Editors’ note: The Strandlines editors are always scouring for news and research about the Strand area. Below we’re delighted to be sharing a short extract from ‘The Strand Statues’, a piece by Ruby Gaffney, a Courtauld Connects Digitisation Placement student. Thank you to the Courtauld Digitisation team for allowing us to share. The Courtauld Connects Digitisation project – part-funded by ...

Anyone who has crossed the Waterloo bridge might have noticed the Royal National Lifeboat Institution Pier, on the north side of the Thames. This is the busiest lifeboat station in the United-Kingdom. Left: Tower RNLI Lifeboat Pier (11/09/18). Right (02/02/2020). Both via @towerrnli on Instagram. I spoke to Stan Todd, a full-time helmsman on the station, and looked over archive ...

This is where Samuel Johnson first inspired me Where I discovered the Queen Victoria statue unexpectedly Devoured small tuna sandwiches with cucumber And realized one night, mournfully, I was too old to join the fun at the pub. It’s where I left my laptop at a café while eating lunch one day, Scurrying back to find they had it behind ...

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 style, I would describe myself ...

The Aldwych underground station on the junction between the Strand and Surrey Street has been closed for nearly thirty years. This lonely station, that stands at the place of the former Royal Strand Theatre, was part of a one-station branch of the Piccadilly line that connected to Holborn station.  This short back-and-forth shuttle service to Holborn, a journey that only ...

A common epithet to describe the coronavirus has been “the invisible enemy”. Not only does the use of the chosen adjective, 'invisible', hint at the nature of a biological threat, but it also perpetuates an understanding of the virus as an abstraction, this other-worldly description questions its reality. King's Strand Campus, photo by Sarah Mir. In a swift four and ...

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, fourteen are either observations from ...

Lockdown in London was announced on 23rd March 2020, but many folks had been social distancing for a week or more before. It's been heartening to see that the - very few - photos that are being posted on social media with the Strand tagged as the location are showing this main artery emptied of the usual throngs. Below, we've ...

Essex Street Water Gate, London WC2 (1934) Edgar Holloway. The British Museum “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 ...