On 1 June 2002, the first national law prohibiting ‘light pollution’ went into effect. The Czech Republic became the first nation to outlaw excess outdoor light. All outdoor light fixtures in the country must be shielded to ensure light goes only in the direction intended, and not above the horizontal. Czech astronomers had lobbied for the legislation. Light from street and road signs bounces off molecules in the atmosphere, making skies less dark. This light pollution is a particular problem for astronomers since even low levels of man-made light from distant cities can obscure their view of faint objects far away in space. Better designed, non-polluting light fixtures should give everyone better more energy efficiency and reduce glare on roads and in residential areas.

East Greenwich Gas Works
The East Greenwich Gas Works of the South Metropolitan Gas Company was the last gas works to be built in London.

Located on the Greenwich Peninsula by the Thames in south-east London, the works was built between 1881 and 1886. Most of the works was built on a greenfield site on Greenwich Marshes. The start of work on the site was complicated by proposals to build a dock system on the peninsula, similar to that on the Isle of Dogs across the river. Originally proposed in the 1850s, this plan was resurrected in the 1880s, but eventually came to nothing. The works was built under the auspices of the South Metropolitan Gas Company’s chairman George Livesey. Before construction could begin many tons of clinker and heavy rubbish were dumped in order to build up the marshy ground. The gas works eventually occupied most of the east and centre of the peninsula, stretching for around 1.2 miles from Blackwall Point, southeast towards New Charlton and covering some 240 acres. The works took over the chemical works of Frank Hills at Phoenix Wharf on the east side of the peninsula, which already used tar and ammonia from existing gas works. In 1889 (during a time of labour unrest including the 1889 dock strike) under the leadership of Will Thorne the workforce resigned en masse in an attempt to prevent a profit-sharing scheme with anti-strike clauses. Livesey successfully brought in labour from outside to replace the workforce. The site had two very large gas holders. The first, built in 1886 and of 8,600,000 cubic feet was the world’s first ’four lift’ (moving section) holder. The second, with six lifts and originally the largest in the world at 12,200,000 cubic feet, was reduced to 8,900,000 cubic feet when it was damaged in the Silvertown explosion in 1917, but was still the largest in England until it was damaged again by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb in 1978. It was later demolished. An extensive internal railway system carried coal from a large coaling pier to the rest of the plant. In the 1920s the Government Fuel Research Station next to the works (on land owned by the company) began research into coal liquefaction in order to make petroleum. It also performed surveys of the properties of coal, and is believed to have carried out chemical weapons research. This closed in 1958, its work transferring to the Warren Spring Laboratory. Following nationalisation of the gas industry in 1949 the plant was taken over by the South Eastern Gas Board, later passing to British Gas plc. In the early 1960s oil gasification plant was introduced, greatly increasing capacity. In 1965 the site produced around 400,000,000 cubic feet of gas, the largest in the world for a single site. After introduction of North Sea gas production ceased in 1976. The gasification plant was mothballed for many years, but eventually demolished. Initial decontamination was carried out by BAM Nuttall for British Gas, with the development being known as Port Greenwich. This included excavation to 15 metres to remove tar from the aquifer and driving a 100 metres diameter sheet pile ring into the London Clay. Around 120 tons of benzene and other hydrocarbons was removed from the soil. Further decontamination was performed by English Partnerships. Redevelopment began in the late 1990s, the first development being the Millennium Dome, originally intended to be a temporary structure to be removed after 2000. The site is covered by many developments, principally The O2, North Greenwich tube station, David Beckham Academy, a retail park and multiplex cinema, a hotel, primary school, Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park and Greenwich Millennium Village. Several sites remain to be developed. Two small sections of the plant’s coaling jetty are preserved as part of North Greenwich Pier, one acting as the base for Anthony Gormley’s sculpture Quantum Cloud. Nothing remains of the works but a single gas holder, built in 1886.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

View of London from Southwark (c1630), section A forest of church spires. More morbidly, London Bridge displays heads on spikes at the southern gate

Dutch School (Museum of London)

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.

On 31 May 1919, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was put to the test. The total eclipse of the Sun has been the subject of scientific interest ever since the time of the Ancient Babylonian astronomers, but of all the thousands of eclipses studied by scientists, the eclipse of 31 May 1919 was the most important. It was able to provide the clinching evidence in favour of one of the most revolutionary ideas in the history of physics, namely Einstein?s theory of general relativity. Although general relativity was a radically new formulation of gravity, its predictions were largely consistent with Newton?s highly successful theory of gravity. However, Einstein?s theory did make one or two predictions which distinguished it from Newton?s theory, and, if true, these predictions would show that Einstein?s model was closer to reality. For example, Einstein predicted that a gravitational field should bend rays of light much more than was expected by Newton?s theory of gravity. Although the effect was too small to be observed in the laboratory, Einstein calculated that the immense gravity of the massive sun would deflect a ray of light by 1.75 seconds of arc ? less that one thousandth of a degree, but twice as large as the deflection according to Newton, and significant enough to be measured. Einstein pictured a scenario whereby the straight line of sight between a star and an observer on Earth would be just blocked by the edge of the Sun. Einstein believed that the star would still be visible because gravity would bend the rays of light around the sun and towards the earth. The sighting of a star that should have been blocked by the sun would prove Einstein right, but it is generally to impossible to see starlight that passes close to the Sun, because it is swamped by the brilliance of the sun itself. However, during an eclipse, the Sun is blacked out by the Moon, and under such conditions a gravitationally distorted star should be visible. General relativity was born in 1915 during the First World War, and as soon as the war ended the Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Dyson began preparing for the next total eclipse, which would occur on 29 May 1919, and which would be an opportunity to test Einstein?s theory. He had already recruited Arthur Eddington, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, to make the observations, a decision that was largely a consequence of Eddington?s pacifist beliefs. The son of devout Quakers, Eddington had nearly spent the war as a conscientious objector peeling potatoes in an army camp, but instead Dyson had arranged for a letter of deferment, which allowed him to carry on his astronomical research. However, in return, Eddington had to promise to make the trek to the island of Principe, off the coast of West Africa, one of the best locations for observing the 1919 eclipse. The eclipse seemed almost too good to be true. Totality would last for 410 seconds, almost seven minutes, which is extraordinarily long for an eclipse, and which would provide plenty of opportunity for measurements to be taken. Also, the eclipse would occur against the rich background of the Hyades constellation, increasing the likelihood for an appropriately positioned star. However, as the vital day approached a cloud, or rather several, loomed on the horizon. It rained every day for the nineteen days prior to the eclipse, and as the eclipse began on 29 May, the sun was obscured by clouds. For 400 seconds the eclipse was hidden from view, and throughout this period Eddington prayed. Then with only ten seconds of the eclipse remaining, the skies miraculously cleared, and he was able to take just one meaningful photograph. Eddington compared his eclipse photos with images taken when the sun was not present, and announced that the sun had caused a deflection of roughly 1.61 seconds of arc, a result that was in agreement with Einstein?s prediction, thereby validating the theory of general relativity. Eddington?s result was hailed as a wondrous piece of science, experimental validation of the greatest intellectual achievement of the of the youthful twentieth century, a sign of optimism in a world that had been torn apart by war. J.P. McEvoy, author of the ?Eclipse?, encapsulated the significance of the announcement: ?A new theory of the universe, the brain-child of a German Jew working in Berlin, had been confirmed by an English Quaker on a small African island.?

Philharmonic Hall
The Philharmonic Hall was a major music hall throughout the 1860s and early 1870s.

The Philharmonic Hall was built by the contractors Holland and Hannen on the site of some former tenements. It opened with a banquet on 7 November 1860. The Hall was the first of many places of entertainment that would be built on this site, culminating in the Islington Empire of 1908. The Hall was redecorated in 1874 and the building was also renamed the Philharmonic Theatre, with a seating capacity for some 758 people. Alas it was destroyed by fire in September 1882. The Grand Theatre opened on its site in August 1883. Like its predecessor, the (first) Grand Theatre was destroyed by fire, this time only four years after being built, during the staging of the annual Christmas pantomime on 29 December 1887. The owners, Holt and Wilmot, immediately set about rebuilding the Theatre with Frank Matcham again doing the redesign. The second Grand Theatre reopened a year later on 1 December 1888 with a production of ’The Still Alarm’. Despite constructing every available surface out of concrete, this Theatre too, like all its predecessors, was also devastated by fire on 26 February 1900. The fire broke out on a Monday morning when the Theatre had been staging the drama ’Hearts are Trumps’. The third Grand Theatre was opened on 26 December 1900 with a production of the pantomime ’Robinson Crusoe’. Again the work was carried out under the supervision of Frank Matcham. In 1908 the Grand Theatre was renamed the Islington Empire, running as a variety theatre by its manager Walter Gibbons. In 1912 the theatre was renamed again to the Islington Palace, run by Charles Guliver. After being renamed back to the Islington Empire, it was turned over to full time cinema use and was taken over by the Associated British Cinemas chain in 1938. ABC closed the cinema on the 10 March 1962. The auditorium was demolished and the site used as a car park, leaving only some of the exterior walls and facade still standing. The entrance of the former theatre became the entrance to the car park.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

Queen’s Road Station, Bayswater (c. 1916)

Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1942)

Video: Oyster
Getting around London with Oyster

On 31 May 1919, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was put to the test. The total eclipse of the Sun has been the subject of scientific interest ever since the time of the Ancient Babylonian astronomers, but of all the thousands of eclipses studied by scientists, the eclipse of 31 May 1919 was the most important. It was able to provide the clinching evidence in favour of one of the most revolutionary ideas in the history of physics, namely Einstein?s theory of general relativity. Although general relativity was a radically new formulation of gravity, its predictions were largely consistent with Newton?s highly successful theory of gravity. However, Einstein?s theory did make one or two predictions which distinguished it from Newton?s theory, and, if true, these predictions would show that Einstein?s model was closer to reality. For example, Einstein predicted that a gravitational field should bend rays of light much more than was expected by Newton?s theory of gravity. Although the effect was too small to be observed in the laboratory, Einstein calculated that the immense gravity of the massive sun would deflect a ray of light by 1.75 seconds of arc ? less that one thousandth of a degree, but twice as large as the deflection according to Newton, and significant enough to be measured. Einstein pictured a scenario whereby the straight line of sight between a star and an observer on Earth would be just blocked by the edge of the Sun. Einstein believed that the star would still be visible because gravity would bend the rays of light around the sun and towards the earth. The sighting of a star that should have been blocked by the sun would prove Einstein right, but it is generally to impossible to see starlight that passes close to the Sun, because it is swamped by the brilliance of the sun itself. However, during an eclipse, the Sun is blacked out by the Moon, and under such conditions a gravitationally distorted star should be visible. General relativity was born in 1915 during the First World War, and as soon as the war ended the Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Dyson began preparing for the next total eclipse, which would occur on 29 May 1919, and which would be an opportunity to test Einstein?s theory. He had already recruited Arthur Eddington, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, to make the observations, a decision that was largely a consequence of Eddington?s pacifist beliefs. The son of devout Quakers, Eddington had nearly spent the war as a conscientious objector peeling potatoes in an army camp, but instead Dyson had arranged for a letter of deferment, which allowed him to carry on his astronomical research. However, in return, Eddington had to promise to make the trek to the island of Principe, off the coast of West Africa, one of the best locations for observing the 1919 eclipse. The eclipse seemed almost too good to be true. Totality would last for 410 seconds, almost seven minutes, which is extraordinarily long for an eclipse, and which would provide plenty of opportunity for measurements to be taken. Also, the eclipse would occur against the rich background of the Hyades constellation, increasing the likelihood for an appropriately positioned star. However, as the vital day approached a cloud, or rather several, loomed on the horizon. It rained every day for the nineteen days prior to the eclipse, and as the eclipse began on 29 May, the sun was obscured by clouds. For 400 seconds the eclipse was hidden from view, and throughout this period Eddington prayed. Then with only ten seconds of the eclipse remaining, the skies miraculously cleared, and he was able to take just one meaningful photograph. Eddington compared his eclipse photos with images taken when the sun was not present, and announced that the sun had caused a deflection of roughly 1.61 seconds of arc, a result that was in agreement with Einstein?s prediction, thereby validating the theory of general relativity. Eddington?s result was hailed as a wondrous piece of science, experimental validation of the greatest intellectual achievement of the of the youthful twentieth century, a sign of optimism in a world that had been torn apart by war. J.P. McEvoy, author of the ?Eclipse?, encapsulated the significance of the announcement: ?A new theory of the universe, the brain-child of a German Jew working in Berlin, had been confirmed by an English Quaker on a small African island.?

Stirling Corner
Stirling Corner is the road junction of the A1 Barnet Bypass and Barnet Lane.

A Mr Stirling opened a garage at the junction – hence both Stirling Corner and Stirling Way. This dual carriageway was part of a 1920–4 road improvement programme that was mentioned in parliament in 1928 as “hopefully being completed by the end of the summer”. The A1 northbound carriageway passes the entrance to Scratchwood, an area of ancient forest which is now a Local Nature Reserve, then crosses the A411 from Watford to Barnet at the Stirling Corner roundabout. A proposed link road at this roundabout, estimated at £22.8m in 1987, would have provided access to the M1, but the plans were subsequently abandoned. The link had been planned during discussions for the Hendon Urban Motorway, which was intended to carry the M1 all the way down to Hyde Park Corner as part of the London Ringways scheme; the interchange would have been junction 3 on the motorway. Past Stirling Corner, the A1 skirts Borehamwood, before turning northeast and running through open countryside to Bignell’s Corner.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

Entrance to the Fleet River, c. 1750

Samuel Scott

Video: Co-ordinate near to Gardner Close, Wanstead
Jago Hazzard went to the far reaches of the Central Line

Home of Rest for Horses
The Home of Rest for Horses was situated at the corner of Furzehill Road and Barnet Lane, near Borehamwood.

Opened as a Charity in 1886, the Home of Rest for Horses became a refuge where horses and donkeys could rest and find peace and contentment following their devoted service, purpose-built stables were opened in 1933. It was demolished in the 1970s to make way for housing. The Home moved to Buckinghamshire where it thrives to the present day. In the photograph, the stables and fields are pictured.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

Christmas, Tower of London Ice Rink New English Art Club 2018 annual exhibition

Andrew Macara

Video: Oyster
Getting around London with Oyster

Canterbury Music Hall
The Canterbury Music Hall was established in 1852 by Charles Morton on the site of a former skittle alley adjacent to the Canterbury Tavern at 143 Westminster Bridge Road.

It was the first purpose-built music hall in London, and Morton came to be dubbed the Father of the Halls as hundreds of imitators were built within the next several years. The theatre was rebuilt three times, and the last theatre on the site was destroyed by bombing in 1942. Morton and Frederick Stanley, his brother in law, purchased the Canterbury Arms, in Upper Marsh, Lambeth, in 1849. Morton was experienced in presenting ’Gentlemen Only’ entertainments in his other pubs, and he had been impressed with the entertainments at Evans Music-and-Supper Rooms in Covent Garden and decided to offer a harmonic meeting, held on Saturdays, in the back room of the public house. He brought in smart tables, with candlesticks, allowing audiences to sit and eat comfortably while watching concerts known as ’Sing-Songs’ or ’Free and Easys’ on Mondays and Saturdays. Soon, a Thursday evening programme was added to accommodate the crowds. Morton encouraged women to attend the entertainments, giving the venue wider appeal than the old time song and supper rooms, which were male preserves. Entry was free, but the profits from the sale of food and drink allowed the construction of a larger hall on the site of the former skittle alley, at the back of the public house. This 700 seat hall took a year to build and opened as the Canterbury Hall on 17 May 1852, described as “the most significant date in all the history of music hall”. The hall charged a modest admission and looked like most contemporary concert rooms within public houses of the period. It specialised in programmes of light music and ballads. Professional performers could earn high fees, and this attracted performances of selections from opera, including the first performances of Jacques Offenbach’s music in England. The venture was profitable, and a new theatre was built in 1856, of unprecedented size, seating 1500. In order not to interrupt the flow of profits, the theatre was constructed around the walls of the 1852 hall, and when it was complete, the old building within was demolished in a single weekend. This new theatre was the first purpose-built tavern music hall and opened in December 1856, as the New Canterbury Hall. The building had a grand entrance with extensive windows and a glazed roof that could be withdrawn to let the cigar and pipe smoke out. The bar was installed on a balcony over the hall, reached by ascending a grand staircase. The fittings were luxurious, with chandeliers and painted walls. At the end of the main hall there was a simple stage with a grand piano and harmonium to provide entertainment between the acts. The ’chairman’ sat on the stage, introduced the acts, provided his own ’patter’ and exhorted the patrons to drink. The entrance fee was 6 pence downstairs, and 9 pence upstairs. Customers sat at small tables, and waiters brought food and drink to them. The 1859 expansion of the viaducts carrying trains to Waterloo railway station separated the theatre entrance from the auditorium, and patrons entered through a long arched tunnel under the railway, entertained by an aquarium. In 1861, Blondin walked a tightrope fixed between the balconies of the hall. Their success at the Canterbury allowed Stanley and Morton to build The Oxford, in Holborn, as a competitor to the nearby Weston’s Music Hall, opening on 26 March 1861. The pair managed both halls, with acts moving between the halls in coaches. On Boxing Night 1867, William Holland took over management of the Canterbury and refurbished the hall at considerable cost. When informed that his purchase of a 1000 Guineas carpet was too good for his clientele, he invited them “to come in and spit on it”. Further popularity accrued to the venue when classical music was removed from the bill and George Leybourne was engaged at £20 a week as lion comique. Leybourne remained top of the bill for some twenty years, before succumbing to the effects of the champagne he promoted here under the guise of “Champagne Charlie”. R. E. Villiers took over the management in 1876 and spent £40,000 to enlarge the theatre. He reintroduced a popular ballet item featuring the dancers Phyllis Broughton and Florence Powell. Topical ballets, such as Plevna and Trafalgar (both by the Belgian choreographer Henri Leopold De Winne), drew in the crowds, including the Prince of Wales. In 1877, the Queen’s theatre in Long Acre and the Canterbury were joined by overhead wires, and public demonstrations of the Cromwell Varley telephone were given. Several simple tunes were transmitted and emitted softly from a large drum-like apparatus suspended over the proscenium. Robert W. Paul’s Theatrograph was used at the theatre from 27 April 1896, a year after it had first been demonstrated at the Alhambra in Leicester Square. The film programme included Boxers and Lady Gymnast. These early experiments in films were only a partial success. In his autobiography, former Lambeth resident Charlie Chaplin recalls seeing his father, Charles Chaplin Senior, performing at the Canterbury. Later Chaplin, himself, played there. The hall was rebuilt as the 3000 seater Canterbury Theatre of Varieties in 1890 by Frank Matcham; and alterations were made in 1902. By 1915, this theatre came to be used as a cinema and was extensively damaged by bombing in 1942. The remains were finally demolished in 1955.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

Trafalgar Square at Christmas

Stanley Roy Badmin (1906-89)

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.

Tyburn
Tyburn was a village of Middlesex close to the current location of Marble Arch and the southern end of Edgware Road.

It took its name from the Tyburn Brook, a tributary of the River Westbourne. The name Tyburn, from Teo Bourne meaning ’boundary stream’, is quite widely occurring. The Tyburn consisted of two arms, one of which, crossed Oxford Street, near Stratford Place; while the other – later called the Westbourne – followed nearly the course of the present Westbourne Terrace and the Serpentine. The Westbourne had rows of elms growing on its banks which became a place of execution. The former Elms Lane in Bayswater, preserved the memory of these fatal elms, which can be regarded as the original ’Tyburn Trees.’ Tyburn Brook should not be confused with the better known River Tyburn, which is the next tributary of the River Thames to the east of the Westbourne. The village was one of two manors of the parish of Marylebone, which was itself named after the stream, St Marylebone being a contraction of St Mary’s church by the bourne. Tyburn was recorded in the Domesday Book and stood approximately at the west end of what is now Oxford Street at the junction of two Roman roads. The predecessors of Oxford Street (called Tyburn Road in the mid 1700s) and Edgware Road were roads leading to the village, later joined by Park Lane (originally Tyburn Lane). In the 1230s and 1240s the village of Tyburn was held by Gilbert de Sandford, the son of John de Sandford who had been the Chamberlain of Queen Eleanor. Eleanor had been the wife of King Henry II who encouraged her sons Henry and Richard to rebel against her husband, King Henry. In 1236 the city of London contracted with Sir Gilbert to draw water from Tyburn Springs, which he held, to serve as the source of the first piped water supply for the city. The water was supplied in lead pipes that ran from where Bond Street Station stands today, one-half mile east of Hyde Park, down to the hamlet of Charing (Charing Cross), along Fleet Street and over the Fleet Bridge, climbing Ludgate Hill (by gravitational pressure) to a public conduit at Cheapside. Water was supplied free to all comers. Tyburn had significance from ancient times and was marked by a monument known as Oswulf’s Stone, which gave its name to the Ossulstone Hundred of Middlesex. The stone was covered over in 1851 when Marble Arch was moved to the area, but it was shortly afterwards unearthed and propped up against the Arch. It has not been seen since 1869. Public executions took place at Tyburn, with the prisoners processed from Newgate Prison in the City, via St Giles in the Fields and Oxford Street. After the late 18th century, when executions were no longer carried out in public, they were carried out at Newgate Prison itself and at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in Southwark. The first recorded execution took place – that of William Fitz Osbert, the populist leader of the poor of London – at a site next to the stream in 1196. In 1571, the Tyburn Tree was erected at the junction of today’s Edgware Road, Bayswater Road and Oxford Street, near where Marble Arch is situated today. The “Tree” or “Triple Tree” was a novel form of gallows, consisting of a horizontal wooden triangle supported by three legs (an arrangement known as a “three-legged mare” or “three-legged stool”). Several felons could thus be hanged at once. The Tree stood in the middle of the roadway, providing a major landmark in west London and presenting a very obvious symbol of the law to travellers. The site of the gallows is now marked by three young oak trees that were planted in 2014 on an island in the middle of Edgware Road at its junction with Bayswater Road. Between the trees is a roundel with the inscription “The site of Tyburn Tree”. By the late 1700s, London’s sprawl had reached along Oxford Street and Tyburn village lost its identity.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

“A View of London taken off Lambeth Church”, hand-coloured engraving by John Boydell. On the right is Lambeth Marsh, possibly somewhat idealised, with Lambeth Palace in the foreground. Much of Lambeth continued to be marsh until the beginning of the 19th century. On the left is Westminster and Westminster Bridge across the Thames. In the distance is St Paul’s Cathedral.

John Boydell/Yale Center for British Art

Video: Oyster
Getting around London with Oyster

Montagu House
Montagu House at 22 Portman Square was a historic London house.

Occupying a site at the northwest corner of the square, in the angle between Gloucester Place and Upper Berkeley Street, it was built for Mrs Elizabeth Montagu, a wealthy widow and patroness of the arts, to the design of the neoclassicist architect James Stuart. Construction began in 1777 and the house was completed in 1781, whereupon it became Mrs Montagu’s London residence until her death on 25 August 1800. The house was destroyed by an incendiary bomb in the Blitz of London and the site is now occupied by the Radisson SAS Portman Hotel.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

Westminster Abbey with a procession of Knights of the Bath (1749)

Canaletto

Video: Co-ordinate near to Gardner Close, Wanstead
Jago Hazzard went to the far reaches of the Central Line

Speakers’ Corner
Speakers’ Corner is in the northeast corner of Hyde Park.

Speakers’ Corner is found close to the site of Tyburn gallows, where public hangings took place between 1196 and 1783. Legend has it the origins of Speakers’ Corner lie in the tradition of granting last words to those condemned to die. Speakers here may talk on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police tend to be tolerant and therefore intervene only when they receive a complaint. On some occasions in the past, they have intervened on grounds of profanity. Historically there were a number of other areas designated as Speakers’ Corners in other parks in London (e.g., Lincoln’s Inn Fields Finsbury Park, Clapham Common, Kennington Park, and Victoria Park). Though Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner is considered the paved area closest to Marble Arch, legally the public speaking area extends beyond the Reform Tree and covers a large area from Marble Arch to Victoria Gate, then along the Serpentine to Hyde Park Corner and the Broad Walk running from Hyde Park Corner to Marble Arch. Public riots broke out in the park in 1855, in protest over the Sunday Trading Bill, which forbade buying and selling on a Sunday, the only day working people had off. The riots were described by Karl Marx as the beginning of the English revolution. The Chartist movement used Hyde Park as a point of assembly for workers’ protests, but no permanent speaking location was established. The Reform League organised a massive demonstration in 1866 and then again in 1867, which compelled the government to extend the franchise to include most working-class men. The riots and agitation for democratic reform encouraged some to force the issue of the “right to speak” in Hyde Park. The Parks Regulation Act 1872 delegated the issue of permitting public meetings to the park authorities (rather than central government). Contrary to popular belief, it does not confer a statutory basis for the right to speak at Speakers’ Corner. Parliamentary debates on the Act illustrate that a general principle of being able to meet and speak was not the intention, but that some areas would be permitted to be used for that purpose. Since that time, it has become a traditional site for public speeches and debate, as well as a major site of protest and assembly in Britain. There are some who contend that the tradition has a connection with the Tyburn gallows, where the condemned man was allowed to speak before being hanged. Although many of its regular speakers are non-mainstream, Speakers’ Corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and William Morris. Its existence is frequently upheld as a demonstration of free speech, as anyone can turn up unannounced and talk on almost any subject, although always at the risk of being heckled by regulars.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

“The Thames from Millbank”, oil on canvas, Richard Redgrave (1804-1888), created around 1836. The scene depicted is around the year 1815.

Richard Redgrave/Victoria and Albert Museum

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Somerset House, Park Lane
Somerset House was an 18th-century town house on the east side of Park Lane, where it meets Oxford Street, in the Mayfair area of London. It was also known as 40 Park Lane, although a renumbering means that the site is now called 140 Park Lane.

The house was built between 1769 and 1770 for John Bateman, 2nd Viscount Bateman and was designed by the master carpenter John Phillips, who was the “undertaker” for the whole north-west corner of the Grosvenor estate. The new house was built with one side facing Park Lane, the main entrance being from a courtyard which continued the line of Hereford Street. It had four storeys above ground, with bay windows extending through the floors. One bay faced Park Lane, and two more faced the garden, which ran down to North Row. Although all surviving pictures of the house show it cased in stucco, at the outset the facades may have been bare brick, with the windows dressed in Portland stone. On the ground floor, the entrance hall was paved in Portland stone and leading from it were the dining room, the drawing room and a dressing room. The staircase rose from the hall, with stone steps and iron railings, to the second floor, which had three principal rooms, including Lady Bateman’s bedroom and her dressing-room. Of the chimneypieces in the main rooms, some cost £25 each, others £50. At the northern end of the courtyard, where it met Oxford Street, there was a stable building, and under it with the kitchen, connected to the house by an underground passage from basement to basement. In 1789 Bateman sold the house to Warren Hastings, a former Governor-General of India, for about £8,000, of which half was paid at once, with Hastings moving in during November 1789. This was shortly after he had been impeached, and he used the house as his London home throughout several years of a long trial which led to his acquittal in 1795. In 1797 he sold the house at auction, when it was bought by the third Earl of Rosebery for £9,450. Rosebery was offered the pictures on the walls but declined them, and Hastings later noted in his diary that they were “sold at Christie’s for nothing”. Little is known of Lord Rosebery’s eleven years of occupation. In 1808 the house was sold to the eleventh Duke of Somerset (1775-1855), when it was described as “a very good one”. The 11th Duke renamed the house “Somerset House”, which Sir John Colville later called “a shade presumptuous of him, for there was another more splendid establishment bearing the name…” The house thus became the third ’Somerset House’ in London. The Duke negotiated unsuccessfully with his neighbour Lord Grenville, who lived at Camelford House, Park Lane, as he wished to add to his new house, but enlarging it to the south would have detracted from Camelford, so in 1810 Somerset approached the second Earl Grosvenor about building in the courtyard between the house and the stables. However, there was doubt about the status of the yard, and Grosvenor thought the extension would darken Hereford Street. In 1813 the Duke wrote to his brother, Lord Webb John Seymour, about his wife: “Charlotte is as busy as a bee upon a bank of thyme. Furnishing her house has been one occupation, and she has the fashionable predilection for old things”. In 1819 the Duke again thought of building on his garden, and after negotiations with Grenville and Grosvenor a short two-storey extension close to the windows of the library at Camelford House was built, and in 1821 or 1822 a single-storey entrance corridor was added on the north side. The Duke’s first duchess died at Somerset House in 1827, and he himself died there in 1855. After that, his second wife remained at the house until she died in 1880. The twelfth Duke made repairs, carried out by William Cubitt and Co., but after he died in 1885 the house was empty for some years. The 12th Duke used the address “40, Park Lane”. He left the house to his daughter Lady Hermione Graham, who became a widow in 1888. In 1890, she and her son Sir Richard Graham sold it to George Murray Smith, of Smith, Elder & Co., the publishers. George Murray Smith, born in 1824, occupied the house, which became known as 40, Park Lane, until he died in 1901. The lease continued in his family until 1915, his widow remaining living there until May 1914, but in 1906, negotiations began for the redevelopment of the Somerset House site together with Camelford House. The 2nd Duke of Westminster, as freeholder, was uneasy about allowing the two demolitions, “having regard to No. 40 having historical associations”, but in the end he agreed to the scheme. Camelford House was demolished in 1913. When Mrs Murray Smith left she claimed that the house possessed “vaults with chains in them”, including a cell said to have been used for prisoners being taken to Tyburn, but when this was investigated by the Grosvenor estate surveyor, Edmund Wimperis, he found nothing of the kind. In 1901, a writer in The Architectural Review complained that Park Lane’s former “casual elegance” was being replaced by a “frippery and extravagance” which looked like converting it into another Fifth Avenue. In 1905 a newspaper noted that “the thoroughfare is becoming a less popular place of residence, eight of the houses being to be let or sold”. Soon, there were complaints of noise from motor buses, and by 1909 property values had fallen. These factors led to the demolition of the house in 1915, to be replaced by the first flats built in Park Lane. There was public opposition to the development, but the flats, designed by Frank Verity, were built on the site in 1915-19.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

’A View of Erith, Looking Up the Thames” , hand-coloured etching by John Boydell (1750)

Yale Center for British Art

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.

Barra Hall Park
Barra Hall Park is an 11 hectare formal park situated near the centre of Hayes.

Barra Hall was originally a manor house, and formerly known as Grove House. In the late eighteenth century it was home to Harvey Combe, who became Lord Mayor of London in 1799. In 1871 was bought by Robert Reid, an auctioneer and surveyor who claimed descent from the Reids of Barra. After enlarging and refacing the building he changed its name to Barra Hall in 1875. On 20 December 1923, Hayes Urban District Council bought Barra Hall and its grounds from then owner Ethel Penfold for £5700 in order to use it as a town hall. The Barra Hall building was officially opened as town hall on 23 February 1924 and its grounds became a municipal park with playground, tennis courts and a paddling pool opened by music hall star Jessie Matthews. Barra Hall Park features ornamental lawns, recreational grass areas, rose and shrub beds, seasonal bedding and mature trees.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

“Jewin Crescent, London EC1” This 1940 drawing is by Roland Vivian Pitchforth – one of his works for the War Artists Advisory Committee and looks west along Jewin Crescent.

Roland Vivian Pitchforth/Imperial War Museum

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