“the curious question of why Barnes was singled out”

Leslie Freeman wrote in the Barnes and Mortlake History Society Newsletter (June 1996):

“Arguably the most important event in the history of Barnes and Mortlake was the opening of the Richmond Railway. In little more than 50 years, it was to change our locality from small villages surrounded by fields and farms with a few large estates to the teeming suburbs of today.
In 1836 the prospectus of the City of London & Richmond Railway was published. This was two years after the Act for what later became the London & South Western Railway (LSWR) had received Royal Assent, but two years before the first part of that line was opened. The projected capital of the company was £1 million and the line proposed ran on the south side of the river from a terminus near Southwark Bridge to Richmond. The deposited plans in the Public Record Office show the intended line following a rather more southerly course than the present railway, with the terminus in Richmond adjacent to the northern end of Waterloo Place. From there it was to follow a straight course almost parallel with the Upper Richmond Road through Mortlake and Barnes. It was intended to be in a shallow cutting, with Green Lane (now Manor Road), Sheen Lane and White Hart Lane carried over it on bridges, thus avoiding the inconvenience of level crossings. It would have run a little to the south of St Leonard’s Road, passed under Sheen Lane where Nelson Terrace now stands, entered Barnes at the junction of White Hart Lane and Priests Bridge and run along the southern border of Barnes Common…

…Of the five original stations, Richmond, Mortlake, Barnes, Putney and Wandsworth Town, only the station house at Barnes survives and there is little in the minutes concerning them. They were excluded from the contract with Henry Knill and all the minutes tell us are that in April 1846 a payment of £11,075 was approved to John Tombs for building the stations at Barnes and Putney, and that in January 1847 he received a final payment of £500. The lack of detail is remarkable because the surviving station house at Barnes is architecturally notable. “Tudoresque gothicism” is how Charles Hailstone has described it, and with its tall chimneys rising above the steeply pitched roof, mullioned windows and red brick walls stone-quoined and diapered with blue bricks, it is unlike any other surviving wayside station. The architect is unknown, although Charles Hailstone asserts it was almost certainly Sir William Tite. Tite certainly built stations for the LSWR, but there is nothing in the minutes of either the LSWR or the Richmond Railway to suggest he had anything to do with the Richmond Railway. The station is mentioned twice in the minutes. In March 1846 it was suggested it be roofed with tiles rather than slates, have chimney pots in character and a small room in the roof, and in May 1846 the Barnes copyholders complained the company had trespassed on Barnes Common by building the station outside of the land allotted. The original stations at Putney and Mortlake stations are said to have been similar, but much smaller. The office at Mortlake is described by Anderson as very small, with a very small entrance room and a small inner room for the ladies’ waiting-room. At the time the railway opened it was incomplete, as was the terminus at Richmond (the result of another delay in obtaining land)…

…It can be safely said that the Richmond was a railway that more than justified the highest hopes of its promoters. It is obvious the primary interest of the LSWR was not in Richmond. Chaplin’s sights were set firmly on a far more glittering prize, Windsor, and within two years the Richmond line was being extended to Datchet, reaching Windsor in 1849. Traffic increased to such an extent that the line, built as double track, had to be quadrupled between Clapham Junction and Barnes in 1885. This is undoubtedly the reason so little of the original railway of 1846 remains. The small stations at Putney and Mortlake soon proved inadequate and had to be rebuilt. There remains the curious question of why Barnes was singled out for the Richmond’s grandest station (the original terminus at Richmond became the goods yard after 1848 but the buildings never rivalled Barnes). Of one thing we can be certain. Chadwick and his fellow directors and shareholders, like John Hibbert of St Ann’s, could hardly have realised that their little railway would form part of one of the busiest sections of railway in this country, the Windsor Lines.”

Surbiton, Surrey

Above: Clock Tower, Claremont Road, Surbiton; John Johnson (1843-1920); 1905-1908 (to commemorate the Coronation of Edward VII in 1902); restored 2007; Bath stone; Surbiton, Surrey (Greater London).

“Surbiton is a suburban neighbourhood in South West London, within the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (RBK). It is next to the River Thames, 11 miles (18 km) southwest of Charing Cross. Surbiton was in the historic county of Surrey and since 1965 it has been in Greater London. Surbiton comprises four of the RBK’s wards: Alexandra, Berrylands, St. Mark’s, and Surbiton Hill.
Founded originally as Kingston-upon-Railway when the area was first developed in the 1840s, Surbiton possesses a mixture of grand 19th-century townhouses, Art Deco courts, and more recent residential blocks blending in with semi-detached 20th-century housing estates. With a population of 45,132 in 2016, it accounts for approximately 25% of the total population of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. Surbiton extends over an area of 7.18 km2 (2.77 sq mi).” (Wikipedia)

Jacqueline Banerjee wrote at The Victorian Web in 2010:

“The plaque on this lovely Grade II-listed clock tower was unveiled by Prince Edward in July 2008, as part of its centenary celebration. The inscription proclaims it to be “a structure of special architectural interest,” and “an important landmark and valuable timepiece.” Much less elaborate and also less prominently sited than the same architect’s clock tower in Brighton, the Surbiton clock tower does have a bronze medallion with a relief of the king’s head, and a weathervane bearing the initials of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. Despite being later than the Brighton one, it is Gothic in style, in keeping with the several Gothic churches in the neighbourhood.”

Lloyds Bank, 1 Claremont Road, Surbiton

Claremont Road, Surbiton

84 Victoria Rd, Surbiton: “Pub in former bank premises adjacent to Surbiton Station. Spartan but comfortable interior includes a granite bar counter. Good quality food sold using local producers. Note the stained glass windows in the ceiling and photos of local scenes on the walls. Changing beers are supplied by Asahi but can be from the Fuller’s range or other breweries. Kingston Gin, home made scotch eggs and Thames Ditton crisps sold. A small library area offers a range of board games.” (Whatpub.com)

HSBC, 1 Victoria Road, Surbiton

National Westminster Bank (NatWest), 10 Victoria Road, Surbiton

12 Victoria Road, Surbiton: “Mid C19. 3 storeys; 2 bays. Ground floor with an elaborate shop front of circa 1900. Plate glass shop windows with Art Nouveau tracery in hardwood. Shop cornice surmounted by wrought iron scroll work which frames an oval medallion. 1st and 2nd floors brick faced and flanked by stuccoed pilasters which carry an entablature with bracketed cornice and low-pedimented blocking course. Windows with stucco surrounds, those of the 1st floor with bracketed cornices. Probably central portion the longer of which those to the right have been demolished, while 2 remain to left (mutilated).” (Historic England)

52-60 Wandsworth High Street, London SW18

KenRoe posted at Cinema Treasures:

“Opened as the Palace Theatre on 13th December 1920 it was a purpose built cinema and was operated as an independent. On 13th December 1924, a Compton 2Manual/5Ranks organ was installed, which was opened by organist Ernest Smith. From 3rd December 1928 it was taken over by the United Picture Theatres circuit and came under Gaumont British Theatres management from July 1930.

It was closed around September 1940 to save money on operating costs and re-opened on 3rd May 1942. From 4th August 1958 it was re-named Gaumont Theatre and the entrance was modernised around 1956.

The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 4th February 1961 with Kenneth Moore in “Man in the Moon” and Harry H. Corbett in “Marriage of Convenience”. It was converted into a Top Rank Bingo Club bingo from 29th July 1961 and this continued until it closed in 1979. The building then lay empty and unused for three years until 1982 when it was taken over and used as a church.

In 1992 it came back into entertainment use when it opened as a nightclub called the Theatre. By 2016 it had been converted into a gymnasium.”

Two former Burton’s branches

Above: 312-314 North End Rd, Fulham, London SW6.

From Wikipedia:

“Beginning in 1923, Burton began to acquire freehold sites in order to build its own custom designed stores. Prominent town centre corner sites were preferred and the shops often moved a few doors along the same street in order to acquire the corner site. Leeds-based architect Harry Wilson was hired at this time and developed the Burton “house style” building design. In 1931 Burton took over Wilson’s practice to make it the in-house architecture department. Wilson was replaced as chief architect by Nathaniel Martin in 1937.

This Burton in-house architecture was Art Deco in style. Individual stores vary from the more restrained red-brick with neoclassical scroll headed columns to fully-fledged Art Deco with glazed white faience tile, geometric patterns and stylised elephant heads.

Fulham branch (facing Haldane Road)

However, there are also many standard elements such as a wide polished black granite band above the shop windows for signage, metal vent grates bearing the company logo, billiard halls on the upper levels, window lights showing the locations of other Burton stores, and mosaic tiles – sometimes including the company logo – in the doorways.

At ground level, foundation stones were often placed by Montague Burton’s four children, Barbara,

Fulham branch

Stanley, Arnold and Raymond. Each store might have one or several foundation stones, each bearing one name and the year. For example: “This stone laid by Raymond Montague Burton 1937”.

Fulham branch

The children were quite young when these stones were laid. Stanley Howard was born in 1914 and laid a stone for the Nottingham Beastmarket Hill store in 1924. At least six stores bear stones laid by Montague’s wife “Lady Burton”, and a number in the mid to late 1930s were laid by Austin Stephen Burton who may have been a grandchild.

Whilst some of these Burton buildings have been destroyed over the years, many are still standing and some of them still have active snooker clubs upstairs. Some were still occupied by Burton stores at the time of Arcadia’s closure in 2020 (often a combined Burton and Dorothy Perkins store) but many others had changed use. McDonald’s first three restaurants in the UK were opened in former Burton stores in 1974 and 1975 as the company was selling property at that time.”

“336-340 Chiswick High Road, Chiswick: The Burton store was probably built in the early or mid 20th century. The store appears to have occupied nos. 338-340 only, as shown in this photograph by the marks of the ‘Burton’ sign on the left of the dark stone fascia.” (Historic England)

“Now is the wall down between the two neighbors.”*

*from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Act V, Scene 1.

Justin Alexander, who started the American Shakespeare Repertory in 2009, posted on August 31st that year:

“…I think there’s also something perverse about looking for problems where none exist when there are plenty of places in Shakespeare’s works where we have actual problems… some of them without any clear solution.

In Act 5, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream there is a play-within-a-play. During that play, the character of Wall exits the stage and one of the audience members says, “Now is the mural down between the two neighbors.”

Or, at least, that’s what it says in many modern editions of the play.

But we have only two primary sources for A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The First Folio (1623) and a quarto edition (1600).

The 1600 Quarto reads: “Now is the Moon used between the two neighbors.”

The 1623 First Folio reads: “Now is the morall downe between the two neighbors.”

These lines don’t make any sense. Clearly something is wrong. In 1725, Alexander Pope — the first English poet to make a living from sales of his published work — produced an authoritative edition of Shakespeare’s plays. In that edition, he created the emendation “mural down”.

But using the word “mural” to mean “wall” was something that Pope made up out of wholecloth. (In many dictionaries you will, in fact, find the origin of this definition cited to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) But what are the odds that Shakespeare made up a word, the typesetters screwed it up, and then Alexander Pope reinvented it?

Many modern editions (including, for example, the Oxford edition) instead render this line as: “Now is the wall down between the two neighbors.” In doing so, they are imitating a line Bottom has later in the scene, when he says, “No, I assure you, the wall is down that parted their fathers.” Is that right? I dunno. It certainly sounds more plausible to me than “mural”. On the other hand, it has a significant influence on Bottom’s line — so if it isn’t right, the impact is felt beyond this single line…”

From the STIFTUNG BERLINER MAUER website:

“…At the CSCE conference in Helsinki in 1975, the SED agreed in principle, albeit without wanting to admit it, to the rights of people to move freely and enjoy freedom of travel. Afterwards, more and more GDR citizens submitted applications to immigrate permanently to West Germany. An opposition movement also developed in the 1980s that expressed pointed criticism of the political and social conditions in the GDR. The general public, angered by environmental pollution and economic stagnation, turned away from the SED state. Similar developments were taking place in other Eastern Bloc countries, such as Poland, where the independent trade union Solidarność achieved national recognition in November 1980. After Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union in 1985, the political situation in the Eastern Bloc slowly began to change. Gorbachev introduced internal political reforms to solve serious economic and social problems. In 1988 he abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine, a central political principle of Soviet foreign policy that demanded limited sovereignty of the Warsaw Pact nations. This change allowed the Eastern Bloc states to set their own national policies. Hungary’s shift towards the West led it to demonstratively dismantle its border fence on May 2, 1989. The first hole was made in the “Iron Curtain.”
The SED was not interested in adopting the Soviet Union’s reform course in the GDR. But the country’s growing protest movement and the migration wave to the West in the late 1980s brought the dictatorship to an end in 1989. The SED had been compelled to make concessions, such as opening up travel to its citizens. When a new travel law was mistakenly announced on November 9, 1989, crowds rushed to the border, which was opened under the onslaught of so many people. The fall of the Wall led to the ultimate collapse of the GDR.

The demolition of the Wall began soon after the border opened. So-called “wall peckers” broke off pieces of concrete as souvenirs. New border crossings were created, leaving behind large gaps in the Wall. Border soldiers began dismantling the signal fence and other border obstacles. Both the GDR government and the border troops began thinking about ways of marketing the Wall. Pieces of the Wall were sold all over the world.
In June 1990 the systematic dismantling of the border grounds began at Ackerstrasse, between the districts of Wedding (West Berlin) and Mitte (former East Berlin), and was basically finished by the year’s end. The East Berlin magistrate placed the first sections of the Wall, including the section on Bernauer Strasse, under protection as a historical monument in 1990.”

“And if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck, it should be taxed like a duck.”

From Wikipedia:

“The duck test is a form of abductive reasoning, usually expressed as “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject’s habitual characteristics. It is sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be.

The French automaton maker Jacques de Vaucanson created a mechanical duck in 1738. The mechanical duck would quack, move its head to eat grain which it would appear to digest, and after a short time would excrete a mixture that looked and smelled like duck droppings. The irony is that while the phrase is often cited as proof of abductive reasoning, it is not proof, as the mechanical duck is still not a living duck.

Douglas Adams parodied this test in his book Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency:

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”

Monty Python also referenced the test in the Witch Logic scene in their 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where Sir Bedevere reasons that if ducks float and wood burns, then a person who weighs the same as a duck is made of wood and should be burned as a witch.

The Liskov Substitution Principle in computer science is sometimes expressed as a counter-example to the duck test:

“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it needs batteries, you probably have the wrong abstraction.”

Vladimir Vapnik, co-inventor of the support-vector machine and a major contributor to the theory of machine learning, uses the duck test as a way to summarize the importance of simple predicates to classify things. During the discussion he often uses the test to illustrate that the concise format of the duck test is a form of intelligence that machines are not capable of producing.

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek has cited the Marx Brothers’ rewording of the duck test: “He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” The humor of this line lies in its violation of an expected opposite.

A common variation of the wording of the phrase may have originated much later with Emil Mazey, secretary-treasurer of the United Auto Workers, at a labor meeting in 1946 accusing a person of being a Communist:

“I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks—I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.”

The term was later popularized in the United States by Richard Cunningham Patterson Jr., United States ambassador to Guatemala in 1950 during the Cold War, who used the phrase when he accused Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán government of being Communist. Patterson explained his reasoning as follows:

“Suppose you see a bird walking around in a farm yard. This bird has no label that says ‘duck’. But the bird certainly looks like a duck. Also, he goes to the pond and you notice that he swims like a duck. Then he opens his beak and quacks like a duck. Well, by this time you have probably reached the conclusion that the bird is a duck, whether he’s wearing a label or not.”

Later references to the duck test include Cardinal Richard Cushing’s, who used the phrase in 1964 in reference to Fidel Castro.

In 2015, a variation of the duck test was applied in the revocation of tax-exempt nonprofit status to Blue Shield of California:

In a startling blow to one of California’s biggest health insurers, the state has revoked the tax-exempt status of Blue Shield of California, forcing the company to pay tens of millions of dollars in back taxes and unleashing a torrent of calls for it to return billions of dollars to customers. The tax board’s action ‘was an acknowledgment of what Blue Shield was already doing, or not doing,’ said Anthony Wright, head of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group. ‘And if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck, it should be taxed like a duck.’
Also in 2015, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov used a version of the test in response to allegations that Russian airstrikes in Syria were not targeting terrorist groups, primarily ISIS, but rather Western-supported groups such as the Free Syrian Army. When asked to elaborate his definition of “terrorist groups”, he replied:

“If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?”
In 2021, a version of the test was used by Singapore’s Minister of Finance Lawrence Wong in response to claims by members of the Progress Singapore Party that their parliamentary motion on free trade agreements was not racist. He said:

“But look, if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it is a duck.”.”

charlatan (n.)

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

“one who pretends to knowledge, skill, importance, etc.,” 1610s, from French charlatan “mountebank, babbler” (16c.), from Italian ciarlatano “a quack,” from ciarlare “to prate, babble,” from ciarla “chat, prattle,” which is perhaps imitative of ducks’ quacking. Related: Charlatanical.

charlatanism (n.)

“methods of a charlatan,” 1804, from French charlatanisme; see charlatan + -ism. OED describes synonym charlatanry(1630s) as “More contemptuous … and referring more to actual practice.”

“I have a strong suspicion that the walls are going to come tumbling down today, and I’m going to be seen for the charlatan that I really am.”*

*Dom Parker in 2019, when he appeared as a contestant in BBC Celebrity Masterchef.

If you’re unfamiliar with The Outlaws, available on BBC iPlayer, it’s worth checking out. I enjoyed every episode, and was very struck by a scene in Series 2, Episode 3 (28:51-32:35 below):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0c70xwm

Darren Boyd plays John Halloran, a businessman and “right wing blow-hard” who struggles to impress his unloving father and keep his struggling business afloat. He is among seven strangers from different walks of life who are forced together to complete a Community Payback sentence, set in Bristol.

[blowhard (n.)

also blow-hard, “blustering person,” 1840, a sailor’s word (from 1790 as a nickname for a sailor), perhaps originally a reference to weather and not primarily meaning “braggart;” from blow (v.1) + hard (adv.). However, blow (v.1) in the sense of “brag, boast, bluster, speak loudly” is attested from c. 1300 and blower had been used since late 14c. as “braggart, boaster, one who speaks loudly” (in Middle English translating Latin efflator, French corneur). (Online Etymology Dictionary).]

Much as I applaud the lead interviewer’s challenge to Halloran’s use of the “glass ceiling” metaphor, there’s some dramatic irony here. The viewer who has seen his character develop through previous episodes is aware of the various ways in which his father keeps him in his place. Although it’s no help to him in an interview setting, John’s not as wrong as he sounds: he’s banging his head on the ceiling maintained over him by Halloran Senior, and it’s not apparent to anyone but John’s wife.

It was Marilyn Loden (July 12, 1946 – August 6, 2022), an American writer, management consultant, and diversity advocate, who was credited with inventing the phrase “glass ceiling”, during a 1978 speech.

Syndromes are often named after the physician or group of physicians that discovered them or initially described the full clinical picture. Münchausen syndrome is exceptional, being associated with Baron Münchhausen (Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, 1720-1797), to whom fantastic and unreal stories about his life and experiences were attributed.

Asperger’s syndrome, once regarded as one of the distinct types of autism,was retired in 2013 with the publication of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

Why ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ Is No Longer An Official Diagnosis

The term empty nest syndrome, although not an accepted diagnostic category, does have a cluster of symptoms to its name.

“Empty nest” was coined in this sense by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (February 17, 1879 – November 9, 1958), an educational reformer, social activist, and best-selling American author in the early 20th century. She employed it in Mothers and Children (1914), one of her many published titles. (Research in the 1970s popularised the term “empty nest syndrome”, and a 2009 study sought to demonstrate that the expression has lost its meaning over time.)

In the February 11, 2021 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey addressed the use of the term imposter syndrome,

“loosely defined as doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud. It disproportionately affects high-achieving people, who find it difficult to accept their accomplishments. Many question whether they’re deserving of accolades.

Psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes developed the concept, originally termed “imposter phenomenon,” (in the same year that Loden publicly spoke of the glass ceiling) in their 1978 founding study, which focused on high-achieving women…”

In the Christmas 2020 issue of The Spectator, Tanya Gold reviewed two newly published biographies of Cary Grant, born Archibald Leach:

“…He became more skilful and better shod; but when Elias was dying of alcoholism, he summoned Archie to Bristol to tell him Elsie was alive. He went to see her. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘It’s me, your son, Archie.’ ‘You’re no son of mine,’ she screamed. ‘You don’t look like my Archie. You don’t even sound like my Archie.’ He freed her from the mental hospital, and supported her, but she never trusted him:

‘She always kept me at arm’s length, as if there was a part of her mind that was convinced I was an impostor. And, I suppose, in a way, she was right.’…

…(Mark) Glancy’s life is good; (Scott) Eyman’s is superb. Neither definitively answer what some – but not I – believe is the most pressing question: did he sleep with Randolph Scott? Having read two desolate books on the mother of impostor syndromes, I can only say – I hope so!”

BBC Radio 3’s Music & Meditation Podcast includes an episode in which hypnotherapist “Marisa Peer leads a guided meditation to help overcome imposter syndrome, which is when you feel like a fraud and doubt your abilities. Marisa is a therapist and author, and in this meditation helps you to be your own inner cheerleader and to start believing in yourself. The music that soundtracks Marisa’s guided meditation was composed by Alex Patterson and recorded by the BBC Singers exclusively for this episode.”

Tulshyan and Burey challenge this sort of approach, arguing that:

“The impact of systemic racism, classism, xenophobia, and other biases was categorically absent when the concept of imposter syndrome was developed. Many groups were excluded from the study, namely women of color and people of various income levels, genders, and professional backgrounds. Even as we know it today, imposter syndrome puts the blame on individuals, without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests in both women of color and white women. Imposter syndrome directs our view toward fixing women at work instead of fixing the places where women work…

…The answer to overcoming imposter syndrome is not to fix individuals but to create an environment that fosters a variety of leadership styles and in which diverse racial, ethnic, and gender identities are seen as just as professional as the current model, which Tina Opie, an associate professor at Babson College, describes as usually “Eurocentric, masculine, and heteronormative.”…”

“Mahalia Jackson (born Mahala Jackson; October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer, widely considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century. With a career spanning 40 years, Jackson was integral to the development and spread of gospel blues in black churches throughout the U.S. During a time when racial segregation was pervasive in American society, she met considerable and unexpected success in a recording career, selling an estimated 22 million records and performing in front of integrated and secular audiences in concert halls around the world.
The granddaughter of enslaved people, Jackson was born and raised in poverty in New Orleans.”

Falcon Hotel Public House, 2 St Johns Hill, Clapham Junction, Battersea, London SW11

From the Historic England entry:

“Late 19th Century. Purpose built hotel at corner of St John’s Hill and Falcon Road. Continuous frontage to both roads. With a total of 9 varied bays wide; 3 storeys plus garret. Red brick with stone enrichments. Ground floor public house facade with stone and granite pilasters. Central entrance on curve of the corner beneath semi-circular fanlight and prominent pediment.

Subsidiary entrances at each end.

Elaborate stone architraves to first and second floor windows. Iron window guards and stone pediments to second floor windows only. Giant pilasters with stylised Corinthian capitals run between first and second floors, supporting heavily bracketed cornice with a panelled brick parapet and stone ball decoration. The 3 entrances are accentuated at roof level by brick gables at each end decorated with stone copings and balls, and in the centre, by a truncated pyramidal roof surrounded by an iron balcony and flagstaff. Prominent chimneys. Internally rich with cut brilliant glass behind the bar display and in partitions between the bars. Leaded lights to the draught lobby, original mirrors and full-storey cast iron columns with stylised Corinthian capitals.”

From pubheritage.Camra.org.uk:

“A splendid, showy pub of 1887, handily placed for Clapham Junction station. The interior is extraordinary and its island servery and very tall back fitting (complete with office in the middle)

has the longest counter in Britain measured at the circumference.

This was originally just over 125ft, exceeding the famous long counter at the Horse Shoe Bar, Glasgow, which weighs in at just over 104ft. A rather tasteless and wider counter top added in 2014 at the rear has extended the circumference even more.

Much of the original arrangements survive. At the corner is a large public bar (originally with partitions) and at the rear a luxuriously panelled room (pity about the garish modern glass in the skylights).

On the left-hand side is a snug enclosed by a glazed screen.

Adjacent is a lobby where the original glass has portrayals of the eponymous falcon and the words ‘private bar’.

The most interesting glass is in the rear room, showing the pub in its humble predecessor states and its grander, present manifestation. You can see funeral corteges stopping off at ‘Death’s Door’, the nickname for the pub when the landlord was a Mr Death!”

“A passage with terrazzo floor and panelled walls including a large Old Bushmill’s whiskey mirror…

…leads to another set of double doors with deep etched and frosted ‘Billiards’ panels” (CAMRA)

1-3 Montpelier Row, Twickenham, Middlesex

Above: this plaque and its twin are on the side wall of 1 Montpelier Row, facing Richmond Road: “The Worshipful Company of Mercers is the premier Livery Company of the City of London and ranks first in the order of precedence of the Companies. The origin of the “Mercers’ Maiden”, the heraldic emblem of the company, is not known. Unlike most of the City livery companies, the Mercers had no early grant of arms but the 1425 charter granted a common seal. A few impressions of the early seal survive showing a greatly simplified version of the present coat of arms. The fifteenth century Wardens’ Accounts reveal that, even then, the Company required the device of the Maid’s Head to be displayed on its property. In 1530 the Company stated to the College of Heralds that they had no arms but only a Maid’s Head for their common seal and in 1568 the Heralds registered the seal as the company’s arms.

“London EC3, CORBET COURT. The above stone is the earliest surviving Maiden property mark dating from 1669.” (London Remembers)

In 1911 the College of Arms confirmed the arms and granted the company a crest and motto, ‘Honor Deo’ (Honour to God). The grant blazons the arms: Gules, issuant from a bank of clouds a figure of the Virgin couped at the shoulders proper vested in a crimson robe adorned with gold the neck encircled by a jeweled necklace crined or and wreathed about the temples with a chaplet of roses alternately argent and of the first and crowned with a celestial crown the whole within a bordure of clouds also proper.” (Wikipedia)

Maiden property mark, Long Acre, London WC2

From the Historic England entry:

“1.5028 MONTPELIER ROW

No 1

No 2 (Warwick House)

No 3 (Seymour House) TQ 1673 21/5 2.9.52

II* GV

2.Montpelier Row consists of 2 very important terrace blocks of nearly uniform early C18 houses, with a row of modern houses between, overlooking Marble Hill Park.

The C18 houses are all 3-storeys and basement, brown brick with red dressings, parapet and windows in nearly flush frames. They have varied types of doorcases, and in many cases good ironwork to street and areas. The row was built by a Captain Gray in 1720. (Country Life, September 8, 1944)

All 3 cement-rendered.

No 1, 6 bays wide (3:3). Doorcase with moulded cornice hood on carved brackets. Decorated plaque with “Montpelier Row 1720”.

Glazing bars have been removed. No 2, 3 bays and No 3, 6 bays (3:3) both with similar doorcases to No 1.”