Charles Brooking
The British Rail Rescues
Steptoe and the joys of
travelling by tube
The following is one of a series of interviews with Charles Brooking, Historic and Listed Buildings Detail Expert, The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail and a Surveyor where we have recorded his comments and various aspects that have affected windows and doors and other collectibles. The interviews outline how his collection started and built over the years and gives an insight into the amazing architectural features housed in his fine collection.
Surveyor: Did you rescue items from British Railway stations?
Charles Brooking : Yes, care of British Rail I rescued items from Hanwell Station, London W7 built with the Great Western Railway in 1877 I retrieved window fittings including door locks and other items; This was during a time when I worked at Isleworth Station House and made regular rescues at many London stations.
Rescue defined
Charles Brooking defines a rescue as saving a window or door or staircase that would be doomed.
Charles Brooking was a pioneer in the rescue of architectural detailing as many years ago it was very much considered a strange and an unusual past time to want to rescue old parts of buildings with everything new and shiny being so important.
Surveyor: Was this part of your duties whilst you worked at British Rail?
Charles Brooking : Well I swung it and I was able to go around. I was supposed to be doing drawings but I basically asked if I could rescue a few bits as it was being demolished. I was a sight, a 22 year old with sweaty hands and a screwdriver looking around to rescue architectural items!
Surveyor: It would seem strange to anyone reading this because now renovation is perfectly normal.
Charles Brooking : Yes, today renovation has been popular for many years but back when I started it was not the normal thing to do.
The whole attitude was different it was seismic and I was very much my own. I remember very well one of the architects where I worked looking at me oddly when I came in with some Victorian gas brackets which aren't my subject now but were then, his attitude was fancy rescuing that tat! In the office where I worked they used to whistle a tune when I came in: Steptoe. Here comes Steptoe.
Surveyor: I can remember in the architects practice that I started off working in as a surveyor that was exactly the same attitude; the architects didn't want to know about the old buildings!
Charles Brooking : No they didn't.
Surveyor: They wanted the new buildings and the modern and that's why surveyors started doing the old buildings because the architects didn't want anything to do with them, and that was part of the modernist movement etc.
Charles Brooking : Well I was very lucky in one sense because in those days you could get away with murder rescuing items during long lunch breaks.
Surveyor: It was much more social wasn't it?
Charles Brooking : Obviously there were problems because I was dyslexic and I wasn't good at drawing and the chief architect was concerned at my lack of ability to layout and do site layouts and measure and calculate floor areas. It was highly embarrassing but, considering I was lucky.
My father worked for British Rail Property Board so he swung it and I got the job, well I would never have got the job otherwise because I couldn't design a rabbit hutch! Well I could but with a scaled drawing of one. It was the old boy network, during my interview I sat there very shyly and when asked if liked old buildings and what did I know about buildings I expressed my interest in Victorian architecture but was listened to rather impatiently.
The thought of horrible trips to London everyday on miserable tubes with an unsmiling character standing at the station did not appeal to me. I didn't like the idea at all of commuting and towing the line of respectability but I did learn about the centre of London. I learnt the ropes but getting up at six in the morning on a lovely summers day was not my idea of fun. Occasionally I would let my father get on the train and I would get off the train when he wasn't looking and get on a train and go off to Brighton and explore the joys of Brighton and ring in and say I had the most awful cold today, I was very naughty! I nearly got spotted once by the chief architect who was down in Brighton with one of his girlfriends but fortunately he didn't see me, but one did all that sort of thing in those days! I was more interested in my architectural rescue work and went down to look at something in Brighton. There were lots of those situations but in London of course at that time there was an immense amount of refurbishment and rebuilding.
Surveyor: Was this during1970's?
Charles Brooking : Yes.
Surveyor: The property boom was at this time?
Charles Brooking : Yes early in this decade.
If you found this article on The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail interesting you may also be nterested in the following articles on our website:
Why have a residential survey?
What is my home worth?
Property eras and their common problems
What does a surveyor do on a structural survey?
References:
TheBrookingCollection.com DartfordArchive.org.uk IHBC.org.uk ProjectBook.co.uk
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