The regeneration of Finsbury Park

It has recently been reported in the Islington Gazette that the area behind Finsbury Park Station, between Fonthill Road and Wells Terrace is about to be 'regenerated' with a £220 million development.
If you fancy having an apartment in one of the two [iconic] towers with views over Finsbury Park then expect to shelve out between £632,000 and £1.5million. The beauty of it is you will have underground parking for the car you use to get out of London at the weekends, and immediate access to the 120,000 sqft of retail and restaurant space below meaning you won't have to go outside and mix with or relate to the people who actually live in the area.
Apparently the architects, Benson and Forsyth, won 'Housing Project of the Year 2014', at The Sunday Times’ British Home Awards before the build had even commenced. Who judges these things? Probably the same people who gave the go-ahead to The Pointy Thing and The Dubaiification of Nine Elms.
I was a little concerned that this would mean the demolition of the old Royal Mail building in nearby Goodwin Street, but having checked it seems the area for the new development falls just short of it.

As you can see from the pics above this lovely, solid, functional building of red London Stocks is now 110 years old. At the moment area around it is being run as a private car park by a very nice Albanian fella who, when I chatted to him, turns out to also be rather concerned about what the City North development will mean to the area. After all, this is only a stone's throw from a road once considered "the worst street in London" which was completely demolished in the 1950s and replaced with a large council estate. We discussed the possibility of a "them and us / haves and have nots" situation as Finsbury Park has never been an area for millionaires (though a million doesn't really get you that much these days).
Across the road from the Post Office building is a small locals cafe and just two survivors from the 19th century that are currently being braced by metal. I hope these can be rejuvenated.

And, if this artist's impression is anything to go by, it looks like Tower House, just around the corner in Fonthill Rd will remain for a while yet.
The view shown is looking north from Endymion Road across to  Fonthill Road. The white building on the left is the Astoria/Odeon/Rainbow.
Read more about the Finsbury Park development plans in City North's online brochure.

The Developing City

Back in September 2012 I went to an exhibition about the past, present and future of architecture in London. It was called The Developing City and I took some photos of the information there. I rediscovered the pictures when looking for the Norton Folgate pics I posted last week. Strange how I never put this together before now. Here goes...

The exhibition was set out chronologically; there were lots of informative panels about the City of London and how it has been transformed and adapted over the years. And there were some great old archive photos.
One thing that particularly caught my eye was a proposal for the site where the Grade II listed Mappin and Webb building used to be, now occupied by a building often compared a Battenberg cake or a 1930's wireless (an unusual building that bears close inspection – it's full of interesting details and historical references).

As you can see, The Prince Of Wales had his Hideous Carbuncle hat on referring to the glass tower as a "giant glass stump" and he helped to put a stop to the scheme. So, it begs the question, how on earth did we end up with so many other equally hideous, even larger, glass stumpy things since then?
Moving westwards along Poultry and into Cheapside, let's look at Cheapside in the past, shown in these four pics with St Mary Le Bow at the centre:

 Top: 1760 and 1837
Bottom: (oops forgot to note the dates) early and mid 20th century  

In the past, London was more compact and Cheapside was a fashionable bustling shopping street lined with every kind of shop imaginable. Most of these grand buildings managed to remain vertical through WW2 but by the twentieth century the men with the purse strings had decided to that most of the street ought to be replaced with glass and the proles needed more clothes and coffee flavoured water. So the Dubaiification and homogenisation began and in the last decade we have ended up with this:

All from google streetview March 2015

After the Great Fire of London, Wren proposed a complete re-working and re-building of the City. The close up on the right shows clearly how the church spires all begin well above the rooftops of the houses, shops and offices beneath:

Then, in the middle of the twentieth century Hitler tried very hard to flatten the City, as shown in the B&W panoramic photo, below, of the Barbican area taken in 1942* which is where the Barbican was built (but that's another story). Compare and contrast with what looks like bomb damage in the second image but is actually a photograph of the wilful clearance and construction of One New Change (shown in the Streetview images above, top right). 

In the middle of the exhibition space was a large scale model showing what was to come. I stood aghast at the glass. It saddened me. In the same way this does. Most of this has happened already. It's all happening way too fast for me.

I didn't stop to look at many of the boards showing ideas for the future. It all looked a bit plastic and manufactured to me. I am hoping I will be dead by then. What happened to those words they were flinging about pre-Olympics; 'sustainability' and 'legacy'?

Website for The Developing City

One more observation... 'we' are knocking down old buildings made of natural stone that was created by compressing of layers and layers of dead matter over millions of years. In the space of a few days these noble blocks are demolished; discarded or used as rubble, to be replaced with manmade composites and factory components; glass, steel, carbon fibre and the like that will last a fraction of that time. It's all about the money, honey. Money talks and calls it progress.

*This image, and many more like it, can be found at The London Metropolitan Archives.

Last orders at The Water Poet, Spitalfields – 8 drinking days left!!!

I am saddened that The Water Poet, that marvellous drinking establishment in Folgate Street, Spitalfields, is due to close.  The immediate area is to be redeveloped, no doubt with more glassified blandification and Dubaiification.

Picture c/o TimeOut – more info on this closure here

They say here that the pub will be opening up again nearby with the same name.
But it won't be the same pub will it?
You have until March 29th to pay your last regards – I will be in there this evening enjoying a pint or two with friends, probably in the garden if I can find a space... so do come and join me.
I am not sure what is actually planned for this corner site once the pub closes. But check out what happened at The Gun on the opposite side of the market – The Gun was built in the late 1920s on a corner of on Brushfield Street but was closed when the Fruit & Wool Exchange was demolished all bar the façade. A new pub has since opened up on the same site and I can't be the only one to be aghast to see that it has been given the same name yet bears no resemblance at all to the old one. If I was the previous landlord or one of his regulars I would be disgusted and insulted by because it is now nothing like the proper old boozer it used to be – it now resembles a horrid chain hotel/cocktail bar. Hmmm.

May 2008

Check out also The Three Crowns just north of Old Street roundabout which a few years back was given a wash and brush up that holds the building there like some kind of historical little gem within a huge block of modern glass and metal. The pub has been 'renovated' involving the removal and/or replacement of anything that made it worth saving in the first instance. And they have painted the tiles!  Yes; painted!  if you paint tiles you then have to paint them again years later when the paint peels off. Tiles can be wiped clean.  Muppets.
Oh what do I know?!

That pointy thing called the Shard

Those of you who have read some of my previous posts will be aware that I am not a fan of that monstrous glass building at London Bridge. I think it's bullying "look at me; I'm really big!" architecture with no flair or design.
With all the empty office space available in Central London I am concerned about all the new build. The Dubaiification of London. And I am fed up with all the unnecessary competition between cities around the world to have the tallest "iconic" building. In most cases the measured height is, to me rather daft as it includes the aerials on the top. If I wear a stovepipe hat does that mean I am 6ft 2?!
A couple of weeks ago there was an article in The Times (Saturday July 6th) reporting that the Shard is failing in its attempt to sell the space within it. The Times reports that the 25 floors of office space are as empty as they were 12 months ago with only 10% being leased. The location is being cited as a reason; London Bridge is not The City, where other big buildings with silly names situtaed in the Square Mile are managing to sell their space.
The article goes on to quote Irvine Sellar, the Shard's developer, who seems to be cherry-picking his tenants. He cites this as a reason for the empty floors and rationalises, "...we are taking our time... we don't want to fill the Shard up with accountants or lawyers". He goes on, "...we are going to have asset managers, energy companies, lawyers and many more. We want a broad mix".
I very much doubt that is the reason at all. Location probably does play a part, but I think the lack of uptake is mostly down to the fantastically high maintenance charges; the window cleaning alone is estimated at £150,000 a year, plus rates on the empty offices need to be paid for before they are leased, and electricity has to be block-purchased in advance. Cleaning and security for the building could cost as much as £9million a year once it is fully let.
So, they must have thought long and hard about how to bring in big dosh for  little outlay.... hmmm... let's think... Yes! viewing platforms. Incidentally, I don't like the word "platforms" in this instance. Bad word. Why not galleries, floors or levels?
They call it "The View" and on Saturday 13th July I went to see it for myself. My very generous friend paid £24.99 each for four of us. TWENTY FIVE QUID!!! That's the pre-booking price. If you buy your ticket on the day it goes up to £29.99.
OK here goes... hold on to your hat... this is what you get for £25...

• On arriving we were informed that there are no toilets on the viewing levels and were directed to the ones adjacent to the booking hall; an area that is awash with CGI on large screens and colourful technology. Opening the door to the Ladies we entered a service corridor with whitewashed breeze block walls. There were loose wires and duct-taped pipes. Inside it was obvious that this was usually used by staff or gym users as we saw lockers in there. A temporary sign on A4 copy paper apologised, explaining that new toilets are currently being built for Guest use. This building has been open to the public for almost a year now and they haven't made the toilets? Is £25 a reduced rate due to this? Or, will the price go up when the toilets are finally open? 
• So, why are there no toilets on or near the viewing levels? What happens if someone is taken short or feels dizzy/sick? Are people expected to get in the lift again, go all the way through the gift shop, past the booking desks and relieve themselves only to find that they (probably) aren't allowed back up again? I am sure there must be toilet facilities on the restaurant floors but viewing-only plebs aren't allowed to mix with high-paying foodies. 
• There is nowhere to sit on the viewing platforms. Not everyone is happy standing, or sitting on the floor. Many people, especially those who are tired, dizzy, disabled, old or infirm would benefit from some simple benches where they can rest for 5 minutes as in art galleries. There is ample space all around the inner wood-panelled wall where these could be added. I believe there are two reasons for their non-existence: 1) it stops people staying up there too long, and, 2) the Shard was never designed to have viewing platforms in the first instance or they would have designed it better. 
• So it ought to go without saying that there are no refreshment opportunities up there either.
• Why no glass floors? A huge opportunity has been missed here. Especially as the building is clad in glass. There are perfect places in recessed areas where glass-floored panels could have been included (such as in Auckland's Sky Tower in and many others). But, again, I think this is for the same reasons as the lack of seating.
• Don't look up because the ceilings of the viewing platforms are an ugly mess. There are hanging wires and pipes clad in silver foil with stickers on them, plus metal fixings and plates that I think ought not to be seen. It looks so out of place with the simplicity of the wooden floors and walls. 
• When we were there we commented how daft it was that the only way to identify the buildings in the distance was to use one of the computerised viewing machines. We wondered why they hadn't put information about the major landmarks onto the windows or on a rail in front of us. It wasn't until I got home and looked at my photos that I noticed that there is a legend there, but it is situated above everyone's heads!! How utterly daft. You have to step back from the glass to see it. Another afterthought?
• On the ground floor, on the way in between security checks and the lift you can have your photo taken against a simulated image of the Shard. As per The London DUNG-eon and all other rip-off tourist attractions of this kind, the prints are an extra charge. Did I mention the tickets for The View at Shard are £25?
• The lifts are rather disappointing. Considering they are being touted for their high speed you don't get a visual sense of this at all. You stand there in a dark blue box looking up at some computer generated whizzy lines on the ceiling. Couldn't they have filmed the journey to the top of the Shard from the roof of the lift and put that up on the ceiling so we had the feeling of heading skyward? This seems too obvious a trick to have missed.

To conclude, I believe due to their lack of facilities, the viewing platforms are an afterthought to the conceived design of the building. I think the developers really thought companies would have been snapping up the office space off-plan before the building was completed.
The exorbitant minimum ticket price of £24.99 for what is just a trip in two lifts with a view at the top and not a lot else, is to help with those cleaning bills.
Mind you, I suppose comparing time:money it does work out cheaper than a trip on the London Eye (£17.28 for half an hour) because you can stay up in the Shard as long as you want. I am not sure if you can take your own food and drink up there, but don't take too much because the toilets are 69/72 floors away (they include the landings on the stairs as two floors!)
Oh, one more thing that nags at me; the location is called London Bridge Quarter. A quarter of what? Does the Shard take up 25% of the whole of the whole London Bridge area? What are the other three quarters called? Answers here please.

"This article has been written to recognise the author's contribution to travel and tourism by Avis Car Hire on the A-List Awards 2013".

It's here, it's there, it's every bloody where

I recently went for a walk around the Fenchurch Street area of the City, popping into churches, investigating little streets and alleys and admiring old buildings and their interesting details.
But that bloody Walkie Talkie loomed over me from almost everywhere.
As you are probably well aware from my previous posts, I am not a fan of all this heavy-handed steel and glass architecture (see here and here) that's sprouting up like some kind of instant Dubaiification.
The Pointy Thing at London Bridge is just a greenhouse that tapers towards the top, and conversely, though similarly, 20 Fenchurch Street is just a tower block that flares out at the top but has the added bonus of being able to fry eggs and melt cars.

As viewed from Blackfriars, from Potters Fields near Tower Bridge, from the northern end of London Bridge, and from Rood Lane EC3.

As viewed from Eastcheap/Philpot Lane (x2), and from the eastern end of Fenchurch Street. The last pic shows it at street level illustrating how truly unimaginative this building is – just compare it to the considered old architecture on the corner of Philpot Lane.

I wandered into Mincing Lane and found a relatively new pedestrian street opposite the Disneyland-style castle and prancing ponies of Minster Court (ugh!). 
Plantation Lane forms part of the huge Plantation Place development (but check out Google maps and zoom in to notice that the road name on the street sign has been erased – why?). The street narrows as it goes westwards towards Rood Lane. The only reason I didn't get agitated by being hemmed in by even more bullying glass is because I was distracted and intrigued by the pavement which is natural stone embedded with lines of names, words and phrases linking to London. Great to spot some wonderful old street names there ;-)

The pavement along Plantation Lane. At the Rood Lane end of the street I took the chance to capture some convergence images illustrating the diverse architecture. 

The City of London will never be finished. It is constantly evolving. Yet it seems to me that there has been a greater percentage of building/development per square metre in the last ten years than in the last 500. I appreciate that we live in a different world these days, with different needs and demands, but what I cannot fathom is the extent and size of these things, especially when so many old buildings stand empty and many finished buildings of similar size are not yet anywhere near reaching full occupancy.

Immediate plans for The City

Read more about this here.

David Edward's idea of what's in store for the future

Read more about the future here.

Victoria Street – a glass corridor

As you will probably already know, I am not a fan of all these build-it-glass, build-it-fast, and build-it-high architecture that is sprouting up like a fungus all over this once great city.
Due to the homogenous design of these clip-together buildings I have been referring to this invasion of glass as 'The Dubaiification of London'
The latest victim of this spore is Victoria Street, SW1.
This vital route links The Palace of Westminster to Buckingham Palace Road and Victoria Station and, just like Cheapside* is in the process of being turned yet another glass river resembling a crevice in an ice flow.

Exiting Victoria Station one is confronted by the enormous upheaval of demolition and construction on a vast scale. Victoria Station itself is undergoing redevelopment, but works do not stop at the station concourse – there are other projects on the go at the same time and the whole of Victoria Street is a massive building site.
I photographed the area back in 2008, as shown above, and in July last year had access to see the huge hole made at the back of the The Victoria Palace Theatre. As you can see, Land Securities have very kindly kept the theatre but demolished a building of similar age that was to the right of it. The theatre will now sit like a tiny little child surrounded by huge shiny robots as per The Albert, a Victorian yellow brick public house that still survives on the corner of Buckingham Gate and is shown in the collection of images below.

What else is staying?
Little Ben has been removed – I assume he will return in the same position.
I notice the old Victoria Arcade has also been retained. I am hoping this is a permanent feature as I would hate to lose that beautiful (Doulton?) ceiling.  
But I am disappointed that the Overtons' sign on the building at the easter tip of the station concourse has been removed.
Westminster Cathedral's a bit old, so it's a good job we can't really see it. It can only be seen reflected in the glass windows of Victoria Street's upper floors, phew; that's a relief.
Compare and contrast... see the archive image above, bottom right, for how the Army and Navy Store used to look in 1905. Much of the rest of the street would have looked similar; imposing, solid and made to last... until someone with a wrecking ball and a love of mirrors came along.
I despair.
Read more about the plans for Victoria Street here.

*blimey, did I never get around to writing that one?

Happy New Year... and a positive resolution

Whoosh!  Is it just me, or did 2014 fly by very quickly indeed?

Happy New Year from some of my favourite ghostsigns

Hovis, Haig, Dunphy, Supper, Brymay, Pring, Dowell's, Harper, Sally, Gillette, Girling and Daren

2014 wasn't that good a year for me for many reasons. And I let myself get irked by too many extraneous things – people on buses, walking blindly out of shops, talking utter rubbish, littering, being rude, insensitive, selfish or self-obsessed etc. Not to mention the phone companies and the banks.

And, as you know if you have read my rants about The Pointy Thing, the Garden Bridge and the Dubaiification of London, I have been becoming very worn down by the huge architectural changes that are happening in London leaving almost no area untouched by an 'iconic' lump of glass.
There are some very rich people with the ability to hold a pen and sign their name who are changing great swathes of London in the sweep of an arm. I don't see the extent of this kind of architectural rape happening in, say, Rome, Madrid or Brussels, and it saddens me.

But I must rise above these ugly towers; I have to stop getting so agitated.
So here is my plan for 2015... 
From now on, I resolve to [try to!] write only about the things that please me. After all, it was the little details that got me started with this blog, and that's what it says on the mast head.
I apologise if a few gripes slip in occasionally, but I will try to make them succinct or witty, or both.

One more thing.... 
People have written to me saying that they are having a problem leaving comments on here. Hence why I get so few.
I have fixed the problem now – please try again – it's nice to know you are out there ;-)

All the best for a positive and prosperous year,
Jane

City of Glass

I recently posted about The Developing City; an excellent exhibition about the changing architecture in the City of London.
It was split into three sections; the past, present and future. The earlier panels were full of great info and wonderful photos of the City in past centuries. It was interesting to see and mentally compare the changes over time. I was especially intrigued by Cheapside, which has always been a shopping street. However, in the past it was lined with one-off shops selling all kinds of things, but of late it's become just another bland road plate glass shops selling coffee, clothes and phones. The church of St Mary-Le-Bow now looks squashed, out of place and off-scale compared to the buildings either side of it.
London, you see, is being over-run by plate glass.

Old buildings are being torn down and replaced with HUGE glass monstrosities that, despite their shapes and silly 'friendly' names, all end up looking the same. They are, in my view, just glass towers squidged and skewed into strange shapes; vertical glasshouses with no detailing or interesting features except they can reflect a grey London sky or a better better building.
Our wonderful City is going to end up looking all new and shiny and bland like Dubai; the Dubaiification of London will soon be complete.
In a few instances listed London façades have been retained; their insides have been gutted and replaced with modern offices, walkways and glass atriums. Or extensions have been added that resemble lean-tos or green houses. Perhaps the powers that be are considering growing tomatoes and runner beans in these places if one day all the computers crash? I am now also gutted, but for a different reason – that although I do like the renovated space inside Unilever House, I didn't see it prior to its re-fit.
Back to the exhib... The 'present' section showed a collection of 80 images that they called 'the best new buildings and public spaces built in the City since 1985'. Looking at these images I could only make out a few structures that were not predominately glass, including The Millennium Bridge and terracotta-clad building in Bishops Square, Spitalfields. The plans for the immediate future show the horrible intensity of tall glass buildings that will be going up during the next decade.
The last part of the exhibition showed some visions of the future that makes it look like the Thames will become some kind of water garden for Teletubbies. Another similar idea for Smithfield had to be seen to be believed.
I cannot be alone with my concerns. One only has to see the queues on Open House Weekend for all the old and preserved buildings such as The Livery Halls, churches and old banking rooms, to understand that a lot of us appreciate intricate mosaics, and hand-carved stone and wood.
Looking forward, I do not see a logical reason to build (any more of) these biggest/tallest/pointiest 'iconic' structures (for iconic, read 'bullying'). They can't simply be show-off statement pieces – there must be more to it.
It can't be that London has a dearth of office space because you only have to look up to the empty top floors around, for instance, Oxford Street and Piccadilly, or wander the streets behind Broadgate).  So, I conclude that there must a financial gain to be made constructing big glass show-off towers.
I rather suspect that a huge tax dodge, or similar, can be achieved by off-setting building costs against profits. Or something. After all these big shiny things aren't cheap you know.
Or perhaps, in addition to growing those vegetables, these megabucks businesses are just trying to keep window cleaners in employment?
The pics in the montage above come from my 'Ugly Beautiful' folder on Flickr. Here's a similar, but shorter post from three years ago on the same subject.

A happy coincidence: 
I wrote most of the above yesterday, intending to rewrite bits of it today. Last night, I sat down to watch the 4th in the series of 'The Shock of The New', a series of programmes made in 1980 by the erudite and much-missed Robert Hughes. 
This episode, entitled 'Trouble in Utopia', was about modern architecture. Robert put forward his views about the idealist attempts to turn major cities, that have endured centuries of history including World wars, into minimalist Utopias, devoid of life or stimulation. He pointed out that the "inhuman" and "absurd" towers of glass just didn't work; that "nothing dates quicker than people's visions of the future". He showed that by the 80s areas of Brasilia, built in the early 60s, were already falling to pieces. Chandigarh too, Le Corbusier's personal vision of Utopia in India, commissioned by Nehru to reflect the nation's modern, progressive outlook, was also a shadow of its former self. 
He also pointed out that none of the modern buildings of the 80s displayed any kind of ornamentation comparable to Chicago's Sullivan building, an early example of high-rise steel construction. (They still don't... they are just plain unadorned plate glass.)
He (wrongly) concluded the episode by predicting the death of the Utopian style of architecture, saying it just doesn't work. I'd love to have heard what he thinks of London now, and the plans for its future.
See the programme here.
In conclusion, I think many architects such as, for example, Le Corbusier and Renzo Piano, may occasionally have some brilliant ideas, but are unable to see further than their own noses. These bullying, narrow-minded, control freaks are being allowed (commissioned by sychophants?) to alter our cities too drastically, and too quickly. 
Stop, stop stop. Or at least, just slow down.
There! I've said it!

The Dubaiification of Nine Elms

Earlier this week, as part of a promotional walking tour around the Nine Elms, Battersea and Vauxhall area I got to see a the scale model of the plans.
My jaw dropped – I knew there was a lot of building work going on but I had no real concept how bullying and oppressive the scale would really be.
At the moment there is one very tall boring glass tube near Vauxhall station – you may recall that a helicopter crashed into it last year. Well, hold on to your hat – there are going to be plenty more tall buildings like that – pilots; take note!

The local councillors who were there, outlined the regeneration scheme and talked about iconic buildings and creating community (note: iconic buildings are not created; they become so, and community is not created; it evolves).
A skinny little grassy space will meander through the area intended to create environments for outdoor events, markets, fairs etc which will "link the town centres".

Towns? As far as I am aware 'Vauxhall town centre' is a train, tube and bus station. Where is the library, town hall, butchers and post office? It's got a nightlife though – there are over 20,000 people going there every weekend for the clubs and bars in the arches area. It's really 'Club Town', I suspect, due to the demise of the nightclub scene that used to be at Kings Cross.

I was not surprised to learn that retail spaces are planned for the ground floor of these new buildings, so expect to find all the same things you see everywhere else such as large coffee chains and express supermarkets with those annoying self-service check-outs. I doubt there will be any shops there selling normal things like groceries, haberdashery, hardware etc. Or pound shops for that matter.
I asked how much of this huge scheme had been sold already and got a woolly politician-style response. When I asked if the local community been involved in the plans, again, I got no real answer, just that there will be schools and health centres. Oh, so that's OK then.

The build is already underway, using glass from the US. I find it scary how so many enormous structures can be erected in one swathe. Nothing is allowed to evolve these days. What they are building here is, I think bigger than the City of London – a pop-up, slot-together 'Meccano' world.
But there are plenty of empty office spaces available in London, even in the pointy thing... so why build more? Just because there is a large piece of land that doesn't mean something big has to be built on it to fill the available space. It is beyond me how they can start with a blank canvas and yet still end up with a spider's web of outdoor areas that not that much different from high-rise housing estates of the 1970s.
And, regarding 'community', do the developers ever think to revisit the areas they have 'regenerated' 5, 10 or 15 years after to see if a community vibe has indeed taken hold? Has anyone been to the Isle of dogs lately?
It's so depressing.

If Ian Nairn was still alive today he would be as agitated by this as I am. Everything will end up looking like Dubai – a sea of glass and metal. Soon there won't be any details for me to find at all and the only things I will write about here will be rants about glass and loss.
For balance, here's Nine Elms' official site so you can hear their side.
Next week I'll write about plans for Battersea...

Actually, speaking of Ian Nairn... His series of programmes and his books about how he cared so much about the buildings around him just show that you don't have to be an architect to be interested in or have a view on or a love of architecture and how it makes us feel. 
If the BBC would like to make a similar series of programmes with a caring, opinionated, woman driving around the UK in an old Morris Minor... then look no further... I am here.  

For more of my posts in this vein London's please enter 'architecture' the search box top left.

Have a drink in a real London pub – The King & Queen, Fitzroiva

The homogenisation of London isn't just happening to the architecture, it's also happening to pubs as breweries rip out and refit in an attempt to blandify* our social environments.
Pubs used to be the social hub of an area, where people gathered to relax after work, meet friends and sing songs together in a place that felt like a home from home. But, sadly, pubs are closing down at an alarming rate these days and the landlords of our once-loved drinking holes and are calling "final orders" for the last time.
So a big "hurrah!" for the independently run King and Queen in Fitzrovia, run by friendly staff who know and understand every beer and whisky they sell.

Some pics mine, some from K&Q's website

As you can see from the pics above, this building is a one-off gem with it's witch's hat roof and weathervane atop a turret, and decorative architectural details. Note especially the mosaic floor in the side door (now only access to ladies toilet from within), the carved relief sign, those curved windows and some lovely woodwork and glass.

All power to K&Q's beer-pulling elbow.

The pub sits just around the corner from the BT Tower and across the road from the GradeII listed Georgian-Victorian workhouse building. 

I heard recently that another of my old favourites, the Duke of Sussex at Waterloo, near the corner of Lower Marsh, has been refitted and is now another gastropub. Yawn. It used to be great in there with a real mix of people enjoying each others' company plus fun friendly nights at the weekends. Go google yourself because I refuse to link to it now. I doubt they have they kept their colourful toilets.

*one of my own words. See also Dubaiification.