FRISKING IN FRINTON

New Year’s Day was spent walking in Frinton on Sea. Once upon a time people used to say Harwich for the Continent (because that’s where the ferries go from) and Frinton for the incontinent (because of the number of retirees). These days you have to be a pretty well-heeled retiree to live there.  I can’t speak for the level of incontinence, but you’re seldom far from a defibrillator.

 

These days I (and all the other hipsters) tend to go there to gawp at the very cool mid-century architecture of the Frinton Park Estate:

It’s great stuff, though it seems to me that a white building against a pale grey sky is a lot less attractive than a white buildings against a blue sky.  This may be why white buildings aren’t as popular in Britain compared with, say, Greece or California.

 

But if, like me, you’re fascinated by suburbia in all its manifestations, it’s a lot of fun to find an example of mid century modern right next to an archetypal suburban bungalow.  I wonder if the neighbouring inhabitants have much in common on.

 

But it’s not all modernity in Frinton. It’s also home to St Mary’s Old Church (aka St Mary the Virgin) which is a very old church indeed, parts of it (very small parts I think) dating back to 1199.

 

It is also apparently the smallest church in Essex. It looks as though the pews would accommodate maybe 50 people at a pinch.

 

There’s some good stained glass which the handy leaflet in the church says was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and installed by William Morris and Co., and no I’m not sure what ‘installed’ means in this context.  I mean, I assume old William didn’t pop round with a bucket of putty.

The church also has two, yes two, keyboards:

Very Keith Emerson:

 

Try as I might I can’t find any connection between Keith Emerson and Essex, much less Frinton, but should you be looking for famous connections and find yourself walking past McGrigor Hall, home to the Frinton Repertory Theatre, you’ll find a blue plaque commemorating the life of Lynda Bellingham, star of the Oxo ads, Confessions of a Driving Instructor, and much more besides.  Here she is walking for charity:

THE FRINTON FLANEUR

As the sharp-eyed may have noticed, I have a new book out The Suburbanist, subtitled ‘A Personal Account and Ambivalent Celebration of Life in the Suburbs with Field Notes,’ which tells you a good deal of what you need to know about the book.

 

It’s not a walking book per se, but the research (aka field trips) have involved a fair amount of slogging through suburban streets, crescents, avenues, closes and so on.

 

And at this point, some two weeks after publication, an author is beset by all sorts of ideas for what he might, and probably should, have included in the book.

And the one I currently keep thinking about is the Frinton Park Estate in Frinton on Sea, in Essex.  I left it out because so much has already been written about it already, but now I think not mentioning it was probably an omission.

 

Frinton Park Estate is widely described as the largest group of individually designed Modernist houses in England, which isn’t saying a great deal, and the group there is not large. The original idea was there’d be 1000 or so houses, all flat roofs, streamlined curves, and white walls, spread over a 200 acre site.  But in fact there are only 50 or so, maybe fewer, depending on how you count.

 

In 1934 the South Coast Investment Company Ltd, bought those 200 acres and employed Oliver Hill as consultant architect. The idea was that prospective Frintonians would buy a plot and then commission an architect to design a house, selecting from a list drawn up by Hill, a list that include Maxwell Fry and Welles Coates.  

 

Well, this worked about as well you’d imagine it.  There really weren’t 1000 people who wanted to live in a Modernist house in Frinton, in fact there were about 15, who went with the plan.  And so the speculators decided to build 50 show houses to impress prospective buyers. Only about 25 of these were built (I say ‘about’ because hard numbers are very hard to come by) with the result that the total number of houses built was somewhere between 40 and 50, but probably nearer 40. 

 

I first went there a few years back and almost got into a fight.  I was wandering around, taking pictures of the houses and I’d spoken to one or two home-owners who were happy enough to chat about the joys and occasional difficulties of living in a piece of history.

 

And then I came across what I thought was a particularly fine example.  There was a tall hedge around it, but I noticed there was a gap, so I peered through the gap, pointed my camera and stared taking pictures, at which point the proud, not to say hubristic, home-owner came running out and accused me of being a pedo.  ‘Supposing,’ he said, ‘my children had been sitting on the lawn, then you’d have been photographing them.’  But of course his children weren’tsitting on the lawn, and I pointed that out, and I thought, though I didn’t say, that if his children were as ugly as him them who the fuck would want to take their picture?

 

In the event I assured him I wasn’t a pedo, and that I liked his house, which seemed to calm him down and we did not come to blows.  Still, it’s the kind of thing that stays with you.  It might have been worth the agro if I’d got a decent picture but I didn’t. I got this: which is an interesting souvenir, and sort of arty, but not my best work.

 

Anyway I’ve been back to Frinton a few times since then, and I’ve not lost my amazement that this attempt at a Modernist architectural Utopia should be there at the Essex seaside, a town that’s famous for being staid, conservative with a very ‘mature’ population. Though, of course, like all Utopias, isn’t not a complete success.

 

And frankly the Frinton Park Estate still isn’t entirely welcoming.  A lot of the roads have private no parking signs on them, and although you can walk around easily enough, pedestrians aren’t really catered for, pavements aren’t all that common.  

 

I’ve never encountered another disgruntled home owner and my taking of photographs has, if anything, got less discreet over the years.  Last time I was there I did hear two builders having a verbal altercation.  One of them was storming away, carrying a ladder, and shouting at his co-worker, his boss  I suppose, ‘I’ve worked for 30 companies in my life, and you’re the only one who’s ever moaned at me like this.’

 

I don’t know if the current inhabitants of the Frinton Park Estate think of themselves as living in suburbia but I’d say they do, and the area’s suburban status is confirmed by all the non-Modernist homes that have been built in the large gaps between the show houses.  These are mostly conventional looking bungalows.  Nothing wrong with that, and I suppose the joy of living in one of those is that you look out your window and can see a Modernist masterpiece, whereas if you live in a Modernist Masterpiece you look out your window and see conventional suburban homes.  One thing's for you, you won't see many pedestrians.