Ruskin Hall of Bournville
The last project of the Contemporary and Historical Context module, we have been asked to capture Ruskin Hall in a way that inspires us personally and allows us to go beyond what we see in front of us.
(this is the only old photograph I can find of Ruskin Hall. Even the library didn’t have anymore information or images that I could use)
I have looked into the historical background of Ruskin Hall, and discovered that it was the first public building in Bournville, designed originally as a social centre for the village. Opened in 1903, Ruskin Hall was used as a place to teach Arts and Crafts to the community of Bournville, and to maintain the values and ideas of John Ruskin, a leading art critic/artist of the Victorian era.
George Cadbury bought 120 acres of land close to the works and planned, at his own expense, a model village which would ‘alleviate the evils of modern more cramped living conditions’. Pretty much all the buildings around this area of Bournville belonged to the Cadburys, so that the employees of Cadbury could be educated as well as being catered with sport activities. These historical buildings still exist today, used as a part of the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, as well as local shops.
Although there is not much that inspires me about Ruskin Hall in today’s state, I have been drawn to the stair case, which seems to me to be the only original part of Ruskin Hall apart from the building structure itself that remains.
—————————————————————————————————-
(please click on each photo to see it in full size)
This is the first of a series of pictures of the Ruskin Hall staircase.
This is an image of the Victorian woodcut design on the bottom of the Bannister.
The spiral staircase leading upstairs…
Chewing gum which has been nonchalantly stuck under the railing.
Descending view of the spiral staircase.
Close-up of another Victorian woodcut.
Close-up of the Bannister.
I have chosen these particular images to express my thoughts about Ruskin Hall because they conjure up representations in my mind about what the atmosphere used to feel like over a century ago in this building. I have always liked the thought of bringing back people from the past and seeing their reactions to modern society, and doing so with the people that used to work here and spend their lives around Bournville would have been an interesting/amusing sight to see.
Although it’s not very pleasant, I like the contrast between the chewing gum stuck under the railing and the railing itself. It’s a sort of crude representation of old and new coming together.
Even if the staircase may have been reconditioned for health and safety reasons, it still remains a part of the old Ruskin Hall, when employees of the Cadbury factory would tread up and down it. You could say we are stepping on history but that is slightly too farfetched for me.
The last image of the close-up of the Bannister is another way of looking at the past. All the marks, dents and scratches in the wood are a tally of things that came and went through the building over the years.
The reason why I have transformed these photos into black & white is just to remind people that this is an old building with a lot of historical context surrounding it.
References
Fliss Taylor 