As a treat for my 40th birthday, my husband arranged a stay at The Midland Hotel in Morecambe. It is an Art Deco gem of a building. It was built in 1933 by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and was designed by architect Oliver Hill.
Being a huge fan of M.C. Escher, I take great pleasure in photographing staircases. Particularly those with art deco features. As Escher first began to explore tessellation in the 1930s the two styles are, I think, connected by global influence if nothing else.
I am also a mystery writer by trade and, of course, many of Agatha Christie’s mysteries are set in the 1930s so I’m a little bit in love with that era. Thus, you can bet that every time I walked down that staircase, I imagined the people of the thirties going to dinner in their finery.
The ‘medallion’ that hovers over the staircase is a work by Eric Gill entitled Neptune and Triton. The perfect emblem for a hotel situated on the edge of one of the most stunning, and deadly, stretches of the Irish Sea.
The hotel is fronted with three long windows and in the mornings heaven-white light streams through into the foyer.
I could have spent hours capturing the twists and turns of the strange, topsy-turvy world created in this small cylinder. But sunlight is scant at this time of year and so I set off on another adventure to nearby Heysham. Regardless of one’s prior engagements however, there’s always time to snap one last photograph…
Read Helen’s poem about Morecambe Bay, here.