Esoteric London

Charlton Place, London, N1. Photo ©RogerDean 2014

Gaslight And Daylight, With Some London Scenes They Shine Upon – George Augustus Sala, 1859:

The Surrey shore of the Thames at London is dotted with damp houses of entertainment. The water-side public-house, though, perchance, hard by an archiepiscopal residence, and over against a legislative palace, is essentially watersidey. Mud is before, behind, around, about it: mud that in wet weather surges against its basement in pea-soup-like gushes, and that in summer cakes into hard parallelograms of dirt, which, pulverised by the feet of customers, fly upwards in throat-choking dust. The foundations of the water-side public-house are piles of timbers, passably rotten; timbers likewise shore up no inconsiderable portion of its frontage. It is a very damp house.