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65: The cobbles of Dean’s Yard, Westminster.
Building London loves old paving. It’s may be only 2 dimensional, it doesn’t soar and it’s usually only one material but it can be quite beautiful as well as functional and utilitarian. The patterns seen at e.g. Albury Street in Deptford or Three Mills Island show that gloriously. But it can be both hard to…
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64: The medieval Westminster Abbey precinct wall
And in full sight, next to the Jewel Tower, is another of London’s significant medieval structures, though this time while ‘just’ a wall, it’s the magnificent ancient precinct wall of Westminster Abbey[1]. The wall separates College Garden from Abingdon Green and around the corner up Great College Street, including 5 medieval gates. The lower sections…
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63: The Jewel Tower
Building London’s blog post on the medieval Palace of Westminster really should have included The Jewel Tower [1] [1a] [1b] as it was and is historically part of the Palace. But it now stands isolated from the main Palace of Westminster, the other side of Old Palace Yard [2] and Abingdon Street. And it’s worth…
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62: The medieval Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster [1] is perhaps the most important and exciting repository of building materials in all of London, though neighbouring Westminster Abbey, and the Tower of London might object! ThePalace of Westminster has both a world important medieval core of buildings including the extraordinary Westminster Hall, and after a fire in 1830 was…
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61: Re-discovering Rennie’s London Bridge, at London Bridge!
When John Rennie’s, senior and junior, father and son, granite London Bridge of 1831 [1], widened in 1902-4 , was sold in 1968, demolished and the re-erected at Lake Havasu in Arizona in the early 1970s, and an apparently entirely new bridge built [2], the current London Bridge, significant chunks of the 1831 bridge were…
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60: Barnack stone, one of the earliest stones to be shipped to London
Barnack stone, as mentioned in the previous Building London post, on London’s Roman wall, has been used in England since Roman times. It is a limestone from in and around the village of Barnack, now in Cambridgeshire, but historically in Northamptonshire. [1] Barnack stone generally refers to a rock from around 170 million years…
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59: The building blocks of London’s Roman wall
The oldest visible walls in London are the remnants of the 3.2Km 2ndC Roman landward wall, [1] [2] that surrounded the city of Londinium, now known simply as London Wall. There are other Roman walls visible, at Guildhall and the Mithraeum and Amphitheatre at Guildhall but none so large or tall as in London Wall.…
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58: London’s hidden and not so hidden, wooden streets.
London’s wooden block roads and their manufacturers, have been fairly well covered, by Ian Mansfield, in Ian Visits, [1], Mary Mills [2][3] and Carlton Reid in the fantastic ‘Roads Were Not Built For Cars’ [4] with a brilliant ‘Sherlock Holmes’ skit on road surfaces, Don Clow for the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society [5] and…
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57: The Marston Valley Brick Company and it’s cable tramway
Building London has covered the Bedfordshire Fletton brick industry before, concentrating on the London Brick Company [1] but for 40 years LBC was not the monopoly it became. The Marston Valley Brick Company, in mid-Beds, [2] which was formed in 1929 rivalled LBC for many years till LBC swallowed it up in the late 1960s,…
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56: More of London Bridge, and much more, at Myddelton House, Enfield
Just north of London and north of Enfield stands the late Georgian Myddelton House, built between 1812 and 1818 from apparently Suffolk bricks [1] The yellow bricks of the 1870 extension are probably local. [2] It was named after the great Welshman Hugh Myddleton [3] who had had the extraordinary New River [4] built in…
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55: The sandstones of the 1840 Limehouse viaduct.
The Limehouse Viaduct on the London and Blackwall Railway, [1] which opened in July 1840, is said to be the 2nd oldest railway viaduct in world [2] [3], though while that is certainly not true as a number of others were built in the 2nd and 3rd decade of that century, though it may be…
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54: The glass walls of Tottenham
While looking at unusual garden walls for posts 51 and 53, an even more remarkable wall was noticed at Mount Pleasant Road in Tottenham. Not only are there burnt and fused bricks, beautifully vitrified bricks, there are large blocks of beautifully coloured glass, not just vitrified fireclay, but actual glass! A wall made from glass!…
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53: The London garden walls made of Stourbridge gas retorts
As noted in the previous post on Building London on the beautifully named burrs, wasters, clinkers and crozzles, https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/11/06/51-burrs-and-wasters-clinkers-and-crozzles/ it turns out that many walls initially thought to be built from burnt bricks are built from materials even more unexpected including, as this post will cover, what appears to be the discarded ‘gas retorts’, used…
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52: A little bit of Southend in Wanstead
(dedicated of course to Wilko Johnson 1947-2022 who bought a whole lot of Southend joy to London and music in general. ) One of the annoying things about bricks used in London, or anywhere, is that the stamps which identify them, are not visible as they are almost always in the ‘frog’. [1] And yes…
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51: Burrs and wasters, clinkers and crozzles!
One of the fascinating materials that was used in building London is/are the melted, vitrified, burnt London Stock bricks that were a by products of the old inefficient London brick clamps and kilns. They are known as burrs, clinkers, wasters, crozzles or just burnt bricks. The bricks stacked nearest the heat source in the clamps…
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Building London 1-50 index
[1] Visit to Swelltor granite quarry in Devon – abandoned corbels for 1901 London bridge widening https://buildinglondon.blog/2021/07/31/a-visit-to-swell-tor-quarry-in-devon/[2] Visit to Foggintor granite quarry in Devon – used for Nelson’s Column and more https://buildinglondon.blog/2021/08/04/foggintor-quarry/[3] Devon granite from 1830s London Bridge at Pickets Lock Sports/Leisure Centre https://buildinglondon.blog/2021/08/10/london-bridge-picketts-lock/[4] Visit to Lamorna quarries and port – granite used in County…
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50: The Pulhamite Cascades at Battersea Park
Following on from the Building London introduction to Pulhamite, https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/09/01/49pulhamite-pt1-an-introduction/ the best place to go and see Pulhamite artificial rock in London is in Battersea Park. [1] There is an amazing area of ‘rock’ faces and a waterfall called The Cascades though currently, sadly, dry, and a smaller ‘rock face’ nearby called The Owlery! Battersea…
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49: Pulhamite Pt1, an introduction.
Pulhamite [1] is a great Victorian invention! ( or two actually … read on! ) James and Obadiah Pulham in the 1840s pioneered the creation of landscape features using “… stone-modelling skills to form artificial rocks from heaps of old bricks and rubble covered in cement, and ‘sculpted’ the surfaces to simulate the colour and…
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48: More of the 1832 London Bridge, at Waltham Abbey
As noted and covered before in other posts, there quite a few remains of the various incarnations of London Bridge doted around. https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/02/22/31-old-london-bridge-part-2/ 2 pieces of the granite 1832 bridge are now sited near Waltham Abbey, marking the Meridian Line, and called Travel and Discovery. The Greenwich Meridian website states they were in place in…
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47: London Bridge balustrade in Gilwell Park?
The Building London Blog has covered London Bridge, and where bits of it ended up, in a number of posts: https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/02/15/30-old-london-bridge-part-1/https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/02/22/31-old-london-bridge-part-2/ and e.g. https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/05/06/38-the-alcoves-of-old-london-bridge/ And, someday Building London WILL go to Lake Havasu, but for now, recently, a visit was paid to Gilwell Park, Sewardstone, up the road from Chingford, on the edge of Epping…
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46: Ancaster stone Pt3! The Hackney Central Library.
Another great example of turn of the century Ancaster use is in the old Hackney Central Library, shut in the later 1990s and now mainly used by the Hackney Picturehouse cinema but also the Rising Tide music studios. The new Hackney Central Library opened across the road in the Town Hall Square in 1999. “After…
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45: Ancaster Pt2. The Clapton Round Chapel.
As noted in Part 1 on Ancaster stone and it’s quarries, this Lincolnshire limestone, while used occasionally in London in Roman and Mediaeval periods, became more regularly used in the late 19thC as ashlar building and facing blocks. https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/08/06/44-ancaster-and-its-streaky-bacon-stone-pt1/ It was used for the glorious Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station in 1873 [1]…
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44: Ancaster and it’s streaky bacon stone! Pt1
Building London has covered a number of limestones used in London before and Ancaster is another one that was much used in the 19thC. It’s a beautiful stone with rich honey and buff and sometimes blueish streaks that has earned it the nickname ‘streaky bacon’. Ancaster is one of the Lincolnshire Limestones, and, as the…
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43: Unusual wall in Homerton.
Building London loves an old wall with re-used bricks and stones! 😀 See https://buildinglondon.blog/2021/08/19/10-mile-end-lock-wall/ And there are many old buildings in London, particularly mediaeval churches, that have re-used Roman bricks/tiles and various old stones from older buildings. The mediaeval parts of London Wall are a great example and see see photo here of a re-used…
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42: The clay that burns! The London Brick Company and the Fletton brick that built much of 20thC London
I was born in Bedford in 1962, and growing up there in the 1970s the presence of the London Brick Company [LBC] was all around. From the big red cabbed brick lorries driving through the town to the massed ranks of towering chimneys just to the south of Bedford and all the way to what…
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Building London - what London is made from and where it came from! 