Lying amidst piles of rubble and high metal fencing in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh stands the former Fountain Brewery. A site of pilgrimage surely for all lovers of cheap lager.

The brewery was once part of the McEwan drinking empire, founded by William McEwan (1827-1913) in 1856 with money borrowed from his family. Fountainbridge was a prime location with its excellent transport links provided by the railway and Union Canal (which still runs alongside the site and provides a nice urban amble). McEwan soon established a presence in the Scottish market, before setting his sights on colonial trade. By the turn of the 20th century, a gentleman could enjoy a pint of McEwans as far and wide as Australia, South Africa or India.

The company merged with William Younger & Co Ltd to form Scottish Brewers Ltd in 1931, before that company merged with Newcastle Breweries Ltd in 1960 to form Scottish & Newcastle Breweries Ltd. This led to a thorough updating of the plant and S&N opened a new Fountain Brewery at Fountainbridge on a 22 acre site beside the Union Canal in 1973, much of which forms the remaining site today.

At its peak, the brewery produced about two million barrels per year of well-known brands such as McEwans Export, Tartan Special, Kestrel Lager, Gillespies Stout and Youngers. Quality brands. But despite the always willing domestic market for such produce, the Fountain Brewery was closed by S&N at the end of 2004 due to the fierce competition of the beer market. About 170 workers lost their jobs.

Despite this, the future of the site looks set to flourish. The Fountain North development plan has been dreamed up to remake the area into offices, housing, retail outlets and a new public park. It aims to become Edinburgh's largest regeneration site, incorporating all sorts of contemporary environmental concerns such as tree-lined boulevards, green space, pedestrian and cycle routes, family housing and underground car parking.

For now, the Laughing Cavalier (McEwan’s famous logo) is still set up there against the skyline, having a great time with beer in hand. It’s definitely worth a look before yet another landmark of Scotland’s industrial history is converted into designer urban living.

How to get there

The Brewery is found at 159 Fountainbridge between Fountainbridge Road and the terminus of the Union Canal in Edinburgh.

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Links

• Gazeteer for Scotland: Fountain Brewery
• Wikipedia: McEwan's Brewery
• BBC News: Fountain dries as beer era ends (Feb 2005)
• Edinburgh Architecture: Fountain Brewery
• Real Beer: Edinburgh brewery closes
• Sunday Herald: Drinking up time at the Fountain Brewery

The Bakelite Museum in Williton, Somerset is a museum of few words. At the entrance, a small sign introduces Bakelite "The material of a thousand uses". Invented by Dr Leo Baekeland in 1907 Bakelite was the world’s first, and most successful synthetic plastic, in continuous production ever since. If you think it's confined to old brown radios, think again. The museum, set over two floors in a 17th Century watermill is jam packed with Bakelite products of all shapes, sizes and colours.

Stepping in the door is like walking into a 1950s home. There are cookers, toasters, washing machines, and irons interspersed with smaller items like banks, clocks and egg cups. It is bright and resilient, in the spirit of the times. If the museum had ended here I would have gone home happy, but there's more. Next, a room of televisions, gramophones, radios and telephones is like a mini Design Museum. Plus a colourful display of elegant bowls and vases made from Bandalasta (also known as LingaLonga), a coloured, marbled variation of Bakelite which first saw light in 1925.

Up the steep stairs and into a little side room where I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. This is the colourful world of Bakelite egg cups, napkin rings and salt and pepper shakers, all perfectly lined up on curvaceous shelves. I shudder to think what the dusting overhead is like, but it looks wonderful.

From there you go onto hairdryers, electric heaters, hoovers and the last room with a full set of Bakelite teeth, picnic sets and the piece de resistance, a Bakelite coffin. As it was famous for its heat-resistant properties this didn't go too well at cremations and the product never took off. It is one of the many highly collectible items on show.

Considering the size and value of the collection, the museum is remarkably relaxed. If there's no one on the door, leave the entry fee in the honesty box. The owner, Patrick Cook, who makes the wonderful "pod" caravans on show outside may float by, but he doesn't intrude. Very few of the exhibits are behind glass which adds to the loveliness as the feel and smell of the material is so evocative of times past. There is little explanation, few captions or signposting. There's no need as the exhibits speak volumes - Bakelite is beautiful, versatile and omnipresent. What would the world have done without it?

Bakelite Museum
Orchard Mill, Williton, Somerset TA4 4NS - England, UK
Phone: +44 (0)1984 632133

Open every day throughout the summer and Easter holidays. In term-time it is open Thurs-Sun 10:30-6.

Links

• The Bakelite Museum website
• The Jorg Zimmermann Bakelite Collection (Switzerland)
• How do I know if it is bakelite?
• It's Bakelite you know!
• Wikipedia: Bakelite
• The Telegraph: This is Bakelite, do not adjust your dial

How to get there

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The Bakelite Museum is at Orchard Mill, Williton, Somerset. It is signposted from the main road (A39) through Williton. Follow the signs until you're going up someone's driveway. If you can see strange looking caravans you're in the right place. If you're in Somerset for a longer stay the charming West Somerset Railway runs to Williton from Minehead and Bishops Lydeard. The museum is a 25 minute walk from the station. Delicious cream teas are on offer from the kitchen next door.

Right in the pivotal centre of Soho, there is a time machine. Walk along Bateman Street until you see a café painted as the Italian Tricolore. You really can't miss it. It looks like it's closed, doesn't it? It probably isn't. Try the door. Is it open? Yes? Well, step right into 1955. Welcome to the Lorelei – one of the last survivors of 'real' Soho. The first thing you'll notice is that the decor is a curious mix of village hall and alpine hut. The second thing is the mural of the naked mermaid that takes up an entire wall. I've never seen the odd-looking light fittings switched on to illuminate it.

From the Formica tables, the lino floor, to the faux-leather banquettes round the walls, almost everything is as it was the day it opened. In the little kitchen area, the elderly proprietor quietly produces the best pizza in London – the genuine Italian flour for these is stacked up by the front door. Watching the vintage grey-green Cimbali coffee machine operated is akin to seeing Handel himself playing the organ. That's the sound of real coffee being made. Chips come cooked to order, always on an ancient glass plate. A little mound of hot golden matchsticks, sweet and crunchy.

How a place so comically un-modern still exists in the centre of this ever-changing city is a mystery. Need the loo? It's in an outhouse down the yard – primly segregated into 'gents' (hand written in gloss paint on a brick) and 'ladies'. Even the plumbing is original. There's never any piped music on – although the dusty old speaker still on the wall no doubt once pumped out Tommy Steele. You bring your own atmosphere. It's the eye in Soho's storm.

There's no need to book a table. The staff always seem a bit surprised when anybody walks in. At night, when the window is streaked with condensation you can watch people stop to scrutinise the menu, their faces yellow from its sodium light. They rarely come in, perhaps preferring the bright lights and familiarity of better-known restaurants. They don't know what they're missing. The world needs character as much as it needs wipe-clean convenience.

Once, Soho was full of coffee houses, started by Italians in the immediate post-war era. Some, like the famous (and long gone) Two-I's on Compton Street were to become the crucible for the UK's all-conquering pop music industry. Only a very few of these little caffs remain. The New Piccadilly – untouched since 1951 and once described as 'a cathedral amongst cafes' has already gone. Get to the Lorelei while you can.

The Lorelei, 21 Bateman Street, Soho, London W1D 3AL

How to get there

The best way to get there is by tube to Tottenham Court Road, then walk along Oxford Street until you see Dean Street on your left. Walk down Dean Street until you come to a pub called The Crown And Two Chairmen. Turn left into Bateman Street – keep walking and the Lorelei is on your left. Forget driving – although turning up on a Vespa would be cool.

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Links

• a good place for a cup of tea and a think: The Lorelei
• Classic Cafes

After the Second World War, 150,000 prefabricated houses (prefabs) were built across Britain. Created to host homeless families with young children, these “palaces for the people” as they were called were synonymous not only with comfort and luxury but also with freedom. The Excalibur Estate in Catford south-east London is still one of the largest surviving estates.

The 187 prefabs here were erected in 1946-47, by German and Italian prisoners of war. They were interim housing, a solution to the housing stock shortage after the end of the 2nd World War. They were expected to last between 10 and 15 years but are still standing after 60.

Over the years, Lewisham Council has tried to develop the site many times. In a recent review it found that the housing stock did not meet Decent Homes Standard and the cost for refurbishment would be £8.4 million. In April 2008 there will be a ballot to decide on whether or not stock transfer will go ahead. Residents have been told by the council that if they vote yes, the stock will be transferred to London & Quadrant, and the estate will be demolished. If they vote no, the estate will be put forward for a regeneration scheme, Lewisham Council will select a housing association of its choice, and the estate will be demolished. Either way the future looks bleak.

One of the tenants, Jim Blackender has been vocal in the campaign to save the estate. He writes:

As tenants we are trying to highlight the difficulties we are having trying to save our historic estate from the bulldozers

The Decent Homes Standard has given councils the golden opportunity to write off vast amounts of housing stock as non decent and transfer their stocks to housing associations who build in its place high density housing estates.

The Excalibur Prefab Estate is the largest of its kind now left in Europe. Europe values its war time history, we on the estate think it’s time we did too.

Links

• Lewisham Council: Excalibur - The Bungalow Estate
• Ideal Homes: Downham Estate: its origins and history
• Prefabulous: history of prefab estates (PDF)
• 10 Downing Street: Reponse to the online petition to save the Excalibur Estate

How to get there

The Excalibur Estate is in Catford, SE6 1RP.

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Footdee (pronounced "Fittie") is a small fishing village near Aberdeen harbour. From the beach it’s easy to miss but turn a corner and you're in a delightful square full of dinky little houses gathered round a communal green. Round the outside of the square the buildings are regular - neat rows of granite cottages and townhouses but round the inside they're anything but with shacks, sheds and outhouses jumbled with washing lines, plants, flowers and even a church.

The wonderful thing about Footdee is the randomness of these buildings. They're pretty puzzling. It's hard to tell if they're outhouses, or holiday homes or perhaps mansions for a race of tiny seafaring people. No two are the same and the styles range from miniatures houses with well-kept gardens to ramshackle structures made of found materials that look like only luck is holding them up. The only place I've seen anything similar is at Dungeness. In the details there are lots of seafaring accoutrements - model boats, ships-in-bottles and glass fishing weights. Hanging on one shack, a lifebelt from the Thermopylae, the world’s fastest sailing boat built in 1868 by the Aberdeen White Star Line, is a nod to local nautical heritage.

There are three squares altogether. North and South Squares were designed in the early 19th century by Aberdeen City architect John Smith who also designed Balmoral Castle. Pilot Square, built to a better standard for pilots of the harbour boats was added later. Looking closely, there are some clever design features - the houses are low and face inward to shelter from the sea, the pitched roofs keep the rain off and even the chimney pots are specially designed to keep seagulls away. As the cottages were so small, they were sold with space for an outhouse opposite, which explains the more idiosyncratic architectural elements. For fisherfolk this would be somewhere to keep your nets and other necessary equipment.

A wander round Footdee is a highlight of any trip to Aberdeen. It's amazing how quiet and sheltered it is despite the sea roaring on one side, the harbour clanking away on the other and the docks round the back. Through gaps in the houses you can see masts, gasometers and industrial bits and pieces but apart from that the modern world doesn't intrude.

Although there is nothing to see apart from houses and their decorations, it's easy to spend a while here as the details are so fascinating. Even the park has a nautical theme with an old buoy and a real fishing boat to play in. Instead of rocking horses there are seals to wobble about on. Aberdeen beach is beautiful with wonderful soft sand. The wind would slice you in two some days but provided you bring enough layers it's a pleasure to come here. Aberdeen, "the Granite City" is sometimes depicted as a city lacking in colour but there's plenty here.

Links

• About Abderdeen: Footdee
• Aberdeen City Council: design guidelines

How to get there

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The Museum Of Shops is sign-posted all over Eastbourne. It really whets your appetite. What an intriguing name. What could this place be? And it doesn't disappoint when you get there. It's spread over four floors in a townhouse not far from the seafront, in a quiet bit of town.

It's a massive 100,000 bit collection of, well, stuff, from the last hundred and fifty years of shops and consumption. Packaging, advertising, products, signage, clothes, ephemera, everything. The collection is crammed into themed displays with emotive mannequins acting out the part of shopkeepers. See Mr Barton in his well-stocked Grocer’s Shop. Check out the now long-gone treats available in the Sweet Shop. The Edwardian Kitchen is like a scene from Upstairs, Downstairs and the Wartime display will remind everyone large and small that we’ve never had it so good.

The focus seems to be mostly on the first half of the 20th century; if you're a thirty or forty year-old, you won't find much actual nostalgia to bathe in, but that's better in a way. You don't spend your whole time shouting 'Look! Spangles!' you actually look and think.

The museum was created by Jan and Graham Upton over a period of 50 years. They've done it really nicely. There's none of the compulsory interactivity that seems mandatory in museums nowadays. And no real attempt to create some historical context. You just gawp at the stuff and soak up the atmosphere. But it works really well, the overwhelming effect of the densely-packed sheer mass of stuff soon fades and you get to peer at the revealing little details. The tiny shop format is the perfect way to organise it – like full-size doll houses. This is a great place to pass some time.

Links

• Sussex Museums: The Museum of Shops and Social History

How to get there

"How We Lived Then": The Museum of Shops, 20 Cornfield Terrace, Eastbourne, East Sussex. BN21 4NS.

Just off the sea front between the War Memorial roundabout and the main theatres. Five minutes walk from Eastbourne railway station.

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North-East England, in the past few years, has been busily redeveloping itself. Towns have been smartened up, decaying buildings redeveloped, and irredeemable monstrosities torn down. The process started twenty years ago, and it's still ongoing today. In the next few months, a large block of Gateshead town centre, for example, is to be torn down and redeveloped. In the process, the building that is arguably the town's most famous and most prominent landmark will be demolished.

Trinity Square car park stands firmly above Gateshead, by some way the tallest building in the town centre. It's been Gateshead's biggest landmark for over forty years, having been opened in 1967 after five years on the drawing board. Built over a market hall and surrounded by a shopping precinct at its base, it was intended to be a centrepiece of its community. The top floor featured a space for a cafe-bar, with large, gorgeous, square picture windows looking out over Gateshead and Newcastle. It was never used, and has been empty for almost the whole of the building's life. Rather than becoming the centre of its community, the building is instead famous for the role it plays in a film, the 1971 gangster movie "Get Carter". A corrupt (and fictional) property developer shows Michael Caine around the empty cafe, and is later thrown off the building to his death. His grim demise fits well with the film, and with the dark bulk of the car park itself.

By the time the car park was constructed, its Brutalist design was already out of date and unfashionable. Its outdoor shopping precinct quickly became outdated too; shoppers preferred indoor precincts such as Newcastle's Eldon Square or, later, the Metro Centre in suburban Gateshead. Nevertheless, the building is still distinctive, striking, and important. Although the car park is closed off, the precinct surrounding it is still just about accessible. Almost all the tenants have left, now, given the impending closure, their shops hidden behind pastel security shutters. Boots The Chemist was so far as I could see, about the only remaining tenant, when I visited in January 2008. The precinct was still busy with locals, though, using it as a shortcut, hurrying through draughty passageways amid a forest of concrete columns supporting higher-level roads and walkways. The lowest two or three storeys have been slathered in thick cream masonry paint, presumably to help prevent graffiti; but above, the car park is still its original bare grey concrete, alternately dark and light, constantly changing shade with light and weather.

Trinity Square was designed by Britain's best-known Brutalist architect, Owen Luder. He will be 80 this year, and will have outlived some of his most famous buildings. Despite its distinctive design, the building is unlisted. The site is owned by Tesco, who want the whole block demolished so they can replace their current Gateshead store, just over the road. They have planning permission, and are currently planning to go ahead with demolition over the next few months. If you want to visit Trinity Square you may have, literally, a few days left before the precinct is closed. Soon, there really will be nothing to see here.

Main photo by Mick Donnelly. Used with thanks.

How to get there

Trinity Square is in Gateshead Town Centre between West St, Ellison St and High St. It is opposite Gateshead bus and Metro station, and is a 10-minute walk from Newcastle city centre.

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Links

• Risky Buildings: Trinity Square Multi-Storey Car Park
• Derelict Places: Get Carter, Trinity Car Park, Gateshead
• Wikipedia: Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park
• BBC News: Eyesore or gem: Gateshead Car Park

Britain is littered with bizarre features that would never have existed were it not for heavy capital investment in the defence of the Realm. Whilst schools and hospitals compete against each other - and private business - for public funding, one must question whether Britain’s military spending is fully justified. During the current illegal and counter-productive conflict, I have often momentarily thought not - until astonishing legacies of military activity have presented themselves before me. These revelations have been numerous, and come always without disappointment.

The Gosport peninsula, a triangular area of land enclosing the western side of Portsmouth Harbour, is particularly rich in such things. Impressive derelict forts that have never seen action, a large aircraft hangar with no runways, old town ramparts, a ‘secret’ military intelligence school, a submarine escape training water-tower and a vast Georgian military hospital. These are just a few of the wonders on offer. All can be enjoyed by the casual onlooker more for the queries that they pose than any assurances that they might deliver.

Many military structures have a highly attractive pointlessness. They are neither useful nor decorative. This obviously provides great interest and value to the aesthete. The structure pictured here, which I have taken the liberty of fondly naming the ‘Browndown Mushroom’, is a perfect example. A brutal concrete fabrication, some twenty-five feet tall, it stands isolated on the extensive shingle beach that is Browndown Military Training Area. Perhaps some kind of vent, the mushroom’s gills are of steel mesh - and it is definitely not a platform. Its original purpose a total mystery, this entity has the power to perplex, impress and amuse all at once. Whilst delighting in such things, one can be absolutely satisfied that corpulent military spending should never be challenged.

Browndown Ranges encompass several separate areas of land. The mushroom can be found (amongst some other strange features and structures) towards the eastern end of the coastal part, which runs along the beach between Stokes Bay and Lee-on-the-Solent. There is ample parking at the western end of Stokes Bay. The ranges are open to the public all year round, unless in use for Territorial Army exercises. Such closures are thankfully very rare.

Portsmouth, or Portsea Island - to give the land mass its geographical title - is most definitely an island, of about three by four miles. It is completely surrounded by water, with sea to the south and harbours to the east and west. To the north is a wide defensive creek. The encapsulating water is bridged by only three roads as links to the mainland. Officially the City includes sprawling suburbs on the mainland, but no local would consider these as part of Portsmouth proper. It therefore has the most clearly defined boundaries imaginable. This gives Portsmouth a unique atmosphere. It is unlike any other place in Britain.

In 1986 and 87, when I should have been at Portsmouth College of Art, I used the time much more fruitfully to develop an understanding of the craft of Urban Exploration. Day after day I cycled and paced the streets of Portsmouth in a quest to satisfy my appetite for experience of the mundane, the forgotten, the empty, the overlooked and the decaying. I craved old-fashioned shops, derelict buildings, odd bits of cobbled street, faded signs, brutal concrete, curious iron rings set into walls, ruins, relics and the obvious hypocrisies of the planning system. All of this is to be found in most places if one just takes the trouble to look - and I looked at Portsmouth. Unfortunately some of these things have now gone, but the strange, unused motorway junction at Tipner remains unchanged some twenty years on.

Until the mid-seventies there were only two roads on and off of the Island. Then came the M27 south-coast motorway, with its spur, the M275, bringing a third connection that penetrated deep into Portsmouth's western flank. The western side of Portsea Island is dominated by the Naval Dockyard, but to its north is the tiny peninsular of Tipner. Tipner is best known locally for the Greyhound Stadium, and a vast scrap yard, not so long ago a treasure trove of wartime military vehicles, tanks, submarines and ships, but unfortunately now largely cleared. There is also ex-MOD derelict land with strange boarded-up buildings, an MOD rifle range, a sailing club and a small council estate - all bleak and windblown by the constant breeze from the nearby water.

Tipner is where you can find much of the forlorn paraphernalia of a busy motorway junction that has never carried traffic. This junction is an impotent virgin – a capon of a junction if you like. Motorway traffic thunders relentlessly overhead on two bridges that should have spanned a junction roundabout. Slip roads were never surfaced, and remain as bramble covered slopes. Costly pedestrian underpasses provide safe passage with no threat overhead. Twisted signs offer advice that is nothing more than rhetorical. There is ironic elegance about this place. Bent and rusty railings are a tasselled hem, and concrete bridge supports form the nave to a secular cathedral, where orange sodium lamps burn in daylight, just for the sake of it. This place is nothing, and therefore everything. Tipner is without aesthetic or academic value, and is quite literally ‘out on a limb’. It is therefore well worth a visit.

How to get there

As you travel down the M275, in a southerly direction towards Portsmouth ferry port, look to your left. You will see the aforementioned features. Leave the motorway at the first opportunity and backtrack parallel to it for a mile or so to find them.

Links

• CBRD Motorway database: M275
• Pathetic Motorways: the M275
• Wikipedia: M275

Ibsley tower combines so much that is of interest to those appreciative of atmosphere. Ibsley was a very busy RAF airfield in the last proper war. It was the location for a morale-boosting wartime movie starring David Niven, and was taken over by the Americans in 1943. Ibsley played a major role in the D-Day invasion. It survived for precious few years, the airfield having been lost, almost entirely, to gravel abstraction. All that is left is a ruined and forlorn watch office (control tower) surrounded by lakes, now known as Mockbeggar Lakes, with wooded islands.

There is undeniable atmosphere, and a definite sense of foreboding due to graffiti and drug-related litter suggesting regular use as a rendezvous for illicit nocturnal activity - which seems all the more strange when one considers the affluent and respectable New Forest village setting. Looking closely at the daubed and battered walls it is just possible to make out three forces' sweethearts painted by US airmen. Well meaning plans to save and restore the building have come to nothing and, unfortunately, its complete demise seems imminent. Ibsley Tower is on private land belonging to the gravel company, but its isolation and neglect would suggest that trespass for the sake of curiosity is unlikely to be a problem.

It can be viewed lawfully from the north-western most corner of Fir Walk, public access woodland a quarter of a mile to the south of the village of Mockbeggar, which itself is just off the A338, about two miles north of Ringwood.

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Links

• R.A.F. Ibsley Historical Group
• Wikipedia: RAF Ibsley
• Control Towers: RAF Ibsley
• Google Earth Community: RAF Ibsley Aerodrome