Category Archives: London Streets

Robert Besley, the Clarendon Typeface and the Longbow

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A title of apparently random subjects for this week’s post, but they all illustrate the many stories behind the plaques that can be found across the City of London, starting with, as far as I know, the only Lord Mayor of the City of London to have created a typeface:

Robert Besley, Alderman and Lord Mayor

Aldersgate Street at its northern end, runs straight into Goswell Road. There is little to indicate this change in name for anyone walking or driving along the street, it just continues on past the point where the name changes.

On the western side of the street, there are two street name signs on two terrace houses, and on the left hand house is a City of London blue plaque:

The plaque is easy to miss and reasonably difficult to read due to being on the first floor of the building.

It records that “Opposite this tablet a Drinking Fountain was erected in 1878 in memory of Robert Besley Esq. Alderman of this Ward and Lord Mayor of London 1869-70. Removed 1934”:

The plaque raises a number of questions. Why was there a drinking fountain in memory of Robert Besley, why at this location, and apart from being an Alderman and Lord Mayor of London, who was Robert Besley.

With a bit of research, we find an interesting character, who worked in, then ran a very successful business. An article about Robert Besley from the Illustrated London News, when he was elected to hold the office of Lord Mayor of the City of London, provides some background:

“The Lord Mayor Elect of London – Mr. Alderman Robert Besley, the successful candidate in the late contested election for the office of Lord Mayor of London during the next twelve month, will be fully installed in its dignities and authority next Tuesday. The career of Mr. Alderman Besley has been one of straightforwardness and industry. He was born in Exeter, in 1800; and began his business in life in his father’s shop, where, as an apprentice, he was initiated into ‘the art and mystery’ of printing.

A weekly newspaper, the Devonshire Chronicle, managed by Mr. Thomas Besley, brother of the new Lord Mayor, rendered good service to the Liberal party. But Mr. Robert Besley, wishing to turn his energies to account in a wider field, came to London, and in the year 1820 joined the firm of Messrs. Thorogood, typefounders in Fann-street. Here his enterprise and business capacity soon became apparent, and he applied himself to the extension of the firm’s connections with marked effect. Various new styles of type were introduced by him, and the foundry increased in reputation; so that when Mr. Thorogood retired, Mr. Besley stood at the head of a large and flourishing concern.

In 1852 he commenced his connection with the Corporation, being in that year returned as one of the representatives of the ward of Aldersgate in the Court of Common Council, where he was distinguished by the sound sense and practical wisdom he brought to bear upon the various matters discussed. Nine years later Sir Peter Laurie, the Alderman of the ward died, and so favourable an impression had Mr. Besley created, that nearly every elector signed the requisition to him to become a candidate for the vacant gown.

He accepted the invitation, and was returned without opposition. In 1864-5 he filled the office of Sheriff.

Mr. Alderman Besley is a man of considerable ability and shrewdness. His speeches are generally brief and pointed, with a dash of humour, which is not the less effective from a light degree of Devonshire provincialism. At various times the Alderman has taken part in several important social and political movements, in which he had had for his colleagues some of the most eminent men of the day.”

The article mentions Besley joining the firm of Thorogood, typefounders in Fann Street, and that when Thorogood retired, Besley was the head of the company. This appears to have included Robert Besley using his name for the company.

The following advert from 1865, shows that the firm was now Robert Besley & Co, still operating at the Fann Street Foundry:

Robert Besley appears to have retired from the business in 1861, but as can be seen from the above 1865 advert, the company was still using his name.

It had been taken over by Charles Reed and Benjamin Fox, which is confirmed by a listing in the Bookseller, covering the companies involved in aspects of book production and publishing who were exhibiting at the International Exhibition of 1862, held in South Kensington, where:

“In type-founding we have Besley and Co.’s Type Casting Machine, exhibited by Messrs. Charles Reed and Benj, Fox, the present proprietors of the Fann Street Letter Foundry”.

Fann Street is just north of the Barbican estate, and south of the Golden Lane estate, running between Aldersgate Street and Golden Lane.

In the following map, the location of the plaque to Robert Besley and his lost water fountain is marked by the green arrow, and Fann Street by the red arrow (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

But where was the Fann Street Foundry?

The 1895 Post Office Directory lists the firm of Sir Charles Reed & Sons Ltd, typefounders, at 2,4 and 6 Fann Street. This is the large building marked with the red arrow in the following extract from the 1890s OS map:

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

In the following photo taken close to the plaque, on the western side of Aldersgate Street, I am looking across to the Barbican. The tower in the foreground is Blake Tower, and this tower is on the site of what was the Fann Street Foundry:

One of Robert Besley’s achievements when he worked at and ran the Fann Street Foundry was the creation of a new typeface, an English slab-serif typeface called Clarendon after the Clarendon Press in Oxford.

The typeface was patented by Besley, however at the time, this type of patent only lasted for three years, so Clarendon soon became widely used and copied by other foundries.

Examples of the Clarendon typeface are shown in the following image:

Source and attribution: Esinconis, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

I cannot find too many references to uses of the Clarendon font today. After the patent expired, it was copied and variations of the typeface were produced, and it was used in many countries outside of the UK.

As well as the Fann Street Foundry, and being an Alderman and Lord Mayor, Robert Besley was also president of the British and Colonial Emigration Society.

This society aimed to “Help those who cannot help themselves”, and provided aid to help people in “seeking another sphere of labour”, in other words, emigrating to the British colonies who were in urgent need of labour.

One of these colonies was Canada, and on the 10th of June 1870, Mr. J. Donaldson, the Canadian Government Emigration Agent wrote to the British and Colonial Emigration Society, that:

“It affords me much pleasure in being able to state that all the emigrants who have arrived up to this date had work found for them without delay, and that the demand for labour instead of diminishing absolutely increases. Farmers return home from this agency, day after day, unable to secure the hands they require. They are offering from 16 to 20 dollars a month for good hands, with board and lodging. Our railway contractors are paying upwards of 1 1/4 dollars a day (5s sterling), and cannot obtain anything like the number of men in which they stand in need. This is a good rate of wages considering that board and lodging can be had from 8s to 10s a week.

We could readily find employment for 3,000 or 4,000 more earth labourers and we shall be glad indeed if you can devise means to send us that number of more. Toronto is growing rapidly; in fact there is not a street of the city in which you will not find buildings in course of erection.

The prospect before the Dominion is a bright and happy one, and when the means of communication. now in course of construction, are fully opened up to Manitoba and the Far West we shall be in a position to offer inducements to the surplus population and capital of England that cannot be excelled in any part of the world. We shall be enabled to offer British waste lands of exuberant richness to British people in unlimited quantities where taxation is at present unknown.”

The British and Colonial Emigration Society was one of the means with which the Empire was populated in the 19th century. Whilst there may well have been genuine opportunities, the description “surplus population and capital of England” where the population is bundled with financial capital as a resource is a rather depressing economic view of people who should not have been considered as “surplus”.

It would be interesting to know how many of today’s Canadians are descendants of those who were helped to emigrate by Robert Besley and the British and Colonial Emigration Society.

Robert Besley died in December 1876. Notices of his death provide some additional information regarding his life.

Before leaving Exeter for London, he had trained as a printer in his father’s business, so involvement in the print industry seems to have been a family profession as the Besley’s had been printers for “three generations at least”.

The mention in an earlier report to the contested election for Mayor of the City of London was because the outgoing mayor (Sir James Lawrence) did not “bow to custom and retire with good grace”, apparently James Lawrence “had a large appetite for honours and resolved to stand for re-election”.

Robert Besley’s wife had died before him, and they had no children.

Back to the plaque and the water fountain. There were in fact two water fountains, as the following from the London City Press on the 31st of July 1878 explains:

“The Aldersgate Drinking Fountains – Two drinking fountains are in course of erection – one on each side of Aldersgate Street, at the union with Goswell Road, and in addition to their ordinary useful purpose they serve to mark the City boundary.

These fountains are the gift of the late Mr. Alderman Besley. They are built with grey and other coloured granites, and present a substantial, handsome appearance. the inscription runs thus: ‘Presented to the Corporation of the City of London, in accordance with directions contained in the will of the late Robert Besley Esquire, Alderman of the Ward of Aldersgate and Lord Mayor of London 1869-70’. The fountains will be maintained by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.”

“Outdoor monuments of the City of London” provides some additional information regarding the fountains removal: “Aldersgate Boundary Marks – Stones or obelisks in conjunction with drinking fountains were set up in Aldersgate under the Will of Alderman Robert Besley in 1877. Their proposed removal to ‘Postmen’s Park’ in 1932 being opposed by the Ward members, but their removal was carried out in 1934 and a plaque was placed on the wall of 107 Aldersgate Street to mark the boundary.”

I suspect that the plaque was therefore a compromise for the removal of the fountains.

It would perhaps have been more relevant to his life to include his involvement with the Fann Street Foundry and his creation of the Clarendon Typeface on the plaque – perhaps there should be a new plaque on Blake Tower for the foundry and typeface.

Site of Bowyers’ Hall in the 16th Century

The plaque for Robert Besley and his fountains is at the north west corner of the Barbican estate. For the next plaque, I have walked to the southern end of the estate, and am in Monkwell Square, where if you look on the wall above the silver car on the right, there is another City of London plaque:

Which records that this was the site of Bowyers’ Hall in the 16th Century:

The first three letters of the name should help with the identification of the specific craft that the Bowyers represented as members of the Worshipful Company of Bowyers made the bow that was a key part of the English longbow, and which was used to great effect during the wars with the French in the 14th century.

The longbow was dependent on three crafts. Those who made the bow, string makers, and those who made the arrow.

The longbow makers and arrow makers had originally been part of the same trade, but the arrow makers, or fletchers, branched out to form their own company, the Worshipful Company of Fletchers.

If your last name is Bowyer or Fletcher, you may have had a longbow or an arrow maker in your family tree many centuries ago.

The longbow had a brief period where it established the predominance of the archer over the infantry or knights, but this would end with the growing use of gunpowder.

Archery was continued in the City of London under pressure of the Crown, and a final attempt to restore the Bowyers’ craft was made on the 25th of May 1621, when James I granted the Company of Bowyers’ their first charter of incorporation.

As with most of the City Company’s, their emphasis changed to being a charitable organisation, but still supporting the craft of bow making where possible.

The following extract from a 1720 ward map shows where the Bowyers’ Hall was located (red arrow), in a run of buildings that backed on to the old City wall:

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

The arms of the Bowyers’ were granted in 1488, and are shown in the following illustration from “The Armorial Bearings of the Guilds of London” by John Bromley (1960):

The motto of the Company shown at the top of the arms names the three major battles at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt during the hundred years war, when archers played a pivotal role.

At the top of the arms are three strung bows. Within the shield, there are three identical tools, each with a handle and teeth. These are “floats”, which were multi-bladed wood shaves, used by a Bowyer to shape the bow.

The stars are pierced mullets. The mullet originally referred to the spur, but was also used to represent a star.

In 1996, the arms were amended with the addition of two “supporters”, or figures on either side. One represents a medieval bowyer and the second figure is an archer at Agincourt.

The following image shows the Battle of Poitiers (1356), a battle named in the arms of the Bowyers, and from the period when English longbows were highly effective in battle. The English forces are on the left, and their archers are firing at several mounted knights, who appear to have turned round in retreat after the knights and their horses have been struck by arrows fired by the archers:

Source and Attribution: Loyset Liédet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Bowyers’ Company is still active, although they do not have their own hall, making use of the Watermen’s Hall in St Mary at Hill for their events.

Whilst mainly a charitable organisation, they do also support, where possible, the manufacture and use for recreation and sport, of the Longbow.

Monkwell Square, the site of the Bowyers’ plaque has a fascinating history, as it is named after Monkwell Street, which I covered in this post.

Two very different plaques, but they both help illustrate how much of a story there is behind the brief few words that these plaques contain.

Chiswell Street and Mr. Whitbread’s Brewery

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Two tickets have just become available for my walk next Saturday, the 13th of June, with the cheerful name of “Wapping – A Seething Mass of Misery”. Click here for details and booking.

Chiswell Street runs from Beech Street (which passes under part of the Barbican estate) to Finsbury Square.

It is an old street. Harben states in “A Dictionary of London” that the first mention of the street was between 1217 and 1243, when the name Chysel Strate was in use.

By the time of Rocque’s map of 1746, the name Chiswell Street was in use, and in the following extract, Chiswell Street can be seen running from White Cross Street on the left, to Finsbury and the open space of Moor Fields on the right:

In a few years after the above map was published, the western part of Chiswell Street would change significantly, and the small courts to the south of the street, including Swan Court and Boar Head Court would be lost under a major development – the Whitbread Brewery.

Samuel Whitbread was born in Cardington, Bedfordshire in 1720, and in 1736 he was in London and apprenticed to John Wightman who was the master of the Brewers Company.

By 1742, Whitbread was in partnership with Godfrey and Thomas Shewell, who ran the Goat Brewery, on the corner of Upper White Cross Street and Old Street.

In 1748, Whitbread and the Shewell’s purchased the King’s Head Brewhouse, which was on the southern side of Chiswell Street, and we can see the location of this business by looking in more detail at Rocque’s map:

The site of the King’s Head Brewhouse was soon cleared, and by 1750 the new brewery had been built, designed for the mass production of Porter – a beer which used brown malt and was very dark in appearance. The name is believed to have come from the popularity of the drink with porters (see my post on the Ticket Porter in Arthur Street).

Porter was also being marketed as a more healthy alternative to the cheap gin that was easily available and very popular during the first half of the 18th century, a drink that was causing considerable problems and large numbers of deaths across the city.

Hogarth’s prints of Beer Street and Gin Lane (1751) contrasted the benefits of drinking beer with the evil of gin drinking:

Attribution and source: William Hogarth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From 1750, the brewery gradually expanded as the business grew. There was a fire at the brewery in 1773 which destroyed the Porter Tun storage room (fires were a frequent occurrence across the city), and a new storage area was then built, which included large vaults below ground.

By 1761, Samuel Whitbread was the sole owner of the business, having brought out the share of the business held by the Shewell family.

This is the view looking east along Chiswell Street, from the junction with White Cross Street in the above map:

The Jugged Hare pub on the corner of Chiswell and Silk Streets is one of a pair of pubs that once stood at the western and eastern ends of Whitbread’s brewery on Chiswell Street. It is Grade II listed and dates from the late 19th century.

The eastern end of the street was badly bombed during the last war, and there was some bomb damage to the western end, however not as bad as the area now occupied by the Barbican and Golden Lane estates, and if you look in the opposite direction to the above photo, this is Beech Street, running through the Barbican – not a pre-war building in sight:

The following extract from the late 19th century OS map shows Chiswell Street, where I have marked some key features explored in today’s post (the red oval is around the Jugged Hare pub, photographed above):

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

The red arrow is pointing to the main entrance from Chiswell Street to the Whitbread Brewery, which occupied a large plot of land running south to Silk Street.

The green arrow is pointing to the courtyard in front of the Whitbread Brewery buildings on the northern side of Chiswell Street.

The blue arrow and the circles are around other features to be explored in the post.

This is the view of the western end of Chiswell Street, with the southern side occupied by the buildings of the old Whitbread Brewery:

These buildings are all Grade II listed, and according to the Historic England listing record date from the later half of the 19th century.

The main entrance from Chiswell Street into the brewery complex on the southern side of the street (red arrow in the OS map earlier in the post):

Throughout the later half of the 18th century, the brewery was expanding, both in terms of the area occupied as well as the technology used in the brewing process, which included the installation of a Boulton and Watt steam engine in 1785.

The scale and reputation of the brewery was such that the site hosted a royal visit, as recorded on a plaque on the buildings in Chiswell Street:

The visit was reported in numerous newspapers, and the following is one of the syndicated reports which gives a good idea of the scale of the brewery, as well as a bit of royal mansplaining, why you needed to provide two banquets for a royal visit, and how much such a visit would cost:

“Royal Visit to Mr. Whitbread’s Brewery. Saturday their Majesties, with the three Princesses, attended by the Duke of Montague, Lord Ailesbury, Lord Denbigh, Duchess of Ancaster, and Lady Harcourt, went to see Mr. Whitbread’s brewery in Chiswell-street. They arrived at a quarter before ten, and were received at the door by Mr. and Miss Whitbread; and politely declining the breakfast provided, immediately went over the works, which took up two hours.

The steam engine, lately erected by the Birmingham Bolton, and first applied by Mr. Whitbread to the purposes of the brewery, took up above half an hour. His Majesty, scientifically explained to the Queen and the Princesses the leading movements in the machinery. In the great store there were 3007 barrels of beer.

The stone cistern raised such wonder, that the Queen and Princesses would go into it, though through a small hole, with much difficulty and some disorder. The sight rewarded them; for the vessel is of such magnitude, as to hold 4000 barrels of beer. The great vessel at Heidelberg is nothing to it.

There were 200 men and 80 horses all in their places; the horse keeper, yielding to the harmless vanity of office, said, he would show his Majesty ‘the highest horse among his subjects’; and his Majesty kindly gave the man his way, was shown a horse 17 hands and 3 inches high.

The Cooperage was looked at from an adjoining room; and it was at this window, looking into the street, that the people without, who by this time had gathered into a great crowd, first seeing the King, gave breadth to their loyalty, and repeatedly huzzard. The Queen, whose worth, were it her sensibility alone, would be beyond our praise, paid the people with a tear! And then, tenderly turning to felicitate the King on the contentment of their people, took her daughters by the hand, and led them to the window. If the day could give emotions of more kindly energy than Mr. Whitbread’s – the rapture of this moment must be the object of envy.

In all that related to the brewery, and the passages through them – all that was necessary, was done; but, very properly, nothing more. Matting covered the way that was dirty, lamps lighted what would have been dark.

When everything was seen, the walk ended in the house. Their Majesties were led to a cold collation, as magnificent as affluence and arrangement could make it. The whole service was plate. there was every wine in the world; and there was also some fine PORTER. The Duchess of Ancaster and Lady Harcourt, sat at the table as well as the Princesses; but the Duke of Montague and Lord Ailesbury, finding in another room a second banquet, scarcely less sumptuous than the former – prepared for their attendants, had there been any – very heartily boarded there.

This being done, it became two o’clock; when the King and Queen, not more completely satisfied with the wonder of the works, than the good sense and elegance with which they had been shown, took leave of Mr. Whitbread and his daughter, and returned to Buckingham House.

It is supposed the preparations on the above occasion cost £1,500. The draymen and all the domestics were new clothed.”

I am sure that Samuel Whitbread was pleased with the expense of hosting the royal visit, as it must have given Whitbread a considerable amount of publicity, and some royal approval for his beers.

Samuel Whitbread (the print is dated 1797, a year after his death, but comparing with prints of his son, also Samuel, I am sure this is the Samuel Whitbread that founded the brewery):

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

As well as running the brewery, Samuel Whitbread was also an MP. His initial public service was as High Sheriff for Hertfordshire between 1767 and 1768, when he was elected as MP for Bedford.

He appears to have been active as an MP. One of the causes that he supported was the abolition of the slave trade.

In 1788 he was Chair of a Common’s committee looking into the salve trade, and on April 2nd, 1792, during a debate on a petition calling for the abolition of the slave trade, Whitbread was reported as being “upon his legs three hours and a quarter. He was uncommonly eloquent and animated”.

The motion was passed with a majority of 145, only after the word “gradual” was added to the call for the abolition of the slave trade.

There are also references to Whitbread donating sums of money to institutions and charitable causes in both London and Bedford. The following is from the Kentish Gazette on the 1st of July 1788:

“Samuel Whitbread, Esq. the Member for Bedford, and we may add the first brewer in the world, has lately given to the Governor and Trustees of St. Luke’s Hospital for lunatics, a rent charge on his brewery of one hundred pounds a year for ever, for the use of the hospital. A donation of this extent, and during the life time of the donor, does honour to the feelings of the individual, at the same that it adds to the pride of British commerce.”

The reference in the article to the “first brewer in the world” was probably down to the ever increasing size of the brewery business, and by 1796, the Whitbread business in Chiswell Street brewed over 200,000 barrels, which was reported as being a first for any brewery in the world.

Whitbread’s ambition, both in brewing and as an MP can be seen in his reaction to his loss of an election in Bedford in 1774, when he came third of four:

“The two first were declared duly elected. This defeat of the ministerial candidates greatly enraged Mr. Whitbread (Porter Brewer of London) and his mob, who that evening committed several outrages on the Mayor and Corporation, both as to their persons and their houses; the windows of which, and also of the Town Hall, were entirely destroyed. Mr. Whitbread also during the poll behaved in a very arrogant and insolent manner to the Mayor, and the voters against him; he likewise treated his opponents with ill manners.

Mr. Whitbread proposes making application to the House for an alteration to the return upon two points. The first is to set aside the voters of the honorary freemen who were made in the year 1769 and 70. The second is, to establish the votes of those who receive alms as good, which the Mayor rejected. In neither of these points we apprehend Mr. Whitbread can avail himself, it being already decided by the House of Commons, who are the legal electors for that town, as appears in the following extract from the Journals – Resolved. That the right of electing Burgesses to serve Parliament for the borough of Bedford is on the Burgesses, freemen and Inhabitants, being householders, not receiving alms.”

After this loss, he seems to have made it back to Parliament as the MP for Bedford in 1775, the following year to the above report.

Despite these political problems, the brewery was continually expanding and improving. A new Porter Tun store room was completed in 1784. It is now Grade II listed and survives as a conference and event space, and brewery buildings had also expanded to cover land on the northern side of Chiswell Street.

The following print dates from 1792 and shows “A view from the east-end of the brewery Chiswell Street”:

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

The expansion to the northern side of Chiswell Street can still be seen, although the buildings date from 1870, having been through several alterations and reconstructions:

The exception to the 1870 date is the terrace of houses on the left (also the blue arrow in the above OS map). These date from 1774 and are Grade II listed. There is a plaque on the terrace detailing their history. The terrace is Grade II listed:

The brewery buildings on the northern side of Chiswell Street now go by the name of Sundial Court:

Despite being the last rebuild and dating from 1870, the buildings around the yard are all Grade II listed:

The name of Sundial Court comes from a feature on the building at the far end of the yard:

Along the top of the Sundial is a similiar listing of dates as on the plaque on the terrace houses, just slightly different years: “Built 1753, Burnt 1773, Rebuilt 1774”.

Between the gnomon (the blade of the sundial that causes the shadow) are the words “Such is Life”, a rather pessimistic view that may be referring to the fire and rebuild in the series of dates above.

Wording at the bottom of the Sundial reads “The buildings from Chiswell Street to the Hop Loft with Vaults and Brewer’s House. Re-erected 1862. W & Co.”. A slightly earlier date to the Historic England listing, and a description which helps explain the function of some of these buildings.

At the eastern end of the brewery buildings in Chiswell Street is a former pub (green circle in the earlier OS map). This is now the Chiswell Street Dining Rooms, but was originally the St Paul’s Tavern Public House. Grade II listed and dating from mid to late 18th century, with mid to late 19th century public house frontage:

The pub sits on the corner of Chiswell Street and Milton Street, and we can see the brewery buildings extending down Milton Street:

fIn the above photo, there is an arched entrance to the interior of the complex, and as shown in the following photo, it is one of those example where it is difficult to know what is original and what is not. The brickwork around the arch looks very different to the rest of the building. I suspect this was down to conversion of the site from brewery to conference centre.

Samuel Whitbread died on the 11th of June 1796, aged 76 at his estate of Bedwell Park in Hertfordshire. There were brief obituaries in the papers, such as:

“By the death of Mr. Whitbread, the poor will lose a most valuable friend. Acts of charity and benevolence everywhere marked the traces of this worthy man, and will render his memory dear to hundreds who have partaken of his liberality. Mr. Whitbread, for some months previous to his dissolution, had been bending under the accumulated load of age and infirmity.”

He died a very wealthy man.

He left all his freehold estates and the brewery business to his son, also called Samuel, excpt for a small part which he left to his daughter.

He left £5,000 to his son in law and each of his nephews. To his three head clerks in the brewery business he left £500 each, along with £500 to his private clerk, and £100 to his butler.

To every servant and employee he left a sum ranging from £100 to £10, and he left £10 to old servants and widows of servants.

He left £15,000 to several hospitals, including St. Bartholomew’s, Bethlem, St. George’s Small Pox and St. Luke’s. To two charity schools in the parish of St. Luke’s he left £500 each.

He left further sums for various institutions and causes in Bedford.

His son, also Samuel, seems to have initially intended to sell the brewery, as there were newspaper reports that he was looking for a sum of £500,000, however the business stayed in the Whitbread family.

When the company became a limited liability company and sold shares, Whitbread’s continued as Chairmen, with the last family member being Sir Samuel Charles Whitbread who stepped down as Chair in 1992 and left the Board in 2001.

Brewing in Chiswell Street ended in 1976, and to the south, two acres of brewery buildings along Silk Street were demolished to be replaced with offices.

The brewery buildings that remain are now a conference and events venue.

The Whitbread company have gradually sold off all their brewing and pubs businesses, and now focus on hotels as they own the Premier Inn brand.

As well as the old Whitbread brewery, Chiswell Street also has a lovely pair of Victorian wall mounted letter boxes, which continue to be in use:

And opposite the brewery buildings is this building:

The more you look at the above building the stranger it seems, and a walk to the side reveals why. Just the street facing façade has been retained and a new building stands behind:

It must be strange living in the street side of the building as you are looking out at the rear of the old façade. It is an interesting discussion as to whether there is value in keeping just the façade. The original building looks to be a typical late 19th / early 20th century building occupied by either offices, a small factory or a warehouse (I need to check some street directories).

It may have been better to either retain and convert the whole of the original building, or to replace by a new building that has some architectural merit.

In the OS map shown earlier in the post, there is a blue oval around a Public House shown in this location, at the junction of Chiswell Street and Lamb’s Passage. The pub seems to have had a narrow side facing onto Chiswell Street, and a longer side along Lamb’s Passage, however it is long gone.

Whilst the building on the southern side of Chiswell Street retains the name the Brewery for the events and conference centre that occupies the site today, the name of the company’s founder, Samuel Whitbread, and the surname that would be associated with the brewery until its closure in 1976, is not that obvious. It is on the plaque recording the royal visit in 1787, and on the plaque recording the fire and rebuild dates of the terrace on the north side, but no where else. There is no blue plaque or any other form of plaque, or sign displaying the history of the buildings.

The buildings are listed, which helps with their preservation, but it would be good to have some signage so those walking along Chiswell Street have the opportunity to learn more about some of the buildings that line the city’s streets.

A. Tattam, Shoe Repairs and Layers of London

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I have two new walk dates now available, if you would like to explore Limehouse and Wapping. These are, with links:

Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation on the 6th of June

Wapping – A Seething Mass of Misery on the 13th of June – Sold Out

This week’s post is rather short as I had to finish it quickly ready for the site to be migrated to the new hosting provider. In the post, I first trace the location of one of my father’s 1980s photos, and then look at another of the resources available if you are interested in researching the history of London.

A. Tattam – Shoe Repairs

Whilst many remain, there were once far more small, independent businesses to be found across the streets of London, and in the mid 1980s you could have had your shoes repaired at A. Tattam in Brodia Road, Stoke Newington:

The same location, forty years later:

I was initially not sure when the business closed, but it had been operating out of this small building for many years.

The Hackney Museum have an online image of a shoe mangle, made between 1900 and 1935. The object history states that it was “Mangle used for leather at Albert Morris Tattam Shoe Repairs which was based at 2A Brodia Road, Stoke Newington.”.

Whilst it was made between 1900 and 1935, it does not mean that A. Tattam purchased it when new, they may have bought it second-hand at a later date. The object number is 1991.1006, and can be viewed by clicking here.

I have emailed Hackney Museum to find out whether the first four digits of the object number – 1991, is the year when the object became part of the museum’s collection. If so, then this would confirm roughly when the business closed.

There is also an early 20th century sewing machine from A. Tattam, with object number 1991.1005, which can be viewed here.

Apart from these two objects, I can find no other references to the business.

A. Tattam was Albert Morris Tattam, and there is a reference to a marriage of an Albert Tattam of Hackney in 1936.

There is also a record of the death of an Albert Morris Tattam in Gravesend in 1990.

In the 1939 register, there is a record of an Albert Morris Tattam living at 59 Windus Road, Stamford Hill, Hackney. His profession is given as Boot Repairer Master, and he is living with his wife Rose.

The 1939 register gives a date of birth of 3rd of January 1914, which is the same date as in the record of death, and in the record of marriage, Rose is listed, so this is the same person.

In the 1921 census there is an Albert Tattam, aged 7 years and 6 months living at St Charles House, Brentwood, Little Warley, Essex. This would be the age of Albert who was born in 1914. He was living there with his older brother George Tattam who was aged 10.

Against both boys is the note of “Father Dead”, and they are classed as an “Inmate”. I suspect that given the year, their father must have died in the First World War, and they are living in a children’s home.

St Charles House was also known as St Charles School and was an orphanage for Roman Catholic boys, established around the year 1884.

The following extract from the OS map shows the town of Brentwood early in the 20th century. St. Charles School can be seen in the fields to upper left:

So, he was born in 1914 in Hackney. By the time he was aged 7, he was living with his brother George in a children’s home in Brentwood. His father may have died during the First World War. I can find no record of his mother. He married Rose Whiteland in 1936, and in 1939, he is living at 59 Windus Road and listed as a Boot Repairer Master. The house at this address is a short 15 minute walk from his shoe repair business in Brodia Road.

He was still working in his Brodia Road business in 1985, as there is an entry for him Kelly’s Post Office Business Directory, where he is listed as a Shoe Repairer.

He died in Gravesend in 1990. Whether he retired to the town, or whether he was visiting, there is no record. The probate record has a residence of Stamford Hill listed, so I suspect he was visiting, and still lived at Windus Road.

He would have been of the age to have served in the Second World War, but I cannot find any records of military service, which is more to do with information freely available online rather than the lack of any service.

Just as I was completing this post, I received an email back from Hackney Museum with the following:

“1991 is when the item was added to our collection. I’ve had a quick look at our paperwork and we actually received the shoe mangle and sewing machine in late July 1990. Albert Morris Tattam (1914-1990) and his wife Rose Elisabeth both died in 1990, Rose on 28 March and Albert on 12 June, so we received the items about 6 weeks later. As they married in 1936, I can’t quickly and easily find any records of them having children so I cannot say for certain if the Tattam who donated the items to us was a child or a relation.

However for your purposes, 12 June would be the final day of Albert trading. As the items were donated to Hackney Museum so quickly afterwards, I can only assume that there wasn’t somebody to take over the business.”

I wonder how many pairs of shoes he repaired for Hackney residents during his working life, and how many times he walked between his home in Windus Road and workplace at Brodia Road:

The small premises of A. Tattam today appears to be a single residence as it has a house number and an entrance.

It is fascinating to be able to trace a small part of the story of those who have lived and worked in London, and put some context to photos of a very different city.

There is much to discover in the local area, but this has to be a short post, so a short distance away from Tattam’s business, I found a cat enjoying the warmth of an early spring day:

And whilst walking along Stamford Hill towards Stoke Newington Station, I found a shop with a wonderful typeface used for the shop’s name:

In the 75th anniversary year of the Festival of Britain, the typeface does remind me of the type of lettering, use of colour, and layout used during the festival, and the Egg Stores does appear to date from 1951 (although I have also read that it dates from 1948), so perhaps the festival was the inspiration.

The Egg Stores was an egg dealing business, selling white shelled eggs to the Jewish community.

The shop is now a Kosher Supermarket, and the shop sign is an example of what can be done when some design effort is put into a such a common feature of a busy street.

Resources – Layers of London

Back in December of last year, in one of my posts where I cover some of the resources I use to help discover and explore London’s history, I featured the publication London Archaeologist.

In the Spring issue of their publication, they included a review of my blog. This was not expected, and for clarity, as it is important to me, anything I feature on the blog is because it is of interest to me. I do not feature anything for financial gain, an offer to publicise the blog etc. Having said that, it was really good to receive a review in such a publication.

In the same post I featured the Archaeology Data Service, and the review in London Archaeologist mentioned:

“As well as London Archaeologist, the blogger recommended delving into the ADS for more information on particular sites, However, it’s a shame that there was no mention of the Layers of London website where articles can perhaps be found more easily if one is curious about certain areas.”

I have long found Layers of London really useful, so to correct my omission from my Resources series, this is the Layers of London website, found at the following link: https://www.layersoflondon.org/

Layers of London has been developed by the Institute of Historical Research, and uses a comprehensive collection of maps as the basis on which an equally comprehensive collection of information has been added.

The above image is of the home page, and at top right you will see “Explore the map” which is perhaps the quickest way to start looking at what is available. This will bring up the following page, which has the base map shown, overlaid with circles containing numbers. You can zoom into the map for greater detail, and the numbers in the circle refer to the number of records available for that locality.

Just exploring these records reveals the wealth of information available.

In the above image, I have added a red arrow on the left pointing to an icon in the tool bar to the left of the screen. Clicking on this icon brings up the Overlays page:

Where a long list of the maps available are listed, including, for example, the Agas map, Inland Revenue Valuation Surveys, Bomb Damage maps, Geology and US Spy Satellite images from 1973, as well as maps such as J. Ogilby and W. Morgan map of 1676, Horwood’s map of 1799, and Greenwood’s map of 1828.

It is also possible to explore by theme, as shown in the following window:

It is also possible to make your own contributions to the resources on the site. This page has more information, including a link to a helpful User Guide as well as some YouTube videos: https://www.layersoflondon.org/get-involved

There is a wealth of information on the Layers of London website, and it is very easy to spend quite a few hours exploring the history of the city, and if you have not found the site before, I hope you will find it to be a fascinating resource.

Hopefully, by the time you read this, or by next Sunday’s post, the blog will be on a new, far more stable home.

Scrap Metals, Pubs and Shops in Allen Road, Stoke Newington

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This week, I am continuing my walk around parts of the London Borough of Hackney, searching for the location of some 1980s photos, and looking at how streets which are today mainly long rows of residential homes, were once far more diverse.

I am in Allen Road, Stoke Newington, and in the mid 1980s, at number 33 Allen Road, was a scrap metal dealer:

Today, the scrap metal dealer’s business is now residential:

The signage on the scrape metal dealer advertised that there was a drive-in yard to the side, and this is what made number 33 the perfect location for such a business, as it was the only building in Allen Road with a large yard at the back.

The entrance to the yard today:

Today, the yard has been filled in with residential properties, following that modern London approach, where any available space or building is converted to residential.

In the following extract from the 1969 revision of the OS map, I have marked number 33, the scrap metal dealers with the lighter blue circle, just to the right of the middle of the map. I will cover the other circled buildings later in the post (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

You can that to the left and behind number 33 is Leonard Place, which was the yard of the scarp metal dealers. The impact of this yard was to shorten the gardens of the houses to the right of number 33, far shorter than the rest of the houses on the street.

This yard behind these houses is shown in earlier maps of Allen Road, so must have been part of the original construction of the street, during the mid 19th century expansion of north London.

Use of one of these north London 19th century terrace houses as a scrap metal dealer was not that common, but there were many small industrial business to be found among the terraces.

Number 33 had been built as a general shop, which was a typical use for this type of house, a corner shop among the terraces, although it is not clear why Leonard Place was built to the side and rear. Its only original purpose or impact seems to be depriving the street of another terrace house, and a row of houses to have smaller back gardens than their neighbours.

Confirmation of use as a shop can be found in newspaper references, for example with the following from the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette on the 25th of October 1907:

“General, double fronted shop, genuine business, one change 17 years, well fitted, no reasonable offer refused, good cause for selling. 33 Allen Road, Stoke Newington”

The terrace houses that spread across north London during the 19th century, were meant to be the homes of the middle class, professional trades people etc. and by the time of the 1921 census this still applied to the majority of homes in Allen Road, where 577 people were recorded as being in residence.

Number 33 however was home to three different families, a total of ten people:

There was the Forsyth family, consisting of Thomas (aged 32), Julia, his wife (aged 25 and from Ireland), and their son Michael (aged 1). Thomas was a Compositor, a job that involved setting the type for a printing press.

Arthur Mead (aged 24), his wife Maud (aged 19), and their daughter Irene Francis, who had been born in the same year as the census. Arthur was a bricklayer for a builder in Lower Edmonton.

The final family were the Payne’s, consisting of Harry Joshua (aged 30), his wife May Beatrice Lilian (aged 29), their son Henry George (aged 2) and daughter May Patricia Lilian (aged 1). Harry was a General Labourer.

As number 33 seems to have been quite a crowded home for three families, I suspect that as it had a business on the ground floor, it was not considered by purchasers as being to the same standard as the other terrace homes on the street which occupied the whole house, so number 33 became a multi-occupancy house.

Whilst residents could work across London, with the expanding train, underground, tram and bus networks doing their best to keep up with the rapid growth of housing; shopping, schooling and socialising would generally be a local activity, and all these streets had shops and pubs, to an extent which seems remarkable compared to the streets we see today.

Allen Road is not a particularly long road, but it had four pubs.

In the map earlier in the post. the red circle on the right is around the Prince of Wales. I cannot find exactly when, but the Prince of Wales has been demolished and replaced with a new residential block.

Then the green circle is around the Allen Arms, which closed in 1993 after a fire, and is now residential.

The Stack Rock at number 48, the purple circle. An unusual name for a pub, but the name did appear in several newspapers, for example in 1897, the landlord was advertising a concertina competition. Not sure when the Stack Rock closed, but again it is now residential.

The dark blue circle is around the Shakespeare, at number 57, which of the original four, is the only pub still open on Allen Road:

The Shakespeare once had an ex Arsenal and England player as landlord. Lionel Smith became landlord of the pub in September 1960, after he had retired from football.

He played for Arsenal between 1939 and 1954, with a break during the war, playing as full back, which probably accounts for the fact that during his time with the club, he had never scored a goal.

He played for England between 1950 and 1953, then after leaving Arsenal, he was a manager of Gravesend & Northfleet between 1955 and 1960, when he retired and took over the Shakespeare.

Opposite the Shakespeare is number 50, another corner shop:

I believe at some point, this was a fish and chip shop, but in the 1921 census it was a green grocers, run by Marks and Marie Rwaries, who had both been born in Russia. They lived in the building along with their five children, all girls.

Today, number 50 is a coffee shop.

If you look to the right of the corner building in the above photo, there are two ground floors painted with bright white paint. The one on the left is number 54, and I think that back in the 1980s, the was L. King’s shop:

I am not 100% sure, but the photo is in the right place in the strip of negatives, and the moulded decoration to the sides and along the top of the shop are the same as on the building today. These moulded decorations are called Pilasters (thanks to “Chase” for his comment on a previous post). An amazing transformation when you consider the white fronted residential ground floor today, compared to a working, local butcher, 40 years ago.

There are still a few shops on Allen Road, but the majority have been converted to residential. A couple still show their early origins, with number 62 displaying signs for Harvey’s Snack Bar and Light Refreshments. The later seems to be written over the former name:

The brown circle, to the left of the map earlier in the post, shows the location of another closed business, where at number 72, on the corner with Milton Grove, was once a Post Office:

To the left of the corner post office building in the above photo can be seen typical 19th century shop fronts, although all these are now residential.

The painted sign advertising the Post Office is on the rounded corner to the building, which again, has also been converted to residential:

There are two other photos on the strip of negatives that should be in Allen Road, but I could not find, or be sure of their location. The first has no identifiable features:

The second photo should be at the junction of Allen Road and Milton Grove according to the photo’s location on the negative strip and relation with other photos:

This is the corner building today:

The corner building has been considerably rebuilt, but it is the numbers that confuse as the florist is at number 75, whilst number 75 today is the house to the right.

I did have a walk around the surrounding streets, but could not find a number 75 on a corner, which looked as if it may have once been a shop.

Whether the corner of Allen Road is the correct location, the florists is another example of the number and varied type of shops that could once be found along these mid 19th century streets.

Their loss over the last 40 years has been down to many factors. Demographics, growth in the number of large chain supermarkets offering a single place for the majority of shopping, car ownership, online delivery services, and probably the major cause, the number of developers looking to turn shops and pubs into residential. For a business with declining sales, and the challenge of making a profit, the sale of the property, or hand back of the lease, was often the best way out.

Industrial premises such as the scrap metal dealer have generally closed or moved further out of London. It is still reasonably common to find car repair businesses among residential streets.

Allen Road was a normal residential street in north London, and it had four pubs. This was probably the right number to serve residents of Allen Road and surrounding streets in the 19th century, when a pub was the main place to socialise and there were no alternative entertainments such as the cinema or TV at home.

Today, the Shakespeare is the one surviving pub. Shops mainly gravitate to busier streets such as Kingsland Hight Street, Stoke Newington Road and Green Lanes.

All part of the continuing evolution of London’s street, but I cannot help thinking that for both residents and just walking the streets, they have lost some local community and character as these places disappear.

And if you know anything about Lloyds Minicars or Le-Jardin Flowers as seen in the photos above, I would be grateful for comments.

The Mildmay Road and Wolsey Road Mural

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A couple of weeks ago, my post was about His and Hers Hairdressers in Middleton Road, Hackney. After finding the location of my father’s mid 1980s photo of the hairdresser, I continued on towards Newington Green, where one of the approach roads is Mildmay Road, and at the junction of Mildmay and Wolsey Roads, is the location of another of my father’s 1980s photos, this time of a rather wonderful mural:

The mural is remarkable, not just for the subject, the colour and the detail, but also for the three dimensional affect the mural achieves, and that it extends not just along the end wall of the two storey house, but continues across to the third storey of the adjacent house.

The forty years between the above photo and the mural today, have not been kind to this wonderful artwork, and in 2026 we see a very faded mural, with much of the colour and detail gradually disappearing:

I cannot find any information as to the exact date of the mural, who created the work, and any meaning behind the image, and why on this particular building.

Comments with any information would be greatly received.

In the 1980s photo, we can see details which raise questions, for example there is a green door reached by some stairs leading up from the grass. The door is partly open, and a woman carrying two bags is going through the doorway.

Why is the woman there, who is she, was she a resident of the house, creator or sponsor of the mural?

There is also a man at the base of the stairs, and a girl stands on the edge of the grass, holding a bunch of flowers, and looks out towards Mildmay Road. Were they also part of the same family?:

My father’s second photo of the mural was a close up of the part of the mural on the upper floor of the adjacent house, where a woman is looking out of an open window. I wonder if she is the same woman who was going in through the green door?

Forty years later, and this section of the mural exists in outline only, with just some of the blue sky in the upper part of the window remaining:

In Wolsey Road we can see that the three dimensional aspect of the mural is still clear. The mural covers a flat wall, and as well as the individual elements of the mural, the two sets of stairs, and the column, the two windows on the right of the mural are painted in such as way as to give the impression that they are on an angled wall:

After forty years, the mural is faded, flaking and losing colour, but enough remains to show what it was like when created, as my father’s 198o’s photos confirm.

The mural is an example of what can be found whilst walking the streets of London, and the pleasure of wandering along London’s ordinary streets is a message I hope I have been able to get across in the last couple of posts on my search for some 1980s photos – The Flower Sellers and London Fields and His & Hers Hairdressers, Middleton Road, Hackney, and is a theme I want to continue in this week’s post, with no deep historical insights, just some views of the streets as I walked up from Middleton Road to Mildmay Road.

The route took me along Kingsland Road, where at the junction with Englefield Road is KTS DIY, a family run business, which according to their website has been there since 1973:

The clock on the corner of the building:

The store stocks a phenomenal range of DIY, building and household maintenance and cleaning equipment. The window display is just a very small part of what can be found inside:

Mops and brooms in the February sunshine on Kingsland Road:

Opposite KTS DIY is the Haggeston, a pub which also has regular live music:

The current name of the pub dates from around 2009, and the original name of the pub was the Swan, as still displayed along the top of the building:

The Swan probably dates to the late 18th century. It was mentioned in an advert in the Morning Advertiser on the 15th of August 1807, an advert for the lease of a house, which gives a good impression of what this now densely built up area was like at the start of the 19th century:

“A neat, genteel brick-built detached dwelling house, with garden, and most pleasantly situated in the fields, near the Swan, Kingsland Road, an easy and pleasant walk from the Royal Exchange, and completely screened from the dust of the public road.”

It is good to know that back in 1807, advertisers of property used the same underestimates of distances in their adverts, as I am not sure the two and a third miles from the Swan to the Royal Exchange could be called and “easy and pleasant walk” for all.

The advert also demonstrates how pubs were used as a local reference points for many forms of public notice.

Further along Kingsland Road, and I am not sure what has happened to the windows on the first floor of this building:

As with the mural on Mildmay Road, along Kingsland Road is the gradually fading sign of the Prince of Wales:

Despite closing around 26 years ago and converted to residential, the Prince of Wales name is still displayed at the tope of the building, a 1930 rebuild of the previous pub on the site:

A short distance further along Kingsland Road is another closed pub, the Lamb, which dates from the early 19th century. The building is now a nightclub:

There were many pubs along Kingsland Road, reflecting both the importance of the road and density of the housing that was built in the fields to east and west of the road in the 19th century.

Kingsland Road is also home to terrace houses built during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These were fine houses at the time, and frequently ground floor shops were added at a later date, built over the gardens that separated the house from the street:

The two semi-detached houses in the centre of the following photo are late 18th / early 19th century and are Grade II listed. At the time of the listing (1975), the building housed a factory, but now looks to ne residential, with shops taking up the space in front of the ground floor of the building:

The two larger buildings behind the shops in the following photo are also Grade II listed and date from the late 18th century. One can imagine how impressive these buildings appeared, before the shops and when the whole façade was visible from the street:

A slight detour down Dalston Lane from Kingsland Road is the old Railway Tavern, so named because it was almost opposite the original Dalston Junction station building, which has been rebuilt as part of a residential development.

The Railway Tavern is now a café / antique store:

The reason for the slight detour down Dalston Lane is to find another 1980s mural, however unlike the mural in Mildmay Road, this one is in a far better condition:

This is the Hackney Peace Carnival mural. The design dates from 1983 when it was created by Ray Walker to celebrate the Greater London Council’s Peace Year, and it was completed in 1985 after being finished by Ray Walker’s wife Anna Walker along with Mike Jones, following the death of Ray Walker in 1984.

Ray Walker is shown in the mural to the lower left:

And Anna Walker is at lower right:

The excellent condition of the Dalston Lane mural compared to the Mildmay Road mural, when they are around the same age, is mainly down to the significant 2014 restoration of the Hackney Peace Carnival mural.

The 1980s seemed to be a prolific period for murals across the streets of London and GLC initiatives such as the 1983 Peace Year were responsible for a number of these, another of which was in Greenwich and was the Wind of Peace mural in Creek Road:

The Wind of Peace was commissioned by the London Muralists for Peace initiative, and painted by artists Stephen Lobb and Carol Kenna. It replaced an earlier mural showing the river and the land alongside the river in Greenwich.

The Wind of Peace has been lost as the building has been demolished. I wrote about the mural, along with another Greenwich mural in this post on the sad fate of two Greenwich murals.

From Dalston Lane, I then returned to Kingsland Road, and headed up to Mildmay Road via Boleyn Road, to find the mural at the start of today’s post.

A short post, with no maps, no deep dive into the area’s history, but I hope it demonstrates why walking the streets of London can be such as pleasure.

The Treachery of Sir George Downing

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Along with streets and places such as Piccadilly, Leicester Square, and Oxford Street, Downing Street is probably one of the more recognisable London street names, not just in the United Kingdom, but across the world, given the number of tourists who peer through the gates that separate Downing Street from Whitehall.

Number 10 Downing Street has been home to the Prime Minister (or more correctly the First Lord of the Treasury) since 1735, when the house was given to Sir Robert Walpole.

There have been many gaps in occupancy by Prime Minsters, however a central London house was considered a benefit of the role. It was only in the early 20th century that it became a full time residence of Prime Ministers.

Security has long been an issue. It was not so long ago that the public could walk down the street, with the street finally being closed to the public in 1982, and in response to ever growing threats, security measures such as physical defences and armed police have been added and enhanced.

So today, this is the best view of the street for tourists and members of the public who do not have official business in any of the buildings and institutions that line Downing Street:

The street has seen so many Prime Ministers, newly elected, arrive in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and expectation, only to leave having been rejected either by the electorate, or through the actions of their former colleagues.

For a rejected Prime Minister, perhaps the most difficult way to leave is when you have been rejected by former colleagues. Those who once supported and worked with you, and with whom you had a shared vision of the future.

Whilst this must be incredibility frustrating, it is not as bad as the treachery of the person who was once the land owner and who gave his name to the street, who through his treachery, condemned former colleagues to the worst death penalty that the State could impose, convicted of being a traitor and being hung, drawn and quartered.

For this, we have to go back to the Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration of the 1640s, 1650s and early 1660s to explore the work of Sir George Downing:

The source of the above paining is from the Harvard Art Museum, and the image title is “Portrait of a Man, probably Sir George Downing (1624-1684)”. It is often difficult to be absolutely certain of those depicted in paintings of some age (see my recent post on the Gresham’s).

The record for the painting states that on the stretcher is written “Sir George Downing Bart./ born August 1623–Embassador [sic]/ to the States General 1659-Son of/ Emmanuel Downing & Lucy Winthrop/ 4th daughter of Adam Winthrop-/ The nephew of John Winthrop/ Governor of Massachusetts–His/ diplomatic services…[illegible]… are well known to history.”, which does add some confidence that this is Sir George Downing.

George Downing was born in Dublin around 1623 or 1624, His father was Emanual Downing, a Barrister and Puritan, and his mother was Lucy Winthrop, the sister of John Winthrope who was the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an English settlement on the east coast of America which had been founded in 1628.

This family relationship with Massachusetts resulted in the family moving to the colony in 1638, where they settled in Salem.

Harvard College had been founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony on the 18th of October 1636, and was the first college set-up in the American colonies.

The name Harvard comes from John Harvard who was an English Puritan minister and benefactor of the college, which included leaving his library of 400 books and half of his estate to the new college.

George Downing attended Harvard College, and was one of the first group of nine who graduated from the college in 1642.

After Harvard, Downing moved to the West Indies where he became a preacher, and in the early 1640s he returned to England, where he found the country in the middle of a Civil War, and he quickly aligned with the forces opposing King Charles I, joining the regiment of Colonel John Okey as a chaplain.

Downing was fully supportive of the actions of Cromwell and the New Model Army in the defeat of the Royalist cause, and he was recognised and promoted quickly to become Cromwell’s Scoutmaster General in Scotland, a role that was basically the head of a spying and intelligence operation, attempts to infiltrate Royalist plots and to turn Royalist supporters to the Republican cause.

During the years of the Commonwealth in the 1650’s, Downing’s skills became valuable in the diplomatic service, and he became the Commonwealth’s ambassador to the Netherlands, where he also developed a network of spies, and passed information on Royalist plots back to John Thurloe, who was Cromwell’s main spymaster.

The later part of the 1650s were a difficult time for the Commonwealth, the main issue being what would happen to the Commonwealth after the death of Oliver Cromwell. Who would succeed Cromwell, how would such a decision be made, could Cromwell take on the role of a monarch and make the head of the Commonwealth a hereditary title?

Downing supported and urged Cromwell to take on the role of a monarch along the lines of the old constitution that had existed before the execution of King Charles I.

To those holding senior positions in the army and the Commonwealth, it must have seemed that the Commonwealth was in a strong position, the country would remain a Republic. Monarchist plots and uprisings had been supressed, and the future King Charles II seemed to be in a weak position in exile on the Continent.

It was then surprising how quickly after Cromwell’s death, that the whole structure of the Commonwealth collapsed so rapidly, and King Charles II was restored as the monarch of the United Kingdom in 1661, just three years after the death of Oliver Cromwell.

George Downing had been watching how sentiments towards the monarchy were changing and started to plan how he would survive and prosper after the restoration.

This involved actions such as ingratiating himself within the court of the future Charles II, passing information on to the Royalists and claiming that he had been drawn in to the Republican cause rather than being an active initiator of the Civil War and the execution of King Charles I.

Whilst Downing had supported the trial and execution of the former king, he was not a judge or participant in the trial, and did not sign the execution warrant of the king:

Source: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Which is an important lesson if you are involved in any plotting or support of a controversial cause – never leave anything in writing.

Despite his involvement and support of the Republican cause, Downing’s efforts to show support for the monarchy were such that after the restoration of the monarchy, he was knighted, and continued in his role as the ambassador to the Netherlands, and it was in the following couple of years that he was to really show his ruthless streak and what he would do to further his own power, position and wealth.

Regicides

After the restoration, the monarchy turned their anger on those who had been involved in the trial of King Charles I, who had signed his execution warrant, or who had had a significant role in his execution.

Known as the Regicides, those who had been responsible in some way for the execution of the King were exempted from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act of 1660, an act that gave a general pardon for all those who had committed a crime during the Civil War and the Commonwealth (other than crimes such as murder, unless covered by a licence from the king, witchcraft and piracy were also not covered by the general pardon).

A number of the Regicides had already died, including Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton. Others gave themselves up in the hope of a fair trial and avoidance of a traitors death, whilst others fled abroad in fear of their lives.

Three of those who fled, and who would meet their deaths through the actions of George Downing, were:

John Okey

Creative Commons Licence – after Unknown artist, published by John Thane line engraving, published 1794 NPG D27161© National Portrait Gallery, London

John Okey had been born in St. Giles, and like many others who were part of the Parliamentary / Republican / New Model Army forces opposing the king during the Civil war, Okey had enlisted in the army, rising through the ranks to become a major, then a colonel, of a regiment of dragoons (mounted infantry).

George Downing had joined Okey’s regiment as a chaplain, and was well known to Okey.

When Charles I was brought to trial, Okey was one of the 80 who were actively involved in the trial, and attended on most days, and the action that would infuriate the restored monarchy was that he was one of the 59 who had signed the warrant for the execution of the king.

Miles Corbet

Creative Commons Licence – after Unknown artist, published by William Richardson
line engraving, published 1810 NPG D30024© National Portrait Gallery, London

Miles Cobet was the MP for Yarmouth and also a Lawyer.

The print of Corbet shown above has the abbreviation Coll. in front of his last name. This may have been an honorary titles, as he did not serve during any military actions during the Civil War. He was though one of the founders of the Eastern Association, which was a military alliance formed to defend East Anglia on behalf of the Parliamentary forces, and he also served as an army commissioner in Ireland, responsible for overseeing the affairs of the army, and with allocation of land within Ireland to soldiers as reward for their service, and often in lieu of wages.

His role in the trial of Charles I was as part of the High Court of Justice, and as one of those who signed the execution warrant.

John Barkstead

Creative Commons Licence – after Unknown artist line engraving, published 1810 NPG D9319© National Portrait Gallery, London

John Barkstead was originally a goldsmith in the Strand, but who joined the Parliamentary forces, becoming a captain of a foot company in the regiment of Colonel Venn. He was Governor of Reading for a short time, commanded a regiment at the siege of Colchester, and was appointed as one of the judges at the trial of Charles I.

He also signed the Warrant for the Execution of Charles I.

He was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower of London, but used this position to further his own wealth by extorting money from prisoners and generally running a cruel regime.

He was rumoured to have hidden a large sum of money in the Tower of London, and in 1662, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary that he was busy in a discovery for Lord Sandwich and Sir H. Bennett of the cellars of the Tower for this hidden money.

By signing the warrant for the execution of the King, Okey, Corbet and Barkstead had also signed their own death warrants, as this would be their fate – a public traitors death in London.

Escape and Capture

In fear of their lives, with the restoration of the monarchy, Okey, Corbet and Barkstead fled to Europe, with Okey and Barkstead making their way to Hanau in Germany, where they were accepted by the town and given a level of protection. Corbet had made his way to the Netherlands where he was in hiding.

For Barkstead, Hanau seemed a natural, long term home, as the town was well known for the manufacture of jewellery, and Barkstead’s background as a goldsmith in the Strand would come in use.

As Hanau seemed to be a long term home for Okey and Barkstead, they wanted their wives to join them, and a plan was put together for them to meet their wives in the Netherlands, from where they would all travel back to Hanau.

They believed that they would be safe in the Netherlands and had assurances that Downing had not been given any instructions to hunt for them. The Netherlands was also known for tolerance and for putting commerce before any other concern.

They travelled to Delft, and met up with Corbet, who was keen to meet with some friends after his time in hiding.

Downing meanwhile had been putting together plans for how he would find and capture any regicides that were living or passing through the Netherlands. He was worried about the repercussions of capturing any regicides and transporting them back to London without the approval of the Dutch, and he had problems with getting an arrest warrant from the Dutch authorities.

After much persuasion, Downing received a blank arrest warrant, which he would be able to use against any of the regicides that he could discover in the Netherlands, and it would soon be put into use.

Through Downing’s network of spies, he discovered that Okey, Corbet and Barkstead were all in Delft, and just as they were about to split up, Downing and his men pounced on the house, and found the three sitting around a fire, smoking pipes. and they quickly rounded up the three regicides. They had their hands and feet manacled and were thrown in a damp prison cell, whilst Downing finalised their transport back to England.

Whilst they were in captivity, the three were visited by Dutch politicians who assured the three that they would be freed, however Downing used his skills to threaten and bully the Dutch on the possible consequences of such actions, and the Dutch conceded, and let Downing continue to hold the three and arrange their transport.

Another challenge was the Bailiff of Delft who was not cooperative and threatened to derail Downing’s plans. Downing’s response to this was another indication that he would do anything to have his way. He made inquiries about the bailiff and learnt that “he was one who would do nothing without money”, so Downing offered him a bribe – a reward if he would keep the prisoners safe until they were finally in Downing’s hands.

There were other problems. The magistrates of Amsterdam sent a message to the authorities in Delft that they should “let the Gates of the prison be opened and so let them escape “.

The bailiff warned Downing that the “common people might go about to force the prison and let them out”, and the authorities in Delft made efforts to provide counsel for the regicides.

Downing finally received an order from the Dutch authorities addressed to the bailiff in Delft to release the prisoners to Downing. The bailiff was concerned that there would be a rising “if there were but the least notice of an intention to carry them away”.

Downing had already arranged for an English frigate to be available, and with the aid of some sailors from the frigate, and a small boat, he:

“resolved in the dead of the night to get a boate into a litle channell which came neare behinde the prison, and at the very first dawning of the day without so much as giving any notice to the seamen I had pro
vided . . . forthwith to slip them downe the backstaires . . . and so accordingly we did, and there was not the least notice in the Towne thereof, and before 5 in the morning the boate was without the Porto of
Delft, where I delivered them to Mr. Armerer . . . giving him direction not to put them a shoare in any place, but to go the whole way by water to the Blackamore Frigat at Helverdsluice.”

The Frigate Blackamore carried the three prisoners back to England, where they were imprisoned in the Tower awaiting a trial, which was not really a trial as in the view of Parliament and the Monarchy, they had demonstrated their guilt by fleeing the country. The trial was a formality to confirm they had the right people.

Having been found guilty of treason, on the 19th of April 1662, the three men were transported from the Tower to Tyburn, each tied to a separate sledge as they were drawn through the crowds, with much mocking abuse from Royalists. Barkstead left the Tower first, a place where he had once been the Lieutenant, and raised his hat to his wife who was waving from a window.

On arriving at Tyburn, each man gave a speech to the crowd, and were then put on a cart under the gallows. When they were ready, the cart was pulled away, and they hung for 15 minutes, before being taken down, and were then drawn and quartered, all in front of a large crowd.

Barkstead’s head was placed on a spike overlooking the Tower of London, mocking his former role at the Tower.

Before his death, Okey had sent a message of obedience to the restored monarchy, and as a reward for this, his family were allowed to bury his mutilated body in a vault in Stepney, however a large crowd gathered around Newgate where his body was being held, and fearing that this was a show of support for a traitor, the King swiftly changed his mind, and Okey’s body was hastily buried in the grounds of the Tower of London.

After the Regicides

Downing appears to have shown very little if any remorse or regret for his actions in the capture and execution of his three former colleagues, especially Okey, in whose regiment Downing had once served during the Civil War.

He acquired large estates and properties across the country and in London. He was one of the four Tellers of the Receipts of the Exchequer. He inspired the Navigation Act: “the foundation of our mercantile marine, and consequently of our navy, and consequently of our colonies and spheres of influence. He was also the direct cause of the Appropriation Act, an Act indispensable in every session, for government at home and one which has been appointed by all our self-governing colonies,” and he was instrumental in persuading the Dutch to exchange New Amsterdam, their colony on Long Island, for the British colony of Surinam in South America. New Amsterdam was then renamed as New York.

George Downing owned land near Westminster, and when the leaseholder died in 1682, Downing developed a cul-de-sac of more than twenty plain, brick built, three storey terrace houses, and he petitioned Charles II for permission to name this new street Downing Street.

Royal approval was granted, but he did not live to see the completion of the street as he died in July 1684 when he was 60, two years prior to work was finished.

The general view of Sir George Downing was that whilst clever, quick to action, ambitious and a very hard worker, he was also self serving, would shift his allegiance depending on changes in political and royal power, and as demonstrated with Okey, Corbet and Barkstead, this would also include the betrayal of his former friends and colleagues.

After the restoration, there were many who recognised Downing’s true character. After the capture of the regicides, Samuel Pepys’s wrote in his diary:

“This morning we had news from Mr. Coventry, that Sir G. Downing (like a perfidious rogue, though the action is good and of service to the King, yet he cannot with any good conscience do it) hath taken Okey, Corbet, and Barkestead at Delfe, in Holland, and sent them home in the Blackmore.”

Downing – a name associated with self perseveration to the extent that former colleagues and the cause for which they all worked, were betrayed, and now recorded in the name of the street where the Prime Minister resides.

Sources: I have been reading a number of books about the Civil War recently which I will list in a future post. My main source for the actions of Downing in the Netherlands and the capture of Okey, Corbet and Barkstead is from “Sir George Downing and the Regicides by Ralph C. H. Catterall in The American Historical Review, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Jan., 1912), and published by the Oxford University Press“.

Resources – The World Turned Upside Down

As today’s post is the first of a new month, it is a post where I cover some of the resources available if you are interested in discovering more about the history of London.

As today’s post has been about the fate of three of the regicides involved with the trial and execution of King Charles I, and George Downing, who supported both the Parliamentary cause and then swiftly converted to support the monarchy, today’s resource is a brilliant website full of resources covering everything Civil War, and events in London played a very significant role, not just during the Civil War, but the lead up to, the causes of the war, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the people, politics and religion, the restoration and later impact.

The website is The World Turned Upside Down:

The name of the website comes from the title of an English ballad published in the mid 1640s, when Parliament was implementing policies that tried to ban the more traditional celebrations of Christmas that the more Puritan and to an extent Baptist members of Parliament believed were associated with the Catholic religion, and that Christmas should be a more solemn event, without the drinking, feasting and joyous elements of the traditional Christmas:

Source: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The standout feature of the website are the podcasts. There are currently 112 on the site with more being gradually added (you can sign up for alerts). Each podcast explores a different aspect of the Civil War and is by an expert in the subject.

For each podcast there is also a transcript, glossary, timeline, maps and further reading.

The first four podcasts in the list are shown in the screenshot below:

There is so much in the news about the destructive elements of social media, AI and the Internet, but the World Turned Upside Down is one of those sites that restores your faith in what the Internet can deliver when a community of real experts put together such a resource – which is freely available.

Even if you have only a passing interest in the mid 17th century and the Civil War, the site and podcasts are well worth a visit, and again, the link to click for the site is: The World Turned Upside Down

His & Hers Hairdressers, Middleton Road, Hackney

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Following last week’s post on London Fields, for this week’s post I am again in search of another of my father’s 1980s photos, also in Hackney, but this one, judging by other photos on the same strip of negatives, seems to be from 1986.

This is His & Hers Hairdressers at the Kingsland Road end of Middleton Road:

The photo is typical of the many small businesses that occupied run down Victorian shops in the 1980s, and for a hairdressers of that decade, the shop has the obligatory display of hair style photos.

This is the same shop, forty years later in 2026:

With photos of hairdressers, you can normally tell the decade of when the photo was taken by the photos in the windows, and His & Hers had photos of 1980s big hair:

Small details in the photo, such as the person inside, probably wondering why my father is taking a photo:

On the wall to the left of the shop, something that was once a common sight:

And there are details in the 2026 photo, where an earlier shop sign has been exposed:

If you go back to the 1986 photo, there is wooden boarding across the location of the above sign, so I suspect this was covered up in 1986 and dates from an earlier business.

M. Matthews is the central name. There does appear to be a shadow name, but this also looks like M. Matthews, so perhaps an earlier version of the same name. To the right is the word Tobacco, and a bit hard to make out, but to the left the letters do seem to form Newsagent.

I cannot find a reference to an M. Matthews, but the ground floor of the building has always been a shop, and searching through Post Office directories, I found that in 1899 the shop was a Confectioner, run by Miss Elizabeth Winstone, and in 1910 it was still a confectioner, but now run by Mrs Matilda Watkins.

A jump from being a Confectioner, to a Newsagent and Tobacconist, but who also probably continued to sell confectionary does seem like a natural evolution of the shop.

I have no idea when the shop changed to a hairdressers, or when His & Hers closed. In the 1986, the ground floor occupied by the hairdresser does seem to have undergone some structural alteration, as above the windows and doors, there is the full width of the panel over the name sign, and this can also be seen in my 2026 photo, where the name sign extends over the windows and two doors.

The ornate carvings typical of the sign endings on Victorian shops can also be seen in the 1986 photo, although the one of the left had been removed by 2026.

This is probably the result of the building being converted from a shop occupying the full width of the ground floor, to a building where the first and second floors became separate residential accommodation, hence the door on the left, and the door to the shop being the one on the right.

Today, the old shop on the ground floor also appears to be residential.

The shop was built in the mid 19th century as the fields and nurseries of Hackney were covered in new homes.

In the following map, I have marked the location of the shop with the red arrow on the left. The darker road running vertically just to the left is Kingsland Road, and to the right of the map is the edge of London Fields. Middleton Road is the street with the Hairdressers, and which runs from Kingsland Road to London Fields.

Nearly all of the straight streets in the map are Victorian housing, serving the growing numbers of middle class workers of London with aspirational new homes.

The shop was part of a street design where small businesses were distributed across new residential developments, so that people who moved out to these new homes would have access to the necessities of life within local walking distance, and this included pubs.

On the corner of Middleton Road and Kingsland Road is the Fox – a rare example of a London pub that closed in around 2018, but has recently reopened (I believe with the upper floors converted to residential):

At the very top of the corner of the building is the date 1881, and this is from when the current building dates, although there has been a pub on the site for a number of centuries.

The earliest written refence I can find to the Fox is from 1809, when on the 21st of July, there was an advert in the Morning Advertiser for the auction of five, neat, brick built dwelling houses between Kingsland Green and Newington Green. Details about the properties to be auctioned could be had from Mr. Taylor at the Fox, Kingsland Road.

When the 1809 advert appeared, much of the area surrounding the Fox was still farm land and nurseries, but the pub was here because Kingsland Road was an important road to the north from the City and would have been busy, with many of those using the road in need of refreshment.

Search the Internet for stories about the Fox, and a story about the pub being used to stash part of a £6 Million Security Express robbery in 1983, by Clifford Saxe, one of the robbers and landlord of the Fox is one of the common stories from recent years.

I cannot find a firm reference from the time that it was the Fox, an account of the robbery from the Sunday Mirror on the 1st of July 1984 on wanted criminals who were living in Spain referenced that “It claimed Saxe, 57, formerly landlord of an east London pub was the brains of the gang”. Presumably that east London pub was the Fox, but again I cannot find a direct reference from the time.

In the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map, I have marked the location of the Fox with a red arrow. The yellow dotted line shows the route of the future Middleton Road, running from Kingsland Road to the edge of London Fields, over what was nursery land, and by 1823 would be known as Grange’s Nursery:

The 1881 rebuild of the pub must have been to transform the premises that had once been surrounded by fields, to an establishment suitable for the large population who occupied the terrace streets by then covering the fields.

The population growth of Hackney mirrors this housing development. In 1801 the population was 12,730, and a century later in 1901, Hackney’s population had grown to 219,110, and this new population needed local shops, and the confectioners / newsagents and tobacconists / hairdresser shop was part of a terrace of shops at the end of Middleton Road, with the following photo being today’s view of this terrace:

In 1899, this terrace consisted of (number 11 in bold is the shop that is the subject of today’s post):

  • Number 1: John Biddle – Fishmonger
  • Number 3: Mrs Stark – Baby Linen
  • Number 5: John Edward Stark – Tobacconist
  • Number 7&9; Benjamin Wilkinson – Chemist
  • Number 11; Miss Elizabeth Winstone – Confectioner
  • Number 13: Robinson Locklison – Laundry

By 1910, the terrace consisted of:

  • Number 1: Walter Hart – Fried Fish Shop
  • Number 3: James Arthur Mullett – Grocer
  • Number 5: William Leigh – Hairdresser
  • Number 7&9: Benjamin Wilkinson – Chemist
  • Number 11: Mrs Matilda Watkins – Confectioner
  • Number 13: John Hart – Bootmaker

The above two lists shows that in the eleven years between the two, there was a high turnover in owners and types of shop. Number 1 had changed from a Fishmonger to a Fried Fish Shop, illustrating the rapid expansion of this type of take away food across London, from what is believed to be the first such shop in east London in 1860.

Number 1 is still supplying food, as today it is the Tin Café.

The only business that is the same is the Chemist of Benjamin Wilkinson. At number 13 in 1910 was John Hart, a Bootmaker. In 1986 it was a shoe repair shop, just visible to the right of the photo at the start of the post, so in the same type of business.

Another view of the terrace, number 3 to 13:

Just visible to the right of the above photo, and in an earlier photo with a train, is a bridge, which adds an unusual feature to this end of Middleton Road.

Walking along Middleton Road, under the bridge and looking back, this is the view:

The bridge carries what is now the Windrush Line over Middleton Road, and the reason for the large dip in the road is because the railway is carried on a viaduct, which runs parallel to Kingsland Road, and needs to run as a level structure, so where the railway carried by the viaduct runs across a road, the runs needs to be lowered to pass under the viaduct.

This railway was built as part of the North London extension of the London and North Western Railway, and the following extract from Railway News on the 3rd of December 1864, when the viaduct was nearing completion, explains the benefits and route of this railway:

“The London and North Western reaches the City by means of the North London extension, but the undertaking may be considered as that of the North Western.

The City extension runs from Kingsland to Liverpool Street, Bishopsgate, and is now rapidly approaching completion. The advantages of this line are very considerable.

The station is within a short distance of the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England and many offices in which the chief monetary transactions of the City are conducted. Five or seven minutes walk will bring you to Threadneedle-street, Moorgate-street, or Gracechurch-street, and all the other busy thoroughfares, lanes and courts hard by – no small consideration to the thousands of railway travellers who come from the North daily within that important radius who are anxious to economise time.

Further, this line shortens the distance between all the stations on the North London line, from Camden to Kingsland and the City by no less than five miles. At present time the North London, on leaving Kingsland, goes by Hackney, Bow, and Stepney, describing nearly three-quarters of a circle before it reaches Fenchurch Street. This detour, with its super abundant traffic and crowded junctions, with therefore be avoided by all coming west of Kingsland to the City.

The extension is about 2.5 miles in length, and proceeds almost in a direct line from its junction with the North London proper to Bishopsgate, With the exception of a cutting near the starting point it passes all the way on a brick arch viaduct which has all but been finished. Running parallel with the Kingsland-road.”

The line would go on to terminate at Broad Street Station, next to Liverpool Street.

This railway helped with the construction of the houses across the fields of Hackney, as for workers to move to Hackney, they needed an easy form of transport to their place of work, and the new railway extension was ideal. For the residents of Middleton Road, Haggerston Station was a short walk south along Kingsland Road. The station opened on the 2nd of September 1867.

Bells Weekly Messenger on the 9th of September 1867 described the new station: “NEW STATION, NORTH LONDON RAILWAY – A large and commodious new station was opened on Monday on the North London Railway, in Lee-street, Kingsland Road. The new Haggerston Station commands the neighbourhood, and also the Downham-road and De Beauvoir Town, which places are situated too far from the Dalston Junction to profit by the latter.”

The line closed in 1986 (Haggerston Station had closed in 1940 due to a number of factors including wartime economy measures and bomb damage to the station).

The station and railway along the viaduct reopened in 2010 as part of London Overground, and in 2024 the railway was renamed as the Windrush Line.

So this small part of London had shops, a pub and a station connected to the City. The other important attribute of a Victorian city was a church, and In Middleton Road is the 1847 Middleton Road Congregational Church, now the Hackney Pentecostal Apostolic Church:

Middleton Road is mainly comprised of terrace houses, but there are some interesting exceptions, such as the building in the middle of the following photo:

Which has an entry to the rear of the building named Ropewalk Mews:

I cannot find the reason for this name, and why the building is very different to the terrace houses that occupy the street.

A ropewalk was / is a long length of land or covered space, where the individual strands of a rope could be laid out and then twisted to form a continuous length of rope.

London had plenty of ropewalks, but these were usually close to the Thames, as the main customer for the ropes produced would have been the thousands of ships that were once to be found on the river.

Rocque’s map of 1747 does not show a ropewalk, although the map does identify ropewalks in other parts of London. In 18th and early 19th century maps of the area, the land is shown as agricultural and a nursery, no mention of a ropewalk.

It may have been that there was a small ropewalk here to produce rope to be used in the bundling of produce from the nursery, but I cannot find any confirmation of this.

One of the architectural developments that was seen in Victorian houses of the mid 19th century was the bay window, which was a way of breaking up a terrace, and a change from the Georgian emphasis on an unbroken terrace of flat, uniform walls facing onto the street. We can see this development in the terrace houses of Middleton Street:

Another change was the semi-basement, where the ground floor is slightly raised, and reached from the streets by steps, allowing the upper part of the basement to just poke above ground level, with a space between basement window and the retaining wall to the street. This development allowed natural light into the basement, and again we can see this in the above terrace.

The 1881 census provides a view of the employment of those who moved into Middleton Road. There were a very wide range of jobs, including: Bank Clerks, Decorators, Commercial Travellers, Commercial Clerks, Boot Makers, Locksmiths, Plumbers, Stock Brokers Clerks, Stationers Assistant, Printers, Teachers, Newspaper Advertising Agents, Drapers, Draughtsmen, Watchmakers, etc. All the vast range of trades and employment types to be found in the rapidly expanding Victorian London of the late 19th century.

Where a job was listed such as a Bootmaker, these were frequently not an individual worker, rather an employer, for example at number 33 Middleton Road was George Clarke, a Bootmaker who was listed as employing 25 men and two boys.

Some of the residents had private means, for example at Oxford Cottage in Middleton Road was Fanny Smyth, listed as a widow, with her occupation as “income from interest of money”. What is fascinating about the 19th century census is how frequently people would marry later in life, and in Fanny Smyth’s household were three children, two daughters aged 31 and 21 and a son of 28, all listed as single.

Many of the houses in Middleton Road also had a Domestic Servant, again confirming that these new streets were occupied by the new middle class.

Whilst in 1881, the majority of people who lived in Middleton Road were listed a being born in Middlesex, (the historic county that from 1965 is now mainly part of Greater London), there were a very significant number of people from the rest of the country, and a small percentage from Ireland. Throughout much of the 19th century, London was expanding both in terms of employment and residents, by attracting people from the rest of the country.

More of the homes in Middleton Street in which the Bank Clerks, Decorators, Commercial Travellers etc. of 1881 would live:

Middleton Road is a perfect example of the mid 19th expansion of London, as the fields of Hackney were taken over by the houses of the growing middle class.

The shops and pub at the Kingsland Road end of the street are a perfect example of how local shops were planned as part of this expansion, and for decades served the needs of the local community.

One can imagine the early morning being busy with the working residents heading to the train station to travel into the City for their work, and in the evening, a busy pub, with the option of a stop off for fish and chips after the pub, then heading back to your terrace home in Middleton Road.

When writing these posts, I often have music on in the background, and for this post it was YouTube, as it has a random playlist based on what I have listened to before, and a track I have not heard for many years came up, the 1982 Lucifer’s Friend by the Rotherham / Sheffield band Vision.

The His & Hers Hairdressers was photographed in 1986, and the track by Vision is a perfect example of brilliant 1980s music, including the type of hair styles that you may have been able to get in His & Hers:

David Bowie Centre and V&A East Storehouse

Last week, we went to have a look at the small David Bowie exhibition, which forms part of the David Bowie archive held by the V&A. It is located at the new V&A East Storehouse at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park:

It is a small, but interesting exhibition of some of the costumes worn by Bowie, photos, song lyrics, ideas for films, plays etc.

The Bowie exhibition and archive is a small part of the Storehouse, which is home to a vast collection of items not on display in the main museums.

You are free to wander around the walkways on several levels between racks of items collected over very many years:

There were a number of London related items on display, for example a London County Council plaque recording that Emma Cons and Lilian Baylis lived here:

The plaque dates from 1952 and was installed on the house at 6 Morton Place, Stockwell. The house was demolished in 1971 and the plaque was saved with the intention that it would go on display in the V&A Covent Garden Theatre Museum. The Theatre Museum closed in 2007, and the plaque is now on display the V&A East Storehouse.

The V&A also has a number of items relating to Robin Hood Gardens, the social housing estate in Poplar, east London, including a section of the west block, to preserve the architectural vision.

One of the items on display is a collage from the Robin Hood Gardens Project:

And some of the fittings from Robin Hood Gardens:

The V&A East Storehouse is a fascinating way to display part of the collection that would not normally be on display in the V&A museums, and is well worth a visit.

London Rebuilt 1897 – 1927. A Snapshot of an Ever Changing City

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One ticket has just become available for my walk “The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain” on the 8th of November. Click here for details and booking.

London has always changed. Buildings have been constructed then demolished. New streets built, others widened and some built over and lost. Individual building plots have been consolidated and replaced with much larger buildings. As well as covering larger plots of land, buildings across the city have also grown taller, although it is only in the last few decades that the city has become home to a growing number of very tall towers.

London has always been a city where you can walk down a street after a space of a few months, and find a familiar building demolished, with a new building, frequently of a very different design and materials, being constructed on the same site.

Patterns of ownership change, ways of working change, new space is needed, older buildings become expensive to maintain, planning regulations change, new materials make very different designs possible and architectural styles change.

London has been through two major reconstructions caused by very tragic events. The need to rebuild after the 1666 Great Fire of London, and again after the bombing of the Second World War.

But there is also continuous change, and this has long fascinated anyone who has lived, worked, or just visited London, and there have been many approaches to documenting this change.

One such approach is the book “London Rebuilt, 1897 – 1927” by Harold Clunn and published in 1927.

The book documents the changing city over a period of thirty years from 1897 to 1927. In many ways this is an arbitrary period of time, and the author admits that he was aiming for the first three decades of the 20th century, however there were so many changes at the end of the 19th century that the last three years of the previous century were taken into the account.

The book could have begun much earlier, as the 19th century was a period of extensive change, with the Victorian transformation of London responding to the city’s growth as a world city, exponential increase in trade, commerce, industry and population, and Victorian attempts to improve living conditions, sanitation, traffic routes and roads, along with the introduction of new utilities such as gas and electricity.

But again, London is always changing, so a book covering any period would always be an arbitrary choice of dates.

The book consists of chapters focussing on different areas across the wider city, and each chapter includes a written description along with a number of photos, many showing before and after views.

As well as the physical aspect of the city, there are other changes.

The way people dress, the number of people on the streets, traffic, the gradual change from horse drawn transport to the use of the motor vehicles.

Clunn’s book provides a fascinating glimpse into London in the first decades of the 20th century.

In many ways, streets that we would easily recognise today, but also streets that have changed dramatically in the past 100 years.

So in this post, we will travel back to the early years of the 20th century and explore the streets of the city, starting with Finsbury Pavement as it appeared in 1901 before the start of reconstruction:

Finsbury Pavement was the street that ran to the west of Finsbury Circus, between London Wall and Ropemaker Street. A large block of land to the west of Finsbury Pavement was demolished and rebuilt, and this work included upgraded entrances to Moorgate Station.

Today, Finsbury Pavement is known as Moorgate. The following photo is from the mid 1920s and shows the street rebuilt, and new entrances to Moorgate Station can be seen to the left and right:

This is King William Street around 1890:

The rebuilt King William Street shows how buildings were increasing in height amd becoming more imposing. We can also see the start of the transformation of vehicles types with horse drawn in the above photo and just over 30 years later, a motor driven lorry van be seen in the foreground:

This is a 1901 view along Cornhill from the Royal Exchange:

Twenty five years later, Cornhill is still a busy street with a number of buildings of recent construction, made obvious by their clean appearance. Not yet darkened by the smoke of the city:

Many of the photos in the book appear to have been taken from the top of the open top buses that carried Londoners along the street. The following image is one example, and is looking along Fleet Street from Ludgate Circus:

Just to the right of centre can be seen one of the new electric street lights. I wrote about the introduction of these into Tottenham Court Road in a previous post, here.

As well as the replacement of individual buildings, the late 19th and early 20th century saw large areas of London completely rebuilt. One of these was around Kingsway and Aldwych, and the following photo shows a large open space where the construction of Kingsway was underway in 1904:

Little details in these photos help to add to the character of London at the time. To the left of the above photo is a painted sign on the end of a building wall for the “Army Men’s Social Work Shelter”.

It is hard to make out the words at the top and bottom of the text on the building, but I think the word at the top is Salvation, as this building was probably one of the many Salvation Army Men’s Social Work Shelters across London, and indeed across the major cities of the country.

These institutions provided cheap overnight lodgings and food for the homeless, and in 1900, over 4,000 men were taken in nightly from the streets. Each person had to pay a charge of one penny, so it was not an absolute charity, and the Salvation Army established a three stage work programme, which had a very questionable outcome.

Stage one was work and accommodation in their city institutions. Stage two was their transfer out to the Salvation Army farm in Hadleigh, Essex for “outdoor work”, and stage three was their transfer to an overseas colony.

Hadleigh Farm is still run by the Salvation Army.

One wonders how voluntary this progression through the three stages was, particularly the transfer to an overseas colony.

The following photo is a 1920s photo of Kingsway, looking north from Aldwych. The book does not explain whether there is any relevance between the photo above and the photo below:

In the centre of the above photo can be seen the “LCC Tramway Station Entrance”:

The following photo is on a different page, but has the same title as the above photo “Kingsway, looking north from Aldwych”, but now with a date of 1906:

If they are of the same view, then there had been a remarkable transformation in thirty years. Kingsway was a new street, planned during the late Victorian period, along with other major road schemes such as New Oxford Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, with an aim to relieve the growing amount of traffic congestion across the City.

The above photo also shows an entrance to the tramway station.

It was not just streets and buildings that were redeveloped. The following photo shows the reinstatement of the lake in St. James’s Park:

The reason for the reinstatement was that after the outbreak of the First World War, the lake in St. James’s Park was dried out, and a series of temporary buildings erected in the site, presumably in someway connected with the war effort.

In 1922 the huts were demolished and the lake was restored, however the lake had been left dry for so long that many of the repairs were inadequate, water started leaking out, and the lake almost completely dried up again.

More repairs were made, the lake refilled and restored to become the familiar part of the park that it had been.

This is the “old” Strand, looking east from Southampton Street:

And the “new” Strand, again looking east from Southampton Street:

The above two photos again show the transformation of traffic from horse drawn to motor, and we can also see how smaller plots of land were being converted into larger plots for larger buildings.

The two photos above seem to be of the same view, as the church steeple can be seen at the end of the street, although it is very faint in the above photo.

The following photo has the title “The Old Tivoli Theatre, demolished in 1914”, and is a view along the Strand, with the Adelphi theatre on the right and Adam Street on the left:

And the following photo shows the “New Tivoli Cinema and the widened Strand, looking west”:

The Tivoli Cinema is the building on the left of the photo. It opened on the 6th September 1923 with music hall artiste Little Tich, so despite the book calling it a cinema, it was also continuing to operate as a theatre.

The demolition and new build of the Tivoli was part of the scheme to widen the Strand, and the end of another building which will soon be demolished as part of this scheme can be seen further along the street.

The Tivoli was closed on the 29th September 1956, demolished and a new Peter Robinson store built on the site, which in turn was demolished in the late 1990s, with the office block we see today then being built on the site.

In the above photo, the building to the right of the Tivoli, on the left of the street, the building with the arch above the second floor remains to this day.

Staying in the Strand, this is the “Old Strand, looking east from Savoy Street”:

The same view in the 1920s:

It is interesting how new builds often retain features from the previous building on the site, for example the dome on the top of the corner building on the left in the above two photos.

Another soon to be demolished entertainment building was the old Middlesex Music Hall in Drury Lane, shown on the left of the following photo:

Old High Holborn, looking east from Southampton Row:

New High Holborn, again looking east from Southampton Row:

There is a single horse drawn vehicle in the above photo, with the rest being motor vehicles, where in the “old” photo it was all horse drawn. Street lighting has also changed from smaller lights on the side of the pavements, to taller lights in the centre of the street, and again, the later buildings are of a more substantial build.

Many of the rebuilding works were aimed at improving traffic flow across London. Many streets still had what were described as bottle necks, where the width of the street would reduce, and many works of the late 19th early 20th century were aimed at eliminating these.

The following photo shows the “High Holborn Bottleneck”:

The “Oxford Street Bottleneck Near Tottenham Court Road”:

The following photo is titled “Charing Cross in 1904, prior to the construction of the Admiralty Archway”:

And then “The New Admiralty Archway, Charing Cross”:

There do appear to be a number of errors in the labelling of some of the photos in the book, so I am not sure how much either Harold Clunn, or his editor checked. In the above two photos, the first is labelled “Charing Cross in 1904, prior to the construction of the Admiralty Archway”, and the reference to Admiralty Archway implies that the archway would be built somewhere in the scene in the old photo, however the “prior” photo is looking down Whitehall (the buildings on the left are still there), the photo is not looking down the Mall, which is the location of the Admiralty Archway.

The following photo is much earlier than the date range in the book’s title of 1897 to 1927. This is the old His / Her Majesty’s Theatre on the corner of Haymarket and Pall Mall, which had been destroyed by fire in December 1867, so the photo must be from 1867 or earlier:

The fire was significant, with the Illustrated London News reporting on the fire on the 14th of December 1867 that “The spacious and beautiful opera house at the corner of Haymarket and Pall Mall, called Her Majesty’s Theatre, and formerly the King’s Theatre, was entirely destroyed, in less than an hour, by a fire which broke out on Friday night about eleven o’clock”.

The His / Her Majesty’s Theatre dated from 1791, and was the second theatre to have been built on the site. It occupied a large plot of land. After the fire, the remaining walls were demolished, and the new His Majesty’s Theatre that we see today was built, but only on part of the plot of the old theatre.

For some of these photos, I did get a chance to do a photo of the site today, to show a Then and Now comparison.

The following photo shows the site of the original His Majesty’s Theatre as it appears today:

To the left of the new version of the theatre (which can be seen to the right of the glass fronted building), the Carlton Hotel was built. The following drawing shows the elevation of the hotel facing onto Haymarket, with the rebuilt His Majesty’s Theatre in outline on the right (which can still be seen in the above photo):

Attribution: Charles J. Phipps (1835–1897), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The hotel suffered bomb damage during the last war. It was later demolished, and New Zealand House, which remains to this day, was built on the site – the glass fronted lower floors and tower.

The following photo shows the “Carlton Hotel and the Kinnaird House, Haymarket and Pall Mall”:

The above photo was taken in Cockspur Street, just after leaving Trafalgar Square. The building on the left is still there, as is the second building on the right. The Carlton Hotel is the building in the middle, furthest from the photographer, and the large dome on the roof is the same as that shown in the plan for the hotel.

In the following photo of roughly the same view today, the building on the left, covered in scaffolding, with an image of the building along the front, is the ornate building on the left in the above photo. The tower block in the background is where the Carlton Hotel was located:

In the following photo we are still in the Haymarket, and the view shows the “Haymarket, looking north showing the Capitol Cinema and Haymarket Hotel”:

The photo was taken a short way down Haymarket, and the first street leading off to the left is St. James’s Market. It is from the 1920s as we can now see a large number of motor vehicles in the street.

The Capitol Cinema was formerly named the Capitol Theatre, and opened on the 11th of February 1925, so just before the book was published.

The Capitol had a relatively short life as in 1936, most of the theatre was demolished, and reconstructed as the Gaumont Theatre, which in turn was significantly rebuilt in 1959, reopening as the Odeon, Haymarket in the basement of an office block. The Odeon closed in 2000, but the office block still remains on the site.

The building at the far end of the street, with the triangular shaped top to the façade is still there in Coventry Street, and the ground floor now houses a Five Guys, the following photo shows the same view today, with the old Capitol theatre building on the left, and the triangular shaped upper floor building at the end of the street:

And heading up to Coventry Street, this is Coventry Street in 1904, looking west:

In the above photo there is a sign for “Wales” on the left, and this is the Prince of Wales Theatre, so the street on the right is Rupert Street and Piccadilly Circus is in the distance.

The following photo is of the same view, but I think was taken further back towards Leicester Square, as the building with the arch on the façade is still there today and is the Rialto:

In the 1904 photo of Coventry Street, on the right you can see some of the late 18th century houses surviving from the first stages of development of the area. These had been demolished by the 1920s, and replaced with the larger buildings, many of which survive today, including the building on the right with the dome on the corner just below the roofline, which is the Trocadero.

Also in the above two photos we see the transition from horse drawn vehicles to motor vehicles.

The following photo shows the same view today, with the arch of the Rialto still to be seen on the right:

These photos provide a brief example of how London has changed over the years.

We could step back into many of the 1920s photos, and instantly recognise the majority of the buildings. What has changed, and is not really visible in these photos, is the change in the businesses that occupy the street facing ground floor.

Just taking the above photo, today the majority of businesses on the ground floor are focused on the tourist trade, with restaurants, take-aways, foreign exchanges, the American Sweet Shops and Souvenir Shops that pop up and disappear rapidly across so much of the West End of the city.

London Rebuilt focused on three specific decades, starting at the end of the 19th century, and up to the late 1920s, however, as discussed at the start of the post, change in London is continuous, and any book, blog post, photo etc. will only show a snapshot of the city at a specific time.

In just a few years, the view can change dramatically, and that is the only thing which is certain for any city such as London – there will always be change.

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

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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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