That familiar urban creature, the humble bus, is the object of the London Transport Museum’s celebration in 2014. Their website is here.
A fascinating aspect of the Year of the Bus is the 100th anniversary of the use of London Buses at the front in World War I. Read more here. Introduced in 1910, this first mass-produced bus was in widespread use in London by the outbreak of the war, and a perfect vehicle for transporting troops.
Read the article about the restoration in the Daily Express here.
The Transport Museum has an excellent collection of old posters — and here is one of the favorites — all the London toffs mixing with the hoi polloi as they travel the tube.
Not so long ago, Victoria and I believed that we had the itinerary for The Wellington Tour finalized and that it was done and dusted, but instead we’re finding that it’s a fluid, ever evolving thing. One could even say that it’s got a life of its own. I recently received an email from the curator at the Tower informing Victoria and me that they were going to be mounting an exhibition this summer on the Duke of Wellington’s influence upon and changes to the Tower made whilst he was both Constable of the Tower and Prime Minister.
While we don’t have complete details regarding the Exhibition as yet, Victoria and I deemed it important that we take it in during The Wellington Tour in September. Accordingly, we have changed the itinerary by substituting the Tower of London for St. Paul’s Cathedral on Saturday, September 6th. Until further details arrive, you can read on to learn more about Wellington’s influence on the Tower of London.
Above – Items belonging to the Duke of Wellington shown previously at the Tower. Read more here.
From the Tower of London website:
The Duke of Wellington was Constable of the Tower from 1826 to 1852. Under his invigorating leadership the increasingly smelly and sluggish moat was drained and converted into a dry ditch.
The Grand Storehouse was destroyed by fire in 1841. The Duke arranged to clear the rubble and started work on a huge new barracks, to accommodate a thousand men. On 14 June 1845 the Duke laid the foundation stone on the barracks named after his greatest victory – Waterloo.
London 1840s was the scene of rallies and disturbances by Chartists demanding electoral reform. The Tower exerted its traditional role of state power over the people, probably for the last time. More defences were constructed, including a huge brick and stone bastion that finally succumbed to a Second World War bomb, but the Chartist attack never materialised.
It was also at the beginning of this century that many of the Tower’s historic institutions departed. The Royal Mint was the first to move out of the castle in 1812, followed by the Menagerie in the 1830s, which grew to become London Zoo. The Office of Ordnance was next to leave in 1855 and finally, the Record Office relocated in 1858. An increasing interest in the history and archaeology of the Tower led to a process of ‘re-medievalisation’ in an attempt to remove the unsightly offices, storerooms, taverns, and barracks and restore the fortress to its original medieval appearance.
Visitor numbers increased dramatically in the 19th century. now it was not just privileged sightseers (who were paying for a guided tour as early as the 1590s), but ordinary people who enjoyed a day out at the Tower. In 1838 three of the old animal cages from the Menagerie were used to make a ticket office at the eastern entrance where visitors could buy refreshments and a guidebook. By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1901, over half a million people were visiting the Tower each year.
You can find more details about The Duke of Wellington Tour here.
Read on for an account of the ceremony swearing in the Duke of Wellington as constable of the Tower from The Life and Campaigns of Arthur, Duke of Wellington by George Newenham Wright (1841) by clicking here.
And you can see almost daily pictures of the Tower ravens posted by Ravenmaster on Twitter by clicking here. Black and white photo above (Beefeaters at Tower gate) also supplied by same.
Midnight Revels – New Year’s Eve 1949, Albert Hall
Cleaning Ladies’ 13th Annual Ball 1960, Walworth Road, London
Aristocrats at a “Gay Nineties” party, London 1933
and on a more contemporary note
The Big Dance Royal Flashmob at Buckingham Palace
Goofy guys doing the Hobo Dance in front of Horse Guards
and in marked contrast, here’s Tom Hiddleston dancing.
and Tom Hiddleston dancing again.
This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of lunching with author Loretta Chase (above, right), who also blogs at Two Nerdy History Girls. We met up at a waterside restaurant in Ft. Myers Beach, Florida and spent three enjoyable hours eating, drinking and, of course, dishing about all manner of things, mostly historical. Victoria couldn’t joint us as she’s off to Washington, D.C. this week, so for her information, and yours, here are the highlights of what Loretta and I discussed:
The weather (and the masses of snow in the northeast), blogging, dolphins (which are awesome, in the truest sense of the word), Twitter, canal boats and how the canal system changed daily life in England forever, how to properly black a stove, gluten free diets, post horses and the ins and outs of coaching inns, coping with elderly parents, the Prince of Wales (past), House of Cards, how Henry Paget, later the Marquess of Angelsey, ran off with the Duke of Wellington’s sister-in-law, the Mary Delaney exhibition at Yale Center for British Art (past), Apsley House, Seven Dials, Sherlock (current), Shepard’s Market, The Wellington Tour, Regents Canal (in no way related to the conversation on canal boats above), bedbugs and iron bedsteads, Sir John Soane’s House, page proofs, ghosts, how pelicans resemble pterodactyls, post horses (again), Agatha Raisin, threshing wheat, A Couple In England, the costume library at Colonial Williamsburg, Highclere Castle, the Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion Exhibit in Rhode Island (past), The Duchess of Devonshire (current Dowager), husbands and golf.
Thanks for allowing me to be an honorary Nerdy History Girl for the day, Loretta!
