Robert Besley, the Clarendon Typeface and the Longbow

16 Replies

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

Robert Besley, Alderman and Lord Mayor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But where was the Fann Street Foundry?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source and attribution: Esinconis, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Site of Bowyers’ Hall in the 16th Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Festival of Britain and the South Bank – 75 Years Later

22 Replies

For this week’s post, I am back on the South Bank looking at the survivals of, and references to the Festival of Britain, 75 years after the festival started the transformation to the place we see today, starting with:

Festival of Britain 1951 – The Moment That Shaped South Bank

A couple of months ago I was asked by the South Bank Employers Group (SBEG) if I would be interested in working with them to create a series of posters for display across the South Bank as part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture and to mark the 75th anniversary of the landmark 1951 Festival of Britain.

I jumped at the opportunity as the South Bank is an area of the city in which I have long had an interest. I started my first London job on the South Bank in 1979, and it was then that I started looking at my father’s photos, taking the negatives of the photos he had taken of the area starting in 1947, to a local film processing studio to get the photos printed out.

I put together a story to be told across the posters, wrote the text, and provided some of my father’s photos.

The SBEG did all the graphic design, put together the overall layout of the posters, and sourced additional images from the National Archives.

They were installed just over a week ago, so if you walk along the South Bank, you will find three locations where there are a number of posters which tell the story of Festival of Britain 1951 – The Moment That Shaped South Bank.

Last week, we went up to take a look, and for me, it is wonderful to see my father’s photos on display, across the area he explored and photographed almost 80 years ago.

Starting at the South Bank end of Westminster Bridge are the first posters:

These provide a brief overview of the history of the area now known as the South Bank, and also tell the story of Eleanor Coade, and the Lion that stands at the end of Westminster Bridge, originally on the Lion Brewery which stood where the Royal Festival Hall is today:

The design of the posters by the SBEG is brilliant, and it is really good to see Britannia, the blue, red and white compass and the bunting of the festival symbol created by Abram Games back on the South Bank.

The following map shows the location of the posters:

In location 2, between the Jubilee Gardens and the London Eye:

Two more posters on the other side of the above:

Between the BFI and the National Theatre:

Looking towards Waterloo Bridge (on the right) and the National Theatre (on the left):

It was a privaledge to have been involved with the creation of these posters, but by far the best part was the chance to get my father’s photos on display, in the place he started exploring as an 18 year old with a Leica camera purchased from a soldier returning from Germany.

If you visit the South Bank over the summer, please do take a look.

The Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri – Waterloo Station

If you head to the upper level of Waterloo Station, there is a sculpture on the wall which has an unusual history. This is the Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri for the Festival of Britain:

Peter Laszlo Peri had an interesting life. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, on the 13th of June, 1899, and was part of a working class Jewish family. He was involved with art, sculpture, the theatre, architecture and travelled widely across Europe.

In 1932 he was in Berlin, and involved in an exhibition of works organised by the Association of German Revolutionary Visual artists. The works on display were removed by the police, and in 1933 the organisation was banned by the Nazi Party.

The organisation was affiliated with the German Communist Party, who Peri and his wife Mary were also involved with, as Mary was arrested in possession of Communist propaganda. Peri was also in trouble with the authorities as during a political demonstration he had punched a Gestapo officer.

The German Communist Party had also been banned in March 1933.

It was after these events that Peri decided that the only course of action was to leave Germany, and they made the move to England.

I cannot find out what happened to Peri’s wife, Mary. She was Mary Macnaghten, the granddaughter of Charles Booth, who is best known for the poverty maps of London. There is no mention of her after her arrest in all the sources I have found (see end of this section), and in 1965 Peri married the artist Heather Hall, so either Mary had died or they had divorced. This is probably down to my own limited time for research.

Peri initially lifted in a flat in Willow Road, Hampstead, and by 1937 he had found a permanent studio in which to work in Camden.

The studio was at 28b Camden Street, and in the early 1960s the whole area was scheduled for demolition, including Peri’s studios.

A documentary was made about the studios, featuring Peter Laszlo Peri by the documentary company Derrick Knight & Partners. It was shown by BBC2 in 1965, and BFI Replay have the documentary online.

It is a remarkable film because it features Peri, along with the other artists working in a small community of studios. It shows Peri’s work, and as well as the area around Camden Street in the early 1960s.

Click here to view the film on BFI Replay.

As usual, whenever I find something interesting when researching a post, it leads to exploring further, and I wanted to find out where Peri’s studio, along with the studios of the other artists featured in the film, were located.

In the following OS map extract, I have circled number 28b. The number is in the central garden featured in the film, and above and below the garden are numbered buildings, each of which was one of the studios featured in the film.

Camden Street is the unnamed street to the left, and College Place is to the right. Plender Street is the short length of street shown in the upper left corner:

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

The demolition of the studios, along with all the surrounding buildings, including the terrace houses seen in the background in parts of the film, which ran along College Place, was to clear space for the construction of new housing blocks.

Brayshaw House which today sits on the site of the Mission Hall in the above map appears to be of recent construction. 28b and the artists studios were behind Brayshaw House. I have marked the location of the central garden of the studios with the red rectangle in the centre of the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The film shows that much of Peri’s work was in concrete, including his own special formulation which he called Pericrete, and this is the material used for the Sunbathers.

Whilst Peri was a long term user of this type of material, many of the other works created by different artists for the Festival of Britain were also made out of materials which were cheap to use and quick to create given the time and financial constraints of the festival.

The use of this type of material, rather than a material such as bronze, was, along with the speed with which the festival site was demolished, one of the reasons why very little sculpture and artwork on display at the Festival of Britain survived.

The Sunbathers was lost after the festival closed.

In 2016, Historic England launched a campaign to find lost public artwork, and the Sunbathers was rediscovered in the garden of the Clarendon Hotel in Blackheath.

Historic England launched a funding campaign to restore and display the Sunbathers.

The work was initially on display in the Royal Festival Hall, and in August 2020, it was put on display in Waterloo Station:

The PA photo agency have an image of the Sunbathers installed during the Festival of Britain, on the side of the Underground Station adjacent to the main Station Gate access point to the festival. Click here to view the photo on PA’s website.

Peri continued to work during the 1950s and 1960s, still using concrete, but also experimenting with Polyester resin.

Camden council rebuilt artists studios on the same site, and Peri did return. I am not sure if they are still there. There are buildings on the alignment of the old studios, with a green space in the middle. One building is occupied by an industrial design company. I am not sure what the other building is used for.

Peri did not have long in his new studio back in Camden, as he died in 1967.

Born in Budapest, escaped the Nazi’s in Berlin and lived just over 30 years in London, it is good that Peri’s work for the Festival of Britain is now on display at Waterloo Station, not that far from when it could be seen in 1951:

The estate of Peter Laszlo Peri have a comprehensive website dedicated to his life and work, it can be found by clicking here.

Historic England cover the story of the rediscovery and restoration of the Sunbathers on their website, the page can be found by clicking here.

There is another reminder of the Festival of Britain in Waterloo Station:

The Lion and the Unicorn, Wetherspoon’s – Waterloo Station

Reader and guide Frank sent me an email about the Wetherspoon’s in Waterloo Station. I had not been down to this part of the station (the Sidings) for some time, so did not realise it was open. A visit was needed to see The Lion and the Unicorn:

The pub is named after the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion at the Festival of Britain.

The best description of the pavilion comes from the guide to the South Bank festival:

“The British People are something more than the sum of: men with ancestors, children in schools, families in homes and gardens, and patients in hospitals. They are, in addition, compositions of various particular habits, attitudes, instincts, qualities and characteristic moods. but these attributes, not being tangible, are hard to display ‘in the round’, in an exhibition of tangible things.

Nevertheless, we should not like visitors – particularly from overseas – to leave the South Bank without having seen, at least, some token and visible reminders of the British People’s native genius. So this Pavilion offers one or two clues to their character.

The title of the Pavilion – ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ – serves to symbolise two of the main qualities of the national character; on the one hand, realism and strength, on the other fantasy, independence and imagination.”

As well as the name, the pub includes a number of references to the 1951 pavilion as well as the festival in general

On the large screen close to the entrance is a rotating series of images, one of which is a photo of the overall Festival of Britain site on the South Bank:

The food menus have a photo of the Lion and the Unicorn from the festival, including a brief summary:

There is also some decoration in the same style as the decoration in the 1951 pavilion.

On the wall at the far end to the bar is an open bird cage, framed by a couple of photos, with birds flying from the open cage:

The photo on the right shows the bird cage and birds as they were presented in the 1951 Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion:

I did wonder whether the one in the Wetherspoon’s was an original from the festival (another find of a lost item, similar to the Sunbathers), so I emailed Wetherspoon’s to ask.

Rather surprisingly for a large company, the same day, my question was forwarded to the person responsible for their pub developments who replied that the bird cage was a replica.

The escaped birds flying from their cage:

The following postcard from 1951 shows the birds flying along the ceiling of the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion:

The plan from the Guide to the Festival of Britain on the South Bank showing the route and subjects covered in the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion:

The following postcard from the festival shows the entrance to the Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion. The rear of the Royal Festival Hall is in the background. The pavilion was along side what is now Concert Hall Approach (on the left of the pavilion) and on the site of the Whitehouse Gardens area, in front of the Whitehouse apartments (the old Shell downstream building):

The guide-book acknowledges the challenge of explaining the British Character. The closing paragraphs for the pavilion read:

If, on leaving this Pavilion, the visitor from overseas concludes that he is still not much the wiser about the British national character, it might console him to know that British people are themselves still very much in the dark about it. For them, the British character is as easy to identify, and as difficult to define, as a British nonsense rhyme.

The lion and the unicorn

Were fighting for the crown;

The lion beat the unicorn

All round the town.

Some gave them white bread

And some gave them brown;

Some gave them plum cake

And sent them out of town.

I am not sure how much the average drinker in the Lion and the Unicorn will be aware of the story behind the name of the pub, and the bird cage and birds on the wall, however I believe that Wetherspoon’s are to be congratulated with their choice of name and decoration, and hopefully it will spread a bit more awareness of the Festival of Britain to a few of the drinkers in the Lion and the Unicorn.

The text over the image on the menu includes the words “only the Royal Festival Hall building now remains”, and I find it really strange that the Wetherspoon’s at Waterloo Station has more information on the Festival of Britain than the Royal Festival Hall.

The Royal Festival Hall did have a large celebration over the weekend that marked 75 years since the opening day, however walking in the RFH today, and there is nothing obvious about the Festival of Britain, and the Royal Festival Hall’s place in the festival.

The Royal Festival Hall did have a good exhibition area, along the side wall between the bar that faces the river, and the café at the back. This included the following wonderful model of the festival site:

The exhibition and the model disappeared a couple of years ago, with the area now occupied by what looks like a corporate hot desk space.

There is also an archive area to the rear of the building, but this always appears to be closed, and whilst there is window and display space, there is little on display.

A real shame as the Royal Festival Hall was built by the London County Council for the Festival of Britain, and for the long term. It was the first large public building constructed after the war, and is a really wonderful building.

It would be great to see the Royal Festival Hall putting more of its history back on public display.

For my last connection with the Festival of Britain, I am staying on the South Bank for:

Siegfried Charoux’s Motorcyclist sculpture – Southbank Place

This is Siegfried Charoux’s sculpture of a Motorcyclist. It can be found between the new buildings that occupy the space where the Shell Centre office blocks once stood. It is close to Chicheley Street which runs from York Road to Belvedere Road:

The Motorcyclist was created by Siegfried Charoux and installed in 1962 in front of the recently completed Shell downstream building, and by a strange coincidence given one of the other topics in this week’s post, roughly where the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion was located during the Festival of Britain.

It was installed at its new location in 2019:

The Motorcyclist therefore has no direct connection with the Festival of Britain, however the creator of the work, Siegfried Charoux, does.

Siegfried Charoux was born in Vienna in 1896, and served in the First World War with the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was invalided out of the army in 1917 after being wounded.

A cartoonist and sculptor, he moved to England in 1935 because of the threat from the Nazi’s who disapproved of his left wing views, and who had destroyed one of his works which displayed a sympathetic view of a Jewish figure. He was able to stay in the country as he had the support of the Tate Gallery Director James Bolivar Manson, who sponsored his Home Office application.

He became a naturalised British citizen in 1946, and continued working as a sculptor.

One of his commissions was a work for the Festival of Britain.

The following is a view of the South Bank festival site from the north bank of the river. The Skylon is on the left and the Dome of Discovery can be seen in the background where Jubilee Gardens are today.

Look in front of the Dome of Discovery, just to the right of the flags on the boat and there is a large sculpture facing the river:

This is the Islanders by Siegfried Charoux:

The Islanders was part of the Sea and Ships Pavilion, and intended to portray the struggle and resilience of the British people in their relationship with the seas that surround the country.

The scale of the work is hard to get from the above photo. The earlier photo shows how clearly it was visible from across the river, and if you had stood next to the sculpture in the above photo, your head would have been level with the feet of the three characters. It was truly colossal.

The Islanders was made out of concrete, and was destroyed as part of the demolition of the Festival of Britain site,

Charoux also created another work that was on the South Bank. This was “The Cellist”, which was on display outside the Royal Festival Hall. It was later moved to Kenwood House where it was on temporary display. I have not been able to find any record of where it is now, and do not recall seeing the work on previous visits to Kenwood House.

Charoux created an extensive collection of works and exhibited annually at the Royal Academy between 1940 and 1974.

He died in Hendon on the 26th of April 1967, and his remains were returned to Austria where he was buried in Vienna’s Central Cemetery.

So although the Islanders was destroyed after the closure of the Festival of Britain, Charoux still has a work on display at the South Bank, not far from the original site of the Islanders.

It is part of what fascinates me with the history of London. All the networks of connections you can build between the city of today, and the people and events of the city of the past, including for Peri and Charoux, events in Europe which resulted in their works being part of the Festival of Britain, and works which can still be seen today.

And if you get the opportunity to visit the South Bank, take a look at the posters spread across the three sites.

Chiswell Street and Mr. Whitbread’s Brewery

15 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He died a very wealthy man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And opposite the brewery buildings is this building:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 120th Anniversary of Vauxhall Bridge

1 Reply

Two places have just become available on my walk on Saturday the 13th of June – Wapping – A Seething Mass of Misery. Click here for details.

Last Tuesday, the 26th of May, was the 120th anniversary of the opening of Vauxhall Bridge. If you had attended the official ceremony in 1906, you may have received a copy of the London County Council booklet recording the event:

Inside was an overview of the Order of Proceedings, which included members of the London County Council travelling in carriages from County Hall to the new bridge:

Along with a Programme of Music, which the Battersea Borough Prize Band played from an enclosure on the eastern side of the Westminster end of the bridge:

The bridge that was being opened in 1906 was not the first Vauxhall Bridge, the original had opened in 1816 as part of an explosion of bridge building, starting with Putney Bridge in 1729 through to Tower Bridge in 1894, a period when 21 bridges were built or rebuilt to support the equally explosive increase in population, homes and industry on both sides of the river, and to provide an easy method of crossing the Thames.

On March the 6th, 1806, a petition was presented to Parliament by the parishes on the Surrey and Middlesex sides of the river, in favour of a bridge over the Thames, at or near the Vauxhall turnpike, along with the construction of new connecting roads.

The petition stated that the need for a bridge was because of the “great increase in buildings, population and commerce in the said districts, and their lack of communication with the western parts of the Metropolis, other than by the circuitous route over Westminster or Battersea Bridges; and the advantages anticipated are a great accommodation to the persons residing in the neighbourhood of the places above mentioned, likewise an additional convenience to the commercial part of the community by opening a more extensive connection with the counties of Middlesex and Surrey”.

The 1806 petition did not make any progress. A second petition was made in 1807, and on the 13th of March 1807, the House of Commons gave permission for a Bill to be brought before Parliament, however petitions against a new bridge at Vauxhall were raised by the proprietors of Battersea Bridge and the inhabitants and landed proprietors of Chelsea and Battersea.

This was in the days when many bridges were privately owned and charged a toll, which is why the owners of Battersea Bridge were objecting as another bridge could have resulted in a reduction in their income.

In 1808, the Bill for a bridge at Vauxhall passed its Second Reading, but was not returned by the House of Lords.

Finally in 1809, an Act was passed allowing for building “a bridge across the Thames from the bank or shore thereof at or near a certain place on the south side of the said river called Cumberland Gardens, neare Vauxhall Turnpike, to the opposite shore called Millbank”.

John Rennie was appointed as the engineer to the bridge, and the first stone was laid on the 9th of May 1811. The stone laying ceremony included the deposit with the foundation stone of different British coins of the year and a silver plate. Apparently these were recovered when the first bridge was demolished in 1899 and were stored with the London County Council’s records. I have had a brief search but cannot find out what happened to these objects.

After construction began, the original Rennie design was found to be too expensive to complete. He offered a second, cheaper design, but this was also viewed as too expensive, so a deign from Samuel Bentham was commissioned. On review, Bentham’s solution was considered to have design issues, so the engineer James Walker was asked to complete a fourth design, which was the design used for the first Vauxhall bridge.

The land surrounding the first Vauxhall Bridge was very different to when the second bridge was completed.

The following map from the LCC booklet shows the stretch of river and surrounding land of Vauxhall and Millbank:

On the Lambeth side of the bridge, the approach was marked by Marble Hall, the smallest of the three pleasure gardens in the immediate vicinity of the Vauxhall Turnpike (red arrow). Cumberland Gardens (green arrow) occupied a site a little to the south of the bridge, while the largest and most celebrated of the three pleasure gardens was Vauxhall Gardsens, originally called Spring Gardens (blue arrow).

The Westminster side of the river was described as “quite open and as rural as could be found anywhere”.

By the time the second bridge opened in 1906, the area was very different (the large, empty space with the word Westminster was the site of the Millbank Penitentiary):

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

The intention was to name the bridge Regent’s Bridge, in honour Prince Regent, who had shown a considerable interest in the bridge, however by the time the bridge was completed, it had taken on the name Vauxhall Bridge.

The original Vauxhall Bridge was the first iron bridge to be built over the Thames. It was 809 feet long and 36 feet wide, and was formed of nine arches, each with a span of 78 feet and 6 inches. The total cost, including construction of the approach roads, compensation to land owners etc, was £296,998.

The first Vauxhall Bridge was completed at private expense for private profit, so a toll was charged for use of the bridge.

In the first full year of operation, the bridge generated £4,977 in tolls, and despite later reduction of tolls and the construction of additional bridges, by 1877, tolls generated by Vauxhall Bridge amounted to £62,392.

Tolls were a common means to finance bridge construction and maintenance, and during the time of the first Vauxhall Bridge, the only bridge above Blackfriars Bridge in what was the County of London (prior to the 1960s expansion) that did not collect tolls was Westminster Bridge.

It was the 1877 Metropolis Toll Bridges Act that provided for the Metropolitan Board of Works to purchase the interests of the private companies, and of H.M. Office of Works in the following bridges: Waterloo, Lambeth, Vauxhall, Chelsea, Albert, Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Hammersmith and the bridge over Deptford Creek.

After the purchase of the bridges by the Metropolitan Board of Works, the tolls were removed and the bridges were free to use.

The LCC booklet includes a list of the bridges over the Thames up to 1906, including the date of opening, rebuilds, and the engineer responsible:

Image from the LCC booklet showing the Thames below Vauxhall Bridge around 1820, with the new bridge in the background:

And a print from a very rural Millbank in 1829, showing Vauxhall Bridge:

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

A photo from the LCC booklet showing the original Vauxhall Bridge:

Changes along the river, and the design and construction of the bridge, along with increases in traffic during the 19th century, all combined to justify the build of a new bridge.

The LCC booklet explains:

“The scour of the river due to the high velocity of the current had, however, tended to expose the foundations of the bridge, and this had been met by depositing material from time to time around the foundations. The velocity of the current had probably been increased by the removal of old London Bridge in 1831, and of old Westminster bridge about thirty years later, but it was in the first place due to the obstruction caused by the numerous and thick piers of the bridge.

Besides having a dangerous effect on the safety of the bridge, the strength of the tide was a considerable impediment to traffic, which was also hindered by the narrowness of the arches. Powers were obtained to remove two of the central piers, thus converting three arches into one. The estimated cost of this was £40,9099. These powers were allowed to lapse.

In the meantime the effects caused by the scour of the river continued, and in November 1887, it was thought advisable to have the foundations of three of the central piers examined by a diver. The result of the examination showed that the bottoms of the timber cradles upon which the piers were founded were in several places 4 or 5 inches above the level of the clay bed of the river adjoining them, and in the case of the third pier from the Middlesex side of the bridge the clay was found to have been scoured away from beneath the cradle 5 or 6 inches inwards from its outer edge. This was arrested by laying bags filled with cement along the outer edges of the cradle, and by depositing 6500 tons of slag around the piers.

In 1887 it was found that these protective measures were in turn washed away.

Moreover, the small width of the bridge and the heavy gradients of its approaches combined to render the structure inadequate to cope with the growing demands of road traffic. This traffic had recently much increased, being assisted by the enlargement and alterations at Vauxhall Station, and the weak condition of Lambeth bridge. During the week ended 11th July 1891, 34,915 vehicles had crossed the bridge, as compared with 22,232 vehicles in the week ended 12th June, 1879.”

The Bridges Committee of the LCC decided that there was a strong case for a new bridge. At the same time, there was an issue with Lambeth Bridge, but the committee decided that Vauxhall should be the first bridge to be rebuilt.

The cost was estimated at £484,000, and Parliament authorised the London County Council (Vauxhall Bridge) Act of 1895.

Before demolition of the existing bridge, a temporary wooden bridge was built between the western end of the Albert Embankment and Millbank.

The first phase of work consisted of demolition of the old bridge followed by construction of the new piers. This work was completed in November 1903.

Whilst the first phase was underway, plans for the superstructure were prepared, and the work on this phase of the bridge commenced on the 1st of January 1904.

The new bridge was designed and construction supervised by Maurice Fitzmaurice, the London County Council’s chief engineer, assisted by the council’s architect, W.E. Riley.

The following photo from the booklet shows the new Vauxhall Bridge. Comparing with the above photo of the first bridge shows much larger piers and wider arches:

The reduction in the number of piers and increased distance between the piers was key for traffic on the river.

With the original bridge, the narrowness of the arches, and the eight piers reduced the space for the river to flow under the bridge and resulted in the tide running up to a velocity of 7 miles an hour, which caused problems with the handling of vessels as they passed under the bridge.

There had also been a considerable increase in the number of vessels passing under the bridge due to the increase in the number of riverside factories and workshops along the upper reaches of the river, and in 1894, an average of 391 vessels were passing under the bridge every twenty four hours.

The roadway over the new bridge was also wider, and the approach to the bridge had a smoother gradient, making it easier for traffic and pedestrians to cross the bridge.

The key features of the new Vauxhall Bridge were;

Total length across the river between abutments is 759 feet 4 inches
Total waterway of 699 feet 4 inches
The central span is 149 feet 7 inches wide, with a head of 20 feet above high water
The width of the bridge between parapets is 80 feet, divided into a carriageway 50 feet wide and two footways of 15 feet in width each
The abutments are formed of concrete faced with granite
The upper portion of the masonry is treated differently on the two abutments, the Westminster one having, above the roadway level, two massive blocks of granite masonry on either side, destined probably to server as the bases of lofty piers or groups of statuary. These measure 20 feet in length by 10 feet 8 inches in width
The Lambeth abutment has similar piers, but behind the downstream one is an open balustrade and a flight of steps giving access to the foreshore.
The upstream side is a plain granite parapet wall, which is continued for some distance along the approach to the bridge. Construction of this abutment involved division of the two large storm relief sewers known as the Clapham and Effra sewers

As mentioned in the above list, the original intention for the large blocks of granite masonry on the abutments of the bridge was for either some pylons of statues. The following newspaper report explains why the pylons were not part of the finished bridge:

“An attempt has been made to introduce a Parisian feature in the ‘pylons’ which have never formed a part of a London bridge. These oblong pylons are carried high above the stone balustrades at the entrance of the bridge, and they are introduced not only to give dignity to the appearance, but also to lend additional strength to the structure. The design resembles in many ways the Alexander III Bridge across the Seine, where, however, the pylons are treated more ornamentally. But the bridges committee while accepting the design and being favourably impressed by the pylons have decided not to adopt them as they would entail the additional cost of £10,000, thus the design will go to the L.C.C. this week shorn of the pylons.”

So the approach to the bridge was built without any pylons or statues, and the large granite blocks on which these would have been placed can be seen to left and right of the following photo of the roadway of the new bridge when completed. They are still there today, and still without any decoration or structure on top:

This is the Alexander III Bridge across the Seine referred to in the above description. It had been built a couple of years before the new Vauxhall Bridge, so if the money had been available, Vauxhall Bridge could have had similar impressive structures towering on the abutments, above either side of the approach to the bridge:

Image source and attribution: Jebulon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

So whilst the roadway over the bridge was devoid of any decoration, there is decoration along the outer sides of the bridge.

The London County Council’s architect, Mr. W.E. Riley advised on the decoratuion of each support by placing steel panels over the masonry, and the application of bronze figures of heroic size on both elevations.

These figures were then created by Mr. A. Drury and Mr. F.W. Pomeroy.

This is a view of the side of Vauxhall Bridge from a few years ago. Statues can be seen above each of the piers:

On the western, upstream side of the bridge are Pomeroy’s statues representing Agriculture, Architecture, Engineering and Pottery:

And on the eastern, downstream side of the bridge are Drury’s statues representing Science, Fine Arts, Local Government and Education:

As well as the statues along the side of the bridge, there was another unique feature to the new Vauxhall Bridge, as explained in the LCC booklet:

“In consequence of the narrowness of the old bridge, no line of tramway had been constructed over it, and thus a gap had been left between the lines running from Victoria down the Vauxhall Bridge Road and the tramway at Vauxhall Cross.

In view of the importance of such a line, it was decided to apply to Parliament for authority to construct it. In 1896 the London County Council (Vauxhall Bridge Tramways) Act was passed, and steps were taken to carry out the work concurrently with the formation of the carriageway of the bridge.

Vauxhall Bridge is thus the first bridge over the Thames in London to accommodate a tramway. It will be seen, on looking at the map, that with the completion of the tramway over Vauxhall Bridge, there is a tramway in a straight line from Victoria Station to Camberwell-green. The latter point is a centre where a number of tramways meet on the south side of the Thames. The new line will therefore be of great importance in connecting large areas of South London with the stations of the London and Brighton, South Eastern, and Metropolitan District Railways at Victoria and with the large omnibus traffic starting from that point.”

The last paragraphs highlights how building one bit of infrastructure can have a much wider benefit, and although the original tram network has disappeared from London’s streets, the interconnectivity of different transport methods, whether train, underground or bus, has long been key to London’s success as a city.

The story of the two Vauxhall bridges also shows that bridges, as with any infrastructure needs maintenance and eventual replacement.

To highlight the benefits of the new bridge, and how London is subject to continual change, I will end the post with the following from the Westminster Mail on the 12th of May, 1906:

“VAUXHALL BRIDGE ROAD TRAMS – Considerable interest was evinced on Wednesday evening in the experimental trips of an electric tram car over the recently completed Vauxhall Bridge-road track. The sight of a tram-car on the bridge was a decided novelty, and attracted crowds of spectators. A car usually running on the Waterloo and Clapham route was requisitioned for the purpose, and it is understood that everything worked smoothly and satisfactorily.

Residents and those having business in the neighbourhood are agreed as to the rapidity with which the work of the electrification of the track was carried out. And but for the fact that the large sewer at the junction of the road in Tachbrook-street required extensive alterations, the task would have been accomplished even more speedily.

The past 15 years have witnessed remarkable alterations in Vauxhall-bridge road. In the early nineties the tinkling bells of the old one-horse cars were a dreadful nuisance, not in the least mitigated by the fact that there were no conductors. When the LCC acquired the system they substituted the more up to date pair-horse cars, and, better still, abolished those tinkling bells.

Now we are on the eve of having electric cars, a still greater improvement. In other directions too, the thoroughfare has been improved, and several blocks of handsome flats have taken the place of small house property. Of good width, and well paved with wood, Vauxhall Bridge-road should speedily become a much more important locality than has been the case hitherto.”

From Putney to Hammersmith – Slipways, Craven Cottage and Industry

4 Replies

Walks

My Wapping walk has now sold out. There are spaces left on:

Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation on Saturday the 6th of June. – 2 Tickets Available

I have also added a new date for my Bankside walk, which is the first time in two years:

~~Bankside to Pickle Herring Street – History between the Bridges on Saturday the 20th of June~~ – Sold Out

Last Sunday’s Post on A. Tattam

There were a number of comments to last Sunday’s post on A. Tattam who ran a shoe repair business in Hackney. These comments provided much more information about Albert.

Unfortunately, I created the post so it was ready for Sunday, and then initiated the transfer of the site to the new hosting provider. This took a while to complete, test and fix a number of minor problems, and I switched the Internet address over to the new site last Tuesday, which meant all the comments were on the old copy of the site with my previous hosting provider.

I do have copies of all these, but cannot add as comments, so will add within the post, as they really added some fascinating detail to his life.

The move means that I am happy to report that A London Inheritance is now hosted with SiteGround.

Now to today’s post:

A few week’s ago, my post was about Putney and Fulham – Bridges, Church and Thames Stairs, and was the first part of a walk from Putney Bridge to Hammersmith Bridge, not just because it is an interesting walk, but also to find the Thames stairs and landing places listed in the Port of London Authority’s directory for this stretch of the river.

My last post finished at Bishops Park Upper Stairs, and this post continues onward, all the way to Hammersmith Bridge.

Exploring this area shows just how rapid London was expanding to the west in the beginning of the 20th century, and that there was still a considerable amount of industry this far to the west along the river.

The following Ordnance Survey map dates from the end of the 19th / early 20th century. I have marked Putney and Hammersmith Bridges, and also put a circle around Craven Cottage, the home of Fulham football club, which I will come to later in the post.

I will be walking along the right hand side of the river as it is orientated in the following map, and around 120 years ago, the land along the river and a distance in land was still open space, although to the right, dense streets of housing can be seen approaching (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Around 45 years later, a range of different industries were lining the river, Craven Cottage had stands, and housing had reached up to the river (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

As well as the two sets of stairs by Bishops Park, the Port of London Authority listing has another access point to the river close to Hammersmith Bridge. That is three places to access the river along this side of the river between Putney and Hammersmith Bridges. The listing does not include any stairs or slipways on the other side of the river, although some do exist, such as the stairs shown in the following photo:

I wonder if this is because the stairs on the eastern side of the river were up against industrial developments and businesses that used the river, and were therefore classified as working stairs, whilst the opposite side of the river had no similar development, and whilst there may have been stairs providing access to the river, these were not classed as working stairs.

The western side of the river is home to a couple of rowing centres, such as the Barn Elms Boathouse:

A short distance along from Bishops Park is the home of Fulham football club – Craven Cottage:

And walking along the river, the most obvious part of Fulham’s ground is the new Riverside Stand, which extends out and over the new walkway along the river:

Inside the ground floor of the new stand are a range of food and rink outlets, with seating alongside the river walkway. These are open during the day, not just on match days, when it is ticketed only, so if you are walking the river between Putney and Hammersmith, this is a good place to stop for a drink.

Inside, there are views through to the ground:

Fulham claim that Craven Cottage is the oldest football ground in London. They played their first match at Craven Cottage on the 10th of October 1896.

The club was formed in 1879, and before the move to their current site, had played at a number of locations around Fulham and Barn Elms. The club had purchased the land in 1894, and it had taken two years for the land to be cleared, a derelict house removed and the ground prepared.

This first, simple ground, was the one shown in the first map in the post. There were banks surrounding the pitch made from earth excavated during the construction of Shepherd’s Bush underground station.

A wooden stand was constructed but this only lasted a few years before being replaced by a new steel stand in 1905, and at the same time, the earth banks were terraced.

It is this configuration of Craven Cottage which can be seen in the following 1928 photo from Britain from Above:

In the above photo, the earthen bank along the river, to the left has now been replaced by the Riverside Stand, the northern edge of which can be seen in the following photo, where the stand and seating can be seen in the gap, and the photo shows just how close the stand is to the river on the immediate right:

Next to the stadium, alongside the river walkway is a statue of George Cohen MBE, a player who spent his entire professional life at Fulham, as well as playing for England, including the World Cup in 1966, where he played in the final against Germany.

The statue was unveiled in 2016 to mark the 50th anniversary of England winning the 1966 competition:

Leaving Craven Cottage, and the view along the walkway towards Hammersmith:

There is plenty of rowing along the river:

Not sure what these strange features are along the wall of the walkway:

It is hard to image that this entire walkway from Craven Cottage up to Hammersmith Bridge was once lined by industry, but a look at the second of the OS maps at the top of the post shows just how much there was.

A surprisingly high number of oil storage and distribution depots along with an oil refinery, a coal depot, a plaster manufacturer, sugar refinery, preserved food factory, joinery works, a distillery, wharves and warehouses.

Their proximity to the river allowing raw materials to be delivered, and finished products transported.

Nearly all evidence of these industrial sites has gone, replaced mainly by housing, but some traces can still be found.

Along the walkway, there is a small, green open space called Rowberry Mead. This was originally Roseberry Meade, where in 1638 there was a house with a cherry orchard which was recorded as being the finest in England. In 1661, a lease granted by the Bishop of London estimated the size of Rowberry Meade as being six acres.

In the late 19th century, it was a place where osiers (a type of willow tree), and reeds were grown for the basket making industry:

However by the 1940s, the cherry orchards, osiers and reeds had all gone, and the site was an oil distribution depot, with five circular oil storage tanks lining the river.

Whilst the tanks have disappeared, the outline of a couple of the tanks have been preserved in the layout of the park:

In the above photo, the curved fencing and concrete wall below is the riverside edge of the tank arrowed in the following map:

And the outline of the tank above the one with the red arrow is also part reserved, and this includes a mechanism which is placed in the centre of where the tank was located:

From a curve in the walkway, we can look across at the building which is still signed as Palace Wharf, which in the second OS map was the northern edge of the building complex that formed the Rathbone Works, where fibrous plaster and joinery was manufactured.

Also, in the following photo, it is interesting that whilst today there are no osiers / willows at Rowberry Mead, willows can still be seen growing on the river foreshore:

All the industry along the river required infrastructure to support the boats that brought goods to and from the storage depots and factories, most of this infrastructure has gone, but there still the remains of some wooden piers along the river:

In the following photo, the large brick building is the Crabtree pub:

There has been a pub on the site since at least the 1830s, with the large building we see today being a reconstruction of the pub in 1898 by Sich’s Lamb brewery of Chiswick.

The name of the pub, the Crabtree comes from the Crab Tree, or wild apple tree, of which there were once many in this part of Fulham.

In the following extract from the late 19th century OS map, the red arrow points to the first Crabtree pub, the green arrow points to Crabtree Lane, and the blue arrow points to Crabtree House. There are tree symbols covering many of the fields, presumably these were the crab trees which gave their name to the house, lane and pub:

Continuing along the walkway which heads under part of the original Palace Wharf buildings:

To show how industries changed along the river, in the late 19th century OS map, the area occupied by Palace Wharf was a malthouse, around 45 years later the site was manufacturing fibrous plaster.

Another reminder of just how connected with the river this stretch of the shore once was, along the walk there are features such as in the following photo, where mooring lines would be tied from the boats transporting goods to and from the industrial premises:

On the opposite bank of the river is the Harrods Furniture Depository:

The Harrods Furniture Depository was built between 1894 and 1913, having been designed by the architect W.G. Hunt.

As the name suggests, it was built to store furniture over and above what could be on display at the Knightsbridge store, and was also used to distribute furniture ordered by customers. The river was a key means of transport, and there was a pier on the river where boats could moor to deliver or take on furniture. Furniture was also repaired and restored in the building.

Harrods made use of the site in other ways to serve their customers, as the following from The Lady on the 30th of March 1895 shows:

“Many of our readers, and especially many ladies, will be glad to learn that there is a possibility this year of viewing the Boat Race from particularly comfortable quarters without the crushing inconvenience usually inseparable from such occasions. The directors of Harrods Stores have decided to fit up their wharf in front of the old Soap Works (now Harrods Furniture Depository), for the accommodation of a limited number of sightseers, and the race may be seen for at least a mile from this point for the very moderate charge of 2s 6d, light refreshments included.”

The Depository became redundant in the 1980s as delivery models moved from the retailers storing large volumes of goods, to a more just in time approach to minimise the need for costly stock holding and storage facilities.

The site was then converted into residential, with the large and impressive façade facing the river, being retained.

Getting closer to Hammersmith Bridge:

There has been a considerable amount of residential development along the land facing the river as we get towards Hammersmith Bridge.

These apartment buildings all follow the standard style of such developments of recent years, and they have the obligatory balcony:

The London Housing Design Guide published by the Mayor of London in 2010 defined in Section 4.10 Private Open Space that dwellings should have adequate private open space, in the form of either a garden, terrace, or balcony, and that 5 square metres should be provided for a two person dwelling.

This has probably led to a building design that in future decades will probably be recognised as an early to mid 21st century apartment design, much as today we recognise a Georgian or Victorian terrace.

Figurehead by the artist Rick Kirby between the riverside walkway and the new residential development:

The final approach to Hammersmith Bridge:

And as I approached Hammersmith Bridge, I found the last of the three places listed in the Port of London Authority’s guide to access points on this stretch of the river.

This access point goes by the simple name of “Hammersmith Landing”, and is a simple concrete slipway into the river surrounded by concrete walls:

The slipway was marked on the 1893 to 1896 revision of the Ordnance Survey map, where is was located directly at the end of Queen Street (now Queen Caroline Street). Rocque’s map of 1746 shows an unnamed street following the alignment of Queen Street and running through agricultural fields, with a number of buildings along the road, The street ran directly into the river, so as a point of access to the river, the site is probably at least 300 years old:

The building in the following photo is the Riverside Studios:

The Riverside Studios are another example of the transformation from industrial. The site was originally the 19th century and early 20th century Hammersmith Iron Works.

In 1933 the iron works was converted into a film studios with two sound stages, and films made here included “The Seventh Veil” with James Mason from 1945, and in 1950 “The Happiest Days of Your Life” with Margaret Rutherford.

In 1954 the studios were taken over by the BBC, who purchased the studios from the Alliance Film Company. BBC productions including Doctor Who and Quatermass and the Pit were then made here, along with Hancock’s Half Hour and Blue Peter, which are recorded on a plaque on the building:

And in June 1956, the American Singer and Actress, Eartha Kitt appeared in a BBC production at the studios, an event which is also recorded by a plaque on the building:

The BBC moved out of the Riverside Studios in 1975 as additional studios had been added to Television Centre in White City, and the Hammersmith buildings were then taken over by a charitable trust formed by Hammersmith and Fulham Council.

The current building dates from a major redevlopment of the site between 2014 and 2019.

Not long after the new site opened, the studios went into administration, and in 2025 were brought out of administration and brought under the control of a new charitable trust, the Anil Agarwal Riverside Studios Trust.

It was then up to the approach to Hammersmith Bridge, which continues to be closed to any form of traffic apart from pedestrians and cyclists.

Not only has Hammersmith Bridge been closed for some years, but Albert Bridge also recently closed, again apart from pedestrians and cyclists, as a crack in a cast iron component had been discovered in the north eastern abutment.

Work is now underway to restore Hammersmith Bridge, but this will probably take a number of years, and a 12 month plan is underway to repair Albert Bridge.

Two examples of the problems that can happen due to the age of much of London’s infrastructure:

If you are looking for a really interesting walk along the Thames, then the path between Putney and Hammersmith is well worth an exploration, and from Hammersmith there is an equally interesting walk to continue all the way to Chiswick, a route that has the added benefit of a number of good pubs. I wrote about the Chiswick to Hammersmith section in this post.

A. Tattam, Shoe Repairs and Layers of London

3 Replies

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

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

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

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

A. Tattam – Shoe Repairs

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

The same location, forty years later:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources – Layers of London

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just exploring these records reveals the wealth of information available.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Royal Festival Hall at 75

13 Replies

I have recently released two new walk dates. These are, along with links for details and booking:

Two tickets have just become available for my walk exploring the Lost Streets of the Barbican, this Saturday, the 16th of May

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

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

This is the post that should have appeared last Sunday, the 3rd of May, which was the 75th anniversary of the official opening of the Royal Festival Hall on the 3rd of May 1951.

Unfortunately, on Friday 1st of May, my web site went down again, coming back online on Sunday afternoon. I wont go into the issues with my current hosting provider (to keep my blood pressure down), but in the next couple of weeks I plan to move to an alternative, and hopefully better performing hosting platform.

So on the 75th (and one week) anniversary of the opening ceremony of the Royal Festival Hall, this post looks at the construction and opening of this South Bank icon.

If you attended the opening ceremony, then you may have purchased this souvenir programme of the event:

The foundation stone of the Royal Festival Hall had been laid on the 12th of October 1949 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee, and less than two years later the building would host the King and Queen and other members of the Royal family, with the King unveiling a commemorative tablet in the foyer.

There was then a service of dedication led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed by the first of a short series of inaugural concerts.

The works performed on the 3rd of May 1951 are shown in the following page from the souvenir programme:

The London County Council had arranged the week of inaugural concerts, and for the coming months there was “a full programme of Festival concerts, ballet, song recitals and light orchestras throughout the summer season and autumn. A season of ballet from July 26 to September 1 will be presented by International Ballet, who are planning imaginative productions of both new and familiar ballets in settings devised specially for the hall”.

The souvenir programme was a comprehensive booklet on the inaugural concerts, with biographies of the conductors along with comprehensive programme notes, which included extracts from the musical score, taking the audience through some of the intricacies of the work, and how some of the instruments in the orchestra had key parts.

It was a programme written for an audience with a serious interest in classical music.

At the back of the souvenir programme were a number of pages of adverts, from companies who had some part in the design, construction and fitting out of the Royal Festival Hall.

Adverts were a common part of the guide books for each of the Festival of Britain locations, and today, looking through these adverts is a rather depressing experience, as they are a list of all the British industries and manufacturing companies that have either closed or been taken over during the last 75 years, however there is one company associated with the Royal Festival Hall that is still in operation:

Harrison and Harrison were Thomas Hugh Harrison, who was born in 1839, presumably in St. Pancras as he was the son of Thomas William Harrison of St. Pancras who had a company manufacturing parts for organ buildings.

The firm of Harrison and Harrison dates from 1872 when Thomas Hugh Harrison set up a manufacturing business in Durham, where the firm was based in 1951, and where it is still repairing and building organs today.

Regarding the Royal Festival Hall, on the website of the company, there is the following: “A hugely influential event was the building of the organ in The Royal Festival Hall in 1954. This landmark instrument, which was restored by H&H in time for its sixtieth anniversary, introduced the British organ world to the classical influence of the continental Organ Reform Movement”.

Their website can be found here, and it is brilliant to see that the company appears to be thriving.

The Festival of Britain on the South Bank opened on the day after the inaugural concert, and the site was already generating some excitement. The South Bank was lit up, and it must have been quite a sight after wartime blackouts and post war austerity, as this article from the May 2nd issue of the London Daily News indicates:

“London’s famous skyline shines bright for the Festival; London’s river picks up the gleam. On the South Bank floodlights and search lights on the exhibition buildings make a blaze of reds, blues and yellows. Against the shadowy Shot Tower is the brilliance of the Royal Festival Hall. Then the Skylon points its finger to the night sky. Above Hungerford Bridge are the illuminated flag-masts of the Bailey footbridge.”

The Skylon was already attracting unwanted interest, as at the start of May:

“Students using grappling irons and nylon ropes, scaled the 295 feet high Skylon on the London south bank exhibition site at midnight and tied to a pole 50 feet from the top, a University of London Air Squadron scarf.

One of them said that five students entered the site late last night and two climbed the Skylon with the nylon ropes 120 feet and 220 feet long and climbing equipment which they had specially made. It was intended to fix the scarf to the lightning conductor but the frailty of the structure at the top made this too hazardous.

The scarf was taken down by workmen.”

Getting within 50 feet of the top was an achievement, not sure I would have wanted to try such a climb:

As well as the souvenir programme, the London County Council had also been involved with the publication of the Official Record of the Royal Festival Hall:

Having the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank was part of the London County Council’s, 1943 County of London Plan, which proposed that the South Bank should become a cultural centre, with a river walkway, public space, offices and homes.

The state of the South Bank was described in the plan as follows:

“It is one of the great anomalies of the capital that while the river, from Westminster eastwards, is lined on the north side with magnificent buildings and possesses a spacious and attractive embankment road, the corresponding south bank, excepting St. Thomas Hospital and the County Hall, should present a depressing, semi-derelict appearance, lacking any sense of dignity and order appropriate to its location at the centre of London, and fronting on to the great waterway. This gloomy aspect is intensified to-day by war damage.”

So it was in need of serious improvement.

Across the Festival of Britain site, the London County Council were responsible for the Royal Festival Hall as well as the new river wall and walkway, and their funding, design and construction, was why they survived, whilst the rest of the festival site was demolished soon after the closure of the festival.

A paragraph in the Forward to the Official Record provides a view of the challenge and intentions:

“The Royal Festival Hall is the only building of such magnitude and importance to have been completed in London since war began in 1939; and it is the first new concert hall the capital has had for much longer than that. This building is of great size and complexity – for it is much more than a concert hall – built on difficult terrain and conditioned in its design by the need for utmost economy in the use of steel and other scarce materials, has had to be planned and produced to an inexorable time-schedule and with a vital and uncomfortably close completion date always in mind. Yet the Council has been at pains to provide a building which is everything that careful planning and anxious forethought could make it, and which has been designed to be worthy of the unique occasion of its inception as well as the longer term use for which it is mainly intended.”

There are a small number of photos in the book, and a large number of drawings, including the following view of the external and internal parts of the building:

The numbers refer to: 1 – Roof Garden, 2 – Choir, 3 – Boxes, 4 – Orchestra, 5 – Stalls, 6 – Grand Tier, 7 – Entrance Staircase, 8 – Side Promenade, 9 – Main Foyer, 10 – Restaurant, 11 – Terrace Restaurant, 12 – Escape Stairs, 13 – Terrace.

The paragraph from the forward hinted at the challenges of building on the South Bank. A major challenge was water, as the ground where the Royal Festival Hall was to be built was saturated, and ground water height varied with the tide in the Thames.

The options were either pumping or freezing the ground, and the solution taken was:

“To sink a sort of subterranean fence round the whole building site, some 350 steel pipes a yard apart , driven 20 feet down with their tops connected up to suction pumps. When the pumping began, water was thrown out at a rate of 150,000 gallons an hour, but when the general water level was reduced to that of the pipe ends, half that ejection rate served to keep all the excavations comfortable de-watered and workable down to 20 feet below the surface”.

A diagram from the book showing the layers of strata, with the excavation for the building on the right and the River Thames on the left:

The Official Record looked at the Auditorium:

“Heart and kernel of the whole concert hall building is of course the great auditorium itself, the vivifying principle that alone gives validity to the outer parts and members of its body that encircle it in protective, ordered complexity. So it is the auditorium that will here be more critically judged than anything else, more keenly discussed and therefore longest remembered.

All else is but accessory and ancillary to this one essential element; the elegant restaurants and terraces, the foyers and bars and all the rest – mere handmaidens in helpful, agreeable attendance.

Spatially the auditorium is immediately satisfying, probably partly because one unconsciously realises that it is so exactly shaped for its particular job. Nothing has been done in the way of embellishment to detract from this obvious functional fitness, and indeed one guesses – and again correctly – that such decoration as there is is all calculated to promote the prime purpose of the Hall: the hearing of good music.”

One of the features of the seats in the auditorium was the use of sound absorbing glass fibre in the pads of the seats, to eliminate the sound of a seat tipping as well as to create the effect where an empty seat had the same acoustic properties as an occupied seat.

Boxes lining the walls of the auditorium:

There was a considerable amount of research into the acoustic properties of the auditorium:

One of the unique features of the Royal Festival Hall is that when you enter the building and stand in the foyer, it is not immediately obvious where the auditorium is located. The foyer presents a wide open space, with thin columns supporting the structure above, with only bars and reception desks in view.

The auditorium is suspended above the foyer, a design that needed a clever means of support with four stairwells at each corner constructed within a bastion to support the auditorium. The following image from the book shows how the auditorium is almost a capsule suspended within the overall building:

The main foyer, with one of the bars to the left. The sloping floor of the auditorium forms the ceiling:

One of the themes of the Festival of Britain was the use of new designs for even the most basic of functions, and in the restaurants of the Royal Festival Hall, this included newly designed chairs, with a rubber cushioned seat, and a dumb waiter made out of tubular metal, timber and aluminium:

The auditorium was by far the most important feature, but restaurants were also an important part of the overall visitor experience, and for those dining in the restaurant with a window seat: “At night a new prospect is revealed as the lights shine across the river”:

Design of the terraces and gardens around the hall were just as important as the interior, and long before the large terrace that we see today was built in front of the hall, there was a lower and smaller upper terrace “from which there is a magnificent view of the river and the northern embankment”:

As with the souvenir programmes, in the official record of the Royal Festival Hall, there were a number of adverts for companies involved in many aspects of the building, including Cox & Co of Watford, who were responsible for the auditorium seating:

One of the aims with the design of the Royal Festival Hall was to make use of the latest technologies available for building such a concert hall. As well as theatre and sound technologies, this also included air conditioning and heating systems, and the following photo from the book shows heating pipes which threaded through the building:

One of the challenges with designing and building so quickly, along with the use of new technologies was that the design had to change as construction progressed.

The installation of air conditioning, heating pipes and electrical cables required the drilling of unplanned holes in the buttresses of the hall that gave support to the auditorium as well as many of the walls.

As well as the design of the interior, the importance of the auditorium, and the use of the latest technologies, one of the other key features of the Royal Festival Hall was its location on the South Bank, directly overlooking the Thames, and the building was intended to present an impressive view:

As mentioned earlier in the post, the South Bank was in a dismal state, and the LCC plan proposed significant new buildings along the South Bank which would mirror the buildings along the North Bank, and the above image shows how the Royal Festival Hall was intended to be the first part of this.

This is an issue I have with the South Bank today. The walkway is lined with trees and especially when they are in leaf, they do obscure much of the view of the Royal Festival Hall from the north bank.

Trees are key in the built environment. Not only do they improve the visual aspect, they also provide shade, have a cooling effect etc. however, for the short space of the walkway in front of the hall, removing the trees would restore the view of the Royal Festival Hall as was intended by the designers and developers.

My father took a whole series of photos of the South Bank showing the area before it was cleared ready for the build of the festival, and then construction.

The first of his photos is from 1947 and shows the site prior to demolition. The Royal Festival Hall would be built on the site of the lion Brewery, which is to the right, with the Coade Stone Lion on the top:

A view on the South Bank. The large building is the Lion Brewery after the Lion had been removed:

Building the foundations of the Royal Festival Hall:

The Shot Tower is the tall tower in both photos:

Looking across the site, the tall houses in the background were in Howley Street, which has long gone, replaced by the slip road that runs between Belvedere Road and the roundabout at the southern end of Waterloo Bridge:

The above image gives an indication of the depth of the foundations.

One of the objections to the Festival of Britain was the impact it would have on both materials and workers, who were also desperately needed for post war reconstruction of the homes, offices and factories that has been destroyed by bombing, and general deterioration since the 1930s.

There was a wonderful book published specially for the Festival of Britain by the Association of Consulting Engineers. The book is a comprehensive exploration of many large infrastructure and construction projects in which the association’s members were involved. The book included a section on the Royal Festival Hall, with a detailed description of the design, construction and challenges.

The following image from the book shows the Royal Festival Hall in the foreground, with the build of the Dome of Discovery in the background, with the rest of the site being built around. The image provides an idea of the sheer scale of the construction of the Festival of Britain site on the South Bank:

Back to my father’s photos, and this one shows the build of the Royal Festival Hall well underway:

And finally it has been completed:

Photo showing detail of the terraces at the front of the building, much the same as the print from the official record shown earlier in the post:

The Royal Festival Hall on the 3rd of May 2026, on the 75th anniversary of the opening ceremony:

The large yellow object on the left is a work called Pin Drop by Carson McColl and Gareth Pugh, created as part of the 75th anniversary and is “reimagining the iconic Skylon for the digital age”.

The Royal Festival Hall is a result of a 1943 LCC plan, as well as using the South Bank for the 1951 Festival of Britain.

A wonderful building, but what I find really remarkable is the speed at which it was built. Just over three years from design to the opening ceremony.

The Festival of Britain, which opened to the public on the 4th of May 1951, was though much more than just the South Bank.

If you would like to explore the festival in more detail, you may be interested in the following posts:

An overview of the South Bank festival is here: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/the-festival-of-britain-south-bank-exhibition/

A walk around the upstream circuit of the site is here: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/walk-round-festival-britain-upstream-circuit/

And a walk around the downstream circuit is here: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/festival_of_britain_downstream_circuit/

The Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea are explored here: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/the-festival-of-britain-pleasure-gardens-battersea-park/

The Festival Of Britain – Maps, Football, Guidebooks. Science And Abram Games is a look at some of the publications that went with the festival as well as the Exhibition of Science at South Kensington: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/abram_games/

An Optimistic View Of The Future is a look at some of the adverts from the 1951 Festival Of Britain: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/an-optimistic-view-of-the-future-adverts-from-the-1951-festival-of-britain/

The Exhibition of Architecture at Poplar is explored here: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/lansbury-exhibition-of-architecture/

and here: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/exhibition-of-architecture/

The strange story of the Festival of Britain and the Atomic Bomb is here: https://alondoninheritance.com/eventsandceremonies/the-festival-of-britain-and-the-atomic-bomb/

Hopefully the site will be up and stable if you would like to read these, and all being well will be on a far more stable hosting platform in the next couple of weeks.

Putney and Fulham – Bridges, Church and Thames Stairs

8 Replies

Walks

I currently have the following walks now available (click on each one for details):

Exploring the Lost Streets of the Barbican on Saturday 16th of May.

In the Steps of a Woolwich Docker – From the Woolwich Ferry to the Royals on Saturday 23rd of May.

The Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street on Sunday 31st of May.

I hope to set up additional dates during the coming months, and for early notification of their availability, follow me on my main Eventbrite page, here.

Now to head to Putney and Fulham:

A couple of week’s ago, I wrote a post about the Putney Debates at St. Mary’s Church in Putney. Whilst there, I also wanted to find the location of some Thames stairs, as part of my long running attempt to visit the site of all the river stairs on the tidal Thames.

It was also an opportunity to have a walk around the area, and after arriving at Parsons Green station on the District Line, I headed south as I wanted to cross the river by a route I had not taken before, the walkway along the side of Fulham Railway Bridge:

The walkway is along the eastern side of the bridge, and brings back memories of the walkway that once ran along the side of Hungerford railway bridge, however this walkway looks to be better maintained.

From the walkway there is a good view of the river to the east. The large building on the left is one of the large blocks of flats which seem to be a feature of this part of the north bank of the river around Fulham, and the trees on the left are part of the grounds of the Hurlingham Club:

The bridge was built to allow the extension of the District Railway, and the following report from the St. James Budget on the 19th of January 1889 provides a wonderful description of how places like Putney were being transformed, and it starts with a reference to the Civil War debates:

“THE NEW WIMBLEDON AND FULHAM RAILWAY – Saturday, September 18th, 1647 – ‘After a sermon in Putney Church, the great General Cromwell, many great officers, field officers, inferior officers, and adjutators met in the church; debated the proposals of the army towards a settlement of this bleeding nation; altered some things in them; and were very full of sermon which had been preached by Mr. Peters’. So it is recorded in authentic history.

Ten years ago it was not difficult to imagine Putney as the headquarters of Cromwell. Ten years ago the District Railway had not been extended to Fulham and quant old relics of the past had not been pulled down. Ten years ago Fairfax House, in which Queen Elizabeth used to lodge, was still standing, and the straggling old high street, with its curious cottages, had not disappeared. Ten years ago the ‘early clerk’ was a rara avis in Putney, and ‘villadom’ had not become aggressive. But the opening of Putney Bridge Station inaugurated a new style of things, and the old Putney was well nigh improved off the face of the earth.

Since that a further extension of the railway has been in progress, and the early part of this year will see Wimbledon in direct communication with the aristocratic west and with all parts of the District and Metropolitan system. The present terminus to the District Railway in the south is at Putney Bridge, on the Fulham side of the Thames; but the opening of the new branch will carry the rails across the Thames to Putney proper, where a station is being established to serve the purpose of both the District and South-Western systems. Thence the line will pass through West Hill and Southfields in the Wandsworth District, and, skirting Wimbledon Park with its expansive lake, will for the present come to a stop at Wimbledon Junction.”

This article is interesting for several reasons. I really like the historical links, it demonstrates how what had been villages around London were being rapidly transformed in the later part of the 19th century, and it highlights the part played by the rapidly expanding rail network.

I also like the term “villadom” which probably describes the suburban houses that were rapidly taking over what had been the fields surrounding Putney and Fulham.

There is a plaque on the bridge alongside the walkway that records the construction and later refurbishment of the bridge:

The bridge was designed by William Jacomb, who had been an assistant to Brunel, and Jacomb created a rather graceful structure across the river, however the large concrete cutwaters around the central columns, which were added later to protect the bridge against any accidental collisions, slightly detract from the architect’s original intentions:

Just to the west of the railway bridge is Putney road bridge:

As with so much of the river, there was a reasonable amount of industry along the banks, and on the north, Fulham bank of the river, there was Swan Wharf and Draw Dock, which was used by the local corporation as a place where barges could be loaded with rubbish and transported down river to landfill sites around Rainham. The Draw Dock is highlighted by the red arrow in the following map, with Swan Wharf to the left (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

To the right of the Draw Dock was the granite, marble & mosaic works of Fenning & Co.

Whilst the corporation yard and granite works have been replaced by residential, the entrance from the river to the Draw Dock remains, although it extends no further back than the cut in the embankment seen in the centre of the following photo:

From the location of the above photo, I walked up to the church featured in the previous post on the Putney Debates. Directly opposite the church, on the approach road to the bridge, is a rather magnificent late 19th century pub:

This is the Grade II listed White Lion Hotel and Public House, which dates from 1887.

The date of construction is within the same couple of years as that of the railway bridge and the extension of the District railway to Putney, and is another example of how Putney was being transformed.

An 1888 advert for the White Lion provides an overview of the business when it opened:

“THE NEW WHITE LION HOTEL, PUTNEY – The above Newly Built Hotel when completed will afford unusual accommodation for Boating Parties, Families and Commercial Gentlemen. It contains Sixteen Spacious Bedrooms, Three Bathrooms, and Sitting Rooms, Magnificent Billiard Room with Two of Messrs. Cox and Yeoman’s Tables, fitted with the latest improvements, Bowling Saloons, Spacious Dining and Grill Room and also a Large Room for Banquets and Public Dinners.”

There are not that many pubs where you can see two large Caryatids supporting the upper floors:

The White Lion was built on the site of a previous pub with the same name, as being at the southern end of the bridge, and opposite the church, was a good location.

There are plenty of references to the pub going back to the early years of the 18th century, and it would be interesting to know if it was here when Cromwell was in the church opposite.

As is still the case, it is generally only bad news that makes the media, and the following example of a tragic accident in the White Lion in January 1750 again highlights the almost casual nature of death across London in previous centuries:

“On Tuesday last a melancholy accident happened at the White Lion at Putney, where some Officers being quartered, a Pair of Pistols belonging to one of them lay on the table where two Sons and a Daughter of Mr. Barnsley were playing; one of the Boys, about six years old (who was the eldest) taking up a Pistol, clapped it to his sister’s forehead, saying ‘I’ll shoot you’, and so indeed he did.”

I have left out the rest of the description of the accident as 18th century newspapers did not leave out any graphic details. There was no report of any action against the Officer who had left a loaded pistol out in a public space and it was just regarded as a tragic accident.

At the top of the building there is a large White Lion, and the date of construction:

I cannot find when the White Lion closed. It has been through the chain pub branding of Slug and Lettuce and Litten Tree. It has been an Australian themed bar and a sports bar, but the building seems to have been empty since 2012 / 2013.

The Historic England assessment record states that it is in poor condition, of medium vulnerability, there is slow decline and no solution for the building is agreed, so not a very promising future.

It is the type of pub that Wetherspoons would typically take over and restore, however there is already a Wetherspoons, the Rocket, in a brand new building just to the east of the church.

Hopefully there will be a future use for this wonderful building.

One of my aims was to visit two Thames stairs listed in the Port of London Authority records of access points to the river. I have highlighted them in the following map. The red arrow is pointing to Bishops Park Lower Stairs and the green arrow to Bishops Park Upper Stairs (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Seen from Putney, Bishops Park Lower Stairs are on the left of the following photo. The church on the right is All Saints, Fulham:

A close up of Bishops Park Lower Stairs:

As I mentioned in my last past on the Putney Debates, churches are often seen adjacent to important crossings or boundaries, and at either end of Putney Bridge, there is All Saints Fulham and St. Mary’s Putney, as shown in the following photo:

The first bridge across the river was opened in 1729, but there had been a ferry crossing here for many previous centuries, so whilst today the churches are at either end of the bridge, they would previously have been at opposite ends of the ferry crossing, when perhaps it would have been important for a quick prayer before braving a crossing by water.

The first bridge was of wooden construction. There was much opposition from the watermen operating the ferry, as the bridge would have destroyed their business. Compensation and pensions were needed to address the waterman’s complaints.

The churchyard of St. Mary’s was originally much larger than we see today. When the wooden bridge was built, the road curved around the larger churchyard to access the bridge, as can be seen in the following print, which was published in 1783 and titled “Putney Church from the White Lion”, again confirming the existence of the pub long before the 1897 building we see today:

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

The Port of London listing does not include any access points along the Putney side of the river, which is strange as there are a number of slipways, although some are quite recent such as the slipway in the following photo. Where the slipway reaches the higher point, which then extends into the river, was one of the construction sites for the Thames Tideway Tunnel:

The point in the river opposite the Tideway Tunnel site is where the University Boat Race starts.

Looking towards Putney on a busy Putney Bridge:

The view in the opposite direction towards Fulham:

In the early 18th century, there were no bridges between London Bridge and Kingston, so if you needed to cross the river, you would have needed a Waterman.

In 1726, the organisation to construct the bridge was put in place, as reported in the Flying Post on the 19th of May, 1726: “London, May 19. Above 180 Persons of the Nobility, Gentry &c. are particularly named to be Commissioners, or a Body corporate, for building a Bridge cross the Thames, from Fulham in Middlesex to Putney in Surrey.”

The references to Middlesex and Surrey recall the original counties that much of modern day Greater London were once part of.

Construction began in March 1729 as reported: “The building of the new Bridge over the River Thames from Fulham to Putney was begun yesterday in Presence of the Commissioners appointed for that work, and the Scaffolding in Fulham side was great part finished, as was that on the Side of Putney this day; and the first pile is to be drove tomorrow; several hundred men are employed in the great undertaking.”

The bridge was in use by the end of the year, and on the 11th October, the Kentish Mercury was reporting that: “The New Bridge over the River Thames from Fulham to Putney is so near finished that the wood work almost joins the brick and stone-work at each end; and the top being for the most part covered, several persons passed over yesterday; and ’tis reckoned that before Christmas, coaches and carriages may pass. ‘Tis no small surprise to see so great a Work complete in so short a time.”

The Putney end of the bridge:

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

The wooden construction of the bridge:

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

The bridge was a toll bridge. The following print shows the toll gate at the Fulham end of the bridge. There also appears to have been a toll gate at the Putney end:

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

I cannot find a list of the tolls, but did find the following report on the lengths that the staff of the toll gate would go to, in order to bring those who tried to avoid the toll to justice. On the 3rd of June, 1754:

“Yesterday morning, about Four o’clock, two Gentlemen in a Coach attempted to go through the Toll-Gate at Fulham Bridge, without paying the Toll, but were prevented by the Toll-Man, upon which one of the Gentlemen jumped out of the coach, ran up to the man, and with great Imprecations swore he would shoot him, at which time he snaped a Pistol against the Man’s Breast, and afterwards beat him over the Head with the But-End of it in a barbarous Manner. Mr. William Low, master of the Gate, seeing his Servant so cruelly used, pursued the Gentlemen to London, where he had one of them apprehended, and being carried before Henry Fielding, Esq. he was by him committed to New Prison.”

View of the Fulham end of the bridge, with the toll gate looking a bit smaller than in the previous print. It is easy to work out which end of the bridge is shown, as the church at the Fulham end had a small turret protruding above the tower:

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

It is interesting to see in these prints how the river had a natural foreshore leading up to the land, long before we built large embankments to hold back to river.

In the above print there are a couple of horses drinking in the river. Just above and to the right of the horses is what I thought may have been a gallows, but looking closely at the print there is a sign hanging from the wooden structure, so this may have been the sign of a pub alongside the Fulham end of the bridge.

The first wooden bridge survived for a remarkably long time, and was not replaced by the current stone bridge until 1886, when the Sir Joseph Bazalgette designed bridge of Cornish granite opened.

At the centre of the bridge:

Where a plaque shows the 1886 date of the bridge and the boundaries of the two parishes of Putney and Fulham:

Close to the northern end of the bridge is All Saints, Fulham:

One of the comments to my post on the Putney Debates mentioned All Saints, and that it was a location from the film the Omen, for the scene where the vicar is spiked by the lightning conductor.

On the bright spring day of my visit, the church did not have any of the sinister atmosphere of the Omen.

The church tower still retains the small turret seen in many of the prints of the bridge:

The church tower is the oldest part of the church. The first mention of the church dates from the 13th century, and the dedication to All Saints appears in the mid 15th century when the tower was being built.

In the 1880, the same decade as the railway was extended across the river, that the White Lion Hotel was being built, and the author of the earlier newspaper article complained about the aggressive “villadom“, the church was considered too small for the growing population, and was also subject to flooding from the Thames, so the original church was demolished (except for the tower), and a new, much larger church built to a design by the architect Sir Arthur Blomfield.

The interior of the 1880 church:

There is a mix of memorials in the church, including ones from the current version of the church, such as the tablet erected for Alfred Bassano, who must have had a fascinating life in military service:

Along with memorials which must have come from the original church, including that of Sir Thomas Kinsey, who was an Alderman of the City of London and who died on the 3rd of January 1696 at the age of 60. He must have grown up during an interesting time in London, with the Civil War and the restoration of Charles II when Thomas Kinsey was aged 24:

To prevent flooding, the new church was built three feet higher than the original church, so I wonder whether the floor level of the interior of the church is the same or also raised by three feet.

These memorials in the floor pre-date the current church, so either the interior floor level is the same, or these have also been raised by three feet:

Back outside and this is Bishops Park Lower Stairs:

I can find very little about these stairs, both Bishops Park Upper and Lower Stairs.

The name Bishops Park refers to the park around Fulham Place, the home until 1973 of the Bishops of London.

In the following extract from Rocque’s map of 1746, the original Putney Bridge (labelled as Fulham Bridge), can be seen to lower right. Fulham Palace is the area with the enclosure to the upper left of the bridge:

The names of both Fulham Bridge and Putney Bridge were both used to name the bridge, with Putney winning out in later years.

There are no obvious stairs shown in the map along the whole of the river.

I would have assumed that the Bishops of London would have made considerable use of the river as a means of travelling to and from Westminster and the City of London.

In the following extract from the same map, there are two breaks in the enclosure around the palace facing on to the river, but there is no indication that there were any stairs facing these openings.

There had been an embankment along the river to prevent flooding, and the large river wall that we see today, and along which there is a walkway that follows the river, was built by Joseph Mears between 1889 and 1893, so perhaps the stairs date from this period.

The lack of any obvious early stairs may have been because the previous embankment provided a more accessible way of reaching the river rather than a large, stone river wall, so the two stairs were added to provide access. I just have no proof, one way or the other.

The Port of London Authority listing provides no information as to their age.

Looking back to Putney Bridge:

Continuing further along the walkway, and I reach Bishops Park Upper Stairs:

These are of the same design as the Bishops Park Lower Stairs, and again must have been part of the original construction of the river wall.

Both sets of stairs are surrounded by railings, and have a locked gate to the stairs facing the park:

Both are substantial, wide sets of stairs, and are in good condition:

Frustrating that I could not find any detail as to the age or use of the stairs, but it is good to see that these large flights of stairs down to the river are there, and in good condition.

From here, I continued my walk to Hammersmith Bridge, as there was one more set of Thames stairs to find, and there is much to discover along this part of the Thames. The subject of a future post.

Barbican Wanderings

20 Replies

May the 3rd is the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Festival of Britain and the opening ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall. To mark the date, I have a walk exploring the history of the South Bank and the Festival of Britain on the day. Click here for details and booking.

I have written a number of posts about the Barbican, mainly exploring the area before the Barbican was built, a place of historic streets which had been there for several hundred years, all lost in one night of bombing. It would have been a fascinating place to explore.

Despite the loss of these streets, the Barbican estate is still a fascinating place to explore, not just for the architecture, the overall design of the estate, the views that suddenly open up, and the careful use of construction materials, but also for what can be found on a casual wander.

This post looks at four things which can be found during a casual wander of the Barbican estate. Objects which tell some of the Barbican’s story, development of the estate, and of the local area and the City of London, with the first being a set of remarkable murals:

Dorothy Annan Murals for the Central Telegraph Office

A walk along the covered section of the Cromwell High Walk reveals a set of nine abstract murals covering subjects which can be rather hard to decode.

They were created by Dorothy Annan around 1960 for the Central Telegraph Office of the General Post Office in Farringdon Street. A building that on completion was London’s largest telephone exchange.

This was a time when there was an optimistic view of the march of technology and the benefits that would come from the expanding capabilities and use of communications technologies.

Dorothy Annan was born in Brazil in 1908, and initially educated in France and Germany, but had moved to England at some point in the late 1930s/ 1940s.

She worked in a number of tactile mediums such a pottery, mosaics, and, as can be seen in the Barbican, murals, which were created by hand scoring the design into tiles of wet clay. These were then fired, decoration and coloured glaze were then added, the tile was fired again, and the individual tiles were then assembled to create the completed mosaic.

As the building on which the mosaics were to be mounted was a telephone exchange, the subject of the mosaics was the technologies used by the General Post Office, and which Dorothy had seen during a number of visits to Post Office sites.

British Telecom, as the telephony and data services of the General Post Office had become, were transforming their technology in the late 20th and early 21st century. Where large buildings were once needed to house large exchanges made of electro-mechanical equipment to switch telephone calls, the move to digital switching, along with the gradual reduction in the number of phone calls and the rise of the Internet, resulted in British Telecom having buildings with no future use, one of which was the Central Telegraph Office in Farringdon Street.

The site was sold to Goldman Sachs who had no interest in retaining the murals. Efforts by English Heritage, the Twentieth Century Society and the City of London Corporation resulted in their move to the Barbican. This retained the murals in the City of London, and on public display.

A walk along the panels, starting with:

Radio Communications and Television

This mural shows four helical radio antennae’s mounted on a frame. It is not clear from the mural, but often this combination would have a rotator at the centre, which would allow the antennae’s to be rotated and elevated.

I like the detail in the mural, such as the two black objects extending backwards at either end of the central pole. These would have been counterweights to balance the weight of the four antenna, which was essential to prevent any damage to the electric motor in the rotator.

They were often used for satellite communication or providing radio links at events such as outside broadcasts.

An extra element to my interest in these murals is that I worked with many of the technologies that they depict (although some are just about recognisable due to their very abstract nature).

At the age of 16, I started a Post Office Telecommunications apprenticeship in the late 1970s, and many of these technologies shown from 1960, were still in use, including:

Cables and Communication in Buildings

The murals were made at a time when copper cables were the primary method of connecting telephone, telex and early data services. For example, each residential telephone would have its own pair of copper wires connecting the phone to the exchange.

Large businesses would often have their own private telephone exchange, so a smaller number of copper cables would be required to connect to the public exchange, but in a place such as the City of London, the very large number of telephones, and associated services, would require a vast network of cables connecting from the end user device through a local connection point where smaller cables were connected to large cables, which then headed to the telephone exchange.

One of the Post Office Training Centres for apprentices was at Bletchley, where the wartime code breaking had been carried out. These were residential courses of three or four weeks and whilst a new training building had been built, you slept in the old huts with meals in the canteen which had been used during the war.

One of the skills taught was how to joint these cables together, how to connect to a frame in an exchange, to learn the colour code of individual wires, and to recognise individual wires when presented within hundreds, all bound within a single cable.

Test Frame for Linking Circuits

A Test Frame was a place where individual pairs of wires could be patched and tested, for example, if you had a fault on your telephone, the wires could be patched through to a test frame allowing the circuit between the exchange and your home to be tested.

Frames were also used to connect different cables and between cables and different equipment units,

The patch cables which interconnected different cables and equipment are, I assume, the black lines shown in the mural.

Cables in the telephone exchange entered the building via a:

Cable Chamber with Cables Entering from Street

All the cables from the customers in the area served by a telephone exchange, along with cables connecting an exchange to other exchanges, would run under the streets and enter the telephone exchange via a below surface level cable chamber.

In the above mural, we can see circles on the right. I assume these are the cable ducts which lead from the chamber into the street, and through which the cables are run.

To lower left of centre, there are two vertical black lines, each of which have several. short black lines projecting from them.

These are cable trays seen from the side.

I did take some photos of some of the smaller exchanges I worked in, in the late 1970s. The following photo shows a cable chamber:

I did not photo the point where the cables entered from the street, but you can see how they run along the cable trays, where they are routed through the chamber and head off to the equipment and distribution frames in the rest of the building, including a:

Cross Connection Frame

A Cross Connection Frame is where cables can be connected to different bits of equipment, or where equipment is connected to other equipment.

One type of Cross Connection Frame was the Main Distribution Frame. This is where all the cables coming in from the street would have their individual wires mounted on a connection block. This would allow a jumper cable to then connect them to the appropriate service.

For example, the copper cable from your home would be connected via one or more local connection points (such as the green boxes you occasional see open along the streets, with someone working on the hundreds of wires within) to the main distribution frame. From here a jumper would connect your phone to the equipment that provides the initial dial tone, ringing voltage and connection to the equipment that routed your calls.

Distribution frames were often difficult to work on, as hundreds of short metal termination poles projected from each block, and if you pulled your hand out too quickly from between blocks, you could risk a very nasty scrape across the back of your hand – as was graphically illustrated during health and safety films shown in the early part of the apprenticeship.

In the above mural, there is a white vertical structure on the left. This is the frame of a cross connection frame. The four black rectangular blocks represent the termination blocks on which wires would be connected and then patched.

The following is a photo I took of a main distribution frame:

Power and Generators

Your home telephone was once a key part of your ability to communicate, whether just a chat with friends and family, or in the extreme, a call to the emergency services.

Even if there was a power cut, the traditional dial telephone would still work, as the power to the phone was supplied from the telephone exchange, which had banks of batteries to provide power whilst generators started up to provide a continuous source of electricity in the event of a power cut.

Today, the majority of home telephone services are connected to the broadband router, so if your home electricity is out – so is all your communication options, apart from mobile services, which have a much shorter battery backup in their local base stations.

Within a telephone exchange, there was a range of equipment to test nearly all aspects of the technology used. One of these test methods involved:

Impressions Derived from the Patterns produced in Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes used in Testing

A Cathode Ray Oscilloscope was a device that used a cathode ray tube (basically the same device that produced a picture in old, pre-flat screen TVs), and in test equipment such as an Oscilloscope a cathode ray tube was used to draw a picture on a screen showing information about the voltage, frequency etc. of the signal being tested.

These are, I assume, the squiggly lines in the above mural. At the lower right corner, there is part of a round circle with the line of a sine wave (a line that goes up and down at a regular frequency). This shows what an oscilloscope screen would have looked like.

Whilst in central London, the majority of cables carrying telephone (and now broadband services) are routed underground, in suburban and rural areas, a different method was used:

Lines over the Countryside

Walk along a suburban street, and you will see poles distributing wires to individual houses. In many rural areas, these wires are carried for considerable distances above ground along a route of poles, as the above mural illustrates.

Training at Bletchley involved how to climb poles and work at height.

It started with short poles, where you were a couple of feet off the ground, and learnt how to use the belt which wrapped around you and the pole, and allowed you to lean back and work with both hands on the junction box at the top of the pole, as well as providing a degree of fall prevention if you slipped.

You then moved to the full size poles where apprentices, in varying degrees of confidence, cautiously made their way to the top, to the encouraging shouts from the instructor of “if you are going to fall from there, you might as well go a bit higher”.

When not on the residential training course as Bletchley, training involved being rotated through many different departments – from poles and holes, to exchange maintenance.

The pole and holes experience often involved the experienced employees you were paired with, taking great pleasure in getting you to climb the highest poles in the area.

Lines over the Countryside provided a means of connecting rural areas.

If you wanted to make a telephone call abroad, then your call would be routed along;

Overseas Communication Showing Cable Buoys

The earliest cables carrying telegraphy traffic were laid below the sea in the 1850s. Telegraphy was the transmission of a very simple data signal rather than voice, using codes, such as Morse code.

These initially used copper wires, but today a web of fibre optic cables connects the world, supporting vast amounts of data with almost instantaneous transmission over long distances,

Special ships lay cables across the seas and oceans, and when they are brought ashore cable buoys are often used to mark their route before final installation.

Overseas communication cables are now an utterly essential part of global life and the economy and any damage to these cables could severely impact a country – as demonstrated by the news of recent Russian interest in cables around the coasts of the UK.

Click here for a fascinating map of the global network of submarine cables, they are one of the hidden wonders of the world, and whether you are speaking to a relative in New Zealand, watching a news report on TV news from Dubai or Brazil, checking share prices in New York, or dependent on where you are reading this post, the data will have been carried over a a submarine cable.

The Greenwich Peninsula was once a major hub of submarine cable manufacturer. See this post for some detail and links.

The survival and display of these murals is brilliant, but it is from a time when there was pride in the activity being carried out in a building, or the associations that a company occupying a building had within their wider field.

Another example from the Post Office is Faraday House in Queen Victoria Street.

This telephone exchange, opened in 1933, has a series of carvings running along the façade of the building that illustrate the technologies of the time.

One of these is a Post Offive Type 3000 Relay:

This type of relay was still the heart of the electro-mechanical telephone switching systems when I started my apprenticeship. A very slow phase out started in the early 1980s when the digital switching system System X started to be rolled out.

I kept a Type 3000 relay from the late 1970s, and as can be seen from the photo below, it is identical to the relay shown in the 1930s carving in Queen Victoria Street:

Another wonderful example of decoration of a building relating to the business of the original occupiers is Imperial Chemicals House, Millbank, where the building displays a history of chemists whose discoveries had contributed to ICI becoming at one time the largest and most successful chemicals company in the world.

There is still more to discover around the Barbican, as a short distance from the murals is:

The Barbican Muse by Matthew Spender

A short walk from Dorothy Annan’s Murals, at the northern end of the walkway under Gilbert House, is a sculpture made from polyurethane, glass fibre and gold leaf, titled the Barbican Muse, and created by Matthew Spender in 1994.

The work shows a reclining figure, which holds the masks of comedy and tragedy. It apparently has the nickname Zoe, after the name of the Cambridge student who posed for the work.

For a first time visitor, the Barbican estate is not that easy a place to find you way around, however the Barbican Muse is there to help, as the figure’s right arm and hand is outstretched, pointing in the direction of one of the entrances to the Barbican Centre, as can be seen to the left, in the following photo:

There is nothing to inform the visitor that the sculpture is helpfully point the way, and I assume it is not an urban myth that has grown up about the work, but if you find yourself in front of the sculpture, and want to get in to the Barbican Centre – follow the outstretched arm.

A short distance back along the walkway under Gilbert House is the:

Foundation Stone of the Barbican Arts Centre, 20th November 1972

The Barbican estate was built and opened over a period of time from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Whilst it is a major residential development, it also consists of the City of London School for Girls, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Barbican Conservatory, and the Barbican Centre.

The Barbican Centre is referred to as the Barbican Arts Centre in the above plaque, and on the 20th of November 1972, the Queen unveiled the foundation stone for the new Barbican Arts Centre.

The Queen returned almost ten years later on the 3rd of March 1982, to officially open the centre.

There is a news film from the time showing the unveiling and a brief walkabout through the Barbican estate, which at the time was still in the process of construction. The film shows completed blocks as well as places where construction was underway.

An interesting snapshot of the Barbican’s development, marked by the foundation stone we can walk past today:

For the next bit of Barbican history, we need to walk into the Barbican Centre, where there is a:

1:22 Feet Scale Model of the Barbican

Next to entrance to the shop in the Barbican Centre is a wonderful model of the whole Barbican complex:

A label on the model states that it dates from 1959, however many of the features are as they were designed and built in the following years, and an information panel provides the theory that the model was created in 1959 for the architects Chamberlain, Powell and Bonn to show their ideas to the Corporation of London, and in the following years, the model was modified to show the estate as it developed.

A view of the Barbican estate from the south:

The model shows not only the Barbican estate, but also the 1950s / 1960s developments that included London Wall. This really was a huge development site, and prior to the Barbican had also included the Golden Lane estate to the north (but which is not included in the model).

The model is a snapshot of the area as it was when substantially finished, and if the model shown above was updated today, there are some features which would change.

I have taken the view of the model as shown in the above photo, and added some labels to explain some of the features and changes outside the main Barbican development:

At the lower part of the model is London Wall, a dual carriageway that was opened in 1959, and intended to be part of a northern ring road around the City between Aldgate and Holborn. The original London Wall ran slightly to the north, and the new route was moved south to free up space.

There are even little model cars in the car park which is shown below London Wall (and which is still a car park).

Moving London Wall a bit to the south created the space for the office blocks that can be seen lining London Wall. Of these, only Bastion House remains, and is under threat following the move of the Museum of London which was in the lower left corner of the model, and the opportunity to redevelop this entire site.

To the right of Bastion House is Bastion 14, one of the medieval bastions on the alignment of the Roman wall , and if you look a bit further along the wall, there is another bastion just visible, which is by Barber-Surgeons Hall, which is a slightly different design to the one that would be built in the 1960s.

Moving to the right is Roman House, one of the first office blocks to be built in the post war redevelopment of the area. The building is still there, but is now residential.

A bit further to the right is the tower of the church of St. Alphage, which was earlier part of the hospital of Elsyng Spital.

Lee House and Moor House have been demolished, and as well as this line of office towers along the northern side of London Wall, there were also identical towers along the southern side.

Walking around the model, and we can see the view of the Barbican Estate from the north:

If you look to the right of centre of the lower edge, there is a ruined church. These are the ruins of the church, which was completely rebuilt and is now the Jewin Church, part of the Presbyterian Church of Wales.

The model provides a fascinating snapshot of the Barbican when substantially complete, and also when the office blocks lined London Wall.

If you like notebooks, and a part plan of the Barbican, then from the model, head into the shop. This is what I did when I purchased the following notebook with a cover of the Barbican Redevelopment Roof Plan from 1966:

The Barbican is a fascinating place for a walk. Not just for the architecture and landscape design of the place, but also for what can be found as you navigate the walkways.

St Mary’s and the Putney Debates of 1647

20 Replies

In the middle of the 17th century, Putney was a small village to the west of London with a population of around 900. A bridge had not yet been built across the Thames, but a regular ferry did provide a means of crossing between Fulham and Putney. Close to the river and ferry crossing was a church, the parish church of St. Mary’s, and in 1647 the church was the location of one of the many key events of the Civil War.

Rather than the violence of battle, St. Mary’s was the location of a debate, between members of the Army Council and representatives from within the Regiments of the New Model Army. A debate that became known as the Putney Debates, an event that would probably have been a footnote in the history of the mid-17th century, had it not been for the actions of one man in writing down the first three days of the debates, and a chance find of this record almost 250 years later.

St. Mary’s Putney in March 2026:

A church has been here since at least the 13th century, when there was a written mention of the church in 1292, and the location follows the historic trend of locating churches next to key crossing points.

You can see this around the City of London, with the number of churches located next to the old gates of the City wall such as St. Giles Cripplegate and St Botolph Without Aldgate, as well as river crossings where St Andrew, Holborn is alongside what was the approach from the west, to the crossing of the River Fleet.

The following map shows St. Mary’s (red circle) adjacent to the current bridge (the second bridge at the site, and also close to the earlier ferry crossing), with a second church in a similar position on the opposite bank of the river; All Saints Fulham (dark blue circle) (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

By 1647, the Civil War appeared to be over, with the New Model Army’s victory at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645, the Siege of Oxford in April 1646, with Charles I managing to escape and joining a Scottish Army, who handed Charles I back to Parliament in January 1647 in exchange for an initial £100,000.

The first half of the 17th century was a time of radicalism, religious dissenters, new ideas and thought about the role of Parliament, the Monarchy, individual liberty, religious toleration etc. and many of these streams came to a head by 1647.

There were Levellers (whose views included religious tolerance and equality of all before the law), and Fifth Monarchist Men, a stream of Protestants who believed that the Kingdom of God would arrive at the end of four earlier kingdoms, the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman kingdoms, with the execution of Charles I signalling the end of the Roman kingdom.

There were those who wanted Charles I to be brought to trial, and there were those (including Cromwell), who wanted an agreement that was more compatible with the King, where he would continue to have a role, although much reduced.

Charles I was being held captive at Hampton Court and there were many discussions about what to do with him. Cromwell was communicating with the King to try and find a way forward, but this led to complaints from the Army that Cromwell was more in favour of Charles I than his own soldiers.

Parliament was also concerned about the continued existence of the New Model Army. The army would require continued funding, and could also become a threat to Parliament, as the army was a more radical organisation.

Regiments within the Army included agitators who would spread and campaign for radical causes. Many of these were aligned with prominent radicals in the City of London.

In October 1647, agitators within five cavalry regiments of the New Model Army published “The Case of the Armie Truly Stated”. The document criticised senior officers within the Army (including Cromwell), for negotiating with Charles I, and also demanded what at the time were radical causes; democracy, equality before the law, extension of the vote, and for soldiers to receive the pay that was owed to them.

A sense of the contents of the document can be gained from the title and opening paragraph:

“The case of the Armie truly stated,: together with the mischiefes and dangers that are imminent, and some suitable remedies, humbly proposed by the agents of five regiments of horse, to their respective regiments, and the whole Army. As it was presented by Mr. Edmond Bear, and Mr. William Russell, October 15. 1647. unto his Excellency, Sir Thomas Fairfax. Enclosed in a letter from the said agents : also his Excellencies honourable answer thereunto.

Whereas the grievances, dissatisfactions, and desires of the Army, both as Commoners and Soldiers, hath been many months since represented to the Parliament; and the Army hath waited with much patience, to see their common grievances redressed and the rights and freedomes of the Nation cleared and secured; yet, upon a most serious and conscientious view of our Narratives, Representations, Ingagement, Declarations, Remonstrances, and comparing with those the present state of the Army and Kingdome, and the present manner of actings of many at the Head Quarters, we not only apprehend nothing to have been done effectually, either for the Army or the poore oppressed people of the nation, but we also conceive, that there is little probabillitie of any good, without some more speedy and vigorous actings.”

A large contingent of the Army were based around Putney, and the church had already been used for meetings. Churches were good for meetings because they offered a large space, and were also a religious building, and prayer was often a key part of meetings and debates held by members of the Army and the radicals.

Today, access to St. Mary’s is via the new building to the side, which has a café on the ground floor. Walking through the café and turning left into the church provides the following view:

On walking into the church, was I looking at the same church that Oliver Cromwell would have seen back in 1647?

Unfortunately not. The church was enlarged and substantially rebuilt in 1836, and in 1973 an arson attack destroyed much of the church, requiring a significant rebuild, which was completed nine years later when the church was re-hallowed on the 6th of February 1982.

Although it is a very different church, it is still the place where the debates where held, and a place where Oliver Cromwell, senior officers and members of the New Model Army, religious and political radicals, argued and debated on the future direction Parliament and the country, religious freedoms and the fate of the King.

Inside the church, looking back towards the café entrance:

One of those involved in the debates was Colonel Thomas Rainsborough.

Rainsborough was born in Wapping in 1610, the eldest son of William Rainsborough who was a member of the Levant Company, who gained their charter from Elizabeth I in 1592, with the right to trade with the Ottoman Empire, and neighbouring states in the eastern Mediterranean.

Thomas Rainsborough would also become a member.

At the start of the Civil War, Rainsborough was appointed Captain of one of the ships of the Navy. The Navy had sided with Parliament, and during the Civil War, the Navy’s main roles were supporting coastal towns and cutting off supply routes to Royalist forces, and one of his successes during this period was the capture of a ship carrying supplies and reinforcements to the King.

He transferred to the Army and in May 1645 became a Colonel in the New Model Army and was part of a number of battles and sieges, including the siege of Oxford, the base of Charles I which surrendered in June 1646, and the siege of Worcester, which surrendered the following month.

Rainsborough was a supporter of the Levellers, and also opposed negotiations with the king. In the Putney Debates he was frequently in opposition to the views of Oliver Cromwell and Henry Irelton, a Major-General in the New Model Army, supporter of Cromwell, and who was married to Bridget Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell’s eldest daughter.

A quote from one of Rainsborough’s arguments at the Putney Debates is above the entrance to the church from the café, as can be seen in the above photo, with a close up shown below:

The phrase (in bold) is from the following part of one of Rainsborough’s arguments:

“I desired that those that had engaged in it [might be included]. For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under; and I am confident that, when I have heard the reasons against it, something will be said to answer those reasons, insomuch that I should doubt whether he was an Englishman or no, that should doubt of these things.”

A very clear argument for equality and democracy, and good to see these words from Thomas Rainsborough are on display in the church where the debates took place, with the caveat that it was a view of equality and democracy in the mid 17th century.

There was no argument for equality of men and women, or for women to be able to vote on who represented them in Parliament, and the debates also included arguments for how far democracy should go, for example that the poor and servants should be excluded. As representatives of the army, there was general agreement that soldiers should be given the vote.

Whilst we should not compare the middle of 17th century with today, the Putney Debates were a step in the right direction.

The interior of the church today – a very different place to when Rainsborough was part of the Putney Debates, Cromwell was here, along with other senior members of the army and representatives and agitators from the regiments:

The church is Grade II* listed, and the following from the Historic England listing provides an idea of just how much the church was changed in 1836 and 1837:

“This involved alterations to the tower, widening the nave, the addition of expanded aisles in yellow stock brick and the addition or replacement of windows in the Perpendicular Gothic style. In addition, the galleries in the aisles and west end of the church which had originally been installed in the early part of the C17 were replaced, a single-storey vestry added in the south-east corner and the Bishop West chapel moved from the south to the north aisle.”

The rebuild after the 1973 arson attack further changed the church, as follows:

“As well as installing a new roof, Sims moved the altar and sanctuary to a central location on the north side of the nave, installed a glazed meeting room in the former chancel and added an organ loft in a gallery in front of the tower. The C19 pews were replaced with chairs.”

17th century benefactors to the parish are recorded in the church, and these included Elizabeth Offley, who in 1664 gave a regular sum of money to be distributed to the poor on St. Andrew’s Day, the sum was charged on the Union Brewhouse in Holborn, and was paid in at Drapers Hall, and in 1669, John Powell gave a sum of £10 per annum, charged on a public house in Westminster:

The following plaques in the church record the 1836 rebuild and enlargement of the church (top), and the lower plaque records the rebuild after the 1973 fire:

The fact that Thomas Rainsborough’s argument, as well as a record of the rest of the first three days of the Putney Debates survives is down to the original record, and a later discovery.

The Putney Debates were recorded by William Clarke, who probably had the help of a number of assistants with recording the live debates.

The Clarke Papers, published by the Camden Society in 1891 provide some background:

“William Clarke who was probably born about 1623, was admitted a student of the Inner Temple in 1645. When the New Model Army was organised, John Rushworth was appointed Secretary to the General and Council of War, with William Clarke and another assistant as subordinates. Clarke acted as secretary to the commissioners who negotiated the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646, and to those who tried to arrange terms between Parliament and the Army in July 1647. He seems to have taken part in the invasion of Scotland in July 1650, and from the autumn of 1651 to the Restoration was Secretary to to Army of Occupation in Scotland.

Not long after the Restoration, Clarke was knighted and, on 28th January 1661, appointed Secretary at War. Sir William Coventry described him to Pepys as one of the ‘sorry instruments’ by whom Monck was lucky enough to effect great things.

Clarke accompanied Monck to sea in 1666, and was mortally wounded in the battle with the Dutch off Harwich on the 2nd of June 1666. He was buried in the chancel of Harwich Church.”

Following Clarke’s death, his books and papers were left to his son George Clarke, who preserved the archive, and would go on to bequeath his father’s archive along with his own library to Worcester College, Oxford.

And there they remained until the later years of the 19th century when a young historian by the name of Charles Firth, who would later become the Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, found a set of manuscripts laying in a cupboard at Worcester College.

Firth edited the manuscripts for the Camden Society (now the Royal Historical Society), and they were published, almost 250 years after the original debates, with Clarke’s record of the arguments of radicals, agitators, the commanders of the New Model Army, and those with opposing views on the future of King Charles I.

Another view of the church, looking towards the organ loft above the door, which was part of the post 1973 fire restoration:

The views of many of the agitators influenced the Putney Debates, but they would grow as the Civil War ended, the Commonwealth was established after the end of the Second Civil War and the execution of Charles I resulted in the country becoming a Republic, with Cromwell being given the role of Lord Protector, with the considerable powers that the role included.

To show how agitators viewed the evolution of the Commonwealth and the role of Cromwell, we can look at the role of Edward Sexby, one of those at the Putney Debates.

Sexby served in Cromwell’s regiment at the start of the Civil War.

During his time in the army, he helped to spread Leveller ideas, and helped to set up the Council of Agitators, which brought together like minded representatives from across the army with a view to petition for soldiers rights.

Sexby was the main representative of the Leveller contingent at the Putney Debates, where he argued for the rights of all men, and strongly argued against Cromwell’s dealings with Charles I.

During the Commonwealth, Sexby viewed Cromwell’s role as Lord Protector as being against the principles on which the Civil War had been fought.

Sexby tried to organise with those he viewed would be against the Protectorate. He was nearly arrested in 1655, but escaped to Europe. He was involved with plots to assinate Oliver Cromwell, and also published a phamplhet titled “Killing no Murder”, in which he argued that the killing of a tyrant (as he viewed Cromwell), was justified.

The plots to assassinate Cromwell failed, and Sexby returned to England in 1657 to try and organise new conspiracies against Cromwell, however he was arrested, imprisoned and interrogated in the Tower of London, where he died in January 1658 of fever, before he could be brought to trial.

Part of the church that probably would still be recognised by those who attended the Putney Debates is Bishop West’s Chantry Chapel:

Bishop West was Nicholas West, who was born in Putney in 1461 to Katherine and Robert West who may have been a fishmonger.

He attended Eton College and Cambridge, became chaplain to Henry VII, was Dean of Westminster in 1510 and Bishop of Ely in 1515.

His legacy to the church in the village of his birth was the chapel, built at some point between the years 1515 and 1530.

The chapel was originally on the south side of the church, but as part of the 1836 rebuild and restorations, the chapel was moved to the north.

The arms of Bishop West, which include a Bishop’s Mitre and the Tudor Rose:

Looking along the north side of the church:

There are not that many monuments in the church, presumably the 1836 rebuilt and the 1973 fire resulted in the loss of many of these.

The monument to Sir Thomas Dawes (died 1655), and his wife Dame Ivdith Dawes (died 1657):

Sir Thomas Dawes was an important land owner in Putney, but lost most of his lands, and suffered imprisonment and heavy fines during the Civil War and Commonwealth.

The 17th century clerics heads are the only items remaining from the monument to Robert Gale who died in 1659:

Robert Gale was chaplian to the Countess of Devonshire, who was a supporter of the Royalist cause.

In her house at Roehampton, she arranged meetings with other Royalist supporters, and also wrote letters in code to Royalists in exile in Europe (Robert Gale was one of those who helped her with her letters), and on the restoration of the monarchy, Charles II was a visitor to Countess Devonshire at Roehampton.

A look towards the south of the church, with the entrance / exit to the café in the centre:

There is a small exhibition about the Putney debates in the alcove behind the two doors to the right of the above photo, and at the top of each column is the figure of an angel. There is no mention of these figures in the Historic England listing so I have no idea of their age:

A final view of the interior of the church, an unusual layout with the altar in the centre, towards the northern side of the church. I suspect that this layout would have been approved by many of those attending the debates. There were no alter rails around the alter, or any other form of separation with the congregation and the act of service would have been visible to all:

The main issue that the army command and the agitators within the regiments failed to agree on was how far across society should the ability to vote be granted.

The Leveller position put forward by the agitators was that all freeborn English men should be granted the vote, whilst the army command, including Cromwell, went only as far as land owners being given the vote.

A compromise was reached that all soldiers who served in the army and had fought for Parliament should be given the vote. Maintaining army discipline seems to have been the main reason why the army command agreed to this compromise.

The Putney Debates also seem to have changed Cromwell’s opinion regarding Charles I. The agitators did not agree that negotiations should continue with the king, and argued that he should be put on trial. Again, to keep the army onside, after the Putney Debates, Cromwell appears to have hardened his attitude towards Charles I.

The “Agreement of the People” that came out of the Putney Debates was to be put to a mass meeting of the army, however Cromwell along with other senior members of the army were concerned about the growing influence of the Levellers within the army, so they disbanded the Army Council before the mass meeting could be arranged, and ordered the agitators and other representatives of the soldiers to return to their regiments.

Three separate, smaller meetings were then arranged with the regiments, however all these plans were thrown into disarray when Charles I escaped from Hampton Court, an action which brought together the New Model Army against a common enemy, and which would lead to the Second Civil War.

Although St. Mary’s is now a very different church to the one in which the Putney Debates were held due to the 1830s restoration and enlargement and the rebuild following the fire of the 1970s, it on the original site.

During my visit, whilst the adjoining café was busy, for the time that I was having a good look around the church, I was on my own, and it was easy to imagine a smaller church, full of the victors of the first civil war, each expecting the outcome of the previous years of fighting to be the opportunity to progress their own deeply held views.

Whilst Cromwell asserted his control over the army, his position during the Commonwealth as Lord Protector was seen by those who were agitators as almost becoming like a king.

Many of the ideas about the freedom to vote, religious tolerance and rule by an elected Parliament rather than a hereditary monarch would come into being over the following centuries and the 17th century began the transition from a late medieval to the modern world.

William Clarke’s record provides us with a view of how these ideas were being discussed and argued, in a church by the Thames in Putney.

Resources

William Clarke’s text of the Putney Debates can be found by clicking here.

I have read a number of books over the last months about the Civil War, and the ideas that were part of the radical thinking of the period. Three excellent books that cover Cromwell, the Civil War and the Levellers are:

The Leveller Revolution by John Rees:

Along with The Making of Oliver Cromwell and Commander in Chief Oliver Cromwell, both by Ronald Hutton:

I will feature more books in future posts about this fascinating period in history.

Robert Besley, Alderman and Lord Mayor

Site of Bowyers’ Hall in the 16th Century

Share this:

Festival of Britain 1951 – The Moment That Shaped South Bank

The Sunbathers by Peter Laszlo Peri – Waterloo Station

The Lion and the Unicorn, Wetherspoon’s – Waterloo Station

Siegfried Charoux’s Motorcyclist sculpture – Southbank Place

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Walks

Last Sunday’s Post on A. Tattam

Now to today’s post:

Share this:

A. Tattam – Shoe Repairs

Resources – Layers of London

Share this:

Share this:

Walks

Now to head to Putney and Fulham:

Share this:

Dorothy Annan Murals for the Central Telegraph Office

Radio Communications and Television

Cables and Communication in Buildings

Test Frame for Linking Circuits

Cable Chamber with Cables Entering from Street

Cross Connection Frame

Power and Generators

Impressions Derived from the Patterns produced in Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes used in Testing

Lines over the Countryside

Overseas Communication Showing Cable Buoys

The Barbican Muse by Matthew Spender

Foundation Stone of the Barbican Arts Centre, 20th November 1972

1:22 Feet Scale Model of the Barbican

Share this:

Resources

Share this: