Category Archives: London History

Bluecoat School, Caxton Street, Westminster

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

Strand Lane, a Tragic Story and William Lilly

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Tickets for my final Southbank walk until next summer: The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain, on the 20th of October, are now available by clicking here.

As well as finding the locations of my father’s photos, it is fascinating to see how London has changed compared to any old photo, and the three volume set of Wonderful London from the 1920s is a fantastic source to compare how London has changed in the past 100 years, and the following photo of Strand Lane from the book took me to a very old place with a long story:

The text from Wonderful London with the above photo reads: “Strand Lane is thought to have once been the bed of a stream which ran down from Drury Lane to the Thames. A bridge called Strand Bridge crossed it, and the name was afterwards transferred to the landing stage at the bottom. The entrance to the Roman Bath is just to the right of the passage under the old watch house, and the property belongs to the parish of St. Mary’s. Just below the point where the camera stood for this photograph are some steps on the right leading up to Surrey Street”.

There is some truth and also a big error in the above 1920s text, which I will come to later in the post.

The same view today (although not exactly from the right place as there was a van and a car parked to the right and behind where I was standing):

The photographer for Wonderful London walked through the passage under the house, and took another photo looking down Strand Lane:

So I did the same:

The Wonderful London text for the second photo reads: “A low entry opposite the church of St. Mary-le-Strand leads to this quant passage. In former times Strand Lane led down to Strand Bridge, a landing place for boats much used by the inmates of Strand Inn, which lay just to the west of the lane. In ‘The Spectator’ it is recorded that Addison landed with a ten sail of apricot boats at Strand bridge for somebody’s stall in Covent Garden. There used to be some tenements in the Lane called Golden Buildings, but at present the backs of high houses on the east and a brick wall on the west are all that keep it as a lane.”

The description of the lane in the last sentence of the above 1920s text can equally apply to much of the lane today, but where is Strand Lane?

I have marked the location of Strand Lane within the red oval in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The entrance to Strand Lane is from the south, along Temple Place. The Strand Campus of King’s College London occupies the large area of land to the west, and also the buildings along the eastern side of the lane, so today, Strand Lane seems to be fully within the campus of King’s College London.

Today, the lane comes to a dead end at the north. The Wonderful London description states that entry to the lane from the north was through a “low entry opposite the church of St. Mary-le-Strand leads to this quant passage“, however this has been closed off for the last fifty years due to the expansion of the college buildings.

Rocque’s map of 1746 shows that Strand Lane was to be found in the mid 18th century, and also shows how the lane ran directly to the Strand, just opposite the eastern end of St. Mary-le-Strand. Strand Lane can be seen running down from the Strand, in the centre of the following extract from Rocque’s map:

In the above map, you can see that Strand Lane runs down to a set of stairs into the river which went by the name of Strand Bridge.

In an 18th century reproduction of an earlier map, we can see Strand Lane, with the name of Strand Bridge Lane on the left edge of the map, when it was along the western border of the old Arundel House, one of the large houses and grounds that once lined the area between the Strand and the river:

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

The above map shows 4 small boats at the end of Strand Bridge Lane, illustrating that this was a place where you could take a boat along the river for a fee.

The use of the word “Bridge”, either in the name of the lane, or for the landing place at the end of the lane can best be described by taking the following extract from “London Past and Present” by Henry B. Wheatley (1891) :

“Strand Lane, in the Strand, east of Somerset House, and opposite the east end of St. Mary’s Church, was originally the channel of the rivulet which crossed the great thoroughfare under Strand Bridge. It must be remembered that the Strand at this part has been raised fully 20 feet above the ancient level. The lane led to the landing place, at one time known as Strand Bridge; but this was destroyed in forming the Thames Embankment and the lane is no longer a thoroughfare.”

“London Past and Present” also includes a passage from the 1709 publication “History of the Quakers” to substantiate a claim that there were once 311 open channels of water crossing the roadway between Westminster Hall and the Royal Exchange:

“The 18th December 1656, J. Naylor suffered part; and after having stood full two hours with his head in the Pillory, was stripped and whipped at a cart’s tail, from Palace Yard to the Old Exchange, and received three hundred and ten stripes; and the executioner would have given him one more (as he confessed to the Sheriff), ‘there being three hundred and eleven kennels’, but his foot slipping, the stroke fell upon his own hand, which hurt him much.”

“Kennels” were streams of water that ran either along the middle or along the edges of a street. One place where Kennels can still be found is Wells in Somerset, where there are streams flowing in channels along the sides of the streets:

Whether there were 311 streams or channels of water leading down to the river, crossing the road between Westminster and the Royal Exchange in the heart of the City is impossible to confirm and it does seem like a very large number, however there must have been a significant amount of small streams, and Strand Lane appears to be the route of one of these old streams. A reminder of how much we have changed the land surface of the city over the centuries, with so many of the original natural features erased or buried.

The plan of Arundel House shows the street as Strand Bridge Street, and perhaps the stream of water also acted as the western border of the plot of land on which Arundel House was built.

This is the entrance to Strand Lane from Temple Place. the buildings of King’s College London line the two sides of the land, and there is an enclosed overhead walking route between the two sides:

Temple Place, and the Embankment which was behind me when I took the above photo, were built during the late 19th century, so originally, the Thames came up to the roadway in front of me, and this was where the stairs at the end of Strand Lane could be found.

I use old newspapers for research into the places I write about. You need to be careful about journalistic spin, and as ever, newspapers always focus on the bad aspects of life, however they do give a good impression of day to day life in a city such as London.

We also tend to romanticise the London of the past, however if you did not have money, London was often a dark and brutal place for the poor, and particularly for girls and women, and whilst researching Strand Lane, I came across one of the most appalling and sad stories that I have read. This was reported across several newspapers on the 16th of June, 1786:

“Saturday morning the body of a fine young woman was taken out of the Thames at the end of Strand Lane, where she had drowned herself the preceding night. She appeared to be about eighteen years of age, and was known to have been turned out of doors the day before, by one of those inhuman monsters, in the shape of women, who keep brothels in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane.

The poor young victim had been brought from her parents at the age of eleven years, by the mistress of the Bagnio, from which she was dismissed when her face grew common, and the charms of extreme youth and novelty were no longer a temptation to debauched constitutions, and debilitated age. Thus thrown upon the town, penniless, and heart-broken, she put an end to her existence. the body was taken to a house in Strand Lane.”

The article states “charms of extreme youth and novelty” when she should have been described as a child, and although from the article some of her history was known, the article does not even give her the dignity of a name.

One cannot begin to imagine how much she must have suffered by the time she ended her life at the end of Strand Lane, in the Thames at what is now Temple Place and the Embankment.

Looking up Strand Lane today, the white house from the Wonderful London photo towards the end of the lane, buildings of King’s College on either side, a mix of very different architecture, and overhead crossings:

View to the west of Strand Lane, with a large, brick building with what looks like an apse, the curved section at the end of the building, almost over hanging the lane:

There is an unusual feature on the very top of the building in the above photo, a dome to house an astronomical telescope:

I wonder how much of the night sky can be seen given the level of light pollution in central London?

Approaching the end of Strand Lane, the van, and a car behind it, was the reason that I could not get into the right position to take an identical photo to that in Wonderful London. Whilst I was there, the lane seemed to be used for deliveries to and from King’s College buildings:

To the right of the van in the above photo, you can see some white tiling on the wall. This is the entrance to Surrey Steps:

Surrey Steps connect Surrey Street with Strand Lane:

One of the buildings that runs between Surrey Street and Strand Lane forms an arch over Surrey Steps. The end is gated so there is no public access from Surrey Street through to Strand Lane:

Surrey Steps is shown, but not named, in Rocque’s 1746 map, and I have highlighted them within the orange oval in the following extract from the map (note that where the steps meet Strand Lane, there appears to be some shading which would be the steps leading down to the lane):

I have also highlighted another feature in the above map, one that cannot be found today having been built over by Kings College buildings. This was Naked Boy Court, and the court featured in the earliest newspaper reference I could find to Strand Lane, from the 9th of January, 1733:

“On Friday Night the House of Mrs. Smith, a noted Midwife in Naked-Boy-Court, near Strand-lane, was broke open and robbed of 19 Guineas, 24 Broad Pieces, and several suites of Wearing Apparel.”

There were a number of Naked Boy Courts and Alleys in 18th century London, and the name seems to have come from a sign of a “youthful Bacchus astride a barrel”.

Walking into Surrey Street and this is the opposite end of Surrey Steps and shows that they are closed and gated:

There is also a sign on the wall at top left stating: “The National Trust Roman Bath, Down Steps Turn Right”.

Not only are the directions impossible to follow, but if you did get through the gate and down the steps, you would not find a Roman Bath, but the remains of a cistern dating from 1612 and built to feed a fountain in the gardens of Somerset House.

Just to show that you cannot always believe what you read, even in old books that for the most part are authoritative and accurate, in the book “London Past and Present” which I have quoted earlier in the post, Henry B. Wheatley states that “on the east side of this lane is a genuine, ancient Roman bath which is well worth inspection”.

Wonderful London also mentioned the Roman bath in the description to the photo.

In researching my blog posts, I always try to use multiple sources, books, maps, academic journals etc. to ensure they are as accurate as possible.

The Roman Baths / 17th century cistern are inside the building shown in the following photo, within Strand Lane. They are owned by the National Trust, but to gain access you need to contact Westminster Council at least a week in advance.

At the northern end of Strand Lane, there is no further access. This is where the old lane turned to the left / west in the 1746 map, and the turn is still here, but abruptly ends at a metal gate and the King’s College buildings that were built over the rest of where Strand Lane ran up to the Strand:

The northern end of Strand Lane was blocked up in 1971, using an order under section 153 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962 entitled ‘The Stopping up of Highways (City of Westminster), No. 3 Order 1971, authorising the stopping up of a length of Strand Lane.”

Looking back down Strand Lane with the brick building and apse on the right:

The building on the right appears from a plan of the college to be the King’s Building, and this link appears to have a photo of a large ornate room at the header of the page, which includes an apse at the far end, so perhaps this is the interior of the building with the apse almost hanging over Strand Lane.

Another view of the building:

Looking up at how the apse is supported:

Another delivery van enters Strand Lane:

Walking up to the Strand, and there is no sign of where Strand Lane once entered the Strand. From aligning maps, it seems to have been in the section of the building between the first and second pillars from the right, in the bay to the left of the “Welcome to King’s” sign:

At the far end of the King’s College building is the old Strand / Aldwych Underground Station, and on the side is green plaque:

Telling that William Lilly, Master Astrologer lived in a house on the site:

William Lilly was born in the county of Leicester, and the Leicester Chronicle on the 25th of October 1930 provides a summary of his life under the perfect local paper headline of “Diseworth Man’s Lucky Prophecies”:

“Leicestershire has given birth to some famous men. One of these, undoubtedly, is William Lilly, who was the first man in England to produce a prophetic almanac. He was born in Diseworth in 1602 and went to Ashby Grammar School. At the age of eighteen he journeyed to London and entered ‘service’.

He was fortunate to find in the City, a prosperous Leicestershire man who wanted a servant. Lilly was engaged to do odd jobs, but as his master was illiterate, and found the Diseworth youth was good at figures he employed him to keep his accounts.

It seems to have been the policy of William Lilly, all his life, to look specially after William Lilly. He so wormed his way into his master’s favour that he was awarded a legacy of £20 a year when the old man died in 1627. That was not enough for him, so he wooed the young widow and persuaded her to marry him. Six years later she died, leaving him property worth £1,000.

That gave him a start. he was now a man of leisure, and devoted a good deal of time to the study of astrology – then a very popular science (!), for most people believed in the influence of the stars on public and private lives. At the age of 42 he brought out his almanac, signing himself Meilinus Anglicus, junr.”

William Lilly:

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

The article continues:

“His almanac succeeded so well, and served him as so good an advertisement, that he set up a sort of astrologer’s business, being prepared to read the future for all who were willing to pay him. It seems extraordinary to us of the twentieth century that the most distinguished people of Lilly’s time used to patronise him, anxious to hear what the stars had to say about coming events.

Cromwell himself is said to have consulted the Diseworth astrologer. In 1648, when the Roundheads were besieging Colchester, and were not getting on very well, Lilly was sent for. He prophesied an early surrender, and the parliamentary troops were so encouraged that they forced the city to fulfil the prophecy.

But while Lilly was taking money from the Parliamentarians he was also feathering his nest from Royalist sources. He was consulted as to how King Charles might escape from his captors, and actually prepared a scheme for enabling the unfortunate monarch to get free. It failed because Charles had not the courage to carry it through to the end.

When the Stuarts were restored, Lilly’s fame began to decline, but he had several strokes of luck in his almanac. One of the prophecies, for instance, was taken to have been a clear indication that he knew the Great Fire of London was to happen; another helped him to acquire the favour of the king of Sweden, who sent him a gold chain worth £50.

In his old age Lilly found it wise to retire and keep out of the public eye. He lived to pass his eightieth birthday. He was a shrewd old man, if often unscrupulous and once his shrewdness saved him. He had prophesized in his almanac for 1653 that the Parliament would not last long, and that the Commonwealth would soon come to an end. He was summonsed to appear before a Governmental committee to account for his publication, but, before he attended, he got his printers to let him have some copies from which the objectionable prophecies were omitted. He presented them and protested that the other copies were spurious, issued by his enemies – and thus saved his skin.”

William Lilly and one of his annual almanacs:

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.

William Lilly, an example of one of the problems of walking around London, there is always so much to find in any small area, as Lilly lived just to the north east of Strand Lane.

Strand Lane is a strange place. There are gates up against the wall at the entrance from Temple Place. I cannot remember if I have ever seen them closed. It is also not clear whether Strand Lane is really public space, or it is part of the King’s College campus, as buildings of the college line both sides of the lane.

The entry into Surrey Steps from Surrey Street is closed and locked, implying that this entrance to the lane is not public space.

In all the time I was looking around, and photographing the lane, there was no challenge, however the only other people in the lane were clearly those who had business with King’s College, and it is a dead end, so there is no destination to be reached by walking along the lane.

It is though, a fascinating place. Possibly the route of a very old “kennel” or stream that ran from north of the Strand, under Strand Bridge, down to the river. It was cut off from the Thames in the late 19th century when the Embankment was built, but for long was a landing place, a boundary between the river and land, and was once also the western boundary to Arundel House.

It was also the site of the tragic suicide of an eighteen year old girl, who must have suffered much in her short life in eighteenth century London.

alondoninheritance.com

Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London 1957-60

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Two new dates for my walks are now available on Eventbrite. Walks, dates, and link for details and booking, here:

Bankside to Pickle Herring Street – History between the Bridges – Sunday 29th September

Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation – Sunday 6th October

The Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London, 1957-60 was a significant investigation into the governance of London, with a target of recommending whether any, and if so what, changes in the local government structure and distribution of local authority functions in the area, or in any part of it, would better secure effective and convenient local government.

The 1957-60 report, with some modifications led to the London Government Act 1963, which resulted in the creation of the Greater London Council in 1965, along with the formation of 32 London borough councils.

The report is an interesting read, not just for its recommendations, but also for the descriptions and statistics of London at the time of the report, the challenges facing London, how London, and the governance of the city had developed etc.

I find it fascinating how, when you explore much of London’s history, many of the themes are much the same today, and the following paragraphs from the introduction to the report could have been written today, rather than 64 years ago:

“Throughout its history London has had this astonishing quality of vitality which has shown itself in two main ways. London has constantly attracted people to itself from the outside, and it has also grown constantly from the centre outwards. These centripetal and centrifugal forces have worked at varying paces at various times; but viewed in perspective the two processes have been continuous. Both forces have been working with accelerating impetus since the year 1900 and they have never been more active than they are today.

At intervals attempts have been made to contain this growth. Sometimes the Court has tried to restrain the growing power of London. Sometimes social reformers have shaken their heads over the problems of size this growth has engendered. Nowadays restriction through planning and other controls is the order of the day. If London remains true to its historic character, it will continue to attract and to try to expand; to attract for business and residence, and to a lesser extent for industry, and to try to expand outwards as its population grows and as the demand for more spacious surroundings grows, a demand which a rising standard of living gives people the means to satisfy.

Already London is leaping over the green belt which as recently as twenty years ago was designed to contain it. Many of the problems with which we deal with in this our Report are direct reflections of the phenomena to which we have referred. The fundamental question is not ‘How can growth of London be stopped?’ but ‘How can London’s abounding vitality be guided and directed for the general good through the medium of self-government?’. The problems we have to consider are the problems of vigorous growth, the growth of a living organism which has earned a better title than the cold, ugly, and in this instance misleading term ‘conurbation’. Such a term would certainly have repelled visionaries such as William Blake whose poetry perhaps brings us nearer the truth than we should get by too exclusive adherence to the prosaic details of the machinery of government:

I behold London, a Human awful wonder of God!

He says: ‘Return, Albion, return! I give myself for thee.

My Streets are my Ideas of Imagination.

Awake Albion, awake! and let us awake up together.

My Houses are Thoughts: my Inhabitants, Affections,

The children of my thoughts walking through my blood-vessels

So spoke London, immortal Guardian! I heard in Lambeth’s shades.

In Felpham I heard and saw visions of Albion:

I write in South Moulton Street what I both see and hear

In regions of Humanity, in London’s opening streets.

The report is almost 400 pages of considerable detail, far more than I can explore in a weekly post, however one thing I can cover are the maps.

At the back of the 400 pages is a large pocket, and in the pocket are 12 maps which illustrate the report, and also provide us with a snapshot of London over 65 years ago, the proposals contained within the report, and how London had developed to the late 1950s.

Map 1 – The Review Area

The first map in the series shows, appropriately, the area covered within the review. This was the extreme boundary of what could be considered Greater London.

As will be seen in a future map, parts of the review area were excluded from the reports’ recommendations for the administrative boundaries of a Council for Greater London.

Map 2 – Proposals for Reorganisation

This map shows how the report proposed the reorganisation of London governance, with the outer boundary showing the “Area of Council for Greater London” (and with modifications, would become the Greater London Council), along with the proposed Greater London Boroughs and their population estimates in thousands:

The thick grey line from the original review area shows that the report concluded that parts to the north west, the north and a small area to the east, should not be included in a new Council for Greater London.

Map 3 – The Growth of London

This is a fascinating map as it shows how the city had grown since the year 1800, with the land area covered in the following 155 years identified by different colours to show expansion.

The map also identifies the outer boundary of the London green belt, major open spaces within the growing city, and the planned new towns, all orbiting the growing city:

Map 4 – Where Does London End?

There is no title to this map, so I have given it my own title – Where Does London End?

I suspect an often asked question, and one that is difficult to answer. London has far outgrown the original City. Over the centuries, it has expanded and consumed all the villages that once surrounded the original City of London.

Add to this complexity, there are different interpretations of London by the different authorities and service providers involved in many aspects of London governance and critical service provision, and this was the focus of the report.

The map shows these different boundaries as they were at the time of the report, and included the boundaries of, for example, the Registrar General’s Greater London Conurbation, the Metropolitan Water Board, Metropolitan Police District, London Transport Executive Area etc.:

Map 5 – Built-Up Areas 1958 and London Green Belt

This map shows “Built-up areas, which include the residential, industrial and business areas of towns, villages and other closely developed settlements, together with the educational institutions, allotments and smaller open spaces which they envelop. Large industrial and service establishments in rural areas are also included. Golf courses and most airfields are excluded. The Greenbelt is that shown in approved Development Plans at 1/1/60”:

There has been a conflict between the green belt and the need for development for as long as the green belt has existed. The 1960 report included the following in the introduction “Already London is leaping over the green belt” which demonstrates that over 60 years ago this was a problem.

The green belt featured again in the recent General Election with Labour’s proposals for more building and the possible inclusion of areas of the green belt in a building plan.

I suspect that the conflict between preserving green belt, and the need for new development and housing will be an ongoing issue for very many decades to come.

Map 6 – Population Density 1951

A colour coded map of population density as it was in 1961 is the next in the map series.

As could be expected, the map shows the highest density of people per square mile towards the centre of the city, with density reducing as you move further away from the centre.

The exception to this is with the City of London and the City of Westminster, where population density, particularly in the City of London has always been low.

Map 7 – Travel to Work into Central London

One of the impacts of the 19th century revolution in rail travel was the ability to live in the London suburbs and travel into the centre of London to work, and map 7 shows the percentage of “total occupied persons resident in each local authority area who worked in Central London in 1951”.

The definition of central London was The City of London, City of Westminster and Metropolitan Boroughs of Finsbury, Holborn and St. Marylebone.

The map shows that in 1951, the majority of travel into central London was from within the area under review, however there were significant areas to the north west (showing the impact of the Metropolitan line), and to east London, and an area to the east in south Essex from Brentwood to Southend:

Map 8 – Changes in Population and Employment

This map shows the changes in population and employment in a single decade, the 1950s.

This was an unusual decade as London was still in the process of recovering from the destruction of the Second World War, and both industry and populations were changing dramatically.

The map shows there was a decrease in population across the majority of London, but increasing population along the boundaries of Greater London.

The map also shows changes in employment, with decreasing employment in east London and to the north and south of the City, but increasing employment further out, and to the west.

The decrease in employment seems to have been more significant in the small area bounded by the City, Shoreditch, Islington and St. Pancras, with a decrease of 8,000 workers in just six years. By contrast, central London from the City of London to the City of Westminster increased employment by 136,000 workers in the same six year period.

There are large increases in employment in some of the surrounding new towns, as these start taking both jobs and people from London.

Map 9 – Classification of Service Centres

In the report, a Service Centre is a place where there is a concentration of services such as theatres, cinemas, banks and shops.

The location of these service centres was calculated using the concentration of these services as well as the analysis of bus services to identify where there were nodes that concentrated bus services as well as the banks, shops, etc. that people would want / need to travel to and use.

Map 10 – Educational Administration

The provision of education across London was a key part of the report, and the following map shows how education services were administered in 1960:

Throughout the report, there are themes and challenges which are the same now, as they were when the 1960 report was published.

The report talks about the importance of delegation of responsibility to heads of schools and teachers, the importance of Youth Services, including the Youth Employment Service and that these should be fully integrated with schools.

School Health Services were considered key, and again should be integrated with health services provided by local authorities and central government.

The report stated that “As standards of education have risen, both as to actual teaching and as to the quality and amenity of buildings, more and more subsidies from tax payers money have been needed and more and more money has had to come from the rates.”

It seems a recurring message with public services, that if you need good services you need to invest, and public services should be fully integrated to work efficiently and deliver an effective service.

Map 11 – Sewerage and Sewage Disposal

A topic which is much in the news today, but had very little commentary in the 1960 report. The report saw little further scope left for further centralisation, following the Report on Greater London Drainage in 1935, and in 1960 these services were provided by a mix of authorities, ranging from the London County Council, and various other boards within urban and rural districts, as shown by the following map:

There is no comment in the 1960 report on sewage discharges into rivers, so I have no idea whether this was a problem in the years between 1935 / 60, however today, it really is a serious problem, and for London, it happens all along the Thames.

I wrote about the London Data Store a couple of months ago, and within the vast amount of data on London available, there is an interactive map of Sewer Overflows across London.

Taking just a small section of central London, between Blackfriars and Tower Bridges, there are the following sewer overflows on the north bank of the Thames:

Fleet Main Line Sewer
Paul’s Pier
Goswell Street
London Bridge
Beer Lane
Iron Gate

When I check the map whilst writing this post, the Fleet Main Line Sewer, Paul’s Pier and Iron Gate were all recorded as “This storm overflow discharged in the last 48 hours. This means there could be sewage in this section of the watercourse.”

If you walk along the Thames foreshore, and want to touch anything, I would wear disposable gloves. If you want to check the map, it can be found here.

Map 12 – Central Areas

Map 12 shows the area that was defined as the central area of London, and the boundaries of various authorities who operated within this central area:

The report makes very little reference to infrastructure projects, which is understandable as it was a report on the governance of London, however are two specific projects which received some attention in the report.

The first was on the Narrow Street Bridge in Stepney. This was the swing bridge that carried Narrow Street over the entrance to the Regent’s Canal, now Limehouse Dock.

The bridge was 100 years old, and since the 1930s had suffered increasing amounts of damage from heavy traffic.

By 1952, the bridge was in such a bad state of repair, that it was closed to motor vehicles and horse drawn traffic. There were too many worn and rusted main girders that even after repair, it could not be operated safely without traffic limitations.

In 1955, the bridge was closed to all traffic, and during the period of closure, “vehicles carrying goods to and from the wharves and warehouses in the area, including the Regent’s Canal Dock, have had to make a detour of 2.5 miles, part of which is along a main road”.

The issue was money and who was responsible to pay for a new bridge. The bridge was owned by the British Transport Commission, but there had been discussion with the London County Council, the Ministry of Transport and Stepney Borough Council about sharing the costs of the bridge.

It seems that finally, the London County Council agreed to accept the whole liability for the additional costs of building a bridge as a special case, and at the end of 1959 approval for the work to go ahead was given.

I did not know that such a key bridge was closed for so long, when use of the docks, wharves and warehouses in the area was still considerable. Trade through the docks was still increasing in the 1950s.

The case of the Narrow Street Bridge is very similar with that today of Hammersmith Bridge, where a bridge in need of repair is closed, stays closed for a considerable period, with the issue being who covers the costs for the considerable repair work needed.

The second infrastructure project in the report was the “Cromwell Road Extension Scheme with particular reference to the Hammersmith Roundabout and Flyover”.

The report goes into some of the challenges with getting approval for the roundabout and flyover (restrictions on capital expenditure, objections by Hammersmith Borough Council etc). These were gradually overcome, with the roundabout opening in 1959 and the flyover in 1961.

Hammersmith flyover is now over 60 years old, and is the main route between central London and Heathrow, and to the west of the country via the M4, and carries around 90,000 vehicles a day.

There were concerns that it might have collapsed in 2011 due to corrosion and weakened support cables running through the structure. This required much repair work, with a second phase of repairs carried out which ended in 2015.

Around this time, there was talk of replacing the flyover with a tunnel, but this proposal does not seem to have made any progress, and would be hugely expensive and disruptive.

So the Hammersmith Flyover is gradually getting older, and at some point will become a major problem, with, no doubt, the same “what can be done” and “who pays” issues that have long been an issue with any infrastructure project across London.

The 1957-60 Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London paved the way for the creation of the Greater London Council, a body that would only last from 1965 to 1986.

The report highlights that whilst the way London is governed and administered changes over time, many of the issues and themes at the heart of London’s development, growth, provision of services, finance, and relationship with the areas of the south-east that border London, are the same today as they have always been – and I suspect, will continue to be the same for very many years to come.

alondoninheritance.com

Late Victorian London in Photos

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One ticket has just become free for my walk next Sunday, the 18th of August, exploring the Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street, an area that could soon change dramatically. Click here for booking and details.

Four years ago, I published some photos from the book “The Queen’s London”. This was a book published in 1896 and described as “A pictorial and descriptive record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks and Scenery of the Great Metropolis in the Fifty-Ninth Year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria”.

The photos in the book show London as it was, near the end of both the 19th century and the Victorian period. A century and a reign of considerable change across the city.

New streets had been carved through areas of historic small streets, courts and alleys. Many of the city’s slum areas had been cleared and rebuilt, although there were many left, and the 19th century had not really done much for the average worker, with poor housing, low wages, and often unstable employment.

However, the 19th century also saw a rapidly growing middle class, who lived in the terrace houses that expanded rapidly in the suburbs.

In many ways, London is still a 19th century city. Although industry has almost disappeared from the city, but many of the innovations of the 19th century have continued to expand, and enable the growth of the city, for example the Underground (the first stretch of the Central Line between Shepherds Bush and Bank opened in 1900, and parts of what are now the Circle, District, Northern, Metropolitan, Waterloo & City, opened in the last few decades of the 19th century).

The railways were transporting passengers and commuters into the city, road traffic was growing rapidly. The docks were exporting and importing goods across the world and serving the industries expanding across the country.

Institutions and places such as the Natural History Museum, Albert Hall, University College London, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square were founded / built, along with the current Palace of Westminster. The Embankment and the first great sewer system was constructed.

The City of London was a global centre of finance and business, and to emphasize how the City had changed during the 19th century, the population of the City had declined as commerce and industrial took as much space as possible, and after the 1666 Great Fire, the Victorian period saw one of the largest periods of closures of City churches due to the dwindling population.

In the 124 years since, there have not been so many fundamental changes to the city. We have just expanded much of what was started by the Victorians (housing, transport networks etc.), and the landscape has changed from relatively low buildings (where St. Paul’s still stood high above the rest of the city’s buildings), to a city of towers, both office and residential.

The major changes have been the exodus of manufacturing industry and the closure of the docks, air travel resulting in London being one of the world’s main tourist destinations, a move to a service / cultural / knowledge based industries (although the roots of these were formed in the 19th century, and earlier), along with significant demographic change.

The dedication at the start of the book shows perhaps one of the most significant changes, when in the 1890s, London was the capital of an empire on which “the sun never sets”:

“To her most Excellent Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, etc. etc. This Pictorial representation of the Capital of Her Empire is by Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Permission., respectfully dedicated.”

The riches from the Empire, whether traded goods or finance, were one of the key drivers of the development of 19th century London, and it was the loss of the Empire, two World Wars, and significant social change, and change in the workplace, that contributed to the development of the London we see today, built on the foundations of the 19th century.

To see how the city has changed, the following photos are a sample from “The Queen’s London”, showing how a Londoner or visitor in the 1890s would see the city (the captions from the book are below each photo):

The Victoria Embankment, From Waterloo Bridge

“The Victoria Embankment, as viewed from Waterloo Bridge, quite surpasses anything that is seen beside the Seine or the Tiber. Its magnificent sweep from the Houses of Parliament to St. Paul’s is one of the finest sights in the whole of London, and cannot fail to impress every observer. Cityward the most noticeable building is Somerset House, with its fine façade of 780 feet, and beyond this lie the Offices of the London School Board, the Temple Library, Sion College Library, and the City of London School. The Embankment itself, the greatest achievement of the late Metropolitan Board of Works, cost nearly two millions, and its construction occupied six years – 1864 to 1870.”

The caption mentions the “late Metropolitan Board of Works”, which was founded in 1856, and then integrated into the London County Council in 1889, following a number of corruption scandals within the MBW, and the drive to deliver competent, London wide, governance, another late 19th century initiative.

St. Paul’s Cathedral

“This noble Cathedral is the third largest church in Christendom, being only surpassed by St. Peter’s in Rome and the cathedral in Milan. The old Cathedral was burnt in 1666, and the first stone of the one designed by Sir Christopher Wren was laid in 1675, divine service being celebrated twenty-two years later. the great architect is buried in the east end of the crypt. The building cost, according to Milman, £736,750, and not only was it virtually completed by one architect, and under one bishop, but the same master builder who laid the first stone also laid that crowning the cupola. The great dome is 112 feet in diameter, 27 feet less than that of St. Peter’s. the Cathedral is 500 feet in length, and the height to the top of the cross from the road is 370 feet.”

London was a low rise city at the end of the 19th century, and would stay that way for much of the 20th century, until buildings such as the Post Office Tower (1964), and the Nat West building (1980) were constructed. In the following decades there would be an explosion of tall towers across the city, both office and residential, however there are now protected views of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which were brought in after developments such as the Post Office Faraday Building (1933) in Queen Victoria Street were constructed, higher than other buildings between the Thames and Cathedral, and impacting the view of the cathedral.

The National Gallery, With St. Martin’s Church

“The National Gallery, concerning the merits or demerits of which such strong opinions are expressed by architectural critics, is Grecian in style and Wilkins was responsible for the design. This gallery was built in 1832-8 to receive the pictures of which the nucleus had been formed in 1824; after twenty two years, the structure was considerably enlarged, and the façade is now 460 feet in length. To the right, in our view, is the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, which boasts a Grecian portico of quite unusual beauty. It was built in 1721-6 by Gibbs, on the site of an earlier church; and in the old churchyard lies buried Nell Gwynne, under whose bequest the fine bells are rung every week.”

The opening sentence in the above description shows another constant in London’s history – that there will always be strongly differing opinions about the new buildings that line the city streets.

The Customs House

“Between London Bridge and the Tower, and having, separating it from the Thames, a broad quay that was for long almost the only riverside walk open to the public, is the Customs House. Five earlier buildings on the same site were destroyed by fire, and the present structure was erected in 1814-17, the fine façade being designed by Sir R. Smirke. Some 2,000 officials are employed at the Customs House, and in its famous Long Room alone – 190 feet by 60 feet – eighty clerks are habitually engaged. this is not surprising, for the trade of the Port of London is by far the greatest of any port in the world. the building, which is entered from Lower Thames Street, contains an interesting Smuggling Museum.”

The Customs House building is still there, although, the closure of the docks made the purpose of the building redundant. The caption makes an interesting point regarding access to the river, as it was “for long almost the only riverside walk in London, open to the public”, however although we now have long lengths of riverside walks, in many ways as the Thames is no longer really a working river, we have lost a much greater connection with the Thames.

The Natural History Museum, South Kensington

“A high place among the fine public buildings in South Kensington must be given to the Natural History Museum, which faces Cromwell Road. Mr. Waterhouse, R.A. was the architect, and the erection occupied the years 1873-80. The structure is Romanesque in style, and the terra-cotta façade is, with good reason, greatly admired. The Museum is 675 feet in length, and the towers which rise from the wings are 192 feet high. Hither were brought the Natural History collections of the British Museum in order to relieve in some measure the congested condition of the national institution in Bloomsbury. Considering the popularity of such collections, it is not surprising that the annual number of visitors to the Natural History Museum should be over 400,000.”

In the late 19th century, 400,000 visitors probably seemed like a very large number, however in the Natural History Museums latest annual review, they state that “In the year to April 2023, we welcomed 5,157,405 visitors”.

Much of this growth has been fuelled by the growth in tourism within London, but the figures highlight that with many aspects of London today, it is just a much busier / larger version of what was established in the 19th century.

The Royal Exchange

“Few edifices in London are more impressive that the Royal Exchange, with its stately Corinthian portico. it was built by Tite in 1842-4, on the site of Gresham’s Exchange. In the tympanum is a group representing the Sovereignty of Commerce, whilst below are inscribed the words ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof’. Business is transacted in the building of an afternoon, the attendance being greatest on Tuesdays and Fridays. On the left of the Royal Exchange is the Bank of England, at one end of Threadneedle Street. the equestrian statue in front represents Wellington and is an excellent specimen of Chantry’s work. The open space bounded by the Exchange, the Bank, and the Mansion House is perhaps the busiest in all the City.”

The congested junction in front of the Royal Exchange was long a problem with City traffic and is one of the reasons why Upper and Lower Thames Street and London Wall were widened as east – west routes to bypass the Bank junction (see last week’s post).

Today, the junction is very different, not only has horse drawn traffic long disappeared from the City streets, changes brought in by the City of London to reduce vehicular traffic in the City have made the junction much quieter.

The Strand, Looking West

“No better idea of the Strand can be obtained than from the church of St. Mary-le-Strand, whence this view was taken. On the left is the entrance to Somerset House, used as Government offices and erected by Sir William Chambers in 1776-80, in place of the old palace begun by the Protector Somerset. A little further west is Wellington Street, bisecting the Strand and affording access to Waterloo Bridge. At the far end of the houses is seen the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square. The Strand is the southern main artery from the City to the West End, and is always crowded with traffic, especially when the theatres which abound in the neighbourhood are being emptied of their patrons. The thoroughfare, which is here shown at its broadest, owes its name to the fact that the Thames formerly flowed close beside it.”

Apart from Somerset House, nearly all he buildings in this view have been demolished, however the terrace immediately to the right of Somerset House can still be seen today, to give an impression of what the overall street would have once looked like.

The reference in the caption to the theatres of the West End is just as relevant today, as it was in the 1890s.

The Crystal Palace

“Built of the materials that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham cost no less than a million and a half sterling. It is composed entirely of glass and iron, and was designed by Sir James Paxton. The Palace from its lofty eminence is visible for miles in every direction. Its principal hall, or nave, is 1,608 feet long, while the central transept is 390 feet long by 120 feet broad and rises to a height of 175 feet. On either side of the Palace are the water towers, each 282 feet high, and these add greatly to the general effect, best appreciated from the delightful grounds, which cover some 200 acres. Our view shows the Upper Terrace, the Central Transept, and the northern Water Tower.”

Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire in November 1936, although the building has gone, the name remains.

The following photos are from the Britain from Above website, showing Crystal Palace before the fire (!928):

And after the fire (1936):

The Tower Bridge

“Further communication across the Thames at this point had been urgently needed for many years. The necessary act was passed in 1885, the foundation stone laid by the Prince of Wales on June 21, 1886, and the work completed at a cost of about a million sterling in 1894. the bridge, designed by Mr. Wolfe Barry, C.B. is of somewhat peculiar construction, the low level passage being on the ‘bascule’ principle: i.e. the centre span of 200 feet is divided into two, each half being pivoted and furnished with a counterpoise, and hauled upward and back against the towers when the waterway is opened, the bridge is shown thus opened in the view. A high-level footway is also carried across nearly at the top of the towers, access to this being afforded by lifts in the latter. The side spans are on the suspension principle.”

Tower Bridge was the last central London road bridge to be built, so by the end of the 19th century, London had the same number of road bridges as we do today. This also applies to the rail bridges. Some have though been rebuilt, and dates for the first and current road bridges are show below:

London Bridge – very early : 1973
Southwark Bridge – 1819 : 1921
Blackfriars Bridge – 1769 : 1869
Waterloo Bridge – 1817 : 1942
Westminster Bridge – 1750 : 1862

The only completely new river crossing we have built since the end of the 19th century is the Millennium Foot Bridge.

The Imperial Institute

“The Imperial Institute at South Kensington was built with the twofold object of celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee and cementing the British Empire. Her Majesty in person both laid the foundation stone of this splendid building in 1887, and declared it open in 1893. The architect, Mr. T.E. Colcutt, was inspired by Tennyson’s words ‘Raise a stately memorial, Make it really gorgeous, Some Imperial Institute, Rich in symbol, in ornament, Which may speak to the centuries’. In design the Institute is Renaissance, freely treated. the main entrance is particularly fine, and the interior is worthy the exterior. Altogether the buildings occupy two acres. Every Friday, the public is admitted free to the exhibitions, and the attractions of the Institute are enhanced by concerts, lectures etc.”

Despite Tennyson’s words and the ideals that the Imperial Institute aspired to, it was not a great success, and by 1899, the University of London had taken over half of the building for administrative offices.

Demolition started in 1957 and was completed by 1967. The site of the Imperial Institute is now occupied by Imperial College.

The tower that can be seen to the right of the above photo was saved from demolition, and after some substantial works to enable the tower to stand on its own, it now stands within the Imperial college campus, and can be seen close up by cutting through the campus along Imperial College Road.

Yeoman of the Guard

“In very welcome contrast to the sober story of the Tower of London is the bright red uniform of its wardens – the Yeoman of the Guard. These men are commonly called Beefeaters, a title as to the derivation of which etymologists differ. Some explain it as a corruption of ‘buffetiers’ or waiters at the royal buffet; others trace it back to the rations of beer formerly served out to men whilst on duty. Be this as it may, the Yeoman of the Guard are veterans who have all more or less distinguished themselves on the field of battle. On State occasions they sometimes constitute a picturesque guard of honour, and at the opening of each new Session of Parliament a body of them searches the cellars of the Houses of Parliament as a precaution against any ‘gunpowder treason and plot’.”

The Yeoman of the Guard are still very much a key part of the Tower of London. I suspect the beard size has decreased somewhat since the end of the 19th century. The major change to the Yeoman of the Guard was very recent, with Moira Cameron becoming the first female Yeoman in 2007.

Greenwich Hospital

“Greenwich Hospital occupies the site of the royal palace erected in the fifteenth century on the south bank of the Thames four miles from London bridge. To students of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, the Hospital is of great architectural interest. It consists of four quadrangles, and is best seen from the river, whence the less worthy portions are invisible. William and Mary deserve the credit of rebuilding the palace and of converting it into a refuge for decrepit and disabled seamen. In the present reign, however, in the year 1871, the pensioners made way under an Admiralty scheme for naval cadets, who are here educated. The Painted Hall, the Nelson relics, and the ship models, regularly draw to the Hospital troops of visitors.”

The Naval College for cadets closed in 1997. Part of the site is now occupied by the University of Greenwich, and it is often used as a film set.

The above view is much the same today, and it is worth walking under the Thames in the Greenwich foot tunnel to get to Island Gardens to see the late 19th century view, as it still appears today.

Holloway Gaol

“Her Majesty’s prison at Holloway is an imposing building, modern in date and castellated in design, with excellently arranged accommodation. It is the chief gaol for London and the county of Middlesex, and is constantly in evidence owing to the fact that prisoners awaiting trial are thither sent. Holloway Gaol also offers hospitality to debtors, to female convicted prisoners, and to a few special offenders, such as those who have committed contempt of court. Lieut-Colonel E.S. Milman combines in his person two offices, being Governor of both Holloway and Newgate prisons. Pentonville Prison is less than half a mile distant.”

Holloway Prison closed in 2016, and the prison is probably best known for being the place where the last women to be executed, Ruth Eillis, was hung in 1955.

Ludgate Circus

“One of the busiest spots in the City is Ludgate Circus, where meet Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street. As may be seen from our view, the stately dome and towers of St. Paul’s Cathedral are conspicuous objects from the Circus, although the railway bridge and the slender steeple of St. Martin’s – one of Wren’s churches – obstruct the view. The name Ludgate is derived from an old gate – the sixth and principal gate of London – says Stow on his survey, which was taken in 1760. Antiquaries, however, differ as to whether the gate was built by a King Lud, who flourished B.C.66, or whether the word is merely a corruption of Floodgate or Fleetgate.”

Apart from the cathedral and church, the only building that remains from the 1890s view is the building on the left of the photo.

The railway bridge has gone, with the railway through Ludgate Hill being replaced by the Thameslink route, with the railway now running underground, and the new City Thameslink station on the right of Ludgate Hill, just the other side of where the bridge was in the photo.

Although the buildings have changed, the view up Ludgate Hill to the focal point of the cathedral is essentially the same.

London Bridge, Looking North-West

“The most noticeable thing about London Bridge is the enormous traffic over it – now however, appreciably relieved by the Tower Bridge a little further east. London Bridge is only 54 feet broad, so that it is not surprising that many projects for widening should have been discussed. The first bridge over the Thames at this point was built about A.D. 994; the first stone one was finished in 1208. Since then the bridge has often been the scene of fighting and tumult, as well as of state pageants. In Elizabeth’s reign it was restored, afterwards the horrid custom grew of exposing upon it the heads of traitors. The present bridge was commenced under Rennie in 1824 and cost £506,000.”

The bridge shown in the above view is not the London Bridge we see today. The latest incarnation of London bridge was constructed about 30 metres to the west of the previous bridge shown in the photo, and opened in 1973.

The bridge in the photo was taken apart and sold to the American entrepreneur Robert McCulloch, who had the bridge rebuilt at Lake Havasu City in Arizona, although by rebuilt, the stones from the earlier bridge were mainly used as facing stones on a steel reinforced concrete structure, required to give the bridge the strength needed to carry traffic.

The Charing Cross Hotel

“Charing Cross Hotel is situated at the South Eastern Railway Company’s western terminus, and lends a dignity to the line which the hideous bridge across the Thames does its best to destroy. Entrance to the station is obtained from the large yard, which generally presents a very busy scene, especially when the Continental mail is about to start. The hotel was built by Sir C. Barry, on the site of Hungerford Market. Charing Cross was once marked by a Gothic Monument, known as Eleanor’s Cross which Edward I erected to distinguish the spot where his dead wife’s body remained a while when being taken to Westminster Abbey. It was erected in 1291, but in 1647 was removed by order of Parliament. The present cross is the work of the late E.M. Barry.”

This view remains almost the same to this day. Charing Cross is one of the few stations that has retained the hotel building that stood between the station platforms and the street. This was a feature of many other stations, such as Cannon Street, which have lost their hotels during redevelopment.

The Charing Cross building continues to be a hotel and is now the Clermont Hotel.

What the caption to the photo does not really make clear is that the cross by E.M. Barry is not in the same position as the original Eleanor Cross – see this post, and the Hungerford Market which was on the site of the station has a really interesting history, which I discovered in this post.

Cleopatra’s Needle

“Conspicuously placed on the Victoria Embankment is the famous granite obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle. It was put up in Heliopolis by Pharaoh Thothmes II, about 1500 B.C,. and twenty-three years before the Christian era it was erected at Alexandria – Cleopatra’s city. For centuries, the obelisk lay neglected in the sand, but in 1819 it was presented to the British nation by Mohammed Ali as a memorial of Nelson and Abercromby. Dr. (afterwards Sir) Erasmus Wilson expended £10,000 upon its removal to this country in 1877. Owing to stormy weather the transport ship had to be abandoned in the bay of Biscay, but fortunately the monument was rescued, and in the following year it was placed in its present position near Waterloo Bridge. It is 68.5 feet high, and weighs 180 tons. The sphinxes are modern.”

A view that looks much the same today, with the same lamps on the Embankment wall, and trees between the pavement and the road. I doubt the trees are the same as those in place today, and there is now a cycle way between trees and road, and in the background it is the original Waterloo Bridge that can be seen.

Oxford Street, Looking East

“A very characteristic part of Oxford Street is depicted above. The large house of which the corner is seen on the left is Messrs. Marshall & Snelgrove’s and in all directions are shops dear to the hearts of town and country ladies. New Bond Street opens on the right, where the flag is waving; and the view extends beyond Oxford Circus. Oxford Street is, as everybody knows, one of the main arteries of the metropolis, through which the traffic flows from east to west, and from west to east, in an unceasing stream; and the broadness of the thoroughfare at this spot affords a pleasing contrast to the cramped and inconvenient proportions of the Strand and Fleet Street.”

I am not sure if the shops along Oxford Street are “dear to the hearts of town and country ladies” today, and the street has come in for considerable criticism over the previous few years, with a number of shops closing, and the take over of many shops by American Candy Stores. The future of the Marks & Spencer store in the street is uncertain as the company want to demolish and rebuild, whilst there are campaigns to save the building.

Oxford Street is a street that needs some considerable change if it is to regain its reputation as one of the premier shopping streets in the country.

Hammersmith Bridge, From The South Side

“At Hammersmith, the River Thames is spanned by a very graceful Suspension Bridge, which was opened in the summer of 1887 by the late Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. This bridge serves the district between Putney and Kew, a distance of five and a half miles. The parish church which is, however, of no particular interest is shown in the picture presented above. perhaps the most striking feature of Hammersmith, which lies, of course, on the left bank of the river, is the Mall, where are situated houses dating from the reign of Queen Anne. At Hammersmith, too, are the headquarters of the various boating clubs. The bridge used to be crowded on the occasion of the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, but of late years, this practice has been forbidden by the authorities.”

The view of the bridge itself is much the same today as it was in the 1890s. Hammersmith Bridge was closed in 2020 due to micro-fractures, caused by corrosion, being found in the structure of the bridge.

It has since been reopened for pedestrians and cyclists (who need to dismount their bike to cross the bridge), and the task of trying to find a solution and repair the bridge is underway, although there is as yet no date when, or if, the bridge will ever fully reopen.

The main issue is financial, as the costs to repair such an old, Grade II* listed structure are considerable, and the previous Government told Hammersmith & Fulham Council that they would have to fund 33% of the estimated £250 million repair costs.

I suspect that the Victorians would have been stunned by the delays in repairing this bridge, however the approach taken in the 19th century would simply have been to demolish the existing bridge and build new. There was very little consideration of the historical or architectural significance of buildings and structures in the 19th century, and if they were in the way of what was assumed to be “progress”, they were simply demolished.

The West India Import Dock

“The West India Docks, a hundred and sixty four acres in extent, consist of two parallel docks running east and west from Limehouse to Blackwell. Over the chief, or western entrance are inscribed the words ‘The West India Import Dock, begun 12th July 1800; opened for business 1st September 1802’. The opening ceremony was performed by William Pitt, and this was the first wet dock built on the north side of the Thames. The Import Dock, the more northerly of the two has on the north side eleven huge warehouses, capable of accommodating nearly a hundred thousand tons of goods; here are stored sugar, coffee, flour, cocoa, spices etc. The other West India Dock is known as the Export Dock.”

A time travelling Victorian would be able to tecognise many of the photos from the 1890s included in the post above, however the West India Import Dock would be unrecognisable.

The dock is part of the overall Canary Wharf development, and whilst part of the dock remains, there is water for much of the original overall east – west length, the width has been reduced, considerable new office building on either side of the water, and the new Elizabeth Line Canary Wharf Station has been built along what was once the centre of the dock.

What the time traveler may recognise are the buildings of the Museum of London, Docklands at the north west corner of the old West India Import Dock. The museum is housed in one of the last remaining, Grade I listed warehouses which date from 1802.

The changes at the West India Import Dock represent not just the closure of the working dock, but the loss of a complete form of trade, with all the jobs and industries that were dependent on the ships that once sailed to and from the central London docks.

I find it fascinating to consider how a major city such as London changes over time, how there are periods in the life of a city which put into place the foundations of how the city will operate for the next one hundred years plus.

Much of what we see in London today, does have its roots in the 19th century, and we have just expanded what was started over one hundred years ago.

alondoninheritance.com

Greater London 1937 Highway Development Survey

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Two tickets have just become free for my walk on Sunday, the 18th of August, exploring the Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street, an area that could soon change dramatically. Click here for booking and details.

The 1937 Highway Development Survey of Greater London (published in 1938), was an attempt to address the rising level of road traffic and congestion in the Greater London area. It was commissioned by the Minister of Transport and was the work of Sir Charles Bressey with Sir Edwin Lutyens acting as a consultant.

In the decades at the end of the 19th century, and the first few decades of the 20th century, traffic on London’s roads had been rising rapidly. This was the result of a number of factors, including:

Increasing trade, both within the City and with the rapid growth of trade through London’s docks, along with expansion of the docks
Growth in Greater London’s population from 7.5 million in 1906 to 9.5 million in 1935 (with one fifth of the population of Great Britain and one quarter of the working population)
New modes of transport (underground, railways) along with growth in buses and trams and trolley-buses, as well as growth in petrol based vehicles
The growth of the suburbs around London and increasing travel into the centre of the city, from home to work (central London’s population had been in a slow decline due to the growth in industry, but the population of the wider suburbs had been growing rapidly)

The number of motor vehicles in the country was also expanding rapidly, as shown by the following graphs from the report:

Based on a 1922 start point, the number of motor vehicles had grown by 185%, from 1 million, to over 2.5 million, whilst the population had only grown by around 5%, and the number of vehicles by mile of road had risen from 5 in 1922 to 15 by 1936.

The above graphs covered the whole of the country. The report also included lots of London specific data, including the following numbers in a table headed “Millions of Passenger Journeys”:

The majority of the report was the work of Sir Charles Bressey, who was a civil engineer and surveyor with a broad experience of the design of road systems. He was already a surveyor, working in his father’s practice in the City of London, and during the First World War, he put his experience to the construction of military roads in France whilst in the Royal Engineers.

Sir Charles Bressey:

Attribution and source: GPO Film Unit, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sir Edwin Lutyens was known mainly as an architect, designing a wide range of public and office buildings, government offices, churches and private houses. he also designed a number of war memorials, including the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Their report was published in 1938, and contains a comprehensive number of recommendations to address the expected continual rise in the growth of road usage through to the 1960s.

The report first identifies places which were “Centre of Congestion”, including:

Oxford Circus – This is the focal point of Oxford Street; at times throughout the day, and particularly at morning and afternoon peak hours, congestion here is excessive, and saturation point is reached.
Gardiner’s Corner, Aldgate – This is probably the key point to the east end. A large proportion of the traffic from the east and the eastern suburbs to the City and vice versa pass this point. It is adjacent to the Docks, to Spitalfields Market and to the manufacturing and trading districts of Stepney, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Shoreditch, etc. Five roads converge on the point and there is a substantial proportion of turning traffic from and to all the thoroughfares involved.
Hammersmith Broadway – A complex and badly arranged six way junction in which four of the converging roads are so close together that, without the most extensive alterations, adequate weaving space for roundabout work could not be obtained.

As part of the data collection process to help form the recommendations of the report, four routes across London were selected, and a 16 H.P, Austin Light-Six Touring Car drove along each of the routes every day (excluding Sundays), from 8 am to 7pm (1pm on Saturdays).

The car was “driven by a steady and competent chauffeur, who had no inducement to attempt to break records or to take risk”, and an observer was also in the car armed with a stop-watch and clip board to record times of sections along each of the routes.

Of all routes and sections along the routes, the slowest were:

between Ludgate Circus and Commercial Road on the west – east route where the average was only 5.85 miles per hour, while of the slowest journey, the pace dropped to 3.6 miles per hour, and;
between Euston Road and Trafalgar Square, via Tottenham Court Road, on the north-west – south east route. here the average pace was 7.7 miles per hour, while on the slowest journey, the figure dropped to 6.3 miles per hour.

Road improvements included the greater use of roundabouts which were seen as a way of improving traffic flow where several roads met at a junction. The first roundabout in the country was in Letchworth Garden City in 1907, but they would not really proliferate until the 1960s,

The report included several suggested designs for roundabouts, including the following two:

Slow roads were not the only problem identified in the report, there were many other factors identified, including one which showed the expected increase in air travel.

In the 1930s, there were a large number of airfields surrounding London, as the following table from the report identifies:

The number of airfields was expected to increase, with the following table identifying possible new locations:

The recommendations of the report covered new roads, city loops, motorways, street widening, changing the configuration of junctions, including the use of roundabouts, and a comprehensive list of schemes was included in the report:

and:

The recommended schemes include lots of proposals within London, such as the Piccadilly Improvement, Mayfair – Soho route etc. and the report is one of the first I have read which recognises that travel to and from London is dependent on the wider network across the country, so we have proposed schemes such as the Cambridge Road Northern Extension past Ware, Improvement of London to Ongar Road (A.113) and Extension to Norwich, and the London – Birmingham Route.

London to Birmingham would later become either the M40 or the combination of M1 and M6.

Another proposal in the list which would later become a new motorway is the Coulsdon – Crawley – Brighton route, which today is the M23 and A23.

The published report included a pocket at the back of the book in which there were a couple of very large maps.

The proposed new routes and changes were drawn on the maps, and I have reproduced these below.

It was difficult to photograph the maps due to their large size, and as they are almost 90 years old, I wanted to be very careful to avoid any tears or other damage, however I hope the following images provide a view of what was proposed back in 1937:

The above map shows the wider area surrounding London, and we are starting to get a map that is recognisable today, for example:

A new outer ring road for London, which for 1937 was a considerable way from the centre of the city. This outer ring road (with some changing of routing) is today the M25. Strange though that where the road crosses the Thames to the east, the north and southern routes do not meet at the location of what would become the Dartford Crossing.
The Motorway network spreading out from London. There are thick red lines running out from London across the wider country. These were the proposed major routes that would connect London with the rest of the country – an urgent need given the increasing number of motor vehicles of all types, both private and commercial.
The growth in the docks to the east of the city, with the thick red line to the right, leading north from the area around Tilbury, Corringham and Canvey Island.

The list of proposals shown on the map was included in the following key:

The following map shows the Great London proposals:

Along with the following key to the proposals:

Proposals included adding a second tunnel to the Blackwall Tunnel (which would not be completed until 1967), as well as the Rotherhithe Tunnel, which would not get its second tunnel, and would stay to this day as a tunnel with traffic running in both directions in a single bore.

The City Loop-Way was described in the report as follows:

“To relieve the almost intolerable pressure on the main routes which now traverse the heart of the City, converging upon the Mansion House and St. Paul’s Cathedral, the creation of the City Loop-Way is recommended, with a view to encouraging drivers to avoid the most congested central area.

The most important section of the Loop-Way would extend from Blackfriars to the Tower, thus forming a continuation of the Victoria Embankment eastwards to the Tower, thus forming a continuation of the Victoria Embankment Route, through a dingy part of the City, which stands urgently in need of renovation. From the Tower, the Loop-Way would follow approximately the general line – Crutched Friars – Duke Street – Camomile Street – London Wall to Wood Street; from here a new cut would be necessary to reach Aldersgate Street; Bartholomew Close is traversed and replanned, and a proper outlet formed into Farringdon Street, down which we turn to Blackfriars, thus completing the circuit.”

Whilst the Loop-Way did not get built, what is interesting about many of these proposals is how they, or variations of the proposals get included in future plans for London, so for example, parts of the Loop-Way can be seen in the 1944 City of London report covering Post-War Reconstruction of the City of London, where northern and southern routes around the City were proposed extending from Aldgate to Holborn via London Wall, and the Tower to Blackfriars along Lower and Upper Thames Street.

The following map from the 1944 report illustrates these routes as thick red lines to north and south:

Lower and Upper Thames Street did get considerably widened and now form a southern route to bypass the centre of the City of London, with the connection through to Blackfriars being completed in the late 1970s. All that got built of the northern route was the dual carriageway section along London Wall and part of Wormwood Street.

Some detail from the Greater London map shows some of the proposals. The following extract shows the area around the Victoria, Royal Albert and King George V Docks, and the Woolwich River Crossing:

These were the last docks to be built in the central London area, and their size enabled the largest of ships (at the time) to be accommodated in numbers, which resulted in a large amount of products and raw materials to be moved.

These docks were connected into the railway network, but their road connections were considered inadequate for the size of the docks. For example, the road between the Victoria and Royal Albert Docks was “the Connaught Road Swing Bridge which carries but one line of vehicles; its approaches are tortuous and interrupted by level crossings”.

To improve the roads to these docks, the North-South Lea Valley Road was proposed, although it was recognised that “considerable demolition would be required in West Ham and Leyton”.

The Woolwich ferry crossing was also a problem, and the report considered three options:

the construction of a high level bridge
the building of a barrage which might accommodate a road
the driving of a vehicular tunnel

The construction of a bridge in combination with a Thames barrage was the subject of a 1944 report which included the following illustration of what it could look like:

In the almost 90 years after the report was published, we still have the Woolwich Ferry.

One proposal that did get built, and in a far more comprehensive way than proposed in the 1937 plan, was the “Cromwell Road Extension to Great West Road” shown by the red lines in the following extract from the map:

This proposal would evolve into what is today the route from where Cromwell Road turns into West Cromwell Road (by the large Tesco at Warwick Road), and then runs along to the Hammersmith Flyover, down to the Hogarth Roundabout, then to the elevated section of the A4 through Brentford, then to the M4, which runs all the way to Pont Abraham in Carmarthenshire, south Wales.

Bressey wrote the conclusion to the report, as follows:

“The discussions that Sir Edwin Lutyens and I have had during the past three years with representatives of public bodies throughout Greater London have shown how widespread is the desire that the lines of new routes should be authoritatively laid down for rigorous observance as permanent governing features in the ceaseless development and transformation of the Metropolis, where, hitherto, so much uncertainty has prevailed as to the official status of various road schemes which are protected in one area and neglected in another.”

The 1937 report was published just before the start of the Second World War which put a hold on all such forms of development. Many of the proposals in the 1937 report were included in some form in the 1944 Reconstruction of the City of London report and the Greater London Plan by Abercrombie.

Post war lack of finance held up many projects, and it was not until the 1960s when some major projects were completed, such as the first Dartford Tunnel which opened in 1963.

Bressey and Lutyens could not have foreseen the closure of the London Docks and the impact that would have on transport requirements in that area of the City, where today, as well as roads, the Docklands Light Railway has been a considerable success in opening up the area.

As usual, in the context of a weekly bog post, I have only scratched the surface of the information contained within the report. The report contains lots of statistics and information on travel across London, and although getting on for 90 years old, many of the aspects of the report are just as relevant today.

Bressey’s comment in his conclusion about how his discussions had: “shown how widespread is the desire that the lines of new routes should be authoritatively laid down for rigorous observance as permanent governing features “, could I suspect. equally apply to today.

I suspect that there is still such a desire for “rigorous observance” today. As a country, we just do not seem very good at completing large scale infrastructure projects.

For example, the last government cancelled much of HS2 and there is still uncertainty on whether it will end at Old Oak Common or Euston, the current government has cancelled a range of infrastructure projects, including the Stonehenge Tunnel, and there is continuing uncertainty over whether Heathrow will ever get a third runway.

Whether you view these projects as good or bad, uncertainty, change or cancellation just costs and wastes yet more money.

I am sure you will be able to write the same thing in another 90 years time, but it would be really interesting to know what transport infrastructure would have been built across London by 2114.

Will HS2 terminate at Euston, will Crossrail 2 have been built, will there be a new Thames Barrier, and will the Bakerloo Line finally have new trains? Unfortunately, I will probably never know.

alondoninheritance.com

St. Olave’s, Hart Street

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St. Olave, on the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane is a wonderful City church. One of the few medieval churches that survived the Great Fire of 1666, it was badly bombed in the last war with only the tower and walls surviving. Wonderfully restored in the 1950s, the church is well worth a visit.

The following print from 1736 shows the same view as in the above photo, and a visitor from 1736 would immediately recognise the church, although the surrounding buildings are now very different:

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

There are minor changes, for example the crenellations along the top of the church walls have been lost, as has the porch over the door to the church on Hart Street. This door provides one of two main entrances today:

The above print from 1736 provides the following information about the church:

“This Church was dedicated to St. Olave, King of Norway, professing ye Christian Religion. he endeavoured to win his Subjects over thereto, but they took up Arms, and with ye Assistance of Canute King of England and Denmark overcame and murdered him A.D. 1028. he was deemed a Martyr, and is commemorated July ye 28th. the first Account we have of this Church is that William de Samford was Rector in 1319. It was repaired by ye Parish in 1633 with cost of £437. the Patronage of ye Rectory was formerly in the Family of Nevil, then in that of Cely (who were considerable Benefactors to ye Fabrick) and afterward in that of ye Lord Windsor, it is now in ye Gift of 5 gentlemen of ye Parish as Trustees by Appointment of Sir Andrew Richards who was Sheriff in 1651 and died in 1672. It was formerly called St. Olave neat ye Tower of London, but now St. Olave Hart Street from its situation n ye South side of Hart street at ye North West corner of Seething Lane near Crutched Fryers in Tower Ward within ye City of London.”

There are some very different interpretations of the story of Olave. he seems to have been baptised in the year 1010, in the Norman city of Rouen. He then helped the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred II (also known as Æthelred the Unready) to regain his throne after the death of Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard.

Sweyn’s son was King Cnut, who took the thrones of England and Denmark in 1016, and would take the throne of Norway from Olave in 1028.

Olave was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad, when he was trying to retake his Norwegian throne.

He was declared a saint in 1031 by the English Bishop Grimketel who was working as a missionary in Norway at the time of Olave’s death.

Nidaros Cathedral, a wonderful Gothic cathedral, in Trondheim, Norway, which claims to be the world’s most northern mediaeval cathedral, is built over the site of Olave’s tomb.

St. Olave’s feast day is now the 29th of July, rather than the 28th as detailed in the text with the 1736 print, and if you work in the Faroe Islands, it is a public holiday.

View of the church from Seething Lane:

And the view of the church from Seething Lane today is much the same as it was in 1810:

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

The gate from Seething Lane to what remains of the churchyard dates from 1658 and has three skulls in the centre and a skull on either side for decoration:

The gateway is Grade II* listed, and Historic England dates the wall and railing to perhaps the 18th century and the iron gates to the early 19th century.

Once through the gates, there is a small churchyard, steps down to the entrance to the church, and on the right an interesting post. Not sure what this could have been, possibly a parish boundary marker:

The Navy Office was once located close to the church, and on the wall to the right of the entrance is a plaque which records the following:

“Entrance to the South Gallery and the Navy Office Pew often mentioned in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Tablet erected 1891.”

The entrance to the South Gallery of the church was discovered in 1883. The church had been granted a sum of £1,200 by the Charity Commissioners to undertake repairs to the fabric of the church.

A cement like material had been used to cover the walls, and on removing the cement, the old entrance was discovered, and was believed to have been where a wooden gallery extended to the Navy Office allowing Pepys to reach the Navy Office pew in the church from the Navy Office, without getting wet.

Inside the church, looking up to the altar:

The same view in the late 19th century:

Although the church had been very badly damaged during the war, and the wooden roof and wooden interior fittings had burnt, it still has the feel of an old church – which indeed it is.

On Wednesday and Thursday lunchtimes, well attended musical recitals take place in the church, but on the Friday afternoon of my visit, the church was very quiet, and for 20 minutes I had the church to myself.

Noise from the outside hardly penetrates the thick walls of these early City churches, and the sound of the camera shutter seemed excessively loud in this quiet space.

The southern gallery to the right of the altar:

The northern gallery to the left of the altar:

Looking back to the western end of the church:

St. Olave has four sword stands, two came from Allhallows Staining, and two have always belonged to St. Olave:

The book “The Annals of St. Olave Hart Street and Allhallows Staining” by the Rev Alfred Povah (1894) has the following to say about the sword stands:

“These picturesque pieces of church furniture – we have no evidence of such earlier than Queen Elizabeth’s reign – are often admired by visitors who have, perhaps, no precise notion of the purpose which they served. It was, till very recently, the custom for the Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Sheriffs to attend divine service at a City church on Sunday morning, and by their presence and their retinue, a larger congregation was drawn to the support of various charities.

On these occasions the Lord Mayor was escorted by the Bearer of the Mace and the Bearer of the State Sword, and our forefathers often did honour to a parishioner elected to be Lord Mayor, by causing a sword stand, sword rest, or ‘branch’ sometimes called a ‘Trophy of Arms’ to be placed upon his pew.”

Memorial to Samuel Pepys:

Samuel Pepys regularly attended services at St. Olave and when Elizabeth his wife died, she was buried in the church on the 13th of November, 1669. Her monument is high on the wall to the left of the altar.

When Samuel Pepys died on the 26th of May, 1703, he was also buried in the church. The entry in the church register reads “1703, June 4. Samuel Pepys buried in a vault by ye communion table”.

The memorial to Pepys would not be erected for well over one hundred years, and came about due to the actions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, as the book, the Annals of St. Olave records:

“As far back as the year 1864, on the occasion of a visit by the Members of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. I proposed that a Memorial of Samuel Pepys should be placed in the Church of St. Olave, Hart Street, and promises of support were received from the Clothworkers’ Company, the Trinity House, Magdalene College Cambridge, and others.

It was not, however, till the Members of the Middlesex Archaeological Society paid a second visit to the Church in 1882, that the want of such a memorial was again publicly noticed. Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, who read a paper on that occasion, conferred with Mr. (now Sir) Owen Roberts, the Clerk to the Clothworkers’ Company and myself. At a meeting held July 5th, 1882, a committee, mainly representative of the great institutions with which Pepys had been connected, was appointed.”

Despite offers from a number of architects and sculptors, work on the design of the memorial was left to a Mr. (later Sir) Arthur Blomfield, and his design was met with approval by the committee.

An appeal for subscriptions to fund the memorial was met with a “liberal response”, and when complete, a service to unveil the memorial was arranged for Tuesday the 18th of March, 1884 at three p.m..

It was intended that the memorial was unveiled by the Earl Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty, given Pepys association with the Admiralty, however on the day, Northbrook could not attend, and it was instead unveiled by J. Russell Lowell, the United States Minister.

It was noted at the service that for the past 180 years, questions from visitors as to the location of the Pepys Memorial could only be meet with the reply that his only visible reference in the church was the entry about his burial in the church register, but now there was a stone monument placed on the wall, and in a fitting location as it was near the door where Pepys had entered from the Navy Office.

Whilst Pepys is probably the most famous of those with a memorial in the church, there are many other historic and fascinating memorials, including one which tells of the horrendous death rate for children in earlier centuries:

The memorial is to Reverend John Letts, who was rector of the parish for nearly twenty years. He died at the age of 57 on the 24th of March, 1857, and the memorial was erected by:

“His sorrowing Widow to the Memory of Her beloved Husband and of their children, Charlotte, Amy, Sarianne, Viola and Egerton who preceded their Father to the Grave”.

Five children who had died before their father. The monument does not record how many children John Letts and his unnamed wife had in total. There was at least one more as the monument records that Letts had died when on a visit to his Son at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire.

Life for the young was very precarious, even within a family who, with a father who was the Reverend of a City church, must have been reasonably well to do.

St. Olave’s association with Trinity House can be seen with a model of a lightship in the church. This is the lightship that was based in the North Sea at Smiths Knoll, an area a few miles off Great Yarmouth in Norfolk:

Stone tablet inlaid with brass – a memorial to John Orgone and his wife Ellyne:

There is no record of the death of John, but in the church registers there is an entry for Ellyn dated the 7th of June, 1580, which reads: “Ellin the wife of M’ John Organ aged 54 years of a swelling in the head”.

The two scrolls above the figures read: “Learne to dye” and “ys ye waye to life”. Between them is the representation of a wool sack, with a trademark and the initials IO (a merchants mark).

A fascinating record of a 16th century London merchant.

The next momument tells a story of how monuments were lost, and occasionally recovered, following wartime damage to the church.

This is the memorial to the physician Peter Turner who died on the 17th of May, 1614:

As mentioned earlier in the post, the church was badly damaged during the last war. Fire had gutted the interior, destroying the wood roof, pews etc. but leaving the stone walls, the tower and many of the monuments within.

There was a large amount of looting of bombed sites during the war. My father recorded furniture being stolen from one of the flats in his estate which had been damaged by an incendiary bomb.

Peter Turner’s monument was presumably stolen, as it went missing from the church.

It reappeared at an art auction in April 2010, and returned to its original position within the church the following year, almost 70 years after going missing.

There is much though that was lost from the overall monument as can be seen from the photo, with the original stone around the bust still missing, as is the stone below the bust and the plaque with the inscription, which are all new.

One that has remained in the church is this impressive memorial to Sir James Deane, who died on the 16th of May, 1608:

His entry in the church register states: “1608, June the 2. S’ James Deane Knight deceased on the 16th of Maie at his howse in hackneye being brought to London, was on the 2 of June following buried in the chancell.”

There is a related register entry which reads: “1600-1, March 16. A Cresom woman child of S’ James Deane’s”.

Cresom or “chrisomes” was an archaic term for death in infants. Chrisomes was used to describe the death of an infant under one month of age. The term came from the name of a white linen cloth that was used to cover a baby’s head when baptised, and was also used as a shroud for a dead baby.

If you look at the photo of the monument above, there is a central panel with a man and woman facing each other and praying. In the centre, below them, there are two babies, with the lower with its head resting on a skull, to symbolise death:

Another reminder of the terribly high child death rate, and how those who could afford a monument wanted to record their children, including those who died as babies, as being part of their family. My post on Bills of Mortality – Death in early 18th Century London, goes into some depth on the causes of death, and just how relatively few children reached adulthood.

Dame Anne, the wife of Sir John Radclif, Knight, who died on the 10th of December, 1585, and well over 400 years later, continues to kneel in perpetual prayer:

As does Andrew Bayninge, who died on the 21st of December 1610, aged 67:

Next is the statue of, and memorial to Sir Andrew Riccard, who died in 1672:

Sir Andrew Riccard was a leading member of two of the trading companies that contributed so much to the financial and trading success of the City of London in the 17th and 18th centuries; the East India Company and the Turkey Company.

The text below his statue reads:

“Sacred be the Statue here raised by Gratitude & Respect to eternize the Memory of Sir ANDREW RICCARD Kn’t. A Citizen &. opulent- Merchant of London Whose active Piety, inflexible Integrity & extensive Abilities alike distinguished and exalted Him in the Opinion of the Wise and Good. Adverse to his Wish, He was frequently chosen Chairman of the Honorable East India Company, and filled with equal Credit, for eighteen successive Years, the same eminent Station in the Turkey Company. Among many Instances of his Love to GOD and liberal Spirit towards Man one as it demands peculiar Praise deserves to be distinctly recorded. He nobly left the PERPETUAL ADVOWSON of this Parish, in Trust of five of its senior Inhabitants. He died the 6th of Sep’ In the Year of our LORD 1672 of his Age 68.”

I suspect that it was not too much “adverse to his wish” that he was frequently chosen as chairman, as these would have been prestige roles in the City and would have made him a wealthy man, as perhaps the scale of his monument suggests.

Another statue records one of the international inhabitants of London. This is Peter Cappone, originally from Florence, and who died in the City of London in1582:

The entry in the register records that he died of the plaque on the 27th of October, 1582, one of the many years during the 16th century when the plaque was a cause of death in London. Not on the scale of the outbreak in 1665, but a continuous risk among the many risks to health for Londoners over the centuries.

St. Olave is a wonderful City church. Restored following wartime bombing to a standard where it still provides a sense of the church when some of those commemorated around the walls once knew St. Olave, Hart Street.

alondoninheritance.com

The Standard, Cornhill

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A few week’s ago, my post was about London Maps, and I included one of the strip maps by John Ogilby, who had the impressive title of His Majesties Cosmographer.

John Ogilby was a fascinating character. Born in 1600 in Scotland, he had many professions including a dancer, teacher, translator, publisher and map maker.

With William Morgan, John Ogilby created a very detailed map of London which was published 10 years after the Great Fire of London in 1666 (although it was probably surveyed before the fire). You can find the map on the Layers of London website, here.

Ogilby is probably best known for his atlas of all the major routes in the country, which he published in 1675 under the name of Britannia.

Routes were shown in a strip map format, where several strips were used to follow a route from source to destination. Along the route, towns and villages were listed, as were geographic features, roads leading off the main route, with their destinations listed, landmarks along the route, distances etc.

The map featured in the previous post was from London to Portsmouth, a route which started at the Standard in Cornhill.

The Standard in Cornhill was the starting point for many of the maps with routes that commenced in London, and after writing the previous post, I wanted to discover a bit more about the Standard, but before I head to Cornhill, here is another of Ogilby’s routes. This one a bit longer than the previous map to Portsmouth.

Each of the routes had a header on each page, with the first map having the title of the overall route, total distances, major towns and cities along the route, with individual distances between them.

So if you were planning to journey from the City of London, to Lands End in Cornwall, this was Ogilby’s route, which started with the summary header of the route of 303 miles and 3 furlongs, and started at the Standard in Cornhill:

The first page of the journey to Cornwall, runs from London to just before Winchester, and just after leaving what was then the limits of London, we cross Knightsbridge, when it was still a bridge:

We then cross Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire and Somersetshire. In the 17th century, counties still had “shire” at the end of the names such as Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, which would later be shortened, but as with current names such as Wilshire, the “shire” recalls the old origins of these counties and county boundaries:

We then continue travelling through Devonshire, passing through Exeter:

Then head into Cornwall, before finally reaching Lands End, which faces onto “The Western Sea”:

So where was The Standard, the start of the Lands End route, and of many other maps, and what was it? Helpfully there is a City of London plaque to mark the site:

The Standard sounds as if it should have been the name of one of the many large coaching inns across London, and which would make sense as a place where journeys across the country commenced, however it was an ancient well / water pump / conduit, and it was located at a key crossroads in the City of London, where Cornhill, Leadenhall Street, Bishopsgate and Gracechurch Street all meet.

The following photo shows the junction of these four roads:

You can just see the blue plaque, on the first floor of the corner of the white building across the junction. To the right of the white building is Cornhill and to the left is Gracechurch Street. The white building also shows how every bit of available land has been built on in the City, as the building is right up against the church of St. Peter, Cornhill, which has an entrance on Cornhill, and the rear of the church can be seen on Gracechurch Street to the left of the white building.

If we look at the four roads leading from this junction, we can see why this was an important location for travelling out of the City.

Gracechurch Street heads south down to London Bridge, which for centuries was the only bridge across the Thames, and therefore the main route to the south.

Leadenhall Street headed to the east, Bishopsgate headed to the north and Cornhill headed to the west, so from this junction, one could travel to the major routes that ran across the country, and was why maps such as Obilby’s used the Standard as their City of London starting point.

London Past and Present (Henry Wheatley, 1891) provides some background detail about the Standard:

“A water-standard with four spouts made (1582) by Peter Morris, a German, and supplied with water conveyed from the Thames by pipes of lead. it stood at the east end of Cornhill, at its junction with Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate Street and Leadenhall Street, and with the waste water from its four spouts cleansed the channels of the four streets.

The water ceased to run between 1598 and 1603; but the Standard itself remained for a long time after. It was long in use as a point of measurement for distances from the City, and several of our suburban milestones were, but a very few years ago, and some perhaps are still, inscribed with so many miles ‘from the Standard in Cornhill’. There was a Standard in Cornhill as early as Henry V.”

A print, dated 1814 of the “Antient North East View of Cornhill” shows the pump at the crossroads. The print is dated over 100 years after the pump was removed, so whether it was an interpretation of what it may have looked like, or whether it was based on an earlier print is impossible to know:

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

London Past and Present, and many other sources date the Standard to around 1582, however the site seems to have been used as a source of water for many centuries before.

In 1921, as new pipes to carry telephone cables were being laid across the junction, a well which was believed to have been below the Standard was discovered.

Four feet below the 1921 road surface an arched brick top to a brick well of 45 inches in diameter was found. Below this, at 18 feet below street level, a much older well was found, of 30 inches in diameter.

It was believed that this much older well had been filled in, along with part of the upper well, when the water pipes of Morris were installed through an opening in the side of the well.

Excavating the well below the old location of the Standard in 1921.

It was believed at the time that the lower parts of the well dated from early Medieval times, or possibly earlier, but as far I can find, no direct dating evidence was found.

I also cannot find any evidence that the brick and stone structure of the well was removed, so presumably the lower parts of this ancient well are still there, far below the road surface of the junction today.

The plaque mentions that the Standard was removed around 1674, and London Past and Present states that it remained long after water ceased to flow in 1603, and from most of the references I have found, it seems to be that the Standard had become an obstruction at a major road junction. It had long ceased to have any functional purpose and so was simply demolished.

Despite the loss of the Standard at some point in the later part of the 17th century, it continued to be used as a point for measuring distances to and from for many years to come. Not just formal measurements in maps, but also for almost any purpose that required a City of London reference point that would be widely known.

For example, I found the following advert in the Morning Herald on the 4th of January 1838:

“WANTED, a detached FAMILY RESIDENCE, within six miles of the Standard, Cornhill; consisting of drawing and dining rooms, three or four best bedrooms, servants’ rooms, and convenient domestic offices; double detached coach house and stabling lawn, pleasure and kitchen gardens; and if a few acres of meadow land it would be preferred – Apply by letter (post paid) to A.H., 9 Coleman-street, City”

The Standard, Cornhill was often mentioned on milestones when giving a distance to London. There was an 18th century example in Purley for many years. I am not sure if it has survived.

A 1921 article in the Sussex Express mentions the preservation of a milestone in Lewis:

“The milestone let in the upper front of 144/5 High Street, which the Council are to preserve when the building is demobilised, bears the interesting inscription, which probably many Lewes residents have not read; ‘Fifty miles from the Standard in Cornhill, 49 miles to Westminster Bridge, 8 miles to Brightelmstone.”

I have not heard of a building being “demobilised”. I assume it meant being demolished, and the Council did indeed preserve the milestone as it can still be seen in Lewes today, and fortunately I found a photo of the milestone on the brilliant Geograph website:

Credit: Old Milestone by the A277, High Street, Lewes cc-by-sa/2.0 – © A Rosevear – geograph.org.uk/p/6038102

The Standard, Cornhill is just one of a number of locations that have been used as a point from where distances to and from London have been measured.

The most common location seems to be the statue of Charles I to the south of Trafalgar Square, where the Eleanor Cross once stood, so possibly the location of the final cross as part of a 13th century journey to London, still marks where distances are measured to and from:

Plaque by the statue recording that the site of the cross was / is from where distances are measured:

It is fascinating to stand at the eastern end of Cornhill, look across the road junction, and imagine the Standard water pump / conduit that once stood there, and that an ancient well probably still exists deep below the surface.

What I also find fascinating are the stories told by books, not just from their intended contents.

I have a copy of a 1939 facsimile of Ogilby’s Britannia, published by the Duckhams Oil Company on the 7th of December 1939, the 40th anniversary of the company’s founding.

Duckhams had a sales office at Duckhams House, 16 Cannon Street in the City, and the books of the facsimile of Britannia were in the office when war broke out. The company thought that the celebration of their 40th anniversary was a little out of place as war had just been declared.

The books appear to have been stored in Cannon Street for a period, with “two narrow escapes from bombing”, they were then distributed, with a little note in the inside cover:

The PTO reveals a postscript appealing for funds for the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund.

Alexander Duckham, who founded the company, and also signed the note in the book lived for some years at Vanbrugh Castle near Greenwich Park. He must have been a long standing supporter of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund as in 1920, just a year after the fund had been established, he donated Vanbrugh Castle to the fund, to be used as a school for children of members of the RAF who had been killed in service.

Just some of the obscure connections you can make across London.

From an ancient well and water conduit at an important cross roads in the City, to a map maker who used the water conduit as the starting point for his routes out of London, and to an early 20th century industrialist who loved Ogilby’s maps and published a facsimile from their office in Cannon Street during the last war.

Copies of the facsimile of Ogilby’s Britannia can be found on the Abebooks website, and if you are interested in John Ogilby, the Nine Lives of John Ogilby by Alan Ereira is a really good account, and can be found here.

alondoninheritance.com

Centuries of Change in Farringdon Street

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Today’s post was not on my list of posts to write. Last Sunday, I was in the City to explore a site for a future post. It was a grey, overcast morning, and at one point there was a fine, wind driven drizzle, so I decided to head back home (I should have stayed for the afternoon as the sun came out).

Walking towards the Holborn Viaduct Bridge over Farringdon Street, I noticed another new building site where the previous building had been demolished and construction of the concrete core of the future development was underway.

I walked down from Holborn Viaduct, down to Farringdon Street as I wanted to see if a bit of Victorian construction was visible.

The following photo is from Farringdon Street. Part of the bridge over Farringdon Street is on the left, then there is one of the four pavilions, one on each corner of the bridge, then an open space with the new concrete core of the new building on the right edge of the photo:

Farringdon Street is the route of the lost River Fleet, and the bridge carries the road over what was the river, hence the low level of Farringdown Street, and the slope of the streets on either side.

Walking along the road to cross the bridge, it is not really obvious that the bridge is not the only part of the overall construction of the road, as you are walking along a manmade viaduct of some length.

Holborn Bridge is part of Holborn Viaduct, the 427m long viaduct designed to provide a bridge over the valley of the Fleet River and a level road between Holborn Circus and Newgate Street.

The construction contract for Holborn Viaduct was awarded on the 7th May 1866 and on the 6th November 1869 it was opened by Queen Victoria.

The construction of this 427m viaduct is not that visible, unless buildings along the viaduct are demolished, and it was this that I wanted to see.

Looking across the cleared construction site, and the side of the viaduct was clearly visible:

This is a view of what remains of the 1860s construction of Holborn Viaduct, and how the long approach to the bridge was built up in height.

At the top, there is a distnct layer which makes up the made ground under the street.

We then come to the core of the viaduct, with the edge of brick walls, which presumably run the width of the viaduct across the street, and in the lower half of the viaduct there are clearly defined brick arches.

Much of the side of the viaduct appears to have been skimmed and filled with concrete. I assume the whole of the viaduct has been filled, but it would be interesting to know whether there is any open space within the arches of the viaduct.

I also assume that the concrete skim and possible fill is of later date, and the brick columns and arches are from the 1860s build of Holborn Viaduct.

It is not often that you can see the hidden details of Victorian design and construction techniques, and the outline of the brick arches that support Holborn Viaduct will probably be soon covered again by the new building that will be built on the site, but they show the considerable construction work either side of the bridge, and which you are walking over as you walk along Holborn Viaduct, towards the bridge over Farringdon Street.

There has been a considerable amount of construction in Farringdon Street in the small section between Holborn Viaduct and Ludgate Circus in the last few years, the above example being just the latest, and I wanted to see what was happening at another, where the Hoop & Grapes pub was located:

The Hoop & Grapes has been closed for the last couple of years, when the buildings on either side of the pub were demolished.

The new building on the right of the pub is making good progress, and there will soon be more construction on the left, and until this is complete the left hand wall of the pub is shored up.

The building is Grade II listed and is of some age. According to the listing details, the building was part of a terrace, with the house being built around 1720 for a vintner, and converted to a public house in 1832.

The listing also states that the “Basement has brick vaults thought to be part of 17th century warehousing vaults built in connection with the formation of the Fleet Canal. Built on part of the site of St. Bride’s Burial Ground.”

Rocque’s 1746 map still shows St. Bride’s burial ground (ringed in map extract below), although there is a space between the burial ground and Fleet Market, so the terrace which included the building that would become the Hoop & Grapes could have been within this small space, or perhaps to one side:

The Fleet Canal reference in the Historic England listing refers to when this stretch of the River Fleet was constrained within a channel, along which, and partly over, the Fleet Market developed.

Another view looking at the new developments and the old Hoop & Grapes pub, which has seen the area change beyond all recognition since the house was built:

I really struggle with some of these redevelopments.

London has always changed. Some of the terrace houses that survived to the 20th century along with the Hoop & Grapes were damaged during the war, and then demolished.

New officces were built surrounding the pub in the 1950s. These were in turn demolished in the 1990s, and it is these buildings which are being demolished for the new development.

Each iteration of development seems to get larger and more overpowering for buildings that survive, and based on the lifespan of the post-war developments on the site, the building currently being built, will be demolished in turn, in the 2060s / 2070s.

Again, it is good that buildings such as the pub survive, but they almost become a museum exhibit, stuck in a streetscape that they have no relationship with, and totally out of context.

I photographed the Hoop & Grapes in 2020, when I had a walk around all the City of London pubs:

I do not know whether the pub will reopen when redevelopment of the surrounding buildings has been completed.

The City of London Corporation seems to be making some efforts to retain City pubs, and they have announced that the Still and Star, Aldgate, St Brides Tavern, Blackfriars, the White Swan, Fetter Lane and the King’s Arms at 55 Old Broad Street / London Wall, will all be reopening in the coming years, however this often refers to the name being retained and the pub being relocated to a new structure within a new development.

There is no mention of the Hoop & Grapes.

A very short distance south along Farringdon Street, on the opposite side of the road is 5 Fleet Place, the cream coloured building that was completed in 2007:

In the above photo, you can just see a road sign with a white arrow on a blue background on the street at the corner of the building. Look through the square arch of the building to the left of the arrow sign, and there are three plaques. which tell of religious and political history:

Staring from the bottom is a stone that was laid on the 10th of May, 1872 at the new Congregational Memorial Hall and Library:

The stone states that the Memorial Hall was erected to commemorate “The Fidelity of Conscience shown by the Ejected Ministers of 1662”.

To understand what was being commemorated, we need to go back to the mid-16th century and the Act of Uniformity of 1558. This was passed in 1559 and established that the church should be unified around Anglicanism and worship should be according to the Book of Common Prayer.

This act was an attempt to address the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism that had been simmering since the break from the Church of Rome by Henry VIII.

The act lasted until 1650 when it was repealed by the Rump Parliament established during the first year of the new Commonwealth of England, set up immediately after the English Civil War.

It was repealed to provide greater religious freedom for Puritans and non-conformists.

There was a strong religious independent and Puritan element to Parliamentary forces in the Civil War, and is why many churches had their decoration and statues damaged and destroyed by Parliamentary soldiers as these were seen as being a residual influence of the Church of Rome.

When Charles II was returned to the throne, there was pressure from the Church of England to unify the church around Anglican principles and the Book of Common Prayer.

The Act was brought back into law, and Ministers were forced to swear an oath that they would give “unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed” in the Book of Common Prayer.

Many Puritan, Presbyterian and Independent ministers could not swear such an oath, and around 2,000 were forced out by the “Great Ejection” from the Church of England on St. Bartholomew’s Day, the 24th of August, 1662 – the event recorded by the stone.

Title page from the pamphlet “‘The Farewell Sermons of the Late London Ministers'” showing 12 of the ejected ministers:

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

Newspaper reports of the ceremony to lay the foundation stone included the following which gives some background as to how the memorial hall was funded and the facilities within the building:

“The Act of Uniformity passed in the year 1662, had the effect of ejecting from their charges more that two thousand ministers who could not conscientiously subscribe to it. At a meeting of the Congregational Union, held at Birmingham in 1861, it was resolved to commemorate the event.

A conference was convened and held, at which it was decided that a bicentenary memorial fund should be raised, among the objects specified being the erection of new chapels, the extinction of chapel debts, and especially the erection of a Congregational Memorial Hall. A committee was appointed to carry the scheme into full effect, and at the next annual meeting it was reported that the total amount paid and promised in connection with this commemoration was nearly £250,000.

A site was found in Farringdon-street, which had formed part of the old Fleet Prison, and the ground was purchased at a cost of £23,000. The architect’s designs comprise a hall to hold from 1,200 to 1,500 people, a library, a board-room, and other offices. The whole is erected at a cost of not less than £30,000.”

The Congregational Hall and Library as it appeared in the 1920s (the building with the large tower):

The library was a considerable resource of over 8,000 volumes and manuscripts covering dissenting religious history.

The library was moved to Manchester during the war, for safety, and also because the Government requisitioned the building between 1940 and 1950 for war purposes.

The library returned in 1957, however ten years later, the collection had to be moved out again as the site was being redeveloped, which brings us to the second plaque:

Around 100 years after completion, maintenance of a large Victorian building was difficult and expensive, so the Congregational Memorial Hall Trust decided to have the site redeveloped with a new office block on site, along with space for the library and for meetings.

The above foundation stone is from this new building – Caroone House.

The library though did not return to the new building. It had been moved to 14 Gordon Square in advance of the redevelopment, and was housed with and administered by Dr. Williams’s Library, another library of religious dissenting books and manuscripts.

The library had to move out of Gordon Square a couple of years ago due to the potential costs of the redevelopment of the site, and the library is now housed at Westminster College, Cambridge, a theological collection that brings together Congregational and Presbyterian college traditions.

And now for the third plaque. It is not often that one of my posts has a very topical subject, but for this week’s post, in 1900, the Congregational Memorial Hall was the site of the founding of the Labour Party:

Rather than a northern industrial town, the meeting that resulted in the founding of the Labour Party was held in the Congregational Memorial Hall, in Farringdon Street on the 27th of February, 1900.

The meeting was the inaugural meeting of the Labour Representation Committee and the purpose of the meeting, which had been arranged by the Trades Union Congress, was to agree on how the various strands of the Labour movement could be brought together into a single party.

Up until the 1900 meeting, the interests of labour had been represented by the Trades Union Congress, the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation, who all attended the meeting in Farringdon Street.

The Cooperative Movement had been invited but did not attend as their aim was to maintain a politically neutral approach.

130 delegates met in the library of the Congregational Hall, and the following paragraph from the end of a report on the meeting in the London Daily News gives an indication of the approach of the new unified Labour Party:

“The speeches for the most part were couched in a spirit of broad toleration. Mr. Burns and Mr. Harnes, and Mr. Steadman and Mr. Tillett, all protested against the spirit of narrow sectarianism which has prevailed so largely hitherto.

And Mr. Hardie and Mr. Burgess, from the Independent Labour Party also took the same line, and strongly condemned a proposal that a Labour Party should be organised upon the basis of ‘recognising the existence of a class war’, which got defeated by the adoption of an amending resolution.”

Caroone House was demolished in 2004, so that the office block we see today could be built, and which was completed in 2007. The two foundation stones and the plaque recording the founding of Labour were reinstalled.

A very short walk along part of Farringdon Street, where we can see part of the viaduct constructed by the Victorians to create a wider and higher bridge over what was the route of the River Fleet, a 300 year old house that once looked onto the river and that once housed a pub, and hopefully will do so in the future, as it is surrounded by much larger steel and glass office blocks, and the site of a hall, built to commemorate a religious schism in the 17th century, and the founding of the Labour Party at the very start of the 20th century.

Another example of just how much diverse history can be found during a short walk along a City street.

The next time I write about Farringdon Street, I hope that the Hoop & Grapes will be open again as a traditional London pub, rather than what seems to happen to so many pubs where development takes place – a reimagined pub.

Despite the appearance of Farringdon Street today, it is a very historic street, and the Fleet Prison which was on the site of the Congregational Memorial Hall will be the subject of a future post.

alondoninheritance.com

London Maps in Books

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I have two new walk dates available. Click on the links for details and booking:

If you have been reading the blog for a while, you will know that I am fascinated by London maps, and make use of a number of maps in many of my posts.

They can help us understand the development of London in many different ways. They are a snapshot of the city at the time they were made, showing the limits of development at a specific time. They record change, and they show features of the city, man-made and natural, that have long since disappeared under the built city we see today.

They can show different interpretations of the city, they can show how people at the time the map was made interpreted the city, what was important to them.

There are some brilliant online mapping sites, such as the National Library of Scotland and Layers of London, however nothing beats the feel of a paper map in your hands.

Many of these maps can be found in books. Large, fold out maps, or even better, a pocket at the end of the book stuffed with a number of maps. You do not find this with the majority of books published today, probably down to cost, however it was once a more common feature, and for today’s post, I have a small sample.

At the start of the 20th century, Sir Walter Besant published a series of books on the history of London, and a number of these included maps.

(You should be able to click on the maps to open a larger image)

In “London In The Time Of The Tudors” (1904) there is:

A Reproduction of the Map by Ralph Agas, Circa 1560

Although the map is known as the Agas map, it appears to be an incorrect attribution. Ralph Agas was a surveyor who lived between 1540 and 1621, however there is no firm evidence that he was the creator of the map, and the coat of arms at the top left of the map is not from the Tudor period, but is the Stuart coat of arms, and the version of the map that survives is believed to date from around 1633.

At the time the map was made, the population of the city was around 350,000, and was still mainly contained within the old City walls, although there were small areas of building outside the walls, for example the route from the City to Westminster can be seen with buildings either side of what is now Fleet Street and the Strand, and the Eleanor Cross can be seen at Charing Cross.

The following extract shows the City of London:

In the following extract, the River Fleet can be seen from the point where it enters the Thames, then heading north where the two crossing points at what is now Ludgate Circus and Holborn Viaduct can be seen, before the river starts wandering to the north:

In the next book in Besant’s series, “London In The Time Of The Stuarts”, we then have:

A Large And Accurate Map Of The City Of London (John Ogilby, 1670s)

John Ogilby was a printer and publisher, translator, Master of the Revels in Ireland, he had served in the Army, and in the period after the Great Fire of London, he created a detailed and carefully surveyed map of the City of London.

There are some significant changes to the City we see today, however there is much that is basically the same (although the buildings will be very different).

In the following extract, the Wool Church Market is where Mansion House is today, and to the right is Cornhill, with the Royal Exchange and the churches of St. Michael Cornhill and St. Peter Cornhill, and there are the same alleys between Cornhill and Lombard Street that we can walk today, although between 19th and 20th century buildings, rather than those Ogilby would have known:

The map still shows the River Fleet in the 1670s, as a channel running up from the Thames, with what looks to be walkways along both sides of the river, between the Thames and Holborn:

After publishing his map of the City of London, Ogilby published perhaps his best known work, “Britannia”, which was a map of the routes between the principal towns and cities of the country.

For Britannia, Ogilby used the innovative method of a strip map, where the route was shown running along a series of strips, with the main geographic features, towns and villages, houses, side roads etc. that could be found along the route.

The following map is the strip map for the route from the Standard in Cornhill (a water pump at the eastern end of Cornhill, and one of the places in London used as the base for measuring distances) to Portsmouth in Hampshire:

In the text in the box at the top, the distance is given as 73 miles and 2 furlongs, and John Ogilby is given the rather grand title of His Majesties Cosmographer, a title given to Ogilby by King Charles II.

We then come to the book “London in the Eighteenth Century”, and:

London in 1741-5 by John Rocque

Rocque’s map is one of the maps I use regularly in blog posts, as it provides a comprehensive view of the city, including the wider, as yet undeveloped part of the city.

The River Fleet can still be seen, but it is now starting to be built over, and where the Fleet runs into the Thames is now Blackfriars Bridge:

Looking to the west of Rocque’s map, and we can see Chelsea Water Works (roughly where Victoria Station, and the tracks leading out of the station are today). About 70 years after Rocque’s map, Chelsea Water Works would be closed and the space backfilled with the soil excavated for the new St. Katherine Docks.

We now come to “London in the Nineteenth Century”, and the city is expanding rapidly. The time when the city was enclosed within the old city wall as shown in the Agas map is long gone. This is:

Cruchley’s New Plan of London improved to 1835

London has expanded rapidly, however there were still fields to the east and west, land that would be built on during the rest of the 19th century and early 20th century.

Part of the city’s expansion has been to the east, as trade carried along the river has grown considerably, and the original wharves and docks in the heart of the City were no longer capable of supporting the volume of goods and the size of ships.

If we look to the Isle of Dogs, we can see the West India Docks which were built in the early 19th century, and below these docks, we can see the outline for some proposed new docks, each capable of supporting 200 ships:

One of the early roads that ran through the Isle of Dogs to the ferry at the southern tip can be seen running across the outline of the new docks.

The docks would not be built as shown in Cruchley’s map, the new docks would be the southern dock below the West India, and the Millwall Dock.

Another book with an impressive fold out map is Henry Chamberlain’s:

A New and Complete History and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and Parts Adjacent

The book dates from 1770, and has a large fold out map of the city in that year:

Again, there are plenty of little details which show the city at the time, and if we look at the top of the map, there is New River Head and Sadlers Wells:

New River Head was the large pond built at the end of the man-made New River that brought water in from springs around Ware in Hertfordshire, ready for onward distribution across London.

Sadlers Wells was named after a well and the first owner of the site and the entertainment venure he developed.

At the time, the land between Sadlers Wells and the city, was still open land, as the map shows, and was a risky place for those returning from a night at Sadlers Wells to their city homes, with many reports of theft across what would have been dark fields.

If we look at the area of Lambeth covered by the map, we can see at the time there were no other bridges between Blackfriars and Westminster Bridges, and we can see one of the pleasure gardens south of the river, Cuper Gardens, which is where the approach to Waterloo Bridge and the large roundabout at the end of the approach road are located today.

Narrow Wall can be seen on the map, one of the early attempts to stop the river from encroaching on the land and reclaiming Lambeth Marsh. Narrow Wall is today Belverdere Road and Upper Ground.

The next book is “A Dictionary of London” by Henry Harben (1918). This book has a pocket at the end, in which there are a selection of maps. The first being:

A Map of the Cities of London & Westminster and the Borough of Southwark together with the suburbs, 1708

Some of the maps in Harben’s book are based on several different maps to provide coverage and detail not seen within one individual map. The above map is based on “Hatton’s New View 1708, but it incorporates material supplied in Philip Lea’s map of 1673, John Ogilby’s of 1677 and Morden & Lea’s map of 1682. Further details come from Richard Blome’s ward maps published in Stryp’s edition of Stowe, 1720”.

The benefit of this composite approach is the level of detail in one map, and in the following extract we can see the stairs and houses along the river between the mouth of the Fleet and the horse ferry in Westminster:

Interesting that in St. James’s Park there is a feature labelled “Decoy”. This may have been a pond where ducks, or other waterfowl would be lured into and trapped. The benefit of such a place was that if they were to be served as meat for food, then not having been shot, they would not contain lead shot.

The next map in Harben’s book is the product of three maps, and is titled:

A Map of London about 1660. The Ground Plan is based on Hutton 1708. The details from Faithorne and Newcourt Circa 1658

Again, there are many small details. Wapping is mainly built along the river and along the Ratcliffe Highway, and the area of Rotherhithe is using the old name of Redriff.

There is one, small detail I really like. Take a look at Limehouse to the east, and next to the small indentation from the river (Limekiln Dock, see this post), there is a drawing of a lime kiln:

The lime kiln is shown in the correct location for the first lime kiln in the area, and is the structure that would give Limehouse its name. The accuracy of the image extends to the smoke issuing from the top of the kiln, from the burning of chalk brought up from Kent.

We then come to:

Map of London shows its size at the end of the 16th century. The ground plan is for convenience based on the plan in Hatton’s New View 1708. The main details are from Norden 1593 & Speed 1610

In this series of maps from Harben’s book, we have been going back in time, and this map shows the city at the end of the 16th century, overlaid on a plan of 1708.

It shows a much smaller city, and there are details which show just how undeveloped parts of London were at the time.

The area south of the river, where much of Lambeth is located today, is labelled Lambeth Marsh, and has the symbols for a marsh along with some lines of trees.

The area between Narrow Wall and the Thames are areas of agriculture, with inlets leading from the river up to Narrow Wall. This area between Narrow Wall and the river was used for agricultural purposes, such as growing reeds.

Some of the maps in Harben’s book show how you can add additional detail to a map, and these are the pre-Internet versions of the Layers of London site, for example:

Plan of London in the 16th, 17th & 18th Centuries Superimposed on the Present Ordnance Survey Plan

The above map is the Eastern Sheet and the map below is the Western Sheet:

A small detail from the map shows the outline of the pre-Great Fire St. Paul’s Cathedral overlaid on the outline of Wren’s cathedral which we see today, showing a slight change in orientation and size:

Another of Harben’s maps where has overlaid data on a street plan is a:

Plan of London showing the Levels of the Natural ground below the present Surface, the Line of the Roman Wall of the City, and the Sites of Discoveries of Roman remains etc.

Walking the city streets today, it is hard to appreciate just how much land levels have changed over the last couple of thousand years.

Centuries of dumping of building rubble, accumulations of rubbish, waste and soils, demolition rubble from events such as the Great Fire, leveling of the city, for example, the land running down to the Thames (when Queen Victoria Street was built, parts were raised to level out the street), covering of rivers such as the Fleet and the Walbrook etc. have all contributed to raising the ground level of the city.

The lowest levels where evidence of human occupation of the city are those from the Roman period, and in the map, Harden has located where remains have been found, and the level below the current surface, for example, as shown in this extract showing the area around Cripplegate and London Wall:

One of the best places where this raising of surface levels can be seen is the part of the Roman Wall shown in the above map, which is preserved in the underground car park below London Wall. Whilst there are many runs of the wall above ground in the area, these are all medieval, we have to look below the surface to get down to the Roman Wall, as can be seen in this post where I photographed the wall in the car park.

A small sample of some of the old maps of London that show how the city has developed over the centuries, and finding an old book with a large folding map, or even better, a pocket at the end of the book stuffed with maps is always a bonus.

Some of the other maps I have looked at in the blog are Reynolds’s Splendid New Map Of London , the 1944 report on the Reconstruction of the City of London, and the 1943 London County Council Plan for the redevelopment of London.

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The Guinness Festival Clock, London Clock Makers and the Corn Laws

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One ticket for my walk Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation for next Sunday has just become free. Click here for details and booking.

A mix of subjects for this week’s post, the first comes from my fascination with all things Festival of Britain, and where we can see aspects of the festival to this day.

Part of the Festival of Britain in 1951 was the Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea. I wrote a post about the pleasure gardens which can be found by clicking here.

The Pleasure Gardens were where people could have some fun. The other London exhibitions, such as the main festival site on the Southbank, and the Exhibition of Architecture in Poplar, were intended to be educational and informative. To tell a story of the history of the country and the people, industry, science, design, arts etc.

The Battersea Pleasure Gardens were also different to the rest of the festival sites, in that the Pleasure Gardens allowed commercial sponsorship, which covered not just advertising and sponsorship of places and events in the gardens, but also the provision of display items by commercial companies.

These had to go along with the general theme of the Pleasure Gardens – they had to provide some form of entertainment, fun, enjoyment, and one of the more prominent of these commercial displays was the Guinness Festival Clock:

I was recently in Ireland, which included a couple of days in Dublin, and a mandatory visit to the Guinness Storehouse, their rather impressive and very popular visitor centre in the city.

One of the floors in the centre is devoted to Guinness advertising over the years, and I was really pleased to find they had a large model of the Guinness Festival Clock:

The Guinness Festival Clock was one of the most popular attractions at the pleasure gardens. Every quarter of an hour it would burst into action with characters appearing and moving, the triangular vanes at the top opening and spinning and doors opening at the lower front to reveal the Guinness Toucan.

The Guinness Festival Clock was designed by the partnership of Lewitt-Him.

Lewitt-Him were two designers who had come to London in 1937 from Poland. Both were from Jewish families.

Jan LeWitt was born in Czestochowa in 1907. After three years travelling across Europe and the Middle East, he started work as a graphic artist and designer, and was also involved in practical activities such as machine building and in a distillery.

George Him (who had changed his name from Jerzy Himmelfarb) came from Lodz, where he was born in 1900. He had a more academic start in life, initially studying Roman Law, then obtaining a PhD in the comparative history of religions. He then began to study graphic art, and in 1933 met Jan LeWitt, and started collaborating on designs, where their style was described as being “surrealistic, cubist and with humour”.

Their move to London was possible as their work had been brought to the attention of Philip James at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Peter Gregory at the publishers Lund Humphries.

Their move to London was timely as two years later Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, and their Jewish background would have meant almost certain death.

The outbreak of war also created significant demand for their skills, with the need for graphic designers to work on numerous books, posters, pamphlets and maps, many of which were in support of the war effort.

After the war, they continued to work on a wide range of projects, from commercial advertising, illustrations for books and magazines, and exhibitions.

One of the first post-war exhibitions in which they were involved was the “Britain Can Make It” exhibition in 1947 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. As with the future Festival of Britain, the 1947 exhibition was intended to show the technical and manufacturing capabilities of the country, as there was a need to dramatically increase exports and a national demand for foreign currency due to the impact of the war on the country’s finances.

The “Britain Can Make It” exhibition became known as the “Britain Can’t Have It” exhibition, as the products on display were aimed at the export market, rather than being available for domestic customers.

Four years later, and the type of design that included Lewitt-Him’s approach to surrealism and humour could be found across the Festival of Britain, with the Guinness Festival Clock being a perfect example.

The festival clock at the Guinness Storehouse is a working replica, and the following short video shows the clock in action, along with a screen to the side of the clock, showing the original Guinness Festival Clock at Battersea (if you receive the post via email, you may need to go to the website by clicking here to see the video):

The popularity of the Guinness Festival Clock was such that Guinness commissioned eight full size travelling clocks, which then travelled across Ireland and the coastal resorts of Britain. Two of these clocks were also sent to the US, so Lewitt-Him’s work for the Festival of Britain ended up providing a very successful means of advertising for Guinness.

The Guinness advert from the Guide to the Festival Pleasure Gardens included a view of the clock, and a poem about the Walrus and the Carpenter’s visit to the Southbank festival site and the pleasure gardens in Battersea:

The Lewitt-Him partnership ended in 1955, as Jan LeWitt wanted to concentrate on more artistic projects, including the design of sets and costumes for ballets held at Sadlers Wells, whilst George Him continued as a commercial graphic designer with a large portfolio of customers for his advertising work.

They both continued to be based in London, until George Him’s death in 1981 and Jan Lewitt’s death in 1991.

Now back to London, but continuing with a clock based theme.

At the junction of Fleet Street and Whitefriars Street, next to the Tipperary pub, there are two rectangular blue plaques on the curved façade of the corner building:

The plaque on the Fleet Street side of the building records that two famous clockmakers, Thomas Tompion and George Graham both lived at the site:

I will start with Thomas Tompion as he was the elder of the two, and was more influential in the manufacture of watches and clocks, and could be described, as stated on the plaque, as the “The Father of English Clockmaking”.

The plaque states that he was born in 1638, but the majority of sources give his date of birth as 1639, in Northill, Bedfordshire (for example Bedford and Luton Archives and Records Service, and the Science Museum). Only one year, but an example of how it is difficult to be exactly sure of dates with the distance of time, and for those who were not born into a well known and documented family.

He arrived in London in 1671, and it was his meeting with Robert Hooke three years later that would help make his name as a clockmaker.

By 1674 Tompion appears to be living and working in Water Lane, the original name of Whitefriars Street, when it ran from Fleet Street all the way down to the Thames. Strype’s 1720 description of the lane is not that flattering:

“a good broad and straight street, which cometh out of Fleet Street and runneth down to the Thames, where there is one of the City Lay-stalls, for the Soil of the Street. This Lane is better built than inhabited, by reason of its being so pestered with Carts to the Laystall and Wharfs, for Wood, Coals &c, lying by the Water side at the bottom of this lane.”

The relationship with Hooke seems to have brought Tompion plenty of information about ways of making clocks and watches, and new developments in the profession, for example, one of the mentions of Tompion in Hooke’s diary is this, from the 2nd of May, 1674 (note that Hooke calls him Tomkin in his early diary entries, but then changes to the correct spelling):

“To Tomkin in Water Lane. Much discourse with him about watches. Told him the way of making an engine for finishing wheels and a way to make a dividing plate; about the form of an arch; another way of Teeth work, about pocket watches and many other things”

Tompion, along with Hooke met King Charles II on the 7th of April, 1675, when Hooke showed the King his new spring watch which was one of Hooke’s attempts at designing a watch that would enable the calculation of longitude at sea. This required very stable time keeping, compensating for the movement of a ship and changing weather.

Charles II requested that a watch be made for him, and Tompion built the watch to Hooke’s design, however this seems to have caused a breakdown in their relationship, as Hooke was frequently complaining to Tompion that he was taking too long to finish the project.

Things did not go well after completion, as after the watch was presented to the King, he complained to Hooke that “the weather had altered the watch”. Hooke’s deign had not yet factored in temperature compensation.

Thomas Tompion:

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

Despite any issues with the watch for the King (which appears to have been mainly Hooke’s design), Tompion’s reputation as a clock and watch maker grew rapidly. He experimented with a number of designs and manufacturing techniques to improve the reliability and accuracy of his clocks and watches, and these variations can be seen in a number of his clocks that survive.

The following watch is an example of Tompion’s work from the period 1700 to 1713:

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

The following side view provides an indication of the complexity of early 18th century watch manufacturing. For reference, the watch is just over 29 millimetres thick and the diameter of the dial is 41 millimetres:

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

From about 1685, Tompion started to number his clocks and watches, so it is possible to estimate how many he produced. Somewhere between 4,500 and 5,000 watches and around 550 clocks.

Thomas Tompion died in 1713, and as the plaque informs, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

His reputation as a watch and clock maker would continue for long after his death, as this advert from the Kentish Weekly Post on the 17th of June, 1732 illustrates:

“This is to give notice that all sorts of watches are made, mended and sold by Samuel Kissar, who is lately removed from St. Margaret’s-street to the Crown and Dial in Bargate-street, Canterbury.

N.B. He has a watch to sell made by Mr. Thomas Tompion, it being one of the best watches in Kent.”

An eight-day clock by Tompion from between 1695 and 1705:

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

As Thomas Tompion became successful, he needed help in his workshops, and this led to him taking on additional staff, which is where George Graham, the second name on the plaque comes in.

George Graham started working for Tompion in 1696 when he was employed at the age of 23 as a journeyman (a trained worker), as he had already completed an apprenticeship with another clock maker, Henry Aske.

A few years earlier in 1687, Tompion had taken on Edward Banger as an apprentice.

Both Graham and Banger married in to the wider Tompion family, as George Graham married Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Tompion’s younger brother James, and Edward Banger married Margaret, the daughter of Tompion’s sister, also Margaret.

The practice of senior workers and apprentices marrying into the owner’s family seems to have been reasonably common.

George Graham became a key member of Tompion’s business and he seems to have had the same attention to detail as Tompion, as well as an approach to improvement and invention with the increasing accuracy and performance of clocks and watches.

George Graham was also a well known astronomical instrument maker as these instruments shared many features with clocks and watches where metal working was needed, with instruments built with increasing accuracy (whether measuring time, or the position of a star in the sky).

As far as I can tell, Thomas Tampion died without having had any children who could take over the business. He left the business to George Graham, who announced this in the London Gazette in December 1713: “George Graham, nephew of the late Mr. Thomas Tompion, who lived with him upwards of seventeen years and managed his trade for several years past, whose name was joined with Mr. Tompion’s for some time before his death, and to whom he had left all his stock and work, finished and unfinished, continues to carry on the said trade at the late Dwelling House of the said Mr. Tompion, at the sign of the Dial & Three Crowns, at the corner of Water Lane, in Fleet Street, London, where all persons may be accommodated as formerly.”

Seven years later, George Graham moved a short distance, and announced in the London Gazette in March 1721: “George Graham, watchmaker is removed from the corner of Water Lane, in Fleet Street, to the Dial & One Crown on the other side of the way, a little nearer Fleet Bridge, a new house next door to the Globe and Duke of Marlborough’s Head Tavern”.

What is interesting with these announcements is the description of the place where George Graham was located. They are all graphical descriptions where the names that would have been on the signs at or next to Graham’s location are given.

The following image shows three of George Graham’s long case clocks, made between 1740 and 1750:

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

The pendulum can be seen in the clock on the right, and the type of pendulum was one of George Graham’s inventions – the mercurial compensated pendulum.

Using mercury at the base of a pendulum was a clever method to compensate for temperature variations.

With an all metal pendulum, when the temperature rises, the pendulum expands and gets longer, which impacts the accuracy of the clock.

When a glass vial is at the bottom of the pendulum, the pendulum rod still expands making it longer, however the mercury in the glass vial responds to the increase in temperature by rising up the glass vial, and because mercury is a heavy mass, the rise in the height of mercury against a lengthening pendulum, keeps the overall centre of gravity at the same place, so the clock continues to keep time as temperature changes.

In 1721 George Graham was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1722 he was elected as Master of the Clockmakers Company, and as well as clocks and watches, he continued to work on astronomical instruments, and other scientific instruments such as a micrometer.

George Graham died in 1751, and the following is a typical newspaper report of his death: “Last Saturday Night died, in the 78th Year of his Age, that great Mechanic Mr. George Graham F.R.S. Watchmaker in Fleet-street, who may be truly said to have been the Father of the Trade, not only with regard to the Perfection to which he brought Clocks and Watches, but for the great Encouragement of all Artificers employed under him, by keeping up the Spirit of Emulation among them.”

After his death, George Graham was buried in the same grave as Thomas Tompion in Westminster Abbey.

Although the plaque states that Thomas Tompion was the “Father of English Clockmaking”, the reports that followed the death of George Graham described him as the “Father of the Trade”.

I do not think there needs to be any competition, both Tompion and Graham seem to have been equals in their craft, and their ability to improve and invent clocks and watches.

There is a second plaque on the corner of the building, and the following photo shows the plaque on the Whitefriars Street side of the building:

The Corn Laws were a set of laws implemented in 1815 by the Tory Prime Minister Lord Liverpool due to the difficult economic environment the country was in following the wars of the late 18th and early 19th century.

The Corn Laws imposed tariffs on imported grains and resulted in an increase in the price of grain, and products made using grain. These price increases made the Corn Laws very unpopular with the majority of the population, although large agricultural land owners were in favour as they made a higher profit from grain grown on their lands.

The Corn Laws were finally repealed by the Conservative Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1846, and they reflect a tension between free trade, and tariffs on imports that can still be seen in politics today.

John Bright was born on the 16th of November, 1811 and was the son of a Quaker textile manufacturer in Rochdale. Having been born into a Quaker family, Bright became involved with the type of political causes favoured by nonconformists.

Bright met Richard Cobden in 1835 and in 1840 he became treasurer of the Rochdale branch of the Anti-Corn Law League. Bright was a gifted public speaker, and in the campaign to repeal the Corn Laws he would travel across the country speaking and campaigning for the cause.

He was an MP for Durham, then Manchester and finally Birmingham. After the repeal of the Corn Laws, Bright continued to campaign for free trade, including a commercial treaty with France, which resulted in the1860 Cobden-Chevalier Treaty which lowered customs duties between the two countries.

Richard Cobden was born on the 3rd of June, 1804 in a farmhouse in Dinford, near Midhurst in Sussex. His only time in London appears to have been after his father died, when Cobden was still young, and he was taken under the guardianship of his uncle who was a warehouseman in London.

Not long after he became a Commercial Traveler, and then started his own business which was based in Manchester, which seems to have been his base for the rest of his commercial success.

During his time in Manchester Cobden was part of the Anti-Corn Law League and was known as one of the leagues most active promoters.

The blue plaque on the corner of the building states that “On the site were situated the offices on the Anti-Corn-Law-League with which John Bright and Richard Cobden were so closely associated”.

What is not clear is how much time they spent in London, and in the offices of the anti-corn-law-league, so if anything, the plaque is recording a political campaign for free trade rather than the place of residence or work for two 19th campaigners.

Richard Cobden does have a statue in Camden, opposite Mornington Crescent underground station, but again this seems to championing free trade and Cobden’s role in the repeal of the corn laws:

The Clerkenwell News and London Times on the 1st of July 1868 recorded the unveiling of the statue:

“The Cobden memorial statue which has just been erected at the entrance to Camden Town was inaugurated on Saturday. Although this recognition of the services of the great Free Trade leader may have been looked upon in some quarters as merely local, the gathering together of some eight to ten thousand people to do honour to his memory cannot be regarded in any other light than that of a national ovation.

The committee had arranged that the statue of the late Richard Cobden at the entrance to Camden Town – with the exception, perhaps, of Trafalgar Square, one of the finest sites in London – should be unveiled on Saturday, that day being understood to be the appropriate one of the anniversary of the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the event was so popular that the surrounding neighbourhood was gaily decorated with flags for the occasion. The windows and balconies of Millbrook House, the residence of Mr. Claremont, facing the statue, had been placed at the disposal of Mrs. Cobden and her friends, including her three daughters.

A special platform had been created in front of the pedestal, covered with crimson cloth, and in the enclosure in front the band of the North Middlesex Rifles were stationed, and performed whilst the company assembled.

The report then covers at some length, all the speeches made which told the story of Cobden’s life and his actions in the repeal of the Corn Laws. There were many thousands present to witness the event, and at the end; “after the vast assembly had dispersed Mrs. Cobden, accompanied by Mr. Claremont, the churchwardens, and other friends, walked round the statue and expressed her high gratification at the fidelity of the likeness.”

Before I leave this small area of Fleet Street, there are a couple of major developments underway. In the following photo, the building with the two plaques on the corner is at the right side of the photo, one of the plaques can just be seen. Opposite is a very large building site:

This area is set to become a so called new Justice Quarter in the City, and the area will comprise:

1 – New City of London Law Courts

2 – New headquarter building for the City of London Police

3 – Public space covering an area slightly larger than the current Salisbury Square

4 – New commercial / office space with, you may have guessed, space for restaurants, bars or cafes on the ground floor

I photographed the area before the buildings that were on the site were demolished in a 2021 post on “Three Future Demolitions and Re-developments” which can be found by clicking here.

A bit further along Fleet Street, towards Ludgate Circus, the building next to the old Daily Express building has been demolished, leaving a view of the side of the Express building, and to the buildings at the rear – a temporary view that will soon disappear:

A mix of different subjects in this week’s post, but a very tenuous clock based link with the Guinness clock and two 17th / 18th century London watch and clock makers – all part of London’s deep history, and how you can find unexpected examples of that history in the most unexpected places, such as a brewery in Dublin.

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Map 1 – The Review Area

Map 2 – Proposals for Reorganisation

Map 3 – The Growth of London

Map 4 – Where Does London End?

Map 5 – Built-Up Areas 1958 and London Green Belt

Map 6 – Population Density 1951

Map 7 – Travel to Work into Central London

Map 8 – Changes in Population and Employment

Map 9 – Classification of Service Centres

Map 10 – Educational Administration

Map 11 – Sewerage and Sewage Disposal

Map 12 – Central Areas

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The Victoria Embankment, From Waterloo Bridge

St. Paul’s Cathedral

The National Gallery, With St. Martin’s Church

The Customs House

The Natural History Museum, South Kensington

The Royal Exchange

The Strand, Looking West

The Crystal Palace

The Tower Bridge

The Imperial Institute

Yeoman of the Guard

Greenwich Hospital

Holloway Gaol

Ludgate Circus

London Bridge, Looking North-West

The Charing Cross Hotel

Cleopatra’s Needle

Oxford Street, Looking East

Hammersmith Bridge, From The South Side

The West India Import Dock

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A Reproduction of the Map by Ralph Agas, Circa 1560

A Large And Accurate Map Of The City Of London (John Ogilby, 1670s)

London in 1741-5 by John Rocque

Cruchley’s New Plan of London improved to 1835

A New and Complete History and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and Parts Adjacent

A Map of the Cities of London & Westminster and the Borough of Southwark together with the suburbs, 1708

A Map of London about 1660. The Ground Plan is based on Hutton 1708. The details from Faithorne and Newcourt Circa 1658

Map of London shows its size at the end of the 16th century. The ground plan is for convenience based on the plan in Hatton’s New View 1708. The main details are from Norden 1593 & Speed 1610

Plan of London in the 16th, 17th & 18th Centuries Superimposed on the Present Ordnance Survey Plan

Plan of London showing the Levels of the Natural ground below the present Surface, the Line of the Roman Wall of the City, and the Sites of Discoveries of Roman remains etc.

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