Monthly Archives: November 2015

Gobbets of the week #30

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Here are links to the top 10 gobbets of London history we liked this week:

1. Cries of London! The Gentle Author announces the launch of the latest Spitalfields Life book with a programme of events to celebrate centuries of London’s street trading culture. 

  
2. Punk London – the 40th anniversary of punk to be marked with a year-long celebration in London. 

3. What inspired the Red Telephone Box? 

  
4. Her Majesty’s Rowlandsons. 

5. Unbuilt London: IanVisits explores A Giant Pyramid for Hyde Park. 

6. From Paper to Copper: fascinating clip explaining how a copper etching was made.

7. Vanished London: The Ticket Porter in Arthur Street. 

8. The secret history of the London Plane Tree. 

  
9. All change at Maggs Brothers: one of London’s best antiquarian booksellers moves house. 

10. Nightwalking: a nocturnal history of London.

Further Reading

If you like our weekly gobbets, you may enjoy the following posts where we explore each of the City of London’s wards:

Poppies and Pepys and Ghastly Grim (Tower Ward)

Fishwives and Firestarters (Billingsgate Ward)

Magnus, the Monument and Mice eating Cheese (Bridge Ward).

Gobbets of the week #29

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Here are links to the 10 gobbets of London history we liked best this week:

1. #PepysShow! Previews of the eagerly awaited exhibition, Samuel Pepys – Plague, Fire, Revolution – at the National Maritime Museum – by J D Davies (author of Pepys’s Navy), Londonist and the Guardian.

  

2. Pepys once bought a leg of beef for sixpence at Leadenhall Market, on the site of the Roman Forum and visited by the Memoirs of a Metro Girl blog. On a similar subject, a lovely piece from Spitalfields Life featuring Liam O’Farrell’s sketches of London Markets. 

3. Hi-res images of historical London maps! 

4. From a blog I haven’t featured before: Sequins and Cherry Blossom visits Riceyman Steps: a Clerkenwell tour in the footsteps of Arnold Bennett. 

5. Inside the House of Cyn: remembering London’s most famous brothel-keeper. 

  

6. ‘Simply wonderfully produced. Lavish …great pleasure between its covers… a treasure. Treat yourself.’ Praise indeed – London Historians reviews Panorama of the Thames: a riverside view of Georgian London. 

7. Sadly a wet day, and overshadowed by the awful events in Paris the night before: the Lord Mayor’s Show was 800 on Saturday. In case you missed it, here’s Rob Lordan’s excellent guide in Time Out. 

  
8. More from Spitalfields Life: ‘a mighty piece of kitsch’: Hogarth at Bart’s Hospital 

9. The Footprints of London festival explores London’s deep literary heritage. Mark Rowlands, the festival’s Chairman, was interviewed on the Robert Elms show. 

10. The Blitz: Peter Watts writes of missing buildings and false memories. 

Gobbets of the week #28

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Here are links to the top 10 gobbets of London history we liked this week:

1. The London that might have been: architectural wonders (and monstrosities) that never got past the drawing board. 

2. Slashing throats for 170 years: the ‘real’ Sweeney Todd.

  

3. As we approach the 800th Lord Mayor’s show, a video of the 1967 event...

4. …another showing just how they get the Lord Mayor’s coach out of the Museum of London…

  
5. …and a song about the Lord Mayor’s coachman!

6. Two London artists from London Historians:  Celebrating Hogarth and Gillray’s Ghost. 

  
7. The grizzly story of Bunhill Fields. 

8. From Spitalfields Life, John Thomas Smith’s rural cottages.

9. More ‘from the City to the Sea’: part IV – the Thames Estuary; part V – the Thames at night. 

10. …and finally…the Return of London’s Fog?