A Visit to Two Charles Rennie Mackintosh Houses

This year I visited two houses designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Both distinct experiences.

78 Derngate is the only house in England designed by Mackintosh. It is well worth booking in advance for a tour, as you will get to hear some interesting historical details about the house. You will also be shown photographs of the house as it was many years ago, and compare these with how the house has been sympathetically restored today.

Before entering, visitors are asked to wear plastic overshoes – as if going in to perform a forensic examination. Once inside, you are allowed to move around the rooms freely, without touching anything.

This townhouse is designed to feel uncluttered even though it is remarkably narrow. Rooms are stacked on top of each other on several floors in more or less this fashion: one room at the front, one at the back, with staircase between.

The 1916 designs – particularly of the front ground floor room and the guest bedroom – still appear modern by today’s tastes over one hundred years after they were designed.

Later in the year I visited The Hill House. Built in 1902-3, with further additions of Mackintosh-designed furniture over the next ten years, I had wanted to see this house for a very long time. When I had the opportunity to visit, I was surprised to find out that it was shortly to reopen with a new conservation project/visitor attraction called ‘The Box’. Upon close inspection, you will see that the walls of the Box are a screen of steel mesh (like chain mail). Originally, visitors would have been able to experience the sight of Hill House against the Scottish landscape, but it looks likely that this view will be denied for approximately ten years while the damp house dries out naturally, shielded from the Scottish rain.

Although denied this view, another experience has taken its place. There are walk ways around and over the roof of the house, so that visitors can see the architecture from several vantages. I thought perhaps, that the Box would spoil the visit to Hill House, making it more of a gimmick. But I was not disappointed. Turning the conservation work into an attraction itself has been advantageous because it gives visitors such a unique opportunity to enjoy the house on many different levels (literally as well as figuratively).

Once inside, it is easy to ignore – nay forget – that the Box is situated outside, and therefore the steel structure in no way affects the experience of walking through the beautiful Mackintosh rooms. 

I walked around the house a couple of times and overheard another visitor say “I don’t want to leave”.

Who would?

Incidentally, items from the Hill House are sometimes loaned out to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. This was the case on my visit. So I visited the latter to see Mackintosh's Kimono writing desk. Another beautiful item, and easy to envisage standing in the drawing room of Hill House on the opposite side of the fireplace to the settle.

Carry On Glamping (My Radio Interview about the Carry Ons)

I contributed to a BBC radio Nottingham broadcast that took place from Meadow View Glamping and Leisure, Stapleford, Nottingham.

My reason for being there was that they wanted someone to talk about the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Carry On Camping (1969)! It came as a bit of a shock to realise that the film is fifty years old. It suddenly brought home how often and how long I have been watching this film. I recall a classmate talking about the mother-in-law being chased by a ram in the final scene the day after the film had been shown on TV. (Which might possibly have been its first TV broadcast).

Although I mention Carry On Camping in my book The Holiday and British Film (2012), I devote a bit more space to the caravan-site-themed Carry On Behind (1975). This is mainly because the chapter it appears in is loosely focused on caravan holidays, but also because I wanted to highlight Behind as it isn’t so often discussed as much as Camping.

Back to the film itself in a bit. What was most startling about my recent experience was seeing how radio is produced these days. I turned up at the glamping site to meet the presenter (Mark Dennison) and two other members of the team.

They had got into the camping spirit! Between the three of them they had slept in one of the luxurious glamping pods; a modern pop-up style tent; and an old-fashioned scouting tent with metal poles.

Everything about the way the programme was produced was deceptively casual. The presenter was holding an iPad / tablet and a microphone, and was wearing a set of headphones. A clipboard with a few notes was close to hand.

Although he could hear the programme being broadcast (music, news reports, and so on...) neither myself nor the rest of the production team could. Occasionally the presenter would chat to the rest of the team - “we’ve got ten minutes till the news, we could have another record before then...” or suddenly go into radio mode and laugh and comment on something he had heard through his headphones that we weren’t party to.

It was impressive to see how slickly the whole thing was handled. To look so laid back but to be in total control of a live radio broadcast, sitting in a chair on the edge of a field in Stapleford was an eye-opener. It also proved that studios are almost a thing of the past.

As I waited for my turn I went over a few points in my head. Then the presenter started chuckling at a sound clip from Carry On Camping that the rest of us couldn’t hear. Suddenly a few words and the microphone was thrust under me. Here are a few things that we discussed in the interview:

Would the Carry Ons work today if new versions were released? 

Probably not. Although some fans (including myself) love the films on a nostalgic level - with a tinge of guilty pleasure - much of the humour the series is based on would appear very out of context today. It would be difficult to deal in such humour without offending a large proportion of people. Thinking nostalgically, I distinctly recall kids at school playing Odd Bod and Junior in the school playground after watching Carry On Screaming (1966). The radio presenter pointed out here that there were aspects of the films that kids could enjoy as well as adults.

I spoke about how it was quite incredible that a feature film had been produced mainly around the location of a muddy field, and that no British film would ever get away with that nowadays without criticism for being cheap.

I did also say that Carry On Camping is my favourite of the series. Probably due to its simplicity and the fact that after seeing it so many times I can predict the lines that are coming up. I spoke about seeing it at the old Phoenix Arts cinema in Leicester in the 1990s as part of the annual comedy festival and how the audience applauded at the film's conclusion. This is not the only time I’ve witnessed this in the cinema, but it is a very rare occurrence.

After about seven minutes the interview was over. It was the turn of the campsite owner to be interviewed. In his interview he said that opening the site was part of a move to make Stapleford an up-and-coming area.

What an experience - to witness this first-hand, and to see how radio is produced these days.