This is an alley I’ve written about before, but it recently underwent substantial change. With some additional information about its history, it’s time to have a look again.

Then
Now

The alley is one of the ancient alignments, appearing in the middle of the 1600s, and although the area changed a lot over the centuries, it remained very much a cluster of smaller buildings surrounding the alley.

Until WWII, when a bomb flattened the entire site.

It turns out that the alley was culverted for a couple of decades as a large 1950s building, known as Oyez House, which housed the printing works, storage, and offices for the Solicitors’ Law Stationery Society swallowed up the whole site.

However, the alley was reinstated in the 1970s when the office was split in half.

The northern side was rebuilt some years ago, but the southern side was still the 1950s office block until a couple of years ago. It’s since been demolished and replaced with a modern office building, thereby enhancing the alley as well.

The corner of the alley is now marked by a blue-glazed faïence tiled building, replacing the old White Swan pub that used to be in the middle of the plot. They also substantially widened the alley along the pub’s side to create more space for standing outside when the weather is nice, or people need a smoke.

There was also another pub on the site prior to the 1950s rebuilding, called the Printers Devil, and by tradition, the Printers Devil was patronised by news journalists while the White Swan was for sports journalists. The sports pub survives and the news pub has vanished, which you read whatever you like into our preferences for journalism.

The heritage of the area’s former pubs has however been recorded in the blue tiles with small printer’s marks and pub signs embossed into some of them. Helpfully, a small stone plaque on the floor also explains their meaning.

So there’s the pubs – Fetter Lane Falcon, the Vintner Arms, the White Swan, the Gulliver’s Travels and the Printer’s Devil. Also, local poet, John Dryden and in reference to printing, the Monotype typefaces.

Further down the alley away from the pub and into the office proper, they’ve clad the building in a modern interpretation of rusticated stucco, and here’s a very nice detail in one section of wall that conceals a ventilation wall for the cycle store inside the building.

My visit was enlivened by a security guard coming out to tell me that the building owners don’t like it being photographed. Well, tough, I am on a public highway.

However, the site also included improved public access, and there’s a new sunken garden around the side, open to the public (as required in the planning approval), which is a rather nice and quite well-hidden addition to the area.

There’s also a column covered in quotes, and helpfully, a metal plaque nearby tells you who wrote each one.

However, I still don’t know why the alley is called Greystoke Place.