After spending £37 million of public money without a single shrub being planted, the Garden Bridge Trust has called it a day.
They had hoped to construct a private bridge from Temple Place to the South Bank, which would ease the burden on the two footbridges 100 yards away.
Much criticism has been levelled at historic sight lines giving distant views of St. Paul’s being ruined.
[T]he Garden Bridge was hoping to address this by obscuring the public’s view from Waterloo Bridge of London’s greatest edifice and replace it a chance to see Wren’s masterpiece through foliage at times when the Garden Bridge wasn’t given over to corporate events.
Little mention was made of what was to become of the Cabbies’ Shelter inconveniently positioned on the northern approach, just where the Garden Bridge’s security guards would have had their picturesque hut.
This little wooden cabbies’ shelter had fought off rich and powerful adversaries before.
In the 1960s developers knocked down four ancient streets running down to Temple Place to allow for a hotel to be built presumably so American tourists could see just the sort of roads they had destroyed. When the hotel reached completion the architects were amazed to find that just at the spot they’d planned to put their grand hotel entrance there was a Cabbie’s Green Shelter.
With typical corporate stupidity, they tried to use their financial might to have the shelter removed by the authorities, but they were told that the shelter had been there since 1880 and was staying put.
With the image of their rich American visitors being greeted by a ramshackle old shelter they were forced to beg for its removal. For a price, the shelter was duly moved a few yards down the hill away from the hotel’s lobby.
The green shelter is still there, but the hotel has since closed. Now apartments, with the imaginatively named moniker Arundel Great Court incorporating another ubiquitous new hotel are being constructed, who no doubt, after losing their private pathway to the South Bank, will attempt to remove the Green Shelter eyesore.
On 27 August 1967 Brian Epstein, manager of many groups including The Beatles was found dead at his Belgrave home, from a sleeping pill overdose
In the 18th Century pick-pockets where known as ‘divers’. A prolific London pickpocket was Mary Young, renamed ‘Jenny Diver’ by her gang
Whetstone is named after a whetstone a block of stone used to sharpen knives, a large stone outside the Griffin pub could be the original
On 27 August 1877 at 35 Hill Street, Mayfair co-founder of Rolls-Royce, the car manufacturer, Charles Rolls was born
According to local legend Theydon Bois in Epping Forest was the site of the last stand by Queen Boadicea against the Romans in AD 60
Picturesque Browning’s Pool forming the junction of Regent’s and Grand Union Canals was named Little Venice by Victorian poet Robert Browning
Europe’s first cable car ran up Highgate Hill it operated between 1884 and 1909, which was followed by a second cable line to draw trams up Brixton Hill to Streatham
The ‘New’ Wembley Stadium cost £798 million to build, it’s predecessor cost less than one-thousandth of that at £750,000
The London Passenger Transport Board was nationalised and became the London Transport Executive in 1948
Greenland Dock was renamed in the 18th century when it became the base for the Arctic whaling fleet, it was once twice the current size and one of the largest in the world
A stone obelisk in New Wanstead whose base is a remnant from a Roman road was once an important mile marker stone between Hyde Park and Epping
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