Derby: Open your eyes to Derby, the city of curving Modernist lines

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Charles Aslin's Art Deco bus station may be gone, but that doesn’t mean Derby is now devoid of architecture in the curving Modernist style. Christopher Bentley, of the Charles Herbert Aslin Society, takes us on a walk through the city centre to pick out some of the highlights.

THE loss of Aslin's Derby Bus Station may have been tragic for the city.

However, if nothing else the campaign for its retention and renovation ignited a much-needed debate on what exactly was Derby's "sense of place".

One of the key points raised against the station’s suitability for up-to-date buses was its curved platforms – although it has to be said that, only a few years ago, a similar station was constructed in Walsall, winning plaudits along the way.

If you look around Derby, you soon encounter other buildings in Derby of like vintage or built since then.

If one starts with one’s back to where Aslin’s station once stood, it doesn’t take long for one’s eyes to hit upon the first Modernist curved corner on this tour of Derby city centre.

Ostensibly, the building on the corner of the Morledge and East Street, housing Millets and associated outlets, is a rather workaday construction.

However, when the site was purchased by a London development firm, the Hammerson Group of Companies, the price of £71,500 was equal to £125 per square yard, which, back in 1962, was a record in Derby for a site of its kind.

It is entirely appropriate that one of the building’s initial tenants was a Wimpy bar, since the style of the building could best be described as coffee bar modernism.

A short walk up East Street, at the corner with Exchange Street, there is a building which is considerably more likely to get Modernist pulses racing.

Probably the last major retail building to go up in the city centre before the Second World War, there could be fewer more dramatic sweeps around a corner in any provincial British city than that which the Co-operative department store makes with its three bands of streamline Moderne ribbon glazing, each with an unbroken length of about 60 metres.

As one gazes up at this monster of the Moderne it is salutary to keep in mind that, at the turn of the 1990s, Derby could easily have waved goodbye to this masterpiece.

Plans were afoot to demolish it and glaze over Exchange Street to make a shopping mall, meaning that the store would only just have seen out its half century.

As things stand, the recently renovated Co-op has just enjoyed its 68th Christmas and New Year. May it enjoy many more.

At the Albert Street end of Exchange Street, a glance to one’s left begins to bring into focus the third stop on this tour.

Following Albert Street to its junction with St Peter’s Street, Corn Market and Victoria Street, it becomes evident that we are in the presence of another curved-cornered department store in the Modernist vein.

This time it is the building at the junction of Victoria Street and Green Lane – Debenhams, originally built as Ranby’s over a period between November 1960 and September 1962.

Not content with making a convex curve on the corner itself, this gorgeously sinuous building has the audacity to make a concave curve to fit in with its curving site.

Ranby’s was about as perfect an example of the coffee bar modernism style as one could get.

The locally-based architects’ practice Evans, Cartwright and Woollatt built Ranby’s in three stages, finally meeting at the middle to a precision of 1/64 inch.

So, not only is the building a thing of beauty, it is also a demonstration of the precision engineering for which the city is justly famous.

Evans, Cartwright and Woollatt had another trick up their sleeves inasmuch as the store has an in-built capacity to take an additional two storeys.

This means that when Debenhams leaves Victoria Street for the new Westfield Centre, any new tenants could potentially have a further two football pitches’ worth of floor-space.

Should the Becket Well redevelopment result in Debenhams’ demolition this landmark location would be lost not only to potential new occupants but also to the city in general.

If Derby is a city worth its salt, it surely will not allow this to happen.

Retracing one’s steps to the St Peter’s Street/Corn Market/Victoria Street/Albert Street junction, then turning left along Corn Market, one comes to stop number four, the curved-cornered building that once housed the Barlow Taylor and Co store at the corner of Market Place and Iron Gate, more recently the offices of Derbyshire Building Society and now housing a restaurant.

It may not seem immediately obvious that this is a Modernist structure.

However, its year of construction, 1925, places it right at the dawning of the Art Deco age, the term Art Deco having been coined just that year in Paris.

The angularity of the detailing indeed places it firmly in the Art Deco camp, backed up by the Egyptian feel of the bas-relief around the bay windows at the apex of the corner, Egypt being a key influence on the early days of Art Deco.

Ashley Adams is to be congratulated for its foresight in taking over the upper storeys for residential development.

What a place to live those apartments will be.

Making one’s way up Iron Gate to Queen Street, three more Modernist curved corners come in quick succession.

First is the Art Deco pepper-pot-like corner where The Glasshouse is currently situated – St Mary’s Chambers – at the junction of Iron Gate, St Mary’s Gate and Queen Street.

Then there’s the recently closed-down Island diner originally built in the early 1930s as Kennings showroom and garage at the corner of Queen Street and Cathedral Road, with its excellent stained glazing.

Finally, there is the curved corner exactly opposite, where the Anglian Window Centre is based. Part of Aslin’s complex of buildings constructed in 1932 around the then Queen Street Baths, it has, since 1992 and an opening by the Queen, been known as Queen’s Leisure Centre.

Bizarrely, the City Centre Conservation Area boundary bisects these two almost mirror-image buildings from the same era.

This means that one building is offered a different level of care from the other, when they surely should be conserved as a pair.

If one now strides out along the whole length of the city’s main shopping spine, ending up at the opposite end to the Queen’s Leisure Centre, where St Peter’s Street, London Road and Osmaston Road meet at The Spot, one comes to the final classic Modernist curved corner in the city centre.

John Beckett’s curved 1930s building currently houses the Spar supermarket, together with a range of shops radiating out along with the western side of London Road and the eastern side of Osmaston Road.

This was originally built as Eastern’s furniture shop and provides St Peter’s Street with a stunningly focal termination at its southern end – a veritable vision of pure white, dazzling wall.

The early 1990s vintage area containing the benches above the public conveniences accentuates the Art Deco feel of the area.

Sadly, planners and developers are considering removing this to make way for the suspect delights of the proposed Derby Spike.

By way of a coda, if one extends one’s tour a little along London Road one will encounter Derby city centre’s latest Modernist curved corner, the new extended Westfield shopping centre, formerly the Eagle Centre. Aslin’s bus station may be no longer physically present but in the curved shape of the Westfield centre it shows that it has left behind an architectural legacy, giving Derby a sense of place as the city of Modernist curved corners.

Just a small poser to finish. A glance across Traffic Street reveals what is now known as Strutts pub, but which was originally built in 1938 as the Telegraph Inn.

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