Bust: Unknown - Hoe Street
Site: Victoria and others (3 memorials)
E17, Hoe Street, 105
This shop front has, like a lot of shop fronts of this period, atop the flanking pillars, decorative capitals and corbels. On this shop front amongst the usual foliage we find three portrait reliefs, which with decreasing certainty we identify as Queen Victoria, Prince Albert Victor and unknown. Victoria's medallion looks like an off-the shelf item. The other two look, well, being kind, hand-made by someone not practiced at modelling the human visage. Describing the tops of the pillars top-down:
Left:
Above the corbel: '1902'
On the corbel: portrait of Victoria
On the capital: portrait of Prince Albert Victor
Right:
Above the corbel: 'AD'
On the corbel: portrait of unknown man
On the capital: fruit
Victoria died in 1901 and Prince Albert Victor in 1892, so both these portraits are understandable given the date of the building. The other portrait ought to be Albert or Edward VII but is neither. Perhaps it represents the man responsible for these architectural flourishes.
