London opens to you like a novel itself . . . It is divided into chapters, the chapters into scenes, the scenes into sentences; it opens to you like a series of rooms, door, passsage, door. Mayfair to Piccadilly to Soho to the Strand.
Anna Quindlen (b.1953), Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City
On 27 April 1831 Apsley House, the London home of the Duke of Wellington, was targeted by ‘an unruly and indecent mob’ incensed by his opposition to the Reform Bill. They ‘broke the windows … and he caused to be put up those blinds which remain to this day as a record of the people’s ingratitude’.
On 27 April 1970 actor Tony Curtis was caught in possession of cannabis at Heathrow Airport and fined £50. He had flown in to star alongside Roger Moore in the long-running series The Persuaders
One for the Road and On the Waggon derive from condemned prisoners going to Tyburn being given a drink at the Angel PH St Giles High Street
Richard Rogers’ Lloyds building was completed in 1986 and Grade I listed in 2011 the youngest building ever to gain that level of protection
St George’s Hospital has a cowhide belonging to Blossom who gave cowpox to Sarah Nelmes in 1796 Jenner developed smallpox vaccine from virus
The clock at Horse Guards has a black square on the dial denoting the time King Charles I was executed outside Banqueting House opposite
The location shots in the 1950s film Passport to Pimlico were shot not in affluent Pimlico but poorer Lambeth and Vauxhall in south London
On 27 April 1828 the Zoological Gardens at Regent’s Park opened, it was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study, the zoo didn’t open to the public until 1847
In 1895, an American visitor demonstrated a new type of basketball where the girls played with wastepaper baskets at both ends of the hall
The first man ever to fly from London to Manchester did so by following the whitewashed sleepers of the London and North Western Railway
Established in 1805 Truefitt and Hill of St. James’s Street remains the world’s oldest barbershop having served nine consecutive Monarchs
Only members of the Royal Family are allowed to drive through the central arch at Horse Guards – Kate Middleton did so after her marriage
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.
In a little backwater between the rear of the Savoy Hotel and Charing Cross Station, there is a small cul-de-sac which once ran down to the river’s edge. On the site that once stood York House former mansion of the Dukes of Buckingham, its 20 or so houses look all the world like a street of small mid-Georgian period houses that can be found all over central London.
Buckingham Street was built before 1680 by Nicholas Barbon London’s first speculative builder. What makes this little unprepossessing street so unique is the sheer number of celebs who once lived here, so many that a whole series of that unlamented television series ‘Through The Keyhole’ could be devoted to these twenty-one houses.
The houses at the northern end of Buckingham Street are smaller than those nearer the river and have been used for many years for commercial purposes.
According to The London Encyclopaedia a Who’s Who of Buckingham Street has among its former residents:
Number 9: Beauty and one of the greatest actresses of the 18th century, Peg Woffington and Laurence Holker Potts inventor of the piling system for building foundations carried out experiments in his workshop there.
Number 10: Was once home to Scottish philosopher and Father of the Enlightenment David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, later postimpressionist painter Henri Rousseau resided there as did Thomas Russell Crampton, the engineer who laid the first submarine cable between Dover and Calais.
Number 11: Groom of the Bedchamber to James II Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury also Victorian artist Arthur Rackham once worked there.
Number 12: London’s famous diarist Samuel Pepys. A later occupant was Queen Anne’s Treasurer Robert Harley who invited Jonathan Swift and William Penn to dinner at his home. Mary, Countess of Fauconberg daughter of Oliver Cromwell. The scientist Humphrey Davy carried out some of his most important experiments in the cellar.
Number 13: Dr William Wellwood who served as a physician to King William and Queen Mary and Dr James Coward who wrote several works on the soul, which were ordered in 1704 to be burnt by the Common Hangman, since the House of Commons considered they contained offensive doctrines. William Jones, the mathematician, was a friend and fellow worker of Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley.
Number 14: Samuel Pepys who liked the street so much after nine years at Number 12 moved next door to Number 14. Robert Harley Speaker of the House of Commons who later became Chancellor of the Exchequer started his book collection here and later the library was bought by the nation for £10,000 and formed a nucleus for the British Museum. Artist George Clarkson Stanfield was born there and fellow artist Charles Calvert had lodged. Sir Humphry Davy is famous for his invention of the miner’s lamp.
Number 15: Russian Peter the Great stayed for a while although some historians dispute this claim. Authors Henry Fielding, creator of Tom Jones and literary giant Charles Dickens also resided here.
Number 19: Lord Drumlanrig, afterwards 2nd Duke of Queensbury who in 1707 was instrumental in bringing about the union of Scotland and England.
Number 21: English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
But most bizarrely of all Napoleon Bonaparte stayed at an unknown house in this same small street.
Go where we may, rest where we will, Eternal London haunts us still.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Rhymes on the Road, The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore
On 20 April 1901, the final tie for the FA Cup was between Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield United at Crystal Palace, Sydenham; 114,000 people attended and it ended with a 2-2 draw. It would be replayed at Bolton a week later.
On 20 April 1968 Conservative MP Enoch Powell made his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech warning about immigration, he was fired from the Cabinet
Magpie and Stump pub until 1868 would charge extra for drinks taken upstairs where punters could enjoy viewing the public hangings at Newgate
At 141ft, Adelaide House was the tallest office block in London when it was completed in 1925 and was the first office building in England to have electric and telephone connections on every floor
Now located in Beckenham, King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry was originaly named bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion
The future Mary II is said to have wept for a day and a half when she was told that she would have to marry William of Orange in 1677
Off Greville Street, Clerkenwell is the cobbled Bleeding Heart Yard mentioned by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit
The world’s oldest public zoo opened in London in 1828 it was initially known as the ‘Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society of London’
Greyhound racing’s first superstar ‘Mick the Millar’ was so popular his stuffed body was put on display at the Natural History Museum
The Peter Lodge recording of “Mind the Gap” is still in use, but some lines use recordings by a Manchester voice artist Emma Clarke
Tesco was founded in 1924 when Jack Cohen and T. E. Stockwell sold tea in bulk opening a store in Tooting
The corgis also have hot scones every afternoon, served with butter and crumbled onto the kitchen floor by the Queen herself
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.
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