Peek Frean's company was founded in 1857 by James Peek, a London tea merchant and George Hender Frean, a ship's biscuit maker. They initially set up production in a disused sugar refinery on Mill Street in Dockhead. While Peek and Frean started the company, its legendary success is widely attributed to John Carr, who joined the firm and introduced innovative, modern biscuit-making machinery and techniques. Needing more space to fuel their rapid growth, the company bought a site integrated with the London and Greenwich Railway arches, opening the newer, massive factory at Drummond Road in 1866. Growing up in Bermondsey I can well recall the delicious smell of custard all about this area. Sadly the factory closed in May 1989.

St Dunstan in the East Church Garden, a Grade I listed medieval church that was destroyed in the Blitz and transformed into a peaceful, overgrown public park.

The circular blue plaque at the Grade II listed carriage ramp in Deptford Market Yard, by the railway arches and station, commemorates the design and history of the historic structure. The ramp was originally used to haul carriages, locomotives, and livestock from the ground-level market up to the elevated viaduct tracks. After years of dereliction, the yard was restored and reopened around 2015/2016 as Deptford Market Yard, repurposing the arches into local businesses.

Cherry Garden Pier - The PLA Lookout Huts. Surviving Port of London Authority (PLA) wooden huts remain from the days when 24/7 staff watched ships round Limehouse bend and telephoned Tower Bridge to coordinate bridge lifts.

Troubadour, Old Brompton Road. A legendary coffee house and basement club operating since 1954. It served as a hub for Beat poets in the Jack Kerouac era, and its basement stage famously hosted early gigs for Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Charlie Watts, and Led Zeppelin.

Charlie Brown's Roundabout in South Woodford, East London, is a major road junction connecting the M11 motorway, the A406 North Circular, and the A1400. The story actually begins a few miles south in the London Docklands. Charlie Brown Sr. (1859–1932) was a former boxer who took over the Railway Tavern in Limehouse in 1893. The pub became an internationally famous hotspot for sailors, who traded rare, global curiosities and treasures to Charlie Sr. in exchange for drinks. It became so iconic that sailors worldwide would simply say, "Meet you at Charlie Brown's." When Charlie Sr. passed away in 1932, his funeral was one of the largest the East End had ever seen, drawing 16,000 people. Following his death, a family dispute arose over his massive collection of eccentric treasures. The curiosities were split between his daughter (who took over the Railway Tavern) and his son, Charlie Brown Jr., who ran the Blue Posts pub directly across the street. Both pubs aggressively put up signs reading "Charlie Brown's", causing mass confusion for locals and visiting sailors. Moving to Woodford and 'The Roundabout' Pub Tired of competing with his sister, Charlie Brown Jr. left Limehouse in 1938 and moved out to the Essex border to take over a newly built pub in Woodford called The Roundabout. He brought a portion of his father’s famous eccentric treasures with him. The pub sat adjacent to a small, early version of the junction built in the 1920s. It quickly became a beloved community hub and landmark, with locals universally nicknaming the building (and the junction next to it) "Charlie Brown's". The pub was instantly recognizable by its unique pub sign: a tall pedestal topped with an ornate, moving fairground carousel complete with finely carved gilt horses. According to a local community group discussion on Facebook, this landmark pub, along with the adjacent Ted's Transport Cafe, served as the primary anchors for the area before major urban development changed the landscape. Demolition and the Modern Junction In 1972, major infrastructure plans completely altered the area. To accommodate the construction of the new M11 motorway terminus and expand the A406 North Circular, the original junction had to be drastically enlarged to build new slip roads and flyovers. Tragically, The Roundabout pub stood directly in the way of the expansion and was demolished. The community was effectively split in two by the massive new concrete roads, cutting residents off from local shops and schools. The remaining pub treasures were scattered or lost, and the iconic carousel pub sign reportedly disappeared "up north," despite later community efforts to track it down and reinstall it. Though the pub has been gone for over half a century, the name stuck so firmly in the local lexicon that transport authorities officially designated the concrete interchange as Charlie Brown's Roundabout, keeping the memory of the East End's most famous publicans alive.

Red Post Hill, Junction with Denmark Hill. The street's name is derived from an old landmark signpost that stood at the junction of the former Ashpole Road and Denmark Hill. Documented as early as 1768, the signpost was inexplicably painted bright red and served as an early precursor to modern street signs, indicating local travel distances. The original post vanished sometime before 1875, but the Dulwich Society stepped in to restore this quirky bit of history by erecting a modern replica red post in October 2010 to mark its historical site.

Located at the corner of Curzon Street and South Audley Street in Mayfair, Leconfield House served as the official operational headquarters for the UK’s Security Service (MI5) for over three decades, from 1945 to 1976.

Pulpit-Shaped Bridge Piers, Blackfriars. Standing in the River Thames next to the modern train lines are the red, stubby columns of the original 1886 railway bridge. The tops are distinctly shaped like church pulpits to reflect the medieval dissolution of the monastery by Henry VIII.

In the late 1990s, archaeologists excavating near the foot of Vauxhall Bridge Road (where the subterranean River Effra flows into the Thames) discovered two lines of oak posts dating back to the Middle Bronze Age (between 1750 BC and 1285 BC). This represents the oldest known prehistoric bridge-like structure found anywhere in Britain. Picture of how it would have looked by Time Team.

From the 1950s until its discovery in 1985, Soviet KGB agents used this specific Victorian lamppost in South Audley Street as a "dead letter box" to exchange secret documents and microfilms. A spy would slip messages inside a small maintenance door at the rear base of the post and leave a white chalk mark on the side to signal to their handler that a pickup was ready. In a bizarre twist of reality mirroring fiction, the building right next door at 3 Audley Square served as the production offices for EON Productions. In the early 1960s, legendary film producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were inside that building casting Sean Connery as James Bond for cinema's very first 007 movie, Dr. No. While cinema's most glamorous fictional spy was being brought to life on paper and cast inside the building, real-life Soviet spies were quietly operating on the pavement just a few feet away outside their window. The lamppost still stands there today with its little metal trapdoor intact.

The churchyard of St Mary’s Church, Harrow on the Hill, with views of the countryside, is where young Byron would sit on this grave after school and compose poems. Visitors attracted to the tomb would chip away at it, therefore a cage was added.

London Character: Joe of Sidcup in 1953. Smokey Joe lived off Sidcup Hill. He could often be seen and heard rattling down the hill with no tyres on his bike, wearing a police helmet. It is said the police locked him up and gave a good wash in the winter.

Located inside the elegant Queen's House, Greenwich, is Britain’s first centrally unsupported geometric spiral staircase. Beyond its architectural brilliance, it is famous for a bizarre 1966 photograph taken by a retired Canadian reverend and his wife visiting the Queen’s House. The Reverend and Mrs R. W. Hardy had heard about the famous Tulip Stairs and took a photograph which after developing appears to show a shrouded, ghostly figure climbing the stairs.

Remember chewing your way through a Black Jack? They were part of the halfpenny chews, which had a kind of aniseed-flavour and would turn your tongue and teeth black, which would go down great for Halloween- although we never celebrated it back in the day.

The Hidden Roman Altar Stone, located right in the front garden of the Omnibus Theatre, 1 Clapham Common North Side, partially obscured by foliage, sits a mundane-looking stone block. This is actually a 1st-century AD Roman relic, likely an altar stone or milestone left behind from when the Romans built Stane Street right through Clapham.

Just in case there is any doubt that some of London's bollards are from recycled cannons, you can see how deep they go below the surface.