The damaged pub sign now showing only part of the artist’s name.
This year’s just published Buildings At Risk Register highlights Kentish Drovers & Halfway House in London’s Old Kent Road as suffering from ‘slow decay’.
The building has ceased to be a pub but the grade II listing includes the surviving pub sign which is the longest in the country. A curving picture depicts a rural Old Kent Road.
The entry adds that the sign has a ‘solution agreed but not yet implemented’.
The Heritage of London Trust had offered a £15,000 grant but has now withdrawn from the project.
Last year Southwark Council awarded the contract to Austin Winkley & Associates for the restoration of the building and mural. Existing modern additions to the fabric will be removed including plastic replacement windows.
There has been a pub on the site since at least 1805 when it was known as the Old Kentish Drovers. The present Kentish Drovers & Halfway House building dates from about 1838. Drovers bringing cattle up from Kent to Smithfield Market had paused there halfway between Deptford Bridge and Southwark. Nearby Drovers Place may indicate the site of a field used for resting and grazing.
The River Peck ran across the main road on the west side (now Commercial Way) on its way from Peckham to the Thames.
The mural dates from about 1880 and is extremely rare being painted not on tiles but structural ceramic blocks by Doulton of Lambeth artist Alice Daniels.
The ground floor is now occupied by De View restaurant featuring West African cuisine.
***The Buildings At Risk register also highlights ‘slow decay’ further along the Pilgrims’ Way at Thurnham church.
An early photograph of the Kentish Drovers sign before damage inflicted.
