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

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 concentrate on what happened to it all the bits after it was […]

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 […]