STRAND, London - 460 buildings of trade, history and new culture.

Today I was invited to 180 Strand (what a fabulous hub of creativity - alive and beating a powerful pulse) and took the opportunity to walk the full street and tune in to the energies.

I have walked along, across and through parts of Strand since age 10 (my family had shops in Covent Garden for years) but never had I tuned in, or observed it as I did today. So much history to report on this main artery of 3/4 mile between the City of Westminster and the City of London. The numbers run consecutively 1-460 starting and finishing at Trafalgar Sq (1, Strand was the first numbered property in London). From Charing X Station, to the Savoy, Somerset House, the place of the first BBC public broadcast, to the Strand Palace Hotel which housed a menagerie of lions, tigers, monkeys and hippopotami - and in 1826, an elephant - on the UPPER floors! (no wonder I’ve always felt the energy of the site to be energetically ‘dark’ and forbidding) and 2 churches, one of which - St Clement Danes - was ringing ‘oranges and lemons’ as I passed it...and SO much more, the street is a hidden gem of paradox.

Tuning into the land’s energy, I was getting: ‘a land for ladies and the gentry’, that it was a public highway - in the sense of permitting the traffic(ing) of goods from the shipyards to Westminster’s Lords and gentry.

The name (which originates from strond - which meant ‘edge of water’ or beach) was, I sensed, allocated during a somewhat lavish ‘luncheon’ and the purpose of running this all-important once trading lane close to the river, as opposed to ‘through’ the city was so maintenance of the cargo could be ensured – the security and safe passage. I sensed it was also once the first ‘toll road’ of London.

Standing on the forecourt of Charing X and I can sense the underlying fields which were once there... and the marsh land nearby which once fed ‘the system of cultural exchange.’ This cultural exchange is the ‘groundwork’ of the Strand – imports and exports. A neutrality. The trading route which now houses embassies, universities, and Royal Courts of Justice alongside food for the homeless, theatres and new creative landmarks.

Tune in, next time you pass.

[3rd June 2021]