THE CITY BEAUTIFUL

Evening Star, Issue 19763, 13 January 1928, Page 14

THE CITY BEAUTIFUL

BRITAIN'S FAMOUS QUARRIES Cities are children of the marriage of stone and atmosphere. Manchester buildings (wrote James Bono, in his book, ‘ The London Perambulator’) are uniform rich black, witli a delicate surface. . . Glasgow buildings darken quickly into a dark, morose quality, with smoko quietly about them. Edinburgh is a grey city, its Craigleith stone and method of cutting reflecting little light, but deepening its tall dignity. _ Liverpool lias Portland stone, but its atmosphere does not whiten or darken it, as London’s does. Portland stone, which, under the strong chemistry of the air, gives London its ghostly black-and-white appearance, has appeared in literature before now. Henley spoke of St. Bride’s as a “madrigal in stone,” and John Davidson caught all tho silver witchery of the stone that gives London its character in the lines: Oli, sweetheart, see! how shadowy, Of some alcult magician’s rearing, Or swung (l\ space of heaven’s grace Dissolving, dimly reappearing, Afloat upon ethereal tides _ St. Paul’s above the city rides. WREN’S MARK. The stone is obtained from the peninsula that was once an island—Portland —and where the yield of stone is as great as 30,000 tons an acre. _ A few .grey stones still lie there with the private mark of Sir Christopher Wren upon them. Most of the public buildings of London, from the City churches to the Royal Automobile Club and the London County Hall, have been quarried out of the limestone of Portland, but there are one or two exceptions. Thus the front of Buckingham Palace came from the famous Craigleith sandstone quarry outside Edinburgh, and Waterlop Bridge and tho Embankment were constructed out of granite from Aberdeenshire and Kirkcudbright respectively. Tlie Jirst appearance of Scottish granite in London was in 1764, when it was decided to pave the streets of the Metropolis with stone brought from near Aberdeen. Scotland made an intervention of a different nature into the architecture of London when the Adam brothers brought some hundreds of their--fellow-countrymen to help' them to make the embankment on which the Adolphi was erected. These invaders were accompanied by half a dozen pipers, who played every day while the work was in progress. A FLOODED QUARRY.

Craigleith sandstone, as the material from which the New Town of Edinburgh was built, shares with Portland stone the sovereignty of British stones. It is found in a quarry a few miles to the west of Edinburgh, now, alas! flooded and never likely to be worked again. It is a stone of remarkable durability, as anyone may see who climbs to the top of the Calton Hill in Elinburgh and examines the {lutings on tho pillars of the unfinished replica of the Parthenon that is known as Scotland’s Disgrace. The weather of a century has left tho edge of the stone as sharp as it was on the day it was cut.

Aberdeen, built of its own granite, is perhaps the city in Britain that owes most to the material from which it has been made. No stone has a more definite character or a wider repertory of moods. On a grey day Aberdeen fades to a smoky indeterminate hue; seen in sunshine after rain it becomes an Italian city built of dazzling marble.