Orchard Court
Orchard Court is an apartment block off of Portman Square in London. Known in French as Le Verger, it was used during the Second World War as the London base of F section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

The spying industry had its professional origins during World War II – it had previously been quite an amateur affair. As the war went on and SOE’s operational capacity grew, 64 Baker Street became its headquarters from October 1940 onwards. By 1943, various apartment blocks around the Baker Street area became an SOE hub. In Orchard Court, SOE’s F section vetted new recruits for secret missions to France. The F Section was commanded by Maurice Buckmaster, assisted by Vera Atkins, who are said to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s ‘M’ and Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond stories. Vera Atkins was responsible for interviewing recruits, as well as organising their training and creating the cover stories for spies. Atkins has been much praised for her extraordinary work in the SOE. During her time at Orchard Court she sent 470 agents into France, including 39 women, 12 of whom were never to return. In the words of one former spy, Noor Inayat Khan: The time the agents spent at Orchard Court was a brief period of luxury before their gruelling, dangerous stints in the field. After the war, SOE moved out and Orchard Court retired back into its previous life as just another block of flats.

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.

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.

Claude Monet

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

Bunhill Fields
Bunhill Fields was in use as a burial ground from 1665 until 1854.

By the mid nineteenth century, about approximately 123,000 interments were estimated to have taken place of which over 2000 monuments remain. It contains the graves of many notable people including John Bunyan, author of ’The Pilgrim’s Progress’; Susanna Wesley, known as the “Mother of Methodism”; Daniel Defoe, author of ’Robinson Crusoe’; William Blake (died 1827), artist, poet, and mystic; . It was a nondenominational burial ground, and was particularly favoured by nonconformists. On the far side of Bunhill Row is a Quaker burial ground, also sometimes also known by the name Bunhill Fields and in use from 1661 to 1855. Its remains are a public garden, Quaker Gardens, managed by the London Borough of Islington.

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.

“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

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St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics
St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics was founded in London in 1751 for the treatment of incurable pauper lunatics by a group of philanthropists.

It was London’s second public institution in London created to look after mentally ill people, after the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlem (Bedlam), founded in 1246. In 1786 the hospital moved to purpose-built premises on Old Street, between Bath St and what is now the Old Street Roundabout. The building had a magnificent frontage of brick, 500 feet long and had a central entrance, with the male wards to the left and female wards to the right. There wered single cells for 300 patients, each with small windows set high in the wall. All patients were transferred in 1916, and the buildings were acquired by the Bank of England to become the St Luke’s Printing Works, used for printing bank notess. The building was demolished in 1963.

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.

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.

John Atkinson Grimshaw

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

On 20 June 1756, 146 British subjects were held overnight in Calcutta, India by Siraj-ud-Dowla, the Nawab of Bengal,. Supposedly only 23 survived the night. There is a lot of controversy on this issue. It is now widely accepted that the British exaggerated the event. As the story goes, on the capture of Calcutta by Dowla, the English garrison consisting of 146 men under the command of John Zephaniah Holwell, were locked up for the night in the common dungeon of the fortress. The dungeon was a strongly barred room and was not intended for the confinement of more than two or three men at a time. There were only two windows, and a projecting veranda outside and thick iron bars within impeded the ventilation, while fires raging in different parts of the fort suggested an atmosphere of further oppressiveness. The prisoners were packed so tightly that the door was difficult to close. One of the soldiers stationed in the veranda was offered 1000 rupees to have them removed to a larger room. He went away, but returned saying it was impossible. The bribe was then doubled, and he made a second attempt with a like result; the nawab was asleep, and no one dared wake him. By nine o’clock several had died. and many more were delirious. A frantic cry for water now became general, and one of the guards, more compassionate than his fellows, caused some to be brought to the bars, where Mr. Holwell and two or three others received it in their hats, and passed it on to the men behind. In their impatience to secure it nearly all was spilt, and the little they drank seemed only to increase their thirst. Self-control was soon lost; those in remote parts of the room struggled to reach the window, and a fearful tumult ensued, in which the weakest were trampled or pressed to death. They raved, fought, prayed, blasphemed, and many then fell exhausted on the floor, where suffocation put an end to their torments. The British prisoners resorted to cannibalism to quench their hunger and thirst in the ensuing pandemonium. About 11 o’clock the prisoners began to drop off fast. At length, at six in the morning, Siraj-ud-Dowla awoke, and ordered the door to be opened. Of the 146 only 23, including Mr. Holwell (from whose narrative, published in the Annual Register for 1758, this account is partly derived), remained alive, and they were either stupefied or raving.

Elephant Field
The grazing elephants of Hampstead Garden Suburb…

One of the last occupiers of nearby Park Farm was the circus proprietor Lord George Sanger, who retired there in 1904, and was notoriously murdered by a farm hand in 1911. His descendants continued the circus in operation until the 1960s. When the circus was not touring, Sanger would put his elephants out of pasture in what would become, in a few years, Hampstead Garden Suburb. An elderly former resident of Denman Drive – constructed in 1908 on what was once Westminster Abbey’s land – used to recall ‘elephants grazing’ in the field between Big Wood and Little Wood, before Denman Drive North and Denman Drive South – constructed in 1912 on what was once the Bishop’s land – were completed.

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.

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

Doreen Fletcher

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On 20 June 1756, 146 British subjects were held overnight in Calcutta, India by Siraj-ud-Dowla, the Nawab of Bengal,. Supposedly only 23 survived the night. There is a lot of controversy on this issue. It is now widely accepted that the British exaggerated the event. As the story goes, on the capture of Calcutta by Dowla, the English garrison consisting of 146 men under the command of John Zephaniah Holwell, were locked up for the night in the common dungeon of the fortress. The dungeon was a strongly barred room and was not intended for the confinement of more than two or three men at a time. There were only two windows, and a projecting veranda outside and thick iron bars within impeded the ventilation, while fires raging in different parts of the fort suggested an atmosphere of further oppressiveness. The prisoners were packed so tightly that the door was difficult to close. One of the soldiers stationed in the veranda was offered 1000 rupees to have them removed to a larger room. He went away, but returned saying it was impossible. The bribe was then doubled, and he made a second attempt with a like result; the nawab was asleep, and no one dared wake him. By nine o’clock several had died. and many more were delirious. A frantic cry for water now became general, and one of the guards, more compassionate than his fellows, caused some to be brought to the bars, where Mr. Holwell and two or three others received it in their hats, and passed it on to the men behind. In their impatience to secure it nearly all was spilt, and the little they drank seemed only to increase their thirst. Self-control was soon lost; those in remote parts of the room struggled to reach the window, and a fearful tumult ensued, in which the weakest were trampled or pressed to death. They raved, fought, prayed, blasphemed, and many then fell exhausted on the floor, where suffocation put an end to their torments. The British prisoners resorted to cannibalism to quench their hunger and thirst in the ensuing pandemonium. About 11 o’clock the prisoners began to drop off fast. At length, at six in the morning, Siraj-ud-Dowla awoke, and ordered the door to be opened. Of the 146 only 23, including Mr. Holwell (from whose narrative, published in the Annual Register for 1758, this account is partly derived), remained alive, and they were either stupefied or raving.

Coldharbour Farm
Coldharbour Farm, which was active in Hayes until the 1950s, was once the property of the Minet family.

Properties in Hayes, Middlesex, acquired piecemeal by the Minet family, were collectively known as the Minet Estate. The Minets were a French Huguenot family who came to England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1686. At its height the Minet Estate comprised a very large portion of the eastern side of the parish of Hayes. Not only did they own Coldharbour Farm but Hayes Court Farm, Hayes Bridge Farm, East Acton Brickworks, Victoria Sawmills, Wistowe, Porch House, Townfield and the Grange.

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.

“An Autumn Lane” (1886)

John Atkinson Grimshaw

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

Thames Tunnel
The Thames Tunnel connects Rotherhithe and Wapping and was built between 1825 and 1843.

There had been an increasing need for a new connection between the north and south banks of the Thames to link the expanding docks on each side. In 1818, the Anglo-French engineer Marc Brunel had patented the tunnelling shield, a revolutionary advance in tunnelling technology. Five years later, he produced a plan for a tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping, which would be dug using the shield. Financing was found from private investors and the project began in February 1825. The tunnelling shield was built at Henry Maudslay’s Lambeth works and assembled in the Rotherhithe shaft. Its main innovation was the support for the unlined ground in front and around it to reduce the risk of collapses. Many workers, including Marc Brunel, fell ill from the filthy sewage-laden water seeping through from the river above. The main engineer himsef, John Armstrong, fell ill in April 1826. Marc’s son Isambard Kingdom Brunel took over at the age of 20. The tunnel flooded on 18 May 1827. Isambard Kingdom Brunel lowered a diving bell from a boat to repair the hole at the bottom of the river, throwing bags filled with clay into the breach. The tunnel flooded again on 12 January 1828, when six men died. Financial problems followed this and in August 1828, the tunnel was walled off and abandoned for seven years. In December 1834 Marc Brunel succeeded in raising enough money to continue construction. The rusting shield was dismantled and removed. A new shield, improved and heavier, was assembled in place and tunnelling resumed. After many further construction issues, the rest of the tunnelling was completed by the end of 1841. The Thames Tunnel was fitted out with lighting, roadways and staircases between 1841 and 1842. An engine house on the Rotherhithe bank was constructed to house the machinery for draining the tunnel. The tunnel was finally opened to the public on 25 March 1843. Though it became a major tourist attraction – attracting about two million people each year – the Thames Tunnel was not a financial success. The tunnel was purchased in September 1865 by the East London Railway Company, a consortium of six railways which sought to use the tunnel to provide a rail link for goods and passengers between Wapping and south London. The first train ran through the tunnel on 7 December 1869. In 1884, the tunnel’s disused construction shaft to the north of the river was repurposed to serve as Wapping station.

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.

“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)

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Oaklands Hall
On the west side of West End Lane, Charles Spain bought 5 acres and between 1829 and 1838 built York Villa.

Oaklands Hall was possibly built due to a sale of land behind York Villa in 1860: To be sold, pursuant to a Decree of the High Court of Chancery, made in causes of Lance v. Aglionby, and Lance v. Elyard, with the approbation of the Master of the Rolls, by Messrs. Farebrother, Clark, and Lye, at Garraway’s Coffee-house, Change-alley, Cornhill, on Tuesday, the 7th day of August, 1860, at twelve o’clock at noon : A. valuable freehold iuclosure of building land, situate in West-end-lane, Hampstead, about midway between the Edgware and Finchley Roads, sloping down from Westend-lane, to which it has a frontage of above 800 feet, and extending back for a depth of about 1056 feet to the rear of Royston Hall, Royston Lodge, and other residences and grounds in the Edgware-road and abutting on the grounds of York Villa and West End House, the whole containing 17A. SB. OF. The Hampstead and City Junction Railway passes close to the property. London Gazette During the 1860s, Oaklands Hall, an elaborate Gothic mansion, was occupying the site. Oaklands Hall was leased from Charles Spain from 1861 to 1872 by Donald Nicoll MP – owner of a gentlemen’s outfitter’s in Regent Street. The three West Hampstead stations were in place by 1888. Nicoll owned portions of the Little Estate to the north and west, which together formed a 23 acre estate which he called West End Park. Nicoll was a director of the Metropolitan and St John’s Wood railway from 1864 to 1872 and, in anticipation of its plans, laid out a road (Sherriff, then called Nicoll, Road) on the line later taken by the railway, for which he received substantial compensation. He then sold West End Park to the London Permanent Building Society, which was connected with Alexander Sherriff, a fellow MP and railway director, who gave his name to the northernmost road on the estate. Oaklands Hall was occupied by Sir Charles Murray until 1878, when it was offered for sale, and in 1883 houses were built in Dynham and Cotleigh Roads on its site. Builders, including A. Rathbone of Mill Lane and Julia Bursill, had erected 123 terraced houses there by 1893, in addition to completing the frontage on West End Lane. A library was built in Cotleigh Road in 1901.

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.

Camberwell Flats by Night (1983) David Hepher (b.1935) is best known for his paintings of buildings, mainly tower blocks, which he refers to as “urban landscapes”. ‘Camberwell Flats’ is part of a series of paintings, two of which can be found at the Museum of London and another at the Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art. They reflect Hepher’s sustained focus on residential architecture, and details of ordinary, everyday life, sometimes pushing it to the brink of abstraction.

David Hepher

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

Petticoat Lane Market
Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in the East End.

It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market is open six days a week and Middlesex Street Market is open on Sunday only. It is one of a number of traditional markets located to the east of the City of London. A few hundred yards to the north is Old Spitalfields Market, which has been refurbished, and across Commercial Street, to the east, lies Brick Lane Market. A half mile further east is the Columbia Road Flower Market. Petticoat Lane Market was not formally recognised until an Act of Parliament in 1936, but its long history as an informal market makes it possibly one of the oldest surviving markets in Britain. The name Petticoat Lane came from not only the sale of petticoats but from the fable that “they would steal your petticoat at one end of the market and sell it back to you at the other.” In Tudor times, Middlesex Street was known as Hogs Lane, a pleasant lane lined by hedgerows and elms. It is thought city bakers were allowed to keep pigs in the lane, outside the city wall; or possibly that it was an ancient droving trail. The lane’s rural nature changed, and by 1590, country cottages stood by the city walls. By 1608, it had become a commercial district where second-hand clothes and bric-à-brac were sold and exchanged, known as ’Peticote Lane’. This was also where the Spanish ambassador had his house, and the area attracted many Spaniards from the reign of James I. Peticote Lane was severely affected by the Great Plague of 1665; the rich fled, and London lost a fifth of its population. Huguenots fleeing persecution arrived in the late 17th century; many settled in the area, and master weavers settled in the new town of Spitalfields. The area already had an association with clothing, with dyeing a local industry. The cloth was pegged out on hooks in the surrounding fields. These were known as tentergrounds. From the mid-18th century, Petticoat Lane became a centre for manufacturing clothes. The market served the well-to-do in the City, selling new garments. About 1830, Peticote Lane’s name changed to Middlesex Street, to record the boundary between Portsoken Ward, in the City of London, and Whitechapel, which coincided with the Lane. But the old name continues to be associated with the area. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area. The chapels, which had previously served the Huguenot community, were adapted as synagogues. Many Jewish relief societies were founded to aid the poor. Jewish immigrants entered the local garment industry and maintained the traditions of the market. The severe damage inflicted throughout the East End during the Blitz and later bombing in World War II served to disperse the Jewish communities to new areas. The area around Middlesex Street suffered a decline. The market continued to prosper. Beginning in the 1970s, a new wave of immigration from India and east Asia restored the area’s vitality – centred on nearby Brick Lane. In previous times the market was unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal. As recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down The Lane, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market. The rights of the market were finally protected by Act of Parliament in 1936. As late as the 1990s, if Christmas Day fell on a Sunday (which in that decade only occurred in 1994), many of the local Jewish traders would still assert their right to open on a Sunday. ’The Lane’ was always renowned for the ’patter’ and showmanship of the market traders. Some, selling crockery, would pile an entire setting onto a large plate, and then send the lot, high into the air. Catching the construction on its way down was to demonstrate the skill of the vendor, and the robustness of the porcelain. A prominent businessman, Alan Sugar, got his start as a stall holder in the market. The market remains busy and vibrant, reflecting both its immigrant history and its continuing popularity with locals and tourists.

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.

“Suburbia” (1929) This painting/sketch was based upon Girton Road and Tannsfeld Road, Sydenham, SE26

Stanley Roy Badmin

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Holy Trinity, Minories
Holy Trinity, Minories was a Church of England parish church outside the eastern boundaries of the City of London, but within the Liberties of the Tower of London.

The parish covered an area previously occupied by the precincts of the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare without Aldgate, founded by Edmund Crouchback, in 1293, for a group of Spanish nuns of the Order of St. Clare who arrived with his wife. The nuns were also known as the Minoresses – which came to be adapted as the name for the district, Minories. The nunnery was surrendered to the Crown in 1539, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the buildings, excluding the chapel, were used as an armory for the Tower of London, and later, as a workhouse. Some of the abbey buildings survived until their destruction by fire in 1797. The liberty was incorporated in the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney in 1899, and today is within the City of London. The nuns’ chapel became a parish church. Considerable changes were made to the building: all the ancient monuments were removed, a gallery, a new pulpit and pews were installed, and a steeple was built. The first recorded reference to a dedication to the Holy Trinity dates from 1563. Later in the 16th century, the church was a Puritan stronghold, where both John Field and Thomas Wilcox preached. Until 1730, the church claimed the rights of a royal peculiar – including freedom from the authority of the Bishop of London; and the right to perform marriages “without licence”. Monuments in the church included those for William Legge (1608-1670), a commander for King Charles I during the English Civil War, his wife, Elizabeth Washington (distantly related to George Washington) and their son, George Legge, 1st Baron Dartmouth. In 1849, a mummified head was found in the under-floor vaults, which was reputed to be that of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who had been executed for treason by Queen Mary I in 1554. The head was displayed in a glass case in the vestry, but later went to St Botolph’s Aldgate where it was interred in a vault and eventually buried in the churchyard in 1990. The church escaped the Great Fire of London but fell into disrepair and was rebuilt in brick in 1706, retaining the north wall of the medieval building. The new church was a plain structure, a single space undivided by pillars or columns, 63 feet long and 20 feet wide, built at a cost of £700. The bells were housed in a wooden turret above the projecting porch. In 1899, the church was closed under the provisions of the Union of Benefices Act 1860 and united with the parish of St Botolph’s Aldgate. The pulpit was taken to All Saints Church, East Meon in 1906. The former church was used as a parish room until destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. The medieval north wall survived until the clearance of the site in 1956–8.

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.

“Suburbia” (1929) This painting/sketch was based upon Girton Road and Tannsfeld Road, Sydenham, SE26

Stanley Roy Badmin

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

On 15 June 1919, Captain John Alcock (pilot) and Lt. Arthur W. Browne (navigator) successfully completed the first, non-stop, transatlantic, aeroplane flight. They flew from Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in 16 hours 12 minutes and won the prize offered by the London Daily Mail. Their aircraft was a Vickers Vimy (which was originally designed as a bomber to be used during WW I.) They faced many problems. Their radio broke down shortly after take off. Fog and drizzle prevented the fliers from seeing anything for much of the journey. They aimed to land in a green field but instead it turned out to be a bog. The plane suffered some damage when it hit the ground and sank into the bog. Both Alcock and Brown came away unhurt.

Toynbee Hall
Toynbee Hall is a building which is the home of a charity of the same name.

It works to bridge the gap between people of all social and financial backgrounds, with a focus on working towards a future without poverty. It was the first university-affiliated institution of the worldwide Settlement movement; a reformist social agenda that strove to get the rich and poor to live more closely together in an interdependent community. Founded by Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta in 1884 on Commercial Street, it was named in memory of their friend and fellow reformer, Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee, who had died the previous year. Built specifically for the charity as a centre for social reform, it remains just as active today.

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.

‘Piccadilly Circus, London’ (1960)

L.S. Lowry

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Getting around London with Oyster