Showing posts with label The Pavement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Pavement. Show all posts

Monday, 3 March 2008

Is this father and son?

There are loads of small architectural features in the upper levels of buildings - usually just above doorways and shop signs - and seeing these made me stop and think.

I find myself invariably walking down a street and looking up now, the camera is an almost instinctive part of my 'what am I carrying when I leave the house in the morning' routine... and it's these little features that spur me on with this endeavour.

It's not uncommon to see kings and queen's, indeed in Kilburn I found four musical greats:
http://474towin.blogspot.com/2008/02/kilburns-musical-past.html

But these two didn't seem quite so obvious. It is entirely possible that we have here a depcition of the Father and Son - perhaps the achitect, the commissioner, the shop owner... any other suggestions.

I have previously commented on this great bit of local shopping,

but this is slightly set aside on the Aldred Road side - if you're down Mill Lane, pause, turn off into Aldred and have a look...
http://474towin.blogspot.com/2007/12/pavement-on-mill-lane.html,

Sunday, 23 December 2007

'The Pavement' on Mill Lane

Some roads you think you know so well and then 'bingo' you notice a feature for the first time. Yesterday was one of those.

I have been up and down, onto and across Mill Lane, West Hampstead, more often than I can remember and yet I had never noticed this sign that identified 'The Pavement 1888'. Now of course, this range of shops running from 41-83 Mill Lane on the North side are a great little run - inlcuding the famous Mill Lane Post Office.

So a bit of digging in the books at home and the best insights I can currently find is in 'Kilburn and West Hampstead, Weindling and Colloms' which references actor Joss Ackland as saying:

"I remember the little row of shops [The Pavement] around the corner. The sweet shop with liquorice bootlaces - all different colours; Mickey Mouse toffees - twopence a quarter; packets of Imps - tiny sweets made from liquorice with menthol, with the kick of a mule; pennyslabs of choclate - brown and white; packets of sherbet with liquorice straws; bottles of Tizer and fizzy tablets that exploded in the mouth.

"There was a chemist that smelt of camphor and a grocer where the salty rashers of bacon blended with the sweet icing smell of biscuit animals, and a hardware store with bundles of wood to light fires and the smell of parafin lamps, and of course, the newsagent and toy shop with copies of the Buzzer, Magnet, Gem, Champion and Film Fun and many others, sometimes with magnificent free gifts - water pistols, Japanese flowers that erupted from the shells when put in water and divers that bobbed up and down in the bath.

"And there were the soldiers and the cowboys were of lead - penny ones that stood; twopenny ones on horseback and sixpenny knights with removable swords - mounted magnificent and unobtainable."

The row is still a busy parade of shops and of course includes the popular Mill Lane Post Office. The picture here is taken from Mill Lane, where Aldred Road drops down onto it - for reference this is just opposite the top of Holmdale Road.