“Have you been down here before?” Jane asks me, jangling a huge bunch of keys. Having met at the entrance to Somerset House, we’ve traversed the courtyard, and, thrillingly, gone through a gate usually locked for visitors. Descending stone steps, the roar of the fountains, tourists’ chatter, and the rumble from the Strand is replaced by the industrial hum of ...

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 post. The Courtauld Connects Digitisation ...

Aisha's 'Lost Buildings of the Strand' collection on Layers of London. 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 ...

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? Aldwych and the eastern edge of the Strand on the 1520 Tudor Map, courtesy the ...

Great Queen Street, 1817, drawing by Bartholomew Howlett (1767-1827). Via Collage, London Picture Archive, catalogue number p5442553. 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 ...

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 oblivion behind me, I advance, ...

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 was the last step. Medieval ...

When the Duke of Buckingham ordered his York House (approximately located at present day 38 Strand) to be modernised in 1623, “it was customary for nobility to be conveyed by water” [1] while the less convenient carriages were preferred for state purposes. This made the building of private watergates by the river very common in noblemen’s houses, “and stairs led ...

K/PH1/9/1 [1859] Print of an engraving showing the proposed design for the King’s College London Chapel by George Gilbert Scott produced by J Frayton Wyatt. King's Archives.At King’s College London Archives our remit is to preserve and provide access to the material in our care. This project is an experiment in how we might apply that philosophy to digitally preserve ...