Five unusual monuments of London

by Sean McLachlan on

The historic city of London is filled with monuments of all kinds: to politicians, heroes, kings, and queens. Many blend into the background, just some more overdressed statues on plinths looking down at the traffic. Here are five unusual monuments that really stand out.

Animals in War Memorial

While London is full of war memorials, this one on Park Lane next to Hyde Park is a bit different, as you can see from this Wikimedia Commons image. It’s dedicated to all the animals who served in war. Used as mounts for cavalry or as beasts of burden, they suffered and died alongside their human comrades. The inscription says:

“This monument is dedicated to all the animals
that served and died alongside British and allied forces
in wars and campaigns throughout time
They had no choice”

The Golden Boy of Gluttony

This fat little naked guy commemorates the Great Fire of 1666, when much of London burnt down. The plaque claims the fire was caused by the “sin of gluttony”. Located at the corner of Giltspur and Cock Lane, the fire stopped just short of here. That’s a shame because the old inn that stood on this site was the scene of sins far greater than gluttony. At a time when the only bodies surgeons could get for study were those of the executed, “resurrection men” would steal the recently buried from graveyards and lay them out for sale in the upper floors of the inn. The practice became so widespread that cemeteries had to post armed guards.

%Gallery-134951%Monument

Simply called “Monument”, the 202-foot column at the corner of Monument St. and Fish St. Hill also commemorates the Great Fire. Unlike the people who erected the Golden Boy, the builders of this memorial blamed the Catholics. The anti-Catholic plaque was removed in 1831. The column’s height is significant-it’s the exact distance from the pillar to the house in Pudding Lane where the fire started.

Monument was designed by the famous architect Sir Christopher Wren (who also designed St. Paul’s Cathedral) and was completed in 1677. It sports a bright golden flame at the top and an observation tower with splendid views reachable by 311 steep steps. Making it all the way up earns you an official certificate proving your accomplishment. The platform became a popular place for distraught Londoners to hurl themselves to their deaths; more people died at the Monument than from the fire itself until a protective screen was installed.

Cleopatra’s Needle

Dramatically set alongside the Thames Embankment between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges is something you don’t expect to see in London-an ancient Egyptian obelisk covered in hieroglyphs. The name is misleading. It wasn’t erected by Cleopatra but rather by Thothmes III around 1500 BC. Two centuries later Ramses the Great added some inscriptions boasting of his military prowess. When Cleopatra was redecorating Alexandria in 12 BC she had the obelisk moved there.

It was donated to the British Empire in 1819 by Muhammad Ali, viceroy of Egypt, as thanks for the English kicking Napoleon out of Egypt. Getting it to England proved problematic. They didn’t even try until 1877, when the obelisk was encased in a metal cylinder and towed out to sea. It was lost in a storm in the Bay of Biscay only to be spotted by another ship floating peacefully on the waves. The chips out of its bottom are courtesy of German bombing during World War One.

Watts Memorial in Postman’s Park

Next to the 18th century church of St. Botolph-without-Aldersgate on Aldersgate Street stands Postman’s Park, a tranquil oasis amid the rush of the city. A curious feature of this park is the Watts Memorial, erected in 1900 by a parishioner who wanted to honor those who had given their lives while trying to save others. Each hero or heroine is given a plaque briefly telling their story. The accumulated effect of the dozens of plaques is deeply moving.

Visiting monuments is one way to travel on a budget. All except Monument are free, and they tell you a lot about British history and worldview. Are going to London? Check out AOL Travel’s London guide!

Was this strange stone a prehistoric calendar?

by Sean McLachlan on


This odd stone may look like an unusual product of nature, but it’s actually a monument from about 4,000 years ago called a menhir. Archaeologists have long debated what menhirs were for, perhaps boundary markers or gravestones or something else. Now experts are saying this one, at Gardom’s Edge in the Derbyshire Peak District, England, may be a prehistoric calendar.

Archaeoastronomers, who study astronomical alignments in ancient monuments, studied the stone and found that where the sun hit the slanted side may have acted as a marker for seasons. Other prehistoric remains are nearby, including the mysterious carvings shown below.

Local Bronze Age people are believed to have kept their herds in the higher hills during summer and moved to the warmer valleys when winter set in. This handy calendar would have told them when to move their herds. While the researchers say this sundial may be unique, some other megalithic monuments have astronomical alignments, the most famous being Stonehenge. Megalithic monuments such as stone circles and menhirs can be found all over the British Isles and make for some interesting stops while hiking. Trails such as the Ridgeway Trail pass by several.

The Peak District is one of England’s most beautiful natural spots and Gardom’s Edge is a favorite spot for rock climbing.

[Images courtesy artq55 via flickr]

Tomb of Stonehenge builder found?

by Sean McLachlan on


A prehistoric tomb discovered in Wales may be the grave of one of the builders of Stonehenge.

Archaeologists found the tomb at the Carn Menyn site in Wales, generally thought to be the quarry for the so-called “bluestones” used for the inner circle of Stonehenge in 2300 BC.

The tomb is a passage grave, a cigar-shaped enclosure of stone that was once covered in earth. The tomb is in ruins and was looted in antiquity. Some organic material has been found and this will be carbon dated. Passage graves were common for elite members of society in the Neolithic.

The tomb was set atop a henge, a circular ditch and embankment that had a pair of bluestones are set upright at one end, reminiscent of the pairs of bluestones at Stonehenge.

It’s a mystery why the builders of Stonehenge would choose to drag stones weighing two to four tons more than 150 miles. One of the archaeologists investigating the site suggests that Carn Menyn, shown to the right, had religious significance because of the many natural springs in the area. The presence of the henge and tomb suggest the place did indeed have religious and cultural importance.

The excavation continues.

[Photo of Stonehenge courtesy Bernard Gagnon. Photo of bluestones courtesy Geograph]

Queens Lane, Oxford: a thousand years of history in a single street

by Sean McLachlan on


Most of the time when we travel (or write about travel) we look at the big picture, yet sometimes a single place can sum up the history and character of a city. Queens Lane in Oxford is one of those places. A quiet backstreet linking the two more popular thoroughfares of High Street and Catte Street, it’s overlooked by most visitors. I use it when walking to work at the Bodleian library as a way to avoid the noise and crush of the crowd.

Entering from High Street, you have The Queen’s College on your left. This college was founded in 1341 and is designed in the Italian style by Hawksmoor, one of England’s greatest architects. Like all Oxford colleges it has its own customs and peculiarities. During Christmastide celebrations a boar’s head is carried from the kitchens to the High Table in the dining hall while the college choir sings an old tune. Legend has it that a student of the college was walking in the forest reading Aristotle when he was attacked by a wild boar. He stuck his book in the boar’s mouth and choked the boar to death!

Walking down Queens Lane you can see a gate to another college, St. Edmund Hall, to your right and the church tower of St. Peter’s-in-the-East ahead. St. Edmund is older than The Queen’s College by a couple of generations but the exact date of its founding is a mystery. Go through to gate to see a couple of quiet, ivy-covered quads. St. Peter’s is worth a visit too. This 12th century Norman church is built atop an earlier Anglo-Saxon church. It now serves as the college library and there’s a display of finds from an archaeological excavation into the Anglo-Saxon foundations.

In the churchyard is the grave of James Sadler, a pioneering balloonist who soared into the air over Oxford in 1784, the first Englishman to try a balloon after it had been invented by the French Montgolfier brothers only the year before. Ballooning was dangerous in those early days. Sadler twice landed in the sea and his own son was killed in a ballooning accident. Another time his balloon hit the ground, dragged him for two miles before he was knocked off, and then sailed away again without him. Amazingly, Sadler lived to 75 and died a natural death.

%Gallery-132119%Continuing along Queens Lane you take a right and the path turns into New College Lane. Yes, I cheated with the title of this post. Sue me. New College doesn’t look like much from here, only a heavy oak door under a medieval vault. Go inside and you’ll see one of the five most beautiful colleges of Oxford. New College Lane is narrow and enclosed with high walls turned black from the acid rain caused by Victorian coal smoke and modern car exhaust. The stone used here is very absorbent and pollution is literally eating away at the university.

Another zigzag takes us within sight of Catte Street, the Bodleian Library, and the crowds. Before plunging into the throng, you’ll see an unassuming little house on the right that was once the home of Sir Edmund Halley, graduate of The Queen’s College and the astronomer who proved comets return regularly. He also loved to party, and went on epic pub crawls with Russian Czar Peter the Great when he visited London. Their landlord complained that they tore all the doors off their hinges and shot holes through all the paintings. The house is now a college residence and is famous for its parties. A little room attached to the roof served as Halley’s observatory and it’s rumored that heavenly bodies can still be seen there on Saturday nights.

If you don’t get invited to a private party in Halley’s old place, you can squeeze down a narrow alley and visit the Turf Tavern, a fine old pub. The oldest part of the building dates to the 17th century but there may have been an alehouse here centuries before that. The management claims that this was where Bill Clinton, then a student at Oxford, “didn’t inhale” marijuana. Yeah, sure you didn’t.

The exit of New College Lane takes you under the Bridge of Sighs, which connects two buildings of Hertford College. It’s said to be an imitation of a bridge in Venice of the same name. One local rumor says that when it was built in 1914, the building on one side still didn’t have plumbing while the other did. Since students weren’t allowed to leave their college after hours and usually had a quick pint or three before being locked in, it was a bad deal to be stuck all night in a building with no toilets. The Bridge of Sighs offered a way for students to hurry to the bathroom in the next building without breaking the rules, thus giving a whole other meaning to its name.

The coolest museum in the world

by Sean McLachlan on


Oxford is full of things to see such as medieval colleges and a lovely stretch of the Thames. Of course, you can find similar sights in other parts of England, although not in such a dense concentration that makes Oxford a perfect day trip from London. The one thing Oxford has that is truly unique is the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The Pitt Rivers is laid out the way museums used to be: cabinets packed with artifacts and the walls and even the ceiling adorned with totem poles, statues, shields, spears, and canoes. Even when it opened in the 1880s it was a bit different from other museums, though. Instead of the displays being organized by region and period, they’re organized by use. For example, one case has fire-making equipment, ranging from simple wooden tools used by Australian Aborigines to matches from 19th century Europe to rather dangerous-looking lighters from a hundred years ago.

The collection started with a donation in 1884 of 20,000 objects collected by anthropologist Lt.-Gen. Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers. He was interested in how different cultures solved the same problems, such as lighting a fire, creating currency, or dealing with the dead. The collection has now grown to half a million artifacts from pretty much every culture and time period.

You name it, they have it. Egyptian mummy? Check. Inuit snow goggles? Check. Witch in a bottle? Check. Helmet made from a blowfish? Check. They even have a nice collection of shrunken heads.

%Gallery-131982%My five-year-old son loves this place. All kids love this place. In fact, it regularly gets chosen as Britain’s favorite museum. At the door they give you a flashlight so you can shine it into the dimly lit cases and pretend to be an explorer. Under the cases are drawers you can open to reveal more stuff.

It never ends. We’ve been in there dozens of times and each time we discover something new. A guard who has been working there for ten years told me the same thing. My kid has never gotten bored at the Pitt Rivers and often asks to go there when we’re in Oxford. Unlike in a lot of museums, you hear more kids complaining that they’re leaving than that they’re going in.

And if that doesn’t make it the coolest museum in the world, I don’t know what does.