Photo Updates: London

Hehe... Sure.. A lot of people don't know that jayeff - you're a mine of information

Lived in London most of my life and always wondered why it was called Fleet Street.

Did you know - (and many people don't ) that if you sit in a cafe at the side of the Hilton, you can watch MI5 "agents" enter and exit their "secret offices"? Always reminded me of James Bond and "Universal Exports"

Just made me love London a little bit more.

very nice pictures

Absolutely fabulous pics...

It's a shame you didn't get down to the east end before all the warehouses were converted in to New York style lofts etc. There were some great bomb sites till the late 80's.

If you could get permission from TFL, there are some old underground stations that have been closed, like "Down Street" in Mayfair, which you'd love.

The next time you are around Fleet Street, imagine it as a giant open sewer, because that's what it was until Victorian times

Trivia time:

In Central Park, NY behind the Metropolitan museum is a giant obelisk, popularly known as "Cleopatra's Needle". Londoners refer to its twin, which stands on the Victoria Embankment near the Houses of Parliament, by the same name, although in fact both were commissioned by a less well-known pharaoh.

Opposite the London "Needle" are the Victoria Embankment Gardens and we owe their existence, the existence of Victoria Embankment as a whole, to the Victorians' efforts to clean up London. The VE was built to hide a sewer into which the Fleet now runs.

It is thanks to the grandson of the founder of the WH Smith newspaper/book chain that there is still a VE Gardens. William Gladstone liked the gardens so much he wanted to take them over for government offices but was prevented from doing so by a public outcry led by W.H. Smith MP.

Near by Cleopatra's Needle in London is a statue commemorating Queen Boudicca (Boedecia) who burned Roman London to the ground during the 1st century. Boudicca and her forces arrived in London somewhat cheekily, by using the road from Colchester (the oldest Roman settlement in Britain) which the Romans themselves had built. Of course she came through what these days is the "East End".

Which gives us a link back to New York, because the first ever Jewish mayor of New York, Abe Beam, was born in Whitechapel one of the most famous parts of the East End, as was another Abe, Abe Saperstein, founder of the Harlem Globetrotters. Nearby Wapping was the birthplace of William Penn and where he attended the Quaker meetings which gave him the religious views which would eventually force him to emigrate to the US. Here I can hook in my family, because George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement, after the vision which inspired him, held his first ever meeting in my family's then home.

Penn's father died leaving a large debt owed to him by Charles II, a debt the king could not hope to settle in cash. So instead, he gave to Penn Jr a massive stretch of land and it was Charles who insisted it be called Penn-Sylvania and not simply Sylvania. That was the place to which Penn emigrated in the 17th century and founded Philadelphia (meaning "city of brotherly love"). Philadelphia was the first modern city to treat equally people of all races and religions.

Sadly Penn's personal story ended badly. He eventually returned to England where he was imprisoned for debt and his health failed. But to mark the 50th anniversary of Penn?s Charter of Privileges, a bell was commissioned from the Whitechapel foundry. That bell has been rung on many important occasions, not least for the first reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

You can go on rambling around forever making these - admittedly sometimes loose - connections, but enough. To finish where we started, in New York, that same foundry cast a bell, now hanging in a church in Wall Street, to mark London's support for the people of New York, after the tragedy of 911.

Amazing! You're a font of knowledge. I've always enjoyed history, especially when it's retold through a context - ie, this, not direct from a book.

RE: Living in sewers. Like many things, I'm sure it's possible, but I find it hard to beleive that someone would want to - there are much nicer, more convenient places above ground.
Living in drains, train tunnels etc [ie the amtrack tunnels over in NY] etc are definitely practiced.

In regards to prospecting - there really seems to be no limit to what you'll find washed down.

A drain I did in Tokyo was fairly large - 5m x 2m in dimension, which went back for about 30m before it was curtained off and the sewer part started.. (If you're ever underground and come to a section that's got mist.. congratulations, you're in a sewer ;) )
Within those 25m, I found no less than 7 mobile phones, 6 credit cards, 1 pearl bracelet and a variety of other crap.
There's a drain we do at home that runs under a main street - we go in every 6 months or so, and can easily collect enough cash to shout everyone dinner afterwards :D

In a final tangent of history - you mentioned abandoned tube lines and bells, and that leads to some amazing history artefacts in Australia.
The station 'St James' in Sydney has disused platforms and tunnels that run parallel to the active tunnels. While the hidden platforms are used mainly to store boxes of papers etc, if you crawl under them and keep ging, you enter the St James tunnels - tunnels that were converted to blast shields during the war as a refuge.
At the far end of these tunnels, you can see grafiti in *pencil* on one of the walls from the 40's - where soldiers wrote messagges to their girlfriends, and recorded their serial numbers and rank etc - totally amazing.

However, one of the most interesting features is a room - totally unlit, and slightly flooded - and in the middle is a bell, raised slightly above the water.

Story goes that during the war to boost morale, a bell that tolled in the fashion of Big Ben was comissioned, so it could remind people of 'the motherland' etc - as time progressed, it was moved to the St James tunnels, where it's been chilling ever since.

Amazing stuff!

Permission or no permission, I beleive you can still get down into a bunch- sadly didnt have time to attempt anything this time.

Almost every rail system in every country has ghost platforms - I even spotted a few in Tokyo, there are ones in Toronto that I've seen.. they're really amazing.

The UK has *so* much to explore because of its long history - and almost every place has so manby stories and so much history attached to it!

You might find this interesting: http://siologen.net/pbase/thumbnails.php?album=9

Simon - you might know this site, but if you don't I think you'll like it

google 'derelict london'

(I can't post URLs until I've hit 30 posts)

Damian
Playboy UK

never knew London from this side

Siolo is the guy we were hanging out with when we were over. Apart from being a totally cool guy, we're good friends as well - and he really is an urbex guru!

Great PICS!!!!

Neat site. They have Woolwich Aresenal on there. I live nearby. I should go take up to date pictures for them because they have made the whole place classy flats and a military museum.

a lot of info on the below the surface stuff at Subterranea Britannica

I had a look at derelict london - great site. I guess it was a little depressing how many of the locations were within a mile of my place!

Woolwich Arsenal is now very swish indeed. Cheap too, shame its so far away from civilisation.

yup i seen them alot