Borley Rectory – The Most Haunted House In England

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As long term readers of the blog will know, as well as London photos, my father also took many photos from around the country, as after National Service, he along with some friends went on very long cycle rides, staying overnight in Youth Hostels. A popular post-war means of exploring the country,

There are two photos which I would not have had any chance of identifying, if he had not left notes for these two:

The note with the photos read “Borley Rectory, 21st July 1952”:

The two photos show what looks like an overgrown field, with no sign of any rectory. The reasons for this will become clear later in the post.

First coming to national attention in 1929, the rectory would soon become know as the most haunted house in England,

Borley is a very small village in north Essex, to the north-west of Colchester, and the rectory was built in 1863 by the Rev. Henry Bull. It seems to have been known for low level ghostly phenomena for some time, for example on the 28th of July 1900, four sisters of the Rev. Bull saw the figure of a nun on the rectory lawn.

The site on which the rectory was built appears to have been the subject of local legends for many years. In a 1956 report on the Borley hauntings by the Society for Psychical Research, it was noted that:

“According to legend, discredited in 1938, Borley Rectory was built on the site of a 13th century monastery, with a nunnery nearby at Bures. The legend told how an eloping monk and nun were caught and put to death. Apparitions of the nun, the coach in which they fled, and a headless coachman figure in stories current in the late 19th century.”

It is always a headless coachman, and there are numerous examples of this type of apparition from across the country. The legend that the rectory was built on the site of a 13th century monastery seems to have just been a local story, with no foundation in fact.

The Rev. Henry Bull was succeeded by his son Harry, who also became the rector of Borley and whilst he moved to another house in the villages, his father’s sisters still lived in the rectory.

The Rev. Harry Bull died in 1927, and two years later, the Rev. G. Eric Smith took over the living of Borley and moved to the rectory.

The Reverend and his wife were so concerned by the rumours that the rectory was haunted, that they got in touch with the Editor of the Daily Mirror for help with contacting a psychical researcher.

Borley Rectory:

Image source: The End of Borley Rectory by Harry Price, 1946.

Following the Rev. Smith’s request to the Daily Mirror, the newspaper arranged for Harry Price to visit the rectory. In the 1920s Price was one of the best known and most prolific physic journalists of his generation, and he did expose the fraudulent activities of many mediums, so he had some credibility in the research of ghostly phenomena.

The Daily Mirror published an article on the 12th of June 1929 announcing that Harry Price was being sent to investigate, and also published details from a witness who had experienced the phenomena that apparently plagued the rectory:

“HAUNTED ROOM IN A RECTORY. OLD SERVANT’S STORY OF A MIDNIGHT VISITOR. LAYING THE ‘GHOST’. Psychic Expert to Investigate Suffolk Mystery.

One of the leading British psychological experts is to investigate the mystery of the ‘ghost’ of Borley Rectory, Suffolk, described in the Daily Mirror.

In an effort to lay the ghost by the heels, and either prove or disprove its existence, Mr. Harry Price, honorary director of the National Laboratory of Psychic Research, is to conduct the investigation. Mr. Price is famous in this country for his research work and his exposures of psychic phenomena.

Striking confirmation of the weird experiences of the present and past occupants of the rectory is forthcoming from Mrs. E. Myford of Newport, Essex. In a letter to the Daily Mirror Mrs. Myford reveals that forty-three years ago, when she was a maid at the rectory, similar phenomena were quite openly discussed in the rectory and neighbourhood.

Much of my youth was spent in Borley and district, with my grandparents, writes Mrs. Myford, and it was common talk that the rectory was haunted. Many people declared that they had seen figures walking at the bottom of the garden. I once worked at the rectory, forty-three years ago, as an under-nursemaid, but I only stayed there a month, because the place was so weird.

The other servants told me my bedroom was haunted, but I took little notice of them because I knew two of the ladies of the house had been sleeping there before me. But when I had been there a fortnight something awakened me in the dead of night. Someone was walking down the passage towards the door of my room, and the sound they made suggested that they were wearing slippers.

As the head nurse always called me a six o’clock, I thought it must be she, but nobody entered the room, and I suddenly thought of the ‘ghost’. The next morning I asked the other four maids if they had come to my room, and they all said that they had not and tried to laugh me out of it.

But I was convinced that somebody or something in slippers had been along the corridor, and finally I became so nervous that I left. My grandparents would never let me pass the building after dark, and I would never venture into the garden or the wood at dusk.”

Then on the 14th of June 1929, the Mirror published an update, covering the first visit of Harry Price to the rectory:

“WEIRD NIGHT IN ‘HAUNTED HOUSE’ SHAPE THAT MOVED ON LAWN OF BORLEY RECTORY. STRANGE RAPPINGS. ARTICLES FLYING THROUGH THE AIR SEEN BY WATCHERS.

There can no longer be any doubt that Borley Rectory, is the scene of some remarkable incidents.

Last night Mr. Harry Price, director of the National Laboratory for Psychical Research, his secretary, Miss Lucy Kaye, the Rev. G.E. Smith, Rector of Borley, Mrs. Smith and myself were witnesses to a series of remarkable happenings.

All these things occurred without the assistance of any medium or any kind of apparatus, and Mr. Price, who is a research expert only and not a spiritualist, expressed himself puzzled and astonished at the results. To give the phenomena a thorough test, however, he is arranging for a séance to be held in the rectory with the aid of a prominent London medium.

The first remarkable happening was the dark figure I saw in the garden. We were standing in the summer house at dusk watching the lawn when I saw the apparition which so many claim to have seen, but owing to the deep shadows it was impossible for one to discern any definite shape or attire. But something certainly moved along the path along the other side of the lawn, and although I immediately ran across to investigate, it had vanished when I reached the spot.

Then as we strolled toward the rectory discussing the figure, there came a terrific crash and a pane of glass from the roof of a porch hurtled to the ground. We ran inside and upstairs to inspect the rooms over the porch, but found nobody. A few seconds later we were descending the stairs, Miss. Kaye leading and Mr. Price behind me, when something flew past my head, hit an iron stove in the hall, and shattered.

With our flashlamps we inspected the broken pieces and found them to be sections of a red vase which, with its companion, had been standing on the mantlepiece of what is known as the blue room and which we had just searched.

We sat on the stairs in darkness for a few minutes and just as I turned to Mr. Price to ask him whether we had waited long enough something hit my hand.

This turned out to be a common mothball, and had dropped from apparently the same place as the vase. I laughed at the idea of a sprit throwing mothballs about, but Mr. Price said that such methods of attracting attention were not unfamiliar to investigators. Finally came the most astonishing event of the night.

From one o’clock until nearly four in the morning all of us, including the rector and his wife, actually questioned the spirit or whatever it was and received the most emphatic answers.

A cake of soap on the washstand was lifted and thrown heavily on to a China jug standing on the floor with such force that the soap was deeply marked. All of us were at the other side of the room when this happened. Our questions which we asked out loud, were answered by raps apparently made on the back of a mirror in the room, and it must be remembered that no medium or spiritualist was present.”

The reference in the above articles to the “National Laboratory for Psychical Research” implies the credibility of an independent research organisation, however the “National Laboratory” was the creation of Harry Price, and of which he was director.

The entrance to the rectory from the road, showing that it was a more substantial building than appears from just a view from the front:

Image source: The End of Borley Rectory by Harry Price, 1946.

Perhaps it should not have been a surprise that as soon as a psychic researcher, sent by a national newspaper got involved, that the phenomena in the rectory became more intense.

The Rev. Smith and his family left the rectory and moved to Long Melford, not just because of the ghostly happenings, but also the “nuisance created by the publicity”.

All then went quiet. The Rev. Smith and his family moved to a new parish in Norfolk, and Borley remained without a rector until the 16th of October 1930 when the Rev. Lionel A. Foyster moves in with his family, and the ghostly phenomena start again, this time with increasing violence.

One of the phenomena witnessed during the Foyster’s time in the rectory was wall writing, where appeals were made to Marianne (the wife of Rev. Foyster):

Image source: The End of Borley Rectory by Harry Price, 1946.

Rev Foyster was a cousin to the Rev. Harry Bull, and the sisters were still living close by as they got in contact with Harry Price to ask him to make a return visit.

An exorcism was held, and the phenomena abruptly cease.

In October 1935, the Foyster family move out, and the rectory is left unoccupied. The next rector of Borley receives the Bishop’s permission to live elsewhere, then the livings of Borley and nearby Liston are combined, making the rectory at Borley redundant.

In May 1937 Harry Price again visited the rectory and decided to rent the building for a year. He advertised in The Times for people to join him in a comprehensive investigation, and 48 individuals are signed up, with a rota of visits to monitor the rectory.

One of those involved arranged for a planchette to be used. A planchette was a heart shaped piece of wood, mounted on wheels, and with a hole for a pencil. Those at the sitting where the planchette was used, would gently put their hands on the planchette, and it would move, guided by any spirits who wished to communicate. The pencil writing the results on paper below the planchette.

This method was used between October and November 1937, and the scripts generated by the planchette provided considerable details about the nun from the original legends. Her name was given as either Mary or Marie Lairre, and she had come from France. The scripts claim that she had been murdered, she was a novice and died at the age of 19 in 1667, and that her remains could be found at the end of the wall or in the well.

Later, in 1943, Price excavated the wells in the cellars of the rectory and found human bones at the bottom of the well. They were assumed to be those of the nun and in May 1945 they were buried in the churchyard at Liston.

Throughout Price’s tenancy of the rectory, strange phenomena continued to be observed and felt. There were cold spots, strange noises, taps, bangs, footsteps and whistles, horses hoofs, lights etc.

In May 1938, Price’s tenancy of the rectory ends, and the rectory is purchased by a Captain Gregson, who also reported minor phenomena, as did visitors to the old rectory.

During the night of the 27th of February 1939, Borley Rectory is destroyed by fire. During the fire, strange phenomena continue, including the sighting of strange figures walking in the flames, and strange happenings continue to be reported in the months after the fire, although the rectory is now a ruin:

Image source: The Haunting of Borley Rectory, Volume 51, Part 186 Society for Psychical Research

The saga at the rectory had received continuous national coverage during the 1930s, and in 1940 Price capitalised on the public’s interest in the story of the rectory with the book “The Most Haunted House in England”.

The book resulted in many more people getting in contact with Price, to report their strange experiences at the site.

The remains of the rectory were demolished in 1944, however interest in the story continued and many people still visited the site (including my father and his friends), and some people also held seances on the site.

The following photo shows an aerial view of the site, with the location of the demolished rectory highlighted by the arrow. The photo helps locate my father’s photos as the second photo at the top of the post has some low rise buildings in the background, and these can be seen in the centre of the following photo:

Image source: The Haunting of Borley Rectory, Volume 51, Part 186 Society for Psychical Research

In 1946, Harry Price published his second book on the subject “The End of Borley Rectory”, repeating as the sub-title “The Most Haunted House in England”.

Two years later, on the 29th of March, 1948 Harry Price died of a heart attack in his home at Pulborough in West Sussex. His papers and archive were deposited with the University of London.

There had always been rumours about the phenomena observed at Borley Rectory, and after Price’s death, these rumours started to gain greater credibility.

In 1948, a Mr Charles Sutton who was on the staff of the Daily Mail accused Harry Price of fraudulently producing many of the phenomena observed when Sutton visited with Price in 1929, although quite why he had left it so long to make public these claims is unknown.

In 1949, Mrs Smith, the wife of the Rev. G. Eric Smith, who took over the living of Borley and moved into the rectory in 1928, wrote to the Daily Mail asserting her disbelief that the rectory was haunted.

In 1956, the Society for Psychical Research (still going and “Founded in 1882, the SPR was the first organisation to conduct scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models”), published the results of a “Critical Survey of the Evidence” into the haunting of Borley Rectory in their Proceedings (Volume 51, Part 186, January 1956):

The report is an in depth and comprehensive survey of the haunting, and looks at all the evidence available, although it does make the point that the evidence was not of the type that would stand in a court of law, as the evidence mainly consisted of the reports of all those who had witnessed phenomena, rather than tangible evidence of a supernatural cause.

The rectory was large and had acoustic properties that could have explained many of the strange noises.

The Rev. Harry Bull, as well as being the rector of Borley also had an interest in spiritualism, and this could have influenced both his view of the rectory, as well as how the phenomena were perceived by others.

The report also looked at Harry Price, who was described as possessing a “complex personality whilst to others the motives which inspired him were simple and clear-cut. He was a man of abounding energy and had a wide range of interests and a practical acquaintance with a good many technical matters from numismatics to radio communication and conjuring. Trained as an engineer, he ran his own amateur workshop and some of his apparatus and gadgets were of first class workmanship”.

Whilst many of these skills could have been used to create the phenomena observed at the rectory, the report states that there is no firm evidence to suggest that Price did this, and with his death, and the distance of time, it was impossible to prove.

The report does refer to his career as a journalist on the subject, and that it was possible to regard Price as “a brilliant if cynical journalist who used the material gathered in his laboratory or in the field in such a way that its publicity value was highest. As we have seen, if the material lacked sensational elements it would seem that he was prepared at times to provide these himself. On the other hand, his motives may have been more complex; he may have thought that there was some genuine basis on which to build his stories, and that, by supplying what he thought to be the proper psychological milieu, the genuine elements could easily emerge”.

The report also focuses on the influence of suggestion, and how, “once the mind has been affected, belief can be strengthened and simple events misinterpreted in order to fit them into the desired pattern”.

Harry Price surrounded by items from his ghost hunting kit:

Attribution: Noel F. Busch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

My father had a copy of the book “The End of Borley Rectory” by Harry Price, and inside there is a cutting from the Daily Mail from the 7th of June, 1958, with the headline “Today, Harry hasn’t a ghost to stand on”.

The article refers to the 1956 Society for Psychical Research report as demolishing the Borley haunting, and then looks at a new book which challenges one of Price’s other notable cases, that of a young girl named Rosalie who appeared during a séance after Price was invited to “one of the better class London suburbs“:

Despite all the challenges to the authenticity of the Borley hauntings, stories about the old rectory and the site continued for long after Price’s death. In 1954, two years after my father’s visit, there were still newspaper articles being published. One full page article ended with the following:

“Recently I stood in the long grass which has grown over the foundations of the Rectory and talked with a man who for the last three and a half years has lived in the coach-house which escaped the fire.

Mr. Williams is a retired engineer who keeps a chicken farm there. Quiet, matter of fact, and the least mystical person I have ever met, he is not normally at all forthcoming about the haunting. Publicity, he knows, will only bring more coach-loads of curious sightseers and more mediums who will fall into trances by the Nun’s Walk.

But he admits, frankly and quite unemotionally, that he has experienced things which have no normal explanations.

He told me of how he had sometimes woken in the night to find a light – a glow he called it – hovering in his bedroom and that once he heard quite distinctly footsteps following him across the courtyard at the back of his house. He turned round, but there was no one behind him. Suspecting a trick, he ran round the corner of the house. Still no one.

Had he seen the nun? Mr. Williams took his time before answering, and then said, slowly; ‘Well, I think perhaps I may have. I was in one of the chicken houses at the time. It was broad daylight and I saw a figure pass the window, – just a vague outline, really, you couldn’t say it was a man or woman – and then disappear.

When? Oh, last summer that was – just before the chicken-house was burnt down.”

And with that, can I wish you a very happy Christmas, and if you do get any strange noises, lights, or apparitions of nun’s at this dark time of year – I suggest you do not contact the national press and ask for the assistance of a psychical researcher.

The Greshams of Norfolk and London

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Almost 12 years ago, the blog started as a means of recording then and now photos based on my father’s photos, but since 2014 it has also been a way for me to explore London and the city’s history (or rather take more interest in what I used to walk past, and I still have lots more of my father’s photos to post about).

As well as taking more notice whilst walking London, it is also fascinating to find connections between the city and the wider country, and one of these connections is the subject of this week’s post.

A couple of week’s ago, we were in the small town of Holt in north Norfolk (thanks to A & C for the suggestion and company). and at the western end of the Market Place, there was a building which had a very familiar symbol for the institution that occupies the building:

The building is the home of Gresham’s Nursery and Pre Prep School, and further west there is a much larger part of Gresham’s School, and what initially caught my attention was the image of the grasshopper, which is on the sign board and also on one of the school busses that went through the centre of the town:

The name Gresham is a key part of London history, and the grasshopper is the crest above the Gresham family coast of arms.

The Gresham grasshopper can also be found in a central part of the City of London. The following photo is of the Bank junction with the Royal Exchange in the centre of the photo:

Not easily visible in the above photo, but on the weather vane of the small tower on the roof of the Royal Exchange is another Gresham grasshopper:

So why does the name Gresham, and the symbol of a grasshopper appear both in Holt and in the centre of the City of London?

Firstly, Holt is in the far north of the county of Norfolk, not far from the North Sea coast, and surrounded by agricultural land. The following map shows the location of the town of Holt (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The Gresham family had long held land in this part of Norfolk, having descended from Ralph de Braunche who fought with, and came over during William the Conqueror’s invasion of England in 1066.

He was granted land in Norfolk (as part of a great transfer of land ownership from the earlier pre-conquest Saxon land owners, to those who had supported William during and after 1066), and at some point in the following years, the family took the Gresham surname from the village in north Norfolk where the family were land owners, and near where they had settled in the 14th century.

In the following map, I have ringed Holt in blue to the left, and the village of Gresham in red, to the right (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

We did not get a chance to visit the village of Gresham, however Geograph has an image of the village name sign, which also has a Gresham grasshopper:

© Copyright Humphrey Bolton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. Image source: https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1051802

In the early 15th century, members of the family had settled in Holt, and had built a Manor House at the eastern end of Market Place, on the site of the current Pre Prep School shown in the photo at the start of the post, and it was in this Manor House that Sir John Gresham was born, at some point around the year 1496.

His father was also a John Gresham, and as well as Holt, he was also involved with business in London, an involvement which would grow considerably in the following years.

Sir John Gresham had been apprenticed to John Middleton, a textile dealer in the City of London when he was 14, and when he was 21, he became a member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers.

He became heavily involved with the Tudor Court of Henry VIII and helped Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell with trade, and his provision of finance, arms and men in support of Henry VIII’s military ambitions helped build his popularity with the King.

He was also Lord Mayor of the City of London in 1547.

Returning to Holt, it was Sir John Gresham that founded the school which still exists to this day, and the need for a school appears to have been due to a gap in local education left by the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539.

In the early 16th century, much formal education was provided by religious establishments, and Sir John Gresham had attended the school at Beeston Regis Priory. This school was closed in 1539 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and there was no other option to replace the Priory.

The first school was in the family manor house which had been extended specifically for the purpose, and Letters Patent from Queen Mary in 1555 provided royal approval for the school.

He would not though live to see the formal opening of the school as he died in his London home on the 23rd of October 1556, a short time before the school opened.

He was buried in St. Michael’s Bassishaw, a parish church in Basinghall Street, however the grave, monument and church were destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Sir John Gresham, founder of the school in Holt, member of the Mercer’s Company, Lord Mayor of the City of London:

Attribution: Flemish school, artist unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Whilst Sir John Gresham is mainly remembered in the town of Holt as the founder of Gresham’s school, it is his nephew, Sir Thomas Gresham who left a mark on London that is still very much in evidence today.

Sir John Gresham’s brother was Sir Richard Gresham.

He seems to have followed a very similar career path to his brother John as he was a member of the Mercer’s Company, Lord Mayor of the City of London in 1537, involved in the Court of Henry VIII, and a significant trader in goods with the Low Countries, the area of Europe now mainly occupied by the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

He also provided goods for the King, and Richard amassed a significant fortune as a result of his trading activities.

Richard had four children, one of whom was the future Sir Thomas Gresham, and is believed to have been born in 1519 in Richard’s house in Milk Street in the City of London.

Sir Thomas Gresham was also a Mercer and had been apprenticed to his uncle Sir John Gresham. He would go on to amass far more wealth than his father or uncle, engaged in trade throughout London and Europe, and in many ways he was one of the original driving forces in establishing the City of London as one of the major financial and trading centres in the world.

He would serve three different monarchs – Edward VI, Mary I and then Elizabeth I, and what is intriguing was the apparent ease of transition between different monarchs as he seamlessly went from the staunchly Catholic Mary I to the Protestant Elizabeth I.

As well as a house in the City of London, he also spent considerable periods of time over a period of around 30 years, living in the city of Antwerp, then the major trading hub of Europe, and a city which had a Bourse, a place where a trading and credit market would operate, and where traders in both goods and finance would meet to agree loans, make foreign exchange trades, trade goods etc. all the different types of trading activity that would soon make London the main trading hub of the world.

Gresham seems to have had a remarkable memory and ability to calculate trades, and would make money on the small differences between currencies, borrowing and lending rates etc. He also attempted to influence rates, for example by providing friendly merchants with amounts of money so that they could make a trade which would raise or lower the value of the currency being traded, just in advance of when Gresham had to make a trade.

The earlier trade changing the rate at which his later trade would take place in a way that was beneficial to Gresham, was indicative of how Gresham would try and manipulate markets to his own advantage.

He was apparently extremely self confident to the point of arrogance, and would do everything needed to get a good outcome from a trade, a loan or borrowings. An example of his approach to raising capital is through his marriage in 1544 to an apparently wealthy widow, Anne Ferneley, whose husband, a wealthy merchant had died at a young age.

Thomas Gresham:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

His time in Antwerp was not all about trade. He became fluent in multiple European languages, experienced the impact and benefits of the renaissance, and saw the benefits that a formal education had to commercial trade. He built up an extensive network of informants across Europe, and he also understood the importance that having a Bourse would be to the trading life of a city. All themes that would later influence his plans for the City of London.

Sir Thomas Gresham, painted by an Unknown Netherlandish artist, circa 1565:

Attribution: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. Source National Portrait Gallery, London

Gresham was involved in so many financial innovations, from ways to improve personal accounting through to how the country’s finances were managed and initiatives to improve the global standing of England’s currency.

One example of the later, was with the strength of Sterling.

Today, the value of the UK’s currency is more dependent on measures such as interest rates, trade deficits, GDP etc. however in the 16th century, the value of the currency was linked to the metal in which the coin was minted, and much of England’s coinage was viewed as “debased” – meaning that the face value of the coin was more than the value of the metal in which it was minted.

A common cause of debasing a coin was through clipping, where small pieces of a coin around the edge, were clipped off. Doing this to a sufficient number of coins provided a large amount of valuable metal, however the value of the metal of the clipped coins was now less than their face value.

When using coins for trade, such as to purchase goods for import, continental traders were not happy to accept English coins without weighing and testing their metal content, to ensure they were getting the value of payment expected. This took time, and reduced the value of English coinage to foreign traders.

Initiatives had been tried to recall all the coinage in circulation with little success, and during Elizabeth I’s reign, Gresham was the brains behind the plans for Secretary of State William Cecil to recall and remint the currency in circulation, as a way of restoring the correct value to the country’s coinage.

The concept of debased coinage replacing coinage that aligned with face value was later framed as Gresham’s Law – “Bad money drives out good”, although the issue around debased coinage, and its impact on coinage as a method of trade, store of value etc. had been known for many years before Gresham.

Thomas Gresham was also a champion of double-entry book keeping and he appears to have been one of the first to have used and introduced the technique into England.

Double-entry is where separate entries are written using two accounts for credits and debits, and was a method that Gresham encountered during his time in Antwerp. The technique was used considerably by European merchants, and appears to have originated with Italian merchants.

Gresham’s double entry journal covering the period from the 26th of April 1546 to the 10th of July 1552 has survived and shows how meticulous Gresham was in using this accounting method for his own, personal finances.

The period covers part of his time as a trader in Antwerp, when he was bringing in goods from England to trade and sell, as well as goods he purchased in Antwerp to sell in England.

Gresham called the profit and loss account in his ledger his account of “damage and gain”, which is a rather good way of describing losses and profits.

Another print of Thomas Gresham, and what I like about this print is the ship to his right. Paintings, prints etc. would often include things that were important of representative of the person portrayed. The print may be symbolic of Gresham’s interest and influence in global trade and commerce. The print also records his founding of Gresham College:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

It is impossible to overstate Gresham’s importance to the financial health of the country, the rapidly growing importance of the City of London as a financial and trading centre, free trade, trading and accounting techniques etc. But there were many other ways in which Thomas Gresham had a considerable impact on the future of the City of London. One of which is still very active and follows its founding principles, the second is still physically here, but no longer has the purpose that Gresham intended. This is:

The Royal Exchange

In the 16th century, trading in the City of London was carried out on the street, or in the small houses and shops that lined streets such as Cornhill and Lombard Street, and there had been calls for a dedicated place where people could meet to trade, agree prices, and generally conduct business of all types.

Sir Richard Gresham first became aware of the opening of a Bourse, or trading centre in Antwerp, one of the major trading centres of Europe. Sir Richard pushed for such a building to be constructed in the City of London, however despite the project receiving royal support, there was no suitable space available.

The proposal was taken up by his son, Sir Thomas Gresham, who was also very well aware of the Bourse from his many years in Antwerp, where he worked on behalf of the Crown, as well as trading on his own account.

Gresham put his own money into the project, along with significant funding generated through public subscriptions, and which supported the purchase of a block of land in Cornhill Street, a short distance from what is now the Bank junction, and occupying the same site as the current Royal Exchange.

The building was opened by Queen Elizabeth I in January 1570, and it was the first, large, Renaissance style building in the City. Gresham had intended that the new Exchange was named after him, however at the opening, Elizabeth I gave it the name Royal Exchange, and Gresham obviously had to retain the Queen’s favour, so the Exchange retained the name Royal.

Sir Thomas Gresham’s Royal Exchange:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

On top of the tower in the above print is a grasshopper, as still to be seen on the current Royal Exchange, and at Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk. The following is an enlargement of the grasshopper from the above print:

The purpose of the Royal Exchange was to provide a place where trades could be carried out, where people could meet, offices could be rented etc. and followed the approach Gresham had seen in the Antwerp Bourse.

Providing a central place for face to face trading was more efficient than being distributed across the city, and the opening of such an impressive Exchange greatly enhanced the City of London’s growing reputation for trade, commerce and finance.

This first Royal Exchange was destroyed during the 1666 Great Fire, and was soon rebuilt following a design by Edward Jarman.

The second Royal Exchange, from a print of the late 17th / early 18th centuries, again with a grasshopper on the top of the tower:

(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

This second iteration of the Royal Exchange lasted until 1838, when, as with the first, it was also burnt down.

The Royal Exchange was soon rebuilt, following a competition to find a design. The competition was won by the architect William Tite, who seems to have also been one of the judges of the competition.

Tite’s design follows the layout of the original two Exchanges, with a central courtyard surrounded by four wings of offices and shops, however Tite’s design changed the main entrance from facing onto Cornhill, now to face onto the Bank junction.

The buildings that had once occupied the triangular space in front of the Exchange were demolished, and it was opened up so that the full Corinthian portico of the new building faced directly onto the Bank junction, and seems almost to mirror the Mansion House across the junction.

The new Royal Exchange was opened in 1844 by Queen Victoria, and this is the building that we still see today, and which retains the grasshopper shown in the photo earlier in the post.

The use of the Royal Exchange as a place for general, face to face trading and commerce faded in the late 19th century as specialist trading exchanges were set up to provide a place where trades could be made, meetings held, and news received in a specific and related set of commodities or services.

In 1939, the building became the offices of the Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and in the late 1980s, the company made substantial changes to the interior of the building, which included replacing the original roof, and an additional upper floor.

In 2001, the building was again refurbished, and reopened as a centre for luxury shops, restaurants and bars, and the Royal Exchange retains this function today.

Although Sir Thomas Gresham was instrumental in the founding and construction of the Royal Exchange. it never carried his name, just the Gresham family’s grasshopper symbol as a weathervane. His name though has been, and still is, recorded in a number of London places, including the 1845 Gresham Street, which was a rebuilding of earlier streets Lad Lane and Cateaton Street.

Gresham’s name is also still in use with a significant London educational institution, in which Gresham was again instrumental in founding. This is:

Gresham College

In Antwerp, Sir Thomas Gresham experienced the way that an education in trade, scientific and technical developments would benefit the commercial life of a country to such an extent that through his Will, in 1597, Gresham College was established, to be run and administered by the City of London Corporation and the Mercer’s Company.

Gresham College was an attempt by Gresham to provide an education to those of the City, traders, merchants and mariners, who had not had a formal education.

The college provided free lecturers that were delivered by Professors appointed by the City of London Corporation and the Mercer’s Company.

The Mercers appointed professors in Law, Physic and Rhetoric, whilst the City of London appointed professors in Divinity, Astronomy, Geometry and Music.

Until 1768, the College was based a Sir Thomas Gresham’s former home at Bishopsgate. When the site was redeveloped, it moved to the Royal Exchange, and then to a new, dedicated building on the corner of Gresham Street and Basinghall Street, the college later held lectures at a number of different locations, ending up at Mercers Hall, before finally moving to the current location of Barnard’s Inn Hall in 1991.

Remarkably, given that Gresham College is over 400 years old, the approach is basically the same as when the college first started.

Professors are appointed for a three year term and each professor, along with visiting professors, will provide free lectures during their term.

Lectures can be attended in person, or watched online. Many of the past lectures are also available to watch online.

Lectures cover an extremely varied range of subjects, ranging from “How It Ends: What We Know about the Fate of the Universe” by Professor Chris Lintott, who is Gresham Professor of Astronomy:

through to “Modern Pagan Witchcraft” by Professor Ronald Hutton, the Gresham Professor of Divinity:

A could be expected, there is also a very large archive of lectures on London’s history, as well as lectures on Sir Thomas Gresham.

The website of Gresham College can be found by clicking here.

The Watch Now option along the top of the page takes you to a page where a sample of lectures are listed, as well as a topic list along the top of the page.

There is also a search option, and as an example, entering the term “London” brings up a large list of London related lectures.

The last lecture of 2025 is this Wednesday, the 17th of December, and is on the subject of a Tudor Christmas. You can book to attend in person, or to watch the lecture live online.

If you have finished reading all the back issues of London Archaeology mentioned in last week’s post, then the lecture archive of Gresham College provides another wonderful source of learning on not just London, but so many other different aspects of the wider world.

It is a wonderful resource, all thanks to Sir Thomas Gresham.

Returning to Holt, and as you walk back west along Market Place from the site of Gresham’s old manor house, and at the end of High Street, there is a wonderful Grade II listed, mid-18th century milestone:

I wondered if London was listed on the milestone, however all the miles and destinations were to local towns and villages, with the furthest being 41 miles away:

An indication of how relatively remote Holt was at the time, and a long way from any direct roads to London, with a trip to Norwich probably being required to pick up the main road to London.

The Gresham’s were a fascinating family. Whilst Sir John Gresham was active in London, and a Lord Mayor of the City of London, his lasting monument is Gresham School in Holt.

It was his nephew Sir Thomas Gresham who left a lasting reminder of his life in London, apparently one of the richest and most well connected men in England at the time.

If you would like to follow up on the story of Sir Thomas Gresham, there are some lectures on his life in the collection at Gresham College, and the book Gresham’s Law by John Guy (who also presents some of the lectures), is excellent:

In the game of who from history you would invite to a dinner party, Gresham would be high up on my list, although by the end he would probably have left with a large profit after selling me some wool and providing a loan – all at rates beneficial to Gresham.

The Exhibition of Industrial Power and London Archaeology

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The Exhibition of Industrial Power and London Archaeology – two completely unrelated topics in today’s post. The first, I will come to in a moment, whilst London Archaeology is the first post of the month “Resources” feature, where I look at some of the resources I use, and which you may also find helpful, to understand and explore London’s long history. London Archaeology resources will be at the end of the post.

But first, if you have been reading the blog for some years, you will know I have an interest in the 1951 Festival of Britain.

Just six years after the end of the Second World War, the Festival was a huge undertaking in terms of planning, resources, construction. etc. at a time when the country was very short of these resources along with the cash needed to pay for a festival.

There were many who argued, with some justification, that all the resources and money would be far better spent on the rebuilding that the country still urgently needed.

The Festival of Britain was though intended to help show the country both to the nation and to the rest of the world. The long history of the country and its people, the arts, design, creativity, science, industry and manufacturing capabilities of the country.

Designers, sculptors, authors, architects all contributed to show a very different post-war world, an optimistic view of the future after years of war and rationing.

Whilst the South Bank exhibition was the main festival site, and the place that is most commonly associated with the Festival of Britain (and where the Royal Festival Hall is today one of the few, physical survivors of the festival), the Festival covered the whole country.

There was a Festival Village, a touring exhibition on an old aircraft carrier, football matches organised with European teams, music and literary festivals etc. all branded with the Festival of Britain design.

There were seven main festival sites:

The main South Bank Exhibition
The Exhibition of Science in South Kensington
The Exhibition of Architecture in Poplar, East London
The Festival Ship Campania, which toured major ports around the country
The Travelling Land Exhibition which went to Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham
The Exhibition of Industrial Power in Glasgow
The Ulster Farm and Factory Exhibition in Belfast

In London, there was also the Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea, not one of the exhibition sites, but a major, and well visited part of the festival where there were gardens, rides, illuminations after dark, cafes and restaurants etc.

The main exhibitions each had their own guide book. These were detailed guides to the exhibition, and contained a wealth of information on the exhibits and wider context of each respective exhibition.

Each guide book had the Abram Games designed Festival of Britain emblem on the front cover, but with a different colour background for each exhibition, with the rest of the guide following the same style and approach to content.

The guide books provide a wealth of information on not just the Festival of Britain, but also the country in 1951, and I have been trying to collect one of the guide books for each festival site, and I recently found one of the two that I am missing.

The guide book cover for the 1951 Exhibition of Industrial Power at the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow:

My other guide books are shown in the following images, the first three are the South Bank, South Kensington Science Exhibition, then the Exhibition of Architecture at Poplar:

My final three are the Festival Ship Campania, the Touring Land Exhibition, and then the Pleasure Gardens at Battersea:

There is now only one of the main Festival of Britain guide books that I need to find, the Ulster Farm and Factory Exhibition held in Belfast. This guide book follows exactly the same format as the main guide books shown above. I have seen a couple in exhibitions, but have never found one for sale.

Next year is the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, and it would be great to find the Belfast guide by the end of the year.

I have written about the other exhibition sites in previous posts over the years, and will now look at the Glasgow Exhibition of Industrial Power.

The guide book starts with some background to the exhibition:

“In common with the other Festival exhibitions, Industrial Power is not a trade fair. Nowhere in these halls will you find stands set aside for commercial exhibitors. The exhibition has been planned, from the turnstiles to the exit, to tell a story – the story of Britain’s tremendous contribution to heavy engineering. It is a story which concerns not only machines, but the men who made them. It sets out to show not only British inventiveness, but the effect it has had on the world. Against this background are shown the outstanding products of British heavy engineering in the present day.

The theme is simple. Heavy engineering is the conquest of power. There are two main sources of raw power used by heavy engineering today. They are coal and water. There is therefore a coal sequence and a water sequence which unite towards the end of the exhibition in the Hall of Railways and Shipbuilding.”

The exhibition was visited by Princess Elizabeth, the future queen, in June 1951, however in a reminder that although this was six years after the end of the Second World War, the country was still involved in the Korean war, as in the same report of the princess visiting the exhibition, she also “included at her own special request a visit to soldiers wounded in Korea who are now in Cowglen Military Hospital, where she had a rapturous reception”.

As with the other exhibition sites, at Glasgow, the story was presented to the visitor as they walked through a series of Halls which focused on individual aspects of the overall theme. Walking through the Glasgow exhibition, there was a Hall of Power, of Coal, Steel, Power for Industry, Electricity, Railways and Shipbuilding, Irrigation and Civil Engineering and Hydro-Electricity.

The final part of the exhibition was the Hall of the Future, which offered a vision of a source of power for the future.

The route through the exhibition and the individual halls is shown in the following plan from the guide:

A very vivid example of how the country has changed since 1951 was that coal was a central theme of the Exhibition of Industrial Power, as coal was the main energy source for almost all British industry, electricity generation and domestic energy use.

The Hall of Coal celebrated this fact, and the intention of the displays were to leave the visitor with evidence that:

Coal sets the wheels in motion and keeps Industry thriving
Coal is the basis of the Machine Age

The displays took the visitor from the geological formation of coal, where plants took energy from the sun, through to the process of mining coal, and to help with providing the visitor with the experience of mining coal, there was an artificial mine as part of the exhibition.

To make the experience as real as possible, there were two National Coal Board cages which could take 30 visitors each. There was a descent of only 16 feet to the “mine”, however to make this as realistic as possible, the descent commenced with a jerky start to simulate a big drop, then a slow descent and a sudden stop at the bottom.

Having reached the artificial mine, visitors would see a full sized section of a modern, 1951 coal mine, complete with working machinery, manned by a team of Scottish miners.

As well as the modern mine, there were also historical displays showing how mining had evolved, including when children and women formed a significant part of the mining workforce, when miners had to descend to the coal face hanging on a chain rather than within a cage, the role of a 17th century fireman who would descend to the mine at the start of a shift, wrapped in wet rages, to set fire to the gas that had accumulated and clear the workings.

Unfortunately, there are no photos of the exhibitions in the guide as it was published in advance of opening, however it does contain drawings of the some of the halls and exhibits.

This is the Coal Cliff in the Hall of Power:

And the Hall of Coal from the pit cages:

The approach to how information was presented, the mix of physical objects, illustrations, sculpture, reliefs, lighting, written descriptions and the theme of taking the visitor on a journey was the same in Glasgow to all other Festival of Britain exhibitions, including that on the South Bank, although in Glasgow the exhibition was dedicated to power and heavy industry.

What these black and white illustrations do not convey is the use of colour throughout the exhibition. For example, as part of the display showing how coal is formed, there was a symbolic sun, created by bright, pulsing bulbs, to represent coal’s origin in heat.

The other halls followed a similar approach, with the Hall of Steel covering the historic development of the material from the work of Darby, Huntsman, Cort, Neilson, Bessemer, Siemens, Brearley and Hadfield, the “fathers of the steel industry” as the exhibition described them, through to the processes used to produce steel in 1951, the modern machinery and working practices.

The Hall of Electricity again starts with the discovery of electricity: “Electricity is invisible, and can be measured only by its effects. That is why it remained hidden for so long, a latent force in human history, its power unsuspected“, and then runs through how electricity is generated, the modern power station, and uses Sir Charles Parsons as a central figure in the development of large scale generating systems.

The Hall of Hydro-Electricity told the story of places throughout Scotland where the flow of water is used to generate electricity. The last section of the hall covered the Severn Barrage, a proposed project to make use of tides on the River Severn to generate large amounts of electricity.

Generating electricity from the large tidal range of the River Severn has been an on / off proposal for the last 75 years, since the Festival of Britain, and the Severn Estuary Commission reported in March 2025, their recommendations that such a tidal project was feasible.

I suspect that there will still be discussions on such a project in 75 years time.

The Hall of Shipbuilding and Railways included “a great ship-like structure that runs the length of the hall”.

As with all the halls, the story of the development of shipbuilding and the railways was told, starting from first developments through to the latest technology, and the displays included “a magnificent locomotive which will be exported to the Government of Victoria when the exhibition closes”.

Rather ironically, given the exhibitions focus on industrial power, Scotland was suffering power cuts in 1951, and on the 15th of June, 1951, many Scottish newspapers reported that “Exhibition Plunged In Darkness. The £400,000 Exhibition of Industrial Power at the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, was plunged into darkness for almost an hour today by an unexpected power cut. Visitors who had just entered the hall to tour the exhibition were left standing in total darkness where a few seconds before they had been gazing at vivid artificial lightning flashes”.

Power cuts appear to have been common throughout Scotland in 1951, later in June the Paisley Daily Express was also reporting that Paisley, along with most parts of the country were suffering power cuts for more than an hour, that there was a ten percent voltage reduction, and that the exhibition in Glasgow again suffered power cuts.

The final hall before visitors left the exhibition was the Hall of the Future.

In this hall the visitor looked down into five pits, each of which covered one of five men who influenced heavy industry in the past, or may do so in the future. These were Watt, Trevithick, Faraday, Parsons and Rutherford, and above the pits a shining cone flashes lightning and represents the limitless future through the promise of nuclear power.

The Hall of the Future:

The design of the guidebook for the Exhibition of Industrial Power was identical to the other Festival exhibitions, whether on the Southbank, Poplar, or the Festival Ship.

The text was intended to educate, and did not (to use a modern phrase), “dumb down” or patronise the reader, but it was also of its time.

As with all the other exhibition guidebooks, the one for Glasgow included a range of colour adverts for companies who had provided their products for exhibition, or who were involved in the theme of the exhibition, so we have Wolf Electric Tools:

English-Electric (with the advert also emphasising the use of coal as a source of energy):

Another common theme of all the exhibition guide books is that the majority of the companies advertising in the books have long since either closed or been take over by foreign competitors, and the adverts from the Exhibition of Industrial Power show just how much the decline of heavy engineering and manufacturing industry in general has been in the last 75 years.

Conveyancer Fork Lift Trucks:

Another advert for English-Electric, this time about their expertise in hydro-electric power:

John Brown shown in the following advert was a major Scottish industrial company, which included a significant presence in marine engineering and ship building. The company built multiple war ships and the liners Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth 2.

After a series of mergers, the engineering part of the company was taken over by Kvaerner in 1996, who closed the engineering works in 2000, and the Clydebank shipyard ended up as part of the French Bouygues Group in 1980, who closed the business in 2001.

Thomas Smith & Sons – one of the major industrial crane manufacturers of the country and with a significant export business. Their cranes were also used on docks throughout the country, so were probably to be found in the London Docks.

Again, after a series of mergers and take overs, the company has all but disappeared, but there is a very small part of the business surviving within another group, but not at all recognisable to a visitor to Glasgow in 1951:

The British Oxygen Company:

The British Oxygen Company started off in 1886 as Brin’s Oxygen Company after the two French brothers who founded the company – Arthur and Leon Quentin Brin. The company was renamed the British Oxygen Company (BOC) in 1906.

In the early 2000’s BOC was one of the largest industrial gas suppliers in the world, however a few years later, the company was purchased by the Linde Group of Germany.

Interestingly, BOC’s former head office in Windlesham, Surrey was apparently designed in the form of an Oxygen molecule.

The following is from Google Maps and I think I can see the similarity (the map may not appear in the emailed version of the post, go to the website here to view):

Crompton Parkinson, a major manufacturer of electrical power equipment:

British Aluminium – another company that has disappeared, however the Lochaber hydro-electric plant and pipelines shown in the illustration in the advert are still in use, generating electricity for an aluminium smelter owned by Alvance British Aluminium, the one remaining aluminium smelter in the UK:

The Standard Vanguard:

Thomas W. Ward Ltd – a steel working and construction company, who also had a major business in ship breaking:

In the Hall of the Future, the future of power was through the potential of atomic power and the splitting of the atom. John Laing advertised their work in building and civil engineering with the construction of the Atomic Energy Establishment’s Windscale Works, today known as Sellafield. Today, John Laing are more of an infrastructure investor, rather than a construction firm.

Babcock – once a major manufacturer of power station equipment. industrial and marine boilers, and many other heavy industrial products, today they are more a defence equipment supplier, including naval ships, ground vehicles, equipment support etc:

The Exhibition of Industrial Power was not as popular as the organisers expected, with attendances averaging between 1,500 and 3,500 a day.

The following is typical of the news reports of the time:

“MOST DISCUSSED EXHIBITION IN SCOTLAND – In three weeks the Exhibition of Industrial Power in Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall comes to an end. If nothing else, it has been the most discussed exhibition ever held in Scotland. And perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that many of those who have joined in the discussion have never visited it to see what all the talk is about.

Why haven’t the crowds flocked in? That is not merely a puzzle to the organisers – it has perplexed all manner of people. ‘Too technical’ say some. ‘Not technical enough’ declare others. ‘ A designers dream’, ‘A designers nightmare’.

So the conflict of opinion has swayed back and forth – in speeches, conversation and correspondence. Many have averred that it is not a woman’s show, yet many women who have visited the Hall have been full of praise for what they have seen.

Flattering too have been comments of overseas visitors, many of whom had already toured London’s South Bank. ‘Better laid out’, ‘More compact’. ‘a wonderful achievement story’ – comments such as these have been made.

The great mystery of 1951 still remains unsolved. Soon the Exhibition will be only a memory but it seems not unlikely that it will live on as a debating point for a long time to come. And even yet the missing thousands may materialise in a final rush to see for themselves the cause of all the commotion.”

There were incentives to visit the exhibition, for example, specific tickets winning a prize of a paid trip to the South Bank exhibition in London, so on the 10th of July, Mr John Campbell of Glasgow won a free air trip to London to visit the South Bank as the 150,000 visitor to Glasgow.

There were also organised trips to the exhibition from across Scotland. These included school trips, as well a trips organised by local Labour party organisations, for example the Arbroath Labour Party organised a visit for 300 in June, which included the provision of a special train to take visitors to Glasgow.

Overall, the Exhibition of Industrial Power was considered a success. There seems to have been a good number of international visitors as one of the apparent achievements listed was the amount of foreign currency brought in during the exhibition.

After closure in October 1951, many of the items were taken back by their manufacturer, some were auctioned off, others were scrapped.

I have not found any photos of the interior of the exhibition, however the following film does show the exhibition being opened by Princess Elizabeth, and a brief walk around some of the exhibits:

The Festival of Britain guide books help to illustrate just how much the country has changed in the last 75 years.

The Glasgow Exhibition of Industrial Power shows just how significant has been the decline and loss of heavy engineering and manufacturing. A loss that did not just impact businesses, but has also had a significant social impact in multiple old industrial areas of the country – a social impact which is still very present.

Now I just need to find the Ulster Farm and Factory exhibition guide book to complete the set.

Resources – London Archaeologist and the Archaeology Data Service

Archaeology is the way we understand so much of London’s physical past, along with the lives of people who once lived in the city. Despite how much the city has been redeveloped over the past few decades, and indeed has been through very many developments over the centuries, there are always new finds that help to tell the story of London’s long history.

Whilst major discoveries make the local and national news, that is plenty more that does not, but which deserves a bit more publicity.

One of the ways of following the work of archaeologists in London, and the latest discoveries is through the publication London Archaeologist, of which the following image is of the latest issue of the four times a year publication:

The cover image is of an iron eel spear, and to give an idea of the type of contents, the autumn edition features excavations at 14-19 Tottenham Mews in Camden as well as excavations at 1 Liverpool Street which has the title “The Dead Marshes” to highlight the historic location of the place.

These two articles are detailed, for example the Liverpool Street report runs to seven pages of text, maps, site plans and photos.

There are also articles about previous finds such as a Roman cremation found on the Old Kent Road, along with the results of new research on the large quantity of Roman painted wall plaster found at the Liberty excavation in Southwark.

A subscription to London Archaeologist is a great way to keep up to date with excavations and general archaeology across the city. The current price of an annual subscription is £22, and details can be found at the following website:

https://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk

A brilliant thing about the publication is that if you want plenty of reading to explore archaeology across London, then back issues of the publication from issue 1 in 1968, through to the end of 2023 are all available for free, and to download at the Archaeology Data Service, and as an example of the early content available, there is a fascinating article in issue 1 in 1968 on the Roman House and Bath at Billingsgate by Peter Marsden.

The archive provides more than enough fascinating reading for the dark winter evenings, but there is far more to the:

Archaeology Data Service

Firstly, the link to the archive of London Archaeologist at the Archaeology Data Service is here:

https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/series.xhtml?recordId=1000237

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is the “leading accredited digital repository for archaeology and heritage data generated by UK-based fieldwork and research”, and it is apparently the oldest repository for archaeology and heritage data in the world, having been established in 1996.

The search methods to explore the database takes some practice, and getting some experience with how to frame queries, but if you are interested in the huge amount of archaeology and heritage across London (and the rest of the country), it is well worth the effort.

The homepage of the ADS is here:

Archaeology Data Service

and at the top of the page there are a number of menu options, but to provide an idea of the breadth and depth of contents, I will click on the Search option, where you can then search the Data Catalogue or the Library.

The Library is a database of archaeological investigations and consists of either a summary of a record held in another archive, or a downloadable report (click on “Available from ADS” on Access Type on the left column of options to select records where the reports are available).

As an example, searching the Library for “Wapping”, there are a number of records, many are a brief abstract, but there are a number with a full, downloadable report.

One of the records is titled, and includes a PDF download of the full report “LAND AT THE HIGHWAY, WAPPING LANE, PENNINGTON STREET AND CHIGWELL HILL, (PARCEL 4) LONDON E1
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT”.

This plot of land is unusual in Wapping in that it is still empty and surrounded by hoardings. It is between Tobacco Dock and The Highway, and is adjacent to the derelict Rose public house (if you have been on my Wapping walk, we walked past the site towards the end of the walk, heading up from Tobacco Dock to The Highway).

The document is a detailed, 524 page report on excavations at the site, including full background detail such as the geology and topography through to a large listing of all the finds.

The location of the empty and derelict land in Wapping (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Back at the Search Data page, clicking on Data Catalogue brings up another screen, and at top left you will see “Filters” with below this a search box.

Searches can be detailed and specific, but just enter “Wapping” and on the right a whole range of search results are listed, 188 in total (although be careful as there are a number of other Wappings around the country, hence the need to explore how to make specific searches).

The first record covers: “An English cargo vessel which stranded near Flamborough Head in 1891 in fog”, nothing to do with London you might think, but clicking on the Resource Landing Page provides more details from the source, and the “Wapping” was a steam collier that carried coal to London and was known as an “up-river” or “flatiron” due to her low superstructure and with masts that could be lowered allowing the ship to pass under the many bridges of the Thames.

Interesting that a ship that carried coal along the east coast was also able to travel far up the Thames to deliver its cargo, including passing under bridges.

I have been tracing the remains of Civil War defences in Wapping, and a quick search for “Wapping Fort” found the following:

“Fort Number 1 of London’s Civil War defences was in Wapping, south of the Church of St Georges-in-the-East. The common Council resolution called for a bulwark and a half, with a battery at the north end of Gravel Lane, which is where Vertue showed it. Lithgow however refers to it as a seven-angled fort close by the houses and the River Thames Rocque’s map shows a mound on the generally accepted line of the ramparts at the junction of the present Watts Street and Reardon Streets, which would accord more with Lithgow’s location. Lithgow’s description is of a palisaded earth fort having 9 portholes with guns for each.”

If we look at Rocque’s map, then we can see the mound quoted in the above reference to the Civil War fort in Wapping:

Which is roughly within the red circle in the map of the area today (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Many of the records returned after a search do not contain details about the site, but can be a brief abstract and / or records of where the information can be found, however there is still plenty to be discovered, and the availability of the London Archaeologist archive at the ADS is a wonderful resource in its own right.

Where there is information in the ADS, such as the detailed reports on excavations, the potential location of a Civil War fort in Wapping, or the collier of the same name that had been designed to carry coals down the east coast, then through to central London, it all helps provide a greater understanding of the city.

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.

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Borley Rectory – The Most Haunted House In England

The Greshams of Norfolk and London

The Royal Exchange

Gresham College

The Exhibition of Industrial Power and London Archaeology

Resources – London Archaeologist and the Archaeology Data Service

Archaeology Data Service

An Autumn View Over London from Westminster Cathedral

The King’s Chapel of the Savoy

It Happened Again and the City in Autumn

Autumn In The City

Union Chapel, Islington – Live Music and a Nonconformist History

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

Resources – Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

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

Nile Street Stairs, Woolwich

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The Royal Exchange

Gresham College

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Resources – London Archaeologist and the Archaeology Data Service

Archaeology Data Service

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Autumn In The City

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Resources – Historical maps of Southwark and City Ward Maps

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