London

Essays An anthology including articles

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Contents

Foreword  1
Introduction  2
City traders  9
The cobbler’s children’s shoes  14
London lettering walk  18
Back to the future  25
Slave to the algorithm  30
Rough sleeping  35
Gintrification  40
Where has all the chaos gone?  45
Inside the green matrix  50
London’s ‘digital economy’  55
London: capital of culture  60
Ladies of the night  65
Glossary  70
City traders Richard Brown
London’s wholesale markets have faced
relocation, population growth and signifi-
cant shifts in the city’s sense of itself. And
they’re still going strong.
At seven o’clock on a drizzly April morning,
Canary Wharf is just coming to life. Bank-
ers, brokers and lawyers stream up from
the station, ready for a new day of trading
and deal-making. But in a low-slung yellow
building just north of the gleaming towers,
the working day is nearing its end.
  Inside Billingsgate Market, traders in
long white coats and wellington boots are
chatting among themselves as they start to
hose down their stalls. Polystyrene boxes
packed with seafood glisten under bright
fluorescent lights. The market is not as busy
at it was earlier but customers still circulate:
trade suppliers are keenly comparing prices
and quantities alongside a diverse selection
of retail browsers – a couple of Orthodox
Jews, a Coptic Christian priest, Chinese
families, bearded foodies..
  There’s fish here from all round the
British Isles: from Aberdeen and Grimsby,
Brixham and the Shetland Isles, Whitstable
and Lowestoft: coley and cod, sea bream
and salmon, tiger-striped mackerel and
scallops in the shell. Other stalls specialise
in ‘exotics’ – species of fish from faraway
oceans, many of which I have barely heard
of, let alone eaten: redfish, milkfish, catfish,
kingfish, needle fish, barracuda, croaker,
tilapia, frozen breeze blocks of squid.
  Billingsgate, which moved to Docklands
in 1982, is the biggest fish market in the
UK; 25,000 tonnes of fish a year, almost
100 tonnes a day, pass through on the way
from sea to plate. Lorries arrive from
9pm until the starting bell rings at 4am,
bringing seafood from UK fishing ports,
from airports, from the cargo docks where
frozen fish from the South Pacific and In-
dian Ocean is unloaded. The consignments
are split between the 98 stands in the centre
of the market and the 30 shops that line its
edges, or sent to a freezer store the size of a
football pitch at the back of the market.
  International Market at Southall, New
Covent Garden at Vauxhall, and New
Spitalfields at Leyton all supply fruit and
veg; Smithfield meat market remains on its
historic site in Farringdon. Three of these –
Billingsgate, New Spitalfields and Smith-
field – are operated by the Corporation
of London, which was granted exclusive
rights to operate markets around the City of
London in 1327. The Corporation estimates
that their three markets handle nearly
900,000 tonnes of fish, meat, fruit and
vegetables every year, and turn over nearly
£1bn (though traders are cautious about
disclosing precise figures that might lead to
rent rises).
  London’s streets may never have been
paved with gold but they were always
dotted with market stalls and filled with
food. Shifting patterns of food production,
trading and consumption have shaped the
city, as much as struggles between church
and state, nobles and merchants, industry
and commerce.
  London’s place names tell this story: Milk
Street and Bread Street; Pudding Lane,
where the Great Fire of London started; Eel
Pie Island. Sometimes the old names have
been erased: Old Fish Street no longer runs
down to Billingsgate; and More London
(the development by London Bridge that
includes City Hall) eschewed the waterfront
walkway’s old name, Pickle Herring Street –
a salty reflection of Bermondsey’s history of
food processing – opting for the stately The
Queen’s Walk instead.
  Meanwhile, London’s markets have been
transformed. In London: the Biography,
Peter Ackroyd describes the street market
that formed the spine of the medieval City
of London. 1 Peter Ackroyd, London: the
Biography, Chatto and Windus, 2000. You
can trace the route down Cheapside today,
from the bloody shambles of livestock and
butchery at Smithfield, outside the city
walls at Newgate (near the end of Holborn
Viaduct today) to Poultry (the name is
self-explanatory) and Cornhill, where vege-
tables, meat and fish were traded from what
would later become the Royal Exchange,
the foundation of London’s stock market.
South of the Royal Exchange, on the banks
of the Thames, Billingsgate was so ancient
that the origins of its name are unknown,
though it was granted a charter in 1400.
9
 London Essays
Until the Thames was overwhelmed with
industrial and domestic waste, eels and oth-
er fish came directly from the river: as the
city grew, the River Roding at Barking be-
came home to Britain’s largest fishing fleet.
There are records of a fleet at Barking from
the 11th century, as Andrew Summers and
John Debenham set out in London’s Metro-
politan Essex.2 Andrew Summers and John
Debenham, London’s Metropolitan Essex:
Events and Personalities from Essex in Lon-
don, Summersbook, 2013. By 1700, boats
would venture to Iceland, and by the 19th
century the fleet was 200-strong, their catch
cooled by ice harvested in the winter from
flooded marshes. From 1850, decline set in,
as the railways made remote northern ports
quickly accessible by land, and street names
like Whiting Avenue are all that preserve
the memory of Barking’s seafaring heyday.
  The arrival of the railways was pivotal for
London’s food supply and urban develop-
ment. Beforehand, most of London’s food
was grown on its doorstep. Beforehand,
most of London’s food was grown on its
doorstep. In 1796, Daniel Lysons’ survey
of the suburbs 3 estimated that there were
5,000 acres (the same area as the Royal
Parks) of market gardens within 12 miles of
the metropolis, plus 1,700 acres of potato
fields and 800 acres of fruit trees. Barges
brought manure from London’s stables to
feed the soil and returned food to the city’s
markets. Ackroyd writes of “cabbages from
Battersea and onions from Deptford, celery
from Chelsea and peas from Charlton,
asparagus from Mortlake and turnips from
Hammersmith”.  The railways untethered
London’s growth from its geography by
dramatically extending supply lines: the
population was no longer constrained by
the availability of food within a few miles
of the city, and the market gardens of the
suburbs could make way for housing.
  One walled market garden, between the
City and Westminster, served the convent
and abbey at Westminster. Covent Garden
was seized by Henry VIII in the dissolution
of the monasteries and granted to the earls
of Bedford. In the following century, the 4th
Earl began developing the land, with Inigo
Jones designing the arcaded piazza and St
Paul’s Church – a prototype garden suburb
10
for prosperous Londoners. For a period
the area flourished, but in time, Roy Porter
writes, “the fruit and vegetable market also
operating in the square sapped its smart-
ness and the aristocracy quit, migrating to
Mayfair”.
  Covent Garden slid into seediness, but
the fruit and vegetables market flourished
particularly after 1666, when the Great Fire
destroyed the City’s markets. In Victorian
times, with new market halls in place, the
market boasted 1,000 porters. 4 Roy Porter,
London: A Social History, Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1998. In 1974 the market relocat-
ed to Vauxhall, after an epic battle between
conservationists who wanted to preserve
the old buildings and the Greater London
Council, who proposed a comprehensive
redevelopment in the worst traditions of
1970s car-based urbanism.
  Every Day But Christmas, Lindsay An-
derson’s 1957 documentary about Covent
Garden, 5 begins late at night in the fields
Beforehand, most of London’s food was grown on its doorstep.
of Sussex, where lorries are loaded with
lettuces, mushrooms and roses, and set out
through the darkness to London. The film
records the quickening tempo of the mar-
ket, as vegetables arrive, then flowers, then
porters and customers (including London’s
last female market porter and last flower
girls, successors in trade to Eliza Doolittle),
then cleaners and scavengers. The streets
are a jumble of lorries, pallets and people.
  There’s a calm interlude in the film, be-
tween the unloading and the stacking of the
produce and the arrival of the customers,
where the market workers retire to a café
for a break – a cigarette, a cup of tea and
a bacon roll. They are not the only night-
hawks in the café. The camera lights on a
group of gay men, chatting and shooting
nervous glances at the camera (we are still
10 years away from the partial legalisation
of homosexuality), and fixing elaborate
coifs. Narrator Alun Owen intones archly:
“Not everybody in Albert’s works in the
market. Some of them, you wonder where
they come from.”
  Market workers would have been less
naïve. Before London’s current redefinition
as a 24-hour city, markets also stood out
as permissive places, where the loud and
the louche mingled with the traders who
kept the city fed. As well as being a place of
butchery and executions, medieval Smith-
field was the location of St Bartholemew’s
Fair, a notorious three-day debauch that ran
for 700 years before being suppressed in the
1850s. In modern times, too, markets and
nightlife enjoyed a curious co-existence: as
in the Meatpacking District in New York,
Smithfield and Vauxhall became hubs for
clubbing, away from the potentially censo-
rious gaze of London’s daytime population
at City of London Corporation, wholesale
markets looked like a spent force, a relic
from a pre-modern era. Supermarkets
were establishing their own supply chains
and their own warehouses on the edge
of London; the wholesale markets’ niche
would only become narrower. In 2002 and
2007, reports recommended the slimming
down of London’s markets, proposing that
Billingsgate and Smithfield be closed and
their business consolidated to New Spital-
fields and/or New Covent Garden. 6 Nich-
olas Saphir, Review of London Wholesale
Markets, Corporation of London, 2002, and
URS Corporation Ltd, London Wholesale
Markets Review, GLA, 2007.
  These plans foundered in the complexity
of legislation and commercial interests,
but then the wholesale trade experienced a
revival: today, the Corporation’s markets are
fully occupied and returning a small sur-
plus. Three factors threw the markets a life-
line: one was London’s phenomenal boom
in dining out, encompassing everything
from opulent Michelin aspirants to inven-
tive street food pop-ups. A city whose food
had traditionally served as the butt of other
people’s jokes became one of the world’s
great dining destinations.
  Another factor was immigration: super-
markets work at scale but the choice they
offer is heavily circumscribed. ‘Internation-
al food’ aisles have been outpaced by the
growth in specialist suppliers of everything
from Chinese greens to curry leaves to
Polish sausage to pomfret. At Billingsgate
alone, ‘exotics’ are now reckoned to make
up 40 per cent of turnover. New Londoners
have revitalised the city’s markets as well
City Traders
as its cuisine. The third factor was a change
in food-buying culture and a resurgence
of middle-class interest in authenticity and
provenance. The markets increasingly oper-
ate at the edge of mainstream consumption,
providing specialities for minority cuisines
and exquisite ingredients for epicureans,
as well as acting as a secondary market for
produce that is just a little too gnarly and
imperfect for the supermarkets’ exacting
aesthetic standards.
  But the irony of London’s voracious
appetite, for land as much as for food, is
that the city is forever devouring its edge,
driving markets and other food services
further from the centre. Rational planning
pushed Covent Garden, Billingsgate and
Spitalfields out of central London, narrow-
ing their focus to wholesale trade and relo-
cating it to fringe industrial areas, but today
these locations – alongside the massive
redevelopment of Vauxhall, next to Canary
Wharf ’s new Crossrail Station and at the
edge of London’s Olympic Park – are far
from peripheral. Yesterday’s remote trading
outpost is today’s property hotspot.
  The City of London Corporation’s
Markets Committee have asked for an-
other strategic review, and at Billingsgate
rumours of relocation abound. Moving to
New Spitalfields is still discussed as one
option, but space there is short; relocation
to a new facility in Barking is another pos-
sibility. Meanwhile, at New Covent Garden
(currently owned by central government),
a joint venture is in place to build a new
500,000 square-foot market, together with
3,000 homes and 135,000 square feet of
offices.
  Curiously, the market that feels most
secure is Smithfield, which has occupied
the same site for the best part of a millenni-
um. As London grew around the livestock
market, Smithfield became increasingly
controversial, not just for what one Victo-
rian campaigner described as the “cruelty,
filth, effluvia, pestilence, impiety, horrid
language, danger, disgusting and shud-
dering sights” of the market itself, but
also thanks to the chaos caused by driving
animals through the narrow streets. A new
cattle market was opened in 1855 in Isling-
ton, and Smithfield was re-established as a
11
 London Essays City Traders

meat market, with carcasses delivered by

underground railway.
  The 42 traders at Smithfield today have
successfully battled against redevelopment,
the most recent proposal for which was
rejected in 2014, following a public inquiry.
The now-disused General Market, along-
side Farringdon Road, is earmarked for the
relocation of the Museum of London, but
the Victorian East and West Markets and
the 20th century Poultry Market are all list-
ed, severely limiting the scope for profitable
redevelopment, especially once the costs of
relocating traders are taken into account.
  The possible future for London’s whole-
sale markets is not simply survival or
displacement. Markets could become
re-absorbed by the city in their new lo-
cations, rediscovering the mix and urban
quality that was lost in rezoning. The plans
for Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea see New Notes
Covent Garden as an essential component
of local character, and include proposals for 1. Peter Ackroyd, London: the Biography,
a new ‘Garden Heart’ of workspaces, with Chatto and Windus, 2000
a ‘Food Quarter’ of specialised shops and
restaurants alongside it. On page 28, Henry 2. Andrew Summers and John Debenham,
Dimbleby outlines plans to bring the Street London’s Metropolitan Essex: Events and
Feast model to Smithfield. Personalities from Essex in London, Sum-
  The story of London’s wholesale markets mersbook, 2013.
is rich in anomaly. Trading animal carcasses
3. Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London:
and crates of fish on the doorstep of Eu-
Volume 4, London, 1796. Accessed through
rope’s leading financial centres is certainly
British History Online.
a surprising use of prime real estate. But
the markets’ survival should be celebrated, 4. Roy Porter, London: A Social History,
as should their continuing capacity for Harvard University Press, 1998.
re- invention. In a city endlessly seeking
novelty, variety and traceability in its diet, 5. Watchable at player.bfi.org.uk
wholesale markets make visible the sinews
6. Nicholas Saphir, Review of London
and circulatory system of consumption,
Wholesale Markets, Corporation of
and draw a line connecting medieval trade
London, 2002, and URS Corporation Ltd,
in beasts, fowls and fish with the complex
London Wholesale Markets Review, GLA,
assets and derivatives that are bought and
2007.
sold in financial markets today.

12 13
The cobbler’s Scott Cain
children’s shoes
There is an old folk story that can be
shortened to a single line: the cobbler’s
children have no shoes. It’s a neat way of
describing how skilled people can become
so consumed – by the process of helping
others, doing the best job possible or
merely earning money – that they forget
to employ their talents closer to home. So
the cobbler’s children have no shoes in the
same way that doctors might neglect their
own health, and chefs rarely eat a square
meal. London’s urban innovation experts
behave in much the same way.
London has always been at the forefront of
urban innovation. Wren’s 1710 reimagining
of St Paul’s Cathedral remains one of the
most iconic parts of the London skyline.
The London Overground still uses Brunel’s
1843 Thames Tunnel. The Circle and
Metropolitan Line trains continue to travel
along routes built 150 years ago, when Lon-
don created the world’s first underground
urban train system. Ashbee’s 1900 architec-
tural Survey of London is a government-
embraced reference still used today.
  London remains a leading centre of ur-
ban talent, and has become a hub for ‘future
city’ expertise – expertise in how to design,
construct and govern cities. The capital
hosts the head offices of globally-acclaimed
architecture and engineering practices. It
has a booming tech economy and many
of its tech business aim to develop new
ways of making city life easier and more
enjoyable. London also has four or five of
the world’s top-ranked universities, with
two others – Cambridge and Oxford – only
short train rides away.
  Indeed, these universities are all leading
centres of urban innovation – they are one
of the jewels in London’s crown. Designers
at the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn
Centre for Design explore how to make
living and working in our cities more
inclusive and sustainable. At University
College London’s Centre for Advanced
Spatial Analysis, a world-renowned team
experiments with the latest measurement,
modelling and visualisation techniques
to revolutionise the way cities around the
world think about planning, policy and
design. Departments at Imperial College
London specialise in making cities more
intelligent and sustainable by reducing their
carbon consumption and improving energy
and Internet of Things, while the London
School of Economics’ Cities centre is an
influential authority on urban planning,
governance and economics.
Expertise in global demand
Most of London’s urban expertise applied
internationally; it has long been the case
and we should not want it any other way.
From the original master- planning of
the nascent city of Dubai in the 60s to the
recent construction of Hong Kong’s Mass
Transit Railway, British engineers, archi-
tects and designers have been busy building
urban capacity overseas. It is understand-
able. The world is urbanising at a stunning
pace – 70 per cent of us will live in cities
internationally by 2050 – and in smoothing
that transition, London experts are boost-
ing our export market and making cities
better places for people to live and work.
We should be happy and proud about that:
no one thinks the cobbler should limit him-
self to shoeing just his children, after all.
  Moreover, unlike the cobbler, Lon-
don urban experts and innovators do
not entirely neglect their home. Under
Ken Livingstone the city was pioneer of
road-pricing, with the Congestion Charge,
and touch-ticketing, with the Oyster Card.
Since then, Boris Johnson has led a drive
to open up public data, culminating in the
London Datastore. Many digital entrepre-
neurs have seized upon that opening of
such data, among them the team behind
CityMapper – a smartphone app that uses
open transport data to provide city-dwellers
with a sophisticated view of how to travel to
their destination. First launched in London
in 2012, it has proved highly popular – it is
estimated that over half of the iPhones in
London have the app – and is now available
in 22 different cities around the world. The
citie.org framework – developed by Nesta,
Accenture and the Future Cities Catapult to
help city governments develop innovation
and entrepreneurship policies – clearly
shows that, against 39 other cities, Lon-
15
 London Essays
don is in the leading pack in terms of its
openness, leadership and infrastructure for
attracting and retaining high-growth, high-
tech SMEs.
  Yet it is hard to avoid the feeling that the
city still does not do enough to make use
of the urban expertise it contains, and to
encourage innovation in its own back yard.
  The result is that London is often behind
the curve. So while Copenhagen spear-
headed the concept of bicycle sharing
with which we are all now familiar – fixed
docking stations, pay-points and robust
bicycles – back in 1995, London had to wait
until 2010. Two years later Copenhagen
replaced its old bicycle- sharing scheme
with a new one offering bikes with satellite
navigation systems and electric motors. In
the Spanish city of Málaga smart grid infra-
structure installed in thousands of homes
and hundreds of businesses has helped res-
idents make energy savings of over 20 per
cent, a feat of which Londoners can only
dream. And in Malmö, Sweden a series of
outdoor vacuum tubes suck waste through
underground pipes to the city’s outskirts,
where garbage is burned to heat homes and
food scraps are turned into bio-gas to fuel
buses – leaving London’s reliance on landfill
looking all but Stone Age.
  A growing number of cities are taking a
very deliberate approach to applying their
own expertise at home, as a way both of
meeting urban challenges and growing the
future cities sector. The Mayor of Bos-
ton, for example, has created a team that
co-locates organisations that are developing
promising new technologies; works with
them to trial their innovations in the city;
and commercialise the resulting products
and services.
  Future Cities Catapult – a government
backed innovation agency, where I am
Chief Business Officer, charged with help-
ing UK businesses develop and scale their
urban solutions – has adopted an approach
similar to Boston’s. We bring together
businesses, universities and city leaders to
develop new ideas and services, which are
then deployed in projects in UK and global
cities. In effect we view the UK’s cities as a
laboratory, in which we can test and prove
new products and services, to help grow
16
The cobbler’s children’s shoes
our already strong future cities sector. joined-up decisions, why can’t London, as
  As part of our Cities Unlocked initia- a truly global city, do likewise? London’s
tive, we’ve worked with over 15 businesses population is growing fast and the city has
including Microsoft and Guide Dogs to embarked on a series of mega regeneration
develop a new prototype device which uses programmes – Stratford, Nine Elms, Old
3D soundscapes to help the visually im- Oak Common, to name a few – which will
paired navigate city streets. In our Sensing pay huge dividends in the long run. With
Cities project, we have collaborated with Old Oak Common alone predicted to boost
Intel’s Collaborative Research Institute, The London’s economy by £15bn over 30 years,
Royal Parks and others, to install low-cost it is not as if the returns do not warrant
sensor networks that measure air and water the upfront investment in technology and
quality and human activity, providing data innovation.
that will allow visitors to choose healthier   London has a great story to tell. It is
routes, say, or help them make commercial a pioneering centre of expertise in city
decisions which are less disruptive to how innovation. Its universities and businesses
people like to use the parks. And our Cities are helping transform and improve cities
Lab, with its advanced data modelling and around the world. But London government
visualisation capabilities, has drawn togeth- needs to get better at using, and in using
er data from 135 different sources to create helping develop, this expertise.
Whereabouts London, allowing us to make   For the incoming Mayor, then, the
choices about where we might choose to challenge is threefold: to make London the
rent or buy a flat based on an area’s charac- best city in the world to develop, test and
teristics. deploy new urban technologies at scale; to
deliberately and systematically make more
The big challenge use of London’s unique urban innovation
The nature and scale of London’s priori- talent; and to channel our collective efforts
ty challenges – such as a chronic lack of to address our great city’s most important
housing, long-term health conditions and questions. Not easy, but to do otherwise
resource and environmental constraints – would be a load of cobblers.
demand disruptive innovation. Boris John-
son has already made an important start:
in the Smart London Board for example,
he’s brought together leading academics,
businesses and entrepreneurs to under-
stand how the city can make the best use of
technology.
  But London must seize this opportunity
and go further – much as it has done with
large-scale hard infrastructure. It is hard to
remember now, but only 20 years ago, the
UK had a pretty wobbly record and repu-
tation when it came to its ability to deliver
large and complex infrastructure projects.
But a series of government backed large
projects – most obviously the Olympics –
has changed that, to the benefit of those
who use and rely on this infrastructure
and the UK’s exports – British firms that
worked on the Olympics are now selling
their experience aboard.
  If Singapore is investing $50m over the
next five years on a multi-system model
to help make better evidence-based and
17
 London lettering
walk 1. British Library Euston Road
While the railway stations next door use
their architecture to announce themselves,
2. St Pancras station
At the time of preparing this, St Pancras is
currently being redeveloped in readiness
the British Library sits back from the road for becoming London’s second Eurostar
and is approached through the dramatic terminal.
gates and across an enclosed garden. The   In addition to a few much older exam-
large lintel of the gatehouse features carved, ples, there still remain traces of the Design
raised letters on red sandstone. The work of Research Unit’s British Rail corporate iden-
David Kindersley’s workshop, its individual tity of 1964. This used the Rail Alphabet de-
letters and words are well-formed, but the signed by Jock Kinneir & Margaret Calvert.
composition as a whole is fatally flawed A sans serif typeface, it was designed as a
because the over-large definite article tiled system to enable correctly spaced signs
dominates quite unnecessarily. But below, to be assembled by untrained staff.
the gates themselves, cut out of heavy sheet
steel, are much more successful: they do not
contain lettering, they are lettering. BRIT-
ISH LIBRARY is repeated and progresses
from ‘light’ to ‘ultra black’.
  Beyond the gatehouse and across the
courtyard, all the library’s internal signage
was designed by Pentagram under the
View of gates
direction of Mervyn Kurlansky. It uses the
typeface Bembo and is useful only as an
example of how not to space capital letters.

Carved lettering presumably from 1873.

This is similar in feel to that used at
Lavers & Barraud.

18 19
 London Essays
3. King’s Cross Station
If St Pancras is about romance, Kings Cross
is about function, its façade simply being a
screen to the end of the twin arched sheds
over the arrival and departure platforms.
  Very few traces of British Rail’s 1964
corporate identity exist here. Perhaps their
privatised successors Railtrack, viewed it
as too brutal. King’s Cross was re-signed in
2001, with trendy colours and a new type-
face: they are in no way an improvement.
A previously painted version can be
seen after the word SCALES.
20
London lettering walk
4. 319—321 Gray’s Inn Rd 5. Road traffic signs Gray’s Inn Road /
Painted house numbers and advertisement, Britannia Street
presumably dating from the late nineteenth The system used in Great Britain is that de-
century. These have a wonderful disregard signed by Kinneir Calvert for the Worboys
for the building – look at the way they run Committee (1963) following the style they
over the first floor window arcading – hard had designed for the motorways (Anderson
to imagine that many shops and buildings Committee) in 1958. The alphabet itself is
must once have been painted this way. A sans serif, carefully spaced to ensure legibil-
shame the owners don’t repaint them re- ity when seen from a distance and at speed.
gardless of the building’s current use. Different versions are provided for reversed
out or black lettering. Signs have different
coloured (and latterly, reflective) back-
grounds for different classes of road – blue
for motorways, green (as here) for primary
routes, white for local signs. Because the
distances between all elements on a sign are
specified, the size of each sign varies.
  The circular, rectangular and triangular
signs containing mainly pictorial warnings
The Rail Alphabet still survives on some or instructions follow the forms set out in
of the station’s lampstands. the Geneva Protocol of 1948.
  Taken as a whole, the system careful-
ly addressed all the issues of legibility of
letterforms when seen at distance when
moving and clarity of information present-
ed. Visually they were a huge step forward
from previous versions and still look
remarkably fresh today.
Direction sign for use on local routes.
(This is also along the walk, between
the Smith’s umbrella shop and Lavers &
Barraud.)
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 London Essays London lettering walk

6. Central London Throat & Ear Hospital 7. Royal Free Hospital Gray’s Inn Road
(The Royal National Throat, Nose & Ear There are carved inscriptions below both
Hospital) Gray’s Inn Road pediments of this building which somehow
There are several versions of the name on seems too big for the street. Each works
the two buildings here. On the original well within its space and shows up all the
building the frieze at the top contains egyp- later versions saying Eastman Dental Hos-
tian letters cast on terracotta blocks. Almost pital both beside the arch and on the newer
monoline in construction, each is placed building next door.
centrally on a square block which creates an
irregular rhythm to the words containing I.
  Above the ground floor are newer
Trajan-derived steel letters whose chief
quality is usefulness for pedestrians. On the
north-facing, flanking wall another version
of this name and lettering style appears
as a white and blue glazed panel set in the
brickwork.
  A third version of the name appears at
eye level. While the letterform – a con-
densed modern – is more usually associated Each letter on the top frieze of the
with fashion magazine mastheads, its exe- original building is made of four ceramic
cution is interesting being apparently cast tiles.
with the terrazzo panels of the wall.

Trajan lettering is used by the new

owners. While good examples of
the form, they don’t work with the
architecture as well as the original.

8. Parsons’ Library Doughty Street /

Guilford Street
Despite being 2 feet high this is the most
reticent building name discussed here – I
must have cycled past it hundreds of times
in the twelve years before writing-up the
first version of this walk in 1997. For all
intents and purposes the lettering is Gill
Sans, but it is relief-carved out of brick
and projects perhaps an inch from the wall
itself. Like many of the other examples it
forms a frieze just below parapet level.
From almost underneath the depth of
the lettering can be seen.

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 London Essays London lettering walk

9. Royal London Homœopathic Hospital 10. British Monomarks 27 Old Gloucester

Great Ormond St Street
Nothing great here, like many buildings A simple but very effective use of cut-out
which have been added to over a period of steel and silhouette to announce the com-
time, there are a variety of different names pany’s name down this small alley.
and materials. Terracotta lettering set into
the brickwork facing the childrens’ hospital
(main picture); glazed terracotta panel on
the corner with Queen Square; and cut-out
steel lettering on the balcony above.

It’s easy to walk by and not notice this

lettering at all.

11. Faraday House 48 Old Gloucester

Street
This carved, raised, building name shows
one of the more playful approaches, some
letters being reduced to abstraction making
them legible as letters only when seen in the
context of the rest. The letters are carved
from the blocks making up the wall and
until 1995 were self-coloured. Unpainted,
they were emphatically part of the wall, a
fact disguised by colour.

Glazed terracotta panel on the corner

with Queen Square, recently painted The lettering was painted in 1995
for some reason. destroying the sense that it is part of
the building.

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 London Essays London lettering walk

12. Central Saint Martins College of Art & 14. British Museum Great Russell Street Gallery this is a real disappointment, the
Design After the British Library moved to St letterforms are virtually the typeface Rotis,
Southampton Row / Theobald’s Road Pancras in 1997 building work began here Foster’s corporate face. At the upper level
As first planned the Central School of Arts to transform the area around the former it has a shallow square-cut section and is
& Crafts [note] would have had carved Reading Room. Norman Foster’s scheme set too high in the space. The sponsors’
lettering on the corner but all that was enclosed the brick Reading Room in stone names in upper & lower-case are spaced
executed was the original name above the to match the surrounding buildings [note] for pattern-making rather than readability.
outer entrance doors. and the whole area was roofed with a geo- None of it feels as though it were done by
  A name change to Art & Design in 1966 desic-like glazed roof. From afar it looks as someone who really loved lettering or the
was ignored, but in 1989 the college was though a bouncy castle is on the roof, from effects of light and shadow and scale.
merged with St Martin’s School of Art and inside, as though you’re walking through a
became part of the London Institute. The computer—generated image. The lighting is
name placed outside in the early 1990s is an flat, slightly blue and the sound, when full
example of how not to do it. As with most of schoolchildren, is like a swimming pool.
corporate identities, this one decrees that The sense of space which was, on opening,
all buildings are signed in an identical way impressive, has since been largely nullified
regardless of age, history or style. by a plethora of direction boards and two
information desks.
The drum of the Reading Room is sur-
mounted by an inscription saying when and
why, while lower down, sponsors’ names
cover the surface. A quote from Tennyson
is set in the floor. Compared to the quality
of Michael Harvey’s work at the National

Original college name above outer

entrance doors on Theobalds Road
This lettering is too high in its place:
when the lights are on it can be difficult
to see.

13. Pharmaceutical Society Great Russell

Street / Bloomsbury Square
This example of a v-cut monoline egyptian
with even character widths dates from 1860
and until at least 1975 was gilded which
must have looked even better. Nevertheless
it is a fine form and works well in the space
and with the architecture.

The toughness of the letterforms

matches the bulk of the building and
contrasts well with the fussiness of the
carved Corinthian capitals.

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 London Essays London lettering walk

15. Dairy Supply Company Coptic Street / 17. Lavers & Barraud 22 Endell Street
Little Russell Street These carved letters running along two
The first Pizza Express (1965) in the coun- sides of the building may not be the best
try, and an example of old lettering surviv- lettering examples on the journey, I just like
ing. Here it is very much an integral part of the fact that they’ve survived intact without
the original building and is accompanied the indignity of having a new plastic sign
by various monograms of the company screwed through them. Raised lettering is
initials. When the company expanded, they easier to remove: the terracotta letters on
copied their original lettering on the small Talbot Mansions in Little Russell Street
extension they built alongside in Little Rus- have been entirely carved off.
sell Street. In total there are seven places on
the two façades where the company name
or initials appear. The building – including
the lettering – was refurbished in 1999.

The main company name facing both

streets is carved in low relief and
intertwined with leaves.

16. James Smith & Sons (Umbrellas) Ltd

53 New Oxford St
The company was founded in 1830 and
moved to this premises in 1857. It is the
largest umbrella shop in Europe and a rare
example of Victorian commercial London.
As with 319–321 Gray’s Inn Road, the
promotion of the business occupies much
of the structure but here the materials are
richer, more ostentatious and more varied.
Mirrored glass, engraved brass and half-
round section timber all have a part to play.
Over time parts have had to be replaced but
this has been done carefully and, with one
exception, sympathetically.

Reverse gilded and painted glass

was a favourite Victorian material for
shopfronts.
28 29
 London Essays City Traders

18. Underground station Long Acre, Cov-

ent Garden
There are three periods of underground
history to see here. The building dates from
1906 and was designed by Leslie Green,
architect of the majority of the Yerkes ‘tube’
stations with their typical red—glazed
façade.
  Covent Garden on the Piccadily & Bro-
mpton Railway opened in 1906. Like all the
red—tiled stations it was built only two sto-
reys high but designed to support more and
so be developed later as land values rose.
  The earliest lettering here is the terracot-
ta station name with ‘curvilinear’ lettering
typical of its time. At platform level similar
forms are made from ceramic tiles and
set within coloured borders which differ
from station to station. The word UNDER-
GROUND appears in an anonymous sans
serif with the characteristically large U and
D which was first used around 1908.
  The typeface most associated with
London Transport actually pre—dates it.
Commissioned by Frank Pick in 1916,
it was drawn up by Edward Johnston. It
was the first sans serif to depart from the
prevailing grotesque pattern and has pro-
portions based on Roman sources. When
typesetting technologies and typographic
fashions changed in the late 1970s there was
talk of replacing the face but Colin Banks of
Banks & Miles suggested that a re—drawn
version would preserve ‘the hand writing of
London’ as well as address the technological
issues. New Johnston appeared in 1980, has
an enlarged x—height and is used in slight-
ly heavier weights than the original.
  Station signage now uses the Henrion
system, Ludlow & Schmidt in New John-
ston typeface: apart from station names all
signage is now upper & lower-case.

Early forms of the roundel featured a

solid circle. At Maida Vale (1915) this
exists as a mosaic in the station foyer.

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 London Essays London lettering walk

19. 27–29 Long Acre 20. Street names Hop Gardens

Only very slight traces of both ‘London’s and elsewhere
favourite fruiterers, T Walton & Sons (Lon- The Victorians and Edwardians were very
don) Ltd’ [note] and ‘Saint Martins School straightforward about street names choos-
of Art’ remain on this façade. The building ing robust letterforms and long-lasting ma-
has been cleaned of its history both within terials. Among the best post-war solutions
and without. No evidence can be seen of are the City of Westminster signs designed
the original floor plan in the new H&M and by Chris Tinings at the DRU c.1968. They
the ground floor façade is only an approxi- use two colours and sizes of Univers Bold
mation of the original fenestration. Condensed to create a clear hierarchy of
  St Martin’s School of Art bought the lease information. Produced from vitreous stove
to this building in 1980 and re-used the let- enamelled steel, their 25mm return gives
ters left by the previous owner making the them considerable presence whatever the
extras needed to re-sign the frontage background material.
When the graphics course left the building Any reservations I have about the scheme
in November 1999 they took the letters concern not the design but the scale and
with them and re-erected them on the necessity of its application: did every street
fourth floor the college’s Lethaby building name in Westminster really need replac-
in Southampton Row. Ceramic sign surviving nearby: why ing at this time? Was it really necessary to
was a new sign necessary? define the new borough’s territory quite so
pedantically, it’s rather like a dog marking
its territory. Several serviceable older ver-
sions exist along Floral Street nearby.

The letters from Long Acre on the

fourth floor of Central Saint Martins
Lethaby building in Southampton Row.

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 London Essays London lettering walk

21. The Coliseum May’s Court, off Bed- 22. Pedestrian signage traffic island at
fordbury junction of Charing Cross Road
A glorious example of lettering proclaiming There is provision in the road sign legis-
the name of a building on the side rather lation for pedestrian signs. Despite their
than the front of the building. Presumably efficacy, the conservation lobby and sign
this was because the front of the theatre manufacturers seem to have got these
would be covered in an ever-changing finger-posts accepted by local authorities
display of publicity for the performances as acceptable substitutes for pedestrian
themselves. The letters, formed out of three signage. Am I being irrational or are these
courses of terracotta blocks, are ‘curvilinear’ a waste of time and money? Everything
in style, typical of 1904 when the theatre about them is apologetic. As objects they
was built and similar to the tiled lettering are weak, the detailing is badly-observed
on the Leslie Green underground stations and generally too small. As signs they do
previously referred to. not work: the capitals are ‘set’ too tightly for
At the time of writing (April 2002) this reading across a wide road.
façade is invisible under a shroud of scaf-
fold and plastic. This is part of English Na-
tional Opera’s £41 million restoration and
improvement of the whole building which
is due to be complete for its centenary year.

Other theatres and cinemas featured

carved ‘permament’ lettering on a side
street. This cinema (now a bar) is in
Shepherds’ Bush.
Elegance on the London’s South Bank.
Clear (but unadventurous) type panels
mounted on a flared stainless steel pole
reminiscent of the Festival of Britain’s
Skylon which stood nearby.

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 London Essays London lettering walk

23. St Martin’s Schools St Martin’s Mews

This is a good teaching aid: compare the
top and middle lines, even if you can’t
explain precisely what good lettering is, the
top and middle lines do it for you. The top
line is well positioned but has weak letters,
the date has good letters but is incredibly
cramped. The middle line is near perfect,
what Bartram calls the ‘English letter’,
robust, even proportions for all the letters
(unlike the roman model), and a strong
contrast between thick and thin strokes.
Note that the success of public lettering
depends not just on the letterforms but how
they work within their place on the build-
ing and with the architecture as a whole.

The middle line is a near perfect match

of letterform, material and use of space.
24. St Martin’s-in-the-Fields St Martin’s
Place
This church was built between 1721–6 to
the designs of James Gibbs. Lettering is
carved across the pediment and dated 1722. Nearly every letter is awkward: E with
This is lettering on its way somewhere. It a stubby crossbar; X top-heavy; T
does not follow the roman model, either too wide; R tail too thin; U with a flat
in weight or in proportion, but it has not bottom.
25. National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing developed like the example at St Martin’s
Trafalgar Square Schools into the English letter.
This extension to the National Gallery was
opened in 1991. [note]
There is lettering on the outside to the
left of the entrance [pic], and in the foyer
behind the reception desk, but it is over-
powered by other distractions. Going up
the grand staircase to the galleries however
is one of the country’s largest commissions
of carved lettering for many years. The
names of some of the Renaissance masters
run along a frieze which begins way above
your head with Duccio and ends at your
feet with Raphael. It was carved by Michael
Harvey in 1990 and the forms themselves
are very much ‘his’ sharing many character-
istics with his lettering for book jackets and
his 1990 typeface Ellington.
Michael Harvey’s lettering to the left of
the entrance doors has good forms but
seems lost in the expanse of the wall.

36 37
 References for The London Lettering Walk
Patrick Baglee (ed.) Open air: the changing
face of 20th century signage G F Smith,
2000
James Sutton Signs in action Studio Vista/
Reinhold Publishing Co, 1965
Alan Bartram Lettering in architecture
Lund Humphries, 1975
Bartram has recently donated his photo-
graphic collection to the Central Lettering
Record).
buy this book: us, uk
search the web: google

Alan Bartram street name lettering in the

British Isles Lund Humphries ; Watson–
Guptill Publications, 1965
Alan Bartram Fasçia lettering in the British
Isles Studio Vista, 30/06/1978

Edward Jones & Christopher Woodward A

guide to the architecture of London Wei-
denfeld & Nicolson (2nd edition), 1992
Information about architects and building
dates was mainly sourced from this book.

Jock Kinneir Words and buildings: the art

and practice of public lettering Whitney
Library of Design, May 1981
Nicolete Gray Lettering on buildings Archi-
tectural Press, 1960

Articles
Phil Baines A design (to sign roads by)
Eye 34, Vol.9, Winter 1999, pp.26-36
Phil Baines Sculptured letters and public
poetry
Eye 37, Vol.10, Autumn 2000, pp.38-49
Phil Baines & Catherine Dixon Variety &
Identity
Druk 2, Autumn 1999
Phil Baines Lettering: history, values, pos-
sibilities
Point (Art & design research journal) 8,
Autumn/Winter 1999/2000

Map of St Brides Printing Library and The

London Lettering Walk, for you to create.
Have a look at:
www.publiclettering.org.uk &
www.stbride.org

38 39