Marine Court (St. Leonards On Sea, East Sussex)

 Streamline Moderne (architecture), Art Deco (architecture), apartment building, 1938_construction, Grade II Listed (UK)

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Hastings St Leonards on Sea Marina, Marine Court II Service flats incorporating shops, car park and restaurant. Foundation stone laid 1936, completed 1938, architects Kenneth Dalgleish and Roger K Pullen in a Cunard style consciously designed to be "a building embodying the beautiful curves of a great ship - a vertical liner on land" inspired by seeing the Queen Mary in dock in Scotland. Late C20 refenestation and glazing-in of balconies.

Steel frame construction with vertical lattice framing to resist the wind pressure due to the height and narrowness of the building and its exposed location. External walls are 11 inch brick cavity, flat roofs are reinforced concrete with tiled finish, floors are hollow block and balcony fronts are painted reinforced concrete and the windows which were metal Crittall casements have mainly been replaced in uPVC and aluminium casements and horizontally sliding windows.

Fourteen storeys high, rising to 170 feet from basement to rooftop. The building provided underground car parking, twenty shops at ground floor level, two storey restaurant on the first floor east end and a promenade deck on the thirteenth floor. There are four separate entrances each served by lifts and staircases.

Every self-contained flat above the second floor has a southern aspect, a balcony and a view of the sea. Ground floor has shopfronts, some retaining original black tiling and horizontally-glazed fanlights and four entrances with doors replaced in uPVC and canopy decorated with wave pattern above. The first and second floors form a podium and have 23 windows, now with sliding sashes. Rounded corner to east (former restaurant) has tall casement windows. Upper floors have balconies, many of which have been glazed-in in the later C20. West end also curved with expanse of stock bricks. Rear elevation has concrete balconies divided by four enclosed staircases and there is an external staircase. Interior retains original lifts and metal staircases and some flats retain original built in kitchen and bedroom units.

historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1379...