On 29 January 1820, King George III died bringing an end to a very long reign of sixty years, long surpassed by Queen Elizabeth II who was on the throne for seventy years. George III was Elizabeth’s great-great-great-great-grandfather. Because of intermarriage, they’re related in other ways too. Unlike the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, that of…
One of the greatest unsolved English murder cases is The Merstham Tunnel Mystery that happened in 1905. The body of 22-year-old Mary Sophia Money, 22, was found in a railway tunnel on the South-Eastern Railway line south of London. Mary was a bookkeeper employed at a dairy in Lavender Hill where she lived with the…
In 1820, a group of English radical activists plotted to kill the entire British government while they were sat down to dinner in central London. The Cato Street Conspiracy – so-called from the place where they met to plot – was uncovered and the ringleaders executed in a public and grisly manner. One of those…
Beneath what is now the London School of Economics lies the remains of a “molly house” – a gay bar basically – once located in the long demolished warren of streets that made up Clare Market. The White Swan pub was on the corner of Vere Street, which you can no longer find. This drinking…
It’s hard to believe today but if you went back to the 13th century – you would have found something very different at Hampton Court Palace. No magnificent complex of Tudor and Stuart buildings but a medieval manor run by the Knights Hospitaller – under the direction of the Priory at Clerkenwell, which was the…
