Stafford Walk

Posted on by modernmoocher

To begin at the beginning – we arrive at Stafford Railway Station.

The current station was built in 1962, by the architect William Robert Headley, as part of the modernisation programme which saw the electrification of the West Coast Main Line.

Illustration: John Greene

On leaving the station there is an as yet partially un-let Sixties office block to let – Victoria Park House.

Onward to the County Technical College 1937 Grade II Listed – interior completed 1946.

The shell of the building was completed in 1937, after which it was used as an American army hospital during the war, then completed afterwards. 

Heavily loaded with Art Deco details.

The new £28m three-storey Skills & Innovation Centre at Stafford College, completed in August 2023, was one of the first further education college schemes to be delivered under the DfE framework and a pathfinder scheme for delivery in accordance with the Further Education Output Specification. The new Centre is equipped with cutting-edge equipment and state-of-the-art facilities for construction, engineering and hybrid / electric vehicle maintenance facilities, as well as IT rich seminar suites and open learning break-out spaces along with a 4-court sports hall, a fully-equipped gym and a flexible 300-seat auditorium.

Ellis Williams

A 1970’s block was demolished to make way for the new development.

Almost everywhere we go we find a PoMo Crown Courts 1991 – architects: Associated Architects of Birmingham, cost of £10.4 million.

The war memorial of 1922 is by Joseph James Whitehead.

Sneaking through the alley to and before the McDonalds – one many more recent buildings with jetted lead clad bays.

Keeping the town Tudor one bay at a time..

Further along a Sixties Boots.

The Classical stone frontage of the Guildhall Shopping Centre.

Working with Mercia Real Estate, Glancy Nicholls Architects have designed a contextual mixed-use scheme in the heart of Stafford Town Centre, within the footprint of a disused shopping centre. This includes the regeneration of the 1930’s Guildhall building that serves as the main entrance to the shopping centre and the listed Market Square building. 

Glancy Nicholls

On the corner a Santander Bank

Across the way an understated Burton’s.

Around the corner a somewhat neglected retail development.

And a long lost Wilko.

Amidst it all the curious time warp that is Trinity Church 1988.

It is used by Methodist and United Reformed Church congregations.

Tucked away in a minor maze of retail a piece of figurative commemorative public art by Glynis Owen Jones, entitled Stafford Faces.

Around the corner a big B&M.

Further along a brick FoB Telephone Exchange of 1959.

Adjoined by the County Records building.

Pringle Richards Sharratt Architects have been appointed by Staffordshire County Council to create a new History Centre for Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent.

The new £4m centre will be located on Eastgate Street in Stafford and will hold historical records and collections up to 1,000 years old.

The scheme will help to provide a rejuvenated service combining the existing Records Office building and William Salt Library, in Stafford and provide a welcoming destination for all of those with an interest in local history. This will include bringing on to the Stafford site the Lichfield Records Office and aspects of the County museum.

Further FoB in the Civic Building.

Close by the Staffordshire Place a civic and retail mixed use development.

Our scheme delivers 135,000 ft2 of high quality contemporary office space across two buildings linked by a new town square. The ground floor incorporates a mix of retail and leisure uses around
a sequence of smaller public spaces to maximise the amount of visible active frontage and create a natural extension to the town centre.

Sustainability issues fundamentally informed the design approach, from mitigating energy consumption to ‘future proofing’ the finished building. The building achieves a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating and a European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive Rating ‘A’.

3D Reid

Surprise surprise another retail development Riverside.

£70m riverside town centre retail and leisure development in the heart of Stafford. The 230,000 sq. ft. scheme anchored by M&S will deliver 18 retail units arranged over ground and first floors, five leisure units and a six-screen cinema to complement and strengthen the town centre economy and create new businesses and jobs.

Harris Partnership

Stafford’s £100 million Riverside development was officially launching today with two high street chains open for business on August 4th 2016.

None of this can detract from the monolithic complex Telephone Exchange.

Onwards across the main road past the Asda and up the road to Pennycrofts Court.

Featuring a split level garage facility.

The just around the corner this little corner of Vienna in Stafford – Corporation Street Flats.

Coniston, Windemere and Rydal were among the first council homes to be built in Stafford, between 1951-52, under the direction of County Architect CM Coombes.

The flats were built as a result of The Housing – Financial and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1946, which gave subsidies to local authorities to provide social housing. The expansion of the Borough Council’s civic duties included the employment of County Architects, in this case CM Coombes FRIBA, to whom these flats are attributed. 

54 flats were built in total, to a distinctly Modernist design, and their appearance and setting are very well preserved.

Let’s head back into the town centre – to the Grade II Listed Picture House 1914

Architectural alterations made by: Captain Fred Campbell in 1930.

The Picture House was closed on 30th March 1995 after a three week run of Disclosure starring Michael Douglas, there were seventy eight attending the final performance.

Cinema Treasures.

Close by the former Odeon

Architects: Roland Satchwell 1936

It was disposed of by the Rank Organisation in July 1981 and was taken over by the Hutchinson Leisure Group who re-named it Astra Cinema. In December 1981 it was tripled with 435 seats in the former stalls and two mini cinemas in the former circle seating 170 and 168.

In 1988 it was taken over by Apollo Cinemas and re-named Apollo Cinema. The downstairs cinema was closed and became a bingo club for a couple of years, during which time the two mini cinemas in the former circle remained open. The bingo operation gave way to films again in 1990 and all three screens were again open, with seating for 305, 170 and 164. In January 2014 it was taken over by the Curzon Cinemas chain and renamed Stafford Cinema.

It was closed on 18th December 2017 with Star Wars:The Last Jedi.

Cinema Treasures

Onwards but backwards to the Civic Centre.

Tiled mural by Brian Lambert 1979

Finally arriving at this lively aggregate gable.

Okehampton to Plymouth

Posted on by modernmoocher

Tuesday 28th July 2015 waking up early on the outskirts of Okehampton – I went next door to explore – the Wash and Go.

I went back to Okehampton.

Headed out of town along the old railway line to Plymouth – where rests the solemn remains of previous railway activity and Meldon Quarry.

It’s believed that the first quarrying began around the late 1700s when the local limestone was extracted. Over the years this gradually gave over to aggregate quarrying and apelite quarrying until it final closure. The original owners of the quarry were the London and South Western Railway and then came Britsh Rail and finally EEC Aggregates.

Crossing Meldon Viaduct.

Meldon Viaduct carried the London and South Western Railway across the West Okement River at Meldon on Dartmoor. The truss bridge, which was constructed from wrought iron and cast iron not stone or brick arches, was built under the direction of the LSWR’s chief engineer, WR Galbraith. After taking three years to build, the dual-tracked bridge opened to rail traffic in 1874. Usage was limited to certain classes of locomotive because the viaduct had an axle load limit. Although regular services were withdrawn in 1968, the bridge was used for shunting by a local quarry. In the 1990s the remaining single line was removed after the viaduct was deemed to be too weak to carry rail traffic.

The crossing is now used by The Granite Way, a long-distance cycle track across Dartmoor. The viaduct, which is a Scheduled Monument, is now one of only two such surviving railway bridges in the United Kingdom that uses wrought iron lattice piers to support the cast iron trusses – the other is Bennerley Viaduct between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

Wikipedia

We’re off across the edge of Dartmoor.

On an old railway line with prefabricated concrete railway huts.

And a bus stop at Mary Tavy a village with a population of around 600, located four miles north of Tavistock.

And a population of one delightful litter bin.

And CJ Down Coach Hire – the pride of Dartmoor.

Don’t the road look rough and rocky, will the sea look wide and deep?

Time for a timely tea and flapjack stop.

So far so good the nicest weather of the tour, shortest yet most amenable distance through moorland, upland and downland – with a final traffic free descent into Plymouth.

Back in the land of the tower block.

Chichester House Citadel Road The Hoe Plymouth PL1 3BA

  • Spacious One Bedroom Apartment
  •  Good Size Living Room
  •  Modernisation Required

Lang Town and Country

Past the former Odeon

Architects – Percy Bartlett and William Henry Watkins

Built on the site of the Andrews New Picture Palace, which had opened in 1910, and was demolished in 1930. The Gaumont Palace was opened on 16th November 1931 with Jack Hulbert in “The Ghost Train” and Sydney Howard in “Almost a Divorce”.

The imposing brick building has a white stone tower feature in the central section above the entrance. Seating inside the auditorium was provided for 1,462 in the stalls and 790 in the circle.

It was re-named Gaumont in 1937 currently closed and at risk.

Cinema Treasures

The post war redevelopment of Plymouth produced this sizable Portland Stone Shopping Centre.

‘A Plan for Plymouth’ was a report prepared for the City Council by James Paton Watson, City Engineer and Surveyor, and Patrick Abercrombie, Consultant Architect, published in 1943.

Planning is not merely the plotting of the streets of a town; its fundamental essence is the conscious co-relation of the various uses of the land to the best advantage of all inhabitants. Good planning therefore, presupposes a knowledge and understanding of the people, their relationship to their work, their play, and to each other, so that in the shaping of the urban pattern, the uses to which the land is put are so arranged as to secure an efficient, well- balanced and harmonious whole.

The Civic Centre soon to be redeveloped.

The magnificent dalle de verre fascia of the Crown and County Courts.

having had a good old look around I sought shelter for the night, with some difficulty I found a profoundly plain room. The town seemingly full of itinerant contractors, filling the vast majority of available space.

Not to worry let’s have a look at the seafront.

Tinside Lido by J Wibberley Borough Engineer, with Edmund Nuttall and Sons and John Mowlem and Company, builders, with entrance building of 1933 by the same engineer.

Set in a beautiful location overlooking the sea at the tip of Plymouth Hoe and voted one of the top 10 best outdoor pools in Europe, Tinside Lido is an attraction not to be missed.

Built in 1935, Tinside is a slice of the quintessential British seaside from a bygone era. The Lido is a wonderful example of art-deco style and is Grade II listed.

Time for a timely 99 tub – what ho!

Followed by several pints of Dartmoor Jail in the delightful Dolphin Hotel.

The Dolphin Hotel is a pub on the Barbican , the building, which is known as either the Dolphin Inn or Dolphin Hotel, is a Grade II listed building. It notable as the setting of several of the artist Beryl Cook’s paintings.

The three storey building was constructed in the early 19th century, although it may contain fabric from an earlier structure. It has a slate mansard roof surrounded by a tall parapet with a moulded cornice. The front has white stucco with plaster reliefs of dolphins. The pub is associated with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, some of whom stayed at the hotel on their return from exile in Australia in 1838, when a Mr Morgan was the landlord.

It is a no-frills unmodernised pub famous for its cask ale, draught Bass served straight from the barrel. The sign on the front of the building has always called the pub the ‘Dolphin Hotel’. In 2010 the pub was refurbished, but vandalised in 2014.

A wobbly walk home and a good night’s rest

Night night.