Thursday, March 5, 2009

Help with mystery buildings?

I'm sorting through my hundreds of London photos, which is a really, really, fun "job." And I'm having pretty good luck—by using my London map, my bus map, the internet and clues from within the pictures themselves—identifying even the generic street scenes as to locations. Not only is this a very enjoyable activity, but I want to pursue due diligence in making the eventual captions that will describe the photos as accurate as possible.

Which brings me to a few mystery buildings that have cropped up so far (I'm only a little over 1/3 of the way through, so there will probably be more questions to come.) If anyone's still reading this blog and can help me with identifications and/or locations for these structures, I'd really appreciate it.

I'll show you what's probably the easiest one first. This is the very attractive building on your right as you face the entrance to Westminster Abbey. Google Maps calls it the Dean's Yard, and that might be right, but my son and I both remember something about its being some sort of ecclesiastical housing. Does it have a different name? The Abbey brochure (and the website, as far as I could tell) doesn't tell you what it is.

Now for one that's a little harder. I think it might be in or near Whitehall. In my sequence of photos, it was in between one taken on the Jubilee footbridge and one of the Admiralty Arch. Any ideas? Bonus kudos for id'ing the green-roofed building in the background.

These last two might be pretty tough. I don't have a memory of where these were taken, and their place in that day's sequence doesn't help much. They were taken one after the other, after one showing the steeple of the Royal Courts of Justice framed in trees, which might have been taken on the Victoria Embankment looking up a side street (I know we weren't actually on the Strand; the Courts steeple shot is from a distance.)

Unfortunately, I don't know if these pictures were taken from near the river, too, or from the bus ride home (although they don't look like through the window shots) or from somewhere near my flat (in Chelsea). The first one doesn't look like Chelsea to me, though. Do they look familiar to anyone?



Thanks for any help y'all can give me!

7 comments:

TBM said...

Yikes--I'm stumped! Want me to twitter this post?

Kathy Amen said...

That would be great! I need all the help I can get!

Fantastic Forrest said...

I can offer no help, but big compliments! Nice shots, Kathy! Makes me want to jump on a plane.

Kathy Amen said...

I hear flights to Europe are really cheap--I'm tempted, too!

Iota said...

I think the first one could be the entrance to a building to the side of Westminster Abbey, called Church House. It's a building used by the Church of England for meetings - I'm not too sure of all the history of it. To get to it, you go through an archway right next to the West door of Westminster Abbey, (which I think is called Dean's Yard, but I might be wrong).

We had our wedding reception there in 1996.

Iota said...

I think the last photo could be the spire of St Martin's in the Fields church in Trafalgar Square. The second one could be a view of the National Gallery or National Portrait Gallery, taken from the east side (Ie the St Martin's in the Fields side). The third one looks like it could be Trafalgar Square too. That would fit in with the walk to Admiralty Arch.

Kathy Amen said...

Thanks, Iota, "Church House" sounds very familiar. What frustrated me about that one is that I remembered it was called something that I couldn't find on any maps. I think that's it. What a fabulous place for a wedding reception!

I'm pretty sure the last one isn't St. Martins, given where it fit into the sequence of photos taken that day, but I'll go back and check as that would be embarrassing to miss such an easy ID. Thanks for your input!