From the Chairman:

A Happy New Year to everyone. My Christmas reading included two very specific London books. Simon Bradley’s St Pancras Station, published last year, is a short introduction to a building now once again at the centre of London’s transport network; the book brilliantly sets the building into its 19th century context. I also read an item picked up second-hand and not previously known to me, Louis Heren’s Growing Up Poor in London, first published in 1973. Heren was brought up in Shadwell and educated at the local council school; from this unlikely beginning he became deputy editor of The Times; his sympathetic but unsentimental evocation of life between the wars taught me a lot about the East End now so radically changed.

This Newsletter is accompanied by the usual events list. I’d like to draw your attention especially to the planned visit to Kensal Green Cemetery on Saturday 31st May. Kensal Green was the first of the great London private cemeteries which proved so necessary in the 19th century to overcome the unhealthy squalor of the parish burial grounds. These cemeteries were characterised by generous layout and landscaping and distinguished architecture. Kensal Green is the resting place of many distinguished people, including royalty, Brunel, Thackeray and Trollope. The Dissenters Chapel has now been taken into the care of the Historic Chapels Trust and is managed by the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery. The Chapel has been converted so that we can use it even if the weather is unkind (which we hope will not be the case at the end of May) and have wine and refreshments there. We have chosen a Saturday so that members who cannot usually come on weekday visits will have an opportunity to join in. We felt that the combination of the Banister Fletcher lecture and a reception not long before last Christmas worked successfully and we hope that this summer event will be an opportunity for a social gathering as well as an interesting visit. Please support this venture if you can.

Subject to confirmation the Society’s Annual General Meeting will be at the Bishopsgate Institute on Tuesday 1st July. Further details and the AGM papers will be circulated with the next Newsletter. Your committee has decided that the Society must employ someone to take on the administrative burden which John Hill has so willingly carried for several years and to develop the range of the Society’s activities. The AGM will be an opportunity to discuss this important change in the Society’s organisation.

We are pleased that the Museum of London has confirmed our tenure of office space at Mortimer Wheeler House which gives us some confidence for forward planning. The Society’s library is well housed there and is used by Museum staff and occasional visiting scholars. We would like to see it used more. Our premises are within the Museum’s Archaeological Archive and Research Centre; to find out what goes on there you can look at the recently re-vamped website at www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk. If you would like to visit do please telephone the office first.

Another much expanded website I have recently made use of is that maintained by the Royal Institute of British Architects. www.ribapix.com makes available on-line many thousands of photographs and drawings from the RIBA’s collections; though international in scope there are numerous images of London.

New London Architecture, at the Building Centre, has an exhibition called Waterfront London, which shows recent developments and new proposals for construction alongside London’s waterways, both the river and canals. NLA is always worth a visit, if only to see the large model of central London which is kept up-to-date as new planning permissions are granted for major buildings. An important exhibition which promises to have a special London interest will be that at Tate Britain, from 13 February, on the work of the Camden Town Group.

While London anticipates the 2012 Olympics and wonders what lessons may be learned from Beijing, we should not forget that this year is the centenary of the 1908 Games, held in London. The stadium was at White City. The Games were held at the same time as a Franco-British Exhibition and White City takes its name from the exhibition halls dressed up in a wedding-cake style. All this will be the subject of a lecture arranged by the Franco British Union of Architects on Friday 14 March. For further information please contact charles.dorin@hainesphillips.co.uk or 07971 558082.

You will know that we have expressed concern that the Olympics will divert National Lottery funding away from other necessary projects in London and elsewhere. It was with some relief, therefore, that we heard the government’s announcement that there would be no more raids on lottery funds. And 2008 began with the welcome news that the Heritage Lottery Fund had agreed a substantial additional sum to support the reinstatement of the Cutty Sark, so tragically damaged by fire when in the course of restoration.

With best wishes,
Frank Kelsall

TheLondonSociety

From the Chairman:

The
London
Society