The day after Braintree we took in the nearby village of Silver End. This was the first time we’d been there as for all the years we lived in Essex we didn’t have a car.

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.

Why Braintree?

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.

Cambridge is a curious mixture of mediævality and the modern. Plus you take your life in your hands walking about the place. People on bikes whizz around almost silently. We nearly got knocked down several times. So many bikes are there parked in one spot I heard one woman say to her companion, “Well my bike’s in there somewhere but I can’t tell where.”

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.

From Grantham we moved on to Stamford, which is apparently where the BBC TV series Cranford was filmed. The town seemed more prosperous tha Grantham had looked.

The approach was olde worlde but the High Street was a bit more modern. I might have expected Deco like this at the western end of the High Street:-

However on Broad street was a fine example of the style:-

It has a lovely rounded facade and original style glazing. Pity about not being able to get a photo with no street furniture in the way. That lamp post!

Central looks like it was once a cinema but now it’s a nightclub. At least it’s getting used.

I noticed it just after photographing the War Memorial, which is on the other side of Broad Street, set into the wall of quite an imposing building.

A couple more photos of Stamford are on my flickr.

Lincoln’s most striking architectural feature is of course its cathedral.

The cathedral can be widely seen from miles off. When we got to the city it was obvious why. It’s at the top of a very steep hill up from the main street. Once through the gateway it’s too close to get the full facade in one shot. This is a stitch of two photos.

Also on the hill’s summit is Lincoln Castle. The picture below was taken by turning 180 degrees from the first shot of the cathedral.

On the way up the hill we stopped into an antique shop. From its window I noticed the building across the street. More particularly its name.

It’s now host to a second-hand book shop. You can just about see the steps up to the main floor level through the doorway. On the fronts of two treads it says BOOKS, NEW & SECONDHAND.

The next house down has a similar startling title (to modern eyes.)

This is no doubt a true reflection of mediæval Lincoln. In those times, Jews were not present in England to a great extent and were restricted by law to a very few occupations – specifically money lending (which was forbidden to non-Jews.) They would also have been required to live close together to avoid mixing too much with their Christian neighbours.

Thank goodness we’re more enlightened, open and friendly nowadays to people who may be different from us. Or even just foreign. (Oh! Hang on.)

We were in England last week visiting places we’d never been before (and one where we’d had a house.)

Our first main stop was in Lincoln. Quite a lot to see but I happened on a street where there were three – Three! – Art Deco buildings within fifty yards of each other.

This was Claskergate (if I am reading Google Maps correctly.) I saw this one first. It’s on the corner with Butchery Court.

Before I’d even taken the above photo I noticed this directly across the street.

The white rectangle is actually a display screen which didn’t come out well. You can see it better on Google Maps.

Just along the street was this.

I couldn’t get far enough back to get a central view.

This is the former Ritz cinema on High Street.

It’s now a Wetherspoons pub.

You can see the nice diamondoid brickwork and the Deco glazing on the above and below which also shows off the curved portico on the High Street frontage

Quite a contrast with the mediæval Cathedral and Castle higher up the town.

During the summer we were in South Queensferry in order to take the boat out to Inchcolm Island.

While there I took a few photos. I hadn’t expected to see a building with Deco styling but this was on the main street.

There was also St Mary’s Church, one of the oldest in Scotland.

(I remember remarking about buildings in Haworth, Yorkshire and Inchcolm Abbey that, unusually, they had stone roofs. St Mary’s also has stone roofing, shown to best advantage in the above photo.)

The War Memorial is fixed halfway up the wall of another building – the Jubilee Clock Tower – on the main street.

A couple more photos of South Queensferry are on my flickr.

There were some architecturally interesting buildings at Dollar Academy.

The first was a nice 1930s pavilion. This was taken from the approach road.

On our recent trip I seem to have passed through, or close to, a fair few towns in England that have or had teams in the Football League, which gave me some idea of their geographic proximity. Starting with Sheffield, we went on through Derby, bypassed Mansfield, then headed back up to Chesterfield where I photographed the famous crooked spire which lends the nickname Spireites to the local side.

Cheterfield had a large street market on the go the morning we were there. It made the place seem thriving though whether it truly is or not I have no idea.

After that it was up north through Huddersfield and Halifax on our way to Haworth again.

Yet in all these travels I caught sight of not one single football stadium – though I had seen a road sign for Brammall Lane in Sheffield.

The reason for going to Haworth this time was we hadn’t seen as much of it as we would have liked when we were there before.

This certainly wasn’t there in the Brontë’s time. It’s now a stop on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway – one of those preservation railways which reflect the British love of nostalgia but are an important reminder of our industrial heritage.

We didn’t do the Brontë Parsonage this time but explored the old street more. There were more shops open this time including the old style sweetie shop where we bought something called Yorkshire Tablet – as sweet as Orkney Fudge but a bit softer – and had a browse round two second hand bookshops we don’t recall from two years ago. The good lady bought three books and I got a hardback of Tricia Sullivan’s Lethe; goodness knows when I’ll get round to reading it.