London Wall was the defensive wall built by the Romans around Londinium in 410 AD.The wall remained in active use as a fortification for over 1,000 years afterwards. It was used to defend London against raiding Saxonsin 457, and was redeveloped in the medieval period with the addition of more gates and further bastions. The Great Fire of London burned this far but was stopped by the wall. In the 18th and 19th centuries the wall underwent substantial demolition, though even then large portions of it survived by being incorporated into other structures. When German bombing raids in 1940 destroyed the area, the wall was revealed once again.

The Whisper was originally commissioned by Sainburys as a resin work to be sited outside Homebase in Bromley in 1981. A bronze version was commissioned by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation as a work ideally suited to its site outside the MK public library, a space where people meet and socialize. Andre Wallace's distinctive heavy figures, larger than life-size, sit relaxed and at ease watching the world go by. In contrast to many public sculptures they seem to be the observers rather than the observed as one whispers gossip or comment to the other.

Andre Wallace has been undertaking commissions for public sculptures since the 1970s and his work can be seen across Britain - from Salford and Newcastle to London's Docklands

Shoes hanging from overhead telephone wires. A number of sinister explanations have been proposed as to why this is done. Some say that shoes hanging from the wires advertise a local crack house where crack cocaine is used and sold It can also relate to a place where Heroin is sold to symbolize the fact that once you take Heroin you can never 'leave': a reference to the addictive nature of the drug. Others claim that the shoes so thrown commemorate a gang-related murder, or the death of a gang member, or as a way of marking gang turf.

This view of the Hang Man's noose and Canary Wharf was photographed from the riverside balcony of the `Prospect of Whitby' Public House in Wapping.This is one of the most famous pubs in London. It dates from 1520. One customer was Judge Jeffreys, the Hanging Judge who was rumoured to view hangings from this point,taking place at nearby Execution Dock - pirates and mutineers were hanged and left until three tides had washed over their bodies. Allegedly, an unknown plant was sold here to a keen gardener by a passing seaman and so the first fuscia entered the country.

Park Bench with the seat missing at the Middlesex Filter Beds Nature Reserve. These filter beds were constructed to filter the water being piped to east London houses in the 1850's (after yet another outbreak of Cholera).

Once Europe's largest gasworks - all that remains of the Beckton Gasworks today is a grass-covered heap of industrial waste - the Alp was the original spoil from the coke used in that gas making. The London Docklands Development Corporation created the 'Beckton Alps' as a monument to an extinct industry in the mid-1980s. Part of a railway locomotive from the works was discovered buried there during excavations at the site. The fight scenes (Hanoi) in Full Metal Jacket, were made by Stanley Kubrick in the dynamited ruins of Beckton gasworks. From 1989 to 2001 a dry ski slope ran down the Beckton Alps and "London's premier ski village" was opened by Princess Diana This has now been swept away presumably to accommodate the A13 widening and is being replaced nearby by a modern snowdome.

Giant old cranes, carefully restored but motionless and silent, are a reminder that for 200 years, London's docks were the busiest in the world, handling 60 million tons of cargo a year. Then, in the 1960s, they fell victim to a global trend: containerization. With them went a host of allied industries and some 150,000 jobs. In the early 1980s Michael Heseltine, then Environment Secretary, observed, "Docklands displays more acutely and extensively than any area in England the physical decline of the city." He came up with a plan to regenerate

The era of the telephone kiosk is drawing to a close. British Telecom,has seen its takings from payphones fall by half since 1999. "We've got thousands that don't make enough to cover their cleaning costs," says BT's payphones division. They have recently began a programme of uprooting uneconomic kiosks. Up to 12,000 are disappearing each year. There are also privately owned kiosks housing orange telephones all over London and the company has appeared to have disappeared and the kiosks have become derelict and councils are taking their time removing them due to the cost of removing them and I believe they are trying to track down the company responsible.

These telephones were linked directly to the local police station allowing patrolling officers to keep in contact with the station, reporting anything unusual, requesting help if necessary, or even to detain suspects until a vehicle could be sent to transport them to the station or to jail. A light on top of the box would flash to alert an officer that he/she was requested to contact the station. Members of the public could also use the phone to contact a police station in an emergency.

In 1997, a new police box was erected outside the Earl's Court tube station equipped with CCTV cameras and a telephone to contact police. The telephone ceased to function in April 2000 when London's telephone numbers were changed, but the box remained despite the fact that funding for its upkeep and maintenance had long since been exhausted. In h 2005, the Metropolitan Police resumed funding the refurbishment and maintenance of the box (which is something of a tourist attraction due to the Doctor Who association)

The decline of the traditional filling station. In 2007, there were 9,271 petrol stations in the U.K, down from about 18,000 in 1992. Several supermarket chains now operate filling stations, such as Asda and Tesco. The filling stations operated by large supermarket outlets usually price fuel more competitively than stand-alone filling stations.

The independently run small and garages (and their suppliers) are often being forced out of a market with such tiny profit margins. Also a few years back, due to European laws, there was a legal requirement to replace pumps dispensing in gallons and they had to sell by the litre and health & safety legislation outlawing kerbside pumps.

After a filling station shuts down and the underground tanks are removed, the area must often be left vacant for a number of years in order for the fuel contaminants to wash out of the soil.

An impromptu arts installation of a shopping trolley containing scrap wood positioned on a "plinth" probably done on the way home from the boozer the night before......

ERITH	HACKNEY	CANNING TOWN
NORTH GREENWICH	CRAYFORD	ERITH
WALTHAMSTOW	EAST FINCHLEY	HAMPSTEAD
FRIERN BARNET	OLD OAK COMMON NW10	ILFORD
SMITHFIELD	PORTOBELLO ROAD	NORTH GREENWICH
STONEBRIDGE PARK	BOW	BERMONDSEY
HOLLOWAY	ALEXANDRA PALACE	SOHO

Mitre Square still retains its cobblestones, one of the very few reminders of what the square would have looked like in 1888. The mutilated body of Jack the Ripper victim, Catherine Eddowes, was found in this corner of Mitre Square.Nigel Fletcher writes: "this was the site of a religious foundation before the reformation? I believe that a couple of royal princes are buried under your cobble stones."

Unlike most other parks in London, Burgess Park was originally a built-up area of the city. Virtually all the land now occupied by the park was previously housing, industry and transport infrastructure and the land has been gradually assembled and landscaped over recent decades. An important stage in the construction of the park was the closure and infilling of the Grand Surrey Canal in the early 1970s.The Canal served the Surrey Commercial Docks, and the area near Camberwell was full of 19th century streets, houses and industrial buildings (including a ginger beer factory), many of which had suffered heavy bomb damage during WWII. While some of this housing was in very poor condition, a lot of perfectly serviceable homes were demolished to build the park, and this has resulted in very strong local feelings about the park.

Ruskin Park occupies the site and grounds of several 18th century houses by Denmark Hill. The famous German composer Felix Mendelssohn wrote a piano piece, inspired by the tranquility of the area, while staying at 168 Denmark Hill in the 1840's. (It is rumoured the piece, originally called 'Camberwell Green', only took off in popularity after it was renamed 'Spring Song'.) Living at number 163 was the Victorian artist & social reformer John Ruskin. In 1907 the houses were demolished and the park opened in their place. All that remains of the original houses is the portico from number 170 and a fenced-off terracotta stump is the last remnant of a sundial planted in 1842 to mark Mendelssohn's visit.

Cattle troughs provided by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association are still all over London. The Association was set up in London in 1859 against a background of a filthy rivers full of untreated sewage, rubbish and effluent from factories, water borne cholera and generally inadequate free drinking water. By 1885 over 50,000 horses were drinking daily from the Association’s troughs in London. These days the troughs are used as flower beds.

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