Everyday London

27/01/2025

It's 1538 and Thomas Lambert has been imprisoned, accused of heresy. Henry VIII decides to hold a debate with him in Westminster Hall. The Hall was set up for a public hearing, with Bishops in attendance and raked seating for the audience. The King opened the proceedings and then left it to his Bishops to argue the case. After five hours of debate, when it became clear that Thomas was not going to change his mind, he was sentenced to be burned alive.
Henry wanted this ex*****on to be a warning to other heretics. So as Thomas’s legs began to burn, he was lifted high on pike staffs and held there to die more slowly.
What was the crime that he committed, the crime that required this most cruel public burning?
He denied the literal presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the communion ceremony.

03/01/2025

The holidays have been mostly this...let's see what 2025 bringsl

26/11/2024

Here is a group of Hieroglyphs which mean to go south, notice the boat. In Egypt the prevailing wind comes from the north so traveling south is a boat with sails. If traveling north you went against the wind and so the symbol is a boat with oars.

01/11/2024

Is this the first new windmill in Hackney for 200 years?

23/09/2024

This autumn we present the Westminster Ghost Walk, more than a ghost tour, a meditation on ghost stories and how they persist among us. That the dead should come back is an ancient idea that appears in many cultures, we could consider it a universal human story.

A thousand years of history means plenty of ghost stories. Come hear spooky tales on our walk through London's Westminster

14/09/2024

In the early 16th century, there are 20 hackney carriages in London, ten years later the city is swarming with them. This new technology disrupts the old way of doing things.

John Taylor, water poet and sculler on the Thames writes these words; “They have undone my poor trade...they do rob us of our livings and do carry five hundred and sixty fares from us. I pray you look into the streets, how they are pestered with coaches, especially after a masque or play at the court, where even the very earth quakes and trembles, the casements shatter, tatter and clatter, and such a confused noise is made, so that a man can neither sleep, speak, hear, write, nor eat his dinner or supper quiet for them.”

11/09/2024

What's the Secrets of Whitehall tour about? A few highlights include the smallest police station in London, Winston Churchill’s cinema where he took refuge in Disney films during the darkest days of World War II, the measuring rods that prevent fraud, Henry VIII’s secret marriage, the scoundrel who built Downing Street, the anchorite of Westminster Abbey, Duck Island Cottage and the intruder who got into the late Queen’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace.

31/08/2024

The singing sharks are back on the Regents Canal, but what are they singing?

29/08/2024

What are ghosts about? People have seen them since earliest times and it’s an idea found in most cultures. There is a Babylonian tablet from 1 500 BCE that shows a ghost being led back to the underworld.
This may be the earliest depiction of a ghost. Back then a ghost was someone who had been deprived of eternal rest and therefore was to be shown compassion. A person’s sin could pull a ghost back to this world and this is what caused disease. The rituals and spells to treat the illness would help the ghost return to the underworld.
https://tinyurl.com/48n7nd8w
Everyday London's Ghost Walk returns in October.

The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

21/04/2024

In the Natural History Museum there is a cast of fossilised footprints from Laetoli in Tanzania. Three million years ago a group of early hominins walked across fresh volcanic ash by the side of a lake. Their footprints were covered by mud and solidified, surviving for millions of years. They are probably prints from a species of ape like creatures called Australopithecus. They had smaller brains than modern humans and they walked on two legs. Scientists had been arguing about what came first; walking on two legs or larger brains. Here is 3-million-year-old proof that walking on two legs came first.
The cast in the gallery is only a small part of 75 metres worth of footprints. The adults walked side by side and there are smaller footprints in the larger ones. A child walked in the footprints of the adult.