Viewpoints – Placecloud (English)

London, United Kingdom. The Astoria Picture Theatre and Dance Hall opened in 1927, quickly becoming a popular spot for socialising and dancing. The Astoria was built during the British dancing ‘boom’ of the 1910s and 1920s.

London, United Kingdom. How could the launch of a theatre with the most modern, prize-winning stage machinery go so disastrously wrong?

London, United Kingdom. Bentham's skeletal "auto-icon" watches students in UCL's hallways. In life Bentham believed that surveillance could make us behave better. His dream of a Panopticon penitentiary was never realised. Instead he became the first man to campaign against transportation to Australia.

London, United Kingdom. Simpsons of Piccadilly. The elegant premises for Simpsons mens outfitters, designed by Joseph Emberton in Portland stone and internally arranged by Laszlo Mohloy-Nagy.

London, United Kingdom. Step into a Sunday School 'Flower Show and Industrial Exhibition' from 1889 in Peckham to hear a rather disparaging newspaper report on the children's exhibits.

London, United Kingdom. Discover the work of Miranda and Octavia Hill's Kyrle Society, and their mission to 'bring beauty home to the people' in the late-nineteenth century.

London, United Kingdom. Discover the Spitalfields 'Home of Industry' where flowers were sent by train from the countryside to be distributed by the women of the Bible Flower Mission amongst the poor of the East End.

London, United Kingdom. Join me on a visit to a working people's flower show, held in the quiet square of Dean's Yard in Westminster in 1883, to find out why window-gardening was encouraged by social reformers in the Victorian era.

London, United Kingdom. What do the 'Housing of the Working Classes Act' of 1885, the Chubb Patent Lock and Safe Company, and a 'laughing jackass' have to do with one another? Find out in this short Viewpoint...

London, United Kingdom. Visit the window-gardens of nineteenth century Herbrand Street to explore why an experimental flower show in 1860 was thought to be a solution for the poor living conditions of the working-class parishioners of St George's, Bloomsbury.

London, United Kingdom. This viewpoint will explain how the structure’s inclusion in an ugly buildings competition brought to a head a larger “crisis of the English avant-garde,” to the lament of one prominent architectural critic.

London, United Kingdom. The Ring was one of the hubs of working-class sporting life in London, encapsulating the allegiances and rivalries of sport in the capital.

London, United Kingdom. In 1911 a new retailer opened up shop here. Yet this was no ordinary retailer. This was the grand new Trade Headquarters of the Salvation Army.

London, United Kingdom. This is the story of the murder of Captain Joseph Johns near Devonshire Square in 1747.

London, United Kingdom. Tyburn, that most famous of London execution sites.

London, United Kingdom. The Bunhill Fields burial ground was the first freehold property to be owned by Quakers in 1661, it is now peaceful gardens.

London, United Kingdom. Before Smithfield sold meat, it sold live animals and lots of them – thousands of cattle, sheep and pigs every single week – all of which had to be driven on-the-hoof through the streets of the world’s busiest city. The trade was worth a fortune but wreaked havoc.

London, United Kingdom. The pioneering female doctor set up this hospital for women in the nineteenth century against fierce opposition.

London, United Kingdom. By Rosamund Lily West. The sculpture, 'The Neighbours', by Siegfried Charoux, was installed on the Highbury Quadrant estate in Highbury in 1959 by the London County Council. This viewpoint looks at the choice of neighbours for this sculpture, and how the theme of neighbourliness was used by the LCC to establish the post-war Highbury Quadrant estate and its community.

London, United Kingdom. John Scurr House is a renovated modernist housing block built by Stepney Metropolitan Borough Council in 1937. At the time, it was the first council scheme to be selected for display at the Ryal Academy's Annual Exhibition.

London, United Kingdom. The former house of comic actor Will Hay, a star of the 1930s and a renowned amateur astronomer.

London, United Kingdom. The amphitheatre, set into the slopes of Streatham Common, is a great place to sit and gaze over the towers of Croydon towards the North Downs.

London, United Kingdom. An old, narrow footbridge stars in Patrick Keiller's film, Norwood, as a border – perhaps between the lands of the living and of the dead.

London, United Kingdom. Along a private road behind a block of flats, the land drops away to reveal South West London all the way to the Surrey Hills, spread out before you.

London, United Kingdom. A wild piece of woodland, a reminder of the dairy that was on this site for more than 150 years and Streatham Wells, where spa water was bottled and sold.