How many different bonds are to be found in St Leonard’s?

Have you ever noticed …

how many different bonds are to be found in St Leonard’s?

“The name’s Bond, Stretcher Bond”.  Somehow, I doubt whether a catch-phrase like that would make anyone’s fortune, even when announced with Daniel Craig’s voice.  Instead, and at no charge at all, can I invite you to look at the way that bricks are arranged in the walls of houses and gardens in the neighbourhood. 

“Bond” is the technical term for the pattern of bricks in walls.  Not all walls use the same pattern.  For many years, British bricks were about 9 inches long, and about half that wide; the thickness was more variable.  Metric bricks are a little smaller.  The long side of a brick is sometimes called a stretcher.  But the important feature of almost all building bricks is that they are twice as long as they are wide – just like the ubiquitous Lego brick with eight studs in two rows of four. 

So how do you build a wall with bricks?  You have foundations, and then lay the bricks in successive courses.  After that it depends on whether you want the wall to be one brick thick, or two.  Most houses built in the last three or four generations have cavity walls, so that the outer bricks form a wall that is one brick thick.  On the other hand, garden walls are generally twice as thick.  And that means that some of the bricks are arranged to connect the two sides of the wall, so that those bricks have an end or header, rather than a stretcher, showing. 

You could build a wall one brick thick by stacking one brick on top of the one below, without any overlaps.  Only mortar would connect adjacent stacks, and the result – with a pattern known as a stacked bond – would be insecure.  (A few years ago, the BBC investigated the strength of Lego bricks that were stacked like this; they discovered that the bottom brick would be deformed if it supported the weight of a pile of Lego over 2 miles high, but experts from Legoland estimated that a pile of single bricks about 10 or 11 feet high would be unstable.)  So, for strength and stability, walls are built with courses which overlap each other.  In the Magdalen Road village, the post-war buildings generally use a stretcher (or running) bond.  That means that the bricks in one course overlap the ones below by half – as if the Lego bricks in one course were connected to the two below by four studs each.  The bricks in the first, third, fifth and all odd-numbered courses look the same.  Those in the alternate courses are shifted half a brick length to the side.  Around the cedar tree in St Leonards Road, there is an interesting variation of this, with the ends of the bricks facing outwards; that’s an end bond, also known as a header bond.  It is strong and allows the wall to curve.

It is in the garden walls around the neighbourhood that there is more variety to be found.  The need to have bricks running from one side to the other presents builders with a variety of patterns.  The simplest patterns have a course of bricks in the end bond style, followed by one or more courses in stretcher bond, then an end bond course, and so on.  The bricks in the stretcher bond courses are fixed to three below them.  (Think Lego again; the stretcher bond brick is fastened to two studs from one end bond brick, four studs from the next, and two from the third.  There’s a matching row on the other side.)  The number of courses laid in the stretcher form varies.  Around St Leonard’s you can find examples with one, three and five.  (Even numbers look less attractive, and are rarely used.)  If there is one stretcher course, it is generally known as English bond.  With three courses, that’s English garden bond, and with five courses, that’s common bond.  More complicated than these bonds are those known as Flemish bonds.  These are very attractive and also widespread in the neighbourhood.  One course of bricks is laid, Flemish style, with alternating stretchers and headers.  Then the next course is the same, with stretchers over the headers below, and vice versa.  The course above that is like the first.  There are plenty of examples in Magdalen Road.  A variation of this is to have some courses of stretcher bond before the next course in Flemish style. 

Belair, in the grounds of County Hall, has a south wall in Flemish Bond.  The modern wall to the right in the picture, is unusual in having four rows of stretchers between the lines of ends.

Before the coming of the railways, which brought mass-produced bricks to all corners of the country, there were marked regional variations in the preferred style of building.  Flemish bond is widespread in the south, and English garden in the north. 

This wall in Archibald Road is an example of English Bond

There are a few walls around us which have mixed construction, showing the need to rebuild or extend over the generations; differing bonds and differing bricks can identify them.  Most of these are in the older streets, but not all – Rivermead Road has one example.

Exeter’s oldest brick building, the Customs House on the Quay, has very irregular brickwork; maybe the builders were unfamiliar with the new material.  But the small chimney on the left hand side, added later, is mostly in Flemish bond.  That’s the King’s Pipe, where contraband tobacco was burnt.  Maybe James Bond’s predecessors had a hand in apprehending the tobacco smugglers?

Printed in St Leonard's

Neighbourhood News, January-February 2016

Keywords: St Leonards, Exeter, history, geography, beauty 

 

Magdalen Road Christmas Fair 2015

The annual Christmas Fair closed Magdalen Road on the afternoon of Saturday December 5th 2015

The road was decorated for the season

There were craft stalls

and more craft stalls

Charity stalls

Lots of food stalls

English pies

and food with a European twist

 

Decorations were on sale

Morris men came to entertain the crowds

One "des res" in St Leonard's

If you want to get ahead, get a hat!

Chocolate for all

Come on, smile for the camera!

The long tent for stalls

Pictures and fabric

Gazebos outside the flats

More crafts - presents for Christmas?

Learn to play a musical instrument - we are a cultured area!

Another view of the long marquee

The empty tray says it all - hot food was most welcome!

And a chance to talk to friends

Fun for the children

The Mount Radford was busy

The pyramids in St Leonard’s

Have you ever looked at …?

The pyramids in St Leonard’s

After my whimsical departure into mathematics last issue, this time we are returning to looking at everyday aspects of St Leonard’s.  So, have you noticed any pyramids around the area?

No, I don’t mean the swimming pool complex, which has some tiles with Egyptian themes (but hardly a pyramid in sight), nor do I mean a well-known brand of tea-bag, nor the formation adopted by some football teams.  I mean objects whose shape is a pyramid, which means that they have faces which are triangular, or roughly so, and they converge to a point at the top.  Just like an Egyptian pyramid.  Those have a square base; tea-bags have a triangular base.  The shape of the base doesn’t matter – it is those triangles and the point which are important.

Pyramid on top of a brick pillar, St Leonard's Road

Once you start looking, pyramids are all over the place.  Most often, you find them at the top of gateposts, making an attractive top to the upright.  The sloping triangles shed water, so the aesthetically appealing shape is practical.  And as most gateposts are rectangular or square, so the base of the pyramid on top is also square.  But that doesn’t mean that all the pyramids in St Leonard’s are the same!  Take a walk and look at a few gateposts with their decorative pyramids on top.  Some are almost flat, others are more pointed.  Some are stone, others are artificial.  Some add a few gentle curves to make a shape that is almost a pyramid (but not quite).  As an introduction to the delights of the neighbourhood pyramids, take a walk along Spicer Road from the Mount Radford to Denmark Road.  You will find some shallow concrete pyramids, some fancier ones, mortar shaped into the bricklayer’s version of a pyramid, and the shaped bricks of the gateposts of the Maynard School.  Once you reach Denmark Road, turn left and admire the gateposts of the almshouses.

Pyramid as part of a shaped granite gatepost, St Leonard's Road

Go a little further, and you’ll find granite posts with shaped tops, those which include a vertical step interrupting the triangular shape, and some which smooth the shape with curves.  Archaeologists link the familiar pyramids outside Cairo with some older Egyptian “stepped pyramids” (whose name suggests the shape).  There are examples of such stepped pyramids around our streets, but I suspect that they are probably not so old that they would be of interest to many archaeologists.

The Smeall Building, St Luke's campus, University of Exeter

There are more pyramids to be found than on our gateposts.  Exeter’s street rubbish bins are topped with a pyramid roof.  The steeple of St Leonard’s church is a pyramid.  Admittedly, it has bits sticking out, but essentially it is a pyramid with four very tall triangles on a square base.  Around the main steeple, and part-way along the roof of the church, there are some more pyramids.  Buildings of other kinds are topped with pyramid shaped roof, because, like the gateposts we started with, a pyramid looks nice and its design sheds water.  There is a fine example at the junction of Barnfield Hill and Spicer Road.  On the Quay, near Colleton Hill, a modern building is topped with a small turret and a pyramid.  County Hall’s clock-tower has a pyramid for its tiled roof, and there are yet more on the St Luke’s campus, and at the Mardon Centre.  During the summer, when I was looking out for examples of local pyramids, there were several gazebos visible in local gardens, and their roofs are made of triangles meeting at a point.

On top of the clock tower of the residences, St Luke's campus, University of Exeter

Just outside the neighbourhood, the uprights of the suspension bridge over the Exe at the Quay are topped with octahedral shapes – which are two pyramids, one pointing up, one pointing down, with eight triangles. 

Not all the local pyramids are on square bases.  I have noticed some with a six-sided base, and others with an eight-sided base.  The more sides, the closer the base comes to looking like – and fitting onto –  circular foundations. 

The Mardon Centre, Wonford Road, see across Exeter School's playing field

The gateposts of several houses in St Leonard’s road have been carved from granite, with a pyramid top and a slight collar around the upright.  It would be interesting to know the reason why this shape was adopted.  Being such a hard stone, it seems unlikely that the collar is there to prevent erosion. 

The late Osbert Lancaster wrote a short guide to the history of architecture.  Thinking of the original pyramids, he commented: “The architecture of ancient Egypt has much to commend it – size, dignity and durability – but nevertheless it must be admitted that it is a trifle monotonous.”  I hope that you do not find a walk in search of local pyramids even a trifle monotonous.  (Next summer, perhaps, with global warming, there will be camels to carry local visitors on tours of our pyramids!)

(My thanks to Ellie, Abbie, James and Tina for their help in spotting pyramids around St Leonard's)

(Published in the November-December 2015 issue of Neighbourhood News)