C is for Crittall Windows and Chevrons

Windows

Windows constructed during the Art Deco period are quite distinctive, being made of steel, and designed using small-ish (I say small-ish because I think they are smaller than we would expect to see today in modern windows, but bigger than those we associate with Tudor windows) often rectangular panes, grouped together to make a whole. Often the window frames are painted green.

Pics Inside Generator, Head Gardener, Echo upstairs, Market Street building (or might save that for waves), Melton pile

Here are some examples of Crittall windows in Loughborough - a few photos inside the Generator building on Packe Street, looking out, and one of a hairdressing business on the corner of Market Place and Swan Street. The final photo shows renovation works going on in an Art Deco building in Melton Mowbray, and the fate of its Crittall windows.

These windows are known as Crittall windows, after the founder and family of the company that make them, which is still operational today.

There's more information about the company over on their website.

A very brief history of Crittalls!

Francis Berrington and Francis Henry Crittall

Francis Berrington Crittall (1825-1878) took over an ironmonger’s business in 1849 in Braintree Essex, and by 1851 he was employing 3 men. The ironmongery grew and in 1861, 7 men and 2 boys were employed in the business, and in 1871 a similar number were working at the ironmongers.

Francis Henry Crittall (1860-1935) took over the company around 1884, and shortly after this they started to produce steel windows. The company was incorporated in 1889, and by 1893 employed 60 people, which increased to around 500 employees by 1918. During WW1 the factory had produced munitions, but reverted to making windows, post-war.

Walter Francis Crittall

In 1926, the firm built housing specifically for its workers, at Silver End in Witham, Braintree, and ‘Francis Crittall’ laid the foundation stone, although it’s not clear to me if that was Francis Henry, or his son, Walter Francis (1887-1956). Walter Francis, an artist, an architect, and a designer became the company director.

John Francis Crittall

The Crittall company began producing aluminium windows in the 1950s and John Francis, who was the last member of the family to be involved with the company, retired from the business in 1974. The company was acquired by venture capitalists, moved location, and then was subject to a management buyout. It now trades back in Witham, Essex.

And so to Chevrons

Today we have a two-for-one offer, so we continue C is for ... with a look at a popular Art Deco motif – Chevrons!

There are plenty of examples of the use of Chevrons as a decorative motifs on many Loughborough buildings. Some are embossed in metalwork, while others appear embossed into the keystone (see K is for!) - here's an example of the latter at Peter's Pizza on Baxter Gate. 

Yet others stand proud and three-dimensional, like this one on the former Constitutional Club, most recently a bar called Revolution

Don't forget to pop back to the blog to catch up with other posts about Art Deco!

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I'm taking part in the A-Z April Blogging Challenge!!

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). C is for Crittall Windows and Chevrons. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/03/c-is-for-crittall-windows-and-chevrons.html [Accessed 3 April 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

B is for Barley Twist

As we saw under letter A, the Art Deco style of architecture is often colourful and easily identifiable, when it isn’t being what I describe as utilitarian!

One of the things that helps to make it identifiable is the use of motifs. These are usually decorative features, which are often repeated, and recur across the same building.

For letter B in the A-Z April Blogging Challenge, in which I’m featuring Art Deco, let’s have a look at some decoration that is, in the case of Loughborough’s buildings, created from the same material as the building’s cladding – barley twists! I suppose when they are vertical, these are a little bit like mini columns, and I’m thinking barley twist legs on chairs on tables, rather than barley sugar sweets!! Sometimes these decorative effects can be found in a building’s string course, so horizontal rather than vertical.

Here's an example from a building on Swan Street, Loughborough, which is currently an estate agent and jewellers downstairs, and possibly an escape room upstairs.

The building has many other Art Deco features that will likely appear in future blogposts in this series, so I won’t go into much detail, except to say that the building was originally constructed for the Echo Press, who published the local newspaper, the Loughborough Echo, and some local books. The building also housed the Press’s stationary shop. Here's an aerial view of the whole building - not too close up so we can't see too much detail - yet!

 ____________________________________ 

I'm taking part in the A-Z April Blogging Challenge!! 

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

____________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). B is for Barley Twist. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/03/b-is-for-barley-twist.html [Accessed 2 April 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

A is for Art Deco

The A-Z April Blogging Challenge

This year I'm taking part in the A-Z April Blogging Challenge again and this year I've decided to focus on Art Deco, as this year is the centenary of the event which gives the artistic movement its name. Let us begin ...

Art Deco shop on Market Street, Loughborough

A is for Art Deco

Art Deco is a term which was retrospectively applied to a style of art and architecture that spanned the early 1900s to about 1940, and to an extent, Art Deco was preceded by the Art Nouveau period [1].

The name Art Deco was derived from an international exhibition, held in Paris, and opened to the public from 29th April – October 25th 1925. The exhibition was entitled ‘L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes’, and was opened by the President of the Republic of France, Pierre Paul Henri Gaston Doumergue. According to the Birmingham Post, Wednesday 29th April 1925, the President

“was surrounded by a brilliant company of all the most famous names in France. The French people are by nature and by temperament the most wonderful of stage-managers, and the scene in the interior of the Grand Palais,[2] where the opening ceremony took place, will linger long in the memory of those who were privileged enough to be able to attend it.”

Of the British exhibit, the Birmingham Post correspondent had this to say:

“Great Britain has been allotted one of the most charming sites close to the Pont Alexandre III, and it is here that the Government Pavilion … has been erected. Only the choicest and the most artistic of the British exhibits will be shown here, and many of them have been lent from private collections, and the most treasured are those that have been sent over by the Prince of Wales and Princess Mary. The greatest portion of the British exhibits will be housed in the Grand Palais itself. Prince Arthur of Connaught is coming over to inspect the British section in the middle of May, when a display fully worthy of a great nation like ours will command his praise and admiration.”

In addition to the pavilion, hanging over the side or the River Seine there was also a gaily coloured, balconied restaurant, its walls brightly painted in lacquer red, blue-green, and orange. Surmounting the building were four wooden signs. Again, from the Birmingham Post

“These signs represent with extraordinary accuracy, a Christmas pudding, a boar’s head, bacon and eggs, and last[ly] a steak and kidney pudding.”

Alongside the restaurant was a houseboat, which would be used as an annex.

An article which appeared in The Bystander of 29 April 1925 had this to say about the British pavilion:

“… one wonders what impression is meant to be conveyed to visitors … I have heard if described as a cross between a village church and a village pub … Perhaps it is intended to bring pangs of homesickness to British exiles. If brewery firms do not establish branches in the immediate vicinity, they are missing an excellent opportunity of profiting from the association of ideas. One look at the pavilion is sufficient to provoke and wandering Briton into an almost unquenchable thirst for something with foam on it. Bur Bordeaux is likely to be very cross about this introduction of the Burton note in Paris.”

So what of the resultant Art Deco style?

The familiar features of Art Deco are bold colours, and metal colours like gold and chrome. Also geometric designs, chevrons, motifs like nudes, foliage, animals, sun’s rays, and with influences coming from Bauhaus and Cubism, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and Egypt. 

Many of these features and motifs can be spotted around Loughborough’s town centre. This is because during the late-1920s-early 1930s, many of Loughborough’s buildings were demolished for road widening, and were replaced by buildings in the Art Deco style. Many used contemporary building materials, and many used the local tiles made by the Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta Company, which changed its name to Hathernware.

Over the course of the next month I will be sharing something here on the blog that is related to Art Deco in Loughborough. I have already written quite a lot about this – here’s one post that covers a lot of ground (I’ll try not to repeat too much of it for this A-Z Blogging Challenge!)  

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Notes

[1] Art Nouveau – is the term applied to an art and architectural style that was prevalent in Europe and the US, and featured flowing lines and curves, organic motifs, and influences from nature. The movement largely coincided with, and was influenced by a similar movement in Britain – the Arts and Craft Movement.

Arts and Craft Movement – this architectural and art style featured designs inspired by nature, but was based on traditional, handcrafting techniques, as a reaction against industrialisation and mass production. Craftsmen in this style that are familiar in our geographical area are Ernest Gimson, who designed a number of houses in the Charnwood Forest area including Stoneywell Cottage, has a permanent online exhibition associated with Leicester Museums and Galleries, and through his pupils left a permanent mark on the forerunner of Loughborough University, through the handicraft Unit. Arts and Crafts had a strong influence on Art Nouveau.

[2] Apparently, the Grand Palais had been built for the great exhibition of 1900.

____________________________________ 

I'm taking part in the A-Z April Blogging Challenge!!

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

____________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). A is for Art Deco. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-is-for-art-deco.html  aboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2023/03/loughborough-and-isaac-newton.html] [Accessed 1 April 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne