St. George's Tavern

Smithy and I finally made it to The St. George's in Belgrave Street last Tuesday. Not mentioned in NL, but the pub in which I.N. spent his last days in the early eighties, according to web sources, and it seems likely. A very *Very* ordinary pub which gets entirely under your skin. The most mixed clientele I've ever encountered, all rubbing along together in a way entirely unlike England, let alone London. Beguiling - irresistable. You may turn up and not get it. Tant Pis. The same web sources assume a disillusioned and marginalised Nairn; as I didn't know him it's impossible for me to comment, but I dunno... maybe he decided to stop shouting against the crap and let it drown all, but disillusioned? I can't see it. He had the St. Georges, and *London Beer*.

The Red Lion

Well I managed to get a shot, of sorts. It was gone eleven when Harry and I finally quit the place. Remarkably for a central London pub on a warmish late summer Friday evening, it was tolerably tosser-free (not entirely, but much less irritating than you'd expect.) Despite the fact that the photo's fuzzy, I think you can tell that, as I.N. says, Nothing is fuzzy. Nairn:

"If I could keep only one pub out of the whole London Galaxy, this would be my choice.... If you had a problem, the Red Lion would not ease it, however much you drank; instead it would strengthen you. It is a place to walk out of ramrod-straight, reinforced by those proud, sparkling arabesques."

Ramrod-straight we just about managed, tacking a little all the while.

Monument and Aldgate

They've cleaned the monument. Hooray. Here's a photo. All too easy to take for granted, but take note:

"It is indeed the Monument, in the true Roman line. Only the restoration could have produced it - the few short years when ceremonial was not something apart but was at the same time larger than life and not just an enlargement of domestic forms."

And then there's Aldgate. I've uploaded a photo of Bain Dawes House / Latham House, boarded up, derelict and dangerous with tank-traps blocking the drives. Awaiting demolition to make way for a very big scheme which may or may not work. Nairn hopes for great things - he's takling about the seventies schemes - which I think work(ed), although that makes me unfashionable. What was nice about this development was that it was part of a complex that incuded housing, facing Mansell Street. Maybe not particularly well realised, but at least a nod to the residential and transitional character of the area, so well described in NL:

"One of the most dramatic contrasts in London. Just when the city seems to be getting to its most crowded and correct, along Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street, the whole thing falls away... At the other end of Aldgate East is another moving change: the split of Commercial and Whitechapel Roads - one going to the docks and the estuary, the other pointed straight at the heart of East Anglia, those long miles beyond Newmarket. It is only a traffic block now, but it could be marvellous, given town artists and not just town planners.".

Indeed. But the new developments seem to emphasise and prioritise shopping at the expense of living space and I worry that the scale might be wholly wrong. Time will tell. Also anxious about the Still and Star's survival, which is essential. Of course, the Hoop and Grapes will survive, which is as it should be. But the Hoop's just a good building. The Still's a pub.

Lime Green

So. Lime green then. What were they thinking?

Finsbury Savings Bank

Finsbury Savings Bank, Sekforde Street. It's claimed that Dickens banked here, but I've yet to verify this. Anyhow, I.N. notes it as an "Extraordinary overwrought building produced by a thoughtful man trying to will his way out of the nineteenth-century confusion of styles and finding that his brain became overheated in the process." The man concerned is Alfred Bartholomew, and, ultimately, Nairn gives him - and it - the thumbs-up, especially the embossed lettering (I like the compressed serlianas - two blind and one wholly opened up). Nice to be able to report a positive change where decline is the norm; in 1966 Nairn reports the building as a 'disaster' in Lime Green; things get a little better by Gasson's '80s revision, "pale grey and white with details (presumably the lettering) picked out in black", but as you see, in 2008 we're back to the cream stucco that Nairn urges. Good show.

Hungerford Lane

The purest sort of Nairn, his entry for Hungerford Lane, "Like meeting a person five hundred years old." The multiple recognition that "Nails you to a place" was somewhat diluted last time I walked Hungerford Lane in the spring of 2008, but it hardly matters now because you can no longer make the journey. The threefold relationship Nairn describes in 1966 is between the Lane, the Arches passage whaich traverses it, and the trains further above; this is substantially the same at the time of Gasson's '88 revision. The threefold relationship now is between "Keep Clear", "Keep Out" and CCTV. Fine democracy, as the great man himself says.

2009

Haven't posted anything this year - the weather's been crappy and I refuse to take snow photos. Last night it rained lots so there's just one shot - Savage Gardens from the Old Cheshire Cheese (The good one, not the famous one.) Blurry and bloody awful light conditions so I "posterised" it; at least the colours are quite nice. The building at the end of Savage Gardens should be the offices of Trinity House but isn't any more. I've been looking down this street, on and off, for the best part of thirty years.