architecture

Whitehall Court – London on the Loire

11/05/2023 donbrown 0

Look towards the Eye from St James’s Park (or vice versa), or look upriver from the Golden Jubilee Bridge and there appears to be a […]

The York House Watergate and the 1st Duke of Buckingham

12/02/2023 donbrown 0

When Joseph Bazalgette created his marvellous (and still used) sewer system the 1860s, he pushed back the banks of the Thames and buried his main […]

Queen Anne’s Gate: Higgledy-Piggledy in SW1

29/08/2022 donbrown 0

Apparently the expression “higgledy-piggledy” is not much known in the US; my use of the phrase to an American tour group as we passed a […]

stockwell bus garage interior

Stockwell’s concrete cathedral for buses

08/02/2022 donbrown 0

Fall asleep on a Go-Ahead bus and you might just be lucky enough to wake up in the depot – the soaring, concrete cathedral that […]

The Chapel of St John the Evangelist

28/12/2021 donbrown 0

One of the loveliest and most peaceful spaces in London is literally in the centre of one of the busiest. The Tower of London gets […]

The Ascent of W1: the Marble Arch Mound

21/08/2021 donbrown 0

I actually thought it might be a good idea. It was certainly an idea worth exploring, and perhaps wacky/left field enough to work; plant a […]

A steam ship in the City of London

29/07/2021 donbrown 0

There are quite a number of ‘Holland Houses’ in the capital – the remains of a Jacobean country home in Holland Park, Kensington; a school […]

London’s newest castle: The US Embassy, Nine Elms

31/03/2020 donbrown 0

Don’t call it a moat. Let’s be clear about that from the start; it’s not a moat – it’s a lake. Well, that’s according to […]

farm st church

Farm Street Church, Mayfair – a gothic wonder

02/03/2020 donbrown 0

The Victorians loved the medieval. The ‘gothic revival’ actually started earlier – in the late 1700s/early 1800s as a reaction to classicism – but it […]

“One of the sights of London”

26/11/2019 donbrown 0

“Miss the Tower of London, if you have to, but don’t miss this” wrote Ian Nairn in his 1966 guide, Nairn’s London. A Nash terrace? […]