Thursday doors Berwick5

More lovely doors from Berwick. A pair of pink ones to begin.

You can spend the night behind these lovely candy pink doors

Farrow and Ball colour chart – this colour falls between Arsenic and Teresa’s Green

Corner door, with a sign showing motorcyclist jumping over a saloon car (actually, it means no vehicular access).

It could do with a lick of paint

Note the stained glass fanlight

Both these last 4 doors have strange rectangular handles

Thursday Doors Berwick4

Behind the southern fortress walls of Berwick, there are some elegant houses, along Wellington Terrace and the Quay Walls. White doors with black knockers, handles and letterboxes look very smart. I like the dressed stone blocks, the porticos and the black iron railings.

Thursday Doors Berwick3

A few more interesting doors from Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Wonderful fanlight

The Grill on the Hill

Odd placement for a front door, at right angles to the main street. Check out the church spire in the window reflection.

The rust-coloured door in the middle leads to the rear of the properties.

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More wonderful doors from the streets of this historic town. This is the Town Hall, built on the site of the Tollbooth. There have been several versions of the Tollbooth, one of which was burned down by marauding Scots, but most just deteriorated with time. In 1749, the Tollbooth collapsed, leaving the bell tower unstable. Joseph Dods, a local builder, demolished the old building and sent the bells to London to be recast. He submitted a design for the new building, but as he had no experience of such a grand project, the guild sent his plans to the Worralls, architects in London who designed St Martin’s in the Fields, the church on Trafalgar Square (before it was Trafalgar Square). Dods successfully submitted new plans, very similar to the Worralls’ design, in 1750. His name is inscribed in stone above the door, and the mayor’s name Joseph Fleming Maguire, is in black on white lettering across the portico supported by fourTuscan columns.

This is the impressive town hall, towering above the shops. To the side of the building there is a set of stocks, where wrongdoers were detained while the locals pelted them with rotten vegetables and fruit.

This is the town hall front door. It is immense. The brassware has been enthusiastically polished

Beautiful fanlight

Matching doors

Sadly in need of tender loving care.

Thursday Doors Berwick

Berwick-upon-Tweed is the most northerly town in England. It is closer to Edinburgh in Scotland than it is to Newcastle. As a border town, it changed hands more than half a dozen times from 1000 – 1482, ending up as part of England. Queen Elizabeth the First spent a fortune building fortifications around the town to deter invaders. I highly recommend a walking trip around the town walls and battlements.

I stayed in a guest house on the Parade Ground outside the Army Barracks (designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, contemporary of Sir Christopher Wren). Many of the town houses are Georgian, almost 300 years old. And they have beautiful doors.

Fantastic fanlights above the doors.

There is a steep slope from the town to the docks. Berwick became prosperous shipping barrels of locally-caught salmon from the River Tweed to London.

If we aren’t answering the doorbell, go around to the side entrance.

This is part of the Barracks, one of the older doorways in town.

Not surprisingly, this house is at the end of the chain bridge (being renovated).