An overcast day on Blackheath, in the south-east of the city. All Saint’s Church is located in the centre of the picture. The Grade II-listed church, the parish church of Blackheath, was built between 1857-67 to the designs of architect Benjamin Ferrey.
Some of 16 hybrid images showing London’s bridges old and new which have been released by the Museum of London Docklands to mark the recent opening of the museum’s new free art exhibition Bridges. The images have been created using historic photographs showcased in the exhibition which opened last Friday and runs until 2nd November. The photographs were taken by renowned late 19th and 20th century photographers, including Henry Grant, Henry Turner, Sandra Flett, Christina Broom, Roger Mayne and George Davison Reid. Above is Tower Bridge, taken by Christina Broom (c. 1903–10) from Shad Thames Jetty. For more, see www.museumoflondon.org.uk/docklands/. PICTURE © Christina Broom/Museum of London.
Albert Bridge (unknown photographer), Chelsea. Glass lantern slide, c. late 19th century. © Museum of London.
Vauxhall Bridge from Cambridge Wharf (taken by Albert Gravely Linney), 1928. Taken from the north bank of the Thames. © Albert Gravely Linney/Museum of London
Looking north across London Bridge (taken by George Davison Reid), c. 1920s. Taken from inside on the 5th floor of No1 London Bridge. © George Davison Reid/Museum of London
Richmond Bridge, glass lantern slide, c. late 19th century. Taken from the south side of the river. © Museum of London.
Rainforest by GUN Architects, located in Bedford Square in Bloomsbury outside the offices of the Architectural Association, has been one of the highlights of the London Festival of Architecture, now into its final week. The five metre high tree-like structures, created by the German-Chilean architectural practice, feature fabric stalactites which drip water into pools below. As well as installations like Rainforest, the festival features debates, exhibitions, film screenings, walks, cycle rides, open studios and family events which focus on the importance of architecture and design under this year’s central theme of ‘capital’. The festival runs until 30th June. For more details and a full programme of events still to run, see www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org.
PICTURE: © Valerie Bennett
A new pop-up shop has appeared in iconic Carnaby Street as part of a campaign aimed at helping to save endangered Asian lions, like Heidi, pictured above.
The initiative, supported by ZSL London Zoo and Carnaby, aims to help raise £5.7 million in funds for the Zoological Society of London’s Lions400 campaign through the sale of specially designed products.
There are only some 400 Asian lions left in the wild, living in the isolated Gir Forest in Western Gujarat, India, and vulnerable to threats including disease, disaster, poaching and a growing human population.
The funds raised in the campaign will be used to build a state-of-the-art lion breeding centre and visitor experience at the zoo – where about a million people a year come into contact with the Asian lions including Heidi – as well as being used to extend conservation work in the field.
Among the items for sale in the shop at 15 Carnaby Street (pictured below) are T-shirts, bone china pieces, notebooks and badges created by fashion designer Elizabeth Emanuel and based on her lion sketch drawings as well as animal print notebooks and cards created by pop artist Rose Hill.
As well as selling products, the shop – which is only open for six weeks – is also hosting a series of free events. On Thursday, 19th June, Phd student Simon Dures will talk about African lions and their genetics at 1pm, 1,30pm, 6pm and 6.30pm. On 3rd July, Joanna Barker, the UK and Europe Conservation Programme coordinator will talking about marine mammal conservation in the Thames Estuary at similar times and, on 17th July, Nisha Owen, EDGE Conservation Biologist will talk about EDGE (Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered) species.
For more, on the campaign, see www.zsl.org/support-us/lions400. For more on Carnaby Street, see www.carnaby.co.uk.
Part of the history of Kenwood House in north London hits the big screen this week with the premiere of the film Belle.
The film, which opens on Friday, is inspired by the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate daughter of Admiral Sir John Lindsay and a slave woman named Maria, who spent her childhood years at the property in the care of her great-uncle Lord Mansfield (played by Tom Wilkinson) in the second half of the 18th century.
The idea for film was apparently sparked when Belle‘s writer Misan Sagay saw a painting of Dido which hangs at Scone Palace in Scotland (a copy of the painting, which was formerly attributed to Johann Zoffany but is now unattributed, can be seen hanging in the Housekeeper’s Room at Kenwood).
Lauren Houlistan, English Heritage senior curator, says Dido grew up at Kenwood from about the age of five (about 1766) and seemed to have been considered one of the family.
She says that while Lord Mansfield was “very fond of her”, Dido’s position was, however, “lower than that of her white, legitimate cousin, Elizabeth – Dido was given a smaller allowance and is noted as only joining visitors after dinner”. Dido is known to have managed the dairy at Kenwood in 1779 and was described as “superintendent” over the daily and poultry yard (for more on Dido’s extraordinary life, see our earlier post here).
Kenwood House was undergoing restoration when the film was being made so scenes for the film set in the house were shot at various other English Heritage properties including Chiswick House and the Ranger’s House in Greenwich.
WHERE: Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane, Hampstead (nearest Tube stations are Golders Green and Archway/nearest train stations are Gospel Oak and Hampstead Heath); WHEN: 10am to 5pm daily; COST: Free; WEBSITE: www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/kenwood/.
PICTURE: Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Dido Elizabeth Belle and Sarah Gadon Lady Elizabeth Murray and in Belle. © Twentieth Century Fox.
Crowds lined the banks of The Thames last weekend as Her Majesty’s Watermen rowed from Hampton Court Palace to the Tower of London in the annual “Tudor Pull”. The palace-to-palace rowing event on Sunday kicked off around 10am with a ceremony at Hampton Court during which the ‘Stela’ – an ancient piece of medieval water pipe made from a hollowed-out tree trunk which symbolises the power of The Thames – is passed to the watermen who then took it up river to the Tower in the royal barge Gloriana. The barge, which was accompanied by a fleet of other traditional rowing craft, stopped at several locations along the journey, before it arrived at the Tower in Sunday afternoon where the ‘Stela’ was presented to the Governor. The event is also said to commemorate the sinking in 1256 of Queen Eleanor’s royal barge under old London Bridge. For more on the Historic Royal Palaces in London, head to www.hrp.org.uk.
PICTURE: Courtesy of Historic Royal Palaces.
Our new special series will kick off next week!
Time is running out for your entry into Cakespeare – the V&A’s competition to find the best Shakespeare-themed cake as part of the institution’s celebration of the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth. The competition, which closes on 4th May, was launched earlier this month with an almost 15 kilogram cake created by Jane Asher Party Cakes (actress Jane Asher and the cake are pictured). A fruitcake, it features the playwright at work with a writing table and feature quill made from icing while a scroll lists the 36 plays in Shakespeare’s First Folio (which is on show in the V&A’s Theatre and Performance Galleries). To enter the competition, design, bake and decorate your cake celebrating Shakespeare and then upload an image of it to social media, tagged #Cakespeare. Oh, and the winner – selected by Asher and Geoff Marsh, director or the V&A’s department of theatre and performance – will receive a weekend for two in Stratford-upon-Avon complete with tickets to see the Royal Shakespeare Company. The V&A’s Shakespeare Festival runs until 4th May. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk. So enjoy your Shakespeare – and your cake…might be a way to take your mind off London’s transport woes! PICTURE: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Angular rooftops stacked one upon the other in Chelsea in London’s west.
A flight of pigeons meet outside Embankment Tube Station.
In contrast to the colourless smog which has lain over London, Scottish artist David Batchelor’s sculpture, Chromolocomotion, brings a splash of colour to the Grand Terrace at St Pancras International. Unveiled this week, the 20 by 10 metre work consists of 44 L-shaped pieces of coloured perspex suspended from the Grade I-listed roof of the Barlow Shed. It replaces Lucy and Jorge Orta’s Cloud: Meteoros and is the second installation commissioned by St Pancras International’s owners HS1 Ltd as part of the Terrace Wires initiative. The work will remain in place until late September. For more on the initiative, see www.terracewires.co.uk. PICTURE: HS1 Ltd.
This year marks the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian accession and to celebrate, Historic Royal Palaces are running a range of events at Hampton Court, Kensington and Kew Palaces. The ‘Glorious Georges’ season opens on Easter weekend – we’ll be bringing more details closer to the time.In the meantime, see which of the Georges and associated figures you can identify in this image. For more, check out www.hrp.org.uk.
A website launched last year – Britain from Above – boasts some unique perspectives on London among its more than 61,000 images including this one above of the South Bank site of the Festival of Britain – a national exhibition held at various venues across Britain as a post-war “tonic” for the nation – under construction, taken on 14th August, 1950. The website features images taken as part of a collection of aerial photographs taken between 1919 and 1953 by pioneering air survey company Aerofilms Ltd. It has been created by English Heritage, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales following their joint purchase of the company’s collection of more than 1.26 million negatives and 2000 photo albums and forms part of a four year project which aims to conserve and digitise some 95,000 of the oldest and most valuable photographs in the collection. Under the project, the general public is invited to share and record their knowledge and memories of the photographs featured. To get involved, head to www.britainfromabove.org.uk. Below can be seen an image of the FA Cup Final being played between Sheffield Wednesday and West Bromwich Albion (Sheffield were 4-2 victors) at Wembley Stadium on 27th April, 1935. PICTURES: © English Heritage. Aerofilms Collection EAW031792/© English Heritage. Aerofilms Collection EPW046905.
Once making chocolate for kings including William III, George I and George II, a special royal chocolate-making kitchen has opened at Hampton Court Palace – the only surviving example of its kind in the country. The opening – which is part of Historic Royal Palaces’ celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian accession – comes after research identified the exact location of the kitchen which, having been used as a storeroom, was found in a “remarkably well preserved” state with original fittings such as the stove and furniture intact. Among those known to have worked in the kitchen is Thomas Tosier (pictured above), personal chocolatier to King George I, and it was in here he prepared special chocolate drinks. (Interestingly, Tosier’s wife Grace apparently traded on her husband’s royal association to promote her own chocolate house in Greenwich). A new display in the kitchen explores how the chocolate was made for the king and features copper cooking equipment and bespoke chocolate serving silverware, glassware and linens from the 18th century. The Royal Chocolate Kitchen will also play host to live Georgian chocolate making sessions. PICTURE: © Historic Royal Palaces/Richard Lea Hair.
WHERE: Hampton Court Palace, East Molesey, Surrey (nearest station is Hampton Court from Waterloo); WHEN: 10am to 4.30pm until 29th March after which it’s open to 6pm); COST: Adult £18.20, Concession £15.40, Child under 16 £9.10 (under fives free), family tickets, garden only tickets and online booking discounts available; WEBSITE:www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/.
The Brompton Road tube station, which closed in 1934 after being made redundant following the opening of other stations, sold for a reported £53 million over the weekend. The former Piccadilly Line station, located between South Kensington and Knightsbridge stations, opened in 1906 and was designed by architect Leslie Green for the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway. It was used as a command centre for anti-aircraft guns during World War II and the story goes was where Nazi Rudolf Hess was interrogated after being captured in 1941. Owned up until the sale by the Ministry of Defence, it was most recently used as a training centre for air cadets and naval reservists. It will reportedly be converted into residential flats.
Colourful terraced homes located in Bywater Street, a pretty cul-de-sac just off King’s Road, in Chelsea. Incidentally, number 9, was the fictional home of spy George Smiley in John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Number 10 as used as the home in the BBC TV series of the same name dating from 1979.
Following on from its LEGO advent calendar and Christmas tree, Covent Garden is home to a giant LEGO snow globe this Christmas. Made of 120,000 bricks, it features 14 of London’s most iconic landmarks – from Nelson’s Column, Buckingham Palace (see below) and the London Eye to The Shard, Shakespeare’s Globe and, of course, Covent Garden. The models took Duncan Titmarsh, the UK’s only certified LEGO professional, around 75 days to build. Hidden among the models are a number of LEGO Santas – count them to win prizes and press a button to make snow fall inside the globe. For more, see www.coventgardenlondonuk.com.
A bust of the anti-apartheid activist and global icon Nelson Mandela at the South Bank Centre has become one of several places in London where people are paying their respects to the former South African president and Noble Peace Prize winner who died last Thursday at the age of 95. The bust – below which are a quoted Mandela’s words, “The struggle is my life” – was erected in 1985 by the Greater London Council. A full-length, larger-than-life statue of Mandela, by Ian Walters, stands in Parliament Square in Whitehall – it was unveiled in 2007 by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown with Mandela himself in attendance.
In a reminder of the summer’s past, here’s an image of Londoners enjoying the sun in the shadow of London’s Eye. The EDF Energy London Eye this year officially welcomed its 50 millionth visitor, some 13 years after the 135 metre high wheel first commenced operation. It was originally anticipated the Eye would only exist for five years but such has been its success that it’s been granted lifelong permission to remain at its South Bank site. For more on the Eye, check out www.londoneye.com.
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