A very unusual gate post in Notting Hill and other lovely things in Holland Park Avenue

At the southern end of Clarendon Road, a few minutes' walk from Holland Park station, I happened upon a strange gate post outside number 31. 

The two pics above are screengrabs from Google's streeview facility – I forgot to take any wider shots at the time because I happened to get chatting to a man who was parking outside the property and I felt the need to explain to him why I was so interested in his neighbour's fancy gatepost. As you can see, it is unlike the two rendered brick posts next door. I have never seen the like of it before.

I took a photo of the maker's mark at the base of the post, which also seems to indicate a swing tab cover for a keyhole, and said I'd get back to him if and when I found out more info. 

Yates, Haywood & Co., 95 Upper Thames St, London.

I wondered, being as it is openwork with fancy grilles on all four sides, if it was installed as ventilation for the coal bunker beneath the street. But, why would a coal bunker need to be ventilated?  

Perhaps one of the names mentioned here lived at this address and this was some kind of test piece...? 

This needed further investigation. 

I first looked at Grace's Guide and discovered that YH&Co [sort of] dates back to 1823 as a foundry in Rotherham. They are mostly listed as making stoves grates etc for cooking. Hmm. How bizarre. I'd expected them to be ironmongers, or similar. 

Here's an idea – perhaps this gate post acted as a flue for a stove below ground? The coal bunker might have been used as a boiler room to heat water for the whole house – could this be an early form of central heating...? 

It is odd that the company's London address doesn't get a mention in the Grace's Guide listing until the 1920s. Yet, surely, this gatepost design is late Georgian/early Victorian, as per most of the houses along this part of Clarendon Rd...?  The GG listing also includes a photo of a pair of almost identical gateposts in New South Wales, Australia(!) – if you zoom in on that pic you will see that they bear the same London address panel, but I think they are there merely decorative rather than functional. 

Let's have a look at the old Kelly's directories... The company is clearly listed in 1899: 

The main address is highlighted in pink, with other businesses in nearby streets shown in orange – Abchurch Yard and Laurence Poultney Hill are both a stone's throw from Upper Thames Street. I'm also wondering if the chimney builders in Bow were also part of the Yates family. However, I can't see any similar businesses purely in the name of Haywood. 

Going further back, this is 1882:

In that same year, 1882, we find members of the Yates family at very nice addresses – John Yates at 37 Eardley Crescent, Earls Court (now a hotel) and Charles Francis Yates at 9 Provost St, Chalk Farm (a delightful street of paired Georgian cottages).

But, here is the gold dust – George Harris Haywood at 8 Clarendon Road:

Whoo hoo! This would have been the address of the house in question before the street was renumbered – today's No.15 would have been No.1 making the house with the fancy gate post the eighth house in the street (the slightly houses adjacent to/south of No.1 are set back from the terrace and would have had a different name). 

This, in my mind, corroborates my idea that the gate post is part of a heating innovation installed at George's family home that perhaps was never rolled out for a wider market. 

As to when the gatepost was installed, Kelly's 1952 London directory lists George Haywood (senior) at the Effingham Works (I don't have immediate access to the private addresses for that year) and I am not sure if any of the Yates addresses shown below, specifically George senior in Earls Court and Charles at Argyle St, Kings Cross, are linked to the company. 

Having checked all these residential addresses via streetview (and the others mentioned previously) I cannot see any other similar gateposts so, for the time being, this is where my sleuthing ends. Any further info is most welcome. 

UPDATE: I've since chanced upon more of the same design just short walk away, all along a west-facing terrace in Westbourne Grove between Elgin Crescent and Blenheim Crescent:

Returning to Clarendon Road, the houses that once formed numbers 1-3 have very wide steps (probably to allow for hooped skirts) which are flanked by wonderfully undulating metalwork and pairs of boot scrapers.

I continued my walk southwards towards Holland Park and stopped to take pics of this old shop sign, the history of which I will look into another day:

Then to the junction with Holland Park Avenue, where I admired the exterior of The Castle pub and searched in vain for a Doulton maker's mark.

On the side of the pub there is a remnant of a poster that itself looks like an artwork. It reads, I think, "Come out" in reverse, as if the glue was applied for that very purpose:

I then recalled that there is a fabulous old shop interior along this stretch – Lidgate the butcher. I had never been inside before. Wow. Do check it out if you are passing, or want to purchase quality meat from a well-established butcher with kudos. As I was making my way out a voice said 'hello' – it was the man I had met earlier parking his car in Clarendon Road! 

Which is older – Lidstone or the gatepost?

Finally... the late afternoon sun softly illuminating the northern side of Holland Park Avenue that day was gorgeous. I wasn't the only one admiring and taking photos of the houses along there.

One of the houses sports a fire insurance marker in a design I can't quite make out, the camera on my old iPhone is not good enough to zoom in that far. Let me know if you can identify it as it doesn't look like any of these.

Ding Dong Doorways and Doulton – Delightful Distractions in Kensington

I went to the The Design Centre on yesterday afternoon. I like it there. But this time, my enjoyment was spoiled by screaming kids at every turn, meaning I couldn't hear myself read. Yeah yeah, I know it's school holidays, but some parents were allowing their sprogs to charge about the place like it was a playground, treating the exhibits as interactive toys. A small Habitat pod exhibition on the ground floor contains a bed with a duvet. I tried to read the the info board in there whilst two adults stood and waited as their charges had a pillow fight and screamed at high pitch. I fear this is what the Museum of London will become. Sorry, I mean The London Museum, henceforth to be known as 'The House of Splat'. 

I gave up and headed out into Kensington High Street and investigated the nearby charity shops* before deciding to wander the streets that form the lower part of my Agatha Christie walking tour. I made my way down to Marloes Rd, passing the revamped St Mary's Hospital site, and turned left into Lexham Gardens. At the far corner there is a passageway leading to Cornwall Gardens.

There is a tree at the centre of this path that has the most enormous leaves, bigger than your head. I can't now recall the name, and I'm pretty sure it's not an indigenous species, but the leaves look gorgeous in the Autumn when they turn marvellous shades of pink, orange and yellow. I continued into Cornwall Gardens and headed south via Grenville Place, looking left and right at the mews. 

Then across Cromwell Road and directly into Ashburn Place with The Millennium Hotel ahead on the left. As I passed the side of the wall I noticed what looks like a face in the render:

Surely this is no accident?!  I had hoped that retrospective Google Streetview of this wall might show what this was, but I can find nothing on there. Perhaps this was a bit of street art/graffiti that was swiftly overpainted by the hotel...?

I turned right into Harrington Gardens. This wasn't my intended route, but this road serves me something new every time I walk along it. I managed to keep my phone in my pocket until the end of the end of the road when I noticed that the houses along the south side seem to have all had some kind competition 'my tiled threshold is better than yours' thing. Each one spectacularly different to the next and all splendid in their own way.

Most are small tiles but one of them sports slices of grey marble.
They also boast some excellent coloured glass in the porches. 

Round the corner, the first/corner house in Collingham Gdns has a lovely symmetrical mosaic pattern.

Turning southwards, I nipped briefly into Wetherby Gdns when I spotted the ghosts of the original doorbells in a gatepost. 

Collingham Gardens becomes Bolton Gardens and here I noticed something I've not seen on houses anywhere else – there are fancy metal ventilation grilles on the ground floor adjacent to the front doors. The second pic is one of a few Thomas Crapper manhole cover plates that I spotted along the way, this one is in Cresswell Place: 

I continued my detour and took a wander around The Boltons, a sort of elliptical shaped arrangement of large houses surrounding a church and private gardens. I counted twelve large vehicles idling with chauffeurs within, and about about the same number of drivers standing or leaning by gates waiting for moneyed clients to exit these large properties. It's all very sterile. Exacerbated by these houses all being painted exactly the same shade of bright dazzling white, which, to my eye, looks completely wrong, and fake. I dread to think what the insides of these houses look like as I very much doubt any of them retain much of their original C19th features. I think I'd be gutted, just like the interiors.

I turned into Priory Walk. There are two properties along here which sport 'Ancient Lights' signs. This tells us that c1870s this area, being ripe for property development, was a cause for planning concern and we might well have had taller blocks on narrower streets. 

One sign is high up on the back of 5 Harley Gdns, the other is a street level adjacent to the side entrance of 86 Drayon Gardens. (possibly the lowest sign of this type?):

Staying in Drayton Gardens there are  a couple of lovely mosaic thresholds. The one at No.90 is HUGE, flanked by beautiful fired tiles on the walls on the porch, and the other is chequered:

Enough. I was hungry. I headed back to Brompton Rd to get a bus to Sth Ken tube station but got distracted by the blue Doulton tiles on The Duke of Clarence. I should have taken a pic of the whole building because I hadn't realised until now that it has only recently been restored – see here to see how the pub used to look when it was slathered in paint. Hurrah!

The delightful Dove Mews behind the pub was yet another, albeit short detour, and then, as I waited for a bus on Old Brompton Rd, I noticed an old hand-painted street name peeping out from underneath the metal one near the corner with Creswell Gardens. It shows how it used to be called Moreton Terrace. 

What I haven't mentioned or shown here are all the lovely coal hole cover plates that I 'collected' along the way. I'll write up separately. Try not to get too excited... LOL!

*In Oxfam I had found and purchased a book about arsenic poisoning – 'The Inheritor's Powder' by Sandra Hempel.  I used to occasionally work with Sandra when I freelanced for publishing houses. I haven't seen here for +15 years and had no idea she'd written any books. I started it on the way home last night and continued it today, such that I have read the whole thing already. It's fascinating and engaging. 

On the tiles at Doulton Lambeth

Happy January everyone.

Let's start the year by looking at some gorgeous tiles.

If you walk five minutes from the south side of Lambeth Bridge and head down Black Prince Road, you will see a Victorian Gothic masterpiece coming in to view. This was once the ofiices and manufactury of Doulton, Lambeth, later to become Royal Doulton.

At the time this building was constructed, Doulton's style was earthy blues and ochres, with the emphasis on good quality workmanship. This is evidenced on the building itself which is cleverly designed to be a street-facing advertisment, showing off a cross-section of some of the syles of designs that were on offer at that time, both glazed and unglazed. Beautiful examples are arranged around the windows and doors as well as higher up the building. Sadly the letters thet spelled the comapny's name have been chipped off. I know not whay, or where they might be now. Do stop for a closer look next time you are in the area.

I have created this montage of the tiles that run underneath the street-level windows (not shown in the pics above) – they look marvellous all together – tiletastic!

I've written about Doulton's work at other locations here.

Susan Hiller at Tate Modern and Postman's Park

In a ground floor Tank gallery at Tate Modern I noticed a montage of photographed wall tiles. Recognising them I stopped to read the info board:

"... Victorian memorial plaques she came across in a London park"
Eh?
No recognition has been made as to where the original marvellous handmade tiles can actually be found.
Susan's photographs are arranged in nothing like the same configuration that they are in their actual location and the quality of the prints looks to be a bit dark and over-inked. It amused me to see that people visiting the gallery are taking photos of these photos. Go figure. 
For those of you who don't know, these Doulton tablets form part of Watts memorial within Postman's Park, a stone's throw from St Paul's.
I took some photos of them a while back when I'd gone to enjoy the peace and quiet in this lovely little garden space and have put six of them together here – does this make me an artist?

Doulton tiles and their stamps

At the north end of Black Prince Road is the old Doulton factory, covered in examples of its own creations, like a ornate street-facing brochure.
Doulton produced all kinds of fired ceramics including tiles, crockery, fireplace surrounds and chimney pots (I have an unglazed one in my garden dated xxx). They also designed and made tiles in all shapes and sizes for room interiors and entrance halls and produced the commemorative plaques in Postman's Park.
Many of London's pubs and buildings were decorated and protected mostly at street level with Doulton's distinctive tiles and many of them still remain.
Hand-firing is (and was) a time-consuming and expensive process and so these days we mass produce by machine but the end product is nowhere near as good. For example, next time you are on the Piccadilly Line compare and contrast the modern replacements, such as at Russell Square; the new ones are flat and just haven't got the depth of colour and lovely crackle glaze that the old ones had.
Doulton didn't appear to have a definitive logo stamp or company signature. As you can see from the pics below, the marks* vary a lot even within the same building. Note especially the middle row of photos which are all to be found in the portico of Lloyds, Fleet Street. I have thus far only spotted two stamps that are alike, shown bottom right, and these can be found in Covent Garden and Fulham.
Another thing to note is that even though Doulton achieved 'royal' status in 1901, none of these marks echo that fact, even though most of the tiles were affixed in decades later in the 1920s and 30s.
Still hunting for more... do let me know if you spot any.

Lambeth x2, Greenwich, Waterloo

Fleet Street,

Charterhouse, Fulham, Covent Garden 

* yes, I am well aware that two of these, top left and top right, are not actually maker's marks!