A few more pockets of old Westminster, snapped on a lunchtime walk yesterday. And by Westminster, I really mean Thorney Island, or the area within half a mile’s radius of Westminster Abbey, rather than the modern borough. For some other blog posts on pre-1834 Westminster, you can also see here and here. Street scene in Old Queen Street, by the Two Chairmen pub.As well […]
Historic Westminster
The Man Who Saved Westminster Hall
Today is the 150th anniversary of the death of Superintendant James Braidwood. He was the man who saved Westminster Hall in the great fire of 1834 through the innovative firefighting techniques he had first developed when fire chief in Edinburgh. His death was both tragic and horribly ironic. He died at the enormous Tooley Street […]
Talking Titles
A yummy lunch today with Lady Antonia Fraser at the Whistler Restaurant at Tate Britain. Tate sits on the site of the Millbank Penitentiary where Joshua Cross (one of the labourers who started the fire) did time. And of course it houses the Turner watercolours of the 1834 fire, along with the rest of the Turner bequest, so […]
The Parish of St John’s Smith Square
More strolling round Westminster of a lunchtime, on the way back from Pret (mine’s a Hoisin Duck wrap, a mango pot and diet coke, since you’re asking). I like finding pockets of the borough which are pretty much as they would have been in 1834 (except for the cars) … First up, Lord North […]
Kerb Crawling for History
Despite some strange looks, I’ve been studying the pavement outside the east end of Westminster Abbey recently. We know that in 1834 there was a street plug (ie access to underground fire mains) in “Speaker’s Corner”, which was the name for the outside area between the apse of Henry VII’s chapel and the Chapter House (as well […]
Slumming it in Westminster
At lunchtime today, I walked down Old Pye Street, once one of the worst ‘rookeries’ in London. Both Joshua Cross and Patrick Furlong, the labourers who started the 1834 fire, lived nearby. Today the street is lined with Peabody Trust mansion blocks, built there in the late 19th century, when the “The Devil’s Acre”, as it was called, […]
