Opposite Liverpool Street Station in London, 162-164 Bishopsgate was built as a fire station in 1885 in a pastiche of the Tudor Gothic style using red brick and Portland stone. A really stunning building with some intricate decoration well above eye level.
Mersey Chambers in Liverpool was built for the Harrison Shipping Line in 1878 and is now a Grade II listed building.
Oriel Chambers is a Grade 1 listed building in Liverpool that was built in 1864 from a design by Peter Ellis. It’s a particularly striking building and one of the first office buildings in the world to use an iron framed structure – possibly an inspiration for New York’s skyscrapers.
Glasgow’s City Chambers, the headquarters of Glasgow City Council, is an imposing building that was completed from 1888. There are (pre-COVID) free public tours twice a day Monday to Friday with tickets handed out on a first come first served basis. I got there about half an hour before the start time and was first in a group of about eight people.
Born into a family of architects, today (9 November) would have been Giles Gilbert Scott’s 140th birthday. He is perhaps most famous for the iconic design of the red telephone box, so here’s a selection of photos of phone boxes taken around the country:
The University of Glasgow was founded in 1451 making it the fourth oldest university in the UK and second oldest in Scotland. They do run tours of the building for visitors but they weren’t running on the day I went so I did the self-guided tour which can be found on the university’s website.
The main reason I wanted to visit Glasgow last October was to go to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and it turned out to be an even better experience than I’d been expecting, in fact I ended up spending most of the day there. The building itself is beautiful inside and out, designed in a Spanish Baroque style in red sandstone by John W. Simpson and E. J. Milner Allen and opened in 1901.
The Lighthouse is Scotland’s National Centre for Design and Architecture. Originally it was the offices of the Glasgow Herald newspaper, designed by the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh as his first public commission and completed in 1895.
Glasgow Cathedral is the oldest cathedral on mainland Scotland, the present building being consecrated in 1197. It’s a large impressive stone building with very high ceilings next to the Necropolis.
It should be obvious by now that I enjoy exploring a good cemetery and Glasgow’s Necropolis is one of the best. Established in 1832 it’s located on a hill next to Glasgow Cathedral (featuring in a future post) that, like Highgate in London, was inspired by Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
