coffee and tea houses
Dan Kirmatzis: Strand series
The Strandlines team periodically check in on photos tagged to the Strand (and surrounding areas) on Instagram and Twitter. We came across Dan Kirmatzis’s work on Instagram. A huge thanks to Dan for so generously sharing his photographs and insights into his inspiration and processes. “Although I take many photos in the street genre…
Read MoreTwinings and Lloyds Intertwined
Part One Twinings has long been associated with fine teas but the company actually sprang from Tom’s Coffee House. This blog explores a little of that early history and links to Tweed family members who lie within my own ancestral tree. Walking along the Strand in 1706 a waft of aromatic coffee and stimulating chit…
Read MoreEighteenth-century lives in Devereux Court
Micah Anne Neale is a 3rd-year PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London, and volunteered for Layers of London in Summer 2019. Her thesis topic is the musical lives of eighteenth-century domestic servants in Britain, and her research interests include early modern social and cultural history, the history of work and the history of…
Read MoreLayers of the Strand
Today, I have been time travelling. I explored the farm around Trafalgar Square. I squeezed into a tiny top room in Devereaux Court to hear Isaac Newton speak. I paid a ferryman tuppence to take me to the floating coffee house on the Thames to look over the water at Somerset House. This is all…
Read MoreThree Poems for Strandlines by Ruth O’Callaghan
Ruth O’Callaghan starred in Strandlines 1.0’s ‘Cabinet of Artists’. She is an acclaimed poet, mentor, reviewer, adjudicator and workshop leader: see ruthocallaghan.wordpress.com for further details of her published poems and poetry-related activities. Her next collection of poems will be published by Shoestring Press in 2020. We are delighted to have three of her poems written…
Read MoreDonald McDonnell – an artist among the people
“It is a living place”, said Donald McDonnell to me near the beginning of our interview. Donald is an artist living and working on the Strand. He is heavily involved with the Peabody Trust, and his artistic mediums range from poetry, photography and painting, to sculpture. Having spent the last (and my first) three years in…
Read MoreA memory of the Strand
This story was kindly contributed by Pattiyan. I have used CX station for years, right from my early working days c.1942. I remember going to lunch at the Strand Palace, Lyons corner house, and eating in the Salad Bar with a boy friend when I was sixteen. The boy I knew was waiting for his…
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