Tamworth, Staffordshire

Uncommon markets (1)

I’ve posted at least once before about my liking for traditional English town halls – the kind that form a central landmark in a town, often with a space for a market beneath and a wooden turret or cupola on top. This is one of my favourites, and it provides a stunning centrepiece to the town of Tamworth. I admire its chequered brickwork, its simple Tuscan arches under which the market was once held, and the collection of engaging details on this end wall. I suppose if I were being critical I’d say that the generous round-headed windows and the triangular pediment with its enormous dentils are enough – the design doesn’t exactly need all the bits in the middle – the clock (a later addition), the plaque, the heraldry. But, cluttered as they are, they add to the charm of this building and to the information it imparts.

The plaque, for example, tells us that the town hall was built by Thomas Guy, no less, the founder of Guy’s Hospital in London. Guy, whose mother came from Tamworth, made his money as a publisher and bookseller in London. He made some generous gifts – to St Thomas’s Hospital, to Guy’s itself, and to Tamworth, where he built almshouses as well as the town hall. The coat of arms relates to Guy too, and also appears on Guy’s hospital in London.

In spite of his benefactions, Guy had a reputation for being mean. Perhaps that’s partly to do with his reaction in 1708, when he was unseated as Tamworth’s MP. In response he excluded Tamworth residents from his almshouses, restricting them to people from the nearby area and to his own relations. But at least by then the people of Tamworth had their town hall. He couldn’t take that away from them.

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Bazza, at the blog To Discover Ice, has a post about the Guildhall at Thaxted, which is the timber-framed 16th-century grandparent, as it were, of the Tamworth town hall and other buildings of its ilk.

Tamworth, Staffordshire

A breath of fresh air

I was slightly baffled when I came across this building. Approaching from what turned out to be the back, I found a low-slung, green-tiled structure around a courtyard, with some concrete detailing that seemed to date from the 1930s. It had clearly been altered quite a bit, but some of the original metal-framed windows were still there. And those green tiles. Weren't they reminiscent of white-walled thirties houses and big cafés on trunk roads? As the wind howled across the courtyard I made my way around the building.

I kicked myself when I got to the front and saw the large sign: ‘BATHS’. Of course. The courtyard was once filled with water, and Tamworthians swam to and fro, or tried not to drop their ice-creams in the pool. As Peter Ashley of Unmitigated England remarked to me recently, Tamworth is probably as far away from the sea as any place in England. So it deserved a lido as much as anywhere. But lidos were all the fashion everywhere between the world wars, when the people began to appreciate anew the health-giving properties of fresh air, exercise, and sunshine. While the enlightened middle classes longed for snow-white modernist houses with big windows, terraces, and ‘sleeping porches’, the rest of the population got more real, and headed down to the lido.

I’m not sure when Tamworth’s baths closed, but many towns, mindful of the English climate, built new indoor pools in the 1960s and 1970s, leading to the demise of many a lido. It’s a shame, but at least we have some bits of concrete decoration, a few Crittall windows, and cherished memories.

Tamworth, Staffordshire

Back to the future

Shops are amongst the most frequently updated of all our buildings. During the past few years it has seemed as if some High Street shops have had their fronts ripped off and replaced with the latest signage or corporate redesign once a year or more. Now, as old retail names disappear, this process seems likely to be replaced with one of boarding-up. But both modern ‘instant signs’ and shuttering ply can leave bits of old shop fronts peeping through. I like these fragmentary reminders of older styles, former ways of selling, and lost businesses, like the evidence of fishmongering I spied recently on the front of a Cheltenham barber’s.

Here’s another example, although this time the business remains the same. This Tamworth Cooperative store must date to the 1930s, its wonderful Art Deco tiling blending hints of ancient Egypt with the kind of ‘moderne’ proportions and abstract patterns that looked futuristic 75 years ago. The splash of colour, the lettering (straight out of advertisements in the backs of 1930s magazines), and that hint of community work (‘Hall & Offices’) are typical of times. So too are those thin lines of eau de nil just beneath the ‘lotus’ motif. The contrast with today’s Co-op logo couldn’t be greater. How marvellous that it’s all still there.