History notes: The Globe public house, Maple Street

This photo taken in the 1880s shows the Globe public house on the corner of Maple Street and Whitfield Street in Fitzrovia. To the right in the photo can be seen Whitfield Street school.

The pub was still standing in the late-1940s (or possibly later) as it is named on the Ordnance Survey map from that time. There is a photo of the interior at Getty Images dated 1949.

The area had suffered from bombing during World War 2, with many buildings lying as ruins or the sites cleared. On the post war map the school is marked as “disused”.

An earlier map from 1862-74 shows it marked as “PH” next to adjacent terraces of houses, when Maple Street was known as London Street.

I’ve not found a record of when the pub first opened. It may have been purpose built along with the neighbouring houses, or constructed by either altering the existing mid-18th-century buildings, as was frequently done, or perhaps by demolishing and rebuilding on the site.

The photo is from an archive held by Historic England. It is referred to as “An exterior view from the north-west of the Globe on London Street“. This particular photo is from a series which contains seven albums showing the exteriors of public houses dating from 1880 to 1899, taken by the photographers H and R Stiles for Watney and Company Limited.

The archive entry states: Victorian public house. 1880s, Globe, London Street. In the album, the photograph is numbered 118. London Street was subsequently renamed Maple Street.

According to the Survey of London, 1949, “The east side of [Whitfield Street] now presents very little of its original frontage as it has been much rebuilt and its old houses have been destroyed by the raids.”

Reference is also made to a “new school” occupying “the northern half of the space between Howland Street and Maple Street.” Presumably on the site of the one in the photo — possibly a temporary prefab which was to be short-lived.

The Survey notes that many of the houses “have now either disappeared or are being demolished since they were too seriously damaged to survive”.

The Globe pub is not mentioned as standing on Maple Street at the time of the 1949 Survey. “Only the western section between Fitzroy and Cleveland Streets has survived the war, with the exception of three houses, Nos. 14, 16 and 18, farther east, on the north side of the way,” states the entry for Maple Street.

The Survey states that the south side of Maple Street was part of the Bedford Estate and the houses were built from 1777. The land later passed to the Cartwright family.

In 1955 Max Rayne bought the Cartwright St Pancras estate, including the site of the Globe pub which together with the Getty archive photo, suggests it was still there into the 1950s.

His property company, London Merchant Securities, moved quickly and demolished the Georgian and early Victorian terraced houses, creating a commercial sub-district either side of Howland Street.

Today on the corner of Maple and Whitfield Street sits a brash, glass office and retail block. Known as The Qube, or 90 Whitfield Street, it was originally built by London Merchant Securities (later part of Derwent London) in the 2000s, and is the second building to occupy the site since 1949.

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