Thursday doors – 17 October 2024 – Doors of Central London

Doors 282 – Doors of Central London – Part III – March 2024

This is the last selection of doors from a visit to Central London back in March this year. It is an especially poignant and nostalgic collection for me because it takes me to the front door of my home where I lived with my parents in the early 1980s. I was the last of my siblings to leave home and when my parents moved to the fashionable address of 1A Montague Place, WC1E, I was starting at Newcastle University, but this was my home out of term-time, and for a little while after I left University, before I moved out properly. To be living in the heart of Bloomsbury and a heartbeat away from Soho and the West End was pure heaven for a twentysomething.

Breaking from tradition, I will write a little bit of commentary beneath some of these doors.

Our immediate next door neighbour was the British Museum, where my father would visit on a very regular basis, I only wish I had made more of the opportunity, but as is always the case when something is so readily available, my mind was elsewhere. My father had a ‘dinner party’ joke, which was to say that “on a clear day we can see the Elgin Marbles” – I can hear him saying it now, and chuckling.

Our little maisonette was dwarfed by the surrounding buildings, but it was rather cosy. The large and rather imposing gates were the delivery entrance for the museum, and I guess exhibits would come and go through these gates.

So here it is, a place where I have some very happy memories spending time with my parents (without having to share them with my siblings – an advantage of being the youngest). It feels a little strange looking at it now… it was a lifetime ago.

The front door was nothing to write home about, but it was a decent black front door, and I don’t think it has changed at all except perhaps for a lick of paint.

As residents of the immediate area, we had the keys to the private Bedford Square Gardens, much to the envy of locals and visitors alike. It was a fabulous place to picnic and drink in the heart of the city without the gathering crowds.

Nearby is the famous London University Senate House, built in the Art Deco style of a New York high-rise. It is a stunning building which looks much taller than it is by clever positioning of smaller windows the higher the building goes, and the stepped ‘wedding-cake’ arrangement. I never made it into the Senate House, but I’ll bet it has some wicked doors, fixtures and fittings of the period.

It also has some glorious Art Deco doors

The wine bars and coffee houses of Soho were my ‘go to’ watering holes, and my friends, most of whom lived in North London, would come in to town on our evenings out. I discovered where all the late night drinking places were, such as the Beaujolais wine bar, The 100 Club, and a funny little basement flamenco club just off Tottenham Court Road.

In Soho Square itself, there is a funny little hut, which I always thought was ancient, but was actually built in 1925 (so I found out today) as an access portal for an electricity sub-station. Who knew?

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of a part of London that will forever be very special to me, and I feel privileged to be able to share it with you via Thursday Doors.

If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s Thursday Doors post.

by Scooj