The Fleur-De-Lys and The Blocked Door

After a week off I'd like to say I returned to work with a feeling of renewed vigour and enthusiasm. But being a normal(ish) person of course I didn't. I felt half sharp and somewhat begrudging. A slightly extended lunchtime walk might help, I thought. Additional motivation was provided by the office 'walking challenge' currently happening, based around increasing one's step count over about a month. Anything that gets people walking ought to be suported, I thought, particularly if it facilitates additional perambulatory activity during the working week. I had my pedometer on and went out into the murky greyness.

Still feeling a bit off kilter following the transition from week off to back on the work treadmill, I wasn't really in tune and didn't really notice anything for most of the walk. My route ended up being a sort of loop, round some residential streets that eventually lead me to Central Park. Nothing stood out.

I had lunch in the park. I had thought of getting a coffee in the cafe, but it was closed. Fully caged up. This seemed particularly odd given that it is half term.

I ended up walking back to work along Eastfield Road and it was only towards it's end that I became more 're-tuned'. This happened when I noticed a door. Or rather an ex-door, on the corner of Monument Street. More precisely, first I noticed the Fleur-De-Lys motif above. Then underneath, the door featuring blue tiling around the edge and a sort of porch above it. It was a few seconds before I noticed the door was bricked up, but only about three quarters of the way up. The remaining section being what looked like the remains of the door with it's window boarded up. Sort of reminiscent of the way many new buildings have the top section made out of or clad in wood. And equally inexplicable as to why this should be the case.

At first glance the door resembled that of a police station, then made me think it might have been the entrance to some sort of club.  A British Legion or Conservative club, that sort of thing. Or possibly a dead pub, The Fleur De Lys is a widespread pub moniker after all. I wondered if it could have been the headquarters of some sort of defunct fraternal society. The Fleur De Lys, although mostly associated with France, is, in it's silver on blue incarnation, the central feature of the coat of arms of the Baron of Digby. Whatever the explanation for the building and it's symbolism, it remains hidden behind the bricked up door and the plethora of Google hits for estate agents that come up on a search for 'Fleur Dear Lys, Monument Street, Peterborough'. I could only be bothered to go three pages in before I gave up. The other mystery, apart from  the partial bricking up, being the identity and motives of SG and rBs.