The Elgin Public House, 96 Ladbroke Grove, London W11, is a Grade II listed pub on the corner of Ladbroke Grove (which has the longest façade) and Westbourne Park Road. A pub on this site was first granted a licence in 1856, and was noted as a "lonely public house" on a desolate corner site in 1860 (Sheppard). But it was rebuilt in 1868, and flourished a horse-bus depot and passenger waiting room. Brick with stucco dressings, it has pedestalled columns to the pub frontage on the ground floor, and some pleasing decorative touches, like the quoins, the curved cornices above the second-floor windows, and the keystones over the windows above. The entrance, as shown above right, is promising, but hardly prepares the customer for the glories within.
A lavish and intricately patterned gold-etched glass screen of c.1893 in the interior (see Girouard 208).
Included in CAMRA's Inventory of Historic Interiors, the pub's interior presented quite a different appearance by the end of the Victorian period, an appearance which it has retained today — for, as the listing text says, it has notable "original features." These come not from the time of rebuilding in the late 1860s, but from the early 1890s, when the pub came into the hands of a certain William George Dickinson.
Left to right: (a) The glass engraving is enhanced by richly coloured crystal studs, and framed with skilful wood-carving. (b) Ornamental tiles lining the saloon bar walls. Just visible at the top, on each side, are monogrammed initials. (c) Muli-colour borders, ironwork ribbing and the lamp fitments all enhance the general effect.
The strikingly coloured and patterned windows were the work of the firm of Walter Gibbs and Sons — though Walter himself died in 1891 (see Girouard 174).
Photograph of the exterior originally posted on the geograph website by Chris Whippet; photographs of the interior originally shown on the CAMRA page, by Noel Tracy. All the photographs were kindly made available for non-commercial reuse under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 2.0) licence, and most have been cropped or slightly adjusted for use on this webpage. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Bibliography
The Elgin, Ladbroke Grove. Geograph. Web. 22 January 2025.
"Elgin, Notting Hill." CAMRA. Web. 22 January 2025.
"The Elgin Public House, 96, Ladbroke Grove, London W11." Historic England. Web. 22 January 2025.
Girouard, Mark. Victorian Pubs. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Sheppard, FHW, ed. "The Ladbroke estate: The 1860s onwards." Survey of London: Vol. 37, Northern Kensington. London, 1973. British History Online. Web. 22 January 2025.
Created 22 January 2025