My neighbour was burgled recently, and within 10 minutes three police cars, and six coppers turned up. The next day, forensics arrived and by the third day, we had posted details of the break-in and advice through our letterboxes. Then nothing, I’m pretty sure this is the usual way police go about ‘reassuring the public’, reactive not proactive, that we once had from the boys in blue.
Johnson’s London Dictionary: London Lickpenny
LONDON LICKPENNY (n.) Something that licks up, or is a drain upon, one’s money, from an early 15th-century ballad that today doth refer to the price of London housing.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
Trusted Places
I wrote about the National Trust last year, and despite its annoying agenda, by lecturing us about the guilt we should feel visiting their properties which were built on dodgy proceeds, after over 40 years I’m still a member, and today my 2024 NT handbook arrived, from the small niche charity that I joined many decades ago, the Trust has now become a commercial leviathan.
Now the Trust is no friend of postmen, I should know after lugging great sacks of mail on my round in the past, and it was with a great thud that awoke the dog that my National Trust slot hit the mat.
I have grown old, now becoming typical of the Trust’s membership demographic, but now the package’s contents that once reflected my age group have disappeared, naturally its contents were wrapped in the predictable compostable bag, but leaflets like that grovelling letter begging me to sign up a friend; Scotts of Stow catalogue; insurance offer for the over 50s; offer to receive a free copy of Which magazine; holiday bond share scheme (as recommended by Judith Chalmers); advert for walking holidays in Austria; mini NT garden catalogue; private medical cover; invitation to join the RSPB; and a National Trust car windscreen sticker, all are missing.
In fact, flicking through the magazine only three adverts appear, Forthglade dog food, Starling Bank and Sanderson wallpaper, there aren’t any classifieds at the back.
So are advertising shunning this veritable charity or is the National Trust so large these days it doesn’t need propping up with pesky advertising?
I haven’t used my Trust card since before Covid, but I still maintain my subscription since this is one of the few charities that gets my support. This year I should try harder to visit some buildings nearer home. There aren’t many Trust properties in London, so I thought I’d knock up the following list and see how many more I can check off as the year progresses.
National Trust properties in London that I have, or haven’t been to:
✅ Bluecoat School (this is just a shop)
❌ Carlyle’s House (Chelsea townhouse and Victorian literary hub)
❌ Eastbury Manor House (Despite a friend once having a working responsibility here, I’ve yet to visit)
✅ Fenton House (A country house in Hampstead with a lot of musical instruments)
❌ George Inn (London’s last galleried inn)
✅ Ham House (Stuart mansion beside the Thames)
❌ Lindsey House (Chelsea townhouse, only open during Open House weekend)
❌ Morden Hall Park (Once a private family estate, now incorporating the Trust’s only garden centre)
✅ Osterley Park and House (So inspired by the Robert Adam decorations I spotted a gardener there with tattoos to match)
❌ Petts Wood (Ancient woodland and memorial to William Willett who gave us British Summer Time)
✅ Rainham Hall (Small house, unfortunately, you have to park in a Havering Council car park, just watch the time or you’ll get a ticket)
❌ Red House (William Morris’s house, still haven’t been despite always promising to go)
✅ ‘Roman’ Baths (I had to find this in Strand Lane on The Knowledge, not much to look at ‘thou)
✅ Sutton House and Breaker’s Yard (A favourite, Hackney boasts this fine Tudor townhouse near where I would have my cab fixed offering great lunches)
❌ 575 Wandsworth Road (Bring a pair of slippers to protect the hand-painted floors)
✅ 2 Willow Road (Ernö Goldfinger’s modernist Hampstead Heath hideaway, I visited this property on my own as my wife doesn’t do modern)
London in Quotations: Sara Sheridan
A vision of the little house in Soho flickered across his mind’s eye, his mother at a desk, writing in her journal, with hazy sunlight streaming through the morning windows. The woman inhabited a world he had once thought his own – a world of publishers and reliable suppliers. A London that was confident and competent amid its grey, puddle-strewn streets.
Sara Sheridan (b.1968), On Starlit Seas
London Trivia: Writers’ block
On 11 February 1862 Elizabeth Siddal died from an overdose. Her grief stricken husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti touchingly placed his notebook in the coffin before internment and buried her in Highgate Cemetery. Seven years later, and presumably suffering from writers’ block he exhumed the body to retrieve his notebook. Her body was said to have no trace of decomposition, probably as a sop to poor old Dante.
On 11 February 1987 at Cynthia Payne was acquitted of 9 charges of controlling prostitutes at her home, in 1978 a police raid had found elderly men exchanging luncheon vouchers for sexual entertainment
Beneath an unmarked alleyway off Sans Walk, Clerkenwell hides the labyrinth that was the House of Detention
Holborn’s Dolphin Tavern contains an old clock with hands frozen at the time when the pub was hit during a 1915 Zeppelin raid
Covent Garden is haunted by William Terris who met an untimely death nearby in 1897 Farringdon has the Screaming Spectre a milliner
It was at The Garrick Club, 15 Garrick Street that Stephen Ward met Soviet Captain Yevgeny Ivanov implicated in the Profumo Affair
Actress and singer Dame Gracie Fields (born Stansfield in Rochdale) once lived at 72A Upper Street, Islington
The Garrick Club was founded in 1831. Many legendary actors, writers and artists have been members, from Charles Dickens to Lord Olivier
Alexandra Palace once famous for its horse racing at ‘The Frying Pan’ it was the last racecourse in London until its closure in 1970
The former poet laureate John Betjeman created Metroland series, a homage to the people and places served by the Metropolitan line in 1973
Baring Brothers, the former merchant bankers on Bishopsgate, helped William Pitt the Younger finance the Napoleonic Wars
The very first Salvation Army hostel was opened by General William Booth at 21 West India Dock Road in February 1888
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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