Symbols & Secrets – Walking the City of London

A ‘country estate’ and Frieze 2026.

By The City Gent

On 24th September 2026

In Memorials, Parks, Sculpture

This resembles a country estate. Where do you think it is?

An elegant family home overlooks the carefully landscaped gardens …

The coat of arms of the Bute family who acquired the lease to the house and gardens in 1889 …

Classy statuary …

Pretty views into the distance …

Well, you may be surprised to find out, as I was when I visited, that it’s a little hidden enclave in Regent’s Park. It is very easy to miss the entrance with its discreet signage …

The statue above is entitled The Goatherd’s Daughter. It’s a Grade II listed bronze of a woman carrying a young goat and was erected in honour of Harold and Gertrude Baillie Weaver by the National Council for Animal Welfare in 1932. Designed by Charles Leonard Harwell, it won him the Royal British Society of Sculptors Silver Medal. The inscription reads: “To all the Protectors of the Defenceless”.

This sculpture by Unus Safardier (b. 1968) is entitled The Awakening and is inscribed on the plinth “In fond memory of Anne Lydia Evans 1929-1999 who shared the secret of this garden” …

Anne was a local GP who, in 1980, took a year off to become professor of family health at the American University in Beirut. After witnessing the ferocity of the war in Lebanon, she was drawn, when she returned to London, to work with the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.

The Statue above the pond is Hylas and the Nymph by Henry Pegram, completed 1922 and installed here in 1933 …

You can read more about the work and see more images here.

A beautiful place for calm and contemplation …

Incidentally, just inside the entrance is this memorial to the journalist Anne Sharpley (1928-1989) …

A true Fleet Street character. According to her Wikipedia entry, she reputedly told Ann Leslie that a female foreign correspondent should: ‘First, sleep with the resident Reuters correspondent and then with the chief of police. That way you’ll pick up stories before anyone else’. She was known for scooping other reporters with her account of Winston Churchill‘s funeral, by vandalising a telephone after filing it, thereby delaying her rivals’ reports. At work in the newsroom, reportedly Randolph Churchill nicknamed her ‘Shapely Sharpley’ …

Bromide print, June 1965, by J.S. Lewinski. © The National Portrait Gallery

Judging by her memorial she was obviously much loved and highly respected.

The house overlooking the garden is St John’s Lodge …

It was originally built in 1818 by John Raffield and was the second villa in the park to be occupied. In 1847 it belonged to the wealthy and eminent Goldsmid brothers and was greatly enlarged by Charles Barry. In 1889 the lease was acquired by the 3rd Marquess of Bute, who commissioned Robert Weir Schultz to improve the garden layout. The building was later used as a hospital for disabled officers during the First World War, it was the Headquarters of St. Dunstan’s from 1921-1937 and the Institute of Archaeology 1937-58. An image from the late 1940s …

It is now a private residence, with public access to the gardens. I strongly recommend reading more about its fascinating history as a hospital and a rehabilitation centre here.

It was a nice surprise to find that Frieze Sculpture had returned to the park and will remain there until 1 November 2026. It is its fourth year curated by Fatoş Üstek and includes 11 leading international artists whose work will be sited throughout gardens.

Here is a selection.

I shall publish a few more images next week.

I loved the shape of this old tree …

As seen from the Regent’s Park Inner Circle on the way to the St John’s Garden, Cotoneaster rothschildianus, an semi-evergreen shrub or small tree famed for its clusters of creamy-yellow berries …

And Amaranthus caudatus …

An eye-catching annual plant famously known by the common names love-lies-bleeding, pendant amaranth, cat’s tail and, apparently, ladies’ riding whip (!).

In other news.

Am I weird for really liking these?

Big slabs of chocolate. My mum used to make a version of the cornflake one (happy days) …

The seriously posh and French Ladurée at Broadgate …

Closer to home, a Barbican artist at work …

At Moorgate station …

Professor Google tells me ‘A Schweerbau rail grinder is a specialised compact maintenance machine used to profile, smooth, and remove surface defects or corrugation from railway tracks’.

Love this mad character. Who says the Germans don’t have a sense of humour …

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A stroll around St Paul’s, a new memorial at Smithfield, a party and an angry Coot.

By The City Gent

On 17th September 2026

In Animals, Architecture, Memorials

This sign on London Wall a few weeks ago indicated a major change to the area around St Paul’s Cathedral …

The St Paul’s Gyratory Transformation Project is a major £19m scheme by the City of London Corporation to replace a 1970s traffic system with pedestrian-friendly public spaces and safer travel routes. One of the development’s nicest features is Greyfriars Square, a new 3,500 sq m public space, the largest in the Square Mile, is being built near Christ Church Greyfriars and St Paul’s Cathedral. You can experience a fly-through visualisation here.

I popped along to have a look last weekend and there is obviously a lot of work under way …

I walked around the Cathedral area a few weeks ago on one of the nice, but not too hot, sunny days last week and took a few images.

The heyday of the postal service …

I still find it bizarre that Royal Mail is now owned by a Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský through his investment vehicle, EP Group, following a £3.6 billion takeover of its parent company, International Distribution Services.

The heyday of the Empire as well as the Post Office …

A glimpse of Lady Justice in the distance …

The ruins of Christ Church Greyfriars and its pretty little garden will be an integral part of the new Greyfriars Square …

In Paternoster Square is a 1975 bronze sculpture by Elisabeth Frink which I particularly like – a ‘naked’ shepherd with a crook in his left hand walks behind a small flock of five sheep ……

Dame Elisabeth was, anecdotally, very fond of putting large testicles on her sculptures of both men and animals. In fact, her Catalogue Raisonné informs us that she ‘drew testicles on man and beast better than anyone’ and saw them with ‘a fresh, matter-of-fact delight’. It was reported in 1975, however, that the nude figure had been emasculated ‘to avoid any embarrassment in an ecclesiastical setting’. The sculpture is called, appropriately, Paternoster.

Paternoster Square Art Installation …

Since the weather was so nice, I took the opportunity to capture a few images of the bust of one-time Dean of St Paul’s John Donne …

It’s by Nigel Boonham (2012).

His bust points almost due west but shows him turning to the east towards his birthplace on Bread Street. The directions of the compass were important to Donne in his metaphysical work: east is the Rising Sun, the Holy Land and Christ, while west is the place of decline and death. Underneath the bust are inscribed words from his poem Good Friday – Riding Westward :

Hence is’t that I am carried towards the west, This day when my soul’s form bends to the east

The most familiar quotation from Donne comes from his Meditation XVII – Devotions upon Emergent Occasions published in 1624:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Something I had never noticed before is that there is an inscription on his shoulder. It’s from Donne’s verse letter to Lady Carey and Mistress Essex Rich: “True virtue’s soul’s always in all deeds all.” It is famous for being the only surviving verse in English written in Donne’s own handwriting …

I have written about Donne before and you can access the blog here.

I really like this work by Paul Mount (1922-2009), also to be found in the gardens. It’s called Amicale (2007) …

Mount was one of the last British artists whose careers were interrupted by the Second World War. A lifelong pacifist, he served in the Friends Ambulance Unit in North Africa and then France, where he stayed on after the end of the war to do relief work. Once free to work again, artists like him never really lost their sense of a world to be made anew through art. For Mount, sculpture expressed an essential human dignity. He observed …

The way that two shapes relate is as important as the way two people relate.

There is a nice obituary notice about him and his fascinating life in The Guardian which you can access here.

On my way to Smithfield I took an image of the Watch-House in Giltspur Street. It’s attached Holy Sepulchre church …

It was built in 1761, to keep guard over the church’s graveyard, which was then much larger and extended across the road. Lost in wartime bombing, it was rebuilt in 1962.

Originally a night watchman was employed here to stop recently buried corpses from being stolen by ‘resurrection men’ (body snatchers) …

According to Dani Middleton, bodies stolen at this graveyard would usually be taken to an inn on the opposite side of the road, where the landlord would tie the name of a doctor or student, who had paid for the body, on the cadaver’s toe. Then the customer, probably from a nearby hospital such as St Bartholomew’s, would visit the pub and collect it.

The building is home to a bust of Charles Lamb …

The wording reads: To the immortal memory of Charles Lamb. Perhaps the most loved name in English literature who was a Bluecoat Boy here for 7 years. B: 1775 D: 1834

Below the memorial there is a plaque reading: This memorial was moved here in December 1962 from Christchurch Greyfriars, Newgate Street, which stands beside the former site of Charles Lamb’s school Christ’s Hospital.

At the entrance to St Bartholomew the Great a new memorial has been installed to the famous martyr Anne Askew who was burnt at the stake outside the St Bartholomew gatehouse on July 16 1546 …

Anne was burnt along with John Lascelles (a lawyer and Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber), John Hadlam (a tailor from Essex) and John Hemsley (a former Franciscan friar). A great stage was built at Smithfield for the convenience of Chancellor Wriothesley, other members of the Privy Council and City dignitaries, to watch the burning in comfort.

The execution of Anne Askew and her companions – 1563 woodcut from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs …

Anne herself, having been illegally broken on the rack, was unable to stand, and was chained to the stake in a sitting position. You can read more about this fascinating, brave lady here. You can read and hear more about the new memorial here.

Every burning was different; if the fire ‘caught’, it could be over relatively quickly, but on damp days, or when the wind persisted in blowing the flames away from the body, it could take up to an hour for the condemned person to die, an hour of excruciating agony.

Their crime was heresy and of the 288 people estimated to have been burnt during the five year reign of Mary Tudor, forty eight were killed in Smithfield. ‘Bloody Mary’ was the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and the burnings were part of her campaign to reverse the English Reformation.

The ‘Marian Martyrs’ are commemorated with this plaque erected by the Protestant Alliance in 1870 …

The gilding is a little faded in this picture. It reads …

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. The noble army of martyrs praise Thee! Within a few feet of this spot,

John Rogers,

John Bradford,

John Philpot,

and other servants of God, suffered death by fire for the faith of Christ, in the years 1555, 1556, 1557

In other (more cheerful) news.

Two lovely City of London Police horses and their riders were here last Saturday to greet visitors to the Barbican Summer Party …

At the Party there was a long queue for the teddy bear zip-wire experience (although obviously much loved non-teddy creatures were allowed to participate as well) …

Some interesting stands in St Giles church …

Harry the Heron poses by the old barrel graves outside St Giles …

We were happily sitting on the Barbican Terrace with a cup of coffee and a slice of lemon drizzle cake when this character turned up, upstaging the hopeful pigeon who was there first …

So we shared a few crumbs with him, but when we stopped he was not happy. Have you ever been given the evil eye by a coot?

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‘The Bloody Code – Capital Punishment in Law and Art’ – an exhibition at the Barbican Library. And Lucien Freud’s dogs.

By The City Gent

On 10th September 2026

In Animals, Social History, Special Exhibitions

Before visiting the exhibition, I thought I would do a bit of research and found some really interesting information on the National Justice Museum website.

The system known as the Bloody Code was established in Britain in 1723 and imposed the death penalty for over 200 offences – many of which were surprisingly trivial.

Introduced under The Waltham Black Act, it was brought in as an emergency measure to deal with deer-stealing, and other activities in the royal forests, by men who disguised themselves by blacking their faces. It was sweeping in its scope, making more than fifty distinct offences capital for seven different group of offenders. Under the Bloody Code, the technical minimum age at which a child could be executed was seven years old provided the court found evidence of “malice” and criminal intent. Those aged seven to fourteen could face trial and capital punishment like adults if the prosecution proved they understood the difference between right and wrong.

The death sentence was also given out for a broad range of other rustic crimes such as damaging orchards, gardens, or cattle, with penalties attached to conspiring to commit any of these crimes or rescuing anyone imprisoned for these crimes. Between 1750 and 1815 a series of Acts/Statutes were added to the number of offences punishable by death, bringing the number to more than 200.

Examining a Sheep Stealer (not in the exhibition) …

As well as sheep stealing, some of the other offences attracting the death penalty were as follows: Murder/Arson/ Forgery/Cutting down trees/Stealing horses/Destroying turnpike roads/Stealing from a rabbit warren/Pickpocketing goods worth a shilling (about £30 today)/Being out at night with a blackened face/Being an unmarried mother concealing a stillborn child/Stealing from a shipwreck/Wrecking a fishpond.

There is no apparent definitive list of all 225 offences. But as each singular offence was added with its own statute, it was no wonder the number of capital offences grew to over 200.

However, it’s also worth noting that juries were often unwilling to find people guilty, so that offenders could escape the noose. Evidence suggests that fewer people were actually hanged under the Bloody Code than before it.

After much campaigning, social reformer Sir Samuel Romilly succeeded in repealing the death penalty for some minor crimes, and as the century progressed transportation became a more popular mode of punishment.

This exhibition explores the history of legalised killing and abolition movements by pairing historical publications from City archives with contemporary artistic responses.

Key highlights include 25 protest prints from California’s Center for the Study of Political Graphics, as well as historical broadsides and volumes sourced from various City libraries and archives.

Single sheets of cheap paper printed on one side only, broadsides were a common means of communication for close to three hundred years, up through the early 1800s. They were first used to post notices of royal proclamations and later expanded into notices of events, advertisements, ballad sheets, and political commentaries. Illustrations made from woodcuts were common, as pictures added interest.

Executions, ‘final words’ and ‘confessions’ were a common and very popular subject and there are some really good examples in this exhibition …

This is a tragic story …

Trial and execution broadsheets often included ‘copies of affecting verses’ or ‘last lamentations’, purported to be written by the criminals themselves, which linked the sentimental poet and the violent murderer. They were usually claimed to be ‘written from the depths of the condemned cell’ and discovered by the guards on the floor of the empty cell shortly before the execution. This publisher’s trick led one Victorian commentator to proclaim, “Every man who is hanged leaves a poem”.

John Any Bell’s sentence has the added horror of the body being handed over for dissection. This was intended to discourage the use by surgeons of ‘resurrection men’ who disinterred bodies from graves and sold them for medical practice.

In the 19th century, the public viewed anatomical dissection with immense horror, seeing it not as a scientific endeavour, but as a gruesome violation of the human soul and a terrifying legal punishment. The primary source of dread was rooted in deep religious convictions regarding the afterlife. These popular beliefs concerned the ‘Resurrection of the Flesh’, in which the whole body was resurrected on Judgement Day, so a person needed to be buried intact.

Fanny Amlett was a grazier’s daughter who was ‘basely seduced by a NAVAL OFFICER who deserted her when she became pregnant’. The scoundrel is shown in the woodcut. ‘Without human assistance, in a lonely place, she brought forth a lovely child. In a fit of despair, and scarce knowing what she did, drowned her new-born -babe for which she was brought to trial and EXECUTED’ …

Starting in the early eighteenth century, more laws were passed concerning forgery than any other crime. Given the growing commercial economy’s reliance on paper credit, both in the form of government currency and in notes of credit offered by private parties, forgery posed a “peculiarly subversive threat” with the potential to topple the entire economic system.

In 1797, a shortage of gold bullion pushed the Bank of England to begin issuing paper notes in smaller denominations of one and two pounds, without being backed up by gold reserves. With the wide circulation of these bills came a rise in forgeries, and forgery prosecutions. From 1805 to 1818, convicted forgers or counterfeiters represented almost one in three people executed in London and Middlesex, and one in five across England and Wales.

After the death penalty was handed down to this gentleman the report tells us ‘Some of the Jury wept’ …

More about the exhibition …

Some of the CSPG prints on display.

Reject Barbarism, Maria van Venrooy, 2022. Newark, Delaware …

Death Code, Mario Fuentes, 2022, Ecuador …

How long will we let them kill us, Josh MacPhee, 1997, Chicago …

A hard-hitting and thought provoking exhibition. It’s open until 28 October and is well worth a visit.

In other news.

I popped over to Kensington for a bit of a change of scenery and saw a couple of interesting sights as I strolled down Kensington Church Street.

I noticed at pavement level this little work of art that might have been created using a stencil. It shows two dogs called Eli and Pluto …

It turns out that they are the famous pet whippets of the renowned British realist painter Lucian Freud, who lived and worked at 138 Kensington Church Street and on whose wall they are painted. From the late 1970s until his death in 2011, this Georgian townhouse served as Freud’s home and art studio. His house is the one on the left …

An etching by Freud of Pluto, aged twelve, (2000) …

And Eli, 2002 …

Eli, 2002, oil on canvas …

Freud admired whippets for their ‘lack of arrogance, ready eagerness, and animal pragmatism’. Was he responsible for the little memorial outside his house? No one seems to know.

Across the road is the Churchill Arms pub, famous for its massive floral exterior that reportedly costs around £25,000 a year to maintain …

The building is covered by roughly 100 flower tubs, 42 hanging baskets, and 48 window boxes. In winter, the flowers are swapped for a massive Christmas display featuring around 90 trees and thousands of lights …

Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

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