The 20th and 21st of September was the weekend of the Open House London event for 2014. I had been to a previous Open House event with some friends and enjoyed it, even though we’d only managed to see one property, so I thought it was about time I went back and did it again. This time I went with Monica and we planned the day a little better. We had a few different places on the list of buildings we wanted to see, most of them around Westminster. We only managed to get to three in the end but I was pleased with the selection, and there’s always next year. The full set of photographs can be seen here.
The first building was the Royal Courts of Justice. It is a large Victorian Gothic style building built in the late 1800s on the Strand. Once through security you find yourself at the front of the 238 feet long Main Hall. [read more]
For the last few years, on and off, I have been researching my family history. It started just after my grandmother died when we found a letter from my mother’s cousin asking her if she could fill in any gaps in the research he had been doing. Enclosed was a print-out of the research he had completed up to that point. That was a great starting point, although I was later to discover that there were a number of errors in his work. So I set off doing research of my own with the help of my parents, my grandparent’s belongings, a whole load of historical records, lots of logic and a good dollop of head scratching. [read more]