It’s time again for the Christmas Quiz based on my blogs from 2021. I trust you are all OK in these difficult times and send you my very best wishes for 2022. I am sure that, like me, you hope that it will bring happier times for everyone than the year gone by.
1, Whose dressing gown is this? He wore it when he met Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas in 1955 …
2. Who is this, holding a protective arm over a hind?
3. What conflict does this memorial on Tower Hill commemorate?
4. This elegant column in Paternoster Square also has a practical purpose. What is it?
5. Number 116 Old Street used to be the Margolin Gramophone Company factory. They manufactured a record player that was very famous right through from the 1950s to the early 1970s. What was it called?
6. Coloured lines painted on the roads and pavements carry messages for workers who may have to dig there. What do red lines signify?
7. This studious monk looks down at his missal in Austin Friars. What order of monks had their monastery here before the dissolution?
8. Who is this with their post-execution head stitched back on?
9. What lady wants her time with you when you meet at St Pancras International?
10. This famous Londoner is represented in stained glass at the church of St Michael Paternoster Royal. Someone once said he looked like a Hoxton Hipster. Who is he?
11. This sign, located in the Museum of London rotunda, was once affixed to a famous coaching inn. What was it called?
12. This is the view from the rooftop restaurant of famous City landmark building. Which building is it?
13. This street name commemorates the action of a brave young lady called Alice Ayres. She also has a plaque on the Watts Memorial. What brave act is she remembered for?
14. This magnificent Shakespeare Memorial Window was created in 1954 to replace another destroyed in enemy action. It shows characters from the Bard’s plays. Where is it?
15. This image was taken in the only surviving late 17th century Gothic church in the City of London and is especially notable for its unique plaster vaulting. What church is it?
16. In what great City pageant is this uniform worn?
17. In what ancient market would you find these extraordinary characters?
18. This pump was once described as ‘the pump of death’. Where is it and why did it get that name?
19. This service is taking place in the bombed-out, roofless ruins of a famous church. What is its name?
20. Where can you find this mural showing elephants helping the emperor Claudius invade Britain in AD 43?
Answers to the quiz along with links to previous blogs and sources :
Noël Coward – see my blog on the recent exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery.
16. This uniform is worn by Pikemen in the Lord Mayor’s Show. See more pictures here.
17. You’ll find them (along with other interesting public art) in Spitalfields Market.
18. At the junction of Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street you’ll find this, the Aldgate pump. It came to be known as the Pump of Death when, in the 1870s, it was discovered that the water was poisoning people. During its passage underground from north London it had passed through and under numerous new graveyards thereby picking up the bacteria, germs and calcium from the decaying bodies.
It’s time again for the Christmas Quiz based on my blogs from 2020. I trust you are all OK in these difficult times and send you my very best wishes for 2021. I am sure that, like me, you hope that it will bring happier times for everyone than the year gone by.
This magnificent statue of the Duke of Wellington stands outside the Royal Exchange. What is it made from?
2. This beautiful clock is sited alongside the church of St Magnus the Martyr and dates from a time when the church was clearly visible from the ‘old’ London Bridge. It was the gift of a Lord Mayor, Sir Charles Duncombe. What’s the story behind his generosity?
3. This extraordinary sculpture of St Bartholomew is, appropriately, on display in the church of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield. Entitled Exquisite Pain, as well as his skin the saint also holds a scalpel in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. Who was the sculptor?
4. The Auroch is a beast that’s been extinct for nearly 400 years. This particular skull dates from the Neolithic period (4,000 -2,200 BC) and was discovered in Ilford, East London, where herds of this creature once roamed.
Where must you go to see it?
5. This brave policeman sacrificed his life saving warehouse workers from a First World War bombing raid. Where can you find this memorial to him?
6. In what way is this church in Eldon Street unique? It’s called St Mary Moorfields.
7. If you visit St Sepulchre-without-Newgate you can admire this font cover with its beautiful craftmanship. Made of oak, it was created about 1690 and is typical of many such covers made for City churches after the Great Fire of 1666. Until 1940 it belonged in Christchurch Newgate Street, so how did it come to reside in St Sepulchre’s?
8. Look at this extraordinary statue at 193 Fleet Street now, sadly, somewhat weathered. Is it a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man?
9. This cross-section shows the layers of paint from a lamp standard on a famous City landmark. What landmark is it?
10. These figures, called Atlantes, support a balcony overlooking Farringdon Street. Do they date from 1814, 1914 or 2014?
11. This is known as The Dean’s Door and the carver was stonemason and architect Christopher Kempster (1627-1715), one of Wren’s favourite craftsmen. His work on the cherubs’ heads and foliage was considered so good Wren awarded him an extra £20 for ‘the extraordinary diligence and care used in the said carving and his good performance of the same’. Where is The Dean’s Door?
12. This churchyard survives from the 17th century, its banked-up top surface a reminder that it is still bloated with the bodies of victims of the Great Plague of 1665. Three hundred and sixty five were buried there including Mary Ramsay, who was widely blamed for bringing the disease to London. What is the name of the church and what famous civil servant and diarist lived nearby and frequently worshipped there?
13. At the church of St Martin within Ludgate on Ludgate Hill rests this very unusual font. The bowl is white marble and the wooden supporting plinth is painted to look like stone. It dates from 1673, predating the church, and was previously located in a ‘tabernacle’ used by the congregation during the rebuilding. The inscription on it reads Niyon anomhma mh monan oyin (which translates as ‘Cleanse my sin and not my face only’). There is something unusual about the Greek wording – can you tell what it is?
14. In St Bartholomew the Less, high up on the south wall, is the memorial to Robert Balthrope, Sergeant Surgeon to Queen Elizabeth I …
The inscription reads …
Here Robert Balthrope Lyes intombed, to Elizabeth Our Queene Who Sergeant of the Surgeons Sworne, Neere Thirtye Yeeres Hathe Beene He Died at Sixtye Nine of Yeeres, Decembers Ninthe The Daye The Yeere of Grace Eight Hundred Twice Deductinge Nine A waye. Let Here His Rotten Bones Repose Till Angells Trompet Sounde To Warne The Worlde of Present Chaunge And Raise the Deade From Grounde.
Can you do the maths and calculate the year he died?
15. What famous cat is this and who lived for a time in the house he is staring at?
16. Here a lady, her head bowed, strains hard to control a gigantic horse (and there is a similar male figure at the other end of the building). The sculpture, called Controlled Energy, dates from 1932 and the sculptor, William Reid Dick, was asked why he included female figures in the work.
This was the sculptor’s interesting reply: ‘These days women are controlling affairs nearly, if not quite, as much as men. They begin to take control in some respects … as soon as they are out of their cradles, and the idea would have been incompletely carried out if only men had been used’.
What building was he working on?
17. What notorious prison is this? Now demolished, where it once stood is now the site of the Central Criminal Court or Old Bailey.
18. What children are represented in this sculpture outside Liverpool Street Station?
19. A friar carrying his missal stands in an alcove in an area named after an order of monks that were finally expelled in 1538 as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries. What is the area called?
20. Tucked away in a corner at Liverpool Street railway station is this plaque directly underneath the main memorial to the First World War dead. Within two hours of unveiling the memorial Sir Henry Wilson was dead. What happened to him?
Answers to the Quiz:
The statue is made of bronze from captured enemy cannon melted down after the Battle of Waterloo. You can read more here.
The story goes that when he was a young apprentice, and rather poor, he missed an important meeting with his master on London Bridge because he had no way of telling the time. He vowed that, if ever he became rich, he would erect a clock in the vicinity and this magnificent example of the clockmakers’ art was the result. Read more here.
It’s by Damien Hirst. Read more about my visit to the church here.
He is commemorated on the Watts Memorial in Postman’s Park. Read about him and three other brave policemen here.
It’s the only Catholic church in the City of London. You can read more about its history here.
When Christchurch was a blazing inferno as a result of the Blitz a postman ran into the building and rescued the font cover. Read more about this and other rescued artifacts here.
It’s a woman dressed as a man, by Giuseppe Grandi, and dates from 1872. The shop owner, George Attenborough, had a niche created specially for it over the front door. Kaled is the page of Count Lara in Bryon’s poetic story of a nobleman who returns to his ancestral lands to restore justice. He antagonises the neighbouring chieftains who attack and kill him. Kaled stays with his master and lover to the end, when it is revealed he is in fact a woman. (Spoiler alert) She goes mad from grief and dies.
It comes from a lamp standard on Holborn Viaduct. Read more about it here.
2014, when the staircase to the north east pavilion of Holborn Viaduct was rebuilt in Victorian style. Read more about the history of the viaduct and its statues here.
The church is St Olave Hart Street and the famous civil servant and diarist Samuel Pepys. Read more about him and the terrible plague of 1665 here.
The Greek words are a palindrome copied from the Cathedral of St Sophia in Constantinople. Read more about unusual church artifacts here.
Here is the inscription again and the answer to the maths:
Here Robert Balthrope Lyes intombed, to Elizabeth Our Queene Who Sergeant of the Surgeons Sworne, Neere Thirtye Yeeres Hathe Beene He Died at Sixtye Nine of Yeeres, Decembers Ninthe The Daye The Yeere of Grace Eight Hundred Twice Deductinge Nine A waye. Let Here His Rotten Bones Repose Till Angells Trompet Sounde To Warne The Worlde of Present Chaunge And Raise the Deade From Grounde.
He died in 1591, but the poet who devised this eulogy presumably had a problem getting 1591 to rhyme with anything. So he chose the frankly odd solution of asking the reader to do some mental arithmetic – ‘The Yeere of Grace Eight Hundred Twice’ (i.e. 800 x 2 = 1600) Deductinge Nine A waye (1600 – 9 = 1591).
15. The famous cat, Hodge, is remembered by this attractive bronze by John Bickley which was unveiled by the Lord Mayor, no less, in 1997. Hodge belonged to Dr Johnson, who lived for a while in the house opposite. Hodge sits atop a copy Johnson’s famous dictionary and alongside a pair of empty oyster shells. Read more here.
16. Unilever house at Blackfriars. You can read more here.
17. It was Newgate Gaol. Read more about it here along with its connection to St Sepulchre’s church including the bell that was rung outside the cells of condemned prisoners the night before their execution.
18. It is the Kindertransport commemorative statue. In 1938 and 1939, nearly ten thousand unaccompanied Jewish children were transported to Britain to escape persecution in their hometowns in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria. These children arrived at Liverpool Street station to be taken in by British families and foster homes. Often they were the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust.
19. Austin Friars (off Old Broad street), once the location of an Augustinian Friary. Read more here.
20 Wilson was assassinated outside his house in Eaton Place at about 2:20 pm. Still in full uniform, he was shot six times, two bullets in the chest proving fatal. The two perpetrators, IRA volunteers Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan, shot two police officers and a chauffeur as they attempted to escape but were surrounded by a hostile crowd and arrested after a struggle. Interestingly both were former British army officers and O’Sullivan had lost a leg at Ypres, his subsequent disability hindering their escape. After a trial lasting just three hours they were convicted of murder and hanged at Wandsworth gaol on 10 August that year – justice was certainly delivered swiftly in those days. No organisation claimed responsibility for Wilson’s murder. Read more and view other interesting memorials here.
If you would like to follow me on Instagram here is the link …
Wow, doesn’t time fly. It’s time for another Christmas quiz!
There are 20 questions with answers supplied at the end of the blog. All questions relate to subjects I have written about during 2019.
Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!
This extraordinary building near Liverpool Street Station is now a restaurant. But what was it when it first opened in 1895?
2. This man as portrayed in glazed faience reliefs in Widegate Street is clearly working very hard. What does he have in the sack?
3. What’s the name of the alley where this ecclesiastical man’s head peers down on us?
4. You’ll find various versions of this elegant lady throughout the City. What famous livery company does she represent?
5. Just what is this happy chap up to?
6. These men are going to meet a nasty end in this 1964 horror movie. What was the film called and what City church are they entering?
7. Where is this winged horse and what is it an emblem of?
8. This voluptuous lady resting on a plinth in the Broadgate Centre has an appropriate nickname. What is it?
9. Why is the Thames riverbank littered with thousands of lumps of chalk?
10. This pretty lady in a Hart Street church looks like she is in mid-conversation. Who is she?
11. These offices in Garrett Street off Golden Lane have a very shallow, sloping set of stairs as a result of the original use of the building in 1897. What was that use?
12. What famous piece of home entertainment equipment was once manufactured in these premises on Old Street? The name of the building is a subtle clue.
13. What can you sometimes hear if you put your ear to this grating at the junction of Greville Street and Saffron Hill?
14. Where can you find this wall tile representing the Palace of Westminster?
15. Why does this elaborate water fountain memorial contain a carving of a Christmas cracker?
16. This creature was a sculptor’s best effort at imagining what an alligator looked like. Where is it?
17. Where is this unusual post box and what is particularly odd about it?
18. Why did the word ‘Resurgam’ have a particular significance for Sir Christopher Wren?
19. What was the connection between the Thomas Cook Travel agency and Fleet Street?
20. No one takes much notice of it now, but why was this piece of street furniture once known as ‘The Pump of Death’?
Answers to the Quiz
It’s in Bishopsgate Churchyard near Liverpool Street Station and was originally a Turkish Bath. You can read all about its history here.
2. Also near Liverpool Street Station, this is the exterior of the former Nordheim Model Bakery at 12-13 Widegate Street. Here there are glazed faience reliefs which, as a group, show the bread-making process in beautiful detail. The man in the picture is hauling flour.
3. It is, of course, Pope’s Head Alley which runs between Cornhill and Lombard Street. I have written about it and other alleys and courtyards here.
4. She is a Mercer Maiden and marks a building, or an area, as belonging to the Mercer Company. She appeared a few times in 2019 blogs but I first wrote about her in detail here in 2017.
5. The artist Ben Wilson brightens up our lives by painstakingly turning pieces of discarded chewing gum into art. Read more about him and his work on the Millennium Bridge here.
6. The film was Children of the Damned and the church St Dunstan in the East. Read more and view a clip from the movie here along with a dramatic Iron Maiden soundtrack.
7. Pegasus, the winged horse, is the emblem of the Middle Temple in the Inns of Court.
8. Created by Fernando Botero especially for the site she is known as the Broadgate Venus.
9. On the Thames Riverbank large chalk beds were once laid down to provide a soft settling place for barges at low tide. Take a look at my Riverbank walk blog.
10. She is Elizabeth, the wife of Samuel Pepys, and her monument can be found in the Church of St Olave Hart Street. Pepys was distraught when she died from typhoid fever at the early age of 29. His memorial is directly opposite hers and their eyes meet eternally across the nave where they are buried alongside one another.
11. These were the stables custom-built in 1897 for the dray horses that pulled the Whitbread Brewery wagons. Where the staircase is now there was a slope which allowed the horses to be easily led up to the first floor.
12. Number 116 used to be the Margolin Gramophone Company factory. They manufactured the Dansette record player – a name very familiar to us baby-boomers. The stylus is a needle that rests against a record in order to play the recording.
13. Here you can occasionally hear the sound of running water since, directly underneath, runs probably the most famous of London’s ‘lost’ subterranean rivers, the Fleet.
14. Aldgate East station has some fascinating tiles that date from the 1930s. Many were created by the artist and craftsman Harold Stabler, who was commissioned by the London Passenger Transport Board in 1936 to design tiles to decorate new and refurbished underground stations. The first of the tiles were installed at Aldgate East when it was rebuilt in 1938.
15. It’s a memorial to Tom Smith, the inventor of the Christmas cracker. Read all about it here.
16. You will find this sculpture, which commemorates Queen Anne, outside the west front of St Paul’s Cathedral. The queen is surrounded by four allegorical figures and this one represents America. In 1712, this is what the original sculptor Francis Bird imagined an alligator would look like.
17 .This post box is just on the other side of the Henry VIII gateway to St Bartholomew’s Hospital. It’s unique in carrying no royal cipher and also because, although it faces the hospital, it is emptied from the other side of the wall in the street.
18. If you look up at the pediment of the south porch of St Paul’s Cathedral this is what you will see. Whilst staking out the foundations in the newly cleared site, Sir Christopher needed to mark a particular spot and asked a labourer to fetch a stone. The man came back with a fragment of a broken tombstone on which was carved 0ne word, RESURGAM – I shall rise again. Wren’s son later wrote that the architect never forgot that omen and it was an incident from which he drew comfort when the obstacles that arose during the long years of rebuilding seemed insuperable.
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