Going nowhere

I love this redundant sign. It’s at the back of a building in Salford which has reinvented itself several times over. Starting as a Scottish Presbyterian Church in 1846, it was given a new life in 1912 as a cinema. It closed in the 1950s, and reopened in 1967 to serve as a bingo hall for 18 years. Now, it’s a church again, home to the New Harvest Christian Fellowship. You'll have to go in at the front, though. 

Withy Grove Stores

I love this decrepit old Manchester building and its once-fine sign. And its history is more colourful than the sign suggests. In 1723, a group of Spanish steel workers were working their passage to New York. They stopped in Liverpool and put their steel skills to good use, joining a company which supplied the maritime trade with iron clad strongboxes and seaman’s chests. When the Leeds and Liverpool canal was opened, the business expanded with this store in Withy Grove, Manchester, which opened in 1850, and in Leeds. The business is still trading today.

The Liberty of Norton Folgate

A Liberty was an area in London considered independent of the city’s normal administration. They tended to attract people eager to be unrestricted by the usual rules and regulations – actors, writers and criminals, for example. Norton Folgate, in Spitalfields, was home to Christopher Marlowe in 1589, and later boasted a playhouse which specialised in Victorian melodrama. The Liberty ended when it became part of the borough of Stepney in 1900.

The land for these Norton Folgate almshouses in Puma Court was bought in 1851 and the houses were built in 1860. Recently modernised, they are governed by Church trustees and Tower Hamlets council.  

Sshhh

Brave little sign at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Completely ineffective, of course. 

And all the better for it. The courtyard was full of tourists and children expressing delight, and the atmosphere was really rather nice. 

Kitchen comforts

I spotted this little badge of quality on a kitchen cabinet in Dunham Massey, an 18^th century National Trust house in Altrincham, Cheshire. In the 1850s, Jeakes was an innovative company, supplying country houses around England with fitted kitchens, larders, meat closets and ranges. After the founder’s death in 1874, the company became Clements Jeakes, and in 1906 it supplied Dunham Massey’s new kitchen equipment. Dunham Massey is worth a visit for its kitchen alone.

Jamaica Wine House - an old story for modern times

Dickens, Johnson and Pepys must have spent a great deal of time inebriated, as every old London pub seems to claim them as a patron (there’s a drinking game in there somewhere). The Jamaica Wine House is no exception – Pepys is thought to have been a customer.

This fine sign is suspended above St Michael’s Alley, off Cornhill in the City of London, making it marginally easier to find this tucked-away drinking den. Now called the Jamaica Wine House (though better known for selling beer), it’s also known as the Jam Pot, and was built on the site of the Jamaica Coffee House, previously known as Pasque Rosee’s Head, or sometimes as the Turk’s Head. Do keep up.

Pleasingly dark, creepy and wood-panelled, the current building is Victorian, built in 1869 and Grade II listed. It is on the site of the Jamaica Coffee House, built after the fire of London. The original coffee house was opened before the fire, in 1652, by Pasque Rosee, who is variously recorded as being Armenian, an Italian-born Greek or Turkish.

The first London coffee house

Rosee was a servant to Daniel Edwards, a merchant; they met while working in the Ottoman Empire. When they came to London, Rosee’s coffee was so liked by Daniel’s family and friends that Daniel helped Rosee to set up a stall in a shed in the churchyard of St Michael’s, under a sign of Rosee’s head. This is said to be the first coffee shop in England (a claim made in a Royal Society report in 1699), though some say that glory belongs to a Jewish man named Jacob, with a coffee shop in Oxford opened in 1650.

Keen to educate the London public in this new art of coffee drinking, Rosee promoted the product with a handbill, claiming it had medicinal properties that could help sore eyes, coughs, dropsy, gout and scurvy, and that it would prevent miscarriages and drowsiness.

Hostile hostelries

The coffee was so popular that it angered local alehouse keepers who saw Rosee’s business as a threat. They protested against him on the grounds that he wasn’t a freeman of the City, sending a petition to the Lord Mayor to stop Rosee trading. Sounds depressingly familiar, doesn’t it? These immigrants come over here, they open historic coffee shops …. The challenge was overcome by forming a business partnership with Daniel’s father-in-law’s coachman, who was a freeman of the City. In 1656 they were able to move to a building on the current site of the Jamaica Wine House, just 27 feet deep and 19 feet wide, at an annual rent of £4. 

Latte legacy

Between 1674 and 1680, the coffee shop became the Jamaica Coffee House, serving business people with interests in Jamaica and the British West Indies. It seems that Rosee was later obliged to leave the country as a result of an unexplained misdemeanour. His story lived on, and his character and coffee were featured in plays and popular street poems, making fun of his foreign accent and poor English (English was probably his third language, after Greek and Turkish).

His legacy was a new type of business which spread all over the country. London’s coffee houses were known as great meeting places to share news, discuss business, debate politics, write and exchange ideas. And, of course, they still thrive today. Drink to Pasque Rosee in the Jamaica Wine House, and remember him next time you pop in to a café for coffee.

Plough on

This handsome stained glass window advertises the Plough on Heaton Moor Road in Stockport. Heaton Moor is now a thriving suburb, but it was largely farmland until the mid -19^th century. The railway station, just up the road from the Plough, was built in 1852, and shops and houses developed along the road to service the needs of the new commuters. The Plough was built in the 1880s, and reminds us of the area’s rural roots: over its door is a lovely sandstone picture of a ploughing scene.