It was Execution Dock, which stood at the side of the Thames between Wapping New Stairs and King Henry’s Stairs. There, in the 16th and 17th centuries, pirates were hanged and their bodies left in chains until three tides had washed over them. Kidd’s execution proved a fiasco: he was so drunk he could barely stand and, as the cart on which he was swaying was moved from the scaffold, the rope around his neck broke and he was thrown to the ground. Still tipsy, and now covered in Thames mud, he was manhandled back on to the cart and eventually despatched.

The answer is George IV. In 1830, a large monument was erected to the memory of the recently deceased king at the junction of Gray’s Inn Road, Pentonville Road, and what is now Euston Road. It was extremely unpopular, attracting much criticism and derision, and by 1845 had been completely demolished. However, the name King’s Cross has survived.

The answer is Brookwood. The funeral trains carrying mourners and cadavers left from a special station at 121 Westminster Bridge Road, just outside the main Waterloo terminus. The station contained a mortuary and a private chapel of rest. It was hit by a German bomb in the Blitz in 1941 and not rebuilt, though much of its elaborate facade is still intact.

It was Lord’s Cricket Ground. On 11 June 1939, the St John’s Wood station on the Metropolitan line near the famous cricket ground was renamed Lord’s Station. Unfortunately, the extension of the Bakerloo (now Jubilee) line to Stanmore that November resulted in the creation of another station serving St John’s Wood. During the war, the Lord’s Station was closed and never reopened.

It would be hard to find two musicians more different, but Hendrix is said to have been pleased by the coincidence that he was living in a house next door to one in which Handel had composed so much of his music.

It never opened. Restrictions on further building in the area, ushered in by the establishment of Hampstead Garden Suburb in 1907, made the station unviable. It was therefore abandoned before it was finished. Frank Pick did, however, live not far away in Golders Green. There is a blue plaque on his former home at 15 Wildwood Road NW11.

It’s a clowns’ service. One of a family of dancers and clowns, Joseph Grimaldi made his first appearance on stage in 1781 when he was less than two years old, and went on to become the archetypal clown of English pantomime. The clowns’ services began in 1946 at St James’s, Islington – the church in whose grounds Grimaldi was buried – but St James’s was demolished and the service transferred to Dalston in 1959. Since 1967 the clowns who attend the service have been allowed to dress in their full motley and make-up, so the pews are filled with white-faced men with red noses and baggy trousers, giving thanks to the man who is still regarded as the father of English clowning.

The answer is Kenneth Grahame. In 1903, five years before the publication of 'The Wind in the Willows', Grahame was lucky to survive a bizarre incident at the Bank when a disturbed young man named Robinson pulled out a gun and fired three shots at him.

It was Jane Austen. Between 1807 and 1816, the house was occupied by the bank Austen, Maunde and Tilson of which Jane Austen’s brother Henry was a director. She stayed there with Henry on visits to London in 1813 and 1814.

It was a tower planned to be taller than the Eiffel Tower. Sir Edward Watkin was an MP and railway tycoon who proposed building a tower in Wembley Park that would rise higher than its Parisian counterpart and accommodate restaurants, theatres, a ballroom and a Turkish bath. It only reached 200 ft in height before the money ran out. The project was abandoned and the tower dynamited out of existence in 1907. The remains of Watkin’s tower were re-discovered recently when the foundations of the new Wembley stadium were being dug.