Highgate East

Saturday, February 29, 2020:

Storm Jorge is passing through the UK, the tempest bringing more rain to London.  We had a respite from the frosty cold and showers this afternoon and wandered through Highgate East where we viewed some beautiful, interesting and notable graves.

Anna Mahler, sculptress & daughter of composer Gustav Mahler

George Eliot, novelist & poet, famed author of Middlemarch (central pillar)

Karl Marx, philosopher & political theorist

An angel dressed in ivy

Malcolm McLaren, clothes designer & impresario of rock music

Jeremy Beadle, British radio & television personality, writer & producer

Pat Kavanagh, literary agent and wife to writer Julian Barnes

Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

William Foyle, founder of Foyle Bookstores

Bert Jansch, Scottish folk musician

Corin Redgrave, actor and brother of Vanessa & Lynn (with daffodils)

Sir Ralph Richardson, actor

Patrick Caulfield, pop artist

Saint Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield

Friday, February 28, 2020:

Ellie, Jim, John and Eddie at lunch on Carter Lane

After lunch with old friends, we visited London's oldest parish church, St. Bartholomew the Great. Situated in the Smithfield neighborhood, the priory was built when Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, was king of England.  This amazingly well-preserved medieval building, founded in 1123 by a monk named Rahere, has survived the Great Fire of 1666 and the blitz of WWII.

In 1559 a half-timbered house is built over the church entrance

Tomb of Prior Rahere who died in 1143, Tomb dating from 1405

St. Bartholomew holding his flayed skin

Throughout medieval times, Smithfield was an area used for selling cattle, jousting and executions.  Over the centuries both Catholic and Protestant martyrs accused of heresy were burnt at the stake here. In 1305 the Scottish patriot William Wallace was dragged here from the Tower of London behind a horse, and subsequently hung, drawn and quartered.  During the years of 1348 and 1349, the Black Death killed half of all Londoners; over 50,000 people were buried in Smithfield soil.

We then encountered Smithfield Market.  Per historic markers at the site, in the early 19th century men sold their unwanted wives here, among other wares.

Smithfield Market, Building from Victorian Era

Colorful Victorian Ironwork

We then came upon the London Charterhouse.  In 1371 a Carthusian Monastery was founded here, an order requiring its members to live in silence and solitude. Between 1535 and 1537 numerous Carthusian monks and lay brothers who resisted the reforms of King Henry VIII were tortured and executed for treason. The monastery was seized by the king and shut down in 1538 and its buildings left for ruin. A Tudor Palace was later built on the site, and several of the buildings that exist today date from the late 1500s. The martyred monks of Charterhouse have since been beatified, and some canonized (made saints), by Rome.

Shrine to the Victims of the Black Death

Inside the Charterhouse Chapel

The Charterhouse Today

Shrove Tuesday: Handel & Hendrix Museum

Tuesday, February 25, 2020:

Today is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.  In the UK Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake Tuesday, and is an occasion to prepare and eat pancakes.  A traditional English pancake is thin like a crepe and is meant to be eaten right away.  It can be garnished with lemon or sugar or more indulgently mantled with Grand Marnier or Bourbon. Eddie and I, however, opted to observe with doughnuts! Crosstown Doughnuts is a scratch bakery; they make all their own jams, glazes, fillings, etc.  Eddie enjoyed a sea salt caramel banana cream and I relished a rhubarb, raspberry & ginger.

Today Eddie took me to a museum - actually two museums in one - that made for an awesome "experience."   It was the Handel & Hendrix on Brook Street in Mayfair.

George Friderick Handel wrote his first opera at the age of 18.  He made London his home in 1712 and was the first occupant of 25 Brook Street which he rented from 1723 until his death in 1759.  He composed many of his most celebrated works in this home during the Baroque era, including his famed oratory Messiah.  Handel's Messiah was premiered in Dublin in 1742, at a concert where women were asked not to wear hoop skirts and men to keep their swords at home, so as to make room for as many as people as possible.  Handel died in this house at the age of 74.

Final page from the Messiah 

The room in which the Messiah was composed

Malcolm, a volunteer at Handel House, plays the harpsichord

Some two hundred years later in 1968, the American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix moved into an apartment at 23 Brook Street, adjacent to the Handel House.  Handel's blue plaque was already on the building next door; Hendrix, out of curiosity,  went to a record store on nearby Oxford Street and purchased an album of Handel's Messiah.  Hendrix said, "God's honest truth, I haven't heard much of the fella's stuff but I dig a bit of Bach now and again."

Jimi Hendrix became a superstar in London.  Sadly, in 1970 at the age of 27, he died there.  It was just five days short of the four-year anniversary of his arrival.  Curiously, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all died at the age of 27 as well.

Jimi Hendrix's Bedroom

Today the homes of Handel and Hendrix are connected and one price gets you in to see both residences.  What an awesome place to visit.

The Spencer House

Sunday, February 23, 2020:

Today we took a guided tour of Spencer House, in Green Park near Buckingham Palace, which was built by the 1st Earl of Spencer in the mid 1700s.  Charles Spencer, the younger brother of the late Princess Diana, is the 9th Earl of Spencer.  Charles currently owns and resides at Althorp House, a country estate north of London where he and Diana lived as children.  Spencer House with its lovely neo-classical interiors has been beautifully restored.

We then took a nice long walk past St. James Park, Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the Thames Embankment where we saw the famous London Eye.

Spencer House interiors

Spencer House

Back of Westminster Abbey

Emmeline Pankhurst, Suffragette

The London Eye