please empty your brain below
Worked on the south side of the Strand above Temple station for many years - 20 years ago now... Temple Bar was the only place that did coffee then (eventually along came the Seattle Coffee Company and the rest is history). Slightly watery 'latte' in Styrofoam cups with fragile, thin and crisp plastic lids - care: sharp when broken. Buttered sugar buns were the treat of choice. Don't recall the submariners memorial but do everything else.

Ken | 13.12.13 - 6:29 a.m. | #

Now you've got me thinking - three RN ships surviving from World War I. One of them is President, the second is HMS Caroline in Belfast (only ship left from Jutland), but what is the third?

(technically, it could be HMS Victory, as she has always been in comission since 1778, but I don't think that is in keeping with the spirit of the question.)

And how can a Police Telephone Box ever be too small to be a Tardis?

Marc | 13.12.13 - 6:59 a.m. | #

What a fine series of posts about a part of London I always enjoy walking along. Thanks DG.

Waterhouse | 13.12.13 - 8:12 a.m. | #

Also worth mentioning that the cabman's shelter round the corner from Temple station does really nice sausage sandwiches (or at least it did when I was at LSE a couple of years ago). Alas, you get them from a little window at the end - civilians aren't allowed in the shelter itself.

Baldassaro | 13.12.13 - 9:04 a.m. | #

Great series. Now for the south bank?

Passed by Two Temple Place on the other side?

Obviously Westminster Hall is rather old, but was the river much closer when it was built? or to put it anoher way, is (most of) the modern Palace of Westminster on an embankment too? Victoria Tower Gardens as well perhaps?

Andrew | 13.12.13 - 9:11 a.m. | #

HQS Wellington, or rather its image, is familiar to long-time readers of 'Amateur Photographer' - the magazine's offices were on the south bank, so the white ship with many portholes was an ideal and convenient subject for testing the quality of photographic lenses.

Gordon | 13.12.13 - 9:25 a.m. | #

Does anyone know what happened to the miniature stone lighthouse which used to be on the jetty under Blackfriars bridge?

It was illustrated in Peter Jackson's 'London is Stranger Than Fiction' (1951), which said 'It is a model only a few feet high, made by a pilot named Taylor about 1910, and was at Southwark until the 'blitz' when it was moved to Blackfriars.'

The book, together with its companion 'London Explorer', reprinted articles from the Evening News, and has, I think been republished. Wonderful founts of knowledge of all things 'geezer-ish'. (Are you familiar with it, d-g?)

Don Petter | 13.12.13 - 9:58 a.m. | #

I don't know where you get the idea that there would be any gold in JP Morgan's basement. JPM is a financial services company, not a deposit-taking bank, and doesn't have vaults with piles of banknotes and gold in its buildings. The company may trade gold from the building but that doesn't mean it physically holds the stuff there.

Alex | 13.12.13 - 10:08 a.m. | #

King's Reach used to be commemorated by the tower on its south side – King's Reach Tower. This looks a bit like the NatWest Tower, aka Tower 42, with its rather brutal geometric style, as it had the same architect, Richard Seifert.

It was the home of publishers IPC until 2007, when they moved downriver a bit and sold it. Various property developers have messed about with it, but the current lot have been granted permission to add 11 more storeys and it looks like the redevelopment (mostly residential) is going ahead shortly.

Sadly, though, they've just changed the name to the blander 'South Bank Tower'. Shame.

ChrisM | 13.12.13 - 10:34 a.m. | #

"J.P. Morgan operates one of the two
largest commercial gold vaults in
London (one of only six in the City)
and is a member of the London gold
clearing system"
https://www.jpmorgan.com/cm/BlobServer/Golden_Opportunitiespdf.pdf?blobkey=id&blobnocache=true&blobwhere=1320534214257&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 13.12.13 - 10:56 a.m. | #

Thanks for a thoroughly enjoyable stroll along the Embankment.

CornishCockney | 13.12.13 - 4:35 p.m. | #

I remember when Scott's ship "The Discovery" was moored on the Embankment prior to be sent up to Dundee.

kissenme | 13.12.13 - 5:43 p.m. | #

Thanks DG for a thoroughly enjoyable read

I can remember the trams that ran along the embankment and also that. for a period after the Second World War, buses were parked up here on both sides between the morning and evening peaks to save fuel by not running the buses back to their garages.

Tony | 13.12.13 - 9:46 p.m. | #

Ah, trams. Presumably DG passed the secret entrance to the subway to Kingsway, under Waterloo Bridge.

Andrew | 14.12.13 - 9:38 a.m. | #

Oops, yes, I forgot the trams. I've just gone back and added a mention on the Waterloo Bridge section, ta.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 14.12.13 - 9:50 a.m. | #

An interesting quirk of the Embankment is the asymmetrical street lighting. The City end has lights on the riverside and in the middle of the road, and is much darker than the Westminster stretch where there are much grander lights on either side of the road.

http://goo.gl/maps/e1TCT shows the difference.

Not something you'd normally notice but I cycle there most days and don't enjoy the dark stretch after Blackfriars bridge.

Rob | 14.12.13 - 11:15 a.m. | #

A lovely walk along the Embankment, DG, many thanks. I remember the area around the Temple very well from my days as a student at King's College London in the early 1990s. I used to eat sandwich lunches in Embankment Gardens very often because the Student Union bar (the Mandela Bar, naturally) in the Strand campus was so awful.

Stilted Banter | 14.12.13 - 7:13 p.m. | #

the name King's Reach also lives on in the names of broadcast circuits between ITV's studios and BT Tower - they're all prefixed KRS, for King's Reach Studios.

martin | 15.12.13 - 8:08 p.m. | #

does anyone know why City of London "guarded" by 'dragons'?

E | 16.12.13 - 6:18 p.m. | #

Well, the dragon at Temple Bar has been there since the 1880s.

In the 1960s, the City Corporation was looking for something suitable to mark its boundaries. The two original 1840s dragon statues from the Coal Exchange were available after it was demolished in 1962 (to allow Thames Street to be widened, a tragedy similar to the demolition of the Euston Arch).

The Corporation preferred the chunky dragon from the Coal Exchange to C. B. Birch's fierce, wiry one.

As to why dragons: they are the supporters on the city's coat of arms, which is based on the cross of St George (who reputedly fought a dragon).

Andrew | 16.12.13 - 11:29 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy