Category Archives: London Buildings

The Mermaid Theatre – Puddle Dock

If you have been on my Puddle Dock walk, you will recognise this location, the old Mermaid Theatre alongside Puddle Dock.

Although I have written about Puddle Dock before (there is a link at the end of the post), I have not covered the Mermaid Theatre, so time to remedy that omission in today’s post.

The Mermaid Theatre is the brick building in the centre of the following photo:

Upper Thames Street is the road in the foreground. This was constructed on land reclaimed from the Thames foreshore as part of the late 1970s / early 1980s redevelopment of the whole area in the photo.

The street Puddle Dock, which occupies the site of the original Puddle Dock is the street to the left of the photo.

Another view of the Mermaid Theatre. This is not the original theatre, it was part of the redevelopment of the area when the surrounding office blocks were built, along with Upper Thames Street:

The following photo shows the original Mermaid Theatre building, the smaller building in the centre of the photo, alongside the edge of the Thames:

In the above photo, all the land in front of the theatre would be reclaimed to allow the move of Upper Thames Street to a new dual carriageway. New office blocks were built around the theatre and Puddle Dock, which can be seen to the left of the theatre, was filled in and the street with the same name constructed.

The story of the theatre, how it came to occupy this bomb damaged site, and its transformation to the place we see today, is the subject of today’s post.

The Mermaid Theatre was the dream of Bernard Miles and his wife, Josephine Wilson.

Bernard Miles was born in Uxbridge to a father who was a market gardener and mother who was a cook.

He went to school in Uxbridge and then Pembroke College, Oxford, and after university he took a job as a teacher, but he would not stay for long in this profession.

His first acting role was as the second messenger in a revival of Richard III, after which he joined a number of repertory companies taking on roles from a carpenter to an actor. He had London stage roles in the late 1930s and early 1940s, including touring with the Old Vic.

He also had a number of film roles starting with the 1932 film, Channel Crossing, and the films that followed included In Which We Serve (1942) and Great Expectations (1946), and he continued to have film roles through to his final film in 1988, The Lady and the Highwayman.

He also appeared on TV, with one of his best known roles as Long John Silver in a TV series and later TV film of Treasure Island. He would also play the role of Long John Silver when Treasure Island was put on at the Mermaid Theatre.

He perhaps overplayed the role of a pirate when he “kidnapped” the Governor of the Bank of England on a short river journey on the Thames, when he “relived” the Governor of a cheque for £25 in support of the Mermaid, and then used the event to claim that the Mermaid Theatre was supported by the Bank of England.

It was down to Bernard Miles enthusiasm for the Mermaid Theatre, his ability to fund raise, and his sheer hard work throughout the whole process, that took the Mermaid Theatre from idea through to a working theatre, opening in 1959.

To explore the story of the Mermaid Theatre, I will use the Press Information document issued for the official opening of the theatre at 6p.m. on Thursday the 28th of May, 1959:

The press pack starts with the background to the Mermaid:

“‘See the players well bestowed’, says Hamlet, and the City has obeyed his solemn injunction by helping to bring to fruition a dream born on Acacia Road, St. john’s Wood, nine years ago.

In the dream Bernard Miles and his wife, Josephine Wilson saw one of the most exciting small theatres in Europe rising against the blitzed warehouses of the City’s riverside. They saw a new and vital centre of entertainment thriving in the great business hub of the Commonwealth.

In that summer of 1951, they had built a small theatre in their back garden. Its stage and fittings had been planned by two brilliant young designers, Michael Stringer and Walter Hodges, and early in September the Mermaid Theatre opened with Kirsten Flagsted singing twenty-six performances of Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’. Her salary for the season was a bottle of stout a day.

This first season was such a success that it was decided to have another one the following year. This time Bernard and Josephine Miles had no idea that before long they would be building a real bricks and mortar theatre in E.C.4. But during the second Mermaid season, a good friend of the Miles’ brought the Lord Mayor, Sir Leslie Boyce, to see the production of Macbeth. It was the Lord Mayor who suggested that the Mermaid be brought to the City for Coronation Year.

So it came about that between May and August 1953, the Mermaid Company played 13 weeks on the Piazza of the historic Royal Exchange in the very heart of a City, theatre less for nearly 300 years. And 70,000 people paid to see the four productions. This solid support led the Miles’s to believe that there was a very real demand for drama in the City.

From this point the ball began to roll towards Puddle Dock. It was argued that if they could persuade the City Corporation to lease them a bombed site for a token rent and then build the theatre by public subscription, they could set it fee from rent and so bring the price down to a real pubic service and habit forming level.

And since the entire Box Office takings could then be spent on the productions, this freedom from rent would also act as a negative subsidy, giving vital artistic elbow room.

In 1956, the Corporation generously granted a lease of the Puddle Dock site, so rich in theatrical associations. Then began the task of raising the £62,000 required to build and equip the theatre.”

The Puddle Dock site provided by the City Corporation really was a bombed warehouse, as can be seen in the following photo with the warehouse that would become the Mermaid Theatre on the left, with Puddle Dock, with a moored barge, to the right of the warehouse:

Looking up what was Puddle Dock today, with the old Mermaid Theatre buildings on the right:

Following the provision of the warehouse site, the next step was to try and raise the money needed to build and equip the theatre. The press pack continues:

“COLLECTING THE MONEY: The Mermaid has been financed entirely by public subscription. By donations from banks, shipping companies, insurance companies, stockbrokers, the City livery companies, ordinary men and women all over the United Kingdom, indeed all over the world – in America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Canada, Bermuda, Norway and Sweden.

The launching of the ‘buy-a-brick’ campaign in 1957 carried the Mermaid appeal across the world. Nearly 60,000 people have paid their half-crown for a brick in the venture.

There have been many delightful instances of individual generosity, many heart-touching stories of a very real and practical interest in the living theatre.

There is the old-age pensioner who write saying she would like to donate £5. Not having the ready cash, she asked to be allowed to subscribe on the ‘never-never’ – a down payment consisting of a savings book containing five shillings worth of 6d. savings stamps followed, and the installments are paid whenever she finds she has a bit to spare.

There is the 10-year-old boy in Hampstead who sent two half-crowns – ‘the profit I made on the pantomime Aladdin which I staged in my bedroom at Christmas’.

There is the man working next door to the theatre who every week for 2.5 years has clocked in to give his half-crown.

There is the school-girl who sent her 10 shilling birthday money – ‘It was given to me to spend on whatever I wanted most, and most of all I want four bricks in your theatre.”

There is the New Zealander who sent money for four ‘bricks’ on behalf of his ancestors who lived and worked in the City during the 18th and 19th centuries.

In addition to cash, covenants etc., the Mermaid has received many gifts of materials. Window frames, lavatory and wash basins, bricks, radiators, timber, electrical equipment, bars, tiles, piping, furniture, carpet. And the neighboring firms have helped by lending office accommodation and storage space; by donations of paper for our printing; by the free use of office machinery and facilities.”

A bit further up Puddle Dock and we can see where the entrance to the theatre dives under the 1980s office block:

Development of the Mermaid Theatre progressed as follows:

OCTOBER 1956; The Mermaid Theatre Trust is granted a lease of a bombed site in Puddle Dock. It is decided to incorporate the existing 4-ft thick walls in the design and simply bridge them with a concrete barrel roof. An appeal is launched for the £60,000 needed to complete and equip the building.
JULY 1957. Sufficient money has been collected for work to start on the site. An open-air concert is held on the site to mark the launching of the building programme. Artists include Amy Shuard, Denis Matthews, Harold Jackson, Larry Adler and Max Bygraves. Some 1000 people sat on park chairs on a bombed site open to the sky, and a mercifully fine evening gives a good send off to the Mermaid project.
SEPTEMBER 1957. The Lord Mayor of London launches a ‘buy-a-brick’ campaign to raise further funds for the theatre. He throws the first half-crown into a trunk on the steps of the historic Royal Exchange and appeals to the rank and file of City workers to support the venture. The two-week campaign brings some of the biggest names in show business into the streets and pubs of the City selling ‘bricks’. Over £3,000 is raised,
DECEMBER 1957. Work on the building advances. The site is a sea of scaffolding as work begins on the roof. Meanwhile the work of collecting money continues. Cheques roll in from the great mercantile exchanges, from banks and shipping companies, from stockbrokers, charitable trusts and insurance companies. From a host of firms and individuals.
MARCH 1958. The roof is on, A roof-warming party is held on the site. A torch lit at the stage door of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (London’s oldest theatre) is run through the streets to Puddle Dock by relays of the John Tiller Girls. on arrival at the Mermaid it is taken over by Norman Wisdom who casts it into the faggots beneath a 15-gallon cauldron of punch which is then served to the 1000 guests. Later, Norman joins the builders on the roof to drink a toast. Meanwhile, Sir Donald Wolfit, in a speech to the crowd, declares the roof ‘ well and truly no longer open’. The first stage of the building is complete.
JUNE 1958. Members of the Moscow Art Theatre Company pay a visit to the site. At tables under the new roof they sit down to a traditional English meal – roast beef and ale from the wood. During their visit, the director of the company, Mr. A. Golodovnikov, traces the M.A.T.’s seagull emblem in a block of cement as a permanent reminder of the visit. The Mermaid is made an honorary member of the M.A.T.
AUGUST 1958. the building is well advanced. the restaurant and dressing room area overlooking the river is nearing completion. Work has started on the seating ramp in the auditorium.
APRIL 1959. The auditorium and restaurant are complete. Work continues in the foyer.
MAY 1959. All is ready. A two year battle is won.

Before continuing with the story of the Mermaid Theatre, lets have a look at the location of the theatre, as the place today is very different compared to when the theatre opened in 1959.

The area around Puddle Dock was completely redeveloped in the late 1970s / early 1980s. New office blocks were built around the theatre, Puddle Dock was filled in, and replaced by the road that retains the name of the old dock, and the theatre was completely redeveloped.

This redevelopment resulted in the building that we see today, with a larger block to the south, overlooking the river, where the Mermaid Theatre restaurant and bar were located, the auditorium running back along the site of Puddle Dock, and the entrance to the theatre under the office block that spans Puddle Dock.

In the following photo, I am looking across the street Puddle Dock to the theatre entrance under the office block:

A close-up showing the glass windows of the entrance foyer, and a small passage running between the theatre and an office block to the left:

The late 1970s / early 1980s redevelopment of this whole area was significant, and included the reclamation of some of the Thames foreshore, and the rerouting of a historic London street.

The following map extract is from an early 1950s edition of the OS map. I have circled the word “ruin”, and this is the location of the ruined warehouse in the photo earlier in the post, and also the location of the Mermaid Theatre (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

You will see that Upper Thames Street runs to the north of the ruined warehouse, and further along to where it joins Queen Victoria Street.

As part of the 1970s / 1980s redevelopment, the foreshore in front of the 1959 build of the Mermaid Theatre was reclaimed, and Upper Thames Street rerouted to run along this reclaimed land as a dual carriageway (the route of the red line in the above map), part of the Lower and Upper Thames Street changes that provided a dual carriageway from north of the Tower of London to join with the Embankment.

And where Upper Thames Street once ran – a typical Victorian street lined by large warehouses and offices, today, in front of the Mermaid Theatre, there is a short passageway. Upper Thames Street once ran along here:

A wider view:

When the Mermaid Theatre opened in 1959, the main entrance to the theatre was onto the original alignment of Upper Thames Street, where the short passageway is in the above photo.

The following photo shows the main entrance to the theatre, with Upper Thames Street (as confirmed by the street sign on the theatre) in front of the building – now a short, dark passageway:

if you walked into the entrance shown above, through the foyer and then into the auditorium, then this would have been your view down to the stage, with the original warehouse walls to left and right, and the new concrete roof above:

The view of the auditorium in the above photo may look rather basic, however at opening, the Mermaid Theatre had:

500 theatre seats on a single sharply-raked tier
A stage of 48 feet wide by 28 feet deep
An extensive stage lighting system
The Mermaid was the first theatre in the country to have a stereophonic sound system, a donation from the Decca Record Company
Restaurant and snack bars
Eight dressing rooms with total accommodation for 50 to 60 actors. The dressing rooms were named after Wards of the City of London – Castle Baynard, Candlewick, Newgate, Cordwainer, Dowgate, Cripplegate, Broad Street and Queenhithe.

After opening, and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Mermaid Theatre was generally successful. An almost continuous run of different productions, apparently able to attract many of the leading actors of the time, as well as good audience numbers, although finances were always a challenge.

Bernard Miles and Josephine Wilson had the role of artistic directors, and Bernard Miles would occasionally also appear in one of the Mermaid’s productions.

The symbol of the Mermaid Theatre, on all their programmes, advertising etc., from the 1959 opening, was a mermaid, as shown on the cover of the programme for the 1972 production of Noel Coward’s Cowardy Custard:

The Mermaid was often struggling financially, so as well as the revenue from ticket sales, the theatre was always looking for additional sources of revenue, and as with theatres today, food and drink made up a large part of this.

In the Mermaid Theatre, there was the Riverside Restaurant, the Tavern Restaurant, the Whitbread Bar, the Charrington Bar and a Snack Bar:

The cast list from the 1972 production of Cowardy Custard:

When the area around the Mermaid Theatre was redeveloped, the theatre had to close for an extended period of time. This work involved the reclamation of the foreshore, build of a new embankment and the move of Upper Thames Street from the north of the theatre to the new dual carriageway to the south, filling in Puddle Dock, and build of the new road alongside the theatre, and the build of all the new office blocks that today surround the theatre.

The new route of Upper Thames Street is shown by the red line on the earlier OS map extract.

Bernard Miles was able to get some support for the rebuild of the Mermaid Theatre out of the developers of all the change, and this resulted in the slightly enlarged theatre building that we see today. However it also cost the Mermaid a considerable sum of money, and in the programmes that went with their early 1980s productions, they advertised the:

“MERMAID APPEAL – The Mermaid Theatre Trust offers warn thanks to those who have contributed in cash and in kind to the rejuvenation of the theatre. BUT, the hard winter of 1979 and the medieval and Victorian obstacles underground slowed up our rebuilding and combined with inflation to push up the cost of completing our existing building by £100,000. PLEASE HELP TO TOP US UP.”

The medieval and Victorian obstacles underground highlights that when the 1959 Mermaid was built, it was mainly built within the ruins of an existing building, and there was no need to go down below the surface for the majority of construction work.

When the Mermaid reopened in 1981, the first production was a musical version of the 17th century play Eastward Ho. This was a financial disaster and lost £80,000, and over the next two years, losses kept increasing to reach a total of £650,000.

One of the 1981 productions was “Children Of A Lesser God”, which opened on the 25th of August, 1981:

Which starred Trevor Eve, Elizabeth Quinn, and Irene Sutcliffe:

The above programme was one of the last to list Bernard Miles and his wife Josephine Wilson as Artistic Directors.

Two years after reopening, debts were so bad that the Trustees were forced to put the Mermaid up for sale.

Bernard Miles and Josephine Wilson stepped down as Artistic Directors.

The Mermaid Theatre was purchased by Ugandan Asian businessman Abdul Shamji through his property company Gomba Holdings.

Shamji was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment in 1989 following the collapse of the Johnson Matthey Bank, and the Mermaid Theatre then went through a series of different owners, and with different artistic directors and managers, however the theatre never reached the success in terms of productions, actors and audiences that it had done under Bernard Miles (although it had always struggled financially).

In 2000 it was basically a redundant building, and in 2002 it was scheduled for demolition as part of a redevelopment plan for the area (which never materialised), and in 2003 the Mayor of London blocked any demolition.

The theatre was used for a number of BBC concerts, and the formal end of the building as a theatre came in 2008 when the Corporation of London City Planning Committee removed the theatre license from the Mermaid Theatre.

When the Mermaid was opened in 1959, it was the first theatre in the City of London for almost 300 years, by the time the theatre was redundant, the City of London had a theatre at the Barbican, so there was probably no perceived need to, or interest in financially supporting the smaller Mermaid.

The building was then turned into an exhibition and conference centre, a role it continues to this day

Bernard Miles was recognised for his work both as an actor and with the Mermaid Theatre as in 1953 he was made a CBE, he was knighted in 1969 and in 1979 he was made a Life Peer as Lord Miles of Blackfriars in the City of London.

His choice as being titled “Lord Miles of Blackfriars” probably indicates his deep connection with Blackfriars and the Mermaid.

Whilst the Mermaid building is a reminder of Bernard Miles’ original dream of a new theatre in the City of London, there is almost nothing to remember Bernard Miles or Josephine Wilson around Puddle Dock.

The one exception requires a walk up to the walkway on Baynard House (one of the office blocks that were built as part of the major redevlopment of the area – the walkway can be accessed from stairs on Queen Victoria Street, and provides access to Blackfriars Station).

In this gradually decaying space can be found the Seven Ages of Man sculpture by Richard Kindersly:

A plaque on one of the side plinths near the sculpture records that the work was unveiled by Lord Miles of Blackfriars on the 23rd of April, 1980:

Bernard Miles continued to act after stepping down from the Mermaid Theatre, but these roles must have been difficult given his previous 30 years involvement with the Mermaid, from the initial idea through to stepping down as artistic director.

In 1983, he took on the role of Firs, the old retainer, in Lindsay Anderson’s production of the Cherry Orchard, at the same time as what could have been considered his very own cherry orchard, the Mermaid, was being sold.

Bernard Miles and his wife Josephine Wilson had put almost all their own money into the Mermaid Theatre, and in 1989 they had to move from their four bedroomed house in Canonbury to a flat.

Josephine died in 1990, she had been Bernard Mile’s strongest and most consistent supporter throughout their life together, and during the whole period of the Mermaid, from the original idea through to the loss of their roles with the theatre.

After the death of his wife, Bernard moved into a Middlesex nursing home, and it was rumoured that he only had his state pension to live on.

The Mermaid Theatre’s new management staged a gala benefit in his honour, and despite being confined to a wheel chair, and also partially deaf, we was able to hear the many tributes that were paid to him, whilst in the theatre that had been his main life’s work.

Bernard Miles died on the 14th of June, 1991. Obituaries after his death celebrate his role in the founding of the Mermaid Theatre and the challenges that he overcame in getting the idea of the theatre from a bomb damaged warehouse through to a working theatre in the City of London.

They also identify a number of shortcomings, that perhaps he never recognised his shortcomings as an actor, that he wanted to take on the great roles of theatre, but in the words of one obituary “he played them and was terrible in all of them”.

He was strongly loyal to his old actor and director friends, but again was blind to their inadequacies.

He also failed to listen to advice when he had an idea and wanted to see it through, which was one of the reasons why the Mermaid frequently struggled financially.

Despite these shortcomings, he was widely remembered with affection and for his achievement in bringing the Mermaid to the City of London, long before the Royal Shakespeare Company were established at the Barbican.

I have tried to visit the Mermaid, and to take some photos, however there has been no response to my requests.

A walk around the outside of the theatre shows the Mermaid surrounded by the developments of the 1970s / 80s, but this could all change as there are proposals for a wholesale redevelopment of the area, and it is one part of London that does need to change – one of the most unfriendly pedestrian places you will find in the City of London.

Nothing appears to remain from before the theatre was built (although I would love to know what is underneath the Mermaid), however I did find these two strange red painted metal objects to either side of one of the doors to the theatre:

They appear to be made of iron, and are completly out of place with their surroundings. Two thirds of the way up, there is a slot on both objects, the type of slot that looks as if a wooden plank would have been inserted to bar the way.

It would be interesting to know if these are survivors from the time before the Mermaid was built.

The Mermaid Theatre is a fascinating story of how one man’s single minded devotion to an idea, led to the founding of the first new theatre in the City of London in almost 300 years, and in many ways, also led to its downfall.

I hope in the redevelopment of the area, the story of Bernard Miles, Josephine Wilson, and the Mermaid Theatre does not get lost.

You may also be interested in my post on Puddle Dock And a City Laystall, and Queen Victoria Street and Upper Thames Street – A Lost Road Junction.

I will also be running the walk “The Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street” in the summer of next year. Follow here on Eventbrite to get updates when new walks are available.

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Bluecoat School, Caxton Street, Westminster

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Two tickets have just become available for my walk “Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation”, this coming Sunday, the 6th of October. Click here for details and booking.

The following photo is from 1984 and shows one of the many Blue Coat figures which can be seen on surviving charity school buildings from the late 17th and 18th centuries across London:

Forty years later, the statue is still there, looking good and has obviously been restored since the 1984 photo:

The figure is on the building that was once a Bluecoat School in Caxton Street, Westminster, and as recorded on the plaque in the above photo, the building dates from 1709.

The figure in the above two photos is on the front of the building, however most first views of the old school are probably of the rear and side of the building, seen as you walk along Buckingham Gate. I was walking from Victoria Street along Buckingham Gate, so this was my first view of the building:

Although the surroundings have changed beyond all recognition, the building itself has hardly changed, as can be seen in the following print of the rear of the school, from 1850:

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.

In the above print, the school appears to have had railings and a wall surrounding its boundary, and also had a grassed area to the rear – possibly a small open space for the children of the school. Today, this is paved over:

The plaque on the first two photos of the front of the school dates the building to 1709, however the school was founded 21 years earlier in 1688 at the expense of “Divers well disposed persons Inhabitants of ye Parish of St. Margaret Westminster”.

The aim of the school was to teach the children of the poor the doctrines of the Church of England, and enable them to move on to an apprenticeship, or to gain an occupation.

As well as a limited form of education, children at the school were also given some degree of medical care, as in 1835, in a listing of physicians at the Royal Metropolitan Infirmary for Sick Children in Broad Street, Golden Square, a Mr. George S. Lilburn, M.D. was also listed as a “Physician to the Bluecoat School, Westminster”.

The school must have been successful in its first 21 years as the new school building was constructed in 1709 on land leased from the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, and funded by William Greene, a local brewer who paid for the school..

The interior of the building was simple, with a single school room above a basement. the exterior of the building was off brick, and was described as being of in a similar style to William Greene’s brewery.

Attendance at the school was initially for 20 boys who would be educated and clothed for free. The clothing was of the style shown on the figures around the building. As well as being the children of the poor, the parents or grandparents of the children would also have had to have lived in the parish of St. Margaret’s or St. John’s for at least a year.

A girls school appears to have been added not long after the new boys school was completed, as donations were being raised for a girls school of 20 pupils between 1713 and 1714.

Nothing today exists of the girls school, however recent research suggests that the girls school was located on the western side of the paved area at the rear of the boys school.

There were other buildings associated with the school that have been lost, including a headmaster’s house, so the single building we see today was part of a cluster of buildings forming a school for boys and girls.

The school was founded in 1688, and whilst this is just a date on a stone block on the school building, it is interesting to consider the state of the country when the school was founded, as both the charity and building did not exist in isolation. They were partly in response to what was happening in the country at the time.

The school was founded not long after the English Civil War (1642 to 1648), execution of Charles I (1649), the Commonwealth (1649 to 1660), restoration of the Monarchy with Charles II (1660), the Great Fire of London (1666), the reign of William and Mary (William III, 1689 to 1702), to prevent a Catholic succession after the death of James II, so the preceding 46 years had been one of considerable change, and the school was founded in the same year that James II’s wife, Mary of Moderna, gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward Stuart, who was next in line to the throne and would perpetuate a pro-Catholic approach by the English Crown.

The following is from the London Sun on Saturday the 29th of June, 1844, and announces a meeting where the audience will be asked for funds to support the Blue Coat school charity, and the article also provides some background as to the worries in the country when the school was founded, and concerns about the religious education of the young at such as time:

“BLUE-COAT SCHOOL, WESTMINSTER – The Rev. Dr. Colls will advocate the claims of the charity next Sunday morning at St. Peter’s Episcopal Chapel, Queen-square, St. James’s Park, in compliance with the particular request of a large body of Governors of that institution.

It may not, perhaps, be generally known that the Westminster Blue-coat School was the first of the kind in England, having been founded in the year 1688. a few months previous to the landing of King William, while this country was in a ferment at the impending danger to the Church and Constitution.

A few persons, grieved at the state of ignorance and irreligion in which the rising generation were then growing up, determined to make an effort to ground them thoroughly in the doctrines and the duties of the Christian religion, considering that this was the only effectual way to preserve the young from the sophistry of the infidel and the contamination of the profane.

In the choice of their advocate on the present occasion, the Governors of the charity have been fortunate, since the Rev. Dr. Colls is himself a practical example of the benefit and the blessing of early religious principles; and we hope he will be successful in opening the hands and hearts of his audience next Sunday morning in favour of the excellent charity.”

The plaque on the school building recording the original founding date of the school, one year before William and Mary landed from the Netherlands, and the “Glorious Revolution”:

The location of the church can be seen in the following map. the front of the school faces onto Caxton Street which has long been the official address of the school, and the western side is next to Buckingham Gate, with Victoria Street running left to right across the centre of the map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Roughly 35 years after the new school building was constructed, Rocque’s map of 1746 shows the school (within the red circle), facing onto Chapel Street (the old name for Caxton Street), and alongside Horse Ferry Road (the old name for Buckingham Gate). Victoria Street will cut across the map in the mid 19th century:

What is interesting about the above map is the number of charity schools in the area, each with their own different coloured coat. I have marked the Green Coat School with the green circle and the Gray Coat School in the orange circle (a grey circle did not stand out well on the map).

The blue colour for the coats of the Blue Coast School seems to have been in use by 1700, when the uniform for the school was decided, and blue was chosen as “the most convenient colour would be Blew, being different from the other schools in the parish”.

When children went to, or left the charity schools in this small area, it must have been a scene of some colour with blue, green and grey coats being worn on the streets.

Also on the map, to the right of the Blue Coat School there is St. Margaret’s Burying Ground, showing an open space with a small chapel. The reference to the original founding of the school quoted earlier in the post states is was through “Divers well disposed persons Inhabitants of ye Parish of St. Margaret Westminster“.

St. Margaret’s was (and still is) the smaller church that is within the grounds of Westminster Abbey, in the north east corner, next to Parliament Square. The burying ground shown on the map was St. Margaret’s extra space for burials.

Part of this burying ground can still be found, the small, open space alongside Victoria Street, now known as Christchurch Gardens, which occupies roughly the middle third of the original burying grounds. The lower third is under Victoria Street and the upper third long built over. The remains of the burying ground today:

There were a number of Blue Coat Schools across London, and there seems to have been some competition, or confusion as to which school was founded first.

The following letter is from the Morning Herald on the 27th of July, 1830, and is in response to a previous comment about the schools of St. Botolph, Aldgate being older than the school facing Caxton Street::

“Sir, – In the Morning Herald of yesterday I observed a notice of a sermon for the charity schools of St. Botolph, Aldgate, it was appended a statement that these schools were the earliest of the kind instigated.

I should be extremely sorry to say one word which might be injurious to so excellent an institution, but justice to another admirable establishment compels me to deny the truth of the statement that the first charity school was established at St. Botolph.

The Blue-Coat School, Westminster, is beyond doubt the earliest of these institutions, having been established in the year 1688. Having been lately called upon to preach for that excellent charity I was led to investigate the matter, and obtained the following results:- The Blue Coat, Westminster, was established in 1688; a school in Norton Folgate in 1691, and that of St. Botolph, Aldgate, in 1697. In 1704 the number of schools had so increased that a general meeting of the children was held in St. Andrew’s Church, the number being about 2,000; the sermon was preached by Dr. Weller, Dean of Lincoln.

In 1716 the number of schools in London and Westminster was 124; the number of children 4,896; the entire number of schools in Great Britain and Ireland was1,239; the number of children 24,941; the greater part established within about 20 years.

To several of the early printed reports is attached the following note, (I copy from the sermon and report for 1716):- ‘All schools above mentioned have been set-up since 1697, except that belonging to the New Church in St. Margaret, Westminster, by the name of the Blue Coat School, which was set up Lady-day, 1688, for 50 boys, and the school of Norton-Folgate, erected in 1691, for 60 boys’.

I conclude with repeating that I have no wish to detract from the merits of St. Botolph’s school, but its friends have no right to claim for it that honour which so clearly belongs to another. I am, sir, your obedient servant, Thos. Stone, M.A. Assit. Curate St. john the Evangelist, Westminster.”

Whilst the Blue Coast School in Westminster may have been the first of this type of charity school, the problem with being a charity school was the constant need to raise funds, and the frequent shortage of sufficient funding to provide all the services that were intended by the trustees.

The following article from the Westminster and Chelsea News on the 28th of January, 1882 shows both one of the benefits of attending the school and the impact of a lack of funding (also note the use of Blew rather than Blue which seems to have been used a number of times):

“THE ‘BLEW COAT SCHOOL, WESTMINSTER. The annual dinner to the children of the ‘Blew’ Coat School, Westminster, the gift of John Lettsom Elliot, a former treasurer of the Charity, took place on the 20th inst. in the large school room, where the children were plentifully supplied with roast beef and plum pudding. This old and very useful Westminster Charity is, we are sorry to hear, sadly in need of support, the Governors being compelled to reduce the benefits in consequence, and singular to state this is the only ‘free’ school in Westminster, all the others having been closed. Mr. James Sarsons, the head master, conducted everything in his usual kind manner.”

The article highlights the precariousness of providing a service through a charity, in that the charity will always be after new funding, and that being dependent on charity funding, the services provided can only match the money available.

The article also states that the Blue Coast School was the only free school available in Westminster, so the other schools shown in Rocque’s map must have closed.

I have got this far in the post, and I have not yet shown the front of the school, so here is the building as it faces onto Caxton Street, with the blue coated figure shown in the photos at the start of the post:

The location of parked cars and a delivery lorry in the road opposite the school made it a bit difficult to photograph, but it is a lovely building and very different to the school’s surroundings.

The article above from 1882 was getting towards the end of the school’s history as a charity school as the provision of education was changing in the late 19th century, with the provision of free education for all children and the creation of the London School Board, which was responsible for many of the wonderful large brick late 19th century schools we can still see across London.

The location of the school was also suffering with the constant development of the area, for example with the construction of the District Line which resulted in the loss of part of the school’s land and buildings.

In 1898 the Governors of the school requested and received authorisation to close the school and transfer the land and building to the Vestry of St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster, who then transferred the school to the Christchurch National Schools, as part of the national church school system. The school then became the Infants department of Christchurch School, and attached to the church which has since been demolished, and which stood on the corner of Caxton Street and Broadway.

During the Second World War, the school was used by the Forces, after the war for community use such as the Girl Guides and as a Youth Club, as well as continuing use as an infant school until 1954.

The building was purchased by the National Trust in 1954, and was then restored and opened to the public.

Further restoration work was needed in 1974, when the Trust also installed offices in the basement.

The National Trust closed their shop along with public access to the old Blue Coat School building in 2013, when it then became a showroom for bridal wear designer Ian Stewart.

The building is Grade I listed. I am not sure if the building is still owned by the National Trust. The Historic England official list entry for the building does have National Trust in brackets after the name of the building, however the date of the most recent amendment is 1987, when the building was an open, National Trust property.

In the National Trust Heritage Records Online record for the building, the Most Recent Monitoring section has “None Recorded”, which implies that it is not a National Trust property as I assume they would be monitoring the building.

The building is now occupied by Studio Ashby, who appear to be residential and commercial interior designers, and on their website they state that they have “become the next custodians of this magical and historic site”, which implies the building is now privately owned.

From photos on Studio Ashby’s website, the interior still includes the following features from the Historic England listing “Fine interior forming single tall space with pilasters and niches to walls, entablature and coved ceiling; four fluted Corinthian columns mark entrance; fireplace to opposite end” – although the fireplace is not visible, and the whole of the interior is painted white.

The building’s Grade I listing should help preserve the building into the future, and it is good to see the statue and plaque on the front looking better today than they were in 1984.

The Blue Coat School in Caxton Street is an important reminder of the development of education in London, and how the aim of these charities was to give the children of the poor a religious education, along with gaining the skills needed to get an apprenticeship, or to work.

A wonderful survivor given how much this area has changed, and continues to change.

alondoninheritance.com

Post Office Tower and Tower Tavern

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If you would like to explore the history of Puddle Dock, Thames Street and the area between Queen Victoria Street and the Thames, one place has just become free on my walk this coming Thursday, the 25th click here for details and booking, and one place on Sunday the 28th, click here for details and booking.

In February, BT announced the sale of the BT Tower to MCR Hotels for a sum of £275m, and that MCR Hotels plan to “preserve BT Tower as an iconic hotel, securing its place as a London landmark for the future”.

The BT Tower has been a significant London landmark since completion in 1964, and opening for operations the following year, however in the intervening 60 years, the original technical requirements for the tower’s design and construction have become redundant, and as I will explore in today’s post, the tower has now outlived its original purpose, and it will be interesting to see how it transforms over the coming years.

In this post, I am going to call the building the Post Office Tower rather than the BT Tower, simply because that was the original name of both the tower, and the organisation responsible for building the tower, and I must admit (probably age), but I still think of the building as the Post Office Tower.

Located just to the west of Tottenham Court Road, and south of Euston Road, the Post Office Tower is a major landmark within the surrounding streets:

The above photo is from April 2024, and towards the upper part of the tower, there is an open section which looks almost as if the tower is still being built, however it is this open section of the tower which was the reason why the tower was built.

I took the following photo in 1980 of the Champion pub, at the junction of Eastcastle Street and Wells Street, with the Post Office Tower in the background, and at time of the photo, there were some strangely shaped objects fitted to this open section:

The following photo of the top section of the tower shows the upper part where the kitchen, cocktail bar, revolving restaurant and public observation floors were originally located. Below these floors is the open section with the round, concrete core of the building at the centre:

View from close to the base of the Post Office Tower:

I have one of the wonderful large (A0 I think) posters produced by the General Post Office (GPO), after the opening of the building. The GPO was the combination of what is now BT, the Post Office and Royal Mail, and was then a state run organisation before being broken up and privatised.

The poster shows in detail the functions of the Post Office Tower:

The poster records that “the Tower is 620 feet high, and weighs 13,000 tons. It is constructed of concrete reinforced with high tensile and mild steel and has no less than 50,000 square feet of glass on its outside covering. It will withstand high winds with the minimum of deflection – so as not to upset the alignment of the radio beams. Gusts of 90 mph are estimated to induce a deflection of only 15 inches at the very top of the Tower!”.

It was built between 1961 and 1965 and was designed by the Ministry of Public Building and Works Architect’s Department with Eric Bedford as the Chief Architect and G.R. Yeats as the Senior Architect in Charge.

The core of the tower is a reinforced concrete cylinder with a height of 582 feet. Not that obvious when looking at the Post Office Tower, however this concrete cylinder does taper, starting at 35 feet in diameter with two foot thick walls at the base, tapering to 22 feet in diameter and one foot thick walls at the top of the tower. This taper means that the lower floors are smaller than the upper floors.

This tapering of the central core is not that visible from outside the tower, but look at the poster above and the difference in the size of the core is very obvious between the lower and upper parts.

Reinforced concrete floors surround the concrete cylinder, with seventeen floors of equipment rooms and offices below the level where the radio antennas were mounted.

Working down from the top of the Tower, there was a storm warning radar mounted at the very top of the Tower, below which there was a circular room where lift and ventilating equipment was housed, along with water tanks. Below this was the kitchen, cocktail bar, revolving restaurant and public observation floors:

The restaurant was appropriately named as the “Top of the Tower” and was opened on the 19th of May 1966 by the Postmaster General, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, and Sir Billy Butlin, as the Butlin Organisation were the operators of the restaurant.

It was Britain’s first revolving restaurant, with the arrows in the above image showing the direction of travel, with one revolution taking 25 minutes.

The restaurant and viewing area were a huge success with over one million visitors in the first year of operation. The intention of the GPO was that entry fees to the Tower would help cover some of the costs of the building.

Public access came to an end after a bomb exploded in the men’s toilets in the restaurant on the 31st October of 1971. There was limited public access until 1981, but after that, the floors at the top of the Tower were used for invited meetings, presentations, charity events etc.

We then come to the section of the tower which is the reason for the Post Office Tower’s existence, height and shape. This is where the radio antennas were mounted:

In the post war period, the amount of telephone use was growing rapidly, and this was joined by the growth of television, services which both required a method of transmitting telephone calls and television signals across the country.

This had traditionally been achieved by copper cables running the length of the country, and connecting key cities from where further networks of cables ran out eventually reaching individual homes and telephones.

TV signals were distributed between outside events, studios and transmitter sites.

The copper cable network was not a cost effective or technical means of supporting this rapid growth through the 1960s and 1970s, so a new network was designed whereby both telephone calls and TV transmissions would be carried across the country using microwave radio signals – linking up key locations where signals would then be converted back from microwave radio signal to electrical signal for local transmission via copper cable.

The key problem with microwave radio is that the signal is line of sight. The sending antenna needs to see the receiving antenna, so to send a signal between geographically spread locations, antennas had to be mounted on high towers, capable of seeing their adjoining towers without any obstructions in-between – hence the height of the Post Office Tower.

This diagram from the above poster shows graphically how this worked:

For the Post Office Tower, the height of the antenna platforms was dictated by the height needed to “see” a surrounding network of towers, and the space where they were mounted was circular to give maximum flexibility for moving and pointing antennas in any direction, as well as the space to add additional antennas, as and when needed.

This circular shape was then mirrored across the whole of the tower, and it was a shape that also resulted in minimum wind resistance. The tower needed to be stable, as a small change could mean that the microwave radio beam between the Post Office Tower and an adjacent tower would become out of alignment.

To support this new, cross country communications system, a network of towers sprang up across the country.

But the towers had another, more secretive purpose.

I have a copy of The Sunday Times Magazine published on the 28th of January 1973, and in the issue there is an article titled “The National Guard”, by Peter Laurie and developed from his book “Beneath the City Streets”.

The article explored what else the towers supported, in addition to telephone and television signals.

At the time of the Post Office Tower’s construction, the Cold War was in full flow between the West and Russia. The risk of a nuclear war was all to real, and the Cuban Missile Crisis took place in October 1962, whilst the tower was being built.

There were a number of radio networks across the country, as well as telephone and television, the Gas and Electricity boards had a network to control their nations grids, there was a network for Civil Air Traffic Control, and a separate network for the United States Air force for their fighter and bomber control.

Peter Laurie’s article explained that the towers also included a network to “safeguard vital national communications in the interests of defence” – which seemed to include both air defence warning and control systems against an attack by Russian nuclear bombers, and to provide Government communications to dispersed underground national and regional seats of Government across the country.

The Sunday Time Magazine article included a collection of photos of towers across the country, of which the Post office Tower was part:

You can still see how the network works today. If you go to the Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street on a clear day, and look to the east, on the far horizon who can see the ghostly outline of a tower.

This is the tower at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex, and in the above matrix of photos, it is the tower in the top row, second from the left.

My photo shows the tower, just visible on the horizon to the right:

As can be seen in the above photo, being up a high point in London, enables a line of site to another, distant high point, over which a microwave radio signal could be transmitted.

Other towers surrounding London include a tower near High Wycombe, which is next to the M40 and very visible if you drive along this motorway, along with another tower at Bagshot in Surrey. These are both in the matrix of photos above.

The network extended across the whole country, with each tower serving as a local connection into the network, as well as the relay point to surrounding towers.

In the matrix of photos above, the caption to the Kelvedon Hatch tower states that it was “near a regional seat of government, north of Brentwood”.

This was the underground bunker at Kelvedon Hatch which would have formed a regional seat of Government in the event of nuclear war. I worked in the bunker a couple of times as a Post Office Apprentice in the late 1970s, and wrote about the bunker in this post.

The microwave radio network was a vast improvement in the volume of data that could be transmitted across the country over the previous copper network, however technology does not stand still and during the 1980s and 1990s, a network of fibre optic cables was being laid across the country.

Fibre optic cables were relatively cheap, and small bundles of cables could carry very large volumes of data, considerably more than a microwave radio network, and with the coming of the Internet, data volumes started to increase exponentially, therefore the new fibre optic network started to take over from the microwave radio network.

The last elements of the radio network were switched off between 2006 and 2007, and the radio dishes and horn antennas were removed in 2011 due to concerns regarding their condition and the safety of the surrounding area.

Permission for removal was needed because the tower is Grade II listed, and planning approval was granted by Camden Council. There was a proposal to install dummy dishes to replicate the appearance, however BT rejected this on the grounds of cost.

This is why this section of the tower looks almost as if it is an unfinished part of building works.

Postcard from the 1960s soon after completion of the Post Office Tower showing the horn and dish antennas mounted on the tower, and at the base is the Museum telephone exchange, with the small tower providing some of the local radio links:

The Post Office Tower was opened in October 1965, and the following news report is typical of the reporting of the opening of the tower:

“FROM BIG BEN TO BENN’S BIG TOWER – The Post Office Tower symbolises 20th century Britain in much the same way as Big Ben symbolised 19th century Britain, said Postmaster General, Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, today.

Both speak eloquently for the age in which they were built.

He added: Big Ben represents the fussy grandeur of the Gothic revival that epitomised Victorian imperial influence, built on the foundation of the first industrial revolution.

The Post Office Tower, lean, practical and futuristic, symbolises the technical and architectural skill of this new age.

Mr. Wedgewood Benn was speaking at the ceremony at which the Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Wilson, inaugurated the operational working of the Tower.

Mr. Wilson talked over a microwave telephone link from the Tower to the Lord Mayor of Birmingham; and audiences in each city watched the ceremony by means of a closed circuit television link via the Tower.

Mr. Wedgwood Benn continued: This new, bigger Big Ben captures the sprit of our time, and visitors to London will remember it as the dominating feature of our capital city. Significantly, it is a great communications centre, that will allow the vast expansion in telephony, telegraphy, data transmission and the distribution of sound and television programmes, linked to the world satellite system.

He added that there was a great growth in telephone traffic. Trunk calls were increasing at a rate of about 17 per cent a year.”

Birmingham also had its own microwave tower, connected into the national network, and which was 500 feet tall, and cost £3 million to build.

We can now continue down the Post Office Tower, and the poster shows the apparatus rooms on each of the floors, which contained apparatus for telephone and television systems, and any other systems that would have used the microwave radio network:

These rooms continued down through all the floors wrapped around the central concrete column:

Since its’ completion, the Post Office Tower has been a significant feature on London’s skyline. Apart from Centre Point (which was built over the same period as the Post Office Tower), there are no other tall buildings in the immediate vicinity.

In 1980, I took the following photo from the viewing gallery of the Shell Centre building on the South Bank, showing the Post Office Tower:

This photo was from a few years ago, taken from St. Paul’s Cathedral:

And this is from the viewing galleries of the Shard, where unusually, you are looking down on the Post Office Tower:

One question about the tower I have not answered is why it is located where it is in London?

The answer comes from London’s historic distribution of telephone exchanges, as the site of the tower was the site of the Museum Telephone Exchange.

Prior to the all number system of telephone numbers we use today, London’s telephone system used a combination of three letters and four numbers. This was called the Director system and used due to the large number of telephone exchanges in London, with three letters identifying each exchange, so if you had a telephone connected to the Museum Exchange, your number would be of the format MUS 1234 (this was when telephone dials had letters as well as numbers around the edge of the dial).

The Museum Telephone Exchange was already a hub for London’s telecommunications network, including audio and video circuits, and the Museum exchange included a link to the BBC’s Broadcasting House, so it was the logical site for a tower that would network and connect London with the rest of the country.

Before the Post Office Tower, the Museum Telephone Exchange already had small mast on the roof, and a name used in the early days of planning for the Post Office Tower was the Museum Exchange Tower.

After construction had been completed, Peter Lind, the company responsible for construction, had large adverts in many newspapers advertising that they had constructed “Britain’s Tallest Building” and although calling it the G.P.O. Tower in the headline, in the text under a photo of the tower it was called the “Museum Telephone Exchange and Radio Tower”.

The tower is still surrounded at its base by a number of BT buildings which have long been used for telecommunications equipment. Whether any or all of these are included in the sale of the Post Office Tower is not clear.

Whilst the tower is listed, the surrounding buildings at the base are not, so it will be interesting to see what happens to these in the coming years:

The above photo shows the view along Cleveland Street with BT buildings on the right, and in the following photo are more BT buildings at the junction of Cleveland Street and Maple Street:

Whilst we can see the majority of the Post Office Tower from the surrounding streets, there is one really interesting part of the structure that can only be seen from one side street

Walk down Cleveland Mews, and this is the view:

As mentioned earlier, the tower needs to be as stable as possible so the microwave radio beams could maintain their alignment with distant masts. To help provide this stability, towards the base of the tower there was a “collar” which extended from the ground level buildings around the central concrete column. As well as providing stability, the collar also provided access to the tower:

The collar can be seen in this extract from the poster, where it is described as a connecting bridge and brace for the tower:

in the above image, we can also see the concrete conical pyramid on which the tower was built, and which helped spread the load over the concrete foundations below.

The foundations of the tower below the conical pyramid consisted of a large layer of reinforced concrete, below this was a layer of oil which formed an anti-friction gasket, below which was a thin layer of concrete, and then natural ground.

Looking up at the Post Office Tower from Cleveland Mews, and we can see the central concrete column at its widest diameter, then the collar / brace, and then the tower rising above London.

The Post Office Tower is a remarkable bit of engineering and construction, all to raise a set of antennas to a sufficient height so that they could communicate with a network of relay towers in the counties surrounding London.

The Post Office Tower seen from Fitzroy Square:

Many historic landmarks have a local pub named after them, and the Post Office Tower is no different as at the junction of Cleveland Street and Clipstone Street, is:

The Tower Tavern

The Tower Tavern is not exactly the most attractive pub in London, and the style of the building probably comes from the period when it was built, as the pub dates from around 1970:

It was built following the demolition of an adjacent pub (the subject of a future post about the area), and was a pub frequented by Post Office / BT workers as well as those who lived and worked in the area, and despite its outward appearance was a perfectly decent pub.

Soon after opening, the Tower Tavern was regularly advertising in the papers that you should “Make a date to meet at The Tower – a fine Bass Charrington House”, and in 1971 it claimed to have a model of an original telephone box in the pub.

In 1993 the Tower Tavern was advertising that you could buy:

Carling Black Label 80p per pint
Tennents Pilsner 80p per pint
Tennents Extra 95p per pint
Bitters £1.20 per pint
Double Spirits £1.50
Indian curries and rice £3.00

The Tower Tavern closed in 2021, possibly due to the impact of COVID / rent increases etc. The pub is owned by the University of Westminster who also have the buildings that surround the pub.

The pub has a lovely sign, with a rather dramatic painting of the Post Office Tower with its full compliment of microwave radio dishes and horns across the upper levels:

The Tower Tavern pub sign with the real Post Office Tower behind:

I do not know what plans the University of Westminster has for the old Tower Tavern, but I would be surprised if it opens again as a pub. I hope the pub sign is saved though, and put on public display as a reminder of the Post Office Tower’s history.

The Post Office Tower in Film

As you would expect, the Post Office Tower features in numerous films, TV reports etc. Below are a selection that provide an overview of the tower’s design, construction, purpose and use, visiting the tower, the restaurant, and how the tower often appeared in popular culture.

If you receive this post via email, and the embedded videos do not appear, click here to view the post on the website to see the films.

The Post Office Tower of London

This 19 minute film has some wonderful aerial shots of London, covers the purpose, design and construction of the tower, with some good technical detail, along with visiting the tower and the restaurant:

Top Of The Tower

This 2 minute video again has some wonderful views of London from above, and within the Post Office Tower, the film focuses on the restaurant at the top of the tower:

Look At Life – Eating High

This film includes an overview of other restaurants at the top of tall structures as well as a detailed look at the Post Office Tower restaurant.

The film also includes the mechanism that rotated the restaurant, and shows how remarkably simple this was:

GPO Tower Construction

This silent film shows views from the tower, as well as construction of the tower. If you work in construction health & safety, then best not to watch:

The Goodies

And finally, the Post Office Tower frequently appeared in popular culture, one example was when it was demolished by a giant kitten in an episode of the Goodies:

The Post Office Tower is an iconic London landmark and when you look at the tower, you are looking at something built to serve the explosion of telephone calls, television distribution, and data from the late 1950s and through the 1960s.

You are also looking at something where the design, height and shape was dictated by the leading edge telecommunications technology of the early 1960s.

You are looking at a building in a specific location that was dictated by how the telephone network had developed across London, and where a key telephone exchange was located, and it was part of a network of towers that spanned the country, and linked to Europe via a microwave radio link across the Channel, and the rest of the World via the Goonhilly satellite station in Cornwall.

And it also had a resturant.

Whatever happens to the tower in the future, I hope that some of this heritage survives.

alondoninheritance.com

New Deal for East London – Greenwich Part 2

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Following last week’s post, this is part two of my exploration of Greenwich, looking for the locations marked as potentially at risk from development in the Architects’ Journal of 1972.

In last week’s post, I started at the Royal Observatory (the black buildings under number 82 in the following map), and then explored the streets and buildings to the lower left of the map.

In today’s post, I am working through the upper part of the map, either side of the old Royal Naval College and National Maritime Museum, starting with the following building in Nevada Street, on the corner with Crooms Hill:

This was the Spread Eagle, an old coaching inn, which still has the name Spread Eagle Yard above the arched entrance to the yard where horses were stabled to the rear of the building.

The current building dates from a 1780 rebuild of the inn, and it was closed comparatively recently in 2013.

The brown plaque on the left of the building is to Dick Moy (1932 to 2004) who was an historian and art dealer who restored and worked from the inn.

Just to the left of the Spread Eagle, Croom Hill changes to Stockwell Street, and we can see a mix of architecture, with buildings from the 18th century through to the 21st century University of Greenwich Galleries on the left:

On the corner of Crooms Hill and Nevada Street, opposite the Spread Eagle is Ye Old Rose and Crown which claims to date from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, however the brick building we see today dates from 1888:

You can also see from the above photo that the Rose and Crown is surrounded by the Greenwich Theatre, with a new entrance on the right and original buildings on the left.

The original buildings date back to 1855 when it was a Music Hall. A change to a cinema followed in 1924, and the theatre opened in 1969 following a campaign to save the building from demolition in the 1960s.

St. Alfege

Continuing down Stockwell Street, and we find a superb view of the church of St. Alfege:

There has been a church on the site for around 1000 years, however the church that we see today dates from between 1712 and 1718 and was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. It was one of the so called fifty new churches planned to be built in the areas around the then outskirts of London, in the places that had been expanding rapidly and did not have the number or size of churches needed to support increasing populations.

The previous church on the site had suffered a roof collapse during a storm, and to save money, the tower of the earlier church was included in the new church, although this was not Hawksmoor’s original plan.

In 1731, the earlier medieval tower was extended and clad in limestone, so presumably, parts of the medieval tower are still within the structure today.

On entering the church, we see the altar at the eastern end, and two galleries running either side of the church:

In the above photo, on either side of the arch leading to the altar, there are two ornate panels, which list benefactors dating back to 1558, when William Lambarde “Founded and Endowed a College, the first Public Charity after the Reformation for 20 poor men and their wives. 8 to be off this parish and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth”:

Other benefactors include in 1577: “William Riplar, Fisherman gave his house called the Peter boat to the poor for ever” and in 1605, Joyce Whitehead gave 5 shillings to repair the church every year. All fascinating local tales of charity.

In front of the altar is a plaque which records why the church is dedicated to St. Alfege, and why it is on this site:

The plaque is hard to read in the photo, but it states that “This church stands on ground hallowed by Alfege Archbishop of Canterbury martyred here 19th April 1012”.

St. Alfege (the spelling of the name includes variations such as Alphege), was born in a village near Bath, and became the Abbot of Bath and then the Bishop of Winchester. In 1005 he was appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the early decades of the 11th century, the Danes were invading much of southern England and in 1011 they attacked Canterbury, burning the Cathedral and plundering the city.

Alfege was taken hostage, apparently to be held for ransom, and he was transported by ship to Greenwich.

It was here that he was killed. It is impossible to know exactly how this happened, but many stories tell that Alfege told his captors that the ransom was too high, and that it should and would not be paid. In a drunken rage, they pelted him with cattle bones and an axe head, which killed him.

It was this event which resulted in Alfege being made a Saint (although there has been some dispute about this, and whether he died because of his faith, or the size of the ransom), and to the first church being built on the site of his death later in the 11th century.

St. Alfege is not buried in Greenwich. After his death he was buried in St. Paul’s, then soon after, his body was moved to Canterbury Cathedral, where it remains to this day.

Although Alfege is not buried in the church, there are a number of well known names who have been, including one who may also have left musical evidence of his connection with the church.

Thomas Tallis was a 16th century English composer who was organist in St. Alfege from 1540 to 1585, and is believed to have lived in Stockwell Street close to the church during the later years of his life.

In the church is the keyboard from one of the earlier organs. The majority of the keyboard dates from the 18th century, however it is believed that parts may date back to the 16th century and may have been in use when Tallis was the organist:

Another burial in the church is that of General James Wolfe (Wolfe’s statue is the one on the hill next to the Royal Observatory – see last week’s post). Wolfe had a house in Greenwich and also a family vault in the church.

He died in Canada during a battle to take Quebec from the French, and it is for his part in the wars to capture French possessions in north America that Wolfe is best known, although this was the culmination of a long military career.

There is an interesting monument in the church that includes a reference to the invention of the “Dinwiddy Rangefinder”:

Conrad Dinwiddy was born in Greenwich in 1881, and was the son of London architect and surveyor, Thomas Dinwiddy who had an architectural practice based in Greenwich.

During the First World War, German Zeppelins were making bombing attacks on London and Conrad Dinwiddy saw one of these attacks on Woolwich by Zeppelin L13. He saw that although there were several searchlights trained on the Zeppelin and many guns attempting to hit the attacker, none were actually hitting, and that it appeared impossible to accurately aim a gun and fire a shell to hit a target at height, which was also moving at speed.

Like his father, Conrad was also a surveyor, so was familiar with use of instruments such as theodolite, however working out the positions of a moving target were far more complex that traditional surveying of fixed objects.

He came up with a plan for two stations, based 500 yards apart. One was a primary observation station and was connected by telephone to the secondary station.

The rangefinder worked by the primary observation station making measurements of position and height which were then adjusted to improve accuracy with the measurements of the second station which was, at 500 yards distant, on a fixed baseline.

The Dinwiddy Rangefinder was put into production, but as the war progressed, the threat from bombing changed from Zeppelin’s to aircraft, and rapid technical advances improved other methods for defending London against aerial threats, however the Dinwiddy Rangefinder remains as an example of the rapid response to a threat from a Londoner who saw the potential impact to their city.

Conrad Dinwiddy joined the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1916, where he was posted to the Western Front in charge of a six inch howitzer battery. He would continue inventing improvements to how guns were aimed, firing from barges, and the methods for transporting ammunition.

He was wounded by German battery fire on the 26th of September, 1917, and died the following day. He is buried in a military cemetery in Belgium. The memorial in St. Alfege has the wrong date, as he died a day earlier on the 27th of September.

A fascinating story from this small plaque in the church.

As I left the church, I had a look in a small room on the left as you exit, which has a number of display cabinets on the history of the church and I noticed the following: The Festival Guide – Greenwich

If you have read the blog for a while, you are probably aware of my interest in the Festival of Britain, and this guide is another example of how the festival was intended to reach across the country, and towns and villages, and suburbs of London were also having their own interpretation of the festival, with local events and guides.

Outside the church, on the corner of what is now Greenwich High Road and Nelson Road is a Bill’s restaurant in a rather ornate corner building:

I did wonder if the building was a new build on the site of bomb damage to the terrace you can see to the left, however the style of the building shows that it is pre-war, and it was indeed built in the early 1930s for the Burton menswear chain.

The road then changes to Greenwich Church Street, and here we find one of the entrances to Greenwich Market:

The terrace buildings on either side come to what looks like a designed end where the entrance to the market is located, and this indeed was the plan.

The terraces on either side of the entrance were built as part of an overall redevelopment of the market area around 1829 / 30. They are all Grade II listed, and if we look to the left we can see how the symmetrical design of the terrace curves along the street:

Further along Greenwich Church Street, at the junction with College Approach, the Spanish Galleon pub is on the corner:

The Spanish Galleon pub dates from the same market redevelopment as the terrace houses featured above. As with so much of Greenwich, the pub is Grade II listed. A pub is believed to have been on the site for many years prior to the 1829 / 1830 redevelopment.

The market can be seen in the following map, located in the centre of some of the streets we have been walking along (on the left of the map) (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Up until the start of the 19th century, this was an area of narrow lanes and alleys, and with the growing importance of Greenwich, a redevelopment of the area was needed, and the architect Joseph Kay was commissioned, and it is his work we see today.

Joseph Kay (1775 to 1847) worked on a wide range of building projects across the country. In London, he was appointed surveyor to the Foundling Hospital in 1807, he laid out the gardens in Mecklenburgh Square, he was employed by the Marquis Camden on his Camden Town Estate, and in 1823 he was appointed surveyor of Greenwich Hospital.

The view along College Approach, with the Spanish Galleon on the right, and the terrace along the right being on the northern side of the market:

Greenwich has had a market since the 14th century, however the current market dates from a charter granted in 1700. It was originally located on part of the Seamen’s Hospital site, close to the West Gate. It relocated to the current site as part of Joseph Kay’s redevelopment of the area, and was originally a market selling fruit and vegetables, fish caught by Greenwich fishermen, plants and seeds, with sellers of pottery, glass and household goods around the edge of the main market area.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the popularity of the market as a place for fruit, vegetables etc. declined, and the market transformed into in place where stallholders sell all manner of arts and crafts products, with a cluster of food stalls at the northern end.

The market is open seven days a week, but gets really busy at the weekends.

A view through the market:

The market, and the surrounding buildings of the 1830 redevelopment are part of the buildings marked in black in the Architects’ Journal article, and with the decline of the traditional use of the market, the market could have been so easily lost during the 1970s / 80s, however the market is owned and managed by Greenwich Hospital who fortunately have both a historic and long term view of the importance of the area.

A message to those leaving the market:

Just to the east of the market entrance in College Approach is another Grade II listed pub, the Admiral Hardy:

Greenwich is very well served with pubs. The Admiral Hardy was again part of the 1830 redevelopment, and to the right of the pub in the above photo is a small part of what was the Royal Clarence Music Hall, built over the entrance to the market.

The music hall was named after the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, and the street outside, College Approach was originally Clarence Street.

At the end of College Approach is the Grade I listed West Gate into the old Royal Naval College. The listing includes the gates, piers, globes and brick lodges on either side:

The globes on top of the piers are fascinating. Each globe is of Portland Stone, of 6 feet diameter and weighs around seven tons.

The globes date from the early 1750s, and were installed to commemorate Commodore George Anson’s around the world voyage, which is a remarkable story, and resulted in the surviving crew becoming rich through the capture of a Spanish treasure ship.

The globes are marked with lines of latitude and longitude in copper strips

It was common practice in the 18th century for the story of voyages such as Anson’s to be published as partworks, and Anson’s voyage was covered in 15 issues starting in August 1744, and was written by “An Officer of the Fleet”.

Adverts for the publication enticed the reader with hints of the dangers faced by the crew and descriptions of a part of the world that the majority of people knew very little about:

“This Work contains a very faithful and exact relation of the many Difficulties and Dangers the Fleet met with in the Voyage. An Account of the Loss of their Ships, and what dreadful Miseries and Hardships the poor sailors met with, being forced on desolate islands, where many of them perished for want. Also an Account of the manner of their Living in the Voyage on Seals, Wild Horses, Dogs and the incredible Hardships they frequently met with for want of Food of any Kind. The Loss of the Wager (one of the ships) and the Behaviour of the Captain (who shot one of his Mates), his Officers and Crew, fully and faithfully related. Their plundering and destroying of the City of Payta, where the Commodore got immense Riches, and his sailing afterwards into the East-Indies, where he was well received by the Vice King of China, who furnished him with Provisions and Necessaries to enable him to pursue his Voyage to England. With a particular Account of his taking the rich Aquapulco Ship.

This Book will give a complete Description of the several places where the Fleet touched, how they plundered and distressed the Spaniards; the Manners, Customs, Religion, Trade and Manufactures of the People who inhabit this large and almost unknown Part of the World.”

All for two pence an issue, with a free print of Commodore Anson with the first issue.

From the West Gate, I turn left and head down to the river, with the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, which I have written about in a dedicated post, here.

An obligatory photo of the Cutty Sark:

From here I headed along the walkway by the river to find the locations in the Architects’ Journal map to the east of the Royal Naval College.

At the start of this walkway is the monument to a young lieutenant of the French Navy, Joseph Rene Bellot who went in search of Sir John Franklin. It is a fascinating story, and I have a dedicated post about Bellot, here.

Looking through the old Royal Naval College, to Queen’s House, with the Royal Observatory just visible on the hill in the distance:

At the end of the walkway alongside the river is the Grade II listed Trafalgar Tavern, which has a remarkable display of colourful flags outside:

Greenwich must have been a hive of building activity around 1830. As well as the market development and of the surrounding streets, the Trafalgar Tavern also dates from the same time. It was built on the site of an earlier pub, the Old George Inn.

The Historic England listing states 1830, however the pub website states 1837, and in this instance the pub website seems more accurate than Historic England as I found a newspaper report mentioning an event at the pub in 1833.

Crane Street alongside the pub was equally decorated, and it was along here that I walked to get to more sites on the Architects’ journal map.

At the end of Crane Street is the (Grade II*) Trinity Hospital and Greenwich Power Station:

I have written a dedicated post about these two buildings, which you can find here.

In the Architects’ Journal map, Trinity Hospital is coloured black, indicating a building of concern, and one that should be protected from potential future development of east London, however the power station was not.

I suspect that if today there were plans to demolish the power station there would be a campaign to save the building. As well as part of Greenwich’s industrial history (off which there is not much left), it is also a major landmark, made prominent with the chimneys.

The power station is not listed.

View of part of the jetty where ships bringing coal for the power station once docked and unloaded:

Ships moored in the river:

Walking past the power station, I reached the eastern end of the Greenwich buildings in the Architects’ Journal map, which included the Cutty Sark pub (Grade II listed):

With the terrace of houses and at the end the Grade II listed Harbour Master’s Office for Ballast Quay:

As this post is getting rather long, here is a link to where I have written about the pub and part of Greenwich Peninsula that follows on from the Harbour Master’s Office.

I still had to visit the buildings shown on the map that are between the power station and Greenwich Park, so I headed back past the Cutty Sark pub, along Hoskins Street, where there is an interesting example of how most of a terrace was demolished leaving only two houses remaining.

The LCC Bomb Damage Map does show bomb damage here, so this may have been the cause of the loss of the rest of the terrace.

This is a very different part of Greenwich to that which I have explored in the first post and so far in this post. Here are the houses built for those who worked in the industries between Greenwich and Woolwich, and on the river, and the essential businesses that frequently occupy such areas:

Rear of the power station:

I do not know the purpose of the tower on the right. It may have been for water storage, but it looks rather small.

The road alongside the rear of the power station is the Old Woolwich Road, and as the name describes this was once the main route between Greenwich and Woolwich.

A nice reminder of the original purpose of the power station, and who consumed the electricity generated:

The rear of Trinity Hospital:

At the corner of Old Woolwich Road and Greenwich Park Street is the Star of Greenwich pub:

I really like the bay windows projecting from the pub on the two sides of the building.

The Star of Greenwich is a wonderful story of a pub saved from closure by the community.

A mid-19th century pub and originally called the Star and Garter, the pub closed in August 2021.

Three friends worked to reopen the pub as a community pub, a pub that would support a wide range of community services and would be an inclusive place for the people of Greenwich.

The pub reopened at the end of April 2023, and there is a BBC video about the pub, here.

A side street off Greenwich Park Street is Trenchard Street, which has some wonderful houses:

These houses, along with others in the surrounding streets are part of the Trenchard Street Estate, and were built by the Greenwich Hospital Estates from around 1913 and into the 1920s.

They are a considerable improvement on typical 19th century housing, and from the outside they can be seen as larger buildings, and have sizeable windows to let in as much light as possible.

At the end of Greenwich Park Street is Trafalgar Road, the main road today between Greenwich and Woolwich, and the road which replaced the Old Woolwich Road that runs at the rear of the power station and Trinity Hospital.

Mural on the side of a building alongside Trafalgar Road:

Crossing Trafalgar Road, and I am heading back to the northern side of Greenwich Park, and the proximity to the park can be seen by the type of house, which are generally larger and more expensive than those between Trafalgar Road and the river.

This terrace is alongside the southern section of Greenwich Park Street:

Park Vista runs along the northern edge of the park. There are no houses alongside the park, and houses line the northern side of the street, and as the street name suggests they have a wonderful view across into Greenwich Park.

The buildings are far from uniform, and show a wide range of styles and dates.

This is the Grade II listed Manor House, which the listing records as being early to mid 18th century:

The whole house is wonderful, however the roof has a unique feature, which the listing describes as “Hipped, tiled roof broken in centre to hold renewed weatherboarded gazebo with pyramidal, tiled roof.”

The gazebo is ideally placed for providing a view across the park, and would be a brilliant place for a summer evening with a beer.

In contrast is Park Place, dating from 1791:

To the west of Park Place is another Greenwich pub – the Plume of Feathers:

The pub’s website claims that it is the oldest pub in Greenwich and dates from 1691.

There is a small cluster of buildings in Samuel Travers map of Greenwich from 1695 in what seems to be the right place for the pub, so this could well be true. It is a really good pub, and well worth a visit.

Just past the pub, Park Vista curves slightly to the north, allowing houses to have been built between the street and park. A strange mix of styles, ages and later additions:

But one of these houses has a rather unique feature. There is a small square sign on the wall to the left of the lamp post in the above photo.

The sign refers to the Greenwich Meridian, and there is also a metal strip in the pavement:

Which continues with studs across the road:

So you do not have to join the queue for a photo of a foot in each hemisphere at the Royal Observatory, just head to Park Vista where you can take as much time as you want for photos.

The building at the western end of this cluster of houses is the Grade II listed St. Alfege’s Vicarage:

The listing starts the description of the building with “Rambling building of various dates”, although most of the building seems to date from around 1800, however at the very end of the listing there is the following “The old parts of this building formed part of Henry VIII’s palace of Placentia”, which is intriguing and would dates parts of the building back to the 16th century.

From here it was a short walk to the open space in front of the Queen’s House and the National Maritime Museum:

And just to show how everything has had some form of building work over the years, the large grassed area hides the cut and cover railway that runs underneath (part one of these Greenwich posts showed a view of the railway), as it runs between Greenwich and Maze Hill.

And from here there was only one place to go. It was a lovely sunny March day, so I headed back to the Cutty Sark pub, one of my favourite places to watch the river:

In these two posts, I have covered area 82 from the Architects’ journal map and list of places identified as worthy of preservation, and at risk of possible development as the east of London (north and south of the river) was expected to radically change in the following decades after the closure of the docks, and the loss of the industry and businesses associated with the docks and trade on the river.

From memory, there was never any significant risk to Greenwich, but the 1972 article has served as a reminder that Greenwich really is a wonderful part of the wider London.

Wander away from the park and there is plenty to be explored.

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New Deal For East London – Greenwich

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Back in 2017, I started a series of blog posts about an article in the Architects’ Journal on the 19th of January 1972. This issue had a lengthy, special feature titled “New Deal For East London”. The feature reported on the challenges facing the whole area to the east of London, which by the 1970s had been in continuous decline since the end of the last war, along with the future impact of some of the very early plans for major developments across the whole area to the east of London.

The article identifies a range of these challenges and developments, including:

The impact on the London Docks of the large cargo ships now coming into service
The lack of any strategic planning for the area and the speculative building work taking place, mainly along the edge of the Thames
The location of a possible Thames Barrage
The impact of the proposed new London airport off the coast of Essex at Foulness
The need to maintain a mixed community and not to destroy the established communities across the area

A key focus of the article is a concern that should there be comprehensive development of the area in the coming years, then a range of pre-1800 buildings should be preserved. The article included a map that identified 85 locations where there are either individual or groups of buildings that should be preserved. The area includes parts of south London, although still to the east of the central city area, therefore considered as being east London.

The map was split across two pages and the locations were divided into five categories, identified by their historical origins:

A – Areas that were developed as overflow from the City of London

B – Linear development along Thames and Lea due to riverside trades

C – Medieval village centres

D – Early 19th century ribbon developments

E – Medieval village centres along southern river bank and around London Bridge

Between 2017 and 2019, I went in search of a large number of locations listed in the article, and followed up with posts documenting what had survived, and also where there had been changes, however after 2019 I did not finish working through the list of 85 locations, so today’s post is the first in a final set of posts for 2024, to finish of writing about all the 85 locations recorded as places at risk of redevelopment in the years following 1972.

The second page of the map included a list of the buildings, along with the area that is the focus of today’s post – Greenwich:

Greenwich is a bit of an outlier in the article. There is very little written about Greenwich in the article, and where many other individual buildings had their own numbered entry, the whole of Greenwich is covered by a single number, 82 in the map of “locations, grouping and number of buildings that should be considered for preservation if comprehensive redevelopment of East London were undertaken”.

Of the five categories of location in the article, Greenwich is identified as “E – Medieval village centres along southern river bank” and the map highlighted pre-1800 buildings in black:

In the first series of articles, there were a number of comments raised about classing places south of the river as being in East London.

This was the definition used in the article, and if you ignore the traditional north or south of the river,, they are all to the east of London. They also all shared a common relationship with the working river. They were the location of docks, industry dependent on the river, people would live and work on opposite sides of the river, they had institutions that were there because of the river, people who arrived by the river would stay and live on both sides etc.

So classing these places as East London is a classification I rather like as they had much in common, and a considerable amount of their development was dependent on the river, and of being east of London where the major developments needed to support the growing trade and commercialization of the river, had space to be built.

The map for Greenwich covers a considerable area, from all the streets to the west of Greenwich Park, through the centre of Greenwich, the Royal Observatory and the old Royal Hospital and Naval College buildings, then to the east with some houses along the river, then around the power station.

Rather than have one extremely long post, I will therefore cover the Architects’ Journal map of places that should be preserved in two posts, with today’s post covering the Royal Observatory and the streets to the west, so starting at the top of the hill in Greenwich Park, where we find the:

Royal Observatory

The Royal Observatory sits at the top of the hill that rises from the land alongside the river, and through the Prime Meridian, or 0 degrees Longitude, which runs through the observatory as defined by the astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy, and recognised internationally in 1884. The Prime Meridian is one of the reasons for the Greenwich name to be known internationally.

The Royal Observatory was founded by a Royal Warrant of King Charles II in 1675, and the first building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and still stands at the top of the hill, and is named Flamsteed House after the Reverend John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich:

Whilst the Royal Observatory has hardly changed in the 50 plus years that I have been visiting Greenwich Park, the area around General Wolfe’s statue, and the hill in front, are undergoing some major changes:

The statue of General Wolfe was unveiled on the 5th of June 1930, and is by the sculptor Dr R Tait McKenzie. The statue is Grade II listed, and the Historic England listing includes the reference “Plinth much pitted by bomb fragments”, so hopefully these physical reminders of the way Greenwich was bombed will be retained.

It looks like a larger viewing area is being built in front of the statue. The view from this area must have been photographed millions of times and in summer does get very busy, so the additional space will help.

My father’s first photo of the view from here was in 1953, and my first photo dates from 1980. I wrote a post on how the view has evolved over the years in this post.

The current work is not limited to the area around the statue, the hill in front of the statue is also being changed:

This hill was a rough grassy slope running from the viewing area down to the flat grass in front of Queen’s House, however this hill is now being terraced:

The work is to restore the 17th century landscape of the park. Greenwich Park had been a hunting ground, but Charles II wanted a more formal Baroque landscape, so he engaged André Le Nôtre who had designed the gardens at the Palace of Versailles.

The following print from 1676 shows the new observatory on the hill, and to the left is a formal set of terraces running up the hill, confirming that these were a feature of the park in the 17th century:

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

Comparing the above print from 1676, with the photo below from 2024 shows that this view has hardly changed in 348 years. the main change to the building being the addition of the post on the left of the two central small towers with the red ball.

The red ball was added in 1833 and was possibly one of the world’s first public time signals, and was installed on the observatory so it was visible from the ships on the Thames, for whom time keeping, and being able to accurately set their clocks and watches was important for tides and navigation.

The ball rises to the top by 12:58 pm, each day, and then drops at 1pm as an early, visible equivalent to the “pips” which would provide an accurate time signal years later on radio transmissions.

Although you cannot look at the view from the area in front of General Wolfe, the walkway directly around the base of Flamsteed House is still open, and from here we can still look at the view.

To the east, with the Dome and Power Station:

The ever growing field of towers that now inhabit the Isle of Dogs:

Looking west to the City of London:

This path runs around the back of the oberervatory buildings and through gardens:

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich started closing in 1948 when the move to a new site in Herstmonceux, East Sussex commenced. The buildings were too dated for modern equipment, and the pollution of London was not ideal for visual astronomy.

Flamsteed House opened to the public in 1960, so I doubt the site was ever really at risk, despite being one of the black coloured buildings in the Architects’ Journal map, although being at risk is not just about the building, but also the wider environment and if large new tower blocks had been built in Greenwich and around the park, the setting of the observatory would today be very different.

To find more of the buildings highlighted in the map, I am leaving the park by one of the gates on the west, to find:

Crooms Hill

Crooms Hill runs along the western edge of the park and has a range of buildings of different architectural style and ages. It is the type of street where you are never more than a few seconds walk from a listed building.

Close to the exit from the park is this structure:

Which my father also photographed in the 1980s:

In the 1980s photo above, there is a plaque below the window on the right, which presumably provided some information about the building, however that has disappeared by 2024.

I did though find some information in the Historic England listing, as both the wall and the building are Grade II listed, and are of some age. From the listing:

“C17 high red brick wall. Gazebo of 1672, probably by Robert Hooke, perched on wall but accessible from higher ground level inside. Pyramidal tiled roof with oval wood finial. Moulded wood eaves cornice with carved modillions. Red brick North-west wall blank. South-west wall has open round arch which once contained detached Roman Doric columns and entablatures with moulded round architrave above. South-east wall has square headed opening, with shouldered, moulded brick architrave and cornice, which once contained a round inner arch. On North-east (road) front square opening with moulded brick architrave resting on band raised in centre.”

On the side of the building facing the road, there is a shield with presumably a coat of arms. The Historic England record does not mention the arms, and I can find no reference to what appears to be four scallops or shells in black and white and in this arrangement:

One of the things about a street such as Crooms Hill is the sheer diversity of architectural styles and the building materials used, as well as the changes that have been made to the buildings over the centuries.

I cannot find the following building in the Historic England list of listed buildings, but it still is of interest, with a large three storey curved end to the building, which then steps back as a relatively normal house:

In 1746 not that much of Greenwich to the west of the park had been developed. Rocque’s map shows Crooms Hill along the western edge of the park, with a number of buildings lining the western edge of the road. These are many of the buildings that we can still see today (Crooms Hill marked with red arrow):

One of the buildings that was marked in Rocque’s map is the Presbytery. Grade II* listed and dating from 1630, but with some 18th century alterations:

The following house dates from the mid 18th century, and the house, railings, wall and gate are all Grade II listed:

Just to the right of the above photo can be seen the edge of a church. This is the Roman Catholic Church of Our Ladye Star of the Sea, which again is Grade II* listed:

The following print from 1862 shows the church and Crooms Hill, which at the time appears to have been a relatively narrow, unpaved track. It is not that much wider today:

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

The church owes its origins to the maritime history of Greenwich.

In the late 18th century there were many Catholic occupants of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich. Estimates of up to 500, with numbers coming from Catholic countries such as Portugal which gives an indication of the residents of the hospital.

In 1793 a Chapel of St. Mary was built for these Catholic seamen. in the following decades, the chapel became rather inadequate, and a proper church was needed.

There is a tradition associated with the church that following the rescue of her two sons following an accident on the Thames, a Mrs. Abraham North vowed to build a church.

Fund raising covered the majority of the costs for building the church, and in recognition of the importance of the church to the maritime community, the Admiralty donated £200.

The North family donated the land for the church, and the architect William Wilkinson Wardell was employed.

Wardell was a friend of W N. Pugin, and Pugin worked on the design of the majority of fittings and furnishings within the church. Work started in 1846 and the church was completed in 1851.

Walking through the main doors into the church reveals a rather impressive interior:

The high altar was by William Wilkinson Wardell, and it was exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition:

Side chapel:

The Church of Our Ladye Star of the Sea is a magnificent example of mid 19th century church design and decoration, and a reminder of the connection between Greenwich, and those who worked and sailed on the Thames and the sea.

Continuing along Crooms Hill and we see plenty of one off house designs.

The tall house with the bay along the first and second floors in the following photo is Grade II listed, and indeed all the buildings in the following photo appear to be listed:

There is no single design theme running along Crooms Hill, and here is another example of the mix of styles. I suspect much of the building was speculative, made use of available plots of land, for different occupants, and variable amounts of money available to build and decorate etc. Whatever the reasons, it has resulted in a fascinating street:

The house on the left has a Greater London Council blue plaque recording that Benjamin Waugh, the founder of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children lived in the house:

Again, the houses in the above photo are listed, and looking further along the street there is another house with a tall, central bay running up all three floors.

There is enough in Crooms Hill to fill an entire post, and one of the buildings in the street houses the Fan Museum, however the Architects’ Journal map included more streets to the west of Greenwich Park, so I turned down King George Street to find more of the buildings marked on the map.

King George Street

The houses to the west are generally smaller. Those on Crooms Hill were facing Greenwich Park, and were the first buildings in this part of Greenwich. They were larger, and in a better position and were therefore built and occupied by the more wealthy residents of Greenwich. As we head into the streets to the west, we find houses that were built from the late 18th century onwards and were probably for the working class, tradesmen and those who worked in the many river related professions.

This large three storey building stands out along the terrace of two storey houses. Whilst it is now a private house, it was once a pub – the Woodman:

And almost opposite the Woodman is another closed pub. This one looking more like a pub. This was the Britannia:

Hidden behind the terrace houses on King George Street is a large, 19th century school, one of the impressive schools built by the London Schools Board. There is an entrance to the school playground from King George Street, with separate entrances for Girls & Infants, and for Boys:

Whilst the main school building behind is still a school, it looks as if the old entrance has been converted to residential.

Half way along King George Street is Royal Place, which has two storey workman’s houses on one side, and three storey, presumably more expensive houses on the opposite side:

At the end of Royal Place, we come to:

Royal Hill

And turning left along this road, we find a pub that is still open – the Prince of Greenwich:

The Prince of Greenwich is not the original name of the pub, it was originally the Prince Albert, and the street Royal Hill has an interesting history. It was originally Gang Lane, but renamed Royal Hill after Robert Royal, the builder of a theatre in Greenwich in 1749.

The street, Gang Lane is shown in Rocque’s map below, and is believed to date from the medieval period:

In the above map, it is shown running from London Street, then curving round to Lime Kiln Lane. Today, only the section to the right of the “L” in Lane remains, and to the west, the street now continues as a straight street, rather than continuing the curve.

Terrace houses in Royal Hill:

Along Royal Hill is another closed pub, the Barley Mow, although rather than residential, after closure in 2003, it was converted into a restaurant:

Above the main corner door is a lovely mosaic sign which dates from the time of the Barley Mow, with the Whitbread brewery name at the top and the pub name at the bottom, with presumably what was meant to be a stack of barley as the main feature:

After the Barley Mow pub, the buildings become more recent, although there is a stub of Royal Hill to the right with buildings from the 19th century, but here I turned around and headed back as there was still much to find from this section of the Architects’ Journal map.

Further back along Royal Hill, is another pub, thankfully still open. This is the Richard 1st, and comprises the two lime green buildings and the slightly taller building to the left. The pub dates from around 1843:

Going back to the Architects’ Journal map, and to the west of the park, there is a longer, slightly curvered section where the houses have been marked in black:

This is leading off Royal Hill and is:

Gloucester Circus

Large building with full height bay to the rear at the western end of Gloucester Circus:

As can be seen in the Architects’ Journal map, the highlighted section is along the south east side, with an open space in the middle, and unmarked buildings to the north west of the open space.

View along Gloucester Circus from the southern end, near Royal Hill:

The development of his area was in two stages. The curved terrace shown in black was built by Michael Searles and completed between 1791 and 1809. This work included the gardens in front of the terrace.

In the 1840s, a terrace was added along the other side of the gardens, and the curved terrace was known simply as The Circus, and the 1840s terrace as Gloucester Place.

Wartime bombing resulted in the destruction of the 1840s terrace which is why there is post war building along this stretch with the Maribor Estate, named after Maribor in Slovenia, one of the three towns that Greenwich is twinned with.

There was also damage to the curved section, the Circus, including considerable damage requiring a rebuild to part of the central section.

The houses damaged during the war were rebuilt in the same style, but the difference can be seen today by the different coloured brick of the original and post war building work:

The terrace is Grade II listed, and is a lovely example of a late 18th / early 19th century terrace design and construction.

Renaming of all the buildings around the central gardens as Gloucester Circus came in 1938. The northern end of the curved terrace:

View along the central residents gardens, the curved terrace is to the left, and the post war buildings following bomb damage are to the right:

And at the end of Gloucester Circus, I have almost come full circle as I am back at Crooms Hill, and at the junction between the two streets is this large Grade II listed building:

Built during the late 18th century, there has been some significant rebuilding of the upper floors.

The chimney stack along the Gloucester Circus side of the house has a nice feature which my father photographed in the 1980s:

The Circus – the original name of the curved terrace that is now part of Gloucester Circus.

And that was just the western section of the Architects’ Journal map.

It is strange to consider that in the early 1970s, places such as these buildings and streets to the west of Greenwich Park were considered at risk from redevelopment, but London was a very different place then.

With the closure of the docks, loss of industry, population reducing considerably after the war, so much of east London was becoming derelict, and the vision to see what these places could really become was not, with some exceptions, really there.

So many lovely 18th and 19th century buildings were demolished in the post war period, and it is good too see places such as Greenwich, where they have survived as whole streets, rather than isolated blocks.

In part two, I will be following the Architects’ Journal map, heading towards the area of Greenwich around the Cutty Sark, then along the river to the streets surrounding the power station where there are some gems to be found.

alondoninheritance.com

Stepney Power Station, Limehouse

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The banks of the Thames was not just full of docks and warehouses, but was also a place of industry, attracted by the easy transport of raw materials and goods along the river. Many of these industries were very dirty, polluting the local area and blighting the lives of those who lived nearby.

One of these was Stepney Power Station, a coal fired electricity generator, that can be seen in the following photo taken by my father in August 1948 on a boat trip from Westminster to Greenwich:

The same view in January 2024:

I have outlined the location of Stepney Power Station in red, in the following map of the area today (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

As can be seen, the power station is next to Limehouse Dock (originally Regent’s Canal Dock), and the name Stepney Power Station comes from the power station being in, and originally built, by the Borough of Stepney. It was occasionally referred to as Limehouse Power Station, which more accurately referred to its geographic location.

At the start of the electrification of London, lots of small electricity generating stations sprung up across the city, funded and built by a mix of private and public bodies.

These would supply their local area, with limited, if any, connection to other power generators.

London’s Boroughs were under pressure to develop and build electricity services to provide this new power source to homes, industry, the lighting of streets etc. and there were a large number of power stations built at the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century.

My grandfather worked in two power stations in Camden (see this post for one of these), and my father worked for the St. Pancras Borough Council Electricity and Public Lighting Department which then became part of the London Electricity Board.

Stepney Power Station formerly opened on the 27th of October, 1909, as recorded by a report in the Morning Leader on the following day;

“An extension of the Stepney electricity undertaking was opened yesterday by the Mayor and Mayoress (the Hon. H.L.W. and Mrs. Lawson).

The new generating station is situated at Blyth’s Wharf on the river, which gives the advantages of cheap sea-borne coal and an ample supply of condensing water.

Councilor Kay mentioned yesterday that the whole station had been erected by the council’s officials, so that it was in every respect a municipal undertaking.”

The 1909 power station was relatively small, but in the following years it would rapidly grow as demand for electricity increased and the cables needed to carry electricity across Stepney were installed and spread out across the Borough.

The version of the power station in my father’s 1948 photo shows the power station at its maximum size, with the tall chimney, which was added in 1937. There would be further upgrades in the following years, but from the river, this is how the station would have looked.

To help identify the location of the power station, features of the power station, and a comparison with the same view today, I have marked up the following two photos, starting with the view in August 1948:

And January 2024:

The following extract from the OS map shows the location of Stepney Power Station, labelled as “electricity works”. The conveyor transporting coal from the coaling pier to the power station can be seen, and between the coaling pier and Narrow Street, there is an open space. In the 1909 report of the opening, there is a reference that the “new generating station is situated at Blyth’s Wharf on the river”, and this open space was Blyth’s Wharf (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Being right next to the river was a perfect location for the power station. It enabled supplies of coal to come from the north east of the country, via sea then along the Thames. The river also provided ample supplies of cooling water and water for steam generation in the boilers.

As the generation capacity increased, and therefore the demand for coal, the coaling jetty was built in 1923 to simplify the transport of coal from ship to where it would be burnt.

Newspapers in the 1920s were full of adverts by Stepney Borough Council advertising that their supply of electricity was the cheapest in London due to the prime location of their power station.

Whilst good for the price of electricity, the location was not good for those who lived, worked, and went to school near Stepney Power Station. There were many complaints about the dirt and pollution from the power station, and if you look at the above map, just to the top right of the power station, there are two buildings marked “school”. These are mentioned in the following newspaper article.

From the East End News and London Shipping Chronicle on the 2nd of December, 1949:

“COAL DUST COMPLAINT – Stepney Council is joining the L.C.C. in ‘strong representations’ to the British Electricity authority about nuisances caused by the Stepney power station.

It is said that coal dust dispersed by the movement of coal at the power station can penetrate into class rooms at the Cyril Jackson school even when the windows are closed and the schoolkeeper’s house – about six yards away from the station – cannot be occupied.

Another nuisance is caused by grit from the chimney of the station, the council was told last week. The council point out that when they were in control of the chimney as electrical supply undertakers in 1935 they improved conditions there.”

As the article highlights, it was not just pollution from the chimney, it was also the dust created by the use of coal.

Coal had to be unloaded from ships, transported across Narrow Street, stored, and then pulverised reading for burning. All these activities would have created coal dust, much of which would have contaminated the local area.

Another example can be found in the East End News and London Shipping Chronicle on the 6th of April 1950:

“GRIT AND COAL DUST, COMPLAINT ABOUT STEPNEY POWER STATION – The public health committee reported to the last meeting of Stepney boro council:

Representations have been made to the Minister of Fuel and Power and the British Electric Authority with a view to securing an abatement of the nuisance caused by the emission of grit from the chimney of the Stepney power station and by coal dust distributed as the result of the movement of coal.

The representations have been duly acknowledged by the Ministry and British Electric Authority, in a communication to the Minister dated January 24, 1950, deprecates the suggestion that the condition has worsened since this station vested in the Authority; state that the Authority is fully alive to the responsibility for ensuring that only the minimum interference is caused in the vicinity; and suggest that the chief engineering inspector of the Ministry should visit the site for the purpose of determining whether any further remedial measures are practicable.

We are fully alive to the fact that the operation of a generating station in a highly congested district must, to some extent, detract from the amenities of the persons residing therein but we are seriously concerned that the health of the children attending the Cyril Jackson school, which adjoins the station, may be prejudiced by the emission of grit and coal dust. We understand the extent of the coal dust nuisance varies with the climatic conditions and, it appears to us that since pulverised fuel is being used the coal storage bunkers should be effectively covered in. before making further representation, however, we have directed that inquiry be made of the Minister of Fuel and Power as to whether the Ministry’s chief inspector has visited the site, if so, what further remedial measures are considered necessary.”

I can only imagine what the long term impact on the health of the children attending the Cyril Jackson school would have been. The mention in the above article to the “British Electric Authority” is to the post-war nationalisation of the country’s electricity generating and distribution industries, which brought together all the private and public generating stations, and their distribution networks, into single bodies.

The British Electricity Generating Authority would late become the Central Electricity Generating Board, which would build the national transmission network (the pylons, or towers as they should be known), which allowed the small power stations in London to be closed, and electricity transported from much larger stations across the rest of the country.

When Stepney Power Station was first built, each of the boilers had it’s own chimney. This was standard construction in the first decades of the 20th century (see this post which includes a photo of the first Bankside power station with its rows of chimneys).

In this 1928 photo, we can see the power station as the white building, with a number of chimneys rising from the roof. Note that the chimneys are relatively low in height:

Photo from Britain from Above at this link.

The low height of the chimneys did not help with the dispersion of smoke, gases and grit from the chimney so by 1937 a much taller chimney had been built, which can be seen in the following 1949 photo and is the chimney seen in my father’s photo:

Photo from Britain from Above at this link.

There was a rather glowing report about the new chimney in the Evening Telegraph and Post on the 2nd of August 1937:;

“An Almost Invisible Chimney – There is nothing mars a city more than unsightly chimneys sprouting from factories and power stations. London’s East End must have hundreds of these chimneys, which are, of course, necessary to carry away dangerous smoke and fumes.

There is, however, one chimney in London, its 354 feet making it one of the highest in Britain, which cannot be called unsightly, for it cnnot be seen a mile away. It is situated in Limehouse, and is part of the Stepney Power Station.

The reason for its invisibility is that it is constructed of square bricks, some brown, some a light creamy colour. At close quarters it looks spotty, but from the distance it seems to have no real colour of its own, and is just a faint shadow on the sky.”

I know for certain that it could be seen from more than a mile away, as the chimney appears in other photos taken by my father, and the “light creamy colour” would have turned dark in a short time due to the level of pollution in the air in the industrial West End of London.

For example, this is my father’s photo of the view from the east of King Edward VII Memorial Park in Shadwell, and clearly shows a very visible chimney rising above Stepney Power Station:

Stepney Power Station would continue in operation until 1972 when it was decommissioned.

During the 1950s and 1960s large new coal and oil fired power stations had been build along the Thames, and a distribution network connected London up with the rest of the country, so there was no need for small power stations in congested areas of London.

All that remains today of Stepney Power Station is the coaling pier. The buildings and chimney were all demolished years ago, and the building that now occupies the majority of the site is the Watergarden complex of apartments.

This is the view of the Watergarden apartments facing onto Narrow Street:

Stepney Power Station was instrumental in providing electricity to the factories, warehouses, docks and homes of the borough, and in 1917, Stepney had entered into an agreement with Bethnal Green Council, under the London Electricity Supply Act of 1908, to help develop and supply electricity in Bethnal Green.

The growing dependence on electricity can be seen by the impact that failures in supply had on the local area.

On the 8th of May, 1926 it was reported that:

“LIGHT CUT OFF, London Hospitals Have To Stop X-Ray Work: Three important London hospitals are still without electric current owing to the Stepney power station cutting off the supply. They are the London Hospital, the Whitechapel Infirmary, and the Whitechapel Dispensary for the Prevention of Consumption.

The work of these hospitals becomes more and more hampered by the loss of electrical power, and all X-ray has had to be stopped.”

And on the 27th if July, 1955, the Daily Herald reported that:

“POWER FAULT BLACKS OUT HOSPITALS: Three East London hospitals and the whole borough of Stepney were blacked out last night by a four-hour power failure.

It was the third in a week, and the third time cinema audiences get their money back. Police were sent in vans to all major crossings because traffic lights failed.

And while engineers sweated at Stepney power station, hospitals, homes and public houses switched to candles.

At the London Jewish Hospital the water supply failed too. It is kept up to pressure by electric pumps.”

From the London Daily Chronicle on the 22nd of August, 1922:

“STEPNEY IN DARKNESS – Two Men Injured at the Electricity Works: Two workmen named as Tindall and Armstroong were injured last evening in a mishap at Stepney Borough Council’s electricity generating station in Narrow-street, Limehouse.

The switchboard burst into flames, and the two men sustained burns in trying to put out the fire. Their injuries, however, were not serious, and after treatment at Poplar Hospital they were allowed to go home.

For a time part of the district was deprived of Light and Power.”

The view today, looking into the Watergarden complex from Narrow Street, into what was the core of the power station:

The view from the west – no coal dust, dirt, smoke or grit covering Limehouse today:

To the west of the power station site was Shoulder of Mutton Alley, which can still be found today, as can be seen in the following photo where the power station would have been on the right, and a paperboard mill on the left, with the power station chimney being at the far end of the street:

Walking along Narrow Street today, it is hard to imagine just how much industry there was along these now quiet streets, along with the noise and dirt which these industries generated. In just the above photo there was the power station and a paper mill on opposite sides of the street.

Stepney Power Station does help tell the story of how electricity came to London, and became an essential part in the ability of the city to operate in the modern world.

The Cyril Jackson school is still in Limehouse, however it has moved slightly east to a site along Limehouse Causeway, where today the children breath much cleaner air than their predecessors.

alondoninheritance.com

Watney Market and Watney Street, Shadwell.

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All my walks have sold out, however I have had a request to run the “South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain” walk on a weekday, so have added a walk on Thursday, the 9th of November, which can be booked here.

For this week’s post, I am in Watney Market and Watney Street in Shadwell. A street that runs between Cable Street and Commercial Road.

It is a rather long post, however the post does what I really love about writing the blog. It takes one of my father’s photos and with some digging discovers so much about life in the area of a single street.

East London poverty, the relationship with the River Thames, a market that has traded for many years, a lost pub, Blackshirts, post-war Germany and post-war redevelopment which erased a long familiar street.

This is the photo, taken by my father in 1952:

As c;lose as I could get to the same view today:

My father’s photo was taken from the bombed space once occupied by a church, and it was looking southwest towards a pub, the Masons Arms, which faced onto Watney Street and Watney Market.

The following extract from the 1952 photo shows on the left, the large sign or perhaps a lantern on the front of the pub and two of the remaining shops which seem to have part survived the bombing which destroyed the area around them.

I have marked the spot with the red circle in the following map of the area today ( © OpenStreetMap contributors):

Commercial Road is the road running left to right at the top of the map. The train tracks at the bottom of the map is the Docklands Light Railway. Watney Street is running from the junction with Commercial Road at the top centre of the map, down to the DLR where it heads under the railway, down to Cable Street which is just below the bottom of the map

The following map is from the 1948 revision of the OS map, and shows the area much as it was when my father took the photo, from the location of the red dot (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“).:

I have mapped some of the key features in the photo onto the map below.

The red line and arrow points from the Masons Arms pub in the photo to the pub in the map
The blue line and arrow points from the two remaining shops in this section of Watney Street to their location on the map
The yellow oval is around one of the pillars that originally stood either side of the main entrance into the open space in front of the church

In the above maps, you will see that my father was standing in front of the outline of Christ Church.

These were the ruins of a church that had been very badly damaged by bombing in 1941, and had then been demolished. It was not rebuilt, and the land was integrated into the post war redevelopment.

The church was not that old. The foundation stone was laid on the 11th of March, 1840, with the land being the site of three former houses on land owned by the Mercers Company, who conveyed the land to the church.

The site of the church, and the surrounding housing, before wartime bombing and post war redevelopment obliterated the area is shown in the following extract from the 1914 revision of the OS map (again the red circle indicates where my father was standing to take the photo) (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“).:

In my father’s photo, the slogan “No arms for Nazis” is painted on the wall running alongside the pub. This slogan represented a concern about the level of Nazi sympathies still remaining in Germany, rearming Germany, and the need to integrate Germany into the wider European community.

In 1953, British security services had made several arrests, and the US had undertaken a survey which revealed that the undercurrents of Nazi-ism in Germany should be taken seriously. It was claimed that the growth of “nationalistic discontent among young men is ominous”.

There was unemployment in Germany and economic grievances were being intensified by the numbers of refuges from the Eastern Zone.

At the time, Germany was not considered an equal partner with other countries in western Europe, and, to quote papers of the time “And the vagueness of British policy, the passive attitude of the Tories towards European co-operation – which they encouraged with words when not in power – has done nothing to speed things up”.

This had already been going on for some years, and when the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer was in London in December 1951, he was met by a demonstration when he arrived in Downing Street for a lunch with Churchill.

He was met with cries of “Adenauer go home”, “Sieg heil” and “Heil Hitler”.

Adenaur had been an opponent of the Nazis and had only just survived the war as he had lost all his property, money and position in the 1930s.

He was strongly anti-communist, wanted cooperation within Europe and the US, wanted to start the rearming of Germany, and he had earlier ended the de-Nazification process.

He was part of the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Paris in 1951, which established the European Coal and Steel Community (the predecessor of the European Union), not a popular move in Germany as it was seen to give France too much influence over German industry.

Adenaur also ensured that West Germany joined NATO in May 1955, and secured agreement for Germany to rearm (although agreeing that Germany would not have nuclear weapons).

When Adenaur visited Downing Street in 1951, leaflets were handed out to the crowd with the words “No arms for Nazis”. These leaflets, and the slogan were part of a campaign by the London Peace Council, based at New Compton Street, W.C.2.

The slogan appeared at many sites across London, and also across the country, for example an article in the East Kent Times reported that in Ramsgate “Motorists and residents were startled to see on the parapet of the viaduct, high above the main Margate Road, the words ‘No arms for Nazis’ painted in large white capitals.”

The use of white paint and capital letters seems to have been standard for where the slogan was found.

The slogan was on the wall that ran alongside the Masons Arms pub. The pub seems to date from the mid 19th century and features in numerous newspaper reports. All the usual issues of crime, drunkenness, change in licensee, meetings etc.

There were a couple of reports which gave an insight into life in 19th century London and the River Thames.

From the Kentish Gazette on the 17th of May, 1859:

“ENROLMENT OF NAVAL WOLUNTEERS – The recruiting officers of the Royal Navy had quite a field-day on the river of Tuesday. A steam boat, profusely decorated with union jacks, ensigns and other national colours, and manned by a dashing crew of blue jackets, with a powerful band on board, left the London-bridge-wharf shortly after eleven o’clock for a cruise down the river. The steamer on her paddle-box bore the words ‘Queen’s bounty’ and on her sides fore and aft, ‘£10 able seamen, £5 ordinary seamen’.

On leaving the band struck up ‘Hearts of Oak’. The sailors gave a most deafening cheer, which was taken up by the vast multitude which lined London-bridge and crowded the water side. The trip was continued to Gravesend, where the blue jackets landed and paraded through the principle thoroughfares, and the proclamation being frequently read. A vast crowd followed the recruiting party, and during their stay the town was kept in a most lively state of excitement. many volunteers were received and numbers promised to present themselves at the rendezvous on Tower-hill. Owing, however to the long prevalence of easterly winds there were not so many first class seamen in port, a large fleet of homeward-bounders being detained in the Channel.

As far as it has gone, however this new popular mode of beating up naval recruits has answered admirably; and the Masons Arms, Watney Street, Commercial Road (situated in a locality crowded with sailors), has been opened as a rendezvous. A change in wind must bring in large numbers of first-class men, who will doubtless avail themselves of the £10 bounty.”

There is so much in the above article. It tells us that in the mid 19th century:

Large numbers of sailors lived around Watney Street
Ships still being mainly powered by the wind could be stuck in the channel with an easterly wind as they could not round the eastern edge of Kent to access the Thames Estuary
That the Thames and the London Docks were a very important part in the life of London

As with most other East London pubs, inquests into unexpected and accidental deaths would be held in the Masons Arms. A newspaper report from October 1841 tells the story of 34 year old James Holland who worked as a coal-whipper (a coal-whipper brought up the coal from below decks using baskets attached to a pulley system).

He was working on the “Three Sons”, a collier from Sunderland which was moored in the river off Rotherhithe and whilst filling a basket with coal, he collapsed with blood pouring from his mouth and nose, and died almost immediately.

At the inquest in the Masons Arms, the verdict was “Died by a visitation of God”. No reference to his working conditions, long exposure to coal dust etc.

Time to have a look at Watney Street. The street has almost completely been rebuilt, with only a couple of pre-war buildings remaining at the very southern part of the street.

The alignment of the northern half of the street changed, and it has been rebuilt with new tiered housing on either side of a central raised section where the market is now located.

Walking along Commercial Road, this is the first view of Watney Street and Market:

To the east of the entrance to the market is a clock tower:

Which has a plaque mounted on the side:

The plaque recalls a dreadful tragedy when three workers died on the 22nd of September, 1990. At the time, they were investigating a blockage in a drain. There were four workers involved. One of them had descended into the drain which was at the bottom of a 9ft shaft. He was overcome by fumes, and in an attempt to rescue him, two other descended the shaft, but were in turn overcome by fumes.

The Fire Brigade was called, and firemen wearing breathing apparatus descended the shaft and pulled the three men out. The man who remained at the top of the shaft was also affected by fumes from the sewer.

It turned out they they have been overcome by hydrogen sulphide gas, and the three who descended all died.

They were not provided with any safety equipment, gas monitoring or breathing equipment, ropes and harnesses etc. and had received no training to undertake such work. It was the type of accident that would have happened in 1890 rather than 1990.

The three who died were trainee electrician Paul Richardson (aged 17), his brother trainee plumber David Richardson (aged 19) and electrician Steven Hammond (aged 32).

Their employer was fined £50,000 which even at the time seemed a ridiculously low amount for the loss of three lives in such avoidable circumstances.

A dreadfully sad loss of life which so easily could have been prevented if they had been provided with the correct equipment and training.

This is the view looking down into Watney Market from Commercial Road:

The London Overground between Shadwell and Whitechapel runs beneath Watney Market. If you go back to the 1952 OS map of the area, to the upper left of the original routing of Watney Street, just below Commercial Road, there is a circle with the words “Air Shaft”.

This was a ventilation shaft for the railway which runs just below the surface. In the rebuilt market, the above ground infrastructure of the airshaft can be seen, which is also used to advertise Watney Market:

Air vent to London overground below the street

View looking through the market back up to Commercial Road:

There was an article in the East London Advertiser on Saturday the 21st of August, 1886 about Watney Market. It was a rather long article, however it does provide a really good view of the market, those who shopped there, and the conditions of many of those who lived in the area. The core of the article follows:

“WATNEY STREET MARKET – How, when, or by whom this market was commenced no one seems to know. It has no charter, nor any legal status but that of usage, and like Topsy, it seems to have ‘growed’. Nevertheless it has become an important market, and to the poor inhabitants of St. George’s and Shadwell it is a most useful institution.

At first the market seems to have been confined mostly to the Cable-street end of Watney-street, the busiest being in the neighbourhood of the railway arch; but now, on some days, and particularly on Saturdays, it extends the whole length of the curved street, from Cable-street to Commercial-road and in it can be purchased almost everything needed in a household, from a pennyworth of pins to a suite of furniture, with bedding, bolsters, curtain lace, baby-linen, suits of clothing. washing machines, pianos and perambulators; whilst in the edible department it is always well stocked.

There is fish in every variety, from the lordly salmon down to a fresh herring, whilst the butchers cater for all classes, and in a manner suitable to the means of their numerous customers. Thus, on a Saturday, from morning till late at night, and particularly in the latter portion of the day, this market is crowded. in addition to the shops on both sides of the street, which are numerous, stalls are erected on and outside the footpath, leaving only a sufficient space for a limited amount of vehicular traffic.

A very large proportion of the purchasers in this market are women, and these mostly of the very poorest class, whose families live from hand to mouth. They can afford little at once, but they want that little every day when they can find the money to buy it; and hence the individual amounts spent at any one time are small, whilst their aggregate for a year must represent a very large sum. here the ‘ladies’ saunter about the market in dozens, in the most careless of deshabille, with hair unkempt, faces unwashed, and a general appearance of not having been dressed or undressed for a very considerable period. Each of them is accompanied by two, three or four children, equally elegantly attired. Whilst the mothers are looking out the cheapest bargains, these youngsters dive in, under and around the stalls, picking up rotten fruit, and anything else from the stalls on which the vendor does not keep a sharp eye.

And yet, notwithstanding all this squalor in dress and cleanliness, there is a general air of cheerfulness, frequently arising to hilarity, amongst the habitués of the market, and the general tone is one of careless happiness, especially when the weather is fine, when the women seem in no hurry about their business, but enjoy a thorough good gossip in the market place. Very few bags or baskets are brought by the buyers, they are not needed. A pound of bits of meat for about four pence, a couple of pounds of potatoes for two pence, and a cabbage for a penny, with perhaps a pennyworth of onions, and there is a dinner which has frequently to be eked out, with the aid of bread, for a family of six. An apron or the skirt of a dress will hold much more than this, and so the ladies who attend here will not encumber themselves with a basket, even if they have one, which in most cases is doubtful.

The women who purchase on Saturdays, are for the most part, wives of working men who are paid their wages on Friday; but there is a large class of men who are not paid until Saturday, and sometimes late even on that day. The bulk of these do not go straight home when they have received their wages, but remain about in public houses, where they are joined by their wives in very many instances, until it is too late, or they are too much overcome, to go shopping. What becomes of the children in the interval nobody knows and nobody seems to care. They play out on the street until they are all thoroughly tired out, and then made their way supperless and unwashed to such beds as they have, whilst their parents, with drunken recklessness, are wasting the food supplies on that which makes them utterly oblivious of the morrow and its responsibilities.”

The London Poverty Maps created by Charles Booth date from around the same time as the above report. Watney Street is in the centre of the following extract, and the streets around the street appear to have almost every category from Middle Class, Well-to-do (along Commercial Road), down to Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal (area in black).

There has been a constant battle regarding space in Watney Market which has been going on for over 100 years, both in the original market, and the post-war rebuild.

The market stalls operate in the central space, with shops in the ground floors of the buildings on either side. These shop owners have long complained about the market stalls hiding their shops. They have complained about the size of the market stalls, the volume of product on display, how close the stalls are to their shops, the amount of traders products also displayed on the floor, and all the problems which the shop owners believe prevent shoppers from seeing, and getting to their shops.

This has been a recurring issue in newspaper reports back to the mid 19th century, and the market today remains a busy place, with market traders using as much space as is possible for the stalls, and to display their goods.

There is only a narrow walkway through the centre of the market, and the shops that line the ground floors of the buildings on either side are quite hard to see:

The southern end of Watney Street is at Cable Street, a street that is well known as the scene of the “Battle of Cable Street”, when on the 4th of October 1936, there were clashes between the Police, ant-fascist demonstrators, and the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, who were attempting to march through the area.

Whilst Cable Street is remembered as the scene of the attempted march, and anti-march demonstrators, in the 1930s, this area of east London was the scene pf regular provocation of the mainly Jewish community who lived in the area, by members of fascist organistions.

Watney Street and Watney Market frequently appeared in newspaper reports of these events. For example, on the 30th of May 1936, the City and East London Observer carried a report titled “Fascists in Watney Street”:

“There was great excitement among the many shoppers and stallholders in Watney Street on Sunday morning when about a dozen Blackshirts paraded up and down the market selling Fascist newspapers amid cries of ‘More Stalls for Englishmen’, ‘Foreigners Last and Nowhere’, while from another section of the crowd there were cries of ‘Blackshirt Thugs’, ‘Rats’, etc.

A great crowd gathered, and a Jewish girl, going up to one of the Blackshirts, bought a paper, tore it to pieces and stamped on the fragments. After this the police took a hand but they found it very difficult to keep the crowd on the move owing to the barrows in the market. Somebody picked up a cucumber from one of the stalls, but was prevented from throwing it at a Blackshirt.

A surprising number of the people present appeared to be in sympathy with the Blackshirts. The Blackshirts are, it is believed, about to open a branch in Stepney.”

A few months later in July 1936 is was reported that the market place in Watney Street “seems to be the chief hunting ground for Blackshirts selling their propaganda, who, according to reports, do their best to encourage hatred of the Jewish community.”

Many of the traders in the market were concerned about the lack of action from the authorities, and “rightly or wrongly, are of the opinion that the police are pro-Fascist”.

The traders were concerned that the Blackshirts were having a negative impact on their trade. Their actions and language put off many of the customers of the market, and when they arrived many of the traders packed up and left.

This all came to a head with the Battle of Cable Street, which greatly diminished the impact of the Blackshirts in Watney Street.

Another air vent, half way along the market. Possibly another air vent to the railway below:

Post war redevelopment of Watney Street and surroundings took some time. It was being planned in the 1950s, however nothing happened on the ground until the 1960s when the market was relocated in 1965, the surviving buildings demolished and the area flattened.

Tiered sets of new flats were built on either side of the new routing of Watney Street and a raised area along the new alignment was created for the market.

This took a long time to complete, with work not being substantially finished until 1977.

The flats were not popular with the original inhabitants of the street. Flats had been planned in the last days of the war, and in 1944 there were protests against the plan for flats, with residents of the Watney Street area telling the Borough Council that “Working people with families must have decent houses in which they can rear them properly”.

The wholesale demolition of many streets of terrace housing across east London, and the construction of flats is one of the themes of post war redevelopment of the area.

Whilst the demolished houses were in very poor condition, often badly maintained by uninterested landlords, lacking basic facilities, and suffering from general war damage and lack of attention, very many could have been refurbished, and would have provided housing, at street level, suitable for a wide range of occupants.

The following photo is looking through the market showing the tiered flats on either side:

The whole scheme, including the tiered flats was designed by the Architect’s Department of the Greater London Council.

The redevelopment work took over ten years, and in 1977 graffiti was appearing in the area complaining that the market has been murdered.

Redevelopment and relocation resulted in a reduction of trade for those running stalls, and the number of market stalls was gradually declining so by the end of the 1970s there were only about 19 market stalls remaining.

It would take the 1980s and most of the 1990s for the market to recover, and to make use of the full space provided by the redevelopment work.

As well as the central market stalls, a large number and range of shops have occupied the buildings along the side. The supermarket Sainsbury’s was a long time resident of Watney Street, opening their first store in the street in 1881, expanding into a second building 13 years later.

Sainsbury’s were in Watney Street for over 100 years, finally moving to Whitechapel in 1994. Iceland then took over the store and are still in Watney Street, at the north-eastern corner, just behind the clock tower.

A couple of the shops are unoccupied, and the space directly in front is quickly occupied by the Watney Market traders:

As can be seen in the 1949 OS map earlier in the post, Watney Street had a rather strange routing. A short distance north along the street, it angled to the east before resuming a northerly route up to Commercial Road.

The point where this swerve to the east happened was at the junction with Tarling Street.

In the photo below, Watney Street is to the right, and where the road does a sharp turn to the right, that is Tarling Street. At this point, Watney Street angled to the right, under where the flats have been built, and continued north, under the flats.

It would seem that when the area was first developed in the early decades of the 19th century, Tarling Street ran left to right across the above photo, and the southern section of what is now Watney Street between Cable Street and Tarling Street was originally Charles Street.

After the junction with Tarling Street, Charles Street changed to Watney Street and was reached through a narrow street or alley, around a larger building to the main section of Watney Street.

This larger building was demolished at some point, replaced by terrace houses, which were also later demolished, and the angle to the right then went through where these buildings was located.

I suspect the name Watney Street displaced Charles Street as the market grew in size and popularity.

I cannot find a firm source for the origin of the name. The general consensus seems to be it comes from the Watney Brewery in Whitechapel, although this was a little distance to the north west so there is no obvious connection.

Watney Market and Watney Street. A working market for well over 150 years. A place once occupied by those working on the river and by the poor of east London, a large Jewish community, and an area targeted by the Blackshirts of the 1930s. Badly bombed during the 1940s then with a lengthy redevelopment that would not see the market busy again until the 1990s.

A fascinating place of east London history.

alondoninheritance.com

Cloak Lane Police Station

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I have now been writing the blog for nine and a half years, and it has changed the way I look at things when walking the streets of the city. I now take far more notice of all the little indicators to the history of an area, a street or a building.

Whether it is the way that streets dip and rise, and the sound of running water rising from below a drain cover, both hinting at a lost river, the way the shape of a building hints at an early street pattern before a Victorian road improvement, or the numerous plaques and architectural features telling of a building’s former use.

A typical example of this was when I walked along Cloak Lane in the City a couple of weeks ago. Although I have walked through the street numerous times over the years, I had not noticed this foundation stone on a building on the corner of Cloak Lane and College Hill:

What caught my attention with this foundation stone is that it was laid by a Deputy Chairman of the Police Committee.

The building does not seem to have any current connection with the Police service and is now an office block, and appears to be on sale for offers in excess of £14.7 million.

The building looks as if it was once home to an institution of some form. Plainly decorated and mainly brick with stone cladding on the ground floor, the building still projects a strong, functional image onto Cloak Lane.

The foundation stone on the building is now the only reminder that this was built for the City of London Police and opened as Cloak Lane Police Station:

As the foundation stone records, Cloak Lane Police Station dates from 1885.

At the time, Cloak Lane was one of six police divisions across the City. They were centered on police stations at Cloak Lane, Minories, Bishopsgate, Bridewell Place, Snow Hill and Moor Lane.

The City of London Police came into being in 1839 when the City of London Police Act was passed on the 17th of August 1839. Before this act, policing in the City was built around a Day Patrol of Constables, and a Night Patrol which started with elected Ward Constables and Watchmen, with Watch Houses that later became the first Police Stations located across the City.

The 1839 Act provided statutory approval of the City of London Police, appointed a Commissioner of Police who was selected by the City’s Court of Common Council, and probably of more importance to the City of London, the Act ensured that the City’s police would be kept separate and not merged with the Metropolitan Police. A separation which continues to this day.

The City of London Police seems to have been funded by the Corporation of London, and funded by a police rate paid by the businesses and residents of the City.

There appears to have been some concern about the extra costs of the new building as in the City Press in 1885 there was the following: “There is every probability of an increase in the city rating, which is already exceedingly heavy. A new police-station is about to be erected in Cloak Lane which will involve an additional penny in the police rate, unless the cost of the building is spread over several years”.

I cannot find the exact date when the new station opened, however it appears to have been built quickly as by 1886 newspapers were starting to carry reports about events involving the station, including what must have been a most unusual use for the new police station:

“AN ADDER CAUGHT IN A LONDON STREET. There is now to be seen at the Police Station, Cloak Lane, City, an adder, about 15 inches long, which was seen in Cannon Street a morning or two ago basking in the sun on the foot pavement, although large numbers of persons were passing to and fro at the time.

A constable’s attention was drawn to the strange sight, and he managed to get it into a box and take it to the station. It is conjectured that it must have been inadvertently conveyed to town in some bale or other package of goods. The creature, which is pronounced to be a fine specimen, has been visited by large numbers of persons.”

I could not find any record of what happened to the adder after its appearance at Cloak Lane police station.

Cloak Lane is to the south of Cannon Street, and runs a short distance west from Cannon Street Station.

The building did suffer bomb damage during the war (although it is not marked on the LCC Bomb Damage Maps). A high explosive bomb did penetrate the roof and caused considerable internal damage. There are a number of photos of the damage in the London Picture Archive, including the photo at this link.

As a result of this damage, there may have been some repairs and rebuilding of the structure, and it is hard to be sure how much of the building is the original 1886 station.

The longest axis of the building is on Cloak Street, with the shortest axis running down College Hill as the building is on the corner of these two streets.

What is strange is that the main entrance to the building is on Cloak Lane, and the building was known as Cloak Lane police station, however as can be seen to the left of the door in the following photo, it has an address of 1 College Hill:

The arms of the City of London can be seen in the pediment above the door. I am not sure who the figure on the keystone is meant to represent, however it could be Neptune / Old Father Thames, as Cloak Lane police station covered the area along the river not far to the south of the building.

I find it fascinating to use these fixed points in London as a reference to finding out about life in the City over the years, and Cloak Lane police station tells us much about crime in the City of London.

Financial crime seem to be a feature of many of those of who found themselves in Cloak Lane police station. Probably to be expected given the businesses within the City. Two examples:

In September 1952, Colin Vernon Ley was awaiting trial, charged with “while being a Director of Capital Investments Ltd. he unlawfully and fraudulently applied £3,000 belonging to that body to his own use”.

The report of his arrest reads as you would perhaps expect of an arrest in the 1950s:

“At 6.45 p.m. yesterday, said the Inspector, I was with Detective Sergeant Reginald Plumb in Bruton Street, Mayfair, when I saw the prisoner outside the Coach and Horses public house.

I said to him ‘You know who we are, and I hold a warrant for your arrest issued at the Mansion House today.

I cautioned him, and he said ‘I suppose I have to come with you now’. At Cloak Lane Police Station, the warrant was read to him, and he said ‘You were in a position to prove it, no doubt before you got the warrant’. I was present when he was charged and he made no reply.”

On the 10th of October 1959, papers were reporting on the arrest of a solicitor for one of the largest, in value, financial frauds. Friedrich Grunwald, described as a 35 year old Mayfair solicitor was arrested and charged under the Larceny Act with the fraudulent conversion of £3,250,000 entrusted to him by the State Building Society to secure mortgages on properties owned by 161 companies. His arrest was described that:

“At a nod from a colleague, a bowler-hatted Detective-Superintendent Francis Lee, head of the City Fraud Squad, intercepted him on the Embankment near Temple Underground Station and escorted him to a car which drove to Cloak Lane police station”

In January of the following year, Herbert Murray, secretary and managing director of the State Building Society was also arrested and taken to Cloak Lane and would later appear in court with Grunwald.

The problem with using old newspapers for research is that there are so many random interesting articles to be found on the same page. If you have ever wondered why and when the Guards at Buckingham Palace moved into the secure area behind the railings, then on the same page as the above article there was:

“PALACE GUARD TO RETREAT BEHIND RAILINGS – Sentries at Buckingham Palace are to retreat behind the railings. They are making their tactical withdrawal to prepared positions to avoid clashes with sight-seers.

It will stop fashion photographers posing scantily dressed models under the men’s noses. It will stop those pictures of kindly small boys tie sentries undone bootlaces. Too often the boys tied the laces of both boots together.”

The River Thames features in a number of events that involved Cloak Lane police station. These normally involved some form of tragedy, due to the nature of police work, and the dangers of the river, such as in April 1924:

“POLICEMAN VANISHES – BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN BLOWN INTO THE THAMES. Police Constable Albert Condery is believed to have met with a tragic death by being blown into the Thames during a storm last night.

It is learned that Condery, who has been in the City Police Force for 20 years, left Cloak Lane Police Station last night to go on duty at Billingsgate Market. He was seen there by the sergeant, but later he was missed, and his helmet was found floating on the Thames near the market. The body has not been recovered.”

The above report was from a time when lone police officers patrolled the city’s streets. Although the following photo was taken by my father in Bankside, not the area covered by Cloak Lane, it does show the traditional image of a policeman patrolling their beat:

There were many strange events across the City in which Cloak Lane was involved. In November 1902, papers had the headline “EXTRAORDINARY AFFAIR AT BANK OF ENGLAND – ATTEMPT TO SHOOT THE SECRETARY. A sensation was caused in the Bank of England yesterday by the firing of a revolver by a young man who had entered the library. As he seemed about to continue his firing indiscriminately the officials overpowered and disarmed him. The police were called in, and he was removed to the Cloak Lane Police Station.”

He was unknown by anyone in the Bank of England and whilst at Cloak Lane, he was examined by a Doctor, who came up with the diagnosis that “the man’s mind had given way at the time”.

In August 1891, there were reports of a “Raid on a Cheapside Club”, which officers from Cloak Lane had been watching for some time, with a couple of Detectives having infiltrated the club. Finally there was a raid, when: “A party of 14 plain-clothes officers made a descent upon the premises. At first, admission was refused, and the officers proceeded to smash the glass paneling in the upper portion of the door. Resistance being of course in vain, the door was thrown open, and the detectives rushing in, arrested everyone found in the establishment. twelve persons were taken into custody, and removed to Cloak Lane Police Station.”

The report does not mention why the club was illegal, however reports in later papers when those arrested were in court reveal that it was an illegal betting club, known locally as the United Exchange Club, held in the basement in Cheapside that had been home to the City Billiard Club.

Another view of the old Cloak Lane Police Station. College Hill is the street leading down at the left of the photo. Cloak Lane is where the longest length of the building can be seen, but strangely the address on the main entrance is 1 College Hill:

In 1914, two of the original six divisions were closed, and the City of London police force was reorganised into four Divisions. These were changed from numbered divisions 1 to 6 to lettered divisions A to D, with Cloak Lane becoming D Division.

In last week’s post on the London Stone, I included a photo from the 1920s publication Wonderful London where a policeman was standing guard over the London Stone.

City of London police had their individual number, followed by a letter for their division on their collar, and looking at the collar number of the policeman shows he was from D Division based at Cloak Lane, which makes sense as Cloak Lane covered Cannon Street.

Cloak Lane Police Station survived until 1965, when it closed and Wood Street became the D Division police station.

The very last report mentioning Cloak Lane Police Station was from December 1965 when an article titled “Foolish Driver in The City” reported on a driver who was seen driving down Friday Street and only just stopping at the junction with Cannon Street. He was arrested on suspicion of being drunk and taken to Cloak Lane Police Station, where he “had to be supported by two officers because he was unsteady on his feet”.

And so ended 80 years of policing from Cloak Lane.

Wood Street (designed by McMorran and Whitby, and built between 1963 and 1966), and which took over from Cloak Lane is shown in the photo below:

Wood Street Police Station has in turn been closed.

In the announcement from the Corporation of the City of London, it is stated: “The Grade II* Listed building has been sold to Wood Street Hotel Ltd (wholly owned by Magnificent Hotels) after it was declared surplus to operational requirements by the City of London Police. The developers have purchased the property on a 151-year lease and will turn it into a boutique 5-star hotel, subject to planning permission.”

The architects plans for the building can be seen at this link.

The only indication that the building on the corner of Cloak Lane and College Hill was a police station is the foundation stone laid by the deputy chairman of the police committee.

It now has a very difference use, and those who enter the building are now presumably doing so voluntarily, unlike very many of those who entered the building between 1886 and 1965.

alondoninheritance.com

Attenborough Jewellers and Pawnbrokers

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In 1986, Attenborough Jewellers and Pawnbrokers had a shop at 244 Bethnal Green Road in east London:

In 2023, they are still in business, and have expanded to take in the ground floor of the building to the right:

It is unusual for the same business to be operating in the same place after almost 40 years, and Attenborough Jewellers and Pawnbrokers have been at the same site for much longer having first opened here in 1892.

Apart from the ups and downs of the economy, the business seems to have had a reasonably quiet 131 years of trading, apart that is from the risk that any business with high value goods has to run, such as reported in the Eastern Post and City Chronicle on the 23rd of October, 1920:

“RAID ON A JEWELLERS: A daring attempt was made on Tuesday night by several men attempting to obtain possession of some valuable jewellery on the premises of Messrs. Attenborough Jewellers and pawnbrokers of 244, Bethnal Green Road. The weapon used was a hammer, and the thick plate glass window was smashed. The thieves were disturbed by a passer by and made off without obtaining any booty.

An unemployment meeting was being held at the time at the corner of Bethnal Green Road.”

The last sentence of the above article is rather strange, and seems to try and link an unemployment meeting with the robbery.

The Attenborough website only mentions the business in Bethnal Green Road, however there have been a few other businesses with the same name and business description across London, so I do not know if they were once all part of the same business, or the naming is just a coincidence.

Attenborough Jewellers and Pawnbrokers appears to have had a branch on Oxford Street in 1940, as in the following article dated the 5th of February, 1940, it is the same name, and the same description of “jewellers and pawn brokers”:

“STANLEY HILTON THURSTON, the prisoner who escaped from Lewes Gaol on August 9 last year was recaptured dramatically in London to-day.

The man, for whom the police have been searching for almost six months, walked into a jeweller’s shop in Oxford-street and was endeavouring to make a transaction when suspicions were aroused, and the police were called.

When the police questioned Thurston, he vaulted the counter and ran into the street. He was chased by the young assistant at the shop, who leaped on his back and brought him crashing to the pavement. Four police officers held him down while a taxi was called to take him to the police station.

The manager of the shop – Messrs. Attenborough, jewellers and pawnbrokers, described Thurston as ‘a real tough guy’. Thurston, a native of Manchester was serving sentences of five years penal servitude for a jewel robbery and five years preventative detention as an habitual criminal when, with a companion, he made his daring escape.

They were mistaken for harriers when seen wearing singlets in Lewes High-street. Thurston posed as a runner when he escaped Liverpool Gaol in 1930.”

Other newspaper articles include a reference to another Attenborough’s shop, also a “jewellers and pawn brokers” at 193 Fleet Street. and also one in Brompton Road

As with the businesses with the same name across London, the Attenborough’s in Bethnal Green Road was both a jeweller and a pawnbroker, and the business still has the three gold balls of the pawnbroker on the front of the building:

The use of three gold balls as the symbol for a pawnbroker dates from the time when most people could not read, and a symbol was needed to show the location of a particular business.

The three balls seems to have a number of possible origins.

One origin is a story that Saint Nicholas gave three bags of gold to the three daughters of a poor man, providing them with the means to get married.

Another possible origin is that the sign was used by Lombard lenders, who were money lenders and early bankers who came from central and northern Italy. The name Lombard is associated in the City of London with Lombard Street, where Lombard merchants settled in the 12th century.

The association between Lombards and pawnbrokers is such that in a number of European countries variations of the name are used for a pawnbroker, for example Lommerd in the Netherlands.

Whatever the origins of the symbol, the practice of pawnbroking goes back many centuries, where you would handover something you owned for a cash sum, with the ability to retrieve the object following payment of the original sum of money, plus interest.

The pawnbroker was often the last resort for the poor, including those who worked and did not have enough money to last to their next pay day.

For the last few hundred years, pawnbroking has been a regulated activity. The Pawnbroker Act of 1785 brought in the licensing of pawnbrokers, with those operating in London having to pay a fee of £10, and those in the rest of the country £5 for their licence. The act limited the rate of interest they could charge to 0.5% with loans being limited to one year.

An interest rate of 0.5% did not go down well with those in the trade, and 15 years later in 1800, another Pawnbroker Act raised the maximum interest rate to 1.5%.

Various acts continued to modify the way the trade was conducted, with conditions being placed on the trade to protect the individual, for example that a pawnbroker could be fined if he traded with a person who was drunk.

Pawnbrokers have had something of a renaissance in recent years, and many have also tried to move their image upmarket, for example, with a trade in luxury watches.

Probably helped by the current cost of living, one major chain of pawnbrokers recently increased their profits by around 30%, and highlighted that “as continued momentum in our core pawnbroking business provides a robust revenue and profit foundation for the remainder of the financial year.”

I searched Google for the number of pawnbrokers in London and Yelp came up with a total of 203 (their page link on Google was “The Best 10 Pawn Shops in London” – written in the way that Google likes, but a rather strange name for a list of pawn brokers.)

Hopefully Attenborough’s will be in business at 244 Bethnal Green Road for a good many years to come.

The expansion of the Attenborough business between the 1986 and 2023 photos shows the occupation of the ground floor of the building on the right of the 1986 photo.

This is very typical of streets such as Bethnal Green Road, where buildings, many of which were probably once fully residential, have had their ground floors converted into shops, and these businesses expand and contract across neighbouring buildings over time:

There are also reminders of the once thriving pubs that catered for the inhabitants of Bethnal Green:

There are some lovely side street off Bethnal Green Road, such as where these small 19th century brick workshops can be found in Gibraltar Walk:

This area of east London is a magnate for murals, street art and graffiti, and there was much to be seen as I headed towards Liverpool Street Station:

Turville Street – this has covered up an area that was used for paste up advertising:

Braithwaite Street, E1:

On the corner of Braithwaite Street and Quaker Street there was a car wash business for several years. Today, there is a three piece artwork created by Cold War Steve:

Who continues the tradition of using art and satire to comment on the politics of the day:

It is always fascinating to explore the streets of Bethnal Green, and to find that Attenborough’s has expanded and continued in business since photographed in 1986.

The trade of a pawn broker has existed for very many centuries, and I suspect will continue to do so for a long time to come.

alondoninheritance.com

Paternoster Square – Destruction and Development

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The area to the north of St. Paul’s Cathedral was destroyed during the war, mainly due to the use of incendiary bombs on the night of the 29th of December 1940. The destruction covered ancient streets such as Paternoster Row and Paternoster Square, and the shells of buildings were demolished and removed leaving a wide open space ready for new development.

The site was redeveloped during the 1960s, with the pre-war streets and original architectural styles being ignored, with an office complex built which followed a number of post war City planning themes which I will come on to later in the post.

The 1960s development was not popular, obstructed key views of the cathedral and tended to separate the cathedral from the area to the north. The buildings were not that well maintained and by the late 1980s the area was not an attractive place to work, or walk through, and did nothing to enhance the cathedral just to the south.

In the early 1990s, a proposed Masterplan was published by “Masterplanners” Terry Farrell, Thomas Beeby and John Simpson & Partners, and Design Architects Robert Adam, Paul Gibson, Allan Greenberg, Demetri Porphyrious and Quinlan Terry.

I have a copy of the Masterplan and it is fascinating to compare the original proposals with the site we see today. Not quite so architecturally ornate as the Masterplan, but very similar to what was originally proposed, and (in my view) a significant improvement on the 1960s development.

The following image is from the Masterplan and shows a “View of Paternoster Square looking south-east to the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral”. The image is by Edwin Venn.

As with City developments such as the Barbican and Golden Lane estates, the damage inflicted on the City during the last war created the large area of space which could take a major, transforming development, rather than the simple rebuild of individual buildings.

The following photo is one of my father’s, taken from the Stone Gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral:

The shell of a building at the bottom left is the Chapter House of the Cathedral.

The circular features between what was Paternoster Square and the remains of the Chapter House are the outline of water tanks that were placed on site during the war to provide supplies of water for firefighting.

The following extract from Bartholomew’s 1940 Reference Atlas of Greater London shows the area to the north of the cathedral. In the map, a Paternoster Square can be seen. In the above photo, this is the rectangular feature at top left, with roads on all sides, but not a building in sight.

Map of pre-war St Paul's and Paternoster Row

As well as Paternoster Square, the map shows a network of streets such as Ivy Lane, Three Tuns Passage, Lovells Court and Queens Head Passage.

Running across the area was Paternoster Row, and the following photo from the book, the Queen’s London, published in 1896, shows the view along Paternoster Row, a narrow street but with substantial 19th century City office buildings on either side.

In the following photo, the dense network of streets and buildings to the north of the cathedral can be seen:

Another of my father’s views from the Stone Gallery, looking slightly above the earlier photo, with a bus running along Newgate Street. The Paternoster Square developments would occupy the area to the south of Newgate Street.

The same view today, showing the buildings of the Paternoster Square development:

The area, and street names are of some considerable age. The first written records of the streets date from the 14th century, with Paternosterstrete in 1312 and Paternosterrowe in 1349.

From the early 19th century onwards, the area was home to many publishers, stationers and book sellers. Much of the stock held by these businesses contributed to the fires started on the 29th of December 1940.

Harben’s Dictionary of London references a Richard Russell dwelling there in 1374 and described as a “paternosterer”, and that paternosterers were turners of beads, and gave the street its name.

Harben also states that “A stone wall was found under this street at a depth of 18 feet running towards the centre of St. Paul’s. A few yards from this wall in the direction of St. Martin’s-le-Grand wooden piles were found covered with planks at a depth of 20 feet”, and that under Paternoster Square, “Remains of Roman pavements and tiles were found in 1884”.

W.F. Grimes’ book, about his post war excavations across the City, “The Excavation of Roman and Mediaeval London” records his limited excavations across the area in 1961 to 1962, and that much of the Paternoster area “was not available for examination because the cellars had retained their bomb rubble and the sites around Paternoster Square had become a garage and car parks.”

In the limited excavations that did take place, Grimes found evidence of ditches and post holes, possibly where the wooden piles were found in the 19th century. He concludes that the area was probably occupied by timber framed buildings rather than stone.

The main discovery on the site was a hoard of about 530 coins, “mainly barbarous copies of coins of the Gallic Empire of the late third century A.D.”

The limited excavation took place prior to the 1960s development of the site. This create a dense cluster of office blocks between the cathedral and Newgate Street, which can be seen in the following photo, to the right of the cathedral:

The 1960s development of the site was based on the plans by architect and planner Lord Holford who was commissioned by the City Corporation to advise them on architectural policy, and the development of buildings within the “orbit of the dome of St. Paul’s”.

Lord Holford’s plan for the site followed post-war thinking about the City’s redevelopment. This included the separation of traffic and pedestrians, with vehicles having priority at ground level, and pedestrians moved to elevated walkways.

The original street plans were rejected in favour of a rigid matrix of building blocks, which resulted in a horizontal slab of blocks with the 18-storey office tower Sudbury House being the highest.

Lord Holford’s explanation of his approach to the design of the site was that “there is more to be gained by contrast in design, than from attempts at harmony of scale or character of spacing” (I think this is the design approach used for the current developments between Vauxhall and Battersea Power Station).

Not all of Holford’s ideas were implemented, and many of the buildings were by other architects, so the new development ended up as a rather uninspiring addition to the land north of the cathedral.

The following photo shows the 1960s office block immediately to the right of the old St. Paul’s Chapter House:

In the following photo, the Chapter House is the older building in dark brick behind the tree, and the new lighter red brick building to the right occupied the site of the 1960s office block seen in the above photo:

The following photo shows one of the access ramps that took pedestrians up to the pedestrian area. To the right is the lower vehicle route, with access to car parking:

I may be completely wrong, but I vaguely remember there being a pub on the upper pedestrian area, which had an outside area with a view over the surrounding streets.

The 1960s development took no regard of the views of the cathedral just to the south.

This is the view to the northern entrance to the cathedral, with only a small part visible through a tunnel that takes a pedestrian walkway through an office block:

In the Masterplan, the proposed redevelopment delivers this alternative view of the same part of the cathedral:

And whilst the buildings are less ornate than originally proposed, the view today is much the same as in the Masterplan, also with a café, on the site of the walkway:

The caption to the following illustration reads “St. Paul’s Church Yard will be re-aligned and the Cathedral gardens re-laid and enclosed”:

The gardens were re-laid and enclosed, and new office blocks occupied the space to the north, and whilst these were very different to the 1960s versions, they were not quite as ornate as the Masterplan envisaged:

The objectives of the Masterplan were to:

Restore views of St. Paul’s Cathedral from Paternoster Square at ground level and on the skyline, respecting St. Paul’s Heights and Strategic Views
To create buildings that are in harmony with St. Paul’s Cathedral
To restore the traditional alignment of St. Paul’s Church Yard and the Cathedral Gardens creating an enhanced public space
To re-establish a traditional street pattern and return pedestrian routes into the site to ground level
To create a new, traffic-free, public open space allowing ease of access, especially for the disabled
To follow the City tradition of classical architecture, using traditional materials such as stone, brick, tile, slate and copper
To be flexible enough for key corners, outside the Planning Application site to be integrated at a later date
To create a thriving new business community in the best traditions of City life
To create a much-needed, new shopping area in the heart of the City, with a variety of shops, restaurants and entertainment, linked into St. Paul’s Underground Station
To create new open public spaces for relaxation and enjoyment by office workers, visitors and shoppers alike

It is interesting to compare the development today with these objectives.

There was an intention to follow the City tradition of classical architecture, and this could be seen in the illustrations of the planned buildings, such as the following example showing “the frontage of the new buildings on Newgate Street”:

The frontage along Newgate Street today is comprised of standard office block design, without the classical architecture proposed in the Masterplan.

The title of the following illustration is “A Meeting Place – Paternoster Square will provide a social focus for the City, a place to meet friends and colleagues, to browse or to use the health club”:

This approach can be seen across the Paternoster Square development, but in less ornate settings. Whilst the buildings do not have the same classical architectural styling, they do make use of stone, and there is a considerable amount of brick throughout the site which is a pleasant change from the glass and steel of many other recent City developments:

Whereas today, Paternoster Square is at a single level, in the Masterplan it was intended that there would be steps leading down to a Lower Court, so whilst the plan did away with the upper pedestrian and lower vehicle levels of the 1960s development, it did retain different levels, but for pedestrians. The Lower Court:

The plan was that Paternoster Row would become almost a continuation of Cheapside.

Cheapside was, and to an extent still is, the main shopping space of the City, and the One New Change development has enhanced this, but in the Masterplan, shopping would continue from Cheapside, across the road into Paternoster Row, and the underground station, which today is reached via a separate access point to the edge of the development, would have been integrated into the plan, as shown in the following illustration:

The St. Paul’s Chapter House was reduced to a shell of a building, as shown in my father’s photo, however it was restored and survived the 1960s redevelopment, and was included in the Masterplan, where it can be seen in the centre of the following illustration.

To the left of the Chapter House is a rather ornate three storey gateway into Paternoster Square, which today has been replaced by Temple Bar.

Temple Bar was included as an option in the Masterplan, which is described as “currently in a state of decay in a Hertfordshire Park”.

As mentioned earlier, the central Paternoster Square was intended to be multi-level, and in the following illustration, there is a rather impressive Loggia (an outdoor corridor with a covered roof and open sides), that would have provided a lift down to the Lower Court, would provide shelter, and would mark the access point to the Lower Court:

A key aim of the Masterplan was to bring life back to the area, and one of the ways to do this was via retail, and the plan stated that “Paternoster Square will be established as one of the foremost shopping areas in central London. There will be more than 80 shops, including a quality food hall or department store”.

The approach to retail included a Shopping Avenue, which was a covered route between the Lower Court and St. Paul’s Underground Station:

Shops would also line the new Paternoster Row:

And along the route of the old Ivy Lane, there would be Ivy Lane Arcade “designed in the tradition of famous London arcades. It will attract specialty shops such as jewelers and galleries”:

And shopping around Paternoster Square and Lower Court:

The Paternoster Square estate does have some shopping, but far less than was intended in the original Masterplan. There is no lower court and no covered shopping avenues.

Most of the shops are either restaurants, bars or take away food and coffee shops, aimed at local office workers and at the number of visitors who pass through as part of a visit to the area around St. Paul’s Cathedral.

There are also many other differences. Whilst the overall concept appears the same, the classical building style is now very limited as is the overall decoration across the buildings and ground level pedestrian spaces.

In 1995, the owners of the land commissioned Whitfield Partners to deliver a Masterplan for redevelopment, and it is the outcome of this plan that we see today. Similar in concept, but different in implementation.

The Paternoster Square development today has a large central space, is pedestrianised, and some of the pedestrian walkways do roughly align with some of the original pre-war streets.

The objective of bringing life back to the area has been achieved, and during the day it is generally busy with local workers, visitors and tourists, and on a summer’s afternoon, the bars and restaurants are particularly busy.

The central square features a 23.3 metre tall column, which conceals air vents to the parking space below the square:

The Masterplan by Farrell, Beeby and Simpson included a Loggia which would have provided a lift down to the Lower Court, and mark the access point to the Lower Court.

Whilst the Loggia and Lower Court were not part of the implemented Masterplan, there is a covered way along the northern edge of the square which has similarities to the original Loggia:

In the above photo, two groups of tourists with guides can be seen to the right. Between them is the artwork “The Sheep and Shepherd” by Elisabeth Frink. This came from the earlier Paternoster Square development as it was installed on the north side of the estate in 1975 when it was unveiled by Yehudi Menhuin.

It was moved to the high walk outside the Museum of London in 1997 prior to demolition of the 1960s estate, then returned to Paternoster Square in 2003.

The Sheep and Shepherd stands where Paternoster Square joins to Paternoster Row (which, as far as I can tell is very slightly north of the street’s original alignment).

Looking through the Loggia that was built as part of the new development:

Rather than lots of classical decoration to the buildings, there is a “Noon Mark” on one of the buildings to the north of the square. In strong sunlight, at midday, the shadow indicates roughly the day of the year:

A key point with the development is the height of the buildings. In the 1960s development, there were office blocks that ran both parallel and at right angles to the cathedral and views of the cathedral were limited.

With the new development, building heights are lower and allow views of the cathedral. As can be seen in the following photo from the north west corner of Paternoster Square, the new buildings are just slightly higher than the original Chapter House (the older, dark brick building to the right of the column):

Whilst a number of the walkways do roughly align with the original streets, Paternoster Square is in a different place to the original square, which would have been to the northwest of the current square, to the right of the building in the following photo, which does retain some classical styling at ground level, but is a modern building above:

This is the view from the western end of Paternoster Lane towards the central square. This stretch of walkway is almost exactly on the original route of Paternoster Row:

Sometimes it seems as if all the large sculpture across London’s streets is there to hide an air vent. This is the purpose of the column in the central square and also the purpose of a work of art on the corner where Paternoster Lane meets Ave Maria Lane:

This is a 2002 work by Thomas Heatherwick, and consists of sixty three identical isosceles triangles of stainless steel sheet welded together.

Round to the front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and to the north of the large open space in front of the cathedral is an office block with shops at ground level which follows the alignment of the old street St. Paul’s Churchyard:

The following photo is taken from Cheapside looking towards the cathedral and Paternoster Square development, and may offer a clue as to why the implemented Masterplan is different to the Masterplan of Farrell, Beeby and Simpson:

To the right of the above photo are two sides of an octagonal building. It can be seen in the following extract of the photo of the 1960s estate:

One of the entrances to St. Paul’s Underground Station is just to the right of the building in the photo, and the building is either part above, or extremely close to, the underground station.

I have no evidence to confirm this, however it may be that the estate we see today was down to cost.

Whilst the initial planning permission did not include the octagonal building, the Masterplan did. It would have been demolished and the entrance to St. Paul’s Underground Station would be integrated into one of the new buildings as can be seen in one of the earlier pictures. The proposed lower shopping arcade would also have led into the underground station.

I imagine that anything involving changes to an underground station incur significant extra planning time and costs.

The overall Paternoster estate, whilst aligning with the original Masterplan, does not have the level of classical architecture proposed in the plan, or the split level with the lower court.

All this extra work would have incurred cost, and in so much of the built environment, decisions often come down to cost.

Having said that, compared to the 1960s development, Paternoster Square is a very considerable improvement.

It integrates well with the cathedral to the south, recreates alignments close to some of the original streets, certainly has brought life back into the area from what I recall of the previous development, and is a generally pleasant space to walk through.

Reading the Masterplan though, it is interesting to speculate what might have been, if this plan had been adopted.

You may be interested in the following posts about the area around St. Paul’s:

Post War London from the Stone Gallery, St. Paul’s – The North and West

Post War London from the Stone Gallery, St. Paul’s – The South and East

Operation Textiles – A City Warehouse In Wartime

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The Tower Tavern

The Post Office Tower in Film

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Top Of The Tower

Look At Life – Eating High

GPO Tower Construction

The Goodies

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St. Alfege

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Royal Observatory

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Gloucester Circus

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