Forgotten History of Jermyn Street - Tinker Tailor Location
POSTED BY CONTROL
Other than the title and brief mentions in the introduction, the first time the words 'Tinker Tailor' appear in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is in chapter thirty-one. It is only at this point that Prideaux tells Smiley about his briefing with Control at the service flat in St. James's. In an already complicated narrative, screenwriter Arthur Hopcraft recognised that he could not keep viewers in the dark about the meaning of ‘Tinker Tailor’ until episode five. The decision to dramatise this scene at the very start helps viewers enormously and provides a context for the unfolding narrative.
As the opening credits for episode one of Tinker Tailor fade out, the scene opens on Control in the back of a taxi.
The taxi pulls up on the side of the street furthest away from the camera. Control gets out and proceeds to walk south west down Jermyn Street.
Next we meet Jim Prideaux. He is sat in a restaurant on the opposite side of the street that Control has walked down. Once he sees Control, he pays his bill and leaves the restaurant.
So let's start with where Prideaux was sitting. It is a famous restaurant, newly opened when filming took place, and forty-eight years later it is still there. Rowley's Restaurant at 113 Jermyn Street opened in 1976 and has a reputation as one of London's finest steak restaurants. Today it continues to be run by the same family.
Thanks to John Rundle we have a contemporary photo (below right) matching the exact shot of where Prideaux sat as he waited for Control (below left). (John would like to thank the staff and management of Rowley's Restaurant who kindly gave him permission to take this photograph.)
We see Control disappear into a doorway (circled below) but in John's photo (above right) you will notice that doorway is missing. That is because we are not looking at the same building. The original building was demolished in 2010.
When you research demolished buildings or organisations that are no longer around, you hope there might be a Wikipedia page and perhaps the odd photo floating about on the internet. It is very rare to discover a personal recollection so full of flavour and detail, that it makes you feel as if you have just visited the time and place in question.
Film critic Roger Ebert, wistfully described in remarkable detail what it was like to stay at the Eyrie Mansion Hotel and brought the characters that inhabited it to life. Ebert describes how Eyrie Mansion eventually became the 22 Jermyn Street Hotel in 1990, before it closed its doors in 2009. His account transports us back to life in Jermyn Street in the early 80s...
Oh, no. No. No. This cannot be. They're tearing down 22 Jermyn Street in London. Much of the block is going. Bates hat shop, Trumper the barber, Sergios cafe, all vanishing. Jermyn Street was my street in London. My neighbourhood.
There, on a corner near the Lower Regent Street end, I found a time capsule within which the eccentricity and charm of an earlier time was still preserved. It was called the Eyrie Mansion. When I stayed there, I considered myself to be living there. I always wanted to live in London, and this was the closest I ever got.
I recalled that Suzanne Craig, a Chicago friend of mine, had once informed me: "If you like London so much, you should stay at the Eyrie Mansion in Jermyn Street."
One block down Regent and right on Jermyn and I found a small sign over the sidewalk above a doorway. It opened upon a marble corridor pointing me to a man who regarded me from eyes in a scarred face. The gatekeeper of the Eyrie. He disappeared and, when I drew abreast, he was behind a wooden counter protecting an old-fashioned switchboard, a thick registration ledger and a wall of pigeonholes.
"How may I help you, sir?"
"Is this . . . a hotel?"
"Since 1685, I believe. You require a room?" He had a Spanish accent.
"I'd . . . how much are your rates?"
He consulted a card tacked to the wall.
"For you, sir, £35. That includes full English breakfast, parlour and bedroom, own gas fire and maid. Bath en suite."
The rate was a third of what I was paying. I asked to be shown these quarters. He locked the street door. Then we ascended in an open ironwork elevator to an upper floor and I was let into 3A. A living room had tall old windows overlooking Jermyn Street. Dark antique furniture: a sideboard, a desk, a chest of drawers, a sofa facing the fireplace, two low easy chairs, tall mirrors above the fire and the sideboard. He used a wooden match to light the gas under artificial logs.
A hall led to a bedroom in which space had been found for two single beds, a bedside table between them, an armoire, a chest, a small vanity table and another gas fireplace. In the bathroom was enthroned the largest bathtub I had ever seen, even in the movies. The fixtures were not modern; the toilet had an overhead tank with a pull-chain.
"This is larger than I expected," I said. "How many rooms do you have in all?"
"Sixteen."
So, there is a lot for us to digest here. Firstly, Ebert mentions Bates hat shop. This rather low resolution photo of Ebert below shows him standing in front of the street signs for both Bates and the Eyrie Mansion Hotel.
We can actually see the 'Bates' sign and the front window of the store in the shot below on the right.
Although we do not have interior photos of the hotel with which to make a comparison, having read Ebert's account, I would be astonished if the interior scenes were not shot in the Eyrie Mansion Hotel. (In fact, I could imagine this being an ideal location for the real security services to have a 'service flat'!)
While reviewing this article, Chris pointed out something he had only noticed recently about the room Control kept his research in. Take a look at the photo below...
I do not know how many times I have watched the series but I have only ever seen a phone on the corner of that desk. It is actually bath taps and a shower head! Which means Control and Prideaux are in the bathroom and that is a board covering the bathtub, with another resting against the wall.
Ebert goes on to provide us with some lovely detail about the owner of the hotel and the transition from the Eyrie Mansion Hotel to 22 Jermyn Street:
That first morning I walked down Regent Street to St James's Park, strolled around the ponds, came up by Prince Charles's residence, climbed St James's Street and returned the full length of Jermyn. I ordered tea. It consisted of tomato, cucumber and butter sandwiches, which the English are unreasonably fond of; ham and butter sandwiches, which I am unreasonably fond of with Colman's English mustard; and cookies – or, excuse me, biscuits.
I had just settled in my easy chair when a key turned in the lock and a nattily dressed man in his 60s let himself in. He held a bottle of Teacher's scotch under his arm. He walked to the sideboard, took a glass, poured a shot, and while filling it with soda from the siphon, asked me, "Fancy a spot?"
"I'm afraid I don't drink," I said.
"Oh, my."
This man sat on my sofa, lit a cigarette, and said: "I'm Henry."
"Am I . . . in your room?"
"Oh, no, no, old boy! I'm only the owner. I dropped in to say hello."
This was Henry Togna Sr. He appears in a Dickens novel I haven't yet read. I'm sure of it. He appeared in my room almost every afternoon when I stayed at the Eyrie Mansion. It was not difficult to learn his story.
Henry and his wife Doddy lived in the top-floor flat. He may have been the only man to live all of his life within a block of Piccadilly Circus. The Mansion was originally purchased in 1915 by his parents, who came from Italy, and Doddy's parents, who were English. The two children grew up together, married, and fathered Henry Jr, "who keeps his irons in a lot of fires". He asked me how I learned of the Eyrie Mansion. "Oh, yes! Suzanne. A lovely girl."
One day he invited me to lunch. He was much concerned about the future of the Mansion. "Our landlady is the Queen," he told me. "The Crown Estate agents have always tried to keep the lease terms reasonable, but the price of property is making the most alarming advances. I've raised my prices as much as I dare. Henry Jr wants to take over and make this a luxury hotel. Well, it's in the blood. But it frightens me. What kinds of loans will he have to take out? How will he make the payments?"
He brought Henry Jr around to meet me. This was a handsome, pleasant man; friendly, confiding. He said he hoped to keep the charm of the Eyrie Mansion. "But at the prices I'll be forced to charge, the public won't stand for this," he said, regarding the carpets, frayed at the edges, and the furniture somewhat nicked, and staring balefully at the gas fireplace.
Word came in 1990 that Henry Jr had taken over operations and closed the hotel for renovation. In his announcement, he wrote: "I agreed to buy the hotel from my father, famous for his wonderful eccentricity." Of course, Henry Jr discontinued the gas fires.
The Eyrie Mansion was renamed 22 Jermyn Street, and my wife Chaz and I stayed there many times. I liked it, she adored it. As the luxurious 22 Jermyn Street, the hotel prospered. Croissants and cappuccino were now served as an alternative to full English breakfast. There'd be a flower on the tray. Clients included movie stars and politicians, who valued its privacy and its absence of a lobby. Doddy and Henry Sr would have been proud.
But in autumn 2009 Henry Jr wrote to us: "Sadly the lease has expired and the greater part of the city block in which the hotel is located is to be redeveloped by the Crown Estate as a project named St James's Gateway, over the next two or three years. Like much else in London, it is planned that this very comprehensive and handsome project will be completed in time for the Olympic Games in 2012."
Just what Olympic guests will be looking for in London. One more god-damned comprehensive and handsome project.
I have just pulled out the detail in Ebert's article about the layout of the rooms, the owners and the transition from one hotel to the other. Give yourself a treat and read his entire account here.
There is one small remaining mystery about these scenes - the location of the phone boxes (these are likely Kiosk No. 8 boxes designed in 1965) we see Prideaux and Mendel using.
There is not much to go on here, although it is reasonable to assume the location was probably close by. However, running along the wall behind Prideaux we can see three small ridges at about head height.
It is unlikely that any of the phone boxes still exist at the location (although it is not impossible) and the building behind them may have been altered or demolished.
I have been able to find one possible location site in the area though. 130 Jermyn Street is an office building located on an island site on the corner of Haymarket. The building has undergone extensive redevelopment in recent years and it does have three small ridges running around the outside.
We hope the late Mr Ebert would approve of us sharing excerpts from his account and some of his photos to further preserve the legend of the Eyrie Mansion Hotel.
Our thanks again to John Rundle for the photo taken from Rowley's Restaurant.
Comments
Post a Comment