I simply can’t decide between these choices for the Letter W, so let's cover them all! So, Harry Weedon’s architectural practice was the one favoured by Oscar Deutsch to design his Odeon cinemas. Arthur J. Price was one of the architects in the practice, and it was he who designed Loughborough’s original Odeon on Baxter Gate, most recently a Beacon Bingo, and now in the process of being renovated. The Art Deco style was rather influenced by the designs of things of travel and speed – like the Mallard train built in 1938, which broke the speed record for steam locos in the summer of that year; like Babs the racing car which broke the speed record on Pendine Sands in 1926 with J.G. Parry Thomas in the driving seat; and like the popularity of the cruise ships. Hence the building designs that almost mimicked the shape and style of the cruise liner, or included waves, or wave-like patterns in their ornamentation. Perhaps you might stand where Market Place joins High Street and look at the amusement arcade, which if you get the right angle, looks like the front of an ocean liner. Plus, its ornamentation is decidedly wavey - and the central panel almost looks like the letter W! A similar ocean liner feel comes from the row of shops on Market Street, and they too have waves. These are above the windows at first floor level of the blocks either side of Party Pieces, although these almost look like eyelashes! There are also some waves above the windows on the first floor of the row of buildings on the right-hand side of the former Ramada Hotel (previously the King's Head), although they do look rather more like window pelmets! And my final choice for W is wheatsheaves! No, not the Jam Garden, but the architectural motifs that we can see on the former Burton Tailoring store. They are keeping well out of the way of the lions, and can be found on the outside pillars of the building, at first-floor level. ____________________________________ I'm taking part in the A-Z April Blogging Challenge!! ___________________________________ Posted by lynneaboutloughborough With apologies for typos which are all mine! _______________________________________________ Thank you for reading this blog. Copyright: The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows: Dyer, Lynne (2025). W is for Waves, Wheatsheaves, and Weedon the Architects. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/04/w-is-for-waves-wheatsheaves-and-weedon.html [Accessed 26 April 2025] Take down policy: I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these. External Links: By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog. Blog archive and tags: If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in. Searching the blog: You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example: site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House” NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space Thank you for reading this blog. Lynne