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.