Note: I published this blogpost a year ago, but accidentally unpublished it a couple of months later.

‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’ It’s the most famous line associated with Private Pike in Dad’s Army. Yet it was the officious Captain Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe, who uttered it. Mainwaring also regularly called Pike a ‘stupid boy’. Such is the enduring fame and appeal of the classic comedy series that many people born long after the last episode was shown in 1977 are familiar with these timeless catch phrases.

Ian Lavender, who has died aged 77, was the last survivor of the golden cast of Dad’s Army. He was 22 when he joined Dad’s Army – almost 50 years younger than Arnold Ridley (Private Godfrey) and John Laurie (Private Frazer). He played the immature Pike to perfection. It is poignant to reflect that Ian Lavender died over half a century after the passing of James Beck in 1973, who played the black market ‘spiv’ Private Walker. (Spivs were people who traded in black market goods, bypassing the strict wartime rationing system for food and other goods.)

The 1971 film version of Dad’s Army was largely filmed in our village, Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire. Walmington on Sea has rarely been so far inland! The old Crown pub took on the guise of Martin’s Bank (manager, Captain Mainwaring), as seen below. In real life, the building is now empty after brief stints as Crown Coffee, and before that Costa Coffee as I blogged in 2014. It is due to reopen as Durans Bistro later this year.

The creators of Dad’s Army produced a West End stage version of the show in 1975. Mum and Dad took me, aged 12, to see it on a trip to London during my first half term holiday in secondary school. Looking back, it’s pleasing to know that I once saw the likes of Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier, Clive Dunn and Ian Lavender playing those unforgettable characters live on stage.

Rowton House: a Victorian legacy

It’s curious how events trigger long-dormant memories. I’d not given a moment’s thought to that 1975 theatre trip until reading Ian Lavender’s obituaries. My mind went back to a rather austere hotel in the tourist-free area of Mount Pleasant, London. We stayed in a hotel next to the Royal Mail sorting office at Mount Pleasant. I remember being unimpressed by the area and the hotel.

This was unusual. When Dad was in London for work, he typically stayed at the London Park Hotel in Elephant and Castle. Looking back, it was better known for being cheap than for luxury. (Although not that cheap: Dad was shocked during a 1973 stay when Mum treated us to a 25p cake in the coffee shop: ‘That’s five shillings for a chocolate eclair!’). The streets around the hotel featured postwar ‘prefab’ bungalows, built to replace homes destroyed in the Blitz. Dad later recommended the hotel to an American friend from Iowa, who was horrified by the mean streets of Elephant and Castle, thinking that he would be mugged or worse.

I assume the London Park was full that October half term, hence our stay in Mount Pleasant.

I remember Dad telling me that the London Park Hotel used to be a hostel. When I researched it and our Mount Pleasant hotel online this week, I was intrigued to learn that they were both former Rowton House hostels. These were founded by a Victorian philanthropist, Lord Rowton, to provide affordable housing for working class men in London and Birmingham. In time, most were converted into hotels, like the ones I remember. Intriguingly the largest, Arlington House in Camden, London, remains as a hostel. George Orwell and Brendan Behan once lived there, and Madness opened their song One Better Day with the line, ‘Arlington House, address no fixed abode’.

Curiously, I have cycled past the site of the old Mount Pleasant Rowton House many times on my Brompton bike when cycling to our office in the City of London. It’s now being redeveloped for a second time as Postmark, a nod to the Royal Mail’s dominance of the area.

Lord Rowton (Montagu Corry) was a notable figure in Victorian Britain, ennobled by Queen Victoria as a reward for his service as private secretary to her favourite, Benjamin Disraeli. By coincidence I first heard of him earlier this week, just before learning about the great hostels named after him.

Richard Aldous’s wonderful book The Lion and the Unicorn about Gladstone and Disraeli explains Rowton’s pivotal role after Disraeli’s death in 1881. Rowton was with the former prime minister in his dying moments, offering words of comfort. In the following days, ‘All deferred to Corry … even the Queen’. He insisted that Disraeli be buried according to his instructions at the church at Hughenden, Buckinghamshire, next to his late wife Mary Anne, avoiding the ‘dismal dreariness of a grave in the great metropolitan [Westminster] abbey’. A procession of European statesmen made their way to the 12th century church of St Michael and All Angels for ‘just a village funeral, nothing more’.

Rowton’s own legacy would be the hostels named after him, which George Orwell described in Down and Out in Paris and London as the best of their kind.