The Bulls Head Barnes - from the other bank

[Serial_Apologist]

To my delight I just discovered this picture on the BBC London weather site today, sent in by a viewer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weatherwatchers/report/f9897282-8363-4efd-a868-b363a17b2ff4/

The Bulls Head pub is the taller white Victorian building near the right-hand end of the view across the Thames taken from the Middlesex side. As an autobiographical aside, only partly in view at the extreme left of that picture, where the main road disappears as it goes north alongside the river, is a house which stands in a corner angle. This was the house of a Dr Wilcox, who was head of gynaecology at one of the top London hospitals when I was in junior school, and whose son Jeremy was my best friend. It was Jeremy who took the trouble to explain the facts of life to us 11-year olds in a series of between lesson breaks, which leads me to reflect on how innocent we were back in the 1950s.

I expect you all really needed to know this!

[gurnemanz]

To my delight I just discovered this picture on the BBC London weather site today, sent in by a viewer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weatherwatchers/report/f9897282-8363-4efd-a868-b363a17b2ff4/

The Bulls Head pub is the taller white Victorian building near the right-hand end of the view across the Thames taken from the Middlesex side. As an autobiographical aside, only partly in view at the extreme left of that picture, where the main road disappears as it goes north alongside the river, is a house which stands in a corner angle. This was the house of a Dr Wilcox, who was head of gynaecology at one of the top London hospitals when I was in junior school, and whose son Jeremy was my best friend. It was Jeremy who took the trouble to explain the facts of life to us 11-year olds in a series of between lesson breaks, which leads me to reflect on how innocent we were back in the 1950s.

I expect you all really needed to know this!

Thanks for that photo. Two memories rather far apart in time come to mind:

1) A very early memory is of seeing the great Tubby Hayes at "The Bull" in the 60s. I remember it was so full we sat on the bar room carpet which was in pretty well-used state. I think I was still a Sixth Former down the road in Wandsworth. I had nothing to do with rowing but our school had a boat house right opposite on the other side of the river.

2) My longest surviving aunt ended her life in a home in Barnes. She died in 2103, aged 99. The last time I saw her was a couple of years earlier when we went to lunch with her at an Italian Restaurant on the river very close to the pub. Incidentally her husband, my godfather, was also a medic. He was for many years a surgeon at the nearby Roehampton Hospital, having been there during the War when the Reach for the Sky pilot, Douglas Bader, was being treated after losing both legs.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for that photo. Two memories rather far apart in time come to mind:

1) A very early memory is of seeing the great Tubby Hayes at "The Bull" in the 60s. I remember it was so full we sat on the bar room carpet which was in pretty well-used state. I think I was still a Sixth Former down the road in Wandsworth. I had nothing to do with rowing but our school had a boat house right opposite on the other side of the river.

2) My longest surviving aunt ended her life in a home in Barnes. She died in 2103, aged 99. The last time I saw her was a couple of years earlier when we went to lunch with her at an Italian Restaurant on the river very close to the pub. Incidentally her husband, my godfather, was also a medic. He was for many years a surgeon at the nearby Roehampton Hospital, having been there during the War when the Reach for the Sky pilot, Douglas Bader, was being treated after losing both legs.

Thanks for those memories, gurney. Back in those days I recall many a "well-used" nightclub carpet of which, if sat on, you were likely to take some of the pattern home with you, fixed in nasty encrustations, after the gig! I think Spike Milligan wrote a poem on the subject. I also rather think that that boathouse you mention on the Chiswick side river bank is still there.

[vinteuil]

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... and just along to the right (towards Barnes railway bridge) are the houses with blue plaques marking the residences of Ninette de Valois and of Gustav Holst. I don't know whether he took the bus from there to get to St Paul's Girls School in Hammersmith (something he couldn't do now what with Hammersmith Bridge being closed, and him being dead.)

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[vinteuil]

... I think I was still a Sixth Former down the road in Wandsworth. I had nothing to do with rowing but our school had a boat house right opposite on the other side of the river.

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... Emanuel School? The boat-house is still there -

https://heartheboatsing.com/2020/06/09/clubs-and-boathouses-of-the-tideway-part-ii/

( ... and for what it's worth, Linden House, mentioned and illustrated there, is where Mme v and I had our wedding reception )


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[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I took a very very nice girlfriend, but a bit sheltered, ex public school, to the Bulls Head because she had never heard "live jazz". She set off to find the loos, came back, and excitedly reported, "I think I've seen the band! They are all smoking cocaine". Oh, those roll ups!

"...a Dr Wilcox, who was head of gynaecology at one of the top London hospitals when I was in junior school, and whose son Jeremy was my best friend. It was Jeremy who took the trouble to explain the facts of life to us 11-year olds in a series of between lesson breaks, which leads me to reflect on how innocent we were back in the 1950s."...

With me it was a boy whose father was a mortuary technician at the local hospital. His father had brought home a box of medical textbooks that were being thrown out. This boy brought one into school and whispered to us all confidentially, "It's got totally naked women in this, you can see everything!". It was actually a medical textbook on Venereal disease with full plate photographs. Gastly & enough to put anyone off sex for life, especially when you're only about thirteen!

[Serial_Apologist]

.
... and just along to the right (towards Barnes railway bridge) are the houses with blue plaques marking the residences of Ninette de Valois and of Gustav Holst. I don't know whether he took the bus from there to get to St Paul's Girls School in Hammersmith (something he couldn't do now what with Hammersmith Bridge being closed, and him being dead.)

.

Especially the latter!!!

Mind, there are stories about Holst walking huge distances acroos the West Country.

[Serial_Apologist]

... Emanuel School? The boat-house is still there -

https://heartheboatsing.com/2020/06/09/clubs-and-boathouses-of-the-tideway-part-ii/

( ... and for what it's worth, Linden House, mentioned and illustrated there, is where Mme v and I had our wedding reception )


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Lovely pics of riverside buildings along my favourite cycling destination - pre lockdown. The Rutland Arms depicted in Picture 6 is/was my regular stop-off point.

[vinteuil]

Lovely pics of riverside buildings along my favourite cycling destination...

... we have doubtless met - our favourite walk these last forty five years. "Bloody cyclists!" I regularly intone as one passes, to mme v ( a keen cyclist).

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[gurnemanz]

... Emanuel School? The boat-house is still there -

https://heartheboatsing.com/2020/06/09/clubs-and-boathouses-of-the-tideway-part-ii/

( ... and for what it's worth, Linden House, mentioned and illustrated there, is where Mme v and I had our wedding reception )


.

Thanks for the link to pictures. It was indeed Emanuel. I went back there for the first time since leaving a couple of years ago for a 60s reunion they had organised. Loads of old codgers present who I had last seen as teenagers. It was a boys' grammar school then, now mixed and fee-paying. I used to travel to Clapham Junction every school day for seven years, amazingly with a free season ticket paid for by Surrey County Council. I could even use it on Saturday to go to Selhurst and watch Palace.

[vinteuil]

It was indeed Emanuel. / ... / It was a boys' grammar school then, now mixed and fee-paying...

... £19,278 p.a. now

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[gurnemanz]

... £19,278 p.a. now

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They've got a boat house to maintain .... Used to be so-called voluntary-aided. That went out with 70s comprehensivisation.

[Lordgeous]

I think I saw Mose Allison there in the 70s. Again, it was packed! (I already knew the facts of life though!).

[Tenor Freak]

Used to love going to the Bull's Head as it was an easy train ride from Hounslow and close to Barnes Bridge station. Got a lot of my jazz education there. Once saw a band with Jimmy and Alan Skidmore playing tenor, and I preferred the old man's playing.

Back in the 80s there seemed to be hundreds of gigs in pubs around west London with the likes of Bill Le Sage or Duncan Lamont.

[Serial_Apologist]

By coincidence, much of last night's Channel 4 News was presented by Krishnan Guru-Murthy from a rooftop adjacent to the Bull's Head - showing drinkers congregated on the pavement and opposite in the pouring rain.