These railings were made by my dad and have been here now for 50 years.

He was apprenticed to his father as a blacksmith in Hungary but came to the UK as a refugee when he was 18 during the Hungarian Uprising in 1956.

We were reminiscing about this over Sunday lunch and he recalled that one of his earliest jobs was making some elegant overlapping-scroll ironwork for Herbert Lom's house in Notting Hill. Not only the front railings, but all the stair rails in the house and some stuff in the garden too.

During WWII, a lot of fine cast iron railings were removed so they could be recycled for the war effort (as well as lots of pots and pans and suchlike). I read somewhere once that this was mainly just a morale booster; a lot of the metal was scrapped as it was not of a high enough grade for aircraft and weapon manufacture.

All this meant there was plenty of work for my dad putting all that metalwork back. Although, rather than replacing the original cast iron railings, the fashion in the late 50's was for lighter wrought ironwork.

So, on the drive back home we detoured through Notting Hill and tracked down the house.

Whether Herbert Lom still lives in this house I couldn't say - probably not, but I'm proud to see that the railings are still there. Sniff...