the town's fine and best-preserved street, Bath Street, continued by David Place and Midvale Road, with a near complete run of Regency terrace houses, all in gleaming stucco. In glowing morning and evening sun they are a wonder to behold.
The houses in these and nearby streets bear names that commemorate the Battle of Waterloo (Apsley Place like the Duke of Wellington's Apsley House in London) and fashionable London estates -- Portland Terrace, Pembroke Terrace and Egerton Place.
Regency St Helier celebrates the auphoria of victory which followed the defeat of Napoleon, felt strongly in the Channel Islands, where so many French Royalists sought refuge and British soldiers came to live after 1815.
Almost the greatest cause for celebration was among Jersey's merchants and mariners, who had been in the front line of the battle to rule the waves, and who built many of these lovely houses.
Himalayan name
The name Almorah is taken from a hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas, which became popular in the early 19th century. Large plots of land on Mont au Pretre belonged to George Dumaresq, of Ponterrin, and his wife Francoise, of Les Augres. Their eldest daughter Jeanne married Captain Edward Ricard and had a son, Charles, who became a speculative builder. His wife Dora Louisa, daughter of Dr H C Taylor, was the first English child born at Almorah after it was taken over by the East India Company - hence the name of the crescent.
In 1844 and 1845 Charles Ricard was advertising houses for sale, seeking purchasers or partners willing to complete them (presumably in the Evening Post). [1]
Regency architecture extends beyond the years of George IV's Regency (1800-1820) to include both his reign and that of his brother William IV, who was succeeded in 1837 by Queen Victoria.
Obviously architectural styles do not conform exactly to the reigns of individsual monarchs and Regency is a generic term for early 19th century architecture, especially the stucco which was so fashionable in London and Brighton, covering the period 1800 to the early and mid-1840s.
Almorah Crescent is built on the gentlest of curves, sufficient nonetheless to give it grace. Earlier crescents had been built on half ellipses, or in some cases, almost a semi-circle, such as London's Park Crescent between Portland Place and Regent's Park.
Beautiful as they were from the street, there was one disadvantage. A strong curve resulted in wedge-shaped houses with awkwardly shaped rooms which did not always appeal to owners in 'the age of elegance' when people had an astute eye for perfect proportions. hence the success of Almorah's very gentle curve.
Special charm
Almorah Crescent has a special charm thanks to the distinct treatment of each storey. it is all of stucco, but the ground floor is treated to look like unusually large squared blocks of stone. The doorways have windows on either side of the front door to let light into the entrance hall and stair, even when the front door is closed. The ground floor windows are all in four parts, the centre ones folding inwards in the manner of French 'casement' windows.
On the first floor the windows are also French windows, opening on to a continuous verandah. The Regency period saw a fashion for ironwork which created a lighter appearance than stucco columns and balustrades. Here the flat pillars which support the roof of the verandah are of iron, pierced not solid, and create a pretty shadow pattern to complement that of the iron balconies.
On the second floor the hoods to the windows provide an added flourish - they are all the more striking this August as they have just been repainted in black glossy paint, giving the ironwork an intense luminosity in the sun. Here the windows change to English sashes, with six over six panes in the manner established in the early 18th century.
The third floor windows are different again - square and small, indicating that they were for children or servants. Usually with such windows only half of the sash opens and the top sash is of just three panes, and is left fixed.
Here the Jersey builder has decided to do it in his own way an d created two equal sashes of six panes over six panes. Because the window is smaller, the six panes are laid sideways instead of being upright - the kind of glazing pattern you would expect in the 1930s or '50s, rather than the 1830s or '40s. But this is a Jersey touch with a practical purpose - the hottest rooms at the top of the house would get a better cooling breeze.
Unusual cornice
Regency town houses were crowned by a cornice running continuously along the terrace or crescent. Here the cornice too is not the normal classical cornice with dentils (teeth) that goes with the Ionic and Corinthian orders, but what is called Tuscan - a flat panel supported on brackets imitating wooden construction, not stone.
Tuscan cornices became fashionable in Bath in the 1820s for villas in the leafy suburbs. They were also used in the 17th century by the first great British architect - Inigo Jones. When asked by the Duke of Bedford to build a church at the end of the new Piazza in London's Covent Garden, the Duke said 'keep it plain, like a barn'. Jones famously replied 'then, sir, I will give you the greatest barn in Christendom' and built a chruch with oversailing Tuscan eaves.
This goes to show that Almorah Crescent has a more interesting pedigree and more charming quirks than may be apparent at first glance.
Sir John Summerson, curator of the Sir John Soane Museum in London, wrote: 'The Crescent has a glorious career. Almorah Crescent counts as a last hurrah.
Notes and references
- ↑ Hardly. The newspaper was not founded until 1890
