Fred's Gym

Remembering Fred Dyer's 1920s boxing gym at the Strand, in London.

There was half-an-hour to kill between train connections at Charing Cross station. It was a sunny September afternoon, so I took a stroll along the Strand. Gazing at the city horizon, my eyes stopped at a tall, imposing building. I’d seen it before but never in living colour. Previously, it had been one dimensional — grey or sepia in the photos I’d seen — but here it was in 3D.

I was staring at the rooftop of Britain’s Zimbabwean Embassy. Not an obvious boxing shrine but nonetheless a building with a rich fistic past. Back in the late 1920s, this grade-II-listed edifice, at 429 Strand, was the HQ of Fred Dyer (real name Frederick O’Dwyer), one of Britain’s top trainers.