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

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.

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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.

 

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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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 7th, 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.

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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

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Ten Lords a Leaping

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough AssociationThe 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.