48 Gower's Walk
Contributed by Survey of London on June 5, 2020
No. 48 is the sole building on this stretch of Gower’s Walk to survive from
before the 1990s. It is plain, of four storeys, and in stock brick with
minimal red-brick dressings and a two-storey extension. It was built in 1924
by West End protagonists, Stanley Whiddington of Berners Street acting as
agent for the owner, A. C. Rickatson of Ridinghouse Street, with Augustus E.
Hughes & Son of Mortimer Street as architects, and Townsends of Dean
Street as builders. Early occupants were the Albion Soap Company Ltd. Eric
Shorter, who lived next door in the early 1950s, has recalled in a
contribution to this website that ‘it triple-milled laundry soap and the smell
was awful’. Thereafter there was use as a jewellery factory and gown
wholesalers. The building was converted to flats in 1997.
Gower's Walk soap factory
Contributed by eric on Oct. 26, 2016
I lived at no. 49 Gower’s Walk in the early 1950s and no. 48 was a soap
factory at that time. According to Trade Directories, it was owned by the
Albion Soap Company. I remember the name now. Dirty windows, impossible to see
in. Later it was used by a firm of meat importers and meat distributers (think
it must have been small for that). When it was a soap factory it triple-milled
laundry soap and the smell was awful. There were no other habitations at that
time, and my bedroom window looked out front to see the immense Tilbury
warehouse as far as one could see in any direction. My father worked for
Faircloughs the meat hauliers who had a yard between Gower’s Walk and Back
Church Lane, approximately where there is now a tennis court.
