Warrington - Transporter Bridge

Of the 19 transporter bridges built to completion worldwide the UK boasted four: Newport (operational), Middlesbrough (operational), Widnes-Runcorn (demolished 1961-62), and Warrington. Warrington (also known as Bank Quay) Transporter Bridge was commenced in 1913 and opened in 1916. It linked two parts of the Joseph Crosfield and Sons Ltd chemical and soap works, either side of the Mersey.



















Designed by William Henry Hunter and built by Sir William Arrol & Co., the bridge has an overall length of 339 feet, a span of 200 feet, is 30 feet wide, and has a height above the high water level of 79 feet. The cantilevered truss structure is founded in massive concrete caissons, faced in engineering brick. These, and the heavy double cantilevers to each of the four towers, shout the industrial use.

The bridge is alternatively known as Crosfield's No.2, as there was another 'bridge' on the site, slightly further north. Built 1905-07, and in service from 1908, Crosfield's No.1 is oft-cited as a transporter bridge, yet there is no evidence that it ever carried a gondola, which disqualifies it from the club. It was, in effect, a gantry crane. The trolley of No.1 was removed by the time of WWII, and the structure was demolished in the 1960s.

Warrington (Bank Quay, Crosfield's No.2) Transporter Bridge is a unique survivor worldwide, in that the gondola was constructed to carry railway stock. The only other example that did so was the Kiel transporter bridge, demolished in 1923. The rails continued right up to the edge of the aprons either end of the bridge (above) and onto the gondola, and can still be seen in the adjoining east bank chemical works yard. The gondola was converted for dual rail and road vehicle use in about 1940, and strengthened circa 1949 to increase the carrying capacity from 18 tons to 30 tons.

The bridge ceased operations in about 1964, and now stands in a very dilapidated state, the gondola stranded on the inaccessible west bank. Despite being scheduled as an ancient monument, Grade II*-listed, and included on the Heritage at Risk Register, the bridge has been left to rot, a victim of its Warrington Borough Council ownership.

Warrington - K4 Rarity

Designed by the GPO's Engineering Department on the basis of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's K2, the K4 kiosk incorporated a post box and a pair of stamp vending machines. Nicknamed the Vermillion Giant, it was one-and-half times the size of the already monumental K2. The kiosk featured the same fluted architrave mouldings as Scott's K2, but the addition of the postal elements necessitated the stretching of the domed roof and extra trim moulding on the longer sides to break up the otherwise flat cast iron surfaces.

Three of the pediments were pierced with the same Tudor crown used on the K2, providing ventilation. The rear pediment bore a lamp, missing on this example in Warrington. The entablatures carried illuminated signs, Post Office on the long sides, Telephone above the door, and Stamps above the post box and stamp machines.

Introduced in 1930, production ceased in 1935, and only 50 were produced and sited. The stamp machines let in water and were noisy, making telephone calls difficult. Moreover, post boxes tend to be placed by the roadside for ease of access, whilst telephone boxes tend to be tucked up against buildings to limit noise, and the K4 thus proved difficult to site successfully.

Just ten K4s remain, only three on the public streets of Britain: Frodsham, Warrington, and Whitley Bay. Three more grace railway stations: Bolton Street Station in Bury, at the East Somerset Railway in Cranmore, and at the Severn Valley Railway in Bewdley. A further three are housed in museums: the Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre, the Avoncroft Museum in Bromsgrove, and the British Postal Museum and Archives in London. A tenth can be found on the Sand le Mere campsite in Tunstall.

Adelaide - The Cheese Grater

Known locally as the Cheese Grater, the Spaceship, the Pine Cone, and the Prickly Pear, the distinctive feature of the new headquarters of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) is undoubtedly its 6,290 triangular windows.

These are hooded in metal against the sun, the depth of the hood varying as one rises up the curve of the building, in accord with the angle of attack of the sun. In conjunction with solid metal panels, the windows give a mesh effect to the façade.

The building, opened in November 2013, appears to float above its North Terrace site, with the structural frame shaped like a tree, expanding from just six beams at ground level to 36 at the top of the structure.

Indeed, it is possible to walk underneath the body of the structure. A large winding staircase connects the building's five floors, the space otherwise kept as open as possible by the Adelaide architects Woods Bagot.

Adelaide - Mortlock Library

Forming part of the State Library of South Australia, the Mortlock Library, know known as the Mortlock Wing, was opened in 1884 as a library, museum and art gallery. In French Renaissance style, with the mansard roof that epitomises the style, it took five years to build, after a number of earlier false starts. The lower gallery is carried upon masonry columns, the upper upon cantilevered ironwork. Separate buildings were later constructed for the museum and art gallery.

Adelaide - Botanic Garden Old

Gracing the 125 acre Adelaide Botanic Garden, the Palm House is of German origin. It was imported from Bremen in 1875 and opened in 1877. Fully restored in 1995, the glasshouse houses the garden's collection of arid plants from Madagascar.

Adelaide - Botanic Garden New

Adelaide's Bicentennial Conservatory was built in the city's botanic garden in celebration of the 1988 bicentenary of Australia. It was designed by Guy Maron, of South Australia.

The build commenced in 1987 and was completed in 1989. 328 feet long, 154 feet wide, and 88 feet high, it is the largest single-span conservatory in the whole of the southern hemisphere. A steel superstructure supports over 26,000 square feet of toughened glass.

Within are lowland non-tropical rainforest plants from northern Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Pacific Islands, which can be viewed from both an at-grade path and a raised walkway that winds through the canopy.

Ekco - Round Two

Introduced in the same year, 1935, as the AC76, the cabinet of Ekco's AD36 was inspired by Wells Coates' earlier work on the first round radio, the Ekco AD65. The radio could be had in either walnut-toned Bakelite (£8.8s.0d), or black Bakelite with chromed grille bars and knob centres (£8.18s.6d). A wooden stand was also available, for £0.25s.0d.

The black and chrome version of the AD36, pictured, did not suit the decor of many houses of the day, and is accordingly much rarer. A plastic miniature copy, with functioning FM reception, is made in the People's Republic of China.

Middlesbrough's Tranny

19 transporter bridges were built to completion worldwide. Of those, four were in the UK: Newport, Middlesbrough, and two over the Mersey (one at Widnes, and one at Warrington). Three of the UK transporter bridges remain, at Warrington, Middlesbrough and Newport, of which the last two are still operational.

Connecting Middlesbrough, south of the River Tees, to Port Clarence, to the north, the Tees Transporter Bridge boasts an overall length of 851 feet and a span (between the towers) of 590 feet. Longer overall than its Newport cousin, although with a span of 56 feet less, the bridge is the longest remaining transporter in the world. (The longest ever built was that between Widnes and Runcorn: it had a span of 997 feet and was 1,150 feet long overall. It was demolished 1961-62.)

Commonly called the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, and known locally as The Tranny, the bridge was designed by the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Co. Ltd, of Darlington. It was built between 1909 and 1911 by Sir William Arrol & Co., of Glasgow, famous for construction of the Forth Bridge.

The bridge is of cantilever form. The structure employs 2,600 tons of steel, plus another 600 tons in the caissons. This compares with 1,326 tons for the more elegant, wider-span, Newport bridge, which relies on its suspension cables for much of the necessary tensioning.

Still operating six days a week, the bridge was Grade II* listed in 1985, with the winch house, piers, railings and gates separately listed Grade II. The third gondola was installed in 2011. Suspended from the truss, which is 160 feet above high water, this can carry nine cars and 200 people, and crosses the river in just 90 seconds.

Those Blue Remembered Hills

To be found in Craven Arms, South Shropshire, The Land of Lost Content showcases, over three packed storeys, the popular culture collection of Stella and David Mitchell.

To attempt a description of the collection's tens of thousands of items is impossible. It is an admixture of everything from the past, from Victoriana to everyday things only just starting to disappear; the sort of items that prompt people to say, "My grandma had one of those" or "I had that."

Unlike in a museum, the collection is presented in tableaux, rather than exhibited in cases. The 32 themed displays are works of art in themselves, and many items can be handled. The building is owned by the designer Wayne Hemingway, and leased back to Stella and David for life.

Scarlett Chain Home, Isle of Man

The first network of early warning radar stations built around the coast of Britain before and during WWII was code-named Chain Home (CH). Two stations were built on the Isle of Man, at Bride in the north and Scarlett in the south, near Castletown, and were online by September 1940.

Operated by the RAF, as all CH stations were, the IoM facilities were designated as Advance Chain Home stations, brought online with temporary short timber masts supporting the transmitter arrays, in advance of the availability of 325-foot guyed steel masts. CH Bride closed in 1942, as it duplicated an area already covered by stations in Scotland and Ireland. CH Scarlett closed the same year, as it was too close to Ronaldsway airport and the fleet air arm training unit, HMS Urley, based there. 

Scarlett was replaced by a new CH station at Dalby, on the western side of the island, which operated for the remainder of the war. Scarlett CH had two Type B operations blocks, without protected roofs, each with two sets of equipment; and two Type C blocks, covered with earth, each with one set of equipment. All four blocks remain, in farm use.

In the Glasshouse

The World of Glass Museum in St Helens, which incorporates the Pilkington Glass Museum, is home to the remains of the oldest surviving gas-fired continuous-tank glass furnace in Europe. The furnace is contained within the Grade II*-listed No.9 Tank House, itself part of Pilkington's Jubilee Glassworks, built next to the Sankey Canal.

The tank house, known locally as the Hotties, boasts a truncated conical flue that once rose above the Siemens regenerative furnace below, installed by Pilkington's in 1889 and in use until 1920. The materials to make glass were fed on a continuous basis into a brick-lined tank and melted together, to provide an endless stream of molten glass. A throat part-way along the tank filtered out impurities. The molten glass was blown into cylinders eight feet long, which were cut open, flattened and polished to produce window glass.

Heat derived from burning coal-gas, used to melt together the raw materials, was recirculated beneath the tank, through a series of flues filled with a latticework of refractory bricks, to keep the molten glass workable. These flues, and the swing chambers in which the cylinders were formed under the influence of gravity, could be accessed by brick-arched service tunnels.

Wells Coated Ekco

Four of Ekco's five round radios (not the AD75) were available for special order in a variety of colours, the cabinet formed of urea formaldehyde instead of the usual Bakelite. There are understood to be extant just three genuine colour A22s - two red ones, and a marbled green one, this last made especially for the 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition. There are known to survive three genuine green AD65s, and possibly a genuine ivory one. Beyond that, all sightings of colour Ekcos are either speculative, or of copies/fakes.

(A genuine green AD65 supposedly sold for £17,500 at Academy Auctioneers, Ealing, in 1993, but this is questionable: the set reappeared at Sotheby's but failed to reach its reserve. Another, with no chassis, sold at Christie's in 1995 for £3,375 including buyer's premium.)

Gerry Wells, who died in December 2014, famous in vintage radio circles, made wooden reproductions of Ekco AD65s. The presenter of a TV programme on which Wells appeared said that Bakelite had been used by Ekco as it was impossible to make the round shape of the cabinets in wood. Gerry proved the theory wrong by forming the front panel from turned and routed MDF and the cylindrical body from steamed plywood.

The Wells copies are proper valve sets, made in batches of 15. The first six sets, made in 1993, were exact copies of the original, including the chassis. Some later sets were jointly made by Gerry, Eileen Laffey and Tina Sandell, of the British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum, Dulwich. Some were fitted with a solid state FM front end by Benito di Gravio, also of the museum. A final batch, of 17 sets, with the correct chassis but an added FM head, was made in 2006 by Wells, Ian Johnson, and di Gravio.

The cabinets were spray-painted in a variety of colours, most commonly marbled green, red and ivory - the colours of the rare genuine survivors. Others were sprayed brown, black, light green, yellow, white, and blue. (A blue one was given to John Paul Getty II, a patron of the museum.) The very first set was marbled green. Eileen's own one-off set was Marks & Spencer green, and Tina's one-off set was a slightly metallic dark blue. The final batch included one each in silver, chrome, camouflage, two-toned metallic, and pink. The very last set was ivory.

The set pictured was Tina's own. The chassis was built, under the tuition of Gerry, by Sandell, who started as a Saturday girl at the museum in 1993. It has a FM front end, and was completed by Benito (by whom it is signed) in July 1996. Tina, from whom the set was acquired, confirmed that Wells had intended to make more AD65 copies than the 152 that are thought to have been made. Someone, though, took from the museum the form used to guide routing of the front panels.

The cabinet of the AD65 was largely designed by the architect Wells Coates. The original sets have printed on the back that they were made at the Ekco works, Southend-on-Sea. In a play on names, and referring to the spray-painting process, a Gerry Wells reproduction AD65 sports a label stating that the set is a RAD65, a "Wells Coated Radio", made in Dulwich.

Zwolle - Foundation Museum

The building that now houses the fine art collection of the Museum de Fundatie - the Museum Foundation - has had a number of lives. It started as a courthouse, built between 1838 and 1841 by Eduard Louis de Coninck, of The Hague.

The neoclassical building was renovated in 1977 to provide offices for the Netherlands' National Planning Department. The architect who oversaw this work, Arne Mastenbroek, returned in 1994 to convert the building into a museum. Architect Gunnar Daan had his turn in 2004/05, when the museum was adapted for the display of fine art.

The rugby ball-shaped roof extension was added in 2012/13 under the auspices of the architectural practice Bierman Henket. The two storey ovoid is covered with 55,000 blue and white three-dimensional tiles that mirror the sky above.

Stockport Air Raid Shelters

Stockport's civilian air raid shelters, although far from being the largest in the land as claimed by the city's museum, did open in good time, in October 1939, the month after war was declared. Construction had commenced in September 1938, a rare instance of local authority foresight.

Cut into the soft red sandstone that underlies the city, the shelters provided accommodation for up to 6,500 people. Seven feet high and with a total length of just under a mile, the shelters were fitted out with benches, bunk beds, warden posts, first aid posts, small canteens, tool stores, male and female toilets, and electric lighting.

This was 'plush' by WWII air raid shelter standards, and led to the section of the shelters that can be visited by the public being nick-named the Chestergate Hotel. The nearby Brinksway and Dodge Hill shelters are not accessible to the uninitiated. The shelter complex was essentially closed by 1943.

Loopwheels - Reinventing the Wheel

Loopwheels, made by Jelly Products Ltd, of Boughton in Nottinghamshire, are wheels for bicycles and wheelchairs that incorporate suspension into the wheel itself. The wheels have no spokes but, instead, six paired springs of carbon composite, fixed between the hub and the rim. They flex to accommodate unevenness in the ground over which they run, and even kerbs.

The springs, which allow the rim to travel up to two inches, serve also to reduce road noise and vibration, a perennial problem for users of small-wheeled bicycles - Loopwheels for bicycles are 20 inches in diameter. As the wheel itself provides suspension, hard tyres can be used, potentially eliminating punctures.

The springs are manufactured by KG Archery. Naturally, those of rear Loopwheels have a greater spring rate than those of front ones. The wheels can't unfortunately be fitted to a Brompton - there isn't enough room for the travel between the forks - but a folding Dahon Mu or Vigor will accommodate them.

Loopwheels were invented by Sam Pearce, a mechanical engineer and industrial designer. He got the idea in 2007, when he saw a mother pushing a buggy up a kerb, which caused the child on board to jolt forward. Sam's first prototype, made of wood and sections of plastic drainpipe, was made in 2009. The first generation of the product now available was launched in 2013.