The last couple of shots from Maidenhead. Maybe not that exciting, but as I got wet taking them, I'm going to use them!
I can't really work out how this building should work. Were it not for the stone name above the main entrance, I'd assume it had been something else, and the lower sign is a later addition.
How do you show off the cars with no windows at the front? And it's in a side street, so limited passing trade.
On the side is a more conventional building/workshop. It's a lot younger than the stone building, so presumably has been replaced at some point, although not recenly as I suspect a 1970s vibe.
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Phil
[1] I fear that gremlins have transferred MINEHEAD inland and to the County of Berkshire.
[2] Studying a map of Minehead may I suggest that the original function of the building was not the servicing or selling of motor cars, but rather the garaging of them. One block to the east, on the Esplanade, is what is now Metropole Court. This seems to be a complex of apartments but would appear once to have been the Metropole Hotel built in 1892.
The image of the croquet lawn here -
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/photos/item/BL26701/004
- says this of the hotel.
"It was used by Indian Rajahs when they played polo at Dunster ….."
A hotel of this standing would surely in the early C20th have provided garaging for the motor cars of guests.
CP
I suspect it was more a maintenance garage rather than a showroom: the sort of place James Bond would have driven his Aston Martin into for “work” to be done.
ReplyDeleteGood spot. I keep getting the town wrong, but until now have spotted and fixed it before embarrassing myself. Got a bit of a thick head at the moment...
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