Welcome back to the Deep Dives. I'm your host.
And today we are doing something that, well,
it sounds incredibly simple on the surface, but
I promise you this, it is going to get very complicated
very quickly. Yeah. Hi everyone. And you're not
kidding about it getting complicated. Right.
So we are looking at a map today, specifically
resuming way, way in on a single tiny rectangle
in West London. Basically a patch of grass surrounded
by some reelings and bricks. Exactly. Just a
square. We are talking about Earl's Court Square.
And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking
a square. We're spending this entire deep dive
on a single square. It sounds a bit entirely
too niche, right? It does. But the reason we
picked this and the reason our research team
went absolutely overboard pulling all these historical
records and architectural surveys is because
this isn't just a location on a map. No, it really
isn't. It's what you might call a microcosm of
London history, a true core sample of civilization.
I love that. That is the perfect analogy. Because
if you're a geologist, right, and you want to
understand the history of the earth, you don't
just look at the surface. You drill down. Right.
You take a core sample. Exactly. You pull up
this long cylinder of rock and you look at the
layers. You see the sediment, the bedrock, maybe
the ash from a volcano from a million years ago.
Cities work the exact same way. And Earls Court
Square is one hell of a core sample. If you slice
through the history of this one specific location,
you don't just see a changing London, you see
these absolutely wild contrasts in the human
experience. The extremes. Yes, the extremes.
We're talking about the highest of high society,
Victorian ambition, the literal founders of the
Royal Ballet. Crashing headfirst into the grittiest,
darkest parts of the 20th century. Exactly. It's
a stage where the scenery just keeps changing.
One minute it's just agricultural calm. The next
it's the home of an inventor designing armor
-piercing naval weaponry. Which is still wild
to me. Right. And then you blink your eyes and
suddenly it's the 1970s. The plaster is peeling
off the walls and you have squalid brothels,
a famous murder, and a member of Pink Floyd losing
his mind in a flat with painted floorboards.
And I still can't quite get over this part from
our source material. A literal civil war. Oh,
the poetry wars. Yes. Not a metaphor, a physical
confrontation involving the police. But the combatants
were poets. The Battle of Earl's Court. It is
such a crucial part of British literary history.
And it happened right there in a house that used
to belong to a weapons manufacturer. You just
couldn't write fiction in this symbolic. You
really couldn't. So that is our mission today.
We are going to stand in the middle of this garden.
metaphorically speaking, and watch the world
rotate around us for 150 years. We're going to
trace how a cabbage patch became a fortress of
empire, then a slum, and finally the multi -million
pound real estate you see today. And we really
need to peel back the architecture, too, based
on those surveys we reviewed. Because the buildings
themselves, they're telling a story about psychology,
about insecurity, and about this desperate need
to be fashionable. Absolutely. The facades are
hiding so much. But before we jump into the time
machine, let's ground everyone. Let's visualize
the location. So we are in West London, in Earl's
Court. The square is situated specifically between
Warwick Road on the west and Earls Court Road
on the east. And it is a garden square. We should
clarify that because that's a very specific London
thing. Yeah, explain that layout for anyone who
hasn't been there. Sure. So it's a communal garden
in the center. Usually it's accessible only to
the residents who have a key to the gate. And
it's surrounded by these grand terraces of tall
houses looking inward at the trees. It sounds
incredibly tranquil. It sounds lovely. But as
we're about to find out. Tranquil is probably
the absolute last word I would use for its history.
It has been a lot of things, but boring is certainly
not one of them. So let's start at the bedrock.
Section one of our dive today, foundations and
facades. Before the bricks, before the drama.
What was actually here? Mud and vegetables. Mud
and vegetables. Just a farm. Just a farm. For
centuries, this was strictly agricultural land.
It was part of what was known as the Earls Court
Farm. And originally, this land belonged to the
Rich family. Which is a great name for a landlord,
by the way. It really is, isn't it? The Rich
family. And then later, ownership transitioned
to the Edwards family. For generations, this
was just the outskirts. London was miles away
to the east. This area was where you grew the
food that fed the city. But then we hit the mid
-19th century. And the monster starts to grow.
The expansion of London. The explosion of London,
really. The railways arrive. The district line
cuts right through the area. And suddenly, growing
cabbages in Earl's Court is just a terrible business
model. Because the land is suddenly worth a fortune.
Exactly. It's worth a fortune if you can stack
people on it instead of plants. So the Edwards
estate makes the decision to develop. And what's
the timeline on that? Do we have a specific?
date from the records? We do. Construction officially
began around 1872 or 1873. OK, so we are deep
in the Victorian era at this point. The British
Empire is at its absolute height. And this is
where we really need to talk about the look of
the place. Because they didn't just build functional
houses, they built a statement. They really built
the architecture of ambition. If you walk into
Earl's Court Square today and look at those main
terraces, what is the first thing you notice?
It's all white. It's incredibly grand. It looks
like a giant wedding cake made of stone. Exactly.
It looks like stone. But here's the secret. It's
a total lie. It's a lie. A complete fabrication.
That is not stone. That is brick. Cheap, usually
fairly ugly brick, entirely covered in a layer
of stuff called stucco. OK, let's unpack stucco
for a second. Because you hear that word on property
shows all the time. Oh, it's a stucco -fronted
property. What actually is it, chemically speaking?
Chemically, it's a render. It's a mix of lime,
sand, cement, and maybe some crushed marble if
the builder's feeling fancy. You literally smear
it over the brickwork like icing on a cake. Wow,
okay. And then you score deep lines into it to
trick the human eye into thinking it's made of
heavy individual blocks of masonry. And then
you paint it. So it's basically theatrical makeup
for a house. It is pure theater. The Victorians
in this area wanted to project immense power.
They wanted their homes to look like the great
Italian palazzos of the Renaissance. That's why
the dominant style in the square is what we call
Italianate. Ah, so that explains the columns.
Yes. You see the upper floor balconies supported
by those heavy columns. Those are Italian at
dressings. You have the heavy cornices, the pillared
porches. It's all designed to create this overwhelming
sense of verticality and grandeur. It's sending
a message. Exactly. It says, the person who lives
here is a person of substance. They are as solid
as Rome. Even though their house is actually
just made of brick and plaster. Precisely. And
there is a massive catch to this. Using SUCO
in 1870s London was a really high -risk strategy.
Why is that? Well, think about the air quality
in 1873. Oh, right. Coal smoke. The famous pea
super fox. Exactly. The air was practically solid
with sulfur and soot. Now what happens to a highly
porous bright white plaster wall in a sulfurous
atmosphere? I imagine it doesn't stay bright
white for very long. It turns gray, then it turns
black, and then the sulfur actually attacks the
lime and it starts to peel off in these huge
ugly chunks. It literally looks like a skin disease
on the building. Oh wow. So living in a stucco
house was actually a double flex. You were telling
society, I can afford to buy this massive house
and crucially I can afford the army of painters
required to repaint it every two years to keep
it white. like owning a white Ferrari today or
something. You're telling the world you can afford
the insane maintenance. That's spot on. It is
the architecture of insecurity. They were desperate
to look established. But here is where the core
sample gets visually really interesting. Because
the square isn't actually uniform. All right,
looking at the architectural survey we have,
it's quite a mix. It is. Alongside all that Italian
stuff, you have clear influences of the Second
Empire style. Which sounds very Star Wars, but
I'm assuming it's French. It is French. Think
Napoleon III. Think Grand Paris Boulevards. You'll
see mansard roofs, those very steep roofs with
the windows set into them, and very distinct
dormer windows. So you have a bit of fake Italy,
bit of fake France? Yeah, but then if you walk
to the south side of the square, specifically
the terrace numbered 30 to 50 suit C3, you step
into a completely different movie. These are
the houses that were built later, right? Yes.
The whole development of the square took about
20 years, eventually finishing around 1890. And
by the time they finally got to building the
south side, the fashion had changed completely.
So what are we looking at when we look at numbers
30 to 52? We are looking at the Jacobian revival.
Okay, so we've ditched the fake Italian stone
by this point. completely ditched it. Gone is
the white stucco. Now we have red brick. We have
incredibly ornate terracotta details. We have
these uniquely shaped gables at the roof line,
sometimes called Dutch gables. Why the sudden
switch? Did they just run out of white paint?
No, they ran out of patience. You really have
to understand, the Victorians were obsessed with
style, but they got bored so easily. By the late
1880s, people were absolutely sick of the endless
rows of white stucco. They were over it. They
called it dra - they thought it was soulless
and repetitive. The aesthetic movement had kicked
in. People wanted texture. They wanted color.
And crucially, they wanted something that felt
English. Because the Italian style was too foreign.
Exactly. The Jacobian revival looked back to
the 17th century, to the reign of James I. It
felt native. It felt domestic and warm. So the
square literally captures that exact moment in
history where Londoners collectively decided
we are done with the fake columns, bring us the
red brick. It's a fossilized change in taste.
You can see the timeline written right in the
mortar and you know it gets even more complex
when you factor in the apartments. The mansions.
Right the mansion blocks. We've got Weatherby
Mansions, Herbert Court Mansions and Langham
Mansions. These are large purpose -built apartment
blocks that just coexist right alongside the
houses. I've always found the term mansion block
quite funny. It is clearly just marketing. it
is 100 % marketing spin because in the 1880s
respectable middle -class English families did
not live in flats. Flats were for the poor or
they were continental. Which again was highly
suspicious to the Victorians. Extremely suspect.
The idea that you lived on one floor with strangers
living literally above your head, it was standaless.
So how do you convince wealthy people to buy
them? You call it a mansion. You put a very imposing
porter in a brass buttoned uniform at the front
door. You build this incredibly grand entrance
hall. You make it sound like a sprawling country
estate. And it worked beautifully. These blocks
became highly desirable. And just to finish the
architectural tour of the square, we have the
modern layer, the addition of Northgate House
in 1965. Which I'm sure you can guess looks absolutely
nothing like the others. Nothing at all. So you
have agricultural roots, Italian ambition, French
roofing, English revival brick, and 1960s modernism,
all facing the exact same patch of grass. It's
an incredible ensemble. So the stage is completely
set. We have these grand, confusing, ambitious
buildings. Now we need to populate them. And
this brings us to section two of our dive. High
culture and high society. The golden era residents.
The list of people who lived in this square in
the late 19th and early 20th century is just.
staggering. And there's a distinct theme. It
seems to be this intense mix of heavy industry
and high art. It really is. It serves as an incubator
for people who, and I don't use this phrase lightly,
who genuinely changed the world. Or at least
they fundamentally changed their corner of it.
Let's start with the art side of things, specifically
the ballet. This square is basically hallowed
ground for British dancers. It is. The absolute
key figure here is Ninette de Valois, the dame
herself. The dame. She lived at number 23. This
was actually her parents' home initially, and
she lived there at the very start of her career.
Now, we really need to contextualize her for
a moment. Because she didn't just do ballet.
She essentially built the entire infrastructure
of British ballet from zero. Because before her,
it didn't really exist here as a major institution,
right? Not as a national homegrown institution.
If you wanted... serious, prestigious ballet
back then. You look to Russia or you look to
France. Devaloa was just an absolute force of
nature. Yeah. She founded the Sadler's Wells
Company. She founded the Royal Ballet School.
She founded the Royal Ballet itself. So imagine
this. You're walking past number 23 in, say,
1920 or so. You look up at the window. And inside
there is this young woman who is mentally constructing
the entire future of dance in the United Kingdom.
The discipline that requires is just insane.
Ballet is all about rigorous, often painful perfection.
And she was plotting all of that out in a house
originally designed for lazy Victorian gentility.
It's a great image. And she wasn't the only one.
Sir Frederick Ashton is also listed as a notable
inhabitant of the square. He was arguably the
greatest British choreographer of the 20th century.
It's amazing. It's like a vortex for dance talent.
It suggests that the area had this very specific
cultural cachet. It was wealthy enough to be
comfortable, but maybe just on the edge enough
to be artistically interesting. But then, and
this is where the contrasts come in, you look
two doors down and the vibe changes completely.
Number 21. Earl's Court Lodge. This is the home
of Sir William Palliser. Now this guy. He was
not choreographing delicate dances. He was choreographing
destruction. He was a brilliant inventor, specifically
of ordinance. Heavy naval weaponry. The palacer
shot. I read up on this in the bios we pulled,
and it is fascinating. It is. And to understand
why his presence in the square matters, you have
to look at the naval arms race of the 1860s and
70s. This was the era of the ironclads. Suddenly,
navies around the world were wrapping their old
wooden ships in these incredibly thick iron plates.
So the old school cannonballs were just bouncing
right off. Boing. Exactly. It was a massive problem
for the British Empire. The navy had these huge,
powerful guns, but they just couldn't penetrate
the new French or Russian armor. Palliser solved
it. How did he do it? He invented an entirely
new way of casting the projectiles. He used something
called chilled iron. Essentially, he cast the
artillery shot point down in a metal mold. OK,
what does that do? Well, the metal mold cooled
the tip of the shell very rapidly. This rapid
cooling made the nose of the shell incredibly
hard. Brittle, yes, but intensely hard. And then
the rest of the shell, the body, was cast in
sand. So it cooled much more slowly and st -
tough and resilient. So when it actually hits
the enemy ship... The nose doesn't squash or
deform, it punches through the iron armor plate
like a needle, and the tough body of the shell
follows it right in, shattering the inside of
the ship. It was absolutely brutal. It changed
naval warfare overnight. And he is designing
this terrifying weapon in a nice stucco house
in Earls Court Square. That is the exact juxtaposition
I love about this place. At number 23, you have
the ultimate grace and elegance of the human
form, the origins of the Royal Ballet. At number
21, you have a man mathematically calculating
the best way to send a heavy piece of iron through
the hull of a battleship to kill everyone inside.
It perfectly captures the duality of the British
Empire right there. The high culture and the
extreme violence, just living side -by -side
in matching houses. And you had other major figures,
too. Frank Gielgud lived there, the father of
the famous actor Sir John Gielgud. Later on,
you had Sir John Egan, a highly notable businessman
in the 1960s. These were all people who made
things happen on a grand scale. The square was
a genuine power center. Nothing stays golden
forever. No, it doesn't. Cities are living organisms.
They breathe in, they breathe out. Neighborhoods
rise and they inevitably fall. And Earls Court
Square fell hard. Which brings us to section
three, the slide into squalor. The gritty 1970s.
If we get back in our hypothetical time machine
and jump from the glory days of the 1920s to,
say, 1972, what are we seeing when we look out
the window? You are seeing a very, very different
world. The historical surveys are actually quite
blunt about it. They describe the square by the
1970s as extremely run down. How does that happen?
How do you go from Sir William Palliser and Dame
Nanette de Valois to extremely rundown. It's
the mechanics of the post -war city. First, you
have the servant crisis. Those big vertical five
-story houses were essentially machines, and
they ran entirely on cheap human labor. You needed
maids to haul coal up four flights of stairs
just to heat a bedroom. Right. After the two
World Wars, nobody wanted those jobs anymore.
And the middle class certainly couldn't afford
to keep fully staffed houses. So the houses just
become unmanageable for a single family. Exactly.
Who wants a massive, drafty house with no central
heating and no staff to clean it. So the original
wealthy families move out to the suburbs or downsizes.
And the landlords move in. They buy up these
mansions and they chop them up. The multi -occupation
era. Yes. They throw up flizzy partition walls.
put a cheap padlock on every bedroom door, install
a coin -operated gas meter in the corner, and
rent them out by the week. The population becomes
highly transient. And when a population becomes
transient, the fabric of the community starts
to fray very quickly. And obviously the maintenance
completely stops. Remember the stucco we talked
about? The peeling skin. The white Ferrari that
nobody is washing. Exactly. By the 70s, it's
gray, it's cracked, it's falling off in dangerous
chunks onto the pavement. The beautiful iron
railings are probably rusting or missing, and
into this vacuum comes the underworld. The notes
we pulled for this section are grim. We aren't
just talking about a bed of litter or some noisy
neighbors. We are talking about organized vice.
Two specific brothels are explicitly mentioned
in the records operating right in the square.
One was at number 9, another was operating out
of the AL block of Weatherby Mansions. And the
phrase used in the source text is squalid brothels.
Which implies a whole lot. These were not high
class discrete establishments for gentlemen.
These were dangerous, intensely unsanitary places.
We know this for a fact because they were eventually
evicted not by the police vice squad, but by
the borough's health inspector. That is such
a grim detail. It wasn't just treated as a crime.
It was literally a public health hazard. And
that kind of environment attracts serious violence.
There was a murder described as a sordid murder
that occurred at number four. It's almost impossible
to reconcile this with the ballet dancers, isn't
it? It is, but this is established life cycle
of grand London squares. Wealthy origins, post
-war obsolescence, severe decay into multi -occupancy,
and neglect. The 1970s was the nadir, the absolute
lowest point for the area's reputation. It was
a really rough place to be. But, and I think
this is the great paradox of urban decay squalor
is cheap. And cheap rent attracts artists. Precisely.
The establishment flees to the suburbs and the
counterculture moves right into the ruins. Which
perfectly transitions us into section four, psychedelics
and counterculture. Because right in the middle
of all this grime and danger, we find a massive
rock star. Sid Barrett. The original front man
and founder of Pink Floyd. He lived at 29 Weatherby
Mansions. The records show he moved in around
January 1969. Now. We really need to set the
scene for Sid here. Because this is not the Sid
Barrett playing sold out stadiums with lasers.
No, not at all. This is Sid on the way down.
He has already been kicked out of the band he
founded. His mental health is rapidly deteriorating,
heavily fueled by intense LSD use. He is actively
retreating from the world. And he chooses to
retreat to Earl's Court Square. It makes perfect
sense for him at that time. It was a place for
outsiders. He lived in that flat. with the artist
Dougie Fields. I've actually seen photos of that
apartment from later years. Dougie Fields eventually
turned it into this incredible pop art masterpiece.
Yes. But in 1969, imagine the stark contrast.
Outside the window, you have the rotting Victorian
facade, the gray London sky, the transient bedsits,
maybe the squalid brothel just down the hall.
And inside, you have these brightly painted floorboards,
mattresses thrown on the floor, incredibly loud
music playing, and and a musical genius who is
slowly, tragically losing his grip on reality.
It's almost poetic, in a way. The building was
decaying, shedding his old erictocratic identity
right at the same time Sid was shedding his pop
star identity. It connects Barrett so deeply
to the architecture of the era, he wasn't living
there because it was posh. He was there because
it was a ruin. And ruins are places where you
can hide. We also have Joan Buck, the American
writer and actress, listed as living there during
this period. It really became a bohemian enclave.
It did. It was gritty. It was undeniably dangerous,
but it was incredibly creative. The knights and
the dames were long gone. The freaks had officially
taken over the castle. And speaking of freaks
taking over the castle, we absolutely have to
talk about the battle. Oh, the battle of Earl's
Court. This is section five. And honestly, when
I was reviewing the research notes, this is the
part that made me stop and reread the page twice
because it sounds like a Monty Python sketch,
but it was entirely real. It was very real and
very intense. So let's go back to number 21.
Right. Sir William Palliser's old house. The
naval gun inventor. Right. By the 1970s, who
was occupying the gun inventor's grand house.
The poets. Specifically, it housed the Poetry
Society and the Poetry Society Bookshop. Okay.
So I'm picturing tea, biscuits, quiet readings
of rhyming couplets. It sounds very peaceful.
You would certainly think so. But the 1970s was
a volatile time for everything in Britain, and
that included poetry. There was a massive, bitter
ideological split in the British poetry scene.
Who were the combatants in this war? Well, in
the blue corner, you had the traditionalist factions.
These were the old guard. They controlled the
society. They firmly believed in strict form,
in narrative verse, in proper, respectable English
poetry. The literary establishment. Exactly.
And in the red corner, you had the modernist
factions. These were the young radicals. They
were part of what's known as the British poetry
revival. They were heavily influenced by American
beat poets, by chaotic sound poetry, by performance
art. They basically wanted to tear up the traditional
rule book and burn it. So what actually happened?
Did they just write incredibly passive aggressive
letters to each other? Oh, no. It went way beyond
letters. The modernists organized a literal coup.
They realized that if they just got enough of
their radical friends to join the society and
vote, they could legally take over the council
of the Poetry Society. And they did exactly that.
They seized control of the organization from
the inside. They seized power. They seized the
means of poetic production. They literally took
over the printing press. in the basement of number
21, they turned the ground for bookshop into
a massive hug for radical underground literature.
They started using society funds to publish experimental
work that the traditionalists absolutely despised.
I'm guessing the traditionalists did not take
this well. Not at all. And more importantly,
the Arts Council, the official government body
that provided the funding for the society was
horrified. They thought they were giving taxpayer
money for quiet culture, not for this radical
anarchist takeover. So you have a full -blown
standoff. You have a literal siege. It was documented
historically as the Battle of Earl's Court. There
were vicious shouting matches in the very hallways
where Palliser used to design artillery shells.
There were lock -ins. The police were actually
called to the square. The police were called
to settle a poetry dispute. Officer, arrest this
man. He's using free verse. Exactly. It sounds
hilarious to us now, but the stakes for them
were incredibly high. They were fighting for
the very future of British poetry. They were
fighting for limited funding for national visibility.
And it was all happening right there, centered
at number 21. I just love the historical irony
of it all. You have a house built by a man who
made literal weapons of war. And 100 years later,
it becomes a metaphorical and almost physical
battlefield for a civil war between angry poets.
It perfectly highlights the cultural of the 1970s.
We usually just think of the 70s as a time of
economic decline or the birth of punk rock. But
even in these supposedly highbrow circles, there
was deep rebellion, clashing ideologies everywhere.
Everything was up for grabs. So at this point
in our timeline, we have hit rock bottom. We
have squalid brothels, unsolved murders, drug
-addled rock stars, and rioting poets. The square
is an absolute mess. It is on the brink of total
collapse. But... We all know the ending to this
story, because if you go to Earls Court Square
today, it is immaculate. It is full of multi
-million pound flats. The stucco was painted
bright white again. How on earth did we get from
the poetry riot back to the pristine recovery?
This brings us to section six of our dive, Conservation
and Legacy. The square obviously didn't stay
squalid forever. The major turning point was
the year 1975. What happened in 1975 to turn
the tide? The square was officially granted conservation
area status. Now here is a detail from the survey
that I found completely fascinating. Despite
the massive architectural ambition, despite having
residents like Palliser and Devaloa, there are
absolutely no listed buildings in the entire
square. That is surprising, isn't it? Usually
grand Victorian terraces with that much history
would definitely be grade a second listed in
London. So what is the actual difference between
a listed building and a conservation area? Why
does it matter? A listing protects a specific
individual building. It says, this one structure
is a unique masterpiece. You cannot touch the
windows. You cannot alter the interior. But a
conservation area protects the broader environment.
It protects the vibe. The vibe of the square.
Right. Legally, the planners call it protecting
the character and appearance. It recognizes that
the true value of the area isn't necessarily
in one specific house, because remember, the
architecture is a total mishmash. Some are fake
Italianate, some are Jacobian, some are massive
mansion flats. The value is in the ensemble,
the way all these different buildings group together
and face inward around that central garden. So
granting that status basically saved the context
of the neighborhood. Exactly. Once that status
was formally granted in 1975, it sent a massive
signal to developers and investors that the area
was officially protected. The Wild West era of
the 70s was over. And the cleanup began. Yes.
The Arts Council eventually cut the funding to
the radical poets, and that society basically
imploded. The borough cleared out the remaining
broccoles, the transient bedsets were bought
up, and the houses were slowly, painfully renovated
back into single -family homes or luxury apartments.
And the garden itself survived through it all.
The garden is the one constant in this entire
story. We should also mention Farnell Muse, which
runs just from the east side of the square. That
layout survived, too, through the agricultural
farming era, the frantic Victorian building site,
the golden era of the ballet, the slum era of
the 70s, and the modern multi -million pound
recovery. that one patch of green remained. It's
a complete Victorian ecosystem that somehow managed
to heal itself. So if you walk through those
gates today, you aren't just seeing a sterile
museum piece. You're looking at a survivor. You
really are. You're seeing a veteran, a building
ensemble that has been scrubbed completely clean,
but has seen things you just wouldn't believe.
It really is an incredible journey when you lay
it all out like this. I mean, we traveled from
the Edwards Family Farm. straight through the
massive construction boom of the 1870s. We saw
the architecture of ambition rise up in fake
stone. We visited the homes of the people who
built the Royal Ballet and the people who armed
the Royal Navy. We watched it all completely
fall apart during the post -war servant crisis.
We hung out with Sid Barrett in the squalor of
the 1960s. And we witnessed a literal poetry
civil war. It brings us right back to that core
sample idea from the beginning. Earl's Court
Square is just a perfect example of how a single
location can wear so many different masks over
a century. It reflects the changing face of London
itself. London is constantly dying and being
reborn. This square is just a very, very concentrated
version of that cycle. And that is exactly what
I want you, the listener, to take away from this
deep dive today. Because we all walk past buildings
every single day. Maybe it's a house on your
commute. Maybe it's your own apartment block.
And you look at it, and you just see bricks.
You just see the surface layer. But if the walls
of number 21 Earls Court Square could talk, they
would scream. They would talk about armor piercing
shells in the 19th century and shouting poets
in the 1970s. Every building has a secret history.
You have to be curious enough to drill down and
look for it. So here is our final provocative
thought for you to mull over today. What seemingly
quiet building in your neighborhood is hiding
a wild history of battles, genius or crime. Next
time you walk past that old quiet house on the
corner, just stop for a second. Imagine who was
living there 50 years ago. Imagine who was pacing
the floors 100 years ago. You might be truly
surprised by what you find. Thanks for diving
deep with us today. We'll see you in the next
one. Bye, everyone.