In addition to the places described in the foregoing two posts, we visited two others. Unfortunately, as I have committed myself to blogging on the day and have run out of time, I cannot describe them in detail. All I can do is identify them so that you can research them yourself, if you wish.

The first is the Blackheath Quaker Meeting House, a Grade II list Brutalist building, whose meeting room is shown above. Note the hour glass on the table (hour glasses fascinate me!).

It has a pyramidal ceiling to allow in the light without this being intrusive.

You will find plenty of information about this intriguing building online.

The next is Boone’s Chapel, built in 1683 to serve almshouses erected by the Merchant Taylors’ Company which have since been demolished. (Photo by Tigger.)

Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hook were both involved in building it. The chapel fell into a state of neglect but has been rescued and restored. As with the previous item, information about this building can be found online.

When we emerged from this last visit, we were both rather tired as we we done a lot of walking and we were glad to sit on buses for the long ride home.

It now remains to be seen what tomorrow will bring!

Our next destination was a Jacobean mansion called Charlton House, pleasantly situated in Charlton Park. (Photo by Tigger.) It was built in 1609-12 as a residence. In its long history it has served as a military hospital and a museum and is now a community centre. The rooms no longer contain period furnishings so the interest is in the fixed decor.

The column-decorated entrance.

We started with a cup of tea in the house’s cafe which has this strapwork-decorated ceiling.

Here are some photos taken as we went through the house.

Here is a view of the park which I assume was once the house’s grounds.

This gateway now stands in an isolated position in the grounds.

As a nice touch, this public library occupies a part of the house.

This quaint little building away from the house near the road is the stables.

We crossed the road and caught a bus to Blackheath for the next part of our tour.

Here we are leaving the train at Charlton. It’s a pleasant sunny day so far, just right for a ramble. Let’s hope it remains so.

Here we are in Charlton village, heading to our first destination. This is London’s annual Open House weekend when many buildings are thrown open to the public.

On the way we spied this old drinking fountain. Is it Victorian? (Many, if not most antique ones date to that period.) I could not find a plaque or any other dedication so I cannot be sure.

This photo by Tigger shows where we were going, to the 17th-century Church of St Luke with Holy Trinity. (The double name suggests that two churches once combined into one but I didn’t enquire into that.)

On the façade of the church is this colourful sundial. I’m not sure that it is telling the correct time but in this age of watches and mobile phones that hardly matters.

This is a general view of the interior of the church, looking towards the altar.

The church has a number of stained glass windows, so ancient and some more recent.

This is one of the side chapels. If it has a name, I did not see one displayed.

This is a view towards the rear of the church, showing the massive beams in the roof.

On the way out we stopped to view the Millennium Tapestry, completed in 1999. It is in a narrow room so I had to take it by panorama which accounts for the distortion. It i a very complex piece of work and we were told that people who had worked on it were reckoned to be descendants of people who had worked on the Bayeux Tapestry.

In the entrance is this colourful mosaic showing a winged bull with the inscription SANCTUS LUCAS. This mythologicl animal is the symbol of the named saint.

We now caught a bus to our next destination.

Earlier this afternoon I was in Canonbury, a district in the Borough of Islington, when I spied this church spire nicely illuminated by the autumn sunshine.

I was intrigued by the fact that the end of the main church building (nearest the camera) seems to have been converted into residential accommodation.

I progressed around to the front of the church and discovered that this is St Stephen’s Canonbury. As I had an appointment I could not spend more time investigating.

The church just qualifies as Victorian, dating from two years into that reign (1839).

Canonbury owes its name to the fact that the land was given to the Priory of St Bartholomew in 1253. As the priory was in Smithfield, I assume the canons derived income from from the land by renting it out for farming.

There we have two topics for further research!

I spent my childhood years in the Sussex seaside town of Brighton. My teenage years were just like those of any teenager today, give or take a few details: computers were room-size machines kept in science laboratories, mobile phones had not yet been invented, “coffee bars” were all the rage and the prevailing fashion among trendy young men was the velvet-lapelled “Edwardian” suit.

I attended the local grammar school, went cycling, rambling and sea-bathing with friends, dated girls and gradually but inexorably, grew up.

My childhood, on the other hand, was quite unlike that of British children today because it was lived during the Second World War.

As a child, I was spared most of the horrors that I was to learn about later. I was aware of shortages and the need to avoid waste. I was aware too of the cardboard box with its string for carrying it that contained my “Mickey Mouse” gas mask. I was used to seeing troops and military vehicles in the streets and seeing the skies full of aircraft, sometimes ours and sometimes those of the enemy.

I once watched from our back garden as two Spitfire fighters each tackled a V-1 “buzz-bomb”. These rockets looked like small aeroplanes with a large rocket engine on their backs. They were usually aimed at London where they would run out of fuel and crash, causing immense damage. The Spitfires used their own wings to tip the wings of the rockets and thus to turn them around and send them out to sea where they could be shot down.

A far as daily life was concerned, the major factor was air raids. Every so often, our activities would be interrupted by the rising and falling wail of the air raid sirens. Even today, if I hear a similar sound, a shudder runs through me.

Brighton and Hove suffered quite badly from bombing despite not being an industrial area. I have found two maps that give an impression of the damage.

This Google Map version, from The Brighton and Hove newspaper, The Argus, shows how thickly the bombs fell.

This printed map from the collection of Brighton Museum shows more clearly the positions of bombs up to 1944 in relation to the streets of the town.

At first, all we could do when the sirens sounded was to go and sit under the stairs, with a candle for lighting. I can remember my mother coming to take me from my bed at night during a raid and seeing our joint shadow bouncing up and down along the wall as she carried me to our not very secure refuge.

Later we were provided with a Morrison shelter. This occupied most of the kitchen, the room where we spent most of our time. It had iron girders at the corners and a smooth top that could serve as a table. Underneath, it had a base of interleaved strips of metal, like some cheap beds, on top of which was a mattress. There were wire panels that could be affixed to the sides to guard against an infall of debris. During the worst of the bombing we slept in the shelter every night.

Our house was never hit by a bomb but one of those opposite was. At the time it was occupied by Mrs Spicer and her infant son. She had put him in his pram in front of the house while she was busy in the kitchen. Later she brought him indoors because there was a threat of rain. That was just as well because when the bomb fell, it destroyed the whole house except for the kitchen. Both emerged unscathed.

The war ended with a street party which I was unfortunately unable to attend, being confined to the house by my anxious mother because I had a heavy cold. She brought me titbits and a balloon from the party as consolation.

I did however attend the street’s Guy Fawkes Night. They built a massive bonfire right in the middle of the road and perched on top of it a uniformed dummy in the guise of Adolf Hitler. That fire left a moon-crater in the tarmac that lasted until the road was eventually resurfaced.

Eventually too, our Morrison shelter was dismantled and carted away. Gradually, all the signs of war faded from the streets and houses though not from our minds.

I went on to pass my school examinations, neither badly nor very brilliantly, and found a place at university. At this point also, we left Brighton for a new home in Gloucestershire. As a result, memories of my formative years remain as though encapsulated, like a ship in a bottle, wrapped in a distant Brighton that is remembered with fondness but no longer exists.