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Carter's cavalcade (4): Showpiece Here’s one last piece of outstanding tiling from my recent visit to Poole, and in many ways, it is the greatest star of them all. The Swan Inn is a pub of 1906, built to designs by the architect C T Miles, who had a long-established practice in Bournemouth (in which he was soon joined by his son, S C Miles). The facade would be a fairly standard turn-of-the-century design, were it not for the tile cladding, which covers the entire ground floor level. The Swan is one of three surviving late-Victorian tiled pubs in Poole and is the most decorative. That is thanks not just to the strong tiled lettering giving the names of the brewery (Marston’s) and the pub, in brown on a cream background, not just for the two-tone green of the wall tiles, not even for the telling details such as egg and dart moulding or the little dolphin in the keystone of arch, but above all for the pair of beautiful swans to each side of the entrance archway. Each bird’s cloud of ...

Carter’s Cavalcade (2): Hunting the hart ‘Now we’re going to go into Halford’s,’ said Jo, leading our surprised group* into a building which was the scene of what seemed to be the last stages of a closing-down sale: the shop is one of those branches of Halford’s that is to cease trading. Diverting our gaze away from the cut-price car accessories, Jo pointed up the stairs, and this panel is what we saw. It is the work of Tony Morris for Carter’s of Poole. The White Hart Hotel commissioned the sign in the 1960s and when the hotel closed, Halford’s took over the building. Later they moved, and took the finely drawn ceramic stag with them, displaying him in their High Street premises, where he has been delighting people buying car batteries, windscreen wiper blades, and adjustable spanners ever since. For now, though, we were taking advantage of the last chance to see this rare tiled species, staring at us (is he apprehensive, defiant, or just vigilant?) from atop his pedestal. We were ass...

The brewer’s art Since doing a post , over a year ago, about a lovely ‘West Country Ales’ brewery plaque, I’ve meant to return to the subject and post at least one more of the ceramic plaques or ‘house marks’ that breweries used to identify their brand on the outsides of public houses. So here, at last, is one of my favourites, the plaque of the Morland brewery of Abingdon, although I would like to be able to share more information about it than I can. You get the idea quickly enough: the plaque depicts an 18th-century artist with his palette, eyeing a glass of beer, with the implication that brewing is an art in itself, and you’ll find the equivalent of a masterpiece of brewing at a Morland house. But it’s a little more than that. Morland was the name of an actual artist – indeed, a family of actual artists, in the 18th century. Perhaps the most well known of them was Henry Robert Morland ( c. 1716–97), a portrait painter whose most famous subject was King George III. But the image o...

Specific gravity My photograph shows a representative selection of the architecture of St John’s Wood High Street. In the left background are classical blocks, probably of the 1830s or soon after, of white or yellow brick with stucco details. Then, a bit closer, a red brick and white ‘Queen Anne’ group with the fancy curvy gables and the characteristic square-pane glazing of the late-19th century. There’s a lot of  late-19th century stripy masonry round here, as witness the building in the right foreground, a bank, more classical but still in a contrasting mix of materials, here brick and Portland stone. In the middle of it all is the pub, the Sir Isaac Newton, standing out like a flashing beacon. This is another late-19th century building (1892, says Pevsner), this time in red brick and orangey terracotta, a combination of colours that means that the bands are there but don’t provide much contrast. Instead, the whole building glows. Like its neighbour, it has ornate gables. The ot...

Entirely satisfactory Looking for something else in my file of photographs, I came across a couple I took years ago of the Old Anchor pub in Abingon. They reminded me that I must go back and take better pictures, but meanwhile I can’t resist sharing them. The building may have a 17th-century heart (there is some timber-framed construction around the back) hidden by this 19th-century red-brick front. The carved lettering, carefully filled in with black paint, stands out beautifully from the brickwork. It probably dates to 1884, when the pub’s licence was first taken out. The lettering of the pub name is a sans serif (or ‘grotesque’) form with plenty of clarity. Apart from the very short middle stroke to the E it’s unremarkable but very effective. The italic letters making up the words ‘Morland’s’ and ‘Entire’ on either side are much more distinctive. Looking closely one can see the bevelled cut made into the stone and the delicate way in which the transition between the thick main strok...