Gobbets of the week #13

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

1. This amateur London Tube Map is better than the real thing.   

   

2. Spitalfields then and now: @thegentleauthor updates Dan Cruikshank’s 1970s snapshots (two separate links!) 

3. Regency London gambling: ‘the two nerdy history girls’ blog visits Crockford’s Club in St James’s. 

4. Rioters & resurrectionists: the turbulent history of Spa Fields. 

5. For our 13th ‘Gobbets of the week’, why is London scared of the number 13?

    

6. The world’s oldest hat shop: the archives of J Lock & Co (via the excellent @ianvisits)

    

7. A map showing the huge acreage of London’s former docks. 

8. Love, health and the weather: what medieval Londoners worried about.

9. More Spitalfields Life: the House Mill of 1776 at Bromley by Bow. 

10. Book review: Summer of Blood: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 by Dan Jones in History Today. 

  

  

Gobbets of the week #12! 

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

1. Sir John Soane’s private apartments: obsessive, eccentric brilliance. 

  
2. 18 beautiful and weird maps that will change the way you look at London. 

3. With all the noise of the recent Hatton Garden heist, here’s a lovely piece by Rachel Lichtenstein on one of London’s most fascinating streets. 

  
4. The Soho shoe shop that supplied Queen Victoria’s wedding slippers. 

5. Murals and street art from 1980s London. 

6. Central London’s massive unbuilt railway terminus. 

7. The little mortuary at St George-in-the-East and its reincarnation as a museum. 

  
8. Should the Euston Arch be rebuilt? 

  
9. Francis Barber: reluctant member of Dr Johnson’s mad ménage. 

10. Witanhurst: the biggest private mansion in London – but who owns it? 

Gobbets of the week #11

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Here are links to the top 10 gobbets of London history that caught our eye this week:

1. Soho stories: six decades of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. 

  
2. London’s Dreary Dockland: Dame Clara Butt sings at the Savoy, 1923.

3. Smog in the City, 1952.

4. Snuff said: a visit to Fribourg & Pontet, tobacconists of Pall Mall. 

5. Remarkable artworks from Roman London.

6. John Wilkes and the St George’s Fields Massacre of 1768. 

  
7. The Streets under the Barbican. 

8. A Wapping boatman, 1938, 

9. 16 fabulous colour photos of a weekend in London, 1959. 

10. Walking London on VE Day, 1945 & 2015.