London street signs – additions to postal zones

My last post mentioned a patch added to a sign along The Broadway in Woodford. This got me thinking about the many additions and changes to street name signage across London. This became necessary as an area has became so populated that the postal district had to be sub-divided, such as Holloway N, becoming Holloway N7, etc. 

As London expanded, districts needed to be defined to prevent confusion between, for instance, Brewer Street in Soho and a road by the same name in another part of the metropolis, and so simple points of the compass were added. More often than not a complete new batch of signs was created to replace/cover the old ones. But in some places, a little patch or tile was added adjacent to the existing name plate, such as these examples in Soho where a small white tile bearing a red W for West has been added next  to the brown and white 1870's tiles that show the street name:

Soho's single letter square tiles are perhaps copies of the similar, earlier, more elegant ones in the Hampstead area where there are also some later additions:

Single letter tiles can also be found in nearby Loveridge Road NW6. Near there you'll also find some lovely blue and white vitreous enamel signs, such as this one in Oxford Road which, like many others in that vicinity, has a little metal plate to the side: 

But surely a more effective and visually pleasing amendment would have been to make small blue enamel [N.W.6.] signs in a condensed typeface to competed cover the N.W. within the sign itself? These could have then been spot welded to the original sign. Hey, but what do I know?!

This extraneous patch device can also be found in W8, as shown below in Cromwell Grove where the little metal tiles that display the full postcode of that era have been better designed completes with fancy corners and affixed centred under the street sign. But where is West W6?!

In Strode Road NW10, it looks like the local council was on a money and time saving exercise as the basic little hand-painted metal add-ons here look like they were created cheaply and attached in a hurry. Incidentally, the punctuation on these old signs often intrigues me. Full points, and sometimes semi-colons too, randomly applied, like a game of Spot The Difference. For instance what happened to the full point after W on the Cromwell Grove sign? But I digress. 

Finally, staying in NW10, in the well-to-do Chamberlayne Road area there are elegant cast metal N.W. signs that also have little 10s attached to the side or below them, but here we can see that the contractor remembered to use a spirit level:

I do like these little quirky add-ons. When councils created complete new street name plates they were mostly fixed directly over the previous one. There are, however, instances where new signs were placed adjacent to the old ones which can be a bit confusing. I will compile a collection of some of my favourite oddities in a future post. 

North East London NE street signs

Many moons ago, back in 2008, I wrote a post about old metal street names which also included some of the now defunct mid-19th century N.E. signs that I had spotted on the streets of North East London in Clapton, Hackney and Stoke Newington, today categorised as East London (E). Since the 1860s the NE code has applied to Newcastle.
I am not the only one 'collecting' these glimpses of the past – Sam, Mr Ghostsigns, has organised a free scavenger hunt to on the afternoon of Saturday 21st April with the aim to make a database. If you are going to join in I'd suggest a bit of pre-event sleuthing via google streetview which will save time and shoe leather.
I won't be able to join in that day as I will be leading events of my own so, to help anyone who is going to join in on the days I thought I'd give you a heads-up and pull together all the NE signs I have collected myself. Well, I say 'all' but I mean the ones I have labelled and filed correctly – I am pretty sure I have other photos in a folder on my desktop titled "to name and file"!

My photos of Clapton's N.E. signs shown A-Z.
Other signs I am aware of but are not shown above are: Brett Passage, Colne Rd, Dunlace Rd, Malvern Rd, Mayola Rd, Mentmore Terrace, Mildenhall Rd, Navarino Rd, Roding Rd, Rushmore Rd and St Philips Rd.

This makes minimum of 31 roads with signs showing the N.E. district. Note that some roads have two or three N.E. signs and I have only shown one of them.
As regards the design of these enamel signs, I notice that there is no fixed punctuation style – colons, commas, full points and semi-colons appear to be interchangeable.
Along my travels I have also found some North (N.) and South East (S.E.) signs from the same era :

These signs from Hackney and Southwark are the same style as the N.E. signs including the typefaces, casing and fixings.

London also has no S postcode – that one was allocated to Sheffield.
More types of street name signs in the Clapton area can be found here.
And this post, also from 10 years ago, shows a variety of road name changes.

Puzzled by a London Puzzle at Christmas

Last week, on Christmas Day afternoon, I cleared the table, poured the wine, and got to work on a PuzzleMap jigsaw of London that I'd found whilst rummaging at a charity sale last summer.
I am happy to report that all the pieces were in the box but, oh boy did I find some other things amiss.

The completed puzzle – 1000 pieces, 19"x27"

Having looked online at reviews for this item people say they really enjoyed doing the puzzle but found the image on the box lid hard to follow because it shows additional map at the left and right sides.
Well, never mind that, dear WordSearchers, you should be more concerned with the inaccuracy of the place- and road-names and the confusion as to why so many insignificant streets, parks and locations have been identified as worthy for inclusion yet other, more important places, have been omitted, and where are the tube station signs for Oxford Circus, Bond Street, Chancery Lane and Hyde Park Corner? Ditto Marylebone and Fenchurch Street rail stations? Did they just fall off the map?!

A crash (one of many) at the junction of Lyall Street and Chester Row.  South Kensington tube stain has been renamed (who knew?) and there optional spellings for the Jameses. In the fourth pic four street names include extra/repeated letters: Roseberry St (+r), Skinnner St (+n), Centrral St (+r) and St. Johns St (+s).

Barnard Park is depicted as a very important district in North London, almost as big as Islington, and Barnsbury Rd has been mis-named Barnsbury St, a silly error because there is a Barnsbury Street further north which runs east-west. In central London alternative spellings are given for the gallery and the body of water that separates the parks, and South Carriage Drive has been mis-named as Carriage Rd. The third pic shows Leather St and Halton Gdn which everyone knows should be Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. Note also in that pic that Stanland Street, a quiet back street, has been selected for inclusion. Ditto Jockey's Fields (which needs no possessive). The last pic shows examples of names without Rd/St/Av endings; Marshalsea (Rd) and Tabard (St) – I could have included plenty more pics of those; Bressenden (Gdns), Grt Percy (St), Appold (St), Wood (St), Vauxhall (St), Lombard (St)...

More errors include (with the correct spelling in brackets), Townshed Rd (Townshend), Edgeware Station (Edgware), Stanland St (Sandland) Plender Rd should be St and, probably my favourite, Long Acre St (delete St).
You probably think I have studied the whole thing like a pedantic sub-editor with a fine-tooth comb – Nope! – I just noticed these things as I was doing it. It wasn't until I'd spotted about ten, when I had barely completed half of the puzzle, that I started jotting them down and then taking photos – this explains the changes in picture quality depending on available light at the time. I have spotted errors mainly in the central and north-east areas because I am not so knowledgeable about the south and south-west, so there must be lots more I don't know about.
I wonder, how did all these silly errors slip though the net? It is fairly evident to me that it wasn't checked before it was printed. Existing maps such as the A-Z can't just be scanned and copied; there are copyright issues and so this had to be redrawn from scratch and, I suggest, in a hurry. Perhaps some of the mis-spellings might actually be mis-hearings with one person shouting the street names to another who typed them onto the map. Or, perhaps it was created as a task on The Apprentice?!!

The blurb on the box, and online, reads: 

• Learn the layouts of famous cities piece by piece as you assemble our PuzzleMaps with friends and family. 
• Perhaps you are planning a trip and want to orient yourself before you go, or perhaps you want to remind yourself of favorite corners and neighborhoods you have explored on foot.  
• The perfect gift for the person planning a first trip or the world traveler who knows a world class city from the ground up. 
• Made from high quality laminated paper board
• PuzzleMaps will challenge the best puzzlers, inspire curious minds interested in far off places and delight world travelers.
• PuzzleMaps are made from post-consumer recycled material

Is it me, or does last bullet seem to contradict the fourth?
You may have noticed the American spellings here and on the map itself such as Av as the abbreviation for Avenue – we Brits prefer to use Ave. Design Ideas Limited, the company that produced this puzzle, is indeed American and, according to the box, is based in Springfield*, Illinois. But they must have internet access over there and they must have access to maps of London. It's inexcusable. Though quite amusing too.
I am going to leave the finished puzzle on my table for a while yet – it sort of pleases me in a supercilious "I know better" way. Perhaps I'll write to Design Ideas and suggest that it could form the basis if another type of puzzle all on its own; a sort of cartographic spot-the-diffence as part of a range called MapMistakes or StreetSearch...?!

*Incidentally, Springfield is not just home of the Simpsons, it's [something like] one of the most common town names in the U.S. – probably why Matt Groening chose to use it. 

Black Cap Yard, Camden

The Black Cap public house in Camden High Street now stands empty awaiting a new future since it closed in April 2015.
The pub opened in the mid-18th century as The Mother Black Cap; a reference to a local witch. A bust of her still sits at the top of the building overlooking the street.

Pre-closure, the bust on near the roof and how the pub looks like right now

In the late 1960s the pub began to put on drags acts and so it became probably the most popular gay pub in this area.
I never went inside. I always meant to. Too late now.

Remnants of the old painted sign in the alley pointing to the yard at the rear, the No.171 doorway mosaic and the handwritten note pasted in the window

twitter: WeAreTheBlackCap

Jane's Advent Calendar – 22nd December

An old vitreous enamel road sign in Bloomsbury.
See yesterday and Sunday 20th for two more 22s

Brixton Windmill

Did you know there is a fully-functioning windmill in the back streets of Brixton within the aptly named Windmill Park?

A windmill has stood on this site since 1816. This is one of only a handful left standing in London. The bonus is that this mill, rather than having been turned into living space, or similar, produces an excellent finely-ground flour which is available to buy in the adjacent cafe. Also available; tours, events, arty things, children's activities and more besides – see here

On the streets nearby I spotted some other these nice things:

The side of the old Ace cinema, a lovely decorative street sign for Blenheim Gardens, a simpler one along Brixton Hill where a stretch of shops was known as The Pavement, and layers of faded and peeling red paint on a pillar box.

College Street and Little Green Street, NW5

Tucked away parallel to Highgate Road, between Kentish Town and Highgate, behind The Vine public house, is a lovely little footpath called College Lane.
Starting at College Yard it runs northwards past pretty little workers' cottages where it's hard to believe that a bus route is a stone's throw away.

Walking northwards from Somerset Road (top left)

The path then continues through a foot tunnel under the railway line and eventually becomes Grove End and then Grove Terrace.

Before the tunnel is the junction of Little Green Street:

With just eight houses on one side and two on the other, all of which were built in 1780 and are Grade II listed, it harks back to a bygone age of carts and flat caps. The street was the inspiration, and featured briefly in the video, for The Kinks' Dead End Street*. More recently the road was threatened with demolition in order to create a gated driveway for 30 new properties being built at the rear. Read more about that evil plan here. And here for a 2012 update.

* which surely inspired this great video by Oasis

Reading, writing and phonetics

Apparently the UK's school kids are having trouble writing the English Language, especially words with silent letters. If you click that link you'll see they also seem to be having trouble with 'Millennuim' too(!). Another recent report announced that they are will now expected to know their times tables all the way up to 12, be able to read a novel and write a short story of their own, all before they go to big school, or whatever it's called these days, at age 11.
Whaaaat?! When did the standards drop?! All of this was normal practice when I was at school. When did all of this cease to be important?
It has been suggested without much real thought* that words with silent letters within them such as column, lamb, subtle, echo and knight ought to be be re-spelled with the offending letters removed.

Unlike many other languages around the world, the English language is not phonetic** – you have only to look at our six different sounds for 'ough'; as in tuff, coff, thru, plow, tho and awt. 

Your Beautiful (Mistake), London N16

Languages evolve and adapt. In a 1934 novel by Evelyn Waugh he uses 'yoghourt' and 'Pekingese' both of which have since been shortened. 

These days, "your" (as in an item that belongs to you) is being mis-used to replace "you're" (you are)". I am also seeing "to" instead of "too", and "no" rather than "know". Hence we end up seeing things such as "you no your to lazy to spell". But it can't just be sheer laziness – it's easy to omit the apostrophe or the 'e', but not both. It's a lack of grammatical understanding.

And what about the disease that's making people replace "would have" with "would of"?! I believe it comes from people hearing "would've" and then writing what they think hear. I am saddened when I see people over 50 making this written error.

Let's return to the five words I chose above – if we remove the silent letters, the first two words, colum and lam, adapt quite well but the other three words create some problems; sutle rhymes with tootle, eco is short for ecological and night would need to be further shortened or completely re-spelled as nite.
Are you keeping up here?

It's a three-stage process. UK school children, having wasted years of their pre-school life being told that a train is a choo-choo and a cow is moo-moo, will then learn phonetic spellings and subsequently learn how to spell them correctly. Judging by the mistakes already being made with 'no', your' and 'of', as illustrated above, I fail to see how this will achieve anything other than a further dumbing-down.

Taking the phoenetic element a step further, it occurred to me that the people in charge of all this are going to be extremely busy covering all the various UK dialects. 

Here's how it might affect some areas if London:  

Lester, Grovener, Grenidge, Burra, Lincun, Willsdun, Bloomsbree and Gloster
See the etymology of London Borough names here

Afterthoughts
*as in the case of the SNP not having a decent plan for the currency should Scotland have become independent last year

**I thought Phonetix might have been an Asterix character. But he's not – here are all the characters.

Jane's Connect. What links these pics?

Here's a little quiz for Christmas, though unlike these cards it has got nothing to do with the time of year or Christmas at all.
All of the above are in central London and are linked in some way. Can you identify the link?

12 clues; some quickly identifiable, others a bit tougher (but you only get four clues on Only Connect).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Immediate plans for The City

Read more about this here.

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

Read more about the future here.

Islington Faces celebrates 100 interviews

Nicola Baird recently celebrated her 100th post by putting on a staged version at the King's Head Theatre last Saturday. In this one-off chat show called Islington Faces Live our inspirational host chatted to different Islington residents.
We met Theresa Debono, Islington's lovely diminutive Maltese lady mayor, Ethiopian singer Hanisha Soloman and John Walters the Pearly King of Finsbury (now part of the borough of Islington). We also heard from others about the theatre itself, star gazing on Highbury Fields, finding unusual artefacts in the road, learning languages in cafes, and how a 1960s immigrant discovered that the streets of London were not paved with gold after all. But he stayed anyway!

Top row: all in Upper Street

Middle row: Liverpool Road; Nicola with some of her guests outside the Kings Head*

Bottom row: Islington Central Library, Holloway Rd which sports the only sign I have seen using the word 'curtilage' (lovely!); a collection of signs in Essex Rd; one of Nicola's blog intervewees outside Islington Town Hall in Upper Street.

*Back row L-R: Bernita Matondo, stargazer Ernie Jegorovas, poet mechanic Stanley Smart, John Walters, Hanisha Solomon, Nicola Baird and King’s Head Theatre executive director Dominic Haddock. Foreground: Islington’s Mayor, Theresa Debono, with her husband, Tony. Photo by Vicky Ryzhykh. 

A very pleasant way to spent a Saturday afternoon.

All ticket money raised went towards The King's Head Theatre fund. 

Well done Nicola – here's to the next 100 interviews.

Holloway Festival – 1st–8th June

This Sunday 1st June sees the start of my local arts festival in Holloway.
Organised by Rowan Arts, it's jam-packed of things to do and see.
I'm involved this year and as well as being one of the featured photographers on show at The Postcards From Holloway exhibition I have produced smaller mounted prints and collections as per the one below, echoing the groups I put together here on Jane's London, and these will be for sale from my stall at the Hornsey Street Festival and the Big Day Out in Whittington Park on Sunday 8th.
Hope to see you there

I've been ill

This is not about London... it's all about me. Me me me!

Last Tuesday I was hit with a violent hayfever attack that felt like a bunch of daffs were being rammed against the back of my head. Odd, cos I hadn't had hayfever in about 5 years. Then the next morning it took almost an hour to get from the bed to vertical... I managed to get dressed but gave up and went back to bed in all my clothes suffering aches and pains, shivering, spasms etc... it was flu. Proper flu. 

The sneezing seemed to have exacerbated an old hip problem which meant I had problems sitting down then trying to stand up again, with shooting pains going up and down my body. I felt debilitated, old and useless. It's horrible when our bodies let us down like this; we take them for granted until something goes wrong and we find that can't do the simplest everyday things. 

I'm now seeing an osteopath. He's great. Things are getting better. Much better. And walking is good. Proper stepping out walking. So I am off out for a walk now... 

Normal service will be resumed in due course.

All these pics have ILL in them:

Oddities of The Strand

On Saturday I joined the engaging Peter Berthoud on another of his interesting walks.
You may recall I spent Christmas Day in central London with him... well this time he showed a group of about 15 around his oddities of The Strand, most of which I never knew about, or had any idea they existed.
I won't give anything away here, but on the walk we saw and learned about bananas, a tunnel, a church, a Bob Dylan video and a royal barge... we even saw some magic! And we ended the tour having a couple of beers in one of my favourite pubs.
Here's a direct link to his walks – be sure to check out Peter's quirky pricing structure!
Below are some of my own observations in and around the same area plus a pic of one of my own strands(!).

The coal hole is in Surrey Street at the side of the now disused Aldwych Station. After the walk a couple of us were taken by another member of the group to see a shooting range that is directly underneath it – this is the view looking up.

City Showcase event in Soho this Sunday

This Sunday 27th May – Dean Street in Soho will be closed to traffic for a one day event with food, comedy, music and market stalls offering a wide range of fashion and eclectic items.
I will have a stall there myself flogging my wares opposite the Crown and Two Chairman pub at pitch 14, so, if you are out shopping in the homogenous mainstream of Oxford Street, please do nip into Soho and say hello.
The event is in aid of the Terrence Higgins Trust.
See here for more details.

The Dean Street area.

Notting Hill Festive Shopping Night

Oh gawd... you wait for ages and then they all come along at once...

Prior to Lamb's Conduit Street's Christmas event on Friday 9th there's another special shopping night on the eve of Thursday 8th in Notting Hill.

The area around the junction of Westbourne Grove and Ledbury Road is teeming with independent boutiques and eateries selling a wide range of fashion and lifestyle goods.

Between the hours of 6pm and 9pm on Thursday they will be offering all sorts of goodies, including festive treats, discounted products, carol singers and lots more.

So this week you have two good reasons to avoid the banality and homogeneity of Oxford Street and Westfield.

Free London Walks

Well, yes, you can go for a walk yourself – I do it myself all the time. And every now and then I go on a guided walk to hear about a certain area or specific things. Some are good, and some are all walk and no information – it all depends on the tour guide – but I've always come away form a walk having learned or discovered something new.
This weekend, 28th and 29th May, Walk London are putting on lots of free led walks all over the Capital.
There are more walks to go on then just the Jack The Ripper and ghost ones, you know. Get your comfy shoes on and get out there!
Fingers crossed that the weather is nice...
Some walk-themed pics:
Clockwise from top left:
Lambeth, Newington, Fulham, Hampstead, Trafalgar Sq, Lambeth, Harlesden, Waterloo

Theatre darling, theatre

I have been to the theatre two nights running this week! Blimey darling!

On Thursday I saw Yes Minister at the Gielgud Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. Lots of words and clever political stuff. Loved it. Consider this a short and sweet favourable review.

And last night I saw the last performance of a brilliant production of Pygmalion by the Tour De Force Theatre Company in a converted industrial unit in Hackney. The cast of five was excellent.

On the bus home I thought up this collection of theatre-related images, which I think may be my best cryptic collection yet. I hope you get all the references...

Top row: Marylebone Passage, Millbank, Victoria Apollo, Chapel Market

Middle row: Old Marylebone Road, Acton, Clapton, Temple

Bottom row: Shepherd's Bush, Kings Cross, Highbury, Hoxton

Notting Hill Carnival

It has just been pointed out to me that it's the Notting Hill Carnival this weekend. Every year this last bank holiday weekend of the Summer (where did that go?!) creeps up on me so fast that I miss the event. As you can see in the link it's a jam-packed colourful weekend that attracts 1000s of people from all over the world* and huge media interest. And it's loud; my friend lives in the middle of it and recorded the visible sound.

I've only ever been twice. The first time I hated it – I wasn't in the mood for lots of people that day and so getting from place wasn't enjoyable. I just sat and watched the world go.

The second time I went to a friend's 3rd floor flat in Powys Square and we looked down on the heaving throng below who were dancing to loud, very loud, dance music. It was mesmerising.

I do like a carnival parade; I love the one at the end of the Thames Festival which is 3 weeks away, so I think I might actually go and watch the parade at Notting Hill this year...

For those of you who do go, please count how many times you hear "olé olé... feeling hot hot hot"!

*Where do they all these people stay? I hope they are using £15 off promotions like this? More voucher offers here. And VoucherCodes' fab new site here.

All of the images below are in and around the carnival route.

There's an a-MAZE-ing thing in Trafalgar Square

Ooh, I love puzzles. So too, do I like mazes; Black Gang Chine, Longleat, Hampton Court – been there, done them. But I don't think I am gonna be able to get to this one in Trafalgar Square as it's only gonna be there until Friday 6th August. Check here for more details.

As ever, any event is always a catalyst for me to put together a collection of 'relevant' photos... Nelson doesn't look very comfy does he?!

Above (except for the obvious shots):

Top row: The crowds making a big noise with vuvuzelas on the first day of The Football World Cup earlier this year

Middle row: Three different travel-related motifs along Cockspur Street.

Bottom row: The Queen's coronation procession, 15 May 1937, and Eat London – London created in food, 2007.