The Queen’s House, Greenwich. PICTURE: Frank Chou/Unsplash
• Artist JMW Turner’s only royal commission has returned to public display in Greenwich to mark the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth. The more than three metre-wide painting (Turner’s largest completed work), The Battle of Trafalgar, went on display on Tuesday – 220 years to the day since the battle it depicts – at the Queen’s House. The 1824 painting, which was commissioned by King George IV, commemorates the victory of the British Royal Navy over a combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar on 21st October, 1805. First displayed at St James’s Palace, it was transferred to the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital in 1829. It was removed from public display in March last year to protect it during a works project at the National Maritime Museum and has now found a new home at the Queen’s House. Admission is free. For more, see www.rmg.co.uk/queens-house.
• The ghosts of King Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell are among those which can be encountered at Hampton Court Palace from Friday as it marks Halloween. Immersive Halloween-inspired installations with unearth the stories of some of the palace’s former residents while outside there’s a Haunted Garden complete with skeletal horse and carriage. Halloween season at the palace runs until 2nd November and is included in general admission. For more, see www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/whats-on/halloween-at-hampton-court-palace/.
• Diwali, the annual Hindu celebration, comes to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich this Saturday with the ‘Illuminate’ festival. The free festival, which runs from 11am to 5pm and is curated by Mehala Ford – founder of South Asian art collective COMMONGROUND&, includes performances, creative workshops including traditional Rangoli art and Henna art, storytelling sessions including a puppet show telling the epic story of Ramayana, and a lantern parade around Greenwich Park. There ares also talks and Diwali-inspired food. For more, see www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/diwali.
• Tickets to London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations have gone on sale. The 12 minute show celebrating the new year will kicks off with the familiar sounds of Big Ben’s chimes, before thousands of fireworks and hundreds of lights help to illuminate the night sky around the London Eye all set to a wide-ranging soundtrack. Around 100,000 Londoners and visitors are expected to attend. Ticket prices are between £20 and £35 for Londoners and £40 and £55 for visitors. For more, see www.london.gov.uk/nye.
Send all items for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com
Described as an “immersive work honouring the reciprocal relationship between the Sámi people, the reindeer, and the land”, the Goavve-Geabbil is a monumental new sculptural installation by Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara and has been made using materials which sustain her community in Sápmi, the territory of the Indigenous Sámi people which spans the countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
In this, Sara’s first major work in the UK, the artist draws on her experience as member of a reindeer herding family to highlight ecological issues impacting Sámi life and has combined hides and bones derived from traditional reindeer herding practices along with wood, industrial materials, sound and scent.
The Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara: Goavve-Geabbil can be seen in the Turbine Hall at the Bankside institution until 6th April. Admission is free. For more, see tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern.
Terroni of Clerkenwell seen in December, 2021. PICTURE: Google Maps
Terroni of Clerkenwell, which opened in 1878, is said to be London’s oldest Italian deli.
Located in the district known as Little Italy next to St Peter’s Italian Church, Terroni was opened by Luigi Terroni to supply Italians living in London with a taste of home.
The business at 138-140 Clerkenwell Road in Clerkenwell was sold to the Anessa family in 1983. It underwent renovation in the early Noughties which saw the deli double in size. A coffee bar was added in 2012.
Wim van den Heever’s winning entry, Ghost Town Visitor.
• An exhibition of entries into the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition opens tomorrow at the National History Museum in South Kensington. The exhibition features 100 images selected from a record-breaking 60,636 entries and follows from this week’s announcement of the winners at a ceremony held at the museum earlier this week. The display includes the winning image – ‘Ghost Town Visitor’ which, captured by South African wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever depicts a brown hyena near the ruins of a long-abandoned diamond mining town in Kolmanskop, Namibia – as well as the winner of the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 – 17-year-old Italian Andrea Dominizi’s After the Destruction which spotlights a longhorn beetle in the Lepini Mountains of central Italy, an area once logged for old beech trees, with a background of abandoned machinery. Other images on show include the winner of the Impact Award – Brazilian photographer, Fernando Faciole’s Orphan of the Road depicting an orphaned giant anteater pup following its caregiver after an evening feed at a rehabilitation centre – as well as category winners. The exhibition can be seen until 12th July next year. Admission charge applies. For more, head here.
• Three 20th century conflicts which broke out in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus after World War II are the subject of a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth.Emergency Exits: The Fight for Independence in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus looks at how these three conflicts, known as “emergencies” to the British Government, shaped and continues to shape Britain, its former territories and the wider world today. The display includes more than 70 objects such as propaganda posters, flags and artworks as well as oral histories and personal belongings which belonged to those impacted by them. As well as telling the stories of the three conflicts, Emergency Exits also explores Operation Legacy, the British Government’s attempt to prevent publication of sensitive documents related to the conflicts which included evidence of human rights abuses. The free exhibition, which opens on Friday, runs until 26th March. For more, see iwm.org.uk/events/emergency-exits-the-fight-for-independence-in-malaya-kenya-and-cyprus.
• The first major solo exhibition focusing on the work of pioneering Black British photographer Jennie Baptiste opens in the Terrace Rooms at Somerset House on Friday.Jennie Baptiste: Rhythm & Roots, which is a highlights of Somerset House’s 25th birthday programme, charts how Baptiste used her lens to capture youth culture, music, fashion, and urban life within the Black British diaspora in London in the past few decades. The exhibition can be entered under a “pay what you can” model. Runs until 4th January. For more, see www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/jennie-baptiste-rhythm-and-roots.
• On Now: Nigerian Modernism. The Tate Modern is hosting the first UK exhibition to trace the development of modern art in Nigeria with more than 250 works by more than 50 artists on display. The exhibition, which spans the period from the 1940s to today, features works by globally celebrated artists of the 1940s, Ben Enwonwu and Ladi Kwali, as well as works by The Zaria Arts Society members Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya, and Jimo Akolo, Nsukka Art School members including Obiora Udechukwu, Tayo Adenaike and Ndidi Dike, and concludes with a spotlight on the work of Uzo Egonu. The display can be seen until 10th May. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/nigerian-modernism.
Send all items for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.
Exploring London spoke to Dr Louise Devoy about her role at the observatory, her new book, Royal Observatory Greenwich: A History in Objects, and her “must-see” for those visiting the observatory…
Dr Louise Devoy, senior curator at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. PICTURE: Courtesy of the Royal Observatory Greenwich
How long have you worked as senior curator at the Royal Observatory Greenwich and what was your pathway into the job? “I’ve been working here for 12 years now and it’s been quite a journey! I originally studied physics with astrophysics at the University of Leicester and intended to continue with scientific research but my ideas changed after an inspirational internship working at a museum in the US. I really enjoyed learning about the history of astronomy – how our ideas have changed over time and the incredible stories of the people who were involved – and I continued my studies in the history of science. I’ve since worked at the Science Museum and British Museum and came here in 2013.”
Have you always been interested in astronomy? “Yes, I have vivid memories of building a space rocket in primary school from cereal packets and yogurt pots that quite literally fired my imagination! I’ve still got The Night Sky Ladybird book that I bought and later in my teens my parents kindly bought me a telescope so I could learn more about practical astronomy. I don’t have much time for stargazing these days but I’ve recently purchased a compact smart telescope that you can put in your hand luggage and I’m looking forward to taking it on my travels.”
What does your job at the Royal Observatory entail? “My job consists of two main parts; one based on research and one focused on communication. As a curator, I’m responsible for doing research on our collections, identifying objects for display and collaborating with researchers from other museums and observatories. Once I’ve done the detective work, I like to share these ideas and stories with our visitors through displays, talks and writing books and articles.”
What’s your favourite part of the day at the Observatory? “For me, I enjoy seeing the sunset as I’m leaving the office, especially as the lights start to come on across London and you get a great view of the city from our hilltop location. It also makes me smile that sunset means going home for me, whereas for Greenwich astronomers in the past, it would have been the start of their working ‘day’!”
What prompted the writing of the book? “It’s difficult to say but I definitely remember working on this during lockdown in 2020 and being inspired by similar books such as Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. Most books about the history of the Royal Observatory focus on the story of longitude, John Harrison’s marine timekeepers and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) but I wanted to show how the Observatory has a much broader, richer history that encompasses many more people, subjects, stories and objects.
How did you decide which objects to feature in the book? “I knew that we would be celebrating our 350th anniversary in 2025 and so I decided to choose objects that spanned the full chronology from 1675. I also wanted to expand the scope beyond the well-known clocks and telescopes to include books, paintings, manuscripts, watercolours, and even items of clothing previously worn by the Astronomer Royal and his family. In addition, I selected a few mystery objects to give me a good excuse to dig into the archives and piece together their stories.”
Do you have a favourite among them? “I really like the story of the hole punch from the 1840s because it’s indicative of the paperwork and number-crunching that is an important but often overlooked aspect of astronomy. Once astronomers have done their observations, they have to apply mathematical corrections (‘reductions’) to account for atmospheric effects that might affect the results. It’s very tedious, repetitive work that was traditionally done by teenage boys known as ‘computers’. The seventh Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) tried to make the process more efficient and less prone to errors by creating a template known as a ‘skeleton form’. The system worked well but generated vast amounts of paper, leading Airy to design a hole punch to organise the work. He was so proud of his idea that he encouraged other observatories to do the same and that’s why you’ll find another example of this hole punch over 8,000 miles away at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town. Airy invented his hole punch several decades before the standard office hole punch was patented, making our gadget one of the oldest in the world!”
What did you learn during the process of writing the book that you didn’t already know about the history of the Royal Observatory? “The story of the secret binocular testing during the First World War really surprised me. The Observatory had already been involved in testing chronometers – portable, accurate timekeepers for navigation at sea – since the 1820s but the binocular testing was a new task. For security reasons, it was not mentioned in the Observatory’s Annual Reports and remained an unknown story for decades. I was intrigued by a one-line mention to it in the archives and dug a little further to uncover the full facts.”
Subscribe for just £3 a month to see all of Exploring London’s content – including the answers to the final two questions…
This 6,000 acre woodland and pasture habitat, located on the north-eastern outskirts of London, is famous for its ancient and veteran trees – numbering almost 55,000 – but is also home to a range of wildlife.
Subscribe for £3 a month to access all of our articles (and support our work!)…
Clyde (1792-1863) was a Scottish carpenter’s son who joined the military at age 16 and fought in many campaigns during the first half of the 19th century including the Peninsular War of 1808-1814, the War of 1812 in the United States, the First Opium War in China in 1842, and in India during the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1848-49.
During the Crimean War, Clyde led the Highland Brigade at the Battle of the Alma and repulsed the Russian attack on Balaclava. He become Commander-in-Chief, India, during the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and relieved the siege of Lucknow in India the same year.
Clyde was raised to the peerage in 1858. Her died in Chatham on 14th August, 1863, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
The Lord Clyde pub sign. PICTURE: Courtesy of Google Maps
A pub was first erected on the site at 27 Clennam Street (on the corner with Ayers Street) at the time of his death in 1863 by brewers in East London (originally known as the Black Eagle Brewery, the name Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co – which appears on the pub’s exterior – was being used for the brewery by 1889).
It was rebuilt in 1913 – the present frontage dates from that period – and is now Grade II-listed thanks to its architecture, which exemplifies the development of the ‘house style’ in pub architecture of the early 20th century.
The signage on the pub depicts Lord Clyde wearing the insignia of the Knight Commander of the Bath, an honour he was awarded in 1849 for his services in the Sikh War. There is a statue of him in Waterloo Place in London.
• The UK’s largest retrospective of trail-blazing 20th century surrealist photographer Lee Miller opens at Tate Britain today. Lee Miller features around 230 vintage and modern prints, some of which are on display for the first time, which reveal how her approach pushed boundaries and led to the creation of some of the most iconic images of last century. Highlights include the newly discovered solarisation exemplar, Sirène (Nimet Eloui Bey) (c1930-32), her celebrated surrealist image of Egypt’s Siwa Oasis, Portraitof Space (1937), London-based works such as You will not lunch in Charlotte Street today (1940) and Fire Masks(1941) which convey the “pathos and absurdity” of the city in wartime, and war-related images including portraits of Miller and David E Scherman in Hitler’s private bath in April, 1945, as well as a rare 1950 self-portrait showing Miller posed in Oskar Kokoschka’s London studio flanked by artworks. Runs until 15th February. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/lee-miller
• The initial and enduring impact of the Hallelujah Chorus is the subject of a new display at the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. A Grand Chorus explores the profound impact music can have on listeners and performers and brings together musical scores, librettos, and musical instruments as well as paintings, photographs, audio, video, personal testimonies, and other archival material spanning three centuries. Originallycomposed as part of his famous Messiah oratorio, George Frideric Handel later incorporated the Hallelujah Chorus into an anthem he created speciallyfor the Foundling Hospital that premiered in 1749 as a fund-raising exercise. The exhibition also showcases a major sound and video installation byMikhail Karikis – We are Together Because (2025), described as a modern counterpart to the Hallelujah Chorus. Runs until 29th March. Admission charge applies. For more, see https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/event/a-grand-chorus-the-power-of-music/.
• Swing a conker at the Hampstead Heath Conker Championships this Sunday. People are all ages are invited to join in, whether a conker veteran or a newcomer, with competitions held in a range of age categories. The competition is being held near the Parliament Hill Bandstand from 1pm to 4pm. Entry is free. For more, see www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/events/go-conkers-on-hampstead-heath-5-october.
Send all items for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com
Famous for it’s flora, Kew Gardens is also home to some unusual animal life including Chinese water dragons who live in the warm environments of the glasshouses.
See all of our content (and support our work) for just £3 a month…
Other animals in the gardens include foxes, hedgehogs and birds including green and great-spotted woodpeckers, mute swans, Canada geese, mallards, ring-necked parakeets, kingfishers, tawny owls, moorhens, and stock doves.
And, of course, the gardens are home to a myriad of insects including bees, butterflies and dragonflies as well as aquatic life including frogs, newts and fish.
WHERE: Kew Gardens (nearest Tube station is Kew Gardens); WHEN: 10am to 7pm (last entry 6pm) daily; COST: £25 adults/£8 children 16 and under (children under four free) (cheaper tickets for online bookings and during off-peak period from 1st November to 31st January); WEBSITE: www.kew.org.
It’s official, a new Guinness World Record was set in Greenwich on the weekend when some 874 people gathered at the Old Royal Naval College on Saturday dressed as their favourite characters from the big (and little) screen. The Old Royal Naval College team partnered with Elstree Studios for the event, part of the festivities being held to mark 100 years of film and TV at the site, which featured everyone from Stormtroopers to Jack Sparrow, Batman to characters from Bridgerton and Sherlock Holmes. The record, which was verified by Guinness, is officially known as the ‘largest gathering of people dressed as screen characters’.
Frockcoat designed by Alexander McQueen and David Bowie for his 50th Birthday Concert, 1997. Image courtesy of the V&A
• David Bowie’s final, unrealised musical projects – The Spectator, an unseen Ziggy Stardust guitar, and Bowie’s costume designs are just some of the treasures housed in the new David Bowie Centre which opened to the public this month. Located at the V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the new home for David Bowie’s archive features nine displays show-casing more than 200 items which also include handwritten lyrics, photography, costumes and sketches. As well as seeing the displays, visitors can book one-on-one time with some of the 90,000-plus objects in the archive through the ‘Order an Object’ service. More than 500 items were requested in the first week of the service going live with a frockcoat designed by Alexander McQueen and David Bowie for his 50th birthday concert in 1997 the most frequently requested item. Entry to the archive is free, but ticketed. For more, including bookings, see www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/david-bowie-centre.
• The annual Chelsea History Festival kicked off yesterday with more than 80 events taking place until Sunday. Events include tours of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and the chance to visit the Soane Stable Yard, the free exhibition Lost and Found in Hong Kong: The Unsung Chinese Heroes at D-Day at the hospital, walking tours including ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Chelsea’ and ‘1960s Chelsea’, and a medicinal trees tour at the Chelsea Physic Garden. For the full programme head here.
• A major exhibition on the Blitz club – which helped shape London’s culture not only in the mid-1980s but in the decades that followed – has opened at the Design Museum in Kensington High Street. Located in a Covent Garden side street, the club is credited with having “transformed 1980s London style”, generating a creative scene that had an enormous impact on popular culture in the following decade. Blitz: The Club that Shaped the 80s features more than 250 items including clothing and accessories, design sketches, musical instruments, flyers, magazines, furniture, artworks, photography, vinyl records and rare film footage. Runs until 29th March. Admission charge applies. For more, see https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/blitz-the-club-that-shaped-the-80s.
Given our current series on London’s animal life, we thought it an opportune time to take a look at another of London’s most famous animals – in this case a hippopotamus called Obaysch.
‘The Hippopotamus at the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park, London’, c1855, by Count de Montizon (Spanish, 1822 – 1887). PICTURE: George Eastman Museum/Flickr
Obaysch had been living near (and named for) an island in the River Nile in Egypt. He was gifted by the Ottoman Viceroy, Abbas Pasha, to the British Consul General, Sir Charles Murray (who became known as “Hippopotamus Murray” due to his affection for the animal).
Transported via a steamer to Southampton, he arrived at London Zoo in Regent’s Park on 25th May, 1850.
Said to have been the first hippo to be brought to Europe since the days of the Roman Empire, Obaysch soon gained the status of a celebrity at London Zoo with Queen Victoria among the thousands who came to see him (she apparently compared his swimming technique to that of a porpoise) in a craze that became known as “hippomania”.
In 1854, Obaysch was joined by a female hippo Adhela, also known as ‘Dil’, (again as a gift of the Viceroy) who was the first living female hippo in Europe since, you guessed it, Roman times.
In 1860, Obaysch escaped from the hippo enclosure and was only lured back to his enclosure by using one of the zookeepers whom he apparently particularly disliked as bait.
The zoo hoped the pair of hippos would breed but it wasn’t until 1871 that they first became the parents of a baby who sadly, didn’t survive.
Two more babies followed and the second of these, born in November, 1872, and named Guy Fawkes despite subsequently being found to be a female, became the first captive bred hippo to be reared by its mother.
Obaysch died on 11th March, 1878 and Adhela four years later on 16th December, 1882. Guy Fawkes died in March, 1908.
• The UK’s first exhibition to focus on the French Queen, Marie Antionette, opens at the V&A on Saturday.Marie Antoinette Style explores the dress and interiors adopted by the Queen, an early modern “celebrity”, during the final decades of the 18th century. It features some 250 objects including loans from Versailles which have never before been seen outside of France. There are personal items worn by the Queen including fragments of court dress, her silk slippers and jewels from her private collection as well as items from the Queen’s dinner service at the Petit Trianon, accessories and intimate items from her toilette case and even recreated scents from the court and a perfume which was favoured by the Queen. There also contemporary couture pieces by designers such as Moschino, Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Valentino and costumes, including shoes, made for screen, such as for Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winning film Marie Antoinette. The exhibition can be seen in Galleries 38 and 39 until 22nd March. Admission charge applies. For more, see vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/marie-antoinette.
• Around 50 works by famed artist Pablo Picasso have been brought together for a new exhibition at the Tate Modern to mark the centenary of the artist’s work The Three Dancers (1925). Staged by contemporary artist Wu Tsang and write and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca, Theatre Picasso explores aspects of performance in his works and features the Tate’s entire collection of Picassos which, alongside The Three Dancers, also includes Weeping Woman (1937) and Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (1932). There are also loans from key museums in France as well as prints, drawings, sculptures, textile works and collages. These include the wool and silk tapestry Minotaur (1935) which is being displayed in the UK for the first time. Accompanying the works is Henri-George Clouzot’s 1959 film The Mystery ofPicasso. Admission charge applies. Runs until 12th April. For more, see
• A new free gallery revealing the stories behind space exploration opens at the Science Museum in South Kensington on Saturday. The gallery – Exploring Space – showcases iconic items from the history of space exploration including a chunk of Moon rock nicknamed ‘Great Scott’ which was collected in 1971, the Soyuz TMA-19M descent module that carried astronaut Tim Peake, and the Sokol KV-2 rescue suit worn by Helen Sharman in 1991. There are also new technologies from the space sector including prototype electric propulsion technology from Magdrive and the ‘rolly-polly’ LEV-2 Moon rover, the result of the first collaboration between a space agency (JAXA) and a toy company (Takara Tomy). For more, see www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/space.
British astronaut, Helen Sharman’s Sokol spacesuit made by Zvezda. Sharman wore this rescue suit during the space flight on board the SOYUZ-TM-12 and MIR spacecraft in May 1991. Space suit model number KV-2 No. 167.
• “Ahoy me hearties!” It’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day on Friday and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is celebrating from Friday across the weekend with talks about everything from Barbary corsairs to sea shanties, character actors and two-for-one discounts on tickets to the Pirates exhibition.Visitors over the weekend who dress like a pirate will be in the chance to win prizes including Cutty Sark rig climb tickets, annual passes to the Old Royal Naval College, and a family tour of The Golden Hinde. And to brush-up on your pirate lingo, “Abbey-Lubber” means a lazy sailor avoiding work, and ‘Jack Ketch’ a hangman or executioner. For more, see rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/international-talk-pirate-day.
Not to be confused with the much larger ZSL London Zoo, this small zoo in Golders Hill Park on the north-western side of Hampstead Heath is home to a number of exotic species including ring-tailed lemurs, red-necked wallabies and kookaburras.
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.
This district in the Borough of Lambeth in south London was formerly a rural manor located on the southern edge of London.
The name, variants of which date back to at least the late 12th century, is said to relate to the Old English words for a tree trunk – ‘stoc’ – and a well or spring, ‘wella’, and has been interpreted as meaning the well or spring by a tree stump, tree truck or perhaps a wood (there was apparently a Stockwell Wood which has long since disappeared).
The War Memorial and mural painted on a ventiliation house in Stockwell. PICTURE: Courtesy of Google Maps
The manor of Stockwell was formed at the end of the 13th century when King Edward I acquired the manor of South Lambeth and divided it into two, creating the manors of Stockwell and Vauxhall (the manor house itself, parts of which survived until the 19th century, stood on the north side of Stockwell Road).
The area become known for its market gardens and was transformed into an urban landscape until the mid-19th century. Remnants of the 19th century housing stock can still be found in areas including the Stockwell Park Conservation Area in the west of the district.
The area around Stockwell Tube station, which first opened in 1890 and has since been rebuilt a couple times, was heavily bombed during World War II and rebuilt following the war. New developments included a number of social housing estates.
Today, Stockwell and nearby South Lambeth host the district known as Little Portugal which, centred on South Lambeth Road, is home to one of the UK’s largest Portuguese communities. The area is also home to several other immigrant communities.
Local landmarks include the oldest surviving building in the area – St Andrew’s Church, Stockwell Green (built in 1767), the Stockwell Congregational Church (1798) and the Stockwell War Memorial.
The latter – a white stone tower – is located on a site first laid out in the 1920s and features a mural on an adjoining ventilation shelter commemorating French Resistance fighter Violette Szabo (there’s a Blue Plaque on her former home in Burnley Road) and other Stockwell residents who died in war. There is also the ‘Bronze Woman’ statue which was unveiled in 2008 as a tribute to Black Caribbean women.
Residents of Stockwell have included artist Arthur Rackham and pioneering theatre director Joan Littlewood as well as musician David Bowie (born in Stansfield Road), actors Joanna Lumley (who still lives there) and Roger Moore (born in Aldebert Terrace).
Tragically, Stockwell Tube station was where Brazilian man Jean Charles de Menezes was fatally shot by police on 22nd July, 2005, after being misidentified as one of four suicide bombers who were on the run after their devices had failed to detonate the previous day (the attempts had come just two weeks after the 7th July bombings in which more than 50 people had been killed).
The Coronation Stone in Kingston-upon-Thames. PICTURE: Loz Pycock (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
This month marks the 1,100th anniversary of the coronation of the Saxon King Aethelstan, so we thought it fitting to recall the place of his coronation, believed to be the Coronation Stone at the heart of the south-west London Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames.
Located outside the Guildhall, the now Grade I-listed stone is an ancient block of sarsen stone which was originally at a chapel, believed to have been wooden, on the edge of the town’s market place (close to the site of All Saints Church which originally dates from the 12th century).
Subscribe to access all of Exploring London’s content for just £3 a month.
Exploring London 