Cowley St London SW1 and Chelsea

Apologies for my absence for a few months. I've not seen any 'new' coalhole covers, until last week that is.

This Luxfer cover bearing the address, 16 Hill St, London EC is round the back of Westminster School. The (almost) square panels are filled with concrete but I think they may have originally been glass.

Visiting Stamford Bridge the other week to see the very sad defeat of the Fulham Under 18s team in the final of the FA Youth Cup, I saw some 'never seen before' coalhole covers on Finborough Road. Unfortunately, I was in such a rush to get to the station to get out of the hellhole that is home to C*****a FC. I've tried to identify them on Google Streetview but can't zoom in enough. You can see what I mean here.

I'm now tweeting as @theplanorak and will post pictures on there as well, so please 'follow' me and tweet me your pictures as well.

Coalhole covers in literature - part 1 Enid Blyton

My daughter has some lovely odd-parents who buy her great gifts. One of the first was a boxed set of Roald Dahl books which I loved as much as she did. Last Christmas they bought her a boxed set of Enid Blyton Secret Seven books. They are quite entertaining, although there is a whiff of 1950s embedded sexism and the leader of the Secret Seven (Peter, if you're interested) is a wannabe fascist dictator.

But imagine my unabandoned joy last night when I read the latest chapter of 'Go Ahead, Secret Seven' to my daughter. The chapter's title was 'Down the Coal-hole' and it featured a bull-terrier being lowered down the coalhole which was in a yard serving several buildings. I checked the book's cover and - sure enough - there's a picture of Colin, Herr Peter and AN Other lifting off the lid of a (rather large) coalhole. The description suggests that Enid Blyton was unfamiliar with the self-locking mechanism of Haywards (and other) foundries and I wonder if she actually checked out how they are secured. The picture on page 108 has a hint of the Luxfer 'cake' design, but the manufacturer of the cover is unfortunatley unknown.

Hatton Garden, London EC1

Visiting Hatton Garden from Brighton is a lot more pleasant now that the Thameslink service has been improved and Farringdon station has been upgraded in a rather tasteful way.

I was intrigued to find that Luxfer coalhole covers dominated the street. Luxfer was a foundry based in the Finsbury EC area of London and probably better known for its pavement lights. I particularly like the way the Luxfer covers look like sliced cakes, ready to be gobbled up.

There is also a Haywards coalhole cover (top) with a combination of glass inserts and holes - another first sighting, I think.

Maunsell Street, London SW1

Three fine covers from around the corner of the august Royal Horticultural Society in the quiet backstreets of Westminster. I particularly like the Haywards concentric circles. The floral design is from Burt and Potts of Westminster and the one split into quarters is a Luxfer Prisms, from 16 Hill Street, London EC. Unfortunately, the glass prisms have been replaced by concrete.