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The Return Of The Gallant
The Gallant is returning to London on 11th July when cargo can be collected from the ship at St Katherine Docks. Click here to place a last minute order The Gallant arrives in Greenwich Photographer...
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The Pubs Of Old London
The Vine Tavern, Mile End I cannot deny I enjoy a drink, especially if there is an old pub with its door wide open to the street inviting custom, like this one in Mile End. In such circumstances, it...
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The Microcosm Of London
Billingsgate Market (click on this plate or any of the others to enlarge and examine the details) In 1897, Charles Gosse, Archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute, was lucky enough to buy a handsome...
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Inside The Model Of St Paul’s
Simon Carter, Keeper of Collections at St Paul’s In a hidden chamber within the roof of St Paul’s sits Christopher Wren’s 1:25 model of the cathedral, looking for all the world like the largest jelly...
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Tessa Hunkin In Stoke Newington
In a quiet terraced street in Stoke Newington a new mosaic has appeared, conjured into existence by Tessa Hunkin & Hackney Mosaic Project – as Tessa explained to me. “The householder had seen our...
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Cherishing The Fabric Of Arnold Circus
Original York stone paving and blue granite setts in Boundary St Use of good quality materials was intrinsic to the Arts & Crafts movement and this principle is evident on the Boundary Estate,...
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At Tim Hunkin’s Workshop
Tim Hunkin’s NOVELTY AUTOMATION is reopening on Saturdays 11-6pm Tim Hunkin at work on his Small Hadron Collider Engineer & Cartoonist Tim Hunkin’s workshop sits in a remote spot beside the estuary...
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At Waltham Abbey
One day last spring – just before the lockdown – I walked along the River Lea as far as Tottenham. Yesterday I returned and continued my journey by bicycle as far as Waltham Abbey. Even from the...
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Terry Scales, Painter
Terry Scales Terry Scales has lived for more than fifty years in a quiet back street in a forgotten corner of Greenwich where the tourists do not stray. To find him, I wandered through narrow...
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The Roman Ruin At The Hairdresser
Nicholson & Griffin, Hairdresser & Barber The reasons why people go the hairdresser are various and complex – but Jane Sidell, Inspector of Ancient Monuments, and I visited a salon in the City...
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Thomas Onwhyn’s Pictures Of London
Born in Clerkenwell in 1813, as the eldest son of a bookseller, Thomas Onwhyn created a series of cheap mass-produced satirical prints illustrating the comedy of everyday life for publishers Rock...
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Cockney Beanos
A beano from Stepney in the twenties (courtesy Irene Sheath) We have reached that time of year when a certain clamminess prevails in the city and East Enders turn restless, yearning for a trip to the...
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Tex Adjetunmobi, Photographer
Bandele Ajetunmobi – widely known as Tex – took photographs in the East End for almost half a century, starting in the late forties. He recorded a tender vision of interracial cameraderie, notably as...
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Watermen’s Stairs In Wapping
Wapping Old Stairs I need to keep reminding myself of the river. Rarely a week goes by without some purpose to go down there but, if no such reason occurs, I often take a walk simply to pay my...
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At Emery Walker’s House
Kelmscott Press & Doves Press editions at Emery Walker’s House Typographer and Printer, Emery Walker and Designer and Poet, William Morris both lived in houses on the Thames in Hammersmith, but...
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In Old Rotherhithe
St Mary Rotherhithe Free School founded 1613 To be candid, there is not a lot left of old Rotherhithe – yet what remains is still powerfully evocative of the centuries of thriving maritime industry...
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The Re-Opening Of Crescent Trading
‘I want to sell my stock of textiles’ If you were eighty-nine years old and your business partner of thirty years died of Coronavirus, could you find the moral courage to go on? This is the brave step...
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The Spitalfields Bowl
One of these streets’ most-esteemed long-term residents summoned me to view an artefact that few have seen, the fabled Spitalfields Bowl. Engraved by Nicholas Anderson, a pupil of Laurence Whistler,...
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The Bookshops Of Old London
At Marks & Co, 84 Charing Cross Rd How much I wish I could go back to the bookshops of old London. When I saw these evocative photographs of London’s secondhand bookshops taken in 1971 by Richard...
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Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
The work of Geoffrey Fletcher (1923–2004) is an inspiration to me, and today I am publishing his drawings of London’s street people in the nineteen sixties from Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders...
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