Backstreet Beauty

Today I emerged from my post-Christmas hibernation and decided a good long walk was in order. Ordinarily when I want a proper stomp, I head up to Hampstead Heath and get both literally and metaphorically lost in the only real wilderness London has to offer, but after flicking through my copy of the wonderful 1960s classic, The London Nobody Knows, by Geoffrey Fletcher, I decided to stick a bit closer to home and see what treasure I could find on the backstreets as I wended my way from my flat in Clerkenwell down to Chancery Lane.

The aim of the walk was to find London’s oldest (and I believe only) surviving cast iron urinal, which is located on Star Yard, round the back of Chancery Lane, near Lincoln’s Inn. This may seem a strange focal point for a walk, but some of you who have been reading my blog for a long time may recall my interest (my friends would call it an obsession, but I prefer interest!) in public toilets. I love the history of public toilets - or conveniences, as the Victorians called them - largely because public toilet provision is closely aligned with the opening up of cities to women as places of leisure. Sadly many of the original Victorian public toilets have now disappeared, so when I come across one I’ve not heard of before, my excitement goes through the roof. The description of this urinal as being a sort of makeshift lean-to affair intrigued me - as did the fact it was still standing, despite being far from a solid structure - and so camera in hand, I set out to find it, and also see what else I could spot on my way.

I am fortunate to live amidst a beautiful cluster of Georgian squares, which are sandwiched between Rosebery Avenue, Amwell Street and Pentonville Road, and which offer much architectural interest. Amwell Street is full of original nineteenth century shop fronts and also has the old industrial buildings of the New River Company, which used to manage the water supply of this part of London. They are currently under construction to become the new Quentin Blake Museum of Illustration, which my neighbours and I are much looking forward to opening in 2025. You can read more about the site here. I am particularly thrilled, as Quentin Blake grew up on the same street as me in South East London, and went to my secondary school, so I feel like my life has come full circle in some small way. Interestingly, Charles Dickens’ illustrator, George Cruikshank, lived on Amwell Street, and his great-grandson was in my class at secondary school. Isn’t life just full of strange coincidences?

Walking through my neighbourhood offers much to delight, but I know it all by heart after spending far too many afternoons during the 2020 lockdown wandering its streets, so we shall bypass this neighbourhood and instead I will transport you past Exmouth Market, which is a delightful street of restaurants and independent shops, and down Rosebery Avenue, which links Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell and Islington as it wends its way from Theobalds Road up to St John’s Street. It is largely made up of old warehouses, which have now been converted into offices and apartments, and also has several interesting nineteenth century mansion blocks and tenement houses. This was always a slum district, and maintains a vaguely institutional air through the height and scale of these large Victorian colossuses that straddle the wide road. It is elevated - you can see the viaduct when you get to the middle of the road - which is due to the fact that this used to be the path of the River Fleet. If you pop down onto the road below, you’ll get a nice view of the Victorian ironwork that props Rosebery Avenue up and gives it this distinctive almost New York-esque character, which you can also see at Holborn Viaduct, but on a larger scale.

When I hit Theobalds Road, I took a left and went down Leather Lane, which is famous for its traditional weekday market. There was no market today, so I could enjoy looking at the mixture of different shop fronts, some of which haven’t changed since the nineteenth century - I particularly enjoyed seeing some of the original signage that has somehow managed to stay intact. As I walked, I happened to spot an intriguing looking Gothic church poking out of a side street, so I ducked off the main road and found a remarkable enclave of buildings that made me feel like I’d gone back in time. Attached to this Gothic church, which is apparently a rare William Butterfield design (he was a prominent neo-Gothic architect), are a Gothic clergy house, and another clergy house/hostel, which looks like it belongs in Amsterdam. In the middle of the road opposite to these, sits a little Dutch-style arts and crafts block of council flats, and opposite that, a small art deco factory painted a startlingly bright white. All around this cluster of architectural wonder are ugly 1960s council blocks, and I was left marvelling at how these pockets of beauty survive amidst the immense amounts of redevelopment that have taken place in the 20th century. I particularly loved seeing this little cat next to a flower pot in the window as I walked past the clergy house; it was like something from a Barbara Pym novel. I could almost smell the cabbage boiling in a pan somewhere behind the panes.

Onwards to High Holborn, where I had a wander through the courtyard of the gargantuan Victorian terracotta office building originally built for the Prudential Life Assurance Agency - all pinnacles and arches and pointed roofs - before cutting down Fetter Lane - which has all been destroyed by modern office construction - and Bream’s Buildings - which has some lovely old Victorian office blocks - before finding myself in Star Yard, home to the aforementioned Victorian urinal, or pissoir, as it would have been known when first built, as it is a copy of a French design. What a joy! It is like a little cast iron shed affixed to a brick wall, and has been there since the 1850s. It was padlocked, but being tall and armed with an iPhone, I managed to look inside with my camera - it is no longer a toilet, but a storage shed, which belongs to the house opposite (I did some googling). It would seem this is why it survives, as it is in private rather than council ownership. It’s a shame it doesn’t still fulfil its original purpose, as truly public toilets are now a rare sight - but I am just glad it is still there to be admired as a piece of nineteenth century craftsmanship. I also love the fact that when it was built, it was situated next to a still-surviving gas lamp - how thoughtful!

My goal achieved, I decided to have a wander through Lincoln’s Inn, which has some of the most beautiful architecture in London, in my view - I absolutely adore the little shops and pubs on Carey Street, which haven’t altered in well over a hundred years, and look so tiny compared with the buildings they are connected to behind. I’d love to find out more about how they came about in the first place. There is so much Victorian gothic in these streets to enjoy - the Maughan Library, now belonging to the King’s College London, is a particular delight - as well as the Georgian stateliness of the beautiful buildings around Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where you can find the marvellous Sir John Soane Museum. I love the wide array of Victorian street furniture on the streets here, too - so many impressive old street lamps, and even an old drinking fountain. You could spend a good hour or so just exploring this little corner behind Chancery Lane, especially if you go into Lincoln’s Inn itself, which is one of London’s famous Inns of Courts, but the sky was beginning to darken, so I thought I best hurry on.

After feeling like I had been transported to the nineteenth century while wandering these quiet back streets, it felt quite jarring when I came out of a side street onto the busy bustle of Kingsway, which joins Aldwych to Holborn. This was once the terminus for London’s trams, and is an enormously wide street as a result. I ducked across into another side street, and then walked down Long Acre into Seven Dials, noticing for the first time many beautiful old shop signs and fronts that I had never really stopped to enjoy before, as well as stumbling across a Swiss Church I had never noticed, despite walking past it dozens of times. En route home, I popped into the gorgeous stationery shop Choosing Keeping, which is well worth a visit, as it’s filled with the most beautiful handmade and vintage stationery that I could have happily have spent a lot of money on (but resisted, because I’m sure I’m not alone in having a drawerful of beautiful unused notebooks already!), and realised that, without the usual crowds (London is always blessedly quiet in these days between Christmas and New Year), Seven Dials is a real joy to wander through and has got some lovely independent shops I’ve always been too frustrated with the crowds to bother exploring. I have made a note to revisit soon.

What I love about London is how suddenly you find yourself moving from one neighbourhood to another - standing amidst the gaudy Christmas lights of Seven Dials and the traffic of High Holborn as I waited to cross the road, I could already glimpse the flat-fronted soot-blackened Georgian terraces of Gower Street ahead, signalling the transition into Bloomsbury. With relief I left the busyness of the shopping streets of Covent Garden behind and walked up Gower Street until I hit Bedford Square, my favourite of the Bloomsbury garden squares. I then took a right, walked past the back of the British Museum, cut through the rather barren looking Russell Square gardens, and then took my familiar route home through the back streets of Bloomsbury, once the stomping ground of Dickens and Woolf. I have been feeling a little out of love with London lately, longing for fresh air and greenery and nature. But on days like this, when a walk down a road I’ve never had reason to go down before can offer so much to delight and surprise, I remember how enormously lucky I am to live in such an endlessly diverting, fascinating and historic place, that manages to be continually in flux while remaining reassuringly the same.