Blog Highlights: 24 Hours in LondonOnly 24 hours to spend in London; what should I see...?
London Advice: British EnglishGet acquainted with the English you'll hear in London...
History: A century of London on filmVideo clips starring London, from the 1890s to the 1980s...
Music: Reggae & Ska in LondonImported from Jamaica, Reggae and Ska took root in London...
Buildings: London's tallest buildingsAfter years of stasis, London is building upwards. Main ones here...
Blog Highlights: Great London EccentricsThe human mole, Stanley Green & the Flying Pieman of Holborn Hill...
Who Are Londoners?: Second World War1940-42, London suffered sustained bombing during the Blitz...
Art & Culture: The British MuseumA trip to London minus the British Museum, is a partial trip...
Hidden London: Brockwell LidoFor several weeks a year, London temperatures are smoking. Cool in the pool...
Hidden and Unusual Sights
Interesting Facts About London
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Nunhead Cemetery - NunheadNunhead, unless you live locally, will register not a flicker of recognition on the average Londoner's expression. No Tube station, stadium, or shopping centre of note - in fact, there are few hooks to snag and categorise this modest area of South London. Except its jewel: Nunhead Cemetery.
Back in the early Victorian Era, London was expanding at an alarming pace. Centre of the British Empire
'Burial Grounds' had been introduced by non-conformists in the previous century (like Bunhill Fields, Islington) as alternatives and useful overspills to churchyard burial, which was every parishioner's right. Churchyards also rarely represented the scarcely-believable number of actual burials which occurred beneath their soil. It's estimated that over 70,000 people are buried in the diminutive 200 square-foot (living-room sized) churchyard space, of St Martin in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. Phoenix GardenOne of London's finest qualities is that whenever you're on the verge of thinking you've seen it all, a new part reveals itself - often down a passage you've walked past numerous times. For a five year period I worked in WC2, 7 days a week, odd shifts, day and night. It's an area which includes the Strand, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Aldwych and many other busy West End districts. As a result, daily, I had hours to kill between shifts and being too far to return home and too tired to sit down for fear of falling asleep - I took to the pavements. There's hardly a street, or stretch of WC2 I haven't walked up, along, around about and back again. Peering over fences: very probably. Wandering into private forecourts uninvited. Guilty, m'lud. So it was a surprise to come across the
Shaftesbury Avenue is a street of two halves. The south end runs into Piccadilly Circus and is ten-deep with pedestrians. An especially tourist-heavy, hot zone. If you were in the market to buy a Buckingham Palace snowglobe, or tea-towel with teddy bear dressed as a grenadier guard on it, you'd generally grub about down here. As you pass the Curzon cinema, heading north-east, you cross Cambridge Circus and the Shaftesbury Avenue on the far side, changes completely in character: leafy and light on foot traffic.
| The Petrie Museum of Egyptian ArchaeologyNamed after Sir Flinders Petrie, who held the UK's first chair in Egyptology Most importantly, he rolled up his sleeves and got involved in the digging - an early adopter of a "back to the floor" policy of management. At an excavation of the New Kingdom site in Tanis, Egypt, he took over the role of foreman and removed the pressure on his diggers to find items as quickly as possible. As such, the earth was 'pared back', as his former, pre-teen self had precociously suggested. This made him popular with his digging crews. It's also pleasing to note that throughout the Petrie Collection in the museum, sepia photographs of his local digging supervisors are placed amongst the finds. He strikes you as someone who shared credit and responsibility among his workforce, rather than simply providing a chest to pin medals to. The chair at University College, London was created in 1892 and Flinders Petrie was the first to hold it. In 1913 he sold his collection to UCL, which is why it's now housed in The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Ham House and Garden
Elizabeth was a noted beauty and although the house was built at the beginning of the Stuart period, during James I's reign (for Sir Thomas Vavasour - Knight Marshall to the king), she was the one who breathed life into Ham House. Elizabeth inherited the property from her father and though she was no doubt intelligent and beautiful, she also possessed 'Lady Macbeth-ian' levels of political ambition and an unfetching, greedy glint in her eye. Elizabeth Murray married into titles which elevated her up the pecking order of British society. Love was never mentioned. After Charles II's ascension via the Restoration, she enjoyed considerable favour and influence in Stuart court life (she backed the winning team, which always helps). To discover more about the Stuarts - see The Banqueting House in Westminster. |
Unusual Sights in London
