Street in Somerset is a shoe town, well more accurately a village. Since the 1830s Clarks have been making shoes in Street, and while their shoes are now manufactured abroad, its headquarters are still located there. Within these headquarters is housed the most delightful little museum.

Passing through the corporate-style glass doors you find the introductory section which tells of the origins of Clarks and has a fabulous display of some of the fearsome foot measuring machines that used to feature in their shops. There’s also a selection of shop display showcards from the thirties, fifties and sixties. In fact ‘showcard’ does them an injustice - some are stylish and charming little 3D dioramas.

Up the wooden staircase the museum really gets into its stride, with a comprehensive chronological display of the history of shoes, housed in simple vitrines with hessian backed displays, a touch that reminds me of museums in the seventies and perhaps gives a clue as to when this museum was established. While the overriding emphasis is on shoes worn in Britain, from Roman times on, there are plenty of examples of footwear from all over the world, including some adorable Chinese silk children’s shoes. Even the most resistant visitor will soon be fascinated, as my (male) companion will happily confirm.

There’s plenty of contextual information should you need it, especially from the 19th century and on, including fashion pictures, advertisements, catalogue illustrations and photographs of shops. But its also possible, and perfectly natural, just to ooh and aah. One thing you can’t do it is rush through it - there’s so much to detain you despite its small size. Importantly, you are welcome to take pictures, something that cannot be taken for granted in many museums these days.

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Posted by Trevira on June 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Thames is a dead river. Save a stray tourist boat, and the Tate ferry that goes from one branch of Nicholas Serota’s World of Adventures to the other, London’s huge, majestic river is totally unused, and even in ‘Docklands’ it’s difficult to find any sign that it ever was. There’s one major exception to this, and that’s the Woolwich Ferry.

Not only is this a strange fragment of a past in which the river had some sort of function rather than being the backdrop to the ubiquitous ‘stunning developments’, it's also gloriously free. Just queue up at either side of the river : Woolwich SE18 or North Woolwich E16 – there’s a concrete shelter in case of rain – and at no point will anyone ask who you are or what you’re doing there, let alone ask for money.

The Woolwich Free Ferry was introduced in the 1880s by Joseph Bazalgette as one of his ‘improvements’, and the current terminus and ferries date from the mid-60s. The terminus is in shuttered concrete, with an angular staircase poking out, while the boats themselves are named after local politicians: all of a Leftish bent, given Woolwich’s history as a socialist stronghold. One of the three, marvellously, is called the ‘Ernest Bevin’, after the union boss and Cold Warrior foreign secretary in the Attlee government.

Go in the daytime or the weekend and the ferries are bracingly empty, with lines of benches sitting forlorn, while red-walled rooms labelled ‘SMOKING’ have their doors definitively locked. The ferry fills up at rush hour with people getting off at the DLR station on the North Side, going to the (until 2008) tubeless South. You can also stand on the traffic deck and gaze at this desolate stretch of river: the Tate sugar refinery (ironically enough) and the Thames Barrier dominate the riverscape here, with the leftovers of industry now overwhelmed by those riverside flats that cling to even the poorest stretches of Thames, with Canary Wharf (or ‘Thatcher’s Cock’ as it was once known) looming in the distance. At the front of each of the ferries is a little cylindrical lookout pod, creating a peculiar arch framing Woolwich Reach.

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Posted by Owen on June 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ulverston is a lovely example of how the Lake District used to be. Compared to the bright lights of Kendal and Keswick it has twice the charm and half the tourists. When we arrived at 10am it was still stirring awake and didn't seem to make it far beyond dozing for the rest of the day. Traditional shops jostle with one or two designer boutiques and fancy delis but apart from Greggs and Boots it is relatively chain-store free, and thankfully there isn’t a cut price fleece in sight.

The town is full of unexpected fragments of a more genteel time. The Glaxo Social Club proclaims to be "Licensed in pursuance of act of parliament for public dancing, singing, music and other public entertainments of the like kind".
At the top of the high street there's an ancient chemist and opposite the Oxfam shop street spreads over 3 floors with the non-fiction laid out in Dewey Decimal order. Amazingly, the charity shops here still have something you might want to buy.

Round the corner just off King Street there's a museum devoted to Stan Laurel, Ulverston’s most famous son who was born here in 1890. It's a gloriously ramshackle affair. Not so much a museum as a collection of anything Laurel (or Hardy) related crammed into two rooms. In a third, complete with old red velvet cinema seats, you can watch Laurel & Hardy films in period style. When we arrive the proprietor, himself a bit of a character, is just nipping out for fish and chips so he leaves us to look around the place. Even the souvenirs are fantastically old school – thimbles, mugs in two different sizes and stylish leather bookmarks.

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Posted by Anne on June 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)