The London that never was

This Week in London – Totally Thames kicks off; ‘The London That Never Was’; and an evolutionary garden at Kew…

by exploringlondon

• London’s annual, month-long celebration of the River Thames, Totally Thames, has kicked off and this year’s program includes everything from concerts in Tower Bridge’s bascule chamber to the largest ever exhibition on mudlarking and a mass boat regatta at the end of the month. The programme includes more than 100 events stretching over 42 miles of the river as it winds through London, covering everything from art installations to heritage-related walks and talks, family-oriented offerings and the chance to get out on the river itself. Other highlights include the Rivers of the World Retrospective art exhibition, a scented heritage exhibition –The Barking Stink, a heritage walk through riverside Rotherhithe, open days at the RNLI Tower Lifeboat Station and this weekend’s Classic Boat Festival at St Katharine Docks. Many events are free. Runs until 30th September For the full programme, head to https://totallythames.org/. PICTURE Courtesy of Totally Thames.

• London’s grand building plans that never went ahead are the subject of a new exhibition opening at the Guildhall Art Gallery tomorrow. The London That Never Was imagines a city where the Tower Bridge is clad in glass and where a colossal burial pyramid looms over Primrose Hill. The free exhibition can be seen until 8th December. For more, head here. (To see some of the projects that were never built, see our previous series, 8 structures from the London That Never Was).

• A new garden celebrating the evolution of plants has opened at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Agius Evolution Garden is divided into eight sections to form “garden rooms” with each room containing closely related plants, revealing fascinating stories such as the connection between strawberries and nettles and why the Asteraceae family have “false flowers”. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.kew.org.

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8 structures from the London that never was – 8. Primrose Hill’s Pyramid of Death…

by exploringlondon

We started this series with a pyramidal-shaped structure (see A pyramid in Trafalgar Square), so we thought it only fitting that we end with one as well. 

PyramidThis time, it’s not so much a monument, however, as a place to house some of London’s ever increasing population of dead.  The over-crowded graveyards of early Victorian London (and the horror stories that went with them of bodies bursting forth from their graves), led to proposals for a range of innovative solutions in the early nineteenth century.

Among them was a pyramidal-shaped necropolis for Primrose Hill. Architect Thomas Willson came up with the 94 storey-high structure – which would have stood higher than St Paul’s Cathedral – to provide storage for some five million corpses with steam-powered lifts to carry the bodies to their place of rest.

Made from brick with granite facings, the base of the vast structure would have covered 18 acres. Its design, which included quarters for staff, four entrances and a central ventilation shaft, drew upon the Victorian fascination for all things Egyptian.

“It was supposed to be compact, hygienic and ornamental,” author Catharine Arnold told the BBC. “Willson hoped people would come to admire this huge pyramid from far and wide, picnicking on Primrose Hill and enjoying this splendid monument. But it would be rather like a giant car-park of the dead.”

According to the prospectus Willson, who trained at the Royal Academy, issued for potential investors, the pyramid – which was to cost £2,500 to build – would have raised a staggering sum of more than £10 million in profit when it was full.

Still, it was not to be and the idea never left the drawing board. But Willson did go on to join the board of the General Cemetery Company.

For more on London and its dead, see Catharine Arnold’s Necropolis: London and Its Dead.