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Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter. Monday 25th May 2020 marked another instance of police brutality against a member of the Black community in the United States. George Floyd, a Black 46-year-old father, son, and brother, was murdered by white police officer, Derek Chauvin, in broad daylight – a disproportionate reaction to Floyd supposedly passing a counterfeit $20…
Read MoreBlack Lives Matter protest, Trafalgar Square 31 May 2020
Black Lives Matter. Below, we’ve archived a selection of photographed geotagged at Trafalgar Square on 31 May 2020. The protests in May and June 2020 were a response to the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. But, as organisers and participants write in their photo captions and in television interviews, the reality is…
Read MoreArundel Great Court: between redevelopment and conservation
180 Strand, the remaining part of the former Arundel Great Court, is located between Somerset House and the Inner Temple. Constructed between 1971 and 1976 the building stands as a brutalist landmark in the heart of the Strand. Once a multi-use office space, now an art and fashion hub, the site will soon be redeveloped…
Read MoreRepost from Courtauld Digital Media: Pictures of London in the Age of Social Media
Editors’ note: The Strandlines editors are always scouring for news and research about the Strand area. Below we’re delighted to be sharing a short extract from ‘The Strand Statues’, a piece by Ruby Gaffney, a Courtauld Connects Digitisation Placement student. Thank you to the Courtauld Digitisation team for allowing us to share. The Courtauld Connects…
Read MoreStranded
This is where Samuel Johnson first inspired me Where I discovered the Queen Victoria statue unexpectedly Devoured small tuna sandwiches with cucumber And realized one night, mournfully, I was too old to join the fun at the pub. It’s where I left my laptop at a café while eating lunch one day, Scurrying back to…
Read MoreAldwych: a not so abandoned station just below us
The Aldwych underground station on the junction between the Strand and Surrey Street has been closed for nearly thirty years. This lonely station, that stands at the place of the former Royal Strand Theatre, was part of a one-station branch of the Piccadilly line that connected to Holborn station. This short back-and-forth shuttle service to…
Read MoreStargazing from centuries gone by
In the 18th century, the Philosophical Transactions journal (then a relatively new publication) preserved several accounts of astronomical events as observed from the Strand. The Royal Society of London provided James Short, “from the College at Edinburgh”, this platform to publish his observations. In the Philosophical Transactions database Short’s name appears thirty-four times. Of these,…
Read MoreSensible Stillness
In 1796 Mary Wollstonecraft reflected in print on her travels in Scandinavia. One topic she addressed was quietness. She alludes to the ‘stupid stillness’ of London on a Sunday… which came to mind as I walked along the Strand on a spring morning, 17 March 2020, the day before London lock-down because of coronavirus Covid-19.…
Read MoreRepost from Courtauld Digital Media: Visions of London
Editors’ note: The Strandlines editors are always scouring for news and research about the Strand area. Below we’re delighted to be sharing an extract of ‘Visions of London’, a piece by Hannah Wilson, a Courtauld Connects Digitisation placement student. Thank you to the Courtauld Digitisation team for allowing us to share a snippet of Hannah’s…
Read MoreCan you volunteer for Strandlines and Layers of London?
If you’re reading this on our website, we hope that you already know that Strandlines collects and shares histories and stories of this most central of London’s streets. Why not browse some of our existing ‘strands’ to see what our contributors have preserved so far? Layers of London is a huge collaborative effort to map…
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