Doulton House, Black Prince Road SE1

Right up until the 1950s the area behind White Hart Drawdock in Lambeth was dominated by the huge Doulton potteries. Originally they made sanitary ware but in the 1870s expanded into art pottery. An enormous building by R. Stark Wilkinson was built in 1878 to be headquarters, studios, factory and advertisement for the products, all in one. Only one corner survived the comprehensive redevelopment that followed Doulton's departure for Staffordshire in 1956, but it still impresses. It is a riot of polychromatic Gothic brickwork and terracotta gargoyles.
Over the door is a charming relief of potters by one of the most distinguished to work in the building, George Tinworth.
Tinworth himself appears standing at the centre, holding a pot. Seated to the right is Sir Henry Doulton, and working steadily on the left is Hannah Barlow, with her cat under her stool. Behind, a worker carries a tray of pots rather perilously on his head, though no doubt this was a lot safer than it looks.
The scene is a gallery of Victorian facial hair and hats. What would they have made of 'designer' stubble and baseball caps?
Gilbert Bayes, who was also at work on the London Fire Brigade HQ round the corner, created a frieze for a later wing on the building which happily survives in the V&A.

White Hart Drawdock SE1

For the first time, this blog features an ornament of the future.
White Hart Drawdock is a medieval wharf a little upstream of Lambeth Palace, dating back to the 15th century at least. In the 1860s it was cut off from the Thames by the construction of the Albert Embankment, but access was maintained through a pair of tunnels beneath the new road. The enormous Doulton pottery works was next door, and the wharf was busy with barges taking the firm's ceramic drainpipes to London Docks for export round the world.
After Doulton's closed in 1956, White Hart Drawdock languished unused and increasingly unsightly until Berkeley Homes were forced to put their hands in their pockets as a condition of planning permission for nearby flats. Now the wharf is being restored and beautified with oak arches and 'street boats' by Handspring Design. It should look rather nice - the designs are here.

Albert Embankment SE1

Just along from Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury's London pad, a ship sails majestically out of a 1970s office block straight into the traffic on Albert Embankment.
The offices are those of the International Maritime Organisation, built in 1977 by Douglas Marriott, Worby & Robinson. The fad for faceted bronze-coloured cladding was at its height then.
The ship's bow was added in 2001 as "the international memorial to the world's seafarers, past, present and future". It is by Michael Sandle, who was also responsible for the Memorial for the Victims of a Helicopter Disaster, Mannheim (1985) and the Malta Seige Memorial (1989), a 13 ton bronze bell.The Seafarers Memorial is rather poignant with the seaman on the bow, exposed and alone, secured by an oh-so-thin safety line to the mast behind him. Unfortunately, the dedication to all seafarers over all time dilutes the sentiment so far as to make it almost meaningless.

1 Hatton Garden EC1

The NatWest on Holborn Circus is a humdrum Victorian building (1870) by an unrecorded architect. The carvings on over the doors on Hatton Garden are rather nice, but again the sculptor is not known (at any rate, I have not managed to find out who did them).
But they are rather elegant, transforming utilitarian vents into works of art. Nude figures emerge from swirls of acanthus, carrying symbols of their occupations.
To the right, the Spirit of the Land carries a sheaf of wheat, a bunch of grapes and a pomegranate, plus a scythe to harvest them with, and the Spirit of the Sea holds a paddle with a trident and a dolphin carved on it, pouring out the bounty of the deep with his other hand.
To the left, Commerce with Mercury's rod and a bag of gold flirts with Industry, holding a gear shaft and a distaff.

25-35 Grosvenor Place, SW1

The ends of the old AEI building are marked with pavillions topped by more statuary by Maurice Lambert. These are not as disturbing as the angels, but very odd. I think they epitomise engineering. Weird creatures with horseheads on long snake-like necks, bat wings, human torsos and lions paws support a strange gimballed mechanism embellished with esoteric symbols. It is impossible to take them seriously today because of the creatures' strong resemblence to Jah Jah Binks.

25-35 Grosvenor Place, SW1

For years I have cycled briskly past the old AEI building on my way from the station, dismissing it as a bland, conformist design that was intended not to offend the Queen (it looks out on the garden wall of Buckingham Palace).
The building was designed in 1956 by Wimperis, Simpson & Fyffe to house the bureaucrats that ran one of the conglomerates that dominated British industry until the advent of Thatcherism. The elderly modernist Sir Albert Richardson was hauled in as a consultant, presumably to intimidate the planners and Her Majesty into giving permission.
The facade would be extremely boring, except that Maurice Lambert, sculptor brother of the composer Constant Lambert, was brought in to add some decoration.
The images are among the most disturbing I have ever seen. I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to work out what they could possibly mean.
Over the columns of the pediment at the centre of the facade, six angels triumph over demons.
Renaissance and Victorian artists portraying the triumph of St Michael over Lucifer show a knightly figure trampling a scaly serpenty figure beneath his feet, aiming his sword at his horrible head. It is the battle of good and evil, and we are all rooting for good.
Lambert carved a line of men torturing women.
The angels gaze into eternity, their faces calm and emotionless. They may even be experiencing some sort of bliss.
They take no notice of the demons they hold, however much they squirm, squeal and
bite. The angels are in control though - one tightens a rope round his demon's neck, another sticks a knife in the demon's belly.
All the angels are clearly men. And all the demons are obviously women. What is going on?

Wandsworth Town Hall, SW18

At last, we conclude our tour in stone through the London Borough of Wandsworth at Tooting and Balham.
Sculptor John Linehan seems to have run out of ideas at this point, or perhaps this area is a bit short on historical incident.
Tooting gets its name from the Anglo-Saxon clan (or inga) of a chief called Tota, and there his is on the right, riding a horse and accepting homage from a family of villeins. He is wearing cross-garters and a Phrygian cap, oddly.
Behind him is Tooting's only famous visitor, Saint Anselm, who was Abbot of Bec in France, which had been given the area by William the Bastard. Anselm is a rather attractive character, trying to bring a bit of rational thought to Christian belief and also standing up to William Rufus who was even more of a bastard than his dad. Anselm became Archbishop of Canterbury, and is seen accepting tithes of wheat and what looks like a monster cabbage from the locals, who are still villeins.
On the left, a rider gallops o'er Tooting Common.
The frieze runs across the whole facade of Wandsworth Town Hall. The intention was to create a rich tapestry of life in the borough through the ages, but the odd Victorian history-book style of some of the costumes just makes it look like the queue for His Worship the Mayor's Christmas Fancy Dress Ball.