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.
Vauxhall Tea House – 2:30pm 7 March 2024, in sketchbook 14
The tea I drank was their “Russian Smoky Tea”.
I’ve visited the Tea House many times. Here is an outside view from June 2022
Tea House Theatre, external view, June 2022 in Sketchbook 12
They have all sorts of theatrical events on their tiny stage. I enjoy “Don’t Go Into The Dungeon” where talented actor Jonathan Goodwin plays all of the characters to amazing effect. He specialises in Victorian mysteries. The next one is “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. Dinner is served before the performance. With scones for dessert.
Here’s where it is, just a 5 minute walk from Vauxhall Station.
And in more detail:
Here’s my sketchbook page:
Sketchbook 14
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I was expecting the hidden alleyway to be deserted on a Tuesday lunchtime, and so it was for the first hour. But then it became suddenly busy. A small ambulance backed carefully down the alleyway in front of me and parked. Its doors opened and two paramedics went round to the back of the car. They lifted out their equipment and walked calmly off down the alley. After that excitement, a certain calm returned to the alley, insofar as calm is possible a few hundred metres from Kings Cross.
I carried on sketching, now working on the beer barrels to the left of the picture. But the calm did not last long. Two cars arrived and people dressed in orange hi-vis vests scrambled out. They unlocked a gate off the picture to the left, and went in, leaving their car on the pavement. Then a van arrived, it parked directly in front of me, and a further person in a hi-vis outfit got out. He looked across the bonnet of his van and saw me sketching. “Oh, sorry,” he said, “Am I in your way?” I said that yes, he kind of was. I stood ready, however, to concede the space to him, as he looked important and determined in his bright orange overalls and hard hat. But to my surprise he grinned at me, “Ten minutes! I’ll be just ten minutes!”. He rushed off through the gate where the other people had gone. I abandoned the beer barrels and worked on the roofs.
The roofs were quite a challenge, and they productively occupied the 8 minutes until the driver came rushing back out, looking triumphant, accompanied by a selection of the people who’d arrived earlier. “I told this woman I’d be ten minutes,” he explained to his entourage. He raised a hand to me in greeting, got into his car and rumbled off, leaving the other people standing on the cobbles. I asked them what they were working on. “The bridge,” they said. Oh yes, I was standing on a bridge. The train lines were below.
Annotated Google map of the location.
It’s in a labyrinth of roads and railway lines just to the east of Kings Cross mainline station.Here are some maps to show the location. Walk east from Kings Cross, about 10 minutes.
On the maps, the blue line represents the River Fleet, which is alongside the Kings Cross Road, underground. It flows from left to right across the map (West to East) and then heads South down to join the Thames beneath Blackfriars Bridge.
The river Fleet, before it became an underground sewer in 1825, flowed along the western side of Pancras Road and then eastward along the south side of the common, crossing the old highway (now Gray’s Inn Road) north of St. Chad’s Place.
‘Battle Bridge Estate’, in Survey of London: Volume 24, the Parish of St Pancras Part 4: King’s Cross Neighbourhood, ed. Walter H Godfrey and W McB. Marcham (London, 1952), pp. 102-113. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol24/pt4/pp102-113 [accessed 7 February 2024].
St Chad’s Place slopes down towards the River Fleet. This area was once the location of St Chad’s Well, a spring said to have health-giving properties. It operated from about 1815 to 1860. I found a picture in the London Picture Archives, reproduced below with their permission.
A river, a bridge, a well, a passage and a music venue. It’s amazing what you find.
Looking east from where I was sketching. Street art in St Chad’s PlaceIn St Chad’s Place, looking North towards the Kings Cross Road.North entrance of St Chad’s Place. The cyclist is coming out of St Chad’s Place and into the Kings Cross Road.Street name in the Kings Cross Road
Here is work in progress on the sketch:
The colours are:
For the sky and pavement – a special new colour, Schminke Horadam “Random grey” – “formulated each year from surplus pigments”. This is the 2022 edition.
Rose madder permanent – also on the pavement
Mars Yellow
Ultramarine Blue
Green Serpentine Genuine
Buff Titanium
Fired Gold Ochre in the brickwork
Burnt Umber
Arches Aquarelle paper in a sketchbook made by Wyvern Bindery (Sketchbook 14).
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“The House they left Behind”, 27 Ropemakers Fields, London E14 8BX, sketched in Sketchbook 14 28th Jan 2024 at 2pm (Image copyright JaneSketching.com)
The London Inheritance article shows a 1986 photo taken by the author’s father. Painted on the side of the building was the sign:
THE HOUSE THEY LEFT BEHIND BUILT 1857 RESTORED 1985
The sign has now been painted over. The wall, which is on the left of my drawing, is now completely white. But the name lives on and appears on current maps. Here is a map showing where the house is.
The building is now residential, but was previously a pub. It was “left behind” by the bombs dropped on London by the Luftwaffe in the 1939-45 conflict. The website “Layers of London” provides maps of bomb damage in London. Here is the area.
Map showing bomb damage. Classified from Total Destruction (Black), through Seriously Damaged (Dark Red) to Clearance Areas (Green). credit: https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/overlays/bomb-damage-1945 Map provided by London Metropolitan Archives. Geo-referenced with the support of the National Library of Scotland
The map is based on 1:2500 Ordnance Survey sheets originally published in 1916. The bomb damage was recorded on these maps by hand soon after it happened. The circle represents where a V2 rocket landed. The red area shows buildings that were classified as “seriously damaged – doubtful if repairable”. As you see, the pub, labelled “P.H.”and outlined in red, is shown as undamaged.
I found more information on Bomb Damage Maps from a National Geographic article on a book about the maps. This article also provides a detailed key to the colours on the map. The book is “The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps” by Laurence Ward.
“A diary entry included in the book, from architect Andrew Butler on April 20, 1941, gives an idea of what the work was like:
For the block I have started on—eight floors high with two flats on each floor—has had its whole face ripped off … I found it possible to stand on part of the roof. So, clutching a broken chimney, I surveyed the damage there. My notebook became very messy. What with the dust and soot, wet filth and the perspiration of fluster on my hands, it was difficult to read what I wrote. The notes served their purpose however when, after drying the book, I had to transcribe them into a report.”
Here is my work in progress on the sketch. Thank you to the author of “A London Inheritance” for providing the stimulus for this expedition. Thank you also to the friends and family of local resident David Newell-Smith, on whose memorial bench I completed the sketch. His dates are given as 1937-2017. He would have been a boy when the bombs were falling.
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Here is the Market Café, sketched from the “Cat and Mutton Bridge” on 19th January 2024.
Market Café, 2 Broadway Market, London E8. Sketched 19th January 2024, 15:30, in Sketchbook 14.
As you see, this building is the former pub, the “Sir Walter Scott”. A pub was on this site in 1836. The wording on the building says “rebuilt 1909”. It closed as a pub in 1999 according to “pubhistory.com”. The Market Café now operates from the ground floor.
The website of Broadway Market gives a history of this area. In the early 19th century, the canal was the major means of freight transport, until the coming of the railways in the 1840s.
In 1812 “The Regent Canal Act” was passed and the Regent’s Canal constructed. This final link was direct into the River Thames at Limehouse, completing the passageway of heavy freight to Birmingham Manchester and the entire industrial North. (It should be noted that this was at the time of horse-drawn stage coaches and ox-laden wagons).
The new Regents Canal became a central pivot for industry and supplies. Timber warehouses grew, Gas light and Coke companies were established and this once rural backwater had become a major hub of enterprise.
This “once rural backwater” evidently needed a pub. Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish historian, novelist, poet, and playwright. He died in 1832, which must have been around the time this pub was named and the area was growing in population and importance.
The National Library of Scotland provides a wonderful side-by-side map, so you can see how the area looked previously, alongside a modern map. Click the image below to go to their marvellous site. You can shift the images around and expand them: both maps change at once. It’s fascinating.
I had a look at an 1870 OS map. The Public House “P.H.” existed here in 1870. The road currently called Broadway Market was called “Pritchards Road” then. You can see the rows of terraced houses along the canal, gone now, and the “Coal Wharf” and “Wood Wharf” which used to be on the south side of the canal.
Broadway Market is now a street of modern coffee shops and small enterprises, with a street market of stalls down the middle. The jeweller William Cheshire has a workshop at the south end of the street. Climpson Coffee are further up. There are bakers, grocers, greengrocers and an opticians. At the North end, Broadway Market gives onto London Fields, a lovely park, with a lido.
It’s a great area to explore.
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I walked through the City lanes towards London Bridge and passed by the Jamaica Wine House embedded, as it seemed, in a canyon amongst towers.
Jamaica Wine House, 12:30pm 30th August 2023 in Sketchbook 13.
The Cheesegrater and 22 Bishopsgate are the office blocks in the left background and One Leadenhall is under construction on the right.
This is a very old part of the City. Although some buildings have changed, the road layout still retains something of the feeling of Dickensian London. There has been a pub or coffee house on the site of the Jamaica Wine House since 1652. The current building dates from 1868 according to the Historic England List Entry (number 1079156).
Off the picture to the left is MacAngusWainright bespoke tailors and shirtmakers, at number 4 St Michael’s Alley. This shop used to be John Haynes＆Co, the jewellers.
St Michael Cornhill is visible to the left in the background, and you can just see the weathervane on St Peter upon Cornhill in the centre of the picture.
My drawing of St Peter upon Cornhill is in this post:
I went out to look for more gas lights in the City. There was rain, and the back alleys were wet. I couldn’t find any more gaslights. At the South East extreme…
Location of the Jamaica Wine House in the alleys between Lombard Street and Cornhill. (Map (c) OpenStreetMap contributors)
The picture took an hour on location and I finished it at my desk.
Chair kindly lent by MacAngusWainright
The colours in the picture are:
Fired Gold Ochre – my go-to colour for brick and sandstone
Ultramarine blue, Lavender, and Cerulean Blue for the sky
Burnt Umber in the sky
All greys and blacks are Ultramarine Blue with Burnt Umber
There’s a bit of Iridescent Gold on the weathervane of St Peter upon Cornhill
The trees in St Michael’s garden are Serpentine Genuine with some Permanent Yellow Medium.
St Michael on Cornhill is Buff Titanium with some Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue.
Done on Arches 300gsm NOT watercolour paper in a sketchbook by Wyvern Bindery, Hoxton. Thank you to McAngusWainwright, city tailor, for the kind loan of the chair.
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Sketching is a way to fill those “waiting” times with creative activity.
..at the airport…..waiting for lunch…..before dinner…..before the others arrived……waiting for the food….
I had an A5 sketchbook with cartridge paper. This cartridge paper behaved differently from the watercolour paper I am used to. It was more suited to quick sketches.
It was hot weather. Outdoors the paint dried quickly. Here’s the hotel from the other side of the road, drawn very quickly, about 20 minutes.
Hôtel de France, Sainte-Croix 18 August 2023
I went to the swimming pool. On the way back I stopped to sketch the sloping hill and a house in the trees.
Here’s a view of the bar at the hotel.
Here’s a flip-through of the sketchbook. 20 seconds of silent video. [This video and the gallery beneath may not show on email or phones so if there’s a problem please see the web version of this post]
Sketchbook flip-through. Sketchbook from the Vintage Paper Company.
I’ve sketched in Switzerland before. Here are some other other drawings I’ve done in the same location:
Waiting in London City airport… Breakfast… Looking out of the window… Walking around… A rich cultural spectacle: Photographs absolutely not allowed, but sketching was OK. It was very crowded,…
Here is 23 rue du Petit-Montreux, Sainte-Croix, Vaud. I sketched this house after breakfast. The sun was bright and I rushed out into the crisp morning. It took me…
It was raining in Switzerland. Here is a sketch I did looking out of the window of the Hôtel de France, Sainte-Croix, Vaud. The building with the flags is…
I visited the Hôtel de France, Sainte-Croix in Vaud, Switzerland. Here is the hotel, from the street outside, just after I arrived. I had to wait in Geneva train…
The weather in the Jura mountains is changing. This is climate change, the residents tell me. Once, the snow came reliably every year, bringing skiers. Now, the snow is…
Here is a machine that was used to make music boxes: The machine is about 100 years old. It still works. It sits with its colleagues and companion machines…
This is the church. Drawn and coloured on location, about 1 degree C. That’s snow in the foreground. Then later, it was colder. Hotel de France, drawn from the…
This building is on the Rue des Rasses, in Sainte-Croix, Vaud, Switzerland. For maps, see end of this article. There is much that is interesting about this building: there…
Snowfield behind the church. Painted with melted snow as I forgot to bring water. All done standing up as everything was wet and cold. Snow blew from the roof…
Here is a sketch looking south down St John St, Islington, towards Smithfield Meat Market, which is off to the left. The building with the pointed gable is the pub “The White Bear”.
55-65 St John St, London EC1M. 18 March 2023 in Sketchbook 13
No. 99: the former “Horns”, no longer a pub.
The White Bear has “1899” written on its tall gable. “British History Online” points to two pubs built around that time on St John St, of which only the White Bear survives as a pub:
.. two public houses from the same period: the White Bear at No. 57 [], rebuilt in 1898–9 by the City of London Brewery Co., along with the adjoining house No. 59; and the former Horns of 1887 at No. 99, by Alexander & Gibson, architects []
Here is a map and a photo of the ink drawing. I was sketching on a somewhat damp day, ‘rain with sunny intervals’. I went home at this point to finish the colours at my desk.
Here are the colours I used in this sketch. As you see, there are only four.
Here are a few other sketches I’ve done in the area.
These glorious buildings are at the south end of St John’s Street. This is the view looking north from the Smithfield Meat Market, Central Avenue. It’s a busy corner. I…
Here is a sketch of St John Bar and Restaurant in St John Street, London EC1 This was for a special client, a collector who wanted a small sketch, which…
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.Map showing location of the sketch
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.
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.
PenPainting on locationPaint drying in Origin coffeeSketchbook 12
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?
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Here is “The Eagle” 159 Farringdon Road, London, EC1.
The Eagle, Farringdon Road, October 2022, 12″ x 9″ [sold]
I painted this as a commission. My client liked the pub and asked for a picture which showed the liveliness of the place. I sketched it from the other side of the Farringdon Road.
There was certainly a lot of activity in the pub. As you see in the picture, people arrived and occupied at the tables in the street, even though this was October, and quite chilly. The lamppost by the door was soon adorned with a collection of bikes.
Here are some details from the picture:
Here is work in progress:
Preliminary sketchPencil underdrawingPen on Arches Watercolour blockPen (Safari Lamy, shown in my hand)Pen complete
I completed the pen drawing on location and added the colour later:
Thank you to my client for this commission, and for allowing me to post the picture here.
I have also sketched The Eagle, 2 Shepherdess Walk. See this post:
