Taken from Sam Robert and Roy Reed's book London's Ghost Signs, we take a closer look at 10 of the capital's most eerily beautiful ghost signs, still lingering in plain sight.

1. Nestlé | Boro, Killyon Road SW8 (corner of Wandsworth Road)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

There are two layers of Nestlé signage on this wall, with the slogan on one dating it to the early 1920s. This is noteworthy for its explicit endorsement of breastfeeding — in the 1970s, the company was widely condemned for aggressively marketing its formula to mothers in the developing world. Two additional signs on the wall, for the billposting company Boro, boasted of their thousands of sites and sought customers to advertise on the wall. They, or a subsequent contractor, later installed billboards on the building, the last of which was removed in about 2015.

2. J.S. Foster & Co., Tisbury Court W1 (corner of Rupert Street)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

J.S. Foster & Co. was a hosier and outfitter, and here from at least 1910 until 1925. This elongated sign pre-dates 1936, when Little Crown Court was renamed Tisbury Court. It was part of a larger composition that wrapped around the corner of the building, but this wall's more northerly orientation and shielded position have helped preserve it. What remains are decadent pictorials in scalloped panels, and a scroll containing copy written in English and French. This was to attract the French catering and hospitality trade that thrived in Soho at the beginning of the 20th century.

3. Peterkin, Corner of St John’s Hill and Sangora Road SW11

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

This well-loved ghost sign advertised Peterkin's products made at the nearby Battersea Mills. For a couple of years from 1919 the business was run by Joseph Arthur Rank, later of Rank Films fame. His milling-magnate father, Joseph Rank, supported him in this endeavour despite being on the record calling his son 'a dunce'. The brand was taken over by the King's Own Cereal Company in about 1921 and was all but gone by 1930. Early 1920s advertising for Peterkin's custard refers to it as 'liquid gold', accompanied by bold claims about its 'real egg' content. This was in contrast to egg-free brands such as Bird's. However, a court case in 1926 revealed that the actual egg content was far from substantial. Ultimately no conviction was made, on the grounds that customers shouldn't expect too much given the product's low price. The sign was locally listed by Wandsworth Council after its nomination by a local historical society in 2016. The Dutch boy pictorial partly explains its popularity, and appears to be based on similar Peterkin (meaning 'little Peter') characters from children's stories. Although unrelated, similar iconography was also used by the Dutch Boy Paint brand in the USA. While it might be reasonable to assume the sign was a privilege for a local grocer or baker, these were in fact the premises of the Cato family, oil and colourmen based here at least from 1891 to 1941. They sold goods including paraffin, ironmongery, and paints and thinners. While these seem unlikely bedfellows with Peterkin's products, wallpaper paste can also contain cornflour, the basis for most custard powders.

4. Boots, Camden High Street NW1 (just south of Parkway)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

Boots had a branch here from 1932 to 1969, and the sign pre-dates 1953, when it was painted over and replaced with an illuminated installation. It's ironic that the painted sign is now back and holding up well, whereas its successor only partially remains. The handwritten logotype, broadly unchanged today, is said to have been designed by Jesse Boot, a long-term owner of the business and son of John Boot, who founded the company in 1849. Soon after opening here on Camden High Street, the Nottingham-based chemist opened its thousandth shop. It was a period of significant expansion driven by providing affordable health products to the nation. At one time this included lending libraries — 'healthy mind, healthy body', we presume. Boots still has a shop on Camden High Street, just a couple of doors down from the building hosting this sign.

5. Gillette, Queensway W2 (by Bayswater station)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

The detailed pictorial shows a man being shaved by his young child to demonstrate just how safe Gillette’s safety razors were. An early 20th century campaign went further, depicting a shaving baby accompanied by the line, 'Begin early, shave yourself'. This sign is also distinctive for featuring the Gillette logotype at a relatively small size, and sitting within a yellow diamond shape at the top of the wall.

6. London & North Eastern Railway (LNER), South End Road NW3 (between Heath Hurst Road and Maryon Mews)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

This sign was positioned to reach those walking back to the station from Hampstead Heath, and sought to encourage longer-distance leisure travel via the railway. It can be dated to between 1923, when the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) was founded, and 1929, when its head of advertising, C.G. Dandridge, rolled out Gill Sans as the corporate typeface. Gill Sans was then adopted by British Railways after nationalisation in 1948. Two thirds of the sign was protected by a billboard, and the right third's longer exposure has resulted in its more faded appearance, and graffiti.

7. Cakebread, Robey & Co., Tyssen Road N16 (corner of Stoke Newington High Street)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

Cakebread, Robey & Co. builders' merchants was founded in 1882 by George Cakebread and Arthur Robey. It remained in Stoke Newington until 1965, but from 1914 its manufacturing took place at the Caroba Works on Wood Green High Road. The business was wound up in 2000, with the assets acquired by Neville Lumb and then Saint-Gobain. The company made a name for itself producing stained and etched windows and mirrors. These survive in pubs and churches around the UK, and as far afield as Barbados. A relatively local example can be found in the well-preserved stained glass at the Salisbury Hotel pub on Green Lanes. There are at least three layers of signage on this wall, creating a palimpsest that represents the development of the business. Each repainting added new products, necessitating smaller letters to fit them in. For each iteration a whitewash or primer was used to cover the older sign, and these are now fading to reveal earlier layers.

8. Bloom's Pianos, Kingsland Road E2 (adjacent to the Museum of the Home)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

Bloom was the adopted name of Russian immigrant and master cabinetmaker Philip Blumhert, who spent most of the 1930s here. This sign has a little bit of everything: scale, illustration, confident language, elastic lettering and the signwriter's signature. It’s also in palimpsest, but the older layer is impossible to make out. The wall regularly catches the eye of passersby and has featured in ghost signs projects from photographers Tom Bland and Martin Thompson. In 2012 the sign was added to the Local List at Hackney Council in recognition of its artistic and aesthetic merit, and historical value. This probably offers less protection than its north-facing orientation, and hasn't prevented the graffiti that is gradually creeping up the wall.

9. Hovis/Warner Bros | Swan Laundry, Inchmery Road SE6 (corner of Sandhurst Road)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

A remarkable trio of signs advertised the Warner brothers, who took over the bakery here in the late
1930s. The main piece on the corner was protected by a billboard until about 2019, while the other two
straddle perpendicular walls on a smaller, connected structure at the back of the premises. This was
probably where the baking took place, with the shop displaying and selling the goods on the main road.
Below the main corner sign is a smaller, incomplete piece, which directed customers to the Swan
Laundry further along Inchmery Road. Records show that in 1934 this was run as a partnership by two men,
George Sydney and William Craddock.

10. Evelyn Gowns, High Street Walthamstow E17 (opposite Westbury Road)

Image: Sam Roberts/Roy Reed

A branch of this women’s outfitter was based in the building next door for more than 50 years from the early 1930s. However, the featured clothing brand logotypes and the signwriter's phone number place the sign in the 1950s. Its good condition is thanks to the protection given by the buildings opposite.

London's Ghost Signs, by Sam Roberts & Roy Reed, published by Metro Publications Ltd

We featured this book because we know it's the kind of thing our readers will enjoy. By buying it via links in this article, Londonist may earn a commission from Bookshop.org — which also helps support independent bookshops.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in October 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Somewhere out there, in the infinite folds of the multiverse, is a London where you can zip along from Charing Cross to London Bridge on an elevated, Thames-side railway.

The Victorians (and predecessors) drew up numerous schemes to embank the river and build roads, railways and promenades on top. It did eventually happen, of course, but had history shifted differently then we might have got an elevated rail system — not dissimilar to the Docklands Light Railway — as far back as the 1840s. Here it is:

Lithograph by W. Richardson, 1841. Image: Matt Brown

At first glance, it’s a standard portrait of St Paul’s, sketched with the smoking chimneys and attendant steeples that still defined the City skyline when the print was made in 1841. Look closer, though, for there’s much of interest in the foreground.

The first novelty is the walkway. The Thames lacked proper embankments in 1841. With the exception of occasional terraces, such as that of Somerset House, the river could only be accessed from industrial wharves and jetties. Yet here we see fashionable ladies and gents promenading beside, and indeed over, the murky, cack-ridden Thames.

The whiffy walkway is secondary, though, to what’s going on above. Here, six carriages, joined together into two trains, pass along a viaduct. We’re looking at an elevated railway — over the Thames — in the early years of Victoria’s reign. (It’s not technically a monorail, but fans of The Simpson’s are welcome to sing at this point.)

The legend beneath the image gives further information. “View of the proposed line of railroad along the banks of the Thames from Hungerford Market to London Bridge.” (Hungerford Market was where Charing Cross station stands today.) I measured the proposed route it in Google Maps. We’re effectively looking at a 1.5-mile (2.5km) bridge, built over the water and tracking the north bank.

This might seem like a fanciful way to get people across town — especially in 1841, when railways were still in their infancy. But the scheme has the significant advantage of bypassing all the buildings. No compulsory purchase and demolition needed, except, perhaps at the termini.

The Thames railroad was the brainchild of Colonel Frederick William Trench (?1777-1859), a former army officer turned MP. He sounds like quite the character. The History of Parliament described him as “a verbose and egregious Irishman”, while author Felix Barker paints him as “an irrepressible busybody”. Here’s our man, in all his bright-eyed pomp.

Colonel Frederick William Trench, painted in 1827. It looks like he was working on one of his embankment schemes just as the artist arrived. Image: public domain

Trench was indeed irrepressible. He’d first proposed a Thames embankment scheme as early as 1824 and never let go of the idea. In his era, the river washed up against the land in a confusing morass of wharves, jetties and inlets. An embankment would effectively declutter the riverside, aiding navigation and commerce. It would also reclaim land from the Thames, to provide a new vehicle and pedestrian route above, and thereby relieve the Strand. Such things had been proposed before. Christopher Wren, for example, had wanted to consolidate the quayside during rebuilding after the Great Fire. John Nash had a go, too. But Trench went further in planning and publicising his ‘Thames Quay’.

The charismatic man, often described as a dandy, was able to drum up considerable support. Numerous wealthy bigwigs, including the Duke of York, the Duchess of Rutland, the Lord Mayor, and the future PM Lord Palmerston, were all keen. They even joined Trench on a jolly down the Thames — in the state barge of the Merchant Taylors’ company, no less — where the plans were first discussed. Following the riverine conference, a working committee was established to take the scheme forward.

Not everyone was delighted at the idea, however. The barristers of the Temple complained that the viaduct would spoil their view of the Thames. The Dukes of Northumberland and Norfolk, whose houses fronted the river, objected for similar reasons. Meanwhile, the shopkeepers of the Strand feared that their trade would diminish if everyone was down by the river. No small number of wharf proprietors also feared loudly for their livelihoods.

The plans were delicately poised, then, with strong voices for and against. Sadly, two of the key backers died with unfortunate timing and, amid growing opposition, Trench’s scheme was retired. There would be no embankment for the time being.

Trench’s other tricks

Trench was very much an ideas man. Throughout his parliamentary career, he put forward various grand schemes for the capital. His most famous, coming in 1815, would have seen a colossal pyramid constructed on the site of Trafalgar Square, a memorial to victories over the French. Imagine stepping out of the National Gallery and seeing this, rather than Nelson’s Column:

Image: public domain

Actually, you wouldn’t have been stepping out of the National Gallery in the first place. The proposed pyramid would have been the length and height of St Paul’s Cathedral, and would have eaten up most of the land later used for the gallery. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.

Trench’s grands projets also included an optimistic pitch to King George IV. In 1825, just a year after the embankment idea, Trench set out his ambitions to build a monumental royal palace in Hyde Park. This would have been accessed via a two-mile long, 200-foot-wide grand avenue direct from St Paul’s. Trench’s trench would have ploughed through the Temple, Covent Garden, Soho and Mayfair on very similar dimensions to a Heathrow runway. The idea seems far-fetched today (and even Trench admitted it was ambitious), but London had recently seen the construction of the canyon-like Regent Street on a north-south axis. Happily, this horizontal sequel never gained momentum.

Dry me a river

Meanwhile, the idea of embanking the Thames would not go away, and other people took up the cause. One well known advocate was John Martin, the painter of dramatic landscapes and glorious apocalypses. Between bouts of doomdaubing, Martin worked on embankment plans even more elaborate than those of Trench. His 1832 proposal would see the Thames lined with a grand terrace. It would encrapsulate an enormous sewer, which would prevent the fouling of the river and carry ready-made fertiliser east towards the fields of Essex.

It was a simple but expensive idea, which sadly failed to gain traction. Martin was despondent, but he was able to realise part of his scheme on canvas. The 1841 eye-popper called Pandemonium features a hellish simulacrum of London, complete with a colonnaded embankment transposed from the artist’s stillborn blueprints.

The architecture here might be classical rather than gothic, but the mass of the buildings is clearly suggestive of the Houses of Parliament. Image: public domain

As Martin was adding the final brimstone flourishes to his painting, Frederick Trench popped up again. It had been 17 years since the now-ageing visionary had first proposed an embankment carriageway. A lot had happened in those years. Notably, London was now in thrall to the railways, with lines running into London Bridge, Euston, Paddington, Nine Elms and Bishopsgate, and more on the way. Trench sensed a bandwagon. He dusted off his embankment plans and reworked them to include an elevated railway.

His trains would not be drawn by steam engines but would instead be pulled along by a cable. This technology was fairly common during the early years of the railways. Trains out of Euston, for example, were pulled by a cable, which helped them master the incline to Camden Town. Trench also incorporated another emerging technology of the age: the electric telegraph. Cooke and Wheatstone’s pioneering message-sending kit had been successfully trialed along the Euston line four years earlier. The Thames-side railway would support a conduit for an Admiralty telegraph.

Once again, though, our man was rebuffed. His plans were rapidly shouted down as financially unworkable. Trench could not retrench and the scheme was once again retired.

Others would make further proposals in the coming years, among them WH Smith of newsagent fame, and another scheme of 1852 to run a viaduct railway along the midline of the Thames. Nothing of the sort was ever constructed.

It took the singular genius of Joseph Bazalgette, with the clout of the Metropolitan Board of Works behind him, to finally build an extensive Thames Embankment. It would be realised in the 1860s and 70s, half a century after Trench’s first stab at the problem. Bazalgette’s embankment was a triumphant compromise of the previous plans. Martin’s sewer was down there, intercepting the combined turds of north London. A wide carriageway and promenade, easing the traffic of the Strand, was built above. And just below trundled the underground railway — now the Circle line. Its stations at Embankment and Monument almost mirror those proposed by Trench, albeit beneath the carriageway rather than propped up on stilts. Sadly, neither Trench nor Martin lived to see this transformative development.

Yet another aspect of Trench’s 1841 scheme would see fruition in our own age. Look again at the original image and you’ll notice that the viaduct railway stands out in the water, rather than hugging the banks. Behind can be seen a further expanse of water, leading to a pair of staircases. These sweep up to a grand avenue bound for St Paul’s. Meanwhile, an ornamental fountain gushes high into the air.

On this precise spot today is the northern bridgehead of the Millennium Bridge. It’s an entirely pedestrian walkway, just like the promenade in Trench’s plan, and its construction knocked through an avenue connecting the river and St Paul’s. Beneath the bridge, twin staircase splay out towards the Thames — not as elegant as Trench’s, but at least they have handrails.

Image: Google street view

The bridgehead even came with its own cable-pulled railway, albeit on a different axis and scale to the Trench plan. Look to the right of the steps in the image above and you’ll see a tall glass partition. Behind it ran a species of funicular railway known grandiloquently as the ‘Millennium Inclinator’. This was, basically, a diagonal lift, to help those with mobility needs get up to bridge level. Sadly, it was recently removed following a catalogue of breakdowns.

The Millennium Inclinator… a cable-pulled railway beside the Thames, now dismantled. Image: Matt Brown

All the essentials of Trench’s scheme did eventually get built, then, albeit in different configuration. And though it was never a direct inspiration, we today enjoy many miles of elevated, waterside transit in the form of the Docklands Light Railway.

And so, as the Rolling Stones shrewdly observed, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get a reshuffled, reworked version of your initial vision. With a sewer.”

In which one of the great figures of 18th-century London paid homage to one of the greatest of all time.

Out in the far-flung fringes of Greater London, just 40 metres from the Surrey border, stands a classical temple built by one theatrical genius as a monument to another theatrical genius. And it's regularly open to visitors.

This is the Temple to Shakespeare, built by David Garrick in 1756 on the banks of the Thames at Hampton. Here's Garrick and his wife posing outside the temple a few years later:

Image by Johan Joseph Zoffany (1733 - 1810), who himself lived right by the Thames in Chiswick. Image: public domain

And here's how it looks today, minus actors and dogs.

Image: Matt Brown

What is meant by a 'temple of Shakespeare', anyway? What's inside?

David Garrick (1717-1789) was the foremost actor of the 18th century. His contributions to theatre and the acting profession were profound. He was particularly noted for reviving the plays of Shakespeare, and cementing the Bard as the revered figure he remains today.

Garrick didn't just act in Shakespeare plays, he was a massive fanboy, too. He staged a three-day Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-upon-Avon to mark the 200th anniversary of the playwright's birth, a celebratory format we're familiar with today, but which was truly novel in the mid-18th century.

He also collected. Manuscripts, clothing, personal effects — even wood from a mulberry tree that Shakespeare had supposedly planted, which was later shaped into a chair by no lesser figure than William Hogarth.

Image: Matt Brown

Garrick needed somewhere to showcase all his merch and so, in 1756, he commissioned this riverside 'temple' from an unknown architect. The dome-topped bauble served not only as a museum, but also as a summer house from which the Garricks, who lived across the road, entertained guests.

Image: Matt Brown

The temple's original contents are long-gone, sold off at auction following his wife Eva's death. There is one almost-exception. Upon entering, the visitor is immediately confronted by a beplinthed sculpture of Shakespeare, created by the celebrated Louis-François Roubiliac. The whimsically poised Bard was modelled on Garrick himself, who struck a pose for the artist. This is in fact a copy of the original statue, which today stands in the British Library:

Image: Matt Brown

Otherwise, the Temple is now filled with paintings of Garrick and his circle, as well as various etchings and information panels relating to Shakespeare and Garrick.

They even have a small gift shop, where you can by temple-of-Shakespeare postcards, trinkets and even tea towels ("Ay, there's the rub").

Inside the Temple to Shakespeare. Image: Matt Brown

How to visit

Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare is freely open to visitors every Sunday 2pm-5pm from late March to late October. See website for further details. Hampton station is a 10-15-minute walk away.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in September 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Image: Matt Brown

“When you get money you get a taste in food as well; instead of eggs and beans and steak, you branch out into the avocado scene. I never dreamed I would like avocado pears. I thought it was like eating bits of wax when I saw people shoving it down.”

George Harrison, there, with an accidental Partridge to the Daily Mirror in 1966. If John Lennon was the self-described Egg Man of the Beatles, then his bandmate favoured a more exotic ovoid.

Here Comes the Pun…? Dodgy Photoshop by Matt Brown.

Lots of people had a thing for avocados in the 1960s. The exotic produce had been a greengrocer’s novelty for decades, but it was the Swinging Sixties that ushered in Britain’s first mass market. Today, of course, it’s ubiquitous, with avocado toast serving as the mushy mascot of the Millennial generation. I just had some for lunch as it happens.

Yet avocados had reached these shores long before Harrison be-slimed his plectrum fingers. They arrived two centuries ago; tentatively, sporadically, with little fanfare. And it was, of course, to London that they came.

The first known reference to an avocado in the English language comes from the pen of a well-known Londoner. You’ve probably heard of him: Mr Hans Sloane (1660-1753). This long-lived gentleman is endlessly notable. He founded the British Museum, and thereby the British Library and Natural History Museum. He’s also credited with bringing drinking chocolate to Britain. Half of Chelsea is named after him (including Sloane Square Tube station). Unfortunately, he was also a slave owner.

Sloane spent 15 months in Jamaica, initially as the personal physician to the Governor, and later gaining possession (through marriage) of lucrative sugar plantations. While there, he developed in interest in the local flora, which culminated in the 1696 publication of a catalogue of Jamaican plants. This included the avocado, whose fruit he described thus:

“The pulp is of a pretty firm consistence, and has a delicate rich flavour: it gains upon the palates of most people, and becomes soon agreeable, even to those who cannot like it at first; but it is so rich and mild, that most people make use of some spice or pungent substance to give it a poignancy; and, for this purpose, some make use of wine, some of sugar, and some of lime juice, but most of pepper and salt. Most sorts of creatures are observed to feed on this fruit with pleasure; and it seems equally agreeable to the horse, the cow, the dog, and the cat, as well as to all sorts of birds”.

Just not my nine-year-old, it seems. Anyway, this was the first time that those four melliferous syllables — a-vo-ca-do — appeared in the English language. Sloane noted that the fruit was also known as the alligator pear, a name that would persist well into the 20th century.

Then, silence. Very little is said about the avocado for many decades. The plant did not travel well, and no accounts of any specimens fruiting in England can be found until the 19th century. Even then, it was grown almost exclusively by elite botanists and wealthy estate owners who had the resources and heated greenhouses to cultivate tropical plants.

One such was he Duke of Northumberland, who was well noted for growing exotic species in his greenhouses at Syon, near Brentford (then in Middlesex, now part of Greater London). His Grace, indeed, had a brand-spanking new conservatory, completed in 1827 by Charles Fowler. It’s still a highlight of the house today:

Syon’s Great Conservatory. Possible site of London’s first home-grown avocado. Image: Matt Brown.

Among the Duke’s first experiments was the avocado plant. He had one flowering by the October of 1829, according to several newspaper accounts. A painting of the plant (which can be seen here) does not include the fruit, so we cannot say for sure whether His Grace ever tasted that rich flesh. But we can be fairly confident that this was London’s first living avocado plant.

The avocado next comes into view in 1867, when the Royal Botanic Society announced its successful cultivation at Kew, along with other tropical specimens. Two years later, the Royal Horticultural Society reported “the first time that such a tree has produced fruit in Europe”, noting that earlier efforts had flowered but not fruited. This apparent success took place in Byfleet, a little south-west of London in Surrey, in the autumn of 1869. If we are to believe this account, then Mr J. Carr, gardener to P.L. Hinds Esq, was the first person to grow an avocado fruit in British soil.

As the century moved on, avocado cultivation was attempted in the warmer parts of continental Europe such as Madeira, which eventually allowed export of the fruit to Britain. Transit would still take several days, and the avocados were sometimes kept fresh with wax seal. The first report I can find of avocados for sale at Covent Garden Market comes from 1884, when they are listed among exotic fruits at the Christmas market. Incidentally, they would have been sold under the glass-roofed market buildings, which had also been designed by Charles Fowler, of Syon House conservatory fame.

By 1896, the avocado was common enough that the Globe was able to run an opinion piece on its merits. We learn that the fruit was sold at ninepence a piece, and usually styled as the ‘alligator pear’. “Some people call it the most delicious fruit in the world,” reported the paper. “Others declare it to be the vilest.” It was most commonly eaten with a little salt, pepper and vinegar.

Avocados remained a rare, seasonal item in London, only available in larger markets and during autumn. A barrier to greater trade, besides the climate, was the problem we’ve all encountered with the fleshy fruit:

Day 1: Too stiff
Day 2: Too stiff
Day 3: Too stiff
Day 4 (2pm): Eat me now!! I’m just right.
Day 4 (5pm): Too late!

Early attempts at mass cultivation found the plant to be equally whimsical in the field, with different plants nearing ripeness at different times. Only from the early 20th century did horticulturalists manage to perfect a budding regime that would grow uniform plants, and thereby unlock mass trade.

Avocado on toast at The Wolseley, which is, of course, how I break my fast every morning. Not. Image: Matt Brown

Improved crop yields and better transportation brought the avocado to a wider audience in the 1910s and 1920s. This was still an expensive indulgence, however. Commentators of the time describe it as “the aristocratic fruit”. By 1927, Scottish paper the Arbroath Herald ran a story called, straightforwardly, “Fruits you can get in London”, in which the avocado was described as “eaten in large quantities”. The paper notes that you will “meet it in many salads”, but that avocados “are seldom seen in the provinces”.

That same year, the Daily Express published a lengthy feature on the immigrant fruit, and in wholly glowing terms. It includes, as far as I can see, the first description of avocado toast in a British publications (the dish is described about a decade earlier in some American newspapers).

“Avocado Toast. -Mash the avocado, season with salt, pepper, lemon juice and, if liked, a little cinnamon, and spread thickly on toast. This makes either a breakfast, tea, or supper dish or hors d’œuvre.”

Imports increased as the decades went on, with the obvious gap during the war years. It was only in the 1960s that we see what might be termed ‘the first great avocado boom’. By now, the fruit was readily stocked in greengrocers, and even chain supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer got the green bug. The latter introduced the more robust Hass cultivar in 1968, which is now the most common around the world. It was, incidentally, discovered by and named after the Californian Rudolph Hass, who most definitely should not to be confused with Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany, Rudolf Hess.

A cute article in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph’s “The Feminine Angle” column (10 March 1965) describes the puzzled looks one shopper got when taking a newly stocked avocado to the till. Neither the staff nor surrounding customers knew what it was, nor what it tasted like. The reporting journalist reassures us that avocados “have a delicious soft and soggy consistency rather like blotting paper, but not in any nasty way”. (I’m not old enough to remember what blotting paper was, exactly, but I’m pretty sure nobody ate it. Perhaps it was a Peterborough thing.)

Avocados were now easier than ever to get hold of, but they retained their “bit posh” reputation — hence George Harrison’s comments about the “avocado scene”. They were still relatively pricey, too. In 1966, cook Ellen Matthews became the first person on record to be arrested on suspicion of avocado theft. Matthews had allegedly swiped two specimens from the Premier Supermarket on King’s Road, Chelsea. Incredibly, the case not only made it to court, but Ms Matthews was tried by jury. Thanks to a lack of evidence, she was found not guilty of the micro-heist.

After the 1960s, avocados pootled along as a readily available if under-appreciated component of the London salad bar. Imports from Israel and South Africa brought the fruit to our shores all year round, and it lost its associations with Christmas. The 1970s saw ‘avocado’ launched as a “brand new colour”. Avocado bathroom suites became unfathomably popular, leveraging a shade that previously (and subsequently) might have been called ‘putrid green’.

The fruit itself remained rare ‘in the provinces’. I never encountered one throughout my entire (80s/90s) childhood in Lincolnshire. It was only on moving to London in 1998 that I gained my first mouthful, at the wonderful Jerusalem basement restaurant in Fitzrovia.

Now, of course, they’re everywhere. The boom here started around 2010, when London’s millennial population became stereotyped as brunch-craving avocado-on-toast addicts. The (debunked) idea set in that young people frittered all their money on green mush, leaving them unable to join the housing ladder. Someone created an avocado Tube map. Avocado ice cream became a thing. A friend of mine even suggested the avocado should become a totem of the anti-Brexit campaign: withdrawing from the EU, he reasoned, could dramatically increase the cost of avocado imports, stymieing brunch and ruining Millennial life. Or something.

Zédel in Soho does a particularly fine poached egg on avo-toast. Image: Matt Brown

Brexit did not have a noticeable effect on avocado consumption. We still meet the curious comestible on every menu. The current worldwide harvest, dominated by Mexico, is around 11 million tonnes per year — enough, in theory, for each and every Londoner to receive over a tonne of avocados each Christmas. It’s a pity George Harrison never lived to see it.

Bonus joke for those who read to the bottom:

Q. Why are George Harrison and the rest of the Beatles like an avocado farmer?
A. They both leave the Stones in the shade.

Aileen Reid, a senior research fellow on The Survey of London at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, delves into the story of London's White House — built for a great artist, but later demolished.

The White House, seen after Harry Quilter had added an extra floor, destroying the artistry of the design, in Whistler's view. Pennell Collection, Library of Congress, Washington DC

Lovers of architecture will have been following with horror, I imagine, the destruction in Washington of the White House's East Wing to make way for a bloated ballroom set to cost the US taxpayer more than half a billion dollars. But London cannot be too smug.

Within living memory another White House, the home and studio in Chelsea of the painter James McNeill Whistler, was allowed to succumb to the wrecking ball. Whistler was also American, a bohemian aesthete who divided his time between London and Paris from the 1860s till his death in 1903. Most famously he painted his mother, an austere profile study in grey and black seen recently in the blockbuster show at Tate Britain.

A sprinkle of artistic stardust

Edward William Godwin, photographed c. 1865, around the time he first got to know Whistler. Private Collection.

Many of his portraits and paintings of the Thames around Chelsea can be read as studies in pure colour, their titles — Symphony, Harmony — suggesting they are painterly equivalents of music, not just depictions of people and places. In the mid 1870s Whistler's star was in the ascendant, he had just had his first one-man show and for once he had achieved some financial security. So much so he decided to build himself a home and studio in Tite Street, running off the new Chelsea Embankment. That triumph of Victorian engineering allowed what had been a rackety realm of wharves, watermen and the less respectable artists to blossom into the fashionable enclave it has been ever since.

The house he had in mind was to be a home for himself and his lover Maud Franklin, with a private studio and a large atelier where he could have students. He didn't have far to look for an architect, choosing his friend and fellow aesthete, Edward William Godwin for the task. Godwin was a superlative architectural designer, sought out by other architects to add a sprinkle of artistic stardust to their buildings, and an endless stream of designs for furniture, wallpapers, textiles and theatrical costumes flowed from his pen.

Image: Julia Margaret Cameron Details on Google Art Project, Creative Commons

Godwin was also notorious for having run off with the married actress Ellen Terry 10 years earlier, and with her he had two children, one of whom was the theatre designer Gordon Craig. Whistler and Godwin, who had first met in the 1860s, shared a passion for the arts of Japan and one of Whistler's gifts to Ellen Terry were kimonos for her and her little girl, Edy.

By the time Godwin was building a house for Whistler they had separated, and Godwin was married to 18-year-old Beatrice Philip, an artist with 'a delightful devil-may-care look in her eyes'.

"Whistler's response must have been along the lines of 'I think you may have misunderstood my budget'"

Godwin’s drawing of 'Jimmy' Whistler at work, added to one of his drawings for the White House. Private Collection.

Godwin went round to see Whistler and Maud on the evening of 14 August 1877 and drew 'Jimmy' at work, an activity he described on another occasion as 'an almost awful display of nervous power & concentration'. He took Whistler to see two neighbouring artists' houses in Kensington before he set about his design. One was huge, the studio of the painter and illustrator Luke Fildes. The other was the Tower House, the medieval fantasy home of Godwin's closest friend in the 1860s, William Burges, the greatest of the High Victorians. This rich jewel box of a house, finished in precious materials, now belongs to Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, who has been its exemplary custodian for more than 50 years.

Whistler, centre, in the modest studio he moved to after he lost the White House. He is seen here with artist friends including, far right, Frank Miles, who also got Godwin to build him a studio-house in Tite Street, shared for a while with Oscar Wilde. Library of Congress, Washington DC

Whistler's response must have been along the lines of 'I think you may have misunderstood my budget', because the house Godwin designed was much more modest. But it was striking in its pared-back simplicity, a ground-floor studio and top-floor atelier tucked in behind the simplest frontage like nothing that had been built before. Whistler himself was responsible, Godwin reported, for the 'constructive colours', the white brick and sweeping green-slate roof — a symphony in green and white. But the Metropolitan Board of Works, which had the final say on the design, wasn’t having it: 'It looks like a dead-house'. Godwin was obliged to add some fancy carved decoration and raise the parapet to protect the modesty of the roof. It was still a remarkable house.

Whistler's White House, the studio-house designed in 1877 for him in Tite Street Chelsea by E.W. Godwin. This drawing shows what Godwin sarcastically referred to as 'little alterations and perfections' — the additional decoration added to satisfy the planners. Private Collection.

Godwin had similar ill luck soon after with his design for the site opposite the White House, for a studio house for Frank Miles, friend of Oscar Wilde, keen plantsman and painter of pretty women. His design was an almost abstract composition of rectangles, of solids and voids, in which Miles's exotic plants on the balcony were integral to the design. Godwin thought it 'the best thing I ever did', but the Board of Works thought it 'worse than Whistler's'. Once again Godwin had to gussy it up with carved decoration and a curving Dutch gable — features the planners could understand.

Abruptly bankrupt

Frank Miles' studio-house in Chelsea, after Godwin added 'some reminiscences of a visit to Holland' — the gable — to keep the planning authority happy. Photograph by Chris Redgrave © Aileen Reid

Whistler was not to enjoy the White House for long. Shortly before he commissioned Godwin, he had sued the critic John Ruskin for accusing him of 'throwing a pot of paint in the public's face' with his deceptively simple Harmonies and Symphonies. Whistler won his case but the negligible damages awarded saw him bankrupted in May 1879, less than a year after he'd moved in to the White House.

Before he left, he wrote over the door: 'Except the Lord build the house their labour is but lost that built it. E.W. Godwin F.S.A. built this one'. Worse was to come. The house was sold to Harry Quilter, another critic nemesis of Whistler's. After a spell frantically working on etchings in Venice to make some money, Whistler returned to London and, in what seems like an act of masochism, moved into a studio-flat next door to the White House, just in time to see Quilter ruin Godwin's work of art by slapping on an extra storey. Whistler wrote in fury to the press: 'The architectural galbe that was the joy of the few… crumbles beneath the pick, as did the north side of St Mark's. Shall no one interfere?'

"By the early hours even the ceiling had murals"

Whistler showing Godwin into the White House, an illustration from the British Architect of which Godwin was London editor. It's actually a valedictory image, as by the time Godwin published it in November 1879, the house had been sold off. Private Collection.

No one did interfere and things only got worse in the 20th century for the White House. The building had been listed in the 1940s, remarkably early for a Victorian building, a recognition both of its architectural innovation and its association with Whistler. But in 1963 its new owner, Lord Glenconner (owner of the island of Mustique in the Caribbean, part of which he gave to Princess Margaret as a wedding gift), applied successfully to demolish the White House, on the grounds that it was structurally unsound. Before the building finally 'crumbled beneath the pick' one last time, the Glenconners held a 'Beatnik Party' at Christmas 1963 in aid of charity in the White House. The beatniks were given 'very loose rein. One room was set aside for the painting of murals with the necessary pencils and paints. By the early hours even the ceiling had murals'. The house came down soon after.

Its replacement went the same way only 25 years later and today the site is occupied by a grand if unremarkable neo-Georgian mansion with not a whiff of bohemianism about it.

Beatrice 'Trixie' Philip, with 'a delightful devil-may-care look in her eyes', was married successively to E W Godwin and to Whistler. Godwin and Whistler's destinies were entwined in a different way. Godwin died in 1886 at 53 after an operation, and two years later his widow Trixie married Whistler. But she, too, was not destined to make old bones, and some of Whistler’s most poignant prints are of the ailing Trixie, gazing out over the Thames from a room in the Savoy, shortly before she died in 1896. University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections, Whistler Collection.

There is a final irony in this tale of thwarted genius. Whistler is now a great star in the art historical firmament, his name as widely recognised as almost any 19th century artist, yet his beautiful house was ruined by a philistine and reduced to rubble 60 years ago. Who now except keen Victorians remembers Luke Fildes? Yet his fine studio-house, worth tens of millions, is now home to rock superstar Robbie Williams, who has spent years digging a basement with a swimming pool beneath the house. You might say it's almost on the scale of a ballroom...

E.W. Godwin by Aileen Reid, published by Liverpool University Press/Historic England/The Victorian Society.

Deptford's famous carriage ramp. Image: Matt Brown

Deptford.org is a superb new website, put together by local journalist Elia Kabanov.

In the 22 years Londonist has been running, we've seen countless local website come and go, and some excellent ones stick around (especially in south-east London, for some reason). Few have got our attention quite like Deptford.org, a new-ish website covering news, culture and particularly history from the titular riverside town.

Screenshot from Detford.org's article on the Isle of Dog's name origins.

For starters, it's joyously slick. Click on any link and you get a slidey, scrolly transition-filled story, but done in a way that serves the narrative rather than looking showy-for-the-sake-of-it. The stories themselves are all highly engaging. Case in point is this article, about how the Isle of Dogs might have got its name thanks to some Deptford wordplay. Or this early map of Deptford dockyard.

We spoke to Elia — who has a background in science journalism — about his love of Deptford, and his hopes for the website.

Tell us a bit about your background, and how you came to be writing Deptford.org

My wife and I came to London in September 2022. After a month in glorious Beckton, we ended up in Deptford and have been here ever since. I knew almost nothing about the area beforehand. But once I started looking around, I immediately had questions. Why are there skulls on the gateposts of St Nicholas? Who was Benbow, after whom our street was named? Where did all those grand houses on Albury Street come from?

I started reading a lot, and over time I realised I had accumulated far more stories than I could keep to myself. The obvious way to share them was through guided walks for friends. After about 80 of those, I remembered that I’m actually a writer, not a tour guide. That's how Deptford.org began: as a place to collect what I was finding, share it with other people, and hopefully make them fall in love with Deptford too.

What made you set this up as a website, when most people would these days tell local stories through Instagram or TikTok?

Maybe it's a midlife crisis, but I've become nostalgic for the pre-social-media internet: all those strange independent websites made by people who were obsessed with one small thing. Deptford.org is partly an attempt to make something in that spirit.

A website also gives the stories room to choose their own form. One might work best as an ordinary article, another as a map, an infographic or a game. None of them has to fit whatever format an algorithm currently prefers.

And, more prosaically, most of this can be made at a desk. Researching an archive, writing, coding a map or building a visualisation comes much more naturally to me than scouting locations, filming and worrying about lighting and sound.

Elia Kabanov's site is blossoming. Image courtesy of Elia.

You've got a science writing background. How do you think the skills learnt as a science journalist are transferable to telling local history stories?

As a science writer, I've always thought of myself as a professional dilettante. You can't become an expert in everything happening across science, so you learn how to research new subjects, fact-check them and rely on experts who know far more about these topics than you ever will.

I try to bring the same approach to local history. Every Deptford.org piece starts with research, including primary sources where possible. I try not to repeat colourful urban legends simply because they make good stories. When I'm unsure about something, I find someone who knows the subject properly and ask them.

That matters in a place like Deptford, where centuries of history have produced many wonderful stories, but also plenty that have been repeated so often nobody remembers where they came from. Yes, I'm talking about Peter the Great and the wheelbarrow races.

Which features on Deptford.org are you particularly proud of?

Perhaps it’s cheeky, but one of my favourites is a little game about the birds of Brookmill Park. People have played it thousands of times, and while matching herons, kingfishers and moorhens they hopefully learn a little about the wildlife. I'm also very happy with the recent piece about the origins of the name Isle of Dogs. It takes Laura Wright's research and turns it into a visual story about how a possible shipwrights' joke may have survived on the London map. And I love the interview with Adam Wiseman, who photographed every single shopfront on Deptford High Street. What a way to document Deptford's ever-changing face!

No flashy adds or clickbait headlines, just genuinely intriguing articles. (And games about birds.)

Is it a one-man show or do you have a group of collaborators?

For now, I make the site myself, but many of the stories depend on other people: historians, local councillors, residents who know things I don't. Over time, I'd like more of those voices to appear on the site. There are enough people with a story or 10 about Deptford to keep it going for a very long time.

How would you like to see it develop over time? Live events? More contributors? Taking the concept to other parts of London?

My main goal is simply to publish more. I have features in various stages of development about its industrial past, culture and environment, and I'm collecting datasets of books and songs connected to the area.

And I've recently started a section called Beyond Deptford, where I use data visualisation to explore London more broadly. So the site can occasionally wander across the rest of the city, while Deptford remains its centre of gravity.

Deptford.org can be found here, and I urge you to go have a play. Elia also has a Substack called Hypertextual.org, where he plays around with data journalism.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in September 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

London’s grand, historic buildings are not all in the centre. Walthamstow, to the far north-east of the capital, is home to this beauty, which wouldn’t look out of place in Stockholm or Copenhagen.

It looks even grander when the clouds go away. Image: Matt Brown

This was Walthamstow Town Hall, the Grade-II-listed home of the local council. It was built on farmland in the late 1930s, just as war was getting underway. As we’ll see later, it took a few unusual measures against the Luftwaffe.

Back in the 1930s, Walthamstow was a whole borough unto itself, and situated in Essex rather than London. To befit its status, the council commissioned this ‘stripped classical’ Portland stone building from architect Philip Dalton Hepworth.

What Hepworth came up with was quietly spectacular:

The copper-coated clock tower not only provides the time, but also acts as a ventilation inlet for the wider building. Image: Matt Brown

Walthamstow Town Hall is one of a kind, yet still looks the part. Its sharp, clean lines look efficient and business-like, while its protruding wings offer a lithic embrace to the community.

Today, the building is officially called Waltham Forest Town Hall. Walthamstow ceased to be a borough in 1965. It engaged in a group-hug with Leyton, Leytonstone and Chingford to form the new London Borough of Waltham Forest, the local authority that persists today. This mighty building was chosen as the Town Hall.

I’m aware that municipal politics can get a bit dull, so let’s dispense with further administrative noodling and step inside the building. As we enter, we pass over a granite foundation stone, laid by the Mayor in 1938. Beneath is concealed a time capsule containing various artefacts from that era, including a scroll signed by a child from every school in the borough. It will only be opened if the building is ever demolished.

The first room any visitor sees is the reception foyer. It is a gem. It has the feel of an ocean liner, with sweeping curves and deco lighting.

Image: Matt Brown

It’s hard to believe this space was built during the Second World War, despite the shortage of cash, men and materials. That said, it is less grand than planned. That floor should have been marble. Pricey oak wood was forsaken in favour of plywood. The exterior was almost relegated to brick, but cost-saving elsewhere allowed for the more stately Portland stone finish. As if to reinforce the message that every penny counts, the symbols for pounds, shillings and pence are etched into the ceiling, above a part of the hall that was once a cash desk.

Image: Matt Brown

The reception area contains a number of cabinets displaying items from the building and borough’s history. These include the ceremonial trowel from the foundation laying, a metal ‘freedom of the borough’ casket, and a souvenir brochure from the 1951 Festival of Britain, highlighting the merits of the area. We can get a sense of the grandeur of the Town Hall and its neighbours from its cover:

Image: Matt Brown

One of the more peculiar items in the foyer is this war memorial, commemorating the lives and properties lost between 1939 and 1945.

Image: Matt Brown

At first glance, it looks much like any other memorial plaque, but this one holds a secret. Look to the bottom and you’ll see that additional words have been scratched into the wood. These confirm that the frame was crafted from timbers taken from the old town hall on Orford Road, as well as a barn on ‘Moone’s Farm’ — an ancient farm demolished in 1927. Further, the metal plate itself is said to come from a German rocket, perhaps the V-2 which landed just west of the Hall on 14 September 1944, killing six people.

We see more evidence of the war when we move down into the basement. This curious space resembles a yellow submarine, with bright fire doors at every turn:

Image: Matt Brown

The Town Hall was built with aerial bombardment in mind (this was the late 1930s), and includes a number of protective features. First and foremost, the ground floor is built with steel frame and reinforced concrete (faced in Portland stone), offering strong resistance to any external blasts. Were a bomb to penetrate the basement, then the steel doors would limit damage and prevent the spread of fire. And then we have these curiosities, which look a bit like torpedo tubes:

Image: Matt Brown

These are explosion vents. Had a bomb exploded in the basement, then the pressure wave would push these hinged metal plates into the wall, absorbing some of the impact and reducing the stress on the masonry itself. There are dozens down here, exceptionally well preserved from the war more than 80 years ago.

Thanks to these preventative measures, the still-incomplete Town Hall was chosen as the base for the local Civil Defence Headquarters during the war, and was also a base for ARP (Air Raid Precautions) wardens. The wider public, however, were never invited to shelter down here.

Up to the Council Chamber

The upper floors of the building are more in line with how we might picture a council hub. A series of meeting rooms, mostly named after the patterns of ubiquitous local hero William Morris or daughter May Morris, are tastefully panelled in light wood. The council chamber itself is an octagonal delight: formal, but not overly grand. It was recently revamped and restored, as can be seen in my before and after images:

Council Chamber in 2015 before refurbishment. Image: Matt Brown

Council chamber in 2025, after refurbishment. Image: Matt Brown

The walls are adorned with the usual lists of mayors and alderman you might find in any building such as this. However, Walthamstow can claim a celebrity-adjacent Mayor. Take a look at the list:

Image: Matt Brown

The notable name here, doing wartime service from 1941-42, is Mrs E.M. Richards (the ‘J.P.’ means Justice of the Peace). This is Eliza Richards, a socialist politician who did much good for the borough. She also accidentally contributed to the cultural history of the 20th century by refusing to allocate a council house to her son and daughter-in-law. They moved out to Dartford instead where, in 1943, their only child was born — a certain Keith Richards. Had Eliza shown favouritism and granted her son a council house, then Keith would have never met Mick, and the Rolling Stones would not have formed. Ironically, then, Gimme Shelter exists because someone did not give shelter. You Can’t Always get What You Want sounds newly apt.

Let’s head back outside for some fresh air…

The Town Hall is an impressive building in its own right, but it was also designed as the centrepiece of a wider civic centre. A monumental Assembly Hall was built at the same time, on the right flank of the Town Hall. This 1,500-seat venue has served countless functions over the years. Everyone from Plácido Domingo to the Sex Pistols has played here. And, yes, that includes the Rolling Stones. You can’t quite make it out in my photo below, but the top of the building features a quote from William Morris: “Fellowship is Life, Lack of Fellowship is Death”, which also serves as the borough motto. This sentiment is echoed in the name of the central plaza: Fellowship Square.

The Assembly Hall. Image: Matt Brown.

The western side of Fellowship Square, where a V-2 rocket had landed in the war, remained an empty plot until the 1970s. It was used as a car park — a fellowship of motors. Eventually, a courthouse was constructed. Given the decade, it was inevitably built in a brutalist style. This was recently demolished, but I got a snap before the wrecking balls moved in. Work is now well underway on a new civic building, containing council offices and a ground floor cafe and restaurant.

The under-construction civic building (left) is a better match for the Town Hall than its brutalist predecessor. Image: Gort Scott

Completing the square is a huge circular water feature. You’ll never guess its name.

Go on, try…

“The Fellowship Fountain?”. How did you know? The aquatic highlight has always stood here in one form or another. During the war, it was used as an emergency fire-fighting reservoir. This was replaced with a basin design in 1953, to commemorate the Coronation of Elizabeth II. Today, it’s been remodelled into a platoon of illuminated water jets, to the delight of any passing children or instagrammers.

Image: Matt Brown

The Town Hall itself is remarkably stripped back for a classically inspired structure. It is untroubled by fluting, capitals, swags or garlands. Look closely, however, and you’ll find it does enjoy some decoration. The monumental columns over the entrance porch, for example, are decorated with a series of bas-relief panels by John Francis Kavanagh (probably), each depicting an aspect of the building trade.

More subtly, the Town Hall is peppered with tiny bells, present on every balcony and throughout the building. These, apparently, are representative of precisely nothing. Just a whimsical Scandi touch.

Image: Matt Brown

The greatest decorations, however, are hidden around the back, for reasons nobody can fathom. Five masterful sculptures by John Francis Kavanagh (again) depict Work, Recreation, Fellowship, Motherhood and Education.

The five statues, two featuring women with children, two of men (at work and recreation), and a fifth showing William Morris embodying ‘fellowship’ (even though he’s on his own… bit odd). Images: Matt Brown

The Council, on its website, is quick to distance itself from any implied sexism:

“Whilst these gender-role stereotypes might have reflected society at the time, they are not representative of modern Waltham Forest.”

That being the case, it’s a diverting exercise to consider how the statues might appear if carved today. ‘Motherhood’ would perhaps be changed to ‘Parenthood’, or left off altogether, so as not to exclude those without children. William Morris would be up there still, because this is Walthamstow, and he must be commemorated at every turn. The embodiment of ‘Work’ would be depicted at a laptop. ‘Recreation’ would be depicted on a mobile phone. ‘Fellowship’ would be depicted at a laptop on a community forum. ‘Education’ would be depicted at a laptop… Oh man, this is a depressing thought-experiment.

Visiting Waltham Forest Town Hall

This showstopper of a building can be enjoyed from the outside whenever you like — just hop up to Walthamstow on the Victoria, Weaver or Suffragette line and help yourself to the views.

For a look around the building, including the basement and council chamber, I can recommend a tour with local guide Joanna Moncrieff.  My thanks to Joanna for taking me round, and pointing out many of the details in this article.

Simon Wroe, author of Ghost Month — a novel in which the spirits of the dead return to London every September — shares five of his favourite literary ghosts which are supposed to haunt the city.

An illustration of the appearance of the Cock Lane ghost, aka 'Scratching Fanny'. Image: public domain

1. Sherlock creator's ghostly Albert Hall appearance

The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, was a keen spiritualist and hunter of ghosts, but it is claimed he also became a ghost himself. Less than a week after Conan Doyle died in July 1930, the Spiritualist Association rented the Royal Albert Hall to commune with his spirit, even being thoughtful enough to leave an empty seat for the recently-departed next to his widow. 5,000 people watched as the medium, Estelle Roberts, summoned the writer's ghost, who was, according to Roberts, "wearing evening clothes". The ghost had a private message for his wife, but as the medium whispered it to Lady Conan Doyle, the Albert Hall's organ struck up and obscured the words from beyond the grave...

2. The vanishing hermit of Spitalfields

No one has claimed there is a poltergeist of the mysterious scholar Joseph Rodinsky, who disappeared from his attic room above a synagogue in Spitalfields in 1980. But there is something undeniably haunting about his story. Rodinsky lived like a hermit as the city changed around him. His door was always locked; his life unknown. His room was covered in indecipherable esoteric writings in 15 different languages, some of them long dead and barely known to a soul. He seemed to have been codifying the city in some way, or creating his own world system. Then, one day, he vanished leaving behind a half-drunk cup of tea and a pot of porridge on the stove.

Arthur Conan Doyle was a spirited man... Image: Ada Deane, Creative Commons

3. The Woman in White

Wilkie Collins' mystery novel The Woman in White begins with a chance encounter at the intersection of the Hampstead, Finchley, West End and London roads, somewhere around where Finchley Road Tube station now stands. Walter Hartwright is stopped, his blood frozen, by "the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly" upon his shoulder. The hand belongs to a mysterious woman dressed all in white. Her name is Anne Catherick and she says she has escaped from an insane asylum. Whether Anne Catherick is or isn't strictly a ghost should not be spoiled here. But it's not hard to imagine her ghostly presence lingering on that stretch of the Finchley Road...

4. The floating head of Oliver Goldsmith

Stories circulate online of a young woman working at Ye Olde Cock Tavern in 1984, letting out huge screams at the sight of a floating, grinning head — supposedly the apparition of the 18th century poet and writer Olivier Goldsmith. It's probable that Goldsmith drank at the Cock on occasion when in the land of the living, and claims that he was buried outside the pub are semi-true; his final resting place is actually a couple of minutes' away, at Temple Church. But why, in death, Goldsmith's head would be severed from his body, when he wasn't decapitated, is a mystery. Makes for better haunting, presumably.

Seen any floating heads around here lately? Image: Another Believer, Creative Commons

5. The fraudulent 'Scratching Fanny'

The haunting days of the Cock Lane ghost may be well over, but the legacy of this 18th century Smithfield spirit lives on. The ghost was said to be that of a murdered girl who, trying to communicate the tale of her killing and the identity of her killer. Her method of communication was scratching and knocking around the bed of 12-year-old Elizabeth Parsons, daughter of the house's owner, Richard Parsons. The story quickly became a sensation which engulfed literary London. Dickens was inspired by it. Hogarth depicted it (twice). Oliver Goldsmith satirised it. Samuel Johnson denounced the whole thing as a fraud, but not so strongly as to avoid being mocked for his credulity. The affair wound up in court, where the testimony of someone who claimed to have seen Scratching Fanny was met with howls of laughter. It wasn't a laughing matter for Richard Parsons in the end; charged with conspiracy, he was sentenced to two years in prison.

Ghost Month by Simon Wroe, published by Faber

We featured this book because we know it's the kind of thing our readers will enjoy. By buying it via links in this article, Londonist may earn a commission from Bookshop.org — which also helps support independent bookshops.

A swimming pool forms the liquid heart of the Owen Williams-designed Pioneer Health Centre. Image: Londonist

"Line upon line of soot-blackened buildings set among bombed-cleared spaces. Row upon row of big and little shops, cinemas, hoardings. A work-a-day, grey little suburb of South London. There is little outward evidence that this is the setting for the world's greatest experiment in human health..."

For a brief moment in time, one extraordinary building in Peckham revolutionised how the world approached health. But the Pioneer Health Centre was ahead of its time, and 90 years later, perhaps it still is.

"An oasis of glass in a desert of brick"

The Pioneer Centre opened in 1935, nine years after the Peckham Experiment commenced. Image: Southwark Archives / The Peckham Experiment CIC

In the mid 1920s, George Scott Williamson and Innes Pearse — two pathologists working at the Royal Free Hospital — were rethinking the concept of health. Health wasn't, they reasoned, the absence of disease, but the full expression of life. And now they set out to prove this theory.

Williamson and Pearse established the Peckham Experiment, a makeshift 'health centre', in a rented house on Queen's Road Peckham. For sixpence a week, members (who must live "within pram-pushing distance") had access to a small range of activities and facilities, as well as health check-ups — whether they believed they were ill or not.

Peckham was chosen, not because it was a particularly unhealthy or poverty-stricken area, but because of its diversity of residents: artisans, labourers and professionals. When Williamson and Pearse began to examine members of the new club, two thirds were found to be less healthy than they thought. A lack of nourishment and exercise were to blame, but so too was a sense of isolation; a dearth of active community.

With a successful pilot under their belt, things were ramped up. In 1935, the Pioneer Health Centre was built on St Mary's Road — an uncanny new neighbour for those 'work-a-day' rows of terraced houses. The design might've been rattled off by architect Owen Williams in just 10 weeks, but it was revolutionary. Enshrouded in glass, it beckoned in natural light. Open planned — around a liquid 'heart' that was the swimming pool — it encouraged communal, flexible behaviour. The design also meant doctors could watch members at play, in this "laboratory of life". Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius extolled it as "an oasis of glass in a desert of brick".

"It was deemed by the founder to be the first health centre in the world, and by their reckoning it still is the only health centre," says Dan Liston, one of the three co-founders of the Peckham Experiment CIC, which celebrates the history and legacy of Williamson and Pearse's project. "Because actually this was not a building to treat sickness, but rather it was a building to nurture health."

"They can do what they like, when they like, as they like"

Many locals had never been in a swimming pool before the Pioneer Centre came along. Image: Southwark Archives / The Peckham Experiment CIC

The Pioneer Centre was a forerunner to the leisure centres that began sprouting up in the UK in the 1960s, yet it was more than that alone. Aside from the pool, gymnasium and cafeteria, there was a library, a creche, a solarium and gardens. The canteen's food was plucked from a farm in nearby Brockley; organic and seasonal. There were classes for children, who learned through play, exploration and movement. "There is an air of real industry..." wrote the Times of one of these classes. "...There is comparative harmony and no perceptible adult direction here." Here was a village green, hall, church, school and pub rolled into one.

Few rules were set out, the founders recognising that members didn't want to be told what to do. As 1948 documentary The Centre (which you can watch above) put it: "They can do what they like, when they like, as they like." 'Everyday anarchy' evolved, activities arising spontaneously. Members created their own dance, the 'Pioneer Waltz'. Plays and revues were devised and performed. Competitions were held. The resulting sense of community and camaraderie played into Williamson and Pearse's reangled concept of health.

A model of the Centre as it was, on show in one of the flats. Image: Londonist

Many members benefitted directly from their time here. When 11-year-old member Maureen Baynton was sidelined from swimming after contracting glandular fever, she began playing on the Centre's billiard tables instead. She ended up being a multiple-time snooker and billiard champion.

Others cherish their memories of the Centre to this day; while being shown around, we bumped into Ken Marley, who came here every day after school as a child. He particularly loved rollerskating on the roof — an activity that features in the film The Centre.

It is hard to imagine the impact of such a place, and such radical, utopian thinking almost a century ago. Surprisingly, the press was overwhelmingly positive. The Peckham Experiment, supposed the Picture Post "may do more to revolutionise England than anything since the coming of electricity".

Ironically, some members were initially sceptical. In The Centre, a 'Mrs Jones' feels uneasy about the doctors: "I think they're cranks," she tells her husband, who's already been won over by the amenities and new friendships. "I'm not going to that place anymore." She comes around in the end.

"We've fallen in love with the building all over again"

Happily, the building survives, and is now residential apartments. Image: Londonist

Sadly, 'Mrs Jones' wouldn't have had long left to enjoy the Pioneer Centre.

Closed down during the Second World War, the Centre had rallied afterwards, its members clubbing together with brushes and tools to bring it back to its former glory. But this renaissance wasn't to last for long. In 1948 — the same year in which The Centre was released — the National Health Service took flight. Its approach to health was markedly different: treatment rather than prevention. The Pioneer Centre's subscription model was no longer sustainable. Come 1950, despite protestations from its founders and members, the Experiment was over.

Fortunately, Williams' landmark building lives on; since 2000, sympathetically repurposed into beautiful open-plan apartments. "I honestly don’t think I could go back to living in a traditional house now," says Nina Farrell, long-time resident, and another of the Peckham Experiment CIC's co-founders.

"I honestly don’t think I could go back to living in a traditional house now." Image: Londonist

Within these apartments, a second-coming of the Peckham Experiment has emerged. "You never tire of having a swimming pool outside your front door," says Nina, "But the most special thing is the community. Some of us have lived here for more than 20 years.

"We've seen babies born here who are now adults, and over that time an incredible support system has grown around us. It really is true that it takes a village to raise a child.

"Like the original Experiment, it probably isn’t for everyone! You have to learn how to live together, respect each other's privacy and share facilities. There are compromises that come with that.

"But there is a sense of safety in having so many neighbours around who know your family and look out for one another."

"The more stories we uncover, the more former members we meet and the more we learn about what happened here, the more extraordinary it becomes." Image: Southwark Archives / The Peckham Experiment CIC

Aspects of the Peckham Experiment live on in a wider context, too: the importance of eating organic, seasonal food is now widely recognised, if not yet widely implemented. Many teaching methods have grown to be more relaxed. Wellbeing clubs of one type or another can be found in every corner of London, and the country.

But because it all ended so abruptly — and without any concrete conclusions — you can't help wondering what might have been, were the Experiment allowed to continue and flourish in the post-war years. What if more centres like this had sprung up, offering a subsidised way to relax, exercise and interact? Would we be living in a more vibrant — and less insular — society?

"We want to put the history and those questions in front of as many people as possible and see what happens next." Image: Londonist

"Surprisingly, the Pioneer Centre is still not widely known, even here in Peckham," says Nina. "For us, one of the first jobs of the CIC is simply to change that.

"We want to put the history and those questions in front of as many people as possible and see what happens next.

"If someone encounters the Peckham Experiment and it plants a seed that they take into their own work, neighbourhood, practice or way of thinking, then the legacy continues to grow. The centenary gives us an opportunity to open the story up again and see what a new generation might do with it.

"You never tire of having a swimming pool outside your front door." Image: Londonist

"I don't think most of us really understood the full significance of the building when we first moved in. The more stories we uncover, the more former members we meet and the more we learn about what happened here, the more extraordinary it becomes.

"We've fallen in love with the building all over again."

Learn more about the Peckham Experiment on the official website. An in-depth archival website is also planned for the near future.

PEX 100: A Place to Belong is a free exhibition marking the story of the Pioneer Centre, and a centenary since the start of Peckham Experiment, is on at Copeland Gallery, Peckham 19-22 November 2026.

And by the way, apartments do show up for rent/sale here every now and then. Just in case you were interested.

October is Black History Month in the UK — a chance to learn about Black creatives, heroes, and campaigners from the past and the present. Here's our pick of highlights for 2026.

Immerse yourself in Black History this month. Image: TfL

Black History Month walks, talks and tours

🚶🏿 Black History Walks host a number of guided walks in October, including a Theatreland walk, a study of images of Black people on the walls of Tate Britain, and a Harlem in Mayfair tour. (Various dates in October)

🚶🏿Black Legacies London regularly lead three walking tours — around City of London, Westminster and Brixton — in which you're invited to immerse yourself in the rich history (and current culture) of London's Black communities. (Various dates in October)

🚶🏿 Black History Studies lead a tour around the British Museum, honing in on its extensive collections from historic societies of Africa. (11 October)

🎤 Paul Crooks is at Victoria library, for a free talk encouraging people to reconnect with their African roots, by way of records, oral history and DNA. (22 October)

🚶🏿 Black Rooted leads the City Of London: Slave Trade Money Trail Tour, following the hidden story of one of Britain's first slave traders, London's Plantation Economy Triangle and the blood money trail of the Lloyds family (24 October)

🚶🏿 Join the NLA for a tour of Brixton's Black history: learn about the area's controversial 'Barrier Block' building, how Lambeth Town Hall helped build cultural bridges — and finish up in Brixton Village, where vendors represent over 50 different nationalities. (24 October)

🎤 Gallery Educator and artist Joanna Conybeare hosts an online talk/draw-along live from the National Gallery, in which you're invited to explore representations of Black and minority figures within the collection, considering how identity, visibility and lived experience have been portrayed/understood through various works of art. No drawing experience necessary. (30 October)

Other Black History Month events

Caribbean Voices: Shaping Docklands Trail is ongoing at London Museum Docklands. Image: London Museum Docklands

We've cherry-picked a few events that focus specifically on history, but you can find loads more happening across October (and beyond) on the Black History Month website.

🤘🏾Harlesden Library is currently hosting the free exhibition The Brent Reggae Album Covers, where you can admire sleeve artwork shot across the borough over the years. (Until 31 October)

🏛️ London Museum Docklands usually has a slew of events taking place — which we expect to hear more of closer to the time. Their (FREE!) Caribbean Voices: Shaping Docklands Trail continues until the New Year. (Until January 2027)

🏛️  The Music is Black: A British Story at V&A East whisks you through the history of Black sounds in this country — from a display of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's batons, to Stormzy's Union Flag stab vest. (Until 10 January 2027)

🏛️  At time of writing, Brixton's Black Cultural Archives haven't announced their October listings, but no doubt there'll be some insightful happenings, plus this month is always a good excuse to call in and explore the archives (Throughout October)

📸 Lambeth Archives hosts the work of Charles Gimpel, who used his camera to capture the everyday lives of Black Brixtonians in the 1960s. (5-31 October)

🎻 Bloomsbury's Foundling Museum hosts an evening of rarely-heard British anti-slavery songs from the 18th and 19th centuries, peppered with readings from 18th-century Black writers. (16 October)

📖 Symeon Brown is at LSE to discuss his new book, The Good, the Black and the Boujee, which unravels the web of class and gender shaping Black Britain today. (20 October)

Londonist on Black history

Image: English Heritage

Check out our articles on Black history in London:

💻  Asquith Xavier: The Man Who Ended Euston Station's Racist Colour Bar

💻 "I Had Never Seen A Train Before!" Memories Of A Windrusher Arriving In London

💻 A Black History Tube Map

💻 10 Black Women Who Changed London For The Better

💻 Wilston Samuel Jackson: A Plaque For The UK's First Black Train Driver's At King's Cross Station

💻 Who Were The First Black Footballers At Every London League Club?

💻 10 London Locations Linked To Slavery

💻 London's Best Walking Tours: Black History Walks

💻 This Map Of Black History In London Charts Slavery To Black Lives Matter

💻 Black London: 10 Sculptures, Murals And Plaques To See

💻 8 Remarkable Vintage Images Of Black Londoners

💻 Who Was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor? (He's Not To Be Confused With Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

💻 Plaque To Phillis Wheatley: The First African-American Woman To Be Published In English

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in September 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

London has so many museums that you could easily build a family tree with different clades and genera. One of the shorter branches — or perhaps roots — would be the ‘crypt museums’, historical snapshots built into church undercrofts. We don’t have many crypt museums, actually, but they’re all marvellous, and I bet we have more than Los Angeles, Tokyo or Hull.

Next time you’re in central London, consider popping into these hypogeal treasure houses, most of which are free. The ancient surroundings are often as enchanting as the exhibits.

St Bride's, Fleet Street

Part of a Roman pavement, which has been sat down here for almost two millennia. Image: Matt Brown

St Bride’s off Fleet Street is one of Christopher Wren’s more famous churches. Its colossal steeple supposedly inspired (pun reluctantly intended) the stepped-shape of wedding cakes. (Nobody has ever found proper evidence of this, but it’s repeated in reputable books and websites, so it must be true.) As well as gazing upward, though, we should also look below, because St Bride’s has one of the best basements in London.

Its extensive crypt serves as a museum to the building’s complicated history. Indeed, it might be regarded as a potted history of the City itself. The eastern end contains part of a Roman pavement, preserved in situ for almost 2,000 years. You’ll also find a section of wall from a Saxon church (very rare in the Square Mile), as well as various medieval replacements.

Bell fragments in St Bride’s crypt museum. Image: Matt Brown

St Bride’s has burned down on at least two occasions. Broken, part-melted bell fragments from the Great Fire of 1666 are placed on display next to similarly stricken metal from the Blitz. The tintinnabular relics are a powerful example of continuity. Nearby, you can examine an original key from Christopher Wren’s era, along with writer Samuel Richardson’s coffin plate, and an iron casket designed to deter grave robbers. Meanwhile, a side corridor displays tombstones of some of the long-term inhabitants. Among them is a memorial to a journalist and broadcaster whom many British readers will remember:

The memorial to Derek Jameson. Image: Matt Brown

Just beyond, a medieval chapel from the pre-Fire church has been preserved, and is now a memorial to the staff of Associated Newspapers who lost their lives in the world wars.

Part of the medieval St Bride’s still survives beneath the Wren church, and now serves as a memorial to newspaper staff killed in the wars. Image: Matt Brown.

I distinctly remember seeing a charnel house down here, too. Actually, I even got a photo of it. That area was not open to the public on my most recent visit, however.

St Bride’s Crypt Museum is free to visit, and open seven days a week during church hours.

All Hallows-by-the-Tower

London’s other impressive crypt museum can be found at the opposite end of the City, right next to the Tower of London. All Hallows-by-the-Tower, also known confusingly as All Hallows Barking, is a rarity in that Christopher Wren didn’t touch it. The nave is early medieval and escaped the Great Fire, while the tower was built in 1658 following the destruction of its predecessor in an explosion (a tale for another day). Much of the church is, however, a patch-up after it sustained heavy damage in the Blitz.

Roman paving in the crypt. Image: Matt Brown

The temporal fusion continues inside, where an Anglo-Saxon arch survives among the later masonry. Down in the crypt — also largely Saxon — we once again push back to the limits of London chronology, thanks to the significant survival of a Roman pavement. This is complemented by a charming model of Londinium. This recreation is a century old, and is itself now an historic artefact. It was created decades before the discovery of the Roman amphitheatre beneath Guildhall, which is therefore absent.

Image: Matt Brown

American visitors will applaud the central section of the museum. William Penn and John Quincy Adams were respectively married and baptised in the church, and the parish records from these events are on show. An impressive plaque to Penn, damaged in the Blitz, is also on display.

Other exhibits in the museum include various bits of church plate, more Anglo-Saxon stonework and the crow's nest from Ernest Shackleton's last Antarctic voyage (I don’t recall why). Look out for the twisting stalactite of metal in the side-chapel. This is another relic of the Blitz. Firebombs melted the church’s lead roof, which trickled to the floors below.

All Hallows-by-the-Tower Crypt Museum is free to visit and open seven days a week during church hours.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Charing Cross

I’m sure most readers have been down here at some point. But if you’ve never had the pleasure, do pop down.(No bookings, just walk in.) Image: Matt Brown

Of all London’s crypts, St Martin’s is easily the most visited. Its spacious refectory-style cafe is always full (the photo above was taken outside opening hours), thanks to the location beside Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. Very few people, it seems, are bothered about dining on top of gravestones.

Image: Matt Brown

The western end of the crypt contains an easily missed series of chambers that serve as a small (and free) museum. Only a handful of items are on display, but they’re all interesting. Where else can you see an 18th century whipping post next to a statue of the first Pearly King?

Whipping post and Henry Croft statue. Image: Matt Brown

St Martin-in-the-Fields crypt gallery is free to visit and open seven days a week during church hours.

Other equipped crypts

St George’s Bloomsbury: This Nicholas Hawksmoor church houses the Museum of Comedy in its basement. Despite the name, the space is predominantly a stand-up venue, but it does display a handful of exhibits, such as Bill Bailey’s six-neck guitar.

St John’s Smith Square: Known as ‘Queen Anne’s footstool’, because it looks like an overturned stool, this former church in Pimlico is now a concert hall. The crypt is an upmarket cafe known as the Footstool restaurant.

St Mary-le-Bow: The famous Wren church on Cheapside has a notable place in London lore. You can only consider yourself a true Cockney if you were born within the sound of Bow bells (which means no true Cockneys were born in the 40s or 50s thanks to the bells’ destruction in the Blitz). Until recently, the crypt housed a very welcoming cafe, situated among the bow-shaped arches that gave the church its name. Unfortunately, it closed in late 2025, and we can only hope it will reopen again in some form.

St Mary Magdalene, Paddington: An utterly enchanting polychrome crypt, which is occasionally open to public visits.

St Martin Outwich: Merchant Taylors’ Hall on Threadneedle Street is an exceptionally interesting example of a livery hall, which I’d encourage you to visit if you can find a tour. Its basement hides an almost unique survivor — part of the crypt of St Martin Outwich. This medieval church was rebuilt after the Great Fire, but demolished in 1874. The bit inside the livery hall survives from the pre-Fire church and is a little-known wonder of central London.

Part of a medieval church that has otherwise been destroyed. Image: Matt Brown

St Pancras New Church: The crypt of this early 19th century church near Euston has long served as a gallery space, with regular changing exhibitions.

St Paul’s Cathedral: One of the ‘must see’ crypts of London, and included in a cathedral entrance ticket. Down here, you’ll see the famous tombs of Nelson and Wellington, as well as memorials to such notables as Lutyens, Florence Nightingale, William Blake, Robert Hooke and, of course, Christopher Wren. They also have a cafe, which can be accessed without entrance fee.

Westminster Cathedral: NOT the Abbey, which doesn’t have a crypt the public can visit, but the Catholic cathedral just down the road. It houses a crypt cafe which, somehow, I’ve never got round to visiting. Maybe I’ll head there now…

The centrepiece of the show was Imre Kiralfy's dramatic 14th century spectacle, Venice, the Bride of the Sea. Image: public domain

Rome wasn't built in a day, but a version of Venice was built in London in just four months.

To step into the Olympia Exhibition Hall on Boxing Day 1891 was to step halfway across the continent. A fleet of gondolas — manned by bona fide gondoliers sporting striped orange and black jerseys — waited to sweep you along the Grand Canal to the Café Rialto, where you could enjoy Italian dainties and wine; then onto the Venetian glassworks, Venetian pleasure gardens, and an art gallery bejewelled with choice specimens from the easel of the late Signor Faveretto.

Everywhere you looked, it was Venice: its houses, palaces, bridges, campaniles and waterways.

Children must've been bowled over. Image: public domain

And things were just warming up. The main event on any given visit was Venice: The Bride of the Sea — "a Grand Historic and Romantic Spectacle and Aquatic Pageant" — overseen by the theatre impresario Imre Kiralfy. Set during the 14th century War of Chioggia, this was anything but understated; played out by some 1,400 performers, it featured triumphal processions, marine ballets, the launch of a ship, a grand banquet, a Venetian gondola regatta, and soldiers being hurled from bridges. "It is difficult," wrote the Times, "to give any idea of the gorgeousness from first to last of this performance." It cost a pretty penny too: today's equivalent of £4m.

Joseph Lyons, one of the men behind the Venetian spectacle. Image: public domain

The two entrepreneurs behind the ambitious idea were the caterer Joseph Lyons and his business partner Harold Hartley. Fittingly, given the aquatic nature of the project, Hartley owned the Pure Water Company. In his 1939 memoir, Eighty-eight Not Out, he remembered:

One evening later on Lyons, who had never travelled, asked me if I had ever been to Venice, as he had an idea that it might be reproduced with its canals in an attractive form. Being well acquainted with Venice, I at once realised its possibilities and thus "Venice in London" was born. Visions of the Grand Canal, with its churches, palaces, and gondolas flashed through my mind.

Some five million people visited the spectacular. Image: public domain

Venice in London was, naturally a great way for both men to flog their products on site; Hartley's Aerated Waters, Orange Champagne and Kola Tonic were on sale at the Olympia's bars, and you could get freshly-brewed pots of Lyons' tea, too. The aqueous theme continued in the ads that peppered the programme (available in its entirety online), including one for a Doulton toilet.

Victorian Londoners were enamoured by facsimiles of exotic locations — a few year earlier, a 'Japanese Village' was opened in Knightsbridge, only to burn down — and Venice in London was a triumph. The Daily Telegraph hailed it "the most marvellous show ever yet organised in any country or age", and some five million people were thought to have visited in its 13 months of opening — about 20 times the population of Venice in 2026.

Joseph Lyons went on to establish a famous chain of tea houses. Image: The Architects' Journal, Creative Commons

The show bowed out in January 1893, and was soon repurposed into 'Constantinople'. But London certainly hadn't heard the last of Joseph Lyons. The following year, he was conjuring up clamours of people again, this time with the opening of his first teashop on Piccadilly. This was the forerunner of the Lyons Corner House, to become a fixture of 20th century London. Anything involving water that this man touched seemed to turn to gold.

St Luke's, Old Street. Image: Matt Brown

At a loose end on Saturday 10 October? Jump on one (or more) of these free guided walks around London.

Every year, London's various guiding associations come together to put on free walks for the public. Local London Guiding Day this year takes place on 10 October, and features walks in six areas of town, on the loose theme of 'Back to the Future' (how yesterday’s London changed into the capital of tomorrow). Here are your options... how many can you do in one day?

Camden Guides: From Grime to Sublime!: Explore how King's Cross has transformed from an industrial wasteland to a hub for leisure, learning and travel, aware of its past as it builds the future, on its journey from steam, coal and gas to coding, creativity and green spaces.

City of London Guides: How the Past Shapes the City: See how history still quietly runs the show: a 17th century Wren tower that still shapes modern architecture; ancient livery companies with a role today; a Roman-influenced 1990s floor plan; why we still use medieval street names.

Clerkenwell and Islington Guides: A Walk along Old Street: Tour the areas of St Lukes and Finsbury, to discover the people, places and stories from London's Silicon Roundabout, where relics of the past nestle alongside buildings of the future.

Hackney Guides: People & Power on the City's Doorstep: How does Hoxton’s past inform its present and future? Compare almshouses and council housing, parks, libraries, music halls, a power station and Hoxton market. Consider how the powerful provided for the poor, and where their wealth came from. Hear about plague pits, workhouses and non-conformism, and discover what is meant by ‘More light, More Power!’.

A Hoxton tour enshrined in sculpture! Image: Matt Brown

Lambeth Guides: Culture, Community and Change: Find out about the parts of Waterloo you may already have seen, those you may have passed by without noticing, and some you might not even know existed. Discover the stories, people and architectural treasures in a central London area ripe for exploration, much of which lies unknown to visitors of the South Bank.

Westminster Guides: Visionaries: A gentle walk through Pimlico’s backstreets, revealing the stories, characters and changes that transformed yesterday’s London into the capital of tomorrow. Meet the visionaries whose struggles for their future shaped our present, including artists, master builders, sewage engineers, social reformers, suffragettes and secret agents.

All walks take place on the hour, every hour between 10am and 4pm, and each lasts no more than an hour. You don't need to book — just turn up — but if you want to absolutely guarantee a place, you can reserve a slot via the Eventbrite links above.

The six guiding companies put on excellent walks throughout the year, often with themes that will appeal to Londoners as well as curious visitors. Local London Guiding Day is a great way to get a taster (or six) without having to pay a penny.

Find out more information about the walks and meeting points on the event's website.

If you could rebuild just one lost London building, which would it be? We asked Londonist readers, and you came back with an eye-openingly eclectic gamut of answers. Let's dig into the results.

Some of you wanted to see the resurrection of Earls Court Exhibition Centre. Image: Steve Daniels, Creative Commons

Honourable mentions

A number of lost buildings fell just shy of fifth place, among them Whitehall Palace (burned down a long time ago), Earls Court Exhibition Centre (knocked down recently), the old Mappin & Webb building (controversially usurped by No. 1 Poultry, one of the buildings you'd most like to destroy), the old Wembley Stadium (replaced by *checks notes* the new Wembley Stadium) and the old St Paul's Cathedral, for which commenter Rxchxrd kindly left us some rebuilding instructions: "Put it somewhere else without demolishing the current one".

Euston is an area of particular contention. The only pub to get a mention from you was the demolished cask beer haven that was the Bree Louise (flattened in 2019 to make way for HS2 gubbins). It received not one, but two votes, and "was pretty much the perfect pub" according to reader David. That's not the last time Euston appears in this article.

But now, for the top five...

5th place: The Coal Exchange/The Firestone Factory/Savoy Palace

Imagine knocking this down... Image: Clive Warneford, creative commons

What a gloriously diverse trio of joint fifth-placers you gave us!

🏗️ The Coal Exchange: There were actually three iterations of London's Coal Exchange, but we'll assume those of you who voted for this meant the one you were alive to see, aka James Bunstone Bunning's frilly design which was wrapped around a cast iron skeleton, and opened by Prince Albert in 1849. Inevitably, the 1960s came along, and despite Nikolaus Pevsner claiming "its destruction would be unforgivable" they went and did it anyway.

🏗️ Firestone Tyre Factory: Brentford's 'Golden Mile' remains an art deco lover's idea of dying and going to heaven, but not all of its gorgeous factory buildings are still with is. If the stories are true, this 'palatial Egypto-Hollywood construction' should never have been a lost building; it's said that on learning the Firestone Tyre Factory could be listed, the owners demolished it over the course of a bank holiday weekend. Put them in jail, an ugly one.

🏗️ The Old Savoy Palace: None of our readers are old enough to remember the Savoy Palace, John of Gaunt's enviable waterside palace complex, where, apparently Geoffrey Chaucer started penning The Canterbury Tales. The Palace was — spoiler alert — destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The best way to console yourself? A stiff drink at the Savoy's American Bar.

4th place: The old Euston station

Very little from this photo survives, but one element does... Image: Ben Brooksbank via creative commons

🏗️ It's no great surprise that so many of you hanker for the rebuilding of the old Euston station/its magnificent Great Hall, replete with indoor 'trees' fruiting with glowing globes — and a dictator-style statue of George Stephenson leering down at passengers. After all, when we asked which building you'd most like to demolish, the incumbent Euston station was firmly in your sights.

Euston station may now be, as Michael Palin put it, little but a series of "smooth, slippery marble and glass surfaces, so that people can be sloshed quickly and efficiently around," but at least the giant Stephenson survives; crane your neck up at him at York's National Railway Museum.

3rd place: The Astoria/Euston's Doric Arch

"It had such cultural significance in the world of music". Image: The Builder, Creative Commons

🏗️  Euston again! And though the high-flown Doric Arch/Euston Arch entrance was technically part of the old station, so many of you mentioned it by name, we had to give it its own entry. Not all of you were so complimentary towards the bludgeoned/chopped up/drowned-in-a-river arch, however. David wanted to see the rebuilding of "Whatever was on the site of the Euston Arch before the Euston Arch, so people would shut up about the bloody Euston Arch." Again, part of the arch does still exist (its gates). Again, you'll need travel to York to admire them.

🏗️ The Astoria Theatre — which had to make way for the Elizabeth line — was a Cross & Blackwell pickle warehouse-turned-gorgeous-1920s-cinema/ballroom, but most of our readers remembered it from its gigging days, when it hosted pretty much every big name in modern pop, including Oasis, Blur, Prince, Radiohead and Amy Winehouse. "It had such cultural significance in the world of music," said reader Richard.

2nd place: The Old London Bridge

This London Bridge has indeed fallen down — and you want to build it back up again. Image: Matt Brown

🏗️  "I think it would be cool to walk across it and see all the shops, gatehouses (fake traitor heads included) and arches. Would have to be historically accurate though." So wrote Jordan, one of a number of readers who would like to see the old London Bridge reinstated. We're taking 'old London Bridge' to mean the one built in the 12th century, which became an ever-shifting palimpsest of houses/shops/chapels, etc until its demolition in 1832 by those pesky Victorians. You can keep your prim and proper Garden Bridges: the people have spoken, and next time a central London bridge is being mooted, we want it with all the ramshackle chaos, clutter and confusion of the medieval one. Not sure about those decapitated heads, though, even if they are fake...

And the winner is... The Crystal Palace!

The Crystal Palace under construction in Sydenham. Image: Philip Henry Delamotte / Henry Negretti, Creative Commons

🏗️  Securing just shy of 20 votes, the majestic Crystal Palace ("Versailles is not nearly so marvellous" enthused George Bradshaw once) is the building that Londonist readers would most like to see resurrected. "My mum saw it burn down," commented Rhonwen — something that we bet Rhonwen's mum never forgot. As tragic as it was beautiful, the Crystal Palace has an ethereal quality about it, partly because it looks so unreal in all those paintings and photos, and partly because very few living Londoners will have witnessed it before it was (accidentally) destroyed in 1936. Funnily enough, the Crystal Palace almost was rebuilt by a Chinese developer — under the auspices of enormo-project-lover Boris Johnson. Bet it wouldn't have held a candle to the original.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in September 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

“Ladies and gentlemen," said the hump-backed showman, "the Centrifiggle Railway is now to be seen.”

Had you walked along Great Windmill Street, Soho in 1842 then you, too, might have been approached by an old man singing the praises of the ‘Centrifiggle Railway’. The superannuated promoter wore a sandwich board over his weary shoulders. It depicted, as one newspaper put it, “some insane person tumbling out of an immense carriage, which, by some undiscoverable means, has fixed its wheels on the top of some prodigious hoop”.

Further enquiry would have led you to Dubourg’s Grand Saloon, a place of spectacle, entertainment and ‘moving waxworks’. Its latest wonder was the ‘Centrifugal Railway’. Today, we’d call it a loop-the-loop roller-coaster.

A similar centrifugal railway, erected in Manchester around the same time. Image: public domain

The mechanism was simple. You can deduce it from the picture. The unpowered car builds up speed on the down ramp, enough to carry it over the loop and part of the way up the other side. The single passenger, it is hoped, would not “tumble out”, but would be held in place by the centrifugal force. “It travels at the rate of a hundred miles an hour,” lied the tout, parroting an impossible speed that is repeated in newspaper advertisements.

A better illustration of the Great Windmill Street roller-coaster can be seen here, in a copyrighted image.

The best account of this marvel appeared in the syndicated press in December 1842. The anonymous journalist who pays the attraction a visit does not venture into the carriage himself, but looks on as “a heroic looking youth, all grease and long hair, seated himself in the machine, and performed the somerset more, apparently, to his own satisfaction than that of any one else”.

This is one of the earliest accounts of a ‘loop-the-loop’ anywhere in the world. A French inventor named Clavieres reportedly pioneered the concept in 1833, but never put it into practical purpose until almost a decade later. It’s not clear from the accounts I can find whether M. Clavieres was involved with this Soho venture, of if it’s a copycat.

The ride received mixed reviews. One anonymous correspondent, perhaps connected to the set-up, gushed about its virtues: “This ingenious plaything is well worthy of a visit. As a piece of curious and amusing machinery, it cannot fail of creating surprise and interest in the general spectator; whilst as an exemplification of the laws of gravity and motion, it must furnish delight and instruction to the man of science.”

Apparently, it could fail to create surprise and interest. “No more than a stone in a sling,” commented one unimpressed observer, “Or a glass of water in a hoop at Astley’s,” he added, referring to the famous circus in Lambeth. Another bemoaned its lack of utility: “It's all rig'lar rubbage, that centriffagle railway… for what's the use o't? Who the mischief is going from London to Birmingham, twirling half the time on their heads? I don't think it'll ever be useful.” (We still encounter his type today — the “complete waste of money” moaner for whom everything has to have some practical use, rather than simply being fun or amusing.)

Still, it attracted enough interest to last for at least a year. According to an advertisement in the Morning Herald, the ride counted many notable ladies and gentlemen among its white-knuckled patrons. If we can believe the advert (which we can’t, because it also cites the 100mph nonsense) then future Prime Minister Lord Palmerston was among them. As well as ending the Crimean War, abolishing the East India Company and securing independence for Belgium, Palmerston may also be the first Prime Minister to loop-the-loop.

(An adroit satirist might here note Liz Truss’s similar achievement: a short, expensive, nauseating ride downhill, the world turned upside-down, before the whole system grinds to a halt and she’s kicked out for the next person. Sadly, I’m not that kind of writer.)

The attraction had stupendously long opening hours (11am to 11pm). We should remember that Dubourg’s Salon had other draws, such as the waxworks and the opportunity to ride a ‘velocipede’ (early bike), which could satisfy large crowds who couldn’t all go on the centrifugal railway. The night opening, later reduced to 10pm, allowed working people to pay a visit. Admission cost a shilling for adults, and 6 pence for children. One advert from 1842 even includes the promotion “Schools half price”. I wonder if the offer was ever taken up. Think how improbable it sounds as a piece of trivia: “In the 1840s, kids could go on a school trip to ride a loop-the-loop roller-coaster… in Soho”. (If the QI Elves are reading this, please give me credit.)

For all its simplicity, the ride was not without its problems. One man narrowly escaped death after his cart left the track mid-loop. “Had the carriage, which weighs 200lb, fallen on the individual he must inevitably have been killed,” reckoned the West Kent Guardian.

Despite the occasional hiccup, the attraction persisted on Great Windmill Street until the summer of 1843. Similar rides popped up in various locations, including the nearby Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly, as well as in Dublin, Cork, Manchester (which predated the London one), Leeds, Bristol, Hull, Birmingham, Liverpool and Edinburgh. The last accounts come from the Scottish capital in 1846, after which the diversion seems to have ran out of favour.

An earlier loop-the-loop in London?

And now something of a mystery. All sources I can find (including Guinness World Records) suggest that the ride first appeared in London in 1842, as essayed above. However, we may have an earlier date. In a previous article, I published the recollections of Ion Codru Drăgușanu, a Romanian traveller and the first of his nation to leave a detailed account of London. After my newsletter, Drăgușanu’s translator, Mihai Risnoveanu got back in touch to say that he’d found another paragraph, excised from the first version. Here it is:

Sogno (the guide) took me from here to the “Centrifugal-railway”, a new mechanical wonder. An iron railway, arranged on a gentle incline from one end of a hall, has a circular twist in the middle of it and, as gently as before, goes upwards from that side to a certain height. One sits down in a cart which is uncovered in middle and is forced to start spinning with the head hanging downwards without falling, since the speed removes any danger [of it].

This sounds identical to the apparatus described above. However, Drăgușanu visited in 1840, two years before the Great Windmill Street phenomenon. I’ve done some more digging, and it sounds like a similar contraption was set up in the Royal Polytechnic Institution on Regent Street in 1840. The following is taken from Herapath’s Railway Journal, in December of that year:

Found via the British Newspaper Archive.

This is the only news account I can find from 1840 that describes the system in action. The difficulties it mentions offer an explanation as to why the ride didn’t make a splash for another two years. Drăgușanu, however, suggests that humans were riding it (“One sits down in a cart…”). But perhaps he was talking hypothetically.

The site today

In the absence of further information, then, the Great Windmill Site seems to be the first place in London where the public could loop-the-loop. I’ve traced the site of Dubourg’s centrifugal railway in trade directories to number 8 Great Windmill Street, at the Haymarket end of the road. The location is now occupied by one of those large Edwardian buildings that line Piccadilly Circus, Coventry Street and Haymarket. It’s currently undergoing redevelopment.

Great Windmill Street today. Image: Matt Brown

The building just so happens to be the old London Trocadero. From the 1980s until it fizzled out in the Noughties, this was a teen’s paradise of rides and attractions, including small roller-coasters. How incredible is that? Central London has been home to very, very few roller coasters over the years, but here we have two, unrelated examples on the same footprint... and on a road (Great Windmill Street) named after a structure that turns through 360 degrees. Peter Ackroyd would love the ‘continuity of place’.

It just goes to show, what goes around comes around… unless it falls off the rails first.

Click or tap for larger image. Image: Matt Brown

Continuing our series on London's heritage murals.

Barking has a long and eventful history. From Anglo-Saxon times, the town was home to an important abbey, whose remains are still a prominent part of the townscape. In more recent centuries, it became a major centre of fishing and manufacturing industries.

This history is celebrated on the Barking Heritage Mural, which was painted on a gable end in East Street in 2021 by artist Jake Attewell. Let's dig the details.

1. East Street. It's a little hard to make out detail, but the row of shops and houses shown here represents early 20th century buildings on East Street, the road upon which the mural stands. East Street is an ancient thoroughfare that led from Barking Abbey off to Dagenham. Its heyday came in the early 20th century, when big stores like M&S, Burtons and Woolworths lined the street. Now pedestrianised, it remains the main shopping street of the town.

2. Electric tram. For a brief time, Barking had its own tram network. Opened in 1903, the system was one of the shortest in the country at 2.8 miles. The lines were never profit-making and closed down in 1929.

3. Barking once possessed a bascule bridge — not quite a rival to Tower Bridge, but impressive nonetheless. The bridge was built between 1898 and 1903 to carry the trams over the River Roding to Beckton Gas Works. It proved costly to maintain, and it was demolished in 1929, along with tram services to Beckton (workers hereafter used a bus). Remnants of the bridge's footing can still be seen on the south-western bank of the Roding.

4. This is Barking's most famous landmark: the Curfew Tower of the old abbey. The abbey was set up by brother-and-sister saints Earconwald and Ethelburga some time around AD 666. It is, therefore, one of the oldest establishments in the London area. Not much of the abbey is left today, thanks to a certain beardy, rotund monarch, though extensive foundations are on display just north of St Margaret's church. One exception is the Curfew Tower, a medieval gateway into the abbey. The current version was built in 1460, making it Barking's oldest building. Such is its importance, that it surmounts the coat of arms of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

The Curfew Tower. Image: Matt Brown

5. Another lost landmark of Barking, this is the Wellington Windmill, named in honour of... well, the usual Wellington. The mill stood over the Roding in what is now Duke's Court. It lasted until July 1926 when it was pulled down by a traction engine after standing for 200 years.

Image: mark's vintage topographical postcards, Creative Commons

6. A scene showing Barking Quay, when it was still a working wharf, serving fishing boats and support industries. The mural image is taken from an old postcard.

Directly opposite the mural stands one of several mosaics in the area by Tamara Froud. This one shows Barking Central Hall, which stood on this site from 1928. The short-lived building was ruined by a V2 strike in the Second World War and pulled down soon afterwards.

Image: Matt Brown

More information about Barking's rich heritage can be found on the BeFirst website.

See our full series on London's best murals, including:

• The Battersea mural
• The Fitzrovia mural
• The Battle of Cable Street mural
• The Sutton Heritage Mosaic
• Dalston's Hackney Peace Carnival mural
• Kingsbury's George Michael Mural
• New Cross's Riders of the Apocalypse mural
• Brixton's Nuclear Dawn mural
• Peckham's RUN mural
• Whitechapel's Sidney Street mural
• The Tolpuddle Martyrs mural near King's Cross

'Hidden London' tours of the London Underground were being organised well over a century ago. Image: Londonist

"Husbands and wives, and even courting couples, were found wandering in the tunnels of London's underground system at 2 o' clock on Saturday morning."

Well over a hundred years ago, the general public were already so fascinated with the labyrinth of Tube tunnels running beneath their feet, they'd signed up to nascent versions of 'Hidden London' tours.

The somewhat unlikely host of these early subterranean explorations was the Selborne Society, a conservation organisation formed in 1885, predominantly concerned with the study of natural history. But the Society also seems to have taken a keen interest in London; in 1916, it was advertising tours titled "An Afternoon with Pepys", "A Dickens Ramble" and "Historic Southwark". Given that the First World War was raging at this time, the Society also hosted "Flemish London" excursions, a friendly nod to the scores of Belgians seeking refuge over here.

People's infatuation with the nooks and crannies of the Underground network are insatiable. Image: Loz Pycock, Creative Commons

That year, the Society also hosted at least two "Underground London" rambles. Someone at the Society must've had good contacts, because the tours went all over the place: exploring the signalling cabins and ventilating plant at Hampstead, the lift motors at Chalk Farm and the escalators and ticket machines at Paddington. "This visit to the subterranean secrets of the great tube system must have altered many fixed impressions..." gushed a report in 'Field'. "...those who could recall the sulphurous horrors of the Metropolitan Railway in the early seventies could not but marvel at the strides that have been made in the application of science to the comfort and convenience of mankind in the last fifty years."

A decade later, and the Selborne Society was still at it. "Ghostly Walk Through London Tubes — Men and Women in Queer Underground Ramble" ran a marvellous account from the Daily Chronicle in October 1926. This time, hundreds of urban explorers descended the spiral staircase at Strand station in the wee small hours, making their way up the line through Charing Cross station, while "jumping over switches" and "astonishing stray electricians".

The Daily Chronicle wrote up a report on a public viewing of the Tube in 1926, though these were already happening a whole decade earlier. Image: British Newspaper Archive

It's wonderful to picture the 'oohs' and 'ahhs' of the lucky tourists echoing through the tunnels, while around them, workmen were busy signal testing, and clanking away as they fitted a new escalator. "But the strangest noise of all," reported the Daily Chronicle, "was a woman's laugh, which the tube magnified until it became a horse roar." We can't find any more reports of these tours after this; perhaps following the laughing incident, some of the workers had a word.

It's particularly fitting that the 1926 tour went to Strand station; later renamed Aldwych — and closed in 1994 — this station was subsequently opened to the public by London Transport Museum, for Open House. The success of this led to more Aldwych tours, and, in 2015 the launch of Hidden London — now offering a smorgasbord of behind-the-scenes explorations across the network.

The Selborne Society is alive and well, though their upcoming events don't mention any 'queer underground rambles'.

The world's most prestigious address? Image: PAUL FARMER, Creative Commons

Ever strolled south-west along Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner and noticed the rather regal building facing out onto Wellington Arch?

It's called Apsley House, was home to the 1st Duke of Wellington for years, but also lays claim to having the address 'Number 1, London'.

The original house was built on the site in 1778, for Lord Apsley. Being in Hyde Park, the lease for the land was negotiated from the Crown Estate, and the house was the first one on the north side of Piccadilly. At the time, it was next to the main turnpike or toll into central London at Knightsbridge, so became known as 'Number 1, London' — because it was the first house you came to once you entered London.

The 'Iron Duke' — which wasn't a complimentary nickname. Image: Thomas Lawrence, Creative Commons

The modern house differs significantly from the original red-brick house built in the 1770s. In 1819, Wellington added a three-storey extension to the north-east, encompassing a state dining room, new bedrooms and dressing rooms. 10 years later when the Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister, he further added a new staircase and the Waterloo Gallery on the west front.

His nickname the 'Iron Duke' had nothing to do with his strength on the battlefield, but the iron shutters his fitted on Apsley House's windows, as protection against rioters. (He was also nicknamed "Nosey" because of his prominent hooter.)

The property's official address today is 149 Piccadilly, Hyde Park Corner, London, W1J 7NT, but rumours still abound that if you post a letter to 'Number 1, London' it will reach this address. If you decide to do it, let us know if you get a reply.

Today, Apsley House is a Grade I listed building, owned and managed by English Heritage and open to the public. Check website for prices and opening times.

First broadcasting on 28 November 1991, Kool FM quickly rose to the top of London’s pirate radio scene. As the jungle genre grew in 1992/1993 — then exploded in 1994 — Kool was at the forefront. It continues to this day under the Rinse umbrella.

Here, curator of the Original Kool Archives, Trevor 7oaks, explains his life-long infatuation with the station, and his self-appointed mission to archive as much of it as possible.

"It was raw, energetic and connected directly to the clubs, raves and estates where the music was happening." Image: Trevor 7oaks

I discovered Kool FM in 1992, when I was 18.

You didn't have Spotify, YouTube or a streaming service where you could instantly find any set you wanted. If you wanted to hear what was happening, you had to find the frequency, tune the radio in and listen.

There was something really exciting about that. You never quite knew what you were going to hear next. A DJ could drop a tune you'd never heard before, or an exclusive dubplate. An MC could completely change the atmosphere, there may be special guests or DJ/MC combinations you had not heard before.

Suddenly you would realise that you'd just heard something special.

The whole London jungle scene felt incredibly alive. There were raves, pirate stations, record shops, tape packs, flyers and people constantly swapping recordings. The music was changing so quickly that something could sound futuristic one month and completely normal a few months later.

"Kool FM was always there for me — through great, good and difficult times"

"Kool FM wasn't just broadcasting jungle — it was documenting the development of jungle and drum & bass." Image: Trevor 7oaks

This completely underground radio station was broadcasting from London and reaching people who were hungry for something different.

It was raw, energetic and connected directly to the clubs, raves and estates where the music was happening. You could hear DJs and MCs who were genuinely part of the scene, playing music that you simply weren't going to hear on the mainstream stations.

In 1992 the music was called hardcore. But over the coming months, a rawer sound emerged. Tracks started to adopt the style, drum patterns and samples that became known as jungle. Kool FM wasn't just broadcasting jungle — it was documenting the development of jungle and drum & bass. Its reputation spread throughout the UK and internationally.

Here was the place for producers to test their new records, so certain DJs were given exclusive early access. MCs would test new lyrics and styles before unleashing them at their next rave booking. With the weekly release of new records, the station remained fresh.

Kool FM was always there for me — on the radio at home, in the car or listening back to recordings — through great, good and difficult times.

"People used to drive to the outskirts of London, record in their cars and take the tapes back home to share with friends"

The author taking some well-deserved refreshment in the studio. Image: Trevor 7oaks

It became a meeting point for the jungle community. Whether up and coming new talent, or established artists, this was the platform they wanted to perform on. Over the years the many artists have been part of the family. From the late greats MC Skibadee and Stevie Hyper D, to Crissy Criss, Brockie, Shy FX, Mampi Swift and DJ Kane, and many, many others — they all helped create a scene that was developing incredibly quickly.

What makes pirate radio particularly interesting is that the geographical reach wasn't necessarily limited to the strength of the transmitter. People would record sets and pass them around, and as the music became more popular those recordings travelled everywhere. People used to drive to the outskirts of London, record in their cars and take the tapes back home to share with friends.

Because it was underground, the listeners really felt part of the Kool community. Over the years I have met the DJs and MCs, as well as regular listeners. Some have become good friends. A listener called Kelly from Harlow became my wife, and we now have two children.

"I realised I wasn't just collecting recordings anymore. I was preserving a piece of musical and cultural history"

"Over time my recordings grew into something much bigger." Image: Trevor 7oaks

I started recording. At first my intentions were not about preservation or forming the largest archive. I just wanted to capture the live recording as it happened. It would not happen again. I had to capture it there and then so I could relive it.

Over time my recordings grew into something much bigger. I've now got more than 9,000 recordings, covering Kool FM from the early 1990s onwards. At some point I realised I wasn't just collecting recordings anymore. I was preserving a piece of musical and cultural history. That’s really how Original Kool Archives came about, and why I describe myself as a pirate archivist.

Digitising them has been a huge undertaking and something I've worked on over many years. It isn't simply a case of pressing a button and uploading them. The tapes have to be digitised, audio repaired/edited to improve quality, checked, organised, named and preserved. I still have around 150 tapes in a box I need to digitise.

It's almost like an addiction, I need to keep feeding the archive. A lot of these recordings only existed on cassette, and without people taking the time to preserve them, huge parts of that history could disappear. There are recordings sitting in people's lofts, cupboards and garages that may contain broadcasts that nobody else has heard for 30 years. That's what keeps me going.

People still want to listen, too. Downloads of MP3 recordings I have hosted online have surpassed 500,000.

"It's like being transported back to being 18 or 19 again"

"It's almost like an addiction, I need to keep feeding the archive." Image: Trevor 7oaks

I'm not just preserving music, but people's memories of a particular period in their lives and an incredibly important period in London's musical history.

People get in touch after hearing a recording and tell me that it takes them back to a particular time in their life. They remember where they were living, who they were with, the clubs and raves they went to — or even just sitting in their bedroom with a radio or cassette recorder listening to Kool FM.

For some, it's incredibly nostalgic. They might suddenly hear a DJ or MC they haven’t heard for 30 years and it's like being transported back to being 18 or 19 again. For others it reminds them of lost friends or family.

I've had people tell me how much it means to them to be able to hear sets they thought had been lost forever.  

Tune in to the Original Kool Archives, streaming 24/7.

It's official: Bayeux Mania has invaded London. Image: HistoryExtra

"Can I send you an exclusive preview box of Bayeux Lager?"

Unless you've been seeking solace beneath a rock/digital detox lately, you'll know that London has a VIP French guest in its midst. The Bayeux Tapestry is in town, and the clamour for tickets makes Harry Styles look positively unwanted.

As well as a chance to ogle what the Guardian raved as "a stupefying, thrilling, horrifying masterpiece", the tapestry's jaunt to the British Museum also weaves a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a healthy bit of marketing. Fun fact: if you put all the Bayeux-related marketing emails we've received in the past few weeks end-to-end, they'd measure 70 metres, the exact length of the Tapestry.

Londoners are cashing in on the almost-1,000-year-old masterpiece, and who can blame them. We probably made the bloody thing, after all*.

"There's William the Conqueror on Westminster Bridge, leafing through a copy of HistoryExtra"

Would sir care for a miniature edible Bayeux Tapestry? Image: Red Carnation Hotels

Suddenly, every corner of the city reveals another Norman-flavoured promotional ploy. Cross Westminster Bridge, and there's William the Conqueror leaning against the balustrades, leafing through a copy of HistoryExtra. Sit down to afternoon tea, only to find your cheesecake's got a miniature Bayeux Tapestry wrapped around it. Nip into the Museum Tavern across the road from the exhibition — having witnessed the Tapestry in all its stupefying, thrilling horror — to discover that a 'Beer Tapestry' (5/10 for that particular pun) has been hoisted up behind the bar.

London galleries which are conspicuously deficient in the Bayeux Tapestry department (i.e. not the British Museum) haven't let that get in the way. Take the Guildhall Gallery, which is launching Beyond Bayeux: Tapestry Now**, the exhibition equivalent of a Harry Styles tribute act performing in a Wembley pub.

"After witnessing such an orgy of embroidered butchery, you'll be in need of a drink"

You'll find it difficult to escape the Bayeux Tapestry for a while, especially around Bloomsbury. Image: Greene King

Sitting prettiest of all is the British Museum's gift shop, bulging with a treasure trove so rich in trinkets it'd overwhelm the Digging for Britain team: Bayeux Tapestry tea towel (£9.99), Bayeux Tapestry Christmas decoration (£13.99), Bayeux Tapestry Battle of Hastings feather quill pen (£19.99), Norman Ghost incense holder (me neither, £40), Bayeux Tapestry pewter tankard (£99), Bayeux Tapestry silk scarf (£125), Edward the Confessor and Harold ceramic ornament (£325). Perhaps there's been a mad rush — on the morning the exhibition officially opens, the British Museum's online gift shop is "currently under maintenance and should be back soon".

Meanwhile, that Bayeux Lager — a collaboration between the British Museum and Battle Brewery — is available to quaff in the Museum's cafes and restaurants. Well, after witnessing such an orgy of embroidered butchery, you'll be in need of a drink.

"London mightn't have witnessed a cultural mania like this since 1972"

In the words of the late, great William the Conqueror: "Chaaaaarge!" Image: British Museum

London mightn't have witnessed a cultural mania like this since 1972. Again, the British Museum was to thank/blame; its landmark exhibition of Tutankhamun treasures prompted 1.7 million people to queue around the block (not all at once), and snap up souvenirs like they were going out of fashion. To be fair, they were going out of stock. Replica jewellery in the gift shop sold out on opening day. "The English, normally phlegmatic about art," wrote Time magazine, "greeted the event with ecstasies of Tutankhamenophilia. Tut appeared on posters, postcards, carrier bags and 56 million commemorative stamps." London's blockbuster exhibition era was born.

While some Bayeux cash-ins might be more cynical than others, who are we to judge. It's refreshing to see people getting hopped up about something so innocently cultural so... what are the words I'm looking for... stupefying, thrilling and horrifying. So, the best of British Norman to anyone hoping to make a quick buck — and in the words of the late, great William the Conqueror, "Chaaaaaarge!"

*Well, maybe Canterbury.
**A free exhibition, I should point out.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in September 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Image: public domain

Today, I’m delighted to publish what might be the first account of London from a Romanian traveller. And I’ll give you a spoiler up front: you’re in for a treat.

A Continental Amazed by London gives us the impressions of Ion Codru Drăgușanu (1818-1884), who visited our city in 1840 while still a young man. It’s a sparkling account of the city (mostly the West End) in the early Victorian period, from a rare east-European perspective.

The text was translated and sent to me by Mihai Risnoveanu, formerly of the Romanian Cultural Centre in London, and includes a short introduction by Ramona Mitrica. It was first published in the Cultural Centre’s newsletter in 2008, but is not available online. I have reproduced it exactly as sent, and included my own comments beneath each section, to offer further context.

By coincidence, this article goes out on 10 September 2026, the 186th anniversary of Ion Codru-Drăgușanu’s journey from Paris to London.

A Continental Amazed by London

Introduction by Mihai Risnoveanu

Ion Codru-Drăgușanu (1818-1884) was a Romanian writer from Transylvania, and was also a journalist and politician. His book, ‘The Transylvanian Pilgrim’, published in 1865, relates his travels throughout Europe, and in addition, his visit to London, which marks him out as one of the truly rare Romanians to have visited Britain up until the very end of the 19th century.

Image: Asybaris01, Creative Commons

Ion Codru Drăgușanu travelled to London in 1840. A continental amazed (to the full extent of the word) by this land appearing from the fogs of Victorian times, he has left us his impressions of the English, England, and the English way of life. From the following one can see that some things do not change much with the passing of time and some other things are still as inexplicable to the continental mind as then.

Fate ordained that one of his great-grandsons, Ion Ratiu, would build his life in London and would become a prominent British-Romanian, inspiring others in the quest to penetrate the mysteries of life in the land of the Albion. What Ion Codru would have made of this we cannot possibly know, but here are his opinions about how life was for him on the banks of the Thames.

London, September 1840

Throughout Europe there are only two great peoples: the French and the English. Writers compare the former with the ancient Greeks, and the latter with the Romans, but this is true only in view of the main characteristics of the nation, because I deem that the reverse would not be false either.

The French have a frivolous insolence and a convulsive tendency to rebel, but they have a tasteful and attractive luxury, and their writings are full of spirit – thus they resemble the Grecians, while their great deeds and their influence on the general culture of other peoples make them the true Romans of modern times. On the other hand, the English are thoroughly endowed with constancy, the chief virtue of Rome, but they have the speculative spirit and egotistical habits that focus on their own interest, which are nothing more that Grecian attributes.

In alliance with each other, these two nations are destined to rule the world and decide the fate of nations.

This was my own theory about the country and its inhabitants. Let us proceed to show what we know from our own experience and to prove these in accordance with my speculations.

We are told that England, being surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, is heavily subject to powerful drizzles, and that London, being close to the sea, towards the mouth of the Thames, suffers greatly because of these all year around. The exception being September, when the weather is bearable. So we took advantage of this propitious time of the year to see this city, the most gigantic in Europe, in its whole splendour.

On the 10th of September, we departed from Paris with the post coach and, travelling throughout the night, reached the French port of Havre de Grace, at the mouth of the Seine. [...] With the evening tide of [the next] day we boarded the steamship “Great Britain” which sailed the Channel – the wet road to London.

[...] [Due to sea sickness] The next morning I woke up a bit more worn than usual, and I went on the deck of the steamship to see the place. One could only see the clear blue skies and the green waters, mirroring each other. The skipper spoke French, so I approached him and asked him several questions. Very affably, which I did not expect from an Englishman, he explained to me the virtues of the maritime compass and the use of the chart of the 39 winds, known well only by the professional seaman; later on he showed me the white chalk coast of England, which gave the country its old name of Albion, to which the French have added the epithet ‘perfidious’.

Completely different from the French, the English are serious and taciturn. They speak gladly only when they have the occasion to praise the institutions of their own country. The same with this Englishman: he told me England is the land of political freedom and, in order to preserve it, she has more warships than France has commercial ships, and then he gave me various other kinds of stories. All hyperbole even according to my humble reason.

Towards evening we approached the mouth of the Thames and began to feel the proximity of London, where ships of all species come and go in numbers so great that one hardly finds one’s place to pass among them. We entered the Thames itself with great care, as if entering a forest of masts and smoking chimneys.

Finally we got to the Custom house. The possessions of all passengers flew like balls from the ship to boats and from here to the halls of the Custom house, and I was close to believing we should never see them again. But here people are so much into order and consequent practice that if you trust them with a needle, it will never get lost or taken by others.

The Custom House, a little east of London Bridge on the north bank, was designed in the 1820s by Robert “also did the British Museum” Smirke. This was a place for the collection of customs duties, with a history going back to medieval times. Smirke’s version still stands today, and is set to become a hotel.

Custom House in the 19th century. Is it just me, or do those cloud formations look aptly like the Carpathian Mountains? Image: public domain.

The luggage was open and inspected in a blink of the eyes and we found ourselves put in a ‘cab’ (a sort of one-horse chariot), and after a quite long distance we reached Saint Martin’s Lane and the ‘Fricour’ Inn, where we were brought in by an Italian guide who was prowling for customers in the valley of the river. He got four Crowns as a reward from us.

I was most surprised we are not asked for passports. Our guide told us that such an enterprise is unknown in England and is a continental luxury.

Drăgușanu, it seems, had no accommodation reserved, and took a room on the partisan advice of a hotel tout. I’ve traced the Fricour Inn to 82-83 St Martin’s Lane. It was owned by one Augustine Fricour, possibly a Frenchman, who was declared bankrupt a couple of years later. It was located where, today, you’ll find Brown’s restaurant.

[...] First of all, London surprises you by the great number of people and the great quiet all around. Then there is the exemplary cleanness of the streets, the simplicity of the buildings and the uniform clothing of men, which is generally grey or a stern ashen grey.

All streets are large and straight, especially the main ones, which are also paved with wood or covered in macadam. The houses do not have such exquisite architecture as in Paris, nor are they as solid, because this city is a whole world of almost two million inhabitants. London has stretched each year passing by, and has engulfed private properties that would sum up a surface as big as the county of river Olt (Tara Oltului) in our country. Many neighbourhoods have the name of Such-and-such Garden. These lands are freehold or leasehold for 20-30 years, and the builders calculate the expenses according to the lease and they build lightly.

I’m surprised that Drăgușanu found our roads “wide and straight”. This was before the Victorians knocked through Charing Cross Road, Northumbland Avenue, Shaftesbury Avenue and Kingsway. Strand has always been wide and straight, and so, too, Whitehall, so perhaps he was hanging out in these areas more than, say, Drury Lane and St Giles. It’s interesting to note that men dressed in ‘stern grey’. Today, men almost universally wear black coats, at least during winter.

On Gardens, I can think of Short’s Gardens, Hatton Garden, Endsleigh Gardens and, of course, Covent Garden in the central area. But these are spread out, and it’s a curious detail to pick up on.

In spite of the lack of a French lustre in London, there is a luxury of commodity which is not to be found anywhere else; all stairs are carpeted to the level of the street and not to speak of the rooms in the house. Of course, the great humidity requires such luxury. Also in front of the houses with a street front there are small flower beds. Yet again, in order to fight humidity and mildew, kitchens are to be found at the base of the houses, akin to cellars.

Some interesting domestic details, which might not have occurred to an English writer.

No other city has so many piazzas as London and almost all of them are quadrangular, therefore the name of ‘squares’. They all have some monument, of course not all grand, and generally they have flower gardens, lawns and trees in the middle. These gardens are generally circular and they are closed with iron railings and serve as places of enjoyment for the neighbouring houses.

Here, the writer seems to be noting the private square gardens, most apparent in Bloomsbury, rather than the fully public piazzas like Covent Garden.

There are in London public gardens – or should I say whole plains, so wide they are – where there are only green lawns, tall trees, bushes, and rivulets or crystal-clear lakes. One will find, but only seldom, beds of flowers. Such public places for the enjoyment of everybody are Regents Green, Hyde and St James’s Park, their name being ‘parks’. On Sundays and holidays you have the entire urban crowd there, otherwise just foreigners and aristocrats.

Green Park is famous among trivia fans for having no flower beds at all, hence the name. According to legend, this was by diktat of Queen Catherine of Braganza, in revenge at her husband Charles II who had supposedly plucked some flowers from the park for one of his many mistresses.

The divine service in the church lasts until eleven antemeridian. During this whole time, no-one is allowed to open windows or doors of the stores, not even to private houses, and the whole city seems to be deep in devout reflection. If one enters the temple, until the end of the service one will not get out of there because the church warden stands at the door and does not allow it. This contrasts greatly with our customs, and especially with those of the Catholics who have made a theatre out of churches and the impious enter and go as their hearts desire, often accompanied by dogs.

In general, the Protestants and the English in particular are more rigid in those matters around religion than the Orthodox. They believe less, but do more for the dignity of religion, which is devoid of all kind of hocus-pocus. In London, nobody works on Sundays, as I saw them do in Paris, not even for the enterprises owned by the State.

The other day I attended the nearby St Martin’s [in the Fields] in order to see the ceremony of the Anglican rite. They are very simple, as those of our Lutherans are. I have noticed something; they read long prayers, as we do in the Eastern Church, then hymns accompanied by organ, followed by a badly declaimed and sleep inducing sermon – well, it is true I did not grasp much besides the occasional ‘Lord God’.

Central London contains fewer active churches today; there are nowhere near as many potential parishioners to fill them. However, Sunday services do still take place at many. I am in no position to comment on the quality of the modern sermon.

St Martin-in-the-Fields with a rainbow that looks strikingly like the Romanian flag. Image: Matt Brown

So it seems to me that the English language does not have pleasant sounds, with which we are accustomed in the continental languages, or maybe it’s just the novelty of English that makes it seem like this to us. With these, Lord have mercy! I occupied two and a half hours counting the number of bald heads and I found only in the hall – me being at the gallery – some 455 of them. Naturally, in the hall one finds the men that have reached a certain age, and at the gallery you have the younger ones, but there were enough bald ones even here.

English men are tall and handsome, but only a few of them will keep a full head of hair due to the dampness of their climate. I really wonder how it is that the ladies have such beautiful manes of hair. [...]

The ‘hall’ and ‘gallery’ here still relate to St Martin-in-the-Fields, that magnificent church that overlooks Trafalgar Square. Drăgușanu would not have witnessed Nelson’s Column, however. It was erected three years after his visit in 1843.

The congregation must have been of extraordinary size if the main hall contained 455 bald heads, when we consider that women and children would have also been present. Perhaps they also tended to use the gallery. The sermon must have been really dull if Drăgușanu was distracted enough to enumerate pates.

[...] We went to see the British Museum. Here you find a treasure of bodies of statues from Egypt, Greece, Italia and both Indies, many rarities, all ordered nicely by their country of origin and their times. If they are not taken by force, so I was told, they are bought with the gold of their wealthy lords and with the intention of offering them to the national museum.

I found extraordinary the petrified skeletons of the antediluvian animals: mastodons, mammoths, and ichthyosaurus, then in the court the skeleton of a real whale, as long as a huge ship, whose bones look like aged fir tree beams. I also went to see the cathedral of St Paul’s, an architectonic monument, similar to St Peter’s in Vatican, albeit much smaller, and besides some secular monuments inside, it is scarcely decorated.

Until 1881, the British Museum in Bloomsbury was home to a large collection of animal specimens. These moved to the newly built Natural History Museum in South Kensington that year. The NHM retained official connections to the British Museum until 1963.

St Paul’s is indeed much smaller than St Peter’s, though it has gained in opulence since Drăgușanu’s visit. The Victorians agreed with his assessment that it was too plain, and set about gilding and mosaic-laying with determination. My favourite adornment is the Quire roof, which was smothered in colourful mosaics by William Blake Richmond, in the final years of the century. (He was named after the more famous William Blake.)

The Quire roof mosaics by William Blake-Richmond, completed 1904. Image: Matt Brown

From here we rode to the Zoological Garden, where is situated the enclosure for beasts of all creation; the richest in Europe. They have here four elephants and six giraffes, very beautiful. It was very funny though when I was shown a buffalo as a curious beast, and funnier still it was when I told the guide there that my father back home has a grange full of such beasts, and I was raised with buffalo’s milk.

This, of course, is London Zoo at the top of Regent’s Park. The zoo was still a new organisation at the time of the Romanian’s visit. It had opened in 1828 and got its first elephant, ‘Jack’, in 1831. Before 1847, access to the zoo was restricted to Fellows of the Zoological Society, or to those who could acquire a ‘written order’ from a Fellow. Presumably, Drăgușanu was connected enough to acquire one.

Leaving that place, we went to the Royal Polytechnic Institution, a place where they conduct physics-chemical experimentation in front of an audience, in which real lightning was produced. A young man, elegantly dressed, stepped into an insulated fabric contraption with a long breathing tube, and he threw himself into a basin 10ft deep, full of water from where he collected in ten minutes the coins thrown in by the audience. He then came out with the money in a receptacle, applauded by the crowd, stepped out of the fabric contraption and he was as brand new.

The Royal Polytechnic Institution was another new landmark for London, having opened just two years before Drăgușanu’s visit. Its buildings could be found between Regent’s Street and Cavendish Square. This was a place where Londoners (and visitors) could enjoy demonstrations of a technical or scientific bent — both via formal study or in public shows. Spectacles of the time including underwater stunts like the one described, and some of the earliest demonstrations of photography.

The following day we went to see another place, called ‘Box hall’, where a species of English gladiators fight with their fists face-to-face, raining blows on each other’s nose and stomach. I saw one oozing blood from his nose and mouth like a slaughtered animal, and some other two who had passed out, lying on the ground. This filled me with nausea so I left that place. The English like this kind of barbarous fight and clap their hands and even place bets on their preferred fighters.

Bare-knuckle boxing was a common diversion in 1840s London. It’s not clear from the name ‘Box hall’ what the venue was in this case. One contender would be the still extant Lamb and Flag pub in Covent Garden. This was nicknamed the ‘Bucket of Blood’ for the gory pugilism staged on its upper floor and courtyard. Or perhaps Box Hall is simply a Romanian mis-hearing of Vauxhall?

[...] Finally, I went to see the tunnel under the Thames, one of the wonders of the world, which surpasses those of the most praised of the ancient world. After the city of London expanded greatly towards the mouth of the Thames, there was a lack of stable communication between the two sides of the river, and they could not build a bridge because it would have disturbed the entry of the ships in the port of London – the London Docks. Thus they have made a society to build a road under the water, and this was made by a Frenchman called Brunel. It has an entry with two arches.

Well, we know all about this one, don’t we, regular readers? Marc Brunel’s Thames Tunnel between Wapping and Rotherhithe today carries the Windrush line beneath the Thames, but it started out as a pedestrian tunnel. Work began on it around 200 years ago in 1825. It was still three years from opening in 1840 when Drăgușanu was in town, but for a small fee the public could descend into one of the tunnel shafts to see the work in progress.

Very strange was an English habit, which I found later on is something natural. We were hot after all our excursions, so [our guide] took us to a cafe, in order to cool down. On the spot, we were served with hot tea, while I was waiting, as is our custom, for lemonades, orangeade, or cold sorbet. The English are very practical homeopaths, fighting fire with fire; we’re not so experts in this field yet.

I’m sorry. What is odd about this? Surely everyone enjoys a hot cup of tea after every activity?

By 1840, better shipping and supply chains had brought down the cost of tea (and sugar) considerably, to the point where it had become a household staple, even among the working classes. The sugary beverage aided nutrition and, because it required near-boiling water, was safer to drink than the untreated cackmixture that came out of the public water pump. Tea was not just a quaint English custom, but a life-saver.

Last night I have been at Covent Garden theatre, a hall as resplendent as possible, and I attended an opera in the English language, but the song was not at all to my liking, screeching in my ears with such a great number of monosyllabic words. They say the shortness of English words is adapted to nautical command, and the English wonder how come other nations can evolve without the concision granted only to their language. Yet I believe that the English shan’t ever accommodate their tongue to singing, because harmony requires sonorous, clear vowels, not swallowed and sneezed sounds such as theirs.

I think Elton John, Adele, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Shirley Bassey, Ed Sheeran, Amy Winehouse, three-quarters of the Beatles and a thousand other international chart toppers might like a word about that last sentence. (What do you mean Shirley Bassey is Welsh?)

Undoubtedly, Great Britain is the most civilised state in the world. I have observed this closely in London – you will not find soldiers here. Either there is not much of an army, or regular soldiers are allowed to don civil clothing when not on duty. But you can find on the streets the so-called ‘constables’, a sort of policemen armed only with short truncheons, filled with lead, and with the arms of the realm at one end. Everybody tries to respect them, even if one is arrogant, otherwise people will have the occasion to experiment on their own skin the specific weight of the lead helped by the constable.

The first part, happily, is still true. It is rare to see soldiers on the streets of London, unless in a ceremonial role. Long may that continue. The ‘constables’ were the early Metropolitan Police. Drăgușanu’s visit was well timed in this respect. Although various forms of policing had been around since the mid-18th century (the “Bow-Street Runners”, for example), it was only in 1839 — a year before Drăgușanu arrived — that the force was consolidated into one London-wide metropolitan constabulary. Their truncheons (usually of hardwood but often incorporating lead) always carried the royal crest, as a reminder of police authority.

The core of London, called The City, is formed especially by small shops, as small as shells, whose owners are all millionaires. They only keep here samples of merchandise, and they all own factories so big so they could equip twenty ships in any port of the world, for a whole week. These merchants with their money keep the whole rule of England and they put the pressure on the political barometer of the world, according to their own interests.

I find this insight particularly intriguing. It’s easy to imagine our 19th century ‘nation of shopkeepers’ as humble tradespeople, each with their own small outlet and limited stock. But as Drăgușanu attests (with exaggeration), the reality could be more corporate. This was especially true in the Square Mile, where land values, then as now, were prejudiced against smaller operations. Coincidentally, Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop, which begins in a shop of very meagre wealth, was published in the same year as Drăgușanu’s visit.

Besides the fact that the English have plenty of money, they are also men of their word, and solid as metal, and are unnervingly exact. The English are not speculative by need, as other nations, but by nature, so everything is possible for them. The English do not change their nature, and remain faithful to it until the day they die.

Again, I’m not sure Little Nell, or Oliver Twist (published the year before), or any of the real-world denizens of Whitechapel or St Giles, would agree that the English have plenty of money. I suspect that Drăgușanu, quite understandably, did not stray into these more impoverished quarters.

The originality of English clothing, way of life, and products, all show simplicity pared with solidity. This is how they say that all which is simple and elegant is ‘à l’anglaise’, meaning according to English tastes.

I reckon this is still a facet of the national identity and/or stereotype — simplicity and solidity rather than flamboyance.

In the English urban society you cannot show your face without scandalising the others unless you wear a black suit with white tie. At the royal court and high lords, even nowadays one must wear tight trousers, silken socks and shoes. Otherwise, shoes are not important at all, because the English, far from excelling in this domain, will even wear riding boots.

I’m sure plenty of women were able to show their faces without the need for a black suit and white tie, but what do I know? I’m also surprised this gendered sartorial summary does not include hats. These were the glory days of the top hat, which had begun its hilarious evolution into the Brunellian stovepipe. The silk toppers would have been the crowning glory of any gent-about-town, but they don’t seem to have made an impression on Drăgușanu.

There is plenty to be seen in this huge city, and I have described plenty. I only have to tell you something about English food.

It is simple, as everything English, but very rich – I mean, all their food is made of steaks, really not done at all, maybe only licked once by charcoal fire. The meat is wonderful, most tender, because they do not work their land with their horned beasts, and game is kept in parks, where it gets fat. But, as I say, from the steak heated-up blood is dripping, and they could eat it if they feel like it, otherwise they say it is ruined by continental tastes. Along with the roast beef comes, generally, the plum-pudding, a sort of Romanian ‘mamaliga’ made out of fine flour, which is very thick and has plums in it, hence the name. For the high houses, it is made with sweet sultanas. Then come potatoes, boiled, and served whole, with their skin on, then bread, fresh butter, and this is all. Soups, sauces, salads, and other thousands of delicacies are kept in contempt, not to mention sauerkraut and pork scratchings.

This is such a glorious description of English eating habits of the time. Something of this simplicity existed (exists?) into our own era. I remember endless ‘meat and two-veg’ dinners while growing up. Soups and sauces were indeed regarded with suspicion; I don’t think I’d tried anything more exotic than ketchup or gravy until I went to university, and my childhood salads were entirely ignorant of the existence of dressing.

The national drink here is beer, which comes in two varieties: porter and ale, both excellent, although porter is inimitable, but a bit too strong; so normally people have ale. The wines are brought from foreign countries, and only fine wines, because of the import duty, so cheap wines would not bring profit; also, the English do not fake their drinks. The wines drunk here are generally Spanish or Portuguese, as Porto, Madera, Sherry, and Malaga.

Wait, I thought the national drink here was tea? But I’m not arguing. Porter and ale and other persuasions of beer are still drunk in huge quantities throughout London. Less so the Iberian tipples that end the paragraph.

Although simple, English cuisine is richer than anywhere else in Europe.

The English are the greediest people in the world when it comes to food. In the morning, as they wake up, they have tea or coffee, at ten in the morning they have a beefsteak and beer, the lunch is meagre, at two o’clock; they have tea again at five o’clock, and will have a hefty dinner at nine in the evening, often followed by some punch.

This way of eating was introduced on the continent, in the places where the English flock around, because they do travel a lot, having business everywhere in the world. When they are abroad, the English live better, having living costs reduced by half comparing to their own land, where everything costs.

Oh dear, it seems the ‘English abroad’ phenomenon was alive and well 185 years ago. To this day, we have a reputation for wanting English food and English-speaking hotel and restaurant staff wherever we may roam.

The last words: the French call themselves Monsieur (wherefrom the Germans call some soldiers ‘mouser’, from the French-speaking Belgians); the English call themselves John Bull [...].

And with that, this John Bull is signing off to cook the family dinner. A not-very-bloody vegetarian roast, since you ask.

My warmest Mulțumesc to Mihai Risnoveanu for sharing this translation. And thanks to you for reading!

Londoners interested in discovering more about Romanian culture might like to browse the upcoming events of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Belgrave Square. This is distinct from the independent Romanian Cultural Centre, which seems to be less active than it once was.

Image: Matt Brown

Antrim Gardens in Belsize Park holds two fragments of old London...

One does not simply stumble across Antrim Gardens. To find this tiny park, you must turn down a side street from Haverstock Hill, and then enter a heavily fenced area that seems to be nothing but a toddler's playground, leading on to allotments.

This local amenity, though, hides a pair of historic secrets. Right beside the play equipment — and no doubt considered to be play equipment by the park's preschool clientele — are two items of architectural salvage, side by side.

Image: Matt Brown

One is a baluster from the Old Waterloo Bridge, which was dismantled from 1936 and then distributed all over the world. The other is a structure from the old House of Commons, burned down in 1834.

The baluster seems to have served as a sundial, though all trace of gnomon has long been eradicated. The stepped structure, meanwhile, is described on its plaque as a 'well head', though if it ever did serve that purpose it only goes down about half a metre today.

The plaque also reveals that the items were 'presented by Mr & Mrs Lionel Barnett' in 1945. ('Mrs Lionel Barnett' was actually called Hilda Barnett.) Further poking finds that only the well head arrived in that year, with the baluster coming along in 1952, perhaps as a marker of Elizabeth II's Coronation. The Barnetts are described as living at Avenue Lodge, St John's Wood.

Image: Matt Brown

The well head is carved with weathered letters. London Remembers suggests that these are 'VR', the initials of Victoria Regina (Queen Victoria), which would date it to the rebuilding after the fire of 1834. However, the lettering more closely resembles a 'GR' to my mind, which would push the stonework back to the Georgian era — perhaps to the works on the chamber by James Wyatt around the turn of the 19th century. Indeed, the objects' provenance is somewhat mysterious. Did the Barnetts who donated it have good evidence that it came from the House of Commons and not some adjacent building?

David Fletcher has taken a 3-D scan of the 'well', which you can play with here (click the '3D' label in the corner of the photo).

Here's a map of how to get to the gardens, if you'd like to go see for yourself.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in September 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Behold, Elizabethan London, as though drawn by Tolkien.

Image: public domain

This almost-huggable cartography is not hand-drawn, in fact. It’s woven. And by hands that withered away 400 years ago. We’re looking at one of the Sheldon Tapestries, commissioned by wealthy landowner Ralph Sheldon in the 1580s.

Sheldon lived in Long Compton in Warwickshire. He was among the earliest to reach the correct conclusion that maps are the best things ever. He also had close links to Richard Hyckes, one of the most high-profile tapestry makers of the time. And so Sheldon commissioned four tapestries to show the surrounding counties, based on earlier paper maps by Christopher Saxton (a wonderful rabbit-hole in their own right). The four counties were Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, offering a wraparound representation of England’s left hip, and a tough pronunciation test for any American readers.

Click or tap for larger version. Image: public domain

London, of course has never been part of any of those counties. Happily, the anonymous loom-whisperers who crafted the Oxfordshire tapestry shuttled far enough east to include the capital, as well as large chunks of Middlesex. Let’s get stuck into it.

We’ll first zoom on central London or, as it would have been considered then, ‘the whole of London’.

Image: public domain

The view gives us some of the earliest representations of famous London landmarks. The most obvious, rising out of the main cluster, is Old St Paul’s Cathedral. It’s farther north than it should be, as though centuries of proximity to the Thames have carried the cathedral chromatographically up the fabric.

This mighty building was easily the tallest structure in the city. Though it would lose its spire in 1561, and burn down in 1666, nothing would surpass its original height until the Post Office Tower (now BT Tower) in 1964.

What Old St Paul’s actually looked like, from a Victorian illustration. Image: public domain

Its depiction in the tapestry shows the cathedral without its spire, as would be expected two decades after its loss. The remaining tower is somewhat elongated from reality — a common occurrence on the tapestry.

Nearby, London Bridge is prominently depicted, crossing over to Southwark. It is encrusted with buildings, as would be the case for another two centuries. One day, when we’ve moved on from buses and motor cars, the houses will be back again.

Other discernible landmarks include the White Tower at the centre of the Tower of London, a rather squashed Westminster Abbey and Palace of Westminster (and possibly Whitehall), and Lambeth Palace across the water. Also on the southern bank, St Mary Overy (now Southwark Cathedral) and St Olave’s (now demolished) are clear either side of London Bridge.

The prominent steepled church on the tip of the south bank is, I think, a fiction. The land around here was marshy at the time, and no church would be built until Christ Church a century later. Sadly, we’re just a bit too early to see Shakespeare’s Globe, which was erected on Bankside about a decade later. At the time of the tapestry, it was still located up in Shoreditch, though it can’t be seen on the map.

Let’s zoom out a little now, and take a look at north London:

Image: public domain

The northern heights look so neat and ordered, don’t they? The area shown above is now almost total sprawl, with only parks, playing fields and Hampstead Heath to break things up. Spelling was not standardised at this point, and hence we find Wilsdon (Willesden), Hakeney (Hackney) and Higat (Highgate). Funnily enough, the automated announcements on the Northern line still pronounce that latter place as ‘higat’, something I’ve never noticed elsewhere in real life.

Most of the place names here should be self evident. ‘Twiford’ might be an exception. It still exists as (West) Twyford, a small area north of Park Royal that rarely calls attention to itself. Newington is Newington Green, just south of Stoke Newington, and not to be confused with Newington in Lambeth (which is also shown).

My favourite detail here is the fenced area just east of Paddington. You’re looking at what will one day become Regent’s Park. In Elizabethan times, this was a royal hunting ground known as Marylebone Park, which was evidently enclosed with a wooden fence, or ‘pale’. The phrase ‘beyond the pale’ harks back to this usage, though probably not this specific example.

A few faint roads are woven into the map. The one leading from Paddington up towards Hendon is the Edgware Road, part of the Roman Watling Street, which was already more than a thousand years old when these threads were intertwined. Meanwhile, the Islington-Highgate-Finchley Road is part of the Great North Road.

The river snaking north-south on the left-hand edge of the map is the Brent. This is one of a tiny number of London place-names that predate the Anglo-Saxons and, indeed, the Romans. It’s thought to be of Celtic origin, perhaps linked to the goddess Brigantia.

Now let’s turn our gaze to west London.

Image: public domain

Well, I say ‘west London’, but the tapestry calls it MIDDEL SEXIÆ… which literally sounds sexier. Here we see a gladdening of villages, slotted in among a quartet of rivers. Left to right, these are the Colne, the Yeading Brook, the Crane and the Brent again. The Brent reaches the Thames at ‘Brainford’, which we would call Brentford.

Most everything east of the Colne (left-most river) is today part of Greater London, although many denizens of places like Uxbridge and Pinner still cleave to the Middlesex identity, 60 years after that county was abolished for all practical purposes.

Things to note… Look at Harrow standing all lofty there on its hill. That hasn’t changed, although the name has since spread to cover the lowlands around the hill and, indeed, a whole London Borough. Uxbridge sports what looks like a skyscraper — presumably a church tower, not that it’s ever had one so dominant. The enclosure, or pale, to the bottom-left is the old hunting grounds of Langley Park.

You’ll spot some confounding spellings in there: ‘Hais’ is, of course, Hayes. The campaign to revert to that earlier spelling starts here, so we can finally distinguish it from Hayes in Bromley. Southold and Northold have evolved into Southall and Northolt. Oxterley is, of course, Osterley; Stanmer, Stanmore; Grinford, Greenford.

A few names may be unfamiliar, even to Londoners. Cowley, south of Uxbridge, still exists, but rarely gets any press. It’s best known for Brunel University. The most intriguing here is ‘Horwood’. No place of that name is recorded on any other source I can find for that time. I suspect this is the village of Norwood Green, and the map’s original compiler mis-heard or mis-transcribed some information.

Finally, this is one of the most visited parts of London. You’ve very probably been yourself:

Image: public domain

I wonder what the tapestry weaver was thinking about when she/he was immortalising these villages in wool and silk. Did they wonder what life was like in Harmsworth, Harlington, Horwood and Heston? Were they aware of another ‘H’ village round there called Heathrow? We’ll never know. They certainly never imagined what the loom of time would weave for this village, centuries hence.

Viewing the Sheldon tapestry

Sadly, the original Oxfordshire (plus London) map is in tatters, though we’re lucky that the London section survived. The fragmented remains can be seen at the Weston Library in Oxford, while the Ashmolean Museum holds a 17th century copy that is more complete. These things are huge: around 5.5 metres wide by 3.5 metres tall. What a sight it must have been, hanging with its three stablemates in the home of Ralph Sheldon in the 1590s. I now know what I’ll spend my millions on when I finally win the lottery.

Jack Jewers, author of Seething Lane, takes us on a trip down the historic thoroughfare.

A bust of Pepys surveys Seething Lane Gardens. Image: Dave Bonta, Creative Commons

Seething Lane is an unassuming little thoroughfare.

Barely 160 metres from end to end, it's tucked away among the warren of narrow byways that connect the Tower of London in the south with bustling Fenchurch Street to the north. But Seething Lane holds an essential place in the literary heritage of London, as the home of Samuel Pepys — the man who kept the most famous diary in English history.

Pepys lived and worked on Seething Lane from 1660 until 1673. For nine years of these years, he recorded his daily life in extraordinary detail. His writing can be funny and it can be tender. It is also racy, at times shocking, and utterly indiscreet. His diaries are frank and honest, whether or not they paint him in a good light — and frequently they don't.

Luckily for Pepys, the Great Fire didn't quite reach Seething Lane. Image: Philip James de Loutherbourg, Creative Commons

"Pepys frequently complained about the quality of the sermons... which may be why he spent several of them lusting after the female parishioners"

These diaries have become a staple of school history lessons, thanks to his powerful eyewitness account of the Great Fire of London. It’s hard to read Pepys' descriptions of people clambering onto boats with the flames at their heels, or pigeons falling to the ground with singed wings, and not feel a shiver down the spine. Fearing that his home was about to be engulfed by the blaze, Pepys took the precaution of burying some of his most valued possessions in his garden — including, famously, a Parmesan cheese.

In the event, the fire didn't reach Seething Lane, but the street was not so lucky during the Blitz. On 17 April 1941, the medieval St Olave's Church, which sits on the corner of Seething Lane and Hart Street, was gutted by a bomb. The tombs of Samuel Pepys and his wife, Elisabeth, were spared from destruction by mere inches. The church still stands there today, painstakingly reconstructed, and is the only building on Seething Lane that survives from Pepys' time.

There are numerous references to St Olave's in the diaries, beginning on 19 August 1660, when Pepys and some colleagues went to demand they be given a pew (when told there were none available, Pepys resolved to have one built). He was a regular, though not always very devout, churchgoer. He frequently complained about the quality of the sermons, which may be one reason why he spent several of them lusting after the female parishioners. Today, St Olave's is a peaceful spot that makes much of its Pepysian heritage, with special services held in his honour, and an annual Pepys-related lecture in November.

St Olave's is the only building on Seething Lane that survives from Pepys' time. Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

"He drunkenly showed his lodgings to a boorish friend privately nicknamed 'Monsieur l'Impertinent"

We don't know precisely where Pepys' house was located, but it was no more than a few doors down from the church, on the west side of the street. It came as a perk of his job at the Navy Office, for which he was paid £350 per year. (Historical exchange rates are notoriously difficult to calculate, but that's somewhere around £100,000 in today's money). The first mention of their lodgings came on 14 July 1660, when he drunkenly showed them to a rather boorish friend called Mr. Butler — privately nicknamed 'Monsieur l'Impertinent.' Their moving day was set for 16 July, but had to be put off until the next day due to heavy rain.

The house consisted of around 10 rooms, with a small garden out back. We know it was large enough to sleep 16 on the night of 2nd March 1669, when the Pepys threw a grand house party — albeit with several guests sharing (Samuel and Elisabeth gave their room to three friends and slept in the maid's bed instead, noting with a certain surprise that it was "very good.")

Pepys' violent behaviour towards his pets was one of his more unsavoury characteristics. Image: Laura Alessia, Pexels License

"Pepys recorded beating the creature 'till she was almost dead,' as punishment for escaping her cage"

The diaries contain scant description of how the house actually looked, but as a grace-and-favour residence, it was likely smart, without being overly grand. Pepys certainly saw room for improvement and set about redecorating the place straight away, paying for new carpentry, plastering and a fresh paint job by the end of their first year as residents. We know that the dining room was finished in green with a fine, gold pattern.

Pepys continued to make improvements throughout the time they lived there, for example, adding a small balcony to their bedroom, completed only months before the Great Fire of London.

The site of the Navy Office is now marked by the Seething Lane Gardens. This idyllic enclave is criss-crossed by footpaths, converging on a bust of Samuel Pepys himself. The paths are inset with a series of carved stones. Designed by sculptor Alan Lamb in 2017, the carvings reference different events from Pepys' life. There are stones depicting the Great Fire, for example, and his beloved cheese. A pair of forceps represents an operation Pepys had to remove bladder stones (an ordeal he faced without anaesthetic), while carvings of a monkey and a lion refer to two exotic pets he kept at the Navy Office — the latter being a somewhat pointed gift, from a man whose wife he had been sleeping with for several years. Though the lion stayed in the office until it grew too large and was sent to live in the menagerie at the Tower of London, the monkey divided her time between the office and Pepys' home. It was here when, on 18 January 1661 — shockingly to modern eyes — Pepys recorded beating the creature "till she was almost dead," as punishment for escaping her cage.

"My contribution to Samuel Pepys lore has been to turn him into a reluctant detective". Image: John Riley, Creative Commons

"My contribution to Samuel Pepys lore has been to turn him into a reluctant detective"

In the winter of 1670, when my book, Seething Lane, takes place, not only was the city still recovering from the Great Fire — the rubble of its ancient, timber-framed buildings slowly replaced by brick and stone — but the capital itself was in the grip of a cultural resurgence. At the forefront of this was the bawdy, exhilarating world of Restoration theatre. Just a decade earlier, theatres had reopened in England after a ban that lasted nearly 20 years. And, most exciting of all, for the first time ever, women were allowed on the stage. London had a new cultural phenomenon: the celebrity actress. This new world in which Samuel Pepys found himself must have felt radically different to the one in which he'd grown up.

My contribution to Samuel Pepys lore has been to turn him into a reluctant detective, working on clandestine missions for the Crown. In Seething Lane, I send him into the glamorous world of Covent Garden theatres, where he is tasked with solving a brutal double murder. And Seething Lane itself sits at the centre of the action, a shadowy corner of historic London, where the very old sits alongside the very new. A place of sanctuary — and a place of danger. Because sometimes, the greatest threats lie closest to home…

Seething Lane by Jack Jewers, published in hardback, eBook and audio on 3 September 2026 by Moonflower.

Jack is also giving the annual Pepys lecture on 10 November 2026, at St Olave's.

We featured this book because we know it's the kind of thing our readers will enjoy. By buying it via links in this article, Londonist may earn a commission from Bookshop.org — which also helps support independent bookshops.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in August 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Image: Matt Brown

One does not simply walk into the Bank of England.

This titanic treasury is built like a fortress. It stands guard over more than £200 billion worth of gold — enough to run the entire NHS for more than a year. The Bank has other secrets to protect. It oversees payment systems, monitors financial stability, decides interest rates and guards any number of fiscal sensitivities. Its inner sanctums are very much not all over TikTok.

Happily, I’ve been invited in. The Bank’s museum is currently running an exhibition about the building’s architecture, and the curator Jenni Adam is keen to show off the real thing. Even with her generous welcome, I still have to satisfy three different gatekeepers, an ID check and a bag search before I’m allowed past the security gate-line.

I’m in for a treat. The building’s innards are rarely seen by the public. They are an essay in magnificence and embellished solidity — not dissimilar to Gringotts from Harry Potter, though without the ludicrous mine-car ride.

The architectural splendour could, and probably does, fill a book. When faced with such overwhelming riches, it often helps to zoom in on one detail. Five steps beyond the security gates brings me to the perfect candidate:

Image: Bank of England Museum

This spectacular floor mosaic is the work of Boris Anrep (1883-1969), whose handiwork you might have seen inside the entrance to the National Gallery. Anrep laid down this mosaic in the 1930s during the Bank’s reconstruction, along with dozens of other ornamentations.

One might easily stride over the mosaic without giving it a second thought. But it holds a world of symbolism. The two lions and classical column are modelled on those of the Lion Gate in Mycenae, Greece, which also guarded a treasure house.

Beneath the stone plinth, the white trace represents the south coast of England. The single red tessera, easily missed, indicates the location of Cobham in Kent, home of the modern Bank’s architect Sir Herbert Baker. Meanwhile, the top of the mosaic features two constellations: The Plough (Big Dipper) and the Southern Cross. If you use the constellations as a navigator would, then they point not to north and south but directly towards the office of the Governor of the Bank of England. I find that enchanting.

Boris Anrep wasn’t the only mosaicist to leave his mark on the Bank. Someone got there 1900 years before him. Three Roman mosaics have been discovered across the site during various phases of expansion. One of these was removed to the British Museum in the early 19th century where it’s been on permanent display ever since. One is in the Bank’s museum. But the third now forms a focal point at the base of a precipitous stairwell:

The Roman mosaic at the bottom of the stairwell. Image: Matt Brown (one of the few things I *was* allowed to photograph).

These mosaics once adorned a Roman villa on the banks of the now-buried River Walbrook. Those early Londoners could scarcely have imagined that their floor covering would, two millennia later, decorate the foundations of the world’s most famous Bank. Where will your carpet be in AD 4000?

The Bank’s physical evolution is a complicated tale. It was established in 1694, mostly because the government needed a stable source of loans to finance yet another war with France. These were humble beginnings. The early Bank operated out of rented rooms and only got its own site 40 years later when it moved into a purpose-built home on Threadneedle Street in 1734. From this nucleus, the bank expanded to eventually fill the whole block, with additions from architects like George Sampson, Robert Taylor, and especially Sir John Soane. The latter’s plan took decades to reach fruition, and we can get a sense of its scale by looking at its Minotaur-conjuring floor plan:

Note, the image is drawn with north to the left. Image: public domain

Soane was mightily proud of his financial fortress. He even had it depicted as a future ruin, as though to suggest it deserved the same reverence as the great buildings of Roman antiquity.

The Bank of England in imagined ruins, by JF Gandy, 1830.

In a prescient twist, artist JF Gandy depicted the ruined Bank on a rise, with a steep gradient to the lower left. This is exactly the spot where Bank Tube station would be hollowed out many decades later (and itself turned into a crater when a high-explosive bomb scored a direct hit in 1941).

Soane’s Bank was much celebrated, with its soaring halls and walls. Unfortunately, it would only last a century. Despite its gigantic footprint, the Bank was running out of space. Modern, taller offices were needed. And so, from 1925 to 1939, Sir Herbert Baker demolished the bewildering congeries and replaced them with the taller, more rational blocks we see today. In so doing, Soane and Gandy’s vision of the Bank of England lying in ruins was realised:

The Bank of England undergoing demolition in the late 1920s. Soane’s Rotunda can be seen centre-left. Image: Bank of England Museum.

Most of Soane’s work was undone. One exception was the mighty curtain wall, which Baker retained. The Bank of England, then, was a pioneer of ‘facadism’ — the practice of demolishing an interior but keeping the outer walls — which people do so enjoy moaning about today.

Sir Herbert Baker’s rebuild was widely slagged off by the cognoscenti. It still is. Undisputed God of Describing Buildings Sir Nikolaus Pevsner reckoned it “the greatest architectural crime to befall the City of London in the 20th century”. Ian Nairn, the equally lionised if more raffish commentator of the built environment, decried Baker’s “evil superstructure”, and thought its architect should be “indicted".

Bit harsh. A radical redesign had to happen if the Bank were to take on the challenges of the 20th century. Soane’s oldie just didn’t have the floorspace the modern Bank needed. Besides, is the replacement really that bad? I mean, look:

Image: Eluveitie, creative commons licence.

You can pompously argue about proportions and harmony and stuff, but I reckon nine out of every 10 people who look at the building will find it impressive. I still do, and I’ve passed it a thousand times. It can’t be all that bad because Historic England have given the modern Bank a Grade I listing, on par with St Paul’s and the Palace of Westminster.

The real architectural crime which, to be fair, the critics also called out, is not so much the external appearance but what was lost within. Soane’s banking halls and Rotunda were genuine marvels, all chopped down in the name of progress.

Soane’s lost rotunda. Image: public domain

Even then, all was not lost. Some of the banking halls were rebuilt in facsimile, albeit with steel frame. What’s more, you can go see them. The Bank of England Museum, along the site’s eastern edge, nestles within these replica spaces. Though not the original Soaneian articles, these are still eye-popping chambers, and almost a century old themselves.

Inside the Bank of England Museum. That lamp stand isn’t really bent. I used the panorama setting for some reason. Image: Matt Brown

But what of the rest of the Bank — the bits the public can’t normally view? These, too, have a magnificence to them. A series of grand corridors wrap around the inner perimeter, all richly marbled and embellished. Anrep’s mosaics are a constant companion as we make a clockwise circuit. They offer a monetary migration back through the ages. Each successive floor-picture depicts a coin of the realm from a different reign. Henry VIII, I learn, was the first to allow a date in Arabic numerals rather than Roman.

(I’m not allowed to take photographs of these details. Strict rules. Even the official photographer, whose images follow below, operates under restrictions.)

The corridor leads to a grand staircase up to first-floor level. Here, I’m introduced to a sequence of rooms that can only be described as ‘palatial’. These are the famous Parlours, the ornate rooms where the Bank’s most high-profile work takes place. Grandest of all is the Court Room. It’s actually a glorified meeting room where the Court of Directors hold their elevated chinwags.

The Court Room: The Bank of England's governing body, the Court of Directors meets in this room. The original design is by Sir Robert Taylor and dates from 1774. Image: Monica A. Walker Vadillo.

The Court Room is one of the oldest spaces in this temporal gallimaufry. It was originally constructed in 1774 and would look very familiar to banking bigwigs of the Georgian era. During Herbert Baker’s rebuilding in the 1920s-30s, the room was carefully disassembled, then rebuilt a floor higher.

The columns, swags and chandeliers are impressive, but nothing unusual for an 18th century grand room. What is unique is the wind dial (centre top in the image above, and zoomed-in below), connected to a weather vane on the roof:

Image: Monica A. Walker Vadillo (cropped from above)

This feature was installed in 1805 to show the Bank’s Directors which way the wind was blowing. This was no metaphor. In the early 19th century, London was the busiest port in the world, and every ship was powered by the wind. The Bank factored the weather into its monetary policy. If the wind was blowing from the east, then more ships would be making their way along the Thames into London. The docks would soon be flooded with imports, and so the Bank released more money into the economy to take advantage. A westerly wind betokened the opposite course of action. The dial has no practical function today, other than to wear out the wallpaper, but its preservation is a joy for the historically minded.

Behind the dial wall stands the First Floor Committee Room. It’s a beauty:

The First Floor Committee Room. Image: Monica A. Walker Vadillo.

This is the space where the Monetary Policy Committee, chaired by the Governor, make decisions that affect every one of us, not least the setting of interest rates. Discussions in this room are top secret. The entrance is via two sets of doors, which dissuade eavesdroppers. Note also the panelled ‘cabinet’ on the left of the photo. It’s actually a concealed fire escape.

North of the Committee Room stands something more snug. This anteroom is yet another survival from before the 20th century rebuild.

Image: Monica A. Walker Vadillo

Here, my eye is drawn to the paintings of historical London scenes. The one you can see above the fireplace shows the old Stocks Market, on the site of what is now the Mansion House across the road. It’s an image of which I’ve long been fond, and I’ll probably make it the subject of a future ‘Anatomy of a Painting’ article. Wonderful to encounter the original.

Having seen the Parlours, my tour ends. It’s been an unforgettable experience to admire these chambers of fiscal brawn. I’ve only seen a fraction of the building, however. We didn’t pop into the Governor’s office. I was not allowed to set foot in the Garden Court, an old churchyard once connected to St Christopher-le-stocks, which was demolished during one of the Bank’s extensions. Nor could I see the fabled bullion rooms, where all that auric treasure is stored.

There is one final stop on the itinerary, however. Down we go into the bowels; not to see gold bars, but bold guards. We’d been allowed to take photographs in just two locations, and these had to be checked by security. Meanwhile, clocking-off bankers walk past in lycra, for London’s most secure bicycle store is also in the basement.

It’s one of two basements, actually, beneath seven floors of office, ranging over a full block. My final question to my guide is: do you still need all this space?

The answer is yes. The Bank employs over 5,000 people and remains central to the British and world economy. None of this vast building is in mothballs. It will not end up as a Soaneian ruin anytime soon. In an age of digital currencies and virtual meetings, it’s reassuring to see that the Bank of England is as solid as ever. These walls were built to last. (Twice.)

VISIT: The Bank is normally closed to the public (other than a counter for exchanging old banknotes just inside the doors). However, very occasional tours are arranged usually as part of Open House weekend.

MUSEUM: The public can, however, get a splendid taster of the wider banquet by visiting the Bank of England Museum along Bartholomew Lane. (Free, Mon-Fri)

EXHIBITION: Visit the museum in the next few months and you can view the Building the Bank exhibition. This explores the demolition of Soane’s bank and construction of Baker’s replacement. You’ll also be able to see Roman artefacts discovered on site.

All aboard! The London Bus Museum hosts another of its wonderful free heritage bus days in October. Image: © David Bowker

All aboard for free vintage bus rides this October!

London Bus Museum's semi-regular heritage day returns on Saturday 3 October 2026, when buses dating from the 1930s-70s ply a short stretch of the 106 route, pinging between Finsbury Park and Ash Grove Bus Station on Mare Street. Stops along the way are Stoke Newington, Clapton and Hackney Central.

How does it work? Simply show up at one of the bus stops on the route above, between 10am-5pm. Soon enough a vintage bus — most are Routemasters and their predecessor the RT-type, but you never quite know what you might get — will scoop you up.

Some services have a conductor on board too, handing out facsimile tickets. (Just be aware that if you board a modern TfL service on the route that day, you'll need to tap in and pay a fare.)

And the fun doesn't end there. Ash Grove Garage is hosting a 45th anniversary open day, giving you a chance to snoop behind the scenes. There's a small entry fee, with proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support.

London Bus Museum Route 106 Heritage Day, Saturday 3 October 2026, approx 10am-5pm, free.

Note that because of the buses' vintage, they're unable to accommodate wheelchairs and most modern buggies, although crews will make every effort to accommodate the less able and those with small children.

Image: Matt Brown

The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield is exceptional, by any definition.

Londoners will be familiar with Dr Johnson's House, the small museum tucked away in the courtyards north of Fleet Street. It's fun to explore, and contains a few surprises, such as a chunk of the Great Wall of China.

Fans of the wordsmith and dictionary compiler will, however, find a much more rewarding experience at the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, the building in which he was born, and lived for the first few decades of his life. It's not in London, but in the small Staffordshire city of Lichfield. You should visit. Both city and museum are lovely.

Image: Matt Brown

Samuel Johnson first entered this world on 18 September 1709 in an upstairs room of a house in Market Square, Lichfield. We can pinpoint the spot to a few metres, because the museum labels this space as the birth room:

Dr Johnson was born in this room. Obviously, he wasn't a doctor yet. Image: Matt Brown

Johnson would go on to spend much of his first 27 years in this family home (before riding down to London with the actor David Garrick, where both would find enormous fame). This is the building in which he learned to walk and talk, and possibly pen his first words. The infant Johnson probably stuck his head up that fireplace, and smeared snotty fingers on those window panes. He would go on to better things.

The house, built in 1707, is a joy to explore. Five floors of Johnsonian memory, some decorated in fancy Georgian style, others crooked, exposed timber frame. The upper floors look down on the market place, where a statue of Johnson now stands. Young Samuel must have gazed out on this square a million times, never guessing his stone likeness would one day be part of the scene.

Johnson's room now looks down on a statue of the big man. Image: Matt Brown

The museum is itself historic, having opened on the site in 1901. Many of the rooms are restored to Georgian look and feel, and occasionally enlivened with Johnson's own furnishings, including a roomy armchair and one of his writing desks.

The upper floors are charmingly crooked and wattlesome. Image: Matt Brown

Johnson achieved A-list celebrity status in his lifetime, which means many of his personal possessions have been saved. Those on show at the museum include his walking stick, writing desk, teapot, prayer books, cup and saucer, knife and fork… even his shoe buckles.

When a man is tired of looking at Dr Johnson's personal effects, then he is tired of life. Image: Matt Brown

The house also has a fingerable copy of the dictionary, so you can look up rude words and discover if he really did leave out 'sausage', as per the Blackadder episode.

Leafing through Dr Johnson's dictionary (a modern copy). Image: Matt Brown

Speaking of which, that's the one aspect that both the London and Lichfield Johnson houses miss out. Neither one mentions Robbie Coltrane's portrayal of Dr Johnson in the 1980s comedy.  

That memorable episode probably did more to re-popularise Dr Johnson and his work than anything from school history or literature classes. The museum should put on a mini-exhibition forthwith — we'll do anything we can to "facilitate their velocitous intramuralisation".

Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum is free to visit, and can be found in the market place at Lichfield. The fastest trains from Euston take 1 hour 12 mins.

Asquith Xavier is now honoured with a Blue Plaque outside his former Notting Hill home. Image: English Heritage

On the first day he arrived in London from the Caribbean island of Dominica in 1958, Asquith Xavier started working.

The 38-year-old Windrusher started out as a porter for British Railways at Marylebone Station, but his work ethic, and popularity among customers, ensured he was soon promoted to train guard — the first Black person to serve as one in Britain.

But something stood in the way of Xavier's next career move. In 1966 when he applied for a transfer to Euston Station, he was rejected, the staff representatives refusing to accept "coloured staff" in public-facing roles. Such unofficial 'colour bars' were both common, and grossly ironic, given that Windrushers had been coaxed to British shores in order to help rebuild the 'mother country'.

Xavier tussled with the powers that be at Euston, to become the staton's first Black train guard. Image: willnoble13, All Rights Reserved

Xavier — who died in 1980 — refused to accept the decision, and worked with a union representative to bring the story to national attention. Eventually British Railways was forced to overturn its decision. Perhaps the divisional manager of the London Midland region of British Railways who spoke at the subsequent press conference should have thought twice before suggesting that "staff representatives as Euston were not really anti-colour so much as pro-white...". We'll leave that one there.

Not only was Xavier awarded the job — becoming the first Black railway guard to work out of Euston Station, on 15 August 1966 — he was given two months backdated pay. "This is my happiest day since I arrived in England eight years ago," Xavier told the press, as he arrived for his first day on the new job 50 minutes early.

Meanwhile, British Railways announced that future job opportunities in London would no longer be closed on racial grounds. This was not, of course, the end of racial discrimination in London's workplaces (indeed, Xavier was the recipient of a number of anonymous abusive letters). But a powerful stand had been made; a big step forward taken.

"Whatever he did, he did it for compassion." Image: English Heritage

"Whatever he did, he did it for compassion," remembered Xavier's daughter, Sandra St John in 2023. "Because he cared about people." This was at an event in which the late Xavier had an Avanti West Coast Pendolino train named in his honour.

In August 2026, he received another honour — an English Heritage Blue Plaque unveiled at his former Notting Hill home on Ledbury Road. Said English Heritage senior historian, Howard Spencer: "Asquith Xavier's story is a powerful reminder that ordinary people can have an extraordinary impact. He was not seeking to become a campaigner or public figure.

"His fight began with a simple desire for a fair opportunity to support his family, but it became a landmark moment in Britain's struggle against workplace discrimination."

Image: Matt Brown

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in August 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Carnaby Street, in the popular imagination, will forever look like this:

May not be an actual historical photo.

Along with King’s Road in Chelsea, the Soho street was the epicentre of the Swinging Sixties; a place that screamed “this is how to be young and trendy” not just for London, but for the world.

That story is oft-told. You’ll find it written up all over the web. I won’t say another word about it. Instead, I want to nudge our neurons towards Carnaby Street before the Swinging Sixties. After all, five-sixths of its history played out before the arrival of Quant, Jagger and Lennon.

It began with plague pits. One of the earliest maps we have of the area comes from John Strype’s Survey of London, published in 1720. Here’s how Carnaby Street is presented:

Image: public domain

You can see Carnaby Street running north-south to the centre-left, with Kings Street (now Kingly Street) parallel to the west. But the eye is drawn more keenly to the oblong of woe marked “Pest-house Fields”, and its adjacent burying place. A pest house was a building in which the sick were isolated, in this case during the 1665 plague. The burying place was where many of them ended up. The despair and suffering on this site must have been immense.

Today, this patch of land could hardly be more alive. The bars, shops and restaurants of Newburgh Street, Foubert’s Place and Lowndes Court are so densely boutiquated that they’ve spawned their own marketing catchall: ‘The Newburgh Quarter’. It has a better ring than ‘The Old-plague Quarter’.

One of the entrances into the ‘Newburgh Quarter’ from Carnaby Street. The 18th century buildings (Grade II listed) were built on land once occupied by pest houses. Image: Matt Brown

The first buildings near the future Carnaby Street, then, were a series of pest houses for quarantining the sick. 36 of these were built during the plague year by William, Earl of Craven, whose own house was nearby on Drury Lane. Despite his name, Craven was one of the few nobles to remain in London during the worst days of 1665. He must have personally superintended the building of the pest houses on his land, and we might therefore declare him the unwitting father of Carnaby Street. He’s not really remembered in Soho today, though for a time the Carnaby area had a Craven Hall, Craven Chapel and Lord Craven’s Arms pub.

Right after the plague came the Great Fire. It didn’t get close to these parts, but the mass destruction of homes and businesses in the City stoked demand for new premises in the West End. Rapid development ensued and Soho was among the first areas to feel the march of bricks.

Carnaby Street itself sprung up around 1685, when the developer Richard Tyler built a number of dwellings and the larger ‘Karnaby House’ on the east side. It was named presumably after a Carnaby/Karnaby family, though there is a touch of onomastic mystery on that point. Tyler would also construct the parallel King Street (now Kingly Street) around the same time, as well as the adjoining cross streets. Among the first residents, so the London Encyclopaedia tells us, were a number of Huguenot immigrants, who’d recently fled Catholic France.

Strype, whose map we saw above, also gives us the first description of the street, from the same 1720 work:

"Carnaby Street is an ordinary street, which goes out of Silver-street [now Beak Street], and runs northwards almost to the Bowling-ground. On the east side of this street are the Earl of Craven's Pest Houses, seated in a large piece of ground, inclosed with a brick wall, and handsomely set with trees, in which are buildings for the entertainment of persons that shall have the plague, when it shall please God that any contagion shall happen."

Strype’s ‘survey’ had been many years in production, however, and it’s possible the pest houses were long gone by 1720.

From these beginnings, and ever after, Carnaby Street was a place of trade. 18th century references paint a picture of the diverse work going on here. We find various butchers, a dealer in Dorchester beer, a linen seller, a looking-glass and picture-frame maker, a mahogany warehouse, an upholsterer, a poulterer, a shoemaker, a ‘chymist’ (a quack pharmacist) and many others. From at least 1732, part of the area east of the street, on the former pest ground, was referred to as Carnaby Market.

We can see this market labelled on the John Rocque map of 1746 as “Marlborough or Carnaby Market”. The market space is divided over two pockets, the last remnants of the old pest fields. Beyond the market, the burial ground of St James’s — subterraneanly teeming with plague victims — is still intact. It would be built over in the early 19th century.

John Rocque map of London 1746, colourised by Matt Brown.

We’re looking at the streets known to Canaletto. The celebrated artist lived just around the corner from Carnaby on Silver Street (now Beak Street) from 1746, and he often displayed his paintings at home. Rocque may well have visited. Canaletto moved out nine years later, and just missed the arrival of another great artist.

William Blake (born 1757) took his first breath on Marshall Street, just metres from Carnaby Market. The natal nexus is now covered by a tower block called William Blake House. Both Blake and Canaletto appear on the left-hand side of the Spirit of Soho mural, which is easily Carnaby Street’s most interesting feature today.

Canaletto’s glazed plaque on Beak Street. Image: Matt Brown.

Like any busy street in Georgian London, Carnaby saw its fair share of the grim and grisly. The street was the scene of a notorious murder in 1737. A Thomas Mudd got into an argument with his wife Ann, during which “she snatch’d a Knife from her Side and stabb’d him through the Back, upon which he dropp’d down dead”. Wilful murder was the verdict. Ann Mudd was later dragged through the streets on a hurdle and burned at the stake at Tyburn. The Daily Gazetteer notes that she “behaved very penitent” at the execution site. Other accounts, however, say she was “insensible” as the horrible fate unfolded. She was just 22.

Other tragedies are not hard to find on 18th century Carnaby Street. In 1739, a Mr Stalley shot himself through the head with a “fowling piece”, or shotgun. Such weapons have long barrels. The fatally ingenious Mr Stalley got round this by tying his garter to the trigger, and then pulling its other end with his foot. Bizarrely, a second man took his own life using garters the following year, this time hanging himself in the stables of a local pub, the Lord Craven’s Arms. A few years later (1747) an unnamed butcher’s boy “had the Misfortune to fall down in the Slaughter House with a large Knife in his Hand, which run into his Belly and ripped it up, so that his Bowels came out”. Needless to say, he died.

Carnaby Street seems to have seen off its residents to a particularly brutal rhythm. In 1750, a Mr Hyndes was beaten near death with hammers. In 1751, a young lad was shot in the back by a plumber. In 1753, a man dropped dead after attempting to dash to Hampstead and back in record time. In 1755, a butcher ate a hearty breakfast, and then “stabbed himself in three places”, dying immediately. It was relentless.

We could cherrypick such misadventures all day long. In truth, Carnaby Street was no more monstrous or ill-fated than any other busy street of the era. Such things were part of life in Georgian London. Besides these occasional episodes, the street remained a relatively quiet backwater.

The 19th century brought more of the same. Carnaby was still “an ordinary street”, as Strype had put it; not exactly impoverished but nor was it a place where you’d spy many top hats. Modest would perhaps be the right word. Charle’s Booth’s seminal ‘poverty map’ at the end of the century paints the street in the muted red to indicate ‘Poor and comfortable (mixed)’, with small pockets of ‘Poor’ in what’s now the Newburgh Quarter. This was essentially a street of tradesmen and shopkeepers. Oh, and pubs. At least seven could be found along the street in the 1880s.

The street’s lowest point came in 1854, when a cholera outbreak swept across Soho. It would ultimately kill around 600 locals. This was the epidemic famously mapped by Dr John Snow. His chart will be familiar to many readers — it’s reproduced in countless books on the history of London. Here it is again; I’ve coloured Carnaby Street in a putrid green.

John Snow’s map of cholera deaths, 1854. Image: public domain.

Every black mark on the map indicates one death from cholera. As you can see, the chief cluster is on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Dr Snow believed, correctly, that cholera was transmitted by infected water. His map pointed to the Broad Street water pump as the source of the disease, and it was later discovered to be faecally tainted. Carnaby Street, just a minute’s walk from the pump, was less affected. It had its own pump to the north. Once again, however, we find bad tidings for the ‘Newburgh Quarter’, where over 30 deaths were recorded. This was history repeating for the former pest-lands.

But now for something completely different. The end of the century saw construction of a power station on Carnaby Street. Yes, a power station, decades before Austin Powers. The St James's and Pall Mall Electric Light Company’s massive facility took up much of the south-east of the street. Built in the 1890s, it boasted a pair of 60-metre-tall chimneys which looked quite alien on the Soho streetscape. A man fell to his death down the middle of one of these in 1902.

The power station closed in the 1920s, but the building lingered on unto the very eve of the Swinging Sixties. Though now long demolished, part of the site was converted into a substation, which famously sports one of London’s most arresting sculptures.

The giant plug socket (street lamp to the bottom-left for scale) of Ganton Street is a reminder of the site’s history of electricity supply. I’m not sure what the exotic birds betoken. Image: Matt Brown

Aside from the hum of turbines, Carnaby Street still had little buzz about it as the 20th century dawned. It continued as a street of trade, with occasionally seedy corners. The area experienced mixed fortunes during the Second World War. Most of the street was undamaged by bombing, and numerous buildings still survive from the 18th century. However, the southern part around the electricity station took a clobbering.

The street’s modern reputation for music, fashion and youth culture really began in 1936, when the Florence Mills Social Parlour, named after the late singer, opened at number 50, opposite the power station. This restaurant and jazz venue was set up by Marcus Garvey, Amy Ashwood, and the calypso singer Sam Manning. It soon became a key social centre for the Black community, and a hub for discourse around Pan-Africanism. The venue then went through a number of evolutions, becoming the jazz-focussed Club Eleven, then the Sunset Club, and later the Roaring Twenties, where both the Beatles and Rolling Stones played gigs.

Meanwhile, the first boutiques were blossoming. Among them, from 1957, was John Stephen’s His Clothes. This store is often cited as the well-spring of the Carnaby revolution. It proved so influential to men’s fashion that it today carries a plaque. "He made Carnaby Street,” said Mary Quant of John Stephen. “He was Carnaby Street."

She was talking metonymically. Stephen made Carnaby Street synonymous with fashion, but he didn’t make Carnaby Street itself. As we’ve seen, this short road already had almost 300 years of history behind it. This isn’t a glamorous history, nor a momentous one. But the area’s gradual transformation from a plague-ridden backwater, from the bubonic to the iconic, from mass graves to bass grooves, is arguably more fascinating than Swinging London phenomenon itself.

The V&A hosted an exhibition dedicated to Winnie the Pooh in 2017. Image: V&A Museum

Alan Alexander Milne, the Londoner best known as AA Milne, is more often associated with Hartfield in East Sussex than the big city. Yet, he and his ursine creation Winnie the Pooh have plenty of links to London — let's take a wander through them...

AA Milne's birthplace: Kilburn

Image: David Howard, Creative Commons

Milne was born in Kilburn in January 1882. His father John Milne ran Henley House School at 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Mortimer Crescent), so Milne was a student there and was briefly taught by H.G. Wells. He also lived at the school, which was destroyed by a V1 in the war. Remsted House, part of the Mortimer Estate, has now taken its place at the junction of Mortimer Place and Kilburn Priory.

Westminster School and AA Milne

AA Milne attended Westminster School. Image: Anthony O'Neil, Creative Commons

Milne attended Westminster School from 1893 to 1900. After his death, he bequeathed a one quarter share of the copyright of Winnie the Pooh to the school, which remains the largest benefaction given to the school to this day. Today, the school's AA Milne Society oversees all gifts, distributing funds for things such as scholarships, bursaries and building improvement work. One of the school's houses is named Milne's in his honour.

AA Milne plaque in Mallord Street, Chelsea

Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

When Milne was discharged from the military in 1919, he moved into a house in 13 Mallord Street in Chelsea, just off King's Road. It now has a blue plaque on it and is Grade II listed. It went up for sale in 2013. When Milne first moved in, he was writing for Punch magazine, but while at the house he wrote poetry for his son Christopher Robin (who was born there) and found that his talents lay elsewhere. Milne owned the house until 1942.

Melina Place, St John's Wood

5 Melina Place, in the shadow of Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood, is where artist E.H. Shepard lived until he retired to West Sussex in 1955. During his career he illustrated the Winnie the Pooh books. Shepard's Melina Place home was put up for sale in 2012, and appears to have since been subdivided into multiple properties. The house bears no plaque or nod to Shepard's time there.

AA Milne and London Zoo

One of two Winnie the Pooh statues at London Zoo. Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

Ever wondered where the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh came from? Winnipeg was a black bear given to London Zoo in 1914 by a Canadian regiment called up to fight at the trenches in France. AA Milne used to take his son Christopher Robin to the zoo, and began telling stories about Winnipeg. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, there are two statues in the zoo dedicated to the literary bear — the one pictured above, and another showing Winnipeg hand-in-hand with a soldier. Parts of film Goodbye Christopher Robin were filmed on location at London Zoo in 2017.

More on Winnipeg the bear here and here.

AA Milne in the London Evening News

Pooh's first appearance was in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve 1925, in a story called The Wrong Sort Of Bees. Began the story:

This is Big Bear, coming downstairs now, bump-bump-bump on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winne-the-Pooh.

AA Milne at the British Film Institute

As well as his children's books and work for Punch magazine, Milne wrote four stories for Minerva Films which were filmed in the 1920s (at least one of them at Bushey Studios in Hertfordshire). Some of these films survive in the BFI archives today, including The Bump and Five Pounds Reward.

Lovers in London by AA Milne

Lovers in London (1905) was Milne's first book, a series of fictional sketches, although he himself wasn't happy with it, and later in his life chose to identify his 1910 book The Day's Play as his first book.

As the title of his debut work suggests, it makes use of several London locations including St James's Park, Battersea, Finsbury Park, Victoria Park, Piccadilly and more.

AA Milne and the Lyric Theatre

Milne's animal writings weren't limited to anthropomorphised bears and their friends; he adapted Kenneth's Grahame's 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows into Toad Of Toad Hall for the stage. The first performance of this adaptation is reported to have taken place at the Lyric Theatre on 17 December 1929 (other reports claim the first performance was four days later, in Liverpool, and that the production didn't make its West End debut until December 1930).

AA Milne and the Garrick Club

Image: No Swan So Fine, Creative Commons

As well as Westminster School, The Garrick Club Charitable Trust was another of the four beneficiaries of AA Milne's literary estate, though in 2001, the Club sold its part of the estate to the Disney Corporation. Milne had been a member of the club and, to this day, a room in the Covent Garden building is named the Milne Room in his honour.

AA Milne and Sotheby's

In 2008, a collection of E.H. Shepard Winnie the Pooh illustrations sold for more than £1.2m at the London branch of Sotheby's auction house. 10 years later, Shepard's original map of the Hundred Acre Wood — familiar to many from the inside cover of childhood books — sold at Sotheby's for £430,000.

Winnie the Pooh at the V&A

Winnie the Pooh came to the V&A in 2017. Image: V&A Museum

In 2017-18, the V&A in South Kensington hosted Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring A Classic, an exhibition exploring the partnership between AA Milne and E.H. Shepard in bringing the books to life. Exhibits included sketches, cartoons and more recent uses of the characters, including a Winnie the Pooh fashion range launched by Cath Kidston.

AA Milne and Buckingham Palace

"Alice is marrying one of the guard". Image: KirkandLynn_photos, Creative Commons

In Milne's book of poems When We Were Young, published in 1924, a work called Buckingham Palace reads:

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"

says Alice

Christopher Robin of course is Milne's son. Alice refers to Olive Brockwell, the nanny who cared for him as a child. When he went off to boarding school aged nine, she married a man named Alf Brockwell. Christopher Robin Milne dedicated his 1975 memoir, The Enchanted Places, to "Olive Brockwell. "Alice" to others, but "Nou" to me".

The links between Winnie the Pooh and Buckingham Palace strengthened in 2016, the 90th birthday year of both the bear and the late Queen Elizabeth II. A new book, Winnie-the-Pooh and the Royal Birthday, was released to mark the occasion, though of course original author AA Milne wasn't around to see it.

Winnie the Pooh art in Yonge Park, Finsbury Park

Look up high to see it. Image: Geoff Holland, Creative Commons

Most people wandering down the residential Yonge Park in Finsbury Park completely miss it. But if you ever find yourself here, cast your eyes to the eastern side of the street and look up. You'll need to look very carefully as it's ever so tiny, but at the top of one of the houses is a charming painting of Winnie the Pooh holding an umbrella, followed by Piglet.

The reason for its existence can presumably be attributed to a whimsical homeowner, as the address bears no known links to AA Milne's world. As of September 2025 it was still in situ, having been there for at least 14 years... and long may it stay.

Mr Sanderz' grotto at Syon Park

Mr Sanderz's grotto at Syon Park in 2009. Unfortunately it's no longer there. Image: Matt From London, Creative Commons

For a few years, west London's Syon Park was home to a replica of Mr Sanderz' house — AKA Winnie the Pooh's own home. Pooh "lived under the name of Sanders" (also variously spelt "Sanderz") in the Hundred Acre Wood, having moved into the tree stump vacated by the previous resident. The name "Mr Sanderz" was carved over his door, an imitation of which was mounted at ground level of Syon's trees, made all the more magical by the inclusion of a tiny chair and other details.

Sadly the door was removed a few years ago, and hasn't been replaced, but a similar replica can be found near Pooh Sticks Bridge in the real Hundred Acre Wood: the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.

AA Milne's life beyond London

In 1924, AA Milne bought a country home in Hartfield, East Sussex, near to a spot now known as Pooh Corner, and his family moved there from Chelsea. Milne died at that residence, Cotchford Farm, in 1956.

These days, Cotchford Farm is a private residence, though very occasionally the gardens open to the public.

AA Milne and All Hallows-by-the-Tower

After Milne died, he was given a private funeral. But shortly afterwards, a memorial was held at City church, All Hallows-by-the-Tower, alongside the Tower of London, to allow fans to mark his passing.

Not one, but four, Samuel Pepys tours take place on 4 September. Images: public domain

Ask anyone to name a London diarist, and the answer is near-unanimous: Samuel Pepys.

Though the 17th-century naval clerk and Tory MP only kept a diary for nine-and-a-bit years, that was plenty of time to open a visceral window into the London of that era, both fascinating and problematic; indeed Pepys himself was involved in the slave trade, and gave unwanted attention to women.

His diary is most famous of all for documenting the ravages of the Great Fire of London, which ignited in the early hours of 2 September 1666. Pepys was already documenting it in his journal by mid-morning that day: "By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish-street, by London Bridge."

To remember Pepys — and to mark the anniversary of the Great Fire  — City of London Guides are having another Samuel Pepys Day on Friday 4 September 2026.

Pepys kept his diary for just over nine years. Image: public domain

Two different walking tours leave at five-minute intervals starting out from the City Information Centre, St Pauls Churchyard from 12pm, with the last departure at 12.22pm:

"To the Exchange and Beyond" heads eastwards, taking in the places, people and incidents from Pepys' life — and ending at the site which sparked the Great Fire broke out.

"To the Wedding Cake and Beyond" heads westwards to Pepys' place of baptism, early childhood and the areas where he socialised, dined and went to the theatre.

Both 2024 and 2025 were sell-outs, so we'd advise booking in advance. Proceeds from tickets go to the Lord Mayor's Appeal.

Samuel Pepys Day tours, Friday 4 September 2026, £15

Tube trains could've had wooden wheels. Image: Phillip Ridlen, Unsplash License

"Screeeeeeeeeeeee!"

The toe-curling squeal of steel alloy wheels grinding on Tube tracks is enough to make you leap up from your moquette seat and yell: "ARE WE SURE WE'VE TRIED EVERYTHING, PEOPLE?!"

Londoners in 1930 were going through the same frustrations. By this time, cast iron wheels had been ditched in favour of steel, but the grinding of metal on metal often remained insufferable.

And then an inventor by the initial-heavy name of A. A. D. Lang suggested he might have the solution: wooden wheels.

Lang was no crackpot. A successful inventor, he'd created a laminated wooden propellor built up via layers of thin wood. After five years of tinkering, his company, Lang Wheels, introduced a similar design for wooden wheels, created by layering discs of wood on top of one another, and cementing them firmly together. "Each layer," explained the Herald of Wales, "is composed of six sectors of specialy [sic] chosen spruce, so arranged that the grain of each sector runs in a different direction. The layers are placed on top of one another in such a way that the joints between the sectors of one do not coincide with those of the other."

Image: from the Herald of Wales, July 1930, courtesy of Newspapers.com

As well as being lighter and less noisy than steel, the wheels were supposedly 'immune to moisture or heat', plus there was a suggestion they were actually more resilient than steel. Lang had already shown off the strength of his wheels during War Office trials for gun carriages, held in Woolwich. The wheels had been run on tracks for a distance of 192 miles, before being subjected to machine gun fire and shelling. After which, they were still fine.

Interest in Lang's wheels was understandably high, and test wheels were made for the London Underground Railway and London Tramways, as well as for the Manchester Corporation. Mr Murray Griffiths, Director of the London District and Underground Railways, hailed the invention as "A wheel that will wear, and that will obviate the terrible noise we now experience in our towns." Griffiths went on to say he was quite satisfied that the wooden wheels would go on to be used on the railways.

Wooden wheels never became a thing. Image: Ketut Subiyanto, Pexels License

Meanwhile, Lang challenged the Central London Railway to stick a mic in one of its carriages to record the noise, before refitting the carriage with one of his wooden wheels and doing the same again.

These were thrilling times for screech-phobes. So what happened with Lang's wooden wheels? Well, we're not entirely sure. The records fall silent about the experiments. Perhaps subsequent tests saw the wheels crack, splinter, catch fire or all of the above. The whole 'machine gun fire' thing did sound incredulous after all. As far as we know, wooden wheels were never properly, well, rolled out on the London Underground.

Lang Wheels carried on regardless; in 1933 they diversified into the fairground and theme park game, quickly trebling its workforce to manufacture roundabouts, dodgems, autodromes and the like. The screeching from those riding on such contraptions would have matched the wheels on any Tube train. But at least in this case, the passengers were having fun.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in August 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

This is actually a sculpture, on a quiet road near Canary Wharf. Image: Matt Brown

9 December 1868 is a doubly important date in world history. In the city of Breslau in Prussia, Fritz Jakob Haber vacated his mother’s womb and settled down for his first feed. 40 years later he would develop the ammonia-producing Haber process, which now feeds half the planet (through fertilisers), and kills vast numbers of people (through explosives). Haber was, arguably, the most consequential scientist of all time.

On the same day as his birth, the world’s first traffic light was unveiled in Westminster.

It was a spectacle. The contraption behaved like a railway signal, but towered six metres (20 feet) over the carriageway, with a trio of four-foot arms and a glowing headpiece, “like a dovecote”. Here’s a press image from the time:

The Westminster street semaphore, from the Illustrated Times, 16 January 1869. Copyright the British Library Board via the British Newspaper Archive.

This “frightful monument,” as one letter-writer saw it, was quite alien, like something from the pages of HG Wells (though not yet; he was currently toddling around his parents’ china shop a few miles away in Bromley). It might have been a “gratuitous hideousness” (another letter-writer), but the street semaphore was sorely needed.

Victorian London was a crazed clopjumble of horse-drawn traffic, all vying for progress along the ill-paved streets. The rules of the road had yet to be codified. Nobody indicated. Nobody had assumed priority. It was a dung-scented free-for-all.

Well, not quite. The busier junctions enjoyed the superintendence of a policeman. The short arm of the law would bend, stretch, and beckon, to let drivers know when it was their turn to proceed. It must have been a hellish job. Many policeman were injured amid the vehicular maelstrom.

One junction had a particularly bad reputation. This is the one where Parliament Street runs into Parliament Square and the approach to Westminster Bridge… the junction nearest Big Ben. It’s still a wretched grimfest today, but back in the 1868 it was a right old snarl up. Two Members of Parliament had recently been injured trying to cross on foot, while a traffic policeman had been killed earlier in the year. The spot was chosen, then, for Britain’s (and the world’s) first traffic lights.

A “dreadful portent”

The brains behind the scheme was John Peake Knight, a respected superintendent on the South Eastern Railway. Knight had a simple idea: that signals like those used on the railways might also tame London’s road traffic.

His experimental apparatus was duly installed at the Westminster junction, roughly where the Winston Churchill statue stands today. It did not look much like a modern traffic light. For daytime operation, a semaphore system could start and stop the traffic by the raising or lowering of mechanical arms. Only at night, when red- and green-filtered gas lamps were used, did the system look the part. None of this was done automatically, of course. A policeman still had to stand on the island and operate the device, and he was usually backed up by more than one colleague to help further manage the flow with gesticulations.

Should you accidentally ‘quantum leap’ into the body of an 1860s coachman, then you’ll need to know how to understand the signal. Happily, this contemporary information sheet has survived in the archives:

Richard Mayne, whose name appears at the bottom, was head of the Metropolitan Police… or, at least, he was for a few more days. He died at the end of December 1868 while the trial was still ongoing. Image: Public domain.

Simply put, you were free to guide your vehicle forwards unless both arms were in the horizontal, or the red signal lamp was illuminated. Notice that the sign mentions a pedestrian crossing. This was actually the whole point of the exercise. This first traffic light was a binary: either it was on to all vehicles or off to all vehicles. The arms could not be moved independently. During the ‘stop’ phase, all traffic halted and pedestrians were able to cross (in all directions) safely. During the ‘go’ phase, traffic would proceed in all directions, with some orchestration from a policemen. You’d be mad to try and cross on foot.

The traffic lights had some initial success. "The regular town drivers are fairly, and to quite an unexpected extent, amenable to the signals," thought the Illustrated Times, soon after the lights were installed.

A plaque to John Peake Knight near the Westminster junction he tried to tame. Image: Matt Brown

Others were more skeptical. One commentator, on approaching the “Dreadful Portent” from Westminster Bridge, asked his driver what it was. “Another o' them fakements put up to wex the poor cabbies,” came the reply. A more serious limitation was the manpower needed. The signal still required a police presence. The lights and semaphore reinforced the hand gestures of the constabulary, but didn’t replace them.

Appearances aside, these early traffic lights were simply not good enough. Many drivers did not understand what the angled semaphore blades were supposed to indicate. Others ignored them. The technology often broke down. In January 1869, a gas leak caused an explosion at the base of the semaphore, badly burning the face of the police operator.

The lights lingered on for a few more months, but constant breakdowns and general ineffectiveness led to their removal by the end of the year. Semaphore systems were adopted elsewhere, but London would not see further signalling for many decades. The roll-out of traffic lights in London was proving to be a stop-start affair.

The first electric traffic lights

Regular readers may recall that London’s first traffic island was supposedly installed at the top of St James’s Street in 1864. Remarkably, London’s first electronic traffic lights were anchored to that very same spot.

Eight sets of lights were placed along Piccadilly — between the Circus and Clarges Street. They were switched on on 3 August 1926, to coincide with the remodelling of traffic flow in Piccadilly Circus. Much as today, London’s first lights had three colours: green to go, red to stop, and amber to be ‘ready for a change’. This time, London was behind the curve. Electric traffic lights had been in limited use in the United States for over a decade by this point, and numerous European cities had also dabbled.

The locations of London’s first eight traffic lights, as deduced from newspaper reports of the time. The blue house symbol represents the control booth on St James’s Street. Image: Matt Brown in Google MyMaps.

Circuitry wasn’t yet reliable enough for an automatic system. Rather, the lights were overseen by “a perspiring policeman in full uniform, including helmet,” perched inside a grey, glass-fronted booth on St James’s Street. The poor fellow would sit there squinting down the road, pushing buttons for hours on end, and sequentially scrolling through the phases on each signal.

These light signals were not for the direct benefit of drivers. Rather, they were intended as cues for the regular traffic police, who were stationed at each set of lights, to perform the customary gestures. This was, after all, an experimental system, and motorists had no previous experience at obeying coloured lights. The chief benefit was that one man could now coordinate the entire street, rather than the existing anarchy of independent junctions.

A policeman on point duty at Piccadilly Circus in 1911. Image: public domain

The Piccadilly lights were of limited success. Traffic flow was judged to be improved, but the mixture of a beckoning human and a guiding light caused confusion. The police on point duty could not always see their lights, which then as now were hooded. “A hundred times a day, drivers are waved out of Bond-street into Piccadilly be the policemen on point duty, although the signal at the corner is set to danger," reported the Evening News one month into the trial. “Similarly, a hundred times a day drivers see the green and think all is well for straight ahead, and find that the policeman will not let them pass”.

These mixed messages, and the sheer cost of employing so many members of His Majesty’s Constabulary on traffic duties (around 1,300 across town at any given time) meant that moves towards a fully automatic system were inevitable. London was again slow to adopt such a system. Detroit had automated lights as early as 1921, and the technology was widespread in North America by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, various towns across the UK, including Hastings and Wolverhampton, held their own trials before London.

The first large-scale system in central London was installed in Trafalgar Square in 1933. It was surprisingly sophisticated. The lights were informed by pressure sensors on the road surface, which relayed information about traffic levels on different approaches. Drivers were even given filter arrows, which allowed traffic to turn from the National Gallery onto Charing Cross Road, even though other directions were on ‘red’. These pioneering lights had their teething issues, but were quickly deemed a success. 14 police officers were reassigned from traffic duty.

Trafalgar Square is today notable for its novelty pedestrian lights, which feature various designs inspired by Pride and the LGBT+ community. This one has a subtle heart between the figures. Image: Matt Brown

Automatic lights enjoyed their finest hour in November 1937, when “the biggest unit of traffic signals in the world” was installed at Piccadilly Circus. The “robot master mind” controlling the junction was officially named “Little Eva”. This box of wonders received signals from nine detectors on approach roads, and could vary the phase times according to demand. It was estimated at the time that Little Eva would save some £3,600 a year on police time, and provide a smoother flow as well. Pedestrians were an after-thought. According to one news report: “The loud speakers of a police car continually barked: "Use the subways, they are safer!" but few people did so.”

From that point on, it was a big green GO for traffic lights in London. They spread across the city and country like a tricoloured rash, and remain a key part of road infrastructure today.

Now, there’s an unwritten rule of feature writing that your final paragraphs should always include a call-back to the opening paragraphs. How on earth am I going to pivot back to Fritz Haber? Well, watch this manoeuvre…

Another of those early traffic light set-ups was placed at the corner of Southampton Row and Russell Square at some point in 1932-33, during measures to disentangle an experimental one-way system. It was at precisely this time that Fritz Haber made a series of short visits to London. He almost certainly stayed in the Russell Hotel, right next to the traffic lights.

Long-time readers of this newsletter will know how important this particular set of traffic lights proved to be. It was here, also in 1933, that one of the most important thoughts in human history took place. While on his way to the Russell Hotel (the same one Haber used), the physicist Leo Szilard paused at the crossing to wait for the traffic to stop. It was then that he had a ‘Eureka moment’ in which he conceptualised the nuclear chain reaction — the process that would lead to both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Szilard is therefore a rival to Fritz Haber as the most consequential scientist who ever lived. One was born on the same day as the traffic light, and the other was inspired by one. Like the road-traffic control network, everything is connected.

After that unhinged conclusion, I’ll sign off with some music. Behold, this uplifting ode to traffic lights by Monty Python:

Some serious monkey business went down in London late in 1926. Image: Matt Brown/Bob Brewer via Pexels

Yes, you did read that right. The hijinks-laden escapade of 13 monkeys — all members of a travelling 'jazz band' — really did happen in London, 100 years ago.

The place: Notting Hill. The time: Friday 19 November 1926. Thieves break into the premises of 'amusement caterer' Mr T Murphy on Latimer Road. They're about to get more than they bargained for.

Spying a wooden, coop-like structure, they crack open the door, expecting a hen or two to waddle out. Instead, out pour 13 more-than-cheeky monkeys. The alarmed thieves scarper. So do the monkeys – making for the rooftops, then on to nearby Latimer Road station, where they entrench themselves beneath the railway arches/platform.

The monkeys, by the way, are pro musicians. In town for an engagement at the World's Fair, to be held at the Agricultural Hall on Christmas Eve. Reports do not suggest they take their instruments with them as they flee. (When you're on the lam, a drum kit is not your best friend.)

One monkey broke into a confectioners, troughing a pound of peppermint creams. Image: Phil Beard, Creative Commons

Keeping up with the rambunctious escapades of the monkeys isn't easy — especially as newspapers give slightly differing reports as to their names, crimes and whereabouts. But in a roundabout way, here is what unfolds:

🙊 From their makeshift Latimer Road lair, the escapees sally forth with all manner of monkey business — frightening old ladies, breaking into homes, yanking off roof tiles, tearing down curtains and making frequent raids on grocers' shops and stables ("One this morning was observed sitting on a horse's back"). Snookums, a cymbalist, helps himself to cigarettes. The drummer, Jennie (or Jenny or Jeannie, depending which report you read), ransacks a local sweetshop, troughing a pound of peppermint creams. She is caught soon after by "an old army man who had been in Singapore and understood monkeys".

🙊  The mood is not so humorous as it is threatening. Any attempt to approach the monkeys is met with a volley of banana skins and nutshells. One monkey finds a tobacco pipe and "puffed this while he gazed with scorn at his would-be captors." Another — or perhaps the same psychotic simian — "clutched at a hammer and brandished it with threatening intent."

🙊 Three of the sax players head to Notting Hill Gate station, where they take up residence and hurl chunks of wood at children.

🙊 "Smart little trumpeter" Issacs lets himself into the bedroom of a Mrs Harris of Mersey Street and her baby, almost scaring the former to death. "Issacs," writes the Province, "has already established a reputation for 'frightfulness' in the area".

🙊 Another monkey plays Santa, by sliding down a succession of chimneys (well it is almost Christmas). A woman taking tea spots the be-sooted monkey on her dresser and faints, the tea tray crashing to the floor. The monkey nicks a slice of bread then scarpers back up the chimney. "Another woman who has lived with her window open for ten years," writes the Courier and Advertiser, "has now nailed it up".

🙊 Reports from startled locals files steadily into police stations: "Latimer Road indeed has an endless supply of jungle tales." Mr T Murphy receives bills left, right and centre for everything from stolen chocolates to broken crockery, It's a wonder he doesn't suffer a nervous breakdown.

A photo of one of the captured primates (which one exactly we're not sure). Image: British Newspaper Archive

🙊 A group of the monkeys (reported as seven, but possibly six otherwise the figures don't add up) get hungry and bored, and are easily lured back to their cages.

🙊 Two more monkeys are captured the next day, as is Issacs.

🙊 That still leaves four: Bimbo, a drummer; cymbal crasher/cigarette snatcher Snookums; Sandy (specialist instrument unknown); and Franko, the band's leader — a dab hand with the baton, and described by the Daily News as "a saxophonist with ambitions for a cabaret career in the West End". Franko is worth over £100, and the show can't go on without him, says Mr T Murphy. A £25 reward is offered for his capture.

🙊 Some 20 people are now part of the hunt for the remaining fugitives: station staff, police, livid shopkeepers, bounty hunters. Traps are set, but the monkeys are wily/quite violent. The press know a good story when they see it. "I went monkey hunting in Notting Hill yesterday," writes an excited reporter for the Daily News.

🙊 Snookums is eventually captured, although not before an acrobatic display around Latimer Road station, which crescendos with him biting the hand of his captor.

🙊 Franko is spotted jumping on the roof of a Paddington-bound train (some say he boards the train), before vanishing into the night.

🙊 Meanwhile, Mr T Murphy receives a telegram from Tom Norman, a travelling showman at the Saracen's Head in Rugby:

Monkey captured here this morning, after doing considerable damage, for which I shall expect you to pay. Am sending him passenger to Euston.

It's Bimbo! In RUGBY ffs! And Norman has managed to bag him up in a sack, and send him back to London. Writes the Guardian: "The monkey, looking cold and crestfallen, struggled vigorously when the guard led it on a chain to the Parcels Office. It took three porters to hold it down while press photographers secured a 'snap'".

🙊 Fears grow that Franko and Sandy may have perished from exposure. But then, on 27 November, the Daily Express reports that Sandy has demonstrated that very morning that such reports are exaggerated, "by sitting on a pile of logs in a wood yard... and hurling lumps of wood at the custodian." Classic Sandy.

🙊 After this, the reports peter out. Was Sandy ever captured? And what became of Franco? We like to think that, as the Lancashire Daily Post suggested, he made it to Paddington and the Cornish Express, on which he journeyed to the softer climes of the English Riviera, living happily ever after. Hard to swallow perhaps, but then so too are the previous 1,000 words.

Image courtesy First Rail London

Four new community roundels have been installed at Bethnal Green station.

Head over to Bethnal Green station (the Overground one, not the Underground) and you'll find that it's been decorated with four eye-catching roundel mosaics.

Each one was pieced together at community workshops with contributions "from babies as young as six months old to residents aged 85".

The mosaics are inspired by the Weaver line, which runs through the station and is itself named for the rich textile history of the area. Look closely at the artworks and you'll see numerous references to Huguenot weavers, bobbins, warps, wefts and looms.

Image courtesy First Rail London

The roundels also weave in references to other features of the area, such as Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, the Museum of Childhood and even local bus routes. Some of the tesserae namecheck local notables such as textile designer Anna Maria Garthwaite and boxer Daniel Mendoza.

The project was overseen by Maud Milton of Artyface, who has created mosaic roundels for numerous Overground stations. This batch were created with the help of First Rail London (who operate the Overground on behalf of TfL), Good Shepherd Mission and Young V&A.

Image courtesy First Rail London

These are such joyous objects, which not only look gorgeous but also involve local communities. We can only hope that similar creations one day beautify every station on the network.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in August 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

A cartoon from 1831 lampooning bus travel. Image on display at London Transport Museum, photographed by Matt Brown

Should you ever find yourself miraculously transported back to pre-Victorian days, then you will assuredly want to ride on one of the new-fangled London omnibuses, recently introduced by Mr George Shillibeer (see the previous article).

These early buses came with their own codes of conduct, just as today we all habitually stand on the right-hand side of escalators and give up our seats for those in greater need (well, some of us do).

In January 1836, The Times codified these rules for their readership. Here they are, with my own comments in square parentheses.

The Laws of the Omnibus

The omnibus could get a little cramped. To reduce conflict, a set of norms and courtesies developed. This engraving is from 1859, some 30 years after the first omnibuses. Image: Public domain

1. Keep your feet off the seats.
[Still a good one to observe. In the 1830s, feet would have been all the dirtier, thanks to a preponderance of horse dung.]

2. Do not get into a snug corner yourself, and then open the windows to admit a northwester upon the neck of your neighbour.
[To this day, I occasionally hear cries of ‘can you shut the window please’ on the top deck in wintertime.]

3. Have your money ready when you desire to alight. If your time is not valuable, that of others may be.
[A forerunner of the message played in Tube elevators that reminds us to have ‘Oyster Cards, tickets and PAYG cards ready for the barriers’. Omnibuses, it seems, charged passengers at the point at which they got off.]

4. Do not impose on the conductor the necessity of finding you change; he is not a banker.
[Typical fares were a shilling or 6d. Most passengers would have coins to these values in their purse. Bank notes were not normally used for day-to-day transactions at this point.]

5. Sit with your limbs straight, and do not let your legs describe an angle of forty-five, thereby occupying the room of two persons.
[Is this the first description in recorded history of manspreading?]

6. Do not spit upon the straw. You are not in a hog-sty, but in an omnibus, travelling in a country which boasts of its refinement.
[If this vehicle is so refined, you might ask, then why is there straw on the floor in the first place? It functioned as a renewable floor covering, which could be swept out and replaced once it had got too claggy with mud and horse dung. Spitting was not uncommon in Regency and Victorian times thanks to high rates of smoking and snuff use. I suspect that the sooty fogs of the age would also have irritated the airways, encouraging a surfeit of phlegm.]

The Victorians were not known for succinctness. This verbose ‘No Spitting’ sign is from a railway, but similar signs might have appeared on the omnibus. Image: Matt Brown

7. Behave respectfully to females, and put not an unprotected lass to the blush because she cannot escape from your brutality.
[Shudders.]

8. If you bring a dog, let him be small and confined by a string.
[Lapdogs only. Early omnibuses could be cramped spaces, so not an acceptable domain for a mastiff. Modern London buses allow dogs of all shapes and sizes, but they must be kept on a lead and off the seats.]

9. Do not introduce large parcels; an omnibus is not a van.
[Worth remembering if you were going to try and sneak your friend on in a crate.]

10. Reserve bickerings and disputes for the open field. The sound of your own voice may be music to your own ears—not so, perhaps, to those of your companions.
[A rule still observed to this day on the Tube, where even the most nugatory comment is frowned upon. Silence is golden. Not so on the buses, where you’re now almost guaranteed an intense auditory experience on the top deck.]

11. If you will broach politics or religion, speak with moderation; all have an equal right to their opinions, and all have an equal right not to have them wantonly shocked.
[Can we have that one over on social media today, please?]

12. Refrain from affectation and conceited airs. Remember you are riding a distance for sixpence which, if made in a hackney-coach, would cost you as many shillings; and that should your pride elevate you above plebeian accommodations, your purse should enable you to command aristocratic indulgences.
[The 19th century equivalent of moaning that the Piccadilly line is not as swish as the Heathrow Express.]

1929 replica of an 1829 Shillibeer omnibus, at London Transport Museum. Image: Matt Brown

Modern Omnibus Law

Given that these instructions are now approaching their 200th birthday, it’s high time that someone updated them. Here, then, are my rules for catching a bus in 21st century London:

1. Do NOT form an orderly queue at the bus stop. That is for provincials. Instead, stand where you will, and examine your phone until the bus arrives.

2. If your bus is taking a long time, do not consume 50 bottles of Smirnoff and arrange them mysteriously in groups of five behind the bus shelter… unless you’re in the village of Bedfont near Heathrow, where this seems to be a thing:

Image: Matt Brown

3. DO say hello to the driver. It gives them an enormous sense of wellbeing to ignore you completely, but at least you made the effort.

4. Do not try to pay with cash. It is an unheard-of commodity on the London bus. Travel cards will work, but you’ll immediately mark yourself out as a tourist. Even Oyster cards and debit cards are passé these days. Smartphone or smartwatch payments are the overwhelming norm.

5. Do not offer to show your ticket to the conductor. No London bus has employed a conductor for decades. If you do see a conductor, then either you’ve just consumed 50 bottles of Smirnoff, or it’s a ghost.

6. Select a seat somewhere towards the middle-back. The options nearest the driver are for those who most need a seat. The benches nearest the middle doors are for those looking after buggies or wheelchairs. The back seat is reserved for troublemakers. This leaves just a handful of seats, and so you may want to head upstairs.

7. If heading upstairs, stay as far from the back as you can. The rear five rows are typically taken by passengers who like sharing their music with the whole bus.

8. The front-top seats are reserved for younger passengers who might “pretend to drive the bus”.

9. The bus will inevitably pause five minutes from your destination “to regulate the service”. It is expected that you will emit a mild groan at this juncture.

10. Always ring the bell if you’d like the bus to make a stop. Without a bell, drivers will studiously not stop, and will even accelerate if they can see that people are agitating to get off.

11. Shout “Thank you driver!” as you effect your egress. This once neglected custom has seen a resurgence in London in recent years. And, despite my joshing, bus drivers are among the great unsung heroes of London, and deserve our thanks.

The ill-conducted Conductor

A horse-drawn double-decker from much later (circa 1890) at the London Bus Museum (actually in Surrey at Brooklands). Image: Matt Brown

In 1841, The Times followed up their Omnibus Laws with two new lists. One set out the behaviours of a ‘well-conducted conductor’ and the other essayed the habits of an ‘ill-conducted conductor’. The first list is essentially a ‘good’ version of the second, so here I reproduce only the six hallmarks of the bad busman:

An ill-conducted conductor…

1. Always bawls out “Bank—Bank—City—Bank—Bank—Bank—City—City—Bank—Bank—Bank!” by which disgusting noise his own lungs are injured, the public peace is disturbed, and not any advantage gained.
[Modern buses are pretty good at giving out just the right amount of information. “The next stop is…” and “This is the 107 service to New Barnet”. The Tube, however, still favours an exhausting onslaught of safety messages. See it. Say it. Sorted.]

2. Always bangs the door so violently that if you are sitting next the door you are likely to be deafened for life.
[No such thing as automatic hydraulic doors in the early Victorian period. Manual slam-doors only. I am old enough to remember slam doors on trains, however.]

3. Never provides any check-string, but compels the passengers who want to be set down to use their sticks, canes, and umbrellas, and loud shouts into the bargain, thereby creating a most intolerable nuisance.
[The check-string was a simple mechanism whereby the pull of a cord would ring a bell, alerting the driver to stop… much like the buzzer-bells on modern buses.]

4. Always takes up and sets down his passengers in the middle of the street; by which rudeness they are sometimes bespattered with mud and always exposed to danger.
[Some omnibuses had check-strings on either side of carriage; passengers would pull the appropriate string to indicate which side of the road they would like to set down on. This was possible because doors were typically at the back of the bus, rather than on one side.]

5. Always stands at the door of the omnibus staring in upon the passengers, particularly after he has been eating his dinner of beefsteak, strong onions, and stale beer; and generally has some cad or other crony standing and talking with him. The air that would otherwise circulate through the omnibus, in the way of ventilation, is obstructed and poisoned.
[London’s buses have their problems today, but I think we can all be grateful that the menace of the beefy-breathed conductor haunting the rear window is a thing of the past. The engraving near the top of this article shows one such man.]

6. Always bawls out “All right!” before the passengers have taken their seats, by which gross carelessness, great inconvenience and even danger are often occasioned.
[This still happens today. We’ve all been on buses that have moved off before new passengers have sat down, only for a tumble to ensue. I’ve seen it happen to a parent carrying a baby.]

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in August 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Image: Matt Brown

They say you should always look up in London. But not too far. Leave the rooftops for the pigeons and chimneysweeps. Instead, cast your eyes to the first floor (second if you’re American). Here you’ll find a neglected, orthogonal catalogue of shop signs clamouring for attention on the high street.

Most of today’s signs are humdrum. Every Pret, Poundland and Paddy Power has its perpendicular glowing herald, thrusting out from the brickwork. They’re little more than eye-clutter. Occasionally, though, you’ll find an individualistic gem, like this cheesy pendant in Seven Dials:

Image: Matt Brown

The dominion of the hanging sign has always been bossed by pubs. Their flapping nameplates remain one of the visual joys of London, even if many characterful pub signs have been lost or blandified in recent years. Here, I can’t help intruding on the text-flow to share a few of my favourite pub signs from around London:

The Old Nick in Holborn. That’s Niccolò Machiavelli, by the way. Image: Matt Brown

The Adam and Eve in Mill Hill, included mostly because I’m not entirely sure which one is Adam and which one Eve. Image: Matt Brown

The Chancellor in Hammersmith has two Tudor boffins anachronistically teaching Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence. Image: Matt Brown

The Three Kings of Clerkenwell. The chosen kings are Elvis, King Kong and Henry VIII. This is the pub's old sign. The current one is more tame. Image: Matt Brown

Hanging signs can rise to immortality. Many of the evocatively named passageways of London take their names from lost pubs, which in turn were named for the images on their hanging signs. Witness Hanging Sword Alley off Fleet Street, or Hen and Chickens Court, or Magpie Alley, all in the same area. In the case of Elephant and Castle, an old pub sign eventually denominated a whole neighbourhood.

Creative hanging signs today are nowhere near as ubiquitous as once was the case. Traditionally, almost every business of quality had its own, unique sign. This was a necessity at a time when most of the population could not read. Pictorial identifiers were easy to spot, and could be reproduced on business cards. Find me at the Crown and Three Sugar Loaves, you might say to your illiterate buddy. Or, as Gandalf tells the hobbits, “I’ll be waiting for you at the Inn of the Prancing Pony.” I don’t think that was London, though.

Hanging signs have been around forever, usually marking taverns. But they got a fillip during the reign of Charles I, who commended them “for the better finding out such citizens’ dwellings, shops, pubs or occupations, without impediment, molestation, or interruption to their heirs or successors.”

Thereafter, businesses of all types began to adopt signs. These might occasionally bear some relation to the trade carried on within: a bunch of grapes for a wine shop, for example, or a golden boot for a shoemaker. More often than not, though, the sign had only cryptic relevance, or none at all. Signs were often passed down to succeeding tenants, who might not carry on the same trade as the previous occupant. Sometimes, a merger could precipitate a fresh sign, with unusual combinations like the Sheep and Dolphin, or the Bell and Neat’s Tongue. (I recall a pub in Greenwich, long gone, called the Frog and Radiator… though that is clearly of more recent vintage.)

Almost all barbers still display a striped pole sign, even those named after barber-immune footballers. The three golden balls of the pawnbroker is another surviving example. Image: Matt Brown

The practice of decorating your shop front with an imaginative hanging sign seems to have withered in the 18th century for a number of reasons; and one of those reasons was numbers. Door numbers. They began to creep in around mid-century as a more rational means of identifying properties. The population was also becoming more literate, so the old pictograms were now merely charming rather than necessary.

Hanging signs could also be dangerous. In 1718, a sign came loose on Fleet Street, bringing down a fair amount of brickwork with it. Two young ladies, the king’s jeweller and cobbler were supposedly killed by the falling masonry. That, at least, is the story regularly repeated in books and websites. It may well be true, although I’ve been unable to find an account of this disaster written before 1810, almost 100 years after it purportedly happened.

After incidents like that, the decline and fall of the hanging sign was inevitable as well as literal. An Act of Parliament in 1762 called for the withdrawal of hanging signs on the grounds that they were dangerous. From that point on, shop signs were supposed to be fixed parallel to the wall, rather than cantilevered out over passing heads. I don’t think this was rigorously enforced for long, however, as a quick scan of old photographs and drawings confirms.

If you seek classic hanging signs today, head to Lombard Street in the Square Mile. This features a sequence of evocative signs, none more photogenic than this auric grasshopper:

Image: Matt Brown

The grasshopper, as any Londonophile will know, was the personal sigil of Thomas Gresham (you can see his initials on the hanging sign). This wealthy Tudor banker founded the Royal Exchange (above which another grasshopper presides) and set up Gresham College in his will. He also maintained a goldsmiths on Lombard Street from 1563, hence the date on the sign.

Is the sign itself that old? Does it predate the Great Fire?

Sadly, I don’t think so. A newspaper article of 1844 notes that the building had a grasshopper sign “as late as 1795, until the erection of the present building, when it disappeared”. A similar tale of absence is told in the Illustrated London News of 13 June 1857. For most of the 19th century, then, there was no grasshopper dangling over Lombard Street.

The first clue that the grasshopper had returned comes from an 1892 account which states that the insect is “the sign which still decorates Martin’s Bank”. My reading is that the original sign was long vanished, and Martin’s Bank hung a replica in the late 1880s… though, of course, it’s possible they found the original in storage.

Lombard Street contains more dangle-treasures than this superannuated grasshopper. Further signs depict a fiddling cat, a golden anchor and a king’s head.

Image: Matt Brown

These also look proper ancient but, in fact, they’re 20th century pastiche. 23 mock-Georgian signs were placed here in 1902 as part of the celebrations for King Edward VII’s Coronation procession, as a “unique and historical” decoration. This street had a long association with hanging signs. It was here, for example, that the black horse still used by Lloyd’s Bank has its genesis. It originally hung over a goldsmiths — a popular trade on Lombard Street — but made a suitable rebus for Barnett’s, Hoares & Co. Bank who took over the building. Lloyd’s absorbed this bank in 1884 and appropriated the sign.

Lombard Street's traditional signs had mostly vanished by 1902, but local banker and antiquarian Frederick George Hilton Price hit upon the idea of reviving them as a “unique and historical” decoration for the King’s big day. His book The Signs of Old Lombard Street provides many details about the signs, including the pastiche ones he helped to erect. These are listed below:

From The Signs of Old Lombard Street

As you can see, the Grasshopper is listed among them. This was one of the few signs that was not pastiche, though as mentioned above, this iteration had only been on show for a decade or two.

Sadly, the signs were only considered temporary and the Corporation of London took most of them down the following year. Now only four remain. Perhaps we should bring them back again. I’ll add it to my list of ideas for the Great Exhibition of London of 2051… which I hope to be around to see.

In truth, I think hanging signs are making a modest comeback. I’ve noticed a rise in imaginative signs of late, including a hanging typewriter in Shoreditch, a pendant bulldog at Two Temple Place (indicating the Bulldog Trust charity), and this menacing set-up on the Lord Napier pub in Hackney Wick:

Artwork by the street artist Phlegm. Image: Matt Brown

Meanwhile, Camden High Street has long been famous for its giant fibreglass signs. Doc Martens, Chinese dragons, anthropomorphic fruit and women of negligible clothing all lean out from the brick terraces.

And then we have the Dog and Pot sign on Blackfriars Road. This is a replica, installed about a decade ago, of a sign Dickens recalled seeing here as a 12-year-old in the 1820s.

Image: Matt Brown

As the resurgence of the hanging sign gathers momentum, we should remember that they can still constitute a public nuisance. ⬇️ This is the Duke of York in Fitzrovia ⬇️ — the pub where Anthony Burgess was once mugged, in an incident that inspired the Droogs in his A Clockwork Orange. Until recently, its hanging sign depicted another character of dubious quality:

The Duke of York in Fitzrovia a few years ago. The sign is now gone. Image: Matt Brown

The Duke of York recently stopped swinging. The sign was removed in early 2025. The pub has new owners who are not willing to trade under their predecessor’s sign. And thereby hangs a tale.

The British Optical Association Museum is one of over 40 places taking part in 2026's Heritage Open Days. Image: Matt Brown/Londonist

An eye-opening museum stuffed with glasses, a bat walk through a cemetery and a trip to an integrated waste management facility.

All feature as part of the Heritage Open Days taking place this year, running from 11-20 September 2026.

In all, we've counted 44 London-based happenings this year, at the city's museums, palaces, mills, churches, cemeteries and various other cultural nooks and crannies. It's all free, and a lot of events don't even require pre-booking.

Venture into Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park in search of bats. Image: Torsten Reimer, Creative Commons

Here's a selection of events ruffling our truffles:

♻️ "Let's all take a trip to Southwark Integrated Waste Management Facility!" said no one ever... until now, that is. This family-friendly 'Wonder Day' shows you what happens to your recycling once it's taken away, plus there are upcycling and craft workshops; a display of vehicles that work on-site; and a bouncy castle. (12 Sept)

🐟 Visit the moated manor at Scadbury, replete with excavations of Tudor great hall and kitchens. (12-13 Sept)

📻 The place we once suggested might be the best shed museum anywhere, Dulwich's British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum is also home to the terrifying Stooky Bill (12 and 20 Sept)

🦇 Bat expert Kenneth Greenway bids you to bring a torch, in order to light your way through Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park in search of resident bats. (13 Sept)

👓 The British Optical Association Museum is "the only museum where the exhibits look at you!" We visited recently, and would highly recommend this eye-opening experience. (13 Sept)

♀️ From organists to bellringers, and scientists to suffragettes, discover the stories of the women connected to St Alfege Church through the centuries. (20 Sept)

All Heritage Open Days events are free to visit/do, but you'll need to book in advance for some. Peruse the calendar and plan from there.

Mid-September also sees the separately organised Open House Festival (12-20 Sept), which has now published a rundown of 600+ venues/tours which opening to the public.

Heritage Open Days, 11-20 September 2026.

Adapted from a feature that first appeared in July 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

Lyme Regis is the place for fossils. Visit the Dorset town at low tide and I guarantee you’ll find something, even if you couldn’t spot a goose in a bath tub. The ammonite fossil shells are unmissable. I had my first prehistoric encounter within seconds of gaining the beach ⬇️:

It’s easy to get blasé about fossils, but just consider this for a few seconds. It was once a living creature, and died, perhaps, 70 million years ago. Now imagine some as-yet-unevolved animal sharing photographs of your remains 70 million years from now. Quite a thought. Image: Matt Brown

Lyme Regis is justly famous for its fossils, and for the work of fossil hunter Mary Anning (1799-1847). Anning and her brother Joseph made some stunning finds on this stretch of coast, including important examples of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterosaurs.

Her life story is very well told above the beach at the superb Lyme Regis Museum, which stands on the site of her house and fossil shop. But the museum also draws us into the lives of other remarkable women associated with Lyme Regis. Jane Austen, for example, set much of Persuasion in the town. Meryl Streep brought it to the big screen in the adaptation of The French Lieutenant's Woman. And before you even reach the museum door, you must step over the the legacy of a famous London businesswoman, Eleanor Coade:

Image: Matt Brown

Eleanor Coade (1733-1821) made fake stone. She was really good at it. The curly forms in my photo above are not real ammonites, and nor are they sculpted. These are Coade-stone casts, and they are very convincing.

Coade stone was a revelation in the late 18th century. Others had made artificial stone before, but Eleanor perfected a recipe that was durable and weather-proof. Its chief advantage over real stone was that it could be poured into a mould, then fired until it became hard. Statues and architectural ornaments could now be mass produced without the need for expensive chisel-hours.

Georgian London was awash with Coade stone, and you can still find examples all over the city. The most famous is surely this dazzling white lion who guards Westminster Bridge. I hope I’m looking as robust as this when I approach my 200th birthday:

Coade-stone lion of Westminster Bridge. Image: Matt Brown

Eleanor Coade was a serial entrepreneur. By the mid-1760s (still in her early 30s) she was running a linen drapers in the City of London. By the 1770s, she was directly managing the artificial stone factory in Lambeth. You don’t need me to tell you how rare it was for a woman to run a business in the 18th century, let alone a highly successful firm with royal warrants to both George III and the Prince Regent. Coade must have been exceptionally skilful to overcome the male gatekeepers of the time, even with wealth on her side.

Incidentally, the ‘recipe’ and firing technique for Coade stone were lost in the 1840s after the factory closed down. Only in recent years has it been revived. The ammonite pavement at Lyme Regis Museum is one such modern example.

The museum didn’t choose Coade stone arbitrarily. Eleanor Coade had strong links to the area. She was born a little to the west in Exeter, into a wealthy Devon/Dorset family. She would later move to London, but also maintained an enviable bolt-hole in Lyme Regis. Here it is:

Image: Matt Brown

It’s called Belmont because it’s beautiful (bel-) and practically on a mountain (-mont)… or, at least, the biggest hill in the exceptionally hilly Lyme Regis. It also happens to be adjacent to the long-stay car park, for those of weaker leg.

Coade was given the recently built house by her uncle in 1784, to be used as a holiday villa. The various urns, quoins, swags and rustications you see in my photo are all made of Coade stone. Belmont was as much a product showroom as a seaside retreat.

Belmont had another celebrity occupant in more recent times. It was here that the novelist (and former Londoner) John Fowles lived from 1968 until his death in 2005. And it was here that he finished writing The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which includes Belmont as a setting.

Eleanor Coade’s wider story is well told inside the museum, and numerous accounts can be found online (Katie’s is particularly good, and gives many examples of where to spot Coade stone in London; meanwhile, Historic England has a map of Coade across the country). But Eleanor Coade is just one famous Londoner to have links with this part of the Jurassic Coast. Let’s meet another.

The foundling father

Recognise this fellow?

Image: public domain

This is Thomas Coram (1668-1751), as painted by his friend William Hogarth. Coram may have saved the lives of more Londoners than anyone outside the medical professions. It was he who, in 1739, set up the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury. This charitable institution took in, cared for, and educated an estimated 25,000 vulnerable children over its two centuries of operation. Most were orphans, or came from families unable to cope with another child. Without Coram’s charity, many would have died.

Coram’s own early childhood was spent in Lyme Regis, and also involved parental loss. His mother died in 1671, when the boy was just three. His father, probably a master mariner, packed him off to sea aged 11. He eventually washed up in Massachusetts, where he pursued various maritime trades for the next two decades. He did not arrive in London until 1704, but thereafter became a dogged campaigner for children’s welfare. Coram poured everything into his foundling project, often at personal expense.

“Dear old Coram died in 1751 a complete pauper,” wrote our old friend John Fowles, more than two centuries later. “Every penny of his fortune had been ‘lost’ in the hospital. Lyme has more famous names attached to it, but none of kinder memory”.

Coram’s links with Lyme are limited to his early childhood, but his formative years, tinged with the tragedy of his mother’s death, must have been important in the shaping of his character. The museum devotes a small display to the good captain, including these buttons and dolls from the Foundling Hospital.

Image: Matt Brown

The Foundling Hospital moved out of London in the 1920s, and eventually closed in the 1950s. The original site in Bloomsbury is, however, still devoted to child welfare. Here you’ll find the Coram charity, which serves as an adoption agency and advisory centre. Next door is the Foundling Museum, which tells the story of Coram and his young charges. It also displays important works of art, including the March to Finchley painting that was the subject of a recent newsletter. A large open space is now the Coram’s Fields Playground, which adults can only enter ‘if accompanied by a child’.

Henry Fielding’s despicable behaviour

Our third noted Londoner is perhaps the most famous. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was a prominent judge who set up the Bow Street Runners, London’s first attempt at a professional police force. He was also a playwright and novelist, best known for the highly influential Tom Jones (1749), though I’d give him more credit for writing a parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, puntastically called Shamela.

The grown-up Fielding was a leading light of both judiciary and proto-constabulary, but the youthful Fielding seems also to have dabbled in villainy. How else to explain this Lyme Regis plaque?

Image: Matt Brown

The plaque marks a narrow path called Long Entry, and records that here, in 1725, the novelist Henry Fielding attempted to abduct Sarah Andrew. What gives?

Fielding, aged 19, was spending the summer in Lyme Regis where he met distant cousin Sarah Andrew (then aged 15). She was an elegant young heiress on the cusp of a vast inheritance. He had a profile like a bottle-opener, and a wallet that was more accustomed to crumbs than currency.

Later accounts relate how Fielding had fallen desperately in love with the heiress. His attempts to woo her, though, were thwarted. Sarah was under the guardianship of her uncle Andrew Tucker, who hoped to see her married to his own son John Tucker. Fielding was an annoying rival.

Things came to a head one Sunday in November 1725. Sarah and the Tucker family were on their way to church (the same one, incidentally, where Mary Anning would be buried in the following century). One street away, Fielding and his servant grabbed the young lady and attempted to spirit her away. Mr Tucker was having none of it, and fought off the attempt on his niece.

Tucker went to the Mayor with his grievance. A surviving record states that Fielding and his man were “bound over to keep the peace, as he [Mr Tucker'] was in fear of his life or some bodily hurt to be done or to be procured to be done to him by H. Fielding and his man. Mr A. Tucker feared that the man would beat, maim, or kill him.”

Fielding fled town to avoid prosecution. As a parting shot, he posted a sour public notice, which still survives in Lyme Regis Museum:

Image: Matt Brown

The note reads: “November 15 1725. This is to give notice to all the World that Andrew Tucker and his son John Tucker are Clowns and Cowards. Witness my hand Henry Feilding [sic].”Clearly, there’s more to this episode than the scraps of documentation disclose. Was Fielding really trying to abduct Sarah, or was that Tucker’s spin on a more orthodox street confrontation? What was Sarah’s side of the story? Why did Fielding view Tucker as cowardly?

We may never know. The experience — whatever its true nature — certainly left a lasting impression on Fielding. His novels and plays are littered with kidnappings. As a judge, meanwhile, Fielding would go on to preside over many cases of abduction, including the famous mystery of Elizabeth Canning. Lyme Regis had left its mark on Georgian London’s pre-eminent judge and novelist.

I began with Mary Anning and I’ll finish with Mary Anning. The great fossil hunter had only tenuous connections with London (though many of her best fossil discoveries now hang in the Natural History Museum). As a woman of the early 19th century, she was barred from joining the learned societies of the capital, though she did correspond with many of the leading lights. Anning spent almost all of her time in Dorset, contributing much to our understanding of ancient life and the vastness of geological time. Tragically, her own time was to be short. Anning died of breast cancer aged just 47. Had she lived another 12 years, she would, I’m sure, have been utterly thrilled to see the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which finally made sense of the “endless forms most beautiful” that she had chiselled from the rocks.

Thanks to a campaign by locals, she now has a statue on the Lyme Regis seafront. Lovely though this is, her real tribute is down in the ammonite beds of low tide. To paraphrase Christopher Wren’s tomb in St Paul’s “If you seek her monument, look around you”.

Limpets shelter in the remains of an ammonite shell. Image: Matt Brown

You wait ages for one vintage Routemaster, and then 25 turn up at once. Image: Peter Hendy, with permission

What's that coming over the hill — is it a 'master, is it a 'master?

Actually it's over 25 Routemasters. This is Imberbus — the annual parade of double-decker London buses from Warminster to Chitterne — via Salisbury Plain and a collection of bucolic villages, including Imber (hence the event's name).

Ohh, a green one. Image: Shutterstock

The uncanny sight comes with a backstory to match. Residents of the small village of Imber in Wiltshire were turfed out of their village by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1943 so the land could be used for military exercises. They were promised their village back at the end of the war. That never happened.

You may spot the odd modern Routemaster too. Image: Imberbus

Fast forward to a tipsy conversation in a Bath pub in 2009, some schmoozing with the MoD's top brass, and the concept of Imberbus was born. Imber may not have any residents, but by heck, it was going to have a (once-annually) bus service.

Imberbus has since ballooned into a cult event, some bus fanatics even coming from overseas to take part.

You ain't seen nothing quite like Imberbus before. Image: Imberbus

So, how DO you take part? All you need to do is get to Warminster station in Wiltshire on Saturday 15 August 2026. Trains from Paddington to Warminster take as little as 1 hour 35 minutes.

Not the usual view you get from a London bus... Image: Ed Webster via creative commons

The 2026 timetable is now live, with the first vintage Routemasters of the day running from Warminster to Imber at 9.30am, and then throughout the day every 15 minutes or so until late afternoon.

On arrival at Imber, some buses from Warminster will carry on to Gore Cross, then either to Brazen Bottom and the Lavingtons or to Tilshead & Chitterne. Extra buses link Tilshead, the Lavingtons, Gore Cross and New Zealand Farm Camp.

In the pretty village of Chitterne. Image: Imberbus

There are various landmarks, events and refreshments to get stuck into, including Imber Church, Caspers Cafe at Warminster Station, the village halls in Tilshead and Chitterne, and the refurbished Market Lavington Museum.

London's urban sprawl is getting ridiculous... Image: Imberbus

Day tickets for Imberbus are £10 (children ride for just £2). This allows unlimited rides, allowing you to try different buses, and stop off in various villages along the way. There's no need to book ahead — in fact you can't. Buses only accept cash, although you can purchase tickets from a special desk at Warminster in the morning using a card/contactless. Cash machines are also available in Warminster Market Place, five minutes walk from the rail station.

In recent years, the event has raised tens of thousands for the Imber Church fund and the Royal British Legion, so your cash is going to a good cause.

Battle bus! Image: Imberbus

By the way, cars, motorbikes, cycles, scooters and pedestrians are NOT permitted access to the military roads on Imberbus day, so don't try to join in that way.

Imberbus, Saturday 15 August 2026.