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The Gates Of Old London

June 22, 2021
by the gentle author

Today I present these handsome Players Cigarette Cards from the Celebrated Gateways series published in 1907.

You may also like to take a look at these other sets of cigarette cards

John Player’s Cries of London

More John Player’s Cries of London

Faulkner’s Street Cries

Julius M Price’s London Types

from → Past Life, Street Life

6 Responses leave one →
  1. Janet M permalink
    June 22, 2021

    Very handsome. Today cigarettes only give one cancer.

  2. Baden Smith permalink
    June 22, 2021

    What was going on around 1760-70 that had all these gates being demolished at the same time?

  3. NicolaMunday permalink
    June 22, 2021

    What a coincidence – on my neighbourhood website a resident posted a photo of St John’s gate Clerkenwell from 1900. If you would like me to forward it to you please let me know.
    It’s interesting that Aldgate may have come from all-gate as that is the section of the City that welcomed so many immigrants from the French Protestant refugees onwards although some must have arrived by river.

  4. Simon permalink
    June 22, 2021

    Magnificent

  5. Helen Breen permalink
    June 22, 2021

    Greetings from Boston,

    GA, so interesting how the story of these historic entry points into London were created and remain as place names in today’s city – a classy way for Player’s cigarettes to advertise.

  6. Saba permalink
    June 22, 2021

    Lovely. I think of Chaucer’s view of the city’s traffic beneath his window in Aldgate. I can’t help but wonder whether some of the travelers that he saw ended up on the pages of Canterbury Tales.

    I also wonder whether antiquities activists, such as those described in this blog, existed in the eighteenth century and whether they tried to save some of the magnificent old gates. Collecting antiquities had become very popular among the nobility by that time, leading to Curiosity Cabinets, private collections, and, eventually, the first public museums. Did the nobility not also recognize the value of the old gates?

    As a note — the author Collette lived in an apartment in the Palais Royale in Paris during WWII and wrote about the flow of traffic outside her window. I lived briefly in Paris and used to sit outside her apartment thinking of her brave life.

    There must be many who watched the streets during the past shutdown who noted the changes as the months went by.

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