Monthly Archives: October 2025

Nile Street Stairs, Woolwich

9 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

23 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pevsner guide describes Fountain House as:

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

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

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

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

Eastern City is a BID or Business Improvement District.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And some history:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Remains of a Battersea Gas Holder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another of Ben Murphy’s photos:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Church of Notre Dame de France

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The domed roof to the church:

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

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

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

A side view of the interior of the church:

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

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

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

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

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

All Hallows Staining and 50 Fenchurch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A weeks notice is generally required on either side.

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

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