Memorials of the Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851 was an extraordinary phenomenon. Such was its appeal that hordes of folk from all over the country and from all classes…
A Portrait of Old Wapping
The London Docks were built in Wapping and neighbouring Shadwell, just downstream of the City of London, between 1801 and 1815 by the London Dock Company. First opened in 1805…
Underground Upheavals
The first underground railway in the world, the Metropolitan, was built in London between 1860 and 1863 from Paddington to Farringdon. Its construction involved the innovation of “cut-and-cover”, whereby roads…
The Omnivorous Omnibus
Travel by bus, or “omnibus”, could be a hair-raising business in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. Collisions occurred, axles broke, wheels came off, and horses fainted or bolted.…
An Unholy Street
When I lived in London I worked for some time in an office overlooking the Aldwych, off the Strand. I did not know then, as I watched the traffic thunder…
Sambourne House
My cultured friend and I recently visited Sambourne House, a West London terraced home preserved pretty much as it was in the 1890s, complete with its original contents and furnishings.…