Westminster: where once trod the ancestors

This morning we caught the tube to Green Park and walked 'The Queen's Walk' - named after an 18th century queen (I forget which one) who often popped out of the palace for a Stuyvo there.  We pretty well had it to ourselves, so that was quite a bonus.  Buckingham Palace was just across the road.   The daffs are just starting to bloom in the front of this pic.  I imagine ER is back in the palace after her hospital sojourn and is no longer imbibing weak tea and flat lemonade after her nasty bout of gastro over the past week. 

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Who knew the poms had pelicans?  I certainly didn't. These are royal pelicans - they live in the gardens near the palace and were quite snooty and up themselves.

We then ventured into the Westminster backstreets, looking for 'Perkins Rents'.   It may surprise blog readers to learn that despite my aristocratic bearing and classic Plantagenet looks,  I am descended from a convict whore named Mary Ann Chandler and her thieving blaggard convict husband, James Hall.  They met and married in Sydney, where they had both been transported,  in the 1830s.

Mary Ann was originally from Reading in Berkshire but somehow ended up in Westminister working as a prostitute.  In 1831 at the age of 19, she was convicted of shaking down a punter called Francis Foy.  She fronted a beak at the Old Bailey on a charge of 'man-robbing' and despite her explanations as to how the entire contents of Mr Foy's pockets were found concealed in her stays, she was convicted and sentenced to seven years transportation.

Mary Ann took punters back to her lodgings in Perkins Rents. Charles Dickens described that area of backstreet Westminister as "Devil's Acre" - it was a squalid slum inhabited by the dregs of society.  In the 1860s all the slum housing was demolished, so this pic below is the exact spot where Mary Ann worked but the accommodation (which I assume is no longer brothels) is much more upmarket these days.

 

We were quite surprised that Perkins Rents was only about a five minute walk from Westminster Abbey.  What a magnificent building! Even though we are cheapskates and have whinged about paying exorbitant amounts to enter public buildings, we let our hair down and forked out 18 pounds to do a tour of the Abbey.  It was money very well-spent and I'm so glad we did it.  Fortunately tours are self-guided with a phone thingy, and the dulcet tones of Jeremy Irons took us through all the main areas.  It was quite something to be standing at the graves of Edward the Confessor, Henry VII, Elizabeth 1, Mary Queen of Scots and many other royal luminaries. And the sublime architecture! Simply breathtaking.

 

Next, we wandered over to the Houses of Parliament, and actually managed to see both the House of Commons and House of Lords in session from the public gallery. Question Time in the House is by invitation only (decreed by that warmonger Tony Blair during his tenure as PM), but we did see QT in the House of Lords.  There were only 2 men and a dog sitting in the House of Commons as QT was over, but one of the few pollies we did see and recognise was the former actor, Glenda Jackson. 

       It's now 5.30pm and we are about to eat our dinner before donning our finery for our outing to Leicester Square to see The Mousetrap this evening.  Ah... London.  I love it!  Wish all the tourists would piss off though. ;-)