Christopher Hilton
LightNews LightNews
banner
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Christopher Hilton
@chilton-bb.bsky.social
1.1K followers 970 following 870 posts
Head of Archive & Library at The Red House, http://brittenpearsarts.org. Archives, music, metadata; side orders of architecture, landscape history & electronic noise.
Posts Replies Media Videos
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Well, that was fun: every folding chair in the archive used for a rolling programme of archive talks as part of Britten's birthday celebrations, telling the tale of the young Britten's 1937 car crash. That takes the archive to 1000+ Red House visitors at our drop-in events; see you next season!
A typed itemised estimate for the repair of a car, on blue paper; the letterhead, of South Bucks Garages, is in 1930s Art Deco style. Folding chairs laid out in the foyer of a modern wood and concrete building.
November 22, 2025 at 3:19 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Beautiful day here at the Red House and its archive; fingers crossed we get the same for Britten's birthday tomorrow. (If you're around Aldeburgh on Saturday, drop in - it's free, there's cake, and I'm doing Stories from the Archive talks several times in the day.)
A sunny autumn day in a large garden. Warm sunlight glows on a serpentine wall, while an angular modern brick building shows its shadowed face beyond the trees and flower beds. A sunny autumn day in a large garden. A tree covered in ripe green figs leans against a warm brick wall to the left, while on the right a gravel path leads towards the shadowed face of an angular modern brick building. A sunny autumn day in a large garden. Warm sunlight glows on a serpentine wall in the foreground, over which peeps a 19th century brick farmhouse behind a tall yew tree.
November 21, 2025 at 11:31 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
We're having repair work done on Benjamin Britten's viola (which belonged before him to his mentor and fellow composer Frank Bridge); as George from our development team sets out below, it's with generous help from the Association of Independent Museums, Pilgrim Trust and Julia Rausing Trust. 1/2
A screenshot of a post on LinkedIn from George Maude, Trusts and Foundations Manager at Britten Pears Arts. The text reads: "Benjamin Britten’s viola is coming back to life! Thanks to a grant from AIM - Association of Independent Museums, Pilgrim Trust and Julia Rausing Trust, this beautiful instrument is going to play again. No other item in our collection better encapsulates our founders’ belief in ‘passing it on’ Read more about it here: https://lnkd.in/eUjT_u-Y It is particularly wonderful that it is going to be restored by one of the country’s finest hands, who happens to be just down the road, Iris Carr. We hope to have it playing again in time for the 50th anniversary of Britten’s death next year. From the stage, it will connect with audiences across the UK and internationally, and as part of Britten Pears Arts’ award-winning education programme, it will be shared with children and young people in Suffolk. This perfectly embodies everything that we (and our founders) are about – making an international impact while staying deeply rooted in East Suffolk. And if anyone happens to be nearby and hasn’t been – please visit The Red House and Archive! You will not regret it." Below is a picture of a man with a short grey beard and light brown hair, smiling, wearing a woolly jumper and holding a viola which is missing its bridge and strings. He is standing in a white, brightly lit room surrounded by metallic shelves with grey boxes on them.
November 20, 2025 at 5:40 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Today's the feast day of St Edmund, patron saint of Suffolk and previously of all England. In his legend his severed head was guarded by a wolf: here's the head and wolf carved on a beam at Greensted church in Essex, and sculptures from a 2015 wolf trail in Bury St Edmunds.
A dark wooden roof beam on which are carved a crowned head and a wolf. A wicker sculpture of a howling wolf, in front of an 18th century hotel covered in ivy. A topiary sculpture of a prowling wolf, life size, in a wooded park. A very stylised "wolf" made of colourful patchwork-motif cardboard. The wolf is a triangular form, tilted to the left, with a dark tip to symbolise the snout.
November 20, 2025 at 9:19 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
It's that week again, when all the new intake at Lowestoft's Benjamin Britten Academy get to visit the Red House and find out about their town's most famous native. A busy week for us all but immensely rewarding: with luck they leave here with a sense of ownership about heritage and the arts.
Six sheets of A4 paper taped to wooden cupboard doors. Each has a printed heading giving dates, in order, from Monday 17th November to Saturday 22nd November; below each heading are lists of times. Initials are scribbled in red marker pen next to the times (JR, NC and CH). Monday's sessions are ticked off in black marker.
November 17, 2025 at 5:08 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Walking over the Red House garden between meetings: light fading over the Archive (and the medlar tree).
An angular modern brick building seen across a garden, a low tree with round brown fruits speaking branches in front of it. The sky and clouds above are tinged with pink as sunset approaches; below in the garden light is fading.
November 17, 2025 at 4:14 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
The other perk of the timing, of course, is that you get to do some Christmas shopping by going crazy with a different insitution's merch.
(Illustration, book-tree in the basement shop.)
A Christmas tree made of stacked books, with a soft-toy black and white cat perched at its summit. The tree is on a stone-flagged floor in front of a window; a display board about joining the Friends of Elizabeth Gaskell's House peeps in at the right-hand edge.
November 16, 2025 at 11:35 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
One of the perks of the @lithouse.bsky.social conference being in November: Elizabeth Gaskell's House was being dressed for Christmas during the meeting and our tour saw it literally minutes after the decorations were finished...
@eilzabethgaskellsh.bsky.social
A tall dark ornate Victorian Christmas tree, in front of the window in a Victorian drawing room. A Victorian table setting, with patterned latest, dishes and tureens. A roast turkey and a Christmas pudding are on the table, as well as rolls and a decanter of dark red wine. A Victorian writing desk, with a little Christmas tree on it. A Victorian table set for tea, with heart-shaped biscuits and playing cards beside the tea things. There is a card propped up showing a young woman speeding on a bicycle.
November 16, 2025 at 11:30 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
At the @lithouse.bsky.social conference at Elizabeth Gaskell's house (@eilzabethgaskellsh.bsky.social) and really enjoying the way there are even quotes in the Gents. (I'm pleased to report there was *no* pestiferous smell.)
A wall inside a toilet, with an electric hand-dryer bottom left. Across the was in a 19th century italic font is written "'The pestiferous smell ... is sure to come in from the cess pool...' / Elizabeth Gaskell, 1865".
November 14, 2025 at 2:22 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Setting off to the @lithouse.bsky.social conference in Manchester today; the glamour of work travel...
Crewe Station across its car park on a dark wet morning. A view of platforms in a large railway station, on a dark wet day.
November 14, 2025 at 9:14 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Quayside at Snape Maltings this morning, en route between meetings.
A tidal river with mudbanks exposed, looking towards a low bridge. On the far side are tawny yellow reedbeds; on the near side, a sailing barge is moored by a quay. The scene is lit by sunlight but the sky is stacked with slate-blue clouds.
November 12, 2025 at 11:09 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
On this day in 2017, I was at a conference in Manchester and as I had time, walked there from Piccadilly along the Rochdale Canal. (I found myself passing the site of the legendary Haçienda, now gone.) All utterly transformed since I mooched around there in a trench-coat in the early 1980s.
A canal, winding between tall modern blocks of flats whose balconies overlook the water. A steep cobbled path (in fact the towpath of a canal rising up at the foot of a lock) with a modern red-brick building to the right; part of the lower floor is made up of steel bars against which are set steel shapes with curving edges and writing on them (in letters too small to read). A steel gate with sections cut out of it and lettering stamped into it, in minimalist type, reading '"Now that's finished. You won't see the haçienda. It doesn't exist. The haçienda must be built." Ivan Chtcheglov 1953'. A steel fence, made of solid sections with curving edges set against sections of steel bars. On one of the solid sections is a stencil-style image of the Manchester cultural provocateur and journalist Tony Wilson.
November 10, 2025 at 10:59 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Out exploring medieval Suffolk churches in the autumn landscape and as light faded we came to the tiny church at Hoo, held together by buttresses and giant staples. Nice to stumble across somewhere with a (partial) dedication to St. Eustachius; not a name you often see in the UK.
A simple church of flint patched with brick and concrete, propped up and held together by brick butresses and iron straps. The tower is thin and made entirely of red brick. The interior of a plain single-aisle church, whitewashed and with dark wood beams holding the walls together at a high level. A battered wooden parish chest in a church, with a vase of autumn-coloured flowers and berries on top of it. A medieval church font, the faces on the figures on it chiseled away.
November 9, 2025 at 6:32 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
And down in Thornton Heath, on Brigstock Road, there's a run of access holes to what used to be the power supply for Croydon Borough's trams - pre-dating London Transport taking over all London trams in 1933, and of course still there more than 70 years after trams ran down that street. 2/2
A former utility duct cover in a pavement. The lid has gone and the duct been filled with concrete but the metal rim of the hole remains; text on it reads "Croydon Corporation Electric Tramways".
November 8, 2025 at 10:41 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Oh, yes: it's amazing what you see once you start reading the text on things people mostly just tread on, isn't it? We used to have a Croydon Board of Health drain grid near our London flat, i.e. pre-dating the County Borough being set up in the 1890s; I wish I could have dated that precisely. 1/2
A drain grid photographed on a sunny day. The text on it reads "Croydon Board of Health".
November 8, 2025 at 10:41 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Out on the beach between Aldeburgh and Thorpeness, reconnoitring for a heritage walk I'm going to be leading during the Aldeburgh Festival next summer.
A view along a curving shingle beach under lowering clouds, the roofs of a small town in the distance. Small wooden houses of different colours on dunes above a shingle beach, white paint gleaming in contrast with dark cloud behind them.
November 6, 2025 at 1:11 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Poet Wilfred Owen died #OTD in 1918, a week short of the Armistice: this is the statue of him in his home town, Oswestry. Britten used Owen's poetry in his 1962 War Requiem and the following year Owen's brother Harold sent him a manuscript of Wilfred's "Anthem For Doomed Youth" in appreciation.
A bronze statue of the First World War poet Wilfred Owen, seen standing in his uniform reading a book that is balanced on a stump. Poppies are laid at his feet. A handwritten manuscript of Wilfred Owen's poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth". The poem is an early draft, with many corrections and points at which the words differ from the final version: the title, too, is different, being given as "Anthem for Dead Youth".
November 4, 2025 at 9:33 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Britten Pears Arts has a stall at today's #HistDay25 in Senate House - come along and find out what research sources we can offer!
A "poster" image advertising the University of London's History Day on 4th November 2025, from 11:00 to 16:00. A shaky black and white 1940s snap showing two men in suits larking about on a balcony above a lake: one (Benjamin Britten) looks at the camera stifling a smile, while the other (Peter Pears) leans round from behind him, "photo-bombing" the image.
November 4, 2025 at 11:40 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
A bit belatedly, here's a November @geograph-gbi.bsky.social calendar image: Aldeburgh Yacht Club from the river wall.
www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6692209
A view across salt marsh next to a tidal estuary. In the foreground, a muddy creek, with a few small motor boats sitting on the mud, leads away from the camera towards the river. The river takes up the right side of the frame; on the left, a modern angular building is surrounded by yachts and other boats pulled up out of the water. Watery sunlight comes down from the top right corner of the image; banks of white and grey clouds are massing on the left.
November 2, 2025 at 10:08 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
From the weekend: always a joy to go through East Midlands Parkway and see these big beasts again. So many of the cooling tower landmarks that punctuated the landscape in my 20th century youth are gone - Didcot, Ferrybridge - but I hope we can keep a few examples as monuments to the age of coal.
A view of three huge cooling towers seen from the bottom, on a sunny autumn day. Perspective has been accelerated by using a very wide angle lens in order to fit them into the frame. At the foot of the picture is a railway station platform and a sign reading "East Midlands Parkway".
October 29, 2025 at 8:11 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
A week to go in the open season and we've just cracked the 900 mark for visitors to Stories from the Archive sessions. Let's see how many more we can get by the end of the month...
1/2
A white portrait format poster. At the bottom, below a red line, is a line drawing of a little red house with "The Red House / Aldeburgh" next to it. The text of the poster reads: Stories from the Archive 20-25 minute talk on an item from the collection Location: Archive Building Please sign up at Reception Times: 11:30 | 12:30 | 14:00 | 15:00
October 24, 2025 at 1:51 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Low sun illuminating the pampas grass in front of the archive this morning. (By the time the public arrive the sun will have moved round to the right and this angle will be gone.)
An angular modern brick building; beyond it the sun is low in the sky, making stands of pampas grass in front of the building glow from behind. Trees frame the view and some angular modern abstract sculpture is on the left in partial shadow.
October 24, 2025 at 10:12 AM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
In London today (for a meeting on the AI-driven features arriving in our digital asset management system), and as ever I'm struck how I lived there for 30 years and still find streets in the city centre I've never been down. This is the first time I've seen the former "Intrepid Fox" pub, in Soho.
A former London pub, now a Brazilian Steak House. The pub is on a street corner site; on the corner is a bas relief with gold letters above reading "The Intrepid Fox". A bas relief of two figures in 18th century dress, with gold letters above reading "The Intrepid Fox". One figure has a tricorn had and a stick; the other, behind him, is dressed more plainly and holds a paper on which is written "Champion of the People".
October 21, 2025 at 10:28 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Trip to Essex Record Office this afternoon for the East of England Archive Council... Serious hassle on the A12 coming home, so I veered off the main road and ended up in Silver End, built between the wars as a model village for Crittalls workers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_...
White, flat-roofed semi-detached interwar houses, in autumn evening light. White, flat-roofed semi-detached interwar houses, in autumn evening light. White, flat-roofed semi-detached interwar houses, in autumn evening light. A white-painted interwar church in vaguely Arts and Crafts style.
October 20, 2025 at 7:50 PM
chilton-bb.bsky.social
Born #OTD in 1854, French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Here from the Britten Pears archive are some items relating to Britten's setting of his "Les Illuminations": Britten's copy of the text and the page in the score for "Being Beauteous" which he has dedicated to Peter Pears (PNLP).
The yellow cheap cover of a 19th century edition of Arthur Rimbaud's "Les Illuminations". The inside cover of a book, with an engraved bookplate on the left reading "Peter Pears & Benjamin Britten", and on the right Benjamin Britten's signature. A sheet of musical score, handwritten in ink. It is for a poem in Benjamin Britten's setting of Rimbaud's "Les Illluminations": the title reads "VI Being Beauteous" and it is dedicated to "P.N.L.P."
October 20, 2025 at 10:28 AM