A Journey of Discovery

As a born and bred Londoner I am bound to say that my natal city is the greatest in the world. I fully realise how subjective this statement is, I doubt there is a person alive (or dead) who has managed to visit every city on the planet in order to make comparisons, and I am a particularly impoverished international traveller. However, I stand by what I say simply because London has everything I want and still has the power to surprise and excite me after half a century of living in the bosom of the Great Wen. I also feel as I grow older that the city feels more organic, and that I am part of it, whether this is the premature onset of senility or something more profound I do not know, but I love the idea that all that has passed here is just waiting to be resurrected by an inquisitive mind and that the knowledge to be gained will make me even more of a Londoner than I already am. This particular adventure started in the London section of Foyle's bookshop on the Charing Cross Road on a balmy August Saturday in 2010, I picked up a book call London Plaques by Derek Sumeray and John Sheppard and, as I leafed through the information packed pages it felt like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle was falling into place. I instantly purchased the book and repaired to the Angel public house on nearby St Giles High Street for a pint and a perusal. Like most Londoners I was aware of the blue plaques celebrating the lives and achievements of the capital's finest citizens, now I had in my hands a guide to all of these, and more; Plaques erected by organizations as diverse as the Dead Comics Society and the London Hellenic Society; and not only people, there are plaques commemorating places long gone, especially in the City of London, and these in particular have the power to bring the past alive; some1,800 plaques in total. I decided there and then that I would attempt to visit and photograph them all. My first two forays into the field were made using detailed itineraries compiled from the book planned to include all the plaques in any given area, but I found this approach strangely unrewarding so now I leave the book at home, using it only as a reference tool and just wander the streets photographing the plaques as I find them; using this method it will obviously take more time to visit all of the plaques on offer, but I am not in such a great hurry and, as the good doctor said: when a man is tired of London.......

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Sir Joseph William BAZALGETTE

17 Hamilton Terrace, NW8 (Greater London Council)

One of my favourites, and surely one of the most important men in London's history. As the chief engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works from 1856 to 1859 he had that Victorian "can do" attitude in spades. His most important project was the building of London' s sewerage system, completed in 1865; as well as ameliorating the "great stink" the resulting cleaner water finally put paid to the Cholera epidemics which claimed so many lives in the burgeoning metropolis of 2.5 million people. Around 318 million bricks were used during its construction leading to a 50% increase in the price of this basic building commodity These Victorian sewers are only now being replaced and, as a child I remember being awestruck at the Gothic splendour of Abbey Mills pumping station, thinking that it must have been the headquarters of some mysterious order of monks, not realising the more prosaic truth until well into adulthood. Bazalgette was also responsible for designing the Albert, Chelsea and Victoria Embankments along the Thames in central London and and the bridges at Battersea, Hammersmith and Putney which span the capital's river.
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