London - places in details

Buckingham Palace
CHANGING THE GUARD
The regular hand-over of guards in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace draws thousands of visitors to watch the soldiers and listen to the music. Known as Changing the Guard or Guard Mounting, the process involves a new

guard exchanging duty with the old guard.
The soldiers are drawn from one of the five regiments of Foot Guards in the
British Army: the Scots Guards, the Irish Guards, the Welsh Guards, the
Grenadier Guards and the Coldstream Guards.
The handover is accompanied by a Guards band. The music played ranges from
traditional military marches to songs from the shows and even familiar pop
songs.
When The Queen is in residence, there are four sentries at the front of the
building. When she is away there are two.



The Queen's Guard usually consists of Foot Guards in their full-dress uniform of
red tunics and bearskins. If they have operational commitments, other infantry
units take part instead.

Units from Commonwealth realms occasionally take turn in Guard Mounting. In
May 1998, Canadian soldiers from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry
mounted guard at Buckingham Palace for the first time since the Coronation in
1953.

Time

There is no Guard Mounting in very wet weather.

Buckingham Palace Changing the Guard takes place at
11.30 am. December -
odd dates

Windsor Castle Changing the Guard takes place at
11.00am. December -
odd dates

Horse Guards Arch Daily at
11am.

Tower of London Daily at
11.30am.



The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace is a permanent space dedicated to
changing exhibitions of items from the Royal Collection, the wide-ranging
collection of art and treasures held in trust by The Queen for the Nation.
Constructed forty years ago on the west front of Buckingham Palace out of the
bomb-damaged ruins of the former private chapel, the Gallery has recently been
redeveloped. It was reopened by The Queen on

21 May 2002 and is now open to the public on a daily basis.



St James' Park

St James's Park is the oldest Royal Park in London and is
surrounded by three palaces. The most ancient is Westminster, which has now
become the Houses of Parliament, St James's Palace and of course, the best
known, Buckingham Palace.

The Park was once a marshy watermeadow. In the thirteenth
century a leper hospital was founded, and it is from this hospital that the Park
took its name. In 1532 Henry VIII acquired the site as yet another deer park and
built the Palace of St James's. When Elizabeth I came to the throne she indulged
her love of pageantry and pomp, and fetes of all kinds were held in the park.
Her successor, James I, improved the drainage and controlled the water supply. A
road was created in front of St James's Palace, approximately where the Mall is
today, but it was Charles II who made dramatic changes. The Park was redesigned,
with avenues of trees planted and lawns laid. The King opened the park to the
public and was a frequent visitor, feeding the ducks and mingling with his
subjects.

During the Hanoverian period, Horse Guards Parade was created
by filling in one end of the long canal and was used first as a mustering ground
and later for parades. Horse Guards Parade is still part of St James's Park. The
Park changed forever when John Nash redesigned it in a more romantic style. The
canal was transformed into a natural-looking lake and in 1837 the Ornithological
Society of London presented some birds to the Park and erected a cottage for a
birdkeeper. Both the cottage and the position of birdkeeper remain to this day.
Clarence House was designed for the Duke of Clarence, later to become William IV
and was also the home of the late Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother.

Outside Buckingham Palace is the Queen Victoria Memorial, which
celebrates the days of the British Empire. The memorial includes not only the
marble statue of Victoria and the glittering figures of Victory, Courage and
Constancy, but also the ornamental gates given by the Dominions. These are the
Australia Gate, South Africa Gate and Canada Gate.

St. James's Palace

has been the setting for some of the most important events in Royal history.



Built largely between 1531 and 1536, St. James's Palace was a residence of kings
and queens of England for over 300 years. It remains the official residence of
the Sovereign, although, since the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, the
Sovereign has lived at Buckingham Palace. High Commissioners present letters and
Ambassadors are still formally accredited to the Court of St. James's for this
reason.

The palace was built by Henry VIII on the site of the Hospital of St. James,
Westminster. Much survives of the red-brick building erected by Henry VIII,
including the Chapel Royal, the gatehouse, some turrets and two surviving Tudor
rooms in the State apartments.



Buildings later sprawled to cover the area of four courts now known as
Ambassadors' Court, Engine Court, Friary Court and Colour Court. The great Tudor
Gatehouse at the southern end of St. James's Street still bears Henry VIII's
royal cypher HR, surmounted by his crown, above the original foot passages
leading through to Colour Court.



Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, whom he contemplated recognising as
his heir, was living in the Palace when he died in 1536 at the age of seventeen.
From then on St. James's House, as it was known, saw a succession of Royal
inhabitants who lived there while playing their part in some of the more famous
events in English history.



Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, stayed there the night after her
coronation. Before she was discarded following the birth of Princess (later
Queen) Elizabeth, the initials HA entwined in a lovers' knot appeared on a
couple of Tudor fireplaces in the State apartments.



It was in St. James's Palace in 1558 that Mary Tudor signed the treaty
surrendering Calais. Elizabeth I was resident during the threat posed by the
Spanish Armada and set out from St James's to address her troops assembled at
Tilbury, to the east of London.



The future Charles II and James II were both born and baptised at St James's, as
were Mary of York (Mary II), Anne of York (Queen Anne) and James Francis Edward
Stuart (the Old Pretender).



After the destruction of the Palace of Whitehall, all monarchs until William IV
lived at St. James's for part of the time.



In 1809, much of the east and south ranges of the Palace was destroyed by fire,
but the State rooms were restored by 1813. At this time the Prince Regent (later
George IV) was living at Carlton House, but four of his brothers were provided
with houses within the Palace walls. Frederick, Duke of York was given Godolphin
House, now Lancaster House, and William, Duke of Clarence (later William IV) was
given Clarence House, today occupied by The Prince of Wales.



William IV was the last Sovereign to use St. James's Palace as a residence.
After his death, Court functions were still held in the State apartments, which
had been enlarged by Christopher Wren and embellished by William Kent. Some
rooms were later partly redecorated by William Morris. Queen Victoria married
Prince Albert in the Chapel Royal in 1840, and court levées continued to be held
at St. James's Palace until 1939.



The State Apartments of the Palace contain many beautiful items of furnishing.



There are Mortlake tapestries ordered by Charles I as Prince of Wales in the Old
Presence Chamber, and a fine display of arms and armour in the Armoury.



The State Apartments also contain an interesting range of Royal portraits from
the time of Henry VIII, including important works by Mytens, Van Somer, Michael
Wright and Wissing; portraits of military and naval heroes painted for George IV
by Reynolds and Hoppner; a portrait of George IV by Lawrence; and important
battle pieces by Wootton and George Jones.

Windsor castle

Windsor Castle is an official residence of The Queen and the largest
occupied castle in the world. A Royal home and fortress for over 900 years, the
Castle remains a working palace today.



Visitors can walk around the State Apartments, extensive suites of rooms at the
heart of the working palace. For part of the year visitors can also see the Semi
State rooms, which are some of the most splendid interiors in the castle. They
are furnished with treasures from the Royal Collection including paintings by
Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck and Lawrence, fine tapestries and porcelain, sculpture
and armour.

Within the Castle complex there are many additional attractions, including the
Drawings Gallery, Queen Mary's dolls' house, and the fourteenth-century St.
George's Chapel, the burial place of ten sovereigns and setting for many Royal
weddings.

http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page574.asp

Sherlock Holmes Museum

A privately run
museum and popular
tourist
attraction dedicated to the fictional detective

Sherlock Holmes. It is situated at 239 Baker Street in central
London.

The house was formerly an eighteenth century

boarding house, and was purchased in 1989 on behalf of The Sherlock Holmes
International Society. The Museum initially operated a ground-floor restaurant,
'Mrs. Hudson's' with the museum open to the public on the upper floors. The
local council agreed to unveil a blue plaque at the house signifying it as the
original location of 221B Baker Street, an address which had previously been
adopted by the

Abbey National Building Society at 215-229 Baker Street.

The Museum - like the address itself - was to prove controversial, and was
denounced as a 'Tourist
trap' by the competing

Sherlock Holmes Society of London, which disapproved of the project while it
was busily arranging the opening of another Holmes museum in

Switzerland that finally opened in October 1990. In the late 1990s, the
restaurant closed and the Museum's lucrative shop moved from the attic to the
ground floor.

The Museum also operates one of the few Victorian
Hansom Cabs
remaining in the country, but it had to be withdrawn a few years ago because it
was refused entry to the Royal Parks as it carried the Museum's advertisement on
the side panels. There are plans to bring it out again in mid 2006.

The Museum hires a number of actors in character. A

Victorian era policeman acts as doorman. Several Victorian housemaids in
attendance can be seen around the museum. A Dr Watson character is stationed in
the first-floor living room. Sherlock Holmes impersonators can be seen handing
out cards at Baker Street
tube
station, and around tourist attractions in central
London. These
actors are of a wide variety of believability - some bear strong physical
resemblances and display an impressive knowledge of the canon to tourists, while
others bear no resemblance at all!

Despite its short history, the museum continues to be a highly successful
attraction, drawing in several hundred thousand visitors a year.

The Museum consists of a tour of three floors of the small

Grade II listed

Georgian house, with two rooms on each floor, arranged to resemble the rooms
occupied by Sherlock Holmes. The sitting room is faithfully reproduced, usually
with an actor pretending to be Dr Watson or Mrs Hudson in attendance. Sherlock
Holmes' bedroom adjoins. The second and third floor contain a few waxworks and
display cases purporting to contain 'exhibits' from the cases. The Museum's
staff and programme eagerly propound that this is the 'real' 221B, and that
Sherlock Holmes lived there(at least according to the stories). The rooms of Mrs
Hudson and Dr Watson are on the second floor. ..............

London Stock Exchange (LSE)

is a

stock exchange located in
London,
England.
Founded in 1801, it
is one of the largest stock exchanges in the world, with many overseas listings
as well as UK companies.

It traces its history to
1698 when the stock
brokers were expelled from the

Royal Exchange and John Castaing, stationed at an office in

Jonathan's Coffee-House, published the prices of stocks and commodities
called The Course of the Exchange and other things.

The former

Stock Exchange Tower, based in

Threadneedle Street/Old Broad Street was opened by

Queen Elizabeth II in
1972 and housed the
Trading Floor where traders would traditionally meet to conduct business. This
became largely redundant with the advent of the

Big Bang on
27 October
1986, which
deregulated many of the Stock Exchange's activities. It eliminated fixed
commissions on security trades and allowed securities firms to act as brokers
and dealers. It also enabled an increased use of computerised systems that
allowed dealing rooms to take precedence over face to face trading.

On July 20,
1990 a bomb planted
by the

IRA exploded in the men's toilets behind the visitors' gallery. The area had
already been evacuated and nobody was injured.^[2]
The long term trend towards electronic trading had been reducing the Exchange's
status as a visitor attraction and although the gallery reopened it was closed
permanently in 1992.

In July 2004 the
London Stock Exchange moved from

Threadneedle Street to

Paternoster Square (EC4)
close to

St Paul's Cathedral, still within the "Square Mile" (the

City of London). It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II once again,
accompanied by The

Duke of Edinburgh, on
27 July
2004. The new
building contains a specially commissioned dynamic sculpture called "The
Source", by artists
Greyworld.

Shakespeare's Globe

The Globe Theatre is a faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse
designed in 1599, where Shakespeare worked and for which he wrote many of his
greatest plays. The theatre season runs from May to October with productions of
the work of Shakespeare, his contemporaries and modern authors.

Each year the Globe Theatre Company rediscovers the dynamic relationship
between the audience and the actor in this unique building. The Globe also
welcomes international theatre companies to share the impact Shakespeare’s plays
have had worldwide. Today, audiences of this ‘wooden O’ sit in a gallery or
stand informally as a groundling in the yard, just as they would have done 400
years ago.

St
Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral on
Ludgate
Hill, in the

City of London,
England and
the seat of the

Bishop of London. The present building dates from the
17th
century, and is generally reckoned to be London's fifth St Paul's
Cathedral, although the number is higher if every major mediaeval
reconstruction is counted as a new cathedral. The cathedral is one of London's
most visited sites.

A Cathedral dedicated to St Paul has overlooked
the City of London since 604AD, a constant reminder to this great commercial
centre of the importance of the spiritual side of life.



The current Cathedral – the fourth to occupy this site – was designed by the
court architect Sir Christopher Wren and built between 1675 and 1710 after its
predecessor was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Its architectural and
artistic importance reflect the determination of the five monarchs who oversaw
its building that London’s leading church should be as beautiful and imposing as
their private palaces.



As the Cathedral of the capital city, St Paul’s is the spiritual focus for the
Nation. This is where people and events of overwhelming importance to the
country have been celebrated, mourned and commemorated since the first Service
took place in 1697.



Since then important services have included the funerals of Lord Nelson, the
Duke of Wellington and Sir Winston Churchill; Jubilee celebrations for Queen
Victoria, King George V; peace services marking the end of the First and Second
World Wars; the launch of the Festival of Britain; the Service of Remembrance
and Commemoration for the 11th September 2001: the 80th and 100th birthdays of
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother; the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, to
Lady Diana Spencer and, most recently, the Thanksgiving for the Golden Jubilee
of Her Majesty the Queen.



Over the centuries, St Paul’s has changed to reflect shifting tastes and
attitudes. Decoration has been added and removed, services have been updated,
different areas have been put to new uses. Today, the history of the nation is
written in the carved stone of its pillars and arches and is celebrated in its
works of art and monuments.



In the crypt are effigies and fragments of stone that pre-date the Cathedral,
relics of a medieval world. From Wren’s original vision, Jean Tijou’s beautiful
wrought iron gates of 1700 still separate the quire from the ambulatory;
children still test the acoustics in the Whispering Gallery; and the 1695 organ
which Mendelssohn once played is still in use.



The magnificent mosaics are the result of Queen Victoria’s mid-19th century
complaint that the interior was “most dreary, dingy and undevotional.” The
American Memorial Chapel stands behind the High Altar in an area that was
bomb-damaged during the Second World War – a gesture of gratitude to the
American dead of the Second World War from the people of Britain. An altar has
now been installed on a dais in the heart of the Cathedral, bringing services
closer to those who attend them.



Throughout, St Paul’s has remained a busy, working church where millions have
come to worship and find peace. It is a heritage site of international
importance which attracts thousands of people each year, a symbol of the City
and Nation it serves and, above all, a lasting monument to the glory of God.



St Paul’s Cathedral is the cathedral of the Diocese of London. The Diocese is
made up of five episcopal areas: Willesden, Edmonton, Stepney, London and
Kensington. Four of these have an Area Bishop, to whom the Bishop of London, The
Right Reverend and Right Honourable Richard Chartres, delegates certain
responsibilities. The Bishops are assisted by Archdeacons. Archdeaconries are
further divided into deaneries which are groups of parishes. The Bishop of
Fulham is the Suffragan Bishop for the whole Diocese. In 2004 the Diocese
celebrates its 1400th anniversary. The administrative centre is London Diocesan
House. For more information please go to
www.london.anglican.org

British Library

The British Library is, as national libraries go, relatively young. Its roots
lay in the report of the National Libraries Committee under the Chairmanship of
the late Lord Dainton issued in 1969, followed in 1971 by a White Paper
recommending the setting up of a national library for the UK ('the British
Library'). In 1972 The British
Library Act was passed by Parliament bringing the Library into operation
with effect from 1 July 1973.

Under the Act the following institutions were administratively combined to
form the British Library: the library departments of the British Museum (which
included the National Reference Library of Science and Invention), the National
Central Library, and the National Lending Library for Science and Technology
(the centre for interlibrary lending, located at Boston Spa in Yorkshire). In
1974 the British National Bibliography and the Office for Scientific and
Technical Information joined the UK's new national library.

Two additional institutions subsequently became part of the Library
increasing the breadth of its collections: the India Office Library and Records
(1982) and the British Institute of Recorded Sound (1983).

Constituent parts

Library of the British Museum

To the library community and the public at large, the best known component of
the new national library consisted of the library departments of the British
Museum. The Museum's Department of Printed Books was founded in 1753, the year
of the foundation of the Museum itself. Over the intervening two hundred years,
the library of the British Museum had grown into one of the largest in the
world, sustained by its privilege of legal deposit whereby it was entitled to a
copy of most items printed in the United Kingdom - not only books and
periodicals, but newspapers, maps and printed music. In addition, the Museum's
comprehensive holdings of non-legal deposit items had reportedly earned it the
accolade from Lenin of possessing (in the 1900s) a more comprehensive collection
of Russian books than libraries in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Lenin was one of those privileged to use the Museum's spectacular domed
reading room. Designed in the 1850s at the instigation of Sir Anthony Panizzi,
then Chief Librarian, the reading room and surrounding bookstacks were
constructed in the courtyard of the British Museum providing its library with
impressive premises in the heart of what was already an overcrowded building.
The Reading Room had been thrown open to all for a short period at the time of
its opening in May 1857, thereafter admission was by pass only, giving access to
its collections an aura of selectivity and exclusiveness. In addition to Lenin
(who used the pseudonym Jacob Richter), the roll call of those holding reader
passes included Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia
Woolf.

Patent Office Library (from 1962 National Library of Science
and Invention)

Another constituent part of the British Library was the library of the Patent
Office. Its origins lay in the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1851 which required
"true copies of all specifications to be open to the inspection of the public at
the office of the commissioners", the Patent Office library itself opened in
1855. For the remainder of the nineteenth century this was housed in cramped
accommodation and it was not until 1902 that purpose built premises were opened
in Southampton Buildings off Chancery Lane - an impressive 'Galleria' style
structure by the architect Sir John Taylor. As with the Museum's library,
despite new premises, the Patent Office collections soon suffered severe
shortage of space.

The Second World War highlighted the need for a comprehensive scientific and
technological network in the UK, specifically for a national library of science
and technology. In the late 1940s and 50s there was considerable debate among
the Scientific Community whether the collections of the libraries of the British
Museum or the Patent Office should serve as the nucleus of this: the position
was resolved in 1959 when a Working Party on the issue recommended that the
proposed library should be based on the collections of both libraries and put
under the control of the Museum Trustees. The National Reference Library of
Science and Invention (as it was called) was set up in 1962, administratively as
part of the British Museum library.