Kensington Gardens

Her favourite part of any scooter journey was whizzing along the Broad Walk of Kensington Gardens, and she was having so much fun, pushing her scooter faster and faster that she didn’t notice that she was being followed.


And who wouldn’t want to zoom along that downhill slope at top speed on a scooter, bike or roller blades?

Kensington Gardens is one of the many Royal Parks around London but this was part of Hyde Park right up until 1689, when the King and Queen, William III and Mary II came into power. The King liked this small part of London because the air was clean, therefore making it a better place to live, because he suffered from asthma. The Royals bought a building called Nottingham House and renamed it Kensington Palace, and it became their main home. The Queen started to create a palace garden in the Dutch style to help her husband feel at home, as he was born in Holland.

Queen Anne, Mary’s sister, was crowned Queen in 1702 and she wanted to make the gardens bigger and so took 30 acres away from Hyde Park. Queen Anne told her designers to make a garden that seemed more English. She also built the Orangery, which was meant to serve as a greenhouse for exotic plants, but was also used for entertainment. Today, it is still a restaurant. The gardens got even bigger when Queen Caroline took yet another 300 acres from Hyde Park in 1728. The new design focused on the palace itself and the Round Pound (see below), where all angles provide different views of the palace.



Back then, the gardens were only open on Saturday and you had to be properly dressed just to enter. Clemmy’s favourite path, the Broad Walk, became a very fashionable place indeed; there would be no scooter rides here. Sadly when the Queen Victoria took up residence in Buckingham Palace, the Gardens became a forgotten place and there was nowhere near enough work carried out on them compared with years gone by.However, it was because of her that we have one of the most eye catching structures in Kensington Gardens, the Albert Memorial, which you can see below. It was built in the memory of Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert, who died in 1861 at the age of 42 from typhoid. The structure was dedicated to the Prince, his interests, and all of the achievements of the Victorian times. There are marble figures on each corner of the structure to represent Europe, Asia, Africa and America. For more information on the memorial click here


The Kensington Gardens is a great place to visit. There is so much to see, ranging from the Palace, to swans in the Round Pound, and even a statue of the legendary Robin Hood. For the young ones there is also a park, in memorial to Diana Princess of Wales. And of course you can whizz along the Broad Walk on your scooter. Just remember wear a helmet and check to see if there are any mysterious Slakistanians following you.

And finally, many thanks to www.royalparks.org.uk, who provided much of the information in this blog entry.

Queens Gate

‘Okay Daddy, let’s go.’ She patted his hand, picked up her scooter and together they headed towards the bus stop on the corner of Queens Gate.



Where better to begin this blog, than the beginning of the book near Clemmy’s flat in Queen’s Gate Place?

Queensgate is a road in London’s very rich and famous South Kensington. Looking at the picture that you can see just how nice the place is. It really does belong in a place called the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. If you look carefully, you can even see Clemmy’s bus stop, which we took especially so it wasn’t just a picture of the road, but also the beginning of Clemmy’s journey to the mysterious and ‘cuddly’ Mrs Mac.

Many of you have been near Queen’s Gate yourself. If you have ever visited any of the famous London museums like the British Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum you, were just a road or two away.

Before those museums existed, a huge exhibition took place way back in 1851 in a glass building in Hyde Park known as The Crystal Palace and then again in 1854. It was a beautiful place that contained not just artefacts from all over the British Empire, but also had fountains, statues, firework displays, motor racing, and football finals in the gardens of Hyde Park. http://www.crystalpalacemuseum.org.uk/history.html

Crystal Palace stood proudly in Hyde Park until November 1936, when a fire destroyed the whole thing.

To the end of Queens Gate, nearby Kensington Garden, you will find this statue

This is Lord Napier. He was an engineer who spent a lot of time in India, not just working but having to fight in a lot of wars and battles during the 1800s. As well as being Commander in Chief in India from 1870, he was Governer of Gibraltar, and Constable at the Tower of London.
He also worked very hard to deprived and under-privileged people.

If you want to visit Queens Gate and take a look at all the beautiful buildings, your nearest stations are Gloucester Road and South Kensington.

Hello and welcome to the official blog of The Littlest Detective

This website will take you through many of the places that Clemmy Bird visits and mentions, and tell you a little about them.

Let’s start with Littlest Detective in London. So many amazing places are featured in the book, but how much do you know about Clemmy’s London?

Here’s some a taster of what’s to come.

We discover that something called New Scotland Yard has information about Natasha Commonov being in boarding school in Slakistan, but what do you know about New Scotland Yard? And if there is a New Scotland Yard, what happened to the old one?

Clemmy loves to whiz along the Broadwalk of Kensington Gardens on her scooter, but what else is there to do in Kensington Gardens? And what’s it connection with Hyde Park?

Natasha plots to tie her poor, pathetic henchman Hench to the hands of Big Ben, but did you know that Big Ben is actually the name of the bell, and not the clock tower itself? And do you know who it’s named after?

Horatio Bird takes his daughter to a restaurant nearby the Globe Theatre. What other famous places are there by the Globe? And did you know that the first theatre burnt down in two hours because the thatched roof was accidentally set on fire during a performance in 1613 and that this is a modern copy. But how modern is it?

This website will be armed with everything:

• History and interesting facts about all the locations in the book
• Great photos to show you what these places look like
• Things to do in London so you can take your own Littlest Detective tour (and how to get there)
• Your reviews of the book, to show that we really do take what you tell us seriously!
• And then we move to Paris with Clemmy and the gang and tell you all about the great locations in that book.
  

Suzy Brownlee will also answer any questions you might have about the story - unless of course they have to do with future story lines and what happened to Clemmy’s mum. Sorry if you are dying to know – all will be revealed soon enough. Feel free to email us with your questions at littlest.detective@googlemail.com

We also welcome comments from blog followers and casual readers of the site - it gives us direction regarding the kind of content kids (and possibly adults) are after.

So once again, we welcome you to the Official Blog of the Littlest Detective, and ask you to check back next week for the next instalment.