When walking the streets of Welshpool, one often finds oneself outside.
Outside a launderette.
I paused.
The porch was decorated by the most enchanting mosaic, Vickery and Co.
Hosiers, Hatters and Outfitters.
Politely, ever so politely, I asked the two local lads if they would step aside from their porch perch one moment, I snapped.
And walked on.
Upon my return, nobody was here, I hurriedly occupied the vacant space, with the expansive volume of my incurable curiosity.
Here is what I found.
Life is full of tiny delights.
Newtown, a town of tiny delights, my journey through Wales by bike took me there.
None more delightful and surprising than the branch of WH Smiths, its exterior adorned with the most beautiful of signs, tiles and lamps.
Curious, curiously I explored further, the porch housed a newspaper and magazine stall with further tiled images.
These tiles were made by Carter & Co. at their pottery works in Poole, Dorset in the 1920s. Commissioned by the retailer, they were installed in the entrance ways of a number of its branches. They were intended to advertise the wide selection of books and other items on sale, however their distinctive Art Deco style and the scenes depicted also expose a great deal about society at that time.
In subsequent decades, particularly during periods of refurbishment from the 1960s, many shops lost their decorative panels, either being removed or covered over. Only seven branches of WHSmith are known to have their tile panels intact, with a few surviving in private collections. Many tiles were rescued by WHSmith and these can now be seen in a museum housed in the Newtown branch in Powys.
The staff were typically helpful and accommodating – directing me to the Museum upstairs – just pull the rope to one side.
You could be in the middle of nowhere.
You are in the middle of nowhere.
Though never six feet from a rat, or a mile from a main road.
Moments away from a laundrette.
Imagine my amazement, on arrival in a town straddling the border of the counties of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire in west Wales and lying on the River Teffi.
A launderette.
The heady of mix of interior austerity.
Functionally muted green, grey sky blue, nothing added.
An all too distinctive aroma of who knows what – warm water, soap and humanity?
Wash your dirty linen in public.
Yorkshire is a county of market towns – Bradford is no exception, a mediaeval village expanding with the growth of the wool trade and the coming of the Industrial Revolution.
Flourishing.
The site was originally occupied by an imposing building of 1878.
Demolished in 1973.
To be replaced by a Brutalist build in the same year.
A structure of bold geometry, contrasting brick and warm, raw striated concrete.
The huge building, designed by John Brunton & Partners, was dubbed Bradford’s ‘space-age shopping centre’ when it opened in 1976. One of a series of American-style Arndale malls
Now the city council has purchased the centre for £15.5 million and agreed a deal that will see Primark – the largest of Kirkgate’s remaining stores – move to Bradford’s Broadway mall which opened in 2015.
The initiative will allow the authority to double the size of its proposed City Village programme, which it hopes will create better public spaces and 1,000 new homes in a ‘world-class sustainable urban’ across 5 acres of city centre land.
The interior has several decorative features, tiles their authorship and origins unknown, consisting of four 2.5 metre, and one 6.5 metre square ceramic panels.
Alongside William Mitchell concrete reliefs.
We now know that they are the work of Fritz Steller – also responsible for Huddersfield’s Queensgate Market ceramics.
So farewell fair Kirkgate, I love your stairwell.
Well.
I’ve never ever been here before – my thanks to the Sheffield Modernist Society for arranging the visit, part of a walking tour of the city, the first of many, one hopes.
You can find them here http://www.modernist-society.org/sheffield/
Or possibly simply bump into them, casually walking around Sheffield and environs.
The Arts Tower is an exciting amalgam of Manchester’s CIS Tower, Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building and itself. A sleek slab of steel and glass, occupying a prominent site with views across Sheffield’s seven hills.
On a sunny Sunday in early April the adjoining library was alive with studying students and Modernists, attracting the odd, odd look, as we stopped and stooped to snap the odd period detail or two. It has retained much of its original character and features, deliciously elegant, almost edible chairs, some signage – and a clock.
Though the seven is mysteriously missing.
It was opened by TS Elliot.
On 12th May 1959 – it was a Tuesday.
The Arts Tower 12 Bolsover Street in Sheffield, belonging to the University of Sheffield and opened in 1966. English Heritage has called it
“the most elegant university tower block in Britain of its period”.
At 255 feet/78 m tall, it is the second tallest building in the city. It is also the tallest university building in the United Kingdom.
Designed by architects Gollins, Melvin, Ward & Partners, construction of the tower started in 1961 and lasted four years.
Entry to the building was originally made by a wide bridge between fountains over a shallow pool area in front of the building. This pool was eventually drained and covered over when it was found that strong down drafts of wind hitting the building on gusty days caused the fountain to soak people entering and exiting the building.
The building was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother in June 1966; it has 20 stories and a mezzanine level above ground. As its name suggests, the building originally housed all the University’s arts departments. Circulation is through two ordinary lifts and a paternoster lift, at 38 cars the largest of the few surviving in the United Kingdom.
A bridge at the mezzanine level links the tower to Western Bank Library. This building was also designed by Gollins, Melvin, Ward & Partners—the two buildings are intended to be viewed together, the Arts Tower and Library are Grade II* listed buildings.
So if you have a penchant for a tall slab with an adjoining library, set in expansive parkland on the perimeter of a dual carriageway – go take a look.
I love libraries.
I love Morecambe.
Therefore I love Morecambe library.
Built and opened in 1967, designed by the County Architect Roger Booth, who was also responsible for a whole host of buildings in Lancashire between 1962 and 1983.
Almost fifty years on, the building still speaks of modernity, optimism, light and learning. It’s well used and loved by the public and the charming and helpful staff – many thanks, for your time and assistance.
Application was made for listing, this was not accepted – there have been significant changes to both the external and internal structure over time.
The vertical, impressed cast concrete panels, shown above, have been replaced by brick.
The original suspended *bean can* lighting system has also been replaced. At night, I was told it was hard to navigate the building using the limited spot illumination, so a box of bike lights were kept and handed out, to permit the safe, well-lit passage of library users.
Concentric hexagonal rings of suspended strip lighting are now in place.
Sadly the vivarium, contained in a glassed link corridor, was short lived.
Archive photographs from Lancashire Lantern Images
The staff were more than happy to allow me take photographs, I was even afforded, at my own risk, to access the roof area through a very secret door!
I urge you to visit Morecambe and its charming library soon.
http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/libraries-and-archives/libraries/find-a-library/morecambe-library.aspx
Attached to the Civic Centre, developed and opened in 1977, to commemorate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, she ain’t no human being, she’s a building.
An low exterior slab of classical municipal modernism, with a series of wonderful and surprising new attachments, ideal for all occasions!
The most amazing set of heavily patinated, square sectioned, inorganic pipes which are precipitously cantilevered onto the front elevation.
Illuminating!
The lobby boasts further exotic lighting, this time on the ceiling, and applied metal reliefs attached to the back wall and booking office.
I’ve never been in the main auditorium, yet – but life is full of little surprises.
Others have – boxers, boozers, bands, concerts, carousers, dancers, thespians – the lot.
The council have a mind to put a stop to all this wayward architecture and replace it something new, shiny and anonymous.
But they’re having to wait for the Men from the Ministry to cough up the cash – which may or may not be tied up in a nearby Northern Powerhouse, Mr Osborne may just have to be lead up the A62 by the nose, with a promise of the most popular Tea Dance in the area.
I do advise you to go and have a look before you can’t.
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.
Tucked away in an arcade, far from Arcadian – not far from Baz’s Off Licence.
The launderette.
Yet another testament to the partial persistence of industrial technology.
No Longer in Use.
A happy hotch-potch of signs, surfaces and sixties design.
Informal formica, stripped bare strip lighting, wobbly laminate walls.
Watch and wait, whilst the World and your washing whirl.
On Lower Hillgate, almost next door to where it used to be, there stands The Tudor Café.
Almost where it has almost always stood.
Other businesses have come and gone, happily it prevails.
The cheapest tastiest grub in town.
An interior festooned with tea towels.
Tables polka dotted, teas hot.
Signs inside and out, some of them inside out.
Greetings from Gdansk.
Don’t forget to forget.
Big is not large, not small.
This is a dirty blue, washed-out pale yellow, Alice in Wonderland un-wonderful land.
Time will not stand still – you’re in a spin, oh what a spin that you’re in.
Walk in, wash and wish.
Facing happily out to sea, hard by Hastings promenade, sits Arthur Green’s, former menswear shop of some considerable distinction. Currently operating as an antiques centre, the whole of the perfectly preserved, period interior is now listed by English Heritage.
A mosaic porch and glass lined vestibule, invite you into a palace of dark hardwood fittings, capacious drawers, glass fronted cabinets, and an ornately carved cashiers booth, all topped off and lit by crystal chandeliers.
Few such example still exist intact, their contents usually ripped out, ripped off and reinstalled in chi-chi overpriced, cosmopolitan boutiques – suits you sir?
I think not!
My thanks to the helpful and patient staff who informed and facilitated my mooching.
Take a walk along the front – pop in.
Mid blue linoleum tiles, patched here there.
And everywhere.
Signs
Everywhere.
In an uncertain universe, you can almost always rely on the launderette, to guide you on life’s soapy journey, through a complex series of immutable do’s and don’ts, arrows, slots, buttons and bows.
Giant is the new big is the new large.
I feel so small.
Standing alone in an unattended laundrette can be a chilling experience, a heightened state of awareness abounds, accentuating that all pervasive absence of presence.
The unseen hand, that write the notes, that speak to you in emphatic hurried caps, pinned or taped precisely on the walls.
The ghosts of clothes, still warm, now gone.
A Proust defying amalgam of aromas, that almost fills the air.
Just you and a series of slots, demotic instructions, care worn utilitarian surfaces and time.
Wash Inn get out.
Hard by Stoke Minster stands the only pub in the area I care to visit, tucked in a cosy corner by the Civic Centre, five minutes from the station, barely time to work up a thirst.
Carefully and skilfully refurbished, exquisite original semi circles of stained and painted glass depicting the months of the year – though there is no February, the lower panes a recent addition.
A tiled floor and broad stripped floorboards beneath your feet.
Sympathetically furnished, plainly, simply appropriate to a pub with pride.
In being a pub.
We and the afternoon sun, spill lazily in, in time for a pint.
It’s delicious so we have another
And another.
http://www.joulesbrewery.co.uk/pubs/pub_details.php?id=9
Idly meandering through Cliftonville, along Northdown Road, I chanced upon the most delightful of cake shop windows. Being something of an aficionado of cakes, shops and windows it seemed like an ideal opportunity to snap away, with customary broad-smiling, wide-eyed enthusiasm. Furthermore why not go in? I was met with the most charming of receptions from the patron Stuart Turner and staff – not unreasonably inquisitive regarding my impromptu picture taking, I explained my particular interest in the patisserie. The interior of the 50’s bakery, shop and café is perfectly preserved, with a little sympathetic restorative work. Well upholstered and formica topped the furniture is the finest of its kind, each table graced with fresh flowers, condiments and loving care and attention. An exquisite array of breads, pastries and cakes, resting on delicate doilies, displayed in glass fronted cases. I encourage you to visit, take tea, take cake, take away the fondest of sweet memories.
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.
Just two Bs and an ampersand, but what volumes they speak, secrets they contain, what does go on behind closed doors?
Bed and breakfast, an immovable feast.
Various does not begin to describe their variety, a cornucopia of dolorous decor, quizzical cuisine, curios, carpets and cohabitees.
So knock on, walk into the hall, up the stairs, open that door – who knows what fate awaits you.
Standing immutable on the south coast seafront is the View Hotel, forever almost changing.
A seventies delight of exuberant geometry, tiled detail, protruding balconies and audacious window frames.
Its confidence is overwhelming.
Recently refurbished this trade union run hotel and conference centre has preserved much of its period interior detail, a swirling spiral stairway, unique circular light fittings, dark hardwood fittings and furnishings.
Suitable setting for high espionage or low talking.
Swept along by the verve, vivacity and capacious volume, I suggest you take a peak.
http://www.theviewhoteleastbourne.com
Did you know,
That there’s some corner of Huddersfield.
That is for ever Merrie England?
A local café group, that has the market cornered in West Riding mock-baronial dining.
Walking into a half-timbered, overwhelmingly cream and red, world of tea, toast and hot beef sandwiches, there is a dislocation in time and location. No longer March 2015 in the centre of a Yorkshire Town, but in a lukewarm Westworld totally lacking in animatronic psychopathic killers.
The furniture is brown.
Moves are afoot to refurbish and refresh the brand, one branch doing its best to emulate an Argos furniture showroom, with an incongruous suit of armour thrown in for good luck.
Clank!
Pop in make your own mind up – old new old, or new new old.
Modern Mooch 