Whitehaven appeared a bit more prosperous than Maryport or Workington, less industrial certainly, and with a lot of sailing yachts in the harbour.

But more Art Deco, not just the Bus Station.

Only separated from the old Bus Station by one building is this pub, the Bransty Arch, now a Wetherspoons.

Here’s the frontage in more detail. Good stuff on the roofline and the Arch motif.

Here’s the side view looking back towards the old Bus Station.

Further into the town I found a Burton’s.

This is typical of 30s Burton’s style. Pity about the wires and other guff in the way in this other view in which I also seem inadvertently to have photographed a gull on the roof!

We found a large second-hand book shop in the town, very nook and cranny-like. Sadly none of the books grabbed my interest sufficiently to buy any. Ones I might have bought I already had! The good lady managed one purchase, though, and also browsed one she had been thinking of buying from the internet but decided she wouldn’t like it.

My original post on the Kirkcaldy Burton’s was one of my earliest to feature Art Deco.

This year, along with some other buildings in the town centre, Burton’s has been illuminated for Christmas by coloured uplighters. The subtlety and elegance of this stands in contrast to the poorer effort of the town’s main Christmas lights which are white and strung along the High Street and can be seen below.

The colours change in sequence, gradually, and the blue/purple ones in particular show off the Art Deco detailings on the window surrounds to great effect.

Ripon has a nice main square where a market was in progress when we were there. Fronting on to the square was a sole Art Deco facade, a Burton’s.

These flats were in Kirkgate. The double glazing has kept the deco feel. The curved architraves above the windows are great. Pity about that roan pipe, though.

This is a closer view which shows the architraves to good effect.

We stopped off at Morpeth in Northumberland on our way down south and found a plethora of Art Deco buildings.

The most striking was Sanderson House on Bridge Street. The semi-circular canopy looks very recent. The entrance leads through an arcade to shops out the back. There’s a good attempt here to retain the style of the windows.

Rutherford & Co is also on Bridge Street. Could it once have been a Burton’s?

My immediate thought on seeing the Iceland shop was “Woolworths.” Checking Google Maps when I got home I found it was indeed before that company’s demise.

The building occupied by Superdrug also has Deco features. The grey area round the windows is interesting, as is the detailing high up. The middle windows retain an old style quality.

Santander bank premises. The windows here have been mucked about with but the embellishments above them are good and I like the roundels in the stonework.

This last one – HSBC – is on the cusp. It’s got verticals and horizontals and good detailing around the door but the finials on the pillars aren’t really deco.

I make that six Art Deco facades – all on the one street! Morpeth obviously had a lot going for it in the 1930s. It’s still reasonably prosperous looking.

The day we visited Great Malvern…..

Well, we didn’t really see the Malvern Hills: only the mist/clouds rolling all over them. We hadn’t realised the town would be about 1/4 of the way up them and the town itself is strange. We came in from the Worcester end where first there’s a lower bit on the level with a few shops we didn’t stop at and then you go higher and eventually reach the main centre.

We followed the signs to a car park and discovered it was a fairly steep climb to the shops.

I saw this after we’d rounded what is, I think, a swimming pool complex:-

It looked to me as if it might be deco.

This is the first part of the frontage. It’s a theatre (or perhaps two – see the bit to the right of the photo which is an older building.)

This bit, just round the right hand corner of the near frontage, clinched it. Definitely deco. The railings on the roof line are nice (but may be modern.)

After some more climbing (past a mediæval Priory) we came on a second hand book shop where the good lady made a couple of purchases, then up once more to the main street.

The building straight ahead has aspects of deco but probably isn’t.

Right along the street which curves to the left in the above was this row of shops.

There is some fine detailing round and above a doorway about 3/4 of the way along them.

Coming back along we dropped into an Amnesty International charity shop and I bought two books. (The good lady’s haul was considerably larger.) Going down towards the car park I took two photos of the building which now houses Iceland’s outlet in Great Malvern. From the way it looks I think it may once have been a Burton’s.

I couldn’t really get it in one shot. Here’s the detail.

There is a nice block of flats called Cambray Court located in the centre of Cheltenham. Reminiscent of Kelvin Court, Glasgow.

This is Monsoon. Originally a Burton’s. The link has some good pictures of the detailing.

Now Poundland. Goodness knows what it was to begin with.

Starbucks. Ditto.

Art Deco houses on Evesham Road. Amazingly the original glazing seems to still be in place. (They look like Critall windows to me.) Compare and contrast with Silver End.

The upward curve on the wall at the side is nice on that first one. Three of this collection of 5 buildings are set in a little crescent off the main road:-

The last two semis of the five:-

Cheek by jowl with the previous semi. Glazing replaced. (Eyes poked out):-

The next house along has suffered a similar fate.

Not a bad haul of deco in Cheltenham, then, for a three hour visit.

Like Burton’€™s on the High Street this is another commercial Art Deco building in Kirkcaldy, though this is not high Deco and has more similarities in style with the Town House.

It’€™s the former office complex of linoleum manufacturers Nairn & Williamson; off Victoria Road, and has now been turned into luxury flats. The linoleum factory was the other side of Victoria Road from here. Since the linoleum trade fell away most of that site has been demolished.

Here’s the view from the left side:-

And from the right:-

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.

Two more Art Deco buildings in Dundee’s Murraygate.

First is Marks And Spencer’s, right out of the Art Deco period.

The second is now under the Topshop/Topman umbrella but was formerly a Burton’s.

Compare the style with the Burton’s in Kirkcaldy. See another view of this Dundee building here.

Lots more Burton’s buildings are pictured in this collection.