Behind the Pump House is a statue of a brown dog. In 1985 it replaced the original, removed in 1910 when it became a focus of riots between medical students and animal rights campaigners.
In 1768 Benjamin Franklin, American statesman and Founding Father, conducted experiments in Mount Pond including pouring oil onto the water to examine how liquids behave. Anglers were not amused.
Another of London’s lost rivers, the Westbourne runs through the Long Water in Hyde Park, under Knightsbridge, over Sloane Sq station and into the river near Chelsea Bridge.
Opened in 1881, the museum facade uses terracotta tiles which were resistant to the soot of Victorian London. The largest of the famous dinosaur skeletons in the central hall is a diplodocus.
Much of the collection was inherited from the Museum of Patents (est 1858) and includes early locomotives such as Stephenson’s Rocket and Puffing Billy, and the first jet engine.
Oxford Street’s biggest department store was opened by the American businessman Gordon J Selfridge in 1909, whose motto was ‘The customer is always right’.
Soho is home to Europe’s largest Chinatown, which developed in the 1970s. Earlier generations of London’s Chinese population had centred around the docks of Limehouse.
This former power station was bought by the manufacturers of Oxo beef stock cubes in the 1920s. Can you spot how they managed to bypass advertising restrictions with their new tower?
Do visit this bustling food market where top London chefs come to buy their ingredients. If you don’t find it here, where will you? Open from Thursday to Saturday, but come early to avoid the crowds! Read more.
Best way to enjoy and see all the park? Have a run! Much more enjoyable than a pic nic! And you feel reborn!
Take a few minutes, even in winter, to explore the central Rose Garden. Lots of flowers with silly names, and plenty of sculpture.
a city-based outpost of the country food chain; inside its Covent Garden branch is a cornucopia of colour, with gorgeous produce spilling out of buckets, bins and baskets Read more.
Still one of the best fish n chips in town. With grilled options. On the pricey side, but you get what you pay for.
