Sea Pools for Health and Pleasure – article - back to the bathing pool ideas.

Sea water bathing has long been considered healthy and not just as exercise. Saltwater is often recommended for skin conditions including eczema, psoriasis, acne and dermatitis. A saltwater bath may improve circulation, help reduce some types of infection and even ease the symptoms of  arthritis, although some remedies have not been scientifically researched. Nor have certain claims made about less physical maladies; when you read that, ‘a monthly saltwater bath is an easy and very relaxing way to cleanse your aura of negative energy,’ a feeling of scepticism may set in. 

       West St Leonards 2019, temporary sea pool formed in the shingle. Photo Susan Gilbert

However going into the sea is much more fun and more physically invigorating than adding some Saxa to your bathwater.  Swimming in the sea is theoretically easier than in freshwater as the salt helps you float more easily. But not everyone has the stamina to immerse themselves in pounding breakers, contend with stones underfoot and the undertow or battle for space with anglers, kayaks and kite-boarders.  Sea pools must be one answer! The recent publicity for Ocean Pools in New South Wales, Australia is a reminder that we have some of these in the UK, we just don’t boastfully call them Ocean Pools. 

Penzance’s Jubilee Pool in Cornwall is the country’s most spectacular seawater pool, a grand saltwater Lido jutting out into the bay, it will soon be able to boast of having geothermal heating for part of the pool. Most seawater pools are unheated.

Tarlair pool near Banff in Scotland is the UK’s most Northerly Lido, another 1930’s pool which is refreshed with seawater at high tide. Although it has listed status it’s fairly run down these days but the pool is still swimmable and used for other activities including kayaking and model boats .

The Sea Pool at Summerleaze Beach, Bude, Cornwall is a less grand offering, without Art deco flourishes and Listed status. However this partially man-made tidal swimming pool set between the rocks is still delightful, popular and much better maintained than Tarlair. There are several similar pools in the South West including at Perranporth, Polperro and Westward Ho.

Porthtowan tidal rockpool in Cornwall is simply a  largeish rockpool with added concrete walls. There were once steps from above but time and tides have allowed these to crumble so now it’s only accessible via the beach. There are a number of other small, tidal rockpools suitable for bathing around the UK coasts, especially of Cornwall and Devon and, surprisingly, Scotland. These small pools are peaceful and completely unsupervised, also often invisible to passers-by, so care bathers should take care.

At the other end of the scale from the small rockpools is the huge Walpole Bay Tidal Pool in Margate, which covers 4 acres and has concrete walls and a base on the stones and chalk of the beach. While the tides are not high enough to refresh the water absolutely every time, a number of springs come up through the beach stones and keep the water clear.

Strand Pool in Gillingham, Kent has a 125 year history. It is not strictly a sea pool but uses filtered seawater from the mouth of the river Medway. The Strand was originally just a small creek off the Medway estuary opposite Hoo Island. After two boys drowned in the muddy creek a safer swimming pool was created in 1896. In 1935 the council parks committee borrowed £ 8,000 to drain the muddy creek and create two modern, concrete pools. It has been developed further since World War Two and is now a hugely popular, modern leisure pool, still using sea water.

Using seawater for medical purposes has a name, thalassotherapy. However going into the sea for paddling, swimming, splashing, diving, surfing, paddle-boarding and any number of other possible activities has a much shorter name, fun.  A sea pool at West St Leonards would be fun, attract visitors and become as popular with the local community as the old bathing pool once was.  

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Sources include

https://wildswim.com/margate-tidal-pool

 https://www.strandpool.info/history

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/mar/15/outdoor-swimming-lido-social-enterprise

https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2017/06/24/walpole-bay-tidal-pool

htthttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2020/jan/21/water-worlds-the-magic-of-new-south-wales-ocean-pools?

https://jubileepool.co.uk/

http://medwaymonthly.com/

https://www.healthline.com/health/sea-salt-bath#takeaway

The Last Seafront Site in St. Leonard's and Hastings.

I was asked to research and write an article for the West Marina Group, who are very concerned about the future facing the Bathing Pool Site in St Leonards-on-Sea, which once housed the largest Lido in the country. It fell into disuse in the 1980s, was demolished ten years later. Now Hastings Borough Council want to lease this  site to a developer for medium-rise flats. The council's motivation has been questioned, as has the need for new housing in the area. The group believe the site should be put to more imaginative use than expensive flats for Londoners and Airbnb's for profit. My article examines the need for local housing.  

The spectacularly huge Bathing Pool was designed in the 1930's as an Olympic venue by talented Hastings Borough engineer Sidney Little. The Olympics never came. The pool was very popular with visitors and locals, but by 1986 was closed due to running costs and it was finally demolished in May 1993, sixty years after its first opening. Had it been an 'Art Deco Masterpiece', like the beautiful Lidos at Saltdean near Brighton or Penzance, Cornwall, it might have been saved for posterity. However it was merely much loved and popular.   (photograph by Aerofilms) 

                              

The Bathing Pool Site earlier in 2019, before the notice
designating it as a 'greenspace' had  somehow vanished
into thin air.  It has since been put back. (photo West Marina Group)

The Article -

"The West Marina Group in St Leonards are seriously concerned about the future of the Bathing Pool Site. We want a visionary future for this last seafront site and we know the proposed development of high-density housing is wrong for this location.

"The question has been asked, is there a need for up to 150 flats here anyway?  Seaside flats could sell to locals but are more likely to sell as holiday homes or become open to abuse as Airbnb’s.

"Part of the answer to that question is that Hastings Borough Council has a statutory duty to ensure a number of new homes are built within a limited period. The Council can’t build these homes themselves.  Successive governments have stripped local councils of funding for housing, leaving them with often unaffordable duties.

"There may be more ‘habitable rooms’ in England than there are people, but we don’t know.  The most recently published English Housing Survey (2017) doesn’t tell us the number of rooms per home, just floor area. In theory we could show that there’s no need to build more homes, just fill all the existing ones.  Practise is another thing.  54% of owner-occupied homes are said to be ‘under-occupied’ as they have spare bedrooms. Less than 15% of rented homes are ‘under-occupied’. However homeowners can’t be forced to take in lodgers if they don’t want to.  We have small families living in large houses, larger families living in small flats and people living in shelters beside the beach.  This inequality is reflected across the country. Yes there are empty homes, but many are in places where people don’t want or don’t need to live.

"People need to live near their jobs, their schools, their families and support networks.  A run-down terrace in Newcastle-under-Lyme that was built 150 years ago, to house hatters (an industry which no longer exists) wouldn’t be suitable for a working family in St. Leonards.  Neither would it be suitable for the homeless on the seafront, unless they have links to Newcastle-under-Lyme.

"The National Audit Office reported (5th November 2019), on the starter homes scheme announced by prime minister David Cameron in 2014, intended to create 200,000 homes.  This appeared to be the government’s agreement that new homes are needed, but their timescale was vague. None of these homes have been built.

"Meanwhile, further down the social scale, are people who couldn’t afford to buy a starter home in 2014.  They still can’t.  They live in the rental sector, which doesn’t need to be a bad thing, but for many it’s a constant struggle to keep a decent roof over their heads. There’s a shortage of good quality homes in the private rental sector and an acute shortage in the public sector.  This has led, according to figures for September 2019, to more than 10,000 people in emergency accommodation nationwide. There is nowhere else for them to go.

"This doesn’t even take account of people who are on the streets.  In Hastings Borough the official figures for rough sleepers is rising each year. This is despite Hastings inclusion in the group of local authorities receiving additional funding under the Rough Sleeping Initiative.

"In February of this year Councillor Andy Batsford said, 'The number of people living in temporary accommodation has increased significantly over the past year.  There are currently around 123 households living in temporary accommodation in Hastings.' This figure has now risen to 150. All these people need housing, but not in seaside flats in an area where the sea-defences are substandard. Any development which ignores potential rising sea-levels and storm frequency is foolhardy and ultimately a waste of money.

"The real need in St. Leonards is for decent rental homes for the disadvantaged and affordable housing for local families. Large empty dwellings such as those on West Hill Road could be converted to flats, though there is limited stock of these older buildings. Conversion can be expensive because of the need to apply current standards to these projects.

"The proposed Bulverhythe development, although controversial, could provide more of the housing that HBC needs than The Bathing Pool Site.  The Archery Road development is proceeding with less density than proposed for the Bathing Pool site.  But is this type of development, with only a small amount of social housing beside larger, expensive homes, the best use of either space?  There are 1666 people on the Council’s housing waiting list.

"Other vacant plots in the area with potential for house building include West Hill Road and Caves Road. These sites offer their own challenges, but few risks can be greater than the risk of flooding at the Bathing Pool Site.

"More homes are needed nationwide. According to Zoopla, the demand for homes both to buy and to rent is rising, while the existing housing stock still has more pre-1960’s buildings than newer ones.  Zoopla reckons that 240,000 to 340,000 new homes need to be created each year to keep pace with demand.

"Hastings BC’s Homelessness Strategy says, “…it is imperative that the Council works with partners to seek innovative solutions to address housing need.” Leasing public land to a private developer for expensive flats on our last beachfront site is not ‘innovative’.  This land belongs to the people and we have not been consulted.  

"The council also express a desire for the West Marina area to become a ‘destination’ to attract visitors. Blocks of flats will not help create an attractive destination, they will just add to parking and infrastructure problems.                                                                                                                                                         

*

Susan Gilbert, for West Marina.                                                                                           

Where Have all the Lidos Gone?

Bathing Pool Poster

First of all, what is a lido? Is it anything more than a swimming pool? Strictly speaking, a lido can be defined as any open-air swimming pool or bathing beach. The word means beach or seashore, in seventeenth century Italian, from the Latin litus for shore. The Lido’s use as a word for a bathing place originates with Lido di Malamocco, the town on a long, narrow reef just to the south of Venice, where the sheltered, sandy beach was, and remains a popular resort for the wealthy and fashionable.

The 1930’s saw a wave of enthusiasm for lidos throughout the UK, both on the seashore and inland. Bathing and swimming were increasingly popular, seen as healthy activities for all the family; by the end of the decade there were around 170 throughout Britain. This was a whole movement and it was radically new. 

Bognor with bathing machines, from a nineteenth century postcard

During the previous 200 years, swimming had been regarded as an exclusively masculine activity. Women of the lower classes could frolic in the water, fully dressed, on female only stretches of beach, but nobody thought they could or should actually swim. Meanwhile wealthier ladies could immerse themselves by stepping from a bathing machine into slightly deeper water, whilst dressed in voluminous and impossibly impractical bathing costumes. They couldn’t swim either.

The decline of Victorian prudishness had an enormous effect, by 1901 mixed bathing was no longer actually forbidden in the by-laws of seaside resorts and so lidos could begin to evolve in the UK. For bathing enthusiasts a lido had to include additional facilities, especially an area for sunbathing which was increasingly seen as an additionally healthy activity. Most would also have somewhere to buy refreshments, at the least a tuck shop, while the most exclusive venues could have a high-class restaurant.  

Strand Pool, Gillingham, from a postcard

One of the earliest lidos was the Strand Pool at Gillingham in Kent. A local entrepreneur, Thomas Cuckow, realised an opportunity to creating a seawater bathing pool in the mud flats on the tidal shore of the River Medway. The pool used disused railway sleepers for shoring up and carriages as changing rooms. The incoming tide, filtered through sand beds, would fill the pool and it was emptied via a sluice gate. The pool opened in June 1896 with a special sports gala. The programme included underwater swimming, water polo matches and a greasy pole competition.

The Strand Pool prospered, once taken over by the town council in the 1920’s its facilities were increased to include a paddling pool, boating lake and park. Water filtration was improved and in 1935 concrete pools replaced the original muddy, tide-dependant pool. Strand Pool has always been locally popular and today, operated by Medway Council who have updated the facilities yet again, it continues to thrive.

​ But many more lidos have not survived. Even in the 1960’s almost every town had a pool of some description, but no longer. One, the huge bathing pool at St Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex, was an ambitious design, on a grand scale by Hastings town engineer Sidney Little, with the Olympics in mind.

St Leonards Bathing Pool, postcard. It was never a financial success. 

By the 1950's it had become the main feature in a holiday camp.

The 1933 St Leonards’ pool was twice the size of the more stylish and upmarket Art Deco pool at Saltdean near Brighton, which was built in the same period. Both struggled financially. While the St Leonards pool only made a profit in its first year of operation and was finally demolished in the 1980’s, Saltdean has gained Grade II* listing and survived, by the skin of its teeth and through the vigorous activities of local enthusiasts.

At the opposite end of the scale, many mining villages in Wales acquired their own outdoor pools, when the local miners took time on their days off, during strikes and the redundancies of the depression to dig a pool for their own communities. All of these have been lost. The only historic pool of any note in Wales today is the Grade II listed Lido Ponty, in Pontypridd, which dates from 1927. Its Art Deco buildings and terraces were added in the early thirties.

Lido Ponty fell into disrepair during the 1980’s and was closed down in 1991. Its restoration, completed in 2015, was thanks to an EU-funded regeneration project. The restoration aimed to balance the conservation of the existing historic lido with the addition of a modern café, poolside terrace, visitor centre, multipurpose venue and dry play area.

So how many Lidos have been lost in the UK? Anne Green Jessel, a former competitive diver and international coach has a better answer than anybody. She has compiled an extensive, though not exclusive list on her fascinating website, https://www.lostlidos.co.uk, which lists 85 and counting, though she has counted them as a swimmer, not actually as lidos with extra facilities and her list includes some indoor pools.

Although too many open-air pools have been lost up and down the country, others do flourish and in a surprising variety of places. Greater London has eight lidos open to the public, including natural bathing in the Serpentine river in Kensington Gardens and the more structured, ever popular Tooting Bec lido which dates back to 1906. The newest pool in London was the Kings Cross bathing pond, opened in 2015 behind the station, however this was intended as a temporary installation and has now closed.

Hathersage Pool, Derbyshire was opened in 1936

There are also popular pools even in small villages, such as the beautiful lido in the village of Hathersage in Derbyshire. Hathersage has a population of only 2,000 but its proximity to the city of  Sheffield brings it plenty of custom. Being close to the county boundary, Hathersage pool has funding from both Derbyshire Dales District Council and the neighbouring High Peak Borough Council. 

Seaside towns in the British Isles may have larger populations than Hathersage, but many have fewer advantages to help financially. Some seaside pools, such as the spectacular Tarlair pool near Banff, which today is unfunded and fading into history. Tarlair is the UK’s most northerly lido, but has sadly become just a Grade A listed, art-deco ruin.

Other pool sites have been altered to accommodate year-round, indoor bathing. For example, in Rhyl the original open-air pool became the indoor Sun Centre, with slides and waves. After a second metamorphosis Sun Centre is now the SC2, which has re-introduced a limited amount of outdoor bathing alongside an indoor fun pool.

Tarlair Swimming Pool, 1930's postcard

Today the Northernmost properly funded lido in the UK is the Stonehaven Lido in Aberdeenshire, which has a fifty-metre pool with sun terraces and heated seawater. It’s run by Aberdeenshire Council in conjunction with the Friends of Stonehaven Open Air Swimming Pool. The Friends have become a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO). A number of other pools also stay functional due to the considerable efforts of the voluntary sector.

Scarborough in Yorkshire has adopted a different approach. The brand new Alpamare Water Park, near the site of the former North Bay pool is a pricey, privately run and inelegant replacement for two beautiful seawater lidos. However if its heated fresh water, exciting water features, year-round operation and newly opened wellness spa gains more footfall and provides more employment than the old, cold lidos, it may benefit the town. 

Porthtowan Rockpool, Cornwall. Not really a lido, but wonderful!

The Westernmost lido is in County Down in Northern Ireland. The Tropicana consists of two shallow, seawater pools with slides, opened in the 1980’s and aimed at children. Further down the coast is the much deeper and rather Spartan, although locally popular Rock Pool which was built in 1933. Both are run by Down Council.

In England there are at least 15 successful open-air pools remaining beside the sea, and many more inland. These range from brand-spanking-new water parks to art deco masterpieces, more mundane bathing pools, paddling pools and tidal rock pools. A number of these pools stay operational with the enthusiastic efforts of the voluntary sector.

Imagination and innovation are needed to keep many going. For example in Cornwall is the spectacular art-deco triangle of Penzance Lido jutting out into St Michael’s Bay, Cornwall. It was opened in 1935 and named with great celebration for King George V's silver jubilee. Formerly run by the town council and now by Jubilee Pool Penzance Ltd, a Community Benefit Society. Jubilee Pool is currently breaking new ground with a bore hole being drilled to provide geothermal heating for the pool.

In Wales, no original seaside pools have survived but some have evolved into good sized paddling pools. One of the best is Blackpill Lido, run by Swansea Council. This is free and has a large splash pool, a baby pool and fountains, in a lawned area with play equipment, cafe and the start of the land train which runs along the front.  

Blackpill Lido, Swansea

 

Children gravitate towards waves, fountains, even puddles and as we have entered a more health-conscious era, similar to the 1930’s, the popularity of swimming pools and water-play areas is bound to increase, particularly at the seaside. Open-air pools encourage healthy exercise, saltwater ones may have additional health benefits over highly chlorinated ones and if sustainably heated, their seasons can be extended. 

The days of creating huge lidos with Olympic standard swimming pools are probably gone, but there should be opportunities to contribute to public health and amenity, attract holidaymakers and enhance the environment with new and exciting pools.         

                                                            *

Article and research by Susan Gilbert, Director of ArchiFACT Limited.                

Looking Up – Who Notices Buildings?

Most infants open their eyes to the whole world, however what they notice is soon culturally defined. They look up – until they can sit up by themselves they have little choice – and see places and objects beyond the faces looking down at them, but then they begin to notice what other people respond to, so they learn to act accordingly. The rest becomes background.

My earliest memory is of a garden, where I was placed on a rug spread by my mother. The rug, red tartan, and the twiggy hedge that released a strong smell are things which I’ve never forgotten. But everything else of my first home is lost in the mists of time, because I took no notice of it. I don’t know what that house looked like, or the second house, or the third although I have been told that one was a flat; we moved a lot.

Those who grew up living in one place will have memories of that particular building and the surrounding ones. They will be more likely to notice houses which remind them of where they lived, other styles of houses will quite possibly create a negative reaction, because of an unconscious rejection of the unfamiliar. Many buildings other than homes are often beyond their known space. They don’t use them therefore they don’t notice them.  

What Is An Architect For? A light-hearted look at Construction’s most Misunderstood Professional.

A YouGov survey carried out between 6^th and 9^th July 2017 revealed a disturbing level of ignorance on the part of the general public about what an Architect actually does. Two thousand and thirty one adults were surveyed. Why that number? Who knows with surveys, but apparently 15% didn’t even know that an Architect designs buildings. That’s three-hundred and four-point-six-five people, which shows why percentages (and therefore surveys which sum up with percentages) often make little sense to whole people. Taking the breakdown of the survey figures further reveals that in in the lowest age group (18-24 year olds) an even more surprising 24% didn’t know this basic fact, but as they don’t tell us what proportion of the group were younger people, this still makes little sense. These younger people probably do know that an ‘architect’ designs computer operating systems and game scenarios.

So what is an Architect actually for? There are plenty of opinions out there in the worldwide aether, far too many of which are hugely inaccurate. The internet is full of lay-persons who still regard the architect as merely the one who draws initial ‘pretty pictures’ for a building project.  Others just know that architects are the ones to blame for everything that ever goes wrong with a building, from a roof that blows off in a once-in-a-hundred-years hurricane to a badly fitting door.

Wealthy individuals commissioning vanity projects suppose ‘their’ architect is a slave to their whims, who can radically alter designs at the drop of a hat, naturally without increasing the cost. Then people looking at modern spec-built houses grumble that the architect has made the porch and windows hideous, when it’s highly unlikely an architect ever went near the plans, let alone the window specification.

Computer ‘architects’ now usually earn far more than the average working Architect in the construction industry. Yet UK Architects are unprotected, unlike elsewhere in the EU, as it isn’t mandatory to actually employ an Architect on a construction project. Their resentment of the computing industry grows as, year on year, their remit and their incomes have been affected by the unqualified not merely abusing their professional name, but also using CAD to create misconceived building designs. The concept of the Architect as Master Builder is in serious decline.

Many inaccuracies are generated by the press, who also can’t tell the difference between an Architect, a spec builder and an interior decorator. To the Sun newspaper, Architects are silly elitists who don’t know what the ‘Great British Public’ wants and insist on building carbuncles, to the horror of the Royal Family, beside ‘Much Loved’ National Treasures such as The National Gallery (which the Sun never expects its readers to actually enter). The Daily Mail’s view is the same except for an expectation that their beloved readers might occasionally like to visit the place.

The Tall Tale of the Worcester Sauce Factory - Lost Buildings 2

Old factory viewed from roof of new shopping

building, Worcester 1991

In 1991 I photographed a red brick, industrial building in the centre of Worcester. It was an obsolete and unwanted Victorian factory which, although it added character and historical context to the area, was about to be demolished to make way for the new Crowngate Shopping Centre.  Victorian industrial buildings would not become really fashionable for renovation or conversion into desirable ‘loft’ homes for a few more years.

Practical obsolescence, changing fashion and new commercial necessity have always been the enemies of previously built structures, often leading to their destruction. This will inevitably continue to be true, like the case of this Worcester factory. The alternative would be to mothball old buildings once they become obsolete, just in case, and only build on unoccupied land.

The obvious impracticality of this approach makes it inevitable that particularly in Britain, with our shortage of building land, we will demolish structures which some people actually like, in order to create new ones. In fact within weeks of their demolition most buildings aren't missed by anyone. A few obsolete buildings can be rescued by enthusiastic individuals with access to money or by TV shows like the BBC’s ‘Restoring England’s Heritage,’ but many more are lost and most of those are almost immediately forgotten.  Some don't matter, others may have fascinating stories attached.

Timber trusses stacked for re-use elsewhere.

In Worcester the shopping centre was already under construction and I was there to document progress in the creation of that new retail hub for the citizens of Worcester, but as I stood the new centre's roof, I took a photograph of the doomed factory. I then went down to ground level and was able to get inside. I managed to take a few shots of the building as the salvage firm moved in. The place was not just bulldozed, bits and pieces were saved for re-use including many of the beautiful red bricks, the chimney pots, lintels, stonework and timber trusses.     
      

Rear entrance originally for horse and cart

At the time, the story told was that this factory was the original building where in the 1830’s two chemists, Messrs John Wheeler Lea and William Perrin, accidentally created their world famous Worcestershire Sauce. It was concocted as an interpretation of a recipe imported from India by Lord Marcus Sandys, who had been serving as an officer in the East India Company - or according to another version of the tale he was Governor of Bengal. He commissioned Lea and Perrins to re-create his favourite Bengal fish sauce. However there seems to be little or no evidence that any Lord Marcus Sandys ever set foot in India.

Yet a third version of the tale credits Lady Sandys with asking the chemists to make a curry sauce from a recipe provided by her friend Mrs Grey, whose uncle was Chief Justice of India. The plot thickens and so did the recipe. Apparently the first batch tasted terrible, Lea and Perrins commented that it was 'unpalatable, red hot fire water.' They had made several barrels of this foul brew, which were hidden in the cellar and forgotten. Several years later the barrels were re-discovered during a stock take and the contents had fermented to become the famous, flavoursome sauce. It was first marketed in 1837 and gained rapid popularity as a table condiment including on passenger ships via which it spread to the USA.

Lea and Perrins factory on Midland Road

Later research tells me that Worcester Sauce was created not in a factory but in a chemist's shop on Worcester's Broad Street.  The sauce has been manufactured since the 1890's in a building on Midland Road, Worcester, which is about a mile from the town centre and more convenient for distribution as it's near the railway. So some time between the Broad Street Pharmacy and the Midland Road Factory, could there have been another production site? After all, it seems a tall order to produce a popular bottled sauce in sufficient quantities to supply an international market in a small shop on a city street.

The mythology/history around the origins of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce make for a great story, but if the sauce was really made in the shop for much of the nineteenth century, then what was that old factory building which I was able to photograph just before it vanished? I found no other clues and if that red brick building, with its distinctive chimney and gables wasn’t the sauce factory, it is well and truly lost and forgotten. 

 

Sustainable Solutions for Old Windows

Plastic windows are often put into older buildings, to ‘upgrade’ old single glazed wooden windows. They can provide improvement in insulation via double-glazing and improved draft-proofing and so are often viewed as the sustainable solution. This is belied by their limited longevity, the PVC-U they are manufactured from gives them an expected maintenance free life of not much more than 30 years, at the end of which it is more likely that they are discarded and replaced than maintained.  There is a huge carbon footprint created in their manufacture and replacement and waste plastic is an increasing environmental problem.  

Old sash Windows don't have to be as beautiful

and rare as those on this Queen Anne townhouse

to be well worth preserving and restoring.

Listed historic buildings cannot be sympathetically re-fitted with modern plastic windows and the appearance of many otherwise handsome, unlisted buildings has been spoilt by the addition of carelessly chosen replacement windows. The making, rebuilding and repairing of sliding sash windows is now a reviving market which deserves encouragement

Wooden window frames and sashes of whatever age can be easily repaired if they have not been allowed to rot, though sliding sash windows in particular are often seen by the inexperienced as more trouble than they are worth to restore.  However weights, sash cords and other traditional sliding sash accessories are readily available from specialist suppliers and slender, pre-manufactured double glazing units can be used to replace original Victorian glass, which was often especially thick in larger windows. An expertly restored wooden sliding sash should be no harder to open and close than a UPVC replacement and will let in more light than a thicker framed plastic window, as is noted in the Building Regulations.

Marine Court, St Leonards, a 1930’s work of art made more

ordinary by the later, indiscriminate insertion of randomly

chosen windows and the infilling of balconies in the

apartments to the left. The sustainable solution here

is not obvious

UPVC can now be recycled and one major manufacturer of window profiles and other parts recycles up to 90% of old UPVC windows, including the glass, on their site in Derbyshire, though even this process has a carbon footprint in the energy used. The RecoVinyl Scheme is a European wide initiative to collect and recycle used  PVC building products to support the Vinyl 2010 Voluntary Commitment. The British Plastics Federation claims that, since inception of the scheme, the UK has led the way in the volume of PVC collected and recycled in Europe. The question is, how many discarded UPVC window actually do get recycled? Figures are lacking and it may be that too many still go to landfill and incinerators.

The Full Gasometer

Here's the complete text of my article on Gasometers

Gasometer; The Rise and Fall of an Industrial Icon.

Is there a gasometer near you? If there is, take a few photographs for posterity because this iconic part of our industrial heritage won't be around for much longer. They were ubiquitous up until the 1960’s; nearly every UK town had its own gasworks, providing reassuring views of the accompanying gasometer as it rose and fell almost mysteriously in the middle distance. We were all very used to them, so their slow demise has hardly registered. Most stopped rising and falling from the introduction of North Sea Gas onward and today, gas arrives from elsewhere, coming ashore from the North Sea or across from Europe to arrive at one of seven UK processing terminals such as the one at Bacton in Norfolk. A few gasometers still rise and fall, but now they are simply used for temporarily balancing the system, not for providing the local gas supply.

This rather elegant lattice structure is part of Huddersfield's column-guided gasometer (or gas-holder), a familiar sight near the town centre just off the Leeds Road. Any fan who has ever ever attended a match starring either the Huddersfield Giants or Huddersfield Town F.C. and tried to locate the John Smith (formerly the Galpharm) Stadium will have either used the gasometer as a landmark to find their way, or parked in its shadow.

Strictly speaking this is the structure which supports the telescopic gas holder as it rises and falls according to how much gas is inside, sealed in by the water reservoir underneath. This column- guided, telescoping gasometer design was invented in 1824 to conveniently contain ‘town gas’ which was produced using coal. However well before this, a coal ‘gasification’ process was creating gas in useful quantities, which was kept in rigid containers and used for lighting in factories and workshops. These coal gases were far from pure, consisting of numerous substances including methane, carbon monoxide and sulphur, they went through purification processes to be reliably and safely useful.

When is Art Deco not Art Deco?

The Modernist Brotherton Wing of Leeds
Infirmary. The curved balcony was
 functional, to allow patients to take in
sun and air

Some claim Art Deco originates in the 1925 French art expo at Le Musee des Arts Decoratifs. The exposition was intended as a display of new design from around the world, although the Americans didn’t participate. However Art Deco style works can be seen in Europe 10 and even 15 years prior to the expo.

The answer to the title question is probably when it’s Modernism, which is quite often. According to the V & A (who should know) the actual term ‘Art Deco’ wasn’t invented until the 1960’s, so to describe buildings from 50 years earlier as Art Deco does seems curious, but that's what art historians do. 

Perhaps the clue to identifying Art Deco lies in the word Deco. It implies decoration rather than function, which was the guiding thought in Modernism. From restrained lines to sunbursts and elaborate Egyptian styling, Deco is frequently applied to the surface of a building rather than incorporated into the basic structure.

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

What is a 'Character Property'?

Estate agents have always been very imaginative in their use of English and who can really blame them? We all do it, every job and profession has its own 'in' phrases and jargon. It's only really when that jargon impinges on the general public, who are not in on the joke, that difficulties can arise.  The joke is that those who use their  own jargon day in and day out actually forget that other people don’t.

A real character property, genuinely full of history.

If you read estate agents’ blurbs on Zoopla, Rightmove and the like, a ‘Character Property’ can be anything which isn’t obviously mundane. ‘Character’ seems to be a word used if the agent’s initial reaction on being asked to value/market a house is, ‘Ooh, it’s a bit weird! What on earth am I supposed to say about this one?’ A recent search revealed that a number of ‘character properties’ in one area on the south coast were in fact static caravans, which are not the ‘character’ buildings as recognised by English Heritage or most people with any experience of buildings - which is most people.

We've been looking for new home and office for a few months now and have learned that, if the ‘character property’ is described as “A beautifully presented Grade II listed period home situated within a conservation area close to local amenities,” you can fairly safely assume that it is Grade II listed and in a conservation area.

The Best Building in London - The Natural History Museum

This wonderful Romanesque entrance doesn't lead into a cathedral but to my favourite London building, the Natural History Museum, on Cromwell Road. The temporary barriers don't enhance the appearance, but are sometimes necessary for crowd control in a building which has almost five million visitors each year.

I was first taken to the Natural History Museum when I was just five or six and I fell in love with the building before we even got inside. The exterior of the building is covered with statues, gargoyles and plaques of creatures which were hand-modelled and then cast in terracotta. I was fascinated by the plaques around the gates which depict mice and squirrels.



Plaque depicting three mice on a gatepost
 outside the main entrance.

No creature is too insignificant, everything from mice and beetles to wolves and sabre-toothed tigers are sculpted.

Pterodactyl plaque on the roof

Large statue of a Sabre-toothed cat
on the West tower, stylised to appear
heraldic - the head was cast separately

Small plaque of a crab on a mullion between
lower ground floor windows








The designs were individually sketched by Alfred Waterhouse, the Liverpool architect who was responsible for the whole building. His sketches were then sculpted and cast by a firm of terracotta manufacturers Farmer & Brindley. The named sculptor is M. Dujardin,
his first name was possibly Oscar or Hubert. He is thought to have been French but little is now known about him.

The building's two wings depicted different groups of creatures, those ornamenting the exterior of the West wing were extinct, those on the East wing were, at the time they were modelled, still surviving. Some larger sculptures had to be cast in more than one piece and certain creatures were given heraldic stylisation.

Today the building is in a much better state than when I first saw it. The exterior was cleaned of a century's worth of London soot and grime in the 1970's, I remember it as being  all black. Now the detailed terracotta can be enjoyed in all its glory.