Another elephant spotted in Camden... and a few other beasts too!

On Friday afternoon, after spending a pleasant hour or so at The Ben Uri Gallery looking at The Anthony Rudolf Collection, specifically his relationship with the marvellously talented Paula Rego (wow!), I headed north up Abbey Road and, as I approached the road bridge over the railway adjacent to Langtry Walk, South Hampstead, I noticed there are faded murals on either side and I wondered if the walls might also be a form of advertising as per the Guinness mural just east of here in Southampton Road.

The artwork here is actually difficult to see when you are up close or walking past – probably best viewed from the top deck of a bus or, if on foot, from the middle of the road, which isn't really possible as regards the traffic, and the railings rather obscure the view from either side. 

Here is the West side as I approached:

And this is the East side as viewed from more-or-less the same spot:

The paintwork is rather splishy-sploshy and in many places very faded or obscured by graffiti and I was half way along this west side before I noticed anything discernible – a spotty yellow beast caught my eye, followed by a few bizarre 'humans' and then something that looked like a dinosaur and a date of Summer '78, indicating that it's been here 47 years! 

So out came the camera and I started taking pics along the whole wall, finding it was easier to view the illustrations on a small screen. There are no references to any alcoholic beverages, instead we have a series of loosely-painted figures and animals. I am at a loss as to whether there is a theme here and I wonder if the things depicted relate in some way to this part of Camden. 

Returning to beginning, here's the wall from the left/south end heading northwards. The first figure is a dark-skinned lady with wings in a white dress and white shoes next to a pale-skinned brunette in a pink dress who appears to be inside a room/turret. Perhaps they are characters from fairytales? I can't decide if the yellow spotty beast is a horse or a leopard. The big peach-coloured creature is either a cat or a dog wearing glasses. 

I now see that I forgot to take the pics of the section between the ladies and the spotty beast, but by zooming in on the wide shot below and looking at google streetview I can make out a figure in yellow, lots of flowers and shrubs, and a small child in blue that looks to be balancing an octopus on its head.

 

After the dog/cat, there's a pointy-eared, masked and muscly, superhero character who is waving his pointy brown hand at us. He is either wearing something striped or is a zebraman hybrid.

The fella next to the zebraman could be wearing a crown, or perhaps he's a strongman as it looks like he's holding a bar at chest height that has pendulous phallic things at each end. The last one of these three gentlemen also looks to be wearing a crown enhanced with rubies, or perhaps that's a shock of blond hair. He's very happy about his diagonally-striped jumper. 

There follows a huge bit of tagging where 'DOGGS' has covered quite a lot of the artwork (not shown here) after which the mural is signed and dated but the powers that be have seen fit to slap a Danger sign across the wording. 

I can make out D S….NTING, Summer '78 on a banner which is supported on the right side by a dark haired man in a blue stripey jumper. Next to him we have the little stick man from The Saint TV programme that starred Roger Moore the titular role (eh? why?) and then that aforementioned dinosaur which, I didn’t realise until I started pulling this together, better resembles The Gruffalo. 

But it can't be The Gruffalo because that didn’t appear in print until 1999, seventeen years after this mural was painted, so perhaps it’s supposed to be one of the monsters from Where The Wild Things Are which was published in 1963. After the horned beast there is an igloo beneath a night sky complete with crescent moon and two colourful men having a jig about near a forest of fir trees.

A tobogganist wearing a green roll-neck jumper, hat, scarf and goggles, then whizzes down the side of a snowy landscape that might be a nod to Parliament Hill Fields in the wintertime, and the whole thing ends with a mountain range which surely can't be Hampstead.

The eastern side of the road starts at the northern end with a double decker London bus. Across its advertising space it bears the the name of the people who made this mural in Summer 1973. Unfortunately this has been tagged and the original hand-painted lettering has been partially obscured making it rather hard to discern. 

I suspect it’s a local school. Two words beginning K... R...?

After the bus there is a large head and shoulders of a green-skinned man with black hair and beard. There are lots of people behind him, and similar crowds continue for half the mural because, as we see, as they have come to see a parade. 

It starts with a zebra pulling circus cage that contains a tiger. Then we see a moustachioed policeman and a fella that resembles either Elvis or The Fonz. Then a man running followed by a man wearing a red coat and striped trousers who, on close inspection, is playing a trumpet. Aha, the band has arrived!

Then more members of the brass band – two trumpeters and a man playing the symbols – who are wearing a slightly different uniform. 

And here comes the elephant with another ill-positioned warning sign has been slapped over its eye and ear.

A tall tree or post begins a new section with a large area of black paint behind what I think is a either sea lion (part of the circus) or a short-legged grey dog within a bucolic scene which includes a colourful butterfly, a fox, and a small animal or bird hiding in a hollow in a tree. 

A wooden fence around a lake (not shown here) could be one of the ponds on Hampstead Heath. 

This is followed by some kind of strange tall striped thing. At first I wondered if this depicted a firework display and/or a bonfire referencing local events but, having again looked at the google streetview, I now believe it's a Punch and Judy tent. This wall ends with a raven haired lady in a red coat carrying a large yellow sack decorated with blue spots.  

Intriguing eh? If this is 47 years old, then there must surely be come ex-Camden schoolkids still around who remember this being installed, or even helped to paint it. Any additional info most welcome.

An Elephant with a very long trunk – Guinness advertising in Camden

Here's a thing. I was recently wandering around the Lismore Circus area prior to my Elephants Escape guided tour just looking at buildings, wandering down side streets, etc. As I headed up Southampton Road, approaching the railway line I looked across at the painted walls that surround the railways. This is from google streetview, looking north, the direction I was walking:

As I approached the bus stop on the western side I happened to noticed that the mural to my left included a Guinness bottle. Up close it was hard to make out so I stepped back to the kerb to get a wider view and saw that there was the word Guinness next to the bottle, rendered in a sort of blobby black letterform. 

And then I noticed that the letters are either birds, like an Ostrich making the 'G' pouring Guinness from a bottle into the U and the two black swans at the end depicting 'SS', or the letters created by warped pints of Guinness like the letter 'e'. 

How jolly marvellous. I followed it along and found lots more references to those classic Guinness ads of old. This has to be the best bit of Guinness advertising I have ever seen. 

The legs of a walking female wearing wedge sandals, carrying a bottle and, to her right, what I think is the base of a pint of Guinness

A sealion with four pints of Guinness in front of him, possibly on plates

I think this might be a pale pink bird, possibly a crane with a long beak and spiky head feathers 

And then, there are lots of yellow circles and a pale grey arc coming in from the right...

... which turns out to be the very long trunk of an elephant reaching past the Guinness harp motif and blowing bubbles, no doubt Guinness bubbles. Hard to get a good shot of this section being as the bus shelter is in the way.

The tusks look more like those on a woolly mammoth.

And it appears he's singing a song, as depicted by those musical notes, although they might be depicting trumpeting sounds!

The far end of the wall is rather faded. But his front legs clearly show that he is running, keen to get to that Guinness!

The strange thing is, I can't spot anything resembling a toucan which was Guinness's most commonly used bird. And, having googled and searched for images of this mural to see how it looked when it was first installed, I have found absolutely nothing at all. In fact the Google streetview from 2009, below, shows the wall has been looking the same for at least 15 years. 

I am also wondering, considering that many things depicted here seem to be decapitated, if an extension to the brick wall was in place when the mural was painted, such as a 2ft strip of wood running the full length.

It's amazing that it's still here at all, especially as the walls on the other side of the road have been overpainted a few times, as shown by the retrospective Google streetview facility which shows that the LISMORE mural was still there, albeit rather faded, until at least April 2019. 

If anyone has any information or can date this please do get in touch. Similarly, if you have any photos of this it when it was all bright and shiny, I'd love to see them – email me at janeslondon@gmail.com

An elephantine enigma – what a load of tripe

I recently asked help with any information about this little building that used to be at 18 Market Road, N7, mid-way on the north side between The White Horse (Gin Palace) and Caledonian Rd.

As you can see below, when I took a photo in 2008, it had dancing trumpeting elephants on the front. I had wondered if it had been a theatre or something similar.

My pic from June 2008

It has since been replaced – see Google Streetview 2008 and click though to see that it had been demolished by 2012. 

Kelly's 1939 directory

Joe, a friend who grew up in the area, told me he recalls it as The Electric Cinema or similar. But I can't find it mentioned in Chris Draper's Islington Cinemas and Film Studios book. 
Further sleuthing in the Kelly's street directory of 1939 (right) shows J. L. Henson, tripe dresser at this address. The company must have been here pre WWII but I can see nothing listed in 1915 and 1895.
Hmmm. Ponder, ponder.
And then recently I met Alan. He's another person who is always looking up, looking down, and questioning things.
Alan tells me that in the 1970s he worked in this building when it was Otaco Ltd. He tells me that the empty meat-related buildings in the area were taken over at that time mostly by businesses related to the motor trade. 

Photo: Alan, ex-OtacoLtd employee, 1970s

He also directed me to a pic of the building in 1962-4 that clearly shows the signage for the tripe factory: 

J. L. Henson also had premises at 97 Charterhouse Street, opposite the northeast corner of Smithfield meat market

As you can see, there were no elephants in the 1960s or 1970s.
The black and white pic is available from a few online photo libraries and In all instances it is credited to English Heritage with John Gay as 'artist'. All tag this pic as 26-40 Vale Royal, Holloway, which is just down the hill off York Way and certainly not part of Holloway! This is a great example of people just copying and pasting info without checking things. 
My 1939 directory shows that Edmund Martin Ltd*, another tripe dresser, was at 22-46 Vale Royal. but Henson did indeed have premises there but not until 1962 when they vacated the Market Road premises as shown here in a document about offensive trading. The link also indicates that Henson had an unauthorised fat melting site in Hornsey Rd near the junction of Tollington Park – that's a stone's throw from my home – ugh!
I can find no info about about Truman Steven/s as shown in this 1960s pic.

So, enough of all this tripe – back to the elephantine enigma. When did the trumpeting beasts appear?
I have a few ideas...
1. If Henson's factory was converted into a theatre/cinema, as my mate Joe recalls, then it couldn't have been until the mid-60s and only for a short while; possibly for a decade until the motor trade moved in. 
2. Or perhaps the elephants were added in the 1980s after the car companies moved away? The buildings would have again been standing derelict and could have been put to good use. Consider that there are playgrounds and sports facilities opposite = lots of children. Perhaps it was at this time that the building was used as a temporary cinema and this is when the elephants were added (children like dancing animals and the ref to a tripe factory might have been obscured to avoid offence and confusion).
3. Or (and here's my latest idea) it might have been used as a film location?

Alan tells me has some other leads to investigate and will get back to me...
Watch this space
All help welcome.

*You might recall that Edmund Martin Ltd had a shop on Lindsey Street ,facing the eastern side of Smithfield market, was demolished to make way for The Elizabeth Line. Boo hoo. Next door was a marvellous Miami-style 1930s building, also demolished, which I am going to be featuring Smithfield Art Deco walking tour, coming soon.

The Royal Menagerie animals at The Tower of London

Did you know they used to keep animals at The Tower of London?
As you queue to pay at the kiosks you will notice animal stickers on the glass.
Then as you go toward the entrance gate there are three lions made from chicken wire by Kendra Haste. There are more or her animals inside, all cleverly located.

Over the centuries, lions, an elephant, a polar bear and apes have been kept at the zoo.
An exhibition about the animals at the Royal Menagerie includes an image of Pompey the lion who looks like a pussy cat, and a clay pipe-smoking Dog-Faced Baboon.

More animals... On the lower floor of the White Tower there is a room containing cannons. In there I spotted a few crazy lions.  

Cutlers' Hall – a guided tour

Back in February I joined a group of London Historians for an illuminating and often amusing guided tour of Cutlers' Hall led by The Beadle, David Hasler (middle top). Thanks to David it was one of the most fascinating and engaging tours I have been on in quite some time.
Three of our group were chosen to wear hats and robes and be 'Master', 'Warden' and 'Clerk' for the morning. And, although this might sound like some kind of dodgy joining-in nonsense, we finished the tour acting out one of the ceremonies in the main hall.
It's worth thinking about how powerful this guild used to be – just consider all the trades which rely on blades of some kind; barbers, butchers, haberdashers, fishmongers... etc
As for all the other information I could give you, it's easier to read more about Cutlers' Hall here but I urge you to make an effort to go and visit in person. Why not join London Historians and, if you do, be sure to mention my site as reference to Mike. 

As seen in the first group of pics, the Cutlers' coat of arms features two elephants.
Elephants can be found in may places within the Cutlers' Hall; carved into wooden chair backs, as clock surrounds, ornaments, decorative motifs on the hammer beam roof and within some exquisite stained and painted glass windows. 

Some details from the stained and painted windows.
The centre image shows cutlers at work.
Note the fine work on the portraits and the amusing quotes about smoking. 

See the full list of livery companies here.