Stratford-upon-Avon is only about ten minutes by car from Alcester. Apart from being Shakespeare’s birthplace I knew that the Royal Shakespeare Company building was erected in the 1930s adjacent to the original Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (see right, picture from Wiki) which had been destroyed in a fire.

The building has had a recent refurbishment though so it now has some modern features. Below is the view from a nearby bridge across the Avon.

The brickwork and windows on the river side are still deco as is the blocky bit in the middle of the building.

A closer view of the river side of the building:-

From the south side some deco fetaures are still apparent but the rounded bit – is it a survivor of the original Memorial Theatre or a homage to it? – looks like a cathedral’s Chapter House.

From the green on the south side you can see two chimneys with deco styling:-

I’m not sure about the modern tower on the right here but the deco-ness of the brickwork and the windows in the main part here is obvious:-

We had menat to go go to a play but I didn’t get organised for it early enough. Maybe next time.

In the town itself I saw one deco building.

Some more pictures of the RSC building are on my flickr.

Evesham in Worcestershire was about 10 or so miles from where we were staying.

I’ve heard of the Vale of Evesham but we didn’t really notice it as such until our last day and had a climb up a steepish hill on our way to Oxford and could see back where we’d come from. There were some apple trees in bloom but nowhere to stop to photograph them.

Evesham itself is a bit down-at-heel but with some quaint old buildings.

Evesham Central Market had a deco flourish on its roofline, though.

Inside there were the usual sort of wee shops found in an indoor market, but only a few of them, plus a set of rooms housing a “junky” kind of antique dealer’s. A bit further up there were two rather less “junky” antique shops side-by-side just off the other side of the main street.

At one end of the street there was this building which doen’t really look very deco apart from the chimney and the decoration between the windows and the roof line.

On our trip south we next stopped near the small the small town of Alcester, in Warwickshire, England. It had a nice wee museum containing lots of Roman artefacts. The town’s origins lie in Roman times.

The town has several Tudor style pubs and houses and a prominent church tower. The clock on the tower is unusually angled on a corner meaning it can be seen easily from the main street. The War Memorial is in the Church yard by the tree you can see in the photo of the church.

There was one possibly Deco building but it’s more likely Georgian. Horizontals and verticals are a feature of both styles.

The roundabout has a globe at its centre. A woman in the museum told us there used to be a pub called the Globe here. When it was pulled down the roundabout still got called by that name so the local council decided to mark it with a globe.

On the Wednesday evening we had a nice meal in the Swan Hotel. We were the only patrons in the dining room. (Photo from Information Britain.)

When we left, the air outside was bitterly cold! I couldn’t stop chittering till we got back to our room (a few minutes by car.) Mind you we missed any snow in Kirkcaldy that may have fallen that week.

Alcester is a lovely wee place. We may go back sometime.

This was, I think, the other deco building I spotted in Morecambe but didn’t have time to photograph 3 years ago. It’s on the seafront, heading northwards from the Midland Hotel.

But there was more. Much more.

Almost the first Art Deco building we came upon this time though was what looked like a toilet block!

Further still along the front was this:-

There was also a deco pub down a side street,

the Lloyds Bank building,

Morecambe Visitor Centre,*

a deco style bridge between two buildings,

and some nice deco-ish glazing on a disused hotel.

There may have been more still but we only stayed one night.

Also on the sea front was a warren of a second hand bookshop, absolutely stuffed to the gunwhales – the SF was mostly old stuff and stacked high making exploring it a bit problematic. The good lady secured a couple of purchases of vintage crime, though.

*Edited to add It’s not a visitor centre. The Morecambe Visitor is the local newspaper. See the first comment on this post.

I couldn’t stay in Morecambe without once more taking photos of the magnificent Midland Hotel.

This is the view of the building from the stone pier which juts out into the Irish Sea.

Here is a shot of the second set of pillars giving entry to the car park.

The staff were very accomodating and allowed me to take photos inside.

This is the very Deco carpet in front of the reception desk.

This is the lovely frieze behind reception. Not the best shot; the lighting conditions were low.

There is a 30s style map located in one of the function rooms

This photo of the hotel, presumably from its heyday as the seafront appearance is now substantially different, emblazons the wall on the first floor landing. There was a replica on the floor above too.

On our recent trip down south we stopped off at Morecambe again. This time we stayed the night so I was able to take quite a few photos.

The War Memorial there has an imposing position overlooking the sea. The lion surmounting the plinth is a good touch.

This is the west side, commemorating WW 1.

There are more names on the north and south sides.

The east side commemorates WW 2.

You can glimpse part of the Midland Hotel in the background in this angle.

Just to the east of the main memorial there is a small garden area containing a memorial of the Burma Star Association.

The other side of this shows a stone poppy encircling a star.

I assumed the local regiments had been posted to Burma and the Burma Star Association website confirms Lancashire regiments were indeed involved there.

We have been away for a few days.*

Regular readers will know this means a slew of photographs of Art Deco buildings and design features plus various War Memorials will be appearing here soon.

*I actually typed away far before spotting it. Which was maybe appropriate as we were down in England again – or maybe not if you consider we only covered 960 miles in total.

I hadn’t been to Glasgow for a while before last Sunday.

Imagine my surprise when I came upon this in Byres Road:-

This wasn’t a Nardini’s the previous time I was in Byres Road but I can’t remember what shop occupied this building up to then.

They have tried to make it look Deco, certainly. The lettering is Deco; and the top glazing. The interior lighting is like the ones in the re-opened Nardini’s in Largs.

Since it is new I can’t really include it in my Glasgow’s Art Deco Heritage series. I wonder if anyone in the future will think it’s 1930s.

On Sunday I was over in Glasgow. (The good lady was at something called Creative Stitches in the SECC. While she was there I hied myself off to the new Transport Museum called the Riverside Museum. No photos: she had the camera and my mobile is so old it doesn’t do photos. Not that I ever use it anyway.)

The Riverside has a modern architectural design which reminds me of a cardiogram and is full of cars, trains, trams etc with a West of Scotland interest, plus there’s a tall ship moored on the Clyde alongside. Worth a visit.

Anyway afterwards we took in an antique centre/warehouse where I spotted some architectural drawings from the 1930s. They seem to have been produced by a third year student at an architectural college. Very Deco.

By this time the camera was available to me.

This one was for a lakeside restaurant.

The others were for Sports Centres.

I don’t know if any of these buildings were ever erected.

The person selling the drawings wanted £45 for the three Sports Centre drawings; which I thought was a bit steep for bits of paper peeling at the edges. (I couldn’t get close enough to the lakeside restaurant one to see its price.)

Fuller pictures of the drawings are on my flickr.

When I first moved to Fife there was a Thirties building in Kirkcaldy on the corner of Abbotshall Road and Wemyssfield.

You had a great view of it as you came out of the library or museum, on the other side of the road at the bottom of the War Memorial Gardens. A perfect example of Art Deco garage construction, complete with white rendered concrete, curved walls, glass bricks, the lot, this was the Fidelity Garage, run by Norman Rollo as I recall. It was lovely, if in need of some attention.

A few years after I took up residence here this distinctive building was (shamefully, to my mind) demolished.

This is what it was replaced with.

A bog standard, rectangular-canopied petrol station of little or no architectural merit.

The Fidelity is given a mention on the Scottish Architects website.
I have tried to find pictures of the Fidelity on the internet, with no success. What a pity.