Bewdley, Worcestershire

Hard cell

Being stuck at home made me think of this place. It’s a rather impressive lock-up, built at one end of the late-18th century Shambles (market) building in the centre of Bewdley. There are actually three cells, one of which is oriented differently and so not visible in my photograph. The whole complex is now part of Bewdley Museum. As is common with lock-ups of the period, the structure is strong and windowless, with brick walls and – a touch which relates the little building to larger-scale prison architecture – stone door surrounds with heavily rusticated blocks.

Those blocks seem to speak of high security, but their symbolism goes beyond this, I think. Their hint of urban grandeur – with the implication that the town had spent more than the minimum on its small prison – speaks of a place that was said to have had quite a bit of use for a lock-up. In the 19th century, Bewdley apparently had some 30 pubs – a large number in what was then a small town – and a resultant persistent problem with drunkenness. It could be, then, that the main use for these cells was to bang up drunks behind the heavy studded iron-bound wooden doors until they sobered up and dried out.

The doors are in fact replacements, but they give a good idea what the lock-up would have been like (the originals are displayed in the museum too), as do the spartan cell interiors. These have a masonry platform on which was the occupant’s bed, plus a ceramic tiled floor, a tiny fireplace, and not much else. It’s very basic, but then 18th-century prisons usually were. The prevailing view of the architecture and the inmates was no doubt that this was ‘as good as they deserve’. Other times, other ways.

Bewdley, Worcestershire

Rain, steam, and tin

As one recent commenter remarked, I do seem to have noticed quite a lot of corrugated iron in the last few weeks. I can’t resist sharing one more example, even though it is in a way going over ground covered by this blog before. The Severn Valley Railway runs between Bridgnorth and Kidderminster on track that originally formed part of a line linking Hartlebury in Worcestershire with Shrewsbury. The line became part of the Great Western Railway in the 1870s and was closed in 1963 (it had already been scheduled for shut-down before the wholesale closure of British railway lines that took place in that year). Part of the line was reopened as a heritage railway in 1970 and an extension to Bewdley followed in 1974.

In the early 20th century the Great Western Railway used small corrugated-iron buildings as stores, as lamp rooms, or as shelters on the platforms of some of its smaller stations and halts. I previously posted about a pair of these pagoda shelters at Denham Golf Club station in Buckinghamshire. Here’s another – but instead of an original example from the early 1900s, it’s a modern one dating from the "heritage" phase of the Severn Valley Railway. Northwood Halt was originally open between 1935 and the line closure in 1963 and during this period waiting passengers sheltered in a wooden hut. When the revived Severn Valley Railway was extended to Bewdley in 1974 the halt was reopened, and this pagoda shelter was put up in 2006 to replace the dilapidated hut. It is said to be the first all-new pagoda shelter to be erected since 1948. The platform sign is new too, but its cut wooden letters are very similar to those on its predecessor. The ensemble makes a welcoming sight for those who wait in rain or shine for one of the Severn Valley Railway's steam- or diesel-hauled trains.

Bewdley, Worcestershire

Bewdiful

A recent post at The Dabbler dealt with plotlands, a form of development that became popular in the early years of the 20th century as a way of offloading unprofitable farmland. Estate agents and speculators parcelled up fields as small plots, on which people – often city-dwellers who wanted a place in the country – could build a home, knock together a chalet, or start a smallholding. Plotland houses were often self-built of timber; corrugated iron was frequently in evidence, too; some were even cobbled together from old railway carriages. Detractors referred to them as shacks, but they provided a rare opportunity for people with a tight budget to build (and in the days before the “property-owning democracy” own) a home – their buildings form a fascinating if unspectacular vernacular.

Probably the best known plotland developments were in Southeast England. Peacehaven in Sussex is a maybe the most famous. The Dabbler mentions Jaywick and other Essex plotlands. There are also examples in the Thames Valley and, as I was reminded yesterday when my travels took me through Bewdley, in the Severn Valley too. I knew about this particular development from a memorable film by Jonathan Meades, Severn Heaven (1990), part of his Abroad in Britain Series. Meades revelled in the rich bricolage that the owners of these houses had created, the melange of corrugated iron sheds, garden ornaments, chain-link fences, and boskage, both old and imported. Back in 1990 the houses themselves looked crudely but lovingly hammered together – now many have been replaced by slick tongue-and-groove structures that could almost be part of a pine-lodge holiday park. But some of the old houses remain. Here’s one, lovingly painted in green with fancy white bargeboards, clinging to the slope below the Severn Valley Railway, which swishes and hoots in the background.

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There’s more about this plotland development at the Liberal England blog.
Jonathan Meades’ film is available on DVD as part of The Jonathan Meades Collection, BBCDVD2601