Reflections at Trafalgar Square. PICTURE: Raphaël Chekroun (licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0).
Carnaby Street ‘Carnival’. PICTURE: Kevin Oliver (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) (image cropped).
Flying high in the West End. PICTURE: Maureen Barlin (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Thrills at Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. PICTURE: Kevin Oliver (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Outside St Paul’s at Covent Garden. PICTURE: Kevin Oliver (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
London from The Shard. PICTURE: Genevieve Perron-Migneron/Unsplash
PICTURE: Rene Böhmer/Unsplash
Wednesday marked the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, so we thought it an appropriate week to feature one of the most moving displays in the Museum of London Docklands’ ‘London, Sugar and Slavery’ gallery.
The permanent gallery, which opened the museum at West India Quay in 2007 to mark the bicentenary of abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, features a wall bearing a list of the many ships that sailed from London to trade in enslaved Africans over what was just a 10 year period.
In what was known as the ‘Triangular Trade’, the ships on leaving London would sail to West Africa where they would bought enslaved Africans before travelling to the Caribbean to sell them and fill their ships with sugar before returning to London.
Among details recorded on the wall are not only the name of each ship, but the captains, owners and destinations of the ships as well as the number of enslaved Africans carried (but not their names; these were not recorded).
A sad record of a shameful time.
WHERE: ‘London, Sugar and Slavery’ Gallery, Museum of London Docklands, No 1 Warehouse, West India Quay (nearest DLR is West India Quay); WHEN: 10am to 6pm daily; COST: Free; WEBSITE: www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london-docklands
PICTURE: Top – © Museum of London; Below – J D Mack/Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0
PICTURE: Gordon Williams/Unsplash
PICTURE: designerpoint/Pixabay
Thinking of all those affected by the London Bridge/Borough Market attack. PICTURE: http://www.freeimages.com
This sculpture by London-based Scottish artist David Mach can be found in Kingston upon Thames in south-west London. It depicts 12 K6 red phone boxes falling onto one another like a row of dominoes and was commissioned from the Royal Academician by the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in 1988. Unveiled the following year, it was renovated in 2001. There’s been talk in the past of it being removed (and of the end phone being connected, so it works) but the iconic sculpture remains in situ near the Old London Road gateway (and unconnected). PICTURE: Jim Linwood/CC BY-SA 2.0 (image cropped)
Fictional British spy George Smiley featured in some eight books written by acclaimed author John Le Carré (sometimes as the main protagonist, sometimes as a side character) and is about to appear in a ninth, A Legacy of Spies, which comes out in September.
And that’s not to mention his appearance on small screens and large where he’s been portrayed by everyone from James Mason and Sir Alec Guinness to Denholm Elliott and Gary Oldman.
In the books, Smiley and his wife, Lady Ann, lived at a number 9 Bywater Street in Chelsea – which is an actual address, just off King’s Road (pictured with the red door). The Georgian townhouse was appropriately used to depict his home in the 1979 BBC series of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy although, interestingly, while number nine’s exterior was used, it was apparently number 10, next door – pictured here with the blue door – which provided the interiors.
Le Carré, who was living just over the Thames in Battersea at the time of Smiley’s creation, has reportedly said he chose the location because his literary agent lived nearby (although there is apparently a little fuzziness on whether this is the case) and the mother of one his pupils from Eton (Le Carré – actually David John Moore Cornwell – taught at Eton for two years before he joined MI5 in 1958) lived in the street.
But perhaps the best literary reason is the fact that Bywater Street, despite the name, is actually a cul-de-sac which adds to the difficulty of anyone trying to spy on Smiley. A wise choice for a spy’s residence, in other words.
Other locations associated with George Smiley in London include The Circus, the secret London intelligence HQ where Smiley and his fellow intelligence operatives worked, which was located in an office block in Cambridge Circus, on the corner of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.
PICTURE: Google Maps
A scene from Chinese New Year celebrations heralding the Year of the Rooster held in central London last weekend. PICTURE: Garry Knight/Flickr/CC BY 2.0
Lemuel Gulliver, the ‘hero’ of Jonathan Swift’s 1726 book, Gulliver’s Travels, wasn’t a native Londoner but moved to the city for work and lived in several different locations before embarking on his famous voyage to the land of Lilliput.
According to the book, the Nottinghamshire-born Gulliver studied at Emanuel College (sic) in Cambridge before he was apprenticed to London surgeon known as James Bates after which he spent a couple of years studying in the Dutch town of Leiden (spelt Leydon in the book).
Returning to England briefly, he spent the next few years voyaging to the “Levant” before returning to London where he “took part of a small house in Old Jewry” (Old Jewry lies in the City of London runs between Poultry and Gresham Street) and married Mary Burton, daughter of a Newgate Street hosier.
His master Bates dying, however, a couple of years later and with a failing business, he took up the position of surgeon on two different ships and it was when he eventually returned to London that he moved to Fetter Lane – which runs north from Fleet Street – and then from there to Wapping where hoping to retire from the sea and “get business (presumably he meant medical cases) among the sailors”.
But it was not to be and so, in 1699, Mr Gulliver set off on the voyage accounted in the famous book.
The name Fetter Lane, incidentally, has nothing to do with fetters (ie chains) – see our earlier post for more. And it’s also worth noting that the author, Jonathan Swift, also visited and lived in London at various times of his career – we’ll take a more in depth look at his experiences in a later post.
PICTURE: Lemuel Gulliver, depicted in a first edition of Gulliver’s Travels/Wikipedia.
Trafalgar Square at Christmas. PICTURE: London & Partners
A gasometer built in 1886 as part of the South Metropolitan Gas Company’s East Greenwich works.
PICTURE: Sérgio Rola/Unsplash
The effects of industrialisation on Londoners and the diseases that affected them is the subject of a new ground-breaking research project being conducted by the Museum of London. Led by Jelena Bekvalac, based at the Museum of London’s Centre for Human Bioarcheology (pictured above, right), the researchers will examine the skeletal remains of more than 1,000 adult men and women from industrial-era London, 500 skeletons from the medieval metropolis and a further 500 medieval and post-medieval skeletal human remains from areas outside of London with the latter to be used for comparison purposes. In the project, made possible through a City of London Archaeological Trust grant from a bequest made by the late Rosemary Green, the museum will employ the latest clinical techniques – including direct digital radiography, CT scanning and 3D modelling – to examine the bones. “The most tangible evidence we have for the long-term consequences of the industrialisation process upon us is, quite simply, written in our bones,” says Dr Bekvalac. The project will result in the creation of an extensive new interactive digital resource that will be able to be explored online. For more, see www.museumoflondon.org.uk. PICTURE: Courtesy of Museum of London.
Former British PM, Sir Winston Churchill, died 50 years ago tomorrow, so we thought it was a good time to take a look at one of London’s most iconic statues.
Standing tall among some of the towering figures of British politics (and others), the over life-sized bronze statue of Sir Winston Churchill on Parliament Square in Whitehall was designed by Welsh sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones and is located on a site on the square’s north-east corner chosen by the great man himself.
Standing 12 feet (3.6 metres) high on an eight foot (2.4 metre) high pedestal opposite the Houses of Parliament (which he faces), Churchill, who was 90 when he died, is portrayed during the years of World War II wearing a navy greatcoat but wears no hat and leans on a cane.
The full length, Grade II-listed statue, which Roberts-Jones was commissioned to create in 1970, was unveiled by Lady Churchill with the aid of Queen Elizabeth II in 1973.
Interestingly, it’s said that there’s a mild electric current which runs through the statue to ensure pigeons don’t perch and snow doesn’t gather on his head. Another quirky fact – Roberts-Jones was subsequently commissioned to make another Churchill statue in 1977 – this one for New Orleans.
PICTURE: Adam Carr
Can you identify where in London this picture was taken? If you think you can, leave a comment below. We’ll reveal the answer next week. Good luck!
This bronze sculpture is indeed located in Spitalfields. Named A Pear and A Fig, the still life was created by Ali Grant in 2006 and installed in Bishops Square just outside the western end of Spitalfields Market. There’s a suggestion it has been moved – we’ll endeavour to confirm that!
Can you identify where in London this picture was taken and what it’s of? If you think you can, leave a comment below. We’ll reveal the answer early next week. Good luck!
Well done to Jameson, this is indeed the steeple of the church of St Mary Magdalen Bermondsey, located in Bermondsey Street. The first record of the church dates from about 1290 when the church belonged to the Prior and Convent of Bermondsey, although a church did apparently exist some time prior. The current building largely dates from around 1690.
View of the top of the Monument from the top of St Paul’s Cathedral. For more on the history of The Monument, see our earlier post here.
Exploring London 