Gower Street and other London, United Kingdom Things to Do Tips

We often "navigated by scaffolding" (there was a lot of it around including some at Gatwick). We walked down Gower Street to this scaffolding most mornings. The bus stop was next to it, and I think it conceals the Slade College of Art or some other building of UCL. Due to my former job, I often take pictures of scaffolding by reflex.

Next door is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art which was established in 1904 by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the leading actor manager of the day. In 1905 the Academy moved to this building at 62 Gower Street.

Their history says: "Fees of six guineas a term are doubled the following year, except for the children of actors, who only pay half. A managing Council is established on which Tree is joined, among others, by Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson, Sir Arthur Wing Pinero and Sir James Barrie. Within a few years they are augmented by other major figures, including W.S. Gilbert, Irene Vanbrugh and, perhaps most significantly, George Bernard Shaw. "

Queen Elizabeth II made a speech here in 2000.

Ordinarily this would be an off-the-beaten-path tip, but since the Bloomsbury section of the London tips doesn't have many things in it (because the British Museum is about IT for things to see), I thought I'd include it here in a relatively harmless place.

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Address: 62 Gower Street
Directions: Goodge Street Station.
Website: http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

Bloomsbury is a well defined area south of the Euston Road, east of the Tottenham Court Road, north of High Holborn and west of Judd Street and Hunter Street. It has a large number of Universities and institutions of higher learning, and it also has the British Museum and good public transportation, with both buses and tube stops nearby. The London Eye is NOT in Bloomsbury and neither is the BT tower, although tips for those things have been grouped here.

We stayed in an inexpensive hotel near the British Museum on Gower Street. We got breakfast as part of the price. It was a nice area but there weren't many really close by restaurants.

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Address: Gower Street
Directions: Tottenham Court Tube Station
Website: http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/home_feat_local_bloomsbury.asp

I wanted to see the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles, and in addition I wanted to pick one section to look at in depth. I didn't think that I needed to look at stuff like Egyptian Mummies that I could see at the Smithsonian at home without flying across an ocean, so it should be something unique to the British Museum. What I picked was Roman Britian.

I looked up on the website and found that there were free Eyeopener Tours, and there was going to be one on Roman Britain while we were there, so we visited the museum when we could take that tour.

This mosaic is on the south wall, and is called Mosaic from a villa (Roman Britain, 4th century AD From Hemsworth, Dorset)

"This panel is the flooring of an apse at one end of a large and imposing reception room. The scene is of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, rising from the sea, standing on a shell. She is surrounded in the outer border by fanciful dolphins and other marine creatures."

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Phone: (+44) 020 7323 8299(information)
Address: Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG
Directions: Bloomsbury
Website: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/

One of my goals was to visit the British Museum. We didn't go when I was in England in 1950, but I'd heard a lot about it. I particularly wanted to see the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. (As a youngster, I used to envision regular marbles when I heard the name Elgin Marbles.)

I went to the website of the museum, because I knew that I, at least, wouldn't last for the whole thing, so I wanted to pick one section to look at in depth. I didn't think that I needed to look at stuff that I could see at the Smithsonian at home, so it should be something unique to the British Museum. What I picked was Roman Britian.

After we saw the Roman Britain section, we went down to the lobby (we had entered from the back), and Bob sat down while I reconoitered. I was thinking I'd go to the bathroom and that we could get something to eat.

But it was Saturday and the museum was quite crowded. So I never did either of those things. I came back and got Bob and we went to see the Rosetta Stone, and I tried to explain why it was important. Then we went and sat in the room where the Elgin Marbles were displayed for a bit.

After that we left by the front door, and discovered that there was a Roman festival in the forecourt.

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Phone: (+44) 020 7323 8299(information
Address: Great Russell Street, WC1
Directions: Bloomsbury
Website: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Other Contact: information@thebritishmuseum.ac.

I took this picture from the bus. I loved the look of the facade, but I thought it must be some kind of religious building because of the towers. This was not the first time I had been fooled by the appearance of something in London.

The building was designed by Captain Francis Fowke as a 'great cathedral of science' but he died before he could build it. It was completed by Alfred Waterhouse with some alterations including a general toning-down of the project. It still features columns, a dome, and a massive entryway flanked by a pair of towers worthy of any Gothic cathedral. The building is adorned with plant and animal sculptures.

I didn't get to go to this museum. The Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum are close to this one. I would really have liked to go to the Victoria and Albert more than this one, as I think that's more a type of museum that I couldn't go to in the US.

* The Natural History Museum is one of the largest museums in Europe.
* If you haven't visited before, and/or your time is limited, start with the most popular exhibitions which include: Wonders, in the great Central Hall, Dinosaurs, the blue whale in the Mammal Hall, the 'earthquake experience' in The Power Within, the precious gems of Earth's Treasury and Phase One of the Darwin Centre. Children also enjoy Creepy Crawlies, Human Biology and Investigate.

Opening times
Monday-Saturday 10.00-17.50
Sunday 11.00-17.50
Last admission is at 17.30

Entry is free

The Museum is open every day, including Sundays and bank holidays, but is closed 24-26 December.

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Phone: 0 20 7942 5011
Address: Cromwell Road, SW7
Directions: South Kensington tube
By bus Routes 14, 49, 70, 74, 345, 360, 414 and C1 stop nearby
Website: http://www.nhm.ac.uk

I went to Westminster Abbey when I was 12. My mom was an English major in college and took us to 'Poets Corner' to see the tombs of famous people buried there - like Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Dr Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, and John Masefield. I had no idea who most of these people were, so I was not very impressed. This was at the end of the trip, and I was kind of "cathedraled out" by this time.

So I did not even have this as a secondary goal for this visit and I told my youngest daughter when she visited with her two pre-school children not to spend too much time there. There are other places that are better to visit with that age child. When I visited with my grandson in 2007, again we didn't have time to visit.

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Phone: 0 20 7654 4900
Address: Deans Yard, SW1
Directions: St James's Park tube
Website: http://www.westminster-abbey.org/faq/faq_other.htm

From Leicester Square, we headed for the National Gallery. I'm not exactly sure what the front of the National Portrait Gallery looks like, because we came to it by the side door, but I do know that it is right next to the National Gallery.

Since we came to the National Portrait Gallery first, we went in and went through the "Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter:Portraits of Children's Writers" exhibit which was free (and was quite interesting and worthwhile). This consisted of portraits (photographic or sculpture or graphics) of writers of children's books (In addition to Beatrix Potter and J. K. Rowling, this included Frances Hodgson Burnett, A.A. Milne, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Raymond Brigg, Travers etc.), and they had some of the books there for kids to read. I looked at some of them because I had never heard of some of the people featured.

It included such people as C.S. Lewis whose photo looked like a picture of a tree with enormous exposed roots until you looked more closely and saw him sitting amongst the roots. The first book of his that I read was "Screwtape Letters" when I was 12. It made a great impression on me.

This exhibit is no longer available of course. I tried to find the photo of C.S. Lewis that made such a great impression on me, and could not.

We also did walk through the portraits of the Kings and Queens of England. The portraits are arranged in timeline order, and the timeline ended (with contemporary portraits) next to the special exhibit gallery. But the National Portrait Gallery really wasn't on my list of things to do so we didn't spend much time on it, but continued next door to the National Gallery.

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Phone: 0 20 7747 2885
Address: Trafalgar Square, WC2
Directions: Charing Cross or Leicester Square tubes
Website: http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp

I knew I would not have the stamina to see all of the many museums in London. So I picked out two or three to visit. The British Museum was a MUST of course. I also wanted Bob to see some of what I regard as the landmark English painters and particular English landscapes.

So I took Bob up to see Constable's pictures of Salisbury Cathedral (which was also on my list of things to see - I looked the locations of the pictures up on the internet before we came), and also some of Turner's pictures because he's an English painter who worked in England and I really liked his work.

The enormous horse (9 foot tall) painting by Stubbs of the stallion Whistlejacket (which is so realistic that the stallion himself is supposed to have thought it was a rival) which was painted in 1762 was in the same room with the Turners and the Constables. I thought the stallion looked pained and worried.

We also spent some serindipitous time on Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode series which was painted in 1743 (although we accidentally started to look at the pictures from the end rather than the beginning)

The Marriage Contract.
Shortly After the Marriage.
The Countess's Morning Levee.
The Visit to the Quack Doctor.
The Death of the Earl..
The Suicide of the Countess.

Hogarth was the cartoonist of his day. According to his biography, he "..invented and popularized the use of a sequence of anecdotal pictures 'similar to representations on the stage' to point a moral and satirize social abuses. A Harlot's Progress (6 scenes, c. 1731; destroyed by fire) was followed by A Rake's Progress (8 scenes, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, c. 1735), and Marriage à la Mode (6 scenes, National Gallery, London, c. 1743), which each portray the punishment of vice in a somewhat lurid melodrama. Each series was painted with a view to being engraved, and the engravings had a wide sale and were popular with all classes. They were much pirated and Hogarth's campaigning against the profiteers led to the Copyright Act of 1735. "

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Phone: 0 20 7747 2885
Address: Trafalgar Square, WC2
Directions: Charing Cross or Leicester Square tubes
Website: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

In the 13th century, the first church build here was 'in the fields' between the City and Westminster. The present church predates Trafalgar Square by a hundred years. Before the square was laid out in the 1820s the church was hidden away in St Martin's Lane. That accounts for the name, because it is no longer 'in the fields'.

The west front has a Corinthian portico, with a steeple including a clock. St Martin's is one of the most influential churches architecturally that was ever built. The combination of steeple and portico became the model for the 'Colonial' style of church-building (on the side of the second picture). In 2007, the church was being renouvated, and it was covered with scaffolding. There was painting on the scaffolding of the front of the church that was underneath.

iandsmith tells me that the bells from St. Martin in the Fields are now in Perth, Australia.

Today the church helps the homeless and provides a lunchtime soup kitchen. It is home to the Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields and choir. The church also hosts free lunchtime concerts, featuring student musicians performing a wide range of music, and there are evening concerts as well.

The Café in the Crypt (a self-service cafe-restaurant) is open from 10am until 8pm Mondays to Saturdays and from noon until 8pm on Sundays for a hot drink, a glass of wine, a full meal or a snack.

But I was primarily interested in the London Brass Rubbing Centre in the crypt. My 2nd daughter had done a rubbing for me when she visited England with my mom in 1977, and I thought that would make a unique gift.

You go in and get paper and wax crayons in various colors, and pick one of the medieval and Tudor or Celtic designs - a choice of 90 plaques- and rub your crayon over the surface. The high points pick up the color. I made a rubbing of the astrological sign of Tauras as a present for my 3rd daughter. Costs of making a brass rubbing range from £2.50 to £15.00.

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Phone: (020) 7930 9306)
Address: Trafalgar Square, London WC2
Website: http://www.touruk.co.uk/london_churches/stmartins_church1.htm

When we were in London in 1950, my dad took pictures of my sister and me feeding the pigeons. He had similar pictures of us at Atlantic City. Now I think of the pigeons as the rats of the air. Nasty dirty birds. But they are well entrenched at this location.

The picture of Nelson's Column was taken from the top of the bus on a hot sunny July day. I was actually trying to take a picture of the pigeons flying up when scared by the lady walking along the sidewalk, but they didn't scare. There was some kind of a stage with what looks like a big speaker or giant TV screen built at the bottom of the column.

Admiral Nelson (his statue is 17 feet tall) stands at the top of his granite column in the square named after his last battle (1805) during which he was killed. He defeated Napoleon and the French and Spanish fleets off the Spanish cape of Trafalgar before dying aboard H.M.S. Victory. The uniform he was wounded in is at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

At the top of the 185 feet high column are canthus leaves, cast from British cannons, and at the base are four bronze relief panels cast from armaments captured from the French. These panels depict the four great victories of Admiral Nelson - the Victory off Cape St. Vincent, by Watson; the Bombardment of Copenhagen, by Ternouth; the Victory of the Nile, by Woodington; and the Death of Nelson, by Carew.

The other pictures were taken in 2007

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Address: Trafalgar Square, WC2
Directions: Charing Cross or Leicester Square tubes
Website: http://www.victorianlondon.org/buildings/nelson.htm