St John's Wood

We decided to take advantage of the nice day to tackle another online walk, this time centred on north London's St John's Wood. Before we moved to London, we spent a lot of time gazing at maps of the city, and some of the neighbourhood names struck us as pretty incongruous with our image of London--"St John's Wood" just seemed too, well, idyllic of a place to exist in the big city! We haven't explored this exclusive area much, except at its fringes, so I met Bob at Baker Street station to begin our exploration. These striking mansion flats filled both sides of a nearby street:

Further along, this remarkable building was currently being renovated, but its attractive Art Nouveau details remained untouched.

We passed by Dorset Square, now a pretty private residents' garden, where Lord's Cricket Ground was founded in 1787:

This 1825 church has been reworked into offices and studio spaces:

According to our guide, the attractive cottages that line Ranston Street were built in 1895 as part of social reformer Octavia Hill's efforts to provide affordable housing for the residents of London.

Church Street was a surprise for us, with almost every shop selling antiques of many types. Even though I may have found the contents of some of other shops more intriguing, this was definitely my favourite sign:

According to a plaque on the building, this Art Deco building used to house the Palmer Tyre Company, "who produced wheels, tyres, brakes, and gun turrets which were fitted to wartime Spitfire, Hurricane, Wellington and Lancaster fighter and bomber aircraft. The company continued aerospace research and development in this building until 1984." The building is now occupied by the offices of Terry Farrell Architects (who also did the renovations) and private flats.

Although not part of our tour information, I had to stop when I saw this very strange, double-height phone box:

As we approached to get a closer look, we activated a light sensor and the interior of the (locked) phone box was revealed as the most civilised phone-box interior I've ever seen. Perhaps it was some sort of art installation?

Hamilton Terrace is full of beautiful (very expensive) houses. At one point, Bob said, "Wow, I can't believe it--there's a woman in that window wearing a maid's outfit!" When I answered by saying that, in this neighbourhood, the woman in question was likely not just wearing the outfit, but doing the job, Bob said that of course he knew that, but just kind of couldn't believe anyone would have to wear the black and white outfit.

Against the darkening sky, the bare trees that lined the street created an otherworldly landscape.

By now we were both a bit tired and decided to cut the walk short and head home. Still, we definitely got a good glimpse of how the other half lives in St John's Wood!