PICTURE: Ugur Akdemir/Unsplash
LondonLife – Liverpool Street Station…
PICTURE: Ugur Akdemir/Unsplash
Liverpool Street Station
London Pub Signs – Woodin’s Shades…
Located on Bishopsgate, Woodin’s Shades takes its name from wine merchant, William Woodin, while the ‘shades’ part apparently comes from an old word for a wine vault with a drinking bar.
Woodin acquired the site in 1863 – only 10 years later, in 1874, Liverpool Street Station opened opposite which was no doubt a boon for business.
The current red brick building dates from 1893.
The pub at 212 Bishopsgate, now part of the Nicholson’s chain, is popular with traders from the nearby Petticoat Lane and Spitalfields markets.
For more, see www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/restaurants/london/thewoodinsshadesbishopsgatelondon.
PICTURE: Ewan Munro (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
10 (more) curious London memorials…1. Kindertransport memorial
Way back in 2011 we ran a series looking at some of London’s most curious memorials. We’ve decided to revisit that theme in our new special series.
To kick it off, we’re taking a look at a group memorial found just outside Liverpool Street Station and dedicated to the thousands of Jewish children who arrived in the UK as refugees over nine months in 1938 and 1939, having fled the Nazis in Europe after the anti-Semitic attacks of the Kristallnacht.
Called Kindertransport – The Arrival, the group of bronze statues representing children with their luggage having just stepped off a train at the station were unveiled in 2006 in Hope Square. A short stretch of railway tracks lays behind them.
The memorial is the work of Frank Meisler – himself a child who travelled on a Kindertransport train from Danzig – and bears an inscription: “Children of the Kindertransport. In gratitude to the people of Britain for saving the lives of 10,000 unaccompanied mainly Jewish children who fled from Nazi persecution in 1938 and 1939. ‘Whosoever rescues a single soul is credited as though they had saved the whole world.’ Talmud.” It is dedicated by the Association of Jewish Refugees and the Central British Fund for Jewish World Relief.
Around the statue group are a series of blocks upon which is inscribed the names of the cities from which the children fled. They include the cities of Cologne, Hanover, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Munich, Danzig, Breslau, Prague, Hamburg, Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna along with others.
The statue is one of four, all created by Meisler, which have been erected along the route the children took to reach safety. Others can be found at the main railway station Gdansk in Poland, Friedrichstraße railway station in Berlin, and another in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Hope Square also contains another plaque which dedicates the square to the children of the Kinderstransport “who found hope and safety in Britain through the gateway of Liverpool Street Station”.
In late June, an event was held in the St James’s Palace to mark the 75th anniversary of the Kindertransport.
London Pub Signs – The Lord Aberconway…
Located just off Liverpool Street in Old Broad Street in the City, The Lord Aberconway is named after the last chairman of the Metropolitan Railway Company, operator of the world’s first underground railway (keep an eye out for our extended piece on the history of the Underground later this week).
Charles McLaren – Lord Aberconway – (1850-1934) was a landowner, industrialist and MP who was raised to the peerage in 1911, a year after he had left the House of Commons. He served as chairman of ‘The Met’ from 1904 to 1933.
While the current building – the interior of which features booths and an L-shaped bar – dates from the 19th century, there has been a pub on the site, close to Liverpool Street Station, for much longer and its previous names included the King and Keys and the Metropolitan Railway’s ‘Refreshment Room’ and ‘Railway Buffet’.
The pub, which stands not far from the Monument commemorating the Great Fire of London, is reputed to be haunted by victims of the fire (only four people are said to have officially died in the blaze but it’s believed the death toll would have actually been much higher). You’re more likely to see city traders there however.
The pub is now run by the Nicholson’s. For more on the Lord Aberconway, see www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/thelordaberconwayliverpoolstreetlondon/.
Exploring London 