Chapter 12 of 122021–22

Portland stone and purple brown

By 2021 the whole front had been painted brilliant white, with a blue front door. Before repainting it, the owners asked the paint historian Patrick Baty for advice. Baty runs the Chelsea firm Papers and Paints, has developed ranges of traditional colours for English Heritage, and is the author of The Anatomy of Colour (2017). He had long used Bartholomew’s Specifications as a source for early Victorian colour, and he recognised that the book’s anonymous savings bank was this building (Chapter XLVII).1 Advice from Patrick Baty to the owners, March–April 2021 (owners’ papers). On Baty: https://patrickbaty.co.uk/about/ (“Architectural Paint Historian & Consultant”; Papers and Paints, Chelsea, Royal Warrant 2007; Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, as Bartholomew was); Patrick Baty, The Anatomy of Colour: The Story of Heritage Paints and Pigments (Thames & Hudson, 2017); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Baty (“employed by ICI (Dulux) and Little Greene to develop ranges of traditional paint colours for English Heritage”).

Bartholomew’s painter’s clause is short. “The sashes are to be finished on the outside thereof, with dark purple-brown”; the rest of the plain painting is to be in “teints of stone-colour, drab, brown, or other plain colours”.2 Bartholomew, Specifications for Practical Architecture (1840), Part II, ch. XLVII, §4596 (https://archive.org/details/specificationsf00bartgoog). §4594 has all the iron-work painted four times in oil, the first two coats in red lead. Baty advised a Portland-stone colour for the render and the dark purple-brown for the joinery. For the railings he suggested a very dark version of the same colour, so dark that it almost reads as black, and for the lettering a shade slightly darker than the walls.3 Advice from Patrick Baty (as note 1). He thought the dark purple-brown had probably been used on the iron-work too, and he called the picked-out lettering a hunch rather than knowledge.

The central block of the front: FINSBURY BANK FOR SAVINGS lettered under the cornice, three arched upper windows with columns and two wall lanterns between them, and INSTITUTED A.D.1816. ERECTED A.D.1840. across the band above the tall barred ground-floor windows and railings. — The centre of the front in March 2022: Portland Stone render, Purple Brown sashes and railings, and the lettering a shade darker.Photo: No Swan So Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

That is what was done. The front is now in Little Greene’s Portland Stone, with the sashes, doors and railings in its Purple Brown, in gloss, and the reinstated lettering picked out a shade darker. For the first time in living memory the building wears the colours its architect specified.4 Information from the owners: Little Greene Portland Stone for the render; Little Greene Purple Brown (no. 8), in gloss, for the joinery and railings. The finished scheme is visible in photographs taken on 31 March 2022 (Wikimedia Commons, “No Swan So Fine”).

Notes

Advice from Patrick Baty to the owners, March–April 2021 (owners’ papers). On Baty: https://patrickbaty.co.uk/about/ (“Architectural Paint Historian & Consultant”; Papers and Paints, Chelsea, Royal Warrant 2007; Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, as Bartholomew was); Patrick Baty, The Anatomy of Colour: The Story of Heritage Paints and Pigments (Thames & Hudson, 2017); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Baty (“employed by ICI (Dulux) and Little Greene to develop ranges of traditional paint colours for English Heritage”).
Bartholomew, Specifications for Practical Architecture (1840), Part II, ch. XLVII, §4596 (https://archive.org/details/specificationsf00bartgoog). §4594 has all the iron-work painted four times in oil, the first two coats in red lead.
Advice from Patrick Baty (as note 1). He thought the dark purple-brown had probably been used on the iron-work too, and he called the picked-out lettering a hunch rather than knowledge.
Information from the owners: Little Greene Portland Stone for the render; Little Greene Purple Brown (no. 8), in gloss, for the joinery and railings. The finished scheme is visible in photographs taken on 31 March 2022 (Wikimedia Commons, “No Swan So Fine”).