Context 165 - August 2020

32 C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 In the 1920s a widely used vernacular revival developed for public houses. The roughcast walls, low, sweeping, graded slate hipped roofs, haphazard chimneys and large dormer windows create the visual effect more of a medieval manor house or an overblown barn than a pub. The crucial aim was that they looked rural even when located in the midst of an urban area. Brewers Tudor, with its half-timbered gables, machine- straight blackened beams, oak doors with Tudor arches and bottle glass windows, was safe and acceptable. It sat well along arterial roads, where it was surrounded by houses built with the same Tudoresque notions. The romantic view of coaching inns which devel- oped in the 1930s made neo-Georgian a favoured style. It was especially but not exclusively used on more confined urban sites. It was sometimes called ‘Post Office style’ because it was so similar to the regimented symmetry, plain brickwork and precise arches used by the GPO in its interwar offices for expanding town centres. Contemporary literature often used words such as dignity and restraint to describe the neo-Georgian, the apogee of the moralistic approach to pub design.The use of sash windows was often rejected by licensing magistrates, who considered them old fashioned and were suspicious that they could be lifted easily at the bottom for illicit purposes. If permitted, they were often only used on the upper floors.The Test Match, West Bridgford, Nottingham (1937, Grade II*) by AC Wheeler has the appearance of a Georgian country house, break fronted and symmetrical, and it unusually has sash windows throughout.TheTest Match is most notable for its surviving surprising art-deco interior plan and fit- tings: a two-storey lounge, terrazzo floor, sweeping staircase and first-floor cocktail bar. The Test Match, West Bridgford, Nottingham, by AC Wheeler, built in 1938 (also pictured on the front cover)