Surely and Quickly With Speed I Strike On Wings Of Fire

On a recent visit to the Grade II listed RAF Club at 128 Piccadilly I was at first intrigued by a pair of narrow vertical windows either side of the door. Here's one of them viewed from inside the reception area – it's slathered in layers of paint and, as such, no longer functional.

Viewed from the street, these little windows are very hard to notice being as they are hidden behind the  pillars that flank the late Victorian doorway. My hunch is that they were used for communication and delivery of letters etc when the heavy main door was closed and would have provided a level of security, especially at night. Any other suggestions and explanations are most welcome.

In January 1922 the building opened its doors to RAF Club members. Here's one of the elegant cartouches on the staircase:

Squadron badges are displayed within frames around the walls of the rooms and corridors. Each squadron has a different pictoral motif and motto with more than a third depicted in Latin. 

I mused what happened when a new squadron was created. A meeting would likely be arranged to decide on the company identity, so to speak. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall listening to them coming up with snappy ideas only to find that another squadron had got there first.

The tone and sentiment of these mottos varies greatly. Some are attacking, others are caring. Some squadrons sound reliable, others leave no prisoners. Many of them could be movie titles or power ballads by Celine or Whitney, or advertising slogans for household products or alcoholic beverages like vermouth. 

As regards who these mottos are aimed at, most are generic, some describe the actions of many as in we/our/us, but there are also a handful that are in the first person as in, I will do this/that.

Here's a list, in no particular order, of the some of the mottos shown in English. Please excuse a random use of initial caps instead of ALL CAPS as depicted in the frames. 

Do Right Fear Naught

I Will Defend the Right

Foremost in Attack

Strong to Serve

Danger is our Opportunity

Swift to Strike

Endurance

Surely and Quickly

Silently We Serve

Steadfast in Support

Tally Ho

With Speed I Strike

Despite The Elements

We Fight To Rebuild

Strike Hard

Never Failing

Beware Beware

We Avenge

Watching Ever Faithful

Direct To Kill

Ready To Move

Achieve Your Aim

Avenge

Strike Hard Strike Sure

Confound and Destroy

We Guide To Strike

This Arm Shall Do It

To Hold On High

Friendship

Fangs of Death

Going Down

On Wings Of Fire

We Kill By Night

Supporting Liberty and Justice

Let Us To The Battle

First From The Eyries

We Learn By Teaching

Panache and Precision

Even Better

Knowledge Sustains

Learn and Lead

Knowledge Dispels Fear

Strike Hard and Strike Fast

Ready

Anywhere Any Time 

Big, beautiful boot scrapers

I've been wandering around and properly investigating the St. James's area a lot these past few years, yet until earlier this week I hadn't noticed some superb metalwork within the entrance to 50 St. James's Street. Considering that I have quite a large photographic collection of London boot scrapers, I was confused how I'd managed to miss this enormous pair of decorated beauties either side of the door. 

A sign near the entrance says that the building is being renovated. There are remnants of scaffold pole footers and the whole thing needs a wash and brush up. The boot scrapers are sublime. I have never before seen any so opulently decorated. The lanterns at the top of the street level posts are no longer in place, hence why they are cropped out of my phots here, but their gas feeds are still evident below their three-legged struts. I had an inkling that building this would have originally been one of the area's many gentlemen's clubs as per White's, Boodle's, Brook's etc. But what was it more recently? I needed to do some delving.

Well, it turns out that for over 12 years this site has been behind scaffolding or under wraps of some kind which is evidence by looking at Google's retrospective street views. In 2012 the site shows that the building looked like the image above. 

A quick bit of googling and Wikipedia tells us that this is an 1827 Grade II listed building that was has been a gentleman's club (yes!*), a bridge club in the 1920s and then various casinos or gaming institutes. There are plans to convert the building for use as either a hotel or as residential properties. However, the written timeline in that Wiki link doesn't seem to correlate with the google streetview which clearly show that scaffolding was in place by August 2014 so I am a bit confused when the squatters were there.     

This 2012 image show the lovely gas-fired lamps beautifully silhouetted. I suspect that the lanterns were removed for safety reasons during the building works and I am hoping that, going forward, they will be reinstated, complete with the gas feed as per other lamps in this area, rather than retrofitted with LEDs.

* had I applied my brain I could have worked that this was William Crockford 's club – he was an interesting character to say the least!