I was out walking on the corner one day.
I spied some old washing.
In the doorway it lay.
Well there was a doorway, but no door.
There was a door, but not attached to the doorway.
Well there was washing, I had inadvertently found the Best Laundrette.
Unattended, seemingly unloved, washing spinning happily, unobserved.
Guantanamo orange walls, stormy petrol blue sky linoleum floor.
Lit by several stark, bare fluorescent tubes.
I quickly went about my business, made my excuses to myself and left.
Once, for a very, very long time indeed there was a shoreline, then sure enough, eventually there was a Hoverport – then there wasn’t.
Opened in 1969 just outside Ramsgate along the Kent coast, Hoverlloyd a Swedish owned company began a cross-channel hovercraft service to Calais.
Along came Prince Philip:
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/prince-philip-opens-hovercraft-at-ramsgate
Can came:
And went:
The passengers’ every need was attended to with alacrity and style.
“As a Stewardess your appearance was paramount, a beautician would come in during training to teach us how to apply make up.”
But it simply wasn’t enough.
The life of Christopher Cockerell’s bold British invention, was short and bumpy.
Genevieve Payne, a former stewardess:
“I remember the summer of 1979 as a year of really bad weather and rough seas.”
“I was working on a craft in a force 8, so on this day we were literally hitting the ceiling, passengers were throwing up everywhere.”
“One lady became hysterical I had to slap her to calm her down.”
By the 1980’s Pegwell and the hovercraft were in terminal terminus decline.
It’s a lot less bother without a hover.
What prevails is the shoreline, a concrete landing skirt and the slow process of reclamation, as nature decides that the council is quite right to decide to create a nature reserve.
Thanks to and for further information http://www.hoverlloyd.org/index.html
Here it is today:
Following my previous post on Market Street, using archive material from the 60s and 70s, I was prompted to record the current state of the street.
To the east is the Arndale, I chose to concentrate on the western elevation and the extant facades that chart a story from Victorian to Moderne – with a little rebuild, pastiche and grandiose Classicism in between.
See what you think, the sooty deposits have long been sandblasted away, much of the previous exciting noise and clutter, of above eye level signage ceases to shout, from just below the rooftops.
It’s a cleaner, leaner and possibly meaner world.
It always pays to look up – just don’t inadvertently bump into things.
City streets are by their nature subject to movement and change, things literally come and go – in milliseconds, days and decades. People and places are shaped by the forces of function and fashion, economics and history.
Before the Arndale, pre-pedestrianisation, Market Street, from the Fifties until the Seventies, was one of Manchester’s key arterial, retail thoroughfares. Mixing mixed traffic, shops, cafés and restaurants, bars, cinemas, offices and administration.
The architectural skyline, had the raggedy silhouette, of a century of build and rebuild.
Lower your eyes, there’s Classical, Gothic, Baroque, local Rococo, Deco, Moderne and Modern – that’s right Madam no two the same, four for a pound, get it while you can.
Lower still, things are still never still, a riot of colour in black and white Vitrolite.
Neon abounds, the names are never changed to protect the innocent.
Local traders are slowly replaced by national and international multinationals.
You have nothing to lose but but your chain-store now.
Henry Cohen came to Manchester around 1880. In 1910 he opened a men’s clothing outlet at the corner of Market Street called the Smart Outfitting Company. Having turned down a chance to join Marks and Spencer, he eventually built his department store in Market Street which opened in 1923. Henry’s Stores was redeveloped in the early 60’s acquiring an extension and a unifying Modernist façade, the site and store was acquired by BHS in the mid 60’s.
Rylands Building is a Grade II listed building in the building was originally built as a warehouse by the Rylands textile company which was founded by John Rylands. The building was designed by the eminent Manchester architects, Fairhursts, in an Art Deco style. It is clad in Portland stone and features a decorative corner tower and eclectic ‘zig zag’ window lintels.
Following a fire, in 1957, which totally destroyed the premises of Paulden’s Department Store, in All Saints, the company acquired the Rylands warehouse building and converted it to a store. This was then a direct rival to the Lewis’s store, on the opposite side of Market Street. In 1973 Debenhams, the owner of Pauldens rebranded the store in their name. Since that time it has remained Debenhams.
Marks and Spencers and Burton’s both undertook extensive Modernist building in the early 60’s on on the Corporation Street site, neither have survived. The Chelsea Girl steel frontage, UCP Restaurant beloved of the Manchester Modernists, Kardomah Café and countless other landmarks are long gone. Lewis’s has become Primark.
The double indignity of the Arndale and a bomb have changed things forever.
Nothing stands still – this is Market Street.
With thanks to http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
89 Roe St – tucked into the side of the sprawling St John’s Centre car park and a cosily withdrawn corner of the Royal Court Theatre.
The New Penny Farthing.
A name which instantly evokes arcane loose change and strange bicycles.
Each time as I pass I’m drawn in, yet never enter.
Amazed by the array of ever changing signage, happy hours abound.
It’s a happy house, we’re happy here.
A dark drinking den awaits within, the daytime drinker abides, imbibing.
Stay new.
The cathedral’s architect, Frederick Gibberd, was the winner of a worldwide design competition.
Construction began in 1962 and was completed in 1967.
William Mitchell designed the concrete relief below the bell, two front and two side doors.
Possibly, probably and inevitably the finest Modernist building in Britain.
It continues to surprise the surprised visitor on each successive visit.
A compelling structure which articulates the ever changing marine light, both inside and out – physically and spiritually.
Dizzy detail waiting to be discovered and rediscovered.
A decorative order of the highest order.
Treat your body and mind to a day out – or simply banish the last traces of Cartesian Dualism and immerse yourself, soon.
http://www.liverpoolmetrocathedral.org.uk
An estate with a chequered career.
Once a beacon of Modernist design, now a listed concrete grid, in arrested decline, an essay in status and stasis, high above the city of Sheffield.
A handful of former residents of the once acclaimed social housing, cling to the western edge.
Phase one of the Urbansplash redevelopment has carefully coloured in a portion of the eastern corner, then exited, their cladding tucked tightly under their arms.
Impasse.
All tinned up with nowhere to go, to walk the walkways, is to enter a ghost town, where no tumbleweeds tumble. Billy the corporation cleaner is happy to work alone, sweeping the empty spaces.
“Some don’t like working up here, I don’t mind my own company. Even if there was just one resident left, we’d still have to keep the place in order. You’d love my house, it’s an Army Barracks in the centre of town. Wife’s the caretaker, been in her family for three generations.”
This is the second of three visits I have made from across the Pennines.
Mark – “Why are all these photographers coming here from Manchester?”
“Been here some time, this is the second flat I’ve had, just missed out on one of the new ones though. Had this one nine years. Bloke threw himself off last week, he had a wife kids, parked up and just jumped.”
Take a look around.
The dissipated filling, in an Aldi and Tesco sandwich, a flat roofed, concrete and brick sixties shopping development, a precinct.
Small towns typically comprise of several retail developments, of various vintages, chasing diminishing returns, in ever expanding rectangles.
Stalybridge is no exception, once a bustling mill town, it sought salvation in a hedonistic mini-break by the River Tame, party industry.
Stalyvegas.
The bright lights of the society of the spectacle, now extinguished, burnt brightly in Bar Liquid, Club Rififi, H2O and Amber Lounge.
Walking the streets today, a meagre spread of shoppers, hardened daytime drinkers and lost souls.
Bids were made for a Portas Pilot, Mary contrarily resisted.
The Northern Powerhouse hits the buffers.
The Buffet prevails.
Confusion
Fusion
Confusion
Imagine
A single storey brick built street corner boozer, it’s not so hard to do.
It’s Sheffield let’s call it the Whetstone, how appropriate.
Bored?
How about the Moorfoot Tavern?
Sounds classy, that’ll do.
Well it did until it didn’t, somehow it migrates south, then west.
Paris Texas – how about Rome Mexico Yorkshire?
El Paso it is then –
Standing on the corner watching all the world go by.
Reflecting on and reflecting it’s older neighbours.
State House Dale Street.
“Built 1962 to the designs of Edmund Kirby & Sons. It has an assertive service tower, apparently clad in polished granite. Unusually, above the entrance is a concrete slab with a relief depicting what looks like a coat of arms above the building’s name. Kirby’s practice moved into the building for a time.”
Three well proportioned volumes – a central service tower, main block and outriding, lower level base.
An exciting conflation of grids, contrasting in scale and finish.
As ever – go see for y’self.
127 Dale Street, corner of North Street, just by the Ship and Mitre, across from the Queensway Tunnel entrance?
Yes that’s the one, Liverpool’s most remarkable, least remarked upon building.
So clean, so modern, so new, a delightful grid of materials, glass, steel, polished marble, brick and patinated beaten metal.
Stand back and wonder, move in and sigh with delight.
As I went about my snappy business, I was approached by a local – Mark.
Surprised by my curiously, up close, slow scrutiny of the building, he went on to explain that he was familiar with the architect Derek Jones who had worked on the design for Ormrod and Partners in 1964.
Formerly home to Higson’s Brewery offices, now housing the Merseyside Museums administration and design teams, the exterior is largely intact.
So am I.
Go take a look.
I want it.
Historic England want it.
Hopefully you and the people of Sheffield want it,
– anyway it’s listed.
http://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1393220
“1964 by George S Hay, Chief Architect for CWS, with interior design by Stanley Layland, interior designer for CWS. Reinforced concrete with Blue Pearl granite tiles and veneers, grey granite tiles and veneers, buff granite blocks, glass, and brick.”
The Liberal Democrat Council objected, saying
“It could be a major barrier to regenerating Castlegate.”
There is now the possibility of redevelopment as a creative hub.
It was a Co-op on the grandest of scales.
It has it all, public art, monolithic proportions and finish, bags of detail and scale in abundance. A fascinating building to explore and certainly one that fills my little heart with joy in superabundance
A building of period distinction, it deserves its preservation.
We do not require another patch of steel and wilfully wayward clad nowheresville non- architecture, replete with aspirational retail agogo.
Go see it soon!
Moments from the centre of the City, bordered by dual carriageways and a substantial roundabout, sits a most remarkable building.
What is it?
It’s almost unfathomable.
A carpark lacking entrance and exit, abattoir, contemporary art space?
No – an electrical substation, on such a colossal scale as to relieve you temporarily, of a gasp or two.
Finished entirely in unfinished concrete, a great volume, broken by vertical and horizontal lines, punctuated by intermittent abutments.
Accessed externally via a most extraordinary glazed and enclosed staircase.
Wisely Historic England have had the site listed:
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1415383
“Electricity substation. 1968 to designs by consulting architects Jefferson, Sheard and Partners, Sheffield, led by Bryan Jefferson, in association with the Regional Civil Engineers’ Department of the CEGB North East Region. Contractors, Longden & Sons Ltd, Sheffield. Reinforced concrete frame with board-marked finish with formwork bolt marks, construction and daywork joints emphasized, concrete floor slabs, blue engineering facing bricks, cladding panels of Cornish granite aggregate.”
Go see for yourself, if you don’t believe my eyes.
Manchester Orbital – a coach trip around the outer and upper limits of the city’s Modernist Architecture.
Organised by the Manchester Modernist Society
http://www.modernist-society.org
“Seifert’s corporate buildings were regularly bold, those in Manchester no exception, but this is perhaps the most monolithic of his North-West schemes. The site, in a depression adjacent the River Irk in Blackley, was formerly owned by ICI, by whom the building was commissioned. At one time, a four storey ICI laboratory building by émigré architect Serge Chermayeff also stood close. Here, the simple massing, formed by the junction of horizontal and vertical volumes, bears several of Seifert and Partners trademark gestures; the hexagonal geometries, the cut away sections of wall to form entrance ways between structural elements, and the repetitive facade. The end wall is reminiscent of Tolworth Tower, also by Seifert. The tower and podium configuration is a product of the brief; the machine hall had to be at ground level and have no construction above. The narrow tower has no internal columns, the structural grid is mirrored in the services arrangement and the two co-exist outside the usable volume of the laboratory space, in the walls and floor. This solution is expressed in the deep reveals of the main façade, services travel vertically between the window modules. Whilst somewhat hidden, the building reveals itself fantastically from elevated vantage points, the tram south from Bowker Vale station being one such location. Originally it was intended that four of these towers would be built and run along the river valley in some sort of massive futurist domino arrangement.”
With thanks to Mainstream Modern
http://www.mainstreammodern.co.uk/casestudies.aspx/Detail/72/hexagon-tower
It’s ever so easy to fall in love with a building, that’s ever so lovable.
So much of its time and place – a perfect piece of Seaside Moderne.
Sun soaked and whiter than white, against almost clear blue southern skies.
A luxury liner beached and beloved, now returned to showroom condition.
Go see for y’self.
http://www.modernistbritain.co.uk/post/building/Marine+Court/
Hardly by accident, passing Pevensey Bay by bike one sunny summer’s day, hurriedly intent on catching up with old friends.
Having visited here some years ago, under the guidance of pal Pauline, I was as ever, over eager to renew our previously brief acquaintance.
There they were waiting patiently, to the left of a long straight road, running parallel to the adjacent shore.
Oyster Bungalows – so called for their cylindrical form and formerly scalloped barge boards.
Holiday homes the work of designer / architect: Martin & Saunders Limited built: 1937 – 1939.
Small and perfectly formed, they all seem to have suffered the indignities of ageing none to gracefully.
Subject to the whims of fashion and the uPVC expediency of our age.
Typically no two are the same, variegated planting, neglect and graceless addenda grace the previously pristine homes.
For all that, their diminutive charm remains undiminished.
My spirits lifted as I strolled by, inevitably yours will too.
There’s a world going on underground.
At ground level.
Fenced off, rather poorly though.
Not much here to deter even the faint hearted urban explorer.
Find a gap and get in.
Join the taggers and lollygaggers,
Underground.
Mr Turner came here way back when,
The same sea lapped a different shore,
A gallery stands where he passed,
If passing pop in,
Or wander the perimeter in search of a sense,
Of well being, or otherwise,
Seeking a link with some not too distant past,
When a different sea lapped the same shore.
https://www.turnercontemporary.org
Two.
Parachuted from who knows where, onto the unsuspecting seafront.
Backed by a rambling range of well behaved Georgian terraces, facing a remorselessly mutable sea.
Affording space age shelter to the passing pilot of an ever imminent future.
Sit in, look through, out and beyond.
Should you, as I did wander down Northdown Road, Cliftonville, you will chance upon Pottons at 262.
By now however, ingress is more than somewhat inhibited.
It’s closed.
The most exciting and extant period fascia, once gave way to oak fittings and fixtures festooned with all manner of menswear, exotic and plain accoutrements, now inaccessible.
It’s gone.
A few sad remnants were on sale, administered in their final days by Lorraine, employed for 35 years in a family business, whose trade had once included made to measure, fine millinery and quality accessories for the discerning gent around town.
No more.
