For this week’s post, I am visiting Old Sarum in Wiltshire, one of the places photographed by my father whilst on cycling tours of the country, with friends from National Service.
Just to the north of Salisbury, Old Sarum is a fascinating historical site, comprising an Iron Age hill fort, with at the centre, the remains of a medieval cathedral and royal castle.
Whilst these medieval structures have been reduced to low walls, the earth works are really impressive, and the views of the surrounding countryside show why this was such an important location.
Old Sarum also had a strange role in the 18th and early 19th centuries, a role that led to much criticism and parody.
I shall start my exploration of Old Sarum, with the first of my father’s photos, from his visit in 1949:
This is looking across the central part of the medieval motte that was raised in the centre of the iron age hill fort just after the Norman Conquest, and where fortifications and a castle were built. The site was important as it overlooked the meeting point of three main roads, Roman in origin, and as the Iron Age builders of the fort had recognised, the height of the land also provided a viewpoint over a wide surrounding area.
The photo below is the same view as the above photo, 77 years later, in July 2026:
In both of the above photos, there are people to the centre left of the photo looking at a feature on the ground. This was the main source of water for the castle:
The sign on the right states that the well was probably over 230 feet in depth when built:
It must have been an horrendous job excavating a narrow well of that depth.
Whilst the majority of the medieval castle was demolished in the 16th century, the size of the remaining walls, and number of rooms show that this was a substantial fortification.
A look across the site towards the place where the first photo in the post was taken:
And a similar view today. I could not get to exactly the same spot as some places have been fenced off:
The castle on the central mound was a complex of defensive walls, towers, store rooms, halls, apartments, and a chapel, along with all the other features needed to maintain and run a medieval castle.
The following 1949 photo, is looking across some of these rooms. The outer wall is on the right, with a deep ditch behind:
The place where my father was standing to take the above photo is inaccessible today, so for the following photo I am standing on the opposite side of the rooms in the foreground. The common feature in both photos is the place where there are two curved ridges of the outer walls:
Standing in the heart of the medieval castle, it is hard to appreciate the complexity and size of Old Sarum, and how the place dominates the surrounding countryside. An aerial view really helps with this appreciation, and the following photo from the Britain from Above archive was taken in 1947, just two years before my father’s visit:
The feature is roughly circular, and the outer ditch forms the boundary of the iron age hill fort, which originally had a flat interior.
The Norman motte, or earthen mound in the centre, was constructed in the 11th century, and within the motte the Norman castle was built.
It is not exactly clear when the hill fort was first built, but it may be from around 400 BC.
The centre would have been occupied by a small community, with wooden huts for living and storage, all surrounded by the large defensive ditch.
It is not known for how long the site was occupied, whether it was permanent or sporadic, and very few artifacts have been found to confirm periods of occupation.
There was some occupation during the Roman period, although again there is very little evidence to confirm how it was occupied and for how long. There may have been Roman British settlements outside of the hill fort, with a military structure within, but again there is very little evidence.
The site became known as Sorviodunum during the Roman period.
Again, there is very little evidence of occupation during the Anglo-Saxon period, possibly down to the lack of any systematic excavation below the levels of the medieval castle. There probably was some occupation, and in the early 11th century, a mint for the production of coins was established at Old Sarum.
The physical record of occupation and buildings at Old Sarum really starts in the later part of the 11th century, when the central motte was built after the Norman conquest.
In the above aerial photo, a track can be seen running up from the outer ditch up towards the central mound. This joins with the A345, which runs from Salisbury, about a mile to the south and northwards towards Amesbury, where it joins with the A303, not far from where the A303 passes Stonehenge.
The track shown in the 1947 aerial photo appears to be the same track as used today. After running across the outer ditch, there is a car park within the hill fort, and a short walk continuing along the track takes you to the entrance to the castle, where the steep earth walls of the motte can be seen:
After the site was deserted in the 16th century, the size of the earthworks and history of the place made it a well known landmark, and the subject of the paintings and prints.
The following print is from 1772, and shows the earthworks on Old Sarum, with the central motte. A man driving some pack horses can be seen in the foreground:
The size of the ditches surrounding Old Sarum is remarkable, even though over the centuries they must have been softened by gradual erosion.
The following is a 1949 photo looking along the outer ditch of the original iron age hill fort:
I could not find exactly where the above photo was taken, however the following photo of the outer ditch today illustrates their size. The outer bank is to the right and the bank leading up to the inner part of the hill fort is to the left:
This is the ditch surrounding the central Norman motte. The bridge provides the access route into the central area. The size of the bank on the right gives an idea of the height of the motte:
It is possible to walk along the edge of the interior of the motte, and signs warn of the drop down the edge of this earthen mound:
The walkway along the edge of the motte:
From where there is a good view of Salisbury just to the south, with the spire of Salisbury Cathedral standing clear above the rest of the city:
The centre of the Norman motte was occupied by a castle. It could be classed as a motte and bailey castle, however the castle complex built on top of the mound was much larger than the typical castle and fortified structure of a motte and bailey.
The land outside the motte, part of the much larger iron age hill fort also had a rather magnificent Norman building. A cathedral of which the footprint can still be seen today, as shown in this 1948 photo from the Britain from Above archive:
The outline of the cathedral foundations can be seen. To the upper left of the cathedral there is the outline of the cloisters, and below the cloisters and to the left of the cathedral are the remains of the cathedral’s library and treasury.
The cathedral was built by Bishop Osmund, and consecrated on the 5th of April,1092. Not long after consecration, the cathedral was badly damaged by lightning during a storm, following which, it was rebuilt by Roger of Caen.
It was originally a relatively small building, but between 1110 and 1135, Bishop Roger doubled the size of the cathedral, and 50 years later a large new west front, along with corner towers was added by Bishop Jocelyn de Bohun. In the above aerial photo, this west front is the three rectangles surrounded by foundations to the bottom of the cathedral.
Surrounding the cathedral, there were cloisters, gardens, the Bishops Palace, along with the other buildings needed to maintain the running of such an important place.
Having a cathedral within the grounds of a Royal Castle caused a degree of friction with the garrison and also with the monarch, particularly during the reign of King John who was known for a lack of piety and religious conviction. Wars with the Barons, the loss of lands in France, and conflict with the Pope over who had the right to appoint the Bishop of Canterbury all made life within Old Sarum difficult.
The church started to look at moving out of Old Sarum into the plains below. The Pope gave approval for the move, and an initial wooden church was built close to the site of the current cathedral, and on Trinity Sunday of 1219, Bishop Richard Poore celebrated the first Mass in the new church.
Construction of Salisbury Cathedral started in 1220. The cathedral was consecrated in 1258 and the rest of the cathedral (with the exception of the spire) completed by 1266.
The tower and spire were built between 1300 and 1320, and the spire is the highest cathedral spire in England at 404 feet. The spires of Lincoln Cathedral and St. Paul’s Cathedral were originally higher, but as both these buildings have since lost their spires, Salisbury Cathedral now holds the record.
The move from Old Sarum to the new cathedral in Salisbury also included the move of the bodies of the three bishops who had been involved with the construction of the first cathedral, Bishops Osmund, Roger and Jocelyn.
Those who occupied the castle continued to make use of a chapel in the old cathedral, but eventually a dedicated chapel was built within the castle, and in 1331 the Bishop and Chapter of Salisbury were given permission to use the stone from the old cathedral for repairs to the new cathedral and to build the wall around the new cathedral precinct.
The foundations of the cathedral were then left to decay, and were eventually overgrown, and they only became visible again in 1834 when the outline of the cathedral became visible in the grass during a dry summer.
Excavations between 1912 and 1914 revealed the extent of the foundations, and they were exposed and marked out so that the full size and layout of the cathedral can still be seen today.
The aerial view in the Britain from Above photo is the best way to appreciate the cathedral, but at ground level we can walk where the Bishops and congregation once walked and prayed 900 years ago.
The view of the cathedral site from the top of the mound around the castle:
Looking along the full length of the cathedral towards the west:
Looking along the nave of the cathedral. Just past the information panel in the centre of the photo, to left and right can just be seen the base of the columns that once supported the roof over the nave:
Looking across the cathedral to the motte of the castle:
At the edge of the site is a part of a stone wall:
Which can still be seen today:
My father’s photo looking across the remains of the Treasury, which occupied the lower part of this building, with the Library above:
My photo of the same building, although it was only after I got home and looked at the photos that I realised I had taken it from the opposite end of the building to where my father was standing:
The move of the cathedral from Old Sarum to Salisbury started the decline of Old Sarum.
Salisbury started to expand around the new cathedral, but Old Sarum continued to be occupied and retain a role as an administrative centre.
It cannot have had much significant use by the start of the 16th century, as in 1514, Henry VIII granted the stone of the old castle to Thomas Compton, along with the right to carry away these materials.
From this point, Old Sarum started the transformation to the ruins we see today, as well as a scenic part of the Wiltshire countryside as illustrated by the prints shown earlier in the post.
The site continued to be owned by the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral, and in the late 20th century, they transferred Old Sarum to the State, and in 1892, it was managed by the Office of Works, and via various changes in government departments, it became part of English Heritage.
Although Henry VIII gave permission for the stone of the castle to be carried away, Old Sarum continued with a key role in national politics. It had long held the role of a Borough, and for long after the loss of the castle and any occupation of Old Sarum, it continued to be a Borough, and therefore returned a member of Parliament.
Old Sarum was one of the boroughs known as a Rotten Borough, a constituency that had very few voters, but still returned an MP, often under the influence of a patron. It was one of the most notorious as it returned two MPs, and a newspaper report in 1823 claimed that the Borough of Old Sarum had a total of two voters.
One of the MPs for Old Sarum was William Pitt (the elder, not the younger Pitt), who served as MP for the old hill fort between 1735 and 1747.
There are many newspaper references to the MPs for Old Sarum, and with William Pitt, one from the 28th of December 1744 records that “His Majesty has been pleased to appoint Will Pitt, member of Parliament for Old Sarum, to be Secretary of War”.
There had long been issues with Rotten Boroughs due to the way in which a very limited number of votes could elect an MP, patronage of chosen MPs and the considerable benefits that could be obtained.
In the following print from 1831, reformers are attacking Rotten Boroughs in the form of the old rotten tree, with those who benefit from the Rotten Boroughs attempting to hold up the tree.
The names of the Rotten Boroughs are written along the branches of the tree, with Old Sarum being on the lower left branch:
In the following print, also from 1831, titled “The System that Works so Well”, the House of Commons is the decaying building on the left, out of which pours a golden stream of public money which is being taken up by those who with Government, Church and Crown preferment and jobs. On the left, under the building, arethe bodies of the dying or despairing victims of the system.
To the left of the building is a water wheel which is powering this rush of money, and the slats on the wheel have the names of the Rotten Boroughs which support the system, with Old Sarum being one of those named:
The above prints must have been made to support the campaign to abolish rotten boroughs as this was achieved the following year through the 1832 Reform Act.
The madness of rotten boroughs where one or two voters could elect an MP was illustrated perfectly in an episode of Blackadder the Third:
From an iron age hill fort to a rotten borough, Old Sarum has had a fascinating history, and must have been a remarkable place when the castle and cathedral was occupied and in use. It continues to be a commanding landmark in the Wiltshire countryside.
I have written quite a few posts about the Festival of Britain, and as this year is the 75th anniversary of the festival, I want to look at another aspect of the festival – the people behind the festival, those who created the overall theme, architects, individual pavilions, the written commentary in each pavilion etc.
The 1951 festival was a snapshot of Britain at a key point in history. The Second World War was just six years before the festival, and decades of significant change were in the future.
The South Bank exhibition site was the centre piece of the festival, and was split in two areas.
Between County Hall and Hungerford Railway Bridge was the upstream circuit, the focus was on “The Land”, and looked at the land of Britain, the natural scene, the country, minerals of the island, power and production (mainly driven by what was mined from the land), sea and ships, and transport.
The downstream circuit was between Hungerford Railway and Waterloo Bridges, and the focus of this section of the festival was on “The People”, and looked at the people of Britain, homes and gardens, schools, health, sport, and the seaside.
Responsibility for developing what was on display throughout the festival was through several key roles.
Individuals were responsible for developing the overall theme, architectural design and display design. This started at the highest level with the overall concept of the festival, and then dropped down to those responsible for the same role for individual pavilions and display areas.
The following image is the first page from the South Bank festival guide for the downstream circuit on the people, and the People of Britain pavilion:
At the top are the names of those who had overall responsibility for this section of the festival, and under the title “The People of Britain” are the names of those responsible for the pavilion and displays on the people of britain.
I have underlined one name in red – Jacquetta Hawkes – the Theme Convener, the subject matter expert who was responsible for bringing a consistent theme to the pavilion.
Jacquetta Hawkes was born on the 5th of August 1910 in Cambridge. Her father was Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, who won the Nobel prize in 1929, along with Christiaan Eijkman, for their discovery of vitamins. Her mother, Jessie Ann Stevens was the daughter of a ship’s fitter from Ramsgate.
Jacquetta developed an interest in archaeology from a very early age, and would go on to establish a considerable career in what was at the time a very male dominated profession.
As evidence of her ground-breaking role as a woman in archaeology, in 1929 she was the first woman to take the Archaeology and Anthropology degree at Newnham College, Cambridge.
After graduating, she travelled to Palestine to work on excavations, and on her return, she married the archaeologist Christopher Hawkes , who she had met earlier at Cambridge.
Jacquetta Hawkes was a prolific author, with her first book, “The Archaeology of Jersey”, being published in 1938.
I have a couple of her books. The first is “A Guide to the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments in England and Wales”:
The book, as the name suggests, is a comprehensive guide to Prehistoric and Roman monuments, and includes background information, such as the types of monuments to be found, a chronology, a lengthy gazetteer of sites, and, something modern books seem to have lost, a large fold out map.
The book obviously reflects the state of knowledge at the time (1951), but it is still a remarkably useful book for cataloguing and examining so many sites.
Chapter One is titled “The Land of Britain”, and this seems to be a theme that can be found in much of Jacquetta’s work, including the Festival of Britain. Her view of how the land of Britain and the evolution of life on the land are intertwined, and the first couple of paragraphs from the opening chapter sum up this approach:
“If it can be claimed that the whole of our country and not only its surviving antiquities should be seen as the creation of past generations, it is legitimate to go much further, to penetrate below the surface of pasture, arable, woodland and waste and to see the whole substance of the island as one continuous creation. Through milliards of years it has been built and shaped; sometimes lying as a part of a vast continent embracing what is now the Atlantic and North America, sometimes part of the sea-bed of equally vast oceans. tropical, desert, and artic climates have played over it.
So, side by side with the evolution of life, the land of Britain was brought into being; the remodelling of its surface by man belongs to this continuous and still rapidly developing process.”
Whilst the guide to Prehistoric and Roman monuments is at its heart a guide, Jacquetta takes the approach summed up in the two paragraphs above, and expands it considerably in, probably her best known book, “A Land”:
A Land was also published in 1951, I have the 1978 edition (some sources give the original publication year as 1953, however my 1978 edition has 1951 as the original date, and Jacquetta’s introduction is dated 1950).
A Land is not a text book, or single subject book on geology, climate, archaeology, the evolution of life, history etc. but takes all these subjects to construct a story of how the land of Britain has developed, and both the impact on, and the use of the land, by the emergence and evolution of life.
The book links the formation of rocks, minerals and resources to how they were and are used by humans. Granite, Portland Stone, Chalk, Coal etc. all have their origins shown as part of the geological development of the land linked to their future use by people for homes, buildings, industry.
The book is “off its time” – a phrase that implicitly means that almost everything we publish today, will, in the next 50, 100 and more years, also be regarded as containing inaccuracies, not reflect the latest scientific understanding, will have unacceptable views, but as with the story told in “A Land”, human knowledge and culture is on a conveyor belt of continuous change, and the present is just a snapshot in time of both knowledge and culture.
As an indication of how archaeological and scientific advances can impact a book, the introduction to the 1978 edition of “A Land” lists several updates to the 1951 edition.
A Land has been described as being a sentimental and romantic book, and there is a degree of truth to these descriptions, but what I find important about the book is that it presents a way of looking at the country, an intertwined story of continuous evolution – an obvious example being the geological and climate conditions that led to the formation of coal, which was the key source of energy for the industrial revolution, from the start of steam power with Thomas Newcomen’s and James Watt’s engines in the 18th century.
When she wrote “A Land”, Jacquetta lived in Fitzroy Road, just to the east of Primrose Hill, and she references the hill in the opening paragraphs of the book:
“When I have been working late on a summer night, I like to go out and lie on the patch of grass in our back garden. This garden is a square of about twenty feet, so that to lie on it is like exposing oneself in an open box or tray. Not far below the topsoil is the London Clay which, as Primrose Hill bumps up conspicuously at the end of the road. the humus, formed by the accumulation first of forest and then of meadow land, must once have been fertile enough, but nearly a century in a back garden has exhausted it.”
Her mind then begins to wander:
“As I lie looking at the stars with that blend of wonder and familiarity they alone can suggest, a barge turning the bend in Regent’s Park Canal hoots, a soft wedge of sound in the darkness that is cut across by the long rumble of a train drawing out of Euston Station.
The people sitting in those lighted carriages, even the bargee leaning sleepily on his long tiller, are not individuals going to board meetings in Manchester or bringing in coal for London furnaces. For the instant they are figures moved about the map by unknown forces, as helpless as the shapes of history that can be found behind them, all irresistibly impelled to the achievements of this moment.”
And then begins the story of millions of years of the history of Britain.
The Land also shows how in 1950 when the book was written, Britain was still a country with strong regional and local differences.
This was not just with the people, but also how the country was built, with towns and villages often being distinctive by their industries and agriculture and their local building materials, and designs.
This localism was also a thread running through parts of the Festival of Britain, and one of the very many publications associated with the festival, was the following map, published by the oil company Esso, with the title “What do they talk about”:
Published by Esso, no doubt as an incentive to get people out driving and buying petrol to explore the country, if did show a country where many areas were still very distinctive.
Compare that with today, where local areas are much less diverse. Buildings are generally built to very similar designs and off remotely rather than locally made materials, nearly all the industries shown on the map have disappeared, and those that remain are in continual decline (for example in the midlands, a kiln can be seen with the word “Pots”. The midlands pottery industry continues to shrink, with the latest casualty being the Denby factory which shut down their kilns a couple of months ago).
A theme to the festival seems to have been to encourage people to get out and explore their country. As well as the map shown above, there were other festival events across the country, and also a series of “About Britain” guides were published, each with the festival emblem on the front cover.
Each guide covered a specific area of the country and provided a detailed guide, recommended routes and places to see:
Returning to the People of Britain pavilion, of which Jacquetta was the theme convener, the journey through the pavilion was laid out in a chronological sequence, with some of the displays set up as an archaeological dig. Starting from the entrance, the displays covered The Relics Of Our Ancestors, How They Came Here, How They Lived, The Romans In Britain, Men of the Iron Age, The Anglo Saxons, The British Today.
The People of Britain pavilion route from the guide is shown below:
The final paragraph in the festival guide section on the People of Britain reflects on how migration and integration has been part of the development of Britain:
“But though the ancient dead are buried, it is the very blood they brought here that runs in us – yet, whether they came as conquerors or men of peace, all of them suffered a sea change on the way. They were absorbed into the life that was here before them, and themselves became islanders of a land that moulded the thoughts, the feelings, and the behaviour of them all into a whole which is our British way of life and our tradition”.
The above paragraph is another example of why I find the Festival of Britain so useful as a reference point for so much about the country at the time.
The paragraph talks about the absorption of those who migrated to the country in the past, and how all islanders moulded the British way of life. In the decades to come, this would change to a more multi-cultural approach, with issues about absorption, or integration as we would now describe the process.
The Festival of Britain guide names all those who had a role in the creation and design of the festival, with Jacquetta Hawkes being the theme convenor for the People of Britain pavilion.
Reading through the names of those responsible for all the other exhibits and pavilions across the festival, she was one of very few women who had a key role in the creation of the festival.
There is far more to her life than archaeology and the Festival of Britain.
During her marriage to Christopher Hawkes, she had a son, Nicolas who was born in 1938.
Serious archaeology was not possible during the Second World War, so in 1941 she took on the role of Assistant Principal of the Post-War Reconstruction Secretariat, later moving to the Ministry of Education, and then became a Principal and Secretary of the UK National Committee for Unesco, a role she held until the start of her involvement with the Festival of Britain.
The war also marked a change in her personal life, as she fell in live with, and had an affair with the poet Walter J. Turner, and she was devastated when he died of a brain haemorrhage in December 1946.
In 1947, she met the writer J.B. Priestley at a Unesco conference in Mexico, and they fell in love, although unable to marry until 1953, by when they had both been divorced.
J.B. Priestley had written English Journey, which was published in 1934, another useful snapshot of the country as the book covered Priestley’s travels around England.
After her marriage to Priestley, Jacquetta continued to write. She was a governor of the British Film Institute and in 1971 she was a vice-president of the Council for British Archaeology.
Following a short spell on the Isle of Wight, they moved to Alveston in Warwickshire, where she became president of the Warwickshire branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. With Priestley, she was one of the co-founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Following J.B. Priestley’s death in 1982, she moved to Chipping Camden, where she pursued an interest in the old buildings and historic churches of the area.
Her last book, published in 1982, and written with archaeologist Paul Bahn was the “The Shell Guide to British Archaeology“, one of a series of Shell guides, which also includes guides to many of the counties of the country.
Jacquetta wrote and contributed to multiple journal and magazine articles, as well as radio and TV.
Jacquetta was involved in one of the more unusual TV programmes of the 1960s when in 1962 she wrote the script for part of a programme in the BBC Monitor series titled “The Lonely Shore”, with the segment being on “What Was Britain Like Before the Apocalypse?”.
This segment sees archaeologists from the future returning to the site of a lost previous expedition, who had placed their finds on the beach waiting for collection by a future team.
It is brilliant as it highlights the difficulty with interpreting the use and meaning of artifacts from long lost peoples and civilisations. It is almost a parody of the archaeological profession that Jacquetta was for so long, a prominent member.
There is a brilliant bit starting at 8 minutes, 22 seconds where a collecting box for the PDSA (People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals) is interpreted as an altar set-up for the dog cult:
Jacquetta Hawkes died on the 18th of March 1996, and her ashes were buried with those of J.B. Priestley in the grounds of the church in Hubberholm in North Yorkshire.
Archaeology had started with the gentleman amateur, and during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had transformed into professional academic excavation and study of the past.
From the 1950s onwards, archaeology became more scientific, and Jacquetta criticised the reductionist approach that she saw as growing in importance in the profession, rather than the importance of constructing the human past.
She wrote an article for the journal Antiquity in 1967, from which the following abstract is taken:
“Archaeology in is danger of becoming so ruled by its technological and scientific servants that its proper goal of reconstructing the human past is being overlooked. The ingenious new equipment of archaeology attracts to itself a major share of not only money but intellectual effort; the result is that, while historical writing of the quality formerly seen is nowhere emergent, enormous quantities of undigested facts, graphs and tables litter our ever more expensive reports. The time needed to compile these analyses keeps other workers too long uninformed; the excavator may not even live to complete his scientifically showy report. As for controversies in interpretation, pages of correspondence solve nothing that time and new discoveries will not. Meantime, art criticism and studies of religion are neglected because they cannot be tabulated; even the remote stages of the Palaeolithic might be made to reveal more than statistics. A proper balance between science and history, a blend of old and new ideals, must be found if we are to maintain popular interest in archaeology and attract recruits with historical imagination.”
Personally, I believe that the approach criticised by Jacquetta, and her own approach, are both equally valid and important.
The technical and scientific approach, where facts, graphs and tables provide a detailed understanding of a site, city, population and culture, and the approach supported by Jacquetta expands on these individual details, and puts an individual site, facts, graphs and tables within the wider context of both the land and human history.
Jacquetta Hawkes was a fascinating woman, who achieved so much in a male dominated profession, and her book “A Land” is still an inspiration to look at history in a different way – a way in which geology, climate, life and human evolution, industry, agriculture, buildings etc. can all be understood as an intertwined story.
What is missing from this post is a photo of Jacquetta Hawkes. All those I have found online are copyright, or appear to have been taken from a copyrighted source, so here is a link to a photo of her in 1955 at the National Portrait Gallery – a remarkable woman:
A rather long post this weekend. There are two parts to the post. In the first part I explore the fascinating church of St Pancras, and in the second part, I explore the tragic story of the City of Boston, recorded on one of the memorials in the church.
So to start with the church, this is St Pancras Church as seen from Euston Road on a hot and sunny summer day in 2026:
In the early years of the 19th century, the area around Euston Road was expanding rapidly, as streets and houses were marching over the fields to the north of the city.
The Parish of St Pancras was originally served by the church known today as St Pancras Old Church, however this historic church was far too small and rather dilapidated to serve the growing population, so in 1812, the vicar, Dr. Middleton led a proposal for the construction of a new, much larger church.
The following map is an extract from Horwood’s map of 1799. I have marked the location of the future St Pancras Church with a red rectangle. The road to the north marked Islington is today Euston Road:
As can be seen, much of the area is still open space, but the construction of new housing and streets can be seen at the top of the map, and new streets would soon occupy the whole of the area of the map, hence the need for the new church.
There is an interesting feature to upper left, marked Polygon, which was part of Somers Town.. This was a development of houses, and in the next couple of decades, Clarendon Square was built around the Polygon, with the ring of houses being in the centre, with surrounding roads and houses forming an outer square.
By the end of the 19th century, the Polygon had been demolished, but they are remembered today by Polygon Road which runs along the northern edge of the original feature.
An Act of Parliament enabling the building of a new church was passed in 1816, allowing fund raising and requests for designs to go ahead.
The design selected was by father and son architects, William and Henry William Inwood. William Inwood, the father, was a land steward and surveyor, and the majority of his architectural work appears to have been in partnership with his son Henry William.
Their joint projects in London included:
St John’s Church, Westminster, destroyed by fire in 1940 – 1941
Camden Town Chapel
St Peter’s Chapel, Regent Square
St Mary’s Chapel, Somers Town
Henry William Inwood had travelled in Greece. He may have been there when the initial designs for the church were made, however whether it was father or son who had the overall responsibility for the design, St Pancras Church displays a very Grecian influence.
William Inwood died in March 1843, and was buried in the church he had designed.
His son, Henry William Inwood died in the same month of the same year, having drowned at sea, when the ship on which he had sailed for Spain was lost, with no survivors.
Henry’s death was around 6 days after his father’s death, so at least the father was unaware of the death of his son. The loss of Henry at sea is a horrible coincidence with another story from the church, which I explore in the second part of today’s post.
St Pancras Church looking across Upper Woburn Place:
The inspiration for the top of the tower of the church is believed to have been the Tower of Winds in Athens, shown to the left in the following late 18th century print. The name Tower of Winds comes from the eight reliefs around the top of the tower which depict wind gods:
The most distinctive feature of the church can be seen on either side of the church, where towards the rear there are caryatid porticoes. A caryatid is a sculpted female figure that acts as an architectural support. They have central cast iron columns which provides the support for the roof, with terracotta being used to form the figure:
The name caryatid comes from the town of Karyai in the southern Greek region of the Peloponnese. They are believed to be based on a dance performed by young women of the town in honour of the god Artemis Karyatis. Some sources refer to the women dancing with baskets on their head, hence the stance, and the use of a caryatid to hold something up:
The inspiration for the caryatids came from the Erechtheion in Athens, a 5th century BC temple dedicated to the gods Athena and Poseidon. The following print from 1853 shows the Erechtheion or Erectheum with five caryatids in an almost identical configuration as those at St Pancras Church:
St Pancras church has only four along the front. In Athens, the temple originally had six, four along the front and one on each of the two sides. As can be seen in the above print, the caryatid on the right side is missing.
Thomas Bruce, the 7th earl of Elgin was the British representative to Constantinople (now Istanbul) between 1799 and 1803. This was a time when Greece was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had a reputation for destroying Greek heritage.
They gave Elgin permission to remove artifacts under the pretence that it was to protect the safety of the artefacts during Greek actions in their attempts to gain independence, which was achieved in 1822.
Elgin removed a range of ancient Greek artifacts, including what are today called the Elgin Marbles, along with one of the caryatids, which, along with the Elgin marbles, is now on display in the British Museum.
The photos above are of the caryatids on the southern side of the church, and an identical feature can be seen on the northern side, facing Euston Road:
Internally, the church presents a large, bright, open space. Galleries run along either side of the church, and the altar is built into an apse at the end of the church, where, continuing the Classical design approach, there are tall Ionic columns:
A model of the church:
There are some lovely design features in the church, such as these columns which support the gallery above:
The font and more Ionic columns close to the entrance to the church:
Stained glass:
A statue of St Pancras:
St Pancras was born around 289 in what is today Turkey. During Emperor Diocletian’s persecutions of Christians, St Pancras was brought before the Roman authorities and asked to carry out a sacrifice to the Roman gods. Pancras refused to do so, despite being offered wealth and power.
As a result, the Emperor ordered that St Pancras should be beheaded on the Via Aurelia, the original road from Rome to Pisa. The sentence was carried out in 303. The saint’s feast day is the 12th of May, which is believed to be the day of his execution.
Church memorials are fascinating. They provide a snapshot of those considered by the parish as worth remembering, but they also tell us a bit more about life at the time.
Take the memorial to William Kitchener M.D.
He died on the 27th of February 1827, aged 48. The memorial, as did the obituaries published in the press, made much of his “universal genius”.
William Kitchiner was originally in the medical profession, but after his father died (an eminent coal merchant in the Strand), he inherited a fortune of between £60,000 and £70,000. This allowed him to give up medicine and pursue separate interests.
He wrote a number of books, including a book on Telescopes, and also a large collection of national songs, but his most widely acclaimed book was “The Cook’s Oracle”, which contained 130 recipes, which will “greatly improve the comfort and economy of all, being the best method of making Maigre Gravy Soups; ditto Green Peas, various Fish Soups, all Fried Fish in clarified butter, fresh Salmon Broiled; ditto Pickled; Carp to Stew; Potted Lobster or Crab; Lobster Patties; Stewed Oysters; Scalloped Oysters; Fish Pies, Stewed Eels; Macaroni; Stewed Onions; Omelettes and various ways of dressing Eggs, and warming cold Fish; potato Pie; Cheese and Toast; ditto Toasted; ditto Buttered; ditto Pounded or Potted; Poached Eggs; Puddings; Maigre and Savoury Patties; Preserves; Tarts; Cakes, &c &c.”
A sample of an early 19th century diet.
By the time that first reviews were published, the book already had a print run of 30,000, and typical reviews were:
“We venture to prophecy that the Cook’s Oracle will be considered as the English Institute of Cookery”, and:
“For practical precepts we recommend particularly and chiefly the Cook’s Oracle, in which , along with the plainest directions, there is more of philosophy, and if we may so speak of the Literature of Gastronomy, than in any other work we have seen”.
If William Kitchiner were alive today, he would probably have his own TV cookery series.
William Kitchiner, pictured with a telescope and book:
William Kitchiner had a disease of the heart, and knew that death could come at any moment, the knowledge of which resulted in periods of depression. He died after he had been for a meal with friends (an attempt by his doctor to raise his spirits), and suffered spasms after returning home.
And with what seems to have been the standard medical approach to many diseases at the time, his doctor attempted to bleed him, but he had already died.
A high proportion of monuments in London churches mention that the person spent time abroad. There is a memorial in St Pancras that records time with the East India Company, and the following memorial records that he was formerly of Canton and Macao in China.
I assume this was a reasonably common background, as they had made their money abroad, retired to London (Fitzroy Square in the case of Daniel Beale, below), and got involved in the life of the local parish:
Some plaques record recent events, including the fire at Kings Cross Underground Station on the 18th of November, 1987, a fire which claimed the lives of 31 people, including Soho’s Station Officer Colin Townsley:
During the last war, the church did suffer some bomb damage, but dry rot seems to have been the major post-war problem, as the church was closed on the 18th of May 1951 as it was considered a dangerous structure due to widespread dry rot:
The church was rededicated and opened two years later in December 1953.
St Pancras Church was the most expensive church in London when it was built, the addition of the caryatid porticoes on both sides of the church no doubt added significantly to the cost, but they are one of the features that make this a very distinctive church.
Henry William Inwood the son of the father / son partnership that designed the church, died in the sinking of a ship.
One of the plaques in the church records another sinking:
The Loss of the Steamship City of Boston
Exploring the story behind memorials can reveal so much about both the event being recorded, and life in general at the time.
One of the memorials records the loss at sea of Henry Horace Baker, his wife Rebecca, and their two young children:
In 1870, ships did not have any form of radio equipment. There was limited weather information, and for the north Atlantic route, any information on the location and density of ice flows and icebergs was mainly the exchange of information between captains whilst in port, talking about what they had seen during their crossing.
A sea journey of any length was a risky experience, and there were hundreds of sinkings every year, and for many of these, relatives had to wait for many months before all hope was given up, and there was often no information on the cause of a sinking, or the location.
The Atlantic route was busy with many ships travelling between the US and the UK and Europe.
Shipping lines competed to offer the fastest, safest and most comfortable route across the Atlantic.
One of these was the Inman Line, along with the Cunard and White Star lines, one of the three largest shipping companies in the later decades of the 19th century.
Formed in 1850 by William Inman, the Inman Line operated out of Liverpool, with a fleet of steam ships, nearly all with the name of City of …..
Many of the Inman Line ships were combined steam and sail ships. This offered the benefit of a fallback to sail if there were any problems with the steam engines.
The City of Boston was the Inman line ship that Henry Horace Baker, his wife Rebecca, and their two children, Frederick and Florence, along with their nanny, boarded in Halifax, with the ship departing for Liverpool on the 28th of January, 1870:
The City of Boston carried crew and passengers, some of whom were officers of artillery and other regiments on their way home from Canada and had preferred to make the crossing in a steam ship rather than the troop ship which brought the majority of the troops back to England.
Henry Horace Baker was one of four officers that had their wives and children with them for the journey back to England.
The ship was well provisioned for the journey. Newspaper reports stated that on board were three months provisions for the ship’s use, and among the cargo were the following: 390 tons of beef, 200 barrels of flour, 180,700lb of bacon, and 10,375lb of wheat.
The ship was also fitted with condensers capable of supplying water. The ship also carried 787 tons of coal.
By reading the news reports from the time, we can follow the course of the tragedy that led to the memorial in St Pancras Church.
The lack of any means of communicating with a ship, rumours, false sightings and reports, the challenges of a long sea journey, optimism that the ship would arrive, even when this would have been an unrealistic outcome. One can also imagine the frustrations and worries of those who had relatives and friends on the ship.
We start in February 1870:
February 1870
By the 15th of February, the City of Boston was several days overdue. Newspaper reports started to mention that the steamer had not arrived at Liverpool, and some papers were reporting concerns about the condition of the ship, for example from the Western Morning News on the 15th:
“The agents at Liverpool of the Inman Company state that the Royal Mail steamer City of Boston, which left Halifax on the 28th January, and is several days overdue. lost two blades of her fan on the outward voyage, and is coming home with only a double-bladed fan. Considering the strong easterly gales and the heavy sea prevailing, the agents entertain fears as to the safety of the steamer.”
The number of ships lost at sea was high. On the 21st, as well as mentioning the late arrival of the City of Boston, it was also reported that the Awsel was lost, including 10 hands and the captain, and that the Tea Ship Westburn sailing from China to London had been lost with 700,000 lbs of tea.
On the 24th of February, is was reported that insurance premiums on the City of Boston were increasing to 50 guineas per cent. Interesting that you could still insure a ship even after it had been missing. There was also a report from a ship arriving in Liverpool from Halifax that a captain in Halifax had told of seeing a steamer which launched three rockets, but he could not be sure of the position.
By the 28th of February, it had been 30 days since the City of Boston had left Halifax, and there was “a very considerable amount of anxiety has been felt and expressed in the commercial and private circles as to the non arrival of the mail steamer City of Boston”.
There were efforts to calm worries by saying that although the ship had left Halifax with a mechanical problem, she was able to use her sails, and could have been blown off course by strong easterly winds. She was a “strong, well built ship, fully manned, most undeniably well found, and in charge of an experienced and efficient commander”.
March 1870
At the start of March, there was still no news about the City of Boston. There were now serious concerns about the safety of the ship, but also voices that offered some reassurance that the ship could still be under sail, could have been blown off course etc.
On the 8th of March it was reported that the Channel Squadron had been ordered to be on the lookout for ships in distress, particuarly the City of Boston
The Channel Squadron had a secondary purpose, and that was to deliver supplies to the ships that were unable to complete their crossing from America due to the strong easterly winds. It was estimated that there could be 500 ships stalled in the Atlantic, including twenty large vessels, loaded with grain which were bound from San Francisco to Liverpool and were long overdue.
A ship, the Ben Nevis had arrived in Gravesend reporting that they had seen a disabled steamer trying to get to the Irish Coast, however it turned out that that the crew’s description of the steamer did not fit the City of Boston.
On the 10th of March, a sailing ship, the Florence arrived in the Thames, having set sail from New York on the same day that the City of Boston had set out. This gave some hope that the City of Boston could also arrive soon.
In 1870, as has been amplified by the Internet today, there was false information being distributed. On the 19th of March, the New York Associated Press offered a reward of 500 dollars for information leading to the detection and punishment of the author of the false report regarding the arrival of the City of Boston on Wednesday. It had “excited much indignation in the United States”.
By the 28th of March, hope was beginning to fade, and the Newcastle Journal reported that “There is no news of the City of Boston. It is now fifty-eight days since she left Halifax on her homeward voyage, and the opinion begins to prevail that she never now will be heard of. The supposition is that she struck against an iceberg at full speed, and went down, leaving no trace behind her. The City of Durham has left Crookhaven to continue the search for the missing vessel”.
April 1870
By April, the rumour mill was running. On the 2nd of April, Admiral Belcher had written in the Times that “if the City of Boston stood south easterly and fell into the horse latitudes, where few ships care to go, or have any business, and be disabled, she may, like a transport he recollects, be detained there from 100 to 150 days, and would eventually find her way by the trade wind into some port in Florida or the West Indies.”
On the 9th, William Inman, the owner of the ship and the shipping line, said that not an officer in his service believes that the City of Boston had foundered from any gale of wind; and if she is lost, it is to be attributed to running into ice.
On the 14th it was announced that the underwriters of the City of Boston and her cargo had agreed to meet all claims upon them on the basis of a total loss.
On the 19th, a further announcement was made that the reports that the underwriters had settled claims was premature, and that they would not be doing so until the loss was posted at Lloyds.
On the 25th of April, William Inman announced that he was bringing an action for libel against the writer of a letter which alleged that the City of Boston was overladen and also defective in her screw arrangements.
On the 28th of April, Henry Ransford wrote to the Times to state that the letter he had written on the 11th which contained suggestions that the City of Boston was not in a good seagoing tradition, may have been damaged and could have been overladen, were false accusations and that there were no grounds whatever for any imputation on the condition of the City of Boston, and that Henry Rainsford apologised if his letter had misled the public.
On the same day, it was reported that a broken piece of teak wood about three feet long had washed ashore at Perranporth. One side was painted blue, and the other side had been roughly inscribed with a knife or chisel “TY OF BOSTON IS SINKING FEB II”.
May 1870
At the start of May, the ship had been missing for three months. During the month, there were still strange stories about the final days of the City of Boston, and the first obituaries started to appear showing that families of those onboard were accepting the loss of their loved ones.
On the 3rd, New York papers had reached Liverpool, and they included the following report:
“A boy named George W. Doty, residing at Princes Bay, Staten Island, while playing along the beach at that place, yesterday (April 19) in company with two other boys, plucked up an ordinary soda bottle, and discovered in it a piece of hard coarse brown paper, and upon it were written in lead pencil the following words:-
Steamship City of Boston, March 2, 1870. As I write this note (perhaps my last on earth) I hear the wails and moans of my fellow passengers as they see the last vestige of their safety lost and swamped in the deep. the vessel caught fire from the engine room this morning, and is fast driving the passengers to the bow of the boat. They have just attempted to launch the lifeboat, but it got swamped with about forty persons, male and female. The captain is doing his best. I must bung and finish. God help us. James…..Nas”.
The New York Times believed that the note was a hoax, as the ship had been at sea for over a month when the note was apparently written, and that there was no passenger on board with a name ending in ‘Nas’.
Another note found in a stone bottle was handed to the receiver of wreck at the Liverpool Custom House. On the note was written:
“S.S. City of Boston, Feb 4 1870. The City of Boston is fast settling. We have lost 4 men overboard, 3 have died. We………..in great danger for our preservation. The ship is on fire, and hurrying all the passengers to the bows. We have had to come on under canvas. our propellor is broken, and we are now at the entire mercy of the waves. God help us, I am on my bare feet and have been all the week. Sig……….Hough, J Hon, W. Eccleston.”
The newspaper report added that the names at the bottom of the note did not appear on the articles of agreement with the crew, and if it were not a hoax, then it must have been signed by passengers. The authorities in Liverpool did not appear to have had a complete list of passenger names.
On the 21st of May, an obituary notice was published in the Times for Henry Horace Baker – the name that appears on the memorial in St. Pancras church:
“Lost, at sea, in the Royal Mail steamship City of Boston, on returning home from Halifax, Nova Scotia, after five years foreign service. Henry Horace Baker Lieutenant Royal Engineers, aged twenty-eight, third and dearly loved son of Mr and Mrs Henry Baker of 108, Gower-street, London’ also his wife Rebecca (Becky), daughter of Mr James Taylor of Summer-hill, Mayfield, Sussex; together with their children, Fredrick Horace aged five, and Florence Hamilton, aged three; and their faithful nurse, Isabella Oliver.”
The memorial in St. Pancras was probably written by the family of Henry Baker. The memorial tells a terribly sad story of the loss of a family, but what adds an extra layer of sadness is that whilst she was remembered in the Times obituary, the memorial in St Pancras does not include Isabella Oliver, the faithful nurse, who had presumably been with the family for some time.
June 1870
By early June, the City of Boston had been missing for over four months, but newspapers were still suggesting that there was still hope. On the 8th of June in an article about the City of Boston, it was reported that the Cerealis, another missing ship which had left Philadelphia on the 14th of January, had finally been reported safe, after being missing at sea for 141 days.
The safe arrival of the Cerealis was repeated in other articles about the City of Boston on the 11th of June, titled HOPE ON, HOPE EVER, where it was argued that whilst people have started to cease thinking or talking about the missing ship, the Cerealis offers a glimmer of hope.
William Inman, the owner of the shipping line, had by mid June, given up any hope of seeing his ship again, as he had written to the Board of Trade admitting that there was no longer any hope, and whilst there is no direct evidence as to the manner of the loss, his opinion was that the sea ice had broken up suddenly that year, and that the City of Boston had foundered from getting among it.
July 1870
By July, the human impact of the loss of the City of Boston was starting to be reported. There were death notices for some of the crew and passengers, and an article reporting the actions of the Liverpool Seamen’s Orphan Institution demonstrated the scale of human loss from ship wrecks.
The article reported that James McGregor, whose father had sailed out of Liverpool for 10 years, and Ann C. McLean, whose father had sailed out of Liverpool for 11 years, and who had both been lost on the City of Boston, had been nominated as deserving of admission to the institution.
The article also mentions that 66 children had recently been admitted, and that there are many more deserving cases which are postponed for want of room.
There were no fewer than 5,271 wrecks between 1867 and 1868, and the seamen who died from various causes during those years numbered 10,133, of these 6,754 left widows, with an average of three children each.
It was an incredibly dangerous profession.
In July, the Inman Line had set aside £300 to distribute “amongst the more necessitous relatives of the ship wrecked crew”. There was no legally binding need to compensate the families of the crew that worked for the Inman Line, or that they should all receive compensation, of what value and for how long.
August 1870
Despite the claim by the Inman Line that they had set aside £300 for relatives of the crew, it is unclear how this was distributed, and in August there was concern within the town of Workington.
Captain J.J. Halcrow of the City of Boston was well known in Workington, and his aged mother had lived in the town for all her life. Captain Halcrow had left behind a widow and four children, the youngest only two years of age.
It was reported that the family of Captain Halcrow have been left unprovided for, and that a ” few Liverpool gentlemen” have opened a subscription for the benefit of the family.
September 1870
There had been two letters to the Times arguing that the City of Boston had left Halifax in a mechanically poor state and also overloaded. One author had withdrawn his claim and apologised. the second author had not, so William Inman had sued for libel. In August the case came to the Law Courts who found in favour of William Inman, and awarded £250 in damages.
Final Reports
As is usual with such disasters, the event gradually faded from the news, and in the last few months of 1870, there were very few references to the loss of the City of Boston.
Strangely, a couple of alleged messages from those on board the ship were still being found.
In November 1870, a bottle was washed up ay Cranstock Sands near Newquay in Cornwall. The pieces of envelope inside contained a number of names and messages “We are lost”, and “City of Boston, We are all sinking, goodbye”.
In May 1871, another message was washed up on the south-east coast of New Brunswick. The message stated “March 21, 1870 – City of Boston – Ship sinking; over half full now. Good-bye all. Look after my boy. Thompson”.
The name of Thompson was confirmed as being on the passenger list.
It took a couple of months for a complete list of passengers and crew to be published, with lists finally appearing in April. I assume it would have taken a couple of months for lists from New York and Halifax, the two US boarding ports, to be transferred to the UK.
Even with this delay, the passenger list appears to be incomplete. There were 116 listed as passengers, some only given a title such as lady, servant, infant or nurse.
For the crew, only the senior officers were named. In addition there were stewards, firemen and coal-passers, giving a total crew of around 100, so in total there were around 216 people who lost their lives on the City of Boston.
The sinking had an impact on the families of those who were lost at sea. This included Mrs Jane Naughton, or Fegan who died in December 1870 after deeply grieving the lost of her son who was one of the crew on the ship. When she first heard the news she was reported as having been “seized with an apoplectic fit, and her health was never so well thereafter”.
In December 1875, rumours of a new possible cause for the loss of the City of Boston was being reported.
The steam ship Mosel was seriously damaged whilst in Bremerhaven Docks. Cargo was being loaded and during the process, one item of cargo fell to the dockside and exploded, killing 80 people and wounding many more.
The cause was found to be an attempted insurance fraud by a Canadian named Alexander Keith.
Boarding the ship using the false name of Thomas, he had taken out insurance, and also built a bomb which was timed to explode whilst the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic. His plan was to leave the ship when it briefly stopped in Southampton, then claim the insurance money after the ship had been lost.
He was badly wounded during the explosion, and attempted to commit suicide, but was held in custody until he died of his wounds, and confessed before his death.
Newspaper reports of the explosion started to make a link with the loss of the City of Boston:
“There is a suspicion now afloat that the missing City of Boston perished by the same means as those which destroyed the unfortunate men on board the Mosel; but we may ask, if the City of Boston, why not any of the many other vessels which have never been heard of since they left their port of departure? We have the appalling fact found that Thomas had ordered and had constructed a whole assortment of infernal machines similar to that placed by him on board the Mosel. It is impossible not to feel alarmed by the thought that life at sea is almost unprotected by any deterrent agency against attempts like that of Thomas.”
The date, reason for the sinking and location where the City of Boston went down, have never been identified.
The memorial in St Pancras Church records just one family who were lost.
The memorial does not include the name of the nurse who was with the family. All the passenger lists I have seen just record nurse or servant rather than their names, so it is good to add the name Isabella Oliver, at least virtually, to the memorial in St Pancras Church.
Thankfully, I do not make that many mistakes in my posts, but when I do, readers always find them, which is really brilliant as some are very embarrassing, and I want the posts to be as factually correct as possible.
I have made a couple of mistakes in the last two posts. In my post on Basing House, I brought the siege forward from 1643 to 1943 in a couple of places in the text, but the most embarrassing was in last week’s post, when I confused the late 18th – early 19th century architect, George Dance the Younger, with the contemporary actor, Charles Dance.
When I wrote the post, I had the Pevsner guide in front of me, clearly stating George Dance the Younger, but there was obviously some disconnect between my eyes and brain, and my fingers as I typed. I still did not pick this up when reading through the final version of the post.
I have no idea if Charles Dance is a descendant of George Dance, although according to his Wikipedia entry, Charles Dance attended the Plymouth Drawing School and studied Graphic Design and Photography at Leicester College of Arts, so he may have similar talents to George Dance.
As a penance for making this embarrassing mistake, I decided to find out more about George Dance the Younger and to track down a couple of his remaining works in London.
Later in the post, I will also be exploring St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, after reading a brilliant book about this medieval chapel, and original home of the House of Commons.
George Dance the Younger
George Dance the Younger was born in Chiswell Street in 1741, the fifth and youngest son of George Dance senior (for simplicity, all future references to George Dance the Younger will be as George Dance).
George Dance by George Henry Harlow in 1814:
Source and attribution: George Dance by George Henry Harlow pencil and chalk, 1814 9 1/4 in. x 7 3/4 in. (235 mm x 197 mm) Purchased, 1936 Primary CollectionNPG 2812
To add to my earlier comments about mistakes and trying to be factually correct, the National Portrait Gallery record with the above image does not make clear this this is “the Younger”, but does give the dates of life of the sitter as 1741-1825, which coincides the life span of George Dance the Younger.
The portrait is also dated 1814, and his father, George Dance the Elder, had died much earlier in 1768.
At the age of 17, George Dance went to Italy with his older brother Nathaniel (later Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland who was a painter, member of Parliament and member of the Royal Academy), and whilst in Italy, George studied in a number of cities including Florence, Rome and Naples.
In 1765 he returned to England, and took over his father’s role, by purchase, as the Clerk of Works to the City of London.
My first stop in my search for locations connected with George Dance was the house where he lived during the later part of his life, and where he died in 1825.
To the left of centre of this terrace in Gower Street is a blue plaque:
The house with the plaque:
Which confirms that George Dance the Younger lived there:
In addition to St Bartholomew the Less featured in last week’s post, George Dance was responsible for a number of works across London, however the majority have been demolished. These include:
Repairs and alterations of Newgate Prison after damage sustained during the Gordon Riots
St. Luke’s Hospital, Old Street
The Giltspur Street Comptor, also known as the City House of Correction
The Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall
At the Mansion House in the City, he added a potico to the west door, which was later removed, and he also lowered the roof of the Egyptian Hall
At the Guildhall, he rebuilt the southern front in a Gothic Style, but this was later demolished, and the Chamberlain’s Court, also demolished
Between 1806 and 1813 he was responsible for the home of the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, however the building was rebuilt by Charles Barry between 1836 and 1837, but Barry did keep Dance’s original portico, which we can still see on the front of the building:
The Royal College of Surgeons does look as if it was the product of a single design, however the portico is from George Dance’s original building (1806 – 1813), the lower part of the building behind is by Charles Barry (1837 – 1837), and the attic storeys and the wings are by Stephen Salter (1888 – 1889):
My next stop was in London Wall to find the church of All Hallows on the Wall, which was rebuilt between 1765 and 1767 by George Dance:
Which is recorded on a plaque next to the entrance to the church:
As a town planner, George Dance worked on a transformation of part of the Minories, which included the original layout of America Square in 1728. My father photographed part of America Square in 1949, when it looked very different to Dance’s original plans:
His work on America Square extended south to include the construction of the Crescent:
The original buildings of the Crescent were badly damaged by bombing during the last war. The damage started with total destruction on the right and progressively reducing along the buildings to the left.
Pevsner’s guide to the City of London explains that there were originally 11 houses, and only numbers 6 to 11 can be seen today. Numbers 6 and 7 (the two on the left of the terrace) retain their original doorcases. The facades were extensively restored in 1985-6 when replicas of numbers 8 to 11 (the houses to the right) were built.
Although only two originals survive (with much restoration), it is good to see that George Dance’s crescent design can still be seen, having avoided being replaced by yet another glass and steel block.
Dance was also responsible for the original layout of Finsbury Square in 1777.
A number of his plans and proposals were not carried out, including improvements to the Port of London and for the layout of the Camden estate in St. Pancras.
George Dance also worked on a number of projects outside of London, including::
The Theatre Royal, Bath
Ashburnham Place, Sussex
Wilderness Park near Sevenoaks in Kent for the Marquis of Camden
Alterations to Kidbrook near East Grinstead for Charles Abbot, the Speaker of the House of Commns
As well as an architect, George Dance was also an artist, and perhaps one of his most touching works is a portrait of his son, also George, dating from 1793, when his son was around the age of 15. He would later die of a liver complaint and fever whilst in India in 1813:
As well as his brother Nathaniel, George Dance was also a founding member of the Royal Academy.
Sir John Soane and William Mountague were pupils of George Dance, and when Dance retired from his position of Clerk of Works to the City of London in 1815, William Mountague took on the role.
George Dance died in Gower Street on the 14th of January, 1825, aged 84, and he was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, close to where Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Joshua Reynolds were also buried. At the time of his death, George Dance was the last of the 40 founding members of the Royal Academy.
In May of 1825, the Royal Academy held an exhibition of sculpture, and one of the items on display was a bust of George Dance, described as “An animated and expressive head of one, who, in the later stages of life, still had a very vigorous bearing, that repelled the infirmities of decay. The likeness is very accurate, and bold; the character of the mind speaks through it. At present it is but a model that is to be executed in marble.”
Despite much having been demolished, traces of George Dance’s work can still be seen across London. As well as an architect, he was an accomplished artist and one of the founding members of the Royal Academy, where he was also on the Council and was elected a Fellow.
And definitely not a contemporary actor.
St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster
A couple of week’s ago, my post was about the siege of Basing House, after reading a brilliant book about the subject and which encouraged a follow-up visit to what remains of the site. For this week, I have another random find when browsing the shelves of a bookshop. This is The Lost Chapel of Westminster by John Cooper:
The Lost Chapel in the title is St Stephen’s, a chapel that had been at the heart of royal, religious and political life from the time construction began in 1292 under Edward I, until it was destroyed in 1834, during the fire which devasted much of the Palace of Westminster.
The chapel was one of the most significant building projects of the late 13th and early 14th centuries, and took a significant time to complete, under the reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, finally being completed in 1348, with internal decoration continuing for a couple more decades.
St Stephen’s Chapel had two primary roles. As the private chapel for the King and the royal family whilst they were resident in Westminster. Secondly, the chapel maintained a daily routine to pray for the dead, including monarchs who had died as well as those who had left money and lands to the chapel. During this period in medieval history, the belief in purgatory was common, with the associated belief that the prayers of the living would hasten the purification of the souls of the dead, and speed their transition through purgatory.
The location of the chapel is shown within the red oval in the map of the Palace of Westminster prior to the 1834 fire:
The building to the upper right of the chapel is Westminster Hall, so as this structure is still there, we can locate where St Stephen’s Chapel was, on a plan of the site today, where the 19th century structure on the footprint of the old chapel is now called St Stephen’s Hall:
In the above plan, to the right of the yellow oval there is the outline of a surviving medieval structure. These are the old cloisters of St Stephen’s Chapel / College, which did survive and can be seen today in the centre of the following Google map, just above the St. Stephen’s Hall label (this map will probably not appear if you receive this post via email, just the way custom HTML is handled. Click here to see the map on Google Maps)
Another medieval survivor is the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. This was also built in the same sequence by Edwards I, II and III, and whilst the chapel was used by the monarch and members of the monarch’s family, the undercroft was used by the Royal Household.
Being below ground level, St Mary Undercroft survived the 1834 fire, and today it is available for use by members of the House of Commons and the Lords.
St Stephen’s Chapel survived as a chapel until the Reformation.
Up until the middle of the 16th century, the Commons did not have their own, permanent home. Debates would be held at different locations, with the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey being one of the places in use.
St Stephen’s Chapel became the long term home of the House of Commons in 1547 when Edward VI gave the chapel for use as their debating chamber.
The pews were removed and replaced by benches along either side of the old chapel. A speakers chair was installed, along with a table and raised platform in front of the speaker.
And so it remained until it was destroyed by the 1834 fire. The key challenge during the almost 300 years of use by the Commons was to accommodate the ever growing number of MPs.
Prints of St Stephen’s Chapel provide an idea of how impressive the chapel, and later home of the Commons was, within the overall Palace of Westminster:
The view from the Thames:
Inside St Stephen’s Chapel during it’s time as the House of Commons:
In the above print, we can see the changes made over the centuries to accommodate the growing number of MPs, with benches running around the back of the speaker’s chair, and upper galleries on either side.
St Stephen’s Chapel / House of Commons after the fire:
Another view of the destruction caused by the fire:
During the chapel’s use as the House of Commons, wooden panelling had been put up along the walls, which hid the medieval decoration. The original chapel was known to have been incredibly well decorated.
In the years before the fire, antiquaries had spent time looking behind the panneling, and also after the fire there was work to record as much of the chapel as remained.
The following illustration gives an idea of how richly decorated the chapel was:
The above print shows the remains of the paintings discovered on the wall adjoining the site of the altar, and the print below illustrates some of the other wall paintings:
The following print shows specimens of sculpture from St Stephen’s Chapel:
Although St Stephen’s Chapel was lost during the 1834 fire, when the Palace of Westminster was rebuilt, the new home for the House of Commons was moved to a new location within the overall site, but retained the same layout as the original House of Commons, as shown in the print above, with the opposing benches, and the Speakers Chair and central table.
The current House of Commons has the same problems as the original, as whilst the rebuilt structure is slightly larger, it still cannot accommodate all the MPs, which is why there is always a crowd of MPs standing at the entrance when there are the type of debates that the majority of members want to attend.
It is though remarkable, that the current House of Commons continues a format that was implemented in the 16th century to make use of the space of a medieval chapel.
Today, brass studs in the floor of St Stephen’s Hall mark the outline of the original chapel and the Speaker’s Chair.
Research by the University of York has been turned into a 3D visualisation of St Stephen’s Chapel, giving an idea of the impressive decoration. The home page of the project website is here:
There is much to explore on the Virtual St Stephen’s website.
And again I highly recommend The Lost Chapel of Westminster by John Cooper for a comprehensive study of the origin of St Stephen’s Chapel, the medieval life of what was both a religious and royal establishment, the transformation into the first permanent home of the House of Commons, and how it developed until the fire of 1834.
Finding the book was one of the benefits of browsing and buying in a physical bookshop, rather than depending on the algorithms of online sellers.
I believe St Stephen’s Hall is still on the tours available of the Houses of Parliament, unfortunately the old cloisters are working offices, so not available for public access, and St Mary Undercroft does not appear to be publicly accessible. A real shame that these medieval survivors within the 19th century Palace of Westminster, are not available to visit.
There is a very small connection between the locations of today’s and last Sunday’s post. The architect Inigo Jones was trapped during the siege of Basing House, and this week I am visiting the church where he was baptised, having been born in Smithfield.
The church of St Bartholomew the Great is a well known church close to West Smithfield and alongside Cloth Fair. Not so well known is that the church has a smaller brother – St Bartholomew the Less.
St Bartholomew the Less is not that visible from West Smithfield, but walk towards the hospital of St Bartholomew’s, or St Barts as it is now more commonly known, through the early 18th century Gate House shown in the photo below:
And you will find St Bartholomew the Less:
The history of St Bartholomew the Less, the nearby church of St Bartholomew the Great, and St Bartholomew’s Hospital (St Bart’s) all have a common root, dating back to the 12th century.
St Bartholomew the Great was founded in 1123 by Rahere, a prebendary of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The story goes that Rahere was originally a Jester or Kings Minstrel, however after the death of the King’s wife and children Rahere travelled to Rome where St Bartholomew appeared to him in a vision and commanded him to build the church. Other stories are that the saint appeared to Rahere during a near death experience.
With the distance of time, and variations of the story through the centuries, what is firm is that he established an Augustine Priory (possibly on the site of an earlier parish church, and part of the priory now remains as St Bartholomew the Great) along with the adjacent hospital of St. Bartholomew.
St Bartholomew the Less appears to have originally been a chapel attached to St Bartholomew the Great, moving to a chapel attached to the hospital around 1184.
It was rebuilt around the 15th century, and for the next few centuries the church appeared as shown in the following print:
In 1546, during the Reformation, Henry VIII gave the church along with the hospital to the City of London.
In 1793, the church was rebuilt by George Dance the Younger. Whilst the medieval tower survived, Dance appears to have completely rebuilt the interior of the church, rebuilding it into the octagonal interior within rectangular outer walls that we see today, however much of the construction materials seem to have been wood, as within a couple of decades, wood rot had set in, and the church needed another major rebuild.
This was carried out by the architect Thomas Hardwick between 1823 and 1825 . Thomas Hardwick was St Bart’s Hospital Surveyor. Hardwick kept the octagonal layout of Dance’s rebuild, but used brick, stone and cast-iron to leave a more permanent structure, and apart from some later 19th century restoration and repairs of war-time damage, this is the church we see today, a medieval tower with an early 19th century octangle interior:
The ornate pulpit:
There is very little to be found on the history of the pulpit. The Pevsner Guide to the City of London states that the pulpit is made of alabaster and dates from 1864, and that it was designed by Philip Charles Hardwick, who was the grandson of the architect Thomas Hardwick who carried out the 1823 – 1825 rebuild of the church.
Philip Charles Hardwick appears to have carried out a further restoration in 1862 – 1863, so around the date of the pulpit, and the following from the London City Press on the 17th of October 1863 describes the reopening of the church:
“On Sunday last, the Church of St Bartholomew the Less, which is also the chapel of the hospital, was reopened for divine worship after its recent restoration. There was a crowded congregation, composed of the Governors, medical officers, students, nurses and patients of St Bartholomew. No one who knew the old church would recognise it in its transformed appearance. The beautiful chancel, the new tracery of the windows, the stained glass, the encaustic tiles, the chaste marble of the altar piece, render this building, hallowed by so many memories of the past, worthy of the fame of the most ancient, as it is one of the most useful, hospitals in Europe.
Too much praise cannot be given to Mr. P.C. Hardwick, the architect of the hospital, for the harmony and beauty of the restoration he has effected. The treasurer of the hospital has devoted much of his time in rendering the ancient church of St Bartholomew one of the gems of the City. No small portion of the cost comes from the private resources of the Governors and almoners of the hospital. the medical staff have shown their appreciation of the harmony which governs their institution by presenting the east window. The little parish church of St Bartholomew the Less, partly parochial, partly collegiate, in its character, reflects honour on the Governors and medical men of St Bartholomew, and is now one of the prettiest ornaments of the City”.
If you have spent any time reading memorials in churches, then you would have found many which tell a really sad story. This is one of them, but for a different reason:
This is the memorial to Richard Milbourne West who was a Lieut-Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and who served during the First World War.
He started as a Major in the North Midland Field Ambulance before eventually taking command.
I have not seen a memorial like this before, where the medals of the person named have been set within the memorial, although whether through theft, or removed for safe keeping, or returned to his family, the medallions are missing with just the medal ribbons remaining (with one exception).
The medal on the left (based on the ribbon) is, I believe, the Distinguished Service Order, or D.S.O. and the following report from the Isle of Wight County Press on the 9th of June 1917 records the award of this medal:
“Many Island friends of Lieut-Col. Richard Milbourne West, M.D., R.A.M.C., eldest son of the late Mr. Henry Algernon West, of High-park, Ryde, will heartily congratulate him on having been awarded the D.S.O. for distinguished service in the field. Lieut-Col. West has been in the war from the first, and some months since was wounded by a bursting shell. Fortunately he made a good recovery, and has again been at the Front for some months. Mrs. R.M. West, who is staying at the Bays, has been a worker at the Seely Red Cross Hospital, Gatcombe, since January.”
The medal which is third from the right, with the blue, white and gold vertical stripes is the British War Medal, which was issued to all those who served in the First World War.
To the left of this medal was either the 1914 Star or the 1914 – 1915 Star. This had the red, white and blue vertical stripes on the ribbon, and the medallion was star shaped and had a crown on top, identical to the remaining indentation.
The medal with both the medallion and ribbon missing was probably the Allied Victory Medal. Each of the allies involved in the war had their own version, with the British version having a rainbow coloured ribbon, a round medallion with the winged figure of Victory on the front of the medal, with the words ‘The Great War for Civilisation 1914-1919’ on the rear. As he served in the First World War, he should have been awarded this medal.
The medal on the right is the Territorial Decoration, and featured the Royal cipher of George V, the letters GvR.
I am sure sure of the other medals, but together they show the service of someone who was originally in the Territorial forces, and then working on the front in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War.
He died on the 18th of July, 1936, at the age of 69, at his home in Wooton on the Isle of Wight.
The majority of the memorials in St Bartholomew the Less are medical related, or for someone who had an administrative role in the life of the hospital.
The two memorials in the following photo are to Arthur Watkins, who was the Steward of the hospital and Christopher Rice Pyle who was the Clerk of Works:
The Clerk of Works was responsible for the fabric of the building, maintenance, building projects etc. whilst the Steward was one of the three historical roles, along with the Clerk and Matron, who were responsible for implementing the orders of the Board of Governors.
Mark Morris, another Steward:
Looking towards the entrance of the church (on the left), with the organ facing the centre of the nave. The organ was built in 1930 by Hill, Norman & Beard, and rebuilt in 1978:
St Bartholomew the Less lost its stained glass windows in the last war, and many of the new windows are also connected to the works of the hospital, and the medical profession in general.
The following window has the dates 1939 – 1945, a kneeling nurse to the right, and the words: “Praise God remembering those nurses from this hospital who gave their lives for their country”:
And the following window has “Praise God remembering those physicians & surgeons from this hospital who gave their lives for their country”:
Side view showing how the rebuilding of the body of the church has clustered all the monuments into alcoves formed by the octangle shape of the church:
Alcove towards the rear of the church:
Where there is another monument, continuing the tradition of recording those who had a significant role in the management of the hospital. This is to John Darker, who was the Treasurer of the hospital for 24 years in the 18th century. his wife Mary Darker is also named:
As well as being Treasurer of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, John Darker was also one of the two MPs for Leicester. He must have been reasonably wealthy as in 1774, the two MPs for Leicester donated £20 each to enable the purchase of a house adjoining the east gate in the city so that the passage could be widened.
The theory of nominative determinism is used to explain why people follow careers which match their name. Unfortunately Howard Henry Tooth was not one of those who followed this theory, as he was a physician rather than a dentist:
Tooth was a neurologist, and he appears to have specilised in peripheral nerve disease and the structure of the spinal cord.
He was at St Bartholomew’s as an assistant physician from 1895 and became a full physician in 1907. He was also at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic at Queen Square.
He may well have had consulting rooms in Harley Street as in 1889, he was living at 34 Harley Street when a newspaper report reported on a chase to find a burglar who had tried to break into a house in Mansfield Mews, and being seen trying to open a skylight by the resident who was sleeping below.
Police pursued Thomas Wolsey who was aged 30 through the streets and across buildings until he was found hiding in Howard Tooth’s home, having broken through a rooflight in the lavatory to get in, no doubt hoping to stay concealed until the police had given up the chase.
He retired in 1921 and seems to have suffered from ill health following the First World War, he had also participated in some form, presumably medical, in the Boer War.
He died on the 13th of May 1925, at the age of 69 at The Moat, in Hadleigh, Suffolk, the home to which he had moved after retiring from his work in London.
The following photo show the view as you walk into the church through the door in the base of the tower:
The stone pillars here are very different to those in the main body of the church. These are almost certainly from the medieval construction of the church as they are part of the overall structure of the tower.
An unusual feature is that after entering the church, there are steps up to the raised level of the interior of the church. This higher level probably dates from when George Dance rebuilt the church.
The church is Grade II* listed, and the listing includes the following reference to the raised level of the church which “has not been fully explained but which may indicate the presence of vaults”. The Pevsner guide refers to the raised level of the church as simply being “a surprise”.
The area around the tower is all that remains of the medieval church, it is fascinating how structures of this age retain the evidence of many periods of rebuild and modification, of earlier doors and windows, and of how building materials have changed over time:
Walking to the rear of the church provides the best view of how the interior has been structured. From here we can see the rectangular outer walls, with at the upper level, the octagonal structure which was built by Dance, and rebuilt by Thomas Hardwick, and Philip Charles Hardwick added the semi-octagonal sanctuary at the end of the church, which internally contains the altar:
The buttresses added to the church, as seen in the above photo, may have been added around 1842 when the screen wall of the hospital (which is to the right of the above photo), was rebuilt.
Up until 2012, St Bartholomew the Less had been a parish church, but was then united with St Bartholomew the Great, and is now a chapel of ease – usually a chapel that is some distance from the parish church, allowing people to have a local chapel to attend, but with St Bartholomew the Great so close, I suspect the change in status is to more efficiently share resources whilst allowing the smaller church to continue to focus on the hospital of St Bart’s.
St Bartholomew the Less is a wonderful little church, and if you are in Smithfield, walk through the old gateway into St Bart’s and take a look.
Over the last year, I have been reading all the books I can find on the Civil War. Two decades of Civil War and then the Commonwealth, a period which included the only time the country had put on trial and then executed a king.
Two decades which revealed so much about Parliamentary democracy, the role of a monarch, individual freedoms and the political, social and religious issues and conflicts of the mid 17th century. Many of which still resonate today.
London played a key part in every aspect of the conflict, not just at places across the wider city (such as the Putney Debates in St Mary’s church in 1647, which I wrote about a couple of months ago), but also the Londoners who were involved in key events during Civil War, the Commonwealth and eventual Restoration. Many fighting, and sometimes dying in battles across the country.
This is a brilliant book. It tells the story of the siege of Basing House in Hampshire, once one of the grandest private houses in the country, larger, and more impressive than Hampton Court, home to the Paulet family, and a place that was visited by five English Monarchs.
A place that ended in ruins after three periods of siege between 1643 and 1645, and there are plenty of London connections in the story of the siege of the house.
Today, what remains of Basing House is in the care of Hampshire Cultural Trust and is open to visit, so after reading the book, this is what we did.
Basing House is in Old Basing, just to the east of Basingstoke, and on a sunny spring day, only the ruins hint as the violence and death that took place here in the 1640s.
What would become Basing House was inherited by the Paulet family in 1428. At the time the site was occupied by a motte and bailey castle which had been built by the de Ports family who had been given the manor of Basing in 1066 by William the Conqueror.
Sir William Paulet, who would become the first Marquis of Winchester constructed two houses on the site. The first was started in 1531, and the second, which became known as the New House, was started in 1550.
By the time of the Civil War, John Paulet, the 5th Marquess of Winchester was the owner of both of these houses which together formed the Basing House complex that would be under siege.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, John Paulet declared for the King, and fortified the house so it could held for the Royalist cause.
Of the old and the new house, there is very little left, but there is one remarkable survivor. This is the Great Barn, built in 1535, and believed to be the largest Tudor barn in the south of England:
The Great Barn was part of the complex of buildings around Basing House that provided the services needed to ensure the operation of such a large house, and the people who both lived there or visited.
The Great Barn was used for the storage of wheat and barley and still today presents a remarkably impressive structure. The barn is now available to host weddings, hence the mirror ball hanging from the ceiling:
The Great Barn was built in 1535, a date which has been confirmed by tree ring dating.
In the above two photos, you can see slits in the brick walls. These were not part of the Civil War fortifications, but were part of the original design of the barn as they provided ventilation, whilst being narrow enough to keep out birds who would have eaten the grain stored within.
The Great Barn was fought over during the sieges of Basing House.
The first attack was in November 1643, when a force of 500 foot soldiers and 500 cavalry of the Parliamentary army led by Sir William Waller arrived at Basing House, and after a refusal from the defenders to surrender, started an attack which focussed on the barn in order to rob the defenders of their stores.
The attackers managed to force out the defenders, who returned to the main house, from where the defenders starting firing cannons at the barn, which forced the Parliamentarian forces to withdraw, and retire to Basingstoke.
Some of the damage caused by cannon fire can still be seen in the barn today:
The barn is part of a small complex of buildings which jointly went under the name of the Grange, and were located to the north west of the old and new houses, so from the Great Barn there is a short walk:
One of the things that Jessie Child’s book does brilliantly is to follow the story of individuals who became involved with the siege of Basing House, both on the Royalist and the Parliamentarian sides.
One of the those on the Royalist side, and who was part of John Paulet’s regiment defending the house was William Faithorne:
William Faithorne was an apprentice engraver living with the print seller Robert Peake near Holborn Conduit.
Peake was a Royalist, and whether or not he had any real choice in the matter, William Faithorne followed Robert Peake and others, as they escaped the defences being built around the City of London, and eventually ended up in Basing House.
Faithorne survived the siege, but was captured by the Parliamentary forces and ended up imprisoned at Aldersgate, where he was allowed to continue his work as an engraver. He was released on condition that he retired to France, but was allowed back in 1650. He then had a shop at Temple Bar which enabled him to continue his work as an engraver, and also to sell prints.
After leaving the area around the Great Barn, we arrive at the gates leading into the main area once occupied by the old and new houses:
Once inside, there is a 3D model of the site, which shows the extensive earthworks, the old house, built on the site of the original motte and bailey castle, and to the left, the new house:
The following image from 1952 also shows the scale of the site of the old house, the Great Barn can be seen to upper right:
The size of the mound on which the old house was built can be seen by walking along the ditch which surrounds the mound, which rises up to the left, with a shallower, but still impressive bank on the right:
There are plenty of information panels around the site, and to get an idea of the size of the old house, by walking the ditch we come to a set of steps that lead up to the top of the mound:
Where there is a viewing platform:
From where we can look out across the site of the old house, and the few remains of what was once the most impressive private house in the country, and a house that hosted a number of monarchs. I used the panorama mode on the camera to get the whole site into one photo:
It is hard to imagine the violence and suffering that those under siege in Basing House went through, whilst looking across such a peaceful site on a sunny spring day.
The first siege of Basing House took place between the 6th and 14th of November 1643, when Sir William Waller led a force of 6,000. This was a relatively short siege as bad weather, and the threat of a Royalist force heading to relieve the house, forced Waller to withdraw to Farnham, which he had captured for Parliament earlier in the year along with Winchester and Portsmouth.
Sir William Waller is an interesting character, as his experience during the 1640s and 1650s illustrate the shifting political and religious tolerance and alliances.
Waller was a professional soldier, and had seen service with the Venetian Republic. As a supporter of Parliament, Waller joined the Parliamentary forces when the Civil War broke out.
As well as his role in the Parliamentary forces, Waller was also an MP, having been elected to represent Andover, but when the Self Denying Ordinance was brought in by Parliament in 1645, (which stated that members of Parliament who were also officers in the army, could only be one or the other), Waller resigned his commission to remain as an MP.
Waller was a deeply religious Presbyterian, and Presbyterian MPs came into conflict with Independent MPs and the New Model Army who wanted freedom of religion, and did not want Presbyterianism to define the state religion of the country.
As a result of his religious view, Waller was one of the eleven Presbyterian MPs accused by Cromwell and other Independent MPs’ of plotting to destabilise the country and promote their religion. As a result Waller fled to Europe, living in the Hague where he met Elizabeth of Bohemia (the sister of Charles I), and on his return two years later he was imprisoned after being accused of plotting the restoration of Charles II.
After being released in 1652, he purchased Osterley Park, became an MP again after the restoration of Charles II, and died in 1668 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
The following print shows the Siege of Basing House. The Old House is on the left, the New House is on the right. The wall surrounding the two houses is that of the Royalist forces holding the houses. Opposite the wall, is another wall which is that of the Parliamentary Army, with a short space of non mans land between:
The print shows the size of the Old and New Basing House, and how little distance there was between those under siege and their attackers.
The first siege was of just over a week. The second siege was much longer. It began on the 4th of June 1644 when Parliamentary forces led by Colonel Richard Norton surrounded the two houses.
After a couple of months, supplies of food and ammunition were running very low in Basing House.
The Royalist Colonel Henry Gage led a force to break through the Parliamentary forces, arriving at Basing House with supplies on the 11th of September. Gage not only managed to get through to the house, but after leaving, he managed to break out to return to Oxford with his soldiers.
The siege continued on to November, when as with the first siege, it was lifted on the 13th of November when the early onset of a harsh winter resulting in the Parliamentary forces withdrawing.
The third and final siege started in August 1645, when the two houses where again surrounded by Parliamentary forces led by Colonel John Dalbier. The third siege was again heading towards autumn and winter, but in October Lt. General Oliver Cromwell arrived with a heavy siege-train (the large canons that were used to break through the defending walls of many a Royalist defended site).
The attack using the siege-train demolished the defensive walls, brought down some of the towers and enabled the parliamentary forces to sweep in and capture the houses that had held out for so long.
It was described that the old and new houses were on fire, and that “nothing but bare walls and chimneys in less than 20 hours” was left.
Today, a sole cannon defends what is left of Basing House from any attack by the towers of Basingstoke:
One of those caught up in the siege was the architect Inigo Jones:
There is much written about Inigo Jones architectural achievements, but very few references to the fact that he was part of a long siege at Basing House, and was captured by the Parliamentary forces after they had stormed the buildings.
Inigo Jones was born in Smithfield in July 1573. Details of his early life are very scarce, but he did have a patron who sent him to Italy to study drawing.
Architecturally, he was responsible for the Queen’s House at Greenwich, the Banqueting House (where Charles I would be executed), St. Paul’s Covent Garden, along with the arcaded square and some of the houses that lined the square.
Charles I’s wife was Henrietta Maria of France, a Roman Catholic, which made her unpopular in the country.
Inigo Jones designed and built a Catholic Chapel for Henrietta Maria in Sommerset House, which made Jones appear a Catholic supporter and sympathiser.
When the Civil War broke out, the chapel was attacked, and much of the art that adorned the interior of the chapel was desecrated.
It is not clear why Inigo Jones was at Basing House, or when he arrived, but he had probably travelled from Oxford.
It may be that his architectural expertise had been used in the design of the defences of Basing House.
He was in his 70s, so living in a house under siege cannot have been easy for someone of that age, and who was not a soldier.
When the third siege ended with Cromwell and Dalbier’s forces seizing what was left of Basing House, Inigo Jones was 72, a considerable age for the 17th century, and he was probably the oldest person in the house.
He was given a £1,000 fine and as a royal delinquent, he was ordered to swear two loyalty oaths, the first to renounce the Bishops, and the second to repudiate the King. This last oath must have been difficult, to repudiate the King that he had worked with for years, as well as the idea of monarchy.
He lived to see the execution of Charles I in 1649.
Inigo Jones died at the age of 78, on the 21st of June 1652, not too many years after the siege ended. He was buried in St. Benet’s, Paul’s Wharf, in the City of London, The church was destroyed during the Great Fire of 1666, and monument to Inigo Jones in the church was lost during the fire.
Walking into the central area of the old house:
Those who lived in the surrounding villages and farms had also suffered during the siege. Much of the area was plundered for supplies by both the Parliamentary forces and also those in Basing House, who, in between sieges, or whenever they had the opportunity, would search the surrounding countryside for any supplies they could take back to sustain the house during the siege.
Those who lived in the immediate area did get some small benefit after the siege had ended. Whilst the cannons of Cromwell’s siege train had inflicted terrible damage on the old and new houses, damage which was compounded when the house was taken by the Parliamentary forces, locals were then allowed to dismantle and take away anything they could find, including much of the stone and brickwork, so today, building material that almost certainly came from Basing House can be seen in the old houses of the district.
Basing House once had a large Great Hall where lavish feasts would have been held for any visiting monarch. Today, only the wine cellar remains:
A gap in the walls is a reminder of the end of the Basing House siege:
It was here, in the walls of the Old House, that the defences were finally breached, and the 800 men of Colonel John Dalbier and 6,000 men of Oliver Cromwell stormed in to finally take the house that had held out for three sieges.
Around 300 Royalists, men, women and children, had retreated into the Old House after the New House had been taken.
The rules of war during the Civil War were that if the defenders of a town or house had been given the opportunity to surrender, but had refused, then the attacking force was entitled to kill the defenders once they had taken the town or house. This led to some appalling bloodshed during the Civil War, and the wars in Ireland during the period of the Commonwealth.
Catholic priests were most at risk of being killed as soon as they were found.
After Basing House was taken, whilst there were deaths, many of the defenders were spared.
Again, walking around the ruins of Basing House on a sunny spring day, it is hard to imagine the fear and suffering during the three sieges, the thunder of the cannon and the crashing and splintering of walls when Cromwell’s siege-train opened fire, and the terror and violence when the house finally fell and the attackers stormed in:
But what of John Paulet, the 5th Marquess of Winchester, the man whose loyalty to Charles I was such that he had written:
“If the King had no more ground in England than Basing House I would adventure as I did and so maintain it to the uttermost.”
Despite being the Marquess of Winchester, a man who was fiercely loyal to the Crown, had held Basing House for three sieges, and had refused to surrender, he was spared execution when Basing House fell.
He was taken to the Tower of London, where he was soon joined by the Marchioness, his second wife, Honora de Burgh. His house had suffered significantly during the siege, much of the fabric of the building had been taken by the local population, and Parliament ordered that what remained of the house be razed to the ground.
He also had all his estates confiscated.
He was released in the early 1650s, but without any estates or income, and with significant debts, he was forced to petition Parliament in 1656 for relief.
The restoration of the monarchy when Charles II returned to England and became King did provide some relief, as he had his estates returned to him.
The Parliament after the restoration had passed a resolution to compensate those who had suffered losses whilst in the service of Charles I during the Civil War, however John Paulet did not receive any compensation.
Basing House was not rebuilt and John Paulet lived in Englefield House near Theale in Berkshire, an estate that he had inherited through marriage.
The effigy of John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester. The valiant defender of Basing House:
John Paulet died in March 1674, and was buried in the local church at Englefield.
One wonders whether he thought the siege had been worth it. As well as receiving little, if any compensation for his losses during the Civil War, he could not rebuild the seat of the Paulet family, and to compound his problems, he had a severe falling out with his eldest son Charles over politics and religion.
John Paulet had been a firm Catholic, however his son Charles adopted the Church of England in his adult life. Politically, Charles was also a Whig, a political party that was opposed to absolute monarchy.
The world had changed.
And Basing House still lay in ruins:
Whilst there are the ruins and earth works of the old house, there is almost nothing left of the new house. One key feature can be found in the building in the following photo:
Within the building is a large well that was built as part of the new house:
The well is brick lined, over 18 metres deep and 3.6 metres in diameter. An animal, probably a horse or donkey would have walked around the circumference of the well to power machinery that drew water up from the bottom of the well.
Many of those who died during the siege were buried in the surrounding lands. A monument records this: “In memory of those who gave their lives in the sieges of Basing House 1643 – 1645 Many of whom are buried near this spot”:
The tranquil nature of what is left of Basing House is added to by a large walled garden:
The walled garden is a reminder of the very different backgrounds of the people who held out during the siege, and some who lost their lives.
One of these was Thomas Johnson, who had been born in Yorkshire, but made his name as a botanist and apothecary in London.
He had a business in Snow Hill in London, from where he sold medicinal herbs and plants, and from where he conducted botanical expeditions to counties outside of London, searching for, and collecting, plants. He was also a member of the Apothecaries Company.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Thomas Johnson joined the Royalist cause, and by May 1643, found himself at Basing Castle as a Lieutenant Colonel in the defending forces.
During the Second Siege, he was shot in the shoulder in September 1644 on one of the many skirmishes between the attacking and defending forces. As a result of his wound, he developed a fever, and died two weeks later. He was buried at Basing House.
Title page of an edition of John Gerard’s ‘The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes’, which was “Very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Johnson, Citizen and Apothecarye of London”:
I have only just scratched the surface of what happened during the siege, the people involved, Londoners who found themselves on both sides of the battle in Basing, Hampshire, and how the siege was part of a much wider conflict.
And if you are ever near Basingstoke, read the book first, then take a look at what is left of Basing House, and as an added benefit, there is a rather good pub (Bartons Mill), next to the car park
A title of apparently random subjects for this week’s post, but they all illustrate the many stories behind the plaques that can be found across the City of London, starting with, as far as I know, the only Lord Mayor of the City of London to have created a typeface:
Robert Besley, Alderman and Lord Mayor
Aldersgate Street at its northern end, runs straight into Goswell Road. There is little to indicate this change in name for anyone walking or driving along the street, it just continues on past the point where the name changes.
On the western side of the street, there are two street name signs on two terrace houses, and on the left hand house is a City of London blue plaque:
The plaque is easy to miss and reasonably difficult to read due to being on the first floor of the building.
It records that “Opposite this tablet a Drinking Fountain was erected in 1878 in memory of Robert Besley Esq. Alderman of this Ward and Lord Mayor of London 1869-70. Removed 1934”:
The plaque raises a number of questions. Why was there a drinking fountain in memory of Robert Besley, why at this location, and apart from being an Alderman and Lord Mayor of London, who was Robert Besley.
With a bit of research, we find an interesting character, who worked in, then ran a very successful business. An article about Robert Besley from the Illustrated London News, when he was elected to hold the office of Lord Mayor of the City of London, provides some background:
“The Lord Mayor Elect of London – Mr. Alderman Robert Besley, the successful candidate in the late contested election for the office of Lord Mayor of London during the next twelve month, will be fully installed in its dignities and authority next Tuesday. The career of Mr. Alderman Besley has been one of straightforwardness and industry. He was born in Exeter, in 1800; and began his business in life in his father’s shop, where, as an apprentice, he was initiated into ‘the art and mystery’ of printing.
A weekly newspaper, the Devonshire Chronicle, managed by Mr. Thomas Besley, brother of the new Lord Mayor, rendered good service to the Liberal party. But Mr. Robert Besley, wishing to turn his energies to account in a wider field, came to London, and in the year 1820 joined the firm of Messrs. Thorogood, typefounders in Fann-street. Here his enterprise and business capacity soon became apparent, and he applied himself to the extension of the firm’s connections with marked effect. Various new styles of type were introduced by him, and the foundry increased in reputation; so that when Mr. Thorogood retired, Mr. Besley stood at the head of a large and flourishing concern.
In 1852 he commenced his connection with the Corporation, being in that year returned as one of the representatives of the ward of Aldersgate in the Court of Common Council, where he was distinguished by the sound sense and practical wisdom he brought to bear upon the various matters discussed. Nine years later Sir Peter Laurie, the Alderman of the ward died, and so favourable an impression had Mr. Besley created, that nearly every elector signed the requisition to him to become a candidate for the vacant gown.
He accepted the invitation, and was returned without opposition. In 1864-5 he filled the office of Sheriff.
Mr. Alderman Besley is a man of considerable ability and shrewdness. His speeches are generally brief and pointed, with a dash of humour, which is not the less effective from a light degree of Devonshire provincialism. At various times the Alderman has taken part in several important social and political movements, in which he had had for his colleagues some of the most eminent men of the day.”
The article mentions Besley joining the firm of Thorogood, typefounders in Fann Street, and that when Thorogood retired, Besley was the head of the company. This appears to have included Robert Besley using his name for the company.
The following advert from 1865, shows that the firm was now Robert Besley & Co, still operating at the Fann Street Foundry:
Robert Besley appears to have retired from the business in 1861, but as can be seen from the above 1865 advert, the company was still using his name.
It had been taken over by Charles Reed and Benjamin Fox, which is confirmed by a listing in the Bookseller, covering the companies involved in aspects of book production and publishing who were exhibiting at the International Exhibition of 1862, held in South Kensington, where:
“In type-founding we have Besley and Co.’s Type Casting Machine, exhibited by Messrs. Charles Reed and Benj, Fox, the present proprietors of the Fann Street Letter Foundry”.
Fann Street is just north of the Barbican estate, and south of the Golden Lane estate, running between Aldersgate Street and Golden Lane.
The 1895 Post Office Directory lists the firm of Sir Charles Reed & Sons Ltd, typefounders, at 2,4 and 6 Fann Street. This is the large building marked with the red arrow in the following extract from the 1890s OS map:
In the following photo taken close to the plaque, on the western side of Aldersgate Street, I am looking across to the Barbican. The tower in the foreground is Blake Tower, and this tower is on the site of what was the Fann Street Foundry:
One of Robert Besley’s achievements when he worked at and ran the Fann Street Foundry was the creation of a new typeface, an English slab-serif typeface called Clarendon after the Clarendon Press in Oxford.
The typeface was patented by Besley, however at the time, this type of patent only lasted for three years, so Clarendon soon became widely used and copied by other foundries.
Examples of the Clarendon typeface are shown in the following image:
I cannot find too many references to uses of the Clarendon font today. After the patent expired, it was copied and variations of the typeface were produced, and it was used in many countries outside of the UK.
As well as the Fann Street Foundry, and being an Alderman and Lord Mayor, Robert Besley was also president of the British and Colonial Emigration Society.
This society aimed to “Help those who cannot help themselves”, and provided aid to help people in “seeking another sphere of labour”, in other words, emigrating to the British colonies who were in urgent need of labour.
One of these colonies was Canada, and on the 10th of June 1870, Mr. J. Donaldson, the Canadian Government Emigration Agent wrote to the British and Colonial Emigration Society, that:
“It affords me much pleasure in being able to state that all the emigrants who have arrived up to this date had work found for them without delay, and that the demand for labour instead of diminishing absolutely increases. Farmers return home from this agency, day after day, unable to secure the hands they require. They are offering from 16 to 20 dollars a month for good hands, with board and lodging. Our railway contractors are paying upwards of 1 1/4 dollars a day (5s sterling), and cannot obtain anything like the number of men in which they stand in need. This is a good rate of wages considering that board and lodging can be had from 8s to 10s a week.
We could readily find employment for 3,000 or 4,000 more earth labourers and we shall be glad indeed if you can devise means to send us that number of more. Toronto is growing rapidly; in fact there is not a street of the city in which you will not find buildings in course of erection.
The prospect before the Dominion is a bright and happy one, and when the means of communication. now in course of construction, are fully opened up to Manitoba and the Far West we shall be in a position to offer inducements to the surplus population and capital of England that cannot be excelled in any part of the world. We shall be enabled to offer British waste lands of exuberant richness to British people in unlimited quantities where taxation is at present unknown.”
The British and Colonial Emigration Society was one of the means with which the Empire was populated in the 19th century. Whilst there may well have been genuine opportunities, the description “surplus population and capital of England” where the population is bundled with financial capital as a resource is a rather depressing economic view of people who should not have been considered as “surplus”.
It would be interesting to know how many of today’s Canadians are descendants of those who were helped to emigrate by Robert Besley and the British and Colonial Emigration Society.
Robert Besley died in December 1876. Notices of his death provide some additional information regarding his life.
Before leaving Exeter for London, he had trained as a printer in his father’s business, so involvement in the print industry seems to have been a family profession as the Besley’s had been printers for “three generations at least”.
The mention in an earlier report to the contested election for Mayor of the City of London was because the outgoing mayor (Sir James Lawrence) did not “bow to custom and retire with good grace”, apparently James Lawrence “had a large appetite for honours and resolved to stand for re-election”.
Robert Besley’s wife had died before him, and they had no children.
Back to the plaque and the water fountain. There were in fact two water fountains, as the following from the London City Press on the 31st of July 1878 explains:
“The Aldersgate Drinking Fountains – Two drinking fountains are in course of erection – one on each side of Aldersgate Street, at the union with Goswell Road, and in addition to their ordinary useful purpose they serve to mark the City boundary.
These fountains are the gift of the late Mr. Alderman Besley. They are built with grey and other coloured granites, and present a substantial, handsome appearance. the inscription runs thus: ‘Presented to the Corporation of the City of London, in accordance with directions contained in the will of the late Robert Besley Esquire, Alderman of the Ward of Aldersgate and Lord Mayor of London 1869-70’. The fountains will be maintained by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.”
“Outdoor monuments of the City of London” provides some additional information regarding the fountains removal: “Aldersgate Boundary Marks – Stones or obelisks in conjunction with drinking fountains were set up in Aldersgate under the Will of Alderman Robert Besley in 1877. Their proposed removal to ‘Postmen’s Park’ in 1932 being opposed by the Ward members, but their removal was carried out in 1934 and a plaque was placed on the wall of 107 Aldersgate Street to mark the boundary.”
I suspect that the plaque was therefore a compromise for the removal of the fountains.
It would perhaps have been more relevant to his life to include his involvement with the Fann Street Foundry and his creation of the Clarendon Typeface on the plaque – perhaps there should be a new plaque on Blake Tower for the foundry and typeface.
Site of Bowyers’ Hall in the 16th Century
The plaque for Robert Besley and his fountains is at the north west corner of the Barbican estate. For the next plaque, I have walked to the southern end of the estate, and am in Monkwell Square, where if you look on the wall above the silver car on the right, there is another City of London plaque:
Which records that this was the site of Bowyers’ Hall in the 16th Century:
The first three letters of the name should help with the identification of the specific craft that the Bowyers represented as members of the Worshipful Company of Bowyers made the bow that was a key part of the English longbow, and which was used to great effect during the wars with the French in the 14th century.
The longbow was dependent on three crafts. Those who made the bow, string makers, and those who made the arrow.
The longbow makers and arrow makers had originally been part of the same trade, but the arrow makers, or fletchers, branched out to form their own company, the Worshipful Company of Fletchers.
If your last name is Bowyer or Fletcher, you may have had a longbow or an arrow maker in your family tree many centuries ago.
The longbow had a brief period where it established the predominance of the archer over the infantry or knights, but this would end with the growing use of gunpowder.
Archery was continued in the City of London under pressure of the Crown, and a final attempt to restore the Bowyers’ craft was made on the 25th of May 1621, when James I granted the Company of Bowyers’ their first charter of incorporation.
As with most of the City Company’s, their emphasis changed to being a charitable organisation, but still supporting the craft of bow making where possible.
The following extract from a 1720 ward map shows where the Bowyers’ Hall was located (red arrow), in a run of buildings that backed on to the old City wall:
The arms of the Bowyers’ were granted in 1488, and are shown in the following illustration from “The Armorial Bearings of the Guilds of London” by John Bromley (1960):
The motto of the Company shown at the top of the arms names the three major battles at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt during the hundred years war, when archers played a pivotal role.
At the top of the arms are three strung bows. Within the shield, there are three identical tools, each with a handle and teeth. These are “floats”, which were multi-bladed wood shaves, used by a Bowyer to shape the bow.
The stars are pierced mullets. The mullet originally referred to the spur, but was also used to represent a star.
In 1996, the arms were amended with the addition of two “supporters”, or figures on either side. One represents a medieval bowyer and the second figure is an archer at Agincourt.
The following image shows the Battle of Poitiers (1356), a battle named in the arms of the Bowyers, and from the period when English longbows were highly effective in battle. The English forces are on the left, and their archers are firing at several mounted knights, who appear to have turned round in retreat after the knights and their horses have been struck by arrows fired by the archers:
For this week’s post, I am back on the South Bank looking at the survivals of, and references to the Festival of Britain, 75 years after the festival started the transformation to the place we see today, starting with:
Festival of Britain 1951 – The Moment That Shaped South Bank
A couple of months ago I was asked by the South Bank Employers Group (SBEG) if I would be interested in working with them to create a series of posters for display across the South Bank as part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture and to mark the 75th anniversary of the landmark 1951 Festival of Britain.
I jumped at the opportunity as the South Bank is an area of the city in which I have long had an interest. I started my first London job on the South Bank in 1979, and it was then that I started looking at my father’s photos, taking the negatives of the photos he had taken of the area starting in 1947, to a local film processing studio to get the photos printed out.
I put together a story to be told across the posters, wrote the text, and provided some of my father’s photos.
The SBEG did all the graphic design, put together the overall layout of the posters, and sourced additional images from the National Archives.
They were installed just over a week ago, so if you walk along the South Bank, you will find three locations where there are a number of posters which tell the story of Festival of Britain 1951 – The Moment That Shaped South Bank.
Last week, we went up to take a look, and for me, it is wonderful to see my father’s photos on display, across the area he explored and photographed almost 80 years ago.
Starting at the South Bank end of Westminster Bridge are the first posters:
These provide a brief overview of the history of the area now known as the South Bank, and also tell the story of Eleanor Coade, and the Lion that stands at the end of Westminster Bridge, originally on the Lion Brewery which stood where the Royal Festival Hall is today:
The design of the posters by the SBEG is brilliant, and it is really good to see Britannia, the blue, red and white compass and the bunting of the festival symbol created by Abram Games back on the South Bank.
The following map shows the location of the posters:
In location 2, between the Jubilee Gardens and the London Eye:
Two more posters on the other side of the above:
Between the BFI and the National Theatre:
Looking towards Waterloo Bridge (on the right) and the National Theatre (on the left):
It was a privaledge to have been involved with the creation of these posters, but by far the best part was the chance to get my father’s photos on display, in the place he started exploring as an 18 year old with a Leica camera purchased from a soldier returning from Germany.
If you visit the South Bank over the summer, please do take a look.
The Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri – Waterloo Station
If you head to the upper level of Waterloo Station, there is a sculpture on the wall which has an unusual history. This is the Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri for the Festival of Britain:
Peter Laszlo Peri had an interesting life. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, on the 13th of June, 1899, and was part of a working class Jewish family. He was involved with art, sculpture, the theatre, architecture and travelled widely across Europe.
In 1932 he was in Berlin, and involved in an exhibition of works organised by the Association of German Revolutionary Visual artists. The works on display were removed by the police, and in 1933 the organisation was banned by the Nazi Party.
The organisation was affiliated with the German Communist Party, who Peri and his wife Mary were also involved with, as Mary was arrested in possession of Communist propaganda. Peri was also in trouble with the authorities as during a political demonstration he had punched a Gestapo officer.
The German Communist Party had also been banned in March 1933.
It was after these events that Peri decided that the only course of action was to leave Germany, and they made the move to England.
I cannot find out what happened to Peri’s wife, Mary. She was Mary Macnaghten, the granddaughter of Charles Booth, who is best known for the poverty maps of London. There is no mention of her after her arrest in all the sources I have found (see end of this section), and in 1965 Peri married the artist Heather Hall, so either Mary had died or they had divorced. This is probably down to my own limited time for research.
Peri initially lifted in a flat in Willow Road, Hampstead, and by 1937 he had found a permanent studio in which to work in Camden.
The studio was at 28b Camden Street, and in the early 1960s the whole area was scheduled for demolition, including Peri’s studios.
A documentary was made about the studios, featuring Peter Laszlo Peri by the documentary company Derrick Knight & Partners. It was shown by BBC2 in 1965, and BFI Replay have the documentary online.
It is a remarkable film because it features Peri, along with the other artists working in a small community of studios. It shows Peri’s work, and as well as the area around Camden Street in the early 1960s.
As usual, whenever I find something interesting when researching a post, it leads to exploring further, and I wanted to find out where Peri’s studio, along with the studios of the other artists featured in the film, were located.
In the following OS map extract, I have circled number 28b. The number is in the central garden featured in the film, and above and below the garden are numbered buildings, each of which was one of the studios featured in the film.
Camden Street is the unnamed street to the left, and College Place is to the right. Plender Street is the short length of street shown in the upper left corner:
The demolition of the studios, along with all the surrounding buildings, including the terrace houses seen in the background in parts of the film, which ran along College Place, was to clear space for the construction of new housing blocks.
The film shows that much of Peri’s work was in concrete, including his own special formulation which he called Pericrete, and this is the material used for the Sunbathers.
Whilst Peri was a long term user of this type of material, many of the other works created by different artists for the Festival of Britain were also made out of materials which were cheap to use and quick to create given the time and financial constraints of the festival.
The use of this type of material, rather than a material such as bronze, was, along with the speed with which the festival site was demolished, one of the reasons why very little sculpture and artwork on display at the Festival of Britain survived.
The Sunbathers was lost after the festival closed.
In 2016, Historic England launched a campaign to find lost public artwork, and the Sunbathers was rediscovered in the garden of the Clarendon Hotel in Blackheath.
Historic England launched a funding campaign to restore and display the Sunbathers.
The work was initially on display in the Royal Festival Hall, and in August 2020, it was put on display in Waterloo Station:
The PA photo agency have an image of the Sunbathers installed during the Festival of Britain, on the side of the Underground Station adjacent to the main Station Gate access point to the festival. Click here to view the photo on PA’s website.
Peri continued to work during the 1950s and 1960s, still using concrete, but also experimenting with Polyester resin.
Camden council rebuilt artists studios on the same site, and Peri did return. I am not sure if they are still there. There are buildings on the alignment of the old studios, with a green space in the middle. One building is occupied by an industrial design company. I am not sure what the other building is used for.
Peri did not have long in his new studio back in Camden, as he died in 1967.
Born in Budapest, escaped the Nazi’s in Berlin and lived just over 30 years in London, it is good that Peri’s work for the Festival of Britain is now on display at Waterloo Station, not that far from when it could be seen in 1951:
There is another reminder of the Festival of Britain in Waterloo Station:
The Lion and the Unicorn, Wetherspoon’s – Waterloo Station
Reader and guide Frank sent me an email about the Wetherspoon’s in Waterloo Station. I had not been down to this part of the station (the Sidings) for some time, so did not realise it was open. A visit was needed to see The Lion and the Unicorn:
The pub is named after the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion at the Festival of Britain.
The best description of the pavilion comes from the guide to the South Bank festival:
“The British People are something more than the sum of: men with ancestors, children in schools, families in homes and gardens, and patients in hospitals. They are, in addition, compositions of various particular habits, attitudes, instincts, qualities and characteristic moods. but these attributes, not being tangible, are hard to display ‘in the round’, in an exhibition of tangible things.
Nevertheless, we should not like visitors – particularly from overseas – to leave the South Bank without having seen, at least, some token and visible reminders of the British People’s native genius. So this Pavilion offers one or two clues to their character.
The title of the Pavilion – ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ – serves to symbolise two of the main qualities of the national character; on the one hand, realism and strength, on the other fantasy, independence and imagination.”
As well as the name, the pub includes a number of references to the 1951 pavilion as well as the festival in general
On the large screen close to the entrance is a rotating series of images, one of which is a photo of the overall Festival of Britain site on the South Bank:
The food menus have a photo of the Lion and the Unicorn from the festival, including a brief summary:
There is also some decoration in the same style as the decoration in the 1951 pavilion.
On the wall at the far end to the bar is an open bird cage, framed by a couple of photos, with birds flying from the open cage:
The photo on the right shows the bird cage and birds as they were presented in the 1951 Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion:
I did wonder whether the one in the Wetherspoon’s was an original from the festival (another find of a lost item, similar to the Sunbathers), so I emailed Wetherspoon’s to ask.
Rather surprisingly for a large company, the same day, my question was forwarded to the person responsible for their pub developments who replied that the bird cage was a replica.
The escaped birds flying from their cage:
The following postcard from 1951 shows the birds flying along the ceiling of the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion:
The plan from the Guide to the Festival of Britain on the South Bank showing the route and subjects covered in the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion:
The following postcard from the festival shows the entrance to the Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion. The rear of the Royal Festival Hall is in the background. The pavilion was along side what is now Concert Hall Approach (on the left of the pavilion) and on the site of the Whitehouse Gardens area, in front of the Whitehouse apartments (the old Shell downstream building):
The guide-book acknowledges the challenge of explaining the British Character. The closing paragraphs for the pavilion read:
If, on leaving this Pavilion, the visitor from overseas concludes that he is still not much the wiser about the British national character, it might console him to know that British people are themselves still very much in the dark about it. For them, the British character is as easy to identify, and as difficult to define, as a British nonsense rhyme.
The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn
All round the town.
Some gave them white bread
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
And sent them out of town.
I am not sure how much the average drinker in the Lion and the Unicorn will be aware of the story behind the name of the pub, and the bird cage and birds on the wall, however I believe that Wetherspoon’s are to be congratulated with their choice of name and decoration, and hopefully it will spread a bit more awareness of the Festival of Britain to a few of the drinkers in the Lion and the Unicorn.
The text over the image on the menu includes the words “only the Royal Festival Hall building now remains”, and I find it really strange that the Wetherspoon’s at Waterloo Station has more information on the Festival of Britain than the Royal Festival Hall.
The Royal Festival Hall did have a large celebration over the weekend that marked 75 years since the opening day, however walking in the RFH today, and there is nothing obvious about the Festival of Britain, and the Royal Festival Hall’s place in the festival.
The Royal Festival Hall did have a good exhibition area, along the side wall between the bar that faces the river, and the café at the back. This included the following wonderful model of the festival site:
The exhibition and the model disappeared a couple of years ago, with the area now occupied by what looks like a corporate hot desk space.
There is also an archive area to the rear of the building, but this always appears to be closed, and whilst there is window and display space, there is little on display.
A real shame as the Royal Festival Hall was built by the London County Council for the Festival of Britain, and for the long term. It was the first large public building constructed after the war, and is a really wonderful building.
It would be great to see the Royal Festival Hall putting more of its history back on public display.
For my last connection with the Festival of Britain, I am staying on the South Bank for:
Siegfried Charoux’s Motorcyclist sculpture – Southbank Place
This is Siegfried Charoux’s sculpture of a Motorcyclist. It can be found between the new buildings that occupy the space where the Shell Centre office blocks once stood. It is close to Chicheley Street which runs from York Road to Belvedere Road:
The Motorcyclist was created by Siegfried Charoux and installed in 1962 in front of the recently completed Shell downstream building, and by a strange coincidence given one of the other topics in this week’s post, roughly where the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion was located during the Festival of Britain.
It was installed at its new location in 2019:
The Motorcyclist therefore has no direct connection with the Festival of Britain, however the creator of the work, Siegfried Charoux, does.
Siegfried Charoux was born in Vienna in 1896, and served in the First World War with the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was invalided out of the army in 1917 after being wounded.
A cartoonist and sculptor, he moved to England in 1935 because of the threat from the Nazi’s who disapproved of his left wing views, and who had destroyed one of his works which displayed a sympathetic view of a Jewish figure. He was able to stay in the country as he had the support of the Tate Gallery Director James Bolivar Manson, who sponsored his Home Office application.
He became a naturalised British citizen in 1946, and continued working as a sculptor.
One of his commissions was a work for the Festival of Britain.
The following is a view of the South Bank festival site from the north bank of the river. The Skylon is on the left and the Dome of Discovery can be seen in the background where Jubilee Gardens are today.
Look in front of the Dome of Discovery, just to the right of the flags on the boat and there is a large sculpture facing the river:
This is the Islanders by Siegfried Charoux:
The Islanders was part of the Sea and Ships Pavilion, and intended to portray the struggle and resilience of the British people in their relationship with the seas that surround the country.
The scale of the work is hard to get from the above photo. The earlier photo shows how clearly it was visible from across the river, and if you had stood next to the sculpture in the above photo, your head would have been level with the feet of the three characters. It was truly colossal.
The Islanders was made out of concrete, and was destroyed as part of the demolition of the Festival of Britain site,
Charoux also created another work that was on the South Bank. This was “The Cellist”, which was on display outside the Royal Festival Hall. It was later moved to Kenwood House where it was on temporary display. I have not been able to find any record of where it is now, and do not recall seeing the work on previous visits to Kenwood House.
Charoux created an extensive collection of works and exhibited annually at the Royal Academy between 1940 and 1974.
He died in Hendon on the 26th of April 1967, and his remains were returned to Austria where he was buried in Vienna’s Central Cemetery.
So although the Islanders was destroyed after the closure of the Festival of Britain, Charoux still has a work on display at the South Bank, not far from the original site of the Islanders.
It is part of what fascinates me with the history of London. All the networks of connections you can build between the city of today, and the people and events of the city of the past, including for Peri and Charoux, events in Europe which resulted in their works being part of the Festival of Britain, and works which can still be seen today.
And if you get the opportunity to visit the South Bank, take a look at the posters spread across the three sites.
Chiswell Street runs from Beech Street (which passes under part of the Barbican estate) to Finsbury Square.
It is an old street. Harben states in “A Dictionary of London” that the first mention of the street was between 1217 and 1243, when the name Chysel Strate was in use.
By the time of Rocque’s map of 1746, the name Chiswell Street was in use, and in the following extract, Chiswell Street can be seen running from White Cross Street on the left, to Finsbury and the open space of Moor Fields on the right:
In a few years after the above map was published, the western part of Chiswell Street would change significantly, and the small courts to the south of the street, including Swan Court and Boar Head Court would be lost under a major development – the Whitbread Brewery.
Samuel Whitbread was born in Cardington, Bedfordshire in 1720, and in 1736 he was in London and apprenticed to John Wightman who was the master of the Brewers Company.
By 1742, Whitbread was in partnership with Godfrey and Thomas Shewell, who ran the Goat Brewery, on the corner of Upper White Cross Street and Old Street.
In 1748, Whitbread and the Shewell’s purchased the King’s Head Brewhouse, which was on the southern side of Chiswell Street, and we can see the location of this business by looking in more detail at Rocque’s map:
The site of the King’s Head Brewhouse was soon cleared, and by 1750 the new brewery had been built, designed for the mass production of Porter – a beer which used brown malt and was very dark in appearance. The name is believed to have come from the popularity of the drink with porters (see my post on the Ticket Porter in Arthur Street).
Porter was also being marketed as a more healthy alternative to the cheap gin that was easily available and very popular during the first half of the 18th century, a drink that was causing considerable problems and large numbers of deaths across the city.
Hogarth’s prints of Beer Street and Gin Lane (1751) contrasted the benefits of drinking beer with the evil of gin drinking:
From 1750, the brewery gradually expanded as the business grew. There was a fire at the brewery in 1773 which destroyed the Porter Tun storage room (fires were a frequent occurrence across the city), and a new storage area was then built, which included large vaults below ground.
By 1761, Samuel Whitbread was the sole owner of the business, having brought out the share of the business held by the Shewell family.
This is the view looking east along Chiswell Street, from the junction with White Cross Street in the above map:
The Jugged Hare pub on the corner of Chiswell and Silk Streets is one of a pair of pubs that once stood at the western and eastern ends of Whitbread’s brewery on Chiswell Street. It is Grade II listed and dates from the late 19th century.
The eastern end of the street was badly bombed during the last war, and there was some bomb damage to the western end, however not as bad as the area now occupied by the Barbican and Golden Lane estates, and if you look in the opposite direction to the above photo, this is Beech Street, running through the Barbican – not a pre-war building in sight:
The following extract from the late 19th century OS map shows Chiswell Street, where I have marked some key features explored in today’s post (the red oval is around the Jugged Hare pub, photographed above):
The red arrow is pointing to the main entrance from Chiswell Street to the Whitbread Brewery, which occupied a large plot of land running south to Silk Street.
The green arrow is pointing to the courtyard in front of the Whitbread Brewery buildings on the northern side of Chiswell Street.
The blue arrow and the circles are around other features to be explored in the post.
This is the view of the western end of Chiswell Street, with the southern side occupied by the buildings of the old Whitbread Brewery:
These buildings are all Grade II listed, and according to the Historic England listing record date from the later half of the 19th century.
The main entrance from Chiswell Street into the brewery complex on the southern side of the street (red arrow in the OS map earlier in the post):
Throughout the later half of the 18th century, the brewery was expanding, both in terms of the area occupied as well as the technology used in the brewing process, which included the installation of a Boulton and Watt steam engine in 1785.
The scale and reputation of the brewery was such that the site hosted a royal visit, as recorded on a plaque on the buildings in Chiswell Street:
The visit was reported in numerous newspapers, and the following is one of the syndicated reports which gives a good idea of the scale of the brewery, as well as a bit of royal mansplaining, why you needed to provide two banquets for a royal visit, and how much such a visit would cost:
“Royal Visit to Mr. Whitbread’s Brewery. Saturday their Majesties, with the three Princesses, attended by the Duke of Montague, Lord Ailesbury, Lord Denbigh, Duchess of Ancaster, and Lady Harcourt, went to see Mr. Whitbread’s brewery in Chiswell-street. They arrived at a quarter before ten, and were received at the door by Mr. and Miss Whitbread; and politely declining the breakfast provided, immediately went over the works, which took up two hours.
The steam engine, lately erected by the Birmingham Bolton, and first applied by Mr. Whitbread to the purposes of the brewery, took up above half an hour. His Majesty, scientifically explained to the Queen and the Princesses the leading movements in the machinery. In the great store there were 3007 barrels of beer.
The stone cistern raised such wonder, that the Queen and Princesses would go into it, though through a small hole, with much difficulty and some disorder. The sight rewarded them; for the vessel is of such magnitude, as to hold 4000 barrels of beer. The great vessel at Heidelberg is nothing to it.
There were 200 men and 80 horses all in their places; the horse keeper, yielding to the harmless vanity of office, said, he would show his Majesty ‘the highest horse among his subjects’; and his Majesty kindly gave the man his way, was shown a horse 17 hands and 3 inches high.
The Cooperage was looked at from an adjoining room; and it was at this window, looking into the street, that the people without, who by this time had gathered into a great crowd, first seeing the King, gave breadth to their loyalty, and repeatedly huzzard. The Queen, whose worth, were it her sensibility alone, would be beyond our praise, paid the people with a tear! And then, tenderly turning to felicitate the King on the contentment of their people, took her daughters by the hand, and led them to the window. If the day could give emotions of more kindly energy than Mr. Whitbread’s – the rapture of this moment must be the object of envy.
In all that related to the brewery, and the passages through them – all that was necessary, was done; but, very properly, nothing more. Matting covered the way that was dirty, lamps lighted what would have been dark.
When everything was seen, the walk ended in the house. Their Majesties were led to a cold collation, as magnificent as affluence and arrangement could make it. The whole service was plate. there was every wine in the world; and there was also some fine PORTER. The Duchess of Ancaster and Lady Harcourt, sat at the table as well as the Princesses; but the Duke of Montague and Lord Ailesbury, finding in another room a second banquet, scarcely less sumptuous than the former – prepared for their attendants, had there been any – very heartily boarded there.
This being done, it became two o’clock; when the King and Queen, not more completely satisfied with the wonder of the works, than the good sense and elegance with which they had been shown, took leave of Mr. Whitbread and his daughter, and returned to Buckingham House.
It is supposed the preparations on the above occasion cost £1,500. The draymen and all the domestics were new clothed.”
I am sure that Samuel Whitbread was pleased with the expense of hosting the royal visit, as it must have given Whitbread a considerable amount of publicity, and some royal approval for his beers.
Samuel Whitbread (the print is dated 1797, a year after his death, but comparing with prints of his son, also Samuel, I am sure this is the Samuel Whitbread that founded the brewery):
As well as running the brewery, Samuel Whitbread was also an MP. His initial public service was as High Sheriff for Hertfordshire between 1767 and 1768, when he was elected as MP for Bedford.
He appears to have been active as an MP. One of the causes that he supported was the abolition of the slave trade.
In 1788 he was Chair of a Common’s committee looking into the salve trade, and on April 2nd, 1792, during a debate on a petition calling for the abolition of the slave trade, Whitbread was reported as being “upon his legs three hours and a quarter. He was uncommonly eloquent and animated”.
The motion was passed with a majority of 145, only after the word “gradual” was added to the call for the abolition of the slave trade.
There are also references to Whitbread donating sums of money to institutions and charitable causes in both London and Bedford. The following is from the Kentish Gazette on the 1st of July 1788:
“Samuel Whitbread, Esq. the Member for Bedford, and we may add the first brewer in the world, has lately given to the Governor and Trustees of St. Luke’s Hospital for lunatics, a rent charge on his brewery of one hundred pounds a year for ever, for the use of the hospital. A donation of this extent, and during the life time of the donor, does honour to the feelings of the individual, at the same that it adds to the pride of British commerce.”
The reference in the article to the “first brewer in the world” was probably down to the ever increasing size of the brewery business, and by 1796, the Whitbread business in Chiswell Street brewed over 200,000 barrels, which was reported as being a first for any brewery in the world.
Whitbread’s ambition, both in brewing and as an MP can be seen in his reaction to his loss of an election in Bedford in 1774, when he came third of four:
“The two first were declared duly elected. This defeat of the ministerial candidates greatly enraged Mr. Whitbread (Porter Brewer of London) and his mob, who that evening committed several outrages on the Mayor and Corporation, both as to their persons and their houses; the windows of which, and also of the Town Hall, were entirely destroyed. Mr. Whitbread also during the poll behaved in a very arrogant and insolent manner to the Mayor, and the voters against him; he likewise treated his opponents with ill manners.
Mr. Whitbread proposes making application to the House for an alteration to the return upon two points. The first is to set aside the voters of the honorary freemen who were made in the year 1769 and 70. The second is, to establish the votes of those who receive alms as good, which the Mayor rejected. In neither of these points we apprehend Mr. Whitbread can avail himself, it being already decided by the House of Commons, who are the legal electors for that town, as appears in the following extract from the Journals – Resolved. That the right of electing Burgesses to serve Parliament for the borough of Bedford is on the Burgesses, freemen and Inhabitants, being householders, not receiving alms.”
After this loss, he seems to have made it back to Parliament as the MP for Bedford in 1775, the following year to the above report.
Despite these political problems, the brewery was continually expanding and improving. A new Porter Tun store room was completed in 1784. It is now Grade II listed and survives as a conference and event space, and brewery buildings had also expanded to cover land on the northern side of Chiswell Street.
The following print dates from 1792 and shows “A view from the east-end of the brewery Chiswell Street”:
The expansion to the northern side of Chiswell Street can still be seen, although the buildings date from 1870, having been through several alterations and reconstructions:
The exception to the 1870 date is the terrace of houses on the left (also the blue arrow in the above OS map). These date from 1774 and are Grade II listed. There is a plaque on the terrace detailing their history. The terrace is Grade II listed:
The brewery buildings on the northern side of Chiswell Street now go by the name of Sundial Court:
Despite being the last rebuild and dating from 1870, the buildings around the yard are all Grade II listed:
The name of Sundial Court comes from a feature on the building at the far end of the yard:
Along the top of the Sundial is a similiar listing of dates as on the plaque on the terrace houses, just slightly different years: “Built 1753, Burnt 1773, Rebuilt 1774”.
Between the gnomon (the blade of the sundial that causes the shadow) are the words “Such is Life”, a rather pessimistic view that may be referring to the fire and rebuild in the series of dates above.
Wording at the bottom of the Sundial reads “The buildings from Chiswell Street to the Hop Loft with Vaults and Brewer’s House. Re-erected 1862. W & Co.”. A slightly earlier date to the Historic England listing, and a description which helps explain the function of some of these buildings.
At the eastern end of the brewery buildings in Chiswell Street is a former pub (green circle in the earlier OS map). This is now the Chiswell Street Dining Rooms, but was originally the St Paul’s Tavern Public House. Grade II listed and dating from mid to late 18th century, with mid to late 19th century public house frontage:
The pub sits on the corner of Chiswell Street and Milton Street, and we can see the brewery buildings extending down Milton Street:
fIn the above photo, there is an arched entrance to the interior of the complex, and as shown in the following photo, it is one of those example where it is difficult to know what is original and what is not. The brickwork around the arch looks very different to the rest of the building. I suspect this was down to conversion of the site from brewery to conference centre.
Samuel Whitbread died on the 11th of June 1796, aged 76 at his estate of Bedwell Park in Hertfordshire. There were brief obituaries in the papers, such as:
“By the death of Mr. Whitbread, the poor will lose a most valuable friend. Acts of charity and benevolence everywhere marked the traces of this worthy man, and will render his memory dear to hundreds who have partaken of his liberality. Mr. Whitbread, for some months previous to his dissolution, had been bending under the accumulated load of age and infirmity.”
He died a very wealthy man.
He left all his freehold estates and the brewery business to his son, also called Samuel, excpt for a small part which he left to his daughter.
He left £5,000 to his son in law and each of his nephews. To his three head clerks in the brewery business he left £500 each, along with £500 to his private clerk, and £100 to his butler.
To every servant and employee he left a sum ranging from £100 to £10, and he left £10 to old servants and widows of servants.
He left £15,000 to several hospitals, including St. Bartholomew’s, Bethlem, St. George’s Small Pox and St. Luke’s. To two charity schools in the parish of St. Luke’s he left £500 each.
He left further sums for various institutions and causes in Bedford.
His son, also Samuel, seems to have initially intended to sell the brewery, as there were newspaper reports that he was looking for a sum of £500,000, however the business stayed in the Whitbread family.
When the company became a limited liability company and sold shares, Whitbread’s continued as Chairmen, with the last family member being Sir Samuel Charles Whitbread who stepped down as Chair in 1992 and left the Board in 2001.
Brewing in Chiswell Street ended in 1976, and to the south, two acres of brewery buildings along Silk Street were demolished to be replaced with offices.
The brewery buildings that remain are now a conference and events venue.
The Whitbread company have gradually sold off all their brewing and pubs businesses, and now focus on hotels as they own the Premier Inn brand.
As well as the old Whitbread brewery, Chiswell Street also has a lovely pair of Victorian wall mounted letter boxes, which continue to be in use:
And opposite the brewery buildings is this building:
The more you look at the above building the stranger it seems, and a walk to the side reveals why. Just the street facing façade has been retained and a new building stands behind:
It must be strange living in the street side of the building as you are looking out at the rear of the old façade. It is an interesting discussion as to whether there is value in keeping just the façade. The original building looks to be a typical late 19th / early 20th century building occupied by either offices, a small factory or a warehouse (I need to check some street directories).
It may have been better to either retain and convert the whole of the original building, or to replace by a new building that has some architectural merit.
In the OS map shown earlier in the post, there is a blue oval around a Public House shown in this location, at the junction of Chiswell Street and Lamb’s Passage. The pub seems to have had a narrow side facing onto Chiswell Street, and a longer side along Lamb’s Passage, however it is long gone.
Whilst the building on the southern side of Chiswell Street retains the name the Brewery for the events and conference centre that occupies the site today, the name of the company’s founder, Samuel Whitbread, and the surname that would be associated with the brewery until its closure in 1976, is not that obvious. It is on the plaque recording the royal visit in 1787, and on the plaque recording the fire and rebuild dates of the terrace on the north side, but no where else. There is no blue plaque or any other form of plaque, or sign displaying the history of the buildings.
The buildings are listed, which helps with their preservation, but it would be good to have some signage so those walking along Chiswell Street have the opportunity to learn more about some of the buildings that line the city’s streets.
Last Tuesday, the 26th of May, was the 120th anniversary of the opening of Vauxhall Bridge. If you had attended the official ceremony in 1906, you may have received a copy of the London County Council booklet recording the event:
Inside was an overview of the Order of Proceedings, which included members of the London County Council travelling in carriages from County Hall to the new bridge:
Along with a Programme of Music, which the Battersea Borough Prize Band played from an enclosure on the eastern side of the Westminster end of the bridge:
The bridge that was being opened in 1906 was not the first Vauxhall Bridge, the original had opened in 1816 as part of an explosion of bridge building, starting with Putney Bridge in 1729 through to Tower Bridge in 1894, a period when 21 bridges were built or rebuilt to support the equally explosive increase in population, homes and industry on both sides of the river, and to provide an easy method of crossing the Thames.
On March the 6th, 1806, a petition was presented to Parliament by the parishes on the Surrey and Middlesex sides of the river, in favour of a bridge over the Thames, at or near the Vauxhall turnpike, along with the construction of new connecting roads.
The petition stated that the need for a bridge was because of the “great increase in buildings, population and commerce in the said districts, and their lack of communication with the western parts of the Metropolis, other than by the circuitous route over Westminster or Battersea Bridges; and the advantages anticipated are a great accommodation to the persons residing in the neighbourhood of the places above mentioned, likewise an additional convenience to the commercial part of the community by opening a more extensive connection with the counties of Middlesex and Surrey”.
The 1806 petition did not make any progress. A second petition was made in 1807, and on the 13th of March 1807, the House of Commons gave permission for a Bill to be brought before Parliament, however petitions against a new bridge at Vauxhall were raised by the proprietors of Battersea Bridge and the inhabitants and landed proprietors of Chelsea and Battersea.
This was in the days when many bridges were privately owned and charged a toll, which is why the owners of Battersea Bridge were objecting as another bridge could have resulted in a reduction in their income.
In 1808, the Bill for a bridge at Vauxhall passed its Second Reading, but was not returned by the House of Lords.
Finally in 1809, an Act was passed allowing for building “a bridge across the Thames from the bank or shore thereof at or near a certain place on the south side of the said river called Cumberland Gardens, neare Vauxhall Turnpike, to the opposite shore called Millbank”.
John Rennie was appointed as the engineer to the bridge, and the first stone was laid on the 9th of May 1811. The stone laying ceremony included the deposit with the foundation stone of different British coins of the year and a silver plate. Apparently these were recovered when the first bridge was demolished in 1899 and were stored with the London County Council’s records. I have had a brief search but cannot find out what happened to these objects.
After construction began, the original Rennie design was found to be too expensive to complete. He offered a second, cheaper design, but this was also viewed as too expensive, so a deign from Samuel Bentham was commissioned. On review, Bentham’s solution was considered to have design issues, so the engineer James Walker was asked to complete a fourth design, which was the design used for the first Vauxhall bridge.
The land surrounding the first Vauxhall Bridge was very different to when the second bridge was completed.
The following map from the LCC booklet shows the stretch of river and surrounding land of Vauxhall and Millbank:
On the Lambeth side of the bridge, the approach was marked by Marble Hall, the smallest of the three pleasure gardens in the immediate vicinity of the Vauxhall Turnpike (red arrow). Cumberland Gardens (green arrow) occupied a site a little to the south of the bridge, while the largest and most celebrated of the three pleasure gardens was Vauxhall Gardsens, originally called Spring Gardens (blue arrow).
The Westminster side of the river was described as “quite open and as rural as could be found anywhere”.
The intention was to name the bridge Regent’s Bridge, in honour Prince Regent, who had shown a considerable interest in the bridge, however by the time the bridge was completed, it had taken on the name Vauxhall Bridge.
The original Vauxhall Bridge was the first iron bridge to be built over the Thames. It was 809 feet long and 36 feet wide, and was formed of nine arches, each with a span of 78 feet and 6 inches. The total cost, including construction of the approach roads, compensation to land owners etc, was £296,998.
The first Vauxhall Bridge was completed at private expense for private profit, so a toll was charged for use of the bridge.
In the first full year of operation, the bridge generated £4,977 in tolls, and despite later reduction of tolls and the construction of additional bridges, by 1877, tolls generated by Vauxhall Bridge amounted to £62,392.
Tolls were a common means to finance bridge construction and maintenance, and during the time of the first Vauxhall Bridge, the only bridge above Blackfriars Bridge in what was the County of London (prior to the 1960s expansion) that did not collect tolls was Westminster Bridge.
It was the 1877 Metropolis Toll Bridges Act that provided for the Metropolitan Board of Works to purchase the interests of the private companies, and of H.M. Office of Works in the following bridges: Waterloo, Lambeth, Vauxhall, Chelsea, Albert, Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Hammersmith and the bridge over Deptford Creek.
After the purchase of the bridges by the Metropolitan Board of Works, the tolls were removed and the bridges were free to use.
The LCC booklet includes a list of the bridges over the Thames up to 1906, including the date of opening, rebuilds, and the engineer responsible:
Image from the LCC booklet showing the Thames below Vauxhall Bridge around 1820, with the new bridge in the background:
And a print from a very rural Millbank in 1829, showing Vauxhall Bridge:
A photo from the LCC booklet showing the original Vauxhall Bridge:
Changes along the river, and the design and construction of the bridge, along with increases in traffic during the 19th century, all combined to justify the build of a new bridge.
The LCC booklet explains:
“The scour of the river due to the high velocity of the current had, however, tended to expose the foundations of the bridge, and this had been met by depositing material from time to time around the foundations. The velocity of the current had probably been increased by the removal of old London Bridge in 1831, and of old Westminster bridge about thirty years later, but it was in the first place due to the obstruction caused by the numerous and thick piers of the bridge.
Besides having a dangerous effect on the safety of the bridge, the strength of the tide was a considerable impediment to traffic, which was also hindered by the narrowness of the arches. Powers were obtained to remove two of the central piers, thus converting three arches into one. The estimated cost of this was £40,9099. These powers were allowed to lapse.
In the meantime the effects caused by the scour of the river continued, and in November 1887, it was thought advisable to have the foundations of three of the central piers examined by a diver. The result of the examination showed that the bottoms of the timber cradles upon which the piers were founded were in several places 4 or 5 inches above the level of the clay bed of the river adjoining them, and in the case of the third pier from the Middlesex side of the bridge the clay was found to have been scoured away from beneath the cradle 5 or 6 inches inwards from its outer edge. This was arrested by laying bags filled with cement along the outer edges of the cradle, and by depositing 6500 tons of slag around the piers.
In 1887 it was found that these protective measures were in turn washed away.
Moreover, the small width of the bridge and the heavy gradients of its approaches combined to render the structure inadequate to cope with the growing demands of road traffic. This traffic had recently much increased, being assisted by the enlargement and alterations at Vauxhall Station, and the weak condition of Lambeth bridge. During the week ended 11th July 1891, 34,915 vehicles had crossed the bridge, as compared with 22,232 vehicles in the week ended 12th June, 1879.”
The Bridges Committee of the LCC decided that there was a strong case for a new bridge. At the same time, there was an issue with Lambeth Bridge, but the committee decided that Vauxhall should be the first bridge to be rebuilt.
The cost was estimated at £484,000, and Parliament authorised the London County Council (Vauxhall Bridge) Act of 1895.
Before demolition of the existing bridge, a temporary wooden bridge was built between the western end of the Albert Embankment and Millbank.
The first phase of work consisted of demolition of the old bridge followed by construction of the new piers. This work was completed in November 1903.
Whilst the first phase was underway, plans for the superstructure were prepared, and the work on this phase of the bridge commenced on the 1st of January 1904.
The new bridge was designed and construction supervised by Maurice Fitzmaurice, the London County Council’s chief engineer, assisted by the council’s architect, W.E. Riley.
The following photo from the booklet shows the new Vauxhall Bridge. Comparing with the above photo of the first bridge shows much larger piers and wider arches:
The reduction in the number of piers and increased distance between the piers was key for traffic on the river.
With the original bridge, the narrowness of the arches, and the eight piers reduced the space for the river to flow under the bridge and resulted in the tide running up to a velocity of 7 miles an hour, which caused problems with the handling of vessels as they passed under the bridge.
There had also been a considerable increase in the number of vessels passing under the bridge due to the increase in the number of riverside factories and workshops along the upper reaches of the river, and in 1894, an average of 391 vessels were passing under the bridge every twenty four hours.
The roadway over the new bridge was also wider, and the approach to the bridge had a smoother gradient, making it easier for traffic and pedestrians to cross the bridge.
The key features of the new Vauxhall Bridge were;
Total length across the river between abutments is 759 feet 4 inches
Total waterway of 699 feet 4 inches
The central span is 149 feet 7 inches wide, with a head of 20 feet above high water
The width of the bridge between parapets is 80 feet, divided into a carriageway 50 feet wide and two footways of 15 feet in width each
The abutments are formed of concrete faced with granite
The upper portion of the masonry is treated differently on the two abutments, the Westminster one having, above the roadway level, two massive blocks of granite masonry on either side, destined probably to server as the bases of lofty piers or groups of statuary. These measure 20 feet in length by 10 feet 8 inches in width
The Lambeth abutment has similar piers, but behind the downstream one is an open balustrade and a flight of steps giving access to the foreshore.
The upstream side is a plain granite parapet wall, which is continued for some distance along the approach to the bridge. Construction of this abutment involved division of the two large storm relief sewers known as the Clapham and Effra sewers
As mentioned in the above list, the original intention for the large blocks of granite masonry on the abutments of the bridge was for either some pylons of statues. The following newspaper report explains why the pylons were not part of the finished bridge:
“An attempt has been made to introduce a Parisian feature in the ‘pylons’ which have never formed a part of a London bridge. These oblong pylons are carried high above the stone balustrades at the entrance of the bridge, and they are introduced not only to give dignity to the appearance, but also to lend additional strength to the structure. The design resembles in many ways the Alexander III Bridge across the Seine, where, however, the pylons are treated more ornamentally. But the bridges committee while accepting the design and being favourably impressed by the pylons have decided not to adopt them as they would entail the additional cost of £10,000, thus the design will go to the L.C.C. this week shorn of the pylons.”
So the approach to the bridge was built without any pylons or statues, and the large granite blocks on which these would have been placed can be seen to left and right of the following photo of the roadway of the new bridge when completed. They are still there today, and still without any decoration or structure on top:
This is the Alexander III Bridge across the Seine referred to in the above description. It had been built a couple of years before the new Vauxhall Bridge, so if the money had been available, Vauxhall Bridge could have had similar impressive structures towering on the abutments, above either side of the approach to the bridge:
So whilst the roadway over the bridge was devoid of any decoration, there is decoration along the outer sides of the bridge.
The London County Council’s architect, Mr. W.E. Riley advised on the decoratuion of each support by placing steel panels over the masonry, and the application of bronze figures of heroic size on both elevations.
These figures were then created by Mr. A. Drury and Mr. F.W. Pomeroy.
This is a view of the side of Vauxhall Bridge from a few years ago. Statues can be seen above each of the piers:
On the western, upstream side of the bridge are Pomeroy’s statues representing Agriculture, Architecture, Engineering and Pottery:
And on the eastern, downstream side of the bridge are Drury’s statues representing Science, Fine Arts, Local Government and Education:
As well as the statues along the side of the bridge, there was another unique feature to the new Vauxhall Bridge, as explained in the LCC booklet:
“In consequence of the narrowness of the old bridge, no line of tramway had been constructed over it, and thus a gap had been left between the lines running from Victoria down the Vauxhall Bridge Road and the tramway at Vauxhall Cross.
In view of the importance of such a line, it was decided to apply to Parliament for authority to construct it. In 1896 the London County Council (Vauxhall Bridge Tramways) Act was passed, and steps were taken to carry out the work concurrently with the formation of the carriageway of the bridge.
Vauxhall Bridge is thus the first bridge over the Thames in London to accommodate a tramway. It will be seen, on looking at the map, that with the completion of the tramway over Vauxhall Bridge, there is a tramway in a straight line from Victoria Station to Camberwell-green. The latter point is a centre where a number of tramways meet on the south side of the Thames. The new line will therefore be of great importance in connecting large areas of South London with the stations of the London and Brighton, South Eastern, and Metropolitan District Railways at Victoria and with the large omnibus traffic starting from that point.”
The last paragraphs highlights how building one bit of infrastructure can have a much wider benefit, and although the original tram network has disappeared from London’s streets, the interconnectivity of different transport methods, whether train, underground or bus, has long been key to London’s success as a city.
The story of the two Vauxhall bridges also shows that bridges, as with any infrastructure needs maintenance and eventual replacement.
To highlight the benefits of the new bridge, and how London is subject to continual change, I will end the post with the following from the Westminster Mail on the 12th of May, 1906:
“VAUXHALL BRIDGE ROAD TRAMS – Considerable interest was evinced on Wednesday evening in the experimental trips of an electric tram car over the recently completed Vauxhall Bridge-road track. The sight of a tram-car on the bridge was a decided novelty, and attracted crowds of spectators. A car usually running on the Waterloo and Clapham route was requisitioned for the purpose, and it is understood that everything worked smoothly and satisfactorily.
Residents and those having business in the neighbourhood are agreed as to the rapidity with which the work of the electrification of the track was carried out. And but for the fact that the large sewer at the junction of the road in Tachbrook-street required extensive alterations, the task would have been accomplished even more speedily.
The past 15 years have witnessed remarkable alterations in Vauxhall-bridge road. In the early nineties the tinkling bells of the old one-horse cars were a dreadful nuisance, not in the least mitigated by the fact that there were no conductors. When the LCC acquired the system they substituted the more up to date pair-horse cars, and, better still, abolished those tinkling bells.
Now we are on the eve of having electric cars, a still greater improvement. In other directions too, the thoroughfare has been improved, and several blocks of handsome flats have taken the place of small house property. Of good width, and well paved with wood, Vauxhall Bridge-road should speedily become a much more important locality than has been the case hitherto.”
