Nature & Environment
Learn how the growth of one of the world’s great cities has affected its environment – with the help of our related objects, stories and blogs.
Blogs-And-Stories
Take a tour along the River Thames in the 1930s
An atmospheric trip through lost London riverscapes
London’s lost rivers
Over hundreds of years, these rivers have been abandoned or concealed beneath our streets
The River Thames
Dive into stories about the key waterway that shaped – and has been shaped by – London
Frost fairs: Festivities on a frozen River Thames
Trading, feasting and entertainment on ice
Atmospheric photographs of Hampstead Heath
Observing the living landscape of London’s urban wilderness
Victorian photographs of Barnet & Enfield
Roaming rural north London in the late 1800s
The animals of London Zoo in the 1950s
Photographer Henry Grant takes us on a tour of these Regent’s Park residents
London’s whaling trade: Blubber & baleen
Whether sporting a corset or reading by lamplight, Londoners once relied on the products of whaling
Hop-picking: Londoners’ working holiday
Going ‘hopping’ in Kent was once a rare summertime escape from city life
Flooded London
Before the Thames Barrier, flooding in London was regularly destructive and often deadly
A thousand years of Billingsgate Market
The prize catch of London’s fish trade, home to a unique culture and generations of working history
Greenwich Park: Where time begins
The birthplace of Tudor monarchs and Greenwich Mean Time
Bushy Park: London's second-largest royal park
One of London's most remarkable historical landscapes can be found in the south-west suburbs
