London Snow

Stoke Mandeville Station

The only "News" in England is the country (but mainly London) has ground to a halt due to - shock, horror - snowfalls in winter!

Boris Johnson said: "I think we've done pretty well in what are absolutely extraordinary circumstances. There's no doubt about it, this is the right kind of snow, it's just the wrong kind of quantities. My message to the heavens is: 'You've put on a fantastic display of snow power but that is probably quite enough'." – Good Ol’ Boris, a First Rate Mind as they say in Oxford!

THE LAND now known as St James’s Park was acquired by King Henry VIII in 1532 as a game park for hunting, but has evolved over 4 centuries of Royal patronage into an elegant open space spanning 23 hectares (58 acres) with a lake harbouring ducks, geese and pelicans - the latter introduced by a Russian Ambassador in 1664.
With its royal, political and literary associations, St James’s Park is considered by many to be the most impressive of all the Royal Parks in London, yet the landscape remains largely unchanged to that which was designed by the architect John Nash in the 1820s.


Buckingham Palace


Frozen Lake with Buckingham Palace in the background


London Eye

The Park is central to some of London’s most important monuments including Buckingham Palace, Horseguard’s Parade, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey which is but a short walk away. The Palace of St James, built in the 1530s, and still used as a Royal Residence also borders the park on the western side.




Duck Island


Mr & Mrs Pelican

Old Queen Street and adjacent Queen Anne’s Gate are set in the Birdcage Walk Conservation Area and contain some of London’s most striking William and Mary, Queen Anne and Georgian architecture. Past residents include peers, industrialists and philosophers, amongst whom are Lords Colchester, Guernsey, Dartmouth and Derby: Lords Grey, North and Palmerston (19th C. Prime Ministers): painters Joshua Reynolds and Jonathan Richardson: industrialists and the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.


Queen Anne’s Gate

“To stumble upon this most exquisite of streets...is one of London’s best architectural surprises...also about the only place where you will see London houses of the 18th century in near-mint condition.”






London Snow

by Robert Bridges

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled - marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;





The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder!'
'O look at the trees!' they cried, 'O look at the trees!'
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:



When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.