Pimlico is a small Central London area within the City of Westminster known for its garden squares and Regency architecture. It’s 2 miles from Charing Cross bounded off by Vauxhall Bridge Road to the east and the River Thames curved directly underneath it.
Cycle Superhighway 5 was launched by Mayor Boris Johnson in November 2015 as a completely portioned off road for cyclists between Oval and Pimlico. As you can see, it’s well used.
Millbank gets its name from a watermill owned by Westminster Abbey around 1573. It was often referred to as Tothill Fields. The general appearance of it today is a result of an incident in the 1930s. It had to undergo extensive rebuilding to repair the damage caused by the 1928 Thames flood disaster in which 25 metres of the embankment collapsed.
Sir Henry Tate, of the Tate & Lyle company founded both the sugar refinery firm and the Tate galleries through the legacy of chattel slavery in British owned colonies throughout the Caribbean and mainland Americas. Enslaved people produced mainly sugar, coffee, cocoa, cotton, mahogany and indigo.
Most of the Tate collections are made up of contributions proffered from slave-owners of the time and the artists they commissioned such as J. M. W. Turner. In 1897 Henry donated £80,000 in aid of the buildings creation on the former site of the Millbank Penitentiary. It was then officially called the National Gallery of British Art for its first 35 years before it officially adopted its nickname as the Tate Gallery up until the year 2000 when a younger sibling was born.
James I sold Pimlico for a little over £1000 in 1623 and it then became one of the districts along Belgravia and most of Mayfair and Kensington inherited by 12-year-old Mary Davies who in 1677 married 21 year old Sir Thomas Grosvenor. The age and age difference of this harmonious arranged marriage was normal in England during that era and lasted all their lives.
Lord Grosvenor contracted the services of Thomas Cubitt. Thomas led a productive life since his birth in 1788. After his extensive work as a ship’s carpenter he pretty much went on to become the most prolific builder Britain has ever known and transformed large portions of London into established places including Warwick Square. He also had a hand in the conception of Buckingham Palace.
His work became a natural inspiration for the 5 month-long Great Exhibition of 1851. He died shortly after the exhibition 1855 but left us footage of his selfie to use in this episode. He used the soil and hardcore excavated from the creation of St Katharine Dock. It was used to reorganise this marshy mess of nothingness into a grid of splendid residential houses breathing life into Pimlico.
The 17 red-bricked buildings forming the components of the highly regarded Millbank Estate was erected with recycled bricks from the old Millbank prison demolished on 1890. Each building is named after a distinguished painter like Turner or Gainsborough.
The previously swampy land of Pimlico was merely a scattering of uninteresting cottages until West London suddenly begun to get fashionable. Anything in demand attracts more demand.
Pimlico is a heavily protected pocket of London with several of its garden squares achieving conservation status and nearly 400 buildings now Grade II* listed. High-profile residents have included prime minister Winston Churchill, Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta, designer Laura Ashley and actor Laurence Olivier.
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