Have you ever noticed that the brickwork either side of the entrance to 20 Rugby Street, WC1N 3QZ* is slathered in gouges and grooves at approx elbow height?
I have often wondered who did this and why, especially as there aren't any initials. It occurred to me that this is similar to school walls where kids don't want to actually be identified for the damage caused.
As you can see, No.20 is a small red brick building and appears to be an infill/addition to No.18, backing on to the rear of 54 Lamb's Conduit Street. The aerial satellite view shows that the door leads to a large space at the rear that wraps around No.18.
When this building was constructed its address would have been 19 Chapel Street (there were lots of Chapel Streets and Church Streets in London, something I will address in my next post). Most of the properties along this street were residential with only three listed in the business directory, one of which was this building, shown in the late Victorian era as The Church of Humanity, founded in Bloomsbury in the 1850s as the first proper home for the London Positivist Society, it included a library and a school (aha!) so, I think my hunch about schoolchildren making these marks is probably on the money.
Those pesky kids! The Church of Humanity closed in 1932.
If intriguing graffiti is your thing, then you'll like these marks off Horseguards' Parade.
*How come so many postcodes have Qs and/or Zs in them?
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Thanks, Jane