Category: Planning

Victorian Society Visits Accrington

Yesterday, Gillian Berry, of Haworth Art Gallery, and I hosted the annual tour of the Victorian Society Northern Building Committee, which this year came to Accrington.

At Haworth Art Gallery

On the morning, Gillian showed our visitors around the Haworth Art Gallery which is located at Hollins Hill, a large Walter Brierley designed Arts & Crafts house. It has a super collection of nineteenth century paintings and the finest museum of Tiffany glassware in Europe.

 

One of the Tiffany vases on show

On the afternoon, we toured Accrington town centre which has a wonderfully coherent townscape and some great Regency, Victorian, Edwardian and Modern era architecture. Highlights were the Red Lion Coaching Inn, Accrington Market House, Riley’s Arcade, Peel Institute, now the Town Hall, and Accrington Carnegie Library.

H. G. Hillier designed Arts & Crafts stair window, J. & M. Wade designed art nouveau tiles and staircase ironwork at Accrington Carnegie Library.

We then looked around the just completed projects of the Accrington THI, where architects Dominic Roberts and Dino Kotlar showed off their wonderful restoration of The Exchange, with its extravagant two-storey shop front.

Francis Roberts Architects’ drawing of the restored Exchange

Everyone had a wonderful time!

V&A Dundee

It’s been a real joy to see Dundee celebrating the opening of its stunning Victoria and Albert Museum, designed by Kengo Kuma. While the building has raised some questions, it chimes so well with the nautical heritage of the city while also being an engineering tour de force.

Dundee and much of Scotland appear rather excited… and so they should be. There has been little to celebrate culturally in the northern lands in recent years, so this wonderful project really lifts the spirit.

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