York, St Sampson's Square

Scene with cranesAs regular readers of this blog will have noticed, I’m rather fond of pubs decorated with tiles. There was a great fashion for tiled pubs in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, when pub owners liked the tiles’ wipe-down surfaces and their colourful appearance – if you’re offering hospitality, it pays to stand out on the street, to catch the attention of passers-by as well as locals. The Three Cranes in York’s St Sampson’s Square has a tiled ground floor that certainly fulfils the easy-care and easily spotted requirements, but it’s also clearly a popular place to gather. Rather than photograph the whole building, and a whole lot of people, I looked up at the beautiful tiled sign.So here are the three cranes in their watery and reed-surrounded habitat, an elegant trio indeed. They must have been a satisfying job for whichever artist produced them at Doulton’s, say, or Minton’s or one of the other factories that produced architectural ceramics.When I researched the…