We hold our own dispensary rather than sending everything to a mail-order pharmacy, which costs us money and occasionally saves an animal a night of pain. It means that when a dog is diagnosed with something at half past five on a Friday, the treatment starts at half past five on a Friday rather than on Tuesday when the parcel arrives. You are always free to ask for a written prescription and buy elsewhere — it is £18 and it is often genuinely cheaper for long-term medication, and we will tell you when we think that is the case rather than waiting to be asked.

The roundel on our door, our notepaper and this website is a straightforward piece of Edwardian printing: two rings, thick and thin, around an initial. Alice Wren had it cut for a rubber stamp in about 1912 to mark the daybook, and it has been redrawn perhaps four times since without anybody being brave enough to change it. The double rule that runs under every heading on this site is the same idea unrolled — the border a jobbing printer would have set around a notice in a market town, which is exactly what this practice was and in most of the ways that matter still is.

The plate came off the Corve Street door in 1987 and went onto the Temeside one the same week, which is why it is a little small for the building and slightly the wrong shade of brass against the newer ironmongery. It has been polished every Friday since before any of us worked here, first by Alice Wren’s assistant and now by whoever is on Friday afternoons and has drawn the short straw. It says WREN & HALLOWAY, VETERINARY SURGEONS, and nothing else — no strapline, no group logo underneath, which after four approaches feels rather more pointed than it did in 1911.

Every veterinary website has them and we understand why. We have chosen not to, for a reason that sounds prim and is actually practical: the animals in this building are somebody’s, usually at a bad moment, and consent obtained at the counter while a person is worried is not consent worth having. If you want to know what the surgery looks like, come in — the waiting room is open all day, the daybook is in its case, and somebody will show you the theatre if it is not in use.

Temeside is a plain single-storey building from 1987 that nobody would photograph for an architectural magazine, and it is very well arranged. The consulting rooms open off the waiting room rather than a corridor, so nobody is walked past a queue. Dogs and cats wait on opposite sides with a screen between them, which sounds fussy and roughly halves the number of animals that arrive already frightened. Theatre and kennels are at the back with their own entrance, so an emergency at two in the morning does not involve unlocking the front of the building. There is level access at the side door, parking for eleven cars, and a bench outside for the people who would honestly rather wait there.

The daybook, first — it is in the case by the window, open at March 1911, and we turn the page every few months. The photograph above the desk is Alice Wren outside the Corve Street premises in about 1923, with a horse whose name nobody wrote down. The wooden cabinet in the corner held the original dispensary and now holds the practice’s copies of every RCVS Practice Standards report we have ever had, which anybody is welcome to sit down and read. And the brass plate, which is slightly the wrong size for the door and has been polished every Friday for longer than any of us have worked here.