Piccadilly Pleasure with Old Town

Old Town herald new products and fabrics with a quiet drink

A charming postcard arrived recently from our good friends at Old Town informing us that new styles of clothes and fabrics are now available. As you will recall, Old Town is highly regarded at Tweed Towers for their wonderfully complete aesthetic and the importance they place on heritage and provenance.

They have also produced a collection of photos, taken by Matt Hind, called Piccadilly Pleasures to show off their wares. The photos for Piccadilly Pleasures are a delight. If only all pubs were made this way.

Red Lion - St James's, London

The shots for Piccadilly Pleasures were taken at a Red Lion in St James', London. I believe it's the one with the lovely interior next to Geo. F. Trumper in Duke of York Street (first picture, below), although there is another Red Lion in St James's - hidden down Crown Passage (second picture) - not far from Truefitt and Hill, coincidentally.  You access that one from a tiny lane, but I'll leave you to discover it yourselves.

Funnily enough, I was getting round to featuring one or both of these pubs. I suppose I have now. 

Hearteningly, there are still lots of pubs in London that have retained their fine old interiors. Pubs in other UK cities haven't faired so well. Are we doing enough to preserve them? I'll trawl up the quote from Hilaire Beloc again, as I think it's an important one:

"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” 

Hilaire Belloc (1911)

With the frightening rapidity of pub closures in the UK, so much local history is in danger of disappearing with them. What to do?  Maybe councils could help by closing the giant drinking warehouses masquerading as pubs that cater to a single (young) age-group. It's much nicer to have the mix of ages of a proper drinker. Maybe there should be some sort of stakeholder initiative along the lines of The National Trust that could take on the work? Maybe CAMRA are on the case? I vow to do my bit by hunting them out and using them.