Tag: West End

Carting Lane Sewer Gas Destructor Lamp, London WC2

This lamp burns gas from the sewers. It’s an engineering marvel from the Victorian age, together with Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, the Embankment and Tower Bridge. Amazingly, it’s still standing, and still burning sewer gas, now renamed “biogas”. The notice on the fence says:

The adjacent street light is the last remaining sewer gas destructor lamp in the City of Westminster. Installed in association with Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s revolutionary Victoria Embankment sewer which opened in 1870, this cast iron ornamental lamp standard with original lantern continues to burn residual biogas.

City of Westminster, notice in Carting Lane
Carting Lane Sewer Gas Destructor Lamp, sketched 13 Feb 2023, 2pm in Sketchbook 13.

The original purpose of the lamps was not to light the streets but to burn off sewer gas, with the aim of reducing odours, exterminating bacteria in the sewer gas and reducing the explosion risk. Some town gas is drawn in with the sewer gas to make sure the lamp stays alight and does its job. The lamp is alight night and day. This was alight at 2pm.

There’s an article about the lamps on this link .

Carting Lane runs down from the Strand to the Thames Embankment, right next to the Savoy Hotel. I drew the picture standing above the lamp, looking down the lane towards the Thames. Here’s a map.

Here is work in progress:

The colours in the picture are:

  • Ultramarine Blue and Lavender for the sky,
  • Serpentine Genuine/Burnt Umber/Fired Gold Ochre/ Mars Yellow for the mid-tones
  • Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber mix for the blacks and greys
  • Transparent Pyrrol Orange for the 20mph sign on the lamppost.
My current watercolour palette. The colours I used for this picture are starred. All Daniel Smith colours.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, WC2

On the way back from a visit to the West End, I passed St-Martin-in-the-Fields, standing out against the cold sky.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. Sketched 2nd Dec 2022, in sketchbook 12

The statue in the foreground, left, is the Edith Cavell Memorial, seen from the back. Edith Cavell (1865-1915) was a British nurse. In German-occupied Belgium, guided by her principles of humanity and her Christian faith, she provided medical care to soldiers irrespective of which side they were on. She was executed by a German firing squad 1915, because she had helped Belgian, British and French soldiers to escape the German occupation and reach Britain. Her grave is in Norwich Cathedral.

I sketched standing on a corner of the Charing Cross road, see map above. This turned out to be a very noisy location. The National Portrait Gallery is being refurbished and there was continuous drilling and banging. Buses and cars ground their gears, and thundered past, rushing through the traffic lights to shriek to a halt at the next junction.

But St-Martin-in-the-Fields rose above it all. The inscriptions which faced me on the Edith Cavell Memorial were: “Determination”, “Fortitude”.

A House in West London

I sketched these lovely houses in West London:

Houses in West London, 12″ x 9″ on Arches Aquarelle CP, [sold]

I enjoyed the television aerials, which look like runes or calligraphy, above the formal lines of the terrace of houses. The street was not as empty as I have drawn it. There were delivery vans coming and going, building work in progress, children being led to school, all manner of arrivals and departures.

I made a preliminary sketch, to make sure I’d understood the perspective. Here are photos of work in progress:

  • Preliminary Sketch
  • Pencil
  • Pen
  • Work area

Canada House from the National Gallery

Here’s a quick sketch of Canada House on Trafalgar Square, seen though the modern windows of the National Gallery Sainsbury wing.

While I sketched, I overheard fragments of conversations: “I was dating a Chinese girl, and she was taller than me…..”, and someone on a mobile phone: “It needs to be connected to the WiFi…yes…though why one would want the dishwasher… I don’t know!”

About 30mins pen and ink on location, colour added later.

Equestrian Statue of William III

This statue is in the centre of St James’ Square, SW1, London.

William III is William of Orange. He was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1688 to 1702. The statue was originally proposed in 1687. It was completed in 1807, which is the date on the plinth. There were a number of delays. The first commissioned sculptor, John Bacon Senior, died. The sculpture was eventually created by his son John Bacon junior.

As you see, the statue has green highlights. This is how it was. It is bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin: tin 12% roughly. The green is verdigris: a mixture of copper compounds. Wikipedia is lyrical on the subject:

“Verdigris is a variable chemical mixture of compounds, complexes and water. The primary components are copper salts of acetate, carbonate, chloride, formate, hydroxide, and sulphate…..All the components are in an ever-changing and complex reaction equilibrium that is dependent on the ambient environment.”

Wikipedia entry for verdigris

This makes it sound like a 21st century environmental art project.

Written on the plinth is: GVLIELMUS. III. And on the other side:

I.BACON.IVNR. SCVLPTR.1807

The sketch took about half an hour. Colours are mostly Phthalo Green, Prussian Blue, and Perinone orange. In Jackson Watercolour sketchbook.

Post Office Tower (BT Tower)

Today we went up the Post Office Tower.

I have drawn the Post Office Tower from the outside.

The Post Office Tower from Lloyd St

For London “Open House” weekend the BT Tower runs a ballot (lottery) for tickets and chance had favoured us.

I drew the people.

Also I drew the view out of the window. The viewing platform rotates. So the view keeps shifting. Fast sketching required.

The City
People looking at the view
The City
Grand boulevards, distant tower blocks, rain.

 

 

Here’s a link to to a previous post about the Post Office Tower:

The Post Office Tower from Lloyd Street WC1

In the footsteps of Nelson

440px-Young_Nelson
Captain Horatio Nelson, painted by John Francis Rigaud in 1781, with Fort San Juan in the background.

For our Boxing Day walk, John researched places in London associated with Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson (29 September 1758 – 21 October 1805).

First we saw some houses of the period, and then went to the various places that Nelson lived or visited in London. My mission was to draw very quick pictures. We had a lot of places to visit, and I didn’t want to hold up the expedition. Here are my sketches, in the order of our visits.


We saw and named architectural details.  On 11 Cavendish Square we noted the “blocked vermiculated columns”
IMG_0925 (1)
“Vermiculated” means wormlike. It’s a really useful adjective. “I found it impossible to follow his vermiculated arguments.” ” After navigating the vermiculated back alleys, we emerged at last onto the main square.”

We saw ionic columns on Stratford House. These are the ones with scrolls at the top. Above the columns is the “metope” or frieze. On this there were “bucrania” which are bulls skulls.
IMG_0926 (1)

An “aedicule” is a house shape with columns each side. At 37 Dover Street we saw a window in an aedicule.

IMG_0931
A window in 37 Dover Street, opposite Nelson’s House

Here is our route:

Screen Shot 2018-12-27 at 09.25.32

It took us 5 hours and was 14km.

After the Georgian London visits in the West End, we walked to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson’s Column, and then along the Strand, where we saw the site of a silversmith he visited. Nelson went along the Strand in his carriage to receive his “Freedom of the City of London”. At Temple, the cheering crowds unhitched his horses and hauled his carriage themselves.

We arrived at St Paul’s Cathedral, where Nelson is interred.

I used Organics Studio arsenic gray ink, and a Lamy Safari pen with fine nib, from The Writing Desk. The book is a sketchbook from Seawhite of Brighton.

Ink: it’s not waterproof. It does not contain arsenic.
Lamy Safari pen.
Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook
Sketchbook: hardbook.

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