Monday:Nooks and Crannies

Oh, I do love finding little hidden nooks and crannies in London - and there are so many of them around!  I get quite excited at the mere thought.

Here is a little alley not far from Charing Cross that I cut through on a regular basis.  This is York Place, which used to house one of the Ragged Schools in the 1860s.  Bizarrely, the alley doesn't look wide enough to house anything very much.

More interesting than that, though, is the fact that it used to be called Of Alley.  The reason for that is that all the land used to belong to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.  He stipulated that as many streets as possible should be named after him and since George, Villiers, Duke and Buckingham had already been used, of was the only word from his title still available.  So there you have it.  I think someone realised Of Alley was just plain silly.

Unfortunately, today was a working day for me, despite the Bank Holiday, and it was every bit as busy as I expected.