Union Chapel, Islington – Live Music and a Nonconformist History

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Live music venues have long been central to London’s creativity and the city’s entertainment industries. The number of smaller pub with live music venues have declined significantly over the last few decades, but there are still many places where live music is performed in a unique venue, and not part of an international corporate empire.

My first large concert in London was at QPR’s ground, Loftus Road in 1975, when with a schoolfriend, we went to see the band Yes. Before that it was smaller groups and venues. Since then, London has continued to be the place where we have seen so very many live performances across the musical spectrum. Dr Feelgood, Blockheads, Stranglers, Human League, Gary Numan, Public Service Broadcasting, Muse and so very many more.

A couple of week’s ago we went to see Toyah, in what must be one of London’s most unique venues – Union Chapel in Islington.

It is a place we have been to a number of times since the Union Chapel started hosting concerts, the last was to see a band called Caravan, who performed there in 2022. They were the first live band I ever saw, I think in 1973 or 1974.

Union Chapel is a really fascinating building, both from an architectural and historical aspect, and the purpose of today’s post is to explore the history of the building – not my musical taste you will be pleased to know.

Looking down to the stage from the rear of the balcony:

The current Union Chapel was built between 1876 and 1877, replacing an earlier and smaller chapel on the same site.

Union Chapel is a Nonconformist, Congregational Church.

The name Union comes from the original founding of the congregation in 1799, when a group of Nonconformists joined with a group of Anglicans who had grown apart from the established church of St. Mary’s, Islington.

Over time, the Anglican element of the union gradually declined and the group became fully nonconformist, which basically means an approach to church hierarchy, worship and prayer that is different to the established church.

The first meeting place of the “Union” was in a large house in Highbury Grove, then in 1806 they moved into a chapel built on the site of the existing Union Chapel.

As the 19th century progressed, the Congregational approach grew in popularity, as did the size of the local population as the area around Islington and Highbury developed quickly.

This resulted in the need for a larger chapel, and the original chapel was demolished in 1875, to make way for the new chapel which opened in 1877.

The new chapel was designed by James Cubitt (no relation to the builders and civil engineers, brothers William, Thomas and Lewis Cubitt who jointly built much of 19th century London, including Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs).

James Cubitt specialised in Nonconformist chapels during the 19th century, and the Islington Union Chapel was one of his first, and probably one of his most important works. Many of his other chapels across the country have since been demolished, but Union Chapel remains.

The Congregational approach was that the whole congregation should be involved in the process of worship, and that the Minister, and those leading services should be visible to all, unlike a typical church service where a screen would often hide key parts of a religious ceremony from the majority of the congregation.

This approach can be seen in the interior design of the Union Chapel.

The interior has a cruciform design, although when inside the church this is not really visible, as the octagonal configuration of the walls is the dominant feature.

This allows an unobstructed view of the pulpit from the floor of the chapel, where there are pews on a floor that gradually increases in height towards the rear of the chapel, as well as on the surrounding balcony, where pews are also arranged so they increase in height as they run towards the external walls of the chapel.

This arrangement minimises the number of obstructions, either architectural, or from the people sitting in front, and is a design that makes the Union Chapel ideal not just for religious services, but also for concerts.

View looking across to the stage on the lower right, pews along the ground floor, balcony with pews underneath the gothic arches at the side of the chapel:

To further ensure the visibility of the minister, the large stone pulpit is raised so that the congregation had a good and unobstructed view of the minister, who could also look out across the congregation:

The ornate ceiling of the chapel, with the decorated central panel:

The interior of the chapel is a contrast to the exterior, which is architecturally still an impressive building, but to glance at the building from Upper Street or Compton Terrace, you would not have an idea of the magnificent interior.

The chapel was built half way along a terrace of houses in Compton Terrace, a street deliberately set back from the busy Upper Street, with a length of gardens separating the two.

In the following extract from the 1894 revision of the OS map, Union Chapel can be seen in the middle of the map as the large block in the middle of a long row of terrace houses, with a Lecture Hall and Sunday School towards the rear, which faces on to Compton Avenue (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

In the above map, the row of terrace houses on either side of Union Chapel is of equal length.

The northern length of houses today is much shorter than originally built. A V1 flying bomb hit in 1944, killing 26 people and resulting in the destruction and severe damage of 12 houses, along the northern end of the terrace, these were demolished after the war.

This demolition provided the space for the traffic roundabout and central space of Highbury Corner to be built. We can see this in the following map, where Union Chapel is again in the centre, the original length of terrace remains to the south, but a much shorter terrace is to the north of the chapel, and Highbury Corner and the central Highbury Island now cover where the rest of the northern stretch of terrace once ran (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The main entrance to Union Chapel, as seen from Upper Street:

The tower was completed in 1889, just over 10 years after the chapel first opened. It is 170 feet in height, and according to the listing at Historic England (Union Chapel is Grade I listed), bells were never installed in the belfry, behind the open windows towards the top of the tower.

A large clock projects out from the tower, and at ground level there are three entrances, a large central Gothic portal at centre, and two smaller, but similar entrances to either side.

To the left of the short stretch of road that connects Upper Street with Compton Terrace, there is a Grade II listed K2 Telephone Kiosk, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. Behind the kiosk are the gardens that separate the terrace from Upper Street:

This is the view along Compton Terrace from the south, with a small part of the lighter brick of the chapel visible in the distance:

Much of the terrace and railings at the front, are Grade II listed, and were built between 1819 and 1821 by Henry Flower and Samuel Kell.

The name Compton Terrace comes from Lord Compton, Marquess of Northampton, the original owner of the land, and whose permission was needed to build the Union Chapel.

Closer up to the chapel, and we can (just) see the clock on the front of the tower:

Plaque on the front of the chapel recording the founding of the original “Union” of the two congregations, who first met at Highbury Grove, then the 1806 chapel in Compton Terrace, then the 1877 rebuild of the chapel, which is the chapel we see today:

The names of the two pastors shown on the plaque show that for the majority of the 19th century, there were only two lead pastors of the Union Chapel.

It was Henry Allon who was the driving force behind the construction of the new, expanded Union Chapel. He was also a significant figure in the Nonconformist movement across London, the rest of the country as well as the United States..

He was paster at Union Chapel until his death in 1892, and the Nonconformist paper published a lengthy obituary on the 22nd of April; 1892, of which the following two paragraphs are just a small part:

“Dr. Allon was a man of immense industry and of very various activities, but his great work was the building up, maintenance and extension of the congregation of Union Chapel. he was a highly competent, but by no mean showy, preacher. He would have blushed at the thought of using the pulpit as a means of setting off his abilities. Teaching and edifying were the aims he kept constantly in view, and never were the labours of a Nonconformist pastor more handsomely requited by the confidence and affection of his people. It was so from the first, and so to the end.

Dr. Allon’s death will be felt as a loss wherever the English language is spoken. In the United States, which sent him the highest academic distinction it has to bestow, he was greatly honoured for his learning and refined taste. At home, where he never evaded difficulties, he was always a healing and unifying influence. Never eager, he was always ready, to speak, and his utterances were invariably well considered and kindly. We shall all greatly miss his intellectual countenance, with its habitually benevolent expression, but we have the consolidation of thinking that he has well and truly accomplished the great task committed to him, and left an example which it will be an honour to follow.”

Henry Allon had been awarded Honorary doctorates from Yale in the united States and from St. Andrew’s in Scotland.

Henry Allon in 1879:

Attribution: Lock & Whitfield, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The foundation stone of the new chapel was put in place in 1876, and the Islington Gazette on the 16th of May 1876 reported on the ceremony, and confirmed some of the history of the chapel:

“On Saturday afternoon the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone of the new Union Chapel, Compton-terrace, was performed under most cheering auspices. From a sketch of the history of the church, a copy of which was deposited under the stone, we gather that the chapel had its origins in 1802, in the spontaneous association of a few earnest and devout men, in part Episcopalians, and in part Nonconformists – the former a more evangelical ministry than at that time could be found in the parish church, and the latter some provision for evangelical worship in addition to the two Nonconformist chapels then existing in Islington. After worshipping together for about two years they formed themselves into an organised church consisting of twenty-six members, and secured as a chapel, a building in Highbury-grove, now the dwelling house No. 18.

In August 1806, the church and congregation moved to the chapel in Compton-terrace, which they had erected. On the 30th of that month it was opened for Divine worship. It was called Union Chapel to indicate the union of its worshippers of Episcopalians and Nonconformists. The liturgy of the Church of England was used in the morning, and the extempore prayer, after the manner of the Nonconformists, in the evening.

In 1861, in consequence of the growing requirements of the church, additional land was purchased, and the chapel was enlarged; 400 sittings were added, and new vestries, lecture and classrooms were built.

From the beginning the church was gradually increased in numbers and influence. In 1802 it consisted of 26 members; 1843, 319; 1875, 676 including the members of the mission stations, Nichol-street, Spitalfields and Morton-road of 791.”

The foundation stone ceremony was attended by around two thousand people, the majority coming from the congregation of the chapel. There were flags and banners, including those from the Union Chapel Sunday School, the Nichol Street Sunday School and the Morton Road Ragged School.

A platform had been set up next to the foundation stone, and on the platform were many of the representatives of the chapel and the congregation, including Dr. Allon, and from the congregation there was Henry Spicer, a senior deacon of the chapel, who would be recorded as the person who laid the stone.

The foundation stone of the Union Chapel.

The formal opening of the Union Chapel was an equally well attended event, and the opening was also attended by the William Gladstone, who a couple of years earlier had ended his first term as Prime Minister.

Gladstone was given a tour of the chapel, and a service was held to commemorate the event.

It is interesting reading the accounts of the opening service, as Dr. Allon’s sermon included references to the dispute between science and religion regarding the position of “man” and the theory of evolution, which had gained considerable more public awareness after Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

During the service “he then proceeded to oppose the argument that man is the mere creature of natural laws, and therefore morally on a level with all other creatures. Having referred to what had been urged by opponents of Christian revelation about the antiquity of the earth and the successive developments of geological formations and of animal and vegetable life, he maintained that the very grounds on which it was thus sought to degrade man really elevated him, seeing that all these vast changes were effected in order to fit the earth to be man’s habitation.”

So Allon was arguing that the earth had evolved to fit man’s habitation, whilst Darwin was arguing that man had evolved because of the way the earth, and life on the planet had evolved.

A walk to the rear of the chapel in Compton Avenue brings us to the Sunday School and other offices of the Union Chapel. In the following photo, the Sunday School is the brick building facing the street, and we can get a glimpse of the tower of the chapel in the background:

A short distance along Compton Avenue is the Compton Arms, which dates from 1895. As with the terrace, the avenue and pub are both named after Lord Compton, Marquess of Northampton. A perfect place for a drink before heading to an event at the Union Chapel:

View looking north along Compton Avenue:

I am not sure of the history or function of the structures on the left. They are not listed so perhaps not old, and I think that Compton Mews were here (although this may be wrong), but whatever their history, they add some interest to the street.

During the later half of the 20th century, attendance at the Union Chapel dropped considerably, and there were proposals to demolish the church. Such a large and complex building needed a considerable amount of funding to maintain.

In 1992, Union Chapel opened as an events space, with the profits generated from hiring out the venue cycled back into the conservation, maintenance and development of the building.

It is still a place of worship, with services being held every Sunday morning, and whilst it is a really good concert venue, it is the people who have used the Union Chapel over the decades that come to mind as you sit in the wooden pews.

At the rear of the church, to the right of the pulpit area, there is a war memorial, recording the names of the members of the Union Chapel, and associated Mission Church, who lost their lives in the First World War (it is always sad to read the term “Great War” in these memorials, when we now call it the First World War, as unknown to those who put up these memorials, there would be yet another global war in a few short years time).

There is a name on the memorial which may be a distant family member – something I have long been trying to confirm:

And to finish off, Toyah was brilliant as usual, and as well as more recent music, it was also a flashback to the 1980s:

It would though be interesting to know what Dr. Henry Allon would have thought of such events happening just in front of the pulpit at which he preached for many years

There are monthly tours of Union Chapel if you would like to visit this remarkable place. Click here to go to their list of tour dates and times.

St Martin in the Fields and Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

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In this week’s post, I am exploring the church of St Martin in the Fields, and also at the end of the post I have my first Sunday of the month feature on Resources, where I look at some of the resources available to help explore the history of London. In this months Resources, I am looking at a source of Historical maps of Southwark (and the rest of London) and a series of maps showing the boundaries of Wards of the City of London..

But first, St Martin in the Fields, a very prominent church on Charing Cross Road and at the north eastern edge of Trafalgar Square, with the prominent tower and steeple looking out over the square and the National Gallery:

A similar, but very moody view of the church through a Trafalgar Square fountain in the 1920s:

The St Martin in the Fields that we see today was designed by James Gibbs and completed in 1726:

The current church was built on the site of a much earlier mediaeval church, with the first mention of the church dating back to 1222, when it would have been mainly surrounded by fields, although just to the south was the important road running from the City to Westminster and the small village of Charing.

We can see the original church in Morgan’s 1682 map of London, by which time most of the surrounding area had been transformed from fields to streets:

The Mews Yard and St Martin’s Church Yard are where Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery are today.

A plan of the mediaeval church was produced shortly before it was demolished. The plan shows a relatively small, simple church with a length of 84 feet, width of 62 feet, height of 25 feet and a 90 foot high steeple which contained 6 bells  (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The church had been extended in the 17th century with the Chancel to the left added in 1607, and the steeple and belfry being cased in stone in 1669, so it was a smaller building prior to the 17th century.

At upper right is marked a school room with rooms above.

Old and New London by Edward Walford includes a drawing of the west view of the church, as it appeared before demolition. The view matches the above plan, with the tower on the left corner, and the school room and rooms above on the right, extending from the side and front of the church:

As with so many medieval churches across London, by the early 18th century St Martin in the Fields was in a very poor condition. A survey of the church identified that the decayed walls made mainly of rubble, had been spread out by the weight of the roof, and the fabric of the church was unable to continue providing sufficient support.

A new church was needed, and as the church was now serving a large, built up area, rather than a small village with surrounding fields, an impressive and larger church was required.

A new church was included in the 1715 list of “Fifty New Churches”, however there was very little progress, and the majority of the fifty churches would not be built due to cost.

The Church Vestry petitioned Parliament and in 1717 an Act was passed to rebuild St Martin, with the costs being covered by the inhabitants of the parish.

Designs for a new church were requested from architects of the day, and George Sampson, Sir James Thornhill, John James, Nicholas Dubois and James Gibbs submitted plans in 1720.

James Gibbs design was chosen, the old church was demolished between April 1722 and January 1723, and construction of the new church commenced.

James Gibbs plans went through a number of iterations. His first plan for the new St Martin’s was for a round church with a large dome – almost a mini version of St Paul’s. There were issues with the overall size of the plot, the need to house memorials from the old church, provision of a temporary site of prayer during construction, the encroachment of nearby houses etc.

Gibbs came up with a final design which addressed these issues, as well as the costs of a large, domed church, and produced a more traditional rectangular design in early 1721.

Minor design changes continued during the construction process, although a major change was made in 1722 to “increase the breadth of the portico”, a change that would result in the impressive front and entrance to the church that we see today, and which brough the front and the steps up to the church, up to the edge of St Martin’s Lane.

In the spring of 1724, the core of the church, consisting of brick and Portland stone, had been completed and construction moved on to the fitting out of the new church with carpenters, plasters, plumbers etc. submitting proposals for how this would be completed. This work included cast iron railings to surround the churchyard.

The total cost for the new church was £22,497.

A rather strange event was held to celebrate the completion of the new St Martin in the Fields. Tomas Cadman, who was known as the Italian Flyer, descended head first along a rope stretched from the top of the steeple to the Royal Mews opposite.

The new St Martin in the Fields not long after completion, as shown in a print dating from 1754  (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The new church when built looked across to the Royal Mews, however after the construction of Trafalgar Square, the church took on a whole new status as a key landmark at the north east corner of Trafalgar Square, as seen in this 1836 print  (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

One print of the church shows a large flag being displayed alongside the steeple. Flag flying from churches seems to have been a common event in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a news paper report from the 4th of June 1726 reads that “The Right Hon. The Lords of the Admiralty have made a present to the Parish of St Martin in the Fields of the Royal Standard, who have a right, it being his Majesty’s Parish, to put out the Ensign (upon all days that flags are put out) upon their Church” – although the flag in the print is not the Royal Standard  (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

A 1920s view looking across to St Martin in the Fields from the National Gallery:

It is difficult to photograph the interior of the church as there are very many services, musical events and rehearsals, and when these take place there are signs up saying absolutely no photography.

On my fifth recent visit, I did find a time when there were nothing was happening, so managed to get the following photo of the interior of the church:

The large number of side windows on two levels provide a significant amount of natural light into the church, and the white of the roof, walls and pillars contrasts nicely with the dark wood of the pews and the balcony seating along the side walls.

In the above photograph, there are none of the traditional monuments and plaques that we would normally expect to see on the side walls of the church. For these we have to go below ground to visit the magnificent crypt:

Originally the crypt was a place of burials, but was cleared to make a large space, which is now used for a café and event space. I will come onto the burials and crypts later in the post.

A carved sign on one of the pillars reads “The vaults and catacombs formerly containing human remains were reconstructed for temporary use as air raid shelters by the parochial church council of St Martin in the Fields jointly with the City of Westminster. A considerable part of the cost was defrayed by friends of St Martin’s both at home and abroad”:

The crypt was also used to provide refreshments to service personnel during the war. As the following from the 10th of May 1940 highlights “A team of Boys Brigade men are undertaking in turn night duty at the Services Canteen in the crypt of St Martin in the Fields Church in Trafalgar Square. Some of those who have been helping out in this way since the outbreak of war have now joined the forces themselves and there are vacancies for more Boys Brigade officers who could give an occasional night to attend to the needs of the soldiers, sailors and airmen who throng St Martins. The hours of duty are from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and one’s turn comes about once a month”.

The church did suffer some bomb damage in November 1940.

Towards the front of the church is a small space:

And to the side of this space, there is a corridor which contains many of the memorials and monuments that were once found across the church, many of which must come from the original church as they predate the current St Martin’s:

The memorial to Benjamin Colinge who died on the 2nd of December 1700, and who worked in the Royal Household from the Restoration until 1697:

With his wife Katherine (also spelt Catherine on the same memorial). They had 11 sons and 3 daughters, of which only 5 sons and 3 daughters survived their father. Katherine lived to the age of 77 – quite an achievement in the late 17th / early 18th century after having a total of 14 children.

To the Pious Memory of Edith Bilson who died on the 14th of March 1651, aged 28:

There are also a few Coats of Arms, presumably of those who had been buried in the church and possibly the only parts remaining of their monument / tomb:

At the corner of the corridor of memorials is that of Henry Croft – “The Original Pearly King”:

Henry died on the 1st of January 1930 and there were numerous accounts of his life and funeral in the papers, with the following from the St Pancras Gazette on the 10th of January 1930:

“At the age of 67, the death took place, as the bells were ringing in the New Year, of Mr. Henry Croft, the original ‘Pearly King’. Mr Croft, who was well known in every quarter of London, had been an employee of the St. Pancras Vestry and Borough Council for over 40 years and only recently retired on pension.

Most remarkable scenes were witnessed on Tuesday, when the funeral took place to St. Pancras Cemetery. Hours before it was due to leave great crowds began to assemble round 16 Charles-street, Euston-road, and those crowds grew until all the adjoining neighbourhood was one solid mass of humanity.

There were over one hundred ‘Pearly Kings and Queens’ to say nothing of ‘Pearly Children’ who assembled in their full regalia to pay their respects to their old comrade, a man who had collected many thousands of pounds for the various hospitals of London.

Almost every Saturday and Sunday he devoted to his task, and hospitals have certainly lost a very great friend by his death. It took a number of mounted and foot police to control the crowds and it was a most impressive sight when the procession left Charles-street to wend its way to the cemetery, led by a band of pipers playing a haunting lament, and many banners were displayed by members of the various societies and organisations with which the deceased was connected. The coffin was borne by four comrades – all Pearly Kings – and on it rested the deceased tall hat of pearl buttons, and also all the medals with which he had been presented for his charitable work, displayed on a black velvet cushion.

The coffin was drawn in an open car with four horses, and the three coaches following contained his widow and family – he had two sons and three daughters. Behind the mourning coaches came a stream of vehicles of all kinds carrying other Pearly Kings and Queens and a whole retinue of the deceased friends. The procession was nearly half a mile in length and was one of the largest that London has seen for many years.”

The statue of Henry Croft was originally installed where he was buried in St Pancras Cemetery, however after several instances of vandalism, it was restored and moved to the crypt in 2002. The choice of St Martin in the Fields was because of the long association of Pearly Kings and Queens with the church, and it is where they continue to hold their Annual Harvest Festival.

On display in the crypt is a reminder of the barbaric forms of punishment that offenders could suffer in London – the St Martin in the Fields Whipping Post:

There were a number of whipping posts across London, and these were often associated with a pillory. Whipping was also carried out with the offender tied to a cart, and whipped as they were being moved between two places, often relevant to their crimes.

Whipping was a public punishment, aimed not only at punishing and humiliating the offender, but also visibly showing the public the type of punishment they would suffer if they were to commit similar crimes.

The punishment was also a risky time for the authorities, if the general public was not happy that the offender was being given a fair punishment, or if there were other general issues with authority. For example, the whipping of James Dinord, a journeyman weaver in Bethnal Green in 1829 was attended by the officers of Worship Street, Lambeth Street, the Thames police and all the parochial and special constables of the district, including the parochial officers of the twenty one districts of Tower Hamlets, due to the risk of trouble.

The large crowd was described as being silent whilst the punishment was carried out, with not a single murmur being heard, nor the slightest symptom of riot or insubordination.

The impact of a whipping or being confined in the pillory could also effectively be a death sentence. On the 28th of September 1810, the London Statesman reported that “The sheriffs and Jack Ketch were actively employed yesterday between the pillory and the whipping post in the Old Bailey; their respective functions were not finished till it was nearly dark. Viguers, the miscreant placed in the pillory in Cornhill, is at present blind, in consequence of the pelting he received. He was so much bruised and lacerated, that he is not expected to survive”.

I cannot find where the St Martin in the Fields Whipping Post was originally located. I wonder if it was a short distance further south at Charing Cross which would have been a public place, at the junction of key roads, for such a public punishment to be carried out.

The Whipping Post dates from 1752, as indicated by the year carved at the top of the post, and at this time St Martin was relatively enclosed within streets and buildings, long before Trafalgar Square was built, and whilst St Martins Lane was a busy street, it would not have been such a public location as the main street just to he south:

It is interesting that it was thought necessary that the post used for such a punishment should also be ornately carved, it was probably to give some authority to the whipping post and the punishments carried out.

There was a pillory at Charing Cross, as illustrated in this print from 1809, by Rowlandson and Pugin from Ackermann’s Microcosm of London:

There is a large space space to the left side of the church and to the rear. This space was once part of the burying ground, which originally extended further than the space we see today:

There were up to 70,000 burials in the crypt and across the burying ground and between 1827 and 1830 the burying ground was emptied and the crypt space extended under a programme of work by John Nash to create buildings to the north of the church. This also allowed Duncannon Street which now runs along the southern edge of the church to be built.

Al the crypt space was finally emptied between 1915 and 1937.

The area to the north and south of the church has been significantly renewed, with a couple of floors of space developed below ground, consisting of the church hall, music rehearsal room, a chapel, open space, and a shop.

There is a new entrance to the crypt and below ground space, as shown in the photo above and just behind the entrance there is a light well that lets natural light into the two floors below:

Looking down through the light well:

The church seen from the north east showing space to the side and behind the church which was once part of the burying ground, and then the below ground extension to the crypt:

And from Duncannon Street, the street created when the burying ground to this side of the church was emptied of human remains:

Today, as well as church services, St Martin’s is a centre for music with regular concerts, and the original home of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, formed in 1958 by Sir Neville Marriner, and who had their first performance in the church in November 1959.

There is an interesting video by Eric Parry Architects on the project to redevelop the below ground space:

St Martin in the Fields is a very impressive church. It is ideally placed at the north east corner of Trafalgar Square, a space that would not be developed for over 100 years after James Gibbs designed the church, and modified the front to enlarge the portico during the construction process, a change which just adds to the view of the church as you look across Trafalgar Square.

I suspect he would be rather pleased with the views now available of his church.

Resources – Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

In this months section on resources that may be of help with researching the history or London, I am looking at some more maps.

Maps are brilliant resources for understanding the history of an area, and by using maps of different dates, how an area has developed over the years.

Southwark Council have put a range of historical maps online. The title of the respective webpage is Historical maps of Southwark, although the maps available cover much more than just the Borough of Southwark, with many of the maps showing the whole of London.

The Historical maps of Southwark webpage can be found by clicking here, where you will find the following listing:

The list shows the range of maps available, and to give an example, the following is an extract from the 1572 map Londinvm Feracissimi Angliae Regni Metropolis, and in the extract I have put a circle around the main subject of the post – St Martin in the Fields:

The map shows how the church justified the use of “in the Fields” within the name, as at the time, it was on the edge of the built city. An early St Martin’s Lane can be seen running north in front of the church.

To the south is the Strand, which runs to Charing Cross, then continues to the south to Westminster. The importance of the Strand can be seen by the large houses running along the street, with rear gardens leading down to the Thames, where each house would typically have its own Watergate.

To the north of the church there are fields, up to another “in the Fields” church, St Giles in the Fields.

At the major road junction at Charing Cross, we can see the last of the Eleanor Crosses, which marked the route taken by the body of Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I, from the location of her death in Lincolnshire, to her burial at Westminster Abbey.

It was taken down on the orders of Parliament in 1647, and the stones were allegedly used in various building works in Whitehall.

Another London local authority with some interesting maps is the City of London Corporation. If you have ever wondered about the current boundaries of all the City Wards, then the Corporation have a webpage to help.

The Ward Maps webpage can be found by clicking here, where you will find subfolders for each of the City Wards, as shown in the following image:

Clicking on any of the Wards when you are on their webpage, will bring up a PDF map showing the boundaries of the relevant Ward superimposed on a modern day street map.

Each Ward Map also shows the boundaries of the City of London, along with the adjacent Wards.

Both the Southwark and the City of London Corporation webpages provide very different views of London, but both help provide an understanding of the historical development of the city, and how historical boundaries still apply in a very modern City.

London Rebuilt 1897 – 1927. A Snapshot of an Ever Changing City

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One ticket has just become available for my walk “The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain” on the 8th of November. Click here for details and booking.

London has always changed. Buildings have been constructed then demolished. New streets built, others widened and some built over and lost. Individual building plots have been consolidated and replaced with much larger buildings. As well as covering larger plots of land, buildings across the city have also grown taller, although it is only in the last few decades that the city has become home to a growing number of very tall towers.

London has always been a city where you can walk down a street after a space of a few months, and find a familiar building demolished, with a new building, frequently of a very different design and materials, being constructed on the same site.

Patterns of ownership change, ways of working change, new space is needed, older buildings become expensive to maintain, planning regulations change, new materials make very different designs possible and architectural styles change.

London has been through two major reconstructions caused by very tragic events. The need to rebuild after the 1666 Great Fire of London, and again after the bombing of the Second World War.

But there is also continuous change, and this has long fascinated anyone who has lived, worked, or just visited London, and there have been many approaches to documenting this change.

One such approach is the book “London Rebuilt, 1897 – 1927” by Harold Clunn and published in 1927.

The book documents the changing city over a period of thirty years from 1897 to 1927. In many ways this is an arbitrary period of time, and the author admits that he was aiming for the first three decades of the 20th century, however there were so many changes at the end of the 19th century that the last three years of the previous century were taken into the account.

The book could have begun much earlier, as the 19th century was a period of extensive change, with the Victorian transformation of London responding to the city’s growth as a world city, exponential increase in trade, commerce, industry and population, and Victorian attempts to improve living conditions, sanitation, traffic routes and roads, along with the introduction of new utilities such as gas and electricity.

But again, London is always changing, so a book covering any period would always be an arbitrary choice of dates.

The book consists of chapters focussing on different areas across the wider city, and each chapter includes a written description along with a number of photos, many showing before and after views.

As well as the physical aspect of the city, there are other changes.

The way people dress, the number of people on the streets, traffic, the gradual change from horse drawn transport to the use of the motor vehicles.

Clunn’s book provides a fascinating glimpse into London in the first decades of the 20th century.

In many ways, streets that we would easily recognise today, but also streets that have changed dramatically in the past 100 years.

So in this post, we will travel back to the early years of the 20th century and explore the streets of the city, starting with Finsbury Pavement as it appeared in 1901 before the start of reconstruction:

Finsbury Pavement was the street that ran to the west of Finsbury Circus, between London Wall and Ropemaker Street. A large block of land to the west of Finsbury Pavement was demolished and rebuilt, and this work included upgraded entrances to Moorgate Station.

Today, Finsbury Pavement is known as Moorgate. The following photo is from the mid 1920s and shows the street rebuilt, and new entrances to Moorgate Station can be seen to the left and right:

This is King William Street around 1890:

The rebuilt King William Street shows how buildings were increasing in height amd becoming more imposing. We can also see the start of the transformation of vehicles types with horse drawn in the above photo and just over 30 years later, a motor driven lorry van be seen in the foreground:

This is a 1901 view along Cornhill from the Royal Exchange:

Twenty five years later, Cornhill is still a busy street with a number of buildings of recent construction, made obvious by their clean appearance. Not yet darkened by the smoke of the city:

Many of the photos in the book appear to have been taken from the top of the open top buses that carried Londoners along the street. The following image is one example, and is looking along Fleet Street from Ludgate Circus:

Just to the right of centre can be seen one of the new electric street lights. I wrote about the introduction of these into Tottenham Court Road in a previous post, here.

As well as the replacement of individual buildings, the late 19th and early 20th century saw large areas of London completely rebuilt. One of these was around Kingsway and Aldwych, and the following photo shows a large open space where the construction of Kingsway was underway in 1904:

Little details in these photos help to add to the character of London at the time. To the left of the above photo is a painted sign on the end of a building wall for the “Army Men’s Social Work Shelter”.

It is hard to make out the words at the top and bottom of the text on the building, but I think the word at the top is Salvation, as this building was probably one of the many Salvation Army Men’s Social Work Shelters across London, and indeed across the major cities of the country.

These institutions provided cheap overnight lodgings and food for the homeless, and in 1900, over 4,000 men were taken in nightly from the streets. Each person had to pay a charge of one penny, so it was not an absolute charity, and the Salvation Army established a three stage work programme, which had a very questionable outcome.

Stage one was work and accommodation in their city institutions. Stage two was their transfer out to the Salvation Army farm in Hadleigh, Essex for “outdoor work”, and stage three was their transfer to an overseas colony.

Hadleigh Farm is still run by the Salvation Army.

One wonders how voluntary this progression through the three stages was, particularly the transfer to an overseas colony.

The following photo is a 1920s photo of Kingsway, looking north from Aldwych. The book does not explain whether there is any relevance between the photo above and the photo below:

In the centre of the above photo can be seen the “LCC Tramway Station Entrance”:

The following photo is on a different page, but has the same title as the above photo “Kingsway, looking north from Aldwych”, but now with a date of 1906:

If they are of the same view, then there had been a remarkable transformation in thirty years. Kingsway was a new street, planned during the late Victorian period, along with other major road schemes such as New Oxford Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, with an aim to relieve the growing amount of traffic congestion across the City.

The above photo also shows an entrance to the tramway station.

It was not just streets and buildings that were redeveloped. The following photo shows the reinstatement of the lake in St. James’s Park:

The reason for the reinstatement was that after the outbreak of the First World War, the lake in St. James’s Park was dried out, and a series of temporary buildings erected in the site, presumably in someway connected with the war effort.

In 1922 the huts were demolished and the lake was restored, however the lake had been left dry for so long that many of the repairs were inadequate, water started leaking out, and the lake almost completely dried up again.

More repairs were made, the lake refilled and restored to become the familiar part of the park that it had been.

This is the “old” Strand, looking east from Southampton Street:

And the “new” Strand, again looking east from Southampton Street:

The above two photos again show the transformation of traffic from horse drawn to motor, and we can also see how smaller plots of land were being converted into larger plots for larger buildings.

The two photos above seem to be of the same view, as the church steeple can be seen at the end of the street, although it is very faint in the above photo.

The following photo has the title “The Old Tivoli Theatre, demolished in 1914”, and is a view along the Strand, with the Adelphi theatre on the right and Adam Street on the left:

And the following photo shows the “New Tivoli Cinema and the widened Strand, looking west”:

The Tivoli Cinema is the building on the left of the photo. It opened on the 6th September 1923 with music hall artiste Little Tich, so despite the book calling it a cinema, it was also continuing to operate as a theatre.

The demolition and new build of the Tivoli was part of the scheme to widen the Strand, and the end of another building which will soon be demolished as part of this scheme can be seen further along the street.

The Tivoli was closed on the 29th September 1956, demolished and a new Peter Robinson store built on the site, which in turn was demolished in the late 1990s, with the office block we see today then being built on the site.

In the above photo, the building to the right of the Tivoli, on the left of the street, the building with the arch above the second floor remains to this day.

Staying in the Strand, this is the “Old Strand, looking east from Savoy Street”:

The same view in the 1920s:

It is interesting how new builds often retain features from the previous building on the site, for example the dome on the top of the corner building on the left in the above two photos.

Another soon to be demolished entertainment building was the old Middlesex Music Hall in Drury Lane, shown on the left of the following photo:

Old High Holborn, looking east from Southampton Row:

New High Holborn, again looking east from Southampton Row:

There is a single horse drawn vehicle in the above photo, with the rest being motor vehicles, where in the “old” photo it was all horse drawn. Street lighting has also changed from smaller lights on the side of the pavements, to taller lights in the centre of the street, and again, the later buildings are of a more substantial build.

Many of the rebuilding works were aimed at improving traffic flow across London. Many streets still had what were described as bottle necks, where the width of the street would reduce, and many works of the late 19th early 20th century were aimed at eliminating these.

The following photo shows the “High Holborn Bottleneck”:

The “Oxford Street Bottleneck Near Tottenham Court Road”:

The following photo is titled “Charing Cross in 1904, prior to the construction of the Admiralty Archway”:

And then “The New Admiralty Archway, Charing Cross”:

There do appear to be a number of errors in the labelling of some of the photos in the book, so I am not sure how much either Harold Clunn, or his editor checked. In the above two photos, the first is labelled “Charing Cross in 1904, prior to the construction of the Admiralty Archway”, and the reference to Admiralty Archway implies that the archway would be built somewhere in the scene in the old photo, however the “prior” photo is looking down Whitehall (the buildings on the left are still there), the photo is not looking down the Mall, which is the location of the Admiralty Archway.

The following photo is much earlier than the date range in the book’s title of 1897 to 1927. This is the old His / Her Majesty’s Theatre on the corner of Haymarket and Pall Mall, which had been destroyed by fire in December 1867, so the photo must be from 1867 or earlier:

The fire was significant, with the Illustrated London News reporting on the fire on the 14th of December 1867 that “The spacious and beautiful opera house at the corner of Haymarket and Pall Mall, called Her Majesty’s Theatre, and formerly the King’s Theatre, was entirely destroyed, in less than an hour, by a fire which broke out on Friday night about eleven o’clock”.

The His / Her Majesty’s Theatre dated from 1791, and was the second theatre to have been built on the site. It occupied a large plot of land. After the fire, the remaining walls were demolished, and the new His Majesty’s Theatre that we see today was built, but only on part of the plot of the old theatre.

For some of these photos, I did get a chance to do a photo of the site today, to show a Then and Now comparison.

The following photo shows the site of the original His Majesty’s Theatre as it appears today:

To the left of the new version of the theatre (which can be seen to the right of the glass fronted building), the Carlton Hotel was built. The following drawing shows the elevation of the hotel facing onto Haymarket, with the rebuilt His Majesty’s Theatre in outline on the right (which can still be seen in the above photo):

Attribution: Charles J. Phipps (1835–1897), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The hotel suffered bomb damage during the last war. It was later demolished, and New Zealand House, which remains to this day, was built on the site – the glass fronted lower floors and tower.

The following photo shows the “Carlton Hotel and the Kinnaird House, Haymarket and Pall Mall”:

The above photo was taken in Cockspur Street, just after leaving Trafalgar Square. The building on the left is still there, as is the second building on the right. The Carlton Hotel is the building in the middle, furthest from the photographer, and the large dome on the roof is the same as that shown in the plan for the hotel.

In the following photo of roughly the same view today, the building on the left, covered in scaffolding, with an image of the building along the front, is the ornate building on the left in the above photo. The tower block in the background is where the Carlton Hotel was located:

In the following photo we are still in the Haymarket, and the view shows the “Haymarket, looking north showing the Capitol Cinema and Haymarket Hotel”:

The photo was taken a short way down Haymarket, and the first street leading off to the left is St. James’s Market. It is from the 1920s as we can now see a large number of motor vehicles in the street.

The Capitol Cinema was formerly named the Capitol Theatre, and opened on the 11th of February 1925, so just before the book was published.

The Capitol had a relatively short life as in 1936, most of the theatre was demolished, and reconstructed as the Gaumont Theatre, which in turn was significantly rebuilt in 1959, reopening as the Odeon, Haymarket in the basement of an office block. The Odeon closed in 2000, but the office block still remains on the site.

The building at the far end of the street, with the triangular shaped top to the façade is still there in Coventry Street, and the ground floor now houses a Five Guys, the following photo shows the same view today, with the old Capitol theatre building on the left, and the triangular shaped upper floor building at the end of the street:

And heading up to Coventry Street, this is Coventry Street in 1904, looking west:

In the above photo there is a sign for “Wales” on the left, and this is the Prince of Wales Theatre, so the street on the right is Rupert Street and Piccadilly Circus is in the distance.

The following photo is of the same view, but I think was taken further back towards Leicester Square, as the building with the arch on the façade is still there today and is the Rialto:

In the 1904 photo of Coventry Street, on the right you can see some of the late 18th century houses surviving from the first stages of development of the area. These had been demolished by the 1920s, and replaced with the larger buildings, many of which survive today, including the building on the right with the dome on the corner just below the roofline, which is the Trocadero.

Also in the above two photos we see the transition from horse drawn vehicles to motor vehicles.

The following photo shows the same view today, with the arch of the Rialto still to be seen on the right:

These photos provide a brief example of how London has changed over the years.

We could step back into many of the 1920s photos, and instantly recognise the majority of the buildings. What has changed, and is not really visible in these photos, is the change in the businesses that occupy the street facing ground floor.

Just taking the above photo, today the majority of businesses on the ground floor are focused on the tourist trade, with restaurants, take-aways, foreign exchanges, the American Sweet Shops and Souvenir Shops that pop up and disappear rapidly across so much of the West End of the city.

London Rebuilt focused on three specific decades, starting at the end of the 19th century, and up to the late 1920s, however, as discussed at the start of the post, change in London is continuous, and any book, blog post, photo etc. will only show a snapshot of the city at a specific time.

In just a few years, the view can change dramatically, and that is the only thing which is certain for any city such as London – there will always be change.

Nile Street Stairs, Woolwich

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One ticket has just become available for my walk “The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain” on the 8th of November. Click here for details and booking.

The Port of London Authority book “Access to the River Thames – Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames” lists 240 of these places between Teddington and Southend, and as you may have noticed from a number of blog posts, I am trying to visit all of them.

The 240 ranges from a causeway at Two Tree Island, near Southend, the last of the sites listed, via multiple sites as the Thames winds through London, out to Teddington, the end of the tidal river.

Back in May, I featured Bell Watergate Stairs in Woolwich, and today I am returning to visit another set of stairs in Woolwich – Nile Street Stairs.

This is the entry point to Nile Street Stairs from the embankment walkway:

The location of the stairs down to the foreshore has changed slightly, as concrete stairs now run parallel to the river wall, down to where the causeway that led from the original stairs can be seen to the right:

Looking to the right, we can see the full length of the causeway that ran from the stairs, with the access jetty to the Woolwich Free Ferry visible at top right:

Nile Street Stairs and Causeway, with the Woolwich Free Ferry:

The causeway runs for some length across the foreshore, and provided a reasonably dry, mud free route between the base of the stairs and your boat which would have been alongside the causeway.

It is in a remarkably good condition. I do not know when it was last repaired, but it is a remarkable survivor given that the original pier to the Woolwich Free Ferry was built immediately to the right of the causeway. The pier and docking point for the ferry we see today is a mid 20th century change from its first location.

As with many other Thames stairs, they have been very many events related directly to the stairs, and a strange headline concerning the stairs in the Kentish Independent on the 3rd of May 1957 read – “The Affair Of The Wet Footprints”, and the article goes on to state “After police boats had been alerted to scour the Thames near the Woolwich Free Ferry on Friday night to look for a youth who was reported to have fallen feet first into the water, P.C. Booth found wet footprints leading from the ferry stairs. He followed them as far as the Odeon cinema where they petered out.

The pier master told police that he had seen an 18 year old youth in Edwardian clothes stagger down the Nile Street stairs alongside the ferry. He then hit the rails, straightened up and slipped feet first into the river.

Later another youth said he had seen a man come up the stairs soaked to the skin.”

A rather mysterious story, with the wet footprints and the youth in Edwardian clothes in 1957.

What is remarkable about Nile Street Stairs and the causeway leading across the foreshore is their survival, as it was here where the original access to the Woolwich Free Ferry was built.

The following photo shows the entry to the foot tunnel to the left, and the pier providing access to the ferry straight ahead.

The stairs and causeway were immediately to the left of the ferry pier:

We can see how close they were in the following extract from the 1897 edition of the OS map, where I have arrowed the causeway (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland):

Which is much clearer in the following extract from the above map, where we can see Nile Street Stairs leading down, immediately to the left of the pier, and the causeway running out along the foreshore:

In the above map, the round entrance to the foot tunnel cannot be seen, as this had not yet been built. It was completed and opened in 1912, and in the following 1956 revision of the map, we can now see the round entry building to the foot tunnel, slightly inland from the pier and to the left of what was Nile Street, now named Ferry Approach, with the stairs and causeway still in place (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland):

The Woolwich foot tunnel had been built after the opening of the Free Ferry as an alternative method of crossing the river, when the ferry was not operational due to weather conditions such as fog and ice, maintenance problems etc.

Both OS maps only use the name “causeway”, rather than give the name Nile Street Stairs. It is named on earlier maps, one of which I will show later in the post. I suspect that the construction and use of the pier for the ferry diminished the importance and use of the stairs and causeway, which may have contributed to the failure to provide a name in these maps.

The above map also shows some brilliant street planning, as you have both the ferry and foot tunnel entrances side by side, so if you were in a hurry to get to your job at the Royal Docks across the river, and when you arrived, the ferry was not working, you could just detour to the tunnel entrance, and walk under the river rather than sail across.

You can also see in the middle of Ferry Approach, a space with the word “Lavs” – some public toilets, also possibly essential in what must have been a place with a very high footfall, as thousands of workers once used either the ferry or tunnel to get to their place of work, either at Woolwich Arsenal, the Royal Docks, or the very many industrial premises that lined the river on northern and southern sides.

In the following photo from the current top of the stairs, I am looking back along what was Nile Street. The round brick access building to the Woolwich foot tunnel is to the right, and the Woolwich Waterside Leisure Centre is the building to the rear of, and surrounding the foot tunnel entrance. The Leisure Centre was also built over Nile Street:

The following photo was taken from the edge of the leisure centre, as far back as I could get, to try and recreate the old photo earlier in the post. I should have been much further back, but the leisure centre now sits above Nile Street:

The area around Nile Street, the old ferry pier, and north towards Woolwich High Street has been considered as the original nucleus of the town of Woolwich, and many of the old street names recall rural surroundings. Streets in the area had names such as Hog Lane, Dog Yard, Hare Street and Cock Yard, and Hog Lane was the original name of Nile Street, as we can see from Rocque’s 1746 map of London, where I have underlined the name in red, as it was also used to name the stairs:

Rocque’s map shows the origins of Woolwich as a number of streets and buildings clustered along the river, with a total of five stairs providing access to the river. Hog Lane was both the name of the stairs and the street running back from the stairs, both of which would later change to Nile Street.

To the right of Hog Lane stairs in the above map is Bell Water Gate, which I wrote about in this post.

I cannot find out when the name changed, but I did wonder, given the ship building, naval and military aspect of Woolwich, with the Royal Arsenal (part seen to the right of the above map by the name of “The Warren”, whether the name changed in the late 18th / early 19th century following the 1798 Battle of the Nile where a fleet led by Nelson defeated a French fleet at Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the River Nile where it flows into the Mediterranean.

This theory falls apart though as Hog Lane still appears in use for much of the 19th century, so in 1861 there is a newspaper report of a drunken man being robbed in Hog Lane, after he had gone to Hog Lane Stairs to wait for a boat, fell asleep, and on waking found that he had been robbed of his hat, handkerchief, boots and money.

Also in 1861 there was a report of a woman’s suicide at Hog Lane Stairs. She was wandering the foreshore and was asked by two boatmen whether she wanted a boat, but replied that a boat was coming for her. After going up the stairs, and returning sometime later, they found the same woman face down in the river.

The use of Hog Lane seems to die out after the 1860s, and in 1882 there is a report of the theft of timber from a wharf . It had been stolen from the pond adjacent to the owners wharf, and was re-landed at Nile Street Stairs, where the timber was sold for chopping into fire wood.

In 1915, Police Constable Taylor received the Royal Humane Society’s certificate for rescuing a boy from drowning at Nile Street Stairs.

The above news reports show why I find Thames stairs so fascinating. It is not just their physical nature, it is the very many stories of London life that can be pinpointed to their specific location. Looking over the river wall at the causeway and thinking about the thousands of Londoners who have used the steps and causeway, their stories, mostly just using the stairs to travel across or along the river, but also what drove some of them to suicide, crime, and the heroism of a rescue of a child from the dangerous waters of the Thames.

I have a theory that the majority of Thames stairs had a pub alongside. This seems true for nearly all stairs in Wapping, Shadwell, Limehouse, Rotherhithe etc. but also seems to be true for Woolwich.

There was a pub called the Nile Tavern adjacent to the stairs. In 1848 this pub was to be Let or Sold, and the following details were in the Morning Advertiser on the 15th of June 1848:

“Woolwich, Kent – Most excellent FREE WATER-SIDE PUBLIC HOUSE and TAVERN – to be LET or SOLD, with immediate possession, the Nile Tavern, Hog-Lane, Woolwich, situated adjoining the stairs next the Royal Dockyard, close to the Steam-boat Piers, and directly opposite the Eastern Counties Railway. The house is at present doing upwards of 20 puncheons of porter per month, with spirits , &c. in proportion, but which may be considerably increased.”

In other adverts for the pub it is described as “river facing”, so must have been at the river end of Hog Lane / Nile Street and facing onto the river.

I wonder if the pub was named after the Battle of the Nile, and the street changed name to reflect the name of the pub.

The Eastern Counties Railway refers to the railway and station that had just arrived in North Woolwich, and the steam boat piers refer to piers for boats travelling along the river, as well as the ferry set up by the Eastern Counties Railway to transfer rail passengers between their station of the north bank, and Woolwich on the southern bank of the river.

And if you fancy trying to order a “puncheon of porter” for Christmas from your local off licence, a puncheon is a third of a tun, which was a large barrel that held 252 gallons of wine.

In another advert, the Nile Tavern was described as “fronting the Thames and conveniently arranged for doing an extensive Public house and Tavern Trade, which its situation is always sure to command, being the nearest house to the shipping lying off the Royal Dockyard, and the place for embarkation for all persons connected therewith, and others employed on the river, the waterside premises” – a description which perfectly summarises why there was nearly always a pub next to a set of Thames Stairs, when the river was the working heart of the city.

In the following photo from the Woolwich ferry, part of the causeway is just visible emerging from the receding tide. The stairs are now on the left, but originally followed the causeway back and up to the land. The Nile Tavern must have been to left or right of the stairs, and Nile Street / Hog lane headed back to the left of the round foot tunnel entrance, under what is now a sports centre, and up to Woolwich High Street:

Woolwich is protected from the river by high concrete walls, as is the opposite shore along North Woolwich. The above photo provides a view of these defences.

They are needed as Woolwich is downstream of the Thames Barrier, and is therefore not protected by the barrier. When the barrier is closed, the height of the water is a remarkable spectacle.

Whilst the Thames has for centuries been the source of London’s economic growth, prosperity, work, trade and travel, it has also been a source of danger to the low laying land along the sides of the river.

Nile Street and the Nile Tavern were mentioned in reports of a major storm during the first week of January 1887 when the “weather had been rough and stormy during the greater part of the week. Heavy rain had fallen every day and the temperature has continued unseasonably high”.

In Woolwich, several houses in Nile Street were flooded, as was the cellar of the Nile Tavern, and along the length of the Thames there was flooding from the lower portions of Chiswick and Hammersmith, where barriers were erected. Parts of Kew and Richmond were flooded, and in central London, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Blackfriars, Deptford and Rotherhithe were all reported as suffering from flooding.

In Shadwell there was an “inundation”, and the “sailors and waterside characters turned out en masse, and beguiled the small hours of the night with songs in praise of the ocean and the river. The poorer of the people who worked in the docks were great sufferers of the inundation, which at one time threatened to wash away their wretched houses.”

In a similar way to the storm and floods of 1953, the 1877 storm also caused flooding along parts of the east coast, and in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.

Nile Street / Hog Lane Stairs – that is another of the 240 river access points on the tidal Thames.

Each has been a part of the development of their local area, both on the river and on land. For many thousands of people over the centuries, they were an important place for so many reasons.

We have lost that connection with the river, but it would be good if the name of these stairs was on display, along with a brief bit of their long story and how important they once were to the people of Woolwich.

Fountain House and Bastion House – Two Soon To Be Lost Podium Towers

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The inspiration for this week’s post came from a tweet (if that is still the correct term for a post on X or what was Twitter), from the City of London, stating that the “Planning Committee has unanimously approved plans for a 31-storey officer tower at 130 Fenchurch Street”.

The post can be seen by clicking here, where there are images of the new building that will be on the site.

130 Fenchurch Street is better known as Fountain House, a rather unique building in the City of London, and one I wrote a bit about in 2018 when demolition was expected in the next couple of years, however I suspect that Covid delayed any work, and seven years later it looks as if Fountain House will finally become one of the many City buildings that become a memory for those that worked in the building, or remember the building from walks along Fenchurch Street:

This section of Fenchurch Street is changing rapidly. Fountain House is on the left of the above photo, and will soon be replaced by the building shown in the City of London’s tweet, also in the project’s website, here: https://130fenchurchstreet.co.uk/

Where the crane can be seen on the right of the above photo is where the development I featured in last week’s post at All Hallows Staining and 50 Fenchurch is taking place. Two large and transformative developments in a small section of Fenchurch Street.

Fountain House was constructed between 1954 and 1958 to a design by W.H.Rogers and Sir Howard Robertson (Consulting). It was the first London building constructed to the tower and podium formula where a large podium occupies the full area of the plot of land, with a much small central space occupied by a tower block.

The lower podium block is occupied by a central entrance foyer and around the street level of the podium there is space for a range of retail units.

The corners of the podium are almost triangular in shape to fit within the surrounding streets. As the central tower only occupies a small percentage of the overall plot of land, today’s developers would no doubt consider this to be wasted space and the modern replacement will see a glass and steel tower occupying the full width and depth of the land available.

The view looking up at the tower of Fountain House rising above the Podium, with what was the main entrance to the building:

Wider view showing a section of the podium. The entrance to the building is in the middle, retail units to left and right along the street level of the podium:

The Pevsner guide describes Fountain House as:

“The first office tower in London to repeat the motif of Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House, New York (1952), that is a low horizontal block with a tall tower above, here set end-on to the street. With its podium curving to the street and lower return wing along Cullum Street, the composition is tentative compared with later versions of the formula.”

When Fountain House opened in the 1950s, it must have been viewed as the most modern of office blocks, and a symbol of the City of London’s post war transformation from mainly Victorian and early 20th century office buildings, to the very latest architectural designs, mirroring what was happening in places such as New York, and offering a new format for office work, and the growing trend for retail along the streets of the City.

The ground floor of the podium today, along with the main entrance, is covered with advertising about the local area:

This advertising display’s one of my pet hates about the way parts of London are often rebranded, as apparently the area surrounding Fountain House is now “Eastern City”:

Eastern City is a BID or Business Improvement District.

A BID is a business led and funded (through a levy of the business rates) organisation, set-up to provide improvements within the local area, and the services delivered in that area.

The concept of a BID is good one. Local businesses working together to improve their local area. I just find the almost arbitrary renaming of a local area rather frustrating. A name not rooted in any history of the area and not really defining the key aspects of an area. For example, in the above photo, Eastern City is defined as:

“Connected across the capital and the world’s time zones, the Eastern City is where chance encounters and longstanding relationships lead to progress”

The above slogan could equally apply to the whole of the City of London and nothing in the slogan is unique to “Eastern City” (I assume the rest of the City of London would argue that it is connected the the world’s time zones).

There are currently five BIDs within the City of London, with each having a defined term of operation. They are:

These are not just within the City. Across the wider London area, there are over 70 BIDs.

In another panel, there is a description of the Eastern City BID and a map showing the area, with “iconic tall towers and historic streets”:

Map from the above photo showing the area of the Eastern City – again I have no issues with the concept and work of a BID, it is just the arbitrary boundaries and name to define the area:

The BIDs overlap an existing structure within the City, which, for very many centuries, has been divided into Wards with an Alderman and a number of Common Councillors.

Fountain House is within Langbourn Ward, and never one to pass an opportunity to include an old map, the following map is of Langbourn Ward, and I have marked the area of the Fountain House redevelopment with a red rectangle, and a red circle is around the church of All Hallows Staining, which is a small part of the redevelopment on the opposite side of Fenchurch Street  (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

More from the panels around the street level of Fountain House:

And some history:

I wonder how many City workers have glanced up at the clock on the corner of the Fountain House podium to check the time:

Another, similar tower and podium building that may well soon be demolished is Bastion House (140 London Wall), which sits on top of the old Museum of London site. The photo below shows the building, and also highlights how the office block is suspended above an open space, with only a few central support columns, along with the wider blocks at the two sides of the structure for additional support, lifts and services, for the 17 storeys of the building above:

Bastion House was part of the redevelopment of the area, which included forming the new London Wall street, as a dual carriageway between the junction with Aldersgate Street to the west and with Moorgate to the east, following a slightly more southern route than the original street by the name of London Wall.

The new developments included several almost identical office tower blocks along either side of London Wall, along with raised pedestrian walkways and the dual carriageway with a long car park below.

These office Towers were built between 1961 and 1976, with Bastion House being one of the last to be completed.

Bastion House was designed by the partnership of Philip Powell and Hildago Moya, the same architects who had designed the Skylon for the Festival of Britain.

The last update on the future of Bastion house on the City of London website is that the “City Corporation resolves to grant permission for London Wall West development proposals” and that timescales currently are that demolition begins in 2028, with completion of the new development on site being in late 2033.

The site was to have included a Centre for Music and Concert Hall by the American architectural practice of Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, however post Covid, funds for such a building seem to have dried up, so the focus of the site will now be commercial, with the City of London identifying the ongoing need for new office space across the City as one of the justifications for the development.

Diller, Scofidio & Renfro still have their original proposals for the site on their website. Click here to visit.

Diller, Scofidio & Renfro are also responsible for the significant redesigned plans for the site, and these can be found by clicking here.

Bastion House and the old Museum of London below, seen from the west:

The Museum of London building was also by Philip Powell and Hildago Moya, so with overall demolition, two of their buildings will be lost.

This will leave one remaining office tower from those that once lined London Wall, and this is further to the east on the southern side of London Wall and is shown in the photo below:

This block is now called City Tower, but the original name when completed in 1964 was Britannic House (although I am not sure if there is some confusion with another Britannic House, built as the head office of BP in 1967 next to Ropemaker Street, which has also changed name and is now City Point).

There is work on the ground floors of City Tower, however I cannot find any plans to demolish this building, so after the demolition of Bastion House, this will be the one remaining office block of the identical towers that once lined both sides of London Wall.

The proposed demolition of Fountain House and Bastion House follow the centuries long tradition of how the City of London has redeveloped and renewed, adapting to changing models of commerce, ways of working, demands for space, changing architectural designs, use of new materials etc.

So the loss of these two buildings follow this process, however I cannot help thinking that in their own way, they are unique, and their loss would result in the further loss of architectural variety across the City.

There are also arguments about the impact of demolition and rebuild with environmental factors such as the CO2 embedded in the existing building, and that generated by a new build.

Both proposals aim to maximise the amount of office space. The replacement to Bastion House and the Museum of London site will consist of three new blocks, the highest being of a similar height to Bastion House. Proximity of this development to the Barbican will probably have a significant impact on the view towards the south west from the estate.

All part of a changing City, and how familiar streets and views can be totally transformed in the space of a couple of years, but how we decide what is worth preserving and what justifies demolition is an important discussion.

On a totally different, but vaguely related subject on preservation of old things, I have long suspected that in the future, despite the enormous number of photos we take today, there will be some form of a digital dark age.

With my father’s photos from over 70 years ago, and my photos from the 1970s, 80, and 90s, it is a matter of basically shining a light through the negative and scanning the view to bring these photos back to life, but with the digital format of photos, will the media still be available and readable, will Cloud based storage still be accessible decades in the future, and who will know your Facebook, Instagram, Apple, Flickr etc. userids and passwords to access, if these services are still available in the future.

The subject of a digital dark age came to mind again when reading a BBC article on a project to rescue the data stored on old floppy disks, the article can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20251009-rescuing-knowledge-trapped-on-old-floppy-disks

So unless we take care to preserve digital media, it may not just be buildings that we loose, but also photos of them.

A Battersea Gasholder, Two Churches and Charles Booth’s Inquiry into Life and Labour in London

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I have just added three new walk dates, links for details and booking are here:

From the Strand to the Old Thames Shoreline: Transformation of a River Bank on Saturday 18th of October – Sold Out

The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain on Saturday 8th November – 1 ticket remaining

The Lost Streets of the Barbican on Sunday 9th of November – Sold Out

Possibly two more dates coming, but that will be it until late spring / early summer next year.

There are loads of small things across London that tell a larger story of the history of an area, a building, and of how the city continues to change.

For today’s post, I am going to visit three of these, that each show a different aspect of the city. History, change, and how sometimes one can find a survivor from a very different past.

At the end of the post, as it is the first Sunday of the month, I have another section on the resources available for discovering the history of London, and for this month I am looking at Charles Booth’s Inquiry into Life and Labour in London, but first a trip out to Battersea:

The Remains of a Battersea Gas Holder

I was in Battersea recently, and within all the recent new developments, there is a short length of ironwork, that looks as if it was once part of a gasholder:

This can be found where Palmer Road meets Prince of Wales Drive, a couple of minutes west of the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

Although this area has been considerably redeveloped, with many new apartment blocks occupying the space between Prince of Wales Drive, and the railway lines that run either side, this area was once heavily industrialised and was home to a collection of gasholders that provided storage space for gas being piped to the surrounding population.

On the wall leading off to the right are a number of plaques and artwork, including the following:

The above plaque was once mounted up on the side of one of the gasholders and bears the name of Robert Morton, a gasholder engineer who was responsible for many of the gas holders that once occupied the space. The year 1882 is the year of the gasholder’s completion.

There are also a number of images where a photograph appears to have been etched onto a stone panel.

The photographs are by Ben Murphy who was commissioned by National Grid to photograph UK gasholders, including the demolition of Battersea’s gasholders:

The gasholder in the above image is the “blue” gasholder that was the stand out feature, alongside Battersea power station.

I believe it was the last gasholder to be constructed at Battersea, having been completed in 1932 and was a 295 foot high, water tight holder.

My father took the following photo of Battersea Power Station, with the holder to the rear in the early 1950s:

I took the following photo in 2015, not long before the gasholder was demolished:

One of Ben Murphy’s photos shows a similar image:

Another plaque from the old gasholders, the cross of St. George:

Another of Ben Murphy’s photos:

Another plaque from the gasholders with the cross of St. George, Robert Morton and the slightly earlier date than the previous plaque of 1876:

The gasholders were originally part of the London Gas Light Company, and the company built the holders starting in 1871 as an extension to their existing holders and gas production plant at Nine Elms.

They ended up as being part of National Grid’s gas distribution network by the time they were decommissioned and demolished.

In the following map extract from the 1894 revision of the OS map, the gas holders can be seen to the lower left of centre as a collection of circles amongst the railway lines. To the right side of the map, three circles and the works of the London Gas Light Company can be seen at Nine Elms. It was here that gas was made from coal, which had been brought along the Thames and unloaded at the Dolphin which can be seen on the foreshore of the river. In the centre are the reservoirs and filter beds of the Southwark & Vauxhall Water Works. It was on the site of the water works that Battersea Power Station would be built:

(Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland)

It was an area that had been supplying either water, gas or electricity to the area for many years.

The Britain from Above archive has the following 1934 photo showing the first half of the power station complete and operational, with the gas holders to lower left:

I cannot tell or find out which of the gasholders the iron structure is from. It is not in its original place, as the current location is too far south, and if a gasholder was on the site, it would have covered Prince of Wales Drive, which is in the same place today as it has always been.

Meanwhile, development of the land around Battersea Power Station continues. The following is the view along Electric Boulevard from Battersea Park Road. The space on the right behind the hoardings will not be empty for long:

National Grid commissioned the following video of the demolition of the gas holders:

There only appears to be a single gas holder in the video that matches the ironwork on display today.

Sad to see these remnants from an earlier industrial past demolished.

Church of Notre Dame de France

The Roman Catholic Church of Notre Dame de France is in Leicester Place, which leads north from the north eastern corner of Leicester Square.

I have long wanted to visit the church as the shape of the interior of the church follows the shape of a building that was on the site and which provided a panorama of views of places and events across the world, to entertain and educate the people of London.

The site started as the home of Leicester House, which had been demolished around 1792.

A large rotunda was built on the site between 1793 and 1794 and which opened as a panorama. This continued to be the building’s use, and by the middle of the 19th century, it was occupied by Burford’s Panorama, and the following from the Illustrated London News on the 7th of June, 1851 gives an idea of the panoramas available:

“BURFORD’S HOLY CITY of JERUSALEM and FALLS of NIAGARA – Now open at BURFORD’S PANORAMA ROYAL. Leicester Square. the above astounding and interesting views, admission 1s to both views, in order to meet the present unprecedented season. The views of the LAKES of KILLARNEY and of LUCERNE are also now open. Admission, 1s to each circle, or 2s 6d to the three circles. Schools half price. Open from 10 till dusk.”

To see how the church and Burford’s panorama are linked, I recently had the opportunity to visit the church when it was open, and no service in progress.

This is the building and entrance to the church in Leicester Place:

The main entrance with a carving of Our Lady of Mercy by Professor Saupique of Paris:

On either side of the entrance, there are carved pillars. These show scenes in the life of the Virgin and are by pupils of Professor Saupique:

Professor Saupique was Georges Saupique, a French sculptor who was born in Paris on the on 17th of May 1889. The second pillar:

The front of the church facing onto Leicester Place dates from a 1955 rebuild of the church.

Through the entrance, and this is the foyer that leads to the interior of the church:

And through the doors in the above photo, we can see the circular layout of the interior of the church:

The interior is also a 1955 rebuild of the original church, but seems to follow the same circular plan as the first French church on the site, a building which made use of the building constructed as a panorama, and used by Burford’s panorama in the mid 19th century.

A cross section of the rotunda, with the internal panorama displays is shown in the following print (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The following link to Google maps shows an aerial view of the church, where the round body of the church can be seen, on the same footprint as the rotunda:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/leicester+square/@51.5114146,-0.1300492,49m/data=!3m1!1e3

The domed roof to the church:

On the 25th of March 1865, Father Charles Faure purchased the building that housed Burford’s Panorama. and the French architect, Louis Auguste Boileau transformed the building into a new church within an iron structure.

The new church opened in 1868 as Notre Dame de France, a French speaking church in London, to serve the large French population based in and around Soho,

The church suffered bomb damage in the Second World War, it had some temporary repairs, but was rebuilt between 1953 and 1955 to a design by Professor Hector Corfiato, a graduate of the École des Beaux Arts de Paris, and this is the church we see today.

A side view of the interior of the church:

There are a number of works of art within the church. Behind the altar is a large tapestry, designed by the Benedictine monk Dom Robert de Chaumac on the theme of Paradise on Earth:

The Lady Chapel is on the northern edge of the circular church. There are three murals in the Lady Chapel, on the rear wall and the two side walls. These show the Annunciation to the left, on the rear wall is the crucifixion, and to the right is the Assumption.

The murals date from 1959 and are by the French artist Jean Cocteau:

The church itself and the internal and external decoration are fascinating, and it is still a very active church for a French congregation.

What makes it unique though from a historical and architectural perspective, is that it follows the same footprint as a rotunda built at the end of the 18th century, which has resulted in the circular form of the main body of the church we see today.

All Hallows Staining and 50 Fenchurch

I have written before about the church of All Hallows Staining, based on the photo my father took of the church in 1948:

Only the tower remains, and the tower is currently part of the construction site on which 50 Fenchurch Street is being built.

All Hallows Staining was featured across online, printed and broadcast media last week, as the tower is now suspended in the sky, on stilts, as the ground beneath the church has been dug out as part of the large below ground open space which is part of the new building.

The BBC have a video of the tower on their website at the following link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cr70e8ez0k8o

It is quite a remarkable site, so last week I visited the site to try and get a photo.

The construction site is large, and is surrounded with a large green painted hoarding which prevents any view of the site. There are a couple of gated entrances, but asking if I could get a photo met with the inevitable reply of not possible.

I did manage to get a couple of photos. The following is looking through the gap between a gate and the hoarding – the large hole in the ground continues under the church tower:

The second photo was taken through the main entrance. I asked if I could just walk over to the concrete edge to take a photo,. but no luck.

In both photos you cannot see below the church tower, which would be the key image of the tower suspended above a large hole in the ground.

The hoarding around the site obscures any view of the construction site. It is a real shame that construction companies hide their work as these are remarkable examples of construction and engineering.

Another site which will soon see a large tower rise over Fenchurch Street in the coming years.

Resources – Charles Booth’s Inquiry into Life and Labour in London 

There is often a tendency to look back at the past, and imagine it was a more socially better world, where front doors could be left unlocked, everyone knew their neighbours, there was less “red tape” governing business and trade, not so much violent crime etc, however even a brief reading of newspapers of the 19th century will show the casual attitude to accidental death, the level of crime, and how many in the city were reduced to a state of poverty and destitution, and being a child on the streets, particularly for a girl, could result in a short life of crime, poverty and worse.

The 19th century was a time when London expanded considerably, and became a major, if not the major, trading and industrial city in the world.

Whilst so much Victorian effort and entrepreneurship was applied to trade, industry and the business of making money, there were also many who wanted to understand and improve the life of the poor. Who wanted to understand the social conditions of the city, what could be done to help, what laws needed to be brought in or changed, how initiatives such as a state pension could help etc.

One of these was Charles Booth. Born in Liverpool in 1840, and a successful businessman, his name would forever be associated with the survey of London that he and his wife Mary Macaulay carried out from 1889, to the last volume being published in 1903 of the “Inquiry into Life and Labour in London”.

The inquiry focused on three broad themes – poverty, industry and religious influences, and the results of the survey were summarised with a series of colour coded maps, and the publication of the many notebooks that covered the information collected by those engaged in the inquiry.

I will not go into greater detail, as the purpose of this section is to point you to where there are resources to help with researching London, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (the LSE), have done a fantastic job by putting the maps and notebooks online, along with a background to the survey and a biography of Charles Booth.

The home page of the LSE’s website devoted to Charles Booth can be found here: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/

The following is a sample from one of the maps. The streets were colour coded, with darker colours indicating increasing rates of poverty and criminality and colours up through red to pink indicating increasing levels of prosperity:

As usual, the maps and notebooks need to be read with an awareness of the prejudices and opinions of the time, but having said that, they do provide a really good insight into Londoners lives at the end of the 19th century, an insight that was both broad and deep.

The notebooks are also all online, and record the investigators notes and findings. Many of these are hard to read, but they do provide a vivid picture of the city at the time.

The following is an example (I have provided a transcript below the image):

I cannot decode the name at the top, however they “Represents Biscuit Factory operatives in Bermondsey. Between two and three thousand persons – the majority being boys and girls – are employed in this industry in Bermondsey.

Wages range from 4 shillings to 12 shillings per week, boys; 14 shillings to 24 shillings, men and 3 shilling to 15 shillings per week, girls and women.

Only two of three hundred are in the ….. There is very little piece work except among the girls in the packing rooms.

There is no other renumeration beside wages, but in most cases there is a sick club, sometimes voluntary, sometimes compulsory.

A weeks notice is generally required on either side.

The ordinary hours are nine or ten per day, but it is very seldom that only normal hours are worked. Overtime is ……. are only too glad to work.”

The LSE have done a brilliant job at putting all of the resources online and making Booth’s survey, both the maps and notebooks are fully available – they provide a fascinating and informative insight into London at the end of the 19th century, and again the link is here: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/

Parliament Hill (or Traitors Hill) – August 1947

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4 tickets are available for my walk “From the Strand to the Old Thames Shoreline: Transformation of a River Bank” on the 18th of October. Click here for details and booking.

Parliament Hill is at the southern part of the high ground of Hampstead Heath. From the top of the hill there are wide ranging views across London, although these views are somewhat obscured by the trees that have grown on the slope leading down from the top of the hill to the fields below.

Parliament Hill has for long been a place to visit, to walk, to look at the view, to play games, and to enjoy the fresh air and open space, above the congested streets of the city.

In August 1947, my father took a number of photos whilst on Parliament Hill, looking at the view, and the surrounding landscape. The first shows an intense, youthful game of football:

I love the concentration and their focus on the ball, a leather ball rather than the lighter balls in use today:

As usual for many places in London, there are different names for the hill, and different origins for these names.

Two names have been associated with the hill, and there is some common root to these names. The name in use today is Parliament Hill, however for most of the 19th century, Traitors Hill seems to have been the most common.

Examples of where references are made to these two names, and their origins include:

From the Holloway Press on the 8th of August 1952: “Of the many explanations of how Parliament Hill got its name, the most popular is that the instigators of the Gunpowder Plot met here to see the effects of their mischief. Some still call the place ‘Traitors Hill’. Another much favoured story dates back to the Civil War when the Parliamentarians had a camp on the site. The Royalists naturally called this ‘Parliament’ Hill ‘Traitors Hill'”.

On the 15th of July, 1897, there was a report of a garden party given by Baroness Burdett-Coutts at her home in Highgate, and after the garden party “A great many of the guests strolled through the numerous walks towards Traitors; Hill, whence, perhaps, the finest panoramic view of London is to be obtained. The extent of the view seemed to impress the Colonial visitors. Traitors’ Hill is so called from the fact that Catesby and his fellow conspirators awaited there the result of Guy Fawkes villainous attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament”.

The hill seems to have been the destination for those holding parties in the surrounding houses, as another report from the Morning post on the 2nd of June 1834 explains that after a Fete held by the Duchess of St. Albans at her nearby villa “After the déjeuner there was a promenade to Traitors Hill, which is half a mile from the house, and through the most romantic labyrinth imaginable, whence there is a prospect of London and the counties of Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex.”

There are also claims that the Parliamentarians had cannon on the hill during the Civil War, and also used the high point as an observation post.

So whatever the true source of the name, it seems to date back to the 17th century, either from the 1605 Gunpower Plot or the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651.

Looking east towards Highgate:

The same view in September 2025:

In both photos (a bit hard to see in my father’s photo due to the resolution of the film) you can see the spire of St. Michael’s, Highgate, the church that stands higher than any other church in London.

A close-up of the church from Parliament Hill, and hidden in the trees just below, someone seems to have a strangely large satellite dish:

Looking to the south-east:

Looking over the city in August 1947, hardly a tall building in sight:

In the above photo, look between the trees and below the hill are open fields, Parliament Hill Fields. At the end of these fields are some low rise buildings. These are the Parliament Hill Fields Lido:

Parliament Hill Fields Lido was opened on 20 August 1938, and the following is a typical newspaper report on the opening of the Lido, part of a scheme by the London County Council for Lido’s across London:

“NEW £34,000 LIDO FOR LONDON – BATHING POOL TO HOLD 2000. With the opening of the new L.C.C. lido at Parliament Hill Fields on Saturday, another important link in the programme of providing London with a chain of modern swimming pools will be completed.

Since Mr George Lansbury, when first Commissioner of Works, gave London its first lido in Hyde Park in 1930, the popularity of these pools has increased enormously.

After Hyde Park came the first lido to be designated as such at Victoria Park built in 1934-35. Records show that in the height of the summer as many as 25,000 people bathe there on a Sunday morning.

The Parliament Hill Lido covers an area of approximately two and a half acres. It is 2ft 6inches deep at the shallow and 9ft 6 inches at the deep end, and holds 650,000 gallons of water, which will be completely filtered and purified every five hours. There are to be fixed and spring diving boards, foot and shower baths, and accommodation is planned for a maximum of 2024 bathers at any one time.

There are two terraces for spectators, and a café available for bathers and spectators alike. The lido had cost approximately £34,000.

The scheme originally approved by the L.C.C. also provided for lidos at Charlton Playing Fields at a cost of £25,000, Battersea Park, £40,000, Ladywell Recreation Ground, £27,000 and Clissold Park, £25,000.

The one at Charlton is nearing completion. The others will be undertaken by convenient stages with a view to the cost being distributed over a reasonable period.

Set among the trees, the lidos of London are vastly different from the cheerless, old-fashioned type of swimming bath. It would seem that they will ultimately render the old baths obsolete.

Including the two lidos already opened, the L.C.C. has eleven open-air swimming pools in London. These were patronised by over 1,000,000 swimmers in a year. Taking the lidos of Hyde Park and Victoria Park alone, the attendances in 1937 were: Children: 62,922, Adults: 175,379, Spectators: 93,731.”

The entrance to Parliament Hill Lido:

Returning to the top of the hill:

Parliament Hill and the fileds below, have long been a place to visit. The above photo shows a couple of children, and earlier photos in the post show people looking at the veiw, and more children playing football.

It was also a very popular place on public holidays, for example om the 11th of June 1892, the Hampstead and Highgate Express reported that: “PARLIAMENT HILL FIELDS – There were some thousands of holiday-makers in these picturesque fields on Whit-Monday. The International Band performed a selection of music in the afternoon, and in the evening Mr. Blake’s band similarly ministered to the enjoyment of the public. Cricket and lawn tennis were in full operation, and attracted large numbers of spectators.”

In 1947, the view from Parliament Hill was less obscured by trees than it is today, There were few stand out features as building height was much lower than it is today. The photos by my father were also made using the lower quality of film available post-war to the amateur photographer, and although taken using a Leica camera and Leica lens, enlarging the photos to look at distant features does not reveal much detail.

Comparing 1947 with today, shows just how the city has grown upwards:

The Parliament Hill viewing point today:

The view towards the towers of the City of London:

The Shard, with the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral to the lower left of the Shard:

The BT / Post Office Tower, and to the lower left of the tower is the Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament. It must have been in this direction that the Gunpowder Plotters were looking, expecting to see an explosion – if the stories of one of the origins of the name Traitors Hill is true:

In the middle of the above photo, in the distant haze, is the radio and TV tower at Crystal Palace.

We can see why Parliament Hill is such a good place for a view by looking at a topographic map of the area.

In the following extract from the excellent topographic-map.com the high ground of Hampstead and Highgate is shown in reds and pinks, with the surrounding low ground in yellow and green.

I have marked the location of Parliament Hill with a red arrow, and as can be seen, it is on a small promontory, extending south from the higher ground of Hampstead Heath. To the right is the higher ground of Highgate, as illustrated by photos earlier in the post showing the spire of St. Michael’s, Highgate:

Parliament Hill as a viewing point and open space, has been photographed and painted for many years.

The following is dated 1841 and is by E.H. Dixon, and shows a “View of Highgate Church, from Parliament Hill in Hampstead Heath” (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)::

And a 1938 view by Joseph William Topham Vinall of “London, & Crystal Palace from Parliament Hill (before fire)” (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.)::

Surrounding the viewing point:

Looking up at the viewing point on Parliament Hill in 1947:

The tress just below the viewing point at the top of Parliament Hill obscure the full view, and you need to move left and right to view different parts of the city below.

Fromn the viewining point, there is a path that leads through the trees and bushes to a lower point, which does though provide a full panorama of the view to the south.

Descending through the trees:

In the middle of the treeline, there is a dried up stream bed, and just to the side an area that is still damp and muddy – one of the many springs to be found in the area:

Once through the trees, the full panaorama opens up:

Click on the following panorama to enlarge:

As well as the view to the south, looking to the east we can see the Emirates Stadium:

Walking down the hill into Parliament Hill Fields, there is evidence of a long hot, dry summer:

At the base of the hill, as well as the Lido, there is an athletics track. The track itself has recently been refurbished, and I believe that that the original facility dates from 1938, and this is when there were newspaper reports of the “opening of the new L.C.C. track at Parliament Field”, and the brick build and design of the buildings facing onto the track are of a similar design and material to those of the Lido:

That Parliament Hill survives today as a public open space is down to a campaign in the 1880s.

In the later part of the 19th century, the hill was at risk of development. Houses had been springing up in the desirable areas around Hampstead, Highgate and Parliament Hill, and what the press called “The Battle of Parliament Hill” was a campaign to keep the hill free of housing, and retained as a public space.

This came about as a result of the Hampstead Heath Enlargement Act of 1886. The aims of the act was described in the Pall Mall Budget of the 20th October 1887:

“In the first place, the object sought for is the enlargement of Hampstead Heath, but is in reality the preservation of it. The actual proposal was the acquisition of the open space known as Parliament Hill, which, of, course, would, to that extent, be an enlargement of Hampstead Heath. But the point to be most insisted upon is that if Parliament Hill be not acquired Hampstead Heath would be spoiled. For one thing, half its beauty will be destroyed; but it is not the aesthetic consideration that we wish now to place in the forefront, although the destruction of all Coleridge saw ‘looking down from Hampstead Heath’ would of itself be no mean loss. More important, however, than a supply of food for the aesthetic sense, is a supply of fresh air for the lungs, and if Parliament Hill were once to be covered in bricks and mortar the health giving quality of Hampstead Heath would be destroyed.”

Parliament Hill was purchased for the public in 1887 for £300,000.

There is an ancient tumulus on the northern side of the hill, which has been excavated, but nothing was found within.

A child did find what was classed as treasure trove on the hill in 1892, reported from the time as “A small boy called Haynes has been the lucky finder of treasure, including coin and antique silver vessels, while playing with a toy spade in Parliament Hill fields. Valued at £2,000, the treasure trove has formally been taken over by the Crown and the lad’s compensation will be the bullion value of the articles only.”

Parliament Hill has also attracted myths and theories about the use of the place in antiquity. In the book Prehistoric London – It’s Mounds and Circle by E.O. Gordon (1932), Gordon claims the hill as an ancient meeting place and also places the hill at the northern corner of a triangular alignment of key London mounds:

With the view across London, and across to the hills in the south, Parliament Hill has long been a place where people would stand and look, a place to look across to the hills that surround London to the south, and it is a special place, although probably not in the way E.O. Gordon thought about the place.

Parliament Hill or Traitors Hill – both names have their origins in events in the 17th century, and in the late 19th century the Parliament Hill was saved from the bricks and mortar spreading across London, so we can continue to stand and gaze across the city to this day.

alondoninheritance.com

London Maps in Books – 2

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If you are interested in one of my walks, the following two walks have a few space available. Click for details and booking:

From the Strand to the Old Thames Shoreline: Transformation of a River Bank on Saturday October 18th

From the Strand to the Old Thames Shoreline: Transformation of a River Bank on Sunday October 19th

As any regular reader will know, I find old books and maps about London fascinating, and when the two combine, it is the perfect way to understand some of London’s history.

This is my second post featuring maps from books about London (you can read the first here), and these maps cover a range of areas and themes.

Some of the maps in today’s post are 200 years old, and are printed on thin, folded paper, so the photos are not perfect as I did not want to stretch or flatten the paper.

Click on the image to see each map in more detail.

The first map is from:

Fleet Street in Seven Centuries

This book, by Walter George Bell was published in 1912. It is a detailed book of some 600 pages covering the history of Fleet Street, and includes a fold out map showing Fleet Street at the Reformation, 1538 – 40, and shows the property belonging to the religious houses and clergy and is based mainly upon the seizures of King Henry VIII at the suppression of the religious houses:

The map shows just how much property was owned by religious institutions. The small details within the map bring out features that require some follow-up, for example:

At number 9 there is a small property that is identified as “Priory of Ankerwyke”.

I assume it is the same place, but back in 2017 I wrote a blog post about the ruins of the Priory of Ankerwycke (a slight difference in spelling), along with an ancient yew tree.

Ankerwycke is on the banks of the Thames, to the south west of Heathrow Airport, and there is a really nice walk to the site from Wraysbury station (45 minutes from Waterloo station).

It was a Benedictine Priory, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene. A small priory with only six or seven nuns and a Prioress at the start of the 16th Century with an annual income of £20. The Priory was founded at Ankerwycke around 1160 and closed during the dissolution in 1536. Today only a small part of the old Priory buildings survive:

Assuming that it is the same place, it demonstrates the importance of having a presence in London if even such a small Priory had a property on Fleet Street.

The map shows St. Bride’s Church, which we can still see today, and includes a location for the Bride Well in the churchyard.

Hanging Sword Alley is also shown, a name we can still find today, but with an altered orientation.

There are a number of pubs; including the Queen’s Head Tavern, the Bolt-in-Tun, The Boar’s Head the Cock and Key Tavern (next to Cock and Key Alley). Many of these seem to have an association with one of the religious institutions.

Four sets of stairs are also shown, and Temple Stairs is shown correctly as having a longer extension into the river. Temple Stairs had a small bridge like structure out from the foreshore (see towards the end of this post).

The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Islington

This book by John Nelson was publish in 1829, and inside the front cover is a very delicate map – A Survey of the Roads and Footpaths in the Parish of Islington. From a Plan in the Vestry Room, Drawn in the Year 1735:

There is not that much on the map, no network of streets, large blocks of land owned by religious institutions etc. but what the map does show is how London has changed in 300 years. From an area where tiny little hamlets could still be found among the fields, where the New River, in 1735 over a century old, wound through the landscape, and where the layout of the core of Islington around the Angel, is the same then, as it is today, as shown in the following extract:

There is the same triangular arrangement below Hedge Row towards the lower centre of the map, and area which today is Islington Green.

Upper Street has the same name today, also known as the A1, and for long a major road from London to the north, and Lower Street to the right is now Essex Street.

Many place names remain to this day, but have been transformed from small hamlets, for example Newington Green:

Newington Green is interesting, because we can still see some of the features of the streets today.

In the above extract, the houses of Newington Green are clustered around a central green. From the lower left of the green, a road runs south, but then curves around Virginia Houses.

If we look at the map day, there is still a central green, at the heart of Newington Green (upper centre of the map. Follow the road that runs from the lower left corner, and after it passes under the railway lines, it follows the same curve (allowing for some straightening over the centuries, as in the 1735 map, down to the junction with Balls Pond Road. so this curve of Newington Green Road is probably down to the boundaries of the Virginia Houses properties:

Other hamlets that have been transformed into landmark place names of today include Highbury:

There is a feature by the name of Jack Straws Castle to the left of Highbury. The book provides the following explanation for the name:

“The haughtiness and ambition of the knights Hospitallers, and the excessive riches that they accumulated, gave such offence to the community at this period, that in the insurrection under Wat Tyler, A.D. 1381, after totally consuming with fire their magnificent priory in St. John’s Street near Smithfield, causing it to burn by the space of seven days together, and not suffering any to quench it, a detachment of the mob proceeded with the same intention to the Prior’s country house at Highbury. Jack Straw, one of the leaders, appears to have headed the party engaged in tis affair, the number of which, as we are informed by Holinshead, was estimated at 20,000, who took it in hand to ruinate the house, from which circumstance, and having perhaps made the spot a temporary station for himself and his followers, the place was afterwards called Jack Straw’s Castle, by which name it continues to be known to the present day.”

In Rocque’s map of 1746, the tree lined route to Jack Straw’s Castle today is Highbury Grove and the name Highbury Barn is still used for the pub at what was once the core of Highbury, long before the name became associated with a football club that had moved from Woolwich Arsenal in 1913:

From the roads and footpaths of Islington, we head south to:

The History of the United Parishes of St. Giles in the Fields and St. George Bloomsbury

This book by Rowland Dobie and published in 1829 states that it combines “strictures on their parochial government, and a variety of information of local and general interest”, and it also includes a delicate, fold out map:

This book is interesting, not just for the historical content, but also it is a book with an agenda.

The preface to the book starts with the following paragraph:

“In the early part of 1828, an Association was formed in the United Parishes of St. Giles in the Fields and St. George Bloomsbury, for the laudable purpose of investigating and correcting the abuses which had too long prevailed under the government of a Select Vestry, possessing no claims to power but what was founded on assumption and usurpation.”

Local politics have long been a place of disagreement and controversy.

It seems that a Mr. Parton, the late clerk of the Vestry of the parishes had collected material for a historical account of the parishes, which was published in an imperfect states after his death.

Although he could not defend himself, the author of the book with the map, goes on to state that:

“Occupying a station both lucrative and influential, Mr. Parton too frequently forgot the impartial province of the historian in his zeal for advocating the cause of the assumed Vestry under whom he held his appointment.”

1829, the year of the book’s publication was also the year when the “pretended select Vestry” of St. Giles was overthrown in a Court, which Rowland Dobie, the author of the book, celebrated in his preface, as an act which would “establish the long-lost rights of the parishioners of St. Giles”.

Returning to the map, and we can see how the combined parishes had developed.

The area south of Great Russel Street was of older streets, whilst to the north there is the more formal development of the land owned by the Duke of Bedford, where we see with more widely spaced, straight streets.

If the map was completed shortly before the publication of the book in 1829, then the map shows the newly completed British Museum, following the demolition of Montague House which had been on the same site, and had been the first home of the British Museum from 1759.

Many of the sites within the map are numbered, and at number 21 (in the centre of the following extract) was the Workhouse, where the poor and needy of the parish would have ended up

The Workhouse shown in the map was the second to serve St. Giles. The first had been pulled down when Seven Dials had been redeveloped. The new Workhouse was build on land purchased for £2,252 10 shillings, and would support not just the Workhouse, but also a hospital and burial ground.

The expectation was that the Workhouse would expect “the poor to be relieved amounted to upwards of 840 persons, at an expense of above £4,000 a year”. A considerable sum, and the book uses extracts from Vestry minutes to highlight the problems of raising such an amount

On the western edge of the parish was Denmark Street which led to Crown Street (at the time of the book, Charing Cross Road had not yet been formed from a widened and lengthen street we see today):

Denmark Street would later become an important player in 20th century British popular music. The street just survives today, whilst the area to the north of Denmark Street has been significantly redeveloped, included the dazzling lights of the Outernet.

Marylebone and St. Pancras. Their History, Celebrities, Buildings and Institutions

Marylebone and St. Pancras by George Clinch was published in 1890, and includes the following map showing the plan of the Marylebone estate as it was when purchased by the Duke of Newcastle in 1708, with some of the planned new streets of the developed area shown overlaid on the fields of the original estate (the eventual redevelopment would be slightly different):

It is usually easy to see in London, whether streets were developed as part of an area development, or whether they were part of a centuries old street plan that had just followed original field or land boundaries, navigated obstacles, or followed the preferred routes for travellers.

In the above map, the new streets run straight across the fields, whilst Marylebone Lane follows a more natural route that aligns with the street’s long history.

Names such as the Clay Pitt provide an indication of what the fields were used for, with Dung Field being a rather descriptive name for the field’s use.

The actual development of the area is shown in the following map from the book, using Morden and Lea’s Plan of the City of London from 1732:

The map shows how these new estates were developed over once rural land. It must have been strange to see this new block of streets and large houses extending northwards whilst the surrounding land was still fields. An indication of what would happen to all the land in the map over the coming decades.

A Chronicle of Blemundsbury

A Chronicle of Blemundsey by Walter Blott F.R.Hist. S. published in 1892 has the sub title of “A record of St. Giles in the Felds and Bloomsbury, with original maps, drawings and deeds”, and it is packed with information across its 400 pages.

The name Blemundsbury in the title is the original name of Bloomsbury. Nearly every history of Bloomsbury gives the origin of the name as being from the Norman landowner William De Blemond. Blott’s book provides an alternative source as Blemond being corrupted from Bellemont, the name of the original Norman lord who owned the manor.

Another indication of how there always appears to be different stories for history going back 1,000 years.

In Blott’s Chronicle of Blemundsey, he states that the original Manor of Blemundsey covered a far larger area than that of Bloomsbury today, covering an area from around Tottenham Court Road / Charing Cross Road in the west, to the River Fleet in the east, and he includes two maps to show a 12th century view.

This is Blemundsburys West:

Again, it is always difficult to know how accurate maps which claim to represent an area some hundreds of years earlier. really are. The book does reference a range of earlier maps, deeds, records etc. and many of the features shown in the maps can be found in other sources, so it is probably a reasonably good representation of the area in the 12th century.

There are a number of interesting features. In the above map, the road leading to the lower right corner, labelled Via de Aldwych is today Drury Lane. The street running to the right, labelled Watling Street is High Holborn.

In the middle is a large open space where a number of roads meet, and to the left, a built area, shown in more detail below:

In the middle left is number 3, which in the key is the Hospital for Lepers. The book states that the founding of the hospital was down to Queen Matilda (also known as Maud, the wife of Henry I), and that it dates from 1108 to 1117 (the later date is the most commonly quoted date, the earlier date is probably the founding of the hospital and the later is the consecration).

The hospital was taken by Henry VIII, and in 1542 the old chapel of the hospital became a parish church, and the latest rebuild of the parish church is today the church of St. Giles in the Fields. The later part of the name of the church describes the area around the church when it became the parish church as this was still an undeveloped part of London. The chapel is number 4 in the map.

In the open space at the road junction is a number of items of public punishment with number 7 identifying the Pillory, Stocks and Pound.

Number 8 is the Fountain and Cross. A cross was often a feature of key road junctions, and today a street name such as Redcross Street by the Barbican is a reminder of when these features were to be seen.

The book also includes a map of Blemundsbury East:

On the left of this map is Via de Aldewych (Drury Lane), to where is meets “the way to Westminster”, today Fleet Street and the Strand.

On the right is the River Fleet with the bridges between Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street on the lower part of the Fleet and the bridge leading to Holborn across the upper part.

In a previous post on Strand Lane, I quoted a reference from a 1709 publication that there were once 311 open channels of water crossing the route between Westminster Hall and the Royal Exchange, and the above map extract does confirm there were a number of channels (although 311 does seem rather high).

Along the top edge of the map there is a Blois Pond. The book gives the source of the name of the pond as “Alexander de Blois, Archdeacon of Salisbury and Chief Justice of England had just succeeded Bishop Bloet and taken his residence in Lincoln’s Inn, by the Old Temple. On the opposite side of the way was a pond which afterwards bore his name – Blois Pond”. This seems to date from the early 12th century.

A stream leads south from the pond, then seems to disappear after reaching Holborn.

Further south, along the edge of the Thames, as well as the Fleet, we can see three other channels that have an outlet into the river.

There are also a number of stairs along the edge of the river which again confirms the age of these structures.

The following extract shows the distinct round tower of the Temple Church within the New Temple:

To the lower right of the map is a feature named Montficquet’s Castle (or Montfitchett Castle in the key):

The location of this “castle” is really confusing. Nearly all references to this castle mainly refer to it being a Tower, and across the Fleet in the Ward of Castle Baynard. So to the east side of the Fleet, not the western side as shown in the map.

In a Dictionary of London, Henry Harben refers to Montficquet as follows: “Montfiquit (Tower of) – Near the Wall of London, next to Castle Baynard, in the Ward of Castle Baynard, afterwards included in the precinct of Blackfriars.

Earliest mention (12th century): Land in parish of St. Martin de Ludgate in the corner opposite the land of the Dean of St. Paul’s. Stow says the castle was built by the Baron of Mountfiquit, who came over with William the Conqueror, not far distant from Baynard’s Castle.”

The inclusion of Montficquet’s Castle to the west of the Fleet shows that you need to be really careful when using historical sources, including maps. This is key when maps created centuries after the landscape they are attempting to portray. They do in general present a good representation of the area, but individual features need to be checked and verified.

With this caution in mind, a folding map in a book is a wonderful addition, and helps to tell the story of a place and how significantly London has changed. From the fields, footpaths and hamlets that are now under the streets and buildings of Islington, the rapid expansion of Marylebone, to the detail within the streets, such as the St. Giles Workhouse, after development.

alondoninheritance.com

Walking the Limehouse Cut – Part 2

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In the first part of my walk along the Limehouse Cut, I started where the Cut once entered the River Thames (blue arrow in the following map), and ended where Morris and Violet Roads cross the Cut (red arrow). In today’s post, I am continuing along the Limehouse Cut to where it meets the River Lea and walking up towards Three Mills Island (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

From here onwards, there are not so many people walking along the tow path. The first part of the walk has been reasonably busy with walkers, joggers and cyclists.

If you do walk the same route, the only thing to watch out for is the occasional cyclist who does not give any warning of their approach, races up behind you, and when you are aware of them coming up behind, the distance is insufficient for both pedestrian and cyclist to safely move to opposite sides of the tow path. One cyclist almost ended up in the water when we both moved to the same side, and the distance between us required an emergency swerve.

This was only a single instance, the majority of cyclists are very considerate of pedestrians.

A short distance along from the Morris and Violet Roads bridge is the bridge that carries the Docklands Light Railway across the Limehouse Cut. As I passed under the bridge, a train passed above:

This is the section of the DLR that runs between Poplar and Stratford, Devons Road station to the north west and Langdon Park station to the south east. It was originally the route of the North London Railway, and on the land to the right of the above photo, there was a complex of engine and carriage sheds with multiple tracks to serve these, and provide a connection with the main railway.

The Limehouse Cut now has a much more industrial / commercial feel to the land alongside the Cut, which probably explains why there are not so many people walking this section than along the earlier part of the walk:

Very few remains of earlier industry survive, however is the metal frame of an earlier building surrounding a new building seen to the left in the following photo. This was originally a furniture factory and what is now a rusty metal frame once extended over the Limehouse Cut to provide a gantry with facilities to load and unload barges on the water:

Further along there is a length of metal piling and concrete infill extending into the water. I cannot find any similar features in earlier maps, and it looks relatively new. No idea of the purpose:

For almost the entire length of the route, the Limehouse Cut has been a straight line. It was built at a time when north of a small area along the river, there was no development, so the original builders dug the Cut through what was rural land.

We are now though approaching the end of the Limehouse Cut and there is a slight curve in the route:

Well signposted:

The towpath changes here and offers two routes. To the right, the footpath runs up to the six lanes of the A12 road, and to the left, and new walkway takes the walking route along the side of Limehouse Cut:

And under the A12:

This walkway was needed when the A12 was enlarged. This section has always been a narrow part of the Cut, and a place where Leonard’s Road crossed, however the routing of the A12 from Stratford down to East India Dock Road (A13) and the Blackwall Tunnel required a new, significantly larger bridge to be built.

There were a good number of ducks along the length of the Limehouse Cut, and after walking under the A12, one of the breeds seen on the water has been painted on the wall of a building to the side of the Cut:

Looking back towards the bridge thar carries the A12, and next to it another bridge for Gillender Street. The original wall of the Cut can be seen on the left:

At the end of the walkway, the water opens up as we approach the River Lea:

I have been using the name River Lea throughout my posts on the Limehouse Cut, although two spellings are used for the river that the Limehouse Cut was built to bypass. Lea and Lee.

The source of the River Lea is in Bedfordshire, to the north of Luton. The river runs through Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, on the edge of Essex before heading into Greater London.

The name Lea is used from the source to Hertforshire, and from Hertford to the Thames, both Lea and Lee are used.

The Lee comes from the Lee Navigation.

The reason why the Limehouse Cut was built was to bypass the River Lea as it ran to the east of the Isle of Dogs, to provide a more direct route to the City of London, to avoid the bends in the River Lea as it approached the Thames and to avoid the tidal sections of the Lea.

Similiar issues resulted in the construction of the Lee Navigation. This is a canal built on a parallel route to the River Lea, with an aim of smoothing out many of the bends in the Lea, providing additional space for boats, along a route where water levels could be managed. In a number of places the Lee Navigation and River Lea are combined as a single channel.

This is why a look at a map reveals a complex route of parrallel waterways, which often combine.

In the following map, the River Lea runs to the right and the Lee Navigation to the left, as they both pass through, and then head north from Stratford (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

The River Lea had been subject to many previous attempts to manage the use of the river, make improvements and control water extraction. See my post on the New River for where this early 17th century approach for providing water supplies to the growing city met the Lea.

The 1767 River Lee Navigation Act authorised a number of improvements, including the construction of new lengths of canal, and further acts, such as the 1850 Lee Navigation Improvement Act allowed additional construction, including a number of locks along the route.

The parallel running, sometimes combining and both routes serving the same source and destination have resulted in both Lea and Lee being used, however Lea is for the river and Lee is for the Lee Navigation, the fully navigable canal system built over the last few centuries, that provides an easier to use route than the river, and we see this name as we approach the point where Limehouse Cut, Lee Navigation and River Lee combine:

And it is here that we find the Bow Locks:

Bow Locks control access from where the Limehouse Cut meets the River Lea, and Bow Creek, also known as the River Lea which runs down to the River Thames, and is tidal:

In the background of the above photo there is a grey / white bridge. This is a 1930s foot bridge that spans the waterways, and although I was at the end of the Limehouse Cut, I wanted to explore a bit further, so headed over this footbridge:

From the footbridge, we can look over the lock and along Bow Creek / River Lea as it heads towards the Thames. The mud banks on the side show that this stretch of the river is tidal, and demonstrates why the lock is needed. On the right edge of the photo, a small part of the Limehouse Cut can be seen. It is these locks that ensure there is a stable height of water in the Limehouse Cut:

Around 20 years before the completion of the Limehouse Cut, where it joins the River Lea was an area of fields, orchards, gardens and limited housing. In the following extract from Rocque’s map of 1746, you can see the world BROMLEY curving to the left of centre. The Limehouse Cut went through the letter M as it ran from bottom left up to join the River Lea:

To demonstrate the complexity of the River Lea / Lea Navigation, and the associated waterways in the area, the following extract is from Smiths New Plan of London from 1816, and shows the straight line of the Limehouse Cut joining one of the strands of the Lea:

The complexity of this water network can be shown using the same map, but a bit further north in the area surrounding and to the north of Stratford. The names Stratford Marsh and Bow Marshes demonstrate the nature of the surrounding land, and how the Lea river system has had an impact on this area for centuries:

After that slight digression, I am still on the footbridge, and this is the view looking north with the bridge carrying Twelvetrees Crescent across the Lea:

The orange boat moored in the above photo is an old British Gas life boat, which I assume came from either a North Sea gas / oil rig or a ship – and is now performing a very different use.

Walking under Twelvetrees Crescent Bridge, and there is a walkway that once provided access to the gas works just to the east:

Further on is the bridge that carries both the District and the Hammersmith & City lines over the Lea:

Along this stretch of the Lea is a rather isolated but colourful piece of sculpture. I knew it was sculpture as the small blue plaque on the concrete base states “Please do not climb on the sculpture”:

The sculpture is part of “The Line”, and the following is from the project’s website: “The Line is London’s first dedicated public art walk. Connecting three boroughs (Newham, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich) and following the Greenwich Meridian, it runs between Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and The O2 on Greenwich Peninsula. The Line features an evolving programme of art installations (loans and commissioned works), projects and events, illuminating an inspiring landscape where everyone can explore art, nature and heritage for free.”

The above work is by Rasheed Araeen, who “is renowned for his use of an open cube structure with diagonal support in his sculptural works”.

A map of the route of The Line, and the works along the route, can be found at this link.

Looking across the branch of the Lea that runs to the right of where I am walking, are the old gas holders of the Bromley by Bow gas works:

The 1914 revision of the OS map shows the round circles of the gas holders, and a short distance below is the Bromley Gas Works, who had their own dock leading from the River Lea. A small part of this dock still remains in the middle of an industrial estate which has taken over the land of the gas works:

(Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland)

The following photo from Britain from Above shows the Bromley by Bow Gas Works in 1924. The River Lea can be seen running below the gas works buildings, and the dock that served the works can be seen coming of the Lea on the right of the photo, and running into the heart of the works. The gas holders are off to the left of the photo, a short distance from the works:

The Bromley by Bow gas works have a fascinating history and hopefully will be the subject of a future post, but for now I am continuing along the River Lea to my final stop.

In the complex web of waterways, as we approach Three Mills Island, we can see through the trees and bushes that line the river, the Channelsea River, one of the old rivers that ran across Bow. It now runs up to Abbey Road where it disappears into a culvert, and also forms the southern part of the channels that now makes Three Mills Island, an island:

If you go back to the 1746 and 1816 maps, you will see the Channelsea River heading east from the Lea, just below the Mill.

Back looking along the River Lea, and if it was not for the tower blocks in the background, this idyllic view could be deep in the countryside rather than being in east London:

The brick buildings to the right of the above photo are those of the old mill buildings on Three Mills Island, which look glorious as you approach:

Although now an island due to the rivers that surround the site, it has not always been an island as the maps earlier in the post show. The site became an island when a channel along the east of the site was built from the Channelsea River back up to the River Lea.

Mills have been operating here for centuries, making use of the power of the water and tides along the River Lea. The buildings that we see today are mainly 18th century and range from Grade I to Grade II listed:

Back in 1972, the Architects’ Journal featured a lenghty article on the sites in east London that were considered at risk. Bombing, post war industrial and population decline across east London resulted in a range of buildings that were considered at risk of demolition.

I started working through all the sites back in 2017, to see how many had survived. The first post in the series is here. I still have a small number to finish off.

Given what a wonderful set of buildings we see today, it is surprise (or perhaps not given the attitude to many old industrial buildings at the time), that the mill buildings were considered at risk, including what is the world’s largest surviving tidal mill.

At the end of the street in the above photo is 3 Mills Studio, a studio complex built on the site of the Three Mills Distillery, and the studios where Master Chef is filmed.

As with the gas works, the history of this site deserves a dedicated post, which will hopefully appear in the not too distant future.

It is a really interesting walk along the Limehouse Cut from the old entrance to the Thames, up to the River Lea, and along the Lea to Three Mills Island.

Limehouse DLR station is near the start of the walk and Bromley by Bow station is a short walk from the end (walk to the north of the nearby Tesco store, underneath the A12, then south to the station.

The Limehouse Cut was a clever answer to the challenges of 18th century cargo transport from the Lea to the City of London, along with the docks and industry along the Thames from Limehouse to the City.

The Limehouse Cut eliminated the need for a long detour around the Isle of Dogs, the curving southern stretch of the Lea into the Thames, and the tidal challenges of this stretch of river.

Today it provides the route for a fascinating walk.

alondoninheritance.com

There is Something Missing on the Southbank and Resources

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I was going to continue my journey along the Limehouse Cut in today’s post. However, it is the first post of a new month, when I feature a Resources section in the post, looking at resources to help with researching and exploring London, so to keep the post to a reasonable size, I am starting with a different subject.

Also, the problems with the blog that I mentioned a few weeks ago have been reoccurring, with the site occasionally going off line, and also with very slow performance. I hope to be able to bring in some additional technical support to try and get this resolved this coming week, but if the blog and posts disappear for a while, it will be back.

Last weekend I was walking across the footbridge alongside Hungerford Bridge, looking over at the very familiar view towards Waterloo Bridge, the City and along the Southbank, when I noticed that there was something missing:

For those of a certain age, the following clip may offer a clue:

The missing feature is the white, square tower seen in the following photo, behind the right hand yellow crane, covered in scaffolding ready for demolition:

The tower was Kent House / the Southbank Television Centre / the London Studios, the original home of London Weekend Television, and in recent decades of ITV, with much of their national and local output coming from the studios that clustered around the base of the tower.

The building dates from a time when there were two independent TV stations covering London and the surrounding Home Counties. Thames Television broadcast from Monday to Friday, when on Friday evening Thames would handover to London Weekend Television who would broadcast until the following Monday morning.

London Weekend Television (LWT) took over the franchise for providing London’s weekend television service from ATV in 1968, with LWT’s first studios being at Wembley at facilities rented from Rediffusion.

LWT’s intention had been to have their own, purpose built, modern television studios along with space for offices so the company could be located in one place.

A site on the Southbank was available close to the National Theatre, and development of the new studios would continue the westward development of the south bank, and followed the 1944 Abercrombie plan for London which had proposed cultural, offices, residential and open space to replace the old industrial sprawl alongside the river.

The first transmission of TV programmes from the new studios was in 1972, with the site being fully complete two years later.

The tower block was mainly offices, although there was a studio higher up the tower for a number of years, when use was made of the view over London as a backdrop for programmes.

Surrounding the base of the tower were a number of studios used for the production of LWT and wider ITV national output as providing space which other broadcasters could use.

If you have watched almost any ITV live productions, game shows, dramas such as Upstairs, Downstairs, ITV’s World of Sport, BBC shows such as Have I Got News For You, QI, the Graham Norton Show, they were all filmed in the studios at the base of the tower on the Southbank.

The studios were also used by many other production companies and broadcasters.

The tower has been a feature of many of my photos, dating back to the late 1970s. This is a photo from 2017 when it was still occupied by ITV:

This photo from 2022 shows the tower standing in isolation on the Southbank (the Shard is hidden behind the tower):

As the local independent television regions went through a period of change and consolidation, LWT was taken over by Granada in 1994. Carlton Communications had previously won the franchise for the London weekday service from Thames Television, and by 2004 Granada and Carlton merged all their operations which included the many regional operators they had taken over such as LWT, to form ITV as a public limited company.

The studio complex also went through some changes from the South Bank Television Centre to The London Studios.

in 2018, ITV announced that the studios were to be closed allowing the buildings to be demolished to make way for new office and production facilities. ITV’s live broadcasts, mainly their daytime programmes would temporarily move to the old BBC Television Centre at White City as the BBC had moved out with the centre “donut” of offices being converted to apartments, and some of the studios remaining, and available for hire.

Later in the same year, it became clear that ITV would not be returning to any refurbished site, and they would use the studios at White City as a long term resource.

ITV had earlier purchased the freehold of the site from the properties division of the Coal Pension Fund, and I suspect they realised that the site was far more valuable if sold to developers, rather than the costs of refurbished studios and remaining on the South Bank.

The site was sold to Mitsubishi Estate, the Japanese property developer, and owner of a number of buildings across London.

The view as was of the tower and the studios from the Embankment walkway:

The view now that the tower and studios have been demolished:

My first photo of the LWT tower and studio complex was in 1980, from the old walkway that ran alongside Hungerford Bridge:

In the above photo, the tower is towards the back of the complex, with the lower studios surrounding the tower and facing on to the river.

The Embankment wall and walkway was being extended in front of both the LWT studios and the new IBM building which was under construction just to the right of the ITV studios.

A different angle to the above view, further along the walkway, with the studios as the white building, and to the right, the IBM building under construction, a building designed by Denys Lasdun, who had also designed the National Theatre, seen to the right of the photo:

The tower to the left of the above two photos is Kings Reach Tower, formerly the home of IPC Magazines / IPC Media, now extended upwards and known as the Southbank Tower and converted to residential.

There is a bit of a mystery in the above two photos which I will come to later in the post.

In 1980 I also took the following photo from the Shell Centre viewing gallery looking down on the LWT tower and studios:

As can be seen in the above photo, the tower is a distance back from the river, with low rise studios between the tower and river. The tower faces onto the street Upper Ground, and this was the view from the street of the base of the tower a couple of years ago, with the first scaffolding that would eventually cover the tower:

A look up at the tower from Upper Ground (personally, I think it was a really well designed and visually pleasing building):

Demolition and development of the site had been delayed due to a large number of objections. Michael Gove approved the proposals at the start of 2024, and the High Court upheld Gove’s decision in December 2024, and the owners of the site then moved quickly to award a £500 million contract to Multiplex to redevelop the site, with demolition of the tower and studios being the first stage.,

A walk along Upper Ground last weekend showed that demolition is now almost complete:

The south west corner of the complex was the only part remaining, and I suspect that by the time you read this, this remaining section will have gone.

In the following photo, the main entrance was underneath the “Thame” lettering. A couple of years ago this was the name Thames Television, as one of the last productions filmed in the building was a recreation of the infamous Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols in December 1976, which had been filmed in a Thames Television studio next to Euston Tower. This was for the 2022 TV mini series on the band.

The remaining section looks almost like the ruins of a medieval castle. When I worked in the area in the late 1990s, it was common to see a queue of audience participants lining up along the base of the left of the building in the following photo, waiting to see what ever was being filmed that evening:

The new development will be very different, and will consist of a 25 storey office building, which will be connected to two further buildings of 14 and 6 storeys.

The space will provide offices and workspace, along with space “tailored to the needs of Lambeth’s emerging creative industries”. There will also be the obligatory open space, cafes, restaurants and a “cultural venue”.

See the page at the following link on the Matrix website (the company responsible for the development) to see an image of what the site will look like after completion, currently planned for 2029:

https://www.multiplex.global/uk/news/construction-starts-at-72-upper-ground-with-appointment-of-multiplex

The image on the above page shows probably the most attractive view of the development, rather than the view looking across the river to the site where the new towers will dominate the area.

The image at the above page does not show the restaurants currently located at Gabriel’s Wharf, so whether these are hidden below the edge of new development, or whether the land will be included in the new development, I do not know.

In many ways, the new development does continue the intentions of the 1944 Abercrombie plan regarding the use of the South Bank. The key issue is the sheer size of the development. If you look along the South Bank there is a reasonably consistent building height from County Hall down to the old IBM building, which has recently been refurbished, and is Grade II listed.

Kent Tower, the tower block of the LWT studios complex was the first tower along this sectionion of the South Bank, and as shown in my 1980s photo, it did stand out. It was though, set back from the river and did not dominate the IBM and National Theatre buildings.

I suspect that the new development will be very different, as will the view from the walkway alongside Hungerford Bridge in 2029.

A Southbank Mystery

I mentioned earlier in the post that there is a mystery in two of my 1980s photos.

Despite looking at these photos a number of times, there is a feature I had not noticed, and I cannot remember it from the time.

There is something on the foreshore at the end of the red arrow:

On a raised platform above the foreshore is a helicopter, the platform looks to be towards the end of Old Barge House Stairs:

I cannot remember ever seeing or hearing about a helicopter here. The location looks rather precarious, and the platform appears to be below the high tide level.

I did wonder if it was a model, but it looks very realistic in these grainy extracts from my film photos.

Whether it was a one off, temporary, or provided a service for some time, again I just do not know, but it is always interesting to discover stuff I did not know.

An even grainer view of the helicopter from a different angle:

The southern side of the river has frequently been used for helicopter services.

The London Heliport at Battersea has been providing a helicopter service since 1959, and in the early 1950s, after the closure of the Festival of Britain, where the Jubilee Gardens is located today was the site of a helicopter service linking central London with Heathrow Airport.

You could check for your flight opposite Waterloo Station, board your helicopter, and be speeding above the traffic to the airport.

I found the following Pathe news film about the helicopter service from the South Bank:

Resources – Britain from Above

Continuing my monthly look at the resources available to research and explore London’s history, and for this month I am looking at the Britain from Above website, which can be found here:

https://britainfromabove.org.uk

Many of the resources I am covering are easy ways to get diverted and spend a whole evening looking at what is on the site, and Britain from Above is another example. There are very many photos covering the early to mid 20th century, not just of London but of the whole country.

The homepage:

The first thing to do is register, which is free. By registering, you are able to go full screen and zoom in to images at much greater detail.

The easiest way to then get started is to enter the name of a location in the Image Ref or Keywords box on the menu bar, and then click search.

This will bring up all photos which fit the search criteria.

To demonstrate, I searched for the Limehouse Cut, the subject of last Sunday’s post, and of the many images available, the following is an example from 1951, which shows the Limehouse Cut, on the left side of the photo, and highlights that this was a very straight canal through former rural land which in the following years had been surrounded by industry and housing. Zooming in allows detail of the industry along the side of the Limehouse Cut to be seen:

Searching for Limehouse Cut also brings up any images with the word Limehouse, and in the same search is this 1928 image of Regent’s Canal Dock. In 1928, the Limehouse Cut still used the original route into the Thames, and by zooming into the photo, this can still be seen, just to the north of the Regent’s Canal Dock (with the later redevelopment of the area, the Limehouse Cut would be diverted into the Regent’s Canal Dock, now known as the Limehouse Basin / Marina):

When searching, there are frequently some unusual photographic finds. In the same Limehouse Cut search is the following image of the Graf Zeppelin in flight over Limehouse in 1931, photographed through the wings of the biplane used by the photographer. The Limehouse Cut can be seen below and to the left of the wing. This must have been a remarkable sight for anyone on the ground at the time:

The archive covers much of the country, for example the following image is of St Mary’s Cathedral, Lincoln in 1921:

Land changes over the decades can be seen. The following image is of the Lighthouse at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast in 1951. All those building along the edge have since been lost to coastal erosion.

A few years ago, the Happisburgh lighthouse and the nearby Church of St Mary the Virgin, both had open days, when you could climb to the top of bother the lighthouse and the church tower. The following photo from the church tower shows the impact of coastal erosion on this part of the Norfolk coastline:

The Britain from Above archive is a wonderful archive of photos showing London and the rest of the country as it was. The use of photography helps provide an understanding of how places have changed. Aerial photos transforms maps into houses, industry, streets, fields, churches and cathedrals, canals and rivers, the coast, and even lighthouses.

Britain from Above allows reuse of the images, such to very reasonable rules of non-commercial use, no sale, no sub-licensing or use for advertising, making sure the link to the original image is shown and not clipped out of the image, which is really useful for a personal blog such as alondoninheritance.

An image from the site helped with the correct location of one of my father’s photos when I got the original location wrong in a post. Luckily there are readers who know far more about London than I do and provided an indication of the correct location.

An image from Britain from Above helped to confirm. See the post here: https://alondoninheritance.com/the-thames/st-katharines-way-ship-fires-thames/

Britain from Above is a really wonderful resource.

What I Am Reading – The Sun Rising by Anna Whitelock

The Sun Rising – James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain by Anna Whitelock was a speculative buy after seeing the book, which was published this year, on the shelfs of a bookshop.

The book focuses on the reign of James I, the first Stuart king after the Tudor dynasty came to an end with the death of Queen Elizabeth. A critical time in the country’s history as the Queen had not had any children.

What makes this book different is that it is not just an account of James I, but as the subtitle to the book highlights, it is about Great Britain starting to play catch up with other European powers such as the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, in establishing networks of world trade.

London does feature heavily in the book, not just with accounts of the processions through the City, but also as the place where many of the trading companies were established to further trade with the rest of the world.

The book does cover domestic events, such as the Gunpowder Plot, trying to unify England and Scotland, Protestant – Catholic conflict, and James’ attempts at trying to unify European Christian powers etc. but the clear emphasis is on Britain’s global trade.

There is the Virginia Company of London, trying to establish settlements in the US, the Plantation of Ulster, the Muscovy Company and the East India Company. Trade with the Shah or Persia, early trade with India.

William Adams from Gillingham, and apprenticed in Limehouse features as a key player in attempts to trade with Japan. See my post on Adams, here.

Pocahontas arrived in London from Virginia, and was taken seriously ill near Gravesend at the start of her return journey. She died in 1617 and was buried at Gravesend.

Although the British trading companies focus was trade, not taking land, we see the start of how this would develop with the first African slaves arriving in the Virginia Plantation in 1619 – the start of the triangular slave trade between Britain, Africa, the Caribbean and America.

We also see the failure in the management of the colony at Virginia by the Virginia Company of London leading the the take over of the land and colony by the Crown – again a sign of what would take place across the world in the coming centuries.

What I did not realise was just how far and how extensive, the network of trade was at the start of the 17th century. Attempts to trade in with Persia, India, the far East, to China, Japan and the Spice Islands.

Some of the horrors inflicted on indigenous populations in the name of trade are covered, including the Dutch massacre of thousands of Bandanese people (on one of the Banda Islands, now part of Indonesia and the source of large quantities of nutmeg, mace and cloves).

My fascination with Thames Stairs and the river includes the lives of people who have travelled out from the stairs and the river on journeys across the world, and this book is full of them – ambassadors, traders, explorers, and settlers – it is quite remarkable how extensive these journeys were in the early 1600s.

The book is a really good read, and helps to provide an understanding of how Britain’s early steps in global trade would develop over the following three hundred years, and many of the horrors that went with this expansion.

And at its root was money. King James I for the revenues that trade would bring to the Crown, and the London trading companies, for the profits of trade. It always comes down to money.

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