We finally got to see the Wye when we reached Ross – and a sluggish, sludgy thing it looked too. (Probably all that June rain.)

I didn’t find the War Memorial (but I did buy a book!)

Almost the first shop I noticed was this:-

It looks very like a former Woolworths to me but is now a Spar.

There was a row of very 30s looking shops leading down from the main road junction. (Unfortunately a random woman was crossing the street when I took the photo.)

The local branch of Edinburgh Woollen Mill was just to the right of these, bang on the junction. Nice railings below the windows.

The building above was somewhat incongruously over the road from some conspicuous mediævality.

This is in Commercial Road, Leven. It’s an estate agent’s now.

Poundland. I can remember when this was a Woolworths.

This one is on the promenade. It may have been a toilet block. I don’t know what it’s used for now. You can just see New Bayview, East Fife’s ground, in the background over the River Leven. You wouldn’t have been able to see it when Methil Power Station stood in between.

In Braintree we parked as close to our old house as possible and strolled up to the town.

The route took us past the War Memorial.

Just over the road is this deco Masonic Centre.

And next door to that is an Art Deco house.

From the above angle you cannot see the curved balcony but looking in by the gate you do.

The old Woolies in the town centre was/is deco in style.

There used to be a Critall window factory in Braintree but that seems to have been demolished and replaced by modern housing.

When we lived there the traffic in the town was horrendous. The queues to get in on a Saturday from the north were enormous. So were the ones in the supermarket; they stretched from the tills all the way to the other ends of the aisles.

The town has long since been bypassed both north/south and east/west and so was relatively tranquil. Mind you we got there about five o’clock.

There is also now a retail park and an outlet centre off the bypass. Considering that, the town centre looked more thriving than you might expect.

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.

I took these a month or so ago.

This is the former Gaumont (later Odeon, Classic and De Luxe) Cinema, Mill Street, Alloa.
According to the Scottish cinemas website it was the last Gaumont to be built pre-war, and the only purpose built Gaumont in Scotland.

Below is a photo of the upper level of a building on Primrose Street, now sadly unoccupied.

At the junction of Shillinghill and Mill Street you can see this:-

Perhaps not really deco but the bits that resemble chimneys have the look.

As part of my quest to photograph old Woolworths premises here is the Alloa variety. It’s right next to the former cinema and has been taken over by Poundland. Not deco, it looks of 1960s or 70s vintage to me.

A couple more pictures of these buildings are on my flickr site.

Last Saturday we had a trip round Fife and stopped off in Newburgh.

This is the War Memorial. There are only First World War names on it; I saw no sign of a World War 2 Memorial. It is just possible no-one from Newburgh died in the second conflict.

Down by the River Tay there is a nice grassed area which can be used for picnics etc. There was an unusual sculpture showing leaping salmon (I suppose) in the middle of it. And some nice yachts on the river. The reed beds in the background are apparently the biggest in Europe.

On the way back home we went via Cupar. This is the former Woolies there. It had been turned into an Allworth’s but that was having its closing down sale’s final day! Looks like replacing a Woolies with something very similar isn’t viable either.

Dunoon is a seaside town so it’s not surprising to find some Art Deco but I didn’t expect quite so much. (I knew previously there was at least one typically flat roofed house.)

This is McColl’s Hotel:-

Here’s a close up on the entrance. The fenestration has obviously been updated.

This photo of the rear was taken from beside the Lamont memorial.

On the main street was Home Hardware, surely a former Woolies.

This is the La Scala cinema (as was) – opened in 1936, closed in the 1970s, now a shop.

There is a frontal image of this at the Scottish Cinemas website.

This is the house – in Mary Street – I mentioned above. It has been reroofed. Originally its windows were much more deco. I’ve seen a photo of this where it resembles the face of a robot.

Finally is Selborne Hotel which is up (down) a side street and difficult to photograph in its entirety.

On the way back up from Alnwick we stopped at Berwick to get something to eat. We’d have settled for a chippy but there wasn’t one on the main street or the ones leading off it.

On the way in to the town I had spotted this Art Deco garage but I took the photo from the opposite side of the River Tweed. On the way out I had to recross the river first and discovered it was built in 1937.

The old bridge over the Tweed has nice arches. There were lots of swans on the river.

I took this of the newer road bridge, and the railway bridge behind it, from the old one.

The town itself was down at heel and shabby looking even allowing for the fact that it was latish (after closing time.) This must surely once have been a Woolworths.

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This was another building that looks a bit deco.

Newcastle’s Northumberland Street does still have a couple of deco frontages. This is a Peacock’s now. Was it once a Woolies? Again the photo is a stitch.

I had thought this one might have been a Burton’s:-

I think now, due to the clock, it was once a Marks and Spencer but it may have been something else. In any case I searched flickr and the picture below is what came up for Burton’s. It looked like one of the art deco buildings I had seen in the book of old Newcastle (see first link in this post):-

I saw no sign of this building on present day Northumberland Street. The Marks and Spencer’s shop is now located in the Eldon Square shopping centre. We went in and browsed but there was nothing worth buying.

The photograph below (from flickr via a postcard) was exactly the same as the other art deco building I had seen in the book of old Newcastle:-

I did notice a newer Bhs further along Northumberland Street. The building in the postcard was apparently demolished to make Monument Mall. I doubt that’s as aesthetically pleasing as the former Bhs was.

Right at the end of Northumberland Street we came upon this very tall monument.

It was erected in memory of the dead of the “South African War” as the inscription has it. This is more often known as the Boer War but more accurately was the Second Boer War.

There are quite a few such memorials around. One is on the parapet of Edinburgh’s North Bridge. I have a piece of crested china which is a reproduction of the memorial in Hull to the dead of the same war and I have seen another similarly patterned piece with a different town’s crest. The next day (in Durham) we encountered another tall memorial to the South African War.

On the way back to the car we passed Newcastle’s civic centre. It’s a much more modern building with a tower surmounted by a circular top with horses’ heads and a finial showing the three castle symbol that also appears on silver objects assayed in Newcastle when the city still had an assay office.

The castle motif also appeared on the railings surrounding the civic centre.

*Edited to add:- for some idea of the memorial’s scale see this link. Its surroundings have changed somewhat since the postcard photos in the link were taken.

Last week the good lady and I took another stroll along the Water of Leith.

No herons this time, and we didn’t tarry by Dean Village, the Dene Bridge nor St Bernards Well but since the last time we were there, there have been a few additions to the water in the shape of Antony Gormley sculptures. This is the one nearest Stockbridge.

Gormley is most famous for the Angel Of The North but has also placed figures on Crosby Beach near Liverpool and on roofs in New York and London.

The Water of Leith seems an appropriate location for these new emplacements as it flows past the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, albeit out of sight in a valley.

We had a look around Stockbridge, the good lady loading up on books from the charity shops and a great second-hand book shop that we hadn’t gone into before.

I liked the look of this one as the facade is Decoish:-

I suspect the projecting frontage may have started life as a bank.

There is some nice detailing on the door surround too.

On its left as you look at it in the photo stands the former Woolworths shop (which wasn’t ever Art Deco) and is now a Scotmid.

On the way back I photographed the bridge which carries Belford Road over the river.

I’ve no idea whether this is one of Thomas Telford’s (as the Dene Bridge is) but it looks of an age to me.

This is the detail up on the right in close up:-

I believe it depicts the Arms of Edinburgh.