18th Century architecture – Jane Sketching

Here is the bar and tapas restaurant “Mar i Terra”, cosily tucked away in a back street near Southwark Station.

“Mar i Terra” Gambia Street SE1, sketched from Scoresby Street. 7″ x 9″ in Sketchbook 12.

There are magnificent Victorian railway arches looping all around, and 21st century buildings in the background, but this building stands defiantly, self-contained and functional.

The restaurant is open Tuesday to Sunday for dinner. It also serves lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was sketching it on a Wednesday so I sought lunch elsewhere, and discovered the wonderful “Origin Coffee” in Scoresby Street.

Poached eggs on toast in Origin Coffee, while the first wash dries on the picture.

According to their website “Mar i Terra” has been serving the people of the neighbourhood since the year 2000. Up until 1999 this building was “The Hop Pole” pub.

The Hop Pole in about 1972. Image from “https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/london/se1_southwark_hoppole.html”

According to the “Pub History” site, victuallers were recorded at this site in 1791. So it was a pub for nearly 200 years.

Here is work on progress on the drawing.

Colours:

Sky: Ultramarine Blue and Cobalt teal blue
Brickwork: Mars Yellow with some Fired Gold Ochre
Greys and blacks: Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber
Green paintwork: Serpentine Genuine moderated with Cobalt Teal Blue
Graffiti added with a red crayon

Here’s an image from the Pub History website. I can just read that the notice on the big window says “Luncheon Room”. So the Mar i Terra continues the tradition, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The railway bridge behind, on the right of the photo, is still there, too, as well as many of the features of the front of the pub. Amazingly, the door layout seems to have endured. Is that Mrs H Thomas standing behind the door on the left?

On the way back from a visit to the West End, I passed St-Martin-in-the-Fields, standing out against the cold sky.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. Sketched 2nd Dec 2022, in sketchbook 12

The statue in the foreground, left, is the Edith Cavell Memorial, seen from the back. Edith Cavell (1865-1915) was a British nurse. In German-occupied Belgium, guided by her principles of humanity and her Christian faith, she provided medical care to soldiers irrespective of which side they were on. She was executed by a German firing squad 1915, because she had helped Belgian, British and French soldiers to escape the German occupation and reach Britain. Her grave is in Norwich Cathedral.

I sketched standing on a corner of the Charing Cross road, see map above. This turned out to be a very noisy location. The National Portrait Gallery is being refurbished and there was continuous drilling and banging. Buses and cars ground their gears, and thundered past, rushing through the traffic lights to shriek to a halt at the next junction.

But St-Martin-in-the-Fields rose above it all. The inscriptions which faced me on the Edith Cavell Memorial were: “Determination”, “Fortitude”.