Hello and welcome to another tale of the hidden secrets of old London.
You may never have noticed this hidden secret, indeed you may never have walked down this street, but Carting Lane is a street with a secret hidden in plain sight. But what is this hidden secret, I hear you ask? Well, settle back and I'll tell you all about it.
It looks like any other street lamp. Indeed if you were to look from the top of the street it would look like any other street lamp that was quite a long way away. But this is no ordinary street lamp, as you would be able to tell if you were standing a lot closer to it, so it's fortunate that I have been able to do just that.
What can I tell you about this street lamp? Well, it's on Carting Lane, which you may know better as one of the secret connections between the Strand and the River Thames, of which there are several. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the streetlamp isn't better known.
At the top of Carting Lane is a pub called The Coal Hole which has never been used for the storage of coal. A plaque just outside the entrance tells the fascinating back story. Alongside is a splendid street lamp that looks like it might be the special street lamp but no, do not be fooled, this is not it.
The Strand is much higher than the Thames so the first part of Carting Lane is all steps. Descend these and the building on your left is the Savoy Theatre, or at least it's the rear entrance and stage door. A historic-looking lamp is attached to the wall, but this is not the special lamp we seek either.
Beyond the Savoy Theatre is the Savoy Hotel itself, a building with many hidden secrets of its own. But visitors to this great hotel never emerge from the basement driveway so are unlikely ever to realise quite how close they came to a street lamp with a most unexpected claim to fame.
Instead consider the large office block on the opposite side of the lane. This is the former Shell Mex House, famously home to the UK's biggest clock face, but you can't see that from Carting Lane. What you can see is the service entrance, and immediately outside that is the street lamp we seek.
It's not in an unblemished state, alas, because it was substantially mangled by a reversing lorry in the 1970s. It's not clear whether the lorry was reversing out of Shell Mex House or out of the Savoy, neither does it matter, but the street lamp was subsequently lovingly restored all the same.
During daylight hours you may be surprised to see that the lamp is fullylit. This is because its fuel source is permanently available, even if it's not the same fuel source originally used by Joseph Webb in the 1890s. A plaque attached to the railings underneath explainsall.
It is amazing to think that no other street lamp of this type remains in working order anywhere else in London. Indeed you could easily walk straight past this one-off survivor without noticing it, as I expect many hundreds of thousands have, because this street lamp remains very much a hidden secret.
I hope you enjoyed my tale of one of the hidden secrets of old London. If you didn't then I have to wonder what you were expecting. It wouldn't be hidden if it was fully revealed, and it wouldn't be a secret if everyone knew about it. Let's do hidden secrets properly, or not at all.
