Worldsenders

Some of you won't recognise the picture above, probably taken in the thirties from the eastern corner of Langton Street, looking south south-west across the World's End towards the power station. The road running from left to right is the King's Road. The World's End pub is just off picture to the left; the bus is standing roughly in front of what is now the World's End Pharmacy.
I like to think of the young lady with the long hair, third from the left, walking towards us as Beckett's Celia:
"She had turned out of Edith Grove into Cremorne Road, intending to refresh herself with a smell of the Reach and then return by Lots Road, when chancing to glance to her right she saw, motionless in the mouth of Stadium Street, considering alternately the sky and a sheet of paper, a man. Murphy"
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

Monday, February 1, 2010

Ye Olde World's End


The second World's End pub.

The sign says "Ye Olde World's End". Well, at least they didn't write "Worlde's". In the window is also written "World's End Distillery" (I always thought that particular epithet was an invention of the 1980s).

The gin palace seen above was built in the mid-19th century and replaced by the edifice we see today in 1897. This picture was probably taken in the 1890s. The single-storey structure on the right, which many will remember as the Salvation Army Mission and which survived until the construction of the new World's End Estate and accompanying piazza in the 1970s, at the time housed stables. I can make out:

World's End Stables
Job Master
Dealer in Horses
"Horses for any period"

In the 1910s and 1920s this odd little building was used as a cinema, known locally, according to Alf Goldberg in World's End for Sir Oswald, Portraits of Working-Class Life in Pre-War London, as The Bug 'Ole.

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