While we were out walking today we saw a notice that amused us and provided a title for this post.

Sneeze like a vampire

It conveys, in a striking and humourous way, the message that the government has given in more sobre terms to confine your sneeze to your sleeve so as to avoid infecting those around you. I’m sure children in particular will respond to this.

Arms of the Metropolitan Water Board

We passed by the New River Head site which has been restyled as residential accommodation and gardens. On one of the buildings there is still the coat of arms of the old Metropolitan Water Board. They took over the motto and part of the arms of the New River Company. You can compare this picture with that in Wells and a river. In 1974, the Metropolitan Water Board was itself replaced, its duties and properties being taken over by Thames Water.

(The photo is a distance shot greatly expanded, hence the fuzziness.)

The gardens

The gardens are extensive and well kept. At this time of year, the flowers are blooming, making a fine display. There is also a fountain but it has not been working recently, perhaps to save water.

Beyond the gardens you can see another building that belonged to the MWB, presumably as offices, and which has now been put to other uses.

Doorway, MWB building

This is the entrance of the above mentioned building. The foundation stone was laid in 1915. You might be able to make out the MWB monogram at the top of the circular ornament above the door. The same monogram is worked into the drainpipes on the sides of the building.

Front of the building

This is a partial view of the front of the building. The front door is usually open during the day, offering a tantalising partial view of the interior. We would very much like to take a look inside. Maybe one day we will feel bold enough to ask for permission!

Finsbury Town Hall

This fine building in Rosebery Avenue is Finsbury Town Hall. It was opened in 1895 for use by the then Borough of Finsbury. This was absorbed into the new London Borough of Islington in the restructuring of boroughs in 1965. I believe it still belongs to the Council but no longer serves as the town hall. Because of its historic and architectural interest, it is Grade II* listed.

Canopy, Finsbury Town Hall

At the front entrance is a canopy which extends from the door to the kerb. This would enable people arriving by carriage to alight and enter the building protected from rain or snow. The canopy has the words “FINSBURY TOWN HALL” in red glass set in a crazy-paving-style glass surround. Two sets of lanterns would have provided useful illumination for people arriving at night.

Sculpted frieze

The building is almost triangular in shape (a design necessitated by the site) and at the far end there is a rounded bay with a fine sculpted frieze. Unfortunately, it is badly in need of cleaning and the dirt makes it hard to pick out the details in a photograph.

Reclining figure

The figures are naturalistic even though they have a slightly hieratic air about them. I find them very attratcive, especially this figure that has modern, rather than classical, features. It is probably recorded somewhere what these figures represent but there is no clue to this on the frieze itself.

Flowers and grafitti

Walking through one of the housing estates, where some of the buildings were looking rather shabby, we saw this thicket of flowers accompanied by grafitti, symbols perhaps of two different worlds.

Dancers on a pillar

On passing through Michael Cliffe House we saw these modernistic dancers on the supporting pillars. I don’t know who the artist is.

Horse chestnut in flower

In Spa Green Park this horse chestnut tree was in bloom, making a pretty sight. I remember being told as a chuild that this tree, known to botanists as Aesculus hippocastanum (note the hippo, from the Greek word for “horse”), owes its name to the scar left when a leaf detaches itself from a branch. The scar is indeed in the shape of a horseshoe, and even has seven marks around the edge recalling the nail holes is a real horseshoe. Apparrently, too, the nuts, called “conkers” by children, used to be ground up to make a medicine to relieve coughing in horses. Unlike the edible chestnuts that can be roasted and eaten, known as Castanea sativa, horse chestnuts are poisonous to humans.

Horse chestnut blossoms

I just hope this tree will not be damaged, as so many are, later in the year by children harvesting “conkers”. If you wait long enough, the conkers fall out of the tree of their own accord, but conkers players are often too impatient to wait!

I said I would not mention the weather again unless it changed. Well, today, it has changed. A cloudy sky and what I think weather forecasters call “scattered showers” had veiled the sun and cooled the air to 17°C (63°F).

Grey sky and raindrops

Actually, for people who are not keen on the heat, it was quite pleasant. The rain was not heavy enough to tempt us to open our umbrellas, and we went for a good walk as usual.

Some windows blanked

At the risk of boring you, here is another example of blanked out windows. A couple of things intrigue me here. Firstly, unlike most other cases I have seen, while three windows in a vertical row have been blanked, one has not. (It’s usually all or nothing.) Secondly, notice the colour of the bricks: the upper story has been added, or perhaps rebuilt after bomb damage, and its window has been bricked up with the same bricks, i.e. at the same time that that floor was built. That argues for a definite decision to have the window blank.

(As I said before, once you notice details like this, you begin to see more and more of them and to become ever more intrigued by them!)

Leafy path to flats

Near Percy Circus stands an estate of apartment blocks. This pleasant leafy path is one of the pedestrian entrances to the estate. How nice it is to find so much greenery among the streets and buildings.

Poppies

Nearby was this patch enclosed with wire inside which were dozens of bright red poppies. They were fluttering in the breeze as though waving for attention. And so I gave them my attention!

Poppy

Here is a close-up of one of these simple but beautiful flowers. They seem so fragile that you would think the breeze might blow their petals away but, no, they just flutter like butterflies.

Percy Circus

Percy Circus is a broad crossroads with five roads leading off it and a circular central garden which also seems to be called Percy Circus. Two of its branches belong to Great Percy Street, which, as I mentioned previously, was named after Robert Percy Smith, a director of the New River Company.

Percy Circus and its houses were developed between 1841 and 1853. This long development time is explained by the site being rather challenging for architects and builders as it lies on a steepish hill.

The garden seems quite popular and there were people enjoying it today despite the weather. I amused myself trying to imagine the changing fashions – and comportment – of the generations who have visited the garden during the 170 years or so of its existence. Are we any happier or wiser than they were? I think not.

The rain became a little heavier (though still not enough to warrant breaking out the umbrellas) and we cut through Prideaux Place (see my previous post) and from there to Myddelton’s to pick up our coffee before heading for home.

I have sometimes wondered what it must be like living on a small island and seeing much the same views day by day. By keeping us close to home, the pandemic has caused us to live in a virtual “small island” and so I have my answer.

When you can range far and wide, you tend to see the larger features of the scenery. When you are confined to a relatively limited area, your gaze focuses successively on smaller and smaller details and changes in the environment. You switch, as it were, from an elephant’s eye view to a mouse’s eye view. Smaller things grow in importance and significance, proving that we can learn something from all situations in which we find ourselves.

Today is a Jusaka day, that is, today it is the turn of jusaka to supply our takeaway coffee. You may already have worked out that we go to Myddelton’s and Jusaka in turn on alternate days. This is because we like both and this seems the most equitable way of doing things.

Urban garden

These Georgian style houses have been here for up to 200 years and so have their front gardens, where these exist. In some streets there are no front gardens, and the properties are divided from the street by their front steps and the railings around the basement. In still other streets, the front gardens that once existed disappeared long ago, replaced be single-story shop fronts.

Where the gardens still exist, they are planted according to the likes and dislikes of the occupants. Some are carefully tended and others neglected. Quite often there are ancient trees at intervals along the street, providing shade and a home for the local squirrels.

Bicycle in waiting

When we made our first trip to Paris in 2008, we “discovered” the public bicycle hire scheme called Vélib’, (see Paris 2008, September 6th). To us at the time, this was a novelty but since then, we have seen a similar scheme set up in London with fixed cycle racks and now several schemes where bicycles can be left and picked up in any odd corner of the city. Some even have electric motors to help with the pedalling!

A view from St Mark’s Church

While cycling is good exercise and using bicycles instead of motor vehicles cuts down pollution, bicycles cause problems of their own. Any idiot can jump on a bike and, ignoring the rules of the road, constitute a risk not only to himself but also to other road users and, not least, to pedestrians. Though I was once a cyclist myself, I must say that these days I regard bicycles with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

Myddelton Square Gardens

There were relatively few people in Myddelton Square Gardens today but, then, it is a weekday. The Gardens form a pleasant shady place to sit on a hot day. People also walk their dogs here and it provides a relatively safe place for children to play.

And so to today’s special topic. One of the variable features of the Georgian houses is the fanlight over the front door. This feature is not merely decorative but provides a source of light for the entrance hall and staircase. This is less important in these days of universal electricity supply but would have been useful when the houses were first built.

While the original fanlights are all very similar, there are subtle and not so subtle differences between them. Here is a selection of those seen today.

Over the life time of these houses, some fanlight have been broken and repaired or even destroyed, perhaps by wartime bombing.

Where one has been destroyed, the replacement may be a replica of the original (making it difficult to tell that it has replaced) or a completely modern design which may, or may not, suit the style of the rest of the house.

If you are not particularly interested in architectual styles, the variation in fanlight design may not mean much to you but I find it fascinating, especially when taken in the context of the rest of the design. When you first see these 19th-century Georgian houses, they may look all alike but as you begin to look more closely, all kinds of surprising details appear.

And finally…

Blanked windows and clear windows

Here is an example of something I mentioned previously (see Convulvulus and blind windows): houses with blanked out windows. In this case, half the windows have been bricked up or, more probably, were never open to start with: the colour of the bricks and the style of brickwork suggests that they were built like this.

I would dearly like to see inside one of these houses to gain a better sense of how the different features fit together. For that, I shall have to wait at least until the wretched pandemic has been beaten.

Right, this is the last time I shall say this until the weather changes: “Today is another warm, sunny day”. From now on you can take it as read unless the weather changes and I tell a different tale.

Do you want a temperature check? You do? Oh, all right,then: it was 23° C (73° F) and because we went out early, there was relatvely little shade but a gentle breeze did help a little.

Looking down Amwell Street

We crossed Amwell Street at Claremont Square and this view is looking along that street roughly south. You can see how clear the sky is with just a few token cloudlets to relieve the monotony.

There are plenty of flowers blooming merrily in the gardens we passed and the insect population is taking advantage of the bonanza.

Bee at work
Photo by Tigger

We stopped to watch the bees collecting pollen on these flowers and Tigger photographed this one. It didn’t seem to mind. (Too busy to worry, probably.)

(And for the person who didn’t know bees from wasps, this is a bee and not a wasp.)

Once the Percy Arms

This ex-pub stands on the corner of Great Percy Street and Cumberland Gardens. Every time we come by, I have it in mind to photograph the building but we are usually here in the afternoon when the sun is behind the building, causing sun-dazzle. Today the light was better. It was called the Percy Arms and was built around 1855-60. Both it and the street were named after Robert Percy Smith (1770-1845), a director of the New River Company who owned the land when the pub was built. It is now a Grade II listed building. It has been converted into a residential block and the original window glass with lettering has been replaced. For a view of it when it was still a pub, see the photo at the bottom of the Historic England listing page.

Love to the NHS

This child’s painting of hearts and a rainbow bears the motto “NHS with Love”. It’s nice to see that people continue to appreciate the NHS and its unstinting efforts during the pandemic, and the lives of NHS personnel that were lost as a result. Let us never forget what they have done for us nor forgive successive governments who have run the service into the ground. Let’s hope this pandemic has convinced them that we need a robust and properly remunerated NHS.

Prideaux House

We found ourselves in Prideaux Place, named after Arthur R. Prideaux, Deputy Governor and then Governor (1920-32) of the New River Company. Apart from the fact that it was built around 1939, I have not found out anything about this residential block or, rather blocks, because there is one on either side of the road.

Gateway, Prideaux House

This gateway gives access to a passageway and then a tantalizing glimpse of a garden beyond.

Double door

Some of the larger Georgian style houses have front doors with two clearly defined panels. Tigger was of the opinion that these are double doors, that is, that both panels open on their own hinges on the door frame, while I was inclined to think that they were one-piece doors but with two well defined panels. I have now come around to Tigger’s view. I notice that on this door, the door knocker is not centred as it would be on a one-panel door. That would be because it has to avoid the central opening.

The postman calls

While out, we saw quite a few work people, including a painter carrying brushes and a pot of paint, and scaffolding builders at work. Not least, the posties have continued to deliver mail throughout the pandemic and deserve our thanks for their dedication.

A load of rubbish

Someone has left this impressive load of rubbish on the street corner. At least it is properly bagged. I have no doubt that it will be removed very soon as another group of essential workers has continued working throughout the crisis, namely the binmen and the collectors of recycling. If they had not continued working we would now be virtually buried in refuse. These, and so many people, have kept on doing their jobs and maintained our environment in a livable condition. Because we tend to take their services for granted, I fear they may never receive the recognition that they deserve.