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.
Streatham Vale The development of Streatham Vale dates from the 1920s. Although the Greyhound Inn was established around 1730, the area was rural until the early twentieth century.
In 1875, the western half of Greyhound Lane became Streatham Vale.
From 1922, the Streatham Vale Estate – built largely by two firms, R.H. Miller and Wates of Norbury – kickstarted suburban development.
Around 1930 schools opened on Streatham Vale, the Greyhound Inn was rebuilt and the River Graveney was culverted to prevent flooding.
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.
“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
Video: Flying into LCY A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.
On 20 January 1320, Wladyslaw I was crowned king of Poland and ruled until 1333.
He was the unifier of the Polish Nation bringing together a series of Polish principalities into a kingdom and laying the foundations for a strong Polish nation.
He also defeated the Knights of the Teutonic Order in his quest for a strong Poland.
Wood Green Wood Green is a suburban district lying to the east of Alexandra Palace, identified by the London Plan as one of the metropolitan centres in Greater London. The name Wood Green derives from ’Woodlea’, a Saxon word meaning ’’open ground near a wood’. In this case it relates to an opening in Tottenham Wood, an extensive area of woodland which formerly covered most of this area. Records suggest that settlement around Wood Green did not start till after the Norman Conquest. The earliest surviving written record of the placename is a reference in documentation dating from 1256, which relates to a grant for Ducketts Manor which used to be located just to the east of the present-day Wood Green High Road.
From the latter half of the 14th century, a number of estates developed around Wood Green, including Ducketts. In the early 17th century, the lord of Tottenham Manor, the Earl of Dorset, conducted a survey of his land. It showed that Wood Green had only sixteen houses and 50 inhabitants.
At around the same time as the survey, the New River was constructed through Wood Green. The proximity of Wood Green to the new watercourse saw several large properties constructed in the area, initially as country retreats for wealthy Londoners. These included Cherson House, Moat Cottage, Wood Green Cottage and the Grange, all of which were situated on the fringes of Wood Green Common and dated from the 17th century. Wood Green House (c. 1780), Chitts Hill House (c. 1805) and Bounds Green House were constructed at the perimeter of the common.
Wood Green’s first inn and recognisable businesses appeared. In 1770 George Chesser established a blacksmith’s shop on the corner of Green Lanes and Lordship Lane (at Spouter’s Corner). In 1781, the Three Jolly Butchers inn was opened on the west side of Green Lanes.
During the first half of the 19th century, the number of people in the area began to increase significantly. The centre of Wood Green’s gravity moved north and east with most development taking place in a triangle directly north of St Michael’s Church. By the time of the publication of the 1869 Ordnance Survey map, Clarence Road, Truro Road, Nightingale Road, Finsbury Road and Commerce Road were all laid out.
The opening of the Great Northern Railway Line station at Wood Green in 1859 encouraged further development. By the end of the nineteenth century, much of Wood Green had been built up.
Wood Green underground station opened on 19 September 1932 as the first section of the Cockfosters extension from Finsbury Park was opened. The station, designed by Charles Holden, is a well-preserved example of the modernist house style Holden developed for London Transport in the 1930s.
When the Cockfosters extension was planned, alternative names for this station — Lordship Lane and Wood Green Central – were considered, but rejected.
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.
Georg Giese from Danzig, 34-year-old German merchant at the Steelyard, painted in London by Hans Holbein in 1532
On 20 January 1320, Wladyslaw I was crowned king of Poland and ruled until 1333.
He was the unifier of the Polish Nation bringing together a series of Polish principalities into a kingdom and laying the foundations for a strong Polish nation.
He also defeated the Knights of the Teutonic Order in his quest for a strong Poland.
Dormers Wells Dormers Wells or Dormer’s Wells is a neighbourhood consisting of a grid of mostly semi-detached or terraced houses with gardens and small parks. Until urban/suburban development in the mid 20th century this area formed a small, east part of the Precinct of Norwood a relatively rare half subdivision of the large parish of Hayes.
Southall and Norwood manors in much of the medieval period belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury hence giving the Norwood quasi-chapelry — virtually all a mixed agricultural area which covered today’s Dormer’s Wells, Norwood Green and Southall — the higher, less alienable status of a precinct.
The 12th century founded, much-altered chapel is St Mary’s Church, Norwood Green.
St John’s Church, Southall was built and endowed in 1838; consecrated in three years and made a parish in 1850. Nine years later Norwood precinct was created a parish separate from that of Hayes.
Further Anglican churches followed: Holy Trinity, St George, Christ the Redeemer and Emmanuel none are named after this area.
In 1800 the precinct’s overshot flour mill on the edge of the fields associated with “Dorman’s Well Farm” belonged to the Hayes manorial estate, the main manor in the parish. At that date it stood, together with a house and other property, at Dorman’s Well. The overshot mill, comprising a mill, house, millpond, and land, was owned by the Earl of Jersey in 1821 (Villiers family seated at nearby Osterley Park) and in the 1860s stood, as before, on Windmill Lane at Dorman’s Well.
In the late 20th century migration into the area included part of London’s Sikh community, who established a large community building and venue for public hire, the Baba Wadbhag Singh Trust building.
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.
Tube Rain (2015)
John Duffin is a print maker and painter well-known for his striking prints focusing on great architecture, depictions of modern life in urban environments and city streets at different times of day.
On 19 January 1998, Carl Perkins died.
He was a sharecropper’s son who learned music on a guitar fashioned from a cigar box and broomstick, was a rockabilly pioneer, influencing the likes of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. He died of complications resulting from a series of recent strokes. Perkins was a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and wrote the definitive anthem of ’50s cool’, Blue Suede Shoes. His career took off in 1956, when he wrote and recorded the song after hearing a young man warn his prom date not step on his fancy footwear.
Chenies Chenies is a village in Buckinghamshire on the border with Hertfordshire, east of Amersham and north of Chorleywood. Until the 1400s, the village name of Chenies was Isenhampstead. There were two settlements here: Isenhampstead Chenies and Isenhampstead Latimers, distinguished by two lords of the manors. In the 19th century the prefix was dropped and the two villages became known as Latimer and Chenies.
The parish church of St Michael includes the Bedford Chapel, burial place of many notable members of the Russell family.
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 Sunset with a View of Nine Elms” (c.1755)
Samuel Scott/Tate Britain
Video: Flying into LCY A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.
On 19 January 1998, Carl Perkins died.
He was a sharecropper’s son who learned music on a guitar fashioned from a cigar box and broomstick, was a rockabilly pioneer, influencing the likes of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. He died of complications resulting from a series of recent strokes. Perkins was a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and wrote the definitive anthem of ’50s cool’, Blue Suede Shoes. His career took off in 1956, when he wrote and recorded the song after hearing a young man warn his prom date not step on his fancy footwear.
Islington Islington grew as a sprawling Middlesex village along the line of the Great North Road, and has provided the name of the modern borough. Some roads on the edge of the area, including Essex Road, were known as streets by the medieval period, possibly indicating a Roman origin, but little physical evidence remains. What is known is that the Great North Road from Aldersgate came into use in the 14th century, connecting with a new turnpike up Highgate Hill. This was along the line of modern Upper Street, with a toll gate at The Angel defining the extent of the village. The Back Road – modern Liverpool Road – was primarily a drovers’ road where cattle would be rested before the final leg of their journey to Smithfield. Pens and sheds were erected along this road to accommodate the animals.
The first recorded church, St Mary’s, was erected in the twelfth century and was replaced in the fifteenth century. Islington lay on the estates of the Bishop of London and the Dean and Chapter of St Pauls. There were substantial medieval moated manor houses in the area, principally at Canonbury and Highbury. In 1548, there were 440 communicants listed and the rural atmosphere, with access to the City and Westminster, made it a popular residence for the rich and eminent. The local inns, however, harboured many fugitives and recusants.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the availability of water made Islington a good place for growing vegetables to feed London. The manor became a popular excursion destination for Londoners, attracted to the area by its rural feel. Many public houses were therefore built to serve the needs of both the excursionists and travellers on the turnpike. By 1716, there were 56 ale-house keepers in Upper Street, also offering pleasure and tea gardens, and activities such as archery, skittle alleys and bowling. By the 18th century, music and dancing were offered, together with billiards, firework displays and balloon ascents. The King’s Head Tavern, now a Victorian building with a theatre, has remained on the same site, opposite the parish church, since 1543. The founder of the theatre, Dan Crawford, who died in 2005, disagreed with the introduction of decimal coinage. For twenty-plus years after decimalisation (on 15 February 1971), the bar continued to show prices and charge for drinks in ’old money’.
By the 19th century many music halls and theatres were established around Islington Green. One such was Collins’ Music Hall, the remains of which are now partly incorporated into a bookshop. The remainder of the Hall has been redeveloped into a new theatre, with its entrance at the bottom of Essex Road. It stood on the site of the Landsdowne Tavern, where the landlord had built an entertainment room for customers who wanted to sing (and later for professional entertainers). It was founded in 1862 by Samuel Thomas Collins Vagg and by 1897 had become a 1800-seat theatre with 10 bars. The theatre suffered damage in a fire in 1958 and has not reopened.
The Islington Literary and Scientific Society was established in 1833 and first met in Mr Edgeworth’s Academy on Upper Street. Its goal was to spread knowledge through lectures, discussions, and experiments – politics and theology being forbidden. A building, the Literary and Scientific Institution, was erected in 1837 in Wellington (later Almeida) Street, designed by Roumieu and Gough in a stuccoed Grecian style. It included a library (containing 3,300 volumes in 1839), reading room, museum, laboratory, and lecture theatre seating 500.
The Royal Agricultural Hall was built in 1862 on the Liverpool Road site of William Dixon’s Cattle Layers. It was built for the annual Smithfield Show in December of that year but was popular for other purposes, including recitals and the Royal Tournament. It was the primary exhibition site for London until the 20th century and the largest building of its kind, holding up to 50,000 people. It was requisitioned for use by the Mount Pleasant sorting office during World War II and never re-opened. The main hall has now been incorporated into the Business Design Centre.
The aerial bombing of World War II caused much damage to Islington’s housing stock, with 3,200 dwellings destroyed. Before the war a number of 1930s council housing blocks had been added to the stock. After the war, partly as a result of bomb site redevelopment, the council housing boom got into its stride, reaching its peak in the 1960s: several extensive estates were constructed, by both the Metropolitan Borough of Islington and the London County Council. Clearance of the worst terraced housing was undertaken, but Islington continued to be very densely populated, with a high level of overcrowding. The district has many council blocks, and the local authority has begun to replace some of them.
From the 1960s, the remaining Georgian terraces were rediscovered by middle-class families. Many of the houses were rehabilitated, and the area became newly fashionable. This displacement of the poor by the aspirational has become known as gentrification. Among the new residents were a number of figures who became central in the New Labour movement, including Tony Blair before his victory in the 1997 general election. According to The Guardian in 2006, “Islington is widely regarded as the spiritual home of Britain’s left-wing intelligentsia.” The Granita Pact between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair is said to have been made at a now defunct restaurant on Upper Street.
The completion of the Victoria line and redevelopment of Angel tube station created the conditions for developers to renovate many of the early Victorian and Georgian townhouses. They also built new developments. Islington remains a district with diverse inhabitants, with its private houses and apartments not far from social housing in immediately neighbouring wards such as Finsbury and Clerkenwell to the south, Bloomsbury and King’s Cross to the west, and Highbury to the north west, and also the Hackney districts of De Beauvoir and Old Street to the north east.
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.
Fox Hill, Upper Norwood by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
Camille Pissarro was born in St Thomas (then a Danish possession) in the West Indies but lived and worked mainly in the Paris area. He was an Impressionist and mainly painted landscapes.
He visited London in 1870-71 and painted London views.
On 18 January 1701, Frederick III of Brandenburg was crowned Frederick I, king of Prussia beginning the rise of the Prussian state.
On 18 January 1871, on the 170th birthday of Prussia, it ceased to exist. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed the first emperor of Germany in the hall of mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
The First Reich began after the Prussians had defeated France swiftly in a brief war.
Millwall Millwall is the historic name for an area on the west of the Isle of Dogs. Originally known as Marshwall, the area acquired its new name after its break with the parish of Poplar – Millwall was part of Poplar until the 19th century. The new name of Millwall was due to the large number of windmills built on the river wall in the 19th century. It became heavily industrialised, containing the workplaces and homes of a few thousand dockside and shipbuilding workers.
Millwall F.C. was founded in the area during 1885 as Millwall Rovers. The team moved south of the river to New Cross in 1910.
On 31 January 1858, the largest ship of that time, the SS Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was launched from Napier Yard. Due to the technical difficulties of the launch, this was the last ship of such a size to be built on the island.
In the 1860s, the Millwall Dock was built, extending from the Thames into the centre of the Isle of Dogs. The spoil from the dock was left as the Mudchute.
The postwar period saw the area become a focus of regeneration programmes on the former industrial land in Millwall. Like other parts of the Isle of Dogs, substantial redevelopment has been ongoing since the 1980s, resulting in modern buildings beginning to predominate over the remaining early 20th century “two up, two down” semi-detached and terraced homes that housed the dock workers.
The area remains home to a number of council estates.
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 Bridge from the Old Swan” by the Irish painter Hubert Pugh (1780)
Shooting the tidal rapids at old London Bridge was dangerous; many passengers preferred to get off at the Old Swan, and walk.
Immediately across the river in the painting is St Saviour’s Church, now Southwark Cathedral.
Hubert Pugh (Bank of England Museum)
Video: Flying into LCY A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.
On 18 January 1701, Frederick III of Brandenburg was crowned Frederick I, king of Prussia beginning the rise of the Prussian state.
On 18 January 1871, on the 170th birthday of Prussia, it ceased to exist. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed the first emperor of Germany in the hall of mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
The First Reich began after the Prussians had defeated France swiftly in a brief war.
Harold Park Harold Park lies to the east of Greater London, straddling the tracks of the Elizabeth Line. In 1868 a wealthy Brentwood solicitor built a mansion to the south of the River Ingrebourne and railway line, named Harold Court. The owner went bankrupt and the house became in turn a children’s home, a lunatic asylum and then a sanatorium. In 1959 it became a teacher training college and is now private flats.
Horse Block Farm lay to the north-east of Harold Court Road. After the First World War, Essex builders Iles and Company laid out a bungalow estate and called it ’Sunnytown’.
Harold Court primary school opened in 1929.
A riverside industrial estate that was created after the Second World War on the site of a brickworks.
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.
Fox Hill, Upper Norwood by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
Camille Pissarro was born in St Thomas (then a Danish possession) in the West Indies but lived and worked mainly in the Paris area. He was an Impressionist and mainly painted landscapes.
He visited London in 1870-71 and painted London views.
On 18 January 1701, Frederick III of Brandenburg was crowned Frederick I, king of Prussia beginning the rise of the Prussian state.
On 18 January 1871, on the 170th birthday of Prussia, it ceased to exist. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed the first emperor of Germany in the hall of mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
The First Reich began after the Prussians had defeated France swiftly in a brief war.
Crayford Ness Crayford Ness is largely a tidal wetland – the easternmost area in the part of Greater London south of the Thames. Situated at the mouth of the River Darent, it has a small industrial estate – the Darent Industrial Estate – built on the site of the former Thames Ammunition Works. This 40 acre site operated between 1879 and 1962.
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.
Reflections on the Thames, Westminster, London (1880)
John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes. Today, he is considered one of the great painters of the Victorian era.
On 17 January 1949, the first TV sitcom debuted in the United States.
The Goldbergs, television’s first situation comedy, ran until 1954. The show, which evolved from a nearly 20-year-old popular radio programme of the same name, followed the adventures of a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx. Gertrude Berg played gossipy housewife Molly Goldberg, and Philip Loeb played her husband, Jake, who worked in the clothing business. They had two teenagers, Sammy and Rosalie.
In each episode, the family would face another typical middle-class problem–and Molly enjoyed trying to help the neighbours in her apartment complex solve their problems, too. Later, when the fictitious family moved from the Bronx to suburban Haverville, the cast was joined by philosophical Uncle David, Sammy’s fiancee (who later became his wife), her mother, and new neighbours. In 1952, Loeb was blacklisted for alleged Communist sympathies.
The show’s sponsor, General Foods, dropped the series, and the show moved to NBC-without Loeb, though Berg had fought to keep him aboard. Loeb declared under oath he had never been a member of the Communist Party, and the charges were never proved, but his career was destroyed. He died in 1955 after taking a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a hotel room.
Claremont Claremont, an estate and suburb of Esher, takes its name from an 18th-century Palladian mansion of the same name. The house of Claremont is now occupied by Claremont Fan Court School and its landscaped gardens are owned and managed by the National Trust.
The first house on the estate was built in 1708 by Sir John Vanbrugh for his own use. He also built the stables and the walled gardens and very probably White Cottage, which is now the Sixth Form Centre of Claremont Fan Court School.
In 1714 he sold the house to the Whig politician Thomas Pelham-Holles, Earl of Clare, who later became Duke of Newcastle and served twice as Prime Minister. The earl commissioned Vanbrugh to add two great wings to the house and to build a fortress-like turret on an adjoining knoll.
The Earl of Clare named his country seat Claremont.
When the Duke died in 1768, his widow sold the estate to Robert Clive (of India). Lord Clive decided to demolish the house and commissioned Lancelot “Capability” Brown to build the present Palladian mansion on higher ground. Clive is reputed to have spent over £100 000 on rebuilding the house and a complete remodelling of the celebrated pleasure grounds. However, Clive never lived here as he died in 1774, the year that the house was finished. The estate then passed through a succession of owners, finally to Charles Rose Ellis.
In 1816 Claremont was bought by the British Nation by an Act of Parliament as a wedding present for George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte and her husband Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Princess Charlotte, who was second in line to the throne, was, after two miscarriages, died there after giving birth to a stillborn son in November 1817. Although Leopold retained ownership of Claremont until his death in 1865, he left the house in 1831 when he became the first King of the Belgians.
Queen Victoria lent the house to the exiled French king and queen Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amelie, the parents-in-law of Leopold I of Belgium, after the revolutions of 1848. The exiled king died here in 1850.
Victoria bought Claremont for her fourth and youngest son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, when he married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1882. Claremont should have passed to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg on his mother’s death in 1922, but because he had served as a German general in the First World War, the British government disallowed the inheritance. Claremont was accordingly confiscated and sold by the Public Trustee to shipping magnate Sir William Corry, director of the Cunard Line. After Sir William’s death, it was bought by Eugen Spier, a wealthy German financier. In 1930 the Mansion stood empty and was marked for demolition when it was bought, together with the Belvedere, the stables and 30 acres of parkland, by the Governors of a south London school, later renamed Claremont School and since 1978 known as Claremont Fan Court School.
Claremont has become the general name for an area south of Esher town south to the Esher Bypass. In the north it covers exclusive housing, most notably Kinfauns – George Harrison’s home in the 1960s and 1970s. In the south Claremont Landscape Garden is a National Trust garden covering the grounds of the mansion.
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.
On 17 January 1949, the first TV sitcom debuted in the United States.
The Goldbergs, television’s first situation comedy, ran until 1954. The show, which evolved from a nearly 20-year-old popular radio programme of the same name, followed the adventures of a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx. Gertrude Berg played gossipy housewife Molly Goldberg, and Philip Loeb played her husband, Jake, who worked in the clothing business. They had two teenagers, Sammy and Rosalie.
In each episode, the family would face another typical middle-class problem–and Molly enjoyed trying to help the neighbours in her apartment complex solve their problems, too. Later, when the fictitious family moved from the Bronx to suburban Haverville, the cast was joined by philosophical Uncle David, Sammy’s fiancee (who later became his wife), her mother, and new neighbours. In 1952, Loeb was blacklisted for alleged Communist sympathies.
The show’s sponsor, General Foods, dropped the series, and the show moved to NBC-without Loeb, though Berg had fought to keep him aboard. Loeb declared under oath he had never been a member of the Communist Party, and the charges were never proved, but his career was destroyed. He died in 1955 after taking a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a hotel room.
Whipps Cross The ’Whipps Cross’ name specifically applies to the junction of Lea Bridge Road with Whipps Cross Road and Wood Street. Whipps Cross is first mentioned in local records of the late fourteenth century as Phip’s cross, referring to a wayside cross set up by a member of the family of a John Phyppe. Further versions on maps and deeds are Phyppys Crosse in 1517, Fypps Chrosse in 1537, Phippes Cross in 1572, and finally Whipps Cross by 1636. The change in the initial consonant is thought to have been a product of the local Essex dialect at that time, in which ’F’ sounds were pronounced as ’W’.
To the south of Whipps Cross Road and west of James Lane, the Forest House estate had its origins in a lease of land granted by the Abbot of Stratford Langthorne Abbey in 1492.
Forrest House was built by 1568. Ownership of the estate passed to James Houblon, a wealthy City merchant of Huguenot descent, in 1682. Houblon built a new house in the English Baroque style. In 1703, the estate was sold to Sir Gilbert Heathcote, the last Lord Mayor of London to ride on horseback at the Lord Mayor’s Show. The estate was later sold to the Bosanquet family in 1743, and it remained in their hands until 1889, when it was sold to the West Ham Board of Guardians who established a workhouse.
During World War I, the workhouse infirmary was used to treat wounded soldiers and this became Whipps Cross Hospital in 1917. Of notable births at the hospital’s maternity unit was one David Beckham.
The area to the south and west of Whipps Cross is residential, mainly terraced housing built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The boundary between Whipps Cross and Upper Walthamstow to the west and with Leytonstone to the south is ill-defined.
To the east of Whipps Cross is an area of Epping Forest called Leyton Flats, which features a lake created from old gravel pits called the Hollow Pond.
In 1905, a swimming pond was excavated by manual labour as part of an unemployment relief scheme, located to the north of the Hollow Pond. It was locally known as the ’Batho’. In 1932, a new open-air swimming pool, now called Whipps Cross Lido, was opened there by the Lord Mayor of London. By the 1980s, attendances had fallen and the decision was taken to close the lido on 4 September 1982. The site was levelled and returned to forest land.
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.
