If you walk down Rathbone Place, which leads off from Oxford Street you might notice a rather fine old fashioned looking pub on the right hand side - The Black Horse. Take a closer look and notice the alleyway next to it.

May not look like much, but it is another one of those overlooked bits of London history.

This is Evelyn’s Yard - and is named after the noted diarist, John Evelyn. He is most famous for his writings about the Great Fire of London in 1666 and his grand plans for the relaying of the city along a scheme which created wide roads and moved industry to the East-End of the city. His plans were never carried out as they were far too expensive and would have taken too long to impliment. As a result, much of the city was rebuilt to its old design, which in part is what saved all the old tiny alleys that litter the place.

The Yard itself is alas, nothing much to look at anymore as all the old buildings around it have long vanished. Aptly considering the constantly changing nature of the Yard, when I visited the other week, the central area which had been dominated by a large office block was now an empty hole in the ground as the old building had been demolished.

The replacement building does however look rather nice, although as is the norm with architect renditions - the image is ignoring the rest of the Yard which is less interesting to look at.

The yard itself existed at least as far back as 1746 according to John Roque’s Plan of the Cities of London & Westminster, although it was called Black Horse Stables. The yard was later renamed as Evelyn’s Yard, but at the time it was created - it was genuine horse stables for the several coaching inns which were in the area. Slightly confusingly, there was a second larger Black Horse Yard just a few yards away as the crow flies - but with its entrance on Tottenham Court Road. I can imagine that caused a lot of problems with carriages going to the wrong stables.

The renaming probably solved a lot of those problem.

The Black Horse pub, whilst looking quite old - the frontage is actually from the early 20th century. But at least it is a good rendition of an older frontage and fits in well with the heritage of the area. Karl Marx once addressed a crowd in this pub, so if you want to tread in his footsteps, here is a chance for a pint as well.

Links:

The Dick Whittington Ale Trail

The proposed new building inside the yard

Hanway Street conservation area

More photos on my Flickr account

Google Maps

I have been listening to the European Court ruling that Sharon Coleman was constructively dismissed after giving birth to a disabled child and the employer was unwilling to be flexible in her parenting needs.

As presented, it certainly sounds like the company was utterly in the wrong.

However, they just had the mother on BBC News being interviewed, and she was incapable of finishing a single sentence without the use of “yu’ know” at the end of it.

Even taking into account the nerves of being interviewed on TV, it was excruciatingly painful to listen to. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the real reason the company wanted shot of her as an employee.

Within the industry I work in, there is a gargantuan trade show next week. It is quite possibly the biggest trade show of the year, and anyone who is anyone will be there.

Also, being the biggest trade show of the year, every company is convinced that they have to launch a slew of new products and send out dozens of press releases about their new services and products. I have spent the past few weeks bombarded with invites to companies I simply must meet at the conference.

The irony is that I am faced with a choice - either go to the conference but be too busy meeting people to write about it, or not attend the conference and manage to put out quite a lot of news coverage.

The net result is that on Monday morning I will awake to a tidal wave of PR flowing into my email boxes, and it will continue like that for at least three days and then slowly die down. At this point, a second smaller flood will arrive from aggrieved PR hacks begging to know why I didn’t cover their “never heard of you” company during the week.

Well, think about it.

All the mega-firms will make their announcements, and they simply have to get priority. No sensible trade publication can ignore the big players in the industry as those are the ones which most interest the readership. Also, the readership equally don’t want to get a newsletter which is suddenly five times longer than usual, so they only want the big stories.

However, also remember that the readers of the news are themselves at the conference and far too busy doing conferency things to be able to read the news either. Most of them will skim read it all the following week when back at the office.

So, if you are a PR firm, please understand that having all of you, all simultaneously sending out your releases at the same time is actually a damn stupid idea.

Being sensible, we buffer some of the interesting smaller stories for the following weeks, but just think about the logic of having everyone in the industry announcing things at the same time and work out what your chances are of being heard above the noise is likely to be. Pretty slim chances. So, in future - please try to curb your enthusiasm for following the herd and maybe wait for a few weeks - or even better, launch the product several months earlier (I mean actually launch it, not say you will launch it).

Thanky

A press release from the Thames Innovation Centre arrived this morning, which is actually quite interesting in what it is saying. The release comments on a plan to create a new UK science park that addresses environmental concerns on the outskirts of London. The Thames Innovation Centre is the first of a number of eco buildings to be built at Veridion Park in Erith, which is an area in need of economic regeneration.

The £8.2M Thames Innovation Centre is a stylish and well equipped building, housing a range of high quality offices and work spaces as well as IT training facilities, conference rooms and even a coffee shop.

Even a coffee shop? Blimy, such luxuries are scarce to be believed and I am sure that people will be desperate to relocate to the venue now that this astonishing development has been announced.

Sorry for the sarcasm - I’m sure it’s a very nice coffee shop.

Rather a good cartoon seen via Digg which is timely in todays world where privacy rights are reduced to increase state security.

Nicely, it doesn’t make a judgement as to whether that is a good thing or not - simply delivers the message in a simple manner.

Personally, I think it is a bad thing - and excessive to the scale of the threat.

Think about it - how many people do terrorists kill, and then wonder how many people are killed in random murders by “ordinary people” over the same period of time. But which one gets all the attention?

Via Digg