London’s Fag End

21 February, 2012 at 1:50 pm | Posted in Thinking allowed | 1 Comment
Tags: London life

Tobacco is said to have arrived on our shores in 1586 and was first smoked at the Pied Bull in Islington, the habit proved so popular that only 28 years later there was recorded over 7,000 tobacco shops in London, this at the time when 8oz of tobacco cost 5/-. By the 18th century to tobacconists’ shops were displaying a large wooden figure of a black Indian wearing a crown of tobacco leaves and a kilt of the same material.

London had 180 factories, almost half the country’s total, which were producing tobacco, cigars (thought at the time to be superior to Havana cigars), cigarettes and snuff and in East London and Hackney there was recorded 76 factories alone.

As recently as 30 years ago London still had one-quarter of Britain’s tobacco factories, and when I worked in Clerkenwell the Old Holborn factory was opposite our company. As junior boy I would go into an adjacent tobacconists, there on the counter was a tall ornate gas pipe, its flame flickering seductively at head level, encouraging one to light up. The shops proprietor, skinny man with nicotine stained fingers and yellow moustache to match was hardly an advertisement for his merchandise, for between gasps he would ask breathlessly “Can . . . I . . . help . . . you?”

One of the last of these shops was Shervingtons which proudly displayed above its door “Ye Olde Tobacco Shop”. The shop was founded in 1864 and situated in Staple Inn, the 16th century block of offices at the eastern end of Holborn, the image of which once adorned tobacco tins as Old Holborn’s trademark. It appeared that the shop remained in its Olde ways and with bitter irony had No Smoking stickers displayed giving a further clue to its demise. Another tobacconist to bite the dust (or should that be ash) is Smith & Sons which only closed recently. Situated at the southern end of Charing Cross Road the shop opened in 1869 as Charing Cross Road’s first shop which had such a wide range of cigars they boasted of a walk in humidor.

I once nominated this as Ugly in my Hidden London – Greater London House – which was once the Carreras London factory which had relocated from City Road. Built in the Egyptian Revival Style some four years after Tutankhamun was discovered by Howard Carter. The two black cats on either side of the entrance are now reproductions of the bronze originals, the sign of a black cat being an advertisement for Carreras Craven “A” cigarettes which featured a black cat on its packet. The original cats were separated one went to Jamaica and his unlucky partner ended up in Basildon.

Another tobacco related enterprise on its last gasp is Tobacco Dock just off the Highway. It was converted into a shopping centre at a cost of £47 million this sad Retail Mary Celeste remains empty and desolate, its only use appears to be as a backdrop to television dramas. At the entrance stands a 7ft tall bronze sculpture of a boy standing in front of a tiger commemorating that nearby in the 1800’s the world’s largest exotic pet store was located and the statute recalls an incident when a Bengal tiger escaped and picked up and carried off a small boy. The shop’s owner gave chase and prised the boy, unharmed from the animal’s jaws. `

This Grade II listed warehouse in Wapping was constructed in approximately 1811 and
served as a store for imported tobacco destined for London’s numerous smokers. Tobacco Dock seems to epitomise London’s fag end as you walk through this monument to smoking with its faint echo and complete lack of human activity save for the odd security guard. Your footfall reverberates and shadows play upon your eye and mind as you pad over the debris of times past.

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