When I first knew the space which is now Culpeper Community Garden in London, it was an unloved bit of waste land, created thanks to the Luftwaffe dropping their left-over bombs on it after raids bombing the Kings’ Cross area. Rosebay willow herb grew there among the remains of bomb craters and bits of brick.
View of Culpeper Community Garden entrance from south. The weeping willow has just come into leaf
Continue reading From Bombsite to Small Community Garden
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Today, I’m taking a walk along the Regent’s Canal from the Angel, Islington, to the Kingsland Basin, en route to the London Docks.
Backs of Noel Road houses seen from the opposite side of the canal
Looking down on the canal from the bridge above Islington Tunnel, I can see the backs of the houses in Noel Road. In the 1960s the whole area was run down, derelict and renting was cheap. One of the area’s claims to fame – or notoriety – was the playwright, Joe Orton, who lived at 25 Noel Road, was murdered here by his lover, Keith Halliwell in 1965.
Islington Tunnel, opened 1820
I come down onto the towpath by Islington Tunnel and the view instantly opens out onto the City Road Lock. You can see the lockkeeper’s cottage hiding behind a willow. The temperature is barely above freezing but it’s already starting to green up.
Continue reading The Regent’s Canal: Angel to the Kingsland Basin
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Some years ago, at a Romantic Novelists’ Association conference, I heard Professor Jenny Hartley give a talk on popular Women’s Fiction – she was researching it at the time. At the end, after the questions, she said, ‘I’d now like to ask you a question: how many of you have read Katherine by Anya Seton?’
Cover of ‘Katherine’ by Anya Seton (1961)
A forest of hands shot up. The entire conference had read it. I myself read it as a teenager and loved it. First published in 1954, it’s the story of a herald’s daughter, Katherine Swynford, who was first the mistress and then the third wife of John of Gaunt, a marriage which scandalized all Europe. It is one of English History’s great love stories and it truly changed the course of history; for Katherine became the ancestor of the Tudors and thus of Queen Elizabeth II.
Continue reading The Savoy Chapel: a John of Gaunt moment
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This is my heroine of the week: the redoubtable – and diminuative (she was only 4ft and 10 ins) – Dame Sarah Ann Swift, the founder of the Royal College of Nursing.
Dame Sarah Ann Swift (1854-1937) by Herbert James Draper
Born in 1854, Sarah Swift had had a long and successful career in nursing and proved herself to be an excellent organizer. She had not long retired when war broke out but she immediately offered her services to the government. They accepted and she found herself responsible for the placement of 6000 trained nurses, and VAD nurses, in various war zones. It was 1916, and World War I was about to enter its most bloody stage; the Battle of the Somme, where over one million soldiers were killed.
20 Cavendish Square, home of the Royal College of Nursing
Continue reading Exploring London: Sarah Swift and the Royal College of Nursing
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I never thought I’d find myself loving a building site but this one is special.
Gasholder, men in hard hats and yellow jackets, machinery, Victorian warehouse: it must be the new Kings’ Cross development!
In the 19th century, the area around King’s Cross station was a hive of industry with barges bringing goods from the Port of London up the Regent’s Canal for storage in the huge warehouses there, like the Granary Building which stored grain. But by the 1970s, the area had become a wasteland, full of decrepit empty buildings, and notorious for drugs and prostitution.
Not any more. It is being totally transformed and this post is a whistle-stop tour of what’s going on. Grab your hard hats and let me show you round.
Continue reading King’s Cross: a Fascinating Building Site
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What is the Supreme Court? Where is it? What does it do? I have to confess that, until last Thursday, I had only the haziest idea. I knew it was the highest court in the land and I assumed it was somewhere near the Royal Courts of Justice. I felt I ought to know; after all, what the Supreme Court decides affects us all. So I booked in for a tour….
Middlesex Guildhall: this is where it now is, opposite Westminster Abbey
I need to start with a bit of background. Please bear with me.
Continue reading The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
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I often walk along the towpath of the King’s Cross to Islington Tunnel section of the Regent’s Canal. It takes ten to fifteen minutes and I love the walk for its interest and variety. It was built 1812-20 and that’s the period I’ve always been interested in.
The second-hand bookshop boat
The first thing I see is the wonderful second-hand bookshop boat – my idea of heaven. There are books piled high everywhere – this is definitely my kind of place.
Continue reading The Regent’s Canal: All Human Life is Here
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In June this year, Kew Garden’s newly-designed summer herbaceous borders in the famous Broad Walk opened to the public, and they are sensational. There are more than 27,000 flowering plants on show.
Richard Wilford’s 2016 Broad Walk
At 320 metres long, it is the longest double herbaceous border in the country – and possibly in the world. Continue reading Kew Gardens: Stunning Summer Colour
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In June 1529, Queen Katherine of Aragon came in person before the legatine court at the Dominican Priory of the Black Friars. At stake was a divorce proposed by her husband, Henry VIII. Henry was desperate to marry Anne Boleyn and sire a male heir and needed his marriage to Katherine to be nullified. He wanted the case to be heard in England. Katherine did not agree.
Katherine of Aragon
The situation was designed to intimidate her. The room in the Dominican Priory was, by definition, exclusively male, and the men she faced carried the full authority of the Catholic Church: Archbishop Warham, six other bishops, and the duplicitous Cardinal Thomas Wolsey who hoped to broker the deal. His line was that he was impartial and well able to deal with the case in England.
The Court Room
Continue reading The Apothecaries Hall: The Ghost of Katherine of Aragon
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Sometimes, when visiting a famous monument, I find that what attracts me most is the visual. Take the Cutty Sark, one of the last tea clippers to be built on the Clyde in 1863 and now permanently on display at Greenwich. There’s something about the interconnected intricacy of the rigging and masts, together with the elegant shape of the ship’s hull, which I find aesthetically deeply satisfying.
The hull
From this angle, it looks like some futuristic butterfly, and the shape of that curving hull is just beautiful.
Continue reading Cutty Sark – Shape, Form and Beauty
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