One of the earliest known maps of London has been found during a routine house clearance. The fascinating engraved plan of the capital of England dates from the time of Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare. The handmade map shows how the city looked in the 1570s when it would have had a population of … Read more
Tuesday, June 2, 1953: Coronation Day. With London decked out to celebrate its 27-year-old Queen, there was only one story in town. Or rather, two. Just four days earlier, with perfect timing, two men, hacking through the snow, had made it to the top of the world’s highest mountain. Edmund Hillary was a tall Kiwi … Read more
Moving house is a stressful business. There’s all that packing up and agonising over what to take, what to throw out, what to give away; then there’s the settling into a new home. But for John and Angela Hodge there was the additional heartache of knowing that they didn’t really want to leave Ballingdon Hall, … Read more
London‘s first playhouse, the Red Lion, has been found by archaeologists. Excavations at a site in Whitechapel in central London yielded convincing evidence that the Red Lion has been discovered. The Red Lion is thought to be the earliest known purpose-built theatre of the Elizabethan era, opened around 1567, but its exact location has long … Read more