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

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  • December 10, 2021

    20: The Huggin Hill Roman, maybe, and Medieval walls

    20: The Huggin Hill Roman, maybe, and Medieval walls

    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, […]

  • November 26, 2021

    19: A Jurassic tale of a giant’s crypt in the City of London and the Crystal Palace dinosaurs!

    19: A Jurassic tale of a giant’s crypt in the City of London and the Crystal Palace dinosaurs!

    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 […]

  • October 30, 2021

    18: Natures Throne and the Hackney Henge!

    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 […]

  • October 13, 2021

    17: The Notting Dale Kiln

    17: The Notting Dale Kiln

    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 […]

  • October 9, 2021

    16: Chwarel Trefor / Trefor Quarry

    16: Chwarel Trefor / Trefor Quarry

    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 […]

  • September 2, 2021

    15: Beerstone; another chalk you can build with! And nothing to do with beer!

    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 […]

  • August 26, 2021

    14: Totternhoe Stone. A chalk you can build with.

    14: Totternhoe Stone. A chalk you can build with.

    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 […]

  • August 23, 2021

    13: 16thC bricks in Hackney, ‘the Arcadia beyond Moorfields’..

    13: 16thC bricks 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 […]

  • August 22, 2021

    12: Kit Hill granite! As used to build Battersea Bridge and much more!

    12: Kit Hill granite! As used to build Battersea Bridge and much more!

    Kit Hill is a magnificent granite plug hill in east Cornwall, north of Saltash and close to the Tamar Valley. It’s a ‘Marilyn’ [ see below ] that rises steeply up out of the rolling east Cornish countryside. And like so many of the Cornish granites it too played an important role in building London. […]

  • August 20, 2021

    11: Penryn -The Granite Port

    11: Penryn -The Granite Port

    Of course the Cornish granite destined for London had to be got there somehow. It would be put on tramways, or simply on horse drawn carts but ultimately it need to end up at a railway siding or wharf to be transported to London. I’ve posted about Lamorna before [ https://buildinglondon.blog/2021/08/11/4-lamorna-or-lands-end-granite/ ] a small dock […]

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