LOVING DALSTON’S CAMPAIGN for the sign that once hung from the Dalston pub celebrated as the Queen Vic in BBC1’s EastEnders has succeeded.

True, it has taken five years and the new sign, looking out to the busy Graham Road, is not going to win a conservation award, but it is a charming mark of a little bit of history that will mean something to the TV soap opera’s fans from all over the world.

And of course editors love a campaign that works. Until Loving Dalston intervened, the original sign was rusting in the backyard of the conversion to expensive flats.

Two detached cottages were slotted into that former garden.

Regrettably, and puzzlingly, the handsome London-stock brickwork on the frontage of one of the vernacular-styled homes was this year painted a once-fashionable 1990s grey.

How did that get past the Graham Road conservation area advisory committee?

David Altheer 070517

* Backstory: Boozer-capital Hackney; On with her head: pledge to save Queen Liz pub sign; Property investor silent on Acorn plans; Precious but little-known pub; A soda kinda Hackney night out; Pint and a Dalston horseburger, please

* All pictures on this page © David.Altheer [at] gmail.com,  for sale for reproduction (see last paragraph of Contact)

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