Comments on: In Old Paddington

By: Sabrina Edge

Sabrina Edge — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 19:31:12 +0000

I am trying to find out about a travel agents on Praed St in the late 1970s.
My dad Michael Warren worked at this agents. He died after going to Guyana in 1979. My dad was living at 143 Ledbury Road and 7 Bonchurch Road.

By: Adrian Risdon

Adrian Risdon — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 12:49:44 +0000

Thanks for this – very nostalgic for me as I grew up in Chilworth Mews, just a stone’s throw from the station. My childhood was stranger than I realized at the time. Then I was Adrian Flick, all unawares that my biological grandmother was living and working just round the corner in Spring Street. Grayson Perry recently said on television that “it takes a village to raise a child” – and, partly because of my Risdon grandmother’s secret local presence, partly because I was sent to boarding-schools in Kent from age 7-16, Paddington was never (for me) really a ‘village’ in that sense. But I do recall going with my ‘father’ to have my hair cut in the Great Western Hotel. Later as a teen I tried to have my hair cut at the barber’s on the opposite side of Praed Street – he occupied a small space in the Circle Line tube – only to be chucked-out because I had eczema on the back of my neck (“We’re not allowed to!” he snarled). My best friend in Paddington, David Bradley, lived in Sussex Gardens and (though I didn’t know this at the time) the poet-to-be Sebastian Barker lived on the corner of Sussex Gardens and Westbourne Terrace. We should have met in Paddington but didn’t – he was a contemporary of mine at The King’s School, Canterbury. Does anyone know if Praed Street is correctly pronounced Pride Street ? The pub at the top of Spring Street where it meets Praed Street/Craven Road is called “The Pride of Paddington.”

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 07 Apr 2019 06:53:32 +0000

Great article. To expand on Ros comment, the Paddington Children’s Hospital was where Donald Winnicott practiced for many years and carried out his seminal work.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 18:56:51 +0000

“She was as beautiful as a butterfly and proud as a Queen
Was pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green”

Unfortunately, Polly did not fare well after rejecting the milkman:

In six months she married, this hard-hearted girl
But it was not a viscount, and it was not an earl
It was not a baronite, but a shade or two worse
It was a bow-legged conductor of a tuppenny bus

By: Ros

Ros — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 16:34:07 +0000

Nice to see this undersung part of London featured in your post today, with photos to bring a little pride back to ‘mournful ever-weeping Paddington’ as Blake memorably wrote and which always comes to my mind when I’m in Praed Street, surely one of London’s ugliest. Mind you, Blake also had ‘golden builders’ at work in the area, a far cry I suspect from what the phrase might conjure up in relation to the developers of today. The pub, Milo Bell, is itself in Praed Street just past St Mary’s hospital and is not long demised. In the first picture, behind Sarah Siddons on the left, is a red-turreted building, which until the late 80’s was Paddington Green Children’s Hospital, a place as loved and respected as Hackney Children’s hospital but which pre-deceased it by about 30 years. It was known for its compassionate attitudes and forward thinking in the fields of children’s physical and psychological health. I expect it’s now….luxury flats.

By: Gary Arber

Gary Arber — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 14:19:53 +0000

My earliest memory of Paddington Station was in the summer of 1939 going with my parents for a holiday at Paignton. My father took me down to see the engine which was to pull us there in the “Torbay Express” to find to y delight that we had the GWR’s best engine in front, the”King George V”
Gary

By: Paul Loften

Paul Loften — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 12:38:22 +0000

There was once a time, around 1974, when I found myself out of work so I took a job as a mini cab driver . I found it easier to get around at night due to the lack of traffic and also enjoyed driving and talking to the offbeat characters that you would come across in the hours that most of us are well abed. On my travels around the empty streets of Central London, I would, when in the Paddington area, take a break at a late night German Bratwurst cafe that was open all night in Praed street. They served a large variety of Bratwurst and Brockwurst in a roll topped with onions and sauce that you could pick from the counter. The cafe would attract the late night revellers and also those of us who prefer the night hours. It would draw in the customers withe the aroma of the grilling sausage which spread into the street. Being in Paddington it was a sometimes a pleasure to sit and savour and simply watch the variety of customers for an hour or more, as they would pass through . However at other times you may want to consume your Bratwurst despite the hot mustard, and head straight for the door as not all the customers would live up to the aroma offered outside . I love Paddington. Alas the cafe has long gone but the station gives it a lifelong guarantee of it being London’s hub of humanity.

By: Helen Breen

Helen Breen — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 11:53:52 +0000

Greetings from Boston,

GA, thanks for the tour around Paddington Green & Station, a part of London I am not familiar with. Wonderful pics too. I do not have the courage to “Tube it” from Heathrow so I take a car service to the Strand Palace where I hunker down. But I might take a day jaunt from Paddington to Oxford on my next visit. Great transportation in London…

By: Colin Cohen

Colin Cohen — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 11:13:14 +0000

I was always amazed at the calm of Paddington Green, despite the bedlam of Westway or the horrors of Praed Street over the canal.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 10:51:09 +0000

Fantastic picture of an overlooked place ! Trumans pubs were like chains of Wetherspoons.