{"id":1351,"date":"2015-06-03T07:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T07:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/?p=1351"},"modified":"2015-06-02T10:23:28","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T10:23:28","slug":"wonders-of-the-world-at-espresso-base-bloomsbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/?p=1351","title":{"rendered":"Wonders of the World at Espresso Base, Bloomsbury"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hasten<\/a>
‘Has Bean’ coffee at Espresso Base<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Espresso Base<\/span><\/a> is exactly the sort of caf\u00e9 that you want to make sure that you know about, but part of you is selfishly quite happy if not too many others do. It is not that the the place is small, far from it. There is plenty of space in the courtyard at Espresso Base, beside St George’s Church, to sit and enjoy your coffee. The thing is, it is great to have the place almost entirely to yourself. With few others around, the oasis-like quality of the place is emphasised, astonishing as it is so close to the busy Bloomsbury Way. Only this\u00a0oasis serves great coffee. Their coffee is roasted by Has Bean<\/span><\/a>, which\u00a0I admit is the reason that I first dropped into Espresso Base a few weeks ago. The black coffee that I had\u00a0was certainly very good and the environment in which to enjoy the coffee was thought provoking which, for me, is an important aspect of any caf\u00e9. Caf\u00e9s need to be places that you can go, slow down and notice things and Espresso Base certainly falls into that group of caf\u00e9s that I would highly recommend both for the coffee and the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\"stone<\/a>
The purple slate waterfall feature in the courtyard area at Espresso Base. You can just see the stone with the rectangular holes carved into it at the bottom of the wall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the day that we arrived, it had been raining. For a caf\u00e9 with seating outside this may have posed a problem but the chairs had been thoughtfully folded so that they remained dry. The rain had however seeped into some of the paving slabs around the chairs and so that was the first thing to notice, the fact that many objects when wet appear darker, why? Opposite our seating was a rock feature that to me looked like a waterfall made out of slate, the slate had a purple tinge which again, had been made slightly more purple by the rain. Below the\u00a0slate ‘waterfall’ and forming a wall, were a series of stones that had clearly been taken here from somewhere else. I say ‘clearly’, because the stone at the bottom had\u00a0two holes that had been carved out of it, one square, one slightly more rectangular. Presumably the stone had been used as part of a gate post in the past and yet there is no evidence of the remains of a gate on the other side of the courtyard (I think that a gate post would have to be deeper than the square indent in the paving slab that is at the other side of the courtyard). It is therefore more likely that the stone had been used somewhere else beforehand and ‘recycled’ for use in this wall. This juxtaposition of slate above and recycled stone below reminded me of the early geologists and how they identified the Great Glen fault that runs\u00a0through Loch Ness in Scotland. Slate is a metamorphic rock, meaning that it has undergone changes due to the high pressure and temperatures within the Earth. Slate is however quite a low-grade metamorphic rock so, compared with higher grade metamorphic rocks, it has not been subjected to that<\/em> much pressure or that<\/em> much temperature. By mapping the lower grade and higher grade metamorphic rocks along the Great Glen, the early geologists noticed a line that sharply separated the metamorphic rock types. This fault would have, in the past, caused earthquakes as the ground slipped along the fault<\/span><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Replica<\/a>
The steeple of St George’s church, Bloomsbury Way. The statue on top is of King George I rather than King Mausolus in \u00a0his chariot. The statue of Mausolus, his wife\/sister Artemisia and a horse from his chariot can be seen in the British Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On leaving Espresso Base I turned and looked up at the church. If you get a chance, take a look at the steeple. Particularly ornate, the stepped steeple is\u00a0apparently built to the description of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus by Pliny the Elder. This monument was one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World and was built to be the burial chamber of King Mausolus of Karia. Described as standing approximately 40 m in height, this massive stepped, marble pyramid stood on top of 36 columns surrounded by statues. Topping the pyramid was a statue of King Mausolus himself, in a chariot. This ancient wonder is thought to have been destroyed by an earthquake in the fourteenth century after which the stones were ‘recycled’ by the Knights of Malta to build a fortress. A history that is aptly mirrored in the geology and stone recycling evident in the courtyard of Espresso Base.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Espresso Base can be found in the courtyard of St George’s church, Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2SE<\/p>\n

Artefacts from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus can be seen in room 21 of the British Museum (conveniently just around the corner from Espresso Base).<\/p>\n

Geology help from: “Geology Today, Understanding our planet”, Murck\/Skinner, John Wiley & Sons, 1999<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Espresso Base is exactly the sort of caf\u00e9 that you want to make sure that you know about, but part of you is selfishly quite happy if not too many others do. It is not that the the place is small, far from it. There is plenty of space in the courtyard at Espresso Base, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,298,11,77,160],"tags":[370,109,369,371,375,377,372,378,373,379,374,376],"class_list":["post-1351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coffee-review","category-coffee-roasters","category-observations","category-science-history","category-slow","tag-bloomsbury","tag-british-museum","tag-espresso-base","tag-espressobase","tag-geology","tag-great-glen-fault","tag-hasbean","tag-mausoleum-of-halicarnassus","tag-slate","tag-st-georges-church-bloomsbury","tag-stone-movement","tag-wonders-of-the-world"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Z8Nz-lN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1382,"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions\/1382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beanthinking.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}