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  • London – Croydon (Borough of) – Church of St. Peter

    London – Croydon (Borough of) – Church of St. Peter

    This church is in South Croydon, but it’s visible from Croydon itself and I felt that it deserved further exploration. It’s well proportioned and has avoided the generic and bland designs that some Victorian churches have suffered from. The designer was the brilliant George Gilbert Scott and it was built between 1849 and 1851.

    The four-stage tower, not entirely dissimilar in style to some medieval churches in Norfolk, although that’s a substantial window.

    The graveyard is in pretty decent shape with no litter or badly maintained areas, although it’s evidently now nearly full.

    This is from the archives of the Church of the England and they think that this document might have been created by George Gilbert Scott, it shows the free and let areas of seating in the church.

    And this is George Gilbert Scott’s work, the design of the church.

  • London – Croydon (Borough of) – Former Swan & Sugar Loaf

    London – Croydon (Borough of) – Former Swan & Sugar Loaf

    This is a rather beautiful building in South Croydon, built as a pub and hotel in 1896. It was built on the site of another pub and was clearly the pride of Page & Overton, the local brewery. It stopped being used as a pub in 2010 and it was soon taken over by squatters, with concerns that it might be attacked during the Croydon Riots of 2011. Fortunately, the building survived and there were plans to turn it into a pub or restaurant after a restoration. Unfortunately, the restoration was ultimately carried out by Tesco, so the property is now used as a supermarket. Lovely as it is that the building survives, the historic interior has been lost and I can’t truthfully say that Tesco has been entirely sympathetic to the former pub.

  • London – Croydon (Borough of) – Trams

    London – Croydon (Borough of) – Trams

    I’ve never before used the tram service to Croydon, so this was a new experience. The network has 39 stops along 17 miles of track, connecting into the London Underground network at Wimbledon, where I caught the tram from. There are two main different trams on the network, the 23 trams of the older Bombardier CR4000 style and the 12 newer Croydon Stadler Variobahn variety. The above is the latter, and thus the newer model.

    The tram service wasn’t overly busy at Wimbledon, although it got busier towards Croydon. It was generally easy to use, although I forgot that it wasn’t the DLR and I tapped in when arriving in Croydon, which isn’t actually necessary. There is also a procedure in Wimbledon to tap in so that the system knows that the passenger used a tram and not a train.

    The service was comfortable and the journey was smooth, it’s a shame that more cities around the country can’t afford tram networks such as this. Norwich would perhaps be very well suited to such a network, although I can’t imagine how the initial funding would ever be reached. Although Norwich did have a tram system in the past, it’s very much now for larger cities only, in the UK at least.

    A tragedy took place on 9 November 2016, which became news across the world, when a driver managed to overturn a tram, killing seven people. It’s hard to imagine just how a driver could do this, but it was confirmed that it was his error that caused the incident, in what was the first tram crash in the UK since 1959 which led the death of a tram passenger. An inquest into the derailment was meant to start in October 2020, but it has now been delayed until next year.

  • Random Post – Words Usage of Pub and Inn

    Random Post – Words Usage of Pub and Inn

    As an another irrelevant aside, I just noticed this on Google Ngram, which is how frequently the words ‘pub’ and ‘inn’ have been used in literature over the last two centuries.

    It’s no surprise to me that the word ‘inn’ used to be used much more frequently when the word ‘pub’, but I’m puzzled how it is now used more frequently in writing once again.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 245

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 245

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….

    Peck

    This is defined by Grose as meaning “Victuals. Peck and booze; victuals and drink”, with victuals being a now mostly archaic word for food, so, “food and drink”. The word is derived from the verk ‘pekken’, or to pick, most commonly used now when referring to birds. The word ‘peckish’, which Grose defines separately as meaning ‘hungry’ could have evolved in one of two ways. It could mean feeling hungry and wanting to pick at food (from the ‘pekken’ verb), or it could have derived more directly from the word meaning food.

    And the usage of ‘peck’ and ‘peckish’ over time…

  • London – Croydon (Borough of) – Pigeons

    London – Croydon (Borough of) – Pigeons

    I don’t think I’ve seen such frenzied pigeon behaviour since the days of when people were encouraged to feed them in London’s Trafalgar Square. Numerous Croydon locals decided to watch the pigeons enjoy their breakfast of bits of bread….

    Anyway, that’s enough nature photography.

  • London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – Holland Park (Walking Man)

    London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – Holland Park (Walking Man)

    This must be quite a scary thing to stumble across in the dark, although, I suspect Holland Park isn’t open at night which does avoid that dilemma….. It’s an artwork by Sean Henry and a text about the artist’s sculptures in this series (and he’s created numerous different versions within the theme) notes:

    “His figurative sculptures are self–contained, often pensive, and preoccupied by their inner imaginings and on occasion verge on melancholic representations of our human existence.”

    There was meant to be an exhibition by Henry on this month in London, although the current crisis means it has been cancelled or postponed. There’s an interesting on-line version though at https://experience.osbornesamuel.com/waiting-for-the-sun/virtual-tour/.

    With regards to the above artwork in Holland Park, Henry notes:

    “The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea have joined forces with the Friends of Holland Park this month to purchase Sean Henry’s final cast of ‘Walking Man’ 1998 for permanent installation in the beautiful grounds of Holland Park, West London. A privately owned version of the sculpture had been on loan to the Royal Borough from 2000 until recently, and the new sculpture will stand in the same location, close to the famous Kyoto Gardens.”

    I’m not sure I entirely understand it, but I like the concept and where the artist can go with it. A nice choice by the council.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 244

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 244

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….

    Peccavi

    This word is defined by Grose as “to cry peccavi, to acknowledge one’s self in an error, to own a fault: from the Latin Peccavi, I have sinned”.

    The word was commonly used in the past, but has now become archaic, despite it being a word which is actually quite useful in clearly describing a behaviour. As Grose says, the origins are from the Latin word peccāvī, but perhaps the phrase “mea culpa” was instead just more appealing…. As might be expected from the Latin roots, the derivative word remains in usage in Italy.

  • London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – Holland Park Mews

    London – Kensington and Chelsea (Borough of) – Holland Park Mews

    This rather lovely looking street is located next to Holland Park itself and seems to be a quiet environment. It has 67 different properties on it and it was constructed between 1860 and 1879 as stables for the properties on either side.

    Here’s how it looked in the late nineteenth century, with the stables being on the ground floor (obviously, it would be fiddly if they weren’t) and servants from the villas would live above. These have since been converted to residential properties, now with garages below. The conversions have taken place in a rather piecemeal way, as the listed building record suggests:

    “Some houses unsuitably altered with ground floor remodelled or stairs removed and some without balustrades.”

    I had a look at some of the property prices of the houses down here, they’re now priced at around £2 million to £4 million each. That’s some change from when they were once stables….

  • London – Newham (Borough of) – ExCel Centre Holiday Inn Express

    London – Newham (Borough of) – ExCel Centre Holiday Inn Express

    Conveniently located near to the Royal Albert DLR station, I picked this hotel as there was an offer on points which I thought I’d take advantage of. The check-in was efficient and the Government’s slightly onerous rules were explained by a helpful member of staff. Normally there is an offer of a welcome drink or bonus points, but they were just giving extra points which seemed reasonable enough given the current Tier 2 situation.

    The room, all clean and well presented. However, I wasn’t that keen on the whole arrangement as this is one of those hermetically sealed hotels with no opening windows. That was coupled with a decision made by the hotel to set the temperature to that similar to that of a furnace in full operation. Making that worse was that the air conditioning was very basic, so customers can’t set it (there was a panel on the wall, more as a placebo effect as the hotel is all heated or cooled to the same temperature). It’s just a decision to do things on the cheap by IHG and it means I won’t stay here again. As an aside, I’d heard about a travel writer saying the best thing to do was to soak a towel in cold water and put under your feet or head, and that worked rather well. But it’s hardly ideal.

    I risked going down to breakfast at the “very busy, queues are highly likely” time. Although it makes me wonder why the hotel hasn’t changed the capacity to deal with that, but that’s a different matter for when the hospitality industry recovers.

    Here’s the very busy breakfast area.

    And the queues.

    There was a full English breakfast option available, but I opted for a bacon butty which was of a perfectly good quality. The drinks options were coffee, tea, pre-packaged juices and the like, but given the challenging times at the moment, this was all sufficient. Incidentally, the staff members were making a huge effort to explain the breakfast arrangements, take orders and engage with customers.

    So, if the hotel hadn’t skimped on its air conditioning arrangements then I might come here again as the staffing was on point and everything seemed clean and professionally run. For those who don’t mind warmer rooms, it’s probably all quite unproblematic as a hotel though.