This view shows the terrace of two-storey shops incorporating the Old Bull pub at numbers 78-82 High Street, Wandsworth, on the north side adjacent to the River Wandle. George Carter and Sons, the hatters shop at 82 High Street, has a double-fronted shop with central entrance, and a neatly arranged and labelled display of hats across the full width and height of the windows. The adjacent shoe shop, with several pairs of shoes displayed to the exterior of its shopfront has a large sign above stating ‘PREMISES COMING DOWN – COMPULSORY SALE – GREAT BARGAINS – ALL GOOD MUST BE CLEARED’. Two men, one the aproned shop proprietor, stand at opposite ends of the shopfront. Ye Old Bull has a brick frontage with a canopy over its central doorway, shuttered ground floor windows, and an impressive gas lamp bracketed beneath its pub sign. Signage shows the pub’s proprietor as A BASS. A ground floor extension to the pub’s flanking wall has its own brick chimney column reaching a similar height to the apex of the terrace’s gable. The tiled roof, with dormers above the pub and shoe shop, shows signs of distortion and deterioration. The terrace was replaced in the early twentieth century with a three-storey terrace of shop buildings with a new The Bull pub on the corner of the site. That pub was lost to wartime bombing, but the neighbouring twentieth-century shop building at 82 High Street survives today as Betfred. To the right of Ye Old Bull, a gas lamp is shown mounted on the stone pillar of the bridge, together with a section of iron railings. They appear to be of the same pattern as the traditional railings still in place today, although the stonework has gone, and a landscaped embankment now occupies the site vacated by The Bull. Some of the shops to the left of view are believed to survive today.
