England – ALL I NEED IS MY PASSPORT

Last days Wandering London

Jul 282024

July 2024

There are two of these unique huts in Grosvenor Gardens. The Gardens have been known as “London’s French Garden” since at least 1952. The Gardens were used as air raid shelters during the Second World War. After the war, it was decided that the gardens needed smartening up, and the huts were installed as part of this makeover. They were designed by French architect Jean-Charles Moreux and are decorated with both French and English shells to signify the links between the two countries. Why shells? It’s not entirely clear.

Halifax Building London

Walking down the Strand, I was struck by this ornament over a door. The most I could find was that it was built in the 1930s.

The Ice Cream Scoop Building

I had read about this building in the Guardian earlier in the year, and then I just tripped upon it this week. It sits at the corner of Union and O’Meara Streets. It is a white brick building with a furrow gouged out of its facade, giving it the nickname The Ice Cream Scoop Building. According to the architect, Jonny Plant of Lipton Plant: “We wanted to respect our neighbor. The church had always been overlooked, tucked down the side street next to the railway viaduct, so we wanted to celebrate it and draw people’s attention to it.” “The developer originally wanted to fill the whole site and bring the building right up to the street edge,” says Father Christopher Pearson, priest of the Church of Most Precious Blood. “But we had just spent a lot of money restoring the church, and we didn’t want to be hidden. They were very accommodating and listened to our concerns – and we are tickled pink with the result.”

Kirkaldy’s Testing and Experiment Works

This building has a very unique history.

In 1862, engineer David Kirkaldy (1820-1897) published the results of several years of systematic testing he performed on wrought iron and steel. This work put him in a realm with engineers like Bazalgette, Bessemer, and Brunel. Kirkaldy’s Testing Works established the scientific testing of structural building materials. As well as tests on columns, links girders, and other materials like concrete, bricks, and wood, the Testing Works carried out forensic testing on failed structures. Kirkaldy’s most famous forensic test was in 1880, when he examined pieces recovered from the fatal collapse of the Tay Bridge. His findings, in contradiction to the view of the official Court of Inquiry, were one of the reasons his 1897 obituary in The Engineer described him as “honest as the sun; outspoken and fearless as a Viking” as well as being “the best-hated man in London”.

The rose garden first caught my eye when wandering down an alley, and after peeking into the garden, I found this quaint building. It is the Hopton’s Almshouse. Charles Hopton (born c.1654) was born into a wealthy merchant family and was admitted to the Guild of Fishmongers as a child. On his death in 1731, his will provided for almshouses to be built in the parish of Christchurch, Blackfriars for poor, single men. By 1746, 26 cottages had been completed, and they have been continuously occupied since July 1752. In 1988, twenty cottages were modernized and are supported by donations to the original trust created by Charles Hopton.

An old hayloft and hoist maintained in the modernization of a building near Borough Market

After a day of dragons at the Royal Pavillion in Brighton, I walked past this statue on the way to my hotel from Blackfriars tube station. I had walked past it before, but it felt so appropriate to take a picture this time.

The Temple Bar Memorial

The Temple Bar Memorial stands where The Strand becomes Fleet Street and marks the Western entrance to the City of London from Westminster. It stands outside the Royal Courts of Justice where Temple Bar, a stone gate, once stood. Designed by the City of London architect Sir Horace Jones, Charles Bell Birch sculpted the bronze dragon; it was erected in 1880.

These two figures look over one of the two timepieces on the façade of the Fleet Street church, St Dunstan-in-the-West. It is believed to be the first public clock in London to include a minute hand. The clock and the figures were installed on the front of the church in 1671. The clock sticks out from the front of the church and features faces on both sides so that passers-by can see the time from either direction. The figures are automata, equipped with mechanisms that allow their heads to turn and arms to move, striking bells to mark the hour and quarter-hour.

The statue, named ‘Allies,’ was created in 1995 by British-American sculptor Lawrence Holofcener. He was commissioned by the Bond Street Association, and Princess Margaret unveiled the statue on May 2, 1995, to commemorate 50 years of peace. It features Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, their faces crafted into permanent smiles as they share a silent joke.

In front of Sotheby’s is Sekhmet, the goddess of healing in the Egyptian pantheon. The goddess is said to have formed the desert with her breath, led Egyptian warriors into battle, and protected the pharaohs. Based on its style, Sotheby’s Sekhmet dates between 1390 and 1352 BCE, making it the oldest outdoor statue in London.

Isokon was established in 1934 as one of Britain’s earliest examples of Modernist architecture. It is the creation of Jack and Molly Pritchard and architect Wells Coates. Their debut project was to design an apartment building and its interior based on the principle of affordable, communal, and well-designed inner-city living.

Jack Pritchard’s altruistic penchant for sheltering refugees from Nazi Europe attracted famous residents—among them architect and designer Marcel Breuer, painter László Moholy-Nagy, and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. An Austrian Isokon resident, Arnold Deutsch, was revealed to be a Soviet spy. The building’s opening was photographed by Edith Tudor Hart, herself a Soviet agent. Agatha Christie also lived in the building with her archeologist husband, Max Mallowan, when her Cornish house was requisitioned by the army and her London property was too exposed to bombing.

The name comes from Isometric Construction drawings, a 3D-looking type of architectural drawing popular at the time.

I have always loved the Penguin Donkey ( magazine/book rack) on the bottom right.

Jack Pritchard worked as Marketing Manager for Venesta, the world’s largest plywood manufacturer at the time. He was tasked with finding new uses for plywood; until the 1920s, they had mainly made tea chests for importing tea leaves from India, hat boxes, and food containers. Pritchard hired the designer Charlotte Perriand through the architectural firm of Le Corbusier to design a trade fair stand for Venesta at Olympia, London, in 1929. Together with Coates, the Pritchards formed Isokon with the idea of building modern houses and furniture.

You can still buy this furniture, although it is now made by Isokon Plus, formerly known as Windmill Furniture, under license from the Pritchard family.

Artist living in the neighborhood

The Hampstead Modernists lived within and around Isokon in the Hampstead-Belsize Park area. In the 1930s, Hampstead was the heart of the socialist intellectual and artistic crowd, a neighborhood of Bauhaus émigrés, artists, and rebels who had fairly unconventional domestic arrangements, ‘open-door policy’ marriages, and an ethos of ‘how best to love and live’.

Piet Cornelis Mondrian lived here.

Henry Moore lived here from 1929-1949.

Until Next Time:

London Restaurants to Remember

Otto’s – An old classic experience of attentive waiters, rich French food, and a unique room. 182 Gray’s Inn Road – SO MUCH FUN!

Daphne’s – It was the friends rather than the restaurant. The food is excellent, the rooms are great, the wine list is very expensive, and the service needs work. 112 Draycot Avenue

Coppa Club Tower Bridge – You go for the view. I enjoyed the evening with good friends, wine, and small plates.

The Portrait – a Restaurant on top of the Portrait Gallery. It offers Great views, great food, fair service. I enjoyed a meal with special friends, which always adds to the fun.

This trip I saw two highly recommendable plays. Operation Mincemeat and The Constituant.

Ceremony of the Keys – Tower of London

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 282024

July 28, 2024

My friend Susan arranged for us to attend the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London. It is a humbling experience that takes months to obtain tickets, and only 50 people are allowed to attend per evening.

The Ceremony of the Keys is an ancient ritual in which the main gates are locked for the night. It is said to be the oldest extant military ceremony in the world and is the best-known ceremonial tradition of the Tower.

Once your name is called and you pass the gate there are no photos allowed. The gist of the ceremony is thus:

At exactly 9.52 pm, the Chief Yeoman Warder (also known as Beefeaters), dressed in a Tudor watchcoat and bonnet and carrying a candle lantern, leaves the Byward Tower and falls in with the Escort to the Keys, a military escort made up of armed members of the Tower of London Guard. The Warder passes his lantern to a soldier and marches with his escort to the outer gate. The sentries on duty salute the King’s Keys as they pass.

The Warder first locks the outer gate and then the gates of the Middle and Byward Towers. The Warder and escort march down Water Lane (where we were standing) until they reach the Bloody Tower archway, where a sentry challenges the party to identify themselves:

Sentry: “Halt! Who comes there?”

Chief Warder: “The keys”.

Sentry: “Whose keys?”

Chief Warder: “King Charles keys”.

Sentry: “Pass King Charles Keys. All’s well”.

The Warder and escort march down to the foot of Broadwalk Steps, where the main Tower Guard is drawn up to meet them. The party halts, and the officer in charge gives the command to present arms. The Chief Warder steps forward, doffs his bonnet, and proclaims:

Chief Warder: “God preserve King Charles”.

Guard and all the onlookers: “Amen!”

On the answering “Amen”, the clock of the Waterloo Barracks strikes 10 pm, and the Last Post is sounded, marking the end of the ceremony.

The Guard is dismissed, and the Chief Warder takes the keys to the King’s House for safekeeping overnight.

We were so fortunate to have a Warder who allowed us to turn our phones back on and take pictures. He then stood for a good half hour and answered questions.

The King’s House is the area above the balcony window. Hess was held in the circular tower on the left.

On May 10, 1941, Rudolf Hess got into the cockpit of a Messerschmitt plane and took off from an airfield in Augsburg, Bavaria, on a solo flight to Scotland. He ejected from his plane and parachuted into the field outside Glasgow. The purpose of Hess’ mission remains one of the great unresolved mysteries of the Second World War.

Whatever his motives, Hess was captured and taken to the King’s House at the Tower of London on May 17, 1941, where many prisoners had been interrogated, including Guy Fawkes. Under the tightest security, he was questioned for four days until he was removed from the Tower. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner at Mytchett Place, Surrey. At the Nuremberg Trials of 1946, Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau, West Berlin, where he remained until he died in 1987, aged 93.

Hess was the last state prisoner to be held at the Tower.

A toilet was installed in the tower so that if Hitler had been captured, he, too, could be held in the same tower.

The Yeoman who guard the Tower of London live on the property in apartments on the left.

Once the ceremony was over, we left via the small door set in the doors just recently locked during the ceremony.

The origins of the ceremony are unknown. It may have begun during the Middle Ages, and it is thought that a ceremony in some form has been held since the 14th century. Written instructions that the keys should be placed in a safe place by a Tower officer after securing the gates date back to the 16th century. In its current form, the ceremony is likely to date to the 19th century when the institution of the Yeomen Warders was reformed by the then Constable of the Tower, the Duke of Wellington.

The ceremony has never been canceled and has been delayed only on a single occasion due to enemy action during the Second World War. A bomb dropped onto the grounds, injuring three soldiers, all of which did not abandon their posts. The incident caused the Yeoman to send a telegram to King George VI apologizing. He responded that he was glad no one was killed but added – don’t let it happen again.

The shard at night, as seen from outside the Tower of London

The Yeoman told us that the ceremony continued throughout Covid, but they had to maintain the recommended distancing.

If you ever have the opportunity, the Ceremony of the Keys is worth the £5 price of admission.

Abney Park Cemetery

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 282024

July 2024

I managed to squeeze in my sixth of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London before my departure.

Abney Park in the Borough of Hackney was laid out in the early 18th century by Lady Mary Abney, Dr. Isaac Watts, and the neighboring Hartopp family. The architect was John Hoskins.

The cemetery is named after Sir Thomas Abney, who served as Lord Mayor of London in 1700–1701. The manor of Stoke Newington belonged to him in the early 18th century, and his townhouse, Abney House, built in 1676, stood on the site of the present cemetery until its demolition in the 1830s.

In 1840, it became a non-denominational garden cemetery, a semi-public park arboretum, and an educational institute. A total of 196,843 burials had taken place there up to the year 2000.

Aesculus hippocastanum – or – Horse Chestnut

Abney Park was the first arboretum to be combined with a cemetery in Europe. Thanks to the founding horticulturist, George Loddiges, it contains 2,500 trees and shrubs arranged around the perimeter alphabetically, from A for Acer (maple trees) to Z for Zanthoxylum (American toothache trees).

Created in the Victorian period, Abney Park’s entrance was designed by William Hosking in collaboration with Joseph Bonomi the Younger and George Collison II in the then increasingly popular Egyptian Revival style.

There are many famous people buried in Abney Park. The most prominent being William and Catherine Booth, founders of The Salvation Army. They are buried next to their son Bramwell Booth and various Salvation Army commissioners, including Elijah Cadman, John Lawley, James Dowdle, William Ridsdel, Frederick Booth-Tucker, George Scott Railton, the Army’s first Commissioner, Theodore Kitching and T. Henry Howard, its Chief of Staff.

William and Catherine Booth

I walked over four miles inside the cemetery looking for Reverend James Mather (b. 1775), the first person to be laid to rest in Abney Park Cemetery. I was unsuccessful. Mather was a Congregationalist Minister and missionary in India. He was buried on April 26, 1877.

Someplace in there is Mather’s grave.

Commonwealth War Memorial

The War Memorial was built over the existing catacombs in 1923. There are 262 Commonwealth burials from the First World War (1914-1918) and a further 113 from the Second World War (1939-1945). The memorial was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

Bostock Lion

Frank Bostock, known as ‘the animal king’, was a menagerist responsible for introducing many exotic animals to Victorian England. The Bostock animal arena was a main attraction at Coney Island in the early 1900s. ‘Bostock’s Arena and Jungle’ is recorded as being held at Earls Court in 1908 and then visited principal cities in the UK over the following years. At the time of his death in 1912, Bostock had over a thousand animals in his various shows. He had circus shows and amusement parks in America, Australia, Europe, and South Africa. The floral tributes at his funeral took up five carriages.

Despite having his finger once bitten off by a monkey and suffering from both a lion and tiger mauling, Bostock died of the flu.

Dr Isaac Watts

Dr. Watts was a famous nonconformist English Christian minister and theologian. He is credited with writing some 750 psalms, which earned him the title “The Father of English Hymnody”. He died in 1748.

The memorial was designed by British sculptor Edward Hodges Baily, who also sculpted the statue of Lord Nelson atop Nelson’s Column.

Joanna Vassa

Joanna Vassa was the daughter of Britain’s first Black activist, Olaudah Equiano, alias Gustavus Vassa. Equiano was shipped to England as a slave, served in the navy, and obtained his freedom in 1766. He became a writer, Methodist, and anti-slavery campaigner. His autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life Of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, was published in 1789.

Vassa married Susannah Cullen of Soham, Cambridgeshire, and they had two daughters. This monument was discovered in bad condition in the early 1990s and restored in 2016 with funds from Abney Park Trust.

John Jay

I took this picture without even knowing who was buried here, as I found the memorial striking. John Jay built the William Hosking-designed Abney Park Chapel. During the 1850s, he also built the Victorian clock tower and the city clock of the Houses of Parliament. The rich baroque sarcophagus is rumored to have been sculpted by Jay himself.

Abney Park Memorial Chapel

Eric Walrond

African-American Eric Walrond was a Harlem Renaissance writer. Born in Guyana, he moved to New York in the 1920s. His work, including the classic Tropic Death, was influenced by his years growing up in the Caribbean and the legacy of the slave trade. In the 1930s, he moved to England and died in London in 1966. This monument was carved by a member of Abney Park’s stone carving group. Walrond is buried in an unmarked public grave somewhere behind the headstone.

James Braidwood

James Braidwood was a firefighter of Scottish descent. He founded the first fire service in Edinburgh and later became the first director of the London Fire Brigade. By 1830, Braidwood had established principles of firefighting that were published and are still in use today. He died in the Tooley Street fire of 1861 when a falling wall crushed him. The funeral procession was over one mile long, the hearse was tailed by 15 coaches, and representatives of all London Fire Brigades, the Rifle Brigade, and the police were present. This monument was rediscovered in 1981.

Margaret Graham

This memorial to Margaret Graham, who died in 1864 and was buried in a pauper’s grave, was put up after £5,000 was raised by organizations and members of the public.

Born Margaret Watson in Walcot, Bath, in 1804, she was married to chemist and aeronaut George Graham. She soon became a famous aeronaut in her own right. She built an impressive career as a professional pilot over more than three decades, from the late Georgian era to the mid-Victorian period. In 1826, Margaret Graham, then 22, became the first British woman to fly solo when she ascended in her balloon from Islington in north London. She was also an early and outspoken advocate of women’s right to fly on equal terms with men.

Reverend Henry Richard

Henry Richard was born in Tregaron, Wales, in 1812. He was known as ‘the Apostle of Peace’ because he advocated for peace and international arbitration. He was also respected for his non-conformist and anti-slavery work.

The only mausoleum permitted by the Abney Park Cemetery Company is Dr. Nathaniel Rogers, who died in 1884. He made donations to assist with the restoration of the Pulteney Monument at Westminster Abbey, stained glass windows at St Paul’s Cathedral, Abney Park Chapel, and the Union Chapel. Rogers designed the mausoleum for himself twenty years before his death.

Remembering those who died in the Blitz

The area of Hockney was badly bombed during the Second World War because it was close to important targets such as docks and the City of London. One of the worst blitz tragedies was on October 13, 1940. Over 100 residents of a block of flats were killed when their air raid shelter was hit. Many of those who died were of Jewish heritage and buried in a common grave. The civilian war memorial was built in 1948 to honor all citizens who died during the blitz.

There are no maps of the cemetery, and while some articles speak of path names, the paths are not marked, so it is very hard to find the graves of specific people. There are many Victorian comedians, pantomime actors, and other performers buried here. None of which I found. These include Albert Chevalier (full incredible first name Albert Onésime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis Chevalier), songstress and male impersonator Nelly Power, and famous comedian and ‘Dame of Drury Lane’ panto star Herbert Campbell. George Leybourne, aka Champagne, is also buried here. His act was to extol the joys of high living, but he died penniless.

A warning to plant enthusiasts: it is not advisable to go mushrooming in Abney Park. Edible plants are likely to be infused with arsenic from the bodies embalmed in the Victorian era, and mushrooms are also likely to be full of lead because of the lead-lined coffins used by Victorians.

Royal Pavillion Brighton

England, United Kingdom

Jul 282024

July 2024

Where do I start? A few days ago I was touring Buckingham Palace with my friend Susan (no photos allowed). I was absolutely gobsmacked by the East Wing (a tour you need to sign up for weeks in advance; thank you, Susan). As I kept attempting to pick my jaw up from the floor, Susan said if I liked this, I must see Brighton, as everything in the East Wing originally came from there. So this is our day in Brighton and the Royal Pavillion.

The exterior of the pavilion and its Indo-Islamic influence is the beginning of the building’s dichotomy.

The India Gate

This dichotomy is echoed later in history by the installation of the India Gate. The India Gate is a memorial given to Brighten by the people of India to commemorate the Indian soldiers who passed through Brighton and Hove hospitals during the First World War (1914 – 1918). From 1914 to 1916, the Royal Pavillion was used for Indian soldiers who had been wounded on the battlefields of the Western Front. From 1916 to 1920, it was used as a hospital for British troops who had lost arms or legs in the war.

I ran into this description of the Royal Pavillion. It probably best sets up what I am about to show you: This Chinese-style interior belongs to a quintessentially Romantic piece of architecture…Silly, charming, witty, light-hearted, extravagant, gloriously eccentric, decadent, childish, painfully vulgar, socially irresponsible, a piece of outrageous folly and a stylistic phantasmagoria, the Pavilion is a flight of Romantic fancy, comparable in its impulse to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan’.”

The Royal Pavillion came into existence thanks to The Prince of Wales, who later became Geroge IV. That is the last of the royal lineage you will get from me.

But I did mention the East Wing of Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria found Brighton too “exposed” and sold the palace. As she thought it would be torn down, she stripped it bare of absolutely everything, including the wallpaper.

However, the town didn’t tear it down. Instead, they turned it into government offices. In 1920, a restoration program funded by a government settlement for the damage done during the war began. This was further boosted when Queen Mary returned original decorations, including furniture that had remained at Buckingham Palace. Queen Elizabeth also gave objects to the pavilion on permanent loan. And yet 20% of the collection still remains in Buckingham Palace, making the East Wing as spectacular as it is today.

So, back to the building. Between 1815 and 1822, the designer John Nash designed the exterior of the building and its Indo-Islamic feel.

At the same time, the designers Frederick Crace and Robert Jones were employed to work on the interior of the Pavilion. They did so in the chinoiserie style. Thus, the dichotomy.

You enter the front door in what had been a lovely entry but now serves as a ticket area and gathering space. However, the glass window with its dragons tells you the Asian influence you are about to encounter.

As you enter the long hall, you are greeted by several of these “Chinese” characters with Western features. (they are actually bobbleheads). To understand the Western features, one must understand Chinoiserie and the trade routes of the time. In the eighteenth century, as the East India Company increased its trade with China, Chinoiserie became a cross-cultural phenomenon between Asia and Europe. Given the rarity and high price of East-Asian-made products, European craftsmen designed and made decorative objects mimicking Chinese motifs, sadly without much authenticity. Notice the wallpaper in the background. It is the English idea of bamboo at the time, flowering to boot.

Looking to my right down the long hall at the stairway

The stairway at the end of the long hall

The stair rail is cast iron painted to look like bamboo.

An actual bamboo set in a side cutout of the long hall

Looking up in the long hallway at little bells everywhere

The Dining Room

the center of the ceiling in the dining room atop the chandelier is a dragon

The coping of the dining room

Chinoiserie paintings can be found throughout the house.

A phantasmagorical figure of a dragon, swords, and fish?

The gold cup-like items at each place setting on the table are used to cool your wine glass. They would be filled with ice, and one would place an empty glass – rim side down – to cool the glass and signal that one needed a top-off.

More dragons

Leaving the dining room, you can find a fire bucket with the royal seal in the hallway.

The tea in one of many areas one could consider a butler’s pantry

The kitchen stove was so modern as to be heated with steam

When the architect John Nash showed George IV the plans, George IV was bothered by the poles in the middle of the kitchen. Nash said, just wait and see. It is reported George IV cried when he saw how beautiful the kitchen was.

George IV was very generous, and the door behind the round table opened to the exterior, where leftover food was given to the public.

A garbage bin for the stinky stuff such as fish bones

Containers for vinegar and beer

The chef’s herb basket. There were many of these around the room.

Interesting chairs in one of the sitting rooms

Another clever disguise of a structural beam

The Saloon

The Saloon

The Saloon is one of the oldest surviving parts of the Royal Pavilion and the most breathtaking room in the palace. It was designed as a formal reception room, where George would greet his guests and accompany them to dinner in the Dining Room. It was designed to make an impression, and boy does it.

When I first entered, my eye was drawn to the carpet. It is one of the most lavish and complicated ever woven by 250-year-old Axminster Carpets, which holds a Royal Warrant. The design incorporates 20 dragons, 100 sun rays, and 274 lotus leaves. The original carpet cost £620 to produce. What is in the room now was designed to cope with the tourism traffic. It cost £59,500 and took fleece from 80 Cheviot, Blackface, Welsh, and Heavy X-bred sheep to produce.

The Music Room

The Music Room features rich, hand-painted red and gold canvases, silvered dragons, chandeliers inspired by lotus plants, and an intricate gilded ceiling.

The organ in the Music Room is a copy. It was made by Henry Cephas Lincoln and commissioned by George IV in 1818. At the time, it was said to be the largest and most powerful instrument in England. When Queen Victoria sold the Royal Pavilion in 1850, the organ was packed up in 56 pieces and stored. It is now in the new ballroom at Buckingham Palace.

The Music Room Fireplace

Another dragon, this one on the fireplace

The Kings Bedroom

Due to the King’s obesity and subsequent issues, such as gout, he was unable to make it to his upstairs bedroom. A bedroom and sitting room were created on the first floor for his use.

The Kings Bed with stairs

The sitting room off of the Kings bedroom

Throughout the house

This early 19th-century Chinese Export paper originally hung on the first floor of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Queen Victoria removed it and took it to Buckingham Palace. Sections of the set were returned to Brighton and reinstalled in the 1920s.

This jasmine-yellow, hand-painted wallpaper depicting many kinds of colored birds was supplied in 1817 by Frederick Crace for the Saloon at the Royal Pavilion. The Crace ledgers described it as a ‘very fine set of India Paper, green ground, colored flowers, birds, etc.’

A model of what the Royal Pavillion looked like in the time of George IV

A chinoiserie window showing the Chinese influence with a Western face.

* *

A curiosity cabinet for displaying interesting items in the breakfast room

Many of the fantastic things you see in Brighton are multiplied exponentially in the East Wing of Buckingham Palace. However, the opportunity to take photographs and talk with the most knowledgeable docents you will ever encounter makes Brighton a must!

The Town of Brighton

No longer the Victorian Seaside town of Hercule Poirot, Brighton still has a pier and a vibrant, LGBTQ-friendly community.

The stunning train station of Brighton was built by the London & Brighton Railway in 1840–41. The platform was built by John Urpeth Rastrick and consists of four pitched roofs, each 250 ft long

The clock at the rail station

The Brighton Dome is now an entertainment center where ABBA made their debut. It was once part of the Pavillion, serving mainly as back-of-the-house spaces.

The pier is what one has come to expect in the twentieth century: fast food, trinkets, and carnival games.

I do recommend a tour of the East Wing of Buckingham Palace, but if that is not in the cards, a day in Brighton is a joy.

Two Cemeteries – Two Nature Reserves

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 252024

July 2024

In a, not quite accomplished yet, attempt at seeing the Magnificent Seven, I was able to get to four on this trip. The Magnificent Seven is an informal term applied to seven large private cemeteries in London. These are Kensal Green Cemetery, West Norwood Cemetery, Highgate Cemetery, Abney Park Cemetery, Brompton Cemetery, Nunhead Cemetery, and Tower Hamlets Cemetery. They were established in the 19th century to alleviate overcrowding in existing parish burial grounds as London’s population grew during the Victorian era.

Tower Hamlets Cemetery

Tower Hamlets opened in 1841 and closed for burials in 1966. The park now contains the cemetery as well as surrounding land. The site is today known as the Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature and Conservation and is an award-winning local nature reserve.

These identical graves belonged to people that, as far as I could see, were not related.

Tower Hamlets Cemetery was very popular with people from the East End, and by 1889, 247,000 bodies had been interred; the cemetery remained open for another 77 years. A good portion of the area is public graves. These were considered the property of the company that formed the cemetery, a block of eleven wealthy men from London. Public graves were used to bury those whose families could not afford a plot. Several persons, entirely unrelated, could be buried in the same grave within a few weeks. Allegedly, some graves were dug 40 feet deep and contained up to 30 bodies.

Only 55 years after its opening, the cemetery was reported to be neglected. During the Second World War, the cemetery was bombed five times during raids on the City of London. Burials continued until 1966, when the grounds were closed with the intention of creating an open space.

As I walked through this ridiculously overgrown and dilapidated cemetery, I understood and appreciated the intention of an open space. The park was filled with walkers, joggers, and dog owners. However, I also wondered about the feelings of those who buried their loved ones with such care and sadness and whether it was a fit ending.

I love cemeteries as does my friend Susan. I commented that I found reading the sentiments on newer tombstones to be difficult but had no problem with those of one hundred years ago or more. Susan pointed out that somehow the very flowery language used in those times somehow eased the pain of reading about their deaths. I think she is correct.

Since Llewellyn never married, he is buried with his parents and siblings, and his inscription reads “REES RALPH LLEWELLYN. PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON.”

The only famous person that I could find buried in Tower Hamlet was Rees Ralph Llewellyn.

Dr Llewellyn maintained a surgery at 152 Whitechapel Road. According to history, Llewellyn was summoned by PC John Thain 96J at approximately 4:00 a.m. on 31 August 1888 to attend Mary Ann Nichols, whose body had been found in Buck’s Row. He conducted a brief examination, pronounced her dead, and had the body transported to the Old Montague Street Workhouse Infirmary Mortuary. He was later recalled to the mortuary when more extensive injuries to the abdomen were discovered by Inspector John Spratling. At 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, 1 September, Llewellyn conducted the post-mortem examination.

I must assume he continued to live a happy life, as that is all I can find about the gentleman.

Nunhead Cemetery

Nunhead Cemetery is the second largest of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries. Almost 270,000 people are buried here, dating back as far as 1840. Nunhead is also a nature reserve but in much better shape than Tower Hamlets.

The Anglican chapel was designed by Thomas Little.

There are two chapels within the cemetery’s grounds. The nonconformist chapel is thought to have been destroyed by a bomb during the Blitz, and the Anglican Chapel fell to arsonists in the 1970s.

The first burial, in October 1840, was of Charles Abbott, a 101-year-old Ipswich grocer; the last burial was of a volunteer soldier who became a canon of Lahore Cathedral.

This obelisk is the second “Scottish Political Martyrs Memorial” (the other is in Edinburgh). They are dedicated to the leaders of the Friends of the People Society, popularly called the Scottish Martyrs, including Thomas Muir, Maurice Margarot, and Thomas Fyshe Palmer, who were transported to Australia in 1794. Radical MP Joseph Hume erected the obelisk in 1851–52.

This mausoleum was built for Mrs Laura Stearns of Twickenham, who died in 1900. Her father, William Chillingworth, a wine merchant, is buried next to her in his own sepulcher. They were the owners of Radnor House in Twickenham, known locally as Pope’s Villa, because it was built on the site of Alexander Pope’s original house, which still stands and is now an independent school.

Monument for John Allan (1790-1865)

The sculptor of John Allan’s tomb was Matthew Noble. Noble was a partner in a City of London shipping firm but also an amateur archeologist. That might explain why his tomb is based on the 370 BC Payava Tomb of Xanthos.

According to a plaque nearby, this tomb is the vault for the family of Vincent Figgents. Vincent was a City of London typefounder who worked his way up from an apprentice. On his retirement in 1836, he handed over to James and his elder brother Vincent II. Vincent II died in Nice at the age of 53, and his body was brought back to the family vault. James took an active interest in City affairs and became MP for Shrewsburty from 1868 to 1874.

The obelisk is William Chadwick, a stonemason, architect, engineer, speculative builder, and entrepreneur. The Celtic Cross is Sydney Carlyon Grier BA, a romantic novelist whose real name was Hilda Caroline Gregg. She began writing when she was thirteen and published her first short story at the age of eighteen. Between 1894 and 1925, she published 32 novels. The cross is Frederick Gorringe, who owned a small drapery shop on Buckingham Palace Road, Belgravia. His business was patronized by the nobility and gentry. He prospered and expanded, and by 1859, occupied 3 shop premises.

It was a rainy day, but through the clouds, you could see St. Paul Cathedral.

From a little farther on, you can see The Eye.

The anchor reads Our dear brave hero sailor brother Reginald Bult of HMS IRIS II who died of wounds received at Zeebrug April 23rd, 1918, ages 21 years.

* * *

* *

Crossbones and Kensal Green Cemeteries

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 252024

July 2024

Crossbones Cemetery

Wandering near the Tate Modern, I found this small graveyard that is only open three days a week for a few hours, and then, only if they can find volunteers. I was lucky!

Depending on what/who you read, the stories vary, but the gist is that Cross Bones is a disused post-medieval burial ground on Redcross Way. Up to 15,000 people are believed to have been buried there. It was closed in 1853.

Cross Bones is thought to have been established originally as an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes, or “single women”, who were known locally as “Winchester Geese” because the Bishop of Winchester licensed them to work within the Liberty of the Clink. The area lay outside the jurisdiction of the City of London and, as a consequence, became known for its brothels and theatres, as well as bull and bear baiting, activities not permitted within the City itself. By 1769, it had become a pauper’s cemetery servicing St. Saviour’s parish.

The graveyard was closed in 1853 because it was “completely overcharged with dead”, and further burials were deemed “inconsistent with a due regard for the public health and public decency”. The land was sold as a building site in 1883, prompting an objection from Lord Brabazon in November of that year in a letter to The Times, asking that it be saved from “such desecration”. The sale was declared null and void the following year under the Disused Burial Grounds Act 1884, and subsequent attempts to develop the site were opposed by local people, as was its brief use as a fairground. After removal of remains to the parish facilities in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, the site was built upon.

Over half of the burials in the cemetery are children. The trust was approached by parents who had lost children prenatally, asking whether an area could be set aside dedicated to children. The trust developed the area following the Japanese tradition of Mizuko kayo, as seen here.

Between 1991 and 1998, excavations were conducted on the land by the Museum of London Archaeology Service in connection with the construction of London Underground’s Jubilee line. Archaeologists found a highly overcrowded graveyard with bodies piled on top of one another. Tests showed those buried had suffered from smallpox, tuberculosis, Paget’s disease, osteoarthritis, and vitamin D deficiency. A dig in 1992 uncovered 148 graves, dating from 1800 to 1853. Over one-third of the bodies were perinatal (between 22 weeks gestation and seven days after birth), and a further 11 percent were under one year old. The adults were mostly women aged 36 and older.

Kensal Green

Kensal Green Cemetery opened in 1833 and was the first commercial cemetery in London. The increase in population and the inadequate space provided by existing cemeteries and churchyards set off a need for large cemeteries in London.

The Penny Magazine, August 1834

Campaigners for burial reform and public opinion considered the best solution would be “detached cemeteries for the metropolis”, and in 1832 Parliament passed a bill that incorporated the General Cemetery Company “for the Interment of the Dead.”

As I was arriving at Kensal Green, the hired Victorian hearse was ending its job. The woman in the photo is the second-generation owner of this stunning team of horses and a stable of Victorian hearses to match. The one shown above is a modern one with disc brakes, but they do have original older ones as well.

Classic Victorian Tombs

Sadly, much of the cemetery is in disrepair.

Erich Fried (6 May 1921 – 22 November 1988) was an Austrian-born poet, writer, and translator. He translated works by different English writers from English into German, most notably works by William Shakespeare.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a British civil and mechanical engineer. He is considered “one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history,” “one of the 19th-century engineering giants,” and “one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions.” Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway (GWR), a series of steamships, including the first purpose-built transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels throughout the UK.

Charles Babbage was an English polymath, mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.

Alexis and Emma Soyer

Alexis and Emma Soyer were fascinating people. Escaping from France during the 1830 Revolution, Chef Alexis Soyer became the most celebrated cook in England. Emma achieved considerable popularity as a painter, chiefly of portraits. Born in London in 1813, she was instructed in French, Italian, and music, becoming a talented pianist. She showed two paintings at the Paris Salon in 1842 but died the same year following complications suffered in a premature childbirth brought on by a thunderstorm. Distraught, Soyer erected a monument to her at Kensal Green cemetery.

During the Irish famine in April 1847, Soyer invented a soup kitchen and was asked by the Government to go to Ireland to implement his idea. His famine soup was served to thousands of people in Dublin for free, and while in Ireland, he wrote Soyer’s Charitable Cookery, giving the proceeds of the book to various charities. In June 1848, 140 of Emma’s works were exhibited on behalf of the Spitalfields soup kitchen.

During the Crimean War, Soyer was inspired by the reports of correspondent William Howard Russell in The Times about the malnutrition of troops to improve the feeding of the army, originally at his own expense. (Later, he was paid his expenses and wages equivalent to those of a Brigadier-General. ) After a six-week journey, he reached Crimea, where he was granted complete autonomy on the soldiers’ diet and, by the use of his invention, the portable Soyer stove, managed radically to improve the way that British soldiers were fed.

Soyer wrote A Culinary Campaign as a record of his activities in Crimea. The 1854 book A Shilling Cookery for the People was a recipe book for people who could not afford elaborate kitchen utensils or large amounts of exotic ingredients.

Soyer died on August 5th, 1858, and was buried beside his wife.

Scottish Botanist Archibald Menzies

A new grave for Scottish Botanist Archibald Menzies has been erected. I found it sad his wife was an afterthought with the stone reading: Also his wife Janet Menzies 1770-1836

The stone at the foot reads:

Archibald Menzies, notable Scottish plant collector
Inscription on the headstone of 1842:

Many years a surgeon in the Royal Navy
In which Station he served in the fleet commanded by Admiral Rodney on the 12 April 1782

He afterwards twice circumnavigated the Globe,
First with Captain Colnett and again in the
voyage of discovery under the orders of
Captain Vancouver as the Naturalist of that expedition.

He added greatly to the knowledge then possessed
Of the natural productions, especially the plants,
Of the various countries visited.
After practicing his profession for many years
In London, he retired to Notting Hill where he died
On the 15th February 1842 aged 88 years

Sincerely respected and deeply regretted by his numerous friends.

In memory of JosephRichardson

formerly of Underskidday Keswick Cumberland

The inventor of

The instrument of Rock Bell and Steel Band

Died 8th April 1855, Aged 65

Samuel Richardson

Died 2nd March 1888, Aged 63

The Rock Bell and Steel Band are collectively known as the “Musical Stones of Skiddaw” and were originally known as the “Rock Harmonicon.”

Built by Joseph Richardson, it took thirteen years to construct between 1827 and 1840. When completed, it was described by a London newspaper as being “the largest and most complete set of musical stones that was perhaps ever collected in this or any other country”. It consisted of about 60 stones ranging in length from eight feet down to three feet and covered a range of at least five octaves.

The “Rock Harmonicon” was played by three players at once, the sons of the inventor. They would sit in front in the same way as at a piano, with one playing the bass notes, the middle one playing the tenor notes, and the third playing the treble notes.

Joseph Manton (April 1766 – June 1835) was a British gunsmith. He innovated sport shooting, improved weapon quality, and paved the way for the modern artillery shell.

19th Century Authors – An Oxford Education

London, Oxford, United Kingdom

Jul 212024

July 2024

I have spent the last week at Oxford Experience, and the class I chose was Modernist Literature Through Oxford and London, concentrating on Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Nights, T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and the writings and paintings of Wyndham Lewis.

The Oxford Experience life is centered at Christ Church College.

Virginia Woolf and others of her era were part of what later became known as the Bloomsbury group, as they lived and worked in the Bloomsbury area of London. Ironically, this is where the VSA lecture courses I had taken the two weeks before were given.

The home of Dorothy Sayers

If you have not read Sayers, I suggest you start with the Peter Whimsey Series. Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893 – 1957) was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. She grew up in Oxford, just a few steps from Christ Church College and next door to where her father was headmaster at Christ Church Cathedral School.

Gaudy Nights takes place in Oxford. Sommerville College is the model for Shrewsbury College, the center of Gaudy Nights.

Women were not considered full members of the University until October 192o. However, it was not until 1957 that quotas restricting the number of women undergraduates in Oxford were removed, and it wasn’t until 1959 that the five women’s colleges received the same ‘full status’ as the men’s colleges. So, in Sayers’s time, women did the same work as men but did not receive a degree.

The City Walls of Oxford still exist at New College.

The present surviving parts of Oxford’s medieval city wall date from the first half of the thirteenth century, when the older wall was overhauled and the remaining sections of rampart replaced by stone. Although it is commonly called the city wall, Oxford was a town until the creation of the See of Oxford in 1542.

The wall enclosed an area of approximately 115 acres. It originally had an internal wall walk and at least 21 semi-circular bastions. Its circumference was approximately two miles.

When William of Wykeham bought the land for New College from the City of Oxford in 1379, the latter made it a condition that the college should maintain the wall around the site. The Lord Mayor of Oxford and a group of city councilors still inspect the city wall at New College every three years.

Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882 – 1957) was a British writer, painter, and critic. He co-founded the Vorticist movement in art and edited BLAST, the literary magazine of the Vorticists.

Vorticist Composition by Wyndham Lewis is a painting of the Dining Hall of New College.

Wyndham was a friend of T.S. Eliot, and they both met James Joyce at Oxford. Eliot’s Preludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night appeared in BLAST in July 1915. Eliot reviewed Lewis’s first novel, Tar, in 1918, describing him as “the most fascinating personality of our time, in whose work we recognize the thought of modern and the energy of the caveman”. In turn, Lewis considered Eliot “the most interesting man in London Society.”

Enjoying Oxford

Continuing the Trail of Artists in Bloomsbury, London

Tavistock Square

A statue of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square

Virginia Woolf moved to 52 Tavistock Square in 1924. Many passages of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse echo this area, and the vivid depictions of city life were inspired by what she called “street hauntings”, which involved her watching people interact with the cityscape. The Tavistock Hotel now sits where her home once stood.

Charles Dickens also lived on Tavistock Square. At Tavistock House, Dickens wrote Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, and A Tale of Two Cities. He also put on amateur theatricals, which are described in John Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens.

You will also find this memorial in Tavistock Square. On July 7, 2005, there was a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists that targeted commuters traveling on London’s public transportation during the morning rush hour. The fourth terrorist detonated a bomb on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square.

Fitzroy Square

Fitzroy Square

No. 29 Fitzroy Square was the home of George Bernard Shaw from 1887 until his marriage in 1898 and later of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell from 1907 to 1911.

Garden Square

Garden Square

50 Gordon Square holds a plaque reading: Here and in neighboring houses during the first half of the 20th century, there lived several members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, and The Stracheys.

Throughout her life, Woolf suffered from mental health issues, which were later diagnosed as bipolar disorder. When Woolf’s father died in 1904, the writer had her second nervous breakdown. This led to the writer and her siblings selling the family home and moving to 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.

Author and critic Giles Lytton Strachey lived at 51 Gordon Square. He was also a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians. Strachey established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit.

Woburn Square

Green Man by Lydia Kapinska 1999

Hidden in the shrubbery at the south end of Woburn Square is a modern sculpture (1999) by Lydia Kapinska of an ancient imaginary creature, a Green Man. It has no real reason for its placement at that spot. But on the plaque giving the name of the sculptor is a quotation from The Waves by Virginia Woolf: My roots go down to the depths of the world… I am as green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge…

St James Square

The London Library

Thomas Carlyle founded the London Library as an alternative to the library at the British Museum, which he claimed was filled with “snorers, snufflers, wheezers, spitters” interrupting his quiet study. Past members include Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin, Agatha Christie, and Winston Churchill—some later providing their books own for the shelves. The library was used often by Leonard Woolf and holds a fine collection of both Virginia Woolf’s work and that of Hogarth Press.

Russel Square

24 Russel Square

24 Russell Square was the home of the publishing house Faber & Faber. Established in 1929 by T.S. Eliot, the firm quickly became a leading publisher of emerging poets, playwrights, and novelists like W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Siegfried Sassoon, Samuel

Beckett, and James Joyce.

Wanderings in the Area for fun and education

The Foundling Hospital was founded in 1739 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram. It was established for the “education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children.” The word “hospital” was used in a more general sense. simply indicating the institution’s “hospitality” to those less fortunate.

Bronze Sculpture by Tracy Emin

This very tiny bronze mitten on the Foundling Museum fence is part of Tracy Emin’s Baby Things series. It was placed there during an exhibit of her work at the Museum in 2010.

I am always a sucker for Atlas and Caryatid. I have no idea what they are called when putti are holding up the pediment.

This stunning, recently restored building became famous as a meeting place for many of London’s artists, intellectuals, and bohemians from the 1920s to the mid-1950s.

Polished mahogany partitions with acid-etched glass were installed downstairs to recreate the original snugs.

The building was originally constructed as the Fitzroy Coffee House in 1883 and converted to a pub (called “The Hundred Marks”) in 1887.

A new Lincrusta ceiling

Although geographically close to the Bloomsbury set, Fitzrovians were wilder in temperament, a loose-knit gang of friends described in the Times Literary Supplement as a ‘world of outsiders, down-and-outs, drunks, sensualists, homosexuals, and eccentrics’.

Regulars included painters Nina Hamnett, Augustus John, Walter Sickert, and Wyndham Lewis, the occultist Aleister Crowley, and poets Stephen Spender and Ezra Pound. In the late thirties and early forties, journalists and playwrights working at the nearby BBC dropped by, including Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNiece, and George Orwell (who conceived the Nineteen-Eighty-Four notion of absolute hell while doing a brief stint at the BBC). Even Albert Einstein came for a pint.

The pub was closed for a year in 2015 and underwent a complete restoration. In the seventies, its Victorian interior had been ripped out, so everything needed to be replaced. The Fitzroy Tavern was named the best-restored pub in the UK in 2017. An often-told story of the Fitzroy Tavern involved a former licensee of the pub named Judah ‘Pop’ Kleinfeld. Having seen the loser of a darts match in the public bar throw a dart into the ceiling in exasperation, Kleinfeld hit upon the idea to provide darts to the public with little paper bags attached, which they would then throw into the ceiling for an aptly named charity called Pennies From Heaven.

St Georges Garden Bloomsbury

In the early 1700s, as graveyards directly around churches had started to fill up in London, new burial grounds and bodies often had to be buried some distance from the church. This is the case with St. George’s. This site served two churches, St George’s Bloomsbury and St George the Martyr on Queen’s Square. The graveyard was closed in 1884/5 and turned into a park.

That was a wild meander of London and Oxford that tied artists, authors, and my interests into one. It made sense to me, even if it didn’t to anyone else.

Busbridge Parish Church

England, United Kingdom

Jul 152024

July 2024

Busbridge Church was founded by John and Emma Ramsden of Busbridge Hall. Building work took place between 1865 and 1867 and finished with the building’s dedication in 1867. The church was designed by George Gilbert Scott a leading Gothic Revival architect.

The front porch’s oak frame was carved by William Farmer, who worked in both wood and stone for Gilbert Scott.

The initials of the founders

The church is made of local stone

Scott’s single-aisle nave is designed to allow light to dominate. The chancel arch terminates in unique carved stone corbels feature naturalistic designs, carved by William Farmer

Margaret of Scotland and Joan of Arc – 1925 A.K. Nicholson

Archibald Keightley Nicholson (1871–1937) was an English 20th-century ecclesiastical stained-glass maker. During his lifetime, Nicholson designed and executed over 700 window designs. The altar front was designed by William Morris for the church in the 1870s. One of only a handful of such frontals by Morris, the original design is in the V&A.

A wrought-iron chancel screen by Edwin Lutyens

Jekyll Memorial

The Jekyll memorial was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens following the death of Gertrude and her brother Herbert in 1932. The Jekyll family was actively involved in Busbridge Church. Gertrude attended the consecration in 1867 with her parents.

Watts Gallery Artists Village

England, United Kingdom

Jul 142024

July 2024

Watts Gallery is a gallery and an Artists’ Village in the village of Compton. Mary Fraser-Tytler Watts created it as an homage to the work of her husband, Victorian-era painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts.

The chapel, designed by Mary and assembled by the local villagers, is the center and most awe-inspiring thing about the place.

The Watts Mortuary Chapel

The Chapel is a Modern (British Art Nouveau style) version of the Celtic Revival. While the overall architectural structure is loosely Romanesque Revival, the terracotta relief carving and interior are Celtic Revival on a large scale. According to the local council, it is “a unique concoction of art nouveau, Celtic, Romanesque, and Egyptian influence with Mary’s own original style.”

The Exterior

Mary Watts was influenced by different cultures and religions from around the world. The chapel design is based on the idea of the Circle of Eternity with the Cross of Faith running through it. Mary was inspired by other round buildings, including the Buddhist Stupa.

The Path of the Just is the frieze around the circular exterior of the Chapel, taking its imagery from the Book of Proverbs. The frieze shows positive human characteristics and is separated into four sections: Truth, Hope, Light, and Love. The Path of Truth shows the owl, which symbolizes wisdom, while the Path of Hope has the peacock, which loses its tail feathers in autumn and grows them again in spring. The bird on the Path of Light is the eagle, which sees further than any other bird, and the Path of Love shows the pelican, traditionally a symbol of selfless love.

The chapel doors are made of chestnut and oak and were carved by the Compton wheelwright Thomas Steadman, and its hinges are made by the local blacksmith Clarence Sex. The overall form and style of the carving is reminiscent of early Scandinavian wooden doors. The design shows a dragon, symbolic of the Evil Spirit, cut through with the cross, reflecting the triumph of Christian love over Paganism.

The entrance arch and pillars are decorated with tiles that reflect the sadness of death but also give hope, showing renewal and unity through the Divine. Angels alternately look down in sorrow and up in hope, and the faces on the pillars learn truths from nature.

A group of local amateurs and enthusiasts, many of whom later joined Mary Fraser-Tytler Watts to found the Compton Potters’ Arts Guild, constructed the chapel from 1896 to 1898; virtually every village resident was involved.

The Interior

Local villagers were invited to decorate the chapel under Mary’s guidance, resulting in an interior fusing art nouveau and Celtic influences combined with Mary’s original style. Each Fraser-Tytler Watt’s evening class member, led by Louis Deuchars, had a separate job, with 74 Compton villagers participating.

The ceiling suggests a transept (something typical of cross-shaped churches), which doesn’t really exist on the chapel’s floor. Fraser-Tytler’s notes on the decorative program indicate that at the apex of the ceiling is the circle, which suggests wholeness, eternity, and divinity.

The four angels closest to God are Seraphim (burning angels), who belong to the highest order of the celestial hierarchy. They are clothed in crimson, the color of love and life, and hold uplifted hands in the sign of blessing.

On the walls, angels alternate facing the center of the room. The ones facing the interior are angels of light, and the ones facing away are angels of darkness.

The messenger angels hold discs representing the light and the dark or the positive and negative of all things.

The Tree of Life is a powerful universal symbol, and Mary uses it both in the interior and exterior of the chapel. Outside, it is used as a vision of hope and renewal on the sides of the Chapel buttresses. Included in the Tree of Life are symbols representing the whole of creation. Flowers on earth are found at the bottom, then fruit, shells, fish, serpents, birds, beasts, man and woman, the sun, the moon, stars, and angels.

Cherubs are included in the highest order of the hierarchy and decorate the arches. They have the faces of children and represent the soul.

The little flowers symbolize the fair gifts of Nature. They were made by the children of Compton and are said to represent flowers that can be found in the area.

G. F. Watts paid for the project and painted a version of The All-Pervading for the altar three months before he died.

Both Wattses have memorials in the “cloister” a few yards from the chapel, and a number of the memorials throughout the small cemetery use unglazed terracotta, even from dates after the Compton Pottery closed in the 1950s.

* **

Members of the Huxley family, including Julia Huxley and her sons Aldous Huxley and Julian Huxley, are buried in the cemetery.

Norney Grange

England, United Kingdom

Jul 142024

July 2024

Norney Grange was designed in 1897 by Charles Voysey, a Arts and Crafts Movement member, for the Reverend Leighton Crane. The name Norney Grange is probably a corruption of Reverend Crane’s name, as it is clear that there has never been a barn or ‘grange’ on this site.

Vorsey displays some foreign styles: the round window above the front door is Roman.

Voysey built several houses nearby. He was trying to discover Englishness in architectural style and experimented at Norney. The roof slate is from Westmoreland. The leaded light windows are of Tudor style. At the eastern end, the shaped leaded roofs above the inglenooks are of Gothic style.

***

The paneling inside is of Austrian oak. Apparently, Austrian Oak grew on the nearby common.

The silver light switches, notice the x pattern.

Voysey’s approach was holistic; he designed everything. Thomas Elsey of West London made metalwork gutters, down pipes, door handles, keyholes and keys, fireplaces, air vents, and hinges for Voysey.

* *

Voysey loved hearts

“bird and tree” ventilation grilles

Lighting

Fireplaces

Other unique features

The laundry

One stove in the kitchen

There is still a considerable amount of property that has not been restored.

It is quite clear that Voysey was among the first people to understand and appreciate the significance of industrial design. He has been considered one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture, a notion he rejected.

Jekyll and Lutyens – Lutyens and Jekyll

England, United Kingdom

Jul 142024

July 2024

Munstead Wood

Munstead Wood

Munstead Wood is a collaboration between Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens. A collaboration of the finest quality and achieved perfection. The garden was the creation of Jekyll, who became widely known through her books and prolific articles in magazines such as Country Life. The Arts and Crafts style house in which Jekyll lived from 1897 to 1932 was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens.

The house, which is not open to the public, was designed by a young Edwin Lutyens (At 19, with very little training, Lutyens had already opened his first office when he met Jekyll). The house is constructed from Bargate stone and other local materials. It was completed in 1897.

This was the first collaboration between these two titans of design in what would amount to as many as 120.

The Munstead timbers that make its structure were all harvested from the surrounding area, including some of the trees Jekyll actually remembered from her childhood. Local craftspeople were employed in the construction, and the house embodies Arts and Crafts principles.

The home was in private hands for many years. In 2023, the National Trust purchased 11 of the original 15 acres. A restoration program had begun in the 1990s, reinstating parts of the garden, but some modern interventions remain, such as a swimming pool and driveway. The National Trust is now grappling with the many issues of owning a home that not only needs restoration but also small things such as access for the general public and a garden that will take, at a minimum, ten years to restore.

Jekyll’s design

The inlay on the door to her workshop was all Jekyll.

At Munstead, original trees and plants have been identified, but loss has occurred due to the passing of time and a changing climate. Of the over four hundred gardens Jekyll designed, only a handful remain.

Ms Jekyll transformed horticultural practices and gardens nationwide until her death in 1932.

She introduced more than 30 new varieties of plants collected across Europe and inspired others to take up gardening through her books and over 1,000 articles.

Ms Jekyll was also the first woman to be awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour.

Munstead Wood plainly shows the importance of seasonality to Jekyll

Jekyll’s choice of plants was influenced by the various phases and travels of her life. She included shrubs and plants, which were features of her childhood home in Bramley, a village near Munstead Wood. These included Amelanchier, Kalmia, Andromeda, and Leycesteria.

Extensive travel in her young adulthood also inspired Jekyll to use many Mediterranean and exotic plants she encountered to add scent, texture, and silver foliage to Munstead Wood. These include bay, myrtle, rosemary, santolina, and Iris stylosa. Exotics such as cannas, euphorbias, and yuccas also held special memories and were chosen because they thrived particularly well in the poor sandy soil at Munstead Wood.

Jekyll chose plants for their shape, texture, habit, scent, or color.

At some point after Jekyll’s death, this Sunken Rock Garden was filled in and leveled to form a lawn. In the 1990s, while the then-head gardener was working in that part of the garden, he discovered that the rocks, steps, and paths were still in their original positions with soil and rubble infill.

* * * * * * * * * *

Jekyll’s garden became famous through her writing and photographs. Her approach to gardening, use of color, and choice of plants were widely admired. With so many gardeners following her example, her planting ideas have changed gardens forever.

* *

Two gates I found enchanting on the road to the house.

This tower was built on the neighboring property belonging to Jekyll’s mother to allow Gertrude to watch the thunderclouds when they rolled in.

Crossness Pumping Station – London

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 142024

July 2024

The Crossness Pumping Station is a former sewage pumping station designed by the Metropolitan Board of Works’ chief engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and architect Charles Henry Driver.

In the 19th century, London’s population numbered around 2 million. The city suffered fatal epidemics of cholera, and thousands died as the Victorians had no known cure.

It was widely believed breathing in ‘miasma’, foul contaminated air, caused disease and death. London-based physician Dr John Snow put forward the theory that the condition was water-borne, and you can read my post about that here.

In 1853-54 cholera claimed a further 10,738 victims. Then in the summer of 1858, temperatures averaged 95 degrees F. The stench from the Thames, the ‘Great Stink’, became overwhelming for those nearby, including Parliament, who finally stood up and took notice.

Enter Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian engineering mastermind and public health visionary behind the vast sewage system that Londoners still rely on today. Prior to Bazalgette’s system, sewage was dumped straight into the Thames. Bazalgette devised a system to take the sewage out of London and, well, simply deposit it further downriver where no one cared.

The Crossness Pumping Station, abandoned after 88 years of service, is now a museum divided into two parts. It took forty years, but two of the magnificent Beam Engines have been restored. Two have been left in the state they were found when restoration began to give a wonderfully visual comparison. The four are named “Victoria”, “Prince Consort”, “Albert Edward” and “Alexandra”.

A schematic of the Beam Engines as they are too large to take in as one

The Octagon is the entry to the guts of the Crossness Pumping Station

The Octagon is made of Victorian cast iron and is imbued with the Metropolitan Board of Works MBW symbol and other meaningful ornamentation.

The Column Capitals are made up of leaves and fruit of the fig tree and Senna Pods – both good cures for constipation.

To counter this, the panels between the columns are ornamented with 4-leaved Dogwood and the 5-leaved Bramble, both useful in combating diarrhea.

At 11 revolutions per minute, 6 tons of sewage per stroke per engine were pumped up into a 27-million-imperial-gallon reservoir, and released into the Thames during the ebbing tide

*The steam required to power these engines was created by 12 Cornish boilers with single “straight-through” flues situated in the Boiler House to the south of the Engine House, which consumed 5,000 tons of Welsh coal annually.

* *

Over the years, the sewage dumping below London has been mitigated. In 1882, a Royal Commission recommended that the solid matter of sewage be separated and that only the liquid portion be allowed to flow into the river. In 1891, sedimentation tanks were added to the works, and the sludge was carried by boats and dumped further out into the estuary. Eventually, purification was added to the system, but removing the sewage of a town the size of London is still a challenge.

The Thames Tideway Tunnel is being built to relieve the pressure on the old system. It will run under London utilizing gravity to transfer the waste eastwards for treatment. It is due for completion sometime in 2024.

Standen House and Gardens

England, United Kingdom

Jul 142024

July 2024

Standen House

Philip Webb designed this house between 1891 and 1894 for London solicitor, James Beale, his wife Margaret, and their family of seven children. The house is constructed in the Wealden vernacular style with sandstone quarried from the estate and locally made bricks and tiles. The interior is decorated with Morris carpets, fabrics, and wallpapers, with furnishings also by Morris.

W.A.S. Benson was a renowned Arts and Crafts lighting designer. The lighting over the billiard table is probably by Benson although it is not found in any of his surviving catalogues. The double brass pendant fitting over the billiard table has three parallel arms with six lights. The shades and bulb fittings have copper tulip-shaped holders. The pair of brass bracket wall lights in the alcove have adjustable swivel arms. W.A. S. Benson met Morris and Edward Burne-Jones at Oxford. Morris encouraged Bensonto to set up his own business, and he had done so by the early 1880s.

The billiard table is from Cox and Yeman, one of the three major billiard table makers in the Victorian period. This table is laid out for the game of Life Pool, a form of Pocket Billiards. Around 1875 Life Pool merged with Black Pool to form the game of Snooker.

Couch for spectators to watch billiards

There are a number of tiles by William De Morgan in the billiard room.

Manxman Piano

An oak upright piano of the type known as a Manxman piano after the original designer M.H. Bailie Scott (186501945), who designed them on the Isle of Man. The instrument was made by John Broadwood and Sons. The upper portion is encased in an oak cabinet designed by C.R. Ashbee (1863-1942) and made by the Guild of Handicrafts in 1904. It has two folding doors with metal handles, which, when opened reveal the keyboard and a metal candle holder on either side. The inside is decorated with inset flora plaques in translucent enamels.

De Morgan bowl

William Morris tapestry hanging behind the chair with William Morris carpet and other furnishings.

From the start, the house had electric power, originally generated by a donkey engine in a shed by the old barn. The house still has its original electric light fittings, designed by W. A. S. Benson.

This plaster relief by Sir George Frampton (1860-1928) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 as Mary and Agnes, daughters of L. Karslake. It is mounted in an Italian Renaissance-style frame designed by Lewis Kaarslake, the architect and father of the two girls depicted.

Burne-Jones originally designed the figure of Saint Agnes as a stained glass window. William Morris designed the foliage to turn it into a tapestry, which was made by Morris and Co. and first woven in 1887.

The fender is made of beaten copper by John Pearson. Pearson was an early member of the Guild and School of Handicraft.

Majolica pottery

A Victorian tin-hip bath

* *

Walking the gardens of Standen House on a dreary rainy day.

The Beales consulted a London landscape gardener, G.B. Simpson, who drew up a layout of geometrical patterns. Webb, on the other hand, proposed a mixture of natural styles combining old-fashioned formality and compartmentalized gardens.
*

Bedford Park and Highgate Cemetery

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 142024

July 2024

Bedford Park

Bedford Park in Chiswick began in 1875 under the direction of Jonathan Carr. It has many large houses in the British Queen Anne Revival style by Norman Shaw and other leading Victorian-era architects, including Edward William Godwin, Edward John May, Henry Wilson, and Maurice Bingham Adams. Its architecture is characterized by red brick with an eclectic mixture of features, such as tile-hung walls, gables in varying shapes, balconies, bay windows, terracotta and rubbed brick decorations, pediments, elaborate chimneys, and balustrades painted white.

John Butler Yeates Home

Irish lawyer-turned-painter John Butler Yeats’s 1879 decision to move his family to Bedford Park in 187o. He was looking for a more aesthetically pleasing way of life.

By moving to a suburb designed by Jonathan Carr, he was happily ensconced in a community of Carr’s gallery owners, painters, writers, publishers, actors, set designers, and social and political thinkers. This community’s ethos was liberal, progressive, multi-cultural, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, pro-women’s rights and gender equality, somewhat vegetarian, and committed to exploring a wider spirituality.

Classic architecture of Bedford Park

Highgate Cemetery

I have explored Highgate Cemetery before, but we were treated to a quick private tour while visiting with the VSA, and these are a few new things I saw.

A restoration project in Highgate

Highgate is suffering from years of neglect and is in the midst of a decades-long project to bring it back to its glory. Above is a slate door that was smashed in many years ago, with a slate piece added to show the before and after. The slate would have been patined when it was originally installed, something that was removed in a very bad 1990s restoration project.

As pieces fall from the building, they are placed back on to show what would have been there, as there is no money to restore them to their original state.

The Mausoleum of Julius Beer

The ceiling of the Julius Beer Mausoleum

The tiled floor of the Julius Beer Mausoleum

The Doors of the Julius
Beer Mausoleum

Mosaics in the Julius Beer Mausoleum

Coffins in an underground private crypt

Coffins in a more communal crypt

A beautiful sleeping angel

One of the curving streets off of the center hub of the cemetery

An answer to Egyptomania that was sweeping the world at the time

Sambourne House

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 132024

July 2024

The Sambourne House

18 Stafford Terrace was the home of the Punch illustrator Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910) and his wife Marion.

The Sambourne House is one of many similar townhouses that line both sides of the street

The house is an excellent example of middle-class Aestheticism and a lot of eclecticism. Throughout are decorative Sunflower motifs in the stained glass windows, William Morris wallpapers, a collection of blue-and-white Chinese import porcelain, and a lot of other items that caught the eye of Sambourne.

A glimpse of the unique wall treatments

***

Sambourne’s studio

Sambourne used a huge library of photographic images to give accuracy to his work.

Sambourne was most famous for being a draughtsman for the satirical magazine Punch for more than forty years and rising to the position of “First Cartoonist” in his final decade. He was also a great-grandfather of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, who was the husband of Princess Margaret.

The house is filled with his work, but most behind glass and very hard to photograph due to the lighting in the house.

*Details of the above work framed in gold.

* * *

The house is eclectic to say the least but Sambourne’s work is a delight to behold.

Leighton House

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 132024

July 2024

Leighton House is part of Holland Circle but deserves a post of its own.

Leighton House was once the home of painter Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton (1830–1896). Leighton commissioned the architect and designer George Aitchison to build a combined home and studio for him. On the ground floor is a spectacular tile-covered Qa’a or room.

The Qa’a

According to the architect, the design was based on the palace of La Zisa in Palermo. The room contains 17th-century tiles and carved wooden lattice-work windows of the same period from Damascus. There are also large 16th-century Turkish tiles. The west wall has a wooden alcove with inset 14th-century tiles.

The room also contains Victorian elements. The capitals of the smaller columns are by Sir Joseph Boehm, from Aitchison’s designs.

* * *

The tiles continue up the stairway

The 2nd story has an alcove of tiles and looks down upon the Qa’a

William DeMorgan was brought in to replicate a tile that went missing when this mural was shipped from Damascus.

William De Morgan recreated the tile containing the parrot on the bottom left.

William De Morgan (1839 – 1917) is often remembered as a friend of William Morris, but he was so much more. He was an inventive and innovative designer of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

He began his formal training as a fine artist before being led by his scientific and mathematical investigations into the decorative arts. He created stained glass, designed his own kilns, and undertook investigations in chemistry to create innovative luster glazes. These experimentations led to the famous blue tiles found in Leighton House as he tried to find the blue for the parrot tile. His collection of Lusterware can be found in the home and in many museums.

A collection of William De Morgan Luster ware

Tile Floors of the Leighton House

A fireplace in the Leighton House

Leighton is best known for his Flaming June in the Museo de Arte de Ponce. I found his study sketches truly magical.

Holland Park And 19th Century Artists

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 132024

July 2024

Holland Park is an area of Kensington, surrounds its namesake park, Holland Park and colloquially referred to as ‘Millionaire’s Row’ as it is one of the most expensive areas of London.

Sir Walter Cope built Cope Castle, which was a Jacobean mansion hidden in the woods of Holland Park, around 1605-1608. Sir Walter Cope was Chancellor of the Exchequer During the reign of King Charles I. The building was designed by John Thorpe and the estate’s gardener was John Tradescant.

Remains of Cope Castle – now a youth hostel.

Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland

During the time of Lord Holland, Holland House became the political and social hub, drawing in some of the famous names of the time. Visitors to Holland House included such notables as Writer Charles Dickens, Prime Minister and politician Benjamin Disraeli, the poet Thomas Campbell, writer Walter Scott, poet Lord Byron, and historian & poet Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay.

The Dutch Garden of Holland Park

The park is vast, including the famous Kyoto Garden; sadly, we were just walking through the park.

Holland Park Circle

The Holland Park Circle was an informal group of 19th-century artists based in the Holland Park district.

Woodland House

Artist Luke Fildes commissioned Richard Norman Shaw to create Woodland House. Fildes is best known for his 1891 painting The Doctor, which depicts a Victorian doctor observing the critical stage of a child’s illness while the parents look on helplessly. It has been used to portray the values of the ideal physician and the inadequacies of the medical profession.

Tower House

The architect and designer William Burges built this late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district as his home. Designed between 1875 and 1881 in the French Gothic Revival style, it was described by the architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook as “the most complete example of a medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Revival, and the last.”

8 Melbury Road

8 Melbury Road was built in the Queen Anne style by the architect Richard Norman Shaw for artist Marcus Clayton Stone. Marcus Stone was trained by his father, Frank Stone, and began to exhibit at the Royal Academy before he was eighteen. He found success in illustrating books by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and other writers who were friends of his family.

Standing admiring the homes of Fildes and Burgess, I spotted this long frontage, perfectly designed as a gnome village. I wondered how the feuding Robbie Williams ( Fildes Home) and Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page (Woodland Tower) felt about it.

Kelmscott Manor

England, United Kingdom

Jul 122024

July 2024

It is impossible to study the 19th Century without a good dousing of William Morris. Kelmscott Manor was one of two country estates owned by Morris.

Kelmscott Manor dates from around 1570 and has a late 17th-century wing. From 1871 until he died in 1896, it was the country home of the writer, designer, and socialist William Morris.

Morris drew great inspiration from the unspoiled authenticity of the house’s architecture and craftsmanship and its organic relationship with its setting, especially its garden. The Manor is featured in Morris’ work News from Nowhere. It also appears in the background of Water Willow, a portrait of his wife, Jane Morris, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1871.

Medieval Settle and Table

This settle was designed by Philip Speakman Webb for Red House, where William Morris and his family lived between 1860 and 1865 and the home he moved into upon his marriage to Jane Burden-Morris. Webb was a close friend of Morris’s and a partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., for which he also designed glass, metalwork, and furniture. This settle is just one example of Webb’s originality and influence on the ‘Morris style’ of interior decoration. May Morris, William’s daughter, recorded that ‘the black settle with gilt and painted leather panels… was placed by the hospitable fireplace’ at Kelmscott House, giving us an idea of its prominence within the family home.

Another decorative feature of Red House and later Kelmscott Manor was the use of embroidered textiles as wall hangings. Designed by Morris, this representation of St Catherine is one of a set of figure panels inspired by classical sources and Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem The Legend of Good Women. The panels were intended to hang around the walls of the dining room at Red House. The scheme was never completed.

The Judgement of Paris was painted in the Red Lion Square workshops of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. by Edward Burne-Jones. Handpainted tiles were an important product of the Morris firm from its establishment in 1861 until the mid-1870s. Some were used as overmantels, but others, as in this case, were intended to be framed and displayed as pictures in their own right.

Morris loved these rare wall hangings mellowed by age, declaring that they gave the Tapestry Room ‘an air of romance which nothing else would quite do’. He gravitated there, using it as a workspace and a sitting room. Tapestries such as these inspired Morris to learn the technique himself.

The Attic

Morris’s journey to Iceland is wrapped up in the history of Kelmscott. He traveled to Iceland twice, once in 1871 and again in 1873. Morris and Rossetti had taken joint tenancy of Kelmscott just a few months before his first visit. An overriding reason for his trips was the strains in his marriage to Jane Morris in regard to her relationship with the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Perhaps Morris felt that by leaving them in seclusion together, something that had been dragging on for long enough could lead to some kind of definite conclusion. Traveling with several other gentlemen to Iceland, Morris learned the language and explored the country.

After William Morris died in 1896, the Manor continued to be occupied by his widow, Jane Morris (who purchased it in 1913), and, later, his daughters. His daughter, May Morris, died in 1938 and bequeathed the house to Oxford University, the contents were preserved, and the public was granted access. The University was unwilling to preserve the house as a museum piece and passed the house and land to the Society of Antiquaries in 1962.

When Kelmscott Manor passed to the Society, it was in a precarious state of decay, and in the 1960s, work was done to ensure that the house did not deteriorate further. Most of the main roof beams were rotten, so much of the structure needed to be replaced. Internal walls and floors were strengthened, and a new porch was added to the North entrance. The associated barns were purchased by the Society in the 1970s and converted into a shop and tearoom.

Slate walls on the roadway

From Right to Left: 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 2) William Morris, 3) Frederick Startridge Ellis (1830-1901), Author and bookseller, 4) Philip Webb

A Fast Run Through Oxford

England, United Kingdom

Jul 102024

July 2024

Fortunately, this was not my first or last trip to Oxford. Today, I am here with the VSA and getting a very small taste of the Victorian aspect of Oxford from the delightful Classicist and architectural historian Peter Howell. It was a mere 4 hours.

Pusey Memorial Hall

Pusey Memorial House was opened in October 1884 as a memorial to Edward Bouverie Pusey, who was a Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, and a leading figure in the Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement was a highly controversial movement of the mid-19th century. It was a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism.

The ceiling of the chapel

Keble College

While studying with the VSA we were only able to stand outside as it was closed the morning we were there. Fortunately I returned to Oxford and was able to get inside the chapel.

One of the founders of Keble College was Edward Pusey. The college was named after John Keble, one of Pusey’s colleagues in the Oxford Movement, who died four years earlier. Begun in 1878, the architect was William Butterfield.

Butterfield was a Tractarian, which contributed to his building design. Among the many contributions of the Oxford Movement to Church architecture was a renewed sense that buildings could be texts and might communicate spiritual truths. Butterfield taught more specific lessons by creating a complex scheme of stories in stained glass and mosaics. The materials he used were intended to communicate.

Butterfield saw the pattern variation in brick as reflecting how we live our lives: with a solid foundation that grows gradually more complex as one reaches heavenward.

Looking at the Chapel from across the quad

The Light of the World by Holman Hunt – 1853

There are two lights shown in the picture. The lantern is the light of conscience, and the light around the head is the light of salvation, with the door representing the human soul, which cannot be opened from the outside. There is no handle on the door, and the rusty nails and hinges overgrown with ivy denote that the door has never been opened and that the figure of Christ is asking for permission to enter. The bright light over the figure is the morning star, the dawn of the new day, and the autumn weeds and fallen fruit represent the autumn of life. The writing under the picture, which is rather hard to read, is taken from Revelation 3: ‘Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.’

The mosaics of Kebel Chapel

Butterfield stated that his intention in the mosaics was “to represent in order, the successive dealings of God with His Church, Patriarchal, Jewish and Christian, as comprehensively as the space and circumstances will allow, and somewhat after the manner of the Christian Year.” The chapel’s mosaics embody and communicate a sacramental interpretation of the Old Testament.

Stained glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones.

Exeter College

Exeter Chapel

The Chapel was designed by Gilbert Scott in 1853. Greatly influenced by French architecture, in particular La Sainte-Chappelle, his design reflected the best of French Gothic style.

*Gilbert Scott’s Chapel has had three organs. The first, built for the new Chapel by William Hill, was a two-manual instrument. The same company, then Hill & Son, enlarged it to three manuals in 1891/2. The organ continued to serve the Chapel for another hundred years, undergoing a second enlargement in 1965. It was retired in 1991. It is the only instrument in either Oxford or Cambridge to be designed in the style of French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. The present organ, by J. W. Walker & Son Ltd., was completed in 1994.

The interior quad of Exeter College

Ornamentation on the exterior of Exeter College

* *

Oxford University Museum

Oxford University Museum

The highlight of the tour for me was this stunning iron and glass museum.

The museum consists of a large square court with a glass roof, supported by cast iron pillars, which divide the court into three aisles.

The neo-Gothic building was designed by the Irish architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Benjamin Woodward, but mostly Woodward. The museum’s design was directly influenced by the writings of critic John Ruskin, who involved himself by making various suggestions to Woodward during construction. Construction by Lucas Brothers began in 1855, and the building was ready for occupancy in 1860.

Cloistered arcades run around the ground and first floor of the building, with stone columns, each made from a different British stone selected by geologist John Phillips, the Keeper of the Museum.

The ornamentation of the stonework and iron pillars incorporates natural forms such as leaves and branches, combining the Pre-Raphaelite style with the building’s scientific role.

There are leaves patterned throughout the cast iron canopy.

A dodo skeleton on display in the main gallery

The Westwood Room, designed in the 19th century as part of a comprehensive decorative project led by the Pre-Raphaelites, was recently restored to its 1860 condition.

A door in the Westwood Room upstairs in the Oxford Museum

The door’s locking mechanism

The paintings of the cornice area

The marble fireplace

carved into the mantel are bugs in keeping with the museum’s purpose

painted walls of the Woodwood room

A rare Gothic prayer stand

The architect

Random Shots of the Day

The Townsend Building

Found at the end of bookcases in a small Exeter College library

Buscot Park and the Faringdon Collection

England, United Kingdom

Jul 102024

July 10, 2024

Buscot Park was built in an austere neoclassical style between 1780 and 1783 for Edward Loveden Loveden. The house is constructed of local stone and materials with Portland stone adornments. The roof is of Westmorland slate. The mansion’s interior has been considerably altered and restored since its completion. The Lord and Lady of Faringdon’s family have lived here since 1887 and still look after the property on behalf of The National Trust, who came to own it in 1955.

The most spectacular of the interiors is the Legend of Briar Rose. The Legend of Briar Rose is the title of a series of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones which were completed between 1885 and 1890. The four original paintings – The Briar Wood, The Council Chamber, The Garden Court, and The Rose Bower along with an additional ten adjoining panels, are assembled in one room of Bucot Park.

The Briar Wood

The Briar Wood depicts the discovery of the sleeping soldiers by a Knight. In their slumber they have become completed entwined by the barbed thorns of the Briar rose.

Under The Briar Wood, the inscription reads:

“The fateful slumber floats and flows
About the tangle of the rose;
But lo! the fated hand and heart
To rend the slumberous curse apart!

The Council Chamber

The council Chamber shows the scene in the Council chamber. The members of the council sleep, as does the King who is slumped on his throne. Under the draped curtains and through the window, further soldiers can be seen sleeping.

Under The Council Chamber, the inscription reads:

“The threat of war, the hope of peace,
The Kingdoms peril and increase
Sleep on, and bide the latter day
When Fate shall take her chain away.

The Garden Court

The Garden Court shows the weavers having fallen asleep at their loom. The walls of the castle form the backdrop to the painting as do arches of roses.

Under The Garden Court, the inscription reads:

“The maiden pleasance of the land
Knoweth no stir of voice or hand,
No cup the sleeping waters fill,
The restless shuttle lieth still.”

The Rose Bower shows the sleeping beauty lying on her bed surrounded by her slumbering attendants. The rose is seen encircling the drapery in the background

Under The Rose Bower, the inscription reads:

Here lies the hoarded love, the key
To all the treasure that shall be;
Come fated hand the gift to take
And smite this sleeping world awake.”

Other items I found interesting

Mercury as a Cut Purse by Sir Joshua Reynolds

The Garden

* *

* * * * *

Rodmarton Manor – Gloucestershire

England, United Kingdom

Jul 092024

July 2024

Rodmarton Manor

Rodmarton Manor

Rodmarton was built for the Biddulph family, who still reside there. For this reason, photos are not allowed inside.

The manor was constructed in the early 20th century in an Arts and Crafts style, to a design by Ernest Barnsley. After Ernest died in 1925, it was completed by Sidney Barnsley, his brother, and then by Norman Jewson, Ernest’s son-in-law. All the construction materials were obtained locally and hand-worked by local craftsmen.

In the construction, Barnsley insisted no machines be used.

Despite the building’s immensity, the Biddulphs lived in some small rooms and left the large reception rooms for community use.

The Biddulphs were interested in the Arts and Crafts movement, and they used the manor house to teach villagers crafts such as woodwork and embroidery.

The house’s gardens were also created in accordance with the Arts and Crafts movement, providing food for the house. The layout of the garden was heavily influenced by Margaret Biddulph, who had studied at Studley Horticultural College, where she met her future head gardener, William Scrubey.
The terrace and gardens include yew hedges to create specific spaces, mixed with Portuguese laurels and roses, giving the impression of exterior rooms.
* *

It was a dreary rainy day, and yet the gardens were delightful.

All Saints Church Selsley

England, United Kingdom

Jul 092024

July 2024

This church in the rolling hills of Gloucestershire is most notable for its collaboration amongst the greats of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England.

It is a celebrated early work by the important church architect G F Bodley, incorporating notable stained glass by William Morris and his company Morris & Co.

You approach All Saints from the road and then walk through its quaint and historic cemetery.

The tombs of the Marling family

Samuel Stephens Marling, owner of several cloth mills, bought property in Stanley Park and donated some to build Selsley Church. He then spent £3785 on its construction.

The wall separates the church from what was once the Marling estate.

All Saints is the only church where the complete scheme of windows was designed and executed by Morris, Marshall, and Faulkner and Company.

This Window is St Paul Preaching at Athens. The top roundel shows an angel with cymbals by William Morris and the two roundels with a pelican and lamb are by Philip Webb.

The next window shows the Sermon on the Mount with Christ and his close circle. The left panel shows a wealthy merchant and the right shows the poor and sick. The center roundel shows an angel playing a pipe.

On the left is the Nativity with the Adoration of the Shepherds by Ford Madox Brown. The roundel shows an angle with a censer, and it is by Dennis Gabriel. Rosetti.

On the right is the Visitation by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, with a roundel showing an angel playing the viol by William Morris.

On the left is the Ascension, the roundel shows an angel playing a dulcimer by William Morris.

On the left is The Ascension based on the Piera della Francesa (1463). On the right is The Resurrection, both by Philip Webb. The roundel above the resurrection is by Rosetti. The roundel above the Ascension is by William Morris.

The Rose Window center circle is Christ seated above the waters, by William Morris or Burne Jones. The roundels, beginning at the top, are The Holy Spirit as a Dove, by Philip Webb. Next, Light and Darkness – Heaven and Earth – Vegetation and Sun, Moon and Stars- are either by Wiliam Morris or Burne Jones. The sixth is Birds and Fishes by Philip Webb. Adam and Eve are possibly by William Morris, and the last is Adam Naming the Beasts by Philip Webb.

The bottom four are the prophets, thought to be from designs by George Campfield, a glass painter who later became the foreman of Morris and Co.

The pulpit was carved by Thomas Earp of London.

G.F. Bodley designed the pews and choir stalls as well as the communion rails and door ironwork.

The windows in the North Aisle are by Philip Webb and show the symbols of the Evangelists.

Two Churches

England, United Kingdom

Jul 092024

July 2024

Ullet Road Unitarian Church

Ullet Road Unitarian Church – Liverpool – The exterior doors on the church are in oak with beaten copper cladding in Art Nouveau style designed by Richard Llewellyn Rathbone.

The Daily Post reported, “every hinge and handle, every bit of tracery and carving, is pleasing to the artistic eye.”

The Ullet Road Church was the first place of worship in the United Kingdom to register a civil partnership for a same-sex couple.

The interior of the church is lined with sandstone from Runcorn quarries. The architectural style is Gothic Revival, with Art Nouveau features.

The architects Thomas and Percy Worthington, Unitarians from Manchester, were commissioned to design the church and associated buildings. The church opened in June 1899.

The accompanying library and other buildings of the Ullet Road Church

In 1900, Gerald Moira (1867-1959), a member of the Art Workers Guild, was commissioned to decorate the new library adjoining the church. He painted allegorical murals on the ceiling, which took him two years to complete. The figures on the ceiling include Moses, Milton, Aristotle, Galileo, Shakespeare, Plato, Homer, St Paul, Gutenberg, and Leonardo, as well as the donor, Sir John Brunner.

The Edgar Wood Center

The Edgar Wood Center is a former Church of Christ Scientist building in Manchester. Edgar Wood designed the church in 1903 in the Expressionist style with Art Nouveau details.

Nikolaus Pevsner considered it “the only religious building in Lancashire that would be indispensable in a survey of twentieth-century church design in all England”.

The church closed in 1971 and was heavily vandalized before reopening as the Edgar Wood Centre in 1975. This closed in 2003.

After days and days of Anglican and Catholic churches, these clean lines and arts and crafts styles were a visual joy.

Wightwick Manor

England, United Kingdom

Jul 082024

July 8, 2024

The last many days have been an overwhelming marathon of architecture. Today, we were at Wightwick Manor, and I discovered the gardens. While the house had some wonders, I needed to sit and take in the garden, which was ideal. As a background: Wightwick Manor is a Victorian house commissioned in 1887 by the architect Edward Ould by Theodore Mander of Mander Brothers, a Wolverhampton paint and varnish manufacturer.

* * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Eventually, I wandered into the house. This is what intrigued me.

I do not believe I ever noticed how many pre-Raphaelite faces were in ornamentation across all forms of architecture until this trip.

How appropriate after visiting Sunlight Village

* * * I

Port Sunlight

England, United Kingdom

Jul 082024

July 8, 2024

Sunlight household soap was introduced by the British company Lever Brothers in 1884. It was the world’s first packaged, branded laundry soap. Before this, one had to go to the grocery store and buy a chunk of soap, keeping in one’s budget. Sunlight came prepackaged and was easy to purchase.

The soap formula was invented by chemist William Hough Watson, who became an early business partner. Watson created a new soap using glycerin and vegetable oils such as palm oil rather than tallow (animal fats).

Port Sunlight is a model village on the other side of the Mersey from Liverpool. Built by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in its soap factory, construction work began in 1888. The name is derived from Lever Brothers most popular brand, Sunlight.

In 1887, Lever Brothers began looking for a new site to expand its soap-making business, which was based in Warrington at the time. The company bought 56 acres, which became Port Sunlight. William Lever built his works and a model village to house his employees. Today, Port Sunlight covers 130 acres.

Port Sunlight was built for Victorian workers at the Lever Brothers soap factory. William Lever personally supervised the village’s planning and employed nearly thirty architects. Between 1899 and 1914, 800 houses were built to house a population of 3,500. The garden village had allotments and public buildings, including the Lady Lever Art Gallery, a cottage hospital, schools, a concert hall, an open-air swimming pool, a church, and a temperance hotel.

Lord Leverhulme’s aim was “to socialize and Christianize business relations and get back to that close family brotherhood that existed in the good old days of hand labor.”

The historical significance of Port Sunlight is influenced by William Morris’s ideas and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Lever believed in the Garden Suburb movement, prioritizing the importance of space between buildings and access to gardens and open spaces.

Originally, only employees of Lever Brothers Ltd. could rent the houses. Today, it is a lovely neighborhood for anyone.

Lady Lever Art Gallery of Port Sunlight

John Galizia (active 1930–1984) and Charles Thomas Wheeler (1892–1974) – The Port Sunlight Museum

I must admit that I am cynical about the concept of “good living conditions” for workers coming from a man of wealth. It reeks of a paternalistic attitude as a form of control. However, Lever believed in sharing the profits of labor with the workers. It was said at the time: “The last and best word we can say about the village of Port Sunlight is that the aim of its founder has been based on the belief that sympathy for the wants and well-being of our fellow men may find a large expression even in our business dealings”.

Liverpool, England

England, United Kingdom

Jul 082024

July 2024

Liverpool Cathedral

Liverpool Cathedral, the longest cathedral in the world, was constructed between 1904 and 1978, based on a design by Giles Gilbert Scott. The pictures will never do it justice.

Because of the interior buttresses, the cathedral space is very open and too huge to grasp

St James Cemetery

The Oratory for St. James Cemetery.

The Cathedral towers over St. James Cemetery, which opened in 1829 and contains 57,839 recorded burials. It closed in 1936.

St James Cemetery

The Oratory, designed by John Foster, was built in 1829 and used for funeral services before burials in the adjacent cemetery.

Downtown Liverpool

St Georges Hall opened in 1854; it is a Neoclassical building with concert halls and law courts.

The tile floor at the entry of St Georges Hall

Interesting construction work in the basement of St George’s Hall

Liverpool Town Hall

The Town Hall is not an administrative building but a civic suite. The architect was John Wood the Elder, described as “one of the outstanding architects of the day”. It was completed and opened in 1754. The ground floor acted as the exchange, and a council room and other offices were on the upper floor.

Above the upper story windows on all faces are panels containing carvings, some of which relate to Liverpool’s foreign trade.

A lovely detail of the neoclassical Liverpool Exchange Court Building

The Exchange Court was built in 1856 as the headquarters for Liverpool and London Globe Insurance. The designer was chosen through a competition, and the winner, the architect, was 25-year-old Harvey Lonsdale Elmes of London.

Adelphi Bank

The Adelphi Bank Building was designed by architect William Douglas Caröe. The building was completed in 1892, and its architecture is described as a mixture of French European Renaissance and Nordic and Eastern European themes.

The building’s bronze doors were designed by Thomas Stirling Lee and depict scenes of male friendship from history and mythology, as Adelphi roughly translates to Brotherly Love.

Exterior ornamentation of Adelphi Bank

Outside the Cotton Exchange

The Liverpool Cotton Exchange Building originally had a Neoclassical façade. Between 1967 and 1969, its exterior was given a contemporary mid-20th-century design. This above sculpture graced the original facade and now sits in front of the modern building.

All that remains are the cast iron panels on the side of the Cotton Exchange.

Charleston House was the home of Confederate paymaster Charles Prioleau’s

Charles Kuhn Prioleau (1827–1887) was an American cotton merchant who became the senior partner of Fraser, Trenholm & Company in Liverpool, a firm that functioned as the European banker of the Confederacy and was its major supplier for arms and military ware during the American Civil War.

At 16 Cook Street is one of the world’s first curtain-walled buildings designed by Architect Peter Ellis in 1864-66.

Air Shafts and offices for the Mersey River Tunnel

There are three Mersey Tunnels connecting the city of Liverpool with Wirral. The Mersey Railway Tunnel opened in 1886, the Queensway Tunnel opened in 1934, and the Kingsway Tunnel opened in 1971.

The elegant, low-relief Art Deco building houses the Joint Tunnel Company’s intake and extract tower, tunnel control room, and offices.

Riding a bus through the Mersey Tunnel

The Royal Liver Building

The Royal Liver Building is located at the Pier Head and, along with the neighboring Cunard Building and Port of Liverpool Building, is one of Liverpool’s Three Graces, which line the city’s waterfront. It is also part of Liverpool’s formerly UNESCO-designated World Heritage Maritime Mercantile City.

Opened in 1911, the building was the purpose-built home of the Royal Liver Assurance group and was designed by Walter Aubrey Thomas.

Cunard Building

The Cunard Building, designed by William Edward Willink and Philip Coldwell Thicknesse and constructed between 1914 and 1917, combines Italian Renaissance and Greek Revival. Its development has been particularly influenced by Italian palace design.

Odds and Ends of Liverpool

A lovely little side alleyway in downtown Liverpool

Outside the Liverpool Museum are the Superlambananas, designed by New York City-based Japanese artist Taro Chiezo.

This is such a small smattering of the architecture of Liverpool. It is a very dynamic and fun city!

The Docks of Liverpool, England

England, United Kingdom

Jul 082024

July 2024

The first thing that comes to mind for many when speaking of Liverpool is The Beatles. But Liverpool is so much more. The city is located on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary (Think Gerry and the Pacemakers) adjacent to the Irish Sea and is approximately 178 miles from London.

Liverpool Mountain, Ugo Rondinone in Mermaid Courtyard at the Royal Albert Dock complex.

Liverpool was established in 1207 and became a significant town in the late seventeenth century when the port at nearby Chester began to silt up. The Port of Liverpool became heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade, with the first slave ship departing from the town in 1699. The port also imported much of the cotton required by the neighboring Lancashire textile mills of Manchester.

The Tobacco Warehouse is on the left, and the Stanley Dock is on the right on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

The Stanley dock is one of five docks opened on August 4, 1848. Stanly dock, built by James Hartley, 1844-58, is considered the most impressive

Stanley Dock

The Stanley dock is the only one in Liverpool built inland, all the others being built out from the foreshore. The warehouses were five stories, with an area of 12,000 square yards. Part of the northern quay warehouse was demolished after sustaining damage in an air raid during the Second World War. Between 1897-1901, the southern part of the dock was filled in to build the Tobacco Warehouse, designed by Anthony George Lyster, the largest brick warehouse in the world.

Inside the Stanley Dock looking at its massive iron pillars and stunning brick archways.

Looking up while standing on the Stanley Dock bridge.

Tobacco Warehouse has been rehabbed into The Titanic Hotel

A machine used to package rum

Hoists to help lift items to the upper floors of the warehouse

Granite stairs inside the Stanley Dock

Royal Albert Dock

The Royal Albert Dock

The Royal Albert Dock is a complex of dock buildings and warehouses designed by Jesse Hartley and Philip Hardwick. Opened in 1846, it was the first structure in Britain to be built from cast iron, brick, and stone, with no structural wood. As a result, it was the first non-combustible warehouse system in the world. Today, it consists of restaurants, shops, and museums.

The canal system and its docks were what made England England. When one looks at them today, abandoned, rehabbed into hotels or kitsch, it is difficult to imagine that without them, England would not be England.

Walking Manchester, England

England, United Kingdom

Jul 072024

July 2024

I want to begin this post with an apology. Manchester is an amazing city. My group had two guides from the Victorian Society of the UK, and their knowledge, not only of the sites but their weaving of British history into the entire day, made it long but one of the more educational and wonderful days I have spent. There is no way I could capture all I learned – but I tried.

Cottonopolis was a 19th-century nickname for Manchester.

Cotton ball. Cotonopolis.

In 1781 Richard Arkwright opened the world’s first steam-driven textile mill in Manchester. His use of steam power was to raise water to turna waterwheel which powered the machines. The arrival of steam power was the beginning of the mechanization making Manchester the world’s first center of mass production and the world’s largest and most productive cotton spinning center.

This led Manchester to become the first industrial suburb centered on steam power, with architectural innovations that eventually included fireproofing by the use of iron and reinforced concrete.

Busy as a Bee is a symbol of Manchester. Mancunians, as people from Manchester are called, have put bees on everything around town.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Mancunian factories were sometimes referred to as beehives because their workers were so busy and productive.

This was how the bee first became associated with Manchester, and in 1842, it was officially incorporated into the Manchester coat of arms.

As the largest cotton processor in the world, Manchester took a strong moral and political stance by supporting Lincoln despite his blockade of the Confederate states beginning in April 1861. This measure drastically reduced supplies of cotton reaching Liverpool and, therefore, the cotton mills of Lancashire.

The aim, for Lincoln, was to out-maneuver the Confederate states, win the Civil War, and ultimately abolish the US slave trade.

However, Manchester and the surrounding area found that 60% of its mills were idle, largely because of the blockade.

Mill and shipping companies lobbied for the blockades to be destroyed, and opposition to the embargo and support for the Confederacy grew. However, in a meeting at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1862, workers agreed to maintain support for Lincoln and the embargo.

The meeting took place just as the cotton famine was beginning to cause serious distress across the country. US aid ships brought relief to starving mill workers as a gesture of gratitude.

Manchester Cenotaph

Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the cenotaph was built to remember the victims of WWI. It was not erected, however, until 1922. The memorial consists of a central cenotaph and a Stone of Remembrance flanked by twin obelisks.

Before 1700, most British inland waterways had been built by aristocratic landowners to carry agricultural products in southern England. When the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal opened, he brought coal from his mines in Worsley to the center of Manchester in 1763, and the price of coal was halved overnight.

A lock of the canals of Manchester

The Bridgewater Canal, built in 1761 and designed by James Brindley and John Gilbert, was the first totally artificial waterway in Britain built separately from natural rivers.

A bridge used by horses to cross the canal when the towpath changed sides

Thanks to these canals, the volume of goods carried increased rapidly, making Britain the first industrial power in the world. As a result, a vast number of people moved from the country to the town, completely changing the face of British society.

Walkway between warehouses on the Manchester Canals

Murray Mills Manchester

Murray Mills would transform the world. The first mill on the site, Old Mill, was begun in 1797 and is the world’s oldest surviving urban steam-powered cotton spinning factory. The Old Mill was a purpose-built steam-powered spinning mill. After the canal’s completion to feed the area, coal, and cotton could be moved directly into the complex, and there was a readily available water supply for the steam engines from the private basin on the canal. By 1806, the Murrays’ Mills was the largest mill complex in the world, with 84,000 mule spindles compared to the others with a mere 10,000 spindles.

Lancaster House was a packing and shipping warehouse built between 1905 and 1910 for Lloyd’s Packing Warehouses Limited. Built in the Edwardian Baroque style, it had a steel frame and was clad with granite at the base, Accrington red brick, and orange terracotta. The building was designed by Harry S. Fairhurst, who had become “the leading expert in the design of these advanced warehouses.”

Lancaster House

Accrington bricks are iron-hard engineering bricks produced from 1887 to 2008. They were famed for their strength and called NORI. The stories of how they got that name are unknown, but the most common is that it was simply the word Iron, accidentally stamped backward.

Many of the warehouses in Manchester were for Textile Packaging rather than manufacturing. They not only held items for storage but also had offices, showrooms, and areas for quality control and the preparation and packing of cloth for transport.

Instead of multiple areas for loading, there was usually a small number less prominently placed in secure yards or wells. Loading would be aided by cranes, as seen in red below.

Steel rails placed in the sidewalks and loading areas acted as a braking system for the lorries carrying goods in and out of warehouses.

Lovely iron exterior stairways of warehouses

The cobbles of Manchester’s streets are called setts. Fleet Street in London was the busiest street in the world at the time, and due to wear and tear, the setts there had to be replaced every ten years.

Large windows provided as much light as possible in the warehouse rooms where cloth was displayed so customers could check for flaws in weaving and printing.

Merchants vied with each other to impress, so the buildings were often built in the Italianate style rather than the utilitarian facades one thinks of with warehouses.

The Princess building, built as offices, shops, and warehousing in 1903 by I.R.E. Birkett

The Midland Hotel

The Midland Hotel opened in 1903 and was built by the Midland Railway to serve Manchester Central railway station, its northern terminus for its rail services to London St Pancras. It was designed by Charles Trubshaw in the Edwardian Baroque style.

Barton Arcade

Barton’s Building façade was once described as “utterly ignorant… the ground floor pilasters must be seen to be believed.” The arcade, however, is “a gorgeous glass and iron shopping arcade with glass domes…, the best example of this type of cast-iron and glass arcade anywhere in the country.”

The interior of the arcade

The entrance to the arcade on St Ann’s Square incorporates a large cast iron and glass wall. The structure is composed of cast iron and glass, with the ironwork supplied by the Saracen Foundry in Glasgow.

John Rylands Library

The Reading Room – Much of the original furniture designed by the architect can be seen on this floor.

The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a late-Victorian neo-Gothic building. The library, which opened to the public in 1900, was founded by Enriqueta Augustina Rylands in memory of her husband, John Rylands. The library was built on a design from architect Basil Champneys.

An idea of the elegance of the interior of the library

Refuge Assurance Building

The Refuge Assurance Building is now the Kimpton Hotel

Interiors of the Refuge Assurance Building

Interiors of the Refuge Assurance Building

The building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and built between 1891 and 1895

Kendal Milne Store

1939 Art Deco store

The modern building shown above was a store opened as Watts’ in 1832, later to become Kendal, Milne & Faulkner when three employees bought out the business and re-opened it in 1836. It was purchased by Harrods in 1919 and was called Harrods in the 1920s, but the name reverted to Kendal Milne following protests from customers and staff.

The present store was designed by Harrods’ in-house architect, Louis David Blanc, with input from a local architect, J. S. Beaumont, in 1938 as a purpose-built Art Deco retail space.

The Royal Exchange

Royal Exchange Cotton Trading Board

The Royal Exchange was heavily damaged in the Manchester Blitz and the 1996 Manchester bombing. The building is the last of several buildings used for commodities exchange, primarily but not exclusively for cotton and textiles. It has been converted into a theater and entertainment center.

Interior domes of the Royal Exchange

Theater inside the Royal Exchange

The Portico Library

The Portico Library is an independent subscription library designed in the Greek Revival style by Thomas Harrison and built between 1802 and 1806.

AV Roe, a Manchester man, designed and flew the first totally British airplane in 1908. Based in this mill – The Brownsfield Mill – Roe pioneered the enclosed cockpit and single joystick and formed the world’s first company registered as an airplane manufacturer. He ran the first scheduled domestic passenger service in Britain in May 1919. In 1928, one of his planes became the first to complete a solo flight to Australia.

Canal Basins of Manchester

Gateways such as this were built to let you know the canal basins were not for the public. – This was a warehouse area with goods waiting to be shipped down the canals to market.

Dale Street Warehouse

The Dale Street warehouse is the earliest surviving canal warehouse in Manchester. The building is dated 1806 and was designed by William Crosley, an engineer who worked with William Jessop on the inner Manchester canal system.

The base of the building incorporates four boatholes, which allowed boats to unload their cargo inside of the warehouse.

Chinatown in Manchester is the second largest in the UK and the third largest in Europe. Its archway was completed in 1987 on Faulkner Street.

Whitworth Hall

Whitworth Hall was constructed c. 1895–1902 in the style of the Gothic Revival and was designed by Paul Waterhouse.

The chandelier in Whitworth Hall

Odds and Ends around Manchester

* *

Contact is an arts organization established in 1972 as a center for young artists to create and learn.

It would take a lifetime to discover the city of Manchester and its incredible history. I had one day.

St. Giles’ Church Cheadle

England, United Kingdom

Jul 072024

July 2024

West Door of St. Giles of Cheadle

St Giles was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812- 1852) and is considered his most splendid work. This Gothic Revival wonder was created by the same man who created the interiors of the House of Parliament.

St. Giles was originally to be a modest-sized parish church sufficient for the Catholic population of Cheadle. As it took shape, it continued to grow.

The encaustic tile floor of St. Giles of Cheadle

The pews of the nave are made of elm from Lord Shrewsbury’s estate.

The piers, arch molding, and upper walls are entirely covered with stenciling, a feature that was not part of the original scheme but one of the many alterations that took place as the building progressed.

The sedilia are marked for the priest, deacon, and subdeacon at High Mass. Normally, they would be all on one level, but Pugin reverted to the medieval arrangement.

The stenciling behind the sedilia

The Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament

Doom painting over the chancel arch

Doom is a representation of the Last Judgement. The Doom was painted on canvas in Rome by Eduard Hauser.

The rood screen marks the separation between the faithful and the sacrifice.

St Giles was a seventh-century French abbot widely venerated in England and France.

The Church of Holy Angels – Hoar Cross

England, United Kingdom

Jul 072024

July 2024

It is often difficult to travel long distances and visit building after building and not have them run together. Then there is someone or something that makes the place, special and something you know you will remember for a very long time. Canon Paul Greenwall is the Vicar of Hoar Cross and he made this visit special.

Holy Angels of Hoar Cross is a classic Victorian Church. Its Gothic style, with its painted arches and rich carvings, is classic for an Anglican church as it was considered proper for the times.

The building is made of sandstone from Alton, Runcorn, and Bromsgrove and was designed by G. F. Bodley and Thomas Gardner.

The church was built by Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram (sister of Charles Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax) in memory of her young husband, Hugo Francis Meynell Ingram, who died in May 1871.

Vicar Greenwall in front of the tomb of Hugo Meynell Ingram

The tomb of Emily Charlotte Menell Ingram

The high altar faces south rather than east to allow light to flood in and illuminate the stone carving. The reredos (the gold screen you see way in the back) is a mass of stone angels and archangels supported by figures of bishops, apostles, and saints.

The organ was built by Bishop and Son and uses parts from an older organ from Bangor Cathedral. The case was designed by Canon Sutton and made by Farmer and Brindley. During Mrs. Meynell Ingram’s lifetime, children from the Orphanage were trained to sing in the choir to improve their chances of getting a job when they grew older.

Mrs. Meynell Ingram collected religious artifacts as she traveled around the world on her yacht, the Ariadne. On a visit to Antwerp in 1896, she saw the Stations of the Cross in St. Paul’s Cathedral. She commissioned wood carvers Boeck and De Wint to copy them, and once they were delivered, she had them covered in gold leaf.

The carved canopy of the Font is of the East Anglican type, richly painted and tall. It was made in the 1890s by John McCulloch of London.

The Vicar was exceptionally proud of the vestments that Mrs. Meynell Ingram collected in her travels and was more than happy to share them with us. The above is from France and is very rare. The following are rare but still worn today on special occasions and come from countries across the continent.

* * *

The pews set aside for the livery boys.

The choir loft

A sample of the lovely tile floor

Mrs. Meynell Ingram lived in an opulent home now a hotel and spa.

The Vicar’s enthusiasm, adoration and love of the church made this visit exceptionally special.

Churches of Staffordshire

England, United Kingdom

Jul 062024

July 2024

We visited four churches in Staffordshire all in one afternoon. It was very overwhelming but fascinating to observe the vast differences in design and style back to back.

All Saints Leek

All Saints Leek is one of sixteen churches designed by Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912). Shaw was a dominant figure in nineteenth-century architecture, and he trained students such as Gerald Horsley and William Richard Lethaby, who were founding members of the Art Workers Guild at the beginning of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

The arts and crafts movement shines through at All Saints, in particular with the stained glass windows designed by Edward Burne Jones of the William Morris Company. Also, the stunning work of the Leek School of Embroidery reviving the art of ecclesiastical embroidery.

St. Martin and St. Helena

Before opening the door of All Saints, you are greeted by six small side windows at the stone entry.

The Chancel

The Chancel walls are decorated to the designs by Gerald Horsley. The carved and painted ceiling is something to behold.

Chancel Walls at All Saints Leek

Carved and Painted Ceiling of All Saints Leek

The Lady Chapel All Saints Leek

The Lady Chapel features a painting by Gerald Horsley showing the Annunciation. The window, the oldest in the church, was designed by Bournes Jones in 1887 and shows Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Lady Chapel

John Edgar Platt decorated the side walls of the Lady Chapel from 1913 to 1916. They show St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds.

The church members were kind enough to bring out some of the oldest work done by the Leek School of Embroidery; here are some close-ups of the absolutely stunning works.

All Saints Church Denstone

All Saints Denstone was designed by George Edmund Street in 1860 and funded by Sir Thomas Percival Heywood, 2nd Baronet. It was consecrated in 1862.

The pulpit was also designed by George Edmund Street

The ornamental lock on the pulpit rail

Wandering Birmingham England

England, United Kingdom

Jul 052024

July 5, 2024

Birmingham—or ‘Brum’ as it’s affectionately known—is an incredibly architecturally varied city. It was once called the City of a Thousand Trades. I am traveling with the Victorian Society in America so the buildings we are seeing and what I am writing about here are primarily of that era.

Rusking Buildings by Ewen & JA Harper – 1900s

Birmingham Victoria Law Courts

The foundation stone of the Victoria Law Courts was laid by Queen Victoria on March 23, 1887, her Golden Jubilee year. The building was designed by Aston Webb & Ingress Bell of London after an open competition. It is faced entirely in deep red terracotta from the clay of Ruabon in North Wales and covered in intricate terracotta ornamentation.

A statue of Queen Victoria by Harry Bates surmounts the main entrance.

Other figures are by sculptor William Silver Frith and designed by Walter Crane.

Ornamentation on Methodist Central Hall

Methodist Central Hall was built in 1903–04 by architects Ewan Harper & James A. Harper. The terracotta was manufactured by the renowned firm of Gibbs and Canning of Tamworth. The main hall seated 2,000. It had more than 30 other rooms, including three school halls. The street level had 12 bays for shops. At the time, it cost £96,165.

Great Western Arcade

The Great Western Arcade was built (1875-6) over the Great Western Railway line cutting at the London end of Snow Hill station. The cutting was roofed over in 1874, and the Great Western Arcade was built on top.

The arcade’s roof was originally a glazed semi-circular barrel vault with a glazed, central dome, similar to that of the Galleria Vittoria Emmanuele in Milan, which was constructed at the same time. It was destroyed during World War II and was replaced with a simpler structure.

The Apse of St Philip Cathedral from the outside

The Cathedral Church of Saint Philip is a Church of England cathedral and the seat of the Bishop of Birmingham. Built as a parish church in the Baroque style by Thomas Archer, it was consecrated in 1715.

During World War II, the cathedral was bombed and gutted on November 7, 1940. Its most significant treasures, several windows by Edward Burne-Jones, had been removed in the early stages of the war by Birmingham Civic Society and were replaced, unharmed, when the building was restored in 1948.

The stained-glass windows are considered among the finest in the world. The windows were created by Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones along with William Morris.

Initially, the commission was for a single stained-glass window at the central opening representing the Ascension. It was in place in 1885. Two years later, when Burne-Jones saw it for the first time, it is said that he was so overcome by the emotional impact of the finished window that he suggested designing two more windows to fill the spaces on either side. After discussion between the artist, architect, funder, Rector, and the manufacturer, it was agreed that the two further windows should represent the ‘Nativity of Christ’ and the ‘Crucifixion of Christ’.

The Crucifixion 1887

The Nativity 1887

Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital

17-19 Newhall Street – The Exchange, previously known as the Bell Edison Telephone Building.

Ornamentation on 17-19 Newhall Street

Opened in 1887, the 17-19 Newhall Street was designed by Frederick Martin of the firm Martin & Chamberlain. It was constructed to house the new Central Telephone Exchange and offices for the National Telephone Company Birmingham’s central exchange, which had 5,000 subscribers and was the largest of its type in the country.

Ornamentation 17-19 Newhall Street

School of Art

The School of Art was the last work of J. H. Chamberlain. Chamberlain completed drawings just beofre his death in 1883 and William Morri executed his design.

Ornamentation School of Art

Ornamentation School of Art

The side of the building shows the classrooms of the School of Art

Birmingham and Midland Institute by Cassins, Peacock, and Bewlay 1899

Hudsons Coffee House 122-124 Colmore Row

Built as the Eagle Insurance Offices, it was later occupied by Orion Insurance and was Hudson’s Coffee House until late 2011. Completed in 1900, it was designed in an Arts and Crafts style by William Lethaby and Joseph Lancaster Ball. Pevsner’s The Buildings of England: Warwickshire describes it as “one of the most original buildings of its date in England” and Foster’s Birmingham (Pevsner Architectural Guides) as “one of the most important monuments of the Arts and Crafts Free Style in the country.”

Town Hall

Birmingham’s Town Hall, built by Hansom and Welch in 1830, began as a concert hall. It is a replica of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in Rome.

This sculpture, titled River, is found in Victoria Square. Dhruva Mistry won an international design competition for a central water feature in the square. Construction commenced in 1992 and was completed in 1994, when Diana, Princess of Wales, officially reopened the square.

Construction of a new brewery in one of the old brick warehouses

The Red Palace

Locally known as the Red Palace, it was designed in 1895 and 1896 by William Doubleday and James R. Shaw for H. B. Sale, a die-sinker firm. The original plans were for five stories, but only four were built. A fifth story was added in the mid-20th century before planning laws were in force to protect the integrity of original structures, and as a result, the fifth floor is not of the same architectural style as the 1895 building. The tower was originally built in 1896 as a memorial to Lord Roberts of Kandahar (1832–1914), who led a successful campaign in Afghanistan in 1879 before a career in India.

Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN) is a network of canals connecting Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and the eastern part of the Black Country. The BCN was owned and operated by the Birmingham Canal Navigation Company from 1767 to 1948.

At its peak, the BCN contained about 160 miles of canals; today, just over 100 miles are navigable, and the majority of traffic is from tourist and residential narrowboats.

This is such a very small glimpse into the City of Birmingham in the UK. I wish I had time to explore so much more of this fascinating and extremely architecturally varied city.

The Jewelry Quarter – Birmingham, England

England, United Kingdom

Jul 052024

July 4, 2024

According to the Birmingham Directory of 1780, there were 26 jewelers at the time. Because the definition of a jeweler was not explained in the directory, it is thought that the number of actual jewelers may be lower. It is thought that by the start of the 19th century, there were around 12 jewelry manufacturing companies, employing approximately 400 people. The following is just a very small indication of the buildings throughout the quarter.

Birmingham Assay Office

The Jewelry Quarter started out as a residential neighborhood. By 1790, manufacturing businesses were starting to establish a presence in the area. Homes were combined into workshops and eventually purpose built factories began to pop up.

The growth of industry in this area increased with the establishment of the Birmingham Assay Office in 1773.

Dark red brickwork with terracotta detailing is synonymous with the Jewelry Quarter.

The area is becoming gentrified, and only historic preservation is keeping the quarter as close to its original feel as possible. Above is what would have been an entry for goods into a warehouse. It now serves as a stunning doorway.

In 1868, the Birmingham Society of Artists received its royal charter and was given official consent to use the term “royal” in its title. The RBSA is now housed in the Medicine Bakery on New Street.

RBSA Gallery

Birmingham City University, School of Jewelry

The Birmingham School of Jewellery and Silversmithing was established in 1890 as a branch of the School of Art when Martin & Chamberlain converted a goldsmith’s factory, built in 1865 to a design by J. G. Bland. The top story was added in 1906 by Cossins, Peacock & Bewlay who also designed the south extension in 1911.

The Queens Arms – Mitchell and Butlers Gold Medal Ales

The Queen’s Arms was built c. 1870. It is most noticeable because of its tiled art nouveau sign on its exterior, which was remodeled in 1901 following designs of the architect Joseph D. Ward for its owners, Mitchells & Butlers. Mitchells & Butlers runs about 1,784 managed pubs, bars, and restaurants throughout the United Kingdom. The company’s headquarters are in Birmingham.

Warstone Lane catacombs and cemetery.

Warstone Lane Cemetery was established in 1848 and accepted new burials until 1982. Above are the tiered catacombs. The cemetery sits on the site of an abandoned sand pit.

The War Stone rock gave Warstone Lane Cemetery its name. It is a glacial erratic made from the volcanic rock felstone and carried here from Wales by glacial ice. Originally it was known as the Hoar Stone, which was likely derived from the Old English har stan feld, meaning ‘boundary stone field. It was used as a parish boundary. Today, it remains a monument to the past and has been located on a sandstone plinth with the following inscription:

“This felsite boulder was deposited near here

by a glacier during the Ice Age: being at one

time used as a parish boundary mark, it

was known as the ‘Hoar Stone’ of which the

modern War Stone is a corruption”.

I did not have time to explore this cemetery, but as I was walking past the war stone, I noticed this Cross of Sacrifice. The Cross of Sacrifice is a Commonwealth war memorial designed in 1918 by Sir Reginald Blomfield for the Imperial War Graves Commission. It is present in Commonwealth war cemeteries containing 40 or more graves.

St Paul’s

St Paul’s Church was designed by Roger Eykyn, and it surrounds St Paul’s Square. Construction began in 1777 and was completed in 1779.

These are just a very small sample of the buildings of the jewelry district in all states of repair, disrepair, and restoration.

Northhampton, England

England, United Kingdom

Jul 042024

July 4, 2024

The Northhampton Guildhall

We were only able to stand outside the Northhampton Guildhall, and even then, it was too huge to photograph in its entirety. The building, the third guildhall, was designed by Edward William Godwin in the Gothic Revival style and officially opened on May 17, 1864.

The stone carvings are the most impressive feature of the exterior.

Northampton is famous for its shoe industry. This is a carving of a cobbler in one of the column capitols.

78 Derngate

78 Derngate was Charles Renee Mackintosh’s final major commission. It was for Northampton model engineer W.J Bassett-Lowke. It is the only place outside Scotland where Mackintosh’s mature architectural and interior style can be seen in their original setting.

The original flooring and the windows that let in such beautiful sunlight to the kitchen

Mackintosh’s designs for the house are considered to be among the first examples of the Art Deco style in Britain.

The house is built on a slope, so the kitchen is one floor below the main level.

The kitchen

A fun old-fashioned tea kettle in the kitchen

The hallway leading from the kitchen to the first floor.

The dining room on the first floor. The large pane while unusual for the times was part of the original design.

The latches on the windows

The dining room

Once coming through the front door you enter into a sitting room that is black with yellow patterns on the wall.

The fireplace in the sitting room.

Door latches in the sitting room

The chandelier in the sitting room

The small washing area of the master bedroom

The detail of the wallpaper around the sink area far more representative of what one thinks of Mackintosh rather than the black and yellow

The guest bedroom is similar to the one he designed for his own home.

The black and white fabric climbs the walls and is extended onto the ceiling.

The small tesserae in the bathroom is actually waterproof wallpaper

It was such a pleasure to have seen this home. It is so vastly different from so much of Mackintosh’s work in Glasgow.

Bedford England

England, United Kingdom

Jul 042024

July 4, 2024

The Panacea Museum

The Panacea Museum was once the home of Joanna Southcott. It still houses her box of revelations.

The house is a wonderful example of middle-class Victorian life, but her box and her preachings were the most interesting to me.*

Joanna Southcott was born in 1750 and began having religious visions around the age of 42, believing that she had supernatural contact with God and was the woman spoken of in the Book of Revelation. By the time of her death, it is said that she had nearly 100,000 followers; however, it was not her following that would be her lasting legacy, but the sealed box of visions she left behind.

Before she died, Southcott collected what is believed to have been a number of her visions that would help save her followers. She sealed these things in a box that was not to be opened until a time of “national crisis.” The contents of the box were to be shown only to the 24 (in Southcott’s time) bishops of the Church of England, who were then to study the findings for a full seven days. No one knows what is truly in the box.

In the yard was this roller to deal with DG pathways, I love them, and you do not see them very often.

The Higgins Art Museum

The Cecil Higgins Museum, as it was formerly known, opened in July 1949. It was originally in the house built in 1846 as the home of Charles Higgins (1789–1862) next to the Higgins & Sons Brewery.

The Gallery holds over 200 pieces from the collection of Charles Handley-Read and his wife Lavinia, an impressive collection of Victorian items.

My favorite pieces of the collection is furniture by William Burges. Burges was an English architect and designer. Considered to be one of the greatest Victorian art-architects. He stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, while his works echo those of the Pre-Raphaelites and herald those of the Arts and Crafts movement.

William Burgess Dresser

The dresser shows Adam being expelled from the Garden of Eden and being handed a piece of clothing by each figure on the front of the chest.

On the bottom, a shaving kit has taken on anthropomorphic shapes

The Narcissus Washstand

The spigot and bowl of the Narcissus Washstand

The Zodiac Settle

A few other pieces of the collection I found charming

This teapot was designed in 1881 by the Royal Worcester Porcelain Factory and is the ultimate caricature of the Aesthetic movement and its followers. The teapot embodies both a male and female Aesthete in typical Aesthetic dress, with their joined heads as the lid, bent arms as the handle and limp-wristed hands becoming the spout.

Both sides of the teapot feature motifs commonly associated with the Aesthetic movement, namely the sunflower and the lily, with the green tones of their dress likely to be a deliberate reference to ‘greenery-yallery, Grosvenor gallery’, a line from the 1881 Gilbert and Sullivan opera ‘Patience’, itself a satire of the Aesthetic movement.

Ivory handled cutlery

Going to Bedford, England, to visit two small museums is probably not on everyone’s to-do list. But if you are in the area, they are both absolutely worth a visit.

Random London

England, London, United Kingdom

Jul 032024

July 3, 2024

The East End

After revoking the Edict of Nantes, which granted Huguenots civil rights in October 1685, Louis XIV forbade them to leave France on pain of imprisonment, torture, and death. Despite that, around 50,000 came to England. They settled in small houses like this and began the trade of silk weaving.

Leopold Buildings is a historic tenement block of flats in Bethnal Green, in the East End.

The flats were built in 1872 by The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, the philanthropic Model dwellings company founded and chaired by Sir Sydney Waterlow. They were built on land leased by Angela Burdett-Coutts, then the richest woman in Britain and, for her philanthropy, nicknamed the “Queen of the Poor.”

Typical storefronts in the East End

A pub in the East End

In Fitzrovia, this public toilet was originally built in the late 1800s but was left unused for fifty years after closing in the 1960s. After two years of serious renovation work, a coffee shop can be found underground where once there were public toilets.

In the same area are some great mosaic signs and Craftsman style homes.

Fitzrovia Chapel

Behind this unpretentious brick building is the Fitzrovia Chapel.

Originally designed by John Loughborough Pearson RA, the chapel was built 1891–92. Its interior was completed 32 years after his death in 1929, and the works were overseen by his son Frank Loughborough Pearson (1864–1947).

The exterior is plain because it was never really meant to be seen. Built in the central courtyard of the former Middlesex Hospital, which was rebuilt in 1929–35 before being demolished in 2008–15, the hospital chapel was preserved and renamed the Fitzrovia Chapel.

The chapel is noted for its opulent Gothic Revival-style interior and mosaics, which must be seen to be believed.

When I went in, an art installation was taking place, so the magnitude of this small chapel’s grandness was somewhat lost, but it is truly worth going in.

Art in the Fitzrovia

Art in the Fitzrovia

All Saints Margaret Place

All Saints Margaret Place

All Saints is an Anglo-Catholic church on Margaret Street in London, England. Founded in the late 18th century as Margaret Street Chapel, the church became an example of the Oxford Movement in the 1830s and 40s. The Movement also prompted the reconstruction of the church in the 1850s under the architect William Butterfield. It has been hailed as Butterfield’s masterpiece and a pioneering building of the High Victorian Gothic style that would characterize British architecture from around 1850 to 1870.

At All Saints, Butterfield felt a mission to “give dignity to brick”, and the quality of the brick he chose made it more expensive than stone. The exterior of All Saints uses red brick, which is heavily banded and patterned with black brick. Decoration is, therefore, built into the structure, making All Saints the first example of ‘structural polychromy’ in London.

The rear of the chancel features a series of paintings on gilded boards within a delicately carved, brightly patterned gothic screen, the work of Ninian Comper, and a restoration of earlier work by William Dyce.

The large west window, originally fitted with glass by Gerente in 1853–58, was replaced in 1877 with a design by Alexander Gibbs based on the Tree of Jesse window in Wells Cathedral.

Murals on the North Wall

All Souls Langham Place

The Exterior of All Souls Langham Place

Random Caryatid and Atlas

Brick

London Stock Brick

You will see many buildings in London made from traditional London Stock Brick. You may not recognize them. Air pollution in London during the 19th century and early 20th century commonly caused the bricks to receive a sooty deposition over time, turning the bricks greyish or even black.

These bricks usually came from directly under the building itself. During the 19th century, the fields around London were built up with new housing. Commonly, a field would be excavated to expose the brick earth (which was found overlying the London clay subsoil), which was then turned into bricks on the site by molding and firing them. The bricks would then be used to build houses adjacent to the brick field. Once the building work was nearing completion, the brick field would be leveled and built upon, while a new brick field would supply the bricks further out.

Westminster Cathedral London

London, United Kingdom

Jul 032024

July 3, 2024

Westminster Cathedral

A small glimpse at a very small part of Westminster Cathedral

The entrance tympanum with mosaic designed by Robert Anning Bell

Westminster Cathedral is the largest Roman Catholic church in England and Wales and the seat of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.

Designed by John Francis Bentley in the 9th century. The building is in the neo-Byzantine style and made almost entirely of brick without steel reinforcements. Sir John Betjeman called it “a masterpiece in striped brick and stone” that shows “the good craftsman has no need of steel or concrete.”

The cathedral was built between 1895 and 1903, and the interiors are yet to be finished. When the architect John Bentley died in 1903, he left no complete designs for the interior beyond saying that he intended there to be mosaics. So much of the ceiling is still plain London stock brick that is dark with age.

The chapels, on the other hand, are well adorned.

Holy Souls Chapel

The mosaics in this chapel were created in 1902-03 by William Christian Symons.

Holy Souls Chapel

St. Andrews Chapel

Chairs in St. Andrews Chapel

The chandelier in St. Andrews Chapel

The round ball above the chandelier is an Ostrich egg. The lamp was originally oil, and the egg was used to keep the rats from running down the chains and consuming the oil.

A small part of the mosaic in St Andrews chapel I found humorous done by George Jack Meo

The donor of the mosaics in St. Andrews was the Fourth Marquess of Bute.

Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine

This is the mosaic in the great apse. It depicts Christ enthroned in Heaven on the great rainbow throne, with his feet resting on the globe of the earth as his footstool. He is flanked by the four cherubim/evangelists: Man/Matthew (UL), Lion/Mark (LL), Eagle/John (UR), and Bull/Luke (LR).

There are eight columns of yellow Verona marble 15 feet high, supporting the Baldacchino over the high altar.

The mosaics of the Lady Chapel were designed by Gilbert Pownall

Mosaic arch in the Lady’s Chapel

Near the Lady’s Chapel is this Second World War memorial to the Royal Canadian Air Force. Hundreds of flat-headed nails pick out the Chi Rho while showing the plan of a wartime airfield.

The foot of the crypt of Cardinal Wiseman, the first Archbishop of Westminster. The head of the dragon is consuming his staff.

The Cathedral is overwhelming. It’s mosaics and marble floors are worth spending some very serious time studying.

Knightsbridge and Pimlico London

London, United Kingdom

Jul 022024

July 2, 2024

Knightsbridge Fire Station functioned from 1907 to 2014.

These stunning terracotta columns and pilasters are on the backside of Harrods. The front of the building is a riot of ornamentation, but it is also scaffolded and is undergoing a large restoration.

Cadogan Hotel

The Cadogan, a five-star hotel, holds the legacy of Oscar Wilde and Lillie Langtry.

Wilde was a frequent guest and entertained many friends, including artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler, at the Cadogan. Most famously, however, the Cadogan Hotel is where Oscar Wilde was arrested in Room 118, an event immortalized by the poet laureate John Betjemen in the ‘Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’ and Betjemen’s address from the arresting officer: “Mr. Woilde, we’ave come for to take yew where felons and criminals dwell. We must ask yew to leave with us quoietly, for this is the Cadogan Hotel!”

In 1895, Lillie Langtry’s townhouse became part of the Cadogan Hotel, and Lillie continued to reside in her old bedroom as part of the expanded hotel. You can book the Langtry room, which the hotel has maintained the suite for over a century.

A lovely caryatid on an upscale apartment building in Kensington

St James the Less

The above is just the top 2/3’s of the campanile to St James the Less. The church was donated by Jane Emily and Penelope Anna Monk in honor of their father.

It was designed by George Edmund Street.

It is a lovely little church in what was originally a very upscale part of town that saw a downturn and, by the 1890s, had become a slum. It is now a lovely upper-middle-class neighborhood.

The iron fence around the church

The entry arch in the campanile that leads to the church

Interesting brickwork throughout

The column capitals all told a story of some miracle.

Minton tile throughout on the walls as well as the floors

I was fascinated with the stone inlaid with mastic. It can be found throughout the church and is very unique. Mastic is a resin obtained from the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus).

Fleet Street – London

London, United Kingdom

Jul 022024

July 1, 2024

Fleet Street is one of the oldest streets in London. It was established in the time of the Romans as an important thoroughfare route. By the Middle Ages, it had begun to thrive, with senior clergy locating their palaces there.

Fleet Street was also known for its general culture of debauchery, as it was the home to a slew of taverns and brothels, many of which were documented as early as the 14th century.

Dr. Johnson’s House

Dr. Samuel Johnson was an English poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. He is also the father of A Dictionary of The English Language.

The house was built at the end of the 17th century by wool merchant Richard Gough.

Johnson lived and worked in the house from 1748 to 1759, paying a rent of £30, as he compiled A Dictionary of the English Language. In the 19th century, it was used as a hotel, a print shop, and a storehouse. In 1911, it was purchased by newspaper magnate and politician Cecil Harmsworth, who later commented: “At the time of my purchase of the house in April 1911, it presented every appearance of squalor and decay … It is doubtful whether in the whole of London there existed a more forlorn or dilapidated tenement”. He restored the house with the help of architect Alfred Burr and opened it to the public in 1914. It is now a museum featuring Dr. Johnson’s work.

This is Hodge, Dr. Johnson’s cat. Hodge was immortalized in a whimsical passage in James Boswell’s 1791 book Life of Johnson. Dr. Johnson was extremely fond of his cat and spoiled Hodge rotten. He fed him oysters that, at the time, were considered peasant food. He did not send the servants to buy the oysters, knowing it would insult them, so he went himself to purchase Hodges’ daily ration of oysters. The statue shows Hodge sitting next to a pair of empty oyster shells atop a copy of Johnson’s dictionary, with the inscription “a very fine cat indeed.”

The DC Thomson building

The Dundee Advertiser and Northern Echo operated out of this building in the 1880s and boasted of direct connection to their head offices via ‘special telegraph wire’ from the site in the publishing trade press. In the following decade, The People’s Journal and People’s Friend moved in.

Fleet Street’s publishing and printing tradition began at the beginning of the 16th century. By the 20th century, most national newspapers in Britain operated here. The newspaper trade continued to dominate until the 1980s when Rupert Murdoch moved The Times and The Sun to Wapping, East London, to escape the influence of the powerful print unions. Most other papers followed suit.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is among the oldest pubs in London. Though destroyed and rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, a tavern has stood in the same spot for over five centuries

Playwright Ben Johnson, poet and pamphleteer John Milton, and authors Mark Twain, Alfred Tennyson, P.G. Wodehouse, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were all regulars at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

In the alley that leads to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is the Wine Court.

Wine Office Court

“Sir” said Dr Johnson “if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this great City you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares but must survey the innumerable little lames and courts.”

This Court takes its name from the Excise Office which was here up to 1665. Voltaire came and, says tradition, Congreve and Pope, Dr Johnson lived in Gough Square (end of the Court on the left), and finished his Great Dictionary there in 1755. Oliver Goldsmith lived at No.6 where he wrote “The Vicar of Wakefield” and Johnson saved him from eviction by selling the book for him.

Here came Johnson’s friends, Reynolds, Gibbon, Garrick, Dr Burney, Boswell and others of his circle.
In the 19th C. Came Carlyle, MacAulay, Tennyson, Dickens, (who mentions the Court in “A Tale of Two Cities”) Forster, Hood, Thackeray, Cruikshank, Leech and Wilkie Collins. More recently came Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Conan Doyle, Beerbohm, Chesterton, Dowson, Le Gallienne, Symons, Yeats – and a host of others in search of Dr Johnson, or “The Cheese”.

A random sign found on Fleet Street

Walking the Albertopolis

London, United Kingdom

Jul 012024

June 30, 2024

Albertopolis is the nickname given to the area centered on Exhibition Road in London, named after Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort (husband). It contains many educational sites, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, and the Natural History Museum.

The entry to the National History Museum

Exhibition Road gets its name from The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held). It was an international exhibition in Hyde Park from May 1 to October 15, 1851. It was the first in a series of World’s Fairs exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century. The event was organized by Henry Cole and Prince Albert.

One of many windows covers the rather long front of the Natural History Museum.

There are creatures everywhere in and around the building. Some are extinct, and some are not.

Richard Owen, then superintendent of natural history collections, persuaded the trustees of the British Museum that a separate building was needed to accommodate their ever-growing catalog of the natural world.

Owen envisioned a ‘cathedral to nature’ that would celebrate the richness and abundance of life on Earth and inspire scientists and the general public.

Francis Fowke, who had also designed the Royal Albert Hall and parts of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was chosen as the architect. However, when Fowke died the following year, the relatively little-known architect Alfred Waterhouse received the commission. He used terracotta design for the entire building. This was a smart choice at the time as, in the 1850s, London was heavily polluted, and architectural details could quickly disappear under all the black soot. It was thought Terracotta would be more hygienic and offer some resistance to the pollution.

I could only walk around the exterior, but I understand the interior is as breathtaking as the exterior.

Gold-leafed leaves cap the fence that surrounds the Natural History Museum.

Animals also grace the concrete pilasters of the fences.

Royal Albert Hall

As part of what was to become Albertopolis, the Exhibition’s Royal Commission purchased Gore House. Sadly, Prince Albert died, so a memorial was proposed for Hyde Park, with a Great Hall opposite the park. The site was purchased with some of the profits from the Exhibition. It was designed by civil engineers Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Y. D. Scott of the Royal Engineers and built by Lucas Brothers.

Originally to be called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, Queen Victoria changed its name to the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences upon laying the Hall’s foundation stone in 1867 in memory of her husband, Prince Albert, who had died six years earlier.

An 800-foot-long mosaic frieze titled ‘The Triumph of Arts and Letters’ encircles the building. It consists of foot-long slabs of mosaic tesserae.

When the Hall was being designed, its architect, Major-General Scott RE, requested that the mosaic be sculptural. However, time and money constraints meant that mosaic was adopted. Seven leading artists of the Victorian age were commissioned to design the 16 sections that make up the entire frieze and depict human accomplishments throughout history.

The mosaic’s tesserae were manufactured in terracotta by Minton, Hollins & Co. and then arranged into 800 slabs by the women’s mosaic class at the South Kensington Museum, now known as the V&A.

The meaning of each section of the frieze is extensive. The picture above was designed by William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918). The domed building is in Hajia Sofia, Istanbul. To the right is a king accepting the plans for Hagia Sofia.

Albert Memorial

The Albert Memorial was unveiled in 1872 and was designed by George Gilbert Scott, and built at a cost of £120,000 which was raised by a combination of public subscription and Parliamentary grants.

Influenced by the series of 13th-century Eleanor Crosses, such as the Charing Cross and other statues in Edinburgh and Manchester, Scott’s memorial design is in the Victorian Gothic style. The centerpiece of the memorial is a 14-foot-high statue of Prince Albert holding the catalog of the Great Exhibition.

Marble figures representing Europe, Asia, Africa, and America stand at each corner of the memorial.

The Frieze of Parnassus at the base of the memorial depicts celebrated painters, poets, sculptors, musicians, and architects.

The mosaics for each side and beneath the canopy of the Memorial were designed by Clayton and Bell and manufactured by the firm of Salviati of Murano, Venice.

The V&A

The architecture and art of the V&A deserve their own book. On this visit I was interested in the mosaic marble floor in the sculpture gallery.

Francis Moody was responsible for the design of the mosaic floor in the corridor. The mosaic in the corridor was the work of female convicts in Woking prison. Approved by the Home Secretary, it was nicknamed ‘Opus Criminale’. The women made up mosaic panels for floors in numerous parts of the museum.

One could spend weeks and weeks exploring the Albertopolis.

Bloomsbury – London

London, United Kingdom

Jun 302024

June 29, 2024

One of my favorite buildings in this area is the Kimpton Fitzroy. It is famous for its thé-au-lait (“tea with milk”) terracotta frontage, which includes statues of four queens – Elizabeth I, Mary II, Victoria, and Anne.

From 1900, when it was opened, until 2018, it was known by its original name of Hotel Russell, where early meetings of the Russell Group of universities took place. But the Fitzroy part of its present name is a nod to its architect, Charles Fitzroy Doll.

These Georgian homes are not far from the Kimpton. It is said that Charles Fitzroy Doll was asked to improve them, so he put on the pink window surrounds, which is where we get the term “dolled up,” although I really have my doubts about that one.

This is the frontage of Sicilian Avenue, a pedestrian shopping parade resembling an open-air arcade that diagonally runs between Southampton Row and Bloomsbury Way.

A hint of the ornamentation that adorns the building

The open area, which is very Edwardian and designed by Robert Worley in 1906, is undergoing major reconstruction, so this building is all that you can see of the shopping parade.

The name is thought to reflect Worley’s architectural style. Sicilian Avenue is also said to have been the first purpose-built pedestrianized street in London.

These two black iron columns are the entry to an old abandoned trolly line that served this area.

When there was a need for a new Holborn Town Hall, William Rushworth expanded an existing French Renaissance-style building that had opened as a library in 1894.

The Metropolitan Boroughs were established in 1900 by an Act of Parliament to provide local government, which had previously been the purview of vestries and district boards.

The London Government Act 1963 officially recognized Greater London and redrew the Metropolitan Boroughs into the 32 boroughs, plus the City of London of today.

This left many Town Halls with no purpose, and most of them are as architecturally lovely as Holborn.

William Shakespeare on the balcony of Holborn Town Hall

This is just an interesting random building in the Bloomsbury area, but I loved the brickwork on the side.

This is the clock tower of St. George’s Bloomsbury Church. This stepped tower is influenced by Pliny the Elder’s description of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and is topped with a statue of King George I in Roman dress. The portico is based on that of the Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, Lebanon.

There is a fun poem about the statue of King George on this church:

When Henry VIII left the Pope in the lurch,
The Protestants made him the head of the church,
But George’s good subjects, the Bloomsbury people
Instead of the church, made him head of the steeple.

— Horace Walpole

These stunning statures of fighting lions and unicorns symbolize the then-recent end of the First Jacobite Rising.

This lovely building, which now houses a Pizza Express was built in 1888 . George Barham founded the Express Country Milk Supply Company, transforming the milk supply industry by bringing milk into London by railway from rural farms rather than relying on city-dwelling cows.

His timing was fortuitous, as most of London’s supply of cows had to be culled due to an outbreak of cattle plague in 1865. His business prospered, and by 1885, the “Express Dairy Company Limited” was bringing 30,000 gallons of milk into the capital every night.

Barham also invented the milk churn. The Dairy Supply Company, specialized in selling milk-related hardware.

Here are some random shots of buildings in the Bloomsbury Area that I found interesting.

The Bloomsbury Tavern dates to 1856

A very different type of bracket at the entry of the National Hospital of Neuropathy

There was a time when many of the tube stations in London were faced with this oxblood-colored faience. This Russel Square station is the work of London architect Leslie Green and is an example of the Modern Style, also known as British Art Nouveau. I love this oxblood color.

Westminster London

London, United Kingdom

Jun 282024

June 28, 2024

I am back in London for a month. Three of those weeks will be spent in school, but on my first day, recovering from a long air flight, I simply wandered around. I was staying at the Strand Palace in Westminster and that is where my roaming took me.

This is actually called Aldwych Station. It has been closed for a very long time but has a wonderful architectural history. It originally opened in 1907 as Strand Station. Construction of the station began in 1905, and the building that once stood here was the Royal Strand Theatre. The red-tiled frontage was the trademark of its architect Leslie Green (1875-1908).

During both World Wars, the empty parts of the station and its tunnels were used to shelter artwork from London’s public galleries and museums including the Elgin marbles, as well as the general public from the Blitz bombing.

St Mary Le Strand

The construction of the new St Mary le Strand began in February 1714 under the architect James Gibbs. The steeple was completed in September 1717, but the church was not consecrated until 1724. It is the official church of the Women’s Royal Naval Service.

A rainbow of chairs in the carless area in front of St. Mary Le Strand

Random Public Art in front of the ME Hotel near St. Mary Le Strand

The Carting Lane Sewer Light

Wandering an alley behind the Savoy Hotel, you come across a street light you would not notice if it weren’t for a small sign attached to it. This system of lamps was the genius of British engineer Joseph Edmund Webb. In the 1890s, the so-called “sewer gas destructor lamps” were designed to extract gases from the smelly sewer pipes that laid under London and burn them off at high heat. They didn’t always work and were eventually retuned to run on the town’s gas mains, as well, to keep a flame perpetually flickering while still also drawing methane from the sewer.

York Watergate

At one end of the Victoria Embankment Gardens between the Savoy and the Thames you will find the York Water Gate.

The gate was built in 1626 as part of the York House, one of the mansions along the Thames. It was commissioned by George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham.

When built the watergate sat at the northern edge of the Thames. Boats would drop off passengers in the mansion’s back garden.

In the mid-19th-century, the UK government decided to build the Victoria Embankment. Thus changing the course of the river and leaving the watergate 150 yards from the water’s edge.

Charing Cross

This random tree on the sidewalk outside Charing Cross is absolutely uninteresting, again, if it weren’t for a little sign nearby.

On October 16, 1987, in the “Great Storm” England lost 15 million trees within a few hours. In London, nearly 100 mph winds took down 250,000 of the city’s trees. The Evening Standard created a campaign to replant trees throughout the city and this was one of them.

A great, colorful scene in the area of Charing Cross Station

Goodwins Court

Originally Fishers Court, this area was built in the 1600s and was first mentioned in official books in 1690. I was charmed by the bowed front shop windows.

Goodwins Court – look at those well-worn stone steps.

Every store front had at least one pane of bullseye glass, why I have no idea.

In front of a bookstore just off of Trafalger Square is this unique arch. It is the work of sculptor Barry Baldwin and is titled Endangered Species.

The arch depicts 70 animals at risk of extinction. At the top are Adam and Eve, bookending a central figurehead sporting a wristwatch set at the eleventh hour.

These sadly dissolving figures were quite the scandal at the time they were carved. They sit on what is now the Zimbabwe Building on The Strand that, at the time of the sculptures was once the headquarters of the British Medical Association.

There are 18 of these, all sculpted by Jacob Epstein. While nothing one would consider odd today, their nakedness and body positions were rather “racy” for the Victorian era when they were done.

Epstein was originally from Eastern Europe and moved to New York in 1880.

In 1905, Epstein moved to London from Paris, where he became heavily involved in The London Group, a cutting-edge group of artists of the time.

Lynda Benglis Power Tower (2019)

This is one of several Power Towers by Benglis found around the world. This one sits in Cavendish Square.

This statue of George Orwell (Martin Jennings 2017) sits in a very large open plaza of the BBC Headquarters. It says “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

World was created by the Canadian artist Mark Pimlott. Its surface describes an imaginary fragment of the globe, marked with lines of longitude and latitude and the names of hundreds of places. The names inscribed on the pavement have been chosen and positioned by the artist based on his personal knowledge, memories, and fantasies. As the visitor walks across its surface, he or she is likewise invited to think about how they make sense of the world.

Henry Moore’s Time-Life Screen

I am a huge Henry Moore fan, so when I walked by this building on Bond Street and looked up, I was thrilled. Apparently, when Henry Moore started on the Time-Life Screen for the Time-Life Organization, he saw it as an exciting problem to solve. He thought the screen should look like it was part of the architecture since it is part of the building, at the same time the sculptures should be projected from it as if they were escaping.

These elephants sit on the underside of a balcony on India House on India Place. Designed by Sir Albert Baker in 193o.

The Howard De Walden Nursing Home on Langham Street

I was charmed by this black and white building when walking to Kibako Japanese restaurant on Great Portland Street.

The building dates back to 1901, at the very end of Victoria‘s reign, when it was built as a nursing home. It was designed by A.E. Thompson and developed by Baron Howard De Walden at the behest of his mother. Florence Nightingale helped in the design of the building, and it is said she was “anxious to have the Nurses Home as nearly perfect as a building can be.”

A random sign off of a Mews

The Joseph Haydn/ Hendrix House – newly renovated with Jimi Hendrix apartment, as it was on the top floor.

That was my first day in London, it is great to be back in this town with so much great architecture, art and especially history.

Wandering London – The Odd and Overlooked

London

Nov 152023

November 2023

I am in London to enjoy the company of friends, see a few plays, eat some good food, and just enjoy the architecture and people of this wonderful city.

I am staying right on the Thames at Broken Wharf, looking down on a spot where I went mudlarking last year. It affords me a view of the Millennium Bridge from my window.

On the 13th of November, I did nothing but walk and walk and walk The City of London and the Southbank areas of London. This post is just a little of what I encountered.

Public Art

It is always fun to see what people are taking pictures of, most being selfies. So, as I was wandering, taking photos of this art on the bridge, I noticed that others had seen it too. These are itty bitty pieces of art that were once chewing gum. This is the work of Ben Wilson. For over ten years, he has been changing the chewing gum blobs you see on all the streets in the world, but in this case, London, into art. He uses a blowtorch, acrylic paint, and lacquer. Wilson has been arrested several times, but since he sticks to gum, he is not actually doing anything illegal. I was glad to grab these shots, as I have read the city plans on getting rid of them in a clean-up job next month. I doubt it will matter. I am sure Wilson will be back. He has a never-ending canvas.

On my very last day in London, I was looking out my window at the Millennium Bridge and saw what I thought might be the artist. I dashed over and, sure enough, was able to get a picture of the man in action.

The Seven Ages of Man

The Seven Ages of Man is a major piece of work by Richard Kindersley, who studied lettering and sculpture at Cambridge School of Art and in the workshop of his father, David Kindersley, who was also a noted stone carver.

Monument to the Unknown Artist

This is an animatronic man. Although the day I was there, he did not move. I have seen pictures of it in varying positions. Apparently, it will mimic someone standing and posing in front of it. The plinth reads, “Don’t Applause, Just throw Money”. The piece stands near the Tate Modern and is by the artist collective Greyworld.

Historical Tidbits

Memorial to Mahomet Weyonomon at Southwark Cathedral

The Southwark Cathedral, while easy to find, is tucked aside a considerable amount of construction, somewhat under the Southwark Bridge and behind the Borough Market.

The area has been a place of Christian worship for more than 1,000 years, but the cathedral dates to the creation of the Diocese of Southwark in 1905.

The shell above is a monument to Mahomet Weyonomon. (c. 1700 – 11 August 1736). He was a Native American tribal chieftain of the Mohegan tribe of Connecticut. He traveled to England in 1735 to petition King George II for better treatment of his people.

He contracted smallpox before ever being able to see the King. As a foreigner, he wasn’t able to be buried in the church, so he was quietly buried outside in the dead of night.

In November 2006, Queen Elizabeth II dedicated the memorial. The sculpture is by British artist Peter Randall-Page.

Southwark Cathedral is one of the starting points on the Pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral.

Seated on the bench behind the cross is a statue of William Shakespeare. There is also one inside of the church. Shakespeare was a member of the parish, and there is a celebration at the cathedral every year on his birthday.

The Ferryman’s Seat

Also in the area of the Southwark bridge is the last remaining of a boatman’s perch that apparently were all over the south bank of the Thames.

Before the London Bridge was built, the only way to cross was by “wherrymen”. They would perch on these stones, waiting for a passenger.

Aldgate Pump

We so often pass things like this in the streets of any city, and in truth, this pump has a bit of a macabre story attached. Water fountains like this can be found all over many cities in the world as a source of fresh water for the neighborhood. The Algate fountain was prized due to the fact that the water was rich in calcium. Unfortunately, after a period of time when people complained that the water tasted funny, they found that the river that fed the pump flowed right through a cemetery, picking up a lot more than the calcium from the bones. This is probably not as bad as the Cholera Pump in Broad Street that I visited last December, but stomach-churning nonetheless.

Lloyd’s Building by Richard Rogers in London

Not far from the Aldgate pump is this striking building. Arch Daily put it perfectly: Completed in 1986, the Lloyd’s building brought a high-tech architectural aesthetic to the medieval financial district of London.

Panyer Alley Boy

No one knows anything about this little sculpture, and yet it has pride of place. The plaque below was not part of the original. It is not where it originally started, where that was no one knows, and what he means and what he is doing is just as lost. Let me lift just one line from Hidden London’s explanation: What does the stone depict? Most authorities have been in no doubt that the boy is sitting on a bread pannier, but others have supposed it to be a fruit basket or a woolsack, while one commentator felt that it “resembles more a coil of rope.”

Parks

Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in Postman’s Park

As in most big cities, the tiny parks that are scattered around are always a pleasure to find, if just to sit. Postman’s Park is exactly that. The plaque above sits near a long row of covered benches, a nice respite from the rain that was beginning to come down.

The plaque from 1900 was a project by George Frederic Watts honoring the bravery of ordinary people, policemen, and firemen who gave their lives to save others. Throughout the park, you will find individual plaques to the heroes themselves.

Goldsmith’s Garden

This gold leopard is the trademark of The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Not only are they the landowners of this public garden, but they are also one of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of the City of London.

Their guild was established in 1327 and was responsible for the inspection and branding of all precious metals within the realm of the ruling monarchs.

Goldsmiths Garden

While hard to tell, the garden is actually sunken. In the corner, you can see the sculpture “The Three Printers.” The piece was commissioned by the Westminster Press Group and is the work of Wilfred Dudeney. It depicts a trio of figures that represent the newspaper trade that was once prevalent along Fleet Street.

The Cornhill Devils

Waaay high up on a building on Cornhill are a series of terracotta devils. The building itself was designed by architect Ernest Augustus Runtz in 1893. It is said that the vicar of St Peter’s Cornhill was unhappy with the plans for this new terracotta structure as it strayed onto the church’s property. Runtz had to change his plans, incurring costs and frustration, and so he added the ornamentation to get back at the vicar.

The Philpot Lane Mice

Little things like this always intrigue me, and if I learn of one, I go track it down. Who really knows why these two mice are on the side of a building? But there is an adorable story of how they came to be, of course, most likely made up, but cute nonetheless.

It is said that in 1862, while the building was under construction, two workers started arguing over the whereabouts of their lunch. The argument eventually came to fisticuffs, with one man falling to his death. Only later was the lunch found with two mice eating away at it. To commemorate their fallen comrade, the workers added the sculpture.

London is a magical city, and the heart of it The City of London is a paradise for history lovers, architecture lovers, and the curious. I will never tire of wandering aimlessly through its streets.

Wandering London in the Pouring Rain

London, United Kingdom

Nov 152023

November 14, 2023

Blackfriar Pub

I began my day at Blackfriars Bridge. Blackfriars originated as a Dominican friary founded in the year 1278. The name Blackfriars comes from the color of the robes that the Dominicans wore.

I had the best of intentions of wandering the Farringdon Neighborhood all day today. The rain began around noon and continued to come down so hard that I made my way back to my hotel to write, dry off, and watch the rain fall on the Thames through the window.

Here is what I did manage to see.

Smithfield

One of the few places in London to escape the fire of 1666, the market’s neighborhood is a treasure chest of remarkable buildings.

The hospital that turned 900 years old this year and a largely Norman church in whose converted chapel a teenage Benjamin Franklin worked as a journeyman printer. In the area, one can find Renaissance-era schools and Turnbull Street, which Shakespeare mentions in Henry IV, Part 2 when Falstaff ridicules Justice Shallow for prating about “the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull Street”.

Smithfield witnessed the execution of William “Braveheart” Wallace and, during Mary I’s attempted reversal of the English Reformation, the burning at the stake of many Protestant Londoners. And a mere 200 years ago, men reputedly sold their wives at the Smithfield Market. Wife selling in England probably began in the late 17th century. It was essentially a form of divorce, which was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest.

The Smithfield Neighborhood

There is evidence that this neighborhood dates from the Bronze Age. The vast difference in architecture throughout the neighborhood shows that it has gone through many changes over the decades.

Ornamentation on the Smithfield Meat Market

The Smithfield Meat Market was designed by Victorian architect Sir Horace Jones in the second half of the 19th century. The market once dominated this area. That is changing. By 2025, Smithfield’s 1960s Poultry Market nearby will reopen as the home of the Museum of London, while the elaborate Victorian Central Market will subsequently relaunch as a combined food hall/conference center/co-working space in a redesign led by Studio Egret West.

The Charterhouse

The Charterhouse

The Charterhouse dates to the 14th century when, in 1348, Walter Manny purchased a 13-acre plot of land in Spital Croft from the Brethren of St Bartholomew. Manny established a Carthusian priory, and that is where it takes its name from.

The building has had many historic and interesting tenants and has also been altered and built upon so that not much of the original building remains.

Charterhouse continues to serve as an almshouse to over 40 older people, known as Brothers, who are in need of financial support and companionship. Since 2017, women have been accepted as Brothers. It is open to the public in partnership with the Museum of London.

Charterhouse Square

This area is littered with plaque pits. It is thought that the one under Charterhouse Square could be the grave of as many as 50,000 Londoners. The pits were necessary as the plague, which wiped out 60% of London, happened too fast to bury people properly. The pits were discovered during the construction of a Crossrail project.

One of the skeletons found during the Crossrail project is displayed in the Charterhouse Museum.

This stunning art deco building is the Fox and Anchor. It was designed by architect Latham Withall and built in 1898 by W. H. Lascelles & Co.. The architectural ceramics and sculptures are by Royal Doulton and designed by W.J. Neatby in the British Art Nouveau style.

As I quickly walked home before my umbrella could give way and I would be ankle-deep in water, I was able to capture these last two shots.

The Golden Boy of Pye Corner

The Golden Boy of Pye Corner from the 17th century. It marks the spot where the 1666 Great Fire of London was stopped. The statue of a naked boy is made of wood and was originally winged. The Monument to the Great Fire marks where the fire started.

Last year, when I walked by St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, it was covered in scaffolding. This time, I was able to see the only statue of Henry VIII, dressed in his resplendent style, on display in all of London. It was erected in this gatehouse in 1702 to acknowledge that in 1546, Henry granted St Bartholomew’s to the City of London.

I had begun to explore this area last December when I was here, and today, despite my day being cut short, I was glad to get back to it.

This area isn’t as touristy as other parts of London and had its rough times in the 70s and 80s, but the number of new hip restaurants and pubs is a sign it is coming back with a vengeance, and that makes it a fun area to explore.

Visiting London for Food and Fun

London

Nov 152023

November 2023

I am leaving London with a heavy heart, despite the knowledge I will be back in a short seven months.

This trip was to visit friends, dine out, and see a few plays. I managed to do a lot more, but here are the plays I saw and the places I dined, none of which would have been possible if my dear friend Susan had not made all the play reservations and all the dinner plans.

Plays

Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theater. This is fabulous; you laugh all the way through, and when you aren’t laughing, you are humming the lyrics to all the songs. The acting was sublime, with the standouts being Daniel Mays as Nathan Detroit and Marisha Wallace as Adelaide.

Below is another stand-out actor in the show, Cedric Neal, as Nicely-Nicely Johnson.

Photo from The Independent

Frank and Percy at The Other Palace was really wonderful. One need not speak of how great the actors were; you expected that, but these two gentlemen brought all the emotions that go with daily life, facing aging and accepting love.

Kenneth Branagh directs and plays the title role in King Lear at the Wyndham Theater. This play got trounced in the reviews, but while I found a few of the characters as pathetic as milk toast in their acting abilities, I truly enjoyed the play.

Dining Out

Tea at Claridges

Tea is always special, and with Christmas decorations, especially so. The tea at Claridge’s is absolutely worth every penny.

Aulis

Aulis is a 12-seat restaurant with a fifteen-course meal. The first few courses were in a small room where we gathered at small tables. The food was brought out and explained. Then we moved to the main room, where the food was prepared to watch and learn. – I had the wine pairing as well.

The menu and the pictures say it all.

And, again, it was Susan who had the sense to take all the photos.

Gooseberry tart, raw sea bream in coal oil, radish, nasturtium, autumn shoots and flowers

Truffle pudding caramelized in birch. Corra Linn cheese and Wiltshire truffle

Launceston Lamb belly with fermented beans and black garlic

Large white pork and Devonshire eel doughnut, cured pork fat, and Aulis blend of caviar

West Coast turbot, Crown Prince pumpkin, lovage, and smoked bone sauce

14-day aged Creedy Carver duck, fermented Kalibos cabbage, Boltardy beetroots, and raspberry vinegar

Frozen Turnworth cheese with London borage honey

Roasted juniper fudge tartlet with preserved perilla

Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight, x

Nov 102023

November 10, 2023

I traveled to the Isle of White via ferry, leaving out of Portsmouth to Ryde.

Once you disembark from the ferry, you have a long walk to town on the Ryde Pier. Ryde Pier is an early 19th-century pier and is the world’s oldest seaside pleasure pier.

The pier was designed by John Kent of Southampton, and its foundation stone was laid in June 1813. The pier opened in July 1814 with, as it still has, a timber-planked promenade.

By 1833, the pier had grown to a length of 745 yards. It is this pre-Victorian structure that has, with some modifications, carried pedestrians and vehicles ever since.

I had but one day, and the Isle of Wight is much bigger than one expects, so the day was spent at Brading Roman Villa.

The Isle of Wight is home to Osborne House, a former royal residence. The house was built between 1845 and 1851 for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a summer home and rural retreat. Albert designed the house himself in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzo. Sadly, it was closed.

The Isle is also home to the Needles, a row of three stacks of chalk that rise 98 feet out of the sea off the western extremity of the Isle in the English Channel. Sadly, from Ryde, the trip by bus is two hours, and there just was not enough time.

The Museum that houses the Roman Villa

However, the Brading Roman Villa was a treat and well worth the trip. Brading Roman Villa was part of an Ancient Roman farm, and while poorly excavated during the Victorian Era, it still has a few mosaic floors that make it a very special place.

The first building constructed at Brading Roman Villa appeared in around 100 AD, not long after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD. This consisted of the South Range, which was soon followed by the larger North Range in 200 AD.

By the 4th century, the Grand West Range was completed as a winged corridor villa, making up the main building of the family’s residence. Over time, the interior of the West Range was changed, with walls moved and mosaics added to suit the changing times and fashions.

The cockerel-headed man is thought to be dressed as a Lanista, a trainer and owner of gladiators. Its symbolism at Brading is a mystery.

The figure in the center of this panel is an astronomer. He points to a celestial globe while on his right is a pillar sundial, and to his left is a horizontal sundial.

To head back to Portsmouth, I took the Hovercraft, which is faster and a fun extra adventure.

On the voyage between Portsmouth and the Isle of White are the Palmerston’s Follies.

Two of Palmerston’s Follies

The Palmerston Forts were built during the Victorian period on the recommendations of the 1860 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, prompted by concerns about the strength of the French Navy. There was considerable debate in Parliament about whether the cost could be justified. The name comes from their association with Lord Palmerston, who was Prime Minister at the time and promoted the idea.

The works were also known as Palmerston’s Follies, partly because the first ones had their main armament facing inland to protect Portsmouth from a land-based attack, and thus (as it appeared to some) facing the wrong way to defend from a French attack.

Another reason for the Folly tag is because, at the time of their completion, the threat from the French navy had passed, and because the technology of the guns had become obsolete before the forts were finished, they were the most costly and extensive system of fixed defenses undertaken in Britain in peacetime.

The Solent Fort or No-Man’s Land Fort

The Solents Fort, or No-Man’s Land Fort, has a long and sordid history after it was sold by the government.

The Fort’s second life began as a luxury home/hospitality center, including an indoor swimming pool and two helipads. In July 2004, Legionnaires Disease found in the hotel’s water system forced its closure. The Fort was put up for sale in 2005 and again in 2007, but the company collapsed. In March 2008, Harmesh Pooni, claiming to be the owner, barricaded himself inside the fort in protest against the administrators of KPMG.

The fort eventually opened as a hotel in April 2015. As of this writing, the island is again up for sale.

Portsmouth, England

Portsmouth, United Kingdom, x

Nov 102023

November 10, 2o23

HMS Warrior (launched in 1860) has been restored to its original Victorian condition.

Portsmouth’s history dates to the Roman times. It is said that Portsmouth was founded c. 1180 by Anglo-Norman merchant Jean de Gisors.

The city is home to the first drydock ever built. It was constructed by Henry VII in 1496. Portsmouth has served as a significant Royal Navy dockyard and base for centuries.

The Dockyard, which is still a major source of employment, dates from 1496 when the town was already a naval base. It was greatly expanded after 1698 and now covers more than 300 acres. In the 1860s, four masonry forts were built along the Spithead to defend the port and naval base.

Portsmouth is the birthplace of notable people such as author Charles Dickens, engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, former Prime Minister James Callaghan, and actor Peter Sellers.

Spinnaker Tower

The Spinnaker Tower is a 560-foot-tall observation tower built to be the centerpiece of the redevelopment of Portsmouth harbor. The tower’s design was chosen by Portsmouth residents from a selection of three different designs in a 1998 public poll.

The tower was designed by local firm HGP Architects and engineering consultants Scott Wilson and built by Mowlem.

The Portsmouth Naval Memorial

The Portsmouth Naval Memorial commemorates approximately 25,000 British and Commonwealth sailors who were lost in the World Wars, around 10,000 sailors in the First World War, and 15,000 in the Second World War. The memorial features a central obelisk, with names of the dead on bronze plaques arranged around the memorial according to the year of death.

The Royal Garrison Church

The Royal Garrison Church is thought to have been built in 1212 by the Bishop of Winchester as part of a hospital and hostel for pilgrims. After the Reformation, it was used as an ammunition store before becoming part of the governor of Portsmouth’s house during Elizabeth I’s reign.

King Charles II married there in 1662. The church was destroyed by fire bombs on January 10, 1941, but the chancel survived.

The Cathedral Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, more commonly known as Portsmouth Cathedral, is an Anglican cathedral church. It is the cathedral of the Diocese of Portsmouth and the seat of the bishop of Portsmouth.

A sweet little planter with a little girl reading a book underneath. This sits in the reflective garden of Portsmouth Cathedral.

Portsmouth Cathedral

Found on the lawn in front of Portsmouth Cathedral

Portsmouth suffered severe aerial bomb damage during World War II, and substantial clearance and rebuilding took place in the postwar decade.

Ancient grave markers in the front of the Portsmouth Cathedral

Vernon Gate of Gunwharf Quay

Gunwharf Quay is now a shopping center. It was constructed in the early 21st century on the site of what had once been HM Gunwharf, Portsmouth. Gunwharf was one of several such facilities that were established around Britain and the Empire by the Board of Ordnance, where cannons, ammunition, and other armaments were stored, repaired, and serviced, ready for use on land or at sea. Later known as HMS Vernon, the military site closed in 1995 and opened to the public as Gunwharf Quays in February 2001.

Boundry Walls of Gunwharf Quay

Point Battery (which is also known by its earlier name, Eighteen Gun Battery) is a former gun emplacement.

The gun battery was created as part of Bernard de Gomme’s rebuilding of the fortifications around Portsmouth in the late seventeenth century.

Vice-Admiral John Benbow (March 10, 1653 – November 4, 1702)

A figurehead that caught my fancy in the museum

This is just a very small sampling of Portsmouth, as I only really had one day, but it is truly a delightful town with the most amazing and informative museums.

The HMS Victory

Portsmouth, United Kingdom, x

Nov 102023

Portsmouth, England

November 9, 2023

The HMS Victory is undergoing a massive overhaul, so I was not able to see her as a whole ship from the outside. The inside, however, is an amazing walk through history. It is difficult to convey through pictures or even words, but the 2-3 hours I spent on The Victory were some of the most enlightening and fascinating hours I have ever spent learning history.

A quick look at the exterior of the ship and its restoration.

I am an American. And yet I know who Admiral Nelson was and The Battle of Trafalgar, but when you walk this ship, you really do feel like you are in the battle from beginning to end. It is a very special experience.

The Battle of Trafalgar was to witness both the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s plans to invade Britain and the death of Admiral Lord Nelson.

The prow of the Victory

HMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was ordered in 1758, laid down in 1759, and launched in 1765. In the rating system of the British Royal Navy used to categorize sailing warships, a first-rate was the designation for the largest ships of the line. Building the HMS Victory took around 6,000 trees 90% were oak, and the remainder were elm, pine, and fir.

She is still a commissioned ship, so she has 245 years of service as of 2023, the world’s oldest naval vessel still in commission.

Victory is best known for her role as Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21st, 1805.

Touring the Victory is a several-hour process and worth every moment. You begin at the top and work your way down to the hold. All along, there are history stops and volunteers that ensure you are the most well-informed person regarding the HMS Victory and the Battle of Trafalgar when you leave.

What one does not really comprehend is how someone such as Horatio Nelson was as revered and admired as any rock star of today. His movements followed, his battles studied, and his death a major state period of mourning.

What never comes across in movies or books is how even the Captain’s rooms are broken down and turned into cannon sites. The lovely blue paneling and doors could be taken down and stored or simply thrown overboard should the ship find itself in a surprise attack. Thus turning the entire area into a battery of cannons.

This is Nelson’s bed. The man only had one arm, so getting in and out of a ship’s bed such as this was something he could do on his own. He was a very proud man and would not accept the help of others when doing simple everyday tasks.

This is what one thinks of when one thinks of sleeping on a ship.

The Carpenters Walk

One of the larger cannons on the HMS Victory. The lead sheathing on the top was to protect the firing pin area from the elements until it was needed.

A battery of 32-pounder cannons. The 32-pounder guns were sets of heavy-caliber pieces of artillery mounted on warships in the last century of the Age of Sail. It was usually the most powerful armament on a warship. The British version fired a 32-pound projectile at about .3 miles per second. They were most famous for being mounted on HMS Victory.

Firing mechanisms changed over the years to become safer. If that is actually possible, this was a newer flintlock system.

Tools used in cannon operation and firing.

This marks the spot where Admiral Horatio Nelson was hit by a musket ball fired from an enemy ship at a range of 50 feet. The ball entered his left shoulder, passed through a lung, then his spine at the sixth and seventh vertebrae, and lodged two inches below his right shoulder blade in the muscles of his back.

Nelson was carried below decks and died on this spot at half-past four in the afternoon, three hours after he had been shot. The man asked not to be thrown into the sea. Instead, his body was placed in a cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh, which was then lashed to the Victory’s mainmast and placed under guard. The HMS Victory had to be towed to Gibraltar after the battle, and on arrival, Nelson’s body was transferred to a lead-lined coffin filled with spirits of wine.

After laying in state, on January 9th, a funeral procession consisting of 32 admirals, over a hundred captains, and an escort of 10,000 soldiers took the coffin from the Admiralty to St Paul’s Cathedral, where he is buried.

It is well known that rats were an issue on ships. However, what I learned was that rats love gunpowder and would gnaw through entire barrels to get to it. This was obviously an issue regarding the gunpowder itself, but also the fact that the rats would be covered in it and scurry around the ship where open flamed lanterns sat about.

For this reason, gunpowder barrels were always lined in copper or lead.

Rats were also a source of food for the hungry sailors, despite the sailors 5000 per day calorie diet.

About 1,500 British seamen were killed or wounded in the Battle of Trafalgar. In the Spanish and French fleet, 14,000 men were lost.

As I have said, this was an amazing experience, and should you find yourself in the neighborhood of Portsmouth, England, set aside a minimum of one to two days to learn about the history of the Age of Sail.

The Mary Rose

Portsmouth, United Kingdom, x

Nov 102023

Portsmouth UK

November 9th, 2023

The Mary Rose

If you want to get an honest and complete look at what naval service and war were like in the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s, visit Portsmouth, England.

The quality of education you receive while touring both the Mary Rose and the Victory is second to none.

The Mary Rose was a warship in Henry VIII’s “Army by Sea”, built in Portsmouth and launched in 1511. She had a career that spanned 34 years.

When Henry VIII came to power in 1509, he inherited a small navy from his father, with only a couple of sizeable ships. Henry commissioned two new ships to be built: the Mary Rose and the Peter Pomegranate. The large vessels represented Henry’s ambition for naval expansion and to send a clear message to England’s enemies.

The Mary Rose required a huge amount of timber. It is said that around 40 acres worth of trees were used to build her. She was built to accommodate up to 700 sailors, soldiers, gunners, surgeons, and cooks.

In 1545, there were 140,000 men in the English forces on land and at sea. This was almost twice the population of London at the time.

The Mary Rose sank in the naval Battle of the Solent. The battle took place on the 18th and 19th of July 1545 during the Italian Wars between the fleets of Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. The Solent lies between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

The Cowdray engraving of the battle of the Solent, 1545. The painting was lost in a fire, but copies remained.

When the Mary Rose went down, she took over 500 men with her to the bottom of the sea. However, there may have been up to 700 men on board, of which fewer than 40 survived. Most of the skeletons recovered by archaeologists were of young men in their twenties. Scientific tests have also shown that her crew was diverse, with sailors from Europe, including Spain and Italy, and others from further away, including North Africa.

Sinking of the Mary Rose at the Battle of Solent

The Mary Rose was probably carrying supplies for two weeks when she sank. This was an enormous quantity of supplies and weight. These included 1800 kg of beef, 900 kg of pork, 750 fish, 3350 kg of hard unsweetened biscuits, and 31,500 liters of beer.

The only confirmed eyewitness, an unknown Flemish sailor who escaped from the sinking vessel, claims that the Mary Rose had fired all of her guns on one side and was turning when her sails were caught in a strong gust of wind, pushing the still open gunports below the waterline. Her reason for sinking is still debated today.

The recovery of the Mary Rose is a feat of modern science and tenacity that is rather incredible and one that took decades.

The search for and discovery of the Mary Rose was a result of the dedication of one man, the late Alexander McKee. McKee initiated ‘Project Solent Ships’ to investigate wrecks in the Solent. His hope was to find the Mary Rose.

Using sonar, the team discovered a strange shape underneath the seabed. Between 1968 and 1971, a team of volunteer divers explored the area.

On the first of May 1971, diver Percy Ackland found three of the port frames of the Mary Rose.

There were 27,831 dives made to the Mary Rose during the modern excavation project, equating to 22,710 hours on the seabed.

A committee was set up to consider many different methods of raising the hull. They decided to use a purpose-built lifting frame that would be attached by wires to steel bolts passing through the hull at carefully selected points. These points were spread evenly across the section of the ship, mainly in the major structural beams.

For the first 12 years, the Mary Rose was sprayed with chilled water to prevent it from drying out while scientists conducted research into its long-term conservation.

The Mary Rose team treated the timbers with polyethylene glycol to replace the degraded timber cells, requiring spray application under 98% humidity. For 19 years, while spraying was ongoing, the ship was sealed within an insulated hotbox.

In 2013, when the Mary Rose Museum was opened in Portsmouth, the sprays were turned off, although the ship remained in an insulated hotbox as it dried. The drying process was informed by complex computational fluid dynamics to ensure that all elements of the ship received the same temperature and relative humidity, preventing variation in drying rates and, therefore, warping, shrinking, and cracking. Over three years, 100 tons of water was removed from the ship. In 2015, the drying was complete.

A Canon from the Mary Rose

Over 26,000 artifacts and pieces of timber were raised from the seabed. As well as the remains of about half the crew members and a dog used as a ratter. These are all nicely displayed throughout the museum.

A Ludus Anglicorum set (a predecessor of modern backgammon) owned by the master carpenter.

Fun and Offbeat in London

London, United Kingdom

Jan 032023

December 2022

I took a Christmas-Food-themed walking tour put on by London Walks. When discussing Christmas geese, we were brought to this very interesting little spot in Leadenhall.

In the 1800s, Old Tom, a gander from Ostend, Belgium, became a fixture in the market. Somehow Tom never made it to anyone’s dinner table and became a regular fixture at the market. He lived to the age of 37 when he died of natural causes and was buried on the market site. He was so famous the Times ran his obituary on April 16th, 1835; it read:

‘This famous gander, while in stubble,
Fed freely, without care or trouble:
Grew fat with corn and sitting still,
And scarce could cross the barn-door sill:
And seldom waddled forth to cool
His belly in the neighbouring pool.
Transplanted to another scene,
He stalk’d in state o’er Calais-green,
With full five hundred geese behind,
To his superior care consign’d,
Whom readily he would engage
To lead in march ten miles a-stage.
Thus a decoy he lived and died,
The chief of geese, the poulterer’s pride.’

The crest of the Bakers Company London

When discussing pies and such, we stopped in front of the Bakers Company, which is essentially a bakers guild. The manager was locking up and invited us in for a history lesson. The chance stop was a delight and education into the livery system of London. The Bakers’ Company can trace its origins back to 1155 and is the City of London’s second oldest recorded guild.

Not far from the Bakers Company building is the monument to the 1666 London Fire.

The fire started in Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday, September 2nd, and spread rapidly.

The 1677 Monument to the Great Fire of London stands near London Bridge

Constructed between 1671 and 1677, ‘The Monument’ was built on the site of St Margaret – New Fish Street, the first church to be destroyed by the Great Fire.

It snowed about 2″ in London on the 12th

In honor of gay pride and the mass shooting at the Orlando Gay Club in the US, London has installed some fun and supportive pedestrian traffic signals. There are several iterations, here are just two I was able to snap a picture of.

Pelicans of St. James Park

It was just a fluke I caught this fellow and his heron friend. Due to the Avian Flu, all of the Pelicans of St. James Park have been rounded up and are being sequestered away from danger; I guess this guy didn’t get the memo. In 1664, pelicans were given to Charles II by a Russian Ambassador. Over the course of history, there have been forty pelicans at St. James; there are presently six at the park: Sun, Moon, Star, Tiffany, Isla, and Gargi (who is actually wild and the only one without his wings clipped).

There are so many statues around London, as there are with any city with this much history. It is worth admiring most of them, but hardly worth a discussion; these two are interesting for a story, and while not true, it is still fun.

Cromwell on the grounds of the House of Parliament

King Charles I over a door of St Margaret’s Church and across the street from Parliament

These two men as nemesis is a kind way of stating it. For those not up on British history, Cromwell was responsible for the execution of King Charles. So as Cromwell sits on Parliament grounds with his head bowed in thought and, some say, “avoiding the gaze from King Charles” across the street, one has to wonder upon their relationship.

The problem with the myth of the statues is that Cromwell’s statue was erected in 1899 to a design by Sir William Thornycroft, and the bust of King Charles I wasn’t donated to the Church by The Society of King Charles the Martyr until 1956.

Have you ever thought about how long history has had postmarks? Fascinating, isn’t it?

The Signs of Lombard Street

The grasshopper was the family sign of Thomas Gresham, who lived here in the 16th century. Gresham founded the Royal Exchange, inspired by Antwerp’s Bourse. London’s first central trading hub was opened by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571.

The first record of a shop under the cat-a-fiddling was back in the reign of Henry VI (1422-16, then 1470-71). It was a second-hand clothes shop.

In 1290 King Edward I ruled that all Jews should be expelled from The City. Soon The City of London began to fill with Italians from Lombardy. Lombard Street and its environs became home to small goldsmiths or family-run banks.

Not all Londoners could read, and street numbers were only sporadically used from the early 1700s. So a hanging sign was a way to draw business to your shop.

Over the years, the signs disappeared, but on the occasion of Edward VII’s coronation, some were brought back.

A little bit of background. The City of London is a mere 1.12 square miles and is widely referred to simply as the City (differentiated from the phrase “the city of London” by capitalizing City). The City is a major business and financial center, with the Bank of England headquartered here. The local authority for the City is the City of London Corporation, which is unique in the UK and has some unusual responsibilities, such as being the police authority. The corporation is headed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London (an office separate from, and much older than, the Mayor of London).

Soho

One of the Noses of Soho

In 1997, artist Rick Buckley decided to stage a protest against the appearance of CCTV cameras across the streets of London. And the concept of The Seven Noses of Soho was born. The artist did this all on the QT, so many were removed immediately by the authorities and the like, but several remained to the delight of people such as myself. Buckley came clean in 2011, and a hunt for the seven that remain is a fun way to pass the time. I want to thank my friend Susan for her patience in my search, and it was actually she who spotted this one on Great Windmill Street; we never did find the one on Marble Arch. Next visit, I hope to search for Tim Fishlock’s ears in his installation “The Walls Have Ears”.

I read the story of John Snow and the Cholera pump as a teen; I was rather thrilled to trip upon it in my wanderings of Soho.

The Cholera Pump of John Snow

In August 1854, Soho was struck with a severe cholera outbreak. A doctor in the area, John Snow, believed that sewage dumped into rivers and cesspools near town wells could contaminate water supplies and cause cholera outbreaks.

He suspected that the source of the outbreak was the public water pump on Broad Street. He used information from local hospitals and public records and specifically asked residents if they had drunk water from the pump.

“Within 250 yards of the spot where Cambridge Street joins Broad Street there were upwards of 500 fatal attacks of cholera in 10 days… As soon as I became acquainted with the situation and extent of this irruption (sic) of cholera, I suspected some contamination of the water of the much-frequented street-pump in Broad Street.”

On September 7^th,1854, Snow took his findings to local officials and convinced them to take the handle off the pump. It didn’t take long before the outbreak came to an end.

Researchers later discovered that the public well had been dug right next to a cesspit. A cloth diaper of a baby, who had contracted cholera from another source, was the source of the outbreak.

This has been a wonderful two months spent in the UK, with most of it centered in London. I always say it takes a lifetime to get to know great cities like London; I am glad to have had this time to explore and learn what I did, even if it leaves me wanting more.

Cemeteries of London

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 292022

December 2022

I am an avowed taphophile, so visiting cemeteries is part of my travels wherever I go. I made an intentional trip to Highgate, tour and all, but the others were pleasant happenstances.

Highgate

An act of Parliament created The London Cemetery Company in 1836. Stephen Geary, an architect, and the company’s founder appointed James Bunstone Bunning as the surveyor and David Ramsey, a renowned garden designer, as the landscape architect.

Over the next 20 years, Highgate became one of London’s most fashionable cemeteries. In 1854 the London Cemetery Company expanded by a further twenty acres. This new ground, now known as the East Cemetery, was opened in 1856.

This 37-acre cemetery is best known for the grave of Karl Marx.

In 1884, on the first anniversary of Marx’s death, around 6,000 people marched from Tottenham Court Road to the grave only to be turned away by police who, afraid of riots, had closed the cemetery. Marx was initially buried a few yards to the north, but in 1956 his grave was moved to its present location, and this giant memorial, funded by the British Communist Party, was erected. You can see the original gravestone incorporated into the plinth. A ceremony is held here every year on the anniversary of his death, to the minute, at 2.30 pm.

The grave site of one of my favorite authors – Douglas Adams – author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

People leave pens at the base of Adams’s grave; I, for one, would have left a towel. But there is a connection to the pens:

“Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life.”

Sculptor Anna Justine Mahler (Gucki) (1904-1988). Daughter of Gustav Mahler.

Gravesite of famous bare-knuckled fighter Thomas Sayers with his dog named Lion.

The lion Nero on the tomb of John Wombwell

George Wombwell (December 1777 – November 1850) was a famous menagerie exhibitor in Regency and early Victorian Britain. He founded Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie. It is said that Nero was so docile children could ride on his back.

A person with some whimsey

Someone with a good sense of humor.

St. Olaves

We had walked into St. Olaves in pursuit of Pepys. A group of musicians had just finished their practice and were thrilled to talk about the church.

Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade.

Pepys recorded his daily life for almost ten years. This record of Pepys’s life is more than a million words long and is often regarded as Britain’s most celebrated diary; it has been a primary source for scholars regarding the English Restoration Period.

The entry to the churchyard of St. Olaves

Charles Dickens called St Olaves: My best-beloved churchyard. The churchyard of St. Ghastly Grim.

In the crypt of St. Olaves

St. Pancras

I have already written about this small unique cemetery in Camden, but I wanted to make sure it got in the cemetery section as well, so here are a few from St. Pancras.

The Hardy Tree –

After photographing this and writing about it, the tree fell in a rainstorm. It became infected with parasites in 2014, which is why there is a fence around it, and it finally succumbed to its illness on December 28th of this year. The Camden Council said that it is looking at ways to celebrate the fallen ash, including harvesting the wood of the Hardy Tree to make a commemorative object or planting a new tree in its place.

Burdett Coutts Monument

Burdett-Coutts monument is a memorial fountain and sundial of 1877. Made of Portland stone, marble, granite, and red Mansfield stone, it was designed by G Highton of Brixton and manufactured by H Daniel & Co, cemetery masons of Highgate.

John Soane Monument

Saint Bartholomew The Great

These graves sit atop a plaque pit in the yard of Saint Bartholomew The Great Church. The church and plaque pit has a fascinating history that I have written about before.

Westminster Abbey

While one doesn’t think of Westminster Abbey as a graveyard, there are over 3000 people buried in it. There are also hundreds of honorary plaques to notable people throughout history. I am only going to include two pieces I found that caught my eye.

Elizabeth Russell

Elizabeth Russel was baptized in the Abbey. Elizabeth I and the Countess of Sussex were her godmothers, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, her godfather. She was a maid of honor to the queen and died of consumption in 1601. The skull is a symbol of mortality.

Lady Elizabeth Nightingale

Lady Elizabeth Nightingale died in childbirth in 1731. The sculpture was done in 1761 by French stonemason LF Roubiliac. It depicts a very skeletal Grim Reaper emerging from what looks like a fireplace to spear the dying woman. Elizabeth’s husband, Joseph, fights in vain to save his wife from death.

Wandering the Outskirts of London

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 292022

December 2022

Eltham Palace

Eltham Palace consists of the medieval great hall of a former royal residence, to which an Art Deco extension was added in the 1930s, described as a “masterpiece of modern design”.

The original palace was given to Edward II in 1305 by the Bishop of Durham. It is said that is was the favorite palace of Henry IV. Henry VIII passed much of his boyhood at Eltham, and was the last monarch to spend substantial amounts of money or time there.

The hammerbeam roof of the great hall is the third-largest of its type in England

The North Stone Bridge

The North Stone Bridge crossing the moat was rebuilt by Edward IV in the 1470s and is said to be the oldest working bridge in London. It had a drawbridge at one end which was discovered during repairs in 1912.

In 1933, Stephen Courtauld and his wife Virginia acquired a 99-year lease on the palace site and commissioned Seely & Paget to restore the hall and create a modern home attached to it.

Virginia’s bedroom with its marquetry and curved walls

Battersea

Designed by Sir Giles Scott, known for his architectural work on Waterloo Bridge, Liverpool Cathedral, and the red telephone box Battersea Power Station was the first of its kind, producing 400,000 kilowatts of electricity. The Power Station was completed by the British Electric Authority in 1948 and began operating in 1953. It became known as the ‘temple of power’ and was the largest power station in the UK.

The power station was closed down in 1983 and remained largely unused. John Broome, an entrepreneur and tourism adviser to Margaret Thatcher, was the visionary behind the rehabilitation of Battersea. He got no further than removing the roof of the place to take the machinery out before rising costs killed the project. It took decades, and many owners before plans for the deteriorating ruin came to fruition. In 2012 Malaysian investors SP Setia and Sime Darby stepped in with designs by Rafael Viñoly, and that is what you see today.

The Power Station was renowned for its unique, lavish Art Deco interior, and a little of that can still be spotted here and there.

Some of the interesting equipment was left in at the ceiling level.

Control Room B sits behind plexiglass in a restaurant and bar. Difficult to photograph and access, at least it remains for posterity and awe.

Interior of Battersea

The buildings around Battersea Power Station that make up the redevelopment are interesting, and yet they are skyscrapers that are crowded together and thus, despite their unique architecture, are difficult to see and enjoy and even harder to photograph.

Gehry Partners-designed apartment and townhouse complex known as Prospect Place

All you can see of the new American Embassy building, designed by Philadelphia-based architecture firm KieranTimberlake from Battersea Power Station

Getting Around London

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 292022

December 2022

Taxis

With the advent of Uber and Lyft filling the world with cheap rides from underpaid drivers, the London Cabbie is still a wonder and should be used as often as possible while in London.

One of the reasons is Knowledge. The Knowledge was introduced as a requirement for taxi drivers in 1865. There are thousands of streets and landmarks within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. Anyone who wants to drive a London cab must memorize them all: the Knowledge of London.

This is actually rather important as the amount of construction that is occurring in London means someone with The Knowledge can get you to your destination on time and without getting lost, as happened to me the only time I agreed to take an Uber.

There is a push in London to switch to electric taxis. They have a little bit different shape and cost £55,599. I spoke with an older cab driver that didn’t mind the price but said there simply aren’t enough charging stations to make the system work. However, I have a feeling; despite pushback, the electric London cab is the future, as it was, for a short time, in the past.

London’s first horseless cabs were powered by electricity and were called Berseys, after their designer Walter C. Bersey. Twenty-five of them were introduced in August 1897. However, they proved costly and unreliable, and after one fatality, they were off the streets of London by 1900.

At Christmas, I stayed at a hotel off of Russell Square and spotted this lovely little shed. It is one of 13 cabmen’s shelters that still exist, out of an original 60, and only licensed drivers who have passed The Knowledge test are allowed inside.

The huts came about in the late 19th Century when George Armstrong, later to become editor of The Globe newspaper, was unable to hail a taxi during a blizzard because the drivers of the then horse-drawn cabs were staying warm in a nearby pub. In 1875 the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund was born.

Each hut was built no larger than a horse and cart, required by the Metropolitan Police rules because they stood on public highways. They provided shelter and food for drivers and had strict rules against swearing, gaming, gambling, and drinking alcohol.

Today the huts are owned by the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers, and the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund is responsible for upkeep and maintenance, issuing annual licenses to those who run them.

The shelters’ have protected status, which means their restoration is expensive. Replacement materials must match the originals, including the color of the paint, Dulux Buckingham Paradise 1 Green.

Buses

Not easily spotted, the above bus is an AEC Routemaster designed by Douglas Scott. The first prototype was completed in September 1954, and the last one was delivered in 1968. Interestingly, no one really knows why London buses are red.

The Tube

There is a labyrinth in every one of London’s 270 tube stations. Artist Mark Wallinger installed them to celebrate the Undergrounds’ 150th anniversary.

While each labyrinth is different, they all have a common graphic language. They are rendered in black, white, and red and produced in vitreous enamel. At the entrance of each labyrinth is a red X.

According to the artist: the labyrinths serve as a spiritual metaphor for the daily journey commuters embark upon while traveling through the city. They also have a much broader meaning, as, throughout history, the labyrinth has been a symbol of the journeys of life itself.

Getting around London is fun, no matter the system, especially if you keep your eye out for the unusual.

Christmas Lights of London

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 212022

December 2022

The Lights at Kew Gardens

***

Ten Lords a Leaping

Christmas Around Town

The tree in Trafalgar Square has been an annual gift from the people of Norway to the people of Britain since 1947 in gratitude for Britain’s support during WW II.

The tree at Covent Garden Market

* * **

Greenwich, To and From and Everything In Between

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 212022

December 2022

A trip from downtown London to Greenwich is about one hour. As the sun was shining and the temperatures have risen to the low 50s, a boat down the Thames seemed the most delightful way to get to Greenwich today.

Original Columns of the Blackfriars Railway Bridge

Of course, there are bridges across the Thames; in fact, there are more than 200 bridges along the river, varying from small wooden crossings on the Upper Thames to large structures like Tower Bridge. But these red columns caught my eye. The red pillars are the remains of the Old Blackfriars Railway Bridge, which was built in 1864 by engineer Joseph Cubitt (1811-1872) for the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway (LC&DR).

From the river, you will see the classic London hot spots such as St Paul’s Cathedral.

St Pauls from the river

You will espy the freshly unwrapped Big Ben with the Parliament Building. The bells of the Elizabeth Tower have been silent for five years; they were brought back on Remembrance Day, November 13th of this year.

Big Ben and Parliament

And, of course, the London Eye.

Once past Canary Wharf, the boat picks up considerable speed and gets you to Greenwich in no time.

This city once relied completely on the River Thames for transportation, and the history of the Waterman is long and storied and worth the time to read about. I found this boat of particular interest to the story. The Thames Sailing Barge.

Thames Sailing Barge

A Thames sailing barge, once common on the River Thames, is a type of commercial sailing boat. It is a flat-bottomed barge with a shallow draught with leeboards, perfectly adapted to the Thames Estuary. The larger barges were seaworthy vessels, and the largest vessels maneuverable by just two men.

There is just one issue with these historic boats. Their masts are really rather tall. Thus getting under the Tower Bridge presented challenges.

Tower Bridge is a bascule bridge. ‘Bascule’ is a French word, which can be translated as a seesaw, and describes how the two sides of the road of Tower Bridge open.

Today there isn’t that much large traffic plying the Thames, and by the late 1960s, Tower Bridge only opened a few hundred times a year. It is now fully automated and powered hydroelectrically.

Greenwich

I was here to visit the Royal Observatory, known for so many things, but mainly the home of what we now consider Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian.

If you stand with one foot on one side and the other on the left of the Prime Meridian, you are perfectly in the middle of the east and west.

The museums of the area are interesting, and watching the Greenwich Time Ball drop at 1:00 is fun, but there are other interesting things in the neighborhood that are a little different and what I would prefer to write about.

There are several public transit options in the attempt to return to Camden, but taking the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) was the most sensible for our return. But an added adventure is to walk under the Thames and catch the DLR on the opposite side of the river.

The Entrance to the Greenwich Tunnel

The Greenwich tunnel links Cutty Sark to Island Gardens on the Isle of Dogs. Opened in 1902, the tunnel was built to replace a hugely unreliable ferry service that brought those who lived south of the river to work in the docks and shipyards.

The tunnel is 1,217 feet long and approximately 50 feet deep. Designed by Sir Alexander Binnie, it was opened in August 1902 at the cost of £127,000. The tunnel is lined with 200,000 glazed white tiles.

The use of a tunneling shield did the digging. However, the excavation was done entirely by hand. The tunnelers worked 24 hours in eight-hour shifts, managing to dig about 10 feet every 24 hours. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel was initially only accessible via a winding staircase, but lifts were added in 1904.

The elevators of the tunnel are octagonal and once had an attendant. Why they are octagonal, I have not been able to determine.

A short length of the tunnel was damaged on the first night of the Blitz, September 7 and 8, 1940. Fortunately, the damage was repaired quickly, and the use of the tunnel could continue. The repairs included these exposed metal ring segments.

Standing on the Isle of Dogs and looking back at Greenwich.

I am not the only one to have admired this view. Canaletto painted this view in 1750.

Canaletto arrived in England in 1746 and stayed for nearly a decade. This painting shows the riverfront at Greenwich with the Royal Naval Hospital and the Queen’s House. The hospital building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, who was also responsible for the Royal Observatory.

Looking up at Christopher Wren’s Royal Observatory from the bottom of the hill

One needs at least one full day to enjoy all Greenwich offers, but the trip is well worth it.

Saint Bartholomew The Great

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 212022

December 2022

We walked into this churchyard because we were looking for a plague pit, we found so much more.

St Bartholomew half-timbered, late 16th-century, Tudor frontage built on the older (13th-century) stone arch

St. Bartholomew Church is very intriguing from the street, and one can’t help but want to walk through that arched doorway even if you didn’t know what lay behind it.

The building was founded as an Augustinian priory in 1123 by a man named Rahere. While in Italy, Rahere had a vision, so he traveled to London, and with the help of servants and children, they gathered stones from all over London to build the structure. The church is one of the oldest in London.

The tomb of Rahere

Having escaped the Great Fire of London of 1666, the church fell into disrepair and was occupied by squatters in the 18th century. The Lady chapel at the east end was used for commercial purposes and this is where Benjamin Franklin worked for a year as a journeyman printer in the 1720s. The north transept was also formerly used as a blacksmith’s forge.

The church was restored in stages in the 1890s. The Priory Church was one of the few City churches to escape damage during the Blitz and, in 1941, was where the 11th Duke of Devonshire and Deborah Mitford were married.

The area to the left behind the raised wall is a plaque pit.

The Great Plague of London saw the Black Death decimate over 15% of the city’s population (estimated at 100,000 people) between 1665 and 1666. During this scourge piles of bodies were tossed into deep pits in unconsecrated ground. Over the centuries people have begun to respect the anonymous inhabitants of these pits. There are efforts to map the pits.

Exiting through the Tudor covered 13th century stone arch.

As you enter the church you will find ‘Exquisite Pain’ by Damien Hirst.

Little is known about Saint Bartholomew other than he was one of the twelve Apostles. Tradition holds that after the Resurrection of Christ, he preached in India and Armenia, and was flayed alive in Armenia by order of a local king.

Hirst’s sculpture shows Bartholomew flayed alive, a scalpel in one hand and shears in the other, and carrying his own skin over his right arm. Hirst said the inspiration for his St Bartholomew came “from woodcuts and etchings I remember seeing when I was younger. As he was a martyr who was skinned alive, he was often used by artists and doctors to show human anatomy.” Hirst’s catholic upbringing exposed him to the legends of the saints “they are great stories and it is about… those guys… who all met these terrible ends…,” “everyone is a martyr really in life. So I think you can use that as an example of your own life, just that kind of involvement with the world. Just trying to find out what your life actually amounts to, in the end.” “I added the scissors because I thought Edward Scissorhands was in a similarly tragic yet difficult position, “it has the feel of a rape of the innocents about it.”

It is said when you travel in Italy never pass a church without going in because of the great art work you will find. I find this just as true here at Saint Bartholomew the Great.

Camden

England, London

Dec 162022

December 2022

I have taken a flat in London for the month. London, like most major cities in the world, has been visited, photographed, and Instagrammed to death. I will not be writing about the major attractions while here, but the odd and obscure.

I am staying in the Camden Borough of London, it is gritty, edgy, and just perfect.

Saint Pancras Old Churchyard

My first exploration was, of course, to a graveyard. The Saint Pancras Old Churchyard holds two things of interest, the Tomb of Sir John Sloan and the Hardy Tree.

The Hardy Tree in Saint Pancras Old Churchyard

In the mid-1860s, the railway companies cut a swath through the area that included the graveyard of Old St Pancras church. In doing their job, the railroads left a trail of corpses and disturbed coffins all around, forcing the Bishop of London to commission a firm of architects to make things right.

At the time, Victorian poet and novelist Thomas Hardy was a 25-year-old junior architect apprenticing to the firm hired to fix the graveyard. The low man on the totem pole apparently received the honors of this particular commission.

Hardy arranged the stones around the base of this tree. I imagine it wasn’t quite so higgledy-piggledy originally and that the tree roots have made the jumble we see today.

The Soane Family Tomb

The Tomb of the family of Sir John Soane

One of the most renowned architects of his day, Sir John Soane, never got over his wife’s death in 1815, although he lived until 1837. Eliza was buried on December 1st, 1815, and Soane recorded in his diary: “Melancholy day indeed! The burial of all that is dear to me in this world and all I wished to live for.”

Sloan was the designer of a slew of monumental public buildings, including the Bank of England, churches, and country houses.

Some of the remaining ornamentation on the tomb

The memorial is made up of a central marble cube of four faces for dedicatory inscriptions, enclosed by a marble canopy supported on four Ionic columns. Enclosing this central structure is a stone balustrade with a flight of steps down into the vault itself. The exterior has Sloane’s favorite emblems of Creativity and Eternity scattered around, the pineapple and the ouroboros.

There is an interesting twist to the story. Architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the designer of the Waterloo Bridge and Battersea Power Station, served as a trustee of Sir John Soane’s Museum for 35 years. Scott designed the classic red British Telephone Box, the K2, after winning a competition run by the Royal Fine Art Commission. The K2, introduced in 1926, utilizes Sloane’s four-pillar structure.

George Basevi’s painting of Eliza Soane’s tomb

The K2 Phone Box

Carreras Cigarette Factory

Another delightful building in my neighborhood is what once was the Carreras Cigarette Factory. They had a line called Black Cat Cigarettes. According to Cigarettespedia, Black Cat cigarettes were first introduced in 1904 and named for a black cat that used to sleep in the window of Carreras’ Wardour Street shop. It was there so frequently that passersby used to refer to the business as ‘the black cat shop’.

The factory was built in 1928 and designed by Marcus Evelyn Collins and Owen Hyman Collins. At the time, the building was the largest reinforced concrete factory in the country. It was also the first to install air conditioning and have a system for dust extraction. Its Egyptian theme was part of the Egyptomania craze that circled the world after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.

There are two of these stunning cats at the entrance to the building; they are not the originals. One was moved to the company’s new factory in Basildon, and the other to Jamaica in the 1950s. The majority of the Egyptian Art Deco details were destroyed in the 1960s when the building was remodeled for office space.

Black cat faces line the front of the building.

Something else in my neighborhood that you do not see on a sidewalk every day.

The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was an association set up in London by Samuel Gurney in 1859 to provide free drinking water.

The Society was inaugurated in 1859 with the requirement “That no fountain be erected or promoted by the Association which shall not be so constructed as to ensure by filters, or other suitable means, the perfect purity and coldness of the water.”

In collaboration with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, troughs were built for horses, cattle, and dogs. The above one is a cattle trough, and like many others that remain in London, it is planted with flowers.

I look forward to exploring more fun and unique in my neighborhood and around London.

Connecting the Past with the Modern

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 162022

December 2022

Roman Walls and the Tower of London

Some kind of fortification most likely completely surrounded the Roman city of Londinium. The portions of the wall still remaining date from between CE 190 and 225.

This section of the wall is built of rubble (mostly Kentish ragstone) bound in a hard mortar and faced on either side by roughly squared ragstone blocks. At every fifth or sixth course, the wall incorporates a horizontal band of red Roman tiles to ensure the courses remained level over long stretches of masonry.

The Roman wall survived well after the departure of the Romans in CE 410, through a long period during which the city seems to have been largely abandoned. The wall above the red Roman tiles would have been added over the years, beginning when it was repaired in the late Anglo-Saxon period. What survived became an important part of the city plan at the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066. Large parts of the wall were incorporated into the medieval defenses of the city.

Bastions were added to the wall sometime in the 4th century CE as spots for catapults or stone-throwing engines.

The 13th-century Beauchamp Tower marks the first large-scale use of brick as a building material in Britain since the 5th-century departure of the Romans.

Beauchamp (pronounced “Beecham”) Tower is a part of the inner defensive wall that once held high-ranking prisoners.

The writings and images are from prisoners from the 16th and 17th centuries, many of whom were confined for political or religious reasons.

Thomas Abel, the chaplain to Queen Katherine of Aragon, carved his name and a bell into the wall after he was imprisoned by King Henry VIII.

Lanterns in the Tower of London

When walking around the Tower of London, I noticed these beautiful lanterns. However, the gold items were not that easy to discern, so I asked a Yeomen Warder. He pointed out that they were three cannons and that the Armory football team logo derives directly from those cannons.

When told stories in places like National Parks and active World Heritage Sites, I am impressed with the vast knowledge of the guides and attendants, but I still take much of it with a grain of salt. Well…he was correct.

William I the Conquerer ordered the building of the Royal Arsenal in the 11th century. The arsenal was built in Norwich, the original home of the Arsenal Football team, to supply the Royal Armory.

The Teams first logo – 1905

Today’s logo of the Arsenal Football team

Yes, I saw the crown jewels and the ravens that are caged due to a worldwide outbreak of bird flu this year, but I thought these pieces of history to be much more fun.

Books, Books and Gas Holders

England, London, United Kingdom

Dec 082022

December 2022

This is just one small section of the books from King George III’s library. The display dominates the British Library and is just one of many reasons to visit the library. They have rotating exhibitions and a permanent area filled with treasures from the British Library, ranging from the Magna Carta to handwritten lyrics by the Beatles, all worth the time and effort to view.

George III reigned from 1760 to 1820. He was king at the time of the American Revolution. His library contains books printed mainly in Britain, Europe, and North America from the mid-15th to the early 19th centuries. It consists of 65,000 volumes of printed books and 19,000 pamphlets (as well as manuscripts and bound volumes of maps and topographical views).

The King’s Library has had various homes during its existence. Its penultimate move was in 1828 when it was moved to the King’s Library Gallery in the British Museum, where it remained for 170 years. During WWII, on September 23, 1940, a bomb destroyed over 400 volumes. In 1998 the collection was transferred to the British Library.

Words on the Water

This fabulous bookstore on an old Dutch barge can be found on Regent’s Canal near Granary Square. Open for at least ten years; it is the brainchild of Paddy Screech, Jonathan Privett, and Stephane Chaudat. Apparently, due to barge rules, it once had to be on the move constantly, but now it is permanently moored in a great location.

Words on the Water are just below a project I had come to see. Gas tanks, or gas holders, as they call them in England, harken back to the Victorian times, when every town had one for storing gas that was made from coal. After the 1960s, they were used for natural gas.

I first read about the potential to repurpose these tanks in an architectural magazine years ago. These two are part of Gasholder Park, designed by Bell Phillips Architects.

These particular holders were built in the 1850s as part of Pancras Gasworks. The gasholders remained in use until the late 20th Century and were finally decommissioned in 2000.

The victorian elements can still be seen.

They were dismantled and shipped piece by piece to Shepley Engineers in Yorkshire for the project. It took two years to restore, and when finished, they were rebuilt on the banks of the canal.

I love finding buildings I have studied from afar, especially when they are near bookstores.

A Day in Cambridge

Cambridge

Nov 022022

As a tourist, I must admit I prefer Cambridge over Oxford. Very simply because its entire downtown is pedestrian and it is not growing upwards so it still has a very comfortable spatial feel to it.

However…bicycle usage is overwhelming, which under normal circumstances I would applaud, but I am afraid the youthful, unfettered cyclists can make being a pedestrian a bit frightening at times.

Oddities

Reality Checkpoint

This lampost is smack in the middle of Parker’s Piece. There are several theories as to how it got its name, but I am rather fond of the one that says it marks the boundary between the central university area of Cambridge (referred to as the “reality bubble”) and the “real world” of townspeople living beyond. One is warned to check one’s notions of reality before passing.

Corpus Clark

The Corpus Clock is fairly new considering most everything else in Cambridge as it dates from 2000.

The ripple design alludes to the Big Bang, with the center considered to show the beginning of time.
The ‘grasshopper’ that sits atop is actually a ‘Chronophage,’ which means time-eater, devouring each minute as it passes with a jaw that snaps shut.
When an hour strikes, there is no chime. Instead, one hears the shaking of chains and a hammer hitting a wooden coffin which represents the passing of time which ultimately leads to death. This is reinforced by the Latin inscription which sits underneath the clock – ‘Mundus transit et concupiscentia eius,’ meaning ‘the world and its desires pass away.’

As fitting a University the creation, construction, and completion of the clock was not a simple task. Here is the story according to Oxford Summer Courses:

In theory, it goes all the way back to 1725 when Englishman John Harrison invents the grasshopper escapement – a mechanical cog-like device that helps to regulate a clock’s pendulum movement and reduce incorrect time readings.

In 1999, John C Taylor, one of Cambridge’s horologist alumni and inventor of the kettle returned to the city for the first time after having graduated in 1956. Having seen that his college – Corpus Christi – hadn’t changed in the 40 years since he was there, he offered the college the funds to transform the (once before) bank into a brand new library. To mark the occasion, Taylor also decided to add the iconic Corpus Chronophage which would occupy the old bank’s front door.

2001 – 2008: Working closely with local engineers, Huxley Bertram, Taylor, and the team worked on the construction of this impressive clock over seven years.

On his website, John C Taylor details his initial ideas for the clock:

‘I was inspired to create the Chronophage because of modern art. I’ve never been a fan of it, so I wanted to create something that was modern art but had a bit more to it. I wanted to find a new way of telling time.

My idea with the Chronophage was to turn the clock inside out, and then make the tiny little escapement and the grasshopper into the biggest gear on the clock. I wanted impact so I made it one and a half meters in diameter, with the grasshopper a meter long on the top and its legs were the pallets of the escapement which John Harrison designed. This means you can actually see the grasshopper escapement working.

The Teleport-o-matic

Hidden amongst some old-fashioned British Telephone Boxes is the Teleport-o-matic. There are actually many of these around town. These whimsical portals are by Dinky Doors and according to their website, Dinky Doors are miniature sculptures (with doors), lovingly made and hidden just out of plain sight in the beautiful city of Cambridge. They’re petite portals into other worlds, made with a dollop of humor to spark imaginations and make people smile. They have a website where you can upload a map of them for a small fee. If I only had more time.

Where you can find the Teleport-o-matic

Another Dinky Door I spotted.

Stage 3 was from Cambridge to London

Honors

Snowy Farr Sculpture

Just across the square is this unique piece of art. It is an homage to a gentleman named Walter “Snowy” Farr. Farr raised thousands of British Pounds for The Guide Dogs of the Blind. He was usually seen in eccentric clothing, often incorporating antique military wear, and accompanied by tame animals, including mice, cats, dogs, and even a goat.

After his death in 1977, the Cambridge City Council hired sculptor Gary Webb to create this sculpture honoring Farr.

Honors at Kings College

Xu Zhimo Memorial

This stone sits on the Kings College Campus. Xu attended King’s College in 1922, where he fell in love with Romantic poetry and literature. Upon his return to China in 1923, he founded the Crescent Moon Society, after a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, and taught English at Peking University. He is considered one of the most important figures of modern Chinese poetry. Xu returned to Kings College in 1928 and wrote a poem titled On Leaving Cambridge, of which the first and last lines appear on the stone. Xu died in a plane crash in 1931.

Isaac Newton’s Apple Tree

In 1948, Queens’ College was presented with a special apple tree, as recorded in The Dial: W. S. Rogers (Matric. 1922) has presented to the College an apple tree descended by grafting from the tree under which Newton is reputed to have made his discovery.

This tree is a grafted descendant of the original one at the home of Sir Isaac Newton’s mother in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. On a visit to his mother’s garden during his Cambridge days in the late 1660s, he observed a green apple fall from a tree and only then began to consider the mechanism that drove what is now termed Gravity.

Isaac Newton would spend the majority of his life and all his academic life at Trinity College. He spent the years 1661 to 1696, at the college, first as an undergraduate and then as a Fellow from 1667.

Having written that, it boggles the mind. That is well over 350 years ago.

The Colleges of Cambridge

Kings College

Kings College Chapel

It is difficult to grasp the scale of Kings College, the chapel, as you see here is 289 feet long and 40 feet wide with an interior height of 80 feet and yet it is in keeping with the size of the other buildings in the school.

The first stone of the Chapel was laid, by Henry VI, on the Feast of St James the Apostle, July 25th, 1446, the College having been opened in 1441. By the end of the reign of Richard III (1485), despite the Wars of the Roses, five bays had been completed and a timber roof erected. Henry VII visited in 1506, paying for the work to resume and even leaving money so that the work could continue after his death. In 1515, under Henry VIII, the building was complete, however, it would take another 30 years to install the 26 sets of stained glass windows.

The ceiling of Kings College Chapel

Fan vault ceilings are always where my eyes go first when entering any building that is graced with one. This fan vault ceiling just made me gape with awe. It is the world’s largest fan vault, constructed between 1512 and 1515 by master mason John Wastell.

Front Door of the Chapel

This is where an Anglo gets frustrated with the royalty, that is not a judgment, just a statement that I have no understanding of the history of the UK and its royalty. There is so much symbolism in the work above the entry arch. The heraldic carvings are the armorial devices of the House of Tudor. The Greyhound is an emblem of Lady Margaret Beaufort. The Tudor rose, incorporating the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York symbolizes Tudor’s links with both Royal Houses. The Coat of Arms is the Royal Arms of England and the Dragon of Cadwallader (Wales) represents the Tudor family of Henry IV’s father.

The intricate carvings on the end of the Ante-Chapel

Carving on the interior of the Ante-Chapel

A small carving on the railings of the Choir. You will see carvings like this in most choirs of older churches and they are always a treat to find and enjoy

Queens College

Queens College Cloister Court

This series of buildings was built in 1460 and are now the oldest surviving buildings on the Banks of the River Cairn. The Cloisters were built in the 1590s.

Queens College Chapel

The Chapel was designed by George F. Bodly and was consecrated in 1891. The design follows those of other College chapels with an aisleless nave and a row of pews on either side.

Queens Chapel – The Dial

There are pages and pages and pages written about this clock and sundial, but the truth is no one really knows who designed it or when.

The gardens at Queens College were just spectacular despite it being the heart of the fall.

Other buildings around the cloister at Queens College

The misnamed Mathematicians Bridge

Part of Queens College and probably one of the most photographed bridges in Cambridge is this wooden bridge. The original bridge was constructed in oak in 1749 by William Etheredge. This existing bridge is made of teak and was completed in 1905. It was not designed by Newton and has always had screws or bolts at the main joints.

Other Colleges

Many of the colleges are not open to the public, but one can admire their entrances from afar.

St John’s College

The main gate or gatehouse of St John’s College is crenelated and adorned with the arms of the foundress Lady Margaret Beaufort. Above these are displayed her ensigns, the Red Rose of Lancaster and Portcullis. The college arms are flanked by creatures known as yales, mythical beasts with elephant’s tails, antelope’s bodies, goat’s heads, and swiveling horns. Above these amazing beasts is a tabernacle containing a socle figure of St John the Evangelist, an Eagle at his feet, and a symbolic, poisoned chalice in his hands.

Westminster College

Other Structures around Cambridge

The Round Church or Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built around 1130, with its shape being inspired by the rotunda in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It has seen many alterations.

This building was originally the Addenbrooke’s Hospital. There are several Georgian buildings behind this façade, designed by Mathew Digby Wyatt in 1866. I just really liked the round windows.

The Fitzwilliam Museum

This neo-classical designed building was by George Basevi (1794–1845) and completed by Charles Robert Cockerell (1788–1863) after Basevi’s death in October 1845 houses the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Above the door of a stately Georgian building, opened in November 1934, and designed by Sir Herbert Baker, R. A. sits this lovely bust of Scott.

SPRI was founded by Frank Debenham in 1920 as the national memorial to Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions, who died on their return journey from the South Pole in 1912.

In front of the institute is a life-size bronze British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Husky to pay tribute to these hard-working dogs.

Standing on the Garret Hostel Bridge looking towards Kings College Bridge that crosses the River Cam

The current stone structure of the Kings College Bridge was designed by famous British architect William Wilkins in 1818 and it was constructed by Francis Braidwood in 1819.

Looking at the Garret Hostel Bridge from afar

The Kings Cross Bridge is the only real way to see the Garret Hostel Bridge, but that part of the campus is closed to visitors. This was taken from The Backs. The bridge was designed by Timothy Guy Morgan, who at the time was an undergraduate student at Jesus College, after an open competition. Morgan died in 1960 before the bridge was completed. It was one of the first post-tensioned concrete bridges in the UK.

By evening, I was exhausted, my back was killing me from carrying around a 7-pound camera, and then I found this, just exactly the thing that gets me excited.

Hobson’s Conduit

In the late 1500s, Cambridge was affected by the plague and other diseases. As in so much of the world, the diseases of that time were thought to be caused by ‘bad air’ resulting from the sewage-contaminated water in the river and local ditches.

For this reason, between 1610 and 1614, a watercourse was built by Thomas Hobson to bring fresh water into the city from springs at Nine Wells, a local nature reserve.

This hexagonal monument to Hobson, which once formed part of a market square fountain, was moved to this location in 1856, after a fire in the Market.

Cemetery

You didn’t honestly think I would leave Cambridge without a stop at a cemetery did you? Ascension Parish Burial Ground is considered the “brainiest cemetery in the UK”, as it contains the remains of astronomers, biologists, engineers, poets, and philosopher, including three Nobel Prize winners.

Ascension Parish Burial Ground was established in 1857, although the first burial was not until 1869. It covers one and a half acres and contains 1,500 graves with 2,500 burials. It was closed to new burials in 2020.

The grave of 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Patti Smith took a Polaroid photo of his grave, which formed part of her “Land 250” exhibition in 2008.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sir John Cockcroft, who split the atom in 1932.

Poet Frances Cornford (the granddaughter of Charles Darwin)

I took a cab ride out to the cemetery and a cab ride back to my hotel. Neither cab driver had heard of the place, it is in need of love, but really worth taking the time to find.

There is so much to see and do in Cambridge, but I only had one day. I must return.

Walking Oxford, England – Random Architecture

Oxford

Oct 192022

October 17, 2022

The buildings of Oxford are well known if one watches British television, in particular Inspector Morse. It isn’t quite like on television because when you wander town there are actual people populating every square inch of the town, but the sense of history and the magnificent architecture isn’t lost on anyone despite, cars, pedestrians, and bicycles everywhere.

I only have 2 days to really spend in Oxford so on day one I decided to walk and walk and walk. In this post, I am going to focus on architecture. The buildings are highly random, I went into some, and others I just found worthy of a photograph.

The Randolph Hotel

I am staying at the Randolph so let me begin there. It too featured in several Inspector Morse shows, and there are several photos of John Thaw in the bar.

Construction of the Randolph Hotel began in 1864. The architect was William Wilkinson. There was debate about the building’s design. John Ruskin favored Gothic revival (why he got any say in the design, I am not sure) but the City Council wanted a classical style since the rest of Beaumont Street was early 19th century Regency. Compromise gave them a simplified Gothic façade, similar to the Oxford University Museum and the Oxford Union buildings, but in brick. The hotel was named after Lord Randolph Churchill. The hotel has been modified many times and after a fire in 2015, it underwent a major renovation.

Across the street from The Randolph is The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology Britain’s first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. The present building was built between 1841 and 1845 and is a work of art.

The Divinity School is a medieval building and room in the Perpendicular style built between 1427 and 1483. It too has undergone several changes, in particular after the Reformation. This is just some of the exquisite detail.

A gentleman touching up signs at the Bodleian Library complex

The Divinity School leads to the Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, however, no pictures are allowed.

The Radcliff Library

The Radcliffe Camera is an iconic Oxford landmark and a working library, part of the central Bodleian Library complex. It is linked to the Bodleian Old Library by the underground Gladstone Link. The exterior was completed in 1747 and the interior was finished by 1748, although it did not open until 1749. It is named after John Radcliff who left 40,000 BP for the library.

The Sheldonian Theater

The Sheldonian Theatre was built from 1664 to 1669 after a design by Christopher Wren. The interior has an exquisite ceiling, which is difficult to capture.

The painted ceiling of the Sheldonian Theater

Painted by Robert Streater between 1668 and 1669 the ceiling is meant to represent Truth descending upon the Arts and Sciences to expel ignorance from the University.

The Emperors of the Sheldonian

There are magnificent carved figures surrounding the theater known as the Emperor Heads. First commissioned by Sir Christopher Wren in the 1660s, the current set, are from the 1970s, and is the third set. Apparently, the University has only found 23 of the original 45. It is believed the original 17th Century heads were given away to Oxford associates.

A view from the cupola of the Sheldonian

Standing atop the Sheldonian one can get a sense of what Oxford felt like in earlier centuries. In contrast, when climbing the Saxon Tower of Saint Michael this is the view.

Standing on the top of the Saxon Tower of Saint Michael

Saxon Tower of Saint Michael

28 Cornmarket Street was originally three separate shops, and probably dates from the fifteenth century and altered in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. It belongs to Jesus College and has always been in the parish of St Michael-at-the-Northgate Church.

The Corn Exchange

The corn exchange was built in 1894-5. Corn exchanges in England are distinct buildings that were originally created as a venue for corn merchants to meet and arrange pricing with farmers for the sale of wheat, barley, and other corn crops. The word “corn” in British English refers to all cereal grains.

The exterior of Frideswide Church, the patron saint of Oxford

The Jackson Building is part of Trinity College

The Danby Gate

The Danby Gate at the front entrance to the Botanic Garden is one of three entrances designed by Nicholas Stone between 1632 and 1633.

Morris Garage

Since my first car was an MG I had to go find this building. In 1902 William Morris (later Lord Nuffield) took over old abandoned livery stables and in 1909–10 demolished them and replaced them with the Morris Garage, designed by Tollit & Lee. In 1977 the whole building was threatened with demolition, but the frontage, side elevation, and roof structure were retained and in 1980 it was developed as student housing for New College by John Fryman of the Oxford Architects Partnership.

That is just a very very small cross-section of the myriad types of architecture that abounds in Oxford.

Walking Oxford, England The Odd and Fun

Oxford

Oct 192022

October 17, 2022

I walked all day on the 17th and decided to break this into two posts, one architecture and the other all the other fun stuff I saw. Here goes with the Odd and Fun.

Jane Burden was a major figure in the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite art movement. She was the favorite model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the leading artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

She became Mrs. William Morris, the one and the same famous textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, and printer associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement.

However, Jane Burden’s beginnings were rather humble, I had to really work to find this alley where she was born, but it was a wonderful little find.

The alleyway where Jane Burden was born

Homage to two very storied Kings

I tripped over this sign, somewhat buried in a hedge down the street from the hotel at 24 Beaumont.

St Giles Cemetery – I tried to find some history and the City Council simply has it listed as “disused”.

The Oxford Canal is a 78-mile narrowboat canal. Completed in 1790, it connects to the River Thames at Oxford and goes to the Grand Union Canal.

I walked for miles along the canal system finding all sorts of interesting little places.

Osney Stream

The old Rewley Road Swing Bridge with the newer Sheepwash Channel Railway Bridge behind it

The bridge once crossed Sheepwash Channel. It was designed by Robert Stephenson and built in 1850–1. It was reconstructed in 1890 and 1906, using steel girders. The rail line that crossed the Rewley Road swing bridge, carried passengers from Oxford to as far as Cambridge. It was closed to passenger traffic in 1951 and to freight in 1984. The bridge is presently under reconstruction once again.

An old gate along the canals running along a very modern housing development

Wildlife along the canals

There is wonderful ornamentation all over Oxford, this guy made me giggle

Lead drain pipes held against the wall with stunning fasteners

Wandering the back streets

The bridge is popularly known as the Bridge Of Sighs but is officially called Hertford Bridge. It was completed in 1914 and designed by Sir Thomas Jackson.

More wonderful ornamentation

Martyrs Mark

Broad Street is undergoing some road construction so I had to shoot this through a fence, but bless the construction workers for leaving the mark exposed. In the middle of the 16th century, during the reign of Queen Mary I (also known as “Bloody Mary” due to her brutal religious persecution), three Protestant clergymen were charged with heresy and executed on this spot marked with a brick cross. It is said that the nursery rhyme, Three Blind Mice is an allegory for the trio of clergymen’s demise.

On the east façade of Saint Martin’s Tower, there is a clock adorned by two “quarter boys” who hit the bells to mark the passing of every “quarter” of the hour.

Deadman’s Walk

As the sun was trying to set and the Meadow Christ Church was closing I made it to Deadman’s Walk. The walkway is thought to be the route of medieval Jewish funeral processions. A procession would begin at the synagogue (near where Tom Tower now stands) and proceeded towards the Jewish burial ground (now the site of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden).

This stone slab in the Botanical Garden reads:

Beneath this garden lies a medieval cemetery.

Around 1190 the Jews of Oxford purchased a water meadow outside the city walls to establish a burial ground. In 1231 that land, now occupied by Magdalen College, was appropriated by the Hospital of St John, and a small section of wasteland, where this memorial lies, was given to the Jews for a new cemetery.

An ancient footpath linked this cemetery with the medieval Jewish quarter along Great Jewry Street, now St Aldates. For over 800 years this path has been called ‘Deadman’s Walk,’ a name that bears silent witness to a community that contributed to the growth of this City and early University throughout the 12th and 13th centuries.

In 1290 all the Jews were expelled from England by King Edward I. They were not permitted to return for over 350 years.

May their memory be blessed

For me, it was really just a lovely stroll on a stunning fall evening.

Colleges of Oxford

Oxford, United Kingdom

Oct 192022

October 18, 2022

The University of Oxford has thirty-nine colleges and six permanent private religious halls. These institutions are autonomous self-governing corporations within the university. The colleges are not only student residences but have the responsibility of teaching undergraduate students. Most colleges take both graduates and undergraduates, but several are for graduates only.

Behind the walls is where you will find the peace and quiet of Oxford.

Magdalen College

You do not just walk into the colleges, most are private and do not allow visitors, and those that do, require a fee. I chose to visit Magdalen because I had read about the gardens. The college was founded in 1458 with a large endowment, a substantial library, and some very impressive buildings. Sadly I am here in the fall and while lovely, the gardens are probably better appreciated in the Spring.

The central quad of Magdalen College

Christ Church

Christ Church is one of the largest and wealthiest of all the colleges of Oxford. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is a joint foundation of the university and the cathedral of the Oxford diocese.

Tom Tower was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It looms over Tom Quad the largest quadrangle in Oxford.

The Dining Hall most famous as the inspiration for Harry Potter has a far richer history that its movie fame. The Great Dining Hall was the seat of the parliament assembled by King Charles I during the English Civil War.

Christ Church Cathedral

The cathedral was originally the church of St Frideswide’s Priory, the patron saint of Oxford.

In 1522, the priory was surrendered to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who had selected it as the site for his proposed college. However, in 1529 the foundation was taken over by Henry VIII. Work stopped, but in June 1532 the college was refounded by the King. In 1546, Henry VIII transferred to it the recently created See of Oxford from Osney. The cathedral’s official name is Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxoniensis, given to it by Henry VIII’s foundation charter.

Christ Church Cathedral is one of the smallest cathedrals in the Church of England. The tour of the Cathedral itself takes half an hour there is so much history as to be overwhelming, but it is a stunning building.

The Meadows Building (1862-6) serves as the public entrance for paying visitors to Christ Church and is where my friend Susan stays when she attends Oxford

Skulls found on the River Magdalen that runs around Christ Church

The exterior gardens of Christ Church are absolutely beautiful.

Alice in Wonderland and Christ Church

Alice was the daughter of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, where Charles Dodgson (Lewis Caroll) lectured in mathematics. Alice was three when her father became Dean. Alice and her sisters were playing in the deanery garden when Dodgson went to photograph it, and that is how they met.

In 1862, Dodgson (Carroll), his friend Duckworth and the three Liddell sisters, including Alice, rowed up the River Isis to the town of Godstow. On the boat trip, Carroll began spinning the story of a bored girl named Alice looking for adventure. Everyone loved his stories and they asked him to write “Alice’s Adventures.” Two years after their boat trip, Carroll penned Alice’s Adventures Underground and in 1865 the story was published.

Those on the boating trip, Canon Robinson Duckworth and Alice’s sisters, Lorina and Edith, appear in the book as the Duck, the Lory—a sort of parrot—and the Eaglet respectively.

You can find “Alice’s Shop” directly across from the entry to Christ Church College

Bath, England

Bath, United Kingdom

Oct 162022

October 15, 2023

There is a legend that Bath was founded in 860 BCE when Prince Bladud, the father of King Lear, caught leprosy. He was banned from the court and was forced to look after pigs in a faraway location. The pigs caught the skin disease from him, but when they went rooting for acorns they crossed an area where they wallowed in hot mud, and over time they were cured. Prince Bladud followed and began doing the same, eventually he was also cured. Later he became king and founded the city of Bath.

The acorns are represented atop this John Wood designed building. This is a small section of buildings found on The Circus built in 1754-60.

The Romans

Around 70 ACE the Romans found themselves in Bath as part of their expansion and found the hot water and mud that Prince Bladud enjoyed a wonderful place to indulge their senses. With hundreds of single Roman soldiers with nothing to do, the baths were constructed as a grand bathing and socializing complex. The Roman Baths are one of the best-preserved Roman remains in the world, where 310,000 gallons of steaming spring water, reaching 114 degrees Fahrenheit still fills the bathing site every single day.

Looking down onto the baths from a terrace built in the 1700s

The Spring Overflow where the surplus water from the spring pours into a Roman drain and flows on to the river.

The Roman Drain

After the Romans

In the 18th century, Bath became a much more genteel and fashionable place and grew in size.

At this time Architect John Wood the Elder 1704-1754 had a large influence on the feel of the city. He designed and built Queen Square in 1728-1739. His son John Wood the Younger was born in 1727 and built Royal Crescent in 1767-1774 and the Assembly Rooms in 1769-71. The Octagon was built in 1767 and Margaret Chapel was built in 1773.

The Royal Crescent in Bath, England

No. 1 Royal Crescent was built between 1767 and 1772 and was the first house to be completed in the Royal Crescent. The façade of the iconic Royal Crescent as mentioned was designed by Bath architects John Wood the Elder and John Wood the Younger. However, the interiors and the rear facades could be designed however the owner pleased.

The 500-foot-long crescent has 114 Ionic columns on the first floor with an entablature in a Palladian style above. It was the first crescent of terraced houses to be built and an example of “rus in urbe” (the country in the city) with its views over the opposite park.

Of the crescent’s 30 townhouses, 10 are still full-size townhouses; 18 have been split into flats of various sizes. No. 1 Royal Crescent is now a museum and the large central house at number 16 is The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa.

Looking down into the garden of the Royal Crescent Hotel from my 2nd-floor room

An example of the various facades in the back of the building

Wandering Bath

The River Avon Bristol

The word Avon simply means river in the language of the pre-Romans. The UK ended up with eight river Avons (or river rivers), thus this is the River Avon Bristol.

Buildings over the River Avon Bristol sit on the Pulteney Bridge which was completed in 1774. Designed by Robert Adam they were to resemble the Ponte Vecchio. Built for William Pulteney the first Earl of Bath, and the man who owned the land.

The 1603 map of Bath by Savile shows a weir on the River Avon. The purpose of the weir was to provide a difference in river level that would drive the water wheels used to power the mills. For centuries Bath had suffered from the River Avon flooding – even the Romans had to raise the level of some of their baths complex to alleviate the problem.mIn the early 1970s the weir was rebuilt in its current ‘V’ shape with an associated flood control gate (sluice) on the east side of the river

Pulteney Weir

Bath Abbey

This is the third church to sit at this location. Robert and William Vertue, the king’s masons were commissioned for the job, promising to build the finest vault in England, saying “there shall be none so goodely neither in England nor France”. Their design incorporated the surviving Norman crossing wall and arches. It is thought construction began around 1500.

Angels ascending and descending Jacob’s ladder

A story goes, (that has been disputed) that Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells (1495–1503) wanted a new church and he had a dream in which he “saw the Heavenly Host on high with angels ascending and descending by ladder”. I found the angels to be such a delightful oddity for the front of a church.

The interior fan vaulting ceiling, originally installed by Robert and William Vertue, was restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott between 1864 and 1874. The fan vaulting runs the entire length of the church.

The walls and floor of the church are just riddled with war memorials for the local population and monuments to several notable people. This was one of my favorites. The top half is dedicated to Robert Walsh who died September 12, 1788, at the age of 66. It is the bottom half that is so interesting and it reads: By the death of this gentleman, an ancient and respectable family in Ireland has become extinct.

Outside of Bath

Avebury

Due to time constraints, I had to make choices, and I decided to skip Stonehenge and head to Avebury.

Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles with the largest megalithic stone circle in the world.

Constructed over several hundred years in the third millennium BCE, during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the center of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown.

West Kennet Long Barrow

The West Kennet Long Barrow was probably constructed in the thirty-seventh century BCE, during Britain’s Early Neolithic period. Built out of the soil, local sarsen megaliths, and oolitic limestone imported from the Cotswolds, the long barrow consists of a sub-rectangular earthen room enclosed by kerb stones. The precise date of construction is not known. Human bones were placed within the chamber, probably between 3670 and 3635 BCE.

Standing atop the West Kennet Long Barrow gives one a good sense of its size.

Silbury Hill as seen from West Kennet Long Barrow

Silbury hill stands 129 feet high and is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world. The first clear evidence of construction dates to around 2400 BCE. Its purpose is unknown. Few prehistoric artifacts have been found on the hill and at its core, there is only clay, flints, turf, moss, topsoil, gravel, freshwater shells, mistletoe, oak, hazel, sarsen stones, ox bones, and antler tines.

Hackpen White Horse

There are 16 or 17 white horses made of chalk dotting England. Some are ancient, the one in Westbury, Wiltshire, was cut to commemorate King Alfred’s victory at the Battle of Ethandun in 878. The Hackpen Horse was cut to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. Although little is known about the origins of the horse it is believed to have been cut by Henry Eatwell, parish clerk of Broad Hinton, and also the local publican.

Tomorrow – Oxford.