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This finial in salt-glazed ceramic is one of a series of over a hundred made between 1931 and 1938 by the sculptor Gilbert Bayes for posts for communal washing lines in the St Pancras Housing Improvement Society in Somers Town, the area between Euston and St Pancras railway stations.

Somers Town was a notorious slum area, and the Society worked to replace slum housing with clean, well-equipped, yet affordable, flats in low-rise blocks.

It commissioned art to brighten these up, including Bayes' ceramics. Over time, most of the finials have been lost, but a number that belong to the St Pancras and Humanist Housing Association, the successor to the Society, have been loaned to the British Library nearby, where they are on display.

This sailing ship comes from St Martin's flats on the Eversholt Estate in Somers Town. The art reflects the Christian Socialist ethos of the Society, in which the Anglican priest Fr Basil Jellicoe was very active.

This information is taken from the British Library display, but see also Ellen Peirson at Untapped Link and English Heritage on the surveyor Irene Barclay, who played a leading role in slum clearance and rehousing in this neighbourhood Link .