This Cab Drivers’ Shelter is outside the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington, London.
This shelter, one of 13 remaining, was built to the designs of Maximilian Clarke in 18971.
As I was sketching, members of staff emerged from the V&A onto the pavement to chat and to smoke. One of them came to look at the picture and told me “It used to be in the centre of the road you know. We all went over there.”
This shelter has been moved at least twice. It was originally in the middle of the road outside number 2-7.
In the 1970s the shelter was moved southwest to be in the middle of the road outside number 112, the Rembrandt Hotel. A picture in the London Picture archive3 shows that it was still there in the middle of the road in 1977. Then some time later (after 1983 4 ) the shelter was moved to the pavement next to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is where it is now (see Google Street view above).
This cab drivers’ shelter is closed and no longer serves refreshments. However in a mysterious way it still exerts an attraction. While I sketched, people congregated there on their work breaks. Even though closed it offers some spirit of “shelter” it would seem.
- A history of Cab Drivers’ shelters is on the Historic England site: https://heritagecalling.com/2024/04/09/a-brief-introduction-to-cabmens-shelters/ ↩︎
- Evidence that the shelter was moved southwest in the 1970s: Here’s an extract from footnote n15 in British History Online. This article was written in 1983 when the shelter was still in the middle of the road, opposite number 11.: “Opposite the Rembrandt Hotel, in the centre of the roadway of Thurloe Place, is a cabmen’s shelter (fig. 22) which was originally erected a little further to the east in 1897 and moved here in the 1970’s. Paid for by the Vicar of St. Jude’s Church, Courtfield Gardens, and the residents of Earl’s Court, it was evidently a replacement for an earlier shelter. The purpose of these shelters, for which a fund had been established in 1875 under the president of Lord Shaftesbury, was to supply cabmen ‘when on the rants, with a place of Shelter where they can obtain good and wholesome refreshments at very moderate prices ’. The shelters took various forms, but the best-known type, of which that in Thurloe Place is a good example, was designed by Maximilian Clarke, who was appointed joint honorary architect to the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund in I884.” This article in British History Online was edited in 1983. (Citation: ‘The Alexander Estate’, in Survey of London: Volume 41, Brompton, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1983), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol41/pp58-86 [accessed 8 September 2026].) ↩︎
- London Picture Archive:https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=232612&WINID=1788868476245 ↩︎
- An article on the Historic England site says “The shelter once sat in the middle of the road on Thurloe Place but was moved to the side of the road due to local road widening for a nearby hotel”. But it doesn’t say when this happened. Historic England history of Cab drivers’ shelters: https://heritagecalling.com/2024/04/09/a-brief-introduction-to-cabmens-shelters/ ↩︎
Jane Sketching 