The stuffaboutlondon review of 2024

Thanks to everyone who has visited the blog this year, passed comments, shared on Facebook or whatever. It’s been another record-breaking (for me) year, with over 28,000 visitors generating a touch under 40,000 page views – both over 40% up on what I thought was a great year in 2023.

As is now traditional, here’s last year’s top ten list of posts, with their positions in the previous year. Cue the Alan Freeman!

1. Henry VIII’s Wine Cellar (non-mover – the top post since for ever) 
2. The American Memorial Chapel, St Paul’s (non mover)
3. The Bomb Damage maps (up 1 place)
4. Scientists’ Corner, Westminster Abbey (down 1 place)
5. The Wondrous Pelicans of St James’s Park (up 5 from 10)
6. The Blue Bridge in St James’s Park (new entry!)
7. Up on the roof (again): the ‘Beast’ (new entry!)
8. “Commit no nuisance” (up 1 from 9)
9. London’s Green Parakeets (up 1 from 10)
10. Westminster Abbey’s Hidden Highlights Tour (down 5 from 5)

(for the completists among you, here’s the top tens for 2023, 2022 and 2021)

And a reminder that I’m planning on some in-person tours in January. Details here.

There were well over 30 new posts last year, some of which proved very popular and some of which…didn’t. All are equally loved by me, so do click on the links below to give as many as possible of them some lurve as we stride boldly into 2025.

• Buildings and architecture
• Feeling Sorry for Marble Arch
• London Pubs: The George Inn in Southwark
• Soho Square, Ancient and Modern(ish)
• South Kensington’s Michelin Man
• Spook Central – the MI6 Building at Vauxhall
• The New London Model: Towering over the City
• The Wellington (aka Green Park or Constitution Hill) Arch
• Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital
• Up on the roof (again): the ‘Beast’
• Clapham Common’s Temperance Fountain

• History and Curiosities
• George Washington – one of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived
• Rabbit holes, hangings and John Rocque’s Map of London
• The “McGill Oak” Tree on Strand and the “Great Storm’ of 1987
• The Algerian Coffee Stores – caffeinating London since 1887
• The Bankside Reconstruction of Drake’s ‘The Golden Hinde’
• The London Plane – our very own tree
• The Mysterious Panyer Boy of St Paul’s

• Memorials and Monuments
• Palely loitering in Moorgate: the new John Keats memorial
• Saul has slain his thousands | The Machine Gun Corps Memorial
• The Bali bombing memorial, Horseguards Avenue
• The Bomber Command Memorial, Green Park
• The Charing Cross: Victorian Medievalism
• The Eagle Squadrons Memorial in Grosvenor Square
• Carve their names with pride: the SOE Memorial

• Museums and suchlike
• 30 Years of Warfare: from the Nery Gun to the V2
• Days Out – Bletchley Park, Home of the WW2 Codebreakers
• Epstein’s Einstein at the V&A
• Glorious Chaos: Sir John Soane’s Museum
• ‘Lost Gardens of London’ at the Garden Museum
• The Ashcroft Gallery at the Imperial War Museum
• The D Day Story and the Overlord Embroidery
• The Last of the WW2 Big Ships – HMS Belfast
• The Nereid Monument in the British Museum
• Days Out: The Wonderful Dover Castle

I’ve a list of new posts to try to get my head around (just once the Quality Street and the stilton have been finished off), so do sign up for my monthly round up of new activity via my mailing list.