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Cleopatra’s Needle is the oldest object on London's streets and one of several interesting monuments on London’s Embankment, not far from Westminster. It is an Egyptian obelisk, one of a pair originally made for the Pharaoh Thutmose III in c1500 BC, erected in Heliopolis and moved to Alexandria in 12 BC. The link to Cleopatra is spurious. It is a single piece of inscribed granite about 60 feet (18m) high and weighing around 186 tons (189,000Kg). The monument was presented to Britain by the Turkish Sultan of Egypt and Sudan, Mahommed Ali, in 1819 in commemoration of Lord Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and Sir Ralph Abercromby’s victory at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801.
However, the obelisk was not moved to the UK until September 1877. Its journey is a story in its own right. A cigar-shaped container ship named the Cleopatra – a kind of iron cylinder complete with deckhouse, mast, rudder and steering gear – was specially made to transport the obelisk, and its crew. It was towed by the steamship, Olga, but a violent storm struck in the Bay of Biscay, the towropes had to be cut and six men from the Olga drowned trying to rescue the Cleopatra’s crew. The crew were saved, but Cleopatra was lost in the raging seas. Later, she was sighted and towed into harbour in Spain. From there, the paddleship Anglia towed her to England, arriving in Gravesend on 21 January 1878. Crowds cheered as Cleopatra's Needle was towed up the Thames. It was finally erected on the Embankment on 12 September 1878. The two sphinxes that sit beneath it were cast in bronze at the Ecclestone Iron Works in Pimlico in 1881.
London’s Cleopatra’s Needle has a twin in New York’s Central Park.
London's famous fruit and vegetable market relocated to Nine Elms in 1974. The district, which had been congested and run-down, has been redeveloped and now offers a range of facilities - two extensive areas of market stalls, selling artwork, hand-made jewellery, unique gifts; plus a range of high-end shops, pubs, bars and restaurants. Covent Garden is also famous for its street performers and includes the Royal Opera House, Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the London Transport Museum. In the Middle Ages, it was the garden for Westminster Abbey, developed into a fashionable Italian-style square in the 17th century - and then became a place of ill-repute!
An urban garden of remembrance has been created on the site of Crossbones Graveyard, a burial place for paupers, prostitutes and the unwanted. It developed from a late medieval 'single women's churchyard' - a resting place for the 'Winchester Geese', prostitutes licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work in London's pleasure quarter, outside the confines of the City of London. The graveyard was closed on health grounds in 1853. An estimated 15,000 people are buried there in unmarked graves.
Staffed by volunteers, limited opening.
The post code is for the Boot & Flogger wine bar opposite.
Borough
Famous 19th century sailing ship, built in Dumbarton in 1869, which was the fastest ship of her time and is the world's only surviving tea-clipper. Carefully restored after a disastrous fire, Cutty Sark has been raised about 10 feet (3+ metres) so that you can walk right underneath her copper-bottomed hull. On deck and below are fascinating displays and accounts of the ship's history and life on board.
Managed by Royal Museums Greenwich, who are also responsible for the National Maritime Museum, Queen's House and Royal Observatory.
Greenwich
"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." Dr Samuel Johnson, writer and wit, is one of the most quoted Englishmen of all time and lived at this house between 1748 and 1759 whilst compiling his famous "Dictionary of the English Language" in the garret. The house was built at the end of the 17th century and is one of 17 different places Johnson lived in in London. After he left, it was used as a hotel, print shop and warehouse. It now contains exhibitions about Johnson's life and works and many original items relating to the man. All five levels are open to the public. A statue of his cat, Hodge, is at the other end of the square and one of his favourite inns, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is round the corner on Fleet Street.
Memorial to Nurse Edith Cavell designed by Sir George Frampton (who waived his fee) in 1915, unveiled by Queen Alexandra in 1920. Edith Cavell was born in Norwich in 1865. She was matron of a hospital in Brussels when the Germans invaded in 1914. Though the invaders offered her and other British nurses safe conduct to neutral Holland, she stayed on, eventually helping some 200 British, French and Belgian soldiers escape to Holland. She was arrested in August 1915 and shot by firing squad on 12th October. She said to her American chaplain, "I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." The British may well have exploited the propaganda value of Edith Cavell's murder, particularly in the at that time neutral USA.
The post code is for nearby St Martin-in-the-Field church. There is another memorial to Edith Cavell in Norwich.
Fortnum and Mason is a luxury department store founded in 1707 by William Fortnum and Hugh Mason. Fortnum was a footman in Queen Anne's household and the business was allegedly established on the profits he made from selling partially used royal candles. "Fortnum's" began life as a quality grocery store and, though it has expanded, it is still primarily known for its fabulous speciality foods and luxury hampers.
There has been an inn on the site of the City’s George & Vulture since the 15th century, but it burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666. Originally called ‘The George’, the vulture bit was added because (allegedly) the rebuilt inn was partly leased to a wine merchant whose sign was a live vulture, tethered above the entrance. These days, it is known as a favourite watering-hole of Charles Dickens, who mentioned it several times in ‘Pickwick Papers’ and whose descendants sometimes meet there. It is not a pub, but a restaurant with varied reviews. This writer has no personal experience of it, but from the outside it looks like a public lavatory.
The George, Borough High Street, is the last remaining galleried coaching inn in London. There were once many such inns in the area, catering for travellers on their way south from the City, or heading north and pausing before crossing London Bridge. They included the famous Tabard, where Chaucer's pilgrims met, which used to stand just south of the George. By Dickens' times, the number of such inns had been reduced to half a dozen. The current George Inn building dates from the 17th century, but there has apparently been an inn on the site since medieval times. And it serves a good pint. The property is owned by the National Trust, leased to a tenant.
Southwark
The Golden Boy at Pye Corner is a carved wooden figure covered in gold on the corner wall of a building at the junction of Giltspur Street with Cock Lane, EC1. As it says below, the statue "was erected to commemorate the staying of the Great Fire which beginning at Pudding Lane was ascribed to the Sin of Gluttony when not attributed to the papists as on the Monument and the Boy was made prodigiously fat to enforce the moral he was originally built into the front of a public-house called the Fortune of War which used to occupy this site and was pulled down in 1910."
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