We knew before we went that there was some stained glass by the pre-Raphaelite (in its later phase) Edward Burne Jones.

The church is no longer in use as a place of worship having been closed as such by the Church of Scotland in November 2010. The congregation merged with that of St Brycedale Church – no more than 50 yards away! – to become known as St Bryce Kirk. St Bryce is the patron saint of Kirkcaldy. (See here.) These two Burne Jones windows are towards the back of the building if you were entering from Kirk Wynd and are only two of many stained glass windows whose splendour cannot be fully experienced from the outside.

The above much more recent stained glass windows represent the flames of the fire which damaged the interior a good few years ago. These flank the main entrance from Kirk Wynd.

One slightly older window by Crear McCartney is on the immediate left wall (see left.)

None of the pews remain as the space inside has been cleared for community use.

It is possible to climb the tower. Don’t do it on a windy day (of which there are a quite a few in Kirkcaldy) as you are fairly exposed on the tower parapet.

Before the stairs/ladders which allow the climb we passed the impressive memorial – see below – to the members of the congregation who died in the World Wars. (The 1939-45 addition blends in well.)

I had to stitch three pictures to get the full panorama of the memorial as the space to step back was limited. The passageway to the stairs is on the left of this.

It was episode 6 of the series, the only one I’ve seen and Murton was “following the sun” up through the East of Scotland’s sea-side resorts. On the way he visited Stonehaven Swimming pool which has featured in my Scotland’s Art Deco Heritage posts (see link above.)

He ended up at the Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen, which is in my Aberdeen Art Deco Heritage posts. Murton undertook some dancing inside the Ballroom. The interior still retains Art Deco features.

Anyway the programme is available on the BBC iPlayer, but only until Wednesday 21/12/11, so if you tune in you can catch some glimpses yourself.

Also on the iPlayer (till tomorrow 20/12/11) is a piece, about 25 minutes in, from The One Show on the Midland Hotel, my post on which you can see via the link.

Just up the coast and originally a separate village but now swallowed up by greater Kirkcaldy is Dysart.

It has a nice wee harbour which the picture below does not show completely. The former Harbour Master’s House on the quayside is now a bistro.

Dysart’s main industry used to be mining. This is the winding gear of the Barony Coal Mine as was.

There are some striking pan-tiled roof houses in Dysart. This part of the village is known as Pan Ha’.

The tower in the background is called St Serf’s Tower.

A couple more pictures of Dysart are on my flickr.

Lured by the promise of a book sale we also ventured into the part of Market Street that leads towards the Bus Station and came upon this combination of buildings, something to do with the University now – the Careers Office? – which has a deco style facade. The photo is a stitch of two.

Judging by the pictures on Google Maps it seems to have been refurbished recently.

Coggeshall had a reputation in Braintree as being inhabited by yokels – they told tales of “Coggies” in the same way others would of the Irish (or the Irish do of Kerrymen.) It’s barely three miles away!

We went on there after Silver End to see how much it had changed. Answer: not a lot. Mind you the minor road from Silver End to Coggeshall Hamlet (just south of Coggeshall proper) is the windiest thing I’ve ever driven on – like a sideways roller coaster. The road is called Cut Hedge Lane and skirts the edges of a farmer’s fields and there are no fences – nor hedges come to that – the fields start where the road’s edge is.

Coggeshall is still quaint, with Tudor style wooden framed houses of which this was the example most lopsided in appearance.

It’s not without some modern references, though. Someone had obviously been watching The Two Ronnies.

This is Wolverton, also on Boar’s Tye Road.

It’s nice that the plants outside the door reflect the house’s symmetry – even if the climber doesn’t.

The balcony, with its W motif, is a nice touch and the gatepost (see below) is exquisite.

The housing estate I mentioned in my last Art Deco post was built by Francis Henry Critall for the workers at his window factory in the village.

This more stylish house was for one of the factory managers to live in. I presume the other biggish Deco house in Boar’s Tye Road (see my last Art Deco post,) though not quite as elaborate as Wolverton, was also for a manager.

We were looking for the housing estate designed by the architect Thomas S Tait who I see from the link submitted an unsuccessful plan for Kirkcaldy Town Hall. Among other accomplishments he was the architect of St Andrews House in Edinburgh which I have featured here.

We knew we were on the right track when we came upon this in Boar’s Tye Road:-

It’s needing a bit of TLC I would say.

The next junction takes you into Silver Street. Every building is one of Tait’s.

This was taken from the other end of the street after we had parked.

This is the junction of Silver Street and Broadway which also contains many Tait houses.

There must have been around two hundred flat roofed houses in the deco style over the two streets.

A few had some extra deco flourishes like the triangular columns with windows in this photo where you can also see the connecting walls between them which house the gates to the rear gardens.

Well: the good lady and myself used to live there when I worked as a Research Chemist. We thought we’d see how it had changed in thirty years so made it one of the last stops on our recent trip down south.

I well remembered the cinema. The Embassy as was. The building is very deco indeed but is now a Wetherspoons pub called the Picture Palace.

Surprisingly the inside has not been mucked about with much. On either side of where the screen was situated – the screen itself appears still to be present behind the bar area – are some original panels one of which I tried to photograph (see left above) but the light level was very low so the result is grainy. Two photographs of the original interior are in a frame on the wall of the foyer (right, above.) The windows are not original but have been replaced very sympathetically. You can just about make them out here.

We astonished the waiter by saying we had actually seen films in it. (By the way, a true life incident – not to do with the film itself – from watching the first Star Trek movie there made it into my novel A Son Of The Rock in somewhat disguised form. It was too good not to use.)

We hadn’t intended visiting Ely but when we discovered it was only twelve miles from Cambridge we thought we might as well.

Its most striking feature is of course the Cathedral (see left.)

Almost the first house we encountered was in a highly traditional style. We had been forewarned by signs in the car park – and the streets up from it – to “Oliver Cromwell’s House.” This surprised me as I’d always thought Cromwell was a farmer from Huntingdon till the Civil Wars dragged him from hearth and home to military fame – not to mention notoriety – regicide and the Lord Protectorship. Anyway the tacky figures outside put us off entering.

I had expected the town would contain mostly traditional architecture. There was nothing extremely modern but I was pleasantly surprised to find not one, nor two, nor even three, but four buildings showing deco styling.

The first had “Coronation Building” and a crown inscribed on it. I suspect this would have been the 1937 Coronation (George VI) rather than that of 1953.

The second now hosts WH Smith’s – I had to stitch two photos as the street wasn’t wide enough to allow me to frame the whole thing in one shot.

The third looked as if it had once been a Woolworths.

The fourth was on another street (Lynn Road?) just off the main one.

The War Memorial was unostentatious, restrained and dignified, set into a niche in the wall that backs onto the cathedral.

There was also a street market which looked pretty thriving. Whether it’s there everyday or merely Wednesdays I don’t know.

It was morning when I took this, and raining slightly – not many takers for the punts.

King’s College (entrance below left) is impressive, but you can’t get back far enough to photograph it all. See below right for the chapel.

Access to the river is also restricted by the various colleges’ grounds.

On a lane down to the river we saw this unusual vertical sundial – well, actually four vertical sundials, one on each compass point of the tower I suppose.

This is from the footbridge over the Cam that we were able to cross. More empty punts – though if you look hard enough you’ll see one being poled just beyond the right arch of the bridge.