Mary's Blog - The Tile Map

The Tile Map

posted by Barter Books @ 6:26pm, Wednesday 6 August 2008.

We have decided to call our cafe ‘the Station Buffet’.

That was Felix’s idea and we liked it. First, because in almost all the larger railway stations, there was always at least some sort of Buffet, usually presided over, someone told me, by ‘large ladies’.

And, second, because I have a penchant for shop names that are straightforward. (Consider our own name ‘Barter Books’; need I say more?)

In creating the cafe, we have not tried to duplicate a past look – pre-war, between-the-wars, post-war.

This is because I don’t actually believe repro works, ever. It always looks fake to me, probably because it is. Or maybe I’ve just seen too much of it in America - on one street alone there’s Spanish hacienda opposite Tudor opposite Tara Hall opposite Le Corbu. Makes me dizzy.

And, then, by the sound of them, who wants a real Station Buffet anyway, let alone a repro one? (I keep hearing scary tales of pale green curled-up sandwiches.)

So what have we (Daisy and me) gone for?

Comfortable. But with a dash of ’50s American diner thrown in just for me. Which amounts to what? A bit of Formica with one of those wandering patterns so beloved of art house movie screens back then. And then an Italian coffee machine that is all-singing all-dancing (think the old Ford Thunderbird - pink, lots of chrome, tail lights that don’t quit).

But there the ‘50s end. And in its place an oak floor, red leather upholstery on the banquettes (extravagant but the older leather gets, the better it looks, all I have to do is live that long).

But, above all, literally and figuratively, on one wall (gorgeous rose-red hand-made brick, cleaned up like a dream), the star of the room: taking up at least a quarter of the wall, itself, a map made of tiles.

Its history: Stuart had taken me to the National Railway Museum in York – probably the finest railway museum in the world - all these locos starting from way back when, tiny, gingerbread on wheels, on up to carriages that had belonged to the royal family (including one that had come into our Station back in 1908), a smoking car for the King, a parlour for the Queen, masses of deep-buttoned velvet upholstery, silk curtains, tassels, mirrors, and brass with engraved coronets above intertwined initials).

But, to be honest, except for the Mallard (what a design! Sleek as a shark) all those locos, I just started looking at my watch and drifting about, where are the shops? Until I saw up on a wall this beauty: a large map made up of hand-glazed coloured tiles 8” square and inserted within a frame also made of tiles, with the whole plastered on to the wall.

I was rivetted.

A nearby plaque gave its history. It was one of twenty-four such maps that had been made in 1903 for the larger stations to show (show off, really) the extent of the North Eastern Railway – then the largest rail network in the world.

On it was the whole North East from Hull up to the Borders, with the North Sea on the right. And all across the map was a web of black lines connecting cities to towns to villages, most of the lines they represented long gone.

Near the top, I could just make out where the old Alnmouth – Alnwick branchline had been. That was ours, a working line until 1968. (Our station was at the end of that little black line, hard to see, way up. I craned my neck: there we were, right there.)

Easier to see was the bright blue colour that ran jagged from top to bottom on the map where the land ended and the sea began (due East you run into Denmark, we’re that far up). The Vikings in their magnificent ships had crossed that sea in the 8^th century. The Armada had rounded the coast in the middle of the 17^th. In the 20th, submarines and warships had ploughed its waters, the concrete blocks meant to prevent their landing still lying in wait on this distant northern shore.

Inland there were the great cities: York connected to Durham connected to Newcastle connected to Edinburgh, each one conjuring up unforgettable images, great cathedrals, ship yards, Castles.

I wanted that map.

When we started work on the Buffet, I told Phil. It would look so perfect there, right there on that wall.

Phil shook his head. That map was made back in 1903. Still, he would see what he could do. And he got on the web, googled the original manufacturer, Craven & Dunnill, whose name was in the lower-left corner of each of the original maps. Whereupon a miracle.

The company still existed. And, by fluke, they told Phil, a chap named Eden Blythe had commissioned them to run off three more of the maps from the exact same transfers they had kept all those years, perhaps we could buy one from Eden? Check out The North Eastern Railway Tiled Maps website, they said, you can only ever ask.

Phil did.

And we got it.

Win some, lose some!

When the boxes of tiles were delivered, Scott Richardson, a tiler from here in Alnwick came along to fit it toegether, plaster it to the Buffet wall, just as it had been in York. That way, the only way anyone could pinch the map would be to take the wall with it.

Because it was a tricky bit of tiling (its frame, alone, looked as complex as any jigsaw puzzle), Scott went down to Morpeth Station – twice – to study how their own original map had been put up. Spent days up there on the scaffolding getting it just right, pins holding bits in place everywhere. When he finished and the scaffolding came down, he looked up at it, smiled, said it was going to be nice for his children to know he had put it there. (Nice for all of us, too, Scott.)

Anyway, there it is on the wall, in the Buffet opposite the counter.

103 years later, the great North Eastern Railway no longer exists. But the map it had made does. And it owns the room.

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