Views From The Wheel (1)

Lovely pictures are beginning to come the Phantom's way, courtesy of the Wheel, and here are a few of the first. This one's by LGM:

I find it almost impossible to imagine that I actually live just down the road from somewhere that looks like that - it's like some stately home or Versailles or something - I feel that I should be listening to a Purcell voluntary whilst looking at it. And the angle it's taken from makes it look as though the whole thing's set in the countryside...

Methers's pics have taken a slightly different approach. Vanbrugh Castle, a mere dot in the distance, seems at least a little closer here:

And I really love the framing of the Dome by the ironwork of the Wheel.

But what I like best are the angles we get of things that make us look at things in a different way. Take this shot, of the Pepys Centre directly below the Wheel:

I don't know about you, but when I think of the ORNC, I think of angles. I think of mathematical precision, straight lines and rigorous perspective. But what's that building just behind the curvy colonnade in the bottom left corner doing? For starters, I'm not quite sure what it is - it's round the back (I have an inkling, but I need to do some more digging...) but just look at that angle. It doesn't particularly bother me - but it does make me curious. I mean - who decided to put something at such a squiff in a place that is so very rigid in its design? I like to think that it was an individual decision.

I don't know what it is or who built it - but I'm going to find out. I want to know who it was that had a little rebellion one day and built what is effectively a neo-classical shed on the wonk; a little fist of defiance to architectural conformity.