Field Study's Man in E11 reports from a Barking secret garden

Monday 23rd September found me in Barking, on a trichological field trip. The complexities of hair have absorbed me before and there were many sites around Barking which added to my bewilderment at the lengths people will go to adorn themselves in a particular manner and/or fashion. The vast array of extensions, wigs and other hairy devices got me quite perplexed. I could even say I was in a state of tricho-culture shock, unable to tell the natural from the artificial, the genuine from the fake, the honest from the dishonest. I scratched my balding head and wandered discombobulated around Barking town centre looking for something real because, briefly, just briefly, it seemed that everyone in Barking was wearing wigs. Even the bald heads appeared fake to me. This fabricated or fictitious delusion was amusing but for the fact I had work to do which involved my approaching people (with 'ha ha hair') with a straight face. I needed something solid and less ephemeral to ground me. 

I found this building. I thought it was the remains of a building so important, so pivotal in the history and heritage of Barking, that it needed preserving hence the very elaborate and incongruous supporting structure behind the crumbling facade.



They don't make them like this anymore, I thought, although quite rightly as they didn't make it like that in the first place (or so I thought). I turned around and basked in some of the reflective monotony and unconvincing blandishments of contemporary architecture. Despite the pattern of panels trying to emulate brickwork, a 'shining mane of hair', a 'mottled skin',  (borrowed metaphors and anthropomorphism*), there is a contemporary absence of the qualities expressed by the handiness of bricks. Much of what might happen to the 'modern' building during the course of it's relatively brief, bright and light residency might also be a sort of trespass - of intruding natures inside and out. It is not that brick buildings cannot look dull, grim and exert a depressing force on their surroundings however they have redeeming properties that smooth paneled shells don't. I think bricks can accommodate the vicissitudes of Nature better than more synthetic cladding. There is sympathy or empathy in brickwork along with 'an aggregation of small effects' - implying 'a human and intimate quality..' - to partially quote Alec Clifton-Taylor, cited in Richard Sennett's, The Craftsman.                

  
In Richard Sennett's, The Craftsman - the chapter, Material Consciousness, includes a section about 'presence'. The chapter uses bricks/brickwork to explore and explain the facts or conditions of material-being by the application of metaphor and anthropomorphism. Sennett's deconstruction of 18th and 19th century sensibilities, including those of Isaac Ware, questions what makes a building 'honest'. Given my confusion about the truth or authenticity of hair in Barking I was probably in no fit state to make judgments about the honesty of this or that building even though, when re-reading 'Material Consciousness', I found wigs and gardens being used in a historical context to explain how a building might be considered honest.

So there I was in Barking, or rather here I am returned to 'Barking' via the photographs I took, studying the brick building. You might picture me on site, looking quite officious, wearing a very bright and clean high visibility jacket, buzzing about the building taking numerous detailed pictures. I thought I might report dishonestly that I wore a hard hat but I now find myself back there wearing a bright yellow deceptively hard high visibility periwig.

Closer inspection of the remains led me to wonder about the purpose or functions of this particular machine (for living in?) before it deteriorated to such an extent it needed a steel framework to support it. The oddness of the building, the seemingly disparate parts, led me to speculate it might be an assemblage of remains tidied up from a sprawling site of decay and dilapidation. The re-assemblage for posterity idea seemed a bit silly to me however I enjoyed much about the materials, the forms, surfaces and textures, the details which express much more sensuous values about shelter. 







Inside, inbetween the front and back, revealed itself via some letterbox size openings. The disorder, if not chaos, of the interior lead me to deduce the building interior was out of bounds - no longer functional - and I took this as evidence the building is a relic. 


Here is a confession on the part of my roving field judge. I tried, I honestly did try to see what I saw - to accept the evidence as it was presented but, but, but, I couldn't help it, I couldn't, honest (get on with it). I saw what I wanted to see, what I imagined or remembered seeing. I wanted to see something like I found at a site in Battersea 5 or 6 years ago. 


Knowing that the truth of the building was inaccessible to me on site, that the shininess of my periwig was tarnished by extreme prejudice, I retired from the site and continued with my proper job for which I am better qualified.

When I got home I reported on the peculiar lengths the people of Barking go to conserve their heritage. There's a weird bit of wall in Barking, I said. I temporarily omitted the fantasy of a wig conspiracy, that is until I could find a sensible sociological context for it. Inevitably, and sadly so, I turned on the computer, got online and sought out the truth about Barking.


Here then are some links that suggest I found, The Secret Garden:




Richard Sennett, The Craftsman - Penguin, 2008

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