The French are better at preserving their architectural heritage than the English. Gascony (aka the Gers) teems with bastide towns built from the 12th to the 14th centuries.
Robert remarked that he’d seen a plethora of Parks Police cars; a lot of alliteration today. Today Hammersmith and Fulham have a joint police force (the Parks Police Service) to patrol the parks on their patch. They look like police but in fact only have the same powers as any other citizens.
It took a third visit to find this rather prominent grave at St Nicholas’s Chiswick. It is in a part of the graveyard that I thought only had modern headstones.
The stock market has been more resilient than I expected. As a result my somewhat defensive stance is underperforming but I intend to stick to my guns, or rather remain in my bunker. I haven’t traded since July.
White’s was founded in 1693, a year before the Bank of England. London’s clubland provides a rich seam of anecdotes and unusual information some of which may be new to you.
Wednesday’s post was mostly about the Grosvenors. The architect for Belgrave Square and the classical terraces surrounding it is George Basevi. He gets a mention on the plinth of Robert Grosvenor’s bronze.
There are twenty-nine non royal extant dukedoms in the Peerages of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The Duke of Norfolk, 1483, is the oldest and The Duke of Fife, 1900, the newest creation.
Anthony Rhodes was born in 1916. He went to Rugby and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. The army sent him to Trinity College, Cambridge to study Mechanical Engineering. He graduated in 1939 just in time to join the Royal Engineers and serve in France as part of the British Expeditionary Force.