Stephen Wiltshire - 'Globe of London'

Week 10

Week 10

This week Edward and I met up in the library on Friday. Unfortunately Emma was ill therefore we had to meet up without her, and talk with each other over the internet instead.

London Trip

In our discussions we have decided that we will go to London at the beginning of the February reading week which starts on the 11th. During our trip we have decided that we should visit some department stores, such as Selfridge's or Liberty. Furthermore, we should also visit some parks and gardens in London. I think it would be good to visit a tea shop in London, as tea drinking is a part of Britain's cultural identity.
From research I have found that there is a Twinings tea room on the Strand which opened in 1706. There is also a museum charting the history of the Twining family and the objects used to make and serve tea. This may provide some useful information to support our research. It may also be useful to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where there is an hourly daily tour telling the history of the museum and the highlights of its collection. This will be of value because many Londoners will have visited the Victoria and Albert Museum for leisure and pleasure, so learning its history will help us.
It will also provide us with the opportunity to ask staff more about the history of people visiting the museum - the opportunity to actually go and ask people about the history of leisure and pleasure in London will be an invaluable one, as gaining information from an expert is much better than finding potentially incorrect or disputed information from less reliable sources on the internet.

Areas of research:

I would like to research further the idea of drinking tea in London, and also the development of department stores in London. I have discovered through research that there is a UK tea council. I would also like to further research the East India Company, and perhaps find some facts and figures about tea and coffee shops in London. I will also attempt to find some Primary resources on the areas I am researching, as this will aid our presentation.

Library books and articles:
While Edward and I were meeting in the library we decided to try and find some books that would be helpful for our individual research topics. Some books and articles which I think could be helpful are:

The Opening of Selfridge's Department Store - History Today March 2009
Innovation in non-food retailing in the early nineteenth century: The curious case of the bazaar - Business History October 2010
The Department Store: A Social History by Bill Lancaster (381.1410942 LAN)
LEISURE AND THE USE OF DOMESTIC SPACE IN GEORGIAN LONDON- article by Benjamin Heller



Useful Websites :
http://www.tea.co.uk/history-of-tea
http://www.tea.co.uk/tea-a-brief-history-of-the-nations-favourite-beverage
http://www.vam.ac.uk/



Tea in London Research: 

The first dated reference to tea in this country is from an advert in a London newspaper, Mercurius Politicus, from September 1658. It announced that 'China Drink, called by the Chinese, Tcha, by other Nations Tay alias Tee' was on sale at a coffee house in Sweeting's Rents in the City. The first coffee house had been established in London in 1652, and the terms of this advert suggest that tea was still somewhat unfamiliar to most readers, so it is fair to assume that the drink was still something of a curiosity. It was the marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza (in 1662)  that would prove to be a turning point in the history of tea in Britain. She was a Portuguese princess, and a tea addict, and it was her love of the drink that established tea as a fashionable beverage first at court, and then among the wealthy classes as a whole. Capitalising on this, the East India Company began to import tea into Britain, its first order being placed in 1664 - for 100lbs of China tea to be shipped from Java.

Some of my essay sources:
Porter: London: A Social History (Penguin Books 1996)
Sandbrook: White Heat: A History of britain in the Swinging Sixties (Little, Brown 2006)

Week 9

Today Bobby was ill, so at home I looked through the documents on parks and green spaces on Minerva. It was interesting to observe the development of the parks, and the gradual process of them opening to the public. It is also interesting to look at the change in function of the parks over time.

Week  8
Today we learnt how to reference our sources in our essays. This was extremely helpful as I am used to the Harvard referencing style, so I feel now that I know how to accurately reference in my work. I feel confident about forming my bibliography for my essay. I have been having problems finding sources for my essay and Bobby gave me advice on how to improve my searching skills - to use more specific terms when searching the library catalogue. This is something I am going to work on. Overall I feel that I learnt a few useful things during this weeks seminar.

week 7

This week we were instructed to find a source for our essay, I tried to find one for the essay on the 60's but had little luck, so decided to visit Bath City library in town, where I found a book with some information on London in the 60's. Hopefully this will be quite useful.  We also observed the perils of Gin drinking London, in comparison to a London which drinks beer. This was a very interesting exercise and was quite enjoyable.

Week 5 

This week we received our formative assessment results back.  The mark I received was a 1st. I am very pleased with this, as I worked hard to research for the assignment. This week I also finished reading Adrian Tinniswood's 'By Permission Of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London.' In the seminar Bobby gave us details on how to improve our essay writing style for university, I found this useful as writing an A level essay is very different to writing an essay for university, and I feel more confident now in my ability to write essays accurately.  I found this seminar very productive, as we also discussed our upcoming essays and planned them. This was helpful as it made it easier to choose which question to do, however I have had trouble finding an electronic source to help me with my essay. For this reason I may choose to work on another essay question.

Collaborative work: 

The other members of my group are Emma Hackett and Edward Hotham.
Their contact details are:
Edward: 07928959636
Emma:

Individual subject areas: 

We are researching the subject 'Leisure and Pleasure.' We discussed many elements of leisure and pleasure in London, and after researching around the topic I have decided to look into the custom of drinking tea, and the coffee shops of London, as I think this would have been a major part of leisure over the time period we are studying. I think it it would be interesting to research the emergence of the social custom of drinking tea, and the part London played in its popularity.

We also discussed the different types of leisure we could research, I think it would be interesting to research domestic leisure, what people did in their own homes in their free time, for example reading, listening to music or throwing dinner parties. However, we also must focus on the much broader topic of outdoor leisure activities, such as visiting London's pleasure gardens, the theatre or London Zoo. Within the group we also discussed that we will research the topic of games, but we will not place too much emphasis on this in our presentation as a previous group has done this. We discussed the ideas of drinking, gambling and prostitution in London being within the topic of leisure and pleasure, and that it may be worth mentioning these things in our seminar presentation, but we do not want to talk too much about them as they may be more related to the seminar on crime and punishment.

During our group meeting we noted that it would be particularly interesting to bring in knowledge we have gained through studying heritage into our presentation. Recently we have been learning about the formation of galleries and museums, and as this is within our time period we could use this work to help with our presentation, for example we have learnt about how the British Museum in London, established in 1753, became increasingly popular over time, with many visitors. The development of museums in London is certainly a topic we will focus on within our research.  Roy Porter's 'London: A Social History' has also given us inspiration about what to research, particularly in researching the pleasure gardens of London.

Original aims and objectives: 

We want to create both an engaging and interesting presentation. We also want our presentation to be very informative, and to make sure that the audience understands our topic. In order to do this we may need to plan a question and answer session, or a quiz on the presentation we have given. I think it is important that our seminar presentation does not go into too much detail, as often it can be quite hard to concentrate if a presentation is quite wordy. While our presentation should be extensive, there should not be too much the audience has to write down. We aim to create a seminar presentation that holds that audience's attention. Furthermore, hopefully our presentation will be for the correct amount of time, it is important for a presentation not to be too rushed or slow, as this can make it tedious.

Record of meetings: 

We held a meeting in the library on Thursday the 8th of November. After meeting up, I decided that my task would be to research drinking tea, furthermore Edward seemed to be interested in the gardens of London, so he may have chosen this as his research topic this week.

Contact list:

It may be helpful to contact the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. We certainly must also visit these places.

Problems: 

We had some problems trying to arrange a meeting this week as it is quite hard to find time when we are all free. Also, we had trouble deciding exactly when to go to London. We will have to discuss this issue in our further meetings. It may cause problems that Edward lives so far away from me and Emma, our first meeting was on campus in the library, however we may have to meet in a more suitable place next time so Edward does not have to travel so far. Logistical issues aside, we also encountered a few problems relating to the topic our seminar presentation is on. We had trouble when we were discussing what time period to focus on. We are unsure whether we should take a chronological approach to the leisure and pleasure activities we will discuss, or whether we should focus on one time period, for example leisure in the 19th century.  I feel it would be best to have an overview of leisure and pleasure in London over the whole time period we study, as it will enable us to observe changes in the way people spend their free time.

Reflection:

While a little disorganized, I feel our meeting this week was a success, as we covered the important task of deciding what to go away and begin researching.

Panorama of London in 1616 by Claes Van Visscher 

 

Wren's plan for London


Christopher Wren's incredibly detailed plan for London is beautiful, in terms of layout it is very practical. His use of vistas ensures that there is an element of beauty on every street, and in terms of practicality it is also effective, the street layout means that it would be easy to travel from one side of London to the other, which is both an improvement for trade access and for the everyday citizens of London, who would find it much easier to go about their every day business if London was structured this way. Although impractical in terms of the amount of time it would take to construct and how much money it would cost, it seems a shame Wren's plan was not put in practice.

Great Fire of London 1666