Walking
The 'Roman' bath, though not the buildings over it, dates from the early seventeenth century. The Watch House, once belonging to St Clement Danes, looks early nineteenth century in its present form, but there are documents to show that there was a building of this shape (projecting over the Lane) already in 1724, and a St Clement Danes Watch House on the Lane already in 1607. The patch of brickwork at bottom left, directly under the Watch House outer wall, is seventeenth century and the last bit of the old Somerset House still visible above ground level.
Shops, seasons, buildings, sounds....
Everything special about Strand in Professor Brant's memory.
This image is evocative of an Alfred Hitchcock tension laden film frame, with the predatory pigeons lurking above in the tree branches above the people on the ground. Read more »
Strand Lines
A sister photo to the similar one that employed sepia tones and oval viewfinder. Taken directly from life on a evening using a long shutter format.
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.
A few doors down from the Adelphi is the pretty building which houses the Vaudeville Theatre.Built in 1870, Henry Irving acted on this stage for a while, as Ronald Bergan's book The Great Theatres of London tells us.
Vaudeville Theatre today.
Interior of the newly-opened Vaudeville Theatre in 1870. Westminster Archives Centre.
Carrying on along the north side of the Strand, heading east towards Fleet Street and away from Trafalgar Square, we reach the Adelphi theatre.
The Adelphi theatre today.
