Telegraph Place and Tokenhouse Yard

Hearing Telegram Sam by Marc Bolan on the radio yesterday, it reminded that I'd taken a series of photos in and around Telegraph Place almost a year ago whilst wandering in the City of London.

These narrow little streets are accessed via Moorgate as in the pics above, or via Throgmorton Street, and they are full of architectural delights:

A hydraulic power access point outside The Telegraph public house – this might have been for the beer pumps. Further along a teeny tiny access point for the sewers. I've not seen one of these anywhere else so I am keen to know the purpose of it. Perhaps it was manually released for temporary ventilation..?

The street is so named because this is where London's first telegraph office was sited on 1845when it was originally called Founders Court (hmm ponder ponder, suggest the land is owned by the Founders Livery Co). More telegraph and telegram references here. 

The barbershop at the looks good but, until a few years ago there was a marvellous multi-layered hand-painted sign on the mirror within its Whalebone Court entrance. It's such a shame that they saw fit to scrape off all those layers of history. As you can from my 2013 photo, the letterform was a delight. It advertised a few earlier companies here including a manicule pointing down to the chiropodist below. The blue script possibly says 'hairdressers' but might have been 'shirtdressers' where you could get your collars and cuffs replaced.

Near the barbershop, two groups of stepped windows above allow light onto a stairwell, and below them an alley beneath that building leads into Tokenhouse Yard:

There are a couple of elaborate doorways in this enclosed and evocative space and both are entrances to the old GII* listed 1872 bank building – some impressive lions flank the entrance to No.12 and a similar doorway at No.11 sports a couple of fearsome fellas. I've found some pics of the interior.

Tokenhouse Yard was where the exchanging of [small value] tokens took place. Read more about the history of this thoroughfare c/o IanVisits here – I love it when someone else has done all the homework!