Posts Tagged ‘London’
“Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs”*…
The digging of Crossrail, London’s new twenty-three-billion-dollar east-west underground commuter line, has been one long party for archeologists. Since construction began, in 2009, imposing encampments, clad in blue fencing and busy with trucks, have appeared across the city, providing access points for the cranes and the huge boring machines that are needed to carve out tunnels, vents, and stations along the line’s seventy-three miles. Almost always, there have also been archeologists on the scene, clipboards and trowels in hand, to see what can be unearthed from the briefly exposed soil. So far, there have been excavations at thirty of Crossrail’s forty building sites, yielding up a section of a medieval barge, in Canning Town; a Bronze Age wooden walkway, in Plumstead; and the remains of a Mesolithic campfire, in North Woolwich.
On a recent, gray spring afternoon, I went to see the latest, and largest, Crossrail dig, across the road from Liverpool Street station, in the middle of the financial district, where a new ticket hall will soon occupy the space previously filled by London’s first municipal graveyard. The New Churchyard, an acre in size, was first used in 1569, not long after an outbreak of bubonic plague, as an alternative to the overcrowded parish plots inside the old city walls. It was not attached to any church, which made it a natural resting place for radicals, nonconformists, migrants, mad people, and drifters—Londoners, in other words. It closed some time in the seventeen-twenties, full many times over. Ten thousand people were buried there; in 1984, a partial excavation found graves dug through graves, eight skeletons per cubic meter…
More urban archaeology at “Bedlam’s Big Dig.”
* William Shakespeare, Richard II
###
As we memento mori, we might recall that it was on this date in 1606 that King James I, having inherited the English and Irish thrones to go with the Scottish monarchy that (as James IV) he already had, decreed the design of a new flag for his domains, according to which the flag of England (a red cross on a white background, known as St George’s Cross), and the flag of Scotland (a white saltire on a blue background, known as the Saltire or St Andrew’s Cross), would be joined together, forming the flag of England and Scotland for maritime purposes. King James also began to refer to a “Kingdom of Great Britaine”, although the union remained a personal one. The flag– known as the Union Flag or Union Jack– was adopted as the national flag in 1707, after the completion of the Treaty of Union and the passage of the Acts of Union.
“Is a Hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool Opotamus?”*…
Dutch artist Florentjin Hofman, known for his massive sculptures (including his giant rubber duck), has floated a giant hippo, “HippopoThames,” down London’s iconic river.
Follow it’s progress past landmarks old and new here. And see more of Hofman’s work here.
* Mitch Hedberg
###
As we watch ourselves at the watering hole, we might recall that it was on this date in 1899 that George Franklin Grant was awarded a patent for the first modern wooden golf tee. Grant was a dentist, one of trio who patented golf tees: in 1922, dentist William Lowell designed a red-painted, cone-shaped, wooden peg with a small concave platform that was patented and became the worlds first commercially produced golf tee called the “reddy tee.” Recently dentist, Arnold DiLaura, patented the Sof-Tee, a tee that sits on top of the ground instead of in it.
Grant was a graduate of Harvard dental school, where he later taught– Harvard University’s first African-American faculty member. He was renowned internationally within his profession for his invention of the oblate palate, a prosthetic device he designed for treatment of the cleft palate.
“By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show”*…
Cowboy and girlfriend, 1960
Colin O’Brien grew up Colin grew up fifty yards from Hatton Garden in Victoria Dwellings, a tenement at the junction of Faringdon Rd and Clerkenwell Rd – the center of his childhood universe in Clerkenwell, London. In 1948, at the age of 8, he began taking pictures of his world– first with a Brownie box camera, then a Leica.
Mrs Leinweber divides the Shepherd’s Pie among her family, Victoria Dwellings, 1959
Since then he has captured over half a million images of a London changing, a London now disappeared.
Rio Cinema, Skinner St, Clerkenwell, 1954
Girl in a party dress in the Clerkwenwell Rd, nineteen fifties
Woman in summer dress, Chatsworth Rd in the eighties
Accident at the junction of Clerkwell Rd and Faringdon Rd, 1957
O’Brien’s work is currently on display at the Hackney Museum. But it is permanently available on his website and at Spitalfield’s Life, where he’s a regular contributor– and more lately, subject (e.g., here and here).
[TotH to Richard Rodriguez for the pointer to Spitalfield’s Life]
* Samuel Johnson
###
As we speculate on the special relationship, we might recall that it was on this date in 1945 that the Vigilantes (AKA, the Secret Committee of Ex-Servicemen) broke into a vacant house in Roundhill Crescent, Brighton, to house a homeless sailor’s wife and her two children– the beginning of a “squatters” movement that grew to an estimated 45,000 over the next few years. Even before the Second World War began there had been an acute housing crisis in Britain. During the war, six years of house building were lost, over 100,000 houses were destroyed by bombing, and many hundreds of thousands more were evacuated because of structural damage. So, when the war ended a massive number of families were left homeless. The Vigilantes first targeted unoccupied properties in coastal resorts, then in other cities, and finally abandoned military facilities. While the official reaction was hardly positive, the squatters were ultimately very successful: the Ministry of Works (a government department formed in wartime to take charge of property for military use) handed over 850 former military camps to those occupying them and many of the London squatters were given alternative housing.
“These people are referred to by the ungraceful term ‘squatters’, and I wish the press would not use this word about respectable citizens whose only desire is to have a home.”
– Clementine Churchill, wife of the ex-Prime Minister, August. 1946
Then and now…
Filmmaker Simon Smith has come up with a clever way to show how much (or little) London has changed over the last century.
In the 1920s, Claude Friese-Greene filmed his travels around Great Britain for a project called The Open Road. He used a film coloring process based on the one his father developed, exposing black and white film through color filters. Claude’s project still captivates viewers today; the British Film Institute eventually restored and re-released it for a 21st century audience.
The London portion of The Open Road inspired Smith to make his own, matching version. In his six-month project, titled London In 1927 and 2013, Smith re-shot each of the scenes Friese-Greene documented 86 years prior. He then lined it up with the 1927 footage for comparison…
email readers click here for Smith’s film
Read more at “London, Then and Now (1927 to 2013)”; and see Friese-Greene’s The Open Road here.
###
As we redouble our efforts to master The Knowledge, we might recall that it was on this date in 1915 that Great Yarmouth became the first British town attacked from the air in WWI, when two German zeppelins (which had intended to attack Hull, but gone astray) dropped bombs on the Norfolk port. Zeppelin attacks continued and soon reached London… “shaping” the urban landscape that Friese-Greene captured just over a decade later.
The aftermath of a zeppelin bombing in London. 1915
The noblest of pursuits…
Emily is a self-proclaimed Luddite:
I use the term because that’s what most people, my own parents included, call me. Fun Fact: the term “Luddite”, although it has now come to mean one who fears and resents progress, originally referred to a movement that developed during the first Industrial Revolution in the factory towns of Northern England where workers feared that new technology would threaten their livelihoods. They weren’t anti-progress; they were just pro-humans.
She has turned her passion for books and bookshops— “the joy of book-hunting, of going in with no idea what you want and finding that hidden gem or that old favourite recalled from a foggy memory”– into a calling: The Matilda Project. Emily wanders London, finding and reporting on the independent book stores that graces its streets. From The Southbank Book Market to Stoke Newington Bookshop, she delivers “by a book lover, for book lovers” reviews and rankings.
It’s altogether enchanting– and inspiring. For while Emily’s is a disciplined London-specific focus, her example could– and surely should– be replicated worldwide.
###
As we delight in the feel of yellowed pages between our fingers, we might send modern(ist) birthday greetings to Nancy Woodbridge Beach (or, as she was better known later in life, Sylvia Beach); she was born on this date in 1887. An American expat in Paris to do bibliographic research, Beach met and fell in love with Adrienne Monnier, one of the first women in France to own her own bookstore. Inspired by her partner, Beach open a small English-language bookshop at 8 rue Dupuytren (in the 6th); she called it Shakespeare and Company.
The shop quickly became a gathering place for both French and American writers, and succeeded sufficiently that Beach had to move to larger premises across the street. She made occasional forays into publishing (e.g., when James Joyce couldn’t find an English-language publisher for Ulysses, Shakespeare and Company put it out). Beach’ memoir, Shakespeare and Company, recounts her experiences with Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder, André Gide, George Antheil, Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Benet, Aleister Crowley, Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many, many other icons of Left Bank intellectual and artistic life in the years between the two world wars.
Shakespeare and Company was closed during the German Occupation of Paris; Beach was interned for 6 months, but hid her books in a vacant apartment above the store. When the war ended, Hemingway symbolically “liberated” the store; but it never re-opened. The Shakespeare and Company that operates today (as featured, e.g., in Richard Linklater’s and Woody Allen’s films) is a different operation, in a different location, renamed in 1964 “in honor” of Beach and her creation.
Beach, center, with James Joyce and Adrienne Monnier in the store; 1920
Happy Einstein’s Birthday!
(Be sure to celebrate with a slice of pie: it’s 3.14– Pi Day)
You must be logged in to post a comment.