Great St. Bart's

Our goal for the day, thank you, Rachel, was the Museum of London. Getting to it entailed some walking in The City and particularly some of its older precincts. One of the joys of touring, for us, is serendipity, getting off course, detours that lead to great things.

The Golden Boy of Pye is about the Great London
Fire (1665) and blame for it; needless to say, the
Protestants blamed the Catholics, and vice versa,
and many blamed the foreigners, and most blamed
the bakers, on whose street the fire began: hence,
the Golden Boy of Pye...and the Sin of Gluttony; I
have my own theory about the origin of The Fire
("follow the money") to be revealed in due course

Himself

The Fire notwithstanding, much older stuff is still around

Smithfield Meat Market

Somewhat off course, we enter the courtyard where William
Wallace was tortured and then executed...and should have been
for allowing himself to be portrayed by Mel Gibson

And then, ahead, the entrance to an obviously very old church

More of which; turned out to be Great St. Bart's, aka, the Priory
Church of St. Bartholomew the Great (there's a Lesser church
nearby)

The usual (thank you!) helpful signage; mostly about Prior Rahere,
founder of the church (see below)

Inside remains of the priory

Helpful image of St. Bartholomew, who, you 
will recall, was martyred by flaying (ouch!)

Helpful map of what remains of the church; 12th century, Norman,
did survive The Fire, but not Cromwell; rebuilt more than once in parts

Much going on in this church; here, a tomb of a plague victim;
"torn from service of state in prime by a disease as malignant as
the time..." The plague occurred mostly in 1665-1666, not a very
good year in London

Our Ben Franklin, himself

The Mary chapel, in the 18th, a print shop, where Franklin worked

Here's where it gets really interesting...Prior Rahere

was (accounts vary) a jester at the court of Henry I;

he was aboard the White Ship when it went down, 

carrying the heir (Pillars of the Earth fans and readers 

will know all about this); later, on a pilgrimage to Rome, 

he had a vision from St. Bart; persuaded Henry to support 

the priory church...

Prior Rahere's tomb; 12th century

Moving on to the church itself, some interesting
glass

Quire and organ; Cromwell's people destroyed the
nave

Chancel and elevation; thoroughly Norman, no
pointy stuff

Among other notables buried at Great St. Bart's,
Sir Walter Mildmay, an official of note who served 
under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I;
must have been a man of greatest diplomacy; and
flexibility

Back out in the courtyard, note how the tombstones have been
integrated into the contemporary buildings

London Out-Takes, 1

There are always interesting people
on the London Underground...at least
he's masked!

On our Bloomsbury Walk, not the first "shoot" we've walked into

End of tracking shot with famous actor and actress for a show
we didn't get the name of...on channel 4, I think

Hey, everybody makes mistakes! But the Russell
family still own much of Bloomsbury, including,
presumably, much of the University of London...

Tough times for churches

A current events book display at Waterstones..."things can only
get better"

It is July 11th, the day of the final contest of the Euro Cup at 
Wembley, and even in Bloomsbury there are roving bands of
already inebriated young men, boisterously singing the songs 
that football fans sing; every venue in the city has been booked
for weeks for giant TV viewings of the match; sadly, after a
valiant effort, their best since The Age of the Beatles, the Three
Lions lost, in an over-time penalty shoot-out to Italy, who
brought a 33-win streak into the tournament

When doing signage, always hire a spell-checker

Every weekend for a month the hospital facility across the street
has been packed with young people in line for their 2nd jabs...
good on 'em!

Urban camo at St. Pancras

The first rule of Flight Club is you do not talk about Flight Club

So we are out walking to Camden town and its
garden center when we pass by St. Pancras' Garden
and decide to go in for a look

Wonders were awaiting us: first, the Hardy Tree...long story 
short is that young Thomas was working for an architectural
firm tasked with moving the cemetery out of the way of the
train tracks being laid to Kings Cross; he piled the leftover
tombstones by the closest available tree; and there they remain!

Thus; click to enlarge and you'll see the tree has actually grown
into the stones

And it was here in 1968 that the Beatles did their famous Mad Day
Out series for the White album

Me, there; only part of the bench is shown; the other part is
occupied by a person who very kindly moved his beer bottle
out of the frame...strangely, he didn't ask us for money

At a City of London office tower

From the book of manners and etiquette at Hampton Court's
Great Hall; no Beano in the Tudor Age

All across London, there is no signage more often seen than this

Perhaps not what was meant...

Tree vs. iron, episode #419

At the British Library; don't gum up
the pages

This is what happens when everything must go

But you still have to wear a mask

We have learned a new word, "mudlarking"; look it up

Doing my part to support British gardening: Cori Anne, Venus,
and Basil XXIV

My world is forever changed...see previous post...I'll never be
able to see this favorite T-shirt in quite the same way