Memorial day - 52

How quick the time has gone, a year since I posted the first Memorial day blog on 6th June 2007. The question was what memorial or public work of art should I choose for Memorial day 52.

The answer was obvious, it could only be - The Monument. The name is sufficient, no need to say what it is a monument too. As can be seen above, it even has an Underground Station named after it.

The photos used in the blog were taken last August before the Monument was clad in scaffolding for it to be given a multi-million pound makeover.

Visitors will have to wait until December, before they can once again climb the 311 spiral steps up to the observation gallery.

The Monument was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Hooke is less well known by the general public than Wren, the architect of among other great buildings St Paul's Cathedral. But Hooke (1635 ~ 1703) was a brilliant scientist and engineer - his discoveries are well worth reading about. The question arises why isn't he better known? He quarreled with Isaac Newton who at the time was President of the Royal Society.Newton used that position to obscure Hooke's work.

Back to the subject of the blog, the flame-topped monument to the Great Fire of 1666 is the tallest free-standing stone column in the world, and was completed in 1677. The Latin inscription on the north panel of the pedestal translates as


"In the year of Christ 1666, on 2 September, at a distance eastward from this place of 202 ft, which is the height of this column, a fire broke out in the dead of night which, the wind blowing, devoured even distant buildings, and rushed devastating through every quarter with astonishing swiftness and noise ... On the third day ... at the bidding, we may well believe, of heaven, the fire stayed its course and everywhere died out."

You might recall the subject of last week's blog the Golden Boy commemorates the point at the north side of the City where the fire was brought under control.