The ornate Hanover Gate Lodge in Regent’s Park. Photo: Phillip Perry/Chowells
WE parted last week outside the Royal Academy of Music, just off Marylebone Road, with the stories of brass players ringing in our ears.
Now we’ll head north a little, following the curve of John Nash’s marvellous Regent’s Park terraces, and stop for a quick livener to get the circulation going for this week’s virtual stroll.
We briefly popped into to say hello to the members of the Handlebar Club at The Windsor Castle in Crawford Place a few weeks back (a moustache club featured in Diary, passim – Ed), and we shall now stop for refreshment at another Windsor Castle. There are lots of places with this name round and about – too many in the UK for the internet to accurately count, a quick search online suggests.
Anecdotally Diary knows of a few nearby: another WC can found in St John’s Wood, another in Kilburn, and then it appears there are more and more as you head out towards west London and up the Thames Valley until you reach Windsor itself. This royal borough, Diary suspects, has nothing but pubs with that name.
Sadly, a personal favourite, the Windsor Castle in Camden Town, has been turned into a burger joint. Still, there are plenty more to choose from if you like the name.
This Castle, which would offer Winston Churchill a quiet spot by the fire to warm himself after a stroll through Regent’s Park, dates from the Georgian period and enjoys a beautiful curved façade.
It opened in 1826 and its first publican was Joseph Spicer, whose trade was described as victualler. His name rests in the books of the Sun Fire Office records – an insurance firm that provided a private fire brigade for subscribers.
He lasted seven years at the pub before handing on the business to a John Flowers who in turn, it appears, gave the pub to his daughter, Jane Brooks Flowers, in 1839.
The longest tenant appears to have been a man called B Worth, whose name is prefixed with the word “German”. The records do not make it clear if this is his first name, or a reference to his country of origin.
German B Worth, as we will call him, took on the place in the 1880s, a period when many people of German origin worked in the London brewing industry. It is telling that his name disappeared from the register in 1915, suggesting he passed the pub on to escape the anti-German feeling directed towards businesses due to the Great War.
Records show that many other German-named firms and pub owners in Westminster removed their names – or anglicised them – from 1914 onwards.
This lovely building is part of John Nash’s vision for Regent’s Park, and while we think of his grandiose terraces, his attention to detail was such that the pubs are worthy of attention, too.
And it wasn’t such everyday amenities Nash was keen to make as good as possible – a shimmy from the Windsor and we come across his Grade II-listed western entrance into the park, known as Hanover Gate.
One can wonder at what Nash was day-dreaming about as he lazily sketched out the early drawings for this wonderful piece of Baroque folly.
It has painted stucco on its frontage, rises two storeys, and includes porches for classical statues. It’s a rather nice place for the gateman to spend his days nodding at horses and carriages entering the Regent’s dandified open space.
Now we duck into the back streets between Regent’s Park and Edgware Road. As we stroll down Hatton Street, we turn to peer at a pretty-looking sign on the side of a wall of a rather outlandish Art Deco, coloured-tiled building for the neighbourhood.
The plaque reads: “The Old Aeroworks, 1912-1984. These buildings built in the 1920s were occupied by the Palmer Tyre Company who produced wheels, tyres, brakes and gun turrets that were fitted to wartime Spitfires, Hurricanes, Wellington and Lancaster fighter and bomber aircraft. The company continued aerospace research and development in this building until 1984.”
This declaration is surrounded by splendid black and white mosaic tiling depicting the types of aircraft that used the parts made within.
The building was taken over by the architect Sir Terry Farrell in the mid-1980s to create an office for his practice and studios for other creative types. He built a penthouse for himself on the top floor, adding plenty of nods to the building’s former life, such as shiny propellers hanging from roof struts.
The building itself started out as a furniture-making hub for the firm Bovis. The house-building company employed scores of joiners here to knock out furniture, cupboards, kitchens and the like for their new developments. But in 1940, when the Palmer Aeroworks in north-east London was hit in a raid during the Blitz, the government took over the building. Instead of interiors for ribbon development housing, engineers moved in.
And the Palmer aero engineers are one of those many groups of unsung war heroes.
As well as making lots of bits and pieces for a range of RAF planes, they invented and patented the “Palmer Cord Aero tyre and wheel rim”, which was the first ever pneumatic aircraft tyre not to burst on landing, thus making the operation safer and saving countless lives.
Now for some more refreshment alongside more architectural wonders. We head into Church Street, and swing into the Traders Inn.
Opened in 1839, this lovely pub still has echoes of those who have swilled back pints in her, and in a good way.
Once managed by the Watney Combe & Reid firm, it enjoys the company’s exquisite, historic branding inside. That means examples of historic mirrors galore – the Watneys workers loved a mirror – and if you look around you carefully, you can still spot other features such as original panelling and ornate wooden columns.
Perhaps the nicest of the lot is a stained-glass sash window that was installed when the pub first opened. The window features an image of a watermill and another of the miller’s cottage – very rustic. Does it perhaps speak of the River Tyburn, that flows beneath the ground nearby?
To its left is a slightly younger but no less lovely Guinness mirror, representing the other type of liquid flowing in these parts.
On that note, chin up, down the hatch and cheers.
Till next week – stay well, stay safe.
