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I’m on Instagram, and subscribe to a whole bunch of urban photography accounts that feature images of many European cities as well as Montreal.
At the same time, today is a very grey day here in Cardiff, and I just got back from walking one of my little Riders to school.
On my walk, I was struck by how little colour there is in British cities compared to those of other countries. I mean, even where a facade might be beautiful (I live in a very Gothic-revival neighbourhood), it still tends toward bare brick and bare stone lintels. But then, if you catch a glimpse of the side, it will almost invariably be bare pebbledash.
Why?!?
Pebbledash as a tender for anything looks like it was spewn from the mouth of hell. Vast expanses of greyness in a frequently grey environment, where some of the greyness just randomly falls of and litters the pavement.
It’s hideous!
Helsinki, by contrast, looks like it’s made from 19th c. Lego bricks. Medieval German villages? The same. Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood practically bursts with colour. And where you don’t get coloured buildings, you get flower boxes.
What an antidote to our Northern European winters!
But not here in Britain. Here, it’s unpainted surfaces and pebbledash. And when we do decorate for things like Christmas (although we seem to be getting a bit better at this), it is fog white LEDs or ‘emergency services blue’.
Anything to keep the spirit down!
P.S. My house is yellow, by the way. Proper yellow.
Try going to Aberdeen
Vast expanses of greyness in a frequently grey environment
This is how you know you're home after you've been somewhere nice.
Try going to Aberdeen
I've been to Aberdeen for about 18 hours in my life. I thought I'd gone fully colour blind.
It's a combination of population density and air pollution.
After the industrial revolution, population density exploded as people moved to the towns and started burning coal. This added to the air pollution being spewed out of the multitude of heavy industries.
This combination meant that pretty much all buildings in the urban UK ended up grey or black regardless of their original colour. This, in turn led to new buildings or refurbs being coloured grey to try and minimise the impact of that. Grey on grey looks less dirty than grey on yellow for example.
It became a habit after a century or so. It's only in the last 30 years that this trend has started to reverse.
The Glasgow of my youth was full of black buildings that have now. been cleaned to reveal much more attractive original colours.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with grey. Go to Aberdeen on a sunny day and the buildings literally glitter.
You’ve just described most of the housing stock in Scotland..
“I’ve battered ma hoos”
Sorry...Clarkson quote
Try going to Aberdeen
I live in Aberdeen and can echo this. It’s the city where your camera automatically selects monochrome on arriving and you can be fined in the streets for wearing any colour but grey, black or sludge green. Oh and any expression of joy is strictly prohibited.
On moving here, I offended many a local by comparing their proud granite buildings with the concrete of the soviet eastern block!
Edinburgh is built mainly of grey / honey coloured stone - but it still remains utterly beautiful and the detail on buildings is lovely. all sorts of stone carvings high up on facades.
Stone does not need painting to preserve it. If you build mainly in wood then painting is needed to preserve it.
also if you looked at the german equivlent of cardiff then what does that look like?
Not all UK towns are dull
Go to Aberdeen on a sunny day
i can see a flaw in your plan...
i can see a flaw in your plan…
Aberdeen is always sunny when I go there.
Sunniest city in Scotland innit.
Try going to Aberdeen
no don't, particularly grey and cold today.
Pebbledash = cheaper construction back then. Area with more money at the time e.g. Manchester (textiles), Liverpool (slave/textile trade) could afford to build differently.
I find pebbledash quite depressing in the winter..... marginally less so in the summer.
There's plenty of colour around Bristol. It started with a few notable streets but loads of streets are getting into it now. Lots of hillside ones that can be seen for miles, and some random backstreets. More so in the bohemian areas.
There's a few that take it even further
On my walk, I was struck by how little colour there is in British cities compared to those of other countries.
You've posted something similar to this beofre haven't you? Although I think it was about skies previously. Maybe you need to move, or just try going out on sunny days rather than just shit gloomy days!
Sunniest city in Scotland innit.
Nope - thats leith. hence "Sunny Leith"
The Met Office and the Scotsman disagree...
You’ve posted something similar to this beofre haven’t you?
I probably have, but it struck me in a fresh way this morning because of the weather, and because of my colourful Instagram feed. I think colour, in this case, is indicative of a collective existential disposition that I’m interested in exploring in the banter-y way that STW facilitates. I hope that’s not a problem for you.
The would do wouldn't they! You never hear " sunny aberdeen" do you? 😉
Apart from when I've said it several times on this thread you mean?
I love Aberdeen. It's beautiful*.
Edinburgh on the other hand? Wan street and a clock made oot o' flooers. 😉
* Bits of it. Not it all. Obvs
Saxonrider
I think some of this may be confirmation bias? ie you see everything when out and about here but the pictures and memories you have are from only the best bits in Europe
I just used google maps to look at Bonn and Neuremberg. Both pretty gray.
On moving here, I offended many a local by comparing their proud granite buildings with the concrete of the soviet eastern block!
Exhibit A
PP - come off it - we even have an entire film and a song and a trade in sunny leith memorabilia!
Anyway, some of us try to change this trend.
See these?
I did this to them...*
* Not by myself. I had some help...but mostly me.
PP – come off it – we even have an entire film and a song and a trade in sunny leith memorabilia!
Typical Burghers. Got to make a song and dance out of everything.
Edinburgh is built mainly of grey
but not exclusively
pebbledash is a cheapish way to give really good weather resistance, especially to strong winds. the UK has more coastline with grotty weather than most european countries, so pebbledash was widely used to protect buildings instead of spending money on more expensive bricks.
Scandi countries seem to tend to use wood for cladding instead - perhaps that's cheaper over there as the population density is lower (so more trees ready to be chopped down per house)
Perchypather can turn day into night, I is properly scared now.
OP lives in Cardiff doesn't he, nuff said really 🤔
Scandi countries seem to tend to use wood for cladding instead – perhaps that’s cheaper over there as the population density is lower (so more trees ready to be chopped down per house)
It's to do with the freeze-thaw cycle. That's what causes a lot of damage to building materials. In most Northern latitudes it drops below freezing in the winter and stays like that for weeks or months. They have relatively few freeze - thaw cycles in a typical winter.
In the UK we can have at least 2 a day for 5 or 6 months of the year. That's also why our road network is under constant repair.
Probably in a minority but I like Aberdeen's granite buildings. Problem with them is not so much visual as functional - non-porous hence tend to promote dry rot of wooden supporting structures (I still have the bills to prove how expensive that is). Harling, on the other hand, is a horrible crime against humanity.
Helsinki, by contrast, looks like it’s made from 19th c. Lego bricks.
Not really. Away from the one end of the city centre it's very drab, and there's a lot of rendering on display. This is typical:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @60.1817148,24.923016,3a,75y,91.89h,96.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sFR617B5P_M1xAl2Iip6JpQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Rendering was also pretty ubiquitous where I lived in Germany - aside from the tower blocks, most of it looked like this:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @48.1166672,11.6730806,3a,75y,64.67h,86.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sraU-8W5bdEniX0gGQDfAXA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
This seems pretty common everywhere I've been in Europe. I actually think that UK cities are MORE diverse than most of Europe. Sure, there were mediaeval wooden villages in Bavaria but it struck me that nearly all the old buildings were built to the same design despite being separated by many hundreds of years. Modern ones rendered, old ones clad with creosoted wood.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @47.4480759,12.3145229,3a,75y,346.87h,89.44t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sq32pUzOxMBvHacEyg52szA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
On the other hand, your typical village in say, Herefordshire has 16th century black and white houses, Georgian cottages, and Victoria brick houses, like so:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @52.2182313,-2.8931479,3a,75y,357.35h,98.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCnZD-yWMSEJ2MDAj09EydQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
The difference between the British houses and the European ones seems mainly to be the state of repair. In some parts of Basel, all the older houses looked identical - the only way to tell if they were 19th century or 16th century was a slight difference in size and a plaque above the door. But the exterior rendering was *always* spotless and recently painted and repaired. Ok so it's a well known tourist town and probably pretty full of rich people, so that could explain it. Compared to a British old touristy town though like say, Salisbury, I thought there was a lot more architectural diversity on display.
pebbledash is a cheapish way to give really good weather resistance, especially to strong winds. the UK has more coastline with grotty weather than most european countries, so pebbledash was widely used to protect buildings instead of spending money on more expensive bricks.
Yeah, I spent 16 months in Helsinki and there was one really windy day, and everyone was very surprised. And it wasn't raining either.
And I actually find the older parts of Cardiff pretty pleasing, architecturally. Lots of raw stone with brick edging on display, with some red bricks here and there. Lots of influence from John Crichton-Stuart (Marquess of Bute) and his mate William Burges who were very into their architecture. Also the reason that so many of the older (by which I mean Edwardian) houses are wonderful to live in.
The house opposite us was bare brick, it's now painted grey. So is the house next door. Ours is grey because it's bare pebbledash roughcast sort of stuff, we want to paint it blue.
Anyway it isn't just houses is it. Take a moment to look at the cars going past your window for a couple of minutes and you can guarantee that 80-90% of them will be a white, black or somewhere in-between. Interior design as well, I followed an Instagram link to some interior designer the other day and her feed was entirely shades made up of different shades of grey.
Edinburgh is built mainly of grey / honey coloured stone – but it still remains utterly beautiful and the detail on buildings is lovely. all sorts of stone carvings high up on facades.
Funnily enough a remark I've heard more than once (particularly from foreign visitors) is that for buildings / streets of their era a lot of Edinburghs buildings are pretty austere and lack flourish - especially compared to Glasgow.
Aberdeen can look very nice when it's sunny, as others have said granite can sparkle. There's also the odd bit of pink granite here and there. But when it's grey, it's very grey.
Anyway it isn’t just houses is it. Take a moment to look at the cars going past your window for a couple of minutes and you can guarantee that 80-90% of them will be a white, black or somewhere in-between.
Sodding silver. We seem to be coming out the other side now finally, but for a while it seemed like every other car on the road was silver. Look at a new car brochure, there will be black, white, red, a couple of blues, and about 15 variations on silver.
Getting a Mondeo a few years back, the dealer asked what colour and I said "not silver." He came back with one which was a perfect specification match and almost ready to transport. I asked him what colour it was and he replied, "erm, metallic grey..."
That's just fashion rather than design though, I think there was a mentality for a while which said that strong colours are harder to sell as someone might object to red / purple / etc. So blandness rules. It's the same with interior design, though foruntately the tide seems to be turning here with "feature walls" and the like. I mean, they're mostly horrendous but it's likely still an improvement on that ubiquitous pale cream that looks like you've chain-smoked in it for twenty years (was it Perchy who coined the term 'fagnolia'?). I guess they're supposed to be a blank canvas but it's just soulless.
was it Perchy who coined the term ‘fagnolia’
No.
It was some old painter & decorator, probably centuries ago.
Nice lights, Perchy. Can you change the colour depending on what particular herb you're trying to cultivate at the time?
Can you change the colour depending on what particular herb you’re trying to cultivate at the time?
Yep, Over 10,000 different colour options are available*. Those ones are set to constantly cycle through the spectrum.
*According to big Frank who installed them.
But not here in Britain. Here, it’s unpainted surfaces and pebbledash. And when we do decorate for things like Christmas (although we seem to be getting a bit better at this), it is fog white LEDs or ‘emergency services blue’.
There's a very simple solution to this.
Most new windows going in now seem to be guess what GREY
Not all UK towns are dull
Hopefully in a month or two we'll move into our new house in Tobermory - our architect and builder came up with this:
You’ve just described most of the housing stock in Scotland..
The evil tentacles of pebbledash extend further south. In the west coast of Cumbria around Whitehaven and Workington they've tried bravely to counteract their scenic surroundings by pebbledashing pretty much everything. Its hideous!
Aberdeen can look very nice when it’s sunny, as others have said granite can sparkle. There’s also the odd bit of pink granite here and there. But when it’s grey, it’s very grey.
You’ve pretty much summed up what a Taxi driver once said to me - ‘on a sunny day, the granite sparkles like the stars, but on a grey day, its sooo grey it’s loke being in a prison!’ Bit like today TBH!
Snowdonia is one of my favourite places but those grey north Walian slate built towns and villages are depressing when it rains. Lucky that the sun generally shines then, err... hang on a min...