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Tindals Burying Ground (Bunhill Fields)

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Tindals Burying Ground was the original name of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, which today can be found between City Road and Bunhill Row.

The following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map of London shows Tindals Burying Ground:

The original name of the burying ground follows the setting aside of an area of land as a cemetery during the plague year of 1665.

Despite the pressure on space to bury the many thousands of victims of the plague, for whatever reason, the cemetery was not used, and in 1666 a Mr. Tindal took on a lease of the land, enclosed it with a brick wall, and opened the space as a cemetery for the use of Dissenters.

A wider view of the 1746 map, with the burying ground circled:

Old Street is running left to right along the top of the map, Royal Row, now City Road, runs to the east of the burying ground and Brown Street runs to the west. The name Brown Street has now been replaced by the extension of Bunhill Row along the western edge of the burying ground.

The use of the name Tindals Burying Ground was not confined to Rocque’s map, but was also in common use across multiple newspaper reports covering events in and around the burying ground, for example, from the Stamford Mercury on the 11th of February, 1768:

“On Saturday night last about ten o’clock, Mr. Hewitt, Watchmaker, in Moorfields, was attacked near Tindal’s Burying ground, by three footpads, who knocked him down, then robbed him of £32 and a dial plate, and beat him so terribly that his life is despaired of.”

Tindal’s Burying Ground was originally described as a place where Dissenters could be buried, and other terms such as Nonconformists were used to describe those within the cemetery. It was also described as the “Campo Santo of Nonconformity” as well as the “cemetery of Puritan England”.

These terms all described someone who did not conform with the governance and teaching of the established church – the Church of England. The 1662 Act of Uniformity defined the way that prayers, teachings, rites and ceromonies should be performed within the Church of England, and the 1662 date of this act explains why there was a need for a noncoformist burial ground four years later in 1666.

I cannot find out whether Mr. Tindal was a nonconformist, but it would perhaps make sense if he was.

The dead who would not have been welcome in a normal Church of England burial ground were buried at Tindal’s, for example in the following account of the burial of an executed criminal in 1760:

“Wednesday Evening, between Five and Six, the Body of Robert Tilling, the Coachman, who was executed on Monday last, for robbing his Master, was conveyed in a Hearse, attended by one Mourning Coach, to Tindal’s Burying Ground in Bunhill Fields, and there interred. The Rev. Mr. Whitefield attended the Corpse, and made a long Oration upon the Occasion, amidst the greatest Concourse of People that ever assembled in that Place; it is thought more than 20,000. The Corpse had been previously exposed in Mr. Whitefield’s Tabernacle near the Burying Ground.”

Robert Tilling was a nonconformist. After being taken from Newgate, he was hung at Tyburn on the 28th of April, 1760, along with four others convicted of burglary. In the report of his execution, he “made a long Speech, or rather Sermon at the Gallows, in the Methodist style”.

The origin of the name Bunhill Fields is interesting, and probably somewhat obscure. Most references talk about the name coming from the earlier name of Bone Hill, and that the site was used for informal burials and also for the 1549 dumping of 1,000 cart loads of bones from the charnel house of St Paul’s Cathedral.

The story of the dumping of bones is that there were so many, and after the following accumulation of the City’s dirt on top of the bones, a significant mound developed, on which some windmills were constructed.

If you go back to the larger extract from Rocque’s 1746 map, and look to the right of the Artillery Ground there is a couple of streets with names of Windmill Hill and Windmill Hill Row, so there must be some truth in the existence of windmills.

As usual, there are several variations of the name as well as stories of the area. There are a number of references that use the name Bonhill. In 1887, members of the East London Antiquarian Society were given a tour of the burying ground, where they were told that “The name was perhaps derived from Bon-Hill, a great tumulus which at one time stood on the Fen outside the City and marked an ancient British burying place, hence the name Bon-hill or Bone-hill fields.”

The City of London Conservation Management Plan states that in 1000 AD there were the “First corpses interred at Bunhill in Saxon times”.

The author Daniel Defoe in his “Journal of the Plague Year” implies that there may have been plague burials in Bunhill Fields, however that does not seem to be the case, and he was probably referring to the purchase of the burying ground which was later taken over by Tindal.

Bunhill Fields occupied a far wider area than just the burying ground, and earlier maps do show some hills spread across the fields.

As usual, there are many variations of names and stories, and it is impossible to be 100% certain of the truth of many of these. The fields were outside the walls of the City, for centuries much of the area was marshland, hence the name Moor Fields.

The entrance to Bunhill Burying Ground from City Road:

Gravestone to William Blake and his wife Catherine:

William Blake had some very complex religious views, and views of the roles of good and evil, human nature, sexuality etc. which were very different to those held by the established Church, hence his burial at Bunhill Fields.

The gravestone states “Near bye lie the remains of”, as Blake’s grave was the subject of damage over the years, as well as bomb damage in Bunhill Fields during the last war, so the exact location of his grave was lost.

Nearby there is a memorial slab which was installed in 2018 by the Blake Society following work by Portuguese couple Carol and Luís Garrido, who claimed they had identified the location of his grave:

Monument to the author Daniel Defoe (which dates from 1870):

As recorded on the monument, Daniel Defoe was the author of Robinson Crusoe. The date of his birth, 1661, shows that he was very much too young to remember, let alone to write a first hand account of the plague in his Journal of the Plague Year, which in reality he used the accounts and experiences of others to write the journal.

There are a couple of graves at Bunhill Fields which seem to have been the focus of attention over many years. The first is from the 1920s series of books Wonderful London, where the grave of Dame Mary Page is shown:

The focus of interest is not the front of the monument, but the reverse, where it is stated that Mary Page “In 67 months she was tapd 66 times. Had taken away 240 gallons of water without ever repining her case or ever fearing the operation”.

The front of the grave states that she was the “Relict of Sir Gregory Page Bart. She departed this life March 4 1728 in the 56 year of her age”.

Dame Mary Page was the wife of Sir Gregory Page. He owned a brewery in Wapping and was a Whig politician. He was also involved with the East India Company, including a period when he was a director of the company and this was the source of much of his wealth. He died in 1720 and was buried in Greenwich.

I cannot find any record of Mary’s religion, and it is strange that she was not buried with her husband. To have been buried in Bunhill Fields, she probably held some form of nonconformist views.

The rear of the monument today:

Bunhill Fields as a site is Grade I listed , and many of the individual graves are also listed, including the following grave of Joseph Watts, which is Grade II listed as: ” It is a well-preserved early-C19 chest tomb with still-legible inscriptions and high-quality relief carving”:

The land originally within Tindal’s Burying Ground is believed to have been extended in 1700 and again in 1788, such was the need for a site for nonconformist burials.

Following Tindal’s original lease, it remained a privately owned and managed burying ground until 1778, when it was brought into public management by the City of London.

Along with many other church yards and burying grounds in the mid-19th century, Bunhill Fields was closed for burials in 1854.

The King and Du Pont family monument which is Grade II listed:

The listing states that “It is a prominent and striking monument in an austere Neoclassical style, its polygonal form – derived ultimately from the Hellenistic-era Tower of the Winds in Athens – reflecting the late-C18 fashion for ancient Greek motifs”.

The vault beneath the plinth on which the monument stands holds a number of members of the King and Du Pont families from the late 18th century.

There is an interesting contradiction in attitudes during the 18th century (and indeed in later centuries), between those who were viewed as religious and displaying a range of admired personality traits and those who cost the state money.

Two different examples, both from the same newspaper on the 13th of December, 1754:

“Thursday evening was interred in Bunhill Burying Ground, the body of Mrs. Hannah Peirce, relict of that excellent Divine, Mr. James Peirce of Exeter. The Sweetness of her Temper, the exemplariness of her Behaviour, in every Religion and Condition, breathed a Spirit of a Religion, which is cheerful, patient, meek, and benevolent: Her whole Life was delightfully instructive, and in her 79th Year, she expired with remarkable Calmness and Composure”.

Meanwhile, on the same page as the above, there was an account of another who had just died, but this was very different where the person who had died was summed up by the amount they had cost the inhabitants of the parish:

“On Tuesday died Diana Nicholas, one of the Poor belonging to St. Nicolas Acorns in Lombard Street. In the Year 1691 she was found an Infant in a Basket in that Parish and taken care of: When she grew up she proved an Idiot, and forty years ago was got with Child, and, being unable to make known by whom, brought a further Charge on the Parish: So that it appears by the Accounts she has cost the Inhabitants near £20 per annum for sixty three Years”.

Two very different views of two deaths, where one was described with a range of perfect attitudes and character traits, whilst the other was down to simply how much they had cost the parish over their life.

Another of the graves that seems to be regularly featured when looking at Bunhill Fields is that of John Bunyan:

John Bunyan’s monument from the 1890’s book “The Queen’s London”:

John Bunyan was born near Bedford, and served with the Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War. He originally followed the Church of England, attending services in his local parish church.

A chance meeting in Bedford resulted in Bunyan joining the Bedford Meeting, a nonconformist group.

Bunyan took his nonconformist views and preaching seriously, to the extent that he served many years in prison, And it was during one of his spells in prison that he wrote his best known work “A Pilgrims Progress”.

His writing became more widely known after his death, and in the 18th century there were multiple editions of A Pilgrims Progress published, including cheap editions, and editions published in regular instalments.

The book was described as an allegorical writing, describing the journey of Christian from his home, the City of Destruction, to the Celestial City, which has been described as either Heaven or the Holy Land. There were also references to the Celestial City being London, and Christian’s Journey being Bunyan’s journey from Bedford to London.

The grave apparently belonged to one John Strudwick , in whose house in Snow Hill, Bunyan had died in 1688:

The gravestone of Thomas Rosewell. The gravestone is listed, not because of the gravestone (which I think is a later addition or replacement, rather as to who it commemorates, as the listing states *It commemorates a prominent late-C17 Dissenting minister, remembered for his infamous treason trial in 1684*:

The story of Thomas Roswell is one of religious persecution. He was born in Bath and arrived in London in 1645 where he trained as a silk weaver.

London in the middle of the 17th century must have been a hotbed of religious and political divide and conspiracy. Not just with the Civil War, but with the established Church, Catholicism and the many nonconformist groups.

Soon after his arrival in London, Roswell came into contact with the Presbyterians, which led him to train as a nonconformist minister. He became a private tutor and also served as a rector in parishes in Somerset and Wiltshire.

The years following the restoration of the Monarchy and Charles II were a time of persecution of nonconformists, and Roswell was forced out from his parishes in 1662, even though he was a firm Royalist.

Persecution continued and in 1684 he was put on trial for high treason, accused of speaking seditious sentiments during a sermon.

The judge at his trial was Lord Chief Justice, George Jeffreys, also known as the Hanging Judge due to the high number of defendants who were found guilty, resulting in Jeffreys passing the death sentence.

Roswell was also found guilty, and sentenced to death, however there was a significant public outcry and early the following year he received a Royal Pardon.

A look across Bunhill Fields:

An Act of Parliamnet obtained by the City of London in 1867 preserved Bunhill Fields as an open space, and in 1869, the grounds were open to the public.

The burying grounds were not spared during the Second World War, and they suffered serious bomb damage, and post war there has been a continual series of restorations of both the grounds and the gravestones and memorials, enabling the listed memorials to be removed from the heritage at risk register.

Bunhill Fields was also the location for an anti-aircraft gun which probably did not help with maintaining the condition of the site.

The walls and railings surrounding Bunhill Burying Grounds are Grade II listed and date from multiple periods from the late 18th century through to the late 19th century, along with later repairs and renovations.

Apart from a few monuments and graves, the majority are within an area surrounded by railings. It is possible to gain access to graves within this area by asking an attendant.

I have only touched on a very, very small number of the graves at Bunhill.

According to City of London records, there are 2,300 memorials within the burying grounds, and there are believed to be around 123,000 burials.

Each tells the story of those involved in nonconformist and dissenting religious traditions, and many, including that of Thomas Roswell show the risks that having a different belief to the established Church could entail.

And the burying ground now commonly known as Bunhill Fields, almost certainly owes its existence to Mr. Tindal who took a lease on the land in 1665 / 1666, enclosed the ground and opened the burying ground.

alondoninheritance.com

Soho Pubs – Part 4 and Resources

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For today’s post, a look at five more Soho pubs, and my monthly feature on one of the resources available if you are interested in delving into the history of the city, as well as my latest read.

The Shakespeare’s Head – Great Marlborough Street

The Shakespeare’s Head is on the corner of Great Marlborough Street and Foubert’s Place, and is a perfect example of the flamboyant architecture of many Soho pubs. Taller than the buildings on either side, and looking out across a junction, the pub cannot help but attract attention, which must have been the intention of the original architect.

The pub claims to have been on the site since 1735 when a Thomas and John Shakespeare were the original owners, and who gave their family name to the pub. They apparently claimed that they were distant relatives of William Shakespeare, but how much truth there is in the story, and just how distant a relative is impossible to tell.

The Shakespeare’s Head makes full use of the name in the decoration across the building with the pub sign showing an illustration of Shakespeare, and in a false windows on the first floor corner of the building, there is a life size bust of Shakespeare looking down on the streets below, and the thousands of people who visit Soho on a daily basis.

The bust of Shakespeare’s has a hand missing, the result of a World War II bomb landing nearby.

The street naming for the pub’s location is a bit confusing, as by the street signs on the sides of the pub it is on the corner of Great Marlborough Street and Foubert’s Place, however on the opposite side of the street which is Great Marlborough Street on the pub, is a name sign for Carnaby Street, so the street to the right of the pub in the photo appears to have two names.

The Great Marlborough Street sign is old whilst the Carnaby Street sign is new, and as the junction where the pub is located sits at the northern end of Carnaby Street, I suspect the extended use of this name is to capitalise on the recent history of Carnaby Street. The pub uses Great Marlborough Street as an address.

There is not much to be found on the history of the pub, and there are very few references to the pub in a newspaper search, which is probably a good thing as most newspaper reports are usually about some form of crime involving a pub. The current building seems to date from the 1920s.

Whatever the truth or distance of the Shakespeare connection, the good thing with the Shakespeare’s Head is the wonderful design of the building in an era of rather bland city architecture, and long may Shakespeare look out from his first floor window.

The Blue Posts – Kingly Street

Another large corner pub with an individual design, and the second pub with the name Blue Posts to be found in Soho.

The pub was originally called the Two Blue Posts and at the time of the pub’s opening in 1728, Kingly Street was King Street.

I mentioned in the description to the previous pub that there were very few newspaper mentions of the pub, as they were nearly always connected with some form of crime, and the first mention I can find of the Blue Posts is a really strange story that highlights the 19th century attitude to mental health, and the type of violent crime to be found on the streets (although this is an unusual example). The following is from the 21st of June 1871, under the title “TAMING LUNATICS”:

“Robert Hodgson, an attendant at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, was charged yesterday, at the Middlesex Sessions, with violently assaulting a man named Richard Walker. It appeared from the evidence that the prisoner, at twelve o’clock on the night of the 9th of June, seized hold of the prosecutor in the Golden Lion, Wardour Street, saying ‘I know you, you are the man I want to see, your name is John Taylor’. The prisoner then seized him by the collar, pulled him into the street, opened his waistcoat, and took a box of cigar-lights from him. A crowd collected, and then the prisoner pulled him through several streets to the Blue Posts, King Street, and having made him take off his clothes, struck him several times with his fist saying ‘That is the way we tame lunatics’. The prisoner then took him to the Bricklayers Arms in King Street and in front of the bar he hit the prosecutor several times times under the jaw with his fist, made him bite his tongue, and pulled him by the beard, saying he was an escaped lunatic.”

The “prisoner” did eventually leave the other man alone, who then went to the police who found and arrested the prisoner.

During the trial, the counsel for the prosecution “suggested that lunacy was infectious, and had spread from the inmates of Colney Hatch to one of their keepers”. The judge delayed sentencing until he had spoken with the authorities at Colney Hatch.

Although the Blue Posts only has a brief appearance in the above account, these stories do help illustrate what life was like around these pubs, and shows how mental health was viewed, even someone as educated for the time as a legal counsel suggesting that lunacy was infectious.

The article also shows how human nature has not really changed. Where the article states that “a crowd collected”, and if the same thing happened in Soho today, a crowd would also collect, but these days they would all be filming the event on mobile phones.

The White Horse – Newburgh Street

Like many pubs in the area, the White Horse claims to be on the site of an original building dating back to the development of Soho in the early 18th century. The pub also claims that the galloping white horse was the sign of the House of Hanover that dates from the accession of George I in 1714, and that the use of the name and sign by inns of the time was a sign of their support of the new Royal House.

London’s pubs were once the meeting place for hundreds of clubs and societies, often societies that you would not have connected with the location of a pub, and for a number of years in the 1960s, the White Horse was the meeting place for the Royal George Angling Society, a long standing society who took their name from the first pub that they used for meetings.

This illustrates how pubs were far more embedded in society and everyday life in the past. They were not just a place for drinking, they were also a place for societies and clubs to meet. Individual pubs often had their own sports clubs, which added to their use as a place where communities would get together.

The White Horse also plays up to the stereotype of London policing in previous decades, where in a 1966 review of the pub in the Tatler, it is described as a “Quiet yet busy, little tavern. The landlord, a former detective, is helpful and genial, and attracts a wide cross section of drinkers. Among them are the sleekly dressed impressive looking policemen one finds stationed at West End Central in nearby Savile Row. An interesting pub, with interesting people.”

I bet is was an interesting pub with interesting people.

The current building dates from the 1930s, when it was rebuilt in an art-deco style.

The Red Lion – Kingly Street

Despite being a late 19th century build, the Red Lion looks as if has adopted the architectural style of earlier centuries. Like many pubs in Soho, there has been a pub here since the early 18th century.

As well as the clubs and societies mentioned with the White Horse, the Red Lion also shows how pubs were embedded in communities as they also were a place where inquests were held. In July 1833, it was reported that:

“SUDDEN DEATH OF DR TWEEDIE – On Monday an inquest was held at the Red Lion, King Street, on the body of Dr Tweedie aged 63. On Saturday night, Dr Tweedie, hearing that the kitchen chimney of his house in Southampton Row was on fire, ran down the stairs, and having procured two pails of water, with the assistance of another gentleman, extinguished it. The deceased then went up stairs, but had scarcely reached the landing, when he fell down, and was heard to groan heavily. The gentlemen immediately put him in a chair, but life appeared to have gone. In about two minutes, Mr Keeling, surgeon, Little Ormond Street, arrived and administered everything by which reanimation could be brought about, but without the desired effect. Verdict – ‘Death by the visitation of God”.

The Red Lion also served another common purpose of a pub, that of a mailing address, an example being in November 1835, when “a respectable young woman was looking for a situation as a Barmaid in a Wine Vault of respectable Public house”.

The Glass Blower –  Glasshouse Street

The name “Glass Blower” is relatively recent, as the pub was originally an early example of a type of 19th century drinking establishment called a Bodega. The South London Press on the 2nd of November 1872 explained the concept behind the Bodega:

“Since the ‘Bodega’ first startled London as a word of strange sound and unknown significance, it has rapidly asserted itself in public favour. Yes, it has over-stepped its original limits, and, taking the metropolis in sections, appears likely to bring the whole of it under conquest. But then even the Capital of the country may be taken by such an enemy with advantage rather than the reverse. The ‘Bodega’ means – but what matters to its meaning in Spain? In London it means a place where you can buy the best wines in glass or in bottle at the lowest remunerative prices. The ‘Bodega’ experiment has been tried so successfully in Glasshouse-street that Messrs. Lavery and Co. have now taken 13 Oxford Street to open on the same principle, and a very pleasant little inauguration dinner was given there on Saturday night, which gave infinite satisfaction to all present.”

The article brushes over the Spanish meaning of the word Bodega, but in Spain it is used for a winery, wine cellar, wine store etc. generally where wine is concerned, and its use in London in 1872 must have seemed rather exotic.

So the Glass Blower pub was the site where the Bodega was first introduced to London as the article confirms that this was where the Bodega experiment was successfully tried.

In July 1904, the Tatler had an article describing how actors would cluster at specific types of establishment, and described: “The ‘Bodegas’ are the most popularly patronised of these”.

Although a name for a type of establishment, Bodega was also the name of the company that owned and ran these places, the Bodega Company Limited. It is perhaps an early example of a company / brand that establishes a similar type of venue across multiple locations – a type of bar / restaurant which is all too common to find across the streets of London today.

Not quite the same, but today, many of the pubs in Soho are Greene King pubs, including the Glass Blower, the Blue Posts and the Shakespeare’s Head just from today’s post. They do have an individual look and feel, and to be honest, with the rate of pub closures today, I am happy for any company who keeps London pubs open.

I cannot find out exactly when the Bodega in Glasshouse Street changed to the Glass Blower, however it was still operating as the Bodega in 1958, when on the 1st of August the Bodega had placed an advert in the Middlesex Independent for a Barmaid.

The Glass Blower is now a very prominent corner pub that always seems to be doing well when I have visited.

A quick run through of five more Soho pubs, and now my monthly feature on one of the resources that I use to help research London’s history if you are interested in delving into more detail.

Resources – Historical Directories of England & Wales

If you have ever wanted to find where a business was based in a London street, or walk through a street to discover the people and companies that were based in the street, then there is a wonderful resource that can help. The Historical Directories of England and Wales, hosted by the University of Leicester, and they have been published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 UK Licence, which makes the content available to use under the terms of the licence.

It is not just London which is covered. There are trade and local directories for much of the country.

The link to access this resource is: https://leicester.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16445coll4

where you will be met with the following screen:

For the purposes of the blog, I am interested in London, and when you click on the entry for London you are presented with a list of directories and filters for the periods covered:

As with the mapping available at the National Library of Scotland featured in my last resources post, these directories are a way in which a quick search can turn into a full evening of exploring London’s streets. An example of the level of detail available is shown in the following example.

As the last Soho pub in the above post was in Glasshouse Street, I searched for Glasshouse Street in the Post Office London Directory for 1895, and here is a detailed list from the directory of who occupied the street 130 years ago:

And to confirm the details for the Glass Blower pub, at number 42 we can see Bodega Co. (The) limited, George Courtney sec. Initially many of these establishments were named with the full company name, but as with the Glass Blower, after a while they just became known at the Bodega.

The listing also shows where the street in focus intersects with other streets (for example in the above – “here is Air Street”). This is really useful to help with referencing streets numbers from the directory with street numbers of today where streets have been renumbered, or individual plots consolidated. For places badly damaged during the last war (such as the City of London), this addition of where other streets joined is really useful as it helps locate the lanes, alleys, courts and indeed streets, which after bomb damage, were not rebuilt post war and have been lost completely.

These directories are a wonmderful resource provided by the University of Leicester, and help provide another layer of understanding to the history of the city’s streets.

What I Am Reading – The Dream Factory by Daniel Swift

The recreation of the Globe at Bankside has probably resulted in the Globe being the most famous of the early London playhouses, even if the current incarnation of the Globe is not quite at the location of the original.

The Bankside area also had the Bear and the Rose playhouses, although the Bear was mainly for bear baiting with plays as a side line.

Before all of these was a playhouse in Shoreditch, created by James Burbage in 1576, and this, the first commercial playhouse in London, is the focus of Daniel Swift’s book, along with the story of how Elizabethan Theatre began to flourish, with Shakespeare weaving through the story.

The book is very readable, and does, as the sub-title states, tells the story of “London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare” (who would go on to lend his name to a pub in Soho – a tenuous link with the rest of today’s post).

The book is published by Yale University Press, who have a good selection of books on London’s history and architecture. They also publish the Pevsner Architectural Guides and the recent editions of the Survey of London, numbers of which I have purchased over the years.

A recommended read if you are interested in the story of the first playhouse in London, along with London generally at this significant time.

alondoninheritance.com

Sloane Square, the Bloody Bridge and King’s Private Road

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Two tickets have just become available for my walk on Sunday the 17th of August: Wapping – A Seething Mass of Misery. For details and tickets click here.

Sloane Square is a relatively recent development in London’s long history, but the square is typical of how London’s squares have developed, from fields and tracks, to being enclosed and lined with terrace houses and small shops, then large buildings with hotels, restaurants and department stores.

The following photo of Sloane Square is from the book, the “Queen’s London”, which shows London at the end of the 19th century, and the photo is of the square in the 1890s:

Slightly over 40 years later, the first part of the new Peter Jones department store was built, so within 40 years, architectural styles in Sloane Square changed from the above late Victorian photo to the 1930s building that we see on the western side of the square today:

Peter Jones was the son of a Welsh hat maker. He moved to London in 1867, and unlike many of his fellow countrymen who were involved in the dairy trade, Peter Jones opened a shop in 1871 in Chelsea, having gained retail experience in the first four years of his time in the city.

His first shop was in Draycott Avenue, but within a few years he had moved to King’s Road, where the street meets the western side of Sloane Square, and after buying up more property to form a large plot, his expanded red-brick department store was a major, successful retail enterprise serving the prosperous area around Sloane Square.

When the store was run by Peter Jones, it was very successful, however after his death in 1905, another successful retailer, John Lewis, was determined to buy the store to help with his London expansion, resulting in his purchase of the store, along with the adjacent buildings owned by Peter Jones, in December 1905.

I believe that the early decades of John Lewis ownership was the only time that the company owned a London pub. This was the Star and Garter, on the corner of King’s Road and Sloane Square, and whilst in the early years the Peter Jones store was making a loss, the pub was making a considerable profit.

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

In the above OS map from the late 1890s, I have outlined the Star and Garter in a red oval. The Peter Jones store is the large block to the left of the pub.

Today, the Peter Jones store occupies the entire block, with the new building covering much of the space with the exception of an area from the north west corner, and along part of the northern side of the block.

The following photo shows the Peter Jones store curving from Sloane Square and down along King’s Road. The Star and Garter was where the curved corner of the building is today:

The building today is Grade II* listed. It was designed by William Crabtree, To maximise the amount of glass along the façade of the buildings, the external wall is not load bearing, and can therefore be of glass, with an almost continuous run of glass along the ground floor to maximise display space.

It must have been an impressive building when it first opened, so very different to the majority of architecture in the surrounding area in the 1930s.

As the name implies, there is a central square within Sloane Square:

Sloane Square is named after Sir Hans Sloane, land owner and Lord of the Manor of Chelsea.

The square was laid out in 1771 when the fields of what had been a very rural area, were enclosed, and building started soon after, with houses built around the square under the direction of architect and builder, Henry Holland.

During the later part of the 19th century, and early 20th century, the original houses around the square were gradually demolished and consolidated into larger plots of land, with the large buildings we see today built along the four side of the square.

Typical of these changes was the construction of what is now the Sloane Square Hotel, with the red brick building being built in two phases between 1895 and 1898:

Part of the title to this week’s post is the “Bloody Bridge”, and this name tells some of the story of the area before Sloane Square was developed.

The following photo shows the north east corner of Sloane Square:

At this corner, Sloane Square leads off in to Cliveden Place, and a short way along, on the right is the following name plaque:

The plaque is on the wall behind the man with the white shirt, just above the bonnet of the white car in the following photo:

Blandel Bridge House is named after a bridge over the lost River Westbourne, a bridge that was once more commonly called the Bloody Bridge.

We can see the location and name in a couple of old maps, for example in Rocque’s 1746 map, showing the area before Sloane Square:

I have circled the name and location of the Bloody Bridge, and we can see the River Westbourne running through fields, then crossing under the bridge, before heading south.

The future location of Sloane Square is just to the left of the bridge.

Also, look at the length of the road that runs over the Bloody Bridge. It is called “The King’s Private Road”. Today, to the left it is King’s Road (which retains the original name, but drops the “private”), and to the right it is Cliveden Place and Eaton Gate / Square, although this part of the road has been much straightened out as the area was developed.

The road was named the King’s Private Road as it was, a private road for the King. This had been a footpath across the fields until King Charles II transformed the footpath into a road suitable for carriages, to form part of a route between Westminster and Hampton Court.

In 1731, copper tokens or tickets were issued to those who were allowed the privilege of travelling along the King’s Private Road. These tokens had “The King’s Private Road” on one side, and on the other an image of the Crown, along with the letters G.R. as at that time, George II was on the throne.

It would continue to be a private road all the way to 1830, when it was opened up as a general road, with no tokens or permissions being required.

The Bloody Bridge was still marked on maps in the early 19th century, as this extract from Smiths New Plan of London, published in 1816 shows:

In the above 1816 map, we can see that the Westbourne is on the edge of new development which is centred around Sloane Square.

How did it get the name Bloody Bridge? The official name seems to have been Blandel Bridge, as the name plaque in the previous photo still records today. The name Bloody Bridge seems to have a been a popular renaming of the bridge given the amount of murders and robberies that took place in the area. The name seems to have been first used in the mid 16th century, at the time of Elizabeth I, however with such a local name, and the distance of time, it is impossible to be sure when the name was first used.

Despite being the King’s private road, serious crime at the Bloody Bridge continued into the 18th century, with a couple of examples, first from 1748, when “four gentlemen coming from Chelsea, the King’s Road, in a coach were attacked near the Bloody Bridge by two highwaymen. They all getting out of their coach and drawing their swords, the highwaymen made off without their booty.”

And from 1753, when on the 17th of September, “Mr. Crouch, cook to the Earl of Harrington, who was attacked about nine o’clock at night by two villains, and, on making resistance, fired two pistols at him; and though he wounded one of them, yet having overpowered him, they took his watch and money, and then stabbed him with a knife, and beat him with their pistols till he was dead”.

The road must have been so dangerous, that in 1715, the local inhabitants petitioned the Government to organise patrols along the road from Chelsea to St. James’s.

Many 19th century reports, state that the Bloody Bridge name was because of the crime in the area, and that it was also a corruption of the name Blandel Bridge, so if that is correct, and Bloody Bridge was first used in the mid 16th century, Blandel Bridge was a name that must have already been in use, and therefore an older name for the bridge.

It is good that that the name of the bridge survives as the name of the building, near the site of the bridge, and the River Westbourne, which is now carried in the sewers beneath the streets, although it does sort of make an appearance, as the sewer which the Westbourne became, is today carried across the platforms of Sloane Square station:

Prior to the development of the area, the fields were once markets gardens, sheep and cattle grazing etc. and it seems that those who worked these fields and gardens were given access to the King’s Private Road, however in the time of George I (1714 to 1727), the overly zealous King’s Surveyor attempted to restrict local workers access to the road. With the support of Sir Hans Sloane, who pointed out to the Treasury that farmers and gardeners of the area had since “time out of mind” been the owners and occupiers of the land bordering the King’s private way and had been accustomed to use it for “egress and regress” to their lands, carrying their ploughs along it and conveying their crops to market.

The king relented, and allowed locals to have access, and it seems that around this time the old wooden bridge over the Westbourne was replaced with a stone bridge, but as shown in the above maps, the Bloody Bridge name continued to be in use.

Sloane Square station, through which the Westbourne runs todays, was built by the Metropolitan District Railway Company, and opened in 1868.

In the following image from Britain from Above, we can see the curved roof over the station platforms running down from the centre of image, above which we can see Sloane Square:

The image is dated 1928, so the original buildings that occupy the site of the 1930s Peter Jones building can be seen at the top of the square.,

From the station, head a little to the right along the lower edge of Sloane Square to the corner where a street runs to the right, and the old Bloody Bridge was located just off Sloane Square along this street.

Returning to Sloane Square, and in the central square is the Grade II listed Venus Fountain dating from 1953, and by Gilbert Ledward R.A.

The base of the fountain has a relief depicting Charles II and Nell Gwynn seated by the Thames. The relief shows Charles II picking fruit from a tree, while his mistress Nell Gwynn fans herself. The relief also includes Cupid who is ready with two arrows, and there are swans along the Thames.

Gilbert Ledward’s view apparently was that it was rather appropriate to show the king and his mistress at a place where they must have travelled along several times, along his private road.

The central square also includes a Grade II listed war memorial, unveiled on the 24th of October, 1920:

The Historic England record for the war memorial states that the architect is unknown, and newspaper reports of the unveiling also do not mention the name of the architect, however they do state that it was London’s first war cross, and was swiftly followed by one in Hackney. The early 1920s were a time when hundreds of war memorials were being unveiled across London and the rest of the country.

There are a number of plaques set among the paving slabs around the war memorial, including a plaque to Captain Julian Gribble who was awarded a Victoria Cross. His plaque is part of the “London VC Pavement Project”, a 2013 initiative by the Government to honour VC recipients:

Captain Julian Gribble was leading D Company of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, when in March 1918 he was ordered to hold the crest of Harmies Ridge until further orders, while troops on either side withdrew.

His Company was soon surrounded, but they continued fighting and he was “last seen emptying his revolver into enemy troops at a range of only 10 to 12 feet.”

D Company’s stand allowed the troops on either side to withdraw, and Captain Gribble did survive this last battle. He was badly concussed by a wound to the head, and was taken to a German hospital for prisoners of war at Hameln. He was soon though removed to a prisoner of war camp at Carlsruhe, where conditions were not good.

He learned that he had received the VC in July 1918. His health though deteriorated, and he was suffering from double pneumonia. Before he could be repatriated after the end of the war, he died on the 25th of November, 1918, just hours before the camp was evacuated, at the age of 21

He was buried on a hilltop at Mayence Cemetery.

It is good to put a face to the names of those recorded on war memorials, and this is Captain Julian Gribble (source, IWM Collection, Image: IWM (HU 115450)

The Imperial War Museum Collection also includes a couple of photos of Sloane Square.

The first shows temporary buildings set up for the YMCA in the central square during the First World War (source, IWM Collection, Image: IWM (Q 28737):

For some strange reason, I do love shops with awnings over the pavement.

The second shows Flying Officer Harold Lackland Bevan buying flowers for his bride to be from a flower seller in Sloane Square in March 1943 (source, IWM Collection Image: IWM (D 12864):

Looking back from the war memorial to the west of the square, with Peter Jones in the distance:

There are two more listed buildings around Sloane Square. The first is the Grade II Royal Court:

The Royal Court theatre owes its existence to a small theatre in nearby Lower George Street. The current building on the eastern side of Sloane Square was opened on the 24th of September, 1888 as the New Court Theatre, and was designed by Walter Emden and Bertie Crewe.

The Royal Court was the first theatre in London to stage a suffragette themed production, when in April 1907 “A play has been successfully produced at the Court Theatre, Sloane Square, in which a suffragette heroine and 50 suffragettes as supernumeraries demonstrated with the enthusiastic support of the audience”.

The theatre closed in 1932, and the building served as a cinema between 1935 and 1940, and then suffered some bomb damage.

The interior of the theatre was reconstructed after the war and the theatre reopened in 1952.

Strangely, the history of theatre on the theatre’s web site starts in May 1956, when John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” opened at the theatre. The only mention of anything prior to 1956 appears to be the state of the drains in the early 1900s, and the creaking of the seats in 1906. 

The interior of the theatre has been refurbished and upgraded a number of times, but the façade facing onto Sloane Square looks much as it did when the original theatre opened in 1888.

In the above photo, the entrance to Sloane Square station is on the ground floor of the new block immediately to the right of the theatre. The original station building having been demolished many years ago. Had it survived, it may well have also been listed.

The other listed structure is not a building, but a “Pair of K6 Telephone Kiosks outside the Royal Court Theatre“:

The telephone kiosks are Grade II listed, with the listing stating that they are “Telephone kiosks. Type K6. Designed 1935 by Giles Gilbert Scott. Made by various contractors. Cast iron. Square kiosk with domed roof. Unperforated crowns to top panels and margin glazing to windows and door.”

There are no payphones in either of the kiosks, and the sign on the door states that “This kiosk is protected for future generations”, along with a web link to where you can adopt a kiosk, and from there, there is another link to where you can purchase a K6 telephone kiosk for a starting price of £3,200 plus VAT and delivery.

It is interesting that both the telephone kiosks and the Royal Court Theatre are equally Grade II listed.

View looking across to the central square from the south west corner of Sloane Square:

Sloane Square has given the term “Sloane Ranger” to the English language, a term that describes an upper middle class, or upper class person, usually young and financially well off, and who have a similar approach to fashion and life.

Prior to the marriage of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew, there were many newspapers descriptions of the bride as follows:

“Miss Sarah Ferguson comes from that well-heeled, rather old fashioned slice of young society known as Sloane Rangers.

Sloane girls’ hallmarks are pearls, Liberty frocks, sensible shoes and cashmere sweaters, their spiritual home the Sloane Square area of London. They speak in cut-glass accents and signify agreement by a drawn out ‘Okay, yah’.

Sloane Rangers may work in the City, but their roots are in the huntin’ and shootin’ countryside where they attend hunt balls and show jumping trials. On such occasions they brush with royalty.

Lady Diana Spencer was the definitive Sloane.”

According to the Sunday Express on the 7th of March 1993, Sloane Rangers were in shock over rumours of the closure of Peter Jones, their mecca on a Saturday morning for a wax jacket and pearls.

The origin of the term Sloane Ranger seems to be in the mid 1970s, and appears to have been used first in print in an article in Harpers & Queen in October 1975 by Peter York.

However there are other candidates for the origin of the phrase including Martina Margetts, a Harpers sub-editor, or it could be Fiona Macpherson, also a Harpers editor. There is also a claim that journalist Julian Kilgour used the term Sloane Ranger to describe his wife, in November 1974.

Whatever the source of the term, it does describe a certain social set, once based around Sloane Square. I am not sure what Sir Hans Sloane would have thought of his surname being put to such use.

The southern side of Sloane Square:

The northern side of Sloane Square:

Sloane Square again shows how much history you can find in a small part of London.

And if you walk along the King’s Road of today, it is so named just because Charles II, and the kings that followed until the 19th century, wanted their own private route from St. James’s Palace and Westminster to Hampton Court, and the Bloody Bridge shows how dangerous and violent parts of London once were.

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Hicks’s Hall – The Original Middlesex Sessions House

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Two tickets remaining for my walk “The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain” on Sunday the 31st August. Click here for details and booking.

Charterhouse Street runs along the northern edge of Smithfield Market. St. John Street is one of the streets that turns off north from Charterhouse Street, and from the junction, we can look up St. John Street, to the point where the street widens out, and there is a tree in the centre:

We can see the way St. John Street widens out for a short distance in the following map extract  (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

The following photo shows this relatively large area of open space, with the widened street passing either side of a central tree and bike racks:

I mentioned in the post on Blackfriars a couple of weeks ago how streets often retain the outline of what was there many years ago, and so it is with this space in St. John Street:

As it was in this space that Hicks’s Hall was built, and in Rocque’s 1746 map of London, we can see the building in the middle of the space, opposite Peter’s Lane and St. John’s Lane, showing that Hicks’s Hall was where the tree and bike rack are located today:

Hicks’s Hall was the first, dedicated Middlesex Sessions House. A place where a court sat, and criminal trials took place.

Hicks’s Hall was built in 1612 by Sir Baptist Hicks, a rich silk merchant, who lived in Soper Lane in the City, as well as having a house in Kensington.

There was a need for a dedicated Sessions House, as prior to the construction of Hicks’s Hall, Middlesex magistrates had used a number of local Inns, places which were not ideal to carry out a trial and to dispense justice.

An account of the opening of Hicks’s Hall reads: “Sir Baptist Hicks, Knight, one of the justices of the county builded a very stately Session House of brick and stone, with all offices thereunto belonging, at his own proper charge, and upon Wednesday, the 13th of January, this year, 1612, by which time this house was fully furnished, there assembled twenty-six justices of the county, being the first day of their meeting in that place, where they were all feasted by Sir Baptist Hicks, and then they all with one consent, gave it a proper name, and called it Hicks’s Hall, after the name of the founder, who then freely gave the house to them and their successors for ever. until this time, the Justices of Middlesex held their usual meeting in a common inn, called the Castle (Smithfield Bars).”

Numerous trials of many different types of criminal cases were held at Hicks’s Hall, and just a brief search of newspaper records reveals hundreds of reports. The following are a small example as crimes also illustrate life in the city. They are all from the 50 years from 1700 to 1750:

  • 24th January, 1723 – This Day, Mr. Ogden was tried at Hicks’s Hall for Cursing the King, which was plainly proved, but some of the evidence disposed that he was very much in Drink, and that he was esteemed a person very much effected to His Majesty, and often drank his Health. The Jury, after a short stay, brought him in Guilty
  • 21st October, 1727 – Two Men who had been convicted at Hicks’s Hall of a Misdemeanour in assaulting the Countess of Winchester in her Coach at Chelsea, with intent to Rob, and were sentenced to be whipt from Westminster Hall Gate to the end of Cabbage Lane in Petty France for the same (the sentence was not carried out as there appears to be a problem with the way the trial was carried out).
  • 15th April, 1730 – On Thursday at the Sessions at Hicks’s Hall, a Soldier having made Oath directly contrary to what he had sworn before, was taken into custody, and a Bill of Indictment for Perjury ordered to be brought against him
  • 24th May, 1733 – On Thursday at Hicks’s Hall, one Dwyer an Irishmen, and a Serjeant in the French Army, was convicted on several Indictments, for seducing Men to list themselves in the Service of the King of France; the Fact was proved very plain upon him, and the Court upon an Indictment sentenced him to pay a Fine of 1s and to suffer one year’s Imprisonment, and upon further Indictment a Fine of £50 and to find Sureties for his good behaviour for five years
  • 21st December, 1734 – Yesterday eight Butchers, who exposed to Sale on the Lord’s Day quantities of Beef and Mutton in a Place called Cow-Cross, near Smithfield, were by the Court of Justices at Hicks’s Hall fined 13s, 4d each, and some of them for a second offence, £1, 6s, 8d and were severely reprimanded by the Justices for such vile practices, and acquainted, that if they ever did so again, the Punishment would be more severe
  • 13th July, 1745 – Last Tuesday three Master Barbers were committed to Clerkenwell Bridewell by the Justices at Hicks’s Hall, for exercising their trades on the Lord’s Day and refusing to pay the fine

Hicks’s Hall from Old and New London. The print is recorded as being of the hall in 1750:

Thousands of cases were tried at Hicks’s Hall, and these were mainly of local crimes, however Hicks’s Hall was also used for trials of national importance and notoriety, for example when Hicks’s Hall played a prominent part in the actions of King Charles II against those who were responsible for the death of his father, King Charles I.

The trial of twenty nine of these Regicides (the Commissioners who had signed the warrant for the King’s execution, or who had a major part in his trial or execution) commenced at Hicks’s Hall on Tuesday the 9th of October 1669, and ended at the Old Bailey on Friday the 19th of October 1660.

Just ten days, including a weekend, which was not long for the trial of 29 people who were charged with crimes that carried some of the most extreme punishments, however I suspect there was little doubt as to the outcome.

The full account of the trial was published in a book which recorded the details of the trial, exchanges between prosecution and those charged, words of the Judge, background to the trial, a brief biography of those charged etc.

The long Preface to the books make an interesting read. It provides a whole range of justifications as to why the crimes committed by the Regicides were against the unity of the country, Christian religious principles, and the preface also tries to explain how those accused could have found themselves in such a position.

The following couple of paragraphs from the Preface are perhaps just as relevant today, as it was then:

“But let us examine a little into this Mystery of Enthusiasm and see by what means People arrive to this high Degree of Infatuation, and what are the several Steps which they take towards it.

The main Foundation of it is, no doubt, a large Stock of Pride, and a singular Fondness, which Men are apt to have for their own Sentiments and Opinions. Nothing is more common than for Men of this Spirit to run into Parties and Factions, and struggle hard for Superiority.”

To set the scene, the book also has a “Summary of the Dark Proceedings of the CABAL at Westminster, preparatory to the Murder of His Late Sacred Majesty, taken out of their own Journal-Book”.

The trial commenced at Hicks’s Hall on Tuesday the 9th of October 1660. The Court was directed by a large number of the great and the good, those who supported the restored Monarchy, including the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the Lord Chancellor of England, the Lord Treasurer of England, Dukes, Earls, Knights, Baronets and Justices.

A jury of 21 was sworn in consisting of Baronets, Knights, Esquires and Gentlemen.

To open the trail at Hicks’s Hall, the Lord Chief Baron, the head of His Majesty’s High Court of Exchequer spoke to the Jury.

Much of his speech was about the position of the King. That the Law Books describe the King as “the Lieutenant of God”, that the “King is immediate from God and hath no superior”, and that “If the King is immediate under God, he derives his authority from no body else; if the King has an Imperial Power, if the King ne Head of the Commonwealth, Head of the Body Politick, of the Body Politick owes him Obedience, truly I think it is an undenied consequence he must needs be Superior over them”.

Basically, although this was a trial, there could only be one outcome, and that those involved in the execution of King Charles I were automatically guilty, as only God was superior to the King.

The book also includes a brief biography of all those on trial. These are fascinating as they show the contempt in which the regicides were held. Below is a sample from the biographies from four of those on trial:

  • Colonel Thomas Harrison was the Son of a Butcher or Grasier at Newcastle-under-line in Staffordshire. After he had been educated in some Grammar Learning, he was placed with a Hulk, or Hulker, an Attorney in Clifford’s Inn, and when out of his Time became a kind of Petty-fogger. But finding little Profit arise from that, he took Arms for Parliament at the Breaking-out of Rebellious War, and by his Enthusiastical Preaching, and great Pretence to Piety, he so far recommended himself to the deluded Army, that he was advanced from one Post to another till he became a Major. He was Cromwell’s great Friend and Confident in all his Designs
  • Col. Adrian Scroop was descended of a Good family in Buckinghamshire. He was a great Puritan, and Stickler against Episcopacy, which made him take Arms against the King. Though he was no Parliament Man, yet he was drawn in, as he pretended by Oliver Cromwell, to be One in the Black List for Trying the King.
  • Mr. John Carew was born in Cornwell, of a very ancient family there, but had the Misfortune to be educated in Factious Principles, and was, like Harrison, a Fifth Monarchy Man, as appears in his trial. This made him an utter Enemy, not only to the King, but to all Government as a single Person, so that Oliver’s Usurpation was as hateful to him as the Royal Sovereignty, which he had destroyed
  • Gregory Clement is hardly worth mentioning. He was at first a Merchant, but failing in that, he sought to thrive by a New Trade in Bishops Lands, wherein he got a considerable Estate. He was turned out of the Rump-Parliament for lying with his Maid at Greenwich, but was taken in again when they were restored after Oliver’s Interruption. His guilty Conscience, and his Ignorance, would not suffer him to make any Plea at the Bar, or any Speech or Prayer at the Gallows

Poor old Gregory Clement seems to have been singled out for special contempt.

John Carew was considered especially dangerous as he was described as a Fifth Monarchy Man. Fifth Monarchists were a non-conformist religious sect that believed the killing of King Charles I marked the end of the fourth monarchy (the rule by kings), and would herald in the fifth monarchy when rule would be by Saints and by those “saved”, and would lead to the Second Coming.

The above four examples of those on trial were all found guilty and were all executed along with other Regicides during three very bloody days at Charing Cross::

  • Colonel Thomas Harrison was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on the 13th of October, 1660
  • Col. Adrian Scroop was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on the 17th of October, 1660
  • Mr. John Carew was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on the 15th of October, 1660
  • Gregory Clement was hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on the 17th of October, 1660

Others on trial at Hicks’s Hall and then at the old Bailey had a mix of sentences ranging from execution, life imprisonment down to a limited term of imprisonment.

Hicks’s Hall is also shown in William Morgan’s 1682 Map of London:

But why was there an open space in St. John Street allowing Hicks’s Hall to be built in 1612?

I suspect to answer that question, we need to go much further back in history, to the founding of the Priory of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in 1144 when 10 acres of land was granted to Jordan de Bricet in Clerkenwell. The following map from my post on the Priory and St. John’s Gate shows the boundary of the Priory.

The green oval is around the location of the space where Hicks’s Hall was built, and the blue rectangle is where a southern gatehouse was believed to have been built at the main entrance to the overall Priory complex. Research and excavations by the Museum of London Archaeology Service found mentions of tenements and possible evidence of a timber gatehouse at the site  (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

So if there was a gatehouse here, there would probably have been some degree of open space in front of the gatehouse, and this would have been where Hicks’s Hall was built centuries later, and is still a wider open space in the street today, with a tree in the centre.

Looking back at the location of Hicks’s Hall, and the possible location of a Gatehouse to the Priory of the Order of St John of Jerusalem is to the right of the tree:

Hicks’s Hall was used as a Session House until the late 1789s. By which time it was in a very poor state, was a bit on the small side for the work being conducted in the building, and the location of the building in the middle of St. John Street was not ideal, given the increase in traffic along the street since the building had originally been constructed.

Hicks’s Hall had been an important building in London, for as well as being a place where criminal cases were tried, it was also one of the places in the city from where distances were measured, and Hicks’s Hall was the measuring point for many places to the north of the city.

There is an interesting story from 1773 which shows how Hicks’s Hall was an important landmark, and also a staggering example of endurance and long distance travel.

On Monday the 29th of November 1773, Mr Foster Powell set off from Hicks’s Hall to deliver a letter to a Mr. Clarke, a watchmaker in York. Rather than travel on a horse, Foster Powell walked the entire route, including the return.

Staring at Hicks’s Hall, on the first day he covered the 88 miles to Stamford, on the second the 72 miles to Doncaster. On day three, Wednesday he set off from Doncaster and arrived in York in the afternoon where he delivered the letter. He then went to the Golden Anchor for some refreshment and an hour and a half of sleep, then later the same afternoon he set off for the return journey.

He reached Hicks’s Hall on the Saturday at four in the morning, having covered 394 miles in slightly over 5 days.

Foster Powell was known for his long distance walks, and it was reported that on many of these, locals would try and keep up with him on the route, but no one could for anything more than a couple of minutes. Off his other walks, one was a bet that he could not walk from London to Canterbury and back within 24 hours. He manged the return journey in 23 hours, 53 minutes, winning a bet of 100 Guineas.

At some point in the 1780s, Hicks’s Hall was demolished. It was because of the state of repair, size and location, and also because a new Middlesex Sessions House had recently been completed, and to find this building we need to take St. John’s Lane, the street opposite the location of Hicks’s Hall.

Walk down this street, and through St. John’s Gate:

Turn left on reaching Clerkenwell Road, and a short distance along, the following building can be seen on the northern side of the street:

The building is the Grade II* listed Old Sessions House, and a walk up from Clerkenwell Road to Clerkenwell Green provides a view of the front of the building. A far more impressive and substantial building than its predecessor, Hicks’s Hall, appears to have been:

Following my post on Archway last week, where the Arms of the old county of Middlesex can still be seen on the bridge, the Arms can also be seen on the pediment above the columns at the front of the Middlesex Sessions House:

Although the Sessions House at Clerkenwell Green was a completely new building, for some years after the transfer to the new building, it was also known as Hicks’s Hall, as this image from 1805 shows by the title of the print:

Credit: London Museum. Used under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC 4.0

The use of the name Hicks’s Hall for the new Middlesex Sessions House seems to have been common until the late 1840s, with the last newspaper report I could find of a trial using the name Hicks’s Hall being in 1848.

Many reports from the time recorded that the new building included a “fine Jacobean chimney piece” from the old Hicks’s Hall. The following inscription was apparently on the chimney piece: “Sir Baptist Hicks of Kensington in the county of Middlesex, knight, one of the justices of the peace of this county of Middlesex of his worthy disposition and at his own proper charge built this session house in the year of our Lord 1612 and gave it to the justices of the peace of this county and their successors for the sessions house for ever, 1618”.

The new building is Grade II* listed, and I can find no reference to the chimney piece in the listing.

I find it strange that, although the space occupied by the original Hicks’s Hall remains, I could not find any plaque recording that the building once stood in St. John Street.

Given that it was the first dedicated Sessions House for the County of Middlesex, that it was a place where lots of trials took place, and where many of those involved in the execution of King Charles I started the trials that would lead to executions and life imprisonment for many, the site of Hicks’s Hall must deserve some form of site record.

alondoninheritance.com

Highgate Archway – Two Bridges and a Tunnel

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Highgate Archway, or just Archway as it is now more commonly known, carries Hornsey Lane over the A1, Archway Road, one of the major routes connecting London with the rest of the country. The A1 starts at the roundabout at the old Museum of London site, alongside London Wall, and ends in Edinburgh, and at 410 miles in length, it is the longest, numbered road in the country.

The Archway bridge looking north:

And looking south. a view which shows how the road descends in height as it heads towards the Archway pub and Archway underground station – the bridge has given its name to a small part of north London:

The land either side of the bridge carrying Hornsey Lane over the A1 is, according to the Ordnance Survey map, around 100m above sea level, so standing on the southern side of the bridge, we can see the A1 heading towards the junction around the Archway Tavern, with a good view of the towers of the City in the distance, with the Shard to the right:

The Highgate Archway has a fascinating history.

Firstly, the location of the bridge, which I have marked with the black arrow in the following map extract,, which shows the location of the bridge within north London (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

The following map is a more detailed view of the location of the bridge. It is carrying the yellow road (Hornsey Lane) over the dark pink (never sure what that colour really is) road running from bottom to top, this is Archway Road, the A1 (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

Follow Hornsey Lane to the left, and it joins Highgate Hill. opposite Waterlow Park, and Highgate Hill is the reason why the Highgate Archway was built.

Early in the 19th century, Highgate Hill was one of the main routes running north from the city. It was a steep hill, in a variable condition, and at the top, Highgate Hill, as its name suggests, ran through the village of Highgate.

Traffic levels were increasing, and a need to bypass Highgate was seen as the best approach of addressing the challenges of the hill, avoiding Highgate village, and supporting increasing traffic volumes.

The following extract from the excellent Topographic Map website shows why the new route was needed, and why the location for the Highgate Archway was chosen:

The orange and red are increasing height, and the greens and blues are descending hights.

The orange, red and pink to the left of centre is the location of Highgate. Highgate Hill runs up this increasing height.

Highgate Archway is marked with the black arrow. Archway Road runs to the east of Highgate, cutting across the lower land height, and where Hornsey Lane runs to Highgate, it is along a short, high spur of land which follows Hornsey Lane. The Highgate Archway bridge was needed to carry Hornsey Lane as Archway Road cut through this short, high spur of land.

At the beginning of the 19th century, much of the land was still fields, so building the new road to the east, avoided Highgate Village, reduced the height and rate of ascent of the road, cut through the short amount of high ground and provided a much wider road to carry increasing levels of traffic.

The following extract from Rocque’s map of 1746, shows the area in the mid 18th century. Highgate village is to the left, with Highgate Hill running up to Highgate from Upper Holloway.

I have marked with the arrow where the bridge is located today, with Hornsey Lane having already been in existence for some centuries. The red dashed line shows the route of the new road, Archway Road, from the current location of the Archway Tavern (at the bottom of the line), up to the point where today it meets Shepherds Hill / Jackson’s Lane:

The Highgate Archway bridge that we see today, is the third of the three plans for carrying Hornsey Lane over Archway Road. The first was a failure, the second worked reasonably well, and the third has lasted well over a century.

A bill was before Parliament in early 1810 for the construction of a new road and a tunnel taking the new road under Hornsey Lane.

The proposal for a tunnel came from the mining engineer Robert Vazie. This consisted of new approach roads and a tunnel with a total length of around 2,000 yards of which 211 yards was in the tunnel. A company was formed to deliver the new road and tunnel, with the ability to raise capital of £40,000 and to borrow up to £20,000.

The capital and borrowing was to be repaid by a toll charged to use the new road. Tolls of 6 pennies for a horse and vehicle, 3 pennies for a horse, 2 for a donkey and 1 penny for someone on foot.

Robert Vazie already had some difficult experience with constructing tunnels, as he was the first to work on a Rotherhithe tunnel, when in 1805 he started construction of a tunnel underneath the river – the Thames Archway Tunnel. Two years later, Vazie had not made that much progress. Sand and quicksand were making it very difficult to build a stable shaft and then tunnel out towards the river. The Directors of the Thames Archway Tunnel brought in the Cornish mining engineer Richard Trevithick, who made far more progress than Vazie, but continued to experience problems with quicksand and the river bursting through into the tunnel, to such an extent that the project had to be abandoned, and the Rotherhithe Tunnel had to wait for the Brunel father and son to build a tunnel between the north and south banks of the Thames.

Vazie’s Highgate Tunnel project also came to grief. The following is from the London Morning Chronicle on the 29th of January, 1812:

“THE TUNNEL – Between four and five o’clock on Monday morning, the Highgate Tunnel fell in with a tremendous crash, and the labour of several months, was in a few minutes, converted into a heap of ruins. Some of the workmen, who were coming to resume their daily labour, describe the noise that preceded it like that of distant thunder. It was the Crown Arch, near Horney Lane, that first gave way, and the lane, in consequence, fell some feet deep, and instantly became unpassable. The houses in the vicinity felt the fall like the shock of an earthquake. The number of persons whom the fineness of the weather attracted on Sunday to inspect the works, were not less than 800. How providential that the fall was reserved for a moment when no person was on the spot, to suffer by an accident, which has reduced this Herculean task to a heap of ruins.”

The collapse of the tunnel seems to have been caused by an economical approach in the materials used to line the tunnel, as on the 22nd of April, 1812, the following article appeared in the London Chronicle:

“The falling in of the Highgate Archway, which had been anticipated by the workmen for nearly a fortnight previous to the catastrophe, is considered to have originated in too economical a regard to the quantity of bricks used in the arch, and the quality of the cement uniting them. This accident, though a partial evil, will be evidently a public advantage, since it is now wisely determined by the proprietors to reduce their tenebrious tunnel to an arch of about 30 feet in length, which will be under and will support Hornsey Lane.”

The tunnel had many detractors, some had concerns with the proposal for a tunnel, other had concerns about the economic impact that the tunnel would have on the trade in Highgate, particularly for the inns that lines the road through Highgate, and attracted business from coaches, and travellers along the route.

Such were these concerns, that a comic opera was put on at the Lyceum Theatre, with the title “Highgate Tunnel or The Secret Arch”, which included a general battle between the Victuallers of Highgate and the Tunneleers. There was a sub-plot of an intrigue between Jerry Grout, described as a “bricklayer, lover and tunneleer”, and Patty Larkins, the daughter of the landlord of the Horns on Highgate Hill.

Following the collapse of the tunnel, plans were quickly revised, additional capital was raised by the company, and the architect John Nash was brought in to design a bridge rather than a tunnel, and to supervise the works.

Nash’s design was modelled on a Roman aqueduct, with two tiers of arches, and constructed of stone. The following photo from “The Queen’s London”, shows Highgate Archway as designed by John Nash:

When open, Archway Road was a toll road, however initially the amount of tolls collected were only just about enough to cover the maintenance of the bridge and road, but with increasing traffic volumes, tolls increased, but the action that allowed all the shareholders and loans to be fully repaid, was the sale of land alongside Archway Road for building. This land had originally been part of the purchase of land for the project, but its sale solved the profitability problem.

The road was freed from tolls on the 30th of April, 1876 when all debts had bee repaired, and the road and bridge were vested with the parishes of Hornsey and Islington.

Whilst Nash’s bridge was a success unlike the earlier tunnel, it had problems as traffic increased ober the 19th century. The central arch was only 18 feet wide, and acted as a choke point on the Archway Road. There were also plans for a tramway along the Archway Road, and a widening of the road and the bridge was essential for trams to run.

In the early 1890s, the London County Council Improvements Committee called for proposals for a replacement bridge along with widening of the Archway Road.

Then as now, there were discussions about cost, and finally the cost for the new bridge was shared between the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (£1,000) as they were freeholders of Highgate Woods, and owned nearby estates of land, Middlesex County Council and Hornsey Local Board (each to cover a quarter of the costs) and the London County Council would cover the rest of the costs, which were estimated at £28,000.

The Middlesex Coat of Arms remain on the bridge today as a reminder of the old county that part funded the structure:

The design of the new bridge was down to Sir Alexander Binnie, the engineer to London County Council.

The bridge had to accommodate five major water mains of the New River Company, who had a reservoir right next to the western side of the bridge, as well as gas mains of the Gas Light and Coke Company.

The plan of the new bridge from the London County Council book “History of London Street Improvements” (1898):

The design was selected in 1896, the contract for construction was signed with Charles Wall of Lots Road, Chelsea on the 13th of July, 1897.

Nash’s earlier bridge was demolished by the end of 1897, and work began on the new bridge in the following year., with the bridge being officially opened in July 1900.

Although the bridge did not open until 1900, and work commenced in 1897, the bridge displays the date 1897, to recognise Queen Victoria ‘s Diamond Jubilee of that year:

There was no formal opening of the new bridge. On the 28th of July 1900, Princess Louise (the sixth child of Queen Victoria) was unveiling a statue in Waterlow Park, and “on her return from the park, the Princess Louise was driven over the new Highgate Archway, and was enthusiastically received by the large crowds which had assembled along the line of the route. Without any formality beyond that of the royal drive across it, Highgate Archway was thrown open to the public on Saturday.”

The view looking across the bridge from the east, towards Highgate:

The cutting providing the route nortth for Archway Road, and the bridge carrying Hornsea Lane across Archway Road has been a success, in bypassing Highgate, and providing additiona road capacity.

Sadly though, for almost the whole time that the new bridge has been in place, it has been a place where people have tragically committed suicide by jumping to the road below.

There are frequent news paper reports over the decades of the bridge’s existence of suicides, and the Office for National Statistics has a record of deaths from the bridge over the last few years, with two between 2008 and 2012, and three between 2013 and 2017.

In 2018, plans were finalised for fencing around the sides of the bridge to try and prevent suicides. The above photo shows this fencing lining the two sides of the bridge, and the following photo shows the fencing looking south, with the towers of the City in the distance:

Other plans were put forward for fencing that blended in with the overall structure, but the solution we see today was installed.

Looking from the northern side of the bridge:

And to the east along Hornsey Lane:

I mentioned earlier that the new bridge had to accommodate a number of large water mains as the bridge was adjacent to a reservoir of the New River Company.

This was a logical place to locate a reservoir as height for the storage of treated water provides back pressure to distribute water to consumers. The water starved grass of the reservoir can be seen in the following photo looking west from the bridge towards Highgate. The road is wet, as the day of my visit to Archway coincided with the only bit of rain in several weeks:

The lamps to the side of the bridge were modelled on those on the Embankment:

It is not just the bridge which is high, the approach of Archway Road to the bridge is also high, and walking back towards Archway underground station, St. Paul’s Cathedral came into view (it is hidden by trees from the bridge), and I looked to be almost at the same level as the dome:

The higher ground behind the cathedral looks to be around Beckenham and Bromley, and illustrates how central London is at a low point, along the river, with high ground to north and south.

At the southern end of Archway Road is the 1888 Archway Tavern:

An earlier version of the Archway Tavern, with John Nash’s Highgate Archway to the right is shown in the following print, from Old and New London and is dated 1825. A rural scene that is hard to imagine today.

fIn the above print, the little hut to the right of the print is where tolls were taken for those using the new route.

It is interesting to compare prints with photos to see how realistic prints were.

If you compare the above print with the photo of John Nash’s bridge from the Queen’s London, earlier in the post. you will see that the road leading up to the bridge has a slope upwards in the photo, whereas in the above print, it looks like a flat stroll up to the bridge.

The Highgate Archway was an early bypass, taking traffic away from Highgate Hill and the village of Highgate.

The original plan for a tunnel was a failure. The double layered bridge by John Nash worked well for much of the 19th century, but as traffic volumes grew and the tram network was extended, the central arch was far too narrow, resulting in a replacement bridge designed by Sir Alexander Binnie. and which opened in 1900. This is the bridge we see today, the last of three plans to cross this busy road.

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In Search of Blackfriars and Resources, Part 2

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At the end of today’s post, there is another of my monthly features on research resources, as well as a London book, but before that, a search for the location of a lost London priory.

If you hear the word Blackfriars, you probably think of either the station, the bridge, or perhaps of the pub at the southern end of Queen Victoria Street:

You may also think of the religious institution after which the station, bridge and pub are named, a house of Dominican Friars, who became known as Black Friars after the black cape they would wrap around their body, an image which the figure on the pub seeks to illustrate.

Within the area known as Blackfriars, and at the end of Carter Lane, where the street meets Ludgate Broadway and Black Friars Lane, there is a plaque on the wall, seen to the right of the red truck in the following photo:

The plaque records that it is the site of the Priory of the Blackfriars, founded 1278:

However, the Priory was a large complex, so how does this plaque relate to the Priory, and what area did it cover in the streets between Carter Lane and Queen Victoria Street? That is the purpose of today’s post, but first a bit of background to the Black Friars.

The Dominican Order was founded by Saint Dominic, who was a Castilian Priest by the name of Dominic de Guzmán, in the early 13th century.

The order was founded to build a community of priests who would go out into the world to preach, and the Dominican’s are also known as the Order of Preachers. The early 13th century was a time when there were challenges to the established church across Europe, with the Albigensian heresy of the Cathars in the Languedoc area of southern France and a growing scepticism of the compatibility of faith and reason.

The Dominican approach to combating these challenges was to go out and preach, and to bring a learned, intellectual and rigorous approach to both theology and preaching.

The new order quickly expanded across Europe, and arrived in London in 1221, with Gilbert de Fresnay being the first friar.

Gilbert de Fresnay was charged with finding a site in London to establish their second English Priory (the first had already be established in Oxford). He had the support of Hubert de Burgh, the Earl of Kent, who purchased a plot of land in Holborn, on the western banks of the River Fleet, and by the Fleet Bridge (today the area of land between the church of St. Andrew and Shoe Lane, down to Farringdon Street).

Hubert de Burgh gave this land to the Dominican’s for their new Priory.

Although it was outside of the City walls, it was an important location as it was adjacent to the street that led from the west, over the Fleet, and into the City of London, and as I mentioned in this post on Churches at City Boundaries, it was a good place to cater to the spiritual needs of those travelling to and from the City, and to seek donations for the Order.

The Holborn Priory would serve the Dominican’s for around 50 years, but by the 1270s, the order wanted to move into the City of London and had been gradually acquiring land in the area we today call Blackfriars.

The area they were targeting for their new Priory was mainly comprised of several large properties, so they did not have the challenge of trying to buy up a dense area of streets and housing. The land to the south west of the City had large buildings such as Baynard’s Castle and Mountfitchet’s Tower.

The main problem was that the old City wall crossed through the area that the Dominican’s were after, and in a remarkable decision which involved the Mayor of London, the King and representatives from the Dominicans, agreement was reached on demolishing 225 yards of the existing City wall, and rebuilding it to the western boundary of the new priory, along the eastern bank of the River Fleet.

Construction of the new priory got underway, the friars moved from Holborn into the City, however it would be some decades into the early 14th century before their Priory was complete (and like all such buildings, it would be under almost continuous modification).

The Dominican priory would continue to be based in this area of the southwestern City until the middle 16th century, when the buildings and lands was surrendered to Henry VIII during the Dissolution, and in 1549 / 50 the priory site was sold to Thomas Cawardine.

The friars in their black capes over their white robes must have been a common sight in the area, and almost 500 years after the friary was closed, the area still goes by the name of Blackfriars.

So where exactly was the Priory, and how much land did it cover?

A Dictionary of London (Harben, 1918), included a map of the Priory, overlaid on the early 20th century street plan. There are some small differences between this plan and some modern interpretations, based on 20th century archaeology, and I will point these out, however the Priory evolved over the almost 300 years that it occupied the site, so the purpose of many of the buildings would have changed, but the layout and key buildings in a Priory would have stayed the same, just improved and repaired over the years that the site was in use:

The blue plaque marking the site of the Priory of the Blackfriars, shown earlier in the post, is at the north western edge of the priory buildings. If you find Carter Lane along the top of the plan, with the Lady Chapel, where Carter Lane meets Water Lane (the street that today is Black Friars Lane), the plaque is on what would have been the northern wall of the Lady Chapel, above the L of Lady.

I am starting a walk around the site of the Priory at the southern end of Black Friars Lane, where it meets Queen Victoria Street. In the above plan, this is the space to lower left which leads up to what was Water Lane.

On the left of the following photo would have been gardens, workshops and a smithy, leading down to the relocated City wall and the River Fleet. On the right would have been the Kitchen Yard and the Parliament Hall or Chamber:

Note that in the early 20th century street plan shown in red in the above plan, Printing House Square is shown to the right, and behind the Parliament Hall.

The buildings around Printing House Square were where the offices and printing machinery of the Times newspaper were based after John Walter brought the King’s Printing House in Blackfriars in 1784.

Further up, we reach the junction with Playhouse Yard. Black Friars Lane continues up to Carter Lane. The buildings on the left appear rather strange as their depth has been reduced to provide space for the railway, which now allows the Thameslink trains to run into Blackfriars Station, the tracks are behind the wall on the left:

In the above photo, the turning on the right is into Play House Yard. The name comes from the Blackfriars Theatre that was on part of the site between 1596 and 1655. The theatre seems to have been mainly used during the winter months. The Globe and Rose theatres on the low lying south bank of the river would often be surrounded by muddy water following heavy rains and when the Thames breached the limited river bank defences then in place, so Blackfriars, on a rising slope above the Thames was a good alternative.

This is the view looking into Play House Yard, and here we are coming from the Kitchen Yard, crossing the Kitchen, and part of the Refectory (or Frater as shown in the above plan), with the southern part of the main cloister in the distance:

Offices are in the building on the left, and just a bit further to the left, behind the offices is Apothecaries’ Hall.

The Apothecaries’ moved into the old Guest House of the Priory, which became their Hall in 1632. The building was lost during the Great Fire of 1666, and the Apothecaries’ rebuilt their hall on the same site in 1670, with some rebuilding in 1786, from when the brick parts of the overall complex, facing the street in the above and below photos date from.

The Hall is Grade I listed, and according to the listing the Hall includes “slight medieval remains of Blackfriars’ Priory”. The Apothecaries’ Hall from Black Friars Lane:

The Porter’s Lodge of the Priory was located where the Apothecaries’ Hall meets Black Friars Lane, and from here a gallery provided a walking route down to the new location of the City Wall alongside the Fleet, where there was a small crossing over the Fleet.

In Play House Yard, looking back towards the entrance from Black Friars Lane, and the buildings around the Apothecaries’ Hall are directly in front. This is where the Guest Hall and Guest House were located. To the right was the southern side of the main Cloister:

To the right of the above photo is an alley by the name of Church Entry and which leads up to Carter Lane. It is here that we find the core of the Priory. In the following photo looking north along Church Entry, the eastern side of the main Cloister would have been on the left. To the right was a School House, then a Chapter House, and further along the alley, just past where the white wall juts in from the left, would have been the magnificent tower of the Priory’s church:

To the left of Church Entry was the Nave and the Choir was to the right, with the tower between. The name Church Entry for the alley is down to the alley being the entry point into the church, running north-south underneath the tower.

Along Church Entry is the entrance to a raised garden:

This open space was once part of the Preaching Nave of the Priory Church. After the Nave was demolished, the space was used as a churchyard for the parish of St. Ann, Blackfriars. Closed for burials in 1849, it is now a garden maintained by the City.

In the years when the Priory was in use, the Nave would have extended to the left of the following photo, and through the buildings that now occupy the space on the left. This would have been one of the most important parts of the Priory. In the plan of the Priory, it is labelled as the Preaching Nave, as this is where the friars would have fulfilled one of the Order’s main roles of preaching.

One of the major events early in the life of the Priory was the Priory’s role in the funeral of Eleanor of Castile. After the funeral of Eleanor at Westminster Abbey, there was one last act for her husband Edward I to attend to, and that was the burial of Eleanor’s heart at the Dominican Priory at Blackfriars on Tuesday the 19th of December, 1290.

The priory at Blackfriars was well known to Edward and Eleanor as the heart of their son Alfonso who had died in 1284 at the age of 10 had already been buried at Blackfriars, so Eleanor probably had been planning for her heart to be buried with that of her son. (for more on Eleanor of Castile, see my series of posts on the line of Eleanor Crosses and the journey from the place of her death, back to London, starting in this post),

It was also Edward I who had specified that the redirected City wall, along the River Fleet was to be built at the expense of the City. A decision which must have pleased the Friars.

There are very few records of life within the priory, and most recorded events come from the time of Henry VIII. In 1522, the visiting Emperor Charles V was put up by Henry VIII at the priory, and Henry VIII had a covered gallery constructed from the western edge of the priory across from the Porter’s Lodge down to Bridewell Bridge, which crossed the Fleet and gave access to Henry’s new palace at Bridewell, enabling Charles V to reach the palace from his lodging in the priory without getting wet if it rained.

The Gallery can just be seen on the left edge of the plan of the priory earlier in the post.

During Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Catherine was put on trial before the papal legate at the priory.

Where Church Entry meets Carter Lane:

Walking back to Play House Yard, I then turned east into Ireland Yard, as here we can see a small bit of stone wall that was possibly part of the medieval Priory.

Ireland Yard takes its name from the Ireland family. Early in the 17th century a William Ireland owned property here, and for some reason, the family gave their name to the street, which runs between Play House Yard and St. Andrew’s Hill.

A short distance along Ireland Yard, on the northern side are these brick walls with a gate and steps leading up to a raised open space:

Walk up the steps, look to the right and you will see the remains of a wall:

This fragment of a rubble wall is Grade II listed, and in the listing record it is stated that it is “Probably part of former Dominican Convent (Blackfriars)”.

The use of “probably” illustrates the problem of being really sure when describing the origins of small bits of a structure. If it is from the Priory, then it would possibly have formed the southern wall of the Provincial’s Hall.

The Provincial’s Hall had an upper floor so a strong wall would have been needed. The plan of the Priory states that over the hall was a Dorter (the sleeping area for the friars).

The open space at the top of the steps, looking back towards Ireland Yard is shown in the following photo. The Provincial’s Hall with the friars sleeping quarters ran across the southern part of this space, by the steps. To the right was the Chapter House, and it seems that the parish church of St. Ann may have used the Chapter House, with the churchyard occupying part of this space, as well as the space in Church Entry where the Nave of the Priory Church was located:

Continuing along Ireland Yard, and the next street running up to Carter Lane is Friar Street:

Friar Street marks the easterly limit of the buildings that made up the Priory. The Priory estate continued to the east with the Prior’s Garden which ran all the way to what is now St. Andrew’s Hill.

In the above photo, the eastern end of the Choir was to the left of the far end of the street, and where Friar Street meets Ireland Yard was the eastern end of the Provincial’s Hall. The Prior’s Gardens were to the right of the above photo.

Continuing along Ireland Yard, and we come to St. Andrew’s Hill, a street that runs up from Queen Victoria Street to Carter Lane.

St. Andrew’s Hill was originally Puddle Dock Hill as the street ran down to Puddle Dock on the Thames, which was used by the Friars as their access to the river.

St. Andrew’s Hill / Puddle Dock Hill formed the eastern boundary of the Friary, and it was at the junction with Ireland Yard that the east gatehouse was located.

On the left of the entrance to Ireland Yard is the Cockpit pub. The current pub building is mainly from 1842, however a pub is alleged to have been here from the 16th century and the name is a reference to cock-fighting and the associated gambling that once took place here. It would have been a logical place for a pub, right next to the gatehouse to the old Friary estate.

There is a reference to the gatehouse on the plaque on the building to the right in the above photo. The plaque records that William Shakespeare purchased lodgings in the Blackfriars Gatehouse on the 19th of March, 1613:

Walking up to Carter Lane, and looking west from the north east corner of the Friary estate:

It is interesting how street patterns retain a memory from what was there in previous centuries.

In the above photo, the boundary wall of the Priory estate cut across the wider part of the road, then turned a short distance up the road to the right, before heading north west, where it met the City wall at the point where it had been redirected to the west to free up space for the Friary.

So in the above photo, where Carter Lane narrows is the point where the street ran within the Priory, with Priory buildings to the left, and the principal graveyard of the Priory to the right. The narrowing of Carter Lane my reflect that the narrow part ran within the Priory grounds..

At the western end of Carter Lane, I meet the junction with Ludgate Broadway and Black Friars Lane, and the following photo is looking back along Carter Lane. The impressive nave of the church was on the right, the principal graveyard was on the left. Behind me, gardens ran down to the rerouted City wall which then ran along the banks of the River Fleet, now New Bridge Street:

Whilst a single part of what may have been a rubble stone wall of the Priory remains above ground, there are still arcaeological remains below ground, however the majority of the Priory remains have been lost.

During the mid-19th century, John Wykeham Archer recorded a number of the surviving parts of the Priory in a series of prints. The following print dates from 1853 and shows the remains of a wall and base of a pillar underneath the Times printing office (all the following three prints are: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.):

The following from 1855 shows the remains of an arch:

And the following print, also from 1855, shows the base of a tower. In the print above and that below, there are men looking as if they are breaking up the structure and carrying stones away in baskets. This must have been the fate of much of the old Priory with the stone being reused in other construction projects:

In a few decades time, it will be 500 years since the Dominican Order surrendered their Priory to Henry VIII, the site sold off and the area began the transformation to the place we see today.

The Priory occupied a large area, it required a significant rerouting of the City wall, and appears to have been an impressive place, with the central nave, choir and tower dominating the Priory.

It lasted for just under 300 years, but the name that came from the sight of the Friars in their black capes still resonates through the area today.

Resources – Mapping at the National Library of Scotland

And now for the second of my monthly additions to a post detailing some of the resources I use for research, and for this month there is a website that can easily lead to an evening of distraction as you explore the street layout of places from over 100 years ago.

The National Library of Scotland has an extensive range of maps which have been digitised and aligned with maps of today. These maps cover not only London, but much of the country, so for example, if you want to see the countryside and villages lost under Harlow new town, as they were at the end of the 19th century, or how much Lincoln has expanded from a country town to the city it is today, it is all there.

The website is at: https://maps.nls.uk/ where you will find the following page:

Click on Geo-referenced maps in the top row of options, and you will be taken to a map with an Ordnance Survey map overlaying a modern map.

From here you can zoom in and out and move the map with a mouse, and at bottom left there is a “Change transparency of overlay” slider where you can reveal the modern base map to help with locating a place before going back to the older map.

Above the slider, you can select a map. The OS Six Inch 1888-1915 is a good place to start, but clicking the down arrow to the right of the select a map box will bring up a list of other available maps. There are plenty to explore.

From the main page shown above you can also view a “Side by side viewer” which places an old and a modern map next to each other, and zooming in and out, or moving one of the maps synchronises with the other map.

There is much to explore at the site, and it is worthwhile spending some time exploring all the different features and options to get to know how the site work, or just zoom in on your current street or home town to see what was there at the end of the 19th century.

The National Library of Scotland have done a remarkable job with putting these maps on line, aligning with maps of today, and making the site so easy to use – a wonderful resource, not just for London, but the whole country.

What I Am Reading – Maritime Metropolis by Sarah Palmer

I also thought I would include in these resources additions to posts, a monthly book, and for this month it is a book that I have just purchased and am currently reading, Maritime Metropolis London and its Port, 1780-1914 by Sarah Palmer:

I have been hesitating to buy this book for some time as the published price of the book is £90, but finally purchased a copy as the subject to so close to my interest in the relationship between London and river and docks that made up the Port.

It is published by Cambridge University Press so could come under the category of an academic title, hence the price.

Many histories of London look at either the city or the port, almost in isolation, however the approach taken by Sarah Palmer in Maritime Metropolis is that the history of both are intertwined. London is a Port City and almost every aspect of the city’s development has been influenced by the port, and the port was able to develop because of London.

This is a view that I have long taken, and today, with the loss of the docks, London has in many ways lost its connection with the river, and the route to the world that the river provided.

It is also why London has in some ways lost its identity. It is no longer a port city, it is no longer home to the largest dock complex in the world, and the enormous volumes of trade that once passed through the city. Indeed up until the later part of the 20th century, ships taking goods to and from London has been a key part of the city’s function, and in the lives of the city’s residents, for almost its entire history.

If you want to understand the deep connection between London and its Port, then Maritime Metropolis is a comprehensive and very readable account.

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Narrow Street – The Story of a Riverside Community

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Back in January I published the following photo, taken by my father in August 1948, which shows the rear of the buildings along Narrow Street in Limehouse. It was in a post about William Adams – The Adventures of a Limehouse Apprentice, and was used to illustrate how so much of Limehouse had a working relationship with the Thames, and I wrote that I would return to the photo to tell the story of some of the buildings.

The photo shows the rear of the buildings along Narrow Street. There are barges and lighters on the foreshore, and the majority of the buildings have structures on, or alongside the foreshore, showing that each building had some form of relationship with the river.

It is a place where for many of the occupants of the buildings, the river was either a place of work, or their onshore work was dependent on the river, the trade that the river brought to London and the wealth created by the river (although for the majority of the residents of Limehouse, very little of that wealth trickled down to them).

The same terrace of houses along Narrow Street today (my photo is looking straight at the terrace from the opposite embankment, where my father’s photo shows the terrace from an angle, and lower down as he was on a ship on the river):

The following extract from father’s photo shows the buildings to the left of the photo. I will be going into some detail as to the occupants of the buildings later in the post, but compare the following photo with the one above, as it shows the change that has happened across the Thames, from a working river, where many of the buildings along the river’s edge were involved in someway with the river, an industrial scene, barges and lighters on the foreshore, where the photo of the terrace today shows a clean foreshore, with the houses looking out on to a quiet river, mainly populated with Thames Clipper passenger boats, Ribs taking people on high speed trips along the river, containers of London’s rubbish being taken further down the Thames for incineration, and the occasional cruise ship heading for a berth along side HMS Belfast:

The following 19th century print shows the same terrace of houses. The tower of St. Anne’s Limehouse is in the background to the above print and the 1948 photo:

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

Buildings have occupied the river’s edge in Limehouse for centuries, with Narrow Street providing a road alongside the inland façade of these buildings.

In the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map, I have marked the terrace in my father’s photo with a yellow line. The red arrow is pointing to Duke Shore, which I will come back to later in the post:

The following extract is from “A New and Correct Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster”, published by Haines and Son in 1796, and again I have marked the terrace in the 1948 photo with a yellow line:

Image: © 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 map shows the clustering of building in Limehouse in the 18th century, with much of the area to the north and east still rural, with fields and marsh. The feature marked as Lea River in the above map is the Limehouse Cut, that had recently been completed from the River Lea to the Thames, west of the Isle of Dogs, thereby allowing boats on the River Lea heading towards the City to take a short cut, rather than having to travel around the bulge of the Isle of Dogs.

The maps above show the area alongside Narrow Street has been occupied since the mid 18th century, however it has been occupied for very much longer as my post on William Adam’s demonstrated, when Adam’s became an apprentice to a boat builder in Limehouse in the 1570s.

The transformation of the area as we see it today, is therefore a very short period in Narrow Street’s long history as for centuries it was intimately connected with industry and trade on the river.

I can only illustrate a very small part of this long history in a single blog post, so I will start with a look at the terrace of buildings in the left side of the 1948 photo, explore who lived in the houses, the businesses that operated alongside the Thames, and compare with the area today, starting with the following then and now comparison, with the coloured arrows referencing the same places in both photos and also used as references in the rest of the post:

Working from left to right, the red arrow points to a gap, with a house on the site today. I will return to this location later in the post.

The yellow arrow points to the Grapes pub, a pub that claims to have stood on the site for nearly 500 years, and I have no reason to doubt that age, as what is now Narrow Street has been a street alongside the river for centuries, and whilst in land was still rural, light industries such as boat building occupied the river front.

There are many newspaper references to the pub, starting in the 1800s, when it was written about as “Mrs. Horsley’s Bunch of Grapes”. For example, in an 1805 advert Mrs. Horseley was advertising for staff for the pub, and in the same year, an auction in the pub of “free hold houses” in Limehouse was being advertised.

The 1911 census records that in the Grapes lived William George Higgins, aged 32 and listed as the Licensed Victualler. He lived in the pub with his wide Charlotte aged 35, and 7 children ranging in age from 5 months to 14.

Charlotte had been married before as one of the 7 children was listed as a stepson to William Higgins. He was also the oldest, at 14. Charlotte was recorded as “helping in the business”. She had had 8 children, one of which had died, with 7 surviving.

The members of the Higgins family had not moved far, as they were all listed as having been born in either Mile End, Stepney or Poplar.

The following photo shows the Grapes from Narrow Street, and it was typical of the times that such a narrow house would be home to a business as well as nine people – two adults and seven children:

Numbering of houses in Narrow Street seems to have stayed the same since the 1911 census, and the following extract from Open Street Map shows the stretch of buildings. The Grapes is shown towards the left, this is number 76. Not all the houses had a return in the 1911 census, but we can trace many of the occupants of the houses from the census (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

At number 82 Narrow Street was William Ritchie aged 66 with his wife Mary 64. He was listed as a store keeper. They were recorded as having 7 children, all surviving but none living at home. Also living in the house was their nephew David aged 30 who was a general labourer.

At 84 Narrow Street was Charles Brammall, a 55 year old Lighterman who lived in the house with his wife Elizabeth aged 56, daughter Jessie aged 24 and son Sydney aged 14.

As an indication of the birth rate and the frequently high death rate for young children, Elizabeth had had a total of 9 children, 4 had died and 5 were still living. Jessie was recorded as “Help at Home”, whilst Sydney was still at school, although at 14 this would not be for much longer.

In my father’s 1948 photo, the rear of number 84 Narrow Street is the house in the following extract from the photo with the word “ETHEREDGE”. In 1948, the building was also occupied by Charles and Arthur Etheredge who were tug owners:

The Etheredge firm had operated from Narrow Street since the 1890s, so I suspect the residents in the 1911 census were either employees of the company, or were living in rented out upper floors.

Etheredge advertised their services as follows: “Vessels Towed to any part of the CHANNEL. Ships transported from Docks to Dry Docks”. As well as offices in the building at Narrow Street, they were also at the London Shipping Exchange, and if you wanted to send them a telegram to get a tug boat for your ship, they had the Telegram address of “TUGBOAT LONDON”.

At 86 Narrow Street was John Barnett aged 77, recorded as being a General Dealer with his 45 year old wife Caroline (quite an age gap) and 3 daughters aged 10, 8 and 6.

At 88 Narrow Street was George Costino aged 60, a Lighterman, and his 60 year old wife Clara. They were the only people in the house, and under children, it was recorded as “none”.

There is no number 90 in the census returns. This is probably down to it being part of the W.N. Sparks business. I will come to this business shortly, but for now, the following is a brief description of number 90 from 1955: “No. 90 is indisputably the oldest. I doubt it was once the home and workshop of an Elizabethan mast and spar maker, as local gossip claims, but one of the firm’s employees did in fact find a spade guinea and a doubloon there”.

Whilst the majority of Narrow Street residents seem to have been born in east London, some had moved to Limehouse, often from a considerable distance.

At number 92 was Robert Gilmore, age 26, who was listed as being single and having a job as a house painter. He was living in the house with Sydney Gilmore, his 2 year old son. Also in the house was Mary Stephenson, a 37 year old House Keeper.

Robert and Sydney had come from Scotland, with Sydney being born in Aberdeen. Robert was listed as being single rather than a widower, so it is interesting to speculate why he had moved from Aberdeen to Limehouse with his very young son.

The housekeeper Mary, had also moved some distance, coming from Cumberland.

Number 92 was also home to Caroline Thorn, 68 and a widow. She lived in the house with her son William, 31 and a General Labourer in the shipping trade, daughters Rosetta (25) a Dining Rooms Waitress and Amy (23) a Restaurant Cook.

All three children were single, and it is interesting when reading census date from over one hundred years ago, that many children were still single and listed as living at home, well into their late 20s and early 30s. Often this seems to be written about as a more recent trend, however it could have been something seen more in major industrial cities in the past.

Number 94 is the building highlighted by the orange arrow in the above then and now photo combination. The following is an enlargement from the original photo, and shows number 94. There are a large number of barges on the foreshore between the building and river, and we can see the name W.N. SPAR, with the rest of the name obscured by the mast and sale:

This was the barge building business of W.N. Sparks, and in 1911, the census records that the building was the home of Reuben James Sparks (30), a Barge Builder and Surveyor, his wife Georgina Sparks (35), daughter Ruby aged 6 and son William, who was 3 months old.

Reuben Sparks had taken over the business from his father, William Nathanial Sparks (hence W.N. Sparks on the building in 1948) who was born in 1848, and in the 1891 census, he was listed as being a Marine Surveyor and was also living at 94 Narrow Street, with his wife Sarah and their 8 children, ranging in age from Mary (19) recorded as being an Organist, down to Lily aged 3. Sarah’s sister Elizabeth was also recorded as living in number 94. She was aged 22 and a machinist, so there were 11 people living in the building, as well as the barge building business..

Reuben was their fifth child, but took over the business as he was the oldest son, the older three children were all daughters.

By the time of the 1911 census, William Nathaniel Sparks had moved from Limehouse to Ilford, where he was living at 38 Mansfield Road. The house is still there, and although now the exterior has been rendered and the house appears to be of multiple occupancy, it was a substantial brick house of the late 19th / early 20 century, so William’s barge building business in Limehouse had obviously been profitable.

In 1911, William was 64, but was still recorded as being a Marine Surveyor Barge Business, but I suspect by then he was mainly retired, leaving the barge business to his son Reuben.

William still had three of his children at home, who were all single. Grace (34), a professional vocalist, Edith (29), Ernest (27), a clerk, and Lily (24) also a professional vocalist.

In the house was also Ann, a servant and Elizabeth, a nurse, so one of the Sparks family probably needed extra medical care.

William and Reuben Sparks were just one in a line of barge building at the same site in Narrow Street.

The following print from 1876 shows the view along the same terrace of buildings as in my father’s photo, and on the right of the print is number 94, and rather than the name W.N. Sparks, the sign reads “Surridge and Hartnoll Barge Builders”:

The only reference I can find to Surridge and Hartnoll is their inclusion in a list or partnerships dissolved in May 1879, when they were listed as being barge builders, shipwrights, mast and sail makers. The record also detailed that as well as 94 Narrow Street, they also operated at Fisher’s Wharf in Millwall.

Number 94 had some history. In an article in the Sphere on the 23rd of April, 1955 about Limehouse, there is the following about the building: “Local gossip maintains that the bricked in ovens on the ground floor are relics of a sugar bakery which formerly occupied the premises. But there is circumstantial evidence that the famous blue and white Limehouse chinaware began to appear in the middle of the eighteenth century. Like the other premises of Messrs. Sparks, this house is full of noble old beams and is a maze of rooms, stairways and trapdoors. Contrasting with the now abandoned kiln where the timbers for wooden barges were once steamed into shape are modern welding plant and electric machinery.”

The front of number 94, facing onto Narrow Street. As with the majority of this terrace of buildings, number 94 is Grade II listed:

It seems a long way back in the post, but if you go to the then and now photo. the green arrow is pointing to an area of open space on the foreshore known as Duke Shore.

This was long an open space, and is shown in Rocque’s 1746 map as an open space as it still is today, although there are two modern, narrow houses that block off Duke Shore from Narrow Street, and the adjacent stairs between street and foreshore have also been blocked off.

Also returning to the 1948 photo, and to the left of the Grapes was an open space. Unlike Duke Shore, this was normally a built space, and in the following photo, the building in the centre with the bay upper floor is the building that stood in the space:

The Grapes can be seen just to the right with the brewery name Taylor Walker & Co on the sign at the top or th3 pub.

The building shown in the above photo was once the Harbour Masters office, but in the 1911 census, it was occupied by James Smith aged 59 who was listed as an Inspector. He lived here with his wife Annie Caroline aged 37, and 9 children including what must have been children from his first marriage as ages ranged from 0 to 24. The eldest two sons were a Mechanical Engineer and a Lighterman. Also living in the house was Katheryn Helvin aged 16 from Poplar and listed as a General Domestic Servant.

The following photo is the right side of the 1948 photo, and continues to show the industrial theme of the buildings along the foreshore, however what I want to focus on with this extract is the chimney and two large buildings in the background:

The building on the right should give a clue as to their function, as we can see the words Taylor Walker. This was the Barley Mow Brewery of Taylor, Walker & Co,

Brewing started on the site in 1730 with the firm of Hare & Salmon. Edward Taylor became one of the partners in the brewing company in 1796 and John Taylor joined in 1816, and the firm eventually became known as Taylor, Walker & Co.

The Barley Mow Brewery buildings that we can just see in my father’s 1948 photo were from the 1889 rebuild and expansion of the brewery.

Ind Coope purchased the brewery in 1959, and with the consolidation and closure of many London breweries, brewing ceased at the Barley Mow in 1960.

After demolition of the brewery, the Barley Mow housing estate was built on the site. A couple of the tower blocks of the housing estate can be seen in my comparison photo earlier in the post.

One of the tower blocks of the estate suffered a strange fate, as when the Limehouse Link Tunnel was built through the area, the tower nearest the construction site was demolished as there was concern that vibration from construction and ground movement would damage the tower.

The article I quoted earlier from the Sphere on the 23rd of April, 1955 was focused on the change then taking place in Limehouse with a focus on Narrow Street, what was being lost, and what may come. The last few paragraphs from the article are below, the text includes a phrase which I suspect, always has, and always will apply to London “the illusion of permanency“:

“Possibly the most disturbing feature of the post-war world is the speed of change. Traditional methods, standards, customs and scenes are swiftly dissolving; and notwithstanding the advantages of streamlined substitutes, those of us who have known the illusion of permanency cannot help feeling that our world has suddenly become unstable.

Nowhere is this feature of to-day more in evidence than along the commercial Thames-side, where long stretches of the tideway banks, in many cases unchanged for a century or more, have been almost completely transformed within the short space of the post-war period. And now the rambling Limehouse waterfront of Messrs. W.N. Sparks and Sons, barge builders and repairers, almost the last of the river scene as Dickens knew it, is for sale.

If you do not know the Limehouse riverside, you are to imagine a line of tall, venerable buildings of varying age, their lower walls washed twice daily by the tides. The centre piece is a dark and cavernous barge-repair loft, usually lit for passing watermen by a dramatic spray of blue welding sparks. The frontages abut on Narrow Street between the Bunch of Grapes and Duke Shore Wharf – a street famous in our island history, for it re-echoes the steps of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, William Burrough, Phineas Pett, Duncan Dunbar, Captain Cook and Jerome K. Jerome.”

In 1955, there was still an expectation that the area around Limehouse, as well as much of the river all the way to the City, would continue to be a place of physical trade and industry in the coming decades. I doubt they could have imagined just how much of this would be lost over the coming 30 years. The articles final paragraph:

“It is too much to expect that this rambling old water-front will be left intact; the modern tideway cannot afford to permit the picturesque to stand in the way of progress. But whatever streamlined industry supplants the old barge establishment, whatever new trade it attracts to the Port of London, some of us think the Thames will be poorer.”

There is obviously much more to be written about Narrow Street (for example see this post about Daniel Farson, a one time resident of one of the houses in the Narrow Street terrace), however the constraints of a weekly post limit what can be explored.

Tower Hamlets council had a plan to demolish parts of the terrace in the early 1970s to replace with a green space along the river. Fortunately this did not take place. The Grapes pub was saved by new leaseholders which included Evgeny Lebedev, and Sir Ian McKellen. The terrace is listed, which should help preserve this historic and fascinating range of buildings, that for so long was part of the working river.

However, as the 1955 article stated, there is always the “illusion of permanency”.

alondoninheritance.com

London House, Parish Clerks and Glovers – City of London Plaques

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Thanks for all the comments following last week’s post. The website has now been stable for over a week and a half. I have not changed anything or upgraded as suggested by the hosting provider, so I still have no idea of the root cause, but I hope whatever caused the problem will not reoccur.

Back to normal service, with a tour of three City of London plaques, which each have their own unique story to tell of the history of the City, and how these locations have changed over the centuries.

London House – The House with Two Plaques

Walk down Aldersgate Street, and there is an apartment / office building on the western side of the street, which has two plaques, one on each side of the entrance:

The building is called London House, and the two identical plaques both record that this is the site of London House, destroyed by fire in 1766:

The plaques that line the City streets are important to record specific sites in London’s history, but I can imagine that they are frustrating to the casual observer as they offer no context or further information.

The name London House came from a building on the site being occupied by the Bishops of London, however there are conflicting stories as to why they were in Aldersgate Street.

The book “A Dictionary of London” by Henry Harben (1918) states that “so called as being, after the Restoration, for some time the residence of the Bishops of London, in place of their Palace in St. Paul’s Churchyard”.

In “Old and New London”, Walter Thornbury (1878), states that “It was also used as a state prison in the Commonwealth-times, and subsequently became the temporary abode of the Bishops of London, after the Great Fire had treated their mansion in St. Paul’s Churchyard in a Puritanical and remorseless way”.

In “A New History of London Including Westminster and Southwark” John Noorthouck (1773) the story of the house is that “it was purchased after the restoration for the city mansion of the Bishop of London: from that time it was known by the name of London-house”.

So that is two sources for post restoration and one for after the Great Fire, but given that the Restoration (1660 – Charles II becomes Monarch) and the Great Fire (1666) both occurred in the same decade, both interpretations are sort of right.

I cannot find any images of London House, but it does appear in William Morgan’s 1682 Survey of London, where in the following extract, it is on the left of Aldersgate Street, and appears to be of some size, including a central courtyard and surrounding land:

I did find a 1747 plan of the building. It needs to be turned 90 degrees to the left to correspond with the above map, but it does align well with Morgan’s map, and the key shows the different parts of the overall complex:

Image: © 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 text to the right states that “Charles II gave it to the Bishops of London”, so I suspect this demonstrates that both the earlier reasons for the Bishops use of the house are correct. They needed a new home after their building in St. Paul’s Churchyard was destroyed during the Great Fire, and Charles II was on the throne after the Restoration of the Monarchy, and he gave the Bishops the house in Aldersgate Street.

I like the description for “G”, The Garden as there being a “lofty elm”. hard to imagine that in Aldersgate Street of today. At “L”, there was the Great Gate and Porch to Aldersgate Street, so I suspect that London House had a rather impressive façade to the street.

The text with the above plan also mentions the previous owner, that it was “formerly belonging to Lord Petre”, when it was called Petre House.

Lord Petre is an interesting character. William Petre, originally a lawyer from Devon, became an assistant to Thomas Cromwell during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. (the family name was originally Peter, but William changed the name to Petre as the French sounding name was more in character with society and the Royal Court at the time).

As part of the dissolution process, William Petre visited the manors held by the Barking Abbey, one of these was a manor at Ingatestone, a village in Essex.

After the lands of Barking Abbey were surrendered to the Crown in 1539, William Petre purchased the manor at Ingatestone for £849, 12 shillings, and he set about demolishing the original stewards house, and built himself a new manor house.

This process may have been how he came to own the building that would become London House, but I cannot find any proof of this – it may have simply been a purchase as he needed a base in London of sufficient prominence for a country lawyer, then working for Thomas Cromwell.

He must have been a shrewd operator in both society and in the Court as the Petre family were Catholic, and managed to survive with very little impact on their position and fortunes.

The manor house at Ingatestone – Ingatestone Hall – still survives to this day, and continues to be owned by the Petre family.

Ingatestone Hall is well worth a visit, and to emphasise the risk of being a practising Catholic in the 16th century, there are two priest holes, used to conceal Catholic priests, to be seen during a tour of the house.

Ingatestone Hall:

The plaque records that London House was destroyed by fire in 1766. I can find no specific reports of the fire, and suspect it was just one of the many fires that continued to plague London, even after the building regulations and construction changes that came into being as a result of the 1666 Great Fire.

It is good that the current building on the site retains the name London House, and I think it is the only place I have come across in the City of London where there are two identical plaques marking the same historic feature.

First Hall of the Parish Clerks’ Company

In the following photo, there is a plaque marking the site until the mid sixteenth century of the first hall of the Parish Clerks’ Company. Difficult to see, so I have marked the location with the red arrow:

The plaque is in Clerks Place, not really a street or alley, rather a walkway leading of from Bishopsgate under one of the many office blocks that line the street.

On the right of the above photo is the side wall of the church of St. Ethelburga, a key marker to demonstrate how named places have shifted their location over the centuries, which I will come to after looking at the Parish Clerks’ Company:

The Parish Clerks’ Company are slightly different to the majority of the other Companies of the City of London, in that it is not associated with a trade, rather the Company is for parish clerks of the parishes and churches of the City of London, as well as a number of churches outside the original walls of the City, and from wider London.

The book “The Armorial Bearings of the Guilds of London” by John Bromley (1960) provides some background as to the age of the Company of Parish Clerks: “Unsupported tradition, based apparently upon a statement of John Stow, claims that the parish clerks of London were an incorporated body as early as 1233, but the first established charter to the Company is that of 22nd January 1441/2. Under this charter the chief parish clerks of the collegiate and parish churches of London, hitherto a brotherhood in honour of St. Nicholas, were formed into a perpetual corporation”.

As well as not representing a trade, there is another unique feature in the history of the Parish Clerks Company. During Henry VIII’s Reformation, the Parish Clerks Company were the only City of London Company that suffered the confiscation of all their property.

A new charter was granted to the “Master, Wardens and Brethren of the Parish Clerks of the City of London and liberties thereof” in 1611 / 1612, and their current charter dates from the 27th of February 1638.

In the years when the Company was first formed, the Middle Ages role of a parish clerk was as a clerk in minor orders who assisted the priest and helped with the preparation and running of church services and the choir.

After the Reformation, the Parish Clerk became more of a lay member role, and crucially it was the Parish Clerk who was responsible for recording the births and deaths of parishioners, including the cause of death, and this data was published as Bills of Mortality, which provides us with a detailed view of life and death in London (see my post here for a detailed review of Bills of mortality in early 18th century London, if you want to know about causes of death such as Planet Struck, or St. Anthony’s Fire).

The responsibility of Parish Clerks to record birth and death data for their parish seems to have run from the mid 16th century to the first decades of the 19th century, when a national system of registration was introduced in 1837.

The armorial bearings of the Company of Parish Clerks from the 1960 book by John Bromley:

The arms today are slightly different following a grant on the 16th October 1991, when “supporters” of angels standing on the top of ionic columns where added to both sides of the shield, and the helmet at the top of the shield has been changed to face directly out from the arms. All other features are the same..

The song book at the top of the arms is a “pricke songe book” meaning a piece of written vocal music, music which has been pricked, marked out or notated. No doubt a book that the parish clerk would have been responsible for.

The motto “Unitas societatis stabilitas” translates to ‘Unity is the support of Society’.

The plaque is to mark the site of the first hall of the Parish Clerks Company. The plaque records that it was the site of the hall until the mid sixteenth century, as this was when the hall was taken by the Crown during the Reformation.

The Company established a second hall at Brode Lane, however this was destroyed during the 1666 Great Fire. Their third hall was in Silver Street (just to the south of London Wall, near the old Museum of London site), but this third hall was destroyed by bombing during the night of the 29th / 30th of December 1940.

The Parish Clerks Company did not build a fourth hall, and today make use of space in other halls of City Livery companies, as and when needed.

The company is still active today, and membership “is limited to those who have been appointed by the parochial or guild church council and the incumbent to hold the office of parish clerk in certain ancient parishes in the City of London and its immediate suburbs”, so continuing a tradition lasting several hundreds of years.

What I am not sure about is whether the plaque is in the correct position, certainly Clerks Place is in the wrong position.

The following is an extract from the 1951 revision of the OS map:

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

The Church of St Ethelburga is at the end of the red arrow. This is the church on the right of the location of the plaque, the current position of the plaque is pointed out by the yellow arrow.

Clark’s Place can be seen just to the north (blue arrow), although to add some further mystery, the name is spelt Clark rather than Clerk. There is no Clerk’s Place next to St. Ethelburga, although there is a very small space next to the church.

The following is an extra from Rocque’s map of 1746, and again shows a Clarks Alley (yellow arrow), rather than Place, and no alley or place next to St Ethelburga (red arrow):

In “A Dictionary of London” by Henry Harben (1918), Clark’s Alley is listed, as is Clark’s Hall – “On the east side of Bishopsgate, ‘was a fayer entrie or Court to the common hall of the saide Parish Clarkes”. and Clarke’s Place is also listed as being “east out of Bishopsgate. First mention 1848 – 1851. Former names Clark’s Alley and Clark’s Court”.

As I was writing the above, I was thinking that this is getting too detailed, but I hope it demonstrates the following:

  • with almost anything historical, it helps to be aware that anything, including plaques, street names that have a historical name etc., may not be in the right place
  • the spellings Clerk and Clark seem to have been used interchangeably for centuries (newspapers contain hundreds of reference to both a Parish Clark or Clerk over the last 300 years)
  • Clarks / Clerks Alley / Place was further north than the current route of the walkway named Clerks Place. I suspect this was to free up a large amount of space for the buildings that now occupy the original location, with the route being moved next to St. Ethelburga
  • the City of London plaque states “On this site”, implying that the Parish Clerks’ Company Hall was where the plaque is located, but if the hall was next to Clarks Alley, then it was further north. I wonder if this is the original plaque from before the new towers were built, and it was simply moved a bit further south, still to recall the hall, but now at the wrong place

A perfect example of the rabbit holes I find myself going down when researching posts.

The Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks are still going today, their website can be found here, where there is a really good list of parish churches in the City, as well as churches outside of the City where the parish clerk may still be admitted to the Company.

To demonstrate just how many churches there were in the City, the listing states that prior to the 1666 Great Fire, there were 97 parish churches within the walls of the City of London. A remarkable number for such a relatively small space. You must have been never more than a couple of minutes walk at most, from a City church.

Glovers Hall

On the Cromwell Highwalk, one of the elevated walkways within the Barbican estate, and next to Cromwell Tower there is a plaque:

Recording that near this site stood Glovers Hall, 17th to 19th century:

Ordinances to create the Glovers Company were agreed in 1349, so that the company could regulate the craft of glove making in London.

By 1489, the craft of glove making was in decline, so the company merged with another company with a declining trade – the Pursers, and in 1502, the combined Glovers and Pursers joined with the Leathersellers Company.

In 1639, the Glovers exited the combined company, and again became a separate company of Glovers.

The hall referred to on the plaque was purchased in the mid 17th century, and the plaque is in almost the right place as my best estimate is that the hall was slightly to the right, in front of the present day Cromwell Tower, and obviously at a lower level to the Cromwell Highwalk where the plaque is located today.

Rocque’s 1746 map of London shows the Glovers Hall (within the red oval), with Glovers Court just below:

Beech Lane just to the right is today Beech Street, and the alignment of the street has been straightened to get rid of the bend to the left shown in the map.

One of the activities of the Company in regulating the trade of Glovers included the prosecution of anyone carrying on the trade of Glover, who had not had the appropriate training or was not conforming to set standards. An example of where people were prosecuted included the following report in the Kentish Weekly Post on the 6th of December 1732:

“On Saturday was tried at Westminster, before the Lord Chief Justice Byre, a Cause depending between the Company of Glovers of London, Plaintiffs, and a Gloveseller in the Strand, Defendant, he being sued for carrying on the Trade of a Glover, not having served 7 Years thereto, and after a Trial of near 2 hours, the Jury, without going out, brought in a Verdict for the Plaintiffs, with Damages and Costs of Suit.”

The City companies were were very protective of their trade, and their members interests.

There are many reports of really strange sensitivities about certain elements of clothing, and between their manufacturers and City Companies. The following from 1739 is a typical example, and shows the strange things going on in London in previous centuries:

“Tyburn was hung with Women’s Thread and Cotton Gloves, to disgrace the wearing of them; the Stocking Weavers encroaching on the Glovers in this Branch of Trade has occasioned much Difference between them; The Glovers are willing to allow the Stocking Weavers the Legs as their property, but hope at the same time the Ladies will assist them with their Hands, by wearing Leather Gloves.”

Another example of the level of specialisation in manufacture, and how each group were fiercely protective of their trade.

Strangely, the arms of the Glovers do not include any gloves, but there are rams, along with the motto of the Glovers: “True hearts warm hands”:

The Glovers do not appear to have been a well funded company, and the 19th century reference in the plaque was when the Glovers sold their hall to raise funds.

An indication of the financial state of the company can be had from the following report on the company in 1834: “Formerly, when the Company used to have dinners, they had stewards, but since they have become too poor to afford entertainments, the stewards’ office was abolished. The members sometimes dine together, but very seldom, then the expense is usually made up by individual subscription, and sometimes the expense is defrayed out of a small general fund they have.”

Since the sale of their hall, the Glovers do not seem to have had their own hall, instead making use of the halls of other City Company’s, although there is a strange reference to the Glovers Hall in a 1953 report in the Bromley and West Kent Mercury when a casket made by a Mr. J.H. Easden of Chislehurst following a commission from the Glovers Company to hold a glove for presentation to the new queen, Elizabeth I, was “taken to the Glovers Hall in the City of London, so that members attending a social function could see it.”

I suspect this was probably an error and the Glovers were making use of another City hall.

The Glovers are one of the smaller City companies that has often struggled over the centuries to survive, both financially and with a purpose. The time when these Companies were responsible for the regulation of a trade within the City has long gone, but those that survive, including the Glovers, now mainly have a charitable function, and also try to support their trade in the form it takes today.

According to their website, the Glovers also maintain a comprehensive collection of gloves at the Fashion Museum, Bath, although a quick search on the museum’s website makes no mention of the collection.

Each plaque only gives a very brief glimpse of the considerable history behind each one. Although there is insufficient room on a plaque for much more detail, adding perhaps a QR code linked to a website, such as the Museum of London, with a listing of all the plaques and some of their stories, would enhance a walk along the City streets.

alondoninheritance.com

An Apology

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For the first time in just over 11 years, I have not been able to complete a post.

We were away for the whole of the last week, with very limited Internet access, and the week before I planned to complete two posts, the Essex Street Water Gate post which I did finish for last Sunday, and a second post for today, the 15th of June.

However, whilst trying to complete these posts, the website kept going down.

I managed to complete the Essex Street post, but also spent loads of time trying the find out why the website kept going down. Not for long periods, just over one hour was the maximum downtime, but there were many shorter periods of around 20 minutes – not helpful when you are trying to complete a post.

I spent lots of time in contact with the hosting provider. The first agent I was in contact with said the site was over using the available resources, and said this may be down to a number of out of date software components, or to a hacking attempt, and recommended that I upgrade some of the software and install some additional; security software, which I did.

The site kept on going down.

Back in contact with the hosting provider, and a different agent, who now said that the up to date software modules could be in conflict, or that the security software could be over using resources.

Running very short of time, I just about completed last Sunday’s post, unloaded anything that was not essential for the website – and we went away.

The website did continue to suffer some downtime, but not as much, and the last brief period of 6 minutes downtime was last Tuesday afternoon, and it has been up 100% of the time since then.

So, I have no idea what caused the problems.

The hosting provider has also recommended that I upgrade the site to their next service tier, which I am happy to do, but would prefer to know the root cause of the problems, to have confidence that an upgrade would be the fix.

I will see what happens this coming week, but hopefully normal service will be resumed next Sunday.

alondoninheritance.com

Essex Street Water Gate and Stairs

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I have written about the area between the Strand and the Embankment in a number of previous posts. It is a fascinating place of alleys, steep streets to the river, and a place where we can still find features that are reminders of long lost landscapes.

One such feature can be found at the southern end of Essex Street, where the street appears to come to an end, with a large gap in the building at the end of the street framing the view towards the Embankment:

The archway through the building at the end of Essex Street leads to a set of stairs down to what would have been the level of the Thames. The archway in the 1920s from the book Wonderful London:

I love the details in these photos. There appears to be a child at lower left of the arch, who looks like they are holding a small dog or cat.

At first glance, the arch and surrounding building looks the same as the photo from 100 years ago, however looking closer and there are differences. The brickwork in the semi-circular area below the two round windows and above the entrance appears far more recessed in the 1920s than it does today, and along the wall between first and second floors there appears to be a white decorative band protruding from the brickwork which is not there today, so I suspect there has been some rebuilding / restoration of the building and arch.

A look at the London County Council Bomb Damage Map shows that there has indeed been some considerable post-war rebuilding, as the building surrounding the arch at the end of Essex Street is coloured deep purple, indicating serious damage.

A look through the arch in 2025:

The following photo from the the book “The Romance of London” by Alan Ivimy (1940), where the scene is described as “Water Gate, at Essex Street, Strand. This opening at the bottom of the street, which gives a view of green trees, is the old Water Gate, built into the surrounding houses, of Essex House, and the only survival of that great mansion”:

Essex House was one of the large houses that once lined the Strand, each with gardens leading down to the banks of the Thames. These houses would typically have their own access to the river as the river was frequently the fastest and safest method of travelling through London.

The caption in Alan Ivimey’s book is rather ambiguous as it states that the opening is the old water gate. It does not specifically state that the surrounding structure is the original water gate.

The houses lining the Strand often did have a feature where their private access to the river was located, as the view of these from the river would have acted as a location marker as well as a symbol of status, where a large, decorated structure acting as their gate to the river would have impressed visitors and those travelling along the Thames.

Another example is the Water Gate to York House, which was the subject of this post.

The arch was described as a Water Gate in the many illustrations of the feature that have appeared over the last couple of hundred years, including this print from 1848, where the Water Gate is described as the “stately portal with large columns to either side”:

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

So is the arch a survivor from the time of Essex House? Any thoughts that this may be a historic survival are quickly dashed when looking through the Historic England listing.

The arch is Grade II listed, however the listing text states that it is a “Triumphal” gateway built in 1676 by Nicholas Barbon to terminate his Essex Street development, and to screen his development of a commercial wharf below. The listing also confirms that there was bomb damage, and the surrounding buildings date from 1953.

Looking through the arch, we can see the steps leading down to Milford Lane:

Through the arch and down the stairs, we can look back at the rear of the 1953 building, the stairs and the arch. The view shows how the height difference between the streets leading down from the Strand, and what was the foreshore of the Thames have been managed, where the ground floor from this angle is the basement from Essex Street:

Although the building was bombed in the 1940s, and rebuilt in the 1950s, this view still looked very similar to the 1920s:

So, although the arch has frequently been called the Essex Street, or Essex House Water Gate, it appears that the feature dates from Nicholas Barbon’s development of what had been the Essex House gardens, into Essex Street. It was bombed in the last war, restored and rebuilt, and the building surrounding the arch dates from the 1950s.

I mentioned at the start of the post how features such as the arch can act as reminders of a long lost landscape, and to see how this works, we need to follow a series of maps.

Starting with the area today, and I have marked the location of the arch / water gate with the red arrow in the map below (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

In the above map, we can see Essex Street running slightly north west from the water gate (red arrow), up to the Strand. In the area between the arch / water gate, we can see part of the Victoria Embankment gardens to lower left, and on the right are Temple Gardens.

Going back to William Morgan’s 1682 map of London, and we can see the area soon after Nicholas Barbon’s development, with the red arrow marking the water gate:

There are 343 years between Morgan’s map, and the area today, and the street layout is almost identical, with Essex Street running to the north west, up to the Strand. The same two streets running east and west about two thirds up the street, and Milford Lane (blue arrow) running from the west to the south of the stairs in almost exactly the same alignment as today.

Morgan’s map shows a gap between the buildings at the end of Essex Street, where the arch is today. The map appears to show an open gap, with no arch, or floors above the arch. Whether this was an error in the map, whether the arch had not yet been built, or whether Barbon initially only put pillars on the building to the side of the gap as decoration, without an arch, would require much more research, but the key point is that the gap leading from Essex Street was there in 1682.

The 1682 map shows the stairs to the river, Essex Stairs (yellow arrow). These were not the stairs that lead down through the arch, but stairs at the end of what must have been a flat space between the water gate and the river, probably Barbon’s wharf development that the building and arch at the end of Essex Street was intended to screen.

To see how rapidly this area had changed, we can go back just five years from the above map, and the 1677 Ogilby and Morgan’s map of London.

In the extract below, we can see that Essex House, along with ornate gardens between the house and the Thames were still to be found. The red arrow marks the location of the water gate / arch we see today:

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

Essex House can be seen close to the Strand, opposite the church of St. Clements.

Essex House was originally Exeter House as it was the London residence of the Bishop of Exeter who had been granted the site in the reign of Edward III.

The house and grounds were taken during the Reformation, after which it was purchased by Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, who was arrested in the house and in 1572 he was beheaded for his part in the conspiracy of Mary Queen of Scots. The house was then owned by the Earl of Leicester, and became Leicester House. After his death, the property passed to his son-in-law, the Earl of Essex during the reign of Elizabeth I, and the house became Essex House.

Originally facing directly onto the Strand, by the time of the above map, we can see that houses and shops had been built between the house and the Strand, reflecting the slow decline in the importance of the large houses built along the Strand.

The house was pulled down around 1682, the same year as the map of William Morgan, however it is always difficult to be sure of exact publication dates, when the streets were surveyed for the map etc.

This may also answer why the gap of the water gate is shown without an arch as the William Morgan map may have used the plans for the area, rather than as finally built.

The 1677 map shows some interesting comparisons and features:

  • comparing the shoreline between the Thames and the land in the 1677 and 1682 maps, and after Bourbon’s development, an area of the foreshore appears to have been recovered – Barbon’s wharf development as mentioned in the Historic England listing
  • this would then put the current arch / water gate at the location of the original stairs at the end of the gardens, to the river
  • the slight north west angle of the gardens is roughly the same as the alignment of Essex Street today, so as we walk along Essex Street, we are walking along what must have been the central pathway through the gardens of Essex House
  • although not named in the map, Milford Lane is running to the east of Essex House, in the same alignment as the lane today (although in 1677 it did not have the bend round the base of the stairs. Milford Lane once formed the boundary between Essex House and Arundel House to the west

An extract from the 1677 map is shown below, covering the boundary with the Thames:

There are two boats moored at the end of the stairs down to the river at the end of the gardens of Essex House, where the water gate stairs are today.

There are two other sets of stairs shown on the map. On the left, there is a cluster of boats around Milford Stairs – named after the lane on the east of Essex House, and a lane we can still find today.

On the right there is a large cluster of boats around Temple Stairs.

Three stairs in a short distance shows just how many stairs there once were between the land and the river. Many still survive, but stairs such as Milford, Essex and Temple have disappeared beneath the land reclamation for the Embankment.

Temple Stairs appear to have been of a rather ornate stone design. The following print shows the Great Frost of the winter of 1683 / 4:

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

Temple Stairs are on the left edge of the print, and they appear to be a stone, bridge like structure, probably over the most muddy part of the foreshore, with a set of steps then leading down to the river, where a passenger would take a boat to be rowed across or along the river.

The print has a pencil note “Taken from the Temple Stairs”, but other British Museum notes to the print state that the print is from near the Temple Stairs.

The following photo was taken from the southern end of Milford Lane, where it joins Temple Place:

The above photo is looking across what was Nicholas Barbon’s wharf development, which the houses at the end of Essex Street were meant to screen, and before Barbon’s work, this would have been the Thames foreshore, with the stairs leading down from the gardens of Essex House to the river, where the gap of the water gate can be seen.

In the following photo, the entrance to Milford Lane is on the right, behind the red phone box. The building on the left is Two Temple Place:

Two Temple Place gives the impression of being of some considerable age, however it is built on what was the Thames foreshore, and dates from the early 1890s, when William Waldorf Astor commissioned the gothic revivalist architect  John Loughborough Pearson to create the building.

One of the stand out features is the gilded weather vane, made by J. Starkie Gardner, a representation of Christopher Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria:

The water gate is today an interesting architectural feature at the end of Essex Street. Perhaps more importantly, it is reminder of a long lost landscape, which dates from Essex House and the gardens which led down to stairs to the Thames. After the demolition of Essex House, Essex Street was built on the same alignment as the gardens, and the stairs then led down to Barbon’s commercial wharf on what had been the Thames foreshore.

Today, the 19th century Embankment has further separated Essex Street and the stairs from the river, and Two Thames Place is a symbol of late 19th century building on the recently reclaimed land of the Embankment.

The stairs are also a reminder of a time when there were very many stairs along this part of the river, important places in the daily lives of many Londoners.

Very much, a lost landscape.

alondoninheritance.com