I was waiting for a train at London Victoria Railway Station on Thursday evening and I found my eyes looking over the wall I was standing next to. It made me think about how buildings provide a record of their history. A brick wall, used by its owner, showing the legacy of multiple fixings with poor filling of holes with mismatched patches of coloured, or not, cementitious mortar. Curious holes, also grooves worn into the red bricks showing the scar of a swinging cabin-style hook or something similar, the hole has been filled where it was fixed.
There’s also some older timber plugs let into the wall to provide a fixing for whatever sign (now removed) was required at the time, these plugs are still in reasonable condition due to the dry but well-ventilated environment of the concourse. With water stains from, hopefully historic, roof leaks to provide a pale stain over bits of the wall, along with some paint splatters to finish the used appearance of the wall. The wall is laid with consistent and tight joints, and the pointing is still in good condition, this just made the patches and old scars from historic fixings even more obvious.
The wall has been a part of the changing requirements of the station and the needs of the people who have operated it and used it, and this utilitarian function continues as a modern sign has been fixed amongst the other filled holes, continuing the lineage of the wall providing a useful place to display information and guide people around the building.
Obviously in the ideal world, I would not be able to see where fixings had been made in the past, because they should have been seamlessly filled with an appropriate mortar and appropriate workmanship, the holes should have also been drilled in the mortar joints not the bricks themselves. But the situation is what it is, and it gave me something to look at and ponder while I waited for a train to arrive.
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