Victoria Embankment Gardens

The York Buildings Waterworks' Water Tower was a water tower on the north bank of the River Thames and a dominant feature of the 18th century London skyline. The water tower was a wooden structure, 70 feet high (21 metres) and with an octagonal cross-section. It was erected in the late 17th century on a site at the end of Villiers Street, by the York Watergate, now part of the Victoria Embankment Gardens. The Survey of London includes a drawing (plate 31 in volume 18) showing the building. The prominent position and height of the water tower meant it appeared in many paintings and drawings of London's north bank at the time. These include:

Toole's Theatre, was a 19th-century West End building in William IV Street, near Charing Cross, in the City of Westminster. A succession of auditoria had occupied the site since 1832, serving a variety of functions, including religious and leisure activities. The theatre at its largest, after reconstruction in 1881–82, had a capacity of between 650 and 700. As the Charing Cross Theatre (1869–1876) the house became known for bills offering a mixture of drama, burlesque and operetta. Among the authors of its burlesques were W. S. Gilbert and H. B. Farnie. Its stars included Lydia Thompson, Lionel Brough and Willie Edouin. In 1876 Thompson and her husband, Alexander Henderson, became lessees of the theatre and renamed it the Folly Theatre. They continued the theatre's customary mix of operetta and burlesque. Their greatest successes were with English adaptations of French opéras bouffes and opéras comiques, most conspicuously Les cloches de Corneville, which began its record-breaking run (705 performances) at the Folly in 1878. In 1879 the comic actor J. L. Toole took over the lease. In 1881 he changed the name to Toole's Theatre and had the building substantially reconstructed. He continued the policy of staging burlesques, but introduced more non-musical comedies and farces. Among the authors who wrote for the theatre were John Maddison Morton, F. C. Burnand and Henry Pottinger Stephens; composers included George Grossmith and Edward Solomon. The theatre was important for beginning the professional careers of many actors, writers and actor-managers. Among the playwrights whose early works were presented at Toole's were Arthur Wing Pinero and J. M. Barrie. Future stars who were members of the company as beginners included Kate Cutler, Florence Farr, Seymour Hicks, Irene and Violet Vanbrugh and Lewis Waller. The lease of the theatre expired in 1895, and the lessor, the Charing Cross Hospital, did not renew it. The theatre was demolished in 1896.

The Charing Cross Music Hall was established beneath the arches of Charing Cross railway station in London in 1866 by brothers Giovanni and Carlo Gatti, to replace the former Hungerford Hall. The site had been acquired, together with Hungerford Market, by the South Eastern Railway in 1862, and incorporated into the railway station, which opened on 11 January 1864, resulting in the demolition of the hall.

The Imperial Camel Corps Memorial is an outdoor sculpture commemorating the Imperial Camel Corps, located in Victoria Embankment Gardens, on the Thames Embankment to the east of Charing Cross station, in London, England. The unit of mounted infantry was created in December 1916 from troops that had served in the Gallipoli campaign in the Dardanelles. The memorial was sculpted by Major Cecil Brown, who served in the Corps, with bronze elements cast by A.B. Burton at his Thames Ditton Foundry. It comprises (considerably smaller than life-size) a bronze statue of a man riding a camel, on a Portland stone pedestal with bronze panels on its four sides. Two bronze plaques list the names of all 346 men who died while serving with the Corps in Egypt, Sinai and Palestine between 1916 and 1918: 191 from Australia on the east plaque, and 106 from the UK, 41 from New Zealand, and 9 from India on the west plaque. The bronze plaque to the south depicts two soldiers running, and that to the north depicts two officers next to a camel. Below the bronze plaque, the north face of the stone plinth bears a dedication: To the Glorious and Immortal // Memory of the Officers, N.C.O.s and Men // of the Imperial Camel Corps – British, // Australian, New Zealand, Indian – who fell in action or died of wounds // and disease in Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, 1916, 1917, 1918. The south face is inscribed with a list of the engagements of the Corps: 1916: Romani, Baharia, Mazar, Dakhla, Maghara, El. Arish, Maghdaba 1917: Rafa, Hassana, Gaza 1, Gaza 2, Sana Redoubt, Beersheba, Bir Khu Weilfe, Hill 265 1918: Amman, Jordan Valley, Mudawar (Hedjaz)Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Chetwode, who was the first commander of the Desert Mounted Corps, unveiled the memorial on 22 July 1921. The Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, delivered the dedication. The memorial received a Grade II listing in 1958. Westminster City Council restored the memorial in 1999.

York House (formerly Norwich Place or Norwich Palace) was one of a string of mansion houses which formerly stood on the Strand, the principal route from the City of London to the Palace of Westminster.

Victoria Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and river-walk along the north bank of the River Thames in London. It runs from the Palace of Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London, and acts as a major thoroughfare for road traffic between the City of Westminster and the City of London It is noted for several memorials, such as the Battle of Britain Monument, permanently berthed retired vessels, such as HMS President, and public gardens, including Victoria Embankment Gardens.

The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges.Founded in 1754 by William Shipley as the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, it was granted a Royal Charter in 1847, and the right to use the term "Royal" in its name by King Edward VII in 1908. The RSA acronym is used more frequently than the full legal name (The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).Notable past fellows include Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Nelson Mandela, David Attenborough, William Hogarth, John Diefenbaker, and Tim Berners-Lee. Today, the RSA has fellows elected from 80 countries worldwide. The RSA awards three medals – the Albert Medal, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, and the Bicentenary Medal. Medal winners have included Nelson Mandela, Sir Frank Whittle, and Professor Stephen Hawking. The RSA members are innovative contributors to human knowledge, as shown by the Oxford English Dictionary, which records the first use of the term "sustainability" in an environmental sense of the word in the RSA Journal in 1980.

Embankment is a London Underground station in the City of Westminster, known by various names during its history. It is served by the Circle, District, Northern and Bakerloo lines. On the Bakerloo line and the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line, the station is between Waterloo and Charing Cross stations; on the Circle and District lines, it is between Westminster and Temple and is in Travelcard Zone 1. The station has two entrances, one on Victoria Embankment and the other on Villiers Street. The station is adjacent to Victoria Embankment Gardens and is close to Charing Cross station, Embankment Pier, Hungerford Bridge, Cleopatra's Needle, the Royal Air Force Memorial, the Savoy Chapel and Savoy Hotel and the Playhouse and New Players Theatres. The station is in two parts: sub-surface platforms opened on 30 May 1870 by the District Railway (DR) as part of the company's extension of the Inner Circle eastwards from Westminster to Blackfriars and deep-level platforms opened in 1906 by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR) and 6 April 1914 by the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR). A variety of underground and main line services have operated over the sub-surface tracks and the CCE&HR part of the station was reconstructed in the 1920s.

The Watergate Theatre in London existed in 1949-56, located on Buckingham Street, Westminster. In 1949 Elizabeth Denby, together with the theatre director and playwright Velona Pilcher, the writer Elizabeth Sprigge, and Jane Drew converted a site at 29 Buckingham Gate, originally a Chinese restaurant destroyed in World War II during the Blitz, to create a performing space for their theatre club. This consisted of two club rooms, and a 70-seat theatre. In 1950 plans were made to increase the seating to 100, and for the walls to display murals designed by Marc Chagall. In 1950 Chagall started work on two studies for the projected murals – 'The Dance and the Circus' and 'The Blue Circus'. After Pilcher's death in 1952, Chagall gave his murals to the Tate Gallery, and the theatre was taken over by the New Watergate Theatre Club.In September 1950 it staged the premiere of George Bernard Shaw's Farfetched Fables, the last work Shaw completed, and it also staged the English premiere of August Strindberg's The Great Highway, in a translation by Sprigge. That year also saw the staging and almost runaway success of Pablo Picasso's short play, Desire caught by the Tail in the translation by Roland Penrose. In 1951 it presented a production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors performed by the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club and directed by John Barton.Several revues were staged at the Watergate Theatre, including Sandy Wilson's See You Later (1951) featuring Dulcie Gray and with Donald Swann playing the piano, and John Cranko's Cranks (1955, featuring Anthony Newley and with music by John Addison) and setting by John Piper.Given notice that 29 Buckingham Gate was due to be demolished as part of the Strand Improvement Scheme, the New Watergate moved to the Comedy Theatre in Panton Street in 1956.

Adelphi (; from the Greek ἀδελφοί adelphoi, meaning "brothers") is a district of the City of Westminster in London. The small district includes the streets of Adelphi Terrace, Robert Street and John Adam Street. Of rare use colloquially, Adelphi is grouped with Aldwych as the greater Strand district (a main street of London between the two areas and those immediately adjoining) which for many decades formed a parliamentary constituency and civil registration district.

Durham House, or Durham Inn, was the historic London town house of the Bishop of Durham in the Strand. Its gardens descended to the River Thames.

Little Theatre in the Adelphi was a theatre in London, on what is now John Adam Street just west of the Royal Society of Arts. It should not be confused with either the Haymarket Theatre (also known as the Little Theatre) or the Adelphi Theatre both of which are in the West End. The theatre was constructed in 1910 from a banking hall previously used by Messrs Coutts, part of the original Adam Brothers Adelphi development between the Strand and the River Thames. The first lessee of the Little Theatre was the actor-manager Gertrude Kingston, who had it built largely to her specification, making it the first British theatre to adopt certain lighting techniques, including ‘dimmer’ lights, which had been invented in the United States. From 1932 to 1941 it was the permanent home of the People's National Theatre with its manager Nancy Price. The theatre was twice bombed, once in 1917, being reconstructed on its original lines in 1920, and again in 1941. It was demolished in 1949.The first play staged after its 1920 reopening was Edward Knoblock's Mumsie.