Shopkeepers
Stanley Gibbons's stamp shop was not the only mecca for nineteenth-century collectors, as Dr Adelene Buckland (English Department, King's College London) demonstrated at the 'Shows of London' seminar series on Monday night at King's (see http://showsoflondon.wordpress.com/). On the opposite side of the street to Gibbons's establishment, at 149 Strand, was a mineral shop from 1804-1881. Read more »
Not far from the theatres, still on the north side of the Strand, is the world-famous Stanley Gibbons stamp shop.
Stanley Gibbons. Photo taken April 2012.
Their website shows what the shop looked like in the late-nineteenth century, when it was at 391 Strand:
Stanley Gibbons, founded in 1856, on the late-Victorian Strand. Images from the Stanley Gibbons website.
In the 1720s, Mrs Holt's Italian Warehouse (a warehouse was a sort of 18th-century department store) in the Strand opposite Exeter Change. According to the trade card that William Hogarth engraved for her, she stocked Read more »
Shopping! This was a major activity on the Strand in the nineteenth-century, and West Strand was the site of the renowned Lowther Arcade (near where Coutts stands today):
The Lowther Arcade, from The Mirror, April 7 1832. Westminster Archives Centre.
This covered shopping area was a favoured destination for whiling away the time in bad weather. You could buy toys and other gifts here.
Somewhat aimlessly strolling, thinking one was going in one direction, gentle breezy waves of seductive haze found one's look firmly fixed on the site that could only be recreated through the evocation of the reminisced nostalgic images. From the other side of where one's powerful urge for nostalgic reminiscing started emerging.
Everything starts with the second year in one’s life. When HerDamend was that old, one became aware of the sensation never felt before. Notes about it were found in one’s diary from some time ago. 
damends/hea--name like any other. only slower. than other names. wandering name. name in space. walking name. name like any other. only slower. than other names. John Edmund Gardner was the youngest son of Thomas Gardner who described himself as an Oilman. The Gardners had been selling lamp oil at No.484 Strand for more than thirty years when John Edmund was born in 1819. They were also considerable property owners. Thomas's will made in 1837 with codicils in 1838 and 1840 mentions 35 houses both freehold and leasehold in various parts of London, including No 4 Leicester Square. John was baptised, like all his siblings at St Mar Read more »
