More oddities and observations near the Britsh Museum

This is the third part of my wandering up and down the streets between the BM and Bloosmsbury Way, following on from my posts about what I think could be a very old coal hole cover and the Dairy Supply Co/Pizza Express building...

Leaving Museum Street, I wandered into  Gilbert Place and looked back towards Centrepoint – a wonderful patchwork of architecture through the ages. Halfway down the street at 8, 9 and 10, the windows are protected by some chunky yet fancy metal railings – is there a proper name for these things? Sunny reflections from the windows opposite.

Similar houses with these additions can be found backing onto these properties in Little Russell Street. At the end of the street at the junction with Bury Place there is, beneath the old Borough of Holborn street sign, a faded metal one that says 'formerly' at the top, but I cannot as yet make out the bottom section. The street is listed as Gilbert Place in 1882 but was simply Gilbert Street pre that, as shown on the map Charles Booth used for his poverty maps. Hardly seems worth the effort, especially as there weren’t lots of other Gilbert Streets in London at that time. 

Almost below this street sign two colourful doorways create a nice pattern at step level and nearby, in Bury Place, Bertand Russell, that very clever man, is commemorated with a blue plaque. 

But then thud – an eyesore! I noticed some dreadful repairs in the brickwork of Museum Chambers, an 1884 residential block:

Clearly no attempt has been made to match the existing mortar and I suspect that squirty mastic has instead been applied. No no no! It's a cowboy job. 

Good job I found Present & Correct, a delightful stationery shop across the road – wow, it's heaven in there. When I was a child, Rymans was my favourite shop – all those pens and erasers and bulldog clips and note pads and and and... I'd love to be able to time travel to a well-stocked Victorian stationery shop. 

Then to the London Review bookshop and through Pied Bull Yard, exiting into Bloomsbury Square and left into Gt Russell St, turning back into Museum Street where I wanted to take snaps of some mosaic thresholds all of which are damaged or dirty in some way even though the shops above sell food or art or other expensive goods. Eh?!

The four tiles making a dodgy diamond infill is at No.29, today a ramen restaurant. This probably covers or replaces an ED logo for Express Dairies, a company I wrote about in my last post and here. The black and white terrazzo and small mosaics were likely installed in the early 1920s, replacing an earlier floral design as seen to the right.

Back to Gt Russell Street. At the corner, at No.48, there is a large souvenir shop called Distinctive London within an impressively embellished late Georgian building that boasts the most amazing vermiculation, the burgundy paintwork in this instance highlighting its features.

The wide doorway also features two defunct doorbells, one each side, no doubt one for Visitors and one for Trade. A few doors along Jarndyce's shop shows hints of an earlier business. Beneath the thick paint a ghostsign for oriental (something) can be seen:

At street level in front of most of the buildings along Gt Russell Street there are chunky metal grilles allowing daylight into the basements below. Indeed, in most places, the below ground windows are visible but it doesn't look like any of these are inhabited, probably used for storage. It's more common to see metal grilles replaced by panels of pavement lights, such as the  ones made by Hayward Bros that allowed much more light into the basement spaces. However, in the years before these properties became shops, the grilles would have prohibited people from walking on them, therefore keeping the tourists slightly at bay. 

A couple of the grilles bear the name of the company that made them: G B Cooper, Drury Lane. Kelly's 1852 street directory shows George Binion Cooper, ironfounder, at 121 Drury Lane and the Trades section of that same year, as shown below, lists another shop in nearby Endell Street and premises in Lambeth which I suspect was the foundry as this is where many businesses of that ilk were located. He's clearly our our man, though I don't know when he started trading or when the grilles were made. 

Three decades later, Harold Cooper (probably his son) is continuing the business but has moved a few doors along to 118 Drury Lane, specifically to 3-6 Nags Head Court which backed onto the yards behind Kean Street. Both of the Drury Lane premises have since replaced by St. Clement Dane School. There were quite a few ironmongers and metal works in and around Drury Lane in the 1880s, including Hart & Son and Peard & Co both at 88-91 (4 shops wide) and Dickson at 157. These shops would have sold a variety of items, more like hardware and housewares stores, akin to the B&Qs and cheapo stores we have today, where you can buy everything from hooks and nails to curtain poles and ladders.

Back to Gt Russell Street, specifically to another souvenir shop on the BM side of the street, where two pairs of sturdy boot scrapers flank the door of No.91 but are often obscured by the merchandise. Four scrapers is a lot and this suggests the building had a lot of footfall. Above the door there is a group of busy cherubs – these probably allude to the wholesale perfumery business that was here in the name of Andrew and Francis Pears – yep, Pears' soap! 

There has also been at least one other company at this address, as is shown by hints of some removed letters on the glass. I can make out Canadian Works along the bottom edge. This is intriguing. Another work in progress.

Back into Coptic Street and left into Little Russell Street where, at No.27, there is a lovely 1879 parochial school building. 

The small plaque between the two skinny windows says, 'For the children of the schools of the united parishes of St. Giles in the Fields & St. George Bloomsbury in lieu of the original building in Museum Street'. Nice. 

Between the school building and the rear of St. George's church, I noticed a double man hole cover which got me thinking about ELO and, because it was such a gloriously sunny day, I wandered off singing Mr Blue Sky.

Could this be London's oldest coal hole cover?

Last Monday, wandering up and down the streets between The British Museum and St George's church, Bloomsbury, wandering into shops and galleries (galleries are shops too!) behaving like the rest of the tourists around me, I spotted a few oddities along the way, in the form of street furniture and details on buildings. Most of these can wait for another day but here I am going to talk about a few coal hole covers I spotted, one of which I think might be the oldest I have ever seen or, simply the most intriguing.

Turning into Museum Street from New Oxford Street there is this fairly modern building at the corner.

It looks to be 1980s/90s in style and it's strange that I had never before noticed it. This kind of thing often happens on my guided walks when I show people a huge Art Deco era building and an attendee who lives or works in the area tells me it's the first time they have seen it, often asking me how long it has been there (d'oh!). Basically, we simply walk past walls without looking up as we scurry from A to B.

Had I not been snooping around looking for a date stamp on this building (nothing found) I probably wouldn't have revisited the first of a row of coal hole cover plates which was partially hidden by racks of souvenirs (shown below right) – the left image is the a view looking back southwards to the top of the street. 

I've noticed these before but never thought to investigate them until now. There are at least five similar plates along this stretch of Museum Street bearing the name and address of Wilson & Co, 117 Charterhouse St, London, which is next door to the beautiful Doulton-tiled Fox & Anchor pub mid-way between Smithfield Market and Barbican station. 

Mr H. Wilson is listed in the 1895 directory as a pavement light manufacturer as seen in the circular glass sections within the cover plates here in Museum Street, the conical or pyramidical prisms designed to direct light into the basement space below the pavement.  

Coal hole cover plates usually indicate that the adjacent building is/was a house/residential and, stepping back for a wider view of this red brick terrace, it's clear to see that the shops we see today were not part of the original design. This terrace is called Talbot Mansions, the name indicating that it was constructed as an apartment block, therefore needing coal for residents on every level.

 

Either there were multiple entrance doors along here giving the appearance of a row of terraced houses with each door adjacent to a coal hole plate or there a couple of entrances at street level, the coal holes being accessible at various points below ground. 

Panels on the side of the building show the build date of 1890 but I cannot ascertain the relevance of the letter S. It could be the initial of the owner or the developer/builder.

Diagonally across the junction there is Ruskin House at 40-41 Museum Street, bearing an ornate hanging sign that includes the name of George Allen & Unwin, a publishing company founded in 1911.

In the googled pic above you'll notice a side doorway with an in-wall boot scraper to the right of it. To the left of that door is what I think might be a very old coal hole cover. The white snakey thing is an air-con extractor.

As you can see, it's the right size for a coal hole cover. This lidded style with a knob at the centre could possibly pre-date the smoother branded and lockable cover plates like the Wilson ones across the street. I did try to lift the lid, but it's fixed in place. The square surround is also peculiar to me as I have never before seen the like of it, and I wonder if it's the same age as the lid. It could be that the two elements are made of different quality metals. 

Another idea is that this could be an access plate for a drain we cannot see...? 

The companies listed here a in the 1880s include Edward Morrison, inspector of weights and measures, and James Brodie who was an ornamental human hair manufacturer, which I assume means he made fancy wigs, perukes and toupées.

That's as far as I've got. If you have any further info please use the comments section below or contact me via janeslondon@gmail,com

I'll be back with part three of my musings in the museum zone in a few days' time – you can expect mosaics and mastic, man holes and more metal

Express services in Coptic Street

Wandering around looking at details on buildings in the streets just south of The British Museum, I intended to share some small observations and details with you today but these I will attend to next week because, when I stopped again to admire the building that houses Pizza Express at the corner of Coptic Street and Little Russell Street, I realised that even though I have been eating in this restaurant since the early 1980s, I still had not properly looked into the history of the building.

A long carved relief around the building tells us that this was built as the Dairy Supply Company Limited. This was a company created in 1864 by George Barham (1836-1913) who had started his first dairy in his twenties at 25 Dean Street in 1858. He then had a novel idea to use the railways to bring milk from Derbyshire to London. He even designed and patented a specific milk churn for transporting these large quantities of liquid – a milk churn features on the building within a terracotta panel:

Churn is an agent noun. To churn – a verb meaning to agitate milk to make butter. By George's day people were already using the word to mean the receptacle rather than the action, specifically for containers of 10 gallons or larger. George's churns were huge things at17 gallons, that's over 70 litres.

The express trains into Euston gave the company its first name, The Express County Milk Supply Company, which was later split into two parts to become Express Dairies, for the sale of milk, and the Dairy Supply Company for the products used to transport the milk, such as the churns that were manufactured here.

This building boasts its build date of 1888* over the door at 30 Coptic Street which, at the time of construction, was Duke Street, the name was changed in 1894 because there were too many roads by that name in an ever-expanding metropolis so a name befitting manuscripts at the nearby British Museum was applied. A panel over the door that lists the directors at that time, Viscount Combermere,  JC Lawrance and George Barham (listed third?!) with RW Shackleton as secretary:

This showcase building, with all its fancy embellishments, was not George Barnum's first property here. He had first taken a shop at 28 Museum Street (at the other side of this block, backing into the same rear courtyard) quickly expanding into No.29 and, later, No.32 as well. By at least the early 1880s the Dairy Supply Co/Express Dairy Co is also at 35-37 Little Russell Street. This is still evident to the right of the green metal gates:

The premises boasts a similar frieze (probably added when the 1888 building was constructed) as well as tiles arranged in diamond patterns.

During the mid-1880s, it's reported that the Express Dairies was supplying half of London's milk so it's not surprising that within only a few years the company could further expand into the large plot at the corner. By the early 1895 the company had 24 large outlets across London – the one at Heath Street, Hampstead also still retains its lettered frieze above the Tesco store, though I am confused as to whether this also includes smaller shops that would later be blue tiled as per here.

In 1967, Pizza Express opened its second outlet here as its first proper restaurant, the first being little more than a serving hatch at 25 Wardour Street, Soho. Nancy Fouts' swirly circular logo created at that time, continues to this day. That woman was a genius, real talent. I met her once. Me me me. Lot's of Pizza Express hitory and info here c/o TimeOut    

Back to the building, despite retaining much of the dairy's tiled interior, and references to the building's original purpose, someone saw fit to chip away at the LDSCo cartouche above the door at the corner. Ah well. –

So we've travelled from Express Dairies to Pizza Express where I assume you can read a Daily Express delivered by Beans Express and pay by American Express. 

This corner building was given Grade II listed status in 1988.

Express Dairies - lots more info about this site etc here and here.  I've written about Express Dairies shops on here before and here's a link to some great archive pics of transportation and churns.

*I would say there are more buildings bearing 1888 than any other year. 

Ghost signs in Rochester Row

A friend asked me if I'd noticed a ghost sign at the western end of Rochester Row, high up on the side of Foxtons. Here are two snaps from Google's streetview: 

Hard to make t out today, so here's a pic I took of it back in November 2008 when the letters were less faded:

The sign advertises oil colours, soap warehouse, paraffin oil & lamps. The name at the top appears to begin with W, possibly followed by IN. 

Having just had a quick peek into a couple of the old directories, this appears to be a directional sign for a shop round the corner at 172 Vauxhall Bridge Road which, in the late 1890s, is shown as George Langabeer, oilman. Then, by 1910 through to at least 1915, William Price is the listed owner, also as oilman, and I think it's his painted sign that we still see today. By the 1930s the shop had been demolished and replaced by a Westminster Bank faced in Portland stone, still evident today but converted into The Jugged Hare public house.

Seeing as we are Rochester Row for this post, I might as well assess another faded sign here, one that has been scratched away but is still discernible in the right kind of light... 

A the junction of Vane Street there is a hotel (again, I'm using Google snaps because I cannot now find the pics I took earlier this year!):

At the corner there is a short of shield containing hints of letterform and, with a bit of patience, the following can be seen: Empire Hospital For Paying Patients. Ooh how jolly intriguing. 

Vane Street leads to Vincent Square. Here's the view from there clearly showing juliet balconies that would have afforded those paying patients a lovely view and lots of fresh air:

The hospital's address was 69 Vincent Square, yet today The Wellington/Rochester Hotel (eh? go Google) is given as 69 Vane Street which is also strange being as it's such a short street. Perhaps they've done that to make that side door easier to find. 

I have found some info about the hospital here showing it was a nursing home rather than a hospital. It was a place where rich WW1 officers could pay for their rehabilitation and recuperation at the rate of £10 per week which equates to about £1,000/pw today! 

The facility was short-lived and by 1919 had closed its doors to paying patients, but was soon to reopen for paying customers of a different kind. 

You want best seats we have them (sic)

I spotted a skinny shop threshold in front of 45 Aldwych;

The thin strip abuts an unbranded basement lightwell and, when this was a ticket shop, it was possibly against a step or counter that ran along the whole frontage. 

This mosaic ghostsign for Keith Prowse tickets, perfectly sited for the adjacent theatres, looks to be mid-1920s to me, although I think a bit of punctuation between 'seats' and 'we' wouldn't have gone amiss!

I had, until now, assumed that KP was a one man concern, but no – the company was founded in 1830 by two musical instrument makers, namely Mr Keith, who had also been selling tickets for events via a messenger service, and Mr Prowse, the comma between their names, as shown in this 1939 directory listing, having since disappeared (as per the mosaic!). 

The directory shows the company merely as musical instrument makers even though they had been selling tickets and publishing music for decades by this time. It's also worth noting the variety of different shops along this stretch of Aldwych at that time, including a chemist, an optician, some solicitors, a picture framer and another ticket agency. Today, the Waldorf Hotel has engulfed most of these small shops.

Back in the early1980s, Keith Prowse was London's premiere ticket agency. I often used their prominent shop at the junction of Monmouth Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, at that time opposite Grodzisnki's the baker, at the end of Neal Street. Ah happy days. There's a bakery there today but you won't be able to buy a pasty, a lardy cake or a belgian bun. When I moved to a new job near Hatton Garden, I was pleased to find another Grod's outlet on Leather Lane. 

Interesting man hole covers in Camden – numbered and wood-filled

Walking down Parker Street a few weeks ago, on my way to find The Herds* I saw three circular man hole covers at the junction with Newton Street and went to get a closer look to see if any fragments of wood were in them. Nope. But, unusually, they all have their identification codes still visible.

More recently, whilst leading my Art Deco Camden walking tour last Saturday, I glanced down at the tarmac in Greenland Street, just before its junction with Camden High Street, and noticed a square cover plate containing remnants of wood block road surface, set within the parking bay. I returned after the walk to take some photos: 

I'm unsure what kind of utilities were accessible beneath here but eighteen of the 25 small square sections still contain wood. Wow!  How had I missed this before? Probably because I was only looking for circular covers as per the ones in Chalk Farm Road. You'll find a list of my ever-expanding collection of woodblock sightings in the A-Z here.  

There may well be other similar grid-format examples nearby, but on Saturday it was too hot to be out in full sunshine in the middle of the day so I will have a look another day. 

Round the corner in Greenland Place there is another interesting 'ghostsign' manhole cover – Mercury Communications – remember them?!

*did you see The Herds? Wow! Images and videos can be found on my Instagram @janeslondon / @janeslondonwalks

Is this the oldest building on Oxford Street?

At the eastern end of Oxford Street, between Centrepoint and Soho Square, there remains a patchwork terrace that I'm glad to see has not succumbed to the heavy-handed rebuilding that has affected many large blocks to the east. 

At the centre of my photo above, you'll see a skinny dark building at 41 Oxford Street. Is this, I wonder, the oldest building on Oxford Street? Viewed from the top deck of a bus it's possible to get a better look of the bay windows, and the decorative panels between them.

The upper floors are currently empty, as per the buildings either side and much of old Oxford Street, which begs the question, why are the powers that be building big new shiny new things everywhere else?! But that's a subject for another day in a pub.

I have tried to find out more about the history of No.41 made all the more confusing that, until the early 1880s, this street was numbered consecutively along the North side from Tottenham Court Rd to Hyde Park and then back along the South side ending at No.440. Luckily, the 1882 directory makes clear the changing numbers and we see that the property in question used to be No.421 which, in 1882, was listed as George Lloyd's coffee house. Delving a few decades further back to 1841, the occupant was Manuel Ferran, wine merchant.

A couple of years before earlier, John Tallis was busy creating illustrative streetscapes of London, and his depiction of No.421 shows a different building altogether:

Tallis, London Street Views, 1838-40, Peter Jackson, London Topographical Society, first published 1969

I'm guessing that the Georgian properties were replaced during Oxford Street's metamorphosis into a fancy shopping high street and the building we see today is c1860 or thereabouts. What do you think? 

I also notice within the Tallis illustration that No.421 is annotated as Brooks & Son, wholesale stationers, and I am now wondering if this has any connection to Vincent Brooks's lithographic printing company that would later amalgamate with Day & Sons, a mega-company that I talk about on my Covent Garden Ghostsigns guided walk... give me a minute... yep... here was John Brooks, the radical printer, the son being Vincent.

I love it when things cross-reference like that. 

If the Search facility is not visible at top right...

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Sticking my oar in

Here's another one that's been a long time festering in my inbox...

At 65 Gresham Street, on the corner of Aldermanbury, there is an office building with blue juliet balconies running around the first level. 

But, look closely to see that they resemble oars/paddles.

I've often wondered if these are a reference to one of the many livery companies in the area, specifically a company that uses boats, the prime candidate being the Company of Watermen and Lightermen. Perhaps these paddles could be a visual clue to property ownership, as per the Mercers' Maiden motifs...?

Having just looked into this today, I discover that 65 Gresham Street, a building constructed in 2000 for Legal & General that replaced Barrington House, is currently empty and plans are underway to refit the building, keeping most of the the exterior – read more here – yet the illustration within that link does not appear to show these intriguing bits of metal.

There is no mention in that link about the freeholder of the land on which it sits which still could be something to do with water. Any ideas? 

Do go and see them soon because they clearly aren't going to be in place much longer. They may well be scrapped or sold as architectural salvage. 

If you are associated with a rowing club or similar, these might be a worthy addition to your boathouse.

A house in Tudor Street, a ghostsign in Primrose Hill and a bit of Fleet Street history

This is about  a ghostsign that I have been trying to pin down for years, yet every time I end up going round in circles and I get nowhere, so I am posting it all here in the hope someone else can fill in the blanks.

24 Tudor Street, at the junction of Whitefriars Street, EC4, is a late Georgian 5-bay house, surely one of the oldest buildings in the vicinity (excluding Temple). It has, for over 140 years, been split into three businesses at street level, a barber, a store and a cafe, with, offices/residential above (tbc).

Google's aerial view shows how the old house backs onto a narrow street called Primrose Hill* no doubt named after flowers that once grew in its garden:

On the back of the house, high up on the right as you enter Primrose Hill from Whitefriars Street, there is a faded hand-painted advertisement for a company whose name appears to end in WERS. 

The major company adjacent to this sign from the 1890s was RT Tanner & Co, paper merchants, with large premises at 39-40 Hutton Street and 40-42 Salisbury Court. But the letters WERS do do tally with that company or any other businesses here for that matter. I'm wondering if it's a 1920's sign for a short-lived company as I have no immediate access to records for that period. 

The modern red bricks is Hutton Street (the rear of 22 Tudor Street) and the magnificent 1920's building is Northcliffe House built as the Daily Mail's HQ – surely a better example of this style of architecture than the M&S store that everyone's been banging on about (!).

Aware that a sign on a wall does not necessarily signify that the ad is for something within that actual building, I also searched in vain for possible candidates in adjacent Salisbury Court, an area layered in history but currently undergoing a large rebuilding project. Nothing.

Ah well, I will try again another day – do let me know if you have any ideas. 

I'd also like to find out the original owner of the house at 24 Tudor Street. The 1841 directory there are only two businesses listed in Tudor Street – William Farmer at No.2, a merchant (dealing in what?) and George Crouch, a bookseller and printer at No.5. However, the entry for Whitefriars, is more illuminating and suggests to me that the house might have been connected to one of the companies trading out of either of the two wharfs which would have been directly between the house and the river. 

I will update this info when I find out more.

Before returning to Whitefriars Street I walked through to Dorset Rise to marvel at the 1980's Neo Deco/Modernist Revival of the Travelodge – these days I am really heartened when I see this style whereas decades ago I would have derided it. This is the same reaction that what we call Art Deco would have garnered in its day, creating the Shards and Cheesegraters of their time.

Back to Whitefriars Street. As I crossed into Ashentree Court, I noticed a bespoke low relief in the pavement and an information panel in the window at the rear of Northcliffe House's most recent extension

This is the first of many panels telling the story of the building as well as technological and engineering processes behind the printing machinery housed here. It's hard to imagine today that this area was once a thriving, noisy environment, especially at night. All gone by 2000 by which time the newspapers had moved to Kensington and Canary Wharf. 

Here are some of the panels. Rubbish pics, so best you go and read them yourself next time you are walking through.

Ashentree Court merges into Magpie Alley where there's lots more info about Fleet Street imprinted onto the white-tiled walls – I spot something interesting every time. 

Exit onto Bouverie Street and turn left up towards Fleet Street, passing the Salisbury Court construction and 2021's large bizarre painted sundial where three panels tell more info about the heritage of Fleet Street and not just the newspapers.

View from the Fleet Street end of Bouverie Street looking down towards the Thames

That'll do!

*Confusing street names – the better-known Primrose Hill can be found just north of Regents Park. There's also another Hampton Court at the northern end end of Upper Street, Whetstone Park in Holborn and Cyprus is near London Airport.