Viewpoints – Placecloud (English)

London, United Kingdom. Originally one of the main Roman roads of Londinium this main city street was inhabited during the medieval period by many immigrants from Lombardy in northern Italy and in time hosted many early coffee houses, the Post Office and eventually became famous as a centre for banking.

London, United Kingdom. In medieval times, Eastcheap was the main meat market in the City of London, with butchers' stalls lining both sides. It was also the location of Falstaff's Boar's Head Inn, featured in Shakespeare's plays and the home to Nehemiah Wallington, the woodturner whose notebooks reveal a great deal about life in the seventeenth-century city.

Ealing Broadway, United Kingdom. This battle took place in November 1642 near the village of Turnham Green in the first few months of the English Civil War. The Parliamentary army, along with many ordinary Londoners rallied to prevent the forces of King Charles I take the city in an important strategic victory.

London, United Kingdom. Cheapside takes its name from ‘chepe’, a Saxon word for a market and was a main thoroughfare of London for much of the city’s history possibly from the time of Alfred the Great. In this street was seen trade of all kinds. Eventually it became an avenue for royal processions, such was its importance.

London, United Kingdom. This tavern in Lothbury was once a headquarters of the Levellers, radicals who during the English civil who proposed changes to the political and legal systems in what are today seen as early calls for democracy.

London, United Kingdom. From the early sixteenth centuries the area around St Pauls Cathedral including the famous Paternoster Row, were the centre of publishing trade in England. Printers and booksellers working from shops here spread ideas and information across the country.

London, United Kingdom. The north-east corner of St Paul’s Churchyard was from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries a space where people came to gather and hear sermons preached from an open-air pulpit. During the fierce debates of the Reformation it was on the frontline of a vicious war of words.

London, United Kingdom. Coleman Street during the civil wars of the seventeenth century became home to religious and political firebrands, a hotbed of radical ideas during a period when the world was turned upside down.

London, United Kingdom. From the early sixteenth centuries the area around St Pauls Cathedral including the famous Paternoster Row, were the centre of publishing trade in England. Printers and booksellers working from shops here spread ideas and information across the country.

London, United Kingdom. The Stockwell Park Graffiti Pen, known as ‘The Pen’ and the ‘Stockwell Hall of Fame’, is another legal graffiti site in London. It was originally built in the 1950s to be used by children from the estate to play sports but attracted graffiti and later became known as a legal graffiti site. It has been used as a graffiti pen for over forty years and can be found in the sunken basketball courts of Stockwell Park Estate on Aytoun Road. Over the years it became a space for graffiti writers and artists to create pieces, eventually becoming a destination site for some of the best graffiti and street art in the capital. The site was transformed in 2019 as part of a £200 million refurbishment of the Stockwell Park Estate by Network Homes and it was designed in consultation with local residents, graffiti artists and architects to provide a space to showcase the ever-changing graffiti artwork and to create interior wall spaces which would allow artists to continue working. 

Stockwell War Memorial Mural can be found near to the First World War memorial and just outside the entrance to Stockwell tube station. The work was created as part of a community art project led by muralist Brian Barnes and artist Myra Harris, and was painted between 1999 and 2001. Many of the images depicted in the mural link to the history of Stockwell and stories from the local area.