streets and roads
Tracing ‘Strand’ Across Land, Language and Time
Today, the name of London’s most recognizable street, the Strand, evokes images of Trafalgar Square’s lions, the iconic Somerset and Bush houses, and, most of all, busied sidewalks alive with Londoners. Those images, while impressive to locals and tourists alike, are tied rather arbitrarily to their street’s name. What brought the name to the place?…
Read MoreAlienation on the Strand; Solitude in Street Haunting
Woolf’s writing has been a part of my life for so long I no longer know if it taught me to see the world this way or just taught me to notice that I do. – Tracy Seeley There is perhaps no greater comfort nor reward granted by reading than resonance. It is an indescribable…
Read MoreWhy visit the Strand (according to reviews)
With lockdown easing, many Londoners and tourists are beginning to explore the city or return to their places of work. Of course, for some essential workers, the Strand has continued to be a part of daily life. As for me, I’m lucky that my job can be done from home, and I am nervous about…
Read MoreThe Strand as photographed by Anthony Frank Kersting
Anthony Frank Kersting was a prolific (and under-celebrated!) photographer of the 20th century. His collection of thousands of photographic prints and negatives, including glass plates, have been held at the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art since his death in 2008. The collection is being digitised as part of a huge project that…
Read MoreA Dickensian Necropolis, our ‘new normal’ London
As we entered a new decade, little did we know that three months down the line our bustling thoroughfare would come to be haunted by the shadows of London’s Victorian past. Transforming into a flaneur-like figure in the dead of the night to combat his insomnia, Charles Dickens documented his traversing of London in the…
Read More#MyStrand: Justin Sherin, playwright and screenwriter
I often scour Instagram for gorgeous, strange, or mysterious looking photographs of the Strand, historical and contemporary. @WychStreet, an account run by Justin Sherin, is an account I return to again and again, as the photographs – and generous evocative captions – instantly transport me into the past. Justin was kind enough to share some…
Read MoreThe Strand’s Foggy Past in Conan Doyle’s Work
In the late 19th century, the Strand Magazine propelled Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings to new heights. This meteoric rise brought wider public attention to some of the issues that plagued London in the 1890s. In the Strand Magazine pieces, complex connections between writing by Doyle and the concerns of the Smoke Abatement Society are apparent.…
Read MoreDan Kirmatzis: Strand series
The Strandlines team periodically check in on photos tagged to the Strand (and surrounding areas) on Instagram and Twitter. We came across Dan Kirmatzis’s work on Instagram. A huge thanks to Dan for so generously sharing his photographs and insights into his inspiration and processes. “Although I take many photos in the street genre…
Read MoreStargazing from centuries gone by
In the 18th century, the Philosophical Transactions journal (then a relatively new publication) preserved several accounts of astronomical events as observed from the Strand. The Royal Society of London provided James Short, “from the College at Edinburgh”, this platform to publish his observations. In the Philosophical Transactions database Short’s name appears thirty-four times. Of these,…
Read MoreEssex street’s Watergate: a threshold to the bourgeois Strand
“He crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under the archway leading into Essex Street, and I let him go. And that was the last I ever saw of him.” – The Diamond Maker by HG Wells (1894). An “in-between” space, the Essex street’s Watergate closes the street on its…
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