The Herd is Getting Ready for Migration

This blog, all of its sundry London scraps and of course all the London elephants are about to migrate! See the end of this post for sketchy details. There is just time to catch a glimpse of a final Weekend Elephant here in its original home.

As regular readers will know, each Friday we publish a picture of one of  London's enormous herd of elephants, this week's is Number 7.

You then have the whole Bank Holiday weekend to email the location to elephants@peterberthoud.co.ukThe first person to locate each weekend's elephant will be rewarded with a glorious mention sometime on Tuesday when the location will be officially revealed.

So, this week's somewhat titillating Weekend Elephant is:

Happy hunting!

During next week the new blog should be up and running at  a new self-hosted site http://www.peterberthoud.co.uk/ .For those of you who are technically minded, a quick glance at the new site will demonstrate conclusively that I am not! A feast of broken links, odd typography, poor layout and limited functionality awaits you.

I am relatively confident that bit by bit I will develop a basic mastery of FTP, CSS, RSS, PHP, HTML, Widgets and all the other tools I would currently struggle to define, let alone be able to use! This confidence, I must stress, is the kind born of blissful ignorance rather than that born out of experience and ability.

Whether I can remove the irritating auto link to a Romanian car dealership, that has embedded itself into every single imported post, remains to be seen ( I hate you Piese Auto, I don't even drive!). I should however be able to remove the other annoying feature of the import, the use of the > symbol at the beginning of every headline and first line.

So, why the move? Well, I have been advised that if I am to develop this blog in the way I want and have the ability to integrate a couple of new London related projects, then I will really need to set up my own site. So I have taken a leap of faith in a quest to deliver more and better content.

August seemed a good time to immerse myself in utter bewilderment, double my nicotine intake and lose what little hair remained on my head. The fruits of my new found obsession and physical deterioration will hopefully be worth it.

It will certainly be good to be back blogging more regularly, I have been missing the daily ritual and have collected quite a backlog of posts. I haven't been publishing too many this month as it would just have given me more stuff to import to the new site and of course provided more free advertising opportunities for that dratted car dealer in Romania!

Anyway, if I can master the mystery of a "301 redirect" and get my RSS into gear, then this blog should pop up at the new site automatically over the next few days. If my innate technical incompetence gets in the way, then I may have to ask anyone who has kindly linked, followed or bookmarked me to amend their links.

Any feedback on features you would like to see on the new blog would be very welcome at hopeless@peterberthoud.co.uk, any advice on how to implement them even more so!

Have a great Bank Holiday!

The author of this blog is a qualified City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours throughout Westminster, see tabs for details.

A Lebanese Elephant Nailed by Claire from the Old Kent Road

There was a bumper crop of entries for Friday's Weekend Elephant! Thank you to all of you who correctly located it in Notting Hill Gate, outside Newcombe House near Waterstones.

But one entrant was especially quick off the mark and is a clear winner. Within moments of me hitting the "Publish Post" button, barely before the pixels had coagulated into an image, sharp-eyed Claire of the Old Kent Road had emailed me her winning entry, congratulations to her!

Carnival Elephant dates from 2003 and was produced by Nadim Karam and his firm Atelier Hapsitus. The artist was born in Senegal and works from his company studio in Beirut. He describes his studio as  “a satellite grouping of young architects and designers around happenings and situations.”. Check out the link for details of their many worldwide projects.

The elephant here was commissioned by the Notting Hill Improvements Group and Land Securities.

On the roof of the nearby Waterstones are two more of his figures, these date from 1999.

The author of this blog is a qualified City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours throughout Westminster, see tabs for details.

I Am Not A Number, I Am A Free Elephant!

Each Friday we publish a picture of one of  London's enormous herd of elephants, this week's is Number 6.
You then have the whole weekend to email the location to discoveringlondon@hotmail.co.uk. The first person to locate each weekend's elephant will be rewarded with a glorious mention sometime on Monday when the location will be officially revealed.

This week's Weekend Elephant photo has been cropped; a fuller view might lead to an instant winner!

Happy hunting!

The author of this blog is a qualified City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours throughout Westminster, see tabs for details.

An Obscure Weekend Elephant

As calm returns, trivia is palatable once more.

Each Friday we publish a picture of one of  London's enormous herd of elephants. You then have the whole weekend to email the location to discoveringlondon@hotmail.co.uk. The first person to locate each weekend's elephant will be rewarded with a glorious mention sometime on Monday when the location will be officially revealed.

This week's Weekend Elephant is a particularly obscure one and merits a clue:

This elephant has an SW1 address and can be found above the door of an defunct insurance company.

 Happy hunting!

UPDATE: Monday 15th August.

Last week's elephant has stumped everybody, uniquely there has not been a single correct entry! With no winner to announce, it only remains to put those of you who may have wondered out of your misery!

The particularly obscure elephant is to be found above the doorway of 29 Buckingham Palace Gate. The building is currently occupied by an insurance company who are in the process of winding up. Municipal Mutual do not appear to have any elephantine element to the company logo and I can offer no explanation for why it is there.

This week's upcoming Friday Elephant should be far more familiar!

The author of this blog is a qualified City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours throughout Westminster, see tabs for details.

Royal Beasts at the Tower - Completed by Weekend Elephant

This week's Weekend Elephant came from the Tower of London. The first person to correctly identify the location was Matt, he of that encyclopaedic London resource the Londonist.  Congratulations! An honourable mention to Marc too for providing the most complete answer, thank you!

The elephant is by sculptor Kendra Haste and was installed last Monday at the QEII gate.

 

The elephant completes her excellent series of wire animal sculptures, produced for the Tower of London's Royal Beasts exhibition. I have blogged about this exhibition several times now. The first animals installed in April were the lions, in May came baboons and the polar bear. Later in May some more baboons were introduced and I wrote about some of the missed opportunities of the exhibition.

Now at last the exhibition is complete. I think Kendra Haste's sculptures are magnificent and have visited them as they arrive about a dozen times. I am a member of Historic Royal Palaces so I can nip in and see them whenever I like and I don't have to queue. Whether I would make a special journey if I was not a member and pay £19.80 each time to see this very small exhibition is highly unlikely. However if I had never visited the Tower before I would probably enjoy this additional temporary attraction.

For locals that haven't seen the exhibition and would like to, I would suggest that a year's membership is probably the best bet. That way you can nip in and out avoiding the crowds and you get to do the same at Hampton Court, Banqueting House, Kensington and Kew Palace's too. Annual membership is £43 so if you only visit a Palace or two it will soon pay for itself. Details of individual and family membership from HRP website can be found here.

Weekend Elephant #5, London's Newest!

Each Friday we publish a picture of one of  London's giant herd of elephants. You then have the whole weekend to email the location to discoveringlondon@hotmail.co.uk. The first person to locate each weekend's elephant will be rewarded with a glorious mention sometime on Monday when the location will be officially revealed. Honour is all that is at stake.

So without further ado here is London's most recent addition to the herd.

 Happy hunting!

The author of this blog is a qualified City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours throughout Westminster, see tabs for details.

The Oldest Inscription in London?

This Mercers' Maiden in Corbet Court was reinstated in 2004. As with all her sisters she marks property held by the Mercers Company.

She is dated 1669 and so this inscription  is seven years older than the one beneath the bust of Lord Essex in Devereux Court.

The Devereux Court inscription of 1676, was commonly held to be the oldest one in London but clearly the Maid of Corbet Court now has a stronger claim to that title. Does anyone know of an even older inscription anywhere in London? If so, please drop me a line.

Update 10.15! Sharp eyed Pepys from the excellent London Peculiar just tweeted me an image of grafitti from the Tower of London that takes the "earliest inscription" title back nearly 200 years! Thank you!



Can anyone beat this?

Van Gogh's Living Wall - The Movie!

In May I posted a short piece on the Van Gogh Living Wall outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Digging around the net I have found this short film about the creation of the wall.

It was produced by the sponsor of the wall GE. Apparently it took 500 hours of work to precisely position each of the 8,000 plants. The computer generated template that was used being based on Van Gogh's Wheatfield, with Cypresses. This 2 minute corporate film does however have some interesting behind the scenes shots of the wall being assembled and then erected on site.


If you have taken your own photos of the wall you can tag them #GElivingwall and add them to an online mosaic of images being created on GE's Facebook page www.facebook.com/ecomagination .

I must say the wall looks better each time I pass it, as the plants mature and their colours become ever more distinctive.  I hope it sets a trend.

Weekend Elephant #4 The Result!

This weekend's London elephant is probably passed by more people each day than any other. It took until Sunday morning though for one reader to correctly identify it. Congratulations to Helene from Brixton for not only supplying the location but also the sculptor.

Asia - Henry Hugh Armstead

The elephant comes from the Asia spandrel on the Whitehall frontage of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (formerly the Foreign, India, Colonial, and Home Offices). All the continents were carved by Henry Hugh Armstead for the building's architect George Gilbert Scott.

Africa - Henry Hugh Armstead

America - Henry Hugh Armstead

Australasia - Henry Hugh Armstead

Europe - Henry Hugh Armstead

Henry Hugh Armstead (1828 –1905) also provided large-scale sculptures for the Palace of Westminster and over 80 figures for Scott's Albert Memorial, but my favourite work of his in London is on a far smaller scale.

Prior to the building of the Albert Memorial, George Gilbert Scott commissioned a scale model, this is now in the Victoria and Albert museum. For the model Armstead provided all of the miniature sculptures. Scott was so pleased with Armstead's work that he wrote ‘I doubt whether either the central figure or a single group, as executed, is superior to the miniature models furnished by Mr Armstead’.

On a different note, sharp-eyed readers may have noticed the swastika patterns surrounding each sculpture. The building dates from 1861-1875, well before the ancient symbol became associated with the Nazis. There are many other innocent uses of the symbol in London. A recent article, and reader comments, on the excellent Great Wen blog describe these and also investigate the rumour of Nazi swastika just off The Mall.

The Museum Exhibit That Serves as a Memorial

Inside the London Transport Museum is an unusual, if not unique, memorial.

The waxwork of the bus driver in the museum's  Routemaster bus is based on a real person, Christopher Moyes.

 Chris Moyes was a former bus conductor who became a key player during the privatisation of the bus and rail industries in the 1980's and 1990's. He was the founder of one of the largest transport companies in the country, Go Ahead, who still run trains and buses all over UK.

“He averaged 1,000 miles a week on public transport – preferably his own buses and trains – and even took his enthusiasm home with him, owning, maintaining and driving a collection of vintage buses. Though criticised for phasing out the Routemasters among the 1,000 London buses operated by Go Ahead, he bought one himself "just for the fun and enjoyment of it" but thought it too uncomfortable for the modern passenger."

Chris Moyes died of a brain tumour aged just 57 in 2006.

When the London Transport Museum reopened, after a lengthy refit, in 2007 they decided to commemorate him with this waxwork and portrayed him as the driver of their Routemaster.


Other waxwork figures in the museum are also based on real people connected with London's transport. The museum's current Director, Sam Mullins, sits as a passenger inside a "padded cell" carriage from the 1890 the City and South London Railway, for example.

But I can't think of anyone else who has deliberately and posthumously been commemorated by a waxwork in quite this way.

Quotes come from the Daily Telegraph obituary of Chis Moyes, the full obit. is here.

Weekend Elephant #4

Each Friday we publish a picture of one of  London's giant herd of elephants. You then have the whole weekend to email the location to discoveringlondon@hotmail.co.uk. The first person to locate each weekend's elephant will be rewarded with a glorious mention sometime on Monday when the location will be officially revealed. Honour is all that is at stake.

So here without further ado here is the last Weekend Elephant of July!

 Happy hunting!

The author of this blog is a qualified City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours throughout Westminster, see tabs for details.

Green Housing Monopolises Pall Mall

Street Art of any kind is rare in the clubland of St James's, so I was pleased to spot this small example in Pall Mall yesterday.

The green paper house is a reference to Pall Mall's inclusion as a property in the original British Monopoly boards. I am old enough to remember when there was only one iconic board available. Today there a bewildering number of different versions available. I am sure the new versions are still able to inspire family rows wherever they are played but they can't inspire pub crawls, so I remain a traditionalist.

The author of this blog is a qualified City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours throughout Westminster, see tabs for details.