A Day in London

Wednesday July 31st

Mary had got online and booked tickets to Top Hat for Wednesday night with a view to spending the day in London. Hamish dropped us off at the station and luckily an express train had been slightly delayed so we got on it and we were in London by 10.30am.

Alan had a list of places to visit that he had found doing family history research.  So these are not your usual shots of London!

Meard's Street in Soho where Benjamin and Hannah Cutler lived from 1825 -1830. They were Mary's 3 times Great grandparents lived before emigrating to Australia.

Here I am with Mary checking out Meard's Street in Soho.

Then we went looking for the church where Samuel William Cutler, Mary's 2 times great grandfather was baptized in 1819.  We could see the steeple but couldn't seem to find the church;it seemed locked in by buildings.  We finally found the church yard which was full of people having lunch.  We asked how to get into the church and they told us to go around the block and into the next street.  We finally found an entrance in really strange place and went in and asked the minister who was sitting in a very small chapel where the church was.  He said, "this is it."  the rest was bombed in WW2. So they had created a small chapel and kept the tower which had survived.  No wonder we spent ages searching using the tower as a landmark, because that is all it is now.

The green space is where the church would have stood before it was bombed.

The Cutlers also lived in Princelet near Spitalfield market when they first got married.

We visited the market and they were having an afternoon tea dance with an amazing band of what looked like retired pro musicians.  Apparently they play there once a month and seem to have quite a following of people who really know how to dance.

Just to prove we really were in London here is a rather nice shot of the Gerkin through the trees.

In the evening we went to Top Hat which more than lived up to our expectations.  We managed to find out way back to High Wycombe on a very slow train that stopped at every village.