George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund
History
George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic; Church architecture -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
Near S. Giles’s church there is another ruined conventual building, S.
Anne’s Kloster. This was originally a nunnery of “Clarissernonnen” (I
suppose these were nuns of S. Clare, an order who had a few houses in
England), but has been converted into a workhouse. Unfortunately a
great fire in 1843 consumed the church, and left nothing but the outer
walls standing, and when I was there it was used as a place for the
workhouse men to break stones or the roads. The church is said to have
been designed and built by one Synsingus Hesse of Brunswick, who came
to Lübeck in 1502 with five assistants, and completed the work in 1510.
With this date the work tallies very well, though I confess there is no
mark of the peculiarities of a Brunswick architect, which, as must be
known to any who have ever seen that very remarkable city, are decided
enough. Part of the west front of the church of S. Anne was built with
courses of stone and brick, a most unusual arrangement in Germany,
though common enough in Italian pointed, and always very striking in
its effect; the domestic buildings retain a good many groined rooms,
and a simple cloister in very perfect condition.
We come now to the Rathhaus, whose long line of picturesque front is so
great a feature in the principal street of the city. Its history is so
confusing and its style so peculiar, that it is very difficult indeed
to affix any certain date to its various portions. It was burnt down
in A.D. 1276, and there was another fire in A.D. 1358. In A.D. 1389
there were considerable works executed, including the famous cellars,
whose still more famous wine was all cleared out by the French, when
they sacked the good city in A.D. 1806. The portion of the Rathhaus to
the south of the market-place seems to have been built in 1442–44, and
the alterations of the Börse towards the street in 1570 and 1673; so
that we may well expect a confusing and picturesque mixture of works of
various dates. The earliest external portion appears to me to be the
screen on the north side in front of the two gabled roofs; and this
and the other great screens or parapets towards the market-place and
towards the street are the most picturesque portions of the building.
They are entirely executed in red and black brick, the cusping being
all done in moulded brick. As a rich piece of colour this work is
very valuable, but architecturally its sole merit is a kind of
picturesqueness, which it certainly has in great force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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