The Beatles – Modern Mooch

City Hall – Leicester

Posted on August 22, 2022 by modernmoocher

Architects: Barnish and Silcock 1938

The medieval Leicester Guildhall was used as the Town Hall for around 300 years. By the mid-19th Century much larger premises were needed to support a rapidly growing industrial centre. The Victorian Town Hall was opened in 1876 on the site of the old cattle market.

In 1919, Leicester was recognised as a city. It continued to expand, along with its Council. Conditions in the Town Hall soon became cramped and some departments began to move out. By 1930 it was agreed new municipal offices were needed to centralize the Housing, Electricity, Rates, Motor Licence and Valuation departments. They would form part of a major redevelopment of Charles Street, the so-called quarter of a million pound building on a million pound road.

The modest opening ceremony took place on 7th November 1938. In his speech the Lord Mayor, Councillor Frank Acton, said it was a privilege to open “this long sought-after and wonderful place.” A stone tablet to mark the event can be seen opposite the reception desk in the entrance foyer. The building was designed to command attention and respect, and conform to a modern desire for simplicity. Clad in Portland Stone, its interior included many elegant Art Deco features, many of which have been restored.

Story of Leicester

The refurbishment was undertaken by Franklin Ellis Architects.

The office floors accommodate workstations for 480 staff, together with breakout areas and meeting rooms. The project included re-purposing original municipal spaces for new assembly functions; restoring period features; and providing a dignified civic interior appropriate to the functions of the Council. An environmentally conscious servicing solution minimises the building’s energy usage.

By the 1930s, demand for electricity was growing rapidly. The Municipal Offices housed the Leicester Corporation Electricity Department (later the East Midland Electricity Board) and were specially furnished with a model kitchen for:

Housewives who are interested in the modern uses of electricity in the home.

A special theatre also presented weekly cookery demonstrations and a Service Centre displayed, sold and hired out electrical appliances.

The theatre is still extant, though sadly no longer available for cookery demonstrations.

On the back wall this mural remains as a reminder of the theatre’s the former use.

Many thanks to Grant Butterworth – Head of Planning, for negotiating access to the hall and accompanying us on our Modernist Mooch.

In the 1960s a nuclear bunker was constructed. This was one of many across the country built by local authorities to protect key personnel from radiation in the event of an attack, enabling some form of government to continue. Today, the bunker has long gone, and the basement of City Hall is now used as a storage area.

By 1963 the De Montfort Hall Box Office was located in the building. This caused chaotic scenes in Charles Street when, in October of that year, around 3,000 youngsters queued all night for tickets to see The Beatles. When the Box Office opened at 9:30am, the queue stretched back to Humberstone Gate and was held in check by a pitifully thin line of police. The Leicester Mercury described the scene as:

A heaving, shouting, screaming, unruly, undignified, disorderly mob – a disgraceful night.

Pressure from the crowd caused a 10 foot square window in Halford´s shop to break. With all the tickets sold, the crowd dispersed and the Leicester Mercury said Charles Street resembled

A filthy, unswept ghost street, badly in need of the cleaners to remove the mountains of waste paper and return its respectability.

With thanks again to the Story of Leicester.

Weston super Mare

Posted on June 18, 2020June 18, 2020 by modernmoocher

Although there is evidence in the local area of occupation since the Iron Age, it was still a small village until the 19th century when it became a seaside resort, and was connected with local towns and cities by a railway, and two piers were built. The growth continued until the second half of the 20th century, when tourism declined and some local industries closed. A regeneration programme is being undertaken with attractions including the Helicopter Museum, Weston Museum, and the Grand Pier. The Paddle Steamer Waverley and MV Balmoral offer day sea trips from Knightstone Island to various destinations along the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary. Cultural venues include The Playhouse, the Winter Gardens and the Blakehay Theatre.

Wikipedia

I arrived mid-morning on Saturday 25th July 2015 – having travelled some two hundred miles or so from Stockport by train.

The Iron Age seemed to be over and regeneration slowly but surely under way.

This marked the start of another coastal tour, following last year’s epic which began in Hastings.

This time I was heading for Hastings – but that can wait until tomorrow, let’s have a look around town.

Directly opposite the station is a group of Seaside Moderne homes in various states of whiteness – standing in line along Neva Road.

Reasonably priced, cheaper than Frinton – check it out

I pushed my bike along the prom heading for my pre-booked digs in a stylish seafront hotel.

Past the Marine Causeway linking the shore to some kind of modern day Post Modern Shangri-La.

A mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains, possibly not.

You can stroll onto Knightstone Island, where you will find some cafes serving light snacks and refreshments, or to the other side which takes you along the causeway, accessible to walk across according to the tides. At the other side of the Causeway you will find a small rocky beach with tidal rockpools ideal for exploring.

Just along the prom stands one of my all time favourite seaside shelters.

Even further along – what’s all this here then?

The foundation stone of the Birch-designed Birnbeck Pier was laid in 1864. It opened on 5th June 1867 and consisted of a 1040 foot cantilever construction to Birnbeck Island and a short jetty extending westwards from the island.

National Piers Society

It seems to have changed hands several times in its relatively short life, including the stewardship of the infamous Urban Splash and the mysterious mystery owners, the current custodians it seems, have done little to secure a secure future.

It remains alone and untended, stretching aimlessly out to sea.

In April 2015, Friends Of The Old Pier Society created a novel fund raising scheme in which 1p and 2p coins would be lined up to stretch from the Grand Pier to Birnbeck Pier.

September 2019 Councillor Mr Crockford-Hawley said:

It’s this end of Weston which is the sore, it’s the carbuncle, it’s clearly well past its prime and it needs some serious attention. I mean it would be wonderful if somebody came along with an open ended bank account and said ‘yup, I’d love to restore it for the sake of restoring it’, but quite clearly there’s got to be an economic future for the pier, there’s got to be a purpose for the pier.

Possibly a wealthy Beatle could bail the ailing pier out of deep water?

Having made a bob or two since they appeared here in 1963.

Next thing I know I’m outside the imposing and impressive sounding Ocean Hotel. Sad to say on the day/night of my visit it wasn’t just this weary traveller that appeared to be over tired, happy to report the the New Ocean Hotel has been revamped and in tip-top condition by all accounts.

Any road up, let’s get out, take a walk up the road – have look at some local type.

Watney’s mythical Red Barrel.

Watney’s was the Evil Corporation which sought to crush plucky small brewers and impose its own terrible beer on the drinking public. It acquired and closed beloved local breweries, and it closed pubs, or ruined them with clumsy makeovers.

Its Red Barrel was particularly vile – a symbol of all that was wrong with industrial brewing and national brands pushed through cynical marketing campaigns.

A page-spread from Design Research Unit 1945-1972 – Koenig Books 2011 via A Practice for Everyday Life via Boak and Bailey – who examine the truth behind the myth.

A palimpsest ghost within a ghost.

A seaside outing for dear old Brush Script – a casual connecting script typeface designed in 1942 by Robert E. Smith for the American Type Founders.

The face exhibits an exuberant graphic stroke emulating the look of handwritten written letters with an ink brush.

It came third as a Least Favorite nomination in a 2007 designers’ survey.

It was rated fifth in The Eight Worst Fonts In The World list in Simon Garfield’s 2010 book Just My Type.

Why have just one identity when you can have two, welcome to the 21st Century schizoid Savoy – don’t it jus’ make you want to stomp?

First but surely not the last sighting of Profil aka Stymie Bold Italic – in a none inline variant.

Classical kerning down at the local estate agents, tasteful Gill Condensed Bold – from the hand and eye of the far from tasteful Eric.

Ay up it’s a launderette that almost thinks it’s a scooter!

Cheap beer, raffle, singer and bingo on a Wednesday afternoon.

Amazing and great atmosphere with friendly service staff and atmosphere, love it, real nice people

Facebook

Russell Davies Flickr

Keeler Productions has taken over Locking Road Car Park, opposite Tesco, and The Regent Restaurant, in Regent Street, to film a BBC period series The Trial of Christine Keeler, based on the Profumo Affair in the 1960s.

Weston Mercury

Enough of all that period drama, let’s have a look at some period architecture.

Madeira Court – 67 flats built in 1988.

Weekly Social Activities include – coffee mornings, card evenings and occasional days out, organised by social club. New residents accepted from sixty years of age, both cats and dogs generally accepted.

I can find no reference for this dalle de verre stained glass window.

Boulevard United Reformed Church – Waterloo Street

Architects Gordon W. Jackson and Partners 1959

Constructed on part of the site of the former Electric Premier Cinema, the Odeon Theatre was opened on 25th May 1935 with Jack Buchanan in Brewster’s Millions. Built as one of the original Odeon Theatres in the then emerging Oscar Deutsch Odeon Theatres circuit, it was built on a prime corner street position in this sea-side town and was the first of several Odeon Theatre’s to be designed by architect Cecil T Howitt.

The Odeon was Grade II Listed on 21st August 1986.

Cinema Treasures

The Weston-super-Mare Odeon was built by C Bryant & Son Ltd of Birmingham on the site of the former Electric Premier Cinema. It opened on 25 May 1935, at which time it was described in the souvenir programme as ‘modernity at its best’, with seating accommodation that was ‘luxurious and spaced to give ample room for true comfort’.

A short walk along the prom snapping shelters and the sheltered – no two the same.

I then chanced to fall into a Beer Festival and bad company – the rest is a blur, see you all tomorrow there’s some cycling to be done.

Night night.

Burton’s Moderne – Ashton and Beyond

Posted on February 28, 2019 by modernmoocher

In almost every town or city worth its salt stood a modern white tiled tailor’s shop, almost every man or boy wore a Burton’s suit.

Harry Wilson had become the company architect by the early 1920s, and was responsible for developing Burton’s house style. Montague Burton, however, maintained a close personal interest. The company’s in-house Architects Department was set up around 1932 under Wilson. He was followed as chief architect around 1937 by Nathaniel Martin, who was still in post in the early 1950s. The architects worked hand-in-hand with Burton’s Shopfitting and Building Departments, who coordinated the work of selected contractors. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s they were kept phenomenally busy: by 1939 many of Burton’s 595 stores were purpose-built.

The very first made to measure gear I owned came from Burton’s in Ashton under Lyne – mini-mod aged fourteen in a three button, waisted, light woollen dark brown jacket, four slanted and flapped side pockets and an eighteen inch centre vent.

Just the job for a night out at the Birdcage, Moon or Bower Club

The story of the stores begins in the province of Kovno in modern Lithuania – Meshe David Osinsky (1885-1952), came to England where he initially took the name Maurice Burton.

The distinctive architecture stood out on the high street, Art Deco motifs and details abound – elephants chevrons and fans.

Topped off with the company’s distinctive logotype.

This example in Doncaster is one of the few remaining examples many having been removed – as the stores have changed ownership and usage.

This Neo-Classical Burnley branch is a rare example of a Burton’s which hasn’t gone for a Burton.

The group maintained a distinctive graphic style in labelling signage and advertisements.

Often including ornate mosaic entrances, ventilation covers and obligatory dated foundation stones – as seen in this Ashton under Lyne branch.

Stores often housed dance halls or other social spaces.

In 1937 Burton’s architect, Nathaniel Martin, collaborated with the architects Wallis Gilbert & Partners on a subsidiary clothing works on the Great Lancashire Road at Worsley, near Manchester. Conceived as a Garden Factory and built in a modern style, this was dubbed ‘Burtonville Clothing Works’. It opened in October 1938 .

Where machinists worked on Ashton built Jones equipment.

Time changes everything and the inception of off the wall unisex disco clothing saw the made to measure suit fall into a chasm of loon pants and skinny rib grandad vests.

The Ashton branch becomes a motorcycle then fitted kitchen showroom, topped off with a succession of clubs and various other modern day leisure facilities.

Currently home to the Warsaw Delicatessen and Good News Gospel Church

Formerly Club Denial.

This is the tale of the modern high street grand ideas, architectural grandeur, entrepreneurial immigrants, style and fashion – disappearing in a cloud of vinyl signage and fly by night operations. Though if you look carefully the pale white shadows of Burton’s are still there in one form or another, however ghostly.

A Short History Of The World – In Several Pairs Of Jeans

Posted on May 7, 2018December 12, 2023 by modernmoocher

Image: Mirrorpix

The Crazy Face shop at Tiviot Dale, Stockport, next door to Gareth and Colin’s Hairdressers, part owned by Gareth Evans who managed the Stone Roses. Two shops owned by legendary Manchester band managers side by side!

You see, the thing is, the Crazy Face factory is my story, my history, my childhood memoirs, the location of my earliest adventures. Crazy Face clothing was my Dad’s workplace, his shops, his factory, his vision and it was a real place, it was places, there were several factories and the ‘factory’ was the whole circus of creativity that surrounded him.

Of course Joe Moss was also the manager of The Smiths and latterly was managing Johnny too, in some capacity, in later years, but the Crazy Face story is a whole in which The Smiths are a chapter, so it feels strange to see the Crazy Face name associated with Johnny Marr in this way, as part of his marketing.

David Moss

This a tale of times long long ago – in the land that Levi Strauss forgot.

Of British boys and girls with – denim set on destruction.

Born in 1955 I was hurled into the turmoil of the Swinging Sixties, with little or no idea concerning style or fashion. Clothes were hand me down, home made accessories to a guileless life of pre-teen, jean-less hi-jinx.

The Beat Boom, that raging torrent that swamped the North West of England in a swirling vortex of raw R’n’B and indigo trousers changed all that forever.

I have no idea just here they came from, or any idea or where they eventually went, but my first pairs of jeans were Tek Sac and/or Jet.

A thin copy of their American cousins, cut and stitched with a casual carelessness from the pale blue gossamer that was Empire Brand cotton, they were pre-worn out, threadbare before you had actually worn them out. Designed to induce a distressed look in the wearer, years before the coming of the distressed look.

Jet seemed to have survived into the 70s – rich in Disco Chic, even warranting their own TV ad – get into Jet Jeans get into Jet.

As I remember the first pair of serious branded jeans were local – for famous local people – they were Liverpool made Lybro of Mount Vernon. A slightly heavier denim, styled to suit and fit the lower half of the upwardly-mobile, mobile teenage tearaway.

In 1963, a Liverpool jeans company, Lybro Limited, asked if The Beatles would advertise their jeans. The request may either have come through the group’s manager, Brian Epstein – or through their friend at the Cavern Club, DJ Bob Wooler. The advertising agency behind the campaign was Millican Advertising Limited, operating from Liverpool 3.

The original photos came to light in 2004, when photographer Richard Cooper unearthed the pictures in an old file and remembered the shoot on which he worked as a young 20-year-old apprentice at a photo studio in Liverpool’s African Chambers.

The photos formed the basis of drawings used on the final advertisements.

Lybro Jeans Shoot

Then along came came Brutus – possibly the first homegrown denim to challenge the American imports for distinctive style and quality.

By now flares had flared up like an unwanted rash on the face of the mid-seventies, whilst I remained in a parallel omniverse – constant and true to the parallel cut.

Beloved of the boot-boy and rampaging teenage togger hooligan alike, Skinners ran counter to the ever widening gulf between toe cap and jean hem. I had several pairs in the Seventies, indigo, white and corduroy – we were out, straight and proud.

Less enlightened times produced a rash of Skinner clad misdemeanours on the streets and terraces of this fair Isle.

Manchester United fans in Cardiff 1974

As the Seventies began to collide with the Eighties the upper half of the UK embraced the widest and wildest styles they could find, the northern soul danced to Northern Soul, as jeans, skirts and trousers wrapped and embraced their flailing all-night limbs.

John Bulmer – Manchester 1974

Blues & Soul August 1976

Blues & Soul January 1979

It couldn’t last, we had to take a narrower view in our strides.

The onset of Punk Rock heralded the inception of the skinnier jean – despatching the Hippy flare and Soul Boy bag, indigo to the bargain bins of history.

I then began to buy mine from Crazy Face – brainchild of Joe Moss, he had series of Stockport shops on Mealhouse Brow, Lower Hillgate and Tiviot Dale along with Chapel Walks in Manchester – Joe would later find fame managing Manchester pop sensations The Smiths.

Stuart Lee of Stockport County at Mealhose Brow

For years I would wear a wide variety of wide and not so narrow Crazy Face denim – served by fresh-faced, soon to be superstar DJ Jason Boardman.

Nothing last forever and my love affair with home grown denim eventually came to an end, Joe Bloggs, Hooch and Bench largely passed me by.

And so our story ends – a Storm Rider in a turn up, I began wearing Lee Jeans and I’ve never looked back, owning several pairs in various states of wash and wear loved, they are now no longer made.

So some ways down the line I’ll have to take a look at what’s shaking – shake down a pair of eBay Tek Sacs and start all over again.