![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_newham posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tubewalks![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
diamondgeezer_feed
This yearOK, on to pancakes.
The winter solstice fell on 21st December 2025.
The new moon on 20th December didn't count.
The first new moon after the winter solstice was on 19th January 2026.
The second new moon after the winter solstice is on 17th February 2026.
Which is today - Kung hei fat choi!
This yearI've checked all the years in the 20th and 21st centuries.
🌑New 17th Feb → 🌕Full 3rd Mar → 🌑New 19th Mar → 🌕Full 2nd Apr
Thursday 2nd April is the first full moon after the spring equinox.
The next Sunday is Sunday 5th April, which is Easter Day.
And 47 days before that is Tuesday 17th February, which is both Shrove Tuesday and a new moon.
Last year: 🌑New Moon 28th FebruaryAt the moment Ramadan's in February but it hits January in 2028 and December in 2030.
This year: 🌑New Moon 17th February
Next year: 🌑New Moon 6th February
ianvisits_feedA long-term aspiration to run more trains on the Northern line could see a new depot being built on the site of a former railway horse hospital in North London.
Transport for London (TfL) aspires to increase the number of trains on the Northern line at peak times to 36 per hour, but doing so would require 45 additional berths to accommodate the extra trains required for the more intensive service.
TfL has worked out that this would require at least two new depots, one on each branch of the Northern line, and a possible site has been identified at Totteridge & Whetstone station on the High Barnet branch of the Northern line.
Thanks to a quirk of railway and industrial heritage, there’s a large plot of disused land next to the station, but with an unusual history attached to it.
Although part of the London Underground, the station was originally opened by the Great Northern Railway in 1872 as a mainline railway station, and later operated by LNER, before being taken over by London Underground in 1940. Like most railways of the time, there were a lot more facilities next to the station that you would find today, for cargo, coal, parcels, and often livestock.
But what stands out is that next to the station was the Great Northern’s horse hospital, which you can see in this photo as the large building (at about 9 o’clock) between the water tower and the railway cottages.
The Great Northern owned around 1,000 horses when the hospital opened in 1884, which, at the average price of the time, represented an investment of around £60,000, so looking after them was sensible.
The horses were used for carting luggage to and from stations, for small freight movements within station yards, and for the railway company’s horse-drawn buses in central London. They had stables near King’s Cross, but fear of an outbreak of the highly contagious Glanders disease in urban centres led the railway company to build a palace for horses in Totteridge.
Capable of caring for 55 horses at a time, the luxurious stables even had a Turkish bath in the centre, which could be used to treat the animals with hot steam generated in a basement boilerhouse.
Eventually, the horses weren’t needed, and the site was turned into a Soft Drinks Works, later the Planston Works, which eventually closed down, and the site was cleared in around 2017/18.
Also sitting next to the station was a goods yard with a single siding, which was kept in use by British Rail right up to October 1962, when it was turned into the station car park.
Today, these two sites sitting next to each other are being eyed up as suitable for housing developments – but one with a bit of a twist.
If it all goes ahead, they need the additional stabling for trains, and the land next to Totteridge & Whetstone station is just the right size for 15 trains to be stabled there on the site of the old horse stables.
But rather than just building an open-air train stabling yard, there is a potential option to bury them beneath housing. The site is on a raised area, so it would be possible to level the ground by a few metres and erect a new roof slab above the trains at roughly the same height as the street level was before.
Then build housing on top of the podium slab.
Although only a concept at this stage, and nothing is confirmed, the proposed housing could be a mix of houses and low-level blocks of flats running around the edges of the site, with a large courtyard in the centre.
The higher buildings on the railway side would act as a sound barrier, deflecting the noise from the railway below. Depending on the configuration and land acquisitions, between 200 and 600 homes could be built on top of the new Northern line train depot.
However, a Freedom of Information request warns that, since the high-level study was carried out in 2021, some housing policies and legislation have changed, as have market conditions, making the study untenable.
So that could mean no houses.
Against that, some of the tightening of planning restrictions that have made the project hard to push forward until now are themselves likely to be relaxed in the near future. There’s also a plan that any future housing next to a railway station will be prioritised, substantially reducing the burden of obtaining planning permission.
If anything were to go ahead, it would likely be required to offer a step-free upgrade to the tube station as a local benefit for passengers. Also, the housing is simply a way of subsidising the cost of building the railway sidings, which would still be needed if the Northern line is to carry more trains.
And of course, all this is subject to being able to buy more Northern line trains.
The existing Northern line trains are on a PFI deal with Alstom until 2033, by which time they will be around 35 years old. By national rail standards, they would be ripe for replacement. However, London Underground is usually expected to get another decade (or more) out of its trains before being allowed to replace them.
That gives them a decade or so to prepare for the additional sidings. Whether one of them ends up at Totteridge and Whetstone is still to be decided.
ianvisits_feedMore than thirty years after Newham closed its local museum, a replacement is set to open in Canning Town following a £2.7 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The council is currently converting the Grade II-listed Old Library into the Newham Heritage Centre, and the grant will assist with that work and ensure it can house Newham Council’s historic archives.
As part of that work, the borough’s museum collection will also go on display for the first time in over 30 years.
The historic building, with ties to the Trade Union and Suffragette movements and Will Thorne’s founding of the GMB Union in 1899, will become the permanent home for Newham’s archive and museum collections. These include a photographic collection of over 3,000 images.
This collection comprises thousands of objects spanning major global events, industry, political change, art, and everyday life in Newham, from the prehistoric era to the present day. The collection also includes over 100 pieces of Bow Porcelain and the largest collection of works by the self-taught artist, Madge Gill.
Eilish McGuinness, Chief Executive, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “Thanks to National Lottery players over the last 30 years, we have invested £3.4bn in more than 10,600 historic buildings and monuments, ensuring the UK’s heritage is valued, cared for, and sustained. These projects will boost wellbeing, create learning opportunities for young people and make heritage a powerful driver of local pride and prosperity.”
The borough’s archive is currently managed by Newham Heritage Service, which runs the Newham Local Studies and Archives Library in Stratford and administers the Newham Photos website along with the former collections of the Passmore Edwards Museum and the North Woolwich Old Station Museum.
The new Newham local history museum is set to open later this year.
pepysdiary_feedUp and by coach with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes to White Hall, and, after we had done our usual business with the Duke, to my Lord Sandwich and by his desire to Sir W. Wheeler, who was brought down in a sedan chair from his chamber, being lame of the gout, to borrow 1000l. of him for my Lord’s occasions, but he gave me a very kind denial that he could not, but if any body else would, he would be bond with my Lord for it. So to Westminster Hall, and there find great expectation what the Parliament will do, when they come two days hence to sit again, in matters of religion. The great question is, whether the Presbyters will be contented to have the Papists have the same liberty of conscience with them, or no, or rather be denied it themselves: and the Papists, I hear, are very busy designing how to make the Presbyters consent to take their liberty, and to let them have the same with them, which some are apt to think they will.
It seems a priest was taken in his vests officiating somewhere in Holborn the other day, and was committed by Secretary Morris, according to law; and they say the Bishop of London did give him thanks for it.
Thence to my Lord Crew’s and dined there, there being much company, and the above-said matter is now the present publique discourse.
Thence about several businesses to Mr. Phillips my attorney, to stop all proceedings at law, and so to the Temple, where at the Solicitor General’s I found Mr. Cholmely and Creed reading to him the agreement for him to put into form about the contract for the Mole at Tangier, which is done at 13s. the Cubical yard, though upon my conscience not one of the Committee, besides the parties concerned, do understand what they do therein, whether they give too much or too little.
Thence with Mr. Creed to see Mr. Moore, who continues sick still, within doors, and here I staid a good while after him talking of all the things either business or no that came into my mind, and so home and to see Sir W. Pen, and sat and played at cards with him, his daughter, and Mrs. Rooth, and so to my office a while, and then home and to bed.
fatgayvegan_feedianvisits_feedThere will be a rare opportunity to stand face to face with music written in Mozart’s own hand as an unfinished manuscript goes on display at the Handel Hendrix House for a few months.
The sheet is modest in size but immense in significance. Carefully inked across the page are the opening 20 bars of a fugue – not Mozart’s own invention, but his transcription of a harpsichord work by George Frideric Handel, composed more than sixty years earlier.
Mozart was 26 when he set to work on it in 1782–83, transforming Handel’s keyboard fugue into the beginnings of a string quartet arrangement.
However, the manuscript is unfinished
Whether Mozart ever completed the arrangement remains unknown. Yet in those neatly ruled staves lies clear evidence of a lifelong musical conversation – a young Classical composer in dialogue with a Baroque master.
Mozart’s connection to Handel began early. During his family’s European tour in 1764–65, the eight-year-old prodigy arrived in London and quickly encountered Handel’s music in grand settings.
These experiences left their mark. As he matured, Mozart returned repeatedly to Handel’s fugues, oratorios and odes, studying their architecture and expressive force. He once wrote that “Handel understands effect better than any of us… when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt.”
Handel through Mozart’s eyes
The new display, Handel through Mozart’s eyes, runs from 25 February to 13 September 2026 at 25 Brook Street — the very house where Handel once lived, next to the later arrival, Jimi Hendrix.
Alongside the handwritten fugue transcription, visitors can see:
The display is included with museum admission.
Details are here.
ianvisits_feedThe date for Chevening House’s annual garden open day has been confirmed, and it’s a chance to wander around an impressive garden normally reserved for government ministers and their staff.
The building, Chevening House, was built around 400 years ago, and it would probably still be a private house, but the last Earl Stanhope, childless and with his brother killed in WW1, effectively gifted it to the nation.
A trust was set up in 1959 that allows a government minister nominated by the Prime Minister to use the house as a private residence. And although any Cabinet minister can be nominated, by tradition, it’s usually been the Foreign Secretary.
The building is not open to the public, but the gardens are open to the general public one day a year — and this year it’s been confirmed that will be Sunday 21st June 2026 between 2pm and 5pm.
The gardens are substantial, with a mix of woodlands and formal lawns surrounding a lake, and all face the mansion house. The house itself will not be open, but the gardens are worth visiting, and it seems that it’s customary to bring a picnic with you and eat it on the Foreign Secretary’s front lawn.
My review from 2021 is here.
Entry is £12 for adults, £1 for children.
Although you don’t need to book in advance, it will save a lot of time queuing when you arrive if you have booked tickets, which can be requested from here.
ianvisits_feedWallace and Gromit may have travelled to the moon for some cheese, but they did so in a vegan rocket made from lentils. Or at least, the rivets, carefully glued to the rocket by Nick Park, were made from painted lentils, and that’s a small nugget of information you learn at Young V&A’s new exhibition about all things Aardman.
As an exhibition, it’s a chance for people (mostly the younger generation) to learn about the art and craft of making animations, as most of the information signs are aimed at future artists. However, unlike some previous Young V&A exhibitions, this one firmly ticks the adult visitor box as well, simply because the icons many of us grew up with are here on display.
From the animals talking about electric central heating to the most recent Christmas special, Vengeance Most Fowl, it’s a chance to ohh and ahh over much-loved (and feared) characters.
The original storyboard from that famous train track is here, along with sketches of Wallace’s home, which actually look quite spooky and sinister when don’t in monochrome. Far from the homely effect in the final animations.
The claymation models are always larger than you might expect, none more so than the huge model of the sailing ship, which turns out to be disassembled for filming. A film showing the animation method shows a metal pole going up a sheep’s bum, so maybe a bit too much information there, but you do get to see how the Accrington Queen came close to disaster on the canal bridge.
And elsewhere, they tell how they put in-jokes into many of the stories, and I suspect that for many, spotting them is as much fun as the rest of the film.
Elsewhere, an example of how stages are designed lets you play with the lighting in the penguin’s prison cell, and I think I did rather well at that. A career in stage lighting clearly beckons.
When I was visiting, pretty much every adult got excited to see the museum where the diamond was stolen from.
And of course, that famous wanted poster.
Although at Young V&A, this exhibition has plenty to entertain visitors of all ages, and for Aardman fans, it’s a delight.
The exhibition, Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends, is at Young V&A until 15th November.
The tickets also allow repeat visits during the exhibition.
Strongly recommend booking tickets as they’re selling out fairly quickly.
Details here.
ianvisits_feedMartin Lane is a narrow cobblestone passage next to London Bridge that was once longer, used to reach down to the riverside, and is linked to a rhyme about oranges and lemons.
For most of its life, the alley’s main feature was the church of St Martin Orgar, possibly named after Ordgarus, a Dane who donated the church to the canons of St Paul’s.
Sadly, most of the church was destroyed during the Great Fire of London. The badly damaged remains were restored and used by French Protestants right up to 1820. After they left, most of the remaining building was then pulled down, but the tower remained and was rebuilt in 1851-3 as the campanile of St Clement Eastcheap.
But they kept the clock, so at least a bit of it is original.
The old graveyard is now a private garden.
The church has an added fame, as it’s often considered to be one of the churches mentioned in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons – “You owe me five farthings, Say the bells of St. Martin’s.”
The alley used to be longer, but was cut short by the rebuilding of London Bridge, which moved the bridge eastwards to its current location in 1830, and by several new roads cutting through the medieval street layout.
So, the bottom half of Martin Lane became the curved Arthur Street, which was recently an important site for the Bank tube station upgrade project.
Further down the alley past the modern offices is The Olde Wine Shades, a wine bar that claims to be in a building that survived the Great Fire of London, which is impressive considering that the church a few yards away was destroyed, and its proximity to Pudding Lane.
Remembering not to treat old maps as gospel, a map of London just after the fire doesn’t show any surviving buildings on Martin Lane, and even notes that the church is marked as destroyed.
However, much of its claim relies on a decorated lead cistern upstairs with 1663 on the side. I’ve struggled to find much reference to a wine bar on Martin Lane, and it’s maybe telling that old maps showing pub locations don’t mention it.
In the 1880s, the building was used as an auction house and later as an accountant’s office, although that may have been just the upper floors. There is also a reference to a bottled water wholesaler, Sterbing & Co, operating out of the building around the same time.
Significantly, I can’t find any reference to 6 Martin Lane as a wine bar until the 1920s.
I might generously suggest that it was a wholesale wine merchant, as there were many in the area, and later opened to the public as a wine bar.
The wine bar also claims to have been involved in smuggling, although as with most claims of smuggling, it’s probably not true. While there was said to be a tunnel to the old river foreshore, if it exists, it’s likely to be just a merchant’s access, as was commonplace at the time.
Having allegedly survived the Great Fire of London, it also barely survived the second fire of London, as its neighbour was destroyed during the WWII blitz.
That takes us to a curious relic around the side of the building. What is currently a side passage was once the neighbouring building, and sitting in the wall is an odd thing, now exposed by the WWII clearance.
It’s thought to be a lawyer’s document safe.
diamondgeezer_feed
squirmelia
squirmelia
pepysdiary_feed(Lord’s day). This morning my wife did wake me being frighted with the noise I made in my sleep, being a dream that one of our sea maisters did desire to see the St. John’s Isle of my drawing, which methought I showed him, but methought he did handle it so hard that it put me to very horrid pain … [and what should this be but my cods, which after I woke were in very great pain for a good while – L&M] Which what a strange extravagant dream it was.
So to sleep again and lay long in bed, and then trimmed by the barber, and so sending Will to church, myself staid at home, hanging up in my green chamber my picture of the Soveraigne, and putting some things in order there.
So to dinner, to three more ducks and two teals, my wife and I. Then to Church, where a dull sermon, and so home, and after walking about the house awhile discoursing with my wife, I to my office there to set down something and to prepare businesses for tomorrow, having in the morning read over my vows, which through sicknesse I could not do the last Lord’s day, and not through forgetfulness or negligence, so that I hope it is no breach of my vow not to pay my forfeiture. So home, and after prayers to bed, talking long with my wife and teaching her things in astronomy.
fatgayvegan_feeddiamondgeezer_feed| 3p | 5p | 10p | |
| 8p | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> |
| 6p | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> |
| 4p | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> | <select ... ><option ... >?<option ... >-<option ... >1p<option ... >2p<option ... >5p</select> |
diamondgeezer_feed
| Value | Diameter | Thickness | Weight | Introduced |
| £2 | 28.4mm | 2.50mm | 12.0g | 1998 |
| £1 | 23.4mm | 2.80mm | 8.75g | 2017 |
| 50p | 27.3mm | 1.78mm | 8.00g | 1997 |
| 20p | 21.4mm | 1.70mm | 5.00g | 1982 |
| 10p | 24.5mm | 1.85mm | 6.50g | 1992 |
| 5p | 18.0mm | 1.70mm | 3.25g | 1990 |
| 2p | 25.9mm | 2.03mm | 7.12g | 1971 |
| 1p | 20.3mm | 1.65mm | 3.56g | 1971 |
pepysdiary_feedUp and to my office, where we met and sat all the morning, only Mr. Coventry, which I think is the first or second time he has missed since he came to the office, was forced to be absent. So home to dinner, my wife and I upon a couple of ducks, and then by coach to the Temple, where my uncle Thomas, and his sons both, and I, did meet at my cozen Roger’s and there sign and seal to an agreement. Wherein I was displeased at nothing but my cozen Roger’s insisting upon my being obliged to settle upon them as the will do all my uncle’s estate that he has left, without power of selling any for the payment of debts, but I would not yield to it without leave of selling, my Lord Sandwich himself and my cozen Thos. Pepys being judges of the necessity thereof, which was done. One thing more that troubles me was my being forced to promise to give half of what personal estate could be found more than 372l., which I reported to them, which though I do not know it to be less than what we really have found, yet he would have been glad to have been at liberty for that, but at last I did agree to it under my own handwriting on the backside of the report I did make and did give them of the estate, and have taken a copy of it upon the backside of one that I have. All being done I took the father and his son Thos. home by coach, and did pay them 30l., the arrears of the father’s annuity, and with great seeming love parted, and I presently to bed, my head akeing mightily with the hot dispute I did hold with my cozen Roger and them in the business.
fatgayvegan_feedmiss_newham in tubewalks - Tube Walk reminderdiamondgeezer_feed - Lunar tripleianvisits_feed - Northern line upgrade could bring a new train depot to a former horse hospitalianvisits_feed - Newham to get its museum back after 30 years with new heritage centrepepysdiary_feed - Monday 16 February 1662/63fatgayvegan_feed - Vegan Hungarian Dining Night in Londonxkcd_feed - SNEWSianvisits_feed - Unfinished Mozart manuscript going on display in Mayfair museumianvisits_feed - Tickets Alert: Chevening House garden’s 2026 open dayianvisits_feed - Morph, Wallace and evil penguins: Inside Aardman at Young V&Aianvisits_feed - London’s Alleys: Martin Lane, City of London, EC4diamondgeezer_feed - D is for Downhamsquirmelia - Mudlarking 93 - a high low tidesquirmelia - Mudlarking 92 - tack and barnaclepepysdiary_feed - Sunday 15 February 1662/63fatgayvegan_feed - FREE Vegan Food In London This Half Termdiamondgeezer_feed - Three coin puzzlesdiamondgeezer_feed - Decimal Daypepysdiary_feed - Saturday 14 February 1662/63fatgayvegan_feed - Vegan Pizza at UK Cinemastimeasmymeasure