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Swampy is a good guy I chat to on the Net. He's a geologist and he's currently somewhere in the wilds of the old USSR looking for oil. These are his photos and he's kindly allowed me to put them here.
Elystan Street, London SW3.. Previously known as the Red House.
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168 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, SW3
Thought by some to be a genius and by others to be a charlatan, Benjamin Thompson was quite possibly, both. Certainly he was one of the more remarkable men of his day. Born in Massachusetts, Thompson's early career as a schoolmaster was interrupted by suspicions that he was spying for the British in the War of Independence and he fled to London, deserting his wife and young chld. In London he gained recognition for his scientific work and was elected to the Royal Society at the age of only twenty-six. Five years later, for rather mysterious reasons, he was knighted by George III. While travelling in Europe, Thompson had met Prince Maximilian of Bavaria and, in 1784, he accepted the Prince's invitation to work as an advisor and civil servant in Munich. He proved an able and imaginative administrator who instigated a series of military and social reforms. His most lasting legacy in Germany is the English Garden in the city. In 1791 Thompson was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire and took the name of Rumford, the New England town from which he had to flee ignominiously fifteen years earlier. As a scientist Thompson is best remembered for his experiments investigating the nature of heat, and for his role in the founding of the Royal Institution 'for diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the gneral introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements'. Rumford's own useful inventions included a smokeless chimney, a revolutionary design of kitchen stove and an early version of thermal underwear. Soon after the foundation of the Royal Institution, Rumford, a notoriously quarrelsome man, fell out with his associates there and left London for Paris where he died in 1814.
Chelsea London SW3
promenades and pereambulations,
Streetscapes
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This mid 19th century terraced house on a street just off King's Rd Chelsea, was initially built for artisans and humble folk at the time when the area was a separate village from London. The houses are not so solidly built,. often only with one skin of brick, the facade showing ony one door and a window to the street, like this.
During the last decade even the tiniest of such cottages were turned into 'desirable' properties for first-time buyers of the better-healed professions: extension at the back, open-plan living room, new basement dug out, loft conversion and all mod cons are de rigueur.
here is a rare example of an 'unmodernised' house, probably lived in by a retired denizen not yet wheeled to an old-foggies home; the sharks are waiting!