Trafalgar Square

Around London – Year of the Rabbit celebrations; virtual art galleries; and, to the moon and back on ‘Boris bikes’

by exploringlondon

• London will celebrate Chinese New Year this Sunday as it once again hosts the largest celebrations outside of Asia attracting some 250,000 people from around the globe. The event programme, which celebrates 2011 as the Year of the Rabbit, kicks off at 11am on the main stage in Trafalgar Square with firecrackers at noon, a Lion and Dragon performance at 1.10pm and dance and song during the afternoon culminating in a finale just before 6pm. There will also be a stage in Shaftesbury Avenue with performances throughout the day. Roads in the area will be closed for the event.

• You no longer have to be in London to walk through the galleries of the Tate Britain or the National Gallery. Both institutions are among 17 around the world taking part in the Google Art Project which allows web surfers to virtually “walk” around the museum using the organisation’s Street View technology and turn 360 degrees to view the artworks in situ on the walls. The project also allows viewers to look through images of more than 1,000 artworks and, in addition, each institution has selected one artwork which then captured in “super high resolution” and then placed on line (Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors‘ for the National Gallery, Chris Ofili’s No Woman, No Cry for the Tate). See www.googleartproject.com for more.

• Cyclists have ridden the distance to the moon and back 13 times – 10 million kilometres – since the launch of Mayor Boris Johnson’s cycle scheme. Transport for London released figures this week showing riders have made more than 2.5 million journeys on the “Boris bikes” since the scheme was launched six months ago. The TfL has announced plans to expand the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme to new areas of east London including all of the Borough of Tower Hamlets, North Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Bow, Canary Wharf, Mile End and Poplar by spring 2012. Almost 110,000 people are now signed up to the scheme. www.tfl.gov.uk.

• The youngest Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain is to be granted the Freedom of the City of London in a special ceremony next month. Squadron Leader Geoffrey Wellum was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in a front line squadron during the battle.

Around London – New fourth plinth sculptures announced; Australian Season at British Museum; and Kenwood House shows off gardens…

by exploringlondon

• Sculptures of a child on a rocking horse and a giant blue cockerel will occupy Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth in 2012 and 2013 respectively, it was announced late last week. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, described the artworks as “witty and enigmatic creations”. The first proposed first sculpture, correctly titled Powerless Structures, Fig. 101, is the creation of Elmgreen & Dragset while the second, Hahn/Cock, is that of Katharina Fritsch. The plinth is currently occupied by Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle. See www.fourthplinth.co.uk.

• The British Museum has announced it will be holding a series of exhibitions and events focusing on Australia later this year. Highlights of Australian Season will include Australia Landscape: Kew at the British Museum (21st April to 16th October), an exhibition of prints and drawings dating from the ‘Angry Penguin’ school of the 1940s through to the rise of Aboriginal printmaking (Out of Australia: prints and drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas, from 26th May to 11th September), and an exhibition focusing on indigenous Australian baskets (Baskets and belong: Indigenous Australian histories, 26th May to 29th August). See www.britishmuseum.org.

• On Now: Kenwood House in Hampstead is hosting a new exhibition, The Gardens of English Heritage. The exhibition, which is based on the publication of the same name, features stunning images of some of the UK’s most impressive gardens.Runs until 3rd April. For more information, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/kenwood-house/

What’s in a name?…Pall Mall

by exploringlondon

This curiously named street in the heart of London’s St James district traces the origins of its moniker back to the 17th century when the game of “pall mall” (“pell mell” and “paille maille” being among a host of alternative spellings) was played there.

The game, mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his famous diary, involves the use of a mallet and ball similar to that used in modern croquet but, according to some commentators, pall mall was more likely a predecessor of golf than croquet, with players attempting to belt the ball as far as possible along a pitch before putting the ball through a hoop suspended high off the ground.

Pall Mall, which runs parallel to The Mall from St James’ Street in the west to Haymarket in the east with an eastern extension, Pall Mall East, completing the journey from Haymarket into the northern end of Trafalgar Square, became famous in the 19th and early 20th centuries for housing numerous ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. Among those still in business are the Travellers Club, the Athaenaeum Club, the Reform Club, the Army and Navy Club, the Oxford and Cambridge Club, and the Royal Automobile Club.

St James’s Palace sits at the street’s western end and it is of note that nearly all of the southern side of the street is still part of the Crown Estate (the exception being a home Charles II is believed to have given to the actress Nell Gwynne, who apparently sensibly demanded the freehold on the property).

Other buildings along the street include Schomberg House, built for the Duke of Schomberg in the late 17th century (only the facade of which remains), and the Sir Christopher Wren-designed Marlborough House, which is tucked in between Pall Mall and The Mall and sits opposite St James’s Palace. The National Gallery and the Royal Academy also both briefly had homes in Pall Mall.