For this week’s post, I am back to my challenge to visit as many Thames stairs as possible, and have arrived at East Lane Stairs, at the end of East Lane, at the junction with Bermondsey Wall West. In the following photo, the stairs are behind the locked gates to the left of the photo:
East Lane Stairs are on the southern bank of the Thames, a short distance to the east of St. Saviour’s Dock.
Unfortunately it is not possible to visit the stairs as they are behind a locked gate. We can see the typical low concrete wall that provides a step up to the top of the steps on the river side, the concrete wall is there to prevent high tides from spilling into the street:
I am not sure what the metal frames on the left are – perhaps bike racks as the old warehouse to the left has been converted to office / commercial space along with residential.
Dating the stairs is difficult. The earliest newspaper reference I could find to the stairs dates from 1803, when they were included in a list of rates that could be charged for rowing a passenger between stairs (8d to be rowed from London Bridge to East Lane Stairs).
They are though much older than 1803, as they appear in Rocque’s map of 1746, where they can be seen in the centre of the map:
In the above map extract, East Lane can be seen running back from the location of the stairs, which are slightly offset from East Lane – exactly as they are today.
East Lane in the following photo, as it is today, looking back from near the location of the stairs. The street is shorter today than it was in Rocque’s map as Chambers Street runs left to right at the end of the street, and housing has been built across where East Lane continued into the gardens and fields around Bermondsey:
In the Port of London Authority’s Access to the River Thames listing, East Lane Stairs are listed as being dilapidated and not in use. The listing does not include any information as to when they were in use, but it does provide a clue of the work carried out next to the stairs, as in backets next to the name is “London Grist Mill”.
33 Bermondsey Wall West, the large brick building to the left of the stairs (as you face them from the street), was the London Grist Mill, a business which was established next to the stairs in 1891, and followed on the building’s previous use as a granary, by now also milling corn. The building is shown in the following photo:
33 Bermondsey Wall West / London Grist Mill was Grade II listed in 1983. The listing includes that as part of the infrastructure of the old mill: “A series of wooden chutes is said to remain in situ, descending from the top floor to the 1st floor terminating in a movable table system leading to a hand winch by the loading hatch”. This was before the conversion of the building to office and residential and it would interesting to know if features such as the wooden chutes have survived.
The London Grist Mill was mentioned in a letter to the editor of the Southwark and Bermondsey Recorder on the 10th of January 1913, regarding the condition of the stairs and the foreshore:
“THE MUD AT EAST LANE STAIRS. Sir,-In your edition of Nov.22nd, you published a letter of complaint about the mud at East Lane, which was read by most of the waterside people, and one of the P.L.A. was sent down to the London Grist Mill Co., to enquire about it. Last Monday, the 6th inst., about midday, a barge berthed at the London Grist Mill Co’s wharf, which is next to East Lane Stairs, stuck in the mud and the water flowed over her, thus proving the truth of my complaint. The barge was the ‘Darfield’ belonging to Messrs. C. and J. Denny, loaded with about 600 sacks of oats. – Yours faithfully, B. Jewson.”
The dangerous condition of the stairs seems to have been a common theme in newspaper reporting (although it is usually only bad news that makes the press), and there was another article with the title “Dangerous East Lane Stairs” in the Southwark and Bermondsey Recorder on the 7th July 1894 regarding the body of a man that was found by the stairs, and that at his inquest “The jury returned an open verdict, and added a rider asking the coroner to communicate with the local authorities with respect to the condition of the stairs”.
Because the entrance is gated and locked, it is very difficult to see the stairs. There is a new apartment building to the right of the stairs, and a walkway that runs along the bottom of this building, alongside the stairs. This has a large wall, but it is possible to poke a camera over the top and get a glimpse of the stairs:
The stairs do not look in too good a shape, and they appear undermined at the base. There was also a causeway that led out from the stairs, and this seems to have been lost to the river.
As with the adjacent building, East Lane Stairs are also Grade II listed. The Historic England listing does not state why the stairs were listed, only that “River stairs appearing as such on Horwood’s map of 1799 and the OS of 1872; possibly the same as “East Stairs” on Roque’s map of 1746. Stone-flagged hard now broken up”. I suspect that as the year of listing of the stairs is the same as the London Grist Mill, the stairs were automatically included in the listing process.
Looking at East Lane Stairs today, it seems remarkable that this would once have been your embarkation point for some rather exotic locations in the mid-19th century. Many river stairs were used by shipping companies that took passengers, and in 1858, the Greek and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was advertising that:
“For Corfu, Syra and Constantinople, the S.S. General Williams, Capt. J.Peter of 2200 tons burthen, and 300 horse power, expected to clear 5th Nov. Lying at East Lane Stairs.
For Coru, Trieste and Venice. The S.S. Milo, Capt. Robinson of 1300 tons burthen, and 360 horse power, expected to clear 15th Nov. Lying at East Lane Stairs.”
Twenty years before the above advert, one of the companies that would later become P&O was operating off East Lane Stairs:
“PENINSULAR STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY. For Lisbon, Cadiz and Gibraltar, calling off Oporto, weather permitting. The Liverpool, Captain Hepburn, of 500 tons and 160 horse-power, elegantly fitted up, and well known for her great speed, will start for the above ports from off East Lane Stairs on Tuesday, the 1st March, at Two o’clock.”
Thames stairs were once the equivalent of airports, when the only means of overseas travel was by ship.
Thames stairs were also an integral part of travelling in London, whether across or along the river. An example from the Southwark and Bermondsey Recorder on the 20th of March 1869 illustrates how crossing the river at East Lane Stairs was an integral part of a journey, just like taking an underground train today:
“15s REWARD. LOST ! On SUNDAY LAST MARCH 14th, 1869, between Fort Road, Bermondsey (via East Lane Stairs), and Clark Street, Stepney. TWO LOCKETS. One Large with Portrait, the other Small with Key and Appendages. They are of little intrinsic worth, but valuable to the Owner as Family Relics. Whosoever will bring the same to Miss Lang, 49 Fort Road, Upper Grange Road, or to Mrs. Finch, 64 Clark Street, Stepney, shall receive the above reward.”
I suspect that the act of getting on or off a boat was often a time when possessions would be dropped, so the lockets may have ended up in the Thames, but it would have been good if Miss Lang got her lockets back – we will never know.
The view looking across the river and over towards the City from the side of East Lane Stairs:
The wooden structures on the foreshore and the remains of a crane on the building are a reminder of the infrastructure that was needed to transfer goods between warehouse / mill and ships.
There is an interesting advert in the Southwark Mercury on the 15th of February 1879 which mentions East Lane Stairs along with a new form of transport in London: “Seven Freehold Cottages and Piece of Building Land situate near the Spa Road Railway Station and East Lane Stairs and producing £50 per annum, almost equal to the ground rent.”
The advert highlights the importance of Thames stairs as a reference point. Where today, we may reference somewhere as being near a railway or underground station, Thames Stairs fulfilled this function for hundreds of years, and in 1879, we see the name of a railway station also being used.
A common theme with reporting on Thames stairs is the amount deaths associated with the stairs location, with an incredible number of bodies being found in the river near the stairs. The following, from the London Evening News on the 12th of December 1884 is one of the more unusual:
“SHOCKING DISCOVERY IN A BOAT ON THE THAMES. A lighterman. named White, about forty years of age, residing at East-lane, Bermondsey, was discovered about seven o’clock yesterday morning sitting up in his boat, off East-lane stairs, and quite dead. He had been engaged during the night in taking the workmen to and from a vessel lying out in the river, on which some urgent work was being done. The deceased was found within a short distance of the landing place, which is close to his home. It is supposed that he was seized with a sudden fit, and dropped one of his oars into the water, the other being found lying in his boat.”
The 1930s seems a common decade for final reporting of events at Thames stairs. I suspect the war during the first half of the 1940s, followed by the changes that the war had brought to the buildings, businesses and communities along the river, along with the trend for larger ships and larger docks, and alternatives for travelling across London and across the river, resulted in the decline in use of Thames stairs.
One final 1930s reference also follows a tragic theme seen at many other Thames stairs, where a 13 year old boy drowned whilst playing in the river with a friend. The boy who survived stated why they were playing at the stairs during the inquest: “We went to the public baths but found it was mixed bathing and we would have to pay threepence, so we went to East Lane Stairs to bathe in the river”.
Whilst East Lane Stairs seem to have been a very typical Thames river stair along the north and southern bank as the Thames headed east, East Lane Stairs appears to be the exception to my theory that stairs in commercial and populated areas always had a pub associated with them.
There were plenty of pubs along Bermondsey Wall, but I cannot find any pub close enough to be directly associated with East Lane Stairs.
Walking further along the walkway at the base of the building to the right of the stairs provides a wider view of the river from East Lane Stairs, and includes the crane that is mounted on the building to the left:
From the street, you would not know that East Lane Stairs are behind the locked gate.
As I have mentioned in previous posts on Thames stairs, these were once a major part of life in London. To show their relevance, a search for the name of the stairs in the British Newspaper Archive returned 1,691 results between 1802 and 1955. There are obviously duplicates where different newspapers covered the same story, but it is still a considerable number.
The very last mention of the stairs was in 1955 when Bermondsey Council was attempting to close the stairs as a right of way. Mr James Taylor, a London Waterman took the issue to the London Sessions, claiming that “He was defending a right of way up and down East Lane Stairs which he and his ancestors for three generations had used in the way of their craft to take pilots, crews, and other such people, to and from cargo ships”.
James Taylor won his case, and the article ended with “So the East Lane Stairs will remain in use, we may hope for many centuries yet” – sadly, within a few decades they were closed, and they look unlikely to ever open again.
In the last of my Rocque Ring posts for a few weeks, I have reached Hyde Park Corner after walking along Constitution Hill at the end of the last post on the walk. Today, I will be exploring Hyde Park Corner, finding a missing horse, and on a totally different subject, discovering an elephant that was once paraded through the streets of the City of London.
In 1746, Hyde Park Corner (or Hide as it was spelt in Rocque’s map), was at the junction with what is now Grosvenor Place to the south and tracks that led into Hyde Park to the north. A short distance to the east was Tiburn Lane, now Park Lane.
Hyde Park Corner was the road that led west from central London towards Knightsbridge (or Knight’s Bridge in 1746 as it was named after a bridge).
Hyde Park Corner was at the western limit of the built city in 1746 as can be seen in the following map:
There is a bit of housing forming ribbon development along Knight’s Bridge to the left, but this quickly ended, but the surrounding land was all park and fields.
The area known today as Hyde Park Corner is a major junction, effectively a roundabout connecting the streets of Knightsbridge, Park Lane, Piccadilly, Constitution Hill and Grosvenor Place. It is a very busy major road junction.
The roads that existed in Rocque’s time have been widened, and roads added to south and east to form a roundabout around a large central area. I have shown the roads that have been added in red in the following map:
There is a feature in Rocque’s map which adds to the sense that this is a gateway between the built city and the surrounding country / villages. A turnpike is shown where the road Hide Park Corner meets Knight’s Bridge (along with a rather interesting mile stone to the right):
The turnpike was known both as the Knight’s Bridge and also the Hide Park Turnpike, and the purpose of the turnpike was the collection of tolls which were to be used to maintain the roads, however fraud was much in evidence at turnpikes including that at Hide Park Corner, as reported in Kentish Weekly Post on the 12th of September 1730:
“On Tuesday night last, the Trustees for the several Turnpikes between Hide Park Corner and Fulham, together with several of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace, met at the Golden Lion Ale-house near Hide Park Corner, and having sent for the collectors at the Turnpikes at Hide Park Corner, Pimlico, Little Chelsea, Kensington, and Fulham, they were severally charged upon Oath with having defrauded the said Trustees of about £600. After a long examination eight of them were committed Prisoners to the Gatehouse: The Discovery, ’tis said, was made by one Williams, who was engaged in the Fraud, and upon his death, ordered his Wife to acquaint the Trustees with it.”
£600 was a very considerable sum of money in 1730, so the fraud must have been going on for some time.
In 1737, the Kentish Weekly Post published a report on the very poor conditions of some of the turnpikes around London, and gave one of the reasons why money was in short supply to repair the roads:
“The Turnpike Roads all around the Town are in so bad and ruinous a condition, that a Person can’t go out, or come into Town, without danger of being smothered; the Roads at Gray’s Inn Lane End, and at Knight’s Bridge are scandalously bad: And as several Road Bills are now before the Honourable House of Commons, it is hop’d some Clauses may be added to oblige the Commissioners to expend on the Roads the Money collected; for it’s certain, the vast sums raised are not fairly laid out on them: It’s hop’d the Commissioners don’t do now what a Commissioner formerly did, who when his Coachman came to ask him, if he might take the Coach Horses to the Farriers, for they wanted shooing; replied, No you Blockhead, don’t you know there’s a Turnpike Meeting next Week, let then be shooed then, and take the Money off the Landlord.”
In Rocque’s time, it was not just the state of the roads that were an issue at Hide Park Corner and Knight’s Bridge, there are also many reports about highway men, people being robbed, and pedestrians having to walk along the road going in groups for safety.
As well as the turnpike, the two parks, Hyde Park to the north and Green Park to the south also added to the sense of a boundary between London to the east and the fields and villages to the west. The parks could not be built on, so it was only when there was substantial development in Knightsbridge, along with the removal of the turnpike in 1825, that the area to the west of Hyde Park Corner was fully integrated as being part of the growing London.
In the last post, part 3 of walking the Rocque’ Ring, I end at the Hyde Park Corner end of Constitution Hill, and this was my view looking across to the central area in the middle of the roads that make up Hyde Park Corner:
The Wellington Arch, designed by the architect Decimus Burton, is shown from the east in the above photo, after the crossing the five lanes of traffic, using the pedestrian crossing as the road is so busy, I walked to take a look at the other side of the Wellington Arch:
Today, at the top of the Wellington arch is a sculpture of Peace (Triumph) descending on the Quadriga of War. A quadriga is a four horse chariot.
What is quite hard to see from the ground is that the quadriga is being driven by a small boy:
But when it was first built, the top of Decimus Burton’s Wellington Arch had a very different sculpture on top:
in the first couple of decades of the 19th century there were calls for memorials to two military heroes. Nelson’s victory and death in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, and Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, for his victories over the French, for example as early as 1812 there were calls for:
“A lasting memorial of the glorious and transcendent achievements of the said Arthur Marquis of Wellington, on various important occasions, but more particularly in the recent brilliant and decisive victory obtained over the French army, by troops under his command, near Salamanca, on the 22nd day of July last.”
These calls became louder after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Committees were set up to plan and implement memorials for both Nelson and Wellington.
The Wellington Memorial Committee consisted of over 80 members, however the choice of a statue of Wellington on a horse was a decision that caused significant concern, anger and distrust within the committee.
It was assumed that a work similar to the current sculpture was to be mounted on top of the arch, however a small core of the committee wanted a statue of Wellington mounted on a horse.
On the 9th of June 1838, a committee meeting was convened to decide the final design of the sculpture for the top of the arch. At this meeting, only 23 members were present, the majority of which were those who wanted the equestrian statue. It was announced that the Queen had given her consent to this form of sculpture, and that the sculptor Matthew Cotes Wyatt had been chosen for the work.
The equestrian statue was agreed.
This decision soon caused considerable anger among the other members of the committee, for example the following is from The Record on the 6th of September 1838:
“The promulgation of this Resolution excited great surprise in the minds of many absent members of the Committee, because from the unusual shortness of the notice (the summons being dated the 5th for a Meeting on the 9th of June), and from a very vague and general terms in which the objects of the meeting were stated, they had no conception that matters of such importance were to be finally and irrevocably determined.”
There were attempts to change the decision and apologies from the members who had attended the meeting on the 9th of June, however the decision had been made, the Queen had given her consent and the work approved, so there was no way back, and the equestrian memorial to the Duke of Wellington would be placed on top of the Wellington Arch:
The statue was mounted on the arch in 1846, and it seems to have been universally criticised.
The main issue appears to have been the size of the work as being far too large for the arch, as well as the whole concept of having such a memorial. The following is typical of the very many articles about the work that appeared in the press after it was mounted on top of the arch:
“However the Duke’s statue has now attained its contemplated height, and stands as a monument of England’s bad taste, and unbounded veneration for successful warriors in the nineteenth century. There, amid the rattle of carriages, in sight of the royal palaces, surrounded by all the blaze and splendour of the aristocratic West, does the old Duke’s ill-fashioned representative rear its colossal proportions, encircled by a glory streaming from the memory of successful conflicts, and warning the traveller from distant lands, that though France has her Napoleon, and America her Washington, England has her Wellington, on whose name she delights to pour honour unbounded and gratitude sincere; whose services to his nation she deems pre-eminent, and whose fame she would perpetuate and diffuse, for the inspiration and encouragement of a venerating posterity.”
The Duke of Wellington was still alive when the statue was raised to the top of the arch, and the papers were full of criticism. The Government wanted the statue to be removed, however Wellington said that he would consider such an action as a mark of royal disfavour, and resign all his posts – the statue remained.
Wellington died in 1852, and in the 1870s, built London had engulfed Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge, and the level of traffic on the surrounding roads had grown considerably, so a new road was planned to take traffic from Piccadilly to Grosvenor Place, cutting across the location of the arch.
This work took place in the 1880s and required the arch to be moved from its original position, when it was opposite the arched entrance to Hyde Park.
The following map shows the location of the arch and the new road after this work had been completed:
The new position of the arch is the same as today, directly facing on to Constitution Hill, however the roads that ran to the left of the arch, forming the junction in the above map, have been completely removed so the left of the arch is today the large, central, open space, and the road from Piccadilly forming the easterly side of the roundabout, now runs to the right of the arch.
The only way to move the arch was to take it down and rebuild in the new position. This allowed the removal of the hated statue.
There was discussions and proposals about what to do with the equestrian statue, including mounting it a ground level, or melting it down, and the consensus seems to have been that it should not remain at Hyde Park Corner.
Army officers objected to the destruction of the statue, so a solution was found, to move the statue to the town of Aldershot – a major home of the army, and it is where we can still see the controversial equestrian statue today:
The pedestal was built on Round Hill, close to the Garrison Church.
Seeing the statue from a short distance away, and walking around the statue does give a good impression of its size.
Newspaper reports on a visit to see the newly installed statue in August 1885 provide some detail of the new location:
“It faces towards the south, as though the Iron Duke were pointing at the scenes of his Peninsular victories. Its pedestal stands 16ft in height, and has a width of 14.5 ft, by a length of 28ft. The figure of Copenhagen and his illustrious rider is 25ft in height, so that there is virtually an equality between the statue and what, from the ground level is seen of the pedestal. This is mainly composed of concrete, faced with red Corsehill stone. On this is a step of white Portland stone, and the base is also of Portland stone, some feet wider than the pedestal on the east and west sides of which have been carved in red stone, which will become deeper in colour with age, the name of Wellington, and the hollows of the letters have been fill up with bronze, well bolted in, a memorial in perennial brass of a name that will outlive the monument.
The statue, however, is bolted firmly some 20ft down by half-inch iron bolts running through the concrete into York stone templates, and it is interesting to note that the total weight of the pedestal and foundations exceeds by more than thirty fold, the weight of the equestrian statue itself.
Lying on the top of the Round Hill are some 16 32-pounder guns, all of them made when the Great Duke was Master-General of Ordnance. These are to support chains on the lower step, in front of which there will be a narrow terrace covered with fine turf.”
The new location for Wellington’s statue was built to last, and on a sunny September day in 2026, we can walk around the statue exactly as it was described in 1885:
The round hill on which the statue can be found is next to a green open space and car park. Very quiet with just a couple of families playing on the grass. The statue is at the edge of a large wooded area with a number of marked walks.
A very different place to where it was originally instralled:
Despite the controversy over the design, the arrival of the statue at the Wellington Arch, and its lift to the top did cause great excitement, with crowds coming to see the work being carried out:
Prints from the time provide a good illustration of how the work of lifting a very heavy object to a height was carried out. Long before the availability of cranes, this work needed a large wooden scaffolding erected around and above the arch, lots of ropes and pulleys, and a large amount of muscle power to lift and move the statue into place:
The following is a print showing one of the early designs for the arch, and shows the type of sculpture on the top of the arch that the majority of the committee were expecting, before the hastily called and vague committee meeting in 1838:
As well as the design for the arch at Hyde Park Corner, there were a number of designs for a Wellington memorial, including the following rather dramatic submission to the committee:
English Heritage looks after the Wellington Arch today, and it is open to visitors. Rooms on the way up have displays about the history of the arch and also the Royal Regiment of Artillery, and there is a viewing area at the top, where you can look out over the streets below.
On a summer’s day, with plenty of people around, for the time I was in the arch, I was the only visitor.
The view looking down from the top of the stairs:
Part of the viewing area:
Looking over towards Knightsbridge, and the original location of the turnpike. The arches to the right lead into Hyde Park:
The Lanesborough Hotel, with the Royal Artillery memorial in the foreground:
The Peninsula Hotel, with part of the curved wall of the Australian War memorial at bottom right:
The view along Constitution Hill:
Looking towards Park Lane, with the 2010 Still Water sculpture in the open space where the north and south bound carriageways of Park Lane diverge:
Although the statue of the Duke of Wellington was removed and is now in Aldershot, a new equestrian statue of the Duke was unveiled at Hyde Park Corner in 1888. It faces Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington’s London home, hidden behind the trees in the following photo of the Duke’s statue:
After the Wellington Arch was relocated in the 1880s, and the original equestrian statue of Wellington removed, the top of the arch stood empty for some years, as shown in the following image from the 1890s book “The Queen’s London”:.
There were campaigns for a new work to be installed, but it was a question of money, however the banker Sir Herbert Stern made a donation of £20,000 towards the costs, and a new quadriga was commissioned from the sculptor Adrian Jones, based on a previous model which the Prince of Wales had seen at an exhibition at the Royal Academy.
This time, there seems to have been almost unanimous praise for the new work after it had been installed. It had a very low key installation, and the following from the Westminster Mail on the 22nd of September 1917 sums up the views at the time:
“In the spring of 1912 a royal carriage driving up Constitution Hill stopped at the Wellington Arch and the occupant, King George, proceeded without any ceremony, to inaugurate the great bronze quadriga which had but a short while been hoisted to its commanding position. The quadriga is the work of Captain Adrian Jones, and is a splendid group of statuary symbolising the triumph of peace over strife, tumult, and confusion. A bronze figure holds aloft a crown of laurel. and below are cannon. swords and lances and other trophies.
Of the beauty of the Quadriga and the splendid decorative effect of its bold silhouette, there never has been any question. it was welcomed by London as adding immensely to the dignity of the famous corner, which already boasted of the Burton Gateway to Hyde Park.“
A very different response to the original statue of Wellington.
Looking up at the quadriga from the viewing gallery on top of the arch:
There is much more to be written about the Wellington Arch and Hyde Park Corner, but my posts are generally too long.
It was used as the home of the park ranger, it was a police station. In 1914 two suffragettes were briefly detained in the arch for throwing leaflets into the king’s coach, before they were taken to Cannon Row Police Station.
Due to the major roads that converge at Hyde Park Corner, and the growth of London’s traffic, there were a number of changes to the roads around the arch. The junction of roads directly in front of the arch following its move, were finally changed in the early 1960s when the road layout we see today was completed. This work included the construction of the Piccadilly to Knightsbridge underpass which created two tunnel bores for traffic running in either direction.
The following image from the Britain from Above archive shows the Wellington Arch with the street linking Piccadilly and Grosvenor Place running directly in front of the arch. The 1960s changes moved this street to the left of the arch to form a roundabout, with a large open space within the centre.
Forming a roundabout with the arch in the land at the centre lost the direct connection between the arch and Constitution Hill which is clear in the above photo.
No longer part of the western edge of built London when Rocque published his map in 1746, Hyde Park Corner continues to be an exceptionally busy place.
And to finish, nothing to do with Rocque’s Ring, but it is fascinating how you can find things such as the statue of Wellington, which have had an association with London, but are now scattered across the country.
Drive out of Camberley, Surrey along the A30 heading west, and on the left you might catch a glimpse of a concrete elephant:
In 1963, the elephant was paraded through the streets of the City of London during the Lord Mayor’s Show:
In the above photo, just behind the tusks, there is a ring around the head, with some damage to the concrete of the ring. This is where the ears of the elephant were placed, but they were stolen in 1993.
The elephant was created by the construction company Trollope and Colls, using concrete drainage and sewage pipes. It is now in Camberley as it stands outside what was the location of Trollope and Colls premises, where it was installed after the Lord Mayor’s show.
Its appearance in the Lord Mayor’s show was down to Lord Mays, a City of London Alderman, who was also the Chairman of Trollope and Colls.
Trollope and Colls were taken over in 1967, and their Camberley site later closed, however the elephant has remained and it is apparently in the tenancy agreement of the factory units that are now on the site, that the elephant is to stay on site, and to be maintained.
There cannot be that many survivors from a Lord Mayor’s Show from the early 1960s, and there must also have been very few things made of concrete involved in a Lord Mayor’s procession.
I will be writing on the next stages of my walk around the Rocque Ring in the next couple of months.
I am into part three of my Rocque’s Ring walk – exploring the boundaries of built London in 1746, and for this section of the walk, I am starting at the rear of the Bluecoat School in Caxton Street, which was the end of part two, and walking up to Hyde Park Corner, which will be the subject of part four.
The route followed in this post is shown in red in the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map. Part one is in yellow, and part two in orange:
The following map shows in detail the first section of today’s walk. The Bluecoat School is at bottom right:
Leaving the Bluecoat School behind, I am now walking along Buckingham Gate. In 1746, gardens were on the left with built up streets on the right. The road joining on the right is Caxton Street, which was Little Chapel Street in 1746. The junction with Buckingham Gate has been changed slightly since Rocque’s map, as today, it has been bent slightly to cut across the left hand end of the land of the Bluecoat School, underneath the first “L” of Little Chapel Street:
A short distance along Buckingham Gate is St James Court, a hotel under the Taj Hotel brand and part of the Indian Hotel Company:
St James Court was built at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, designed as large blocks of apartments. The website of the hotel has a brief history and lists a Major Pawley as the person who proposed construction of the building. I cannot find any reference from the time of a Major Pawley being involved with St James Court (probably down to my lack of time and available resources), however a Major Pawley was around at the time, and was making proposals for the redevelopment of parts of London.
The following is one of his proposals, as reported in the Evening News on the 24th of November 1919, which if it had gone ahead, would have resulted in parts of Westminster looking very different:
“NEW ROAD THROUGH LONDON – Project to Relieve Traffic Between City and West End. A scheme to make a new main road artery connecting Victoria and London Bridge stations is being considered by Sir Eric Geddes, Minister of Transport.
He met Major C.J.C. Pawley, the originator of the proposal, a few days ago and expressed a desire to see the plans of the proposed improvements.
Details have already been made public as part of the Empire War memorial, Westminster. Major Pawley first designed a new city between Westminster, Millbank and Victoria. It entails the clearance of property in this district belonging chiefly to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the Duke of Westminster and the Gas Light and Coke Company.
A centre and home for Science, Art, and Learning is proposed, with wide avenues and circuses adorned with monuments dedicated to the achievements of the Allied Forces. A widened Horseferry-road would become Empire Avenue, leading from Victoria to a Memorial Bridge, in place of the present condemned Lambeth bridge.
I think the enhanced value of the sites would go a long way towards paying for the cost of the street improvements, said Major Pawley, to The Evening News.
The proposed main road would be of enormous value in relieving the congestion in Fleet Street and the Strand, as well as in Holborn and Cheapside. Sir Eric Geddes was very favourably impressed by the scheme.”
Not sure how this scheme would have improved traffic in Holborn and Cheapside, however it is illustrative of one of the many schemes for “improving” London that have been put forward over the centuries, and with Major Pawley’s scheme, it would have left the area covered by the first three sections of the Rocque’s Ring walk looking very different.
When St James Court was completed, adverts started to appear in the press for the apartments that were available, such as, from January 1904: “ST. JAMES’ COURT, Buckingham Gate. HIGH-CLASS RESIDENTIAL FLATS AND BACHELORS’ SUITES. Rent £90 to £500 per annum. Most central situation in the immediate neighbourhood of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.”
These were full service apartments, as they had access to the following facilities: “Restaurant recently and tastefully decorated; with Ladies’ Reception Room, Writing Room, and Private Dining Rooms. Catering and Valeting for Tenants, if required. Electric Light, Passenger Lifts, Messengers’ Call Office. Postal Facilities.”
Despite the high rental costs, and the extensive facilities available, the builder of St. James Court had kept his costs down by limiting the facilities available to those constructing the building.
In 1898, the builder, a Mr. W.R. Rickards was summoned by Westminster sanitary inspectors for failing to provide proper sanitary appliances at a workshop on the site. There were up to 200 workmen on site, and they were provided with “sanitary arrangements of the crudest and most outrageous manner – a menace to the health of the public and probably a source of future nuisance”.
The façade onto Buckingham Gate is only a very small part of the hotel, which extends much further back, and which includes apartment buildings also owned by the Taj Hotel brand.
To the right of the entrance arch in the photo above, there is a small plaque which hints at the earlier history of the site:
The plaque states that on the site, the Emmanuel Hospital, founded in 1594 by Lady Dacre once stood, and it is clearly shown in Rocque’s map (as Lady Dacre’s Alms Houses), when it was already 150 years old:
Before looking at Anne Sackville, the Lady Dacre who founded the Emanuel Hospital, a quick look at her mother-in-law, Mary Fiennes, also Lady Dacre who must have been a rather strong and resourceful woman in Tudor England.
Her first husband, Thomas Fiennes, 9th Baron Dacre, had been executed in 1541 following the murder of a gamekeeper. As well as execution, his titles and land were also stripped from his family.
She campaigned for the restoration of these titles and land for her children, and when Elizabeth I became queen in 1558, she restored these to Mary Fiennes second son, as her first born son had already died.
She married a further two times, and had more children (possibly up to 6), and died around 1576.
Mary, Lady Dacre, with her son Gregory, who had the title 10th Baron Dacre after his mother had campaigned for the title to be restored:
Mary’s son, Gregory, married Anne Sackville, who became Lady Dacre.
During the later part of her life, she lived, along with her husband Gregory, Baron Dacre, in Thomas Moore’s old house in Chelsea, which Mary had inherited from her mother. It was in this house that Gregory died in 1594, and Mary died not long after in 1595.
Mary’s will stated that her Executors should build a house to be called “Emanuel Hospital in Westminster for the relief of twenty aged people and for the bringing up of twenty children in virtue and good and laudable arts”.
Horwood’s map of 1799 shows the Emanuel Hospital, but labelled as Almshouses. There were also three other Almshouses in the very local area, along with the Bluecoat School:
The street in which the hospital / almshouses were located was called James Street, but I have also seen references to the name Dacre Street being in use. Note also in the above map the first use of the name Buckingham, with Buckingham Row, a row of terrace houses on what had been gardens / agricultural land in Rocque’s map.
By the 1880s, educational changes, that also affected the colour coated schools in the area as mentioned in the previous Rocque Ring post, resulted in the merger of several charity schools, and the Emanuel school was included in this merger, and the institution relocated to Wandsworth, where the school is still to be found today.
The old almshouses / school was then demolished, to make way for St. James Court.
A short distance further along Buckingham Gate is Westminster Chapel:
This Grade II listed Nonconformist chapel dates from 1865 – 1866 and was designed by the architect William Ford Poulton, who seems to have been a specialist in designing Nonconformist and Congregational chapels.
I am now passing the junction of Buckingham Gate with Petty France:
Just north of this junction, there is an intriguing feature in Rocque’s map – a Vineyard:
I can find no reference to a Vineyard in Westminster, and in Horwood’s map of 1799, the space occupied by Rocque’s vineyard looks to be part of St. James’s Park. It may have just been a name for a place rather than an actual vineyard, as the map shows the majority of the land as open space with some trees, along with a couple of buildings. There is a small area to top right which may show grapevines being grown, but it is a very small space, and I doubt that they could have been grown successfully or economically in 18th century London.
Between 1833 and 1859, the area occupied by the vineyard, and a large area north of Petty France and alongside Buckingham Gate was taken over by the Wellington Barracks.
The original Grade II listed parts of Wellington Barracks face onto Birdcage Walk, where the large parade ground can also be seen. I took a quick detour down Petty France to see the early 1980s rebuilds of parts of the barracks which loom fortress like over the street and buildings on the opposite side:
Whilst the Birdcage Walk side of the barracks and parade ground is the normal tourist view, Petty France offers a different perspective into the everyday life of a Guardsman:
Back in Buckingham Gate, and I have always been fascinated by this Dry Cleaners on the corner with Wilfred Street:
For as long as I can remember, they have always had a stack of cotton reels up against the window. The different colours and sizes are fascinating, and in a time when shops have such little character, this one stands out:
The Wellington Barracks extend up Buckingham Gate, although unlike Petty France, it is only the castle like walls along the street:
As with the rest of London, Buckingham Gate is constantly changing, and you can walk the street to find a building that was to be seen not so many months ago, has suddenly disappeared:
There are very few buildings along Buckingham Gate that date from the original development of the street, and the majority are at the north western end of the street.
In the above photo, there is a house to the right of the large gap, which thankfully would be rather challenging to demolish, as this is the Grade II listed, late 18th century, number 17 Buckingham Gate:
Next door to the above house, seen to the right of the boarded up house in the photo below is the older, Grade II* listed, number 16 Buckingham Gate, dating from 1706:
It is the only surviving house on the street that would have been here when Rocque was making his map, and I am as certain as I can be, that it is the building that I have circled in yellow in Rocque’s 1746 map below:
The Historic England listing states that the house is “attributed to Captain William Winde”.
William Winde, born around 1645 in the Netherlands to English parents, was typical of the 17th century type of gentleman who moved between different professions. He was described as an architect and a soldier, and was engaged in military engineering, the techniques of which could also be seen in some of his country house commissions.
I assume that rather than just build this house, he also lived there, because, as will become clear later in the post, he worked on one of the major buildings we will soon encounter.
The house to the right of number 16 is Grade II listed, and dates from the mid 18th century. It is not shown in Rocque’s map, and as his survey must have taken place prior to publication in 1746 / 1747, the house must be from the late 1740s onwards.
The house is indicative of the infill that was taking place during the later half of the 18th century.
It has a blue Greater London Council plaque to Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Diplomat, Poet and Traveller, and Founder of Crabbett Park Arabian Stud:
Wilfred Scawen Blunt was certainly an interesting man. He was very anti-establishment, was against imperialism, and for Irish home rule. He had travelled widely particularly throughout the middle east, where Blunt and his wife developed a fascination with Arabian horses, They purchased a number of horses and established the Crabbet Park Arabian Stud in West Sussex.
He seems to have treated his wife appallingly, as he had numerous affairs. His wife Lady Anne Isabella Noel King (whose maternal grandfather was Lord Byron), claimed that she did not receive any love and affection from her husband after their marriage, and the result of one of his many affairs led to the breakdown in his relationship with their only child, a daughter named Judith. Lady Anne had suffered many miscarriages, and Wilfred Blunt appears to have preferred to have had a son.
They legally separated in 1906.
His daughter found out that he had fathered at least one illegitimate child, and he had also tried to seduce her best friend, which understandably led to the estrangement of father and daughter.
Blunt and his wife had owned the Crabbet Park Arabian Stud, where they kept and bred Arabian Horses.
In his later life Blunt signed over management and ownership of the horses at the stud to his ex-wife, but following the death of his wife, he tried to disinherit his daughter and get back the stud and horses.
Legal cases went back and forth between father, daughter and granddaughters, with the court finally finding in favour of his granddaughters.
None of this was mentioned in the obituaries, although some did hint at his more unusual attributes, such as the following from the Liverpool Weekly Courier:
“LOVED HOT WATER – Plenty of conventional notes have been written about the life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who passed away after a stormy career; but I suppose the most interesting portions of his chequered career will never be recorded – for the simple fact that some of his actions were so unusual that they disturbed a great many highly placed individuals.”
He also served two months in prison for his involvement with Irish political agitation during disturbances of 1888.
He also had some strange conditions for his burial, as he wrote in his will that: “I wish to be buried in the simplest manner, being laid in the ground wrapped in my old Eastern travelling carpet, without coffin or casket, at a spot in Newbuildings Wood known to my executors“.
And so he was, buried in the Sussex woodland in the presence of his daughter, his grandchildren, and a few friends. He also requested that his nurse, Elizabeth Lawrence, arranged him in his grave, and that £10 was given to each of the men of the estate who carried out his burial.
There is always far more to be found behind the names on plaques, and his wife Lady Anne seems to have been at least his equal in developing and managing the stud, so should also be named.
A short distance along, Buckingham Gate turns left, and Birdcage Walk joins from the right:
I am approaching Buckingham Palace, and it is the role and enlargement of this building that has resulted in road changes at this end of Buckingham Gate.
I am now in the following extract from Rocque’s map, and the red line shows the route I am taking. At the very bottom of the red line, Birdcage Walk ran to the right, over the lower part of Rosamond’s Pond, and Buckingham Gate continues to the left, along the bottom edge of the map:
Rosamond’s Pond was probably one of James I’s alterations to St. James’s Park (the park takes its name from a leper hospital, not from King James). The pond cut across the photo of Birdcage Walk shown above.
The following is a view of Rosamond’s Pond (the water on the left), in the mid 18th century, the same timeframe as Rocque’s map:
Rosamond’s Pond was apparently known as a place where lovers would meet, where illicit affairs took place, and more dramatically, where scorned lovers (mainly women) committed suicide. There is some evidence of this from newspapers of the time, for example the following from the Kentish Weekly Post on the 10th of January 1730: “Yesterday a Woman well dressed was observed by the Centinel to throw herself into Rosamond’s Pond in St. James’s Park, but he could not come Time enough to prevent her being drowned; it is not known who she belongs to”.
Rosamond’s Pond was filled in, in 1770.
The following photo shows the view along Buckingham Gate where it cuts through the houses shown in Rocque’s map. These were demolished to make way for the road, and the extension of the estate that makes up the ground surrounding Buckingham Palace:
Now I am looking to the Victoria Memorial and the road that circles the memorial, part of which is now pedestrianised in front of Buckingham Palace. In Rocque’s time, all of these was part of St. James’s Park with grass and avenues of trees covering the area I am looking at:
And this is Buckingham Palace, taken from the Victoria Memorial, one of the most photographed buildings in London:
If you look back at Rocque’s map, the house on the site is much smaller and is called Buckingham House.
The house was originally built as a London town house for John Sheffield, the first Duke of Buckingham in 1703, when much of the surrounding land was of parks and fields. The house is the reason why James Street changed named to Buckingham Gate as there was also a gate at the upper end, near the house.
It was designed by Captain William Winde, which is probably why he also built the Grade II* listed house in Buckingham Gate that we passed earlier in the post.
We can get an idea of the almost countryside location of Buckingham’s house, and of William Winde’s design by looking at some prints of the house, as well as how the house looked when Rocque’s map was being surveyed.
From 1727:
From 1753:
From 1799:
The reason why the Duke of Buckingham wanted his London house here can be seen in the following print from 1736, showing the view from the house over St. James’s Park. Rosamond’s Pond is in the trees to the right and St. James’s Palace is to the left – then as now, those with money and influence want a prime London location for their house:
Looking in the same direction as the above print, but from the Victoria Memorial, which is in the central avenue of trees in the above print:
Buckingham House was purchased by King George III in 1761 as a home for his wife, Queen Charlotte. Whilst very few architectural changes were made to the house, purchase by the King put the house on the road to its use as a royal palace which attracts tourists in the thousands to photograph the building today.
Changes started with King George IV in the 1820s who employed John Nash to transform Captain William Winde’s Buckingham House to a royal palace.
After the work of John Nash, completed in the 1830s by Edward Blore, Buckingham Palace appeared as shown in the following print:
The large arch in front of the palace was Nash’s ceremonial entrance to the palace, however the arch was relocated to the north-east corner of Hyde Park as part of major changes in the 1840s and early 1850s. It is now known as Marble Arch.
The changes which moved the arch also included the first balcony on the eastern front of the palace, and the first recorded balcony appearance by members of the Royal Family was in 1851 as part of celebrations to mark the Great Exhibition.
In 1913, the architect Sir Aston Webb was employed to reface the front with Portland Stone and to create a the more formal classical façade to the palace that we see today.
The Victoria Memorial which stands in front of the palace was the work of the sculptor Sir Thomas Brock, and it was unveiled in 1911.
I had a decision here about the route for Rocque’s Ring which should follow the boundary of built London in 1746.
Buckingham House had a walled garden to the rear, which in a much enlarged state is emulated by the walled garden to the rear of Buckingham Palace. I decided not to take the route around the walled garden, but take Constitution Hill alongside the palace grounds and Green Park.
As shown in Rocque’s map, there was a route through Green Park called Constitution Hill in 1746. It has since been straightened out and now runs up to Hyde Park Corner, and follows the boundary of the much enlarged gardens of Buckingham Palace (the red line shows route of Constitution Hill today):
Constitution Hill from the corner of Buckingham Palace:
As you start to walk along Constitution Hill, you can see the difference in the use of stone, with the more expensive Portland Stone used for the eastern front of the palace, with earlier and cheaper stone for the buildings behind:
Walking along Constitution Hill with the palace gardens on the left and Green Park on the right, with the Wellington Arch at the end of the street:
At the north west end of Constitution Hill are the Commonwealth Memorial Gates. They were unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002, and are dedicated to the five million people from Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean, Africa and the Indian sub-continent, who volunteered to serve with the British military during the First and Second World Wars. The individual countries are listed on the four pillars alongside Constitution Hill:
And with that, I am at Hyde Park Corner. A simple junction with a turnpike in Rocque’s map, but a very busy circular junction today, with traffic both below and above ground, and with a large central area with an extensive array of monuments, which I will discover in the fourth part of walking Rocque’s Ring.
Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk is a very old town. Originally having the Anglo Saxon name of Beodricsworth, the change to the name the town is known by today has its origin in the death of Edmund, King of East Anglia at the hands of the Danes in 869, and his burial and shrine in the Abbey that once dominated the town until the mid 16th century Dissolution of the Monasteries.
In July 1952, my father along with two of his friends from National Service, were cycling around Suffolk and he took a couple of photos whilst visiting Bury St Edmunds. We had a day in the town in July 2026 to track down the location of these photos, and to explore the history of the place.
This is the Grade II listed Cupola House, at number 7, The Traverse, photographed by my father on the 23rd of July 1952:
My photo of Cupola House, 74 years later, almost to the day, on the 27th of July 2026:
Cupola House is a 17th century building, that started as two separate properties before being converted into a single house with a large shop of the ground floor.
Thomas Marco came into possession of the house in 1679 and increased the height of the building, added the balcony and the cupola at the top of the building, which gave the house its name.
Cupola House was used as a greengrocers and a wine and spirits merchant, and in the mid 19th century, the grocery business was phased out and the building continued as a pub.
It became part of Clarke’s Brewery, a small brewery in Bury St. Edmunds, which later became part of Greene King in 1917.
The building continued as a pub until 2002, when it was sold by Greene King.
It reopened as a bar and restaurant, however in June 2012 a fire destroyed much of the building’s historic fabric. The front façade, including the balcony, survived, but much of the interior was destroyed, including original panelling.
Cupola House was rebuilt, retaining as much of the original fabric as was possible, and was strengthened by the use of an interior steel frame.
After completion, Cupola House reopned as a resturant. Today it is the Sakura Japanese Food Restaurant.
In the following extracts from the 1952 and 2026 photos there is some rather nice continuity as there are bottles in the two bay windows when it was a Greene King pub in 1952, and as a restaurant today:
Comparing the two photos reveals some differences. The side window to the left and door to the right have been removed allowing the bay windows to be moved outwards from the central door. I assume this happened during the rebuild after the 2012 fire.
The Suffolk Chronicle on the 22nd of September 1933 repeated a story about Cupola House, that the house was “for a time the residence of Daniel Defoe”.
Whilst Defoe did visit Bury St. Edmunds, there is no documentary evidence that he stayed in Cupola House
It must have been a wonderful market town pub.
My father took another photo during his visit to Bury St. Edmunds. This is on the outskirts of the town, on the A1101, Fornham Road, where in 1952 were some remains of St. Saviours Hospital:
Walking up to the site today, you can see the houses on the left, two of which partly appear in the 1952 photo. The remains of the hospital can be seen behind the white car:
The structure we see today are the remains of the medieval Hospital of St Saviour, which was founded between 1184 and 1185 by Abbot Sampson.
Looking at a map of Bury St. Edmunds today, it is not fully clear why a hospital would be established at this place, on the outskirts of the town. The town has grown significantly in the late 20th / early 21st century, and as well as housing and business premises, there are many new roads, inclduing a large road that bypasses the towm.
If we go back to the end of the 19th century, we can see a street plan that had not really changed for centuries. I have marked the location of the hospital with a red arrow, and it can be seen that it was alongside the only road running north from Bury St. Edmunds, so the hospital would have been on a well travelled route:
In both the 1952 and 2026 photos there is a plaque above the arch:
Humphrey Plantagenet was, as the plaque records, the Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry IV, brother of Henry V and uncle and guardian of Henry VI. The reference to being guardian to Henry VI, was down to Henry VI becoming king when he was eight months old, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester was appointed Lord Protector and Defender of the Realm and when John, Duke of Bedford (one of Humphrey’s brothers), was out of the country, and his role in the Regency further increased after the Duke of Bedford’s death.
Humphrey was born on the 3rd of October 1390. He was the fourth son of Henry IV, so was never expected to take on the role of king, although he held a range of key positions and was very influential in politics and the court up to the time when the young Henry VI came of age and took on the full role of king, after which he started to appoint and listen to younger members of the court and aristocracy, and Humphrey gradually became less influential.
One area he was very passionate about was the king retaining British lands in France, and styling himself King of France. This had been the ambition of his brother Henry V, and after Henry’s death, Humphrey continued to champion his dead brothers cause.
Whilst Humphrey had the same aims as Henry V, he lacked the dead king’s political abilities, forming alliances, and ability to raise finance, as ongoing wars with France had left the country in considerable debt.
In the early 1420s, Humphrey had married Jacqueline of Hainaut, who held lands in the Netherlands, and in marrying Jacqueline, Humphrey could see a route to taking on the rather strange mix of titles of Count of Holland, Zeeland, and Hainault.
Humphrey’s failure to take over his wife’s contested lands meant that he could see no further use for her, and he caused a scandal by leaving his wife for the chambermaid Eleanor Chobham.
The choice of a chambermaid as a wife for a high born Duke, and Humphrey’s divorce of Jacqueline and marriage to Eleanor gave his rivals and enemies a further reason to challenge his judgement, in addition to his championing of wars with France.
Despite military defeats and ever increasing costs and debts, Humphrey continued to support aggressive military action in France, despite regular failures and losses of land that English forces were experiencing.
One of the contributing reasons for why Humphrey died in the Hospital of St Saviour in Bury St Edmunds was down to his new wife Eleanor allegedly consulting astrologers for any signs that her husband would one day be king. At the time, the new king Henry VI had not yet married and therefore had no heir.
This was at a time when talking about, or taking any action that might imply the king’s death, was considered a treasonable crime.
Henry VI had been negotiating for a truce and peace with France, and these resulted in the Treaty of Tours along with the agreement that Henry VI would marry Margaret of Anjou, who was the niece of the King of France.
Margaret of Anjou was not a rich woman, and Humphrey was very critical of the marriage, declaring that the king “had bought a queen not worth ten marks“.
In 1447, Parliament was planning to discuss and make a decision on peace with France. The decision to move Parliament’s meeting to Bury St Edmunds was taken as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester was known to have strong support in London, and Bury St Edmunds was under the Duke of Suffolk’s influence. Suffolk was a supporter of the terms with France and an enemy of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester..
Humphrey arrived in Bury St Edmunds on the 20th of February 1447 and was staying at in inn along with a small group of supporters. During his stay, he was arrested on charges of treason, and held in confinement. I cannot tell whether he was held in the Hospital of St Saviour, or whether he had been taken ill and moved to the hospital, however just three days later on the 23rd of February, he had died in the hospital.
Whether this was a natural death, or whether intentional, such as by poisoning, has never been confirmed. The shock of a sudden arrest and potential trial for treason may also have contributed.
He was buried in St. Albans Cathedral.
I always like to find a London connection when writing these out of London posts, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester has a key connection with Greenwich.
Humphrey inherited the land that today makes up Greenwich Park in 1427, and in 1433 he was the first to enclose the park, and he also built a tower on what today is the site of the Royal Observatory.
After Humphrey’s death, the Greenwich estate was taken by Margaret of Anjou, the wife of King Henry VI, and under her ownership, it was renamed the Manor of Pleasance or Placentia.
In my father’s 1952 photo the entrance arch in the ruins was walled up. Today it is open and we can walk through to see what is left of the hospital:
These low walls were found during excavations of the site between 1989 and 1996, when the area was being cleared for a large Tesco store. The brick wall at the far end of the above photo is a very small part of the Tesco buildings.
The structure that remains is believed to be the entrance to the Great Hall and Chapel, and would have been the main area where travellers looking for the hospitality of the hospital would have been welcomed. Fascinating to imagine who may have walked through that door over the almost four centuries that the hospital was in use:
St. Saviour’s Hospital lasted to 1539, when during the dissolution of religious establishments, Henry VIII took posseion of their lands and buildings, and frequently sold these onwards or gave to his supporters.
Much of the stone of the hospital was demolished and taken away, and apart from the walls we see today, the remains below the surface lay hidden until the coming of Tesco, when excavations took place to discover the extent of any remains..
There is much more to discover in Bury St Edmunds, including what must be one of the most impressive direction signs that I have seen:
This is the Pillar of Salt road sign which is Grade II listed and is in a prominent position in an open space between the old abbey grounds, and the rest of the town.
In the early 1930s, road traffic was increasing rapidly, and the local council wanted a direction sign that was worthy of being installed in such an important location.
The design was by the East Anglian and London architect Basil Oliver and is constructed out of whitewashed concrete and metal.
The Town Council needed special approval from the Ministry of Transport as in the 1930s road signs were starting to be standardised under the 1933 Regulations.
Belhind the Pillar of Salt road sign is the Abbey Gate and Gatehouse:
The Abbey Gate is Grade I listed and dates from the 14th century:
Although it is not the original, this was destroyed by the townspeople in 1327 following disagreements between the people of the town and the monks of the abbey. It was rebuilt in 1347, and this is the building we see today:
Today, you can look up to the roof of the Abbey Gate, however originally there was an upper floor, and the fireplace that warmed this floor can still be seen between two windows:
Much of the land behind the Abbey Gate which was once part of the abbey is now parkland, and there are a number of stone ruins to be seen, but there is one part of the old abbey that today has a most unusual use that I wanted to see.
Walk past St Edmundsbury Cathedral and through the Norman Tower, and you come to another open space with some interesting buildings at the far end:
This length of wall consists of the remains of the west front of the Abbey of St Edmund. It dates from the 12th and early 13th centuries, and consists of the lower part of what was a large and impressive front to the abbey, which stretched a considerable distance behind this length of wall.
There are three large arches within the walls, but it is what occupies these arches today makes these remains of the old abbey so remarkable:
After the 16th century closure of the abbey, the space within these arches were used for a number of purposes, including stables, dye works and the town’s Probate Registry and registrars residence, and with 19th century alterations, there were altered to become houses.
It is remarkable how a house has been built within an arch in the remains of parts of the abbey’s structure. Not just the main living space, the door and windows, but also how the tiled roof slopes around the towers of the old abbey:
The remains of the 13th century Charnel House of the Abbey:
There are many more stone remains of the original abbey to be found across the gardens, but this could be a very long post, so I will turn to the left of where I am standing to take the above photos and look at the current St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and in the foreground, below the tower, is a metal sculpture of a wolf, which is linked to the story of Edmund:
But before entering the cathedral, a brief bit of history about the abbey.
Bury St Edmunds was originally a small village called Beodricsworth, in the kingdom of East Anglia.
Edmund was a Christian king of East Anglia between 855 and 869, and was killed during an invasion by the Danes in 869. Soon after his death, he became known as a martyr, and his reputation was further enhanced in the 10th century when a French monk, Abbo of Fleury, wrote the life of Edmund, and described his death as being tied to a tree, shot with arrows and then beheaded, apparently because he refused to abandon his Christian religion. Abbo also states that when Edmund’s head was found, it was being guarded by a wolf.
His remains were moved to a church at Beodricsworth, and the church was given large estates, and in the 11th century, King Cnut funded a rebuilding of the church in stone.
Edward the Confessor further enhanced the status of the church by granting it jurisdiction of over a third of the county of Suffolk.
Throughout the 11th, 12th and early 13th centuries, the original church was redeveloped into a very large abbey complex, which was also one of the most wealthy in the country.
The end came in the 1530s during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Thomas Cromwell was appointed in 1535 to find reasons for closing the abbey, however there were no obvious issues that could be used against the abbey, so, with nothing to be found, it was assumed that the abbey was covering up any issues of corruption, mis-use of money, deviant religious practices etc. so this gave the justification for the closure of the abbey.
In 1538, many of the younger monks were forced to leave and Commissioners were sent in to calculate the abbey’s wealth and remove valuable objects. The abbot surrendered the abbey on the 4th of November 1539, and the abbot, prior and remaining monks left the abbey, but were allowed a pension.
In the weeks that followed, demolition of the abbey commenced with lead from the roof and stones from the buildings being removed either for reuse or for sale.
This included the destruction of St Edmund’s shrine and the loss of St Edmund’s remains.
St Edmundsbury Cathedral, the church we see today, was originally a parish church for the town.
The original parish church had been demolished to make space for the new abbey buildings, so a new church dedicated to St James was built, and rebuilt in Perpendicular Gothic style in the 16th century.
In 1914, the church became the cathedral of the new diocese of St Edmundsbury, and this is the building we see today:
The brightly painted roof was part of the restoration work carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s:
Th central altar which sits beneath the millennium tower, which is a Gothic Revival tower added to the church starting in 2000, with completion in 2010:
Organ loft:
The Bishop’s Throne, which was the work of the Oxford architect Frank Ernest Howard:
View looking back from the choir stalls:
Organ, decorated roof, and view up to the richly decorated Millennium Tower:
Strange to think that this tower is only around 20 years old. The church was Grade I listed in 1952, and the Historic England listing seems based on Pevsner’s description of the building in 1974.
The listing makes no reference to the new tower, but states that the church has “an incomplete central tower”. As the church is Grade I listed, it must have had approvals for the work to build the tower, so it is strange that the listing has not been updated.
The font, also by Oxford architect Frank Ernest Howard:
A Lego model of the cathedral:
So the St Edmundsbury Cathedral dates from after the Dissolution, and served as a parish church to the town before becoming a cathedral early in the 20th century.
The cathedral building has been restored and had much additional work and new building works, which have continued into the 21st century with the tower.
The cathedral does not have any bells. These are nearby in a Norman survivor from the abbey, where we can see the Norman tower that also acted as an abbey gate and now serves as the belfry. It was built between 1120 and 1148; when Abbot Anselm was in charge of the abbey:
There is far more to the history of Bury St Edmunds than I can cover in a weekly post, and the town has many fascinating buildings – it is well worth a visit.
He travelled with friends he had met during National Service, an experience which seems to have sparked an interest in travelling for many who had grown up in London during the war, and had minimal experience of the world beyond London’s boundaries.
For those with little money, Youth Hostelling was a cost effective way of having somewhere to stay, and the Youth Hostel Association offered cheap and basic accommodation.
He made some notes to these photos, and the following is Finningham Youth Hostel and the Warden:
Finningham Youth Hospital consisted of two old farm workers cottages that had been converted into a single building. It was very basic and those staying were expected to work on whatever task was needed during their stay, including emptying the chemical toilet.
The following is of his two friends out the hostel. Note the horse shoe hung over the door:
Finningham Youth Hostel closed in the 1960s. I suspect by then there were more opportunities for young people to travel, and cycling around the country was no longer as attractive as it was to those who had been children during the war.
There is much more to Bury St Edmunds than I have been able to cover in a single post – it is a fascinating place to visit.
Firstly, an update to the second part of the Rocque Ring walk: I have been away for the last couple of weeks with very limited Internet access, so have been unable to correct an error I made in the post on the 30th of August. I stated that the memorial in Christchurch Gardens was to Chopin, where I should have stated that it is a memorial to Henry Purcell. Another example of a disconnect between brain and fingers as I had written Purcell in my notes when I walked the route. Thanks to those who pointed this out, and the post is corrected.
Now to a new walk exploring the Ancient and Interesting Borough of Bermondsey.
I can remember the first time I heard the name Bermondsey. It was in the early / mid-1970s (cannot remember the exact year), and the radio was on at home. It was Good Friday, and they were broadcasting a feature about events on the day in London.
Part of the feature was on the Widow’s Son pub in east London, when on Good Friday, a bun is added to the net hanging over the bar.
The other part of the feature was about an event in Bermondsey. I cannot remember what the event was, but the name Bermondsey, an area in south London, and whatever the event was, sounded fascinating and rather exotic (I was very young at the time).
Over the years, I have been to various places in Bermondsey more times than I can remember, it is a fascinating place to explore, but that early memory of somewhere a bit different has always stayed.
The title of this walk comes from a 1930s edition of a guidebook produced by the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey, and highlights that whilst in the 1930s Bermondsey was a centre of industry, with a population of over one hundred and eleven thousand, it was also a very old and historic borough.
The industry which was so much a part of 1930s Bermondsey and described in the guidebook, is also now part of that long history.
This walk explores Bermondsey’s transformation from a land of marsh and water, and includes the historic Abbey, London’s first railway terminus, industries such as the production of leather and processing of seal skins and furs, a ground-breaking charity that supported girls who worked in factories, Jacob’s Island, the slum made famous by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist, pubs, Thames river stairs, the remains of a medieval manor house, and much more.
The walk starts from London Bridge Station (southern exit from the concourse of the railway station (not the underground) into St Thomas Street, next to Café Nero) and ends at the Angel pub, which is about a 7 minute walk from the Bermondsey Jubilee line station.
The walk lasts around 2 hours 30 minutes and covers just under two and a half miles.
The Angel, where the walk ends, photographed by my father in 1951:
All dates for this new walk can be found on my Eventbrite page at the following link:
I will be adding some more dates for this walk (and my other walks), so if a convenient date is not available, click the Follow button at the Eventbrite page, and you should get a notification when new dates are online,
A small sample of images from the 1930s guide, including a Street Plan of the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey:
Old houses in Grange walk:
Municipal Offices, Spa Road:
Bermondsey Parish Church with Recreation Ground Adjoining:
As well as a detailed history of Bermondsey and description of the borough in the early 1930s, the guide book includes numerous pages of adverts for the businesses that manufactured, exported, imported, and traded in Bermondsey.
A small sample which gives an idea of the breadth of industry and business in Bermondsey, which included the Oriental Confectionary Manufacturers Limited:
Celebrity Gramophones:
Anglotan Ltd. – the All-British House for Reptile Skins:
Kelly & Sons – High Class Book Binding:
H.T. Enthoven & Sons Limited – Metal Manufacturers and Refiners:
Adams Brothers – Suit Cases, Attaché Cases, &c. It will pay you to Buy British:
Bermondsey today is a very different place to that described in the 1930s guide book, but these adverts show only a small snapshot of the long history of an Ancient and Interesting Borough.
In the 75th anniversary year of the Festival of Britain, I am looking at some of the creatives behind the Festival. From those who were involved with setting the overall approach and theme of the Festival down to those who worked on specific tasks to create the displays and pavilions.
Back in July, I looked at Jacquetta Hawkes, and for today’s post, I am looking at someone who in the years after the Festival, would become a very well known author.
This is the page from the Festival guide book for the South Bank Festival site, covering the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion:
Among the names of those responsible for the Lion and the Unicorn, the person who created the commentary (the text to go with the displays and exhibits), there is the name Laurie Lee, an author who would later become very well known for the book Cider with Rosie:
Laurie Lee was born on the 26th of June 1914 in the town of Stroud in Gloucester. Three years after his birth, his family moved to the village of Slad, also in Gloucestershire, a village which would provide the experiences and material for the book that would make his name as an author, and a village that he would have a life long attachment to, moving back to Slad in the 1960s, and where he was buried after his death in 1997.
He left his home in Slad at the age of 19. He travelled to London, where he stayed for a year, busking with his second hand violin and working as a builders labourer, before travelling on to Spain. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Lee was one of a number of British subjects picked up on the southern Spanish coast by the destroyer HMS Blanche.
The destroyer came under attack by anti-government forces. A news report from a crew member of a merchant vessel being escorted by HMS Blanche describes the attack:
“When dawn broke we were glad to see H.M.S. Blanche close to us and five of the rebel’s aeroplanes came over aloft. At first they thought the warship was Spanish and dropped some bombs round her, but none hit her. The aeroplanes then discovered that the boat was an English naval vessel, and continued to escort us into harbour.”
The British Government did receive an apology for the attack as they were informed that “the anti-Government leaders desire to express their own and General Franco’s profound regret for the bombing of H.M.S. Blanche, which they say was mistaken for the Government destroyer Jose Louis Diez.”
He travelled back to Spain in 1937, and joined the International Brigades, who were formed to support the government of the Second Spanish Republic against the Nationalists of General Franco.
Lee’s experiences whilst in Spain during the Civil War and with the International Brigades were described in his book “A Moment of War“.
Returning to England, he wrote poetry, being named one of five little known poets who were “Poets of Tomorrow” in the Bookseller on the 30th of October 1941. His poetry became more widely known during the 1940s, and by October 1945, the Birmingham Mail was naming Lee as a “Midland Poet”, due to his birth in the Cotswolds.
During the war he worked for the Crown Film Unit as a scriptwriter and also with the publications department of the Ministry of Information.
In 1950 he married Catherine Francesca Polge, whose mother was Helen Garman, one of four sisters who were part of the Bloomsbury set.
In 1951 he wrote the script for the Board of Trade film “West of England”, a wonderful colour film that describes a lost way of life, but a film very much aligned with the themes of the Festival of Britain:
There is a wonderful line in the film, where he is describing the continuity of the countryside, and the churches which have “bells that have rung in a thousand years of Christmases”.
He was also writing drama for broadcast on radio, some of which were published, and again the Bookseller on the 6th of March 1948 advertises “The Voyage of Magellan” by Laurie Lee – “The text of the highly praised verse drama which helped to inaugurate the Third Programme in 1946”.
His work for the Festival of Britain started in 1950. Whilst he was writing the commentary for the Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion he was also advertising for contributions to a specific part of the pavilion.
I have not written about the specific area in the Lion and the Unicorn over which Laurie Lee had some key responsibilities.
The overall theme of the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion was the British character, language and literature, the instinct of liberty, British craftsmanship, and the area where Laurie Lee had specific responsibility – Eccentricity and Humour.
This display area within the pavilion looked at both British humour and the streak of eccentricity in the British character, and to build this display, Laurie Lee wanted the eccentrics among the British population to contribute. The following is one of many newspaper articles advertising what he was after, from the London Weekly Dispatch on the 19th of November 1950:
“HE WANTS MADMEN TO HELP WITH FESTIVAL SHOW – If you have an eccentric mind, and during a nightmare or in a waking thought, have conjured up the weirdest, most fantastic object, the Festival of Britain wants to hear from you.
One section of a pavilion in next years’ Exhibition will be devoted to the ‘craziest’ conceptions of the British mind.
Mr. Laurie Lee of the Festival staff, eccentric poet, writer of film and radio plays, is the man responsible for choosing four objects that will, he hopes, evoke laughter, admiration, and technical interest.
Junk-Shop Hunt: ‘The main idea is to show in this Crazy Corner, things that will stand up to the foreigner’s idea of the ‘Mad English’ he said yesterday. ‘We want what I’d call fertile madness. for example, if someone told me of a hitherto unknown solution of perpetual motion, it would appeal.
Laurie Lee told me he had already dug into all the junk-shops of the East End of London and Chelsea, as well as in the country, without finding anything more eccentric than a square-rigged model bargue in an ordinary electric light bulb.
He invites ‘British Madmen’ to send written offers of their craziest creations to him at 2, Savoy-court, London, W.C.2.”
This was definently the “men in sheds” section of the Festival of Britain. Laurie Lee was after the sort of creation that use to feature on the “and finally” section of TV news, and on local TV news features.
In January 1951, the West London Observer was reporting on the creations that Laurie Lee was receiving: “They include ‘a machine 20ft square on the best engineering principles, with the sole object of blowing out matches. Says Mr. Lee; Admirable for its particular purpose, but slightly too big. I have suggested he builds a smaller model and perfects it by making it light matches as well. Another offer is a smoke grinding machine. Then, there is a mouse trap maze. This is a really cunning device in rough brick (the rough brick is important, so read on). Lured in by the smell of cheese. the mouse is diverted into dead ends until it becomes hysterical. its frantic running stirs up pepper on the pathways. causing such violent sneezing that it ‘bashes its brains out’ on the rough brickwork.
But, as Mr. Lee wisely points out, ‘you cannot have six months of mouse massacre just for the fun of the thing. How right he is! More than anything, Mr Lee wants little machines that work like mad and do nothing in particular”.
I wonder if Laurie Lee, poet, playwright and script writer, and soon to be author, felt any frustrations with having to deal with this type of submission, however the £11 a week as an Executive Officer in the Civil Service he was earning for his role in the Festival of Britain may have come as a welcome regular income.
In an interview with the Daily Express on the 20th of January 1951 Laurie Lee said that his role was “interesting and exhausting. To overcome this he takes three kinds of anti-nervous pills”.
With the sheer scale of the festival, the short time available before the festival was to open, and limited finances, I suspect that the pressure that Laurie Lee was feeling was common across all those involved.
In the same article he speaks about having just tested some “Walking-on-Air” shoes – he fell flat on his face when he tried them out. He had also received a violin made of matches, a tea-set made of old haddock bones, a pair of motoring goggles with windmill and windscreen wipers attached and some bottled circus clowns (miniatures).
He has also received a “Moral Uplifter”, created by a retired colonel, and worn inside your jacket, and gives out encouraging sounds of “Jolly good show, Hear Hear, applause and even laughs when you tell a joke”.
Also in Lee’s office was a stuffed white rabbit which contained a music-box, however the workings had gone wrong and the rabbit now plays God Save the Queen at unexpected times.
I cannot find a list of all the items submitted to Laurie Lee that ended up in the Eccentricities section of the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion. The text for the guide book was probably finished before the final selection was agreed, but the guide book does state that the visitor would see Tenniel’s White Knight
The White Night is a character from the book “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll. he is an inventor, of the type wanted by Laurie Lee, and the following print is of the White Knight, by John Tenniel who provided illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s book, published in 1871:
In the illustration, the White Knight is seen sitting on his horse, which is covered in many of his inventions.
He can also be seen on the right in the Eccentricity and Humour section of the Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion:
As well as writing for the Lion and Unicorn pavilion, Laurie Lee also wrote captions for other pavilions on the South Bank festival site. A reviewer in the Daily Herald in the days after the festival had opened wrote about the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion “I was especially impressed by the captions, the work of the poet Laurie Lee, who has written captions for several other pavilions as well. These combine point with nonchalance in a way that would be impossible to anyone but a most sensitive artist in words.”
Looking through the Festival of Britain guide for the South Bank and the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion is the only one where there is a named author for the commentary. No idea whether this was because the commentary in the pavilion was considered of more importance compared to the other pavilions, whether it was because of Laurie Lee’s reputation as a poet, or for some other reason.
In the years after the Festival of Britain, Laurie Lee began the strand of his career that would lead to his popular fame as an author.
In 1955 “A Rose for Winter: Travels in Andalusia” was published. This was about a return visit to Andalusia, to find a country that had been broken by the Civil War, but the underlying character of Spain was still to be found.
In 1959, “Cider with Rosie” was published. This was the story of his childhood in the village of Slad, from a time when the way of life in the British countryside was still much as it had been for a very long time, and before modern conveniences such as electricity and the car had arrived.
This is probably Laurie Lee’s most well known book. Turned into a number of TV adaptations and films, radio dramas and a stage play. It was also one of the books used for school English Literature courses and examinations.
Cider with Rosie was followed in 1969 by the second book in Lee’s autobiographical series – “As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning“. This book starts when he first leaves his home in Slad, his journey walking to London, then his time in Spain, and ends when he returns to his family home.
“A Moment of War“, published in 1991 tells of his time in Spain and involvement in the Spanish Civil War.
Whilst writing these autobiographical books, he continued to write and publish poetry, along with other books such as “Down in the Valley”, a description of the landscape, life and traditions of his Cotswold home:
And also “Village Christmas And Other Notes on the English Year”, which included both his home landscape of the Cotswolds as well as his time living in Chelsea.
The majority of his books show an intense love of place, the landscape, people and traditions that make a place.
Laurie Lee’s attachment to his home village of Slad lasted all his life. Along with his wife, he returned to the village to live in the 1960s, whilst keeping a flat in Chelsea.
As with my post on Jacquetta Hawks, all the photos I can find of Laurie Lee seem to be in copyright, or taken from a source which appears under copyright.
He died in 1997 at the age of 82, and was buried in the churchyard at Slad.
A typical obituary focused on his book A Cider with Rosie, but also said that he was:
“First and foremost a poet, and his writings were autobiographical. He imposed on his work a vigorous discipline and perfection which might involve rewriting a book three or four times. It meant his output was small, with barely a dozen books published.
Lee also represented an era of brilliance and idealism that sprang from the 1930s; he fought in the Spanish Civil War, wrote verse plays for radio, and was a contemporary of such literary figures as Stephen Spender, John Lehmann, George Orwell and Cecil Day-Lewis.”
The majority of his books are still in print, and reading them today, it is clear why he wrote the commentary for the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion, as well as a number of other pavilions across the festival.
I just wish I could write blog posts that are able to “combine point with nonchalance in a way that would be impossible to anyone but a most sensitive artist in words“, as a reviewer of his work for the festival had written.
For today’s post, I am continuing my walk around the Rocque Ring, exploring the boundary of London in 1746, and discovering just how big a task this will be, as there is so much to be discovered in just a short length of the walk.
I have an old, printed copy of Rocque’s map (unfortunately not the original), however if you would like a copy of this fascinating map, a reader left the following comment to the post covering part one of the walk:
“The London Topographical Society has just published – at about 50% of original size – John Rocque’s two maps of London, his 24-sheet ‘Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark’ and his 16-sheet ‘Exact Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark with the Country near ten Miles round’. For more information and to order see http://www.londontopsoc.org “
In the following extract from Rocque’s map, the route is shown by the red line. The yellow arrow points to where I finished the last post, and my starting point for today:
In walking this section of Rocque’s Ring, I am crossing Victoria Street, one of the many new streets built in the 19th century to support the growing city and the ever increasing level of traffic, as well as providing improved, direct routes between key points.
Victoria Street carved through a network of streets and houses. In the above map, the blue line marks the future route of Victoria Street, showing in the lower part of the map, the streets and buildings that would be lost, and in the upper part, the open space that would soon be covered.
And this is where I am starting from, at the end of Great Peter Street, with Horseferry Road to the left and Greycoat Place ahead:
To the right is Strutton Ground:
Strutton Ground is a very old street. It is shown both on Rocque’s map as well as in William Morgan’s map of 1682 (I have an extract from this later in the post which shows the street).
In both Rocque’s and Morgan’s map, the street is called Stretton Street,, however the first mention I could find of Strutton Ground was from 1731, when there is mention in the Kentish Weekly Post of a wine merchant “of Strutton Ground, Westminster”, so the current name was in use, before Rocque’s map was showing it as Stretton Ground..
I have read that the street was a path that ran been Stourton Meadows and was used by “monks and peasants travelling from the fields and meadows to the abbey at Westminster”, although I have been unable to confirm or double check this.
Today the street has a market, which seems to mainly cater to the lunchtime needs of local workers, but it has a long history of being a general market for local residents.
The first mentions of the market that I can find date back to the start of the 20th century, and it may have been populated by traders that moved from an earlier market in Broadway.
In 1922, when describing the trade of a fishmonger at the market, a newspaper report described it as “a market street nearby when that district was notoriously very rough”.
Before following the route of the Rocque Ring, I am taking a short detour down Horseferry Road:
As at numbers 124 to 126 is the headquarters of Channel 4:
For a very recently constructed building (between 1992 and 1994), it is Grade II listed.
Designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, the building was specifically designed for Channel 4, to replace the rented offices in the West End that the channel had taken on and expanded as the audience grew.
There were a number of reasons why the building was listed, including the “elegant work of the high-tech movement”, and the “sophistication of design”, but probably my favourite of the reasons for listing is that it is a “a late-C20 exemplar of both a prestigious, owner-occupied headquarters building and a television centre”.
The majority of buildings designed today give no idea of the business of the occupier, The design for this building makes clear who the building is for, with the large number 4, which was added in 2007, looking onto Horseferry Road being the stand out advertisement.
The building we see at surface level is only part of the business of TV programming and transmission. Below street level there are 10m deep basements that were designed for production and transmission facilities and a small studio space.
As we leave Great Peter Street and walk into Greycoat Place, on the right is the old Westminster Fire Station:
This wonderful building is typical of those built by the Fire Brigade Branch of the London County Council Architects Department. It is Grade II listed and dates from 1906.
Westminster fire station closed on the 9th of January 2014. It was one of 10 fire stations closed by Mayor Boris Johnson. The other were Belsize, Bow, Clerkenwell, Downham, Kingsland, Knightsbridge, Silvertown, Southwark, and Woolwich.
Opposite the old fire station building is the Grey Coat Hospital, with the two figures typical of a charity school above the door, with the arms of Queen Anne in the centre:
The Grey Coat Hospital was a charity school, and the name comes from the colour of the coats worn by those who attended the school. There were a few more of these school in the local area, each with their own coloured coat.
An early example of a school uniform.
An article from the London Chronicle on the 17th of July 1816 provides some history of the institution:
“Mr. J. Lancaster, Master of the Grey Coat School, Westminster, stated that it was founded in 1707 by Queen Anne: this establishment educated, lodged, and boarded 60 boys and 30 girls. The boys had a mathematical education, and those who were inclined to go to sea were taught the principles of navigation. The witness’s salary, as master, was £50. His wife, as matron was £20, with lodgings and board. There was a mathematical teacher at £45, an assistant at £30, with board and lodging; five women servants.
The witness delivered in a copy of the Charter, which recited, that in 1698 a Charity School was erected in the parish of St. Margaret, for the education of poor children in the principles of the Christian religion, and for teaching to write and cast accounts, and binding them (when fit) to honest trades and employments; and that the trustees, designing to enlarge the said charity, did, in 1701, take into their care several other poor boys and girls, and provide them with clothing, meat, drink, lodging, and other necessaries in a large house, known by the name of Grey Coat Hospital, appointed to them by the vestry of the said parish, rent free, and that the charge of the undertaking being upwards of £800 per annum, was made by voluntary subscriptions and benevolence.”
The 1698 charity school was funded by members of the parish of St. Margaret. Eight parishioners had subscribed 12 shillings and six pence to get the school established.
Queen Anne granted the school a charter on the 19th of April 1706, which enabled the school to purchase the land where the Grey Coast Hospital we see today would be constructed. It is not clear whether the Hospital took the original building on the site in 1701 when the charity was enlarged, or in 1706 when it was granted a charter and purchased land.
The Grey Coat Hospital is Grade II listed, and the Historic England listing confirms that the central block dates from 1701, and that the building was restored and wings added after war damage.
The listing also states that the arms of Queen Anne on the central block are of Coade stone. If the listing is correct, then the arms date from much later than 1701, as the artificial stone factory on the South Bank was not taken over by Eleanor Coade until the 1770s.
The site was originally a Workhouse, as can be seen (green arrow) in William Morgan’s map of 1682:
And referring back to Rocque’s map I used at the start of the post, in 1746, the Grey Coat Hospital is on the site of the Workhouse, and the overall area of land occupied by the Hospital appears larger than that occupied by the Workhouse:
I suspect the quality of the environment was not as important to the Workhouse as it was to the Hospital.
In 1874 the Grey Coat Hospital became a day school for girls, and there are frequent adverts in newspapers for the school, such as the following from 1896:
“GREY COAT HOSPITAL – Day school for girls, near Victoria Street, Westminster. Tuition &c £4 5s to £4 15s a year. Piano £4. Preperation for University and Public Examinations. Scholarships in the Schools and on leaving.”
The Grey Coat Hospital continues as a school today, based on Christian values, and for girls between the ages of 11 and 18, and with boys admitted to the Sixth Form.
On the school building, to the left of the main entrance shown in the earlier photo, there is a green City of Westminster plaque:
Explored and Mapped Canada is both an unbelievable achievement given the size of the country, and is also an understatement of a remarkable life.
David Thompson was born in London on the 30th of April 1770, and in 1777 he was in the Grey Coat Hospital, the charity school on which the plaque stands.
He left the school in 1784 when he was 14 via a route that offered a career for orphans and children of the poor – an apprenticeship with the Hudson’s Bay Company. This meant that at this still very young age, he left London and sailed for Canada where he started work as an apprentice in the fur trading industry.
His initial base in Canada was in what is today called Churchill in Manitoba, directly on the coast of the Hudson Bay. It must have seemed an incredibly remote and challenging place to live after having grown up in London.
At the age of 17, he left Churchill and started to walk and paddle west across Canada, meeting the indigenous peoples, learning their languages and their stories. He also saw the impact on imported diseases such as small pox that had such a devastating impact on the local people.
He was a successful fur trader, but his real interests were in surveying and mapping Canada and the north west of the United States, and he worked to the west of Lake Superior, walking and paddling on the numerous rivers that he came across, also recording the cultures and religions of the peoples that he met.
As his main interest was surveying and mapping, and focussing on the unexplored north western lands of Canada, he resigned from the Hudson Bay Company and took up employment with the North West Company, another trading company that was founded in 1779 by Scots who had migrated from the Highlands to Montreal, mainly due to the Highland Clearances.
He spent 15 years with the North West Company, making a total of 27 years surveying and mapping western Canada.
As well as exploring, surveying and mapping, during this time he also married. At the age of 29 he married a girl, Charlotte Small from the Cree peoples who was aged 13. A marriage today we would be appalled by as she was just a child.
David Thompson seems to have spent most of his life exploring and meeting indigenous peoples, so perhaps that was considered normal among the peoples that he met.
They did have a long life together, a total of 58 years, and had 13 children of which 5 were born during his time exploring. He would also take his wife and children on his explorations, including into unknown territory.
During his time exploring, he mapped a total of 3.9 million square km, and met and spoke with dozens of indigenous peoples.
When he finished travelling, he moved to Montreal in 1812, primarily to help his children get an education.
With money he had saved from fur trading he made some investments, but these went bad, and he lost the majority of his money. To compound his financial problems, two of his children died, and his eldest son left home after rebelling against his father.
He did get some short term surveying work, but this was never enough to pay the bills, and when out of work, things were so bad that he had to pawn his surveying equipment, which must have been a considerable blow to someone who had invested so much of his life in mapping a new country.
Such were his financial difficulties, that David along with his wife Charlotte, moved in with their daughter and her husband, and he spent some time trying to get all his journals into a format that could be published, but years earlier, which makes his exploits even more remarkable, he had lost his sight in one eye, and his second eye was failing.
He died in 1857, unknown to the wider world, and in poverty, with his wife Charlotte dying three months later.
None of his work was published in his lifetime, but the geologist Joseph Burr Tyrrell worked on his notes and journals, which were published in 1916 as “David Thompson’s Narrative“.
He work is now far more widely known in Canada.
The maps he produced were very detailed, with the following being an example of one such map. Lake Superior is to the lower right:
David Thompson, holding one of the tools of his trade:
The remarkable story of the life of a boy from the Grey Coat Hospital.
Hard to get a photo of the full width of the buildings of the Hospital. The following photo from Greycoat Place shows the building, with the top of the Channel 4 building in the background.
One of the wonderful things about Rocque’s map, is the level of detail. Every time you look at the map, you see something new.
In 1746, Rocque’s map shows a “Pound” just past the Grey Coat Hospital (circled):
A Pound was a place where animals would be held. This was either a place where stray animals were kept until an owner could be found, or where animals on their way to market were held on the journey. There were many of these across the city, and one that is still named on milestones today is the St. Giles Pound – see this post).
In the area today, the Pound would have been in front of the brick building with the large white surround around the door. The roundabout is the junction of Greycoat Place, Greycoat Streetand Rochester Row:
Whilst walking the Rocque Ring, we can see how the expansion of the city outwards from the area mapped in 1746 was already being laid out.
Returning to the map, and projecting out into Tothill Fields is a line of trees with buildings along the upper side. If you look at Morgan’s map from 1682 earlier in the post, this was just a track across the fields with trees lining both sides:
The track between trees and buildings is labelled Rochester Row, and today the street has been built up on both sides, and still has a number of trees (obviously not the originals), lining both sides:
The name Rochester Row comes from the Bishops of Rochester. A number of these bishops held the Deanery of Westminster and in that capacity owned land in Westminster, including the land on which Rochester Row was built.
If you look half way along Rochester Row in Rocque’s map, there are buildings labelled as “”Hills Alms Ho. & School”.
The alms houses and school were founded in 1708 by the MP Emery Hill, but the buildings we see today date from a rebuild in 1882 following a consolidation of almshouses in Westminster.
Known today as the Westminster Almshouses Foundation, they still provide accommodation for those over the age of 60 who need sheltered housing:
There is another large feature shown in the map above. Just to the right of Rochester Row and the Pound is the Artillery Ground, and whilst this open space is long gone, the name is still used for streets and buildings, on or alongside the site:
An Artillery Ground was a place where training with weapons took place, archery, musket firing etc. According to The London Encyclopaedia by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, it “Takes its name from the artillery practice which used to take place here. Butts had been erected in the area in obedience to an ordinance of Elizabeth I”.
Butt refers to a place where archery practice took place and is often used to describe the mounds of earth that were used as targets. Rocque’s map does not show any of these features, just a row of what appears to be trees along one side of the ground.
I am now at the junction of Greycoat Place and Artillery Row, and on the left is the Greencoat Boy pub (which is a good place to stop off on this walk – pint of Caledonian Deuchars IPA £6.65):
The street on the left hand side of the pub is named Greencoat Place, and there is a rather nice pub sign showing what look like a rather old boy, wearing a green coat:
The green coat refers to another charity school, a very short distance from the Grey Coat Hospital, Referring back to Rocque’s map of this small area, I have circled a couple of buildings, just above and to the left of the Artillery Ground:
The building on the left of the red oval is labelled as the Green Coat School. The school was originally founded as St Margaret’s Hospital by the Churchwardens of St Margaret’s, Westminster in 1624, but as was typical with charity schools the children wore green coats so it was clear which school they came from, and wearing green coats gave the school its later name.
A Charter of Incorporation was granted to the school in 1633 by Charles I, who gave £50 a year to support the school, which was “for the relief of the poor fatherless children of St. Margaret’s, Westminster”.
The school was always dependent on charity donations. The Civil War put an end to donations from Charles I, but after the restoration, Charles II gave £100 a year, but apparently he always had to be petitioned each year for the donation.
I cannot find out exactly when the Green Boy pub was built (the current version is an 1881 rebuild of an earlier pub on the site), but the land belonged to the Green Coat School as in 1818 the school received £1,200 for a renewal of the lease of the pub, a sum which a made a big difference to the school’s finances.
Print from 1811 showing aspects of the Green Coat School:
Next to the Green Coat School was the Tothill Fields Bridewell – the local Prison or lockup. The name Bridewell was taken from the institution of the same name in the City of London. Rather strange to have a prison located right next to a charity school.
You could be locked up in the Tothill Fields Bridewell for a wide range of reasons. The earliest I found was from the 18th of January 1725, when:
“Yesterday three of the White-hand Club, vulgarly call’d Sodomites, were discharged out of Tothill Fields Bridewell, viz. a Cook to a Nobleman in Palmall; a Master Taylor, and a Man who kept a Dairy Cellar at the other End of the Town.”
On the 11th of August, 1729:
“Yesterday an Irishman caused his Wife to be taken into Custody, and committed to Tothill fields, Bridewell, for giving abusive language to a Woman that she was jealous of: A notable example to such of our English Dames as may give themselves too much Liberty to censure their Husbands Actions or Acquaintance.”
And on the 6th of January, 1737:
“Several Persons have been lately committed to Tothill Fields Bridewell, for driving Wheelbarrows about the Streets with Oranges, and seducing and enticing several Servants, Apprentices, &c. to play at Dice, whereby they are defrauded of their Money.”
They were very different times.
Tothill Fields Prison on the site shown in Rocque’s map lasted until 1834, when a new prison was completed a few hundred yards away, to the north of Francis Street.
This new prison did not last that long as it was closed in 1877, demolished and the site of the prison was later used for Westminster Cathedral.
Although the original Tothill Fields prison was demolished in 1834, there is a survivor from the building to be seen today.
Walk a short distance down Little Sanctuary in Westminster, along side the Supreme Court Building (the old Middlesex Guildhall), and you will see this old stone entrance:
This entrance is from the original Tothill Fields Prison, and was moved here by the Greater London Council in 1969.
There is a plaque above the entrance:
Which reads:
“Here are several Sorts of Work for the Poor of this Parish of St Margaret’s Westminster. As also the Country, according to LAW and the such as will Beg and Live Idle in this City and Liberty of Westminster. Anno 1655.”
I must carry on, and walking along Artillery Row, I reach the junction with Victoria Street. Looking back along Artillery Row, and on the left there is an impressive building of light coloured stone, which glows in the summer sun:
This is Artillery House, built on part of the old Artillery Ground.
It is Grade II listed and dates from 1928, and was designed by the architect Maurice Webb. The listing describes the stye of the building as being modernistic “Hollywood Egyptian”.
There are a number of nice features on the building, some recall the history of the site. The South Door:
Just above both the south and north doors is a feature described in the Historic England listing as being a “ceramic miniature howitzer”. No idea if this type of weapon was used at the Artillery Grounds. The grounds look a little too small for a weapon of this size, but you never know:
Artillery Row, Artillery House and the model howitzers are nice reminders of the use to which the land here was put in the time of Rocque’s 1746 map.
I have now reached the point where Victoria Street crosses my route, and across the junction is the Albert pub:
The Albert is a very prominent feature on Victoria Street because it is so very different to all the other buildings along the street – a street where buildings seem to be undergoing a continuous process of demolition and new build.
The Albert dates from 1862, and was named after Queen Victoria’s husband, Price Albert, who had died the previous year.
A pub that is well worth a visit, but having stopped off at the Green Boy, I decided to continue.
Looking west along Victoria Street (named after the Queen):
Victoria Street was one of the many 19th century “improvements” to the landscape of London, that carved new roads through an existing networks of much smaller streets, courts, alleys and buildings.
These new roads were built to manage the rapidly increasing volume of traffic across London, to provide routes between key places (Victoria Street linked Westminster and the Embankment with the new Victoria Station which opened in 1860, and then via Grosvenor Place, up to Piccadilly and Knightsbridge).
Victoria Street was built between 1850 and 1860, and the following is an image from the start of construction in 1851:
Towards the end of the 19th, and during the early 20th century, Victoria Street was lined with large brick apartment buildings, and offices, shops and department stores gradually populated the street. Today, the brick buildings are in the minority, and the street has gone through many iterations of offices, and today glass and steel office and apartment blocks line the street, and continue to be built, although some late 19th and early 20th century brick buildings survive.
Looking east along Victoria Street:
Before continuing along the route of the Rocque Ring, I am going to make a short detour east along Victoria Street.
Returning to the 1746 map of the area, the red line is the route of the Rocque Ring. The blue line is the future route of Victoria Street (the above two photos were taken where the red and blue lines cross).
I have ringed an area of open space in which there is a small building labelled “Chapel”, with “St Margaret’s Burying Ground” describing the rest of the space:
This is a very old site, and dates back to around the 13th century, when a chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdalene was here. By the end of the 16th century, Stow describes the chapel as being in a ruinious state. The dissoloution of religious sites by Henry VIII probably contributed to the chapel falling out of use.
A second chapel would later be built, and as indicated by Rocque’s map, the land surrounding the chapel was the burying ground of St. Margaret’s, the church that can be found between Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey. The chapel was replaced by Christ Church Broadway, but this church was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. The grounds had already been reduced by the construction of Victoria Street in the mid 19th century.
In the 1950s, the land on which the chapel in the Rocque map, and the later church had been built, was lost to post war building, so what remains today is roughly the area between Victoria Street and the left of the chapel in the above map.
View of the post-war garden from the east:
There is a memorial to the composer Henry Purcell, showing the “flowering of the English baroque” at the eastern entrance to the gardens. The work dates from 1995 and is by the sculptor Glynn Williams:
Along the western side of the garden is an artwork dedicated to “Commemorate the courage and perseverance of all those men and women who in the long struggle for votes for women, selflessly braved derision, opposition and ostracism, many enduring physical violence and suffering”.
The relevance of the location is that as the artwork states “Nearby Caxton Hall was historically associated with women’s suffrage meetings and deputations to Parliament”:
A very important memorial when you consider that in the early 18th century, a husband could get his wife taken into custody in Tothill Prison, as quoted earlier in the post, and that:
“A notable example to such of our English Dames as may give themselves too much Liberty to censure their Husbands Actions or Acquaintance.”
View of the gardens looking from the west. The chapel and later church was located to the left of the photo:
Back to the route of the Rocque Ring, and after crossing Victoria Street and heading down Buckingham Gate, I come across another of the colour coated charity schools:
This is the rear of the Bluecoat School in Caxton Street.
I have put a yellow oval around the location of the school in the 1746 map below, showing that the Bluecoat School was on the edge of the built landscape of London in 1746:
Judging by how far I have come in two posts, I suspect I have underestimated how much there is to discover when walking the Rocque Ring, but it will be an interesting journey.
Statues and monuments are fascinating. They reflect what is important at the time they are created, especially those who are in a position to fund or authorise the creation and implementation of a statue.
They are intended to be an almost permanent memorial to an event or person. Walk around a city, and the majority of statues and memorials tend to be for those involved in the military or monarchs, and whilst the majority tend to be of men, Queen Victoria was one of the few women to be immortalised by a statue. Queen Anne has a statue in front of St. Paul’s, but they are the exception.
Events are also commemorated, and the period following a war is often one where multiple statues and memorials are erected. The horror of the First World War was such that in the years after the end of the war, almost every city, town and village across the country ended up with some form of memorial to those who had died.
Many statues and memorials are made of stone, and the use of this material, aligns with those responsible for the idea, the funding, creation and erection of the statue or memorial, that it should be permanent. It should outlast those who created it, and it should carry a message for future generations.
In recent years, a number of statues have fallen out of favour as a result of changing attitudes to the person represented – views that would have seemed bizarre to those who originally erected the statue. Our views, the things we represent and choose to record with a memorial or statue may also fall out of favour in the future – everything changes.
Walk up Charing Cross Road from Trafalgar Square and there is one memorial / statue that is still very relevant. One of the few statues of a woman in a significant location and a memorial to a heroic act amidst the barbarism of war:
This is the statue and memorial to the nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed on the 12th of October, 1915 by the German forces that occupied Brussels:
The statue was unveiled on the 17th of March 1920. It would have been completed earlier, but the war delayed sourcing of the marble for the statue from a mine in Italy.
A typical syndicated news report of the unveiling reads as follows:
“Nurse Cavell, London Statue Unveiled – Queen Alexandra unveiled yesterday, in St. Martin’s Place, Trafalgar Square, London, in the presence of a large Anglo-Belgian assembly, a statue of Edith Cavell, which has been erected out of the fund subscribed by readers of the Daily Telegraph. The monument, of grey granite, stands forty feet high, and the statue of white marble shows Miss Cavell standing erect in her nurse’s uniform. On the base is the simple inscription ‘Edith Cavell, Brussels, dawn, October 12th, 1915’.
Viscount Burnham, in an appropriate address, invited Her Majesty to unveil the memorial, and in reply Queen Alexandra said: This beautiful statue, the work of our distinguished sculptor, Sir George Frampton, will stand for all time as a memorial of one who met a martyrs fate, with a calm courage and resignation which has rarely been excelled. The countless thousands who will pass this spot in our time, and in future generations, will think with sorrow of her cruel death, with pride of her splendid fortitude, and with affection of her unselfish and womanly character. The example of Miss Edith Cavell’s life will always be before us.”
The sculptor of the work, Sir George Frampton was also the creator of the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens. His work can also be seen on the Lloyds Register of Shipping building at 71 Fenchurch Street, where he was responsible for the decorative friezes around the façade of the building.
The unveiling ceremony was attended by several members of the Cavell family and delegations of nurses, including one from the Ecole Edith Cavell in Brussels.
The main structure of the monument is of granite, and the statue of Edith Cavell is of Italian marble:
Edith Louisa Cavell was born in 1865 in Swardeston, a small village just to the south of Norwich in Norfolk. Her father was the Reverend Frederick Cavell, and for the early years of her childhood, she was educated in the vicarage.
She later attended Norwich High School, and then three boarding schools, including a school in Kensington.
After leaving school, she started work as a governess, and following the receipt of a legacy, she started to travel across Europe, and in 1890 she took on the role of governess for a family who lived in Brussels.
Five years later, she returned to her Norfolk home to nurse her sick father, which apparently inspired Edith to pursue a career in nursing, so she started to train at the Royal London Hospital.
In 1907, she returned to Brussels, where she took on the role of running a school for the training of nurses. The school was very succesful.
In August 1914, German forces occupied Brussels. Whilst many other British nurses leave the city, Edith remains, and is soon treating the sick and wounded of all the nationalities involved in the First World War.
Later in 1914, two British soldiers, who had been stranded in the confusion of the German invasion, and the retreat of the British and French, find their way to Edith’s training school, where they are given shelter.
In the following months, many other stranded soldiers find their way to Edith’s school, and an escape organisation develops to help stranded soldiers escape and return to Great Britain.
In August 1915, a Belgian collaborator had passed through the school, resulting in the school being searched. Whilst nothing was found, the German secret police started to take a more focussed interest in the workings of the school, and on the 5th of August 1915, Edith Cavell is arrested, as well as many other colleagues and those involved in the organisation to assist those wanting to escape.
Edith is interrogated for three days, and makes a confession only after being told that it was the only way in which her friends would be saved. She is transferred to the St Gilles prison in Brussels, where she spends the rest of August and the whole of September.
On the 7th of October 1915, Edith, along with some of her colleagues, are taken before a Germany military court. It many ways it was a show trial as there was no jury, and those accused did not have any proper legal representation, and on the 11th of October, Edith, along with four of her colleagues are sentenced to death. Others involved in the escape organisation receive prison sentences.
Appeals to the German authorities are made by the Americans (who had not yet entered the war), the Dutch and the Spanish. The Pope also made an appeal for clemency.
Despite the appeals for clemency, Edith was shot at dawn on the 12th of October, 1915.
Before October 1915, Edith very rarely appeared in any newspapers. On the 20th of October 1888, she was mentioned in the Norwich Argus for her role in the East Suffolk Sewing Scheme, and on the 1st of January 1898, she was mentioned in the Deal, Warmer and Sandwich Mercury as one of those responsible for decorating the church of St. George with evergreens, white flowers, ferns and ivy for Christmas.
In June 1910, she is mentioned as one of the mourners at her father’s funeral, but this quiet life changes in October 1915, when her name is across all the national and local newspapers of the country.
The first that the country appears to hear of Edith and her execution is on the 16th of October, when papers report that the Foreign Office was informed of her death by the United States Ambassador.
These initial reports bring to their readers the full horror and barbarism of war, which had descended to such a level that a nurse could be executed, for example from the Eastern Evening News on the 18th of October, 1915:
“How Nurse Cavell Died – Shot by a German Officer – In an account of the execution of Miss Edith Cavell at Brussels – she was found guilty and sentenced to death on a charge of aiding Belgian men to escape to England – the Amsterdam correspondent of the Daily Mail states: The German firing party of six men and an officer were drawn up in a garden surrounded by a high wall. She was led in, blindfolded with a black scarf. Up to this minute she had stepped out bravely to meet her fate. But before the rifle party her strength at last gave out, and she tottered and fell to the ground. The officer in charge of the execution walked to her, and drew a large pistol from his belt, took steady aim from his knee, and shot her through the head. The firing party looked on. The officer then ordered the soldiers to carry the body to the house, where charge was taken of it by a Belgian woman. The execution of Miss Cavell has shocked the whole Belgian community.”
It is interesting that by the time that the statue was unveiled, Edith’s execution had been raised to a more heroic story. From the London Evening News on the 17th of March 1920:
“Homage of Two Nations – A grey morning in Brussels, one October day in the year 1915. A file of German soldiers, with an officer in command. A quiet figure in the habit of a nurse facing them at a little distance. Dead silence in this prison yard on the grey October morning. The word of command brings up the soldiers rifles, so that they are levelled at the breast of the quiet, motionless figure. Another command. The rifles spout red flame, the noise of the exploding charges rends the air. The steadfast figure shudders and falls forward; dead.”
As well as numerous newspaper reports, a range of prints were made depicting various aspects of her execution. These were often used to show the barbarous nature of the enemy, to encourage recruitment into the army, as at the time of Edith’s execution, conscription had not started.
The following print by Alexander Rosell is a prime example. Described as Edith Cavell wearing a Red Cross uniform lying dead on the floor as her spirit rises in the form of an angel, whilst a Prussian officer stands over her corpse, stroking his beard. A stone cross shattered into pieces lies on the ground:
Licence:Public Domain MarkCredit: Edith Cavell wearing Red Cross uniform lying dead on the floor as her spirit rises in the form of an angel. Process print after A. Rosell, ca. 1915. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Edith Cavell’s monument and statue is Grade I listed for a number of reasons, including the historic interest of the memorial, the quality of the sculpture and Sir George Frampton’s design and craftsmanship, along with the overall location of the memorial in that it continues from Trafalgar Square and is adjacent to the National Portrait Gallery.
At the very top of the memorial is the figure of a woman shielding an infant. In the folds of her dress is the Geneva Cross, now used by the Red Cross, and traditionally a symbol used for the protection of medical personal in war:
The rear of the monument has the word “Fortitude” above a relief of a lion standing triumphant over a serpent, which symbolised Britain’s triumph over treachery:
Sacrifice – on the side of the memorial:
Devotion on the other side:
The reason for writing about Edith Cavell and the monument and statue to her in Charing Cross Road, is a chance find whilst we were in Norwich a couple of weeks ago.
Norwich Cathedral is a magnificent building that deserved a look:
And whilst we were having a look around the cathedral, we found that Edith Cavell was buried just outside at Life’s Green, next to the Cathedral’s St Saviour’s Chapel:
Edith Cavell’s body was brought back to England in May 1919, when “The body of Nurse Cavell was yesterday conveyed from Brussels to Ostend, whence it will be brought to England to-day on board a British destroyer. Impressive scenes attended its removal. When the coffin reaches Dover, this evening special honours will be rendered by nurses and other women war workers. It will lie in state to-night at the Admiralty Pier preparatory to its departure for London tomorrow.”
From Dover to London, the coffin was carried by train, and from Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey, it was carried through the streets on a gun carriage. A service was held at Westminster Abbey, after which it was replaced on the gun carriage and transported to Liverpool Street Station, where a special train took the coffin to Norwich, where, after a second service, Edith Cavell was buried where we find the grave today.
The stone at the grave is not the original. It dates from 2015, the 100th anniversary of her death. The headstone is in the style of those also used in War Graves Commission cemetaries – a request from the family.
The emblem on the top of the headstone is that of her nursing school in Brussels:
Around the edge of the grave are the words “In the light of God and eternity I have realised that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone”.
These words are a variation of words spoken by Edith Cavell on the day before her execution. The part of the sentence starting at Patriotism is also on the memorial in London.
The memorial to, and statue of Edith Cavell is not just a memorial of one person, important though it is. It is also a reminder of the horror and barbarism of war, and, as recorded on the front of the memorial, just above the statue, the importance of humanity.
Hopefully Edith’s approach to her fellow humans is one attitude which will not go out of favour in the centuries to come.
There are so many walks through and around London, and for the really ambitious there is the Capital Ring, and the longer London Loop, or London Outer Orbital Path, which takes you on a walk of almost 150 miles around the edges of Greater London.
I have walked sections of both these routes, and they both offer a different perspective of the wider boundaries of the ever growing city.
For many of the 12 years that I have been writing the blog, I have used the maps of John Rocque to illustrate London as it was in 1746, and I have always been fascinated by the way the edges of the built city end with fields, pasture and gardens. These fields would, in turn, soon be covered with houses and streets, as London’s rapid expansion continued, but the map does what maps do well, it shows the city at a specific point in time.
I enjoy both random wandering and following a theme when out walking, so for a new theme, I decided to try and follow the edges of London in 1746 as shown by Rocque’s map.
A full circle around London, which can go by the wonderfully alliterative name of the Roqcue Ring.
I decided to start on the western edge of the built city, on the northern bank of the river, at what was the horse ferry, and is now Lambeth Bridge, and then work my way northwards to start the circle of the city.
In today’s post, I am covering part of the following map:
I have marked the route in red in the map below, starting at the Horse Ferry on the Thames:
My rule is to try and follow the edge of the built environment, but I am also including Royal Parks in the definition of built, as they would not be covered in streets, and were part of the manmade environment, although I am not including gardens, orchards and other agricultural land.
Some parts of the route will be rather arbitrary, but my intention is the whole of the circle around London will provide a good idea of the edge of London in 1746, and would find what remains from that year in history.
I have replicated the route in the above map on a map of 2026. It looks a bit different as the orientation of the two maps is different, and I preserved the orientation so the street names are readable:
To the starting point, and in 1746, the western edge of the built city was at the Horse Ferry, a historic ferry that once carried people and goods between the point shown on the map, and Lambeth on the opposite side of the river.
The Horse Ferry can be seen in the centre of the river bank in the following map. Mill Bank runs left to right, and northwards from the Horse Ferry is Market Street, now Horseferry Road. There are gardens to the left, and along Mill Bank there is Grosvenor House. Originally Peterborough House, the house was part of the considerable inheritance of Mary Davies, and it came into the Grosvenor family when she married Sir Thomas Grosvenor in 1677. The house was demolished in 1809 so that the Grosvenor family could redevelop the area:
This is the old Horseferry in 1800, with Lambeth Palace in the background:
This is the view today, where Lambeth Bridge has replace the Horseferry. Lambeth palace can be seen in the background to the left:
This is the view looking north along Horseferry Road (Market Street in Rocque’s time). The building of the Security Service MI5 is on the left, and the almost identical building on the right was Imperial Chemicals House, the old headquarters of the chemicals company ICI:
Leaving Millbank and heading along Horseferry Road. Millbank takes its name from the mill that belonged to Westminster Abbey and was at the end of Great Collge Street.
This section of Horseferry Road was originally Market Street, but changed name after the remodelling of the area when Lambeth Bridge arrived:
A short distance along Horseferry Road, we can look right down Dean Bradley Street and just see the columns of St. John’s, Smith Square. The church was built between 1714 and 1728, so around 20 years before Rocque’s map, where it is shown with a large churchyard:
Dean Bradley Street was not there in Rocque’s map, and although the street layout in Westminster may appear to be old, Dean Bradley Street was an early 20th century addition, when the area was developed from terrace housing to larger office blocks.
Dean Bradley Street was named after George Bradley, Dean of Westminster Abbey between 1881 and 1902. St John’s Smith Square is now Smith Square Hall, home of the Sinfonia Smith Square, and is a venue for hire.
Looking north along Horseferry Road at the junction with Dean Bradley Street. In 1746 there were buildings on the right and left. The buildings on the left had a large central area of gardens.
The trees in photo mark the location of a feature that was in Rocque’s map:
On the 1746 map, there is a feature called St. John’s Burying Ground, and although long closed as a burying ground, this is still open space called St. John’s Gardens:
The burial ground served the church at the end of Dean Bradley Street, but as with most burying grounds in London, it soon became full, and the parish went to the extremes of adding three feet of earth across the surface to provide additional depth for more burials.
Body snatchers were a big problem, guards were posted for a time, and in the early 19th century, they were armed with pistols.
These places must have been horrendous, and an article in the Kentish Weekly Post on the 3rd of February 1750 illustrates one of the bizarre happenings at such as place:
“On Sunday morning last, a man, supposed to be murdered, there appearing several marks of violence, tied up in a sack, was thrown over the wall of the Burying Ground of St John’s, Westminster, and on Wednesday he was exposed to view, in order to be owned.”
Today, gravestones line the sides of the gardens:
On what appears to be a relatively recent small building at the southern end of the gardens, there is a much eroded plaque, which looks as if it was moved from another location, and whilst much is illegible, it appears to talk about the grave stones and memorials, and ends with “Become illegible through lapse of time”:
There are a few remaining larger graves / monuments across the gardens as a reminder that this was once a burying ground:
As well as adding three feet of earth, the burying ground was extended by the purchased of some of Grosvenor’s land in 1823, but later when Horseferry Road was widened, the burying ground lost some land.
The state of the burying ground was so bad, that it was closed in 1853, and after being left derelict for a number of years until 1880, a group of local residents took on the responsibility to convert it to a public garden, which was opened on the 23rd of May, 1885.
An article in the London Evening Standard described the opening of the garden, which was performed by the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, who had also contributed £1,000 to the costs of creating the gardens.
The Rev. Colin Furse presented the Duke with a key to the gardens and also stated how important they were for an area which lacked open space, and with a population of between 30,000 and 40,000 within a quarter of a mile, this would be an important place.
The article makes mention of the careful way in which the gravestones were moved to the boundaries of the gardens, but makes no mention of the bodies. With the burying grounds of many London churches, bodies were moved to one of the big 19th century cemeteries that surrounded the city, but perhaps with St. John’s Garden, the old inhabitants are still there.
Just past St John’s Gardens is the junction of Horseferry Road with Marsham Street, which runs to the left and right:
In 1746, Horseferry Road continued onwards, following its current alignment. The land to the left consisted of gardens with Tothill Fields to the north, along with gardens to the right. The stretch of Marsham Street which todays runs to the left at the traffic lights did not exist, but Marsham Street to the right did.
The following map is the detailed extract of this area from the 1746 map. Unfortunately on my printed copy, Marsham Street is at the bottom of a page, so the full section of this street is not shown, but if you look at the bottom of the map could can make out the Mar of Marsham, and it is down this street that I am turning, to follow the built up edge of the city:
View looking along Marsham Street today:
On the right is the 1930s Romney House and on the left are the offices of the Home Office.
Romney House has me confused, and shows the value of double checking.
This adds to the confusion, as in the Millbank Estate, Romney (Stubbs) House is simply named Stubbs House.
Not sure what is happening here, whether the listing is missing, or that I just could not find the listing for Romney House in Marsham Street, or whether the estate agents have mixed up the Romney House in Marsham Street with the listing for the building in the Millbank Estate.
The building on the left is currently occupied by the Home Office. The building was completed in 2005, and designed by the architect Terry Farrell.
Before the current building, there were three infamous 1960s office blocks on the site, which I have ringed in the following 1970s post card:
Designed by Eric Bedford of the Ministry of Public Building and Works, the towers were 216 feet in height which meant that that they were in the background of the view when looking across the river towards the Palace of Westminster / Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey
All of Marsham Street has been rebuilt since Rocque’s map, but as well as the street, Bennett’s Yard, which is the only alley / yard on the eastern side of the street, still survives from 1746:
To show that Marsham Street had already been here for many year’s before Rocque’s map, there is a plaque in one of the walls around the Home Office:
An old street name plaque dating to 1688:
Marsham Street is named after Sir Robert Marsham, who lived between 1650 and 1703 and was a politician and an MP who sat in the House of Commons. I cannot find any reference to whether he either lived on Marsham Street, owned the land or built any part of the street, so I suspect it was his political career that resulted in his name being used for the street.
On the opposite side of Marsham Street is the Emmanuel Centre, a Christian Church:
The building was originally the Christian Science Church and Sunday School Chapel, and was built between 1926 and 1930. This red brick building designed by Sir Herbert Baker, is Grade II* listed, mainly as it is a “virtually unaltered example of an early C20 Christian Science church”. The design also makes creative use of what is a relatively small space between Marsham Street and Tufton Street.
In the following photo, I am at the junction of Marsham Street and Great Peter Street, which crosses from left to right. I am turning left at the traffic lights into Great Peter Street, which was simply called Peter Street in Rocque’s map:
The section of Great Peter Street, north from Marsham Street, appears to have been laid out in the 1720s. The “Great” appears to have been added towards the end of the 18th century, and the name Peter appears to be from the Collegiate Church of St Peter, or Westminster Abbey.
The following photo shows the view along Great Peter Street from Marsham Street. In 1746, to the right was a network of streets and buildings of the growing city. To the left was a single row of buildings along the side of the street, with gardens and fields beyond – the limit of the built city in 1746:
On the pillar at the far end of the building on the left of Great Peter Street, there is a green City of Westminster plaque, seen in the photo below just above the bonnet of the van:
The City of Westminster plaque records that the Gas Light & Coke Company operated on the site between 1813 and 1937, and the site provided the first public supply of gas in the world:
Parliamentary approval for the gas works was given in 1810, and three years later, the plant was in operation.
In October 1813 there were numerous reports in the London newspapers about the rollout of new gas lamps in Westminster, for example:
“The parishes of St. Margaret’s and St. John’s, Westminster, are being lighted with gas by the Gas Light and Coke Company, putting up one lamp where there are three of the common lamps.”
The spread of gas lighting on the streets must have been seen as a remarkable technical achievement, and other towns and cities across the country were eager to emulate the success of gas lighting.
A newspaper article on the 18th of April 1818 reported that “Since the principal streets of London and Westminster have been lighted up with gas, converting ‘darkness visible’ into the glare of day, there have not been those frequent depredations committed, either in the shops or on the highways. The example of the metropolis is immediately to be followed by Bath, Worcester, and other large towns.”
Before the start of the 19th century, at night, London was a very dark place.
Despite the benefit of gas lighting, the gas, an other industries were dirty, polluting and dangerous and they were frequently right next to housing and other types of business.
The was also the case with the gas works in Westminster and the following report, which was in multiple newspapers on the 1st of November 1813, illustrates some of the dangers:
“On Monday the neighbourhood of Great Peter-street, Westminster, was thrown into much confusion and alarm by a gas light explosion, which shook the surrounding houses, broke many windows, and threatened to fire in every direction. From all we could learn it appeared that a pipe unexpectedly burst in the premises of the Gas Light and Coke Company.
By this means much gas oozed out and filled the apartment; but not calculating on this, one of the men took a candle and proceeded to the spot to ascertain what was the matter. The moment the candle was introduced, the whole of the gas that had escaped from the pipe burst into flame, with a dreadful explosion, as if fire had been communicated to a heap of gunpowder. By it, this man was much injured, as well as two or three more of the workmen.
The speedy arrival of many engines, and the exertions within the manufactory, soon got the fire under control, and prevented it from extending to the neighbouring premises.”
As well as the risks of explosions and fires, local residents also had to put up with the constant transport of coal to the works, along with the removal of all the waste.
This was part rectified by a pipe which ran from the gas works down to the river for the disposal of effluent, and a wharf was leased in Millbank for ships to deliver coal for the shorter journey to the gas works.
During the mid 19th century, the gas works were enlarged, eventually filling a large rectangle of land between Great Peter Street, Monck Street, Horseferry Road and parts of Marsham Street.
This was the “Principal Entrance to the Gas Works” in 1830:
By the later parts of the 19th century, the site was too small for the size of gas works needed to power much of the city. Gas companies were amalgamating and the giant Beckton Gas Works opened, so in 1870, the Great Peter Street works changed to only being available for peak demand, closing fully in 1875.
Whilst the site had ended gas production, it was still useful as it was the hub of a network of gas distribution pipes, so after gas production ended, gas holders were built to store gas produced elsewhere, and distribute to local consumers.
The 1950 revision of the OS map shows two gas holders that were built on the site, and also gives an indication of the size of the overall site:
In the following image from the Britain from Above archive, dated 1938, you can see the two gas holders as two large white circles to the lower left. Remarkable from today’s perspective, that these were so close to the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey:
I am continuing along Great Peter Street. On the right is part of the red brick St Matthew’s clergy house, built in 1905:
And just past the red brick building is the church of St Matthew, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and built between 1849 and 1851:
The church has a really strange design. The church and the clergy house sit on a rectangular plot of land. The clergy house occupies a corner of the plot, so the church has the tower and entrance in Great Peter Street, runs back along the side of the clergy house, then does a 90 degree turn along the back of the clergy house to end at St. Ann’s Street, next to which there is also St Matthew’s Church of England Primary School, shown in the right of the following photo, with the rear of the church to the left and the brick clergy house to the left:
Continuing along Great Peter Street:
In the above photo, there is a white building along the street, which turns out to be a pub, the Speaker:
There was a pub on the site when Rocque’s map was made in 1746. The original pub appears to date from 1729, which is when this section of the street was originally laid out. The pub was originally called the Castle.
It was rebuilt between 1794 and 1795, and I assume that the current building dates from this rebuild, as I can find no other references to any further reconstruction. Following completion of the late 18th century work, the pub became known as the Elephant and Castle, a name it kept until 1999, when it became the Speaker.
I had a quick look at the census data for 46 Great Peter Street, and in 1911 when the pub was known as the Elephant and Castle it was occupied by the licensed victualler William Arthur Atkins and his family consisting of his wife and two daughters, the wife and eldest daughter assisted in the business, whilst the second daughter was at school.
There was also a 2 year old son, who, in the “occupation” field has the brilliant description of “playing”, which is the perfect occupation for a 2 year old.
There were also two servants, listed as barmen and a cook.
The interior of the pub:
Today, the pub is one single bar, but despite its relatively small size, as with the majority of pubs, it had once been divided into public and saloon bars.
The gradual merging of these two very different types of bars was a contentious issue. There is a brilliant article in the Chelsea News and General Advertiser on the 5th of June 1959 when the landlord of the Elephant and Castle, as it was named at the time, raised his objections to these changes:
“Mr. Rupert Finch, tenant at the Elephant and Castle, Great Peter Street, Westminster, said that trying to join public and saloon bars together had been tried in Victoria with disastrous results. Customers had walked out to express their opposition to it.
Gin palaces aren’t wanted in London, he declared.
You.ve got to cater for people who don’t like drinking in the same bar as their bosses each day. And there’s always the fellow who likes his cheaper pint in the public.”
I had a part-time job in the early 1980s in a pub, and the salon and public bars were indeed very different places, and the public bar was always the last one to empty out at closing time. The pub is still around today, but is now a single bar.
So the pub does not date from the time of Rocque’s map, but there is one building on Great Peter Street that could:
This is a really strange building, which looks as if it has undergone some considerable change over its possibly long history.
The side wall is made of much later brick. This could have been when the rest of the houses in what would have been a terrace, were demolished, leaving only number 79.
The ground floor also appears to have been significantly remodelled, leaving only the upper two floors which look as if they could have been part of an early 18th century terrace house.
The building is not listed, and also has a rather strange white feature projecting from the second floor. I have no idea what this is, but the building is occupied by a firm of architects, so it may be something to do with their profession.
It would be nice to think that the outer wall on the upper two floors is the same as would have been found in 1746, when Great Peter Street was part of the western limit of built London.
The yellow arrow in the following map shows the point I have reached in the Rocque Ring:
Not that far, given the total length of the route, but even in this small distance, I have found that it is another way of exploring and looking at London, and to appreciate just how much the city has grown in the 280 years since Rocque’s map of 1746.
I will continue walking the Rocque Ring in the coming months.
At the end of the last war, there were a range of booklets published by local authorities, postal and transport organisations, police, fire service etc. documenting London at war and their participation in the six years during which the destruction of the city would be at a level not seen since the Great Fire of London. These were published quickly, and reading them they have a common theme of wanting to set on record the challenges of the last six years before the country quickly moved on to what was hoped to be a period of reconstruction and prosperity.
My father bought a large number of these as they were published, one of which was titled “Hitler Passed This Way”, which showed bomb damage throughout the city using before and after photos.
I wrote about the booklet ten years ago (link at the end of today’s post), and today I want to look in detail at one of the sites recorded in the booklet.
This is The Ring on Blackfriars Road, at the junction with Charlotte Street (now Union Street):
At the time of the above photo, the Ring was an indoor boxing venue, but it had an earlier history before boxing. The building dated from 1783 and was the creation of the Reverend Rowland Hill, a rather eccentric churchman.
Rowland Hill was born in August 1744. He was the son of Sir Rowland Hill and brother of Sir Richard Hill, and he came from an influential Shropshire family.
He went to Eton and then to St. John’s College, Cambridge, and then started preaching across the country, and in London at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in the Elephant and Castle and at the Tottenham Court Road Chapel.
He seems to have had a rather complex view of religion and in his obituary he was described as “theoretically a Churchman and practically a Dissenter. A Dissenter within the Church, a Churchman among Dissenters – necessarily involved him, especially in the early part of his career, in continual polemic skirmishing. His very Catholicism sometimes put on an aggressive form.”
There were many anecdotes about his life, including one where he was riding with his wife in a carriage “somewhere near London”, when they were attacked by three men who violently demanded money. They had earlier attacked his assistant who had gone on before them. When he was held up he stood up and, “set up such a tremendous unearthly shout that one of them cried out ‘We have stopped the devil by mistake and had better be off’, on which they ran away, and left him and his lady in peaceable possession of the road.” When telling this story he said that he had “made all the outrageous noises I could think of, and frightened the fellows out of their wits”.
The building opened as the Surrey Chapel opened in 1783, and the Rev Rowland Hill was the first to preach in the chapel, although rather than a successful opening, newspapers reported that “There was the greatest confusion imaginable last Sunday in the Rev. Rowland Hill’s new Chapel in which he preached that day for the first time. Near the conclusion of his sermon a man loudly proclaimed that the ‘chapel was falling’. The consequence was too dreadful to be described. In the struggle to escape, many individuals were exceedingly hurt; and others had their clothes torn from their backs. The man was taken into custody.”
Rowland Hill preached at the Surrey Chapel for much of his life, almost to the very day of his death in April 1833, when at the age of 89, he died in his house next to the Surrey Chapel in Charlotte Street, (now Union Street).
The chapel was an unusual shape, not the traditional rectangle of a church of chapel, but a multi-sided part circle, as the Rev. Rowland Hill wanted a chapel in which “there were no corners for the devil to hide”.
In the following extract from the 1892 OS map, I have circled the Surrey Chapel:
By the time of the above map, extensions had been added to the chapel at top right in the map, which part obscured its original shape.
Blackfriars Road runs from top to bottom in the centre of the map. Great Charlotte Street is today The Cut, Charlotte Street is Union Street, and Southwark Underground Station on the Jubilee Line is today on the upper corner of Great Charlotte Street and Blackfriars Road.
The Surrey Chapel was always well attended with between 1,000 and 2,000 people attending services and meetings.
One meeting held in April 1845 demonstrated that even 300 years after the break with Rome, the Catholic faith continued to be a contentious issue.
1,500 people attended a meeting to oppose a grant that the Government proposed to make to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth in County Kildare in Ireland, a seminary founded in 1795 for the education of priests, and an institution that by 1850 had become the largest seminary in the world. The meeting in the Surrey Chapel believed that “the Reformation from Popery was the greatest blessing and honour that England ever possessed, and therefore, views with alarm, the determination of Her Majesty’s Ministers to endow the popish college of Maynooth with £26,000 per annum.”
The Surrey Chapel was also home to a number of societies, including:
The Auxiliary Bible Society – formed to distribute bibles and holy scriptures, for example to the Southwark Sunday School Society
The Dorcas Society – which assisted poor married women during their period of confinement, including the provision of money, coals, soap, clothing for the infant and the loan of suitable linen for the mother
The Female Clothing Society – the object of the society was to furnish, at half price, the most necessary and useful articles of female clothing; and many needy but decent families have therefore been enabled, by their small savings to procure comfortable apparel
The Female Missionary Working Association – the object of which is the promotion of a missionary spirit among its member, to assist those ladies who, with their husband, are labouring abroad in connection with the London Missionary Society
Just a sample of the societies that were meeting the chapel in Blackfriars Road.
The word Missionary usually conjures images of people travelling across the world to convert other populations to the Christian church, however the Surrey Chapel was also involved in extensive missionary work across London. The following is from the London City Mission Magazine on the 1st of December 1841:
“London affords the opportunity of carrying on Missionary work among many distinct classes of people. As to birth, we have the Irishman, the Welshman, the German, the Italian, and the Jew, both British and foreign, in great numbers, and all of these want missionaries.
As to employment, there are many classes greatly neglected which either want missionaries or the special and direct attention of the clergy and or other ministers of the Gospel. There are two police forces of about 4,000 men; there are also omnibus drivers and conductors, coach and cabmen, and cattle drovers. There are also soldiers at various barracks, who spiritual advantages are very few, and whose spiritual state is sadly neglected, and there are firemen who, from the peculiar duties, seldom know the enjoyment of a Sabbath.”
The article had a special mention for the work of the Surrey Chapel after the loss of the lives of two firemen at a fire in Blackfriars Road, following a service where the reverend of the chapel preached directly to the firemen assembled in the chapel. This action resulted in a letter of thanks from James Braidwood, the Superintendent of the London fire service.
After the death of the Rev. Rowland Hill, he was buried under the Pulpit of the Surrey Chapel, and it continued as a religious chapel until 1876 when the congregation moved to Christ Church in Westminster Bridge Road. This included the move of Rowland Hill’s body from Surrey Chapel to Christ Church.
Following the move of the chapel’s congregation, the building took on the role of a factory, before becoming a centre for boxing, which I will cover after the next two photos.
The Surrey Chapel / The Ring was severely damaged by bombing in 1940, and in December 1944 a V2 rocket landed next to the building, and what remained was demolished to the leave the site of the building as shown in the following photo from “Hitler Passed This Way”:
I took the following photo of the site today, in August 2026, showing a very different building:
The current building on the site is 197 Blackfriars Road, a building which also has the name Palestra, which is a rather nice reference to the history of the site, as Palestra in ancient Greece and Rome was a place for training in boxing and wrestling. It is an office block used by Transport for London.
After the move of the congregation of the Surrey Chapel, and the building’s brief life as a factory manufacturing electric motors and as a general engineering works, in early 1910 it was reported that the building was being converted to “an electric theatre for kinomategraph exhibitions” – presumably a cinema, however later in the same year it would take on a very different use, as reported in the South London Press on the 30th of May, 1910:
“BOXING RING FOR SOUTHWARK – With its exterior brightened by countless rows of electric bulbs, old Surrey Chapel has been reopened as The Ring. The announcement that an up-to-date boxing ring would be opened there, under the sole direction of Mr. Dick Burge, has been enthusiastically welcomed. At the opening on Saturday night, the building was filled with a big audience of those interested in boxing. The construction of the old place is peculiarly suitable and the reseating, redecorating, and the erection of a twelve feet enclosure have been caried out judiciously, and on up-to-date lines.
Several local heroes fought bouts in a 10st. novice competition, which was preceded with on Whit-Monday, and champions and ex-champions gave exhibitions of skill. The timekeeper was a clergyman – the Rev. Thomas Collins.”
The boxing ring was on the site of the old pulpit, and as King Edward VII had just died, the ring was “draped in purple and black crape, as were the pillars supporting the gallery”.
Dick Burge had taken over the ring with his wife Bella. He had been a boxer in the last few decades of the 19th century, and for six years had been the British lightweight champion. After retiring from boxing, he had financial difficulties and ended up being involved with some conmen, with the result that he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released a couple of years before the end of his sentence after helping a prison guard who was being violently attacked.
Not long after opening The Ring, the First World War started, and Dick Burge joined the 1st Surrey Rifles, being promoted to Sergeant in 1915. He had joined up as “an example to English sportsmen”.
In March 1918, he fell victim to pneumonia after just a week’s illness. His obituary stated that he was instrumental in obtaining a large number of recruits, that he was a generous man, whose chief joy in life was extending a helping hand to those who needed it.
As well as Dick Burge’s example of joining up, the Ring was also involved in the drive for recruits, and the hunt for those who were dodging the call-up, as described in the following report, which was carried by numerous newspapers on the 5th of September 1916:
“BOXING RING RAIDED BY POLICE AND MILITARY – A crowd of spectators were present at the Ring, Blackfriars-road yesterday afternoon to witness the boxing contests. Three thousand had paid for admission. Suddenly a force of police officers and military with fixed bayonets entered. Each exit was guarded, and as the spectators left the building there was a challenge by the police. Eligible looking men were asked to show their papers and explain why they were not in khaki. Instantly the shirkers and dodgers amongst the crowd vainly attempted to elude the police. With great promptitude 50 arrests were carried out, and the prisoners were marched away in custody. They made a striking procession along Blackfriars-road to a chorus of loud applause from wounded soldiers in the vicinity.”
After Dick’s death, his widow Bella took on the running of the Ring, and made a considerable success of the venue. It was a place well known for bringing on boxers at the start of their careers, as well as more established and famous boxers.
Bella had a real interest in boxing, and how the sport was developing. In 1924 she wrote to the London Evening News:
“Mrs. Bella Burge writes from The Ring: During the fifteen years that The Ring has been open, everyone will admit that practically every British boxer with anything appertaining to fame has been brought out at this venue.
With this many years experience, it appears to me that British boxing at the present time is in a state of chaos, and I think that something should be done, especially with regard to the heavy-weight championship. I feel sure that Mr. Bettinson and the members of the National Sporting Club will coincide with my views.
The fabulous salaries being paid to some boxers at the present time will ultimately mean ruin to all concerned. The public have stood by with wonderful patience, which will eventually be exhausted.
In an effort to revive public interest I once again offer Frank Goddard (the present champion) and Jack Bloomfield a purse of £1,000, and an additional £100 each for training expenses, for a contest under championship conditions, to be held at the Ring.”
Bella was quite a woman. Born in New York, by the age of twelve, she was on stage at the Pavilion Theatre in London, and until marrying Dick Burge, and getting involved in boxing, she was a music hall artist, working with Rosie Lloyds, the sister of the artist Marie Lloyd.
Bella must have been a formidable woman as she was known for being the boss of the Ring, a place which was often called the “roughest and toughest arena in the whole rough and tough boxing world”. There was often plenty of trouble at the Ring, with the cheap standing area at the back of the balcony a place where the “tough lads used to gather, armed with knuckle-dusters and hob-nailed boots”.
She dealt with these trouble makers as with all trouble makers, and when she told them to get out and not come back, they knew that she meant it. There was also a system of suspensions to keep out trouble makers.
Bella was also against the fixing of fights, and it was claimed that “there were no fixed fights when Bella was watching”.
In the final years of the 1930s, other boxing halls were starting to draw greater crowds than the Ring, and Bella often had to pay the fighters from her own personal savings.
After the Ring was bombed, she ended her role in the boxing profession and lived quietly in Bloomsbury, until her death aged 84 in 1962.
Whilst today there is no trace of the Ring, the name of the building on the site today is an obscure reference to the sport, but the pub across the road junction has taken on the job of maintaining the name:
The pub was originally the Railway Tavern and seems to date from the mid 19th century. I am not sure when the name changed to the Ring, but the last reference I can find to the name Railway Tavern was in 1951.
The pub did for a number of years have a boxing ring in one of the upper floors, and walking in today, photos and memorabilia of the sport of boxing covers almost every bit of free space across the walls:
They have Adnams Broadside on handpumps (£6 a pint if you track London beer prices), so with one of these, I sat alongside one of the windows so I could look out across to the location of the place that gave the pub its name:
Photos of boxers fill the pub – a bit difficult to photo as I did not want to include other customers in the photo:
There is much else to find at this road junction. In the photos of the Ring as well as the map, a railway running across a brick viaduct and bridge across Blackfriars Road can be seen just behind the Ring.
This is the view of the eastern side of the bridge today:
Under the bridge, and in the eastern side of the bridge is what appears to be an old entrance, with signs stating Charing Cross Railway and Blackfriars Station:
There is a plaque on the wall to the right which states that this is the entrance to the former Blackfriars Station, commenced by the Charing Cross Railway Company on a line from London Bridge to Charing Cross, and that it was taken over by the South Eastern Railway Company before opening in January 1864.
This is from a time when railway construction was taking place across much of London. Small companies were merging to form larger compnaies, temporary stations opened whist other major construction work was completed, and this appears to have been the story for this first Blackfriars Station.
The plaque states it was opened in January 1864, and a news report in the London Evening Standard from December 1863 is titled “Opening of the Charing Cross Railway”, and includes a brief description of the station during an official inspection of the route by Captain Tyler of the Royal Engineers on the 31st of December:
“About twelve o’clock, the train, consisting of a fine locomotive and two of the new first-class carriages belonging to the South-Eastern Railway, left the Charing-cross end of the line and proceeded gently along the down rail to the junction at the Waterloo-road, where a minute scrutiny of the signals (Saxby’s patent) and the points were made by the inspector.
After some time had been spent at this point the train proceeded on its way to London bridge, passing the new Blackfriars Station; which is provided with two side and one central platforms lighted by globular lamps similar to those on the Metropolitan Railway. The whole of the signals, points, stations and permanent way were carefully examined by Captain Tyler, who, we believe, expressed satisfaction at many of the arrangements, and on the arrival of the train at London Bridge.”
Not sure when the station closed, but it was part of the ever expanding story for London’s rail network.
The glazed bricks on the side of the bridge close to the location of the Ring still have damage sustained during the bombing which destroyed the Ring:
This road junction continues to play a part in the story of London transport networks, as directly opposite the location of the Ring, and as with the original Blackfriars Station, also next to the railway viaduct, is Southwark Station on the Jubilee Line. The station opened in November 1999 as part of the Jubilee Line extension:
I have now covered three corners of the junction, and there is more to discover on the fourth corner, where looking across, there is a housing block:
This is Rowland Hill House, named after the Reverend Rowland Hill, founder of the Surrey Chapel:
And in the corner, between Rowland Hill House and the road junction, there is a black post with a golden dog licking a pot on the top:
The reason why the golden dog and pot is here is down to a quote from Charles Dickens. The following extract from the Norwood Press and Dulwich Advertiser on the 26th of May 1933 provides some background:
“While Dickens himself was lodging in Lant-street and drudging in Warren’s blacking warehouse down by Hungerford-stairs, he tells us ‘My usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge and down that turning in the Blackfriars-road which has Rowland Hill’s chapel on one side, and the likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot, over a shop door on the other’. Rowland Hill’s once famous chapel is very well known to present patrons of ‘ the noble art’ as The Ring, but alas the golden dog is no more, He was sold only a year or two since, and so has taken his place in the honourable and ever-increasing company of vanished landmarks of old South London.”
The South London Press is a wonderful local newspaper for research, not only for news articles from the past, but the paper also had a regular series of articles on Southwark’s Past, and one article on the 6th of June 1913 included a section on old signs that once hung above shops and businesses, including the following on the dog and pot (and apologies for the language in the verse at the end):
“One is to be seen on the premises of Messrs. Cunningham and Co., the well-known iron merchants at the cornet of Charlotte-st. It is referred to by Charles Dickens as the ‘likeness of a golden dog licking a pot’. I am sorry that I cannot give you a copy of the original parchment document, as Mr. Cunningham tells me one day, some rascal or other stepped in and prigged it.
This time honoured survival dates from 1533 and the house is generally known as the ‘Dog and Porridge Pot’. In the Magazine of Commerce of September 1903, it is thus described:- ‘The dog is in the act of licking out a three legged iron pot, which it has over turned, and is said to indicate a slovenly housewife. There are woodcuts extant representing the customs of those days, in which two old women, in a disorderly kitchen, are to be seen wiping a plate with the bushy tail of a dog, whose head is buried in a pot, doing his duty at the washing-out process. Then follows this classic:-
All sluts behold, take view of me, Your own good housewifery to see, It is (methinks) a cleanly care, My dishcloth in this sort to spare, Whilst dog, you see, doth lick the pot, His tail for dishcloth I have got.”
The article from the Norwood Press states that the original dog and pot was sold, and this appears to have been to the Cumin Museum, where the collection of the Cumin family was held. They had collected objects from across the world, and left them to the borough of Southwark in 1902.
The Cumin collection is now held by the Southwark Heritage Centre, where apparently a selection are on display. There are also 145 pages of on line shows artifacts in the collection. I got half way through but could not find the dog and pot. I will email the heritage centre.
The shop on which the dog and pot was mounted was destroyed during the last war.
The Dickens Fellowship on their website report that two copies of the dog and pot were created in wood by carver Mike Painter. One was held by the Dickens Museum and the other put on display at the road junction where it was unveiled in 2013.
Being wood, it suffered from exposure to weather and environment, and developed a large split.
The second copy was taken out of storage, and to prevent the same thing happening again, was covered in gilding by Woodwork London, and unveiled on the 7th of February 2026.
So on this one south London road junction, there is:
On the south-east corner – the Rowland Hill building named after the founder of the Surrey Chapel and a gilded dog and pot recalling an earlier version on an iron mongers, that was based on an old story, and seen by Dickens on his route home
On the south-west corner – the Ring pub. Once the Railway Tavern, now named after the centre of boxing opposite, and covered with photos and boxing memorabilia
On the north-west corner – Southwark Station, a relatievly recent station and part of the continued expansion on London’s transport network
And on the north-east corner – where today Transport for London work on the management of London’s transport network, on the site of one of London’s major boxing venues managed by Dick Burge, with his wife Bella taking over the business after his death, and where police and soldiers with fixed bayonets in the First World War searched for those dodging conscription, which had been introduced in January 1916 for all single men aged between 18 and 41, and where in 1783, the Reverend Rowland Hill opened the Surrey Chapel, attracting congregations of over 1,500, and from where missionaries were supported both across the world, and to the immigrants and workers of London
It continues to amaze me just how much history there is to discover in every part of London, not just of the buildings, but of the people who once called the city their home.
