Frontispiece
Friday, October 30, 2009
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Over in Norfolk I came across this shed, looking very appealing with its red trailer parked-up inside. A typical corrugated iron structure, but it was the frontage that caught my eye. The ends of sheds like this are usually finished-off with just plain timber doors or infilled with bricks, but often the iron curves were deemed just a bit too prosaic, and so were screened with slightly more upmarket facades. This one in Wereham looks like it was probably once a garage, decorated with petrol signs and the ubiquitous M.O.T triangles. The curved top echoes what lies behind, but two little wings were added to make it 'just that little bit different'. More often we will see crow-stepped gables, painted or rendered to give the illusion of a much larger building behind. Very pre-war, very much a fashion. And of course once you start looking, you see them everywhere. Workshops, factories, cafes; sometimes extended out from the workaday end to form offices with Crittall metal windows. I once went to a cinema in Suffolk that had an art deco facade hiding a corrugated iron-roofed auditorium. Which was fine until a prolonged storm broke out over the town and the noise of hailstones hitting the roof completely obliterated the soundtrack of Witchfinder General. (Screams, noisy dismemberments, Vincent Price's accent.)
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