General Chat

The site of the Tate Gallery and much of the surrounding land bounded by what is now Belgravia and Pimlico was occupied by one of the largest prisons in the country. The Millbank Prison or Pentitentiary which was surrounded by an octagonal shaped wall was finally demolished in 1903.

Michael

Shall come back and read, luvin this xxx

The grave of Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame can be in the churchyard of St Mary-at-Lambeth, (now part of the Trandescant Trust), adjacent to Lambeth Palace. His home still exists in the adjacent Lambeth Road and is marked by a blue plaque.

Michael

The line of the Euston Road - Pentonville Road - City Road was originally constructed as a by-pass for drovers and wagons bringing cattle and goods to London.

Cockspur Street which flanks the southern end of Trafalgar Square was named after a cock fighting pit which used to be located in nearby Whitehall.

The tallest building in London is the Canary Wharf Tower.



The Tower of London is a royal fortress, on the north banks of the River Thames. It is the home of the Crown Jewels.

Tower of London

Originally built by William the Conqueror, following his successful invasion of England in 1066, it has been guarding this part of London for over 900 years.

It is perhaps better known as a prison. The prisoners would be brought, via the river, from Westminster where they would have been tried and crowds would wait on the river bank to find out the verdict to see if they would be treated to the spectacle of a public execution. The executioner, with his long sharp axe would stand behind the accused on the boat. If the accused was guilty he would point his axe towards the victim and if not guilty he would point it away. People knew that if found guilty there would be a public execution 48 hours later.

Yeomen WardersThe responsibility for looking after the prisoners was given to the Yeomen Warders or Beefeaters (These guards, although looking very similar, are different from the Yeomen of the Guard).

The Yeomen Warders originate from twelve Yeoman of the Guards, who were once private bodyguards of Henry VIII.


The Yeomen Warders job title is "Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and Members of the Sovereign's Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary".

In the centre of the Tower of London is the famous White Tower (see left). It is the oldest part of the fortress and was built on the site of the Norman Keep built by William the Conqueror.

The Tower, or Bloody Tower as it is known, has been host to many famous executions and imprisonments, including those of Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and Sir Walter Raleigh.






Tower Prisoners

Many people have been locked in the Tower, for religious beliefs or suspected treason. Famous prisoners have included Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth I was held prisoner in the Tower for two months by the order of her half sister, Queen Mary. Mary felt that her throne was being threatened by Elizabeth, so she imprisoned her in the Tower

Tower of London
The curtain wall protecting the White Tower

As well as being a palace and a fortress, the Tower of London has also served as:

* the first Royal Armoury
* Royal Mint (where money is made)
* Royal Observatory
* Royal Zoo

Today the Tower of London houses the Crown Jewels and is open to the public as a museum.




The Ceremony of the Keys

A ceremonial guard is provided by the Yeomen Warders. One of their main ceremonial functions is the daily Ceremony of the Keys. Every night for the last 700 years the Tower has been locked up in the Ceremony of the Keys.

At 21:53 each night the Chief Yeoman Warder of the Tower, dressed in Tudor uniform, sets off to meet the Escort of the Key dressed in the well-known Beefeater uniform. Together they tour the various gates ceremonially locking them, on returning to the Bloody Tower archway they are challenged by a sentry (foot guard).

"Who goes there?" the sentry demands.

"The Keys." answers The Chief Warder

"Whose Keys?"

"Queen Elizabeth's Keys."

"Pass Queen Elizabeth's Keys. All's well."

A trumpeter then sounds the Last Post before the keys are secured in the Queen’s House.





The Legend of The Ravens

Ravens have lived at the Tower of London for hundreds of years. Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London the White Tower will crumble and a great disaster shall befall England.

A set of steps in the garden of the Inner Temple lead down to a river which is no longer there. When the Enbankment was contructed, businesses that lined the river were demolished and the construction narrowed the width of the River Thames along it's length. The Temple Garden steps were then left high and dry.

Michael

The Monument in London is 202 feet tall and was built to commemorate the Great Fire of London that occured in 1666. The distance from the base of the Monument to where the fire started in Pudding Lane is also 202 feet.

Michael

The arch at Hyde Park Corner was built as the front entrance to Buckingham Palace. It was only discovered after it's construction that the arch was too narrow to allow many of the state coaches through. As a result, the original fron entrance to Buckingham Palace was abandoned and what today we consider to be the front of Buckingham Palace is actually the rear of the building.

Michael

Charing Cross, an ornate gothic stone structure on the forecourt of Charing Cross Station is a reconstruction of the cross built in 1290 by King Edward I in memory of his beloved wife Queen Eleanor. Queen Eleanor died on a visit to Lincolnshire and Edward I had her embalmed body brought back to London. At every location the cortage stopped for the night, (12 in total), Edward I had an identical cross built. The 12 crosses were known as the Eleanor Crosses.

St Albans an Watham, (now Waltham Cross), were the last two on the route to London.

Michael

Marble Arch marks the location of the old village of Tyburn and the notorious Tyburn Tree where many London criminals were hanged. The Tyburn Tree was not a tree but a three sided scaffold which allowed numerous prisoners to be hung and left on view.

Oliver Cromwell died in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Three years after his death, Charles the II sought revenge against Oliver Cromwell for beheading his father Charles I. Charles II had Oliver Cromwells body disintered and hung from the Tyburn Tree after which his body was decapitated and probably thrown into a nearby pit.

Michael

A well known landmark of London used to be the Shot Tower adjacent to the east side of the Royal Festival Hall and which demolished along with the Festival of Britain site. The Shot Tower looked rather like a tall free standing chimney and produced lead shot for ammunition by pouring molten lead from the top of the tower down the inside into a cold water basin at the bottom.

The tower was originally built in 1826.

Michael

Cleopatra's Needle on the embankment had nothing to do with Queen Cleopatra. It was made in Egypt for the Pharaoh Thotmes III in 1460 BC and transported to England in 1877 on a specially built ship named the Cleopatra which encased the needle. The ship containing the needle was towed by another ship wich was forced to cut the needle adrift in the Bay of Biscay during a storm.

After five days the Ceopatra was found still afloat and towed to Spain for repairs after which she was again towed to London.

Michael

The original St Pancras station – designed by William Henry Barlow – took 6,000 men armed with 1,000 horses and 100 steam cranes four years to complete and opened in 1868.

During the time of the Roman Invasion, London was known as Londinium. In Saxon times, it was known as Lundenwic and during the kingdom of Alfred the Great, its name was changed to Lundenburg.

The Thames Flood Barrier was built in 1982 to stop the river flooding London. It is reckoned to have saved us more than seventy times since its opening.

The ten stainless steel pillars are 61 metres wide and sit on concrete blocks down to the bed – making each one as tall as a five-storey building. The gates between them are normally sitting on the bottom, but can be raised to stem the incoming tide.


Great London floods
Flooding has been a problem in London for centuries. The earliest recorded instance of the water level rising above the banks was in 1099, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said the Thames "sprung up to such a height and did so much harm as no man remembered that it ever did before."

The 16th-century saw fish deposited in the grounds of Westminster Hall, and Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that "last night the greatest tide that ever was remembered in England to have been in this river, all Whitehall having been drowned."

The last great flood to cover London was in 1953, when 300 people lost their lives. Records show that the river has risen a further 50cm since then, and will continue to rise another metre every century.

Global warming is expected to increase the need for defences, and there has been talk of adding another one closer to the sea. But whatever happens, the Thames Flood Barrier will come to the end of its operational life in 2030

Westminster Abbey is London’s most prestigious religious building – the setting for coronations, State funerals, and the burial place of many celebrated kings and queens.


History of Westminster Abbey
The Abbey’s proper name is the Collegiate Church of St Peter, founded in 616 when a fisherman saw a Thorney Island vision.
A shrine was kept throughout the ages, until some Benedictine monks built an abbey in the 730s. Edward the Confessor ordered the construction of a better building in 1045, and it was consecrated a decade later – a week after his death.

Henry III then knocked it all down and started again from scratch in the mid 13th-century, and Richard II completed it 260 years later.
Religious persecution throughout the 16th and 17th-centuries passed it in and out of favour, but its royal connections kept it safe for the nation.
By the 18th-century it had risen to be the third-highest seat of learning in the country (after Oxford and Cambridge).

Many famous scripts have been written here – notably the first third of the King James Old Testament.
The last half of the New Testament was also translated on the grounds, and the New English Bible was put together in the building.


Coronations and funerals
William the Conqueror was the first king to be crowned at Westminster Abbey, on Christmas Day 1066.
The famous Coronation Chair may look modest, but it has been used at every British crowning for 700 years.
The only monarchs to forgo the tradition were Edward V and Edward VIII.


The famous Stone of Scone – the coronation stone of the Scottish sovereigns – used to lie beneath the seat, but has now been returned to Edinburgh.
It was taken from the Scots in 1297 when Edward I dragged it back to London.

The Scots nicked it back again in the 1950s, but it was soon recovered. The only other time it had left the Abbey was during the two World Wars, and when Oliver Cromwell was consecrated in Westminster Hall.


Westminster Abbey is also famous for its funerals. Every King and Queen from Edward the Confessor to George II can be found inside the grounds – with the exception of just two: Henry VIII and Charles I, who are both buried at Windsor.

Charles I’s nemesis – Oliver Cromwell – was given an elaborate funeral here in 1658, only to be dug up and hung from a nearby gibbet when the monarchy was restored under King Charles’ son.
Such was Charles II’s ire, that he left his head upon Westminster Hall for twenty-five years until it finally fell off in a storm.
It now resides in Cambridge.
His body is believed to buried somewhere under Marble Arch – but you can see his original burial place in the RAF Chapel.


The Chapel of Edward the Confessor is a supremely important monument in British history.
The tomb of the King is in the centre of the room, with the Coronation Chair nearby.

The Henry VII Chapel was built in the early 16th-century, and completed by his son in 1512. The magnificent golden gilding on the ceiling makes it the most beautiful part of the Abbey.
Banners of the Knights Order hang around the choir stall, and the tomb of Henry and his Queen can be seen sitting at the back.

Other monarchs buried in the chapel include Elizabeth I, Mary I and Edward VI. Mary Queen of Scots also has a tomb nearby.
But most poignant of all is the Innocents’ Corner containing the bones of the two princes murdered in the Tower of London.

The full list of Kings and Queens buried inside Westminster Abbey is as follows: Anne, Charles II, Edward the Confessor, Edward I, Edward III, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, George II, Henry III, Henry V, Henry VII, James I, Mary I, Mary II, Mary Stewart, Richard II and William III.

One of the most popular parts of Westminster Abbey is Poet’s Corner the burial place of the nation’s greatest playwrights.
You can see graves and memorials to Geoffrey Chaucer, Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens (who was apparently buried here against his wishes – on the orders of Queen Victoria).

Other writers include Milton, T S Eliot, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Rudyard Kipling, Dylan Thomas, Jane Austin and the Brontë Sisters.
William Shakespeare and Robert Burns are buried elsewhere, but have grand tablets to commemorate them.

Famous politicians include William Pitt and Gladstone.
There are also statues and memorials to Lord Palmerston, Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli.

Famous scientists include Isaac Newton, James Maxwell, Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday.
Westminster Abbey Museum



Westminster Abbey Museum

The Abbey Museum is housed in the Norman Undercroft.
Here you can see the creepy wax effigies of people’s actual death masks.
Queen Elizabeth I, Charles II and Lord Nelson all have their faces on display, wearing clothes from the period.

The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus was erected in 1893, to commemorate the philanthropic works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. During the Second World War, the statue atop the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, The Angel of Christian Charity, was removed, and was replaced by advertising hoardings.
It was returned in 1948.

When the Circus underwent reconstruction work in the late 1980s, the entire fountain was moved from the centre of the junction at the beginning of Shaftesbury Avenue to its present position at the south-western corner.

Rag-and-bone man is a British phrase for a junk dealer.
Historically the phrase referred to an individual who would travel the streets of a city with a horse-drawn cart, and would collect old rags, (for converting into fabric and paper), bones for making glue, scrap iron and other items, often trading them for other items of limited value.

They would use a distinctive call to alert householders to their presence.
The call was something similar to "rag-and-bone", delivered in a sing-song fashion.
Long usage tended to simplify the words, for instance down to "raa-boh", even to the point of incomprehensibility, although the locals clearly could identify who could make the call.

In later days a goldfish was offered by the ragman as a thank you for contributions to his cart.

Battersea Park
The Park has a rich and varied history. More on the history of the Park can be found in the book published by the Friends in 1998.Refreshments in the Park

There are a number of garden areas set out around the Park, the Old English Garden, the Sub Tropical Garden and the Russell Page Garden


The Old English Garden is an oasis of calm, tucked away just north of the Cricket Pavillion.

Battersea Park’s first Superintendent, John Gibson, created the Sub-Tropical Gardens in 1863. The first public Sub-Tropical Gardens in the country, they attracted immediate attention for their show-stopping colours, giant leaves and unusual plants.

Plants in the Sub Tropical GardenIn 1835 Gibson was sent to India by the Duke of Devonshire hunting for orchids, on a journey that took him through Madeira and South Africa.
He brought both plants and ideas back to England and at Battersea created a mixture of exotic plants and colourful “carpet” bedding that started a fashion that swept across England and can still be seen in gardens today.

Gibson created a mild micro-climate for the tender plants in the garden, making a dense shelter belt of earth and trees from the wind.
He moulded the planting beds on top of brick rubble to help drainage and absorb the heat of the sun during the day and act as storage heaters for the plants during the cooler nights.
Many of the plants were planted in pots and could be lifted out of the ground and put into the Park’s glasshouses for the winter.

The Sub-Tropical Gardens remained a feature in the Park until World War II when many of the gardeners went to war and much of the Park became allotment gardens to help feed local people.
In 1992 the Friends of Battersea Park took the first step in the recreation of the Gardens by planting a large palm tree which thrives there to this day.
Wandsworth Council with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund restored the Gardens to the original plans in 2004.
The plants stay out all winter but the more tender species are given winter protection of fleece and straw.

Russell Page (1906-1985) was one of the 20 century’s great landscape architects. He designed gardens throughout Europe and America. Among them are those at the Frick Museum in New York City and the Festival Gardens in Battersea Park.

In 1950 Page, who was working in Belgium and France, returned to England to direct and design the Festival Gardens for the 1951 Festival of Britain. It took him eighteen months of extremely hard work to source and organise the “tens of thousands” of bedding plants and shrubs required. This was achieved with the help of E. R. Janes, who had been in charge of the flowers at the Chelsea Flower Show. Between them they managed to meet the opening deadline.

The purpose of the Festival Gardens was to make a dazzling break from the bleak rationed world of post-war Britain. An island of green lawn and flower beds provided an oasis of quiet on the site surrounded by a children’s zoo, a model railway and everything else needed to make a riotous funfair. The area sat on a bed of cinders, put down to overcome drainage problems. A free-flowing central part was bordered by formal, raised beds of roses and yew trees with the exuberant domes and swags of the Pavilion Buffet tea terrace along one side.

Page’s design involved masses of colour, twenty thousand yellow tulips given by the grower in Holland and raised beds of crimson and pink floribunda roses. In his book Education of a Gardener he wrote: “I saw that I must mix my flower colours, plant in wide pools and drifts, let pale pinks overlap into clear lemon yellow, interplant orange with red-purple and use every device I could so that texture, colour, size and shape would combine to make all the flower plantings sparkle, shimmer and seem to move in contrast to the bright, flat and static surfaces of paint.”

The overall impression was of great single blocks of vibrant colour. These were regularly changed from spring bulbs to summer bedding with predominant colours of red, white and blue. He was appointed OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for his work.

The Friends contributed £9000 towards the restoration of the Festival Gardens as part of the major restoration works which were opened by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh in 2004.


The lodges have a rural, countryside character.
The original designers of the Park were keen that visitors would feel they were leaving the grime of London and entering a rural idyll.

The Rustic Bridge has been visited by a number of personalities.
It has two almost Georgian styled brick piers.Clearly visible are the timbers, which almost resemble railway sleepers.


The shelters are an enduring feature, a place to hide from the weather, or from the gaze of other Park users.