Crystal Palace Park

On Sunday, I did a walking tour of Crystal Palace Park which is in Southeast London, not far from Greenwich. It gets its name from the Crystal Palace from the Great Exhibition which was moved here in 1854. It was considered to be the world's first "theme park." The palace burnt down in 1937. I had heard a lot about the park, mainly because of the dinosaur models. Hugely popular with kids.

A tunnel of trees
All that's left of the Crystal Palace-this was the entrance wall

Big headed statue of Joseph Paxton-the architect of the Crystal Palace, also a famous landscape gardener

"The Land that Time Forgot"-the models were made in 1854, they've also brought in non native trees to make it look like you really are in a different world

Lots of the models are now known to be slightly inaccurate-they didn't have as many fossils in 1854 as they do now!!

It was a nice day and the area was packe with kids. They all love the dinosaurs!

Model of an Iguanodon-one that they now know is slightly off

Huge model of an ice age giant sloth-they also have a trail of other ice age animals along with the dinosaurs

Mural done by some local schoolchildren

The park is dinosaur crazy-even the play area!

An ornamental lake

A small bird sanctuary

A (real) crane

Not from the Park-at the moment there are hundreds of elephant statues in London, they are going to be auctioned off to raise money for Asian Elephant conservation

An elephant by Cleopatra's needle

The "Elephant Parade" was organized by Camilla's brother-he has a large conservation charity

Winchester

On Sunday, I took the train to Winchester. It's in Hampshire between London and Southampton. Originally it was a Roman settlement, then it was the capital of England during the Anglo Saxons and the Norman period-roughly between 700 and 1200. There was a royal palace in Winchester until the English Civil War.

Winchester Cathedral-on the site of the original Anglo Saxon cathedral, the current cathedral is Norman and was completed in 1100.
The front of the cathedral

Side view

Queen Mary Tudor ("Bloody Mary") married Philip of Spain here

The Flying Butresses

The Central Nave

12th century painting in one of the inner chapels

Jane Austen's grave-they don't mention that she was a novelist, though they did dedicate a window to her nearby in the 1900s

The house where Jane Austen died, she came to Winchester to consult a doctor-they think she had TB or a similiar disease.

The ruins of Wolvesey Castle, the Bishops of Winchester lived here

The Castle was built around the same time as the Cathedral.

Bloody Mary had her wedding reception here.

The drains from the latrine block!!

A round table in the Great Hall with the names of King Arthur and his knights-a 13th century fake made by one of the Henrys

The ceiling of the Great Hall-the only remaining part of the medieval palace

Some timber framed houses near the cathedral

Another house across from the cathedral

Hampstead Garden Suburb

On Sunday, I did a tour of Hampstead Garden Suburb, a planned "garden village" that was built in the 1900s. It was designed to be a sort of social utopia with all classes living together. Today it costs about a millions pounds to buy a small house. It has a really strict trust-you can't have fences, very specific rules about your windows, house numbers, etc.

One of the main streets leading up from the Heath
One of the "cottages" built to mimic an English village cottage

One of the grander houses

St Judes Church

The Free Church, ie non C of E people

Another cottage

Cherry tree

One of the streets where you can see the hedges every resident must have