'Scenes of Contemporary Life' by William Mitchell, Stevenage, Hertfordshire

Summary

'Scenes of Contemporary Life', a sculptural wall mural designed in 1972 by William Mitchell for Stevenage Development Corporation, erected in 1973.

Description

'Scenes of Contemporary Life', a sculptural mural designed in 1972 by William Mitchell for Stevenage Development Corporation, installed in 1973.

MATERIALS: Cast-concrete decoration on aggregate background.

PLAN: North and south walls of Park Place underpass, which extends east – west under St George’s Way, linking Park Place and the Town Centre Gardens.

DESCRIPTION: The murals decorate the north and south walls of Park Place underpass, and measure approximately 20 metres in length. The entrances to the underpass are recessed from the path by approximately 1 metre, and are flanked by perpendicular decorated walls, approximately 3 metres in length. The decorative scheme features a band of cast-concrete bas-relief decoration, approximately 1.8 metres in height, with an abrasive-blasted aggregate background over a coved skirting tile. Above the band of decoration, the wall is smooth rendered with late-C20 angled lighting. Each end bears the crest of Stevenage, and the band of decoration includes repeated casts of stylised figures in contemporary dress, buildings, vehicles and machinery. The scheme features: two musicians with hands applauding; a collection of high-rise buildings and scaffolding representing ‘modern building and engineering’; a stack of buses, trucks and cars; a figure holding a placard of the Womens’ Liberation Movement and political demonstrators entwined in embrace; a BBC TV camera and TV screen showing a cricketer bowling; a cricket player in motion bowling; two footballers in a ‘football ballet’, with a stadium audience behind and a woman presenting a trophy; a stack of men’s heads representing a ‘bus queue with vicar and others’; the no.88 bus with passengers; two policemen on parade representing ‘law’; a group of figures in contemporary dress representing the ‘Flower Power’ movement; a pop group with dancers; a United States Air Force rocket; and a Soviet space-landing craft with two seated cosmonauts looking out a central window to the world below. Where figures are in motion, they are shown as being projected a number of times in relief, eg. figures dancing or cricketer bowling. Each cast is generally repeated approximately 3 times on each side, sometimes randomly. Some motifs are only cast once on each side, eg. the space station, bus and political demonstrators.

History

Stevenage was the first of a group of eight English post-war settlements established under the New Towns Act in 1946, intended as ‘self-contained and balanced communities for work and living’. Of the new towns around London, only Stevenage, Harlow and Basildon offered the opportunity for a wholly new town centre. Located a mile south-east of Stevenage old town, the new town centre was surrounded by six neighbourhoods, each intended to house around 10,000 people and have their own neighbourhood centre and facilities, including shops, schools, churches, community centres, pubs and recreation grounds. Work on planning Stevenage's new town centre began in 1946 and continued throughout the early 1950s, with the final scheme approved in December 1954. Informed by the ideas of architects and planners including Gordon Stephenson and Clarence Stein, the detailed design was undertaken by Stevenage Development Corporation under Chief Architect Leonard Vincent. The first phase of construction of the new town centre, comprising a shopping precinct, surrounding car parks and a bus station, commenced in 1956 and officially opened in April 1959. The fully pedestrian precinct is one of the earliest examples of this kind of development in the world and on a scale unequalled in Europe at the time of its initiation.

Such was the success of the new town that an extension to the shopping area was already being planned in 1958 and was built between 1962 and 1964, with further extensions undertaken up to the mid-1970s. The early 1960s saw the completion of a number of municipal and community facilities in the town centre, including Daneshill House (offices of Stevenage Development Corporation), the Mecca dance hall, county library, health centre, swimming pool, bowling centre and a youth centre. A new Master Plan by Leonard Vincent, unveiled in 1966, proposed a new population figure of up to 105,000, introduction of dual carriageways, and an increase in town centre parking to cope with greater levels of custom. Along the east side of the town, St George’s Way was redeveloped as a dual carriageway in 1972, with two underpasses to facilitate safe pedestrian access between the new town and the area to the east, which included residential housing, the Town Centre Gardens and parish church of St Andrew and St George (1956-60, listed at Grade II). Both underpasses were adorned with sculptural murals by William Mitchell; his ‘Scenes of Contemporary Life’ at Park Place underpass features stylised figures in contemporary dress, buildings, vehicles and machines, and his ‘Abstract’ mural at Market Place underpass features stylised organic forms. Elsewhere in Stevenage, Mitchell also designed a 60-foot long mosaic mural of a longboat on the side of the Long Ship public house and restaurant at the base of Southgate House, St George’s Way (1966); the mural was removed when the ground floor was converted to a car park in 2001. Mitchell is also known to have contributed an inlaid mosaic table for Bowes-Lyon House, opened in 1964 as Europe’s largest dedicated youth club.

William Mitchell (1925-2020) was a prolific and innovative architectural sculptor who worked in various materials but most notably concrete. He grew up in London and worked in painting and decorating before undertaking a National Diploma in Design at the Southern College of Art in Portsmouth, from which he secured a scholarship to the Royal College of Art and thence to the British School in Rome. In 1957 he was appointed London County Council’s first in-house artist, a short-term post shared with Anthony Hollaway. The LCC’s architects, led by Oliver Cox, had fought for the post, wanting to encourage site-specific works using cheap materials; the art was to cost no more than conventional construction. Mitchell’s first medium was concrete, and throughout his career he developed a number of techniques, including casting concrete from glass fibre moulds (as at Stevenage), and crafting sculptures from wet concrete known as 'Faircrete' (as at Clifton Cathedral).

Mitchell’s work can be grouped into a few types: early work for London County Council on public housing and related community buildings, which led to work in many schools and public libraries around the country; large-scale schemes such as those at the Three Tuns public house in Coventry, and the Lea Valley Water Company in Hatfield (both Grade II); sculptural works within a host building, such as at Liverpool and Clifton cathedrals (both Grade II*); freestanding works, such as ‘Corn King and Spring Queen’ for the Cement and Concrete Association at Wexham Park (Grade II); the decoration of retaining walls such as those at Harlow Water Gardens (Grade II), and at underpasses such as Hockley Circus in Birmingham (not listed) and Kidderminster roundabout (Grade II); and lastly, his work overseas in the 1970s and 1980s, including sculptural fountains at the Federal Building in Honolulu, Hawaii, murals at Richmond Station, San Francisco, and works in the Middle East. The two sculptural underpasses at Stevenage reflect his work in the United States at that time; ‘Scenes of Contemporary Life’ at Park Place underpass, interchangeably known as ‘Scenes of Everyday Life’, includes images of US spacecraft, while the Market Place mural features organic forms reminiscent of the flora of Hawaii.

Preparatory drawings by Mitchell of the Park Place underpass scheme, held in the collection of Stevenage Museum, help explain how the sculpture was constructed and what is being depicted in each scene. In correspondence with Stevenage Development Corporation around 2015, Mitchell wrote how 'infrastructure was essential to give a sense of permanence and identity' in a new town, and that sculpture played an important role in giving an area character and making the surroundings 'less severe'. Representations of the football team, buses, cars and people dressed in the fashionable clothes and hair styles of the day were intended to be 'an instantly recognisable pastiche of time and place... The panels were meant as a time warp for the future and a recognisable landmark for the then present'. An article by Paul Marsh, titled ‘Concrete Too is Beautiful’ and published in Concrete journal in July 1973, featured a large photograph of a detail of the newly-finished Park Place mural. In his article Marsh declared Mitchell ‘an international authority on sculpted concrete’ and stated the mural at Park Place underpass was ‘among William Mitchell’s favourite creations’.

Reasons for Listing

'Scenes of Contemporary Life', a 2-part sculptural wall mural designed in 1972 by William Mitchell for Stevenage Development Corporation, installed in 1973, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as an accomplished and high-quality work of public art;
* as a fine example of the pioneering commissioning of art works by private companies and local authorities for exhibition in the public realm in the post-war era;
* for its design by William Mitchell, an eminent sculptor of public artworks, a number of whose works are listed and some at high grades.

Historic interest:
* as a key piece of public art in the development of Stevenage New Town centre;
* as a fascinating window into contemporary life in Stevenage and Britain in 1972, it incorporates a range of commonplace local motifs including transport, sports, and entertainment, and extraordinary national and international motifs, including broadcasting, political demonstrations and spacecraft.

Group value:
* for the strong group the mural forms with nearby listed pieces of public art on the Town Square, including the ‘Joy Ride’ public sculpture by Franta Belsky (1958-9) on the raised platform overlooking the Square, and the clock tower and surrounding raised pool (1957-9), both listed at Grade II;
* for the strong group the mural also forms with the nearby church of St Andrew and St George (1956-60, listed at Grade II).

External Links

Historic England Listing

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