St Mary Axe

All of these pictures are taken from the same spot in St Mary Axe in the City of London and show the diversity of the London skyline.

Lloyds is a Richard Rogers building and was completed in 1986. Pipes, ducts and lifts are all exposed to maximise floor space within the building and allow maintenance to be conducted without disruption.

Lloyd’s insurance business dates back to 1860 and a coffee house in Tower Street where Edward Lloyd would meet with business men who had shipping connections. They would insure each others cargo and write their names under the ship owner’s slip. Hence the term ‘under-writers’.

The Heron Building, when completed in February 2011, will be the second tallest building in the country (until the Shard is completed) and the tallest in the City of London at 230 meters, 40 stores high. The top three floors will be restaurants and a sky bar with a roof top terrace providing London with it’s highest outside space.

Don’t know much about the Willis Building other than it is only 26 floors high but did cost an impressive £110 million to build.

The Gherkin and St Mary Axe.

The ‘Gherkin, or the Swiss RE building as it should be known, is a fantastic Norman Foster design. 41 floors high and costing £138 million to construct it contains 17 lifts and only 5 car parking spaces. I wonder who gets them. While the tower is wonderfully curved there is only one piece of curved glass in the entire building which is the piece that crowns it.

The original St Mary’s Axe Church was demolished in 1561 but the current building has been able to survive both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz. The name derives from the possession of one of three axes that beheaded St Ursula and her eleven thousand handmaidens in Cologne at the hands of the Huns, supposedly, in 383.

Ghost sign # 3

Alpha Road, New Cross. A classic ghost sign

Every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining

Enjoy the jet free sky while you can. The volcanic dust cloud will not last forever.


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Cable Street

On Sunday 4 October 1936 Oswald Mosley and his Black Shirts tried to march through the East End, down Cable Street, to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the fascist British Union movement. Over 100,000 counter demonstrators stopped them. Mosley was “denied the streets of Stepney”

It’s generally thought that the Battle of Cable Street was fought between Black Shirts and the people of the East End but the fight was really between the entire London mounted police force plus 6,000 foot police against many separate groups, all anti fascists. Police led baton charges against the protesters but were unable to clear the way and rioting broke out. Mosley, who was to be married the next day in Goebbels’s Berlin home (Hitler was a guest), was afraid of being arrested and so called off the march.

Anti fascists won the day and Mosley was humiliated.

 

The mural was completed in 1981 and painted by Ray Walker, Paul Butler and Desmond Rochfort. Dave Binnington had originally planed the project but quit after early attempts were destroyed by vandals (or should that be modern day fascists).

Wilton’s is the oldest surviving music hall building in England. It was built by John Wilton in 1858 in Graces Alley, just off Cable Street and was used as a Music Hall for over thirty years. From 1888 to the 1950's it was used as a Wesleyan Mission Hall and destined for demolition in 1964 until successfully rescued by a campaign championed by John Betjeman.

Wilton’s still stages events despite its crumbling appearance and has featured in films such as The Krays and Interview with a Vampire.

Sunset over London

You can tell this is London because of all the bloody craines. Is London just a "work in progress", not yet finished?

The Monument

The Monument stands in Monument Street off Fish Street Hill and was built in 1671-77 by Sir Christopher Wren and Dr Robert Hooke to commemorate the Great Fire of London of 1666. The fire began on Sunday 2nd September and lasted until Wednesday 5th September. Although there was little loss of life the fire consumed or damaged thousands of buildings including St Paul's Cathedral. The only buildings to survive were those built of stone.

The balcony is reached by climbing the 311 cantilevered stone steps of the world’s tallest free standing Doric column. The Monument was originally topped off with a copper urn from which flames emerged symbolising the fire.

The Monument is 202ft high (62m) which is the exact distance from the fires source in a bakers shop in Pudding Lane.

The Shard # 1

The Shard is starting to rise. At 83 stores, 306 metres it will be the tallest building in South London (and Europe). There is no way I can do the scale of this project justice with just a few pictures but it will be interesting to record the buildings progress as it starts to grow.

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