Tag: London

“The Chapel” Cab Drivers’ Shelter, Wellington Place, St John’s Wood, NW8 7PE

According to the cab driver sitting at one of the tables, this is “the oldest, and the last to be listed”. It was built in 1875, and listed in 2024 (listing ref 1488223).

“The Chapel” Cab Drivers’ shelter, Wellington Place, St John’s Wood, NW8 7PE Sketched 27 March 2026, in Sketchbook 16

As I was sketching, the manager of the shelter came out and kindly brought me a cup of tea. She was very welcoming, and interested in the drawing. She told me that the rail running round the shelter, shown in my drawing, was for drivers to tether their horses.

Cup of tea courtesy of the manager of the shelter.

A former cab driver came by in his mobility scooter. He evidently still had dining rights, as he was seated at the tables by the hut. Only cab drivers can sit there, I understood. Cab drivers also went inside the shelter, through the door which you see on the right of the hut, with a circular plate on it. The ex-Cab Driver told me he was a photographer now. “Street Photography”, he said. But he told me he was going to take up birdwatching. This was something it was convenient to do from a mobility scooter. He had no teeth, and it was hard to understand what he said. But nonetheless we enjoyed an extended conversation and listened to the birds we could hear in the park. He went off, waving from his vehicle, steering a confident route along the uneven pavement.

This shelter is called “the Chapel” because it is right next to St John’s Wood Chapel Gardens.

The St John’s Wood Cab Driver’s shelter is next to the Church

It started to rain and I stopped sketching. I bought a bacon sandwich from the woman in the shelter and went to eat it in the garden.

The gardens are the Chapel graveyard. The watercolour artist John Sell Cotman is buried there. I have seen a large exhibition of his work at the British Museum.

Back at my desk, trying to channel my inner John Sell Cotman, I struggled to match the green colour of the shelter. It is called “Dulux Buckingham Paradise Green I”. 1 It exists in the Dulux Trade Paint range2, but not as a watercolour.

I tried to mix it myself, with partial success. Any colour varies depending on the light conditions, and the surroundings, so I forgive myself for not making an exact technical match. My green is made from Serpentine Genuine (Daniel Smith watercolour ) with touches of Mars Yellow and Ultramarine Blue.

Equipment for this picture. The sponge is for making the tree. Serpentine Genuine is the colour in the palette at the bottom left. It looks quite similar to Dulux Paradise Green I.

When the picture was finished I ordered a digital print of it, and returned to the shelter to gift the print to the manager who had been so kind and welcoming. It will hang inside her shelter.

The St Johns Wood Cab Drivers’ Shelter, digital print
(c) JaneSketching
  1. Historic England has an article about this shelter here: https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/13th-cabmens-shelter-in-london-listed/
    It names the colour of the shelter as “Dulux Buckingham Paradise Green I” ↩︎
  2. Dulux paint Paradise Green I listed here: https://www.duluxtradepaintexpert.co.uk/en/colours/paradise-green-1-645605 ↩︎

Russell Square Cab Drivers’ Shelter, WC1

Continuing my series on Cab Drivers’ Shelters, here is the shelter on Russell Square. It was built in 1897, restored in 1987, and listed in 1988.

Russell Square Cab Drivers’ shelter, WC1, sketched 9th March 2026, in Sketchbook 16

This little building is on the North side of Russell Square, not far from the British Museum.

Location of the Russell Square Cab Drivers’ Shelter

I sketched from a convenient bench, fortified by a sandwich and cake from the marvellous Fortitude Bakery, just to the east – marked on the map above (and recommended).

On the other side of the road is a school for young children. Adults stood about, ready to collect the school children. Between them flowed a current of workers, students and people of all nations. “SOAS”, the School of Oriental and African Studies, is nearby, as is the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and many other academic institutions of the University of London.

A cheerful woman swathed in scarves bustled up to me and examined the picture. She glanced up to to the shelter and looked back down again at my picture, comparing. She then delivered what I took to be a speech of encouragement and admiration. But it may equally have been closely argued constructive criticism. Her words sounded garbled, she had no teeth, and I think she was speaking a language unknown to me. However we smiled at each other, I held up the picture so she could better compare it to the building. She nodded curtly, as though putting a confirmatory flourish at the end of her expressed opinion. We smiled again, she waved, and off she went.

A woman with a large handbag came and sat down right next to me on the bench. She placed the handbag on her lap, and took no interest in my picture whatsoever. After a few minutes she took off again. Perhaps she had spotted the pupil she had come to collect.

I photographed various details of the shelter. Note the bird on top of the bell. I had tried very hard to show it in my drawing, but at that distance it was very small.

The shelters were built by The Cabmen’s Shelter Fund. Its monogram “CSF” is in the fretwork. This charity set up the shelters in the 19th century, and still exists.

Russell Square Cab Drivers’ Shelter – fretwork showing “CSF” for “Cabmens’ Shelter Fund”

I finished the drawing back at my desk. Here is the sketchbook spread.

Russell Square Cab Drivers’ shelter in Sketchbook 16

Temple Place Cabdrivers’ shelter, WC2

Here is the Cab Drivers Shelter near Temple Station.

Cab drivers’ shelter, Temple Place. Sketched 5th March 2026 2pm in Sketchbook 16

There are 13 of these shelters surviving. All are now listed. This one was built in around 1900 and listed in 19871. Here’s a map from the Historic England site showing the location of all the shelters in London. interestingly they are all to the North of the river.

Map of the 13 listed cab drivers’ shelters. Temple place circled. Map from Google, on https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/13th-cabmens-shelter-in-london-listed/
Eager diners queue at the shelter before it closes.

I sketched this one on the first sunny day in spring. I’d arrived there at around 1:30pm. There was a long line of people outside and several tables. While I was doing the sketch, the manager closed the window and the queue dissipated. Then she came out and packed up all the tables. I just managed to sketch one table before they all disappeared. This shelter closes at 2pm.

Two men walked past me, engrossed in a conversation about a colleague. “He has a strong survival component” observed one of them, somewhat ruefully.

Then there was a man pushing a bicycle. “Ah!” he said, noticing me, “ink. Real ink!” I was indeed using real ink. I held up the fountain pen to show him. “I love the sound of ink on paper!” he said. I hadn’t thought about the sound of ink on paper. I noticed it, from that moment on.

Here’s a map showing the location of the shelter. As you see, it is near Temple Station, which accounts for the flux of people passing.

Here is the sketchbook spread. My aim is to sketch more of these shelters – maybe even to sketch all of them.

Sketchbook 16
  1. Historic England listing: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1357301?section=official-list-entry ↩︎

Donnybrook Quarter, Old Ford, Tower Hamlets, London E3

I saw this group of Mediterranean-style buildings on a long peregrination around East London. I went back to have a closer look. This is the “Donnybrook Quarter” which stands on a corner of Parnell Road, in Tower Hamlets. I arrived just as the sun was setting.

The sketch shows a pale modern building against a sunlit sky. At street level there is a shop with a canopy.
Part of the Donnybrook Quarter, Parnell Road, Tower Hamlets London E3, sketched 29 January 2026 in Sketchbook 16

The Donnybrook Quarter was completed ready for occupation in 2006. The architects were Peter Barber Architects.

The architects write: “The scheme is laid out around two new tree lined streets which cross the site creating very strong spatial connections with adjacent neighborhoods and a handy cut through for their residents” (Peter Barber Architects.)

Here are snapshots of the tree-lined streets they mention. These pictures were taken in January 2026, so the trees aren’t perhaps as flourishing as they might be in the summer.

A photo-essay on the “Tower Hamlets Slice” website has some beautiful pictures by Yev Kazannik from April 2000. The essay provides interesting background to the development. It quotes Peter Barber as saying:

“…the style came about at the request of local residents during community consultations in the early to mid-2000s before the project was finished in 2006. 
‘The residents were thinking, “Spain! Holidays! Marbella!” I’m completely happy with that,’ Barber said in an interview.”

Peter Barber goes on to say:

“…’This project is a celebration of the public social life of the street,’ ..
‘A worrying amount of building in London is done as a gated community. This is a counter-blast to that.’ “

Yez Kazannik comments:

“Walking through the lanes of Donnybrook, you will feel this neighbourly intimacy. Uniquely, the building units themselves have no corridors, entrances or ‘connecting’ spaces. Each room simply opens out into another. The streets themselves are meant to be the corridors, where neighbours can amble across each other. “

The concept is perhaps better understood from the air. Here’s an image from the architects’ website:

Image credit: Peter Barber Architects (https://www.peterbarberarchitects.com/donnybrook-quarter)

Here’s my snapshot of one of the streets:

I’d be interested to know how it works in practice.

If you’d like to find it, the development is just south of Victoria Park.

My sketch map of the locality of Donnybrook Quarter and my sightline for the sketch above

The number 8 bus goes along Old Ford Road, and took me back to the City after I’d done this sketch.

Towards central London on the number 8 bus Image credit: TfL website https://tfl.gov.uk
Page spread Sketchbook 16

More about Donnybrook Quarter and the architect Peter Barber:

This Guardian article describes his work and has more quotes: “Washing line warrior – the architect who wants to get the neighbours singing”

Here’s another Guardian article: “Marbella on Thames”

This technical report contains plans of Donnybrook Quarter and many photos, as well as a list of references: Westminster Research

See also Peter Barber’s website here (about Donnybrook) and here (all projects) and his instagram

Arnold Circus from Leila’s shop, Calvert Avenue, E2

On a very cold day in January I stopped for lunch in Leila’s shop in Calvert Avenue. My table at the window offered a view along a tangent of Arnold Circus.

View from Leila’s, 15-17 Calvert Avenue E2 7JP 29 January 2026 10″ x 7″in Sketchbook 16

I enjoyed all the lines and curves, and the hundreds of notices stuck to the lamppost, and the trees in boxes, and the transitional feel of this area, between the City and Hackney, between the trendy shops of Redchurch Street and the social housing of the Boundary Estate.

Then lunch arrived, which was a kind of a goulash and very good.

The woman serving said “It’s so cold, I’m offering cups of hot water. Would you like one?”. This was a good idea. She placed the cup of hot water in amongst my drawing things, and the plate of goulash, on the table. They are very tolerant and understanding in this café.

Next door is the deli of the same name, where I procured a slice of malt loaf to sustain me on my walk. I’d eaten it before I reached the other side of Arnold Circus.

Sketchbook 16 page spread

I’ve sketched in this area before:

Shoreditch Church: St Leonard E1

Here is St Leonard Shoreditch, which stands at the intersection of Shoreditch High St and the Hackney Road, postcode E1 6JN. There has been a Christian church here since medieval times. The present building dates from 1741 and was designed by George Dance the Elder (1695-1768). George Dance the Elder was the City of London surveyor at the time, and designed, amongst other buildings, Mansion House at Bank Junction. The current church is active in the community. On the day I was sketching, a Thursday, they were offering meals to local people. This is the Lighthouse Project, “providing practical help,…

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Shiplake House, Arnold Circus

This is the “Boundary Estate”, Britain’s first council estate, opened in 1900. It was built to the design of Owen Fleming and his team.  Fleming was a member of the Housing of the Working Classes branch of the LCC’s* Architecture department. He was 26 years old. The aim of Boundary Estate project was to replace slums, in an area of disease, want, squalor and crime known as “Old Nicol”. The slums were pulled down, and replaced  by dwellings that were more healthy, and more pleasant to live in. The area was also provided with schools, a laundry, shops and clubrooms.…

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67 Redchurch Street E2, “Jolene” bakery

Jolene bakery is on the corner of Redchurch Street and Club Row. This is a lively corner in a street on various edges: on the edge of the City, at the boundary between a new London and an old one, at the intersection of 21st century entrepreneurial culture and 19th century housing projects. Redchurch Street is just North and West of Brick Lane. There are restaurants, independent clothes designers, hairdressers, and various 21st century businesses I couldn’t identify but categorised in my mind as broadly “creative”. It’s a good place to walk around, and Jolene is a great place to…

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61 Hackney Road, E2

Along the Hackney Road stands this building with a turret: This on the corner of Waterson Street and Hackney Road, at the western end of Columbia Road. After I’d sketched it, I walked into the picture, and had a look at the building from the Waterson Street side. It was a pub called the Duke of Clarence. There is deep green tiling, characteristic of 19th century London pubs. It was listed in the London Street Directory of 1940 as a pub. Other online references have it trading from 1802 up to 1944. For many decades it’s had retail premises on…

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The Royal Oak, Columbia Road, London E2

Columbia Road flower market is famous. It takes place on Sundays from 8am to 2pm “whatever the weather”. This magnificent pub, The Royal Oak, is about half way along the road.

The Royal Oak, Columbia Road, sketched 22 January 2026, 2pm

Columbia Road has its own website. It says

“We are one of the few streets in the country composed of sixty independent shops. Small art galleries sit next to cup cake shops, vintage clothes stores, English and Italian delis, garden and antique shops. There is also a wealth of great pubs, cafes and restaurants.”

This is true, although you need to know that many of these shops are open only Friday-Sunday. I was there on a rainy Thursday. This was probably just as well, because it meant I had a good view of the pub from the doorway of the shop opposite.

Sketching “The Royal Oak” from outside “Bob and Blossom” on Columbia Road

It was the nicest-smelling location for sketching. There was a coffee shop opposite distributing coffee-and-croissant aromas into the damp air, and somewhere nearby must have been selling soap, because there were wafts of tangerine, cedar, and lavender, smelling clean and unusual.

The pub is Grade II listed, listing reference 1426765. The present building is from 1923, built to the designs of Arthur Edward Sewell, for Trumans Brewery. The listing notes “Trumans distinctive green mottled tiling” which you can see in my sketch. According to the listing, there was a previous pub here, of the same name, from before 1842. The listing also maintains that this is an “early pub” with a licence to open from 9am on Sundays to serve the market-goers. This doesn’t seem to be the case any more, according to the pub website. But if you know different, or if you are the pub, please correct me!

It is now a Youngs pub, open every day from 12 noon.

The Royal Oak, sketchbook spread, Sketchbook 16
What it looked like before the colour went on

61 Hackney Road, E2

Along the Hackney Road stands this building with a turret:

61 Hackney Road, E2 7NX, sketched 12 January 2026 in sketchbook 16

This on the corner of Waterson Street and Hackney Road, at the western end of Columbia Road.

After I’d sketched it, I walked into the picture, and had a look at the building from the Waterson Street side. It was a pub called the Duke of Clarence.

There is deep green tiling, characteristic of 19th century London pubs.

It was listed in the London Street Directory of 1940 as a pub. Other online references have it trading from 1802 up to 1944. For many decades it’s had retail premises on the ground floor.

Now it is home to “Colours of Arley” on the ground floor, which offers “bespoke striped fabric and wallpaper”. Other floors are occupied by tenants of “Fount London”, which provides small office spaces in quirky buildings.

It’s still standing on its corner, still noble, still useful, while the businesses and the district change around it.

Rotherhithe Tunnel, South Entrance, London SE16

Having sketched the North entrance of the Rotherhithe Tunnel, I then went to have a look at the South entrance. Here it is:

Rotherhithe Tunnel South Entrance, and St Olav’s Church, Rotherhithe, London SE 16 7JB, sketched 18th November 2025

The church is St Olav’s, the Norwegian Church in London. It was designed by John Love Seaton Dahl, and the foundation stone was laid in 1926 by Prince Olav, later King Olav V, of Norway.

The steel arch over the tunnel approach road is part of the equipment used to cut the tunnel, as on the North side.

Sketch detail showing the steel arch.

Below is a photo taken from the front courtyard of the church, looking back towards my sketching location. You can see the steel arch above the wall of the Church courtyard.

View of the arch above the Rotherhithe Tunnel Approach road, from the front courtyard of St Olave’s church

As you see, there were many trees. I was sketching from a traffic island, between major roads.

Map showing my sketching location (red dot and arrow)

Above me there were parakeets, the green ones. I think this is the furthest east I have heard parakeets. They seem to be migrating slowly across London, West to East, and North to South.

Sketching amongst greenery, Rotherhithe Tunnel South entrance

I enjoyed the weathervane on the church: a viking boat.

For completeness, here is a map showing the entire route of the Rotherhithe tunnel.

Background map (c) OpenStreetMap contributors

I reached the South entrance via the “Brunel Tunnel”, which is now used by the Windrush Line.

I’ve now sketched both entrances and two of the shafts. Here are the other posts. Click on the image to go to my article about it on this website.

North Entrance
Shaft 3
Shaft 2

Here’s my sketchbook with this sketch:

Sketchbook 16 page spread

Sketchbook: Arches Aquarelle 300gsm, book made by Wyvern Bindery

Paints: Roman Szmal

Pen and ink: De Atramentis Document Ink, Black, in a Lamy Safari fountain pen with Extra-Fine nib.

Rotherhithe Tunnel North Entrance, London E14

The Rotherhithe Tunnel carries road traffic in both directions between Limehouse on the north of the River Thames, and Rotherhithe on the south side. It was constructed between 1904 and 1908, for horses and carts. The designer was Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice.

The tunnel links Limehouse on the north of the river to Rotherhithe on the south. Built originally for horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians, the tunnel now carries far more traffic than it was designed for, which requires careful day to day management by TfL to ensure safety.

Transport for London press release 20181

Here is the North Entrance of the Rotherhithe tunnel, near to Limehouse DLR Station in the east of London.

Rotherhithe Tunnel North Entrance, sketched 18 November 2025 in Sketchbook 16

The arch in the picture is made of steel. A notice on one of the columns explains that this arch is part of the equipment used to construct the tunnel.

You can see the steel structure in the photo below. The tunnel is narrow. As you see in my sketch, there are just two lanes. The tunnel is heavily polluted from exhaust fumes. Even so, as I sketched, some people cycled into the entrance. Cycling in the tunnel must be very unpleasant and scary. I feared for them.

Cyclist entering the Rotherhithe Tunnel, under the steel arch.

Because of the limited space in the tunnel, there are size restrictions on traffic, including a height restriction. To indicate the safe height, there are long vertical tubes over the approach road, as shown in the photos below. These photos were taken looking back from near the tunnel entrance, towards Limehouse DLR Station, which you can see in the background.

While I was sketching, I heard the banging sound as an overheight van struck the metal tubes. This happened three times during the 45 minutes I was there. Each time, the vehicle carried on past me into the tunnel.

On the road island where I stood to sketch, there are two red telephone boxes. Amazingly, one of them still had the phone inside.

Despite the bright company of the phone boxes, it wasn’t a great place to stand. I could smell the pollution from the tunnel and its approach roads and I didn’t think it was doing me any good. Also it was cold. So having made my pen sketch, I went off to cross the Thames in search of the south entrance.

Sketching the North Entrance

Here are maps, click to enlarge them.

I used Roman Szmal watercolours for this picture. It appears in an article on the Jackson Art Supplies website, reviewing these colours. Here are the colours I used:

Sketchbook 16 spread
  1. Transport For London Press release 12 June 2018 contains data about the number of vehicles using the tunnel: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2018/june/rotherhithe-tunnel-celebrates-110-years-of-transporting-people-across-the-thames ↩︎ ↩︎

Flaxman Lodge, London, WC1

This wonderfully turreted building adorns a street corner in Bloomsbury.

Flaxman Lodge, Flaxman Terrace, London WC1H 9AW sketched 31 Dec 2025 in Sketchbook 16

It is listed Grade II. According to the listing entry it was built in 1907-8 to designs of Joseph and Smitham, “for the Vestry of St Pancras”. St Pancras is a church on the nearby Euston Road.

Map showing the location of the Lodge and St Pancras Church

Pevsner1 takes a different view. He associates this lodge with the terrace behind, which has the same domed turrets. He says:

FLAXMAN TERRACE, early St Pancras Borough Housing, 1907-8 by Joseph & Smithem. 6 storeys, with much conspicuously pretty detail: rough cast top floor and Art Nouveau railings. Similar features on the engaging little caretaker’s lodge at the corner of Burton Street

Pevsner, London 4 NORTH
Pevsner’s “LONDON 4:NORTH” book, describing Flaxman Terrace on page 330.

You can see the redbrick terrace, mentioned by Pevsner, in the photo below, with its domed turret matching the turret on the lodge.

Corner of Flaxman Terrace and Burton Street

So, in Pevsner’s version, the designer Smithem has an “e” not and “a”, and this building is “an engaging little caretaker’s lodge”.

Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras Coat of Arms on Flaxman Terrace railings

The “e” is correct. The architectural practice of Joseph and Smithem was founded by Nathan Solomon Joseph (1834-1909) and Charles James Smithem (1856-1937)2. The practitioners later included sons and a nephew of the founders. The practice designed a number of buildings in London including social housing, schools and the Egerton Road synagogue in Stamford Hill.

Flaxman Terrace was originally built as social housing by the then Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras, whose coat of arms is in the cast iron railings of Flaxman Lodge.3

Now Flaxman Lodge appears to be a private house. Evidently at one time it was divided into flats. Planning permission to convert the flats into one “4 bed dwelling house” was granted by Camden Council in 2014, application reference 2014/1396/P

The property was last sold for £2,280,000 in 2017 (The Move Market)

I sketched this building standing at the corner of Flaxman Terrace and Woburn Walk. “Woburn” would imply a possible burn or stream. Sure enough, the marvellous “British History Online” site delivers a map showing a stream in this location:

‘The Skinners’ Company Estate’, in Survey of London: Volume 24, the Parish of St Pancras Part 4: King’s Cross Neighbourhood, ed. Walter H Godfrey, W McB. Marcham (London, 1952), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol24/pt4/pp83-93 [accessed 1 January 2026]

I was standing in roughly the position of the “pond” shown in the 1785 map on the left. At that time, I would have been surrounded by fields. By 1898, urbanisation had arrived, but not yet this Lodge. The routes of old byways and street boundaries are retained. Here’s a 1942 map4, by which time the Lodge has appeared. The street pattern of 100 years previously is still there.

OS Map Revised 1894 Published 1911 Reprinted 1942 – Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland’
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.
Link: https://maps.nls.uk/

For comparison, here is a modern map:

(c) OpenStreetMap contributors https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/51.526865/-0.129873

The former “Drill Hall” has become “The Place” contemporary dance centre, and many of the 19th century terraces have been replaced by larger buildings. But the street pattern is unchanged. Burton Street still follows the angle of a long-gone field fence.

Sketching “the Lodge” at the corner of Flaxman Terrace and Woburn Place.
Sketchbook 16
  1. London 4: North, Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, 2001 reprint, page 330 ↩︎
  2. https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/joseph/index.html ↩︎
  3. See “Footprints of London” on this link for more information about the Coat of Arms and the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras. ↩︎
  4. National Library of Scotland OS map:
    “Somers Town Edition of 1911”
    https://maps.nls.uk/view/231272247#zoom=4.2&lat=8319&lon=6377&layers=BT
    ↩︎