The problem I find with this blog is that there is so much to discover and learn, each post really needs much more investigation than I currently have the time to do. This week’s post is an example.
My father took the following photo of a milestone in Highgate in 1948. It is just south of the Flask pub along Highgate West Hill. (For a view of the Flask and Highgate in 1948 see my post here.)
The milestone is still there. See my following photo of the milestone today. Nothing special you might think, but compare the mileage, five in 1948 and four today and the destination is a location that does not now exist in London, Saint Giles Pound.
So where and what was Saint Giles Pound?
Saint Giles refers to the parish of St. Giles in the Fields, the parish that took in the area around the church of the same name, just a short distance south-east from the junction of Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road.
In my usual London reference books I have found a number of references to the Saint Giles Pound which was a fenced area to hold sheep and cattle etc.
From “The History of the United Parishes of St. Giles in the Fields” by Rowland Dobie, published in 1829:
“The Pound and Cage originally adjoined each other, and stood in the middle of the High Street, from whence Parton informs us it was removed in 1656, to make way for the almshouses which were afterwards built there.
‘The Pound’ he adds, probably existed from a very early period, as a necessary appendage to the parish while a village, and abounding in pasture lands, though it is unnoticed in the books of the parish, till Lord Southampton’s grant of the ground on which it stood for the almshouses, where it is described as occupying a space of 30-feet, which was to the dimensions of the new Pound, therein directed to be removed to the end of Tottenham Court Road. The exact site of the Pound was the broad space where St. Giles High Street, Tottenham Court Road, and Oxford Street meet, where it stood till within memory. Noticed for the profligacy of its inhabitants, the vicinity of this spot became proverbial: witness the couplet of an old song.
‘At Newgate steps Jack Chance was found,
And bred up near St. Giles Pound’
it was finally removed about the year 1765, since when the neighbourhood has experienced many improvements, particularly by the erection of the great Brewery of Messrs. Meux and Co.
The Cage appears to have been used as a prison, not merely of a temporary kind, but judging from the parish records, with little lenity.”
Charles Knight in the Milestones section of his book, London, published in 1841 states:
“Again, St. Giles Pound, a real pound for cattle, which is marked upon the old plans, was a prominent object, standing in the village of St. Giles at the intersection of the roads from Hampstead and from Oxford. This also was something like the beginning of London: but Hicks’s Hall and St. Giles Pound have long since vanished; and the milestones which record their glory ought also to be swept away.”
The milestone therefore is alongside one of the old routes that was used to bring animals in from the north, through Highgate and down into London, and thankfully it has not been “swept away”.
The two photos of the milestones also have different distances, five in 1948 and four in 2016. The only reference I can find to this change is that it was made by a local resident of Highgate who was frustrated with the error. So is four miles correct? Although I have walked the route, I have not measured, so a quick check on Google maps, from Highgate West Hill at roughly the position of the milestone, to a point on New Oxford Street a very short distance past the end of Tottenham Court Road to allow for the possible siting of the Pound more towards St. Giles High Street. The following map confirms the distance as being exactly four miles (the blue dots). Even with some longer alternative routes, the distance does not reach five miles.
It would be interesting to know if the error in distance was from when the milestone was originally installed, or perhaps when the figures may have been re-cut as they do look very sharp in the 1948 photo with very little deterioration to the edge of the lettering. The key point is that today, the distance is correct.
A wider view of the milestone alongside Highgate West Hill.
Intriguingly, the Pound may be marked on a map. The following is an extract from John Rocque’s map of London from 1746. This is 19 years before the Pound was removed. Look in the lower right of the map, at the junction of Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and the High Street of St. Giles. There is a rectangular feature in the open area of the junction – could this be the Pound? The location fits perfectly the description given by Rowland Dobie in his book, quoted earlier.
Strange to think that this very busy junction, with the new Crossrail station being built, was once the location of a Pound, holding animals being brought down from the north.
The map extract is from the very lower right hand corner of the page. At the very bottom right corner is a street with only the word “Street” showing. This is Denmark Street featured in my post of a couple of weeks ago.
The map has some other references that point to the original use of this area. In the above map, the road running south from the junction is Hog Lane. The alley leading off from the top right of Hog Lane is Farmers Alley.
Hog Lane is now the northern section of Charing Cross Road. From “London” by George H. Cunnigham (1927):
“In Hogarth’s time this portion of the street was known as Hog Lane, later Crown Street, under which name it was widened and made part of Charing Cross Road.”
So after the Pound had disappeared, there was no longer an association with animals so the name changed, with finally as so often happens in London, the street being integrated in the lengthening and widening of a main street.
Returning to my opening comment at the start of today’s post, just finding this single milestone opens up so many questions.
Is there more information on the Pound, and is the original location marked on any maps? (the Rocque map shows the location after the move from St. Giles High Street). Are there any more of the milestones? I have not found any, however Knight’s book refers to another milestone in Camden at the two-mile point. What was the purpose of the Pound? Was it used as a stopping off point before heading into the City or did it serve the local area?
More questions for my ever-growing list of things to learn about London.
London Under Fire is the title of a set of postcards issued during the last war showing some of the damage caused by bombing around the city.
You might think that this was a strange subject for a postcard, and given the levels of censorship at the time, why would photos showing considerable damage to London be published?
The envelope containing the set of twelve postcards, “passed by the censor”:
Although showing how much damage had been caused, these postcards had a very serious message. Firstly, the photos were mainly of the City of London, not the main population centres, for example across east London that had suffered so much damage which directly impacted the lives of Londoners.
The postcards were meant to inspire and motivate the population, London has taken this much damage and has come through and will be rebuilt again. The rear of the postcards carried exerts from the speeches of Winston Churchill:
“Let us all strive without failing in faith or in duty”
“This is a time for everyone to stand together and hold firm”
This was after the initial Blitz but before the V1 and V2 weapons fell upon London. The war still had an at the time unknown number of years to run so the message carried by the postcards was very clear, we have taken this much so this is not the time to weaken in any shape or form.
As well as an example of one of the many forms of subtle propaganda employed during the war, today they are helpful in understanding how the city has changed so a couple of weeks ago, I took the postcards up to the city for a walk to see what the locations looked like now and how much remained from these original photos.
The first postcard is of St. Paul’s Cathedral from Paternoster Row, this whole area across Paternoster Square was destroyed during the attack on the night of the 29th December 1940. The area today is now covered by the Paternoster Square development, I located the position where I suspect the photo was taken from, but looking across towards St. Paul’s I was looking into an office wall with no sight of the Cathedral.
As well as the cathedral, the only building that remains today is the Chapter House. This had been reduced to a shell and is the building in the centre of the photo below the dome of St. Paul’s. The Chapter House was rebuilt and has recently finished a full restoration.
I had better luck with the next postcard, again of St. Paul’s but now from Cannon Street.
The photo was taken on the corner of Friday Street and Cannon Street. As can be seen in the postcard by the remains of buildings leading up to St. Paul’s along the right hand side of Cannon Street, this view was only possible due to the destruction of these buildings and in the plan for rebuilding the City, the area around the cathedral was opened up making the views we see today possible.
The next postcard was taken from London Wall and is looking north across to the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate.
With the amount of building along London Wall, I could not get to the exact position of the original photo, however I did find one position in London Wall where the church tower is visible today. This also shows the Barbican development which would cover so much of this area in the post war redevelopment.
Postcard showing the remains of the interior of St. Giles, Cripplegate. Again, the church suffered this damage mainly on the night of the 29th December 1940.
The church was rebuilt after the war, and apart from the remains of the Roman city wall, is all that remains in this area from the pre-war city following the development of the Barbican.
The next postcard is showing Fore Street, no idea where in Fore Street as there are no points of reference.
But this is Fore Street today. The Barbican is on the left and office buildings between Fore Street and London Wall are on the right.
The following postcard is titled New Basinghall Street.
I could not find a New Basinghall Street in the City today. There is a Basinghall Street, but not a “New”, so it was to the 1940 Batholomew’s Reference Atlas of Greater London to check and this is where I found New Basinghall Street, a short extension of Basinghall Street from London Wall to Fore Street.
Today, New Basinghall Street does not exist. In the photo below of Fore Street today, it was on the right, just past where the road is closed and passed to the right under the new office development to meet up with London Wall. Returning to the postcard of Fore Street, this shows a road leading off to the right and this may have been New Basinghall Street.
The next postcard is of the buildings of the General Post Office from Newgate Street. Strange that the postcard does not mention the church in the foreground, only the buildings of the G.P.O in the rear. The church is Christ Church, Greyfriars.
I could not get the same angle due to new building in the area, so I took the following of the church. The church was not rebuilt after the war, the tower was preserved and the main body of the old church turned into a garden. One of the few reminders in the area of the damage suffered during the last war.
We are now at Ludgate Hill, looking down towards the junction with Fleet Street. The church tower on the left is that of St. Brides.
Ludgate Hill today still has the slight bend to the left, however since the photo for the postcard was taken, the railway bridge has been removed and new building on the left has obscured the view of St. Brides with only the very tip of the steeple visible if you find the right place. The buses also look very different as well.
Now moving slightly to the west, the following postcard is titled “View from High Holborn”. The buildings in the background to the right are those of Smithfield Market.
Although I could find the position from where I suspect the photo was taken, the view is totally obscured by new building, so I walked back to where Holborn Viaduct crosses Farringdon Street and took the following photo of the market buildings.
The next postcard is of St. Andrew’s Church from High Holborn:
And another view of High Holborn. There is a single building in this wartime view that remains to this day.
The building is the one in the centre of the photos above and below. I could not get the same angle as the original photo as the photographer must have been standing on the ruins of buildings between High Holborn and Charterhouse Street so the original photo is looking onto the side of the building which in my photo is off to the right.
The final photo is of Temple Church, closed during my walk around London.
It would be interesting to know how many of these postcards were posted. I suspect the majority were purchased and kept as a record of the destruction of the City rather than for posting.
They provide a fascinating view of the city at a point in time, before the start of the post war redevelopment that in many areas such as the Barbican and Paternoster Square, would result in so much change.
London has always had areas which attracted specific types of trade, shops and industry, a number of which clustered around Tottenham Court Road underground station.
To the south, along Charing Cross Road was Foyles and a range of second hand bookshops (some of which remain, along with Foyles in their new location). To the north, along Tottenham Court Road was to be found a large number of electronics shops. It was here that I bought my first calculator whilst still at school in 1976, a Decimo Vatman, so called because as well as the normal addition, subtraction, multiplication and division keys, it also had a (revolutionary for the time), percentage key. When I last walked along Tottenham Court Road, nearly all of these electronics shops have now disappeared.
The Paolozzi mosaics at Tottenham Court Road underground station featured designs including cameras, electronics, music shops and saxophones to reflect the area around the station. It is these last two which feature in this week’s post, from a street I have been wanting to photograph for some time as the area is changing considerably. Walk a short distance south along Charing Cross Road and you will find Denmark Street, a street that has been the hub of the music industry for many decades.
I walked to Denmark Street early on a very sunny morning – not always the best for photography with the contrast between light and dark.
Looking back up towards the large building site at the top of Charing Cross Road, an indication of what is happening to the area:
On the corner of Charing Cross Road and Denmark Street:
Looking down Denmark Street from Charing Cross Road, a mix of architectural styles, with at the end of the street, a sign of things to come with the standard new build that can now be found anywhere across London.
According to George Cunningham in “London – a Comprehensive Survey”, Denmark Street was built in 1689 and is the scene for the Noon drawing from Hogarth’s series Four Times of The Day. The drawing contrasts the different populations of the area, an elegant crowd leaving a French Huguenot Church, compared with a rowdy crowd of Londoners outside a tavern.
Numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 Denmark Street, although having had many alterations, are still much the original buildings from the 1689 construction of the street.
Denmark Street is now mainly guitar shops, but at the peak of the music industry here in the 1960s was also the home of music publishers, recording studios, and the music papers NME and Melody Maker.
Wunjo Guitars and the Gary O’Toole School of Music:
There have been a number of recent closures, including this Saxophone shop which has now moved to Hampstead Road.
The old signs still on the building:
Number 6 Denmark Street, one of the remaining 17th century townhouses which was recently Grade II listed. The building was the home of the Sex Pistols for a time in the 1970s and has John Lydon’s graffiti still on the walls.
Number 5 was the London home of Augustus Siebe who designed a version of the diving helmet which was detachable from the main body and included a valve in the helmet. This new design revolutionised diving for the construction, naval and salvage industries.
Number 7, the Smoking Goat restaurant:
Rose Morris, opened in Denmark Street in 1920:
Plaque recording the alternative name sometimes used for the street:
Music Room:
Westside:
Regent Sounds Studio. The original recording studios here were used by the Rolling Stones to record their first album. Others recording here included the Kinks and Black Sabbath:
Guitars are everywhere:
Taking photos of guitars in the sun:
Hanks Guitar shop:
Denmark Place alley, adjacent to Hanks, closed now and subject to a stopping-up order due to the large development at the rear of Denmark Street:
Denmark Place – an old alley, now with nowhere to go:
Yet more guitars:
Looking back up Denmark Street towards Charing Cross Road:
The opposite side of the street:
At the end of Denmark Street is St. Giles-in-the Fields. Outside the church and looking back at the corner of Denmark Street. New building to the right:
Looking down St. Giles High Street towards the Centre Point building which is now being redeveloped and will consist of “82 highly exclusive, superior luxury apartments” .
The redevelopment will also apparently transform the area into “one of the most visited retail, leisure and prime residential hubs in the country”. I fully agree that the area around Centre Point was in need of development, however I fear this area will now become the hub of ridiculously expensive luxury apartments and global retail brands – much as can be found across the rest of London with no local character or acknowledgement of the areas history.
To see the scale of construction, walk down St. Giles High Street and turn left to see this example of facadism. The whole area at the rear of Denmark Street is being rebuilt and the old facade onto St. Giles High Street looks to be the only part that will possibly remain.
Although the 1960s and 1970s were the peak for the music industry in Denmark Street, it still retains a very unique character, which I fear will be lost in the years ahead as the area sucumbs to the corporate development which is sanitising so much of London. Specialist shops will go online or disperse across London (as with the Sax shop) and the impact of clustering a specific trade will be lost.
For an in depth look at Denmark Street, I recommend the excellent Street of Sound photo blog.
When I get the time, it is great to have a walk round London without any fixed purpose other than look at the buildings, shops, streets and people. I always have a camera with me to record how London continues to change.
Last year I posted a number photos we took of 1980s London on a number of walks just exploring the city, and for this week’s post I have another selection of photos from across London in 1986. (The earlier posts can be found here and here)
Many of these shops and businesses have long since disappeared, however surprisingly a number still remain and thankfully many of the buildings have survived.
This was only thirty years ago, but in some ways, a very different City.
To start with, this is the shop of Amos Jones, theatrical chemist on the corner of Drury Lane and Long Acre, Amos Jones has long since disappeared however the building is still there and looking much the same.
S. Krantz & Son, Specialist Shoe Repairers, 180 Drury Lane. Another closed business, but the building remains.
L. Cornelissen & Son, Artists’ Colourmen in their original shop in Drury Lane. The business is still going and is now located at 105 Great Russel Street. The photo also has one of the parking meters that were so common on the streets in the 1980s (on the left, underneath the number 22). Funny how what was so common on the streets can disappear without really being noticed.
G. Smith & Sons – Smith’s Noted Snuff Shop Est 1869 at 74 Charing Cross Road. Lasted for over 120 years, but now closed. The building remains the same.
Dodds the Printers, 193 King’s Cross Road. Again, closed but the building is still much the same.
Covent Garden now and N. Mann, Picture Framers, closed many years ago.
Into the City, and the corner of Wood Street and Cheapside. The building is still there, but L & R Wooderson, Shirtmakers, have been replaced by a gift card shop.
Attenborough Jewelers, 244 Bethnal Green Road. The past 30 years must have been good to them as they now occupy the building to the right as well as the original building.
The Monmouth Coffee House at 27 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden. Still at the same location, but now called the Monmouth Coffee Company. Unfortunately the impressive display of coffee beans hanging above the shop are not there now.
Albert France & Son, not sure where this photo was taken, however they are still in business and based in Lamb’s Conduit Street.
James Smith & Sons, 53 New Oxford Street. Umbrella manufacturers since 1830. Still in the same shop with the same signage as back in 1986.
F. W. Collins & Son, 14 Earlham Street, Covent Garden. Run by seven generations of the Collins family, with each first-born son always being named Fred to ensure the continuity of the business. Closed around 2006.
J. Evans, Dairy Farmer on the corner of Warren Street and Conway Street. The shop has long closed, however the exterior decoration has remained and the shop is now a cafe.
LLoyd and Son, Dairy Farmers on the corner of River Street and Amwell Street. The shop has closed, but the building and the original exterior decoration is still in place.
Another photo of Lloyd & Son showing one of the shop windows. Corner shops like this just do not exist anymore.
Camden:
Another Camden shop – walk along Camden High Street today and the shops are much the same,
Syd’s Coffee Stall, opened in 1919 and still going strong on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Calvert Avenue.
Did not make a note of the location of this building – original signs on the walls. Do not recall having seen this building in recent years.
B. Flegg in Monmouth Street. I suspect these signs are not there anymore as I do not recall seeing them when I last walked down Monmouth Street as I would have taken another photo.
Advertising signs on building on the corner of Cambridge Gardens and Ladbroke Grove. The building is still there (much cleaner now) but the signs have gone.
F. Bowman, Engineer’s Pattern Makers, 13 Amwell Street. Although the business has long since closed, the shop front is still in place.
London is a fantastic city to walk, having a few hours to go on a walk with no clear direction and turning down streets at random just to see what is there often reveals so much about the city. Hopefully now that the lighter evenings are here with the hope of better weather, there will be plenty of opportunities for more long, random walks.
So many historical buildings were destroyed across London in the last war, however few have been reconstructed with such care, and continue to fulfill their original function as the subject of this week’s post.
A quick look at the following photo and it is another bomb site, however the white monument on the right of the photo confirms exactly where this is, the site of Chelsea Old Church, at the junction of Old Church Street and Cheyne Walk. When my father took the photo, very little of the church remained apart from the chapel on the right. The main body of the church along with the tower had been completely destroyed.
The same location today, with the reconstructed church. The monument and buildings to the right confirm the location.
And to confirm how accurately the church was reconstructed, the following photo shows the pre-war church.
In 1957 a booklet was published to raise money for the rebuilding fund. Titled “Chelsea Old Church, 1941 – 1950” it tells the story of the destruction of the church and the battle to rebuild.
The booklet starts with a paragraph summing up the night on which the church was destroyed:
“On the night of the 16th-17th April 1941, four hundred and fifty German bombers attacked south and central London for nearly eight hours. Civilian casualties were over one thousand killed and two thousand seriously injured, and among the buildings hit were eighteen hospitals and thirteen churches, one of which was Chelsea Old Church.”
Chelsea was heavily bombed that night with a total of five parachute mines, a range of high explosive bombs and hundreds of incendiary bombs. Parachute mines, or landmines were really the same mines as used at sea. They were dropped by parachute and detonated either by vibration or magnetism making them a problem on the ground until they could be safely dealt with.
April 16th had been a fine spring day, much like the day I visited the church, with the sun shining all day long.
The air raid sirens sounded at five past nine in the evening and the residents of Chelsea either headed towards air raid shelters or stayed in their homes and the fire watchers took up their positions ready to deal with any fires caused by incendiaries and to try and deal with any casualties of bombing.
Parachute flares were the first signs of the attack, dropping over the south east of Chelsea and over the Lots Road Power Station. The raid then intensified and the booklet takes up the story:
“By one in the morning about forty trapped casualties had been reported at the Royal Hospital Infirmary. A wardens’ post nearby had dealt with more than that number of walking cases and homeless persons. The Post Warden was conducting his senior officer, the District Warden, on a tour of the area, and they were returning from watching incendiary bombs rattling down on the warehouse roofs across the river when they saw six members of the Old Church Fire Party leave the shadow of the tower and walk away from it along Cheyne Walk towards Danvers Street.
The Post Warden had returned to Cook’s Ground School and was just lowering himself into a chair to make an entry in the Log Book when two heavy explosions occurred close at hand. The time was twenty past one. Everything in the room jumped, dust was shaken down, the noise of breaking glass and splintering woodwork came from elsewhere in the building. Leaving the telephonist in charge of the Post, the Post Warden dispatched all available wardens to investigate and went out himself. The District Warden joined him in the corridor. His windows had been blown in on top of him as he sat in his office, but he escaped injury. As they turned the corner from Gleve Place into Upper Cheyne Row light came from some of the houses; windows and window frames complete with blackout had been sucked out into the road or pushed into the room. Tiles, broken slates, lath and plaster, bits of wood and glass littered the roadway; but this was only the minor damage. Justice Walk was blocked halfway in from Lawrence Street and it was evident that the center of the damage was somewhere on the other side of it. As they ran round the corner into Cheyne Walk they were brought down by a length of garden railing. They saw flames leaping up in a thinning dust haze. Near Danvers Street in a shallow crater in the road a gas main was on fire. And then it came to them both: “The Old Church has gone!” There was a jagged stump of brickwork and projecting timbers silhouetted where the eye had expected the massive square tower.”
The account in the booklet then explains what had happened to cause such destruction:
“About the time the sirens sounded the “Alert”, Mallett and the others on duty had gone up to the top of the church tower, the first time they had been up there, he said. They stayed up there for a time watching the flares and then went down to the embankment. Later on they went back to the room on the first floor of Petyt House (just behind the church) for a cup of tea. After that they were in and out all the time. About one o’clock they went along Cheyne Walk towards Danvers Street and some of them were talking to one of the fire party on duty at the cafe on the corner there. The ack-ack fire had been very heavy and there was a lot of shell casing lying about.
He had picked up a nose cap which had fallen outside the house with the copper panels on the gates (75 Cheyne Walk). He remembered saying to himself; ‘This is made of phosphorous bronze, expensive stuff to chuck about like this’, and then he heard something fall on the road beside him. It landed with a thump, not very loud, ‘like a fifty pound weight falling on soft ground’. It was not an alarming noise, and he looked round casually to see what it was. Actually it must have been painted dark green, with the sea green parachute collapsing beside it. Mallett described it as a ‘big thing about seven feet long and as big as you could get your arms round.’
He shouted a warning to the others and started running. They probably saw it first for they were ahead of him and had turned into Old Church Street when a second mine struck and exploded between Petyt House and the Church. the explosion detonated the one which had landed unexploded beside Mallett. How he was not killed, blown to fragments like Michael Hodge and the others caught in the open, can only be guessed at. He said he was running too fast to turn the corner and follow the others up Church Street, and he was kneeling beside the fire alarm post on the corner of the street when the explosion took place. As he was on the far side of the tower and probably below the level of the church yard wall he was protected from the direct blast of the first explosion. There was in fact a fraction of a second’s interval between the two. It may be that the debris of the tower collapsed beside him into the roadway in time to divert the blast of the other mine lying not more than seventy-five yards away.”
The tower and the majority of the church had been complete destroyed. Only the More Chapel at the far end of the church from the tower remained (as can be seen in my father’s photo).
Map of the area in 1940 showing the church just above Carlyle Pier on the river with the street names, Old Church Street, Danvers Street, Lawrence Street, Cheyne Walk mentioned above.
The following plaque in the entrance to the church records the names of the fire watchers who were killed when the church was bombed.
Whilst the plaque records their names, the booklet provides some background to help us understand more about the people who died protecting the church:
“There was a leader appointed for each night in the week. Normally Wednesday’s leader was Mr Bottley of Gregory Bottley & Co. Mineralogists, 30 Old Church Street and Mrs Bottley made one of the party, but they had gone away the week before on a three weeks trip to North Wales to obtain geological specimens and their places on the rota were taken by their manager, Mr Fred Winter and optical lens maker Mr. Sidney Sims. Both men had been with the firm since leaving school and were highly regarded. Sims was engaged to be married, Winter was married with two children. With Mallett, Winter and Sims on duty that Wednesday were Mrs. Greene, Michael Hodge and Mr. Franklin. The later was a carpenter employed by the Westminster Carriage Company, 48 Old Church Street, and was not strictly speaking a member of the Fire Party but had attached himself to them for the company and they included his premises in their patrols. Michael Hodge was aged seventeen and very tall for his age. He was waiting to go up to Cambridge but talking of enlisting in the Black Watch. He was staying at the Grosvenor Hotel with his parents and used to come down to Chelsea on Wednesday evening by taxi. Yvonne Greene of 34 Old Church Street, a Canadian and newly married to a Canadian army officer, was a part-time Auxiliary Fire Service driver.”
With the church destroyed, the challenge was now to protect the church site and plan for rebuilding. Anything that could be recovered from the site was quickly recovered and stored, however the site attracted problems during the years after the bombing:
“During the next two years there were no major engagements, though it was necessary to carry on a constant warfare against children who used the site as a playground, scribbling undesirable remarks on the stones and carrying off wood and bricks for their own purposes; and against adults, whom less excusably, stole lead to sell and wood to burn. It was Mr. Stewart Jones who took the initiative by getting the site fenced, and organised a concert to pay for it.”
The challenge for the church was getting approval and the funding needed to rebuild the church. The amount of damage across London meant that both funding and the labor and materials needed were in short supply during, and in the years after the war. There was no automatic assumption that Chelsea Old Church would be rebuilt.
Approval for reconstruction and funding was subject to Diocesan authority and expenditure required the consent of the Diocesan fund. A Diocesan Reconstruction Measure of 1941 placed the church on a list of bombed churches that would not be rebuilt within five years from the end of the war and there was doubt whether the church would ever be rebuilt.
In March 1945 proposals from the Diocesan Reorganization Committee recommended limited reconstruction of the church with just the More Chapel being retained to house the monuments recovered from the church. The concern was that the remains of the church would be little more than a museum for the recovered monuments. A hard-fought campaign was needed over the following years to convince the Diocesan Reorganisation Committee that the full church should be rebuilt with permission and funding to build to the same design as the destroyed church. Fund raising took place and approval was finally given with the More Chapel reopened for services in 1950 and the whole church reconsecrated in May 1958.
The history of Chelsea Old Church requires a dedicated post to do justice to the church, however the following is a brief walk round the church.
Looking across the church to the More Chapel, the Jervoise arch and the memorial to Lady Jane Cheyne:
The church is the only one in London with any chained books. In a case within the church are five chained books, presented to the church by the Lord of the Manor, Sir Hans Sloane. The books consist of a Bible from 1717, first and third editions of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs from 1684, a 1723 book of Common Prayer and a 1683 volume of Homilies.
The remains of the tomb from 1555 of Lady Jane Guildford, Duchess of Northumberland.
The inscription reads:
HERE LYETH Y RIGHT NOBLE AND EXELLENT PRYNCES LADY JANE GVYLDEFORD LATE DVCHES OF NORTHVBERLAND DAUGHTER AND SOLE HEYRE VNTO Y RIGHT HONORABLE S EDWARD GVYLDEFORD KNIGHT LORD WARDEYN OF Y FYVE PORTES Y WHICH S EDWARD WAS SONNE TO Y RIGHT HONORABLE S RICHARD GVYLDEFORD SOMETYMES KNIGHT AND COMPANION OF Y MOST NOBLE ORDERE OF Y GARTOR AND THE SAID DVCHES WAS WYFE TO THE RIGHT HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE JOHN DVDLEY LATE DVKE OF NORTHVBERLAND BY WHOM SHE HAD YSSEW XIII CHILDREN THAT IS TO WETE VIII SONNES AND V DAWGHTERS AND AFTER SHE HAD LYVED YERES XLVI SHE DEPARTED THIS TRANSITORY WORLD AT HER MANER OF CHELSEY XXII DAY OF JANVARY IN Y SECOND YERE OF Y REIGNE OF OWR SOVEREYNE LADY QVEEN MARY THE FIRST AND IN A MDLV ON WHOSE SVLE IF SV HAVE M’CY
Standing in the church and thinking about even the recent history of the church, the words “this transitory world” are so very true for all those who have lived in, and traveled through London.
Although the bomb blast destroyed the majority of the church, the More Chapel was mainly intact and between the main body of the church and the More chapel, part of the original wooden construction of the church was exposed by the blast. The wooden “King Post” from the pre-Tudor construction of the building was not plastered over during rebuilding and has been left exposed.
Monuments and plaques from the 16th century onwards:
A view of the Sanctuary and on the right the memorial to Sir Thomas More.
Built by More for his first wife and intended by More also for him and his second wife after their deaths. The inscription, written by More describes his life and ends with a tribute to both his wives:
Sir Thomas More’s first loving wife lies here
For Alice and myself this tomb I rear
By Joan I had three daughters and one son
Before my prime and vig’rous strength was gone
To them such love was by Alice shown
In stepmothers, a virtue rarely known
The world believed the children were her own
Such is Alicia, such Joanna was
It’s hard to judge which was the happier choice
If piety or fate our prayers could grant
To join us three we should no blessings want
One grave shall hold us, yet in heaven we’ll live
And Death grants that which Life could never give
Another of the monuments from the original church, the triumphal arch commemorating Richard Jervoise:
The sundial on the south-facing tower of the church, remade in 1957 and identical to the original (see the pre-war photo at the top of this post to see the original sundial in the same position).
There are a number of monuments outside the church, including this water fountain built-in 1880 by the widow of George Sparkes of the East India Company:
The 1969 statue of Sir Thomas Moor.
Sir Thomas More’s association with the church began when he settled in Chelsea, the owner of a large estate close to the church. When he moved to Chelsea in 1520 he rebuilt one of the chapels and with his family, worshiped at the church when at his Chelsea residence.
Another memorial to a person with a close connection to Chelsea is the memorial to Sir Hans Sloan, who was also involved with the founding of the nearby Chelsea Physic Garden:
The fact that Old Chelsea Church is still here is a tribute to those who fought hard for the church to be re-built and to the same design as the pre-war church. It also reminds us of those who died trying to protect the area in which they lived and worked during the last war.
To finish, the following photo is an enlargement of a small section in front of the church from my father’s photo. I suspect this is an ice cream vendor cycling round the streets of Chelsea – very different to the busy road in front of the church today.
A church with a fascinating history and highly recommended for a visit, even if it is not a beautiful spring day in London.
The area on the Southbank between Waterloo Station, the Thames, Waterloo Bridge and County Hall has seen considerable change over the last 70 years. Originally the location of industry and closely packed housing, post war the streets and buildings were almost completely erased and the Festival of Britain was built on the site in 1951.
Following the end of the Festival, the Royal Festival Hall remained with later additions including the Hayward Gallery and Purcell Room. On the area between Belvedere Road and Waterloo Station, Shell Centre, the UK head offices of the Royal Dutch Shell oil company were built, consisting of a tower block and upstream building to the west of Hungerford Bridge, with a downstream building to the east. The downstream building of Shell Centre was converted into flats some years ago, and currently the wings around the tower building are almost fully demolished ready for the construction of more residential towers (see my post covering a walk round the Shell Centre viewing gallery for more information).
Scanning through negatives, I have since found additional photos of the area and I feature these for this weeks post.
The map below is from the 1940 Bartholomew’s Atlas of Greater London and I have marked the locations and directions of view of this week’s photos.
The following photo is from position 1 on the map and was taken from the end of the footbridge that ran alongside Hungerford Railway Bridge. The Lion Brewery is on the left and the railway into Waterloo East and across the river to Charing Cross Station is on the right, with Waterloo Station being the building on the far right. The buildings at the end of the road alongside the railway are along Belvedere Road. The building with the white lower level is a pub, however I have been unable to confirm the name, there were a number of pubs along Belvedere Road but I cannot find the name of this one. Sutton Walk is to the left of the pub.
Enlarging the photo, the building to the right of the pub has the name “Westward Ho” on the sign above the ground floor door and window. Not sure what this was, however in the Survey of London volume for the area there is a drawing of the building, the online page can be found here. Unfortunately, the Survey of London does not shed any light on the name of the pub. It does confirm that these buildings were numbered 116 and 118, the only pubs I can find were the White Hart at number 35 and the Green Dragon at number 68.
These photos were taken in 1948, before demolition took place in 1949. Another view at a slightly different angle from the end of the footbridge:
The Royal Festival Hall now occupies the area on the left and the whole scene has changed dramatically. Standing on the end of the new footbridge alongside Hungerford Bridge, I took the following photo.
My father visited the area again as demolition was taking place. This must have been around 1949 as this was the time when the area was being cleared ready for construction of the Festival of Britain.
The following photo is from the same position on the end of the Hungerford Bridge footbridge and is looking slightly to the left of the above photos. Much of the Lion Brewery has now been cleared with only the entrance arch to Belvedere Road remaining. It also looks as if the pub has been gutted with empty windows now looking out onto the area.
The tall buildings in the background to the left all remain to this day. The church is St. Johns at Waterloo, the building to the left of the tall office block is the old Royal Waterloo Hospital for Women and Children.
I featured the following photo in my post on Sutton Walk. This was taken outside the pub with Sutton Walk running off to the right and part of the Lion Brewery directly opposite.
I have repeated this photo as the following photo was taken from roughly the same position after the brewery buildings had been demolished. The bollards confirm the location. This is looking from point 2 on the 1940 map.
The buildings that edge the open area are houses that ran along Howley Terrace.
Sutton Walk has changed location, however the following photo was taken from roughly the same location and looking in the same direction. This whole area is now occupied by the White House Apartment Building (the old Shell Centre Downstream Building).
Moving along Belvedere Road towards Waterloo Bridge, the following photo is looking along point 3 in the map, along what was Tenison Street. The buildings have all been demolished but the road, pavement and street lamps remain, however they will also soon go ready for the Festival of Britain.
It is difficult to get the precise location today as the White house building obscures the view of Waterloo Station, however I took the following looking in the direction of where I believe Tenison Street ran.
As I covered in one of my earlier posts on the area, many of the roads in this area were named after Archbishops of Canterbury. Tension Street was named after Thomas Tenison who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1695 to 1715.
Move a bit further along Belvedere Road, and the following photo is looking along Howley Terrace (view 4 in the above map). The approach road running up to Waterloo Bridge is to the left of the photo hence the large advertisement on the side of the building to catch the eye of those travelling across Waterloo Bridge from the north to the south.
As part of the reconstruction of the area, a new approach road was built up to Waterloo Bridge. This approach road covered some of the area occupied by most of the housing on the left. Today, at the end of the approach road to Waterloo Bridge, at the junction with York Road and Stamford Street is a large roundabout which covers the space occupied by the houses at the very end of Howley Terrace.
The following photo is looking along the same view today.
Remarkable how the area has changed. The original buildings along Howley Terrace (named after William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1828 to 1848) were crowded, multi-tenant housing with very basic facilities. Apartments in the White House now sell for between one and three million pounds.
William Kent in his 1951 edition of An Encyclopedia Of London has a couple of references to Tenison Street and Howley Terrace:
“The Lion Brewery has always been associated with a famous crime. In 1872 Dr. W.C. Minor, who had been a surgeon in the American Civil War, and on a visit to this country, was staying at 41 Tenison Street, shot a stoker, an employee of the Brewery in Belvedere Road. At the trial, he was found guilty but insane. From Broadmoor criminal lunatic asylum, where he was confined, he contributed between five and eight thousand quotations to Sir James Murray’s famous Oxford English Dictionary, and his name will be found in the acknowledged assistants to that great work.
In the process of making a site for the Festival of Britain, in the course of excavations, a skeleton was found near Howley Terrace. It was 12ft below ground and in 2ft of mud. It is believed to have been two hundred years old. Its legs were sprawled in odd directions, which seemed to indicate a violent end.”
Kent also states that during the preparation of the site for the Festival of Britain, sixty men used 93,000 tons of demolition material to build the river wall which is 1,691ft long, so it is interesting to think that as you walk along the Southbank, next to the Thames, you may well be walking on all the materials that once made up the brewery and houses that occupied this area.
It is fascinating to walk around the Southbank with the photos from this and previous posts on the area. I can now build up a detailed photographic record of this small but fascinating part of London. I plan to bring these all together in a future post for a detailed walk around the area covering before, during and after the Festival of Britain to the current day.
The bridges over the River Thames are key transport links between the north and south sides of the river and closure of any of the bridges can quickly lead to congestion during a busy London day. Today, any closures are normally for short periods of time, however during the last war there was a real risk that one or more of London’s bridges would be put out of action by bombing. Destruction of any of the bridges would quickly impact the day-to-day business of Londoners and would also cause problems for the emergency services and troop movements.
To help mitigate the impact of any damage to London’s bridges, a number of temporary bridges were constructed to provide alternative routes across the river. I featured the temporary bridge between Westminster and the Southbank in an earlier post, and whilst searching through my father’s photos I found a photo of one of the other bridges, the temporary Chelsea Bridge, this one providing a route across the Thames from Chelsea to Battersea Park and built across the river between the Albert and Chelsea Bridges.
The photo was taken in 1947 and shows the bridge in the final stages of demolition with only the centre box girder section in place, along with the full set of piers sunk into the river. One of the chimneys of Battersea Power Station can be seen to the left of the photo, and just to the left of the box girder section of the bridge is the blue gas holder at Battersea, a local landmark built in 1932 and finally removed in 2015.
The view from the same position in 2016.
Today, there are no remains of the bridge to be seen, which makes trying to locate the landing point of the bridge rather difficult and I have been unable to find the bridge marked on any maps from the period. Estimating the position from my father’s photo and looking at the roads in the area, I suspect that the bridge landed on the north bank on the Chelsea Embankment at the junction with Royal Hospital Road. The following map is from the 1940 Bartholomew’s Reference Atlas of Greater London. The streets in this area of Chelsea are almost unchanged. I have marked where I believe the bridge crossed the river with a red dotted line.
One of the reasons why a temporary bridge was built in this location was a concern that German bombing would be aimed at the Chelsea Barracks (see top right of the 1940 map) and that the local bridges would also be targeted.
I took the photo below from the Chelsea Embankment looking north into the junction with Royal Hospital Road. It is here that I believe the bridge landed.
Both the Albert and Chelsea Bridges continued in full service during the war, so the temporary bridge was not needed, but it demonstrates the planning that was put in place to ensure that key transport routes would continue to be available, even if the main London bridges were put out of action.
After visiting the Chalybeate Well in Hampstead which I featured in my post of two weeks ago, I stayed in Hampstead and walked to the other side of Heath Street to visit Holly Bush Hill.
Sixty seven years ago in 1949, my father took the following photo looking up Holly Bush Hill from the walkway that leads up to Mount Vernon.
And in 2016, Holly Bush Hill looks much the same.
Turning to the right in 1949, the view looking down from Holly Bush Hill.
And the same view in 2016.
As with many of the side streets in Hampstead, there has been very little change over many decades. Both photos highlight the major change since 1949 which is how much cars have taken over the streets. In 1949 there were very few cars to be seen and street parking was minimal, however in 2016 cars are everywhere and the side streets are lined with parked cars.
I cannot find the origin of the name Holly Bush Hill. Many of the streets in this area use the name Holly, for example Holly Bush Vale and Holly Mount so there must be an original local meaning, perhaps the growth of holly bushes at the top of the hill. Other possible sources of the name refer to the local pub, The Holly Bush. This pub name has several possible meanings including the use of the Holly Bush by the Romans during their Saturnalia celebrations and also the custom of hanging a green branch or bush over the door of a building that sold wines and beers for advertisement.
Whatever the original source of the name, the holy on the pub sign has reduced over the years from a full holly bush in 1949 down to a sprig of holly in 2016.
Holly Bush Hill was not the original name of the street. George W. Potter in Hampstead Wells – A Short History Of Their Rise And Decline published in 1907 states that the original name was Cloth Hill “no doubt because it was anciently used as a drying or bleaching ground”.
George Potter records that before becoming a very fashionable area, Hampstead was the location for a large number of laundry businesses set-up to serve London. Hampstead was a perfect location due to the availability of a large number of springs with a good supply of clean water. No doubt the windy heights of Hampstead also helped with drying.
In the first 1949 photo there is a pub sign on the left and on the wall on the right the brewery name Benskins.
This refers to the pub “The Holly Bush” which, as can be seen by the 2016 pub sign, is still in existence and down the side street Holly Mount. The Holly Bush is a lovely old pub, built-in 1643 and a grade II listed building, one of the London locations that Dr. Johnson and Boswell drank in. Today it is a perfect stop after a walk around Hampstead.
In the top photo, look just along the street to the buildings on the right, these are also much the same.
On the far left of the buildings there is blue plaque recording that the artist, George Romney lived here. George Cunningham in “London” (1927) records the history of this building:
“Formerly the house and studio of George Romney. In 1796 George Romney, the artist, bought an old house and stable here, and in 1797-8, when his health had begun to decline, he built a new house and studio on the site and on land he had purchased at the back of it. Romney lived here until 1799, when he went back to Kendall to the wife he had deserted some thirty-five years before. This was his last London residence, and his stay here was a period of constantly increasing illness. The property was sold in 1801 and in 1807 it was purchased for use as assembly rooms and until 1860 it was a social centre for the neighbourhood. The Hampstead Literary and Scientific Society was formed here about 1833, and among its lecturers Dr. Lardner, Dr. Ure, Professor Lindsey, John Constable and others of equal prominence. The Conversazione Society was established in 1846 and held its meetings here. Since 1886 the Constitutional Club has been here.”
George Romney was a society portraitist, completing portraits of many prominent people of the time. A very skillful draughtsman, initially he did not have the confidence for major works of art, however in 1782 he met Emma Hart, the future Lady Emma Hamilton who became Lord Nelson’s mistress.
At the time of Romney’s meeting with Emma Hart, she was the mistress of Charles Greville who took her to Romney to have her portrait painted. Romney was fascinated by her, and she became his “artist’s muse”, sitting for him many times and featuring in a large number of Romney’s works.
Self portrait of George Romney, oil on canvas, 1784.
On the assumption that you may have stopped for a drink in The Holly Bush, when you come out, turn left along Holly Mount, then down Holly Bush Steps to Heath Street. Cross over, walk a short distance up Heath Street then stop , turn round and look back. This was the view in 1949.
And in 2016 (my apologies for the quality of the photo, it was a very sunny day and despite waiting for the sun to drop behind the buildings it still presented some contrast problems).
The entrance to Holly Bush Steps is just behind the furthest car in the 1949 photo.
Heath Street is an incredibly busy road and despite waiting for almost half an hour there was not a break in the traffic, however if you ignore the cars and focus on the buildings, the scene is almost exactly the same. I am sure that the trees in front of the white building on the right are the same.
The side streets of Hampstead have changed very little over the years. Take away the cars and I suspect George Romney would not find too many differences if he was to return to his house and studio.
With this post, I finish my second year of exploring and writing about London, and start my third. I would like to thank everyone who has read, commented, e-mailed and subscribed, I am very grateful for every bit of feedback and I apologise for my often delayed responses, it is a challenge to research and write a post a week.
I started this blog with two main aims:
To identify the locations of all the photos my father took across London.
To act as an incentive to get out and explore more of London.
I have made great progress with my father’s photos and now have around 90% identified and will cover many of these locations over the coming year. I published two posts with locations I could not identify and the response was remarkable with the majority of locations and events from these two posts identified. To have locations identified over the course of a Sunday where I had spent some weeks trying to work out where they were was a fantastic experience, and my thanks for your considerable knowledge of London. It is still my aim to identify the location of every single photo.
For point two, it has been a really interesting year. We too often take for granted what is on our doorstep. Follow the same routes and go to the same places. There is so much to explore across London and the blog has given me the incentive to get out and explore different places, I will highlight a few of these below.
So what of the third year? I still have very many of my father’s photos of London to cover and will be comparing these with the location today. He also took hundreds of photos across the UK during Youth Hosteling holidays and National Service in the late 1940s. If you do not mind the occasional trip out of London I will also start covering some of these to show what the country looked like to a Londoner after almost six years of war. There are also many new places in London I want to visit and explore and will be covering these during the coming year.
So, again my thanks for reading the blog, and I hope I can keep you interested during the coming year.
And to finish, a summary of some of the posts from the last year:
Mystery Locations
Nearly all the locations from my two MysteryLocations posts were identified. The following photo was in my first post from last August and did not get identified at the time, however when I published the second set, I had feedback on this photo. It was taken just off Theobalds Road and is looking across to Harpur Street (the old building on the right is at the junction of Harpur Street and Dombey Street). The building work is the construction of new flats which are still there.
I was doubtful whether the next photo would get identified as there were very few landmarks. It shows a scene after a fire with hoses still covering the street.
I had feedback that the building looked like one of the pubs on the corner of the old Caledonian Market. I visited in September and was really pleased to see the building is still there – hidden behind the tree in the photo below:
The Changing City
Exploring the locations of my father’s photos show how much the city has changed over the last 70 years, however even in places with considerable change there are still survivals from the past. My favourite example of this was from my post on Pickle Herring Street. This is a lost street that ran along the south bank of the river, west from the southern end of Tower Bridge. My father took the following photo standing under an arch in the approach to Tower Bridge looking along Pickle Herring Street:
The scene is very different today:
But despite all this change, small features such as the tiling in the roof of the arch are exactly the same:
The Southbank is another of the areas in London that has changed beyond all recognition. My father took lots of photos of this area just before demolition for the Festival of Britain. They show a very different place to the Southbank we see today. The entrance to the Lion Brewery at the end of Sutton Walk:
And the same scene today – part of Sutton Walk still exists, but the length in which my father took the above photo is now a pedestrian walkway and has been built over to the right:
London in the 1980s
As well as photos from the late 1940s / early 1950s I have photos from many other periods. I published a number of photos that both my father and I took in the 1980s, the decade when the areas to the east of London started to change following the closure of the docks. These photos included the changing face of the Isle of Dogs:
Along with reaction to the politics of the time:
I have more of these photos for the year ahead.
London Maps
There are some remarkable maps of London, but my favourite by far is my 1940 copy of Bartholomew’s Greater London Street Atlas from 1940. This was my father’s who had to get a neighbour who was in the Home Guard to purchase it from Foyles as only people in uniform could purchase maps during the war. The following is an extract from this atlas showing the area to the south of Tower Bridge and the same Pickle Herring Street referred to above.
There are also many other maps of London and I covered a sample of the maps I have collected, including the colourful from London events over the years:
And the practical to track down changes in the street plan:
New Places
There is so much to explore across London and the city is ideally suited to walking, whether to Highgate in the spring:
Or along the Greenwich Peninsula – an area which will soon look very different and where some key locations rich in industrial history are under threat:
I have also traveled along the Thames on many occasions throughout the year. Two of the most memorable being on the Paddle Steamer Waverley from Tower Pier out to the Maunsell Forts in the estuary.
We have lost some of the connection with the Thames, however it has been the Thames that established and has shaped London during the last two thousand years. Now the river seems to only be seen as either a scenic sales benefit to the many buildings being constructed along the banks of the river, or as a threat during the high tides that cause water to flood onto the footpath in Greenwich of leak through the embankment walls in Millbank.
The Waverley will be making another visit to London later this year – I plan to be on-board again
A reminder of the warehouses along the side of the river and the risks of fire came when I had the opportunity to be on the Massey Shaw Fireboat on 29th December to mark the 75th anniversary of the major bombing attack on London on the 29th December 1940. The Massey Shaw has been restored to a fully operational condition and to see a Fireboat that went to Dunkirk and fought fires along the river for many decades, performing the same function as a modern-day fire boat was a credit to the original designers of the Massey Shaw:
Open House London offers opportunities to visit places that are normally closed. For the Open House weekend last September I was able to climb the Caledonian Clock Tower. The gallery around the top provides some of the finest views of the city:
The London Transport Museum have also run a number of tours of hidden parts of the Underground System. I was able to visit many of these during the year, including the old Down Street station:
The Post Office Railway has held an almost mythical status for me since reading about the railway as a child in the early 1970s. Last year it was opened for a few days by the Postal Museum and it did not disappoint:
With the coming spring (although with this year’s weather spring is already here in parts of London), the Chelsea Physic Garden is a place to spend an afternoon away from the traffic and crowds which I did last April:
London Events
In July I went to see Swan Upping take place along the Thames. My father had photographed the event when it still started in central London:
Following the swans, Swan Upping has now moved out of central London, now running along the river to the west of London. I saw the boats arrive at Goring and whilst the location has changed, the uniforms and ceremony remain the same:
So thank you again for reading, and I hope you will join me for a third year of exploring London.
The high ground of Hampstead Heath, to the north of central London has a fascinating geology which helped to drive Hampstead’s original development and is also the source of rivers such as the Fleet and the Westbourne.
The highest point on the heath reaches some 133 meters above sea level. If you stand on the heath, under your feet will be a thick layer of sand and gravel, known to Geologists as the Lower Bagshot Sands, which at the highest point is 24 meters thick. The thickness of this layer fluctuates across the heath, for example when the shafts were sunk for the Hampstead Underground Station, the layer was found to be only 5 meters thick, and the layer disappears as height descends running down from Hampstead.
Underneath the layer of sand and gravel is a layer of sandy clay which extends for 15 meters at the thickest point. Underneath this layer is the thick and impermeable London Clay which extends over much of London.
The following map from “Hampstead Heath – It’s Geology And Natural History” by the Hampstead Scientific Society published in 1913 shows the area covered by the Bagshot Sands.
Hampstead and the heath can therefore be considered as a sandy peak sitting on top of a layer of thick clay.
It is this geology which gives rise to the large number of springs which can be found across the heath. Rainwater can easily pass through the layers of sand before reaching the layer of London Clay which presents a barrier. Water then runs horizontally along the boundary between the sand and clay to come back out from the ground in the form of a spring at the point lower down the heath where the sand layer stops.
When emerging from the ground, the water carries with it the properties of the sand through which it has passed, and it is these springs and the properties of the water that have been so important in Hampstead’s development.
So what relevance does this brief geological introduction to Hampstead have to this week’s post? Among my father’s photos is this photo of a well taken in 1949:
The same well in 2016:
This is the Chalybeate Well in Well Walk, Hampstead. In the context of water, the name chalybeate means that the water contains iron.
The springs of Hampstead have a long history of providing supplies of water for the rest of London. Conduits were built to channel water from the springs along the heath to the centre of the city. During the search for sources of water, the chalybeate springs must have also been found, and whilst not suitable for drinking water, the high iron content gave rise to the believe that the water had medicinal properties.
On the 20th December 1698 the infant Earl of Gainsborough and his guardian and mother, the Countess of Gainsborough gave six acres of land in the region of the Chalybeate Well, to be used to benefit the poor of Hampstead. The deed that transferred the land refers to “the Wells lately made there for medicinal waters”. The transfer was to a charity managed by 14 trustees.
This gift of land is recorded on the plaque on the Chalybeate Well:
The land in this area of Hampstead was poor quality and rather boggy due to the number of springs. Despite the gift of the land, there was little from the land that would benefit the poor of Hampstead, apart from the springs and it is these that the trustees started to develop.
An advertisement posted by the trustees in the “Postman” on the 18th April 1700 reads:
“The Chalybeate Waters at Hampstead being of the same nature and equal in virtue with Tunbridge Wells and highly approved of by most of the eminent physicians of the College, as likewise by many of the gentry who formerly used to drink Tunbridge Waters, are by direction of the Trustees of the Wells aforesaid, for the conveniency of those who yearly drink them in London carefully bottled up in flasks and sent to Mr. Phelps Apothecary at the Eagle and Child in Fleet Street every morning at the rate of 3d per flask and if any person desires to have them brought to their own houses, they will be conveyed to them upon their leaving a note to Mr Phelps’ aforesaid at 1d more, and to prevent any person being imposed upon the true waters and nowhere else to be procured unless they are sent for to the Wells at Hampstead, and the said Mr Phelps to prevent Counterfeits hath ordered his servants to deliver to each person who comes for any of the waters aforesaid, a sealed ticket viz: a wolf rampant with 7 Crosslets. Note! the messengers that come for the waters must take care to return the flasks daily.”
So the Chalybeate Wells of Hampstead were in competition with those of Tunbridge Wells. It also provides a fascinating insight into the need to guarantee that the waters provided in flasks were original – the use of a sealed ticket with a wolf rampant sounds very dramatic.
The waters were bottled on the site of the present pub “The Flask” on Flask Walk which leads directly into Well Walk.
The source of the water that was sold in London was not from the existing Chalybeate Well in Well Walk, the source was a spring and pond (filled in about 1880) about 100 yards further up the hill.
As well as the sale of the water in London, the trustees also looked at other opportunities for how they could gain further benefit from the 6 acres of land.
On the 2nd June 1701, a John Duffield was granted possession of the land for a period of 21 years for an annual rent of £50. John Duffield must have realized the opportunities that the land and the associated springs provided with their close location to the rest of London. He immediately started building work, constructing buildings that would enhance the local springs with a Great Room or Long Room, Assembly Rooms and a Pump Room. To these rooms were soon added a tavern, chapel and shops along with formal gardens and a bowling green.
The following map from George Potter’s “Hampstead Wells” published in 1907 provides an overview of the area around 1761. The original source for the Chalybeate waters is at point C. The walkway between Well Road and Well Walk terminates on Well Walk directly behind the current Chalybeate Well so the locations of the Great Room, Pump Room etc. can be positioned along the current Well Walk.
The type of entertainments provided in these rooms can be identified from another advert in the “Postman” on the 9th September 1701:
“In the Great Room at Hampstead Wells on Monday next being the 15th, exactly at 11 o’clock of the forenoon will be performed a Consort of vocal and instrumental Musick by the best Masters, and at the request of several gentlemen, Jeremy Bowen will perform several songs and particular performance on the violin by several masters. Tickets to be had at the Wells and at St. Stephen’s Coffee House in King Street, Bloomsbury at 1s per ticket. There will be dancing in the afternoon as usual.”
A later advertisement mentions that the room will hold 500 people which gives an indication of the size, and also at 1s per ticket the amount of money that the new buildings at the Hampstead Wells were generating.
John Rocque’s map published in 1746 shows the village of Hampstead still as a village surrounded on all sides by fields and the heath. The new developments around Well Walk are to the upper right of the village.
The rear of the Chalybeate Well in 1949. On the left of the basin is a chain which presumably had a cup attached to allow the waters to be drunk from the basin.
The rear of the well in 2016. The chain and cup have disappeared. Just above the right hand-side of the basin is a modern push button which appears to offer a pump-action to bring water to the basin – I tried it several times but there was no water.
The chalybeate waters, the Long Room, Pump Room etc. enjoyed a number of years of great popularity with those who could afford to travel and pay for the entertainments, with Londoners flocking to Hampstead. However after a number of years their popularity declined, there were a number of scandals and trouble at the tavern. It was also found that the poor of Hampstead who should have benefited from the original grant of land had not received anything as John Duffield had not been paying his annual £50 rent, and by the 1720s when the situation could not last for much longer, eleven of the original fourteen trustees had died so the trust had also become rather ineffective.
After this initial development of the grant of the 6 acres of land, and the chalybeate waters, the area continued under the management of what became the Wells Charity. Continued efforts were made to promote the waters and the entertainments that were provided in the buildings along Well Walk and during the 19th century the houses that currently line Well Walk gradually replaced the 18th century buildings, constructed to promote the spring waters.
The original public basin that held the spring waters was on the opposite side of the road from the current Chalybeate Well which was built around 1882. Water has never run freely from the well. Digging of sewers in the road and other building works appears to have disrupted the underground flow of water. Even if water was flowing into the well, it would not be wise to drink.
A Dr. Atfield analysed the water from the well in 1884 and found that it contained:
There was a note at the bottom of the above table which read:
“Note – This appears to be chalybeate water mixed with ordinary surface water. If this could be excluded a purely chalybeate water would probably be obtained.”
Not that there was much to drink. In 1907, George Potter of the Wells and Campden Charity recorded that:
“The traveler requiring a draft of it would have to spend at least an hour to obtain a moderate one from this source, and when he had obtained it he probably would not relish it very much.”
So, despite the new well being constructed, there was very little water and what was available was not very drinkable.
George Potter tried to find other sources of water which could be run to the well. A number of shafts were sunk in the gardens of houses along Well Walk and spring water was found, however on analysis it was found that:
“With reference to the analyst’s report on the two samples of water, Nos 2 and 3, a copy of which I forwarded to you on the 10th, it appears to me that I cannot allow it to pass without representing to those in whom is vested the Chalybeate Spring that persons drinking this water run a serious risk of injury to their health.” (Letter from Dr. Herbert Lttlejohn, Medical Officer of Health to George Potter on the 17th November 1902.)
George Potter described his disappointment with these results: “The handsome new fountain in Well Walk, a fountain without water, is now only a monument – a monument to commemorate the memory of the departed glories of the once famous Hampstead Spa. But even now I am not without hope that a supply of this water, practically pure, may yet be found and let to this fountain – a fountain only in name at present.”
The Well Charity continues to this day in the form of the Hampstead Wells and Campden Trust. Although having been through amalgamation with other charities and changes in status, the charity is rooted in the original donation of 6 acres of land by the Earl and Countess of Gainsborough
The well provided a common source of street names in the area. Chalybeate Well is on Well Walk. Just behind the well is Well Passage which leads up to Well Road.
Well Walk has been the location for a number of drawings and paintings of Hampstead over the years. The following print being an example, and reads: “A Prospect of Hampstead from the Corner of Mrs Holford’s Garden, opposite the Well Walk” and shows Hampstead in 1745 (print by William Henry Toms)
Hampstead has also long been the residence of artists. A blue plaque along Well Walk identifies one of the two houses in which the artist John Constable lived in Hampstead. He frequently visited Hampstead in the summer then moved there permanently until his death in Hampstead in 1837. He took the lease on the house in Well Walk from the summer of 1827 until 1834.
Constable delighted in the view of London from his house in Well Walk and worked on a number of paintings of the view. The following is a watercolor painted in the drawing-room at 6 Well Walk looking across to the City and St. Paul’s Cathedral. An inscription on the rear of the painting reads: “Hampstead. drawing Room 12.oclock noon Sept.1830”
Walking back into Hampstead, at the junction with Christchurch Hill is the Wells Tavern. This was built on the site of the original tavern, the “Old Green Man” which was pulled down in the late 1840s.
At the Hampstead end of Well Walk, the road splits into Flask Walk and Gayton Road. Follow Flask Walk towards Hampstead to find The Flask. Both the walk and the pub are named after the flasks that were filled here with spring water ready for dispatch to London.
The Chalybeate Well is a reminder of how the geology of a location has played a part in the development of London. The springs helped the early development of laundry services in Hampstead, the waters were channeled to the City through conduits and they have shaped the development and natural history of the heath.
I hope to cover this in more detail in future posts (and it provides a good excuse to walk more in Hampstead and visit Hampstead pubs).
The sources I used to research this post are:
Springs, Streams and Spas of London by Alfred Stanley Foord published in 1910
Hampstead Heath. Its Geology and Natural History by the Members of the Hampstead Scientific Society published in 1913
Hampstead Wells – A Short History of their Rise and Decline by George W. Potter published in 1907
For the poor of Hampstead for ever – 300 years of the Hampstead Wells Trust by Christopher Wade published in 1998
