Category: Animals Page 1 of 22

Roman London edition (and a flock in the shop).

On 1st October 2026

In Animals, Architecture, Parks, Religion, Roman London, Special Exhibitions

As you travel down the escalator at the Walbrook entrance to Bank Underground Station you will encounter a rather remarkable sight …

The 24 illuminated panels on display are a tribute to the Roman life that once flourished in this location, most notably, the nearby Temple of Mithras. Discovered in 1954, the ancient temple has now been restored and returned to its original Roman location, of which more later.

The panels were created in 1960 by the celebrated glass artist, John Hutton (1906 – 1978). Born in New Zealand, Hutton moved to London as a young artist. He became renowned for his masterful work in etched and engraved glass. They were originally on display in an office block called Bucklersbury House and, when that building was scheduled for demolition, they were gifted to London Underground to be installed in the tube station entrance.

The first series depicts daily life in Roman London, with the original London Bridge visible in the background. Women cluster in groups – some holding baskets or amphorae, vessels used to carry oil or wine, while others tend their children. A merchant sells his wares on the steps leading down to the river, while men holding scrolls engage in conversation. A group of soldiers gathers in a small clutch, their swords and spears piled next to them, elsewhere other soldiers ride their horses across the bridge …

A second series of panels shows gods and goddesses from a variety of ancient traditions. This cluster shows three Roman deities, Venus, Bacchus and Minerva but also the Egyptian God Serapis wearing a modius (cylindrical headdress) …

There is also the main iconography from the cult of Mithras, The Tauroctony where Mithras slaughters the bull …

Various other Gods and Goddesses …

You can read more about the delicate removal and restoration of the panels here.

Next door to the station entrance is the London Mithraeum. This is a fantastic venue to visit and entrance is free with a time-booked ticket.

Here are images from my visit some years ago. Descending through time, seven metres or so, from modern London to the very last days of the Romans in Britain, about AD 410 …

The beautifully restored temple itself …

Well done Bloomberg!

Even if you are not planning to visit the temple, you can pop in to the ground floor reception area …

At the moment it is hosting a fascinating free exhibition entitled Folkmoot by Anne Ryan. You can read more about the artist and the work on display here.

Some images from the exhibition …

There is also a permanent, well organised display of Roman artefacts which can be explored using your own mobile device, a tablet that they provide, or just by reading the labels …

If you are fascinated (as I am) with all things Roman London related you could follow the London Wall Walk which is identified throughout the City by plaques like this …

They’re a bit low-tech and weatherbeaten now, but I think that gives them a particular charm. Also, I found this very useful guide to the plaques and the wall in the London on my Mind website. Recommended.

A few words about what we still tend to describe as the ‘Roman’ Wall.

Londinium was a settlement established around AD 43-50. It sat at a key crossing point over the River Thames which turned the city into a trading port, serving as a major commercial centre in Roman Britain until its abandonment during the 5th century. Sometime between 190 and 225, the Romans built the London Wall, a defensive ragstone wall around the landward side of the city. It was one of the largest construction projects carried out in Roman Britain, requiring somewhere in the region of 85,000 tons of Kentish ragstone to complete. A medieval city wall was built on top of the remains of the Roman wall so much of what we see today was constructed in the fifteenth century.

Here are some images I took recently.

For a good sense of the scale of the wall one of the best places to visit is Salters’ Hall Garden …

Impressive as it is, it is pretty much all medieval, although the red tiles were probably scavenged from the earlier Roman construction …

This illustration from the excellent Living London History blog gives a good idea as to how the wall ‘grew’ in medieval times …

You can see medieval stonework. This is the only surviving section with a brick parapet dating from 1477 …

It was added by King Edward IV to help protect the city during the Wars of the Roses.

I like nice, helpful signage …

You also get a good view from the St Alphage Highwalk …

If you head north, you get a glimpse of more remains …

You can view them more easily if you make your way to the friendly, beautifully restored church of St Giles Cripplegate. In the old churchyard you can look across the artificial lake to another section of wall …

Also visible are the remains of two bastions …

I could get close to the more complete one since I have a Barbican Residents’ key …

Fragments of Roman red tiles …

Heron and Roman wall combination …

I’ve seen the heron literally dozens of time but never seen him catch a fish. Although, I’m told, he is partial to the occasional duckling.

And whilst on the subject of birds, a flock of pigeons has arrived at the Barbican shop …

And now I have a companion of my very own …

I know his feet are a little strange, but we don’t talk about that.

In other news.

A palm tree silhouette in Regent’s Park …

Or maybe not …

It’s another surprise exhibit from Frieze 2026 …

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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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