Category Archives: London Streets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was buried on a hilltop at Mayence Cemetery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Diana Spencer was the definitive Sloane.”

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

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

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

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

The southern side of Sloane Square:

The northern side of Sloane Square:

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

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

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Hicks’s Hall – The Original Middlesex Sessions House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Highgate Archway – Two Bridges and a Tunnel

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

The Archway bridge looking north:

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

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

The Highgate Archway has a fascinating history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking from the northern side of the bridge:

And to the east along Hornsey Lane:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Essex Street Water Gate and Stairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

A look through the arch in 2025:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 1677 map shows some interesting comparisons and features:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very much, a lost landscape.

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A Stoke Newington Church Street Ghost Sign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another ghost sign:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These two houses are interesting for a number of reasons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another closed store is the Haikksun Chinese Resturant:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources: The London Topographical Society

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

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

Their 1900 prospectus included the following statement:

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

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

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

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

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

https://londontopsoc.org/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View across the gardens from the north west:

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

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

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

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

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

View from the western entrance to the central gardens:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

House along the northern side of the square:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A magical place.

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

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

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

BP’s offices:

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

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

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

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

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

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Junes Ladies Hair Stylist, Durham Row, Stepney – 1986

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I have two new walks planned for this year, and they should be ready in June / July, however until then, if you have not been on one of my existing walks, I have just released three for May. They are, along with links for details and booking:

~~The Lost Streets of the Barbican on Sunday the 11th of May~~ (Sold Out)

~~The Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street on Sunday the 18th of May~~ (Sold Out)

~~Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation on Saturday the 24th of May~~ (Sold Out)

Continuing the theme of last week’s post, looking at changes across the streets of London between the 1980s and today, I am now in Stepney, hunting for the location of Junes Ladies Hair Stylist, in Durham Row, as photographed by my father in 1986:

The same house in 2024:

Junes Ladies Hair Stylist is a reminder of when very small businesses were run out of 19th century terrace houses, when services were very local, and when shops or businesses selling essentials such as food and household goods were frequently owned and run by an individual.

I suspect the business dated from the 1960s, or perhaps earlier. The sign for Junes Ladies Hair Stylist provides a phone number of STE 4835:

The use of three letters plus four digits was used for telephone numbers when the British telephone network used the original director system, with the three letters representing the location, so STE was for Stepney.

The conversion to an all number system was made national policy in 1965, and the conversion of London’s telephone network was completed in 1969, so that would be the latest date for the sign.

The fact that it was still on the sign in 1986 means that either the business had gone out of business between the late 1960s and 1986, or that regular customers did not need the number, or were aware of the new number (790) that replaced the STE for Stepney.

Hair dressers are still found across the city, but are now usually larger premises with multiple employees. Food and household goods stores are now larger supermarkets, or the large corner store such as the Nisa on the site of the Boleyn Pet Stores featured in last week’s post.

As well as Junes Ladies Hair Stylist, Durham Row was once a street with multiple small shops housed in single bay terrace houses, as seen in this view along Durham Row:

The surviving early 19th century houses are along the south side of Durham Row, the houses along the north site were destroyed by bombing during the last war, and on the other side of the fence to the right are small gardens of houses which have been built to replace those destroyed.

This quiet street was once a bustling east London street of small shops. A look at the 1910 Post Office Street Directory shows the shops along the south side of the street, in the surviving buildings, when number 11, the location of Junes Ladies Hair Stylist was then occupied by Albert Schensul, Umbrella Maker:

The north side of Durham Row had more shops, as the buildings along the south stopped at St. Dunstan’s Churchyard, whilst those along the north continued, and as with the south side of the street, we have a comprehensive range of small businesses and shops:

Despite the small size of the businesses in Durham Row, many looked beyond their immediate area for customers and placed adverts in newspapers, for example on the 13th of August, 1886, Mr. Adolphe Michels was advertising his “Great Wonder Boot and Shoe Stores” in the East End News, where his products were “All Leather. No cardboard used. Therefore every boot will wear to the last. Give me one trial, and you will walk miles for my boots”.

Unfortunately, the advert does not mention the house number of his Boot and Shoe Stores, just the address Durham Row, side of Stepney church, however, looking at the above list of businesses in Durham Row, there was a Mrs. Mary Ann Michels listed as a boot maker at number 30 (on the bomb damaged and lost north side of the street), so probably Adoiphe had died, and his wife Mary Ann continued to run the business to at least 1910.

Just a small example of how you can build a picture of a street and those who lived and worked in the street, even small streets such as Durham Row.

View looking east along the street, from where Durham Row meets the churchyard of St. Dunstan, Stepney:

The houses along the south side of Durham Row are all Grade II listed. The Historic England listing dates the buildings to early 19th century, and remarks on their “Small simple C19 shop windows”.

The Grade II listing is probably why the shop fronts survive, although all the houses now seem to be residential.

This is number 5, which in 1910 was home to Edward Henderson, Butcher:

And next door to the above shop, was number 3, which in 1910 was home to the Fried Fish Shop of Edmund Rowe:

At the western end of the terrace there is an empty space, also seen as empty on the early 1950s and late 1890s editions of the OS maps, where it may have provided access to the cinema that remarkably was once housed in a building that ran along the rear of the terrace houses, and is shown in both the late 1890s and early 1950s OS maps:

There is currently a planning application to build two, three bedroom semi-detached houses within the above space.

Durham Row is located to the north east of St. Dunstan Stepney, and I have highlighted the street with a red arrow in the following extract from the 1890s OS map (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

The terrace houses on the south side of the street have survived, all the houses along the north side of the street, including where the street continues alongside the northern edge of the churchyard, were destroyed during the last war, but probably resembled those we can still see today in Durham Row.

A map of the same area today (© OpenStreetMap contributors)::

On the corner of Durham Row and White Horse Road, there is a closed pub. There was a pub here in the 19th century, but about half the size of the building we see today, which was the result of a 1936 rebuild. This is the Fish and Ring which closed in 1999 and is now residential:

The Fish and Ring is an unusual name for a pub, and I cannot find a direct link between the pub and a source of the name, however there is a story about a burial in St. Dunstan that may be the source. From the Eastern Post on the 3rd of January, 1914, which is a reprint of an article from the Morning Advertiser of 1805:

“STEPNEY’S ‘FISH AND RING’ – St. Dunstan’s church, Stepney possesses amongst its numerous interesting historical features, a curious story of medieval times.

On the outside of St. Dunstan’s Church, there is a monument inscribed to the memory of Dame Rebecca Berry, who departed this life April 26th, 1696, and over the inscription is a coat of arms representing a fish with a ring in its mouth.

It appeared that Dame Berry, in the early part of her life had been cruelly traduced by her enemies and accused of incontinence by her husband, who was a captain of the Royal Navy. On his return to his house on the banks of the Severn, his jealousy having been previously excited, he tore the wedding ring from his wife’s finger, and in his rage cast it into the river, bidding her never again to come into his presence if she valued her life, without producing that token of their ill-fated marriage, a thing he conceived utterly impossible. Mrs. Berry, distressed in the extreme at her husband’s groundless suspicions, yet dreading the violence of his temper, quitted her home and became a domestic in the house of a gentleman some miles distant.

A short time afterwards, while cleaning the inside of a salmon, she was going to cook for the family dinner, she found a wedding ring, and from the legend round it knew it to be her own, and the same her husband had thrown into the river. Overjoyed at her good fortune, she flew to her husband, and again protesting her innocence and the malevolence of her accusers, she laid before him the ring and informed him of the marvellous way in which she had regained it.

The husband, supposing the event to have been the interposition of Providence to prove his wife’s innocence, consented to her immediate return, and the parties, returning to London and from thence to Stratford, passed the remainder of their lives in peace and happiness.

The wife was the longest liver, and in her will directed that the monument and the device above described should be fixed up after her death to commemorate a fact which her gratitude taught her to believe was not altogether the effect of chance.”

This unusual story, and that the church and pub are very near each other must mean that the pub was named after the fish and ring on Dame Rebecca Berry’s monument, but whether there is any truth in the full story is difficult to confirm.

There is though an intriguing symbol on the side of the old pub:

With very limited time for research, I have not been able to find the meaning of the symbol. Whether it refers to a much earlier pub on the site, or a building of importance. I checked Rocque’s map from the decade before the 1757 date to see what was on the site.

I have marked the location of Durham Row with the red arrow, which seems to have been a passage along the northern side of a walled estate, and which led, as it continues to do, into St. Dunstan’s church yard.

There is a building in the top right corner, the current location of the pub, and a larger building to the south of the walled enclosure. Whether the castle and wings symbol seen on the old pub relates to a building within this enclosure, the owners, or something else entirely, I have no idea, but it is on the never ending list of things to try and follow-up.

After a look at Durham Row, I walked to Limehouse DLR station, and the following photos show just what can be discovered on almost any walk in London between two places.

A short distance south along Whitehorse Road we come to the ornate iron railings that form the boundary to St. Dunstan’s Churchyard, along with one of the gates into the churchyard:

The iron railings and gates that surround the churchyard are all Grade II listed, and are described as railings with “interlaced gothic arches and interval piers with gabled caps”.

A plaque alongside the gates detail the Rector, Church Wardens and the Surveyor at the time of their installation in 1844:

The spring weather was brilliant, which does always help, and St. Dunstan’s Church looked as if it was really a rural church, rather than in the heart of east London:

St. Dunstan’s is a fascinating, historic church. I wrote a blog post dedicated to the church back in 2018 during a visited on a much more dismal day. The post can be found here, (although when I visited, I did not see the fish and ring monument, I will have to return).

The long, tree lined walk up to the church from the southern corner of the churchyard:

Tree lined walk along the eastern side of the churchyard:

Along the southern side of the churchyard are some Mercers Almshouses. They can be seen in the extract from Rocque’s map shown earlier in the post:

Although as this plaque on the side of the building, under the eaves of the end of terrace house as seen in the photo above indicates, the current buildings date from 1856, replacing the row seen in Rocque’s map, which were built in 1691:

And in another example of how just walking the streets finds places that deserve their own blog post, on the corner of White Horse Road and Salmon Lane is the former site of the Stepney Meeting Burial Ground, Almshouses and School:

The Stepney Meeting was the first independent church in east London, dating from 1644, when it was set up by a group of Puritans called Independents. Their first Meeting House was built in 1674, and the Stepney Meeting opened this, their own burial ground in 1779, and built a row of small almshouses for women by the side of the burial ground.

The burial ground and the almshouses are shown in the following extract from Smith’s 1816 New Plan of London, although I think the almshouses were on the eastern edge of the burial ground, not on the western edge as shown in the map:

The burial ground was closed in 1853, but it remains as an example of one of the many non-conformist burial grounds in east London:

Google maps labels the burial ground as a Mercers Burial Ground – I suspect that this is a confusion between the Mercers Almshouses and those of the Stepney Meeting.

Terrace houses along Salmon Lane:

There are a couple of boundary markers on this terrace. The first is a boundary marker for the Hamlet of Ratcliff, a reminder of when east London was a collection of small hamlets surrounded by fields:

And some parish boundary markers:

Then there is York Square, a central garden surrounded by four sides of almost complete late 18th, early 19th century terrace houses, with many being Grade II listed:

Unusually for east London, York Square retains two pubs. On the north east corner is the Queen’s Head, which reopened in 2023 after a series of closures, and on the south western corner is the Old Ship:

I wrote last week that the Boleyn Pet Stores was an example of the many derelict buildings to be found across London in the 1980s. Whilst many derelict buildings and sites have been rebuilt, with the majority now residential, there are derelict buildings still to be found, and the following was on the northern side of Commercial Road – what was Callegari’s Restaurant:

Approaching Limehouse DLR station, and under the arches of the railway, there are the typical businesses that make good use of these spaces, one of which is Fast Lane Auto Repair:

The DLR railway viaduct and arches, were built for the London and Blackwall Railway which opened in 1840. The design of many of the arches where the railway crosses a road is interesting as the road is carried through a central arch, with separate pedestrian arches on either side:

And on reaching Limehouse DLR station, the bright spring sunshine was highlighting beer barrels from the nearby Craft Beer Company pub:

Junes Ladies Hair Stylist was an example of one of the many businesses and shops across London, that were usually run by an individual, and Durham Row was once a small shopping street serving Stepney with the majority of essentials needed for day to day life.

Whilst hairdressers continue to be found across London, they are now usually larger premises with multiple workers.

With the exception of shops used by specific ethnic communities, so many other small, individual shops have closed or are under threat by the major supermarkets who continue to open large, stand alone stores, or “local” stores such as the Nisa store shown in last week’s post.

I hope this post has also shown the pleasure of just walking the streets of London, that despite the considerable damage suffered by east London during the last war (and later developments), there is still much to be discovered and places that evoke the history and development of the area in so many streets.

alondoninheritance.com

Boleyn Pet Stores, Dalston – 1986

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The 1980s were a time of significant change across London. The city had been in decline since the end of the 2nd World War. Not only having to deal with extensive bomb damage, but also with the loss of a significant amount of industry, including the closure of all the London Docks (with the exception of Tilbury), the docks having been the drivers of much of London’s growth during the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

There were large areas of derelict industrial land, including the extensive land in east London covered by the old docks. Much of the city’s 19th century housing stock was also in poor condition. A significant decline in population since 1939 had reduced demand, bomb damage had not been fully repaired, and buildings had been left derelict or had been poorly maintained.

The 1980s were the decade when the old London was disappearing, a new London was starting to emerge, and 40 years later, after significant demographic and population changes, considerable rebuilding, including the transformation of places such as the Isle of Dogs, Vauxhall etc. the almost exponential rise in house prices, change to a fully service based industrial model, changes to the way the city is governed etc. London is a very different place to the city that was disappearing in the 1980s.

We can see these changes in photos of individual places, and I will be featuring a number of these during the coming year, photos taken by my father on walks across the city, starting with the Boleyn Pet Stores at the junction of Boleyn Road and Bradbury Street in Dalston:

The same view today:

The London Picture Archive has a view of the pet stores in 1970, confirming that the business had been open for some years, but also showing that the building had decayed significantly during the 1970s and first half of the 1980s (this embedded image will probably not appear in email versions of this post. Go to the website by clicking here to see the image in the post):

By the mid 1980s, whilst the pet store was still open, the rest of the building appears unoccupied, the windows to the upper floor are broken, and the first floor is probably the home of some of the city’s pigeons.

In the 1970s and 1980s, this level of dereliction was quite common across many of the city’s street.

What the photo also shows is the benefit of random walking through the city. My father took many of these photos on random street walks, setting off to a specific area, then a random wander around the streets, particularly the side streets, and it is an approach which I have continued.

To get to the site of the Boleyn Pet Stores, I took the Windrush Line to Dalston Junction, crossed Kingsland High Street, headed north, where after a very short distance is Boleyn Road, and not far along is the junction with Bradbury Street. The location of the old pet stores is shown in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

In each post on 1980s location I will cover a different aspect of how the city has changed, and for this post I will look at overall population.

The London Data Store is a wonderful, free resource provided by the Greater London Authority. The website provides access to a wealth of data about the city, and to look at how population has changed. i used data from the London Data Store Historical Census Population data set to create the following graph which shows the population of Greater London:

The graph starts in 1801, where there is a population of just over one million.

During the 19th and first half of the 20th century, the population of the wider city continues rising at a rapid rate to reach a peak of 8.6 million in 1939.

For the previous 140 years London had industrialised, the large east London docks had been built, the City’s role in trade and finance expanded rapidly, government, West End entertainments, fruit, vegetable, fish, meat markets etc. there was hardly an aspect of life in London that had not expanded rapidly during this time.

The Second World War brought an end to the expansion of population. The loss to bombing of considerable amounts of housing, migration to new towns orbiting the city, the loss of industry, closure of the docks, all contributed to the decline in population, which reached a low of around 6.5 million in the 1980s.

By the end of the decade, a small increase heralded a change to London’s fortunes, which was visible in the 1991 Census data.

For the following decades, population would rise rapidly, returning to 1939 levels in the early 2020s, a change mainly driven by inward migration.

The rise in population increased demand for housing, which can be seen both in the rapid rise in the price of housing across the city, but also by the renovation, or demolition and rebuild, of almost any available space across the city, and as an example, the site of the Boleyn Pet Stores is now occupied by a new Nisa supermarket at ground level, within a new building of four floors rather than the previous three, allowing three floors of apartments to be built.

A change that can be seen across London, as well as the renovation of buildings of the type shown in the 1986 photo, which now sell at a price which must have seen unimaginable 40 years ago.

After finding the site of the Boleyn Pet Stores, I had a wander around the local streets, and found the following within a very small area, firstly this lovely, almost Gothic, building in Boleyn Road:

The building was built as the St. Mark’s Mission House, later the Cholmeley Boys Club, as still recorded above the door to the right:

The Mission House was built at the end of the 19th century, and was built as a result of the rapid rise in population in Dalston, along with the poverty and poor housing conditions to be found in the area.

In the Islington News and Hornsey Gazette on the 11th of June, 1898, we find one of the justifications during one of the fund raising bazaars for the Mission House (St. Marks, Dalston is on the eastern side of Kingsland High Street):

“As to the object of the bazaar, it might be a revelation to some of them to be told that there are over 8,000 people on the other side of Kingsland Hight-street in the parish of St. Mark’s, who have no room of suitable size wherein work in connection with the church might be carried on. Kingsland High-street acts as a sort of stone wall or barrier between the two sections of the parish, and the people on the other side of it will not cross over to them. Hence it became necessary for them to go to the 8,000 people living on the other side of the intersecting thoroughfare”.

The Arch Deacon of London was also at the fund raising bazaar and added that “Wherever a parish is intersected by a great thoroughfare, it was as if a river flowed between its two divisions”.

Interesting how major roads through a city can act as “a sort of stone wall or barrier” between the people on either side. Kingsland High Street is also now the A10, and is still a busy road through the district.

The foundation stone of the Mission Hall was laid when: “The Lord Mayor (who was accompanied by Miss Davies) and the Sheriffs of London paid a State visit to Kingsland yesterday afternoon, and laid the foundation stone of the new mission buildings of St. Mark’s Church, Dalston, which are to cost £3,600”:

Opposite the location of Boleyn Pet Stores is St. Jude Street, and along the street is an example of what can be achieved when buildings are renovated rather than demolished:

And at the end of St. Jude Street, at the junction with King Henry’s Walk is the Railway Tavern:

The first references I can find to the Railway Tavern are from the 1860s, when the pub was an operating business, so it must have been built somewhere around the mid 19th century, however it is a very different architectural style to the buildings to the left, and the two small, two storey houses to the right, which are up against the tall, flat wall of the pub. The buildings on either side all pre-date the Railway Tavern.

If such a building was planned today, there would probably be an outcry about how the design was not fit for its surroundings.

The Railway Tavern was named after the nearby North London Railway, and was close to Mildmay Park station in Mildmay Grove.

The station is shown on the 1927 edition of the Railway Clearing House, Official Railway Map of London:

The station closed in 1934, however the way the rail tracks part to provide space for the centre platform that was once between the tracks can still be seen on Google maps, at the following link:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5484962,-0.0825652,242m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQwMS4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw%3D%3D

The transformation from the Boleyn Pet Stores to the new Nisa supermarket and apartments is indicative of how much of London has transformed over the last 40 years, and the same applies to the streets close to the old pet stores, where as well as new builds, the majority of the surviving pre-war and 19th century houses have been really well restored.

I will be looking at more places, contrasting the 1980s with the 2020s, and the trends that have changed London in more posts throughout the year.

alondoninheritance.com

Noble Street – The Ruins of London’s Industry

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Walk around the City of London today, and the majority of working buildings are those in use as office space. Today, there is very little, if any, small manufacturing industry in the City, although once the streets would have been full of small businesses, manufacturing a wide range of products.

This was not “dirty” industry, this was relegated to the south of the river, to the north, and particularly, to east London.

Despite the multiple phases of rebuilding in the City since the last war, there is one place where we can still see the ruins of the buildings that once supported multiple small manufacturing business, buildings that followed the alignment, and had their foundations built on the original Roman city wall, and where extensive Roman remains were found after wartime destruction – all in Noble Street:

Walk to the western end of Gresham Street, and the last street on the right, next to the church of St. Anne and St. Agnes is Noble Street. On the western side of the street, just past the church, are the ruins of a bombed building, as seen in the above photo.

A quick look behind the building reveals the old surrounds of the church, now almost impossible to access:

The ruined walls still retain a small part of the interior decoration:

Next to the above building, we can look north along Noble Street. A narrow City street, today with new office blocks along the eastern side, with the remains of more late 18th to early 20th century buildings along the west:

Which we can see by looking over the wall in the above photo, down into the gardens and brick walls:

The whole area within the above photo is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The Historic England listing states that the area includes “buried remains of part of London Wall, the Roman and medieval defences of London, and part of the west side of Cripplegate fort. Remains of property walls of the late 18th-20th centuries built using the London Wall as their foundations are also included”.

To understand more about the remains here, I turned to my go-to book about post war excavations across the City – The Excavation of Roman and Mediaeval London by Professor W.F. Grimes. There is a good amount of details about Noble Street in the book, which he sums up as “This consists of the double Roman wall, still carrying in one place at its northern end a mediaeval fragment; an internal-turret of the fort; and the south-west angle, with its turret, the junction of the Aldersgate length of the city wall and the surrounding portion of Bastion 15. Final consolidation of these remains awaits completion of redevelopment schemes in the area.”

The mention of a fort in the above extract from the book refers to one of the earliest substantial Roman features in the City of London, a fort built at the north west corner of the City over what would become Cripplegate.

The Roman wall under the remains of the bombed buildings in Noble Street formed part of the western wall of this fort, dating from between AD 120 and 150, and later strengthened by building a new interior wall up against the original external wall, when the fort was incorporated within the late 2nd century City wall.

At the southern end of the Noble Street is a key feature which helped to confirm this, along with the changes in direction of the wall.

Grimes excavations found below the basement of number 34 Noble Street, the foundations of a “small sub-rectangular turret, built against the inner face of the wall on the crest of the curve. Taken in conjunction with the rest, it was immediately recognisable as the quite typical corner turret of a Roman fort”.

The curve refers to the way Grimes found the wall unexpectedly curve eastwards below the cellar of number 33, but on digging down in number 34, this was found to be the wall of the turret, and within number 34, the turret was found to be on the corner, where the wall then turned westwards to run to Aldersgate.

Looking down today, we can see part of the remains of this rectangular turret:

Grimes book includes a couple of photos of the excavations along Noble Street. The caption to the first reads “Noble Street, the junction of the fort wall (A) and the City wall (B) with the culvert through the later overlying the fort ditch. The fort wall can be seen approaching the modern wall in the background, is broken by a modern concrete foundation”:

Also in the book is the following photo, which was taken from a height looking down into the remains at the southern corner of Noble Street. The caption to the photo reads: “the south-west corner turret of the Roman fort, with, to right, the double wall curving towards it from the north and Roman city wall going westwards from it”:

Most of these remains have been covered up today, but are still below the surface – hence the status of a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and there are only small parts, such as the south west corner, where some of these remains can be seen.

The street is probably of a very considerable age, as it runs along the front of buildings constructed up against the wall, however the name is not (in London terms) that old. Henry Harben, in a Dictionary of London (1918) provides the following “First mention: On a tradesman’s token, 1659. Perhaps in early times Foster Lane extended further north than at present and included the present Noble Street. It may have been renamed ‘Noble’ Street after an owner or builder”.

As usual, with features many centuries old, much is speculation. The comment about Foster Lane does make sense, as Foster Lane and Noble Street were once a continuous street, before the construction of Gresham Street which cut across the two and made a clear separation.

William Morgan’s map of 1682 shows Noble Street as a continuation of Foster Lane in the south. Note that in 1682, the City wall is still a substantial feature to include in a map. The way the wall runs south, then turns to the west, as confirmed by Grimes, can clearly be seen. Also, in 1682, there is still an Aldersgate. This is not the original gate, but a 1618 rebuild of the earlier medieval gate. Aldersgate would not be demolished, and the street cleared until 1761:

There are a few numbered references along Noble Street. These are:

420 – Lillypot Lane
421 – Oat Lane
422 – Scriveners Hall
423 – Fitz Court

The entrance to Scriveners Hall, or as it was by the time of the print (1854) Coachmakers Hall:

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 following extract from an Aldersgate Ward map from William Maitland’s Survey of London (1755) again shows Noble Street and Foster Lane:

The 1914 revision of the OS map shows Noble Street much as it must have been prior to wartime bombing, with the buildings shown along the western side of the street, which today can still be seen as ruins.

I have marked a number of key features on the map (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

Fascinating that at the start of the 20th century, the alignment of the Roman fort and city wall can still be seen.

The wall continued north across Falcon Square, between Castle Street and Monkwell Street, where Grimes found more Roman and Medieval features, including the bastion shown on the map, and a second, hidden bastion. I wrote about this stretch of the wall in the post at this link.

Moving to the early 1950s, and we can see the considerable extent of wartime damage, with no buildings, and only a couple of ruins, shown along both sides of Noble Street. Much of this damage was caused by bombing during the night of the 29th December, 1940, when fires raged through the area surrounding and to the north of St. Paul’s Cathedral (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

The remains of the buildings along the western edge of Noble Street were not even considered worthy of marking as ruins in the OS map:

There is a parish boundary marker on the rear wall of the above photo. The marker states that the boundary of the parish of St, Botolph, Aldersgate, extends 20 feet southward of this wall. I have always wondered where the plaque was originally located, as it is currently on the internal side of an east / west facing wall:

Many of the ruins are of quite substantial structures:

The title of the post referred to Noble Street and the ruins of London’s industry, and we can get a very comprehensive picture of this industry and commerce by looking at some of the old street directories of London, and the 1910 Post Office directory provides a listing from a time when all the ruins we see today, were in use, starting at the south east corner of the street:

In the above listing, we can see that at numbers 2 and 3 was the Post Office Tavern. In 1848 this was known as the Post Office Hotel, as in the Morning Advertiser on the 6th December, 1848 there was an advert for: “The Post-Office Hotel, Noble Street, Cheapside. The Valuable Lease And Goodwill. Mr. Daniel Cronin is instructed by the Assignees of Mr. Jasper Taylor, a Bankrupt, to Sell by Auction, at Garraway’s on Tuesday December 27th at 12, with possession of the above very excellent property, eligibly situate in the immediate vicinity of the busiest part of London, and constructed for the conduct of a first rate trade ion all its branches; held for an unexpired term of 34 years from Christmas 1848, at the low rent of £100 per annum”.

The directory starts from the south eastern side of the street, at the junction with Gresham Street. These directories usually list the street junctions, making is easy to work out the numbering and locations of businesses listed, and the directory does include those along the eastern edge – Lilypot Lane, Oat Lane and Fitchett’s Court, however the map does not state where Falcon Square to the north is reached, and the numbers start along the western side.

Fortunately, the details in W.F. Grimes account of excavations helps.

He wrote that the turret at the very south of the open space we see today, was found under number 34, with number 33 next to the north, so using the listing, we can see that in 1910, number 34 was occupied by:

Alex Strauss & Co – Millinery, ornaments
Hemken & MacGeagh – Manufacturers agents
Glasser & Co – Ladies belt manufacturers

I wonder if they ever realised they were working on top of a key junction of the old Roman fort / wall and a Roman turret?

The building adjacent, on the north of the one with the turret, was number 33, which was occupied by:

Egisto Landi – Confectioner
Frederick Rolinson – Lace agent
Hugh Sleigh & Co – Sewing silk manufacturer
Richard Chas Burr – Manufacturers agent
Joseph Johnson – Manufacturers agent
Victor Wolf – Manufacturers agent
M. Bloch & Co – Cape merchants
Albert Edward Hondra – Manufacturers agent

And continuing with the numbers as they head below 33 and 34, we can see the occupants of the ruins that continue north along Noble Street:

There are a number of common factors across the listing, which show how Noble Street was occupied during the first half of the 20th century (and almost certianly for much of the 19th century):

Many of the buildings were of multiple occupancy. Where we see a name with the title of Manufacturers Agent, we can imagine one person occupying a room, buying and selling the finished products from the street, or buying and selling the raw materials used in many of the manufacturing businesses.
Almost every building had a manufacturer of some type. These were small manufactures, mostly connected to the clothing trade, for example making gloves, handkerchiefs, hats, needles and pins. There was a “Galloon Manufacturer” at number 31 – a galloon was a heavily decorated woven or braided trim, so a product which would be used as part of a larger item of clothing
The number of businesses show how busy this relatively small street would have been in the first half of the 20th century. People coming and going to the buildings, raw materials and finished products being moved
The type of manufacturing shows how this area was so badly damaged by incendiary bombs during the night of the 29th of December 1940. Nearly every building would have been storing inflammable materials, and this type of industry was very common in the streets to the north of Gresham Street, including across what is now the Barbican. A fire would have taken hold, and spread very quickly. Even without bombing, fires were still frequent ( see my post on the Great Fire of Cripplegate ).

The listing concludes with the businesses from the corner of the present day southern end of the ruins, down to the junction with Gresham Street:

Noible Street had been a place of industry and manufacturing for many years before the above 1910 Post Office directory. The British Museum have a collection of trade cards from businesses within the street, and the following are a sample of these, starting with the following dating from around 1800, of Ashworth, Ellis, Wilson & Hawksleys, Silversmiths & Platers from Sheffield; who had their London Warehouse at 28 Noble Street:

Next is the trade card of Joseph May, an engraver who worked at number 4 Noble Street in the 1780s:

George Yardley was a carver and gilder in Noble Street in the mid 18th century:

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

Many of the Noble Street manufacturers resorted to some unusual methods to sell their products. For example, in January 1897, J. Scott of the City Umbrella Company at 1 Noble Street ran a competition for Valentines Day offering cash prizes to those who purchased umbrellas.

To qualify they first had to complete the following words by finding the missing letters. These were all examples of articles of daily foods in the late 1890s:

You then had to send your answer, along with an order for an umbrella to stand a chance of winning a first prize of £50, second prize of £25, 4th of £15 and 5th prize of £10. There was also a prize of £50 to the person who ordered the most number of umbrellas.

The individual winnings cannot have been much, as the prize money was divided across all the correct entries, so everyone who got the answers correct, and ordered an umbrella, received a share of the over prize.

Towards the north end of the ruins:

At the northern end of Noble Street, at the junction with London Wall (the area which was Falcon Square, and opposite the location of St. Olave, see this post from a couple of weeks ago) is a stretch of surviving ragstone medieval wall which stands up to 4.5 metres in height:

This medieval wall survives because it was incorporated into the structure of the building which stood on the site.

Looking back along the garden and ruins along the eastern side of Noble Street:

The ruins are silent now, but they do act as a reminder of the trades that once occupied so many streets across the City of London, when industry and manufacturing worked alongside commerce and office work.

Noble Street is also a p[lace which may have nurtured my interest in history, and London history in particular. When we were children, Noble Street was where my father parked when he drove up to London for a weekend walk, and I do remember peering over at the ruins as a child. Noble Street was the starting point for many walks across London.

alondoninheritance.com

St. Olave and the Coopers Arms Pub, Falcon Square and Silver Street

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One of the pleasures of researching posts for the blog is finding new stuff about places I have already written about. It gives me a chance to learn more, and to look at a place from a different perspective.

Searching through the three volumes of Wonderful London for a photo of a location for a future post, I came across the following photo which I had not noticed before:

The photo dates from the 1920s, and the text below the photo reads:

“The Coopers’ Arms From The Churchyard of St. Olave’s, Silver Street – In 1604 Shakespeare moved from Southwark and lodged in Silver Street, Cheapside, with one Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot. On the same site now stands the Coopers’ Arms, Falcon Square: and though the original house has gone, at least the playwright must have contemplated the little churchyard opposite every time he looked out of the window. Now the churchyard has, as it were, become fossilised by the Great Fire, for the church, St. Olave’s was never rebuilt; hence this is a genuine piece of Shakespearean London.”

I have written about the Shakespeare connection in a previous post when I looked at the blue plaque recording Shakespeare’s short residence here. There is a link to that post, along with other posts about the area at the end of this post.

And in this post, I will first look at St. Olave and then at the Coopers’ Arms.

I could not get a photo from exactly the same viewpoint, as the above photo was taken from an upper floor of the building to the south of the churchyard, and today there are also bushes at the southern end of the garden. The following photo is as near as I can get:

In the original photo, there are steps with metal railings and a gate leading down to the street. The height of the street is different today, and the garden has been extended into what was Silver Street, but there are now small steps in the same position, and the grave in the above photo behind the steps must be the middle grave in the original photo.

St. Olave was an old church, but appears to have been rather plain, and I cannot find any prints of the church, which is not surprising given that they would have had to have been pre-1666.

I found the following description of the church in “London Churches before the Great Fire” by Wilberforce Jenkins (1917):

“With John Stow the monuments in a church were the chief feature of interest, and he is rather contemptuous of the little church of St. Olave in Silver Street: ‘A small thing and without any noteworthy monuments’. The date of the original church was earlier than 1291, the date of the ‘Taxatio’ of Pope Nicholas, in which the church is called ‘Olav de Mokewell’ (i.e. Monkwell). We are told of a certain priest or curate in charge, Roger de Shardelawe, in 1343. The church was rebuilt in 1609. The income was stated to be £83, including the vale of the parsonage. It was not rebuilt after the Fire, but the Parish was joined to that of St. Alban, Wood Street. A small piece of the churchyard may still be seen in Falcon Square, and is used as a public resting-place.”

The reference to “Olav de Mokewell” will become clear later in the post.

The loss of the church was the first of three waves of church losses, beginning with those not rebuilt after the Great Fire, then the demolitions of the late 19th century as the City’s population decreased, along with Victorian “improvements” to the City, and finally those not rebuilt after the Blitz.

When you consider how many churches remain in the City today, it is remarkable to think of how many more there were before 1666.

So where was St. Olave’s? I have circled the location of the remaining churchyard in the following map, showing that it is close to the old Museum of London roundabout, and to the south of London Wall, the post-war dual carriageway that was build over part of Silver Street, and Falcon Square (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The following photo shows the overall churchyard today, with London Wall to the left. The 1920s photo was taken from one of the upper floors of the building that was on the site of the building to the right:

In “London Churches before the Fire”, the churchyard was described in 1917 as a “public resting-place”, and that is still the same today, and I had to wait for a while to get a photo without anyone sitting on the seats – phone call and smoking refugees from the nearby offices:

The view to the right of the above photo:

St. Olave’s was one of about three in the City along with one in Southwark that were dedicated to St. Olave.

In the City, only St. Olave’s, Hart Street survives.

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 the 29th of July, and if you work in the Faroe Islands, it is a public holiday.

Back in the garden, in front of where the steps and gate were in the 1920s photo there is today, the following stone:

No idea whether this is a remnant from St. Olave, or from some other local building. It does not appear in the 1920s photo and post-war there was plenty of architectural stone available for uses such as this, and the water does provide a good reflection of Bastion House.

The City of London Corporation have approved demolition and redevelopment of Bastion House and the old Museum of London buildings, however their is currently a legal challenge to stop these plans, which would result in the loss of one of the two remaining towers built along London Wall completed between 1961 and 1976 (the remaining tower is Britannic House completed in 1964, refurbished in 1990 when it was renamed as City Tower).

Bastion House above the old Museum of London building:

On either side of the steps leading down from the churchyard to the small garden area alongside London Wall are two stone plaques. The first records that this was the parish church of St. Olave, Silver Street, and it was destroyed by the fire in 1666:

London Wall was a post-war, major new road to the north of the churchyard, however road changes have always taken place as the second plaque records that “St. Olave, Silver Street. This churchyard was thrown back and the road widened by eight feet by the Commissioners of Sewers at the request of the Vestry. Anno Domini 1865” and I think records the names of the churchwardens as Harris and Wilson:

Another view of the churchyard with the steps just visible between the bushes on the left, the grave seen in the 1920s photo on the right, and on the left is what appears to be the base of the grave on the left of the 1920s photo:

Before a look at the Coopers’ Arms pub, a quick look at how the area has changed. The following map is an extract from Rocque’s map of 1746. I have marked the site of the Coopers’ Arms with a red circle, and just below this, very slightly to the left is St. Olave’s Churchyard:

We can see Silver Street, and running north from Silver Street is Monkwell Street. The origins of the name Monkwell Street are the same as the 1291 name of the church mentioned earlier of ‘Olav de Mokewell’ .

Monkwell Street is a very historic street, now completely lost. I wrote a detailed post about the street at the link at the end of thios post.

Moving forward to the late 19th century, and this is an extract from the OS map, with the Coopers’ Arms ringed in red, and the churchyard ringed in orange (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

We can see that Silver Street runs into Falcon Square, which was a name mentioned earlier in the post in relation to the churchyard.

According to Henry Harben’s “A Dictionary of London”, the first mentions of Silver Street date from the start of the 14th century, when it was known as Selverstret (1306) and Silverstrete (1311). The source of the name is believed to come from silver smiths living and working around the street.

Harben does not give a source for the name Falcon Square, but gives an earliest reference as dating from 1799, which looks right, as the square does not appear in Rocque’s map of 1746.

Strangely, the Coopers’ Arms does not have the PH notation for a public house in the above map. The building I have ringed is definitely the pub, as the position on the map is the same as can be seen in the 1920s photo. There is though a pub to the left, on the corner of Castle Street and Falcon Square.

Now move forward to the post-war period, and we see the impact of bombing during the Blitz (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“:

The Coopers’ Arms has gone, the outline of the churchyard is still there, but so much of the buildings and streets shown only 50 years earlier in the previous map have been destroyed, and the area is now ready for redevelopment, with the dual carriageway of London Wall carving through Silver Street and Falcon Square, and the whole area being redeveloped with new office blocks, and to the north of the map would come the Barbican estate.

The outline of Monkwell Street can still be seen, but this street will also soon be gone.

I will now have a look at the Coopers’ Arms, and this is a photo of the pub I found a few years ago and used in the post on the link with Shakespeare:

The pub was destroyed during the Second World War, and not rebuilt as part of the post-war reconstruction of the area.

I cannot find when the pub was opened, the earliest references I can find to the pub date from the early 19th century. What I can be confident about is that the Coopers’ Arms shown in the above photo was the result of a rebuild after an 1828 fire destroyed the earlier pub building.

There is a very graphic account of the fire in the London Evening Standard on the 20th of September, 1828. The account is very graphic regarding the death of an occupant, and shows the almost casual approach to, and reporting of deaths, including violent death in London in the first part of the 19th century, when accidental and violent death was relatively common:

“LATE FIRE IN SILVER STREET – Yesterday an inquest was held in the vestry room of St. Alban’s Church, Wood-street, Cheapside on the body of Nathaniel Smith, aged 56 who perished in the above conflagration.

The jury first viewed the remains of the unfortunate deceased, which lay in one of the vaults under the church. The body was scorched to a cinder, and the whole of the limbs were burnt off. The following evidence was taken:

William Dix, landlord of the Coopers’ Arms, Silver Street, Falcon Square, deposed that the deceased, who had been a town traveller for many years, was a lodger in his house at the time of his death. On Wednesday night last, a little before twelve o’clock, witness locked up the house, and at that time considered everything safe.; before he and his wife left the bar to go upstairs to their bedroom, witness took off nearly all the coals in the grate, and only left a very small glimmer, which he had repeatedly done before; about 2 o’clock he was alarmed out of his sleep by cries of ‘fire’ which proceeded from the street.

He instantly got up, and could discern that the house was full of smoke, on looking out of the window, he saw a flare in the street, which seemed to be occasioned by the lower part of the house being in flames; witness, his wife, and two little girls made their escape up to the front garret, and got out of the window on the parapet of the house, before witness got on the house he ran to the whole of the lodgers rooms, and alarmed them. The deceased door was fastened, and he burst it open, and laid hold of him by the shoulder, and said ‘For God’s sake, get up, Mr. Smith, or else you will be burnt in your bed’.

The deceased, who seemed very drowsy, replied that he would put part of his cloths on and follow him to the garret window. Witness, in making his escape down the ladder, saw the deceased at a window on the second floor – he did not see him afterwards; the whole of the house was burnt down, with the exception of the outer walls.

The jury returned a verdict – That the deceased was accidentally burned to death.”

A horrific story, but so very common in London when almost every building in the city had a fire for either cooking, heating, or as part of an industrial process, when small businesses and factories sat within residential streets.

The Coopers’ Arms was back in business by 1833, as the pub was used as a mailing address for any business looking for men trained in paper-staining.

As with so many London pub’s, the Coopers’ Arms was also used as a meeting place for businesses, clubs and societies. One example was from 1857, when the City Coal Society held a meeting at the Coopers; Arms and advised that they would receive tenders at the pub for their quarterly supply of upwards of 160 tons of coal.

The following photo is looking east along London Wall. St. Olave’s churchyard is behind the greenery to the right, and Silver Street once ran into London Wall at this point, emerging from under the building to the right of the arch seen in the photo:

With a bit of changing the perspective of the photo of the Coopers’ Arms, I think I can get the positioning right, superimposed on the photo of the area today:

Not sure whether this will work, or appear in emails, but an animated GIF of the above photo:

Monkwell Street is the street running off to the left of the Coopers’ Arms, which is on the corner with Silver Street running off to the right. It does not follow the route of today’s London Wall, but heads to the right / south of the street, and disappears under the building on the right of the arch over London Wall.

St. Olave’s churchyard is the only part of an old streetscape that dates back to at least the 13th century, to remain. Silver Street and Monkwell Street were lost during redevelopment, and I doubt those who lived, worked, or simply walked along Silver Street could have imagined what the area would look like in the future – a recurring theme across the ever changing city.

I have written a number of posts about this area, and I find it fascinating to continue exploring to gain a fuller understanding of the place.

You may be interested in the following posts which also cover the area:

Monkwell Street, Barbican – Discovering A Lost Street

William Shakespeare and the Mountjoy Family, one of the plaques looked at in this post

London Wall – A Location Shifting Historic Street

alondoninheritance.com

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Category Archives: London Streets

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

Hicks’s Hall – The Original Middlesex Sessions House

Highgate Archway – Two Bridges and a Tunnel

Essex Street Water Gate and Stairs

A Stoke Newington Church Street Ghost Sign

Resources: The London Topographical Society

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

Junes Ladies Hair Stylist, Durham Row, Stepney – 1986

Boleyn Pet Stores, Dalston – 1986

Noble Street – The Ruins of London’s Industry

St. Olave and the Coopers Arms Pub, Falcon Square and Silver Street

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Resources: The London Topographical Society

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