BlogNor09: The Soup Tower
King's Lynn has always been the workhorse of Norfolk. Norwich and Yarmouth may be larger and on first appearance busier, but neither of them concentrate on industry and commerce in the way King's Lynn has. There are no huge insurance offices in Lynn, no sea-front selling kiss-me-quick hats. King's Lynn is a town of industry, and a town where the agri-industry of the surrounding countryside came to trade.
As a child we used to through King's Lynn from my home in rural North Norfolk, on the way to see family elsewhere. The landmarks were all industrial in nature. The huge grey slab of the grain silo in the docks, the sugar beet factory pumping out it's sickly-sweet smelling steam, and the Campbells soup tower with it's transluscent sides revealing a mess of convoluted pipes. It was like a piece of modern art.
Today the beet refinery is long gone, travellers to Norfolk are no longer greeted by it's sugary pong. The power station and the new paper mill have taken it's place along the river, but I kind of miss the friendly smell of warm sugar.
The grain silo is still there, now painted gleaming white. Also still standing, but now unused, is the Campbells tower. It's the nearest we've got to the Angel of the East, a roadside icon seen by the thousands of holidaymakers who channel past Lynn on their way to the Norfolk coast. A few years ago they replaced the glass sides with metal ones, which if anything enhanced it's feel of an art installation.
The friendly Campbells logo instantly recalls Warhol's soup tins. The stark brick lines of the building itself are reminiscent of Giles Gilbert Scott's architecture.
Today it's decorated by a huge banner, "See what Campbells Meadow can become!", Campbell's meadow being the name for the shopping area at the tower's feet.
The banner has been hung by Tescos, who have a supermarket just next to the factory. What they want Campbells Meadow to become is, unsurprisingly, a shopping area dominated by an even bigger Tescos. Ironically, they're using the tower to promote its own destruction.
The soup tower isn't very large (strangely, it looks bigger from further away, where it easily dominates the flat fen skyline), it's not very old, and it's also not very important architecturally, but it is important as a symbol for what King's Lynn is, or was. A town that makes things, in fields and factories, not just consumes things in food courts and giant supermarkets.
If the Campbells tower goes, and I suspect it will, Lynn will have lost one more symbol of it's past, which to me is a sad thing.
Blogging Norfolk
As a child we used to through King's Lynn from my home in rural North Norfolk, on the way to see family elsewhere. The landmarks were all industrial in nature. The huge grey slab of the grain silo in the docks, the sugar beet factory pumping out it's sickly-sweet smelling steam, and the Campbells soup tower with it's transluscent sides revealing a mess of convoluted pipes. It was like a piece of modern art.
Today the beet refinery is long gone, travellers to Norfolk are no longer greeted by it's sugary pong. The power station and the new paper mill have taken it's place along the river, but I kind of miss the friendly smell of warm sugar.
The grain silo is still there, now painted gleaming white. Also still standing, but now unused, is the Campbells tower. It's the nearest we've got to the Angel of the East, a roadside icon seen by the thousands of holidaymakers who channel past Lynn on their way to the Norfolk coast. A few years ago they replaced the glass sides with metal ones, which if anything enhanced it's feel of an art installation.
The friendly Campbells logo instantly recalls Warhol's soup tins. The stark brick lines of the building itself are reminiscent of Giles Gilbert Scott's architecture.
Today it's decorated by a huge banner, "See what Campbells Meadow can become!", Campbell's meadow being the name for the shopping area at the tower's feet.
The banner has been hung by Tescos, who have a supermarket just next to the factory. What they want Campbells Meadow to become is, unsurprisingly, a shopping area dominated by an even bigger Tescos. Ironically, they're using the tower to promote its own destruction.
The soup tower isn't very large (strangely, it looks bigger from further away, where it easily dominates the flat fen skyline), it's not very old, and it's also not very important architecturally, but it is important as a symbol for what King's Lynn is, or was. A town that makes things, in fields and factories, not just consumes things in food courts and giant supermarkets.
If the Campbells tower goes, and I suspect it will, Lynn will have lost one more symbol of it's past, which to me is a sad thing.
Blogging Norfolk
I love the fact that the tower 'looks bigger from further away'. I know exactly what you mean!
I like the idea of a soup tower, don't know why, I just do
Formerly Michelle Faith Allen
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