Country Life 1-Mar-2023

A FRESH FACE DRIVERS and cyclists held at the lights at the south end of London Bridge as they wait to cross into Southwark from the City cannot help but notice a striking landmark. Immediately ahead, marooned amid bridges, viaducts and the vast developments subsidiary to The Shard, is a striking, single-storey frontage from the 1890s covered in white glazed tiles, its pediment inset with a large clock and the head of a stag. This commercial building was formerly occupied by the wine merchant Findlater Mackie Todd & Co, one of 50 shops once managed by the firm in London and south-east England. It latterly became an Oddbins shop. Since 2018, Findlater’s Corner—as it is known—has stood empty. It has also looked increasingly down at heel with its boarded windows covered by…

Coming full circle RICHARD GROSVENOR, 2nd Marquess of Westminster, has been vindicated: this year sees the grand revival of a groundbreaking innovation he introduced to London more than 150 years ago. As the second half of the 19th century dawned, the peer commissioned architect Thomas Cundy III to build Belgrave Mansions (above), a palatial building overlooking what is now Grosvenor Gardens, SW1, with a view to turning it into the capital’s first serviced mansion block, inspired by Europe’s hôtel meublés. Cundy, too, drew from Continental tradition, shaping the architecture in French Renaissance style (Edward Walford, in his 1878 Old and New London calls the then newly built mansions ‘lofty and handsomely constructed houses’). The Marquess’ idea proved a sensation. In 1868, the British Almanac and Companion noted the ‘peculiarities’ of ‘the immense…

DIGNIFIED, almost stately, the Battersea Power Station holds court on the south bank of the River Thames, the stocky panels of the nearby buildings deferring like a respectful retinue to the fluted chimneys that soar like columns of a long-lost Greek temple above the ziggurat of the Boiler House. The plump pig that flew against the station’s black smoke on the cover of the Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals may have given way to a crown of steel and glass, but the Grade II*-listed power station remains a much-loved symbol of London. Quite a feat for a place that had originally sparked protests for fear it would be an eyesore. The man behind this remarkable shift in perception was Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who turned the building’s lumbering bulk into…

Seasonal suggestions In March, attentions turn to the River Thames. On March 18, up to 400 crews will take part in the Head of the River Race between Mortlake and Putney; on March 26, Cambridge will take on Oxford in the Boat Race. The impact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had on civilians is the subject of the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Ukraine: Photographs from the Frontline’ exhibition. Tickets are available until May 8 (www.iwm.org.uk/events/iwm-london-ukraine-exhibition). On March 11, Melita Thomas will kick off a day of talks about Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day Queen (below), at Southwark Cathedral, with an in-depth look at her book The House of Grey: Friends and Foes of Kings (www.cathedral.southwark.anglican.org/whats-on). On March 22, Sir David Bell will chair a talk on Sir Christopher Wren at St…

DOWN at East Street Market, a lady on crutches stands by the fish stall in the Saturday-morning sun. ‘Harrington’s, that’s my local,’ she says to the trader in the white coat. ‘No,’ the lady standing next to her replies, ‘the pies there don’t taste as nice.’ ‘Anyway, how you been, girl?’ the trader asks, as he hands over a pint of whelks. ‘Well it was my brother’s inquest last week,’ the lady on crutches replies, ‘they said he didn’t do it on purpose, so that’s something.’ By the time I get to the front of the queue, the shrimps are gone, so I ask for half a pint of prawns and, as Brian fills the pewter tankard—his name is printed on the street vendor’s licence, pinned above the weighing scales—I ask him…

What part of London is home to you? I live in Camberwell in south-east London. It’s the capital at its best: wonderful Georgian homes mixed into a maelstrom of modern life and the sights and sounds of a younger, more diverse London. I love that the shops are always open, that I know my neighbours and that King’s College Hospital (Denmark Hill, SE5) is close by if anything serious goes wrong! You’ve seen more of London in the early morning than most people as a longstanding presenter of Today. What do you love about dawn London? What on earth are people doing at that time? I mean, I have an excuse; often, everyone else seems not to have seen it or to have forgotten it. The most poignant sight is the cleaners going…