Achilles

ACHILLES

The statue of Achilles, correctly known as The Wellington Monument, is positioned just inside the south-easterly corner of London’s Hyde Park, alongside Park Lane. Not so much a lane any longer, it is more like a motorway with eight lanes of traffic roaring past Achilles at speed. Occasionally, a driver will take a moment to glance across at the monument, standing eighteen feet high atop a pediment of granite blocks. Achilles is positioned a stone’s throw from Apsley House, the home of The Duke of Wellington which nowadays houses the Wellington Museum, (see earlier blog: HYDE PARK CORNER.)

Richard Westmacott won the commission for The Wellington Monument, with the project funded by donations from the women of England. Erected in 1822, the inscription on the pediment reads: “To Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and his brave companions in arms, this statue of Achilles cast from cannons won at the victories of Salamanca, Vittoria, Toulouse and Waterloo is inscribed by their countrymen. Placed on this spot on the XVIII day of June MDCXXII by command of His Majesty George IIII.” Achilles is depicted with a cloak draped over his arm and bearing a shield. When the statue was unveiled, the size and shape of the shield was criticised for being historically inaccurate, however, defenders of the sculptor insisted the shield was allegorical in purpose. Achilles is depicted suitably muscular and heroic in stature and certainly in Greek mythology Achilles was the most handsome of the heroes assembled against Troy.

Achilles was invulnerable except for his heel. In an attempt to make him immortal his mother, Thetis, dipped his infant body into the sacred river Styx of The Underworld.  Whilst doing so, she held him by his heel and Achilles was thereby never fully submerged, leaving his heel vulnerable. By extraordinary bad luck, during the Trojan War, Paris shot an arrow that directly pierced his heel, resulting in his death. The only weakness in the bronze statue of Achilles is not the heel but his fig leaf, which was twice removed by pranksters, in 1870 and 1961. Achilles was the very first statue of a naked man in London and the fig leaf was added as an after thought, on account of the public reaction. It was reported that, “The bronze colossus…excited at first something like wonder, then an ignorant or canting clamour, because it was undraped.”

Situated to the immediate south of Achilles are The Queen Elizabeth Gates, at the entrance to the South Carriage Drive into Hyde Park. The one hundred and twenty feet wide gates were raised through public subscription and presented to Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday in 1990. Made from aluminium and steel, they are adorned at the centre with a rather stylized version of her coat of arms. To the east of Achilles is the statue of Lord Byron, in pensive mood together with his dog ‘Bo’sun.’ He sits on a pink marble slab that was a gift from the Greek government, in memory of Byron who fought for the Greeks during their War Of Independence.

The statue of Byron is somewhat stranded in a traffic island in the centre of Park Lane, one of the capital’s busiest highways. The four lanes to the west were introduced in 1983, taking out a large ribbon of parkland in the process. The southerly part of Park Lane is lined with grand houses and hotels, first built up in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The grandest is The Dorchester, where Elizabeth Taylor spent nights during several of her honeymoons. The hotel is owned by The Sultan of Brunei, who spent £130 million restoring its beautiful Art Deco interior. The Dorchester ballroom was used by General Eisenhower during The Second World War, its soundproofing conveniently doubled up as bomb proofing. The nearby Park Lane Hilton Hotel was built in 1963 and at the time of construction, it was the tallest of London’s hotels. From the Windows restaurant on the twenty-eighth floor of the hotel, there are fine panoramic views to the four compass points. Diners are even able to look into the gardens of nearby Buckingham Palace and of course, back down below to Westmacott’s statue of Achilles.

Achilles

Park Lane

London W1K 1BE

London Underground (Tube) Hyde Park Corner

Where to view Achilles 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 ‘Achilles’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.

County Hall

COUNTY HALL

The County Hall is situated on the South Bank in London besides Westminster Bridge and looks across to The Palace Of Westminster across the river Thames. It was the headquarters of the London County Council (L.C.C.) from 1912 and its successor, The Greater London Council (G.L.C.) from 1965 until it was disbanded in 1986. With an impressive façade of Portland Stone, the hall was built in the ‘Edwardian Baroque’ style and stands out from its mostly modernist neighbours, in an area that was heavily bombed during The Second World War.

The construction of County Hall was a particularly costly building project. A ‘Cross and Blackwell’ factory stood on the intended site and being only a dozen years into a 999 lease, a whopping £100,000 had to be paid to the makers of the world famous ‘Branston Pickle’ relish, to persuade them to vacate the site. In addition, £10,000 was spent on reclaiming land from the river, to bring the embankment in line with the neighbouring St Thomas’s Hospital. During the process, a third century Roman Thames riverboat was discovered and it is now on display in The Museum of London.

Plans for an even vaster edifice were scaled down in size after intensive debate between government and the chief architect W.E. Riley. King George V laid the foundation stone in 1912 and formally opened the building in 1922. However, at the official opening, the building was far from complete, with work having been halted during the First World War and construction duly continued over the following decades. ‘The North Block’ of County Hall was commissioned in the 1950's. Extraordinarily, the project was delayed after all ten firms tendered the identical sum of 50,238 pounds, 19 shillings and three pence, leading to a mass referral to the Monopolies Commission!

Expansion continued as late as 1974, with the ‘The Island Block’ annex. It was a truly perfect example of rotten ‘Brutalist’ architecture. Attached to the back of County Hall by a walkway, the bulk of the building was itself stranded within a busy roundabout. Within a meagre twelve years, it was empty and abandoned. The Island Block remained a wretched blot on the landscape until it was pulled down in 2006. On its destruction, the unrepentant architect, John Bancroft, declared, “I am absolutely devastated – I consider that it was a distinguished building.” The general public disagreed, in a nationwide poll it was voted the eleventh most ugly building in Britain.

The Labour Party had controlled the London County Council from 1934 and the political opposition complained that elections were one-sided because the L.C.C. only covered the mostly Labour voting inner London districts. After much debate and procedure, the metropolitan boundaries were extended at all four compass points. Thirty-two boroughs were formed including the more genteel suburban areas, swallowing up chunks of the surrounding counties. The first Greater London Council elections were held in 1964. Some argued that the G.L.C. was ‘created to be a Conservative poodle that turned into a mighty monster of the left.’ During its last five years, the G.L.C. was led by Ken Livingstone, commonly known as ‘Red Ken.’ In 1982 Ken Livingstone was voted runner up to the Pope in a BBC Radio 4’s Today programme’s ‘Man Of The Year.’ At the same time a national newspaper described him as ‘the most odious man in Britain.’ The Left’s strength at the G.L.C. contrasted with the power of the Conservative Party in Westminster. Margaret Thatcher finally disbanded the G.L.C. in 1986. In retrospect, historians generally agree that the vision of the G.L.C. was utopian and its achievement modest.

By 1993 County Hall had been sold to the Shirayama Shokusan Corporation, a private Japanese company, for sixty million pounds. Mr Makoto Okamoto is the family-run corporation's European head and an article published in The Independent Newspaper on 28 September 2005 reported that he had allegedly refused to allow war veterans into the County Hall building to pay respects at a war memorial listing more than a thousand L.C.C. staff who died in the two world wars. The resulting uproar forced the Japanese ambassador to intervene. The Independent likewise reported that in 1998, Mr Okamoto allegedly was accused of making sexist and racist comments at Lisa-Jane Statton, the manager of the London Aquarium, which currently rents the lower ground floors of County Hall. She told an employment tribunal that he called British women ‘bloody fat pigs’ with ‘legs like tree-trunks’, but withdrew the case after she was paid an estimated £100,000 to settle. Mr Okamoto’s wife is herself English. The Saatchi Gallery left County Hall after only three years, likewise after disputes with Mr Okamoto, who allegedly kicked a Gavin Turk sculpture. Another sculpture mysteriously had its nose removed and was spat on, when the gallery was closed to the public and very people had access to the space.

County Hall is now home to the aforementioned London Aquarium, the London Film Museum and two hotels, The Marriot and The Premier Inn. There are several restaurants and a number of one and two bedroomed apartments. Dali Universe moved out in 2010. County Hall is also a popular location for marriage ceremonies. The entire fourth and fifth floors have been left entirely empty since the G.L.C. was disbanded in 1986.

County Hall, Belvedere Road, London Se1 7PB. Waterloo and Westminster London Underground (Tube) stations.

London Underground Railway (Tube): Bond Street and Marble Arch 

Where to view County Hall 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 ‘County Hall’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.

Selfridges

SELFRIDGES

It was announced on February 11^th 2010 that the forty year old fashion designer Alexander McQueen has been found dead at his London address. One of the creations from his last year alive was passed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary shoppers during the last months of 2009, in London’s Selfridges department store. In collaboration with the two hundredth anniversary celebrations of the first performance of Cinderella at The Theatre Royal and as the centrepiece of Selfridges 2009 winter collection, Alexander McQueen made a one-off £16,000 ‘pantomime dame’ dress. It was a truly exquisite creation and typical of Selfridges to display such a jaw dropping crowd puller.

Every day in central London, people can be seen clutching distinctive yellow and black carrier bags, each betraying a visit to Selfridges, famous across the four compass points of the world. It is the second largest shop in the United Kingdom, after Harrods, (see earlier blog.) Selfridges has remained fashionable since it first opened up in 1909 and this is in no small part to its founder, the extraordinary H. Gordon Selfridge who, leading by example, totally transformed the experience of shopping in this country.

Gordon Selfridge was an American who learned his trade in Chicago. On his first visit to London, he was astonished to find on more than one occasion, that he was asked to leave stores for simply browsing, rather than making an obligatory rapid purchase. His encounter with frosty shopkeepers standing behind imposing counters, protecting the shelves from shoppers, inspired him to leave America and open the store that still bears his name to this day.

The store cost £400,000 to build and is positioned on the northwest side of what was to become London’s premier shopping thoroughfare, Oxford Street. It was a massive sum to pay at the time, partly because it was one of the first buildings in London to have a steel frame construction. Gordon Selfridge called it a ‘trade palace’ and the expression was hardly an exaggeration. He wanted the exterior of the building to be indicative of the quality of goods on sale within. The store is fronted by load bearing ionic columns, with a 1928 Art Deco clock, known as ‘The Queen Of Time’ riding her ‘Ship Of Commerce.’ The ground was not levelled before construction and the entire building slopes eleven feet from one end to the other, a feature that may be noticed by careful observation.

Back in Chicago, Selfridge had been the first to promote Christmas with the expression, “only x number of shopping days left until Christmas.” Never one short of a catchphrase, he also coined, “less servility and more service,” and this motto was drummed into his staff, who were made to have three months of training before the grand opening. Such was the anticipation, that on the first day of business people queued around the block (unlike most of London this area is laid out in grid pattern and does have blocks) and a million people passed through its doors during the first week.

Marketed as the equivalent of Macy’s in the USA, its popularity was instant. Selfridge was the first to put expensive popular items, such as perfumes, near to the entrance. He tried to make shopping fun rather than a chore, merchandise was displayed so that customers could touch and examine it, leading to profitable impulse purchases.

Bristling with ingenuity, he exhibited Bleriot’s airplane in Selfridges one day after its pioneer flight across the channel, attracting people 150,000 people into the store who would never otherwise cross its threshold. He staged the first public show of television in 1925 and installed a seismograph, which in 1932 recorded a well-documented earthquake in Belgium.

The roof of the building is nowadays covered in air conditioning units, but in Gordon Selfridge’s time, a garden with trees and a lily pond covered the roof. At times, ‘mini golf’ was played up there and a seasonal ice rink provided further excitement. Selfridge even threw election night parties for English society on the roof, which was also where in 1930, he exhibited the work of sculptors from ‘The London Group’ whose members were the most pre-eminent artists of the day.

Like many, Gordon Selfridge made a fortune during the First World War. In 1919, he planned to build a huge mansion on the south coast of England, with grand intentions for it to be taller than St Paul’s Cathedral, a plan that was never realised. Ultimately too extravagant, Gordon Selfridge lived the life of Croesus and he died a pauper. He became a British subject in 1937, three years before he was forced to relinquish control of the store, shortly after the start of the Second World War. It was during the war that the lowest of the three floors beneath ground level was used by U.S. personnel. At a depth of sixty metres, it was safe enough for both Churchill and Eisenhower to hold meetings there.

In his last years, Selfridge was reduced to travelling through London by bus, sometimes making the trip up to Oxford Street to gaze across at his greatest achievement. He died almost penniless in 1947, but was held alive in the memories of loyal staff of longstanding service. Indeed, many of the staff served out their entire career there, which was unusual for retailing, where a high turnover of workforce was common, even during the earlier part of the twentieth century. There was much to be proud of, from its history of bold window displays, to its marvellous food hall.

The Selfridges food hall is one of four major food halls in central London, Fortnum and Mason, Harrods and Harvey Nichols incorporate the other three. Selfridges food hall has the best reputation amongst internationals, with Middle Eastern cuisine comfortably stacked around the corner from the famous kosher department. If you cannot afford the oyster bar, then fill up with free samples, Selfridges has a longstanding generous tasting policy.  Although now surpassed in cost if not by flavour, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Selfridges Food Hall sold the world’s most expensive sandwich, at £85. Consisting of Wagyu beef, brie de Meaux, foie gras and black truffle mayonnaise, the sandwich was reportedly most often requested from and dispatched to, a number of luxury hotel rooms on the nearby Park Lane.

The store is open from ninety-thirty in the mornings until eight, nine on Thursdays and Sunday opening is midday until six. Finally, to answer the question that every child asks when first encountering the famous name, yes, they do sell fridges…

Selfridges

400 Oxford Street

London

W1A 2LR

London Underground Railway (Tube): Bond Street and Marble Arch 

Where to view Selfridges 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 ‘Selfridges’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.

Piccadilly Circus

PICCADILLY CIRCUS

The West End is the location of many theatres, restaurants, bars and clubs and a popular place to meet at the start of the evening is at Piccadilly Circus. In fact, it is very rare to not see people waiting for friends and loved ones, standing near the famous and much admired Statue Of Eros (see earlier blog entitled EROS.)

Piccadilly Circus is sometimes described as being the Times Square of London, its many illuminated advertising signs being a comparable feature. The very first illuminated sign was put up in 1909, advertising Schweppes, which was then a mineral water supplier. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the signs had long since abandoned neon and were mostly state-of-the-art LED video displays, costing millions of pounds per year to rent each space.  One computer animated sign posted personal messages with a special rate for marriage proposals. After a romantic kiss at The Statue Of Eros, loved ones would be encouraged to look up to the sign, to see the personal message scrolling across. The service was discontinued in 2007.

Piccadilly Circus was built in 1819 and it is named a circus from the Latin word for ‘circle’ or ‘ring.’ Although no longer truly circular, it is the hub of six streets, including both Regent Street and Piccadilly. It has over a million pedestrian visitors each week and a further two million people pass through it by bus. Six hundred thousand people use Piccadilly Circus underground station on a weekly basis. Besides being filled with pedestrians and swirling traffic, Piccadilly Circus is closely surrounded by many famous locations.

Situated on the south side of Piccadilly since 1925 is Lillywhite’s, a multi-floored sports store. Nowadays it draws in tourists by selling replica Premiership football sports kits cheaply, but still specializes in outfitting for minority sports. Beneath Lillywhite’s is the Criterion Theatre, one of only two subterranean theatres in London and decorated with extravagant gilding by Verity in 1884. Nearby, on ground level is The Criterion, the restaurant where Sherlock Holmes first met Doctor Watson in its splendid Long Bar. The Criterion was a favourite of the French artist Toulouse-Lautrec who, when visiting London, ate porterhouse steaks there whilst gazing across to The London Pavilion.

A published statistic states that of the twenty-six million visitors to London each year, the majority pass through Piccadilly Circus and one in twenty-five of those go inside the London Pavilion. The north side pavement (sidewalk) on Coventry Street, outside the London Pavilion, has the highest density of pedestrian traffic in the United Kingdom. The London Pavilion was originally a music hall, nowadays it is part of The Trocadero Centre. The Trocadero Centre has been a London landmark for two and a half centuries, its fortunes almost changing on a decade-by-decade basis. In the late 1990’s, a forty-five million pound investment programme transformed the venue into a ‘high-tech’ indoor entertainment complex.

The entrance to The Café De Paris is on Coventry Street, which leads off Piccadilly Circus to the east. It opened in the roaring twenties, much of its early success rose from the patronage of King Edward VIII, who often visited when he was Prince Of Wales. The Aga Khan, the Mountbatten’s and Cole Porter were also regulars and its subterranean location allowed it to remain open at the outbreak of The Second World War. However, tragically, in March 1941, two fifty-kilogram explosive devises came through the roof during an air raid, landing straight onto the dance floor. Eighty people were killed including the young bride of Group Captain John Darwen RAF DSO DFC. Aged just twenty and married only weeks earlier, she died in his arms on the dance floor. John Darwen went on to become a heroic and much documented pilot, until a little over two years later he was killed in action, shot down by stray flak over Italy in 1942. The Café De Paris remains a popular venue to this day.

Not far from the entrance of The Café De Paris, is a street level statue called The Horses of Helios and the four beasts, Pyrios, Eos, Aethon and Phleyon, rear up above foaming fountain water. Directly above them, high up on the building’s top are three golden naked figures. They represent Faith, Hope and Charity, known as The Three Graces and they can be seen frozen mid-leap, heading downwards into the crowds beneath.

Not only is Piccadilly Circus at the meeting point of six thoroughfares, it has Mayfair, Soho, St James’s and China Town all quickly accessible to the four compass points, with the remainder of central London stretching beyond. Indeed, at one time, Piccadilly Circus was said to be the hub of the British Empire itself. It is hardly surprising then, that a flagship retail store bordering Piccadilly Circus has recently contracted to pay 1.95 million pounds a year to rent its premises.

Many descend on Piccadilly Circus simply to soak up the atmosphere and the saying goes, that if you wait in Piccadilly Circus long enough, you will meet someone you know. Be prepared, it may well be quicker than you think! Piccadilly Circus, Piccadilly, London W1J 7BX.

 Where to view Piccadilly Circus 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 ‘Piccadilly Circus’ category of this website.  New additions of London video clips are being frequently uploaded and further categories will be appearing over the coming months.