The London Daily Newsletter Wednesday 2 August

Bullbaiters Farm
Bullbaiters Farm near Boreham Wood was originally called Bullbeggar’s Farm – Bullbeggar meaning ’hobgoblin’ or ’scarecrow’.

Above the central door was the Byng family crest – onwers of the farm, who were based in Wrotham Park, South Mimms. In the 1861 census, the occupant of Bullbaiters Farm was 60 year old William King, who farmed 190 acres and employed 3 men and 2 boys. In addition to his family two farm labourers also lived in the farm. Thrift Farm, nearby, was occupied by a farm labourer according to the census – so it may have been used as a farm cottage. Quite often, especially involving what had been smaller tenanted farms, the fields would be combined into a larger farm and the ’redundant’ farm house used as farm cottages.

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.

“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: Oyster
Getting around London with Oyster