Railings made from wartime stretchers – spot one and you'll start seeing them everywhere!

In my last post, looking at remnants of woodblocks, I mentioned that I'd been walking through the residential streets in Bermondsey, between Long lane and Tabard Street, here. I'd returned to this zone on a Friday because I'd actually intended to have a look around the much-diminished Bermondsey Antique Market and, being as I was in the vicinity, I thought I'd revisit some repurposed WW2 metal stretchers I'd often noticed on a corner along Long Lane. 

There are similar examples of stretchers as railings across London (see the list at the bottom) and whenever these have been pointed out to me, they have often been described as oddities. I was sure I'd seen more than just a handful of these things in Bermondsey so, after a conversation with a Vauxhall-based friend who had doubted me, I headed back to take a few snaps as evidence. 

I approached via Hankey Street and found some stretchers there lining both sides of the meandering street:

Hmm, I'd never walked down this road before and thought that these stretchers didn't look like the ones I spotted before; I was sure the buildings behind them had been the red brick late-1930's London County Council variety and that the stretchers had faced Long Lane, so I continued down to Manciple Street, turned left and left again into Staple Street and found it was also lined with stretchers, many with privet hedges growing through them.

When I again joined Long Lane I found the stretch of stretchers that I was looking for, adjacent to the post box including one that's been in a war of a different kind:

Interesting that these metal mesh fences were added after the war. I'm assuming they replace broken or trampled fencing. 

I headed eastwards along London Lane and, deciding that this needed a proper investigation and the market could wait for another week or two, I turned right into the state via Weston Street and found myself in 'Stretcher Central' because the things are almost everywhere casting interesting shadows on the pavement, their layers of peeling paint showing they were previously painted a bright shade of green:

The bended bars and black mesh continues around and past the LCC's 1930's buildings at the southern end of Mancipal Street and into Pardoner Street and Law Street. 

I followed the stretchers along Law Street passing an old pub that is now Leo's Den Nursery but still sports an old pub sign of a sheep hanging above the door – how amusing if the pub used to be called The Slaughtered Lamb (poor little lambs!) – then all the way down to Tabard Street and left around Pilgrim House into Potier Street. 

Phew! I decided that was enough and managed to get to the antiques market just as the stallholders were packing up. 

This Bermondsey estate and its 'sister' the Rockingham Estate just to the south, surely must contain the greatest concentration of these things. 

Hackney and Lambeth can also boast quite a few, the latter having a Facebook page on the subject. More information about Lambeth's housing estates can be found on Municipal Dream's excellent Substack page. 

I am pretty sure I have spotted stretcher fences in Camden, but I cannot now recall where I saw them, and there surely must be some stretchers surrounding similar estates in Tower Hamlets...?

Here follows a list of others I have either seen or been told about. However, some of these might have since been removed and replaced as per the ones in Pytchley Rd, off Dog Kennel Hill in East Dulwich as shown here in 2014 which I am hoping have been repurposed somehow. Please let me know about any of the others on the list so that I can add streetview links to those that don't have them:

• Amhurst Road, Hackney
• Atkins Road, Wandsworth
• Downs Estate (around Blackdown Hse), Hackney 
• Glebe Estate, Camberwell Road
• Kennings Way and White Hart St, Kennington
• Mereton Mansions, Brookmill Road, Deptford
• Shrewbury House, Kennington Oval
• Springfield Estate, Union Grove, Lambeth
• Watergate Street/Trevithick St, Deptford
• ... any more?

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...?  

Little letters at low level

Has anyone else ever spotted this on the streets of this fair city?

Only, I have showed the image above to many London historians, guides and friends, and, despite the letters shown, which sit on a half inch metal rod just off the pavement, only a couple of people have ever worked out what it means and therefore where it might be. 

And when I explain what it stands for, almost everyone says something like "oh, my god, how have I never noticed that myself?!"

Here's a wider view. It's street-facing, in front of a very well-known historic establishment:

Have you got it yet?

It's Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, 145 Fleet Street, EC4. See it on a reprospective Google Streetview here.

The Chap Olympiad in Bedford Square

Taking place in Bedford Square this Saturday is the 6th Chap Olympiad.

So curl your hair or wax your moustache, dress up in something dapper and go put on a damn fine show. What?!

Top row: LRT Acton Depot, Clerkenwell Road, Belgravia, Holloway Road.

Middle row: Chenies Street, Curzon Street, Olympic Park, Bedford Square [c]space pavilion.

Bottom row: New Oxford Street, Bedford Square, Jermyn Street x2.

Boot scrapers

A short while ago I was invited to join the 'Boot Scrapers of London' group on Flickr. I had noticed lots of them in and around Central London but thought they were all too similar and I had enough things to photograph as it was! But I joined the group pool anyway, and now I have gone boot scraper mad having discovered that there are so many different types out there. All of these have been taken on three occasions in the first 2 weeks of August 2008 in Camden, Covent Garden, Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury and Canonbury.
To see any of the individual photos at a larger size please go to my Boot scrapers set at Flickr.