The London Daily Newsletter Tuesday 8 August The London Necropolis Railway was opened in 1854 as a reaction to severe overcrowding in London’s existing graveyards and cemeteries. 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.
The London Daily Newsletter Tuesday 8 August The Hungerford Stairs were the entrance point to Hungerford Market from the River Thames. They are now the site of Charing Cross railway Station. 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 London Daily Newsletter Tuesday 8 August The Hungerford Stairs were the entrance point to Hungerford Market from the River Thames. They are now the site of Charing Cross railway Station. 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 London Daily Newsletter Monday 7 August A local West Hampstead builder, Thomas Potter, constructed Cedars in 1878. 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.
The London Daily Newsletter Monday 7 August Leytonstone is an area of east London and part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest . 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.
Vestry House Museum The Vestry House Museum features the history of Waltham Forest. Situated in Walthamstow Village, the building used to house the parish workhouse, and was later a police station and private home.
It now contains themed displays capturing the unique heritage of the local area and includes a Victorian parlour, costume gallery and wonderful display of locally manufactured toys and games.
A collection of 80 000 historic photographs from across the Borough is accessible to everyone by appointment. The volunteer-run garden is an oasis in which to relax and enjoy the arrival of spring.
On permanent display in the museum is the Bremer Car, the first British motor car with an internal combustion engine, which was built by Frederick Bremer in a workshop at the back of his family home in Connaught Road, Walthamstow. The car first ran in 1892 and was donated to the museum by Bremer in 1933.
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.
Hendon Central (1928) Photographed in 1928, this stretch of Watford Way at Hendon Central Circus had recently been built along ancient Butchers Lane and shops were rapidly lining its sides. The United Dairies occupied the domed building, a prestigeous site. Further up Hendon Way you can see an island site between the two carriageways with a pond and war memorial. The houses here were demolished in the 1940s.
Taken at the junction of Queens Road, this photograph is taken on more or less the same spot as a 1923 photo.
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.
London Omnibus (1914)
Chevalier Fortunino Matania (1881–1963) was an Italian artist noted for his realistic portrayal of First World War trench warfare and of a wide range of historical subjects.
Fortunino Matani
Video: Flying into LCY A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.
Royal Society The Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of science, engineering and medicine. The Society has played a part in some of the most fundamental, significant, and life-changing discoveries in scientific history and Royal Society scientists continue to make outstanding contributions to science in many research areas.
The origins of the Royal Society lie in an ’invisible college’ of natural philosophers who began meeting in the mid-1640s to discuss the new philosophy of promoting knowledge of the natural world through observation and experiment, which we now call science.
Its official foundation date is 28 November 1660, when a group of 12 met at Gresham College after a lecture by Christopher Wren, then the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and decided to found ’a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning’. This group included Wren himself, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray, and William, Viscount Brouncker.
The Royal Society’s motto ’Nullius in verba’ roughly translates as ’take nobody’s word for it’. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.
The Society was to meet weekly to witness experiments and discuss what we would now call scientific topics. The first Curator of Experiments was Robert Hooke. It was Moray who first told the King, Charles II, of this venture and secured his approval and encouragement. At first apparently nameless, the name The Royal Society first appears in print in 1661, and in the second Royal Charter of 1663 the Society is referred to as ’The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge’.
The Society found accommodation at Gresham College and rapidly began to acquire a library (the first book was presented in 1661) and a repository or museum of specimens of scientific interest. After the Fire of 1666 it moved for some years to Arundel House, London home of the Dukes of Norfolk. It was not until 1710, under the Presidency of Isaac Newton, that the Society acquired its own home, two houses in Crane Court, off the Strand.
In 1662 the Society was permitted by Royal Charter to publish and the first two books it produced were John Evelyn’s Sylva and Micrographia by Robert Hooke. In 1665, the first issue of Philosophical Transactions was edited by Henry Oldenburg, the Society’s Secretary. The Society took over publication some years later and Philosophical Transactions is now the oldest scientific journal in continuous publication.
From the beginning, Fellows of the Society had to be elected, although the criteria for election were vague and the vast majority of the Fellowship were not professional scientists. In 1731 a new rule established that each candidate for election had to be proposed in writing and this written certificate signed by those who supported his candidature. These certificates survive and give a glimpse of both the reasons why Fellows were elected and the contacts between Fellows.
The Society moved again in 1780 to premises at Somerset House provided by the Crown, an arrangement made by Sir Joseph Banks who had become President in 1778 and was to remain so until his death in 1820. Banks was in favour of maintaining a mixture among the Fellowship of working scientists and wealthy amateurs who might become their patrons. This view grew less popular in the first half of the 19th century and in 1847 the Society decided that in future Fellows would be elected solely on the merit of their scientific work.
This new professional approach meant that the Society was no longer just a learned society but also de facto an academy of scientists. The Government recognised this in 1850 by giving a grant to the Society of £1000 to assist scientists in their research and to buy equipment. Therefore a Government Grant system was established and a close relationship began, which nonetheless still allowed the Society to maintain its autonomy, essential for scientific research. In 1857 the Society moved once more, to Burlington House in Piccadilly, with its staff of two.
Over the next century the work and staff of the Society grew rapidly and soon outgrew this site. Therefore in 1967 the Society moved again to its present location on Carlton House Terrace.
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 Surrey Canal, Camberwell (1935)
Algernon Newton began to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy summer shows in 1923 and he continued to send paintings for several decades. His chosen subjects were views of London, mostly in the St John’s Wood, Hampstead, Kentish Town and Paddington areas. He was particularly fond of including a stretch of water in his compositions and often chose back-street views of canals, as here. He liked the slightly forlorn Regency and early Victorian terraces that faced the canals, and gave them a curiously uninhabited look. He once wrote: ’There is beauty to be found in everything, you only have to search for it; a gasometer can make as beautiful a picture as a palace on the Grand Canal, Venice. It simply depends on the artist’s vision.’
Royal Aeronautical Society The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a British-founded multidisciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community. The objectives of Society include: to support and maintain high professional standards in aerospace disciplines; to provide a unique source of specialist information and a local forum for the exchange of ideas; and to exert influence in the interests of aerospace in the public and industrial arenas.
The Society was founded in January 1866 with the name The Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. Early or founding members included James Glaisher, Francis Wenham, the Duke of Argyll, and Frederick Brearey. In the first year, there were 65 members. In 1868 the Society held a major exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace – John Stringfellow’s steam engine was shown there. The Society sponsored the first wind tunnel in 1870-71, designed by Wenham and Browning.
In 1918, the organization’s name was changed to the Royal Aeronautical Society.
During the 1940s, the RAeS responded to the wartime need to expand the aircraft industry. The Society established a Technical Department to bring together the best available knowledge and present it in an authoritative and accessible form – a working tool for engineers who might come from other industries and lack the specialised knowledge required for aircraft design. This technical department became known as the Engineering Sciences Data Unit (ESDU) and eventually became a separate entity in the 1980s.
In 1987 the Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers and Technologists, previously called the Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers, was incorporated into the Royal Aeronautical Society.
The Royal Aeronautical Society is now a worldwide society with an international network of nearly 70 branches. Many practitioners of aerospace disciplines use the Society’s designatory post-nominals such as FRAeS, CRAeS, MRAeS, AMRAeS and ARAeS.
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.
“Bridge in London” (1908)
Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky or Dobužinskis (1875-1957) was a Lithuanian/Russian artist noted for his cityscapes conveying the explosive growth and decay of the early twentieth-century city.
On 16 February 1946, the first commercial helicopter, the four-seat Sikorsky S51, single rotor helicopter first flew. It was the first Sikorsky helicopter to be licensed by the U.S. Civil Aviation Administration for commercial operations.
The world’s first commercial sale was confirmed, with deliveries in August 1946, to Helicopter Air Transport of Philadelphia. It marked the end of the first phase of the helicopter’s evolution. The design established would be followed by others to this day. It could carry 3 passengers over 400 kilometres at a speed of 160 kp/h.
The S51 had a 15 metre span and a length of 12.5 metres.
Golders Green crossroads The Golders Green name derives from that of a local family – the Goodyers – and was first recorded in 1612. The hamlet of Golders Green originated as a group of cottages on waste ground on each side of the main road. In 1754, manorial waste at Golders Green stretched for some distance on either side of the main road from Hampstead.
By 1754 there were about 16 houses with small gardens at Golders Green, most of them on small inclosures from the waste and by 1751 there were two inns at Golders Green: the Hoop, commemorated later by the name ’’Hoop Lane’’, and the White Swan. The White Swan had tea gardens for summer visitors to Golders Green in 1882.
In the early 19th century, the manorial waste at Golders Green was enclosed for villas. In 1814 Golders Green contained ’many ornamental villas and cottages, surrounded with plantations’, and in 1828 detached houses spread on both sides of the road as far as Brent Bridge. The green was finally enclosed in 1873-4.
At Golders Green, a straggling hamlet in 1901, new houses were built at the corner of Wentworth Road and Hoop Lane in 1905.
The underground railway arrived in 1907. In that year, trams, and motorbuses, the area began to be developed into suburban streets of semi-detached houses, a process which continued into the 1930s.
At Golders Green cross-roads, near the Underground station, rows of shops were under construction in 1911-12 on a site which in 1904 had been deserted; churches, chapels, a theatre, a cinema, and a large shopping centre followed. The fire brigade opened a sub-station at Golders Green in 1900.
In 1911 the population had grown to 4465, and by 1931 it had reached 17 837.
The Refectory, now a pub, was opened in February 1916, and is thought to by some to be the first ever public restaurant supplied by electricity. The shopping district called ’Cheapside’), was well established by 1914. In June 1918 a Handley Page bomber crashed near to houses in Golders Green and in December 1920 a Handley Page passenger aircraft crashed into houses in Basing Hill.
By 1940 the area had developed into a centre in its own right, separate from Hendon, with a theatre (The Hippodrome 1913), a library (1935) and a cinemas (the Ionic 1913).
It is for its Jewish community that Golders Green is mostly famous. There were Jewish businesses and homes in Golders Green even by 1910, and by 1915 there were thought to be about 300 Jewish families living in Golders Green. By 1959 around a quarter of the population of the Borough of Hendon (which included Golders Green) was Jewish.
More recently, the lower half of Golders Green Road has attracted some Japanese and Asian businesses and many Polish people have moved into the area.
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.
Monet’s ’Le Parlement, soleil couchant,’ (The Houses of Parliament, at Sunset) (1900)
Claude Monet painted a series of impressionist oil paintings of the Palace of Westminster, home of the British Parliament, in the autumn of 1899 and the early months of 1900 and 1901 during stays in London. All of the series’ paintings share the same viewpoint from Monet’s window or a terrace at St Thomas’ Hospital overlooking the Thames.
By the time of the Houses of Parliament series, Monet had abandoned his earlier practice of completing a painting on the spot in front of the motif. He carried on refining the images back home in Giverny, France, and sent to London for photographs to help in this. This caused some adverse reaction, but Monet’s reply was that his means of creating a work was his own business and it was up to the viewer to judge the final result.
On 16 February 1946, the first commercial helicopter, the four-seat Sikorsky S51, single rotor helicopter first flew. It was the first Sikorsky helicopter to be licensed by the U.S. Civil Aviation Administration for commercial operations.
The world’s first commercial sale was confirmed, with deliveries in August 1946, to Helicopter Air Transport of Philadelphia. It marked the end of the first phase of the helicopter’s evolution. The design established would be followed by others to this day. It could carry 3 passengers over 400 kilometres at a speed of 160 kp/h.
The S51 had a 15 metre span and a length of 12.5 metres.
Blake Hall Blake Hall station was opened by the Great Eastern Railway on 1 April 1865 and closed on 2 November 1981. Steam locomotives operated by British Railways for the Underground ran a shuttle service from Epping to Ongar, stopping at Blake Hall, from 1949 until 1957, when the line was electrified and taken over by the Underground’s Central line.
On 18 April 1966 the goods yard was closed and Blake Hall became a dedicated passenger station. On 17 October 1966, Sunday services were withdrawn.
Blake Hall became reputed as the least-used station on the entire Underground network. Fare subsidies provided on the rest of the system were not provided on this part of the line because local government agencies for Essex and London failed to agree on their respective public transport responsibilities, and Blake Hall station was located a considerable distance from any substantial settlement.
By the time services were permanently discontinued on 31 October 1981, the station was reported to have only 17 passengers per day. The station was permanently closed down on 2 November 1981. The Epping to Ongar branch line was closed 13 years later, on 30 September 1994.
Blake Hall’s station building has since been converted into a private home.
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.
“Some High, Lonely Tow’r”
Woolwich-based artist Gail Brodholt creates striking linocuts of her city. “I suppose what I’m really interested in is those unconsidered and unnoticed places that people pass through,” says Brodholt, “They are on their way to somewhere else, presumably more important — on the escalators, on the tube, train station platforms, motorways..”
Gail Brodholt
Video: Flying into LCY A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.
Great Missenden Great Missenden once had its own Metropolitan Line station. Great Missenden is a large village in the valley of the River Misbourne in the Chiltern Hills lying between Amersham and Wendover. It is a few kilometres to the south of the prime minister’s country residence at Chequers and the village is now best known as home to the late Roald Dahl.
In 2019 the local postcode of HP16 was noted as the most affluent place in England.
Great Missenden station was opened on 1 September 1892 by the Metropolitan Railway when the railway was extended from Chalfont Road (now Chalfont and Latimer) to Aylesbury Town. The Great Central Railway also served the station from 1899 onwards, linking the station with Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield.
After the Metropolitan Railway became Metropolitan line of the London Underground, the line was fully electrified in the early 1960s only as far as Amersham. This meant that Great Missenden would now only be served by main line services. Responsibility for the railway north of Amersham to Aylesbury was transferred from London Transport to British Railways on 11 September 1961.
Many prime ministers have used the station when travelling to Chequers.
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.
St Paul’s Cathedral from Ludgate Circus, London c 1885
John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 – 1893) was a Victorian-era painter, notable for his landscapes.
In 1861, at the age of 24, to the dismay of his parents, he departed from his first job as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway to pursue a career in art. He began exhibiting in 1862, under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.
Wendover Wendover was a station on the Metropolitan Line. Wendover station was opened on 1 September 1892 by the Metropolitan Railway when the railway extended to Aylesbury. London Underground services finished in 1961 when the main line took over – now Chiltern Railways.
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.
Paddington Station at Night (1992)
Since Doreen Fletcher (born 1952) was a teenager, she has been committed to drawing and painting what might be termed, ‘the almost gone’ – her immediate external environment and the traces left by people on the surface of things, in city and landscape, urban and rural
Stoke Mandeville Stoke Mandeville was a station on the Metropolitan Line. Stoke Mandeville station was opened on 1 September 1892, by the Metropolitan Railway, when its main line was extended from Chalfont Road to Aylesbury Town. The Great Central Railway served the station from 1899, connecting the station to Leicester, Nottingham, and Sheffield.
London Transport services ceased in 1961.
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.
Aylesbury In 1868 the Aylesbury & Buckingham Railway – later part of the Metropolitan Railway – reached Aylesbury. The Metropolitan Railway opened from Chalfont Road in 1892 to a separate station named Aylesbury (Brook Street) adjacent to the GWR station. It closed in 1894 when services were diverted to the GWR station.
The Metropolitan Railway ran through trains from Baker Street to Verney Junction via Aylesbury and which operated until 1936. From 1948 to 1961 Aylesbury was the terminus of the Metropolitan’s main line, on which trains had to change between electric and steam locomotives at Rickmansworth. Following electrification from Rickmansworth to Amersham, Aylesbury stopped being served by London Underground trains.
The Great Central Railway reached Aylesbury in 1899 from Annesley Junction just north of Nottingham on its London extension line to London Marylebone. Until 1966 Aylesbury was an intermediate station on the former Great Central Main Line between London Marylebone and Sheffield Victoria and on to Manchester London Road via the Woodhead Tunnel. In 1966 British Railways closed the Great Central Main Line north of Aylesbury. Aylesbury was thus left with commuter services to London only.
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.
“Zoot Suits, London” (1948)
Edward John Burra was an English painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, best known for his depictions of postwar black culture in London.
Edward Burra (1905-1976)
Video: Flying into LCY A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.
