17 Gough Square, E.C.4
The house in Gough Square is still standing today much as it looked in Johnsons time. With the little courts and alleyways to the north of Fleet Street, still running into the Square. Fleet Street its self has changed a lot, in those days it was a much more narrow cobbled stone street, and already noted for its many taverns. Johnson's local was the now famous Cheshire Cheese, his large towering figure could be seen often parading through Bolt Court, on his way to Wine office Court and the Cheshire Cheese with his feet having very little to do with his overall motions. His famous tavern chair, ('the throne of human felicity') can still be seen in the upstairs bar as if waiting for him to come back in for a pint of Ale, with friends like, Boswell, Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith and Reynolds. And if still able to walk, they would occasionally drag themselves off to the Mitre, at 39 Fleet Street (no longer standing) the Tavern where Johnson and Boswell decided upon their famous tour of the Hebrides. In the house at Gough Square rented by Johnson for £30 per annum, it was Johnson's happiest London residence, and also his saddest. He lived here from 1749 - 59, the years that saw him and his wife Tetty at there happiest, but also saw her death in 1752 was the saddest event in Johnson's life. 17 Gough Square is best known as the house that Dr Johnson compiled his Dictionary, the task took eight years to complete, and was done in the attic on the third floor, that stretched across the house. He had a pension from George 111 in 1760, and made the house a refuge for the homeless. Johnson's last home was at 8 Bolt Court (now demolished) he spent more time travelling up and down the country, thou London remained dear to him, for has he once said 'Sir when man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford'.

In the very busy Mayfair part of London, at the end of Brooke Street, almost with the junction of fashionable Bond Street, lived two renown musicians one George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and just over two-hundred years later Johnny Allen Hendrix, better known as Jimi, born 27 November 1942, Seattle, Washington, USA, died 18 September 1970, London, England. Jimi moved into number 23 Brooke Street in January 1969 with his girl friend Kathy Etchingham. Whilst in 1723 on a first floor room next door, Handel wrote the Messiah, Handel did not leave this house for twenty-four days while writing it. Of course Jimi would have known of his famous next door neighbour, but I wonder what Handel would have thought about the guy next door. They both were big on the music front, and only history will tell if Hendrix will still be remembered in two-hundred years from now. But in a street more noted for it's property tycoons and fashion accessories, these two geniuses of the music world resided.

Hemmed in between Nat west bank and a modern coffee house in the Strand, is this narrow and small Twinings tea shop. This building goes back to the early 1700's and is near to where Thomas Twining discovered the new Oriental beverages from an East India Company merchant's. In 1706 he bought Tom’s Coffee House when he was 31 years old. Above the doorway to the shop are two Chinese men in Oriental costumes plus a gilded Lion, and below the Royal crest. They were now a popular feature of London life. Men – but never women – of all classes would gather there to drink, to gossip, and to do business. Coffee shops gathered a loyal clientele by specialising in particular products or by encouraging customers with common interests. Poets, for instance, would go to one establishment; army officers, to another.

The world famous art of tipping began here. Customers who wanted a quick service would drop a small coin into a wall-mounted box inscribed with the letters ‘T - I - P’ that stood for
To Insure Promptness.

London Famous # 13: Henry the VIII Chelsea Manor house

Rowland Hill was born in 1795 in Kidderminster, the son of a school master. In 1827 the family moved to Bruce Grove, Tottenham, in North London where they opened a school at Bruce Castle. It was ten years later in 1837 while working as Secretary for the South Australian Commission, that he worked on postal reform.
Realizing how expensive it was to send a letter, as the weight and destination had to be calculated for each letter that he had the idea of a flat rate penny stamp for all British inland mail. By 1839 his plans were accepted. A bill was passed and on the 17 August 1839 Queen Victoria gave her approval. Queen Victoria's portrait was used on the stamp that was to become known as the penny black. In 1854 he became Secretary to the Post Office. Rowland Hill was knighted by Queen Victoria for his service to the Empire in 1860. After a long illness Hill died in 1879 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay India, on December 30, 1865, the son of Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, who was the principal and professor of architectural sculpture at the newly founded Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay. At the age of six, he was left in a foster home in England. He was extremely unhappy at his foster home, but stayed there until 1878, when he entered a boarding school in England. He returned to India in 1882 and joined his parents in Lahore where he worked as a journalist with Civil and Military Gazette. By the last decade of the nineteenth century Rudyard Kipling had become enormously successful as a poet and writer, and was seen as a successor to Charles Dickens. It was around this time that he lived in London’s Villier Street for the next two years. “Meantime, I had found me quarters in Villiers Street , which forty-six years ago was primitive and passionate in its habits and population. My rooms were small, not over-clean or well-kept, but from my desk I could look out of my window through the fanlight of Gatti’s Music Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to its stage. The Charring Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames under the Shot Tower walked up and down with his traffic." Rudyard died in 1936 at the age of 70, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

London Famous # 22: Charles Lamb

Duncan Terrace, Islington, Charles Lambs House.

It was in the year of 1823 that Charles Lamb became a resident in this rural cottage in Islington. He enjoyed the quite country side here by the banks of the Regent's Cannel, where he often enjoyed long walks. He was born in London in 1775 and had studied at Christ’s Hospital where his lifelong friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge had began. At the age of twenty Charles had suffered a period of insanity, his elder sister Mary Ann also had mental problems, and during a fit of madness she killed her mother with a table-knife in 1796, avoiding a murder trial due to mental illness she was given over to her brother Charles, to care for and protect her. Just two years after his move to Islington he retired to Enfield, where he remained until his death on December 27th 1834. He died after a fall during a walk where he cut his face, the wound developed into erysipelas, he was buried at All Saints Church, Edmonton. His sister Mary Ann survived another thirteen years until her death in 1847, she lies buried in the same grave with him.

London Famous # 23: Joe Meek (Telstar Man)

The Joe Meek Studio at 304 Holloway Road. Where he lived and died.