Old Slaughter’s Coffee House; ‘Now among the things that were…’

  Thursday March 30 1843 saw the auctioning off of a London landmark just for its building materials. The wildly misnamed and deeply corrupt government department, the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, had bought the site at number 74 St Martin’s Lane. There was not a wood nor forest in sight, but Woods and Forests was conducting… Continue reading Old Slaughter’s Coffee House; ‘Now among the things that were…’

Light Up the Sky Like a Flame

Few Londoners know how close they once came to losing Leicester Square. Without  Baron Albert Grant it would have been ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ in 1874, when the private gardens that we know as the square were earmarked to build a department store. The square had been plunging downmarket since the previous century, when the likes… Continue reading Light Up the Sky Like a Flame