London Curiosities

If you walk along St Martins Le Grand in the City you will come to Postman's park, it is out of place in the busy commercial finance area. Inside is the old Roman burial ground of Saint Botolph's, if the gate is open you may go in where you will find some grave stones stacked by the side, they were moved during the rebuilding of the area after heavy bombing during the second world war. George Watts was one of the Victorian age's most popular and successful artists, his fame increased in 1864 when he married the popular actress Ellen Terry, though this marriage lasted less than a year. His work in general had a high tone of morality, from his works in the Tate and Victoria and Albert museum, and his 'Physical Energy' sculpture in Kensington Gardens. In 1900 he was prompted to take over a wall in Postman's Park, close to St Paul's, and have it filled with delicate tiles, honouring 'heroic deeds of self sacrifice.' He died in 1904 and thirteen tiles went up in his life time, his widow kept adding to them till they ceased at no. 54. There is also a wooden statue of Watts. If you click on the seat below you will see enlarged photos of all the seats, and will be able to read most of them.

Another hidden corner of London is the street by the name of Cloth Fair, which runs by the side of West Smithfield. It has these two buildings that have survived the Great Fire of London in 1666. The houses at numbers 41 and 42, were built between 1597 and 1614, and was preserved from the Great Fire because of them being enclosed by the wall of the priory.

St Bartholomew's gatehouse that leads to the oldest parish church in London, St bartholomew-the-Great was built in the sixteenth century, and is where Queen Mary ate chicken and drank red wine while watching Protestant martyrs burn at the stake. It was only when a first World War German Zeppelin bomb in 1916 fell nearby, that the tiles to this arch fell off to reveal this Elizabethan half timber fronted house built in 1597.

Front and rear view of the Elizabethan gate house

The Brixton Windmill was built in 1817 and leased to Mr John Ashby. John, his sons and grandson were millers producing stone-ground wholemeal flour. The Ashby family operated the mill – which became known as ‘Ashby's Mill’ – for the whole of its working life. By 1862, the surrounding area had become too built up for the windmill to operate efficiently, so the building was used for storage. In 1962, the windmill was acquired by the London County Council, the mill is now owned by Lambeth Borough Council and forms the centrepiece of Windmill Gardens. With nearby Brixton prison, and the very busy Brixton shopping centre with it's large Caribbean population, this windmill remains a hidden gem of South London.

Side by side they stand and more than a century apart are these two mile stones. One in the reign of the Prince Regent George the 1V and placed in Regents park, before the architect Nash laid it out as a royal palace for the Regent, who decided to open it out as a royal park. The other in the reign of Queen Victoria. Regent's Park (including Primrose Hill) covers 487 acres.

Ask any visitor to London what is the biggest clock in London, and you will get the answer Big Ben, well Big Ben the official name being St Stephen's Tower is the most famous of the London clocks, but the biggest clock face belongs to Shell Mex house in the strand once the London head office of the Shell petroleum company, opened in 1933, with a tower rising to over 200 ft and containing the largest clock in London.

They stand on opposite corners of the west window of St Andrews Church, St Andrews Hill. These figures are to be found in various parts of London, on the walls of school buildings. This would mean that this church once had a school for girls and boys. The boy holds a bible in his right hand and a cap in his left.



The girl has a bible in her right hand and what appears to be a shopping bag in the other. She stand looking at the new Sainsbury's head office at Holborn Circus, which has an express shop inside. She has a look of surprise in her eyes as though she has forgotten to buy something that she needed.








William III was in a financial crisis in 1696 due to the wars with Ireland and on the continent. One new idea that was brought in to help pay for the debt was the unpopular window tax. The tax was payable on houses of more than six windows, so the clever tax-dodgers simply got hold of a builder to brick up the other windows. Houses with nine windows would pay 2/- (10p) and ten to nineteen windows the cost was 4/- (20p). In 1851 the window tax was scraped and a new tax called house duty a forerunner to community charge became payable.

The old tramway that passed under the centre of the road in the Kingsway was built in 1906. It was a two way tunnel that took trams down to the Victoria Embankment underneath Waterloo Bridge, where they could go either left to Blackfriars or right to Westminster. The last tram entered the tunnel on 5th of April 1952. Part of the tunnel was opened to cars in 1964 from Waterloo Bridge becoming known as the Strand Underpass, though it ends quite short of the old entrance. It has had various uses like films and storage and still has the tracks left of those bygone days.

Magpie Alley that cuts between Bouverie Street and Whitefriars Street has a hidden treasure, for beneath the railings of a new office development, down in the basement is this 700 year old crypt displayed in a glass case. This is the only remain of the Whitefriars Monastery that has laid hidden for hundreds of years beneath a house, where the vault was used as a coal cellar. This medieval crypt offered sanctuary in the middle ages for thieves, murderers, and prostitutes as the law of those times were afraid to enter this monastic crypt.

The Oxo Tower now a top class London restaurant with superb views across the River Thames of the city of London. Built on an earlier-twentieth-centuary electric power station and rebuilt in 1920 with its art nouveau design by the Oxo meat and gravy consortium owned by the Liebig meat company. Unable at the time to have outside advertising on such a high tower the inclusion of the clever window design in the Oxo letters was allowed, whereby at night the red background light illuminates the Oxo sign to the London skyline as our picture insert shows.

The Jewel Tower was built in 1365-6 to house jewels and treasures of gold and silver belonging to King Edward III, and is the only surviving building of the ancient private palace of Westminster. It is surrounded by an attractive moat that is fed by the Tyburn during heavy rainfall. It was the southern most end of the palace hence its L shape, other than a treasury it has also been store room for the house of Lords documents, and used by the weights and measures department, and now it is open to the public as a museum.

Outside the Athenaeum Club in Waterloo Place are these strange pair of kerb stones that have stood here for over 170 years with people passing by without a thought. They were placed in this position to allow the Duke of Wellington to both mount and dismount his horse while visiting the Athenaeum club. The Dublin born Iron Duke defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in June, 1815.

One of the most beautiful gas lamppost to remain in use in London is this one in Carting Lane of Savoy Hill, it is one of the last surviving gas lamps to be using gas from effluent in the subterranean sewers.

On the corner of Queen Victoria Street and Huggin Hill is a small open space that is popular with city office workers on a warm sunny day, they can relax with their sandwiches and chill out during their lunch break. The reason for this quite garden retreat! A large Roman bath house once stood here and was fed by a natural spring, with much of this bathing complex still remaining hidden in the basement of the buildings opposite. In the meantime we can still glimpse part of the Roman wall at the bottom of the gardens.

This fine shop doorway complete with area railings with all the eloquent beauty of eighteenth-century architecture including a window box displaying summer flowers. As interesting as this corner shop may be I am drawn to the old sign of Barbon Close W.C.1 where the notice informs that G Bailey and Sons Horse and Motor Contractor were once operating in the rear mews. The wonderful thing about London are these old signs that nobody has considered removing even though the horse drawn day's are long gone.

This wonderful piece of Southbank history had remained hidden until the warehouse building was destroyed in a World War Two Blitz, revealing itself while the warehouse bricks were being removed. The Rose Window part of the lavish fourteenth-century Great Hall that served the Bishops of Winchester as the central feature of their London Palace. Southwark in those day's was full of brothels known as stews, with the famous Rose and Globe theatre's, and bull-baiting just a stones throw away the Bishop's decided to build a prison that became known as the Clink just to the west of the palace. The last Bishop to reside here was Lancelot Andrewes, who died in 1626. In 1642 Cromwell used it to house royalist prisoners, and eventually sold it off to a Camberwell property speculator who broke up the palace leaving the ruin by 1662. If the wall had not been used to support the inner sanctums of a warehouse wall this unique Elizabethan gem would not have survived.

Jacob the Circle Dray Horse.
The famous courage dray horses were stabled on this site from the early nineteenth century and delivered beer around London. From the brewery on Horselydown Lane, by Tower Bridge. In the sixteenth century this area was known as Horselydown which derives its name from Horse-Lie-Down, a thing that they did here before crossing the river at London Bridge to enter the City of London.

In 1811 Daniel Alexander built a warehouse to store tobacco, wines and spirits the warehouse still survives although it had a face lift in the mid eighties when some £30 million was spent to convert this building into a modern shopping mall, although it proved to be a disaster and now remains one of the quietest spots in this vicinity. At the rear of the warehouse are a couple of replica ships the one in our picture is the Three Sisters, that was built a couple of miles away at Blackwall Yard in 1788. It sailed to the East and West Indies with British home made goods and returned with tobacco and rum.

Relics of the old warehouse wall with a few barrels of rum balancing on top.

An old window frame hides a curious bath.

At the top of Strand Lane is a curious old window that is purported to house an old Roman Bath. It was certainly here in the seventeenth century that much we do know, though in the preceding years remains a bit of a mystery. It is surrounded by some typical Roman tiles so it could well come from those distant times, however this theory has been dismissed several times by archaeologists.
The view through the cloudy window and a well worn frame of the mysterious bath.

We do know that the bath was once replenished from a small stream said to be Holy Water that came from St Clements well that passes underneath St Clements Danes church in the Strand. What we also know is that the bath was found on the site of Arundel house later to become Norfolk house, home to the Dukes of Norfolk. During the reign of Charles II, Norfolk House was demolished, at which point the underground bath was first exposed. It is thought to have been a covered over water-storage reservoir from its older Arundel House times. The stream that once flowed down Strand Lane was much wider than the lane of today, and the water would run along its path into the Thames. This lane was quite notorious in the 18th century for smugglers hoarding their contraband up the hill from boats tied up on the corner where the Thames once flowed up to present day Temple Place, before the embanked was built.

The Ferryman's Seat Bear Gardens, Bankside.

The Ferryman’s seat along at Bankside near to where Shakespeare’s Globe now stands, has seen rather a lot of comings and goings. Long ago when London had only London bridge to cross over the river, there were many ferrymen waiting to take people from one side of the shore to the other. It would have seen the many “Stews” the old name for brothels that were lined along this side of the river on the South Bank, as well as actors and troubadours that preformed at the Rose and the Globe theatres, with the large crowds that also came from the nearby bear baiting ring. Now set into the side of a modern building in exactly the same spot where the ferrymen rested all that time ago.

The curious stone circle of Mohegan Chief, Mahomet Weyononon remembered at last.

In 1736 Mahomet Weyonomon, a Mohegan Sachem (chief), died in Aldermanbury in the City of London. He was 36 years old. Foreigners could not be buried in the City, so he was carried across the river and buried near St Saviour’s church, now Southwark Cathedral. Mahomet had sailed to London to petition King George II for the return of stolen lands taken by early English settlers. His tribe had helped the first English settlers in New England to survive the bitter cold and repel Indian attacks. Despite support from Queen Anne’s Commissioners in 1705, the lands were not returned. While waiting for an audience with King George II, Captain John Mason and Mahomet contracted smallpox and died. Two hundred and seventy years later a stone was brought from Mohegan lands and carved with forms that reflect ancient tribal customs. The Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, on the 22nd November 2006 with tribal chairman Bruce Two Dogs Bozsum, whom presented the queen with a red stone peace pipe, and with the U.S Ambassador - symbolically granting the audience Mahomet never received. "Mahomet has his stone now -- and his place in history“.

The original street bollards came from the French Canons captured at Trafalgar. They became so popular that once the real things were all used up copies were made. They are still made today in a similar shape, although they are the plastic variety. This one however is an original that stands on the Southbank near to Shakespeare’s Globe.

Here we have an assortment of copies that includes Victorian metal ones, and some vile twentieth century jobs.

Being more than fifty miles from the nearest coast and smack bang opposite Kings Cross Station, is this metal lighthouse tower that has puzzled the passing populations for many years, without anyone knowing why it was erected in the first place. Some will tell of the helter-skelter fairground ride that is said to have been here in the early Victorian times. Others claim that the shop below was once an Oyster restaurant and that the lighthouse was added for effect. I have even heard it said that an old seafaring sailor pensioned out of the navy had this eccentric loft conversion built to reminded him of his beloved voyages. Now a listed building that is in a state of disrepair, with the entire building deteriorating faster than a passing ship, something must be done and soon. With the Channel Tunnel main line rail station across the road, and with its direct line to Paris, you would think it could be returned to an oyster bar once again.

North Kensington can boast the only remaining 19th century tile kiln in London. Originally known as the Piggeries and Potteries where high-quality clay was dug from about 1818, and then fired in this very kiln that still stands in Walmer Road. Once known as Cut-throat Lane, Pottery Lane nowadays has properties selling from anything upwards of £500,000. When Samuel Lake, whose rough trade of scavenging and chimney-sweeping compelled him in the early years of the nineteenth century to remove himself from premises in Tottenham Court Road, and set up a business in a more solitary spot here at Nottingdale, where gravel and sand was discovered under the grass, and soon his brick works was making bricks for the wealthy houses being built in North Kensington. The pig-keepers of Tyburnia, present-day Marble Arch and Bayswater Road, soon made use of this district. Meanwhile some sixteen acres of adjoining land to the west were being dug for brick earth by Stephen Bird, one of the principal brick makers in London, who was also a builder active in Kensington; and with the arrival of the potters several of the principal ingredients were soon put together. Many of the workforce employed were Irish labourers who could also turn their hands to bricklaying and building work, and so from this little acorn North Kensington arose.

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