Timeout said:
This insect has sat on successive iterations of the Royal Exchange since before the Great Fire. It commemorates founder Sir Thomas Gresham, whose crest is was
Dave did:
Now the problem with weather vanes is that I've never knowingly searched or found one!
And so it is that once successfully locating the Royal Exchange building (one which as it turns out I have passed on numerous occassions over my last 19 months in London, without once realising it is a shopping mall inside...I thought it was a Bank of England office?!!?), I spent the next half hour trying to find a grasshopper!
At one point I wondered if it was inside the building itself (which was closed), my mind trying to convince me that despite it being a weather vane (i.e. one of those North, East, South West, wind blowing sign things) some mad-hatter decided to place one inside for decorative reasons.
Just as I was about to give up however, I managed to find it BEHIND the main entrance on the top of the clock tower! An ominous sign for things to come later today? I hoped not!
Some further research on this weather vane since spotting the grasshopper (yes it is a rainy day...) has helped explain that the reason the grasshopper was used to commemorate Sir Thomas Gresham was because his life was saved by a chirping grasshopper....but then even further research (yes its STILL raining) shows through Wikipedia that Sir Thomas Gresham was responsible for founding the Royal Exchange and that it was actually the founder of the Gresham family - one Roger de Gresham - was abandoned as a baby in the long grass of North Norfolk, and that a woman was drawn to him on the chirpings of a grasshopper. Of course wikipedia being the cynical machination that it is quells all these stories by stating:
" A beautiful story, it is more likely that the grasshopper is simply an heraldic rebus on the name Gresham, with gres being a Middle English form of grass"
Oh well!
7 down...993 Things to go!
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