John Vanbrugh has already lived an eventful life by 1693 – he’d already travelled to India (as a factor or trading agent for the East India Company), joined English Army, having received a commission in the Earl of Huntingdon’s Regiment, travelled to Holland where he was among those advocating for William of Orange to invade England and been imprisoned for four years after being arrested in France as a spy (he even spent time in the Bastille before he was released as part of a prisoner exchange in late 1692).Whew!
But it’s his return to London in 1693 – at age 29 – that we’re interested in here. Because that was when, already moving within a prominent group of Whig politicians, that he became a member of the famous Kit-Cat Club.
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American-born George Peabody, widely considered the “father of modern philanthropy”, spent the last almost 30 years of his life in London where he financed the building of thousands of homes for the poor.
Peabody was one of seven children born into a poor family in Danvers, Massachusetts, on 18th February, 1795, and only attended school for part of his childhood before leaving at age 11 to take up an apprenticeship with the owner of the local general store. His father died when he was 14 and Peabody started work in his brother’s shop to help support the family.
A statue of George Peabody outside the Royal Exchange. PICTURE: Ethan Doyle White/Wikipedia (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
In 1816, he moved to Baltimore and established himself as a businessman importing dry goods from the UK with a reputation for working long hours. His work had taken him to London on numerous occasions and in 1837, he moved to London where he undertook work as a financier.
While he had something of a rocky start in the city – having marketed securities for US states, he suffered considerable reputational damage when they defaulted on their debt, he would become one of the City’s most successful investment bankers (he founded George Peabody & Co in 1851, taking on Junius Spencer Morgan as a partner in 1854 and following his retirement in 1864, it later became the global financial services firm JP Morgan & Co).
Interestingly, as well as honouring visiting American diplomats with banquets, he also had a key role in the United States’ contribution to the Great Exhibition of 1851 when, with no support from US Congress, he paid for exhibits to be shipped and displayed on the site in Hyde Park.
But it’s in the field of philanthropy, his ventures spurred on by his own childhood experiences, that he’s often remembered for today. This spanned both the US – where he founded the Peabody Education Fund to help destitute children living in the South and funded numerous cultural and educational institutions – and the UK where in London he founded the Peabody Donation Fund, now known as the Peabody Trust, to provide decent housing for the “laboring poor” of the city.
The trust’s first dwellings opened in Commercial Street in Spitalfields in February, 1864, and thousands more were to follow. In total, Peabody donated some £500,000 to build affordable housing (today’s Peabody Group said that equates to about £33 million in today’s money) and as much as half of his total fortune – some $US8 million – to charitable causes.
Peabody never married though he was at one stage briefly engaged. He died in London on 4th November, 1869, at the age of 74 at the house of his friend Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson at 80 Eaton Square. He was initially buried in Westminster Abbey before his remains were shipped back to Massachusetts on the Royal Navy ship HMS Monarch with an escort provided by the US ship USS Plymouth. There, he was reburied in the place of his birth the following February.
Peabody is widely seen as one of the early models for the millionaire philanthropists of today. Thanks to his philanthropic efforts, he was the first American to be made a Freeman of the City of London and was awarded a Congressional Gold medal (he was even offered the title of baron by Queen Victoria which he turned down).
A statue commemorates Peabody outside the Royal Exchange in the City. Sculpted by William Wetmore Story, it was unveiled while he was still alive by the Prince of Wales in July, 1869 (Peabody was unfortunately too unwell to attend). There is a replica of the statue in Baltimore and his birthplace, South Danvers, has been renamed Peabody in his honour. Numerous institutions and schools in the US are named in his honour.
A Blue Plaque commemorating Peabody can also be seen on the property at 80 Eaton Square.
• The role science played in shaping America is explored in a new exhibition at the Science Museum. Opening tomorrow, Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and features at its heart a rare surviving copy of the Declaration as well as items used by King George III and George Washington and a pioneering map made by Benjamin Franklin which charts the Gulf Stream. Others among the 100 items on display in this free exhibition include a 10 foot long traditional Indigenous dugout canoe, the painting The Exhumation of the Mastadon which became a symbol of national pride for the US, and a surveyor’s compass believed to have been used to define the Mason-Dixon Line. The ticketed event runs until 25th April next year. For more, see https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/becoming-america.
General view of the cloak and crown ensemble worn on the Magic Tour, 1986, featured in ‘Splendid Things’. PICTURE. David Parry/Assignments/the Press Association
• Eight looks worn by iconic performer and songwriter Freddie Mercury go on display at the V&A this Saturday. Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things marks the 80th anniversary of the late singer’s birth and has been developed with Mary Austin, Freddie’s former fiancée and confidante. The looks span the 1970s and 1980s and include a monochrome ensemble Freddie wore at an early Queen gig at Imperial college which later featured on the cover of Queen’s debut album in 1973, the ‘Mercury Wing’ catsuit designed by Wendy de Smet that was worn on stage for Night At the Opera tour in 1975- 1976 (and seen in Bohemian Rhapsody video), and Mercury’s signature crown and cloak designed by Diana Moseley and worn on the Magic Tour including for his last stage appearance with Queen at Knebworth, 1986. The free display runs until 17th January. For more, see https://www.vam.ac.uk.
• Diwali returns to Trafalgar Square this Sunday. Diwali On The Square is a free, family-friendly event which runs from 1pm to 7pm and features music, dance and performances celebrating the cultural heritage of London’s Hindu, Sikh and Jain communities as well as arts, crafts, storytelling, yoga and meditation, dance workshops and food stalls. Families can enjoy StoryHour UK’s Ramayana Puppet Show, which brings the Diwali story to life with handcrafted puppets, music and narration. For more, see https://www.london.gov.uk/events/diwali-square-2026
• More than 20 tapestries created with world-leading artists including David Hockney, Yinka Shonibare, Tania Kovats, Alberta Whittle, and Rachel Maclean go on show at the Guildhall Art Gallery tomorrow. Beyond Bayeux: Tapestry Now, which complements the display of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, represents a unique collaboration between the gallery and Dovecot Studios and features two major new commissions by Hurvin Anderson and Farshid Moussavi. The display can be see until 21st March next year. Admission is under a pay what you can approach. For more, see www.onecitylondon.com/beyond-bayeux-tapestry-now.
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This short City of London street located near the Tower of London takes it name from its connections to Russia – but there’s a couple of possible explanations related to this.
Looking down Muscovy Street from the eastern end. PICTURE: Courtesy of Google Maps
Firstly, though, we should note that the street – which runs from Trinity Square to Seething Lane (Seething Lane Gardens sits on the north-west corner of the junction) – only dates from 1912 when the area was redeveloped.
PICTURE: Courtesy of Google Maps
So, to the theories. One concerns Peter the Great, who came to stay in Deptford in 1698 to study naval architecture as part of his ‘Grand Embassy’ tour of Western Europe.
A tavern located nearby in Great Tower Street apparently attracted his patronage and as a result subsequently changed its name to the ‘Tsar of Muscovy’ in his honour. The street was then named after the tavern.
The second theory is that the street takes its name from the Muscovy Company which was founded in 1555 and headquartered close by, near the top of Seething Lane (we’ll deal more with the company’s history in a later post).
Long used as an instrument of punishment for those found guilty of offences in London, the last person to spend time standing in the pillory in London (and indeed England) – at the Old Bailey – was Peter James Bossy.
The Old Bailey as it it today. PICTURE: Donnchadh H/Flickr (licensed under CC BY 2.0)
The pillory consisted of a wooden device with holes through which the head and hands were placed, set upon a pole. The person being punished had to stand with their head and hands through the holes and were thus unable to defend themselves should refuse be thrown at them.
It was a very public and humiliating punishment, not to mention extremely uncomfortable, and had been used in London since medieval times.
Bossy was convicted of perjury by the London Oyer and Terminer and received a mixed sentence which an hour in the pillory at the Old Bailey followed by six months in prison at Newgate before being transported to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania in Australia) for seven years.
The pillory part of the sentence was carried out on 22nd June, 1830. After subsequently serving his sentence, Bossy travelled to Australia on board the Gilmore along with 223 other convicts, arriving in March, 1832.
Use of the pillory in England had been restricted by and 1816 Act of Parliament and was formally abolished in England and Wales in another act of 1837.
The gallery when it was used as the Osteology gallery in 1893. PICTURE: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum London
• A gallery at the Natural History Museum which has been sealed off to the public for 80 years has reopened with a new display exploring our relationship with the natural world through 50 objects. Among the objects on show in the Nature and Us exhibition are a miniature model of a Crystal Palace dinosaur; Jenny, a Victorian skeleton of a monk seal; a bryozoan-encrusted Star Wars toy from the 1980s; and a 400,000-year-old handaxe whose discovery transformed our understanding of when humans first existed. Visitors will also be able to touch a replica jaw of one of Britain’s earliest known domesticated dogs, dating to around 14,300 years ago. The gallery is open for an initial 18 months and visitors can have their say on what appears in the permanent gallery when it opens in 2029. Located on the second floor of the main Museum’s Waterhouse building, the gallery historically served as both an osteology (skeleton) gallery and a mammals gallery and, after the herbarium was damaged in World War II, was repurposed to house the botanical collection. It has been closed to the public until now. For more on the new gallery, visit www.nhm.ac.uk.
The City of London Corporation relaunches its Blue Plaques Scheme with a plaque honouring Francis Barber, the first known Black schoolteacher in British history, at Dr Johnson’s House in Fleet Street Quarter. PICTURE: Paul Grover/ Fleet Street Quarter BID
• Britain’s first Black schoolteacher, Francis Barber, has been commemorated by a Blue Plaque at the writer’s townhouse in the heart of the City of London’s Fleet Street Quarter. The plaque commemorating Dr Samuel Johnson’s former servant, friend, and heir was unveiled on Dr Johnson’s House in Gough Square as the City launches a redesigned “modern, transparent, inclusive” City of London Blue Plaques Scheme and marks 150 years since the City’s oldest Blue Plaque was unveiled honouring Dr Johnson at same historic site. Barber, a West African man born into slavery in Jamaica, came to London as a child and lived at Dr Johnson’s house from 1752 to 1756 where he worked as his servant. Dr Johnson, who compiled the Dictionary of the English Language (1755), supported him and his family throughout his life, and helped secure his financial future. Dr Johnson also named Barber as the sole heir and beneficiary of a Trust established in his will. Barber later became the first known Black schoolteacher in British history. The 17th century townhouse known as Dr Johnson’s House is now a museum and believed to be the only surviving property in the City that was home to a formerly enslaved person who later lived there as a free man. The plaque was unveiled by Alderman Tim Hailes and Michael Bundock, director of Dr Johnson’s House Trust and author of The Fortunes of Francis Barber.
• London Sculpture Week kicks off on Saturday in a citywide celebration of London’s public art. The week – which brings together sculptures in the Fourth Plinth, East Bank, Frieze Sculpture, Sculpture in the City and The Line – includes the chance to gain new insights into London’s outdoor artworks through talks, walking tours, film screenings and other activities. Highlights include the 16th Fourth Plinth commission, Lady in Blue, Frieze Sculpture’s 14th edition which features the work of 11 leading international artists sited throughout the historic English Gardens of The Regent’s Park, and a walking tour organised by East Bank featuring works commissioned for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as well as recent East Bank commissions such as Larry Achiampong and David Blandy’s Trēow of Time and Thomas J Price’s A Place Beyond. There’s also a walking tour taking in the eight works in Sculpture in the City followed by the chance to sample canapés inspired by a selection of the sculptures, and a free wellbeing walk along The Line, East London’s public art trail. For the full programme, head to https://tinyurl.com/london-sculpture-week-2026.
• The 500 year story of one of the smallest yet most revolutionary books in English history is being told at St Paul’s Cathedral. A Dangerous Calling: 500 Years of William Tyndale’s New Testament, which opens tomorrow, provides a rare chance for visitors to see a first edition of Tyndale’s translation up close in the cathedral library (one of only three in existence) as well as access to a new digitised version on the cathedral floor. The exhibition can be seen until 27th February. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.stpauls.co.uk/whats-on/exhibition-dangerous-calling-500-years-of-william-tyndales-new-testament
• Marilyn Monroe’s life, career and legacy is the subject of a new exhibition which opened at the National Portrait Gallery this week. Marking 100 years since her birth, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait features works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon. There’s also unseen photographs portraits taken by Allan Grant at Monroe’s Brentwood residence a day before her death in August, 1962, in a session for Life magazine. The display can be seen until 6th September. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2026/marilyn-monroe-a-portrait
• The Great Exhibition Road Festival kicks off in South Kensington this weekend, marking 175 years since the 1881 Great Exhibition. The event features workshops, talks, performances and installations with organisations ranging from the Natural History Museum and Science Museum taking part along with Imperial College London, the Royal Parks, the V&A and Royal Albert Hall. For more on the festival, head to https://www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk/.
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• An antique Chinese carpet which originally was part of furnishings at Eltham Palace has returned home after 80 years. The carpet, dyed in the “dynastic blue” of the Qing dynasty and featuring symbols including dragons, Buddhist emblems and masks, represents the demand for the Chinese decorative arts in the 1920s and 1930s and serves as a reminder of how Chinese art was produced, circulated, and displayed in Britain. The carpet, donated from the estate of Mrs M R Bernard – the niece of former palace owner Stephen Courtauld, has undergone extensive conservation work. It can be seen in what was Virginia Courtauld’s boudoir. Eccentric millionaires Stephen and Virginia Courtauld built a magnificent art deco mansion right next to the medieval Great Hall of Eltham Palace in 1936 but moved out in 1944 and passed the lease to the Army Educational Corps. Over the ensuing decades many of the original items in the palace were dispersed but English Heritage, which took over management of the palace in 1995, has been working to restore the interiors back to when the Courtaulds lived in them. Other original items which have returned to the palace in recent history including a gold telephone and a pair of Cartier brooches. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/eltham-palace-and-gardens/.
• The works of more than 40 artists from 25 countries across the Asia Pacific region are going on show at the V&A in South Kensington.Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific, to be held in The Porter Gallery, is being held in partnership with Australia’s Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art. Highlights include: Mchael Parekōwhat’s life-sized sculpture of a Mãori security guard, Kapa Haka (Whero) (2003); Pala Pothupitiye’s Kalutara Fort (2020-21) – a reimagined map of an historic Sri Lanka military camp; Brenda Fajardo, Elisabet Kauage, Mathias Kauage and John Siune’s There is still a war going on in Bougainville (1995) which responds to Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville conflict between 1988-98; and, a series of porcelain busts by Ah Xian. The exhibition opens on Saturday and runs until 10th January. Admission charge applies. For more, see https://www.vam.ac.uk/.
• The role broadsides played in spreading news, advice and gossip in London from the 16th century onwards is the subject of a new exhibition at the Guildhall Library.Broadsides: Speaking to the People explores the history of broadsides and how they were used to speak to the general public, high and low alike. Free to see. Runs until 29th October. For more, see www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/events/exhibition-broadsides-speaking-to-the-people.
• Ground-breaking astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin has been honoured with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at the home in Notting Hill where she lived as a teenager. The plaque at 70 Lansdowne Road marks where Payne-Gaposchkin’s journey towards expanding our understanding of space began. Payne-Gaposchkin earned a doctorate in astronomy from Harvard after moving to the US. Her groundbreaking 1925 thesis proposed that stars are composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, a discovery that fundamentally changed scientific understanding of the universe, and in 1927, she became the youngest astronomer ever to have a star of distinction next to her name in the publication American Menof Science. For more, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/.
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• The work of 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán is the subject of a new exhibition opening at the National Gallery this weekend.Zurbarán, the first major monographic exhibition on his work in the UK, features almost 50 paintings spanning the breadth of his career. They include life-size depictions of saints, altarpieces and still lifes such as Saint Bonaventure on His Bier, Saint Apollonia, The Crucifixion, The Crucified Chrisr with a Painter and Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose. Zurbarán (1598-1664) spent most of his life in Seville and, along with Diego Velázquez and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, is considered one of the leading Spanish artists of his era. Runs until 23rd August. Admission charge applies. The exhibition will travel on to the Musée du Louvre and then the Art Institute of Chicago. For more, see www.nationalgallery.org.uk.
• Rare documents related to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the US are going on display in the City of London Heritage Gallery. The display, which marks the 250th anniversary of the signing, features two letters, dated 1775, which were sent to the City of London from the General Committee of Association of the City and County of New York and the Congress in Philadelphia along with a silk bookmark commemorating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on 14th April, 1865, and the Roll of Fame recording the Honorary Freedom of the City of London opened at the entry for General Dwight D Eisenhower. Admission is free. The display, entered via the Guildhall Art Gallery, runs until 29th October. For more, see www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/events/heritage-gallery-display-america-and-london.
• The first UK exhibition showcasing the multi-faceted work of Japanese designer and creative director NIGO opens at the Design Museum tomorrow.NIGO: From Japan with Love features more than 700 objects with highlights including a recreation of NIGO’s teenage bedroom, ceramics hand-thrown by NIGO and a life-size glass tea house made especially for the exhibition. Runs until 4th October. Admission charge applies. For more, see https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/nigo-from-japan-with-love.
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It’s exact location has long been a mystery but now new research has pinpointed the exact location of William Shakespeare’s Blackfriars house.
The City of London plaque at 5 St Andrew’s Hill. PICTURE: Spudgun67 (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
The discovery, the results of which were released last week, was made by Shakespeare expert Professor Lucy Munro, of King’s College London.
Professor Munro has been able to shed new light on the location using two documents from The London Archives and one from The National Archives.
One of the documents found in The London Archives – a plan of the Blackfriars precinct drawn up in 1668 – shows exactly where the property, which Shakespeare bought on 10th March, 1613, at the age of 48, was located.
It puts it at what is now the eastern end of Ireland Yard and the bottom of Burgon Street and also covered the land now occupied by sections of 19th century buildings at 5 Burgon Street and 5 St Andrew’s Hill.
Interestingly, the property 5 St Andrew’s Hill bears a City of London blue plaque, placed there in 2013, which suggests the house was located “near this site”. The find shows it was not just near, but actually on, part of the site.
The find also confirmed that the site of the house was partly located on land which had been previously occupied by the “great gate” that led into Blackfriars monastery – long known by historians.
It is possible that Shakespeare wrote the play The Two Noble Kinsmen, which he co-authored with John Fletcher later in 1613, while living in the property.
The property, which was located near a tavern at the Sign of the Cock (the Cockpit pub is now located on the site), was left to Shakespeare’s eldest daughter Susanna and then his grand-daughter Elizabeth Hall Nash Barnard who sold it in 1665, just a year before it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Winnie-the-Pooh author AA Milne worked at Punch magazine prior to writing his famous book and it was while doing so that he started a friendship that was to prove consequential.
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Artist Thomas J Price unveiling ‘A Place Beyond’, outside of London’s V&A East Museum ahead of its opening on East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on 18th April. PICTURE: David Parry/PA Media Assigbments for the V&A
• An 18 foot tall sculpture of a young person, holding a mobile phone and looking towards a horizon “full of possibilities”, has appeared outside the V& East Museum ahead of its public opening next month.A Place Beyond, the work of artist Thomas J Price, has been created from an amalgamation of images, 3D scans and observations and has been constructed in bronze using digital technologies and ancient techniques. Also announced this month have been the artists involved with New Work, the V&A’s new six-monthly rotating creative commissions programme. The artists – who include Turner Prize-nominated artist Rene Matić, Lawrence Lek, Laura Wilson, Tania Bruguera, Es Devlin, Shahed Saleem, Justinien Tribillon and Carrie Mae Weems – have been invited to reflect on east London’s layered histories and creative futures under the theme of Making East London. The works will be displayed across V&A East’s two sites – V&A East Museum and Storehouse – from the museum’s public opening on 18th April. For more, see vam.ac.uk.
• On Now: Londoners on Trial: Crime, Courts and the Public 1244-1924. This free exhibition at The London Archives explores the history of law and order in the city and draws on documents from famous cases involving the likes of 17th century pickpocket Moll Cutpurse, highwayman Dick Turpin, Jack Sheppard, Oscar Wilde, and suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst. runs until 25th February next year. For more, head to www.thelondonarchives.org/visit-us/exhibitions/londoners-on-trial.
• The work and impact of Elsa Schiaparelli, one of the 20th century’s most innovative fashion designers is the subject of a new exhibition at the V&A. Opening on Saturday in the Sainsbury Gallery, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art follows the fashion house’s evolution from its origins through to its present day incarnation under creative director Daniel Roseberry. It features more than 200 objects including garments, accessories, jewellery, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, perfumes and archive materials. Highlights include the V&A’s Skeleton dress and the Tear dress as well as a hat shaped to look like an upside-down shoe – all of which were conceived in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. There will also be artworks by Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray on display. Runs until 1st November. Admission charge applies. For more, see vam.ac.uk.
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