Southgate Underground Station. Photo: © TfL from the London Transport Museum collection.
A Quaker and the Underground
David Burnell looks at the contribution of Charles Holden to the design of London’s underground stations
The work of Charles Holden (1875-1960) is celebrated in an exhibition currently on show in the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) architectural gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Holden designed many of the underground stations built in the inter-war period and immediately afterwards and inspired the design of others. The exhibition is a mark of the growing stature and appreciation of this architect whose work, until recently, only received a low profile in architectural history. The publication in 2007 of a definitive biography by Eitan Karol, Charles Holden, has helped to put Holden firmly on the architectural map. More recently the Guardian included his masterpiece, Arnos Grove station, in a series of articles featuring the world’s ten best modern buildings.
Many Friends will pass daily through Holden’s stations and probably not give them any thought as they do so. Why should they? After all, travelling on the underground doesn’t usually provoke positive reflections on the experience. However, it might if Friends knew that Charles Holden, with his partner Margaret, had an association with Hertford Meeting for over fifty years from the time they moved to the area until Holden’s death in 1960. Holden never came into membership but described himself as ‘nine-tenths Quaker’ and a Hertford Meeting Friend, at the time of Holden’s death, described him as ‘a true Friend in all but name’. Holden’s ashes were scattered in the Hertford Meeting House garden.
Having got Friends to pause, at least in thought, as they travel through a Holden Underground station, what might they see of the architecture that would connect them to Holden and his designs? Well, they would have to look beyond the clutter of signage and cabling and the accretions of age on what was and still is a simple, straight-forward, uncluttered design. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts ideal of honesty in construction, Holden’s stations are characterised by strong but simple shapes, and the use of natural warm red or brown brick between exposed concrete. The station buildings are devoid of fussy decoration and when built avoided the excesses of the Art-Deco, flashy styling more associated with cinemas of the same interwar period. The overall effect was modern, restrained and calm and glimpses of this are still to be seen. Despite the predations of upgrading and neglect, the best examples of Holden’s underground stations are formally recognised as an important part of our architectural heritage. Holden’s other outstanding contribution to London’s architectural heritage is the daunting and austere London University Senate House, whose ziggurat-like tower is visible from Friends House. His work for the Underground was commissioned by its managing director, the personally austere Frank Pick, who also sought good basic design. Their continuing artistic and business association lasted nearly twenty years, leading the architectural press to refer to them as ‘the Puritan and the Quaker’.
Karol suggests Holden searched for the ‘elemental’ in architecture. He sought to create in his work the principles of ‘Truth, order and clarity’. His belief, inspired by the social reformer Edward Carpenter, in the ‘Simple Life’ influenced his desire to make his buildings simple; in relation to decoration, embellishment and ornament, he strove to, in his own words, ‘when in doubt, leave it out’. Eitan Karol suggests that the most formative influence on Holden’s work was the ‘rough hewn, honest naked and unashamed’ poetry of Walt Whitman, seen by the young Holden and his associates as a manifesto for a spiritually creative life. Holden spoke of Friends in terms of ‘simplicity’, ‘restraint’, and ‘sincerity’, terms that can be applied to his underground stations. For me, a Holden Underground station is a reminder of the same qualities that are to be found in Quakerism.
