Several people have said to me that, now that I am working in Blackfriars, the best place to have lunch is Sweeting’s.   It first opened in 1889, as someone remarked the year that Hitler was born.   I was invited there today by John Morton Morris whose father had always promised to take him there when he was a child, but always took him to Sheekeys or Simpson-in-the-Strand instead.   You have to be there by noon to get a table.   Then black velvet, smoked eel and fish pie.   A perfect meal to ease the return to London:-

Continue reading →

Before checking out on holiday, I am posting an unexpected view of Paddington Station which I took yesterday morning en route for breakfast at the headquarters of Marks and Spencer.   My eye was caught by the bold lettering in the distance on the 1930s office block – the so-called ‘Arrivals Side Offices’, now called Tournament House – which were added behind the Great Western Hotel by P.E. Culverhouse in 1933:-

I am gradually getting to know the neighbourhood round Unilever House.   It’s like a foreign country, the business and commercial district sandwiched between the Temple and the City.   Down Temple Avenue I was interested by the sculpture supporting the door on a building of the late 1880s:-

I went to see St. Bride at lunch-time today.   It’s not a church that I know at all well, tucked as it is on an alleyway behind the old Reuter’s building off Fleet Street.   The spire is particularly magnificent, built between 1701 and 1703 to a design that replicates the spire on the Warrant design for St. Paul’s.   The interior is an over-luxurious remodelling after catastrophic war damage.   In the churchyard, I spotted the tomb of Samuel Richardson:-

Continue reading →

It was a breezy morning as I walked across Blackfriars Bridge and was able to admire the grand, monumental classicism of our new home in Unilever House, together with its jazz moderne and Egyptomanic detailing:-

Continue reading →

I have been reading Nicholas Taylor’s The Village in the City, a classic of early 1970s invective against the inhumanity of tower blocks, which made me interested to see how well Luxborough Tower survives behind the University of Westminster, now semi-privatised, but designed in 1965 on the site of a Victorian workhouse in the high noon of tower blocks:-

Continue reading →

I found myself in the west end today which I normally try to avoid at the weekend.   It gave me time to examine the detailing on some of the houses in Brook Street at the Hanover Square end.   This is Nos. 14-16 with what Pevsner describes as ‘undercooked-looking’ terracotta:-

This is Nos.2-4, Jacobethan by C.O. Parnell:-

Continue reading →

It’s a long while since I’ve had breakfast at the Ritz where we used to conduct a lot of business when I was at the NPG.   We were choosing the winners of this year’s Mayfair Awards.   I’m not the best person to choose a jeweller and am sadly unable to distinguish the qualities of the Savile Row tailors, but enjoyed the opportunity to find out about new pop-up coffee shops.   Underlying a lot of the discussion was the distinction between new Mayfair – the many new shops which have opened in the last year – and the old Mayfair of grand hotels, auction houses and gun shops.   Sad to hear that Dover Street Market may be moving out:-

I was told last night that much the best view of St. Paul’s Cathedral was from the roof of One New Change, the large and not very prepossessing shopping mall which dominates its chancel end.   It’s true that, rather amazingly, long before the shops open, it is possible to take the lift up on to the roof and there survey not just the great dome of St. Paul’s, but the whole of London and its changing roofscape beyond:-

Continue reading →

The nearest landmark to our new offices is The Black Friar, an astonishing, richly ornamented, still surviving Arts-and-Crafts pub, built in 1873, but magnificently revamped in 1905 with ample lettering and assorted signage outside and again restored in the 1980s by Jamie Troughton of Troughton McAslan:-

Continue reading →