Farringdon Rd | >Re-PHOTO

More City Panoramas: I spent several days wandering around the City of London – the “Square Mile” in July and August 1994, I think in prepaation for a group show in which I had decided this would be my contribution.

More City Panoramas - 1994 — *Bubbs, Restaurant Francais, Farringdon Rd, West Smithfield, City, 1994, 94-702-43*

Bubb’s Le Restaurant Francais with the address Central Market, Farringdon Street is long closed, but a listing states that they served “a variety of traditional French dishes at their restaurant and can cater for private parties of up to 30 guests upon request.” There are still several French restaurants in the area.

A little further down West Smithfield was the London Central Market with on the corner a wholesale Cash and Carry and Harry’s Drinks and in the distance a covered way across the road between market buildings.

I photographed this corner on several occasions, making a similar panorama here in 1992, perhaps why I have not put this on Flickr.

Looking west along the river to Bull Wharf, Queenhithe and beyond. Bull Wharf proudly states it was REBUILT 1980 and it looks to me exceedingly ugly, probably why I didn’t upload this picture to Flickr. My picture perhaps makes the red brickwork event more virulent – the building looks much better to me in a black and white non-panoramic image I made at the same time from more or less the same spot.

*Car Park, Smithfield St, City, 1994, 94-704-51*

Slightly out of focus in the distance I can just make out Lady Justice on the roof of the Old Bailey and to her right more clearly the tower of Holy Sepulchre Church at the east end of Holborn Viaduct.

I think this car park probably extended to Hosier Lane and is now filled with the shops and offices of 12 Smithfield Street, built in 2004 and now described on Buildington as “an outdated office block that has suffered from poor environmental performance, limited architectural merit, and inefficient servicing. Its ground floor lacks engagement with the surrounding public realm, and its dated façade no longer reflects the character of the conservation area” and being refurbished and extended.

*St Mary Somerset Church, Upper Thames St, City , 1994, 94-704-13*

A rather dark rendering of this high contrast scene with deep shadow the block of St Paul’s Vista (or 1 High Timber St, now One Millennium Bridge) straddles Upper Thames Street with the bright sky above. My picture was made from the footbridge of Fye Foot Lane carrying a section of the CIty’s Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and Castle Baynard Street and on to Queen Victoria Street.

St Mary Somerset Church was one of those destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and like 50 others rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The tower remains between Lambeth Hill and Castle Baynard Street but the rest of the church was demolished in 1871 when like other redundant churches the land was sold to build churches in the rapidly expanding suburbs of London. The tower was a Ladies toilet before the Second World War, Damaged by bombing, it was restored by the city in 1956 and has now been converted into a private residence.

A fruit and vegetable stall on the pavement in Front of St Mary Aldermary (another rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire) on busy Queen Victoria Street which you can see at extreme left. I think the extremely low stone wall on the pavement and the railings mark the former edge of its churchyard.

I liked the range of architectural age and style across the upper half of this image, and particularly admired the ornate Victorian block in the centre of the picture. As well as a bus and a coach there are 5 London taxis in the picture, an aspect of London’s traffic congestion long overdue for reform.

Highwalk, Footbridge, Queen Victoria St, City, 1994, 94-705-31 — *Highwalk, Footbridge, Huggin Hill, Upper Thames St, City, 1994, 94-705-31*

This was taken from a now-closed section of Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and the church at left is St Mary Somerset. The alley at right is Huggin Hill with a view of the distinctive building on the block between Queen Victoria St, Bread Lane and Cannon Street, 30 Cannon St built for Crédit Lyonnais between 1974 and 1977.

*Highwalk, London Wall, City, 1994, 94-706-51*

So many buildings have changed around here since 1994. The building right of centre is Standard Chartered on the corner of Aldermanbury and Aldermanbury Square and was remodelled around 2010 and the building left of centre is Brewer’s Hall, now with a roof extension. I think this section of the highwalk led up at Brewers Hall Gardens

More from July 1994 in the City later.

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Limehouse and the City – Panoramas 1994: I made one panorama at the end of my trip to Limehouse in June which is on a film processed in July which I overlooked when posting pictures to Flickr.

DLR Viaduct, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-701-51

This was taken from the top floor of John Scurr House on Ratcliffe Lane where there are open balconies leading to the flats it shows both the National Rail and DLR Limehouse stations with the DLR viaduct leading east, with the white tower of St Anne’s Limehouse just visible at extreme right before the top of the brickwork of the stairs.

You can also just see the north side of Limehouse Basin on the other side of Branch Road, and lower right of centre is a small but packed garden centre. A bus goes along Commercial Road and you can see the houses and flats of Limehouse and Bow beyond. Like all the other pictures in this post it was taken with a swing-lens panoramic camera with a horizontal angle of view of over 120 degrees.

Blackfriars Rail Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, River Thames, Southwark, 1994, 94-701-42

Early in July I took a train to Waterloo and walked into the City from there, pausing before I crossed Blackfriars Bridge to make this panorama. This is the only place where the City comes ‘South of the River’ and where I was standing in Rennie Garden I was already in the City of London, though the wall at right and half the rail bridge past it is in Southwark.

While the City boundary for the other bridges is in the centre of the river, for some reason the Blackfriars and Southwark Bridges Act 1867 put the full length and its southern end within the city’s borders, in the parish of St Anne Blackfriars.

The garden here Rennie Garden is named after John Rennie (1761 – 1821) the engineer who built several of London’s bridges but not this one, which was by by Joseph Cubitt, also responsible for the dismantled railway bridge whose red piers remain.

This was the site of the Albion Flour Mills designed by Samuel Wyatt on this site in 1786 to house the machinery of Matthew Boulton and steam engine of James Watt – and it was this steam-powered corn mill, the first major factory in London, which is thought to be the inspiration for William Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’.

The Albion Mill died by its own hand, burnt down in 1791 by a fire probably caused by poor maintenance when a bearing overheated, but four years earlier Robert Barker had sent his son Henry Aston Barker to sit on the roof of the building to make the sketches for his ‘London from the roof of the Albion Mills‘ which he then added detail, “greatly enlarged and painted in distemper on canvas.” He coined the name ‘panorama’ and in 1787 patented the idea. His panorama, first shown at the Albion Mill shortly before it was burnt down and then shown in various galleries in London.

Sets of aquatints were made by Frederick Birnie which toured Europe and went to the United States and while these survive in various collections the original panorama is lost.

Puddle Dock, Queen Victoria St, City, 1994, 94-701-33

Puddle Dock was a dock and also a sewer outfall and was filled in during the comprehensive reclamation and redevelopment of the area between 1962 and 1972 which created Upper Thames Street as a major road and Puddle Dock linking this to Queen Victoria Street underneath part of Baynard House, a Brutalist office block built for BT and completed in 1979.

As a part of plans to separate vehicle and pedestrian movement in the City it included a walkway leading to Blackfriars Station from which I made this panorama. The dome of St Paul’s can be seen just to the left of the tower of St Andrew by the Wardrobe.

Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-702-51

Holborn Viaduct was London’s first flyover, connecting the City with Holborn over the deep valley of the River Fleet, which had be culverted here in the 18th century, in part for the building of New Bridge Street. Built in 1863-69 it links Holborn Circus with Newgate Street and was a major redevelopment ‘”the most ambitious and costly improvement scheme of the [nineteenth] century” (White 47), and it involved some outstanding feats of Victorian engineering.‘

Over the years I’ve made quite a few panoramas on and of the viaduct and written about it at some length – here are a few from 1994. You can read a detailed account on the Victorian Web site.

*Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-702-52*

*Sculpture, Farringdon Rd, Holborn Viaduct, City, 1994, 94-703-11*

Tag: Farringdon Rd

More City Panoramas – 1994

Limehouse and the City – Panoramas 1994