Skip to content

The Fogs & Smogs Of Old London

November 4, 2026
by the gentle author


Click here to book

.
.

St. Martin, Ludgate with St. Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1900

At this time of year, when dusk gathers in the mid-afternoon, a certain fog drifts into my brain and the city itself grows mutable as the looming buildings outside my window merge into a dark labyrinth of shadows beyond. Yet this is as nothing compared with the smog of old London – in the days before anyone dreamed of the Ultra Low Emission Zone – when a million coal fires polluted the atmosphere with clouds of filthy black smoke carrying noxious fumes, infections and lung diseases. In old London, the city resounded with a symphony of fog horns on the river and thousands of people coughing in the street.

Looking at these glass slides of a century ago, once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute, the fogs and smogs of old London take on quite another meaning. They manifest the proverbial mythic “mists of time,” the miasma wherein is lost all of human history, save the sketchy outline that some idle writer or other jotted down. Just as gauzes at the pantomime conjure the romance of fairyland, the hazes in these pictures filter and soften the images as if they were faded memories, receding into the past.

The closer I examine these views, the more I wonder whether the fog is, in some cases, an apparition called forth by the photographic process itself – the result of a smeary lens or grime on the glass plate, or simply an accident of exposure. Even so, this photographic fogging is no less evocative of old London than the actual meteorological phenomenon. As long as there is atmosphere, the pictures are irresistibly atmospheric. And old London is a city eternally swathed in mist.

St Paul’s Cathedral from the north-west, c. 1920

Pump at Bedford Row, 1911

Cenotaph, 1919

Upper Thames view, c. 1920

Greenwich Hospital from the Park, c. 1920

City roadworks, 1910

Looking north across the City of London, c. 1920

Old General Post Office, c. 1910

View eastwards from St Paul’s, c. 1910

Hertford House, c. 1910

New River Head, c. 1910

The Running Footman public house, c. 1900

Unidentified building, c 1910

Church Row, Hampstead, c. 1910

Danish Ambassador’s residence, Wellclose Square, Wapping c. 1910

Church of All Hallows, London Wall, c. 1890

Drapers’ Almshouses, Bromley Street, c. 1910

Battersea Bridge, c. 1910

32 Smith Grove, Highgate, in the snow, 1906

Unknown public building, c. 1910

Training ship at Greenwich, c. 1910

Flooded moat at the Tower of London, c. 1910

The Woodman, 1900

Bangor St, North Kensington, c. 1910

Terrace of the Houses of Parliament, c.1910

Statue of Boudicca on Westminster Bridge, c. 1910

Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

You may also like to take a look at

The Nights of Old London

The Ghosts of Old London

The Dogs of Old London

Maurice Evans, Firework Collector

November 3, 2026
by the gentle author

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours

 

 

Maurice Evans collected fireworks since childhood and at over eighty years old,  he had accumulated the most comprehensive collection in the country – so you can imagine both my excitement and my trepidation upon stepping through the threshold of his house in Shoreham. My concern about potential explosion was relieved when Maurice confirmed that he had removed the gunpowder from his fireworks, only to be re-ignited when his wife Kit helpfully revealed that Catherine Wheels and Bangers were excepted because you cannot extract the gunpowder without ruining them.

This statement prompted Maurice to remember with visible pleasure that he still had a collection of World War II shells in the cellar and, of course, the reinforced steel shed in the garden full of live fireworks. “Let’s just say, if there’s a big bang in the neighbourhood, the police always come here first to see if it’s me,” admitted Maurice with a playful smirk. “Which it often isn’t,” added Kit, backing Maurice up with a complicit demonstration of knowing innocence.

“It all started with my father who was in munitions in the First World War,” explained Maurice proudly, “He had a big trunk with little drawers, and in those drawers I found diagrams explaining how to work with explosives and it intrigued me. Then came World War II and the South Downs were used as a training ground and, as boys, we went where we shouldn’t and there were loads of shells lying around, so we used to let them off.”

Maurice’s radiant smile revealed to me the unassailable joy of his teenage years, running around the downs at Shoreham playing with bombs. “We used to set off detonators outside each other’s houses to announce we’d arrived!” he bragged, waving his left hand to reveal the missing index finger, blown off when the explosive in a slow fuse unexpectedly fired upon lighting. “That’s the worst thing that happened,” Maurice declared with a grimace of alacrity, “We were worldly wise with explosives!”

Even before his teens, the love of pyrotechnics had taken grip upon Maurice’s psyche. It was a passion born of denial. “I used to suffer from bronchitis and asthma as a child, so when November 5th came round, I had to stay indoors.” he confided with a frown, “Every shop had a club and you put your pennies and ha’pennies in to save for fireworks and that’s what I did, but then my father let them off and I had to watch through the window.”

After the war, Maurice teamed up with a pyrotechnician from London and they travelled the country giving displays which Maurice devised, achieving delights that transcended his childhood hunger for explosions. “In my mind, I could envisage the sequence of fireworks and colours, and that was what I used to enjoy. You’ve got all the colours to start with, smoke, smoke colours, ground explosions, aerial explosions – it’s endless the amount of different things you can do. The art of it is knowing how to choose.” explained Maurice, his face illuminated by the images flickering in his mind. Adding, “I used to be quite big in fireworks at one time.” with calculated understatement.

Yet all this personal history was the mere pre-amble before Maurice led me through his house, immaculately clean, lined with patterned carpets and papers and witty curios of every description. Then in the kitchen, overlooking the garden lined with old trees, he opened an unexpected cupboard door to reveal a narrow red staircase going down. We descended to enter the burrow where Maurice has his rifle range, his collections, model aeroplanes, bombs and fireworks – all sharing the properties of flight and explosiveness. Once they were within reach, Maurice could not restrain his delight in picking up the shells and mortars of his childhood, explaining their explosive qualities and functions.

But my eyes were drawn by all the fireworks that lined the walls and glass cases, and the deep blues, lemon yellows and scarlets of their wrappers and casings. Such evocative colours and intricate designs which in their distinctive style of type and motif, draw upon the excitement and anticipation of magic we all share as children, feelings that compose into a lifelong love of fireworks. Rockets, Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels, Bangers, and Sparklers – amounting to thousands in boxes and crates, Maurice’s extraordinary collection is the history of fireworks in this country.

“I wouldn’t say its made my life, but its certainly livened it up,” confided Maurice, seeing my wonder at his overwhelming display. Because no-one (except Maurice) keeps fireworks, there is something extraordinary in seeing so many old ones and it sets your imagination racing to envisage the potential spectacle that these small cardboard parcels propose.

Maurice outgrew the bronchitis and asthma to have a beautiful life filled with fireworks, to visit firework factories around Britain, in China, Australia, New Zealand and all over Europe, and to scour Britain for collections of old fireworks, accumulating his priceless collection. Like an old dragon in a cave, surrounded by gold, Maurice guarded his cellar hoard protectively and was concerned about the future. “It needs to be seen,” he said, contemplating it all and speaking his thoughts out loud, “I would like to put this whole collection into a museum. I don’t want any money. I want everyone to see what happened from pre-war times up until the present day in the progression of fireworks.”

“My father used to bring me the used ones to keep,” confessed Maurice quietly with an affectionate gleam in his eye, as he revealed the emotional origin of his collection, once that we were alone together in the cellar. With touching selflessness, having derived so much joy from collecting his fireworks, Maurice wanted to share them with everybody else and he gave his collection to the Museum of British Folklore.

 

Maurice with his exploding fruit.

Maurice with his barrel of gunpowder

Maurice with his grenades.

Maurice with two favourite rockets.

Firework photographs copyright © Simon Costin

Read my story about Simon Costin, The Museum of British Folklore

Sarah Ainslie Introduces ‘Women At Work’

November 2, 2026
by the gentle author

Today I publish these edited extracts from Sarah Ainslie’s introduction. The book includes Sarah’s extensive commentary throughout.

CLICK HERE TO BUY A SIGNED COPY FOR £20

‘Women at Work, East End Portraits 1992–2025 brings together the many working women I have encountered and photographed since coming to the East End of London.

My fascination with photography began whilst studying at Derby Art College in the late 1960s. It was a male-dominated course with only three of us young women, sharing a darkroom. For us, this was a time not only for exploring alternative ways of photography but also for seeking different approaches to telling our stories.

I came to London in the late 1970s, and I remember walking through the streets of the East End and finding myself beside the Thames at Wapping. I fell in love with the area and moved into a studio that was part of a working warehouse at New Crane Wharf. I lived and worked there for seven years alongside an eclectic group of around seventy artists and filmmakers until our eviction in 1985 to make way for the redevelopment of the Docklands.

Every Sunday, I wandered through the streets to take pictures in Brick Lane and I still feel the excitement of walking through the chaos, energy and humanity of the market, where people laid out their personal possessions on the pavements to sell and be recycled into a new life. It was a theatre of the streets. And I was captivated, not only by this community but also by the urban landscape it inhabited.

In 1992, I was commissioned by Hackney Museum to make portraits documenting the working lives of women in the borough. It was fascinating to search for a diverse range of occupations to photograph.

By this time, I had moved my studio to Shoreditch and I was shooting mainly with black and white film. I would process my film and print contact sheets in my darkroom before selecting the images, so captivating as they slowly emerged in the developer.

Alongside photographing the East End, I was also working for fringe theatre companies documenting rehearsals as well as capturing the action of performance. Photographing in the theatre informed the way I worked outside in the streets. Becoming embedded in and committing time to projects has always been important for me, allowing my relationships with people and places to grow. In the mid-1990s, I was drawn to exploring the night-time economy of Smithfield Market in the City of London. It was a dramatic, subterranean and mysterious world where glowing lights illuminated rows of hanging carcasses reminiscent of paintings by Rembrandt or Soutine. There was a camaraderie there between the traders who were mainly men and the few female cashiers. As dawn rose over the city, these night workers returned home to sleep and the daytime working world began.

In 2010, I became a contributing photographer to Spitalfields Life, which tells the stories of the people, the culture and the history of the East End. Sometimes we would visit a particular person and other times we would explore the streets, making surveys of launderettes, chicken shops, barbers and other vital parts of our community.

We found that everyone’s life experience was distinct, always interesting, sometimes dramatic and sometimes joyous, whilst at other times it was the simplicity of an individual’s life that was inspiring. At the same time there were many housing campaigns, the threat of eviction is an all too familiar story in the East End, and photographs and stories became an important tool in raising awareness against injustice.

It has been both an honour and an adventure to meet and photograph women from across numerous communities, many of whom have found new ways of working within the structure of society, setting up businesses and organisations, individually and collectively. Some have created spaces for music, dance and the arts. Others have become political activists fighting for better conditions and equal rights. All are vital contributors to the East End cultural landscape. And it is the spirit of these women who have shared their lives with dignity, integrity and strength that have enriched and inspired me through all these years.

This book is a tribute to these women.’

SARAH AINSLIE

Sue Venning, Owner G Kelly Pie & Mash, Roman Rd, 2011

Sarah Ainslie will be giving an illustrated lecture, showing her pictures and telling the stories behind her WOMEN AT WORK project at this year’s Bloomsbury Jamboree on Saturday 14th November at the Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AT.

 

CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR SARAH’S LECTURE

 

We invite you to join us at the book launch and exhibition opening for WOMEN AT WORK on Thursday 19th November 6:30-9pm at Four Corners Gallery, 121 Roman Road, London, E2 OQN.

 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE LAUNCH PARTY & EXHIBITION OPENING

Sarah Ainslie’s Women At Work Is Published!

November 1, 2026
by the gentle author

We are overjoyed to announce that – after many months of work and thanks to you – copies of Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK are now available and we are sending them out.

 

CLICK HERE TO BUY A SIGNED COPY FOR £20

 

Sarah Ainslie will be giving an illustrated lecture, showing her pictures and telling the stories behind her WOMEN AT WORK project at this year’s Bloomsbury Jamboree on Saturday 14th November at the Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AT.

 

CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR SARAH’S LECTURE

 

We invite you to join us at the book launch and exhibition opening for WOMEN AT WORK on Thursday 19th November 6:30-9pm at Four Corners Gallery, 121 Roman Road, London, E2 OQN.

 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE LAUNCH PARTY & EXHIBITION OPENING

 

WOMEN AT WORK celebrates the women whose work shapes the fabric of our lives, sustaining communities with their labour, warmth & fellowship

SARAH AINSLIE documents the contribution of female labour in exuberant photographs that capture the passion and struggle of the working life, forming a panoramic survey of social change over four decades.

“My pictures are a testament to the indomitable spirit of women whose work is often unrecognised, whether in factories, working from home or caring for the vulnerable – tradeswomen, community organisers, garment workers, faith leaders, artists, firefighters, shopkeepers, transport workers, cleaners and NHS staff, women who are catering, and many more who sustain and bind together communities with their warmth, labour and fellowship.”

Sarah Ainslie

THANK YOU Carol Addis, Liz Aitken, The Alcove Library, Fatima Ali, Monica Allen, Deborah Andrews, Geraldine Anslow, Alice Audsley, Elizabeth Aumeer, Kate Bacon, Stephen Ball, Betsy Barker, Graham Barker, Sarah Bates, Roxy Beaujolais, Niamh Bermingham, Millie Bird, Catherine Burd, Karolina Brodnicka, Jill Browne, Yvonne Cheyney, Karen Chung, Jackie Connor, Esther Conway, Wendy Cook, Sarah Correia, Clarice Corell, Valerie Cottle, Mary Dalton, Rachel Darnley-Smith, Rosie Dastgir, Jill Day, Lucinda De Jasay, Luke Dixon, James Douglas, Josephine Eglin, Marion Elliot, Rachel Ferriman, Linda Florio, Jillian Foley, Lisa Forkas, Gillian Forrester, Nancy Franklin, Emma Grace, Carol Grantham, Judy Greenway, Karen Greenwood, Polly Grylls, Stephen Guy, Keith Hagan, Jayne Hamilton, Mark Hamsher, Siri Hansen, Julia Harrison, David Heath, Carolyn Hirst, David Hoffman, Anne Holland, Melissa Horn, Emma Howard Boyd, Susan Hoyal, Robin Huffman, Richard Humm, Diana Fawcett, Lisa Ferguson, Doreen Fletcher, Jane James, Annie Johns, Andrew Jones, Barbara Jones, Rachel Jowitt, Tom Kavanagh, Hilda Kean, Michael Keating, Colette Khan, Mark King, Lin Lee, Martin Ling, Pauline Lord, John Patrick Lowe, Jaime Rory Lucy, Sarah Ludford, Alison Lynch, Mirela Mardare, Anabel Marsh, Sarah Mason, Frances Mayhew, Jill Mead, Julia Meadows, Carolyn Meunier, Jennifer Michael, Susan Miles, Janet Mohler, Stephen Moran, Annie Moreton, Robert Moye, Lee Murphy, Jeremy Musson, Ros Niblett, Krissie Nicolson, Thomas Nowacki, Sarah Nuttall, Frances Oakley, Janet O’Brien, Vivienne Palmer, Peter Parker, Tanya Peixoto, Pamela Percy, Fiona Pettitt, Caroline Pick, Alison Pilkington, Jeffrey Press, Elizabeth Prochaska, Tony Quinn, Alice Rawsthorn, Caz Richards, Ruth Richardson, Madeleine Ruggi, Anne Sally, Sir Charles Saumarez Smith, Tim Sayer, Christine Sibley, Marie Sleigh, Robert Small, Annie Sparks, Henrietta M Startup, Carrie Supple, Gilane Tawadros, Pen Thompson, Sophie Thompson, Jane Trethewey, Olivia Horsfall Turner, Sukhin Tye, Roel Van Der List, Nicola Von Velsen, Elizabeth Walker, Arabella Warner, Nicky Webb, Lianne Weidmann, Patricia Wenz, Gilda Williams, Jane Williamson, Jill Wilson, Sarah Winman, Jenny Wiseman, Robert Zeigler and many others who choose to be anonymous.

Upon The Nature Of Fear

October 31, 2026
by the gentle author

I believe I was born with a medieval imagination. It is the only way I can explain the explicit gothic terrors of my childhood. Even lying in my cradle, I recall observing the monstrous face that emerged from the ceiling lampshade once the light was turned out. This all-seeing creature, peering at me from above, grew more pervasive as years passed, occupying the shadows at the edges of my vision and assuming more concrete manifestations. An unexpected sound in my dark room revealed its presence, causing me to lie still and hold my breath, as if through my petrified silence I could avert the attention of the devil leaning over my bedside.

When I first became aware of gargoyles carved upon churches and illustrated in manuscripts, I recognised these creatures from my own imagination and I made my own paintings of these scaled, clawed, horned, winged beasts, which were as familiar as animals in the natural world. I interpreted any indeterminate sound or movement from the dark as indicating their physical presence in my temporal existence. Consequently, darkness, shadow and gloom were an inescapable source of fear to me on account of the nameless threat they harboured, always lurking there just waiting to pounce. At this time of year, when the dusk glimmers earlier in the day, their power grew as if these creatures of the shades might overrun the earth.

Nothing could have persuaded me to walk into a dark house alone. One teenage summer, I looked after an old cottage while the residents were on their holiday and, returning after work at night, I had to walk a long road that led through a deep wood without street lighting. As I wheeled my bicycle up the steep hill among the trees in dread, it seemed to me they were alive with monsters and any movement of the branches confirmed their teeming presence.

Yet I discovered a love of ghost stories and collected anthologies of tales of the supernatural, which I accepted as real because they extended and explained the uncanny notions of my own imagination. In an attempt to normalise my fears, I made a study of mythical beasts and learnt to distinguish between a griffin and a wyvern. When I discovered the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Breughel, I grew fascinated and strangely reassured that they had seen the apocalyptic visions which haunted the recesses of my own mind.

I made the mistake of going to see Ridley Scott’s The Alien alone and experienced ninety minutes transfixed with terror, unable to move, because – unlike the characters in the drama – I was already familiar with this beast who had been pursuing me my whole life. In retrospect, I recognise the equivocal nature of this experience, because I also sought a screening of The Exorcist with similar results. Perhaps I sought consolation in having my worst fears realised, even if I regretted it too?

Once, walking through a side street at night, I peered into the window of an empty printshop and leapt six feet back when a dark figure rose up from among the machines to confront my face in the glass. My companions found this reaction to my own shadow highly amusing and it was a troubling reminder of the degree to which I was at the mercy of these irrational fears even as an adult.

I woke in the night sometimes, shaking with fear and convinced there were venomous snakes in the foot of my bed. The only solution was to unmake the bed and remake it again before I could climb back in. Imagine my surprise when I visited the aquarium in Berlin and decided to explore the upper floor where I was confronted with glass cases of live tropical snakes. Even as I sprinted away down the street, I felt the need to keep a distance from cars in case a serpent might be lurking underneath. This particular terror reached its nadir when I was walking in the Pyrenees, and stood to bathe beneath a waterfall and cool myself on a hot day. A green snake of several feet in length fell wriggling from above, hit me, bounced off into the pool and swam away, leaving me frozen in shock.

Somewhere all these fears dissolved. I do not know where or when exactly. I no longer read ghost stories or watch horror films and equally I do not seek out dark places or reptile houses. None of these things have purchase upon my psyche or even hold any interest anymore. Those scaly beasts have retreated from the world. For me, the shadows are not inhabited by the spectral and the unfathomable darkness is empty.

Bereavement entered my life and it dispelled these fears which haunted me for so long. My mother and father who used to turn out the light and leave me to sleep in my childhood room at the mercy of medieval phantasms are gone, and I have to live in the knowledge that they can no longer protect me. Once I witnessed the moment of death with my own eyes, it held no mystery for me. The demons became redundant and fled. Now they have lost their power over me, I miss them – or rather, perhaps, I miss the person I used to be – yet I am happy to live a life without supernatural agency.

Fourteenth century carvings from St Katherine’s Chapel, Limehouse

You might also like to read about

A Dead Man in Clerkenwell

Misericords at St Katherine’s Chapel, Limehouse

The Dead Man In Clerkenwell

October 30, 2026
by the gentle author

 

This is the face of the dead man in Clerkenwell. He does not look perturbed by the change in the weather. Once winters wore him out, but now he rests beneath the streets of the modern city he will never see, oblivious both to the weather and the wonders of our age, entirely oblivious to everything in fact.

Let me admit, although some might consider it poor company, I consider death to be my friend – because without mortality our time upon this earth would be worthless. So I do not fear death, but rather I hope I shall have enough life first. My fear is that death might come too soon or unexpectedly in some pernicious form. In this respect, I envy my father who always took a nap on the sofa each Sunday after gardening and one day at the age of seventy nine – when he had completed trimming the privet hedge – he never woke up again.

It was many years ago that I first made the acquaintance of the dead man in Clerkenwell, when I had an office in the Close where I used to go each day and write. I was fascinated to discover a twelfth century crypt in the heart of London, the oldest remnant of the medieval priory of the Knights of St John that once stood in Clerkenwell until it was destroyed by Henry VIII, and it was this memento mori, a sixteenth century stone figure of an emaciated corpse, which embodied the spirit of the place for me.

Thanks to the curator at the Museum of the Order of St John, I went back to look up my old friend after all these years. They lent me their key and, leaving the bright October sunshine behind me, I let myself into the crypt, switching on the lights and walking to the furthest underground recess of the building where the dead man was waiting. I walked up to the tomb where he lay and cast my eyes upon him, recumbent with his shroud gathered across his groin to protect a modesty that was no longer required. He did not remonstrate with me for letting twenty years go by. He did not even look surprised. He did not appear to recognise me at all. Yet he looked different than before, because I had changed, and it was the transformative events of the intervening years that had awakened my curiosity to return.

There is a veracity in this sculpture which I could not recognise upon my previous visit, when – in my innocence – I had never seen a dead person. Standing over the figure this time, as if at a bedside, I observed the distended limbs, the sunken eyes and the tilt of the head that are distinctive to the dead. When my mother lost her mental and then her physical faculties too, I continued to feed her until she could no longer even swallow liquid, becoming as emaciated as the stone figure before me. It was at dusk on the 31st December that I came into her room and discovered her inanimate, recognising that through some inexplicable prescience the life had gone from her at the ending of the year. I understood the literal meaning of “remains,” because everything distinctive of the living person had departed to leave mere skin and bone. And I know now that the sculptor who made this effigy had seen that too, because his observation of the dead is apparent in his work, even if the bizarre number of ribs in his figure bears no relation to human anatomy.

There is a polished area on the brow, upon which I instinctively placed my hand, where my predecessors over the past five centuries had worn it smooth. This gesture, which you make as if to check his temperature, is an unconscious blessing in recognition of the commonality we share with the dead who have gone before us and whose ranks we shall all join eventually. The paradox of this sculpture is that because it is a man-made artifact it has emotional presence, whereas the actual dead have only absence. It is the tender details – the hair carefully pulled back behind the ears, and the protective arms with their workmanlike repairs – that endear me to this soulful relic.

Time has not been kind to this figure, which originally lay upon the elaborate tomb of Sir William Weston inside the old church of St James Clerkenwell, until the edifice was demolished and the current church was built in the eighteenth century, when the effigy was resigned to this crypt like an old pram slung in the cellar. Today a modern facade reveals no hint of what lies below ground. Sir William Weston, the last Prior, died in April 1540 on the day that Henry VIII issued the instruction to dissolve the Order, and the nature of his death was unrecorded. Thus, my friend the dead man is loss incarnate – the damaged relic of the tomb of the last Prior of the monastery destroyed five hundred years ago – yet he still has his human dignity and he speaks to me.

Walking back from Clerkenwell, through the City to Spitalfields on this bright afternoon in late October, I recognised a similar instinct as I did after my mother’s death. I cooked myself a meal because I craved the familiar task and the event of the day renewed my desire to live more life.

 

The Museum of the Order of St John, St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, EC1M 4DA

The Tombs Of Old London

October 29, 2026
by the gentle author

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours

.

Monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, Westminster Abbey, c.1910

What could be more appropriate to the season of spooks and spirits than a virtual tour of the tombs of old London, courtesy of these glass slides once used by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute?

We can admire the aesthetic wonders of statuary and architecture in these magnificent designs, and receive an education in the history and achievements of our illustrious forbears as a bonus.

In my childhood, no festival or national occasion was complete without a visit to some ancient abbey or cathedral. Yet while ostensibly we went to pay our respects, my interest was always drawn by the stone tombs and ancient monuments.

It is a human impulse to challenge the ephemeral nature of existence by striving to create monuments, even if the paradox is that these attempts to render tenderness in granite will always be poignant failures, reminding us of death rather than life. Yet there is soulful beauty in these overwrought confections and a certain liberating consolation to be drawn, setting our personal grief against the wider perspective of history.

Tomb of Sir Francis Vere, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Monument to William Wilberforce, Westminster Abbey, c.1910

Memorial to Admiral Sir Peter Warren,  Westminster Abbey, c.1910

Monument to William Wordsworth in Baptistery, Westminster Abbey, c.1910

St Benedict’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey,  c.1910

Chapel of St Edmund, Westminster Abbey, c.1910

Tombstone of Laurence Sterne, St George’s Hanover Sq, c.1910 – Buried, grave-robbed and reburied in 1768, subsequently removed to Coxwold in 1969 due to redevelopment of the churchyard.

Hogarth’s tomb, St Nicholas’ Churchyard, Chiswick, c.1910

Sir Hans Sloane and Miller Monuments in Old Chelsea Churchyard, c. 1910

Stanley’s Monument in Chelsea Church, c. 1910

Sanctuary at All Saint’s Church, Chelsea, c. 1910

Shakespeare’s memorial, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Colville Monument in All Saint’s Church, Chelsea, c. 1910

Tomb of Daniel Defoe at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, c. 1910

At the gates of Bunhill Fields, c. 1910

Tomb of John Bunyan, Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, c. 1910

North Transept of Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

North Ambulatory, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Ambulatory, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Monument to John Milton, St Giles, Cripplegate, c. 1910

Offley Monument, St Andrew Undershaft, c. 1910

Pickering Monument, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, c. 1920

Plaque, Christ Church, Newgate, 1921

Tombs in Temple churchyard, c. 1910

King Sebert’s Tomb, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Monument to Historian John Stow in St.Andrew Undershaft, c. 1910

Tomb of Edward III, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Queen Elizabeth I’s Tomb, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Monument to Charles James Fox, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Poets’ Corner with David Garrick’s Memorial, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Memorial to George Frederick Handel, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Monument to Francis Holles, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Tombstone of the Kidney family, c. 1910

Cradle monument to Sophia, Daughter of James I, Henry VII’s Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Tomb of Sir Francis Vere, Chapel of St John the Evangelist, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Tomb of John Dryden, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

Wellington’s Funeral Carriage, St Paul’s Cathedral,c. 1910

Robert Preston’s grave stone, St Magnus, c. 1910

Tomb of Henry VII, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910

 

Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

You may also like to take a look at

The Nights of Old London

The Ghosts of Old London

The Dogs of Old London

The Signs of Old London