Brompton Cemetery in London’s west is to undergo a major renovation thanks to a £6.2 million project. Designed by Benjamin Baud and consecrated by the Bishop of London in 1840, the 39 acre cemetery – one of the oldest Grade I listed cemeteries in the country and known as one of London’s “magnificent seven” cemeteries – was strongly influenced by landscapes around St Peter’s in Rome. Among the 205,000 people buried there are suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, Sir Thomas Spencer Wells – Queen Victoria’s surgeon, and thousands of former Chelsea pensioners. The project will see the chapel, central colonnades and catacombs restored and the transformation of North Lodge into a visitor’s centre with shop and cafe as well as other conservation and improvement works. It is funded by an almost £4.5 million grant from the BIG Lottery Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as a £1.2 million investment from The Royal Parks, managers of the site, and £500,000 from The Royal Parks Foundation, only half of which has been raised. Those looking to donate to the foundation’s appeal, can visit www.SupportTheRoyalParks.com. PICTURE: © The Royal Parks
LondonLife
LondonLife – London in a different light…
Last weekend saw London transformed in a blaze of colour and light as the city hosted its first Lumiere light festival. More than a million people hit the streets over the four nights of the event – developed by creative producers Artichoke and supported by the Mayor of London – to take in the 30 artworks. Above are some of images of British screen stars and directors which were projected on 195 Piccadilly in an installation by Newcastle-based studio NOVAK. Below are some more images from the rather spectacular event. For more on the event, check out www.visitlondon.com/lumiere.
Above is Les Voyageurs (The Travellers) by French artist Cédric Le Borgne (located in St James) while below is Litre of Light by Mick Stephenson and Central Saint Martin’s students in Kings Cross.
Above is binaryWaves by LAB[au] while below is Ron Haselden’s Diver depicting an illuminated figure plunging into the water of the King’s Cross Pond Club.
All images courtesy of Lumiere London.
Top posts of 2015 – The ‘lost’ chapel of St Thomas; and, inside King Henry V’s chantry chapel…
2016 is fast approaching and to celebrate, we’re looking back at the 10 most popular posts we published in 2015. Today, we present our most popular and second most popular articles posted this year…
2. Our second most popular article, posted in August, was another in our Lost London series and this time looked at a long-lost feature of Old London Bridge – Lost London – Chapel of St Thomas á Becket.
1. And we are finally there – the most popular of our posts published this year was run in conjunction with the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Part of our LondonLife series, it took a look inside King Henry V’s rarely opened chantry chapel in Westminster Abbey – LondonLife – A rare glimpse inside King Henry V’s chantry chapel.
LondonLife – Baby gorillas get to know each other…
Female infant gorilla Alika, who celebrated her first birthday at ZSL London Zoo in Regent’s Park last week, is pictured getting to know her two week old baby brother, Gernot. Named after the partner of a generous donor who has supported the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) international work for wildlife, Gernot (below, top) was born to 22-year-old female Effie and 17-year-old silverback Kumbuka on 25th November, both Western lowland gorillas, and can most often be found tightly snuggled in Effie’s arms (below, bottom). Gorilla keeper Glynn Hennessy said while Gernot had become the “centre of attention” at the zoo’s Gorilla Kingdom, “one-year-old Alika has embraced her new role of the doting big sister”. “Western lowland gorillas live in troops and learn how to act from observing each other’s behaviours and manners and here we can see Alika demonstrating some of the nurturing skills she’s learned from the adults.” This has included touching his head and stroking his face as he sleeps in his mother’s arms. For more, see www.zsl.org. PICTURES: ZSL London Zoo.
LondonLife – Christmas at Covent Garden…
Take your chance to ‘meet under the mistletoe’ this year at Covent Garden, thanks to the designs of renowned production designer Michael Howells. Howells, whose previous credits include fashion shows for the likes of Alexander McQueen as well as sets for films including Nanny McPhee and theatre productions such as Chariots of Fire, has come up with a design featuring more than 40 “mistletoe chandeliers” of up to 3.5 metres in size, each of which is adorned with almost 700 glistening berries. The chandeliers are united by more than 320 metres of garlands while about 100,000 pealights are suspended inside the historic Market Building. Outside, London’s biggest hand-picked – and richly decorated – Christmas tree once again stands in the piazza. For more on Covent Garden, see www.coventgarden.london. PICTURES: Courtesy of Covent Garden.
LondonLife – An illuminated Christmas at Kew…
It was Queen Charlotte who first dressed the branches of a Christmas tree in Kew Palace in the 1790s and, drawing on that tradition, Kew Gardens is once again hosting a mile long winter light experience. Visitors can walk through ribbons of light, count the festooned Christmas trees and listen to a holly bush choir as well as see larger than life winter flora such as snowdrops and Christmas roses and pause at the scented Fire Garden for a moment of reflection. Santa and his elves are appearing on stage at the Princess of Wales Conservatory and a Victorian carousel and other rides are located at the White Peaks Cafe where visitors can sample goodies like mulled wine, spiced cider and roasted chestnuts. The after-dark event runs from 5pm to 10pm on select dates until 2nd January. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.kew.org. PICTURE: The Palm House at Kew Gardens lit up for Christmas. Courtesy Kew Gardens.
LondonLife – Rediscovering Londinium’s residents…
A detailed picture of the inhabitants of Roman London, known as Londinium, has been created for the first time, the Museum of London announced this week. Detailed analysis of the DNA of four skeletons has revealed a culturally diverse population. The examined skeletons include that of a Roman woman (pictured left), likely to have been born in Britain with northern European ancestry, found buried with high status grave goods at Harper Road, Southwark, in 1979, and another of a man, whose DNA revealed connections to Eastern Europe and the Near East, who was found at London Wall in 1989 with injuries to his skull which suggest he may have been killed in the nearby amphitheatre before his head was dumped in a pit. The other two skeletons examined were found to be that of a blue-eyed teenaged girl found at Lant Street, Southwark, in 2003, believed to have been born in north Africa, whose ancestors lived in south-eastern Europe and west Eurasia, and that of an older man found at Mansell Street who was born in London and whose ancestry had links to Europe and north Africa. The examination – the first multi-disciplinary study of the inhabitants of a Roman city anywhere in the empire – also revealed that all four suffered from gum disease. Caroline McDonald, senior curator at the museum, said that while it has always been understood Roman London was a culturally diverse place, science was now “giving us certainty”. “People born in Londinium lived alongside people from across the Roman Empire exchanging ideas and cultures, much like the London we know today.” The four skeletons will form the basis of a new free display, Written in Bone, opening at the Museum of London on Friday. PICTURE: © Museum of London
WHERE: Museum of London, 150 London Wall (nearest Tube stations are Barbican and St Pauls); WHEN: 10am to 6pm daily; COST: Free; WEBSITE: www.museumoflondon.org.uk.
LondonLife Special – Expressing solidarity with Paris…
A week ago tonight the world was left reeling in the wake of the devastating series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris, France, which have left 132 people dead and hundreds more wounded. In the wake of the attacks, national landmarks across the world were lit up in the colours of the French flag, among them, the London Eye, overlooking the River Thames. PICTURE: Martin Sylvester/Digital Concepts.
LondonLife – City of spires…
View looking west from St Paul’s Cathedral down Fleet Street.
LondonLife – 600 years on, Westminster Abbey commemorates the Battle of Agincourt…
Hundreds gathered at Westminster Abbey last Thursday for a service to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt – 600 years to the day when word of the battle’s victory arrived in London. During the service, the sword of King Henry V – who was buried in the abbey and whose chantry chapel is located above his tomb (see our earlier post here) – was carried through the abbey and presented to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, at the High Altar (pictured below). “A hundred years ago, as our countrymen fought alongside the French, the old enmities had been put away,” Rev Dr Hall told those at the service who included the Duke of Kent and Princess Michael of Kent. “In the dark days before the Second World War, the story of Agincourt encouraged men and women alike to strive their utmost for freedom from tyranny. Today we give hearty thanks for our freedoms, and we pray for an end to tyranny wherever it is found, and for enduring peace and prosperity.” Royal Shakespeare Company actor Sam Marks read the St Crispin’s Day speech from the Bard’s Henry the Fifth (pictured above) while veteran of the stage and screen, Robert Hardy, read the prologue from Act IV of the same play. For more on abbey, visit www.westminster-abbey.org. PICTURES: Ian Stratton/Westminster Abbey.
LondonLife – Giacometti’s works go on show at the National Portrait Gallery…
Bust of Annette is among more than 60 works by the 20th century Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti on display at the National Portrait Gallery in an exhibition which opened earlier this month. The first ever exhibition to consist solely of portraits by Giacometti (1901-66), Giacometti: Pure Presence features paintings, drawings and sculptures from across his entire career. While he is most famous for his tall, thin standing or walking figures – works which fueled his reputation as a leading surrealist sculptor, the exhibition focuses on his life-long preoccupation with portraiture. Apart from his wife Annette, subjects featured in his works include his brother Diego, friends such as the writers Louis Aragon and Jean Genet, retailer and philanthropist Lord Sainsbury, art writer James Lord, Isabel Nichol – who later become Francis Bacon’s muse, Isabel Rawsthorne, and a prostitute named Caroline with whom he worked for five years from 1960. Highlights of the exhibition include a portrait bust of his brother Diego created in 1914 when the artist was just 13, an Egyptian-inspired sculpture of Isabel’s head and his celebrated work, Women of Venice VIII, which stands at the centre of the exhibition. The exhibition, at the gallery just off Trafalgar Square, runs until 10th January. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.npg.org.uk. PICTURE: Bust of Annette by Alberto Giacometti, 1954 Private Collection/© The Estate of Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti, Paris and ADAGP, Paris) 2015.
LondonLife – The Australian coast comes to London…
The National Gallery has unveiled a coastal masterpiece by Australian painter Sir Arthur Streeton, Blue Pacific, lent to the gallery by a private collector for the next two years.
Painted in 1890, the painting – never seen before in the UK – depicts people strolling along the clifftops at Coogee in Sydney, looking eastward over the gleaming blue of the Pacific Ocean.
Christopher Riopelle, the gallery’s curator of post-1800 European paintings, says Streeton’s use of the vertical format was “brilliantly calculated to exploit the contrast between the azure sheet of water and the subtly observed depictions of rock face and sky”.
“Still young, but at the height of his powers, Streeton demonstrates here how impression was a capacious and flexible tool for confronting the awesome landscape unique to Australia.”
Streeton (1867-1943) was considered one of the most advanced landscape painters in Australia in the 1880s and 1890s and was one of the first to adopt an impressionist style. His masterpiece, Golden Summer (1889), was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1891.
Blue Pacific is now on show in Room 43 at the gallery off Trafalgar Square alongside Monet’s Water-Lilies and Manet’s The Execution of Maximilian. Entry is free. For more on the gallery, see www.nationalgallery.org.uk.
PICTURE: Blue Pacific, 1890, Sir Arthur Streeton (1867 – 1943), oil on canvas, © on loan from a private collection/via National Gallery.
LondonLife – Supermoon over Docklands…
London photographer Ian Wylie captures the “supermoon” rising over Canary Wharf in London’s east on Sunday, ahead of the lunar eclipse in the early hours of Monday. As seen from London Bridge at 6:54pm – 20 minutes after moonrise and six minutes after sunset. A supermoon occurs when the moon reaches the closest part of its orbit to Earth and hence appears larger than normal. This week’s supermoon coincided with a lunar eclipse – in which the moon passes behind the Earth through its shadow (also known as an umbra) – which later made the moon appear red (a lunar eclipse is also known as a “blood moon”). Last seen in 1982, the phenomena will apparently not be visible again until 2033. PICTURE: © Ian Wylie/Flickr
LondonLife – Remembering Agatha Christie…
Today marks 125 years since the birth of the world’s best-selling novelist, Agatha Christie, subject of this memorial which was unveiled in Covent Garden in 2012.
Standing at St Martin’s Cross – the intersection of Cranbourn and Great Newport Streets, the memorial – which also marks 60 years and 25,000 performances of her record breaking long-running London play The Mousetrap – is the work of sculptor Ben Twiston-Davies.
It takes the form of a 2.4 metre high book with a bust of Christie in profile and features a series of motifs from Christie’s works as well as a ‘bookshelf’ of her best sellers in English and other languages, the titles of which were selected in a competition involving fans.
Christie, who was born on 15th September, 1890, in Torquay, Devon, and died on 12th January, 1976, is famous for the scores of detective novels she wrote – featuring the likes of detectives Miss Marple and London’s own Hercule Poirot – which have gone on to sell more than two billion copies around the world.
The memorial was unveiled on 18th November, 2012, by Christie’s grandson, Matthew Pritchard, along with Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen, chairman of Mousetrap Productions, and the Lord Mayor of Westminster, Cr Angela Harvey.
For more on the memorial, see www.agathachristiememorial.co.uk. For more on events surrounding the anniversary, see www.agathachristie.com.
PICTURE: Diagram Lajard
LondonLife – Kenwood’s architect James Adam rediscovered…
A painting of James Adam, unseen for almost 150 years, has gone on show at Kenwood House in London’s north.
Antonio Zucchi’s Portrait of James Adam, dating from 1763, depicts Adam who, along with his brother Robert, created the splendid villa which now sits on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath between 1767 and about 1779.
The Adams’ first encountered Zucchi while on a “grand tour” in Italy and engaged him as their draughtsman, recording what they were seeing.
They subsequently had him decorate ceilings and walls at Kenwood and his signature was also recently discovered on the painting of Adam – the only known portrait the artist completed – after it was cleaned.
The painting depicts Adam as both architect and “man of fashion” and shows his interest in classical statues and ornamentation, showing the famous Medici vase in the background.
The painting hadn’t been seen by the public since 1867. The painting, loaned to English Heritage – managers of Kenwood House – by Adam Williams Fine Art Ltd in New York, can be seen until 4th January.
WHERE: Kenwood House, off Hampstead Lane, Hampstead Heath (nearest Tube stations are Golders Green and Archway/nearest rail is Gospel Oak and Hampstead Heath); WHEN: daily, 10am to 5pm; COST: Free; WEBSITE: www.english-heritage.org.uk/kenwood.
PICTURE: Adam Williams Fine Art Ltd.
LondonLife – See the Thames…in Blackfriars station…
This is one of a series of works by renowned photographer Henry Reichhold which features in the exhibition Thames – Heart of London, currently on show at Blackfriars Thameslink railway station. Thameslink and JCDecaux have provided 49 platform advertising sites for the display, part of the Totally Thames celebrations taking place throughout September. The photographs, which measure 2.5 metres long, are an attempt to capture the character of the Thames as it winds its way through the city and were taken from a series of notable vantage points including the Shard, City Hall, OXO Tower, One Canada Square, Southbank Tower and the Houses of Parliament. As well as the river itself, they also capture some of the many events which have taken place upon it – from the Diamond Jubilee Pageant to New Year’s Day celebrations. Each image has taken between one and three weeks to create from up to 100 separate photographs – selected out of more than 800 taken on a single day – which have then been put together in a stunning panorama. New York-born Reichhold says the process of “extracting” the final image is “never the same”. “The camera is very stubborn about creating a ‘mechanical’ view and it is the reinterpretation of these files to in some way reflect what the human eye sees that I find so troublesome and fascinating.” The exhibition is at Blackfriars Station, 179 Queen Victoria Street, London, and runs until 30th September. Entry is free to passengers with a valid GTR train ticket and to holders of a 10p platform ticket.
LondonLife – New River Wildlife…
Taken along New River Walk which follows the course of the “New River” in Islington. The New River, completed in 1613, was a man-made canal which brought water from Hertfordshire to New River Head in Clerkenwell (it now takes water to reservoirs in Stoke Newington). PICTURE: David Adams.
LondonLife – Crossrail unearthed mass burial believed to be of Great Plague victims…
Thirty skeletons found in a mass burial – the latest archaeological find at Crossrail’s Liverpool Street site – are believed to have been victims of the Great Plague of 1665. Made during the excavation of the former Bedlam burial ground in order to make way for a new eastern entrance to the station, the discovery comes during the 350th anniversary year of the Great Plague. Jay Carver, the lead archaeologist for Crossrail, said the mass burial – with the bodies placed in now long gone wooden coffins – was unlike other individual burials found in the cemetery and thus “is likely a reaction to a catastrophic event”. “Only closer analysis will tell if this is a plague pit from the Great Plague of 1665 but we hope this gruesome but exciting find will tell us more about one of London’s notorious killers.” Clues which suggest that may be the case include a headstone found nearby marked “1665” and the fact that the 30 people all seem to have been buried on the same day. Museum of London Archaeology osteologists will now analyse the skeletons to find out the cause of death. Archaeologists have excavated more than 3,500 skeletons from the site since excavation of the burial ground – used between 1569 to at least 1738 – began earlier this year. It suggested 30,000 Londoners were buried there during that period. For more on the the Great Plague, see our earlier post here. PICTURE: © Crossrail Ltd.
LondonLife – Enjoying the greenery…
A stroll through the green oasis of the aptly named Green Park in central London. For a look at the history of Green Park, see our earlier post here.
LondonLife – London’s celebration of sculpture…
Damien Hirst’s seven foot tall statue Charity (2002-2003) stands in the shadow of the Gherkin as a highlight of this year’s Sculpture in the City event. Kicking off last month, the exhibition – the fifth of its kind – features 14 works by a series of internationally renowned artists. Other sculptures (pictured below) include Adam Chodzko’s 2010 work Ghost (on show at Leadenhall Market), Laura Ford’s 2012 work Day of Judgement – Cats 1 & 2 (150 Leadenhall Street), Sigalit Laudau’s 2011 work ‘O my friends, there are no friends’ (St Helen’s Square), and Kris Martin’s 2012 work Bells II (on the corner of Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street). The works can be seen until May next year. For more (including a map of locations), see www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/sculptureinthecity. PICTURES: Nick Turpin.
Exploring London 