A Visit to Two Charles Rennie Mackintosh Houses

This year I visited two houses designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Both distinct experiences.

78 Derngate is the only house in England designed by Mackintosh. It is well worth booking in advance for a tour, as you will get to hear some interesting historical details about the house. You will also be shown photographs of the house as it was many years ago, and compare these with how the house has been sympathetically restored today.

Before entering, visitors are asked to wear plastic overshoes – as if going in to perform a forensic examination. Once inside, you are allowed to move around the rooms freely, without touching anything.

This townhouse is designed to feel uncluttered even though it is remarkably narrow. Rooms are stacked on top of each other on several floors in more or less this fashion: one room at the front, one at the back, with staircase between.

The 1916 designs – particularly of the front ground floor room and the guest bedroom – still appear modern by today’s tastes over one hundred years after they were designed.

Later in the year I visited The Hill House. Built in 1902-3, with further additions of Mackintosh-designed furniture over the next ten years, I had wanted to see this house for a very long time. When I had the opportunity to visit, I was surprised to find out that it was shortly to reopen with a new conservation project/visitor attraction called ‘The Box’. Upon close inspection, you will see that the walls of the Box are a screen of steel mesh (like chain mail). Originally, visitors would have been able to experience the sight of Hill House against the Scottish landscape, but it looks likely that this view will be denied for approximately ten years while the damp house dries out naturally, shielded from the Scottish rain.

Although denied this view, another experience has taken its place. There are walk ways around and over the roof of the house, so that visitors can see the architecture from several vantages. I thought perhaps, that the Box would spoil the visit to Hill House, making it more of a gimmick. But I was not disappointed. Turning the conservation work into an attraction itself has been advantageous because it gives visitors such a unique opportunity to enjoy the house on many different levels (literally as well as figuratively).

Once inside, it is easy to ignore – nay forget – that the Box is situated outside, and therefore the steel structure in no way affects the experience of walking through the beautiful Mackintosh rooms. 

I walked around the house a couple of times and overheard another visitor say “I don’t want to leave”.

Who would?

Incidentally, items from the Hill House are sometimes loaned out to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. This was the case on my visit. So I visited the latter to see Mackintosh's Kimono writing desk. Another beautiful item, and easy to envisage standing in the drawing room of Hill House on the opposite side of the fireplace to the settle.

A Visit to Great Yarmouth

Seaside towns have long been the place for unusual or eccentric attractions. The types of exhibits and collections that were also part of the travelling fairground. Take for example, the infamous Rector of Stiffkey – the defrocked clergyman who ended up being mauled by a lion in a sideshow at Skegness.

Madame Tussauds at Blackpool has kept up to date for its holidaymakers by including likenesses of Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. The Louis Tussauds Waxworks at Great Yarmouth, however, was looking more than tired by the time of its closure in 2013, with its replicas of Kojak, Mr Blobby and Samantha Fox.

The House of Wax, Great Yarmouth before it closed

 

The House of Wax in 2016 - now closed

If you are visiting Great Yarmouth then I would highly recommend visiting the Time and Tide Museum. Converted from an old herring smoke house, this place has a reconstruction of an old Yarmouth row (a narrow pedestrian lane with houses and shops), a seaside gallery, and information on the area's fishing industry.

The Hippodrome Museum is also open to visitors after performances at the circus.

Before you leave Great Yarmouth, you must make sure that you pay a visit to The David Howkins Museum of Memories. Admissions here go to charity, and at the time of my visit (2016) only cost £3 for an adult, and £1 for children. The contents of the museum are eclectic. Some its exhibits look like small personal collections – such as the cluster of Murano Glass clowns (familiar tourist souvenirs from the latter half of the twentieth century), and some Royal memorabilia. There are also some dolls houses (not antiques), and rooms full of teddies and dolls.

A fairground Aunt Sally - see if you can knock the clay pipe from her face...

Of particular interest however, are the Stamp Room and the Joseph Merrick display. The latter includes a bust of Merrick, which is a replica of a plaster cast taken of his head, kept in the London Hospital where he spent the last few years of his life. Visitors can buy a booklet about the ‘Elephant Man’ at the museum. The curator is keen to point out that the ‘true’ story of the Elephant Man is that the showman Tom Norman was Merrick’s colleague and friend, and that, contrary to the David Lynch feature film, Merrick tired of the medical inspections instigated by the film’s ‘hero’, Frederick Treve. Joseph Merrick’s skeleton has still not been buried, and it has recently been mooted that his remains should be returned to his original birthplace, Leicester (in a similar vein to Richard III’s).

The member of staff on duty at the Museum of Memories was very eager for me to go to the first floor to see the Stamp Room. This is a room with furniture and artifacts completely covered in postage stamps. This display was created by Albert Schafer who spent over 30 years fulfilling this self-imposed challenge.

The museum is housed in an impressive building that used to be the local gas showroom. You can walk a grand staircase – lit by a huge stained glass window – leading up to the former gas offices on the first floor, which now house the Stamp Room and toys. As you leave, you can buy a genuine seaside postcard from the 1950s as a souvenir.

The Museum of Memories is memorably eccentric and unique.

For more information on the museum look here

The Rex Cinema, Coalville: A Little Art Deco Palace

This is the Coalville Rex cinema. The last film it ever screened was 'Champions' starring John Hurt in 1984. The Rex was a two-screen cinema, with Screen 1 being situated at the top of a long staircase that took audiences to a large upper circle. Screen 2 had been built at a later date in the stalls area of the main auditorium.

For many years since the cinema's closure it has been used as a Dunelm Mill shop selling homeware and soft furnishings. Dunelm have been sympathetic to the interior of the cinema and very few alterations have been made.

If you visit the shop and concentrate on the architecture rather than the shelves of towels and bed linen you can find many tell tale signs about the Rex's former Art Deco splendour.

Entrance steps and sign for the buffet:












Foyer ceiling:






Corridor leading to screens 1 and 2 (the buffet was positioned on the right side and the box office on the left):







Floor and stained glass ceiling in the box office area:



















Main staircase leading to Screen 1:













Curved walls leading to fire exits in Screen 2 / stalls area of auditorium:












The above two photos are taken in the main shopping area of Dunelm Mill. A suspended ceiling above this area hides the cinema's auditorium from public view. However, a recent article in the Leicester Mercury shows that the cinema space itself is largely untouched.





(Above photo taken from the Leicester Mercury).

Dunelm are due to close the shop on 26th June 2016. It would be great if The Rex were to reopen as a cinema again. It would be a tragedy if the interior of this cinema is lost forever.