Dieu et Mon Droit

Our daily walk takes us past this building, which used to be our local Post Office and sorting office. It was vacated in 2014 when the sorting office moved to a modern industrial estate a couple of miles away, and the building was then redeveloped into apartments.

I couldn’t take a decent photo of the whole building because there were cars and vans parked in front of it, so this shot just shows one of the gables, with the beautiful stone window frames and the decorative plasterwork of the Royal Coat of Arms. This building is so much easier on the eye, I feel, than the sorting office’s somewhat utilitarian new home.

I did a bit of online research on the building. It was built around 1905 and the architect was one Jasper Wager. It seems that he was quite a prolific designer for the Post Office and I smiled to myself when I saw the list of the buildings he had designed. Several of them were in the stamping ground of my youth – one in Barnet, where I lived, one in Enfield, where I went to school, and one in Winchmore Hill, where my husband grew up. No wonder I have always felt attached to this building, it must awaken subconscious memories of my childhood!