Monstrosities Mon Amour: Thetford with John Boughton
Let’s visit an ancient Norfolk town, and instead focus on its postwar estates with one of Britain’s best loved housing historians, John Boughton of Municipal Dreams.Thetford gets a bad rap. It isn’t particularly well known outside of Norfolk, and in many ways feels like a lot of towns expanded in the 1960s and 70s. With a variety of housing estates demonstrating the fashions and philosophies of the day, Thetford is a town of great history, from Roman to medieval and Georgian, and also of modernity. Discover where Dad’s Army’s Warmington on Sea was filmed, where Conran’s modern furnishings were made, and where a young municipal dreamer’s fascination with postwar housing was first kindled.And let’s also find out just why he’s so obsessed with white bread – not the plastic ready-sliced sort, and certainly not sourdough…John Boughton’s book Municipal Dreams grew from his amazing Wordpress and Substack sites: https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com and https://substack.com/@municipaldreamsMonstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod Get full access to Grindrodia at johngrindrod.substack.com/subscribe
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Monstrosities Mon Amour: The Golden Mile, Blackpool, with Kathryn Ferry
Let’s visit a wonder of Britain’s industrial heritage – the gaudy seafront excess of Blackpool, Britain’s most extraordinary seaside town.After a summer break Monstrosities Mon Amour is back with a seaside special! Blackpool isn’t just the Tower, the illuminations and Strictly. Where else could you get your bumps felt on the beach by a phrenologist, see a dead woman in a coffin just for fun, and experience Britain’s first carpeted amusement arcade? Kathryn Ferry has spent years researching seaside history, and here she shares her love for this, the ultimate holiday destination, a place that thrived until the rise of the package holiday. Here’s a joy-ride through unexpected murano glass mosaics, beach huts and post-war design heritage, in a place as heady as candy floss and as over the top as drag bingo. Let’s allow ourselves to enjoy laughs, thrills and memories in one of the most remarkable towns in Britain.And let’s discover another of Kathryn’s passions too – postwar plastics, here in the form of drip-dry wonder fabric crimplene, which was invented in Macclesfield in 1959. Guaranteed to make you rush to Vinted to buy a psychedelic outfit fit for a distant relative at a 1970s wedding. Kathryn Ferry’s new book is Twentieth Century Seaside Architecture: Pools, Piers and Pleasure around Britain’s Coast, published by Batsford with the 20th Century Society. You can find out more about her other books and her work at https://kathrynferry.co.uk/ and follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/seasideferry/Monstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod Get full access to Grindrodia at johngrindrod.substack.com/subscribe
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Monstrosities Mon Amour: The Drum, Margate, with Dan Thompson
Turner Contemporary was the first modern art gallery in Margate this century, right? Wrong. And why are so many studio pottery teapots languishing in charity shops?Margate, on the north Kent coast, is famous for its amusement palace, Dreamland, for the Chas and Dave song, and for its hipster reinvention this century thanks to David Chipperfield’s Turner Contemporary. But before that gallery opened, another modern seafront structure – the Drum – by a very different modern architect – Terry Farrell – was built here, also celebrating the work of Turner. How did the town end up with two amazing contemporary buildings on the front, and why isn’t the Drum better known – or more widely loved?And why aren’t people going nuts over the earthy brown wonder of late twentieth century British studio pottery? Especially the teapots. Well, someone is. And I’ve met him.And that person is writer and artist Dan Thompson, who has lived in Margate for over a decade, and whose work has involved everything from epic community action, pop ups, poetry and large-scale history pieces, and has brought him together with master potter Keith Bymer Jones among any others. You can find out more about Dan’s work on his Substack (Dan Thompson Studio - see below), on his site https://mrdanthompson.wordpress.com/ or on his online shop https://payhip.com/DanThompsonStudio.Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrodGrindrodia is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grindrodia at johngrindrod.substack.com/subscribe
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Monstrosities Mon Amour: The Blue Bridge, with Catherine Croft
What’s so special about this modest little bridge in a central London park? And why is twentieth century architecture’s saviour Catherine Croft a capybara superfan? St James’s Park in London is surrounded by spectacular acrhitecture: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Buckingham Palace and Horseguards Parade. But in the middle, over the lake, is a polite little mid century bridge, that hides a few secrets. Designed in the mid-fifties in a Festival of Britain style by Eric Bedford, chief architect of the Ministry of Works – the man who also designed the Post Office Tower – the Blue Bridge is a modest structure that’s all about the view and not about its own presence. Now we live in an era when such modesty is unthinkable for a centrepiece in a royal park, and it is soon to be demolished. Catherine Croft, Director of The Twentieth Century Society, shares her love of the bridge, her memories of family trips and the design heritage it stands for. And also, why guardsmen were so obliging at testing it out.Meanwhile when not thinking about saving and celebrating modern buildings, Catherine is mainly thinking about capybaras. Discover how a modernist zoo led her to a love of these giant rodents, and why they have become a Tiktok sensation.Catherine Croft is Director of the Twentieth Century Society, an organisation that campaigns for the protection and wider appreciation of modern buildings and places. But it didn’t stop her from bashing me over the head and kidnapping me in her Austin Maxi, to wax lyrical about the charms of functional bridges and freaky giant rodents. Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod Get full access to Grindrodia at johngrindrod.substack.com/subscribe
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Monstrosities Mon Amour: Grafton Car Park, Worthing, with Travis Elborough
How and why was the chi-chi seafront in Regency Worthing modernised in the 1960s? And what is the appeal of a Swedish prog-rock album of Tolkien’s fantasy epic?Worthing in West Sussex, long associated with the subversive observational wit of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde, has since been scandalised by the shadow of a late 1960s concrete car park on the sea front. Between the delightful lido and the pier, the car park represents a brave new Worthing, put up at the time when Harold Pinter is nearby writing his menacing play The Homecoming and social and cultural cjhange is coming to the seaside. Fast forward fifty-odd years and that modern dream is crumbling, the car park and its bowling alley are shut. But for some the americanised allure remains.Meanwhile Swedish prog rocker Bo Hansson’s 1972 album Music Inspired By Lord Of The Rings casts a different sort of shadow, eerie in a space-age way. Choosing these two disparate beauties is Travis Elborough, author of many wonderful books, including one on the English seaside, Wish You Were Here; a classic work on the Routemaster bus; a history of spectacles, Through the Looking Glass; and many others. It was a delight to be bashed over the head and kidnapped by him in his Austin Maxi for this collision of seaside modernism and epic prog-rock extravagance. So don your wizard’s hat and bowling shoes, and come with us on the adventure of a lifetime* [*Lasts apprioximately 30 minutes]. Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrodMonstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Grindrodia at johngrindrod.substack.com/subscribe
In Monstrosities Mon Amour we celebrate places and things that have been unfairly monstered in popular opinion. Host John Grindrod will be your excitable guide to a world beyond the lazy stereotypes of crap towns and guilty pleasures. He'll be meeting people who’ll share their enthusiasm for monsters major and minor, places that get a bad press and cultural artefacts that need to be rescued from the bin.
‘Warmly, welcomingly geeky.’ Jude Rogers, Observer
‘What a breath of fresh air … a genuine celebration of places and culture it’s all too easy to dismiss.’ Radio Times
Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando.
You can support the podcast by subscribing through Substack or https://ko-fi.com/grindrod.
Thank you for listening. johngrindrod.substack.com
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