April 2023 and the shops and homes are being prepared for demolition.
The company responsible for the demolition also dropped the Robert Tinker, on nearby Dalton Street.
While it is not yet clear exactly what will replace the shopping parade, work has already started nearby on other projects within the scheme. The first phase of development in Collyhurst will see 274 new homes built in the area.
The council has pledged to reinstate the William Mitchell totem nearby.
However the weight of the concrete sculpture and its base have presented unforeseen challenges.
Siting a crane above the Victorian rail tunnel is an issue, as is the cost, a quote for £100,000 was deemed excessive. So stasis is the order the day – the immovable object awaits an unstoppable force.
The sculpture is one of four around Manchester – the Hulme exemplar is long gone.
We begin at the Railway Station – recently refurbished, overwriting its 60s iteration – completely rebuilt by the architect Ray Moorcroft as part of the modernisation programme which saw the West Coast Main Line electrified.
Across the way an enormous brick clad multi-storey car park – skirted by the lines for the tram, which travels to and from Birmingham.
Walk across the brand new pedestrian footbridge over the ring road.
Architectural glass artist Kate Maestri was commissioned to produce the artwork design which features glass with blue and green strips of colour running through it.
Linking the Rail Station with the brand new Bus Station.
The normal practice of the Wolverhampton Bus Service is to have dirty, smelly buses, that are cramped and extremely hot in the summer and freezing cold in winter. They offer no announcements apologizing for delays they know about and don’t appear to care how long passengers wait with no idea of how or when they’ll be getting a bus.
The best thing you can do is learn to drive as quickly as possible and get your own vehicle or car pool.
Midland News Association managing director Matt Ross confirmed the company is now looking at the building’s future.
For a number of years we have been exploring opportunities surrounding our historic Express & Star offices in the heart of Wolverhampton.
After removing the printing presses from the site and restructuring our departments we now have significant spare capacity available and so are looking at the various options available to us, be that redeveloping the current site or exiting the building altogether.
Extension is by architects: H Marcus Brown & Lewis 1965
With further work at the rear.
Along Princess Street this corner group, with an impressive clock tower – originally HQ for the South Staffordshire Building Society
Architects: George A Boswell of Glasgow 1932.
On to the Mander Centre – opened on 6th March 1968, refurbished 1987, 2003 and 2016-17.
The Mander Shopping Centre in the heart Wolverhampton is your one-stop shopping destination for all things fashion, home, beauty, food and technology.
Architects: James A Roberts principal architect Stanley Sellers.
Developed by Manders Holdings Plc, the paint, inks and property conglomerate, between 1968 and 1974. The site occupies four and a half acres comprising the old Georgian works and offices of the Mander family firm, founded in 1773, as well as the site of the former Queens Arcade.
Architects: T & PH Braddock and also Bernard Engle & Partners.
Along St Georges Parade, an abandoned Sainsbury’s church combo – store designed by J Sainsbury’s Architects Department opened 1988.
The church was built between 1828 and 1830 – architect: James Morgan, at a cost of £10,268. It was consecrated on Thursday 2 September 1830 by the Bishop of Lichfield, it was made redundant in 1978.
The site is currently under lease to Sainsbury’s for a further three years and will come forward on a phased basis subject to their lease concluding. The council is in active dialogue with prospective development partners on the redevelopment of this site and in wider consultation with Homes England.
Notable cases included trial and conviction of four members of The Stone Roses, in October 1990, for criminal damage to the offices of their former record company.
Thence up Snow Hill to the former Citizens Advice former Barclays Bank currently empty.
Architects: John HD Madin & Partners 1969
Take time to have a look around the back.
Off to Church Street and Telecom House
Sold for £4.25 million to Empire Property in 2022.
It had previously been sold for more than £3m in July 2018, also for use for apartments, to Inspired Asset Management which later went into receivership.
Located on a popular apartment block on Church street in the Wolverhampton centre, this 1 bedroom property has been newly renovated throughout and compromises an entrance hallway, open plan lounge/kitchen with in built appliances, shower room and double bedroom.
Next to this modern piazza New Market Square – Architects: Nicol Thomas from a concept by head of planning Costas Georghiou.
Formed from the former Market Square, a mix of flats and shops opened in 2004, in an Italianate version of the modish school of streaky bacon.
In 2021 the Coca-Cola Christmas Truck visit to the Midlands was cancelled.
It was meant to arrive at Market Square in Wolverhampton at 11am today but failed to show up.
One fan had waited since 7am this morning to see the Coca-Cola truck.
While schoolchildren were left gutted when the truck didn’t turn up – and one boy had been so excited his mother said he had been talking about the red truck all morning.
Retail Market – Late 1950s market hall and offices above.
Architects: Borough Surveyor.
Excellent example of the Festival of Britain style of architecture, won Civic Trust Award 1960.
Locally Listed March 2000.
demolished January 2017.
Photo: Roger Kidd
This development that wraps itself around Salop, Skinner and School Streets appears to be of a similar period to the Retail Market – and sports a Lady Wulfrun in relief.
There is access to its roof top car park.
And also an exit back to street level.
Where we find at street level the former Odeon Cinema, opened on 11th September 1937 with Conrad Veidt in Dark Journey.
In October 2000, the former Odeon was designated a Grade II Listed building by English Heritage.
RIBA pix
In recent years it was a Mecca Bingo Club, but this was closed in March 2007 In October 2009, it had been refurbished and re-opened as the Diamond Banqueting Suite. In April 2021 police raided the vacant building to discover an illegal cannabis farm operating in the building.
Four men were arrested.
Let’s take a turn around the corner to Victoria Street where we find the complex of Beatties Buildings.
Architects: Lavender, Twentyman and Percy 1920’s – 30’s
The C20 Beatties store is a multi-period site developed first in the 1920s-30s. A Burton’s men’s clothes shop was built on a curved corner site at Victoria St/Darlington St and Beatties themselves replaced their existing Victoria St store in the 1930s with a building by local architects Lavender, Twentyman and Percy. Beatties later acquired and incorporated the Burton’s shop into their store. These two buildings form the locally listed building to which were added a mid-C20 extension along Darlington St and a late-C20 development to the rear at Skinner St.
An imperious Portland stone clad mixed us block on Waterloo Road, with a delightful clock.
Formerly the Gas Showrooms then SunAlliance & LondonInsurance offices – aka Clock Chambers
The showroom in Darlington Street was also the centre of a radio network that controlled a fleet of service vans. This enabled customers to receive service within minutes of making a telephone call. Demonstrations of cookery, washing and refrigeration were given by the Gas Board’s Home Service Advisers and a number of the company’s engineers, who specialised in designing gas equipment for industrial processes operated an advisory service for manufacturers.
Architects: Richard Twentyman 1939.
Nineteen Waterloo Road latterly First City House formerly home to Eagle Star Insurance 1970
8-10 Waterloo Road architects: Richard Twentyman 1959 extended 1966.
I caught the 51 Bus from the Bus Exchange – and the ever so helpful fellow passengers put me off at the right stop.
The church is set back from the road and sands in substantial grounds – visible through the surrounding houses.
A large site at the corner of Plas Newton Lane and Newhall Road was acquired, and a new church designed by the architects LAG Prichard, Son & Partners. The design embodied the ideals of Vatican II, with no seating more than fifty feet from the altar. It was designed for 675 people. The foundation stone was laid in September 1964 by Canon Murphy, and the 115 ft spire lowered into position in December 1964. The first Mass was on 19 December 1965, and the church was officially opened in 1966 by Bishop Grasar. St Columba was the third new Catholic church to be built in Chester after the Second World War.
The only glazing to survive from the original church scheme is small triangles of glazing on the sanctuary elevation and the dalle de verre-style baptistery window by Hans Unger & E Schulze.
Unger & Schulze ran a prominent mosaic and glass studio in London from 1960-74, and provided a large mosaic for another LAG Prichard church in 1965, St Jude’s in Worsley Mesnes– Wigan.
The coloured glazing depicting St Columba, Christ and the apostles was added in 1986.
North Wales Police – Heddlu Gogledd Cymru is the territorial police force responsible for policing North Wales.
Photo: Gareth Ellidge
As of March 2020, the force has 1,510 police officers, 170 special constables, 182 police community support officers, 71 police support volunteers, and 984 staff.
Having cycled from Prestatyn, I popped into reception to ask permission to photograph the exterior of the HQ.
Following a short wait, I was granted permission.
The building is an imposing steel, concrete and glass system built structure of 1972, with brick outliers on a grassy site.
It has undergone adaptation to modern eco-standards.
The administration building for North Wales Police, located in Colwyn Bay, was typical of the breed: a 1970s leaky and draughty concrete-framed building with high solar gains, especially on the South and West facades. It consumed a lot of energy and delivered very poor comfort conditions.
The budget for the refurbishment was set at around £2.4 million. North Wales Police appointed Capita Symonds as the Project Manager with the design team comprising FSP Architects, Buro Happold, WS Atkins, and Faithful+Gould.
A system of brise-soleil solar shading was provided for the East, South and West facades. Combined with the reduced area of glazing, the brise soleil reduced the solar gains enough to avoid the need for mechanical cooling and for the natural ventilation strategy to be retained.
Two swans in front of his eyes Colored balls in front of his eyes It’s number one for his Kelly’s eye Treble-six right over his eye
Edward Thompson, the family printing business, was founded in Sunderland in 1867.
They identified a business opportunity when a local priest, Jeremiah O’Callaghan, ordered some bingo tickets for a parish fund-raising exercise.
From those humble beginnings, Edward Thompson mushroomed in size as Britain went bingo-mad in the 1960s, becoming first the UK’s and then the world’s biggest producer of bingo cards and tickets.
The company which has been printing for more than 155 years – has been hit hard by the crash in bingo hall use as Covid ripped through the leisure sector. CEO Paddy Cronin said he was ‘gutted’ but the business had finally had to face the inevitable as the cashflow dried up.
We were built on a bet but our luck has now run out – he told The Northern Echo.
Covid completely changed the market and as the halls went into decline it just became untenable so I had to break the news to the workers.
They were the pioneers of newspaper bingo, printing the first cards in 1975 and going on to work in places like Bolivia and Belgium and even printing the ballot papers for Nelson Mandela’s 1994 election in South Africa.
So their number is up the factory is tinned-up, house has been called for the very last time.
Yeah, yeah, industrial estate
Well you started here to earn your pay Clean neck and ears on your first day Well we tap one another as you walk in the gate And we’d build a canteen but we haven’t got much space
It was decided to build a new church in 1963, when the architects Burles, Newton & Partners were appointed and drew up a scheme for a church seating 470. Financial restraints delayed the start of building work until 1966. The contractors were William Thorpe and the foundation stone was laid by Bishop Burke in October 1967. The church was opened two years later in 1969. The church was built to reflect the emerging liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, with a wide interior affording full views of the altar. The same architects designed a presbytery, added in 1974-5. A sanctuary reordering took place at some point when the Blessed Sacrament Chapel became the Lady Chapel and the tabernacle was placed behind the altar. The altar rails were removed, and the sanctuary carpeted. Perhaps at the same time the font was brought from the baptistery into the body of the church.
Description
All orientations given are liturgical. The church is a steel-framed structure with loadbearing gable walls built on a series of rafts to guard against mining subsidence. It was designed to ensure that the congregation would have unimpeded views of the sanctuary, and the architects described the layout as ‘in conformity with the Spirit of the new Constitution’. The plan is near rectangular, angled at the east end, with a striking roof swooping up at the east end and trios of sharply pointed gables on each side.
The building is entered on the northwest side via a low porch which gives to a narthex and a former baptistery lit by a pyramidal roof light, attached on the west side. Light pours in to the narthex from a screen with semi-abstract stained glass with the ox symbol of St Luke, an original fixture. The nave is an impressive and memorable space with the boarded roof forming dramatic shapes which frame the east end and sanctuary, where a pair of full-height slit windows are angled to cast light without creating glare and frame a Crucifix. The roof rises up on each side of the big triangular windows on the north and south sides. Those to the south have stained glass showing the Tree of Life the True Vine and the Cross of Faith designed by Roy Coomber of Pendle Stained Glass in 2002-3. There is a cantilevered west gallery with a pipe organ set into the wall above it and a southeast chapel, now a Lady Chapel, formerly of the Blessed Sacrament, with stained glass on sacramental themes. A Pietà in the chapel probably originated in the previous church. The tabernacle, of stainless steel with high relief abstract modelling, was repositioned behind the altar at the time of the reordering. This item and the sanctuary Crucifix with a gilded figure are by an unknown artist. Stations of the Cross are by Harold Riley, installed in circa 2003. They consist of triptychs executed in pencil and wash. Other works by Riley include a study of the Virgin dated 2003 and a print of his painting Our Lady of Manchester.
Black’s Regal Theatre was built on the site of the Olympia Exhibition Hall and Pleasuredrome 1897-1910 and it was built for the northern independent Black’s circuit. It opened on 28th March 1932 with Jessie Matthews in Out of the Blue.
The theatre was equipped with a Compton three manual, nine ranks theatre organ which had an Art Deco style console on a lift.
This was opened by organist J Arnold Eagle. The policy of the theatre for many years was pictures and variety and it had a fifty seven feet wide proscenium, the stage was forty feet deep and there were ten dressing rooms. Other facilities included a cafe and roller rink.
Regal/Odeon, Holmeside, Sunderland, Co. Durham
In 1955 the Black’s circuit was taken over by the Rank Organisation and the Regal was re-named Odeon from 28th November 1955. It was divided into a three screen cinema in 1975 with 1,200 seats in the former circle and two 150 seat screens in the rear stalls.
On 28th March 1982 a special 50th Anniversary concert was given by Phil Kelsall on the Compton organ. Three months later, on 26th June 1982 the Odeon was closed with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Star Wars & The Empire Strikes Back, Mary Millington’s True Blue Confessions.
The building was boarded up and abandonded for a long period of time.
However it was to re-open as a Top Rank Bingo Club and remains in use today as a Mecca Bingo Club. The sub-division of the auditorium has been removed. In July 2009, it was announced that the building and the entire block had been the subject of a compulsory purchase order.
Opened on 1st March 1937 with Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers in Swing Time, the Ritz Cinema was built by the Union Cinemas chain. They were soon taken over by Associated British Cinemas – ABC. It was lavishly fitted with deep pile carpets and chandeliers.
In 1961 it was re-named ABC. It was converted into a two screen cinema from July/August 1974 when the former circle became a 534 seat screen and the front stalls a second screen seating 212. The rear stalls area was converted into a Painted Wagon pub. Sadly the conversion destroyed much of the original interior of the auditorium. It was later taken over by the Cannon Cinemas group, but later went back to the ABC name.
Sadly it closed on 29th April 1999, the last of Sunderland’s major cinemas.
It has recently reopened as The Point a nightclub which has four dance floors and has now completely lost all features of its cinematic past.
Construction of Killingworth, a new town, began in 1963. Intended for 20,000 people, it was a former mining community, formed on seven hundred and sixty acres of derelict colliery land near Killingworth Village. The building of Killingworth Township was undertaken by Northumberland County Council and was not formally a New Town sponsored by the Government.
Unlike that town, Killingworth’s planners adopted a radical approach to town centre design, resulting in relatively high-rise buildings in an avant-garde and brutalist style that won awards for architecture, dynamic industry and attractive environment.
This new town centre consisted of pre-cast concrete houses, with millions of small crustacean shells unusually embedded into their external walls, five to ten storey flats, offices, industrial units and service buildings, which often consisted of artistic non-functional characteristics, shops and residential multi-storey car parks, interconnected by ramps and walkways. These made up a deck system of access to shopping and other facilities, employing the Swedish Skarne method of construction.
Originally named Killingworth Township, the latter part was quickly dropped through lack of colloquial use.
Killingworth is referred to as Killy by many residents of the town and surrounding areas.
Around 1964, during the reclamation of the derelict pit sites, a fifteen acre lake south of the town centre was created; spoil heaps were levelled, seeded and planted with semi-mature trees.
Manchester City Council agreed to use the Phoenixmodel for their prefab estates.
A total of 43,206 Phoenix prefabs were built across the country, each one designed by the John Laing Group.
The Phoenix, designed by Laing and built by themselves as well as partners McAlpine and Henry Boot, looked much like an AIROH with a central front door. It was a two-bedroom in-situ preform design with steel frame, asbestos clad walls and an innovative roof of tubular steel poles with steel panels attached. Like all designs, it came pre-painted in magnolia, with green highlights on frames and skirting.
Phoenix prefabs cost £1,200 each constructed onsite, while the specially insulated version designed for use on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides cost £2,000.
Prifysgol Aberystwyth University – Penglais CampusSY23 3AH
Led by London Welshman Hugh Owen, a small group of patriots sought from the 1850s onwards to raise enough money by public and private subscription to establish a college of university status in Wales. A project of enormous ambition, the University opened its doors in 1872 initially with a handful of teachers and just twenty five students in what was then a half-finished hotel building – the Old College on the seafront.
The first decade presented many challenges for the University’s survival. The generosity of a few individual benefactors and organised appeals for support from the ordinary people of Wales kept the University in being, and, perhaps more importantly, deeply rooted it in the minds and the affection of the Welsh people. A matter of considerable pride is that the University has made a significant contribution to the education of women, being one of the first institutions to admit female students.
Since those early days, Aberystwyth University has gone from strength to strength and now has more than 6,000 students and 2,000 staff. As the institution grew, its main campus moved from Old College on the seafront to Penglais Hill. This finely landscaped site enjoys spectacular views over the historic market town of Aberystwyth and the Cardigan Bay coastline. New buildings, including major arts and science developments, halls of residence, a magnificent Arts Centre and sports facilities are located here.
In 1935 Percy Thomas prepared a plan for the layout of a new campus, and was appointed as architect for the first three buildings to be constructed – Cledwyn, Pantycelyn and the swimming bath. This marked the beginning of the move away from the college by the sea to the college on the hill.
Built in a simple Georgian modern style, faced with Forest of Dean stonework, the building’s main entrance features a broad architrave adorned with low reliefs of agricultural scenes, and there are decorative circular stonework emblems in between the windows of the upper floor.
The carved stone work is by David Evans.
A Manchester-born sculptor who attended the Manchester School of Art, and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. After active service in the World War I, he resumed his studies at the Royal Academy, where he was instructed by Francis Derwent Wood. In 1922, he won the Landseer Prize and later went to work in the British School at Rome. He had been exhibiting at the Royal Academy since 1921. His works from the 1920’s are mainly highly stylised religious and mythological themes.
During his stay in the United States, he executed some significant work for public buildings in New York. The locations there included Rockefeller Center, Radio City, Brooklyn Post Office, a bank on Wall Street, St Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue.
Here are the four decorative panels placed higher on the building.
Immortalised in this elegant educational stamp set – designed by Mr Nicholas Jenkins of the Royal College of Art
To the right of the entrance this striking mosaic – action is ossified in the manner of a semi-permanent Pollock.
Aberystwyth Arts Centre is one of a number of campus buildings designed by Dale Owen of Percy Thomas Partnership, and completed in 1970-1972.
Built to a strongly horizontal design using grey granite aggregrate, the facade is essentially an overhanging rectangle framing of glass with an off-centre overhang. The position of the building providing unobstructed panoramic views over the main piazza style concourse and the sea beyond.
David began lecturing at Cardiff College of Art, later teaching and holding administrative posts at University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, retiring in 1988 as director of the department of visual art.
David Tinker was prominent in so many aspects of the visual arts in Wales throughout the second half of the 20th Century as a painter, sculptor, teacher, and stage designer.
Tinker is perhaps best known as one of three originators of the 56 Group with Eric Malthouse and Michael Edmonds, the new generation of young artists in Wales who were interested in modernism and keen to ally themselves to the international art world.
The 56 Group had no manifesto and for the most part they acted as an exhibiting co-operative; not all were abstract painters and their work was stylistically very different from one another, but all shared radical ideals. Their orderly revolt against the establishment was unique in the history of art in Wales.
They championed abstraction and allied themselves to European and American modernism, at a time when painters in Wales were being commended for recording the urban, rural and industrial face of Wales and its inhabitants.
As might be expected, the art establishment more readily accepted 56 Group avant garde works, and those artists who had been achieving some success as painters of the contemporary scene suddenly found themselves side-stepped, and labelled parochial.
The period 1966-1974 saw in his paintings a move toward hard-edged abstraction in which Tinker employed geometry-based structures, simple arithmetical problems, colour mixed from a restricted palette, and gentle tonal gradation.
Another great looking estate pub that was on the same estate as the Hipp which it was also fairly close to.
There was the usual two rooms inside, I had a drink in the bar room which was quite busy on my Friday afternoon visit, there was also a more comfortable lounge.
The pub was a Robinsons tied house, there were two real ales on, I had a drink of Robinsons Bitter which was a nice drink, there was also Robinsons Mild on.
We are committed to the growth and development of individual, our local and international communities. In the interim may I use this medium to invite you to be part of the move of God in our church, the Pathfinder.
The Lord bless your richly as you navigate through in Jesus name.
Situated at the junction of Salkeld Street and Cook Street
Glasgow Central Signalling Centre, located in the vee of Bridge Street Junction, opened on 2 January 1961. It replaced signal boxes at Central Station, Bridge Street Junction, Eglinton Street Junction and Eglinton Street Station. When initially opened it was capable of handling 1,000 routes.
Glasgow Central Signalling Centre closed on 27 December 2008, when its area of control was transferred to the new West of Scotland Signalling Centre – WSSC at Cowlairs. The NX panel is to be preserved. The station is currently signalled by two Westinghouse Westlock Interlockings which are controlled via an Alstom MCS control system.
The 19th-century industrial concentrations in the above-named urban areas resulted in the Tame being a much polluted waterway. As well as industrial pollution from the dyes and bleaches used in textile mills, effluent from specialised paper-making cigarette papers, engineering effluents, including base metal washings from battery manufacture, phenols from the huge coal-gas plant in Denton, rain-wash from roads and abandoned coal spoil heaps there was also the sewage effluent from the surrounding population. Up to two-thirds of the river’s flow at its confluence with the Goyt had passed through a sewage works. The anti-pollution efforts of the last thirty years of the 20th century have resulted in positive fauna distributions.
There is a plot of land to the left of Porsche which remains undeveloped, I often walk around this area, what would have once been for myself and others the place of childhood high jinx.
Now it is the domain of the fly-tipper, the home of the homeless, a war zone for a species which has declared war upon itself.
A desert of detritus, interpolated with tangles of brambles, seas of teasels and the ubiquitous buddleia.
This is the unofficial showroom for the unofficial Anthropocene Epoch – always crashing in a different car, during increasingly unseasonal weather, the superabundance of abundance.
It seems that the sun may set on us, before the sun finally sets.
Let’s take a peep at Portwood.
Game over.
Vehicle use affects our whole quality of local life. Traffic can be dangerous and intimidating, dividing communities and making street life unpleasant, whilst air pollution and traffic noise can make urban living uncomfortable.
The impacts of mass consumption are: Misuse of land and resources, exporting pollution and waste from rich countries to poor countries, obesity due to excessive consumption, a cycle of waste, disparities and poverty.
Opened in 1966 along with the slightly later Lancastrian Hall and Library, the Swinton Square shopping precinct provided an integrated modern setting for shopping, living, learning and entertainment.
The late 60s and early 70s was a time of general prosperity – and the hard landscaping offered a soft option for the local folk.
This was the age of the Precinct, celebrated nationally with postcard after postcard.
My local haunt in Ashton under Lyne.
Local traders and national chains rubbed shoulders.
There was even a Job Centre opening- there was even a wide range of vacancies.
Following a challenging year, the letting reinforces Swinton Square as a pillar in the local community. Whilst retail has been heavily affected throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, footfall at the scheme has remained buoyant, with shoppers staying local, favouring the convenience and independent retailers of Swinton Square. Renovations began on the site of the new, temporary job centre at the beginning of the year and is due to be completed in May. The centre is expected to boost footfall and support for local, independent businesses.
Despite Swinton’s many strengths, it faces similar challenges to other towns. The shopping centre and other buildings in the town centre are dated and in need of investment. Demand for local housing has grown by 23% in the last five years, but there is a lack of high-quality family and affordable housing in the right locations in the area.
The vision is just the first step of the journey, the next is to appoint a developer partner who can take this vision and help shape it, through ongoing consultation and engagement with the community, into a framework and plan for Swinton that will guide future investment.
Curiously brick-ish, for work largely concerning concrete.
Did they not know the Madcap Syd wrote See Emily Play down the road at the now demolished Leeds College of Technology?
A fact I discovered whilst researching my Leeds Walk.
Myself I would have gone with – Borrow Somebody’s Dreams ’til Tomorrow.
For here we have an exposition of the architecture of three Universities, exploring the possibilities of a new age.
An age typified by the expansion of minds and opportunities in higher education, rendered corporeal in glass, steel and concrete – with some concession to the use of brick.
I was minded of the political context to these campuses, radicalised by the events of the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Myself a student at Portsmouth Polytechnic during these heady days, where several Maoist, Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist and Trotskyite factions played out ideological debate and display, against these Modernist backdrops.
On the day of my visit to the Leeds campus, I saw three students stood behind a hardboard paste table, selling the Socialist Worker.
Along with staff building support for the following day’s UCU strike.
So to the exhibition – Another Brick In The Wall at the Stan and Audrey Burton Gallery until Saturday 25th March.
Photographer Simon Phipps shines a contemporary light on the innovative designs of this period. He has produced new work of a variety of campuses, including the University of Leeds, exclusively for the exhibition.
Alongside these contemporary photographs, the exhibition displays archival material from the Universities of Leeds, Sussex and East Anglia.
Rarely seen material from the Arup archive is also exhibited.
Let’s take a look at a topic from a bygone age that seems to come of age – there’s never been a better time to be Brutal!
Go and take a look, we really do need education – and exhibitions.
The current railway station is a modern version from the 1980s that was built on top of the original station. The level of the old platforms can be seen under the existing station’s two platforms which are connected by underpass. The initial station was opened on 22 December 1841 by the Bolton and Preston Railway – which later became part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and was subsequently served by the Lancashire Union Railway between St Helens, Wigan North Western and Blackburn from 1869.
Passenger trains over this route between Blackburn & Wigan were however withdrawn in January 1960. Further work was done in 2016 and 2017 in connection with the electrification of the line between Euxton Junction and Manchester.
Crossed over to the Interchange – which was formerly a humble bus station, opened in February 2003 replacing the previous structure.
Across the way a stand of shops with distinctive faience fascias.
Further along the Shepherds’ Victoria Hall – once home to the Jubilee of the Ancient Order of Shepherds’ Friendly Society which was quite prominent in Chorley in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s
Down the way a ways a Baptist Chapel of 1845 on Chapel Street – currently trading as Malcolm’s Musicland.
Hang a sharp right to the Market – where there is this newish piece of public art Pattern of Life a bronze relief by Diane Gorvin and mosaic work by Tracey Cartledge
This piece involves an innovative combination of cast bronze and ceramic mosaic. Two bronze relief panels display female figures holding out rolls of fabric, each decorated with patterns and images that are particular to the town of Chorley. Payphones, for example were invented and manufactured in Chorley, the crested newt is protected here and you might also notice the famous Chorley Cakes. As the fabrics tumble down, the designs are translated from bronze relief on the wall surface into 2D mosaic in the pavement.
Looking down Fazakerley Street to where Fine Fare once was.
We’ll return to such matters in a moment – we have to get to the Post Office – which is no longer a Post Office.
It was a Post Office in 1935 – it also has a later extension.
The local list declares that the post office dates from 1935. This is almost certainly erroneous since the contract documents date from 1924, and from contract to completion the average construction and fitting-out time was about 18 months.
Plans supplied by the Architects Messrs. Cheers & Smith of Blackburn which were approved by the Education Committee on the 18th August 1904 – design proposals for the new Technical School entitled Light and Air.
The considerable task of erecting the school was given to the local builder Mr. William Hampson of Pall Mall.
Surely the envy of his trade, the total contract was worth a mouth- watering £10,041 15s. 9d. – approx. £720,000 today.
The building was officially opened by the 16th Earl of Derby on September 24th 1906.
Over the road the town’s newest retail development Market Walk – the work of AEW Architects.
Chorley Council bought the shopping centre from Orchard Street Investments for £23m in 2013 and commenced a large-scale regeneration scheme in 2018 involving a £15m, 79,000 sq ft retail and leisure extension led by main contractor Eric Wright Group and designed by AEW Architects. Here, Conrad Heald of Chorley Council tells his interviewer, AEW director Phil Hepworth, how the scheme came to fruition and has rejuvenated the town centre.
The memorial re-sited in 2018 commemorates the Chorley Pals.
In less than 20 minutes, 235 of the 720 men from the 11th East Lancs. were killed. Another 350 were wounded, of which 17 would eventually succumb to their wounds. Many of the Battalion died where they fell, in No Man’s Land.
As a result of the attack on the morning of the 1st July, the Chorley Pals – Y Company, had 31 men killed and three died within a month of their wounds received on that day. 21 have no known graves and their names are transcribed on the Thiepval memorial to the Missing on the Somme battlefield. A further 59 were wounded, making a total of 93 casualties out of approximately 175 men from Chorley who went over the top that morning.
Reversing now to the former Barclays Bank – which closed earlier in 2022.
We return now to the former Fine Fare.
The company began as one single supermarket in Welwyn Garden City in 1951, as an offshoot of the Welwyn Department Store, owned by Howardsgate Holdings, the company of Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the garden city movement.
Now here’s a thing a bank which is a bank NatWest not gone west.
Next to the former Woolworths, opened in Chorley in 1930 on Market Street, with its pale Deco faience fascia.
They traded from this building for sixty five years, before closing in March 1995 in order to move to a new store on Market Walk – it became an Argos, then it didn’t.
Here we are now at a Post Office that is a Post Office but was an RBS Bank.
the Bank was the work of Cruickshank & Seward – thanks to Mainstream Modern for these archive images.
The new location is at the former Royal Bank of Scotland on Market Street in the town centre.
Since the Post Office that was based at WH Smith on New Market Street came to an end, when that store closed in January, it relocated to a temporary unit in Market Walk until a permanent solution could be found.
The unit, which had been provided by the postmaster from Burscough Bridge Post Office, closed on Tuesday.
Kenny Lamont, Post Office Network Provision Manager, said a Post Office is important to a community.
This had been a Methodist Church – then, it became the HQ of the Lancashire Electric Power Company.
The Lancashire Electric Power Company was one of the largest private electricity companies in the UK. It was established in 1900 and generated and supplied electricity to 1,200 squares miles of Lancashire from 1905 until its abolition under nationalisation in 1948.
Time to back track to the Cop Shop – the work of County Architect Roger Booth and crew.
The Magistrates’ Courts are closed and up for sale.
Next door the White Hart once upon a time the Snooty Fox, a pub with an up and down trajectory – currently open and described online as plush.
Down the road a pub no longer a pub but an Urban Spa.
We offer you a full range of professional treatments tailored to your own personal needs. We treat every client as an individual and offer an extensive range of treatments and professional products making your visit one to remember.
Let’s go to the theatre – The Empire tucked away at the back of town.
The Empire Electric Theatre opened, as the town’s first purpose-built cinema, on 3rd September 1910. In 1912 Archie Hooley began his connection with the cinema business at the Empire Electric Theatre. By 1927 it had been re-named Empire Cinema and by 1930 it was equipped with a Western Electricsound system and was operated by the Perfecto Filmograph Co. Ltd. By 1939 it was operated by the Snape & Ward chain. According to the Kine Year Books, in 1940 the seating was for 800, while by 1952 it had been reduced to 679 – still a far cry from today’s 236 seats. 3D films were shown in the early-1950’s. Archie had died in 1944; his son Selwyn closed the cinema in 1957, apparently “because of the taxes”.
1959
Wrestling took over for a while before Chorley Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society – CADOS acquired the building and renamed it the Chorley Little Theatre. Since 1960 CADOS have been putting on high-quality productions, presenting at least six productions per season – from September to July. It is also the home of the award-winning Chorley Youth Theatre who meet every Saturday, putting on shows throughout the year; and Chorley Empire Community Cinema who present the cinema experience on their 21ft wide screen with 8-Speaker Surround Sound. Run entirely by volunteers the theatre has state-of-the-art sound systems and a full range of lighting equipment. There are two spacious dressing rooms, space for costumes and props and the Empire Bar. The building has disabled access throughout the public area, including a toilet, and the auditorium is fitted with a hearing loop. There are three spaces for wheelchairs in the auditorium. It was re-named Chorley Empire Cinema at Chorley Theatre in October 2019 and films are still part of the programming.
The Odeon Market Street was built for and operated by Oscar Deutsch’s Odeon Theatres Ltd. chain, it opened on 21st February 1938 with Jack Buchanan in The Sky’s the Limit.
Architect Harry Weedon was assisted by PJ Price.
It was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th February 1971 with George Lazenby in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. After laying closed and un-used for over two years it was sold to an independent bingo operator and re-opened on 9th August 1973 as a Tudor Bingo Club. It later became a Gala Bingo Club which was renamed Buzz Bingo Club in June 2018. It was closed on March 21, 2020 due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. On 15th July 2020 it was announced that the closure would be permanent.
The building was handed over to Chorley Council who decided that asbestos removal would be too costly and the building was demolished in August 2021.
Located on Salisbury Street, off Cunliffe Street, built in 1888 as a military warehouse, it was converted into a roller skating rink around 1909. It opened as the Pavilion Picture Palace on 14th September 1911, operated by George Testo Sante, a music hall strong man, who also operated the Grand Theatre as a cinema. By 1915, music hall acts were also part of the programme. After the end of World War I, the flat floor of the cinema was raked, allowing for better viewing of the screen. The proscenium was 30ft wide, the stage was 16 feet deep and there were two dressing rooms.
The Pavilion Cinema was the first in town to screen ‘talkies, when an Electrochord sound system was installed in 1929. It was taken over by the J.F. Emery Circuit in 1932 and they operated it until the end of 1933. The sound system was upgraded to a British Talking Pictures sound system. In 1954 it was the first cinema in town to be fitted with CinemaScope and the proscenium was widened to 36 feet.
The Pavilion Cinema was closed by 1962 and converted into a bingo club. In 1972 it was re-opened as a cinema again, but due to Star Cinemas chain barring it from showing first run features – they operated the Plaza Cinema, it was closed after 5 months of operation. It was later demolished and the area was redeveloped for housing.
No trace of The Hippodrome Theatre on Gillibrand Street, which was built and opened in 1909, or the Theatre Royal, opened on 30th September 1911, It was demolished in 1959.
A supermarket was built on the site which later became a McDonalds, which is now a Pizza Hut.
Last but not least – located on the Flat Iron Parade, aka Cattle Market, The Grand Theatre was a wooden building built in 1885, which presented melodramas and plays. In June 1909 it was taken over by George Testo Santo, who had been a music hall strongman, and his family. It went over to operating as a Picture Palace for a short season.
By 1914 it was operating as a full time cinema, but was destroyed by fire in 1914.
The police station and magistrates’ court at Chorley was designed to replace a building from 1896 – a weights and measures plaque from the original building was retained and remounted at the foot of the new building.
The two buildings were set adjacent one another and around a newly formed square with one side made up of the rear of the existing town hall. This small civic group was intended to relate to one another in scale, but was markedly contrasting in its material make-up.
County Architect’s Report: 1963-64.
The design team was Roger Booth, Lancashire County Architect; C.A. Spivey, Assistant County Architect; D.B. Stephenson, Design Architect; and D.G. Edwards, A.G. Gass, responsible for the detailed design and construction. The seven-storey in-situ concrete framed main block was the last bespoke police station to be built in Lancashire, following this the department developed a systemised concrete construction method which was deployed across the county. The dramatic cantilevers gave the new building a stature and presence that signalled authority. The lower levels were accessed by ramps and provided space for police vehicles. To enter the police station one ascended a set of external stairs across a pool that once contained koi carp – fittingly, one boy described the new building as a ‘fishtank’ upon its completion. The magistrates’ court was finished externally in a grey brick and carried the signature pyramid rooflights that were synonymous with the Department.
Coun Alistair Bradley, Leader of Chorley Council, confirmed that the council had enquired to take ownership of the building but that this was knocked back.
He said: We’ve enquired about taking the building on but the owners, the Ministry of Justice, has said they want to take it to market.
The building is being advertised as a potential site for a future office, residential, restaurant and bar, leisure, entertainment, and hotel.
Asked about its future, Chorley councillor Aaron Beaver told Lancs Live he had heard no news of developments but desperately wanted to see something happen with the building, he said:
It’s a perfect location. There’s lots of things it could be used for.
If you were to knock it down, there’s all sorts of things which could be built there. If you were to convert it to something like flats, it could be tricky because there’s not many windows.
Commenting on the progress of the sale since it’s closure, he added:
I wouldn’t say it’s slow moving, I’d say it’s not moving.
I was last here in 2020 – made ever so welcome in this Byzantine cathedral like church.
The apsed sanctuary is completely covered in a mosaic scheme with the theme Eternal Life designed by Eric Newton. Newton was born Eric Oppenheimer, later changing his surname by deed poll to his mother’s maiden name. He was the grandson of Ludwig Oppenheimer, a German Jew who was sent to Manchester to improve his English and then married a Scottish girl and converted to Christianity. In 1865 he set up a mosaic workshop, (Ludwig Oppenheimer Ltd, Blackburn St, Old Trafford, Manchester) after spending a year studying the mosaic process in Venice. Newton had joined the family company as a mosaic craftsman in 1914 and he is known to have studied early Byzantine mosaics in Venice, Ravenna and Rome. He later also became art critic for the Manchester Guardian and a broadcaster on ‘The Critics’. Newton started the scheme in 1932 and took over a year to complete it at a cost of £4,000. It had previously been thought that he used Italian craftsmen, but historic photographs from the 1930s published in the Daily Herald show Oppenheimer mosaics being cut and assembled by a Manchester workforce of men and women. It is likely, therefore, that the craftsmen working on St John the Baptist were British.
There had, as ever, been issues with the structure, water ingress and such, given several flat roofs and a temperamental ferro-concrete dome.
Happily, a successful Lottery Heritage Fund grant has covered the cost of two phases of repair to the physical fabric.
Thanks to the Parish Team, for once again making us all feel so welcome, and thanks also for their efforts in securing the finances which have made the restoration possible.
We were all issued with our hard hats and hi-vis at the comprehensive and informative introductory talks.
Followed by a detailed explanation of the mosaic work being undertaken by Gary and his team from the Mosaic Restoration Company.
This involves skilfully cleaning the whole work, whilst repairing and replacing any damaged areas.
We were then privileged to ascend the vast scaffold, the better to inspect the work up close and personal.
And this is what we saw.
Many thanks again to our hosts, the contractors and all those involved with this spectacular undertaking.
