Monthly Archives: July 2026

The Creatives behind the Festival of Britain – Jacquetta Hawkes

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I have written quite a few posts about the Festival of Britain, and as this year is the 75th anniversary of the festival, I want to look at another aspect of the festival – the people behind the festival, those who created the overall theme, architects, individual pavilions, the written commentary in each pavilion etc.

The 1951 festival was a snapshot of Britain at a key point in history. The Second World War was just six years before the festival, and decades of significant change were in the future.

The South Bank exhibition site was the centre piece of the festival, and was split in two areas.

Between County Hall and Hungerford Railway Bridge was the upstream circuit, the focus was on “The Land”, and looked at the land of Britain, the natural scene, the country, minerals of the island, power and production (mainly driven by what was mined from the land), sea and ships, and transport.

The downstream circuit was between Hungerford Railway and Waterloo Bridges, and the focus of this section of the festival was on “The People”, and looked at the people of Britain, homes and gardens, schools, health, sport, and the seaside.

Responsibility for developing what was on display throughout the festival was through several key roles.

Individuals were responsible for developing the overall theme, architectural design and display design. This started at the highest level with the overall concept of the festival, and then dropped down to those responsible for the same role for individual pavilions and display areas.

The following image is the first page from the South Bank festival guide for the downstream circuit on the people, and the People of Britain pavilion:

At the top are the names of those who had overall responsibility for this section of the festival, and under the title “The People of Britain” are the names of those responsible for the pavilion and displays on the people of britain.

I have underlined one name in red – Jacquetta Hawkes – the Theme Convener, the subject matter expert who was responsible for bringing a consistent theme to the pavilion.

Jacquetta Hawkes was born on the 5th of August 1910 in Cambridge. Her father was Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, who won the Nobel prize in 1929, along with Christiaan Eijkman, for their discovery of vitamins. Her mother, Jessie Ann Stevens was the daughter of a ship’s fitter from Ramsgate.

Jacquetta developed an interest in archaeology from a very early age, and would go on to establish a considerable career in what was at the time a very male dominated profession.

As evidence of her ground-breaking role as a woman in archaeology, in 1929 she was the first woman to take the Archaeology and Anthropology degree at Newnham College, Cambridge.

After graduating, she travelled to Palestine to work on excavations, and on her return, she married the archaeologist Christopher Hawkes , who she had met earlier at Cambridge.

Jacquetta Hawkes was a prolific author, with her first book, “The Archaeology of Jersey”, being published in 1938.

I have a couple of her books. The first is “A Guide to the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments in England and Wales”:

The book, as the name suggests, is a comprehensive guide to Prehistoric and Roman monuments, and includes background information, such as the types of monuments to be found, a chronology, a lengthy gazetteer of sites, and, something modern books seem to have lost, a large fold out map.

The book obviously reflects the state of knowledge at the time (1951), but it is still a remarkably useful book for cataloguing and examining so many sites.

Chapter One is titled “The Land of Britain”, and this seems to be a theme that can be found in much of Jacquetta’s work, including the Festival of Britain. Her view of how the land of Britain and the evolution of life on the land are intertwined, and the first couple of paragraphs from the opening chapter sum up this approach:

“If it can be claimed that the whole of our country and not only its surviving antiquities should be seen as the creation of past generations, it is legitimate to go much further, to penetrate below the surface of pasture, arable, woodland and waste and to see the whole substance of the island as one continuous creation. Through milliards of years it has been built and shaped; sometimes lying as a part of a vast continent embracing what is now the Atlantic and North America, sometimes part of the sea-bed of equally vast oceans. tropical, desert, and artic climates have played over it.

So, side by side with the evolution of life, the land of Britain was brought into being; the remodelling of its surface by man belongs to this continuous and still rapidly developing process.”

Whilst the guide to Prehistoric and Roman monuments is at its heart a guide, Jacquetta takes the approach summed up in the two paragraphs above, and expands it considerably in, probably her best known book, “A Land”:

A Land was also published in 1951, I have the 1978 edition (some sources give the original publication year as 1953, however my 1978 edition has 1951 as the original date, and Jacquetta’s introduction is dated 1950).

A Land is not a text book, or single subject book on geology, climate, archaeology, the evolution of life, history etc. but takes all these subjects to construct a story of how the land of Britain has developed, and both the impact on, and the use of the land, by the emergence and evolution of life.

The book links the formation of rocks, minerals and resources to how they were and are used by humans. Granite, Portland Stone, Chalk, Coal etc. all have their origins shown as part of the geological development of the land linked to their future use by people for homes, buildings, industry.

The book is “off its time” – a phrase that implicitly means that almost everything we publish today, will, in the next 50, 100 and more years, also be regarded as containing inaccuracies, not reflect the latest scientific understanding, will have unacceptable views, but as with the story told in “A Land”, human knowledge and culture is on a conveyor belt of continuous change, and the present is just a snapshot in time of both knowledge and culture.

As an indication of how archaeological and scientific advances can impact a book, the introduction to the 1978 edition of “A Land” lists several updates to the 1951 edition.

A Land has been described as being a sentimental and romantic book, and there is a degree of truth to these descriptions, but what I find important about the book is that it presents a way of looking at the country, an intertwined story of continuous evolution – an obvious example being the geological and climate conditions that led to the formation of coal, which was the key source of energy for the industrial revolution, from the start of steam power with Thomas Newcomen’s and James Watt’s engines in the 18th century.

When she wrote “A Land”, Jacquetta lived in Fitzroy Road, just to the east of Primrose Hill, and she references the hill in the opening paragraphs of the book:

“When I have been working late on a summer night, I like to go out and lie on the patch of grass in our back garden. This garden is a square of about twenty feet, so that to lie on it is like exposing oneself in an open box or tray. Not far below the topsoil is the London Clay which, as Primrose Hill bumps up conspicuously at the end of the road. the humus, formed by the accumulation first of forest and then of meadow land, must once have been fertile enough, but nearly a century in a back garden has exhausted it.”

Her mind then begins to wander:

“As I lie looking at the stars with that blend of wonder and familiarity they alone can suggest, a barge turning the bend in Regent’s Park Canal hoots, a soft wedge of sound in the darkness that is cut across by the long rumble of a train drawing out of Euston Station.

The people sitting in those lighted carriages, even the bargee leaning sleepily on his long tiller, are not individuals going to board meetings in Manchester or bringing in coal for London furnaces. For the instant they are figures moved about the map by unknown forces, as helpless as the shapes of history that can be found behind them, all irresistibly impelled to the achievements of this moment.”

And then begins the story of millions of years of the history of Britain.

The Land also shows how in 1950 when the book was written, Britain was still a country with strong regional and local differences.

This was not just with the people, but also how the country was built, with towns and villages often being distinctive by their industries and agriculture and their local building materials, and designs.

This localism was also a thread running through parts of the Festival of Britain, and one of the very many publications associated with the festival, was the following map, published by the oil company Esso, with the title “What do they talk about”:

Published by Esso, no doubt as an incentive to get people out driving and buying petrol to explore the country, if did show a country where many areas were still very distinctive.

Compare that with today, where local areas are much less diverse. Buildings are generally built to very similar designs and off remotely rather than locally made materials, nearly all the industries shown on the map have disappeared, and those that remain are in continual decline (for example in the midlands, a kiln can be seen with the word “Pots”. The midlands pottery industry continues to shrink, with the latest casualty being the Denby factory which shut down their kilns a couple of months ago).

A theme to the festival seems to have been to encourage people to get out and explore their country. As well as the map shown above, there were other festival events across the country, and also a series of “About Britain” guides were published, each with the festival emblem on the front cover.

Each guide covered a specific area of the country and provided a detailed guide, recommended routes and places to see:

Returning to the People of Britain pavilion, of which Jacquetta was the theme convener, the journey through the pavilion was laid out in a chronological sequence, with some of the displays set up as an archaeological dig. Starting from the entrance, the displays covered The Relics Of Our Ancestors, How They Came Here, How They Lived, The Romans In Britain, Men of the Iron Age, The Anglo Saxons, The British Today.

The People of Britain pavilion route from the guide is shown below:

The final paragraph in the festival guide section on the People of Britain reflects on how migration and integration has been part of the development of Britain:

“But though the ancient dead are buried, it is the very blood they brought here that runs in us – yet, whether they came as conquerors or men of peace, all of them suffered a sea change on the way. They were absorbed into the life that was here before them, and themselves became islanders of a land that moulded the thoughts, the feelings, and the behaviour of them all into a whole which is our British way of life and our tradition”.

The above paragraph is another example of why I find the Festival of Britain so useful as a reference point for so much about the country at the time.

The paragraph talks about the absorption of those who migrated to the country in the past, and how all islanders moulded the British way of life. In the decades to come, this would change to a more multi-cultural approach, with issues about absorption, or integration as we would now describe the process.

The Festival of Britain guide names all those who had a role in the creation and design of the festival, with Jacquetta Hawkes being the theme convenor for the People of Britain pavilion.

Reading through the names of those responsible for all the other exhibits and pavilions across the festival, she was one of very few women who had a key role in the creation of the festival.

There is far more to her life than archaeology and the Festival of Britain.

During her marriage to Christopher Hawkes, she had a son, Nicolas who was born in 1938.

Serious archaeology was not possible during the Second World War, so in 1941 she took on the role of Assistant Principal of the Post-War Reconstruction Secretariat, later moving to the Ministry of Education, and then became a Principal and Secretary of the UK National Committee for Unesco, a role she held until the start of her involvement with the Festival of Britain.

The war also marked a change in her personal life, as she fell in live with, and had an affair with the poet Walter J. Turner, and she was devastated when he died of a brain haemorrhage in December 1946.

In 1947, she met the writer J.B. Priestley at a Unesco conference in Mexico, and they fell in love, although unable to marry until 1953, by when they had both been divorced.

J.B. Priestley had written English Journey, which was published in 1934, another useful snapshot of the country as the book covered Priestley’s travels around England.

After her marriage to Priestley, Jacquetta continued to write. She was a governor of the British Film Institute and in 1971 she was a vice-president of the Council for British Archaeology.

Following a short spell on the Isle of Wight, they moved to Alveston in Warwickshire, where she became president of the Warwickshire branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. With Priestley, she was one of the co-founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Following J.B. Priestley’s death in 1982, she moved to Chipping Camden, where she pursued an interest in the old buildings and historic churches of the area.

Her last book, published in 1982, and written with archaeologist Paul Bahn was the “The Shell Guide to British Archaeology“, one of a series of Shell guides, which also includes guides to many of the counties of the country.

Jacquetta wrote and contributed to multiple journal and magazine articles, as well as radio and TV.

Jacquetta was involved in one of the more unusual TV programmes of the 1960s when in 1962 she wrote the script for part of a programme in the BBC Monitor series titled “The Lonely Shore”, with the segment being on “What Was Britain Like Before the Apocalypse?”.

This segment sees archaeologists from the future returning to the site of a lost previous expedition, who had placed their finds on the beach waiting for collection by a future team.

It is brilliant as it highlights the difficulty with interpreting the use and meaning of artifacts from long lost peoples and civilisations. It is almost a parody of the archaeological profession that Jacquetta was for so long, a prominent member.

There is a brilliant bit starting at 8 minutes, 22 seconds where a collecting box for the PDSA (People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals) is interpreted as an altar set-up for the dog cult:

Jacquetta Hawkes died on the 18th of March 1996, and her ashes were buried with those of J.B. Priestley in the grounds of the church in Hubberholm in North Yorkshire.

Archaeology had started with the gentleman amateur, and during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had transformed into professional academic excavation and study of the past.

From the 1950s onwards, archaeology became more scientific, and Jacquetta criticised the reductionist approach that she saw as growing in importance in the profession, rather than the importance of constructing the human past.

She wrote an article for the journal Antiquity in 1967, from which the following abstract is taken:

“Archaeology in is danger of becoming so ruled by its technological and scientific servants that its proper goal of reconstructing the human past is being overlooked. The ingenious new equipment of archaeology attracts to itself a major share of not only money but intellectual effort; the result is that, while historical writing of the quality formerly seen is nowhere emergent, enormous quantities of undigested facts, graphs and tables litter our ever more expensive reports. The time needed to compile these analyses keeps other workers too long uninformed; the excavator may not even live to complete his scientifically showy report. As for controversies in interpretation, pages of correspondence solve nothing that time and new discoveries will not. Meantime, art criticism and studies of religion are neglected because they cannot be tabulated; even the remote stages of the Palaeolithic might be made to reveal more than statistics. A proper balance between science and history, a blend of old and new ideals, must be found if we are to maintain popular interest in archaeology and attract recruits with historical imagination.”

Personally, I believe that the approach criticised by Jacquetta, and her own approach, are both equally valid and important.

The technical and scientific approach, where facts, graphs and tables provide a detailed understanding of a site, city, population and culture, and the approach supported by Jacquetta expands on these individual details, and puts an individual site, facts, graphs and tables within the wider context of both the land and human history.

Jacquetta Hawkes was a fascinating woman, who achieved so much in a male dominated profession, and her book “A Land” is still an inspiration to look at history in a different way – a way in which geology, climate, life and human evolution, industry, agriculture, buildings etc. can all be understood as an intertwined story.

What is missing from this post is a photo of Jacquetta Hawkes. All those I have found online are copyright, or appear to have been taken from a copyrighted source, so here is a link to a photo of her in 1955 at the National Portrait Gallery – a remarkable woman:

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw56556/Jacquetta-Hawkes?_gl=11a7d30k_upMQ.._gaOTE3MDgxNDI4LjE3ODQ5OTExNDU._ga_3D53N72CHJ*czE3ODQ5OTExNDQkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODQ5OTExNDQkajYwJGwwJGgw

St Pancras Church and the Loss of the City of Boston

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A rather long post this weekend. There are two parts to the post. In the first part I explore the fascinating church of St Pancras, and in the second part, I explore the tragic story of the City of Boston, recorded on one of the memorials in the church.

So to start with the church, this is St Pancras Church as seen from Euston Road on a hot and sunny summer day in 2026:

In the early years of the 19th century, the area around Euston Road was expanding rapidly, as streets and houses were marching over the fields to the north of the city.

The Parish of St Pancras was originally served by the church known today as St Pancras Old Church, however this historic church was far too small and rather dilapidated to serve the growing population, so in 1812, the vicar, Dr. Middleton led a proposal for the construction of a new, much larger church.

The following map is an extract from Horwood’s map of 1799. I have marked the location of the future St Pancras Church with a red rectangle. The road to the north marked Islington is today Euston Road:

As can be seen, much of the area is still open space, but the construction of new housing and streets can be seen at the top of the map, and new streets would soon occupy the whole of the area of the map, hence the need for the new church.

There is an interesting feature to upper left, marked Polygon, which was part of Somers Town.. This was a development of houses, and in the next couple of decades, Clarendon Square was built around the Polygon, with the ring of houses being in the centre, with surrounding roads and houses forming an outer square.

By the end of the 19th century, the Polygon had been demolished, but they are remembered today by Polygon Road which runs along the northern edge of the original feature.

An Act of Parliament enabling the building of a new church was passed in 1816, allowing fund raising and requests for designs to go ahead.

The design selected was by father and son architects, William and Henry William Inwood. William Inwood, the father, was a land steward and surveyor, and the majority of his architectural work appears to have been in partnership with his son Henry William.

Their joint projects in London included:

  • St John’s Church, Westminster, destroyed by fire in 1940 – 1941
  • Camden Town Chapel
  • St Peter’s Chapel, Regent Square
  • St Mary’s Chapel, Somers Town

Henry William Inwood had travelled in Greece. He may have been there when the initial designs for the church were made, however whether it was father or son who had the overall responsibility for the design, St Pancras Church displays a very Grecian influence.

William Inwood died in March 1843, and was buried in the church he had designed.

His son, Henry William Inwood died in the same month of the same year, having drowned at sea, when the ship on which he had sailed for Spain was lost, with no survivors.

Henry’s death was around 6 days after his father’s death, so at least the father was unaware of the death of his son. The loss of Henry at sea is a horrible coincidence with another story from the church, which I explore in the second part of today’s post.

St Pancras Church looking across Upper Woburn Place:

The inspiration for the top of the tower of the church is believed to have been the Tower of Winds in Athens, shown to the left in the following late 18th century print. The name Tower of Winds comes from the eight reliefs around the top of the tower which depict wind gods:

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

In the above print, the Tower of the Winds has lost the majority of its roof, the following print shows a reconstruction of the roof:

© 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 most distinctive feature of the church can be seen on either side of the church, where towards the rear there are caryatid porticoes. A caryatid is a sculpted female figure that acts as an architectural support. They have central cast iron columns which provides the support for the roof, with terracotta being used to form the figure:

The name caryatid comes from the town of Karyai in the southern Greek region of the Peloponnese. They are believed to be based on a dance performed by young women of the town in honour of the god Artemis Karyatis. Some sources refer to the women dancing with baskets on their head, hence the stance, and the use of a caryatid to hold something up:

The inspiration for the caryatids came from the Erechtheion in Athens, a 5th century BC temple dedicated to the gods Athena and Poseidon. The following print from 1853 shows the Erechtheion or Erectheum with five caryatids in an almost identical configuration as those at St Pancras Church:

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

St Pancras church has only four along the front. In Athens, the temple originally had six, four along the front and one on each of the two sides. As can be seen in the above print, the caryatid on the right side is missing.

Thomas Bruce, the 7th earl of Elgin was the British representative to Constantinople (now Istanbul) between 1799 and 1803. This was a time when Greece was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had a reputation for destroying Greek heritage.

They gave Elgin permission to remove artifacts under the pretence that it was to protect the safety of the artefacts during Greek actions in their attempts to gain independence, which was achieved in 1822.

Elgin removed a range of ancient Greek artifacts, including what are today called the Elgin Marbles, along with one of the caryatids, which, along with the Elgin marbles, is now on display in the British Museum.

The remaining five caryatids were removed in 1979, due to the risk of pollution damage, and were put on display in the Acropolis Museum, and if you visit today, you can see the five caryatids on display, with a gap where the missing caryatid should be positioned.

The photos above are of the caryatids on the southern side of the church, and an identical feature can be seen on the northern side, facing Euston Road:

Internally, the church presents a large, bright, open space. Galleries run along either side of the church, and the altar is built into an apse at the end of the church, where, continuing the Classical design approach, there are tall Ionic columns:

A model of the church:

There are some lovely design features in the church, such as these columns which support the gallery above:

The font and more Ionic columns close to the entrance to the church:

Stained glass:

A statue of St Pancras:

St Pancras was born around 289 in what is today Turkey. During Emperor Diocletian’s persecutions of Christians, St Pancras was brought before the Roman authorities and asked to carry out a sacrifice to the Roman gods. Pancras refused to do so, despite being offered wealth and power.

As a result, the Emperor ordered that St Pancras should be beheaded on the Via Aurelia, the original road from Rome to Pisa. The sentence was carried out in 303. The saint’s feast day is the 12th of May, which is believed to be the day of his execution.

Church memorials are fascinating. They provide a snapshot of those considered by the parish as worth remembering, but they also tell us a bit more about life at the time.

Take the memorial to William Kitchener M.D.

He died on the 27th of February 1827, aged 48. The memorial, as did the obituaries published in the press, made much of his “universal genius”.

William Kitchiner was originally in the medical profession, but after his father died (an eminent coal merchant in the Strand), he inherited a fortune of between £60,000 and £70,000. This allowed him to give up medicine and pursue separate interests.

He wrote a number of books, including a book on Telescopes, and also a large collection of national songs, but his most widely acclaimed book was “The Cook’s Oracle”, which contained 130 recipes, which will “greatly improve the comfort and economy of all, being the best method of making Maigre Gravy Soups; ditto Green Peas, various Fish Soups, all Fried Fish in clarified butter, fresh Salmon Broiled; ditto Pickled; Carp to Stew; Potted Lobster or Crab; Lobster Patties; Stewed Oysters; Scalloped Oysters; Fish Pies, Stewed Eels; Macaroni; Stewed Onions; Omelettes and various ways of dressing Eggs, and warming cold Fish; potato Pie; Cheese and Toast; ditto Toasted; ditto Buttered; ditto Pounded or Potted; Poached Eggs; Puddings; Maigre and Savoury Patties; Preserves; Tarts; Cakes, &c &c.”

A sample of an early 19th century diet.

By the time that first reviews were published, the book already had a print run of 30,000, and typical reviews were:

“We venture to prophecy that the Cook’s Oracle will be considered as the English Institute of Cookery”, and:

“For practical precepts we recommend particularly and chiefly the Cook’s Oracle, in which , along with the plainest directions, there is more of philosophy, and if we may so speak of the Literature of Gastronomy, than in any other work we have seen”.

If William Kitchiner were alive today, he would probably have his own TV cookery series.

William Kitchiner, pictured with a telescope and book:

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

William Kitchiner had a disease of the heart, and knew that death could come at any moment, the knowledge of which resulted in periods of depression. He died after he had been for a meal with friends (an attempt by his doctor to raise his spirits), and suffered spasms after returning home.

And with what seems to have been the standard medical approach to many diseases at the time, his doctor attempted to bleed him, but he had already died.

A high proportion of monuments in London churches mention that the person spent time abroad. There is a memorial in St Pancras that records time with the East India Company, and the following memorial records that he was formerly of Canton and Macao in China.

I assume this was a reasonably common background, as they had made their money abroad, retired to London (Fitzroy Square in the case of Daniel Beale, below), and got involved in the life of the local parish:

Some plaques record recent events, including the fire at Kings Cross Underground Station on the 18th of November, 1987, a fire which claimed the lives of 31 people, including Soho’s Station Officer Colin Townsley:

During the last war, the church did suffer some bomb damage, but dry rot seems to have been the major post-war problem, as the church was closed on the 18th of May 1951 as it was considered a dangerous structure due to widespread dry rot:

The church was rededicated and opened two years later in December 1953.

St Pancras Church was the most expensive church in London when it was built, the addition of the caryatid porticoes on both sides of the church no doubt added significantly to the cost, but they are one of the features that make this a very distinctive church.

Henry William Inwood the son of the father / son partnership that designed the church, died in the sinking of a ship.

One of the plaques in the church records another sinking:

The Loss of the Steamship City of Boston

Exploring the story behind memorials can reveal so much about both the event being recorded, and life in general at the time.

One of the memorials records the loss at sea of Henry Horace Baker, his wife Rebecca, and their two young children:

In 1870, ships did not have any form of radio equipment. There was limited weather information, and for the north Atlantic route, any information on the location and density of ice flows and icebergs was mainly the exchange of information between captains whilst in port, talking about what they had seen during their crossing.

A sea journey of any length was a risky experience, and there were hundreds of sinkings every year, and for many of these, relatives had to wait for many months before all hope was given up, and there was often no information on the cause of a sinking, or the location.

The Atlantic route was busy with many ships travelling between the US and the UK and Europe.

Shipping lines competed to offer the fastest, safest and most comfortable route across the Atlantic.

One of these was the Inman Line, along with the Cunard and White Star lines, one of the three largest shipping companies in the later decades of the 19th century.

Formed in 1850 by William Inman, the Inman Line operated out of Liverpool, with a fleet of steam ships, nearly all with the name of City of …..

Many of the Inman Line ships were combined steam and sail ships. This offered the benefit of a fallback to sail if there were any problems with the steam engines.

The City of Boston was the Inman line ship that Henry Horace Baker, his wife Rebecca, and their two children, Frederick and Florence, along with their nanny, boarded in Halifax, with the ship departing for Liverpool on the 28th of January, 1870:

The City of Boston carried crew and passengers, some of whom were officers of artillery and other regiments on their way home from Canada and had preferred to make the crossing in a steam ship rather than the troop ship which brought the majority of the troops back to England.

Henry Horace Baker was one of four officers that had their wives and children with them for the journey back to England.

The ship was well provisioned for the journey. Newspaper reports stated that on board were three months provisions for the ship’s use, and among the cargo were the following: 390 tons of beef, 200 barrels of flour, 180,700lb of bacon, and 10,375lb of wheat.

The ship was also fitted with condensers capable of supplying water. The ship also carried 787 tons of coal.

By reading the news reports from the time, we can follow the course of the tragedy that led to the memorial in St Pancras Church.

The lack of any means of communicating with a ship, rumours, false sightings and reports, the challenges of a long sea journey, optimism that the ship would arrive, even when this would have been an unrealistic outcome. One can also imagine the frustrations and worries of those who had relatives and friends on the ship.

We start in February 1870:

February 1870

By the 15th of February, the City of Boston was several days overdue. Newspaper reports started to mention that the steamer had not arrived at Liverpool, and some papers were reporting concerns about the condition of the ship, for example from the Western Morning News on the 15th:

“The agents at Liverpool of the Inman Company state that the Royal Mail steamer City of Boston, which left Halifax on the 28th January, and is several days overdue. lost two blades of her fan on the outward voyage, and is coming home with only a double-bladed fan. Considering the strong easterly gales and the heavy sea prevailing, the agents entertain fears as to the safety of the steamer.”

The number of ships lost at sea was high. On the 21st, as well as mentioning the late arrival of the City of Boston, it was also reported that the Awsel was lost, including 10 hands and the captain, and that the Tea Ship Westburn sailing from China to London had been lost with 700,000 lbs of tea.

On the 24th of February, is was reported that insurance premiums on the City of Boston were increasing to 50 guineas per cent. Interesting that you could still insure a ship even after it had been missing. There was also a report from a ship arriving in Liverpool from Halifax that a captain in Halifax had told of seeing a steamer which launched three rockets, but he could not be sure of the position.

By the 28th of February, it had been 30 days since the City of Boston had left Halifax, and there was “a very considerable amount of anxiety has been felt and expressed in the commercial and private circles as to the non arrival of the mail steamer City of Boston”.

There were efforts to calm worries by saying that although the ship had left Halifax with a mechanical problem, she was able to use her sails, and could have been blown off course by strong easterly winds. She was a “strong, well built ship, fully manned, most undeniably well found, and in charge of an experienced and efficient commander”.

March 1870

At the start of March, there was still no news about the City of Boston. There were now serious concerns about the safety of the ship, but also voices that offered some reassurance that the ship could still be under sail, could have been blown off course etc.

On the 8th of March it was reported that the Channel Squadron had been ordered to be on the lookout for ships in distress, particuarly the City of Boston

The Channel Squadron had a secondary purpose, and that was to deliver supplies to the ships that were unable to complete their crossing from America due to the strong easterly winds. It was estimated that there could be 500 ships stalled in the Atlantic, including twenty large vessels, loaded with grain which were bound from San Francisco to Liverpool and were long overdue.

A ship, the Ben Nevis had arrived in Gravesend reporting that they had seen a disabled steamer trying to get to the Irish Coast, however it turned out that that the crew’s description of the steamer did not fit the City of Boston.

On the 10th of March, a sailing ship, the Florence arrived in the Thames, having set sail from New York on the same day that the City of Boston had set out. This gave some hope that the City of Boston could also arrive soon.

In 1870, as has been amplified by the Internet today, there was false information being distributed. On the 19th of March, the New York Associated Press offered a reward of 500 dollars for information leading to the detection and punishment of the author of the false report regarding the arrival of the City of Boston on Wednesday. It had “excited much indignation in the United States”.

By the 28th of March, hope was beginning to fade, and the Newcastle Journal reported that “There is no news of the City of Boston. It is now fifty-eight days since she left Halifax on her homeward voyage, and the opinion begins to prevail that she never now will be heard of. The supposition is that she struck against an iceberg at full speed, and went down, leaving no trace behind her. The City of Durham has left Crookhaven to continue the search for the missing vessel”.

April 1870

By April, the rumour mill was running. On the 2nd of April, Admiral Belcher had written in the Times that “if the City of Boston stood south easterly and fell into the horse latitudes, where few ships care to go, or have any business, and be disabled, she may, like a transport he recollects, be detained there from 100 to 150 days, and would eventually find her way by the trade wind into some port in Florida or the West Indies.”

On the 9th, William Inman, the owner of the ship and the shipping line, said that not an officer in his service believes that the City of Boston had foundered from any gale of wind; and if she is lost, it is to be attributed to running into ice.

On the 14th it was announced that the underwriters of the City of Boston and her cargo had agreed to meet all claims upon them on the basis of a total loss.

On the 19th, a further announcement was made that the reports that the underwriters had settled claims was premature, and that they would not be doing so until the loss was posted at Lloyds.

On the 25th of April, William Inman announced that he was bringing an action for libel against the writer of a letter which alleged that the City of Boston was overladen and also defective in her screw arrangements.

On the 28th of April, Henry Ransford wrote to the Times to state that the letter he had written on the 11th which contained suggestions that the City of Boston was not in a good seagoing tradition, may have been damaged and could have been overladen, were false accusations and that there were no grounds whatever for any imputation on the condition of the City of Boston, and that Henry Rainsford apologised if his letter had misled the public.

On the same day, it was reported that a broken piece of teak wood about three feet long had washed ashore at Perranporth. One side was painted blue, and the other side had been roughly inscribed with a knife or chisel “TY OF BOSTON IS SINKING FEB II”.

May 1870

At the start of May, the ship had been missing for three months. During the month, there were still strange stories about the final days of the City of Boston, and the first obituaries started to appear showing that families of those onboard were accepting the loss of their loved ones.

On the 3rd, New York papers had reached Liverpool, and they included the following report:

“A boy named George W. Doty, residing at Princes Bay, Staten Island, while playing along the beach at that place, yesterday (April 19) in company with two other boys, plucked up an ordinary soda bottle, and discovered in it a piece of hard coarse brown paper, and upon it were written in lead pencil the following words:-

Steamship City of Boston, March 2, 1870. As I write this note (perhaps my last on earth) I hear the wails and moans of my fellow passengers as they see the last vestige of their safety lost and swamped in the deep. the vessel caught fire from the engine room this morning, and is fast driving the passengers to the bow of the boat. They have just attempted to launch the lifeboat, but it got swamped with about forty persons, male and female. The captain is doing his best. I must bung and finish. God help us. James…..Nas”.

The New York Times believed that the note was a hoax, as the ship had been at sea for over a month when the note was apparently written, and that there was no passenger on board with a name ending in ‘Nas’.

Another note found in a stone bottle was handed to the receiver of wreck at the Liverpool Custom House. On the note was written:

“S.S. City of Boston, Feb 4 1870. The City of Boston is fast settling. We have lost 4 men overboard, 3 have died. We………..in great danger for our preservation. The ship is on fire, and hurrying all the passengers to the bows. We have had to come on under canvas. our propellor is broken, and we are now at the entire mercy of the waves. God help us, I am on my bare feet and have been all the week. Sig……….Hough, J Hon, W. Eccleston.”

The newspaper report added that the names at the bottom of the note did not appear on the articles of agreement with the crew, and if it were not a hoax, then it must have been signed by passengers. The authorities in Liverpool did not appear to have had a complete list of passenger names.

On the 21st of May, an obituary notice was published in the Times for Henry Horace Baker – the name that appears on the memorial in St. Pancras church:

“Lost, at sea, in the Royal Mail steamship City of Boston, on returning home from Halifax, Nova Scotia, after five years foreign service. Henry Horace Baker Lieutenant Royal Engineers, aged twenty-eight, third and dearly loved son of Mr and Mrs Henry Baker of 108, Gower-street, London’ also his wife Rebecca (Becky), daughter of Mr James Taylor of Summer-hill, Mayfield, Sussex; together with their children, Fredrick Horace aged five, and Florence Hamilton, aged three; and their faithful nurse, Isabella Oliver.”

The memorial in St. Pancras was probably written by the family of Henry Baker. The memorial tells a terribly sad story of the loss of a family, but what adds an extra layer of sadness is that whilst she was remembered in the Times obituary, the memorial in St Pancras does not include Isabella Oliver, the faithful nurse, who had presumably been with the family for some time.

June 1870

By early June, the City of Boston had been missing for over four months, but newspapers were still suggesting that there was still hope. On the 8th of June in an article about the City of Boston, it was reported that the Cerealis, another missing ship which had left Philadelphia on the 14th of January, had finally been reported safe, after being missing at sea for 141 days.

The safe arrival of the Cerealis was repeated in other articles about the City of Boston on the 11th of June, titled HOPE ON, HOPE EVER, where it was argued that whilst people have started to cease thinking or talking about the missing ship, the Cerealis offers a glimmer of hope.

William Inman, the owner of the shipping line, had by mid June, given up any hope of seeing his ship again, as he had written to the Board of Trade admitting that there was no longer any hope, and whilst there is no direct evidence as to the manner of the loss, his opinion was that the sea ice had broken up suddenly that year, and that the City of Boston had foundered from getting among it.

July 1870

By July, the human impact of the loss of the City of Boston was starting to be reported. There were death notices for some of the crew and passengers, and an article reporting the actions of the Liverpool Seamen’s Orphan Institution demonstrated the scale of human loss from ship wrecks.

The article reported that James McGregor, whose father had sailed out of Liverpool for 10 years, and Ann C. McLean, whose father had sailed out of Liverpool for 11 years, and who had both been lost on the City of Boston, had been nominated as deserving of admission to the institution.

The article also mentions that 66 children had recently been admitted, and that there are many more deserving cases which are postponed for want of room.

There were no fewer than 5,271 wrecks between 1867 and 1868, and the seamen who died from various causes during those years numbered 10,133, of these 6,754 left widows, with an average of three children each.

It was an incredibly dangerous profession.

In July, the Inman Line had set aside £300 to distribute “amongst the more necessitous relatives of the ship wrecked crew”. There was no legally binding need to compensate the families of the crew that worked for the Inman Line, or that they should all receive compensation, of what value and for how long.

August 1870

Despite the claim by the Inman Line that they had set aside £300 for relatives of the crew, it is unclear how this was distributed, and in August there was concern within the town of Workington.

Captain J.J. Halcrow of the City of Boston was well known in Workington, and his aged mother had lived in the town for all her life. Captain Halcrow had left behind a widow and four children, the youngest only two years of age.

It was reported that the family of Captain Halcrow have been left unprovided for, and that a ” few Liverpool gentlemen” have opened a subscription for the benefit of the family.

September 1870

There had been two letters to the Times arguing that the City of Boston had left Halifax in a mechanically poor state and also overloaded. One author had withdrawn his claim and apologised. the second author had not, so William Inman had sued for libel. In August the case came to the Law Courts who found in favour of William Inman, and awarded £250 in damages.

Final Reports

As is usual with such disasters, the event gradually faded from the news, and in the last few months of 1870, there were very few references to the loss of the City of Boston.

Strangely, a couple of alleged messages from those on board the ship were still being found.

In November 1870, a bottle was washed up ay Cranstock Sands near Newquay in Cornwall. The pieces of envelope inside contained a number of names and messages “We are lost”, and “City of Boston, We are all sinking, goodbye”.

In May 1871, another message was washed up on the south-east coast of New Brunswick. The message stated “March 21, 1870 – City of Boston – Ship sinking; over half full now. Good-bye all. Look after my boy. Thompson”.

The name of Thompson was confirmed as being on the passenger list.

It took a couple of months for a complete list of passengers and crew to be published, with lists finally appearing in April. I assume it would have taken a couple of months for lists from New York and Halifax, the two US boarding ports, to be transferred to the UK.

Even with this delay, the passenger list appears to be incomplete. There were 116 listed as passengers, some only given a title such as lady, servant, infant or nurse.

For the crew, only the senior officers were named. In addition there were stewards, firemen and coal-passers, giving a total crew of around 100, so in total there were around 216 people who lost their lives on the City of Boston.

The sinking had an impact on the families of those who were lost at sea. This included Mrs Jane Naughton, or Fegan who died in December 1870 after deeply grieving the lost of her son who was one of the crew on the ship. When she first heard the news she was reported as having been “seized with an apoplectic fit, and her health was never so well thereafter”.

In December 1875, rumours of a new possible cause for the loss of the City of Boston was being reported.

The steam ship Mosel was seriously damaged whilst in Bremerhaven Docks. Cargo was being loaded and during the process, one item of cargo fell to the dockside and exploded, killing 80 people and wounding many more.

The cause was found to be an attempted insurance fraud by a Canadian named Alexander Keith.

Boarding the ship using the false name of Thomas, he had taken out insurance, and also built a bomb which was timed to explode whilst the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic. His plan was to leave the ship when it briefly stopped in Southampton, then claim the insurance money after the ship had been lost.

He was badly wounded during the explosion, and attempted to commit suicide, but was held in custody until he died of his wounds, and confessed before his death.

Newspaper reports of the explosion started to make a link with the loss of the City of Boston:

“There is a suspicion now afloat that the missing City of Boston perished by the same means as those which destroyed the unfortunate men on board the Mosel; but we may ask, if the City of Boston, why not any of the many other vessels which have never been heard of since they left their port of departure? We have the appalling fact found that Thomas had ordered and had constructed a whole assortment of infernal machines similar to that placed by him on board the Mosel. It is impossible not to feel alarmed by the thought that life at sea is almost unprotected by any deterrent agency against attempts like that of Thomas.”

The date, reason for the sinking and location where the City of Boston went down, have never been identified.

The memorial in St Pancras Church records just one family who were lost.

The memorial does not include the name of the nurse who was with the family. All the passenger lists I have seen just record nurse or servant rather than their names, so it is good to add the name Isabella Oliver, at least virtually, to the memorial in St Pancras Church.

Apologies to Charles and George Dance, and exploring St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster

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Thankfully, I do not make that many mistakes in my posts, but when I do, readers always find them, which is really brilliant as some are very embarrassing, and I want the posts to be as factually correct as possible.

I have made a couple of mistakes in the last two posts. In my post on Basing House, I brought the siege forward from 1643 to 1943 in a couple of places in the text, but the most embarrassing was in last week’s post, when I confused the late 18th – early 19th century architect, George Dance the Younger, with the contemporary actor, Charles Dance.

When I wrote the post, I had the Pevsner guide in front of me, clearly stating George Dance the Younger, but there was obviously some disconnect between my eyes and brain, and my fingers as I typed. I still did not pick this up when reading through the final version of the post.

I have no idea if Charles Dance is a descendant of George Dance, although according to his Wikipedia entry, Charles Dance attended the Plymouth Drawing School and studied Graphic Design and Photography at Leicester College of Arts, so he may have similar talents to George Dance.

As a penance for making this embarrassing mistake, I decided to find out more about George Dance the Younger and to track down a couple of his remaining works in London.

Later in the post, I will also be exploring St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, after reading a brilliant book about this medieval chapel, and original home of the House of Commons.

George Dance the Younger

George Dance the Younger was born in Chiswell Street in 1741, the fifth and youngest son of George Dance senior (for simplicity, all future references to George Dance the Younger will be as George Dance).

George Dance by George Henry Harlow in 1814:

Source and attribution: George Dance by George Henry Harlow pencil and chalk, 1814 9 1/4 in. x 7 3/4 in. (235 mm x 197 mm) Purchased, 1936 Primary Collection NPG 2812

To add to my earlier comments about mistakes and trying to be factually correct, the National Portrait Gallery record with the above image does not make clear this this is “the Younger”, but does give the dates of life of the sitter as 1741-1825, which coincides the life span of George Dance the Younger.

The portrait is also dated 1814, and his father, George Dance the Elder, had died much earlier in 1768.

At the age of 17, George Dance went to Italy with his older brother Nathaniel (later Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland who was a painter, member of Parliament and member of the Royal Academy), and whilst in Italy, George studied in a number of cities including Florence, Rome and Naples.

In 1765 he returned to England, and took over his father’s role, by purchase, as the Clerk of Works to the City of London.

My first stop in my search for locations connected with George Dance was the house where he lived during the later part of his life, and where he died in 1825.

To the left of centre of this terrace in Gower Street is a blue plaque:

The house with the plaque:

Which confirms that George Dance the Younger lived there:

In addition to St Bartholomew the Less featured in last week’s post, George Dance was responsible for a number of works across London, however the majority have been demolished. These include:

  • Repairs and alterations of Newgate Prison after damage sustained during the Gordon Riots
  • St. Luke’s Hospital, Old Street
  • The Giltspur Street Comptor, also known as the City House of Correction
  • The Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall
  • At the Mansion House in the City, he added a potico to the west door, which was later removed, and he also lowered the roof of the Egyptian Hall
  • At the Guildhall, he rebuilt the southern front in a Gothic Style, but this was later demolished, and the Chamberlain’s Court, also demolished

Between 1806 and 1813 he was responsible for the home of the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, however the building was rebuilt by Charles Barry between 1836 and 1837, but Barry did keep Dance’s original portico, which we can still see on the front of the building:

The Royal College of Surgeons does look as if it was the product of a single design, however the portico is from George Dance’s original building (1806 – 1813), the lower part of the building behind is by Charles Barry (1837 – 1837), and the attic storeys and the wings are by Stephen Salter (1888 – 1889):

My next stop was in London Wall to find the church of All Hallows on the Wall, which was rebuilt between 1765 and 1767 by George Dance:

Which is recorded on a plaque next to the entrance to the church:

As a town planner, George Dance worked on a transformation of part of the Minories, which included the original layout of America Square in 1728. My father photographed part of America Square in 1949, when it looked very different to Dance’s original plans:

His work on America Square extended south to include the construction of the Crescent:

The original buildings of the Crescent were badly damaged by bombing during the last war. The damage started with total destruction on the right and progressively reducing along the buildings to the left.

Pevsner’s guide to the City of London explains that there were originally 11 houses, and only numbers 6 to 11 can be seen today. Numbers 6 and 7 (the two on the left of the terrace) retain their original doorcases. The facades were extensively restored in 1985-6 when replicas of numbers 8 to 11 (the houses to the right) were built.

Although only two originals survive (with much restoration), it is good to see that George Dance’s crescent design can still be seen, having avoided being replaced by yet another glass and steel block.

Dance was also responsible for the original layout of Finsbury Square in 1777.

A number of his plans and proposals were not carried out, including improvements to the Port of London and for the layout of the Camden estate in St. Pancras.

George Dance also worked on a number of projects outside of London, including::

  • The Theatre Royal, Bath
  • Ashburnham Place, Sussex
  • Wilderness Park near Sevenoaks in Kent for the Marquis of Camden
  • Alterations to Kidbrook near East Grinstead for Charles Abbot, the Speaker of the House of Commns

As well as an architect, George Dance was also an artist, and perhaps one of his most touching works is a portrait of his son, also George, dating from 1793, when his son was around the age of 15. He would later die of a liver complaint and fever whilst in India in 1813:

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

As well as his brother Nathaniel, George Dance was also a founding member of the Royal Academy.

Sir John Soane and William Mountague were pupils of George Dance, and when Dance retired from his position of Clerk of Works to the City of London in 1815, William Mountague took on the role.

George Dance died in Gower Street on the 14th of January, 1825, aged 84, and he was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, close to where Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Joshua Reynolds were also buried. At the time of his death, George Dance was the last of the 40 founding members of the Royal Academy.

In May of 1825, the Royal Academy held an exhibition of sculpture, and one of the items on display was a bust of George Dance, described as “An animated and expressive head of one, who, in the later stages of life, still had a very vigorous bearing, that repelled the infirmities of decay. The likeness is very accurate, and bold; the character of the mind speaks through it. At present it is but a model that is to be executed in marble.”

Despite much having been demolished, traces of George Dance’s work can still be seen across London. As well as an architect, he was an accomplished artist and one of the founding members of the Royal Academy, where he was also on the Council and was elected a Fellow.

And definitely not a contemporary actor.

St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster

A couple of week’s ago, my post was about the siege of Basing House, after reading a brilliant book about the subject and which encouraged a follow-up visit to what remains of the site. For this week, I have another random find when browsing the shelves of a bookshop. This is The Lost Chapel of Westminster by John Cooper:

The Lost Chapel in the title is St Stephen’s, a chapel that had been at the heart of royal, religious and political life from the time construction began in 1292 under Edward I, until it was destroyed in 1834, during the fire which devasted much of the Palace of Westminster.

The chapel was one of the most significant building projects of the late 13th and early 14th centuries, and took a significant time to complete, under the reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, finally being completed in 1348, with internal decoration continuing for a couple more decades.

St Stephen’s Chapel had two primary roles. As the private chapel for the King and the royal family whilst they were resident in Westminster. Secondly, the chapel maintained a daily routine to pray for the dead, including monarchs who had died as well as those who had left money and lands to the chapel. During this period in medieval history, the belief in purgatory was common, with the associated belief that the prayers of the living would hasten the purification of the souls of the dead, and speed their transition through purgatory.

The location of the chapel is shown within the red oval in the map of the Palace of Westminster prior to the 1834 fire:

(Unless stated, all prints in this section of the post are: © 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 building to the upper right of the chapel is Westminster Hall, so as this structure is still there, we can locate where St Stephen’s Chapel was, on a plan of the site today, where the 19th century structure on the footprint of the old chapel is now called St Stephen’s Hall:

Source and Attribution: It is probably an original drawing produced by Charles Barry’s office., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In the above plan, to the right of the yellow oval there is the outline of a surviving medieval structure. These are the old cloisters of St Stephen’s Chapel / College, which did survive and can be seen today in the centre of the following Google map, just above the St. Stephen’s Hall label (this map will probably not appear if you receive this post via email, just the way custom HTML is handled. Click here to see the map on Google Maps)

Another medieval survivor is the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. This was also built in the same sequence by Edwards I, II and III, and whilst the chapel was used by the monarch and members of the monarch’s family, the undercroft was used by the Royal Household.

Being below ground level, St Mary Undercroft survived the 1834 fire, and today it is available for use by members of the House of Commons and the Lords.

St Stephen’s Chapel survived as a chapel until the Reformation.

Up until the middle of the 16th century, the Commons did not have their own, permanent home. Debates would be held at different locations, with the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey being one of the places in use.

St Stephen’s Chapel became the long term home of the House of Commons in 1547 when Edward VI gave the chapel for use as their debating chamber.

The pews were removed and replaced by benches along either side of the old chapel. A speakers chair was installed, along with a table and raised platform in front of the speaker.

And so it remained until it was destroyed by the 1834 fire. The key challenge during the almost 300 years of use by the Commons was to accommodate the ever growing number of MPs.

Prints of St Stephen’s Chapel provide an idea of how impressive the chapel, and later home of the Commons was, within the overall Palace of Westminster:

The view from the Thames:

Inside St Stephen’s Chapel during it’s time as the House of Commons:

In the above print, we can see the changes made over the centuries to accommodate the growing number of MPs, with benches running around the back of the speaker’s chair, and upper galleries on either side.

St Stephen’s Chapel / House of Commons after the fire:

Another view of the destruction caused by the fire:

During the chapel’s use as the House of Commons, wooden panelling had been put up along the walls, which hid the medieval decoration. The original chapel was known to have been incredibly well decorated.

In the years before the fire, antiquaries had spent time looking behind the panneling, and also after the fire there was work to record as much of the chapel as remained.

The following illustration gives an idea of how richly decorated the chapel was:

The above print shows the remains of the paintings discovered on the wall adjoining the site of the altar, and the print below illustrates some of the other wall paintings:

The following print shows specimens of sculpture from St Stephen’s Chapel:

Although St Stephen’s Chapel was lost during the 1834 fire, when the Palace of Westminster was rebuilt, the new home for the House of Commons was moved to a new location within the overall site, but retained the same layout as the original House of Commons, as shown in the print above, with the opposing benches, and the Speakers Chair and central table.

The current House of Commons has the same problems as the original, as whilst the rebuilt structure is slightly larger, it still cannot accommodate all the MPs, which is why there is always a crowd of MPs standing at the entrance when there are the type of debates that the majority of members want to attend.

It is though remarkable, that the current House of Commons continues a format that was implemented in the 16th century to make use of the space of a medieval chapel.

Today, brass studs in the floor of St Stephen’s Hall mark the outline of the original chapel and the Speaker’s Chair.

Research by the University of York has been turned into a 3D visualisation of St Stephen’s Chapel, giving an idea of the impressive decoration. The home page of the project website is here:

https://www.virtualststephens.org.uk/

One of the 3D visualisations is of the 1360s medieval chapel, which can be found here:

https://www.virtualststephens.org.uk/sites/virtualststephens.org.uk/files/panoramas/1360s/tour.html

There is much to explore on the Virtual St Stephen’s website.

And again I highly recommend The Lost Chapel of Westminster by John Cooper for a comprehensive study of the origin of St Stephen’s Chapel, the medieval life of what was both a religious and royal establishment, the transformation into the first permanent home of the House of Commons, and how it developed until the fire of 1834.

Finding the book was one of the benefits of browsing and buying in a physical bookshop, rather than depending on the algorithms of online sellers.

I believe St Stephen’s Hall is still on the tours available of the Houses of Parliament, unfortunately the old cloisters are working offices, so not available for public access, and St Mary Undercroft does not appear to be publicly accessible. A real shame that these medieval survivors within the 19th century Palace of Westminster, are not available to visit.

St Bartholomew the Less, the Chapel and Parish Church of St Barts

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There is a very small connection between the locations of today’s and last Sunday’s post. The architect Inigo Jones was trapped during the siege of Basing House, and this week I am visiting the church where he was baptised, having been born in Smithfield.

The church of St Bartholomew the Great is a well known church close to West Smithfield and alongside Cloth Fair. Not so well known is that the church has a smaller brother – St Bartholomew the Less.

St Bartholomew the Less is not that visible from West Smithfield, but walk towards the hospital of St Bartholomew’s, or St Barts as it is now more commonly known, through the early 18th century Gate House shown in the photo below:

And you will find St Bartholomew the Less:

The history of St Bartholomew the Less, the nearby church of St Bartholomew the Great, and St Bartholomew’s Hospital (St Bart’s) all have a common root, dating back to the 12th century.

St Bartholomew the Great was founded in 1123 by Rahere, a prebendary of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The story goes that Rahere was originally a Jester or Kings Minstrel, however after the death of the King’s wife and children Rahere travelled to Rome where St Bartholomew appeared to him in a vision and commanded him to build the church. Other stories are that the saint appeared to Rahere during a near death experience.

With the distance of time, and variations of the story through the centuries, what is firm is that he established an Augustine Priory (possibly on the site of an earlier parish church, and part of the priory now remains as St Bartholomew the Great) along with the adjacent hospital of St. Bartholomew.

St Bartholomew the Less appears to have originally been a chapel attached to St Bartholomew the Great, moving to a chapel attached to the hospital around 1184.

It was rebuilt around the 15th century, and for the next few centuries the church appeared as 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.)

In 1546, during the Reformation, Henry VIII gave the church along with the hospital to the City of London.

In 1793, the church was rebuilt by George Dance the Younger. Whilst the medieval tower survived, Dance appears to have completely rebuilt the interior of the church, rebuilding it into the octagonal interior within rectangular outer walls that we see today, however much of the construction materials seem to have been wood, as within a couple of decades, wood rot had set in, and the church needed another major rebuild.

This was carried out by the architect Thomas Hardwick between 1823 and 1825 . Thomas Hardwick was St Bart’s Hospital Surveyor. Hardwick kept the octagonal layout of Dance’s rebuild, but used brick, stone and cast-iron to leave a more permanent structure, and apart from some later 19th century restoration and repairs of war-time damage, this is the church we see today, a medieval tower with an early 19th century octangle interior:

The ornate pulpit:

There is very little to be found on the history of the pulpit. The Pevsner Guide to the City of London states that the pulpit is made of alabaster and dates from 1864, and that it was designed by Philip Charles Hardwick, who was the grandson of the architect Thomas Hardwick who carried out the 1823 – 1825 rebuild of the church.

Philip Charles Hardwick appears to have carried out a further restoration in 1862 – 1863, so around the date of the pulpit, and the following from the London City Press on the 17th of October 1863 describes the reopening of the church:

“On Sunday last, the Church of St Bartholomew the Less, which is also the chapel of the hospital, was reopened for divine worship after its recent restoration. There was a crowded congregation, composed of the Governors, medical officers, students, nurses and patients of St Bartholomew. No one who knew the old church would recognise it in its transformed appearance. The beautiful chancel, the new tracery of the windows, the stained glass, the encaustic tiles, the chaste marble of the altar piece, render this building, hallowed by so many memories of the past, worthy of the fame of the most ancient, as it is one of the most useful, hospitals in Europe.

Too much praise cannot be given to Mr. P.C. Hardwick, the architect of the hospital, for the harmony and beauty of the restoration he has effected. The treasurer of the hospital has devoted much of his time in rendering the ancient church of St Bartholomew one of the gems of the City. No small portion of the cost comes from the private resources of the Governors and almoners of the hospital. the medical staff have shown their appreciation of the harmony which governs their institution by presenting the east window. The little parish church of St Bartholomew the Less, partly parochial, partly collegiate, in its character, reflects honour on the Governors and medical men of St Bartholomew, and is now one of the prettiest ornaments of the City”.

If you have spent any time reading memorials in churches, then you would have found many which tell a really sad story. This is one of them, but for a different reason:

This is the memorial to Richard Milbourne West who was a Lieut-Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and who served during the First World War.

He started as a Major in the North Midland Field Ambulance before eventually taking command.

I have not seen a memorial like this before, where the medals of the person named have been set within the memorial, although whether through theft, or removed for safe keeping, or returned to his family, the medallions are missing with just the medal ribbons remaining (with one exception).

The medal on the left (based on the ribbon) is, I believe, the Distinguished Service Order, or D.S.O. and the following report from the Isle of Wight County Press on the 9th of June 1917 records the award of this medal:

“Many Island friends of Lieut-Col. Richard Milbourne West, M.D., R.A.M.C., eldest son of the late Mr. Henry Algernon West, of High-park, Ryde, will heartily congratulate him on having been awarded the D.S.O. for distinguished service in the field. Lieut-Col. West has been in the war from the first, and some months since was wounded by a bursting shell. Fortunately he made a good recovery, and has again been at the Front for some months. Mrs. R.M. West, who is staying at the Bays, has been a worker at the Seely Red Cross Hospital, Gatcombe, since January.”

The medal which is third from the right, with the blue, white and gold vertical stripes is the British War Medal, which was issued to all those who served in the First World War.

To the left of this medal was either the 1914 Star or the 1914 – 1915 Star. This had the red, white and blue vertical stripes on the ribbon, and the medallion was star shaped and had a crown on top, identical to the remaining indentation.

The medal with both the medallion and ribbon missing was probably the Allied Victory Medal. Each of the allies involved in the war had their own version, with the British version having a rainbow coloured ribbon, a round medallion with the winged figure of Victory on the front of the medal, with the words ‘The Great War for Civilisation 1914-1919’ on the rear. As he served in the First World War, he should have been awarded this medal.

The medal on the right is the Territorial Decoration, and featured the Royal cipher of George V, the letters GvR.

I am sure sure of the other medals, but together they show the service of someone who was originally in the Territorial forces, and then working on the front in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War.

He died on the 18th of July, 1936, at the age of 69, at his home in Wooton on the Isle of Wight.

The majority of the memorials in St Bartholomew the Less are medical related, or for someone who had an administrative role in the life of the hospital.

The two memorials in the following photo are to Arthur Watkins, who was the Steward of the hospital and Christopher Rice Pyle who was the Clerk of Works:

The Clerk of Works was responsible for the fabric of the building, maintenance, building projects etc. whilst the Steward was one of the three historical roles, along with the Clerk and Matron, who were responsible for implementing the orders of the Board of Governors.

Mark Morris, another Steward:

Looking towards the entrance of the church (on the left), with the organ facing the centre of the nave. The organ was built in 1930 by Hill, Norman & Beard, and rebuilt in 1978:

St Bartholomew the Less lost its stained glass windows in the last war, and many of the new windows are also connected to the works of the hospital, and the medical profession in general.

The following window has the dates 1939 – 1945, a kneeling nurse to the right, and the words: “Praise God remembering those nurses from this hospital who gave their lives for their country”:

And the following window has “Praise God remembering those physicians & surgeons from this hospital who gave their lives for their country”:

Side view showing how the rebuilding of the body of the church has clustered all the monuments into alcoves formed by the octangle shape of the church:

Alcove towards the rear of the church:

Where there is another monument, continuing the tradition of recording those who had a significant role in the management of the hospital. This is to John Darker, who was the Treasurer of the hospital for 24 years in the 18th century. his wife Mary Darker is also named:

As well as being Treasurer of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, John Darker was also one of the two MPs for Leicester. He must have been reasonably wealthy as in 1774, the two MPs for Leicester donated £20 each to enable the purchase of a house adjoining the east gate in the city so that the passage could be widened.

The theory of nominative determinism is used to explain why people follow careers which match their name. Unfortunately Howard Henry Tooth was not one of those who followed this theory, as he was a physician rather than a dentist:

Tooth was a neurologist, and he appears to have specilised in peripheral nerve disease and the structure of the spinal cord.

He was at St Bartholomew’s as an assistant physician from 1895 and became a full physician in 1907. He was also at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic at Queen Square.

He may well have had consulting rooms in Harley Street as in 1889, he was living at 34 Harley Street when a newspaper report reported on a chase to find a burglar who had tried to break into a house in Mansfield Mews, and being seen trying to open a skylight by the resident who was sleeping below.

Police pursued Thomas Wolsey who was aged 30 through the streets and across buildings until he was found hiding in Howard Tooth’s home, having broken through a rooflight in the lavatory to get in, no doubt hoping to stay concealed until the police had given up the chase.

He retired in 1921 and seems to have suffered from ill health following the First World War, he had also participated in some form, presumably medical, in the Boer War.

He died on the 13th of May 1925, at the age of 69 at The Moat, in Hadleigh, Suffolk, the home to which he had moved after retiring from his work in London.

The following photo show the view as you walk into the church through the door in the base of the tower:

The stone pillars here are very different to those in the main body of the church. These are almost certainly from the medieval construction of the church as they are part of the overall structure of the tower.

An unusual feature is that after entering the church, there are steps up to the raised level of the interior of the church. This higher level probably dates from when George Dance rebuilt the church.

The church is Grade II* listed, and the listing includes the following reference to the raised level of the church which “has not been fully explained but which may indicate the presence of vaults”. The Pevsner guide refers to the raised level of the church as simply being “a surprise”.

The area around the tower is all that remains of the medieval church, it is fascinating how structures of this age retain the evidence of many periods of rebuild and modification, of earlier doors and windows, and of how building materials have changed over time:

Walking to the rear of the church provides the best view of how the interior has been structured. From here we can see the rectangular outer walls, with at the upper level, the octagonal structure which was built by Dance, and rebuilt by Thomas Hardwick, and Philip Charles Hardwick added the semi-octagonal sanctuary at the end of the church, which internally contains the altar:

The buttresses added to the church, as seen in the above photo, may have been added around 1842 when the screen wall of the hospital (which is to the right of the above photo), was rebuilt.

Up until 2012, St Bartholomew the Less had been a parish church, but was then united with St Bartholomew the Great, and is now a chapel of ease – usually a chapel that is some distance from the parish church, allowing people to have a local chapel to attend, but with St Bartholomew the Great so close, I suspect the change in status is to more efficiently share resources whilst allowing the smaller church to continue to focus on the hospital of St Bart’s.

St Bartholomew the Less is a wonderful little church, and if you are in Smithfield, walk through the old gateway into St Bart’s and take a look.