Building London – what London is made from and where it came from!

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 […]

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] […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“… went to search for brick-earth” John Evelyn [1]“… the Earth about London, rightly managed, will yield as good Brick as were the Roman Bricks, (which I have often found in the old Ruins of the City) & will endure, in our Air, beyond any Stone our Island affords” Christopher Wren [2] Bizarrely, maybe, the […]

The previous Building London blog post, https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/05/24/39-collyweston-slate-part-1-the-city-of-london-guildhall-roof/  looked at the use of Collyweston Slate on the roof of the City of London’s Guildhall and even though while the Building London blog only concerns building materials used historically in London, and it is not at all certain that Collyweston was used on Guildhall before 1953,  because […]

Building London has posted about Guildhall before, see https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/04/01/36-the-simply-gorgeous-guildhall-crypts/, one of London’s oldest, finest and most interesting buildings, and this post is about the magnificent Guildhall roof, covered with rare Collyweston limestone ‘slates’ from Northamptonshire! And it’s a mystery when it was first covered in these fascinating slates, and that’ll be discussed in part 1, […]

One of the most obvious surviving relics of the Old London Bridge, ( though are they? read on! 😀 )  are the shell-like alcoves or shelters of the 1759-62 Portland stone faced bridge, that replaced the more famous bridge with it’s fantastic houses, gatehouses and chapel which was knocked down between 1758/9. But the ‘new-old’ […]

Three Mills Island is a wonderful site for anyone interested in historical buildings and materials. [1] The Building London blog has already covered the magnificent granite paving by the Millhouse, itself full of historical building materials which, along with the associated buildings, will be blogged about on Building London in the future. https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/01/03/27three-mills-granite/ But behind […]