It was “the handsomest pleasure room in the district” noted the Daily News in 1864. Wilton’s Music Hall, nestled down an unassuming alley way behind Cable Street in London’s East End, was in Victorian times a popular variety venue enjoyed by Whitechapel locals and international sailors visiting the […]
It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon and Finsbury Park is alive with the infectious sound of drumming. More than 25 people are sitting in a circle holding their instruments and jamming along to the lively rhythms. The session in front of Finsbury Park Art Club, on the Seven Sisters […]
Shoreditch is known today for its trendy bars, arty coffee shops and retro clothing stores, but it was once more famous for being the beating heart of England’s furniture trade. Wholesale warehouses lined Curtain Road, from Old Street to Great Eastern Street, while workshops and factories were sandwiched […]
For centuries London’s cattle market was Smithfield on the eastern fringes of the City. Drovers brought animals down what is today the A1, which incorporates Holloway Road and Upper Street in Islington, on long journeys from Scotland and the north of England. The animals would then often be […]
Market day in Brixton is a noisy affair. The minute you step out of the Tube station and onto the main shopping stretch you are struck by a sea of music and chanting. Gospel choirs, steel drum bands and gig promoters all compete for the attention of passers-by. […]
London in the first half of the 18th century was a city addicted to gin. Daniel Defoe noted in 1726 that “the Distillers have found out a way to hit the palate of the Poor, by their new fashion’d compound Waters called Geneva….” Ordinary people, added the writer […]
St John’s Gate, a red-brick structure faced with ragstone near the centre of Clerkenwell, north London, has had a number of interesting uses over the past 500 years. In the early 18th century it housed a coffee shop, run the father of William Hogarth, the artist. Latin was […]
I’m drinking a well-brewed latte in a new plush London hotel. Not that much of a usual event given the number of such luxurious establishments in our capital you might say; from the Dorchester in Mayfair to the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park they are stayed in and […]
Like others in the 19th century, Thomas Barnardo planned to train as a doctor and use his new skills to help the poor on the other side of the world. As a medical missionary, he set his sights on ministering to the needy in China. The fact that […]
26 Chittys Lane looks like many other houses built on British council estates to provide “homes for heroes” following the First World War. But the presence of a Blue Plaque on the front of this Becontree property suggests there is a specific story to tell. It wasn’t however […]
Past In The Present 