This Week In London’s History
- Monday - 8 July 1965: Ronnie Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the notorious ‘Great Train Robbery’ a couple of years earlier, escapes from Wandsworth Prison. He would remain un-incarcerated until 2001.
- Tuesday – 9 July 1968: The Hayward art gallery on the South Bank is opened by the Queen.
- Wednesday – 10 July 1958: Britain’s first parking meters are installed in Mayfair. Soon there would be 625 of them in the district, charging 6 pence per hour.
- Thursday – 11 July 1848: Waterloo Station is opened. The original station would survive just 52 years until 1900, when it would be demolished and rebuilt to form the Waterloo mainline station that we know today.
- Friday – 12 July 1543: Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr at Hampton Court Palace, in the last of his six marriages.
Random London Quote Of The Week
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
Yet in its depth what treasures!
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from a letter to Maria Gisborne
Photo by Veronica Aguilar via the Londonist Flickr Pool.