Foggy Views in Toft, Cambridgeshire

Yesterday's early morning walk in Toft was magical with fog obscuring the backgrounds and giving great tree sillouettes.

London Barbican Created and Seen

This is the final set from our visit to the Barbican Estate last week. Some composite images (1-5), an art installation comprising lots of mirrors in the stairway of the Barbican Centre and the entrance ramps with their great lighting (never enough people when you want them).

 

Return Visit to London Lions Basket Ball

As we enjoyed our last visit to the Copper Box to watch the basketball, we went again this weekend and watched the Lions defeat Cheshire Phoenix 88 77 with lots of action and atmosphere. I haven't had time to process many but here some shots to get a flavour of the event.

 

London: Nightfall Across the Thames

When we arrived at the top of the Blatnik Tower, the buildings around the Thames were still sunlit. After a cup of tea and a warm up inside, the view had changed dramatically with lights coming on allover the city. Here some before and after shots etc.

London: Farringdon Station, Smithfields and Charterhouse Square

A few more images from my nostalgia trip visiting an area of London that my parents lived in. Farringdon Station was opened in the 1860s as the terminus of the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground metro line but the present building dates from 1922. It was built together with a freight station to take livestock to a slaughterhouse to supply Smithfield Market. Smithfield was redesignated as a wholesale 'deadmeat' market in the 19th century and the Freight station was last used in the 1920s. Meat has been traded at Smithfield Market for more than 800 years, making it one of the oldest markets in London.
Charterhouse was founded as a Carthusian monastery in 1371 near a 1348 plague pit, which formed the largest mass grave in London during the Black Death. Tens of thousands of bodies were buried there (some discovered during the Crossrail excavations). It was later dissolved and the building has been an almshouse and later used by two public schools, Charterhouse and Merchant Taylors'. Now it is partially occupied by Charterhouse Square School a much smaller primary school. The square is managed by Trustees, one of whom was inspecting the Square and chatted to me on Wednesday.

Revisiting the Barbican Development after 45 years!

On Wednesday, some CCC members made a trip to photograph the architecture in the Barbican area of London. It had the added interest for me that my parents bought a flat 33 floors up in the Cromwell Tower soon after it was built in 1973. I wished that I had taken photographs of the view at that time from the flat - certainly I remember that St Pauls dominated the skyline and none of the subsequent buildings of theatre, museum etc were present. In the view from the Tate looking towards the Barbican with its three Towers, Cromwell Tower is the one on the right now completely surrounded by city office blocks etc. The second image is the painting from the front of the Brochure produced in the 1970s to sell the flats. A resident told me the flats are now worth over £ 2million pounds - what an investment that would have been had they kept the flat as they would probably have paid around £10,000 for it.