Last week I posted about the debacle of the Marble Arch Mount, which got me thinking of a similar instance of abject failure over 125 years earlier. Watkin’s Tower was a partially completed viewing tower in Wembley Park. Its construction was the vision of Sir Edward Watkin the railway entrepreneur and was an ambitious project to create a 358… Continue reading Sheer Folly
Tag: London
Reflection
One Word Sunday The spire of St Clement Danes and behind the Royal Courts of Justice on an overcast Sunday morning.
Streets, Stories and a Soft Shoe Shuffle
Now and again A London Miscellany Tour goes so well that it calls for a little celebration. After a faultless tour yesterday, where I remembered all the names and dates without reference to my notes (it was a new tour) I felt the urge to break out into a little jig.
…”and something for the weekend sir?”
Six Word Saturday I really like the old Dundee Courier building on Fleet Street, if it wasn’t for the lettering it would be quite an austere plain brick facade, but the typography lifts it and turns it into quite a warm looking building. It sits at number 186, the location of the fictional demon barber… Continue reading …”and something for the weekend sir?”
Hype versus reality
It’s easy to sit back look at something in hindsight and say “I told you so”. Well I’m not guilty of that, because I never shared my feelings to anybody else, but my unease seems to have been vindicated. The matter in question was the building of “London’s newest tourist attraction”, or “London’s newest expensive… Continue reading Hype versus reality
Market Day
In the last post I wrote about Clare Market an area of London that from the 1600s was synonymous with Butchers and Greengrocers. So today I thought I’d look at a few of the other markets that once drew in the punters. The largest and probably best known of all of London’s markets was Cheapside.… Continue reading Market Day
How Curious
There is a small area of central London crammed in between Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Strand and Aldwych. The area is known as Clare Market and is taken up in the most part by the London School of Economics (LSE). The area of Clare Market was originally centred on a small market building constructed by… Continue reading How Curious
Old
One Word Sunday The Old Curiosity Shop has been an iconic Dickensian site since the mid-1880s, when its owner, with no justification whatsoever decided to emblazon the words “Immortalised by Charles Dickens” above the door. However, it is an old building, probably dating to the sixteenth century. Dickens buffs have always been rightly sceptical about… Continue reading Old
Shoe Leather
A while ago I posted a piece about a London guidebook that was published in 1937. In Quantity, not quality I shared an itinerary that was in the guidebook for the visitor to London that has a day to take in the sights. The amount of places and distance travelled were quite staggering and I… Continue reading Shoe Leather
Stairway to Heaven
I’ve always wondered at the design of the escalator system on many of London’s underground stations. It is such a simple idea, but the machinery involved is quite complex. The only design limitation came when they were retro fitted to existing stations with limited space. It was in 1892 that the first working escalator materialised,… Continue reading Stairway to Heaven
A LONDON MISCELLANY 