Sam Redlark

photo credit: Pafcool2 (Wikimedia Commons) Cross-posted from r/ImaginaryLondon Mention the 2011 Croydon property boom to any estate agent based within the Capital. The likely response will be awestruck nostalgia, dating to a six-month period when it seemed as though all roads to home ownership converged upon the South London borough. “It was the speed of it,” recalls Mark Barton of Barton Sales & Letting. “I returned from a fortnight in the Seychelles to find that, during my absence, we had sold all eleven of our mainstays – rundown properties in Croydon that had been on our books for ages. I almost fell off my chair when I was given the news. It was the same for the other estate agents in the area. People were coming in off the street looking for homes that they could renovate almost from the ground up. A lot of them were first time buyers. Nobody knew why it was happening at first. It was Gary Rockley who eventually put two and two together.” The unlikely catalyst for Croydon...

The golden statue of Tony Blair that occupies the lobby of The Guardian HQ, where it urinates a stream of champagne, sourced by an Islington-based socialist collective, has tragically broken down. One of the paper's online moderators has, in their anger, deleted my response to yesterday's Notes & Queries for breaching their esoteric community guidelines. You may read it below if wish. How much does it cost to change the British monarch? In July, 1964, Ronald Wren found himself deposed from what he had regarded as a secure position within the civil service, following the internal restructuring of his department. “'Curtailment' is how they referred to it,” he recalls. As a man in his mid-40s, whose work experience could be best summed up as monotonously clerical in nature, his prospects were sketchy. Unable to find a new job, he resigned himself to returning, unannounced, to the family farm in Dorset, where he intended to throw himself on the mercy of his parents an...

Photo by Graham Tiller (sourced through Wikimedia Commons ) Cross-posted to r/ImaginaryLondon  Bernard Mellin's 'Holmes Trail' claims to follow in the lesser-known footsteps of the celebrated London detective. Mellin was seriously injured by a falling shop sign during the 1987 hurricane and died in hospital a few months later, having never regained consciousness. His guided walks were continued by his two daughters who have since passed on the responsibility to a niece. Among the landmarks featured in Mellin's six-hour tour (which leans heavily on the London bus and Underground network) are four private dwellings, besides 221b Baker Street, where Holmes is known to have been resident in some capacity. 9 Lowry Court Holmes is believed to have owned 9 Lowry Court, in the London borough of Kensington, though he did not live in the building, having turned it over to tenants. He retained exclusive access to the rooftop where he tended a small garden that he referred to as ...

Cross-posted from  /r/ImaginaryLondon The commonplace description of the ancient and fictional London parish of Morwellyn as “pint-sized” is an apt one. The tiny community made its first appearance as the setting for George Tatters' 1964 novel The Catboat – a book containing neither cats nor boats. Tatters later admitted that it was a working title that he kept at the behest of his publisher, who thought that it implied to the reader hidden depths that were, in fact, not present in the narrative. Morwellyn is initially framed by Tatters as “a few rows of houses that had lain unclaimed by the parishes on either side.” Our first glimpse of it comes courtesy of the novel's protagonist, David Breddy, who regards the neighbourhood out of the corner of one eye, through the sudsy lens of an empty beer glass, that he holds carelessly up to his face like an inverted telescope. The following morning, Breddy, who appears to be a resident of Morwellyn (although this is not stated implicit...

The ugly spectre of censorship by the heritage media once more rears its shaking head and wags a puritanical finger in gentrified Kings Cross! I am sorry to report that a moderator for The Guardian , paused in the act of massaging scented oils into the feet of Owen Jones just long enough to delete my response to this week's Notes & Queries question. You may read it below in all its abridged, just under 5000 characters glory: At what age do we become capable of love? “Our neighbour is the London Underground,” said Ann Cromack, as she led me, at a brisk pace, through the sub-basement of the British Museum. “We share a common wall with the Central Line,” she clarified, inserting a key into the lock of Room 45, which is also known as The Temple of Aphrodite. The name, which evokes images of Doric columns bleached by the Mediterranean sun, belies the disquieting reality of tall cabinets, filled with disembodied arms - rendered mostly in marble, many missing fingers - layered in sha...

When I cracked open one eye this morning, I could hear the wind pawing at the garden . The television was on, but the volume had been reduced to zero. I will often do this in a state of semi-wakefulness, now that the off button on the remote only seems to function intermittently. A prolonged infomercial for mattresses, that are manufactured from foam springs, was playing, as it always does at this time of day. Maybe the intent is to capitalise on the vulnerability of those reluctant early risers, who feel they should have slept better and for longer. Still in bed, but now partly uptight, I observed, through the larger of the two windows in my bedroom (I never draw the curtains) the leafy boughs of some tall trees, on the adjacent golf course, churning in slow motion against an overcast sky. My thoughts turned to the headless trout that had been left to defrost on top of the small fridge, next to the washing machine, and how a new mode of cooking it would be required if a barbecue was o...