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

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…

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…

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……

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.…

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…

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]…

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!…

A two part post on the Old London bridge … This blog has already done a couple of posts on the building stones that was used in the new London Bridge, the abandoned corbels on Dartmoor that were surplus to the widening in the early 1900s and the engraved pillar at Pickets Lock and there…

“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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

London is underlain with rock, but it’s not the type of rock that we generally think of as rock. Most of London sits on up to 140m of clay, though a few areas in south-east London sit on chalk. And while technically rock, clay needs to be baked to become a building material, brick, and…

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…

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…

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…

While searching in The City recently for the site of the hall of Gerard the Giant, see previous post, I noticed a small park the other side of Queen Victoria Street.I investigated, found it to be Cleary Park, noticed that the top of it was apparently right above the Circle Line, behind a big wall,…

I love this! A beautiful circle of history from Deep Time through an early medieval hall in the City of London and Gerard, its attendant giant, and back to the dinosaurs of in Crystal Palace! Our tale starts in the swamps of the Bathonian Age [1] in the middle of the Jurassic Period, in the…

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…

While I love the stone that has been used to build London, from the Cornish granite to the Collyweston slate, really it is brick that built London. The vast majority of houses built in the 17th to 19thC in London were built from the brickearth and the clay that lies at or near the surface…

Quarries often have great views being dug into and out of the sides of hills. But even with that the Trefor granite quarry cut into the side of Garn Fôr aka Mynydd y Gwaith [mountain of ‘the works’], one of the 3 peaks of Y Eifl on Pen Llŷn, has extraordinary views! [1] The main…

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…

We all know chalk in one way or other. For me it was sticks of it exploding on the wall behind me and a teacher screaming “Pay attention Harries!!!”. For others maybe just something they played with when young or what we use to write on pavements and walls. And we know then that we…