Each week we solve one of London’s great mysteries (as submitted by you, the reader). This week  Karine from Forest Hill asks: Crossing the Golden Jubilee Bridge at Charing Cross last week, I noticed dozens of metal padlocks locked to the bridge’s railings. The locks are covered in messages: ‘Winnie and Heather Forever’, ‘Tess and Caro’, and drawings of hearts. What’s going on?

Now hear this, Karine…

This is a global phenomenon, known as ‘love locks’. To touchingly commemorate the permanence of the union between their souls, lovers nip down the hardware shop, splash a few quid on a padlock, then clamp it to street furniture. Yep: we’re welling up too. The locks are  engraved with the couple’s names, initials and a romantic message. The choice of landmark hinges on its significance to the couple’s relationship, be  it where they first met, got engaged or had their first dust-up over looking at other men/women. Once the padlock’s affixed, the key’s thrown away (usually into the river), thus rendering it an everlasting commemoration of the romance. At least until the local council turn up with bolt-cutters.

The origin of the custom is unknown, but chances are that it hails from overseas. Serbia’s Most Ljubavi bridge (the Bridge of Love) similarly sprouts a multitude of love locks, some of which can be traced back to World War II, but over the past decade, thousands more have been attached to  landmarks all over the world. There are so many padlocks on Moscow’s Luzhkov Bridge that the local authorities have installed treelike sculptures, so there are more things to attach locks to. Rome’s Milvian Bridge is on similar lockdown, thanks to Italian author Federico Moccia. His novel ‘Ho Voglia De Te’ (‘I Want You’) features a young couple who cement their affections by fixing a padlock to the bridge. A spate of copycat romances later and it looks like the police have had to secure the structure against a desperate gang of bridge thieves. Not all Italian cities are enamoured of the practice. Florence city council recently removed 5,500 love padlocks from the historic Ponte Vecchio due to oxidisation damaging the bridge’s metal railings. Lust? More worried about rust, mate. Jess West

Discover the truth behind other London mysteries.

Each week we solve one of London’s great mysteries (as submitted by you, the thoughtful reader). This week, Tony Richard from Norfolk ponders the secret to long life.
Q: ‘On a recent visit to Westminster Abbey (above) I noticed a gravestone commemorating Thomas Parr, born in 1483. He then seems to have lived to the age of 152. Is this true and, if so, what was his secret?’

Well Michelle…

The answer can be found by listening to an episode of ‘that antidote to panel games’, BBC Radio 4’s comedy programme,  ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.’ The popular show has been broadcast since 1972, but in 1978, a new element was introduced: the perplexing game of ‘Mornington Crescent’. Without revealing any of the rules (we couldn’t explain them if we tried) the premise of the game is that players must name various London Underground stations in a particular sequence which will finally lead them to ‘Mornington Crescent’.

Radio nerds should travel to www.mornington-crescent-rule.fsnet.co.uk for an explanation of the rules, which if you read very carefully and concentrate hard and don’t have a job and family to attend to, might, just possibly, make sense after days of contemplation, although they won’t.

Few fans can match the grasp of the game displayed by the show’s stars: Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Willie Rushton, who was a panellist and favourite on the show for 22 years, right up until his death from a heart attack in 1996.

Since his death, Rushton’s spot has been deemed irreplaceable and has only been occupied by temporary panellists.

Mornington Crescent station itself was subject to reconstruction for most of the 1990s, but when it was rumoured to be closing for good, a backlash (mainly constituting ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ fans) ensured it reopened in 1998. In 2002, a blue plaque honouring Rushton was erected there. The ceremony was attended by 200 fans along with Rushton’s fellow panellists.

Kate Samuelson

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Each week we solve one of London’s great mysteries (as submitted by you, the reader). This week Charlotte Ross of Haggerson asks: ‘While travelling on the 48 bus to Hackney, I saw what looked like a potato with matchsticks poking out of it – a spudnik? – perched on the roof of a bus shelter. I have since seen several others like it at bus stops on the 48 and 55 bus routes. Is this the beginning of an alien invasion or are these things ‘art’?‘

Well Charlotte…

We have had other reports of these strange objects (pictured above), Charlotte, and many have speculated about their purpose and origin. Rumours circulating online have suggested that they could be monitors to track buses or devices to discourage pigeons. However, we can tell you that they are indisputably potato-based; were created by the artist known as No Nose; and were featured in the 2008 Tate Media documentary ‘Street Art – Painting the City: London, Paris, Madrid’.

No Nose explained to us how, in 2004, he began creating his art by painting dots on potatoes. He then started spray painting the spuds in fluorescent hues and covering them in spines, to make them as noticeable as possible. In some cases the protuberances are cocktail sticks; in other cases, matches, cotton buds or nails.

By carefully launching his creations on to bus shelters, No Nose says that he has ‘a clear strip of flat roof allowing the small and relatively insignificant potato a place to inhabit’. He intended to explore the fear surrounding unattended, suspect devices brought on by his ‘objection to the war in Iraq’. The significance of the potato is to do with his fascination for creating objects that ‘have their own natural lifespan’.

But who is this mysterious No Nose? Like other notorious London street artists such as Sweet Toof and Pure Evil, we know very little about him personally. He exhibited at the Red Gallery in 2011 and will be showing work in the inaugural exhibition of the Herrick Gallery in late June. However, the Street Art London blog prefers to refer to him as a ‘concept’. ‘He will always be an idea, an expression of creativity,’ said Griff from the blog. ‘I think it is best to keep No Nose a mystery.’ Josie Gurney-Read

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Well Anne Marie…

It sure was. The Republic of Texas, which existed from 1836 to 1845, was a sovereign state. Originally Texas was part of Mexico, but in 1836 it formed a breakaway republic from the country after General Sam Houston led the Texans to victory at the Battle of San Jacinto.

In an attempt to thwart an almost certain Mexican invasion, the new state began to develop international ties by opening legations in Paris, Washington and London. Initially, the British wouldn’t recognise the Texans, because of the UK’s friendly relations with Mexico, and the republic was unable to establish an embassy here. However, when Texas sought to join the United States in the 1840s, Britain encouraged it to remain independent, even offering to guarantee its borders with Mexico and the States and allowing it to set up a legation in 1842, at Pickering Place, St James’s Street, in a building that was also home to the wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd.

This has not been forgotten by modern Texans. Twenty-five years ago, during the Texas sesquicentennial, 26 Texans clad in buckskin showed up at the wine shop (which is still there) to settle the republic’s outstanding debt of $160; it was repaid in Republic of Texas bills. When the Anglo-Texan Society installed the plaque in 1963, among those in attendance was former Texas governor Price Daniel and Tony Berry (a Berry Bros & Rudd descendant). George Charlton

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Each week we solve one of London’s great mysteries (as submitted by you, the reader). This week,  Lucy Still from Stoke Newington asked: ”I passed the Savoy hotel the other day and noticed that cars were driving up to its entrance on the right hand side of the road. Is this just a case of one rule for the rich?”

Well Lucy…

You’ve pretty much nailed it. For more than a hundred years, vehicles of the horse-drawn or mechanical kind have entered and left ‘Savoy Court’, the private thoroughfare that leads up to the hotel’s front doors, on the right-hand side of the street. It is the only road in the UK where this is the case, special dispensation to do so being granted by legislation thus avoiding a contravention of British traffic regulations.

We spoke to the Savoy Hotel’s archivist Susan Scott to find out why their little road insists on breaking the rules. ‘I have heard any number of reasons to explain the anomaly over the years, each possibly more ludicrous than the previous,’ says Scott, who adds that the most common assumption is that it’s to please visiting Americans. ‘Sadly the real reason is entirely prosaic. It is to prevent cars dropping off or picking up people at the Savoy Theatre (which is next to the hotel on the Strand) from blocking the hotel’s entrance.’

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1902 allowing carriages and cars to enter Savoy Court on the right. Even if there was a queue of cars for the theatre, cars and taxis for the hotel could cut directly past all of that,’ says Scott, who says that the turn of the century and into the 1920s was a ‘golden age’ for both establishments. There were other benefits to having the cars approach the hotel on the right-hand side. Ladies would traditionally sit behind their chauffeur, and so female film stars and dignitaries could exit their car in style – their door being opened immediately by their driver, who didn’t need to walk around the vehicle – allowing them to sweep from the car straight into the building. Oh, what it is to be rich and famous…  Clare Considine

We assumed the scrawling was simply the work of some teenage whippersnapper with a large ego and an infinite supply of white chalk, but we were wrong. This isn’t just any old tag. It’s art. The, um, markings are the work of the Turner Prize-winning Mark Wallinger, who chalked walls across London as part of his 2010 Frieze art fair project.

The Marks have popped up all over the place – from Clapham Junction to Mayfair to Camden Town, but the template is always the same: the name is written within the space of a single, standard-size brick. At his Frieze show, Wallinger presented a slideshow of the results: 2,265 images appear, one every three seconds over a span of almost two hours. But what is the point of it all?

In Martin Herbert’s excellent recent book on the artist, the author explains that the idea behind Wallinger’s knowing exhibitionism is an attempt to examine the role we all play in the larger scheme of things. Bricks were chosen because, according to Wallinger, they are ‘as ubiquitous as people’. Herbert concludes: ‘There is a fine line being walked here between controlling one’s environment and accepting how insignificant one is within it.’

Not convinced? Head out to Wimbledon, where some witty sceptic has chalked the word ‘Mock’ on to a brick wall. We imagine that Wallinger is probably chuckling about that one too. George Charlton

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Well Tom,

This is not a belated April Fool: it’s true! Back in 1999 geneticists Kate Byrne and Richard Nichols analysed the phenomenon in a research paper, ‘Culex pipiens in London Underground Tunnels: Differentiation Between Surface and Subterranean Populations’. The study found that London Underground had its very own family of mosquitoes- a unique species that is alive and well and has most likely been commuting with us for years.

Most of us have been irritated by pests on the tube at some point in our travelling lives. But surely the Underground is far too hostile a place for any living thing to thrive for long? We tracked down Byrne at the London Institute of Zoology to find out more about this subterranean sucker. ‘My assumption is that they have been there as long as the Underground has existed,’ said Byrne. ‘They were certainly present during the war, when people were frequently bitten while using the Underground as an air raid shelter.’

The mosquitoes are unique, Byrne explained, because ‘they have adapted to a manmade environment, changing their biology in the process, and have become reproductively isolated from surface mosquitoes.’ The insects are able to survive in this environment due to the damp nature of Underground tunnels. ‘Mosquitoes require water in which to lay their eggs,’ she said. ‘Water in the Underground is full of nutrients, which come from everything from discarded sandwiches to shed human skin. Nutrient-rich water means large, healthy mosquitoes, and it importantly means that females are able to lay at least one batch of eggs without needing a blood meal.’ We asked Byrne if the mosquitoes have a favourite tube line. She explained that, even within the system, there are distinct populations on the different lines, ‘presumably because it is easier to move up and down tunnels on the same line than from one line to another’. It turns out everybody in London has an opinion on the best line to travel on – even those pesky mosquitoes. Clare Considine

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Each week we solve one of London’s great mysteries (as submitted by you, the reader). This week Olivier from Mile End asks: ‘Recently I’ve heard reports of geese mysteriously disappearing while swimming on the River Lea. We’ve all heard of the Loch Ness Monster – is there a River Lea Monster?’

Any clue? Post your answers below. Have a London mystery you want solved? Comment below or tweet us at @TimeOutLondon.

Well Udo,

The dummy bridge you mention doesn’t span any water, but stands in the grounds of Kenwood House on the bank of its lake, the Thousand Pound Pond. The structure, which resembles a discarded theatre set, was created as a picturesque focal point for Kenwood’s handsome gardens. According to English Heritage, it was built between 1755 and 1757, when the house was owned by the first Earl of Mansfield. Mansfield commissioned Scottish neoclassical architect Robert Adam to remodel the seventeenth-century house and landscape the grounds, and he also designed and built the bridge. It has been rebuilt many times, most recently in 1992, and it is now protected by Grade II-listed status. Despite its various reconstructions, it has retained its original design: a white timber facade with a Palladian balustrade painted on it. But venture round to the back of the structure and the deception becomes apparent: rows of wooden struts hold up the two-dimensional front. We spoke to Andrew Ginner, the range supervisor at English Heritage, about the origins of the bridge. He told us that the first evidence for its construction might be in a sketch by eighteenth-century artist and writer Mary Delany. Her drawing, now part of the Iveagh Bequest art collection at the house (which, incidentally, closes in April for repairs and reopens in autumn 2013), is entitled ‘A View of the Ancient Bridge at Kenwood’, and is dated June 25 1757. The ‘Ancient Bridge’ depicted isn’t the dummy one, but in a corner of the sketch you can glimpse something that could be a pillar of Adam’s imposter. The fake bridge must, therefore, have been fooling visitors for 250 years. Josie Gurney-Read

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