It seems the Cock Tavern designation as a ‘Community Asset’ is at risk as it has expired.
The developers want to turn the Function Room into a flats, as has happened to the upper floors previously. They have lodged a planning application in order to allow a fire escape access, which has been prevented due to a dispute with residents in Walker House where the access would be situated.
We the Somers Town History Club will support its designation as a Community Asset.
The pub is the only working class pub left – we documented the loss of 13 pubs in our film Spirit! – and serves a useful community purpose.
The current pub was built part of the Listed Ossulston Estate adjoining council flats 1929-30 designs of the LCCArchitects’ Department under G. Topham Forrest. However it has a longer lineage as ac Cock Tavern was known
the Cock Tavern as a local facility is known to have existed since at least 1856 and its entry into the
Post Office Directory of this year, when it was run by a Miss S Howland. The location of the Cock Tavern before its assimilation into Walker House is further known to be on the junction of Clarendon Square, Phoenix Street and Chalton Street. This was directly adjacent its present location.
With its location also facing the old Polygon, the place where many world renowned thinkers such as Godwin and Wollstonecraft lived in the 1700s, we feel it is a important that it should remain.
The pub has also been listed on Pub Heritage site.
Ossulston Estate is described thus:
. the most important inner-city estate of the inter-war period, representing the most considered attempt by the LCC to inject new thinking into inner-city housing estates. It was influenced in particular by Viennese housing models and was innovative in terms of layout and elevation.’
- Heritage statement Prepared for / Flamestrike Ltd. September 2014
The Cock Tavern, apparently changed location, too as evidenced in earlier records.
Post Office Directory entries show it to assume that of 62 Chalton Street in 1921; 1 – 2 Clarendon
Square in 1934 and 1938; and at 23 Phoenix Street in 1944, its present address and location. As landlord from 1915, a William Claude Chatty can be seen to have occupied the property both throughout these various changes of addresses and its final, actual move, eventually as part of the Ossulston Estate.
In first and third edition OS maps (Figures 4 & 5) it is merely marked ‘PH’ for
‘Public House’:
It also fits into Council own policy:
Policy 7.9
Heritage-led Regeneration
Strategic
A Regeneration schemes should identify and make use of heritage assets and reinforce the qualities that make them significant so that they can help
stimulate environmental, economic and community regeneration. This includes
buildings, landscape features, views, Blue Ribbon network and public realm.
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and
Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or
historic interest.
Name: WALKER HOUSE SOUTHERN BLOCK INCLUDING THE
COCK TAVERN PUBLIC HOUSE
References
Quotes Text and images taken from Heritage statement 178a Ltd / Registered in England No: 07753020 / Registered Office: 178a Ferme Park Road, London, N8 9BN Prepared for / Flamestrike Ltd. September 2014\