Tag: Lambeth Palace

No More Shell Building

IMAGES CAN BE ENLARGED BY CLICKING ON THEM – TWICE IF NECESSARY

As usual when I travel to London, Waterloo, Jackie drove me to and from New Milton today. Apart from the fact that the ticket office was closed because the system wasn’t working, and I held up the queue for the machine on the platform because I didn’t know how to use it, the journey was uneventful.

When I last took today’s walk from Waterloo Station, across Westminster Bridge to Carol’s  home off Victoria Street, I would have crossed York Road by footbridge from the station concourse. This was not possible today. The bridge was closed and we had to walk down steps on the station side, and along the road until reaching the County Hall corner before we could cross.

South Bank development 1South Bank development 3

South Bank Development 2South Bank Development 5

South Bank Development 4

A great, gaping hole appeared where the Shell Building, a landmark as long as I can remember, had stood when I made the trip a year ago.

South Bank Development signs

This is to become a South Bank Development of ‘exceptionally stylish apartments’. Apparently people are already queuing up to acquire them although prices have not yet been fixed.

South Bank development workmen 1

Around the corner, on the approach to The London Eye, I noticed two men in hard hats sitting against the background of building works.

South Bank development workmen 2

As I came nearer, one of the very friendly men held up warning hands to ensure that I did not, without a hard hat, enter the site. The other gentleman came over to me and we had a pleasant conversation during which he suggested I might prefer to be photographing the New Forest.

South Bank Development 6

I then shot the scene without the workers.

Crowd on Westminster Bridge 1

Once on Westminster Bridge I was reminded how difficult it is to negotiate that thoroughfare during the tourist season.

Piper and audience

The piper, however, was given some breathing space.

Roadsweeper

An assiduous road sweeper kept the area around Parliament Square suitably tidy. The Plane tree around which he had just wielded his brush, was bursting into leaf,

Plane Trees and buses

as were those in an unusually quiet Victoria Street,

Plane trees and St Stephen's Church

and outside St Stephen’s Church, Rochester Row.

I didn’t note the name of the excellent Italian restaurant in that street where Carol and I enjoyed each other’s company over a superb meal. My choice was a tortellini and clear chicken stock soup followed by sea food risotto. We both chose creme brûlée. I drank Friuli sauvignon.

Lambeth Palace from 507 bus

I returned to Waterloo on the 507 bus, from which I gained a clear view of Lambeth Palace.

P.S. Perusal of the comments by Paul and Geoff below, will show that the title and the inference of this post is only partially correct. The main tower remains. It is just the lower levels that have been removed.

Lovelocks

Last night Jackie researched the history of Bisterne on the Internet.  Emma historian, in her blog featured this year’s Scarecrow Festival, photographing the exhibits as I did.  She had this to say about The Village Hall and The Old School House: ‘The Village Hall was built in 1840 to house the local school and is adjacent to a thatched building which was once the old schoolhouse.  Following its closure in 1946, the two buildings were given to Bisterne and Crow to be used as a Village Hall.’  In his 1958 article ‘Journeying through Bisterne’, Roy Hodges adds: ‘a picturesque cottage, once the home of the village schoolmistress when the hall was a school’ as a description of the house we viewed yesterday.

This afternoon Jackie drove me to Southampton Parkway for a London trip to visit Carol at her flat in Rochester Row.  If anything interesting happened on the journey I missed it because I slept most of the way.

Westminster Bridge

On this beautiful balmy Autumn day tourists, as usual thronged Westminster Bridge.  Some of them, perhaps, had indulged in leaving tokens of their love for each other in a less vandalising manner than is generally applied. Lovelock Locked in place on the supports for the handrails lining the steps leading up to the bridge were a row of tiny padlocks bearing the coupled lovers’ names.  I thought of them as lovelocks. Love seat Normal examples adorned a seat in Westminster Tower Gardens, alongside the Houses of Parliament. Grafitto on plant 3.04 Lovers in Barbados, as I discovered in 2004, use a less permanent platform on which to inscribe their names.  Thick succulent leaves sufficed for them.

My reason for entering the gardens as a slight diversion from my route to my friend’s flat had been once more to admire the work of Auguste Rodin.  That great French sculptor’s ‘Monument to The Burghers of Calais’ has always intrigued me, and sometime in the 1970s I had made a series of large black and white prints.  Had I been able to find the negatives this evening I would have illustrated this post with one.  So, why didn’t I use today’s photos?  You may well ask.  I didn’t take any.  Why not? Rodin poster Because the work was away on loan.  There is something elusive about Rodin for me.  When Julia Graham, one of my Area Manager colleagues in Westminster Social Services, about the time I was taking the aforementioned photographs, had asked me to bring her a poster back from the Musee Rodin in Paris, that establishment had been closed on the occasion of my visit.  I was able, on a subsequent trip, to rectify the situation, so maybe I’ll get to find my negatives.

In order to purchase the lifting of the siege of Calais by England’s Edward III, six burghers were willing to sacrifice their lives.  This is the theme of the dramatic sculptural group.  They were saved by the intervention of the English Queen, Philippa of Hainault. Richard Coeur de Lion The crowns of England and France were pretty interchangeable in those days, as exemplified by Richard, Coeur de Lion, featured two days ago.  Today, he still sits astride his horse, sword raised, about to send his motorised transport into battle from the Houses of Parliament car park.

Lambeth Palace

Lambeth Palace, which I would pass on the 507 bus back to Waterloo, stands on the opposite bank of the Thames, vying with the vast modern buildings alongside, the tallest of which blends with it rather well.

Dean's Yard

I walked through Dean’s Yard, where the ornamental trees were beginning to rival the splendour of the Parliamentary gilt in the background.

Jackie met me at Southampton after I made my usual journey back there, drove me home, and fed me with a superb sausage and bacon casserole followed by apple crumble, with which I finished the Kumala begun a few days ago.