Oil Drum Lane

  This weblog  isn't a diary or a diatribe. Rather, it is  a scrolling collection of notes, in no particular order, on offbeat places, real and imagined, and the events and people that shaped them. The content wanders but has a London & South Eastern bias. My gaff, my rules. It is formatted for reading on a phone, so I try to keep the word count in the 2000-3000 range.   To see if there is anything that interests you, check the 'Contents' index above; all the posts are linked from there.      A note on methodology. I read a lot, and spend a lot of time in the British Library. I use online material, especially original research, when it is available, and AI only usually comes into it when I want to check facts like dates etc.  If there are conflicting theories, I usually go with the most popular or credible one, as the word count does not allow me to explore alternatives. I try to incorporate new evidence when it becomes available. ...

  Brass Point nr. Beachy Head More on the chalk country I introduced in the previous post. This is a continuation of the story of why the landscape came to look like it does, but also some more impressionistic notes.  Geologically, England has a long strip of chalk  running from Dorset to the Yorkshire Wolds. The purest, white stone underlies the  rolling green 'Downs' surrounding London, the Thames Valley, and alongside the Channel coast.  These are  the primordial 'bleached clean bones of old England', and the name comes from  the Old English 'dūn', which simply means hill .   Chalk Hills & Streams Nowhere else on Earth has as much chalk countryside, and it is wo nderful stuff. I f you are walking, it is usually dry and springy underfoot. On foot or on a bike, the slopes are merciful. Moulded through time, the chalk shapes our landscape.  William Blake was living in Sussex when he asked, "And d id those feet in ancient time....Walk upon...

Thursday, September 6th 1666. The King was Charles II, and much of the City of London was a smouldering heap. To the West, saved by the open fields in between, were the palaces, gardens and grander houses of Westminster. Events are events; in this case, you know the story about the fire, so my interest is in the seldom-told story of the rapid redevelopment that followed it, and in particular, what happened in the ‘in-between’.  The organisation of the feeding and rehousing of the population after the fire was commendable. Meanwhile, souls could not be neglected! Sir Christopher Wren got to work on rebuilding St Paul’s Cathedral while also devising one of several plans to use the opportunity to straighten out the winding streets and let a bit of air in. You can see some of them here:  Rationalising London in the 1660s Unfortunately, Charlie wasn't a French-style almighty monarch and had neither the will nor the unchallengeable authority to dictate the necessary reallocation of...