This rare Modernist example of “ocean liner” art deco got a mention in my old “Demolished Dalmuir” thread, but as the building is neither demolished nor arguably in Dalmuir I thought it was worth its own post.
You’ll find the pavilion at the end of Lilac Avenue in Mountblow, and I’m sure many of you will have spotted it from the train heading west out of Dalmuir Station going towards Dumbarton and the Highlands.
It served as the changing rooms for various organised sports and football clubs who used the Recreation Grounds (or Reccie as it’s known locally), and I remember when I was young its roof space was still fully accessible and the Reccie at the weekends was packed with players.
The Reccie
These days the pavilion is surrounded by a mostly condemned housing estate and I’m not in town often enough to vouch for the Reccie’s popularity. I don’t even know if the steel shutters on the building’s doorways are ever open, however I did manage to get a few snaps last week.
The Register for Scotland website notes that it is a “building at risk” and a “fine and rare example of a Modern Movement sports pavilion” built “circa 1937”. Curiously no single architect seems to have been recorded as responsible for it. They note simply
“Architects: Probably Clydebank Borough Council”
Even stranger, it seems to me that the Council at the time took its inspiration for this deco form from, of all places Fascist Italy and its colonie. These were surprisingly diverse and elegant structures designed as holiday villas for children and youth organisations often from deprived and malarial parts of the country who would “be stimulated, for the first time, to appreciate architectural form”, as a contemporary magazine article explained. As yet untainted by WWII this Italian inspiration wouldn’t have seemed so odd at the time.
The Mountblow Sports Pavilion reminds me of a mini version of one of my favourite of these Italian buildings, the Colonia Fara in Chiavari, though it’s sad to see that both buildings are suffering from a similar dangerous state of decay and vandalism.
In Italy “these buildings, potentially worth millions of Euros, are just disintegrating. No one can summon the political will either to tear them down or rehabilitate them”. (Peter Popham, The Independent Magazine). The Mountblow Sports Pavilion faces an even tougher survival challenge though. It’s in Scotland.
http://www.buildingsatrisk.org.uk/BAR/d ... 1&NumImg=5
