A Dream: Utopia Square? [continued (3)]}[20th January 1991]

[Redbook8:176-177][19910120:0945c]{A Dream: Utopia Square? [continued (3)]}[20th January 1991]

19910120:0945

[continued]

After looking in a narrow, gloomy street (with ?a covered way or alley back onto the Main or High Street), I emerged unexpectedly on the corner or edge of a broad square across which many individuals were passing about their business. The other end was completely taken up by a white or pale grey building (a palace?) in a type of |* Hispanic** style of architecture, with Italianate and even slight Palladian influences (the details are vague!). There was a feeling of well-being, of contented activity, about this square and this building.

I looked round to check the layout of streets radiating from my location, and, yes, that they did radiate in a regular eight-spoked wheel plan (one***, presumably, although I did not consider this at the time, leading to the building); but I noted that the ways representing r~ and s~ were narrow (and straight)**** alleys, not broad roads. These I think may have been at 45º and 135º to the building, in the direction of the High Street, although this conflicts with my original entrance to the square.

Perhaps the entry road and High Street on the one hand, and the r~ and s~ alleys on the other, were on different ‘planes’: one for starting, one for completion. I don’t recall seeing route C, for example, or route a~, as individual ways, although the 8 radial routes were certainly all there.

(This is as much conjectured as observed.)

|*interrupted by viewers’ visit; resuming 1159

** – It is a pity that I did not at the time draw an outline of this architecture, which in retrospect seems to have been notable for its upper outline curves, eg something like this:

or perhaps this sort of thing:

Neither of these is right; the fact is, I have (or had) an overall impression as though it was a complete image, but I cannot express it in detail.<920226>

[A colour photograph inserted in the ms here on <920620> shows the front of the house into which the writer and his family eventually moved, which is dominated by a triangular gable frontage with curved timbers and a church-style (gothic-arch) window at high level.]

***[of them, presumably]

****[sic]

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