One more London location has been added to the Sense of Place website. Thanks to Ryan J Payton. (Is that RyaN?)

I'm still hoping for some photos of the old Bryant and May factory referred to as Bigend's place.

Remarkably, it's now the top hit on Google for F:F:F Pattern or F:F:F William Gibson.

do you know exactly where the factory is? i'm googling for it right now, so far to no avail. i could go tomorrow and take pics.

It's in Bow, East London. In Fairfield Road.

And there's a photo of it here but I'm sure you could take a better one. London E3.

Gosh, it's prettier than I expected. Considering the amount of suffering it occasioned its employees, I'd expected something more like that ghastly Huntley & Palmer one.

I've emailed the owner of the Bryant and May photo for permission to use it.

Gil your site is brilliant, most informative.

Its a long time since I have visited your site, It has really grown bigger and better. Cool.

I was thinking: don't you think Neals Yard might be the inspiration for the magical allyway in Harry Potter, too?

It's where I buy my records, and I couldn't help thinking about it, reading for my daughter.

Diagon Alley... Absolutely! It's quite near the location mentioned in the book, isn't it?

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Originally posted by GrimlyFiendish:
Gil your site is brilliant, most informative.

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<FX>Basks in glow of compliment. </FX>

Courtesy of Bob Stuart, we now have a new page on the F:F:F site!

Click on the Residential Match Factory Link

Enjoy.

Now, all I need is New York and Primrose Hill.

i can do primrose hill. sorry i was so slack about the match factory. i was going to get to bow last weekend, but it started snowing.

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Originally posted by GrimlyFiendish:
Gil your site is brilliant, most informative.

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I agree. Nice site.

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Originally posted by mirrorgirl:
i can do primrose hill. sorry i was so slack about the match factory. i was going to get to bow last weekend, but it started snowing.

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Wimp.

Seriously, though, Primrose Hill would be most welcome!

What views do you need of/from Primrose Hill? I need to re-read PR for some exact locations, but I walk to the top of the hill most days in my lunch break.

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Originally posted by Kradlum:
What views do you need of/from Primrose Hill? I need to re-read PR for some exact locations, but I walk to the top of the hill most days in my lunch break.

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Gosh. Search me. Anyone got the book handy?

Tell you what. If you're doing it digitally, take a few pretty ones, preferably with people in them, and we can choose. Also, it helps with the OS grid numbers if I can pin down where they were taken from.

I'n new here, so apologies if this has been mentioned before, but is it commonly known that Inverness St in Camden is the home of SF critic -and Gibson friend - John Clute? This isn't breaking a confidence, partly because Clute's address was in the London phonebook last time I looked and partly because it's also been used in a Kim Stanley Robinson story, 'A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations' where - if memory serves - the protagonist starts his journey to Orkney. From my reading of 'Pattern Recognition' we never enter the Clute abode but we certainly skirt around it.

Apropos of previous posts on this topic, it's the Gibsonian view of Camden that I have the most problems with in the book as it is presented as a happening place whereas I just see it through jaded eyes as a hell-hole to be avoided, especially at weekends when it attracts people searching for an epicentre of cool which I just don't feel to be there. I'm not sure whether the cultural signals you'd pick up at Camden now would be of any use at all - aside from the fact that members of Blur used to drink there it's hardly been hip since the New Romantic era. But that's the prerogative of the incoming observer I suppose and Gibson IS particularly good on that 'mirror-image' feeling. Perhaps Camden still feels new to the unjaded.

Well, no that has never been mentioned before. Thank you. more interesting texture to add what we already have.
As far as the trendiness aspect goes, yes Camden can be a hellhole when you just want to cut through the crowds and get where you're going, but on the other hand it draws all kinds of people there for all kinds of reasons and some of them turn out to be very interesting, so it evens out.
I can't count the number of lunchtimes when I'd nip out for a quick sandwich and finally get back to work two hours later having been totally diverted by seeing something or running into someone unexpected.

okay, just went to primrose hill and camden this afternoon for photos. had lunch at the wagamama, of course. i, too, view camden as a hellhole.

i have an ascii copy of PR (shhhh), so i grepped it for primrose hill. wg mentions blue plaques and a pub. i didn't see a pub with bullseye glass windows, but i went out of my way to find the sylvia plath plaque and took a snap of it. i observed to my intrepid co-observer that the place where the house was wasn't exactly on a beaten path or main drag (unlike friedrich engels, whose is more so), so it seems unlikely to me that cayce as a visitor to london would have just casually run across it. i certainly hadn't and wouldn't have until today. gives me pause to wonder exactly how much wandering wg has done in london.

anyway, on to the photos. i am posting them full-size for you to crop down as you see fit. so they are huge. without further ado...

primrose hill in march

cool pics, thanks mirrorgirl