If you walk down the high street of Manningtree at the moment, you'll see this, part of a
building that's being worked on:
It’s a door marked for wheelchair users that’s about a foot off the ground – no ramp, no lift. Getting in of course is impossible, but getting out would be a wild ride. The door opens, the wheelchair passes through and the occupant is (briefly) airborne.
I don’t honestly think this is a Thomasson – i.e. a surviving architectural relic that serves no purpose but by some kind of alchemy has become a work of art, or hyperart.
Nah, I think the guys working on the building just needed a door, any door, to plug up the hole and the one they found happened to have a wheelchair sticker on it. And maybe one of the guys likes a larf. I expect it’ll soon be gone.
If you happen to be walking in Ipswich, up in the next county, you might come across this place:
It’s closed up and one of the doors is bricked up, and again not a Thomasson, just a way of securely plugging a hole. But what really catches the eye is that belt arrangement that appears to be holding the house together.
I’m sure there must be a technical architectural term for those belts, and perhaps it’s a tried and trusted method. Even so, the house owner, and the builder, evidently have more confidence in the belt materials than I would have, especially if I lived in the house next door.
