Monthly Archives: August 2026

Walking the Rocque Ring Part 2 – Colour Coated Schools, Artillery, Pubs, Prison and a Lost Chapel

For today’s post, I am continuing my walk around the Rocque Ring, exploring the boundary of London in 1746, and discovering just how big a task this will be, as there is so much to be discovered in just a short length of the walk.

I have an old, printed copy of Rocque’s map (unfortunately not the original), however if you would like a copy of this fascinating map, a reader left the following comment to the post covering part one of the walk:

“The London Topographical Society has just published – at about 50% of original size – John Rocque’s two maps of London, his 24-sheet ‘Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark’ and his 16-sheet ‘Exact Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark with the Country near ten Miles round’. For more information and to order see http://www.londontopsoc.org “

In the following extract from Rocque’s map, the route is shown by the red line. The yellow arrow points to where I finished the last post, and my starting point for today:

In walking this section of Rocque’s Ring, I am crossing Victoria Street, one of the many new streets built in the 19th century to support the growing city and the ever increasing level of traffic, as well as providing improved, direct routes between key points.

Victoria Street carved through a network of streets and houses. In the above map, the blue line marks the future route of Victoria Street, showing in the lower part of the map, the streets and buildings that would be lost, and in the upper part, the open space that would soon be covered.

The route through today’s streets is shown in the following map, and again, sorry for the different orientations of the maps – it follows the orientation of the street names. The starting point is shown by the blue arrow (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

And this is where I am starting from, at the end of Great Peter Street, with Horseferry Road to the left and Greycoat Place ahead:

To the right is Strutton Ground:

Strutton Ground is a very old street. It is shown both on Rocque’s map as well as in William Morgan’s map of 1682 (I have an extract from this later in the post which shows the street).

In both Rocque’s and Morgan’s map, the street is called Stretton Street,, however the first mention I could find of Strutton Ground was from 1731, when there is mention in the Kentish Weekly Post of a wine merchant “of Strutton Ground, Westminster”, so the current name was in use, before Rocque’s map was showing it as Stretton Ground..

I have read that the street was a path that ran been Stourton Meadows and was used by “monks and peasants travelling from the fields and meadows to the abbey at Westminster”, although I have been unable to confirm or double check this.

Today the street has a market, which seems to mainly cater to the lunchtime needs of local workers, but it has a long history of being a general market for local residents.

The first mentions of the market that I can find date back to the start of the 20th century, and it may have been populated by traders that moved from an earlier market in Broadway.

In 1922, when describing the trade of a fishmonger at the market, a newspaper report described it as “a market street nearby when that district was notoriously very rough”.

Before following the route of the Rocque Ring, I am taking a short detour down Horseferry Road:

As at numbers 124 to 126 is the headquarters of Channel 4:

For a very recently constructed building (between 1992 and 1994), it is Grade II listed.

Designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, the building was specifically designed for Channel 4, to replace the rented offices in the West End that the channel had taken on and expanded as the audience grew.

There were a number of reasons why the building was listed, including the “elegant work of the high-tech movement”, and the “sophistication of design”, but probably my favourite of the reasons for listing is that it is a “a late-C20 exemplar of both a prestigious, owner-occupied headquarters building and a television centre”.

The majority of buildings designed today give no idea of the business of the occupier, The design for this building makes clear who the building is for, with the large number 4, which was added in 2007, looking onto Horseferry Road being the stand out advertisement.

Adding decoration to a building indicating who occupied the building was once more common. For example the headquarters of ICI on Millbank and the British Telecom Faraday Building of Queen Victoria Street.

The building we see at surface level is only part of the business of TV programming and transmission. Below street level there are 10m deep basements that were designed for production and transmission facilities and a small studio space.

As we leave Great Peter Street and walk into Greycoat Place, on the right is the old Westminster Fire Station:

This wonderful building is typical of those built by the Fire Brigade Branch of the London County Council Architects Department. It is Grade II listed and dates from 1906.

Westminster fire station closed on the 9th of January 2014. It was one of 10 fire stations closed by Mayor Boris Johnson. The other were Belsize, Bow, Clerkenwell, Downham, Kingsland, Knightsbridge, Silvertown, Southwark, and Woolwich.

Opposite the old fire station building is the Grey Coat Hospital, with the two figures typical of a charity school above the door, with the arms of Queen Anne in the centre:

The Grey Coat Hospital was a charity school, and the name comes from the colour of the coats worn by those who attended the school. There were a few more of these school in the local area, each with their own coloured coat.

An early example of a school uniform.

An article from the London Chronicle on the 17th of July 1816 provides some history of the institution:

“Mr. J. Lancaster, Master of the Grey Coat School, Westminster, stated that it was founded in 1707 by Queen Anne: this establishment educated, lodged, and boarded 60 boys and 30 girls. The boys had a mathematical education, and those who were inclined to go to sea were taught the principles of navigation. The witness’s salary, as master, was £50. His wife, as matron was £20, with lodgings and board. There was a mathematical teacher at £45, an assistant at £30, with board and lodging; five women servants.

The witness delivered in a copy of the Charter, which recited, that in 1698 a Charity School was erected in the parish of St. Margaret, for the education of poor children in the principles of the Christian religion, and for teaching to write and cast accounts, and binding them (when fit) to honest trades and employments; and that the trustees, designing to enlarge the said charity, did, in 1701, take into their care several other poor boys and girls, and provide them with clothing, meat, drink, lodging, and other necessaries in a large house, known by the name of Grey Coat Hospital, appointed to them by the vestry of the said parish, rent free, and that the charge of the undertaking being upwards of £800 per annum, was made by voluntary subscriptions and benevolence.”

The 1698 charity school was funded by members of the parish of St. Margaret. Eight parishioners had subscribed 12 shillings and six pence to get the school established.

Queen Anne granted the school a charter on the 19th of April 1706, which enabled the school to purchase the land where the Grey Coast Hospital we see today would be constructed. It is not clear whether the Hospital took the original building on the site in 1701 when the charity was enlarged, or in 1706 when it was granted a charter and purchased land.

The Grey Coat Hospital is Grade II listed, and the Historic England listing confirms that the central block dates from 1701, and that the building was restored and wings added after war damage.

The listing also states that the arms of Queen Anne on the central block are of Coade stone. If the listing is correct, then the arms date from much later than 1701, as the artificial stone factory on the South Bank was not taken over by Eleanor Coade until the 1770s.

The site was originally a Workhouse, as can be seen (green arrow) in William Morgan’s map of 1682:

And referring back to Rocque’s map I used at the start of the post, in 1746, the Grey Coat Hospital is on the site of the Workhouse, and the overall area of land occupied by the Hospital appears larger than that occupied by the Workhouse:

I suspect the quality of the environment was not as important to the Workhouse as it was to the Hospital.

In 1874 the Grey Coat Hospital became a day school for girls, and there are frequent adverts in newspapers for the school, such as the following from 1896:

“GREY COAT HOSPITAL – Day school for girls, near Victoria Street, Westminster. Tuition &c £4 5s to £4 15s a year. Piano £4. Preperation for University and Public Examinations. Scholarships in the Schools and on leaving.”

The Grey Coat Hospital continues as a school today, based on Christian values, and for girls between the ages of 11 and 18, and with boys admitted to the Sixth Form.

On the school building, to the left of the main entrance shown in the earlier photo, there is a green City of Westminster plaque:

Explored and Mapped Canada is both an unbelievable achievement given the size of the country, and is also an understatement of a remarkable life.

David Thompson was born in London on the 30th of April 1770, and in 1777 he was in the Grey Coat Hospital, the charity school on which the plaque stands.

He left the school in 1784 when he was 14 via a route that offered a career for orphans and children of the poor – an apprenticeship with the Hudson’s Bay Company. This meant that at this still very young age, he left London and sailed for Canada where he started work as an apprentice in the fur trading industry.

His initial base in Canada was in what is today called Churchill in Manitoba, directly on the coast of the Hudson Bay. It must have seemed an incredibly remote and challenging place to live after having grown up in London.

At the age of 17, he left Churchill and started to walk and paddle west across Canada, meeting the indigenous peoples, learning their languages and their stories. He also saw the impact on imported diseases such as small pox that had such a devastating impact on the local people.

He was a successful fur trader, but his real interests were in surveying and mapping Canada and the north west of the United States, and he worked to the west of Lake Superior, walking and paddling on the numerous rivers that he came across, also recording the cultures and religions of the peoples that he met.

As his main interest was surveying and mapping, and focussing on the unexplored north western lands of Canada, he resigned from the Hudson Bay Company and took up employment with the North West Company, another trading company that was founded in 1779 by Scots who had migrated from the Highlands to Montreal, mainly due to the Highland Clearances.

He spent 15 years with the North West Company, making a total of 27 years surveying and mapping western Canada.

As well as exploring, surveying and mapping, during this time he also married. At the age of 29 he married a girl, Charlotte Small from the Cree peoples who was aged 13. A marriage today we would be appalled by as she was just a child.

David Thompson seems to have spent most of his life exploring and meeting indigenous peoples, so perhaps that was considered normal among the peoples that he met.

They did have a long life together, a total of 58 years, and had 13 children of which 5 were born during his time exploring. He would also take his wife and children on his explorations, including into unknown territory.

During his time exploring, he mapped a total of 3.9 million square km, and met and spoke with dozens of indigenous peoples.

When he finished travelling, he moved to Montreal in 1812, primarily to help his children get an education.

With money he had saved from fur trading he made some investments, but these went bad, and he lost the majority of his money. To compound his financial problems, two of his children died, and his eldest son left home after rebelling against his father.

He did get some short term surveying work, but this was never enough to pay the bills, and when out of work, things were so bad that he had to pawn his surveying equipment, which must have been a considerable blow to someone who had invested so much of his life in mapping a new country.

Such were his financial difficulties, that David along with his wife Charlotte, moved in with their daughter and her husband, and he spent some time trying to get all his journals into a format that could be published, but years earlier, which makes his exploits even more remarkable, he had lost his sight in one eye, and his second eye was failing.

He died in 1857, unknown to the wider world, and in poverty, with his wife Charlotte dying three months later.

None of his work was published in his lifetime, but the geologist Joseph Burr Tyrrell worked on his notes and journals, which were published in 1916 as “David Thompson’s Narrative“.

He work is now far more widely known in Canada.

The maps he produced were very detailed, with the following being an example of one such map. Lake Superior is to the lower right:

David Thompson, holding one of the tools of his trade:

Source and attribution: Winnipeg Free Press, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The remarkable story of the life of a boy from the Grey Coat Hospital.

Hard to get a photo of the full width of the buildings of the Hospital. The following photo from Greycoat Place shows the building, with the top of the Channel 4 building in the background.

The Grey Coat Hospital in 1854:

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

One of the wonderful things about Rocque’s map, is the level of detail. Every time you look at the map, you see something new.

In 1746, Rocque’s map shows a “Pound” just past the Grey Coat Hospital (circled):

A Pound was a place where animals would be held. This was either a place where stray animals were kept until an owner could be found, or where animals on their way to market were held on the journey. There were many of these across the city, and one that is still named on milestones today is the St. Giles Pound – see this post).

In the area today, the Pound would have been in front of the brick building with the large white surround around the door. The roundabout is the junction of Greycoat Place, Greycoat Streetand Rochester Row:

Whilst walking the Rocque Ring, we can see how the expansion of the city outwards from the area mapped in 1746 was already being laid out.

Returning to the map, and projecting out into Tothill Fields is a line of trees with buildings along the upper side. If you look at Morgan’s map from 1682 earlier in the post, this was just a track across the fields with trees lining both sides:

The track between trees and buildings is labelled Rochester Row, and today the street has been built up on both sides, and still has a number of trees (obviously not the originals), lining both sides:

The name Rochester Row comes from the Bishops of Rochester. A number of these bishops held the Deanery of Westminster and in that capacity owned land in Westminster, including the land on which Rochester Row was built.

If you look half way along Rochester Row in Rocque’s map, there are buildings labelled as “”Hills Alms Ho. & School”.

The alms houses and school were founded in 1708 by the MP Emery Hill, but the buildings we see today date from a rebuild in 1882 following a consolidation of almshouses in Westminster.

Known today as the Westminster Almshouses Foundation, they still provide accommodation for those over the age of 60 who need sheltered housing:

There is another large feature shown in the map above. Just to the right of Rochester Row and the Pound is the Artillery Ground, and whilst this open space is long gone, the name is still used for streets and buildings, on or alongside the site:

An Artillery Ground was a place where training with weapons took place, archery, musket firing etc. According to The London Encyclopaedia by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, it “Takes its name from the artillery practice which used to take place here. Butts had been erected in the area in obedience to an ordinance of Elizabeth I”.

Butt refers to a place where archery practice took place and is often used to describe the mounds of earth that were used as targets. Rocque’s map does not show any of these features, just a row of what appears to be trees along one side of the ground.

I have marked the approximate area of the Artillery Ground on a map of today – it was a large space (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

I am now at the junction of Greycoat Place and Artillery Row, and on the left is the Greencoat Boy pub (which is a good place to stop off on this walk – pint of Caledonian Deuchars IPA £6.65):

The street on the left hand side of the pub is named Greencoat Place, and there is a rather nice pub sign showing what look like a rather old boy, wearing a green coat:

The green coat refers to another charity school, a very short distance from the Grey Coat Hospital, Referring back to Rocque’s map of this small area, I have circled a couple of buildings, just above and to the left of the Artillery Ground:

The building on the left of the red oval is labelled as the Green Coat School. The school was originally founded as St Margaret’s Hospital by the Churchwardens of St Margaret’s, Westminster in 1624, but as was typical with charity schools the children wore green coats so it was clear which school they came from, and wearing green coats gave the school its later name.

A Charter of Incorporation was granted to the school in 1633 by Charles I, who gave £50 a year to support the school, which was “for the relief of the poor fatherless children of St. Margaret’s, Westminster”.

The school was always dependent on charity donations. The Civil War put an end to donations from Charles I, but after the restoration, Charles II gave £100 a year, but apparently he always had to be petitioned each year for the donation.

I cannot find out exactly when the Green Boy pub was built (the current version is an 1881 rebuild of an earlier pub on the site), but the land belonged to the Green Coat School as in 1818 the school received £1,200 for a renewal of the lease of the pub, a sum which a made a big difference to the school’s finances.

Print from 1811 showing aspects of the Green Coat School:

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

Next to the Green Coat School was the Tothill Fields Bridewell – the local Prison or lockup. The name Bridewell was taken from the institution of the same name in the City of London. Rather strange to have a prison located right next to a charity school.

Tothill Fields Bridewell in around 1780:

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

You could be locked up in the Tothill Fields Bridewell for a wide range of reasons. The earliest I found was from the 18th of January 1725, when:

“Yesterday three of the White-hand Club, vulgarly call’d Sodomites, were discharged out of Tothill Fields Bridewell, viz. a Cook to a Nobleman in Palmall; a Master Taylor, and a Man who kept a Dairy Cellar at the other End of the Town.”

On the 11th of August, 1729:

“Yesterday an Irishman caused his Wife to be taken into Custody, and committed to Tothill fields, Bridewell, for giving abusive language to a Woman that she was jealous of: A notable example to such of our English Dames as may give themselves too much Liberty to censure their Husbands Actions or Acquaintance.”

And on the 6th of January, 1737:

“Several Persons have been lately committed to Tothill Fields Bridewell, for driving Wheelbarrows about the Streets with Oranges, and seducing and enticing several Servants, Apprentices, &c. to play at Dice, whereby they are defrauded of their Money.”

They were very different times.

Tothill Fields Prison on the site shown in Rocque’s map lasted until 1834, when a new prison was completed a few hundred yards away, to the north of Francis Street.

This new prison did not last that long as it was closed in 1877, demolished and the site of the prison was later used for Westminster Cathedral.

Although the original Tothill Fields prison was demolished in 1834, there is a survivor from the building to be seen today.

Walk a short distance down Little Sanctuary in Westminster, along side the Supreme Court Building (the old Middlesex Guildhall), and you will see this old stone entrance:

This entrance is from the original Tothill Fields Prison, and was moved here by the Greater London Council in 1969.

There is a plaque above the entrance:

Which reads:

“Here are several Sorts of Work for the Poor of this Parish of St Margaret’s Westminster. As also the Country, according to LAW and the such as will Beg and Live Idle in this City and Liberty of Westminster. Anno 1655.”

I must carry on, and walking along Artillery Row, I reach the junction with Victoria Street. Looking back along Artillery Row, and on the left there is an impressive building of light coloured stone, which glows in the summer sun:

This is Artillery House, built on part of the old Artillery Ground.

It is Grade II listed and dates from 1928, and was designed by the architect Maurice Webb. The listing describes the stye of the building as being modernistic “Hollywood Egyptian”.

There are a number of nice features on the building, some recall the history of the site. The South Door:

Just above both the south and north doors is a feature described in the Historic England listing as being a “ceramic miniature howitzer”. No idea if this type of weapon was used at the Artillery Grounds. The grounds look a little too small for a weapon of this size, but you never know:

Artillery Row, Artillery House and the model howitzers are nice reminders of the use to which the land here was put in the time of Rocque’s 1746 map.

I have now reached the point where Victoria Street crosses my route, and across the junction is the Albert pub:

The Albert is a very prominent feature on Victoria Street because it is so very different to all the other buildings along the street – a street where buildings seem to be undergoing a continuous process of demolition and new build.

The Albert dates from 1862, and was named after Queen Victoria’s husband, Price Albert, who had died the previous year.

A pub that is well worth a visit, but having stopped off at the Green Boy, I decided to continue.

Looking west along Victoria Street (named after the Queen):

Victoria Street was one of the many 19th century “improvements” to the landscape of London, that carved new roads through an existing networks of much smaller streets, courts, alleys and buildings.

These new roads were built to manage the rapidly increasing volume of traffic across London, to provide routes between key places (Victoria Street linked Westminster and the Embankment with the new Victoria Station which opened in 1860, and then via Grosvenor Place, up to Piccadilly and Knightsbridge).

Victoria Street was built between 1850 and 1860, and the following is an image from the start of construction in 1851:

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

Towards the end of the 19th, and during the early 20th century, Victoria Street was lined with large brick apartment buildings, and offices, shops and department stores gradually populated the street. Today, the brick buildings are in the minority, and the street has gone through many iterations of offices, and today glass and steel office and apartment blocks line the street, and continue to be built, although some late 19th and early 20th century brick buildings survive.

Looking east along Victoria Street:

Before continuing along the route of the Rocque Ring, I am going to make a short detour east along Victoria Street.

Returning to the 1746 map of the area, the red line is the route of the Rocque Ring. The blue line is the future route of Victoria Street (the above two photos were taken where the red and blue lines cross).

I have ringed an area of open space in which there is a small building labelled “Chapel”, with “St Margaret’s Burying Ground” describing the rest of the space:

This is a very old site, and dates back to around the 13th century, when a chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdalene was here. By the end of the 16th century, Stow describes the chapel as being in a ruinious state. The dissoloution of religious sites by Henry VIII probably contributed to the chapel falling out of use.

A second chapel would later be built, and as indicated by Rocque’s map, the land surrounding the chapel was the burying ground of St. Margaret’s, the church that can be found between Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey. The chapel was replaced by Christ Church Broadway, but this church was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. The grounds had already been reduced by the construction of Victoria Street in the mid 19th century.

In the 1950s, the land on which the chapel in the Rocque map, and the later church had been built, was lost to post war building, so what remains today is roughly the area between Victoria Street and the left of the chapel in the above map.

View of the post-war garden from the east:

There is an artwork of the composer Chopin at the eastern entrance to the gardens. Chopin stayed nearby in 10 Bentinck Street when he visited London in 1848:

Along the western side of the garden is an artwork dedicated to “Commemorate the courage and perseverance of all those men and women who in the long struggle for votes for women, selflessly braved derision, opposition and ostracism, many enduring physical violence and suffering”.

The relevance of the location is that as the artwork states “Nearby Caxton Hall was historically associated with women’s suffrage meetings and deputations to Parliament”:

A very important memorial when you consider that in the early 18th century, a husband could get his wife taken into custody in Tothill Prison, as quoted earlier in the post, and that:

“A notable example to such of our English Dames as may give themselves too much Liberty to censure their Husbands Actions or Acquaintance.”

View of the gardens looking from the west. The chapel and later church was located to the left of the photo:

Back to the route of the Rocque Ring, and after crossing Victoria Street and heading down Buckingham Gate, I come across another of the colour coated charity schools:

This is the rear of the Bluecoat School in Caxton Street.

I have put a yellow oval around the location of the school in the 1746 map below, showing that the Bluecoat School was on the edge of the built landscape of London in 1746:

This post is already a long one, so rather than look into the history of the Bluecoat School in this post, here is a link to a dedicated post on the school I wrote a few years ago.

Judging by how far I have come in two posts, I suspect I have underestimated how much there is to discover when walking the Rocque Ring, but it will be an interesting journey.

Edith Cavell – Brussels, Dawn, October 12 1915

25 Replies

Statues and monuments are fascinating. They reflect what is important at the time they are created, especially those who are in a position to fund or authorise the creation and implementation of a statue.

They are intended to be an almost permanent memorial to an event or person. Walk around a city, and the majority of statues and memorials tend to be for those involved in the military or monarchs, and whilst the majority tend to be of men, Queen Victoria was one of the few women to be immortalised by a statue. Queen Anne has a statue in front of St. Paul’s, but they are the exception.

Events are also commemorated, and the period following a war is often one where multiple statues and memorials are erected. The horror of the First World War was such that in the years after the end of the war, almost every city, town and village across the country ended up with some form of memorial to those who had died.

Many statues and memorials are made of stone, and the use of this material, aligns with those responsible for the idea, the funding, creation and erection of the statue or memorial, that it should be permanent. It should outlast those who created it, and it should carry a message for future generations.

In recent years, a number of statues have fallen out of favour as a result of changing attitudes to the person represented – views that would have seemed bizarre to those who originally erected the statue. Our views, the things we represent and choose to record with a memorial or statue may also fall out of favour in the future – everything changes.

Walk up Charing Cross Road from Trafalgar Square and there is one memorial / statue that is still very relevant. One of the few statues of a woman in a significant location and a memorial to a heroic act amidst the barbarism of war:

This is the statue and memorial to the nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed on the 12th of October, 1915 by the German forces that occupied Brussels:

The statue was unveiled on the 17th of March 1920. It would have been completed earlier, but the war delayed sourcing of the marble for the statue from a mine in Italy.

A typical syndicated news report of the unveiling reads as follows:

“Nurse Cavell, London Statue Unveiled – Queen Alexandra unveiled yesterday, in St. Martin’s Place, Trafalgar Square, London, in the presence of a large Anglo-Belgian assembly, a statue of Edith Cavell, which has been erected out of the fund subscribed by readers of the Daily Telegraph. The monument, of grey granite, stands forty feet high, and the statue of white marble shows Miss Cavell standing erect in her nurse’s uniform. On the base is the simple inscription ‘Edith Cavell, Brussels, dawn, October 12th, 1915’.

Viscount Burnham, in an appropriate address, invited Her Majesty to unveil the memorial, and in reply Queen Alexandra said: This beautiful statue, the work of our distinguished sculptor, Sir George Frampton, will stand for all time as a memorial of one who met a martyrs fate, with a calm courage and resignation which has rarely been excelled. The countless thousands who will pass this spot in our time, and in future generations, will think with sorrow of her cruel death, with pride of her splendid fortitude, and with affection of her unselfish and womanly character. The example of Miss Edith Cavell’s life will always be before us.”

The sculptor of the work, Sir George Frampton was also the creator of the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens. His work can also be seen on the Lloyds Register of Shipping building at 71 Fenchurch Street, where he was responsible for the decorative friezes around the façade of the building.

The unveiling ceremony was attended by several members of the Cavell family and delegations of nurses, including one from the Ecole Edith Cavell in Brussels.

The main structure of the monument is of granite, and the statue of Edith Cavell is of Italian marble:

Edith Louisa Cavell was born in 1865 in Swardeston, a small village just to the south of Norwich in Norfolk. Her father was the Reverend Frederick Cavell, and for the early years of her childhood, she was educated in the vicarage.

She later attended Norwich High School, and then three boarding schools, including a school in Kensington.

After leaving school, she started work as a governess, and following the receipt of a legacy, she started to travel across Europe, and in 1890 she took on the role of governess for a family who lived in Brussels.

Five years later, she returned to her Norfolk home to nurse her sick father, which apparently inspired Edith to pursue a career in nursing, so she started to train at the Royal London Hospital.

In 1907, she returned to Brussels, where she took on the role of running a school for the training of nurses. The school was very succesful.

In August 1914, German forces occupied Brussels. Whilst many other British nurses leave the city, Edith remains, and is soon treating the sick and wounded of all the nationalities involved in the First World War.

Later in 1914, two British soldiers, who had been stranded in the confusion of the German invasion, and the retreat of the British and French, find their way to Edith’s training school, where they are given shelter.

In the following months, many other stranded soldiers find their way to Edith’s school, and an escape organisation develops to help stranded soldiers escape and return to Great Britain.

In August 1915, a Belgian collaborator had passed through the school, resulting in the school being searched. Whilst nothing was found, the German secret police started to take a more focussed interest in the workings of the school, and on the 5th of August 1915, Edith Cavell is arrested, as well as many other colleagues and those involved in the organisation to assist those wanting to escape.

Edith is interrogated for three days, and makes a confession only after being told that it was the only way in which her friends would be saved. She is transferred to the St Gilles prison in Brussels, where she spends the rest of August and the whole of September.

On the 7th of October 1915, Edith, along with some of her colleagues, are taken before a Germany military court. It many ways it was a show trial as there was no jury, and those accused did not have any proper legal representation, and on the 11th of October, Edith, along with four of her colleagues are sentenced to death. Others involved in the escape organisation receive prison sentences.

Appeals to the German authorities are made by the Americans (who had not yet entered the war), the Dutch and the Spanish. The Pope also made an appeal for clemency.

Edith Cavell, from the Wellcome Collection:

Licence: Public Domain Mark Credit: Edith Louisa Cavell. Photograph. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Nurses looking at floral tributes at the statue of Edith Cavell:

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Credit: Statue, Edith Cavell 1865-1915 Brussels, dawn October 12 1915. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collectio

Despite the appeals for clemency, Edith was shot at dawn on the 12th of October, 1915.

Before October 1915, Edith very rarely appeared in any newspapers. On the 20th of October 1888, she was mentioned in the Norwich Argus for her role in the East Suffolk Sewing Scheme, and on the 1st of January 1898, she was mentioned in the Deal, Warmer and Sandwich Mercury as one of those responsible for decorating the church of St. George with evergreens, white flowers, ferns and ivy for Christmas.

In June 1910, she is mentioned as one of the mourners at her father’s funeral, but this quiet life changes in October 1915, when her name is across all the national and local newspapers of the country.

The first that the country appears to hear of Edith and her execution is on the 16th of October, when papers report that the Foreign Office was informed of her death by the United States Ambassador.

These initial reports bring to their readers the full horror and barbarism of war, which had descended to such a level that a nurse could be executed, for example from the Eastern Evening News on the 18th of October, 1915:

“How Nurse Cavell Died – Shot by a German Officer – In an account of the execution of Miss Edith Cavell at Brussels – she was found guilty and sentenced to death on a charge of aiding Belgian men to escape to England – the Amsterdam correspondent of the Daily Mail states: The German firing party of six men and an officer were drawn up in a garden surrounded by a high wall. She was led in, blindfolded with a black scarf. Up to this minute she had stepped out bravely to meet her fate. But before the rifle party her strength at last gave out, and she tottered and fell to the ground. The officer in charge of the execution walked to her, and drew a large pistol from his belt, took steady aim from his knee, and shot her through the head. The firing party looked on. The officer then ordered the soldiers to carry the body to the house, where charge was taken of it by a Belgian woman. The execution of Miss Cavell has shocked the whole Belgian community.”

It is interesting that by the time that the statue was unveiled, Edith’s execution had been raised to a more heroic story. From the London Evening News on the 17th of March 1920:

“Homage of Two Nations – A grey morning in Brussels, one October day in the year 1915. A file of German soldiers, with an officer in command. A quiet figure in the habit of a nurse facing them at a little distance. Dead silence in this prison yard on the grey October morning. The word of command brings up the soldiers rifles, so that they are levelled at the breast of the quiet, motionless figure. Another command. The rifles spout red flame, the noise of the exploding charges rends the air. The steadfast figure shudders and falls forward; dead.”

As well as numerous newspaper reports, a range of prints were made depicting various aspects of her execution. These were often used to show the barbarous nature of the enemy, to encourage recruitment into the army, as at the time of Edith’s execution, conscription had not started.

The following print by Alexander Rosell is a prime example. Described as Edith Cavell wearing a Red Cross uniform lying dead on the floor as her spirit rises in the form of an angel, whilst a Prussian officer stands over her corpse, stroking his beard. A stone cross shattered into pieces lies on the ground:

Licence: Public Domain Mark Credit: Edith Cavell wearing Red Cross uniform lying dead on the floor as her spirit rises in the form of an angel. Process print after A. Rosell, ca. 1915. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Edith Cavell’s monument and statue is Grade I listed for a number of reasons, including the historic interest of the memorial, the quality of the sculpture and Sir George Frampton’s design and craftsmanship, along with the overall location of the memorial in that it continues from Trafalgar Square and is adjacent to the National Portrait Gallery.

At the very top of the memorial is the figure of a woman shielding an infant. In the folds of her dress is the Geneva Cross, now used by the Red Cross, and traditionally a symbol used for the protection of medical personal in war:

The rear of the monument has the word “Fortitude” above a relief of a lion standing triumphant over a serpent, which symbolised Britain’s triumph over treachery:

Sacrifice – on the side of the memorial:

Devotion on the other side:

The reason for writing about Edith Cavell and the monument and statue to her in Charing Cross Road, is a chance find whilst we were in Norwich a couple of weeks ago.

Norwich Cathedral is a magnificent building that deserved a look:

And whilst we were having a look around the cathedral, we found that Edith Cavell was buried just outside at Life’s Green, next to the Cathedral’s St Saviour’s Chapel:

Edith Cavell’s body was brought back to England in May 1919, when “The body of Nurse Cavell was yesterday conveyed from Brussels to Ostend, whence it will be brought to England to-day on board a British destroyer. Impressive scenes attended its removal. When the coffin reaches Dover, this evening special honours will be rendered by nurses and other women war workers. It will lie in state to-night at the Admiralty Pier preparatory to its departure for London tomorrow.”

From Dover to London, the coffin was carried by train, and from Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey, it was carried through the streets on a gun carriage. A service was held at Westminster Abbey, after which it was replaced on the gun carriage and transported to Liverpool Street Station, where a special train took the coffin to Norwich, where, after a second service, Edith Cavell was buried where we find the grave today.

The stone at the grave is not the original. It dates from 2015, the 100th anniversary of her death. The headstone is in the style of those also used in War Graves Commission cemetaries – a request from the family.

The emblem on the top of the headstone is that of her nursing school in Brussels:

Around the edge of the grave are the words “In the light of God and eternity I have realised that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone”.

These words are a variation of words spoken by Edith Cavell on the day before her execution. The part of the sentence starting at Patriotism is also on the memorial in London.

The memorial to, and statue of Edith Cavell is not just a memorial of one person, important though it is. It is also a reminder of the horror and barbarism of war, and, as recorded on the front of the memorial, just above the statue, the importance of humanity.

Hopefully Edith’s approach to her fellow humans is one attitude which will not go out of favour in the centuries to come.

Walking the Rocque Ring – The Limits of London in 1746. Part 1

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There are so many walks through and around London, and for the really ambitious there is the Capital Ring, and the longer London Loop, or London Outer Orbital Path, which takes you on a walk of almost 150 miles around the edges of Greater London.

I have walked sections of both these routes, and they both offer a different perspective of the wider boundaries of the ever growing city.

For many of the 12 years that I have been writing the blog, I have used the maps of John Rocque to illustrate London as it was in 1746, and I have always been fascinated by the way the edges of the built city end with fields, pasture and gardens. These fields would, in turn, soon be covered with houses and streets, as London’s rapid expansion continued, but the map does what maps do well, it shows the city at a specific point in time.

I enjoy both random wandering and following a theme when out walking, so for a new theme, I decided to try and follow the edges of London in 1746 as shown by Rocque’s map.

A full circle around London, which can go by the wonderfully alliterative name of the Roqcue Ring.

I decided to start on the western edge of the built city, on the northern bank of the river, at what was the horse ferry, and is now Lambeth Bridge, and then work my way northwards to start the circle of the city.

In today’s post, I am covering part of the following map:

I have marked the route in red in the map below, starting at the Horse Ferry on the Thames:

My rule is to try and follow the edge of the built environment, but I am also including Royal Parks in the definition of built, as they would not be covered in streets, and were part of the manmade environment, although I am not including gardens, orchards and other agricultural land.

Some parts of the route will be rather arbitrary, but my intention is the whole of the circle around London will provide a good idea of the edge of London in 1746, and would find what remains from that year in history.

I have replicated the route in the above map on a map of 2026. It looks a bit different as the orientation of the two maps is different, and I preserved the orientation so the street names are readable:

To the starting point, and in 1746, the western edge of the built city was at the Horse Ferry, a historic ferry that once carried people and goods between the point shown on the map, and Lambeth on the opposite side of the river.

The Horse Ferry can be seen in the centre of the river bank in the following map. Mill Bank runs left to right, and northwards from the Horse Ferry is Market Street, now Horseferry Road. There are gardens to the left, and along Mill Bank there is Grosvenor House. Originally Peterborough House, the house was part of the considerable inheritance of Mary Davies, and it came into the Grosvenor family when she married Sir Thomas Grosvenor in 1677. The house was demolished in 1809 so that the Grosvenor family could redevelop the area:

This is the old Horseferry in 1800, with Lambeth Palace in the background:

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

This is the view today, where Lambeth Bridge has replace the Horseferry. Lambeth palace can be seen in the background to the left:

This is the view looking north along Horseferry Road (Market Street in Rocque’s time). The building of the Security Service MI5 is on the left, and the almost identical building on the right was Imperial Chemicals House, the old headquarters of the chemicals company ICI:

Decoration on the old ICI building presents almost a text book of the history of those involved in the chemicals industry. I wrote a post about the building, which you can find here.

Leaving Millbank and heading along Horseferry Road. Millbank takes its name from the mill that belonged to Westminster Abbey and was at the end of Great Collge Street.

This section of Horseferry Road was originally Market Street, but changed name after the remodelling of the area when Lambeth Bridge arrived:

A short distance along Horseferry Road, we can look right down Dean Bradley Street and just see the columns of St. John’s, Smith Square. The church was built between 1714 and 1728, so around 20 years before Rocque’s map, where it is shown with a large churchyard:

Dean Bradley Street was not there in Rocque’s map, and although the street layout in Westminster may appear to be old, Dean Bradley Street was an early 20th century addition, when the area was developed from terrace housing to larger office blocks.

Dean Bradley Street was named after George Bradley, Dean of Westminster Abbey between 1881 and 1902. St John’s Smith Square is now Smith Square Hall, home of the Sinfonia Smith Square, and is a venue for hire.

I wrote about the history of the church and Smith Square in this post.

Looking north along Horseferry Road at the junction with Dean Bradley Street. In 1746 there were buildings on the right and left. The buildings on the left had a large central area of gardens.

The trees in photo mark the location of a feature that was in Rocque’s map:

On the 1746 map, there is a feature called St. John’s Burying Ground, and although long closed as a burying ground, this is still open space called St. John’s Gardens:

The burial ground served the church at the end of Dean Bradley Street, but as with most burying grounds in London, it soon became full, and the parish went to the extremes of adding three feet of earth across the surface to provide additional depth for more burials.

Body snatchers were a big problem, guards were posted for a time, and in the early 19th century, they were armed with pistols.

These places must have been horrendous, and an article in the Kentish Weekly Post on the 3rd of February 1750 illustrates one of the bizarre happenings at such as place:

“On Sunday morning last, a man, supposed to be murdered, there appearing several marks of violence, tied up in a sack, was thrown over the wall of the Burying Ground of St John’s, Westminster, and on Wednesday he was exposed to view, in order to be owned.”

Today, gravestones line the sides of the gardens:

On what appears to be a relatively recent small building at the southern end of the gardens, there is a much eroded plaque, which looks as if it was moved from another location, and whilst much is illegible, it appears to talk about the grave stones and memorials, and ends with “Become illegible through lapse of time”:

There are a few remaining larger graves / monuments across the gardens as a reminder that this was once a burying ground:

As well as adding three feet of earth, the burying ground was extended by the purchased of some of Grosvenor’s land in 1823, but later when Horseferry Road was widened, the burying ground lost some land.

The state of the burying ground was so bad, that it was closed in 1853, and after being left derelict for a number of years until 1880, a group of local residents took on the responsibility to convert it to a public garden, which was opened on the 23rd of May, 1885.

An article in the London Evening Standard described the opening of the garden, which was performed by the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, who had also contributed £1,000 to the costs of creating the gardens.

The Rev. Colin Furse presented the Duke with a key to the gardens and also stated how important they were for an area which lacked open space, and with a population of between 30,000 and 40,000 within a quarter of a mile, this would be an important place.

The article makes mention of the careful way in which the gravestones were moved to the boundaries of the gardens, but makes no mention of the bodies. With the burying grounds of many London churches, bodies were moved to one of the big 19th century cemeteries that surrounded the city, but perhaps with St. John’s Garden, the old inhabitants are still there.

Just past St John’s Gardens is the junction of Horseferry Road with Marsham Street, which runs to the left and right:

In 1746, Horseferry Road continued onwards, following its current alignment. The land to the left consisted of gardens with Tothill Fields to the north, along with gardens to the right. The stretch of Marsham Street which todays runs to the left at the traffic lights did not exist, but Marsham Street to the right did.

The following map is the detailed extract of this area from the 1746 map. Unfortunately on my printed copy, Marsham Street is at the bottom of a page, so the full section of this street is not shown, but if you look at the bottom of the map could can make out the Mar of Marsham, and it is down this street that I am turning, to follow the built up edge of the city:

View looking along Marsham Street today:

On the right is the 1930s Romney House and on the left are the offices of the Home Office.

Romney House has me confused, and shows the value of double checking.

A Google for Romney House took me to the site of estate agency Garton Jones, who on their website state that it is a Grade II listed building. Checking the Historic England listing and I could not find any reference to this listing, but there is one for Romney (Stubbs) House, in the nearby Millbank Estate, which is Grade II listed.

This adds to the confusion, as in the Millbank Estate, Romney (Stubbs) House is simply named Stubbs House.

Not sure what is happening here, whether the listing is missing, or that I just could not find the listing for Romney House in Marsham Street, or whether the estate agents have mixed up the Romney House in Marsham Street with the listing for the building in the Millbank Estate.

The building on the left is currently occupied by the Home Office. The building was completed in 2005, and designed by the architect Terry Farrell.

Before the current building, there were three infamous 1960s office blocks on the site, which I have ringed in the following 1970s post card:

Designed by Eric Bedford of the Ministry of Public Building and Works, the towers were 216 feet in height which meant that that they were in the background of the view when looking across the river towards the Palace of Westminster / Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey

What was below these 1960s towers has an interesting history, and for that, I refer you to this page on the excellent Subterranea Britannia website (well worth joining if you are interested in what is hidden below ground).

All of Marsham Street has been rebuilt since Rocque’s map, but as well as the street, Bennett’s Yard, which is the only alley / yard on the eastern side of the street, still survives from 1746:

To show that Marsham Street had already been here for many year’s before Rocque’s map, there is a plaque in one of the walls around the Home Office:

An old street name plaque dating to 1688:

Marsham Street is named after Sir Robert Marsham, who lived between 1650 and 1703 and was a politician and an MP who sat in the House of Commons. I cannot find any reference to whether he either lived on Marsham Street, owned the land or built any part of the street, so I suspect it was his political career that resulted in his name being used for the street.

On the opposite side of Marsham Street is the Emmanuel Centre, a Christian Church:

The building was originally the Christian Science Church and Sunday School Chapel, and was built between 1926 and 1930. This red brick building designed by Sir Herbert Baker, is Grade II* listed, mainly as it is a “virtually unaltered example of an early C20 Christian Science church”. The design also makes creative use of what is a relatively small space between Marsham Street and Tufton Street.

In the following photo, I am at the junction of Marsham Street and Great Peter Street, which crosses from left to right. I am turning left at the traffic lights into Great Peter Street, which was simply called Peter Street in Rocque’s map:

The section of Great Peter Street, north from Marsham Street, appears to have been laid out in the 1720s. The “Great” appears to have been added towards the end of the 18th century, and the name Peter appears to be from the Collegiate Church of St Peter, or Westminster Abbey.

The following photo shows the view along Great Peter Street from Marsham Street. In 1746, to the right was a network of streets and buildings of the growing city. To the left was a single row of buildings along the side of the street, with gardens and fields beyond – the limit of the built city in 1746:

On the pillar at the far end of the building on the left of Great Peter Street, there is a green City of Westminster plaque, seen in the photo below just above the bonnet of the van:

The City of Westminster plaque records that the Gas Light & Coke Company operated on the site between 1813 and 1937, and the site provided the first public supply of gas in the world:

Parliamentary approval for the gas works was given in 1810, and three years later, the plant was in operation.

In October 1813 there were numerous reports in the London newspapers about the rollout of new gas lamps in Westminster, for example:

“The parishes of St. Margaret’s and St. John’s, Westminster, are being lighted with gas by the Gas Light and Coke Company, putting up one lamp where there are three of the common lamps.”

The spread of gas lighting on the streets must have been seen as a remarkable technical achievement, and other towns and cities across the country were eager to emulate the success of gas lighting.

A newspaper article on the 18th of April 1818 reported that “Since the principal streets of London and Westminster have been lighted up with gas, converting ‘darkness visible’ into the glare of day, there have not been those frequent depredations committed, either in the shops or on the highways. The example of the metropolis is immediately to be followed by Bath, Worcester, and other large towns.”

Before the start of the 19th century, at night, London was a very dark place.

Despite the benefit of gas lighting, the gas, an other industries were dirty, polluting and dangerous and they were frequently right next to housing and other types of business.

The was also the case with the gas works in Westminster and the following report, which was in multiple newspapers on the 1st of November 1813, illustrates some of the dangers:

“On Monday the neighbourhood of Great Peter-street, Westminster, was thrown into much confusion and alarm by a gas light explosion, which shook the surrounding houses, broke many windows, and threatened to fire in every direction. From all we could learn it appeared that a pipe unexpectedly burst in the premises of the Gas Light and Coke Company.

By this means much gas oozed out and filled the apartment; but not calculating on this, one of the men took a candle and proceeded to the spot to ascertain what was the matter. The moment the candle was introduced, the whole of the gas that had escaped from the pipe burst into flame, with a dreadful explosion, as if fire had been communicated to a heap of gunpowder. By it, this man was much injured, as well as two or three more of the workmen.

The speedy arrival of many engines, and the exertions within the manufactory, soon got the fire under control, and prevented it from extending to the neighbouring premises.”

As well as the risks of explosions and fires, local residents also had to put up with the constant transport of coal to the works, along with the removal of all the waste.

This was part rectified by a pipe which ran from the gas works down to the river for the disposal of effluent, and a wharf was leased in Millbank for ships to deliver coal for the shorter journey to the gas works.

During the mid 19th century, the gas works were enlarged, eventually filling a large rectangle of land between Great Peter Street, Monck Street, Horseferry Road and parts of Marsham Street.

This was the “Principal Entrance to the Gas Works” in 1830:

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

By the later parts of the 19th century, the site was too small for the size of gas works needed to power much of the city. Gas companies were amalgamating and the giant Beckton Gas Works opened, so in 1870, the Great Peter Street works changed to only being available for peak demand, closing fully in 1875.

Whilst the site had ended gas production, it was still useful as it was the hub of a network of gas distribution pipes, so after gas production ended, gas holders were built to store gas produced elsewhere, and distribute to local consumers.

The 1950 revision of the OS map shows two gas holders that were built on the site, and also gives an indication of the size of the overall site:

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

In the following image from the Britain from Above archive, dated 1938, you can see the two gas holders as two large white circles to the lower left. Remarkable from today’s perspective, that these were so close to the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey:

I am continuing along Great Peter Street. On the right is part of the red brick St Matthew’s clergy house, built in 1905:

And just past the red brick building is the church of St Matthew, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and built between 1849 and 1851:

The church has a really strange design. The church and the clergy house sit on a rectangular plot of land. The clergy house occupies a corner of the plot, so the church has the tower and entrance in Great Peter Street, runs back along the side of the clergy house, then does a 90 degree turn along the back of the clergy house to end at St. Ann’s Street, next to which there is also St Matthew’s Church of England Primary School, shown in the right of the following photo, with the rear of the church to the left and the brick clergy house to the left:

Continuing along Great Peter Street:

In the above photo, there is a white building along the street, which turns out to be a pub, the Speaker:

There was a pub on the site when Rocque’s map was made in 1746. The original pub appears to date from 1729, which is when this section of the street was originally laid out. The pub was originally called the Castle.

It was rebuilt between 1794 and 1795, and I assume that the current building dates from this rebuild, as I can find no other references to any further reconstruction. Following completion of the late 18th century work, the pub became known as the Elephant and Castle, a name it kept until 1999, when it became the Speaker.

I had a quick look at the census data for 46 Great Peter Street, and in 1911 when the pub was known as the Elephant and Castle it was occupied by the licensed victualler William Arthur Atkins and his family consisting of his wife and two daughters, the wife and eldest daughter assisted in the business, whilst the second daughter was at school.

There was also a 2 year old son, who, in the “occupation” field has the brilliant description of “playing”, which is the perfect occupation for a 2 year old.

There were also two servants, listed as barmen and a cook.

The interior of the pub:

Today, the pub is one single bar, but despite its relatively small size, as with the majority of pubs, it had once been divided into public and saloon bars.

The gradual merging of these two very different types of bars was a contentious issue. There is a brilliant article in the Chelsea News and General Advertiser on the 5th of June 1959 when the landlord of the Elephant and Castle, as it was named at the time, raised his objections to these changes:

“Mr. Rupert Finch, tenant at the Elephant and Castle, Great Peter Street, Westminster, said that trying to join public and saloon bars together had been tried in Victoria with disastrous results. Customers had walked out to express their opposition to it.

Gin palaces aren’t wanted in London, he declared.

You.ve got to cater for people who don’t like drinking in the same bar as their bosses each day. And there’s always the fellow who likes his cheaper pint in the public.”

I had a part-time job in the early 1980s in a pub, and the salon and public bars were indeed very different places, and the public bar was always the last one to empty out at closing time. The pub is still around today, but is now a single bar.

So the pub does not date from the time of Rocque’s map, but there is one building on Great Peter Street that could:

This is a really strange building, which looks as if it has undergone some considerable change over its possibly long history.

The side wall is made of much later brick. This could have been when the rest of the houses in what would have been a terrace, were demolished, leaving only number 79.

The ground floor also appears to have been significantly remodelled, leaving only the upper two floors which look as if they could have been part of an early 18th century terrace house.

The building is not listed, and also has a rather strange white feature projecting from the second floor. I have no idea what this is, but the building is occupied by a firm of architects, so it may be something to do with their profession.

It would be nice to think that the outer wall on the upper two floors is the same as would have been found in 1746, when Great Peter Street was part of the western limit of built London.

The yellow arrow in the following map shows the point I have reached in the Rocque Ring:

Not that far, given the total length of the route, but even in this small distance, I have found that it is another way of exploring and looking at London, and to appreciate just how much the city has grown in the 280 years since Rocque’s map of 1746.

I will continue walking the Rocque Ring in the coming months.

The Ring and a Junction on Blackfriars Road

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At the end of the last war, there were a range of booklets published by local authorities, postal and transport organisations, police, fire service etc. documenting London at war and their participation in the six years during which the destruction of the city would be at a level not seen since the Great Fire of London. These were published quickly, and reading them they have a common theme of wanting to set on record the challenges of the last six years before the country quickly moved on to what was hoped to be a period of reconstruction and prosperity.

My father bought a large number of these as they were published, one of which was titled “Hitler Passed This Way”, which showed bomb damage throughout the city using before and after photos.

I wrote about the booklet ten years ago (link at the end of today’s post), and today I want to look in detail at one of the sites recorded in the booklet.

This is The Ring on Blackfriars Road, at the junction with Charlotte Street (now Union Street):

At the time of the above photo, the Ring was an indoor boxing venue, but it had an earlier history before boxing. The building dated from 1783 and was the creation of the Reverend Rowland Hill, a rather eccentric churchman.

Rowland Hill was born in August 1744. He was the son of Sir Rowland Hill and brother of Sir Richard Hill, and he came from an influential Shropshire family.

He went to Eton and then to St. John’s College, Cambridge, and then started preaching across the country, and in London at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in the Elephant and Castle and at the Tottenham Court Road Chapel.

He seems to have had a rather complex view of religion and in his obituary he was described as “theoretically a Churchman and practically a Dissenter. A Dissenter within the Church, a Churchman among Dissenters – necessarily involved him, especially in the early part of his career, in continual polemic skirmishing. His very Catholicism sometimes put on an aggressive form.”

There were many anecdotes about his life, including one where he was riding with his wife in a carriage “somewhere near London”, when they were attacked by three men who violently demanded money. They had earlier attacked his assistant who had gone on before them. When he was held up he stood up and, “set up such a tremendous unearthly shout that one of them cried out ‘We have stopped the devil by mistake and had better be off’, on which they ran away, and left him and his lady in peaceable possession of the road.” When telling this story he said that he had “made all the outrageous noises I could think of, and frightened the fellows out of their wits”.

The building opened as the Surrey Chapel opened in 1783, and the Rev Rowland Hill was the first to preach in the chapel, although rather than a successful opening, newspapers reported that “There was the greatest confusion imaginable last Sunday in the Rev. Rowland Hill’s new Chapel in which he preached that day for the first time. Near the conclusion of his sermon a man loudly proclaimed that the ‘chapel was falling’. The consequence was too dreadful to be described. In the struggle to escape, many individuals were exceedingly hurt; and others had their clothes torn from their backs. The man was taken into custody.”

Rowland Hill preached at the Surrey Chapel for much of his life, almost to the very day of his death in April 1833, when at the age of 89, he died in his house next to the Surrey Chapel in Charlotte Street, (now Union Street).

The chapel was an unusual shape, not the traditional rectangle of a church of chapel, but a multi-sided part circle, as the Rev. Rowland Hill wanted a chapel in which “there were no corners for the devil to hide”.

In the following extract from the 1892 OS map, I have circled the Surrey Chapel:

By the time of the above map, extensions had been added to the chapel at top right in the map, which part obscured its original shape.

Blackfriars Road runs from top to bottom in the centre of the map. Great Charlotte Street is today The Cut, Charlotte Street is Union Street, and Southwark Underground Station on the Jubilee Line is today on the upper corner of Great Charlotte Street and Blackfriars Road.

The Surrey Chapel was always well attended with between 1,000 and 2,000 people attending services and meetings.

One meeting held in April 1845 demonstrated that even 300 years after the break with Rome, the Catholic faith continued to be a contentious issue.

1,500 people attended a meeting to oppose a grant that the Government proposed to make to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth in County Kildare in Ireland, a seminary founded in 1795 for the education of priests, and an institution that by 1850 had become the largest seminary in the world. The meeting in the Surrey Chapel believed that “the Reformation from Popery was the greatest blessing and honour that England ever possessed, and therefore, views with alarm, the determination of Her Majesty’s Ministers to endow the popish college of Maynooth with £26,000 per annum.”

The Surrey Chapel was also home to a number of societies, including:

The Auxiliary Bible Society – formed to distribute bibles and holy scriptures, for example to the Southwark Sunday School Society
The Dorcas Society – which assisted poor married women during their period of confinement, including the provision of money, coals, soap, clothing for the infant and the loan of suitable linen for the mother
The Female Clothing Society – the object of the society was to furnish, at half price, the most necessary and useful articles of female clothing; and many needy but decent families have therefore been enabled, by their small savings to procure comfortable apparel
The Female Missionary Working Association – the object of which is the promotion of a missionary spirit among its member, to assist those ladies who, with their husband, are labouring abroad in connection with the London Missionary Society

Just a sample of the societies that were meeting the chapel in Blackfriars Road.

The word Missionary usually conjures images of people travelling across the world to convert other populations to the Christian church, however the Surrey Chapel was also involved in extensive missionary work across London. The following is from the London City Mission Magazine on the 1st of December 1841:

“London affords the opportunity of carrying on Missionary work among many distinct classes of people. As to birth, we have the Irishman, the Welshman, the German, the Italian, and the Jew, both British and foreign, in great numbers, and all of these want missionaries.

As to employment, there are many classes greatly neglected which either want missionaries or the special and direct attention of the clergy and or other ministers of the Gospel. There are two police forces of about 4,000 men; there are also omnibus drivers and conductors, coach and cabmen, and cattle drovers. There are also soldiers at various barracks, who spiritual advantages are very few, and whose spiritual state is sadly neglected, and there are firemen who, from the peculiar duties, seldom know the enjoyment of a Sabbath.”

The article had a special mention for the work of the Surrey Chapel after the loss of the lives of two firemen at a fire in Blackfriars Road, following a service where the reverend of the chapel preached directly to the firemen assembled in the chapel. This action resulted in a letter of thanks from James Braidwood, the Superintendent of the London fire service.

After the death of the Rev. Rowland Hill, he was buried under the Pulpit of the Surrey Chapel, and it continued as a religious chapel until 1876 when the congregation moved to Christ Church in Westminster Bridge Road. This included the move of Rowland Hill’s body from Surrey Chapel to Christ Church.

Following the move of the chapel’s congregation, the building took on the role of a factory, before becoming a centre for boxing, which I will cover after the next two photos.

The Surrey Chapel / The Ring was severely damaged by bombing in 1940, and in December 1944 a V2 rocket landed next to the building, and what remained was demolished to the leave the site of the building as shown in the following photo from “Hitler Passed This Way”:

I took the following photo of the site today, in August 2026, showing a very different building:

The current building on the site is 197 Blackfriars Road, a building which also has the name Palestra, which is a rather nice reference to the history of the site, as Palestra in ancient Greece and Rome was a place for training in boxing and wrestling. It is an office block used by Transport for London.

After the move of the congregation of the Surrey Chapel, and the building’s brief life as a factory manufacturing electric motors and as a general engineering works, in early 1910 it was reported that the building was being converted to “an electric theatre for kinomategraph exhibitions” – presumably a cinema, however later in the same year it would take on a very different use, as reported in the South London Press on the 30th of May, 1910:

“BOXING RING FOR SOUTHWARK – With its exterior brightened by countless rows of electric bulbs, old Surrey Chapel has been reopened as The Ring. The announcement that an up-to-date boxing ring would be opened there, under the sole direction of Mr. Dick Burge, has been enthusiastically welcomed. At the opening on Saturday night, the building was filled with a big audience of those interested in boxing. The construction of the old place is peculiarly suitable and the reseating, redecorating, and the erection of a twelve feet enclosure have been caried out judiciously, and on up-to-date lines.

Several local heroes fought bouts in a 10st. novice competition, which was preceded with on Whit-Monday, and champions and ex-champions gave exhibitions of skill. The timekeeper was a clergyman – the Rev. Thomas Collins.”

The boxing ring was on the site of the old pulpit, and as King Edward VII had just died, the ring was “draped in purple and black crape, as were the pillars supporting the gallery”.

Dick Burge had taken over the ring with his wife Bella. He had been a boxer in the last few decades of the 19th century, and for six years had been the British lightweight champion. After retiring from boxing, he had financial difficulties and ended up being involved with some conmen, with the result that he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released a couple of years before the end of his sentence after helping a prison guard who was being violently attacked.

Not long after opening The Ring, the First World War started, and Dick Burge joined the 1st Surrey Rifles, being promoted to Sergeant in 1915. He had joined up as “an example to English sportsmen”.

In March 1918, he fell victim to pneumonia after just a week’s illness. His obituary stated that he was instrumental in obtaining a large number of recruits, that he was a generous man, whose chief joy in life was extending a helping hand to those who needed it.

As well as Dick Burge’s example of joining up, the Ring was also involved in the drive for recruits, and the hunt for those who were dodging the call-up, as described in the following report, which was carried by numerous newspapers on the 5th of September 1916:

“BOXING RING RAIDED BY POLICE AND MILITARY – A crowd of spectators were present at the Ring, Blackfriars-road yesterday afternoon to witness the boxing contests. Three thousand had paid for admission. Suddenly a force of police officers and military with fixed bayonets entered. Each exit was guarded, and as the spectators left the building there was a challenge by the police. Eligible looking men were asked to show their papers and explain why they were not in khaki. Instantly the shirkers and dodgers amongst the crowd vainly attempted to elude the police. With great promptitude 50 arrests were carried out, and the prisoners were marched away in custody. They made a striking procession along Blackfriars-road to a chorus of loud applause from wounded soldiers in the vicinity.”

After Dick’s death, his widow Bella took on the running of the Ring, and made a considerable success of the venue. It was a place well known for bringing on boxers at the start of their careers, as well as more established and famous boxers.

Bella had a real interest in boxing, and how the sport was developing. In 1924 she wrote to the London Evening News:

“Mrs. Bella Burge writes from The Ring: During the fifteen years that The Ring has been open, everyone will admit that practically every British boxer with anything appertaining to fame has been brought out at this venue.

With this many years experience, it appears to me that British boxing at the present time is in a state of chaos, and I think that something should be done, especially with regard to the heavy-weight championship. I feel sure that Mr. Bettinson and the members of the National Sporting Club will coincide with my views.

The fabulous salaries being paid to some boxers at the present time will ultimately mean ruin to all concerned. The public have stood by with wonderful patience, which will eventually be exhausted.

In an effort to revive public interest I once again offer Frank Goddard (the present champion) and Jack Bloomfield a purse of £1,000, and an additional £100 each for training expenses, for a contest under championship conditions, to be held at the Ring.”

Bella was quite a woman. Born in New York, by the age of twelve, she was on stage at the Pavilion Theatre in London, and until marrying Dick Burge, and getting involved in boxing, she was a music hall artist, working with Rosie Lloyds, the sister of the artist Marie Lloyd.

Bella must have been a formidable woman as she was known for being the boss of the Ring, a place which was often called the “roughest and toughest arena in the whole rough and tough boxing world”. There was often plenty of trouble at the Ring, with the cheap standing area at the back of the balcony a place where the “tough lads used to gather, armed with knuckle-dusters and hob-nailed boots”.

She dealt with these trouble makers as with all trouble makers, and when she told them to get out and not come back, they knew that she meant it. There was also a system of suspensions to keep out trouble makers.

Bella was also against the fixing of fights, and it was claimed that “there were no fixed fights when Bella was watching”.

In the final years of the 1930s, other boxing halls were starting to draw greater crowds than the Ring, and Bella often had to pay the fighters from her own personal savings.

After the Ring was bombed, she ended her role in the boxing profession and lived quietly in Bloomsbury, until her death aged 84 in 1962.

Bella Burge in 1910:

Source and attribution: Unknown (1910), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Whilst today there is no trace of the Ring, the name of the building on the site today is an obscure reference to the sport, but the pub across the road junction has taken on the job of maintaining the name:

The pub was originally the Railway Tavern and seems to date from the mid 19th century. I am not sure when the name changed to the Ring, but the last reference I can find to the name Railway Tavern was in 1951.

The pub did for a number of years have a boxing ring in one of the upper floors, and walking in today, photos and memorabilia of the sport of boxing covers almost every bit of free space across the walls:

They have Adnams Broadside on handpumps (£6 a pint if you track London beer prices), so with one of these, I sat alongside one of the windows so I could look out across to the location of the place that gave the pub its name:

Photos of boxers fill the pub – a bit difficult to photo as I did not want to include other customers in the photo:

There is much else to find at this road junction. In the photos of the Ring as well as the map, a railway running across a brick viaduct and bridge across Blackfriars Road can be seen just behind the Ring.

This is the view of the eastern side of the bridge today:

Under the bridge, and in the eastern side of the bridge is what appears to be an old entrance, with signs stating Charing Cross Railway and Blackfriars Station:

There is a plaque on the wall to the right which states that this is the entrance to the former Blackfriars Station, commenced by the Charing Cross Railway Company on a line from London Bridge to Charing Cross, and that it was taken over by the South Eastern Railway Company before opening in January 1864.

This is from a time when railway construction was taking place across much of London. Small companies were merging to form larger compnaies, temporary stations opened whist other major construction work was completed, and this appears to have been the story for this first Blackfriars Station.

The plaque states it was opened in January 1864, and a news report in the London Evening Standard from December 1863 is titled “Opening of the Charing Cross Railway”, and includes a brief description of the station during an official inspection of the route by Captain Tyler of the Royal Engineers on the 31st of December:

“About twelve o’clock, the train, consisting of a fine locomotive and two of the new first-class carriages belonging to the South-Eastern Railway, left the Charing-cross end of the line and proceeded gently along the down rail to the junction at the Waterloo-road, where a minute scrutiny of the signals (Saxby’s patent) and the points were made by the inspector.

After some time had been spent at this point the train proceeded on its way to London bridge, passing the new Blackfriars Station; which is provided with two side and one central platforms lighted by globular lamps similar to those on the Metropolitan Railway. The whole of the signals, points, stations and permanent way were carefully examined by Captain Tyler, who, we believe, expressed satisfaction at many of the arrangements, and on the arrival of the train at London Bridge.”

Not sure when the station closed, but it was part of the ever expanding story for London’s rail network.

The glazed bricks on the side of the bridge close to the location of the Ring still have damage sustained during the bombing which destroyed the Ring:

This road junction continues to play a part in the story of London transport networks, as directly opposite the location of the Ring, and as with the original Blackfriars Station, also next to the railway viaduct, is Southwark Station on the Jubilee Line. The station opened in November 1999 as part of the Jubilee Line extension:

I have now covered three corners of the junction, and there is more to discover on the fourth corner, where looking across, there is a housing block:

This is Rowland Hill House, named after the Reverend Rowland Hill, founder of the Surrey Chapel:

And in the corner, between Rowland Hill House and the road junction, there is a black post with a golden dog licking a pot on the top:

The reason why the golden dog and pot is here is down to a quote from Charles Dickens. The following extract from the Norwood Press and Dulwich Advertiser on the 26th of May 1933 provides some background:

“While Dickens himself was lodging in Lant-street and drudging in Warren’s blacking warehouse down by Hungerford-stairs, he tells us ‘My usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge and down that turning in the Blackfriars-road which has Rowland Hill’s chapel on one side, and the likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot, over a shop door on the other’. Rowland Hill’s once famous chapel is very well known to present patrons of ‘ the noble art’ as The Ring, but alas the golden dog is no more, He was sold only a year or two since, and so has taken his place in the honourable and ever-increasing company of vanished landmarks of old South London.”

The South London Press is a wonderful local newspaper for research, not only for news articles from the past, but the paper also had a regular series of articles on Southwark’s Past, and one article on the 6th of June 1913 included a section on old signs that once hung above shops and businesses, including the following on the dog and pot (and apologies for the language in the verse at the end):

“One is to be seen on the premises of Messrs. Cunningham and Co., the well-known iron merchants at the cornet of Charlotte-st. It is referred to by Charles Dickens as the ‘likeness of a golden dog licking a pot’. I am sorry that I cannot give you a copy of the original parchment document, as Mr. Cunningham tells me one day, some rascal or other stepped in and prigged it.

This time honoured survival dates from 1533 and the house is generally known as the ‘Dog and Porridge Pot’. In the Magazine of Commerce of September 1903, it is thus described:- ‘The dog is in the act of licking out a three legged iron pot, which it has over turned, and is said to indicate a slovenly housewife. There are woodcuts extant representing the customs of those days, in which two old women, in a disorderly kitchen, are to be seen wiping a plate with the bushy tail of a dog, whose head is buried in a pot, doing his duty at the washing-out process. Then follows this classic:-

All sluts behold, take view of me, Your own good housewifery to see, It is (methinks) a cleanly care, My dishcloth in this sort to spare, Whilst dog, you see, doth lick the pot, His tail for dishcloth I have got.”

The article from the Norwood Press states that the original dog and pot was sold, and this appears to have been to the Cumin Museum, where the collection of the Cumin family was held. They had collected objects from across the world, and left them to the borough of Southwark in 1902.

The Cumin collection is now held by the Southwark Heritage Centre, where apparently a selection are on display. There are also 145 pages of on line shows artifacts in the collection. I got half way through but could not find the dog and pot. I will email the heritage centre.

The shop on which the dog and pot was mounted was destroyed during the last war.

The Dickens Fellowship on their website report that two copies of the dog and pot were created in wood by carver Mike Painter. One was held by the Dickens Museum and the other put on display at the road junction where it was unveiled in 2013.

Being wood, it suffered from exposure to weather and environment, and developed a large split.

The second copy was taken out of storage, and to prevent the same thing happening again, was covered in gilding by Woodwork London, and unveiled on the 7th of February 2026.

So on this one south London road junction, there is:

On the south-east corner – the Rowland Hill building named after the founder of the Surrey Chapel and a gilded dog and pot recalling an earlier version on an iron mongers, that was based on an old story, and seen by Dickens on his route home
On the south-west corner – the Ring pub. Once the Railway Tavern, now named after the centre of boxing opposite, and covered with photos and boxing memorabilia
On the north-west corner – Southwark Station, a relatievly recent station and part of the continued expansion on London’s transport network
And on the north-east corner – where today Transport for London work on the management of London’s transport network, on the site of one of London’s major boxing venues managed by Dick Burge, with his wife Bella taking over the business after his death, and where police and soldiers with fixed bayonets in the First World War searched for those dodging conscription, which had been introduced in January 1916 for all single men aged between 18 and 41, and where in 1783, the Reverend Rowland Hill opened the Surrey Chapel, attracting congregations of over 1,500, and from where missionaries were supported both across the world, and to the immigrants and workers of London

It continues to amaze me just how much history there is to discover in every part of London, not just of the buildings, but of the people who once called the city their home.

The before and after photos of the Ring came from the copy of Hitler Passed This Way, purchased by my father when it was published. Click here for my 2016 post with many more photos from the booklet.

Old Sarum – Hillfort, Castle, Cathedral to Rotten Borough – 1949 and 2026

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For this week’s post, I am visiting Old Sarum in Wiltshire, one of the places photographed by my father whilst on cycling tours of the country, with friends from National Service.

Just to the north of Salisbury, Old Sarum is a fascinating historical site, comprising an Iron Age hill fort, with at the centre, the remains of a medieval cathedral and royal castle.

Whilst these medieval structures have been reduced to low walls, the earth works are really impressive, and the views of the surrounding countryside show why this was such an important location.

Old Sarum also had a strange role in the 18th and early 19th centuries, a role that led to much criticism and parody.

I shall start my exploration of Old Sarum, with the first of my father’s photos, from his visit in 1949:

This is looking across the central part of the medieval motte that was raised in the centre of the iron age hill fort just after the Norman Conquest, and where fortifications and a castle were built. The site was important as it overlooked the meeting point of three main roads, Roman in origin, and as the Iron Age builders of the fort had recognised, the height of the land also provided a viewpoint over a wide surrounding area.

The photo below is the same view as the above photo, 77 years later, in July 2026:

In both of the above photos, there are people to the centre left of the photo looking at a feature on the ground. This was the main source of water for the castle:

The sign on the right states that the well was probably over 230 feet in depth when built:

It must have been an horrendous job excavating a narrow well of that depth.

Whilst the majority of the medieval castle was demolished in the 16th century, the size of the remaining walls, and number of rooms show that this was a substantial fortification.

A look across the site towards the place where the first photo in the post was taken:

And a similar view today. I could not get to exactly the same spot as some places have been fenced off:

The castle on the central mound was a complex of defensive walls, towers, store rooms, halls, apartments, and a chapel, along with all the other features needed to maintain and run a medieval castle.

The following 1949 photo, is looking across some of these rooms. The outer wall is on the right, with a deep ditch behind:

The place where my father was standing to take the above photo is inaccessible today, so for the following photo I am standing on the opposite side of the rooms in the foreground. The common feature in both photos is the place where there are two curved ridges of the outer walls:

Standing in the heart of the medieval castle, it is hard to appreciate the complexity and size of Old Sarum, and how the place dominates the surrounding countryside. An aerial view really helps with this appreciation, and the following photo from the Britain from Above archive was taken in 1947, just two years before my father’s visit:

The feature is roughly circular, and the outer ditch forms the boundary of the iron age hill fort, which originally had a flat interior.

The Norman motte, or earthen mound in the centre, was constructed in the 11th century, and within the motte the Norman castle was built.

It is not exactly clear when the hill fort was first built, but it may be from around 400 BC.

The centre would have been occupied by a small community, with wooden huts for living and storage, all surrounded by the large defensive ditch.

It is not known for how long the site was occupied, whether it was permanent or sporadic, and very few artifacts have been found to confirm periods of occupation.

There was some occupation during the Roman period, although again there is very little evidence to confirm how it was occupied and for how long. There may have been Roman British settlements outside of the hill fort, with a military structure within, but again there is very little evidence.

The site became known as Sorviodunum during the Roman period.

Again, there is very little evidence of occupation during the Anglo-Saxon period, possibly down to the lack of any systematic excavation below the levels of the medieval castle. There probably was some occupation, and in the early 11th century, a mint for the production of coins was established at Old Sarum.

The physical record of occupation and buildings at Old Sarum really starts in the later part of the 11th century, when the central motte was built after the Norman conquest.

In the above aerial photo, a track can be seen running up from the outer ditch up towards the central mound. This joins with the A345, which runs from Salisbury, about a mile to the south and northwards towards Amesbury, where it joins with the A303, not far from where the A303 passes Stonehenge.

The track shown in the 1947 aerial photo appears to be the same track as used today. After running across the outer ditch, there is a car park within the hill fort, and a short walk continuing along the track takes you to the entrance to the castle, where the steep earth walls of the motte can be seen:

After the site was deserted in the 16th century, the size of the earthworks and history of the place made it a well known landmark, and the subject of the paintings and prints.

The following print is from 1772, and shows the earthworks on Old Sarum, with the central motte. A man driving some pack horses can be seen in the foreground:

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

And this print from 1801 shows the easterly view and the entrance to Old Sarum:

© 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 size of the ditches surrounding Old Sarum is remarkable, even though over the centuries they must have been softened by gradual erosion.

The following is a 1949 photo looking along the outer ditch of the original iron age hill fort:

I could not find exactly where the above photo was taken, however the following photo of the outer ditch today illustrates their size. The outer bank is to the right and the bank leading up to the inner part of the hill fort is to the left:

This is the ditch surrounding the central Norman motte. The bridge provides the access route into the central area. The size of the bank on the right gives an idea of the height of the motte:

It is possible to walk along the edge of the interior of the motte, and signs warn of the drop down the edge of this earthen mound:

The walkway along the edge of the motte:

From where there is a good view of Salisbury just to the south, with the spire of Salisbury Cathedral standing clear above the rest of the city:

The centre of the Norman motte was occupied by a castle. It could be classed as a motte and bailey castle, however the castle complex built on top of the mound was much larger than the typical castle and fortified structure of a motte and bailey.

The land outside the motte, part of the much larger iron age hill fort also had a rather magnificent Norman building. A cathedral of which the footprint can still be seen today, as shown in this 1948 photo from the Britain from Above archive:

The outline of the cathedral foundations can be seen. To the upper left of the cathedral there is the outline of the cloisters, and below the cloisters and to the left of the cathedral are the remains of the cathedral’s library and treasury.

The cathedral was built by Bishop Osmund, and consecrated on the 5th of April,1092. Not long after consecration, the cathedral was badly damaged by lightning during a storm, following which, it was rebuilt by Roger of Caen.

It was originally a relatively small building, but between 1110 and 1135, Bishop Roger doubled the size of the cathedral, and 50 years later a large new west front, along with corner towers was added by Bishop Jocelyn de Bohun. In the above aerial photo, this west front is the three rectangles surrounded by foundations to the bottom of the cathedral.

Surrounding the cathedral, there were cloisters, gardens, the Bishops Palace, along with the other buildings needed to maintain the running of such an important place.

Having a cathedral within the grounds of a Royal Castle caused a degree of friction with the garrison and also with the monarch, particularly during the reign of King John who was known for a lack of piety and religious conviction. Wars with the Barons, the loss of lands in France, and conflict with the Pope over who had the right to appoint the Bishop of Canterbury all made life within Old Sarum difficult.

The church started to look at moving out of Old Sarum into the plains below. The Pope gave approval for the move, and an initial wooden church was built close to the site of the current cathedral, and on Trinity Sunday of 1219, Bishop Richard Poore celebrated the first Mass in the new church.

Construction of Salisbury Cathedral started in 1220. The cathedral was consecrated in 1258 and the rest of the cathedral (with the exception of the spire) completed by 1266.

The tower and spire were built between 1300 and 1320, and the spire is the highest cathedral spire in England at 404 feet. The spires of Lincoln Cathedral and St. Paul’s Cathedral were originally higher, but as both these buildings have since lost their spires, Salisbury Cathedral now holds the record.

The move from Old Sarum to the new cathedral in Salisbury also included the move of the bodies of the three bishops who had been involved with the construction of the first cathedral, Bishops Osmund, Roger and Jocelyn.

Those who occupied the castle continued to make use of a chapel in the old cathedral, but eventually a dedicated chapel was built within the castle, and in 1331 the Bishop and Chapter of Salisbury were given permission to use the stone from the old cathedral for repairs to the new cathedral and to build the wall around the new cathedral precinct.

The foundations of the cathedral were then left to decay, and were eventually overgrown, and they only became visible again in 1834 when the outline of the cathedral became visible in the grass during a dry summer.

Excavations between 1912 and 1914 revealed the extent of the foundations, and they were exposed and marked out so that the full size and layout of the cathedral can still be seen today.

The aerial view in the Britain from Above photo is the best way to appreciate the cathedral, but at ground level we can walk where the Bishops and congregation once walked and prayed 900 years ago.

The view of the cathedral site from the top of the mound around the castle:

Looking along the full length of the cathedral towards the west:

Looking along the nave of the cathedral. Just past the information panel in the centre of the photo, to left and right can just be seen the base of the columns that once supported the roof over the nave:

Looking across the cathedral to the motte of the castle:

At the edge of the site is a part of a stone wall:

Which can still be seen today:

My father’s photo looking across the remains of the Treasury, which occupied the lower part of this building, with the Library above:

My photo of the same building, although it was only after I got home and looked at the photos that I realised I had taken it from the opposite end of the building to where my father was standing:

The move of the cathedral from Old Sarum to Salisbury started the decline of Old Sarum.

Salisbury started to expand around the new cathedral, but Old Sarum continued to be occupied and retain a role as an administrative centre.

It cannot have had much significant use by the start of the 16th century, as in 1514, Henry VIII granted the stone of the old castle to Thomas Compton, along with the right to carry away these materials.

From this point, Old Sarum started the transformation to the ruins we see today, as well as a scenic part of the Wiltshire countryside as illustrated by the prints shown earlier in the post.

The site continued to be owned by the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral, and in the late 20th century, they transferred Old Sarum to the State, and in 1892, it was managed by the Office of Works, and via various changes in government departments, it became part of English Heritage.

Although Henry VIII gave permission for the stone of the castle to be carried away, Old Sarum continued with a key role in national politics. It had long held the role of a Borough, and for long after the loss of the castle and any occupation of Old Sarum, it continued to be a Borough, and therefore returned a member of Parliament.

Old Sarum was one of the boroughs known as a Rotten Borough, a constituency that had very few voters, but still returned an MP, often under the influence of a patron. It was one of the most notorious as it returned two MPs, and a newspaper report in 1823 claimed that the Borough of Old Sarum had a total of two voters.

One of the MPs for Old Sarum was William Pitt (the elder, not the younger Pitt), who served as MP for the old hill fort between 1735 and 1747.

There are many newspaper references to the MPs for Old Sarum, and with William Pitt, one from the 28th of December 1744 records that “His Majesty has been pleased to appoint Will Pitt, member of Parliament for Old Sarum, to be Secretary of War”.

There had long been issues with Rotten Boroughs due to the way in which a very limited number of votes could elect an MP, patronage of chosen MPs and the considerable benefits that could be obtained.

In the following print from 1831, reformers are attacking Rotten Boroughs in the form of the old rotten tree, with those who benefit from the Rotten Boroughs attempting to hold up the tree.

The names of the Rotten Boroughs are written along the branches of the tree, with Old Sarum being on the lower left branch:

In the following print, also from 1831, titled “The System that Works so Well”, the House of Commons is the decaying building on the left, out of which pours a golden stream of public money which is being taken up by those who with Government, Church and Crown preferment and jobs. On the left, under the building, arethe bodies of the dying or despairing victims of the system.

To the left of the building is a water wheel which is powering this rush of money, and the slats on the wheel have the names of the Rotten Boroughs which support the system, with Old Sarum being one of those named:

The above prints must have been made to support the campaign to abolish rotten boroughs as this was achieved the following year through the 1832 Reform Act.

The madness of rotten boroughs where one or two voters could elect an MP was illustrated perfectly in an episode of Blackadder the Third:

From an iron age hill fort to a rotten borough, Old Sarum has had a fascinating history, and must have been a remarkable place when the castle and cathedral was occupied and in use. It continues to be a commanding landmark in the Wiltshire countryside.

After visiting Old Sarum in 1949, my father and his friends continued on to Salisbury, and I searched for the locations of his photos of Salisbury in this post.

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Monthly Archives: August 2026

Walking the Rocque Ring Part 2 – Colour Coated Schools, Artillery, Pubs, Prison and a Lost Chapel

Edith Cavell – Brussels, Dawn, October 12 1915

Walking the Rocque Ring – The Limits of London in 1746. Part 1

The Ring and a Junction on Blackfriars Road

Old Sarum – Hillfort, Castle, Cathedral to Rotten Borough – 1949 and 2026

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