For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Are you being served? (11.06.13)

The Centre for Retail Research has recently forecast 62,000 shops will close in the next 5 years. The independent analysis group estimate that one-fifth of all retail outlets will cease trading by 2018.

Peter Watts writes on his Great Wen site of the demise of Tobacco Dock. Designed by Terry Farrell and opening in 1989 the dock conversion featured two arcades of shops on two floors inside a skilfully modernised structure that retained its Victorian industrial integrity. It now lies there completely empty.

Once London had a number of prestigious stores many were owned by a partnership of two men. Unlike the generically named Next or Top Shop, their premises reflected the owners’ personal taste and retain acumen.

As our shopping habits change the great days of the department store are probably over. There are some survivors left in London, but many of the great privately owned retail partnerships have gone.

Old-fashioned concepts like knowledgeable staff, politeness and service are now less important in a digital retail age.

Arding & Hobbs is one of the few stores Sarf of the River. This department store was once situated at Clapham Junction and very often spoken of as “Arding ‘n’obbs”. It opened in 1885 and at that time was the largest store south of the River. Destroyed by fire in 1909 it was rebuilt in Edwardian baroque style the original signage remains in place above the main entrance. Now Debenhams.

Bourne & Hollingsworth Mr Bourne and Mr Hollingsworth set up a fancy drapers’ shop in 1894 in Westbourne Grove. In 1902 they moved to Oxford Street slowly acquiring the rest of the block including a brothel, a ‘next of Polish tailors’ and Savory’s cigarette factory. Closed in 1983.

Derry & Toms A little shop run by Joseph Toms described as a ‘toy and fancy repository’ joined with Charles Derry acquiring seven shops one of which was described as a ‘mourning department’. The firm prided itself on being the main supplier to the upper classes of South Kensington and had over 200 employees living in. Closed in 1973 and taken over by Biba.

Dickens & Jones Dickens originally opened a shop in Oxford Street in 1790 moving to Regent Street in 1835. By 1900 the staff totalled 200, most of them lived in nearby Argyll Street. In the 1890s John Pritchard Jones became a partner and the store changed its name. In 1901 the store was all prepared for a while sale when Queen Victoria died. Most of the stock was dyed black to meet the urgent demand for mourning wear. It is now owned by House of Fraser.

Marshall & Snelgrove opened in Vere Street in 1837 their nearby rival was William Debenham. By 1871 James Marshall the son of the founder had introduced a large mail-order business. Alas, the rivalry is over Marshall & Snelgrove is now part of the vast Debenhams empire.

Swan & Edgar William Edgar had a haberdashery stall in St. James’s Market and used to sleep under it at night. Meeting Mr. Swan together they ran a shop in the Ludgate area. In 1812 they moved to Piccadilly Circus and then Regent Street premises which had been the Western Mail coach offices and also the Bull and Mouth public house. They retained the inn licence until the late 1970s. Its vast store was closed in 1982.

Waring & Gillow The business was established by Robert Gillow in Lancaster about 1731 and by 1765 leased some land in Oxford Street that was to become the Selfridge’s site. S. J. Waring had a cabinet-making enterprise in Liverpool and in 1895 had a retail outlet in Oxford Street. The companies merged and made furniture for Boodle’s, the Garrick and Reform Clubs. However, the business of the firm began to decline and the Lancaster workshops closed in 1962 and the company merged with Maples.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

It’s a small world (07.06.13)

My mother once told me that while on a holiday in Switzerland having walked for 20 minutes from a nearby town and ascended the funicular to take her up to view the Reichenbach Falls without encountering hardly a soul there standing alone on the viewing platform was one of her work colleagues.

A similar, if less than dramatic incident, occurred to me on Saturday. Taking a welcome break from driving a cab around London we went to Hatfield House. This superb Jacobean property is easily accessible from London having a main line railway station outside its front door.

The BBC are running a Tudor season and Hatfield House is one of the finest architectural examples from that time, and as one might expect visitor number could rise, coupled with a recently open children’s zoo and sculpture park.

Situated not far from where I grew up it’s a place we return to time and again, but this time we were there to see their garden show and look around at their beautiful gardens and sculpture trail.

One of the first exhibitors we encountered was Fiona Rule, an author I’ve featured in my Radio Taxi blog whom I’ve only corresponded with by email, having first listened to her being interviewed on the Robert Elms show on BBC’s Radio London.

A London historian promoting her books, hardly the sort of enterprise you would have thought would be featured at a gardening show. Even though Hatfield House is one of the finest Tudor houses in England it seemed to me a little incongruous until Fiona told me of her other venture.

As well as looking into one’s family tree those lucky enough to live in a house with some character now often want to know their home’s history and this is where House Histories comes in.

Your House History is reproduced in either a small book or a coffee table format and additional copies can also be printed. Each averages around 70 pages with numerous illustrations. Taking a few weeks to complete research is available for properties in any London or Hertfordshire postcode.

I doubt if the 7th Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury whose family have lived at Hatfield for 400 years will feel the need to commission a history of his house.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

The Spirit of London (06.06.13)

One of the projects that I have been most proud of is my contribution to The Spirit of London, a magnificent coffee-table book, produced by Anthony Osmond-Evans to celebrate the London Olympics and HM Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. The book which was presented to Her Majesty was also given to all athletes competing in the London 2012 Olympics. The paints with a broad brush the changing seasons, personalities and cultures, which make up the colourful mosaic that is London today. In addition to my contribution the Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the Lord Mayor both wrote forewords for the book.

A Cabbie’s London Spirit by David Styles

Any artist or photographer will tell you that professionally they observe the world around them in ways that others take for granted, and it’s this same attention to detail that’s needed when one undertakes The Knowledge, the qualification required to become a London cabbie; every street, club, bar, church, hotel and even blue plaques must be committed to memory.

In pursuit of all these facets of London the student discovers that there is more to London than is apparent at first sight. Just like a photographer they stop looking at the features of London in isolation and try to put them into some context of London’s history and its people.

The Knowledge was introduced in 1851 after complaints that cabbies didn’t know where they were going by visitors to the Great Exhibition in pursuit of obtaining the Knowledge a student discovers that some streets in the City; Milk Street, Poultry, Goldsmith Street are named after the goods once sold there, or Old Jewry was an area where Jewish money lenders lived before being expelled by King Edward I.

On the Knowledge when given London Stone to locate in Cannon Street a little research suggests that London’s prosperity was thought to depend on London Stone’s safekeeping and that the Romans could have used the limestone block as the point to measure all distances from Londinium.

While London Bridge enabled London’s cab trade in the 16th century to challenge the watermen’s monopoly to go south of the river ferrying wealthy City merchants to Southwark so they could enjoy the delights of the gaming houses and stews (brothels) on Bankside in an area owned by the Bishops of Winchester and known as the Liberty of the Clink – unregulated by the city authorities.

The latest place for Knowledge students to find – The Shard – London’s newest building nearing completion at London Bridge Quarter is the European Union’s tallest building and students will be expected to know its formal name – London Bridge Tower – and the entrance to the 5-star Shangri-La Hotel within its walls.

London’s longevity as the world’s premier city is the result of generations of resourceful, hard-working individuals coming together to improve their lives and in so doing adding another strata of history, business and culture in this incredible city for future Knowledge students to go out and find.

The words of Samuel Johnson should be the mantra for any prospective Knowledge student:
“Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts . . . that the wonderful immensity of London consists.”

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

What’s in a name? (31.05.13)

It is the Celts who probably named the Thames. It is thought by some to come from the Old English word ‘Temese’, meaning ‘to flow turbidly’. A simple name for a river full of detritus you might think, but it was probably the only waterway in the region that actually flowed, even if a little muddily.

The river’s sinuous looping remains central to the idea of London and is frequently used on graphic devices representing the capital even the BBC’s Eastenders uses it on the titles.

Today we Londoners refer to this lower stretch of England’s longest river as, well, ‘The River’ in the definite article as if it was the only river that existed, or at least the only one that mattered – which of course it is.

Ham comes from a bend in the shore, similar to ‘ham’ from the bend of the knee, a cut of meat from the thigh of the hind leg of certain animals, especially pigs. Hampton gets its name from a pig’s anatomy.

At times it has erroneously been given a male gender and nicknamed Old Father Thames a kind of post-modern quasi-tutelary deity when in reality at times it has flooded and rather than protected Londoners has taken lives.

Over time most goods that entered London came via The River, so landing places were crucial. In Old English the word for a landing place was Hythe, some locations on The River’s foreshore still bear this out: Rotherhithe or cattle harbour from which cattle may have been shipped across The River for the market at Smithfield. Greenhithe and Bablock Hythe in Oxfordshire are also locations of mediaeval docks.

Lambs were landed just west of Westminster – you could say today politicians act like a flock of sheep – but from that, we get the corruption, Lambeth.

Further, upriver Chelsea was where the chalk was landed and Putney (once Puttenhuthe, possibly where hawks were landed, but more probably named after a man who had hawk-like features).

Greenwich was first recorded in 964, its name derives from the Old English for a green trading place or harbour. At Shadwell, its name is derived from a shallow spring or stream, not a shady well as some might think of the area.

Further downriver Woolwich unsurprisingly is named after a trading place for wool, while its neighbour Thamesmead sounds as if it should be a bucolic place to enjoy a glass of mead.

Thamesmead’s name in fact was the winning entry in a newspaper competition. The area’s topography of lakes and canals relieving the starkness of the built environment was once dubbed ‘the town of the 21st century. I doubt if many of its residents today would agree with that sentiment.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Bloomsbury Blues (28.05.13)

When I first started working, driving a cab in London, dotted around the Capital were a number of small independent garages, many providing facilities for cabbies to empty their bladders as well as fill up their cabs.

One popular such garage with the most basic of washroom facilities was once to be found in Waverton Street, Mayfair occupying a site worth probably many millions more than the fuel they were selling.

The oldest garage in London, which until recently was located in Store Street, a short anxious drive from Oxford Street when running low on diesel. The Bloomsbury Village Garage reminiscent of a period that Enid Blyton wrote about closed in June 2008 after being turned down for listing by The Department for Culture Media and Sport.

It opened in 1926 probably for the exclusive use of The Duke of Bedford, a well known car enthusiast, who on 1st April 1968 was fine £50 for undertaking on the M1, the police had recognised his number plate DOB1.

The petrol station which attracted famous customers’ including Lewis Hamilton and Jamie Oliver was once probably used by Virginia Woolf’s chauffeur has now been redeveloped using most of the original brick and stone incorporating the original kiosk. A mosaic above harks back to the ‘golden age’ of motoring when it was possible to fill your tank and spend a penny in central London.