Step inside Faraday's shed

A few steps away from the entrance to the Experimental Lighthouse - the home of the world's longest piece of music, Longplayer - at Trinity Buoy Wharf, is a small shed bearing the name 'The Faraday Effect'.


Designed by Ana Ospina and Fourth Wall Creations, the shed bills itself as one of London's smallest museums and is a tribute to the life and times of Michael Faraday.

It was at Trinity Buoy Wharf that Faraday conducted many experiments on lighthouse apparatus, using a second experimental lighthouse, built for the scientist and demolished in the 1920's.

For more information, visit http://www.thegreenwichphantom.co.uk/2009/10/michael-faradays-shed/

Walk by the Quaggy floodplain in Sutcliffe Park

An awful lot is written about London's Lost Rivers, so it's great when even part of one is brought back to the surface, or out of narrow pipes and culverts. And that's what happened to the part of the River Quaggy that runs through Sutcliffe Park, in Eltham in South East London in June 2003, when work to restore the river and its flood plain began.


Completed in July 2004, after five years of campaigning by Quaggy Waterways Action Group, and eight years of plans and work by the Environment Agency, the plan was to generate a flood plain to prevent flooding of nearby homes, and that is what has been created.

When your author visited yesterday, it all seemed to be in working order - despite a traffic cone floating in the middle - and it was helping young and old people to learn about how rivers work, which is very commendable.

Whilst the Quaggy Waterways Action Group's plan to make the River Quaggy the first fully restored urban river in the world is still a long way off, they've certainly done a good job here. For more information, see http://www.qwag.org.uk/quaggy/flood.php

Visit the Thames Barrier Flood Awareness Exhibition

Last Thursday, as part of the nationwide flood preparation day called Exercise Watermark, the Thames Barrier held a flood awareness day, where the monthly Barrier test closure was combined with an exhibition on flooding.


The exhibitions, with staffed displays on flooding, maintenance and reliability, and how to take action and plan for the future, run until today, and members of the public are invited along to the Thames Barrier Learning Centre, to talk to staff and learn about more about Exercise Watermark, the largest peacetime exercise to happen in the UK.

For more, see http://www.exercisewatermark.co.uk/en/events/thames-barrier-public-event-(3).aspx

Walk through Paternoster Square

In the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral, Paternoster Square is actually a very modern development, completed in 2003 on a site that had previously been home to a deeply unpopular 1960s construction designed by William Holford.


The new square houses office blocks, shops, cafes and bars using diverse materials including brick, Portland stone, York stone, granite, bronze, marble and slate. A little artistic flair is also added in the form of a 23m tall column, known as the Paternoster Square Column, topped off with a gold covered flaming urn, and also the sculpture pictured of a Shepherd and Sheep, designed by Dame Elisabeth Frink, originally added in 1975 to commemorate the sheep once driven through the area, one of the few parts to have survived from the earlier development.

For more background on Paternoster Square, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2003/nov/03/architecture.regeneration

See Queen Elizabeth's Oak

The remains of Queen Elizabeth's Oak lie in the heart of Greenwich Park. Probably planted around the 12th century, this great old tree has an interesting history and legend has it that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn danced around it, while the young prince Elizabeth looked on.


It has always been a key part of the park, and a plaque beneath it records that it may have once been used as a lock up for those who broke park rules. It probably died in the 19th century but remained supported by ivy until 1991, when it collapsed.

The association of the site with royal oaks was, however, maintained, when a new oak was planted beside it by Prince Phillip in 1992. For more information, see the excellent Greenwich Phantom.

Eat at the 1901 Restaurant

Your author has written before about his trip to the former Great Eastern Hotel in Liverpool Street, now known as Andaz, at the invitation of the managers. Whilst parts of the hotel are a little too modernised for his liking, the 1901 Restaurant, within the Hotel, was a particular historical highlight.


Opened in its current incarnation in October 2010, the restaurant sits beneath a huge stained-glass dome, and its Grade-II listed interior dates back to 1901, giving the space its name. The food and drink all looked excellent, and whilst in this area of town you are likely to pay handsomely for this sort of experience, a two course lunch is available at £19, and an afternoon tea at £18, making it cheaper than many contemporaries in the West End.

It's admittedly still expensive, and your author still isn't sure why an historic railway hotel needs this kind of facelift, but there was something about the atmosphere, and the live violinist who was playing, which made it worthwhile. That, and they gave him free port.

For more, try here, or visit the official website at http://www.andazdining.com/1901/1901.asp

Find your nearest toilet

Your author doesn't usually talk about online things, but the new website from Ian Mansfield, the creator of Ianvisits, is so in tune with the ethos of this site, it is definitely worth a mention. For Ian has mapped all London's public toilets, in an easily accessible guide.


There are, we are told, over 800 public toilets within the M25 and Ian has located all the ones he can find and pinpointed them on a map which can be used on your computer or on a mobile phone, to ensure you're never caught short again.

The map includes both public toilets, and shops and cafes taking part in a Community Toilet Scheme, and they are searchable by price and opening times, though unfortunately you can't filter out cottaging or tramps shaving and washing their socks in the sink.

For more, see http://www.toiletmap.co.uk/

Cash in at London's oldest pawnbrokers

Attenborough Jewellers claims to be London's oldest pawnbrokers, with shops in Islington and Bethnal Green having opened in 1835 and 1892 respectively.


They are a fairly traditional business, specialising in good service, and running a pawnbroking outfit side by side with retail of secondhand jewellery and watches from their traditional shops from 9.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Saturday.

They also offer an instore jewelery workshop with a qualified goldsmith, and, of course, are more than happy to give you cash for any old gold you might have hanging around. For more information and contact details, click here.

Find the LSE Penguin

The London School of Economics has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past couple of weeks, so it's important to remember that it really is just a university like any other, full of lefty students, silliness and bizarre obsessions.


The LSE penguin is a perfect example. The penguin statue, originally donated by Louis Odette, the philanthropist and former LSE student, with other animal statues, stands on the pavement in Portugal Street, in the heart of the School's campus just off the Aldwych, and the students have embraced it as their unofficial mascot for years now.

However, disaster struck when the statue was stolen in 2009, leading to gifts of flowers, poems, tins of sardines and Penguin biscuits at the site, presumably to encourage the Penguin to return, and an inevitable Facebook campaign to find the missing sculpture.

Eventually, the decision was taken to replace the penguin with a heavier, less steal-able model, which was installed in November 2009, and remains to this day. For more information, click here.

_{^Picture © RachScottHalls used under Creative Commons^}

Step inside the Greenwich Camera Obscura

There are only a couple more days to visit the Greenwich Royal Observatory for free, and it contains a number of interesting features apart from the magic line. One which was particularly popular when your author took a wander around yesterday was the Camera Obscura, at the Northern end of the site.


This is London's only public Camera Obscura, and though it was only installed in 1994, it is the latest in a line of such devices at the Observatory. Using a lens and rotating mirror to project a real-time image of the outside world, it presents a panorama of one of London's most celebrated views, showing Greenwich, the Thames, the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Naval College.

The Observatory is open daily, but your author recommends that readers make their visit today or tomorrow, as the £10 fine for being interested in science comes into force on Tuesday. For more information, see http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/on-display/the-camera-obscura

See Jacob Epstein's sculptures on Zimbabwe House

Now the centre of running peaceful protests between Zimbabweans in Britain and the Mugabe Regime, Zimbabwe House, on the Strand, was not always connected to the African country. Previously it was the Headquarters of the British Medical Association, before it was acquired by the Government of what was then Rhodesia in 1935.


The building's facade has been a cause of controversy for over a hundred years, since the installation of eighteen large naked figures designed by Jacob Epstein in 1905. If you look high up on the walls of the building, you should be able to make out the remains of these statues of nude men and women, symbolising the ages of man.

They were deeply contentious at the time, thought to be too graphic, and when the Government of Rhodesia took over the building and a piece of masonry fell off one of the statues, they used the opportunity to destroy the statues by chiseling away extremities and leaving them literally defaced.

Like probably most readers, your author considers this to be a shame, but the Government of Rhodesia weren't exactly known for their enlightened attitudes. For more click here or to see some of the sculptures closer up, click here.

Visit St Lawrence Jewry

Latterly one of Wren's churches, St Lawrence Jewry was originally built in the 12th Century, and got its interesting name as it was close to the Medieval Jewish Ghetto, centred two streets to the East on what is now Old Jewry until their expulsion by Edward I.


Like a lot of City churches, not only was it destroyed in the Great Fire of London, it also suffered damage during the Second World War. It wasn't until 1957 that it was fully restored, in a way sympathetic to Wren's original design, probably because it had been designated a Grade I listed structure in 1950.

It's a pretty little church, right outside the Guildhall, and another interesting feature is the attractive little pond garden in front of the church, although this is probably best seen in summer.

Alongside morning prayers and other services, St Lawrence Jewry also hosts frequent piano and organ recitals. For more information, see http://www.stlawrencejewry.org.uk/

Watch theatre at the Southwark Playhouse

Established in the 1990s in a disused workshop in Southwark by Juliet Alderdice, Tom Wilson & Mehmet Ergen, today the Southwark Playhouse Theatre Company aims to provide accessible theatre, creating opportunities for emerging theatre types and people in the local community to get involved.


Working from the vaults beneath London Bridge Station, they remain true to those aims, claiming to work with over 5,000 school pupils a year, offering free performances and teaching. They also run a youth-led theatre company for local people between the ages of 16-25, to introduce them to theatre, and inspire them to consider a career in the arts.

Most of all, however, they provide a full theatre programme showcasing up and coming talent, and often reinterpreting classic plays and contemporary plays. For more information, see http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/

Search for the Skylon

Your author really hasn't talked enough about the new galleries at the Museum of London, and if you still haven't visited, you really should. For where else could you find a scale model of the Skylon, the iconic tower built on the South Bank to celebrate the Festival of Britain in 1951.


Rumour has it that the sculpture, which once stood 90 metres high in the space around what is now Jubilee Gardens near the London Eye, followed the trend for tearing down artistic treasures and throwing them into the River Lea, in a fit of post-war austerity.

Regardless, the Skylon is no longer with us, and whilst Wikipedia fiends claim that there are plans to search the River for it later in the year, if you want to get a sense of what it was like, you will have to visit the Museum of London and see a model of it, or a few bits and bobs which have been retained.

For more on the history of the Skylon, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(tower)

Gaze up at the Duke of York Column

Central London's other column may not be as famous as the one that stands in Trafalgar Square, but it is just as imposing, standing over 120 feet tall and topped off by a bronze statue of the Duke which itself is 14 feet in height.


However, surprisingly few Londoners seem to know where to find the Duke of York Column, which has towered above Carlton Gardens beside the Royal Society, surveying the Mall and St James' Park, since 1833.

Many might even question who he was, although they will almost all know a rhyme about this 'Grand Old Duke Of York, who had 10,000 men'. So, next time you are in the area, take a look up at the statue of Prince Frederick, Duke of York, hero of the French Revolutionary Wars, and remember his story.

For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_York_Column