The Deptford Project Cafe is a brilliant example of regenerating a disused space – in this case a 60s commuter train. In 2008, the 35-tonne carriage was transported to Deptford from Essex at 2mph down the A11 in the middle of the night. Once in situ, the dated moquette seats were ripped out and the interior turned into a cafe, while the exterior was decorated with street art Photograph: Sarah Lee/Guardian
Malmaison, Oxford, is a former Victorian prison, shut in the 1990s due to chronic overcrowding and redeveloped into a hotel, with three cells each forming one bedroom. The hotel’s brasserie was the prison workshop and still features an original iron staircase. In the summer, you can eat in the former exercise yard – press-ups not essential Photograph: PR
Garage food usually means a Ginsters pasty and a Ribena, but not at Shrimpy’s. Restaurateurs Pablo Flack and David Waddington turned a disused BP petrol station into an upscale diner, keeping the 1960s canopy and forecourt but, funnily enough, not the Wild Bean Cafe. The shop is now the dining room Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
One of London’s best-known restaurants began life as a car showroom. Wolseley Motors commissioned the grand building on Piccadilly in 1921. Five years later Wolseley went bankrupt and the building became a Barclays bank. “The bank features were as important in our design as its original life as a car showroom,” says Simon Rawlings of David Collins, who designed The Wolseley and converted the bank manager’s offices into its bar and salon. The showroom’s famous marble floor remains, as do one of the bank’s postboxes and a stamp machine Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features
Biblophiles will be hoping 2013 doesn’t bring more library closures, but at least this one in Norwich which shut in the 70s has been put to good use. The Norfolk and Norwich Subscription Library closed in 1976 and the books were donated to a local school. The Grade II-listed building became an advice centre before being converted into a restaurant, which still features the original bookcases Photograph: PR
1945’s Brief Encounter was shot at Carnforth Station, Lancashire. Carnforth’s actual refreshment room fell into disrepair in the 70s, but was restored in 2003 and is now The Refreshment Room restaurant. “It’s all been made to look as then,” says owner Andrew Coates of the cafe, which looks identical to Brief Encounter’s set, with its vintage till and 40s water boilers on the bar Photograph: Alamy
All those decommissioned Routemasters had to go somewhere, and The Tea Stop is one of the few that didn’t end up bussing around wedding guests. The 1966 bus now has a kitchen downstairs with a hatch. Upstairs you can sit in the original seats, which the owner Daniel Organ has turned round and added some Formica tables to make things more sociable Photograph: PR company handout
