Which materials? 2) Travel/pocket watercolour sets

Yesterday I posted about the different travel sketchbooks that I’ve used over the last 8 years. Today I’d like to look at the subject of travel watercolour paint sets.

If you read that post, you’ll know that even though I haven’t used specifically watercolour sketchbooks the Moleskine and Seawhite books that I favour will take watercolour pretty well, and although the majority of sketches that I make while abroad are plain ink, it’s nice to know that I have the option of colour if I want. Even a dauber with no great watercolour skill like myself can enhance sketches by adding colour.

So, why specifically a travel paint set? Why not just use an ordinary set? Well, sketching on the move is easier the less equipment that you carry. If you take the full watercolour set that you use at home, you’re not only going to have the set, but also brushes and other paraphernalia. Will you be able to use it balancing it on your knee, or while you’re standing up? How is your set going to cope in your bag, especially if you’ve just been using it?

So, in the last 8 years I have bought three different pocket travel paint sets. If you look at the photo you’ll see all three. My first is the set at the top of the photo. This was an own brand set by British retailer WH Smith. Soon afterwards I bought the middle set – this is in the Winsor and Newton Cotman Range. Then just yesterday I bought the bottom set – Daler Rowney Aquafine.

Now, I know from experience what I think about the first two, but I’d never used Daler Rowney paints before. So, I came up with an idea – I would take three pages from my Seawhite book I tried yesterday, because this seems to take watercolour well. I would draw pretty much the same scene in ink on each page. Then I would paint one page with each of the three sets to compare. The photograph shows the

scene on each of the pages. Every year in the UK our sovereign has two birthdays. One is their real birthday, commemorating the day they were born. This is a private affair. Then they have their official birthday. I kid you not. The official birthday is usually celebrated in June as the chances are that there will be better weather for celebrations. As it happens, despite his real birthday being in November, King Charles III’s official birthday this year falls upon the Fifteenth of June – incidentally my real birthday. I can’t afford to have an official one as well. The main ceremony on the official birthday is the Trooping of the Colour, where members of the guards regiments put on their finery and parade. Very colourful it is too. So this is what I chose to depict, thinking it should give me an opportunity to use a range of different colours from each and compare the results. I made the trial as fair as I could by using the same paper for each and he same subject matter as close to the same picture as I could draw it. For the record, each set comes with its own brush and I only used the brush provided with each set.

So, let’s begin with WH Smith’s own brand travel set. This is still available and is listed on WH Smith’s own website as retailing at £10, which is the bottom/middle end of the market. Yes you can get sets this size that are cheaper but most of these are specifically marketed for kids, and so there would be a question mark in my mind about the quality.

So, the set is bigger than the other two but still would fit easily within a coat pocket. As you can see, it has 12 colours – white, yellow, red, crimson, orange, 2 blues, 2 browns, 2 greens and black. It’s a sensible range and you can mix any other colours you want. The brush is okay for a travel brush.

Now, if I tell you that my set is already 8 years old, the something might strike you. It really hasn’t been used much. There must be a reason for that. Well, there is. I find the colours rather insipid. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised that this particular sketch came out as well as it did. That red is a lot more vibrant than I expected. However if you look at the pink of the street, and the blue of the sky you’ll maybe get an idea of what I mean. Compare this with what I produce using the Winsor and Newton set.

Let’s have a look at the set first. Yes, this one has been used. If I tell you that this is my second Winsor and Newton Cotman travel set that might give you an idea how much I like this brand. It’s currently retailing on special offer on Amazon at £15. If you are prepared to shop around you can even get it a little bit cheaper

sometimes. Hobbycraft are currently asking £20. That’s Hobbycraft for you. It’s the smallest travel set I have, which makes it easy to use anywhere Now, you might well have noticed one of the strange features of this set. There’s no black. There’s everything else you need, but there’s no black. You may well have been told that you shouldn’t use black in watercolours anyway, so this must be deliberate on Winsor and Newton’s part. To be fair it does have the effect of making you think about how you are going to render the places where you would have used black. 

I make no bones about it, I think Winsor and Newton are a quality brand and I like sketching with this set. Yes, I made the sky a bit blue for some people’s liking, but it serves as a demonstration of what you can do with this set that you can’t with the WH Smiths. It’s a small thing, but the travel brush in this set was my favourite of the three as well – just that bit finer than the other two. As regards the black, well the paints are all standard half pans, so if it bothered me that much I could buy a standard half pan ivory black and put it in place of a colour I used less. Haven’t needed to yet.

As I said earlier I bought the Daler Rowney Aquafine travel set yesterday and this is the first sketch I’ve made with them. I paid just under £10 for them which is about as cheap as you can get them by shopping around. This is the same price as the WH Smith set, but Daler Rowney are specifically an art supplies company. I’m not sure that their name carries quite the same cachet as Winsor and Newton but whenever I’ve used their products in the past they have been of good quality in my opinion. The photograph shows the set after I made the painting. It’s slightly bigger than the Winsor and Newton but not significantly so. I was slightly disappointed when I first saw the range of colours. 

There is a black, but only one shade of green and only darker blues. Mixing colours can be awkward when you’re sketching outdoors and chances are you’re going to be doing a bit of foliage, necessitating different shades of green so that’s a drawback. I don’t find that these paints mix quite so well as the Winsor and Newton paints do, which is why I couldn’t get such a bright blue for the sky. But on the positive side, to my mind this set is clearly better to use than the WH Smith set which cost the same. (Actually, I think it cost the same - £10 – when I bought it in 2016.) With this set I came closest to the proper colour of the roadway and I think the red of the uniforms is every bit as good as W&N, if not slightly more vibrant. But the W&N set is so consistent – the colours all work together so well in a way that they don’t quite do in the DR set. Still, I have to say that bearing in mind the relative cost I am rather impressed with DR. With a little practice with it I reckon I could probably get results which are even closer to W&N.

So, here’s the three sketches for comparison–

You know looking at it I think there’s even less to choose between W&N and DR than I thought. Still just about prefer Winsor and Newton, but I’d be happy to use DR as well in the future. WH Smith, not so much.

Monopoly Challenge - Oxford Street

Oxford Street is only one short section of one of the main thoroughfares leading west out of the centre of London. Just about four miles along the road it becomes Uxbridge Road, which is the main street running through West Ealing and Hanwell, where I grew up. It follows the route of a Roman road, the Via Trinobantia which led all the way to Hampshire. The Oxford Street section of the road runs from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch. Marble Arch was built by John Nash as the ceremonial gateway to Buckingham Palace, but was moved to its present location to make room for the extension work on the Palace in the 1850s. It’s current location was once called Tyburn, which is where the gallows held public executions.

Oxford Street’s reputation as a shopping street largely came about with the 20^th century, and if there was one pivotal factor in its development it was probably Harry Gordon Selfridge’s decision to open his eponymous department store on Oxford Street in 1908. Amongst the many distinctions the store holds, it was the venue for the first ever public demonstration of a form of television in 1925.

Like Regent Street, Oxford Street is famous for its annual Christmas lights and every year since 1959 a celebrity has ceremoniously turned on the lights (not the same celebrity, obviously). Oxford Street also boasted its own lovable eccentric for many years. From 1968 until his death in 1993, Stanley Green paraded the street with a placard advising people to eat less meat and reduce their libido, which would make them kinder. He also produced a pamphlet on the subject, which sold an estimated 87,000 copies. I saw Mr. Green once or twice in Oxford Street. I didn’t speak to him. Later I saw him interviewed on a segment for a TV show and he came across as a very pleasant if slightly unworldly gentleman.

Which Materials? 1) Travel Sketchbooks

So, a few days ago I completed my self-imposed challenge to draw all of the locations on the London Monopoly board (allowing me to use a few earlier sketches which are of the required quality. ) As a reward for this and for selling some prints on Etsy and gaining a commission for a sketch, I decided to buy myself a new sketchbook. Yes, I still have a few pages in the current one left, but what the hell? And it strikes me that I’ve never yet posted about sketchbooks. So let's rectify that and begin with travel sketchbooks.

I greatly enjoy urban sketching and I have made the best part of 20 city break sketching trips since 2016 so It's important to have a decent travel sketchbook on the go. Over the last few years experience has helped me clarify what I'm looking for from a travel sketching journal. I want something that isn't overly large - small enough to be carried in a large jacket pocket but large enough to allow for quite detailed ink sketching. It must be robust enough for some pretty rough handling, so hard covers are better. As well as taking ink comfortably it's nice if the paper is heavy enough to be able to cope with a little watercolour as well. 

When I first discovered Urban Sketching I just didn’t want to be carrying A4 spiral bound books around, so I started using books like this. It’s Daler Rowney again, this time staple bound soft cover. I did find some packs of these discounted, but generally they’re slightly more expensive than a red and yellow spiral bound sketchpad, which has five pages more. Also the paper in the staple bound book is only 130 gsm. It’s fine for ink, graphite or charcoal sketches but isn’t heavy enough to take a watercolour wash. Also, it’s hard to get a decent scan from an exercise book style pad like this than it is from a spiral bound book.  

As I said, I travel as much as I can around Europe and I’ve made 17 sketching trips since 2016 – and

lost the time we were locked down for covid as well. Ideally I wanted to find a decent sketching journal. Now, when friends and family learned that I was so into my sketching and painting they would often give me materials, and my first real travel sketch journal came to me this way. It’s the one on the left here, while the one on the right is the Moleskine travel sketching journal that has been my journal of choice for the last few years.

The book on the left had a label on it – now gone – which said it was from Wilkinson, a British retailer that is sadly no more. The cover is essentially a soft cover, but with a sort of faux leather vinyl. The vinyl is now coming away from the paper covers which is a shame, however the book has withstood a fair amount of punishment, and all the pages are still secure. I used this book in many places. There are about 100 pages in it, and you could use both sides of each page for ink sketching. That’s pretty good considering the paper doesn’t feel very heavy at all, in fact I’d be surprised if it was more than 130 gsm. As you can see from the photograph above, it does take watercolour, but you could never plan on using the opposite side of the page for anything else. I have tremendous affection for this book, and I did try to obtain more when I was coming close to filling it. Sadly, Wilkinson stopped stocking them and I couldn’t get any. It’s a real shame, because as budget sketching journals go you could have done a lot worse.

For example – there’s this one here. Morrisons is a British supermarket chain. I was in my local Morrisons one day a few years ago when I treated myself to a walk along the stationery aisle. I found this sketching journal, very cheap, and bought it. Now, it’s almost exactly the same size as a Moleskine travel journal, slightly less than A5. Like a Moleskine, there is a document wallet at the back. Here the comparison ends. The covers are card, and don’t seem very hardwearing. As for the paper, well it is very thin and light, lighter than the paper in the Wilco book. So I always used the Wilco book in preference, and by the time I’d finished the wilco book, I had been given my first Moleskine. So all I used this for was making written notes. So when I started writing this post I decided that I would only be fair

to test it by making a sketch. So I made a sketch of my hero, Tom Baker as The Doctor. Well, it proves that you can make ink sketches in it. I didn’t enjoy sketching in it as much as I did in the Wilco, or the Moleskine, and don’t think it brings out the best in a fineliner sketch – if anything it looks more like biro and the image shows quite badly through the thin paper. Well, I will go to great lengths for you when I’m making a post, so I made another sketch in it. This is based on a photo of Piccadilly Circus in the 1950s. The photo underneath it shows you the same picture after watercolour had been applied to it. Now, I have to admit that I am rather surprised about the way that it turned out. The lower part of the sketch, with the car , in act, everything from the rooftops

downwards is a lot more vibrant than I thought it could possibly be on this paper. The sky though is the real telltale. When you’re painting wet on wet on this paper it waffles la lot. In fact the page underneath it does so slightly as well. To be fair it  dried well enough hat I could use the page underneath it the next day. But it is an issue with cheaper sketchbooks like this. If you only wanted to use it for a light medium like graphite I reckon it wouldn’t be too bad. But anything much heavier, including fineliner which is my weapon of choice and you won’t be able to use both sides of the paper. Which means it’s maybe not such great value after all.

My oldest daughter asked me one day in late 2019, a propos of nothing, which was a good make of travel sketching journal to buy. I told her that in my sessions with the South Wales urban sketching group, and in Facebook art groups I belonged to the name that kept coming up was Moleskine. Lo and behold, on Christmas day 2019 she gave me my first Moleskine travel journal.

In terms of quality, it’s quite a cut above the Wilco book. Mind you, it’s a lot more expensive too. Its dimensions are slightly smaller than the Wilco book, but I like this size for travel sketching. This is a hardcover book, and those covers can take a lot of punishment. They give you a nice support if you’re sketching with the book on your knee, for example, or even sketching standing up. There are 104 pages, a bit of an odd number. The paper is pretty smooth and it takes a fineliner well. The paper is 165 gsm, and this is pretty forgiving. I’ve been able to use watercolour on sketches in it, and although there’s a little buckling, it’s nowhere near as much as I got in the Wilco book. It’s so watercolour friendly that you can draw or even paint on the other side of

your painted page without any show through. I know other reviewers who compare Moleskine with a similar product from Seawhite of Brighton, who feel that the Seawhite journal makes watercolours look brighter and more vibrant. Well, I haven’t used a Seawhite travel journal yet, but I’m very happy with the way that my Moleskine book takes colour. One other feature is a handy document wallet attached to the backcover. With this book it’s a case of you get what you pay for. Moleskine sketchbooks ain’t cheap. But in my experience you’re paying for quality rather than just the name.

Coming back to Seawhite, I’ve never had a Seawhite travel journal like this. However, I have had a Seawhite A5 Concertina style sketchbook, that I used on a few trips. It has 70 painting surfaces, and is 150gsm. I liked using this a lot. It took watercolour well, with the colours mainlining their brightness- see above -  and no show through at all. It took a little getting used to but once you’d got the hang of it you could use it just like a normal sketchbook. This is a quality item, the only issue for me being that it does have fewer pages than the Moleskine.

Now, for Christmas 2023, instead of Buying me another Moleskine travel sketchbook, my daughter bought me two books, one of which was this Seawhite of Brighton A5 landscape spiral bound sketchbook. Now, it’s not specifically a travel sketchbook, but there’s no law against using it as one. I haven’t used it yet, but again, in the spirit of investigation, I made a sketch in it for this post. Now, if you’re looking at it you maybe be asking yourself the

same question. Why do they put their label where they put it on their sketchbooks? Because that’s clearly the back of the book, not the front. Well, leaving that aside, I made this sketch of a tram in Rome. I have been to Rome, and seen trams there, but I was 19 and stupid so I never rode on one. There’s no issue with using fineliner in it, but then the paper in it is 160gsm, only five less than Moleskine. The texture is not quite as smooth as the pages in the

Moleskine, but I don’t mind that at all. So here’s the same sketch with watercolour. What do you know – I really like the outcome. There’s hardly any waffling, let alone cockling, and you can definitely use both sides of the page. The covers are very thick, very tough card. This is a pretty impressive piece of kit.

Beauty if in the eye of the beholder. I like to take a black casebound book on a sketching trip, which is the only drawback I see to the Seawhite book – aesthetically it’s not as appealing as the Moleskine books. This does not have elastic to hold it closed, and nor does it have a pouch at the back for documents. So I am encouraged to try out the Seawhite Travel journal in the future, although it is only 130 gsm. But as regards this sketchbook, if you can get over the fact that it’s not a black, portrait hardcover then this is a good budget alternative to the more expensive classic large Moleskine. 

For the record here's my rating of the books I've discussed - the higher the score, the better.

Make	Paper and pages	Sketching	Painting	Durability	Aesthetics	Cost	Total/ 60	Average Score
Wilco Own brand	7	8	6	7	7	9	44	7.3
Morrisons Own brand	5	7	6	5	6	9	38	6.3
Moleskine Large Travel sketchbook	9	9	8	9	9	6	50	8.3
Seawhite Concertina A5	8	9	9	9	8	7	50	8.3
Seawhite Spiral bound own brand A5	8	9	9	8	7	7	48	8

Monopoly Challenge Regent Street

 

Regent Street is named after the Prince Regent, who would become King George IV. I have a soft spot for this particular obese royal reprobate, not least because I took him as a specialist subject on a well known British quiz show. Regent Street was one of the very first planed developments of London to actually be developed. Both Sir Christopher Wren and John Evelyn drew up plans for redeveloping the City of London under brand new street plans, but it took so long for anything practical to be done about the plans that people just went ahead and built new houses according to the old street plan.

The street was originally built by architect John Nash. He was responsible for rebuilding the Regent’s elegant and sedate Marine Pavilion in Brighton into the glorious madcap folly of the Royal Pavilion. He became so synonymous with a particular style that George Cruikshank labelled him as “The one wot builds the arches’ in a cartoon from 1829. Originally Nash planned a straight boulevard, but this was impossible because of land ownership issues. Today, Regent Street without its elegant curve at the Piccadilly Circus end would be unthinkable, and it makes the Street one of the most instantly recognisable of all London’s great thoroughfares.

The Green set of properties are three London streets particularly known for shopping, and Regent Street is certainly not short on famous stores, including Liberty’s and Hamley’s, noted in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s oldest Toy shop. For a long time it was also the largest toy shop in the world, but that record passed elsewhere in the 1990s.

Under a change of name Regent’s Street continues to Oxford Circus, which forms the junction with the green property, Oxford Street. 

Monopoly Challenge Go To Jail

When I reached Jail I decided to draw London’s Newgate Prison. Now I’ve reached Go To Jail it only seems right to draw the Old Bailey. After all, we know that the instruction Go To Jail means go directly to jail. Prior to the demolition of Newgate Prison, the Old Bailey Court stood as part of the prison complex, so it really was a direct route from one to the other. After Newgate was demolished, the current Old Bailey building was erected on the same site.

The Old Bailey is more correctly called The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales. It has become known as the Old Bailey because that’s the name of the street on which it stands. Bailey derives from the old roman wall of the city of Londinium, and Old Bailey Street follows part of the course of the wall.

The current building was opened in 1907. It’s possibly best known for the statue that tops the dome. If you ask a majority of Londoners I’d guess that they would tell you the statue is called Blind Justice. Yet she’s not blind! It’s common to depict the personification of Justice as a young woman, holding a sword and a pair of scales, who is blindfolded to represent impartiality. Yet the Old Bailey statue is not blindfolded and is actually called Lady Justice. She wears a diadem from which sun rays radiate, and looks a bit like the Statue of Liberty’s younger sister who has given up enlightening the world and taken up swordfighting and greengrocery. 

Monopoly Challenge Piccadilly

Many people think that Piccadilly on the London Monopoly Board means Piccadilly Circus. Well, that’s understandable. Piccadilly Circus is probably the most important road junction in the West End. However, it is also at the end of a mile long road, called Piccadilly. Piccadilly is a small section of a main thoroughfare leading West out of London, connecting with the M4 motorway.

So, let’s start with Piccadilly Circus. Throughout the 20^th century it was particularly notable for its huge neon advertisements displayed on the side of some of its buildings. Through my childhood there was a huge one advertising Coca Cola. The word circus in this case has nothing to do with the type popularised by the Ringling Brothers in the USA and Billy Smart in the UK, but simply refers to the round shape of the junction. At the other end of Regent Street the junction with Oxford Street is called Oxford Circus. There is also a Cambridge Circus within walking distance.

The most famous feature of Piccadilly Circus is the statue of a winged archer. Ask most Londoners who it represents and they will incorrectly tell you it is the Greek God Eros. Some who think they know better might tell you that it is the Spirit of Christian Charity. Both are wrong. The statue actually represents Anteros, the God of requited love, brother of Eros. It stands on top of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. The 7^th Earl of Shaftesbury was a Victorian philanphropist who successfully campaigned to end child labour in the UK and replace it with free education. In the 1980s extensive repair work was done to Sir Alfred Gilbert’s aluminium statue. It had to be removed from the square, and as work was completed put on public display in London’s Festival Hall, where you could view it from a platform.

Bearing in mind the names of the other properties in the yellow set you might be forgiven that the street was named after Sir Absolom Piccadilly, King Charles II’s ceremonial bottom-wiper. However since he never existed, this is not true. It takes its name from the piccadill. During the time of King James I – Charles II’s grandad – a man called Robert Baker bought land in the area and began to manufacture piccadills. If you think of portraits of prosperous Jacobean men, like the engraving of Shakespeare at the front of the first folio – they are often wearing broad, white cut lace collars. These are piccadills. They probably derive their name from a Spanish word meaning pierced or cut.

Piccadilly has been home to many grand and stately houses. Most of these are long gone, although Burlington House still stands an is the home of the Royal Academy of Arts. It’s also home to the very exclusive Burlington Arcade of shops, and Fortnum and Masons. You could argue that Fortnum and Masons are the world’s oldest department store, opening in 1707. However they were specifically a grocers until much later. The Ritz hotel is only one of several along the length of Piccadilly. While we’re going through the edited highlights it also boasts the church of St. James, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Piccadilly Circus Underground station with its underground circular booking hall was a pioneering achievement which caused a sensation when opened in the 1920s. The last remaining station surface buildings were removed at the end of the 20^th century.

All done

Just today I finished the last London Monopoly Sketch. I’m going to post all of them one day at a time as I have been doing which means I make it that there’s 8 days still to go before I’ve posted them all. If you can’t wait then I do have a page with all of the sketches already posted – its on my links under London Monopoly Challenge.

So I have spent just a little time reflecting on the challenge. Overall I’ve enjoyed it immensely. All of the sketches have been made in the month of April 2024, with the exceptions of Euston, Strand, Fleet Street and Piccadilly, where I used some of my old sketches. So that’s 27 new sketches. I would estimate that each one has taken an average of four hours. That’s over 100 hours. Not for me to say that it shows in the results. So I gave myself a set of questions about the challenge to help me get my thoughts in order about the whole thing.

Which set did you enjoy most?

I have to say that my favourite set to sketch was the yellows. Alright, I’d already sketched Piccadilly a few years ago so that made it easier, but it wasn’t that, or I’d have picked the reds. I think that what I enjoyed was that for Leicester Square and Coventry Street I ended up using quite different subject matter than the majority of other sketches I made. For Leicester Square my main focus, at least at the start, was the two figures talking on the bench. For Coventry Street I ended up sketching a modern building, the Swiss Centre. Although I can see the mistakes I made clearly it’s still a sketch I really enjoyed making.

Which set did you enjoy least?

If you hold my arm up behind my back I’d probably say the pinks. I don’t think that any of them are bad sketches – in fact I think that the green Northumberland Avenue sketch is pretty good, but there was a sameyness doing Pall Mall and Whitehall. And by that stage of the challenge I had started thinking – I’ve done ten sketches which have taken ages and I’m not even halfway there yet. – It’s one of the reasons why I tried using the different colours as a way of maintaining my interest. In any 'long-distance' challenge that you undertake there's a pain barrier you have to go through. 

Which is your favourite sketch you made for the challenge?

Probably the Swiss Centre for Coventry Street. I don’t think it’s the best sketch out of the lot, but I just really enjoyed it. I don’t often sketch modern buildings, especially in this amount of detail.

Which is your least favourite sketch you made for the challenge?

Probably Free Parking. It’s not a bad sketch, but I wasn’t in love with the subject matter and I couldn’t find enough detail in the reference photos I’ve looked at to extend the picture into a proper street scene.

Do you think you’ve learned anything doing the challenge? If yes, then what? If no then why not?

Yes, certainly have. I’ve been showcasing the sketches in a Facebook group. There’s a lot of highly talented artists who belong to the same group, and some of them use a stippling technique. I haven’t used this before, but used it in several of these pictures for roadways and shadows.

Taking my two latest sketchbooks together I’ve done almost 100 sketches since Christmas and all of them have been detailed and carefully shaded. If nothing else I’ve developed my self belief that I can sketch anything I can see, and if I just keep working at it sooner or later it will become what I want it to become.

In terms of information, I did not know about the early London multi storey car parks before.

What’s next for you?

Watch this space.

Monopoly Challenge Waterworks

 

London has had many heroes throughout its almost 2000 years of History, many of them very well known, and some of them unsung. Such a hero was Joseph Bazalgette. He was awarded a well deserved knighthood during his lifetime, but it’s not that well known that thousands of Londoners owed their lives to him. It was under his direction that the sewer system was built, which finally relieved London from the great scourge of cholera.

So, for Water Works I have chosen to draw Bazalgette’s Crossness Pumping Station. This was a state of the art facility when it opened in 1859. It was decommissioned in the 1950s. Ironically the building and the machinery inside the building was only initially saved because the cost of demolishing it, and scrapping the machinery far exceeded any value to be gained by doing so. It wasn’t until 1970 that the building became a grade 1 listed building – if you’re not in the UK, this means that it has the legal standing of a building of huge national importance and virtually guarantees its preservation for prosperity. Work on preserving and restoring the interior began in 2008 and the building opened as a museum in 2015. The elaborate ironwork restored in the octagon hall is worth a visit by itself.

Monopoly Challenge Coventry Street

 

You can walk along Coventry Street from one end to another without even realising you’ve done so. It’s one of the shortest streets on the London Monopoly Board. You come to the western side of Leicester Square, and you’re near as anything already in Piccadilly Circus. Still, that short thoroughfare you’ve just walked down between the two is actually Coventry Street.

Like Leicester Square it does date back to he reign of Charles II. It’s named after Henry Coventry, one time secretary of state to the merry monarch.

For a long time Coventry Street had a seedy reputation, with gambling houses and prostitution. In the second half of the nineteenth century its reputation slightly improved as it became home to several music halls. In the last century it became particularly known for restaurants and nightclubs. Notable establishments have included the Swiss Centre, where Coventry Street becomes Leicester Square. This was a very modern building which lasted from 1966 until being demolished in 2007. Its most notable feature was a carillon clock which has been preserved on the site, which is now home to the M and M store. I wrote more about this building last week. Coventry Street is also home to the Trocadero, which has during its colourful life housed many attractions.

Monopoly Challenge Leicester Square

 

Leicester Square is very much an entertainment hub nowadays. London’s biggest cinemas are clustered around the square, and it is the venue for more film premieres than all other locations in the UK combined. Leicester Square is at the heart of the ‘West End’ of London, the theatre district. It’s also home to many restaurants, and is noted for Chinese cuisine, bordering as it does on Soho’s ‘chinatown’.

Like Pall Mall. Leicester Square came into being during the Restoration period , just a few years later in 1670. It developed around Leicester House, home of the 2^nd Earl of Leicester, Robert Sidney. For almost a century it was a highly genteel area, amongst whose residents included Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of George III. Poor old Frederick never had much luck. He co-wrote a play which nearly caused a riot on the first (and only) night and lost a fortune giving the audience their money back. Like most of the Hanoverian kings, he never got on with his father, who refused permission for him to see his mother, Queen Caroline, when she was on her death bed. Finally he died at the age of 44, supposedly after being struck by a cricket or a real tennis ball.

Reflecting its connections with the theatre and later, with cinema, the gardens in the Square contain a famous statue of William Shakespeare and Charlie Chaplin and more recently statues have been added including Paddington Bear, Mary Poppins, Harry Potter and Bugs Bunny. Mind you, you’ll have to really look to find some of them, for example, Wonder Woman is halfway up a wall, and Batman is standing on the roof of the Empire Cinema.

You’re really spoiled for choice for things to sketch in Leicester Square. I settled on this view from the mid fifties. The film showing in the Warner cinema is Hondo, which was a Western released in 1953. I just really liked the two Londoners chatting on the park bench. Even now in the third decade of the 21^st century, you can’t beat yakking on a bench in Leicester Square on a sunny day.

Monopoly Challenge Fenchurch Street Station

There aren’t many London Monopoly Board properties that I have ever visited in real life. In fact Fenchurch Street station is the only one.

The world’s first railway linking two cities, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830. The railways reached London in 1836, with the opening of London Bridge station. By the middle of the 1830s new railways were booming and would go on booming for 10 years until the crash of 1845. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie and although he majority of planned railways in his period were never even built, a large number of companies had their eyes on London.

Fenchurch Street Station was built in 1841, for the London and Blackwall Railway. Through acquisitions and mergers it served a number of different railway companies. When the vast majority of Britain’s railways were rationalised into four companies in the 1920s,Fenchurch served the LMS (London, Midland and Scottish Railway) and the LNER (London North Eastern Railway). This is why it’s included on the London Monopoly board, as an LNER terminus.

Fenchurch Street is the only London terminus which is not also a London Underground station. In the 90s it was planned to either connect Fenchurch Street with the Jubilee Line or to extend the Docklands Light Railway a few hundred yards to Fenchurch Street, which would put it onto the network, but neither of these plans came to fruition. Fenchurch Street largely connects the City of London with Essex. The current building dates back to 1854.

Monopoly Challenge - Trafalgar Square

 

The name Trafalgar Square references the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. What is now the square once housed the Royal Mews, until King George IV moved the mews to Buckingham Palace in the 1820s. John Nash was asked to develop the site, but he died and work progressed very slowly. In 1830 the site was going to be called King William IV Square after his accession that year. Finally in 1835, the 30^th anniversary of Trafalgar, it was decided to name the square Trafalgar Square, and include a memorial to Nelson. One can guess that the owner of the square, King William must have been enthusiastic, bearing in mind that he had been a brother officer and a personal friend of Nelson during his own time in the Navy.

The Square wasn’t opened until 1844. Its most well known feature is Nelson’s Column, a 145 feet tall Corinthian Column topped with Edward Hodges Baily’s statue of Nelson. This has become one of London’s most iconic and recognisable landmarks. The base of the statue is flanked by four pedestals, each bearing a bronze statue of a lion, sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer.

Throughout its history Trafalgar Square has see a huge number of mass gatherings and demonstrations. It became the unofficial focus of London New Year celebrations, and I remember dancing in the fountains on New Years Eve in the early 80s very fondly. I remember the 2 hour walk home sopping wet less fondly. The Square is still home to a large number of pigeons. Up until the 21^st century feeding the pigeons in the square was seen as an essential component of any visit to London. Then people began to realise the public health risk of a gathering of 35,000 pigeons in such a small space. Feeding the pigeons has been banned since the early 2000s.

There are four plinths surrounding the square. Three of them have permanent statues – George IV, General Charles Napier and General Henry Havelock. The fourth plinth was unoccupied until the 21^st century, since when it has been used for temporary displays of sculpture by some of the leading names in contemporary sculpture in the UK and the rest of the world.

Let’s come back to Nelson. In July 2020 protestors in the city of Bristol pulled down a statue of the 17^th/18^th century trader Edward Colston. The statue was supposedly erected by a grateful city, as a way of memorialising his charitable support of almshouses, churches, workhouses and schools. The protestors’ argument was that in our modern, multicultural Britain, glorifying a man who organised and greatly benefited from the Slave Trade is untenable. to me, tha makes sense, bearing in mind that the city authorities seem

This action focused public attention on the question of public memorials to men associated with the slave trade, and Nelson’s Column became the subject of public debate. This is a question which leads to very heated views on all sides. The older generation as a rule don’t even want to discuss it – my mother and stepfather both being examples. Look, I’m a Londoner myself, and I get an emotional buzz whenever I see an iconic image of the city like the column. But. . .

Symbols matter. Images matter, and the messages that they convey matter.

Now, as I understand it Nelson did not own slaves. As far as I know Nelson did not trade in slaves. Okay. However, he was certainly opposed to Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish the slave trade, and he seems to have been very friendly and protective towards the slave owning elite in the west Indies. I’m not saying this in itself means we should convict him and tear his statue down at once. But I am very much saying it is at least grounds for a constructive public debate on the subject. If Nelson was as great a hero as his defenders think he is then his reputation will survive any amount of public debate. But if he wasn’t, then we certainly should be discussing it.