MH Photos

This weekend is the London Open House. It's an annual event where various public and private buildings of significance are opened to the public. I went to a huge 60s brutalist tower block not far from me. We were given a short talk about why it's interesting from an architectural point of view and then taken up to the 24th floor into someone's flat! The view was quite amazing and the apartment was a good example of how they managed to make the flats as roomy and well lit as possible in a small amount of space.

I also went to visit Eltham College in south-east London. Eltham College is the school where my father was educated before he moved to Australia. It was built in the 1700s and was a boys' boarding and day school. The boarding house was closed a few years ago and the school now allows girls to enroll for sixth form. I was shown the old school rooms in the main building and taken to the chapel by a prefect who freely admitted that she knew nothing about the school's history as she had only been there for three weeks.

The grounds were pretty typical public school with a couple of rugby pitches and a large number of horse-chestnut trees around the perimeter. The remains of vanquished conkers crunched under my feet. Some of you may be interested to know that the school library is named after Mervyn Peake, the author of the Gormenghast books and an old Elthamian.