Watts News

‘It is a happy circumstance, that the style which on its own intrinsic merits recommends itself as the groundwork of the future, is that which above all others is calculated to enlist our love and sympathy, from its association with the past’. --- Sir George Gilbert Scott, Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture, Present and Future (1857).   Sir George Gilbert Scott, one of the most prolific 19th century English architects, trained all three of the founders of Watts & Co. at his practice: George Frederick Bodley, his...

The Public Worship Regulation Act  1874 was a year of aesthetic transition in England. The Public Worship Regulation Act was passed in order to curtail elements of High Anglican ritualism, including the use of vestments, incense, and a liturgical emphasis on the sacraments; simultaneously, in art and architecture, the genesis...

  Our final station stop, where this service terminates.     Westminster is quite a station. Of the original, opened in 1868, there is nothing left, but all is now part of the above ground building: Portcullis House, opened in 1999, when the station was also extended downwards to a depth of 34...

After a summer lull, we’re now ready to go on without last two stations: Embankment and Westminster. Embankment Station is really tied up with its neighbour Charing Cross, and the two of them are a survival of four stations, all within a ten minute walk. There has also been Trafalgar Square and Strand...

Why is Temple called Temple? Not anything to do with sinister (or even non-sinister) Pagan rites, but rather this area was the home to the Knights Templar, just as Clerkenwell (St. John’s Gate) was home to the Knights Hospitaller. The Temple Church, which was their conventual church still stands to this day, and is a...

Since the station (re-opened in 2012, after some years of closure and renovation is almost uniformly ghastly, we shall pass through it as quickly as possible and move on to our church for this part of the tour. Step lively please.   St Bride’s stands in Fleet Street, with its very distinctive Wren spire. It is,...