Strandlines
Repost from Courtauld Digital Media: Visions of London
Editors’ note: The Strandlines editors are always scouring for news and research about the Strand area. Below we’re delighted to be sharing an extract of ‘Visions of London’, a piece by Hannah Wilson, a Courtauld Connects Digitisation Intern. Thank you to the Courtauld Digitisation team for allowing us to share a snippet of Hannah’s longer…
Read MoreLost buildings of the Strand
Editor’s note: below you can find teasers of Aisha Brady’s research for her Layers of London collection ‘Lost Buildings of the Strand‘. Aisha researched this collection (and many more!) as a Layers of London and Strandlines collaborative volunteer. We are currently recruiting for more volunteers, apply by 7 February 2019! Find out more here. Lost…
Read MoreCan you volunteer for Strandlines and Layers of London?
If you’re reading this on our website, we hope that you already know that Strandlines collects and shares histories and stories of this most central of London’s streets. Why not browse some of our existing ‘strands’ to see what our contributors have preserved so far? Layers of London is a huge collaborative effort to map…
Read MoreA short history of Great Queen Street
Laid out around the time of construction of Covent Garden and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Great Queen Street, just to the North East of Covent Garden, was the third step of the quest for homogeneity that seventeenth-century London then wished to pursue. Following the same principles of houses already built in the Covent Garden area, brick…
Read MoreUntitled Poem
Photograph and poem by Godelieve De Bree * 12:26 I start, step onto the assigned street am struck by neon nails brought up to split of the lip then the orbs of sandwich in the cheeks of a crouching man, scornful of the city, he swallows. Conscious that every motion renders reality into…
Read MoreThe Eleanor (Charing) Cross
The story of the Eleanor Cross begins with the death of Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I, on 28th of November 1290. A series of twelve crosses marked the resting places of the funerary cortège which began in Nottingham, where Eleanor died, and made stops at towns between Lincoln and Westminster Abbey. Charing Cross…
Read MoreLet’s All Go Down the Strand – For the Age of Brexit
One night half a dozen toffs met together in Westminster A severing from the continent was planned Empathy and sense were summarily banned ‘Let’s inflame irrational nationalism! It won’t hurt us when it backfires’ Decorate a bus in lies Lie some more when they ask why And then dance around the union’s funeral pyre Let’s…
Read MoreThe Mau Mau Case: Post-Colonial Justice on the Strand
“This is a historic judgement today, which will have repercussions for years to come” – Leigh Day Prosecution team. The Mau Mau insurgency, also known in Britain as the ‘Emergency Period’, was an eight year span of violence in colonial Kenya (1952-60). In 2012, the British High Court of Justice, inside the Royal Courts of…
Read MoreMonet’s Pied-à-terre
“I find London lovelier to paint each day” – Claude Monet. Monet’s link to London Monet fell in love with London in 1870-71, while in exile from France, during the Franco-Prussian war. After his return to France he vowed to revisit London, which he did in 1899, 1900 and 1901. In each of these three…
Read MoreStreetkind UK on Southampton Street
‘For several years my sister always came out and gave out little care packages for people sleeping rough’, Ijlal explains, ‘but we had our first outreach in March and then it’s been once a month every month since’. It’s 2:30pm on what, for many visitors to the Strand, is a regular relaxed Sunday. However, for…
Read More