The Mineral Shop at 149 Strand

Stanley Gibbons’s stamp shop was not the only mecca for nineteenth-century collectors, as Dr Adelene Buckland (English Department, King’s College London) demonstrated at the ‘Shows of London’ seminar series last Monday night at King’s. On the opposite side of the street to Gibbons’s establishment, at 149 Strand, was a mineral shop from 1804-1881. Dr Buckland told us…

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Adelphi Theatre

Carrying on along the north side of the Strand, heading east towards Fleet Street and away from Trafalgar Square, we reach the Adelphi theatre. This gorgeous Art Deco-style building is the latest incarnation of the theatre, built in 1930. However, the Adelphi started life as the Sans Pareil in 1806. It was renamed in 1819,…

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Panoramas, Dress Circles and Tubes

In 1787 Robert Barker put a patent on a way of seeing: ‘panorama’. It is said that he came upon the term when surveying the city of Edinburgh from the top of Calton Hill. Moving to London, Barker reconstructed 360 degree views in a Leicester Square art gallery; an initiative mimicked by his son on…

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