Bridgwater, Somerset


About time

The other day someone asked me if I was on Instagram. I had to admit that I was not. I’d tried Twitter and thought about Instagram, but blogging seemed to be the platform for me. But the question suggested to me that perhaps it was about time I was on Instagram, and prompted me to have another go. I now have an Instagram account, @philipbuildings .

It will not be a torrent of images, but my initial plan is to post more often than I blog, and offer a selection of things I’ve seen, mostly but not exclusively architectural. I’ll probably include more pictures of places and buildings near where I live – I have done blog posts about quite a few local buildings over the years, but as my blog is called English Buildings, I try not to have to much of a local bias. This is not meant to replace blogging for me. For now at least, I intend to carry on here in my usual way. But do have a look at my Instagram and feel free to follow, like, and share.

The clock in the picture, by the way, is in Bridgwater, and is an elegant Art Deco object that reminds me how often shops were adorned with timepieces in the 1930s and the following decades. It marks a branch of the jeweller’s H. Samuel. The H. Samuel chain was begun in 1862, when Harriet Samuel took over her father-in-law’s clock-making business. It’s a familiar name on British High Streets, although now owned by a larger global retail group. Many people who are familiar with H. Samuel’s stores do not realise that they are named after a woman, an unusual example of the acknowledgement of the major female role in early retailing.

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Follow Philip Wilkinson on Instagram @philipbuildings

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