In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house ...
5 days ago · Bethelem Hospital with London Wall in Foreground – Drawn June 1812. Two centuries ago, John Thomas Smith set out to record the last vestiges of ancient London that survived from before the Great Fire of 1666 but which were vanishing in his lifetime.You can click on any of these images to enlarge them and study the tender human detail that Smith recorded in these splendid etchings he made ...
At The Mansion House | Spitalfields Life
5 days ago · Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman & I were granted the privilege of a visit to the Mansion House designed by George Dance the Elder (1739) in the City of London. I use the word privilege because this gleaming palace that serves as the official residence of the Lord Mayor of the City is an embodiment of the notion.
The Closure Of Smithfield Market | Spitalfields Life
Nov 29, 2024 · Another rich piece of London history. Family friends of ours dating back to the early 1950s, owned the very lucrative Christmas Turkey business at Smithfield and I have a couple of wonderful photos of an occasion when Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (King Charles III’s grandmother) was visiting the Market and was photographed with those friends.
Lost Spitalfields | Spitalfields Life
Oct 16, 2024 · Now one of those little houses on Buxton Street would suit me just fine! Although I grew up in Chelsea and not the East End, our childhood playgrounds back in the 1950s were bombsites, although forbidden by our parents to go near them, but we were streetwise and lived in a great Community, everyone having gone through the same experiences, and there for each other if you needed help.
A Final Walk Home - Spitalfields Life
Jan 6, 2025 · I thought long and hard about what to do with my parents’ ashes. My dad died four years ago and my mum last year. In 2015, my parents moved into a little bungalow opposite my house leaving behind their home in St Margaret’s at Cliffe, Kent.
Literary Life - Spitalfields
Dec 1, 2024 · There are more than 5,000 stories by The Gentle Author with 43,000 pictures to be found in the categories and archives on this site
In Old Globetown - Spitalfields Life
Jan 17, 2025 · I took advantage of rare hours of January sunlight to take a stroll over to Globetown. You walk east from Museum Gardens in Bethnal Green through Sugar Loaf Walk and immediately recognise you have entered a different neighbourhood, where an atmosphere of domestic quietude prevails in distinct contrast to the clamour you encountered at the junction of Bethnal Green Rd and Cambridge Heath Rd ...
The Interregnum In Spitalfields
Feb 2, 2024 · Today Philip Marriage introduces this series of photographs published for the first time here. “These photographs were taken almost thirty years ago, 1994-5, during what I think of as ‘The Interregnum’ – the period after the old Spitalfields Market had moved to Leyton but before the wholesale redevelopment of Brushfield St and its inexorable gentrification.
In Search Of Daniel Defoe | Spitalfields Life
Jan 11, 2025 · Defoe’s obelisk at Bunhill Fields. A year after Lockdown I turned to Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year to compare notes. His experience was much like ours in many ways: the first signs in Holland, followed by rumours regarding possible origins in Italy or the Levant, mirrored our own experiences watching Italy and Wuhan.
Lost Spitalfields | Spitalfields Life
Sep 24, 2021 · A splendid set of photographs. Give it another 100 years and what is there now will be a thing of the past too. I think the photograph marked as ’52 & 9a Artillery Passage, 1680s’ should probably read 1880s.