The Rotherhithe Obelisk

[Trevp666]

I was always impressed with Cleopatra's Needle when I happened past it.
And as Wikibumdia edumicates us.....

Cleopatra's Needle is the popular name for each of a pair of ancient Egyptian obelisks re-erected in London and New York City during the nineteenth century.
Although these needles are genuine Ancient Egyptian obelisks, their shared nickname is a misnomer, as they have no connection with the Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and were already over a thousand years old in her lifetime. The London and New York needles were originally made during the reign of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Thutmose III. An earlier reference states Queen Cleopatra brought the London obelisk from Heliopolis to Alexandria for the purpose of decorating a new temple but it was never erected and lay buried in sand on the shore until presented to Great Britain in 1819.
n 1819, Muhammad Ali Pasha gave Britain the obelisk as a gift. However, Britain's prime minister at the time, Lord Liverpool, hesitated on having it brought to the country due to shipping expenses.[2] It remained in Alexandria until October 1877 when its transport to London was funded by William James Erasmus Wilson.

 

[staticgirl]

I think it has been a very interesting digression @Endlessly Amazed What I heard from American swho want to move to the UK is that they are often surprised by how small and poky our houing is. Our estate agents (translation : realtors) sell houses by how many bedrooms they've got and don't often explain how big the floorspace is. Whilst looking at American house adverts I notice the floor space is pretty much always front and centre.

 

[Trevp666]

To be fair....not all our houses are small, just the ones that lowly scum like us can afford, lol.

 

[staticgirl]

To be fair....not all our houses are small, just the ones that lowly scum like us can afford, lol.

True enough.

 

[Trevp666]

Here's my tiny, 1 bed, dump.

I wish.

https://www.francisyork.com/blog/if...ng-in-a-gothic-tower-you-can-for-just-1475000

 

[Mythopoeika]

I'd love to live in one of these! My husband and I have been discussing for the past year what country we would move to for a couple of years or forever if our current country (USA) gets too, er, weird.

Any big city here in the UK (and particularly London) has its parts you might not like. Living on the outskirts of a city might not be so bad.
Depends on how much money you have to spend. London and Cambridge are just ridiculous for house prices.

 

[Cochise]

Any big city here in the UK (and particularly London) has its parts you might not like. Living on the outskirts of a city might not be so bad.
Depends on how much money you have to spend. London and Cambridge are just ridiculous for house prices.

Can recommend the North West.

NOT Manchester, or any town beginning with 'B' - for some coincidental reason there are a lot of then in the NW . No offense to current inhabitants, but we are talking to people from te US who may not understand the nuances of life there.

Liverpool is OK because anyone with a US accent is deemed sympathetic to the huge population that is wholly or partly Irish by descent.

Southport is a decayed seaside town but still very charming and not violent - certainly not by US standards. New Brighton, Hoylake or West Kirby on the Wirral ditto but smaller and less pretty - still nice though.

Chester excellent if you are a bit better off.

I repeat, no commentary on the population, just trying to identify places where a US incomer would be happy and not commit the sort of faux pas I did when I was a newcomer to the US. Several times I was collected by the cops and escorted home because they thought I was too naïve to be wandering about on my own. I didn't know you weren't supposed to just walk home late at night through whatever dodgy neighbourhood. In a tweed jacket. (it was cold). I dunno, never had a problem, but they seemed to think I should have.

I've related the whole process of buying a car on 'the wrong side of town' in Bridgeport CT on here before. I'll never forget the black guys who somehow thought we were amazing because it never occurred to us that their skin colour might have been an issue.

 

[Victory]

@Endlessly Amazed

Those houses are typical of mid 1990's to 2010 properties in London, a mix of social and private housing.
There are lot of them in the former Docklands, north and south of the River Thames.

Since 2010 though, as the city has got more and more crowded (until brexit/Covid caused about 700,00 people to leave, though perhaps temporarily), there have been many more multi story buildings.

These will typically have a small percentage for social housing, normally in the form of "key worker housing" for low paid health service, education and transport employees, and a much larger percentage for the private market.
Parking spaces will be usually limited to just one per property, cycle racks will proliferate.

A prime example is in Greenwich in South East London, (the next peninsula to the East from Rotherhithe), where the former industrial peninsula is a mass building site.

Here is a link to a typical such development


https://upperriverside.co.uk/no5-kn...MIztWom9qT8wIVaoBQBh0cXgKjEAAYASAAEgLRufD_BwE

 

[Lb8535]

I was always impressed with Cleopatra's Needle when I happened past it.
And as Wikibumdia edumicates us.....

Cleopatra's Needle is the popular name for each of a pair of ancient Egyptian obelisks re-erected in London and New York City during the nineteenth century.
Although these needles are genuine Ancient Egyptian obelisks, their shared nickname is a misnomer, as they have no connection with the Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and were already over a thousand years old in her lifetime. The London and New York needles were originally made during the reign of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Thutmose III. An earlier reference states Queen Cleopatra brought the London obelisk from Heliopolis to Alexandria for the purpose of decorating a new temple but it was never erected and lay buried in sand on the shore until presented to Great Britain in 1819.
n 1819, Muhammad Ali Pasha gave Britain the obelisk as a gift. However, Britain's prime minister at the time, Lord Liverpool, hesitated on having it brought to the country due to shipping expenses.[2] It remained in Alexandria until October 1877 when its transport to London was funded by William James Erasmus Wilson.

View attachment 45406

So it's easy to understand why Cleopatra and her successors left the damn thing in the sand for 1800 years.