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37: The mystery of the Three Mills stones!
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…
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36: The simply gorgeous Guildhall crypts
The most exciting event so far on the London end of the Building London blog, as opposed to standing in, rowing across or gazing out of vast quarries in Devon, Cornwall, the Midlands or Wales, has been my, er, discovery of the Guildhall crypts! I had asked for, and received permission, to inspect and photograph…
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35: London Bridge at Ingress. Part 2 – The Cave of the Seven Heads.
Ingress Park at Greenhithe in Kent is full of 19th and 18thC follies and tunnels and caves associated with Ingress Abbey and the previous house that stood on that site. See previous post https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/03/20/34-london-bridge-stones-at-ingress-abbeypart-1/ However in terms of the remit of the Building London Blog, relevance to London’s building materials, one of these stands out……
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34: London Bridge stones at Ingress Abbey?Part 1
It has been said that the largest amount of the Old London Bridge [ see https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/02/15/30-old-london-bridge-part-1/ ] that was to be re-used ended up down the Thames at Greenhithe in North Kent, for the building of Ingress Abbey and maybe some local walls, and some other bits and pieces, as noted by the Londonist and others.…
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33: Old London Bridge at Wandsworth Common
One of the best places to see some of the, and I think original, stones of the Old London Bridge, is on the north-west corner of Wandsworth Common. Though to be honest it’s not that exciting! [1] [2] There’s a row of large Edwardian houses, built in c.1908, that have their front garden walls constructed…
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32: Stones of Old London Bridge at Beaumont Quay
Out on the bleak North Sea coast marshes of Essex stands the abandoned Beaumont Quay, sat forlornly at the end of the mile long silted up tidal Beaumont Cut [1] that sliced through the estuary mud, marsh lands and hundreds of islands of the massive Hamford Water National Nature Reserve and RAMSAR site [3] [4]…
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31: Old London Bridge: Part 2
Part one of this two part post on the Old London Bridge that existed from 1196 to 1832, concentrated on what it was built and rebuilt from. see Part 1 here https://buildinglondon.blog/2022/02/15/30-old-london-bridge-part-1/ This much shorter second part of the post is going to list what happened to it all the bits after it was demolished!…
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29: Charnwood Forest ‘granites’ Pt.1. Bardon Hill ‘granite’.
“The streets are not paved with gold in London, they are paved with Leicestershire granite” From an ancient volcano and one of the most spectacular hills in the Midlands of England comes one of the most common materials used to build London, the ‘granite’ roads chips that we walk, cycle and drive over every day…
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28:Three Mills granite
Three Mills is an historic milling, distillery and industrial site on the Lower Lea, technically in Newham but with more links historically to Bromley by Bow in Tower Hamlets. It’s been the site of various tide and wind mills and distilleries since the 11thC and in the 1776, Grade I listed building House Mill, has…
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27: The historic road setts of Lamerton and Albury Streets in Deptford aka ‘Lewisham! Leave those setts alone!’
This post was originally just about how beautiful are the swirling granite setts of Albury and Lamerton Streets in Deptford. But then I saw they are under threat threat of ‘tidying’! So what was once just going be a homage became an historical investigation and a plea! First some history: Albury Street is one of…
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26: Granite setts at the Middlesex and Essex Filter Beds
The Middlesex and Essex Filter Beds are nature reserves either side of the Lea Lea at Leabridge in east London, both built in the 19thC as part of the Lea Bridge Water Works of the East London Waterworks Co. and I’ve blogged about the Middlesex Filter Beds before for it’s magnificent granite Natures Throne at…
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25: Kentish Rag Pt2 – Fox’s Quarry and the Loose Valley near Maidstone.
In the previous post I, hopefully, have showed how important Kentish Ragstone is to building London, and, as part of the objective of this blog is to trace London’s building materials to their source, a few months ago I visited a number of abandoned quarries near Maidstone, and I have more visits planned. The…
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23: The John Watson Building Stones Collection at the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge
I’ve become quite a fan of the Victorians/Edwardians in the course of this project, their fascination with science, building, innovation and categorisation. Less a fan of course of their racism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism, employment practices and their almost utter disinterest in protecting the environment of course! But you can’t have everything! [ NB it is…
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22: Stepney Green Scoria!
One of my absolute favourite London building material is the shiny blue glazed Scoria Brick of Teeside seen above at Stepney Green. Scoria bricks are a by-product of the Teeside iron industry and are not clay based like most other bricks. Iron makers were looking for a use for the waste scum or slag from…
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21: Upper Watergate Street. The oldest street surface in London?
Upper Watergate Street connected, and still connects Deptford, the High Street and St Pauls Church, down the King’s Stairs, with the River Thames, once it’s key highway into London and out to the rest of the world. And I think it has the oldest paving anywhere in London, or at least the most unique! The…
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18: Natures Throne and the Hackney Henge!
Tucked between the two Leas in Hackney, the old river Lea the Saxons and Danes fought over [1], the boundary between Danelaw and Saxon Mercia [2], and the 18thC canalised River Lee Navigation, just south of Lea Bridge in the Middlesex Filter Beds Nature Reserve, stands an unusual granite sculpture called Nature’s Throne, surrounded by…
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15: Beerstone; another chalk you can build with! And nothing to do with beer!
Just into Devon, coming from London, on the south coast, is the small seaside town of Beer. Building stone has been quarried below and above ground here since Roman times. And it makes a few appearances in building London. Like Totternhoe [ see previous post ] it’s a chalk, this time a bit younger and…
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13: 16thC bricks at Sutton House, the ‘ Bryck House’, in Hackney, ‘the Arcadia beyond Moorfields’..
The first posts on this blog have been about granite, and granite is indeed the dominant feature of building along the Thames through central London. But London more generally is about brick and I’ll focus a lot on that in posts to come. And to start, yesterday, I checked out the 16thC bricks/brickwork of the…