Capture of Crockers Folly Public House, near to the Regents Canal, in St John's Wood, London, now boaded-up and closed.
Capture of Crockers Folly Public House, near to the Regents Canal, in St John's Wood, London, now boaded-up and closed. Symptomatic of the state of British pubs which are disapearing at an alarming rate all over the coutry. Crocker's, built in 1898-9, is one of the show-case pubs of the golden age of London pub-building. It was built in an elaborate, eclectic style to the designs (Oct. 1897) of the architect C. H. Worley of Welbeck Street for the entrepreneur Frank Crocker. This was a very prosperous area of London and no expense was spared to fit out the building in lavish style. Doubling as an hotel, it is very near to Lord's cricket ground which generated a goodly trade during the season. The main entrance leads into a spectacular 'grand saloon', as it was known. Here the highlights are a superb marble fireplace, marble-topped bar counter and an ornate ceiling. On the left is a large room now used as a restaurant but, when the pub opened, this space was a billiard room, accommodating two full-size tables. Where the servery now is, there was a platform for thirty people to watch the play. The ceiling is another tour de force. In the right-hand part of the pub there were originally several separate bars and a jug and bottle department, all screened off from one another. One of these was reserved for ladies only. When it opened the restaurant for the hotel was on the second floor and there was a concert room on the first floor. From its opening until 1987 the pub was known as the Crown Hotel. The name change arose because of a silly story that Frank Crocker built this grand establishment to serve the Great Central Railway's new terminus. In fact this ended up at Marylebone over half a mile away. Ruin, despair and suicide! In fact, Marylebone was abuilding at the same time as the Crown and Frank died of natural causes at the tender age of 41 in 1904, a much-liked and respected member of the community
Size: 4064px × 2261px
Location: 24 Aberdeen Place, St Johns Wood, London, NW8 8JR
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1897, architect, architecture, boarded-, british, closed, closing, disappearing, disused, john, london, pub, st, wood
