X Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2018

Art & Design

Art, design and architecture in 20th century London was influenced by the city itself. The international movements that shaped the course of the visual arts in the twentieth century were present in the work of London artists, but so too was the city's unique flavour of modernity, a peculiarly British blend of past and future.

The personal visions of many London artists drew inspiration from their surroundings, not just in a literal sense but also in the city's character, its inescapable politics and its sense of place. The painter Walter Sickert rooted his post-impressionism in proletarian Camden Town. C.R.W Nevinson adapted revolutionary futurist styles to paint the masses crowding into the jazz-age metropolis. The 1960s Pop Art of Peter Blake drew as much from London's low-brow popular culture as it did from American models.

London's art schools were central to creative practice in the capital. By the middle of the century London had 13 major art schools, most of which had developed from nineteenth-century institutions of technical education. London's most important school of this type was the Central School of Arts and Crafts, founded in 1896 and funded by the London County Council. Central provided classes in a range of practical arts, from life drawing and textile design to typography and book illustration. It embraced what was later to be called industrial design, and its alumni included Douglas Scott who trained as a silversmith at Central in the 1920s but who later found fame as the designer of the Routemaster bus.

Cityscape

London's physical look was transformed in the 20th century. At the beginning of the century London's tallest building was St Paul's Cathedral, built in 1701, and 365 ft. high. By the end of the century the tallest was the tower at Canary Wharf in Docklands, built in 1991 and 800 ft. high. London had acquired a new jagged skyline of high-rise skyscrapers and tower blocks.

New construction technologies made taller buildings possible during the 20th century. Building by means of a steel frame skeleton became a widely used construction method in the first quarter of the century. It not only enabled buildings to get taller, but also to increase in bulk. Thanks to steel framing, the streets of central London took on a new, large scale in the years between the wars. Shops became department stores: office blocks became large corporate headquarters: cinemas became glamorous picture palaces. Regent Street and much of Oxford Street was completely rebuilt during the 1920s. Many of the new buildings expressed the new architectural spirit of the 20th century, which looked to the skyscrapers and large blocks of American cities for their inspiration. Broadcasting House built for the BBC in 1929 is a good example.

He trend towards even greater heights and greater bulk continued after the second world war. The 1960s brought science-fiction structures and a new skyline. In 1966 the Post Office Tower became London's highest structure at 580 ft. but within ten years this was topped by the National Westminster Tower at 600 ft. Steel-framed, glass-fronted office blocks thrust their way into the streetscapes of central London. Away from the centre an inner-city motorway swooped through west London sweeping away swathes of old terrace housing in its path. Much of inner London was wrenched into a new shape as massive tower blocks, housing estates and pedestrian shopping precincts brought a new scale of buildings to neighbourhoods that traditionally had been low-rise.

Some people thought these new futuristic buildings took away London's distinctive sense of place. As the tower blocks rose, so the building conservation movement gathered strength. Several battles between property developers and conservationists took place during the 1960s and 1970s. Covent Garden Market was saved from destruction in 1973 by determined community activists. Piccadilly Circus and south Soho also survived, despite several abortive redevelopment schemes. On the South Bank the Coin Street Action Group began a long battle against a 'Berlin Wall' of office buildings proposed for the riverside. Elsewhere the developers had their way. In the Euston Road the property tycoon Joe Levy created a canyon of high-rise office blocks, sweeping away the old Victorian Euston station and its famous classical arch.

Environment

At the end of the nineteenth century London was the biggest and most economically successful city in the world. The downside of continuous and almost unregulated growth was damage caused to the environment. Although the extent and seriousness of air and water pollution in London was recognised, little was done in the early twentieth century to deal with it effectively.

London still relied almost entirely on coal as its main energy source in the early 1900s. Huge quantities arrived in the city every week by rail and barge, to be burnt as fuel everywhere from domestic grates to factory boiler rooms. Coal-fired ships on the Thames and steam railway locomotives contributed more smoke to the industrial atmosphere. Even with the introduction of electric trams and trains, the power was originally generated using steam turbines at giant new coal fired power stations, which also belched fumes into the city air.

Victorian London had become notorious for its thick 'pea-souper' winter fogs which combined with the smoke from coal fires to create noxious 'smog'. This regularly reduced visibility in the streets almost to zero. Pollution from industries to the west of the city was blown across London by the prevailing south-westerly winds. Itdamaged plants, buildings, clothes, furnishings and paintings, but above all Londoners' health. As late as 1952 a particularly bad London smog in December resulted in an estimated 4000 premature deaths.

There was little real improvement until the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, which finally curbed smoke emissions. More than 90% of London was designated as a 'smokeless zone'. By this time industry and commerce had switched largely from coal to oil and gas, trains were diesel or electric powered, and domestic central heating using oil, gas and electricity had replaced open coal fires in the home.

London eventually resolved the problem of smoke pollution, but still faced with the less visible, but potentially more dangerous mix of air pollutants resulting from vehicle emissions. By the end of the century road transport was the major source of harmful emissions such as carbon dioxide, which not only damage London's environment but contribute to global warming and climate change.

Other types of environmental pollution also changed across the century, sometimes for better, often for worse. The water quality of the river Thames improved overall as more efficient sewage treatment plants were introduced and anti-pollution laws were tightened. Open land and green spaces within Greater London acquired legal protection through the designation of conservation areas.

Transport

Transport systems have both defined the shape of London and been essential to the city's daily operation since the nineteenth century. By 1900 the railways in particular had transformed the speed of travel for people and goods both across the city and from other parts of the country. Nearly all London's food and fuel supplies came in by rail, goods to and from the docks went by train and the railways carried nearly all passengers on journeys of more than a few miles.

Road transport was still almost entirely dependant on the horse, which meant that it was slow and only suitable for short distance travel. Apart from the original steam underground lines opened from the 1860s, the railways tended to make road congestion in central London worse. They fed both goods and people on to the streets to reach their final destination by horse drawn cart, cab or omnibus. Horse trams operated on the main roads and could carry more passengers than buses, but they were not allowed in the City or West End. For short journeys of two or three miles it was still almost as quick to walk.

Passenger transport in London changed dramatically in the early years of the twentieth century with the arrival of new technology. The first electric trams were introduced in 1901 and by 1915 the last horse tram had been withdrawn. Buses were fully mechanised in an even shorter period, between 1904 and 1914, once reliable petrol engines had been developed and mass production of standard vehicles got under way. Horse drawn cabs survived a little longer, but they were already heavily outnumbered by motor taxis by 1914. Motor vans and lorriesreplaced horse power on goods vehicles much more slowly and there were still horse drawn milk carts in London as late as the 1950s.

New technology also changed the railways. Improved tunnelling methods, reliable safety lifts and non-polluting electric power were the three essentials for deep level Tube operation. The first line opened in 1890. By 1907 a network of new electric Tubes had been completed under central London, the Victorian steam underground lines had been electrified and a start had been made on electrifying overground suburban railways.

All this development in public transport made Londoners much more mobile. Journeys by bus, train and tram were faster and cheaper, and routes were extended into the suburbs and beyond. Commuting some distance to work by public transport and leisure travel at weekends became an option for a growing number of people. At the same time, better transport facilities encouraged suburban development. This was a major factor in the rapid growth of outer London in the 1920s and 30s while the population of inner London declined. New road development was also concentrated in the suburbs, with the building of arterial roads such as Western Avenue and the North Circular. At the time there were barely enough private cars on the roads to justify their construction, but these government funded schemes served another purpose in relieving unemployment.

Sport

By the early 1900s some well established spectator sports already had major organised events during the year which amounted to a season in or near London. These have continued throughout the twentieth century: the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race on the Thames in March, the Derby Day horse race at Epsom in April, the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships in July. They are still well attended and popular events a century later and with television coverage are viewed by even more people today.

During the twentieth century there was a gradual change from the 'gentleman amateur' tradition that had dominated most Victorian sports to a new professionalism, but this varied considerably between different sports. At the start of the twentieth century, the leading national sport in England (though not the rest of the UK) was cricket. It was already organised on a county basis, which in London meant the Middlesex County Cricket Club at Lord's in St John's Wood and the Surrey County Cricket Club at the Kennington Oval. These two venues continue to dominate today and are still run as rather exclusive private clubs. In 1903 the MCC had 5000 members, with many more hoping to join, and it could attract crowds of 30,000 to matches at Lord's. By its very drawn out nature cricket is a game attended by the leisured classes more than those who have to put in a full day's work. Despite its upper class associations, cricket has remained widely popular and, through its British Empire and Commonwealth links, it became London's major international sport long before football.

Professional football in England was largely a northern game before 1914, but all the current London clubs had been established by then. It was very much an urban working class game and team support at that time was highly territorial. If you lived in the East End you supported West Ham or Leyton Orient; in west London it would be Chelsea, Fulham, QPR or Brentford. Two clubs which had started as works teams moved grounds before 1914: Millwall, originally the works team of a jam and tinned food company on the Isle of Dogs, moved south of the river in 1910; Arsenal, starting as the works team at the Woolwich Arsenal, moved north of the river to Highbury in 1913.

The 1901 Cup Final, played at Crystal Palace, was the first ever football match to be filmed and drew an unprecedented crowd of 110,820 probably because London's top club of the time, Tottenham Hotspur, were playing.

The match was a draw, but Spurs beat Sheffield United 3-1 at the replay. Since 1923 the usual venue for the Cup Final has been Wembley Stadium, turning this north west London suburb into the home of English football. Another London club, West Ham, lost the first Wembley final but they and other London teams have had many cup victories since. Football was already the major form of male entertainment in Britain before the First World War, and it has remained so ever since. In the late twentieth century, television coverage and rising interest in the World Cup as the biggest single sport international event have encouraged rather than diminished this phenomenon. The irony is that although team and territorial loyalties have remained as fierce as ever, by the end of the twentieth century very few of the players for the top London football clubs were born Londoners. Evenlocalfootballhasbecometrulyinternationalandmulticultural.

No other individual sport has achieved the popularity of football in twentieth century London. The city has hosted huge sporting events like the third modern Olympics at White City in 1908 and the 1948 Olympics at Wembley, though neither of these had any lasting impact on London. Many different sporting activities have had periods of rise and fall, partly through association with particular social groups and often depending on the cost of participation. Boxing, for example, has always been a working class East End sport and tennis remains very middle class though not, of course, confined to Wimbledon and the south west suburbs. Golf was very much an aspirational and exclusive suburban sport in the 1920s, and the maps promoting new commuter housing estates in Metro-land always included little flags to show their proximity to golf clubs.

References:

https://www.london.gov.uk/

http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/theme

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/catalogue

https://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/London

http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/

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