My first job after leaving school in 1980 was as junior in the design and artwork studio of Lennart Advertsing, 7a Langley Street, Covent Garden, WC2. I was immediately fascinated by the area and most lunchtimes my workmate Debbie and I wandered about looking at how it was all being renovated, changing from a zone of fruit and veg and tradesmen to become the popular shopping and entertainment district we see today. Neal Street back then was a building site. The piazza was almost completely refurbished and we enjoyed seeing some of the entertainments. Actually, enough of that, I'll park all the memories for now and save them for another day, otherwise I will never get to the point.
The tall buildings in Langley Street, Shelton Street and Earlham Street were all built to store fruit and veg. Hence the name of Pineapple Dance Studio and all the other fruity references you might see as you wander about. For such a short road, Langley Street, has a lot to offer. Not only is this street where Yours Truly first worked*, but there are also plaques in the street that commemorate other things.
For instance, on Saturday 11th May this year, I attended a small ceremony for the unveiling of a red plaque to remember lives lost fighting an awful fire in the same very building back in 1954, a horrible incident that I had no previous knowledge of.
I'd seen the event listed on the London's Fire Brigade's site (I subscribe for updates) but I was surprised and a little disappointed to see so few people in attendance. It was mostly relatives of the deceased as well as wives and colleagues related to the organisers or people participating. There was a speeches by dignitaries and the local priest blessed the plaque.
The firemen are here standing outside Pineapple Dance Studios in front of their vehicle, looking magnificent but obliterating a couple of things I hadn't noticed before. Two days ago, on Saturday 12th August, I was leading one of my walking tours when I noticed that in the middle of this recently resurfaced street, there is a man hole cover which contains woodblocks in one of its segments!
At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, how had I never spotted this before?! I wondered if it might have been moved here from elsewhere, but no, Google Streetview shows it in 2008:
There's something else of interest here, and I don't just mean the demolition of those smaller buildings on the right which now form an open space in front of Stamfords that leads through to Mercers Street, I am looking at the scaffolding that is boxed in. Today there is a metal gate that was mostly obscured by the fire truck in my pics above.
I have often admired it as being a good modern example of well-crafted metalwork – one of those things that I make a mental note to find out about another day. Well, it turnes out that I didn't have to look hard because all the information is there!
A metal panel to the side of the gate is hard to read but it tells us that this was installed in 2021 on behalf of the Mercers Company which owns this swathe of land. The gate is the work of Bex Simon AWCB, artist and blacksmith, and was forged and fabricated by CB-Arts Ltd. Indeed this information can also be found within a tiny panel at the bottom left of the gate itself:
I looked again at the man hole cover and pondered whether I should wander the nearby streets to see if I could find any more remnants of woodblocks, but it was a hot and sticky day and the area was busy with shoppers people out having a good [noisy] time, so I thought better of the idea, for now, and caught a tube home instead. For more wood blocks, see my A-Z here.
Ooh... I've just remembered another thing in Langley Street – I am always delighted to see that Café Pacifico, London's first Mexican restaurant, is still trading. It opened in 1982 and must be one of only a handful of businesses that have stood the test of time. Again, I will return to this idea of then and now in due course.
*there ought to be a plaque for this too!