The seventeenth-century London Wenceslaus Hollar knew is now largely destroyed or buried. Yet its populous river, its timbered streets, fashionable ladies, old St Paul's, the devestation of the Fire, the palace of Whitehall and the meadows of Islington live on for us in his etchings. Drawing on nume[...]

Just across the River Thames from St Paul's Cathedral stands an old house. Built in the days of Queen Anne, it stands in the footprint of a far older habitation. Some of the people who have lived in the house have been skilled; some were prosperous traders in the coal and iron on which Britain's ind[...]