Gray's Inn Road – strange backward-facing houses, a water trough and another laundry (with fancy tiles)

I was walking from Russell Square to Kings Cross today and, as I passed by these houses that end at Heathcote Street, I thought it was high time that I shared my idea that surely they face the wrong way. 

I mean to say, the front doors face Mecklenburgh Street, yet the walled back gardens abut Grays Inn Road here. I've only seen the like in two other London locations: off Liverpool Rd in N7 and near Kensington High Street station, but those aren't along big main roads. Explanations welcome.

On the Gray's Inn Rd side there's a nice old water trough planted with flowers. It's listed on Historic England's site but they make no mention of its inscriptions. 

The street side says 'DRINKING FOUNTAIN & WATER TROUGH' – the drinking fountain element (for humans) would have been that protrusion at end. The west-facing pavement side commemorates HTW and MWW, whoever they were back in 1885. 

The north-facing end is hard to decipher. It's degraded, and a circular stud has obliterated some of the letters – I can make out what looks like: ... RICHARD'S MA... / REGARDETH THE LIFE / ...ST HIS BEAST ...?! – see the comments section for more. 

I continued my journey northwards towards Kings Cross station and glanced across the street to check on Nos.332-336 at the corner of Britannia Street which sports the a bizarre mix of tiles which look like they belong in a 1960's kitchen, strangely affixed to a pair of buildings that are surely Victorian. Again, I thought, surely it's about time I looked into why this building sports this mad patchwork. 

As I took these snaps a man stopped to talk to me, intrigued that someone else was also interested in this façade. Jonathan told me works in the ENT Ear Institute next door and that this building was until recently part of their complex. Indeed, this is evident by the spayed out names on the door where only UCL is now visible. He said this corner site, which actually continues further along Britannia Street, through a series of later building extensions, was known to the as 'the cottage'. 

We looked at the mix of different building styles at street level. I pointed out the slabs of grey stone at low level below the large plate glass windows which include large ventilation panels. I suggested that this might have previously been a grocer shop or a butcher's. It wasn't until I was heading home on the bus that it occurred to me that it might have been a laundry.

Well, bash me over the head with a packet of Persil, it turns out this was an outlet for Western Laundries Ltd, a company I wrote about only a few days ago here (this Grays Inn location is shown the middle of the 1939 listing within that link). John Richard Western is here by 1910 and I suspect at that time the store sported the bright blue tiles we see at other locations. 

I'm guessing that these fancy repeat pattern tiles were added at a time when this branch was offering self-service coin-operated machines as well as a laundry collection service. I'd love to hear from anyone who recalls this shop when it functioned as a laundry.
As to what/who was here before the launderette, I'm thinking the pair of houses might have initially been associated with St Jude's church which was sited next door between this building and what was then called the Throat and Ear Hospital at 330-332. By 1882 the corner shop was Wellen & Co's fancy repository and in 1899 Joseph Thomas Roe is selling fruit from here.

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. 

Another tiled shop front has gone – Express Dairies, 300 Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill

There seems to be a tile removal epidemic... as if it's not bad enough painting over tiles as per here and here and here, at least the paint can one day be removed to reveal the fired ceramics beneath. 

But in many places I am seeing lovely old tiles on old butcher shops, bakeries and dairies completely removed and replaced, as here in Notting Hill where a lovely shop front for a branch of Express Dairies that used to look like this....

... now looks like this (1st August 2024):

I discovered this latest bit of blandification yesterday whilst leading my Notting Hill Ghostsigns guided walk, this shop being one of the places I talk about along the route. It has for the past year it so been standing empty, waiting for a new occupant. Its intact exterior was unusual as I have not seen the like elsewhere in London, so I was stunned to see that so much of the shop's century-old façade hade been revamped. 

I say 'revamped' because, if you look closely, you'll see that they (whoever they is/are) have removed all the original features, excluding the tiles on the wall to the right, and replaced them with modern versions of the same proportion. I cannot believe that these alterations have been achieved by anyone who lives locally or has a link to the area, especially as there are other restored shops and businesses in this are such as the green tiles at Mary’s Living and Giving and the Electric Cinema. 

The bizarre fakery installed here echoes the shape and size of the window frames and the door, and includes panels of blue tiles which I assume have been affixed directly on top of the old ones. Compare and contrast 2022 with 2024 here:

I mean, what's the point?! It's not even a decent pastiche! Perhaps this is all down to Health and Safety – I have been told in the past, when other shops of a similar style have been gutted or over-panelled, that cracked tiles are unhygienic. If so, this tells us that this will be a food outlet of some kind. But this is the exterior, not the interior.  

These next pics contrast the depth, colour and variation within the old artisan/hand-made deep blue tiles on the left, with the flat blue panels installed in 2024, right:

These pics better highlight how the shape and style of the original front door has been echoed in its modern replacement. It's a wonder that they didn't also include a little plastic 'beware of the dog' badge as per the old one. I am hoping that the terrazzo threshold still remains under that sheet of cardboard. 

But, if like-for-like was the brief or intention here, why not use modern products that better resemble the 1920's originals? There are many companies today making very good brushed aluminium frames, and joiners who can produce good quality bespoke wooden doors. Why use such bland products that will not last ten years, let alone a century? Because it's cheaper, but only in the short term.

This next group of pics shows how good the shop looked a few years ago. Note the mechanism for the retractable sun blind/awning which ran across the whole front of the shop (also removed as part of the revamp), the ED logo in white and gold within glass panels and the Jazz Age geometrics of the ventilation grille at low level.

This, to me, is such a great loss as I am unaware of any other Express Dairy shops that still retain their original logos and tiles – please do let me know if you have any further information.

On the tiles again

Another set of six images of tiles to be found taken within or or near to the ticket halls of some London Transport tube stations

Can you identify any of them?

Charles Herbert Tidman, optician in Stockwell

I just pulled together a montage of some of the nice things I spotted in the Wandsworth and Vauxhall area last week, and added it to that post see here. Whilst doing that, I rediscovered a couple of pics I'd snapped from the top deck of that No.88 bus, just north of the Stockwell station junction.

Facing the street outside the house at No.247 South Lambeth Road I spotted what looked like railings at that resembled co-joined spectacle frames:

Here's the view from checked on Google Streetview: 

A quick delve into the old street directories shows that an optician called Charles Herbert Tidman was here in 1939, though I have no other access to other info to find out when he might have had these marvellous railings installed.
My guess is that this was his home and workshop where he performed eye tests etc, and No.159 was the shop/showroom were customers could choose frames and make appointments. 

The Stockwell Partnership is at No.159 on the corner of Tradescant Rd today, complete with some interesting nature-inspired pavement mosaics – these two pics I photographed back in 2009:

I wonder how many people in the Stockwell area walk past these things without noticing them...?  

Overground to Willesden Junction and Harlesden in the rain

I had an appointment in Kentish Town on Wednesday 28th December at 10am. I took the 29 bus from Holloway and got off at Camden Town Station. This reminded me that I'd read on Ian Visits, that the Overground Line was making a detour for a few days to allow for maintenance work on the section between Camden and Willesden, so after my appointment I returned to the station to take advantage of the mystery tour.

From Camden Town Station the train branched left (ooh the excitement!) then slowly glided (glid?) over Hawley Street to the west side of Chalk Farm Road passing the rear of The Roundhouse and stopping for a while at the moss covered defunct platforms of old Primrose Hill Station. How annoying it was raining. Photos were futile. And then we chugged slowly through a tunnel to emerge at South Hampstead, which is basically Swiss Cottage East, if there was such a place.

I toyed with the idea of getting off at Kilburn, but decided to stay on the train to Willesden Junction. By now it was raining quite heavily. I'd only popped out for an hour for a journey that was supposed to involve a quick bus ride to Camden and back and there I was in the wide open spaces of NW10. I considered getting on a Bakerloo train that was pulling in to the adjacent platform. It said 'Elephant and Castle' on the front and I was tempted to head south, for the novelty of using a tube line that I only ever get on if I need to go to Wembley Central from Baker Street, which is rare, but instead found myself climbing the steps to street level where I headed north and investigated the nearby streets, along pavements I haven't pounded for about 10 years.

Willesden Junction isn't really near Willesden Green or Willesden cemetery at all. It's actually the main station for Harlseden which, until only a few decades ago, was a go-to shopping area. I recall going there many times with my friend back in the mid-80s. Its demise as a shopping zone must have come about when Brent Cross shopping mall opened followed later by Westfield at Shepherd's Bush. Both are short bus rides away. 

Near the station, there's a marvellous old hotel building complete with imposing portico and mosaic threshold, but the building appears to empty now. 

Further into the shopping streets, I was pleased to see that Harlesden town centre retains many signs of its Victorian heyday. 

A few hand-painted ghostsigns are still there including the fab Whitbread stout sign, but a little further along that terrace I hunted in vain for the vitreous enamel sign that announced 'you may telephone from here' that used to be above the newsagent. 
A large hand-painted sign at the end of the High Street, facing north into Craven Park still needs deciphering, though I think it's advertised Victoria Wines Ltd. Any ideas?  

At 4 Park Parade there is a grocer shop that was once part of the David Greig chain. I have a bit of a thing about DG shops and have been known to shout "Stop the car!" if, when passing, I notice remnants of an old shop. These are evident by the name, the initials or thistle motifs. Having just done a quick search of this blog it's hard to believe I haven't written a specific post about this company as my collection of photos is now far more extensive, nay comprehensive, than the images shown shown in the Wiki link above. Regarding this Harlesden store, a quick glance at streetview shows it still retains the DG pilasters on each side of the exterior. The interior retains fully-tiled walls sporting the thistle motif, although most of those tiles are obscured by products and many are damaged where shelving brackets have been added and removed throughout the post-DG decades. Nevertheless it is one of the best DG interiors I know of in London. 

The rain was starting to get the better of me and my hat was not really the right one for wet weather. I was also starting to get hungry. A No.18 bus came down Craven Park with Euston Station on its bus blind. I nabbed a top deck front seat and sat there all the way to the end peering through the steamed-up rain droplet-ed windows at intriguing buildings along Harrow Road, making a mental note to go back again soon. 

I was back home in Holloway and changed into dry clothes by 1.45pm. What an interesting, unexpected and productive morning. Who needs world travel when London offers so much..? 

Christmas Day 2022 looking at Art Deco architecture and ghosts of the past

I hope you spent Christmas Day doing something that makes you happy, because I surely did.

A friend picked me up in his car and we headed to NW London where we at first pootled around the streets either side of Scrubs Lane in North Kensington and East Acton, specifically in the industrial estates around Willesden Junction. 

Ooh I love a well-designed old factory building, especially one that pre-dates WWII, such as this fine example which wa originally constructed as the Rolls Royce manufactory. 

We then investigated the upper slopes of Counters Creek, one of the mostly-disappeared Thames' tributaries that, as it makes its way southwards from its source somewhere near Kensal Green Cemetery, becomes Chelsea Creek, for obvious reasons. 

From there we made our way down Old Oak Lane, stopping to lament at the sad loss of a lovely old green and gold shop front that was once W. Burrow & Sons Fish and Chip Restaurant. 

These pics show how the shop used to look back in January 2009 but there's nothing left of it today except the hand-painted sign, high up on on the east side of that building, hinting at a world before UPVC windows.

Further south, we investigated the buildings in Warple Way and Stanley Gardens, an area that used to be railway sidings. 

Acton's main shopping streets boast some interesting old shop fronts and repurposed buildings plus quite a few ghost signs of various kinds. We tried to decipher the letters in the multi-layered ghost sign on the East-facing wall above 265 Uxbridge Road. There's at least two signs there. The earlier one is black script on yellow and a later sign is red on white. I will return to this at another date when I've got more time to work it out.

And so to the A4, the Great West Road, the main arterial thoroughfare cutting through Brentford. We were specifically interested in the short stretch of road just west of the River Brent which boasts many excellent examples of interwar architectural elegance. Consider that these fine constructions, which resemble cinemas or grand hotels, were actually built as factories!  

These temples to industry were constructed for Gillette, Pyrene, Coty and Firestone, the last of which only the gateposts remain after the vicious demolition of the main building on August Bank Holiday Monday 1980. 

A fab day out. 

Shown here are some pics I took with my phone. I took lots more, but they're on my camera. i need more hours in the day, more days in the week...

Old shops in St Pauls Road, Highbury and Islington

I am often to be seen walking from Holloway to Canonbury and back, and this means I use the stretch of St Paul's Rd between the two terraces of shops at the western end which still displays some hints of a bygone age or two. The shops on the right hand side adjacent to the Hen and Chickens pub are clearly older and I will return to them another day, but it's north/left side I'm going to talk about here. It starts with a single shop, No.306a, an large add-on to No.306 which is the first of six paired premises. The shops at street level have angled entrances each side of a door that leads to residential accommodation above. The door numbers are beautifully incised into the street-facing fabric of the building in a clear sans serif letterform at each side of the arches with a flower motif above them. 

First, let's look at No.296, today a barber/hairdresser. Above the shop door there two small signs in the glass advertising Ogden's St. Bruno, a tobacco product that is still available today:

In the 1930s this was a tobacconist shop managed by the wonderfully-named Samuel Brilliant. On the subject of names, at No.298 in the 1910s, there was a confectionery shop run by the perfectly-named Miss Eliza Sweetland. I wonder if she was led into this line of work by nominative determinism?!

Two doors along at No.290 is Sawyer & Gray. As far as I can make out this café and homewares shop (no wifi or laptops, hurrah!) took its name from a name that was uncovered about ten years ago. Indeed, today's S&G was established in 2012. But the Sawyer and Gray of 1939 was a confectionery shop (Miss Sweetland no longer in evidence). It's really nice to see old signage revitalised like this.  

And now to a location past just the bus stop and the cobbled access to the rear. At No.276 today you'll find Firezza Pizzeria. Thick layers of green paint are currently being removed to reveal shiny ultramarine blue tiles. And this suggests it was once a laundry:

A quick look at the old Kelly's directories confirms my hunch. This was indeed a Western's Laundry shop. This blue-tiled exterior being the usual style for Western's and for Sunlight Soap – see more here. Customers' sheets and shirts were collected by vans at the rear via that cobbled side access and then taken to the large facility in Drayton Park which I waffle about on YouTube here(!).  The 1915 directory tells me that this site was previously Isendure Laundry Ltd, an independendent local business that looks to have been subsumed into the Western's umbrella by the 1930s. 

I really hope if they manage to clean off all the green paint and retain the blue tiles, not just for their specific historic value but for logic's sake. I mean, what is the point of painting tiles?! Tiles are washed by rain, or easily wiped. 

Next door to the old laundry, at a site recently vacated by St Paul, there was a dairy/grocery store, no doubt also making good use of that cobbled side access. Throughout bygone centuries, Islington was well-renowned for the quality of its milk – that's a story you've probably heard me tell many times if you've been on my walking tours. 

In 1915 the dairy at No.274 was run by a woman called Mrs David Davies. At some time in the 1920s it had become part of United Dairies, a company famous for pioneering pasteurised milk. 

As you can see by my dodgy pics, taken through the window, the shop interior still retains much of its interwar United Dairies tiled walls -clean white wth geometric stripes in two tones of green.  The exterior still retains the panelled sections in the window glass, but the minty-green tiles and air vents at low level have been covered (or replaced?) by wooden panels. This view from 2008 shows those elements still in place when it was a chemist's shop. The archive pic above right shows a UD shop in New Eltham, dated 1933, and this gives us a sense of how this St Paul's Rd store would have originally appeared. How lovely.

Saloons – Everyone's gone to the pub or the hairdresser

Here in the UK, some restrictions as regards social distancing have been lifted – pubs with outdoor table space are open again and hairdressers are busy attacking our lockdown barnets*

It occured to me that both are historically linked by the word 'saloon' so I've pulled some pics together in my old montage-stylee showing a selection of lovely signage across London.

Most of these are pub signs but, as you can see, some are on hairdressers and barbers. Perhaps you recognise some of them or know of some other beauties...?

The separate rooms for saloon, lounge, public, private, snug and offsales is a thing of the past these days, harking back to a Victorian era of class and gender segregation. However, a few pubs in London still have the original walls/dividers and others have reinstated them. This latter section includes The Princess Louise in Holborn, the Fitzroy Tavern in Charlotte Street and the Angel at Rotherhithe. 

Never mind sitting outside a pub; that's just not for me. I am looking forward to getting back inside; to stand at a bar or sit on a barstool; to read a newspaper in a comfy chair by a real fire; to talk to barstaff and locals... sigh.

Barnet Fair = hair (London Cockney rhyming slang)

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.