Sunday 5/15–our first full day in London…..this by the way is the Breakfast area at our hotel—they do a continental every morning—Yogurt, and cereal, sweat rolls and that kind of thing…..
So far the weather has been sunny and each day a bit warmer….too hot for even a light jacket.
‘No Act of Kindness No Matter How Small is Ever Wasted’ Irish street artist Karma
Then on to the subway for our days adventure…..White Chapel here we come.
The White Chapel area was named after its white-washed St. Mary’s Church and was home to bell-founders and metal workers whom the city didn’t want due to the noise that their work caused. Bells were made here for Westminster Abbey were cast–the bell that would become America’s Liberty bell…Big Ben was actually recast here.
Next stop was the White Chapel Art Gallery Café for a spot of coffee
This lovely lady waited on us
and this handsome man was there to help too
The gallery was founded in 1901, and is an independent gallery with an excellent international reputation for high quality shows of major contemporary artists.
If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes politics. Mogul.
White Chapel was once the horrid slums that hosted the outcasts and refugees from around the world. It also was the hunting grounds of one Jack the Ripper, one of the most famous monsters and a murderer never captured, nor identified that left the mutilated bodies of 9 prostitutes scattered about this area.
We unfortunately didn’t get here in enough time to see the gallery which was and is still free–brought to the dark and forbidding slums of London to introduce the poor and unfortunate to the finer things in life
Sometimes being the only one who isn’t desperate to be noticed makes them pay attention. Morley
A walk about in the area found us at Altab Ali Park. The park is a small park .] Formerly known as St. Mary’s Park, it is the site of the old 14th-century white church, St. Mary Matfelon, from which the area of Whitechapel gets its name. St Mary’s was heavily bombed during The Blitz in 1940, ll that remains of the old church is the floor plan and a few graves. The park was renamed Altab Ali Park in 1998 in memory of Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi clothing worker, who was murdered on 4 May 1978 in Adler Street by three teenage boys as he walked home from work.
In 1664 3/4 of the people who lived here earned less than a pound a year.
You’re never too young to think big. Mr. Brain Wash
Then to our main event of the day…Free Tours By Foot on Graffiti and Wall art in the alternative, trendy, gentrified, London’s East Side….a most vibrant and exciting area of London town.
This area once lined with cheap coaching houses and its streets full of hay carrs, vegetables, drays of beer and herds of sheep and cattle until the 1920’s.
It’s easier if you try. WrdSmth
but it’s getting late and I’m scheduled for a very early train to York tomorrow so we’ll do the tour then hang in their guys and sorry.
This area is the place of Dickens’ Fagan and his Artful Dodgers.
Follow your heart. Scampi
