The changing face of Warren Street – long-lost pubs and international cuisine

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Fitzroy Square, particularly when I used to work at Gannaways/ArtIntegrators within No.4 in the late 1980s. I had intended for that piece to include some other places in the vicinity but as I started typing I started to recall many other things associated with the company and that particular post just got longer and longer.

Here I am returning to the area as a sort of Part 2; the shops pubs and cafes that I used to frequent on this northern part if Fitzrovia during that same era. Today, wandering around the streets immediately adjacent to 4 Fitzroy Square, I can see quite a lot has changed, although at first glance it's not immediately obvious. On closer inspection, I can see that many pubs have been irrevocably ruined, many shops and cafés have changed, and many businesses I knew then are no longer there now, some having completely disappeared without a trace even though the building that used to house them still stands.

Back in the 1980s it was usual to go to the pub at lunchtimes (not just after work!) whether to have meetings with workmates and/or clients or simply just for a bite and a pint. This being before the age of mobile phones it was relatively simple to find employees 'still out at lunch' by sending someone out to do a quick circuit of the local taverns. And we had a marvellous choice here. 

Exiting from the rear of 4 Fitzroy Square into the mews and turning right there was the Grafton Arms with its lovely upper room, evoking the days of Georgian splendour. Today's website makes the whole place look a bit too sanitised and MDF pastiche for my liking. What is this obsession with 'boutique' – This isn't Carnaby Street or the Kings Road in the 1960s. I don't want to buy a Biba dress!

At the other end of the mews on the corner of Warren Street there used to be Rive Gauche, an excellent French café that had absolutely best cherry clafoutis I have ever tasted. They also served marvellous lunches accompanied by a short but good wine list. Today it's home to Little Nan's.

Heading eastwards along Warren St towards TottCt Rd you'll find The Prince of Wales Feathers public house almost oppostite the side exit of Warren Street tube station. In the 1980s this pub had the most amazing horsehoe-shaped bar. I recall even back then thinking how marvellous this was and how there weren't many pubs that still had a similar interior. Being just one shop wide it was a little cramped such that there was perhaps more space behind the counter than there was customer area, but I loved how conversations were held across the bar thus involving the staff. It was really inclusive. There was proper seating at the rear, like a snug. No surprises to find that the interior has been completely gutted (I know not when) and replaced with a long boring bar along the rear wall, with laminate flooring and homogenous furniture and fittings. They call it progress.

On the plus side, I am glad to see that Jai News, the family-run newsagent next door, is still going strong. I used to take my rolls of 35mm film into there for processing, this being the local Colorama collection point.

At the other/western end of Warren Street, on the left, just before Cleveland Street, there is the Smugglers Arms public house. This was another favourite of mine when working in this area in the late-80s. But today, the 'olde worlde' seaside exterior complete with its mini-smuggler-figurehead belies its boring ubiquitous interior. I recall distinctly c1990 taking a group of friends there a life drawing class nearby, telling them how this pub that was reasonably similar inside to The Crosse Keys in Endell St, Covent Gdn, that it was run by a family with a marvellous friendly dog, lovely atmosphere and hand-made doorstop sandwiches in a cabinet on the bar (thick slices of crusty bread packed with proper fillings such as ham salad, corned beef and pickles, cheese and coleslaw) ... the minute I stepped across the threshold, and noticed that the pub carpet had been replaced with something modern, a lump came to my throat and I looked up to see a renovation that as good as broke my heart. Deciding that I couldn't bear to go inside (I still haven't returned) I instead took the group to one of the other pubs adjacent to Gt Portland St station. 

The Smugglers Arms was one many pubs to be stripped of any interest and history during the 1990s; something that was spreading like a disease, a plague, across the whole country at that time. The big breweries, having seen how well a pub was doing under independent management, sought to cash in and many leases were not offered for renewal. Families who had run a successful and popular business for decades now had no source of income and no homes. Gone in a flash was individuality and decades of layered history, and in came blandness and homogenisation. A particularly great loss during this time was the marvellous White Swan in Covent Garden; OK that pub is still there but since that transformation it has never regained the popularity of the 1980s*. 

Another good thing – nearby in Warren Street, at the corner of Conway Street is the marvellous corner shop of  J. Evans, dairy with its gorgeous blue tiles and shop fascia, today an Italian deli. And opposite, a building of the 1930s with geometric pattern details, which is one of the stops on my Art Deco Fitzrovia tour.

Heading back to Fitzroy Square there is a building that really intrigues me. At 43 Fitzroy Street the house is painted or maintained to look like it is in a permanent state of decay. I say this because the five pics at the top here were taken in July 2021, yet the bottom row shows my pics of 2008. Bizarre huh. Look at those layers of painted history. And I am fascinated by the little lock-up shed in the basement area. Whatever the are owners are (not) doing here, I just love it.

Writing this reminded me of other places long gone, yet fondly remembered, perhaps you can add to the list?:

The Adams Arms in Conway Street. This was another early loss in the early 1990s. Much missed and probably the favourite choice of the staff at No.4 Fitzroy Square. This 1742 building had a marvellous front bar, many Georgian and Victorian fittings, an enclosed conservatory area at the rear, and good friendly staff lead by jovial Colin the manager, also a bit-part actor/extra and often to be spotted in ads and videos of that era including Holly Johnson's Love Train where he appears both as a bridgegroom and a flag-waving guard.

Il Pappatore – an Italian restuarant that used to be in a 1970s development at 235 Euston Rd, where now sits the green and white University College Hospital. Although I continued to go there when working at Fitzroy Square, my best memory of the place is a few years earlier when I spent all day there from 10.30am until well gone midnight with Del, the account handler at Strata, just over the road at 22 Stephenson Way. I remember the pale pink on white tablecloths. This extra-long lunch was a treat for successfully managing and completing a job that our client was really pleased with. We had brunch, lunch, dinner, nibbles and alcoholic beverages of all kinds. Other staff from the company popped in to join us throughout the day. And, being as we both lived in the Romford area, it was just one cab ride home also part of the reward. We both showed up for work the next day at 9.30am. And probably went to a pub after work!

The Warren – a marvellous large wine bar underneath The Grafton Hotel, accessed via the alley at the side of Caffe Nero or from Whitfield Street. It was lovely down there. It was often the venue for leaving dos and birthday parties. I tried to take a friend there in the 1990s but found it had gone. 

There were many excellent Indian restaurants to suit all pockets at this northern end of Whitfield Street. I particularly liked the ones that offered fab value help yourself vegetarian lunches. Of these restaurants, only Agra seems to remain. There are still some marvellous Indian restaurants to be found in what's left of Drummond St on the other side of Euston Rd. 

Directly opposite Agra on the corner of Whitfield Place was Stern's African record shop and I recall going in there quite a few times with a friend who would come to meet me for lunch. He often DJ'd and was really into World music of all kinds. The shop had an amazing atmosphere.

Pirroni's on Tottenham Court Road – another Italian restaurant where I used to go for lunch or meet friends in the evening. I can't find any ref of it now, but I'm pretty sure it was where Honest Burgers is today. I was told that the name had links to Marco Pironi the guitarist in Adam and The Ants which could be true seeing as he hails from Camden.

I think I'll leave it there. If I think of more, and I am sure I will(!) I will add them in.

*Some time I'll do a series of Covent Garden in the 1980s posts.

Remembering Fitzroy Square in the late 1980s

On Wednesday last, after leading a lovely group of London Historians on a meandering route through Fitzrovia looking at 1920s-30s buildings (people call the era Art Deco but it mostly isn't!), I decided after a much-need drink in The Wheatsheaf, Rathbone St, to wander back up to Fitzroy Square and have a look at something other than interwar buildings. Specifically, I was intrigued to see how this area has evolved since I worked at 4-5 Fitzroy Square in 1988-90.

For just short of two years I was studio manager and typographer for Art Integrators, a small artwork company situated in the rear lower level of this building which comprised two co-joined Georgian houses, the main reception being in the hallway of No.4 (the red door) which since 2012 is called Willan House and home to The British Association of Dermatologists. 

Art Integrators had external clients such as Cato Johnson, who I used to visit for briefs at Greater London House AKA The Carreras 'Black Cat' Factory which, coincidentally, is a building and company I talk about as a presentation via Zoom. We also did a lot of work for the other companies within the building, all of us being under the Gannaways umbrella. John Gannaway its founder and director took a great pride in the building and I recall vividly the colourful paint on the metal banisters in the stairwell and the paintwork too, all of which John had researched. At the time I thought the pinks, purples, blues an greens a bit strange, but you need only to visit Smithfield market to see the same palette.  

Looking at the building last week I noticed for the first time that there are three animal skulls within the frieze at high level. I have no idea what they refer to. I had also never noticed the fine fancy fanlight above the front door, though I do rememer the front door being mid-grey. And now I'm noticing that gorgeous lampholder and the railing. I have no recollection the great view of the BT/PO Tower as you exit the building. I obviously had other things on my mind back then.

Intrigued at whether anything could be seen inside, I peered in through the window at the side of the front door to see that the hallway is the same as I remember as regards layout and fittings but today the colours are muted, bland, very tame. Very pale grey and magnoila. There's no way the Georgians, the Victorians, indeed the early C20th century bright young things would have lived in anywhere as dull. poor John and all his hard work. I peered down into the front basement area and remembered the two Johns and Frank who used to work out of that office, yet I am not aware of them using these steps. Instead, they would access through Art Integrators, going past my desk, back and forth to Solar Typesetting which was situated at the very rear of the building abutting Grafton Mews (see below). 

I really liked the guys in Solar, in particular Mick and Ron the bosses who were always always immaculately well-dressed in that old-school 1960s way; shiny shoes, tie pins, clean hands and aftershave. They sometimes let me use the compositor machine to make my the headline lettering for jobs myself, the machine being a kind of enlarger that produced crisp-edged large format letters on photo-quailty paper. Using turning handles to get the right size and focus on a single character you then hit the button to photograph it, then moved on to take a snap of the next letter. I was so in my element there as, since starting in the industry back in 1980, it had often been commented on that I have a natural ability for letterspacing; The Queen of Letraset – a skill I think is sadly lacking these days where you can often easily 'drive a bus' through the gap in 11 and then blame technology if anyone points it out.

I particularly recall how I liked working with affable and super-efficient, self-effacing Bob, one of the Solar typesetters, and how impressed and intrigued I was at how he/they could turn my mark-ups supplied to them as instrucutions on A4s into beautiful long silky sheets of words, often created overnight to be ready for me next morning, having typed up the whole thing up manually, looking at screens of coloured codes and symbols that to my mind looked nothing like my starting point or the marvellous end product. there ceratinly was no opportunity for amendements. Once it had gone to the typesetter that was it. Any changes were costly. Unless, like me you were adept with the PMT camera and bit of clever cut and shunt. Today, just like I am doing here, we can amend our copy as we go along and change styles and fonts in seconds, effectively acting as designer, typographer, typesetter, artworker, even printer, all at once. Jacks of all trades. Masters of none.

There was a wonderful exchange of ideas and skills between AI and Solar with many of our in-house  chats taking place in Ian's office, someone I was to keep in touch with for years to come. Indeed, when I was made redundant from this company in October 1990, a fate that befell most of us there, I had by that time made good friends within the building and many of us stayed in touch furthering each other's careers going forward. Who was it who said "workmates are friends your boss found for you"?! 

This got me thinking about bygone times, places and people connected to this company, so I sat down on one of the benches for a while to try and remember the people I worked there. Let's return to the front door and then travel around the building. 

I cannot now recall who or what was in the office to the immediate left of the front door, ditto the room beyond the reception to the left. I think it was probably a marketing company that I rarely had to deal. My department, Art Integrators, was down the stairs towards the rear. There was an office to the right of the corridor and the main studio to the left. The corridor then lead to Solar and a back door to Grafton Mews. 

Returning to the stairs and going up to the first floor front, John Gannaway and his business partner Eddie (aaargh, can't remember his surname), their jolly can-do PA (again, name drain here. Jackie? Janice?) had offices either side of the lovely conference/meeting room which ran across the front of the building and in a previously time zone would have been a family dining room/reception. The accounts dept was adjacent to the stairs. I am now remembering bubbly colourful Janet from accounts, she was marvellous. I loved it when she did the rounds handing out the payslips every month. Indeed, as with most accounts depts, they went a bit party-mad whenever the was a birthday or party celebration on a Friday. I think this is because, unlike the rest of the company who were in pubs practically every lunch time and after work whatever day it was, they had to keep a clear head for figures and restricted their binges.  

First floor rear was The Sharp End, another design and artwork company, headed by Keith, backed up by head creative Roger and managed by Chrissie. This larger studio worked mostly for the large holiday companies of the day producing brochures and ads, with a lot of work coming in from Yugotours, much of which also filtered down to AI. Staff at AI included Nigel, Jane, Chris, Paul, Erica, Dylan, Debbie, [Miss] Watmough on telephone and secretaral duties; I can hear her lovely husky south London accent in my head as I type this. At certain times both studios were full to brimming expanded by freelance artworkers employed to produce the paste-ups for those thick holiday brochures. Paste-up, for the unitiated, involves paper, glue, scalpels, Rotring pens and PMT machines. The end products then get photographed by a reprographic company pre going to print. Wow. To the under 40s this must sound like I am writing in a foreign language. How times have changed. 

So back to the tour... The upper floor was Gannaways advertising company. Here goes, and sorry if I miss anyone out, but hell, this was 30 years ago... production dept by the stairs comprising Phil, Tim and Ruth (strong Wakefield accent). Client handlers Hilary and Andrew (who, coincidentally links in a different way to the Carreras building mentioned above), creatives Dexter, Paul and another well-spoken bloke who's face I can see but name I can't recall (?Rupert) worked on a lot of film company and VHS ads (we all used to go to screenings in Hammersmith. Happy days). Barry the illustrator in the central zone opposite the marriage of Jon (pictures) and Leon (words) with Mike the creative director in the corner room. Phew! I think that's the whole building done.  

When I'd only been working there a few weeks a photo was taken of all employees outside the building. I was wearing a hat I had recently purchased from Zone at Harvey Nichols. I've still got that hat. It's like a cross between a lady's riding hat and a funeral director's top hat. I never got a copy of the group photo. However, I do have a few photos of some of the people mentioned above – please do contact me if you are interested and I will send them to you.

Sitting on the bench, looking at the laminated aggregate that now runs a full ring around the beautiful gated gardens at the centre, I was reminded that back in the 90s there were fuctioning roads with parking spaces all the way round and at lunchtimes I often went inside the gardens with workmates. I don't recall anyone having a key or opening a gate. I am sure we simply walked in and sat on the grass, though I suspect it was only accessible on certain days and times.

It's doubtful that 4-5 Fitzroy Square was initially designed to be one property being as the columns above No.4 are not repeated on No.5. It's an enigma. Simliar pairings are evident further along and are more easily discerned being symmetrical in design as regards their additional embellishments. I suspect one door would have been used by the owners for slipping in and out unannounced, and the was other for visitors, with servants/trade making use of the access at the rear. However there are other divisions, such as shown top left here (green door) which show a history of change. 

Other points to note along this side of the square, shown above: some lovely metalwork in the form of balconies, railings and boot scrapers, and more beautiful delicate fanlights. Within the upper pediment of 7-8  it looks as if some architectual details in the form of floral motifs have been removed. The blue plaque commemorates Charles Eastllake, 1793-1865, Painter and First Director of the National Gallery who lived here (for a length of time unspecified!).

I will continue my observations in this area in another post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*one of my own words. See also Dubaiification.