Donny's Ugliest Building? Steve Bates Doncaster’s ugliest building or a hidden gem? Almost hidden from view for many years, unless you had the misfortune to need to visit, Doncaster’s police station and magistrates’ court building are now far more visible due to the regeneration of the Civic and Cultural Quarter, including the new Council offices, Cast Theatre and the new road linking Chequer Road and Trafford Way. Built between 1959 and 1969, their foreboding low-rise construction in solid, grey concrete, almost bunkerlike in appearance, has led to them often being described as ugly and they probably wouldn’t look out of place in a dystopian vision of the future.
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Photography: Steve Bates ©2015
But in my opinion these are Doncaster’s best buildings of the 20th century, although, aside from the Co-op, there’s not a great deal of competition. Raw concrete, steel windows, a functional appearance, inset cobblestones - these are all classic signs of the Brutalist school of architecture. Brutalism has its foundations in the Modernist movement of the early 20th century (e.g. Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe). The name refers to the key construction material being ‘béton brut’, ‘raw concrete’, not the fact that the buildings often look ‘brutal’. One of the key post-war municipal architects in Britain was Sir Frederick Gibberd (1908-1984), who designed a number of London housing estates, including Harlow New Town, and perhaps most famously Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral, aka Paddy’s
Wigwam. It is Gibberd we have to thank for our two Brutalist masterpieces. Brutalism has had its detractors for many years, but seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment, with the regeneration of Park Hill Flats in Sheffield and highprofile campaigns to protect London’s Southbank Centre and save Robin Hood Gardens from demolition. So I urge you to celebrate Doncaster’s ‘ugly’ gem. Foreboding it may be, but surely that’s exactly the feeling that a court and police station should inspire. End wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Gibberd