Great Railway Stations Number 9: Haarlem

The railway station at Haarlem is rather special – early Machine Age engineering and architectural ceramics combine to offer a richly anachronistic experience. Recently restored to its full glory with beautifully varnished timbers, painted steelwork and glowing ceramic pictorial panels. A tall unglazed curved canopy supported on slender tapering steelwork soars over unenclosed platforms. Daylight comes mainly from the side rather than from overhead creating some unusual effects of light and shade. A unique feature is the provision of an elevated signal box of hardwood construction over a ground floor plinth in glazed brickwork, embedded in the heart of the station. The station roof is the longest in the Netherlands and was designed by an engineer named H Werker. The rest of the building was the responsibility of the architect, Dirk Margadant and built in 1906-08. The largest ceramic panels decorate the Stationshal with images of farming and metal bashing designed by D J P de Ruiter at the Rozenburg studio in Den Haag. The smaller panels were also supplied by Rozenburg to designs by E Cuyper. The decorative scheme is completed with stained-glass windows and carved floral motifs. 

Jackfield Tile Museum

Opulent decorative architectural ceramics define the Victorian architectural legacy – the voracious appetite for complex ornamentation sustained a large industry manufacturing fired clay terracotta and faience products. Companies involved include Doulton, Maw, Burmantofts and Craven Dunnill. In the form of cladding these products both protect and enhance and remain in use to the present. Some of the better known examples have been described here in the past (Michelin Building, Edward Everard in Bristol, Usine Menier and the County Arcade in Leeds) and this is a record of a visit to the Jackfield Tile Museum near Ironbridge that offers a spectacular display of tiling schemes in the Craven Dunnill factory. In the former Drawing Office and Trade Showroom an extraordinary range of mostly Victorian tiles reflects the global span of inspiration derived from Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament and the influence of Victorian illustrated books. Elsewhere there are recreations of a 1920s butcher’s shop and an Edwardian pub interior plus examples from London Underground. I have an aversion to museums that insist on guiding the visitor along a didactic track but happily at Jackfield the sheer volume of exhibits allows the visitor to wander at will. 

Rue de Londres

Rue de Londres runs at an angle across the tracks leading out of Gare St-Lazare between the Place de l’Europe and Sainte-Trinité. The reason for exploring this street is the blue and green tiled facade at No. 30, designed to serve as a giant advertisement for a former occupant of the building, Société Française des Eaux Minérales. The use of ceramic tiles has conferred a degree of permanence that a painted facade would never have acquired. The building is of late 19th. century origin and the ceramic facade was installed around 1920 by the firm of Fourmaintraux & Delassus, specialists in faïence and stoneware based in Desvres, near Boulogne, most of whose work is to be found in the north of France. The mineral water business has long since departed leaving behind twin cascades of gas bubbles, gently descending the building.