Snow London

SNOW LONDON

A snow covered London is a rare sight, so if ever the city is blanketed, it draws excited crowds straight to the parks and open areas for snowmen building, snowball fights and all manner of excitement. The playing is often with a sense of urgency, for the city dwellers know that soon enough it will melt and very often be gone for another year. The United Kingdom is, for much of the time, in the path of the warming Gulf Stream which generally flows across from the southwest Atlantic. Also, the island status means that the country is surrounded by much slower cooling sea water, making for less severe winters than almost all the other countries lying on the same latitude. Coupled with the milder winters of recent decades, the sparse snowfalls are generally met with enthusiasm rather than irritation.

The national preoccupation with the quickly changing weather patterns experienced by those living in the United Kingdom, means that wagers are regularly placed with bookmakers as to whether a white Christmas in London is likely to happen. To win the bet, a single flake of snow needs to fall during the twenty-four hours of December 25th. The meteorological office states that London had only ten white Christmases during the twentieth century, which was slightly above average, as the city has only a six per cent probability of having a white Christmas.

In times gone by, white Christmases were more common, with snow falling and lying on the ground for months on end. From the Middle Ages to the mid nineteenth century, winter temperatures in the United Kingdom were on average lower than today, with the coldest winter recorded being that of 1684, just twenty-five years after records first began being taken. The river Thames often froze in winter in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the well-documented 'frost fairs' were held. The old London Bridge aided the freezing of the river, its many broad arches acted as a dam slowing the passage of the water. The Thames froze twenty-three times between 1620 and 1816, the year when it last froze downstream of Teddington, where the river becomes tidal.  That final year of freezing, 1816, became known as the, ‘year without summer’ when London saw snow in June and July. This was a phenomenon experienced across the four compass points of the globe, which was caused by volcanic ash set high in the atmosphere, from an earlier massive explosion of a volcano in the East Indies.

The novelist Charles Dickens saw six white Christmases in the first nine years of his life, so it is hardly surprising that snow and all that comes with it, is so evocatively described in his works. Christmas cards first became fashionable in Victorian times and the snowy scenes depicted have continued through to those of the present day. Anyone wishing to recreate the joys of a typical snowy Christmas card scene, should head to Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath or Greenwich Park for the opportunity for steep hill tobogganing and snowball rolling.

There is much pleasure to be had in watching the very young enjoying their first encounter with a London snowfall. Most Londoners hold onto memories of a particularly cold winter throughout their lives. For the old living today, it is the notoriously snowy winter of 1947, the next generation remembers well the winter of 1961. Londoners in their forties will talk of the London snows of 1981-1982 and those born later remember 1990-1991. The very youngest will hold relatively fresh memories of London blanketed in the white stuff from early winter of 2009. As I sit writing these words towards the end of that same year, through the window, here in London, I see white roofs and snowflakes falling.

Where to view video clips of Snow London  and video clips of London

London in motion has some of the best London Stock Footage and London Library Footage with moving clips of many of the above mentioned places to see, are available to browse through by simply visiting the ‘Snow London’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.

Christmas

CHRISTMAS

London at Christmas time is excellent for shopping, for festive attractions and many breathtaking activities for children, making the city a popular destination to visit for young and old alike. The city is adorned with lights, Christmas trees, mistletoe, nativity scenes and thousands dressed as Santa Claus many of whom can be seen out on the streets collecting for charities. There are many carol services and concerts and the peculiarly British form of popular theatre, known as pantomime.

Forty million shoppers visit the main shopping thoroughfares central London over the Christmas period and one in four are from abroad. The weakness of Sterling against the Euro currency has led to the number of visitors from Europe overtaking the number from the United States, who in previous years have accounted for half of the two billion pounds spent by foreign visitors in central London each year. Visitors are up fifteen per cent from the Middle East, likewise benefitting from the exchange rate. Oxford Street and Regent Street always have spectacular festive lights, with different themes each year. These Christmas lights are funded by the shops themselves and are famous across the four compass points of the world. The initial switching on ceremony is always a glitzy event attended by many celebrities and their fans.

Open air ice-skating beneath the stars continues through to January the twenty-fourth 2010 in the courtyard of Somerset House. It is one of London’s finest neoclassical buildings, right in the heart of central London, providing a beautiful backdrop for the skaters.

The Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park is an exciting day out with funfairs, grottos, Christmas markets, ice-skating, a German food market, Zippos Circus and a giant observation wheel offering fine views over the surroundings. Winter Wonderland continues until January the third 2010. Entry is free and tokens for the rides and the grotto can be purchased on the day of visiting. Tickets for ice-skating, the wheel and the circus must be purchased in advance. Information for this event and all the others mentioned in this article, are easily found on the Internet.

London’s New Year Day Parade starts at noon on January the First, setting off from Piccadilly and finishing around three in the afternoon on Parliament Street. This will be the twenty-fourth New Year’s Day Parade in the capital, with more than 10,000 performers from over twenty countries worldwide taking part. More than half a million people line the streets to see what is always a spectacular occasion. The event is broadcast across the globe allowing millions to see the marching bands, cheerleaders, clowns, acrobats, giant balloons, vintage vehicles and much else besides.

Church services and carol services take place at most of London’s hundreds of churches, including St Paul’s Cathedral. Also, there is a series of carol services held in Trafalgar Square, under the huge Christmas tree positioned there each year.

Children can meet Father Christmas in Santa’s Grotto at Harrods department store up until to Christmas Eve and there is also a grotto at Selfridges. Also very popular, The English National Ballet performs The Nutcracker at The London Coliseum until the twenty-fourth of January 2010. The Hackney Empire theatre performs an annual pantomime, a long standing tradition and this year Aladdin is their treat.

Where to view video clips of Christmas  and video clips of London

London in motion has some of the best London Stock Footage and London Library Footage with moving clips of many of the above mentioned places to see, are available to browse through by simply visiting the ‘Christmas’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.

Nelson's Column

NELSON'S COLUMN

Nelson’s Column is positioned in the centre of London’s Trafalgar Square. The statue of Horatio Nelson stands on top of a Corinthian column, the base of which is surrounded by four alert lions, guarding this statue of a man widely considered to be one of the greatest sailors who ever lived. Trafalgar Square was laid out to commemorate the decisive victory over the combined fleets of the French and the Spanish at the Battle of Trafalgar off the South coast of Spain in 1805 with Nelson’s Column as the centrepiece.

The granite column itself is forty-six metres high and was designed by William Railton. It was built between 1840 and 1843, weighs 2500 metric tonnes and with a ninety-five per cent quartz content it has weathered extremely well. Nelson alone weighs sixteen tonnes. During restoration in 2006 the monument was discovered to be shorter than had previously been thought, it is exactly fifty metres from the base to the tip of the admiral’s hat. The restoration finally repaired Nelson’s arm, which had been damaged by lightning in 1896.  

The statue was carved from sandstone by the Royal Academician E.H. Baily. Nelson is depicted three times larger than he was in real life. Nelson is shown looking towards The Admiralty buildings on Whitehall and beyond to distant Portsmouth where the Royal Navy flagship HMS Victory is docked. Nelson died aboard the vessel, which was painstakingly restored by Arthur Bugler and as a consequence it is open for the public to visit.

Facing out to the four compass points, the quartet of bas-reliefs at the base of the column were cast from the captured French cannon at The Battle Of Trafalgar. They depict the battle of Cape St Vincent, The Battle of Nice, the bombardment of Copenhagen and the death of Nelson. The four lions are by Sir Edwin Landseer and they were added after much delay in 1867.

Adolf Hitler boasted in 1940 that after he had successfully invaded England, he would transfer Nelson’s Column from Trafalgar Square to Berlin as an impressive way of underlining German victory as it represented, ‘A symbol of British naval might and world dominion.’

During his lifetime Admiral Lord Nelson lost one of his eyes and one of his arms. The statue shows the sailor as having one arm and two eyes. However, Nelson lost his eye before he lost his arm, so the sculptor should have carved the statue with either two eyes and two arms, one eye and two arms, one eye and one arm, but never as Nelson is actually shown, with two eyes and one arm.

Every year a Christmas tree is positioned to stand alongside the column in Trafalgar Square. A majestic Norwegian Spruce, around seventy feet tall, it is an annual gift from the Norwegians, to mark the support from the British people during the Second World War. For many Londoners the ceremony marks the start of Christmas. In 1996, when the fiftieth tree was presented, Queen Sonja of Norway said, ‘The star on the top is a reminder of what Britain did for us in a dark and difficult period of our history.’ The tree is traditionally one foot longer each year.

This year marks the sixty-third tree to come from the City Of Oslo and it is always decorated in traditional Norwegian style. The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree lighting up ceremony took place on Thursday 3rd December 2009. The tree will remain at Trafalgar Square until Tuesday 5th January 2010.

Carol singing takes place daily from 5pm - 9pm, starting on Monday 7th December and continuing until Sunday 20th December 2009. The carol services are free to attend.

Nelson’s Column is near to Charing Cross and Leicester Square Underground stations. Many bus routes pass through Trafalgar Square.

Where to view video clips of Nelson's Column  and video clips of London

London in motion has some of the best London Stock Footage and London Library Footage with moving clips of many of the above mentioned places to see, are available to browse through by simply visiting the ‘Nelson's Column’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.