Saturday 29 November 2014

Please adjust your dress

 

While I don't actively plan my visits around the presence of Victorian cast-iron urinals, it's always a joy to come across them - at the National Railway Museum, York, the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, and most recently, St Fagans National History Museum, Wales. 


The Welsh example is technically Scottish, since it was cast by the omnipresent Walter Macfarlane & Co at their Saracen Foundry. However, it spent nearly a century in Llanwrtyd Wells before moving to St Fagans in 1978. 


Like all Macfarlane's work, the urinal is full of elegant and decorative detail. A particularly nice feature, though, is the admonition cast into a panel of each stall to 'please adjust your dress before leaving'.




5 comments:

Hels said...

Love the cast iron designs and great they were made available to the public. But I am glad I am not a male. What do men do with their dress, while they are peeing standing upright?

CarolineLD said...

It's a delicate way of reminding them not to leave their trouser flies open!

Maggie said...

Love them! They are beautiful even if they are urinals! Thanks for sharing! X

Philip Wilkinson said...

Terrific. I do enjoy these cast iron posts - as you may have gathered from my own observations in Bristol and Bath.

Anonymous said...

I came across (completely innocently) a similar gentleman's urinal just off of Chancery Lane - I think it was on Star Yard - very few of these little utility buildings around now