Westminster Abbey

First thing's first. Mark your calendars everyone, The Littlest Detective in Paris is out next week. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, babysitters, ratcats, henchmen and all those who want to know what will happen now that Clemmy is living in Paris. What will this mean for her search for the truth about her mother? You will have to wait and see . . .

Now, back to London...

Clemmy noticed they were now driving towards Westminster Abbey



Westminster Abbey is a church – a big beautiful building close to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Many exciting things have happened here, including the coronation of Kings and Queens, since King Harold’s in January 1066. Poor old King Harold was only King for a few months, but the Abbey has lasted a lot longer, hasn’t it?

The Abbey hasn’t always looked the way it does today, however – there have been lots of little changes and adjustments over the hundreds of years since it was first built. But where did it all start? Well, can you believe the church is actually situated on what was once an island? It was called Thorney Island and was owned, way back in 960AD by twelve Benedictine monks. These priests got a lot of support from the monarch of the time, King Edgar, who had granted them the island land in reward for their services. That’s why there is a special link between Westminster Abbey and the Royals to this day.

Today’s church has been around since 1245, the time of Henry III. In 1301, a special Coronation Chair was built inside, by order of Kind Edward I. Can you believe that there used to be something quite unique inside that chair? It was the Stone of Destiny, a Scottish emblem taken from the North Country by the English royalty, and has been used in coronations including our present Queen Elizabeth’s. But it isn’t there now - in 1996 it was returned to Scotland with a military escort! But Charles or Prince William shouldn’t worry - it will be temporarily returned to the Abbey for the next coronation, whenever that is.

In 1560, Queen Elizabeth I made the Abbey into a collegiate church (which means someone who is not a member of the church, such as a priest, is not in charge). Since then, the church has been used for funerals and burials of royals and important people in British History, including Princess Diana.

And the building of the Abbey continued for two hundred more years. The West Towers, which you can see in the picture, were not completed until 1745. That took almost 800 years to finish – about as long as homework feels sometimes!

Sometimes, people are confused by another church nearby. This one, just down the road from the Abby, is a Catholic church and is called Westminster Cathedral (see below). It’s pretty stunning too, but tourists often overlook it for the more popular Abbey.



This part of Westminster has so many buildings to look at - Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, The Houses of Parliament, and the famous Big Ben. Pop across the River Thames and you can visit the London Eye or the The London Aquarium. St James's Park is also not too far from the Abbey, so if the weather is nice and sunny, a relaxing day in the park is a great way to finish off a day out in Westminster.

Finally, credit must go to http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history, for a lot of the information contained in today’s blog.

See you next time.

King's Road

“She often lost Clemmy when they went out shopping, usually because she became distracted by food. Once, in Marks and Spencer on the King's Road, Clemmy had to page her.”



Curry and cucumber sandwiches! Mrs Mac really is absentminded when she sees something tasty. It's a wonder how she was ever able to get anything done. But this isn't about food, this is about the King's Road. And there is more to it than Marks and Spencers.

King's Road has long been the home of the rich, but did you know it was also the route of kings, home of the 'swinging sixties', home of punk in the 1970s, site of the first ever artificial ice rink and, believe it or not, home to the first ever Starbucks in the UK? Today, it is still an exclusive area where even the fast food restaurants look swanky.

Kings Road used to provide a route for the King to travel from his palaces from Hampton Court to the Palace of Westminster; and from St James's Palace to Fulham. It was a private road and you could only use it if you had a special pass.

This lasted until 1830, when the road opened up to the public, and what a place it became after that!

King's Road was forever changing with the times. Royalty, hippies, punks, and artists all had a home on this road at one time or another.

Like I mentioned, King's Road was home to the first artificial ice rink, not just in London but in the world. Wow! Go London. It was called the Glaciarium and it opened way, way back in 1876. The rink and building cost £20,000 to build. Measuring 40 feet by 24 feet, made up of six inches of concrete base which four inches of loose dry earth, six inches of cow hair (oh my!), two inches of thick timber plank, a series of copper pipes which had been immersed in water on the hair, and finally, a machine to freeze the water so that people could skate on the surface. Just like everything on King's Road at the time, you had to be quite upper class to be able to afford to use it. For more information click on this link.

If we fast forward to the next century (even if it was just 55 years ago), you will find trendy Mary Quant opening up her first store on the King's Road. Her name may not mean very much to you, but her shop was where that icon of the swinging 60s fashion craze was born – the miniskirt. Even though those were already in existence, Mary decided to make them even shorter than they originally were and the trend just took off. Only the young could wear it (you needed nice legs!) and it was controversial amongst adults who thought the short length very rude!

Thanks to Mary and her mates, older rich people who lived nearby were not very happy with what was happening on King's Road, especially when the Chelsea Drugstore opened. It was part chemist, but it also housed loads of cool stuff for teenagers and young people, including a newsstand, bars, food, music, a boutique. If you wanted your goods delivered, pretty girls on motorbikes, wearing purple catsuits, would bring them right to your door. Plus, the building was made up of stainless steel, marble, mirrors and brass – in those days all of that sort of stuff was really trendy.

These days there are a lot of chain stores on the King's Road, whereas in the 60s there were loads of different types of people selling their individual brands. Take a walk down Kings Road today and you’ll find Gap, Monsoon, Zara and John Lewis, as well as some boutique shops with very hefty price tags. And if you look really carefully around you, at the people walking and the cars on the road, you may just spy someone famous. I’ve seen Kylie and Hugh Grant myself. So get out and check out the King’s Road. And don't just limit yourself to the food section of Marks and Spencer, as tempting as that might be!

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.