I worked for ten years as a tour guide, driving sight-seers around London in a fleet of classic Mini Coopers. The basic idea was to recreate The Italian Job, by sneaking down back alleys and doing cheeky manoeuvres. Zipping down Lower Robert Street, giving my passengers an unexpected white knuckle ride under a building, was PERFECT for this, and was always my favourite part of the tour!
Many many moons ago as a homeless teen I slept in Lower Robert Street whilst waiting to be helped by "The Connection" and Centrepoint. It was relatively dry, and relatively protected and "warm" thanks to the vents from buildings as that year London had snow....
Interesting insight.... I wonder whether the night time closure is due to their 'fear' of homeless people seeking shelter there or the protective, paranoid nature of the businesses with service access in the street (or a combination of both). Either way a night time closure specifically for Lower Robert St contradicts the concept of a public road. Lots of tents under the covered part of Adelphi Terrace above it and it's jarring to see so many people surviving under the shadow of some of the wealthiest land in the world.. The constant contradiction of wealth and poverty isn't unique to London but it's an issue which has become far more visible in recent years. I've heard that those vents are life savers. A sorry situation for one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. I wish you well!
I work in The Adelphi and going through Lower Robert Street after a fire evacuation drill saves me having to wait half an hour to get a lift from the main lobby. Also, The Adelphi is the London HQ for Spotify, Condé Nast, The Economist and other well known companies.
One of my favourite ways to spend a day off is to 'lose myself' in London. I never cease to be amazed at the hidden gems that can be found just by strolling around off the beaten track. So many little passages to explore....
That's the best thing to do just about anywhere...within reason...when traveling. Wander off to the places the tourists never see. which almost always turn out to be more interesting than the tourist traps.
This is similar to Chicago! Chicago has some double-decked and a few triple-decked streets downtown immediately north and south of the Main Branch and immediately east of the South Branch of the Chicago River. The multilevel configuration in Chicago arose from geography and traffic patterns in the Loop. The Loop is a neighborhood named after the elevated tracks above it for Chicago's L system, and the tracks were built by you guessed it...Charles Tyson Yerkes. In most other parts of the rest of the city near the Chicago River, only major streets crossed the river. However, most downtown streets crossed the river, and all of these crossings were bascule bridges, which required height clearances at the approaches to and over the river. Clearances were further necessitated due to the presence of many existing railroad tracks along the river (as in the west bank of the south branch) and tracks that ended at the river (like tracks ending at Randolph Street). Thus, a clearance zone was created along the river at locations that contained many closely spaced crossings. Many double-decked or triple-decked streets were created because they fell within this clearance zone. This also created an anomaly not only in the layout and uses of streets, but also planning of buildings. Generally, the upper levels of the multi-level streets usually serve local traffic. The primary entrances of buildings are usually located on this level. The lower levels generally serve through-traffic and trucks serving businesses along the roads. This level houses the receiving/shipping entrances to the buildings on these streets. As a result, loading docks at street level are noticeably absent. There's also the McCormick Place Busway which opened in 2002 and runs for 4 km from Lower Randolph between Michigan and Columbus in downtown to the center. It uses the lower levels of the multilevel streets near downtown, and surfaces to follow the Metra Electric District right-of-way to outside the South Building of McCormick Place. It is meant to provide a true and unencumbered expressway for visitors to move between downtown hotels and the convention center, but is also used by buses for Soldier Field events, public safety workers, Metra, convention contractors, and Art Institute deliveries, along with providing a secure route for national and international government officials to utilize between the two points. Chicago also has the Chicago Pedway, a network of pedestrian tunnels, ground-level concourses and bridges connecting skyscrapers, retail stores, hotels, and train stations throughout the central business district
"Oi! You! Hazzard! Diocletian here! You pronounced my name wrong! Git it sorr-tid or you'll git a slap! Geeeeez-a!" (Ed: it is a little known fact that Diocletian was actually born within the sound of Bow Bells - and REALLY hated the hoi polloi getting his name wrong)!
That "decent wine bar" you mentioned at the end is actually called Gordon's and as a group of friends we've being going there on the 1st Wednesday of each month since about 1977, at least until the Covid lock-downs happened. We had a tradition that as couples started their families they'd bring along their new baby to the 1st Gordon's after their birth. Great fun ! 😎
Many years ago there was a bicycle shop on Lower Roberts Street which is how I first found it. Also used it many times as a motorist to cut from Embankment to Strand as it was much quicker than going via Trafalgar Square.
The bike shop was Bike UK, my first job! 😁 Spent a year in that tunnel😱, we were always busy though and had access to the brilliant cafes and sandwich bars by the station. One of my older, not wiser, colleagues used to test the brakes on newly built up bikes by sprinting from the river end straight at the brick wall… They,mostly, worked😂
@@DavidKnowles0 😁 Sorely tempted, but the results would have been catastrophic😱 In the end I didn’t have to, he ran out of talent (and luck) on his own! 🚑😬🦷🤣
Did you know Bob Dylan filmed 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' in which he has the lyrics on a series of large cards was filmed further along the embankment in an scruffy alley at the side of the Savoy hotel.
It’s called Savoy Steps and is near the rear of the Savoy Hotel. Turn around and you’ll be facing the rear of a building called Savoy Place which is home to the Institute of Electrical Engineers. They moved there in 1909 and the architect in charge of the alterations that took place was one Charles Holden. Can’t think where I’ve come across his name before 🤔 The fledgling BBC rented space there when they first formed and before moving to nearby Bush House.
"buying cheese at my favourite cheese shop" Cheese is love, cheese is life! Here are some cheese facts: The word cheese comes from Latin caseus (where the Spanish queso, Portuguese queijo, and Romanian caș come from) from which the modern word casein is also derived. When the Romans began to make hard cheeses for their legionaries' supplies, a new word started to be used: formaticum, from caseus formatus, or "molded cheese" (as in "formed"). It is from this word that the French fromage, standard Italian formaggio, Catalan formatge, Breton fourmaj, and Occitan fromatge (or formatge) are derived. The earliest evidence of cheesemaking in the archaeological record dates back to 5500 BCE and is found in what is now Kuyavia, Poland, where strainers coated with milk-fat molecules have been found. The earliest evidence of cheesemaking in the Mediterranean dates back to 5200 BCE, on the coast of the Dalmatia region of Croatia. The earliest proposed dates for the origin of cheesemaking range from around 8000 BCE, when sheep were first domesticated. Because animal skins and inflated internal organs have provided storage vessels for a range of foodstuffs since ancient times, it is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach In 2021, world production of cheese from whole cow milk was 22.2 million tonnes, with the United States accounting for 28% of the total, followed by Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands as secondary producers. In the US, Wisconsin has a long tradition and history of cheese production. Wisconsin's cheesemaking tradition dates back to the 19th century. European immigrants who settled in Wisconsin were drawn to its fertile fields. Soon, dairy farms sprang up around Wisconsin, and farmers began producing cheese to preserve excess milk. In 1841, Anne Pickett established Wisconsin's first commercial cheese factory, using milk from neighbors' cows. A century later, Wisconsin was home to more than 1,500 cheese factories, which produced more than 500 million pounds of cheese per year. In 2010, Wisconsin's cheese production rose to 2.6 billion pounds (requiring the state cheese industry to import a substantial amount of milk from other states to meet production needs). In 2014, Wisconsin produced 2.9 billion pounds of cheese, accounting for 25.4% of all cheese produced in the US
I am here by the blessing of the RU-vid algorithm. I subscribed purely because your narration is top notch. I look forward to hearing more stories from you. With love, from Western USA
I used to deliver letters there when i was a postman in the 1980s. I seem to remember an old fella who appeared to reside / work in a caged entrance in the wall??? I think his name was 'Old Bob'? I know sometimes when it rained heavily i would stand and chat to him as we watched the water flow past like a stream
Greek speaker here: Αδέλφοι (Adélfi) does indeed mean Brothers, but it is not pronounced Adelfoi. Οι is a diagraph in Greek, meaning it is considered one sound, like ch in English. Οι transliterates to I, or somewhere abouts. Good pronunciation, though.
I've always wondered how that can be proven, given that there are no audio recordings of ancient Greek. Regardless, the οι digraph isn't one that has changed at far as I know. Unlike β which is a v sound or δ which is like a soft th. To do a b or d, modern greek uses two letters: μπ (mp) and ντ (nt).
@@frankhooper7871 good for you been prepared to be corrected. Let's go .... The two English brothers lived in 19th century, the commentator lives in 21st, and the writing of the establishment as is clearly shown in some underground black parking fences is "ADELPHI" @ 2:19 So the mental inability of all English speakers to pronounce "I" in most cases like "i" in "incognito" or "inability" and instead as "I" in "I am" has nothing to do with the Greeks or their pronunciations. It's a totally English (and American) distortion, having to do with their brains. You don't believe me ? Go found a native Spanish speaker. Preferably of Caribbean or Mexican origin, but Spaniards or Argentinians will do also. Give them five words starting with "S" and tell them to pronounce them. Their mental capacity cannot handle it. They will add an "E" sound in the front. So if you give them "STUPID" they will say "ESTUPIDO" Same goes with Slavs pronouncing "th" in "therapy" or "th" in "the" They simply cannot pronounce it. They will say "FERAPY" and "DE" Simple facts. I'm proud to be a native Greek speaker myself. But we Greeks have same inability to pronounce many sounds of other languages. Like oʻòóôõøōŏőœọ èéêëēėęěĕəɛ ìíîïīı and àáâãäåāăą or сш, щч and зж So blame each language's mental incapacity to pronounce sounds of other humans and stop serving the same excuse of "ancient Greek pronunciation and phonology" Nothing is closer to ancient Greek, than the people who never moved away, never stopped negotiating in the markets, talking politics in coffee shops, singing in weddings and mourning in funerals. I don't want to make you fell bad. Only to make you understand how vast the phonology of languages is across the World, amongst humans, and the simple fact that some of us are compatible to pronounce a foreign sound, and some are not. At least not with a hell of a practice. That's why I included myself in the examples. And neither you or me can pronounce some african languages witch use the "click" of the tongue in the back of the mouth as natural sounds of every day talk. So. What I suggest? When a Greek tries to teach an English that Adelfoi pronounce Adelfi, an English tries to teach a Spaniard, that stomach is not pronounced estomach, a Spaniard tries to teach a Russian that Zaragoza is not pronounced FARAGOSA, and Kenyans teach all of us how to click our tongues, then trust the native talking to you ! Not your brain !
@@frankhooper7871@frankhooper7871 @frankhooper7871 good for you been prepared to be corrected. Let's go .... The two English brothers lived in 19th century, the commentator lives in 21st, and the writing of the establishment as is clearly shown in some underground black parking fences is "ADELPHI" @ 2:19 So the mental inability of all English speakers to pronounce "I" in most cases like "i" in "incognito" or "inability" and instead as "I" in "I am" has nothing to do with the Greeks or their pronunciations. It's a totally English (and American) distortion, having to do with their brains. You don't believe me ? Go found a native Spanish speaker. Preferably of Caribbean or Mexican origin, but Spaniards or Argentinians will do also. Give them five words starting with "S" and tell them to pronounce them. Their mental capacity cannot handle it. They will add an "E" sound in the front. So if you give them "STUPID" they will say "ESTUPIDO" Same goes with Slavs pronouncing "th" in "therapy" or "th" in "the" They simply cannot pronounce it. They will say "FERAPY" and "DE" Simple facts. I'm proud to be a native Greek speaker myself. But we Greeks have same inability to pronounce many sounds of other languages. Like oʻòóôõøōŏőœọ èéêëēėęěĕəɛ ìíîïīı and àáâãäåāăą or сш, щч and зж So blame each language's mental incapacity to pronounce sounds of other humans and stop serving the same excuse of "ancient Greek pronunciation and phonology" Nothing is closer to ancient Greek, than the people who never moved away, never stopped negotiating in the markets, talking politics in coffee shops, singing in weddings and mourning in funerals. I don't want to make you fell bad. Only to make you understand how vast the phonology of languages is across the World, amongst humans, and the simple fact that some of us are compatible to pronounce a foreign sound, and some are not. At least not with a hell of a practice. That's why I included myself in the examples. And neither you or me can pronounce some african languages witch use the "click" of the tongue in the back of the mouth as natural sounds of every day talk. So. What I suggest? When a Greek tries to teach an English that Adelfoi pronounce Adelfi, an English tries to teach a Spaniard, that stomach is not pronounced estomach, a Spaniard tries to teach a Russian that Zaragoza is not pronounced FARAGOSA, and Kenyans teach all of us how to click our tongues, then trust the native talking to you ! Not your brain !
Just for any American watching everyone in Southern England has their favourite cheese shop and Friday is known as cheese day, where you go to the most delightful local vender of coagulated milk, to sample their finest selection of cheeses on tiny slices of Welsh rarebit, while listening to The Planets by Holst. A typical conversation in a Southern cheese shop may go: Jolly Chap: Good vender of cheese how has the milking been this fine morning. Youth: oh Aye, Sir, been 'right good recently I wager Jolly Chap: this cheese is magnificent, here is a penny for your trouble young fellow Youth: oh thank you sir, me' ma' and 14 siblings, will be able to afford to eat tonight, I'll buy them a slap up microwave dinner from Tesco
Thank you for spreading the word about this noble tradition. Am about to stab the non-recyclable lid on the heritage ready meal before settling down in front of a roaring microwave, to google heritage cheese pictures while waiting to serve up a fitting repast to all my rickety urchin siblings here in Blighty. Living the dream!
Yes, in England one oft must curtail one's Walpoling activities, sally forth, and infiltrated ya place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
@@JM-bg1it - Ensuring, of course, that the copy of 'Rogue Herries' you were reading before you came over all esurient, was replaced in it's correct place on the shelf in the Thurmond Street Library.
Of all the places I’ve visited, I think only Berlin comes remotely close to London in just oozing with history around every little corner. Just because London already was a huge city even by modern standards back in the 1800s there’s just so incredibly much to explore.
I've drove down here a couple of times with a couple of people when parked on those streets(for work dont worry) because it always makes them think wtf when you enter and I feel James Bondy lol
So, Jago suddenly came over all peckish, thought a little fermented curd would do the trick and infiltrated ... a cheese shop near Seven Dials. Hope they had some. 😅
4:20 - I think we can be confident that it was a civil servant who thought "End of British Summer Time to 15 February" was a good way of specifiying a date range.
The list is so long it goes on to a second column! "1 March to commencement of British Summer Time ... 1 April to 15 April ... 16 April to 30 April ..." A bureaucrat's way saying "until it gets dark" 🤧
that's such an absurd way of writing that sign. In Denmark they write something like "open 8 to 20 or sunrise to sunset, whichever comes first", but since only a few of our historical gardens ever close, typically it translates to "if the gate's locked, the park is closed"
@@thesteelrodent1796 That is definitely the reason, but then there is the debate on which sunset/sunrise you should use. And the closing time would change every day, quite annoying.
Amazingly, in my very limited London experience, I actually been here, after a mandatory visit to 10 Adams street we ended up here. (Are we allowed to be here? Well, it says 'street', so we use it as such!) I remember that at the base of the Adelphi, next to Victoria embankment, there was a homeless encampment. So some things never change...
I used to drive through a lot back in the Eighties whenever it was my turn to drive the lads up the West End. It always made me laugh as they thought I was driving down a dead end, only to turn at the last minute into the tunnel and come out on the Strand.😂
I was visiting London for Pride and took a drink at the Retro Bar. Upon leaving, we passed Lower Robert Street, and I wondered where it went/what it was for as it seemed to be a road in a building. Now I know. Thank you!
if the street is a public highway, as opposed to being part of a private property, it's quite likely that 10 mph speed limit sign at 2:25 is legally unenforcable the only permitted standard variants of the speed limit sign are 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 - anything else has to be authorised by central government on an individual basis
That's a whole can of worms, because even a private road that is open to the public is considered a public highway. A legal change made necessary by car cruising events.
The ground where the Adelphi terrace was built was granted to the Adam brothers and several others by the Thames Embankment Act 1771, and the cellars were sold in 1936 when the Adelphi was demolished, so I'm pretty that this is still private property with a public way passing through. The cellars themselves weren't gated off as a car park until ~1980 so the speed limit may have been obtained around that time.
Wow, all that from buying cheese. It's amazing what inspires historical research. I'd hate to drive through that tunnel, but I wouldn't mind walking. Maybe I'll visit if I'm ever in London.
One Strand thing you could find out if you can because the American "we flew first" brigade have been very efficient at erasing events that might upset that viewpoint, is in Victorian times a French inventor flew by remote control a monoplane down the length of the Strand to the wows of the folks lining the street, dunno why this particular event upsets the Wrights did everything camp as it wasn't manned but it did highlight a monoplane as opposed to a manyplane and apparently it flew extremely well something that could not be said about the Wright's maiden voyages which were notably lurching and short.
I feel we should know. What is your favourite cheese, from your favourite cheese shop? Venezuelan beaver cheese? Gruyere? Emmental? Danish blue? Cheshire? Dorset blue vinney? Brie, Roquefort, Pont-l'Évêque, Port Salut, Savoyard, Saint-Paulin, Carre-de-L'Est, Boursin, Bresse-Bleu, Perle de Champagne? Red Windsor? How about Cheddar?
Being pedantic, nay correct, is perfectly acceptable. After all, we don’t say The Whitehall, or The Piccadilly. Laziness among some bloggers can see the reference to The Strand. Mind you, Simpsons in the Strand, and a well known music hall song, don’t help matters.
Why would you say "the Picadilly"? There are not lots of picadillies, of which just one is called _the_ Picadilly, while there _are_ lots of strands, of which just one is _the_ Strand. "Picadilly" and "the Strand" obey the rule of English Grammar that referring to just one of a set of things covered by a description or a common noun gets a "the", and if you make a proper noun out of the result, it also gets a capital letter. I'll give you that "Whitehall", without a "the", breaks the rule, but that is no argument for breaking it elsewhere.
Good evening Jago from Spain. Every other Friday we have a van comes by with fresh goat's cheese. So we get fresh cheese that is't available in the shops or supermarkets. We have been to the dairy in the past so we know that the quality of the place and cleanliness is 100%
As a student at King’s College in the Strand, I thought I knew this area well. Embankment, Drury Lane, Holborn, etc. were regularly haunts as was Aldwych station which was still on the Underground and not a portal into Narnia. But I never knew this shortcut/street although I must have walked past it dozens of times. I’ll be on the lookout for it next time I’m in the area…
I’m surprised you’ve just learned of this, Jago. It’s been covered by several other London history content creators, to the extent I would have misremembered you being one of them!
Lovely little video , London it seems is never ending with bits of historic interest and amazing how you find out the history of these little place's👍 .
Yeah, that's London for you. Nowhere else would regard that underground rat-hole as a 'street'; but in London, that's how it started, so that's what it stays. I love my home city.
Great watch thanks. I work I was born and bred in London but moved out in 1982 when I joined the army. I never went back to live but my current job has me working in Islington and Hackney and Dalston - which means a 5am road commute from my house in Epsom. I hate working there to be honest. I might take some time to have a nimble areound in the summer
I am Diocletian and I'd like to make a complaint! You pronounced my name correctly, but I'm an Emperor so I'm putting in a complaint just to make sure you know you're not an Emperor. Like what I am.
From a _very_ early age, "adelphoi" was pronounced "adelphi". [Edit:] No, your pronunciation of Diocletian is on point. [Edit 2:] A "strand" is a "beach".
Fascinating that London in the 18th century had an almost exact predecessor of what Chicago would build in the 19th and 20th centuries. I think the original designers for the Adelphi would have hopefully been quite pleased with today's Lower Wacker Drive and Lower Michigan Avenue as validation of their idea, even if they weren't able to make their own design work in their time.
The haunting sounds interesting and i never made the connection until now "Strand" is Dutch for beach, so it makes sense to be a word for Riverside in the UK
Neither here nor there but for years the signs in Ireland pointing to the beach always used the word 'strand' instead of 'beach'. Probably still do somewhere though I haven't seen one for ages as I don't go to the beach much now.
Neal's Yard Dairy is on the 'to vist' list ! Tip: If you can find it, try a Normandy Pont-l'Évêque, and/or a Dutch Leidsche kaas with the red rind and keys, aged is best.
Discovered Neal's Yard Dairy on line during COVID-19 when we couldn't just wander around London. My favourite from there is Tunworth, although this is now more widely distributed and can be found in classier supermarkets.
I am very partial to Golden Cross, a goats milk cheese that does not taste 'goaty'. Other cheese I love, includes: Parlick Fell; Dorset Blue Vinney; Dorset Red; Lord London; Renegade Monk; Cashel Blue; Ossau-Iraty; Gjetost; Pitchfork Cheddar; Baron Bigod; Minger; Young Buck; Gorwydd Caerphilly.
@@davidcronan4072 - A tad, but most, other than the Ossau-Iraty, which is a cheese type that goes back possibly thousands of years, are modern. There are over 800 different types of cheese made in the UK nowadays. 800. In the 1970's, when the first small cheese producers' survey was taken, there were possibly 20-30. Also, a lot of traditional British cheeses, like Dorset Blue Vinney (still only available from one producer) had died out, some forever. Dorset Blue Vinney directly because of the last war, when milk was used to make basic 'lasting' cheese.
I used to work on Adam St in an odd little building, it’s blurred out in google maps but I think it’s no 7 or 8. It has 3 floors BELOW Adam street with the lowest having an exit to Robert st. So what appears to be a 4 story building at street level is actually a 7 story.
The existence of a "Lower Robert Street" implies a "Higher Robert Street". And perhaps a middle-of-the-road "Robert Street" as well. More investigation is needed 🤔
This is fascinating! I love how it looks like an entrance to that building rather than a street so most people wouldn't go down it. The tunnel to the left appears to go to The Adelphi Hotel's basement?
Funny enough, there's another Robert Street in the Whitechapel/Shoreditch area, which is even _more_ 'tunnel~y' and even creepier. It used to be something of a red light area, back in the '90's. Shouldn't be surprised if it's all gentrified now.
'Strand' is German for 'beach'. I had always wondered if there was a connection (especially given the English word 'stranded'. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
Walking up to Camden Markets it 2014, I ducked down a side street to the left. One property was numbered 221B, but it wasn’t Baker Street! Silly me, I didn’t get a photo. Love all those quirky streets and alleys in cities.
Another theory about the word “Strand”. From the Dutch Straand, meaning Beach. As in Strand-on-the-Green near Kew Bridge. (Real name King Edward VII Bridge).
