Shore Road Poole

Posted on by modernmoocher

I was wandering lonely from Bournemouth to Poole, one sunny day in May, when all at once I came upon a road – Shore Road.

Shore Road is adjacent to Sandbanks.

Sandbanks is an affluent neighbourhood of Poole, situated on a narrow spit extending into the mouth of Poole Harbour.

It is known for its high property prices and for its award-winning beach.

 In 2005, Sandbanks was reported to have the fourth highest land value by area in the world.

Wikipedia

Zoopla

Shore Road is by comparison a poor relation.

House prices in Shore Road have an overall average of £1,150,000 over the last year.

Overall, the historical sold prices in Shore Road over the last year were 35% up on the previous year and 44% down on the 2019 peak of £2,055,238.

Right Move

So much for the cost, but what about the value?

To begin at the middle, the middle of the Twentieth Century, houses may have looked like this:

Or possibly these:

These Shore Road survivors have resisted the charm of redevelopment, the demolition and new build, or the uPVC over cladding, relentless render or reglaze.

So what happened to houses that look like houses?

This upwardly mobile trend, fuelled by the rakish progress on the so called property ladder, fanned by 80’s Thatcherite tax cuts, and the ever so irresistible allure of conspicuous consumption.

Architectural historian Virginia Savage McAlester, coined the term Millennium Mansion, though these houses are also referred to as a McMansion, Persian Palace, Garage Mahal, Starter Castle, and Hummer House.

Marketing parlance often uses the term tract mansions or executive homes.

Let’s take a closer look at the look of luxury, is it playful and witty pastiche or Post Modern mumbo jumbo – un repas de chien.

If you liked this, then you may like this North Foreland Estate.

Y’all come back now!

Tin Town – Wythenshawe

Posted on by modernmoocher

Prior to the end of WWII, the British Iron & Steel Federation worked closely with Architect Frederick Gibberd & Engineer Donovan Lee, to develop several steel framed prototype houses and flats, which could be erected quickly and efficiently with limited use of skilled labour.

Frederick Gibberd

These prototype were duly named BISF which is a acronym of the originating  sponsor, The British Iron & Steel Federation.

However, it was in fact the newly formed company, British Steel Houses Ltd, that went on to develop and manufacturer the BISF houses we see today.

Over 34,000 three-bedroom semi-detached houses and 1048 Terraced Houses were erected across England, Scotland and Wales.

Non Standard House

The final production design incorporated rendered mesh ground floor walls and the now familiar, profiled steel sheeting panels affixed to the upper storey. The preferred roofing material was generally corrugated asbestos cement, or corrugated metal sheeting.

The frame of the prototype ‘B’ house was of the same general design as the type ‘A’ frame, but fabricated from flat light steel sections.

Northolt

The roof trusses were also of light steel sections and the roof cladding was the same as that used in the type A house. 
Both prototypes had been designed to accept a variety of external wall materials, including traditional brick masonry if desired.

The external steel cladding that was affixed to the upper storey of the original BISF house appears visually similar to the external cladding that was used during the production of the unrelated Hawksley BL8 temporary bungalow.

This visual similarity caused many people to wrongly assume that the BISF House was a semi-detached version of the temporary bungalow, despite the fact that the BISF House was built as a permanent dwelling.

The vast majority of BISF houses were built as two-storey semi-detached pairs. A smaller number of terraced houses were also built by replicating the standard semi-detached frame.

A number of variations relating to the layout and materials used in the construction of this house have been noted, but in all cases, the original construction, design & construction of the steel framework, remains largely as described.

The area in Wythenshawe where the BISF houses were built, is known locally and colloquially as Tin Town.

Here are the homes in 1955.

Here are the homes in 1972.

JF Hughes Local Image Collection

In 2012 we visited the home of former Durutti Column drummer Bruce Mitchell.

Bruce in Greater Mancunians.

Owen Hatherley wrote about this White Bus Tour in The Guardian – at the behest of Richard Hector-Jones.

New residents were given the choice of an apple or cherry tree for their back gardens.

Here are the photographs I took in November 2021.

Tamara – Whaley Bridge

Posted on by modernmoocher

I’ve often cycled by here, on occasion taking time to take a snap or two.

You seemed to be in decline, in need of care and attention. Stood amongst Peak vernacular and sub-Lutyens villas something of anomaly.

A diminutive Modernist house – a rose amongst the herbaceous borders.

Someone seems to have taken you in hand and work is underway, I just hope that they put your name back in place.

Tamara

Tamara is a female given name most commonly derived from the Biblical name Tamar, meaning date – the fruit, date palm or palm tree. In eastern European countries like Armenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, North Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine it has been a common name for centuries. In Australia it was very popular from the 1960s to 1990s. 

In the United States, the name was fairly common from the late 1950s to mid 1990s, bolstered by the popularity of the film Tammy and the Bachelor – Tammy is commonly a nickname for Tamara. In the US the most girls named Tamara were born in 1970 and the number of Tamaras born per year was greater than 1,000 as late as 1996.

The name is now fairly uncommon in the US: in 2010, the name fell off the Top 1000 SSA Baby Names list, with fewer than 250 baby girls named Tamara that year.