Central London at Jubilee time

Tags

Admiralty Arch, Bloomsbury Square Gardens, Buckingham Palace, Caffe Concerto, Diana Fountain, Elizabeth Line, Grenadier Guards, King George VI, marabou stork, Oxford Circus, Paddington Station, Piccadilly, platinum jubilee, Queen Ekizabeth the Queen Mother, Queen Mary's Gardens, Regent Street, Regent's Park, Ride London, The Mall, The Ritz, Trooping the Colour

The purpose of my trip to London was to see the Stonehenge Exhibition at the British Museum, but it would have been impossible not to be aware that a rather significant jubilee was about to be celebrated, that marking 70 years of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Just in time for the festivities, (but five years late) the Elizabeth tube (metro/subway) line had been opened just three days before my trip. The driver of the mainline train bringing me up from the West Country had helpfully said that access was to be found to the side of Platform 1 of Paddington main line station. Just as well, since there was no signage until very near to the entrance.

Movement was among airy, cavernous stations throughout, and what felt like natural daylight everywhere.

The trains are light and airy as well, open end to (very long) end. Like certain sections of the Circle Line.

My goodness did the Elizabeth Line make a difference to my own movements around the capital! Just 3.5 minutes from Paddington main line station to Tottenham Court Road underground station, (which will increase marginally when the the line’s Bond Street platform opens in the autumn. Meanwhile its roundels read alternately, as we whizzed through, ‘Station Closed’ and ‘Opening Soon’).

Once I had arrived at Tottenham Court Road, my saving of time all evaporated. Even though I had the assistance of the sun’s shadows to determine points of the compass, I still managed to set off in the wrong direction, and what should have been a 6-minute walk turned into a 20-minute one. Thank goodness for texts/SMSs. Mary was able to go and have a coffee while she waited for me.

Once I’d made it to the museum

we made use of Mary’s membership of it, and had a coffee in the members’ cafe.

I’ll cover the exhibition itself in my next blog post.

Mary knows London bus routes inside out, and after our visit to the excellent exhibition she confidently had us walking past Bloomsbury Square Gardens,

to the stop we needed for the bus to get to her home in Kentish Town,

where I was invited to join in a Zoom call with Mary and her siblings,

before her eldest, Susan, top left, who lives very near, joined us for a meal.

The following morning, Saturday, was Mary’s regular get-together for tennis in Regent’s Park. It was a little chilly to begin with, but this did not detract from enjoying the wonderful display of roses.

Crossing the Inner Circle, which surrounds the rose garden, a.k.a. Queen Mary’s Gardens, was a risk to life and limb as cyclists whizzed round!

I took many photos of them, of which here are a very few.

At the tennis courts.

Zooming in on the far end of the courts, I could make out a tennis lesson for youngsters.

I had seen a photo of a flag-lined Mall, and had a yen to reproduce it myself. After we had had sociable coffee with the other tennis players, Mary’s unerring knowledge of the routes soon got us to a bus which would take us to Trafalgar Square. Oxford Circus was not very busy (she said).

Regent Street more so. The yellow sign warns of road closures for the following day to enable Ride London to take place.

I hoped to take my photo of the Mall through Admiralty Arch, but this was as near as I could get, as a very polite policeman directed me back round the outside of the Arch. (Ride London also was inconvenienced by the Jubilee preparations as it usually finishes in the Mall, but did so this year at Tower Bridge.)

The Arch from the Mall side.

I post this photo only to show another, very cheery, policeman.

More zooming in, and this was the best I could do for my hoped-for photo. Crowds (and clean-up lorries) prevented me from getting dead centre.

We had alighted on the tail end of a rehearsal, for, as we soon learned, Trooping the Colour, part of next weekend’s Jubilee celebrations. Did the crowd know of the rehearsal, or had they, just like us, stumbled on it by chance? There were absolute hordes there, making photographic opportunity very random.

Two young Grenadier Guards were selling programmes for the ceremony. (I have no idea what is in the mind of the fellow to the right.)

Two Grenadier Guards selling programmes for the forthcoming ceremony

Statues of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother that I’d never seen before.

I was hoping to take a photo of the front of Buckingham Palace, but we were diverted by solid barriers before getting there. We skirted round to the right, and at one point I could see the whole of the roof of the building over the barriers. Two men from a private security firm were standing by, and one of them (the other held back all the time) told me “No photos, security.” “Ridiculous’ I thought, and said, ‘this is the UK!’ I was quite riled, especially as it called to my mind an incident that had occurred to me on my first day in Uganda in 2013, when a corrupt young soldier (again with his companion holding right back) tried to get my camera from me because I had taken a photo of an enormous bird (a Marabou stork if I remember correctly) in a tree next to some kind of military establishment. I was quite sure he was only going to let me have it back on payment of a ransom, so I wasn’t going to let it go. I won. Anyway, I was quite sure that this security man, whether misinformed or just plain bossy, had got it wrong. There were no notices of any sort forbidding photography, nor could there be any possible reason to justify what he said.

In due course I gave up, and a few steps further on was able to take his photo, with, though it does not show up, a corner of Buckingham Palace in the background, and no-one objecting.

And just a few yards further on, I got this corner of the Palace.

We crossed Green Park to get to Piccadilly,

The Diana Fountain, 1952.

decided not to have lunch at the Ritz, (!)

and settled on Caffe Concerto over the road,

where Mary notice the interesting functional ceiling, à la Pompidou Centre,

and we had a very nice meal, chosen from a very wide menu.

Emerging on to Piccadilly, we saw that it had flags too, though not at such frequent intervals as we had seen elsewhere.

Regent Street had lots.

Back in Kentish Town, we called into a cake shop, and bought a celebratory ‘Queen’s Jubilee White Chocolate Chip Cookie’ each, which we had with a cup of coffee, or half a cookie each anyway. It was very sweet and very enormous.

A game of ‘Upwords’, at which Mary, as usual, beat me, and it was time for me to leave. Again the Elizabeth Line helped speed me on my way to Paddington, and this time it was quite crowded. Today the news tells us that in its first five days, a million journeys were made on it. Mine contributed two to that total.

Focus on Street

Tags

alderfly, Bear Inn Street, Blue lias, buttercups, C & J Clark, Clyce Hole, comfrey, Cow Bridge, Crispin Centre, Hay harvesting, Horse and cart, icthyosaur, Jonathan Minshull, Laura Wolfers, Liz Leyshon, Mendip District Council, oil seed rape, peat extraction, Poldens, quarrying, River Brue, robin, shoemaking, Somerset Council, Somerset County Council, Street, Street Parish Council

Street village, that is. (It prides itself on being a village, despite being bigger than the town of Glastonbury to its north, on the other side of the River Brue.)

On Saturday (14th May) I was invited by my friend Liz, Somerset County and Mendip District Councillor, who lives in Street, to the unveiling of some murals in the Library Gardens, a small green space on Street’s High Street. (How did Street get its name? “The place-name ‘Street’ is first attested in Anglo-Saxon charters from 725 and 971, where it appears as Stret. It appears as Strete juxta Glastone in a charter from 1330 formerly in the British Museum. The word is the Old English straet meaning ‘Roman road’.”) The Wikipedia article on Street, while needing a bit of an update, has a lot of interesting background information.

The murals were commissioned by Street Parish Council, working in partnership with Mendip District Council (to merge, in a year’s time, along with Somerset’s three other district councils, and with Somerset County Council, to become a new unitary authority called Somerset Council) and Street Library Trust. They were painted by local artist Jonathan Minshull.

When Laura Wolfers, Chair of Street Parish Council, reached out to shake my hand, I realised that this was the first time I had shaken anyone’s hand since February 2020. Whereas in March of that year, I had declined to do so several times, with explanation, it would now have been very awkward to do so, although I am still being very cautious. And I have to admit, it felt good, alongside feelings of worried hesitancy. She didn’t seem to take it amiss when I then took a photograph of her chest, in order to capture Street’s ichthyosaur emblem (since 1894) at the base of her Chairman’s chain. (A parish council does not have a mayor.)

Here she is introducing the artist.

Among the many people taking photographs was her son.

And here are the murals. The captions are as provided in a handout.

“This panel represents the shoemaking process during Edwardian times inside the old C & J Clark’s factory buildings in Street, around 1900-1910.”

“This scene shows summer hay harvesting in the meadows to the south of the Clark’s factory buildings in Street in Victorian times around1860-1880.”

“The image shows the discovery of the ichthyosaur fossil specimens at one of the Street ‘blue lias’ limestone quarries in the 1850s. Here some discoveries have been dragged to near the quarry entrance ready for transportation to the recently started Clark’s collection and a lady from the village has brought her daughter to see the fascinating finds.”

Liz unveiled the fourth:

“This panorama shows the manual process of peat extraction from the levels around Street at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, before mechanisation. The peat was cut into blocks calles ‘”mumps” or “turves” and stacked to dry in tower-like formations called “ruckles”, before transportation by horse and cart.”

There were some very short speeches, including by the artist.

While thanking friends and relatives for posing as the figures in the pictures, he said it was as well that one such, who appeared in each mural, was not there, as he was rather naughty. He was referring to his dog, Stanley.

Liz, who had been very much involved in finding the finance, also was invited to speak.

[Later edit: 33-minute background video on the making, hanging and unveiling of the murals here.]

People hung around chatting to each other, as they do on these occasions, enjoying the lovely sunshine. Then five of us went for coffee and cake in the Crispin Centre’s café.

Liz had collected me from my home in Glastonbury, and volunteered to take me back, but I had already decided that I was going to walk, following the River Brue for much of the way. I had to go along the pavement of a main road for about ten minutes.

Part of Clark’s 19th century building, also seen in the second mural. It is flying the Somerset flag.

Like so many buildings in Street, and wider in Somerset, the Bear Inn is built in Blue Lias limestone.

After a short while, I was able to see my destination, by looking to my right.

Still on the road, and having crossed this rhyne, I had thought possibly to cut diagonally across to the Brue, but an electric fence redirected me.

But in due course I was able to reach the river. What a pleasure to walk among all those buttercups!

I reached the river.

Not buttercups here, but oil seed rape,

and comfrey

Many specimens of these creatures had been flying around for a while, and after extensive research, I think they are probably alderflies, of which I had never previously heard. They fly for just a few weeks each year.

Clyce Hole (or Clyse Hole, depending on which Environment Agency panel you read), a water level measuring station

The River Brue was severely canalised, and indeed its channel to the sea redirected, in mediaeval times, and it shows from here on.

This little fella flew on to the branch, and just stayed there while I cautiously moved past him.

Being south of the Brue, I was still in Street, and this was my view southwards, with the lowest range of hills in Somerset, the Poldens, in the distance.

Not the most exciting bridge, Cow Bridge, circa 1930, of reinforced concrete with stone piers. Could one claim that it is art deco?

Anyway, it was time for me to cross and leave the Brue, and continue on to a rather busy main road. But I leant on the parapet contemplating upstream for a bit,

along with my neighbour, Terry, who I had just bumped into here. He was just out to take photos of buttercups.

Together we watched a rather unusual sight go by, after which I set off for the last, and easily the least interesting, leg of my walk.

They and I were rather a nuisance to the quite heavy traffic in each direction… no pavement…

After five minutes more I came to my turning off the main road. Taking the stile would have enabled me to continue on grass for about 100 yards/90 metres or so, but

I took advantage of a recently installed (local elections anyone?) barrier, the forerunner of a cycle lane to be created, in place of an unofficial traveller encampment.

Door to door it had been an hour, which would have been more like 45 minutes had I not stopped for various reasons on the way. A very pleasant walk indeed, in ideal weather, following a happy occasion for Street residents and visitors.

Milton Lodge Gardens

Tags

camass, Glastonbury Tor, Mendip Hills, Milton Lodge Gardens, National Gardens Scheme, ransoms, red kite, triple entry pond, Wells, Wells Cathedral, wild garlic, Wrington

After a pleasant ‘first Friday’ walk with my friend Zoe, starting and finishing in the village of Wrington in North Somerset,

on Sunday I visited Milton Lodge Gardens, just north of England’s smallest city, Wells. It is open to the public three times a week, but this time it was in aid of the National Gardens Scheme.

The weather was lovely, and the outing was popular, so I had to use the overflow car park, from which this was the view, with Glastonbury Tor, whence I had come, a pimple on the horizon.

Right near where I had parked, was this curious depression, explained in a note nearby to be a ‘triple entry pond’, unique to Mendip, and likely to date from the late 1700s. It was constructed to capture naturally draining water from the Mendip Hills, and used to channel water underground to nearly stock fields.

According to Wikipedia, “Milton Lodge was built by Aaron Foster in 1790 and descended in his family until it passed, by marriage, into the ownership of the Tudway family in the mid 19th century. The Tudways had lived nearby at a house, known as The Cedars, which was built in the 1760s by Thomas Paty, and had bought up much of the local land. In 1909 Charles Tudway moved the main family residence to Milton Lodge, with The Cedars being used during World War I as a military hospital and later by Wells Theological College and Wells Cathedral School” [which it still is].

The same source goes on to say that, “The garden was laid out in 1903 by Capt Croker Ives Partridge of the Alfred Parsons garden design company for Charles Tudway. It consists of a series of terraces planted with mixed borders including a collection of roses and climbing plants. The terraces include Yew hedges, ponds and fountains.^[4] The traditional English vegetation is supplemented with Mediterranean plants which are able to flourish due to the microclimate of the site. The upper terrace includes four canons from the Napoleonic Wars are on display.”

Wells Cathedral can just about be made out middle left.

My Candide app suggested that this, of which there were several examples in the Gardens, might be a Flowering maple, (which is not a maple at all but an abutilon), but I’m not quite convinced, while failing to find a better suggestion…

The Gardens go just beyond the big hedge.

As I had walked from the car park, the way was lined with wild garlic, ransoms. I did not take a photo, but need not have worried about there being no further opportunity.

I was tempted up this tiny path to my right, (the terraces being to my left),

and was rewarded with this.

I returned to the main path, went down a few shallow steps, and found a few more ransoms.

Into parkland.

A clearer view of Wells Cathedral

As I said, the Gardens go down to just beyond the big hedge.

At the end of this path was a large area of wildflowers.

My app identified this as Camass, of which I am more confident

On the edge of the wildflower area was this knobbly tree, which I have failed totally to identify,

even given the clue of its leaf shape.

Just by the tree was a bench, one of several in the Gardens. I partook for a minute or two, surveying the lowest terrace

As I stood up, something made my eyes turn skywards, and I was thrilled to see this red kite. It is now some 30+ years since they were reintroduced into the Chiltern Hills. I had seen some in Scotland in 2011 following their reintroduction there, and I knew that they had spread westwards from Oxfordshire into Somerset. But this was the first I had seen here.

I walked through the tea area to explore the middle terrace.

Turning round I spotted a bench hidden on the other side where I thought it would be nice to take a cup of tea.

It’s hidden!

‘Olivia Rose Austin‘

Tea and cake duly bought, I found ‘my’ bench still unoccupied, with this to my left,

this to my right,

and this ahead.

As I returned to my car, it was all too tempting to take an arty photo of the Cathedral, where I shall be singing at a memorial service in a week’s time.