25 Years of Last Orders

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.

Cafe Review - Corner Coffee, Cheltenham

A relaxed and friendly atmosphere in this recently-opened cafe, and a modern decor with posters on the walls. A menu of coffee and tea and a food menu of scones (some savoury) and teacakes, if no cooked breakfasts. I had: a cortado (served in a glass, very nice) and a teacake (also pleasant). This cafe is quite close to the Park campus of the university – the second place I ever stayed in this town, years before moving here.

The cortado’s intensity is such that it sticks with you through the drink even if you take your time – more diffuse tastes like cappucino (which I haven’t had for years) dissipate until you are left with cooling water.

No dogs – until someone brings in a dachshund while I am about to leave (the two events are unconnected!).

Recommended.

Corner Coffee, 234 Bath Road, Cheltenham GL53

Open 0700-1500 weekdays, 0800-1600 Saturdays, 0900-1400 Sundays.

The Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad

In 1811 the Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad opened to carry coal, stone, and general materials between Cheltenham and the docks at Gloucester. It was a form of early railway, where 'tram' refers originally to the wooden rails used in early examples, and went on to mean a system of waggons carried on rails.

The line had a spur to the tram road from the quarries on Leckhampton Hill (opened in 1800), and the 15 km main route terminated at the top of Gloucester Road, Cheltenham, where there were 1.75 acres (0.7 ha) of wharves, offices, and freight warehouses. The route between Gloucester and Cheltenham took it north of the present-day railway for most of its length, passing close to the site of Staverton (Gloucestershire) Airport. On a 94 bus you'd probably be closer to the route than you would on a train.

The gauge was 3 feet 6 inches (106.6 cm), using L-shaped rails, and all vehicles were horse-drawn. At its peak the tramroad saw up to 60 journeys each day, and carried over 35,000 tons of general materials and 20,000 tons of stone in a single year. (Source). The only trials of a steam engine, in 1831-2, resulted in disaster and the steam project was abandoned.

In 1859 the line closed, replaced by a steam railway (the Birmingham & Gloucester) that had opened in 1840 and whose Cheltenham Spa station, an inconvenient distance from the town centre, is now the only remaining main-line station in the town (Racecourse, on the other side of town, is on a preserved railway). At various points there have been five others including St James, close to the town centre. There is a strong case to be made for a Cheltenham North station at Swindon Lane, Wyman's Brook serving both Cheltenham and Bishops Cleeve ... but we digress.

There remain a few relics of the GCR, mostly in Gloucester, including a brick entrance on Southgate, and a railway crossing near Gloucester Royal Hospital. The sleeper blocks under the replica wagons at the Docks, installed in 2010, are also original. The Leckhampton section is remembered with engraved stones at the Norwood Triangle, and Railway Buildings - the former Railway Inn - on Norwood Road carries a plaque.

21 January 2025 - Across the Fediverse and Into the Trees

If you wonder why you are in a particular place maybe you need to ask what questions brought you there. In this case, it's
"Is there an equivalent to LiveJournal and preferably in the Fediverse?"

LiveJournal, you may recall, was a popular blog and discussion site back in the 2000s. It's still going in some form I believe and also forked to Dreamwidth Studios, though at a time that Facebook was gaining traction so a lot of science fiction fandom just went over to FB.

Because that's what I know LJ for - the SF fandom community. There were lots of us on there. And because LJ had the following:
- Personal blogging - use it as a diary
- Discussion groups - which could be public or locked
It was flexible, in a way that FB is also. You could maintain that FB operates in the same way as LJ, with its mix of a 'wall' (do people still call it that? Did they ever?) and groups which may be by local area or by interest. It's just that the demographic was very different with FB having a more generalist audience - so generalist that a significant proportion of the world's population is now on it. When did the internet become reality rather than just commenting on it? When, as EM Forster might put it, did the machine start? Around the mid-2010s I'd say.

My nephew, who is in his late 20s, tells me that people of his generation use Instagram but not FB. But you can't put long text on IG. Nor does it do groups.
That's a different discussion though, one about Pixelfed and whether it will have groups, to bring it closer to a Flickr replacement. Pixelfed I do use, and you can have up to 2,000 characters of text with a picture but people don't go there for the text. 2,000 characters is 350-400 words in English and probably similar in other languages which is ok - we're up to just over 1,800 characters now so if this were PF I'd have to be slowing down right now.

The other thing re FB, which also makes me dip into Goodreads while mainly using Storygraph for book reviewing, and look at Reddit while not really using Lemmy, is the sheer number of users which translates into niche communities. (same in Reddit. With Goodreads that is "pretty much any book in existence is on there and there are lots of reviews to look at"). You know the saying - "Build it and they will come." Well, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I once worked in a community centre and my main dealings with the organisation that ran it was management asking me "why don't you think the centre gets more people going there?" My main answer was, It's in the wrong place. If it was the other side of town, nearer the park and the well-heeled areas and the swimming pool, we'd get traction. But on a more run-down side of town known only for its supermarket (drive in, get groceries, drive away) it wasn't going to thrive.

Not wishing for a moment to sound negative, though. The virtue of Federation is its flexibility - for example Pixelfed is getting so many new users at the moment. If it's in the right place then build it and they will come and they will stay.