I went to a very enjoyable lunch party at the Turf Club last week. My host encouragingly said that it would not be a short one and this proved correct. After some sluicing and slurping in an outer room at lunch I sat between two strangers.
On my left, an opera lover with whom I had much in common. We picked over our pet loves and hates. My other neighbour had a long career in the City and now lives in North Yorkshire running a grouse moor and writing a weekly blog, Toby on Tuesday. Do read it, as if I could stop you, but be warned that it has little grouse shooting content. Toby Horton is Chairman of UKIP in Thirsk and Malton. He stood as their candidate in the 2015 General Election and got 8.3% more votes than in 2010, a swing only bettered by Zac Goldsmith, standing for the Conservatives in West London, who improved on his 2010 performance by 8.5%.
This is all a slight digression. But before we get to the point, Toby told me that it keeps his brain in gear planning and writing his blog. The Irish Aesthete said much the same, celebrating his fourth blog birthday last week. They are spot-on and I find that I am much more curious about things that I see, hear and read than I was pre-blog.
On Shepherds Bush Road, at the west end of Brook Green is the last remnant of the Osram Works, built in the late 19th century to make electric light bulb filaments. All that remains is this tower, reminiscent of the dome above the Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane, home to English National Opera.
The adjacent building dates from 1915/16 and the plaque saves me telling the story.
I remember it looking a bit rundown but it has now acquired a new lease of life while retaining its original features. The most prominent feature of a sensitive restoration is a curved glass roof and the building now has an additional three floors of offices, providing 115,000 square feet of office space. It has been leased by Dunnhumby as their global HQ.
Perhaps you have never heard of Dunnhumby? I hadn’t although they are a local firm. Here is what I culled from the Borough website.
The business was founded in 1989 in the spare bedroom of husband and wife team Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby’s Chiswick flat, with the vision of helping businesses understand their customers better.
The company went on to help develop the Tesco Clubcard programme and, now, it analyses data from around 1bn customers worldwide, for clients including Tesco, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola.
As well as its business aims, it also runs a charitable programme, called Helping Hands, with employees each given a volunteering allowance to take part in community projects.
The building is Grade II listed and I took a few pictures to try and bring out some of its features.
Please don’t criticise the, rather well hidden, additional three floors. When Charles Heathcote & Sons designed it a hundred years ago they intended it to have five storeys but only three were built. It’s interesting that such a project could be undertaken in the middle of WW I. It would be unthinkable in WW II. Also interesting that a Manchester architect won the commission.
Thanks for the Osram Building stuff. I had no idea. It happens I am warming-up to write a poem on concrete. I have tracked down a quote from Denys Lasdun (National Theatre; Royal College of Physicians) in which he talks of the aphrodisiac effects of the smell of drying concrete. I am thinking of riffing-off from there.