9 July: The Hayward Gallery

This date in 1968 was the official opening of the Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank. 10 things you might not know:

1. The address of the gallery is Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. The nearest tube stations are Waterloo and Embankment.

2. Its close neighbours in the Southbank Centre include the Queen Elizabeth Hall/Purcell Room, the BFI Southbank repertory cinema, the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre.

3. The gallery is named after Sir Isaac Hayward who was the leader of the London County Council when the gallery was built.

4. It was designed by a group of young architects which included Dennis Crompton, Warren Chalk, and Ron Herron, who were part of the architectural collective, Archigram. It was built by a company called Higgs and Hill.

5. It is the only gallery in the world to be built in the Brutalist style of architecture, which was popular in the 1960s.

6. Another thing which makes it different is that it doesn’t have its own permanent art collection but rather hosts a series of temporary exhibitions.

7. The Hayward Gallery’s main focus is modern art; has a reputation for taking risks and showing art that is not necessarily mainstream, but is more experimental. Well known names who have featured in the Hayward’s exhibitions include Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Grayson Perry. That said, artists from before the modern era, such as Leonardo da Vinci, have on occasion been shown here as well.

8. The founding director was Joanna Drew. At time of writing the position is held by Sally Tallant, who took over from Ralph Rugoff in 2026.

9. The original plan for the Hayward Gallery included five main art spaces. There are two levels of indoor galleries and three outdoor sculpture courts. It has a large, glass-fronted foyer designed by Haworth Tompkins and added in 2003. A new glass pavilion, designed by Dan Graham, was also added above a new cafe.

10. Not based anywhere near London? The gallery has formed a partnership with Google Arts & Culture to create virtual exhibitions that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

18 September: Royal Opera House

On this date in 1809, the Royal Opera House in London opened. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. The building which opened in 1809 was the second of three theatres to stand on the site. The first opened in December 1732, having been commissioned by an actor/manager named John Rich. He was carried there on opening night by his actors and the first performance held there was Congreve's The Way of the World. The theatre then was primarily a playhouse. King Charles II gave it, along with Drury Lane, almost sole rights to present spoken drama in the capital.

2. In 1808 the theatre was destroyed by a Fire and a new one, designed by Robert Smirke, opened on 18 September 1809 with a performance of Macbeth followed by a musical entertainment called The Quaker. This building was also destroyed by a fire in 1856.

3. Work began on the third theatre, the nucleus of the Royal Opera House as it is today, in 1857. This one was designed by Edward Middleton Barry, opened in 1858. Barry wisely designed it as a fireproof building. It opened on 15 May 1858 with a performance of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots.

4. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, making it the third largest in London. It consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery.

5. It is the home of not only the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet, but it also has the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus. Both were established in 1946.

6. During the first world war, the theatre was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works for use as a furniture repository. During the second world war, the building was used as a dance hall.

7. A number of firsts took place in the various buildings during the site’s history, including: the first 'ballet d'action'. That is, a ballet which tells a story through dance. This was Pygmalion, performed in 1734; the first public performance on a Piano in England on 16 May, 1767. A Miss Bricker sang a song from Handel's Judith accompanied on a piano by Charles Dibdin. The first solo performance on a piano happened the following year on 2 June 1768, by Johann Christian Bach, Johann Sebastian's youngest son; it was the first theatre to use limelight indoors for the first time in 1837.

8. There was also a famous last. A famous actress called Sarah Siddons gave her last performance at the Royal Opera House. She gave a 10-minute long farewell speech after her final performance, as Lady Macbeth in 1812.

9. E M Barry designed a building adjacent to the theatre called the Floral Hall (now called The Paul Hamlyn Hall). It was originally a flower market opened in 1860. It too succumbed to a fire in 1956 and was derelict for a time. It was acquired by the Opera House in 1977 and used as storage space. It is now the atrium for the theatre and houses a champagne bar, restaurant and other hospitality services. Its original facade was stored away and eventually bought by Borough Market for £1 and added to the market’s structure in 2003.

10. The covid plague did the Opera House no favours. In fact, it lost 60% of its income as a result of the restrictions. It was forced to sell the 1971 Portrait of Sir David Webster by David Hockney which had hung there for decades, in an auction at Christie’s. It sold for £12.8 million and allowed the institution to survive.

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

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2 September: The Monument

On this date in 1666 the Great fire of London began. Today in London there is a Monument which commemorates this event. Here are 10 things you might not know about The Monument:

1. At 202 feet (62 metres) high it is the tallest isolated stone column in the world. The height is significant. 202 feet is the distance from the location of the Monument to the exact spot the Great Fire of London Started in Pudding Lane. It stands on the site of the first church to be destroyed by the Great Fire, St Margaret, New Fish Street.

2. It is a fluted Doric column made from Portland stone topped with a gilded urn of Fire.

3. Once it was decided that a monument should be built, the surveyor-general of the King's Works was asked to submit a design. The person in that post at the time was none other than Christopher Wren. He wasn’t entirely responsible for the design, though. Evidence suggests that he delegated the task to one Robert Hooke, an architect in his employ. It’s not known to what extent the two worked together on the design, but Hooke’s drawings still exist, signed by Wren, meaning it’s possible all Wren did was approve them.

4. Wren and Hooke saw this commission as a chance to make the building a scientific instrument as well as a monument. It has a central shaft that was intended for experiments with gravity and pendulums, and there’s a tiny science lab beneath it, which is accessible through a hatch in the floor of the ticket office. The top of the shaft is covered by a lid on the urn at the top of the structure. The laboratory wasn’t used much, however, as it was found that vibrations from the heavy traffic in the area interfered with the work.

5. All four sides of the base have inscriptions. The South side describes, in Latin, the actions taken by King Charles II following the fire. The east side describes how the monument was built and which mayors had an influence. The North side describes how the fire started and how much damage was done. The west side has a relief sculpture representing the destruction and restoration of the city. In 1681, anti-Catholic aldermen added to the inscriptions about the fire, placing the blame firmly on Catholicism, translating from Latin as “but Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched”; and "burning of this protestant city, begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction”. These words were chiselled out in 1830.

6. Construction began in 1671 and took six years, due to Portland stone being difficult to source.

7. The cost of building it was £13,450 11s 9d.

8. It is Grade I-listed and a scheduled monument.

9. It’s possible to climb the 311 steps to a viewing platform for panoramic views of London.

10. There’s also a monument on the spot where the fire was eventually put out. It’s called the Golden Boy of Pye Corner and is located on the intersection of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane. It’s a statue of a chubby cherub, intended as a reminder that gluttony was the cause of the fire.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

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13 July: Victoria Embankment

On this date in 1870 Victoria Embankment in London was opened by the then Prince of Wales and Princess Louise. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. It runs from the Palace of Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London.

2. It was one element of a three part project, which also included the Albert Embankment, from the Lambeth end of Westminster Bridge to Vauxhall; and the Chelsea Embankment, extending from Millbank to the Cadogan Pier at Chelsea, near Battersea Bridge.

3. The original date for the opening was to be 25 July 1870, but Queen Victoria Unexpectedly sent word on 8 July that she wanted to open it on the 13^th. What Queen Victoria said went, so there was a last minute push with about 2,000 workers toiling day and night to get it finished a week early. After all that, on the new appointed day, Queen Victoria was “indisposed”. Hence her son, the future King Edward VII, was the one who opened the Embankment on her behalf.

4. The Dictionary defines the word Embankment as a wall or bank of earth or stone built to prevent a body of water from flooding an area.

5. The Victoria Embankment was designed by civil engineer Francis Webb Sheilds. Construction, started in 1865, was under the direction of Joseph Bazalgette. The contractor for the work was Thomas Brassey. The net cost was £1,156,981.

6. Thirty-seven and a quarter acres of land was reclaimed from the River Thames. Nineteen of them became the road and footway. About ten acres were made into gardens and ornamental grounds for the public, and the remainder became the property of the Crown, the Societies of the Inner and Middle Temple and other landowners.

7. Why was it done? Partly in order to provide London with a new sewage system, and partly to relieve congestion on the Strand and Fleet Street.

8. In December 1878 Victoria Embankment became the first street in Britain to be permanently lit by Electricity.

9. London Underground stations along Victoria Embankment are Embankment and Temple. Its only London Bus route is the N550, a night bus providing a service when the Tube is closed.

10. Ships permanently moored by Victoria Embankment include HMS President, HQS Wellington, and PS Tattershall Castle.

Character birthday

Glare was violently opposed to plans to privatise rail companies, believing the system should be under government control. He comes from a long line of railway workers – both his father and grandfather were engineers. His father taught him to drive a train and he has worked his way up through the ranks to become a senior planner.

It is not known how or when his power of hypnotism first manifested. He was recruited by the Gunpowder Lot, a group intent on bringing down the government, in order to help them divert a train of nuclear waste to their hideout.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

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4 June: Pall Mall

On this date in 1807 Pall Mall became the first London street to be lit by gaslight. 10 facts about Pall Mall:

1. It was named after a game. The game of pall mall was popular in the 17^th century and was similar to croquet. It is said to have originated in Italy where Pallamaglio loosely translates as ‘ball mallet’, and introduced to England by James I. Samuel Pepys's diary entry for 2 April 1661 says: "I went into St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pelemele, the first time that I ever saw the sport". In 1630, St James's Field, London's first pall-mall court, was laid out to the north of the Haymarket, in the area where Pall Mall is today.

2. It’s also found within a game. Pall Mall is part of a group of three squares on the British Monopoly board game, the other two being Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue. All three streets converge at Trafalgar Square. Pall Mall is in the lowest-priced third of properties on the Monopoly board, but in real life even a small flat there would set you back over £1 million.

3. The street is around 0.4 miles (0.64 km) long.

4. Historical research suggests there has been a road in this location since Saxon times. The earliest written references are from the 12th century in connection with a leper colony at St James's Hospital.

5. One of the things Pall Mall is known for is high class shopping. Two of the historical shops include that of the Vulliamy family, who made Clocks at No. 68 between 1765 and 1854; and Robert Dodsley’s bookshop at No. 52, where he suggested the idea of a dictionary to Samuel Johnson.

6. The world’s oldest shopping arcade is here, called the Royal Opera Arcade, because it was built on the west side of the Royal Opera House, now Her Majesty’s Theatre. It survived a fire which destroyed the theatre in 1867. Royal Opera Arcade was designed by John Nash and his assistant George Repton.

7. Carlton House Terrace is home to the only Nazi-era memorial in London. Before the second world war, the German Embassy was based here. Giro, the ambassador's German shepherd, tragically died in 1934, electrocuted trying to chew through the Embassy’s wire fence. Giro’s grave, with its headstone, is still there.

8. In 1814 the Royal Academy, the National Gallery and Christie's auction house were all based on this street.

9. Most of the property on the south side belongs to the crown, the exception being number 79, which was given to the trustees of Nell Gwyn, mistress to Charles II. Aside from Nell Gwyn, some famous residents of Pall Mall include Richard Cosway, Thomas Gainsborough and Giacomo Casanova. King George V was born here in 1865.

10. The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening Newspaper founded in London in 1865 by George Murray Smith. It was absorbed into The Evening Standard in 1923. Prior to that it made several appearances in fiction. Sherlock Holmes places an advertisement in The Pall Mall Gazette, in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, and a Pall Mall Gazette article describing the escape of a wolf from the Zoological Gardens appears in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Character birthday

Captain Australia, aka Bruce Foster, He grew up in Melbourne and excelled at all types of sport. Went to university in Sydney although mostly for the opportunities to play sports and compete. When he realised his strength was beyond normal human limits, he began styling himself as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Australian superhero.

26 May: Vauxhall Bridge

On this date in 1906 Vauxhall Bridge opened. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. Vauxhall Bridge is a Grade II listed steel and granite deck arch bridge which crosses the River Thames in a southeast–northwest direction between Vauxhall on the south bank and Pimlico on the north bank. It is 247 metres long and 24 metres wide.

2. There may well have been a crossing on this site 3,500 years ago. In 1998, the Thames Archaeological Survey found the remains of an oak crossing dating to around 1500 BC.

3. The bridge that is there today replaced an earlier bridge, known as Regent Bridge but later renamed Vauxhall Bridge, built between 1809 and 1816 as part of a scheme for redeveloping the south bank of the Thames.

4. The current Vauxhall Bridge was the first in London to carry trams.

5. It was one of the first two roads in London to have a Bus lane.

6. The road it carries is the A202.

7. The bridge was designed by Sir Alexander Binnie and Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice.

8. The design was quite functional, and so the LCC began debating ways to make the bridge more interesting. They consulted with architect William Edward Riley regarding possible decorative elements that could be added to the bridge. He suggested two 60-foot (18 m) pylons topped with statues at one end of the bridge, and adding sculptures to the bridge piers. The pylons were rejected on grounds of cost, but the statues were commissioned and are there to this day. They are not visible from the bridge itself. The statues represent Agriculture, Architecture (this one is holding a model of St Paul's Cathedral), Education, Fine Arts and Engineering. They are made from bronze, weigh two tons each and were designed by Alfred Drury and Frederick Pomeroy.

9. In 1963 another grand scheme was proposed but abandoned because of the cost. This was to replace the bridge with a glass structure called the Crystal Span, inspired by the design of the Crystal Palace. An air conditioned glass shell would contain the road, shops, a luxury hotel, a gallery space to be used by the Tate Gallery, a skating rink and roof gardens including an open air theatre.

10. For a while there was another bridge just 200yards (180 m) downstream. During the Second World War the government was concerned that Axis bombers would target Vauxhall Bridge, so a temporary bridge known as Millbank Bridge was built parallel to it. Millbank Bridge was made of steel girders supported by wooden stakes. Despite its flimsy appearance it was capable of supporting tanks and other heavy military equipment. In the event, Vauxhall Bridge survived the war undamaged, and in 1948 Millbank Bridge was dismantled.

Character birthday

Blatt, aka Ian Poole, a former bouncer at a sleazy club. The club was a favourite haunt of Leopold Smythe-Warner, leader of the Demolition Squad. Poole viewed Smythe-Warner as a man who commanded respect and appeared to him to have a finger in any number of lucrative pies. Smythe-Warner was impressed by Poole's "professional technique", in particular one occasion when he broke a man's legs with a single blow. On witnessing that, Smythe-Warner invited Poole to join the Demolition Squad and take the code name Blatt.

Blatt has no powers, although he is strong and an expert brawler. He holds a deep seated mistrust of people with powers, for reasons unknown, including Smythe-Warner himself, although the fact that he uses a crossbow rather than relying entirely on powers redeems him in Blatt's eyes.

Blatt sees himself as the leader of the non-powered section of the Squad, rather like a drill sergeant with a particularly useless bunch of recruits. He feels it is his duty to lick them into shape.

1 May: Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square opened to the public on this date in 1844. 10 things you might not know about Trafalgar Square.

1. It’s named after the Battle of Trafalgar, one of Britain’s most famous military victories. However, when the idea of putting a square there was first suggested, it didn’t have a name at all. Later, it was going to be named after William IV. However, it was the king himself who issued a court circular in 1832 saying that he wanted to name it after the battle instead. The name "Trafalgar" is a Spanish word of Arabic origin, which means either “cape of the cave/laurel” or “extremity of the west”.
2. Hippopotamus and Elephants once roamed where the square is now. Building work in the 1950s on the south side of Trafalgar Square uncovered deposits left over from the last interglacial period. Among the findings were the remains of cave lions, Rhinoceros, straight-tusked elephants and hippopotamus.
3. The square was once the location of the royal stables and was the place where the king kept his hawks. In fact, it still belongs to the monarch today, although the task of maintenance was handed over to the Mayor of London. Part of the original reason for turning it into a square was to keep the poor people away from the rich people.
4. The fountains weren’t part of the original design, and were added about a year later to make it harder for the plebs to organise protests there. Originally the fountains were fed by a couple of wells underneath Trafalgar Square, but they were replaced by modern pumps. A more recent upgrade can send a jet of water 24 metres into the sky. The ones that are there now are not the originals. They were given to Canada and now reside in Ottawa and Regin.
5. In the centre of the square is Nelson’s Column, which is 169 ft 3 Inches tall. I’m not going to say too much about that here as Nelson’s column has a page on this blog of its own, HERE. At the base of the column are four bronze Lions designed by Sir Edwin Landseer who used a dead lion donated by London Zoo as a model. It’s said that the paws are less graceful than the rest of the lions as by the time they got to the paws, the model had started to decompose. There’s also a legend which state that the lions will come to life if Big Ben chimes 13 times.
6. The square is home to London’s smallest police box, which dates back to 1926. It’s essentially a hollowed out lamp post with a round black lamp above it. It was put there so the police could have an unobtrusive presence during protests, and once had a telephone in it which was connected to the local police station. Today, it has been decommissioned as a police box and is used to store cleaning materials.
7. Seventeen Bus Routes pass through Trafalgar Square.
8. There are four plinths for statues. One has a statue of George IV, by Sir Francis Chantrey, which was originally intended to be placed on top of Marble Arch; another is General Sir Charles James Napier and a third Major-General Sir Henry Havelock. They never quite got around to deciding who should grace the fourth plinth, and today it is used to display a series of different art installations. Which have in the past included a boy on a rocking horse, a model of the HMS Victory (Nelson’s Ship), a pregnant woman, and a sculpture of a cockerel, intended to symbolise “regeneration, awakening and strength”. There have been other statues in the square which were moved. One of these was a statue of the vaccine scientist, Edward Jenner, which now resides in Kensington Gardens. The statue was moved in 1862, and the British Medical Journal commented on the decision, noting that the military statues to Jenner, and noted that they remained in Trafalgar Square “because they killed their fellow-creatures whereas he only saved them”.
9. Around 200 years ago, Sir Frederick William Trench, an MP and soldier, put forward a plan to erect a giant pyramid in the square which would have been taller than St Paul's Cathedral with a base of around 360 feet along each side. It would have been to commemorate the defeat of the French, not only at the Battle of Trafalgar, but in the whole war. Trench thought the Battle of the Nile was the turning point, which was why he suggested a pyramid.
10. The square was the target of two suffragette bombings in 1913 and 1914, but it narrowly escaped being bombed in WWII. The roads around it were badly hit. The Square was used on several occasions to show off Allied weapons to the public and to raise funds for the war effort, and was one of the major sites for the VE Day celebrations.

Character birthdays

Auriga, a Roman soldier who was brought to the future as part of a time travel experiment. He was offered a place with the Constellations, and, seeing his chance to carry on serving as a warrior, accepted.

Captain Jersey, aka Roger Courdelion, a solo hero based in the Channel Islands. He volunteered to crew lifeboats and on one occasion the floundering vessel he was called to assist turned out to be an alien spacecraft. The aliens were grateful for the help and granted Courdelion superpowers as a thank you gift.

19 February: EastEnders

The first episode of EastEnders was broadcast on this date in 1985. 10 things you might not know about EastEnders:

1. Creators Julia Smith and Tony Holland considered a number of potential titles for the show, which included Square Dance, Round The Square, E8 and London Pride. It was only when Julia Smith started ringing round agents and asked “Do you have any real East Enders on your books?” that the show got its name.
2. Both Julia Smith and Tony Holland were actually born in East London, and Walford, the fictitious area of London the show is set in is actually a portmanteau of the areas they came from: Walthamstow and Stratford. The postcode, E20, was also fictitious, at least to begin with. Back then, the highest “E” postcode in London was E18 (South Woodford). E20 sounded better than E19. However, in 2011 the Olympic Park was given the postcode E20 so it’s no longer fake. The real-life inspiration for Albert Square is a place called Fassett Square in the Dalston area of Hackney.
3. Actor Adam Woodyatt (Ian Beale) has been a part of the show since the very first episode, when he was a teenager, making him the show’s longest-serving character. He’s also been a prime suspect in three murders over the years.
4. The longest serving costume is Dot Cotton’s Christmas dress. She wore the same dress every single Christmas. It is the oldest costume in the entire EastEnders cast wardrobe – it’s almost as old as the show itself. Most of Dot’s other outfits came from charity shops.
5. There’s nothing behind the door to the Queen Vic aside from a corner bar which is visible in shot. Scenes set in the pub are filmed in a studio elsewhere. Most of the drinks are fake, too. Vodka is actually water; Whiskey is water and burnt Sugar; Wine wine is diluted Apple juice. The one exception is the Beer. The beer in the pumps is real.
6. Every episode is 27 minutes and 15 seconds long.
7. The highest viewed episode of any soap in UK television history was the Christmas Day episode of EastEnders in 1986. The one where Dirty Den handed divorce papers to Angie.
8. Fictional tube station Walford East is located between Bow Road and West Ham, on the Hammersmith & City and District lines. The trains, however, are as fake as the Queen Vic vodka, having been animated with CGI since 2010.
9. Also fake are the leaves on the trees and Daffodils in spring. Because episodes are filmed up to 12 weeks in advance fake leaves are added to trees and plastic daffodils placed in the ground to make it look like spring in the middle of winter.
10. Barbara Windsor was actually the fourth choice to play landlady Peggy Mitchell. Emma Bunton auditioned for the role of Bianca before becoming Baby Spice.

Character birthday

Crusher: Power armour wearer and member of Combat Team Delta. Former stunt double who first wore his armour for his role in a superhero movie. Has not yet appeared in a published story.

21 January: Battersea Power Station

Pink Floyd’s album Animals was released on this date in 1977. It features Battersea Power Station on the cover. 10 things you might not know about Battersea Power Station:

1. The proposal for a huge coal burning power station on the site was first proposed in 1927, and met with some opposition. One Conservative MP opposed it because it would ‘kill every Green thing within two miles of Battersea, rot all the buildings and bleach all the babies’. (Far cry from now when Tories couldn’t care less about dead trees and bleached babies as long as they and their mates are making money out of it!) People thought the power station would render 20 square miles of London uninhabitable. King George V was one of those against the proposal.
2. It took over 20 years to build, and was only half built when it began operating in 1933. The final chimney wasn’t completed until 1955.
3. At its peak, Battersea Power Station supplied a fifth of London's Electricity.
4. The building was designed by Leonard Pearce, chief engineer of the London Power Company, with James Theodore Halliday creating the interior. Concerns that the building itself would be an eyesore as well as polluting everything were addressed by calling in Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, famous for designing the Red Telephone box and Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. He later designed another London power station, Bankside, which is now the Tate Modern art gallery.
5. Coal wasn’t the only fuel used to generate power. During WWII, it also burned bundles of surplus banknotes so that they wouldn’t fall into the hands of the enemy, and the US Embassy later used it as a means of getting rid of confidential documents.
6. People may have disliked it, but stray Cats loved it. The area around the power station was lovely and warm, so about 200 stray cats formed a colony there. It may have been warm, but also dangerous as their human neighbours began exterminating them, so by the time the station closed, there were only six cats left.
7. From 1950, Water from the power station boilers was pumped through a tunnel beneath the Thames to provide hot water and central heating for Pimlico’s Dolphin Square flats and Churchill Gardens housing estate.
8. It was used as a landmark by the Luftwaffe during WW2 but was never directly targeted.
9. The iconic structure has made numerous film and TV appearances including the opening scenes of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1936 film Sabotage, Beatles films, Doctor Who episodes, Slade’s video for Get Down and Get with It, featuring Noddy Holder dancing on the roof dressed as a spaceman. Bear Grylls has abseiled down the structure, and of course, it featured on that Pink Floyd album cover along with the flying Pig which broke loose and floated into the flightpaths of passenger jets.
10. After it closed in 1983 there was the dilemma of what to do with the building. By this time it was listed so knocking it down wasn’t an option. The whole thing was on sale at one point for £1.5 million, less than the cost of one flat in the latest development. Michael Jackson wanted to turn it into a ‘self-contained fantasy centre’. Margaret Thatcher arrived by Helicopter wearing a hard hat to launch the theme park development by John Broome, creator of Alton Towers, which saw the roof taken off before the plan folded. Other proposed uses for the building have included football ground, cinema, casino, mosque, museum, gallery, Noddy theme park, ‘urban ruin’ and racecourse. However, in 2022 it has finally been developed into a swanky space with housing, hotels and shops which opened in October 2022. It’s possible now to take a Lift up one of the chimneys to enjoy panoramic views of London.

Character birthday

Shimmer, member of the villainous Combat Team Omega, and his deceased twin, John. The twins were genetic variants with the ability to teleport and were studied by Prof. James Lovell (Unicorn). The twins were severely co-dependent and when separated to test whether they could communicate telepathically, one or other would teleport to where the other was. One day a fire broke out in the building where John was. Shimmer went in to teleport him out, but John died from a combination of injuries from the fire and damage suffered from being teleported. Shimmer’s mental health subsequently suffered. He blames Unicorn for his brother’s death and has extreme revenge fantasies. Shimmer was briefly a member of Combat Team Delta, but other members of the team expressed concerns about his behaviour and he was fired. He then sought out Team Omega and was taken on as their tepeporter. Not yet in a published story.

20 May: Kew Bridge

The present Kew Bridge opened on this date in 1903. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. Kew Bridge is 1,182 feet (360 m) long and 75 feet (23 m) wide.
2. It carries the A205 road, and forms a link between the North Circular and the South Circular, which means the bridge can get quite congested at times.
3. It is located in in the London Boroughs of Richmond upon Thames and Hounslow. It is next to the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew Gardens) on the south side of the river and the former Grand Junction Waterworks Company buildings, now the London Museum of Water and Steam, on the north.
4. There have been three bridges on the site. Before the first one, there was a ferry owned by Robert Tunstall of Brentford. He must have got tired of running the ferry, because he was also the one who had the first bridge built.
5. The first bridge was opened in June 1759 by George, the then Prince of Wales, who drove over it with his mother and various members of the royal family. It was opened to the public three days later and 3,000 people crossed in one day. It was a toll bridge: pedestrians had to pay one penny; a coach and four Horses a shilling and sixpence. In today's money that would be 64p and £17.
6. 30 years later, the bridge needed replacing. In 1782, Robert Tunstall, the son of the first Robert Tunstall, sought permission to build a new bridge. The second bridge was built alongside the first, so that traffic could keep flowing during construction work. This bridge was built entirely of stone.
7. The second bridge was opened in September 1789, again by George, who by now was King George III. He crossed it with a great concourse of carriages.
8. This bridge lasted until the 1890s when it became clear it could no longer cope with the traffic and the Brentford approach was too narrow and steep. The engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry assessed the bridge in 1892 and recommended building a new bridge rather than making modifications to the existing one. This time, a temporary wooden bridge was built alongside to keep the traffic moving while the new bridge was built.
9. The current bridge was commissioned jointly by the Middlesex and Surrey county councils at a cost of £250,000 (£28.1 million in today's money). The engineers were Barry and Brereton and the building contractors were Easton Gibbs and Son. The bridge is built from Cornwall granite.
10. It was opened on 20 May 1903 by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra and was originally called King Edward VII Bridge. However, this name never really caught on and the name reverted back to Kew Bridge.

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3 July: Chiswick Bridge

Chiswick Bridge opened on this date in 1933. 10 things you might not know about Chiswick Bridge:

1. The bridge is made from reinforced concrete and is faced with 3,400 tons of Portland stone.
2. It is 606 feet (185 m) long and 70 feet (21 m) wide.
3. It has five spans, but only three of them are over the river. The two at either end of the bridge are shorter and cover the former towpaths. When the bridge was first built, the centre span was the longest concrete span over the Thames at 150-foot (46 m).
4. The designers were architect Sir Herbert Baker and engineer Alfred Dryland, who took advice from Considère Constructions, at the time Britain's leading specialist in reinforced concrete construction.
5. In the 17th century, there was a ferry where the bridge is now, which linked the small villages of Chiswick and Mortlake. Because they were small villages, it was never deemed worth building a bridge there.
6. Things changed however, with the arrival of railways, the London Underground and car ownership, making commuting into London from Chiswick and Mortlake more practical and affordable. The population in the area grew rapidly and by 1928, a new road, the A316, was given Royal Assent. The road would cross the river in two places, Chiswick and Twickenham, so bridges were needed in those two places.
7. The bridge was built by the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company at a cost of £208,284 (about £14,524,000 in today's money).
8. Chiswick Bridge was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales on 3 July 1933, and at the same time, the ferry service closed forever.
9. The name of the bridge, Chiswick, comes from the Old English for "Cheese farm".
10. The bridge's biggest claim to fame is that it is 370 feet (110 m) away from the end of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. The end of the course is marked by a University Boat Race Stone on the south bank, and a brightly painted Blue and Black marker post near the north bank.

MY LATEST BOOK!

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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