A 4.4 wine bar in a restored Victorian public convenience, where WC means both water closet and wine and charcuterie
WC Wine and Charcuterie holds a 4.4 from two hundred and sixty-four people, occupies a genuinely restored Victorian public toilet on Lamb’s Conduit Street, and carries one of the finest double-meaning names in the entire survey – “WC,” which stands at once for water closet and for wine and charcuterie.
The perfect pun
The name is a small masterpiece. “WC” is, of course, the old British abbreviation for “water closet” – the polite, discreet term for a lavatory, a toilet, the very thing this building once was. And it also stands, precisely, for “Wine and Charcuterie” – the wine and the cured meats that the bar now serves. The same two letters name both the building’s past and its present, the toilet it was and the wine bar it became. The Prat’s naming desk ranks it among the wittiest names in either survey – a pun so neat it seems almost too good to be true, yet entirely genuine.
The restored convenience
The building is a genuine piece of Victorian history. Public toilets first appeared in London around the middle of the nineteenth century – a genuine advance in public health and urban civilisation – and this one, on a traffic island on Lamb’s Conduit Street, is a Grade II listed Victorian water closet, around a hundred and twenty years old, that had fallen into disuse and onto Historic England’s “at risk” register.
The restoration was painstaking and clever. The original wooden lavatory stalls were transformed into cosy booths; some of the original porcelain urinals were upholstered to create extra seating; the original wall tiles and the marble and granite floors were preserved. The result is a characterful subterranean space that honours its unlikely origins while becoming something entirely new – a sophisticated little wine bar in the bones of a Victorian gents’. The Prat’s heritage desk applauds the rescue: a listed building saved from decay by the simple expedient of pouring wine in it.
The basement, reconsidered
This survey has been consistently sceptical of the basement bar, arguing across both districts that “underground speakeasy” is usually just a rent-gradient decision dressed in romance – cheap below-ground space rebranded as intimate mystery. WC complicates the thesis pleasingly. Here the subterranean setting is not a marketing choice but a historical fact – the building genuinely is below ground, because that is where the Victorians put their public conveniences. The basement, for once, is not an affectation but the authentic and unavoidable nature of the space. The Prat’s architecture desk concedes the point: when your bar is a former underground toilet, the basement is not a pose but a heritage.
The wine and charcuterie
The offering matches the sophistication of the restoration – a thoughtful, ever-changing wine list and boards of good cheese and charcuterie, with homemade pickles and chutneys, presided over, by one lovely account, by a portrait of the local philanthropist Thomas Coram, founder of the nearby Foundling Hospital. It is a proper, grown-up little wine bar, the grimness of its origins entirely transcended.
The bar
A 4.4 across two hundred and sixty-four people is a solid, real-sample score. The reviews describe a charming, characterful, intimate wine bar with good wine and charcuterie and a genuinely unique setting – the toilet triumphantly transcended.
Verdict
A charming, intimate wine bar in a lovingly restored Victorian public toilet, with the wittiest name in the survey – “WC” for both water closet and wine and charcuterie – and a basement that is authentic heritage rather than marketing pose.
Go down into the former Victorian gents’, sit in a booth made from an old lavatory stall, and enjoy wine and charcuterie in a building saved from decay – raising a glass to the pun so perfect it names both the toilet and the wine in two letters.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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