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








More lovely doors from Berwick. A pair of pink ones to begin.
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.
A few more interesting doors from Berwick-upon-Tweed.
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.
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.