Tag Archives: London

Dame Jane Mico

My attention was caught whilst out walking this morning by an inscription on the side of the Victorian almshouses to the south of Stepney parish church which revealed that they were the gift of Dame Jane Mico in 1691.   LADY MICO’S ALMSHOUSES FOUNDED AND ENDOWED UNDER THE WILL OF DAME JANE MICO RELICT OF SAMUEL MICO CITIZEN AND MERCER.

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Who she ?  Her husband, Sir Samuel Mico, grew rich on the profits of the Levant Company and East India Company, importing silks.   He also (surprisingly since he was a pure Londoner) owned the George Inn in Weymouth.   When he died in 1665, he split his estate between his widow Jane, his nephew Samuel, the Mercer’s Company, and the town of Weymouth, which celebrates his memory every year with lemonade and hot cross buns.   She in turn drew up her will in 1670, leaving money to multitudes of relations, for ‘the redemption of Christian slaves in Barbary’, as well as for 10 poor widows of the city of London who were to be housed in her Almshouses.   They remained there until 1976 when they were moved to new accommodation in Whitehorse Lane.   She left funds to her nephew which he could not claim because he failed to marry one of his cousins as specified.   The funds accrued until they enabled the establishment of a teacher training college in Jamaica. Continue reading →

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St. James’s Park (1)

I once got into trouble with my family for saying that my favourite part of the day was walking in the morning across St. James’s Park.   They thought it sad that a grown man should have so few other pleasures.   But I have to confess that I enjoy it still, particularly at this time of year when the air is bright and the shadows long.

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I used to always pass a man who I assumed was on his way from Albany to the House of Lords.   There are always small groups of tourists taking photographs and runners.   As I cross the bridge, I remember a description of Ian Nairn looking east across the lake towards Xanadu.

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Turk’s Head Club

I’ve just realised that tomorrow is the 250th. anniversary to the day of what Joshua Reynolds called the Turk’s Head Club, others called (at least later in its life) the Literary Club, and was sometimes referred to, at least by Samuel Johnson and his friends, as just the club (although confusingly Reynolds has entries in his pocketbook referring to his attendance at ‘Club’ long before the Turk’s Head Club was established).   It was set up by Joshua Reynolds so that his and Samuel Johnson’s close friends could enjoy each others’ company on a regular basis – in fact, every week in an upstairs room on Monday evenings in the Turk’s Head tavern in Gerrard Street, where they were looked after by the publican Charles Swinden.   The site of the tavern still exists and is now a Chinese supermarket.   So, tomorrow night we should all raise a glass to Samuel Johnson and his friends, who included Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke.   Not a bad club, I think.

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Stepney

As summer approaches, I like walking home through the back streets.   There are unexpected pieces of popular styling:

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And even the Corbusian housing estates look surprisingly magnificent in the setting sun:

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Catherine Goodman (6)

My early morning walk to Flood Street made beautiful by the early morning sun.   Peter Jones looking like a transatlantic liner:

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The Royal Hospital looking, as indeed it was designed to be, like a French chateau:

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King’s Place

Last night, Jeremy Dixon, who has been responsible for much of my musical education, invited us to a concert at King’s Place, the small and very beautiful concert hall which he designed for Peter Millican underneath the building which now houses the Guardian.  Imogen Cooper was playing with a young cellist, Sonia Wieder-Atherton.   It had a good atmosphere, partly because half the audience were friends of Jeremy, invited by email.   The programme was Janacek, Beethoven, Webern, Shostokovitch and Rachmaninov.

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Hackney Wick

Since I have been told that my blog is too highbrow, I should maybe record the fact that I have had lunch in a motorbike store in Hackney Wick following a trip to visit the Custom Built Bicycle Show in the Velodrome.  I wanted to like the Velodrome, which is beautiful from the outside, but unexpectedly disappointing inside, cheap finishing, exceptionally poor disabled access and smelling of drains.   So, we retreated in search of food in Hackney Wick where we discovered pancakes, burritos and Beavertown American pale ale (brewed in Hackney) for lunch.

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Regent’s Canal

I’ve just walked to the London Library by way of the Regent’s Canal.   It’s a long time that I’ve done the full stretch from Bow in the east to Regent’s Park in the west.   In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever done it except on a bicycle.   It’s a pleasure to see London from the back view, as from a railway train, past Victoria Park, past Broadway Market, past the Towpath Cafe which was setting up for breakfast and the smarter gardens east of Duncan Terrace, up and over Islington by way of Chapel Street Market and down through some of Islington’s seedier estates to Dixon Jones’s King’s Place, which I’ve never seen from the canal, through the new developments north of King’s Cross, past Nick Grimshaw’s smart aluminium pods at the back of his Camden Town Sainsbury’s and the egg cups which are all that remains of Terry Farrell’s tv-am to the creamy Regency houses on the north side of Regent’s Park which have canal boats moored at the end of their gardens and the brilliant green of the canal-side as it goes through the zoo.   Apart from a brief detour to pich up a map of Piedmont in Daunt’s in Marylebone High Street, it took the best part of three hours, ending with a cappuccino at the Royal Academy.   I recommend it.

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Catherine Goodman (5)

Another day, another sitting.   I quite like the way the sessions drift between music, observation, occasional stretching and a lot of high class gossip.   Yesterday I was given an enormous bowl of coffee and then made to sit dead still for two hours which is a form of Japanese torture.   For some reason, we discussed my very brief and disastrously unsuccessful career as the opening bat for my prep school 1st. XI.   I suppose it is inevitable that being painted engenders a degree of self reflection.   Today was quieter and more reflective.   We tried to remember the brilliance of Humphrey Ocean’s speech last night.   As I sat, bits of it came back to me:  the fact that he regarded himself, like Constable, as a flatearther and that Constable retained a strong affinity for the ground.  He’s the only person I know who can speak intuitively entirely from the left side of the brain.

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Catherine Goodman (4)

As Catherine’s exhibition at the NPG looms, my sittings have moved to early in the morning, although not quite as early as I used to sit for Leonard McComb.   So, I find myself walking through Chelsea past Bram Stoker’s house in St. Leonard’s Terrace.   I remember a cousin of mine saying that when they set up house in Chelsea in the early 1950s it was regarded as bohemian and scandalised her relations who expected them to live in Mayfair.   Hard to imagine now as I pass the merchant bankers on their way to work.   John Morton Morris is very pleased because my portrait is smaller than Sally Clarke’s.   I don’t know how he knows because I haven’t seen either.

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