Results tagged “wharfinger”

Among the many hazards facing the modern Londoner, death by earthquake must feature low on the list.

But not for two unfortunates who were among the toll of a quake of April 6, 1580. Originating in the Dover Straits, the quake sent tremors across the south east. It was one of the largest in the recorded history of the country.

Lord Nelson's first military honour was the insignia of the Order of the Bath, presented to the English flag officer by King George III in September 1797 for his role in the successful Battle of Cape St Vincent.

The piece consists of an "eight-pointed silver Breast Star", surrounding a gold and red enamel ring at the centre.

John Reith, pictured, general manager of the BBC, discussed the idea of broadcasting "Greenwich Standard Time" with astronomer royal Sir Frank Dyson in 1923 soon after the Summer Time Act had extended BST.

In December of that year, two clocks used by the Royal Observatory were modified to generate time signals for other users.

Dr Richard Beeching has gone down in history as the most hated civil servant. His "axe" closed miles of railway lines and underused stations.

The aim was to put the rail system into profit by culling loss-making routes.

But the effect was to give 1960s Britain a taste for using their cars.

While Peckham has something of an insalubrious reputation now, the haunt of Delboy has a rich and long history.

The district south of Rotherhithe was noted in the Domesday book as "Pechecha", an Anglo Saxon word meaning village among the hills (in this case, referring to the hills of Honor Oak, Nunhead and Plow Garlick).

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus runs at Shakespeare's Globe and a quote from his most famous play is engraved upon a stone in St Nicholas's Church, Deptford, where he is bured in an unmarked grave following his fatal stabbing in 1593.

The East End was originally considered to be the district outside the medieval walled City of London, north of the river.

Today such an area would consist of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with some of the southern part of Hackney.

The canal network has mostly been turned over to pleasure craft and, in some areas, the artificial water feature has been converted into a centrepiece for upmarket homes.

And so it is the case for Limehouse Basin, a former quay of what was once known as Regent's Canal Dock.

Lightermen were workers who transferred goods between ships, anchored in the middle of river, and quays, aboard flat-bottomed barges called lighters in the Port of London.

This was no mean feat. The shifting tides of the Thames required concentration and skill and, in the early days, considerable muscle to pull the lighters to the dockside.

Nelson House in Rotherhithe was probably not named after the famous admiral. Instead its origins lie in the 1740s when it was built for one of the shipbuilding owners linked to the nearby Nelson Dock.

The front entrance of Nelson House faces Rotherhithe Street - rather than the Thames - suggesting that, in an earlier life, it led to the shipyard.

High on the agenda of the the London Docklands Development Corporation was transport links from west to east.

The railway question was answered, in part, by plans for a light railway but on the roads, there was an equally ambitious scheme.

On June 11, 1509, the Franciscan Church at Greenwich witnessed a wedding that would have seismic implications for the future course of the country.

The wedding was between King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon who became Queen a few days after the ceremony.

The plight of dock workers throughout the centuries has always been the uncertainty of work and the over-supply of labour. This tended towards low wages and battles between rivals for the scarce jobs.

When they did find a grievance on which they could unite, industrial action was usually effective. The London Dock Strike of 1889 was painful but heralded the rise of the trade union and labour movements.

The City of London is cut through with a web of alleyways, some of them still cobbled, which reflect its past as a place of conviviality and gossip.

One such alleyway, and frequently cited as one of the City's most evocative and attractive is Lovat Lane, although that was not its original name.

Back in 1798, the port of London was rich pickings for every smuggler, pilferer and petty thief. Very little in the way of vigilance stopped sailors and dockers from skimming the precious cargos from around the world.

Merchants were losing an estimated £500,000 a year from the Pool of London and something had to be done.

An incongruous slab memorial sits beside a Rotherhithe tunnel ventilation shaft in King Edward VII Memorial Park.

It remembers an Elizabethan adventurer Sir Hugh Willoughby who set off on an ill-fated exploration at the nearby Ratcliff Stairs.

The name Edward Dent may not be well known but one piece of work is one of the famous icons in the world.

The Great Clock (colloquially known as Big Ben) at the Houses of Parliament is probably the single most famous timekeeper in the world.

Temple Bar once marked the western limit of the City, and took its name from the Temple Church nearby.

The monument that stands outside the Royal Courts of Justice marking the original site of the gate was erected in 1880, topped with the symbol of the City, a winged dragon.

The Old Vic in Waterloo Road was designed in the early 1800s by Rudolph Cabanel of Aachen as a "house of melodrama" with some materials from the Savoy Palace that was demolished to make way for the approaches to Waterloo Bridge.

Since then it has a number of incarnations and name changes.

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George ripped into the house of Lords for its opposition to his people's budget in 1909, his attack became known as "Limehousing".

It was phrase that would soon encompass all incendiary political speeches.