An Autumn View Over London from Westminster Cathedral

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A high level view always provides a different perspective than walking the streets of London. From high-up, we can see how the height of the city changes over time, how different parts of the city relate to one another, how new developments impact the overall look and feel of London, architectural features not easily visible from ground level etc.

I have always taken any opportunity to look at London from above. Two of my first experiences of this were the Shell Centre Viewing Gallery, and crossing London in an old biplane (here and here). Click on the links for photos of a very different city.

A couple of week’s ago I was in Victoria on a fine autumn day with clear blue sky and bright sun, which presented another opportunity to look at the view over London, as Westminster Cathedral has a wonderful outlook from a viewing gallery towards the top of its 284ft high bell tower.

Westminster Cathedral is the Mother Church for Catholics in England and Wales, and is the home for the Archbishop of Westminster. It is a wonderful building, so very different to the buildings that have been recently built around Victoria:

The cathedral is also so very different to other churches to be found in London. Designed by the architect John Francis Bentley and based on the type of Byzantine – Christian style of architecture frequently found in Italy and eastern Mediterranean countries, construction marked the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, as the Cathedral was completed in 1903, so for a London church, it is relatively recent.

The view of the cathedral we see today from street level is even more recent, as up to the 1970s there were the large terrace style of houses, still to be found in Victoria, lining the street in front of the cathedral and blocking the view.

The cathedral was constructed of brick and Portland stone, the extensive use of brick was to reduce costs, however brick is a really good building material, and the mix of brick and Portland stone considerably adds to the architecture and appearance of the Cathedral, and the brick looks wonderful in the sun of an autumn day.

A full view of the façade of the Cathedral, with the bell tower on the left:

The overall height of the bell tower, or campanile to use the correct term, is 284 feet to the top of the cross on the dome, and just below the very top of the tower, there is a viewing gallery at 210 feet.

The bell tower has only one bell, however it weighs over 2,646 kg, and was cast in 1910 at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, having been funded by Gwendolen Mary Fitzalan-Howard, Duchess of Norfolk.

The bell is apparently known as Big Edward, after Edward the Confessor, who is buried just along Victoria Street in Westminster Abbey.

In the following photo, the viewing gallery is the section of the tower where there are black railings:

Thankfully, there is a lift that takes you from the ground floor up to the viewing gallery, although they do warn you that if there is a problem with the lift, then it will be stairs all the way down.

The lift was blessed in 2015, and on a sign inside the lift is a copy of the blessing, so hopefully no lift problems during my visit.

The lift opens out onto a semi-enclosed area, where there are arches providing access to stunning views across the city.

In the lower right of the following photo are two of the domes on the roof of Westminster Cathedral, and the towers in the distance are part of the recent developments at Nine Elms on the southern side of the Thames:

The following photo shows a close-up view of the domes along the roof. There are three of these, and whilst they look impressive from above, internally they provide a dramatic addition to the roof space, again following the style of Byzantine – Christian architecture:

At the rear of the cathedral is the Westminster Cathedral Choir School, which explains the football pitch and the buildings at the back.

Internally, the church is richly decorated across the lower half. The upper half and the internal sides of the domes are plain brick, which gives the upper part of the cathedral a darker appearance as you look up.

During my visit, there was a service in progress and no photo signs in place, so I cannot illustrate the internal appearance of the cathedral, but it is well worth a visit if you are in Victoria.

As well as the wide sweep of a view across the city, one of the joys of looking from above is picking out individual buildings, and getting a different perspective which is not that obvious from street level.

In the centre of the following photo is the impressive tower above the main entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington, and behind the V&A is the Natural History Museum:

The dome in the following photo is that of the Brompton Oratory, and the tower to the right is the Queen’s Tower at Imperial College London, also in South Kensington. It is hard to tell from this distance, but I think the Queen’s Tower is still wrapped in sheeting as restoration work has been underway:

Victoria has changed dramatically over the last decade, and from the cathedral tower we can see many of the new buildings that now dominate the area:

Looking down to street level gives an impression of the height of the viewing gallery:

As I mentioned earlier in the post, when built, Westminster Cathedral was screened from Victoria Street by rows of terrace houses.

As a post is never complete without a map and the following is an extract from the 1952 revision of the OS map, where the houses that that once sat between Ashley Place and Victoria Street can be seen. These would be demolished in the 1970s, opening up the view to the cathedral from Victoria Street (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

In the above map, another church can be seen to the left. This is St. Andrew’s Church, but with the word “ruins” in brackets. This church was also demolished in the 1970s and today the office building on the site is the head office of the John Lewis Partnership (although I vaguely recall a story that they were relocating from this office).

Large terrace blocks of flats can still be seen to either side of the cathedral, some of which have roof gardens:

As well as Nine Elms, another part of London that has, and continues to change, is the Isle of Dogs, and from the tower of Westminster Cathedral we can see the towers that continue to be built in this part of east London. The change has been such as the tower with the pyramidal roof top, One Canada Square, the original tower at the development is now almost obscured by the other towers that have since been built:

In the following photo, the Victoria Tower of the Palace of Westminster can be seen to left of centre, with the Shard partially obscured behind. The Elizabeth Tower with the clock is obscured by the building on the left, as are views of the City of London. The Isle of Dogs towers are in the distance:

Another view of the Nine Elms development. The green space in the centre and to left is Vincent Square:

To the west of the cathedral is another long line of terrace flats, with those along Morpeth Terrace in the foreground and to the rear, Carlisle Place:

In the above photo we can see the chimneys of Battersea Power Station in the distance, and the following photo shows a closer view. It is good that with all the development around the old power station, the chimneys are still a stand out feature of this part of the city:

One of the power station’s chimneys also has a view across London, with an enclosed platform that rises up through the chimney, which can be seen in the above photo, and a close-up in the following photo (see links at the end of the post for views from the top of the chimney):

The long roof over the platforms of Victoria Station can be seen in the following photo, with the partially obscured brick building at the station entrance to the right:

View looking towards the north, with the Centre Point building still dominating the skyline:

A closeup of a section of the above photo shows Centre Point, with to the left what was once one of the tallest buildings in London – Senate House of the University of London:

Also in the wider photo which includes Centre Point on the skyline, is a square brick tower, which is shown in the following close-up. This is the tower on the corner of Westminster Chapel, a much large church than this view of the tower suggests, founded in 1840 and facing onto Buckingham Gate:

In the centre of the following photo is the Post Office / BT / New Hotel Tower, with Euston Tower in the background. Again, this view shows that there have been very few buildings of much height constructed since the Post Office Tower (officially opened 1965) and Euston Tower (completed in 1970) in this part of the city:

Close-up of the Post Office Tower with Euston Tower in the background:

Plenty of chimneys along the tops of the terrace buildings that still surround part of the cathedral. One can imagine the smog in the air when all these fires were once lit:

The 1963 Millbank Tower dominates the following photo, with new apartment blocks on the south of the river behind:

The church tower and steeple in the above photo belongs to St. Stephen’s in Rochester Row.

The City of London is obscured by the new blocks that have been built along Victoria Street, with one exception.

The following photo shows the blocks running south along Victoria Street. In the centre of the photo, in a gap between two smaller blocks is:

St. Paul’s Cathedral:

I do not think this small gap is part of the protected view of St. Paul’s, but I need to check. It is interesting though that in scanning the skyline from London’s high viewpoints, there is always something to find hiding among the later developments across the city.

Unsurprisingly, the brick walls surrounding the viewing area at the top of the tower are covered in the names and initials of previous visitors:

After returning back to ground level, I took a walk along Ambrosden Avenue, the street that runs to the east of Westminster Cathedral. The rear and sides of the building are just as ornate as the front, and in the sunshine of an autumn day, the red brick and Portland stone look really good:

In the above photo, between the two windows in the lower left corner, there is an old wooden sign on the wall, with one of the strangest warnings I have seen on a sign in London:

As far as I can tell, the sign reads:

“If any child is seen disfiguring these walls by chalking or writing upon them, the Police will be communicated with by the phone. By Order.”

I do not know if the sign was aimed at pupils at the Westminster Cathedral Choir School, or children in general, who must have been writing on the wall, and requiring the contact with the Police, but it must have been a real problem.

The viewing gallery at Westminster Cathedral is a wonderful place to look across London, and over time, to watch the development of the city.

Every time I have been to the top of the tower, it has been empty, and during my visit to take these photos, I was up there for about 30 minutes and no one else came up during that time.

If you are in Victoria, it is well worth a visit, both to see a fascinating cathedral, and to look across London. Entrance to the tower is via the shop, on the left side of the main entrance.

The viewing gallery is open from 10.30am to 4.30pm, Wednesday to Sunday, and costs between £5 and £10.

The following videos should help provide an impression of the view from the top of the bell tower.

Firstly looking from the west to the north:

Continuing round from the north to the south (the thumping sound you can hear in the next video is a military band along the Mall):

A bit more detail from the east to the south:

And finally from the south to the west:

For some of my other posts on views over London, the following links may be of interest:

Climbing The Caledonian Park Clock Tower

The Monument, Sky Garden And St. Paul’s Cathedral

The Shard And The London Eye

Chrisp Street Market Clock Tower, Poplar

A Walk Round the Shell Centre Viewing Gallery in 1980

A de Havilland Dragon Rapide Flight Over London

Flying Over London

Lift 109 and the Transformation of Battersea Power Station

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy

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From the Strand, head down Savoy Street, then into Savoy Hill and you will find a remarkable little chapel, which today looks out on much taller buildings, but once was surrounded by a very different estate. This is the King’s Chapel of the Savoy. The chapel tells a story of the complexity of medieval land ownership, and the challenges of being sure of facts when using historical records, maps, books etc.

This is the view from Savoy Hill. The main entrance is through the modern brick building to the right:

If you approach the chapel from the Strand, along Savoy Street, you will find the entrance to the small churchyard located to the east of the building:

And in the churchyard, we can see the eastern side of the chapel:

There are many remarkable things about this chapel, one is how much larger the interior is when compared to the view from outside, along with the colour and decoration to be found within:

There is a cleaner working on the pews in the above photo, with their bucket in the aisle. In a bit of historical symmetry, the following print from 1808 shows a much plainer interior, but with two cleaners working on the flag stones which then paved the floor:

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy is today the only survivor of a much larger institution, and includes the name of a medieval owner of the land. The chapel has also long held a unique position with respect to the Church and Crown.

The easily traceable history of the estate, a small part of which is occupied by the chapel, goes back to the 13th century, when the land was owned by Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester, who formed an estate to the west of Somerset House, and built a palace on the land.

de Montfort has a fascinating history and both supported, and fought against the king, and for a time he ran an early form of Parliament. de Montfort died during the Battle of Evesham on the 4th of August, 1265, when he led a small army of rebellious barons against Edward, the son of King Henry III.

de Montfort’s land then went through many different owners, eventually becoming part of the Duchy of Lancaster, which is still in existence today, and continues to be a landowner, with assets held in trust for the King or Queen of the day, in their role as the Duke of Lancaster.

One of the owners of the land was Peter of Savoy hence the use of the name Savoy in the full title of the chapel. Some accounts state that Peter of Savoy built a large house on the land in 1245, later known as Savoy Palace, however Simon de Montford did not die until 1265, so the house was either built later during Peter of Savoy’s ownership, or it was built in 1245 by Simon de Montford.

The Duchy of Lancaster continues to own the land occupied by the chapel, along with a number of surrounding parcels of land and buildings. I wrote a post about the Duchy of Lancaster here, and included the following diagram as an attempt to trace the ownership of the estate through to the Duchy taking full control:

The above was an attempt to explain how this area of land between the Strand and the Embankment was formed, came into Royal ownership, and how the name of Savoy became part of the chapel’s name.

Interesting that although Peter of Savoy owned the estate for a relatively short period of time in the 13th century, the use of Savoy continued for many centuries, and today can be found not just in the name of the chapel, but in many of the surrounding streets, the hotel and theatre.

But in all the above changes in ownership, and by 1399 when Henry IV combined the Savoy estate with the Duchy of Lancaster, the chapel had not yet been built. That would have to wait until the early 16th century when Henry VII founded the “Hospital of Henry late King of England of the Savoy”.

The Savoy Palace had been attacked during the Peasants Revolt in 1381, when the rebellion, angered by the actions of then owner, John of Gaunt, destroyed all the contents of the palace, and set fire to the building.

It remained semi-derelict until the founding of the hospital by Henry VII, although he died in 1509, six years before the completion of the hospital in 1515, when Henry VIII was on the throne, hence the use of “Henry late King of England” in the original name of the hospital.

According to Henry Chamberlain in “A New and Complete History and Survey of London and Westminster” (1770), the hospital was “controlled by a Master amd four brethren, who were to be in priests orders, and officiate in their turns, and they were to stand alternatively at the gate of the Savoy, and if they saw any person who was an object of charity, they were obliged to take him in and feed him. If he proved to be a traveller he was entertained for one night, and a letter of recommendation, with so much money given to him as would defray his expenses to the next hospital”.

Henry Chamberlain goes on to state that the hospital was supressed in the 7th year of the reign of Edward VI (who reigned from 1547 to 1553, so presumably the final year of his reign), with the furniture being given to the Hospitals of Bridewell and St. Thomas.

Once Mary I came to he throne (1553 to 1558), she refounded the hospital, there was also recorded a porter, who was responsible for locking the gates of the hospital every night, and for receiving rents, so presumably some of the land had been rented out or leased to other occupiers, and a considerable sum was received, amounting to around £20,000 per annum.

The chapel was one of a number of chapels built as part of the hospital complex, which appears to have been of some size, with the main dormitory being described as larger than Westminster Hall.

The following map, part of an 1660s “bird’s-eye plan of London” by Wenceslaus Hollar shows the area from the Thames in the south, up to High Holborn  (© 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 is an extract from the map showing the Savoy estate. Just to the lower left of centre, there is a tower which may be the tower of the chapel:

The above extract shows a substantial complex. Presumably much of the estate had been leased or rented out, hence the high level of income, and the main dormitory could have been the long building just to the south of the tower, running east – west, with a couple of transverse wings running north – south.

The following print from 1736 shows a view of the Savoy from the river, and the building in the print can be aligned with the above map from about 75 years earlier  (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

By the time of the above print, the hospital had been dissolved, and act carried out in 1702.

The print also creates a bit of a mystery regarding the King’s Chapel of the Savoy.

Nearly all sources state that the chapel has always been dedicated to St John the Baptist, however in the above print, the tower, seen in the print and earlier map is part of a church that is dedicated to “St. Mary-le-Savoy”. Henry Chamberlain states the following “The chapel of the Savoy (which is called St. Mary le Savoy) is probably the chapel of St. John the Baptist”, the St. Mary may have been a later dedication which came into more common use in the 18th century, before the later restoration of St. John the Baptist, which is the current dedication.

In my ongoing interest in Thames Stairs, it is good to see that Savoy Stairs are also shown in the print, towards the left, with some waterman’s boats at the base of the stairs, along with two larger boats, which presumably were used for carrying goods to and from the Savoy.

These stairs can also be seen in the following extract from another 18th century map, where the church tower can again be seen, although a tower that looks more like a traditional church tower than the tower we see today:

Confirmation of the dedication of the chapel, and identification of a number of other chapels on the site of the Savoy and hospital can be seen in Rocque’s map of 1746, where the chapel has a St. John dedication – circled in red in the following extract:

In the mid-18th century, as well as the chapel of St. John, there were three other chapels marked on Rocque’s map – a German (green circle), Dutch (yellow) and French (blue):

To add confusion to the chapels, Henry Chamberlain states that there were two German churches, one a Calvinist and the other Lutheran, a French church and a Quaker meeting house.

Henry Chamberlain also records that after the hospital had been dissolved, the site was occupied by “barracks for 500 soldiers, the Savoy prison for deserters and other delinquents of the army, and for securing the recruits. There is also a handsome infirmary for such of the guards as fall sick, and for three or four officers”.

Soldiers seem to have been sent to the prison for relatively trivial offences, for example in January 1729: “On Sunday 62 Soldiers of the second Regiment of Foot Guards were sent to the Savoy, for having spots on their Cloths”.

The prison and barracks for 500 are confirmed in the earlier print of the complex, with the large central building running east – west being the barracks. The print does not mention a Quaker meeting house, however there is a mention in a March 1776 article about a fire at the Savoy estate, when:

“The flames then communicated to the Soldiers Barracks, which are totally destroyed down to some stone work, Several men escaped from the Savoy Prison; but the building itself is not burnt. The Lutheran Chapel is not damaged, and the Quaker’s Meeting House nearly destroyed. Happily through the vigilance of Captains Greenfield and Stephens, and the activity of the Savoy Guard, the Gunpowder was moved in time, to prevent the consequences of the fire catching it.”

Many of the buildings survived until to the early 19th century, but by this time there was pressure to redevelop the area, and major construction projects such as Waterloo Bridge required land as the approach road to the bridge was built over the eastern edge of the Savoy estate.

The chapel was repaired in 1721 at the expense of George I, who was also responsible for enclosing the churchyard, as well as adding a side door between the chapel and churchyard.

Throughout all this time, the King’s Chapel of the Savoy survived. Firstly a part of Henry VII’s hospital, then after the hospital was dissolved, part of the different uses of the buildings on the Savoy estate, including military barracks and prison, then seeing all these buildings demolished as the area became occupied by more commercially focused buildings.

The Savoy Stairs were lost when the Embankment was built, distancing the chapel from the Thames, and further reconstruction in the later part of the 19th century and the 20th century resulted in the area as we see it today, where the 16th century chapel still survives.

Inside the chapel. the core of the walls are Tudor, from the time of the chapel’s original construction. The ceiling is part of a later restoration:

The organ, which was built by J W Walker & Sons Ltd, and dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II during a service on the 27th of October 1965:

The magnificent ceiling, recently restored and decorated to mirror what is believed to be the original appearance of the ceiling:

The font:

The font was a gift to the chapel in 1864 to replace an earlier font which had been “destroyed with the chapel by fire”.

The fire was significant, and helps explain why only the core of the walls are original, and the roof, decorated ceiling and much of the rest of the chapel is later. The following is typical of newspaper reports from the 15th of July 1864, describing the fire:

“On Thursday afternoon, one of the most ancient structures in London, the Savoy Chapel, was destroyed by fire. When first it was seen it would appear that only the organ was burning; but in a few minutes the whole interior woodwork, open seats, pulpit, &c were in flames. The fire presently burst out of the stained glass window at the northern end, and caught the veranda of the house in front of it, 109 Strand, a tailor’s shop. The upper part of the house, occupied by the Press newspaper, was also on fire for a short time, but the flames were got under control by the timely arrival of the steam engine.

The fire in the church however was not subdued till the roof had fallen in. The cause of the unfortunate occurrence is in this instance more easy to trace than usual.

It appears that there was an escape of gas near the organ, and the gasmen were engaged at one o’clock to find the precise spot. They left for their dinner without turning off the gas at the meter, and it is supposed that they either left a light behind them, of that they had unwittingly lighted an escape and left it burning. The keys of the church were not forthcoming for some time after the engines had arrived.”

The report states that the ceiling was entirely destroyed, and that it was the most striking feature of the interior of the chapel (as it is today). It was wholly of oak and pear tree, divided into 138 quatrefoil panels, and enriched with a carved ornament either of sacred or historical significance. The report also covers some of the many monuments in the chapel, only a few of which survived the fire.

The 1864 fire appears to have been the last of three fires that overall caused severe damage to the chapel. A report in 1911 states that “Owing to three fires between 1842 and 1864, very little of the old interior is left”.

At the rear of the chapel, underneath the organ, are two separate seats:

The name King’s Chapel of the Savoy explains why these seats are here, and the unique status of the chapel.

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy is a private royal chapel for the monarch, and is not subject to the jurisdiction of the established church. It is also therefore not a parish church.

Until recently it was the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, but with the death of Elizabeth II and the coronation of Charles III, the chapel changed to the King’s Chapel.

The addition of “King’s” to the name Chapel of the Savoy is relatively recent, as in April 1939 “The Duchy of Lancaster Office last night issued the following announcement – His Majesty, in right of his Duchy of Lancaster, has been pleased to command that his Chapel of the Savoy shall be styled henceforth ‘the King’s Chapel of the Savoy'”.

Two years earlier, in 1937, George VI has also commanded that the Savoy Chapel should be the chapel of the Royal Victorian Order, an order that was founded by Queen Victoria in 1896 for services to the King or Queen, and other members of the Royal Family.

The special seats at the rear of the church, which face straight down the walkway between the pews are for the monarch, and on the wooden panels behind the seats are copper panels which display the Coat of Arms of previous monarchs and other members of the royal family who have or had a role in the life of the chapel, for example Princess Ann who as Princess Royal is the Grand Master of the Royal Victorian Order, part of the honours system that is closely associated with the chapel:

There are similar copper plates on the wooden panels that line the rear and side of the chapel. These are for members of the Royal Victorian Order, and include John Mansel Miller who as Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Miller was made a GCVO (Knight or Dame Grand Cross) in 1987 having been a Crown Equerry between 1961 and 1987:

Colonel Sir Henry MacGeagh who was the Deputy Treasurer of the Middle Temple and also became a GCVO, in 1950:

As well as the devastating fire in the chapel in 1864, much of the stained glass at the northern end of the church was destroyed by a bomb which hit a neighbouring building during the last war. Stained glass to the southern end survived, but is later than the chapel fire of 1864.

Stained glass window dedicated to the memory of Richard D’Oyly Carte and his son Rupert:

Richard D’Oyly Carte was behind the construction of the Savoy Theatre which he built using the profits from Gilbert & Sullivan productions and he also built and owned the Savoy hotel, this time using profits from the Mikado:

He married his second wife, Helen Lenoir, in the Savoy Chapel.

The latest stained glass window in the chapel is a window dedicated to Elizabeth II and installed in 2012 for the Queen’s diamond jubilee:

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy has been the location for many baptisms, marriages and funerals over the years, normally for someone who has some association with the chapel, or with the Royal Victorian Order.

An interesting court case in July 1756 shows that unofficial marriages were also celebrated, but these would lead to a substantial sentence.

“Yesterday, the Rev. Mr Wilkinson was tried at the Old Bailey, for celebrating clandestine Marriages at the Savoy Chapel. He was found guilty after a trial of upwards seven hours, and ordered for transportation for fourteen years.”

I very much doubt that a clandestine marriage could take place in the chapel today.

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy is a fascinating place to visit, just a short detour from the Strand. As well as the original church, there is a side room which contains some historical maps, prints and photos which help to tell the history of the chapel, and the staff at the chapel are very happy to tell visitors the story of the place, and point out key features of the building.

On the chapel’s website, the opening times for visitors is stated as from 9am to 4pm, Monday to Thursday, however I have found that it can also be closed during these times, but a bit of perseverance is worthwhile to see a unique chapel that retains the name of the owner of a long lost estate back in the 13th century, and was part of an early 16th century hospital founded by Henry VII.

It Happened Again and the City in Autumn

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It happened again last week. A few months ago I apologised for the lack of a Sunday post due to problems with the website. It was very slow and was going up and down, and the hosting provider was telling me the problem was something that I knew it was not.

I had some help from a brilliant web design and support company (Toast, who can be found at this link if you ever need any help with website support and design – they are really good). Sorting out the database, caching improvements and a number of other changes had the website working well again.

With almost 12 years of posts, 14,500 photos and images and over 2 million words, I am surprised it lasted as lonmg as it did without some in depth maintenance.

But then it happened again.

Last week, the website went down, and was down for two days. It was different this time – it was completely down. Not slow, not intermittent, just down.

I contacted the hosting provider. Their first response was that it was loading just fine for them, and it was a problem with the SSL certificate (the bit that puts the padlock symbol in your browser, encrypts the link between you and the website, is preferred by Google etc.)

This sounded ridiculous, as if the certificate was the problem, I would have still been able to access the website.

Once this theory was knocked down, they were still telling me it was a problem at my end, as they could access the site without any problems.

After much effort trying to prove to them it was a routing problem (sending copies of traces showing the connection was failing in Germany (where the site is hosted), just before getting to the site), and asking several times for the problem to get escalated, then after about 9 hours I got an update from someone who actually knew what was going on.

A really weird issue, and nothing to do with my website.

My website is on a shared server (I cannot afford a dedicated server), and another website on the shared server was getting lots of strange traffic, so to prevent any problems this might cause to the server, the hosting provider cut the routing to the server from the rest of the Internet, which explained why their support team could still access as they were on their internal network).

This went on for just under two days, and then the website came back online after they have made routing changes, and presumably sorted out the strange traffic to the other website.

So all good.

A day later it went down again.

I bypassed their first line support and went back to the team who knew what was happening with the original fault, and a quick response was provided, that the server needed emergency maintenance. No idea why, whether it was connected with the original problem or just an unlucky coincidence.

Later that day, the website came back online.

The whole experience reminds me of a quote from a customer in a former employment “Sh*t happens, it is how you deal with it that counts”, which is very true, and first line support should not see it as their role to deflect all problems back to the customer, but once you get to someone who knows what is going on, you have some confidence that it is being managed.

Anyway, this has been a very longwinded way to explain why there is no new post this week – I simply ran out of time.

I am though going to do something I promised myself I would never do – repeat a post.

So for this week’s post, I am going back 10 years to November 2015, and look at:

Autumn In The City

Whilst the majority of my father’s photos came to me as negatives, a number were printed, and of these some had the location written on the back. As well as the location, a few are also specific about the time of year as the photo reflects how London appears as the seasons change.

For this week’s post, I bring you two photos on which my father had written the simple title “Autumn in Finsbury Circus”.

Both were taken early in the morning and show autumnal light shining through the trees, with the first autumn leaves on the path. There are two photos, one showing a woman pushing what looks like a pram, whilst the second shows a man starting to sweep the fallen leaves:

I suspect that he had taken these photos either for exhibition or competition at the St. Brides Institute Photographic Society as they have a more composed quality rather than the straight forward recording of London’s buildings and streets:

To try and find the location of these photos, a day off from work last Friday provided the opportunity for an autumn walk around London.

Finsbury Circus is much the same today, with one significant exception being that it is a major construction site for Crossrail with the centre of the gardens in the middle of the square being used for access to Crossrail and sections of the path that runs round the perimeter of the gardens also being closed.

If I correctly located the buildings in the background, they were behind part of the closed off path, however parts that remain open provided the opportunity to show that not too much has changed (if you ignore the major construction site to your left):

The layout of Finsbury Circus was established in the early 19th Century, with the office buildings we see today being built over the following century, with some redevelopment continuing today.

As one of the few areas of green space, the gardens were very popular with city workers, with a bandstand and bowling green occupying part of the centre of the gardens. A small, temporary bandstand remains today. The gardens at the centre of Finsbury Circus will be restored after the Crossrail works are complete.

The main entrance to the Crossrail construction site which currently occupies much of the gardens in the centre of Finsbury Circus:

Walking in central London, there are very few indicators of the season of the year. Apart from temperature and the times of the rising and setting of the sun, it could be any time of year. The natural indicators of whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter are few and far between.

Taking inspiration from the title of my father’s photos, I thought it would be interesting to take a walk through the City and look for any other examples of where autumn can be found in amongst such a built environment.

The weather last Friday at least was very autumnal with strong winds and alternating between heavy showers of rain and clear blue sky (although in fairness that could be English weather at any time of year).

There are very few green spaces left in the City, the majority that remain are usually associated with a church, either still remaining or one that was lost in the last war, and it was to one of these that I headed to after Finsbury Circus.

This is the garden that occupies the site of St. Mary Aldermanbury. a church that was heavily damaged in the last war, not rebuilt and the remains shipped to America (see my first post here). Just south of London Wall at the corner of Aldermanbury and Love Lane.

A heavy rain shower as I stood in the garden, and a strong wind blowing the fallen leaves up against the far wall:

The next stop was the garden that occupies the graveyard of the church of St. Anne and St. Agnes at the corner of Noble Street and Gresham Street.

This garden occupies a relatively small space, however some mature trees reach up to the sky in amongst the surrounding buildings, with the leaves starting to turn to their autumn colours:

Walking to the end of Gresham Street, then turning up St. Martin’s Le Grand I came to Postman’s Park. At this time of year, the sun does not reach above the buildings to the south in order to shine on Postman’s Park, so the park spends much of this time of year in shade that appears to be made darker by the sunlight on the surrounding buildings. Many of the trees here had already lost the majority of their leaves:

Walking out from Postman’s Park into King Edward Street and I was back in the sunshine of an autumn day:

Heading south from Postman’s Park to one of the larger areas of green open space remaining in the City, the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral:

Here plenty of mature trees can be found around the eastern half of the cathedral and their autumn colours looking spectacular against both the stone of St. Paul’s and the sky:

From St. Paul’s, it was then a walk down Cannon Street, Eastcheap and Great Tower Street to Trinity Square Gardens. (I did miss out the garden at St. Dunstan in the East as the sky to the east was getting very dark and I wanted to get to Trinity Square before another heavy shower of rain).

This large (for the City) open space also benefits from a lack of tall buildings to the south so the rare combination of a City garden that also gets the sun at this time of year.

The pavements showing the signs of recent rain. Overhung by mature trees, the pavements will soon be covered by leaves:

The old Port of London Authority building in the background with the new memorial to Royal Fleet Auxiliary and Merchant Seamen who lost their lives in the Falklands Campaign. The mature trees around the edge of the gardens just starting to change to their autumn colours:

My final visit was to the churchyard of St. Olave in Seething Lane. A small churchyard just catching the last glimpse of an autumn sun, with leaves on the trees starting to fall:

It was a fascinating walk through the city on a typical autumn day with extremes of weather from heavy rain showers to clear blue sky. Even with the amount of building there are still places were it is possible to observe the changing of the seasons and retain contact with the natural cycle through the year.

I fear though that with the ever increasing height of buildings in the City, these valuable survivors of the natural world will be spending more and more of their days in the shadow of their surroundings.

Normal service should hopefully be resumed next Sunday.

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.

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