National Archives Bookshop

I must share. Have been doing some research this past week at the National Archives in Kew, about two miles from here (how lucky am I?). While the excellent staff were digging out the stuff I requested, I killed time by browsing their bookshop. It’s almost exclusively stocked with history, architecture and ancestry type titles [...]

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The Watts Gallery Reopens

Last month I did a preview of the £13 million revamp of the Watts Gallery in Compton near Guildford. The gallery is dedicated to the works of Victorian artist George Frederic Watts, “England’s Michelangelo”. It reopened to the public last weekend. The Watts people requested that I publish minimum photos until the official launch when [...]

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Best of Recent Blogs #23

First off, another delightful new discovery: The Dustshoveller’s Gazette, written by Caroline Shenton who is writing a book about the 1834 Westminster Fire, to be published next year. London Cemeteries has been that busy with daily posts, I shan’t list them individually, but rather exhort you to go take a look. And now, on to [...]

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Evening All: Birth of “The Met”

Whereas offences against property have of late increased in and near the metropolis; and the local establishments of nightly watch and nightly police have been found inadequate to the prevention and detection of crime, by reason of the frequent unfitness of the individuals employed, the insufficiency of their number, the limited sphere of their authority, [...]

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Birthday Greetings: A Bridge Most Fair

On this day in 1887, Prince Albert Victor – accompanied by his father, the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII – opened the present Hammersmith Bridge. London’s bridges had quite recently been taken into public ownership and made toll-free, to great public acclaim. It then became the job of the chief engineer of the Metropolitan [...]

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Direct Hit: the Guards Chapel

On the morning of Sunday 18 June, 1944, the Guards Chapel in Wellington Barracks suffered a direct hit from a V1 flying bomb. The building was all but destroyed. It was packed with worshippers, 121 of whom were killed and a further 141 injured – soldiers and civilians alike. The enemy could not have dreamed [...]

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Now Showing

I’d like to draw your attention to two new historical plays which are showing in London, but on quite short runs. The Four Stages of Cruelty, presented by the Simple8 Theatre Company is based in 1751 and inspired by Hogarth engravings. It runs until 24 June. £15. More info and tickets here. The King’s Face [...]

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The “50 Churches Act” of 1711: Hawksmoor’s Contribution

Tomorrow is the 300th anniversary of the Act establishing the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches in London, following an earlier Act to set up the principal intention the previous year. They were enacted partially to fulfil the spiritual needs of London’s burgeoning populus, but mainly to cement the authority of the Church of England against [...]

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St Stephen Walbrook

This morning I left the house in bright sunshine. A bit later as I emerged from Bank station, it was tipping down. No coat, no hat, no brolly. I whizzed past St Mary Woolnoth in Lombard Street, a pretty little Hawksmoor Church which I had seen very recently (more on this tomorrow!), dashed past Mansion [...]

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Execution of a Baby Farmer

On this day in 1896, Amelia Dyer –  having been tried and found guilty at the Old Bailey – was hanged at Newgate prison for murder. Her victim was a baby called Doris Marmon. But baby Doris was one of possibly hundreds of babies murdered by Dyer in her role as a “baby farmer”. Baby [...]

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