Holborn Viaduct
This is my second instalment, looking into the Dragons of the City of London. Whilst I was researching my Boundary of Dragons, for my PGCert course last year. I found that the city’s dragons were very prominent in the area of Holborn Viaduct and Smithfield. I returned there this week to photograph them and give you just a few facts about the area. For sometime now the Viaduct has been under going major repair work so you can't photography it. I was able to find these two pictures taken by Jacqueline Banerjee of The Victorian Web. You can see what a beautiful bridge it is from these.
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| THESE SILVER DRAGONS ARE FOUND UNDER THE VIADUCT. THEY ARE VERY DIRTY AND IN NEED OF A GOOD CLEAN. THE BRIDGE HAS AT LEAST 40 DRAGONS ON IT. |
Holborn Viaduct is a bridge in London and the name of the street which crosses it, passing over Farringdon Street and the now subterranean River Fleet. It was built between 1863 and 1869, at a cost of over two million pounds. It spanned the steep-sided Holborn Hill and the River Fleet valley. City Surveyor William Haywood was the architect and it was opened by Queen Victoria at the same time as Blackfriars Bridge. Nearby was the Holborn Viaduct station, now replaced by the City Thameslink station.
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| ALSO UNDER THE VIADUCT IS A WINE MERCHANT, WITH THIS DRINKING DRAGON. |
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| WHEN PUTTING THIS BLOG TOGETHER, I NOTICED THIS DRAGON HAS LOST HIS TONGUE |
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| MORE DRAGONS FOUND EITHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE. |
Smithfield
Smithfield – or London Central Markets – is not just the largest EU approved wholesale meat market in the country, but the oldest too.
Originally known as Smoothfield, it was a large open space just outside the city boundaries on the edge of St Bartholomew’s Priory. (The name meant a smooth plain – but the word eventually became known as smith, a corruption of the Saxon word smeth, which meant smooth).
In the Twelfth Century it was used as a vast recreational area where jousts and tournaments took place. By the late Middle Ages the area had become the most famous livestock market in the country.
There was also a murkier side to the area, because from the early Thirteenth Century it was used as a place of execution for criminals. Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, was executed here, as was Scottish hero William Wallace and of course, it was the location of Bartholomew Fair – three days of merrymaking, dancing, selling and music which over the centuries became the most debauched and drunken holiday in the calendar. Even so, it lasted almost 700 years before it was eventually closed in 1855.
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| DRAGON ON MAIN ENTRANCE AND CENTRAL ARCADE |
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| OUT OF ALL THE DRAGONS IN THE AREA, THIS IS MY FAVOURITE |
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| DRAGONS ON SMITHFIELD WAR MEMORIAL |
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| JUST A SPEAR THROW FROM SMITHFIELD, THE MEMORIAL OF BRAVE HEART HIMSELF. |
