Category: Animals Page 1 of 21

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

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

If you would like to follow me on Instagram here is the link …

https://www.instagram.com/london_city_gent

Back at Hampstead Cemetery. A poem to make you smile, the lovely Marie Lloyd and some surprises.

By The City Gent

On 3rd September 2026

In Animals, Memorials

What better way to start a blog with a poem to make you smile.

Charles Cowper Ross (1929-1985) presented many plays and revues, the best known of which being Toad of Toad Hall (1964 and successive years) …

Who’s Who in the Theatre listed his recreations as squash, golf and starting businesses!

The epitaph on his grave marker shows a man with a great sense of humour (and a realist). He describes himself as ‘A Man of the Theatre’ and there follows this poem …

What will be said
When I am dead
Of what I used to do?
They liked my smile?
I failed with style?
Or, more than likely: “Who?”

Well, Charles, we know who you are now. And quite right too!

Nearby is the grave of an immensely popular performer …

Matilda Alice Victoria Wood (12 February 1870 – 7 October 1922), professionally known as Marie Lloyd, was an English music hall singer, comedian and musical theatre actress. She was best known for her performances of songs such as “The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery“, “Don’t Dilly Dally on the Way” and “Oh Mr Porter What Shall I Do“. She received both criticism and praise for her use of innuendo and double entendre during her performances.

My favourite example is when complaints were made about her song She sits among the cabbages and peas she changed the lyrics to She sits among the cabbages and leeks.

The image usually used in articles about her …

On stage in the 1890s …

By 1891 Lloyd was a household name, pulling in large crowds at halls across Britain, and starring in the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane’s Christmas pantomimes alongside stars such as Dan Leno. As her star continued to rise, her agent reported that Lloyd was fully booked up for years at the best houses across the UK, and that her salary ran from £250-£300 a week, sometimes as much as £700 a week at the height of her career.

Despite her successes, Lloyd had a troubled personal life. She was married three times, and experienced domestic abuse during two of them. She married Percy Charles Courtenay in 1887, but the marriage was unhappy, and filled with violence, drunkenness and jealousy. The couple divorced in 1894, after Courtenay discovered that Lloyd had started an affair with fellow performer Alec Hurley. Hurley and Lloyd married in 1906, however the pair were effectively separated by 1910 after they had consistent marital problems. Lloyd began an open and passionate affair with Bernard Dillon, a jockey. Hurley initiated divorce proceedings in 1911. Sadly the relationship between Lloyd and Dillon was not a happy one, marred by Dillon’s jealousy, heavy drinking, and gambling addiction. Despite this they married in 1914. He was violent and abusive throughout the rest of Lloyd’s life.

In the later years of her life, Lloyd was in financial trouble (in part due to Dillon’s gambling debts) and needed to work in order to get by. Her drinking and ill health made her less and less reliable, sometimes only performing for a fraction of the time that she was scheduled. She began to forget her lines and would sometimes stumble on the stage, so much so that stagehands would be asked to be on call to help her if she became unsteady. In order to save money, in early 1922 she moved in with her sister Daisy, and by the time of her death Lloyd was virtually penniless. She died at her residence in Golders Green, 7^th October 1922 at the age of 52.

Lloyd’s funeral was held at Hampstead Cemetery on 12 October, 1922. More than 50,000 people turned out on the streets of Hampstead to watch her funeral cortège. It was estimated that 120,000 people visited her grave in the following weeks, with queues stretching out from the cemetery gates.

Many newspapers and fellow performers paid tribute to Lloyd in the days after her death. T.S. Eliot wrote a moving tribute to her in The Criterion of January 1923. He said of Lloyd…

“Marie Lloyd was the greatest music hall artist in England: she was also the most popular… It is evidence of the extent to which she represented and expressed that part of the English nation which has perhaps the greatest vitality and interest… Whereas other comedians amuse their audiences as much and sometimes more than Marie Lloyd, no other comedian succeeded so well in giving expression to the life of that audience, in raising it to kind of art.”

Sadly, the inscription on her tomb is now almost illegible, but reads:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF OUR DARLING SISTER
MARIE LLOYD
BORN FEB. 12th 1870
DIED OCT. 7th 1922
DAUGHTER OF JOHN AND MATILDA WOOD

TIRED SHE WAS, AND SHE WOULDN’T SHOW IT.
SUFFERING SHE WAS, AND HOPED WE DIDN’T KNOW IT.
BUT HE WHO LOVED HER KNEW, AND, UNDERSTANDING ALL,
PRESCRIBED LONG REST, AND GAVE THE FINAL CALL.

I expected to see some eminent people in this cemetery but wasn’t expecting a three-time Prime Minister of Australia. This is the tomb of Andrew Fisher (1862-1928) …

He was the fifth Prime Minister of Australia and one of the most important early leaders of the Australian Labor Party. Born in Crosshouse, Scotland, Fisher began working in coal mines when he was only ten years old. He later became involved in trade union activities before migrating to Queensland, Australia, in 1885. There he became a prominent miners’ leader and entered politics.

He was elected to the Queensland Parliament in 1893 and later became a member of the first Australian Federal Parliament in 1901, representing Wide Bay in Queensland. He became leader of the Labor Party in 1907 and served as Prime Minister three times: from 1908–1909, 1910–1913, and 1914–1915.

Fisher’s second period as Prime Minister was particularly important. His government introduced many reforms and passed more than 100 pieces of legislation. It established the Commonwealth Bank, introduced maternity allowances, improved pensions, and provided workers’ compensation for Commonwealth employees. His government also helped develop Australia’s defence forces, transport system and federal administration. Fisher strongly supported the development of Canberra as Australia’s national capital.

The Parliament House portrait of Fisher by E. Phillips Fox, 1913 …

Fisher became Prime Minister for the third time in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War.

His government organised Australia’s early military contribution to the war, including sending Australian troops overseas. However, the pressures of wartime leadership affected his health, and he resigned as Prime Minister in October 1915.

After leaving politics, he became Australia’s High Commissioner in London …

He died in London on 22 October 1928, aged 66.

If a Prime Minister was a surprise, so was finding the tomb of the grandson of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich, and his wife Sophy, Countess de Torby …

Also surprising was its very plain design.

He was raised in the Caucasus, where he lived between 1862 and 1881 with his family, was educated by private tutors and, as Romanov tradition demanded, he follow a military career.

Grand Duke Michael (on the right) with his eldest brother Nicholas, Baden, 1876 …

He served in the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, became a Colonel and was adjutant at the Imperial court. In 1891 he contracted a morganatic marriage with Countess Sophie von Merenberg, a morganatic daughter of Prince Nicholas William of Nassau and a granddaughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. His punishment was severe. For contracting this marriage without permission, Emperor Alexander III of Russia stripped him of his military titles and banished the couple from the Russian Empire.

For some years he lived in Wiesbaden, Nassau and in Cannes (as you do) before settling permanently in England in 1900, leasing Keele Hall in Staffordshire.

Grand Duke Michael and family on the steps of Keele Hall …

This image of Michael and his children, also at Keele, is taken from The Good Grave Guide to Hampstead Cemetery, so it’s a photo of a photo and not very clear, but it’s such a wonderful pose I had to include it …

After leaving Keele, they rented Kenwood House from the Earl of Mansfield from 1910 to 1917 at an annual rent of £2,200 (about £210,000 in today’s money) and shared the property with their three children Nadeja (Nada), Anastasia (Zia) and Michael, plus numerous dogs. The Grand Duke in 1910 …

They carried out extensive renovations to Kenwood, including electric lights along the drive, and entertained lavishly. One such dinner and ball was reported by the Ham & High newspaper just before the outbreak of War, where it was noted that the drives and grounds were brilliantly illuminated and the rooms – already luxuriously furnished – were filled with plants and flowers whilst a Viennese orchestra played in the Orangery. Supper was served in a marquee hung with pink and green draperies outlined with gold
mouldings on the South Terrace, overlooking the lake.

A similar event held in 1914 was attended by the King and Queen, who came again two years later to attend the wedding of Nada to Prince George of Battenberg (later Mountbatten), the Marquis of Milford Haven.

A year later Kenwood hosted another glittering gathering, when Zia married Major Harold Wernher, who inherited Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire …

Michael and his wife were well known for their philanthropy. In 1913 he donated a motor ambulance to Hampstead Hospital, and in 1914 he started a movement to supply the troops at the front with warm gloves. A year later he allowed Kenwood to be used as the barracks for the newly established Royal Naval Anti Aircraft Brigade, organised by the Admiralty.

The Grand Duke and the Countess at home …

A keen sportsman, he built a golf course and cricket pitch in the grounds and also opened a high diving board at Highgate Ponds in the hope that it could be used to train Olympic divers. However, the only evidence that remains of his residence a Kenwood are the headstones of two of the family dogs, Bill and Mac.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 took a heavy toll on the family’s fortunes. Their income had been derived from the Borjomi mineral water plant on the family estates in Georgia, which after modernisation was producing a third of a million bottles a year by 1913. Following the confiscation of the estates by the Bolsheviks, the Grand Duke was left virtually penniless and had to rely on the charity of his wealthy son-in-law. The family was obliged to leave Kenwood in 1917 and move to a (comparatively) modest house at Cambridge
Gate, Regent’s Park.

The loss of many relatives – three of his brothers were murdered by the Bolsheviks – and his straitened circumstances appeared to take their toll on the Grand Duke’s spirits and he is reported to have become troublesome and short-tempered with his wife and with servants. In September 1927, his wife died aged fifty-nine. King George V wrote a letter of condolence and the
Prince of Wales attended the funeral. The Grand Duke survived her by less than two years and died of influenza in 1929.

Another image of the Grand Duke with all his children including their only son Count Michael …

Michael was subject to bouts of depression but found some success as a painter mostly of still lifes and luxuriant garden landscapes, a far cry from the developing avant-garde movements of the family’s native Russia. He was also active as a theatrical and fashion designer. He died unmarried in Roehampton in 1959 and was buried beside his parents.

Resting near to one another are members of the Forte family …

Famous as hoteliers and restaurateurs, they originally came from Montforte, a hilltop village in Italy. Rocco Forte married Maria Luigia in 1908 and in 1911 he emigrated to Scotland, opening a café in Alloa. His wife and son Charles followed two years later. Charles subsequently returned to school in Italy, but decided he wanted to follow his father’s business. He studied book-keeping, started a café in Weston-super-Mare and opened his first London premises, a ‘Milk Bar’ in Upper Regent Street in 1935. The successful business expanded to include the Café Royal and the Waldorf Hotel, and became Trusthouse Forte, a worldwide catering empire.

Charles was knighted in 1970 and became Baron Forte of Ripley in Surrey in 1982. He died aged 98 on 28 February 2007.

Charles Forte in 1977 …

What about this Grade II listed monument? The Hampstead Cemetery Good Grave Guide describes it as ‘a stone figure of a woman in flowing robes balancing on a globe reaching up to touch a flower-filled urn on a column. Symbolically the pose indicates a rejection of worldly pleasures’ … …

And an intriguing inscription …

A short notice in the Daily Mail of 24 August 1928 gives a few more details …

Here is a report from the New York Time of 25 August 1928 headed :

‘ARDATH DE SALES, DANCER, DIES AT SEA; Seattle Girl Was on Her Way to London to See Her Sister Appear in a New Revue.

LONDON, Aug. 24 (P).—Ardath De Sales, American actress from Seattle on her way from New York to England to see her sister, Miss Adrienne Ash, take part in the first performance tomorrow night of a new revue, died today on the steamer Homeric. Death followed an operation for appendicitis.

Miss De Sales was an accomplished toe dancer, and she had appeared with Pavlova at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Here in London she was known for her work in “Mercenary Mary” and in “Princess Charming.”

She was apparently in excellent health when she boarded the liner in New York last Saturday, but was taken ill the following evening. Her sister was in the midst of a rehearsal when news of the death was telephoned to her.’

Some of the online images of Miss De Sales …

Unfortunately, I have not been able to discover who commissioned and paid for her beautiful monument.

I paused at the war memorial to both World Wars and the individual graves beyond …

So many young lives lost …

I am sure readers will have noticed by now that Hampstead Cemetery offers almost endless opportunities for blogging, but I have reminded myself that am supposed to be concentrating on the City of London! So that’s what I shall try and do next week.

If you want to explore Hampstead Cemetery yourself I cannot recommend more highly the Good Grave Guide …

It is packed with information about the residents along with great maps based on aerial photographs …

You can buy it here from the Camden History Society.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a selection of Hampstead angels …

In other news, Barbican denizens.

Loitering with intent …

Watching the world go by …

He actually climbed into the bin but was out before I could photograph him inside …

Something I didn’t know before, coots actually eat the reeds on the lake (or appear to) …

Algae is definitely more accessible …

But you have to share space with the ducks …

And now City of London denizens, a gathering outside Guildhall with many robes in evidence …

If you would like to follow me on Instagram here is the link …

https://www.instagram.com/london_city_gent

A stroll from Barbican to King’s Cross (and more ducks).

By The City Gent

On 9th July 2026

In Animals, Architecture, Art Deco, Quirky

I’ve put on a ‘bit’ of weight lately and have been told that consistently walking 10,000 steps a day helps weight loss and general health. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it gave me an incentive to get out and explore. I thought walking from the Barbican to King’s Cross should suffice and also give me some blog material, which it duly did.

The first place I paused was Charterhouse Square, home to the lovely Art Deco block of flats called Florin Court, forever destined to be associated with Hercule Poirot’s flat in ‘Whitehaven Mansions’ ..

It has been described as ‘a rare example of a surviving, unaltered Art Deco/Streamline Moderne residential building’ …

Built between 1935 and 1937, the building’s original residents were local businessmen, who often needed to be at Smithfield Market in the early morning. Most of the flats were therefore intended to be bedsits. But for some of the wealthier, permanent residents, there were several attractive amenities including: a restaurant, a cocktail bar, a squash court, and even a parking garage for twenty cars. Flats at the top even had small roof gardens, which are still used today.

The original ground floor lobby had the Charterhouse coat of arms embedded in the marble floor but this area is now carpeted …

The local public space opposite the flats was being prepared for an event …

The classic red phone box nearby has been converted into a ‘Little Free Library’ …

If you know anyone who keeps insisting that London is a ‘very dangerous place’ please refer them to this photograph …

Also on the Square is, of course, The Charterhouse after which it takes its name. The original stone arch and wooden gate, set into the chequered flint and stone wall, are remarkable survivors which have stood here since construction in 1405 …

You can read more about this fascinating institution in my At the Charterhouse blog.

Charterhouse Mews, an atmospheric cobbled alleyway. Notice the stone setts on the ground with solid lines for carriage wheels to run over more comfortably for their occupants. …

I’m pretty sure that the decorations around the alley entrance and the door to the house next door are made of Coade Stone …

You can read more about the entrepreneurial Eleanor Coade in the brilliant Look Up London blog which you will find here.

Smithfield meat market is still operating …

You can read more about the area in three of my blogs – Goodbye Smithfield Market, Smithfield Stories and A more cheerful wander around Smithfield. I have also written more specifically about the pubs in the area in this blog.

My next location was the mysteriously named Greenhill Rents …

You can read more about its name and history in the great Ian Visits blog.

It’s home to our favourite local restaurant, Trattoria Brutto …

Fantastic food with house Negronis for £5. Need I say more?

Cowcross Street was known as ‘Cow Cross’ until the end of the 18th century. You would think that Cow Cross got its name from cows crossing the street on their way to Smithfield market. But that wasn’t it at all. There used to be a large cross, like a big sign, set up where St John Street and Cowcross Street meet. This was the sign for the Smithfield Cow Market, which was a separate market from the main Smithfield Market which also traded in other livestock and horses. The cow market cross gave Cow Cross, and eventually Cowcross Street, their names. The street in 1870 …

Leading off the north side of the street is Peter’s Lane, named after the church which once stood nearby …

The Rookery is a boutique hotel. It was expanded in 1996/7 and a new brick tower was constructed. Artists Mark Merer and Lucy Glendenning cast several bulls’ and cows’ heads in glass-reinforced resin and placed them into the gables of the tower. It’s well worth strolling down the lane and having a look …

Peter’s Lane in 1867 …

Across the road back in Cowcross Street is Bouchon Racine, just voted the UK Restaurant of the Year …

If you manage to get a booking, see if you can get a table in the small terrace overlooking the street.

Farringdon Station moved to its current location on 23 December 1865 when the Metropolitan Railway opened an extension to Moorgate. It was renamed Farringdon & High Holborn on 26 January 1922 when the new building by the architect Charles Walter Clark facing Cowcross Street was opened, and its present name was adopted on 21 April 1936 …

From mid-1914, the Metropolitan Railway introduced its own version of the Underground roundel. This originally appeared as a blue station name plate across a red diamond and the diamond is still there, above the entrance …

The Zeppelin Building is a historic Victorian warehouse-style office space located at 59-61 Farringdon Road …

On September 8, 1915, the site was levelled by a German Zeppelin bombing. It was rebuilt two years later by John Phillips and a commemorative plaque recalls the event …

The building encloses an entrance to ‘The Drill Hall’ dated 1887 …

Designed by architect Alfred J. Hopkins, it was built between 1887 and 1888 for the War Office as the headquarters of the 2nd City of London Rifle Volunteer Corps. In 1908, the volunteer corps became the 6th (City of London) Battalion, London Regiment, also known as the City of London Rifles. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the battalion assembled and mobilised at the drill hall before departing for service on the Western Front. During the war, the building itself suffered damage in the 8 September Zeppelin raid …

During the mid-1930s, the City of London Rifles relocated as part of an anti-aircraft reorganisation, leaving the drill hall vacant. After the Second World War, the building became home to the 167th and 168th City of London Field Ambulance units of the Royal Army Medical Corps. It remained in military use until 1967, when another reorganisation led to its closure.

Today, much of the hall has been carefully restored …

An amusing warning sign that made me smile …

The Betsey Trotwood Pub …

Built in 1865 as The Butchers Arms, it was renamed in 1983 after the Charles Dickens character from David Copperfield. It was one of the first buildings constructed above the new Metropolitan Railway extension, sitting over tunnels for both the Underground and Thameslink lines. Some memorabilia from the pub website, ‘London’s only pub in the middle of the road’!

I reach the point where Farringdon Road seamlessly merges into King’s Cross Road.

Mount Pleasant Post Office has an important place in the history of postal services in the United Kingdom and its Mail Centre is one of Royal Mail’s largest and busiest sorting offices. For many years it has handled millions of letters and parcels, connecting people and businesses across the UK and around the world …

In 2017 Royal Mail sold off much of the site for redevelopment and I passed these new apartments on my walk …

If you need ventilation shafts on a development once linked to Royal Mail, what better than to make them look like pillar boxes …

The Union Tavern which dates from 1878 …

A face appears to emerge from the brickwork …

The sign reads:

THIS IS BAGNIGGE HOUSE NEARE THE PINDER A WAKEFEILDE 1680

The London historian Peter Jackson identified this tablet as the oldest piece of street advertising in the capital …

You can read more in the great London Inheritance blog website.

Having been captivated by the World Cup recently, I can’t help but think that the person represented in the tablet looks a lot like the brilliant Manchester City and Norway international footballer Erling Haaland …

Wacky signs in an optician’s window …

And by the door …

Redundant Police Station …

… and, next door, a redundant Courthouse …

The Victorians routinely built magistrates’ courts physically attached or immediately adjacent to police stations. This combined approach—often referred to as a “lock-up and justice room”—was an administrative strategy to ensure suspects could be held in the police cells overnight and marched directly into court the next morning without logistical complications.

Derby Lodge, in nearby Britannia Street, is a Grade II listed block of Victorian-era social housing. Originally built around 1865 by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, these six-storey philanthropic tenement buildings were designed to provide quality housing for working-class railway families …

I really enjoyed looking at these models on display at a local architects’ firm …

London is full of spooky little alleyways …

Finally my destination looms into view …

The St Pancras Station and Hotel. How extraordinary to think that there were once plans to demolish this building …

Looking at its design, it still seems strange that the King’s Cross Station building is actually older than the St Pancras one (1852 versus 1868) …

I was once told that the King’s Cross ‘Lighthouse’ was built by a retired sea captain to remind him of his career …

For its true history, do read this London Inheritance blog.

According to my Smartphone that was a walk of 9,800 steps, so now I’m perfectly justified in taking the Tube home (it must be at least 200 steps from Tube to flat!).

Out for a paddle with mum. The Barbican ducklings are growing up and thriving …

And now a different variety of quackers.

I spent the weekend in the lovely village of Chiseldon and, when going to buy a paper, I looked up and saw a thatched roof with a delightful decoration …

Initially there was a pigeon who looked like he wanted to join in …

And then proceeded to show no respect whatsoever …

If you would like to follow me on Instagram here is the link …

https://www.instagram.com/london_city_gent