Favourite Places - St James' Park

I have posted photos of St James' Park before. It's arguably the prettiest park in London and the fine buildings around it allow some unmatched vistas, like this one of the extraordinary architecture of the Horseguards' Building offset by the towers of the Foreign Office overtopped in turn by the London Eye.

Favourite Places - Chilcomb, Winchester

Chilcomb, Winchester

I have been spending a lot of time in Winchester lately. It's such a beautiful city, and as someone said yesterday on Twitter, the walk from the Square through the Cathedral Close out to the College and Kingsgate St and then on though the water meadows (where Keats composed his 'Ode To Autumn') to St Cross must be one of the finest in the country.  But Winchester is also blessed as it lies in glorious Hampshire countryside and is watered by the clear chalk streams of the Itchen. The little village of Chilcomb is closest to the city. It's also the site of an Army firing range and so is curiously peaceful.

Click the heading for more photos  and here for a report on the Drapers' Almshouse outing to Winchester in 2009

The Drapers' Almshouses

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The Drapers' Livery Company maintain some 180 almshouses on three sites around London, continuing a tradition initiated by bequests from wealthy members of the company in previous centuries. The almshouses at Edmanson's Close, Tottenham are a fine example of Victorian philanthropy, and are co-incidentally only short distance from my great-grandfather's house at Downhills (He was also a liveryman. The house was torn down in 1901).

Downhills, Tottenham, once the home of John Lawford

The almshouses, though seemingly old fashioned by modern standards, provide perfect sheltered accommodation for some 80 elderly residents in extraordinarily tranquil setting, surrounded by grass and trees although in the middle of a busy suburb. Click the heading for some photos of the almshouses and their garden.

Chelsea Flower Show 2011

The Chelsea Flower Show this year was held at the end of the sunniest and driest spring anyone could remember and the exhibitors struggled to keep their plants from flowering too early. Nevertheless the show gardens were superb and the artisan gardens - like the one shown above - as enticing as ever.  My favourite designer, Ishihara Kazuyuki, almost withdrew following the Japanese earthquake but decided to come with a more conventional design.

Click the heading for a selection of photos from the show.

Chelsea Flower Show 2010
Chelsea Flower Show 2008
Chelsea Flower Show 2007

Favourite Poetry - Tall Nettles - Edward Thomas

Tall Nettles
TALL nettles cover up, as they have done These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. This corner of the farmyard I like most: As well as any bloom upon a flower I like the dust on the nettles, never lost Except to prove the sweetness of a shower. Edward Thomas

Favourite Flowers - Banksian Rose

I rarely post photos of flowers - apart from the bluebells in my favourite wood in Wiltshire - as they are so difficult to photograph well, but the Banksian rose in the garden is looking so fine this year that I have made a special effort to capture it.

Those who would like to see some really good photographs of flowers - usually in their natural garden settings - should look at Nigel Burkitt's photos on Flickr.

Wandle Road Royal Wedding Party

The residents of Wandle Road, including some who had moved away but retained close friends in the street, held a party to celebrate the Royal Wedding on 29th April, beginning immediately after the Palace balcony scenes and going on late into the night. The road was closed and cleared of parked cars and tables set up along the middle of the street with stalls on the pavement and in driveways, with food being laid out and barbecued in the playground of Finton House. Many of the houses were hung with flags  and the street decorated with bunting. There was face painting and pavement drawing, table tennis and welly throwing and a tug of war (won by the girls!). The local fire engine paid us a visit and allowed the children to investigate its mysteries and a well stocked tombola was complemented by a raffle of decent prizes, such as commissioned paintings, a dinner for six cooked at one's home and many gifts donated by local businesses, with the proceeds going to the SMA Trust for research into spinal muscular atrophy.

At the end of the day, after prizegiving and superb rock guitar performance by Mark Fiddes and the Wandling Minstrels, our resident opera singer, Friederike Krum, sang a selection of songs from the steps of her house, ending with the most moving of all hymns, 'I Vow To Thee My Country', before the release of a mass of red, white and blue balloons into the sunset. And although some party-loving souls later relit the barbecues and returned to the street for supper, most treated that ceremony as the perfect finale of a most memorable street party.

Click the heading for some photos from the event.

The History of Battersea and Wandsworth Common

Wandsworth Common 

Until 1850, only about 300 people lived in the area known as South Battersea. The land had originally belonged to the St John family as Lords of the Manor of Battersea. Henry St John became the first Viscount Bolingbroke after purchasing the title in 1712 and the family are commemorated by a number of streets bearing their name. The land was then purchased by Earl Spencer in the 18th Century and their name also lives in in many road and pub names as well as in Spencer Park, where Earl Spencer built a substantial house.

A banker, Robert Dent, bought a significant portion of the Spencer's land at the end of the 18th Century and began an ambitious building programme including several large estates and five grand houses facing the Common on 'Five Houses Lane' - now Bolingbroke Grove. Only one of the houses - the former Bolingbroke Hospital - remains today. One of the five houses was lived in by a successful wine merchant, Matthew Charlie. His granddaughter, Marianne, married a Spanish count and became Countess of Morella. Morella Road is named after her. Dent himself lived in the largest and most impressive of the five houses, Old Park. The horseshoe shaped Dents Road took his name in 1881, though one half was later named Gorst Road after Sir John Gorst, a lawyer and Conservative MP, who lived there.

The opening of the Clapham Junction Railway Station in 1863 made the City accessible and the area became a target for developers. Broomwood House and its substantial grounds gave rise to Broomwood, Montholme, Gayville, Devereux and Hiller Roads. The house, which William Wilberforce lived in for several years, was demolished in 1904.

For more than sixty years 24 Morella Road was home to Ida and Louise Cook, two opera-mad spinsters, who helped to rescue dozens of Jews from Hitler's Germany. Their mission was financed by Ida's career as Mills & Boon's most prolific author, writing 130 novels over 50 years. The sisters were posthumously honoured for their bravery in a ceremony at Downing St in 2009.

Some of this history can be found at the reopened Wandsworth Museum. Click here for some photos

[With thanks for Sullivan Thomas]

Russia: The Wild East

Martin Sixsmith's  Russia: the Wild East - explores the history of this great land and for the first time for me explains why Russia's political attitudes and responses seem often threatening and even hostile to habits of thought that we take for granted, being almost inscrutable to those brought up in Western European (and American) society. Even Winston Churchill called Russia 'A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'.

The most recent episode deals with their terrible 240 years of slavery under the yoke of the unbelievably cruel and barbaric Tartars (led by a descendant of Ghengis Khan) who laid waste to their beautiful capital, then Kiev, while butchering and burning their way across the country in what was a dark age version of 'total war'. Russia lived under the Tartars' autocratic rule for nearly three centuries during the crucial era in which Europe discovered of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. Russia not only missed out on those great and civilizing influences, but additionally became attached to the arbitrary and autocratic exercise of power and the subjugation of the judicial process to dictatorial whim - as still pertains today. As Sixsmith says "She would never fully catch up with its intellectual, cultural and social values. Instead, a profound admiration for the Mongol model of an autocratic, militarised state began to enter the Russian psyche.This legacy was so deeply assimilated that its influence has marked the way the country is governed right down to the present day."

Click here for a recent review from the Guardian

Click here for some of Ahkatomova's poems which deal with the fear and cruelty of the now slightly more familiar Stalin terror.

This excellent history reminds me of the even finer America: Empire of Liberty by David Reynolds

Favourite Photographers

Jean Shrimpton at the Dolls' House Museum by Terry O'Neill

I was lucky enough to see two photographic exhibitions in London this week, one of Terry O'Neill's work, and the other of Wim Wenders called Places, Strange and Quiet. Both were fascinating - the Wenders for his vast and atmospheric landscape shots and O'Neill for his wonderful black & white portraits. His photographs had the most immediate impact, as they were all of people well-known to my generation - mostly actors, as well as my favourite model, Jean Shrimpton. Audrey Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Paul Newman, Frank Sianatra, the Beatles and the Stones taken informally, Marianne Faithful, Brigitte Bardot, Monica Vitti, Sean Connery, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood - all the old favourites, beautifully captured.

Click here for my photos from the Terry O'Neill exhibition and here for the Wim Wenders.