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!

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.

Update: Stephen's comment below has led to more sleuthing about another restaurant that was at the end of this street. Back in the 1920s, his grandmother worked at Slaters & Bodega Ltd at No.30 as shown here (since demolished) – it was part of the RE Jones empire, a prolific company that I have mention in this piece. RE Jones's many London outlets need a specific article – I might get to that in due course...!

Sir George Peabody and Paul Julius Baron Von Reuter – marvellous memorials

I wrote recently about the shops around the exterior of the Royal Exchange and their lovely architectural details. The pedestrianised street that runs along the eastern side offers plenty more to feast your eyes on. Here you'll find gorgeous Victorian street furniture, such as bollards and benches and lamp posts that contain some of the few surviving gas-powered lanterns in the City of London* as well as some K6 phone boxes and, along the buildings on the eastern side facing the exchange building, there are some delightful metalwork panels at low level that depict four hands gripped together – I always think of The Musketeers when I see these; all for one and one for all! 

There are also some excellently-achieved sculptural works to be found here, commemorating two men who had a huge impact on The City and beyond. 

George Peabody was a much loved and well respected businessman and philanthropist. He sits comfortably in his chair staring across Threadneedle Street and, I like to think, into the middle distance, to where the first of his housing estates was constructed in Islington**. Look closely around the base of the plinth to see the names of the people who made this piece:

William Wetmore Story was an American sculptor and Ferdinand von Miller of Munich was also a sculptor in his own right but here he simply casted Story's work as it is not listed as one of his achievements here.   

At the centre of the street, there is different style of memorial created a little over 100 years later. The bust of Paul Julius Reuter has to be one of my favourites in The City due to the mass of justified letterform at lower level echoing the marks at Cornhill.  

Michael Black's informative piece was installed here in 1976. More information and other works here. 

PJBVReuter created the news agency whose Grade II HQ building designed by Lutyens, sits at 85 Fleet Street, currently adjacent to a huge hole where major redevelopment is underway. But I digress...!

*I have yet to finish my coherent history of this form of street lighting (having found that much of the info available is confusing and often contracting in 'fact') – when I finally stop adding and amending to it I will make it live so that I can directt people to it after they attend my walking tours on the subject. 

** Find out more on my 'Look At The Estate We're In' guided walking tour – see here for more