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Guildford Road, SOUTHEND-ON-SEA, SS2 5BH

Pennine is one of four identical council tower blocks near Southend Victoria railway station, the others being Quantock, Chiltern and Malvern. They are 16 floors high with 105 flats each and their roof heights are about 47 metres, or about 154 feet above the ground level.

Pennine towerblock

This is the south-west elevation of the block. Pennine along with Quantock, Chiltern and Malvern comprise the Queensway Estate whose first tenants moved in from 1967 onwards. The estate was built in conjunction with the Queensway Ring Road scheme and replaced a grid of long-forgotten terraced streets built in the late C19. In the intervening years the estate has been beset by all the issues affecting other such high-rise developments and there are frequent calls for its major refurbishment or demolition.

I can find absolutely nothing on the internet about this building, which is on Sutton Road at its junction with Guildford Road. The inscription in the massive stone carving states that the building was opened as a bakery in 1921 by the London Co-operative Society Limited to the designs of H E Tufton. The Co-op evidently still operate out of the building as evidenced by the store logo at the far right hand end, but whether the bakery still functions is unknown to me. In complete contrast to the massiveness of the building the stone carving also has a beehive with intricately carved bees buzzing around. Again I do not know if this was a former logo of the Co-operative Society or a symbol of the building being a bakery.

These buildings were clearly there long before Queensway, and a wall needed to be built partly to stop children getting onto the dual carriageway.

This is the south-west elevation of the block. Malvern along with Quantock, Pennine and Chiltern comprise the Queensway Estate whose first tenants moved in from 1967 onwards. The estate was built in conjunction with the Queensway Ring Road scheme and replaced a grid of long-forgotten terraced streets built in the late C19. In the intervening years the estate has been beset by all the issues affecting other such high-rise developments and there are frequent calls for its major refurbishment or demolition.

Malvern is one of four identical council tower blocks near Southend Victoria railway station, the others being Quantock, Chiltern and Pennine. They are 16 floors high with 105 flats each and their roof heights are about 47 metres, or about 154 feet above the ground level. In this photograph Sutton Road is the street in the foreground while Coleman Street leads off to the right.

This is the west elevation of the block. Chiltern along with Quantock, Pennine and Malvern (behind) comprise the Queensway Estate whose first tenants moved in from 1967 onwards. The estate was built in conjunction with the Queensway Ring Road scheme and replaced a grid of long-forgotten terraced streets built in the late C19. In the intervening years the estate has been beset by all the issues affecting other such high-rise developments and there are frequent calls for its major refurbishment or demolition. The footbridge crosses Queensway and provides a direct link into the block.

There is somewhat of a contrast here, and there is very little light available for the house at the end.