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.
Limehouse Hole Stairs are one of the very old stairs between the land and the river. They are towards the eastern edge of Limehouse, in an area once known as Limehouse Hole, where the river turns south on its journey around the Isle of Dogs.
Today, the stairs are a wide and well maintained set of steps leading down from the walkway alongside the river, towards a very roughly rectangular area which is accessible when the tide is low:
The foreshore at Limehouse Hole Stairs has large sandy patches along with plenty of stone and brick that has found its way into the river from the buildings and infrastructure that once lined the Thames.
If you look closely, it is interesting how similar items can be found in lines along the foreshore. They were left when the tide went out, and form a line across the sand. I have no idea of the mechanism that leaves them in a line rather than randomly scattered, and on the foreshore at Limehouse Hole Stairs, a line of green glass / plastic / minerals (not sure what they were), was stretched across the sand:
The Port of London Authority list of the steps, stairs and landing places on the tidal Thames has very little information on Limehouse Hole Stairs, just recording that they were in good condition, with stone and concrete steps and in use. The PLA had not recorded whether the stairs were in use in their two key recording years of 1708 and 1977.
The stairs are old, but the stairs we see today are very different to what was there prior to the redevelopment of the area in recent decades, which I will show later in the post.
There is an area of foreshore that dries when the tide is low shown mainly within the red circle. Limehouse Pier extends into the river. Follow the pier back to land, and in the corner is Limehouse Hole Stairs.
You can also see in the above map, a line forming two sides of a square, with the river walls forming the other two sides. The two lines running across the dried foreshore in the map were a wooden surround, parts of which can still be seen today, as I will show later.
I will come to the relevance of the blue circle later in the post.
This area has a complicated naming history.
Written references to the stairs date back to the early 19th century, although these do not explicitly name Limehouse Hole Stairs. A typical advert in February 1807 was for the Schooner Anne which was for sale and could be seen “lying at Limehouse Hole, opposite the stairs”.
The name Limehouse Hole is also a bit of a mystery. It may refer to a form of small harbour or dock, although I find this unlikely as the larger Limekiln Dock is within the area traditionally known as Limehouse Hole.
I did wonder if the name referred to a hole in the river, perhaps a particularly deep part of the Thames, however in the area known as Limehouse Hole, the bed of the river is of a depth that is normal for much of this stretch of the river, typically around 6 metres deep at the lowest astronomical tide.
There is though a strange depression in the bed of the river not far to the west, in the middle of the river opposite the entrance to Limehouse Dock, where the river descends from a depth of 5.5 metres to a depth of 11.4 metres, all within a small area of the Thames.
To add to naming confusion, if we look at Rocque’s map from 1746, there are stairs in the rough location of Limehouse Hole Stairs, however Rocque calls then Limekiln Stairs, and he also names this stretch of the river Limekiln Holes rather than Limehouse Hole, so perhaps the name refers to some aspect of the Limekiln industry, and as this industry declined, the name changed from Limekiln to Limehouse Hole.
The Survey of London does though state that the name Limehouse Hole was in use for this section of the river by the seventeenth century, so perhaps Rocque was confused with the Limekilns and Limekiln Dock, or in the 18th century there were different names in use.
The extract from Rocque’s map is shown below:
The first references to the full name of Limehouse Hole Stairs start to appear around 1817, and there are multiple references in the 1820s onwards. All the usual events that make their way into the papers – accidents on the river, ships for sale, fires in the buildings by the stairs, rowing competitions, and tables of rates for Watermen to charge to row passengers along the river.
In the OS map shown above, there is a pier coming out from Limehouse Hole stairs. The earliest reference I can find to the pier dates from 1843, when there was an article in the November 5th edition of The Planet recording a court case, where “On Tuesday, Jonathan Bourne, a waterman, and one of the proprietors of the floating-pier at Limehouse Hole stairs, appeared to answer a charge of carrying passengers in his boat on Sunday, in violation of the rights and privileges of William Banks, the Sunday ferryman. The real question in dispute between the parties was as to the right of the watermen owning the floating pier to convey passengers to and from the Watermen’s Company steamers which stop there. When the tide is low there is not sufficient water for the steamers to come alongside the outer barge of the pier, and the watermen row the passengers to the steamers, and vice versa, but no money is taken.”
From the article, it appears that the pier was owned by a group of watermen. The article also shows how watermen were regulated, and had specific rights covering what they could do, and when. I did not know that the Watermen’s Company ran steamers on the river. This must have been a far more efficient way of conveying passengers along the river, rather than rowing as watermen in previous years would have done. Also, an early version of the Thames Clippers that provide the same service today.
The pier seems to have disappeared by the 1860s, as in the East London Observer on the 1st of May, 1869, there was a report on a public meeting of the parishioners of Limehouse “to consider what action should be taken in obtaining the construction of a pier on the Thames, for the convenience of the inhabitants of Limehouse”, and that “there were many persons who would far rather go to the city by boat than either rail or bus”.
A new pier was needed because “the old pier was never under the management of the Thames Conservators, but under that of the watermen, who let it go to ruin”.
A new pier was built in 1870 and this second pier lasted until 1901, when it was removed for the construction of Dundee Wharf, and a couple of years later, the London County Council built the third pier on the site.
Getty Images have some photos of this third iteration of the pier, with the following photos showing the pier stretching out across the foreshore, with Dundee Wharf in the background, on the left. Click on the arrows to the sides of each photo to see all images of the pier in the gallery. (If you have received this post via email, the photo may not be visible due to the way code embedding works. Go to the post here https://alondoninheritance.com/ to see the photo).
The photos show the wooden surround which was shown in the earlier OS map. The photo helps with the purpose of this surround, as it presumably held back a raised area of the foreshore to create a reasonably level space for barges and lighters to be moored.
The Survey of London states that this third pier “was removed by the PLA in 1948, but the stairs and Thames Place, though closed off in 1967, survived until 1990”. The survival of the stairs until 1990 presumably refers to the version of the stairs prior to that which we see today.
The result of multiple piers, along with the wooden surround to the area, means that there are still remains on the foreshore which we can see today:
Including plenty of loose timbers which may have been washed here from other locations along the river:
And when the tide is low, we can still see the wooden surround which once enclosed a flat area of the foreshore as can be seen in the Getty photo above:
The following 1914 revision of the OS map shows Limehouse Hole Stairs and the pier, and also shows Limehouse Hole Ferry running across the river from the pier. This was a ferry to the opposite site of the river which landed at Horn Stairs, and which provided a fast way of crossing the river, rather than having to travel to either the Rothehithe or Blackwall Tunnels (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):
The following photo from Britain from Above shows the site in 1953 when the pier had been removed. I have marked Limehouse Hole Stairs, which at the time was simply wooden steps leading down to the foreshore. To get a closer view, the photo can be found here.
The pier had been removed just a few years before the above photo. Limekiln Dock runs inland towards the top of the photo, and, along with the shape of the river wall where Limehouse Hole Stairs is located, is the only feature that survives today. Almost every single building has disappeared.
Although Limehouse Hole Pier has gone, there is another pier, a short distance to the south, where the Canary Wharf pier can be found today, which provides access to the Thames Clippers, providing a similar function to the old steamers that once docked at Limehouse Hole pier:
Looking north from Canary Wharf pier, and there is another feature that survives. In the following photo, looking towards the location of Limehouse Hole Stairs, there is a straight row of metal piling, followed by a brick wall:
With a closer look, we can see that the brick wall turns inwards:
Returning to the 1949 revision of the OS map, I have marked the curved brick wall in the above photo, by a blue circle in the following map:
The curved brick wall was at the northern side of the entrance to a dock that ran alongside Lower Aberdeen Wharf.
The wall today looks as if it continues in land and I would love to know how much of the old dock, and the walls that once surrounded the dock, survive under the modern walkway that has been built as part of the redevelopment of the area.
We can also see the dock in an aerial photo, again from the Britain from Above web site, and dating from 1938:
I have highlighted the corner wall we can see today in an extract from the above photo, and have also marked the stairs and pier:
As well as Limehouse Hole Stairs, the other part of the title of the post is “the Breach”.
Much of the Isle of Dogs, and indeed much of the land alongside the Thames, is low lying, and over the centuries, it has been very common for there to be floods during high tides.
As London grew, and trade along the river developed, land was reclaimed, and river walls were built, but until the 20th century, these walls were often not of the height and strength we see today.
Nor far south of Limehouse Hole Stairs is an area of land where the river wall was breached, and was flooded, or in a state of marsh, for very many years. This was known as “The Breach”, and was shown on maps, including Rocque’s 1746 map, where it can be seen with a road running around what appears to be an area of marsh:
There is also a water feature in the above map called the “Poplar Gut”, and both this and the Breach were mentioned in an article in the East London Observer in 1903, when “Pepys in his diary under date of 23rd March, 1660, mentions that he saw the great breach which the late high water had made, to the loss of many thousands of pounds to the people about Limehouse. In Gascoyne’s map, the spot is marked by the explanation ‘Old Breach, the Foreland, now a place to lay timber’ and ‘The Breach’ is applied to what was more recently known as the Poplar Gut”.
The reason why the Breach happened where it did was down to the natural erosion of the land by the river at this particular point in its meander around the Isle of Dogs.
In time, and without any human intervention, the Thames would have cut through the northern section of the Isle of Dogs, leaving the part of the river around the south of the Isle of Dogs as an Oxbow Lake. The Thames has made subtle changes to its course over the centuries, and it is only in recent years that we have effectively put the river into a concrete and banked channel, and limited the natural forces of erosion.
There are also stories of people digging out ballast from the foreshore around where the Breach occurred, which would have contributed to the flood.
The view from Greenwich would have looked very different if the river had continued with the Breach.
in the quote from Pepys, he mentions that the Breach is now a place to lay timber, and this would have been a good place, as timber was often kept in a wet environment to stop the wood drying out and to allow gradual conditioning before sale.
In a parish map from 1703, the area is marked as a place to lay timber:
In Rocque’s map, there is an inland area of water called the Poplar Gut and in the above map it is labelled as the Breach. This was part of the area that flooded when the river breached the bank along the river.
This must have been a significant area of reasonably deep water, as on the 10th of June, 1748, it was reported that “On Saturday last, in the evening as Mr. George Newman, son of Mr. Newman, an eminent Linen Draper in Whitechapel, was washing himself in Poplar Gut, he was unfortunately drowned, although all possible means were used by a companion he was along with, to save him, to the inexpressible grief of his parents, and all who knew him”.
The Breach lasted for some years, and was still shown in the 1816 edition of Smith’s New Plan of London, which also included the recently completed West India Docks, which had been built over the Poplar Gut:
The Breach would soon be reclaimed after the publication of the above map, as the size and number of docks grew on the Isle of Dogs, and industry expanded along the edge of the river (the West India Docks and the channel across the Isle of Dogs will be the subject of future posts).
Nothing remains to be seen of the Breach today, although it was to the south of where the Canary Wharf pier is today, in the following view:
And almost as a reminder of when it was impossible to cross where the water of the Thames had breached the bank, during my visit, the path was closed, but this time for maintenance, rather than a flood:
This small area of Limehouse has changed dramatically over the last few decades, however there are still places where we can see traces of the previous industrial. docks and riverside infrastructure.
Wooden planks still poking through the foreshore, although being gradually eroded, a brick wall running along the river’s edge, and location and names of the stairs that bridge the boundary between land and the river.
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.
In 1952 my father was in Peterborough. It was one of the cycling trips he did with friends after National Service. Cycling and staying in Youth Hostels was a very popular means for young people to explore the country. It was cheap, much quieter roads ensured that cycling was safer and more enjoyable than it would be today, and for those who had been born, and grown up in London, it provided an ideal opportunity to see the rest of the country.
Although it was probably not realised at the time, it was also a time to see much of the country before the coming decades brought significant change. For example, when my father visited Peterborough, the population was around 54,000 and today it is well over 200,000. The city centre would also have a large new shopping centre, the Queensgate, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which resulted in the loss and demolition of part of the historic street network.
Peterborough also has a connection with many of the buildings in London, as the city is the home of the London Brick Company, the name of the company dating from 1900 following the purchase of a local brick company by John Cathles Hill, who developed large parts of suburban London, using bricks from the Fletton deposit of lower Oxford Clays found around Peterborough.
I am going to start my tour of Peterborough, in the old market place, with a view from 1952 of the Guildhall:
The Guildhall dates from 1671 and has an open space at ground level for the market, and assembly rooms on the first floor, which were also used for meetings of the local council.
The Guildhall is at the eastern end of the Market Place and faces the entrance to the cathedral Minster Close.
It was obvioulsy not market day when the above photo was taken, as cars were parked under the framework for the market stalls.
Also, to the left of the Guildhall, you can see a building up close to the rear of the Guildhall, and to illustrate the scene today, I took a wider view to show how this has changed:
The Guildhall is still there and looks as it did in 1952. As shown in the 1952 photo, there were buildings up close to the rear of the structure between the Guildhall and the parish church of St. John. These have now been demolished. The market has also been moved to a dedicated market building and Market Square is now named as Cathedral Square.
The cathedral is at the opposite end of Cathedral Square, and is reached through a gateway into Minister Close where the western front of the cathedral can be found, here photographed in 1952:
The cathedral today. The open book features key dates in the history of the cathedral:
Gateway into the area where the Deanery is located:
Seventy-one years later:
Peterborough is a Cathedral City, and the cathedral has been at the heart of the city for very many centuries.
Long before the current cathedral, a monastery was founded in 655 at what was then called Medeshamstede, on the edge of the Fens, a large area of eastern England, with much of the land being waterlogged or marsh. The site of the monastery was on dry land overlooking the Fens, and was an ideal location as the Fens provided supplies of fish, wildfowl, and reeds for thatching.
Viking raids across eastern England resulted in the deaths of all the monks in the monastery in 870, and the Christian church was wiped out as a functioning organisation.
The monastery was refounded just over 100 years later in 972 by King Edgar and Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and the community needed to service the monastery, and that formed the start of Peterborough, began to grow around the cathedral.
In the year 1116, the monastery buildings, and much of the early town was destroyed in a fire which was believed to have started in a bakery (a parallel with the Great Fire of London), and the loss of the monastery buildings resulted in the construction of the building we see today, which commenced in 1118.
The need for funds to help with the construction of the new building led the monks of the monastery to create the market to the west of the cathedral, and the development of streets to attract commercial activity.
The monastic church would take decades to construct, and was finally consecrated in 1238, with additions and modifications continuing to be made during the following centuries.
In 1539 the monastery and abbey church were closed by King Henry VIII, who also confiscated the land and buildings.
Two years later in 1541, the church was reopened as Peterborough Cathedral, with the foundation charter for the cathedral being established on the 4th of September, 1541.
Time for a walk around the cathedral in 1952:
I could not easily take the same views as the two photos above, due to trees which have since grown around the cathedral and obscure some of the views.
However I could recreate the above photo:
The eastern end of the cathedral is the subject of the following photo. The section in the lower right of the photo is known as the New Building and dates from a programme of building work carried out between 1496 and 1509.
The view today is almost identical:
When I can get these Then and Now photos as closely aligned as possible, given the very different cameras in use, and the view has hardly changed in 70 years, it is always a moment to stop and think just how many people have seen the same view over the centuries, and how many will do so in the future.
Buildings such as the cathedral, and the Guildhall in the Market Place, anchor the city’s history and provide a physical link with the past. Whilst shopping centres, office blocks etc. will come and go, these buildings are so much more than their physical appearance.
Painted sun dial:
I found a couple of sundials on the cathedral. One of the west facing front of the building and one of the south, however they were not in the same position as the above 1952 photo. I did find the sundial in the following photo on the southern side of the cathedral, which would be the correct location for such a device.
The grounds around the cathedral have long been used as a place of burial. On the southern side are a number of medieval stone coffins which were discovered during 19th century restoration works, and could be 12th century when the area was being used as a graveyard for the abbey community:
I could not find the location of the following photo:
I did ask one of the guides in the cathedral, who thought is was probably in the Cloisters, which were closed at the time of my visit due to tiles falling from the roof in recent winds.
The plaque in the above photo reads “The Monks Lavatory as renewed in the 14th Century”.
Peering through the gate to the Cloisters:
The view from the western front of the cathedral, looking back to the entrance gate which leads into the old Market Place where the Guildhall is located:
As could be expected, the interior of Peterborough Cathedral is magnificent. The view looking toward the altar:
The following photo is looking west along the Nave. Whilst the Nave is a wonderful example of 12th century architecture, the key feature of this part of the cathedral is the 13th century painted wood ceiling:
Although is has been painted a few times in the last 800 years, the wooden structure, style and carving is original, and makes the ceiling a unique example of such a ceiling within England, and indeed is one of only four wooden ceilings of this period surviving across the whole of Europe.
Peterborough was bombed during the last war, and the cathedral had a narrow escape from incendiary bombs, which would have devastated the wooden ceiling. As with St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, a team of fire watchers protected the cathedral in Peterborough.
As can be seen from outside, the cathedral has a relatively short central tower.
Many medieval cathedrals did have much higher towers and steeples, however the weight of these was often too much for the supporting structure and foundations, or often were badly damaged by high winds
The original 12th century tower was much higher. Just a couple of hundred years later in the 14th century, the tower was lowered due to stability problems.
Over the following five hundred years, the weight of the tower continued to cause stability problems and by the mid 19th century there were wide cracks developing in the pillars supporting the tower.
This required urgent work, and the tower was dismantled and rebuilt, and whilst not that dramatic a structure from outside, looking up at the tower from inside the cathedral we can get a wonderful view of the supporting pillars, the tower, windows (the tower is in the form of a Lantern Tower), and the decorated ceilings:
The ornately carved wooden pulpit dates from restoration works in the cathedral during the 1880s:
Cathedrals take on a different atmousphere at different times of the year, and in different weathers.
September sunshine brought plenty of light into the building, and every so often, on the stone floor, on medieval pillars, an array of coloured light filtered through the stained glass windows:
The original burial place of Mary Queen of Scots was in Peterborough Cathedral.
Mary was only 6 days old when she inherited the throne of Scotland after the death of her father, James V. For much of her early life Scotland was governed by Regents, and Mary lived in France and raised as a Catholic as she was seen to be at risk from the English.
Even after returning to Scotland and taking the throne, governing a mainly Protestant country did not go well. She was imprisoned and forced to abdicate. Mary fled to England, hoping to get protection from Elizabeth I, however Mary was also considered a legitimate claimant to the English throne, so Elisabeth had her imprisoned in a number of different places across the country.
After over 18 years of imprisonment, Mary was found guilty of attempting to assassinate Elizabeth, and beheaded in 1587 at Fotheringhey Castle in Northamptonshire.
She was buried in Peterborough Cathedral a few months later in 1587, and remained in Peterborough until 1612, when her son who was now James I arranged for her body to be reburied in Westminster Abbey.
The location of her burial in Peterborough Cathedral is still marked:
Peterborough Cathedral suffered badly during the English Civil War when the Parliamentary soldiers under Oliver Cromwell entered the town.
The cathedral was ransacked, and everything that could be associated with the old Catholic faith was destroyed. The cathedral’s library was also destroyed with the exception of a single book, the story being told at the cathedral that a clergyman persuaded an illiterate solider that it was a bible and should not be burnt.
Parts of the cathedral still show the damage from the Civil War, including the remains of a family monument shown in the photo below:
There is nothing visible of the early monastery built on the site of the present cathedral, however there is a single stone on display. This is the Hedda Stone and dates from around the year 800, and may have marked the grave of an Anglo-Saxon saint or king:
The stone is solid, so would not have held any relics or bones, and may have been part of a larger feature. It does provide an indication of the degree of decoration that may have featured in an early 9th century monastary.
As with many cathedrals, many of those who have passed through the building in previous centuries have left their mark:
Between 1496 and 1509 there was an extensive programme of work across the cathedral, and the eastern end of the building saw an extension, which is still known as the “New Building”, which is rather impressive for a building that is 500 years old.
Perhaps the most impressive part of the New Building is the fine fan vaulting of the roof, which can be seen in the following photo:
Peterborough Cathedral is where Henry VIII’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon was buried. Her tomb was destroyed during the Civil War, however her body was undisturbed and the grave is now marked by a marble slab and memorials to Katherine.
Katherine of Aragon was born in 1485 to King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabel of Castile. At the age of 16 she was married to Henry’s older brother Arthur, however after his death at a young age, his younger brother Henry was in line for the throne, and Katherine’s future looked uncertain.
Her future looked secure when she married Henry when he became King in 1509. She ruled when Henry was aboard, usually fighting in France, and must have been a formidable woman as she governed when a Scottish army was defeated at the Battle of Floden.
It was Katheryn’s apparent inability to provide Henry with a son that led to her downfall. Henry VIII was desperate for a son and heir, and whilst married to Katherine, his eye was already on Anne Boleyn.
Without the Pope’s approval, he could not divorce Katherine, so this led to the separation of the Church in England from the Church in Rome. Henry divorced, married Anne Boleyn, and Katherine was sent to stay in a number of houses across England, almost in a form a house arrest.
She died in Kimbolten Manor (to the south of Peterborough) in 1536, and following her death Henry refused a state funeral in London, so Katherine was buried in Peterborough Cathedral in a ceremony that included four bishops and six abbots, a large number of mourners, with the ceremony being lit by 1,000 candles.
Katherine of Aragon is at a point in history where it is interesting to speculate “what if?”. If she had given birth to a son, Henry would probably not have needed to divorce Katherine, and the separation with Rome and the dissolution of all the religious institutions across the country, and the establishment of the Church of England, may not have happened.
Henry did divorce though, and for almost 500 years, Katherine of Aragon’s body has rested in Peterborough Cathedral.
There is a clock mechanism in the cathedral that has the name of “The clock with no face”, as the clock does not have any clock face or hands. The mechanism instead would strike a bell every half hour so the monks would know when to pray, although how they new what the specific time was, I have no idea.
Parts of the mechanism date from about 1450, and it was installed in the bell tower until 1950, when it was replaced with an electronic device. Still able to work, it is now on display in the cathedral:
A magnificent painted ceiling above the altar:
A final look back towards the eastern end of the cathedral. This is the earliest part of the building as construction started in the east and worked towards the west:
Peterborough cathedral is magnificent. The old Guildhall building hints at what the old town of Peterborough may have looked like, before a combination of wartime bombing and post war development changed much of the core of the city.
Very much worth a visit though, and I am pleased to have visited the location of some more of my father’s photos.
I shall be returning to his London photos in next week’s post.
I have now been writing the blog for nine and a half years, and it has changed the way I look at things when walking the streets of the city. I now take far more notice of all the little indicators to the history of an area, a street or a building.
Whether it is the way that streets dip and rise, and the sound of running water rising from below a drain cover, both hinting at a lost river, the way the shape of a building hints at an early street pattern before a Victorian road improvement, or the numerous plaques and architectural features telling of a building’s former use.
A typical example of this was when I walked along Cloak Lane in the City a couple of weeks ago. Although I have walked through the street numerous times over the years, I had not noticed this foundation stone on a building on the corner of Cloak Lane and College Hill:
What caught my attention with this foundation stone is that it was laid by a Deputy Chairman of the Police Committee.
The building does not seem to have any current connection with the Police service and is now an office block, and appears to be on sale for offers in excess of £14.7 million.
The building looks as if it was once home to an institution of some form. Plainly decorated and mainly brick with stone cladding on the ground floor, the building still projects a strong, functional image onto Cloak Lane.
The foundation stone on the building is now the only reminder that this was built for the City of London Police and opened as Cloak Lane Police Station:
As the foundation stone records, Cloak Lane Police Station dates from 1885.
At the time, Cloak Lane was one of six police divisions across the City. They were centered on police stations at Cloak Lane, Minories, Bishopsgate, Bridewell Place, Snow Hill and Moor Lane.
The City of London Police came into being in 1839 when the City of London Police Act was passed on the 17th of August 1839. Before this act, policing in the City was built around a Day Patrol of Constables, and a Night Patrol which started with elected Ward Constables and Watchmen, with Watch Houses that later became the first Police Stations located across the City.
The 1839 Act provided statutory approval of the City of London Police, appointed a Commissioner of Police who was selected by the City’s Court of Common Council, and probably of more importance to the City of London, the Act ensured that the City’s police would be kept separate and not merged with the Metropolitan Police. A separation which continues to this day.
The City of London Police seems to have been funded by the Corporation of London, and funded by a police rate paid by the businesses and residents of the City.
There appears to have been some concern about the extra costs of the new building as in the City Press in 1885 there was the following: “There is every probability of an increase in the city rating, which is already exceedingly heavy. A new police-station is about to be erected in Cloak Lane which will involve an additional penny in the police rate, unless the cost of the building is spread over several years”.
I cannot find the exact date when the new station opened, however it appears to have been built quickly as by 1886 newspapers were starting to carry reports about events involving the station, including what must have been a most unusual use for the new police station:
“AN ADDER CAUGHT IN A LONDON STREET. There is now to be seen at the Police Station, Cloak Lane, City, an adder, about 15 inches long, which was seen in Cannon Street a morning or two ago basking in the sun on the foot pavement, although large numbers of persons were passing to and fro at the time.
A constable’s attention was drawn to the strange sight, and he managed to get it into a box and take it to the station. It is conjectured that it must have been inadvertently conveyed to town in some bale or other package of goods. The creature, which is pronounced to be a fine specimen, has been visited by large numbers of persons.”
I could not find any record of what happened to the adder after its appearance at Cloak Lane police station.
Cloak Lane is to the south of Cannon Street, and runs a short distance west from Cannon Street Station.
The building did suffer bomb damage during the war (although it is not marked on the LCC Bomb Damage Maps). A high explosive bomb did penetrate the roof and caused considerable internal damage. There are a number of photos of the damage in the London Picture Archive, including the photo at this link.
As a result of this damage, there may have been some repairs and rebuilding of the structure, and it is hard to be sure how much of the building is the original 1886 station.
The longest axis of the building is on Cloak Street, with the shortest axis running down College Hill as the building is on the corner of these two streets.
What is strange is that the main entrance to the building is on Cloak Lane, and the building was known as Cloak Lane police station, however as can be seen to the left of the door in the following photo, it has an address of 1 College Hill:
The arms of the City of London can be seen in the pediment above the door. I am not sure who the figure on the keystone is meant to represent, however it could be Neptune / Old Father Thames, as Cloak Lane police station covered the area along the river not far to the south of the building.
I find it fascinating to use these fixed points in London as a reference to finding out about life in the City over the years, and Cloak Lane police station tells us much about crime in the City of London.
Financial crime seem to be a feature of many of those of who found themselves in Cloak Lane police station. Probably to be expected given the businesses within the City. Two examples:
In September 1952, Colin Vernon Ley was awaiting trial, charged with “while being a Director of Capital Investments Ltd. he unlawfully and fraudulently applied £3,000 belonging to that body to his own use”.
The report of his arrest reads as you would perhaps expect of an arrest in the 1950s:
“At 6.45 p.m. yesterday, said the Inspector, I was with Detective Sergeant Reginald Plumb in Bruton Street, Mayfair, when I saw the prisoner outside the Coach and Horses public house.
I said to him ‘You know who we are, and I hold a warrant for your arrest issued at the Mansion House today.
I cautioned him, and he said ‘I suppose I have to come with you now’. At Cloak Lane Police Station, the warrant was read to him, and he said ‘You were in a position to prove it, no doubt before you got the warrant’. I was present when he was charged and he made no reply.”
On the 10th of October 1959, papers were reporting on the arrest of a solicitor for one of the largest, in value, financial frauds. Friedrich Grunwald, described as a 35 year old Mayfair solicitor was arrested and charged under the Larceny Act with the fraudulent conversion of £3,250,000 entrusted to him by the State Building Society to secure mortgages on properties owned by 161 companies. His arrest was described that:
“At a nod from a colleague, a bowler-hatted Detective-Superintendent Francis Lee, head of the City Fraud Squad, intercepted him on the Embankment near Temple Underground Station and escorted him to a car which drove to Cloak Lane police station”
In January of the following year, Herbert Murray, secretary and managing director of the State Building Society was also arrested and taken to Cloak Lane and would later appear in court with Grunwald.
The problem with using old newspapers for research is that there are so many random interesting articles to be found on the same page. If you have ever wondered why and when the Guards at Buckingham Palace moved into the secure area behind the railings, then on the same page as the above article there was:
“PALACE GUARD TO RETREAT BEHIND RAILINGS – Sentries at Buckingham Palace are to retreat behind the railings. They are making their tactical withdrawal to prepared positions to avoid clashes with sight-seers.
It will stop fashion photographers posing scantily dressed models under the men’s noses. It will stop those pictures of kindly small boys tie sentries undone bootlaces. Too often the boys tied the laces of both boots together.”
The River Thames features in a number of events that involved Cloak Lane police station. These normally involved some form of tragedy, due to the nature of police work, and the dangers of the river, such as in April 1924:
“POLICEMAN VANISHES – BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN BLOWN INTO THE THAMES. Police Constable Albert Condery is believed to have met with a tragic death by being blown into the Thames during a storm last night.
It is learned that Condery, who has been in the City Police Force for 20 years, left Cloak Lane Police Station last night to go on duty at Billingsgate Market. He was seen there by the sergeant, but later he was missed, and his helmet was found floating on the Thames near the market. The body has not been recovered.”
The above report was from a time when lone police officers patrolled the city’s streets. Although the following photo was taken by my father in Bankside, not the area covered by Cloak Lane, it does show the traditional image of a policeman patrolling their beat:
There were many strange events across the City in which Cloak Lane was involved. In November 1902, papers had the headline “EXTRAORDINARY AFFAIR AT BANK OF ENGLAND – ATTEMPT TO SHOOT THE SECRETARY. A sensation was caused in the Bank of England yesterday by the firing of a revolver by a young man who had entered the library. As he seemed about to continue his firing indiscriminately the officials overpowered and disarmed him. The police were called in, and he was removed to the Cloak Lane Police Station.”
He was unknown by anyone in the Bank of England and whilst at Cloak Lane, he was examined by a Doctor, who came up with the diagnosis that “the man’s mind had given way at the time”.
In August 1891, there were reports of a “Raid on a Cheapside Club”, which officers from Cloak Lane had been watching for some time, with a couple of Detectives having infiltrated the club. Finally there was a raid, when: “A party of 14 plain-clothes officers made a descent upon the premises. At first, admission was refused, and the officers proceeded to smash the glass paneling in the upper portion of the door. Resistance being of course in vain, the door was thrown open, and the detectives rushing in, arrested everyone found in the establishment. twelve persons were taken into custody, and removed to Cloak Lane Police Station.”
The report does not mention why the club was illegal, however reports in later papers when those arrested were in court reveal that it was an illegal betting club, known locally as the United Exchange Club, held in the basement in Cheapside that had been home to the City Billiard Club.
Another view of the old Cloak Lane Police Station. College Hill is the street leading down at the left of the photo. Cloak Lane is where the longest length of the building can be seen, but strangely the address on the main entrance is 1 College Hill:
In 1914, two of the original six divisions were closed, and the City of London police force was reorganised into four Divisions. These were changed from numbered divisions 1 to 6 to lettered divisions A to D, with Cloak Lane becoming D Division.
In last week’s post on the London Stone, I included a photo from the 1920s publication Wonderful London where a policeman was standing guard over the London Stone.
City of London police had their individual number, followed by a letter for their division on their collar, and looking at the collar number of the policeman shows he was from D Division based at Cloak Lane, which makes sense as Cloak Lane covered Cannon Street.
Cloak Lane Police Station survived until 1965, when it closed and Wood Street became the D Division police station.
The very last report mentioning Cloak Lane Police Station was from December 1965 when an article titled “Foolish Driver in The City” reported on a driver who was seen driving down Friday Street and only just stopping at the junction with Cannon Street. He was arrested on suspicion of being drunk and taken to Cloak Lane Police Station, where he “had to be supported by two officers because he was unsteady on his feet”.
And so ended 80 years of policing from Cloak Lane.
Wood Street (designed by McMorran and Whitby, and built between 1963 and 1966), and which took over from Cloak Lane is shown in the photo below:
Wood Street Police Station has in turn been closed.
In the announcement from the Corporation of the City of London, it is stated: “The Grade II* Listed building has been sold to Wood Street Hotel Ltd (wholly owned by Magnificent Hotels) after it was declared surplus to operational requirements by the City of London Police. The developers have purchased the property on a 151-year lease and will turn it into a boutique 5-star hotel, subject to planning permission.”
The only indication that the building on the corner of Cloak Lane and College Hill was a police station is the foundation stone laid by the deputy chairman of the police committee.
It now has a very difference use, and those who enter the building are now presumably doing so voluntarily, unlike very many of those who entered the building between 1886 and 1965.
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.
The Impact of the M25 was the title of a 1982 report from the Standing Conference on London and South East Regional Planning.
I am sure that drivers have long had a love / hate relationship with the M25. When it is flowing well, it is a fast and efficient way around London, to reach different entry points to the city, or main roads and motorways spreading away from the city. At other times, it can be a car park, with a lane closure or accident quickly leading to miles of slow moving and stationary traffic.
The M25 is the latest in a series of attempts at moving traffic around the city. From plans in the 1940s by the City of London to circle the City with dual carriageways that became Upper and Lower Thames Street and London Wall, to the north and south circular, to the M25.
There is also a perception that London begins at the M25, and indeed with the recent expansion of the ULEZ zone, in some places such as near Waltham Abbey to the north, the ULEZ zone is up against the M25, as it is in the east, where to the east of Upminster the zone crosses the M25 to cover a small area of land around North Ockenden.
The M25 is only there because of London. It was built to provide a route around the city without having to travel through built up and congested areas, and to offer a way for lorries and cars traveling from, for example, the midlands to the channel port at Dover, a fast route between the motorways that spread out from London.
However the M25, as indeed with any new road, has an impact far beyond the original intentions of improving traffic flow.
It will result in developments that aim to take advantage of the new road, it will open up areas for regeneration, it will generate new levels of traffic, and it will have an impact on the natural environment of the places through which the road is built.
Investigating the potential impact of the M25 was the aim of the 1982 report, to see what impact on the south-east this major new infrastructure project would have in the years ahead.
At the time of the report, the M25 was under construction, and the following map shows the expected completion dates of individual sections of the motorway from 1982 to 1986:
For nearly all post-war planning, the car and lorry were central to transport planning. This had started in the 1930s, and planning for post-war reconstruction in the 1940s expected a significant increase in personal car ownership and use for both work and pleasure purposes.
The cost of car travel would also gradually reduce compared to other forms of transport, and the report included the following graph, which shows that between 1971 and 1981, the costs of London Transport bus fares (1) and underground fares (2) had risen far more than both average earnings (5) and motoring costs (6):
The report identified five major development implications that the M25 would result in:
warehousing serving national and regional markets, for which the areas around Dagenham, Dartford, Grays and Redbridge are likely to be attractive;
high-technology growth industries; which are likely to be attracted to towns just beyond the Green belt;
offices which do not require a central London location. Increased demand in Romford, Croydon, Orpington, Hounslow, Uxbridge and Barnet is envisaged;
hypermarket and superstore developments for which locations close to M25 junctions would be most attractive, but would also conflict with Green Belt policy;
discount shopping stores, for which locations on major cross London routes such as the North Circular Road are likely to be attractive.
Much of the route of the M25 was through Green Belt, and the use of land close to the new motorway, would result in planning problems, and increase the value of land where development was permitted.
The route of the M25 through the Green Belt is shown in the following map:
Although there were a few very small exceptions, the M25 did not pass through Grade 1 and 2 agricultural land, although the report identified large areas of the highest quality land in east Hertfordshire, Essex, and north-west Kent, as shown in the following map:
Being close to the M25 could result in development pressures to these areas of high grade agricultural land, and these, along with the Green Belt were considered landscape constraints on where additional development could take place, and where proposals for development would threaten the natural environment and the production of food.
As well as agricultural land, a trip around the M25 provides an insight into the underlying geology of the land surrounding London. From the heathlands as you exit the M25 onto the M3, the flat, open lands of Essex as you exit onto the A13 and A127, and the chalk hills around the south of the M25.
Green Belt and agricultural land added to the policy constraints for land development around the M25, with Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Special Landscape Areas also needing to be considered. The scope of these are shown in the following map from the report:
As well as natural and agricultural areas that were protected, there were also what the report classified as “Damaged Landscapes” which was land that had, or was being used as mineral workings, refuse tips, sewage works, electricity transmission installations and industrial development.
The report identified that some of these damaged landscapes, such as gravel working could be used for other purpose, such as recreational uses, but cautioned that areas used for refuse tips, mineral workings and sewage works would require very expensive restoration works.
The report also included “landscape under threat” which included deteriorating agricultural and woodland, as well as under-used open land close to urban areas (it is interesting that land always needs to be “used” and cannot just be left).
The areas of land included in these two categories are shown in the following map:
I well remember some of these “damaged landscapes”. As a child, an outing to Kent required a drive through the Dartford Tunnel, (which was built before the M25). On the approach to the tunnel from Essex, there were chalk quarries and cement factories on either side of the road.
These places were always coated in a thick grey dust, and I found a couple of photos on the excellent Geograph site showing the cement industry in West Thurrock:
The nearby Dartford Tunnels (now the Dartford Crossing with the addition of the bridge), is a major part of the M25, although not being officially part of it as the crossing still carries the designation of A282.
The first Dartford Tunnel was planned in the 1930s, and construction work did start, but was soon halted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
Work recommenced in 1959, and the first tunnel opened four years later in 1963. This was a single tunnel with two carriageways to carry traffic in both directions under the river. Crossing through the tunnel required the payment of a toll.
Traffic through the tunnel increased significantly and a second tunnel was planned, a key upgrade given that the M25 was also bang planned.
Money to fund the project was in short supply in the early 1970s, however funding was granted from the European Economic Community, allowing construction of the second tunnel to start in 1974, opening to traffic in 1980, with one tunnel being used for traffic from north to south, and the other tunnel used for south to north traffic.
Entrance to one of the Dartford Tunnels:
Even the two tunnels were insufficient for the increasing volumes of traffic once the M25 had opened, and starting in the late 1980s, construction started on the Queen Elizabeth II bridge, which opened in 1991.
The bridge now takes traffic running from north to south, with the two tunnels carrying traffic from south to north.
A journey across the Dartford Crossing, whether through the tunnels or across the bridge has always attracted a toll, which was originally used to cover the costs of construction. Toll booths once collected payment, however there have now been replaced by automatic number plate recognition, and online payment.
I found some figures for the tolls dating from the financial year 2016 – 2017, when the crossing generated almost £205 million, with £92 million coming from fines for unpaid fees, with a further £42 million of unpaid fines being written off as being unenforceable.
The latest traffic figures from National Highways shows that the Dartford Crossing carries more than 180,000 on its busiest days, with the highest amount recorded of 206,713 vehicles, on the 20th of February 2018.
The report tried to identify areas where there were a major development commitment. This data was dependent on local authorities, who provided data from different time periods and different classifications of development, but the plan attempted to identify the main sites and types of proposed developments:
Taking one area as an example, to the east, around the river crossing, large circles are shown to north and south of the river for industry and warehousing, with no identification of any planned shopping developments (shown as a small triangle in the above map).
This would change very quickly, with the Lakeside Shopping Centre being built in an old chalk quarry in the second half of the 1980s, in West Thurrock on the north side of the river, and the Bluewater Shopping Centre being built in the second half of the 1990s, again in a former chalk quarry, on the south side of the river.
The M25 provided a wide catchment area for these two shopping centres.
The area around the Dartford Crossing continues to be developed. The old oil and coal fired Littlebrook Power Station complex on the south side of the river next to the Dartford Cross has been demolished in recent years, and the area is now subject to major redevelopment with large numbers of warehouses which take advantage of easy access to the M25.
The M25 has also helped with the expansion of passenger numbers to London’s main airports, with both the M25, and motorways radiating out such as the M23 and M1 opening up large catchment areas for Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports.
Whilst the M25 has helped these airports attract passengers, the M25 has caused problems with any possible expansion of Heathrow, with the motorway being in the way of a number of possible options for an additional runway.
At the time of the report, there was an inquiry into the proposal to site London’s third airport at Stansted, and the report was sure that the M25 would have a positive impact on the development of Stansted, but would lead to greater pressures for development in the surrounding areas.
The report identified that the impact of the M25 would be major development pressures on many areas bordering the M25, whether retail, such as at Lakeside and Bluewater, warehousing and offices and residential developments.
As well as providing a simplified route around London, and between the major routes heading out of, and into London, the report highlighted the expected significant time savings.
The diagram below shows expected time savings based on a 1980 GLC Department of Planning and Transportation paper:
As an example, the diagram shows an expected time saving of 25 minutes between Brentwood in Essex and Heathrow, making flights from the airport a much easier option for those living in Essex. It would be interesting to see if these time savings were still achievable.
The extent of the impact of the M25 is shown in the following map, The M25 is the dark line circling the city. The inner and outer lines show the area within 10 minutes of the M25:
The report mentions that 10 minutes was an arbitrary figure, but was chosen to illustrate just how much of the wider area surrounding London was within a very short time of travel to and from the motorway.
The overall view on Development Pressures and Opportunities was summarised in the following diagram:
The diagram highlighted that the impact of the M25 would result in development pressures to places such as Chelmsford in Essex, as well as places much closer to the M25.
These pressures were despite limited development opportunities in many areas, with the Greater London Development Plan identifying that there were “no preferred industrial locations” in outer north-west London.
There was one area where development was encouraged, and it was expected that the M25 would help with opening up the area and attracting developers. This was the area to the east of the City, starting in the Docklands and spanning both sides of the river out to Basildon on the north and Medway on the south side of the river, as shown in the following diagram:
It was hoped that this area to the east of the City would ease the development pressures in the area from Watford in the north, down to near Gatwick, with the arrows on either side of the motorway in the diagram both pointing away from the area in the west, to the Docklands / Basildon / Medway area in the east.
Following completion of the M25, use of the motorway has expanded rapidly.
The Department for Transport has a number of automatic traffic counters located around the M25, and on many other major routes.
I took one of the counters which is located just east of the Holmsdale Tunnel on the M25, just by Waltham Cross as an example, and on an average day in the year 2000, there were 108,038 vehicles of all types travelling on both sides of the M25.
In 2022, this had grown to 142,242, over a 31% increase in traffic, and the 2022 average was still slightly below the pre-pandemic 2019 average of 146,475.
The 2022 number consisted of 298 two wheeled motor vehicles, 54 buses and coaches, 86,334 cars and taxis, 35,561 light goods vehicles and 19,995 heavy goods vehicles.
Whether this rate of increase continues remains to be seen. If it does, the M25 will resemble a car park with long queues more frequently than it does now.
The M25 is the busiest motorway in the country, and carries a large percentage of the country’s road traffic. The Department for Transport also provide traffic volumes for the five busiest road sections in the UK motorway network. Four of these are on the M25:
The table shows that the section between the M3 and the M40, which includes the sections running west of Heathrow, is the busiest part of the M25, and has four out of the five most heavily used sections of motorway in the country.
The fourth most congested section in the country is a section of the M60, to the south west of Manchester.
The 1982 report identified many of the development pressures that the M25 would bring to the areas surrounding the new motorway. Almost 40 years after completion, the M25 is a key part of south east England’s transport infrastructure, and the volume of traffic using the motorway continues to increase.
The M25 did reduce traffic volumes on London’s roads, and roads of the surrounding towns and villages, as traffic now had a more direct route to travel around, into or out of the city, however I suspect that with the general increase in traffic volumes, any initial reduction has probably been replaced by an increase.
Whether this continues to increase, whether the transition to electric vehicles will result in a change to traffic volumes, whether changing working patterns will have an impact, and how the M25 will continue to impact the surrounding areas remains to be seen.
What is certain is that the M25 is another example of how London impacts a much wider area than the central city.
And for another example of the impact of London, if you travel south on the M25, look to the left a short distance along from Junction 17 (providing you are not driving), and you will see the large construction site for HS2, at the point where the tunnels start as the railway heads north under the Chilterns.
It will be interesting to see how HS2 is viewed in 40 years time – and whether it has finally reached Euston.
In 1986, Attenborough Jewellers and Pawnbrokers had a shop at 244 Bethnal Green Road in east London:
In 2023, they are still in business, and have expanded to take in the ground floor of the building to the right:
It is unusual for the same business to be operating in the same place after almost 40 years, and Attenborough Jewellers and Pawnbrokers have been at the same site for much longer having first opened here in 1892.
Apart from the ups and downs of the economy, the business seems to have had a reasonably quiet 131 years of trading, apart that is from the risk that any business with high value goods has to run, such as reported in the Eastern Post and City Chronicle on the 23rd of October, 1920:
“RAID ON A JEWELLERS: A daring attempt was made on Tuesday night by several men attempting to obtain possession of some valuable jewellery on the premises of Messrs. Attenborough Jewellers and pawnbrokers of 244, Bethnal Green Road. The weapon used was a hammer, and the thick plate glass window was smashed. The thieves were disturbed by a passer by and made off without obtaining any booty.
An unemployment meeting was being held at the time at the corner of Bethnal Green Road.”
The last sentence of the above article is rather strange, and seems to try and link an unemployment meeting with the robbery.
The Attenborough website only mentions the business in Bethnal Green Road, however there have been a few other businesses with the same name and business description across London, so I do not know if they were once all part of the same business, or the naming is just a coincidence.
Attenborough Jewellers and Pawnbrokers appears to have had a branch on Oxford Street in 1940, as in the following article dated the 5th of February, 1940, it is the same name, and the same description of “jewellers and pawn brokers”:
“STANLEY HILTON THURSTON, the prisoner who escaped from Lewes Gaol on August 9 last year was recaptured dramatically in London to-day.
The man, for whom the police have been searching for almost six months, walked into a jeweller’s shop in Oxford-street and was endeavouring to make a transaction when suspicions were aroused, and the police were called.
When the police questioned Thurston, he vaulted the counter and ran into the street. He was chased by the young assistant at the shop, who leaped on his back and brought him crashing to the pavement. Four police officers held him down while a taxi was called to take him to the police station.
The manager of the shop – Messrs. Attenborough, jewellers and pawnbrokers, described Thurston as ‘a real tough guy’. Thurston, a native of Manchester was serving sentences of five years penal servitude for a jewel robbery and five years preventative detention as an habitual criminal when, with a companion, he made his daring escape.
They were mistaken for harriers when seen wearing singlets in Lewes High-street. Thurston posed as a runner when he escaped Liverpool Gaol in 1930.”
Other newspaper articles include a reference to another Attenborough’s shop, also a “jewellers and pawn brokers” at 193 Fleet Street. and also one in Brompton Road
As with the businesses with the same name across London, the Attenborough’s in Bethnal Green Road was both a jeweller and a pawnbroker, and the business still has the three gold balls of the pawnbroker on the front of the building:
The use of three gold balls as the symbol for a pawnbroker dates from the time when most people could not read, and a symbol was needed to show the location of a particular business.
The three balls seems to have a number of possible origins.
One origin is a story that Saint Nicholas gave three bags of gold to the three daughters of a poor man, providing them with the means to get married.
Another possible origin is that the sign was used by Lombard lenders, who were money lenders and early bankers who came from central and northern Italy. The name Lombard is associated in the City of London with Lombard Street, where Lombard merchants settled in the 12th century.
The association between Lombards and pawnbrokers is such that in a number of European countries variations of the name are used for a pawnbroker, for example Lommerd in the Netherlands.
Whatever the origins of the symbol, the practice of pawnbroking goes back many centuries, where you would handover something you owned for a cash sum, with the ability to retrieve the object following payment of the original sum of money, plus interest.
The pawnbroker was often the last resort for the poor, including those who worked and did not have enough money to last to their next pay day.
For the last few hundred years, pawnbroking has been a regulated activity. The Pawnbroker Act of 1785 brought in the licensing of pawnbrokers, with those operating in London having to pay a fee of £10, and those in the rest of the country £5 for their licence. The act limited the rate of interest they could charge to 0.5% with loans being limited to one year.
An interest rate of 0.5% did not go down well with those in the trade, and 15 years later in 1800, another Pawnbroker Act raised the maximum interest rate to 1.5%.
Various acts continued to modify the way the trade was conducted, with conditions being placed on the trade to protect the individual, for example that a pawnbroker could be fined if he traded with a person who was drunk.
Pawnbrokers have had something of a renaissance in recent years, and many have also tried to move their image upmarket, for example, with a trade in luxury watches.
Probably helped by the current cost of living, one major chain of pawnbrokers recently increased their profits by around 30%, and highlighted that “as continued momentum in our core pawnbroking business provides a robust revenue and profit foundation for the remainder of the financial year.”
I searched Google for the number of pawnbrokers in London and Yelp came up with a total of 203 (their page link on Google was “The Best 10 Pawn Shops in London” – written in the way that Google likes, but a rather strange name for a list of pawn brokers.)
Hopefully Attenborough’s will be in business at 244 Bethnal Green Road for a good many years to come.
The expansion of the Attenborough business between the 1986 and 2023 photos shows the occupation of the ground floor of the building on the right of the 1986 photo.
This is very typical of streets such as Bethnal Green Road, where buildings, many of which were probably once fully residential, have had their ground floors converted into shops, and these businesses expand and contract across neighbouring buildings over time:
There are also reminders of the once thriving pubs that catered for the inhabitants of Bethnal Green:
There are some lovely side street off Bethnal Green Road, such as where these small 19th century brick workshops can be found in Gibraltar Walk:
This area of east London is a magnate for murals, street art and graffiti, and there was much to be seen as I headed towards Liverpool Street Station:
Turville Street – this has covered up an area that was used for paste up advertising:
Braithwaite Street, E1:
On the corner of Braithwaite Street and Quaker Street there was a car wash business for several years. Today, there is a three piece artwork created by Cold War Steve:
Who continues the tradition of using art and satire to comment on the politics of the day:
It is always fascinating to explore the streets of Bethnal Green, and to find that Attenborough’s has expanded and continued in business since photographed in 1986.
The trade of a pawn broker has existed for very many centuries, and I suspect will continue to do so for a long time to come.
The Festival of Britain and the Atomic Bomb – two very different subjects, but with a connection, and which also both show different expectations of the future in the early 1950s. The Festival of Britain put forward a vision of hope for the future, a country with strong industrial and cultural traditions, based on the history of the British people and the land they inhabited. The atomic bomb put forward a terrifying vision of destruction as the world descended into the Cold War.
I hope all will become clear by the end of the post.
Festival Ship Campania
I have written a number of posts about the Festival of Britain (there is a list of links at the end of the post). The festival presented a view of the country based on the people and the land. History, industry, science and creativity all featured, as well as what the organisors portrayed as Britain’s contribution to civilisation and the rest of the world.
The main Festival of Britain exhibition site was in London, on the South Bank, and this, along with the Pleasure Gardens at Battersea are probably the most well known festival locations, however the intention with the festival was to get as many people across the country involved as possible. There were fixed exhibitions in Glasgow and Belfast, a travelling land exhibition, and also an exhibition within a ship that sailed around the coast of the country, and brought the festival to several major port cities.
The exhibition was in the Festival Ship Campania:
The Campania had been a “ferry carrier” during the war. The role of a ferry carrier was to transport aircraft between locations. Whilst aircraft could land and take off from the ferry carrier, this was more for delivery of aircraft than for combat, although planes from the ship were involved in a number of combat operations.
The Campania had been used on artic convoys, delivering aircraft to Russia to support the eastern front and the Russian campaign against the Nazi’s..
As with all other Festival of Britain exhibitions, there was an official guide book published for the Festival Ship Campania, and the following from the guide book provides more detail about the ship:
“This is the first time that an exhibition of this size has been presented in a ship. Clearly the primary requirement in an Exhibition Ship is adequate display space, and for this reason Campania was chosen; for she has a hanger deck 300 feet long, and high enough for galleries to be built to increase the Exhibition area.
H.M.S. Campania was laid down as a merchant vessel at the yard of Messrs. Harland & Wolff. She was taken over during the last war by the Admiralty while still on the stocks, and converted into a ferry carrier. In this role she had a distinguished career. She has been lent by the Admiralty as a Naval contribution to the Festival of Britain. Her conversion to a Festival Ship has been planned by the Director of Naval Construction, Sir Charles Lillicrap, in conjunction with Mr. James Holland, the Exhibitions Chief Designer. It was carried our by Messrs. Cammell Laird of Birkenhead.
During her time as a Festival Ship, Campania is flying the Red Ensign. She is manned by a Merchant Navy crew and managed on behalf of the Festival of Britain by Messrs. Furness, Withy & Co.
F.S. Campania is a motor ship with two diesel engines, 13,000 h.p. and has a speed of 18 knots. Her principal dimensions are: overall length 540 feet, beam 70 feet, draught 23 feet, gross tonnage 16,408.”
The guide book for the Festival Ship Campania has the same design features of all the festival guides, with the front covering featuring the symbol of the festival, designed by Abram Games. As with all other guides, the book is “A Guide To The Story It Tells”, and was written by Ian Cox, the Festival’s Director of Science and Technology, who was from the Ministry of Information:
The displays on the Campania were a mini version of the South Bank site, with main exhibition themes of The Land of Britain, Discovery and The People at Home.
The exhibits and displays were spread over three decks of the ship, and the benefit of the Campania was that it had a large hanger deck and flight deck which were used for displays.
The guide book included a diagram of the ship showing the three decks, the subjects of each display area, and a recommended way around the exhibition:
As with the other exhibition locations, the Campania was fitted out with a restaurant, bar and café to enhance the overall visitor experience.
The side of the ship was decorated with the Abram Games festival sumbol and the words Festival of Britain. Coloured flags decorated the flight deck, as shown in this illustration from the guide book:
The Campania toured the coast of the country for the same period of time as the main festival on the South Bank, starting at Southampton in early May and ending at Glasgow in the first week of October, soon after the South Bank site closed. The following table from the guide shows the ports of call, and the duration of each visit:
There were very many school trips to the ship, some of which included the organisation of special trains, as for example, from the New Milton Advertiser on the 19th of May 1951:
“Between 600 and 700 Brockenhurst County High School pupils went to Southampton by special train on Friday in last week to visit the Festival Ship Campania. A section of the party also cruised round Southampton Docks in a specially chartered vessel.”
The Liverpool Echo reported on the visit of the ship to the city, and included some highlights of what could be seen onboard, including models of an “Underground railway junction and London Airport as it will be when completed, a jet engine and a seaside pub, several full-size boats and working models of busy shipping ports”.
The article ended by stating that “This is Birkenhead’s Great Festival Show – the one you mustn’t miss”.
During the visit of the Campania to Belfast, the officers and many of the organisors and administrative staff on the ship were treated to a reception by the Northern Ireland Government, and the Belfast Newsletter reported that on the day of the reception there had been a total of 4,909 visitors to the Campania.
The popularity of the exhibition on the Campania seems to have had an impact on the experience for those on board. A visit to the ship by children of the Holy Trinity Secondary Modern School in Bradford-on-Avon, was reported in the Wiltshire Times as “The visit was somewhat marred by the terribly overcrowded conditions on the ship”.
The visit of the Campania seems to have been a great success at all the ports of call, with newspapers reporting high numbers of visitors to the exhibition, although I suspect that as well as the Festival of Britain exhibition, the opportunity to look around a large ship that had seen service in the war just six years before, must have been a major incentive.
As with all the Festival of Britain Guide Books, the book for the Festival Ship Campania had a number of adverts, many colour, and for the Campania, many of these adverts had a maritime theme, such as the advert of the Marconi company:
One of the key themes for the festival was Britain’s industrial and scientific strengths, and how these would contribute to the future of the country.
I doubt anyone in 1951 could foresee the industrial decline of the country over the next 50 years when almost every company featured in the adverts across all the festival guides would disappear, with the majority being taken over by foreign competitors.
The Marconi company featured in the above advert went through several changes of ownership, and became part of GEC, which sold some of the business to BAE. GEC renamed itself as Marconi during the so-called dot com bubble, buying a number of US networking companies at very high prices.
Losses became significant, parts of the firm were sold, shares were suspended and Marconi as a business folded in 2006. A small part of the once sprawling empire remains as Telent.
British Thomson-Houston was part of the gradual consolidation of British industry, eventually being owned by GEC:
The South American Saint Line was a Cardiff base shipping company that operated cargo routes between Dover and European ports, and Cardiff and South American ports, for example taking coal to Argentina and returning with a cargo of grain. The business was closed in the early 1960s, with routes and ships being sold to other shipping companies.
Even if a company had no maritime connections, they tried to include an appropriate reference in their advert:
British Aluminum was taken over by US and Canadian companies, and all UK based operations seem to have closed in the early 2000’s:
The discovery referenced in the following advert for the British Oxygen Company was made by two French brothers, Arthur and Leon Brin who founded Brin’s Oxygen Company, soon after renamed as the British Oxygen Company, which was taken over by the German company Linde in 2006:
And finally, I doubt that the companies behind the Shipbuilding Conference who issued the following advert, could have expected the British ship building industry to be at such as reduced state some 70 years later:
The Festival of Britain tried to mix industrial strength, leading edge science and design, with a rather romantic view of the country’s culture, history and relationship between the people and the land.
One of the Theme Conveners for the exhibitions on the Campania was Jacquetta Hawkes, a British archeologist and writer. who in the same year as the festival, published probably her best known book “A Land”. A really difficult book to classify, it has been described as a deep time dream of the country’s archaeology. There is a good review of the book here. It is a fascinating read, and although we cannot visit the Festival of Britain today, it is a sort of published form of the “Land” parts of the festival.
Back to the Campania, and during the Second World War, the ship was used to ferry aircraft and many other supplies and equipment to Russia, who were fighting the German’s in the east. Aircraft on the ship were also used to defend the convoys, with a U-Boat being sunk in 1944.
The route taken by these convoys was around the northern edge of Norway and Finland to reach Arkhangelsk in Russia. Conditions were appalling. There was the constant threat of attack from German aircraft, ships and submarines as well as dreadful weather conditions, as shown in the following two photos of the Campania during a convoy:
After the end of the Second World War, the Campania was decommissioned. Many ships which had served a temporary purpose during the war were sold or scrapped, however the Campania was put on the reserve list, and was therefore available for the Festival of Britain.
After the festival, the ship returned to the navy, which brings us to the second part of the title of the post:
Operation Hurricane and the Atomic Bomb
During the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project underway, as did the Americans. The cost, complexity and need for a rapid solution in the development of such a weapon resulted in the US, UK and Canada working together on what became known as the Manhattan Project, with the partnership being formalised by the Quebec agreement of 1943.
Under this agreement, British scientists worked with the Americans in the development of the atomic bomb, and shared the UK’s work up to that point.
After the war, the US ceased all cooperation with the British, and did not share any of the development work that led to the bomb produced by the Manhattan Project.
This was mainly down to the perceived risk of sharing such knowledge, and that the Quebec agreement gave the British a veto in the use of atomic weapons.
In 1949 the Russians tested their first atomic bomb, and in 1950 the German physicist Klaus Fuchs, who had fled from the Nazi’s, and was part of Britain’s early research into the atomic bomb, and then the Manhattan project, was found to have shared secrets with the Russians.
He was sentenced in a British court and imprisoned, however the US viewed this as a further risk of working with the British and ended any remaining cooperation, including the use of US test sites.
So the US and Russia had the atomic bomb, and in the late 1940s, the UK still believed that it had a “Great Power” status, and having atomic weapons was essential in maintaining that status.
In 1947, the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, approved the creation of the High Explosive Research Project, which would be responsible for the development of a British designed and built atomic bomb.
Operation Hurricane was the name given to the first test of Britain’s atomic bomb, and when it had been built, a fleet was assembled with Campania given the role of Flag Ship, sailing from Portsmouth where the ship had been equipped for the role, to the western Australian test site..
The 25 kiloton bomb was to be exploded on board a redundant British frigate called HMS Plym. It was placed in the hold, below the water line as one of the intentions was not just to test the performance of the bomb, but also the impact of an atomic bomb being smuggled onboard a ship into a British harbour.
The bomb was exploded just before eight in the morning (local time), on the 3rd of October, 1952. Exactly a year before, the Campania was moored at Glasgow in the last few days of its role as the Festival Ship.
There is far too much on the story of Operation Hurricane than I can include in a weekly post. For lots more detail, the Ministry of Supply produced a film showing the full story from the development of the bomb, through to the test and explosion. This film is on the Imperial Museum website, and is in three parts.
The first part covers the development of the bomb, and also includes the departure of the Campania from Portsmouth. The second part covers preparations, and the third and final part covers the final preparation of the bomb, the explosion and the testing carried out after the explosion.
The film shows not just the devastating impact of an atomic bomb, but also the very rudimentary safety precautions – if you could call them that – for those who participated in the test.
HMS Plym, the ship on which the bomb had exploded had been vapourised, with only a few small fragments of radioactive metal to be found. A large crater was left on the seabed below where the ship had been located.
A wide range of samples were taken from sea water and the land of the islands. Structures had been built on the islands to see how these would have withstood the blast from an atomic bomb, and the impact on these was measured and photographed.
Churchill, who by the time of the test had been re-elected, declared in the House of Commons that the test had been a success and lived up to expectations.
Those who had been involved in the test and witnessed the explosion were sworn to secrecy, as this newspaper report from the 16th of December 1952, when the Campania returned back to Portsmouth explains:
“Atom sailors home with censored story – Five hundred and seventy officers and men of Britain’s atom ship, H.M.S. Campania, back in Portsmouth yesterday from the Pacific, have been put on their honour. And it means that for once Jack Tar cannot talk about his sea travels.
For he knows what happened when Britain’s atom bomb exploded off the Monte Bello Islands; he knows what effect it had on vegetation and test shelters, and some of his colleagues from the vaporised ship, H.M.S. Plym, know what it looks like. He must not say a word.
Before the first of the Campania’s crew went ashore last night they were reminded: ‘Tell them your impressions of the explosion and nothing more. keep to what Dr. Penney said on the B.B.C. and Mr. Churchill in the House. Your are on your honour’.
To make sure these security instructions were fully understood the ship’s company were lectured on board by Rear Admiral A.D. Torlesse, in charge of Operation Hurricane, officials of the Supply Ministry and Dr. William Penny.
Copies of the Admiral’s Speech and Mr. Churchill’s statement in Parliament, were posted on the ship’s notice boards and each man was given a copy.”
In the final part of the Ministry of Supply film on the IWM website, there are some scenes showing a helicopter taking samples of water, and dropping them into a box on the ship.
This was also reported in the press with the rather dramatic headline of “They Got Half Pint Of Death Water“:
“The two men with the most dangerous job of the atom test – they flew a helicopter over the danger spot to get a sample of deadly radioactive water – were Lt. Comdr. Denis Stanley of Thruxton, Hampshire, and Commissioned Observer H.J. Lambert of Carnoustie.
To them it was ‘just another flight’ but that routine flight meant going to within 30 feet of radio-active water only two hours after the explosion.
While Stanley piloted the plane, Lambert was checking the Geiger counter and other instruments. He was watching for a danger point when the flickering dials would indicate that they would have to turn back.
Beneath the aircraft was a canister, like a half-pint milk bottle, said Lambert, suspended 20 feet below by a piece of string. We flew slowly, said Stanley, so as not to spill any of the water. The canister was supposed to be unspillable, but we took no chances.
Said Lambert: We had practised for six weeks lowering a small canister into a box. What happened to the water? we never saw it again. The boffins took it, I suppose.”
After the success of the test, the bomb was developed into the Blue Danube bomb that was Britain’s first operational atomic weapon and for which the V-bomber aircraft were designed and built.
The bomb tested in 1951 had a yield slightly higher than the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War.
Not long after the British tests, the US tested a Hydrogen bomb, which had a yield of some hundreds of time greater than the British design, so in many ways, the British bomb was redundant soon after the test.
The Montebello Islands are now part of a Marine Conservation Reserve, and radiation levels have reduced to a point where the islands are now open to visitors.
So that is the connection between the Festival of Britain, and the test of Britain’s first atomic bomb. The Festival Ship Campania, carried an exhibition around the ports of the country, showing the history of the country, British contribution to science and technology, British industry, design and culture.
A year later, the same ship was a witness to the atomic bomb, a threat that would come to define much of the final half of the 20th century during the Cold War, and which rather frighteningly seems to have returned with current world politics and wars.
HMS Campania was decommissioned in December 1952 after returning from Australia. Three years later in 1955 the ship was sold and scrapped.
A mix of very different subjects this week, starting with:
Bethlehem Hospital
On the wall of the old Great Eastern Hotel on Liverpool Street, where the station is also located, is the following plaque marking the site of the first Bethlehem Hospital:
The Bethlehem Hospital (also know as Bethlem or Bedlam) was founded in 1247 when a Sheriff of London, Simon FitzMary donated a parcel of land to the Bishop of Bethlehem.
On this land was founded the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem. As well as being a religious establishment, the priory also cared for the poor who were sick.
The hospital occupied a space of around 2 acres where Liverpool Street Station now stands. The Historic England record for the hospital states that it was “centred around a courtyard with a chapel in the middle, it had approximately 12 ‘cells’ for patients, a kitchen, staff accommodation and an exercise yard.”
The hospital was taken over by the City of London in 1346, and later in the 14th century and early 15th century, it seems to have gradually changed from being a hospital for the poor, to a hospital that treated “lunatics” – not that any realistic treatment was available.
The term lunatic was a catchall for anyone who had any form of mental illness, and the term would continue to be in use for centuries to come. As an example, in a previous post where I looked at 18th century Bills of Mortality, there were frequent deaths due to “lunatic”, and you were automatically assumed to have this condition if you committed suicide, for example with the following record from January 1716 “Hanged himself (being Lunatick) at St. Olaves Southwark”.
Conditions were harsh at Bethlehem Hospital, and it seems to have been more a place to keep people off the streets rather then to provide treatment, with those in the hospital frequently being restrained and chained.
By the middle of the 17th century, the site was considered too small, run down, and in a very crowded area, so in 1676 the Bethlehem Hospital moved to Moorfields.
The following image uses embedded code, not sure if it will display in the emails. If not, go to the home page of the website.
The following photo shows the plaque on the side of the building with the street Liverpool Street on the left:
The plaque is a reminder of the harsh treatment of people with conditions of which there was no understanding at the time.
Parsonage of St. Nicholas Acons
In Nicholas Lane in the City of London is a plaque recording that Scientific Life Assurance began at the site in 1762.
Assurance is cover for something that will happen, whilst insurance is for something that may happen, and with life assurance, a payout is inevitable, as along with taxes, the only other certainty in life is death.
However the problem with life assurance is being able to calculate the profile of death in the population being covered. Basically, for how long will people be paying their premiums and when will payout be expected after their death.
Unless this could be fully understood, those offering life assurance ran the risk of making it so expensive that no one would buy the cover, or too cheap and the business running at a loss.
The first company to use a statistical approach to calculating life assurance premiums and payouts was the Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships, which was established in the parsonage of St. Nicholas Acons in 1762.
Work on a statistical approach to mortality had been underway before 1762, with Edmund Halley (after whom the comet is named), having created mortality tables in 1693. A mortality table is basically a table of ages, and for each age a probability is given of death before the next birthday, so for someone aged 45, it would show the probability that they would die before their 46th birthday.
The mathematician James Dodson took Halley’s work further, and although he had died before the founding of the Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships, the society took his work as the basis for their calculations of premiums and payments.
Edward Rowe Mores was instrumental in the use of Dodson’s work, and he was one of the group that founded the company. Mores was a typical 18th century scholar, as his interests ranged from mathematics, typography, history and statistics.
In establishing the company it was Mores who first used the term “actuary” for the person responsible for making the calculations of mortality, premiums and payouts.
The plaque can be seen on the wall in Nicholas Lane, near to Nicholas Passage:
The Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships was known for trying to be fair to its customers, and allocated some of their financial surplus back to their policy holders. The following from the London Evening Standard on the 6th of December, 1851 illustrates their approach:
“Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships, New Bridge-Street, Blackfriars. Instituted 1762.
At the end of every ten years two-thirds of the Surplus Funds of the Society are appropriated to the oldest 5000 Policies, and one-third is reserved as an accumulating fund.
At the last investigation – on the 31st December, 1849 – the Capital of the Society exceeded Eight Millions Sterling, invested in Three per Cents and on Mortgages.
The surplus amounted to £3,215,000, of which £2,113,000 were appropriated to the oldest 5000 Policies, and the remaining £1,102,000 were added to the reserves.”
The Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships eventually became Equitable Life, and the plaque records where the use of statistics were used in financial services, and where the profession of actuary was formalised.
In Gracechurch Street there is a plaque recording that the botanist William Curtis lived in a house at the site of the plaque:
It is low down on the wall of a building at the southern end of Gracechurch Street, as can be seen at the bottom left of the following photo:
William Curtis was a Quaker, who was born in the town of Alton in Hampshire in 1746. He appears to have had an interest in the study of plants and insects from an early age, and after arriving in London he had a position as a Demonstrator of Botany at the Chelsea Physic Garden (see this post for my visit to the Chelsea garden).
Such was his success that he opened his own garden, the London Botanic Garden in Lambeth, where he is reported to have grown and exhibited in the order of 6,000 plants.
The 18th century was a time when plant collectors were bringing back specimens from across the world. Collectors such as Joseph Banks, who would become President of the Royal Society encouraged the activity.
This influx of foreign specimens did concern William Curtis though, who was worried that they would take over from indigenous species. This led him to publish a set of books that would make his name.
The six volume set was called Flora Londinensis, which had the following full title:
“Flora Londinensis, or, Plates and descriptions of such plants as grow wild in the environs of London : with their places of growth, and times of flowering, their several names according to Linnæus and other authors : with a particular description of each plant in Latin and English : to which are added, their several uses in medicine, agriculture, rural œconomy and other arts.”
The six volumes, published during the last quarter of the 18th century aimed to record all the plants to found within an area of roughly ten miles around London. Each plant was described and illustrated, such as the following example:
The above image is from the Biodiversity heritage Library, where the books are available for download and marked as “not in copyright”.
After publishing Flora Londinensis, William Curtis went on to publish TheBotanical Magazine, which contained illustrations and descriptions of various plant species along with other botanical articles.
The magazine continued after his death in 1799 and is still published today by the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, as Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, and it is believed to be the oldest botanical magazine in the world, still in publication.
William Curtis:
His magazine made him very financially successful, and along with Flora Londinensis, and his work in London’s gardens, his place was secured in 18th century botanical history, and he is now remembered by the plaque in Gracechurch Street.
St. Dionis Backchurch
In Lime Street, there is a plaque recording the site of St. Dionis Backchurch:
St Dionis was Dionysus the Areopagite, who was a judge in Athens during the first century AD. He converted to Christianity and was said to have been a follower of St. Paul.
He is the patron saint of France, where he is also known as St. Denis, as a result of having converted the French to Christianity.
In the 1870s there were proposals for the demolition of a number of City churches. The local population was insufficient to justify so many churches, and the aim was to consolidate parishes and congregations.
Newspapers had lengthy articles about some of the churches, and the City Press on Saturday the 16th of September, 1871 had a full column on the history of St. Dionis Backchurch. The following is from the beginning of the article and provides an overview of its history:
“This parish is first mentioned in the records of the Corporation, Letter-book H, folio 105. John Fromond, in 1379, being charged before John Philpot, Lord Mayor, for stealing the dagger or knife called a ‘baselard’ from his girdle, for which charge, it being proven, he, the said John Fromond was adjudged the punishment of the pillory, and then to be banished from the City.
The foundation of the church is of great antiquity; Reginald de Standen was rector in 1283; he was succeeded by Richard Grimston in 1350. The church was newly built early in the reign of Henry VI., 1427-30, John Derby, Alderman, added a fair isle or chapel on the north side, in which he was buried in 1466. Lady Wych, widow of Sir Hugh Wych, who was Mayor of London in 1461, gave some other benefactions; John Bugg also contributed to the new work of restoration. The structure falling into decay, it was partially rebuilt in 1628 – 32, the middle isle of the same being laid in 1628 and a new turret and steeple were added in 1630, and in 1632 new frames were made for the bells. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.
It was rebuilt, all but the tower, from the designs of Sir Chistopher Wren, and was finished in 1674; and about ten years afterwards it was found necessary to rebuild the tower, which was done under the direction of the great architect. The building consists of a nave and two aisles formed by Ionic columns, which support the entablature; and arched ceiling in which, under groined openings, small circular lights are introduced on either side. the length of the church is 66 feet, and the breadth about 70 feet; the tower is 90 feet high. At the west end is situated the organ gallery.”
The later half of the 19th century was a time of great change in the City of London. The City was growing rapidly in terms of global influence, trade and finance. Victorian architects wanted to build a City that reflected this, and in 1877 the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was founded by William Morris to try and preserve many of the buildings at risk, including the church of St. Dionis Backchurch, however in their second annual meeting in 1878, they reported that:
“Amongst the objects the Committee had taken in hand was the preservation of the City churches, and in this respect they were able, to a certain extent, to report favourably, for, although St, Dionis Backchurch had been demolished, the interesting church of St. Mary-at-Hill, Eastcheap, has been saved, in spite of strenuous opposition.”
I wrote about the church of St. Gabriel Fenchurch, in this post. The description of the origins of the name again illustrates how many City churches they were, and how close together.
The plaque can be seen on the wall on the left, in Lime Street, a short distance north of the junction with Fenchurch Street:
As well as the plaque, in the above photo you can see one of the Lime hire bikes across the walkway. This was not how the bike was originally left, and it is interesting how much anger these seem to generate.
I have seen them left in some ridiculous places, blocking pavements, in the middle of the road etc. however whilst I was photographing the plaque, a cyclist arrived at the cycle stand. Saw the Lime bike in the rack, threw it angrily (along with some choice language) out onto the pavement (narrowly missing a pedestrian), putting his own bike in its place, and walking off.
All rather strange.
Crosskey’s Inn
In Gracechurch Street, at the entrance to Bell Inn Yard, is a plaque recording the location of the Crosskeys Inn:
In the 16th century City of London, there were four main locations where plays were performed. These were the Bell Savage off Ludgate Hill, the Bell at Bell Inn Yard (the location of the above plaque), the Bull off Bishopsgate Street, and the Crosskeys Inn.
Inn’s were perfect locations for the performance of plays. They frequently had a large yard which was normally used for the arrival and departure of coaches and wagons, but could also provide the space for actors and an audience.
They were places were people could congregate, and the Inns benefited from the sale of food and drink before, during and after a performance.
There has been some research that suggests that the Crosskeys were one of the few locations that put on plays inside rather than in the yard, however this is difficult to confirm.
Actors of the time were frequently grouped in a company that was financed by a wealthy sponsor, and the company took on the name of sponsor.
At the Crosskeys Inn, Lord Strange’s Men performed in 1589, when William Shakespeare may have been with the company. Lord Strange was Ferdinando Stanley, the 5th Earl of Derby, and after Stanley’s father died, and he became the Earl of Derby, they became known as the Earl of Derby’s Men.
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men are also believed to have played at the Crosskeys Inn in 1594.
The use of these inns for performances seems to have ended around 1593 and 1594, when they were banned following an appeal by the Lord Mayor to the Privy Council. This is believed to have been due to an increase in the plaque, and they moved out of the City to the Theatre in Shoreditch and the Globe on the south bank of the river.
It may also have been due to the rowdy behaviour that sometimes accompanied a play, which the City may well not have appreciated within their boundaries.
The Crosskeys Inn continued in use during the 17th century, until it was destroyed during the Great Fire of 1666.
What is confusing is why the plaque to the Crosskeys Inn is at the entrance to Bell Inn Yard.
Morgan’s map of London from 1682 shows the location of the inn (the inn was rebuilt after the fire).
In the following map, the red circle is around the location of the Crosskeys Inn and the yellow circle around Bell Yard:
The key to Morgan’s map includes the number and location:
I have checked a number of maps, and tried to accurately align them along Gracechurch Street, and as far as I can tell, the Crosskeys Inn was located along the current Bell Inn Yard, and Bell Yard was just a bit further north and has been lost under the larger buildings that now line the west of the street.
The Crosskeys Inn was rebuilt after the Great Fire, and continued as one of the City’s busy coaching Inns. The name appears on Rocque’s map of 1746, and there are numerous newspaper reports referencing the inn.
It appears to have closed in 1850 and been demolished soon after. There is a newspaper report in the Illustrated London news on the 24th of May 1851, which referring to Gracechurch Street states:
“On the west side of that thoroughfare, and on the site of the old Cross Keys, an Inn from which the licence was withdrawn some twelve months ago”.
The newspaper report was about the collapse of a building which was under construction and covered a wide area along Gracechurch Street, including the site of the Crosskeys Inn.
The building using a frame of iron girders, collapsed when one of the girders snapped. There were around 80 workmen on the building, with many injured and 3 deaths.
So the plaque refers to the version of the Crosskeys that was part used for putting on plays in the later part of the 16th century. The inn was rebuilt and continued in use as a coaching inn to the mid 19th century.
The name Crosskeys comes from the arms of the papacy, where the crossed keys are St. Peter’s keys, and the keys to heaven.
And there is now a Wetherspoons on this part of Gracechurch Street called the Crosse Keys. It is in the former premises of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, which was designed by W. Campbell Jones and dates from 1913.
It has a rather splendid interior and is well worth a look.
That is about 25 of the roughly 170 plaques within the City of London covered, so still a number to go.
