Final bit from Bournemouth: Roundhouse Hotel. The reviews of the hotel are pretty dire, but no matter. I love any rotunda, especially when it’s also a car park, and especially when it’s wrapped in a beautiful concrete lattice.
Bonus: the logo of this restaurant and bar on the ground floor of the hotel.
When you’re walking down the street and some concrete beauty appears around the corner 😍
The massive, looming presence of the Beales building, a former department store in Bournemouth.
Having gone bust in 2020, the Twentieth Century Society writes:
A planning application to convert most of the building to residential use was refused in 2016 because of a wish to retain retail floor space in the town’s primary shopping area against a backdrop of a sizable public campaign to retain Beales as a store – “I back BEALES.”
Look at how well that worked out! In July 2024, the building has been granted planning permission to convert it into housing with gym and pool, as well as three ground floor retail units. These will surely be of similar architectural value as those in Bristol & West House.
Walking away from the Bournemouth Echo building, we were distracted by Bristol & West House, a 1958 art deco building. Originally it must’ve been offices + retail, with the upper floors being converted to become the plainest apartments imaginable in 2015. Externally it’s a very fine building, however.
Lovely weather to see Bournemouth today actually, plenty to see here!