Just a few days ago, on this blog, we were paying a visit to Adela Street, the location of their yard in the 1972 Steptoe and Son movie.
We were about to post our next article about a pub called The Narrow Boat – once the Victoria Arms which was positioned until 1989 on the Ladbroke Grove bridge over the canal.
A very small establishment, it stood just next to a “dingy” staircase and alleyway which formed a short cut between Ladbroke Grove and what was Church Place – handy for the bus stop for the number 18 bus along the Harrow Road. Down the stairs were the toilets of the pub and a small beer garden.
In later years it became called “The Narrow Boat” and was a Fullers pub. It was a regular in the Good Beer Guide. It fell into disrepair when the landlord, known as Wally, retired. Sainsbury’s needed a wider bridge for their lorries to stock their new store on the site of the gas works. So the bridge had to go and so did the pub.
But, five years before. a 1984 episode of the TV series “Minder” (Season 4, Episode 6, “If Money Be the Food of Love, Play On”) was shot there. Here is a still from that episode.
But where is Dennis Waterman standing. Well, we think it\s likely that he’s near the top of Adela Street. One small street, one giant leap for cinematic history…
3 comments
My wife and I had one of our first “dates” (well, a drink together) in the Narrow Boat in 1978. I had foolishly taken a flat in Kensal Rise, and only later discovered I’d chosen probably the only location in London where there wasn’t a pub for well over a mile in any direction! But the nearly 2-mile walk to the Narrow Boat was worth it for the Fullers ESB!
Didn’t know that about Kensal Rise’s dryness. No pub areas are sometimes due to the original builders being Quakers. Laing’s the builders for instance were a Quaker company who build no pubs at all in the Mill Hill Broadway area. Kensal Town meanwhile must have had anti-Quaker builders. Never in an area of London could we see so many pubs built – now there are none alas.
This image is from Series 2 Episode 2 – Whose Wife Is It Anyway