And Did Those Feet

I gave a walk for Better Bankside on the Architecture of Bankside - route was Borough Market, Hop Exchange, Redcross Street, Union Street, Tabard, George, Guys, St Thomas St, St Thomas Church, London Bridge Station, Shard of Glass, Tooley Street, Olaf House, No 1 London, London Bridge, Southwark Cathedral, Minerva House, Winchester Palace. It was wet and rainy but good fun and improved my familiarity with the more modern sights - although typically we did not have time to fit all of these in. It is quite amazing the amount of good architecture in Southwark today.

I have now finished reading Home Britannicus by Chris Stringer. It seems a very important book as it brings together all the work from the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project. AHOB seems a model of a multi-disciplinary team working together in a scientific manner. The reason the book is important is that it first shows that Humans have been in Britain since 700,000BC but that the climate has often turned inhospitable so that Humans have abandoned this area of Europe on no less than seven abandonments of these islands. So we can only trace our descent from people who came back to Britain 12,000 years ago. Britain which seems such a benign place to live - no great disasters, no very poisonous or dangerous animals is actually not a secure place for humans. This is fascinating - it has contradictory messages for the climate change. On the one hand if we mess with the climate we can see what the implications for Britain can be, on the other this sort of changing climate is all p...

The V&A has opened the original door of the Museum which leads from the Garden to the new Cafe. The door which is inspired by the Doors of Paradise by Ghiberti was the original door in the main building in the 1860's above the door are the words: 'Better it is to get wisdom than gold'

Brian Sewell in the Evening Standard reviewing the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Modern wrote: '...It provided yet another opportunity for the curators and critics of contemporary art to write of the many layers of meaning that they could perceive not only in the concept but in the labour of its embodiment, This is now what curators do - apply meaning to the meaningless.' The particular focus was on Shedboatshed 'its double metamorphis was more a matter of carpentry than art, as oddly remarkable as farting Annie Laurie through a keyhole (and no one would mistake that for music).

I cycled past a blue plaque in Hatton Garden on a 19th Century factory building which recorded that it was here that Hiram Maxim invented the Maxim Gun which used the power of the recoil to eject the spent bullet and inject the new one. As Hillair Beloc wrote: Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. quoted from wikipedia article: Maxim gun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a very interesting exhibition on the Lethaby Building in the Lethaby Gallery at CSM. Interesting insight into art training in the early 20th Century and some good arts and crafts designs. Also first view of the planned new CSM building in Kings Cross

I discovered some interesting new 'facts' while reading about St Thomas Hospital in 'the Religious houses of London and Middlesex' (Ed Caroline M Barron and Matthew Davies). Firstly, the Hospital in 1535 had 3 laysisters, while originally the Sisters were professed and of the Augustinian order. At the same time the Master was accused of closing the Free School which the Hospital used to run with a £4 allocation. After a scandal in 1323 Bishop Asser involving the 'brethren and sisters' ordered that they should all follow the rule of St Augustine (the implication being that they did not subscribe to this rule before) and that the Master should eat with the Brethen In 1357 the hospital presented a petition to the Pope, asking for an indulgence of 2 years for fund raising. In the petition they claimed that the Hospital was founded by St Thomas Becket himself in Southwark. In 1299 Isaac the Jew gave a house to the Hospital (interesting because the Jews were suppo...