31 October 2024

Happy Hallowe'en (whatever that means!)

Last week I wrote on here about the mythogical beasts on the columns that support the portico leading into Burlington House courtyard. Well, on the walls either side of the entrance to The Linnean Society, on the left side within that same entranceway, there are more embellishments, depicting life and death. These take the form of a bird feeding chicks on a nest and a skull.


Hmm, I thought, let's save that for Hallowe'en and add some more 'spooky' things I've seen.
Staing with skulls and bones – a hazard warning on a metal bin and a medical skeleton hanging in a window:


And then I recalled these two – an ad for a Gregg's muffin and peeling paint on the wall around Mount Pleasant Sorting Office:

Best include a couple of demons... one in Paddington and another in Cornhill, both featured on Jane's London before, such as here:


And, finally, an eyeball and a demonic bat:

That's actually a tealight holder I espied on the Thames foreshore. The bat is one the many marvellous motifs on The Blackfriars pub.

That's it.  Whooo whaaaay!

28 October 2024

The Elizabeth Line wins The Stirling Prize 2024 – but how?! It's like a grubby version of Orwell's 1984 down there

When London's newest transit line first opened back in May 2022, some of my friends were quick to travel on it and kept asking me why I hadn't used it because, they said, it was marvellous. My reason was not that I was avoiding it, more that I didn't need it. Living in Holloway, North London, my most convenient rail routes into central London are the Victoria and Piccadilly lines and, as I explained, until I needed to travel to the eastern or western extremes, the Elizabeth line was of scant use to me. I am here using a cap E for Elizabeth only, as per other lines on the TfL network, yet I often see it written as 'The Elizabeth Line' which seems a bit much.   

My first experience of was from Stratford to Romford, having reached the former via the Overground line from Highbury and Islington. On that occasion, with my iPhone low on juice I was keen to recharge it and so I walked up and down the carriages scanning the walls and seat backs for charging points, a facility that is easily available on many other train lines including Thameslink and the Overground line, albeit not on the tube lines. But I couldn't find any sockets at all on the Lizzie line. I have subsequently discovered that there are a few USB ports on some of the trains – they can be found under the windows between the pairs of front and back-facing seats, as shown above = four ports per carriage. 

A second thing I found disappointing was the colour used for the interiors of the carriages, which is shades of gloomy grey. It's not so noticeable when travelling above ground in daylight but after dusk and/or when train goes underground within tunnels, it's gloomy. London is grey grey grey these days – I have often written on here about buildings being painted grey. 

Last year, I was near in near Cabot Square, Canary Wharf, when I saw a directional sign to the Elizabeth line so I thought I'd go and check out the station to see what it was like, and to and take a speedy route into town. With hindsight, I should have stayed above ground and walked to the nearest DLR station because it took ages to get anywhere near the trains. I had to navigate corridors, tunnels, stairs and escalators to finally reach a crowded dimly-lit platform where people queued at the door openings waiting for the next train to take them to their destiny (or doom), like living in a dystopian nightmare or being part of an immersive theatre production of Orwell's 1984* or Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I couldn't understand why there were so many people using the service at 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon? Did they do this every day?! It was horrible. Once on the train, it was packed with people, and dark and foreboding. I felt like I was being taken to an abattoir.  Oh the joy when I escaped at Whitechapel. Phew!  

But back to this year's RIBA Stirling Prize where the Elizabeth line is described as "flawless, efficient... beautifully choreographed solution...". Efficient perhaps, but 'flawless'? 

Earlier this year, on 17th May 2024, I used the service from Farringdon station, a few days before the line was approaching its 2nd birthday. I'm here using the pics I took on that day to tell the story from street level to the eastbound platform. 

As you enter from Cowcross Street, go through the ticket barriers and take the escalator to your right (not the escalator ahead of you unless you want to get a Thameslink train, the two lines not being interchangeable at lower level). At the bottom of the [correct] escalator you'll see that there is another escalator to the left of you, but a freestanding temporary signboard directs you to the right around a lightweight curved railing. 

If you look closely at the floor you can see that this curved railing has been installed as an afterthought, probably after they suddenly realised the clash of people on this concourse. Flawless? Efficient? I see poor planning, no forward thinking.


Then, as you approach the second escalator, there are dirty marks on the walls. Why? How? Do passengers (customers/clients/whatever we are these days) reach out and touch this, or is this mess made by maintenance staff?:


Down into the depths of the beast and, if you are in a hurry or have never been here before, it's hard to ascertain which way to go, left or right, to East or West? All it says is 'Elizabeth Line' in both directions, which is unhelpful to say the least. Certainly not efficient or beautifully choreographed. Only at the far end, beyond the people in this photo, will you finally find the information you seek:


People often tell me I am moaning or complaining. This is not so. I'm all for improving things, making them better. If a job's worth doing it's worth doing well, and all that. I am simply disappointed, especially as, in the case, the creases could have been ironed out before the project was completed. I am simply disappointed. This could have been so much better with a bit of forethought. 
Signage is key. Especially for the uninitiated, the one-time user, the visitor, the confused soul who has lost his way. But, here, the designers do not seems to have looked at these environments from the viewpoint of a user. Nor have they adequately tested the products used to see how they will fare going forward, never mind how they will be cleaned/maintained, evident by the many dirty, smeary marks along the corridors and platforms that it seems will now be with us until the station gets a complete makeover. Perhaps they'll simply paint it grey.


The walls panels are simply the wrong products for this environment. There are two issues here. First, the surface makes them perfect for holding onto dirt and, secondly, the dirt is therefore difficult to remove for the same reason, hence we see unsuccessful attempts to scrub away the filth by hand. 

Note that we are looking at just two years of grime and degradation on a product that should have never made it through all those years of R&D. I mean, jeez... Crossrail, as it was back then, was over ten years in the making, let alone the pre-planning. One would surely assume that they tested many different surfaces to see which would best suited for this situation. Also, what about all these silly undulating curved walls! How did the designers think these would be efficiently and adequately maintained? 

On the platform at Farringdon, you can find examples of ghostly shadows of people who have sat on the seats. I recall when this 'phenomenon' hit the news last year, thinking, 'er, wrong product, stop scrubbing, simply replace the wall panels.  


It's clear that they also didn't look into how this surface texture might also be problem in conjunction with their own self-adhesive information signs. Next time you are a platform, look out for strange stone effect patches of varying shapes and sizes that aren't quite the same as the walls, such as the one shown below right. This, I am reliably informed, is their solution to covering up the gluey mess left behind where a sticker has been removed. Efficient? I think not.  


In conclusion: Disappointing. Not flawless. Efficient as a train service, but not in the respect of interior design. They should look to the past to see that there is nothing more suitable than ceramic tiles, as within the old Victorian and Edwardian stations. 

*This is a reference to a version of 1984 now on at Hackney Town Hall. All I can say is, don't expect too much, because it's disappointing. The word 'immersive' is misleading, the condensed storyline is poorly imparted and the sound and visuals are hard to comprehend. You'll bet to walk up some stairs, put on an armband, walk back down the stairs, strain to see the 'stage' and then "bang!" it's over, please return your badge and armband on the way out. It was nice to see the inside some of the fabulous town hall though. 

26 October 2024

Only a few days left to see these delightful dolls' houses at The Guildhall Gallery – ends 31st Oct

There's a lovely a wall of miniature worlds created within shoes boxes and the like either side of Lord Tennyson 's bust at The Guildhall Art Gallery

As I say in the title; it's delightful in many ways. If you can't manage to get there yourself, you can find out more about the Giant Dolls' House Project here.


The Guildhall's excellent gallery and Roman amphitheatre are always worth a visit – and FREE to enter! 

24 October 2024

Mythological beasts and birds at Burlington House

Next time you are walking through the gateway that leads from Piccadilly to The Royal Academy and many other fine societies and institutions that surround the courtyard, stop to take a look at the marvellous carvings on the pillars:

When I took these snaps on Tuesday, I had just attended a fascinating lunchtime talk at The Society of Antiquaries. The lecture was given by Ella Hawkins about who creates biscuits decorated to evoke Tudor fabrics, Victorian wallpapers and excavated sherds. Wow!

18 October 2024

Hold The Handrail – TfL's horribly confusing safety posters

I can't be the only one who finds Transport for London's safety posters rather ill-conceived. TfL's graphics do not enhance their messages – their posters are confusing.

The design team seems to have overlooked that many people who use the network are visitors and tourists from other countries for whom english is not their fist language, and it's no good mentioning a handrail in big bold capital letters if the handrail mentioned is not clearly indicated in the image, whether you understand the language or not. 

A depiction of a hand actually holding the handrail might have been a nice idea, with the words placed in such a way they they highlight/enhance the handrail in the graphic. I'm also surprised that none of the posters include a pleasantry or an explanation, such as 'For your safety, please hold the handrail'. 

Let's start with the buses – signs like these can be found at the top of the stairs on many routes:


At first glance, it appears to say, HOLD HANDRAIL. Ah, but no, there's a tiny little THE at the end of the stairs, looking like an afterthought. The message might make better sense if the 'designers' had aligned the words with the handrail(s) and, for clarity, added a hand holding the handrail at bottom left. Note the handrail is here depicted in yellow, but on this bus the rails are orange. 
A similar version of this can be found on the underground where the handrail is coloured black as per the moving handrails on escalators yet, but they've painted the side walls blue when, in reality, they are are actually silver colour. 


The handrails in the graphic are barely noticeable at all. The poster seems to be luring us into a golden sunset where a little white 'the' is waiting to take us down a fiery tunnel (to hell?). 

Travelling down the long Elizabeth Line escalators at Farringdon, I spotted this animated version which starts with the world HOLD in roman, then it becomes italicised as HANDRAIL appears across it in white. It wasn't until I looked at these pics that I noticed the word 'the' again hiding in there. 


These signs are bonkers. Someone took the time to design this. And someone else approved it. It beggars belief. 
I think at some point they realised that these posters make scant sense, so someone had the bright idea to link the word HOLD with the visual depiction of the handrail, thus we see a series of posters where the O appears like a ring on a curtain rail that, being fully circular, only slides up and down or laterally but can't let go of the rail, as shown below within the carriages:


Call me pedantic(!) but I am not sure many of us refer to a vertical pole as a handrail.
Moving on, they also created a series of alternative poster designs on this theme, as shown here below at Holborn station. These dispense with the chunky drop shadow letters, as shown above, instead using TfL's Johnston typeface:


These posters depict a mysterious androgynous figure, almost silhouetted at top right, who has speared a big Polo mint and is about to spin it around. Holborn station is slathered in signs of this design – on the platforms, in the tunnels that connect the Central and Piccadilly lines, before the escalators and pasted into the gaps between the escalators, as shown here, viewed from the bottom, the top and mid-journey (ascending):


Heading up towards street level, I struggled to snap the second two pics above. It's almost impossible to read these things as you glide past – you'd need to be at least 8ft tall to be able focus on them, let alone be able to read the content. The message is therefore lost in transit. 
At street-level, on the concourse, three of them are pasted on the wall:


I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during the creative brief for this. I think the design department was first tasked to create the blue poster and, when someone slipped over on a wet floor, they adapted it for the green version and then realised that people with bags are an issue and so the purple poster was made. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the orange Don't Rush version was created.
If you read the smaller text here, you'll see that some of these posters advise us to use the lift which, here at Holborn, is misleading in two respects; 1) you might already be half way up an escalator at this point, and 2) there are no lifts at this station. Or stairs for that matter. 
The purple poster irks me the most and I wonder what message do they think they have conveyed here?  Considering how foreboding this is, what with the colour scheme of black and purple and that shady figure, it looks more like they are telling us to watch out for luggage thieves who might steal our suitcases. Or, perhaps that dark figure is supposed to be you/me, suggesting that we should hold the handrail whilst we slide our luggage ahead of us down the pole?!  Hmm, letting go of the bag is not a good idea and this is why I think another poster was created on this subject (see further down).
Got Luggage? Eurgh!  This kind of short question-heading is everywhere these days and I really don't like it. It requires us to do an upward inflection at the end when we notice the question mark! Add to that, the use of 'got/get' which is lazy and can always be replaced with something better.

On the subject of luggage, this next one is sublime, for all the wrong reasons...

The design style here is quite similar to the one on the buses. However, here, the two words that have been given the most visual emphasis are 'the' and 'too' – leaving the instruction to 'hold the handrail' lost within a red wheelie bag that seems to tell us that we should place our luggage sideways across the footplate, thus blocking up the space for anyone who wants to walk past. It certainly doesn't show us to hold the bag and the handrail which is what they are trying to say here. 

Ah, but, hold on, (see what I did there?!) this wheelie bag seems have made the journey up the escalator all by itself. Note that the handle is depicted as being away from us, suggesting that this is not our bag but the property of some poor soul who has let go of their luggage but is now out of view somewhere on the concourse at the bottom!

As regards the typography on this one, the message to 'hold the handrail' is completely muddled. It's as if someone recalled Katherine Hamnett's T-shirts back in the 1980s but didn't grasp that they work because the largest words in those statements were the ones that were the most important. Instead, here we see HOLD, the most important word, in italics on across the top of the bag, black on red (and vice-versa) being the worst pairing of colours for legibility. Instead, 'the handrail too' in white letters stands out as some kind of cryptic puzzle.

I was going to continue here and address some of TfL's other posters of this type but I think I will save them for another day.

In the meantime, please hold onto your hats and bags and handrails, in anticipation.

……

Update: w/c11Nov: I found another one – this is within the below ground tunnels at Waterloo:


This poster depicts a spiral staircase, yet is placed at the top of a straight flight of stairs. Note the depiction of teeny tiny treads on the stairs and I'm also querying the rotation of the spiral being as the one at my local station at Holloway Road curves round and down to the left, making it a clockwise descent. Do they vary station to station?

16 October 2024

TCSU and LBH-EP – bold and brassy additions, but what do they mean

Last Thursday, whilst leading my Notting Hill Ghostsigns walking tour, we happened upon a utility access plate near Portobello Road market, within the pavement outside 294 Westbourne Grove, which has an additional small brass plate screwed to it bearing the letters TSCU. One of the group proclaimed it as a trip hazard, which it surely is, being as it sticks up higher than the main plate and the screws that hold it in place protrude even more so. 

Convinced I'd very recently seen similar elsewhere, perhaps in this vicinity, I took a quick snap for reference and made a mental note to find out more some time in the near future*. 

Well, the future was only two days ahead because, as I exited Hoxton station and turned into Cremer Street, heading south towards, I saw a similar example within the pavement near the gate just beyond the railway line, and another a little further along abutting the wall. I realised I must have spotted one of these the previous Sunday when I rushing to meet friends in Columbia Road market. The pic below is the view looking North along Cremer Street:

The little brass additions here are the same design as the Portobello ones but these bear the letters LBH-EP which is surely must be London Borough of Hackney – Electricity Power, or similar(?). 

Further along Cremer Street, near the southern end, there is another plate bearing the same letters but in a different punched-out stencil design, the rivet fixings on this one being even more sticky-uppy than the others. 


I wonder how many people have actually tripped up on these things? Surely, to avoid this potential hazard, they (thever 'they' are) could have devised something flatter/thinner and instructed the contractors to weld them into the recessed areas of the original cover plates...?  

*I just googled, and I discover that TCSU = Traffic Control Systems Unit. Hmm... strange, seeing as this is about 50metres from the junction where the traffic lights are located.

14 October 2024

What's going on at J. Lyons & Co, Throgmorton Street?

Whenever I am wandering around the City of London, I often take a detour into Throgmorton Street to check if anything is happening at the site once occupied by J. Lyons & Co as the Throgmorton Restaurant. This restaurant opened on 15th October 1900 in the basement areas beneath Drapers Hall, and was entered either side of the livery company's main portico, resplendent with large male figures and a huge crest:

On this recent visit (late August 2024), Lyons' door to the left was boarded as seen below, top right, but the door to the right offered more, including a glimpse at the ceiling within the entrance, and there seemed to be activity beyond.

The Long Room, The Grill Room and The Millionaire's Room were accessed via a marble staircase and kitted out in oak, mosaics, etched glass, gilded mirrors and more marble – very similar, I guess, to the opulant dinings rooms at The Café Royal on Regent Street, so beloved of Oscar Wilde, etc. I think this short review from 2006 is about the space that once was The Grill Room when it was a pub/sports bar, this link shows a red interior in 2004 that I think was originally The Long Room, and I deduce is probably the same space reviewed in The Standard in 2012

Frustratingly, books written about the Lyons company make no mention of this place. There's nothing in either The First Food Empire by Peter Bird, 2000, or Legacy by Thomas Harding, 2020, with neither indexing Throgmorton, Drapers or City of London. However, the 2000 book does include Throgmorton Restaurant in its appendices where it's in a list of 'other restaurants operated' showing that it was at that time 'still open under new owners'.

How jolly frustrating. How can there be no reference or evidence of this place? No one was taking selfies or pics of their meals pre 2000!

I did see visual evidence myself once, on TV at least 15 years ago. I was watching The Apprentice when I identified this restaurant being used as a task – if my memory serves me well, the candidates were asked to sell off fixtures and fittings from here. I was horrified, especially as they didn't seem to have a clue about the approximate date of the items, let alone the provenance/history. The programme didn't identify the actual location but I recognised it from the snippets they showed of the exterior/street. Note, this was pre the digital channels, without the catch-up and rewind facilities we take for granted today, otherwise I most definitely would have recorded it somehow. Having since tried to check iPlayer and YouTube to find that particular episode I'm finding it to be an uphill struggle – if you also recall this programme please do get in touch in the comments section below or email me via jane@janeslondon.com 

Fingers crossed that there's something good down there simply covered in dust waiting for a savvy and historically-minded entrepreneur to bring it back to its opulent heyday.

Back to the exterior – the metalwork is marvellous and very much of its time. I particularly like the lanterns, the swags, the intertwined flipped Ls on the panels, the cheeky cherubs and the lions used as a rebus for Lyons. Also, the truncation 'Restaunt' which could be interpreted as an invitation to relax and be rude – something Oscar Wilde used to be well known for at The Café Royal!

Also along this section is Pasha's barbershop (the exterior with its hanging sign to the right of the Drapers' doorway can be seen in one of the first pics above). This tiny shop retains some original fittings including the overhead mirrors in the entranceway:


I'll leave it there. I was going to include the some of the other buildings along this street at the eastern end, but I now realise I need to do additional research(!), so I'll save them for another day

12 October 2024

The Piccadilly Hotel (today The Dilly) and Cordings – a glitch in the timeline?

I popped into The Dilly to see if there was anything left of what was, over 100 years ago, often described as one of the most impressive hotels in the world. I was on the hunt for any of its original 1908 construction or the 1920s revamp when it became one of London's best Jazz Age venues. Suffice to say, I couldn't find much from either period, but I did uncover an enigma whereby the dates for certain things simply don't make sense. 

This huge central London hotel fills the space bordered by between Piccadilly, Air Street and Regent Street. Its exterior is today slathered in scaffolding. However, many information boards hint at the building's history and the kind of modern facilities that are available inside. 

I wandered into the bland foyer which still retains the three lovely ceiling lights, to my mind at odds with the modern PVC panels and printed info for facilities available on other floors:

The room at the far left of the reception area is today Madhu's of Mayfair, offering Indian cuisine, set within ornately sumptuous surroundings that was originally The Grill Room: 


Note the image bottom right above which is from one of the panels on the exterior of the building. The second photo within that shows a second room with lovely ceiling lights, which I also did not see on this occasion. I'll need to go back again. 
Back in the reception area, there was an unmanned temporary counter advertising 'Downstairs at the Dilly'. I'd also noticed a sign outside depicting an 'exclusive' dance studio, by which I am assuming that it's only residents or members who can use this facility.  

Convinced that one of these spaces would have been the hall used for parties in the 1920s when the Bright Young Things dressed up in tailed suits and beaded dresses and danced the Charleston into the early hours, I headed down the stairs to investigate further but I ended up in a small basement lobby leading to a gym. Hmm. I'll have to check out some floor plans and go back for another try. I'm now recalling that there's an elaborately columned swimming pool down there somewhere too. So I headed to the upper floors via the lovely staircase which, I assume, dates from 1908 when the hotel first opened. Marble, metal and wood in elegant harmony, albeit badly married with some nasty modern carpet. 


On one of the landings there is an old London map etched into metal and lit so strongly that it's hard to see in person, let along photograph it. I've done my best here in an effort to show how bizarre it is that the designers of today's hotel have installed a map that shows this area before the hotel existed yet there is no annotation or explanation on or near it to explain to the uninitiated what they are looking at!

It's actually a very fascinating map and one I am not sure I have seen before. Note Regent Circus for Piccadilly Circus. Judging by the things depicted within it, I'm guessing it's 1870s. 

I took a snap of the layout of one of the floor plans and continued up the stairs to The Terrace, passing through an area festooned with horrid fake plastic flowers (but you can't have a plastic straw with your cocktail, go figure) and a screen advertising the facilities available at the hotel. This includes a bizarre image of a 'bride and groom' entering the ground floor lobby. This repeats along the exterior of the building and I have often shown this image to friends to point at the strange camel toe effect at the front of her dress at thigh level – ugh!  Has the marketing department at The Dilly not heard of photo editing software?! And whilst I'm in picky mode – that TV screen isn't level. 

But the terrace area itself is actually a lovely space with, considering its locality, reasonably priced fare (ooh, careful Jane!). It sits behind the columns that run along along the main facade. Back in the 'Art Deco' era this terrace included an outdoor circular bathing pool, approx 4metres diameter, just like like one of the large collapsible ones you can buy today. I know this because I have photo somewhere of some young women in bathing suits here – when I locate that image it I will add it to this post.

And so to the enigma. It's about the timeline of this building which, doesn't seem to make sense.

Richard Norman Shaw's elegant Palladian/Baroque designs for this hotel are said to have started in 1905/6 with the 300-bedroom building opening in 1908 offering a wide range of additional facilities that included the aforementioned Grill Room, three basement floors for hospitality and entertainment, and four Masonic lodges(!). An illustration of the building is included within the info panels on the outside of The Dilly and within the in-house promotion. 


It comes from an advertisement in the New York Herald dated 1911, three years after the hotel had opened. But look again at that illustration and note that it is a drawing, not a photograph, and the hotel covers the whole block including the corner space, complete with a flag on it. Air Street is shown to be as big and fancy as the Piccadilly side, which is not so, not actually possible. 

I suggest that the hotel never covered this corner section at all because by 1903 that bit was already occupied by Cordings. Indeed, a lovely ribbon-effect 1903 building date stamp can be seen on the first floor above the entrance to Denman House at No.20 Piccadilly. The date is hard to see in my pics here, but trust me it's there:


This leads me to believe that designs for the hotel were started at least six years before it opened and this American newspaper (and possibly others too) simply used a preliminary illustration, no other visual image being available to them at that time. It's hard to believe that nobody took at actual photo, especially as this was such prestigious building. 

UPDATE: This press ad (c1909) backs up my theory as it shows the corner part of this block cropped out of both of the street views:

The Dilly's own history page doesn't offer much more than I have already written above. This piece by Historic Hotels is more comprehensive and includes some excellent images.

To find out more about RE Jones who owned the hotel from 1921, join me for my Southwark Ghostsigns guided walk, often available here.