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  • London – Central London – Tower of St Elsyng Spital

    London – Central London – Tower of St Elsyng Spital

    Located on London Wall, the road named after the Roman defensive wall, this is all that remains of St Elsyng Spital church. It was part of the structures built by William Elsyng, a wealthy London merchant, as a hospital in 1330 to help the poorest members of society in medieval London.

    Clicking on this image will make it larger and it’s the site in around 1900 and next to it, what there is today. Reconstruction following the Second World War saw much of this area swept away, but the remains of the church were kept. The landscape has changed substantially though, London Wall now ploughs through this part of London and the area has been opened up to the public. The little cursor on the map on the left is where the remains of the tower stand today.

    Through the central arch would have been the main part of the church, the choir and then the nave.

    The hospital section of the site was the first to be constructed, with the priory church being completed in 1340. This was later turned into a parish church in 1536, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Much of the rest of the site was damaged in 1541 and some of the buildings were turned into a private house, which all became part of Sion College in 1630. There was substantial damage caused by the Great Fire in 1666, but the College remained here until 1886 when they moved to a new site in Victoria.

    The cloisters and cemetery would have been off to the right, under what is now London Wall road. The church was damaged in a First World War air raid and part of it was reconstructed in 1919, but the nave was removed in 1923. This wasn’t an entirely destructive process in terms of the history, as the nave of the building only dated to between 1774 and 1777 when it was rebuilt as the old church was falling down, but they did keep the original tower. Following the demolition, the tower and porch were turned into a small church of its own, but this was in turn damaged during an air raid during the Second World War, with the area being comprehensively redesigned.

    The stone steps into the tower remain, although are gated off. The steps aren’t easily visible due to the assorted litter that has collected up here.

    There’s now a walkway to get a better view of the church and in the centre is where the stone steps come out.

    The remains of the church in their new post-war surroundings in what is a decent public space, with numerous interpretation boards explaining the history of the site. Although the medieval street plan has been lost here, the tower is now more visible than it would have been in previous centuries since all of the buildings around it have been removed. I’m sure that there have been many times in the past when planners thought that it would just be easier to remove this section, but it’s now an important part of the local landscape.

  • London – Central London – Postman’s Park

    London – Central London – Postman’s Park

    This park is a short walk from St. Paul’s Cathedral and was once three separate churchyards before being merged together in 1880 as a space that the public could use to exercise and relax. It’s a relatively sizeable space for such a central area of London, but it had long since struggled to deal with the number of burials that were needed at the site. With London’s central churchyards being not only full by the 1840s but also a dangerous health hazard where diseases spread, the idea was to open up cemeteries around the city (the Magnificent Seven) and turn sites such as this into public spaces.

    This map from the end of the nineteenth century also gives a clue to the reason for the park’s (named as the recreation ground) name, simply that it was commonly used by staff from the General Post Office.

    The park is made up of three different churchyards, those belonging to St Botolph’s Aldersgate church, Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard Foster Lane. Only the former is still standing, with Christ Church now being in ruins due to bomb damage during the Second World War and the third was lost in the Great Fire of 1666. Some of the ruins of the latter church remained until the nineteenth century, but they were destroyed during the construction of the General Post Office in the nineteenth century.

    The former Christ Church churchyard entrance.

    Looking across the park to St Botolph’s Aldersgate church.

    A rather large tree that has been here for some considerable time, with some graves which were once in the churchyard of St Botolph’s Aldersgate, but which were shoved against the wall in the late nineteenth century when the park opened.

    A rather lovely little water feature.

    The St Botolph’s Aldersgate church entrance to the park.

    Also in the park is the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice.

  • London – Central London – Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice

    London – Central London – Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice

    Located in Postman’s Park and on the site of the former graveyard of St Botolph’s Aldersgate church is this memorial to those brave individuals who have died through acts of great self-sacrifice. This is the idea of George Frederic Watts, a painter and sculptor, who wanted the bravery of ordinary men, women and children to be remembered for generations to come. The memorial opened in 1900 and most of the tiles were produced by William De Morgan (later on Royal Doulton produced the tiles), but the project slowly ground to a halt and by 1931 only 53 of the planned 120 tiles were in use. The church has recently started adding more tiles again, bringing the original concept back to life.

    There was a memorial held in the church in December 1905, a year after Watts had died, which was attended by the Bishop of London. A statue of Watts was unveiled and the Bishop referred to the “humility of character and simplicity of life” of the former painter.

    Some of the names on the memorial, with some tragic stories amongst them.

  • Cambridge – Reality Checkpoint

    Cambridge – Reality Checkpoint

    This is from my visit to Cambridge with Nathan a couple of weekends ago and it’s a lamp post. But not just any lamp post, this is Reality Checkpoint which has managed to acquire its own Wikipedia page. And not many lamp posts have managed to gain that sort of accolade, so I felt the need to take a photo of it. It’s located at Parker’s Piece, which has its own heritage as being one of the places which can claim to be the home of the rules of football. But that didn’t happen when the lamp post was hanging around, as this iron centrepiece of the park dates from the last few years of the nineteenth century.

    The reason for the name is unclear, with Wikipedia quoting three different options:

    (i) It may mark the boundary between the central university area of Cambridge (referred to as the “reality bubble”) and the “real world” of townspeople living beyond. One is warned to check one’s notions of reality before passing. For students at Cambridge, who walk out to Mill Road across Parker’s piece for an evening in the “real world”, usually including a visit to one of Mill Road’s selection of pubs, the lamppost marks the end of the “reality holiday” as they walk back to central Cambridge – back into “the bubble”.

    (ii) The name arose because the lamppost forms a useful landmark for people crossing the park at night – perhaps inebriated or in the fog – since it is the only light for over a hundred metres.

    (iii) When drunk, students and the general public are reminded to check they are able to walk like a sober person before passing the police station at the edge of Parker’s Piece, hence a “reality check”.

    I have no idea which it is, but the middle one rings true to me and alcohol or drugs was likely involved in the whole arrangement. The reality (if we can excuse my use of that word here) is that one student wrote it on the post in the 1960s and future generations of students kept up that tradition.

    The lamp post was listed in August 1996 to further cement its reputation in the history of Cambridge and here’s the official text:

    Lamp standard erected in 1894, renovated in 1946, and refurbished in 1999.

    “Cast iron. Square-section plinth and base with inscription panels to each side. South west side with access hatch. Top edges with waterleaf decoration. Base of shaft with four intertwined dolphins. Plain shaft of circular section carries four candelabra lamp holders by means of scrolled wrought-iron stays. Glazed cages of inverted conical section.”

    At the bottom of the lamp post is one of the little artworks from Dinky Doors that are in numerous places around Cambridge.

  • Greater Anglia : Norwich to London Liverpool Street

    Greater Anglia : Norwich to London Liverpool Street

    I’m used to the journey from Norwich to London Liverpool Street, but it’s rare for me to be getting the 07:00 train as that’s normally an expensive commuter service. Today though, it was £12.50 which I thought was reasonable all things considered (namely how expensive some other Greater Anglia services are which are of a much shorter destination).

    Norwich railway station wasn’t packed with people, but there were a few services about to leave, including the service to Liverpool Lime Street, so it wasn’t entirely quiet.

    Here’s the London thunderbolt that would hopefully get me into the city at 08:51. I boarded and had a carriage to myself, which was rather lovely. I then had a woman come up to me and she said that I looked strong (can’t fault her logic there) and could I open her bottle of water for her. This sort of scenario isn’t ideal, as if I can’t open it then I look ridiculous. Fortunately, I gave the impression of huge strength since I opened the bottle immediately. That’s a decent start to a journey.

    What wasn’t a decent start was seeing that the train was marked as delayed, with no announcements made about it. I’m not sure what caused this, as the signs soon lost their delayed status and the train was ready to rock and roll at 07:00 as expected. The announcements made by the staff were all friendly and informative, with a guard checking tickets. This process didn’t exactly take him long and to my slight disappointment (as I like watching drama unfold) everyone seemed to have a valid ticket.

    Here’s the packed carriage. I also managed to sit at the only block of seats on the train that didn’t have working power, so had to move to the seats opposite. This wasn’t the only technical problem on board, as the shutter at the cafe had broken and jammed, so the staff had to walk up and down the train with the trolley. The service though arrived into London on time, so no complaints there. It didn’t get much busier either, just a handful of people on the entire train.

    This is London Liverpool Street at commuter time, but on a morning between Christmas and New Year’s Day, which is perhaps never going to be packed with hordes of travellers. Nonetheless, it was still quieter than I expected.

    And outside London Liverpool Street station, with a calmness in the air.

  • Bunwell – St. Michael and All Angels Church (Grave of Jacob Hinchley)

    Bunwell – St. Michael and All Angels Church (Grave of Jacob Hinchley)

    When my friend Richard and I went to visit some churches last week, we visited St Michael and All Angels in Bunwell. We spent some time looking for the war graves that are located here, and found two of the three that are located at the church.

    Anyway, for absolutely no reason at all that I can explain, I was interested in this grave and it’s the only non war related one that I took a photo of. Given that, I thought I should investigate a little why the grave of Jacob Hinchley who died at the age of 59 on 10 March 1897 seemed so intriguing to me.

    Jacob was born in Bunwell in 1837, the son of John and Rebecca Hinchley. At the 1841 census, he had three older brothers, Charles, Henry and Robert, as well as a younger sister, Rebecca, and they all lived at Burnt House in the village. This quite substantial house still stands, today worth half a million pounds and having six bedrooms. Despite residing at a large property, I can’t imagine that the family were particularly wealthy as John worked as a road labourer and the male children worked as farm labourers and the daughter as a worsted weaver.

    Jacob is listed on the 1871 census as living with his wife Sophia and his father John, who was now aged 73, with their address listed as “by the turnpike in Bunwell”. Jacob had married Sophia Parish at Bunwell church in 1866, but something clearly goes wrong after this and there is a burial record for Sophia Hinchley at the church in 1875. There wasn’t a great delay before Jacob married Ellen Blake in 1876, when he was 39 years old, although his wife was aged just 21 years old. Jacob appears in the local press a few times as a bell ringer at the church and he travelled the county performing his hobby.

    The last census that took place during Jacob’s lifetime was in 1891, when he lived in North Bunwell and was still working as a farm labourer. He lived with his wife Ellen, their daughter Alice and their sons Oliver and Percy, which is the same arrangement as the 1881 census, other than he had a new child. Percy was just two years old, which meant that Jacob became a father at the age of 52, which is relatively old for the period, but a reality given that he married twice and I’m not sure whether he had any children with his first wife.

    Jacob died in 1897, with Ellen living until 1916. I’m not sure that I uncovered much about Jacob, other than he married twice, he liked bell ringing and he lived in Bunwell all of his life. It is though a case of just how important the church likely was to Jacob, as he was baptised there, married there twice, buried there and was a bell ringer. And maybe one day I’ll find out something else about Jacob to add to this little story….

  • Warsaw – National Museum in Warsaw (Bed from Saint John of God Hospital)

    Warsaw – National Museum in Warsaw (Bed from Saint John of God Hospital)

    Fortunately, this isn’t the start of one of my little hotel reviews (I would be annoyed if that was the bed), but from when Richard and I meandered along to the National Museum in Warsaw a few weeks ago. I admit that a photo of a bed might not appear to be riveting blog content, but this oak and birch construction has some charm to it I think. It’s from the Saint John of God Hospital in Warsaw and it dates to between 1757 and 1760. It was donated to the museum in 1931 by the hospital itself, when I assume that it ceased to be needed.

    How on earth this bed survived is a mystery to me, given that nearly everything else in Warsaw was destroyed during the Second World War. And there were likely many more items in the collection that the museum would have focused on saving rather than traipsing a bed around the place during the traumatic war years. I’m going with the answer, as I feel I need a supposition here, that they moved it to the cellars of the museum where it avoided damage and didn’t attract the interest of any Nazi plunderers.

    Back to the hospital itself though, which was first built in 1728 next to the church of Saint John on Bonifraterska Street (which is still named after the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God) in Warsaw. It had eight beds, but it was clear that the church could help more patients, so they constructed a new building in 1760 which would support 34 patients. And that’s why they know when this bed was made, as it was made specifically for the new hospital building, all funded by the wealthy August Aleksander Czartoryski.

    The church today, courtesy of Google Street View.

    Like most places in Warsaw, the hospital and church buildings were badly damaged during the Second World War, not least because they were used by the Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 when they were fighting back against the German occupiers. It was decided that the hospital wouldn’t be reconstructed following the end of the conflict, although the church was rebuilt.

    And I think there’s some magic here, that a bed constructed for patients in 1760 has managed to survive and is now tucked away in a corner of the country’s national museum. Although, and not wanting to be negative about the arrangements, it does look like quite a small bed which might not have entirely suited any tall patients. It is though perhaps one of the very few objects that remain of a hospital that helped so many people given that even the building itself has now gone.

  • Warsaw – Royal Castle (Canaletto Hall)

    Warsaw – Royal Castle (Canaletto Hall)

    I’ve just realised that another thing I never got around to doing was writing about the Royal Castle in Warsaw (on the left in the above photo), which I’ve visited a few times before on free admission days. Very thrifty…. I visited with Richard when we were in the city a few weeks ago and we had a meander around, although the downside of visiting on free admission days is that it’s very busy. But more on the building in another post.

    This post is mostly just photos from one particular room that I’ve managed to misunderstand the importance of before. The paintings are all by Bernardo Bellotto (1721-1780) who was the nephew of Canaletto and he also used his name which confuses things a little. These artworks have had a busy time of it since they were painted between the late 1760s and the early 1780s. They were placed in the castle following their commission by King Stanislaus Augustus, a collection of 22 different street scenes of Warsaw and a canvas showing the King’s election.

    The paintings weren’t here for that long, as Napoleon pinched four of them in 1807, made worse by Tsar Nicholas I stealing the whole lot in 1832. They were recovered and put back in the Royal Castle, but then the Germans pinched the whole collection again in 1939. The Nazis then destroyed the entire castle building in 1945, before it was carefully reconstructed between 1971 and 1984. And then the collection of paintings was put back once again in this recreated room in 1984, an amazing tale of survival. And the paintings have also played a crucial part in the rebuilding of Warsaw, as they were used by the post-war architects to restore the Old Town area back to as it looked in the late eighteenth century.

  • Warsaw – Witold Pilecki

    Warsaw – Witold Pilecki

    I wrote about the Polish hero Witold Pilecki a couple of weeks ago, as he was part of the story of the Municipal Tourist House in Warsaw.

    I was pleased and interested to see that the BBC have published this week an episode about his bravery at volunteering to go to Auschwitz and then managing to escape from it.

  • Norwich – Orford Plaice

    Norwich – Orford Plaice

    This was the final Christmas lunch of 2021 for James and I, at Orford Plaice which is a chip shop we’ve managed to walk by several hundred times and never quite gone in.

    It’s larger inside than I expected, there’s a downstairs eating area and there are a number of tables on the ground floor. The service was friendly and helpful, although we got their last pot of gravy (not something that we really ever buy, although it’s a personal favourite of mine with chips).

    Having chips on a proper plate is a bit decadent for us, or “it’s like being in a Wimpy” as James put it. The food was brought over after a few minutes, at which point they remembered they hadn’t prepared the gravy, but that didn’t take much longer. Our meal was chips alongside battered pigs in blankets. The chips were fine, complemented nicely by the gravy, although I thought that the pigs in blankets were a little generic and not really very interesting. Having written that though, I did like the battering of them, primarily as I like nearly anything that has been battered, it just adds taste and texture. The portion size was also reasonable, with everything at the appropriate hot temperature, although the plate itself was cold.

    Price-wise, this is somewhere between Grosvenor and Lucy’s, with the surroundings being reasonably comfortable. There’s meant to be a masks-on inside policy, but it was ignored by some and not questioned, but I’m not going to burden myself with getting concerned about that. I think I still prefer Lucy’s, their butchers sausages are a nice little treat. This venue has won some awards, which I’m slightly surprised about, but we’ve decided to revisit in the new year to test some more of their menu out. No point coming to any snap verdicts about the food quality….