The London Daily Newsletter Friday 24 March

Tothill Fields Bridewell
Tothill Fields Bridewell (also known as Tothill Fields Prison and Westminster Bridewell) was a prison located in Westminster between 1618 and 1884.

It was named ’Bridewell’ after the Bridewell Palace, which during the 16th century had become one of the City of London’s most important prisons. Tothill Fields later became the Westminster House of Correction. Like its City counterpart, the Westminster Bridewell was intended as a “house of correction” for the compulsory employment of able-bodied but indolent paupers. It was enlarged in 1655, and during the reign of Queen Anne, its regime was extended to cover the incarceration of criminals. In 1834 the original Bridewell was replaced by a larger prison, on a different site, 8 acres in area, south of Victoria Street and close to Vauxhall Bridge Road. The new prison, designed by Robert Abraham and costing £186,000, was circular in plan (following Jeremy Bentham’s ’panopticon’) so that warders could supervise prisoners from a central point, and had a capacity of 900 prisoners. After it was completed, the old prison was demolished. At the back of Middlesex Guildhall in Little Sanctuary is the 17th century ’The Stone Gateway’, positioned there by the Greater London Council in 1969. This is the only visible remnant of the prison. Originally the Bridewell comprised three separate gaols for untried male prisoners and debtors, male convicts, and women. Inmates were put to work oakum-picking and treading the treadmill, and it operated on a silent/separate system. However, due to poor management, the regime was changed in 1850 and the Bridewell then housed only women and convicted boys under the age of seventeen. The second prison was closed in 1877, when prisoners were transferred to Millbank Prison, and was demolished in 1885. Westminster Cathedral, started in 1895, now stands on the site. The prison’s foundations were re-used for the cathedral.

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

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

“Some High, Lonely Tow’r” Woolwich-based artist Gail Brodholt creates striking linocuts of her city. “I suppose what I’m really interested in is those unconsidered and unnoticed places that people pass through,” says Brodholt, “They are on their way to somewhere else, presumably more important — on the escalators, on the tube, train station platforms, motorways..”

Gail Brodholt

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