Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex

Memories of empire

It’s a surprise to arrive in Bexhill, prepared to take a look at one of the most famous examples of English modernism, the De La Warr Pavilion, all white walls, glass and steel, and to encounter a group of buildings with a whiff of the Mughal empire about them. Close to the seafront is Marina Court Avenue, a row of dwellings built in the early-1900s. These houses have Moghul-inspired details including windows with horseshoe arches (like those on the bandstand in my previous post), together with a minaret and an array of chimney stacks in the form of miniature onion domes. The nearby Marina Arcade, with its copper-domed entrances, is clearly a development of the same period and style.

The Maharajah of Cooch Behar moved into one of the houses in 1911 to convalesce when he became ill after attending King George V’s coronation. However, the presence of the maharajah does not seem to have inspired the architecture of these houses – they were built several years before he arrived. Back then, however, this style of architecture looked less out of place in this English seaside town, because Bexhill had a major building partly in the Mughal taste: the kursaal.

Kursaal is a term derived from two German words meaning ‘cure’ and ‘room’, and a kursaal was a prominent feature in Central European spa towns, places where you went to be cured of your ills. In fact such buildings were more about entertainment than medicine – they usually had a large hall for concerts and assemblies, together with side rooms for other functions, including at Bexhill separate reading rooms for ladies and gentlemen. More to the architectural point, Bexhill’s kursaal was adorned with large ‘oriental’-looking domes and a minaret. Built in the 1890s, they survived until the building of the De La Warr Pavilion, with its theatre, café, and sitting areas, led to its demolition.

In this context, the smaller buildings ofMarina Court Avenue and Marina Arcade would not have looked out of place, creating a small cluster of onion domes, horseshoe arches, and ornate glazing to give an impression that would have seemed exotic to British visitors. This kind of architectural borrowing of foreign styles is now looked down on as ‘cultural appropriation’, but back in the 1890s and early-1900s, Britain had an empire, having appropriated not just the culture but also the land of numerous foreign powers. Buildings influenced by the architecture of India would have reminded people of British global power. They might also have reminded the people of Bexhill that if Brighton, just along the coast, could have an outstanding ‘oriental’ building in the Royal Pavilion, Bexhill too merited its share of the action.

Dome-like chimney stacks and ‘oriental’ windows, Bexhill

Harrogate, Yorkshire

High up in Harrogate 3

Harrogate’s Royal Hall, my third striking skyline structure in the Yorkshire spa town, actually has three towers topping its entrance front, a rather squat square one in the middle and two round ones, one at each end. I like the design of the circular end towers – they’re actually quite plain, but the ring of windows offers ventilation, light – and, presumably, could be illuminated at night too, to add interest to the evening skyline.

This large building fulfilled several functions, as hinted by its original name, still carved into the face: Kursaal. If you look up the word ‘kursaal’ in a dictionary, you’ll find it defined as ‘a public room at a spa’. The word comes from the German, and is made up of words for ‘cure’ and ‘hall’. But curative functions were far form the only ones in most kursaals – balls, entertainments, theatrical performances, those were the kinds of things that might take place there, and today buildings known as kursaals are given over to all kinds of uses, cinemas and theatres being the most common, although the most famous kursaal, the one at Southend-on-Sea, is the main building of an amusement park and was designed to house a range of activities from balls to billiards.

The Kursaal at Harrogate houses a large theatre and performance auditorium. This is surrounded by an ambulatory, a space around which people could stroll and socialise, not the least important function of the building. You could also take the waters here. This multitude of functions, and the building’s size, made it an important one for Harrogate when it was erected in 1903. A competition was organised to find the best design, and well known theatrical architect Frank Matcham was hired to assess the entries and act as consulting architect. He chose a design by an architect called Robert Beale. However, the council judged that Beale’s design wasn’t entirely practical – it couldn’t be built with the available budget – and Matcham was asked to revise the designs. It’s said that the final result owes more to Matcham than Beale.

Matcham is best known for his theatre interiors, which are typically highly ornate and admirably practical. The Royal Hall is certainly both of those things – its highly decorative auditorium is looking good after a lengthy restoration in 2000–2008, and its entrance front is certainly inviting and striking. Like my other Harrogate towers, those of the Royal Hall pinpoint a building that’s both interesting to look at and an asset to the town.