Day 77 Part 2 – Pennington Street – Wapping High Street – St Katharine Docks

When you left us last time we’d made our way back north from the river and the Wapping Wharves to The Highway, the main road that stretches from Tower Hill to the entrance to the Limehouse Tunnel. From here we’ll head west for a bit then double back past the former site of the infamous News International Wapping printworks before winding back towards the river and following Wapping High Street west to St Katharine Docks.

On the north side of the Highway off Cannon Street Road stands the impressive St George In The East Church. The church is one of six in London designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736) built following the passing, in 1711, of an Act for the building of Fifty New Churches in the Cities of London and Westminster or the Suburbs thereof. This was prompted by the accession of Queen Anne to the throne in 1702 under the terms of the Acts of Settlement designed to ensure the Protestant succession. St George’s was built between 1714 and 1729 and gave its name to both the local ecclesiastical parish and its civil counterpart, the third tier of local government, though it was superseded in the latter role when the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney was established in 1927. The church was hit by a bomb during the WWII Blitz on London’s docklands in May 1941. The original interior was destroyed by the fire, but the walls and distinctive “pepper-pot” towers stayed up. In 1964 a modern church interior was constructed inside the existing walls, and a new flat built under each corner tower. The church was Grade I listed in 1950 and in 1980 featured in the film, The Long Good Friday. Not sure which is the greater honour.

Back on the south side of The Highway, once known as the Ratcliffe Highway incidentally, sits the marooned and very derelict former Old Rose pub. This closed down in 2011 and has been left to rot ever since. The building dates from the early 19th century which means that the mysterious stone plaque embedded in eastern wall, which reads “This is the Corner of Chigwell Streate 1678” must have been salvaged from a different building. Presumably one that stood here, as the Old Rose is at the top of what is now called Chigwell Hill. It was only a few years after the building became licensed premises that the so-called Ratcliffe Highway Murders took place in the very near vicinity. On 8 December 1811 a young draper and ex-sailor Timothy Marr, his wife Celia, their young son Timothy, and their shop boy James Gowan were brutally killed at 29 St George’s Street (now the location of a car showroom adjacent to the Rose) while their maidservant had been sent out to pay a baker’s bill and buy a dozen oysters. Twelve days later the publican of the Kings Arms in New Gravel Lane (now Wapping Lane) John Williamson, his wife Elizabeth and a servant Bridget Harrington were also killed at home. The murders were never satisfactorily solved. A sailor named John Williams was arrested as the prime suspect; it was said that he had a grudge against Marr from their time together at sea, but he was found hanging in his prison cell the night before the trial. This was taken to be proof of his guilt and investigations petered out, even though it had been assumed that there must have been two people involved in each killing. Extraordinarily, to allay public anxiety, the Home Secretary, after consultation with the senior Shadwell magistrate, ordered Williams’ body to be drawn through the streets on a cart, for a suicide’s burial.

After continuing west along The Highway we turn left into Virginia Street which, like Breezer’s Hill, Artichoke Hill and the aforementioned Chigwell Hill, bridges the gap between The Highway and Pennington Street. This western end of Pennington Street was once home to the News International Wapping plant which was at the centre of an industrial dispute that, alongside the Miners’ Strike, defined the conflict between the Trade Unions and Thatcherite laissez-faire capitalism in the 1980’s. The 54 week long strike was sparked by the decision of Rupert Murdoch’s News International group to move print production of their UK newspapers from Fleet Street to the new plant in January 1986. At Wapping new computer facilities would allow journalists to input copy directly, rather than relying on print union workers who used older “hot-metal” Linotype printing methods. As a consequence 90% of those typesetters would lose their jobs. News International’s strategy in Wapping had strong government support, and the company enjoyed almost full production and distribution capabilities and was able to rely on a sufficiently large coterie of journalists (including NUJ members) who defied the picket. NI was therefore content to allow the dispute to run its course and, with thousands of workers having gone for over a year without jobs or pay, the strike eventually collapsed on 5 February 1987. In 2010 News International closed the Wapping plant and moved all the staff to nearby Thomas More Square. Two years later, following the demise of The News of The World, and having rebranded as News UK, the company sold the Wapping site to Berkeley Group for £150m. They left Wapping altogether in 2014, decamping to offices forming part of The Shard development.

Credit to http://www.wappingdispute.co.uk/

The photo above was taken from the eastern end of Pennington Street. In the distance on the left you can see the Pennington Street Warehouse, a 313 metre long bonded warehouse constructed around 1805 with a semi-basement of brick vaulted cellars. This now Grade II listed (1973) building was originally used to store fortified luxury commodities such as ivory, spices, coffee and cocoa as well as wine, spirits and wool. It is the only substantial building to survive from the former London Dock. Following the departure of News International, as part of the redevelopment of the London Dock site by St George (part of the Berkeley Group) it was converted into new state-of-the-art office and studio spaces which opened in 2018. (The image top left below is of the old wool warehouses on Breezer’s Hill which date from the mid nineteenth century).

Having traversed the length of Pennington Street we turn south onto Wapping Lane and head down to Tobacco Dock. Tobacco Dock is a Grade I listed warehouse that also formed part of the London Docks.  It was designed by Scottish civil engineer and architect John Rennie and completed in 1812, serving primarily as a store for imported tobacco. At full capacity, the warehouse could accommodate 24,000 hogsheads of tobacco. In 1857 Tobacco Dock was the location of an extraordinary rescue. A colourful local business on the bustling Ratcliff Highway was Charles Jamrach’s Exotic Animal Emporium. This eccentric German businessman had a roaring trade in all manner of unusual animals and birds. One day his Bengal tiger escaped and went wandering down the road. A little boy, who had never before seen such a creature, reached out to stroke the cat. Unsurprisingly the tiger responded by grabbing the boy by his neck and carrying him off into Tobacco Dock. Jamrach gave chase and incredibly managed to fend off the beast with his bare hands. The boy was rescued unharmed and the tiger shipped off to the famous animal collector George Wombwell, earning Jamrach the handsome sum of £300. Unfortunately for him, records show that the boy’s parents sued the animal dealer for the same amount. He wrote bitterly about the incident in his memoirs! After the London Docklands ceased seaborne trade, the warehouse and surrounding areas fell into dereliction until it was turned into a shopping centre which opened in 1989 at a cost of £47 million. It was the intention of the developers to create the “Covent Garden of the East End” but this was never a realistic possibility and it went into administration. By the mid-1990’s only a sandwich shop remained as the sole tenant. In 2003 English Heritage placed Tobacco Dock on its “at risk” register and it stood largely empty until it was used as a barracks for military personnel providing security to the 2012 London Olympics. In the same year the company Tobacco Dock Ltd launched the building as an events and conferencing space for up to 10,000 people. The only event I could find listed for 2024 is something called Meatopia (live-fire chefs ?) happening on the August bank holiday weekend. It’s sold out apparently. Moored in a dry dock in front of Tobacco Dock are two replica ‘pirate ships’ built to entertain the children whose parents were expected to visit the ill-fated shopping centre. The Sea Lark is apparently a copy of a 330 tonne tobacco and spice ship built at Blackwall Yard in 1788 while the Three Sisters is a copy of an 18th century American merchant schooner captured by the Admiralty during the Anglo-American War.

From Tobacco Dock we follow the so-called “ornamental canal” and then work our way back to Wapping Lane, through the new-ish housing developments, via Waterman Way and Reardon Street with nods to the cul-de-sacs of Stevedore Street and President Drive. To the east of Wapping Lane on Raine Street is Raine’s House, named for Henry Raine (1679–1738), a wealthy local brewer and devout churchgoer, who built it in 1719 as a school where poor children could get a free education. The statues in the window niches are replicas, the originals having moved with the school when it relocated to the north of the Highway in 1883.

Round the corner is St Peter’s Church designed by F.H Pownall. It was established in 1856 as an Anglo-Catholic mission to the poor of London by Reverend Charles Lowder and a group of fellow priests belonging to the Society of the Holy Cross. The Society had been founded a year earlier with the purpose of providing its members with a rule for living and a vision of a disciplined priestly life.

From Raine Street we make our way east on Farthing Fields and Pearl Street then do an about-turn and follow Prussom Street, Penang Street, Clegg Street and Hilliards Court down to Wapping High Street. We switch between the High Street and Cinnamon Street a couple of times using Clave Street and Wapping Dock Street before Cinnamon Street feeds us back onto Wapping Lane. Heading north here takes us past today’s Laund(e)rette of the day and several other refreshingly old- school local businesses.

Taking the next turn on the left into Watts Street brings us to today’s pub of the day, Turner’s Old Star. The Star is a real blast from the past. Apparently it was refurbished in 1987 but from the looks of it that was only to update it as far as the Seventies (nowt wrong with that mind). That was also when the pub was renamed in honour of the painter J.M.W Turner who created the pub in the first place. In 1833 Turner met Sophia Booth, a widowed landlady from Margate who was to become his mistress until his death in 1851. When Turner inherited two cottages in the dockland area of Wapping, he converted them into a tavern and installed Mrs. Booth as proprietor. He named the tavern ‘The Old Star’. To maintain his secrecy during their life together Turner adopted her surname. This, combined with his five-foot height and portly physique was to earn him the nickname ‘Puggy Booth’. Refreshments – half of lager and a packet of crisps – not much sustenance for four hours of walking ! Just the two other customers.

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After leaving the pub we continue northward up Meeting House Alley before turning left onto Chandler Street and then heading back south on Reardon Street with a brief detour into Vinegar Street. This walk coincided with the start of the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch weekend so in recognition of that here are some Cockney sparrers spotted at this point.

At the bottom of Reardon Street we make a right into Tench Street and loop round past the John Orwell Sports Centre (the eponym of which seems to be unknown to the internet).

On the corner of Tench Street and Green Bank is the Turk’s Head which closed as a pub in the 1970’s but has retained all of its old signage. Confusingly an Anglo-French restaurant called Bistro Bardot now operates from the premises. A sign outside divulges that “During World War II it was run by its eccentric landlady, Mog Murphy, and stayed open all hours for service personnel seeking news of their loved ones. After a vigorous campaign in the 1980s led by Maureen Davies and the wild women of Wapping, the Turk’s Head Company, a charity they set up to improve local life, bought the derelict building from the Council and restored it.” The adjacent St John’s Church is another Grade II listing in the area. The present building was originally erected in 1756 but suffered extensive damage in WWII, with only a fragmentary rectangular shell remaining. The tower was restored in 1964 by the London County Council and the remainder converted into flats in the 1990’s. The exterior of the church appears briefly in Episode 23 of Season 4 of Friends, “The One With Ross’ Wedding”.

Further along Green Bank, this chimney is all that remains of the old D&W Gibbs factory. Gibbs was a manufacturer of soap, shaving soap and toothpaste founded in 1712. Gibbs SR toothpaste was the very first product advertised on ITV when it started in 1955 though by that time the company was part of the industrial behemoth, Unilever, (The initials ‘SR’ are short for sodium ricinoleate, an ingredient effective in the treatment of gum infections). An earlier brand, French Dentifrice, gained infamy when it was used by British troops in France the First World War – not only to clean their teeth, but also to polish the brass buttons on their tunics and the regimental badges on their caps.

Green Bank returns us once more to Wapping Lane from where we follow Brewhouse Lane down to Wapping High Street, on the way passing Tower Buildings, another Grade II listed edifice, erected in 1864 by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company. It is a rare surviving example of a Victorian tenement block built to house working class families.

We arrive on Wapping High Street right by Phoenix Wharf, the alleyway beside of which runs down to the river and Wapping Pier. The words delusions of grandeur spring readily to mind here.

Just west of Phoenix Wharf is Wapping Police Station where The Marine Policing Unit (MPU) is based. There has been a police building for river police at this site since 1798. The MPU is responsible for policing 47 miles of the River Thames in London between Dartford and Hampton Court. It also provides a response to over 250 miles of waterways and other bodies of water across the rest of London, such as lakes, reservoirs and canals. Prior to 1839 the Marine Police Force was an independent operation and up until 1878 it relied on rowing galleys to conduct its patrols. It was only following the loss of over 600 lives when the steam collier Bywell Castle collided with the pleasure steamer Princess Alice in that year that the force acquired its own steam-powered vessels.

Next up are three traverses between Wapping High Street and Green Bank courtesy of Reardon Path, Dundee Street and Scandrett Street. The latter brings us back up to St John’s Church and the “bluecoat” school that was founded by the parish in 1760. As we have seen on previous excursions, bluecoat schools were charitable institutions established between the 16th and late 18th centuries. The first such school was founded by Edward VI at Christ’s Hospital in Newgate Street in 1552. Around 60 similar institutions were set up over the next two hundred years. They were known as “bluecoat schools” because of the distinctive blue uniform originally worn by their pupils which comprised a blue frock coat and yellow stockings with white bands.

Opposite the southern end of Scandrett Street is the final wharf building of the day, Oliver’s Wharf, which was built in 1870 by architects Frederick and Horace Francis to store tea and other cargo. In 1972 it became the first of Wapping’s warehouses to be converted into luxury apartments. Beside the Wharf is another historic riverside pub, the Town of Ramsgate (which also claims to be the oldest Thameside hostelry). It acquired its present name in 1811 in deference to the fishermen of Ramsgate who landed their catches at Wapping Old Stairs. They chose to do so as to avoid the river taxes which had been imposed higher up the river close to Billingsgate Fish Market. At the beginning of the 20th century there were up to 20 pubs on Wapping High Street and now this is the only one remaining. Like seemingly everything else in the area of a certain vintage it has a Grade II listing and, like the Prospect of Whitby, it has a mock gallows.

A short way beyond the pub the Thames Path resumes alongside the river with great views of Tower Bridge and the Shard looking west.

But we’re not following the path eastward we’re taking a more circuitous route to St Katharine’s Dock which involves heading back through the developments in the old London Dock area by way of Knighten Street, Vaughan Way (several times), Sampson Street, Lilley Close, Codling Close, Torrington Place, Smeaton Street, Lime Close, Hermitage Wall and Kennet Street; then working our way back to St Katharine’s Way via Nesham Street, Thomas More Street and Stockholm Way. A hundred metres or so to the west we arrive at St Katharine Docks. These Docks were named after the former hospital of St Katharine’s by the Tower, built in the 12th century, which stood on the site and which was demolished along with 1,250 slum dwellings when construction of the docks began in 1827. The scheme was designed by engineer Thomas Telford (1757 – 1834) and was his only major project in London. To create as much quayside as possible, the docks were designed in the form of two linked basins (East and West), both accessed via an entrance lock from the Thames. Steam engines designed by James Watt and Matthew Boulton kept the water level in the basins about four feet above that of the tidal river. By 1830, the docks had cost over £2 million to build. Although well used, the Docks were not a great commercial success, being unable to accommodate large ships. They were amalgamated with the London Docks in 1864. During WWII all the warehouses around the eastern basin were destroyed by German bombing and the area they had occupied remained derelict until the 1960s. St Katharine Docks completely ceased commercial activity in 1968 and the site was sold to the GLC who leased it to the developers Taylor Woodrow. Most of the original warehouses around the western basin were demolished and replaced by modern commercial buildings in the early 1970s, beginning with the bulky Tower Hotel and followed by the World Trade Centre Building and Commodity Quay. Development around the eastern basin was completed in the 1990s with the docks themselves becoming a marina which is still in regular use today.

Once beyond the docks we’re out onto the stretch of St Katharine’s Way that runs parallel to the eastern side of the Tower of London and this delivers us back to Royal Mint Court which is more or less where we started the day and which we mentioned briefly at the beginning of the previous post. We noted then that this was the site of the Royal Mint from 1809 to 1967. In actual fact, 1967 only saw the start of the transfer of operations to a new facility in Wales. Minting on some scale continued here until 1975 and the Royal Mint only moved out of the main Johnson-Smirke building (designed by James Johnson and completed by Robert Smirke), in the year 2000. At that time the land was still property of the Crown Estate. The subsequent ownership of the site is somewhat serpentine to say the least; but by 2014 it was effectively in the hands of Delancey (a vehicle owned by BVI incorporated funds controlled by billionaire George Soros) and LRC Group (a property investment company founded by Israeli businessman Yehuda Barashi). Four years later Delancey and LRC sold Royal Mint Court to the People’s Republic of China who envisaged building a new fortified embassy here. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that ground has still to be broken on this project. Concerns and objections were raised by local residents and councillors and Historic England (there are remains of a medieval abbey on the site) and in both the Commons and the Lords. At the same time allegations were raised about possible fraud connected with the sale of the freehold from the Crown Estate to Delancey in 2010 and misinformation supplied to the Treasury Select Committee that reviewed the sale. As of August 2023 the PRC had temporarily shelved its plans having failed to meet the deadline for filing an appeal against Tower Hamlets Council’s original rejection of their plans. The PRC would now have to resubmit its planning application, but the Chinese government is looking for assurances that the UK central government will use its powers to get the application approved. Watch this space (see below).

Day 77 Part 1 – Cable Street – The Highway – Wapping Wall

It’s been a lengthy lay-off but the weather was good, the trains were running and the diary was free so there were no longer any excuses. After several excursions round the exclusive environs of Kensington and Chelsea it was time for a change though; so this return to the fray sees us heading out east to sample the contrasting delights of Shadwell and Wapping. Specifically, we’re talking the area between Cable Street and the north bank of the Thames between Shadwell Basin and St Katharine’s Dock adjacent to Tower Bridge. Out with the blue plaques therefore and in with the pubs, both live and demised, and the converted warehouses. Over four hours walking so a lot to cram in, which means this walk will be covered over two posts.

We start out from Tower Hill tube station and head east along Shorter Street which swiftly merges in Royal Mint Street. The Royal Mint was, of course, once situated within the Tower of London. It moved to the site between Royal Mint Street and East Smithfield, which became known as Royal Mint Court, in 1809 and resided here until 1967 when production was transferred to Llantrisant in Wales. We’ll return to Royal Mint Court at the end of today’s post but for now we’ll just note the presence of the Wapping Telephone Exchange at the north side of the site. I hadn’t realised that telephone exchanges still existed in the modern world but it appears that some of them will remain in active use for a few more years at least. That being the case, this building falls outside the scope of the redevelopment plans to be revealed later.

A bit further along the street stands the Artful Dodger pub. This was formerly part of the Ind Coope estate and originally called the Crown & Seven Stars. It dates from 1904 and is Grade II listed. The change of name occurred in 1985. Unpretentious, traditional and friendly according to reviews though one Twitter post from 5 years ago referred to “people selling fags out of carrier bags and a menacing atmosphere” then awarded it 10/10.

After the pub we turn south down Cartwright Street then cut through Crofts Street into Blue Anchor Yard and back up to Royal Mint Street. A few steps further east John Fisher Street runs down to The Highway (aka the A1203) with a brief detour into Flank Street. We then switch back north via Dock Street. On the east side of Dock Street stands the former St Paul’s Church for Seamen which was consecrated in 1847 and lasted as a place of worship until 1990. Since 2002 it has been home to a private nursery. Apparently, the west window which depicts scenes of Jesus in relation to the Sea of Galilee was installed in memory of Captain Sir John Franklin who led the ill-fated expeditionary voyage of the Erebus and the Terror (as realised in the TV series of the latter name). Almost directly opposite the church is the Sir Sydney Smith pub, named after the British Admiral of the Napoleonic Wars who is the only person known to have been present at both the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Waterloo. The pub has been serving thirsty Eastenders since 1809.

At the top of Dock Street, at the western end of Cable Street is the Jack the Ripper Museum. Since I find the whole Jack the Ripper industry pretty unsavoury, I didn’t venture into the museum and I’m not going to dwell on the man himself here. I will however offer a few words about Elizabeth Stride (1843 – 1888), the Ripper’s third victim, who is remembered in a blue plaque (the only one today) on the front of the museum. She was born as Elizabeth Gustafsdotter in rural Sweden and moved to London in her early twenties. In 1869 she married John Thomas Stride, a ship’s carpenter who was 22 years her senior. Within five years the marriage had hit the rocks although they continued to live together on and off until 1881. For the last three years of her life while living in various common lodging houses she was involved with a dock labourer named Michael Kidney. They separated for the final time, following an argument, just days before her murder in Berner Street (now Henriques Street) which is a few hundred yards north of the museum. Due to the tempestuous nature of his relationship with Stride and inconsistencies between her murder and those of the Ripper’s other victims, suspicion originally fell on Kidney. In the end, though, the inquest verdict was “Wilful murder by some person or persons unknown.”

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Just off Ensign Street, which is next right after the museum, is Graces Alley where you will find the famous Wilton’s Music Hall. Wilton’s began life as five individual houses built in the 1690’s. The largest house (1 Graces Alley) became an ale house in the early 18th century, serving the Scandinavian sea captains and wealthy merchants who lived in the area. In 1839 a concert room was built behind the pub and soon after it was was licensed for a short time to legally stage full-length plays under the name of the Albion Saloon. John Wilton bought the business around 1850 and by 1859 had created his ‘Magnificent New Music Hall’ with mirrors, chandeliers, decorative paintwork and the finest heating, lighting and ventilation systems of the day. The entertainment comprised of madrigals and excerpts from opera along with the latest attractions from the West End and circus, ballet and fairground acts. However, Wilton sold up in 1868 and after a serious fire in 1877 the Music Hall closed its doors within four years despite having been faithfully rebuilt. In 1888 the building was bought by the East London Methodist Mission who renamed it ‘The Mahogany Bar Mission’ (reflecting one of its incarnations as an alehouse). The Mission survived until 1956 when the building became a rag sorting warehouse for a few years. Then in the early 1960s the London County Council drew up plans for demolition and redevelopment of the whole area between Cable Street and the Highway including Wilton’s. A campaign was launched to save the building led by theatre historian John Earl who persuaded the poet John Betjeman and the newly formed British Music Hall Society to back the campaign. Eventually, The Greater London Council (successor to the LCC) bought the building and agreed to leave it standing. The building was grade 2* listed in 1971 and a year later John Earl, together with Peter Honri, an actor and music hall historian, founded the first trust to raise funds to buy the lease. A successor charitable trust acquired the freehold in 1986. For the next almost twenty years the building remained in a state of dereliction whilst still playing host to sporadic theatrical productions and video shoots. Only in late 2004 did The Wilton’s Music Hall Trust fully open the building to the public, secure its ownership and present a wider arts programme. Finally, between 2013 and 2015, with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund a full restoration project was undertaken which enabled Wilton’s to became structurally sound for the first time since the renovations of the 19th century. (The interior shots in the slideshow below were taken during an Open House visit in 2014 before the restoration was fully complete).

After a brief diversion into Fletcher Street, we double back onto Ensign Street and follow this down to The Highway before making our way to Swedenborg Gardens via Wellclose Street and Wellclose Square. The gardens are named after Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 – 1772) a Swedish inventor, thinker, scientist and theologian, best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell . Swedenborg travelled widely in western Europe and spent time in London living in this area which was then known as ‘Prince’s Square’. When he died he was buried in the churchyard of the Swedish Church in the square. In the 1960’s the square (by then known as Swedenborg Square) was demolished to make way for the St George’s public housing estate which incorporates the gardens. A hundred years ago this part of the East End was largely populated by Jewish immigrants so there is a certain poignancy in seeing Palestinian flags flying from the lampposts in what is now a predominantly Bangladeshi Muslim.

On the other side of the estate we head back to The Highway on Crowder Street then return to Cable Street via Cannon Street Road. A hundred metres or so further east we arrive at the Grade II listed St George’s Town Hall which is where the inquest into the death of Elizabeth Stride was held. At that time it was still functioning as the Vestry Hall for the Church of St George In The East (more of which later) having been built for that purpose in 1860. In 1900 it was co-opted as Stepney Town Hall. The building ceased to function as the local seat of government when the enlarged London Borough of Tower Hamlets was formed in 1965. It was renovated fairly recently and is now principally used as a wedding venue. On the side of the building is a mural, dating from the 1980’s, which commemorates the so-called Battle of Cable Street. This catch-all term refers to a series of clashes which took place on Sunday 4 October 1936 between the Metropolitan Police, who had been sent to protect a march by members of Oswald Mosley‘s British Union of Fascists, and a consortium of anti-fascist demonstrators, including local trade unionists, communists, anarchists, British Jews, supported in particular by Irish workers, and socialist groups. Sources at the time estimated that the fascist rally attracted around 2,000 to 3,000 participants while the counter-demonstrators numbered anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000. Around 7,000 police officers were in attendance including the whole of the Met’s mounted police division. About 150 demonstrators were arrested, with the majority of them being anti-fascists, although some escaped with the help of other demonstrators. Around 175 people were injured including police, women and children. Following the battle, the Public Order Act 1936, which outlawed the wearing of political uniforms and forced organisers of large meetings and demonstrations to obtain police permission, was put on the statute. The events of that day are generally seen as sounding the beginning of the end for Mosley and his blackshirts though ironically the BUF experienced an brief increase in membership in the immediate aftermath.

We continue along Cable Street as far as Shadwell Tube Station which in its original incarnation, which opened in 1876, was one of the earliest London Underground stations. It was part of the East London Line up until 2007 when that line was carved out of the Underground system and subsumed into the new London Overground network which became operational in 2010.

We make a loop of Dellow Street and Bewley Street and call in on Sage Street before saying farewell to Cable Street via the south-heading King David Street. We make a final foray eastward along Juniper Street and Redcastle Close then take Glamis Road down to The Highway once more. Here we make a brief detour to the west to take a look at St Pauls’ Shadwell Church before continuing down towards the river on Glamis Road. A church has stood on this site since 1656. In 1670 it was renamed after St Paul’s Cathedral. Captain James Cook was a member of the congregation and his eldest son was baptised here in 1763. Also baptised at St Paul’s was Jane Randolph, mother of Thomas Jefferson. The original church was demolished in 1817 and the present building, a Waterloo church designed by John Walters, was erected in 1821. It was Grade II listed in 1950. The church stands in the charismatic and evangelical Anglican traditions so the interior is nothing to write home about.

As I said, we’re heading down towards the river now but before we get there we’ve got Shadwell Basin to take a look around. Shadwell Basin was originally constructed between 1828 and 1832 as part of the eastward expansion of the London docks. The new docks were granted access to the river via entrances at both Shadwell and Wapping. By the 1850s, the London Dock Company had recognised that the entrances at both Wapping and Shadwell were too small to accommodate the newer and larger ships coming into service so the company built a new larger entrance and a new basin at Shadwell. Regardless of this, The London Docks had outlived their usefulness by the early 20th century. New steam-powered ships were built too large to fit into them, so cargoes were unloaded downriver and then ferried by barge to warehouses in Wapping. This uneconomic and inefficient system was one of the main reasons that The London Docks complex closed to shipping in 1969. Purchased by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Shadwell Basin and the western part of the London Docks fell into a derelict state, mostly a large open tract of land and water. The site was acquired in 1981 by the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) and redevelopment of Shadwell Basin took place in 1987 resulting in 169 houses and flats being built around the retained historic dock. Today Shadwell Basin is a maritime square of 2.8 hectares used for recreational purposes (including sailing, canoeing and fishing) and surrounded on three sides by a waterside housing development of four and five storey residential buildings. The development was added to the National Heritage List for England by Historic England as Grade II listed in 2018, part of a listing of postmodern buildings.

  • Shadwell Basin – Maynard Quay
  • Shadwell Entrance
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  • Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
  • Shadwell Basin – view of St Paul’s Church
  • Shadwell Basin north side
  • Bascule Bridge

Once across the Bascule Bridge (see slideshow) Glamis Road morphs into Wapping Wall with Wapping Hydraulic Power Station to the west. This was built in 1890, originally operating using steam but later converted to use electricity. Before the adoption of electricity, hydraulic power was London’s main power system, generating everything from bridges to private households in Kensington and Mayfair. In the heyday of hydraulic power, more than 33 million gallons of water a week were pumped beneath the streets of London. It was transmitted along 186 miles of underground, cast iron piping. The Power Station closed in 1977 and after a certain amount of conversion eventually reopened as an arts centre and restaurant. In 2013 the building was sold to new owners who are still awaiting planning permission for redevelopment. In the meantime, at least part of its upkeep is funded by the that old stand-by, location-hire for film and video. For a view of the interior check out this.

Where Wapping Wall reaches the River Thames lies the Prospect of Whitby Inn, reputedly London’s oldest riverside tavern, dating back to 1520. It was formerly known as The Pelican and later as the Devil’s Tavern, on account of its dubious reputation. All that remains from the building’s earliest period is the 400-year-old stone floor, and the pub features eighteenth century panelling and has a nineteenth century facade. In its early years it was a meeting place for sailors, smugglers and cut-throats and according to the 16th century antiquarian, John Stow, “The usual place for hanging of pirates and sea-rovers, at the low-water mark, and there to remain till three tides had overflowed them”. Charmingly, the pub still displays a noose overhanging the river’s edge. (Although it is widely accepted that the actual execution site was further along the river). Following a fire in the early 19th century, the tavern was rebuilt and renamed The Prospect of Whitby, after a Tyne collier that used to berth next to the pub and transported sea coal from Newcastle upon Tyne to London.

To the west of the PoW are a series of Victorian Wharf buildings, the various warehouses comprising which were built between the 1860’s and 1890’s. The first of these we encounter, Metropolitan Wharf was one of the last to be converted into luxury penthouse apartments and contemporary office space. Its riverside dock is credited as being the “real” execution site used by the Admiralty to hang pirates for over 400 years up until 1830.

The adjacent New Crane Wharf was built in in 1873 then rebuilt 12 years later after a fire. Like its neighbour its buildings are Grade II listed and these were converted for retail and commercial use in 1989-90.

After a quick circuit of Monza Street and Milk Yard we leave Wapping Wall (and the wharves for the time being) behind and head back north up Garnet Street, calling in on Riverside Road and Benson Quay before we reach The Highway once more. And that’s where we’re going to sign off for this post. We’ll be back shortly with the lowdown on the rest of today’s excursion including the story of the “Battle of Wapping”.

To be continued.

Day 76 – King’s Road – Sydney Street – Sloane Avenue – Cadogan Square

For today’s expedition, just like Real Madrid, we’re getting stuck into Chelsea. Specifically, the area north of the King’s Road bounded by Sydney Street to the west and Sloane Street to the east. Away from the main thoroughfares it’s a relatively quiet mainly residential quarter equally comprised of streets of terraced houses (some of the most expensive in London) and large mansion blocks. There are plenty of high-end stores scattered in between and some impressive churches. Not quite such well-known names as last time as far as former residents go but some interesting characters nonetheless.

Once again the starting point is Sloane Square and this time we’re leaving via the north west corner, on Symons Street to be precise. This feeds into Culford Gardens continuing westward then we take a left turn down Blacklands Terrace onto the King’s Road. John Sandoe opened his eponymous bookshop here in 1957 with Félicité Gwynne, sister of the cookery writer Elizabeth David (who we shall meet again later).

A sequence of Lincoln Street, Coulson Street, Anderson Street and Tryon Street bring us to the eastern end of Elystan Place which on a western trajectory merges into Cale Street. The next run of streets occupy the space between that duality and the King’s Road. After Markham Street we have to backtrack along the King’s Road to visit Bywater Street and Markham Square. The latter is a prime example of the terraced housing in this part of town, immaculately maintained and with brightly painted exteriors.

No.47 Markham Square was the one-time residence of Dame Maud McCarthy (1858 – 1949), who was matron-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders during WW1. The square, unsurprisingly, also boasts a well-planted private garden.

The branch of Pizza Express at 152 King’s Road occupies the building known as The Pheasantry, which got its name from the business of one Samuel Baker who developed new breeds of oriental pheasants here in the mid-19th century. The Grecian-inspired architectural stylings, including caryatids and quadringa, were added in 1881 by the artist and interior decorator Amédée Joubert. From 1916, part of the building was used for a ballet academy run by the dance teacher Serafina Astafieva (1876–1934), great niece of Leo Tolstoy. Then in 1932, the basement became a bohemian restaurant and drinking club patronised by actors and artists such as Augustus John, Dylan Thomas, Humphrey Bogart, and Francis Bacon. The drinking club closed in 1966 after the death of the owner Mario Cazzini, and the building was converted into apartments and the basement into a nightclub. The nightclub went on to host early gigs by Lou Reed, Queen and Hawkwind. The 1972 gig by Queen, which had been intended as a showcase for the band, did not go well. One attendee remembered that the band were “unpolished” and since the venue was mainly a disco, “once the disco had stopped and Queen went on everyone went to the bar.” (Oh, happy days). The Pheasantry name lives on under Pizza Express in the form of a basement jazz and cabaret venue.

To the west of The Pheasantry we turn north on Jubilee Place then return via Godfrey Street and Burnstall Street. The latter was once home to actress Diana Dors (1931 – 1984). Britain’s answer to the American “blonde bombshells” of the 1950’s was born in Swindon as Diana Mary Fluck. She made her screen debut in the British noir The Shop at Sly Corner (1947) in a walk-on role that developed into a speaking part. During the signing of contracts she changed her contractual surname to Dors, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother, later commenting “They asked me to change my name. I suppose they were afraid that if my real name, Diana Fluck, was in lights and one of the lights blew …”. Diana had an extremely varied career though she was rarely offered quality roles in films and by the 1970’s was restricted to a series of abysmal sex comedies and TV work. Her most acclaimed role was probably playing a Ruth Ellis-style character in 1956’s Yield To The Night. Dors had supposedly been close friends with Ellis, who was the last woman to be hanged in Britain, the year before the film was released. To say that Dors’ personal life was colourful doesn’t come close to covering it. At 10 Burnsall Street in the 1960s’ she hosted lavish “adult” parties that lasted until dawn, with guests including the Kray Twins, press coverage of which provoked the Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher to denounce Dors as a “wayward hussy” and her home as a “den of scandal”.

We make our way back up to Cale Street and then down to the King’s Road for the final time today taking in Danube Street, Astell Street, St Luke’s Street, Britten Street and Chelsea Manor Street (with a nod to Hemus Place). Britten Street once hosted the Anchor Brewery, which shut down in 1907, the site is now occupied by an office block called Anchor House but the brewery’s original arch (and anchor) remain in situ.

After that final incursion onto King’s Road we head north up Sydney Street and soon find ourselves in the splendid gardens attached to the imposing St Luke’s Church. St Luke’s, which was consecrated in 1824 and bears a striking resemblance to King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, is regarded as one of the first Neo-Gothic churches to be built in London. The nave, at 60ft in height, is the tallest of any parish church in the capital and the tower reaches a height of 142 feet. The architect was James Savage, one of the foremost authorities on medieval architecture of his time. Charles Dickens was married here on 2nd April 1836 to Catherine Hogarth, eldest daughter of George, who was editor of ‘The Evening Chronicle’ in which Dickens’ Sketches by Boz appeared. The large burial ground which surrounded the church was converted into a public garden in 1881, the gravestones being placed to form a boundary wall.

After visiting the church we continue north on Sydney Street up to Fulham Road then immediately make a loop down Bury Walk and up Pond Place. After heading east about a hundred metres on Fulham Road we turn right onto Elystan Street then right onto Ixworth Place to complete a circuit round the Samuel Lewis Trust Dwellings. Samuel Lewis was born in Birmingham in 1837. He began work at 13 and in due course became a salesman of steel pens, then opened a jeweller’s shop, and finally entered the money-lending business, becoming the go-to money-lender for most of Britain’s aristocracy. When he died, in London in 1901, he left an endowment of £670,000 to set up a charitable trust to provide housing for the poor, a huge sum at the time and one that equates to £30 million at today’s values. The estate in Chelsea was the second of eight to be built between 1`910 and the start of WW2.

We circle back to Elystan Street via Marlborough Street then turn south past one of many parades of tastefully presented shops.

If you look closely you’ll see that the middle emporium is called Chelsea Green Shoe Repairs. In all innocence I initially took this to be a pitch for ecological credibility; however when I reached to the nexus of Cale Street and Elystan Place a short distance further south I realised that there is an actual Chelsea Green. Though, to put it kindly, that nomenclature is somewhat stretching a point; my back garden is bigger (and greener) and that’s not saying much.

Forking left off of Elystan Place into Sprimont Place there is more distinctive architecture in the form of The Gateways, a 1934 housing development designed by Wills and Kaula that now has a Grade II Listing.

Sprimont Place emerges onto Sloane Avenue, on the east side of which stand two very different high rise residential buildings though both date from the 1930’s and were designed by the same architect, George Kay Green (1877 – 1939). The Art Deco eleven-storey Sloane Avenue Mansions was completed first, in 1933. Neighbouring Nell Gwynn House was finished four years later and has a Cubist design which utilises Egyptian, Aztec, and Mayan patterns and decoration. From the outset, each apartment had built-in central heating and there was a restaurant in the basement, a hairdressing salon, and a bar in the lobby. Above the main entrance, at the level of the 2nd floor, is a statue of Nell Gwynn, with a Cavalier King Charles spaniel at her feet. This is reputedly the only statue of any Royal mistress to be found in London.

We return to Elystan Street down Whitehead’s Grove then back to Sloane Avenue via Petyward. On the intersection of Makin Street with Sloane Avenue there is a combined Kwik-Fit and 24-hour petrol station which at first sight appears totally incongruous in this context. But then you realise that all those Chelsea tractors have to have somewhere to fuel up.

Rounding the garage we proceed north up Lucan Place to the point at which Fulham Road turns into Brompton Road and where stands Michelin House, one of the most distinctive and iconic buildings in the whole of the capital. Michelin House was constructed as the first permanent UK headquarters and tyre depot for the Michelin Tyre Company Ltd, opening for business in January 1911. The building was designed in an Art Nouveau style by one of Michelin’s employees, François Espinasse. It has three large stained-glass windows based on Michelin advertisements of the time, all featuring the Michelin Man aka “Bibendum” and around the front of the original building at street level there are a number of decorative tiles showing famous racing cars of the time that used Michelin tyres. When Michelin moved out of the building in 1985, it was purchased by publisher Paul Hamlyn and the restaurateur/retailer Sir Terence Conran who embarked on a major redevelopment that included the restoration of some of the original features. The new development, which opened in 1987, also featured offices for Hamlyn’s company Octopus Publishing, as well as Conran’s Bibendum Restaurant & Oyster Bar, and a Conran Shop. The dining experience is nowadays run by Chef Claude Bosi and the prices are not for the fainthearted.

From the east side of Bibendum we follow Sloane Avenue back south almost all the way to the King’s Road. Instead we turn east onto Bray Place then take Blacklands Terrace up to Draycott Place, passing the Spanish Consulate as we resume eastward.

St Mary’s Church on the corner of Drayton Terrace and Cadogan Street looks rather humdrum in comparison with St Luke’s but, as you would expect from a Roman Catholic house of worship, the glories are all interior. The original St Mary’s was built close to the present site in 1812 and was one of the first Catholic chapels in the country since the Reformation. The foundation stone of the present church was laid in 1877. It was designed by John Francis Bentley (1839-1902), an English church architect chiefly known for Westminster Cathedral. For many years the church served the spiritual needs of the Roman Catholic residents of the Royal Chelsea Hospital. One of the special features of the interior is the hanging rood which has a figure of Christ, robed and crowned and the symbols of the four Evangelists.

From the church we head east on Cadogan Street into Cadogan Gardens then take a right into the southernmost section of Pavilion Road which is the area’s home of al- fresco dining and is one of the few places I’ve seen so far making any effort to prepare for the forthcoming Coronation.

Having completed the full circuit of Cadogan (private of course) Gardens we return to Draycott Place and proceed west to the southern end of Draycott Avenue.

Flat 14, Avenue Court on Draycott Avenue was home between 1949 and 1955 to the New Zealand-born reconstructive surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe (1900 – 1960) who is feted for his work with seriously burned aircrew of the RAF during WW2. The painting below was done by artist Anna Zinkeisen in 1944 and depicts McIndoe operating at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead.

We wend our way northward to the east of Draycott Avenue taking in Rawlings Street, Rosemoor Street, Denyer Street to reach today’s pub of the day, The Admiral Codrington on Mossop Street. The pub is named after Sir Edward Codrington (1770 – 1851) who served in the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Navarino (Greek war of independence). As a consequence of the ships under his command destroying the Turkish and Egyptian fleets in the latter engagement, Codrington is a popular figure in Greece. His reputation in this country however is tarnished by the fact that he and his siblings inherited a slave plantation in Antigua from their uncle. The other two pubs named after him, in Coventry and south-east London, have both closed and I suspect, if this remains open, it may need to do so under a different name in future. In any event I enjoyed my Chicken Milanese sandwich and half a Madri.

The pub faces onto an empty 4 hectare lot that was formerly the site of the John Lewis Clearing Depot which was built in the 1930’s. John Lewis closed the depot in 2010 and acquired permission to redevelop the site a year later, however, according to the bar staff, the building was only demolished about 18 months ago. It is reported that Mike Ashley (Sports Direct) was behind two companies that acquired the site from John Lewis for £200m in 2015. There is little sign of any construction work going on at the moment. Anyway, after leaving the pub we swing round Ives Street and drop onto Donne Place where maverick inventor Sir Clive Sinclair (1940 – 2021) lived at no.32 from 1982 to 1987, a period that covered both the heyday of the ZX Spectrum home computer and the unfortunate failure of the Sinclair C5 electric vehicle.

From Donne Place we visit Bulls Gardens and Richard’s Place on the way to Milner Street. We then traverse between Milner Street and Walton Street on First Street, Hasker Street and Ovington Street. No.10 Milner Street, which is also known as Stanley House, was built in 1855 in an Italianate style built by the Chelsea speculator John Todd for his own occupation. From 1945 it was home to the interior designer Michael Inchbald and his wife Jacqueline, who founded the Inchbald School of Design in the basement in 1960. The house was Grade-II listed in 1969, an honour it shares with the other Stanley House in the area, at 550 King’s Road (which is for another day).

No launderette of the day this time (unsurprisingly) so we’ll have to make to do with the Elite Dry Cleaners at the top of Ovington Street. Come on you Reds !

Round the corner on Walton Street, the building at No. 1a started life as a school then became a magistrate’s court and finally a private mansion. In 2018 it was sold for over £50m following the death of the previous owner Canadian cable TV mogul David Graham, who had infuriated neighbours by submitting plans to triple its size by digging down 50ft to create a four-storey basement with 45ft pool, hot tub, sauna, massage room, ballroom, covered courtyards, staff accommodation, parking and car lift. The proposal was thrown out by Kensington and Chelsea council.

After looking in on Lennox Gardens Mews we navigate the loop that is Lennox Gardens and arrive at St Columba’s Presbyterian Church on Pont Street. The Church of Scotland originally built a kirk here in 1884 but that was hit by a German incendiary bomb in May 1941 and burnt to the ground. It took 14 years before the rebuilt church that we see today was open for worship. As you might expect the interior of the church is even more spartan than that of your typical C&E.

  • Lennox Gardens

From Pont Street we make a tour of Cadogan Square, Clabon Mews and the northern section of Pavilion Road before returning to Milner Street. At 72 Cadogan Square there is a blue plaque commemorating the war correspondent and writer , Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998). Gellhorn met Ernest Hemingway during a 1936 Christmas family trip to Key West, Florida. Gellhorn had been hired to report for Collier’s Weekly magazine on the Spanish Civil War, and the pair decided to travel to Europe together. They celebrated Christmas of 1937 in Barcelona then, moving on to Germany, she reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler. In the spring of 1938, months before the Munich Agreement, she was in Czechoslovakia. After the outbreak of World War II, she described these events in the 1940 novel A Stricken Field. The same year she married Hemingway. Subsequently, Gellhorn reported on the war from Finland, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, and England. In June 1944, she applied to the British government for press accreditation to report on the Normandy landings; her application, like those of all female journalists, was denied. So, posing as a nurse she got herself onto a hospital ship where she promptly locked herself in a bathroom. Consequently, she was the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day, becoming a stretcher-bearer for the wounded. A year later she and Hemingway divorced.

Final church of the day is St Simon Zelotes on the corner of Milner Street and Moore Street. This was designed by Joseph Peacock in the High Victorian tradition and completed in 1851. The church is named for Simon the Zealot, one of the less well-known of Jesus’s apostles. Very little of substance seems to have been recorded about Simon. He is variously reported as having been martyred by either crucifixion or being sawn in half but other accounts have him dying peacefully in his sleep. Despite this obscurity he is regarded as a saint by nearly all the major Christian faiths.

Final street of the day is Halsey Street, which also hosts a final blue plaque. I mentioned Elizabeth David (1913 – 1992) right and the start of this post and mentioned that we’d be returning to her later. Well, here she is at no. 24 where she lived and worked from 1947 until her death. Before she settled down to become one of the most influential cookery writers of the 20th century David had an eventful personal life. In the 1930s she studied art in Paris, became an actress, and ran off with a married man with whom she sailed in a small boat to Italy, where their boat was confiscated. They reached Greece, where they were nearly trapped by the German invasion in 1941, but escaped to Egypt, where they parted. She then worked for the British government, running a library in Cairo. After returning to England, she published her first cookery book, A Book of Mediterranean Food, in 1950 when rationing was still in force and many of the ingredients she championed were unavailable. Nonetheless, the book was a success and she went on to write seven more over the next three and a half decades becoming a major influence on British cooking, both domestic and professional. 

Day 75 – King’s Road – Flood Street – Royal Hospital Chelsea

Continuing where we left off last time, today’s journey takes us west and south from Sloane Square into the area tucked in between the King’s Road and the Chelsea Embankment. A good proportion of this is taken up by the Royal Hospital Chelsea and its grounds, a visit to which concludes this outing. Before then we’ve got plenty else to cover including Chelsea Old Town Hall, Chelsea Physic Garden and a wealth of literary connections.

We start out from Sloane Square tube station again and head westward through the square and onto King’s Road. King’s Road derives its name from its function as a private road used by King Charles II to travel to Kew. It remained a private royal road until 1830. In the 1960’s it became synonymous with Mod culture and Swinging London and although its glory days are behind it now it remains one of the capital’s most fashionable shopping areas.

Immediately to the south is Duke of York Square, a retail quarter developed by Cadogan Estates after purchasing the site from the MOD in 1998. It includes one of the largest European stores of fashion retailer, Zara amongst its 33 outlets.

Beyond the square, the building known as the Duke of York’s Headquarters is now home to the Saatchi Gallery. The building was completed in 1801 to the designs of John Sanders, who also designed the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. It was originally called the Royal Military Asylum and was a school for the children of soldiers’ widows. In 1892 it was renamed the Duke of York’s Royal Military School. In 1909, the school moved to new premises in Dover, and the Asylum building was taken over by the Territorial Army and renamed the Duke of York’s Barracks. The Duke of York in question being Frederick, second son of George III, the so-called “Grand Old Duke of York” and Asylum used in its archaic sense of “sanctuary or refuge”. Saatchi moved his gallery here in 2008 having leased the building from Cadogan Estates. It’s probably the only major Art Gallery in London I’ve never visited, having no wish to patronise a vanity project of Charles Saatchi, a man who will have one or two things to answer for come judgement day. And as it’s currently between exhibitions I have an excuse for not rectifying the omission.

Having returned to King’s Road we take the next left, Cheltenham Terrace which runs down to Leonard’s Terrace and then head back up on Walpole Street. Next up on the south side is the grand and leafy Royal Avenue, an open-ended square with a clear view of Chelsea Hospital in the distance. No.29 was once home to the American theatre and film director Joseph Losey (1909 – 1984) who relocated to the UK in 1953 having been blacklisted by Hollywood. Unlike many of the victims of the McCarthyism, Losey had actually been a member of the American Communist Party. His number was up once RKO pictures, where he has under contract, was bought by Howard Hughes. Once in the UK, Losey worked on everything from crime features to melodrama to horror before achieving major critical and commercial success with a trio of films scripted by Harold Pinter, The Servant (1963), Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971). He died here in 1984, four weeks after completing his final film.

Back on St Leonard’s Terrace at no.18 is a Blue Plaque commemorating the first of the literary icons we’ll be encountering today, Abraham “Bram” Stoker (1847 – 1912). Stoker’s fame largely rests upon his authorship of the classic gothic horror tale Dracula which was published in 1897. I would imagine, like me, you’d be hard pushed to name any of his other novels. Born in Dublin, Stoker moved to London following his marriage in 1878 and for 27 years worked as business manager of the Lyceum Theatre which was in the charge of the most famous actor of the day, Henry Irving. The precise sources of inspiration for Dracula are still subject to debate but prior to writing the novel he had spent several years researching Eastern European folklore and mythology though he never actually visited that part of the world.

Returning to the King’s Road and continuing west we arrive at Wellington Square which despite an absence of plaques also has a number of literary ghosts. A. A. Milne, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, lived there in the early 1900s as well as the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley in the 1920s. It is also considered to be the location Ian Fleming had in mind when he described his creation, James Bond, as living “in a ground floor flat in a square lined with plane trees in Chelsea off the King’s Road”.

Next southward turning is Smith Street with yet another figure honoured at no.50. P. L. Travers (1899-1996) lived here for seventeen years and the house inspired the depiction of the Banks’s family home in the Disney film of her most famous creation, Mary Poppins. Travers was born as Helen Lyndon Goff in Queensland, Australia. She took the stage name Pamela Travers when she started an acting career in her late teens. After a few years, she gave up acting for journalism and moved to England in 1924. Ten years later she wrote Mary Poppins, the first in a series of eight books featuring the eponymous “supernanny”; the last of which she wrote in 1988 at the age of 1989. Under financial duress, Travers eventually ceded to years of pressure and sold the film rights to Disney. She famously disapproved of the musical which was released in 1964, particularly the animated sequences. The relationship between Travers and Walt Disney was itself given a cinematic treatment in 2013’s Saving Mr Banks.

From Smith Street we cut along Smith Terrace to Radnor Walk and head back to King’s Road again. Just around the corner is the Chelsea Potter Pub which dates from 1842 and was reputedly a regular haunt of Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones in the late sixties. It has added resonance since the appointment of Graham Potter as manager of Chelsea F.C of course, and the beard gives the connection added flavour. Though by the time this is published…

Beyond the pub we turn left again down Shawfield Street then west along Redesdale Street emerging on Flood Street opposite the Hall of Remembrance which is attached to Christ Church (which we will come to in due course).

From here we head north back to the King’s Road for just about the final time today. I took the photo below left on account of the splendid tiling. Today this building houses an antique centre but back in the sixties it was home to the Top Gear fashion boutique.

On the other side of the northern end of Flood Street is the Chelsea Methodist Church, the only church with an entrance on King’s Road. The original 1903 building was badly damaged in a 1941 bombing raid; the present church formed part of a 1983 redevelopment and was opened by Cardinal Hume the following year.

Almost the last stop on King’s Road is Chelsea Old Town Hall which it was a real treat to visit. So many of these old municipal buildings are inaccessible to the public these days. Surprisingly, there seems to be a dearth of information about the buildings despite their Grade II listed status. The oldest part of the complex is the Vestry Hall to the rear which was designed by J.M Brydon in 1886. The north elevations that front onto King’s Road are part of the 1906-08 extension by Leonard Stokes constructed in a neo-classical style. The building ceased to be a seat of local government in 1965 when the boroughs of Chelsea and Kensington merged. The Brydon building houses the Kensington and Chelsea Register Office which has hosted the weddings of, amongst others, Marc Bolan and June Child (1970), Judy Garland and Mickey Deans (1969), Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (1968) and James Joyce and Nora Barnacle (1933). One section of the Stokes building is taken up by Chelsea Library. Many of the other rooms are hired out for functions and events, including the splendid main hall with its original Victorian wall paintings depicting representations of Art, Science, History and Literature. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to discover who was responsible for creating these. Even if you don’t need to (and are qualified to do so) it’s also worth visiting the Gents’ toilet (see picture).

Just beyond the Town Hall is a building which dates back to 1722 and was originally the Six Bells pub (as evidenced by the eponymous sign that remains on the outside) which backed on to the bowling green of the local bowls club. Both pub and bowling green have now been consumed by the Ivy Chelsea restaurant which has gotten itself a little too excited about the upcoming Valentine’s Day.

We finally say goodbye (for now) to the King’s Road via Oakley Street then veer left down Margaretta Terrace to reach Phene Street which runs east into Oakley Gardens. At no.33 Oakley Gardens there’s another literary commemoration, somewhat more obscure this time. George Gissing (1857 – 1903) wrote 23 novels in all the most highly regarded of which are Demos, New Grub Street and The Odd Women. Gissing’s relationships with women don’t seem to bear much scrutiny. He parted from his first wife Nell on account of her chronic ill-health then, subsequent to her death in 1888, he married Edith who he also separated from, nine years later, blaming her uncontrolled violent rages. Five years further on, Edith was certified insane and confined to an asylum. Before then, Gissing had met Gabrielle Fleury, a Frenchwoman with whom he lived until his death. Gabrielle eventually outlived him by fifty years.

Exiting Oakley Gardens onto Chelsea Manor Street we return northward past the NHS Day Clinic in what was formerly the Violet Melchett Infant Welfare Centre named after Violet Mond, Baroness Melchett (1867 – 1945) and financed by her husband, politician and businessman, Sir Alfred Mond.

Further up the street we make a quick detour onto Chelsea Manor Gardens for a view of the facade of the Vestry Hall before turning back south.

Flood Walk takes us back to Flood Street and after dropping in on Alpha Place we head east on Redburn Street. Unfortunately there’s no time to take in a pub of the day today as there a fair number of fine looking hostelries in the area such as The Cooper’s Arms on the corner of Flood Street and Redburn Street.

Redburn Street leads into Tedworth Gardens and the adjacent Tedworth Square. Our next literary icon was a one-time resident at no.23 in the latter. Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens described in his New York Times obituary as “the greatest humorist the United States has produced” and by William Faulkner as “the father of American literature”. Twain is best known, of course, for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) which he wrote at his family home in Hartford, Connecticut. The two years he spent in England came after the conclusion of a year long around-the-world lecture tour which he undertook in 1895 as a means to pay off creditors, having lost most of the money earned through his writing by unsuccessfully investing in new inventions and technology, particularly the Paige typesetting machine. 

Next we make our way back west to the actual Christ Church following Ralston Street, Tite Street, Christchurch Street, Christchurch Terrace and Caversham Street. The church was consecrated in 1839 having been built to a design by Edward Blore (1789-1879). It was intended as a church for the many servants and tradesmen who worked in and for the grand houses of Belgravia and as such was designed to accommodate the maximum number of people at minimum cost. The construction cost was just over £4,000, paid for by the Hydman Trust, the Hydman family having originally made their money from sugar plantations in the West Indies. Philanthropy really does begin at home.  In 1843, a new school was built on land donated by Lord Cadogan, directly opposite the church. The school still exists as a Church of England Primary School.

From the church we make a full circuit of St Loo Avenue, Cheyne Gardens, Cheyne Walk and the southernmost section of Flood Street. The literary connections continue unabated with a blue plaque commemoration the death of novelist George Eliot (1819 – 1880) at no.4 Cheyne Walk. George Eliot was the pen name employed by Mary Ann Evans, born the third child of a West Midlands’ mill owner and his wife. Of the seven novels she wrote, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861) and Middlemarch (1871–72) are probably the most celebrated (or at least the most studied by English Lit. undergraduates).  Following the success of her first complete novel, Adam Bede, public curiosity as to the author’s identity and the emergence of a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins, led Mary Ann to acknowledge that she stood behind the pseudonym George Eliot. She continue to publish her novels under the pen name nonetheless. From 1854 to 1878 Mary Ann lived with the philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes (1817–78). Although Mary considered that she and Lewes were effectively husband and wife, he was in fact already married to Agnes Jervis, although in an “open relationship”. In addition to the three children they had together, Agnes also had four children by Thornton Leigh Hunt, the first editor of the Daily Telegraph. It was her association with Lewes, in addition to her denial of the Christian faith, that led to her burial in Highgate Cemetery rather than Westminster Abbey.

English novelist George Eliot (1819 – 1880), pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, poses for a photograph.

No.72 Flood Street, The Rossetti Studios, is a Grade II listed building containing artist studios which was built in the Queen Anne Revival style in 1894 to a design of Edward Holland. The studios were named after pre-raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose own studio was based nearby.

After returning to Christ Church we head down Christchurch Street to Royal Hospital Road for a visit to Chelsea Physic Garden. The garden occupies four acres beside the Thames and was established in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries as a base for conducting plant finding expeditions in surrounding areas and teaching their apprentices to identify plants, both those that might cure and those that might kill. The river access allowed plants arriving from around the world to be introduced to the British Isles via the Garden and its international reputation was quickly established through a global seed exchange scheme, known as Index Seminum, which it initiated in the 1700s and continues to this day. The Garden’s unique microclimate and location has facilitated the cultivation of plants not typically found outside in the UK. Early February is obviously not the best time to visit but there was still plenty of green stuff on show.

Beyond the garden we turn right onto Swan Walk which runs down to Chelsea Embankment. Round the corner at no.9 Chelsea Embankment is a rare non-literary related blue plaque. This one is for George Robinson, Marquess of Ripon (1827 – 1909), politician and Viceroy of India. Robinson was actually born at 10 Downing Street, the second son of F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich who was Prime Minister at the time (though his premiership only lasted 144 days; I studied that period of history at A level and have no recollection of his tenure. Still, compared with Liz Truss it’s quite a stellar effort). Robinson junior’s political career was an extensive one; he served as a member of every Liberal cabinet between 1861 and 1908. In between administrations he managed to fit in a four year stint as Viceroy of India (1880 -84) during which time he did at least attempt to get progressive legislation to improve the rights of native Indians passed.

Turning off the Embankment onto Tite Street we immediately double back along Dilke Street for a short glimpse of the ill-named Paradise Walk. My partner, artist Susan Eyre, featured this in an ongoing art project based around unlikely places which include Paradise in their name.

We return to Tite Street to take us back to Royal Hospital Road. The imposing red brick terrace on the west side of the street is home to three more blue plaques more or less adjacent to each other. At no. 38 we have Lord Hayden-Guest (1877 – 1960), author, journalist, Labour politician and physician; at no.34 Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) dramatist and celebrated wit; and at no.30 composer, Philip Arnold Heseltine a.k.a Peter Warlock (1894 – 1930). We’ve had an overload of blue plaques today so just a few words about each of these three. Haden-Guest was once described by Bertrand Russell as “a theosophist with a fiery temper and a considerable libido”. Oscar Wilde wrote both The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest while living at no.34 and it was from here he left to serve his jail term for ‘gross indecency’ in 1895. Peter Warlock died here from coal gas poisoning; the inquest returning an open verdict. Previous to this he had penned the following words as his own epitaph :

Here lies Warlock the composer
        Who lived next door to Munn the grocer.
    He died of drink and copulation,
        A sad discredit to the nation.

We cross over Royal Hospital Road and loop round the two sections of Ormonde Gate and we arrive at the West Road entrance to Royal Hospital Chelsea ready for our tour conducted by a Chelsea Pensioner. Guide, John, definitely looks the part with his grey whiskers and multi-bemedalled red tunic. He also knows his stuff as he regales us with facts and stories for at least half an hour longer than the scheduled 90 minutes. To deal with the history first: in 1681 Charles II issued a royal warrant for the building of the Hospital to provide for elderly and injured soldiers, Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to design and erect the building and Sir Stephen Fox was charged with securing the necessary funds.  In 1692 work was finally completed and the first batch of Chelsea Pensioners, 476 in total, were in residence by March of that year. By the time of completion, Charles II had died (in 1685) and his successor James II had been deposed in “the glorious revolution” of 1688. This is why the Latin inscription on the exterior of the main building, composed by Wren himself, translates as ‘For the succour and relief of men broken by age and war, started by Charles II, extended by James II and completed by William and Mary, King and Queen 1692’.

Upgrades to the accommodation, the ‘berths’ – were enlarged in 1954-55 and again in 1991 to resize them from 6ft square to 9ft square, mean that the modern day capacity is only 300 pensioners. Due to an annual death rate of around 10% there are always slightly fewer than that; currently 278 of which 16 are women. To be eligible for admission as a Chelsea Pensioner you must be a former non-commissioned officer or soldier of the British Army who is over 66 years of age, “unencumbered by spouse” and “of good character”.

Since 1913 the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show has been held annually on the South Grounds, between Figure Court and the Chelsea Embankment.

  • West Road entrance
  • College Court
  • College Court
  • Figure Court
  • The Chapel
  • The Great Hall
  • Great Hall side panels commemorating historic engagements of the British Army
  • The Great Hall
  • Table on which Duke of Wellington’s coffin lay in state
  • Figure court
  • Gilded statue of Charles II by Grinling Gibbons

Tour over, we leave the RCH via Light Horse Court and the East Road entrance. Crossing Royal Hospital Road, we make a circuit of Franklin’s Row, Turks Row and Sloane Court West emerging back on Royal Hospital Road opposite the Margaret Thatcher Infirmary, a state of the art care home and hospice for Chelsea Pensioners, designed by Sir Quinlan Terry and opened in 2009.

From here it only remains to work our way back to Sloane Square tube station via Sloan Court East, Lower Sloane Street and Sloane Gardens.

Day 74 – Sloane Square – Chelsea Bridge Road – Pimlico Road

This trip sees us returning to south-west London, specifically the area to the north, south and east of Sloane Square which is a nexus of Chelsea, Belgravia and Pimlico. Basically, about as swanky as it gets. It’s long been a desirable area for the well-off and well-known so there were more blue plaques on this jaunt than you can shake a yappy little handbag dog at. But we’ve also got theatrical history, an iconic department store, a clutch of churches, a few embassies and one of the largest building sites in the capital to offer you. It’s a bit of an epic tbh.

Right next door to today’s starting point, Sloane Square tube station, is the Royal Court Theatre. This red and moulded brick building with a stone facade in free Italianate style was designed by Walter Emden and Bertie Crewe and opened in 1888 as the New Court Theatre. Previously there had been a theatre on the opposite, west side of Sloane Square, a converted non-conformist chapel variously known as the New Chelsea Theatre, the Belgravia Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre between 1870 and 1887. By 1900 the “Royal” monicker had been reapplied to the new theatre and in the following few decades it played host to several of George Bernard Shaw’s plays. It ceased to be used as a theatre in 1932 and became a cinema from 1935 to 1940, until World War II bomb damage closed it. It reopened in 1952 and four years after that was acquired by The English Stage Company whose aim was to produce plays by young and experimental dramatists and “the best contemporary plays from abroad”. This intent was manifested from the outset with the premiere of John Osborne’s “Look Back In Anger” as the third production. Since then, the RCT has “courted” controversy on many occasions and played a key part in bringing about the abolition of theatre censorship laws in the 1960’s. Writers such as Caryl Churchill, Jez Butterworth and Sarah Kane have had multiple works given their first run here and “The Rocky Horror Show” debuted here in 1973. The building was Grade II listed in 1972.

1956 Production of Look Back In Anger

Sloane Square forms a boundary between the two largest aristocratic estates in London, the Grosvenor Estate and the Cadogan. Named after Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), an Anglo-Irish doctor who, jointly with his appointed trustees, owned the land at the time the square was laid out in 1771. In the 1980’s, of course, it became synonymous with the rise of yuppiedom and the Peter York-coined “Sloane Rangers”. These days the clientele for the Ralph Lauren and Tiffany stores is somewhat different I would imagine though you still have to watch out for marauding Range Rovers and where you step on the pavements.

On the west side of the square, the Peter Jones department store still caters to its traditional demographic however. The shop is named after Peter Rees Jones (1842–1905), the son of a Carmarthenshire hat manufacturer, who opened a store here in 1877 on a 999-year lease from the Cadogan estate at £6,000 per year, the terms of which have never been increased (apparently). After Jones’ death in 1905 the store was bought by a certain John Lewis, who already owned a thriving business on Oxford Street. The present building was built between 1932 and 1936 to designs by William Crabtree of the firm of Slater, Crabtree and Moberly and is the first modern-movement use of the glass curtain wall in Britain. It is a Grade II* listed building. Despite being one of the flagship stores of the John Lewis partnership it has always retained the Peter Jones name.

  • Top floor restaurant
  • View from 5th floor looking west
  • view from 5th floor looking east
  • View of Sloane Square north side
  • Elves !!! we haven’t even got through Halloween yet
  • Only c.60 shopping days to Christmas

Just off the square, on Sloane Street, stands Holy Trinity Church which, like the theatre, was constructed in 1888. The architect was John Dando Sedding (1838-1891) who was appointed by the 5th Earl Cadogan and his wife Beatrix. The church is notable for its impressive stain glass windows, chief amongst which is the great east window designed by Edward Burne-Jones (1833 – 1898) and installed by Morris and Company (which was founded by William Morris and members of the pre-Raphaelite movement including Burne-Jones). During WW2 the church was hit by several incendiary bombs causing considerable structural damage. Post-war there was considerable pressure to demolish rather than restore the building, and it was only saved from this threat by a campaign mounted by the Victorian Society and Sir John Betjeman who described the church as the Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement. I should also note that at the time of visiting there was an extensive selection of Charity Christmas cards for sale and the two ladies on the till were very amiable.

It’s about time we got into some actual streets, so let’s kick that off by exiting the square northwards up Sedding Street. On the left we pass the Grade II listed Neo-Georgian Sloan Telephone Exchange which dates from 1924 and was designed by John H. Markham for HM Office of Works. These days it’s used for offices.

At the apex with Sloane Terrace stands the Cadogan Hall. This started life in 1907 as a new Christian Science Church designed by Robert Fellowes Chisholm, hosting up to 1400 worshippers. However, after planning permission for renovations was refused in 1996, the congregation moved on. The Hall was sold but fell into disuse until it was acquired by the Cadogan Estate in 2000 and four years later opened as a concert hall and the permanent base of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Most of the concerts put on here are classical in nature but they also host (mainly) vintage pop and rock acts and jazz performers. In fact, I was due to attend a concert by the now 85-year old Ron Carter (one time bassist with the Miles Davis Quartet) and his current band in a couple of weeks’ time as part of the London Jazz Festival but sadly it’s been postponed until next year.

We turn left down to Sloane Street then turn briefly north before checking out the rear of the Hall on Wilbraham Place. Not an essential photo this next one but I do like these gates.

Returning to Sloane Street again via D’Oyley Street and Ellis Street we come across the first of today’s many blue plaques at no. 95, this one commemorating the English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist, Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926). Gertrude spent much of her life travelling around and mapping the Middle East and is principally known for her involvement in the establishment of territorial boundaries in the region following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire post-WW1. She was (alongside T.E Lawrence) a strong advocate for independent Arab states and was also opposed to the Balfour Declaration which determined the future of Palestine. Towards the end of her life she settled in her beloved Baghdad where she was President of the National Library and founded the Iraq Museum as a permanent home for the country’s rich collection of antiquities. I can thoroughly recommend the 2016 documentary about Bell’s life, Letters from Baghdad, in which quotations from her letters are read by Tilda Swinton. 

Winston Churchill Gertrude Bell T.E Lawrence

On reaching Pont Street we turn east and then south again down Cadogan Place where the houses, which distinguish themselves from other stuccoed terraces in the area by having mini gazebos on their first floor balconies, face the extensive eponymous private communal gardens. Both flats and terraced houses here are popular with foreign buyers, the average price of the former being upward of £3m and the latter £11m. There were some extremely expensive looking motors parked along the street but as I have little interest in cars you’ll have to use your imagination. The metal ironing board dumped beside the bollard outside no.69 strikes a nicely incongruous note.

The next two blue plaques appear at nos. 30 and 44 Cadogan Place respectively. The former commemorates the actress Dorothy Bland (aka Mrs Jordan) (1762 – 1816) who was at least as famous for her love life as she was for her comic stage performances. In 1790 she became the mistress of the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV and during their a 20-year relationship bore him 10 children, all given the surname FitzClarence. The couple lived together as husband and wife, mainly at Bushy House in Bushy Park, Surrey, of which William was Ranger, until they finally separated in 1811. Dorothy moved to Cadogan Place the following year, living there for three years before retiring to France where she passed away within a year. The anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce (1759 – 1833) resided at no.44 but only for the last ten days of his life (it was his cousin’s house). One month after his death, the House of Lords passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire from August 1834.

Next street along, moving eastward, is Cadogan Lane which is largely comprised of mews houses which back on to the grand residences of its neighbour to the west. At no. 40 is an English Heritage (as opposed to GLC) blue plaque in honour of the writer and actor, Jeremy Lloyd (1930 – 2014). Lloyd is perhaps best known as the co-writer (with David Croft) of the sitcoms Are You Being Served and ‘Allo ‘Allo. In 1974 (at the age of 14) I went with my grandparents to see the recording of an episode of the former at the BBC’s White City studios. To my embarrassment, my grandma collared Jeremy for his autograph.

Jeremy Lloyd with his second wife Joanna Lumley. They were married for all of four months in 1970.

To the north Cadogan Place extends across Pont Street and here at no.4 Judy Garland died in June 1969 having accidentally overdosed on barbiturates. That house was eventually demolished in 2019.

No launderette of the day this time unsurprisingly so you’ll have to make do with London’s finest dry cleaners which we turn right past to get to Chesham Street where we immediately take a left into Chesham Place. It’s here you’ll find the German Embassy, or rather the 1970’s extension thereof. Amazingly, this won the Westminster City Council prize for architecture in 1978.

Next up is Lowndes Place where the composer, William Walton (1902 – 1983) lived. Among Walton’s orchestral works were marches he wrote for the Coronations of both King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, entitled Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre respectively. Of the 13 film scores he composed those for the three Laurence Olivier-produced Shakespeare adaptions Hamlet, Henry V and Richard III are probably the best known. In 1934 Walton began an affair with Alice, Viscountess Wimborne, his senior by 22 years, which lasted until her death in 1948. Later that same year he met and married (in Buenos Aires) Susana Gil Passo who was 24 years his junior.

At the end of Lowndes Place we turn right into Eaton Place then right again up Lyall Street which was home to the master builder, Thomas Cubitt (1788 – 1855) who featured prominently in Day 69.

At the top end of Lyall Street we make a sharp left turn back down Chesham Street to the westernmost section of Eaton Place which plays host to the Chilean Embassy.

After turning off onto Lyall Street again we follow Eaton Mews North back to Eaton Place.

This next stretch of Eaton Place, going east, is the site of another embassy, that of Hungary. Though (and I’ll hate myself in the morning for saying this), judging from the number plate, that car would be more at home outside the German embassy.

We turn right beyond the embassy down Belgrave Place then switch back westward along a previously unexplored section of Eaton Square. The grandest of the houses along here (no.93), with its double set of columns, was once the residence of Stanley Baldwin (1867 – 1947). Baldwin served as Prime Minister on three separate occasions, May 1923 to January 1924, November 1924 to June 1929, and June 1935 to May 1937. During the last of these stints the country was ruled by three different monarchs, George V, Edward VIII (although he was never crowned) and George VI. These days, of course, it’s hard to imagine a Conservative PM seeing out a full term of office let alone remaining as leader after losing even one election.

Just a few doors away, at no. 86, lived Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881 – 1959). He held various ministerial posts during the first and last of Baldwin’s three terms of office and in between time served as Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931. Neville Chamberlain appointed him as Foreign Secretary in 1938 and he initially gave his support to the appeasement of Nazi Germany. However, after Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became a proponent of resistance to further German aggression. On Chamberlain’s resignation early in May 1940, Halifax effectively declined the position of Prime Minister as he felt that Winston Churchill would be a more suitable wartime leader. Following the retreat from Dunkirk, Halifax proposed trying to reach peace terms with Hitler using Mussolini as an intermediary. He was overruled by Churchill after a series of stormy meetings of the War Cabinet and was subsequently eased out of the Foreign Office, becoming UK ambassador to the USA from 1941 to 1946.

He got everywhere that Winston Churchill, didn’t he ?

On the corner of Eaton Place and West Eaton Place is the house where Frederick Chopin gave his first London performance in 1848. West Eaton Place runs into Eaton Terrace where the Antelope pub is in full bloom.

Beyond the pub, Cliveden Place takes us all the way back to Sloane Square. Before we finally leave the square via the southern section of Sloane Street I’ll just quickly mention the two monuments on the island. The Venus Fountain was created in 1953 having been designed by sculptor Gilbert Ledward. The fountain itself depicts the Goddess Venus, and on the basin section is a relief which depicts King Charles II and Nell Gwynn by the Thames. At the other end, the Chelsea War Memorial is a slightly off-centre cross made of Portland Stone with a large bronze sword affixed to its west face.

This section of Sloane Street, which runs down to join Chelsea Bridge Road, is lined on its west side by impressive Dutch style red-brick buildings built in the 19th century at the instigation of Earl Cadogan.

A good run of streets now before we get to the next point of interest (yet more of those blessed blue plaques !). So we’re working our way east to get to South Eaton Place and taking us there are Sloane Gardens, Holbein Place, Whittaker Street, Bourne Street, Caroline Terrace, Eaton Terrace, Eaton Gate, Lyall Street and Eaton Mews West. On reaching no.16 South Eaton Place we are presented with two plaques. The topmost is in honour of Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864 – 1958) one of the creators of the League of Nations post-WW1 and accordingly winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937 (though I’d rate that as the very definition of a pyrrhic victory given what happened two years later). The one underneath celebrates Philip Noel-Baker (1889 – 1982) the politician, diplomat, academic, athlete, and renowned campaigner for disarmament. He carried the British team flag and won a silver medal for the 1500m at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, and (how’s this for coincidence) also received the Nobel Peace Prize (in 1959). So far, he is the only person to have won both an Olympic Medal and a Nobel Prize.

We’re heading back west to the top end of Chelsea Bridge Road next by means of Chester Row, Graham Terrace and Holbein Mews.

Holbein Mews

The 12-acre site to the east of Chelsea Bridge Road between Pimlico Road and Ebury Bridge Road was formerly occupied by the Chelsea Barracks. The original barracks, designed to house two battalions of infantry, were completed in 1862 and comprised a long and monotonous brick structure broken by towers in the centre. It also included a chapel which still remains (and which we will come to later). In the late 1950s these original buildings were demolished and in June 1960, construction started on new barracks primarily consisting of two 13-storey concrete tower-blocks which were used to accommodate four companies from the Guards Regiments.

In 2005 the then government announced that Chelsea Barracks would be sold and three years later the site was vacated with the troops transferred to the Royal Artillery Barracks at Woolwich. In the meantime, a sale to the Qatar Investment Authority for £959m had been agreed subject to Westminster Council’s stipulation that 50% of any residential units should be affordable housing. The original development scheme proposed, a contemporary design with a series of copper, glass and concrete pavilions, by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners met this requirement but was withdrawn after criticism from Prince Charles. A new masterplan – designed by Squire and Partners – was approved by Westminster Council in 2011. Under this scheme the site would be redeveloped in multiple phases over several years and would incorporate 448 residential units including 123 affordable units (27%), as well as a new leisure centre, NHS medical centre, community centre and local shops. Phases 1 to 3 have now been completed and ground has been broken on phase 4.

As you can see the results are a long way short of awe-inspiring and, to make matters worse, the buildings facing on to Chelsea Bridge Road have some of the naffest poetry I’ve ever encountered etched in their walls. Cabbage face and mushroom lips my arse ! The Qataris are also noticeably more comfortable advertising their involvement in this project that others around the capital. According to one of the security guards the penthouse apartments have a guide price of around £120m.

Anyway, moving on, we follow Chelsea Bridge Road down to its eponymous river crossing then backtrack to the start of Ebury Bridge Road. On the corner here is a plaque marking the flat where Jerome K. Jerome (1859 – 1927) wrote his timeless Three Men In A Boat in 1889. This humorous account of a two-week boating trip on the Thames upstream from Kingston to Oxford has been filmed numerous times including the 1956 screen adaptation, with David Tomlinson as J., Jimmy Edwards as Harris and Laurence Harvey as George, as well as German and Russian language versions.

Heading east along Ebury Bridge Road, with a quick detour into Gatcliff Road, yet another massive development on the south side is at least trying something different with these colourful (but temporary) work and community spaces.

I mentioned earlier that I’m no car buff but who doesn’t love an old Wolseley like this one on St Barnabas Street.

St Barnabas Street intersects Ranelagh Grove where you’ll find that chapel referred to above. As noted, this example of mid 19th Century Romanesque-Byzantine style with Venetian Gothic elements is the only thing that remains of the original barracks. As part of the current development this Grade II listed building was fully restored, including a new bell cast by the world’s largest foundry, John Taylor & Co., and is now home to the Prince’s Foundation (as in Charles of course) – funny that !

Our route takes us back west briefly next, Bloomfield Terrace leading into Pimlico Road which we follow down past Dove Place and Whistler Square (phase one of the Barracks development) before doubling back as far as Passmore Street. En route we pass the southern end of Holbein Place where there is a memorial to WW2 SOE agent Yvonne Cormeau (1909 -1997). In 1940 her husband, who had enlisted in The Rifle Brigade and been sent back to the UK after being wounded, was killed when their London home was bombed. Yvonne’s life was saved by a bathtub which fell over her head and protected her but not her unborn baby. Shortly thereafter she joined the WAAF (to “take her husband’s place) and in 1943 was recruited by the SOE where she was swiftly promoted to Flight Officer. Later that year she was parachuted into southwestern France to be the wireless operator for the SOE network there; a role she carried out until the liberation of France 13 months afterwards. Before dedicating herself to the SOE she placed her 2-year old daughter with a convent of Ursuline nuns in Oxfordshire.

Once on Passmore Street we take an almost immediate right turn into Bunhouse Place which takes us back onto Bourne Street. In Ormonde Place, a discreet a relatively recent private residential development on the west side there is a somewhat incongruous statue of Hercules (about which I can find no further information).

St Mary’s Anglican Church on Bourne Street was built ‘quickly and cheaply’ in 1874, with the intention of providing ministry to the poor living in the nearby slums of Pimlico. Sadly, it appears there is little else of note to be said about it.

We pass the church to the south along Graham Terrace and make our way back to the intersection of Eaton Terrace and Chester Row for today’s pub of the day. The Duke of Wellington is devoid of other clientele when I enter but as I work my way through a (pretty good) fish finger sandwich and glass of Sauvignon there is a flurry of fresh arrivals (mostly tourists).

We make our way back along Chester Road then drop down South Eaton Place to Gerald Road to continue east. Here we find the last (blue) plaque for today commemorating the residence at no. 15 between 1930 and 1956 of the playwright, composer, director, actor, singer and noted wit, Sir Noel Coward (1899 – 1973). During this period, he penned two of his most successful stage works, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit and collaborated with David Lean on the patriotic WW2 films In Which We Serve and This Happy Breed. Subsequently, in 1945, he also provided the (uncredited) narration for Lean’s Brief Encounter.

From Gerald Road we turn right onto Elizabeth Street then head back west along Ebury Street. Next left, Semley Place, leads into Ebury Square and off the south-western corner of the square, where the very short Avery Farm Row adjoins with Pimlico Road, stands the Memorial Fountain to Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster. Created in an Italian-renaissance style in around 1869 this incorporates four enamel mosaics by the renowned Italian glassmaker and artist, Antonio Salviati.

We make our way back up the west side of the square into Cundy Street. I was shocked to learn (from another security guard) that the splendid 1950’s estate, designed by T.P Bennett with a definite nod to Art Deco, is scheduled for demolition. Grosvenor Estates, which owns the site has received approval from Westminster Council to replace the existing 160 flats (44 of which are leased by the council) with new housing including 88 affordable homes, senior living housing for up to 170 people and 75 open market homes. These will be framed by new and improved green spaces and introduce a community hub, food store and cinema to the area. To my mind (and that of the existing residents who fought unsuccessfully against the plans) this could have been achieved without doing away with the current flats.

Back on Ebury Street is a today’s very final plaque (honestly). It’s one of the rare sepia brown London County Council ones from pre-WW2 and it commemorates the house in which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) composed his first symphony in 1764 (at the age of eight !).

I don’t tend to focus on retail establishments very much but sometimes you just can’t help yourself.

Ebury Street ends at Pimlico Road where we turn east briefly to find ourselves at the top end of St Barnabas Street. On the corner here is the Grade II listed Orange Pub and Hotel (formerly the Orange Brewery) which dates from 1845-6. And across St Barnabas Street is the Church of St Barnabas which is a year younger, having been completed in 1847 to the designs of Thomas Cundy (Junior).  It was one of the earliest Ritualistic churches, and the first in London in which all pews were free (charging for pews was normal practice at the time). The building was listed Grade I in 1958.

To finish off today (at last) we follow Ranelagh Grove and the last section of Pimlico Road onto Ebury Bridge Road and head up towards Victoria past the National Audit Office. This seminal example of Art Deco architecture was probably the last hurrah for that iconic style of building (at least as far as the UK is concerned). It was constructed as The Imperial Airways Empire Terminal and opened in June 1939 just months before the outbreak of WW2. Designed by the architect Albert Lakeman it has a symmetrical facade with a 10-storey central clock tower and wings curving forward to form a crescent shape. As well as being used by Imperial Airways for ticketing and checking in passengers, it was also used by the airline as a Head Office. The location was chosen because the Air Ministry insisted that Southampton had to be used as base for flying boat services, and this was the only site that backed on to what was then Southern Railway station. Over the years the name of the building changed in synch with changes to the national airline, becoming first the BOAC Terminal and then the British Airways Terminal. The building closed to passenger use in 1980, partly due to pressure on BA to cut costs and also because it became redundant as Heathrow Airport gained direct transport links. It was officially listed a year later and since 1986 has been occupied by the National Audit Office, the independent Parliamentary body with responsibility for auditing central government departments, government agencies and non-departmental public bodies. The sculpture above the entrance, “Wings Over The World” designed by Eric Broadbent, is the only remaining external clue as to the building’s original use.

Day 73 – Paddington Station – Gloucester Terrace – Lancaster Gate

After another, longer than intended, break we finally get around to a second visit to Paddington area, this time concentrating on the west of the station between the Westway and the Bayswater Road. This is another largely residential part of town comprised for the most part of mid-19th century terraces lined with stuccoed four or five storey houses. However, there have been a few interesting residents over the years and there are strong associations with two of the most iconic characters in 20th century children’s fiction.

Starting point is Paddington Station which was built as the London terminus for the Great Western Railway (GWR) to the designs of Isambard Kingdon Brunel. It opened in 1854, replacing a temporary station of 1838 which subsequently became the goods depot. In 1863, Paddington became part of the world’s first underground railway, the Metropolitan Line, serving as its original western terminus. As part of the nationalisation of the railways in 1996, a new version of GWR won the franchise to operate intercity services to the South West of England and South Wales and Thames Valley commuter services out of Paddington. In recent times, of course, it has undergone wholesale redevelopment to become a major Crossrail hub, providing the link between Elizabeth line services west to Reading and east to Abbey Wood.

On the left side of the image above is Tournament House (mentioned briefly in the last post). Built in 1935 and designed by P. E. Culverhouse of the GWR Chief Civil Engineer’s Office it was originally given the rather more prosaic appellation “Arrivals Side Offices” before becoming Tournament House in 1987. The shell-like protrusions contain lights that illuminate the GWR Paddington sign.

For very many people, Paddington Station is inextricably linked with the eponymous bear first created by author Michael Bond in 1958 and subsequently immortalised in almost 30 books (with combined sales in excess of 35 million), a much-loved BBC TV series and two hugely popular recent films. The statue of Paddington Bear on Platform 1 was created by Marcus Cornish in the year 2000 and attracts a constant stream of visitors. A bit further along Platform 1 the 1922 bronze memorial to the employees of GWR who died in the Great War, sculpted by Charles Sargeant Jagger, garners somewhat less attention.

We leave the mainline station via its western exit and make our way up on to Eastbourne Terrace past the entrances to the Elizabeth Line.

Crossing over Bishop’s Bridge Road we head down into Sheldon Square and along Kingdom Street through the new development created in what was the old goods depot area. Kingdom Street turns out to be an unforeseen dead end, culminating in the Pergola mega-bar, so we have to turn back and try and find another exit via the walkway of the canal.

This also proves unsuccessful so we end up taking a foot-ramp down into the underbelly of the Westway leading to the entrance to the Battleship Building. Originally known as Canal House, this was built in 1969 as a British Rail Maintenance Depot. The original architects were the practice of Bicknell and Hamilton who incorporated elements inspired by the German Modernist Eric Mendelsohn. In the early 1990’s the building fell into disrepair but it was still awarded Grade II listed status in 1994 and in the year 2000 was refurbished by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris becoming the London HQ of clothing firm, Monsoon, until 2011.

Beyond the Battleship is another dead end as shown below.

Retracing my steps yet again I encounter a security man who directs me up the side of a vehicle ramp that leads to the Harrow Road. A couple of hundred metres west I’m able to duck under the Westway again and access Westbourne Bridge which crosses over the railway lines and gets us back on track.

Westbourne Bridge leads into Westbourne Terrace; at the apex of this and Orsett Terrace sits Brunel House (one of the many so-called) built in 1848 and designed in an Italianate style by architect George Ledwell-Taylor. Despite being Grade II listed and reputed to have been the London home of Brunel, while he was working on Paddington Station, the 20 bedroom house is in a dilapidated state and seems to be unoccupied.

Next up is Gloucester Terrace where we find a green plaque commemorating the Italian Catholic Priest and Politician, Luigi Sturzo (1871 – 1959) who lived here between 1926 and 1933 having been forced into exile in 1924 when Mussolini’s fascists came to power.

Porchester Square is the next stage of a loop that returns us to Bishop’s Bridge Road. Here there are some prime examples of the early-Victorian properties I referred to in the opening paragraph.

We continue south on another stretch of Westbourne Terrace then turn westward again along Cleveland Terrace. This swings south into Leinster Gardens from where we take a right through Leinster Place to Porchester Gardens which we follow as far as Inverness Terrace then head down towards Hyde Park. Towards the bottom end of Inverness Terrace is the Grand Royale Hotel. This was built at the turn of the 20th century and according to society gossip of the time was commissioned by the Prince of Wales (soon to be Edward VII) as a private residence for his former mistress Lillie Langtry.  Within a few years the house was acquired by Louis Spitzel, a merchant banker, who engaged fashionable architects Mewes and Davis to undertake a renovation which included the addition of a private theatre. The house became a hotel in 1966 and was reopened after refurbishment in 1972 with an ornate theatre bar as its most striking attraction.

On reaching the Bayswater Road we turn briefly east before heading back north up Queensborough Terrace. On the exterior of no.38 (The Byron Hotel – looking somewhat sprucer than most of its neighbours) is a blue plaque honouring the English composer William Sterndale Bennett (1816 -1875). I’m not au fait with Bennett’s works but it appears they were admired by Mendelssohn and Schumann, both of whom he became friends with. He composed around 130 musical works in total; with the earliest of those being held in the highest regard today. From 1866 until his death he served as principal of the Royal College of Music, where he had enrolled as a student at the tender age of ten. He is credited with saving the RAM from closure and its renaissance under his watch is probably a greater legacy than his music.

Cutting through Queensborough Passage we arrive on Porchester Terrace and before heading back down to the Bayswater Road turn briefly north to check out a be-flagged but rather unprepossessing building which turns out to be the Embassy of Laos.

Back on the Bayswater Road, before heading back north up Leinster Terrace, we just about manage to spot the blue plaque at no.100 celebrating the one-time residency of the novelist and playwright J.M Barrie (1860 -1937). Barrie moved here in 1900 with his wife Mary, (nee Ansell). Two years later his most famous creation, Peter Pan, made a first appearance in the novel The Little White Bird before being immortalised in the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up which had its first stage performance on 27 December 1904 at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Barrie’s personal life was unconventional (to say the least), his marriage was reportedly unconsummated and in 1908 Mary began an affair with a man twenty years her junior whom she married following divorce from Barrie who, nonetheless, continued to support her financially.

A short way up Leinster Terrace is today’s final blue plaque marking the house where the American author Francis Bret Harte (1836 – 1902) lived during the latter part of his life. Completely unknown to me beforehand, Harte is apparently most renowned for his short stories chronicling the protagonists of the California Gold Rush. He left the United States in 1878, following a decline in the popularity of his writings, initially taking up the role of US consul in the German town of Krefeld. His former friend, Mark Twain, tried to block his appointment on the grounds that “Harte is a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward… To send this nasty creature to puke upon the American name in a foreign land is too much”. (Don’t hold back, Mark – tell us what you really think.) Subsequently, Harte was given a similar post in Glasgow before ending up in London. Throughout this time he never called upon his wife and children to leave America and join him.

From Leinster Terrace we continue on into Leinster Gardens then loop eastward round Cleveland Square and Cleveland Gardens to end up on Chilworth Street where the laundry and comestible needs of the local population are well catered for.

The pub on the right above, The Cleveland Arms, has been around since 1852 but it looked to be closed when I passed by, which was post-midday. Hopefully, that was just a one-off. Adjacent to the pub, on the other side of Gloucester Mews, is the splendidly ornate frontage of what was once the premises of J. Kinninmont & Sons, builders and decorators. It appears that this family business lasted (in this location) for just over a century, disappearing in the early 90’s. The property is currently occupied by a hairdresser’s which, charmingly, has retained the Kinninmont name.

We turn left next, finding ourselves back on Gloucester Terrace with more of those stuccoed townhouses stretching out before us.

From here we make our way back to today’s pub of the day (by default largely as it was actually open), the Leinster Arms on Leinster Terrace. Taking us there are Cleveland Terrace, Eastbourne Mews, Chilworth Street (again), Gloucester Mews, Craven Road, Upbrook Mews, Devonshire Terrace, Queen’s Gardens, Craven Hill Gardens and (plain old) Craven Hill. When I entered there was only one other patron, who left not long after having drunk what I presumed to be his regular lunchtime pint. Just as I polished off the last of my glass of wine, calamari and falafels a (German – I’m guessing) couple wandered in to avert an existential crisis. Full disclosure, I forgot to take a photo when I got back outside so this one is taken from the pub’s Facebook page.

We exit Leinster Terrace to the east on Lancaster Gate which incorporates a square of the same name in which resides Spire House. This apartment block was built in 1983 on the site of the former Christ Church which dated from 1855. In the late Seventies the main structure of the church was declared unsafe and demolished, leaving just the Grade II listed tower and Gothic stone spire, which together rise nearly 205ft high, to be incorporated into the new (and frankly pretty hideous) development.

Between Spire House and the Bayswater Road stands The Lancaster Gate Memorial Cross, a grade II listed war memorial in commemorating residents of the Borough of Paddington who died fighting in the First World War. It was was designed by Walter Tapper in the Gothic Revival style and its sculpture was executed by Laurence Arthur Turner. It consists of a column surmounted with a golden cross, below which in eight niches are the figures of Saint George for England, Saint Louis for France, and six of the warrior saints of Christendom: Maurice, Longinus, Victor, Adrian,  Florian and Eustace.

A few steps away from the war memorial is a monument to Reginald Brabacon, 12th Earl of Meath (1841 – 1829). Created shortly after his death it consists of a tall pedestal of Portland Stone with inset portrait relief and Soanesque domed top surmounted by statue of a nude seated boy. Brabacon was an Irish politician and philanthropist, who held several senior diplomatic posts and was involved in many charitable organisations. On succeeding his father as Earl of Meath he joined the Conservative benches in the House of Lords where his chief accomplishment was to pressure the government to introduce an “Empire Day” (to nurture a sense of collective identity and imperial responsibility among young empire citizens). I have been unable to ascertain what the nude boy is all about.

Nipping round the corner onto Bayswater Road we come across what should be the Thistle Hotel Hyde Park but which is all closed up and stripped of any identifying signage. As I go in for a closer look a workman/security person comes out of the building to check what I’m up to. Self-identifying as an ex-squaddie he vouchsafes that the building is now owned by the Government and leaves me to draw my own inference from that. All very mysterious. Thistle Hotels is part of the GLH Group which operates a number of hotels in central London. This hotel is still listed on their website but dates beyond the start of October 2022 are unavailable for booking and there is no explanation for the closure of the property. At this time, I was unable to discern anything further from online searches.

At the eastern extremity of Lancaster Gate we turn into Craven Terrace. For some reason, that wasn’t obviously apparent, the pub here, The Mitre was doing a roaring lunchtime trade and Sheila’s Cafe wasn’t doing so badly either.

Having done a circuit of Lancaster Mews we continue north on Craven Terrace past today’s second Launderette of the day though this one doesn’t strictly qualify either (no self service machines you see). However, it does deserve a special mention for doubling up as a deli bar – a definite first.

The section of Craven Road that connects us with Brook Mews has a splendidly international flavour with a Malaysian Cafe, European Food Market and Persian Restaurant all within a few yards of each other.

At the end of Brook Mews there are steps down to Elms Mews which runs back into Bayswater Road. From here it’s a relatively short final stretch back to Paddington Tube Station via Gloucester Terrace (Pt 3), Westbourne Crescent, Westbourne Terrace (Pt 3), Craven Road (Pt 2), Conduit Mews and, finally, Spring Street; the last of these with an international flavour of a somewhat different kind.

Day 72 – Sussex Gardens – Praed Street – Paddington Basin

After another lengthy hiatus we’re finally back on the beat and for this trip we’ve moved south from where we finished last time, across the Westway into the area between Paddington Station and the Edgware Road.

We start out on Bayswater Road and head north up Hyde Park Street into the heart of the Hyde Park Estate. This residential district was originally developed in the early 19th century on land owned by the Bishop of London. In 1836 ownership of the freeholds passed to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (who became the Church Commissioners in 1948). A series of redevelopments from the 1950’s through to the 1970’s saw a number of high density blocks of flats rise up amongst the remaining Victorian villas.

Having circled east on Norfolk Crescent we double back via Oxford Square to reach St John’s Church on Hyde Park Crescent. The church was designed by Charles Fowler (of Covent Garden Market fame) in a 13th century Gothic style and was consecrated in 1832. It has a long history of musical associations and in the 1960’s Beatles’ producer George Martin was invited to sort out the acoustics.

Having circumnavigated Cambridge Square we proceed northward on Southwick Street past a solitary representative of the “Dolphin” lamp posts familiar from the Thames Embankment. Unusually, in this case, the “dolphins” are white rather than black.

Taking a right turn onto Sussex Gardens we pass the Monkey Puzzle Pub. It’s pretty rare to see an example of Araucaria araucana these days so this one was a welcome sight. Also had a sudden memory flash as I recalled meeting an old school friend here for a drink many, many years ago despite this being an area that I have never had any familiarity with.

We resume a northward trajectory on Sale Place, passing Junction Mews, on the corner of which stands a house bearing the sign “Boatmen’s Institution”. In 1828, an organisation known as the ‘Paddington Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge among Canal Boatmen and Others’, purchased a stable and coach house with a view to creating a place of worship for the boatmen who transported goods along the Grand Union canal and their families. As Victorian Society generally looked askance at such families, partly because the boatmen worked on the Sabbath, it was difficult for them to gain acceptance in existing church congregations.

Sale Place is also home to this excursion’s launderette/laundrette of the day. Another example of the latter (mis)spelling.

We make a brief visit to the Edgware Road via Star Street before returning to Sale Place along part of St Michael’s Street. Then we continue north up on to Praed Street where we turn right again just as far as Harbet Road. On the corner here is another pub conversion that gives a flavour of the changing tenor of this part of London.

Harbet Road affords access into Merchant Square, a development built around the eastern end of the Paddington Basin. The first of the six buildings for which planning permission was granted was completed in 2013 and three others have been completed since. The remaining two, including 1 Merchant Square which, at 42 storeys, will be the tallest building in the City of Westminster, are still under construction.

Cutting back on to Harbet Road we swing up to Harrow Road in the shadow of the Marylebone Flyover. We skirt the latter as far as North Wharf Road then follow this as far as Hermitage Street which takes us up to the eastern end of Bishop’s Bridge Road. The bridge itself crosses over the final stretch of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal which runs from Little Venice down into the Paddington Basin. The Paddington Canal was opened in 1801, with the Basin chosen for its strong onward transportation links. Large furniture depositories arose around the Paddington Basin and its wharves were soon handling huge quantities of building materials, coal, hay, pottery and for the return journey, manure for agriculture and household rubbish to fuel brickyard kilns. However, its heyday was short-lived; within twenty years the Regents Canal had been built allowing goods to be transported from the Grand Union through to the River Thames and the Port of London rendering the Paddington Basin largely redundant.

We drop down from the bridge onto Canalside Walk with its array of modern eateries then nip across into North Wharf Road again following this round to the western end of the Paddington Basin which was redeveloped earlier in the 21st century. On the way back to Merchant Square we pass the Fan Bridge and a statue of Sir Simon Milton, who as Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning during Boris Johnson’s Mayoral administration, was largely responsible for overseeing the regeneration of the Basin.

Exiting Merchant Square onto Praed Street we turn back west as far as the junction with South Wharf Road. Here stands the one-time Grand Junction Arms, a splendid representative of the former estate of the Truman, Hanbury, Buxton brewing company (1666-ish to 1988). If you look closely you can just about make out the gargoyles. These days it operates as the Fantasia Grill House.

South Wharf Road runs through the middle of St Mary’s Hospital. To the north, abutting the Paddington Basin stands the modern Queen Mother Wing which was opened in 1987 and subsumed the services of Paddington General Hospital.

The Messenger, by Allan Sly

Across the road is the private Lindo Wing which opened in November 1937, having been financed by businessman and hospital board member Frank Charles Lindo, and has witnessed numerous royal and celebrity births. Amongst these being Princes William and Harry, musicians Elvis Costello and Seal and actor Kiefer Sutherland. The artworks on the windows were created as part of a 2012 exhibition by Julian Opie, perhaps best known for the cover of Blur’s “Best of” compilation in 2000.

At the western end of South Wharf Road we turn left, where, because of the Paddington Square redevelopment on the east side of Paddington Station, the street configuration is different from that shown on either my printed map or Google maps. Since July 2020 a new road called Tanner Lane has fomed the connection with Praed Street and Winsland Street. It’s named after Sir Henry Tanner (1849–1935) the architect who designed the former Royal Mail sorting office on London Street which was demolished in 2018 to accommodate the Renzo Piano designed new development. During its period of vacancy from 2010 the Sorting Office moonlighted as a culture venue, hosting Punchdrunk’s 2013, A Drowned Man, and acting as a staging post for the 2012 Olympic Games. One small silver lining to its destruction is the view temporarily afforded of Paddington Station’s majestic Tournament House (1935).

Moving back east along Praed Street we approach the The Clarence Memorial Wing, of St Mary’s Hospital which was designed by Sir William Emerson and opened in 1904.

It was here that Alexander Fleming (1881 – 1955) discovered penicillin by happy accident in 1928. On 3 September that year he returned to his laboratory having spent a holiday with his family at Suffolk. Before leaving for his holiday, he had inoculated staphylococci on culture plates and left them on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. On his return, he noticed that one culture was contaminated with a fungus, and that the colonies of staphylococci immediately surrounding the fungus had been destroyed, whereas other staphylococci colonies farther away were normal, famously remarking “That’s funny”. He was able to identify the mould as belonging to the genus Penicillium. Fleming’s laboratory has been restored and incorporated into a museum about the discovery and his life and work, however the museum has not as yet re-opened post-pandemic.

On the other side of Norfolk Mews is the original incarnation of St Mary’s Hospital in Norfolk Place which was designed by Thomas Hopper in a classical style. It first opened its doors to patients in 1851, the last of the great voluntary hospitals to be founded. Among St Mary’s founders was the surgeon Isaac Baker Brown, a controversial figure who performed numerous clitoridectomies at the London Surgical Home, his hospital for women. Since 2008, St Mary’s has been operated by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the Norfolk Place site now forms one of the campuses of Imperial College’s Faculty of Medicine.

Beyond St Mary’s we turn south off Praed Street into Junction Place then swiftly make a right into another section of St Michaels Street. At the junction with Bouverie Place the pub named after Alexander Fleming sits as inactive as the museum. The Iraqi restaurant opposite appears to be flourishing on the other hand.

A combination of Star Street, Rainsford Street, Southwick Mews and Norfolk Place return us to Praed Street where we head west as far as Paddington Station before turning south again on London Street and almost immediately veering off into Norfolk Square. This is one of the few squares in the vicinity accessible to the public, which might be connected to the fact that the majority of the mid nineteenth century stuccoed terrace houses that surround it are now mid-range hotels (though that might be a slightly generous description). In any event nos. 2 to 22 have a Grade II listing.

After a circuit of the square, London Street drops us down onto Sussex Gardens. The section from here east as far as Radnor Place is equally well endowed with, well let’s call them budget plus, hotels.

Just off Radnor Place, Radnor Mews is a rare example of a mews with vehicle access at either end. There was a certain amount of rebuilding following WWII bomb damage but a number of original buildings survive nearer to the Sussex Place entrance.

On the other side of Sussex Place is Bathurst Mews which like Radnor Mews originally provided stables for the larger properties in Gloucester Square and Sussex Gardens. However, unlike Radnor and, indeed, any other mews in London, Bathurst is still home to working stables. Hyde Park Stables and Ross Nye Stables are both at the western end of the Mews from where they offer horseback excursions into Hyde Park. As you can see below left, some of the residents at the eastern end have excelled themselves on the horticultural front.

Bathurst Mews east
Hyde Park Stables

We exit Bathurst Mews onto Bathurst Street the proceed east through Sussex Square, Clifton Place, Gloucester Square and Somerset Crescent all the way back to Hyde Park Crescent and St John’s Church. Then we wend our way back west via Southwick Place, Hyde Park Square and Strathearn Place to arrive at today’s pub of the day, The Victoria on the corner with Sussex Place. A beautiful Victorian pub, dating from around 1864, The Victoria is a Grade II listed building with an interior than retains its original counter with panelled bays divided by fluted pilasters and a regency-style fireplace. The Theatre Bar, upstairs, has ornate fittings imported from the Gaiety Theatre about 1958. It was Fuller’s pub of the year in both 2007 and 2009 and does a mean club sandwich.

Suitably refreshed, we crack on with the last leg of today’s journey, joining Hyde Park Garden Mews from Sussex Place then swinging round into Hyde Park Gardens via Brook Street. Hyde Park Gardens is home to the Sri Lankan consulate which takes up several buildings.

Beyond the consulate we turn right into Clarendon Place which drops us onto the Bayswater Road. On the way we pass Chester House designed and lived in (from 1926 to 1960) by, our old friend, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880 – 1960). GGS is, of course, the man who brought us the red telephone box and both Battersea and Bankside Power Stations (the latter now Tate Modern).

We follow Bayswater Road west as far as Westbourne Street from where detour off to loop round Stanhope Terrace, Sussex Square and Bathurst Street before continuing up to the western end of Sussex Gardens. Turning east we circumnavigate Talbot Square, another one with rare public access to its gardens, before making our way back to Praed Street via Spring Street and Conduit Place.

We end today’s excursion opposite Paddington Station, which has seen enormous changes in recent times due to its participation on the Elizabeth Line. But we’ll delve into that next time.

Day 71 – Maida Vale – Little Venice

Switching our attention back to the north west for this excursion which, roughly speaking, covers the triangular area formed by Maida Vale, Warwick Avenue and Edgware Road tube stations. The name Maida Vale apparently derives from a pub called The Maida which formerly stood on Edgware Road near the Regent’s Canal. The pub was named in recognition of General Sir John Stuart, who was made Count of Maida, a town in Calabria, by King Ferdinand IV of Naples, after victory at the Battle of Maida in 1806. In contrast, the somewhat over-ambitious soubriquet, Little Venice, only became popularised in the latter half of the 20th century.

Starting point today is Maida Vale tube station which opened in June 1915 and consequently was the first station to be staffed entirely by women.

We turn right into Elgin Avenue which merges into Abercorn Place and then proceed as far as the junction with Hamilton Terrace. Here stands St Mark’s Church, consecrated in 1847 when this area was on the fringes of urban London. In 1870, Canon Robinson Duckworth became parson. Duckworth’s main claim to fame is that he introduced Alice Liddell, the daughter of his friend, Charles Liddell, to the Reverend Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, on a boating trip. Duckworth himself appears in the foreword of an early edition of the Wonderland as ‘The Duck’ and Alice Through the Looking Glass is thought to have been written in the his vicarage.

Like neighbouring, and equally affluent, St John’s Wood, Maida Vale is home to an architecturally diverse array of grand residential mansion blocks. The ones here generally predate those in the former, being mainly of late Victorian and Edwardian vintage.

You don’t employ common or garden removal men round here – you need Master Removers.

From St Mark’s we head south down Hamilton Terrace as far as Hall Road where we turn back west. On the corner of Hall Road and Maida Vale (A5) is the massive Cropthorne Court apartment block, built 1928-30 (one of the few from that era in this locale) and designed by (our old friend) Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880 – 1960). Flats here were originally let out for between £375 and £425 per annum. The building was Grade II listed in 2003 and, fittingly, it has its own telephone box.

We turn up Maida Vale back towards Elgin Avenue and at no. 32 find a blue plaque commemorating the actor and music hall star, Lupino Lane (1892 – 1959). Born in Hackney, Lane, whose cousin was the screenwriter/director/actress Ida Lupino, started out as a child performer known as ‘Little Nipper’ and went on to make numerous appearances in theatre, film and variety. He moved to America in the 1920’s and forged a successful career in screen comedies before returning to England in 1929. In a rather neat segue from the last post, he is perhaps best known for playing Bill Snibson in the play and film Me and My Girl, which popularized “The Lambeth Walk”.

Also on Maida Vale is the gated Vale Close with its mock tudor pretensions and throwback attempts to keep the riff-raff at bay.

Going back to my point about the diversity of architectural styles there is a distinct Italianate feel to the brick-built parade on Elgin Avenue.

And on Lanark Road, which we follow next there’s another reminder of the social hierarchy that still feels implicit in these parts.

Sutherland Avenue is home to the Maida Vale Everyman Cinema which was purpose built in 2011.

Randolph Avenue takes us back to Maida Vale tube station where we turn left on to Elgin Avenue this time, proceeding as far as Ashworth Avenue which runs down Lauderdale Road. On the corner here sits the Lauderdale Road Synagogue which is one of the main centres for London’s Sephardi Jewish community. The Sephardi Jews first arrived in England in the 18th century fleeing the inquisitions taking place in Spain and Portugal. Originally, they congregated in the East End but by the late 19th century many wealthier members of the community had moved across to the new north-west suburbs. As a consequence, Lauderdale Road Synagogue was opened in 1896, constructed in the Byzantine style by architects Davis & Emanuel.  From 1887 to 1917 the Sephardi community was led from here by Haham Rabbi Moses Gaster who played a major role in the promotion of Zionism in the British Jewish community and at whose home the first meeting to plan the Balfour Declaration was held. As with the synagogue near Lord’s which we encountered a couple of posts back there was security on site to encourage me to move on, though I think my explanation for my interest just about convinced them.

Turning left, we are soon at five-way roundabout from where we take the first exit anti-clockwise and revisit Sutherland Avenue heading west. This is probably a good point to note just how wide some of the streets are round here (compared to nearly everywhere else in London). Many of them have parking on both sides (and sometimes in the middle) and still plenty of space for two-way traffic flow.

We drop south on Castellain Road then cut through Formosa Street to Warrington Crescent. On the way we call in at the Grade II listed Prince Alfred pub which was built in 1856 and is justifiably on the Campaign for Real Ale’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. Inside it retains its original “snob screens”, a Victorian invention comprised of an etched glass pane in a movable wooden frame which was intended to allow middle class drinkers to see working class drinkers in an adjacent bar but not to be seen in return. The Prince Alfred was also featured in David Bowie’s Grammy Award-winning short film “Jazzin’ for Blue Jean” (1984).

Warrington Crescent adds to the architectural mosaic with its Regency-style white painted stucco terraced town houses reminiscent of those we saw in Belgravia and Pimlico.

At no.75 there’s a blue plaque in honour of David Ben Gurion (1886 – 1973), the first Prime Minister of the state of Israel.  Ben-Gurion rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. He served as Prime Minister up to 1963 save for a short break in 1954–55. He led military operations during the first Arab-Israeli war which took place almost immediately following the declaration of independence and was instrumental in arranging for the extraction of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina by Mossad in 1960.

PRIME MINISTER DAVID BEN GURION. פורטרט, ראש הממשלה דוד בן גוריון.

Back on the roundabout at the top of Warrington Crescent stands another impressive Grade II listed Victorian pub, the Warrington Hotel, built just a year later than its near neighbour. The Warrington has also retained its colourful original features including mosaic floors, stained glass windows, pillared porticos and art nouveau friezes.

On the other side of the hotel we turn southward again first on Randolph Avenue then on Randolph Crescent. At the end of the latter we turn right on Clifton Gardens and follow this back to the lower end of Warrington Crescent before taking Warrington Gardens to cross behind St Saviour’s church (which we’ll come to in a minute). Now we’re back on Formosa Street which links into Bristol Gardens. The houses on the right side of the latter have a distinctly Moorish feel to them. I came across a picture of these same houses from the early 1970’s that illustrate just how far up in the world this area has come in the last fifty years.

Next we follow Clifton Gardens, Blomfield Street and Warwick Place round to Warwick Avenue and head north up to the eponymous tube station. Also dating from 1915, Warwick Avenue has no surface building, the station being accessed by two sets of steps to a sub-surface ticket hall. It was one of the first London Underground stations built specifically to use escalators rather than lifts. 

As you can see. the Catholic Church of St Saviour stands beyond the station. The current church was built in 1976 replacing a gothic structure dating from 1855 which was demolished in 1972. The original church was deemed too large for its 1960’s congregation and so the site was redeveloped to incorporate a block of flats behind a new brick church building designed by architects Biscoe and Stanton. Local interest groups had lobbied to retain the original tower, as it was felt a vertical feature was desperately needed in the area as Warwick Avenue is one of the broadest streets in London. However, the proposal was ignored in favour of the fiberglass spire we see today.

We retrace our steps eastward on Clifton Gardens then swing round Randolph Road and Clarendon Gardens back onto the southern section of Lanark Road and follow this back up to Sutherland Avenue. Then we return past Cropthorne Court on another stretch of Maida Vale that incorporates two more enormous mansion blocks, Clive Court and Rodney Court, the former dating from 1923 and the latter built in 1915.

Clive Court (1923)
Rodney Court (1915)

We run down as far as Clifton Road which has a suitably upmarket parade of shops including a Village Butcher’s. There’s also yet another red phone box here. This area must have the highest density of them in London.

From Clifton Road we take a peek at Lanark Place and Clarendon Terrace and then work our way down to the Regent’s Canal via Randolph Avenue. Blomfield Road runs along the north side of the Canal through so-called Little Venice. As noted in a previous post the 8.6 mile long Regent’s Canal links the Paddington arm of the Grand Union canal in the west with Limehouse Basin in the east. Construction of the canal formed part of architect John Nash’s grand redevelopment of central north London for George IV (conceived when the latter was still Prince Regent). The first section from Paddington to Camden Town, which includes where we are today, opened in 1816 and included a 274 yard long tunnel under Maida Hill.

We follow Blomfield Road alongside the canal as far as Westbourne Terrace Road just beyond the triangular basin where the Puppet Theatre Barge is moored. The Puppet Theatre Barge began life as a marionette theatre touring company called Movingstage, founded by Juliet Rogers and Gren Middleton in 1978. Several years later, the company acquired a 72ft-long Thames lighter and converted it into a permanent puppet theatre. The stage was specially designed to put on shows using string marionettes, and the seating raked to ensure a good view from every seat. Initially, the Barge was based in Camden Lock and toured the Grand Union Canal in the summer. Then in 1986, it moved its winter base to Little Venice and each summer went up the River Thames, sometimes as far as Oxford.

In the middle of the Basin sits Browning’s Island, named for the poet Robert Browning (1812 – 1889) who lived on Warwick Crescent for most of the latter part of his life. Browning is also credited with being the first person to coin the name Little Venice though there are those who maintain that Lord Byron beat him to it by several years. The island is popular with waterfowl including cormorants, swans, Egyptian Geese and various species of duck.

Westbourne Terrace Road starts with a bridge across the canal which we use to get to Delamere Terrace which runs west parallel to the southern canalside. On the corner here is the Canal Cafe Theatre which holds the dubious privilege of being the only venue to have staged a piece of work written by myself – albeit just a sketch in a 2016 comedy revue. Operating here since the 1970s, the theatre is better known for hosting Newsrevue, the world’s longest running live comedy show (Guinness Book of Records certified) which in March 2020 was forced to close for the first time in over 40 years by the Covid pandemic.

A westward circuit comprised of Chichester Road, Bourne Terrace, Blomfield Villas and Delamere Street takes us through the least salubrious section of today’s walk and deposits us back on Westbourne Terrace Road where we turn back north and then follow Warwick Crescent east beside the south side of the basin. At the end of Warwick Crescent we switch briefly onto the Harrow Road (A404) before turning up Warwick Avenue again. This section of Warwick Avenue skirts Rembrandt Gardens which abut the third side of the basin triangle. A shout out here to Westminster Council for maintaining in the gardens an example of that sorely endangered species, the Public Convenience. Running east from the bridge south of the canal is Maida Avenue which at no. 30 boasts a blue plaque in commemoration of the one-time Poet Laureate, John Masefield (1878 – 1967). Masefield lived here from 1907 to 1912 during which time his wife Constance, who was his senior by 12 years, gave birth to their second child and he wrote his first narrative poem, Everlasting Mercy.

Also on Maida Avenue is the imposing Victorian Gothic-styled Catholic Apostilic Church. This was built in 1891-93 to a design of architect John Loughborough Pearson (1817 – 1897) who worked on around 200 ecclesiastical buildings during a fifty plus year career. The Catholic Apostilic Church, confusingly, was actually a Protestant Christian sect which originated in Scotland around 1831 and later spread to Germany and the United States. Its founder, Edward Irving, was still a minister of the Church of Scotland at the time but was subsequently expelled. Despite his death within four years of its establishment the CAC continued as a going concern until the early part of the 20th century with 200,000 members at its peak. Since then it has been in gradual decline. According to sources, this building, which was Grade I listed in 1970 was home to the last active British congregation as of 2014; though on the day I visited it was completely locked-up with no signs of life.

Maida Avenue runs right up to the Edgware Road (and the canal tunnel I mentioned earlier). We don’t spend long on Edgware Road, turning right almost immediately into Compton Street then following Hall Place, Cuthbert Street and Adpar Street south to Paddington Green. Here we head west past City of Westminster College (originally founded as Paddington Technical Institute in 1904) and St Mary’s Church. The college building was designed by Danish architects, Schmidt Hammer Lassen. The church, the third on this site, was built in 1791 by John Plaw and sits within its own extensive graveyard which contains fine monuments (by renowned sculptors such as Physick, Derby and Blore) to local luminaries including Peter Mark Roget (the Thesaurus man) and Sarah Siddons, actress.

From St Mary’s Square we turn north and make a loop of St Mary’s Terrace, Park Place Villas, Howley Place and Venice Walk before returning past the church on the Harrow Road, in the shadow of the Westway.

Paddington Green is home to a statue of the aforementioned Sarah Siddons (1755 -1831) who was acclaimed for her many performances in the role of Lady Macbeth and who, reputedly, fainted at the sight of the Elgin Marbles. She also played Hamlet on several occasions, illustrating that gender-blind casting is far from a purely 21st century phenomenon.

On the east side of the Green stands the Grade II Listed former Paddington Green Children’s Hospital which is now a residential apartment block. And in its south-east corner, reached via a circuit of Church Street, Edgware Road and Newcastle Place, two more red phone boxes make it at least ten in total for today.

Just behind where that right hand photo was taken lies Paddington Green Police Station, as was. Built in 1971 it became infamous as a location where high-profile terrorist suspects were brought for interrogation. In 1992 a phone box outside the station was blown up by the IRA (not one of the ones above obviously). In 2007, a joint parliamentary human rights committee stated that the station was “plainly inadequate” to hold such high-risk prisoners and despite subsequent major refurbishment its days were numbered. It closed permanently in 2018 and then in February 2020 was occupied by anarchist group the Green Anti-Capitalist Front, who said they intended to turn the space into a community centre. They also discovered that since its closure the station had been used for firearms training for police and special forces.

From here it’s just a few steps to Edgware Road tube station and we’re done for this time.

Day 70 Part 2 – Black Prince Road – Lambeth Road – Albert Embankment

On to the second leg of this excursion and this time we’re knocking off the triangle of streets bounded by Black Prince Road, Kennington Road and Lambeth Road then heading back down the Albert Embankment to Vauxhall station.

We start on the Albert Embankment at White Hart Dock. The origins of a dock and slipway at this site can be traced back to the 14th century. The present structure was built c.1868 as a parish dock when the Albert Embankment was constructed by the Metropolitan Board of Works to improve flood defences. Several other inland docks were built to enable continued access to the river for firms such as the Doulton Pottery (see below) but now only White Hart Dock remains. It was used to hold an Emergency Water Supply during the Second World War and the faded EWS logo can still be seen on the brickwork of the western wall. In 1960 the Borough of Lambeth sought to close White Hart Dock as it had “not been used by commercial craft for very many years” but the proposal wasn’t implemented and the Dock just fell dormant and largely unnoticed. Then in 2009, the Dock was cleaned and refurbished and Handspring Design were commissioned by Lambeth BC to create the timber sculpture now seen in and around it. Made in Sheffield from sustainably sourced English Oak, the arches and boats celebrate the meeting of land and river and remind us of the site’s long history.

There is also a plaque here (possibly the wordiest you’ll find in the whole of London) commemorating the victims of the mid-nineteenth century Lambeth Cholera Epidemic. During 1848 and 1849 at least 1,600 nearby residents (who took their water directly from the river) died of cholera and were buried in unmarked graves. It was by studying this tragedy and the 1854 outbreak in Soho (which we covered many moons ago) that Dr John Snow (1813 – 1858) was able to conclude that cholera was a waterborne disease rather than one transmitted through the air.

Heading away from the river on Black Prince Road named as you will recall (if you were paying attention last time) after Edward of Woodstock, the eldest son of Edward III. Edward junior never made it onto the regnal throne as he died of dysentery at the age of 46. Instead, on the death of Edward III, succession passed to the Black Prince’s 10 year old younger son, Richard (II). At the junction with Lambeth High Street stands the formidable Southbank House which is the only surviving part of the Doulton Pottery complex that dominated this area from the early Victorian era until the mid 1950’s. This Grade II listed gothic extravaganza with its striking pink and sandy-coloured terracotta ornamentation was built in 1876-78, probably to a design of architect, Robert Stark Wilkinson. The building housed the pottery’s museum and art school as well as serving as company HQ. During WW2 the pottery’s industrial buildings presented an easy target for German bombers and the resulting destruction hastened the process of transferring production facilities to Stoke-On-Trent which had begun in the the 1930’s. New clean air regulations finally sounded the death knell for the Lambeth factory in 1956 and demolition of all the buildings apart from the HQ followed shortly thereafter.

Beyond Southbank House and after passing under the railway we turn left into Newport Street. Adjacent to the railway, the Beaconsfield Contemporary Art Gallery occupies the southern (girls) wing and only remaining part of the former Lambeth Ragged School. This was built 1849-1851 by Henry Beaufoy, whose family wealth came from the vinegar trade, in memory of his late wife, Eliza. Originally the plot had been owned by South-Western Railway and in 1903 the decision was made to sell the site back to them. One year later most of the school was knocked down when the railway was widened. Network Rail still own the freehold for the site. Beaconsfield took over the lease from the London Fire Brigade in 1994 and worked with LKM Architects to restore the building and transform it into a contemporary art space. 

We turn left after the gallery, back under the railway, along Whitgift Street, named after John Whitgift who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1583 to 1604. At the end we turn right into Lambeth High Street past the Windmill pub, renowned for its extensive selection of rums apparently.

The building behind the pub was formerly the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade and looking back down Lambeth Hight Street towards the rear of Southbank House there is some vestigial evidence of this.

To the east of Lambeth High Street at its top end lie the Old Paradise Gardens. These public gardens were opened in 1884 on the site of what had been the burial ground for St Mary’s Church from 1703 to 1853. The old gravestones can still be seen around the perimeter of the gardens, the walls of which are Grade II listed. Originally known as Lambeth High Street Recreation Ground the gardens were renamed in 2013 following refurbishment.

Just beyond the gardens is Old Paradise Street which takes us east to the top end of Newport Street home to the eponymous gallery, created through the conversion of three listed buildings, which were purpose-built in 1913 to serve as scenery painting studios for the booming Victorian theatre industry in London’s West End. With the addition of two new buildings, the gallery now spans half the length of the street. It opened in 2015 for the purpose of displaying works from Damien Hirst’s private art collection to the public free of charge. The current exhibition, which runs until 12 December 2021, features the hyper-realistic paintings of Richard Estes, a mixture of vignettes of American urban life and panoramic landscapes.

The railway arches on the other side of the street are all part of the Pimlico Plumbers empire.

Beyond these, heading south again, we’re back on Black Prince Road and moving eastward into what was one of the largest conglomerations of social housing in the capital. Or at least it was when the various apartment blocks and towers where originally constructed in the late sixties and early seventies. These days there is a significant interspersal of private ownership. We make an immediate loop of Lambeth Walk, Lollard Street and Gibson Road (and we’ll come on to the cultural resonance of the former later on) to start with. Then further east on Black Prince Road, Marylee Way provides the main route into the Ethelred Estate. In 2012 the residences in Ethelred and its sister estates, Thorlands and Magdalen, still owned by Lambeth Council (around 1,300 leaseholds and tenancies) were transferred to Housing Association, WATMOS. This was after a ballot of tenants in which 51.1% voted in favour. Hopefully it’s working out better than Brexit.

The estates are to the north of Black Prince Road. Of note on the south side is the Beaufoy Institute, built in 1907 by Henry’s nephew, Mark Hanbury Beaufoy, as a technical school for boys and also to replace his uncle’s Ragged School which had been torn down three years earlier. The Beaufoy vinegar-making dynasty began in 1741 when the family switched from the distilling of gin, apparently horrified by the damage it caused and its toxic ingredients. Their malt vinegar was used on ships as a ‘fumigator, antiseptic and preservative’ and the Beaufoys acquired a lucrative Navy contract. They also produced ‘sweets’ or ‘mimicked’ wines from raisins with added sugar and by 1872 were advertising cordials and non-alcoholic drinks as well. The Beaufoy vinegar works were bombed in 1941, and the Institute was requisitioned for use by women manufacturing munitions. It returned to use as a school after the war, before being eventually acquired by Lambeth Council. It was bought by the London Diamond Way Buddhist Centre in 2012.

At the eastern end of the street named after him the Black Prince is also commemorated with a pub on the corner with Hotspur Street.

We turn north up Kennington Road then dip into the estates and back out again via Lollard Street, Distin Street and Fitzalan Street. Further up Kennington Road we veer off along Walnut Tree Walk which returns us to Lambeth Walk. En route we encounter Hornbeam Close and Bedlam Mews, which some local vandals have decided merits some retrospective nominative determinism.

Lambeth Walk is, of course, best known for being the title of one of the songs in the 1937 musical Me and My Girl. The contemporaneous musical, with music by Noel Gay and original book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose, tells the story of an unapologetically unrefined cockney gentleman named Bill Snibson, who learns that he is the 14th heir to the Earl of Hareford. It was revived several times in the 1940’s and made a triumphant return to the West End in 1984 in a version revised by Stephen Fry and starring Robert Lindsay and Emma Thompson.

I have to say that if the song didn’t already exist I doubt anyone would be inspired to write it by the present-day Lambeth Walk.

It does however boast Pelham Hall which was built as Lambeth Mission Hall in about 1910 and is distinguished with an exterior pulpit.  The building is now home to the the sculpture department of Morley College.

On the wall of the adjacent Chandler Hall Community Centre is a stone plaque dedicated to Charlie Chaplin who lived in the area in his youth and whose uncle ran the (long since departed) Queens Head pub in Black Prince Road. No. 5 Lambeth Walk, on the junction with China Walk, was built in 1958 to replace the Victorian municipal swimming baths which a V2 bomb had destroyed in 1945. The new building had no pool but provided slipper baths and laundry facilities for the local community. In the early 1990’s it was reconfigured for use as a GP practice.

Lambeth Walk doglegs into Lambeth Road where he turn left and head down towards Lambeth Bridge. At 109 Lambeth Road is the building that houses the Metropolitan Police’s Forensic Science Laboratory. It also hosts the Met’s 24 hour emergency call centre and its Lost Property office (inter alia). And it does more than nearly any other building of its era to give Brutalist architecture a bad name (not that it’s not intrinsically a bad name to start with).

Across the road, in stark contrast, is the former Holy Trinity Primary School (1880) now part of Fairley House School (for children with learning difficulties).

Back on the same side of the road as the Met and just beyond it stands the Bell Building which is a poster child for the sympathetic redevelopment of former public houses into residential space. Crucially the emblematic exterior sculpture of a man lifting a heavy bell has been retained.

Crossing the road again we’re in front of the former St Mary’s Church which was saved from demolition in 1977 by Rosemary and John Nicholson who turned it into The Garden Museum. The church is the burial place of John Tradescant The Elder (c1570 – 1638), the first great gardener and plant-hunter in British history. Tradescant was gardener to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury then to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (remember him) and finally to Charles I, after Buckingham’s assassination. His son, John Tradescant The Younger (1608 – 1662), followed in his footsteps as royal head gardener and is buried beside him. The first church on this site predates the Norman Conquest and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. The present church was originally built in 1337 and the bell tower still largely retains its 14th century form. The rest of the building was substantially rebuilt in the Victorian era.

Turn to the right beyond St Mary’s and you’re face to face with Lambeth Palace or, more specifically, Morton’s Tower. You can’t go beyond this gateway as a rule since, as it rather pompously states on the website, this is “a working palace and a family home” and therefore not open to the public except on rare special occasions. The Tower was built by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1486–1501 and is one of the few surviving examples of the early Tudor style of brick building. From the time of its completion onward the “Lambeth Dole” of bread, broth and money (which originated in the 13th century) was dispensed to beggars at the gate. In his 1785 History of Lambeth Palace archivist Andrew Ducarel writes that in his day it was regularized and consisted of a weekly allowance of 15 quartern loaves, 9 stone of beef and 5s., which were divided amongst around 30 poor parishioners and distributed three times a week. The practice was discontinued after 1842 and replaced with direct pecuniary grants to the poor.

After negotiating the roundabout at the nexus of Lambeth Road and Lambeth Bridge we set off on the final stage of today’s journey, southward along the Albert Embankment to Vauxhall Station. Almost immediately on the left is the headquarters of the International Maritime Organization and just beyond that the former HQ of the London Fire Brigade (as referenced earlier). Commissioned by the London County Council, the building was designed by EP Wheeler, architect to the LCC, with sculpture work by Gilbert Bayes, Stanley Nicholas Babb and FP Morton. It was opened by King George VI in 1937. Despite not being one of the prime examples of 1930’s architecture in the capital it has acquired a Grade II listing. In 2020 a plan to redevelop the building into a new home for the LFB Museum and erect two towers of over 20 storeys each immediately behind creating over 400 flats and a 200 bedroom hotel was submitted to public inquiry. Although the scheme had the support of the London Fire Commissioner and Lambeth Council it was vetoed by the Secretary of State for Housing in the summer of 2021. (The main objection being, I think, that it would spoil the views from the Palace of Westminster).

Time for the pub of the day finally, and in the face of plenty of stiff competition, the sunny skies tipped the balance in favour of the Tamesis Dock, a converted 1930’s Dutch barge, permanently moored on the river opposite the Millbank Tower.

These floating bars tend to charge over the odds but this one was pretty reasonable and thanks to the mild weather (for mid- November) I was able to enjoy a glass of wine and some baked goats cheese up on the deck, in glorious isolation and with a great view of the Houses of Parliament. Until I drew the attention of the local gulls that is.

Lambeth Council actually designated the Albert Embankment riverfront an Area of Conservation in 2001 but as noted earlier this hasn’t stopped them approving plans for redevelopment. The Corniche Building, designed by Foster & Partners, was completed in spring 2020 and along with the adjacent Dumont and Merano residential blocks has created 472 new luxury apartments close to the river.

As we approach Vauxhall Bridge the railway converges with the Albert Embankment and the river moves away.

The space between the road at the river here at Vauxhall Cross is famously occupied by the MI6 Headquarters. Officially the organisation that operates out of these premises is called the Special Intelligence Service (SIS). The MI6 pseudonym was used extensively during WW2 especially if an organisational link needed to be made with MI5 (the Security Service) but it is no longer applied by the secret services themselves. Of course it’s still the go-to appellation as far as the media and popular culture are concerned. SIS moved to Vauxhall Cross in 1994 from its previous home, Century House, on Westminster Bridge Road (see Day 55). Architect Terry Farrell won the competition to design the new HQ and he took his inspiration from 1930s architecture such as Battersea and Bankside power stations, as well as Mayan and Aztec temples. The building has 60 different roof areas and six perimeter and internal atria, and also incorporates specially designed doors and 25 different types of glass to meet the Service’s specific needs. Vauxhall Cross has, of course, featured in many of the films in the James Bond franchise made since it was opened. The building was first featured in GoldenEye in 1995 and is depicted as coming under attack in The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Skyfall (2012). In fact in the latter the front of the building is completely destroyed in an explosion. A 15 metre high model of the building was constructed at Pinewood Studios to create this illusion which was cheered by MI6 staff at a special screening of Skyfall at Vauxhall Cross. Filming for the 24th film in the series, Spectre, took place on the Thames near Vauxhall Cross in May 2015, with the fictional controlled demolition of the building playing a key role in the finale sequence of the film.

The light is beginning to fade as we head up onto platform 8 of Vauxhall Station and before the train arrives to take us back to the suburbs there’s just time to contemplate how very different this view would have looked just a couple of years ago.

Day 70 Part 1 – Vauxhall

As George McCrae sang, aeons ago now, It’s Been So Long. But we’re back finally and with a double header no less. In returning south of the river and working my way through the (roughly) rectangular area bounded by Kennington Lane, Kennington Road, Lambeth Road and the Albert Embankment I bit off more than can be chewed over in a single post. So for this initial instalment we’re sticking to the southern half of the quadrilateral; let’s call it Vauxhall.

Starting point for today is Vauxhall overground station, from where we head east along Kennington Lane. By the river and further west, Vauxhall these days is redevelopment central with new high-rise apartment blocks sprouting like knotweed but we’re saving all that for another time.

The grandiose Imperial Court, like so many large former commercial or public buildings, is now a community of private apartments. However, its origins lie in the creation in 1794 of the Friendly Society of Licensed Victuallers which was established to educate the children of publicans affected by long term illness, incapacity, or poverty. The original school was demolished in 1835 and the current neo-classical building was erected the following year after a design by H & E Rose. In 1921 the school moved to Slough and Imperial Court became the HQ of the Navy, Army, and Air Forces Institutes, or ‘NAAFI’ which was formed to provide catering services and recreational activities for the British Armed Forces and their families posted overseas. In 1980 the building became Grade II listed and in 1992 the NAAFI moved out and the inevitable happened.

The area between Cardigan Street and Sancroft Street, to the east of Kennington Lane, is strongly held to be the site of Kennington Palace, built by the eldest son of Edward III, Edward of Woodstock aka the first Duke of Cornwall aka The Black Prince (1330 – 1376). Edward junior built his palace here during the 1340s and 1350s at the end of which its main structures were a large Hall orientated east-west and measuring approximately 88 feet long by 53 feet wide and the so-called ‘Prince’s Chamber’, of a similar size but two or three storeys high. In 1531 the Palace was largely demolished by Henry VIII to provide materials for his own Palace at Whitehall.

This plaque is on the exterior of Edinburgh House which stands on the site of the Palace’s stable block. Originally a 1960’s office block, Edinburgh House, has been reconfigured to provide separate office space and studio units.

The land on which the palace stood was within the Manor of Kennington which formed part of The Duchy of Cornwall, a private estate (largely comprised of land in Cornwall) established under charter by Edward III in 1337 in favour of Prince Edward and every future Duke of Cornwall (i.e. the eldest surviving son of the Monarch and heir to the throne). The current Duke of Cornwall, Prince Charles, is the longest serving Duke in history. The houses which now occupy the area north of Edinburgh House, were built at the turn of the 20th century and are mostly subject to preservation orders. The majority were sold to a housing association in 1990 but the Duchy still directly owns 23 houses and 16 flats. Our route through the so-called (by estate agents at least) Kennington Triangle is a circuit of Courtenay Street, Courtenay Square, Stables Street, Sancroft Street and Cardigan Street.

  • Courtenay Street
  • Cardigan Street
  • Courtenay Square with its parade of Maple trees
  • Courtenay Street
  • Rear of St Anselms Church
  • The Duchy Arms at the junction of Courtenay Street and Sancroft Street

At the top end of Courtenay Street, after a quick look in on Hansom Mews, a sequence of Aveline Street, Brangton Road, Loughborough Street and Newburn Street brings us out onto Vauxhall Street and back within touching distance of Kennington Lane. We make the rapid acquaintance of Dolland Street before heading east along Vauxhall Street then completing a circuit of Orsett Street, and some more of both Newburn Street and Sancroft Street. I should have noted at the beginning what a beautiful day for a walk this was; uniformly blue skies and sunlit autumn leaves.

We turn a short way back down Vauxhall Street as far as the laund(e)rette of the day and then make a right into Jonathan Street.

Almost immediately we turn left down Wickham Street at the end of which the Hope Church is making its message loud and clear.

Next, St Oswalds Place (with a diversion into Tyers Terrace) takes us back onto Kennington Lane and St Peter’s Church. The church was erected in 1863-4 (on the site of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’ Neptune Fountain) by the notable Victorian gothic revival architect John Loughborough Pearson (1817-1897). The driving force behind the church was the (long-lived) Reverend Robert Gregory (1819 -1911) and it was built adjacent to a new school he had established just a couple of years previously, also on land reclaimed from the Vauxhall Gardens. The school was designed in what was called a thirteenth-century Gothic style and consisted of separate boys’ and girls’ schoolrooms, a headmaster’s house, and an art school. The foundation stone was laid in 1860, by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Gregory’s art school achieved great renown. The two major employers in the area,  Maudslay’s engineering works and Doulton’s pottery factory, needed, respectively, skilled draughtsmen and designers and artists and the school set out to train its pupils accordingly.

 To the west of the church, on Tyers Street, we find the Vauxhall City Farm. The farm began life as Jubilee City Farm in 1976, instigated by a group of architects squatting in nearby St Oswalds Place. Together with local residents they commandeered a plot of land cleared as part of a spate of demolitions in the early 1970s’ and used it for growing vegetables and keeping livestock. A year later the operation was registered as a charity under its present name. Today, the farm is home to over 100 animals, a riding centre, education and youth projects, and a cafe. And it is still run solely by volunteers. I ventured inside for a quick look around (and to make a donation) feeling more than a little self-conscious. I was given a bag of Grass Nuts to feed to the alpacas but made a bit of a hash of that and most of them ended up on the floor (though they were still eaten). Lovely place; though probably best to visit with kids (if you have them).

After leaving the farm we make a loop to the left off of Tyers Street, taking in Laud Street, Vauxhall Walk and Glasshouse Walk. The former runs past the back of Darley House, a post-war 1940’s built public housing block. The central column is adorned with a sculpture by artist Peter Peri entitled Following The Leader. The work was intended as a memorial to children killed in the Blitz, which hit this area quite hard.

We turn left at the top of Tyers Street and left again to head south on Vauxhall Walk and Worgan Street until we reach Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (formerly Spring Gardens). The original Spring Gardens were established here after the Restoration of 1660 (covering a wider area than the present day gardens). At that time Vauxhall was still quite a rural environment and a boat-trip was required to visit the gardens where impromptu live entertainers joined the many purveyors of food and drink. In the evenings the resident nightingales competed for airtime with the sounds of amorous liaisons, as noted by regular visitor Samuel Pepys. In 1729, ‘Vauxhall Spring-Gardens’, was sub-let to a new tenant, the entrepreneurial Jonathan Tyers (1702-1767), who saw an opportunity to provide a new type of paid entertainment for Londoners. He also figured out that charging an admission fee (of one shilling) would discourage the pickpockets and ladies of the night. Thus was created the first and best-known of London’s “Pleasure Gardens”. Over the next 130 years Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens played host to concerts by Handel, firework displays, operas, balloon rides, circus acts and much more besides. Despite Tyers’ wish to create a nexus of wholesome family entertainment, the Gardens remained synonymous with after dark activities of a more salacious nature. All good things come to an end though and in 1859 the Gardens were permanently closed and the site redeveloped into housing.

By the 1970s, those houses, badly war-damaged and suffering from long neglect, were demolished as part of the so-called slum-clearances. A dozen or so acres of the cleared site were grassed over by the new owner, the London Borough of Lambeth, and the resulting park, first opened to the public on 9 October 1976, was originally called Spring Gardens. Then in 2012, after a campaign by local supporters, was re-named Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and a new monumental entrance to the park was created by local architects DSDHA near the site of the old Coach Entrance to the gardens on Kennington Lane. 

  • The Tea House Theatre and Cafe on the east side
  • The Gardens have become a hotspot for Boules afficionados
  • Entrance from Kennington Lane
  • The Black Dog pub on the north side

At the southern end of the gardens an apex of Auckland Street and Glyn Street interrupt the alignment with Kennington Lane and it the the south-western corner sits the renowned Royal Vauxhall Tavern. The RVT actually opened the year after the Pleasure Gardens closed, in 1860. Its close association with London’s gay community dates back to the 1940’s while its iconic drag shows were first staged in the 1970’s. In 2014 the pub became the first building to be listed in recognition of its significant role in LGBTQ history.

From here we proceed north up Goding Street then duck under the railway via Glasshouse Walk to the Albert Embankment before heading back under the railway courtesy of Tinworth Street. Here we find the headquarters of the National Crime Agency (“NCA”). The NCA was formed in 2013 to replace the Serious Organised Crime Agency (“SOCA”). In addition to organised crime its remit covers trafficking (of the human, weapons and drugs kind), cybercrime and economic crime with cross-border implications. It has around 1,800 active officers and an annual budget approaching £460m (which is a 43% reduction on the combined budgets of the various agencies whose responsibilities it assumed).

Beyond the NCA, back on Vauxhall Street, stands the building that from 1877 to 1982 produced iron bedsteads for Horatio Myer & Co. Ltd.

On the east side of Vauxhall Walk, a bit further north, is the 1960’s section of the Vauxhall Gardens Estate which also includes Darley House and a number of 1930’s blocks that stretch down to Kennington Lane.

In conclusion of this Part 1 we make a Z shaped return to the Albert Embankment formed by Randall Row, Randall Road and Salamanca Street.