London, how could one ever be tired of it?
Margaret Drabble (b.1939)
London Trivia: Carpenter opens theatre
On 15 December 1720 John Potter, a carpenter advertised that: ‘At the New Theatre in the Haymarket, between Suffolk Street and James Street, which is now completely finished, will be acted French Comedies, as soon as the actors arrive from Paris . . .’ Musket. It was the third public theatre opened in the West End. The theatre cost £1,000 to build, with a further £500 expended on decorations, scenery and costumes.
On 15 December 1906 the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway, later known as the Piccadilly Line opened
Abingdon Street is named after Mary Abingdon who wrote the letter which led to uncovering the gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in 1605
Bartholomew The Great nicknamed the ‘weeping church’ when cold/wet the stones become porous, an inscription reads unsluice your briny floods
George II was the last English king to be born abroad, the last to lead his troops into battle but died ingloriously sitting on the loo
When George IV first clapped eyes on Caroline of Brunswick, the woman he was expected to marry, he called his man to pour him a large brandy
In 1848 the group of artists known as the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood was founded at 7 Gower Street WC2 in 1848
Opening in 1956 at Old Compton Street Soho’s 2i’s Coffee Bar was Europe’s first rock’n’roll venue it featured Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele
In 1875 the first tennis match took place at Worple Road, two years later it was renamed the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club
The world’s longest continuous railway tunnel is the Northern Line: Morden to East Finchley totalling 17.3 miles, 24 stations and 3 junctions
Maxwell Knight head of MI5 from 1931 to 1961 and the original ‘M’ lived in a London flat with a brown bear called Bessie
According to the London Wildlife Trust there are 125 types of fish to be found in the Tidal Thames (the estuary mouth to Teddington Lock)
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.
Previously Posted: Worse face in the world
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.
Worst face in the world (21.10.11)
The 2012 Olympics have a lot to answer, being told we can’t travel to work next August, cabs banned from Olympic Priority “Zil” Lanes, and Lord Coe’s self-satisfied face on television every night of the week, but its biggest affront is about to be unleashed on Londoners in the next few weeks, namely the worst typeface in the world.
Soon every bus, taxi and billboard will be advertising the 2012 Olympics. Avenues of lampposts will have hanging from them banners written in a font called 2012 Headline, and as if to rub salt into the wound they will also be displayed in . . . French.
Every lamppost in the Capital looks to have hung from it what the International Olympic Committee call pageantry, and because French is the Olympics’ second language expect the “pageantry” to appear in England and French.
Why should we present ourselves in such a fashion? Thirty years ago London was regarded as a culinary desert offering only meat and two veg or fish and chips in most of its restaurants, now because of the brilliance of its chefs London can claim to have some of the finest restaurants in Europe. In the world of fashion – so they tell me – we have surpassed New York and Paris as the place to show the work of cutting-edge clothes designers.
So what have we given the world to advertise London’s Olympics and to place it yet again at the forefront of design? A font that looks like a group of primary schoolchildren designed it during a wet lunch break, but don’t take my word for it. As the world’s worst typeface Simon Garfield in his recent book Just My Type placed it at number one, despite some very strong competition. Simon Garfield claims that the public was so outraged by the London 2012 Olympic logo that the Games typeface will just go unnoticed. At the time of its unveiling some accused the logo of looking like a swastika, unfairly in my opinion, at least the swastika has symmetry, others rather bizarrely saw within its jagged shapes Lisa Simpson having sex.
Some might think that the choice of typeface is unimportant amid the enormity of London’s Olympics, but we identify companies, institutions and events by the advertising used to promote them. If amongst all the other crazy things that Transport for London does they one day should choose to “rebrand” our Underground by getting rid of the familiar roundel and Johnson’s typeface, petitions would be at every station in protest.
I know that the Olympics were started in Greece, but did we have to brand London’s contribution to the Olympic heritage with a typeface that wouldn’t look out of place above a dodgy kebab takeaway down the Mile End Road?
London in Quotations: Clive Owen
For me, London is and always will be home.
Clive Owen (b.1964)
London Trivia: First cheque
On 8 December 1660, the earliest extant cheque held by the Bank of England Museum is for £200 and was drawn by Vanacker on his account with Clayton & Morris. They were the leading bankers of the Restoration, with offices at Cornhill, their business was centred in the private market of lending money to landowners, a unique contribution to banking history integrating the mortgage as a form of long-term security for banking loans.
On 8 December 1995 head teacher Philip Lawrence was stabbed to death outside St George’s Roman Catholic School, Maida Vale, while protecting a pupil who was being assaulted
Watchhouse Coffee Shop, Bermondsey Street is a room where Victorian police once spied on grave robbers it overlooked an affluent graveyard
At 103 Borough High Street once stood the Queen’s Head Inn owned by the Harvard Family, the ones that set up Harvard University in the USA
Inventor of the pedestrian refuge Colonel Pierpoint left his club in St James’s Street stepped back to admire his work was run over by a cab
At the base of Big Ben is a cell to incarcerate any agitators causing trouble in The Houses of Parliament last used for Emmeline Pankhurst
On 8 December 1660 a Mrs. Hughes scandalised the public becoming the first woman actor to take to the stage in London
From 1934 to 1971 with the blessing of George V 1,500 bargeloads of sand were dumped by Tower of London creating at beach attracting 100,000
Laid out in the 1980s the Wood Lane Estate, Sudbury Hill has 11 streets named after sportspeople: Lilian Board Way; Mary Peters Drive etc
Maida Vale was the first Tube station to be manned without men – opened in 1915 with an all-female staff because of the First World War
The Greenwich Time Ball has several dents after renovations, builders assumed the historic ball was for the skip and played football with it
On 8 December 1954 a huge tornado ripped through Chiswick, Gunnersbury, Acton, Golders Green and Southgate
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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