Red Herring had a shop for some years at 6 Old Brompton Road, more or less opposite South Kensington Station, which has now for some years been an opticians. They sold trendy casual clothes for women including shoes and bags. The poster at left in Arabic I think reflects the Iranian presence in the area.
The Brompton Hotel is still there at 30 Old Brompton Road, getting rather mixed review which perhaps reflect its 3* status and rather cheap rates for London. You can no longer go in and swear an oath at Lawrence Bloomfield, though the curious short pillar is still there. The Punch wine bar has last its superstructure, though the low wall at the bottom remains and there is still a popular bar area, but now steps lead down to a steak restaurant.
I couldn’t resist another picture of the Imperial Hotel on the corner of Queen’s Gate and Harrington Rd, demolished in 1992 and since then a cleared site used as a car park. In an earlier post I mentioned that planning permission had been granted in 1975 for the erection behind this facade of a cultural centre for the Islamic Republic of Iran and twenty self-contained flats, and later by Kensington and Chelsea for the use of the cleared site as a car park pending the building of this.
There was a crude simplicity about this mosaic of a bottle advertising the off-licence to its left that attracted my attention.
The Institut français du Royaume-Uni was begun in 1910 by Marie d’Orliac to introduce Londoners to well-known French writers, thinkers and artists. This building in Queensbury Place by architect Patrice Bonnet (1979-1964) in an art deco style was opened in 1939. Along the top of the facade are an olive branch, a cockerel, an asp and an owl, symbolising peace, courage, knowledge and wisdom. The Grade II listing text attributes the building to A J Thomas, a former assistant of Edwin L Lutyens and the architect of St Pancras Town Hall.
Bray Place is a short street a little to the north and parallel to the King’s Road in Chelsea presumably named for Sir Reginald Bray who owned the manor at the time of Henry VII. This house with its two round windows is on the corner with Draycott Ave.
Mr Brunello is no longer here, and the shop is now a hairdresser, on the corner opposite the previous image at 3 Bray Place. The view is looking down Draycott Ave to the houses on Coulson St, and above them the tall block of flats, Whitelands House, a 10 storey block of flats dating from 1935-7 above the shops in the Kings Road by Frank Verity & Sam Beverley.
I can tell you nothing about this small half-timbered house on Draycott Avenue, which I suspect is considerably more modern than it looks. At a glance the tiles and windows look remarkably ancient, and the beams have something of the character found in genuinely old buildings. Perhaps someone reading this will know more and comment.
Click on any of the above images to go to a larger version in the album 1988 London Photos from where you can browse through other pictures that I made in that year in London.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
