The Island Churches of the Strand

Many King’s students have likely passed the ‘Island Churches’ of the Strand as they make the pilgrimage from Somerset House to the Maughan Library. Likewise, many Strand dwellers may recognise their spires from afar, perhaps unaware of their history. Just a few minutes walk separate St Mary le Strand, located between Bush House and the…

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Catch up with Maureen Duffy and Liz Mathews in conversation

Maureen Duffy and Liz Mathews, with host Katie Webb.

On 25th November 2020, we held an online event to celebrate the launch of Strandlines‘s special collection on Maureen Duffy. We heard from Maureen about her latest work; the forthcoming publication of her first children’s book Sadie and the Seadogs, illustrated by Anita Joice, and her 20th novel, After Eve. Maureen also read two poems…

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Class of 2020: Graduating From a Distance

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. In a swift four and a half…

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King’s College London Chapel Preservation Project

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 our physical objects and spaces. The buildings of King’s have a rich history and have changed much over the years. The…

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Göttingen and the Strand: Publishers and Princes

Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen

What connects Somerset House and King’s College London in the Strand with the University of Göttingen in Germany? The answer, it turns out, is a combination of the Royal House of Hanover and the movements of an enterprising eighteenth-century Dutch publisher. The current Somerset House was begun in 1776 in the reign and under the…

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The King’s Shop in 1847

The King's shop as it was in 1847 from the second, 1847 edition of John Tallis’s Steet Views.

With thanks to Professor Michael Trapp of King’s, this is the (now former) location of the King’s shop as it was in 1847, long before the 1905 rebuild that brought the present building into being; from the second, 1847 edition of John Tallis’s Steet Views.

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The changing face of (academic) retail

The empty King's Shop in November 2017

I worked at King’s College London for seven years, and I was a student there a long time before that. I have many memories of interesting projects at the College, but this post is about one in particular—in 2009 I helped to build a new retail space for the university on the corner of Surrey…

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Victorian Lives Revealed

King's College London Main Building ~1830

King’s College London has employed some of the great and good from the academic world over its 188 years but there are many members of staff, academics, technicians, clerical and domestic, who are less well-known or not known at all. King’s College London Main Building ~1830 A joint project between King’s College London Archives and…

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The All-New Watch House

A general view of the Watch House

The scaffolding has recently come down from around the Old Watch House in Strand Lane, after a five-month restoration project sponsored by King’s College London and carried out by PAYE Conservation . It has been completely re-rendered, the zinc sheathing of the penthouse storey has been replaced, and the zinc, woodwork and wrought iron of the balcony…

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