architecture

black and white half timbered house in mayfair

22 Farm Street, Mayfair – a tudorbethan house of history

10/10/2025 donbrown 0

The much-photographed Farm House in Mayfair – residents include Wallis Simpson, Gloria Swanson and JFK (possibly).

the quadriga on top of wellington arch

The Wellington (aka Green Park or Constitution Hill) Arch

24/10/2024 donbrown 1

As well as Marble Arch to the north, Park Lane has at its opposite end what is now called the Wellington Arch. This is just […]

st paul's cathedral on the nla city model

The New London Model: Towering over the City

16/02/2024 donbrown 0

Should you want to feel godlike, the entire capital spread out beneath your glorious presence, then the place to go is The London Centre, in […]

A History of London – free talk recording

27/11/2023 donbrown 0

Last week I did a Zoom talk for 40 or so people as a fundraiser for Prostate Cancer UK. Called “a history of London in […]

Prince Albert’s Mega-kitsch Memorial

06/09/2023 donbrown 0

Of course the damn thing is utterly absurd. Every criticism of high victoriana – over-sentimental, over-decorated, over-elaborate to the point of fussy, over size – […]

St George’s Bloomsbury: the triumph of “the Devil’s Architect”

28/08/2023 donbrown 0

Find your way to the High Holborn entrance to the roof terrace of the new ‘Post Building’ (the former Royal Mail West Central District Office), […]

Duck Island Cottage – Westminster’s Swiss Chalet

15/05/2023 donbrown 0

It’s somehow absolutely typical of london that some of the closest neighbours to George Gilbert Scott’s huge Italianate Foreign Office building is a pair of […]

The Citadel – Central London’s real wartime bunker

16/11/2022 donbrown 0

Squatting next to the elegant Queen Anne revival of the Old Admiralty Building (and more on that at some point) on the north side of […]

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 […]