Whitehall and Churchill

Essentially adjacent to Westminster sits Whitehall, a large governmental administrative sector, including 10 Downing Street, home of the Prime Minister. The area is appropriately impressive but also not the sort of place you would ‘hang out’.

The buildings include, however, a fascinating museum, the Churchill War Rooms, on a lower level of one of the buildings, reached via a small, contrasting entrance – below.

These were the rooms from which the British government directed its forces during WW II.

Incredibly, an entire extra floor structure (red beams above and heavy concrete slab above that) was inserted into the existing buildings above the control center to protect it from damage from aerial attack.  Equally incredibly, the building was never hit. The story is that many of the artifacts (notepads, etc) are those that were left there at the end of the war.  Not sure how true that is, but am fairly confident that the soldier is a mannequin.

The careful maintenance of the day to day environment effectively conveys the mood of the rooms, though I’m sure that there was a lot of hustle and bustle that we no longer see.  Staff worked long hours there, with breaks but without any ability to see out.

And Churchill himself spent extensive amounts of time working in a hands-on manner with the staff.  While he did not officially reside there, the space was set up for him to stay there whenever he felt he needed to.  Here’s his dining room.

All the comforts of home !

Many of the spaces focused on intelligence.  Here’s a map room.

Lots of telephones but no computers or cell phones.  It seems like a long time ago.

For a fine detailed exposition of the history of this space, go to:

The secret Cabinet War Rooms

Westminster

In our various day trips around London we frequently passed by the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey.  This view is from the boat we took from Kew as we approached the dock.

A little Wiki background: The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Commonly known as the Houses of Parliament after its tenants, the Palace lies on the Middlesex bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, in central London. Its name derives from the neighboring Westminster Abbey.  It’s very striking, especially from the river, what a wall the Houses of Parliament create facing south across the Thames. Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, and often extended to refer to the clock and the clock tower.

The tower is officially known as the Elizabeth Tower to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. The tower holds the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world and is the third-tallest free-standing clock tower. The tower was completed in 1858 and had its 150th anniversary on 31 May 2009. There’s no question about its landmark status as a visual element, though now it has some competition from its circular neighbor across the river.

Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothic, church, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster.

It is one of the most notable religious buildings in the United Kingdom and is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English and, later,British monarchs. The abbey is a Royal Peculiar and between 1540 and 1550 had the status of a cathedral. Since 1066, the coronations of English and British monarchs have been held here. Construction of the present church was begun in 1245 by Henry III who selected the site for his burial. Henry VIII assumed direct royal control in 1539 and granted the abbey the status of a cathedral by charter in 1540, simultaneously issuing letters patent establishing the Diocese of Westminster. By granting the abbey cathedral status Henry VIII gained an excuse to spare it from the destruction or dissolution which he inflicted on most English abbeys during this period. Westminster was a cathedral only until 1550. The expression “robbing Peter to pay Paul” may arise from this period when money meant for the abbey, which is dedicated to Saint Peter, was diverted to the treasury of St Paul’s Cathedral.

To help continue the distinction between the Catholic Church and Henry VIII’s new Church of England, prominent English citizens replaced the saints commonly found above the entrance.

On the Thames

As we headed downriver towards central London, it was only a matter of time before the smaller scale of Kew fell away and was supplanted by more contemporary constructions.  This charming older building marked the transition.

Of course it’s easy to forget that this building may have been seen as an outrageous incursion or a delightful addition in its own time. Have to do a lot of research to determine that.  In any case, around each bend in the river, new examples of the 21st century came into view, in this case a campus of office buildings.

And then a sports club, complete with sail-shaped solar protection.

But a lot of what is now being built is high-end housing, drawn to the allure of a river view and a sense of open space.

Some of the structures have more formal bravado than others.

And there are the occasional bridges to provide some visual variety to the ride.

One strikingly different building offered some contrast – an abandoned power plant.  This structure, much like the one in the south bank area of London that is now the Tate Modern, is in the planning stages of a new development.  I’m not sure what the scope of that plan will be; but I’ll bet that a view of the river will have something to do with it.  Hopefully they won’t tear it down, but find some way of incorporating a bit of London’s industrial past into its future.

Otherwise everything will end up looking like this – for miles and miles.

At the end of our ride, the views became familiar, of both the old and the new.

A bridge detail from a period in which sculpture and engineering mixed, and then Westminster seen from the river, our low vantage point foreshortening Big Ben’s tower.

And, framed by yet another bridge, the London Eye.

All in all, a refreshing finish to our day in Kew.