John Henderson and his dog Sugar

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A PLAQUE for a three-legged dog owned by a former street bookseller has been mysteriously removed.

The blue plate for John Henderson’s Sugar was put up six years ago on the Network Rail-owned bridge in West End Lane.

It disappeared on the day after New Journal published a story about a documentary film featuring Mr Henderson and a wall mural dispute that divided West Hampstead during the Covid pandemic.

“This seems to me more than a coinci­dence,” said one resident.

The plaque to Sugar described an “amazing three-legged” Staff bull terrier who was the “soul of West Hampstead”. “Book girl – lived here with her dad John,” it added.

Mr Henderson was a street bookseller outside the station in West End Lane for 20 years.

When the dog died, in 2018, Mr Henderson told the New Journal: “She was my best friend and I was hers. We did everything together.”

The plaque which has gone missing

He was known as “John the book man”, and his canine companion as “Sugar the book girl”. Mr Henderson died in 2019, aged 49

“She was a rescue dog,” he had  said. “One day a woman came up to me and said: ‘Would you like to have a dog?’ The next day this three-legged dog ran around the corner and ever since that day we have been together. I just loved her as soon as we met.”

Last week, the New Journal reported on a film telling the “true story” of the dispute between residents about murals painted on a bridge outside the West Hampstead Thameslink station.

A Network Rail spokeswoman said “we have not found any record that we have removed it”.