One Word Sunday
Tag: History
What a Shambles
Shambles is a term for an open air slaughterhouse and meat market. Streets of that name were so called from having been the sites on which butchers killed and dressed animals for consumption. As far as I can ascertain there are only about ten streets or areas left in the UK that are known as “The Shambles”. Manchester has one as do Sevenoaks,… Continue reading What a Shambles
Ship Ahoy! in Shaftesbury Avenue?
“….that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” I believe is a lyric by Joni Mitchell and very succinct when applied to the rather tatty looking shop premises in the picture. Shaftesbury Avenue, which is where this shop is located slices diagonally through the fringes of Covent Garden, Soho and Chinatown to end… Continue reading Ship Ahoy! in Shaftesbury Avenue?
Philpot Lane (No Mice)
A few posts ago I took a look at a quirky piece of art that adorns the wall of a building on Philpot Lane and so as I was there so to speak, I thought I’d take a look at the lane itself. In the late fourteen hundreds the lane was known as St Andrew… Continue reading Philpot Lane (No Mice)
The Philpot Lane Mice
Question: What is the smallest piece of public art within the City of London? To answer that question let me take you back to the 1860s and the redevelopment of Eastcheap, the street that runs east from the Monument towards the Tower of London. The block adjoining Philpot Lane was demolished and the architect Robert Lewis… Continue reading The Philpot Lane Mice
Den of Thieves
The title of this piece wasn’t hard to come up with, however I wasn’t sure what the source was. It actually comes from the Bible. Well in this, the Den of Thieves is known as a Patter-Free Lumber. There were many of these dotted around London, one of them was located at 23 New Boswell… Continue reading Den of Thieves
Flood Warning!
It’s been decidedly wet over the last few days and being outside for most of them has left me feeling rather damp on my return home. So to continue this moist motif I came across a nice little bit of London Folklore which pre-dates the Thames Barrier by a hundred years. Its connected to the… Continue reading Flood Warning!
Puggy Booth
Now there’s a name to go by. A tough Georgian bare knuckle pugilist, or a renown Victorian cricketer known for stubbornly occupying his crease perhaps? Well the answer is neither and in fact the name goes to an artist of great repute. The name was not one given at birth and in fact was not… Continue reading Puggy Booth
A baby, but no bath water
Whilst rooting about in A Survey Of The Cities Of London and Westminster written by John Strype in the 1720s for some information, I came across a story by accident that is too good not to tell. The story is set near to the Tower of London and centres around the Churchyard of All Hallows-by-the-Tower,… Continue reading A baby, but no bath water
When nature calls
The Victorians seem to have laid claim to the invention of modern Sanitary Fixtures. It is a widely-held belief that Thomas Crapper designed the first flush toilet in the 1860s, but it was actually 300 years earlier during the 16th century. The credit for inventing the flush toilet goes to Sir John Harrington, godson of… Continue reading When nature calls
A LONDON MISCELLANY 