Tag: London

Baker Street tube station is a landmark in the history of urban transportation, as it was part of the world’s first underground passenger railway. Construction of the station began in March 1860 using the ‘cut-and-cover’ method, which involved digging a trench along the street, laying the tracks, and then covering it over. Despite several accidents during construction, the work was completed by the end of 1862 at a cost of £1.3 million. The station officially opened to the public on 10th January 1863 as part of the Metropolitan Railway, which connected Paddington to Farringdon Street and aimed to alleviate the severe street congestion in Victorian London. The name also explains why in other cities subway systems are called ‘Metro’.

The Kindertransport was a rescue effort between 1938 and 1939 that saved nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe, bringing them to safety in the United Kingdom. Liverpool Street Station in London played a pivotal role as the arrival point for many of these children. To honor this history, a memorial titled ‚Kindertransport – The Arrival’ stands outside the station.

It is an unusual place to visit at London, but also an impressive one: the Victorian-era Crossness sewage pumping station. The fast growing city had a massive problem to get rid of the human waste produced by the rising number of inhabitants. Initially, cesspits were used that had to be emptied by the night soil men: they’ve put the solid remains (and ‘night soil‘ was the euphemism for them) on their carts and sold them to farmers on the land surrounding the city as fertilizer. On the way back they used the same carts to transport grain into the city. Well, hygiene wasn’t so well developed in these days.