Bexleyheath Clock Tower
The Bexleyheath Coronation Memorial Clock Tower, commemorating the coronation of King George V, was formally opened on Bexleyheath Gala Day, 17 July 1912.

Designed by Walter Epps, the Clock Tower was intended to stand “as a memorial to the enterprise and loyalty of the inhabitants of Bexleyheath” and it was thought that the Clock Tower “would be the beginnings of better things to come in Bexleyheath”. The clock would certainly be useful for passengers waiting at the tram terminus at the Market Place. At the opening ceremony a “temporary” bust of King George V was unveiled. The architect, Epps, ended his speech with, “I hope to see all the niches filled with busts of members of the Royal Family”. A bell was installed on 17 June 1913 but in August 1914 the Defence of the Realm Act banned the ringing of bells for fear they might be used by German spies to convey secret messages. The bell did not ring again until the year 2000. During the 1930s the bust of King George disintegrated and then completely fell apart during cleaning after WWII. It was recast by John Ravera, Bexleyheath resident and a President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, and re-installed in its niche. In 1996 Ravera was commissioned to sculpt a bust of William Morris, who lived at the nearby Red House, and it was unveiled by the Mayor on 18 January 1997.

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

Bow Church
Bow Church is the parish church of St Mary and Holy Trinity, Stratford, Bow.

There has been a church on the same site for over 700 years. A chapel of ease on the site was licensed by Bishop Ralph Baldock of London on 17 November 1311 for the people of Stratford-at-Bow within the parish of Stepney. Before this date, churchgoers had had to travel to St Dunstan’s, Stepney. The present building is thought to have a 14th-century structure and the tower was added in the 15th century. It is constructed of Kentish Ragstone with brick additions. The chapel of ease arrangement allowed parishioners to practise their religion locally, but were still obliged to attend St Dunstan’s at Stepney on religious holidays and to help pay for the church’s upkeep. In 1497, an agreement was reached, whereby the people of Bow promised to acknowledge themselves as parishioners of Stepney and agreed to pay 24 shillings annually for repairs of the mother church. They could now dispense with their attendance there. In 1556, during the reign of Mary I, many people were brought by cart from Newgate and burned at the stake in front of Bow Church. These included the thirteen ’Stratford Martyrs’. In 1719, the parish became independent and St Mary, Stratford, Bow, was consecrated. The church suffered considerable bomb damage during the Second World War. The site was visited by Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) in 1951 to mark the start of a campaign to restore the church with the work was overseen by the architect H S Goodhart-Rendel. The bell tower was reconstructed. During 2011, the church celebrated 700 years of Christian life on the site.

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

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La Trompette
Poplar Baths is a former public bath house dating from 1933.

The original Poplar Baths opened in 1852, being built to provide public wash facilities as a result of the Baths and Washhouses Act 1846. A public laundry was located at the rear of the building on Arthur Street. The Baths were rebuilt in 1933 to a design by Harley Heckford and the larger pool was covered over to convert the building into a theatre. Called the East India Hall, it had seating capacity for 1400 people and incorporated a dance hall, cinema, exhibition room and sports hall for boxing and wrestling programmes. The main bath hall sustained bomb damage during the Second World War and was forced to close. The baths reopened in 1947 and continued to be used as a swimming facility, before the facility’s eventual closure and conversion to an industrial training centre in 1988. A campaign to restore the baths won the support of Tower Hamlets Council in 2010 and works created a new leisure centre incorporating a swimming pool, gymnasium and affordable housing on adjacent land. The site reopened in July 2016.

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

Kilburn Bridge Farm
Kilburn Bridge Farm stood beside Watling Street until the late 1830s.

Watling Street has long been running through Kilburn. The road stretched in Roman times from Dover to Wroxeter in Shropshire. Kilburn was a stopping point on the way to Willesden’s ‘Black Madonna’ shrine, and in turn a destination in itself to take the waters at the Kilburn Wells. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, Kilburn Bridge Farm was reported as lying to the west side of Watling Street and consisting of 40 acres. It was worth £230 a year in 1795. The modern day site of the farm is just south of the junction between Kilburn Park Road and the Edgware Road. The earliest mention of the farm dates from 1647 when a Mrs Wheatley leased 44 acres of pasture in five closes from the Bishop of London who owned the land. In 1742, when Richard Marsh was tenant, the farmhouse and its yards stood by the road close to the Westbourne stream, with 39 acres in six fields to the south and west. It was named after the bridge where the Edgware Road crossed the stream, a few yards to the north. The farm survived until the 1830s – by the time of the 1840 map, a terrace had been built over the site.

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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Ridler’s Tyre Yard
Ridler’s Tyres was situated in a part of Blechynden Street which no longer exists

It was situated next to the railway bridge in Blechynden Street. This part of the street was redeveloped.

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

On this day in London history

1879: The 1879 Royal Agricultural Society of England’s annual show was held on an area which later became Queen’s Park and opened on 30 June 1879. The show ran for a week but the poor weather meant people had to struggle through deep mud and attendances fell disastrously. The visit to the show by Queen Victoria on the fifth day rallied visitors and nearly half the people who visited the show went on that day.

Orme’s Green
Ormes Green was the former name for this part of Westbourne Park.

In 1809, Edward Orme, a print seller of Bond Street, acquired the former Bell at Bayswater, called Elms House, with two houses behind it, formerly a single house, along with the Bayswater tea gardens. Soon he also held much property farther west along the Uxbridge Road, where he may first have made money from gravel. He turned to building and property speculation, mainly in the Bayswater area. By the mid 1820s, he had been responsible for building Orme’s Green – named after his family like much of what he built. He built a row of houses, later called Belsize Villas, standing alone in the fields on the south side of Harrow Road. The name eventually fell out of use.

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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Getting around London with Oyster

On this day in London history

1879: The 1879 Royal Agricultural Society of England’s annual show was held on an area which later became Queen’s Park and opened on 30 June 1879. The show ran for a week but the poor weather meant people had to struggle through deep mud and attendances fell disastrously. The visit to the show by Queen Victoria on the fifth day rallied visitors and nearly half the people who visited the show went on that day.

White City Estate
The 50-acre White City Estate was built in 1938-1939 on the former White City Exhibition Grounds.

Between the wars the 1908 White City Exhibition Grounds and its pavilions were trending towards dereliction. In 1935, part of it was purchased by the London County Council for housing development. The White City Estate was the largest LCC estate to that date. The housing blocks are laid out in a grid, surrounded by grass with numerous mature London plane trees, which predate the buildings. Commonwealth Avenue, Australia Road, India Way, South Africa Road, and other roads and blocks in the White City estate were named in connection with the exhibition and the empire. The architects were praised for their decision to separate the kitchens from the living areas and for including bathrooms. However, tenants expressed a preference for the traditional “parlour” and were unimpressed with the monotonous layout of the estate. By the 1970s, a significant portion of White City had fallen into disrepair.

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.

Georg Giese from Danzig, 34-year-old German merchant at the Steelyard, painted in London by Hans Holbein in 1532

Hans Holbein

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

Shepherd’s Bush Market
Shepherd’s Bush Market is a street market located on the east side of the railway viaduct for the Hammersmith and City Tube line.

The market dates back to the early part of the twentieth century, when the present layout of the Hammersmith and City tube line was fixed. The market opened for business in around 1914, with shops lining the railway viaduct. Individual market vendors sell a wide variety of goods, including fresh produce, cooked food, music CDs, household goods and clothing. Individual vendors rent their stalls from Transport For London, who own the land on which the market sits. With a wide variety of fresh produce, fabrics, household goods and furnishings the market has long stood as a one stop shop for the local community, gaining a reputation as one of the most diverse locations this side of London. Many traders in the market have passed their sites down for generations.

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.

Charing Cross Bridge (1902) Charing Cross Bridge is part of a series of oil paintings by French artist Claude Monet. The paintings depict a misty, impressionist Charing Cross Bridge. Monet worked on the series from 1899 to 1905, creating a total of 37 paintings depicting the bridge.

Claude Monet

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Shepherd’s Well
Shepherd’s Well, whose flow was thought to be nearly as pure as distilled water, is the source of the River Tyburn.

Also known as The Conduit, the well provided a source of good quality soft drinking water for the residents of Hampstead. The walk to the nearest road meant that well carriers sold water by the pail or two pails because of the yoke needed for carrying the water. The spring never froze and only vary rarely ran dry. There was an arch over the conduit, and rails stood round it. At the close of the 1700s Lord Loughborough, its landwoner, tried to stop locals from obtaining the water, by enclosing the well. So great was the popular indignation, that an appeal was made to the Courts of Law, when a decision was given in the people’s favour, and so the well remained in constant use until well into the nineteenth century. Hone’s Table Book, in the nineteenth century, writes the following about Shepherd’s Well: The arch, embedded above and around by the green turf, forms a conduit-head to a beautiful spring; the specific gravity of the fluid, which yields several tons a day, is little more than that of distilled water. Hampstead abounds in other springs, but they are mostly impregnated with mineral substances. The water of ’Shepherd’s Well,’ therefore, is in continual request; and those who cannot otherwise obtain it are supplied through a few of the villagers, who make a scanty living by carrying it to houses for a penny a pailful. There is no carriage-way to the spot, and these poor things have much hard work for a very little money. …. The chief inconvenience of habitations in this delightful village is the inadequate distribution of good water. Occasional visitants, for the sake of health, frequently sustain considerable injury by the insalubrity of private springs, and charge upon the fluid they breathe the mischief they derive from the fluid they drink. The localities of the place afford almost every variety of aspect and temperature that invalids require; and a constant sufficiency of wholesome water might be easily obtained by a few simple arrangements. Once Hampstead became supplied by the New River Company the conduit became neglected – a small swamp. Railway tunneling under Hampstead diverted the waters away and finally streets and houses were built over the site. A plaque on the corner of Fitzjohn’s Avenue and Lyndhurst Road marks the position of the well or close to it as its exact position is in the middle of the Road.

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.

John Duffin

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

Clapham South
Clapham South tube station is one of eight London Underground stations with a deep-level air-raid shelter underneath it.

Clapham South station was designed by Charles Holden and was opened on 13 September 1926 as the first station of the Morden extension of the City & South London Railway, which is now part of the Northern Line. Other proposed names for the station prior to opening were Balham North and Nightingale Lane. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Clapham Sect were a group of upper class evangelic Anglicans who lived around the Common. They included William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton and Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian Thomas Macaulay. They were very prominent in campaigns for the abolition of slavery, against child labour and for prison reform. They also promoted missionary activity in Britain’s colonies. After the coming of the railways, Clapham developed as a suburb for daily commuters into central London, and by 1900, it had fallen from favour with the upper classes. Most of their grand houses had been demolished by the middle of the twentieth century, though a few remain around the Common and in the Old Town, as do a substantial number of fine late eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses. In the twentieth century, Clapham was seen as an unremarkable suburb, often cited as representing the thoughts of the ordinary people: the so-called ’man on the Clapham omnibus’. The apartments above the station, named Westbury Court, were a later addition to the architecture, built in the mid-1930s. The parade of shops along Balham Hill was extended as part of the same development using the same style as the original three closest to the station. A collection of shops congregates around the exit to the Underground station. The number and variety of food and drink establishments has increased over the years in light of the growing population and a more widespread interest in world cuisines and healthy eating.

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

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Getting around London with Oyster