RAIN

In his song, “Rain”, John Lennon celebrates a meteorological phenomenon that most just see as an inconvenience to a greater or a lesser degree.

As in most things, I am with John.

It has just been raining here in the Sierra. Autumn has arrived. The parched earth will now start to come back to life. The smell of damp earth drifts in through my open windows, bringing back too-far-off memories of living in England.

Damp and mouldering decay are the two smells that transport me straight back to my home city, Liverpool. Paradoxically, decay and rot celebrate life and regeneration. That which decays must first grow and that which rots feeds new life. In the midst of death we are in life.

All over Britain we can see examples of mouldering buildings and blighted land being given new life. Victorian Britain is undergoing a resurgence, yet I am not quite sure if this is aesthetically and spiritually a good thing.

The abandoned Albert Dock, Liverpool. 
Photo from Liverpoolshop.com

I would contend that the best way to experience Victorian gothic is when it is in a state of decay. I spent a lot of my youth exploring abandoned buildings, large family houses with rambling overgrown gardens, deserted railway stations, still factories, cavernous, empty warehouses… Such places let your imagination run free, I would even suggest that given the Victorian penchant for Gothic, the Victorians themselves would have appreciated the romanticism of their run-down glories.

Birkenhead East Float Sept. 2007. Image: 

http://www.dipity.com/tickr/Flickr_birkenhead/ 

Now as I think of it, the state of Victorian architecture over its lifespan reflects the British zeitgeist. As the British Empire and pride in it crumbled and mouldered, so did our 19th-century architectural heritage.

As the irreverence and satire of the 60s and 70s poked fun at the 19^th-century stuffed shirts of Victorian Britain, Victoriana became ugly. I remember my mother having bonfires in the garden, throwing onto the pyre mountains of mahogany furniture that no-one wanted or loved. All of us over a certain age will remember the wholesale demolition of Victorian buildings, ranging from back-to-back hovels to exquisitely-decorated public buldings

The restored Albert Dock today

 As Britain regained its confidence in the 1990s and 2000s, we suddenly rediscovered our heritage and began to appreciate its beauty. This has led to restoration projects throughout the country. Let’s hope they expand and continue, bringing more truly wonderful buildings back to their former splendour, even if this does mean that people like me will lose the physical spaces where imagination runs riot. At least the buildings, well quite a few at least,  will survive.