Ep 32 Maida Vale & Little Venice Pub Crawl - Pub Legends, Snob Screens & Beatles Crossing

In this episode, we visit historic pubs in Maida Vale and Little Venice.  Included are The Warrington, The Prince Alfred and The Warwick Castle

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Google map with pubs covered in previous episodes pinned, courtesy of Andy Meddick:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/4/edit?mid=12c-WKa3XiT1qTLydK8psZocUR7Y_Wes&usp=sharing

Or TinyURL: https://tinyurl.com/bduca5dv

The following resources are referenced or quoted frequently in these episodes:

• Ted Bruning  -- Historic Pubs of London (ISBN 978-0658005022) and London By Pub (ISBN 978-0658005022)
• Wikipedia
• https://londonspubswherehistoryreallyhappened.wordpress.com/  by Ann Laffeaty 

Additionally, the  following resource(s) were used / quoted in this episode:

Warrington Hotel

https://londonist.com/2016/08/back-again-to-the-local-the-warrington-hotel

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/director-films-horror-movie-in-pub-after-stopping-there-for-lunch-a3267821.html

Abby Road crossing webcam

https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam=abbeyroad_uk

Warwick Castle

https://camra.org.uk/pubs/warwick-castle-maida-vale-128967

Intro Music:  Vivaldi - Spring Allegro by John Harrison w/ the Wichita State University Chamber Orch.

Photo:  Ewan Munro

Website: https://historiclondonpubcast.com/

E-mail: hosteric@historiclondonpubcast.com

Transcript

Welcome to this episode of The Historic London Pubcast. I'm Eric Blair, and I'd like to take you on a journey through the rich history of London's iconic pubs. My goal is to share with you my passion for the great old pubs of London. I want to give you some facts to help you appreciate the history of these hallowed establishments mixed in with some fun stories that make it all go down as smooth as a well poured pint.

Today we are going to cover historic pubs in the Maida Vale area. A friend of this Pubcast, Andy Meddick, has taken the time to pin the pubs covered in all previous episodes in a single Google map.Clicking on each pin gives you the pub's address, the nearest tube stop and in what Episode it was covered. I think this will be a great resource for us historic pub fans. 

Thanks so much, Andy. The link to the map will now be a permanent part of the notes, and I'll mention it in all the closings. Looking at the map, I see that I have not been fair to our West side pubs, so this episode will cover some pubs in Maida Vale and the surrounding area. Let's get some map pins in there, shall we?

A really good place to start is The Warrington at 93 Warrington Crescent. Although sometimes referred to as The Warrington Hotel, it's a very nice pub with five rooms for overnight accommodation. It keeps pub hours so don't expect a nightclub. As frequent Listeners know, I often refer to Ted Bruning’s books to provide a good description. Ted always does a good job, but for some reason he did not cover The Warrington in either of his books.

But we're in luck. The Londonist did a great piece on the pub in 2017, even with pictures. It is linked in the notes,and I'll draw from that article for our introduction. 

“One of London's most spectacular drinking venues, the Warrington Hotel, was opened in 1857 at the end of a smart Italianate terrace crescent in Maida Vale, and lavishly reworked in the great age of pub rebuilding in the 1890s.”

The article points out that although Victorian pubs are known for their, 

“Class stratification architecture (that's privacy snugs and snob screens), by the time of the 1890s, there was more of an inclusive attitude and that is reflected in this pub's refurbishment.” 

Quoting from The Londonist,

“The big pubs of the 1890s aim to cater for everyone, including the respectable middle classes, women and families. Separately, but together under the same roof. At the end of the social spectrum was the saloon lounge, where customers expected luxurious surroundings, higher prices and table service.”

Referring to what Maurice Gorham wrote in his well-known 1940s book on pubs entitled, “The Local,” and later, “Back To The Local,” the article continues, 

“Gorham selected The Warrington as, “The finest Flower of Lounges.” The Warrington's Lounge, he writes, “Has a magnificent staircase, heavy, old fashion imposing. The mere sight of it makes you think of Edwardian revelry, of well-nourished bookmakers and stout ladies in cartwheel hats, of feather boas and parasols, and malachite canes, of dog skin gloves, and big cigars. The beauty has endured from Gorham’s time through today.”” 

The Londonist heaps praise, 

“Thanks to a careful recent restoration by current Owners, the lounge is looking as magnificent as ever, complete with stained glass, mirrors and geometric tiling. The room is still dominated by the staircase, which now leads to a dining room. It's perfectly framed by the beautiful three bay arcade and arch of which is visible in Gorham’s book’s illustration. Also recognizable in the sketch are the curious, bulging posters beneath the marble top. Above the bar is a heavily molded canopy carried on the shoulders of putty. Its decadence intensified by the vaguely risqué Art Nouveau style paintings that adorn it.” 

Now, “Shoulders of putty.” What's that? I had to look it up. Putty are, “Chubby, naked infant figures, often with wings.” They are common in Renaissance and Baroque Architecture. So those are what I would term little baby angels.

So overall it gets a big thumbs up from them, and I agree. Others do too. It has been included in a couple of episodes of the British cop drama series The Sweeney, and it gets better. It was in the 1965 film Bunny Lake Is Missing, a psychological mystery directed and produced by Otto Preminger and starring Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, and Laurence Olivier. Given Larry Olivier's fondness for The Salisbury in Covent Garden, I would guess he likes elaborate pubs, so he should have felt right at home in The Warrington. Finally, Director James Wan was in London filming The Conjuring Two, which was based on the famous poltergeist case up in Enfield. He popped into The Warrington for a lunch in November of 2015, looked around and said, “Hey, let's put this place in the film.”

Voila! A star is born. Wouldn't it be great being an Actor and getting paid to go to great pubs like this one? 

All right, let's drink up and head on to our next one. As we step out of The Warrington, look around. This is quite a fancy area, and it has some historic people and places associated with it. To your left, a one-minute walk away is one of those blue plaques noting that David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, lived at 75 Warrington Crescent, further down the street at Number Two, Alan Turing, the World War Two codebreaker and pioneer of computer science, was born in 1912. Across the street and down a bit at 155 Lauderdale Road, Actor Alex Guinness was born in 1914. 

About a ten-minute walk north is Paddington Recreational Ground that contains the track that Roger Bannister trained on to be the first runner to break the four-minute mile, which he did in May of 1954. Finally, and arguably the most famous of them all is about a ten-minute walk away, and that's Abbey Road Studios and the well-known pedestrian crossing seen on the Beatles album cover.

They have a really good high-definition webcam of the crossing. It operates 24/7. I click over there when I'm curious what the weather is like in London at the moment. I'll put that link into the notes. 

Our pub is six-minutes south on Warrington Crescent. We pass the Ben-Gurion and Turing plaques we mentioned as we walk on to The Prince Alfred at 5A Formosa Street. Ted Bruning does cover this pub in his Historic Pubs of London book, so let's see what his take is,

“A very well-preserved but rather scruffy survivor from 1863, the Prince Alfred is something of an architectural marvel, combining almost every feature characteristic of the times and being almost an object lesson in glass and mahogany. The front is remarkable enough. It's actually open, and the entire weight of the upper floor is being supported via lintels supported on impossibly slim iron columns with a slightly barley sugar twist to them.

The windows, structurally, are no more than screens. Bearing no loads, they are free to curve and convolute as they wish. The elegant, sculptured mahogany frames forms arches and Orioles around the glorious etched plate glass. Inside, five private bars, separated from each other by glass and mahogany partitions, are grouped around the high, ornate bar wagon. One of these, originally for women only, retains its pivoting snob screens.

A remarkable feature of these private bars is that they have access to one another through tiny doors no more than three feet six inches tall. In a similar pub in Hull, a man robbed a customer in one such private bar, and made his escape via the hatches, “Running like a rat all around the pub,” according to a witness.””

Thanks, Ted, for another great write up! By the way, the small doors are there to allow for maintenance, access, cleaners and the like. This pub is indeed noted for its preservation of snob screens from the days of old. 

Wiki tells us,

“A snob screen is a device found in some pubs of the Victorian era. Usually installed in sets they compromise an etched glass pane in a movable wooden frame, and were intended to allow middle class drinkers to see working class drinkers in an adjacent bar, but not to be seen by them, and to be undisturbed by the bar staff.”

Ted told us that they were in the women's only section in this pub. So, ladies, checking out men, but not vice versa might be another object of a snob screen that Wiki didn't mention. Wiki does say that they are rare to have survived until this day. They list only eight pubs having them in London, including The Prince Alfred, and only five pubs elsewhere in the UK.

All right, that's the pub. What about the namesake? Prince Alfred was Queen Victoria's second son, born in 1844 and died in July of 1900, six months before his mother's passing, having only a relatively short life of 55 years. So, he was just around 20 years old when he got this pub named after him. Lucky guy. I have been waiting a lot longer than that.

Alfred wanted a Naval career and mum Victoria, and dad Albert agreed. At age 12, he took and passed the test to become a Cadet. By his early 20s he was an Officer and was given command of the Frigate HMS Galatea. In 1867 The Galatea sailed around the world. Alfred became the first member of the Royal Family to visit Australia.

He was received with great enthusiasm and visited the major cities over a several month period, but an unfortunate event occurred in April of 1867 while Alfred was attending a beachfront charity event. He was wounded in the back by a revolver fired by a man named Henry James O'Farrell. In about two weeks. Alfred recovered from his injury and was able to resume command of his ship, and returned home in early April 1868.

Assassin O'Farrell was tried and hanged. Alfred continued to sail to places no European Royal had been - New Zealand, Japan, and Hong Kong. Through his parentage, Alfred had a lot of Royal connections. He was named Duke of Edinburgh, which gave him a seat in the House of Lords. Following the expulsion of King Otto of Greece in 1862, Prince Alfred was chosen to succeed him, but the British Government blocked plans for him to ascend the Greek Throne, largely because of The Queen's opposition to the idea.

Mom and dad wanted him to succeed his parental uncle Ernest The Second as the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in the German Empire, which did happen in 1893. He married Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, a member of the Russian ruling family. They seem to have it all, but the fates chose differently. Prince Alfred died at age 55 of throat cancer, leaving Maria widowed at age 46.

By the time she was 63, the Russian Revolution had taken her uncle, Czar Nicholas the Second and her only surviving brother, and basically wiped out her assets. Her British income was small, and she never saw a penny of it. She was forced to sell a great part of her jewelry collection just to make ends meet. She died of a heart attack five years later.

Sad ending for both Maria and Alfred. So many lofty titles now gone. But what is truly important endures. Prince Alfred still has a fine pub named after him. Sorry to end on a bit of a downer. Do visit The Prince Alfred. It is a nice pub. 

Drink up now and let's take a six-minute walk. That will cheer us up a bit. We are headed to Warwick Castle. That's a pub now, not a building. Both The Prince Alfred  and The Warwick Castle are just outside Maida Vale. The Prince Alfredis right on the edge, and The Warwick Castle is clearly south of Maida Vale, in what is called, ”Little Venice,” named so because of the canals in the area.

The origin of the name is sometimes attributed to Poet Robert Browning, who lived at 19 Warwick Crescent, about a minute walk from the pub, between 1862 and 1887. Others think it got the name earlier from a humorous comparison made by Lord Byron, who lived from 1788 to 1824. 

Canals in Great Britain go back to Roman times, but they really took off with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, canal building equipment and techniques improved, and a good thing. Roads were terrible in those days for transporting raw materials and finished goods on a commercial basis - the stuff that the Industrial Revolution needed. Thus, canals flourished. But just like the coaching industry, canals were upended by the coming of the railroads. Canal usage declined, and although there were occasionally new canals built, by the beginning of the 20th Century, Britain had seen the last of its new canals built, and most of the waterways were very quiet, particularly the older, more narrow ones.

But gradually the leisure industry took over. In the 1950s, The British Waterways Board encouraged leisure use by operating a fleet of holiday hire boats initially converted from cut down workboats. Holiday makers began renting these, “Narrow Boats,” as they were called, the ones that could make their way up the small width canals and roaming the canals, visiting towns and villages as they passed.

Richer people bought boats to use for weekend breaks and the occasional longer trip. Government entities began to clean up and refurbish canals to increase tourist trade, and today there's almost 5000 miles of canals in Britain on which to wander about. 

Okay, just a block or so away from the confluence of the Grand Union and Regent's Canals is our pub, The Warwick Castle.

CAMRA tells us a little about the pub, 

“It is a pub with a dark green frontage, exterior blending with the rest of the terrace. Inside three drinking areas and a secluded side room with marble fireplace. In the main bar area, there's a warming living fire in the grate. There are four cast iron hand pumps, selling at reasonable prices by London standards. The House Cask Beer is a positively, and amusingly named, “Made of Ale.””

Hah! Get it? Made of Ale. Maida Vale. Well, if you don't get it, you must be from Little Venice then. The pub was built in 1846 and is now a Grade II listed and thus protected building. The pub and the street it is on, Warwick Place, were named after Jane Warwick, the Bride of the original Landowner. 

Remember, we said Robert Browning lived one minute away for 25 years, starting in 1862. This had to have been his local,

“Grow old with me. The best is yet to be”

 Could he have written that about this pub? Did the lads in the pub call Poet Browning, Bob or even brownie? Lots of questions, but let's get back to the pub itself. Several sources I came across refer to this as just being a darned good basic pub. Speaking for the rest, let me quote the best of those writers, again, Ted Bruning,

“There is nothing particularly historic about this quiet local, but to sit here quietly for a while with a glass of cool London Pride is the most practical way of learning one very important thing about London's pubs and their history. Why people like them so much. Warwick Place is a quiet and elegant little cul de sac on the fringe of the most delicious of enclaves, Little Venice, scarcely 100 yards from the pub's front door. Broad and busy streets of spacious villas front the canal and its colorful fringe of brightly painted narrow boats, but here all is calm. A permanent Sunday in a city of Monday mornings.”

Wow! Robert Browning himself could have written that last line. Remember the pub book Author of the 1940s, Maurice Gorham? We mentioned his love for The Warrington, but he included this pub in his book as well, similar to what was said about The Star Tavern over in Belgravia. The history of pub patrons here seems to be a blend of skullduggery and celebrity.

Wiki says,

“Regular customers have included the Welsh drug smuggler and Author Howard Marks, who recount in his Autobiography, “Mr. Nice,” that he concluded a drug deal there, while half of the consignment of Thai grass was hidden in a car parked outside. Music entrepreneur Richard Branson was a regular at the pub in the 1970s. Early in his career, when his office was a barge on the Grand Union Canal about 100m away. Michael Caborn-Waterfield, known for setting up the first Ann Summers sex shop in 1970, was also a customer, as was musician Rick Wakeman in the 1980s.”

As you may know, Rick was keyboard man for the group Yes, before going on to a solo career. 

Okay, that covers our historic pubs in the Maida Vale area. This episode is a bit shorter than most, but here is my dilemma. I could add some pubs a little further south, like The Churchill Arms, but those are probably best covered in another episode with a Kensington focus. There are some new pubs in the Maida Vale area, like The Hero,just an eight-minute walk away, but they are not historic. In the case of The Hero, reports are that it is a stunning redo of a site that has been a pub since 1870, so it could potentially qualify on Architecture, but it seems to be more of a restaurant than a pub. A deciding factor - there are no stools for sitting around the bar, so although not covered here, it may be worth checking out if you are hungry and looking for something on the Gastro side. 

Once again, thank you for listening. Be sure to like, thumbs up, subscribe, and all of that, as you see fit. Drop me a line in the email listed in the notes hosteric@historiclondonpubcast.com if the notion strikes you, and finally, be sure to check out Andy's map of all the pubs covered in previous episodes. Again, the notes has that link. 

Okay, until next time then, Cheers!