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.

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. 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 image on the left is the a view looking back southwards to the top of the street. 

I've noticed these cover plates 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 or, possibly, the oldest one I have yet discovered. 

That white snakey thing is an air-con extractor.

As you can see, this appears to be the right size for a coal hole cover. The 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

A walk from Ealing Broadway to Acton Central

Last Tuesday I met my friend Sue for a wander in West London. We met outside Ealing Broadway station and, before we set off along the Uxbridge Rd towards central London, I wanted to show her a lovely shop I had discovered a while ago when I was out on one of my 'where does this bus go to' mystery routes. Just north of the station, facing Haven Green, passing a sign for squash courts that sits above an earlier hand-painted sign for squash courts, there is a beautiful old chemist's shop: 

36 The Broadway still bears the name of D. L. Lewis set in metal across the granite front and within a panel in the entrance way. There is also a more recent neon sign within the window.

The sinuous letterbox is also lovely, as are the flourishy figures used for the door numbers at either side of the entrance. It all screams fin-de-siecle Art Nouveau.

When I had been there last year, the shop had been closed and I could only peer in through the plate glass, but this time it was possible to go inside – and what a treat!

Much of the front part of the shop is original as regards the shelving, storage and display areas. The floor has been cleverly covered in a herringbone wood effect lino and this continues to the rear section where a faux panelled ceiling is also in place, no doubt evoking what used to be there in the 1900s. The shelves showcase many old bottles that once contained all sorts of poisons and potions no longer available to us, and I particularly like the huge blue and green droplet-shaped bottles.

We walked back past the station and found another shop of particular note – Paddy Power's betting shop at 7 The Mall is absolutely gorgeous and clearly dates from the same era as the chemist's shop:

It's sublime – the central threshold contains a terrazzo 5-pointed star motif flanked by carved and bent wood and curved glass, with a mirror'd ceiling in six sections that I have tried my best to photograph without being the star attraction myself. 

However, many of the other shops further along the terrace are empty and in a poor state of repair such as these four here and I am concerned about their future. Many of the coal hole cover plates along this stretch bear the name of White & Son of Oxford Street which dates them to the late 1880s – read more within here.

We crossed the road walked towards Ealing Common where, on the northern edge, there is a marker telling us we are 6 miles from London (Charing Cross) and 9 miles from Uxbridge.

I wrote about a similar metal mile marker here. This Ealing one dating from 1832 appears to have lost a motif in the top section.

We continued across the common, admired the handsome trees, had a half of ale in the garden of The Grange public house, investigated the exterior of the nearby church and pondered at the relevance of this gateway to Warwick Dene:

We wondered if Fraser's Patent Disinfecting Apparatus was something to do with farming and sheep dips. But I now think it's more likely linked to laundry, this being a hanging mechanism to suspend large items in a large vat underneath it. I've spent ten mins looking for decent info and I give up, though I have found this about a similar manufacturer.

The residential properties that abut the common on the south side, along and around Elm Avenue, remind me of similar estates in Gidea Park, indeed many of the street names are similar. Man hole cover plates in the roads show the name of pre-LCC 'Corporation of Ealing'.

 

At Ealing Common tube station we stopped to admire the gorgeous octagonal Art Deco interior (detail, above left) and, opposite the station, we found a green plaque for computer-whizz and poet's daughter Ada Lovelace, this being near to a house she lived in, since demolished. 

Approaching Acton Central's shopping zone Sue peeled off to catch the tube. I continued along to The Vale and then back again to see if much had changed since I last visited. The ghostsign for Dadd's boots store has gone, the space now cleverly filled in with a building of the same Victorian design. 

I then made my way to the overground line via Churchfield Road, a street that still retains hints of its middle class Victorian past including another large slab of York stone outside No 35 and the carved and gilded, yet faded, sign for C. Wright, ladies' and children's outfitter at No. 31:

Another nice day!

You might also like this piece about another ghostsign in Acton.

Broken glass and gas lamps on Horse Guards Road

I'm still writing about the zone between Horse Guards Parade*, St James's Park and The Mall, because there's so much to discover ins such a small space. Scroll down to see the previous posts. 

At the junction with The Mall there is a building known as the Admiralty Citadel. It's a bug lump covered in creeper.  At this time of year it's possible to see a panel affixed to its side telling us that it houses a dry riser inlet valve (amongst other things). 

In front of that there is a smaller building also covered in creeper looking like the big building had a baby, or a poo. Next to that, there's a tall skinny glass sculpture. This is the National Police Memorial. The water feature at the base has been removed (as per many other memorials near here) and the lights no longer illuminate it, but I actually now prefer it for its simplicity and the way that daylight seeps through and enhances its damaged and repaired corner sections, where different coloured glass has been inserted, resembling jewel-like slivers.

Nearby, within the pavement, I noticed a circular utility plate, approximately the same size as a coal hole cover plate, but bearing a design I have never seen anywhere else – three concentric rings of Jazz Age era letters that look like E D repeated.

A few metres along the path I found anther one, and then another and another, some of them almost obliterated by the road surface. I wondered what they were used for as they certainly weren't for the delivery of coal. 

I crossed over to the park side of the road and found another one very close to one of the huge gas lamps.

And then it hit me – Aha! yes! These plates must be access for either the gas feed or the electricity for the timers that power these impressive lanterns along Horse Guards Road which were installed during the rein of George V** 

The letterform on these plates is very Art Deco, a chunkier version of the 'Broadway' typeface, but what is the relevance of ED? Who was Ed?! It's more likely to signify something like Energy Department.

 

A GRV cipher on one of the lamp posts.

Any further info, please leave a comment or contact me via email: jane@janeslondon.com

*In an earlier post I wrote this as one word, horseguards, and queried whether this should have a possessive. Having just checked the a few maps, I only now discover that it's Horse Guards; two words with no indication of possession. No guards for a horse to wear. Nor does the horse do the guarding. Well, not alone, he has a guard on his back, the guard being a man, a soldier.  I'll stop now as I am confusing myself! 

**These lamps feature on my London by Gaslight guided tours which I will continue to offer into the late spring, starting at 8pm or later – let me know if you are interested.

More bits of woodblock paving – Bermondsey and Chalk Farm

Walking northward through Camden recently, as I passed the the station and crossed Inverness Street I stopped occasionally to check that these manhole covers in Chalk Farm Road are still filled with wood blocks – yep. Good. 

I went for a wander, musing that the markets here aren't markets any more, just Bansky and Winehouse opportunities surrounding some food outlets. I continued up the street then just after The Roundhouse, I found another wood-filled manhole cover within the large triangle of pavement at the corner of Regent's Park Road:

Only two segments retain wood, but that's enough for me!

A few days later I was ambling through the residential streets between Long Lane and Tabard Street in Bermondsey, SE1, and I found another man hole cover in Hankey Place, the wood almost hidden by the greenery growing within it. How lovely!

This broken line design is new to me – the lines are usually solid as per the one at Chalk Farm, above. We can assume that this was a specific feature of covers made by this particular maker, who is shown around the rim of the cover plate as: Frederick Bird & Co., engineers, ironfounders, West Drayton near London. This is a company I have seen adorning many coal hole cover plates including those made by Bartle & Co of Notting Hill Gate who implemented Bird's patented self-fastening locking system, as shown here. 

Lots more lumps of London wood blocks here.

Kensington Coal Hole Cover Plates – Farmer, Pearson, Bartle and Bird

I recently wrote about the lovely things to be found along the streets to the east of Gloucester Road and mentioned that I'd spotted quite a lot of attractive coal hole cover plates along the way. Quite a few bore the name Haywards, a company that became one of the largest suppliers of this kind of thing, others plates bore names which provoke further investigation. 

This first of these is Bartle & Co. Two examples shown here cut into into a slabs of York Stone. There are two different patents visible. 

Patent 1:  The example above left is in Cornwall Gardens. The outer ring/casing is made by Hayward Bros of Southwark and includes instructions how to install the fixture:"This ring to be fixed with Portland cement / For Haywards Patent Plate 12" – this indicates that Haywards intended that one of their own lids should be to be dropped into this space., however, with about 98% of cover plates being of the 12" variety, it's fair to say one size [almost] fits all. although whenever I have found these outer rings visible they usually bear the Haywards* name.  But the instructions are not meant to be visible – as per the instructions, the outer recessed lip should be covered by cement to hold it in place, as shown by the pic on the right; a messy example I spotted in nearby Lexham Gardens. 

Patent 2: These two covers advertise James Bartle's Western Ironworks in Notting Hill and are interesting because they also include "Bird's patent self-fastening plate" – something I have seen before but not really thought about or addressed until now. Who was Mr Bird? Perhaps he worked for the Bartle family and had another job making custard?! Having just 'wasted' 20 mins on this in a futile online searches and found nothing but observations, I am going to have to shelve this research for another day – please do let me know if you can shed any light on Mr Bird.

Another Notting Hill company also prevalent within the posh streets of South Kensington is R. H. & J. Pearson Ltd:

Pearsons also implemented circles within their anti-slip designs, varying the amount of circles from five to seven. I believe the one shown above left is the more recent of the two – it advertises the company's 'Patent Automatic Action' – a different way of saying 'self-locking' as seen on other makers' plates – after the coal was poured into the bunker below the plate was dropped back into the hole and it triggered a catch which immediately locked it, negating the need for additional human interaction below.  The pretty plate on the right sports ventilation holes allowing air to circulate within the storage space. 

More circles near Cornwall Gardens. Two very simple designs:

The self-locking plate on the left sports raised dots as additional non-slip device and appears to have travelled all the way from Stockport!  Mikey Ashworth has shared some marvellous info about John Needham & Sons here. The one on the right bears no maker's name but includes glass inserts to allow light into the bunker, as also seen here in another Bartle plate:

I like these two because it shows how one design can be adapted as solid metal or with glass inserts which, I assume, are prisms or cones that spread/reflect the light rather than just direct it straight downwards. 

Finally, these two – an almost smooth plate set within an octagon surround and a plate bearing the name of Farmer, a local comapny. 

I have only ever spotted one other housing with eight sides and it's in Marylebone, near Regents Park. Neither appear to have ever been branded with a maker's name. The Farmer Brothers plate in Drayton Gardens shown above is actually sited a stone's throw from the company's shop – and they are still trading today, but I can't seem to link to their website. I have not discovered any other Farmer Bros plates, but surely there must be, especially in this area of London, this being the local hardware store. 

I now now realise that this last pair of pics makes the one of the left look like a diddy little hexagonal plug point next to a manhole cover! All the pics here are just snaps taken on the day – I haven't shown them in proportion.  FYI, the standard size cover for a cover plate (the central removable bit) = 12"/30cm diameter and I've just recalled that one of them was [unusually] slightly larger than the standard size – I think it was probably the older Pearson one with the ventilation holes. 

There are lots more similar posts about coal holes on his site – please use the search box at top right  on the web version.

*If you are interested in finding out more about Hayward Bros, a fascinating company, why not join me for my Southwark Ghostsigns guided walk.