Harwich
Take a
ferry over the Stour estuary from Shotley Quay
and you find yourself in Old Harwich. Kings Quay St is a short step
away
and behold! A delightful pocket-sized kinema for the showing of those
awful talkies which will never catch on...
-
The
splendid facade displays a central panel: 'ELECTRIC
PALACE', which is not wonderfully readable on our image and
enlargement, so we 'borrowed' the shot from their website (see Links). The Electric Palace cinema, Harwich, is
one of the
oldest purpose-built cinemas to survive complete with its silent
screen, original projection room and ornamental frontage still intact.
Other interesting features include an open plan entrance lobby complete
with paybox, and a small stage plus dressing rooms although the latter
are now unusable. There is also a former gas powered generator engine
with a 7 foot fly wheel situated in the basement. The cinema was built
in 18 weeks at a cost of £1,500 and opened on Wednesday,
November
29th, 1911, the first film being The Battle of Trafalgar and The Death
of Nelson. The creator of the Palace was Charles Thurston, a travelling
showman well known in East Anglia, and the architect was Harold Hooper,
a dynamic young man of 26 years who demonstrated his imaginative flair
with this his first major building. The cinema closed in 1956 after 45
years interrupted only by the 1953 floods and was listed as a building
of sociological interest in September 1972 and is now a Grade II*
listed building. It re-opened in 1981 and now runs as a community
cinema showing films every weekend.
Not far from the cinema and the ferry is this hostelry at 25 Kings Head
Street with a huge blue painted cartouche on the side wall (perhaps it
originally conatined much larger text?) with the sign:
'THE
ALMA
INN
-
TRADITIONAL ALES
-
BEER GARDEN'
And further
into the town, one of our favourites at 21 Market Street, Harwich. By
the look of the fine ceramic panel to the right of the shop door
depicting a gentleman atop a ladder resting against the bough of a
tree, while a fair maiden receives the fruits of his labours in a
basket below, Mr Smith once sold fruit and vegetables from these
premises. Now a bookshop, the entrance still boasts this excellent
piece of mosaic lettering on the trapezoidal doorstep. Replete with
colourful fleur-de-lis in the corners, contiguous borders and a capital
letter resembling a treble cleft - perhaps Mrs Smith had a sweet voice
and sang to the customers queuing for their calabrese and celeriac. 10
out of 10 for panache and preservation. These photographs date from
2006.
-
-
[This information comes from the Harwich Old Books
website (see Links).
The shop is spread over three rooms on the ground floor of a historic,
Grade II-listed building in the town's conservation area. The back
rooms retain the late-medieval flavour of the original timber-framed
building (ask to be shown the surviving carvings!), while the
atmosphere in the Victorian front of the shop is quite different - this
is a light-filled area, probably added in the 1880s, which served as a
butcher's, greengrocer's and antique shop before we moved in. A period
mural outside the front door and the elegant windows are highlights of
this stage in the building's evolution. Other unusual features of the
building include the 'rainback', a kind of well that was used to
collect rainwater before the piped supply came to Harwich.]
Walking
along the Old Harwich Marine Parade past the
historic Low Lighthouse, the path rises up the cliff until one reaches
a statue of Queen Victoria. Turn left down Cliff Road and at a
refurbished frontage on the right, look back at the right-angled brick
wall (shown below). Yes, it's been cleaned almost to extinction, but
you can just make out in huge capitals the words:
'IRONMONGER
SPORTS[?] DEALER'
This doesn't quite ring true as a retail opportunity. We assume that
the trader's name was above this in the inverted 'V' of the gable. It
also suggests that the red brick structure to the left, which abuts the
wall and obscures one or more letters, post-dates the signed
wall.
A little
further down Cliff Road on the opposite side
is a relief panel with a gnomic motto ('Each
for
all & all for each' it
definitely isn't):
'1902
LABOUR - & - WAIT
LIBERTY - UNITY - CHARITY'
Although not readable in the photograph, the mottos which appear below
the date (shown in decorative numerals curving round the top of the
panel) on two heraldic banners are certainly there above the Old
Harwich/Dovercourt branch of the Co-op. These last two photographs were
taken in 2002.
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throughout the Ipswich
Signs and
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Lettering sites: Borin Van Loon
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