The story of the Lost Pubs Blog (my 'other' blog).
In 1981 we moved to a flat on the site of the old St Paul’s School in West Kensington. This was the first place I’d lived in London ‘proper.’ On a street corner nearby was a closed and forlorn relic- the “Red Cow,” once a rural local, later a music venue known for punk gigs (along with the then also closed Nashville, now the Three Kings). It closed in 1978, was demolished in 1983 and rebuilt. At first named the Red Cow and with a ‘Diner’ style, it’s now a pub/Thai restaurant called Latymer’s.
Later on, in the mid-1990s, I worked in Pimlico and my fellow workers and I made good use of the pubs in the area. One I don’t think we used was the Regent Arms, Re
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The story of the Lost Pubs Blog (my 'other' blog).
In 1981 we moved to a flat on the site of the old St Paul’s School in West Kensington. This was the first place I’d lived in London ‘proper.’ On a street corner nearby was a closed and forlorn relic- the “Red Cow,” once a rural local, later a music venue known for punk gigs (along with the then also closed Nashville, now the Three Kings). It closed in 1978, was demolished in 1983 and rebuilt. At first named the Red Cow and with a ‘Diner’ style, it’s now a pub/Thai restaurant called Latymer’s.
Later on, in the mid-1990s, I worked in Pimlico and my fellow workers and I made good use of the pubs in the area. One I don’t think we used was the Regent Arms, Regency Street (the street was originally Regent Street but renamed to avoid the obvious confusion). It’s near a Young’s pub called the Royal Oak, which my records tell me we visited on 24th January 1997. But one day, the Regent wasn’t there. It closed in 1997 or ’98 and was demolished in 1998. That gave me pause.
In 1999 I was visiting one of my Chiswick friends and she and I went for a walk down to the river. On the way we passed a closed down pub – the Feathers, near the A4 road. Realising it was going to disappear I took some pictures.
Since then I’ve documented derelict pubs and also buildings that once were public houses – and which may now be private houses, or shops, or something else.
In some cases I have also pictured where a pub was – and has since been demolished.
In 2003-4 I audited the entire pub stock of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. That’s to say, I went around photographing every one of them. There were around 164 pubs as I recall. Some of that work – though not the photographs – went into a book called “Images of England: Hammersmith and Fulham Pubs” which drew mostly on the H&F Borough Archive. And as you might expect, among the active hostelries I photographed for that audit, are some that have since closed.
