View allAll Photos Tagged Embankment
Victoria Embankment as seen from the South Bank on Thursday June 20 2013. Just a few hours before the Summer Solstice at 6:04am on Friday June 21.
View of the line from the cab of The Earl. These pictures were taken to show the impact of the vegetation clearance activity undertaken on 17th & 18th October 2015. Apoligies they are not very good quality but the weather was despicable at the time.
Minninglow hill with its Neolithic burial chamber and the 1831 stone embankment of the Cromtord & High Peak Railway in the middle distance.
The Postcard
A postally unused Valentine's Photo Brown Series postcard. The card, which has a divided back, was printed in Great Britain.
The publishers have added a brief description of the photograph on the back of the card:
'The Embankment, London - London's
most popular promenade, extending
from Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars
Bridge.
Cleopatra's Needle is seen on the right'.
Cleopatra's Needle
Cleopatra's Needle is one of a pair of obelisks that were moved from the ruins of the Caesareum of Alexandria, in Egypt, in the 19th century. It was presented to the United Kingdom in 1819 by the ruler of Egypt and Sudan Muhammad Ali, in commemoration of the victories of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and Sir Ralph Abercromby at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801.
Although the British government welcomed the gesture, it declined to pay to move the obelisk to London.
The obelisk remained in Alexandria until 1877 when Sir William James Erasmus Wilson, a distinguished anatomist and dermatologist, sponsored its transportation to London from Alexandria at a cost of some £10,000 (equivalent to over £1,000,000 in 2020).
it was dug out of the sand in which it had been buried for nearly 2,000 years, and was encased in a great iron cylinder, 92 feet (28 metres) long and 16 feet (4.9 metres) in diameter. It was built at the Thames Iron Works, shipped to Alexandria in separate pieces, and built around the obelisk.
The cylinder, named the Cleopatra, had a vertical stem and stern, a rudder, two bilge keels, a mast for balancing sails, and a deck house. It acted as a floating pontoon which was to be towed to London by the ship Olga.
The effort almost met with disaster on the 14th. October 1877, in a storm in the Bay of Biscay, when Cleopatra began wildly rolling, and became uncontrollable. The Olga sent out a rescue boat with six volunteers, but the boat capsized, and all six crew were lost – they are named on a bronze plaque attached to the foot of the needle's mounting stone.
Captain Booth of the Olga eventually managed to get his ship next to Cleopatra and rescued the six men on board it. Booth reported the Cleopatra "abandoned and sinking", but she stayed afloat, drifting in the Bay, until found four days later by Spanish trawler boats.
Cleopatra was then rescued by the Glasgow steamer Fitzmaurice and taken to Ferrol in Spain for repairs. The Master of the Fitzmaurice lodged a salvage claim of £5,000 which had to be settled before departure from Ferrol, but it was negotiated down and settled for £2,000.
The paddle tug Anglia, under the command of Captain David Glue, was then commissioned to tow the Cleopatra back to the Thames. Upon their arrival in the estuary on the 21st. January 1878, the school children of Gravesend were given the day off.
A wooden model of the obelisk had previously been placed outside the Houses of Parliament, but the location had been rejected, so the London needle was finally erected on the Victoria Embankment on the 12th. September 1878.
On the 4th. September 1917, during the Great War, a bomb from a German air raid landed near the needle. In commemoration of this event, the damage remains unrepaired to this day, and is clearly visible in the form of shrapnel holes and gouges on one of the sphinxes flanking the needle.
Restoration work was carried out in 2005.
You can see they have taken the banking down to about halfway. Told they will go down to track level to allow bridge footings to be started then.
Built by inmates of local juvenile prison in the 1930's, reclaiming hundreds of acres of land from the sea. RSPB Freiston Shore, Lincolnshire
Victoria Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and river-walk along the north bank of the River Thames in London. It runs from the Palace of Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London.
As well as being a major thoroughfare for road traffic between the City of Westminster and the City of London, it is noted for several memorials, such as the Battle of Britain Monument, permanently berthed retired vessels, such as HMS President, and public gardens, including Victoria Embankment Gardens.
Some industrial archaeology here. A very clear soil horizon with a thin stony and very brightly-coloured layer separating grey soils with lots of gravel.
This is near the top of a railway embankment on the former Midland Railway branch from Mangotsfield to Bath, now used by both the Avon Valley Railway and the Bristol-Bath cycle path. A path down from the cycle path to the Avon riverbank has exposed this section, revealing something of the construction of the embankment.