somewhere in london

“Mind the gap, please.” Loving these articles about the 150s anniversary of the London underground!

The name Central line was formally adopted in 1937, at the same time as the line was being extended east and west as part of a London-wide integration and expansion programme, though many of the stations built in the late 1930s were not opened until after the second world war. For the duration of the war, those stations – especially in heavily bombed east London – served as air-raid shelters, and the tube tunnels became the sites of factories and warehouses. From 1942-45, armaments company Plessey had a factory producing aircraft components in the 2.5-mile twin tunnels between Leytonstone and Gants Hill. The Central line really has seen it all, and continues to be a touchstone of life in the capital.

I stop briefly at Stratford, the shiny, energetic new face of east London, home of the Olympic park and Westfield shopping centre. I like Westfield – the brashness, the anthemic music, the ice rink where the struggles of the young to stay upright feel like a metaphor for life. I also like the fact that across the road from Westfield the old 1970s Stratford Centre, with its poundshops and market stalls, is still going strong, a haven for elderly East Enders banging on about the war. Two eras side by side.

Those elderly locals have good reason to obsess. The second world war had a profound effect on the East End, and on the Central line itself. A bomb hit Bank station in January 1941, killing 56 people, and on 3 March 1943, in the worst civilian disaster of the war, 173 people died atBethnal Green station. They had been rushing to seek shelter after the air-raid sirens had sounded, when a woman fell at the bottom of the set of stairs that led down to the station from the street. Those behind fell on top of her, and in the panic that followed many were crushed or suffocated. According to John Day and John Reed’s The Story of London’s Underground, 146 of the 173 who died were women and children.

A plaque with the names of the dead was unveiled to mark the 50th anniversary of the disaster in 1993, and a more elaborate memorial is now being constructed by the Stairway to Heaven Trust. The first phase is complete, but there are posters next to the station entrance appealing for funds to complete it. This is a locally driven act of remembrance. For all the yuppification of the East End, many people have lived hereabouts all their lives and were children during the blitz. They lost friends and relatives in the disaster, and the collective memory is long. - The Guardian

Blogged » Brideshead Revisited: A trip to Castle Howard

#london #cemetery #history (Taken with Instagram at Nunhead Cemetery)

painfulprince:

→ princess elisabeth of hesse and by rhine (march 11 1895 - november 16 1903)

known as ella to the family, she was the only daughter of ernst ludwig, grand duke of hesse and by rhine, and his wife, princess victoria melita of saxeburg and gotha.

princess victoria was eighteen at the time of her birth and was fond of elisabeth, but found it hard to compete with ernst’s devotion to their daughter. ernst was convinced that even before she could speak that only he alone could understand her. he had a playhouse built for his daughter that stood in it’s own garden. adults were forbidden to enter, much to the frustration of the tutors and nurses, who could be seen pacing impatiently outside, waiting for their young charge to stop her games and emerge.

she was the favourite of all who knew her, including her great-grandmother queen victoria, who called the little girl, “my precious.” it was elisabeth whom queen victoria asked to see first and receive eightieth birthday greetings in 1899. when ella heard the queen’s carriage arrive, she ran out onto the balcony, waving and calling, “granny gran! i’m here!” elisabeth’s playfulness made the queen laugh out loud.

she died suddenly in 1903 of typhoid, after drinking water from a contaminated stream.

her body was placed in a silver casket, a gift from tsar nicholas II, her uncle. her devoted father arranged a white funeral with white flowers and white horses for procession. a marble angle was installed to watch over her grave. her father was still devestated by the memory of his daughter thirty years later. “my little elisabeth,” he wrote in his memoirs, “was the sunshine of my life.”

(via sharontates)

News of the Titanic disaster reaches London, April 15, 1912 via @LIFE

Restoration work at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

vaacuum:

Nefertiti Bust, a 3300-year-old painted limestone bust of the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, believed to have been crafted in 1345 BC by the sculptor Thutmose.

(via pdaervo-deactivated20120407)