Churches

The 'Roman' bath, though not the buildings over it, dates from the early seventeenth century. The Watch House, once belonging to St Clement Danes, looks early nineteenth century in its present form, but there are documents to show that there was a building of this shape (projecting over the Lane) already in 1724, and a St Clement Danes Watch House on the Lane already in 1607.  The patch of brickwork at bottom left, directly under the Watch House outer wall, is seventeenth century and the last bit of the old Somerset House still visible above ground level.

Shops, seasons, buildings, sounds....

Everything special about Strand in Professor Brant's memory.

 

In Agatha Christie style, my subtitle is:  “The Curious Case of the Poisoned Umbrella”, the assassination of Georgi Markov.

I should first declare some slight personal involvement:  I am the widow of perhaps the most well regarded Bulgarian intellectual émigré:  Petar Ouvaliev, cultural commentator for the BBC Bulgarian service at Bush House and to whom Georgi Markov wrote in the late ‘60s asking for help in obtaining work in the United Kingdom.

A successful and published writer in Bulgaria, why should Markov have wanted to come and perhaps settle in the UK? Read more »

Crowds watching the Duke of Wellington's funeral procession on 18 November 1852 - no-one now on top of St Mary's (Illustrated London News 27 November 1852, 472)

On 29 April 1802, crowds assembled to watch a grand procession, celebrating the proclamation of peace between Great Britain and France; as the report published in The European Magazine 41 (January - June 1802), 410, reveals, not all of them lived to tell the tale: Read more »

 ‘Discover a local Golden Moment’: advertisement for Symonds cider, on the bus stop outside the entrance to King’s College London, April/May 2011 (now removed). Read more »

Composed by Michael Caines, runner-up of the Cosmo Davenport-Hines Poetry Prize.

Your three islands 

You lose your language in the church:

A stillness island, traffic-bordered. Read more »

In 1147 the site was occupied by the church of The Nativity Of Our Lady and the Innocents. This was demolished in 1549 to make way for Somerset House, Protector Somerset promised to rebuild it but never did so and for nearly 200 years the parishioners had used the Savoy Chapel. A maypole used to stand on the green outside. During 1714-1717 the present small baroque church designed by James Gibb, was built as the first of the 50 new churches which were built in London in accordance with the act of 1711. It was Gibbs's first public building and 'Got him great reputation'.

During the vote for the increase in student fees, outside the palace of Westminster the students expressed their anger.