London History

London tube, crossrail & accessibility

Another new London site is on the horizon. Well, it is actually not a new site, just a rebuild on something I have been passionate about for a long time. Access for all.

Some years back, I built a site about all of the London transport stations, in London, obviously; and with particular relevance to the accessability to the London tube network. This was about the same time that Channel 4 were running a series of reports on nogobritain, and I initially named the site nogobritain.com

What is also interesting is that I was never contacted by anybody who had the same interests, even though I clearly showed my levels of interest, perhaps I did not do a very good job in this – who knows.

As often happens, I eventually included this site into my pub history site, it’s very easy for me to do this, I have done it many times.

Anyway, back to the present. We now have Crossrail coming sometime in the next 12 months or so, after considerable problems in being ready on time. Exciting times for the London rail network.

I have revisited my accessible rail site, and re-branded it as nogolondon.com; and I am now finally starting to actually visit some of the stations, of which there are a lot, and linking into my other London sites about street directories (mostly historical) and pub history, etc etc.

The site remains a tribute to Andy. Andy is a family member, and also the Godfather to my eldest child, long past that stage. For this reason, although the site pages need a considerable update, I will make this site as interesting to the entire community who use the London rail network, with particular relevance to those with accessibilty issues.

Enjoy, and feel free to contact me with additional detail, pictures, etc.

pub history site audit

I thought as it was late at night, and after most of a bottle of wine, I thought I would take the plunge and see where there are about fifty thousand pages on my site.

I would like to reduce this number, and also I am unclear as to why so few people visit the site / s!

First, create a new site mapping of the site, this takes a few seconds.

find `pwd` > mall.txt
more mall.txt | wc -l

gives me 68613 – I think that is line numbers

Then look for those files which are shtml only

cat mall.txt | grep shtml > malls.txt
more malls.txt | wc -l

gives me 48060 – I think that is line numbers

I am now searching on this latter file only (with 48000 entries)

So, to find specific words in the file, this is just a test for various counties / partial words

more malls.txt | grep Berks | wc -l #2086

Surprisingly, I thought London would be a lot bigger, quite an eye opener with only 12500 entries!.

Crossrail & London

A simple post. I am about to start updating my posts on the London accessible rail travel site in London, and need pictures of the various rail stations in London, in fact, any of them

Thanks

Kevan

London history web sites & stuff

I have a number of web domains and I have just been moving some web pages about, a a bit like readjusting your document folders, well fairly similar.

I actually do this quite a lot, and sometimes lose track on what domain names / web sites I actually own and what they are for. so, here goes – a list on the 21st February 2019.

Main sites are :

pubshistory.com is my London & South East pub history site.

pubhistory.co.uk is a pub history site for the Midlands & North

pubshistory.co.uk – I don’t use this at present.

deadpubs.co.uk – a site about Southwark taverns etc

londontaverns.co.uk – a site about early coffee houses and taverns

pubsinUK.com – not sure what I use this for, not a lot.

london17.co.uk – this is now again my Accessible rail travel in London (nogobritain)

london18.co.uk – this is something to do with London rivers, mostly hidden

london19.com – My London street directory site

pubwiki.co.uk – a small useless pub wiki

pubpics.co.uk – probably drop this one

southernpub.co.uk – drop this one

I think this is all of them – several more.

1918armistice.co.uk – World war one stuff (originally two sites)

historyofsuffolk.co.uk – The Cosford database

essex1841.com – my tree and stuff

historyofstratford.co.uk – another one about to go

Now, I think that’s all of them

One more

londonpublichouse.com – currently a blog about london pubs, not a great one

pub history site audit

It’s one o’clock in the morning, and as is quite normal, I have been standing and staring, and thinking about how to proceed with my many history web sites.

Simple, I need an audit of what I currently have.

I know there re about fifty thousand web pages on my main pub history site. I know this from the sitemaps I produce, I just have little idea of what they refer to!

I have been building the pub history site /s for the past thirteen years, and this number excludes the midlands and northern pubs I list, although these are not any where as good as the London & south area for content.

I have just finished a major update for the St Pancras area of London, with many thanks to Ewan, who runs the pubology site about London pubs. I suggested this update would take me a month, but added it in about three days.

I am also waiting for a good book on creating a decent mobile responsive web site, i.e. mobile friendly. This is probably my main concern at present, and I want to have a go at doing it myself.

Tomorrow, I start an audit, and probably more files around between sites.

Here is a rather excellent pub history site, although i say it myself.

Cancellation of London history blog

I have just cancelled this blog. It stops in March 2019 sometime, as it is too expensive. It costs me £84 a year which is way above what it is worth. It seems quite simple to cancel, which is good.

But, it is a nice blog.

I do have my own web server on which I can write as many blogs as I like for the additional cost of a domain name, i.e. about £10 a year. Many of these new blogs are slowly being altered back to web sites, as I can write a complete web site on the same domain, often my preferred option.

I do have a considerable number of separate web sites which I could build quite easily. They are not necessarily good web sites, which is where I suffer. Most of my web sites do not look very good on a mobile platform, i.e. they are not web responsive.

That’s it really at present.

City of London parish pubs

If you are interested in early London, you will share my passion for being in London. Not in the modern, busy hustle, but imagining what the place was like before, a long time ago, but at the same time sharing in the city that calls itself London, and rarely sleeps.

I had a brief glimpse of this today, enjoying an afternoon tea near to the Tower of London. This was after having wandered along parts of Oxford street, and a coffee near to the new BBC building. It was also cold, to my mind, and therefore I was treated to a nice new coat, just an observation.

I spend large parts of my time wandering through London, and looking at a modern coffee house, or whatever it may now be, and imagining whether it was previously a pub, or some other old building. It doesn’t matter, as long as it is not a modern piece of architecture.

But, saying this, I marvel at some of the strange shapes forming Londons outline these days, including Gherkins, Shards etc. I am sure you know what I mean. Our entry to London was also on the lookout for the new Elizabeth Line trains. I did see one, but was unsure as to how this train continues on towards Heathrow, maybe a story for another time. Crossrail is amazing, and I am proud to see it happening.

Back to history, I spent large parts of the week working through the 1911 St Sepulchre All hallows census, just looking for pub entries, and updating the site appropriately. That’s what I do, boring as it may seem or look.

Here are many of my updates to the many City of London parish pubs, and I think I have managed to get them all in the correct parish. All in 1911, but all with lots more history added.