There was a time when children would learn things in a book, or by just going out and discovering, today’s youngsters, on the other hand, find an answer courtesy of Tim Berners-Lee’s clever invention.

One popular post-war publication was the I-Spy series. Like so much, I had forgotten this series of booklets until Diamond Geezer wrote a post about finding a copy of The Sights of London from his young days. This rather intrigued me, so I purchased a copy on eBay.

The Sights of London was the eleventh to be published around 1955, measuring 5″ x 4″ it comprises of 50 pages, with most of them having two ‘sights’ with each given a score for tracking them down. Once the booklet was completed children could send them to Big Chief I-Spy (the pseudonym of the writer and retired headmaster Charles Warrell), at the News Chronicle a liberal-leaning broadsheet which ceased publication in October 1960, which later would become the Daily Mail. At the time of my book’s publication, there were half a million members of the I-Spy Tribe.

The trail starts at Trafalgar Square, yards from where all measurements are calculated in London, with a useful double-spread map at the booklets’ centre. All the sights are labelled and listed, and a set route weaves around central London from Nelson’s Column to Charing Cross. As a cabbie, it’s not an efficient route with Trafalgar Square being visited three times, and one can only assume that Bit Chief I-Spy finished at his train station. I can’t imagine a retired headmaster (who incidentally died at the grand old age of 106) became a taxi driver, but none of the 70 sights is located South of the River.

Unremarkably much has changed in central London over the last 65 years. The Roosevelt Memorial (17) is still to be found in Grosvenor Square, unlike the United States embassy, and therefore you’ll no longer “see plenty of American cars.” No! I haven’t seen American cars there either. You wouldn’t be able to identify the “useful article standing each side of the front door” of No 10 Downing Street (26), although I can remember the innocent days when I drove into that cul-de-sac.

Captain Scott’s ship The Discovery (39) was moored just below Waterloo Bridge at the time, in 1979 it moved to Dundee.Along the Thames London Bridge (58) which the Redskin was urged to stop and have a look at the ships unloading. To get your 20 points you had to count the arches, today a trip to Lake Havasu in Arizona would be needed to complete the task.

Much has been framed with the quaint language of the time. Eros (18) is described as “a gay and well-known figure in the centre of Piccadilly Circus”. Nobody today sitting on its steps would describe nude Eros as ‘gay’, and the traffic doesn’t now flow around the memorial. New Scotland Yard is not the headquarters of the C.I.D., the police have had two homes since this time. In 1955 St. Mary-le-Bow Church (51) didn’t have bells to enable someone to call themselves a cockney, they were destroyed on 10th May 1941 since the publication the bells have been reinstated.

Probably the biggest change is Covent Garden (66), described as “Best time to see it is very early in the morning-a great bustle of vegetables, flowers, fruit and people”. It sounds like Mary Poppins is likely to be seen walking around the market.

Today’s lock-down quiz is taken from I-Spy The Sights of London and considering that the book was aimed at 8-year-olds, the questions shouldn’t pose much of a problem.

Questions

1. In front of the National Gallery is the statue of a famous American. Who is he?

2. The gates of the Admiralty Arch are very large and handsome. How many are there?

3. Towards which street is Eros aiming his bow?

4. What does Justice atop the Old Bailey hold in her left hand?

5. St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose statue stands outside the main entrance?

6. The Monument. Where exactly did the Fire of London start?

7. At one time an Inn of Chancery for law students, Staple Inn stands in Holborn opposite Gray’s Inn Road. How many gables?

8. Covent Garden. Who designed St.Paul’s Church in Covent Garden?

9. You’ll find an unusual kind of police box at the Strand corner of Trafalgar Square. Which statue is close to the police station?

10. No. 10 Downing Street. What useful articles stand on each side of the front door?

Answers

1. In front of the National Gallery is the statue of a famous American. Who is he?

George Washington’s words of “not wishing to set foot on English soil again” have been respected, in the statute of him at the front of the National Gallery there lies beneath his feet a quantity of earth transported over from America.

2. The gates of the Admiralty Arch are very large and handsome. How many are there?

Each carriageway has an ornamental gate, but the centre ones are kept closed, being opened only for Royalty. A little-known trivia fact concerns the presence of a life-size human nose which protrudes from the inside wall of the northernmost arch. Best viewed on foot, or whilst sat in rush hour traffic, bewilderingly it stands at waist height for anyone riding a horse. As many a London cabbie will explain, it is said to resemble Napoleon’s nose and was rubbed by anyone riding through the arch as a snub to the diminutive Corsican.

3. Towards which street is Eros aiming his bow?

With 30,000 people every hour, it comes as no surprise that all this attention has turned Eros’ head, in 1986 it needed some restoration lasting 18 months. when the aluminium statue was reinstated instead of facing Shaftesbury Avenue, as he did in the past, in deference to Victorian philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury in whose honour he was sculptured, Eros was turned himself around. He now faces the Haymarket. The statue was also shifted 40 feet from its original site.

4. What does Justice atop the Old Bailey hold in her left hand?

The 22-ton, 3.5m tall figure of Lady Justice is the Old Bailey’s crowning glory — clutching the sword of retribution in her right hand, and the scales of justice in her left hand. But contrary to the well-worn adage, this particular Justice is not blind(folded).

5. St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose statue stands outside the main entrance?

Queen Anne, the Queen that chair legs have been named after, itself rather curious for as when Queen Anne was crowned the tradition at that time of buckling on a new pair of spurs had to be abandoned for the future Queen’s legs were deemed too fat. Originally completed in 1712 depicting the Queen with an alluring figure, when in fact at the time of its creation, she was obese. The statue itself was reproduced because, by the end of the 19th Century pigeon droppings, coal smog and vandalism had all but finished it off. The City approached the celebrated sculptor Richard Claude Belt and he duly promised to complete the work within a year. Belt although undoubtedly talented was a bit of a reprobate, he was constantly running up debts and getting into scrapes, and about the time of the Queen Anne commission found him in prison for fraud. He had spent the money advanced for the commission already, but the City authorities had no intention of throwing that money away and gained special permission to deliver stone and tools to Belt’s cell, with the result that we can confidently say that the St Paul’s statute of Queen Anne, albeit a rather slimline version, is the only public work of art completed by a convicted prisoner while he was actually in prison.

6. The Monument. Where exactly did the Fire of London start?

The word curfew derives from the Norman French Couvre le Feu. It literally means put out your fire, and not as is commonly thought to tell citizens that they must not leave their homes after nightfall, but since it is bedtime (the poor would have little means to light their houses at night) a bell would ring to remind them to extinguish all their fires. It is something a baker from Pudding Lane on 2nd September 1666 clearly ignored.

7. At one time an Inn of Chancery for law students, Staple Inn stands in Holborn opposite Gray’s Inn Road. How many gables?

As recently as 30 years ago London still had one-quarter of Britain’s tobacco factories, and when I worked in Clerkenwell the Old Holborn factory was opposite our company. As a junior boy, I would go into an adjacent tobacconist, there on the counter was a tall ornate gas pipe, its flame flickering seductively at head level, encouraging one to light up. The shop’s proprietor, skinny man with nicotine-stained fingers and yellow moustache to match was hardly an advertisement for his merchandise, for between gasps he would ask breathlessly “Can . . . I . . . help . . . you?”

One of the last of these shops was Shervingtons which proudly displayed above its door “Ye Olde Tobacco Shop”. The shop was founded in 1864 and situated in Staple Inn, the 16th-century block of offices at the eastern end of Holborn, the image of which once adorned tobacco tins as Old Holborn’s trademark showing its seven gables. It appeared that the shop remained in its Olde ways and with bitter irony had No Smoking stickers displayed giving a further clue to its demise.

8. Covent Garden. Who designed St.Paul’s Church in Covent Garden?

On 12th April 1665 England’s first Black Death victim, Margaret Ponteous, was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden. Known as the ‘actor’s church’ it was designed by Inigo Jones in 1633.

9. You’ll find an unusual kind of police box at the Strand corner of Trafalgar Square. Which statue is close to the police station?

The great thing about the Fourth Plinth is that for me, having run out of money when originally laying out a square, pragmatically the Plinth was left unadorned for over one-and-a-half centuries. At the time of Trafalgar Square’s construction the founder of the modern police force, Sir Robert Peel described as “the finest site in Europe” (he presumably hadn’t been to Venice). If asked to name its other statues most would say ‘Nelson’. Although he stands over 17 ft high we can only gaze up his not inconsiderable nostrils standing up on his lofty position. Cabbies might tell you of the world’s smallest police station in the square’s south-east corner, but who could name any of the other public figures adorning Trafalgar Square?

The three equestrian statues of 19th-century notables standing on the other plinths one next to the police station is of Sir Henry Havelock (he of Indian Mutiny fame) by William Behnes who so driven by debt and drink was found one night in the gutter with three pennies in his pocket. The second Sir Charles Napier had his statue paid for by the squaddies of the British Army, the sculptor of the third statue of King George IV, Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey, who had expected to receive £9,000 for his efforts, with the King promising to contribute one-third, died before receiving a penny.

10. No. 10 Downing Street. What useful articles stand on each side of the front door?

Probably the only way to answer this (unless you have had good reason lately to go there), is via the internet, even Google View hasn’t taken photographs. So here is the best I can find showing two boot scrapers:

Some unless Number 10 trivia:
•During expensive alterations in the late 1950s remains of Roman Pottery and a Saxon wooden hut were found in the foundations.
•The zero of the number ’10’ is set at a slight angle as a nod to the original number which had a badly-fixed zero.
•After the IRA mortar attack in 1991, the original black oak door was replaced by a blast-proof steel one. Regularly removed for refurbishment and replaced with a replica, it is so heavy that it takes eight men to lift it.
•The brass letterbox still bears the legend “First Lord of the Treasury”.
•The original door was put on display in the Churchill Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms.
•Number 10 has been the official home of the Prime Minister since 1735 when Sir Robert Walpole first took residence.
•It has been home to over 50 Prime Ministers
•Downing Street stands on the site of a former brewery
•Number 10 was originally Number 5
•The last private resident of Number 10 was a Mr Chicken
•The Cabinet usually meets once a week in 10 Downing Street, normally on a Thursday morning, in the Cabinet room
•The door has no lock
•It’s postcode is SW1A 2AA

If you think it’s bad now, 355 years ago London was struck with one of the most devastating epidemics in European history. A little known fact is that cabbies’ licences are called ‘bills’, a reference to one having a bill of health. At a time of self-isolating just how much do you know about this earlier (but not the first) plague?

Questions

1. In which London parish was the first recorded plague death of the 1665 outbreak?

St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Giles-in-the-Fields
St Botolph without Aldgate
St George in the East

2. How long had it been since the previous outbreak of plague in London?

11 years
29 years
50 years
62 years

3. Which of the following is not a form of plague?

Hepatic
Pneumonic
Bubonic
Septicaemic

4. When someone fell ill with the plague, for how many days was their property to be quarantined?

14 days
28 days
40 days
60 days

5. What was the common term given to buboes in the seventeenth century?

Tokens
Blackeyes
Satan’s pustules
God’s curse

6. In which of the following did King Charles II not shelter from the plague outbreak?

Canterbury
Hampton Court
Oxford
Salisbury

7. With London’s city gates locked, Londoners travelling outside the city had to present a certificate of health. Who was responsible for signing this?

The Bishop of London
The Lord Mayor of London
The Royal College of Physicians
The Lord of the Admiralty

8. The physician of diarist Samuel Pepys, Dr Alexander Burnett, is believed to have died of the plague in 1665, but how is it thought that he contracted the disease?

Dissecting the corpse of a plague victim
Tripping and falling into a plague pit
Having relations with his maid
Eating at the French Ordinary Court

9. With virtually all qualified physicians fleeing London, the capital’s sufferers were left in the hands of amateur ‘plague doctors’. How were most of these individuals recognised on the streets?

Showing an order from the Mayor of London
A beak-shaped mask and long overcoat
A bell that a servant rang while walking the streets
A bag with a red cross

10. Due to fears of contamination from touching anything from London, courtiers were reluctant to handle news pamphlets produced here during the outbreak. A new publication was born out of this. What is it called today?

The London Gazette
The London Courier
The Oxford Gazette
The London Record

11. How did people keep track of the total number of deaths from the plague as the epidemic progressed?

Weekly Bills of Mortality
Bulletin of the Royal Society
News pamphlets
Hearsay

12. During the height of the outbreak, where did Parliament sit?

Cambridge
Oxford
St. Albans
York

13. Although we now understand fleas on black rats were responsible for bringing the plague, what creature did they attribute the plague to in 1665?

Dogs
Pigeons
Cats
Red Kites

14. In which month of 1665 was the total death toll in London highest?

January
March
June
September

15. A ‘plague house’ was a residence in which an occupant had fallen victim to the disease. Unlike today, such property was identified by having a red cross and a notice painted on the front door. What wording was used?

Heaven Awaits
Pray For Us All Who Pass
Lord Have Mercy Upon Us
God Preserve Our Souls

Answers

1. In which London parish was the first recorded plague death of the 1665 outbreak?

St Giles-in-the-Fields

St. Giles in the Fields
The first person recorded as having fallen victim to this epidemic died in January. This death was followed by another the following month, although there was little alarm at this stage as the area, know as a rookery, was one of the poorest in the capital.

2. How long had it been since the previous outbreak of plague in London?

29 years

Bubonic plague had last visited the capital in 1636, although the toll of 10,000 recorded deaths was the lowest of England’s epidemic outbreaks in the seventeenth century up to that point. In addition, several years up to 1665 saw more localised outbreaks of plague occur in parishes of London.

3. Which of the following is not a form of plague?

Hepatic

Although bubonic plague, involving swelling of the lymph nodes, was the most common form of plague, pneumonic was the most infectious, and septicaemic the most deadly with patients sometimes dying within twenty-four hours of symptoms appearing, only the more recent Spanish Flu killed that quickly.

4. When someone fell ill with the plague, for how many days was their property to be quarantined?

40 days

The quarantine period of forty days was stipulated by the Lord Mayor of London and followed guidelines set by the Royal College of Physicians, which was consulted for help in managing the outbreak.

5. What was the common term given to buboes in the seventeenth century?

Tokens

Most common in the armpit as well as the groin, ‘tokens’ were generally black spots caused by a build-up of blood in the area. Removal of these was attempted on occasion but the consequences were usually found to be counterproductive as the procedure could lead to septicaemic plague taking hold.

6. In which of the following did King Charles II not shelter from the plague outbreak?

Canterbury

Just like today, the Royals fled the capital. In July 1665, the King and his court fled London for the apparent relative safety of Hampton Court but soon moved further afield to Salisbury. When the plague was subsequently reported in Salisbury, he decided to decamp to the traditional royalist city of Oxford.

7. With London’s city gates locked, Londoners travelling outside the city had to present a certificate of health. Who was responsible for signing this?

The Lord Mayor of London

Obtaining a certificate of health was not easy. It required medical approval in a time when few doctors were on hand. Desperate to relocate, however, many people forged their own certificates, and those who could afford to move away from their businesses got out of the capital until the death figures fell dramatically.

8. The physician of diarist Samuel Pepys, Dr Alexander Burnett, is believed to have died of the plague in 1665, but how is it thought that he contracted the disease?

Dissecting the corpse of a plague victim

One of Burnett’s servants had contracted plague in June 1665, with the result that Burnett placed his house under quarantine. When no other members of his household contracted the disease, the quarantine was lifted. However, Burnett subsequently succumbed to plague himself, believed to be as a result of his attending the first-ever post mortem of a plague victim.

9. With virtually all qualified physicians fleeing London, the capital’s sufferers were left in the hands of amateur ‘plague doctors’. How were most of these individuals recognised on the streets?

A beak-shaped mask and long overcoat

Plague doctors’ outfits were designed to protect the plague doctor from the illness they were treating. The beak-like feature of the mask was filled with scents for purification of the air they breathed in. In addition, they carried a cane. Its use is debated today but is believed to have been a means of examining victims without the need to touch them directly.

10. Due to fears of contamination from touching anything from London, courtiers were reluctant to handle news pamphlets produced here during the outbreak. A new publication was born out of this. What is it called today?

The London Gazette

The need for an issuance of a news publication from outside London led to a new source produced in the location of the royal court at the time. This was called the ‘Oxford Gazette’ and became a popular read among the upper echelons of society. When the king and court returned to London, the publication moved with them and became the ‘London Gazette’.

11. How did people keep track of the total number of deaths from the plague as the epidemic progressed?

Weekly Bills of Mortality

Bills of Mortality

The weekly Bills of Mortality were issued by each parish and detailed the numbers of deaths and their causes. It was by following these that fears of the epidemic first grew, and when in May 1665 the number dead from plague surpassed 100 it fell in line with a definition of an epidemic.

12. During the height of the outbreak, where did Parliament sit?

Oxford

The sitting of Parliament in 1665 was initially postponed as a result of the epidemic. Eventually, Parliament decamped to Oxford, to where the King’s court had also taken up residence. Once in Oxford, Parliament resumed its session in October 1665.

13. Although we now understand fleas on black rats were responsible for bringing the plague, what creature did they attribute the plague to in 1665?

Cats

In an attempt to stop the spread of the plague, it was ordered that stray cats be destroyed. The irony of this was that it increased the problem as the number of rats grew as a result of fewer cats catching them.

14. In which month of 1665 was the total death toll in London highest?

September

From its winter beginning, the disease overall claimed more and more lives as 1665 progressed into the summer months. This reached its peak in the week of 19-26 September when more than 7,100 deaths from the plague were recorded. England experienced a hot summer that year and the number of plague cases reached their zenith with the highest temperatures.

15. A ‘plague house’ was a residence in which an occupant had fallen victim to the disease. Unlike today, such property was identified by having a red cross and a notice painted on the front door. What wording was used?

Lord Have Mercy Upon Us

The painting of the cross and prescribed wording was mandated by law and served as a warning for others to avoid the property. As the surviving residents of plague houses were required to stay indoors until the forty-day quarantine had passed, a guard was to be posted outside, supposedly helping to provide food and drink for those inside. This didn’t always go to plan and there are reports of residents lowering rope from upper windows to hang the guards preventing them from leaving their homes.

I find it interesting as to why certain ethnic groups have congregated into different areas of London, turning the capital into a series of ‘villages’. You can understand the attraction once the pioneers have landed on a location, others near you are speaking your mother tongue, sharing cultural and religious values, and there is an abundance of ingredients to make your cultural dishes. But why these areas in the first place?

So today’s quiz is relatively easier than before, with the nickname of an area (sometimes derogatory, I’m afraid) you have to name the precise area of London and the group that at some time inhabited its environs.

Questions

1. Paddy Fields

2. Kangaroo Valley

3. Asia Minor

4. Korea Town

5. OK Yardie

6. Swone-one

7. Trustafarian Suburb

8. Italian Hill

9. Goldberg’s Green

10. Gantville Cowboys

Answers

1. Paddy Fields
They used to call it Ireland’s 33rd county. Kilburn went ‘green’ in the mid-20th century when Irish migration to north west London hit its peak. For the young men (typically) who came here to build roads and railways, this was a home from home. You couldn’t beat the emerald isle, but at least the High Road offered a substitute — lined as it was with pubs, dance halls, and other diversions designed to swallow up navvies’ earnings. Ian Dury named a band after it; and the IRA -it’s alleged – openly fundraised on it.

2. Kangaroo Valley
A former nickname for the Earl’s Court area on account of its popularity as a place to flat-share for Antipodeans spending a year or two while working in London. Popular in the 1960s to 1980s it had faded from use as Earl’s Court has become more heterogeneous. The area has also been known as the Polish Corridor.

3. Asia Minor
A snide nickname applied to Belgravia in the mid-19th century, on account of the large number of wealthy Jews who lived there, as a favoured area for retired military professionals with south Asian experience, who preferred fruits and vegetables redolent of their time abroad. By the mid-1880s it had transferred to Bayswater and Kensington.

4. Korea Town
With around 10,000 Korean residents living east of Kingston upon Thames, it has the largest and most concentrated Korean population in Europe. On explanation for the area’s popularity is that 1970s Korean expatriates followed the example of their ambassador and settle in Wimbledon, but when prices there rose excessively they decamped to nearby New Malden. Several local churches hold services in the Korean language.

5. OK Yardie
A nickname invented in the 1990s for a Sloane Ranger living in a multicultural and supposedly ‘edgy’ area such as Ladbroke Grove. The term is a blend of “OK, Yah” and “Yardie”.

6. Swone-one
Pronounced ‘swunwun’ in the 1970s and 1980s for Battersea, an area to which Sloane Rangers had recourse if they could not afford to live on the opposite side of the Thames. The area has also been referred to as South Chelsea, a nod to the diaspora from the more chic address.

7. Trustafarian Suburb
Notting Hill has been described as ‘London’s Trustafarian Suburb’, with its population if young, usually white, inhabitants who enjoy a bohemian lifestyle financed by a trust fund or other unearned income. The term was successfully imported into London from New York in the mid-1990s.

8. Italian Hill
Because I spent my first 6 years working here, this Italian enclave in Clerkenwell is my favourite of all of London’s villages. The strong Italian connections whose boundaries encompass Clerkenwell Road, Roseberry Avenue and Farringdon Road have lasted well over two centuries. The Processione della Madonna del Carmine, held on the Sunday after 16th July from the church of St. Peter’s has taken place every year, except wartime, since 1896. The Italian School was founded in 1841 in the street where I worked, and nearby there is even at Italian driving school the Scuola Guida Italiana.

9. Goldberg’s Green
Like our trade, this area of Golder’s Green has a large Jewish presence. This pun, once used by cabbies in the second half of the 20th century, may also refer to this wealthy area being ‘paved with gold’ and hence having an abundance of customers needing cabs.

10. Gantville Cowboys
Gants Hill, Newbury Park and Clayhall once had a large number of cabbies living in this area, far few nowadays with many going to the cab rank in the sky.

These past weeks London has been missing much. Traffic is almost non-existent, the Tube is empty, and there is a noticeable absence cabs on the road. So for today’s quiz, the questions are about something missing. For the first question, I’ll start with a favourite pub quiz question and something slightly disingenuous.

Questions

1. What is missing from the name of St. John’s Wood tube station?

(a) The signage is not in the Underground’s familiar typeface
(b) The word ‘mackerel’ cannot be made from the station’s name
(c) Although near Lord’s Cricket Ground no sign indicates in which direction to find it

2. Most know of Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, but why was it empty?

(a) They run out of money before commissioning a statue
(b) The committee couldn’t decide a worthy to surmount it
(c) The chairman of the board was assassinated before a statue was decided upon

3. Why are there no electricity pylons visible on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park?

(a) The pylons are in underground utility tunnels
(b) The pylons would interfere with City’ Airport’s flight path
(c) The pylons would have to have been painted in the Olympic colours

4. What did Ray Davies of The Kings nearly call ‘Waterloo Sunset’?

(a) Muswell Hill Daybreak
(b) Waterloo Sunrise
(c) Liverpool Sunset

5. The Theatre, Shoreditch, opened by James Burbage in 1576, was one of London’s earliest playhouses. It was taken down in 1598, but what happened to its timbers?

(a) They were used to build The Globe on Bankside
(b) They were used to burn Burbage and his company of actors at the stake for heresy
(c) They were used in the construction of the warship The Mary Rose

6. The U.S. Army’s signal centre was based in an unused deep tunnel beneath which tube station?

(a) St. John’s Wood
(b) Hampstead
(c) Goodge Street

7. There are many mythological rivers and streams supposedly running under London, but which of the following holds no water today?

(a) Beverley Brook
(b) Walbrook
(c) Houndsditch

8. There are over 40 ‘ghost stations’ in the Underground network, but what makes Bull and Bush between Hampstead and Holders Green especially unusual?

(a) It never opened
(b) It was built for the exclusive use of Frank Pick, the first chief executive of London Transport
(c) It was closed when a ceiling collapsed revealing the remains of a plague pit

9. CH N. Katz was one of the last Jewish businesses to continue trading on Brick Lane. What did Mr Katz sell?

(a) Boxes and crates
(b) String and paper bags
(c) Cigars and tobacco

10. What did the 19th-century trader Charles Jamrach sell from his long-vanished store on Radcliff Highway in the East End?

(a) Opium and cannabis
(c) Wax models of famous people of the period
(c) Exotic animals

And as a bonus: Why do cabbies sometimes call the junction of Kensington Gore and Exhibition Road ‘Hot and Cold Corner’?

(a) The wind blows along Kensington Gore but Exhibition Road is sheltered, making it a better place to get a fare
(b) The Royal Geographical Society building on the corner has two statues, one of David Livingstone and one of Ernest Shackleton
(c) Cabbies travelling up Exhibition Road face the dilemma of going north to Paddington or west to Kensington High Street for their next fare

Answers

1. What is missing from the name of St. John’s Wood tube station?

(b) The word mackerel cannot be made from the letters of St. John’s Wood station, bizarrely, a surprising number of people care about this question, ever since a group of Cambridge students came up with it after an evening in a pub about 30 years ago, the mackerel-tube question has been a meme that refuses to die.

2. Most know of Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, but why was it empty?

(a) When Sir Charles Barry designed Trafalgar Square in the 1840s he included four plinths. One carries a statue of George IV while two others have statues of two generals Sir Charles James Napier and Sir Henry Havelock. The fourth plinth, in the north-west corner, was intended to hold a statue of King William IV on horseback but the money ran out. To this day no agreement has been reached on who should be celebrated there. True to British propensity to compromise, in the mid-Nineties the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group was set up to fill the gap with a series of temporary art commissions.

3. Why are there no electricity pylons visible on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park?

(a) Decontamination and beautification work to prepare the site for the London 2012 Games (and future use as a park) included digging two 3.7-mile tunnels to conceal fifty-two less-than-lovely electricity pylons. Spoil sufficient to fill Wembley Stadium was dug out and you may be shocked to learn that all that electrical cable would stretch from London to Nottingham, a distance of 127 miles.

4. What did Ray Davies of The Kings nearly call ‘Waterloo Sunset’?

(c) The Muswell Hill-born Davies had originally composed a song heralding the demise of the so-called Merseybeat groups from Liverpool. However, after The Beatles released ‘Penny Lane’, he transformed it into a homage to his home city instead. Spending time in his childhood at St. Thomas’ Hospital as a seriously ill youngster he would often look out on the Thames, and also met his first girlfriend who became his wife along the Embankment at Waterloo.

5. The Theatre, Shoreditch, opened by James Burbage in 1576, was one of London’s earliest playhouses. It was taken down in 1598, but what happened to its timbers?

(a) Shakespeare had a share in this Bankside theatre and acted there. Many of is most famous plays, including Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear were first performed at The Globe, which was reconstructed from the original Theatre after a dispute with the landlord.

6. The U.S. Army’s signal centre was based in an unused deep tunnel beneath which tube station?

(c) Near the American church, Eisenhower’s command centre has long been used as a secure storage space. Its entrance can be seen on the north side of Store Street.

7. There are many mythological rivers and streams supposedly running under London, but which of the following holds no water today?

(c) According to Stow, the area, once a most that bounded the City wall, got its name ‘from that in old time, when the same lay open, much filth (conveyed forth of the City), especially dead dogged were there laid or cast’.

8. There are over 40 ‘ghost stations’ in the Underground network, but what makes Bull and Bush between Hampstead and Holders Green especially unusual?

(a) the establishment of Hampstead Garden Suburb in 1907 imposed restrictions on further building in the area, making the station unviable. It was abandoned before it was finished. Frank Pick did, however, live not far away, there is a blue plaque on his former home at 15 Wildwood Road.

9. CH N. Katz was one of the last Jewish businesses to continue trading on Brick Lane. What did Mr Katz sell?

(b) Katz followed a long line of immigrants into Spitalfields and was trading until the late 1990s, travelling from his home in Stamford Hill. Today the shop at 92 Brick Lane is Gallery SO, above the door is the inscription ‘CH N Katz, String and Paper Bags’. It is one of the few reminders of the time when Brick Lane was full of Jewish traders, rather than the Bangladeshi and hipsters of today.

10. What did the 19th-century trader Charles Jamrach sell from his long-vanished store on Radcliff Highway in the East End?

(c) Charles Jamrach ran a business importing tigers, rhinos and other exotic animals. At the north entrance of Tobacco Dock, Wapping, there is a statue of a small boy in front of a tiger. This records an incident in which a fully grown Bengal tiger escaped from Jamrach’s and began to make its way down Commercial Road. The large cat seized a small child in its mouth but was eventually persuaded by Charles Jamrach himself to release the boy unharmed.

And as a bonus: Why do cabbies sometimes call the junction of Kensington Gore and Exhibition Road ‘Hot and Cold Corner’?

(b) The two statues, one of Ernest Shackleton who explored the icy Antarctic faces Kensington Gore, while David Livingstone who opened up Africa can be seen facing Exhibition Road.