Here’s another Cab drivers’ shelter, which serves cab drivers, workers and visitors from its busy location at the North end of Hungerford Bridge.
Cab drivers’ shelter Northumberland Avenue WC2N 5AQ, sketched 29 September 2026 in Sketchbook 17
This shelter is still very much in use. People queued at the window for their drinks and snacks.
I sketched it from the steps of Hungerford Bridge as people walked by.
This shelter was built in 1915, replacing an earlier shelter from 1882. It is listed Grade II, listing number 1462592. The listing entry is here.
The shelter is right next to Embankment Tube station, which is reached by walking under the bridge to the right of my drawing. The Playhouse Theatre is to the north of the shelter, in the background of my sketch.
The steps of Hungerford Bridge, though convenient, were metallic, and therefore cold. I warmed myself with a cup of tea from the shelter and tried to keep out of people’s way.
Oddly, hardly anyone noticed me. As is often the case, it was the small children who took an interest: “What is she drawing?” [I hold up the picture so the child can see it] “Oooh!” says the child, fascinated, looking up to compare my drawing with the view in front [Thinks: “Adults can draw too!”]. I hope I inspired at least one small person to keep drawing.
Also dogs took an interest, mostly in my tea.
Sketchbook 17 page spread
My growing collection of sketches of Cab drivers’ shelters is here.
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View of the Wapping Power Station from outside (January 2023)
Here is the London Hydraulic Power Station in Wapping, now known as 25 Wapping Wall. In September 2026 here was an art installation there. The alert location manager spotted my post from January 2023 and got in touch. Would I like to visit? Yes I would!
Lucy from Location Works kindly made me welcome and gave me a tour. We had fun tracing the pipes, and finding out how the water flowed.
Then I did some sketching. Here is the Accumulator Tower.
Accumulator tower, 25 Wapping Wall, 15th September 2026 in Sketchbook 17
Here is an overall view of the power station.
London Hydraulic Power – dip pen and drawing ink – 15th September 2026 – 10″ x 14″ on Somerset Smooth paper
On the right is the accumulator tower. The left and centre buildings housed the machinery which pumped the water. On the far left, at the top, are water tanks. I later found out that there are also water tanks underground, underneath where the people are standing on the left.
Cover leading to the London Hydraulic Power pipes. This one is at 25 Wapping Wall.
Hydraulic power was a way to transmit power from one place to another. These days we use electrical cables. But in the nineteenth century they hadn’t yet discovered how to generate and transmit electricity in industrial quantities. If you had a lock gate to open, or a theatre curtain to raise, or a printing press to operate, you had to do it either manually or with steam power.
You probably didn’t want to install a noisy dirty steam engine right next to your lock gate, theatre or printing press. Since you only wanted the power occasionally, it didn’t make sense to go to the trouble of building your own steam engine. So, what could you do? Answer: put a really big steam engine somewhere else, and transmit the power, using water. The power station at Wapping housed one of those really big steam engines. The steam engine pumped water at high pressure into cast-iron pipes. At the other end of the cast-iron pipe, the lock keeper opened a tap, releasing this high pressure water, which pushed the lock gates open. Or it raised theatre curtains, or operated printing presses and cranes, raised lifts. Amazing. 1
The water was in underground cast-iron pipes, 2 to 10 inches in diameter. The water was at around 800 psi or 55 bar, which is a very high pressure2. Just to give you an idea, normal water pressure in your kitchen taps in the UK is less than 1 bar3.
To maintain this high pressure despite variable demand, the steam engines pumped the water into the accumulator tower, where it raised a heavy weight. The accumulator tower was a sort of “battery”, storing power until it was needed.
I was thrilled to be able to discover the inside of this building which I had previously sketched from the outside. There is still some of the original machinery in there. Here are some snapshots. Photographs cannot convey the grandeur of the space and the quiet dignity of the machines.
I was very taken by the textures of the surfaces.
The building is now owned by the Glass Castle Foundation, a registered charity.4 They plan to use the building to host arts events:
…new owners Glass Castle Foundation have ambitious plans to turn this iconic building into a new cultural powerhouse for London. A thoughtful renovation programme from 2026 onwards will transform it into a stunning performance space and gallery for the arts, while carefully preserving its priceless industrial heritage and architecture…
This is the Limehouse Accumulator Tower, seen from Mill Place, London E14. In the 19th century, this building provided hydraulic power to machinery in the Limehouse docks. Hydraulic power is…
“psi” (pounds per square inch) and “bar” are measures of water pressure. Ofwat says that water companies must maintain “water of seven metres static head” in the connecting pipe to your house. This is about 10 pounds per square inch, or 0.7 bar. This is a measure of the force with which the water comes out of the tap when you turn it on. ↩︎
The Glass Castle Foundation, Registered Charity Number 1212538, has three trustees, according to the Charity Commission website: Suneil Setiya, Neil Cosgrove and Greg Skinner. Mr Setiya and Mr Skinner are among the founders of Quadrature Capital, https://www.quadrature.ai/, an electronic trading company. ↩︎
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I was commissioned to make a picture of Luca, the Michelin-starred restaurant on St John Street near Smithfield, London. My client kindly gave me permission to show the picture here.
Luca, 88 St John Street, sketched May 2026, 12″ x 9″
As you can see from the sharp shadows, this was a bright spring morning. The challenge of this commission was to find a place to stand where I could see the front of the restaurant, without being in anyone’s way. That blossoming tree obscured the entire frontage from some angles. But I found a good place to stand in a door way and it didn’t rain.
I generally do a preliminary sketch for a complicated scene such as this, to work out the proportions, the perspective and the light and dark.
Luca: Preliminary sketch
Here there were two perspectives: the perspective up the street, which I marked in yellow, and the perspective perpendicular to the street, which I marked in red. As I worked this out, it gradually became obvious that the building next to Luca, number 86 on the right of my drawing, was not in line with the Luca frontage, but at a slight angle. Also the windows on Luca are not all the same. The ones on the left are wider and have more window bars. It is details such as these which conjure the character of a place, I think, and so I try to get them into the drawing.
People were going to and fro the entire time. It’s an active place. And the chimneys are marvellous.
The marvellous chimneyscape above LucaA “picture within a picture” – people in front of the restaurant.
Here’s what the picture looked like before the colour went on, and a snapshot of work in progress.
Here, I am drawing on an Arches Aquarelle “block” of paper, which is a rigid surface. The paper is glued almost all the way round, so it doesn’t buckle. The yellow tape round the edge is masking tape. I use it to provide a neat edge to the picture, and also it’s handy to write on.
Here’s the finished picture ready to go on its journey into the world.
Th building is listed Grade II. The listing reference is 1208756 and the entry is on this link.
The listing gives the date as 1821:
“1821 (metal plaque at first floor level, reads ‘P [Parish of] SS [St Sepulchre] Mdx [Middlesex] 1821’). Yellow brick set in Flemish bond, stucco, roof of Welsh slate. Four storeys over basement, three windows each. Ground floor has elliptical-arched entrance to right to Hat and Mitre Court, the rest a shop front probably of mid-C19 origin”
This shelter is on the south edge of Kensington Gardens, not far from The Royal Albert Hall.
“The Green Hut” cab drivers’ shelter, Kensington Road, SW7. Sketched 24 September 2026 in Sketchbook 17
It is evidently in use, with signs describing the many tempting dishes on offer. Sadly, however, on the particular day I was there, a handwritten notice announced that it was temporarily closed “due to broken oven” and “open as usual tomorrow!”. I shall go back.
The pavement was strewn with early-falling leaves, as the numerous trees in Kensington Gardens tried to cope with the heat and the drought.
It bears a plaque saying it is supported by the “Provincial Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons of London”. The Mark Master Masons are an organisation within the fraternity of Freemasons.
Also affixed to the outside is a black and white photo, apparently showing the shelter in the early twentieth century. The design of the shelter is different from today. For example the vent at the top is a different shape, and the roof is simply a gable with a dormer, rather than the more complicated Dutch gable roof of today. 1 There are also some wonderful spikes along the ridge of the roof in the photo, completely absent today. The design of the shelter in the photo resembles that of the shelter in Temple.
Photo on the outside of Kensington Road Shelter. Note the gable roofTemple Shelter, with the same sort of gable roof shown in the early photo of Kensington Road Shelter.
I completed my pen and ink drawing leaning on the wall of Kensington Park, and added the colours back at my desk.
Page spread, sketchbook 17
Other cab drivers’ shelters I’ve sketched are on this page.
Here is the view from the mountain Le Cochet, 1,484metres high. I paused on the way down to sketch the view of the distant Alps.
Lac Neuchatel (on the left behind the trees), and the Alps, seen from the slopes of Le Cochet 31 August 2026 (A5 card, Arches Aquarelle)Location of the sketch. I was looking south-east. I saw the Alps, 50 km away. (Map link: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/46.351/7.430)
Work in progress:
View of the Alps
Nearby L’Auberson, where the cheese shop is, has a lovely plain church.
Temple de l’Auberson, 1 Sept 2026
Here is a photo of the cheese:
Gruyère from L’Auberson – more mature at the top (36 months), less mature at the bottom.
And here are some quick sketches of houses and roofs.
Sketches on 6″ x 4″ postcards, pen and inkSketches done on location, from life….
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Here is a view looking into Basel old town. The house is number 49 Spalenberg. At street level is a goldsmith: Goldschmiede Spalenberg (https://goldschmiede-basel.ch).
Spalenberg 49, Altstadt Basel, CH-4051 sketched 30 August 2026 in Sketchbook 17
Spalenberg slopes downhill to the left, towards Marktplatz and the river Rhine. Here’s a map:
Map showing the location of 49 Spalenberg, and the sketch sightline.
This was a quick sketch on location, pen and ink, finished later in my hotel room.
Basel is a historic town. The old town retains its medieval street pattern. As well as the ancient streets, there is much to admire elsewhere.
There is a huge underground bicycle car park next to the main railway station. beautifully clean, dust free and quiet.
21st century bike parking near the train station
The glorious kinetic fountains next to the Theatre are still working. This chap has been scooping water for fifty years.
All of Tinguely’s kinetic works of art require ongoing care and maintenance. «All that is fixed decays – all that is movement endures.» Jean Tinguely
Fountain character by Jean Tinguely, created 1975 to 1977
And, amazingly, swimming is not only allowed in the Rhine, it is actively encouraged! Here is the sign outside the Tourist Office. Barfüsserplatz and the Old Town are in the background.
Rent your swimming float here. Float down the Rhine, under bridges and past the Old Town. The tourist shop also sells waterproof bags to put your clothes in.
And, still, the old city retains its calmness.
“In Basel, you can hear your footsteps”
Someone said this to me over twenty years ago, and it is my abiding memory of Basel. Metaphorically, and in reality, I can hear my footsteps in Basel.
Hebelstrasse, University area, Basel. August 2026
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The Royal Oak Borough, 44 Tabard Street, SE1 4JU, sketched 25 August 2026 in Sketchbook 17
This pub serves Harvey’s beer and is listed in the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) guide.
According to the landlord, the pub was built in 1825. The wooden bar inside is newer, but retains the old design. Outside there are fun Victorian architectural features. See the highly original “keystone” arrangement on the first floor window, and the flourishes around the chimney.
Keystone arrangementChimney with flourishesFront door and lamp
The chimney flourishes are useful because they enable the pub to be easily identified on old photos. See for example this one, which is in the London Picture Archive (click the picture to go to the London Picture Archive). The Royal Oak is the only building surviving from this 1913 view.
In that 1913 picture you can see the huge sign on the angle at the corner of the pub, advertising “Courage” ales. This was a Courage pub up to 19971 when it became the first Harvey’s tied pub in London.
The Royal Oak is near Borough Underground Station.
Location of The Royal Oak Borough, near Borough Underground Station (Northern Line, Bank Branch)
As I was sketching, people walked past, deep in conversation.
Worldly wisdom: “Your options are limited without Maths and English Grade 4 or 5. That’s just the way the world works.”
And running. “He runs on his toes. Maybe I’m running wrong?” “No, bro, you’re not running wrong.”
It’s endlessly fascinating, just standing, looking and listening, on London streets.
Here are some snapshots from my sketching expedition, Thank you to the landlord Mike, who kindly brought me a chair, and welcomed me into the pub for a very welcome drink on that hot day.
Thirsty work, sketching.Sketchbook 17 page spread
Harvey’s took over the pub in 1997 according to https://www.spbw.beer/lpoty-2/. The current landlord told me that the Royal Oak was Harvey’s first tied pub in London. ↩︎
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I sketched this block of flats in Southwark, towards the end of an afternoon.
Albury Buildings1, Boyfield Street, Southwark, London SE1 0SD, sketched 24 August 2026 in Sketchbook 17
This block, and the block opposite, Clandon House, were completed in 1897.
Pevsner2describes these buildings as “noteworthy early L.C.C. [London County Council] housing of 1896-7” with “quirky Arts and Crafts details”. These, and nearby blocks between Rushworth Street and King’s Bench Street, were designed by R.M. Taylor for the L.C.C.’s housing branch. They are listed Grade II, listing entry 13783763.
I found the building dignified and beautiful, with its arches, railings, and plant pots. The buildings are interesting because they represent the beginnings of the state taking some responsibility for people’s housing4.
During the 19th century, the industrial revolution drew many workers to London. By the middle of the century many of these workers were living in appalling conditions. The government of the day did not see housing as any part of its role. Social reformers such as Octavia Hill made valiant attempts to provide better housing, by raising money from investors. The Peabody Trust, funded from the fortune of a London-based American banker George Peabody, was also building what we would now call social housing. But the rents were too high for the poorest Londoners, who continued to live in unsanitary and crowded conditions. Members of the clergy, reformers and politicians wrote articles drawing attention to this misery.5
By 1890 the government was starting to take positive action. A “Housing of the Working Classes Act” (1890) gave London County Council the power and the duty to replace at least half of the housing that was demolished in improvement schemes for roads and railways. Only half of the housing is to be replaced by the council, note. In his book “Metropolitan Dreams” John Boughton notes that this Act “provided the basis of the relative surge in council house building that followed.” Council house building was controversial. Conservative politicians in power at the time “saw it [the Act], at most, as a small shift towards increased state responsibility but retained their basic belief in the efficacy of the free market and fear (to use a later idiom) of a ‘dependency culture’ fostered by state provision.”6
The London County Council was formed by the Local Government Act of 1888, and the first elections in 1889, just 7 years before Albury Buildings were completed. A subset of the LCC was the “Housing of the Working Classes” branch. This group was influenced by socialist thinkers including William Morris, who is now remembered for his textile designs but who, in his time, was a campaigner for the dignity of working people. So the Arts and Crafts movement, through William Morris and others, was influential at the time of the construction of Albury Buildings. Hence the ornamental railings, the arches, and the balconies.
The arches are open: I could have walked in and along the balconies.
Arches to stairwaysWiring
Albury Buildings is now part of the Boyfield Street Estate managed by Southwark Borough Council, who own the freehold. Some are social rent dwellings7, and others are privately owned leaseholds, selling on platforms such as “Rightmove”.
As I sketched people were walking home from work. A passing man asked me, “Is it an architectural drawing, or just for fun?”
“Just for fun”, I replied.
“Good!” he declared, and walked on.
“Albury Buildings” is the name written on the building. In some references it is called “Albury House”. ↩︎
LONDON 2: SOUTH by Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry ISBN 0 14 0710.47 7 2001 reprint, page 591 ↩︎
Another early example of social housing is the Boundary Estate, Arnold Circus which I have sketched previously . ↩︎
For example,”The Bitter Cry of Outcast London” by Rev. ANDREW MEARNS, London Congregational Union, Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, E.C., and William C. Preston (1883) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/55316/pg55316-images.html This pamphlet describes the appalling conditions in graphic detail, and also gives a sense of the moral panic that was felt by this clergyman and others. In the crowded conditions, incest was all but inevitable, and people could not go to church. Here’s an extract [all quotes are from the pamphlet reproduced online by Project Gutenberg]: “Whilst we have been building our churches and solacing ourselves with our religion and dreaming that the millennium was coming, the poor have been growing poorer, the wretched more miserable, and the immoral more corrupt; the gulf has been daily widening which separates the lowest classes of the community from our churches and chapels, and from all decency and civilization….“ The authors go on to describe the conditions. Here is one description [page 9]: “Every room in these rotten and reeking tenements houses a family, often two. In one cellar a sanitary inspector reports finding a father, mother, three children and four pigs! In another room a missionary found a man ill with small pox, his wife just recovering from her eighth confinement, and the children running about half naked and covered with dirt. Here are seven people living in one underground kitchen, and a little dead child lying in the same room. Elsewhere is a poor widow, her three children, and a child who had been dead thirteen days.” The authors propose state intervention [page 24]: “Large spaces have been cleared of fever-breeding rookeries, to make way for the building of decent habitations, but the rents of these are far beyond the means of the abject poor. They are driven to crowd more closely together in the few stifling places still left to them; and so Dives makes a richer harvest out of their misery, buying up property condemned as unfit for habitation, and turning it into a gold-mine because the poor must have shelter somewhere, even though it be the shelter of a living tomb. The State must make short work of this iniquitous traffic, and secure for the poorest the rights of citizenship; the right to live in something better than fever dens; the right to live as something better than the uncleanest of brute beasts.” ↩︎
The history of social housing is from John Bougham’s book “Metropolitan Dreams” ISBN978-1-78478-739-4. The parts I’ve quoted here are from Chapter 1: “How to provide Housing for the People”. ↩︎
Social rent houses in “Albury Buildings” are listed on “https://uksocialhousing.com” under postcode SE1 0SD as council rents. ↩︎
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This unassuming door leads to a spectacular hall. This is 8 Ayres Street, the entrance to Bishops Hall, formerly known as Redcross Hall.
The Ayres Street entrance to Bishops Hall, 8 Ayres Street, sketched 22 August 2026, in Sketchbook 17
When I sketched this door I didn’t know about the surprising building behind it. I had just walked past the tiled frontage, and the pointed doors, and thought it dignified and unusual. I had seen the view from Redcross Gardens, but hadn’t connected the front to the back.
View of Bishops Hall from Redcross Gardens, photo credit unique property companySketch map showing Redcross Hall, marked in red.
There is an informative estate agents description online, undated. This praises the “brick arched windows, tiling, historically distressed herringbone parquet floor and the ingenious hammer-beamed roof joists that reach the apex of the internal roof line”. It sounds amazing.
The black door in my drawing threads through a passage into Bishops Hall at the back. In the front is a different building, number 8A Ayres Street, which is called “George Bell House”. Both are listed Grade II.1
Ayers Street numbers 8 and 8A
Redcross Hall was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1888. It was designed by Elijah Hoole, with interior decorations by Walter Crane. 2
Interior of Redcross Hall as designed, image from English Illustrated Magazine 1893 via Layers of London. You can see the pointed windows at the back, which give onto Redcross Garden. Ayres Street was called “Whitecross Street” at that time.
The development was influenced by the ideas of social reformer Octavia Hill. The hall was created as a community theatre and “living room” for people of the area, in conjunction with Redcross Gardens which adjoin. The cottages further north along Ayres Street, to the left of my drawing, were built at the same time. This was 19th century philanthropy in action.2
Redcross Gardens are still there: beautiful, tranquil and a community resource. Bishops Hall is now privately owned.
Number 8A, George Bell house, is a separate building from number 8. It is the studio for Whistledown Productions who make podcasts, and programmes for Radio 4.
This is a striking example of the surprises that abound in London. It’s amazing what you find simply by strolling about.
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.
Undated photo, probably 1920s or 30s, judging from the cars. This is a view looking East along Thurloe Place. The domed structure is on the corner of Thurloe Place and Brompton Road. It is still there. There is a long line of cabs in the road, leading to the shelter in the bottom left (arrowed). Image from Margaret Purnell on Facebook. Google Street view (September 2025), showing approximately the same view. The shelter is now on the pavement, arrowed, partly hidden by a bus stop. The trees have grown!
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 sheltering place – detail from the sketchPage spread sketchbook 17
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].) ↩︎
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/↩︎
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