: ' london maps'
Dead boring
It’s the stuff of a science fiction writer’s dreams. Excavating in London one finds something buried that should have remained entombed forever. In the late 1950s, BBC Television transmitted the Quatermass trilogy, culminating in Quatermass and [...]
Dying for a drink
The next time you find yourself in Soho, go to Broadwick Street where at one end you’ll find a village pump, while standing on the junction with Lexington Street is a pub rejoicing in the name [...]
The first A-Z
The story is almost certain in the main untrue, the first street-indexed map of London was drawn up in 1623 by John Norden [...]
All mapped out
You know how it is, you have been invited to a little soirée in Belgravia but, try as you might, you cannot find its location. This is what happened to Phyllis Pearsall one evening in 1935. [...]
Bomb Sights
In my house in suburban North London we had a joke about my Father’s war wound. Thankfully his war service concluded without injury, his garden fence on the other hand did not survive unscathed. Returning from [...]
City Limits
Ask any cabbie where the centre of London would be and you’ll get an unequivocal answer – The King Charles I Island in Trafalgar Square – there is even a plaque to prove this assumption. The [...]
Trap Streets
There is an apocryphal story which every generation of Knowledge students hears. It relates an appearance (test) when a Knowledge boy tells the examiner that you could turn right into Farringdon Street from Holborn Viaduct. The [...]
Dead boring
It’s the stuff of a science fiction writer’s dreams. Excavating in London one finds something buried that should have remained entombed forever. In the late 1950s BBC Television transmitted the Quatermass trilogy, culminating in Quatermass and The [...]
Order out of chaos
n CabbieBlog there are currently 180 posts and by far the most read has been a short introduction to London’s maps, so you might say that today’s contribution is back by popular demand. In any city [...]
Dying for a drink
The next time you find yourself in Soho, go to Broadwick Street where at one end you’ll find a village pump, while standing on the junction with Lexington Street is a pub rejoicing in the name [...]
Climb aboard
The number of people who have entered my cab:
Regular bloggery from a Black London Licensed Cabbie.
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What I’m Reading
Abstracts of Black Cab Lore by Sean Farrell
For four hundred years London taxi drivers have served the capital, the vehicles may have evolved but the driver has remained pretty much the same. But who were the men (and later women) who drove those cabs? London’s taxi drivers are continually voted the best in the world, each one of them having gone through the infamous test, ‘The Knowledge’, but very little is known about those who got us where we are today. Now, the history of the trade from the driver’s perspective is told for the first time, this huge tome contains hundreds of stories, compiled from a variety of sources, give a more intimate perspective than has ever been seen before.
London Links
Down Your Alley: Turnagain Lane
Thanks
Down Your Alley: Turnagain Lane
Brilliant blog. Invaluable info. Apt metaphor.
London Books Review: The Great Trees of London
Thanks. My favourite is the Marylebone Elm which I'm pretty sure the h
London Books Review: The Great Trees of London
A most excellent post! I am tempted to go and visit some of these behe
Welsh dairies
Another interesting glimpse of the past from you, I don't know what th