Open House opens minds

Last week’s nostalgia page highlighted some interesting nooks and crannies of Watford set to feature in a new booklet, The Locally Listed Buildings Register, published by the council.

Considering the architectural vandalism that has blighted this town, the fact that the list provides protection against exterior development should be welcomed.

I was slightly unsettled, however, to read that “changes to the list…have been proposed “ and that “these will be open to public consultation until Tuesday, October 12, before the final document is produced”.

Hmmm… I just hope this ‘consultation’ period doesn’t provide a loophole through which wily developers can wriggle? Watford has lost so many landmarks that the last remaining buildings of any significance deserve full protection.

The importance of preserving our built heritage and the positive way that people seem to respond to old buildings was really brought home to me this weekend when I worked as a volunteer steward at my office in the East End, which was taking part in Open House London.

This free annual event sees hundreds of thousands of architecturally significant or historic buildings across the country throw open their doors to visitors for the weekend. Because so many buildings in London take part, the capital’s own Open House weekend takes place a week after the national event - so you might well have visited some local participating buildings a couple of weeks ago?

My office dates from the early 18th century and, like many other buildings in the Spitalfields area, it was built for a wealthy Huguenot cloth merchant.

Parts of it are actually quite grand, so Peter Ogier - the merchant in question - was obviously doing rather well for himself back in the 1700s.

Now, I have to admit that it’s sometimes not the most efficient of working environments. The building is tall, narrow, and, frankly, rather wonky. Space is at a premium and our jostling desks occupy spaces that were once kitchens, stock rooms, sitting rooms, bedrooms and attics.

There are six flights of stairs and 80 steps up to my own, generally very untidy, spot in the corner of the attic. There‘s no room for a lift, and even if there was the listed status of the building would make it very difficult to install one.

Every time I need to frank a letter or collect supplies from the stationery cupboard down in the basement I think about putting out a call to Bart’s Hospital to suggest they should have a team of paramedics on standby in case I don’t make it back up again.

Looking on the bright side, however, the arcane configuration of my office means that as long as work there, I’m saving a small fortune on gym membership. My thighs have never been so toned!

My work colleagues and I often grumble about the cramped conditions, the sloping floors, the creaking boards, the lack of storage space and the number of stairs, but, actually, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

And this weekend I realised just how fortunate I am to work in a building with history and character when visitor after visitor said something like: “This must be such a wonderful place to work - it feels like a home not an office” or, “You are so lucky to work here. I work in a big open-plan office in a cubicle and I feel just like a battery hen.”

They were quite right, of course. There is something almost comforting about working in an old building.

The romantic in me likes to imagine all the people who have lived in worked in the place over the last 300 years or so and sometimes, when I’m sitting at my desk in the attic and looking out into the big plate-glass box opposite me, where rows and rows of City workers are sitting at identical desks and peering at identical computer screens, I feel very smug and very privileged.

In fact, wherever I look from my attic, the view is pretty much the same because the lovely old building where I work is the only historic landmark to survive on that particular street.

Wartime bombing raids and, more recently, enthusiastic property development have left my creaky office with its wood panelling, shutters, original fireplaces and stone backyard peculiarly sandwiched between a high-tech, modern dental practice and the HQ of a national bank.

(I’m still not sure which of these is responsible for inflicting the most pain.)

It looks quite odd, overshadowed and marooned there in all its rickety glory, but it’s obviously a building that people notice and feel a genuine affection for.

One man who visited this weekend told me that he passed my office on his way to work in the City each morning and was delighted to see our ‘Open House’ posters because he was “desperate to get inside and have good nose around”.

Another elderly woman, whose family had lived in the same street in the early part of the 20th century, had made a special visit from Essex with her grandchildren because she wanted them to see the sort of house her parents and immigrant grandparents had once shared with three other families.

She was so enthusiastic and her grandchildren were so captivated by the age and the oddness of the building that I even sneaked them all up to the attic, which was actually closed to the public because we’d temporarily “tidied up” by hiding all our junk up there.

“This is wonderful,” she told me. “It’s just like the room where I was born and where we all lived until I was 12. Now when I describe my childhood to them, they can picture me here.”

“Do you really work here?” asked her small granddaughter, her eyes shining with excitement as I let her explore a dark and slightly spooky, narrow hidden passageway in the rafters that leads from behind my desk and into the furthest reaches of the attic.

“That must be so cool,” she enthused.

And do you know what? - she was absolutely right!