20TH CENTURY MODERNIST CHURCH OF ST PETER & ST THOMAS MORE, PLYMOUTH CROWNHILL AT RISK FROM STRUCTURAL FAULTS www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymout...

Best Christmas ad yet! Knocks John Lewis into a cocked hat.

The lost Crittall windows of Penzance pt3...ACLAND HOUSE about 100yds from the sea front between Penzance and Newlyn, built with curved glass in metal frames , now with more efficient double glazing www.flickr.com/photos/74784...

The lost Crittall windows of Penzance pt2.... the house on Captains Row, (Promenade x Lower Queen Street) had Crittalls and a sunrise front gate !... round the Corner the Sunhome apartments had Crittalls till the 1980s and the auctioneers below had 1930s curved glass windows

The lost Crittall windows of Penzance....we'll start with architect Colin Drewitt's Yacht Inn( 1937) near the Jubilee Pool.... double glazing installed early 1980s...they said 'Yes' to AGS ?( local TV ad jingles)....

GAGGIA are celebrating their 75th anniversary....the BAR CAPRI in St Ives got theirs about 1962..Still there around 1982 but not much longer I suspect www.gaggiadirect.co.uk/gaggia-in-th... www.flickr.com/photos/74784...

The Torbay riviera is on the up it seems....these ladies are officials but can any holidaymaker sit with Agatha? www.torbayweekly.co.uk/resizer/800/...

Swimming pool at Claridges ...best bit in an Art Deco piece in the Times online

And a Google Image search on this Praa Sands "wedgie" house pic finds some well tended examples near Carlyon Bay, St Austell, Cornwall maps.app.goo.gl/TLA3aou3E6cR...

A Google Image search on a pic of Coldrose Court,Truro pent/ monopitch roofed "wedgie" houses leads to many in Hawkins Rd,Newquay by the town architect, Dinsdale ca.1963 maps.app.goo.gl/BXJNnsNiA37r... and around Deer Park Drive, Plymouth maps.app.goo.gl/AEECByQLR1TU...

TV-AM 😀 static.dezeen.com/uploads/2015...

One iconic late 20thC building I did see was the TV AM studio and its eggcup on canal-side rear view www.dezeen.com/2015/08/26/p... static.dezeen.com/uploads/2015...

The DEZEEN online newsletter is currently commemorating architects Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell who were at the front of high-tech and post-modern architectural styles in the last third of the 20thC www.dezeen.com/2025/10/06/n... I lived near but never saw : www.dezeen.com/2019/11/14/p...

In 2020 Will Self visited Ker Street, Devonport social club, first stop on his National Express powered fact-finding UK tour www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b... but he missed the Devonport crews wild Halloween celebration around 2016

The Ker Street, Devonport area had fallen out of favour by Y2000 and was rebuilt around 2010. www.devonportonline.co.uk/millennium_d... The lively Ker Street social club is still in Foulston's Egyptian Odd Fellows Hall, and his Guildhall is alive again

Miraculously Ker Street was almost untouched by the WWII bombing of Devonport and Plymouth but not by the council planners in the 1950s when the Grand terraces were replaced by flats ( Stalinist , I've heard them called !)

Foulston put a cluster of exotic buildings at the end of the terrace of of grand houses in Ker Street, Devonport..the pillared Guild Hall, the Devonport column (statue of King George never erected), a 'Hindoo' temple (actually Baptist) and the Egyptian library just in time for photography

Architect John Foulston 's Ker Street was the finest in Devonport 2 centuries ago

AFAIK the last flying boat to put down in Plymouth Sound was in 1986 and it was a slightly too exciting SPLASHDOWN! as the wildly flickering bit of VHS newsreel shows....all survived! youtu.be/7Cd9XTuUKg4?...

Tree-hugging& recycling are mainstream beliefs now.....https://www.ft.com/content/0ae25b6f-e819-4cd2-9840-b47399109101

I prefer brickwork to concrete....will the FT paywall come up on this piece...https://www.ft.com/content/caa1ceff-8666-4703-abc9-a3f51e565452

There's a lot of 'pedestrian' subways in Bristol it seems and concrete attracts graffiti in an unremovable way....even without graffiti it attracts black mould growth....https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/features/stange-beauty-bristol-underpasses/

This one slipped past me....is it still there in Eastbourne? www.thelondonmuralcompany.com/the-towner-a...

The BBC looks at the Concrete Jungle www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazin... www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl... Are they really trying to demolish this multistorey car park because rough sleepers can keep relatively dry in there?

Tut-tut SPECTATOR....Bored OF Banksy , should it not read, Bored WITH Banksy? .....though I think the English language maybe mutating as it must inevitably do.

@maximumeffort.bsky.social xeterunispeccoll.bsky.social Carry on regardless!....Central Exeter after some WWII bombing a Margaret Tomlinson photo i0.wp.com/historycolle...

Country Life have piece about a Cooperative housing groups perseverance and success in Dorset www.countrylife.co.uk/architecture... Fellow Croydonian ( well,3 miles south of!) on-the-button John Grindrod has a longer more encyclopedic piece on Milton Keynes and the new towns in the FT

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social Is there anything in the whole of the UK like this French 'spacey' dwelling from the late 20thC?.....( the interior of Mervyn Seal's office/dwelling later ' Vergines' night spot near Torquay maybe but it was brick outside) www.standard.co.uk/homesandprop...

www.bbc.com/news/article... Graffiti outbreak in TAGWELL Road?...humour in there somewhere...National Highways quoting £10,000 to roughly roller paint over a single example not even neatly?....suggest art schools give graffiti artists recycled offcut boards they can paint for sale

Public Art by the railway into Plymouth....don't know the artist

Edwin Heathcote on Public Art exhibition 2019 www.ft.com/content/a8e5... It featured frieze panels by W Cornwall sculptor Paul Mount for Co-Op Leo's Falmouth ( also Co-Op's HOMEWORLD*, ...*Lastonet factory reclad) www.facebook.com/groups/60448...

Shot from the fastest scheduled train in the UK at the time ( HS125...and you could stick your camera and head? out of the sliding window 😀 ).... Eggborough, Yorkshire on the Flying Scotsman

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social On reflection I've got no evidence for the assumption that the scalloped roofs at the former Primrose Dairy/ United Dairy/ Unigate St Erth Creamery in Cornwall are made of concrete ( could be metal?).....can't find out much about it eg it's designer or date

By St Erth rail station is the former Primrose Dairy/ United Dairies/ St Ivel Creamery site which contains a 6-bay thin concrete shell roofed bottling plant now hemmed in by other sheds....surely it was their flagship building in the 1950s?

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social The rear of the RITZ, Penzance was bare concrete, a bit of a Bauhaus feel with slit Crittall windows on the stairwell and heavy even brutal mouldings on the corner and over the foyer ...all now painted I think for the re-opening in Sep2025

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social The RITZ, Penzance went BINGO till ca.2007...porch ciggie break for the ladies...from a passer-by on FB...."I remember once listening outside to the Bingo calling, like a magical ritual incantation"..then a DJ driven laterite club and GOLOWAN festival hub.... BONGO!

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social Trying to find the name for that 50s style end wall on the curvy concrete roof loading bay I found the platform shelter at the former ACROW HALT near Saffron Walden which is possibly all concrete rather than worrying brick overhang at Marsh Barton

The RITZ cinema theatre in Penzance has been rescued by the enthusiastic Merlin Cinema chain and reopens in September. The attached drawing by Penzance architect Drewitt was never built...a plainer design by an upcountry architect was used

More Public Art....The striking Elim Pentecostal Church,HALIFAX, 1972, ARCHITECT C.S. OLDFIELD has a puzzling ' brutalist'multiple sculpture panel alongside....I think it may have been commissioned from West Cornwall sculptor Paul Mount who did some even bigger multiples on buildings

More Public Art.....In 1968 the new Heron Shopping Centre in Nuneaton was equipped with a 15ft 800lb semi-abstract Heron fibreglass sculpture....made in West Cornwall by sculptor Paul Mount..... the centre changed hands so the heron probably ' got lost'

Well I never!! The Telegraph gives Jeremy Corbyn's views about the Government permitting council allotment sell-offs column inches and pics and it's not even behind their paywall www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

Prague based Adam Štěch featured in this article has a photo collection on Instagram (@okolo_architecture)......love the fabulous cylindrical glass ' beam me out of here' elevator ( lift in the UK) observer.co.uk/culture/arch...

Public Art #3 Agatha Christie, Torquay wearesouthdevon.com/wp-content/u... And I'm glad I got something of the Belle Epoque Paviion vibe on a visit 18 years ago www.flickr.com/photos/74784...

Public Art #2 Plymouth installed'The Messenger' ( £0.75m?)outside the Theatre Royal last year...was originally to be called Bianca after a Theatre Royal worker who inspired it reportedly.... scale and phone-pic from K-twin #1

Some interesting details about the building of the road bridge from plucky journalist Audrey Miller who climbed to the top of both Bridges ( the Brunel rail bridge at age 76. www.thepost.uk.com/news/buildin...

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House notes the dynamiting of the 1954 Pruitt-Igoe housing project in 1972...the single tower is in Londons East End

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social Mervyn Seal's butterfly house is the 'cover-pic' for the excellent and most useful UK Modern House Index ukmoho.org.uk

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social I was well wrong about Denver International Airport's timeframe....it opened in 1995. It's fabric roof structures partially collapsed under the weight of heavy snow, which the 'sails' at Plymouth's Sainsbury Superstore will probably not experience

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social Penzance got a tensioned fabric station bus shelter for about a decade after Y2000...gone now....all inspired by Denver Colorado airport's 'wigwam' roofs from the 1970s?

@westcountrymodern.bsky.social Those sail thingies....successful on the A38 Sainsbury but less so on the Armada Way Shopping Centre ( removed 2017 per streetview)...all started by Denver, Colrado airport in the 1970s!