Delightful street art by Max Jaz Art in Holloway Road

Next time you are shopping in Holloway, look out for a series of hand-painted artworks between Boots and Lidl.

I think I first spotted them in mid-2024, yet whenever I point them out to Holloway locals, whether friends, other shoppers or people at the bus stop, it is rare that they have ever noticed them before.

I love the double trompe-l'oeil of the corner window with a view beyond. A lot of time and effort has gone into this. They are little works of art containing, I think, hidden messages or stories. 

I wonder if the figure with a light in their hand is supposed to be anyone in particular:

Bizarrely, the chevron tape seems to enhance this artwork. Max Jaz is clearly a cat lover as a feline friend is shown on almost every panel. 

The panel closest to Lidl shows two people sitting at a table. It's the only piece that is signed, on the blue jumper, on the trainers and as a squared-up underneath:

If you look closely, you can see it's romantic – there are flowers on the table and fireworks in the sky. The blond moustachioed male on the left is secreting a ring underneath the table, probably about to propose marriage to the redhead in yellow. One of these people is surely the artist.

I can't quite deduce the name on her necklace though – something like Smartina – my photo here is a bit blurred – whoops! I think we can deduce that the couple shown embracing in the first pair of pics (with a cat at their feet and an angel playing a guitar above their heads) are the same two people. 

The style is ver much like murals I have seen. Which makes me wonder, at what size does a painting on a wall become a mural? Or does a mural have to tell a story or multiple stories? 

Any further info about the artist and the stories behind these works is most welcome. 

Updates to previous posts – loss and regeneration

I have this morning added some updates to these old posts – click the links above the pics to read the articles and see the pics at larger size:

Scratched graffiti outside the Humanist Chapel in Rugby Street 

New life for Michli's old grocery store

Loss of another ghostsign in Holloway Road

Woodblock paving in Pentonville Road

A scratched doorway in Rugby Street

Have you ever noticed that the brickwork either side of the entrance to 20 Rugby Street, WC1N 3QZ* is slathered in gouges and grooves at approx elbow height?

I have often wondered who did this and why, especially as there aren't any initials. It occurred to me that this is similar to school walls where kids don't want to actually be identified for the damage caused.

As you can see, No.20 is a small red brick building and appears to be an infill/addition to No.18, backing on to the rear of 54 Lamb's Conduit Street. The aerial satellite view shows that the door leads to a large space at the rear that wraps around No.18.

When this building was constructed its address would have been 19 Chapel Street (there were lots of Chapel Streets and Church Streets in London, something I will address in my next post). Most of the properties along this street were residential with only three listed in the business directory, one of which was this building, shown in the late Victorian era as The Church of Humanity. Founded in Bloomsbury in the 1850s it was the first proper home for the London Positivist Society and included a library and a school (aha!) so, I think my hunch about schoolchildren making these marks is probably on the money.

Those pesky kids! The Church of Humanity closed in 1932.

Update March 2026: sorting through a bulging folder of photos files last week, I found these pics that show the interior of the Humanist chapel. But I cannot find any reference of where I sourced them from. they look to be snaps from a book. I will credit them as and when I have more info.

If intriguing graffiti is your thing, then you'll also like these marks off Horse Guards' Parade.

*How come so many postcodes have Qs and/or Zs in them?

Graffiti at Horseguards Parade building

Horseguards Parade ground links Whitehall to St James's Park. I love marching across the open space  listening to the scrunch scrunch scrunch of the gravel beneath my feet. Approaching from Whitehall, two of the King's Life Guards sit mounted on horseback either side of the gate, usually surrounded by tourists taking photos. An information panel behind them gives a bit of background:

But there's so much more to see here than good looking young soldiers and beautiful beasts – continue into the passageway and look up to see a parish boundary marker painted on the stone ceiling:

This delineation marker at the junction of St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Margaret's, Westminster, is rarely noticed by the thousands of tourists, and indeed Londoners, who daily walk through here. But there's something else to check out next time you are using this cut through – scratched into the stone walls here there are marks said to be made by the guards, possibly as they wait to move forward to the parade ground:

There are full names, initials and dates of varying sizes and quality. The middle right pic above shows a couple of dates; 1886 and 1924. Bottom left shows P.C. Burt, R.H.C. (Royal Household Cavalry).

Some areas are slathered in multi-layered scratchings and others are very well incised, such as the marks left by Parking and Paynter:

High up at the top of one of the arches on the right-hand side (as you enter from Whitehall) there is a name that looks like W. A. Burrows, beautifully executed in italic script (pics 2, 3 and 4 below): 

I'm wondering if he had to stand on his horse to achieve that mark. Also, how long did it take to create? Another question is, what implements did they use to make the marks? Hand held tools look to have been the favourite in the most part and some marks have been infilled with a black substance which I'm guessing is boot polish. 

Some marks at lower level are dotty, messier and less distinct. I think these might have been made by the guards bashing their boots/spurs into the walls. A good example is shown below, left:

As I stared at the walls, trying to decipher names and dates, it occurred to me that many of the marks might actually be quite recent and not created by the guards at all. Almost as that thought popped into my head, two eastern European fellas walked in from the parade side and made a bee-line for the dotty heart containing the letters W.A.P. over W.L. (below left above T.S.). One fella pointed it out to the other in a sort of 'see, look there!' fashion, and the second fella seemed to say 'oh yeah' and then they walked off at speed back the way they came. Perhaps he knows who made that mark and what it means, or he could have done it himself. It looks to me to be created by a metal punch of some kind. 

Also within that same top left pic: J.H.Q. is followed by 1925-26, although I am befuddled by TSCATS. In the other pics, Andrew O'Connor and A. Richardson haven't dated their work but there appears to be a hint of '54 under Kennedy's weak scratchings, and I think 1.31 after PL/LW in the last pic could be January 1931.

Do go and look for yourself. I wonder which of these marks is the oldest and the the newest.

The pillars of NYT

The building that is home to the National Youth Theatre, 443-5 Holloway Rd, N7, was originally built as Holloway Hall in 1865 and used for meetings, events and shows including, in 1873, 'Aborigine travelling minstrels' and a baby elephant (not on stage at the same time!)
NYT have plans in place to make some clever architectural changes to the building and I recently went inside during one of their open evenings to see how the spaces will be revamped.
The large area at the rear of the ground floor, which 150 years ago was the  auditorium, is today used to create stage sets and I noticed that many of the columns within are 'decorated' with interesting paint patterns and graffiti.

I understand that these columns will be removed one renovations are complete to create an open, even more useable, unimpeded space.
Keep your eye on local press for updates about NYT's improvements.

Update on the old Whittington Park mural

A couple of years ago I took my friend Jen, to Whittington Park to show her an old mural that had become obscured by plants. Read about that here.

This was all we could discern in July 2015

Well, twixt Christmas and New Year's Day I went to check on it again. As you'd expect, the spray can graffiti-ers have been busy. I couldn't make out the images above but I found some others.

Lucky Kelsey!

Two schoolchildren with backpacks and a figure [possibly] climbing over a wall

Toffee tin lid

Whittington Park, just south of Upper Holloway Station, is named after Richard/Dick of the turnaround-Lord-Mayor story. Jen's an expert on Dick Whittington and leads a fascinating guided tour about the great man within the City of London. I gave her this old toffee tin a few years back as a present and she uses it as a prop on the walk. Check here for updates or contact her for more details.
See also Dick Whittington's Cat – a previous blog post

Cally Festival – Sunday 18th June

A section of Caledonian Road will be closed to traffic this Sunday for the yearly street festival which takes place between noon and 6pm.
It's basically a vibrant community-led street party – there will be all sorts of stalls lining the road plus live music, arts projects, dancing and creative workshops.
Find me at my stall selling my cards and prints of photos I have taken in the area including some new ones.

A selection of new cards (prints to order)

  

Swain's Lane, Highgate West Hill, development of site

I have for many years been keeping my eye on the old garages at the corner of Swain's Lane on Highgate West Hill. It always pleased me that this sinuous low-rise 1930s building was still intact especially in the light of all the high rise apartments and modern shopping centres going up all around us.

The garages in 2008 – one expects a Bugatti to appear any minute

In August 2014 the plans for redevelopment of this site were published and businesses within the parade moved out. One lovely cafe, Forks & Corks moved to Archway but has had to close for a while during building works.
But nothing seems to have happened since then. It all looks a bit sad.
On a sunny day last month I took a few snaps for an update:

A hand car wash company was still trading at the rear of the garages. As the plans for redevelopment show, these garages will soon be converted into shops and cafes.

On the curved corner end a lovely old sign for an Ekcovision TV shop has been revealed

The Swain's Lane side of the terrace is all boarded up. I am not sure about the relevance of Liz Taylor's decorating skills; it looks like she is advertising Wall's ice cream.

Jane's Advent Calendar – 14th December

Cement impression graffiti. Not sure is this is Eden's age or the year 2014.
More of these here.

Brentford canal

An interesting guided walk following on from my visit to Boston Manor House, starting near the GlaxoSmithKline building and ending in Brentford town centre.

I have never walked around that area before and was impressed how lovely it is. Apart from the flyover and the bloody planes on the Heathrow flightpath.
More about the Brentford area of The Grand Union Canal here.

Whittington Park's hidden mural

Whittington Park near Upper Holloway Station is just a short walk from my house. I often go there to sit, meet friends, relax, attend events or just people-watch.
I met a friend for some tea and cake at the park's cafe recently and then showed her the little wooded area that abuts the back wall of Yerbury Primary School. Walking through there in the past I had half-noticed that there was paint on the walls but hadn't ever taken a closer look. Jen always has a camera hanging round her neck and so we investigated further.

The first two rows show the mural.
The images in the bottom row show the construction of some hideous container-style apartments being built along the Wedmore Street side of the park, some lovely meadow flowers and thistles, and a tree with a face.

On closer inspection we found, hidden behind the climbing plants and graffiti, an old well-painted mural depicting people partaking in different kinds of sport. The only ones we could identify easily were table tennis and football. A woman in a striped dress and hat may have been intended as a spectator or just a park-goer.
I have no idea how when this mural was painted but suspect it's at least 20 years old judging by the Gary Lineker style shorts on the footballers.
Any info welcomed.

Clean up of Hanley Road HOVIS ghostsign

Another ghost sign demise.

An old faded hand-painted HOVIS advertisement sits above The Old Dairy public house at the end of Hanley Road in Stroud Green.

June 2008, December 2014 and June 2015

The picture on the left shows that there had been two versions of this sign painted one over the other; note how some words and phrases look to be repeated. However, this is just a fading over time such that the older sign starts to visibly seep through the newer one.
The decipherable elements were:
    J T TURNER
    BAKER & CONFECTIONER
    SHOPS & SCHOOLS SUPPLIED
    HOVIS
    BREAD
     (overprinted with)
    SUPPLIED TO HM THE KING

At the end of last year I noticed with sadness that some idiots had graffitied a wobbly indecipherable tag (defily?) over the bottom half. On closer inspection I realised that the sign had for some unknown reason been previously scrubbed clean. 

Well, here is an update: it's now free of graffiti but has been scrubbed even cleaner to remove the spray paint and, as you can see, we have now lost the word HOVIS altogether and the bottom section is a pale greeny-grey splurgy mess.

The brand name HOVIS came from the winning entry in an 1890 competion to name the then new bread. Herbert Grime won £25 by shortening the Latin "HOMINUS VIS" which means “the strength of man”.

A villa in Hawley Road – RIP

For decades I have been watching the decline of a lovely old villa in Hawley Road at the junction of Kentish Town Road, opposite Quinn's public house.

Top left in August 2008. Top right in June 2013.
The bottom two pics taken in early March this year.

As you can see, this must have once been a lovely, family home. But, having stood empty for [I'd estimate] +20 years, it has subsequently become the home of squatters, sniffers and taggers. Nothing wrong with squatting, mind; why should buildings stand unoccupied when so many people have nowhere to live?!

In early March when I took these pics, because I'd noticed that all the villas along that stretch of road were surrounded by hoardings, probably awaiting demolition. 

Quinn's pub top left with some clever street art on the side. Top middle and right are the villas next to the one above. The pics in the second row are in the stretch from the railway bridge to the Hawley Arms, and judging from the hardings and wire mesh panels, I guess by the time of writing this they have all succumbed to the wrecking ball, even the relatively new building in the pic bottom right. 

I found some pics and more info here.
An article in The Kentish Towner shows the £35million redevelopment scheme and mentions that only 95 signatures were collected for a petition to save the villas from demolition. Sad.

Trinity Buoy Wharf and East India Dock

A few weeks ago I finally found time to visit this once thriving area of London docklands.

We met at East India station and walked down the meridian line to the Thames and along the river's edge to East India Dock. Malcolm's hat was a bit big for him. It was the day of the Tall Ships and the cormorants had also come out to watch them.
The old dock basin looked sad and lonely, like a desolate wasteland with stinky stagnant water. Orchard Place, the road to leading to Trinity Buoy Wharf, is littered with street art including a taxi with a tree 'growing' out of it and a wall made of colourful cable ties. The northern section of Orchard Place which forms a kind of island surrounded by the loop of Bow Creek, was once a district inhabited by people who worked in the area and had barely ventured further than two miles from their homes. The site is now being developed. Images on the hoardings show yet another conglomeration of high rise glass and pre-formed plastic.
But forward into Trinity Buoy Wharf itself...

It's a steam punk's dream environment with art and history and containers as homes thrown into the mix. Read more here on Trinity Buoy Wharf's website.

Also see this wonderful episode of The Lost Valley of London here:

Leake Street graffiti – art or a smelly mess?

This is the last of three posts about Lower Marsh.

It must be that if you have a can of aerosol paint in your hand you will be compelled to just spray whatever is to hand.
I say this because the pedestrian access that leads from Lower Marsh end of Leake Street into the tunnel section itself is covered completely with what looks to me like a complete random mess. I could understand if people were testing out new skills, but this just looks like some kind of free-for-all; the proverbial 'explosion in a paint factory'.
Leake Street is a dedicated space for graffiti and street art and there doesn't appear to be an inch of bare brick visible any more – even the railings and crash barriers have been 'decorated'. And, as I have reported here before, the old market barrows in Lower Marsh have been tagged too even though they are not part of Leake Street's walls or fixed furniture (grr!).

I peered down from ground level above the pedestrian tunnel and saw a group of people spraying a wall in the Station Approach section. The smell of the propellent wafting up to me made me want gag – how do people actually walk through the tunnel?!
As per Parkland Walk, the quality of the work, to my eye (and nose), isn't up to much.
Street art? Really?

Old market barrows at Lower Marsh

This is the continuation of a post I wrote earlier this month about the changes to Lower Marsh, a market street situated just behind Waterloo Station.

I found a few of the old wooden market barrows near the pedestrian access to Leake Street. These once-loved and carefully maintained mobile market stalls are now sitting in amongst a lot of rubbish and hence have attracted the graffiti taggers.
On closer inspection I noticed the original barrow owners' names and addresses or market locations carved into the wooden frames. And somewhere on every one: 'On Hire'.

I am still trying to fully decipher some the names because the hand-carved scripts are hard to read – note the non-joined areas within the m and h of 'Lambeth'.
Of the road names, Fitzalan Street (shown bottom right) is just a short walk away from Lower Marsh, ditto Lambeth Walk which was also a bustling market street decades ago but today shows no real signs of life today. But, so far, I cannot find out anything about Topaz Street, shown second on the bottom row. Holland St, top right, is a bit further away in Southwark at Bankside.
The owners' names are even harder to decipher; possibly 'A Heehn' (second, top), A H Pelin (top right), M J Tala... (middle right). Any ideas?
And how old are these barrows? When do they date back to? If they aren't going to be used any more what's going to happen to them?

Parkland Walk graffiti

Continuing on from my post the other week, this one is not about nature so much as the colourful graffiti, mainly to be found in the stretch between Crouch Hill and Crouch End Hill.
For many years now kids who practiced their skateboarding skills on the half pipe at the adventure playground (now removed) would also practice their graffiti skills on the arches under the road and along the sides of the old railway tracks.
As I walked along I stopped here and there and took a few snaps of the patchwork of graffiti styles crashing into each other. The mix of nature and paint actually works quite well, especially contrasted by the vibrant grassy greens and the dark arches.

As I approached Crouch Hill Road Bridge I could see some hooded artists in action. I commented to them, in a jolly way, that the aerosol smell was quite heady. They half looked at me but ignored me. These men, for they were over 30, not kids, obviously didn't like me invading their play space.
I walked on and overheard them bitching about me and my type (something like): "who do these people think they are?", "how would they like to be photographed when they are working", "it's theft man".
I stood staring at them about 15 metres away hoping one of them might have the balls to come and speak to me but no.
What I would have said was, "you paint all over public property, yet, as a fellow member of the public, I can't take pictures of you doing that?"... "if you don't want people to see your work then don't do it public places at 5pm on a Sunday afternoon".
Nothing they were doing appeared to be very accomplished or new. I wanted to ask these untalented idiots "don't you have a wall on your own house you could practice on?!"
As you can see from the photos, I don't think Parkland Walk will be taking over from Shoreditch as the graffiti centre of London any time soon...

Stik in Dulwich

Four years ago I was walking along Dalston Lane and I turned to see a fresh mural depicting six white female stick figures, with one carrying a baby (see top left within the montage below.)
I took a couple of photographs. A fella standing next to me on the pavement asked me if I liked it and I said, 'yes, of course', so he told me that he was the artist and had just finished it. I think at the time I just assumed this was a commissioned piece, so I thought nothing of it and wandered off. I didn't stop to chat, and as friends will tell you, that's rather out of character for me!
Within weeks I realised that I had been in the presence of genius as I started to spot Stik's shy, lonely, furtive figures throughout north and central London, peeking out from windows, or sleeping or smoking in backstreets. People were starting to 'collect' his work on Flickr.
Stik spotting?  Spot Stik?
Some of my own collection is shown below, many of which have now been sadly overpainted, including the ladies and the bookshop. But such is the way with street art. And that's how it ought to be.
The news is that Stik has recently invaded South London and, in conjunction with last week's Dulwich Festival and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, he has created some street art based on classical paintings hanging within the gallery. His reinterpretation of Franceschini's Guardian Angel is near Push Studios in Blackwater Street, and more re-workings can be found in the surrounding streets on walls and garage doors. 
I am kicking myself for a second time... last weekend Stik led a (sold out) tour of these works but I found out about it too late. Grr!

It's back!!! Smoke – a London peculiar

A friend told me about Smoke magazine a few years back and I quickly signed up for a subscription. Full of short obscure London-inspired stories and witty observations it was perfect for bedtime reading and dull tube journeys (not bus journeys – I like to gaze out of the window, even if it's a journey I have made hundreds of times).
Issue sixteen, the last printed version plopped through my door well over a year ago containing one of my own observations, but since then, apart from Soho! the board game, we have been smokeless.
So, I am glad to report that it's back, and this time as a shiny new on-line version.
For those of you still prefer, as I do, to read from a malleable chunk of paper, back issues are still available of most editions. I recommend Issue 14 mainly because there are 3 of my photos in there plus a whole page of my coal holes like this. Even more coal holes here.
See, it's all about me really.
Enjoy...

The Valentine Moonie Wedding

Oh gawd, today is that consumer-fest that is Valentine's day.

It used to be a day for letting someone know that you fancied them. But now it's just a way for restaurants and florists to get money from couples who think it's a really romantic to give the same flowers and eat the same food as all the other bored couples in the room.

So, if you were thinking of popping out for food this evening, don't bother unless you have already booked a set meal with all the other Moonies.

Alternatively, I see one supermarket is offering a three course meal for two with wine and chocs for £15. Ooh the romance of it all.

A friend pointed out to me that this Tom Jones CD that's being flogged at the moment as a good Valentine's present has 'Delilah' and 'Green Grass of Home' on it. Go Google the lyrics.

Clockwise from top left: Belgravia, Hoxton, Saville Row, Harlesden, St Mary Le Bow, Phoenix Gardens, Holloway, The Golden Heart