Last May, partly as a birthday present to myself, I spent a week in Athens. It was my first trip abroad since 2018 and I had a fabulous time with everything going well (aside from almost missing my connecting flight home due to delays with my first flight). My reason for picking Athens was of course the Parthenon which was absolutely worth the trip but as you’ll see in future posts there’s plenty of other sites to enjoy across the city.
This post goes through all the random statues, streets and buildings that don’t quite amount to enough for their own posts. To start with, we have this statue of the world’s only consulting detective. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh. That building is no longer there but nearby to where it stood is this quite nicely done statue of his creation. The statue was sculpted by Gerald Ogilvie Laing and was moved to its new home on the traffic island here in 2023 after being taken from its original position for renovation.
At the entrance to Paddington Station at the corner of Eastbourne Terrace and Praed Street can be found this lovely bronze sculpture called The Wild Table of Love. It’s the creation of British and Australian artists Gillie and Marc. It’s a very well detailed sculpture intended to provoke thoughts of unity and protection of the ecosystem.
Earlier today I went into Nottingham city centre to take photos of this recently unveiled sculpture in The Green Heart, Nottingham’s newest green space near the Central Library and on the way up from the train station. The statue represents a white lace worker and a black enslaved woman greeting each other. As someone from a long line of men and women who worked in the Nottingham lace trade from working in factories to designing lace patterns the fact that none of their work would have been possible without the cotton supplied by enslaved people has never been lost on me but it’s not something that gets highlighted as much as it should and this sculpture goes some way to rectifying that as well as emphasising the contributions made by women to the economy and society in general.
Last October’s trip to London got off to a rocky start when my hotel cancelled on me less than 12 hours before check in. Although I was offered an alternative it wasn’t in a particularly convenient location for what I had planned so I ended up doing some pretty intensive searching myself that lead me to a hotel offering a last minute deal near Hyde Park and Paddington Train Station. This was quite handy as it allowed me to finally visit the Paddington statue at the station and, as I was to discover, another temporary Paddington statue in the area.
On my most recent visit to London I did a fair bit of walking around neighbourhoods I hadn’t spent much time in before. This lead to me taking photographs of two sculptures that turned out to be by the same sculptor. Allan Sly is an English sculptor and senior lecturer at Wimbledon College of Arts. The first sculpture I came across also happened to be one of his earliest public artworks. Located just outside Edgware Road Tube Station The Window Cleaner was installed in 1990 – he’s staring up at the tall Capital House building which has a lot of windows, and wondering how he’s going to manage them with his small ladder.
Home to the devolved Scottish Parliament, the building was formally opened by Elizabeth II in 2004 after building commenced in 1999. It’s been a controversial building since the very start – I can remember the seemingly endless pieces about it in the news at the time – everything from the location, architect and most significantly the design was a hot topic of debate. It was over three years late and estimated to cost a truly staggering £414 million, just a bit out from its £10-40 million estimate! You can go on free tours of the building, the work of government permitting, but I just paid a flying visit here on my way back up the Royal Mile from visiting Holyrood Palace.
Located next to the Church of the Holy Rude, Cowane’s Hospital is a 17th centruy almshouse. It’s named for John Cowane, a businessman who left money for its establishment in 1637. The money he left was to allow for twelve elderly members of the Merchant Guildry of Stirling to live rent free in their old age.
Holyrood Abbey is the ruins of an abbey founded in 1128 by David I and can only be accessed on a visit to the Palace of Holyroodhouse next door.
Holyrood Palace, as it is more colloquially known, is the King’s official residence in Edinburgh. What this means from a practical standpoint is that photography isn’t allowed inside which is a shame because there are some beautiful rooms and items on display. Adult tickets cost £20 in advance, £22 on the day and gives you access to the 12th century abbey (that will feature in its own post), the palace gardens, the palace itself including the state apartments and what I found to be an excellent multimedia/audio guide.
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