A few week’s ago, my post was about London Maps, and I included one of the strip maps by John Ogilby, who had the impressive title of His Majesties Cosmographer.
John Ogilby was a fascinating character. Born in 1600 in Scotland, he had many professions including a dancer, teacher, translator, publisher and map maker.
With William Morgan, John Ogilby created a very detailed map of London which was published 10 years after the Great Fire of London in 1666 (although it was probably surveyed before the fire). You can find the map on the Layers of London website, here.
Ogilby is probably best known for his atlas of all the major routes in the country, which he published in 1675 under the name of Britannia.
Routes were shown in a strip map format, where several strips were used to follow a route from source to destination. Along the route, towns and villages were listed, as were geographic features, roads leading off the main route, with their destinations listed, landmarks along the route, distances etc.
The map featured in the previous post was from London to Portsmouth, a route which started at the Standard in Cornhill.
The Standard in Cornhill was the starting point for many of the maps with routes that commenced in London, and after writing the previous post, I wanted to discover a bit more about the Standard, but before I head to Cornhill, here is another of Ogilby’s routes. This one a bit longer than the previous map to Portsmouth.
Each of the routes had a header on each page, with the first map having the title of the overall route, total distances, major towns and cities along the route, with individual distances between them.
So if you were planning to journey from the City of London, to Lands End in Cornwall, this was Ogilby’s route, which started with the summary header of the route of 303 miles and 3 furlongs, and started at the Standard in Cornhill:
The first page of the journey to Cornwall, runs from London to just before Winchester, and just after leaving what was then the limits of London, we cross Knightsbridge, when it was still a bridge:
We then cross Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire and Somersetshire. In the 17th century, counties still had “shire” at the end of the names such as Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, which would later be shortened, but as with current names such as Wilshire, the “shire” recalls the old origins of these counties and county boundaries:
We then continue travelling through Devonshire, passing through Exeter:
Then head into Cornwall, before finally reaching Lands End, which faces onto “The Western Sea”:
So where was The Standard, the start of the Lands End route, and of many other maps, and what was it? Helpfully there is a City of London plaque to mark the site:
The Standard sounds as if it should have been the name of one of the many large coaching inns across London, and which would make sense as a place where journeys across the country commenced, however it was an ancient well / water pump / conduit, and it was located at a key crossroads in the City of London, where Cornhill, Leadenhall Street, Bishopsgate and Gracechurch Street all meet.
The following photo shows the junction of these four roads:
You can just see the blue plaque, on the first floor of the corner of the white building across the junction. To the right of the white building is Cornhill and to the left is Gracechurch Street. The white building also shows how every bit of available land has been built on in the City, as the building is right up against the church of St. Peter, Cornhill, which has an entrance on Cornhill, and the rear of the church can be seen on Gracechurch Street to the left of the white building.
If we look at the four roads leading from this junction, we can see why this was an important location for travelling out of the City.
Gracechurch Street heads south down to London Bridge, which for centuries was the only bridge across the Thames, and therefore the main route to the south.
Leadenhall Street headed to the east, Bishopsgate headed to the north and Cornhill headed to the west, so from this junction, one could travel to the major routes that ran across the country, and was why maps such as Obilby’s used the Standard as their City of London starting point.
London Past and Present (Henry Wheatley, 1891) provides some background detail about the Standard:
“A water-standard with four spouts made (1582) by Peter Morris, a German, and supplied with water conveyed from the Thames by pipes of lead. it stood at the east end of Cornhill, at its junction with Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate Street and Leadenhall Street, and with the waste water from its four spouts cleansed the channels of the four streets.
The water ceased to run between 1598 and 1603; but the Standard itself remained for a long time after. It was long in use as a point of measurement for distances from the City, and several of our suburban milestones were, but a very few years ago, and some perhaps are still, inscribed with so many miles ‘from the Standard in Cornhill’. There was a Standard in Cornhill as early as Henry V.”
A print, dated 1814 of the “Antient North East View of Cornhill” shows the pump at the crossroads. The print is dated over 100 years after the pump was removed, so whether it was an interpretation of what it may have looked like, or whether it was based on an earlier print is impossible to know:
London Past and Present, and many other sources date the Standard to around 1582, however the site seems to have been used as a source of water for many centuries before.
In 1921, as new pipes to carry telephone cables were being laid across the junction, a well which was believed to have been below the Standard was discovered.
Four feet below the 1921 road surface an arched brick top to a brick well of 45 inches in diameter was found. Below this, at 18 feet below street level, a much older well was found, of 30 inches in diameter.
It was believed that this much older well had been filled in, along with part of the upper well, when the water pipes of Morris were installed through an opening in the side of the well.
Excavating the well below the old location of the Standard in 1921.
It was believed at the time that the lower parts of the well dated from early Medieval times, or possibly earlier, but as far I can find, no direct dating evidence was found.
I also cannot find any evidence that the brick and stone structure of the well was removed, so presumably the lower parts of this ancient well are still there, far below the road surface of the junction today.
The plaque mentions that the Standard was removed around 1674, and London Past and Present states that it remained long after water ceased to flow in 1603, and from most of the references I have found, it seems to be that the Standard had become an obstruction at a major road junction. It had long ceased to have any functional purpose and so was simply demolished.
Despite the loss of the Standard at some point in the later part of the 17th century, it continued to be used as a point for measuring distances to and from for many years to come. Not just formal measurements in maps, but also for almost any purpose that required a City of London reference point that would be widely known.
For example, I found the following advert in the Morning Herald on the 4th of January 1838:
“WANTED, a detached FAMILY RESIDENCE, within six miles of the Standard, Cornhill; consisting of drawing and dining rooms, three or four best bedrooms, servants’ rooms, and convenient domestic offices; double detached coach house and stabling lawn, pleasure and kitchen gardens; and if a few acres of meadow land it would be preferred – Apply by letter (post paid) to A.H., 9 Coleman-street, City”
The Standard, Cornhill was often mentioned on milestones when giving a distance to London. There was an 18th century example in Purley for many years. I am not sure if it has survived.
A 1921 article in the Sussex Express mentions the preservation of a milestone in Lewis:
“The milestone let in the upper front of 144/5 High Street, which the Council are to preserve when the building is demobilised, bears the interesting inscription, which probably many Lewes residents have not read; ‘Fifty miles from the Standard in Cornhill, 49 miles to Westminster Bridge, 8 miles to Brightelmstone.”
I have not heard of a building being “demobilised”. I assume it meant being demolished, and the Council did indeed preserve the milestone as it can still be seen in Lewes today, and fortunately I found a photo of the milestone on the brilliant Geograph website:
The Standard, Cornhill is just one of a number of locations that have been used as a point from where distances to and from London have been measured.
The most common location seems to be the statue of Charles I to the south of Trafalgar Square, where the Eleanor Cross once stood, so possibly the location of the final cross as part of a 13th century journey to London, still marks where distances are measured to and from:
Plaque by the statue recording that the site of the cross was / is from where distances are measured:
It is fascinating to stand at the eastern end of Cornhill, look across the road junction, and imagine the Standard water pump / conduit that once stood there, and that an ancient well probably still exists deep below the surface.
What I also find fascinating are the stories told by books, not just from their intended contents.
I have a copy of a 1939 facsimile of Ogilby’s Britannia, published by the Duckhams Oil Company on the 7th of December 1939, the 40th anniversary of the company’s founding.
Duckhams had a sales office at Duckhams House, 16 Cannon Street in the City, and the books of the facsimile of Britannia were in the office when war broke out. The company thought that the celebration of their 40th anniversary was a little out of place as war had just been declared.
The books appear to have been stored in Cannon Street for a period, with “two narrow escapes from bombing”, they were then distributed, with a little note in the inside cover:
The PTO reveals a postscript appealing for funds for the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund.
Alexander Duckham, who founded the company, and also signed the note in the book lived for some years at Vanbrugh Castle near Greenwich Park. He must have been a long standing supporter of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund as in 1920, just a year after the fund had been established, he donated Vanbrugh Castle to the fund, to be used as a school for children of members of the RAF who had been killed in service.
Just some of the obscure connections you can make across London.
From an ancient well and water conduit at an important cross roads in the City, to a map maker who used the water conduit as the starting point for his routes out of London, and to an early 20th century industrialist who loved Ogilby’s maps and published a facsimile from their office in Cannon Street during the last war.
Today’s post was not on my list of posts to write. Last Sunday, I was in the City to explore a site for a future post. It was a grey, overcast morning, and at one point there was a fine, wind driven drizzle, so I decided to head back home (I should have stayed for the afternoon as the sun came out).
Walking towards the Holborn Viaduct Bridge over Farringdon Street, I noticed another new building site where the previous building had been demolished and construction of the concrete core of the future development was underway.
I walked down from Holborn Viaduct, down to Farringdon Street as I wanted to see if a bit of Victorian construction was visible.
The following photo is from Farringdon Street. Part of the bridge over Farringdon Street is on the left, then there is one of the four pavilions, one on each corner of the bridge, then an open space with the new concrete core of the new building on the right edge of the photo:
Farringdon Street is the route of the lost River Fleet, and the bridge carries the road over what was the river, hence the low level of Farringdown Street, and the slope of the streets on either side.
Walking along the road to cross the bridge, it is not really obvious that the bridge is not the only part of the overall construction of the road, as you are walking along a manmade viaduct of some length.
Holborn Bridge is part of Holborn Viaduct, the 427m long viaduct designed to provide a bridge over the valley of the Fleet River and a level road between Holborn Circus and Newgate Street.
The construction contract for Holborn Viaduct was awarded on the 7th May 1866 and on the 6th November 1869 it was opened by Queen Victoria.
The construction of this 427m viaduct is not that visible, unless buildings along the viaduct are demolished, and it was this that I wanted to see.
Looking across the cleared construction site, and the side of the viaduct was clearly visible:
This is a view of what remains of the 1860s construction of Holborn Viaduct, and how the long approach to the bridge was built up in height.
At the top, there is a distnct layer which makes up the made ground under the street.
We then come to the core of the viaduct, with the edge of brick walls, which presumably run the width of the viaduct across the street, and in the lower half of the viaduct there are clearly defined brick arches.
Much of the side of the viaduct appears to have been skimmed and filled with concrete. I assume the whole of the viaduct has been filled, but it would be interesting to know whether there is any open space within the arches of the viaduct.
I also assume that the concrete skim and possible fill is of later date, and the brick columns and arches are from the 1860s build of Holborn Viaduct.
It is not often that you can see the hidden details of Victorian design and construction techniques, and the outline of the brick arches that support Holborn Viaduct will probably be soon covered again by the new building that will be built on the site, but they show the considerable construction work either side of the bridge, and which you are walking over as you walk along Holborn Viaduct, towards the bridge over Farringdon Street.
There has been a considerable amount of construction in Farringdon Street in the small section between Holborn Viaduct and Ludgate Circus in the last few years, the above example being just the latest, and I wanted to see what was happening at another, where the Hoop & Grapes pub was located:
The Hoop & Grapes has been closed for the last couple of years, when the buildings on either side of the pub were demolished.
The new building on the right of the pub is making good progress, and there will soon be more construction on the left, and until this is complete the left hand wall of the pub is shored up.
The building is Grade II listed and is of some age. According to the listing details, the building was part of a terrace, with the house being built around 1720 for a vintner, and converted to a public house in 1832.
The listing also states that the “Basement has brick vaults thought to be part of 17th century warehousing vaults built in connection with the formation of the Fleet Canal. Built on part of the site of St. Bride’s Burial Ground.”
Rocque’s 1746 map still shows St. Bride’s burial ground (ringed in map extract below), although there is a space between the burial ground and Fleet Market, so the terrace which included the building that would become the Hoop & Grapes could have been within this small space, or perhaps to one side:
The Fleet Canal reference in the Historic England listing refers to when this stretch of the River Fleet was constrained within a channel, along which, and partly over, the Fleet Market developed.
Another view looking at the new developments and the old Hoop & Grapes pub, which has seen the area change beyond all recognition since the house was built:
I really struggle with some of these redevelopments.
London has always changed. Some of the terrace houses that survived to the 20th century along with the Hoop & Grapes were damaged during the war, and then demolished.
New officces were built surrounding the pub in the 1950s. These were in turn demolished in the 1990s, and it is these buildings which are being demolished for the new development.
Each iteration of development seems to get larger and more overpowering for buildings that survive, and based on the lifespan of the post-war developments on the site, the building currently being built, will be demolished in turn, in the 2060s / 2070s.
Again, it is good that buildings such as the pub survive, but they almost become a museum exhibit, stuck in a streetscape that they have no relationship with, and totally out of context.
I photographed the Hoop & Grapes in 2020, when I had a walk around all the City of London pubs:
I do not know whether the pub will reopen when redevelopment of the surrounding buildings has been completed.
The City of London Corporation seems to be making some efforts to retain City pubs, and they have announced that the Still and Star, Aldgate, St Brides Tavern, Blackfriars, the White Swan, Fetter Lane and the King’s Arms at 55 Old Broad Street / London Wall, will all be reopening in the coming years, however this often refers to the name being retained and the pub being relocated to a new structure within a new development.
There is no mention of the Hoop & Grapes.
A very short distance south along Farringdon Street, on the opposite side of the road is 5 Fleet Place, the cream coloured building that was completed in 2007:
In the above photo, you can just see a road sign with a white arrow on a blue background on the street at the corner of the building. Look through the square arch of the building to the left of the arrow sign, and there are three plaques. which tell of religious and political history:
Staring from the bottom is a stone that was laid on the 10th of May, 1872 at the new Congregational Memorial Hall and Library:
The stone states that the Memorial Hall was erected to commemorate “The Fidelity of Conscience shown by the Ejected Ministers of 1662”.
To understand what was being commemorated, we need to go back to the mid-16th century and the Act of Uniformity of 1558. This was passed in 1559 and established that the church should be unified around Anglicanism and worship should be according to the Book of Common Prayer.
This act was an attempt to address the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism that had been simmering since the break from the Church of Rome by Henry VIII.
The act lasted until 1650 when it was repealed by the Rump Parliament established during the first year of the new Commonwealth of England, set up immediately after the English Civil War.
It was repealed to provide greater religious freedom for Puritans and non-conformists.
There was a strong religious independent and Puritan element to Parliamentary forces in the Civil War, and is why many churches had their decoration and statues damaged and destroyed by Parliamentary soldiers as these were seen as being a residual influence of the Church of Rome.
When Charles II was returned to the throne, there was pressure from the Church of England to unify the church around Anglican principles and the Book of Common Prayer.
The Act was brought back into law, and Ministers were forced to swear an oath that they would give “unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed” in the Book of Common Prayer.
Many Puritan, Presbyterian and Independent ministers could not swear such an oath, and around 2,000 were forced out by the “Great Ejection” from the Church of England on St. Bartholomew’s Day, the 24th of August, 1662 – the event recorded by the stone.
Title page from the pamphlet “‘The Farewell Sermons of the Late London Ministers'” showing 12 of the ejected ministers:
Newspaper reports of the ceremony to lay the foundation stone included the following which gives some background as to how the memorial hall was funded and the facilities within the building:
“The Act of Uniformity passed in the year 1662, had the effect of ejecting from their charges more that two thousand ministers who could not conscientiously subscribe to it. At a meeting of the Congregational Union, held at Birmingham in 1861, it was resolved to commemorate the event.
A conference was convened and held, at which it was decided that a bicentenary memorial fund should be raised, among the objects specified being the erection of new chapels, the extinction of chapel debts, and especially the erection of a Congregational Memorial Hall. A committee was appointed to carry the scheme into full effect, and at the next annual meeting it was reported that the total amount paid and promised in connection with this commemoration was nearly £250,000.
A site was found in Farringdon-street, which had formed part of the old Fleet Prison, and the ground was purchased at a cost of £23,000. The architect’s designs comprise a hall to hold from 1,200 to 1,500 people, a library, a board-room, and other offices. The whole is erected at a cost of not less than £30,000.”
The Congregational Hall and Library as it appeared in the 1920s (the building with the large tower):
The library was a considerable resource of over 8,000 volumes and manuscripts covering dissenting religious history.
The library was moved to Manchester during the war, for safety, and also because the Government requisitioned the building between 1940 and 1950 for war purposes.
The library returned in 1957, however ten years later, the collection had to be moved out again as the site was being redeveloped, which brings us to the second plaque:
Around 100 years after completion, maintenance of a large Victorian building was difficult and expensive, so the Congregational Memorial Hall Trust decided to have the site redeveloped with a new office block on site, along with space for the library and for meetings.
The above foundation stone is from this new building – Caroone House.
The library though did not return to the new building. It had been moved to 14 Gordon Square in advance of the redevelopment, and was housed with and administered by Dr. Williams’s Library, another library of religious dissenting books and manuscripts.
The library had to move out of Gordon Square a couple of years ago due to the potential costs of the redevelopment of the site, and the library is now housed at Westminster College, Cambridge, a theological collection that brings together Congregational and Presbyterian college traditions.
And now for the third plaque. It is not often that one of my posts has a very topical subject, but for this week’s post, in 1900, the Congregational Memorial Hall was the site of the founding of the Labour Party:
Rather than a northern industrial town, the meeting that resulted in the founding of the Labour Party was held in the Congregational Memorial Hall, in Farringdon Street on the 27th of February, 1900.
The meeting was the inaugural meeting of the Labour Representation Committee and the purpose of the meeting, which had been arranged by the Trades Union Congress, was to agree on how the various strands of the Labour movement could be brought together into a single party.
Up until the 1900 meeting, the interests of labour had been represented by the Trades Union Congress, the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation, who all attended the meeting in Farringdon Street.
The Cooperative Movement had been invited but did not attend as their aim was to maintain a politically neutral approach.
130 delegates met in the library of the Congregational Hall, and the following paragraph from the end of a report on the meeting in the London Daily News gives an indication of the approach of the new unified Labour Party:
“The speeches for the most part were couched in a spirit of broad toleration. Mr. Burns and Mr. Harnes, and Mr. Steadman and Mr. Tillett, all protested against the spirit of narrow sectarianism which has prevailed so largely hitherto.
And Mr. Hardie and Mr. Burgess, from the Independent Labour Party also took the same line, and strongly condemned a proposal that a Labour Party should be organised upon the basis of ‘recognising the existence of a class war’, which got defeated by the adoption of an amending resolution.”
Caroone House was demolished in 2004, so that the office block we see today could be built, and which was completed in 2007. The two foundation stones and the plaque recording the founding of Labour were reinstalled.
A very short walk along part of Farringdon Street, where we can see part of the viaduct constructed by the Victorians to create a wider and higher bridge over what was the route of the River Fleet, a 300 year old house that once looked onto the river and that once housed a pub, and hopefully will do so in the future, as it is surrounded by much larger steel and glass office blocks, and the site of a hall, built to commemorate a religious schism in the 17th century, and the founding of the Labour Party at the very start of the 20th century.
Another example of just how much diverse history can be found during a short walk along a City street.
The next time I write about Farringdon Street, I hope that the Hoop & Grapes will be open again as a traditional London pub, rather than what seems to happen to so many pubs where development takes place – a reimagined pub.
Despite the appearance of Farringdon Street today, it is a very historic street, and the Fleet Prison which was on the site of the Congregational Memorial Hall will be the subject of a future post.
Bedford Square, Bloomsbury must be one of the best preserved, late 18th century squares in London, and in this part of London there is plenty of competition.
Bedford Square is just north of New Oxford Street, and has the British Museum to the east, and Tottenham Court Road a short distance to the west. The following map shows the location of the square in red:
Bedford Square was planned and built between 1775 and 1780 as part of the development of the land owned by the Duke of Bedford (hence the name) within his Bloomsbury Estate.
This was a time when London was expanding northwards and the fields, streams, ponds and footpaths that comprised the Bloomsbury Estate would soon be part of the built city, however it would be a unique area due to the number of large squares which provided open, green space for the occupants of the new houses to enjoy.
The following extract shows the area as it was not long before the development of Bedford Square. This is from Rocque’s map of 1746 and I have marked the future location of Bedford Square with the red rectangle, and much of the approximately 112 acres of the Bloomsbury Estate then open space:
The yellow rectangle is around Montague House, the future site of the British Museum.
Plots of land around Bedford Square were leased by the architect Thomas Leverton and builders, Robert Crews and William Scott.
it is believed that Thomas Leverton was responsible for the overall plan of the buildings lining the four sides of the square, although there is no firm evidence to support this.
Thomas Leverton was the son of the builder Lancelot Leverton who was based in Woodford, Essex.
He seems to have designed a number of country houses, and where there is firm evidence of his connection with Bedford Square is with number 13 where he worked on the interior of the building and lived in the house from 1796 until his death in 1824.
Each of the sides of the square has the same basic design, which was intended to emulate the appearance of a large country house, with the central building decorated with stucco, along with pilasters and pediments.
The “wings” of this central house are the row of brick terrace houses on either side of the central house and that run to the corners of the square:
The above photo is of the northern side of the square and the photo below is of the eastern side. The overall design is the same however there are subtle differences, for example the central house on the north side has six bays, whilst that on the eastern side has five:
This seems to be down to the fact that the square is not really a square, rather a rectangle with the north and south sides being 520 feet long whilst the east and west are 320 feet.
To show how little Bedford Square has changed, the following print from 1851 is of the same view as the above photo:
The only things that have changed is the replacement of coach and horses by cars, wider paving and the amount of street furniture we see today.
The remarkable preservation of the houses in Bedford Square appears to be due to the way that the Bedford Estate has managed the square since its original construction.
Steen Eiler Rasmussen writing in “London: The Unique City” (1948 edition) gives a fascinating insight into how this worked.
The original land was leased as a number of lots where a house would be built, and for the first 99 year lease, the annual ground rent was £3 for each lot.
After 99 years, the Bedford Estate than became the owner of not only the ground, but also the house that had been built on the land, and it was then leased for an additional period for a new annual sum that reflected both the land and the house, so by the end of the 99 years of the first leasing period, houses were then leased at different values to reflect the type, design and condition of the house on the land.
After the first 99 years, as well as different financial values, the leases were also for different periods, between twenty and fifty years. This seems to have been based on the work that the new leaseholder was planning to put into the building, so a leaseholder making a considerable investment on repairs, rebuilding and improvements would have a longer lease period.
One of the benefits to the Bedford Estate of then having leases expire at different times was that it avoided the risk of the leases for all the houses surrounding the square being renewed, for example, during a period of financial depression and low demand, when lease values would have been reduced.
It also means that any plans for radical change across the square are difficult, as the leases all expire at different times, and so the leases that make up a large block of land would not all become available at the same time.
I have no idea whether the Bedford Estate still takes this approach, however it does help explain why the houses in Bedford Square have externally hardly changed since their original build.
Although the external appearance has hardly changed, the interior of the houses on Bedford Square may be very different, reflecting the changes that have taken place over the last few centuries. Different uses, different types of owner, all would have left their mark on the interior.
There are also subtle different to the external façade of the houses, for example, this end of terrace house has a metal veranda structure above the balcony that runs the full width of the house:
From the street, these houses look relatively narrow, however clever design results in a sizeable interior.
The following plan from the book London: The Unique City shows the layout of a typical house in Bedford Square:
Despite the narrow front facing onto the square, each house does extend a fair way back, with both the basement and the ground floors extending some distance, and storage areas which would have held consumables such as coal, extending underneath the pavement from the basement.
On the north east corner of Bedford Square, the house in the photo below has street signs indicating that it is at the corner of Gower Street and Montague Place:
However below the signs for these two streets are these much older signs indicating a Bedford Square address:
Much of the decoration around the doors of the houses is of Coade Stone, which was made in the factory owned by Eleanor Coade on the south bank of the river, just to the west of the Royal Festival Hall, and in the following photo Coade stone alternates with brick around the main entrances to the house:
As could probably be expected for a location such as Bedford Square, there are a large number of blue plaques on the houses. On the house in the above photo is an English Heritage plaque to Sir Harry Ricardo:
As stated on the plaque, Sir Harry Ricardo was a Mechanical Engineer, and much of his work was centred around the development of the internal combustion engine for both vehicles and aircraft, and his work contributed to the outcome of the First World War as he developed the engines that were used by the tanks on the battlefield.
And if you fill up a car with petrol, and check the octane rating of the petrol, that is also down to Sir Harry Ricardo as his work on the chemical composition of fuels resulted in the octane classification system
The company he founded is still going strong, and is still named Ricardo, and is based at Shoreham-by-Sea in West Sussex.
The large central houses on the north and south sides of the square have six window bays, and two large entrances:
Whilst those in the centre of the other two sides, have five window bays, and a single entrance from the street:
To the right of the entrance to the building in the above photo, a London County Coucil blue plaque record that Lord Eldon (1751 – 1838), Lord Chancellor, lived in the house.
He does not appear to have been very popular in the role of Lord Chancellor as the following is typical of the obituaries that were published after his death;
“For five-and-twenty years Lord Eldon held possession of the woolsack. Here was a position and a power of doing good in the hands of any man honestly disposed towards his country. For a quarter of a century he had absolute authority over the very stronghold of legal corruption – over the crying grievance of the nation – over the engine which broke the happiness, destroyed the fortunes, and wore away even the lives, of no small portion of his fellow men.
What did Lord Eldon do? Did he make one effort to palliate the evil? Did he, in a single instance, exert his power to rescue its victims? Did he, by one gesture, encourage those who were labouring day and night to work out the reformation he could at once have accomplished?
No. Lord Eldon was their bitterest, their most determined foe. He exerted his mighty power, in his court, in the cabinet, and in the closet, to stifle all enquiry, to destroy all opposition, to render hopeless every effort for amendment. He threw his protection over every harpy which fattened upon the corruption of his court, and verily they flourished.”
He also does not appear to have been that popular with his daughter, as she eloped with G S Repton, who was the son of Humphry Repton, the designer of the gardens in nearby Bloomsbury and Russell Squares.
View along the western side of Bedford Square:
The above photo shows that there are subtle differences to the apparent identical design of the houses in the terrace. Look at the decoration around the entrances, and the central two have solid white stone decoration, whilst the outer two have a mix of white Coade stone and the same brick as the rest of the house.
The central gardens are private, and are for the residents of the square.
As well as the majority of the surrounding houses being listed, these gardens are also Grade II* listed.
They have not changed that much since originally being set out. The shrubbery around the perimeter of the gardens appear to be a long standing feature. In the 19th century, paths across the grass were removed.
There was limited damage to the square during the last war, with a single house in the southern side of the square damaged, along with the houses in the south east corner.
The shrubbery limits the views across the gardens, but glimpses are available as shown in the following photo:
Another Bedford Square blue plaque on the house in the photo below:
This plaque is a perfect example of the range and diversity of people who have passed through London over the centuries.
The plaque records that Ram Mohun Roy, Indian reformer and Scholar lived in the house.
Ram Mohun Roy was born in Radhanagar, Bengal, India, in 1772. Although a Hindu, Roy studied all the religions he could find in India. He wrote and campaigned against religious superstition, and the caste system.
He was the founder of two of India’s earliest newspapers, but after the British imposed censorship of the Calcutta press in the 1820s, he started to campaign for freedom of speech, and became more involved in social reform.
He had come into contact with the East India Company, working as a translator as well as an assistant to East India Company staff.
in 1830, Roy came to England. An ex-emperor of Delhi had made Roy his ambassador so that he could plead the emperor’s cause with the authorities of the East India Company.
He was well received in London society (no doubt a Bedford Square address helped), and addressed the Unitarians (a dissenting Christian approach, where members follow their own beliefs rather than the doctrine of the Church of England). The Unitarians are still based in Essex Street off the Strand, where their first meeting was held in 1774, so it was probably here that Roy made his address.
He did not return to India, but died in Bristol during a visit at the invitation of Unitarian friends, and is now buried at Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol.
On an adjacent house is a green plaque:
Recording that the Bedford College for Women, the University of London was founded in the house in 1849 by Elizabeth Jesser Reid.
There is a connection between Ram Mohun Roy and Elizabeth Jesser Reid, as she was the daughter of a wealthy Unitarian ironmonger and was born in 1789. She married Dr. John Reid, a nonconformist, and in 1849 she founded the Ladies College or College for Women, using her Unitarian and Bloomsbury connections to gather support, and to get teaching staff and professors to teach at the college.
The College was the first higher education establishment for women in the country.
It would stay in Bedford Square to 1874, when the lease came up for renewal. The Bedford Estate did not want to renew the lease with the college, so the college moved to larger premises near Baker Street.
Yet another blue plaque:
This one to an architect, William Butterfield.
Born in London in 1814, Butterfield trained as an architect and established his own architectural practice in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, before moving to the Adelphi.
He was involved with the study of Gothic Architecture, and the Victorian revival of religious architecture. This resulted in a considerable amount of work on churches and their associated building both in London and across the country.
William Butterfield died in his house in Bedford Square on the 23rd of February, 1900.
That is just a sample of the plaques to be found in Bedford Square.
Today, Bedford Square is home to a number of cultural institutions, including Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Yale University Press, and the New College for Humanities.
Bedford Square is one of those rare places in London, where, if you took away all the cars, a resident from the late 18th century, just after the square was completed, could return today and externally, the square would be perfectly recognisable.
It is also interesting to consider that whilst there is so much change across London, and there have been multiple different buildings on sites across much of London, when we stand in Bedford Square, we are looking at the only houses that have been built here, since the land was fields.
It is a lovely example of architecture and street planning.
Charles Street is a typical Mayfair street. A varied range of architecture, a hotel, private houses, investment and wealth management companies, corporate offices, embassies, and much more hidden behind the facades of tall buildings that line the street.
I recently went for a walk along the street to find two pubs, the Footman and the Red Lion.
A photo of the Footman appeared in the 1920s three volume set of Wonderful London, when it was known as the Running Footman:
The following text is the commentary to the above photo in Wonderful London:
“THE RUNNING FOOTMAN, A PICTURE OF THE OLD MAYFAIR – Charles Street, off Berkeley Square, retains a pub named after that special kind of servant whose duty it was to run before the crawling family coach, help it out of ruts, warn toll-keepers, and clear the way generally. He wore a livery and usually carried a cane. The last person to employ a Running Footman is said to have been ‘Old Q.’ the Duke of Queensbery who died in 1810. The faded sign is fixed to the bay in the side street and appears here, over the taxi. The tavern is a bit of London from the days of ‘the Quality’, whose servants it served.”
Wonderful London has a rather rose tinted view of the role of a running footman. I suspect in reality it was really difficult and exhausting to keep ahead of a coach, and carry out any other manual activities such as lifting the coach out of outs.
I found an alternative description of the role of a running footman, which is probably more realistic:
“The Running Footman – men have adopted various inhuman methods to increase their self-importance at different epochs, but few more inhuman than that of the running footman, of whom Mr. John Owen writes in his new novel, published today under the title of ‘The Running Footman’.
This 18th century barbarism, whereby a man was forced to run 30 yards in front of his master’s coach for incredible distances, naturally resulted in the runners death from heart disease or consumption.”
The following print from 1741 is a satirical interpretation of the opposition methods in the parliamentary motion to remove Robert Walpole from office, and shows a Running Footman at the left of the print, running in front of a team of horses and the coach.
There was an interesting story of a Running Footman in the newspapers on the 5th of October, 1728, which hints at how fast they could run:
“A Foot Race of two Miles being Advertised to be Run last Thursday on the Marshes near Hackney River by young Women for a Holland Shift, as three were dressing in order to start, one of them was discovered to be a Running Footman to a Person of Quality, who seeing he was betrayed found means to re-mount the Horse he rode on with a Side-Saddle. The Mob understanding the matter pursued him in order to duck him in the River, but to make more speed, he dismounted, rid himself of his Petticoats, took to his Heels and got clear of them, after much more Diversion than the Race, which was afterwards run by the other two.”
The pub that is shown in the Wonderful London photo would only last for around another 10 years, as in the 1930s, the Running Footman would be rebuilt in the red brick style of pubs of the time, and it is this version of the pub that we find in Charles Street today, with the name truncated to just The Footman:
The shorter name is relatively recent as the pub also had the names “The Only Running Footman” and “I am the Only Running Footman”.
The original pub dates from the mid-18th century, and there are online references to the pub originally being called the Running Horse, although I cannot find any references from the late 18th century of a pub in Charles Street with this name.
The first newspaper references to the Running Footman date from the first decades of the 19th century, for example in May 1821 there were stables for sale in Charles Street, and the Running Footman was given as one of the places were details of the sale could be found.
The 1930s rebuild features an interesting extension to the roof, and the building is now taller than the rest of the terrace of which it was part:
The above photo shows the eastern end of Charles Street, with the southern end of Berkeley Square to the right.
Charles Street seems to have been laid out during the later part of the 17th century. Rocque’s map of 1746 shows the surrounding built area, the upper eastern part of Charles Street has been built, and a blank space with street outlines covering the area west and north of Charles Street. The yellow circle marks the location of the Running Footman:
Although the map shows street outlines, the layout today is slightly different, and Charles Street extends to the corner of the space occupied by the large house at left, where it turns north. It was here I was heading next to find another pub, and to look at the mix of architecture along the street.
The original build of Charles Street was mid to late 18th century / early 19th century, brick terrace houses, and over the following decades many of these would be combined and rebuilt to leave the mix of architectural styles and periods that we see today:
At the junction with Queen Street, there is an open space with a tree in the centre, with the street turning slightly to the north. This point was the original end of Charles Street as shown in Rocque’s 1746 map, so the street may have originally terminated here, before being extended on as development of the area completed.
And as we walk along Charles Street, we continue to see the mix of architecture, including where original terrace houses have been combined and a new stone façade has been built over the original brick:
On the house shown above, there is a London County Council plaque stating that Archibald Philip Primrose, the 5th Earl of Rosebery was born in the house in 1847:
Towards the western end of Charles Street, the street suddenly narrows as it turns to run along the northern edge of large, terrace houses. This change in the street marks the point where the original gardens of Chesterfield House (see the extract from Rocque’s map earlier in the post) extended, with the street turning along the north east corner of the old gardens:
At the end of the narrow section of Charles Street, where there is a sharp bend up towards Waverton Street we can see what remains of the Red Lion, the second pub I was looking for in Charles Street (the scaffolding is on the building opposite, not on the old pub):
The Red Lion is now a residential property, having closed as a pub in 2009.
The building still retains some of the features of a London pub on the facade facing the street, however the rest of the building is very different.
After closing as a pub, it underwent a very significant rebuild, both above and below ground to create a very different space behind the façade.
I would not normally put a link to the Mail Online in the blog, however this is where I found an article on the conversion of the building from pub to residential, which includes a number of photos of the interior of the building, which are hard to reconcile with the view when you stand outside, and shows what can be done if you have £25 million to spare (in 2009).
A look down Red Lion Yard at the side of the old pub shows the way that the building has been extended above ground, in addition to the two levels below ground which doubled the overall space:
The article described the pub as a “dingy drinking establishment“. It did seem to have been left to run down over the last few years of being a pub, but in the few times I went in, it always seemed to be reasonably busy.
Unlike the Running Footman, the Red Lion was in a rather hidden part of the local streets, and it was a “local” pub so perhaps trade was not enough to keep the pub viable.
I suspect that when the company that owned the pub was offered a good sum of money, it was worth selling for development rather than retaining as a pub.
At the end of the alley leading into Red Lion Yard is this square of buildings, which again shows a level of redevelopment:
Entrance to Red Lion Yard alongside the old Red Lion:
Although the Red Lion is at the end of Charles Street, it is also in the southern edge of Waverton Street, with a short section leading up to Hill Street before continuing northwards. A short distance from the Red Lion in Waverton Street, significant development continues:
Looking back from in front of the Red Lion, along Charles Street. Again this narrow section of the street once had the gardens of Chesterfield House on the right:
Walking back along Charles Street, and this is Dartmouth House:
Dartmouth House is another building which started off as part of a brick terrace of houses, but after combining individual houses, extending the resulting building and constructing a new stone façade, we get the building we see today.
the first recorded resident was the Dowager Duchess of Chandos in 1757, and for the following centuries the house has been occupied mainly by a succession of Dukes, Earls, a Dowager and a Marquis – or “The Quality” as Wonderful London and other early references to the role of a Running Footman would have referred to them.
Since 1926, Dartmouth House has been the headquarters of the English Speaking Union (ESU).
The ESU have published a brief history of the house, and within this they reference the River Tyburn and that the brook runs under Dartmouth House and caused serious damage to papers stored in the basement in the 1990s.
According to “The Lost Rivers of London” by Nicholas Barton and Stephen Myers the Tyburn runs slightly to the east and south. Under the south eastern corner of Berkeley Square towards Curzon Street, rather than running under Dartmouth House, however the basement of Dartmouth House is within what would have been the marshy area surrounding the Tyburn and any remaining springs, a high water table after heavy rains etc. could still result in basement flooding.
Just one of the ways in which the pre-built environment, when the area was all fields streams and ponds, occasionally still bursts through to the 21st century.
A house with a green City of Westminster plaque on the ground floor:
The plaque states that Lady Dorothy Nevill lived in the house from 1873 to 1913:
Born in 1826, she was the daughter of Horace Walpole and Mary Fawkener.
When she died in 1913, obituaries stated that she was one of the more important links between the Victorian and present eras, and that she had lived through the reigns of George IV, William IV, Victoria, Edward VII and George V.
Her obituaries stated that she was “profoundly conscious of the fact that she was connected in blood with many of the leading families in England; but unlike most British aristocrats (remarks the Times), though a keen Conservative in politics, fully alive to the changes that time had brought upon English Society.”
Her support of Conservative politics was such that she “was one of the two or three ladies responsible for the founding of the Primrose League; indeed it is said to have been first suggested at her luncheon table; and every year on April 19 her windows and balconies were covered with primroses”.
The Primrose League (named after the favourite flower of Benjamin Disraeli) was founded in 1883 and was a Conservative supporting, mass membership organisation, formed to promote the aims of the Conservative party across the country, and support the election of Conservative candidates.
The success of the league was such that in ten years, membership had reached over one million, and there were members across the country, including the industrial towns of the north.
There were however, many sceptical of the organisation, and the Edinburgh Evening News on the 2nd of February 1884 was reporting that:
“That latest of Conservative follies, the Primrose League, is pushing its way. A considerable number of people have joined it, and its organisors assert that it will in the course of time become a powerful element of Tory reaction. It has been decided to start a branch of the League at Birmingham, with a view of assisting the candidature of Lord Randolph Churchill.
A correspondent suggests however, that an institution like the Primrose League is more suited for the atmousphere of Belgravia than Birmingham.
It was established by some rather weak-minded Conservatives in the West End of London, and it is not likely that it will be largely supported by the artisans of Birmingham. The League intends to hold a great demonstration on April 19th, the anniversary of Lord Beaconsfield’s death. There is some talk of its members walking through the metropolis in a monster procession.”
Surprisingly, the Primrose League lasted until 2004, when it was disbanded.
Her obituary also remarked that “The Sunday luncheon parties at her little house in Charles Street were the meeting place of people of all kinds of opinion, drawn from many walks of life, though she herself was fond of saying that her society was exclusive, dull people being never admitted”.
I like the description of her house in Charles Street being described as “her little house”, but I suppose that all things are relative for “The Quality”.
Whilst many of the buildings along Charles Street have changed significantly since the street was first developed, there are some original houses, and some of these have had some rather strange additions, such as this terrace house with a stone bay window that looks as if it has been randomly stuck on the building:
At the Berkeley Square end of the street there is, what the Historic England listing describes as “Two full height canted bays of 3 sashes each per floor and a 2 storey 2 window extension to left hand”. This is the rear of the Grade II listed 52 and 52A Berkeley Square, which date back to around 1750 and form part of the first development along Charles Street:
Charles Street is an interesting little street. Many of the buildings have an aristocratic heritage, as does the origins of the name of the Footman pub.
It is brilliant that the Footman survives, and the loss of the Red Lion is a shame. I do not know the reasons for the pub’s closure, but I often wonder in the planning decisions for pub conversions, just how much consideration is given to the change in use, and the loss of a community asset.
These converted properties often become trophy assets that add very little to the area.
Theoretically, it should now be much harder to get planning permission for the conversion of a pub.
The London Plan, published by the Mayor of London, includes “Policy HC7 Protecting public houses” which does appear to provide a strong framework for resisting the conversion of a pub to alternative uses, however I suspect there are always ways and means to get around such constraints.
On a positive note for the area, Charles Street is in the City of Westminster, which in the 2017 London Pubs Annual Data Note (part of the Greater London Authorities Cultural Infrastructure Report), and Westminster had the highest number of pubs of any borough in London with 430,
In second place was Camden with 230 and in third place was Islington with 215. Barking and Dagenham had the fewest number of pubs, with just 20.
I did not take any photos of the Red Lion when it was open, which I regret. You do not appreciate places until they are gone, and this is now one of the reasons why I probably take too many photos of even the most mundane street scene, as you know for sure, that within London – at some point it will have changed.
Jays Stores was a store in Lower Road, Rotherhithe, that had a large sign advertising Jays for Jeans at the top of the building, above an illustration of a man presumably dressed in clothes available from the store.
My father photographed Jays Stores and the Jays for Jeans sign in 1986:
I could not get exactly the same view as in 1986 due to road works occupying the space directly opposite, however an almost the same view of Jays for Jeans, 38 years later in January 2024:
I am not sure exactly when Jays Stores opened, but the store closed in 2016. I suspect that the location of the store opposite the shops of the Surrey Quays shopping centre, Internet shopping, and the loss of local industry, with the resulting loss of trade for industrial wear, donkey jackets etc. (as advertised in the 1986 window) resulted in the store being economically unviable.
The store did make it onto the Internet though, as the surviving sign on the top of the building in 2024 shows that Jays for Jeans had a.co.uk address for the store, a different sign to the one in 1986.
The central panel has either completely faded, or perhaps been over painted.
To the right of the store, in the 1986 photo, can be seen part of one of the estate agents set-up to market the new properties being built as part of the redevelopment of the docklands.
Jays for Jeans is one of those local landmarks that defines an area for a specific period of time.
I walked down to the location of Jays for Jeans from Canada Water station, having arrived on the Jubilee Line.
It was a short walk, by the most direct route (that avoided the Surrey Quays shopping centre), but a route that confirmed that you can find things of interest in almost any London street, and is one of the joys of walking.
Staring with the wonderful drum structure over Canada Water station, a design which allows a large amount of natural light to get into the station below. The drum is above the escalators which run between the ticket hall and the platforms below:
From Canada Water Station, I headed down Surrey Quays Road, a street which was one of the main entrances into the Surrey Commercial Docks which once occupied the majority of this part of Rotherhithe.
Along this street is one of the very few remaining buildings from the docks – the Dock Manager’s Offices:
This glorious buildings is Grade II listed, and dates from 1892 when it was built by the Surrey Commercial Dock Company.
The building is very well preserved, and when in use as the dock offices, it consisted of three main parts: the Superintendent’s Office with clock tower, a Janitor’s House, which is the smaller block closest to the camera with the Dock Offices signage, and a large open plan General Office, which can be seen in the above photo receding to the right.
The building is now owned by British Land, and I believe part of the interior has been designed to showcase the flats that are being built as part of the significant redevelopment going on around the Surrey Quays area.
There is a plaque on the side of the Dock Manager’s Office which records a major event during the last war:
I am going to save the story of the docks here in Rotherhithe for some later posts as there is so much to tell about this part of London, and for now, I will continue on to Jays for Jeans.
At the end of Surrey Quays Road, the street meets Lower Road, and on the western side of Lower Road is the Seven Islands Leisure Centre:
Opened as the Rotherhithe Bath and Assembly Hall on the 27th of November, 1965, the building included a swimming pool, assembly hall with stage and dressing rooms, crèche and play area for children and a place for sunbathing.
The name comes from what were believed to have been seven islands in-between the streams that drained Rotherhithe and Bermondsey into the Thames.
The building retains a wonderful example of the coat of arms of the old Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey:
Bermondsey, as a Metropolitan Borough existed from 1900 (when it brought together the old parishes of Bermondsey, Rotherhithe and St. Olave), until 1965 when it was replaced by the London Borough of Southwark.
Within the coat of arms, the lion and the two letter B’s on either side, are from the Bermondsey Vestry and have their origins in Bermondsey Abbey.
Rotherhithe and the docks are represented by the ship at bottom right.
The Latin motto at the bottom of the arms, “prosunt gentibus artes” means “Arts profit the people”
On the opposite side of Lower Road is a brick built block of apartments, with a blue plaque between the first and second floors, above the central arch:
The blue plaque is to King Edward Frederick Muteesa II, the first President of Uganda:
Muteesa was the Kabaka (king or ruler) of Buganda, one of the individual kingdoms that make up the country of Uganda.
When Uganda became independent from Britain in 1962, Milton Obote became the Federal Prime Minister, and Obote negotiated an agreement with Muteesa that he would become President of Uganda, an agreement which was implemented by secret vote in Parliament on the 4th of October, 1963.
In the following years, there was infighting between the coalition that made up Parliament and between Obote and Muteesa, and it finally got to the point where in February 1966, Obote suspended the Federal Constitution and declared himself President, thereby deposing Muteesa.
Muteesa fled into exile and arrived in London, penniless, and without any support from the Government of Uganda.
During his earlier years he had been educated at Cambridge, where he also joined the university’s officer training corps, which led to a commission as a Captain in the Grenadier Guards.
It was this military connection that was to help with accommodation in London, and an old military contact provided him with the apartment in Orchard House, Lower Road.
He was temporarily buried in England until the political situation changed in Uganda when Idi Amin overthrew Milton Obote and Muteesa’s body was returned to Uganda and given a state funeral and burial.
As with so much of London, there are a number of closed pubs in Lower Road, places that recall the working class history of the area.
The first of these is the Prince of Orange:
The pub seems to have opened around the late 1830s / 1840s as it is during these years that I find the first mentions of what appears to be the Prince of Orange pub.
In the following decades there are all the usual mentions of events that you would expect to find in a London pub in the docks, with crime, fights, jobs available etc.
in the pubs last few decades, it seems to have been a venue for jazz, as in newspapers there are plenty of adverts, such as for Pete Boulter’s Blues Jam session (1995), and Mr. B Plays Basie (1983). In the Stage and Television Today in October 1982, it was reported that “on the pub front, let us applaud the Prince of Wales, Buckhurst Hill and the Prince of Orange, Rotherhithe, both presenting jazz practically every night of the week”.
At times, the pub was on BBC Radio 2, for example the listings for the 25th of January, 1988, included “Jazz Score, where Benny Green is in the chair at the Prince of Orange, Rotherhithe, and on the panel are Acker Bilk, Peter Clayton, Alan Elsdon and Ronnie Scott”.
The Prince of Orange is now apartments.
A short distance further along Lower Road is another closed pub, the China Hall:
There has been a pub on the site for a number of centuries and in 1719 a pub on the site was apparently called the “Cock and Pye Ale House.”
The earliest written reference I can find to the name China Hall is in the Oracle and Daily Advertiser, on the 27th of February, 1802, when “A few afternoons since, about half past four o’clock,, as Mr. Witts of the Europa Inn, Rotherhithe, was travelling near China Hall, in the lower Deptford Road, he was stopped by a single foot-pad, who robbed him of a £2 note and his cash”.
The road was originally called Lower Deptford Road, but has since dropped Deptford and is now simply Lower Road.
The site of the pub has a long history. In 1776 the pub appears to have been leased to a trader in tea and china called Jonathan Oldfield, and who built a theatre next to the pub, called the China Hall. The name may have come from his trade in china, and the name appears to have transferred from the theatre to the pub.
Edward Walford, writing in Old and New London (1878), has the following to say about the China Hall: “In former times a narrow pathway, called the ‘Halfpenny Hatch’ extended through the meadows and market-gardens from Blue Anchor Road to the Deptford Lower Road, where it emerged close by an old and much-frequented public-house called the ‘China Hall’. The ancient tavern, which was a picturesque building partly surrounded by an external gallery, was pulled down within the last few years, and in its place has been erected a more modern-looking tavern, bearing the same sign.
Our old friend Pepys mentions going to China Hall, but gives us no further particulars. It is not unlikely, says Mr. Larwood in his History of Signboards, that this was the same place which, in the summer of 1777, was opened as a theatre. Whatever its use in former times, it was at that time a warehouse of a paper manufacturer.
In those days the West End often visited the entertainments of the East, and the new theatre was sufficiently patronised to enable the proprietors to venture upon some embellishments. The prices were – boxes 3s; pit 2s, gallery 1s; and the time of commencement varied from half-past six to seven o’clock, according to the season. The Wonder, Love in a Village, the Comical Courtship and the Lying Valet were among the plays performed. The famous Cooke was one of the actors in the season of 1778. In that same year the building suffered the usual fate of theaters, and was utterly destroyed by fire”.
The China Hall pub closed at the end of 2018, after a local campaign failed to save it, although it appears to have been a going concern, was wanted by the local community and had publicans who wanted to continue.
The ownership of the pub has been very controversial, and since closure the upper floors have been converted to residential, with extra space from the addition of a mansard roof.
The ground floor did appear to be undergoing conversion however council planners issued a warning notice to stop. A planning application was made for conversion of the ground floor, this was turned down, and the council issued an enforcement notice requiring removal of residential partitions and fixtures.
The owner has since appealed against the planning refusal – I do not know the status of this appeal.
The China Hall illustrates the sad fate of many London pubs, that even when they are still viable businesses, and wanted by the local community, they are all too easily sold to a developer who can find more profit in the conversion of the property to residential.
Continuing down Lower Road, and on the eastern side of the street is a row of late 19th century, terrace houses. The second house on the left has a plaque to Ada Salter, just above the ground floor bay window, directly above where green bins can be seen:
Ada Brown was born in 1866, a child within a Wesleyan Methodist family in Raunds, Northamptonshire. She moved to London in 1896, where she joined the West London Mission of the Wesleyan Sisters of the People, before moving to their Bermondsey Settlement in 1897.
Alfred Salter was a student at Guy’s Hospital when he met Ada at the Bermondsey Settlement. They married in 1900 and lived in Bermondsey. Both Ada and Alfred worked tirelessly to improve conditions in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe.
The house with the plaque is at 149 Lower Road, and was the Women’s House of the Bermondsey Settlement. Ada lived in the house for two periods in 1897 and 1898.
The plaque is very recent as it was installed on the house in 2023:
Ada became a Labour councilor, the first woman councilor in Bermondsey in 1909 and set about recruiting women workers to trade unions to organise against the terrible working conditions in the area’s factories.
Alfred was elected MP for Bermondsey in 1909, the same year as Ada was elected Mayor.
A view of Ada’s campaigning approach to improving the living conditions of Londoner’s, can be seen in the following first two sections from an article she wrote in the Daily Herald on the 28th of February, 1934, titled: “Don’t forget the HIDDEN LONDON”:
“London is the most wonderful and romantic city in the world. London leads. What London thinks to-day Great Britain will do to-morrow.
Underlying its romance, its magnificence, its power, its wealth and its resources, is a vast morass of sorrow and misery, of poverty and struggle, of unrequited toil and unmerited suffering.
Watch some hundreds of thousands of citizens pouring each evening out of their office and work places in the centre of London and follow them to their homes. You will have glimpses of drab, featureless streets, rows of Early Victorian terrace houses, huge blocks of tenement dwellings. In these industrial dormitories the workers are not housed, but warehoused. Observe the daily fight for tram or bus and all the discomfort that it involves. Note the imperfect education given to children, too large classes, insufficiency of secondary schools, inadequacy of playing space in all working-class quarters.
Compare the dullness and ugliness of grace and colour which constitute the environment of the poor with the stateliness and magnificence of the West End and the pleasing amenities of the middle-class suburb.
Contrast the narrow, shut-in back yards with the spacious gardens surrounding the houses of the well-to-do. Remember the acres and acres of playing fields attached to all the public schools of England where the sons of the rich are educated, and then turn to the cramped, asphalted play grounds of the elementary schools in Bermondsey, Southwark, Bethnal Green, Stepney and Poplar.
It is this London of the mean streets to which our thoughts should turn at a London County Council Election rather than the ‘show’ London which visitors from the country and abroad come to see.”
Ada Salter in the early 1920s:
Ada was also featured in “The VOTE -THE ORGAN OF THE WOMEN’S FREEDOM LEAGUE” on the 1st of December 1922, when she was the fifth in a series of features on women mayors. In the article, she wrote:
“As the first woman in London to be offered the position of Mayor, I am proud that I live and work in a borough, the elected representatives of which are prepared to choose an individual who belongs to what is sometimes described as the weaker sex. As a woman, I am naturally eager that the woman’s share in responsibility of government should be a direct one. There is still a tremendous leeway to be made up in all departments of life that affect women, but the failure to catch the vision of a free humanity, where men and women can act together, and not in antagonism, is not confirmed to one sex.
By common consent, the Bermondsey Borough Council has for some years dispensed with the wearing of the Mayoral and Aldermanic robes, but I also do not intend to wear the chain of office. This, of course, is a purely personal matter. For brilliant colouring, and for the brightness of gold, I have the greatest admiration, but I desire them not as symbols of place and power. The ideal for which we must strive is to secure respect for the authority and decisions of the Chair, rather by personality and character, than by decorations of office.”
I suspect we need more Ada’s in politics today.
Ada Salter died on the 4th of December, 1942. One of the newspaper reports of her death started with “The death of Mrs. Ada Salter, who was London’s first woman Mayor, is a reminder of the many hitherto exclusively masculine fields in which women have now staked out a claim”.
Continuing down to the site of Jays for Jeans, and the third pub in this short walk. This is still open as a bar and restaurant but with a new name of the Yellow House:
The was the Caulkers, originally the Jolly Caulkers, and in a couple of references, the Merry Caulkers.
A Caulker was the person who had the job to fill in any gaps in a ship, to make it watertight. Filling the gaps between originally wooden planks and later the metal sheets that would make up the hull of a ship.
A profession that would have been found across the docks of Rotherhithe.
The earliest reference I can find to the pub is in the 1840s, however the design of the pub does not look 19th century, and I suspect it may have been rebuilt in the 1910s, as in the South London Gazette in 1919 there are references to the New Jolly Caulkers, and which therefore may be a reference to the pub we see today.
And a very short distance on from the Yellow House / Caulkers, was Jays for Jeans.
A short walk, which has revealed one of the few remaining buildings from the time when Rotherhithe was covered in docks, the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey, the first President of Uganda, Ada Salter, a campaigner for the living conditions of London’s working class and London’s first woman mayor, and three historic pubs.
There is so much more to write about this area, and the large dock complex that once occupied much of this part of Rotherhithe, and I hope to return in future posts.
An extra post this weekend, following up on the post a couple of weeks ago on Captain Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue which was first published in 1785; a fascinating little book that really bring to life the language that would have been heard on the streets of London in the 18th century.
This week I am covering words starting with the letters N to Z, and as with the first post covering A to M, there is the same focus on crime and punishment, and the challenges of everyday life.
There are words and phrases that are still in use today, many others have been redundant for a very long time.
There are also early examples of how we communicate today, with “gentlemen’s visiting cards” showing an early use of the type of text abbreviation used today with text and Whatsapp messaging (see P.P.C and D.I.O).
It was not just the vulgar tongue of London that Grose collected, he also published “A Glossary of Provincial and Local Words used in England” – a collection of words used across the country and show a very different focus than the vulgar tongue with an emphasis on agriculture, the weather and rural life, my favourite being AQUABOB which I will be using should we get any really cold weather this winter.
So, starting with the letter N from Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, we find some people that you would not want to meet on the streets of London:
NATTY LADS – Young thieves or pickpockets.
NAVY OFFICE – The Fleet prison. Commander of the Fleet; the warden of the Fleet prison.
NECK STAMPER – The boy who collects the pots belonging to an alehouse, sent out with beer to private houses.
NEW DROP – The scaffold used at Newgate for hanging criminals; which dropping down, leaves them suspended. By this improvement, the use of that vulgar vehicle, a cart, is entirely left off.
NICKNACKS – Toys, baubles or curiosities.
NIGHTMAN – One whose business is to empty the necessary houses in London, which is always done in the night.
NYP SHOP – The Peacock in Gray’s Inn Lane, where Burton ale is sold in nyps.
NIPPER – A cut-purse; so called by one Wotton who in the year 1585 kept an academy for the education and perfection of pickpockets and cut-purses; his second school was near Billingsgate, London. As in the dress of ancient times many people wore their purses at their girdles, cutting them was a branch of the light fingered art, which is now lost, though the name remains.
OAR – To put in one’s oar; to intermeddle, or give an opinion unasked; as, to be sure, you must put in your oar.
OLD HAND – Knowing or expert in any business.
OLD HARRY – A composition used by the vintners to adulterate their wines, also the nick name for the devil.
OLD NICK – The Devil.
ORGAN – A pipe. Will you cock your organ? will you smoke your pipe?
OTTOMISED – To be ottomised; to be dissected. You’ll be scragged, ottomised, and grin in a glass case; you’ll be hanged, anatomised, and your skeleton kept in a glass case at Surgeons Hall.
OVERSEER – A man standing in the pillory, is, from his elevated situation, said to be made an overseer.
OWL – To catch the; a trick practiced upon ignorant country boobies, who are decoyed into a barn under pretence of catching an owl, where, after divers preliminaries, the joke ends in their having a pail of water poured upon their heads.
OWL IN AN IVY BUSH – He looks like an owl in an ivy bush; frequently said of a person with a large frizzled wig, or a woman whose hair is dressed a-la-blowse.
OWLERS – Those who smuggle wool over to France.
P.P.C. – An inscription on the visiting cards of our modern fine gentleman, signifying that they have called pour prendre conge, i.e. ‘to take leave’. This has of late been ridiculed by cards inscribed D.I.O. i.e.’ Damme, I’m off’.
PADDINGTON FAIR DAY – An execution day, Tyburn being in the parish of Paddington. To dance the Paddington frisk; to be hanged.
PALL – A companion. One who generally accompanies another, or who commit robberies together.
PANNIER MAN – A servant belonging to the Temple and Gray’s Inn, whose office is to announce dinner. This in the Temple is done by blowing a horn, and in Gray’s Inn proclaiming the word Manger, Manger, Manger, in each of the three courts.
PARSON – A guide post, hand or finger post by the road for directing travelers: compared to a parson, because like him, it sets people in the right way.
I discovered the Guide Post shown in the photo below, which dates from 1686 and includes a pointing hand at Wroxton, from my post On The Road To Stratford-Upon-Avon
PECKISH – Hungry
PETER GUNNERE – will kill all the birds that died last summer. A piece of wit commonly thrown out at a person walking through a street or village near London, with a gun in his hand.
PETTICOAT HOLD – One who has an estate during his wife’s life, called the apron-string hold.
PETTICOAT PENSIONER – One kept by a woman for secret services.
PIGEONS – Sharpers, who, during the drawing of the lottery, wait ready mounted near Guildhall, and, as soon as the first two or three numbers are drawn, which they receive from a confederate on a card, ride with them full speed to some distant insurance office, where there is another of the gang, commonly a decent looking woman, who takes care to be at the office before the hour of drawing; to her he secretly gives the numbers, which she insures for a considerable sum.
PIMP – A male procurer, or cock bawd; also a small fagot used about London for lighting fires, named from introducing the fire to the coals.
PISS POT HALL – near Hackney, built by a potter chiefly out of the profits of chamber pots.
PISS-PROUD – Having a false erection. That old fellow thought he had an erection, but his _______ was only piss-proud; said of any old fellow who marries a young wife.
PITT’S PICTURE – A window stopt up on the inside, to save the tax imposed in that gentleman’s administration.
PURL – Ale in which wormwood has been infused, or ale and bitters drunk warm.
QUEEN STREET – A man governed by his wife, is said to live in Queen Street, or at the sign of the Queen’s Head.
QUEER BIRDS – Rogues relieved from prison, and returned to their old trade.
QUEER PLUNGERS – Cheats who throw themselves into the water, in order that they may be taken up by their accomplices, who carry them to one of the houses appointed by the Humane Society for the recovery of drowned persons; and the supposed drowned persons, pretending he was driven to that great extremity by great necessity, is also frequently sent away with a contribution in his pocket.
QUICK AND NIMBLE – More like a bear than a squirrel. Jeeringly said to any one moving sluggishly on a business errand that requires dispatch.
RABBIT CATCHER – A midwife.
RAINY DAY – To lay up something for a rainy day; to provide against a time of necessity of distress.
RANTALLION – One whose scrotum is so relaxed as to be longer than his penis, i.e. whose shot pouch is longer than the barrel of his piece.
RAREE SHEW MEN – Poor Savoyards, who subsist by showing the magic lantern and marmots about London.
RIDING ST. GEORGE – The woman uppermost in the amorous congress, that is, the dragon upon St. George. This is said the way to get a bishop.
RIGMAROLE – Roundabout, nonsensical. He told a long rigmarole story.
RING – Money procured by begging; beggars so called it from its ringing when thrown to them. Also a circle formed for boxers, wrestlers, and cudgel-players, by a man styled Vinegar; who, with his hat before his eyes, goes round the circle, striking at random with his whip to prevent the populace from crowding in.
ROMEVILLE – London
ROUGH – To lie rough; to lie all night in one’s clothes; called also roughing it. Likewise to sleep on the bare deck of a ship, when the person is commonly advised to choose the softest plank.
ROUND ABOUT – An instrument used in house-breaking. This instrument has not been long in use. It will cut a round piece about five inches in diameter out of a shutter or door.
RUFFLERS – The first rank of criminals; also notorious rogues pretending to be maimed soldiers or sailors.
RUNNING STATIONERS – Hawker of newspapers, trials and dying speeches.
RUSSIAN COFFEE HOUSE – The Brown Bear in Bow-street, Covent Garden, a house of call for thief-takers and runners of the Bow street justices.
SANDWICH – Ham, dried tongue, or some other salted meat cut thin and put between two slices of bread and butter; said to be a favourite morsel with the Earl of Sandwich.
SCAMP – A highwayman. Royal Scamp; a highwayman who robs civilly. Royal foot scamp; a footpad who behaves in like manner.
1894 06 11 79
Maclain the Highwayman robbing Lord Eglington
Anon
P&D
SCOURERS – Riotous bucks, who amuse themselves with breaking windows, beating the watch, and assaulting every person they meet; called scouring the streets.
SHARK – A sharper; perhaps from his preying upon anyone he can lay hold of. Also a custom-house officer, or tide-waiter. Sharks; the first order of pickpockets. Bow-street term, 1785.
SHOOT THE CAT – To vomit from excess of liquor; called also catting.
SHOPLIFTER – One that steals whilst pretending to purchase goods in a shop.
SHY COCK – One who keeps within doors for fear of bailiffs.
SILVER LACED – Replete with lice. The cove’s kickseys are silver laced; the fellow’s breeches are covered with lice.
SIMPLES – Physical herbs; also follies. He must go to Battersea, to be cut for the simples – Battersea is a place famous for its garden grounds
SNAP DRAGON – A Christmas gambol; raisins and almonds being put into a bowl of brandy, and the candles extinguished, the spirit is set on fire, and the company scrambles for the raisins.
STARVE’EM, ROB’EM AND CHEAT’EM – Stroud, Rochester and Chatham; so called by sailors, and not without good reason.
SUGAR SOPS – Toasted bread, soaked in ale, sweetened with sugar, and grated nutmeg; it is eaten with cheese.
SUNNY BANK – A good fire in winter.
SURVEYOR OF THE HIGHWAYS – One reeling drunk
THIEF TAKER – Fellows who associate with all kinds of villains, in order to betray them, when they have committed any of those crimes which entitle the persons taking them to a handsome reward, called blood money. It is the business of these thief takers to furnish subjects for a handsome execution, at the end of every sessions.
THIMBLE – A watch. the swell flashes a rum thimble; the gentleman sports a fine watch.
THREE-PENNY UPRIGHT – A retailer of love, who, for the sum mentioned, dispenses her favours standing against a wall.
THREE THREADS – Half common ale, mixed with stale and double beer.
TILBURY – Sixpence; so called from its formerly being the fare for crossing from Gravesend to Tilbury fort.
TWITTER – All in a twitter; in a fright. Twittering is also the note of some small birds such as the robin &c.
TWO TO ONE SHOP – A pawnbroker’s; alluding to the three blue balls, the sign of that trade; or perhaps to its being two to one that the goods pledged are never redeemed.
The three balls of a pawnbroker’s can be seen in this Hogarth print “Beer Street” from 1751. The drawing shows the collapsing house of “N Pinch Pawn Broker”, and looking at the people shown in the view, one can imagine how the phrases listed in Captain Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue were part of normal street language.
UPPING BLOCK – Steps for mounting a horse. he sits like a toad on a jossing block; said of one who sits ungracefully on horseback
UPSTARTS – Persons lately raised to honours and riches from mean stations.
VAULTING SCHOOL – A bawdy-house; also an academy where vaulting and other manly exercises are taught.
WAITS – Musicians of the lower order, who in most towns play under the windows of the chief inhabitants at midnight, a short time before Christmas, for which they collect a Christmas-box from house to house. They are said to derive their name of waits from being always in waiting to celebrate weddings and other joyous events happening in the district.
WATER SNEAKSMAN – A man who steals from ships or craft on the river.
WATERPAD – One that robs ships on the River Thames
WESTMINSTER WEDDING – A match between a whore and a rogue.
WHETSTONE PARK – A lane between Holborn and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, formerly famed for being the resort of women of the town.
WIBLING’S WITCH – The four of clubs: from one James Wibling, who in the reign of King James I, grew rich by private gaming and was commonly observed to have that card, and never to lose a game but when he had it not.
WINDOW PEEPER – A collector of the window tax.
XANTIPPE – The name of Socrates’s wife; now used to signify a shrew or scolding wife.
YARMOUTH PYE – A pye made of herrings highly spiced, which the city of Norwich is by charter bound to present annually to the King.
ZNEES – Frost or Frozen, Zueesy weather; frosty weather.
A Glossary of Provincial and Local Words used in England
Francis Grose also published “A Glossary of Provincial and Local Words used in England”, and the words and phrases in this publication are very different to those in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
Whilst those in the Vulgar Tongue have a number of common themes such as crime and punishment, prostitution, sexual relations, and general street life, those in Provincial and Local Words have mainly agricultural and rural meanings.
It is though impossible to know whether there was any bias in Grose’s collection of words and phrases. Was he looking for words that confirmed the worst of city life for his dictionary of the vulgar tongue, whilst looking for words that confirmed the rural nature of the countryside?
The two books do show the split between City and Country life which was still very marked in the 18th century, and would change significantly during the 19th century with the rapid expansion of industry and migration to the city by very large numbers of those who had lived in the countryside.
Examples from “A Glossary of Provincial and Local Words used in England”, include:
AQUABOB – An icicle
BARSON – A horse’s collar
BERRY – to berry, to thresh out corn
CANDLING – a supper given in some parts by landlords of ale houses to their customers on the Eve of Candlemas-day; part of it is a pie, thence called a CANDLING-PIE
CUSHETS – Wild pigeons
DALLOP – A patch of ground among corn that has escaped the plough; also tufts of corn where dung-heaps have long laid
ERRISH – A stubble field
FEATHERING – Binding a hedge
FLIGGURS – Young birds, just fledged.
GIBBET – A great cudgel, such as are thrown at trees, to beat down fruit.
HOPPER-CAKE – a seed cake with plums in it, with which the farmers treat their servants when seed-time is finished.
IMP – to rob, or disposes a person.
JACK – half a pint.
KING HARRY – A goldfinch
LEASTY WEATHER – dull, wet, dirty.
MAWKIN – a bunch of rags used for cleansing the oven.
NEB or NIB – the nose, also the beak of a bird.
NOON-SCAPE – the time when labourers rest after dinner.
OLD LAND – ground that had laid long untilled, and just ploughed up.
PINGSWILL – a boil
QUAKLED – almost choked, or suffocated.
RANDLE BAWK – an iron gibbet in a chimney, to hang the pot-hooks on.
SEEING-GLASS – a mirror, or looking glass.
TWITTER – to tremble. This is a word of general use. My heart twitters; I am all of a twitter. To TWITTER thread or yarn, is to spin it uneven; generally used also in this sense.
URCHIN – a hedgehog
VELLING – ploughing up the turf, or upper surface of the ground, to lay in heaps to burn.
WARPING – turning a river on land to obtain the mud for manure when it recedes.
YEAVELING – evening.
ZINNILA – a son-in-law
Francis Grose left a wonderful collection of words and phrases in use in the city and country during the late 18th century. The importance of these words is that they provide an insight into life at the time,
I did wonder how many of these terms were invented by those providing them to Grose, however I have found very many of them in newspapers from the 18th and 19th centuries, confirming their use in the way described by Grose.
For example, the first reference I could find of the term SNAP DRAGON dated from 1738, and in the Bristol Mercury dated the 30th of December 1889, there is a feature on Christmas customs, and the following is included:
“SNAP DRAGON – With regards to Christmas fare, snap dragon is a very ancient favourite, although I think it is dying out. A number of raisins are deposited in a shallow disk or bowl, and brandy is poured over them and ignited. The fun is to snatch a raisin through the flames. To this there is such a song as:
Here he comes with flaming bowl, Don’t he mean to take his toll; Snip snap dragon,
Take care you don’t take too much, Be not greedy in your clutch, Snip snap dragon.“
Although Grose collected all these words and phrases in the second part of the 18th century, many of them must have had some considerable age, particularly those of the Provincial and Local words as I suspect words in use in the city changed more frequently than those in the countryside..
Both of Grose’s publications help to bring to life the everyday experience of the late 18th century, and provide a very valuable record.
In 2017, I photographed the area to the west of Euston Station, with a focus on St. James’s Gardens, as this area was about to become the construction site for the expanded Euston Station, for the London terminus of HS2, a high speed railway that would run to Birmingham with branches to Manchester and the east Midlands.
Each year since 2017, I have made a return visit to the area around Euston Station, intending to photograph what was there before demolition, then the construction phase and finally the new Euston Station.
In recent years, the future of HS2 has been in doubt, and a couple of months ago, the Government announced that the northern sections would be dropped and that the London section between Old Oak Common and Euston Station would be paused.
In the latest HS2 6-monthly report to Parliament – November 2023, it was stated that delivery remains on track for “Old Oak Common in west London and Birmingham Curzon Street by 2029 to 2033”. There was no date given for completion of the section from Old Oak Common to Euston.
There is a list of all my previous HS2 posts at the end of this post, and after anticipating seeing a new station as the final post in this series, I now wonder whether I will ever get to see a new HS2 station at a redeveloped Euston.
As well as pausing construction of the section from Old Oak Common to Euston, the November report to Parliament stats that “we will not proceed with Phase 2a, 2b or HS2 East”.
Much of the construction area is hidden behind panels, many of which have artwork and advertising that tells the story of what HS2 will bring to Euston, and the wider benefits of the project. Much of this now looks rather hollow and out of date, and includes the new Euston Station:
And as well as “building you a better Euston”, the following poster still states that HS2 will be “Connecting eight out of ten of Britain’s largest cities”, and will “More than double the number of train seats out of Euston in peak hours”:
And that improvements to the existing station will provide a “Bigger, better concourse, 100s of new seats, wider platform ramps”.
Extension of HS2 from Old Oak Common to Euston has been “paused”, and the November report to Parliament states that:
“We are going to scale back the project at Euston and adopt a new development led approach to the Euston Quarter which will deliver a station that works, is affordable and can be open and running trains as soon as possible. We will not provide design features we do not need and will instead deliver a 6-platform station which can accommodate the trains we will run to Birmingham and onwards and which best supports regeneration of the local area. In this way we will attract private funding and unlock the wider land development opportunities the new station offers, while radically reducing its costs to the taxpayer.”
But the most scary part of the new plans for Euston is this sentence in the November report:
“At Euston, we will appoint a development company, separate from HS2 Ltd, to manage the delivery of this project. We will also take on the lessons of success stories such as Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms, which secured £9 billion of private sector investment and thousands of homes.”
Whilst economically, Nine Elms has been considered a success in bringing in considerable (mainly overseas) investment to develop the area, the Nine Elms development seems to have resulted in the random placement of individually designed tower blocks, without any apparent cohesive design for the area. The towers look as if they have been randomly dropped from the sky, with a height and density to maximise profit rather than to add character and improve a key part of London.
Is this the future for Euston? A station hiding underneath another vision of Nine Elms, delivering enough cash from developers to complete the section from Old Oak Common to Euston along with the new station, but with a focus on the needs of developers, rather than a new the design and build of a new station that could have served as the London terminus of a growing railway to the north of the country.
HS2 have a couple of photos in the Media section of their website which shows the scale of the site. The following is looking at the site from the north:
An aerial still of the HS2 Euston Station site, August 2022
And the following view is looking north, with Euston Station to the right:
An aerial still of the HS2 Euston Station site, August 2022
I suspect that the main problem that HS2 has had is the name – High Speed 2.
The slightly shorter journey time from London cannot really justify the expense of the project, and the additional speed will only really benefit journeys much further north than Birmingham.
The main benefit that HS2 provides is extra capacity on existing rail lines, such as the West Coast Main Line (WCML).
Transferring high speed trains from the existing WCML onto HS2 would have released a significant amount of extra capacity which could have been used for freight, additional passenger train services between many of the places on the WCML route, as well as increasing the number of high speed trains.
However, calling the project Extra Capacity 1, or EC1 does not sound as exciting as HS2, although it would have been a better description of the real benefits.
I started my 2023 walk on a weekday, when hopefully it would be clear how much work was still underway. My route started in Clarkson Row, just to the west of Mornington Crescent, as here you can just about see over the wall, across the existing tracks, to where new tracks will be run as the railway heads from Euston to Old Oak Common:
Heading along Hampstead Road, and this is the view along the street, back towards Mornington Crescent. The main entrance to the site to the west of Hampstead Road is here:
There was still work underway, however according to HS2 press releases, what is happening now around Euston is “enabling work” rather than construction works, and there were utility works on the street, so I assume this means minor, low cost works which may make the project easier to get underway if and when it restarts.
One of the entrances to the main Euston site:
Look back along the Hampstead Road:
This is the main entrance from Hampstead Road to the main site around Euston Station:
There appeared to be very little happening, and the only vehicle that was running through the site was a road sweeper.
There is no sign of any elements of a new station, and the appearance of the site was much the same as last year. Parts of the site which were open last year have now been fenced off, so the site appears more enclosed than a year ago, but again, not much happening within the site.
There are three places where there is a change to last year, the first is the National Temperance Garden, described as “a temporary green space for all to enjoy”. It has been built on the site of the old National Temperance Hospital, and this is the view of the garden from Hampstead Road:
The large structure behind the gardens are offices and have been there for the last few years. The fencing between the gardens and Hampstead Road are standard HS2 Euston green security fencing and surround places on the site where there are no large panels.
Inside the gardens, which apparently has been “specially designed to be moved and re-used in the local area when the site closes”:
These buildings were home to the Maria Fidelis School:
To free up the school site, HS2 have built a new school between Drummond Crescent and Phoenix Road, and the site in Starcross Street is now closed.
The school and a large new building behind the school are a new “Euston Skills Centre”, set-up to provide training to local people and thereby providing the number of trained workers that such a large project requires.
The Euston Skills Centre was handed over to Camden Council on the 20th of November, however given that work within Camden has now been paused it will be interesting to see what Camden Council does with the facility. Hopefully there are still plenty of training opportunities for Camden locals to work on the project from Old Oak Common northwards.
Between the skills centre and Starcross Street is the second of the places where there has been a tangible change, compared to last year.
This is another temporary open space, in the form of Starcross Yard:
The theme for Starcross Yard is “echoes of place”, and within the space there are physical reminders of places from a surprisingly wide area, not just the HS2 construction site, or Euston.
To highlight these, there are information panels along the railings which tell of the “uncommon histories of people and space”.
The first is the Temperance Hospital, which was demolished as part of the clearance of the HS2 construction site:
The second covers the St. James’s Burial Ground, which again was cleared as part of HS2 site clearances. The panel highlights the boxer Bill Richmond who was buried at St. James’s Burial Ground, and a number of others buried are also named, as well as many from the workhouse:
Railings from the old burial ground now form part of Starcross Yard.
The above two panels refer to places that have become part of the HS2 construction site. The rest of the panels cover people and places that are further away, and not part of HS2.
The first of these is the German Gymnasium which today can be found by the southern entrance to Pancras Square, between St. Pancras and King’s Cross Stations:
Poles from the German Gymnasium can now be found at Starcross Yard.
Next up is Cumberland Market:
Cumberland Market was a short distance to the west of Euston Station, at the southern end of the Regents Park Basin, a small dock area off the Regents Canal.
Next is St. Aloysius, a Somers Town Catholic Church:
The church is still functioning, although a mid 1960s rebuild, rather than the buildings shown on the panel. The church can be found to the east of Euston station, in Eversholt Street.
And the final panel covers the local schools, including the Maria Fidelis school, which is the large brick building beside Starcross Yard:
I rather like what they have done with Starcross Yard. Too often when large areas of London are redeveloped, there is nothing left to indicate anything about the people and places that once had a connection to the place.
Starcross Yard is temporary, and I hope whatever comes next retains this approach to the areas history.
Meanwhile, at the end of Starcross Street, the Exmouth Arms are still open:
Next to the Exmouth Arms is another of the site entrances, guarded by a rather bored security person:
At the end of Starcross Street is Cobourg Street, although the road element of the street is now boarded off, with only the footpath remaining.
Cobourg Street crosses Drummond Street, and last year you could walk along this far stretch of Cobourg Street, but during my 2023 visit, the footpath was being fenced off:
It seems to be a result of the “pause” in work of HS2 into Euston, that the whole site seems to be getting more enclosed and secure. I assume if you have a large area of open land sitting idle, you do not want the risk of anyone getting in.
This is the view back along Cobourg Street from Drummond Street towards the Exmouth Arms:
Where Drummond Street once ran all the way to the edge of Euston Station, it now stops at the junction with Cobourg Street, and continues on as a walkway, with the HS2 construction site on either side.
This is the view along the walkway, looking up towards Drummond Street:
And from the same location, looking towards Euston Station:
To the left of the underground station is another large area of cleared space, this was the area once bounded by Melton Street, Drummond Street, Euston Street and Cobourg Street, and was where the Bree Louise pub was to be found:
The following view is from the same position as the above photo, and is looking along where Melton Street ran into Cardington Street. It was a short distance along Cardington Street that St. James’s Gardens could be found. The tree is the only reminder of the trees that once lined part of the street and across the gardens.
The view along what was Melton Street, with a walkway into Euston Station up the ramp to the left:
The walkway along what was Melton Street:
There is a small stub of Melton Street left, where it meets Euston Road, and again has a very quiet entrance to the HS2 construction site:
I then walked along Euston Road to find the third place where there is any tangible sign of a change. At the eastern side of the station is Eversholt Street, and in front of the station, and the bus stops, between Eversholt Street and Euston Road, one of the open spaces alongside Euston Road has been redeveloped:
The area is still secured by standard HS2 Euston green mesh fencing, but through it there appears to be a new taxi drop of point. It all looks finished, but no indication of when it will be opening:
Then a walk to the open space in front of the station:
With a view in the opposite direction showing the office blocks between Euston Station and Euston Road:
Returning to Melton Street, where there is a ramp leading to a walkway into Euston Station, this is the view, with a large open construction site behind the panels on the right:
If you walk into Euston Station, up to the first floor area where there is a pub and food outlets, at the western end of this space there are stairs back down to ground level, and from here there is a view over the construction space in front of the station, with Melton Street to the right, and taxi ranks alongside Euston Road:
Not much happening in this large area:
The station concourse:
That was the HS2 Euston construction site in 2023. Very little change compared to a year ago, with only two small gardens and a taxi drop off point the only external signs of change.
There were not that many construction workers around, and the perimeter of the site seems to be getting more secure, as if it is closing up for a long period.
HS2 seems to be a love / hate project, and whatever your individual views on the project, it does not give a good impression of the country when we seem unable to build major infrastructure projects such as HS2.
There is an interesting article on the London reconnections website, comparing the costs of infrastructure projects in the UK and other, comparable countries, and it is remarkable just how much extra, projects in this country are to build compared to others.
There are many complex reasons for this. Planning processes, funding complexity, objections to projects, long decision making, changes to decisions etc. all add to cost.
Although the Old Oak Common to Euston section has been paused, there will still be cost, at the very minimum the construction sites will need security, and I suspect it will take very many years before sufficient private finance is found to complete the project.
London Mayors and Government Ministers of all parties seem to like the phrase that “London is open for business”, a phrase which I find rather meaningless, but seems to translate as the city is open for anyone to purchase London’s assets, and this will probably be the way for Euston with offshore investment building up a new Nine Elms above a very slimmed down station.
Apart from the Silvertown Tunnel, HS2 is the only other major public transport infrastructure project in London.
Crossrail 2 has been “paused” since October 2020, and I doubt there will be anything for some decades to come.
Sorry to be so depressing on your Sunday morning.
I stayed taking a few more photos as it got dark, and as I left the station, the new information board in the outside concourse mirrored my thoughts at the time about the future of Euston’s development, with almost every train being delayed:
My visits to the Euston HS2 construction site for the past six years are covered in the following posts:
If you would like to come on one of my walks, a couple of places have just become free on two of my final walks until late next spring. Details and links are:
For this week’s post, I am in Whitechapel, on the Commercial Road, a short distance east from Aldgate East Underground Station, where, in 1952, my father took the following photo:
The view is looking east along Commercial Road. My father was standing in a cleared bomb site, looking across to where a café was parked. The café looks as if it was once a tram or coach, however after a quick bit of Googling, I could not find anything similar, so any information would be appreciated.
Roughly the same view today (although the street in the foreground is not the same in both photos, I had to stand slightly to the east to avoid trees, parked lorries and other obstructions on the pavement that obscured the view):
The map shows the amount of bomb damage in this part of Whitechapel with plenty of blank space where bomb damaged buildings had been cleared.
The map also shows the name of the narrow lane in the foreground of my father’s photo. This was Plumbers Row, a lane that went much further north from Commercial Road up to the junction of Fieldgate Street and Whitechapel Road, however today, the southern section has been built over, covering much of the area along Commercial Road with a large new building over the bombsite where my father was standing, where the café was located, and up to Greenfield Road.
Although nothing remains of the view to the left of Commercial Road in my father’s photo, much of the right hand side of the road is still recognisable. In the following extract from the 1952 photo, there is a row of terrace houses of difference sizes:
In the above photo, from the centre to the right, there is a row of terrace houses of the same height. These still remain today, although they have all had an additional floor added at roof level as shown in the same view, seventy one years later in 2023:
The building to the right of the terrace is still the same, as are the taller terrace buildings to the left.
The reason my father took this particular photo must have been the rather unusual café on the bomb site. On the front there are adverts for a number of soft drinks:
On the left is an advert for Fling with their slogan that it “Freshens and Fortifies”. It was sold in a bottle that was very similar to that used by Coke, and from what I have read it seems to have been a cheaper version of the American drink.
In the middle is an advert for Solo, an orange drink, highlighted by the illustration of a cut orange in the advert.
One the right is an advert for Pepsi Cola, which ten years later would rebrand as just Pepsi. There was also a large advert for Pepsi Cola on the left of the café, which seems to have had a small kitchen area at the rear:
There are also a couple of milk churns, one of which is in a box which appears to be mounted at the front of a bike. No idea whether this was to bring milk to the café, or whether milk was distributed to local residents from the café.
The building behind the café had a large advert for Liquid Sunshine Rum – Pure Jamaica:
This was a brand of Charles Kinloch who were wine and spirits merchants, who seem to date from the early 1860s.
They were an independent company until 1957, five years after the above photo, when they were taken over by the brewer Courage.
I cannot find out for how long Liquid Sunshine Rum was sold, however their rum trade seems to have taken a back seat during the 1960s as wine started to become a popular alcoholic drink.
Charles Kinloch had plenty of adverts in the press and on TV targeting the low cost wine market, and they seem to have focused on lower cost Spanish wines, rather than more expensive French. Their marketing was on the pleasure of drinking their wines, rather than “putting by or putting one over the next door neighbour”.
In 1966 they advertised that “My Spanish wines are for drinkers, not collectors, says Charles Kinloch, They’re Good and Cheap”. Cheap was 9 shillings, 3 pence a bottle. In 1966 they also had an advertising slot on ITV titled “The Great Charles Kinloch Wine Robbery”, and in newspapers had full page adverts providing helpful lists of which of their wines to use for different types of food, and courses during a dinner.
At the time, their head office was in Kinloch House, Cumberland Avenue, London NW10. As Courage was taken over several times during the following decades, the Kinloch brand gradually disappeared.
And this is where research gets really frustrating as I found a Charles Kinloch building close to the site of the 1952 photo, the subject of this post.
Almost on the opposite side of the road, from the 1952 and my 2023 photo is Back Church Lane that runs from Commercial Road to Cable Street.
Along Back Church Lane was a large Charles Kinloch warehouse, and the building remains, along with the name Charles Kinloch in large letters along the top of the building.
It is frustrating as I found this during final research for the post on the Saturday prior to publication, so did not have time to go and take a photo, so to make up for the lack of a photo, you can see the building at this link to Google StreetView.
A relatively short post this week, but I am pleased to have found and photographed another of the locations of my father’s early photos.
For this week’s post, I am in Watney Market and Watney Street in Shadwell. A street that runs between Cable Street and Commercial Road.
It is a rather long post, however the post does what I really love about writing the blog. It takes one of my father’s photos and with some digging discovers so much about life in the area of a single street.
East London poverty, the relationship with the River Thames, a market that has traded for many years, a lost pub, Blackshirts, post-war Germany and post-war redevelopment which erased a long familiar street.
This is the photo, taken by my father in 1952:
As c;lose as I could get to the same view today:
My father’s photo was taken from the bombed space once occupied by a church, and it was looking southwest towards a pub, the Masons Arms, which faced onto Watney Street and Watney Market.
The following extract from the 1952 photo shows on the left, the large sign or perhaps a lantern on the front of the pub and two of the remaining shops which seem to have part survived the bombing which destroyed the area around them.
Commercial Road is the road running left to right at the top of the map. The train tracks at the bottom of the map is the Docklands Light Railway. Watney Street is running from the junction with Commercial Road at the top centre of the map, down to the DLR where it heads under the railway, down to Cable Street which is just below the bottom of the map
I have mapped some of the key features in the photo onto the map below.
The red line and arrow points from the Masons Arms pub in the photo to the pub in the map
The blue line and arrow points from the two remaining shops in this section of Watney Street to their location on the map
The yellow oval is around one of the pillars that originally stood either side of the main entrance into the open space in front of the church
In the above maps, you will see that my father was standing in front of the outline of Christ Church.
These were the ruins of a church that had been very badly damaged by bombing in 1941, and had then been demolished. It was not rebuilt, and the land was integrated into the post war redevelopment.
The church was not that old. The foundation stone was laid on the 11th of March, 1840, with the land being the site of three former houses on land owned by the Mercers Company, who conveyed the land to the church.
The site of the church, and the surrounding housing, before wartime bombing and post war redevelopment obliterated the area is shown in the following extract from the 1914 revision of the OS map (again the red circle indicates where my father was standing to take the photo) (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“).:
In my father’s photo, the slogan “No arms for Nazis” is painted on the wall running alongside the pub. This slogan represented a concern about the level of Nazi sympathies still remaining in Germany, rearming Germany, and the need to integrate Germany into the wider European community.
In 1953, British security services had made several arrests, and the US had undertaken a survey which revealed that the undercurrents of Nazi-ism in Germany should be taken seriously. It was claimed that the growth of “nationalistic discontent among young men is ominous”.
There was unemployment in Germany and economic grievances were being intensified by the numbers of refuges from the Eastern Zone.
At the time, Germany was not considered an equal partner with other countries in western Europe, and, to quote papers of the time “And the vagueness of British policy, the passive attitude of the Tories towards European co-operation – which they encouraged with words when not in power – has done nothing to speed things up”.
This had already been going on for some years, and when the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer was in London in December 1951, he was met by a demonstration when he arrived in Downing Street for a lunch with Churchill.
He was met with cries of “Adenauer go home”, “Sieg heil” and “Heil Hitler”.
Adenaur had been an opponent of the Nazis and had only just survived the war as he had lost all his property, money and position in the 1930s.
He was strongly anti-communist, wanted cooperation within Europe and the US, wanted to start the rearming of Germany, and he had earlier ended the de-Nazification process.
He was part of the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Paris in 1951, which established the European Coal and Steel Community (the predecessor of the European Union), not a popular move in Germany as it was seen to give France too much influence over German industry.
Adenaur also ensured that West Germany joined NATO in May 1955, and secured agreement for Germany to rearm (although agreeing that Germany would not have nuclear weapons).
When Adenaur visited Downing Street in 1951, leaflets were handed out to the crowd with the words “No arms for Nazis”. These leaflets, and the slogan were part of a campaign by the London Peace Council, based at New Compton Street, W.C.2.
The slogan appeared at many sites across London, and also across the country, for example an article in the East Kent Times reported that in Ramsgate “Motorists and residents were startled to see on the parapet of the viaduct, high above the main Margate Road, the words ‘No arms for Nazis’ painted in large white capitals.”
The use of white paint and capital letters seems to have been standard for where the slogan was found.
The slogan was on the wall that ran alongside the Masons Arms pub. The pub seems to date from the mid 19th century and features in numerous newspaper reports. All the usual issues of crime, drunkenness, change in licensee, meetings etc.
There were a couple of reports which gave an insight into life in 19th century London and the River Thames.
From the Kentish Gazette on the 17th of May, 1859:
“ENROLMENT OF NAVAL WOLUNTEERS – The recruiting officers of the Royal Navy had quite a field-day on the river of Tuesday. A steam boat, profusely decorated with union jacks, ensigns and other national colours, and manned by a dashing crew of blue jackets, with a powerful band on board, left the London-bridge-wharf shortly after eleven o’clock for a cruise down the river. The steamer on her paddle-box bore the words ‘Queen’s bounty’ and on her sides fore and aft, ‘£10 able seamen, £5 ordinary seamen’.
On leaving the band struck up ‘Hearts of Oak’. The sailors gave a most deafening cheer, which was taken up by the vast multitude which lined London-bridge and crowded the water side. The trip was continued to Gravesend, where the blue jackets landed and paraded through the principle thoroughfares, and the proclamation being frequently read. A vast crowd followed the recruiting party, and during their stay the town was kept in a most lively state of excitement. many volunteers were received and numbers promised to present themselves at the rendezvous on Tower-hill. Owing, however to the long prevalence of easterly winds there were not so many first class seamen in port, a large fleet of homeward-bounders being detained in the Channel.
As far as it has gone, however this new popular mode of beating up naval recruits has answered admirably; and the Masons Arms, Watney Street, Commercial Road (situated in a locality crowded with sailors), has been opened as a rendezvous. A change in wind must bring in large numbers of first-class men, who will doubtless avail themselves of the £10 bounty.”
There is so much in the above article. It tells us that in the mid 19th century:
Large numbers of sailors lived around Watney Street
Ships still being mainly powered by the wind could be stuck in the channel with an easterly wind as they could not round the eastern edge of Kent to access the Thames Estuary
That the Thames and the London Docks were a very important part in the life of London
As with most other East London pubs, inquests into unexpected and accidental deaths would be held in the Masons Arms. A newspaper report from October 1841 tells the story of 34 year old James Holland who worked as a coal-whipper (a coal-whipper brought up the coal from below decks using baskets attached to a pulley system).
He was working on the “Three Sons”, a collier from Sunderland which was moored in the river off Rotherhithe and whilst filling a basket with coal, he collapsed with blood pouring from his mouth and nose, and died almost immediately.
At the inquest in the Masons Arms, the verdict was “Died by a visitation of God”. No reference to his working conditions, long exposure to coal dust etc.
Time to have a look at Watney Street. The street has almost completely been rebuilt, with only a couple of pre-war buildings remaining at the very southern part of the street.
The alignment of the northern half of the street changed, and it has been rebuilt with new tiered housing on either side of a central raised section where the market is now located.
Walking along Commercial Road, this is the first view of Watney Street and Market:
To the east of the entrance to the market is a clock tower:
Which has a plaque mounted on the side:
The plaque recalls a dreadful tragedy when three workers died on the 22nd of September, 1990. At the time, they were investigating a blockage in a drain. There were four workers involved. One of them had descended into the drain which was at the bottom of a 9ft shaft. He was overcome by fumes, and in an attempt to rescue him, two other descended the shaft, but were in turn overcome by fumes.
The Fire Brigade was called, and firemen wearing breathing apparatus descended the shaft and pulled the three men out. The man who remained at the top of the shaft was also affected by fumes from the sewer.
It turned out they they have been overcome by hydrogen sulphide gas, and the three who descended all died.
They were not provided with any safety equipment, gas monitoring or breathing equipment, ropes and harnesses etc. and had received no training to undertake such work. It was the type of accident that would have happened in 1890 rather than 1990.
The three who died were trainee electrician Paul Richardson (aged 17), his brother trainee plumber David Richardson (aged 19) and electrician Steven Hammond (aged 32).
Their employer was fined £50,000 which even at the time seemed a ridiculously low amount for the loss of three lives in such avoidable circumstances.
A dreadfully sad loss of life which so easily could have been prevented if they had been provided with the correct equipment and training.
This is the view looking down into Watney Market from Commercial Road:
The London Overground between Shadwell and Whitechapel runs beneath Watney Market. If you go back to the 1952 OS map of the area, to the upper left of the original routing of Watney Street, just below Commercial Road, there is a circle with the words “Air Shaft”.
This was a ventilation shaft for the railway which runs just below the surface. In the rebuilt market, the above ground infrastructure of the airshaft can be seen, which is also used to advertise Watney Market:
View looking through the market back up to Commercial Road:
There was an article in the East London Advertiser on Saturday the 21st of August, 1886 about Watney Market. It was a rather long article, however it does provide a really good view of the market, those who shopped there, and the conditions of many of those who lived in the area. The core of the article follows:
“WATNEY STREET MARKET – How, when, or by whom this market was commenced no one seems to know. It has no charter, nor any legal status but that of usage, and like Topsy, it seems to have ‘growed’. Nevertheless it has become an important market, and to the poor inhabitants of St. George’s and Shadwell it is a most useful institution.
At first the market seems to have been confined mostly to the Cable-street end of Watney-street, the busiest being in the neighbourhood of the railway arch; but now, on some days, and particularly on Saturdays, it extends the whole length of the curved street, from Cable-street to Commercial-road and in it can be purchased almost everything needed in a household, from a pennyworth of pins to a suite of furniture, with bedding, bolsters, curtain lace, baby-linen, suits of clothing. washing machines, pianos and perambulators; whilst in the edible department it is always well stocked.
There is fish in every variety, from the lordly salmon down to a fresh herring, whilst the butchers cater for all classes, and in a manner suitable to the means of their numerous customers. Thus, on a Saturday, from morning till late at night, and particularly in the latter portion of the day, this market is crowded. in addition to the shops on both sides of the street, which are numerous, stalls are erected on and outside the footpath, leaving only a sufficient space for a limited amount of vehicular traffic.
A very large proportion of the purchasers in this market are women, and these mostly of the very poorest class, whose families live from hand to mouth. They can afford little at once, but they want that little every day when they can find the money to buy it; and hence the individual amounts spent at any one time are small, whilst their aggregate for a year must represent a very large sum. here the ‘ladies’ saunter about the market in dozens, in the most careless of deshabille, with hair unkempt, faces unwashed, and a general appearance of not having been dressed or undressed for a very considerable period. Each of them is accompanied by two, three or four children, equally elegantly attired. Whilst the mothers are looking out the cheapest bargains, these youngsters dive in, under and around the stalls, picking up rotten fruit, and anything else from the stalls on which the vendor does not keep a sharp eye.
And yet, notwithstanding all this squalor in dress and cleanliness, there is a general air of cheerfulness, frequently arising to hilarity, amongst the habitués of the market, and the general tone is one of careless happiness, especially when the weather is fine, when the women seem in no hurry about their business, but enjoy a thorough good gossip in the market place. Very few bags or baskets are brought by the buyers, they are not needed. A pound of bits of meat for about four pence, a couple of pounds of potatoes for two pence, and a cabbage for a penny, with perhaps a pennyworth of onions, and there is a dinner which has frequently to be eked out, with the aid of bread, for a family of six. An apron or the skirt of a dress will hold much more than this, and so the ladies who attend here will not encumber themselves with a basket, even if they have one, which in most cases is doubtful.
The women who purchase on Saturdays, are for the most part, wives of working men who are paid their wages on Friday; but there is a large class of men who are not paid until Saturday, and sometimes late even on that day. The bulk of these do not go straight home when they have received their wages, but remain about in public houses, where they are joined by their wives in very many instances, until it is too late, or they are too much overcome, to go shopping. What becomes of the children in the interval nobody knows and nobody seems to care. They play out on the street until they are all thoroughly tired out, and then made their way supperless and unwashed to such beds as they have, whilst their parents, with drunken recklessness, are wasting the food supplies on that which makes them utterly oblivious of the morrow and its responsibilities.”
The London Poverty Maps created by Charles Booth date from around the same time as the above report. Watney Street is in the centre of the following extract, and the streets around the street appear to have almost every category from Middle Class, Well-to-do (along Commercial Road), down to Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal (area in black).
There has been a constant battle regarding space in Watney Market which has been going on for over 100 years, both in the original market, and the post-war rebuild.
The market stalls operate in the central space, with shops in the ground floors of the buildings on either side. These shop owners have long complained about the market stalls hiding their shops. They have complained about the size of the market stalls, the volume of product on display, how close the stalls are to their shops, the amount of traders products also displayed on the floor, and all the problems which the shop owners believe prevent shoppers from seeing, and getting to their shops.
This has been a recurring issue in newspaper reports back to the mid 19th century, and the market today remains a busy place, with market traders using as much space as is possible for the stalls, and to display their goods.
There is only a narrow walkway through the centre of the market, and the shops that line the ground floors of the buildings on either side are quite hard to see:
The southern end of Watney Street is at Cable Street, a street that is well known as the scene of the “Battle of Cable Street”, when on the 4th of October 1936, there were clashes between the Police, ant-fascist demonstrators, and the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, who were attempting to march through the area.
Whilst Cable Street is remembered as the scene of the attempted march, and anti-march demonstrators, in the 1930s, this area of east London was the scene pf regular provocation of the mainly Jewish community who lived in the area, by members of fascist organistions.
Watney Street and Watney Market frequently appeared in newspaper reports of these events. For example, on the 30th of May 1936, the City and East London Observer carried a report titled “Fascists in Watney Street”:
“There was great excitement among the many shoppers and stallholders in Watney Street on Sunday morning when about a dozen Blackshirts paraded up and down the market selling Fascist newspapers amid cries of ‘More Stalls for Englishmen’, ‘Foreigners Last and Nowhere’, while from another section of the crowd there were cries of ‘Blackshirt Thugs’, ‘Rats’, etc.
A great crowd gathered, and a Jewish girl, going up to one of the Blackshirts, bought a paper, tore it to pieces and stamped on the fragments. After this the police took a hand but they found it very difficult to keep the crowd on the move owing to the barrows in the market. Somebody picked up a cucumber from one of the stalls, but was prevented from throwing it at a Blackshirt.
A surprising number of the people present appeared to be in sympathy with the Blackshirts. The Blackshirts are, it is believed, about to open a branch in Stepney.”
A few months later in July 1936 is was reported that the market place in Watney Street “seems to be the chief hunting ground for Blackshirts selling their propaganda, who, according to reports, do their best to encourage hatred of the Jewish community.”
Many of the traders in the market were concerned about the lack of action from the authorities, and “rightly or wrongly, are of the opinion that the police are pro-Fascist”.
The traders were concerned that the Blackshirts were having a negative impact on their trade. Their actions and language put off many of the customers of the market, and when they arrived many of the traders packed up and left.
This all came to a head with the Battle of Cable Street, which greatly diminished the impact of the Blackshirts in Watney Street.
Another air vent, half way along the market. Possibly another air vent to the railway below:
Post war redevelopment of Watney Street and surroundings took some time. It was being planned in the 1950s, however nothing happened on the ground until the 1960s when the market was relocated in 1965, the surviving buildings demolished and the area flattened.
Tiered sets of new flats were built on either side of the new routing of Watney Street and a raised area along the new alignment was created for the market.
This took a long time to complete, with work not being substantially finished until 1977.
The flats were not popular with the original inhabitants of the street. Flats had been planned in the last days of the war, and in 1944 there were protests against the plan for flats, with residents of the Watney Street area telling the Borough Council that “Working people with families must have decent houses in which they can rear them properly”.
The wholesale demolition of many streets of terrace housing across east London, and the construction of flats is one of the themes of post war redevelopment of the area.
Whilst the demolished houses were in very poor condition, often badly maintained by uninterested landlords, lacking basic facilities, and suffering from general war damage and lack of attention, very many could have been refurbished, and would have provided housing, at street level, suitable for a wide range of occupants.
The following photo is looking through the market showing the tiered flats on either side:
The whole scheme, including the tiered flats was designed by the Architect’s Department of the Greater London Council.
The redevelopment work took over ten years, and in 1977 graffiti was appearing in the area complaining that the market has been murdered.
Redevelopment and relocation resulted in a reduction of trade for those running stalls, and the number of market stalls was gradually declining so by the end of the 1970s there were only about 19 market stalls remaining.
It would take the 1980s and most of the 1990s for the market to recover, and to make use of the full space provided by the redevelopment work.
As well as the central market stalls, a large number and range of shops have occupied the buildings along the side. The supermarket Sainsbury’s was a long time resident of Watney Street, opening their first store in the street in 1881, expanding into a second building 13 years later.
Sainsbury’s were in Watney Street for over 100 years, finally moving to Whitechapel in 1994. Iceland then took over the store and are still in Watney Street, at the north-eastern corner, just behind the clock tower.
A couple of the shops are unoccupied, and the space directly in front is quickly occupied by the Watney Market traders:
As can be seen in the 1949 OS map earlier in the post, Watney Street had a rather strange routing. A short distance north along the street, it angled to the east before resuming a northerly route up to Commercial Road.
The point where this swerve to the east happened was at the junction with Tarling Street.
In the photo below, Watney Street is to the right, and where the road does a sharp turn to the right, that is Tarling Street. At this point, Watney Street angled to the right, under where the flats have been built, and continued north, under the flats.
It would seem that when the area was first developed in the early decades of the 19th century, Tarling Street ran left to right across the above photo, and the southern section of what is now Watney Street between Cable Street and Tarling Street was originally Charles Street.
After the junction with Tarling Street, Charles Street changed to Watney Street and was reached through a narrow street or alley, around a larger building to the main section of Watney Street.
This larger building was demolished at some point, replaced by terrace houses, which were also later demolished, and the angle to the right then went through where these buildings was located.
I suspect the name Watney Street displaced Charles Street as the market grew in size and popularity.
I cannot find a firm source for the origin of the name. The general consensus seems to be it comes from the Watney Brewery in Whitechapel, although this was a little distance to the north west so there is no obvious connection.
Watney Market and Watney Street. A working market for well over 150 years. A place once occupied by those working on the river and by the poor of east London, a large Jewish community, and an area targeted by the Blackshirts of the 1930s. Badly bombed during the 1940s then with a lengthy redevelopment that would not see the market busy again until the 1990s.
Before taking a look at the long history of the London Stone, a quick advert as I have arranged some dates for my very last tours of the year, and the last ones until probably May of next year. I have included all my different tours, and it would be great to show you many of the stories and photos from the blog over the last nine years, at the actual sites.
It would be wonderful to see you on a walk – now to the London Stone.
In its ability to attract myths and legends, the London Stone is far more powerful than its physical size suggests. A long time resident of the area around what is now Cannon Street Station, but with the distance of time, it is impossible to know the truth about the block of stone, which can now be found in a new housing with a glass front:
The new housing for the London Stone was completed in 2018, along with the building of which the stone is part of the ground floor frontage onto Cannon Street:
The plaque to the left records some of the key stories about the London Stone:
It may be Roman and related to Roman buildings to the south
It was already known as the London Stone by the 12th century
Jack Cade, the leader of a rebellion against the government of Henry VI in 1450 struck the stone with his sword and claimed to be Lord of London
The plaque on the right tells the story in braille which is rather good.
The previous building on the site was an early 1960s office building, which was demolished 2016, when the London Stone was moved to the Museum of London where is was put on temporary display, before being moved to its new home.
A view of the London Stone through the window at the front of the housing:
The site was originally occupied by St. Swithin’s Church, however the church was destroyed by bombing in 1940. The stone walls of the church, with the London Stone, survived, and continued to stand on the site until being demolished for the 1960s office building.
Wonderful London has a photo of the London Stone in its housing on the front of St. Swithin’s Church, I doubt that the stone usually had a police guard:
The Wonderful London description below the above photo reads: “Set in a stone casing in the wall of St. Swithin’s, Cannon Street, is this block of oolite, guarded by a grille. It was placed there in 1798, having been transferred from the other side of the road. Camden, the historian, 1551 – 1623, held that it was the milliarium, or milestone, from which distances were calculated on the main roads in days when London was Londinium Augusta. There was a similar stone in the Forum at Rome. If Camden is right, Roman lictors may have stood, like this policeman, in front of the stone 1,600 years ago”.
The text mentions that the stone is a block of oolite, which is a form of limestone, and was used in Roman London for building and sculpture, but may also have arrived in the City in the Saxon and early medieval period.
There was a large Roman building where Cannon Street Station now stands, so it may have formed some part of this building, or some of the decorative sculpture or statues that would have been part of the building.
There is no way to be sure.
The Roman milliarium or milestone story is repeated in multiple accounts of the stone. Sir Walter Besant in his 1910 book on the City of London includes the milestone story, but goes further by saying that some have supposed the stone to be the remains of a British druidical circle or religious monument. He quotes Strype as saying that Owen of Shrewsbury gave rise to the assertion that “the Druids had pillars of stone in veneration, which custom they borrowed from the Greeks”.
Besant also records that “Sir Christopher Wren was of opinion that ‘by reason of its large foundation, it was rather some more considerable monument in the Forum; for, in the adjoining ground to the south, upon digging for cellars after the Great Fire, were discovered some tessellated pavements, and other extensive, and other remains of Roman workmanship and buildings.”
The problem with all these stories about the original Roman use of the London Stone is that there is no firm evidence that it was a milliarium or milestone, when it arrived in the City, whether it was Roman, or the original use of the stone.
What seems to be certain is that the stone has long been in this part of Cannon Street. It was originally on the south side of the street and was also in the street, where it was an obstruction to the traffic flowing along the street.
The Wonderful London quote references that the stone was moved to St. Swithin’s Church, and guarded by a grill in 1798. This was urgently needed to protect the stone, as it appears to have been frequently under attack by those who used the street, as this report from several papers on the 2nd of July 1741 records:
“Thursday a Carman and a Drayman contending for the Way in Cannon-street, made a shift between them to throw down the little Building that covers London Stone (as ’tis call’d) and then pull the said Stone out of the Earth. this being presently known, great Numbers of People flocked to see it, and many curious Observations, Conjectures, and Prognosticks were believed by the Wiseacres present, on so extraordinary an Accident.”
The 16th century historian John Snow, who first published his Survey of London in 1598 included the following reference to the London Stone which explains how it was fixed in position, and why it was a significant obstruction for those who used Cannon Street:
“On the south side of this high street, near unto the channel is pitched upright a great stone called London stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set, that if Carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken, and the stone it self unshaken.”
The London Stone seems to have been a well known feature of Cannon Street, as it was often used as part of an address, such as in the following from an advert in the Kentish Gazette on Friday, November the 6th, 1795, where a contact was given as “Mr. Sergeant, Number 86, London Stone, Cannon Street”.
And on the 26th of February 1788 there was an announcement in the Kentish Gazette of the marriage at “St. Swithin’s, London Stone, of W.T. Reynolds’s Esq. of Great St. Helen’s to Miss Sands of St. Dunstan’s Hill”
The above print repeats the milliarium story and provides sources from a number of historians, who, to an extent are repeating the same story, but not providing any firm evidence.
The print also includes a reference to Shakespeare’s Henry Vi, Act 4, Scene 6, and it is from this scene that Shakespeare amplified the story of Jack Cade’s association with the London Stone.
Jack Cade led a rebellion in 1450, from the south east of the country against the corruption, poor administration and the abuse of power by the King’s local representatives.
He led a large group of men from the south-east who headed into London in an attempt to raise their grievances, remove from power those they held responsible for corruption and abuse of power, and to reform governance.
Once within the City, the rebellion turned into looting, and the residents of the City turned on the rebels
The rebels were offered a pardon to return home peaceably. Cade as the leader was captured in a fight and died of his injuries as he was being returned to London for trial.
The connection between Jack Cade and the London Stone comes from the rebellion’s entry into the City of London. Cade pretended to use the name of Mortimer, (the family name of ancestors of one of Henry VI’s main rivals), and on reaching the London Stone, he struck his sword on the stone and according to Holinshed (a 16th century English chronicler), he exclaimed “Now is Mortimer Lord of this City”.
Describing the London Stone in Old and New London, Walter Thornbury embellished the story of Jack Cade by adding that “Jack Cade struck with his bloody sword when he had stormed London Bridge”.
There is no reason why Cade would have used the London Stone in such a way. It was not a tradition for Kings or Lord Mayors of the City to strike the stone for any form of recognition.
Accounts imply that Cade did do this, but it was Shakespeare who really amplified and spread the story, including Cade using the stone as a sort of throne from where he issued proclamations and judgments. All part of the myths surrounding the London Stone.
The above print of Cade does show the stone in the street, not against the church, which appears to have been its location until the 18th century.
The Illustrated London News on the 13th of March 1937, reported that the London Stone was to be moved to a worthier setting, that it would be moved into an arched recess higher up the church, and flood lit at night.
Unfortunently, these plans were not carried out due to the start of war in 1939.
The Illustrated London News did repeat one of the apparent myths concerning the London Stone, that it “is believed to have originally been a tall prehistoric menhir, and later a Roman milliarium or milestone”, so not just tracing the stone back to Roman origins, but attributing a very much earlier origin as a prehistoric standing stone.
As well as prehistoric origins of the London Stone, there are also a number of myths about spiritual associations with the stone, the position of the stone at a centre of the City, and that if anything ever happens to the London Stone, the City will fall.
The following saying which is alleged to date from the medieval period has been repeated in a number of books about London:
So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe
So long will London flourish
John Clark in Folklore, Vol. 121, No. 1 found that this saying only existed from 1862.
A Brutus Stone seems to have been found in a number of places, for example in the Dartmouth and South Hams Chronicle on the 4th of March 1898: “Mr. Page rather made fun of the Brutus Stone set in the pavement of the High-street in Totnes, and of the claim that it was the stone on which Brutus of Troy landed when he came to Britain.”
Kipling used the name London Stone for a poem published in the Times on the 10th of November 1923. The poem was an elegy on grieving for the dead, however the poem referred to the Cenotaph, rather than the stone in Cannon Street (although the name of the poem was changed in different publications, as explored by the Kipling Society).
Many of the stories associated with the stone are just that, myths and stories, and there is very little to confirm the history of the stone prior to the medieval period.
Wherever stones are found, from the complexity of Stonehenge to a single prehistoric standing stone in a field, they always attract myths and legends.
I used a reference from Sir Walter Besant’s 1910 book on the City of London earlier in the post, and opposite the page on the London Stone was this view looking west along Cannon Street towards St. Paul’s. Part of St. Swithin’s church is on the right, with the London Stone just out of shot:
One hundred and thirteen years later the street is just as busy. Apart from St. Paul’s there is only one building that is in both views. In the photo below, on the immediate right is a building with distinctive arches over the windows. In the above photo, you can see the same building on the right, a little further down the street.
The first written reference to the London Stone appears to be from the late 11th century, so the stone is old, but as to its origins and purpose, we can only make educated guesses, and whilst it has moved slightly around its current location in Cannon Street over the centuries, it has looked out on an ever changing street scene.
