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he set aside his admiration for the general to describe the mansion as ‘large but
ugly’. In a famous depiction of one of London’s 17th century ‘Frost Fairs’, parts of Essex House and its gardens can be seen in the background as Charles II and the royal family walk along the ice to view the sports on offer.

    The building had been divided in two in 1640, with half sold to a speculator who demolished it and laid out Essex Street in its place. For a while the remaining half of the
property served as the Cotton Library of Manuscripts (now part of the British Library) but was finally demolished in 1777.
Euston Arch

    W HEN E USTON S TATION WAS FIRST OPENED IN 1837, its entrance was dominated by Euston Arch, which stood
    72ft high and was supported by four Doric columns to make it the largest arch in Great Britain.
    Costing over £30,000, the railway board attempted to publicly justify the expense: ‘The entrance to the London passenger station, opening immediately upon what will
necessarily become the Grand Avenue for travelling between the Midland and Northern parts of the Kingdom, the directors thought that it should receive some embellishment.’
    A hundred years later, with the Victoria and Adelaide hotels having been built either side, the arch was recognized as a major landmark and ‘the most imposing entrance to a London
terminus’. Some contemporaries, though, were much less forgiving. In Old and New London , Thornbury described it as ‘a lofty and apparently meaningless Doric temple – for it
seems placed without reference to the courtyard it leads to ... and although handsome in itself, and possibly one of the largest porticoes in the world, it nevertheless falls far short in grandeur
to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Some ofthe blocks of stone used in its construction weighed thirteen tons.’
    However, when the station entrance was completely redesigned and rebuilt in 1962, the heedless demolition of the arch galvanized the nascent preservation movement. Although it failed to save the
arch, many other historic buildings owe their survival to groups formed as a result. There is even talk of having the arch reconstructed as the stone work itself was saved to make a bed for the
channels of Bow Backs River, which occupies the Lea Valley.
Execution Dock

    Wapping
    A MILE DOWNSTREAM FROM THE T OWER OF London at the Wapping bend of the Thames was a jumble of houses and wharves known as
Execution Dock.
    For 400 years from the time of Henry VI , condemned pirates met their fate at this site and, in contrast to executions at Tyburn, once they were dead
they were not immediately cut down. As John Stow explained, they were left ‘to remain till three tides had overflowed them’. The condemned were often housed at the Marshalsea Prison
before being taken by boat to Wapping to be hung close to the water’s edge at low tide.
    Throngs of sightseers would attend on land and on the water, and there were still more degradations for these high-seas highwaymen. To discourage others, their bodies were
often covered in tar to preserve them from the weather and to prevent birds pecking out their softer parts. Their corpses were then hung in chains – gibbetted – along various points on
the river.
    The notorious English privateer, Captain Kidd, was hanged here on 23 May 1701. During his execution, the hangman’s rope broke and Kidd had to be strung up again. His body was then gibbeted
and remained a landmark by the river for the next 20 years. The Captain Kidd pub in Wapping continues to keep his name alive. George Davis and William Watts were the final victims to hang at the
dock on 16 December 1830. John Rocque’s 1746 map of the capital marks Execution Dock as being near the modern day Wapping Tube Station.
Exeter House

    The Strand
    A NOTHER OF THE GREAT S TRAND MANSIONS , built in the reign of Edward VI (1547–1553) for Sir Thomas
Palmer, who was executed in 1553. Elizabeth I later gifted the house to