London Shopping
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...
Oxford Street  Tube |
Selfridges & Co. Selfridges & Co. is a London institution. The store opened in 1909 and helped to establish Oxford Street as the main shopping district in London. Bleriot's cross-channel
Responsible for numerous marketing campaigns and ploys that have become standard practice, Selfridges & Co. was the first department store to open a perfume department built around the main entrance. At the time London was besieged by Omnibuses and other horse drawn traffic, (there's some early film of London's street traffic) so the air was heavy with the ripe aroma of manure. Shoppers flooded into the fragrant entrance and as Gordon Selfridge had hoped, made their way further into the store. In the 1960s Selfridges launched the young fashion brand 'Miss Selfridge', with its own entrance on Duke Street, coffee bar and for the first time music. So the hip, swinging cats of London would feel at home within the Grand Dame of British retail. Regent Street Tube | Lamb's Conduit Street - Bloomsbury Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, is a street you're unlikely to drift through by accident and belongs to no established tourist trail. Understanding what a conduit is and what it's for, is a useful starting point - before tackling the specifics of who Lamb might be.
History of London ConduitsLondon's unabated growth throughout the middle-ages created a practical problem, which required one of London's mightiest engineering projects to solve. The water supply failed to meet the daily needs of the population. To address this a 'Great Conduit' was built. Conduits are still used today, though mainly as small plastic coverings for cables and wires. You might imagine that a 'Great Conduit' was the kind of pipe you could manoeuvre three Minis through,
Since the use of water by some trades was regarded as excessive (baking, brewing & tanning were especially demanding), the conduit houses surrounding the cisterns were managed and access to the supply was strictly controlled. Conduit houses also served as 'moral billboards' since everyone in the city would need to visit them regularly. Nothing was likely to raise Londoners' scorn quite like having their viewpoint steered or massaged. Then, or now. The conduit houses were consequently covered with graffiti & slogans. The accession parade of James I passed a conduit house where the following verse was daubed for His Majesty's consideration.
Life is a dross, a sparkle, a span A bubble: yet how proud is man! Harrods Harrods department store was founded in 1834 by Charles Henry Harrod and moved to its current site in 1851 after capitalising on brisk trade at a stall set up for the Great Exhibition of that year. The company |
