Monday, August 18, 2003
Places within 10 minutes walk of my house that people think are famous but in fact aren't
Number 5 - Bow Street police station
Bow Street in Covent Garden was home to London's first ever police station and remains the most famous lock-up in the capital. The street had been home to the Bow Street Runners for over a century before the formation of the Metropolitan Police here in 1829 by good old Sir Robert Peel. Historic stuff indeed.
But this isn't Bow Street, it's Bow Road. The police station here (closed Sundays) was built in 1912, just in time for all those Suffragette protests that were about to break out down the road. Sylvia Pankhurst liked smashing the windows of the police station so much that she spent many a night here, but she spent far more nights over at the real Bow Street. So, Bow Road copshop's not really that famous, relatively speaking. They have some nice police horses there though.
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