History notes: Pollock’s Theatrical Print Warehouse, Whitfield Street

Enjoy it while it lasts, because this old shop sign is about to be lost in the passage of time as the new owner of 41 Whitfield Street plans on opening a tea room and hotel complete with updated signage.

Pollock’s Toy Museum and Shop used to trade from two neighbouring buildings: number 1 Scala Street, which is Grade II listed; and 41 Whitfield Street, which is an “unlisted building of merit” in the Charlotte Street conservation area. After the business closed at the end of 2022 the two buildings, which were joined, were put up for sale together but failed to sell.

They were then marketed separately and the larger 41 Whitfield Street was bought last year, and the new owner has made a planning application to Camden Council, giving an insight into the proposed future use of the site.

Drawings submitted this month reveal that a new sign is planned for the shopfront declaring, rather awkwardly: “The Museum Pollocks Time Present”.

Now old and faded, and a rarity in Fitzrova, the current shopfront and its signage was painted in 1970 when Marguerite Fawdry acquired the building, having a year earlier moved her Pollock’s Toy Museum and Shop from 44 Monmouth Street in Covent Garden to 1 Scala Street in Fitzrovia.

Fawdry had bought the museum collection, including the printing plates for the toy theatres, in the 1950s and had set up her first museum and shop in 1955.

The collection takes its name from Benjamin Pollock who created paper cut-out figures and scenery. These toy theatres were produced at Pollock’s shop in Hoxton until his death in 1937.

When she opened 41 Whitfield Street as an extension to the museum, Fawdry decorated the shopfront as a tribute to Benjamin Pollock’s original Theatrical Print Warehouse.

But the Print Warehouse actually pre-dates Pollock. The original was at 73 Hoxton Street and was the creation of John Redington, who had obtained printing plates made by John Kilby Green, in an area of London where a cluster of toy theatre manufactures thrived between 1830 and the Second World War.

On Redington’s death in 1876 his daughter Eliza took over the business. In 1877 she married Benjamin Pollock who had taken a fancy to her along with the contents of her shop.

Today Pollock’s Toy Museum has a temporary home in Croydon and the Leadenhall Market. In Covent Garden there is Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop which was originally a branch set up by Marguerite Fawdry in 1980 but was sold in 1988 and is now run as a completely separate business.

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