London’s cabbies love to give a moniker to places around the capital. The Resistance was a derogatory nickname given to Harley Street as it was populated by doctors opposed the formation of the NHS, the Dead Zoo for the Natural History Museum. But surely the most inspired must be ‘Hot and Cold Corner.
Royal Geographical Society was formed in 1830 as a professional body to advance, as you might have guessed, geographical studies.
The Royal Geographical Society purchased this [featured] 1874-built property at 1 Kensington Gore, known as Lowther Lodge in 1913 for £100,000. It stands on the intersection of two busy roads, Kensington Road/Kensington Gore going east-west and Exhibition Road/West Carriage Drive north-south.
In 1932 a statue by Charles Sargeant Jagger of Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, was unveiled on the eastern side of the building facing Exhibition Road.
Some twenty years later in 1953 a statue by Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones, of David Livingstone, pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and Africa explorer was unveiled looking north on the Kensington Gore side of the building.
I suppose both statues should have faced south towards their achievements, but nobody would be able to see them.
So next time you’re in the vicinity of the Royal Albert Hall check out Hot and Cold Corner.
All images courtesy of Statues – Hither & Thither by René and Peter van der Krogt
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