Six more photos from recent walks, none of which were interesting enough for a full post of their own.
1) This is all that's left of London's first Swedish church, which is nothing at all. It was built in 1728 in the centre of Prince's Square, Shadwell, which no longer exists. A Danish-Norwegian church had already been built in nearby Wellclose Square, which also no longer exists. The Swedish congregation abandoned the building in 1911 and moved to Marylebone, and their Lutheran chapel was demolished ten years later. The site is now part of Swedenborg Gardens, a nondescript park on the St George's Estate. The church's footprint is raised and railinged, the interior is pebbly with mature trees, and a few famous local Swedes are commemorated on planks. One of these is Emanuel Swedenborg, the scientist and theologian, whose bones were transferred from here to Uppsala Cathedral in 1913. Other than a font added for the sesquicentenary there is very little to see. Look for it behind the Texaco garage.
2) Canary Wharf has opened an artybasketball court, designed by British and Nigerian heritage artist Yinka Ilori. The press release describes it as eye-catching and vibrant, which is shorthand for Insta-friendly because it's more about sharing pics than shooting hoops. It's really only half a court, unless you're familiar with playing 3x3 basketball in which case it'll do for a proper game. You'll find it in the far corner of Bank Street Park, a temporary astroturf deadzone half-surrounded by building sites, backed by a multi-coloured strip of outdoor seating. The court's only supposed to be open between noon and 9pm (bring your own ball after six), but I found it unlocked and unstewarded so wandered in anyway. Alas I only got four likes for my photo, so I suspect it's overrated.
3) The unusual thing about this bus stop on East India Dock Road is that the three bus routes consist of only two different digits - 1 and 5. This has been the case since 2018 when the N550 was diverted to serve City Island instead. I wondered if there were any other bus stops in London with three routes and just two digits. I also wondered if there were any with two routes and one digit, or maybe four routes and three digits, but I couldn't be bothered to try to work it out. Obviously there are plenty with the same number of routes as digits, but more routes than digits is a bit special.
4) Tower Hamlets have started putting up new signs at the entrances to their parks. They're black rather than the previous blue. They're quite smart. They tell you not to light a BBQ or litter, and to clean up after your dog. They don't have a lot of other information on them but they do have a QR code. I expected this to link to www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/parks which is the URL given on the sign, but instead it just takes you to the council home page where there's no mention of parks whatsoever, nor any easy way of clicking through to the parks subpages, and I think that's a truly wasted opportunity.
5) This tumbledown building in St George's Gardens used to be the Municipal Borough of Stepney's Nature StudyMuseum. It opened in 1904 as a branch of the Whitechapel Museum and would have been a favourite place for a school visit. Inside were tanks of live fish and amphibians, butterflies and stuffed birds (including a moth-eaten cockerel), and outside in the wild flower garden were London's first municipal beehive and a small aviary. Sadly it never reopened after WW2 and has been decaying since, and a long-planned restoration project has never come to fruition. The building was originally a mortuary, indeed the post-mortem for Jack the Ripper victim Elizabeth Stride was held inside, but let's not give heritage entrepreneurs any gruesome ideas.
6) I found this plaque in the cobbles near the foot of the Monument, a flame's leap from Pudding Lane. It's rather nice, not least for the fact that the date contains one of each Roman numeral in descending order. You don't often see 1666 on plaques on the fronts of buildings, not in London, because the Great Fire destroyed everything and any replacements would have been completed in a later year. As for 1888 on a building somewhere, which is the longest-to-date sequence of Roman numerals, I'm still looking.
