tower

Bagnall Court and West View Court – Manchester

Posted on November 24, 2020November 24, 2020 by modernmoocher

Tucked in the crook of West View Road and Shawcross Lane a tower block and an adjacent slab block can be found.

For twenty years or so I’d cycled close by, either on Longley or Ford Lane on my way back and to from work.

By night the blocks are a sight to be seen, illuminated alongside the nearby M60.

Let’s take a look at Bagnall Court.

Originally commissioned by Manchester Borough Council, built by Direct Works and contractors Holst, currently managed by Parkway Green.

Consisting of thirteen storeys and sixty two homes.

The balconies were open and shielded in glass, later to be replaced by thick metal sheeting.

1987 – Tower Block

2020

Around the corner to West View Court – also commissioned by Manchester Borough Council, built by Direct Works and contractors Holst, currently managed by Parkway Green.

Nine storeys in height containing seventy three homes.

1987 – Tower Block

2020 – the distinctive coloured panels and glass shields now replaced.

Beneath the block an amazing void, entrance and stairway.

West View Court has an amazing community cinema The Block.

Church of St Leonard and St Jude – Doncaster

Posted on October 7, 2020 by modernmoocher

Barnsley Road Doncaster DN5 8QE

Constructed 1957 – 1963

Another church by architect George Pace – along with William Temple Wythenshawe, St Saviours Bradford, St Marks Broomhill and the Church of St Mark Chadderton.

They are all built in his distinctive manner, brick and concrete, steel, wood and glass. Often working within tight budgets, respectful of the Christian Church’s early heritage, expressing mass and volume with simple geometry.

The exterior skin pierced by multiple rectangular windows, the interior revealing an elegant calm space with attendant simple decorative elements and fittings.

The body of the church has two asymmetric orthogonal outriders and a tall bell tower.

The transept chapel

The chancel and apse has a raised roof with a glazed face.

Let’s literally take an anti-clockwise look around the outside.

I was warmly welcomed by The Revd David D’Silva, Curate-in-Charge and kindly given free access to the church’s interior.

The wooden framed roof supported by huge parabolic arches of laminated timber.

There are retrieved pews, temporarily reordered to accommodate Covid requirements.

Pugin statuary.

Pace’s own detailed design work in the altar screen and crucifix.

A Mediaeval font.

Light enters from several sources on three elevations.

And through the glazed area of the raised gable.

A delightful morning’s work visiting this well used and cared for church.

Fire Station – Bury

Posted on May 25, 2017 by modernmoocher

Curvilinear, cantilevered, concrete canopies wave – wave goodbye.

Opened in 1967

Closed in 2012, it continues to stand idly by, as the Bury Town centre doughnuts the site with shiny new developments.

A striking tower topped by a hyper parabolic roof with a cheeky twist, it remains an elegant feature on The Rock.

Facing an uncertain future it can only be a matter of time, as the new build proliferates that the fire station disappears in a puff of smoke.

Who you gonna call?

Lansbury Tower – London

Posted on March 29, 2017March 29, 2017 by modernmoocher

Neither wrought from purest ivory, nor containing some woe begotten, long gone, misplaced Rapunzel, but conceived as a democratic symbol of a new age of concrete, brick and steel.

Frederick Gibberd’s almost triumphal tower interlocks zig-zag diamonds of cast concrete upwards towards a silently clicking clock, at the head of the Chrisp Street Market.

Lewis Mumford wrote of the adjoining Lansbury Estate:

Its design has been based not solely on abstract aesthetic principles, or on the economics of commercial construction, or on the techniques of mass production, but on the social constitution of the community itself, with its diversity of human interests and human needs.

I was privileged to ascend the internal staircase, once open to the public – now reserved for high days, holidays and nosey northern interlopers. Having mildly vertiginous inclinations when so inclined, I gingerly went up in the world and leaned out to take the air and the view.

And this is what I saw.