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…
Perils of Passage
Liverpool's waterfront must have been a fascinating place to visit in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. The growth of the dock estate in the period was prodigious, and…
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.…
Leeds Leylands’ Life
The Leylands has long since vanished as a distinct area of north Leeds, but it was once a densely-populated and vibrant district, lent extra colour by an influx of Jewish…
Liverpool Zoological Gardens
Sadly, no trace remains of Liverpool Zoological Gardens, “a place of favourite and fashionable resort” in its day, which graced the south-side of West Derby Road beyond the old Necropolis…
Nautical Nassau
Back in February of this year, before the dreaded “lockdown”, I flew to Nassau on New Providence Island in the Bahamas to stay for a couple of weeks. This was…
Wild Woodhouse Moor
Before it became a landscaped park, Leeds’s Woodhouse Moor was a wild, rough stretch of common land on the town’s North-Western fringe, scarred by disused quarries and coal-pits, bordered by…
Leeds Welcomes Suffragists
This year marks the centenary of women being granted the parliamentary vote in 1918 (though it was for the over-thirties only at first!). We may expect the media to dwell…