Five... ways to explore London's historic green cab shelters
Built at a time when London cabbies were still driving horse-drawn carriages
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
This edition’s a few slices from the history of London’s green cab shelters. Once more than 60 of them peppered the city’s streets, offering a pitstop and some respite for Victorian cabbies in horsedrawn hansom cabs; there are 13 still standing — all of them, as of this year, with Grade II listed status to protect them from redevelopment.
This newsletter includes some original research by Matt Brown.
The origin story
2025 will mark a century and a half since the first green cab shelter was dreamed up by Captain George C Armstrong, editor of The Globe newspaper, and brought into being by the philanthropic organisation Cabmen’s Shelter Fund — under their stewardship, the first green shelter was opened in 1875 in St John's Wood. (We’ve mapped all of the green cab shelters still in existence here.)