| Status: | Active, open to new members |
| Organiser: |
Penny da Silva
|
| Organiser: |
Fiona Blackmore
|
| Group email: | London Studies 3 group |
| When: | Monthly on Wednesday all day The third Wednesday of the month; occasionally another day that week. |
We take it in turns to organise a monthly trip to London to visit a site of interest, especially places that are less well known. We usually work in pairs and sometimes do a recce trip ahead of time. We travel up by train during the off-peak period and have lunch in a nearby pub or restaurant.
On yet another sunny summer morning, on Wednesday 15 July Graham Lacey led a London Studies 3 group trip to Highgate Cemetery to which the party of four travelled by the full range of public transport (i.e. train, underground and bus) as well as a short walk through the pretty Waterlow Park. Divided by Swain’s Lane, Highgate Cemetery, now run for public benefit by the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, consists of the older West side, founded in 1839, and the East, acquired in 1860. While many of the 53,000 graves have been neglected those of the more recently buried are easily identified. From George Eliot, Catherine and Dora Dickens (wife and daughter of Charles) and Michael Faraday to Douglas Adams, Malcolm Mclaren and Alexander Litvinenko - to name but a few - the cemetery is packed with famous figures of the distant and not so distant past. The most well known, of course, is the grave of Karl Marx which was moved from its original less obtrusive spot to a more prominent one, not least so that some of his acolytes, such as Paul Foot and Eric Hobsbawm, could be buried alongside him. After a ninety minute stroll through the cemetery, members of the party walked down to Boris Nemtsov Square (named after the Russian opposition leader assassinated in February 2015) around which is a number of delightful cafes. After a very tasty lunch on the terrace of one of them, we travelled back to central London, in plenty of time to get home to watch yet another England World Cup defeat at the hands of Argentina - which, however, did not overshadow a very enjoyable as well as educational day out.
The inaugural trip of the new London Studies group 3 was to the Postal Museum in Clerkenwell. We travelled to Farringdon Station independently but the whole group of 6 met up at the museum, which we hadn’t realised is at the infamous Mount Pleasant sorting office.
Thrillingly, the first activity was a 15-minute ride on a loop of the narrow-gauge underground Mail Rail, which was used between 1927 and 2003 to transport millions of items of mail between sorting offices in London. Mount Pleasant was roughly in the middle as it stretched from Whitechapel in the east to Paddington in the west.
We saw some old stations and mail trains, and there were audiovisual displays showing how chaotic and busy the railway used to be. Every station had a cat to catch mice. The actual Postal Museum is across the road from the railway. It explains the history of the postal service and telephones, and has an impressive collection of both green and red mail boxes. We were amused by a 1936 GPO film “The Fairy of the Phone”, which explained how to answer the telephone: never just say "Hello"; give the phone number and your name. That's exactly how I was taught to answer the phone as a child. It seems strange that, not long ago, both the postal service and landlines were central to all our lives, but have now been replaced almost entirely by new technology.
Lunch was tasty and excellent value at a traditional pub, The Anchor, and we then made our way back to the train by bus or on foot. If you like exploring new places in London why not join the group?
Forthcoming visits include Highgate Cemetery in July and the Horniman Museum and Gardens in August. Our wonderful capital city boasts a wealth of amazing historic sights, including many that are not so well known. If you’d like to be part of this new group, email via the link above.
We are a new group and would welcome more members.
Last updated 16 July 2026