Upstairs to the management floor, where it is still 1959

January 22, 2018 2:04 PM

Last Saturday I visited the abandoned Coventry Evening Telegraph building. It’s an amazing place, vacated in 2012 but most of the interior untouched since the 1950s. Here are just a few of the photos I took. The site is being looked after by arts collective @CETpopup for the next few months ahead of the inevitable demolition / repurposing. Go & see it now, before it’s all lost. So let’s start the explore of a building that once had 600 people working on the evening daily. (SLTwitter photo thread)
posted by ambrosen (14 comments total)

Thanks for this ambrosen. I've been away from Cov for 13 years now and hadn't heard the CET had bit the dust.

Bit of local knowledge for non-Coventrians: The photo across the tweeter's homepage is an indoor bowling green, which is located inside a sports centre built in the shape of an elephant. You can drive under the body of the elephant and the tube connecting it to the rest of the building is supposed to be the trunk (I think). Its perhaps not totally obvious, I have to admit, but it is true! The elephant is on Coventry's coat of arms.
posted by biffa at 2:35 PM on January 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

Roger Daltrey wuz here.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:51 PM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh, wow. It looks like everybody just popped out for lunch and never came back.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:58 PM on January 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

That's amazing. Sort of place I'd love to photograph.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 3:58 PM on January 22, 2018

I know that it is an easy joke, and I know they were actually a respected firm throughout the 80s and 90s (had a big hand in designing a lot of the Space Shuttle tech), but dear god, does this sticker make it way too simple to write about a million "Prince of Darkness" or "Gentlemen don't go motoring at night" jokes...
posted by 1f2frfbf at 4:04 PM on January 22, 2018

Why do the British drink warm beer? Because Lucas makes their fridges as well.
posted by deadwax at 4:37 PM on January 22, 2018

Anyone want to rent this place out for the weekend, for a game of "Cold War Intelligence Agency"?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:42 PM on January 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Shit, didn't expect the press to still be there.
posted by scruss at 5:03 PM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you want to see a similar thing I highly recommend the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, UK. It was a jewelry manufacturer that never upgraded its equipment and the owners just locked up and walked away in the eighties. Some of my pics: 1, 2, 3, 4.
posted by srboisvert at 6:22 PM on January 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

I love that blue wallpaper.
posted by duoshao at 6:58 PM on January 22, 2018

Fantastic photos, but are they anywhere other than Twitter? I find it a really unhelpful interface for browsing large numbers of images.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 2:47 AM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Why do the British drink warm beer? Because Lucas makes their fridges as well.

Why don't they manufacture computers? They couldn't find a way to make them leak oil.
posted by thelonius at 5:38 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

But no, thelonius! We have that covered. As a long time follower of the Computer Conservation Society, some of the older British mainframe components from Elliott and others do require a drip tray. I suspect it was required to support the nationalised drip-tray industry of the time.
posted by scruss at 7:06 AM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

This is what I imagine the Laundry offices in Charles Stross' novels to be like...
posted by mrbill at 3:22 PM on January 23, 2018