Variety

It has become almost second nature to me to seek out the atypical buildings in places that I visit – to look for Victorian architecture in Regency Cheltenham, to find Art Deco in Georgian Bath, to keep my eyes open for the unexpected, not just the Shakespearian, in Stratford-upon-Avon. In Coventry, of course, there’s plenty to look at from the post-World War II rebuilding. But the place also has some buildings that survived the Blitz – medieval town gates, Georgian houses, and this, the former Gaumont-Palace, from the golden age of cinema.

It was opened in 1931 and its facade is very much of its time, with its moderne straight lines and a colour scheme combining off-white and eau de nil. Towards the top, there are four capital-like flourishes that bracket what look like stylized palm or lotus leaves with a pair of scrolls. This kind of detail is from the vocabulary of Egypt-influenced ornament that became ultra-fashionable in the late-1920s after the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the craze for all things ancient Egyptian. Cinemas, where glamorous decoration was just the ticket, were prime sites for this sort of adornment.

The Gaumont-Palace began as a cine-variety venue. This would offer a combination of filmic and live entertainment. An evening programme of a main feature film, a second feature or B movie, and perhaps a newsreel, would be complemented by a sequence of live acts – the comedians, singers, magicians and the like that were the mainstays of the 20th-century theatrical grab-bag known as ‘variety’. Audiences would get a long and varied night out in glamorous surroundings, for a couple of shillings a head.

Like so many buildings in Coventry, the cinema was damaged during the massive air-raid of November 1940 and there was more damage in another attack the following year. But the building survived and was repaired, and continued to screen films after the war. With further modifications (including the fitting of multiple screens), it carried on as a cinema until the end of the 1990s, being converted in 2000 for the media and performing arts students of Coventry University. It is now named after that great woman of the theatre, Ellen Terry, who was born in Coventry.

Old and new

So you build a cinema in 1937 in the latest pared-back moderne style, all straight lines, plain brickwork, and strips of metal-framed windows. You decorate in a similiar style inside, with a stepped ceiling and concealed lighting, so that cinema-goers could imagine for a moment that they were in the latest picture palace in London, or Honiton anyway. And you call your cinema the Cerdic, after the first king of Wessex. It seems an odd mixture, but cinema was like that in the 1930s – and still is, one could say – using the latest technology and style, but equally at home in the worlds of science fiction and historical romance.

The Cerdic cinema was one of a small West Country chain run by the Wessex Kinema Company. There were others in Wellington, Somerset, and – yes – Honiton, Devon and, according the the excellent Cinema Treasures website, the buildings were almost identical. The architect was Edward de Wilde Holding (1886–1958), who was based in Northampton and form the evidence of this frontage had the idiom at his fingertips. The building doesn’t seem totoally out of place in the centre of the town of Chard – a place after all of old factories built of red bricks. As with so many cinemas, the exterior architecture is all about the facade. As you can see from my photograph, the rear of the building is a simple shed with a monopitched roof.

The Cerdic closed in 1962 and after a spell as a DIY store it was taken over by the Wetherspoon pub chain, who no doubt liked the combination of usable space and a long street frontage. Their popular pubs occupy numerous buildings (from old offices to spas) that might otherwise have struggled to survive in England’s town centres. This one was already filling up on the morning I passed by, as people took advantage of the building’s enduring mix of the old and the new.

Festival of Britain (1): For these reliefs much thanks

Of all the streets in London, or anywhere else for that matter, Oxford Street is probably the place where it’s most difficult to follow the instructions I’m always giving people: “Look around you, and look up.” With a footfall this dense, it takes me all my time to dodge my fellow pedestrians and look where I’m going on the rare occasions when I walk along this street. But, since it’s sixty years since the Festival of Britain kicked off in 1951, it’s time to share with you one of Oxford Street’s highlights: number 219, now part of the Zara store.

This corner block was designed in a neat strip-windowed moderne style by Ronald Ward and Partners (who were also the architects of the Millbank Tower), and was presumably built in 1951. Its simple façade, with long windows, pale masonry, and wonderful corner curve, picks up where pre-war Art Deco and moderne architecture left off. But the frontage is just that bit different because it’s enlivened by three relief plaques celebrating the Festival of Britain. At the top is the Festival Hall*, next is Abram Games’s festival symbol†, and at the bottom are the highlights of the Festival’s South Bank Exhibition, the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon.

Lots of people are remembering the Festival at this anniversary moment, such reminiscences ranging from memories of modernistic aspiration (the Skylon) to evocations of sheer whimsy (the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway). So it’s good to be reminded of the Festival architecturally by these reliefs, especially as so little remains on the ground at the main London focus of the Festival – there is the Festival Hall, of course, but little else on the South Bank or at Battersea, although there are other buildings elsewhere in the capital, as I hope to show in another post soon. Meanwhile, all praise to John McAslan and Partners for their refurbishment of this little gem when building Zara’s main store beside and behind it.

*indistinct in my pedestrian-dodging quick-fire iPhone photograph: apologies
†of which more soon

* * *

There are some clearer photographs of the plaques on this building at the fascinating Ornamental Passions blog.

Backstreet moderne

I don’t know much about Shropshire House, tucked away in Capper Street off Tottenham Court Road, except that it was built in 1931–32, and is in that combination of pared-down modernism (strips of windows, white walls, flattish roof) and moderne (curved corners, bulbous balconies, horizontal bands), that people insist on calling Art Deco.


I think of Art Deco as the style of cinemas and chrome-trimmed restaurants from the interwar period – something altogether more over the top and wilfully decorative than this building. But, like postmodernism, Art Deco isn’t one style, but several – which is appropriate because both postmodernism and deco are reactions to modernism, ways of saying, ‘We can have pluralism, decoration, wit, style in buildings; we don’t have to wear the hair shirt of modernism, or the silk shirt of minimalism.'

So Art Deco can be, amongst other things, smart industrial deco, like the west London factories; deco with a touch of ancient Egypt; exuberant cinema deco, often adorned with reliefs and statues; or rich deco interior design using marble, chrome, and bakelite. Or this winning combination, not on a major road like a trophy factory but refreshingly gracing an obscure London backstreet.

Back to the future

Shops are amongst the most frequently updated of all our buildings. During the past few years it has seemed as if some High Street shops have had their fronts ripped off and replaced with the latest signage or corporate redesign once a year or more. Now, as old retail names disappear, this process seems likely to be replaced with one of boarding-up. But both modern ‘instant signs’ and shuttering ply can leave bits of old shop fronts peeping through. I like these fragmentary reminders of older styles, former ways of selling, and lost businesses, like the evidence of fishmongering I spied recently on the front of a Cheltenham barber’s.

Here’s another example, although this time the business remains the same. This Tamworth Cooperative store must date to the 1930s, its wonderful Art Deco tiling blending hints of ancient Egypt with the kind of ‘moderne’ proportions and abstract patterns that looked futuristic 75 years ago. The splash of colour, the lettering (straight out of advertisements in the backs of 1930s magazines), and that hint of community work (‘Hall & Offices’) are typical of times. So too are those thin lines of eau de nil just beneath the ‘lotus’ motif. The contrast with today’s Co-op logo couldn’t be greater. How marvellous that it’s all still there.