Chesterfield, Derbyshire

The way to do it

The Punch Bowl in Chesterfield is a pub, like the White Horse, Chichester in my last post, that uses coloured glass in its decoration. It was built by Chesterfield Brewery in 1931, in a period when street alterations led to a number of new buildings in the town centre. Quite a few of these are half-timbered and the Punch Bowl has a large timber-framed window and gable above its stone ground floor.

But the coloured glazing in a couple of the windows was what really caught my eye. My favourite is this pub sign in glass, a depiction of the traditional glove puppet Mr Punch lying inside a shallow bowl, a personification of the pub name that I’ve seen on the painted signs of other pubs called the Punch Bowl, although I’ve not seen the image done in glass elsewhere. In this window, Punch’s protruding nose and chin, his pointed hat, and his legs and feet are all discernible. Legs and feet are unusual in a glove puppet – the ‘glove’ that conceals the puppeteer’s hand usually renders them irrelevant or inconvenient. Punch always has legs, however, and they hang in front of the glove and if the puppeteer is skilful, he or she can make Punch wave them around in suggestive or amusing ways. Colour and the varying textures of variopus kinds of glass distinguish the different parts of the image. It would be even more striking if there was a strong light behind it – perhaps this was the intended effect when the building was lit up at night.

As more and more pubs close, or modernise away their old decor and character, pub glass gradually disappears. But there are still numerous examples of both coloured and engraved glass in the windows of pubs and former pubs. I hope building owners don’t trash it all – what’s left enlivens our streetscapes, enhances pub interiors, and reminds us of a time when pubs were brasher and often more colourful than they are today. Cheers!

Chesterfield, Derbyshire

The sunset of an empire

My recent trip to Sheffield took me past Chesterfield in Derbyshire, where I stopped for a break and to look at the twisted church spire, a famous sight that I’d not seen for about 40 years. Naturally, I had a walk round the centre of the town. Naturally I found a few things I was not expecting. One of these was a superbly preserved former Lipton’s grocery shop with most of its internal tiles and fittings still intact. I’ve not seen a better preserved Lipton’s than this – and the architectural historian Kathryn A. Morrison, who knows as much about the history of shops as anyone, thinks there is none that compares to it.*

The structure of the original shop front is still there, but with new signage and some damage to the tiling. But the interior is where it gets really good. One side has a counter with a tiled front bearing legends such as ‘Lipton’s Pickles’ and ‘Cooked Meats’, all in beautiful curly green lettering of probably c. 1910. The walls behind the counter are tiled in green and white too. This was the side of the shop where the fresh produce was sold – eggs, butter, cheese, bacon, and so on. On the other side is a panelled wooden counter with a range of shelves behind, for the tea, coffee, and stuff in bottles and jars. These shelves, still used for jams, preserves, lemon curds and other delights by the baker’s who occupy the shop today, are beautifully made in dark wood and topped with a tiled panel with a slogan that shoots from the hip: ‘The business of which the sun never sets.’ Yes, Lipton’s was the biggest chain grocer in the UK† and had imperial ambitions, for the British empire was, back then, the one ‘on which the sun never sets’.

Yes, Lipton’s were big, once. They were still a large concern in the mid-20th century and I remember their branches from when I was young. But they never had the really large shops of their old rivals Sainsbury’s or brash new, pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap Tesco’s. They were eventually bought up and shops either rebranded or sold off. The name had gone by the 1980s. The people who work in the baker’s in the former Lipton’s in Chesterfield and proud of their shop: they keep it spotless, welcomed me when I asked if I could take photographs, and run what looks like a successful business – the place was full when I was there and I was diving and dodging to avoid getting in people’s way. It was in every way a pleasing sight.

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* For more about Lipton’s, see Kathryn Morrison’s site, here.

† Lipton’s, Sainsbury’s, International Stores, Home & Colonial: these were the big British chain grocers of the 19th and early-20th centuries, before the supermarket era.