Houses of Parliament

The final day dawns foggy and dull, so I put aside the idea of taking my posh camera to get some shots with real detail. It’s a film camera which means the processing is expensive, so the pictures have to be worth it. And of course, this being one of the most English sites on the planet, the dull morning gives way to glorious sunshine, we don’t do predictable weather here!

Back on site, the little team (and there are far fewer of them today) of ‘recording angels’ who are drawing the ornate masonry fragments in detail are back at work, and I am stunned by the detail of their drawings. Martin and his team are continuing to record the ‘hole in the wall’, today with a member of the team topsides in Victoria Tower Gardens measuring downwards, which is the only way we will get a complete picture of such a large upright feature. Theories about what caused the hole in the wall fly thick and fast, but meanwhile, walking the foreshore I have noticed something different.

There is clearly some kind of a Tudor feature further up the site, as there are unmistakably Tudor bricks on the foreshore, and I have spotted some red roof tiles. Time to go and find a seventeenth century map of the area!

Later on, I spot a broken mug (nothing particularly special, the kind of thing you would have found in a ‘caff’ in London in the 1970s), and I turn it over. On the bottom it says “Churchill England”, and I think this is just so beautifully appropriate for the location where I found it that I have to photograph it.

Time is called for the last time, as the tide makes the ending of our sessions pretty inevitable. But as we walk to the Tube, we come across Martin and his party, who are finishing the measuring of the hole in the wall from the top. Us FROGs can be pretty devoted!

What an amazing week! All our sites are intriguing and full of archaeological interest, but only a few of them are as iconic as this. Here’s to our next visit, there’s clearly a lot more to do.