Here is a sketch of the remarkable pub, The Lord Napier, now the Lord Napier Star.
As you see, the top of the pub is covered in street art. I had fun trying to copy it. The original art is done at large scale with a spray can. My drawing is at small scale with watercolour and gel pens.
The pub has history. It has been a working pub, derelict, a rave venue, a squat. Now it is back to being a pub again.
Hackney Wick is in East London between Victoria Park and the Olympic Park.
Hackney Wick is on the East side of London, 20 min walk from the Stratford railway station, and on the Hackney Wick overground.Hackney Wick is between the Olympic Park and Victoria Park.
I have walked and run through there at intervals over the last twenty years. It has changed remarkably. The company I use for printing my artwork moved over there about 5 years ago, from a location in central London. I thought “what!” and “why?”. Now I realise that they were at the start of a trend. They were wise. The area is on the up. It used to be somewhat derelict and somewhat dodgy. Now the old buildings are taken over by new businesses, and there are cranes everywhere, constructing buildings where there were coal depots, docks, builders yards, heavy industry.
Map at the bridge to the Olympic Park.
There are new residential buildings, at human scale of 3 to 5 stories, with footpaths and green spaces in between, and commerce at ground level. The commerce is, yes, coffee shops, but also gyms, shared office spaces, businesses to do with the film industry, music and film studios, a bakery, and what looked like scenery painting studios. It felt as though real things happened there, new businesses moving in, people living near where they worked, businesses springing up to serve the people who live there.
New businesses adapting the spacesNew housing, built and under constructionNew businesses in old buildingsDwellings in old buildingsNew businesses in old buildingsA peaceful cafe “The Ethical Bean” Dace RoadA walk around Hackney Wick
I found it cheering and energising. And I recommend the café I found: “The Ethical Bean” on Dace Road.
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Here is the “Prospect of Whitby” pub by the Thames in Wapping.
“The Prospect of Whitby” sketched 21 August 2024 at 2pm, the first picture in Sketchbook 15
The “Prospect of Whitby” is the name of a ship.
The coal boat, “Prospect of Whitby”, from the pub sign.
There is an informative entry about the whole area in “The London Inheritance” website. He writes:
“The pub was originally called The Pelican and the alley and stairs down to the river at the side of the pub to the right are still named Pelican Stairs.“
This structure is visible from the North side of the Regents Canal at Coal Drops yard. It was a “water point” for replenishing the boilers of steam engines. The top housed a water tank.
Waterpoint, seen from the Regents Canal towpath at Coal Drops. August 14th 2024, in sketch book 14
Here’s a map to show where it is. I’ve seen this structure often when walking along the canal, and it’s been on my “sketch-list” for a while, so I was glad that a co-incidence of weather and time gave me the opportunity to sketch it.
Waterpoint, circled.
I was sketching from the Regents Canal towpath right next to St Pancras Lock.
Sketching Waterpoint, looking south across St Pancras Lock.
It turns out that this structure is open to visitors from time to time. By an amazing co-incidence, one of the visiting days was the weekend after I did my sketch. The kind and informative guides there patiently answered the many questions I had, and allowed me to photograph their video and their display boards.
For me, the really fascinating thing about this structure is that it has moved. It was not always in this location. It used to be next to St Pancras Station. It was built around the same time as the station, 1870. In 2001 it was moved North, to its current location.
It was designed by team of Sir George Gilbert Scott, who designed the St Pancras Hotel. Since its purpose was to fill the tanks of steam trains, it was right next to the railway lines. You can see it here:
Photo of a video shown at the Waterpoint.
Here it is on an 1871 map: (click to enlarge)
my annotations to show the original position next to St Pancras, and the current positionOn the 1871 map it is labelled “Pumping House”1871 map on display at the Waterpoint (copyright National Library of Scotland)
I think I can spot it on this archive aerial photo from 1964. Here is the link to the picture:
The water point is just beyond the far right hand edge of the St Pancras train shed, in the centre left of the photo on the link above.
Here are some low resolution images to help you find it.
Detail from the aerial photo above. The gas holders shown in these photos have also moved.
Here are modern maps annotated to show the original position and the current position:
Google map. Waterpoint moved A to B.Waterpoint moved A to B. Gasholders moved X to Y. map (c) openstreetmap contributors
To move it, the original Water Point was cut horizontally into three sections. The lower section was left behind. A new lower section was built in the new location. The middle and upper sections went by road to the new location and were stacked on top of the newly built lower section. You can see, by changes in the bricks, the joins between the sections.
The new lower section is clearly visible.The line of new bricks at the top marks the join between the middle and upper sectionsView of the south side of the Waterpoint, annotated to show the sections
On the side of the Waterpoint visible from the canal, there is a clear “roof” pattern in the bricks, which I noticed when sketching it.
This marks the position of a shed that was fastened to the structure in its original position. See the pictures below.
Original position – note the shed on the left What was left when it was moved.The display boards show the project to move the Water Point. These are 2001 photos.
These photos and maps show how much the area has changed. See all the gas holders! They were constructed on the south side of the Regents Canal, because that’s where the gas works was. They originally held coal gas, which is carbon monoxide and hydrogen, manufactured from coal. Until 2010 they were a landmark for anyone who made this journey into Kings Cross regularly.
Here’s a frame from the 1963 film “Alfie” captured by @runningthenorthernheights, showing the gasholders in their original position.
Thanks to @runningthenorthernheights
The gasholders were decommissioned in 2000, but several of them couldn’t be destroyed because they were listed, so they just stood there for ten years. Then they were dismantled, stored, preserved and reconstructed in the years 2010-2015. They are now on the north side of the Regents Canal. Gas holder No. 8 was the first to be reconstructed, in 2015. It surrounds a small park. Gas holders 10, 11 and 12 followed, surrounding luxury apartments, part of the Kings Cross development. (https://www.kingscross.co.uk/gasholder-park)
Gasholders seen from the top of the Waterpoint, August 2024. I did the sketch from the far side of the canal.
Here are more photos from my visit to Waterpoint in August 2024.
Ball cock in the (now empty!) tank on the topView from the topView from the topThe “chimney” up close. The guide is explaining that it is purely decorative. It is solid: there’s no “chimney”.
I was very glad to have the opportunity to visit this quirky building. Recommended!
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This is the Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell, 16 Great Sutton Street, EC1.
Sutton Arms, 16 Great Sutton Street, EC1V 0DH, sketched 10 August 2024 in Sketchbook 14
I sketched it towards the end of a sunny afternoon in August, sitting on steps outside number 6 Berry Street. As you see, the sun streamed in from the west. The trees in the distance, on the left of the drawing, are on Clerkenwell Road. Behind them is The Charterhouse, fulfilling its ancient tradition as an arms house and sanctuary for the elderly and frail.
From 1611 to 1995, The Charterhouse owned the whole of this area.
Great Sutton Street area. The broken red line indicates the extent of the former Charterhouse estate. Image from British History Online [reference 2] annotated.
The Charterhouse sold this land in 1995. A developer bought up the land and built factories and warehouses. In the 21st century a new wave of developers transformed former warehouse blocks into apartments and offices. I sketched sitting outside one such: 6 Berry Street is residential apartments. This is now an area for architects and interior designers.
There was a pub here by 1825 [1]. It was rebuilt in 1897 [2]. It’s now a Free House. It’s clearly well looked after and well patronised. Definitely to be visited! The flowers are spectacular.
Spectacular flowers of the Sutton Arms.
Thomas Sutton (1532-1611) was the founder of the Charterhouse, hence the name of the road and the name of the pub. This is the Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell, north of The Charterhouse. There is also a Sutton Arms south of The Charterhouse, in Carthusian Street, near Barbican tube.
The pub sign is Sutton’s coat of arms. His motto is:
DEO DANTE DEDI
The translation is “God having given, I give”, or “As God has given to me, so I give in my turn”, a good motto for the benefactor that he was. The pub sign misses off the “O” in DEO and the “I” in DEDI.
Sutton Arms pub sign: “DE[o] DANTE DED[i]”Thomas Sutton’s Coat of Arms. See the greyhound. Source: Charterhouse School on Wikipedia
The “Survey of London ” [2] gives a detailed history of this area, which has alternately flourished and decayed over the centuries. It is currently flourishing.
I completed the ink on location and finished the colour at my desk. The colours are:
Fired Gold Ochre (bricks)
Ultramarine Blue and Phthalo Blu (Green shade) (sky)
Serpentine Genuine (trees)
Mars Yellow (road and bricks)
Ultramarine Blue plus Burnt Umber (blacks and greys)
Transparent Pyrrole Orange (flowers, street signs)
The changing fortunes of the Great Sutton Street area.
In the 14th century this area was fields, owned by a Carthusian Priory. There was a mortuary chapel, called “Pardon Chapel” for saying the last rites for criminals and suicides. Henry VIII eradicated the Carthusian Priory in 1538 (“Dissolution of the Monasteries”) and it passed into private hands, along with the land. It became known at “The Charterhouse”. Thomas Sutton, a wealthy businessman, bought the Charterhouse in 1611. He died that year. His will provided for the hospital and almshouse that are still there. The Charterhouse leased the land outside its walls to developers, who built houses. “By 1687, when the Charterhouse estate was thoroughly mapped by William Mar, almost the whole had been laid out in streets of small terrace houses—242 houses in all, with yards, gardens and sheds.” [2] These terraces set the street pattern for the small streets that are there today. The lattice continued to the walls of The Charterhouse. Clerkenwell Road was cut through much later, in the 1870s. Then commerce moved in and a hundred years passed. By the 1700s, the area was a mix of residences and industries: “In 1731 Philip Humphreys, the Charterhouse gardener [..]complained of the adverse effect on his crops of smoke ‘from so many neighbouring Brewhouses, Distillers and Pipe-makers lately set up’ in the vicinity.” Thus we see that NIMBYism is not a new phenomenon. A new developer (Pullin) came in and rebuilt, and more and larger factories were built. Again, the neighbours complained: “Already by the 1820s some houses were giving way to further industrial developments, including slaughterhouses, a dye-house, breweries, and vinegar, vitriol and gas works. Complaints were made to the Charterhouse in 1832 about the nuisance of these works and their steam engines, and to the Vestry in the 1850s about the ‘boiling of putrid meat and other offal’ and blood running into the drains.” Building continued. Eventually government intervened: “Extensive redevelopment of the Charterhouse estate followed remarks in 1884–5 by the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes as to the badness of the houses there. […] Charterhouse was criticized for allowing [..]the incidence of house-farmers, severe overcrowding and badly constructed, poorly ventilated housing to continue on its property. One house in Allen Street was found to be occupied by thirty-eight people, eleven of them in one small room; similar conditions were found in the cottages of Slade’s Place. Many of these properties were occupied by costermongers with ‘very precarious’ earnings (whom the Commission felt would do better ‘if they kept from drink’).[2]” The Charterhouse governors eventually took action. The small houses were demolished, and replaced by factories and warehouses. This time the trades were less polluting: “Among early occupants were clothing manufacturers: milliners, mantle-makers and collar-makers, leather manufacturers, glove-makers and furriers. The printing trade was also well represented, along with book-binding, engraving and stationery manufacture. Continuing a long-standing tradition were several butchers and tripedressers.” By now we are in the early 1900s. About a dozen buildings were destroyed by bombing in the 1939-45 conflict, and replaced in the 1950 and 1960s by factories and warehouses. The Survey of London [2] reports that the area was “considerably run down” in 1995 when the Charterhouse sold it to developers. The developers started a programme of warehouse conversions, to apartments and offices, which transformed the area, and moved it back upmarket. And that’s where we are today. (The above is my summary of the more detailed description in reference [2])
[Reference 2 fig 402] Warehouse developments of the 1890s by Mark and Albert Bromet and others at the corner of Berry Street (Nos 12–14, left) and Great Sutton Street (Nos 44–49)The same site today. (Google Street view). Above street level, this is residential. I met one of the residents while sketching. I was sitting on the steps of the entrance to her block, centre left.
[2] British History Online: ‘Great Sutton Street area’, in Survey of London: Volume 46, South and East Clerkenwell, ed. Philip Temple( London, 2008), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol46/pp280-293 [accessed 2 September 2024].
“The Coach” Clerkenwell, Sketched 20th June 2024 in Sketchbook 14
I sketched this after I had sketched “Gunmakers” in nearby Eyre Street Hill. Above the pub sign is a model, just visible on the right of my drawing.
The Coach pub sign: a gun carriage?
The model is a gun carriage. I wondered what the connection was to The Coach, and if there was any connection to Gunmakers on Eyre Street Hill. But no, it is the symbol of The Cannon Brewery. This brewery was founded 1720, in nearby St John Street. It was acquired by Taylor Walker in 1930. I have this information from http://breweryhistory.com. So that explains the cannon.
At the top of the pub, the medallion names the pub as “The Coach and Horses” in white relief work.
The pub website says: “The Coach was established in 1790, and has been at the heart of the lively Clerkenwell community for generations.”
British History Online describes a pub called The Cock Inn, which was part of a sale in 1695:
At the time of the sale [1695], the land was mostly taken up by two fields of pasture: Gardiner’s Field to the north and the larger Sir John Oldcastle’s Field to the south. There was a cluster of buildings and a large rubbish dump or laystall in the south-eastern corner, in the area of Hockley-in-the-Hole. Chief of these buildings was the Cock inn, the forerunner of the present-day Coach and Horses in Ray Street.
The current building dates from 1897 according to this source:
All the eighteenth-century public houses in the area have been rebuilt or have disappeared entirely. The Apple Tree in Mount Pleasant was rebuilt in the 1870s, and the Coach and Horses in Ray Street in 1897
So it looks as though the pub was there already in 1695 as the Cock Inn, was established as The Coach and Horses in 1790 (according to the pub website) and rebuilt in 1897. It was renamed The Coach in 2018.
Having closed on 31st July 2015, this pub reopened on 16th January 2018 as the Coach with its Taylor Walker/Cannon Brewery sign frame retained.
People sometimes ask me how I determine the viewpoint in my sketches. Often, as here, it is determined by practical rather than artistic considerations. I need somewhere to sketch, out of the way, not in the road, and with a clear view. I don’t carry a seat, though sometimes I wish that I did. But here, like a miracle, a seat presented itself.
This perhaps had been a phone junction box, but no more. Now it was a seat. I commandeered it.
I did the pen-and-ink on location and then added the colour back at my desk.
The colours here are:
Fired Gold Ochre for the bricks
Ultramarine Blue plus Phthalo Blue Turquoise for the sky
All greys and blacks are Burnt Umber with the blues
There’s a bit of Mars Yellow in some of the brickwork and the pillars.
Here is the pub “Gunmakers” in Eyre Street Hill, Farringdon.
“Gunmakers” in Eyre Street Hill EC1R, sketched 20th June 2024 in sketchbook 14
Eyre Street Hill is a small sloping street in Farringdon, within the triangle made by Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell Road, and the Farringdon Road.
It slopes down to the River Fleet which is now below ground. I marked the approximate route of the Fleet on the map below:
It is a very old street, laid out in the 1720s as “Little Bath Street”. “British History Online” contains a detailed history of the area. This tells me that here and to the north was called “Coldbath Fields” in around 1719. The small houses in Eyre St were beside the Cold Bath, “a privately run hydropathic establishment opened in the late 1690”. This was on the edge of town. But then the came a distillery, a smallpox hospital and a workhouse.
“On the north-western ground, now largely occupied by Mount Pleasant Sorting Office, a distillery was built in the 1730s, and a smallpox hospital in the 1750s. These were joined towards the end of the eighteenth century by the prison, the Middlesex House of Correction, which became notorious for the brutality of its regime. South of the Cold Bath, near the old and insalubrious quarter called Hockley-in-the-Hole, the parish workhouse, built in the 1720s, was greatly enlarged in 1790.”
Then Rosebery Avenue and Farringdon Road were built, with much demolition and reconstruction. By the beginning of the twentieth century, this area became part of “Little Italy”, a centre of the Italian Community. St Peter’s Church, on Clerkenwell Road, is still “the Italian Church”.
I can find no reference to this pub, or to gunmaking in the area. The building looks like one of the ones built in 1812:
The sun catches the castellated building.
“Today the oldest structures are the small, single-bay houses with shopfronts at Nos 33–37, dating from the early nineteenth century and fairly typical of the rebuilding that took place in the area at that time. Nos 33 and 35 were erected as a pair around 1812 by Thomas Abbott, builder, of Leather Lane.”
Christ Church Esher stands on the top of a hill, near the intersection of roads that marks Esher town centre.
Christ Church, Church Street, Esher, Surrey, KT10 8 QS. Sketched 28 May 2024, in Sketchbook 14
The church has a “splayed foot” spire.
SPLAYED-FOOT: variation of the broach form, found in England principally in the south-east, in which the four cardinal faces are splayed out near their bases, to cover the corners, while oblique (or intermediate) faces taper away to a point.
BROACH: starting from a square base, then carried into an octagonal section by means of triangular faces.
– Pevsner’s Architectural Glossary, page 116, under “SPIRE”
This simple and elegant geometry turned out to be rather tricky to draw. I worked hard to get the shape of the spire correct.
Sketching the spire of Christ Church
The church was built in 1853-1854 to the design of Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880) according to its Historic England listing entry. Ferrey studied under A.W.N. Pugin1, and like Pugin, designed in the style known as “Gothic Revival”. Christ Church was built because the growing congregation could no longer be housed in the smaller St George’s, a little way down the hill.
I sketched the church on location and added the colour later. The colours are:
Mars Yellow
Green Gold
Phthalo Blue Turquoise
I used just three colours, all Daniel Smith. I used gold paint for the clock. The clock is on the roof of the spire, which is remarkable. Usually the clock is on the tower, below the spire. So I wanted to put it in and show its unusual location.
Here is a sketch map of the area.
See this post for my sketch of St George’s, this post for the Tin Tabernacle in West End Esher, and this post for sketches of the council housing in Lower Green.
1A.W.N. Pugin designed, amongst other things, the inside of the Houses of Parliament: https://heritagecollections.parliament.uk/stories/the-architects-barry-pugin-and-scott/. The Houses of Parliament are a classic example of Gothic Revival Style. The Houses of Parliament were designed by a team consisting of Charles Barry, A.W.N. Pugin and later Giles Gilbert Scott.
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Wycliffe Hall is a “permanent private hall” in the University of Oxford. A permanent private hall is like a college, in that it provides accommodation and tuition for its students. The difference is that a college is governed by its Master and Fellows, whereas the Hall is governed, at least in part, by the Church of England. It is an Anglican theological college, offering courses in philosophy and theology, and preparing people for ordination into the Church of England. John Wycliffe was a 14th century Bible translator, scholar and churchman.
I stayed there as a bed-and-breakfast guest, and sketched this picture from a bench beneath the branches of the plane tree in the gardens. Breakfast is served in the Talbot Rice Dining Room, shown on the bottom left of the picture. I was waiting for it to open.
Wycliffe Hall, West side, 09:40. In Sketchbook 14, 25 May 2024.
Sculpture portrait of Mervyn Gurney Talbot-Rice, in the dining room at Wycliffe Hall (Photo: Feb 2025)
When they say “friend of Wycliffe”, they must mean a friend of the the Hall, as John Wycliffe died 600 years ago. The Talbot Rice art gallery in Edinburgh is named after David Talbot Rice, one of Mervyn’s sons.
The breakfast room opened, and I took my place at one of the long tables. Behind me, three, or possibly four, men were already engaged in a serious conversation about Middle Eastern politics. Judging by the various accents, at least one of them was American. They took different points of view, and argued from personal experience, with courtesy. At another table, a group of young men and women were working out complicated logistics to do with rowing. Who was to be cox? Who was rowing? When? Where? Another man engaged the member of staff in a lively conversation on management techniques prevalent in a particular football team and how this may or may not affect their chances.
Between them all, I finished my porridge and headed back out to the plane tree to continue my picture.
I’ve sketched at Wycliffe Hall before. Click the image below to go to the post.
Wycliffe Hall Chapel
*The link to the Bulletin is here. Or if that doesn’t work, the pdf is below. The history of Wycliffe Hall starts on page 19.
The Sekforde EC1R 0HA, Clerkenwell, sketched March 2024 12″ x 9″ [commission]
This watercolour was specially commissioned to celebrate a happy event.
The colours are:
Mars Yellow
Fired Gold Ochre
Ultramarine Blue
Burnt Umber
plus some Horadam Random Grey, some Daniel Smith Green Serpentine Genuine, and Pyrrol Red for the street sign and road marker.
Gold paint for the lettering.
Admire the bricks! I am very pleased with this effect. It was done by applying a rubber resist, “pebeo drawing gum” to the paper before I did any painting. The paint does not adhere to the rubber resist. When I had done all the colour, I rubbed off the rubber resist and hey presto! bricks.
Thank you to my client for their encouraging words and for inspiring me to make this picture of The Sekforde. Here are some details of the drawing.
I was reading about “tin tabernacles” having sketched the “Tin Tabernacle” in Esher. I discovered, via a Historic England blog article, that there is a Tin Tabernacle in Kilburn in London. So I went to have a look. It is an “iron church” built of galvanised corrugated iron in 1863. It used to have a steeple, but that has disappeared.
Here it is now:
Cambridge Hall, Cambridge Avenue, Kilburn NW6 5BA, sketched 28 February 2024 3pm in sketchbook 14
The building was built as a church, and more recently was a centre for Sea Cadets. Its future is under discussion, according to an article on the London Historic Buildings Trust site (LHBT).
The site is owned by Notting Hill Genesis Housing Association (NHG). LHBT are currently working with NHG and the Sea Cadets, supported by Historic England and the Conservation Officer at Brent Council, to explore how the building can be stabilised and used in the future.
The latest date mentioned in this article is 2021, so I guess the exploration is still going on. It’s listed as a “current project” on their website. The building was looking a little precarious when I visited this year (February 2024). An alarm was sounding inside.
It is Grade II listed, and on the Heritage at Risk Register. The listing is on this link. It is currently an events venue, the website is: http://tintabernaclekilburn.org/
Here are some photos of the outside:
The building is about 150m north of Kilburn Park underground station on the Bakerloo Line.
Jane Sketching 