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Narrow Street – The Story of a Riverside Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

alondoninheritance.com

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

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

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

London House – The House with Two Plaques

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ingatestone Hall:

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

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

First Hall of the Parish Clerks’ Company

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glovers Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

alondoninheritance.com

An Apology

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

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

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

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

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

The site kept on going down.

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

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

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

So, I have no idea what caused the problems.

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

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

alondoninheritance.com

Essex Street Water Gate and Stairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

A look through the arch in 2025:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 1677 map shows some interesting comparisons and features:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very much, a lost landscape.

alondoninheritance.com

A Stoke Newington Church Street Ghost Sign

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I often get asked about resources to research and discover London’s history, so I plan to add a resources page to the blog / website, and to build up to that I am starting a monthly addition to a blog post covering one specific resource. This month it is the London Topographical Society, and is at the end of the post, but first, a visit to Stoke Newington Church Street, to find the site of a photo taken by my father, 40 years ago in 1985:

This is the building in 2025, with the same ghost sign on the front, along with a second on the side of the building, which seems to be advertising the Westminster Gazette and Criterion Matches, there may be something else there as well, but the signs shows how new advertisements resulted in the overpainting of earlier adverts:

The signage on the front of the building also shows evidence of earlier changes and additions, but looks much as it did 40 years ago:

The ladder at the ground floor shop was a nice bit of symmetry with the sign above, as it was being used by a sign writer to add the name of the business. Good that these are still done manually.

Walker Brothers (their name is top right on the front of the building) presumably had a shop in the building, selling and repairing fountain pens, including those made by Watermans (bottom right panel), who are still in business today.

Interesting that the word Fountain is abbreviated to Fount, presumably to get all the text on the sign at the right size to be seen.

There was very little to be found about the company, and they do not appear to have advertised, or been mentioned in the newspapers in the British Newspaper Archive.

The building is Grade II listed, and dates to early 18th century, indeed there are a number of listed buildings in Stoke Newington Church Street, which tells a story of the age of this street.

In the following map, Stoke Newington Church Street is the yellow road running left to right across the centre. Stoke Newington High Street, also known as the A10, is the road on the right running from bottom to top of the map. Abney Park Cemetery is the green space to the right, and Clissold Park is the green space to the left, so there is plenty of interest along this one street (map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

Much of this area is of 19th century and later development, so why is there an early 18th century house in Stoke Newington Church Street?

To answer that, we can look at Rocque’s 1746 map of London, and we can see the street running left to right across the centre, from what is now Stoke Newington High Street on the right, to Newington Common on the left, which is now part of Clissold Park. The small river running to the left, and around Newington Common was the New River, bringing water in from Hertfordshire to the New River Company reservoirs at north Clerkenwell:

The wavy line of another stream can be seen in the upper half of the map, crossing the road at Stamford Bridge (hence the name), and then flowing south, heading towards the River Lea.

This was the Hackney Brook, one of London’s many lost streams and rivers, and a stream that was covered up during the mid 19th century, effectively becoming part of the sewer network.

We can see that in 1746, there were houses lining the street, including the house with the Fountain Pen sign we see today, and these houses had gardens extending behind them, with the rest of the map being fields.

Newington Church Street is therefore a street with some history, an interesting walk, with a number of other ghost signs, but in this post I want to look at some of the buildings, and what could be classed as modern day ghost signs.

I am starting on the corner of Stoke Newington High Street and Stoke Newington Church Street, where we find the Three Crowns:

The pub’s website claims that a pub has been here since the 1600s, with an original name of Cock and Harp, changed to the Three Crowns to represent England, Scotland and Ireland for James 1.

How far back in the 1600s is unclear, however there was a building on the site in Rocque’s 1746 map, and it would be the logical location for a pub, on the junction with a major road leading out of London, and the only significant set of buildings between Hoxton to the south and Tottenham to the north.

Surprisingly, the pub, and its rather decorative Saloon Lounge are not listed:

Another ghost sign:

This sign is not old, rather it is part of the Stoke Newington Heritage Mural project, and the poem that makes up the words across the wall is by children of the William Pattern Primary School.

I mentioned that there were what might be classed as modern ghost signs along the street. The first of these is above the middle (light blue) shop in the following photo:

A clock, presumably paid for, supplied by BASF when Church Street Electronics (television and audio) occupied the shop. BASF still exist as a chemicals company, and back in the 1970s / 80s made and sold cassette tapes. I remember them as being one of the more expensive, but better quality cassette tapes, and which did not jam in my Sharp cassette player in the car:

A short distance along is Stoke Newington Fire Station, and on the lower right of the building is a sign:

Proudly proclaiming that this is the G.L.C. London Fire Brigade:

The G.L.C. or Greater London Council was dissolved in 1986, so this sign is at least 39 years old, and interesting to see its survival on an official and still working building. I wonder if the phone to the left still works? In the days before the mobile phone, if you saw a fire, you could run to your nearest fire station, and use the phone on the wall outside to contact the fire brigade.

I do not know whether it is correct to call the clock and the GLC sign, ghost signs, but there are interesting reminders of the continuous change across London’s streets. I hope they both survive for many years to come. There are many similar examples to find across the streets of London.

Another traditional painted ghost sign, above a Gail’s bakery – a shop that is often used as an indicator of gentrification:

One of the entrances to Abney Park Cemetery is on Stoke Newington Church Street – a cemetery that deserves at least a couple of posts to do it justice:

The Clarence on the corner of Stoke Newington Church Street and Bouverie Road:

Not as old as the Three Crowns, the pub has the date 1860 on the side, and the date would seem right as I cannot find any earlier records of the pub, and it was probably built as the streets north of Stoke Newington Church Street were being developed, providing an increasing population and customers for the pub.

One of the newspaper reports mentioning the Clarence in the years after it opened, dates from the 26th of August, 1876. It reports that Charles Howard, a teetotal Police Detective, amused himself for a few nights by watching the pub, and seeing four Police Constable drinking outside of the pub, one of them from a pewter pot.

Howard took out summonses against them for drinking an intoxicating drink whilst on duty, however the case was thrown out by the magistrate as it was impossible to prove whether the Constables were drinking alcohol, or water or ginger beer.

Charles Howard had to pay a guinea costs, and I bet he was not popular with his work colleagues.

Further along is this lovely red brick pub – the Red Lion:

There appears to have been a pub on the site since the end of the 17th century, however the pub we see today dates from the 1920, when Lordship Road alongside was widened.

I generally do not trust AI, but results can be interesting to follow up. When I Googled the Red Lion, Google’s AI summary included the following: “some accounts suggest its original name was “The Greene Dragon”.

I always try to get references from the time, or from books and journals rather than Google, but I searched the British Newspaper Archive for the Greene Dragon, and found the following from the 22nd of October, 1773:

On Wednesday Night as Mr. Smith, a Barbados Merchant in Winchester Street, was going in his chariot to his house in Tottenham, he was stopped by a single Highwayman, who demanded his Money, putting a pistol into the Carriage and threatening to shoot him on not complying with his demand. Mr. Smith, not delivering the Cash immediately, the Fellow snapped his Pistol, which missed fired; the Gentleman’s Footman then prepared to fire at the Highwayman, which the later perceiving, discharged another Pistol at him, but missed; the Servant then discharged a Blunderbuss, when one of the Balls went through the Highwayman’s Arm, and entered his Heart, upon which he dropped from his Horse, and expired immediately. Mr. Smith called at the Green Dragon, Newington, and desired that the Body might be fetched thither, till the Coroner can sit upon it.

Yesterday Afternoon the Coroner’s Inquest sat on the Body of the Highwayman who was shot, at the Green Dragon at Stoke Newington, and brought in their Verdict, killed by Mr. Smith’s Servant in defending himself.

The above Highwayman was lately Coachman to Heaton Wilkes, Esq; had a Letter of Recommendation to that Gentleman, and Advertisement for a Service, and but Sixpence in his Pockets.”

The attempted robbery must have taken place on Stoke Newington High Street as Mr. Smith was going in his “chariot” to his house in Tottenham.

If the Green Dragon was the original name for the Red Lion, then it is interesting to wonder why the body was not taken to the Three Crowns rather than the pub that was a distance along Stoke Newington Church Street.

I have no firm evidence that the Red Lion was the Green Dragon (one of the problems of the time available for a weekly post), but it is an interesting story of life in the area in the 18th century, and the story of a rather inept Highwayman.

One of the pleasures of walking London’s streets is finding unique shops such as Bridgewood & Neitzert, Violin Dealers, Makers & Repairers:

These two houses are interesting for a number of reasons:

They are set back from the street, there are no shops projecting from the ground floor towards the pavement, and there is a plaque about an earlier building on the site:

They are Grade II listed, and according to the listing information, were built in 1717 (so were on Rocque’s 1746 map earlier in the post – they must have looked out on a very different view of Stoke Newington when built), and if you look at the photo of the two houses, the listing states that they were each served by a “ two-storey wing housing coach house, kitchens and servants’ quarters”. These two kitchens and servants wings are the two storey buildings on each side of the main house, now with shops on the ground floor running up to the pavement.

These two houses did have shops on the ground floor, part of 19th century additions to houses that lined the busy street, and these two shops were removed in 1993, revealing the houses we see today, and as they would have been (along with many others on the street), when first built.

The story of these houses is one of the transformation of London’s streets as the city expanded. When they were built, Stoke Newington Church Street was a single street, houses along the street, with gardens to the rear, then fields.

As the area was built up during the 19th century, these once grand country houses changed to houses of multiple occupancy, and had shops built in the space between the ground floor and the street. This has always been a busy street, so the added footfall of having a shop in a rapidly expanding part of London, made the benefit of building a shop considerable.

Many of these shops survive across London, and indeed are interesting 19th century survivors, but it is good to see these two houses, with their shops removed to see what the street would have looked like for much of the 18th and early 19th century.

The two storey house next to the two large houses, again Grade II listed and 18th century, but with the addition of a 19th century shop:

John’s Garden Centre closed in 2017, and the site has remained empty since. If you look at the first floor, the windows have metal shutters, and there is a heavy metal support for the upper floor wall, so it looks as if there are some structural problems, which probably explains why it has been empty for so long.

Hopefully its listing should help ensure the building is preserved, although sometimes listed building are left to decay until the point of no, financially viable, repair.

Another closed store is the Haikksun Chinese Resturant:

You would not realise to look at the building today, but it is Grade II listed, along with the building on the left and the terrace to the right.

The building is mid 18th century, and again the ground floor shop was added in the 19th century. At least the old house looks in better condition to that behind John’s Garden Centre.

We then come to Stoke Newington Town Hall & Assembly Hall:

There is far more to be written about the evolution of the street, residents, Abney Park Cemetery, Hackney Brook and the surrounding area, but now I want to introduce a new feature to the blog, a first Sunday of the month feature on resources.

As I mentioned at the start of the post, I frequently get asked for recommendations to research many different aspects of London’s history, so this feature will cover societies, websites, books, mapping etc. etc. and I will eventually bring them together in a single Resources page.

For the first of this series, can I introduce you to the London Topographical Society:

Resources: The London Topographical Society

I will point out that for anything I feature, there is no commercial aspect or benefit for me. It is my choice of what is featured, and I get no benefit of any kind (this is important to me so readers know that whatever I feature and write about is my choice, and there is no external influence or financial benefit for anything across the blog). The only commercial element are my walks, and the money from these is used to fund the costs of the blog.

I have been a member of the London Topographical Society for several years, and they are a wonderful source of publications and information regarding the history and development of London.

Their 1900 prospectus included the following statement:

And that is what they basically still do today. There is an annual society publication for members – an incredibly well researched and comprehensive hardback book on an aspect of London’s history, as well as two newsletters a year, and this is why I am somewhat biased in featuring the society first, as I have just started writing for them, and I have an article in the May newsletter (again, no commercial benefit for me in any form):

The London Topographical Society have a comprehensive set of publications available to purchase (members get a 25% discount), as well as information on their website to help with researching London’s history.

The annual subscription is currently £20 a year, and I have no idea how they publish an annual book of such a depth of research and quality of publication, free to members, at this subscription level.

If you are interested in London’s history, joining the London Topographical Society is probably one of the best £20 you can spend.

Their website with details of the society and how to join is here:

https://londontopsoc.org/

The next resources addition to a post will be in the first post in July.

alondoniniheritance.com

Bell Watergate Stairs – Woolwich

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It has been some months since I last wrote about a set of Thames Stairs, so for today’s post, I am visiting another of these historic places that for many years connected the river with the land, and were once an essential part of life in London for very many people.

This is Bell Watergate Stairs, Woolwich:

Bell Watergate Stairs are listed in the Port of London Authority’s guide to Steps, Stairs and Landing Places on the Tidal Thames, although there is not much information provided, just the name, that they consist of stairs and a causeway, and that the concrete stairs and handrail are in poor condition. They are also confirmed as being in use.

Bell Watergate Stairs look in pretty good condition today, still with concrete stairs leading down to a causeway, with a handrail to the side. The causeway runs across a wider open space, and on the right is a sloping approach to the foreshore lined with stones, and along the upper part, there are wooden bars bolted to the stone surface to provide grip.

It was a very low tide on the day of my visit, leaving the causeway fully exposed, with green algae on the stairs, and along the side walls showing how far the water reaches:

The stairs are shown within the red oval in the following map, just north of Woolwich High Street, with a small street – Bell Water Gate – linking Woolwich High Street and the stairs. The jetty for the Woolwich Ferry is the feature on the left of the map  (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The stairs are shown on the 1897 revision of the OS map, where the feature looked then, much as it does today, with the stairs and causeway within a wider entry into the river. The South Pontoon of the Woolwich Ferry is on the left and on the right is a Steam Boat Pier, originally used by the two steam ferries of the Eastern Counties Railway, the “Kent” and the “Essex”, to link Woolwich with the new railway station across the river at North Woolwich:

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

If we then look at the same area, almost 60 years later, the following 1956 revision of the OS map shows Bell Watergate Stairs in the centre of the map. The old steam boat pier has been removed (there was a charge to use this cross river ferry, and it could not compete with the Woolwich Free Ferry).

If you look to the right of the above map, I have used a blue arrow to point out a similar feature to Bell Watergate Stairs, where there is an inlet to the Thames, with stairs leading up to land. Sixty years later, this feature had disappeared, with the expansion of the industrial premises along the river.

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

The street leading up to the stairs was not named on the 1897 map, but in the 1956 revision, it is named as Bell Water Gate (I have used the single word Watergate in the title of the post, as this aligns with the Port of London listing – not that this means that it is correct and most references use Bell Water Gate).

As I have mentioned when writing about other Thames stairs in previous posts, whilst the physical feature of a set of stairs is fascinating, they are also important as they provide small snapshots of history and individual events which can be tied to a specific place.

They can illuminate different aspects of life in London over the centuries.

In the past, the river was a far more a part of many Londoner’s lives than it is today. Whether for work, travel, or just for play and entertainment. On the day of my visit, the stairs were quiet, however this has not always been the case, as “E.T.” was complaining about to the Woolwich Gazette on the 9th of August, 1901, when the hot summer weather was causing problems at the stairs:

“RIVERSIDE BATHING. Sir, – Surely measures can be taken to prevent this disgusting practice which takes place daily during the summer months at Bell Water Gate, Woolwich. The place in question is situated in close proximity to factories where young girls are employed. The language used by the lads is of the vilest description, and should not for one moment be tolerated. I sincerely hope that the authorities this should apply to will see these few lines, and in the name of decency stop once and for all the nuisance complained of.”

All along the river, Thames Stairs were places where children would play. The following is an extract from one of my father’s photos of Wapping Old Stairs, taken in 1948, and shows some children at the bottom of the stairs, alongside the water:

For children, the river could be a very dangerous place, and there were numerous reports of drownings, as well as many rescues. The following is from the Daily Mirror on the 9th of August, 1933:

“BOY OF 12 RESCUES A CHILD – A heroic rescue was made by a boy of twelve, Terence McNulty of Woolwich High-street, at Bell Water Gate, Woolwich, last night.

While playing on the steps leading down to the Thames, Peggy Ramsey, aged six, of Borgard-road, Woolwich Dockyard, fell into the river. Seeing the girl in difficulties, Terence plunged in and brought her to the bank. The girl was taken to hospital.”

Another example was in September, 1916, when: “A gallant rescue from drowning was effected yesterday morning at Woolwich by the Rev. C.W. Hutchinson, priest in charge of St. Saviour’s Mission, Woolwich. It appears that Arthur South, 12, Paradise Place, Woolwich, was playing on the steps leading to the river at Bell Water Gate when, on reaching for a box which was floating by, he overbalanced and fell into the river, being carried away by the tide.

Attracted by the screams of his companions, Mr. Hutchinson, whose mission house is close to the spot, ran out, and seeing the boy about 50 yards away, dived into the water, fully dressed, and succeeded in rescuing him. The boy was little the worse for his immersion, and after being treated at the Mission House, was able to go home.”

The Mission House was one of the establishments that was in Bell Water Gate, the street running up to Woolwich High Street.

The source of the name of Bell Water Gate Stairs is difficult to confirm, but the street leading from the stairs was also called Bell Water Gate, and in the street there was a Bell Public House, which dated from at least 1655, so the name of the stairs may come from the pub, along with the existence of a parish gate at the stairs. Bell being a common name for a pub, I think it is safe to assume that the stars were named after the pub, rather than the pub being named after the stairs.

The following 1907 report is typical of some of the mentions of the Bell public house: “At the Woolwich Police Court on Friday, William John Leonard, of the Bell public house, Bell Water Gate, Woolwich, appeared on an adjourned summons which charged him with permitting his premises to be the habitual resort of prostitutes for a longer time than necessary to obtain reasonable refreshment.

For the defence it was urged that the licensee was totally unaware of the character of the women who used the house, and maintained that it would have only been fair had the police notified him and given him warning first.

In giving evidence, John William Leonard, brother of the defendant, swore that he did not know that women pointed out by the police were prostitutes.”

I suspect that William Leonard, the landlord of the Bell, did know who was in his pub.

Bell Watergate Stairs could well have also existed when in the 17th century, and the stairs were once the main landing point for traffic between the river and the town of Woolwich, and they are the last of this type of stairs to survive in Woolwich.

A very early form of the Uber Thames Clippers operated from Bell Watergate Stairs, as in 1845, adverts in the Kentish Independent were informing the people of Woolwich that “Fast and Splendid Boats of the Waterman’s Company leave at the Waterman’s Pier, Bell Water Gate, Woolwich, every hour and half hour”, running to and from Westminster.

The boats offered an extensive number of stops, to, and as they returned from Westminster, calling at the Adelphi, Temple, Blackfriars’s and City Pier, and at the Thames Tunnel and Limehouse.

The following print dates from 1922 and is by Edward Arthur Evacustes Phipson. The view is looking down the street Bell Water Gate, towards the stairs at the end of the street, with the river and North Woolwich in the distance:

Attribution and source: Edward Arthur Evacustes Phipson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The above view has been replaced today by a very short street from the stairs up to Woolwich High Street with the Waterfront Leisure Centre on the western side, and new blocks of flats on the eastern side.

The stairs from the river showing the new flats on the left and leisure centre to the right. The buildings behind the stairs are in Woolwich High Street:

One of the reasons for the reduction in use of the stairs, as well as the redundant steam boat pier, is the Woolwich Free Ferry, which can be seen from the end of the causeway leading from Bell Water Gate Stairs into the river:

Although the area is rapidly developing with new apartment buildings, and the leisure centre has been here for a number of years, the location of the stairs was for many years surrounded by industry.

As an example, in 1893, the wharf next to the stairs was to be sold at auction, and was described as “This old-established concern, comprising a most valuable Wharf on the Thames at Bell Water Gate, Woolwich, with frontage of 180 feet, steam crane, large hopper, overhead tramway, large stores holding 2,000 tons, offices stabling for 20 horses, workshops, spacious yard with two entrances, capital residence etc. horses, vans, carts, machines and all the suitable trade fittings as a going concern.” Everything you would have needed to continue the coal merchants business.

On the western side of the stairs, Woolwich Power Station was one of the major developments, and is the feature labelled as “Works” in the 1956 extract from the OS map earlier in the post.

The electricity infrastructure alongside the stairs was the subject of one of the strangest newspaper stories about Thames stairs, when in April 1949:

“EXPLOSION AND FIRE CAUSED BY CAT – A cat caused an explosion and slight fire when it short-circuited a 33,000 volt transformer in the London Electricity Board’s transformer station in Bell Water Gate, Woolwich, early today.

The cat, which was chasing a rat, was killed. The explosion set light to the transformer housing, but no one was injured and the fire was out within half-an-hour.”

Events at places such as Thames Stairs can reveal society’s approach to domestic abuse and how someone who had attempted suicide was treated as a criminal rather than someone in need of help. There are a number of examples of this at Bell Water Gate Stairs, with the following being typical:

“MARRIED MISERY AY PLUMSTEAD – WIFE’S ATTEMPTED SUICIDE. Alice White, 31, married, 14 Barnfield Road, Plumstead,, was again before Mr. Disney at Woolwich, on Monday, charged with attempted suicide in the Thames at Bell Water Gate, Woolwich. Police Constable Falla found her with her hat and coat off, about to jump into the water, and she said she would do it again when she got the chance, alleging that her husband was the cause of the trouble.

Frederick White, the husband, said that the prisoner did not drink much, but she was upset about her son, who was away in a sanatorium for tuberculosis. he had had no words with her on the day in question.

Prisoner: He threatened to pull everything off me if I went out. When I was out with my boy, his brother threatened to break every bone in my body. They have both beaten me.

Husband: When I have words with her it is over the beer.

Wife: It’s you who has the beer.

Magistrate: You must both keep away from the beer, and try to agree. I will bind you (the woman) over for twelve months, and your husband must be surety.”

The following photo is looking back towards the land from the end of the causeway. To the left can be seen a small part of the new apartment buildings. These are built on the site of a large council car park, which in turn occupied the site of Woolwich Power Station, which closed in 1978:

One of the more unusual feature of Bell Watergate Stairs, compared to other Thames stairs can be seen in the above photo, where to the left of the stairs, there is a slopping, paved area running between foreshore and land, and this sloping area has some horizontal wooden treads bolted into the ground.

These can be seen in detail in the following photo:

These were used as foot holds when pulling a boat out of, or lowering into the river.

They may also have been used to reduce the friction between the bottom of a boat and the surface, with the keel of the boat running across the wood, rather than the stone surface. The bolts holding the wood to the ground are recessed, so would not have damaged any craft being pulled across them.

The impact on wood of regular covering with water as the tide rises, followed by drying out as the tide recedes can be seen in the following photo, where the wooden treads end at roughly the tide mark, with the wooden treads below this level having rotted away, with only the metal bolts showing that they had continued down to the foreshore:

As with so many other Thames Stairs, they are rarely visited these days, and I doubt are used to get between the river and the land.

These are still dangerous places, the damp algae on the steps was extremely slippery on my visit, and the Thames tides would still easily pull someone out into the river.

They are though important places to act as a reminder of how much Londoners were once dependent on the river, and of the countless thousands who have come into contact with Bell Water Gate Stairs. I will leave the last words to Mary Ann Carney, who in 1898 was up before the Magistrate for being drunk and disorderly at Bell Water Gate, with this little exchange:

Prisoner: Whenever I begin talking Irish the police think I am drunk and lock me up

Magistrate: I think your accent rather pretty but you are fined 5s or five days

Prisoner: God bless your Worship and long life to you.

alondoninheritance.com

Tower Subway and the Mystery of the Southern Entrance

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On the north bank of Thames, and alongside the Tower of London, is a frequently photographed and written about structure, over what was the entrance to the Tower Subway, here with the ice cream van that seems to be there most days, selling to those visiting the Tower:

The story of the Tower Subway starts with an Act of Parliament which was passed in 1868 for the new tunnel at Tower Hill, urgently needed as the only route across the river to the east of London Bridge was the recently completed Thames Tunnel at Wapping (see this post), and during the latter half of the 19th century, the population of London, as well as the volume of trade passing through the city, the number of docks, and the amount of industry, was growing very rapidly.

People needed to cross the river. To get to work, to transport goods, for meetings and commerce, and with the expansion of London to the south of the river. There was a mile and a half gap between London Bridge and the new Thames Tunnel at Wapping, which, along with very busy streets, created a very considerable barrier.

It was estimated at the time that a million people lived on both sides of the river below London Bridge, and this population was continuing to grow.

The proposed tunnel would consist of shafts, between 50 and 70 feet deep on either side of the river. The north access point at Tower Hill and the southern alongside Vine Street.

A hydraulic lift would raise and lower up to ten passengers at a time, and at the bottom of the shaft there would be a small waiting area, with a cable pulled carriage transporting passengers between the north and south of the river.

It was estimated that the cost would be £16,000, it would take eight months to complete, and the engineer for the project was Peter William Barlow, who was also the engineer responsible for the first Lambeth Bridge..

Construction of the Tower Subway started in 1869.

Where today, there are plenty of photographs and video of major construction projects, in the 1860s, the only way to illustrate such a project was to lower an artist down to the tunnel, and in September 1869, an artist working for the Illustrated Times found himself in the tunnel, and reported that:

“After getting into the pail I was lowered some fifty feet, turning round and round like a joint of meat at the fire. A trolley was waiting at the bottom; I seated myself, and was propelled by a stalwart navvy. During my progress through the tube I heard the sounds on the water above; by candle light I could see the great strength and perfectness of the work, ribbed like the skeleton of some huge snake. Presently we stopped to allow a trolley laden with clay to pass; then we arrived at the telegraph station – a very complete arrangement, to enable men below to communicate with those above. While at the top of the shaft I had an opportunity of seeing it at work. Tinkle, tinkle goes a small bell. ‘More nuts’. Answer ‘All right’. Tinkle twice, tinkle three times. ‘Send down castings’. Answer, ‘All right’. Tinkle four times, ‘More air’, Answer. ‘Can’t have it yet; taking in lime’. And so on, saving a great amount of time.

The men having thrown out the clay in front of the shield, I saw them advance it. It was easily done with three or four men working the screws to the width of the casting; one of which is placed in the curve of the shield at the bottom, bolted it, and placed the side pieces, and finished with the top, screwing them all to the last ring of the tube. The clay through which they are passing is about the consistency of caked chocolate, the pick leaving a shining surface upon it. The men have plenty of air, but by candle light look weird and strange.”

The use of a shield was key to the success of the project, as was the use of iron for the rings forming the tunnel.

On completion of the tunnel in 1870, the speed and ease of construction supported the view that iron would allow considerably larger tunnels to be constructed, and some newspaper reports on the opening of the Tower Subway stated that: “Considering that a project has been recently discussed for carrying a subway from England to France, it would be ridiculous to go into raptures over the completion of a Tunnel from Tower Hill to Tooley Street”.

By the end of March 1870, the tunnel was being tested with invited guests. The mechanism for taking passengers between the two entrance shafts was described as a carriage, able to carry 14 persons, with a door at each end. A wire rope was attached to the carriage, and to cylinders at each end of the tunnel, with the cylinders being worked by steam power.

The tests though, demonstrated the limitations of the method, and the recurring problems that would result in the removal of the carriage, a short time after opening.

On one of the trials, the wire rope was unable to bear the strain, and snapped, with the carriage and passengers being left, midway through the tunnel. It took a while to repair the wire rope, the trial started again, but after a short distance, the wire again broke.

The trials ended soon after, with a stronger rope ordered for the opening of the tunnel.

The interior of a carriage in the Tower Subway:

Attribution and source: UnknownUnknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The northern entrance to the Tower Subway as seen today:

The first commercial use of the Tower Subway, was late in the afternoon of Tuesday, April the 12th 1870, when paying freight was hauled through the tunnel, and the next day is was opened, with very little ceremony, for passengers.

By the end of 1870 though, London’s papers were starting to report on the Tower Subway as being a failure, with numerous problems with the lifts taking people up and down the shafts, and passengers often being stuck mid-way through the tunnel.

Such were the problems with the complexity and reliability of the lifts and the carriage, that the Tower Subway was soon converted to foot passenger use, and just over a year after first opening the following account is of a trip through the tunnel after conversion to a walk-way, by a correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle on the 30th of June, 1871. The account provides a view of what a walk through the tunnel would have been like (with the caveat that this was written by a journalist, so probably a bit of over emphasis on the poor conditions):

“I have just availed myself of my first opportunity of inspecting the work over which, not a great while ago, such a deal of enthusiasm was expended – the Tower Subway.

I found the City terminus under a conical little shed, planted in the midst of an expanse of rough flag stones, in very good keeping with the adjacent old Tower, and with the antiquated old gentlemen who strut around in medieval toggery within the Tower railings. I had made up my mind to descend luxuriously – in a sort of lift, comfortably fitted up – and after a railway rush under the river, to make a triumphant exit on the Surrey side. It appears, however, that the lift and the railway carriage didn’t pay, and so were of necessity abandoned. Instead of the lift I found a narrow, dimly-lighted spiral staircase, up which, as I descended, came an unsavoury odour.

The gas lights were most ingeniously placed exactly between the landings. At the bottom I found a turnstile, presided over by an unhappy little boy, condemned to spend in damp and gloom and foul air no less than fourteen hours and a half out of his twenty four, and that seven days a week. I commenced groping my way through what looks like a gigantic rats’ hole. lighted up at intervals with gas jets. The narrow rails on which the carriage ran at one time are still down, and serve admirably to trip up passengers and knock their heads against the girders whenever two have occasion to pass each other. Here and there the footpath is wet and sloppy. This is, perhaps, unavoidable, but it is certainly an unpleasant feature.

The safety of the structure is, no doubt, beyond question; but the leakage very forcibly suggests the idea of thousands upon thousands of tons of water overhead, and one is by no means sorry to reach the other turnstile, where another young unfortunate sits at the receipt of custom. Passengers are supposed to spend six minutes in performing the journey. This, I presume, doesn’t include the time which, on emerging into the open air, I, at least was compelled to spend in holding on to the nearest lamp-post.”

The following illustration shows the tunnel being used as a walk-way:

Attribution and source: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=298484

The tunnel continued in use as a walk-way, however in 1886, the project that would bring about the demise of the Tower Subway as a method for people to cross the river, was starting to appear just to the east, with the start of the construction of Tower Bridge.

When Tower Bridge opened on the 30th of June, 1894, use of the Tower Subway collapsed. With Tower Bridge, there were no shafts to descend and ascend, no damp, gas lit tunnel to walk through, and the new bridge was free.

The owners of the Tower Subway tried to sue the Corporation of the City of London for loss of tolls, and in September 1897, a shareholder meeting of the Tower Subway Company was held at 21 Great George Street, Westminster, when it was discussed and agreed that:

  • The arbitrator between the Tower Subway Company and the Corporation of London had awarded the company compensation of £11,000;
  • That the Tower Subway was to be sold to the London Hydraulic Power Company for £3,000;
  • And that the Tower Subway Company was to be wound up.

The name of the London Hydraulic Power Company still circles the Tower Hill entrance today, which is not the original entrance building to the subway, but a 1926 construction over the shaft. At the time of the purchase of the subway, hydraulic power was used to power much of London’s infrastructure – cranes across the docks, lifts, even the curtains in theatres were power by hydraulic power.

The tunnel was also used for the water supply of the city, and in September 1898, workers were laying 20 inch diameter iron water main pipes through the tunnel, connecting a growing network on the southern and northern sides of the river.

Much of this work was aimed at fixing what was called the “East London Water Famine”, as there were insufficient supplies of water to service the rapidly growing population of east London.

Pipes through the tunnel connected to the network of the Southern and Vauxhall Water Company to the south of the river, and from the northern exit of the subway, the 20 inch pipes ran to Leman Street, where they connected with the mains network of the East London Waterworks Company.

The following image is from the 1961 book “London Beneath the Pavement” by Michael Harrison, and shows water pipes running through the old Tower Subway:

As a diversion, I have mentioned a number of times over the years, how I find the journey of books fascinating. This is my copy of London Beneath The Pavement, and in 1961 is was owned by Richard J. Waller, who wrote his name inside the cover:

I do not know whether it was the same owner, but 30 years later, in 1991, either Richard J. Waller, or a later owner had cut a notice of the death of the author from the Daily Telegraph, and pasted it inside the book:

A very small thing, but part of an individual book’s journey through multiple owners.

Part of the title to the post is “Mystery of the Southern Entrance”, and now I need to explain why.

From the round brick entrance at Tower Hill, the Tower Subway heads south, crossing the river towards the new developments on the south bank of the river:

Openstreetmap has the Tower Subway Access marked (in my red circle in the extract below © OpenStreetMap contributors):

And leaving Tooley Street, there is a small, square building where the map has the subway access. A photo of this structure is also shown on Wikipedia as the entrance to the subway:

The original entrance on the south bank was demolished in 1990, and this building does indeed look like an entrance to a place that would hold utility services:

However, I am not sure whether this is the site of the original entrance.

Firstly, it is a reasonable distance back from the banks of the Thames, further than the distance between river and northern entrance. Why would this extra distance have been necessary?

Secondly, newspaper reports often mentioned the southern entrance was next to the Vine public house in Vine Street, which the 1895 Post Office directory confirms:

In the following extract from the mid 1890s OS map, I have highlighted key features as follows:

  • Green arrow, track of the Tower Subway
  • Red arrow, small building next to the Vine which could have been the original entrance
  • Yellow arrow, the Vine public house
  • Blue arrow, location of the new building that today is often mentioned as the entrance to the Tower Subway

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

As can be seen in the above map, the building at the blue arrow is a good distance from the banks of the river, and there is a small building next to the Vine, as mentioned in newspaper reports, and in the Post Office Directory.

Jump to the 1950 revision of the OS map, and we can see the track of the Tower Subway (green arrow) and although the Vine has gone, there is still a small building where the possible entrance next to the pub was located (red arrow), and at the point of the possible entrance building today (red circle), there is nothing marked:

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

Looking at the location of the red arrow in the above map in more detail below, we can see the parallel dashed lines of the track of the Tower Subway terminate at the small building which was once next to the Vine public house – not at the location of the possible entrance today:

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

To add to the confusion, there is a sign on the building that is the possible entrance today which states that the building is maintained by Jascom.

A couple of years ago, Vodafone published a video about the tunnel, and a Project Manager from Jascom is featured in the video, so based on this, the small building we see today must be the entrance to the Thames Subway.

This fascinating video is below, and shows the condition and use of the tunnel today:

But I still cannot get away from the references to the entrance being next to the Vine public house, and the track of the tunnel terminating at the small building closer to the Thames, which would also make sense as the work needed for the additional length of the tunnel to the building we see today, would have added to the overall cost of the project.

There is another option. The possible original location of the tunnel entrance today, would be at the south western end of the paved open space, to the south west of the old City Hall building, between Fire Station Square and More London Place. Is it possible that an additional length of tunnel was dug when this area was redeveloped to move the entrance away from the open space?

As the video states, the tunnel was purchased in the 1980s as part of the overall London Hydraulic Company pipe and duct network by Mercury, one of the 1980s challengers to British Telecom.

Mercury was taken over by Cable & Wireless, and then Vodafone took over part of the business which included the old Thames Subway, and as well as water pipes, the tunnel today now carries communications cables.

As is often the case, you start digging into a part of London’s history, and you are left with more questions.

I have messaged Jascom to see if they can clarify, however whether the small building is at the correct place, or whether it was further to the north, the Thames Subway is a fascinating story of one of the many methods of bringing the north and south banks of the river closer together, as London expanded, and the population, trade and commerce of the city grew.

The Tower Subway is also a story of how infrastructure evolves, from the original plan to carry passengers, then hydraulic power pipes and water supply pipes, and today communication cables have been added to the mix.

If you are interested in more history of Tower Hill, I have written a post on the Tiger Tavern at Tower Hill, click here for the post, how Tower Hill has changed over the years, click here, and for Johnny Eagle, the Tower Hill Escapologist and Strong Man, click here.

alondoninheritance.com

St. James’s – The Essence of Piccadilly

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If you would like to explore the history and transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street, two tickets have just become available for my next walk on Sunday the 18th of May. Details and booking here:

The Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street Tickets, Sun, May 18, 2025 at 11:00 AM | Eventbrite

St. James’s – The Essence of Piccadilly. The final part of the title of today’s post is a description of the church I took from a 1940s book about the area which I will quote from in more detail later in the post, but it does capture this historic 17th century church between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, seen in the following photo from Jermyn Street:

The church was part of the same 17th century expansion of London that also resulted in nearby St. James’s Square, see my post from a couple of weeks ago.

A church was needed as the area was originally within the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields, and the significant increase in population as fields were replaced by streets required a new, local church for the residents then moving into the new streets and squares.

The land was part of the original grant from King Charles II and was held as part of a leasehold by the Henry Jermyn, the Earl of St. Albans.

Construction of the church seems to have commenced around 1676, as the foundation stone was laid on the 3rd of April of that year.

The church was consecrated in 1684 after the freehold of the land had been obtained, and the majority of financing for the church was from the Earl of St. Albans.

The church gardens to the west of the church:

When consecrated, the church was lacking a steeple and spire, and the construction of these would cause some considerable problems.

The cost for building Wren’s design for the steeple and spire was estimated at around £800, and was rejected as being too expensive, so the vestry went for a design by Jonathan Wilcox (recorded as being a Mr Wilcox. Jonathan Wilcox was a carpenter who had worked on a number of other construction projects, including St. Vedas in the City).

In preparation for the spire, the steeple, brick and stonework up to the cornice at the top of the tower was completed, allowing work on the spire to start, first with the carpentry of the central structure to make ready for the lead sheeting that would cover the spire.

Before the lead sheeting was added, it was noticed that the structure was leaning to the west, and an investigation found that poor workmanship, wet clay and poor mortar used for constructure of the steeple had all contributed to the lean.

It seems that the construction did stabilise, but the vestry decided to replace the original spire with a new one, which appears to have been completed in 1700.

The spire does seem to have had a lean all the way up to the destruction of the spire, along with much of the rest of the church, in the bombing of October 1940.

The verger of St. James’s along with his wife both lost their lives as a result of the bombing.

The view of the church today from Piccadilly, rebuilt in the immediate post-war period:

Today, the church is known at St. James’s. Piccadilly, which makes sense as the church is to the immediate south of this major London street, and large ornate iron gates form the main entrance to the courtyard in front of the church from Piccadilly.

For many years after the church was built, it was known as St. James’s Westminster, reflecting a very different focus to the south, as in the years immediately following the completion of the church, the land to the north of Piccadilly was still being developed.

The use of Westminster rather than Piccadilly lasted into the early 19th century, as shown in the following print from 1814, the church is also referred to as being “situated on the north of Jermyn Street, fronting St. James’s Square”, even though St. James’s Square was not directly along side the church:

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

The early emphasis on Westminster rather than Piccadilly may have been due to the gradual evolution of the street into a major thoroughfare.

Whilst a road described as an early “route to Reading” had existed on the current route of Piccadilly for centuries before the development of the street, it was only during the late 17th and early 18th centuries that the street was fully developed, and even in the early 18th century, the street had still not taken its existing name for the full route from what is now Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner.

As shown in the following map from 1720, the stretch to the east of the church was known as “Pickadilly” and to the west of the church, the road was “Portugal Street”:

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

Walking into the church today, it is hard to imagine the state that the church was in, 85 years ago:

Looking to the west end of the church, with the fully restored organ:

The origins of the organ date back to 1686, when an organ was built by Renatus Harris for a Roman Catholic Chapel at Whitehall Palace.

With the Protestant William of Orange and Mary (who jointly ruled as William II and Queen Mary II) coming to the throne in 1689, the Roman Catholic Chapel was dismantled, and the St. James’s vestry petitioned the Queen to have the organ from the chapel installed in their new church., as a result, the organ was moved to St. James’s, being ready to play at Christmas 1691.

The organ was restored during the late 19th century, but was badly damaged during the bombing of 1940, luckily the organ case had already been dismantled and stored remotely. It was restored and rebuilt, ready for use in 1954.

After completion, and in the first decades of the 18th century, St. James’s Piccadilly was considered the most fashionable church in London. No doubt due to the residents of the new streets around St. James’s Square, and the large houses that were built along Piccadilly, which was also growing in prominence as an important London street.

There are a lovely series of books about the Piccadilly area in wartime by the author Robert Henrey.

Robert Henrey was a journalist, however his wife was the French writer Madeleine Gal who also wrote under the name of Robert Henrey. Writing was a joint enterprise with much of the material being hers and he supplied the editorship. 

They lived in Shepherd Market, and I wrote about the area in this post. In “A Village in Piccadilly” (1942), Henry wrote the following about St. James’s Church:

“I decided to attend matins at St. James’s Piccadilly. Only the south aisle remained standing after high explosives and incendiaries had rained down on both the church and the adjoining rectory during the night raids of the summer.

St. James’s was the essence of Piccadilly. Wrecked and charred, it continued to arrest the attention of the passer-by as the most spectacular ruin of the neighbourhood.

My first interest in St. James’s was when, as a child, it was pointed out to me that the steeple was sloping – a local tower of Pisa!. This had struck me so deeply that I never walked past without looking up at it with fascination. This steeple was the only part of the church for which Wren was not responsible; his original design was refused on the grounds of expense, and the work was given to a local builder.

What gave the church its picturesqueness was the open-air pulpit , the big yard paved with old tombstones that originally stood upright, and the gnarled tree that in summer spread its leafy branches over Piccadilly.”

The following photo is from the book “A Village in Piccadilly”, which shows some of the damage to the church:

There is also a short British Pathe film showing the bomb damaged church:

And this British Pathe film shows the 1946 opening of a Garden of Remembrance at the church, as well as more scenes of the considerable damage to the church in 1940:

The church has some rather unique lights mounted on the pews:

The walls of the church have a good number of monuments and plaques, and some of these record that it was not just the living who suffered wartime bombing, but also the dead.

This plaque is to William McGillivray, who died in London in 1825 and with his wife Magdalen, were buried at the church, with their graves being destroyed in 1940:

William McGillivray was a Scottish born fur trader, who spent the majority of his life in Canada, with a home in Montreal, as well as retaining a significant estate in Scotland.

McGillivray’s time with the North West Company was during the expansion of their operations across Canada, and with considerable competition with the Hudson Bay Company.

Furs were one of the major exports of both the North West and Hudson Bay Companies, and during the first decades of the 19th century, the excessive numbers of beaver trapped for their furs was leading to the scarcity of what had been a common animal. Many of the furs exported by the North West Company would have been traded through the Port of London.

The fur trade from Canada was gradually replaced by timber as in 1809 Napoleon had blockaded the Baltic Sea which prevented timber being exported to the UK, and in the same year, the countries other main source of timber, the United States enacted their Non-Intercourse Act, which prohibited trade with the UK – an act which did contribute to the industrialisation of the United States as for the time that the act was in place, British manufactured goods could not be imported into the US – a parallel with recent US tariffs perhaps?

His death in London was during a visit, rather than when living in the city.

Another grave destroyed in 1940 was that of Bartholomew Ruspini, who apparently in 1788 established the “Royal Cumberland Freemason School for the Daughters of Deceased or Distressed Freemasons”:

The school is still going, and is based in Rickmansworth, although judging by their fees, it does not look as if it would cover the daughters of those in financial distress.

Another of the graves or tombs destroyed in 1940 was that of Mary Beale, who unusually for the time, was a portrait painter:

According to the National Portrait Gallery, Mary was the daughter of a Suffolk clergyman who married Charles Beale, who was an artists colour-man – a person who made and prepared the materials that an artist would use.

She had a studio in London and produced a considerable number of portraits, and the National Gallery records her as being the earliest professional female artist in their collection.

Mary Beale – a self portrait:

Image source: © National Portrait Gallery, London and reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

In her portrait, Mary is holding in her right hand a portrait of her two sons, and on the wall on the left is an artist’s pallet, highlighting both her family and her profession.

Mary’s portrait is believed to date from 1666 – the same year as the Great Fire of London. No connection – just interesting to see an image of someone who may have witnessed such a disastrous event in the history of London.

A memorial to two other artists who were buried in the church. The Dutch marine artists William van der Velde the Elder, and his son William van de Velde the Younger:

Father and son van de Velde left Amsterdam in 1672 and settled in England. They became favourites of King Charles II, who, to encourage them to stay, provided studio space in the Queen’s House in Greenwich, as well as a salary of £100 each, a year.

The van der Velde’s established maritime art as a key part of Britain’s maritime identity, at a time when trade via the sea was rising rapidly, as well as the strength of the Royal Navy.

The Royal yacht ‘Cleveland’ by William van de Velde the Younger:

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

A sample of some of the original monuments in the church. This is to Master Henry Nesbitt Brooke who died in Hammersmith at the age of 11 and was described as “A Most Promising Youth”:

Looking at some of the monuments, you do wonder about the history of the people recorded. Henry died in London in 1823 at the age of 11, and had been born on the Island of St. Helena.

St. Helena is the very remote island in the southern Atlantic, where Napoleon Bonaparte was held from his surrender in 1815 to his death in 1821.

The plaque does not record when Henry left St. Helena, but it is possible that he was on the island at the same time as Napoleon, and that they may have met.

The “artist, poet, visionary” William Blake, who was baptised in St. James’s in 1757:

William Yarrell – Treasurer and a Vice President of the Linnean Society of London:

The Linnean Society was founded in 1788 at a learned society devoted to the science of natural history.

The monument is a memorial to Yarrell, as he was not buried at St. James’s. Yarrell died in 1856, and I assume his memorial is at St. James’s as during the following year, 1857, the Linnean Society moved from Soho Square to Burlington House in Piccadilly (the current location of the society), so by the time the monument was completed, it was installed in the church nearest to the home of the society.

The font:

The font is believed to be the work of Grinling Gibbons, and dates from 1686. The font is of white marble. Gibbons is usually known for his work with carved wood, for example with the decoration on the reredos (wooden panels) behind church altars (such as the panels in St. James’s), but he was also exceptionally skilled at marble work as the ornate font demonstrates.

The font originally had a cover, however it is believed that this was sold by the church, possibly in 1822, when the font was moved to a location where the cover could not be hung.

The following print is from 1718 and lists Grinling Gibbons as the sculptor of the font, and also shows the ornate cover that was part of its original design and installation:

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

The courtyard of the church, between the church and Piccadilly is where the high explosive bomb fell in 194o, and that did so much damage to the church. Today, it is busy place with food stalls and people taking a lunchtime break:

The Grade II listed Southwood memorial located between the courtyard and the garden to the west of the church:

The memorial is to Viscount Southwood, who died in 1946 and bequeathed money for the memorial garden, the opening of which is shown in one of the British Pathe films shown earlier in the post.

A walk along Church Place to the east of the church, shows the eastern end of the church, whare the altar is located:

Church Place from Piccadilly:

St. James’s Church is a lovely late 17th century London church, which tells the story of the westward expansion of London, how the building of new streets and significant increases in population required the division of parish boundaries into smaller areas, as what had been fields disappeared.

A church that looked almost a lost cause after the bombing of 1940, but too important not to be rebuilt, and as Robert Henrey / Madeleine Gal wrote in 1942 – the Essence of Piccadilly.

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Late 20th Century Sculpture in the City of London – Part 2

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In today’s post, I am continuing to track down the works listed in the 1994 booklet published by the Department of Planning of the Corporation of London with the title of “Late 20th Century Sculpture in the City of London”.

The full list was in the original post, and to identify the location of the works covered in today’s post, I have included the maps with numbers for each work which were included in the booklet:

Art was considered an important addition to the public space, particularly as part of the many developments taking place in the City in the later years of the 20th century, and the booklet includes the following statement of the City of London Corporation’s approach:

“The Corporation considers that art can contribute significantly to the quality of the environment. It will therefore encourage the incorporation of art and artworks into the urban scene, in appropriate locations. To this end it is important that the integration of art and artworks into developments and the local environment is considered at an early stage in their design.”

In the last post, I finished with Icarus near Old Change Court, so for today’s post, I made the short walk towards St. Paul’s Cathedral, to find:

13. Cannon Street, Festival Gardens, Young Lovers, Georg Erlich

To the immediate south east of St. Paul’s Cathedral, you will find Festival Gardens, created during and named after the 1951 Festival of Britain:

The gardens consist of a central green space, surrounded by walkways and seating, along with flower beds, and a water feature, and at the western end of Festival Gardens, Georg Erlich’s Young Lovers can be found:

Although the gardens were created for the 1951 Festival of Britain, the “Young Lovers” was not installed until 1973, eight years after Erlich’s death in 1966.

Georg Erlich was born in Austria where he had studied art, but for much of his life he lived in London, from where he had a very successful career, and was exhibited widely in the UK, as well as Europe and North America.

I cannot find out why it took several years after his death to install the Young Lovers, given that the Festival Gardens had been completed in 1951. I suspect it was after a reconfiguration of the gardens in the early 1970s. The original configuration of the gardens is shown in the following photo, and they were later extended to cover the area in the upper part of the photo:

I also cannot find out whether the Young Lovers was originally displayed at a different location, or whether the City of London Corporation intended to install the work at a different location prior to installation at the Festival Gardens.

The work does add a focal point to the western end of the gardens:

Although he did not take any photos of the gardens in 1951, my father did take a photo of the flags on the gardens at the time of the Festival of Britain – one of those times when it is a shame he was relying on a limited amount of film, rather than the almost unlimited number of photos we can take today with digital cameras:

As I left Festival Gardens, I walked past One New Change where there is a modern piece of sculpture. This is Nail, a 12 metre bronze sculpture by Gavin Turk:

“Nail” was installed in 2011, so much later than the works covered in the City of London booklet, however I have included it in the post simply as an example of the continuing use of sculpture to enhance the public realm, and hopefully so that when walking the streets, we stop for a moment to stop and think.

I was walking down New Change to reach my next destination, which was:

14. 20 Cannon Street, The Leopard, Jonathan Kenworthy

The following photo shows the latest version of 20 Cannon Street:

The Leopard, by Jonathan Kenworthy should be just to the right of the corner entrance to the building.

Using Google Street View, I did find the Leopard in 2008, when the side of the building along Friday Street (the street to the right), had larger gardens than we see today.

As well as 2008, Google Street View shows the area in 2009, the following year, and the Leopard has disappeared, as it had by then been relocated to the construction company Wates’ headquarters at Station Approach, Leatherhead, directly opposite the station entrance.

A quick search on Google Street View shows the Leopard can still be found in Leatherhead.

There are also versions of the Leopard by Jonathan Kenworthy in Chester, as well as outside the Lord Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

Although not in its original location in the City of London, at least the Leopard was not lost, and for commuters from Leatherhead to London, the Leopard will be part of their daily entrance and exit from the station.

15. Barbican, Ben Jonson Place, Dolphins

The ordering of the list of sculpture is rather strange for a walking route, so from 20 Cannon Street, I then headed to the Barbican, to find the Dolphins:

Ben Jonson Place is a large raised plaza which runs above Beech Street, on the northern side of the Barbican Estate, and the Dolphins is a small work in the middle of a water feature along the southern side of the plaza, as shown in the above photo, and with a close up below:

The Dolphins are not part of the early build of the Barbican Estate, but were added in 1990, and in the City of London booklet on late 20th Century Sculpture, the Dolphins is one of only two where there is no name listed for the creator of the work.

The Dolphins was created by John Ravera, a Surrey born sculptor who trained at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts between 1954 and 1962.

He was based in Bexleyheath, Kent, where he had his own bronze foundry, and from where he created a wide range of works including water features, family groups, architectural reliefs, and was known for creating works that demonstrated the freedom of movement of their subjects, as can be seen by the dolphins leaping up from the central ring of small jets of water.

Ben Jonson Place along with the surrounding buildings are built of materials of a very similar colour, so the Dolphins also provides a splash of colour that attracts the eye whilst walking through the estate.

The next work in the list was a very short distance away, at the end of Ben Jonson Place:

16. Barbican, Series of Silver Metal Pipes, Mayer

Working through the list of 20th century sculpture in the City of London raises some interesting questions about the preservation of knowledge about public sculpture.

The City of London booklet did not list the sculptor for the Dolphins, and for this work, it is listed as a “series of silver metal pipes”, with just the last name of the sculptor.

The description is though accurate as it is just a series of silver metal pipes, with their different lengths forming what looks to be a sort of spiral staircase that wraps around the work.

This gives a clue as to its proper name, which is “Ascent”, by Charlotte Mayer, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, and moved to the UK in 1939 with her mother to escape the Nazi occupation.

She trained in London, and lived in the city until her death in 2022.

Many of her works were based on spiral forms, as demonstrated by Ascent at the Barbican. I have no idea as to whether it was mirroring the towers at the Barbican, the tallest residential blocks in London at the time of their construction, but with Cromwell Tower behind, as shown in the above photo there is a possible link.

As far as I could see, there is no reference to either Charlotte Mayer or the name “Ascent” next to the sculpture, as the proper name of the work, which is a shame, as it would be good to have some background to the work and the sculptor on display to add more meaning to the work, rather than being, as described in the booklet as a “series of silver metal pipes”.

17. Barbican, Carmarque Horses, Enzo Plazzotta

The Carmarque Horses by the Italian born sculptor Enzo Plazzotta should be by the waterside terrace in the Barbican:

However despite walking up and down both sides of the terrace, I could not find the work, and cannot remember if and when I last saw it.

One of the things I have realised with writing the blog is that it is easy to take the street scene for granted, and often the buildings, landmarks, statues, plaques etc. that you walk past, just do not register, particularly these days when so many people are walking whilst looking at their mobile phones.

If it has moved, I cannot find a record of where to, although there do seem to be several versions of Plazzotta’s Carmarque Horses to be found in both public and private collections.

Enzo Plazzotta was an Italian born sculptor, who spent the majority of his working life in London, and whilst I cannot find the Carmarque Horses, there are a number of his works remaining across the city.

Despite the rather obscure location, I did have better luck with finding the following work:

18. 125 London Wall, Unity, Ivan Klapez

Hidden away at the end of one of the walkways alongside London Wall, is Ivan Klapez’s Unity:

Ivan Klapez is a Croatian figurative sculptor, who has been based in London for almost four decades.

Unity dates from 1982, and was part of the overall office development of Alban Gate which sits above the junction of London Wall and Wood Street.

The work is at the edge of an alcove, part of which can be seen to the right of the above photo, and looking directly at the alcove, we can see the location of Unity, which is above Wood Street, seen through the windows of the alcove:

Unity is an example of how the surroundings of a public work of art can change. Whilst this was probably once an area of higher footfall, during my visit I did not see another person, and nearby building work has shuttered off part of the space which does not help.

Probably intended as a focal point, Unity is now just a chance find for anyone straying into this part of the walkway alongside London Wall and Wood Street.

The next work on the list is very much in a busy place:

19. Bow Churchyard, Captain John Smith, Charles Renick

The majority of the sculpture listed in the City of London booklet is abstract or figurative. Unlike the first half of the 20th century, and the 19th century, very few are of real people, however in Bow Churchyard there is an exception. This is Captain John Smith:

Text on the plink explains why Captain John Smith has a statue in the City:

“Captain John Smith, Citizen and Cordwainer, 1580 – 1634. First among the leaders of the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, from which began the overseas expansion of the English speaking peoples.”

Cordwainers were among the first of the craft organisations having received ordinances from the Mayor of London in 1271, and the name is derived from the early English word “cordwaner” meaning a worker in “cordwane” which was leather from the town of Cordova in Spain and the name dates back to around the 12th / 13th Century.

The statue is Grade II listed, and is in the old churchyard (now a paved public space next to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow), as Captain John Smith was a parishioner at the church, although after his death in London in 1634, he was buried in St Sepulchre-without-Newgate.

The statue is based on an early 20th century statue at Jamestown, and the origins of the version next to St. Mary-le-Bow is also explained on the plinth:

“This statue presented to the City of London by the Jamestown Foundation of the Commonwealth of Virginia was unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother on Monday 31st October 1960.”

The statue was installed in 1960 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of Captain John Smith’s return to England in the winter of 1609 – 1610.

From St. Mary-le-Bow, I then headed to:

20. Guildhall Plaza, Glass Fountain, Allen David

Allen David was born in Bombay, India in 1926, and moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1948, where he studied drawing and architecture.

By the end of the 1960s he had moved to London, and in 1969 he received the commission for the Glass Fountain from a Mrs Edgar, who was the wife of Gilbert H. Edgar CBE, a City of London Sheriff between 1963 and 1964.

I have not seen the fountain working for some time, but when it does, it is flooded with water from multiple clear pipes across the whole of the sculpture giving the impression of covering it in water.

I think the Glass Fountain was installed during a remodelling of the area, as the next work in the list is also in the Guildhall Plaza and dates from 1972, so close to the 1969 date of Glass Fountain. It is:

21. Guildhall Plaza, Beyond Tomorrow, Karin Jonzen

Beyond tomorrow is a very short walk from Glass Fountain, and is close to the 1958 northern wing of the Guildhall:

Karin Jonzen was born in London to Swedish parents in 1914, and studied at the Slade School of Art, and during the war, she worked as an ambulance driver.

After the war, she made the decision to concentrate on figurative sculpture, and in 1951, one of her works was included in the Festival of Britain exhibition.

I had a look in the guide book for the South Bank festival site, and under “New Sculpture, Painting and Design”, is listed:

“Karin Jonzen – Sculpture. At the end of Waterways, near the Waterloo Bridge Gate”, so it was somewhere to the left of the southern approach to Waterloo Bridge.

The guide book did not include a name for the work, there are some references to it being a “standing figure”, but I can find no photos or references as to what happened after the Festival of Britain. Works for the Festival were often made quickly and cheaply, and out of temporary materials (even papier mache), so it may not have survived.

The commission for Beyond Tomorrow was as a result of three works that Jonzen entered into the 1968 Sculpture in the City exhibition, which led to the Corporation of London commissioning two works, one of which was Beyond Tomorrow, the second I will hopefully find in the final post of this series.

Hard to see in the following photo, which was taken in the dark shadow of the northern wing of the Guildhall, but there is a plaque recording the name Beyond Tomorrow, and the date of 1972. It also records that it was given by Lord Blackford and created by Karin Jonzen:

The reference to Lord Blackford is that the first casting of the work was made whilst Karin Jonzen was travelling. On her return she was not happy with the result, so she paid for a new version, created using bronze resin.

Lord Blackford was apparently so impressed with the work, that he paid for a new bronze casting to be made, which is the version we see today, and is why Lord Blackford is recorded as having “given” the sculpture.

22. Bassinghall Street, Woolgate House, Ritual, Antanas Brazdys

With Ritual by Antanas Brazdys, I was really not sure if I had found the right work, in the right place. I knew I was at Woolgate House, but it is a new development, not the Woolgate house that was here in 1969, when Ritual was installed.

Approaching the latest version of Woolgate House along Bassinghall Street:

It is interesting how buildings in the City of London frequently have the name during several decades of demolition and rebuilding, but that is not the subject of today’s post as I was here to find the statue, which today sits beside the street, a bike park, and the building:

The sculpture I found seemed to be too bright and shiny for a 1969 work, as the majority of the late 20th century sculpture featured in the City of London guide was of either stone or bronze, but here ii was, in all its shiny glory:

I was able to confirm it is the work Ritual, as whilst the City of London booklet on late 20th century architecture only has a few photos of the works listed. It does include Ritual, and here it is, outside one of the earlier versions of Woolgate house:

When originally installed, it appears to have been within the concrete approach to the entrance to Woolgate house. Today, it is within a small water feature and an area of planting which looks to be a good improvement from its original position.

Antanas Brazdys was born in Lithuania in 1939. he studied in Chicago and London, and become a senior sculpture lecturer at Cheltenham College of Art, and had works exhibited in many sculpture exhibitions, including the 1966 Open-air Sculpture Exhibition, at Battersea Park.

Many of his works are of the same materials and style as with Ritual.

It is interesting as I have worked through the the City of London booklet on late 20th century sculpture in the City of London, how many of the sculptors were from foreign born sculptors – Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Croatia, Swedish parents, India and Lithuania, just in the selection in this post.

I do not know if that was a conscious decision of the City of London Corporation, or whether it was people with different origins and backgrounds who were bringing the creativity to the streets of the City during the later half of the 20th century.

I still have the remaining works in the list to track down, so will feature these in a post later in the year.

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St. James’s Square and the Growth of Stuart London

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A couple of week’s ago, I was in St. James’s Square, where a combination of time of year, and weather contributed to one of those days where London is such a pleasure to walk and explore:

St. James’s Square was developed as part of the growth of Stuart London during the 17th century, when London was expanding westwards with the development of large estates in Piccadilly and St. James’s and eastwards through the developments of the East India Company in Wapping, Limehouse and Blackwall. St. James’s Square can be found almost half way between Piccadilly and Pall Mall.

The central gardens are an oasis of peace, away from the surrounding streets, including the street that surrounds the gardens which is packed with parked cars and vans, and traffic which appears to use one of five streets leading off from the square as a short cut, away from the main streets.

The gardens have a number of works of art, including the 1982 Leonardo da Vinci Monument (Vitruvian Man) by Enzo Plazzotta:

View looking north through the gardens. A small part of the church of St. James’s Piccadilly can be seen in the distance behind the statue:

I did not get the details of this work, which I think is relatively new:

View across the gardens from the north west:

In the centre of the gardens is a statue of William III, cast in bronze with the king dressed as a Roman General. The statue dates from 1807, so is much later than the original square, and it is a statue that was some years in the making, as the funding for the statue had been provided in 1724 by the will of Samuel Travers, and was reported in newspapers of the time as follows:

“Samuel Travers Esq. of Hitcham in Berks, member of Parliament for St. Maws in Cornwall, Auditor to the Prince, and Clerk to the King’s Works, and who dy’d, last Week, has left a Legacy of £500 to Prince William, as much to Lady Essex Roberts; Money for erecting a statue to King William in St. James’s Square or Cheapside Conduit”.

Samuel Travers must have been very rich for the time. As well as the above, he also left considerable sums of money to other beneficiaries, including £500 for “maintaining seven decayed Lieutenants at Sea”, as well as a considerable sum to Christ’s Hospital.

The statue of King William III, with the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in the distance:

The view of the statue with the theatre aligned with the centre of the gardens, along one of the streets which leads off the square, gives the impression that this was part of the design of the overall area, however the theatre was built after St. James’s Square had been completed, and when the square was built, there was a much narrower street leading into Haymarket, along with buildings that blocked the view. The view we see today is the result of later improvements to the surrounding streets.

View from the western entrance to the central gardens:

If you walk from Jermyn Street along Duke of York Street to get to St. James’s Square, there is a plaque on the walk at the corner of street and square that provides some background as to the origins of the square:

Henry Jermyn, the Earl of St. Albans (and who gave his name to Jermyn Street which runs between St. James’s Square and Piccadilly) has already started development of area based on his leasehold of land where Pall Mall is now to be found.

In 1665, King Charles II granted the freehold of the land now occupied by St. James’s Square and the surrounding streets, to Henry Jermyn, two years after he had petitioned the King for the grant of land.

In the following years there were issues with the exact area covered by the grant of land to Henry Jermyn, and the City of London objected to the development of an area that had been fields and lanes as all the new houses would be a competitor for limited supplies of water, however Henry Jermyn’s relationship with the Crown appears to have overcome any objections.

Initial plans for the development of the square included a symmetrical plan of four wide streets leading from the square at the centre of each side of the square. During development, this plan was modified with narrower streets to extend the amount of built space, and on the southern side of the square, rather than a single street to Pall Mall, two streets were built at the south east and south west corners. The use of two narrow streets on the southern side of the square was aimed at preventing the square from being a major route from Pall Mall up to Jermyn Street.

Development of the square commenced in the late 1660s, and by the time of William Morgan’s 1682 map of London, houses lined three sides of the square, with smaller buildings between the square and Pall Mall, as can be seen in the following extract from Morgan’s map:

The original layout of the square included a central area surrounded by low fencing, but early in the 18th century, the centre had been taken up by a large pond, as shown in Rocque’s 1746 map:

A 1720 print showing the original design of the square, with a street for coaches lining the four sides alongside the houses, and a central square for walking surrounded by a low fence:

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

The above print shows an ordered and tidy square, however there were ongoing issues with maintaining the cleanliness of the place, as described by Norman Brett-James in “The Growth of Stuart London” (London & Middlesex Archaeological Society 1935): “The condition of St. James’s Square left much to be desired, and Macaulay was not exaggerating when he describes the Square as ‘a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. At one time cudgel play kept the ring there. At another an impudent squatter settled himself, and built a shed for rubbish under the windows in which the first magnates of the realm, Norfolk, Ormode, Kent and Pembroke, gave banquets and balls’ “.

To address issues with the square, in 1726 a Bill was put before the Commons to “enable the inhabitants of St. James’s Square to make a Rate on themselves, to clean, adorn and keep in repair the said Square”.

This improvement act appointed Trustees to care for and regulate the square, and their first meeting was held on the 23rd of June, 1726. This trust is still in place, and is the oldest Trust of its kind still operating in London.

The following 1754 print of St. James’s Square shows the central pond (a basin of water of 150 feet diameter), and if you look closely, to the left of the pond is a small boat with a man pushing the boat along with a stick and a woman sitting in the back of the boat – perhaps one of the most unusual features of a London square. There is also a small fountain in the centre:

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

One of the more unusual events held in a London square occurred on the night of the 9th of September, 1695, when a fire-work display was held in the square to celebrate “His Majesties Glorious success in taking of Namur” (Namur, in what is now Belgium, was taken by the French during the Nine Years war , and recaptured in 1695 after forces led by the Earl of Athlone surrounded the town).

A print of the event shows fireworks in the centre of St. James’s Square, which also appears to be surrounded by soldiers simultaneously firing their guns:

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

The statue of King William III from the time it was installed in St. James’s Square in 1807, in the centre of the basin of water, which was still occupying the central part of the square:

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

From the 1820s there was more planting around the square, and by the 1850s this was making the central water filled basin into a rather dark and dank place, so in 1854 the basin of water was filled in, and the gardens gradually assumed the shape and planting we see today.

The majority of the buildings surrounding the square date either from the 19th and 20th centuries, or are rebuilds or significant remodels of the original houses. An example is number 4 St. James’s Square, in the north east corner, which is Grade II* listed, and is a 1726 to 1728 rebuild of the original 1676 house built on the site by Nicholas Barbon, a significant property developer of London in the late 17th century, and responsible for many of the original houses in St. James’s Square:

On number 4 is a plaque recording that Nancy Astor lived in the house, she was the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament:

In the photo of the corner of the square just above, there is a building to the left of number 4, with a flag flying above the entrance with the number 5. This building was the Libyan Embassy in 1984.

On the 17th of April, 1984, a demonstration by the Libyan National Salvation Front was held outside the Libyan Embassy, to protest about the execution of two students in Tripoli opposed to the Gaddafi regime.

Barriers had been erected to separate the protestors from the Embassy and from a separate protest by those who supported the regime.

During the protest, shots were fired by those in the Embassy at the anti-regime protestors, and one of the police officers on duty during the protest was hit, and died later the same morning.

The police officer was PC Yvonne Fletcher, and today there is a memorial to her at the place in St. James’s Square where she fell:

There is also a tree planted inside the gardens as a memorial to PC Yvonne Fletcher by the Trustees of the square, and her colleagues at Vine Street police station:

To the right of number 4 is number 3, a 20th century occupant of the square, dating from 1934, and designed by architects Alfred and David Ospalek:

Above the ground floor are a series of stone panels by Newbury Trent, which represent the street-criers of London:

On the corner of the south east street leading from the square down to Pall Mall is this brick Grade II listed house, and it is prime example of how houses have been modified over the centuries:

From its appearance, the house could date from the original build of the square, however the house dates from around 1772, so almost 100 years after St. James’s Square was laid out and built.

If you look at the house, there is the ground, then first and second floors, with a band of brick running around the walls above the second floor. This band marks the original start of the roof of the house as the upper two floors were added in the 1850s. London houses have had so many modifications over the centuries.

Many of the newer buildings around St. James’s Square occupy the space of more than one of the original houses, however there are some new builds which occupy the same plot of land as the original house. The only way to generate more floor space was to build up, resulting in tall, narrow buildings, such as these two, also at the south eastern corner of the square:

The western side of the square – the building on the left with the two flags is the East India Club, one of west London’s many private members clubs:

House along the northern side of the square:

If you look just above the roof of the Mini car in the above photo, there is a very small part of a blue plaque showing, this is to record that Ada Countess of Lovelace lived here:

Augusta Ada King was the only legitimate daughter of the poet, Lord Byron. She was eight when her father died, and perhaps typically of the time, the majority of the reports of her death focussed on her father, the following being one example:

“She had small resemblance to her father. No one, we are told, would have recognised the Byron features – the finely chiselled chin or the expressive lips or eyes of the poet – in the daughter. Yet at times the Byron blood was visible in her look – and those who saw her in 1835, on her marriage with Lord Lovelace fancied they saw more traces of the poet’s countenance in the bride than they remembered at any other time. But dissimilarity of look was not the only dissimilarity between Byron and his daughter. Lady Lovelace cared little about poetry”.

The report does acknowledge that “Her favourite science was the mathematical”, and indeed she does seem to have been a mathematical prodigy from an early age, and the reference to being a “Pioneer of Computing” on the plaque is down to her work with Charles Babbage and his “calculating machine”.

From notes that she kept, Ada appears to have been one of the first to recognise that a machine such as that built by Babbage, could be used for more than just as a calculating machine. With the appropriate algorithm, such a machine could carry out a wide and varied range of tasks – although I wonder if Ada could have imagined just how far computing and algorithms have been embedded into almost every aspect of life, 173 years after her death.

Ada Countess of Lovelace died of cancer at the tragically young age of 36. She is remembered still to this day with the programming language Ada being named after her.

Further along the northern side of the square, on the corner with Duke of York Street are two houses, both from 1736. On the left is the Grade I listed Chatham House, and on the right (without a door to the square) is the Grade II* listed number 9, which has its entrance in the street leading out of St. James’s Square:

Chatham House on the left is home to the organisation of the same name, dedicated to international affairs, and also the source of the term “Chatham House Rule”, a rule that states that what is revealed at confidential meetings can be used, but the identity of the person who spoke cannot be revealed.

The house has also been the home to three Prime Ministers, as this really nice London County Council plaque on the building reveals:

The house on the right is on the site of the house where Henry Jermyn, the Earl of St. Albans died.

The reason why I was in St. James’s Square was to visit the London Library, one of the institutes that I use for research, and which has a entrance in the north-west corner of the square:

The London Library was founded in 1841 and moved to its current location in 1845.

The single bay entrance is deceiving, as the London Library occupies a considerable area behind this one façade, stretching back and around to the right, along the side of the building to the right of the above photo.

The building is a bit of a maze (which is part of the pleasure), and in the following photo, the shelves on the left cover just part of their collection of books about London:

And in an area known as the “stacks”, you walk amongst shelves, along floors which look down to more shelves of books below:

A magical place.

There is one more building in St. James’s Square which I have not mentioned, and on the day of my visit was to be a focal point for protest. The first indication of this was this small group within the gardens:

St. James’s Square is home to the registered office and worldwide headquarters of BP and Extinction Rebellion were holding a protest in the square, outside BP’s offices.

This started off with the north eastern section of the square being blocked:

BP’s offices:

Whatever your views of Extinction Rebellion, they have perfected a very theatrical method to get their message across, and are just one of many in the long running history of protest in London over very many centuries:

That is a very brief overview of St. James’s Square. A square that was part of the Stuart expansion of London during the late 17th century, as the city expanded into the surrounding fields.

A square that has been transformed over the centuries. Not just the central gardens, but also the new builds, rebuilds, and modifications of buildings surrounding the square, as the square changed from being the homes of the rich, aristocrats and well connected, to the home of international companies, institutes such as Chatham House, the London library, and a private members club.

A square that has been the home to many of those who were influential in their period of time, and a square that has seen protest, with one of these events resulting in the murder of a police officer by the representatives of a murderous regime.

Sitting in the central gardens on a glorious spring day, it was though intriguing to imagine the 1695 fireworks in the square to celebrate the victory at Namur, a display held on the edge of the growing city, and long before the use of gas or electric lighting, a very dark city.

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