Things Look Better in Black and White; Picture of the Week 24 May 2016

To accompany my new header photograph, here's a close up of the same scene.

I often prefer black and white photographic images to coloured ones. When were these buildings photographed? When were they built? The black and white makes them seem very old, until you notice the windows above the garage door, and in the dormer, top left. Looking at the header picture, un-cropped, tells you more. But can you pin it down?

Ok this was a backstreet in Brighton, just off the Old Steine, in 1971. Photograph taken from the third floor of Brighton College of Art, I printed the original in college, negative is long since lost.

Marine Art Deco Ashore - Picture of the Week 30 March 2016

Marine Court. 

This Art Deco style apartment block in St Leonard's-on-Sea - was deliberately designed to somewhat resemble an ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary. To describe Marine Court takes a combination of architectural and nautical terms. At the eastern end, the curved lower floors protrude like a ship’s bow and the floors above recede like the stacked decks of a liner. At the west end the balconies end in a graceful curl, leaving a gap at the stern. The architects, Kenneth Dalgleish and Roger K Pullen, stopped short of adding portholes, but every seaward facing flat has a balcony. On a sunny day, residents may imagine they are enjoying a luxury cruise from the comfort of their own flat.

RMS Queen Mary sailed the North Atlantic Ocean between 1936 -1967 for Cunard White Star Line. She was built by John Brown & Co on Clydebank, Scotland and sailed on her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936. With the outbreak of the war she was converted to ferry soldiers for the duration of the war. After the war, the Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service and began the transatlantic passenger service for which she and her sister ship the RMS Queen Elizabeth were designed. They dominated the transatlantic passenger service until the jet age in the late 1950s. After several years of decreased profits for Cunard Line, Queen Mary was officially retired from service in 1967. She left Southampton for the last time on 31 October 1967 and sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, United States, where she remains permanently moored. Much of the machinery, including one of the two engine rooms, three of the four propellers, and all of the boilers, were removed. Today the ship serves as a tourist attraction featuring restaurants, a museum and a hotel. 

Picture of the Week; Leeds first Gasometer

While researching for an extended article on gasometers for publication in QS Eye magazine, I came across this very early photo of an even earlier gasometer.

This stood beside the gasworks at Bean Ings Mills in Leeds and was probably built before 1800. Do you know of an earlier gasometer anywhere?

Bean Ings wool mill, owned by Benjamin Gott was one of the town’s biggest employers from 1790, with over 2000 workers. Gott engaged steam engineers Boulton and Watt to provide a steam engine for this woolen mill when earlier, water-powered mechanisms, which relied on water from the nearby canal, proved unreliable. Bean Ings Mill also acquired its own gasworks (one of the first ever built), complete with a rigid gasometer, so that Gott’s weavers could work by gaslight late into the night.

The exact date of this gasometer’s installation at Gott’s mill is unclear, but some years later, in 1800, much of the mill burnt down and Gott moved the enterprise to Armley. The gasometer must have lasted longer than that, for the photograph to have been taken as photography wasn't around at the time.

Today the site of the mill is home to the Yorkshire Post building at the end of Wellington Street.

*

Photo found at :- http://www.leodis.net/discovery/discovery.asp?page=2003219_348858059&topic=200335_73055447&subsection=2003724_663265408&subsubsection=2003911_593959988

The De La Waar Pavilion, Bexhill is not an Art-Deco Masterpiece; Picture of the Week 26 September 2015

The De La Waar Pavilion was built in the 1930's as an arts centre to lure the cognoscenti to the delights of Bexhill-on-Sea, a previously quiet seaside resort of no great fame.  The pavilion has often been described as an Art-Deco masterpiece.  I disagree, it was designed as a Modernist masterpiece. 

The only possibly Art-Deco element in this design might be that curvaceous semi-circular stairwell, though the lines are pure and very plain. There's none of the extraneous decoration which seems to be compulsory in supposedly Art-Deco designs. In fact the term 'Art-Deco' is a post WWII invention. 

'Art-Deco' was unheard when the De la Waar was built.  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/art-deco/ 

“A modernist building of world renown that will become a crucible for creating a new model of cultural provision in an English seaside town which is going to lead to the growth, prosperity and the greater culture of our town.”  Thus said the 9th Earl De La Warr in May 1935, as he laid the plaque which forms part of the floor of the De La Warr Pavilion's foyer.


The Pavilion opened to the public for the first time on the 12th December 1935, to critical and popular acclaim and controversy. Some Conservative critics were horrified by the plain lines and lack of ornamentation, but the public flocked to the concerts and the seafront restaurant.

The interior of the elegant stairwell is beautifully functional, following the tenets of Modernism as practiced by its major practitioners Le Corbusier and Mies van de Rohe. The design for a Modernist building should abide by the principle of form following function, without the necessity for extraneous detail or ornamentation. The De la Waar building has no Art-Deco flourishes, no sunbursts, no Egyptian motifs. It relies on simple lines and generous spaces to provide a graceful, practical place for its designated functions.  

Today the De la Waar Pavilion is a Grade I Listed building : http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-292006-the-de-la-warr-pavilion-east-sussex/photos/?connected_with=facebook#.Vgcc0vnBzGc

Hastings Pier; Good News

The derelict Hastings Pier, which followers of this blog will remember I’ve been interested in for some time, will have a £14m restoration after the Hastings Pier Charity formally took ownership of the ruin this week.

The 140-year-old structure was almost completely destroyed by fire in October 2010. Renovation work is due to start very soon, hopefully this month. This will include refurbishing the remaining pavilion and building a new visitor centre, the project is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2015, which seems quite quick until you remember that the pier was closed in 2008, after being declared unsafe. It then belonged to a nominally Panamanian company, Ravenclaw, who did absolutely nothing with it, leaving the gates padlocked and the structure subject to the ravages of weather and, with no security in place, vulnerable to idle trespassers and vandalism. 

 Ravenclaw was issued with a compulsory purchase order last year, after it failed to carry out any repair work or even appear to explain why it had not. Hastings Borough Council formally took ownership of the pier this week, on Wednesday 15 August and passed ownership directly to the Hastings Pier Charity, which will oversee the work. Most of the £14m will come from the Heritage Lottery Fund, significant amounts have also been allocated to the project by the Coastal Communities Fund, Community Assets Fund, Hastings Borough Council and East Sussex County Council.

For more recent information see:-   http://hpcharity.co.uk/tag/hastings-pier/

For a complete history of Hastings Pier:-  http://www.hastingschronicle.net/hastingsPier.html

Hastings ruined pier, latest; Picture of the Week 26 Dec 2012



The ruin of Hastings Pier

The pier, which was devastated by an arson attack in 2010, has won Heritage Lottery funding for its restoration, granted in November. Work is expected to begin in the New year and be finished in 2014.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/19/hastings-pier-lottery-grant

Coal Drops, Sowerby Bridge: Picture of the Week 15 November 2012

These coal drops in a railway siding beside Sowerby Bridge train station date from the 1860's. They were used by coal trains bringing fuel from the mines and many Yorkshire towns had them in Victorian times. The fuel wagons would be positioned over the drops, a large cart would sit below and the coal would simply be dropped into the cart, for distribution around the town. They were in use well into the twentieth century, though the coal was dropped into waiting lorries, not horse-drawn carts. There are similar coal drops still in existence at Halifax and Huddersfield, all are now Grade II Listed Buildings.

I like this photograph because of the parallel diagonal elements which indicate the direction & movement of the trains and the contrast between textures of stonework, timber and foliage.

Bridge Over Calder's Waters; Picture of the Week 8 November 2012

Sterne Bridge crosses the Calder River just where it leaves the mill town of Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. High on the hill across the valley stands the landmark of Wainhouse Tower.

Sterne Bridge and Wainhouse Tower 2011

The river flows on through the towns of Brighouse, Mirfield and Dewsbury before enterning the city of Wakefield. Then it proceeds to Castleford where it joins the River Aire. The Calder's water then joins successively the Ouse and Trent as they cross the rest of Yorkshire, before falling into the North Sea via the Humber estuary.

Meanwhile Sterne Bridge, which is dated 1914 and was one of the earliest reinforced-concrete slab bridges in the UK, goes nowhere. Calderdale Council, in their wisdom, decided it was unsafe and closed it in 2010, to the discomfiture of residents south of the river who were left with an inconvenient treck to get to town.

Immediately downstream of the bridge is a beautiful L-shaped wier - see http://www.geolocation.ws/v/W/File:River%20Calder%20-%20geograph.org.uk%20-%20983914.jpg/-/en
 
We surveyed the bridge in 2011. Due to restricted access I was unable to photograph on the north bank, or downstream.



London Zoo's Listed Building Problem

Zoos Ain’t What they Used to Be.
Modern zoos are not what they were even as recently as the 1960’s and this is a probably a good thing. I remember as a child being taken to see polar bears living in what looked like a concrete pit, where they had to endure baking sun with only a small, grey pool for their comfort, which seemed a poor substitute for the Arctic Ocean.



Mappin Teraces, 1972 photo by Sue Gilbert

This was at London Zoo, on the famous Mappin Terraces, which may have been architecturally innovative and apparently practical, providing a catchment for water to feed the aquarium below, but it was no place for a polar bear.

Constructed in 1913 in the newest fashionable materiel, reinforced concrete, the Mappin Terraces were jointly designed by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, secretary of the Zoological Society and Scottish architect John James Joass. The terraces were intended to simulate mountain scenery which it was thought would be a good backdrop for the display of bears and other creatures who could climb the rocks.  This illustrates the historic attitude; while London Zoo was established in the 1830’s as a collection for scientific study, the animals were on display to paying visitors by 1847 and though relatively well treated, their environmental requirements were not understood. Their primary function was to be an exhibit.

Today we know better, at least with some species, and there are no polar or any other bears at London Zoo, while its sister zoo at Whipsnade houses European brown bears in a large woodland enclosure. The now Grade II listed Mappin Terraces house Australian wildlife, emu, wallaby and others more suited to the arid, rocky environment. The only polar bears in the UK today live at the Highland Wildlife Park in the Cairngorms, where they roam in enclosures of several acres, with a lake and the climate is much more suitable for such Arctic species.

The Architectural Photographer Begins - Picture of the week for 19 Sept 2012

This was the view which I saw, every day, from the windows of the studio in Brighton College of Art, while I was a student there. It's one of the earliest architectural photographs I took, but at the time I was unaware that it was an architectural photograph. I was studying fine art and, while the course was not engaging me, this view always did. When I left, I went on to study photography at Ealing Technical College.




Rooftops - view to rear of Grand Parade, Brighton C1970/ 1971, shot on Ilford 125 film with a Zenit B 35mm camera.

This higgledy-piggledy array of roofs, windows, chimneys, fire-escapes, fascinated me then and still does. It has many of the abstract qualities which I was being introduced to in the work of artists I was studying, angles, planes, light, dark and texture. It also had the drama and mystery of humanity - and this was just some of what was missing from the teaching. I didn't understand conceptual art and found minimalism just boring, I had no idea what to paint so I gazed out of the window at this view.

The Sawmill, Batsto Village - Picture of the Week 22 August 2012

Batsto Village is an important and very beautiful heritage site in the pinelands of New Jersey, USA.


Sawmill

As a settlement Batsto can trace its history back to 1766, though there is some evidence of people who lived in the area much earlier. Being situated in woodlands, an early and always crucial element was timber and Batsto has had a sawmill for almost as long as the settlement has been in existence.

Stony Stratford Historic Roofing, Pictures of the week 13 July 2012

Having missed posting anything at all last week (due to technical problems, honest!) I'm once again posting several. These show some of the reasons why Archifact stays in business. 

Historic Roofscape

Driving through an old English coaching town, you can enjoy the quaint shopfronts, ancient pubs and historic town houses, but what goes on above your eyeline?

Milton Keynes Shopping Centre, Pictures of the Week 28 June 2012

 Midsummer Arcade in 1990, with a sculpture,Circle of Light, by  Liliane Lijn above the planting

I spent the years from 1975 to 1993 living in Milton Keynes, the largest New Town ever built in Britain. I was engaged on several occasions to photograph the Milton Keynes Shopping Building, which was the largest indoor shopping centre in Europe at the time, as well as the most beautiful. In Britain, shopping centres only became called malls in the 1990's when the influence of American shopping malls began to creep across to this side of the Atlantic.

Milton Keynes Shopping Centre was designed and built for the Milton Keynes Development Corporation in the 1970's, in the Modernist style influenced by Mies van de Rohe. It has high, bright indoor streets with huge, high level windows allowing daylight to stream in. As well as more than adequate space for all the high street retail chains, the original building included restaurants, pubs, a wine bar, two large outdoor squares, a huge indoor hall, two department stores, two supermarkets, a market hall, an arcade of small, low rental, specialist shops and a traditional outdoor market. The structure was fed by bus routes on either side and surrounded by extensive ground level parking, which was initially free though charges were soon introduced.

The Seaside Pier, A Burning Question.

The devastating fire which destroyed ninety-percent of the buildings on Hastings pier on the night of the fifth of October 2010 was only one example of a number of conflagrations which have devastated seaside piers across the UK since these iconic structures began appearing around the British coast in the nineteenth century.   The over water position of piers means they could be expected to suffer the ravages of water, weather and occasional collisions with shipping, but fire might seem to be less probable.

The difficulty in some instances is a direct consequence of the leisure use they are put to. People at work tend to pay attention and take more pride in their workplace, casual visitors are relaxed, mainly on holiday and their concentration is elsewhere.  Some pleasure-pier fires may have been caused by discarded cigarettes, matches etc., soft furnishings in ballrooms and theatres, the timber decking and many wooden structures built on the piers make them particularly vulnerable.

Beware of falling debris, Hastings 2012

Today the smoking ban might make a thoughtless smoker surreptitiously discard a lit match in a hidden location, with disastrous results, though most are more sensible. However the sheer number of serious fires on seaside piers is far larger than can be blamed purely on the tobacco industry.  Past fires on piers have been started by anything from casual vandalism and ineptly used kitchen equipment to gas lamps and electrical faults, though deliberate arson is suspected to be the cause at Hastings and this wasn’t the first case of a pier subjected to a criminal attack.

Britain’s seaside piers are passed down to us from the era of the Victorian enthusiasm for trips to the seaside, made possible in most cases by the equally Victorian enthusiasm for railways.  Without the railways most seaside resorts would have remained the small ports or quiet fishing villages which they were in previous eras and would have no use for the expensive luxury of a pleasure pier.  Some ports, such as Southampton, had become popular spa towns in the Regency period, but no piers intended principally for purposes other than serving shipping were constructed until Victorian times.

View from St. Andrews Church Spire, Worcester. Picture of the week for 27 April 2012

This picture of the week was taken in 1990. It shows the excavations which preceeded construction of the Crowngate centre in the historic centre of Worcester. The semi-circular building to the left is the front of the Huntingdon Hall, formerly a choral chapel and a historic building which was on the boundary of the building site and had to be completely undisturbed, causing many headaches for the architect and developer. Despite many local objections the hall uses Crowngate as its address, and is now a thriving arts centre accessed via the Centre.

Chapel Walk site, shot from St Andrew's Church tower, October1990

One fascinating thing is that today you can see almost the same view, as it looks right now and updated every few seconds on a webcam. This is camera 5 of the Peregrine Falcon watch which is located on the spire of St Andrews Church, from where the picture of the week was also taken. Earlier this month, on 20th April this spire was struck by lightening and all the cameras failed. Some are now up and running again and the views of the town and birds are at http://www.worcester.gov.uk/peregrine/

A Titanic Work of Art-Deco - Picture of the Week 12 April 2012

With the centenary of the Titanic tragedy and the stranding of the Costa Concordia, ocean liners are in the headlines more than they have been for many years.

Sunset, 9 February 2012

This photograph shows not a massive liner waiting to strike anchor and sail off into the sunset, but Marine Court, a huge Art Deco apartment block which dominates the seafront at St. Leonards-on-Sea. The building opened in 1937 and was in its time the tallest block of flats in Britain. Less famous than the Art Deco De la Waar Pavillion at next door Bexhill, Marine Court is none the less an iconic structure typical of the nautical arm of the Art-Deco design movement.  

Marine Court was modelled on the Queen Mary, Cunard's famous liner which first sailed in 1934. To describe it takes a mixture of architectural and nautical terms. At the eastern end, the curved lower floors protrude like a ship’s bow and the floors above recede like the stacked decks of a liner. At the west end the balconies end in a graceful curl, leaving a gap at the stern. The architects, Kenneth Dalgleish and Roger K Pullen, stopped short of adding portholes but it’s a simple but effective set of visual clues. On a sunny day, residents could feel like they were enjoying a luxury cruise from the comfort of their own flat.

However, not everyone could see the bright side. A competition to name the building had suggestions like ‘Monstrosity Mansions’ and ‘Have No Care House’. When it opened it contained 153 flats and 3 restaurants. In the 1960s it was home to The Cobweb, also known as the Witch Doctor - a nightclub that saw Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and other luminaries play. Today, it's much quieter and the "comfort superstore" that occupies the ground floor is more suited to its current, mostly elderly inhabitants.

Although in full daylight today Marine Court can be see to have grown rather shabby, it still retains some original features internally and was Grade II listed in 1999. Despite its listing much of the Art Deco detailing has been compromised by double glazing and rogue DIY. But it could have been a lot worse. Marine Court is still standing and being lived in. It looks like it has a few stories to tell.

Details: Anne Ward
http://www.nothingtoseehere.net/2009/05/marine_court_stleonardsonsea.html

Greenhead Park - Glasshouse & Sky, Picture of the Week, 30 March 2012

Roof of the renovated and restored Victorian conservatory in Greenhead Park, Huddersfield, which now houses both plants and a new cafe.

glass and sky, winter

Glass is hard to photograph straight on but angles can work well, look for abstract effects and/or reflections.

Hastings Pier, Picture of the Week for 22 February 2011

Hastings pier, Feb 2012

Hastings Pier  was gutted by a fire in October 2010 after being closed since 2006.  Arson was suspected and two people arrested.  Campaigners are still trying to raise support to refurbish the pier despite the devastation.  The Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust want to secure community ownership of the pier.

Designed by Eugenius Birch, Hastings Pier opened in 1872 and was originally 277 metres (910ft) long.  Birch was a renouned engineer who worked on the railways of India and with naval engines before turning his hand to pier design. He eventually created fourteen, the most famous being Brighton West pier which, also as a result of fire damage, has for many years been in an even more ruinous state than Hastings Pier.

Hepworth Gallery,Picture of the Week for 9 February 2012

Vote for the Hepworth, Wakefield!

 The Hepworth gallery sits on the River Calder, opposite a boat yard.

The Hepworth is up for a prestigious award, the Art Fund Prize, which is awarded for the best museum or gallery in the UK. The public can vote for their favorite from a list of ten - go to www.artfundprize.org.uk.

Highgate Planning Blight, Picture of the Week 19 January 2012

Highgate back lane, 1972.

Images like this are usually associated with the industrial north, not one of London's most prestigious boroughs. However in 1972 a whole area below Highgate hill, with streets of Victorian terraces, was due for demolition. They had been allowed to fall into a state of decay, Victoriana was unfashionable and new flats and a dual carriageway were planned.

Planning blight becomes the scourge of such places. Long before the planning permissions were in place, people had moved out or been evicted from their homes. The area became derilect, litter strewn. Squatters moved in, most did not have anti social aims, they were protesting at the vandalisation of the community and the sheer waste of what were mainly still perfectly sound houses. 

Years later some of the promised new homes were built. The dual carriageway never materialised.