ALBERT MEMORIAL (n.) Doth dedicated to Her Majesty’s late consort, once constructed the monument was allowed to decline for 150 years, the restoration took as long as the original construction, and much monies.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
Word on the Street is an occasional post about discoveries found on London’s streets, from street furniture, urban byways and trivial roadside facts.
I like to tell anyone who’ll listen that there are no ‘roads’ in The City of London, just streets, passages, alleys or other curious titles like Crutched Friars.
Goswell Street was renamed Goswell Road, in the past the northern section (that being furthest away from the City) was named Goswell Street Road. In 1994 boundary changes brought the eastern half under the jurisdiction of the City of London, while the western carriageway remains firmly in the Borough of Islington.
The boundary now runs down the middle of the road, pedants might argue that this still, technically, means that there isn’t a single road within the City of London, merely a half-road.
Curiously The Square Mile also doesn’t have street lamps, not on the pavements, anyway. Thanks to an old bylaw, all street lighting must be attached to buildings, or else run along a central reservation – you won’t find a single lamp jutting out from the pavement proper. What are dogs to do?
In all my journeys driving a cab in London, how could I have missed this major peculiarity?
On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes, / the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes. / I wipe them away with a black woolly glove / And try not to notice I’ve fallen in love.
Wendy Cope (b.1945), Serious Concerns
On 17 September 1091 a tornado which subsequently was estimated at 200 mph badly damaged London Bridge and demolished 600 houses. It laid waste to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow reports stated that four huge rafters were driven deep into the London clay so that only 4ft of their 26ft lengths remained visible. Incredibly, only two deaths are said to have been caused by the event. After the Tornado William II rebuilt the bridge, but a fire destroyed it only 40 years later.
On 17 September 1993 the British National Party won its first seat, lorry driver Derek Beackon beat Labour by 7 votes in Millwall by-election, he held seat for 8 months
After execution at Tyburn Highwayman Jack Sheppard was buried at St-Martin-in-the-Fields in front of 200,000, some protecting his corpse
Kensington Olympia’s Grand Hall famed for its barrel-roof made of iron and glass was the largest building in the country covering 4 acres
Rule, Britannia! composer, Thomas Arne, is buried in St Paul’s, Covent Garden, he also wrote a version of God Save the King, and the song A-Hunting We Will Go
Women’s Rights Campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst once lived at 120 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea it was little more than a rest stop between her numerous countrywide tours for the Women’s Social and Political Union
Wimpole Street was once home to poet Elizabeth Barrett, author Arthur Conan Doyle and Paul McCartney who wrote Yesterday there
The Palace Theatre opened in 1891 as the Royal English Opera House by Richard D’Oyly Carte wanting it to be the home of English grand opera
Old English skittles, once popular in pubs across the South East, is confined to a single alley at the Freemasons’ Arms in Downshire Hill is thought to be played in London and nowhere else
According to Transport for London Underground trains travel a total of 1,735 times around the world (or 90 trips to the moon and back) each year
In the 1800s London prostitutes were sometimes referred to as ‘Fulham virgins’ during this time there were probably about 30,000 street sellers
Kew Gardens holds the largest and most diverse botanical collection in the world, including around 7 million dried plant specimens and a living collection of over 19,000 plant species spanning two sites
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
The man who invented the world’s most intrusive device described his instrument as: “The telephone may be briefly described as an electrical contrivance for reproducing in different places the tones and articulations of a speaker’s voice so that Conversations can be carried on by word of mouth between persons in different rooms, in different streets or in different Towns . . . The great advantage it possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus is that it requires no skill to operate the instrument”.
Alexander Graham Bell (if ever a person’s name was better suited for his invention, I’ve yet to find), couldn’t have imagined what his invention would lead to in the 21st century or for that matter what idiots would make use of it.
So what has the latest reincarnation of Mr Bell’s invention got to do with CabbieBlog I hear you muttering amongst yourselves? Well, driving in London is becoming ever more stressful with pedestrians engrossed in using their i-phones walking into the road, then looking up with a startled expression when they see my cab bearing down on them.
Women are often accused of lacking spacial awareness, but men, sorry chaps it’s usually the male gender, that seems engrossed in their phones, and whatever they are doing on it, certainly excludes any road sense.
So when Alexander Graham Bell informed the populace that his “apparatus . . . required no skill to operate he should have added the caveat – but retraining might be necessary in the art of crossing a road, for how to talk on one’s phone and cross London’s busy roads needs a skill that many have failed to acquire.
FOOTNOTE: Around the mid 1800’s many were trying to invent the telephone, the most unfortunate was the American Elisha Gray who actually filed something called a patent caveat – a sort of holding claim that allowed one to protect an invention that wasn’t quite yet perfected – on the very day that Alexander Graham Bell filed his own, more formal patent, unfortunately for Gray, Bell beat him by a few hours.
Thanks for checking out CabbieBlog just don’t do it while crossing the road.
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