Here is the Cab Drivers Shelter near Temple Station.
There are 13 of these shelters surviving. All are now listed. This one was built in around 1900 and listed in 19871. Here’s a map from the Historic England site showing the location of all the shelters in London. interestingly they are all to the North of the river.
I sketched this one on the first sunny day in spring. I’d arrived there at around 1:30pm. There was a long line of people outside and several tables. While I was doing the sketch, the manager closed the window and the queue dissipated. Then she came out and packed up all the tables. I just managed to sketch one table before they all disappeared. This shelter closes at 2pm.
Two men walked past me, engrossed in a conversation about a colleague. “He has a strong survival component” observed one of them, somewhat ruefully.
Then there was a man pushing a bicycle. “Ah!” he said, noticing me, “ink. Real ink!” I was indeed using real ink. I held up the fountain pen to show him. “I love the sound of ink on paper!” he said. I hadn’t thought about the sound of ink on paper. I noticed it, from that moment on.
Here’s a map showing the location of the shelter. As you see, it is near Temple Station, which accounts for the flux of people passing.
Here is the sketchbook spread. My aim is to sketch more of these shelters – maybe even to sketch all of them.
- Historic England listing: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1357301?section=official-list-entry ↩︎
Jane Sketching 