Ann Sotheran’s West End Champions

The Champion

Perhaps more than anywhere else in London, Oxford St is where the grief of the world can descend upon me without warning  – especially when I make the foolish mistake of going to the West End to buy a pillowcase. In such circumstances, there is fortunately a nearby refuge where I can seek respite from the urban clamour. It is The Champion in Well St – just minutes walk from the nightmarish agglomeration of chain stores – where Ann Sotheran‘s magnificent stained glass windows cast a spell of benign quietude.

The Champion has been there on the corner of Wells St and Eastcastle St since before 1869 and you would be forgiven for assuming that the glorious array of stained glass dates from this era, but you would be mistaken because it was designed and installed in 1989. The husband and wife publicans who live upstairs informed me that this imaginative notion was the inspiration of a member of the Samuel Smith family of brewers who own the pub and commissioned the glass from Ann Sotheran to endow it with distinction.

Thirty years later these gaudy portraits of Victorian worthies offer a generous welcome to the weary shopper, proving that there is still mileage in the traditional pub when it is as cherished and as handsome as The Champion.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) gained professional status for nurses and raised hospital standards in the Crimea

Bob Fitzsimmons (1862-1917) The only Englishman to have won three world titles at different weights

Young Tom Morris (1851-1875) won four consecutive Open Championships, first at the age of seventeen

Capt Bertie Dwyer (1872-1967) ‘Flying Bertie Dwyer was one of the early Cresta riders, a President of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club and winner of several trophies

W G Grace (1848-1915) A legendary figure whose all round ability and enthusiasm dominated cricket for over thirty years

Edward Whymper (1840-1911) became a traveller and mountaineer, the first man to climb the Matterhorn and Chimborazo in the Andes

Capt Matthew Webb (1848-1883) was the first to swim the English Channel (thirty-four miles in twenty-one hours) He died swimming below Niagara Falls

David Livingstone (1813-1873) Originally sent to Africa as a missionary, he mapped and explored vast areas of the continent

William Renishaw (1861-1904) Winner of seven singles and seven doubles cups, he with his brother, made Lawn Tennis into a sport

Fred Archer (1857-1886) Possibly the greatest jockey ever, being Champion Jockey for thirteen consecutive years, with twenty-one classic victories

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