Blog Search Results

No Dove Lost

Emery Walker house   During the First World War, if you’d been walking across Hammersmith Bridge at night you might have spotted a shifty looking gentleman surreptitiously throwing bits of metal off the bridge and into the River Thames. This mysterious dumper was a disgruntled bookbinder by the name of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, who died 100 years ago this year. As for the metal, they were his collection of Doves Type, a beautifully designed font created with his partner Emery Walker.   In the last years of the 19th century Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922) decided to abandon his life as a barrister and become a bookbinder.  With his wif...

Hidden Coade in the City

How many times have you crossed Westminster Bridge and gazed up at the large Lion Brewery feline on the southern end of the bridge? Or admired the two Chinese figures above the doorway to Twining’s in the Strand? Both sculptures were the product of a remarkable businesswoman by the name of Eleanor Coade. She was born in 1733 in Devon, the daughter of an unsuccessful wool merchant. In her thirties she headed for London and began to set up her own drapery business. She added the title ‘Mrs’ as a courtesy as it was highly unusual at the time for an unmarried woman to run their own company. Before long Mrs Coade had gone into partnership with a Da...

The Chiswick V2

  Chiswick may be more famous for its eponymous Palladian house, Arts and Crafts Bedford Park and Fuller's Brewery but it’s also the site of the first recorded V2 rocket attack during the Second World War. On the evening of 8 September 1944, a rocket exploded in the middle of Staveley Road, Chiswick, outside number 5. Staveley Road lies just south of Chiswick house, the elegant mansion built in the 1720s for the 2nd Earl of Burlington by William Kent, and comprises a series of smart family houses constructed in the 1920s and 1930s. The explosion created a crater 9m in diameter and 2.5m deep. Three people were killed, including a 3 year-old...

River Rubbish

When the Romans arrived in Britain in AD43 they looked for a place to found a settlement along the Thames. A patch of high ground to the north, between two rivers, was the ideal spot - and so the city of Londinium was founded. Those rivers were the Fleet and Walbrook, two sources of drinking water. Today you can still follow the courses of those lost rivers: the Fleet flows into the Thames at Blackfriars, while the Walbrook begins around Finsbury Circus and ends up going down Dowgate, by Cannon Street.The Walbrook may originally have acted as a sort of boundary. Whatever its purpose was, this waterlogged valley has preserved some remarkable finds un...

Going Dutch in the City

     Though the City today seems dominated by high rise developments and soaring skyscrapers, you can still find some pockets of earlier office buildings. One such gem is Holland house, tucked away in Bury Street, behind the iconic Gherkin. This impressive Art Nouveau structure was designed for the Dutch shipping magnate Kroller-Mullers by a fellow countryman Hendrik Petrus Berlage. It dates from 1914-1916 is quite unlike any other building within the Square Mile. Berlage was inspired by a visit to the United States; indeed Holland house wouldn’t seem out of place in Chicago or New York. It has a narrow, 4-storey frontage that faces south ea...

Ancient and Modern

In southeast London lie the remains of what was once a favourite palace of a young King Henry VIII, his father and grandfather. Eltham Palace dates back to the 1300s, when it was given to Edward II. In the 1470s Edward IV had a grand hall built - it was where he spent his last Christmas in 1482 - but by the 1600s this moated manor had gone out of fashion. It took a member of the textile magnates, the Courtaulds, to transform it into a place of luxury, with all the latest designs and gadgetry. For the last 20 years English Heritage have looked after it, and on a sunny spring day it is a glorious site. Eltham Palace is very much a palace of two halve...