![]() Temperance and Billiards ... they don't feel a natural match, do they? Billiards suggests bottles of ale, overflowing ashtrays and an ample measure of the dissolute. I came across this wonderful sign on Battersea Rise in south London, just off Clapham Common, Not a billiard hall any more, of course. Not temperance either. It's a pub. But it's a splendid building, an unlikely survival. And, I discover, a remnant of what was once a nationwide movement to break the link between billiards and beer. The Temperance Billiard Hall Company - no, I am not making this up - was set up in Lancashire in 1906. Its aim was to provide a salubrious location for the hugely popular pastime of billiards way from the corrupting influence of alcohol and the licensed trade. An architect, Norman Evans, designed a dozen or more of these halls in the years before the First World War. There's one in Fulham which is listed; it's also now a pub, cheekily called The Temperance. But as you can see this Battersea Rise billiards hall also has a touch of style about it, with almost an oriental ambience to its tiled frontage complete with cupola. I'm not sure, but I'd guess it's one of Evans's. As late as 1958, this was one of more than twenty temperance billiard halls in London. P.J. Kavanagh, indeed, wrote a poem entitled 'The Temperance Billiard Hall' - thugh sadly I can't find the text online.
A brave attempt at social improvement - snookered by the popular appetite for something a bit stronger than sasparilla. I went today, for the first time in a few years, to the Anarchist Book Fair.- and discovered it as vibrant and crowded as ever. It has a new, and at first glance unlikely, home - in the splendid, mega-expensive redevelopment of the King's Cross Goods Yard. And here on the ground floor of Central St Martin's - which fronts on to the majestic Granary Square - there was room for all a hundred or so stalls, selling books, pamphlets, T-shirts, badges, poetry, art, old clothes ... And as you can see, the place was packed, with the red-and-black bunting adding a touch of distinction to the surroundings. My favourites among the array of stalls were then handful selling old stuff for which, as any regular readers (are there any?) of this blog will know, I am a complete sucker. Nice to get this copy of Colin Ward's Anarchy - cover by Rufus Segar - from August 1968, looking at the student unrest of that politically scorching summer. |
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