268-270 High Holborn is an unassuming building, ignored by countless Londoners since it was built almost a century ago. Few, hurrying past in the 1920s and ’30s, would have guessed it housed central London’s foremost telecommunications hub.
But to those who chart the wayward history of London’s anchoring in space and time, 268-270 High Holborn is as famous as they come.… Read more
The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens were a place to lose oneself. Laid out among Lambeth’s green fields as an escape from 17th Century London, over the following 200 years they became a virtual town in themselves, an unrivalled destination for music and theatre, drinking and bear-baiting.
But there was seclusion and shadow amid the noise. Dark, tree-lined alleys were a favourite haunt of the amorous.… Read more
Each night, a bright green beam cuts through the sky above Greenwich: a laser, marking the path of the Prime Meridian (the imaginary line – from the north pole to the south pole – from which all other lines of longitude are measured).
It is emitted from the Royal Observatory, high on the hill at Greenwich Park. Another (carved and gilded) representation of the line crosses the building’s forecourt.… Read more
Camberwell, 1980. In the cold, dingy attic room of a smog-blackened terraced house, two undergraduates are on the brink of something. They are physics students, although the strange, gaffer-taped structure that fills the room could be mistaken for an art project. A crudely bolted network of steel piping – propped up by beer crates and books – connects a large refrigerator, the workings of a spin dryer, a tangle of wires and a bank of television screens, circuit boards and telephones.… Read more
We continue our retelling of an interview with H, who works as a cycle courier for a company that collects business visas in passports. As much as possible, it is presented in her voice. In part one, H described discovering the Twitchells, the hidden network of wormhole-like portals which connect London’s streets.
Like I said, no-one’s going to tell you how to find them.… Read more
This is a guest post, of sorts. A written version of an interview with a good friend of PoL’s, presented with a narrative element, but in her voice as much as possible. She wishes to remain anonymous, so we will refer to her as H. H describes herself as a quasi cycle courier. New to the gig, she rides for a company that collects business visas in passports.… Read more
This is a short post to aggregate some of the stories concerning what locals have come to call ‘The Blackheath Triangle’. These stories, drawn mainly from local press archives, go back some time. They have an eerie similarity. All vanishments occurred within a relatively small area towards the southern point of the heath. None of the missing reappeared. In many cases witnesses were not believed, some even accused of concocting the stories to hide murder or mishap.… Read more
(Short post):
The image heading this post shows a photo taken on a phone camera by a close associate of Portals of London. From near Deptford Creek he watched for several minutes as clouds above Limehouse “moved in a strange, very slow, swirling movement”, in contrast to their general easterly motion across the sky.
As it happens, such a sight from this vantage point is not rare.… Read more
