Category: Travel

FORGOTTEN SPACES EXHIBIT, SOMMERSET HOUSE, THE STRAND, LONDON

Forgotten Spaces Exhibit, Sommerset House, The Strand, London Photo: Yin&Yan Forgotten Spaces is a shortlist of the Call for Entries for architects, students, designers, and other creatives to submit their design solutions for neglected, redundant, and overall forgotten spaces in and about Greater London.  The project aims to get people thinking about urban design and city planning in new ways, of examining the potential for the overlooked nooks and crannies

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SPENCER HOUSE, LONDON

Rear elevation of Spencer House facing St James’ Park at 27 St James’ Place Photo © Heather Shimmin Spencer House was built by the first Earl Spencer, John, in 1756-66, on the edge of Green Park, just across the park from Buckingham Palace.   It was one of the most ambitious aristocratic homes ever to be built and today it is the only surviving private mansion from the 18th century in London.  Between

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Queen Elizabeth costume globe theatre london

OPEN HOUSE LONDON 2011: THE GLOBE THEATRE

  Exterior of the Globe Theatre on the South Bank, 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside. Photo © Heather Shimmin Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is the result of one man’s vision to have an accurate recreation of the Globe Theatre built not 300 yards from where the original theatre on the banks of the Thames stood until 1642 when it was shut down by the Puritans. Sam Wanamaker, an American actor and producer,

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OPEN HOUSE LONDON 2011: APSLEY HOUSE

  Front elevation of Apsley House, 149 Piccadilly, Hyde Park Corner, London Photo: English Heritage Number One London is Apsley House, home of the Duke of Wellington.  Little has changed in the home’s interior since he lived there in the 19th century.  The Duke of Wellington moved into the house after his victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. Apsley House was built for Lord Apsley and originally was a red brick

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OPEN HOUSE LONDON 2011: ST GEORGE’S BLOOMSBURY

        Front Elevation of St George’s Bloomsbury, 6-7 Little Russell Street, London Photo © Heather Shimmin   In 1711, worried about England’s spirituality and the deplorable lack of churches, Queen Anne ordered 50 churches to be “built of stone and other proper materials, with Towers or Steeples to each of them” in the City of London and Westminster.  Only 12 were constructed, 6 of which were by

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OPEN HOUSE LONDON 2011: SIR JOHN SOANE MUSEUM

Sir John Soane Museum & House 12-14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields The Soane Museum is a set of three houses, Numbers 12, 13, and 14, on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.  Soane designed the house as both a home to live in and as a space to display his vast collection of plaster casts, statues, artifacts, drawings, paintings, and much more.  Not all of the spaces are open

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TOWN HALL HOTEL, LONDON

Emerging from the Bethnal Green tube stop, one might feel as if they had got off in Harlem instead of London.   Sad, 1960s buildings line the street, with even sadder storefronts: quality car store, low-price tyres, off license city supermarket, City Chic. It in the middle of this neglected street is Bethnal Green’s old Town Hall, unassuming, yet stately.  This 1910 Edwardian structure was built at the height of British

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Williamson's Tavern London

WILLIAMSON’S TAVERN, LONDON

  Pubs are a fascination of mine.  Some of the older ones in London are tiny, hidden gems.  Some have much written about them, others have hardly anything.  The latter is the case with Williamson’s Tavern, located in the City of London, down the street from St Paul’s Cathedral and several pubs Sir Christopher Wren himself would frequent.  The following is the result of an exhaustive search on Williamson’s Tavern, its history,

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HAMPSON COURT PALACE GARDENS

Hampton Court History in Brief Hampton Court Palace sits on the banks of the Thames in Surrey.  Cardinal Woolsey transformed Hampton Court, a grand house when he acquired it, into a sprawling palace in the mid- 16th century.  So impressed was Henry VIII with the Cardinal’s palace that Woolsey “gifted” it to the King (he really did not have a choice in the matter).  Of all of his palaces, Hampton

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sachenhausen concentration camp arbeit macht frei

SACHSENHAUSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP, ORANIENBURG, GERMANY

  Entrance to Sachenhausen Concentration Camp. Photo ©Heather Shimmin About 40 km north of Berlin, in the small town of Oranienburg, is Sachsenhausen, the first Nazi Concentration Camp.  Sachsenhausen’s design was the model on which all other Concentration Camps were based.  Its triangular shape was so that a single, mounted machine gun in the watch tower (in the centre of the triangle’s base) could reach the entire camp.   The

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