2025: To date, 40 monarchs had been crowned in the abbey since 1066. The first one would have been William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, after overpowering the English army under King Harold Godwinson. This historical skirmish became known as the Battle of Hastings. The coronation was held on Christmas Day 1066.
The abbey is known as a Royal Peculiar, it is independent from any archbishop or bishops’ authority. It is directly under the jurisdiction of the Sovereign, who is the Defender of the Faith.
To Date, there have been 14 Royal Weddings which included, The Queen marrying Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh) in 1947. The most recent was Prince William to the then Catherine Middleton in April 2011.
Some Famous People buried in the abbey:
Sir Isaac Newton
Robert and Elizabeth Browning
Ernest Rutherford
Joseph Addison
Clement Attlee
Sir Robert Moray
Charles Dickens
George Frederic Handel
David Livingstone
William James
Thomas Telford, the founder and first president of Institute of Civil Engineers.
Laurence Olivier
Stephen Hawking
A commemorative marker with the Dirac Equation was finally allowed in the Abbey after a five-year persuasion to the Dean that Paul Dirac was not an anti-Christ.🤣
The above beautiful shining solid sliver abstract fine silver work which is an exhibit, rather caught my eye. The silver smith craftsman made five and from what I learned cost £72,000.00 each. If I were a multi millionaire+. I think I would indulge myself 🙂
The Maker’s diagonally stamped Hallmark can just be seen near the top.
This is just one of many wonderful silver work exhibits many dating back hundreds of years, in the ‘Silver Speaks’ exhibition, held in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The V&A is well worth a visit if you can when in London.
The Blind Beggar Pub is a famous East End Pub in Whitechapel, East London. Sadly many pubs are closing in London and England because of taxes and the fact that most people now prefer tp buy cheaper
Sadly many pubs are closing in London and England because of taxes and the fact that most people now prefer to buy cheaper alcoholic drinks in supermarkets and cut-price shops to drink at home. These closed pubs end up being demolished or converted by property developers into apartments and flats. Such is the building boom in London that houses & former commercial property are now being turned into apartments to make a quick profit on sale or rental. We have lost three local pubs each over 100 years old to such in the last few years.
These closed pubs end up being demolished or converted by property developers into apartments and flats. Such is the building boom in London that houses & former commercial property are now being turned into apartments to make a quick profit on sale or rental. We have lost three local pubs, each over 100 years old, to such in the last few years.
Numerous history and convivial social meeting places are now disappearing from the London landscape and culture.
The Blind Beggar was built in 1894 on the site of an Inn dating from 1654.
Notable events in its history include where William Booth preached his first open air sermon then forming a Mission that led to the founding of The Salvation Army.
The first modern Brown Ale ( my first beer when a teenager) was brewed and sold in the pub which was then part of Manns brewery.
The pub’s name is linked to a popular legend concerning a local connection with a knight, who was the son of the famous Simon de Montfort , an Earl, who rebelled against King Henry III in the 13th century.
His son Henry de Montfort, lived in a grand manor house in the area. One story of the legend is that de Montfort was wounded and blinded at the Battle of Evesham and was left wandering and with no memory. He became a beggar. He was found by a nobleman’s daughter, who married him. Their child, Besse, could not find a husband as her father had no status, as he was the blind beggar of Bethnal Green. At that time, a woman needed a sizeable dowry to be able to marry a suitable husband. Marriage was a way of bringing wealth and prestige to a union of families.high-classNoblemen,
Noblemen, merchants, and knights courted her but when they found out that there was no dowry they all left, except for a lone Knight, who was not concerned about a dowry and loved Besse as she was; as herself.
This union was blessed when Besse’s father revealed that far from being the poor beggar, he was a rich nobleman and so rewarded the Knight. As Shakespeare would have said: “All’s well that ends well” 🙂
Now, what captured my imagination to the Blind Beggar many years ago, is my interest in major historical crime cases of London.
In March 1966, a murder took place in the Blind Beggar, which later became part of London crime legend.
Ronnie Kray, the twin brother of Reggie, the notorious, infamous and any other ..’ous’! Kray Twins walked into the pub and calmly took out a pistol and shot and killed another criminal, George Cornell, in front of a few witnesses.
The Kray Twins (Reggie & Ronnie (front)
Ronnie Kray had a long-standing score to settle with Cornell, who was apparently as ruthless as the Krays, but who was nowhere in their league.
Such was Krays power & influence in the 1960s London’s criminal underworld, many involved kept quiet about the Twins activities for years before they were arrested and sentenced to 25-30 years in prison.
There have been many books about the Krays & by the Krays too, which are interesting to read, if one is interested in major crimes.
Two movies have been made about the Krays too.
They are truly legends in the criminal history of London.
It appears from current on-line reviews that the Blind Beggar today is a shadow of its former standing as a popular east end pub.
I hope the pub remains as a pub for many years to come as London cannot keep affording to lose such culturally important pubs.
Peter had been wanting jellied eel – made to a traditional East-end recipe, for ages.
On his birthday, just before Christmas last year, he had his wish granted at Manze’s pie and mash & eel shop (known as shops as opposed to being called a restaurant or cafe). The shop is adjacent to the Chapel Market in Islington North London.
We visit Chapel Market around Christmas time every year for our fresh vegetables, meat etc., for the festive family meals.
Anyway, it was rather lucky that Manze had not run out of the eel delicacy yet when Peter enquired as usually eels are off the menu by lunchtime!
Jellied eels are served as a side dish to pie & mash.
The traditional pie is normally made of suet based pastry pie containing minced beef. The mash is mashed potato.
The delicious green tinged liquor served as a gravy with pie & mash was traditionally made using the water kept from the preparation of the stewed eels, but nowadays mainly from the parsley used with cooking of the jellied eels.
Peter said he enjoyed the jellied eel but I am not too sure as I think I saw his face turned rather green at some point. 🙂
When I was still a little girl, eels were quite a delicacy in our province in the Philippines. It was fun trying to catch them because they were so slippery; it was almost impossible to catch them without a net. The eels used to live in dykes around our ricefield.
photo from www.rainwaterharvesting.org
The dykes were so clean, that you can drink from them if you are desperately thirsty but we used to go up further afield to the waterfall, which sourced our farm.
With a feat of engineering, my father was able to harness the water directly from the waterfall using a course of bamboos which carried the water not only into the field but to my mother’s huge water clay jars as well, giving us fresh, cool drinking water. The taste was definitely better than any bottled mineral water that are on sale nowadays.
Anyway, I digress! When we caught enough eels after much screaming and hilarity, my mother would salt them liberally to remove the slime and then she would cook it with sprouts from vines (not sure of the name of the plant, will find out) growing near our farmhouse which give a very sour taste; perfectly delicious.
Eel is delicious eaten hot but I am not too sure about cold jellied eel. I couldn’t really comment too much because I turned down Peter’s generosity to taste his eel meal. 🙂
Anyway, he said it was good and that is good enough for me.
If you happen to come across some eel to cook here is the recipe for the jellied eel.
INGREDIENTS:
900g eel
1/2tsp Grated nutmeg
Juice and zest from a lemon
handful of fresh herbs such as parley, thyme an coriander, chopped finely
Fish stock – 600 ml (1 pint)
1 small onion, chopped finely
1 small carrot, chopped finely
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
Bouquet garni
15g Gelatine
Method of Preparation:
1. Skin and bone the eels but do not cut them up. Lay them on the table, skin side down and sprinkle with grated nutmeg, a little grated lemon zest and the chopped herbs.
2. Cut the fish into pieces about 4 inches long. Roll up each piece and tie with strong cotton or fine string. Put the stock, vegetables and bouquet garni into a saucepan and bring to he boil. Add the eels and simmer very gently until tender, for about an hour.
3. Lift out the fish take off the cotton or string and place the eels in a basin. Measure the stock and make up to 450 ml (* pint) with water.
4. Add the gelatine to the lemon juice to dissolve the gelatine, then add this to the hot stock. Stir until completely dissolved. Strain this over the fish and leave to set.
5. Turn out when cold and serve with a green salad and sliced gherkins.
Peter and I went to this very reasonably priced Chinese restaurant called Tao in Golders Green, Northwest London. It is a buffet kind of restaurant where you choose vegetarian or/and meat dishes. It used to be a vegetarian place only but in the last couple of years, it started to serve meat as well.
The food is good but some takes getting used to like the tofu with cabbage soup. At first we were not sure as it tasted like boiled socks. (LOL, I am not really sure how boiled socks would taste as never tried boiling any before, hehehe) Well actually it smelt like socks. We only tried a few dainty sips of the soup and gave up. Food smell does make food tastes better or not.
Two days ago, we went back to the restaurant as I was positively starving and couldn’t resist the appealing array of dishes visible on the restaurant front window. So rather gingerly got a bowl of the soup. They seemed to have varied their food preparation as the soup is not too bad, It lost the boiled sock taste and smell but rather quite delicious and just set you up for a feast of vegetarian and meaty dishes.
I really loved it and so below is an easy recipe, which anyone can try at home.
Tofu & Cabbage Soup, iphone photo by JMorton
Tofu & Cabbage Soup
Ingredients
½ pound soft tofu
1 half head of Chinese cabbage
1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 tsp sesame oil
1 inch ginger, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced finely
1 tsp cooking wine
1 tsp salt
a few shake of freshly ground black pepper
4 cups water
Method of preparation:
Cut the soft tofu into cubes.
Wash and chop theChinese cabbages
Prepare a pan with water and ginger. Heat the water to boiling with high fire and then put tofu cubes in. Continue cooking for a couple of minutes.
Add chopped Chinese cabbages to cook until soft.
Season with salt and pepper.
Pour into a large bowl and finally add some sesame oil to serve.
If you are really partial to meat, add sliced fried pork into the boiling water and proceed with the recipe above.
~Enjoy!
Did you know?
Superstition: There is an American superstition which believes that a salty soup means the cook is in love.
