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Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Here is a list of other buildings in the City and along the Strand that survived the Great Fire. TH thinks that a Sunday will have to be spent investigating them very soon.
Word comes of an entirely praiseworthy series of events in April (which is almost upon us though you would never believe it from the weather): a celebration of the Huguenots in Spitalfields. There will be talks, walks, seminars and exhibitions. It all promises to be most interesting. There will also be blogs on some of the events.
A great day for London: on January 9, 1863 a number of grandees were carried from Paddington to Farringdon Street Station on the first ever underground railway. It was opened to the public on the following day and 30,000 people crowded into the trains and stations. Despite the mockery and dire predictions the Metropolitan Railway proved to be a huge success.
More on the history and the day here.
The three examples are respectively by George Sheringham, Andrew Power and Annie Gertrude Fletcher.
Curiously, the Daily Mail article gives no examples of Edward McKnight Kauffer, possibly the best of the artists whose career was made by London Transport. Here is one example.
Mr Romanyuk is the complete Anglophile. To him there can be nothing wrong with Britain and if there is a dispute he takes the British side, even attempting to exonerate the British authorities in the somewhat dubious story of Nicholas II and his family to whom Britain apparently refused to give shelter. A muddled story, as Mr Romanyuk rightly says and in his opinion if anyone needs to be blamed it had better be David Lloyd George.
Naturally there are a few pages about Peter the Great and his stay in London, particularly in Deptford but in other parts as well. Bearing in mind recent comments about London being put on the map in the last couple of weeks, I was interested to read that "at the time [Peter's arrival in 1698] London was Europe's largest city: with a population of 675,000 at the beginning of the eighteenth century".
After some description of the devastation caused by the Great Fire and of the rebuilding that was going on, Mr Romanyuk adds that London was also a great sea port. In the year of Peter's arrival 13,444 ships had visited it.
Event Number 6 on the London Historians site
KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY TOURI have been round a part of that very large cemetery and can thoroughly recommend the tour.
Sunday 18 September 2011, 2pm – 5pm (approx)
Meet at the Anglican Chapel. Nearest Tube: Kensal Green or Ladbroke Grove.
Kensal Green Cemetery is one of the so-called Magnificent Seven – cemeteries which were established in London’s suburbs during the Victorian period in the interests of public health. Notable “residents” include the Brunels (pere and fils), Charles Babbage, Anthony Trollope and many others. We have 12 places booked on the official tour run by the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery. This means that we’ll have access to the fine chapel and also the catacomb, both of which are normally closed to the public. An extra treat for us is that LH member Sue Bailey, who runs the London Cemeteries blog, will be giving her personal tour after FKGC. There are some very good pubs nearby – we’ll repair to one of these afterwards for drinks.
£7, to include tea and biscuits, pay on the day.
To book your place, please send email to admin@londonhistorians.org with “Kensal Green” in the subject line. Preference will be given to London Historians members in the first instance.
Tory Historian has found two blogs that might be of interest to readers and they both seem to be authored by the same person except that both seem to have a number of other bloggers. In fact, one on Georgian London seems to be more of a magazine than a blog with the number of guests writing about their interests.
Lucy Inglis, expert on Georgian London and particularly interested in artisans and immigrants to London in that period, is also the blogger in residence at the Museum of London, a very fine place that Tory Historian has not visited for far too long. Nevertheless, the Museum's blog seems to have a number of authors who deal with different aspects of that institution and its work. Very interesting it is, too.
London Historian reminds all those in or around London that this Saturday there will be no fewer than four guided walks to do with London's rivers, presumably those that are now underneath roads helping to destabilize London's buildings.
Tory Historian investigated the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum on Friday morning and a separate blog is called for that institution. However, while waiting for a friend and lulled by the beautiful autumnal weather TH took this picture of Clive silhouetted against the Foreign Office.
Tory Historian is very fond of St Pancras station, its combination of exoticism with the Eurostar trains and the longest champagne bar in the world with the more homely commuter trains and the large shopping, eating and drinking area.
One of the best sights is this charming statue to Sir John Betjeman, poet, writer, campaigner and all-round Good Egg, besides the Eurostar trains. Around the statue it is written: Sir John Betjeman 1906 - 1984, Poet and Saviour of this glorious station. A great memorial even apart from his poems.
That may be a rhetorical question with the answer being no in all cases but there must come a time, says Tory Historian, when even a politician is held to his (in this case but let us not be sexist) promises.
Tory Historian has a distinct memory of Boris Johnson, at present Hizonner the Mayor of London, promising in his electoral campaign to deal with the vexed issue of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, one of the few matters that do lie within the Mayor's competence in a sensible fashion.
There was going to be a statue of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park GBC, KBE, MC and Bar, DFC, RAF, the man who was in direct command of pilots and those who assisted them during the Battle of Britain; the man who was responsible for the defence of London; and one who has no proper memorial in Britain.
Indeed, a model was produced by the sculptor, Les Johnson and it seemed to all who are genuinely interested in what happens in Trafalgar Square rather than those who bleat about the latest trends taken up by the art establishment or about it all being so much fun having jolly rubbish on the Fourth Plinth, that the statue would be appropriate both artistically and historically.
It seems that Hizonner the Mayor is not prepared to fight for this one. The idea and the stature have been rejected
Westminster council officials say the proposed statue of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park would clash with the changing series of contemporary sculptures on the fourth plinth.Tory Historian could not believe that there was anybody in the whole world who could spout this rubbish. An adverse impact on its surroundings? Have these people been to Trafalgar Square? Do they realize what sort of adverse impact plastic shelving (the last exhibit) or moronic narcissists getting up on the plinth to be filmed for an hour at a time have on the surroundings and on the mental welfare of passers-by?
Councillors will decide on Thursday whether to accept their recommendation. The planning report says the bronze statue would have an "adverse impact" on its surroundings because it is too representational and traditional.
Is it not time Hizonner the Mayor started thinking about fulfilling his promise or explaining that he cannot do so because he has not got the power?
Tory Historian went to the Barbican today (on the Circle Line from Westminster and it did not take all that long – what is the world coming to) but found that the Le Corbusier exhibition, much discussed in the media, does not actually open till tomorrow. Bad planning and an unusual misreading of the programme. Never rely on media write-ups, is a good motto and Tory Historian should have remembered it.
So it was off for a cup of tea to the remarkably unpleasant and unattractive old-fashioned canteen-like Waterside Café. The little booklet on the Le Corbusier exhibition and attendant programme says:
The last truly utopian planning project in London and greatly inspired by his [Le Corbusier’s] aesthetic, the Barbican presents the perfect backdrop to discover the man and his legacy.That is the precise sentence as printed; therefore Tory Historian takes no responsibility for the shoddy grammatical structure. The content is of interest, though.
Le Corbusier is probably one of the evil geniuses of the twentieth century, a man with whose legacy we are still contending. His notion that people’s lives can be wrenched out of their accepted grooves, arranged and organized according to some grand plan devised by those who know best fitted in well with many other, more political than cultural views of the time. The appropriateness of the Barbican, one of London’s ugliest structures, hosting the exhibition had already occurred to Tory Historian.
It is, however, interesting that this monstrous, unattractive in any weather and shambolic building should be described as “the last utopian planning project in London”. Want to know what a twentieth century utopia was intended to be once all those who opposed it had been carted off to the concentration camps? Well, go to the Barbican and try to navigate your way round it, not forgetting the unattractive eating places and the incomprehensible lifts.Then look across the water at St Giles Cripplegate, a mediaeval church, much rebuilt and enlarged through the centuries with which Milton, Cromwell, Frobisher and, even Bunyan were connected. It survived the Great Fire but was gutted by German bombs in 1940. The outside survived even the Blitz and was restored using the plans of the reconstruction of 1545, after another fire. Utopia loses to history. Long may that continue.
This week-end Tory Historian has fulfilled a long-standing ambition and visited Benjamin Franklin’s House in Craven Street, near Charing Cross Station. Well, worth a visit if you have a couple of hours to spare.
The house is as it was in the days when Franklin lived in London, trying to negotiate an agreement between the British government and the Colonies on matters to do with taxation as well as conducting scientific research, writing many things, including his Autobiography and leading and intensely busy social life.
However, there is next to no furniture. Instead of filling the house up with contemporary artefacts, the people who run it have opted for an alternative solution. They have used voices from different parts of the room, films and the presence of one actress who plays the daughter of Franklin’s landlady and the wife of the anatomist who conducted classes in the house to give a very fair idea of the great man, his many friends and interests and of the busy life of the household at the time.
Occasionally we see and hear of riots both in America and in London with the implication that in 1775 Franklin barely escaped with his life.
All in all a praiseworthy enterprise and a fascinating slice of history. Tory Historian went with a Canadian friend who was visiting London and is, like TH, something of a Franklin admirer. Sad to say, all the other people in the group were American visitors. Not that Tory Historian has any objections to American visitors, especially if they are interested in Benjamin Franklin’s stay in London but it would have been nice to see some British students of eighteenth century history. The word “students” here is used in the widest possible sense.
Franklin is as much part of our history as of America’s. He was described as a Citizen of the World, who was also a great patriot. He was, to use our own terminology, a great Anglospherist. He was desperate to avoid war between Britain and her colonies and desperately sad and angry when it became impossible. But, when the time came, he signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
