Nearly Forgot! Elfin's Tuesday Architecture thread- stuff local to you.

Soz for being late with it this week.

Right, I think it was Harry Spider or someone last week, what suggested a ‘local’ theme. So, This week’s all about stuff what is within a couple of miles of where you live, or maybe a slightly bigger radius if you don’t live in a town or city. But not stuff hundreds of miles away, you get me? Little bit about the history of stuff is helpful for other viewers.

Will be nice to see any STWers living outside the UK in this one.

I am of course spoiled rotten for this one, but I’ll go for some lesser known stuff rather than the obvious ones.

Whitechapel Library and art gallery. The Passmore Edwards ‘University of the Ghetto’. The library is now part of the expanded gallery, which is a little bit of a shame.

Abbey Mills Pumping Station; lovely old Victorian ‘Cathedral of Sewage’.

The old Bryant and May match factory; site of the Match Girls strike of 1888, which was one of the events which led to the Suffrage Movement and the birthplace of the firrst trade union for women in Britain.

Show us yer local treasures!

Oh and btw, last weeks’ thread on religious buildings was fantastic. Thanks to all who contributed. 🙂

Sunny Manchester

Heaton Park (about a mile from my house)

Clifton Viaduct (As featured in every Hit the North race so far)

Salford Docks and Imperial War Museum

John Ryland’s Library (The wife works there)

St Peters Church Heppenhiem, looks better at night than during the day.

One I have posted before, the waldspiral in Darmstadt.

and finally castle Frankenstien, on one of my regular midweek ride routes, gets quite spooky riding up to it through the forests in winter. The view is good from there though looking out over the Rhine valley.

The Imperial War Museum in Salford. The concept of the building is to show a shattered globe. The exhibitions inside are wonderfully creative too. They’ve really re-thought what a museum should be about

and… AND… its got a tank by the door. Whats not to like?

The Bridgewater hall. Built on springs don’t you know? By Tigger*

* That may not actually be true

A nearby art-deco-ish garage

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&gl=uk&ie=UTF8&ll=55.946843,-3.080806&spn=0,0.001577&z=19&layer=c&cbll=55.946843,-3.080806&panoid=sbd0H3Vy_H2rbFQYzVB0aQ&cbp=12,257.91,,0,0.6

I like this building down the road from me. A beautiful old former Billiard Hall.

Unfortunately its now a Wetherspoons and is an absolute ****-hole inside! Full of old alcoholics and the local chav smack-addicts bottling each other and throwing up!

Always liked this round building just down from Torduff reservoir in Bonaly (Edinburgh), 5 mins walk fron the flat –

[/url]

The thread inspired me to research its’ origins, & after literally 2 minutes ceaseless searching, lo the answer appeared –

The Edinburgh Water Company constructed the Torduff Reservoir in 1848 and its associated structures including the dam, filter beds, filtering cistern and dam keeper’s house to serve the city of Edinburgh. This set of buildings is an early example of reservoir construction; the filtering cistern is a good example of a simple utilitarian building design.

The building is the filtering cistern. Now I know 🙂

Grosvenor Estate, known affectionately as the Domino Estate;

Other side of the Moat;

Unfortunately its now a Wetherspoons and is an absolute ****-hole inside! Full of old alcoholics and the local chav smack-addicts bottling each other and throwing up!

My dad always convinces me to go in because it’s cheap and usually always has a good selection of ales in.

Peel Building, U of Salford. Had a couple of lectures in there.

Manchester’s Town Hall. V. impressive.

Manchester’s civil justice centre

Beetham Tower, Manchester

Urbis. A beautiful building housing both the worst museum in the world – the Museum of the City, and the worst TV station – Channel M – who’s six viewers will doubtless disagree with me. The restaurant was meant to be average and overpriced too. Inexcusable use for a great building. Now to become the National Football Museum – we’ll see how that goes?

portlyone – I’m basing my assertion on the fact that I tend to pass it in the morning where the afore-mentioned ‘Chortons finest’ are sat outside getting stuck into their liquid breakfast

[/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos

Just over the road from the workshop, Elliots town winding house, with one of the old winding engine in.

The John Barrow Monument, taken from my bedroom window 😉

[/url]
19th December 2010[/url] by Rob Sutherland[/url], on Flickr

Built in memory of Sir John Barrow who came from this small corner of Cumbria and became something of a big name in the naval world!

The Blast Furness at the foot of the Duddon Valley

[/url]
30th August 2010[/url] by Rob Sutherland[/url], on Flickr

Quite a nice example of such a thing.

And the Buddhist Monastry just down the road… biggest in Europe!

[/url]
9th October 2010[/url] by Rob Sutherland[/url], on Flickr

LOLs at the stitching on Beatham Tower.

Urbis looks like the conning tower off some vast Russian submarine.

The good and the bad (IMO)

I love the big wheel, but the IRA could have moved the bomb a bit closer to the Arndale Tower, not to blow it up like… just to knock the tiles off.

Library Walk, Manchester.

Yes, the building on the left (Town Hall Extension) is curved to follow the shape of the building on the right (Central Library).

Stockport Viaduct:

The viaduct itself is really rather nice and it strides elegantly over a motorway, the River Mersey, a bus station and a whole host of other random stuff. Stockport is a dump and a half but the viaduct is graceful.
When it was built (1840) it was the largest viaduct in the world, 27 arches and about 35m high.

There’s a law that says that any train passing over the viaduct must stop at Stockport Station – they were so worried after they built it that trains might just go whizzing through that they put a law down to stop that!

Sackville Street Building, University of Manchester (formerly UMIST), Manchester.

It’s indicative of the might of Manchester in its original heyday. Big, brash and imposing.

The Hermitage – outdoor architecture. The bridge, the hut and the trees were all planned. The hut is shaped like a guitar body and it used to be that when you walked in to it, it amplified the roar of the aterfall so much than in it”s early days, ladies were banned from entering in case “they were overcome by the force of nature and swooned as a result”. The national trust “improved” it by blocing the sound with a glass wall. Muppets.

Also, not quite local to me, but not that far away – the fantastic piece of engineering that is the falkirk wheel

Metropolitan, West Didsbury, Manchester.

One of the soon-to-be-ex locals to me, as I move away from the area after 10 years. Formerly the Midland Hotel, a den of rival drug gangs and bikers, it was converted into a swish pub just over 10 years ago and is rammed every weekend with the beautiful people.

I don’t live on Preston but once went out with someone who did, I made her visit this with me:

I once got dumped in The Metroplotian (nurse, medium size). I hope the place burns to the ground. 😉

BBSB is that near Pitlochry? Where there’s a random incidence of suicide dogs or something?

This is quite pleasing on the eye

Some excellent stuff so far.

This is the cistern in the centre of my village

[/url][/img]

This is Totnes, I love the way the architecture gets older as the image dissapears, like time itself.
[/url][/img]
[/url][/img]
[/url][/img]

When I was in Totnes I thought the people were getting higher the further I went up the hill.

This is round the back of our house.

Loads of nice stuff round our way, may have to do a ride and take some photos

Is that Hogwart’s?

Maybe not genius but very cute – The Old House, Hereford. Santa parks up his sledge outside at Christmas 🙂

Is that Hogwart’s?

Nope its this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_Building

NLA tower Croydon:

IMHO the only nice 60s concrete building around here. Lots of the worse ones are being demolished 🙂

One of the loveliest bridges in the world:

Built with tobacco money, hard to believe it’s a twentieth century building:

I can see this from my office window

Scottish Parliament Building:

Almost all of my rides from start by going around the mini mountain behind it:

And finish by riding through here:

Five minutes from the door.

Here’s the Eddystone Lighthouse just a short, 12 mile paddle out of Plymouth….

The one on the right with the smoke coming out of it’s a concrete structure disguised as a thatched boathouse near the entrance to Dartmouth Harbour. It was used to accommodate anti submarine netting & winches during WW2….

That’s the hotel on Burgh Island. A popular haunt of Agatha Christie between the wars and, no doubt, an inspiration in some of her murder mystery locations….

And, influenced by Trailmonkey’s photos above, here’s another Totnes street view, (unfortunately, slightly spoilt by the grinning tourist cluttering up the foreground 😉 )….