Clapham South Deep-Level Shelter

7 Replies

I have always been interested in what can be found beneath the city streets since finding a copy of Under London by F.L Stevens, published in 1939, probably one of the earliest books dedicated to the subject.

In the late 1970’s, straight out of school as a British Telecom apprentice and working in one of the hidden regional seats of government during the Cold War only furthered this interest. This site in Essex was entered via an ordinary bungalow built on a hillside, inside which a long tunnel led deep into the hillside to the centre of the complex. The site is now open as a tourist attraction !

Therefore I will always take any opportunity for an underground visit and recently the London Transport Museum have been arranging open days at a number of facilities associated with the transport system.

A couple of weeks ago, as part of the London Transport Museum open days I visited the Clapham South Deep-Level Shelter, built during the 2nd World War.

The book Under London, being published in 1939, did not cover the structures built during the war, however it does show the rapid change in the types of defences needed to protect Londoners. The book concludes with a final chapter “London Takes Cover” which documents some of the preparations in London for the expected bombing of the city. Part of the chapter reads:

“A model system of trenches has been built in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, under the seven acres of which is an underground network, one thousand four hundred and twenty-nine feet long, seven feet deep, and covered with concrete and two feet of earth. Seating accommodation is provided for one thousand three hundred people. When the work is finished, turf will be replanted, tennis courts re-laid and, in addition, a new putting green is to be constructed.

Trench systems nearing completion are, at the time I write this, at Clapham Common; Kennington Park; Victoria Park….”

There follows a list of the locations in London where trench systems were being built. The inadequate protection provided by shallow trench systems for the bombing that was to come was soon very apparent. I doubt the author of Under London could have imagined the shelters that would be built in the next few years, one of which was the Clapham South Deep-Level Shelter.

One of the entrances to the shelter close to Clapham South Underground Station on the edge of the Common:

At the start of the war, air raid shelters consisted of trench systems, the basements of buildings, along with the opening of underground stations, although the adequacy of these proved ineffective to direct bombing, including parts of the underground system which were just below the surface. Deep level shelters were needed and in October 1940, with no end in sight of the heavy bombing on London, the Government planned the construction of a number of deep level shelters across London capable of taking up to 10,000 people in each shelter.

Construction started in 1941 with completion in 1942.

To enter the tunnel system on the tour, a second entrance was used, not the obvious entrance on the edge of the Common. At first glance it could be part of the architectural features of the new building above the entrance, however a side door provides access to a very different world:

The shelters are approximately 30 meters deep and the vertical shaft providing access has a double spiral of stairs to speed entry and descent. Whilst the shelters had the facilities to house 10,000 people, getting this many in and out needed the double spiral to try and speed this up, although how long it may have taken for many thousands of people of all ages to climb 30 meters of stairs after a long night below ground can only be imagined.

At the base of the stairs, part of one of the cross passages:

The cross passages provide access to the main shelters. These consist of two tunnels, each about 400 meters long. The tunnels are divided into upper and lower levels thereby doubling the number of people each tunnel can accommodate.

A glimpse of one of the shelter tunnels curving into the distance:

Looking down one of the shelter tunnels. This is the lower half of the tunnel with an identical arrangement in the half of the tunnel above. On the left are the original frames of the bunks provided for those seeking shelter. On the right is shelving for when the shelter was later used to provide secure archive storage.

One of the sections has been fitted out to show how they would have been used:

Looking along the top bunk level, the length of the shelter. Imagine looking along this level when the top bunks were all occupied.

One of the junctions on the cross passages. On the left is one of the places on the tour where a photo background has been put in place to show what the shelter looked like at the time of use, very effective.

With two long, identical tunnels, each divided into two, it would have been rather difficult to find the specific place where you had your bunk or to meet other family members or friends. To help with location finding, the tunnels were divided into shelter areas, each named after a senior officer in the navy.

The tunnels are very well signposted so even with many thousands of people, whilst it would have been crowded, it would have been difficult to get lost.

Each of the shelters had a canteen. To keep up morale and provide an incentive for being in the shelters, as well as hot drinks, the canteens provided sausage rolls, meat pies etc. food that was not easily available due to the strict rationing restrictions in place at the time.

Original fuse box at one of the canteen locations:

As well as the fuse box, other reminders of the original use of sections of the shelters remain. Original location for a sink in one of the medical facilities:

Examples of wartime posters highlighting the problems with food supplies at the time and the importance of home grown, basic food products such as potatoes and carrots:

As well as the two surface entrances, the tunnels also has an access to the Clapham South Underground Station. This entrance is now bricked up, however during the war it was used to provide direct access to the station platforms for those travelling to work by underground train.

Throughout the tour, the sound of trains highlighted how close the shelters were to the tunnels of the Northern Line.

Steps leading up to the bricked up entrance to Clapham South station:

Brown staining on some of the tunnel walls provide an indication of the materials used in construction. Apparently the brown stains are from the creosote used to soak the hemp that provides waterproofing between joints in the structure.

By the time the shelters were completed, the intense bombing from the blitz period had ceased and bombing of London was much more sporadic. The shelters remained available, but were not opened. This changed during the later period of the war when the V1 and V2 weapons were targeting London.

After the war the Clapham South shelters were called on to provide accommodation to meet a number of specific needs.

Military personnel were accommodated in the shelters for large events in London, such as the 1953 coronation. Migrant workers who arrived in 1948 on the Empire Windrush, and who did not have any other accommodation, were provided with space in the shelters.

During the 1951 Festival of Britain, the shelters became the Festival Hotel and provided cheap accommodation for overseas visitors to the festival.

Some of these occupants left their mark in the shelters. Above the bunks, names can be found written on the shelter walls. Due to the dry conditions and stable temperatures of the shelters these look as if they could have been written yesterday rather than over 60 years ago:

Some are written upside down. Here, Marcel de Wael from Brussels was obviously lying on his bunk, writing his name on the shelter wall above his head:

As well as reminders of the occupants, other original signage can be found throughout the shelters:

And inside the control room, one of the boards and the outlines of alarms and indicators that would have notified the staff of any problems within the shelters:

The end of the tour and time to climb the 30 meters back to the surface:

The shelters are impressive to visit and the London Transport Museum tours are really well run and highly informative.

These tunnels were built at the height of the war and the blitz on London, mainly dug by hand and without the complex shields and tunnel boring machines that would be used today.

It was not just the shelters at Clapham South, but the other eight shelters completed around London at the same time. In addition to Clapham South, shelters were completed at Clapham Common, Clapham North, Stockwell, Goodge Street, Chancery Lane, Camden Town and Belsize Park. Tunnels were started at the Oval and St. Pauls but were abandoned at the Oval due to poor ground conditions and at St. Paul’s due to restrictions with tunnelling close to the cathedral.

A truly impressive undertaking.

The excellent Subterranea Britannica site has a wealth of detail and photos on the Clapham South Deep-Level Shelter which can be found here.

alondoninheritance.com

The Ticket Porter – Arthur Street

15 Replies

For this week’s post we are in the City of London in 1948, on the corner of Arthur Street where it joins with Upper Thames Street, close to the northern approach to London Bridge. A small part of the City that did not suffer major damage during the war just a few years earlier.

Looking up Arthur Street we can see a large pub, “The Ticket Porter”:

I stood at the same place in 2015 and looked across to a very different scene:

A building site now occupies the location of the Ticket Porter. The original pub lasted until the early 1970s and the building work on the site is for probably the third building since the destruction of the pub.

To confirm that this is the correct location, if you look at the buildings on the left of the street, the second building is still the same as when my father took the original. It is the only building on Arthur Street that has survived the last 67 years.

This photo taken from the approach road to London Bridge shows the original building and the curve of Arthur Street round to the right.

Arthur Street, by London standards, is a relatively new street and I believe it was constructed to provide a route up from Upper Thames Street to London Bridge.

The location of Arthur Street is shown in the Google Map below. The curve of the street from Upper Thames Street to King William Street providing easy access to London Bridge can be clearly seen.

Prior to the move of London Bridge to its current location, Arthur Street did not exist. The following map is an extract from John Rocque’s survey of London from 1746. I have highlighted St. Martin’s Lane with an orange line. This street once ran all the way to Upper Thames Street, however today, Arthur Street now forms the lower half of what was St. Martin’s Lane (you need to zoom in on the above Google map for the street names to appear).

Today, St. Martin’s Lane has also been abbreviated to Martin Lane.

The original London Bridge was further to the east than the current bridge, John Rocque’s map shows the bridge up against the church of St. Magnus. The London Bridge that replaced the one shown in Rocque’s map was built slightly further to the west, allowing the original bridge to continue in use until the new bridge was opened in 1831.

The following extract from Cruchley’s New Plan Of London Improved to 1835 shows the new London Bridge opened a few years earlier, with Fish Street Hill, the approach road to the original London Bridge now terminating at the river. Cutting across from St. Martin’s Lane, across King William Street to Fish Street Hill is Arthur Street.

So, Arthur Street may well have been part of the changes in the area when the new London Bridge was built, originally to provide access up to King William Street and London Bridge from the surrounding roads.

At some point after 1835, Arthur Street was changed again to terminate on King William Street and down to Upper Thames Street, cutting in half St. Martin’s Lane. I suspect this change was soon after 1835 as licensing records from the 1840s give an Arthur Street address for the Ticket Porter pub.

Having established how Arthur Street may have come into existence, what about the pub?

Although there were probably more, I have only been able to find references to two pubs called The Ticket Porter. One in Moorfields and the one in Arthur Street.

The pub takes its name from those who were employed as Ticket Porters across London. The job of a Ticket Porter was to transport and carry goods across London. Ticket Porters who worked at the riverside would be responsible for the transport of goods to and from ships whilst Ticket Porters who worked in the streets would transport goods and parcels between London locations, so if a London Bookseller wanted to deliver a parcel of books to a customer, they would call on the services of a Ticket Porter.

Ticket Porters could be identified by the pewter badge that they wore, bearing the arms of the City of London.

Hogarth includes a Ticket Porter in his drawing “Beer Street”:

©Trustees of the British Museum

In the lower right of Beer Street can be seen a man drinking from a large tankard of beer. Across his chest can be seen the badge of the Ticket Porter and below him is a tied up bundle of books which he has set down whilst getting some refreshment during his journey across London.

The role of Ticket Porter also gave the name to the drink Porter, which they consumed on benches and tables set outside many London pubs as the thousands of men employed as Ticket Porters crossed London with their loads.

Hogarth’s drawing Beer Street was published to show the virtues of drinking beer rather than Gin. His Gin Lane drawing shows the drunken state to which Gin drinkers have descended whilst Beer Street shows a healthy, working population, even with the ability (as can be seen above) to work at height on the roofs of buildings. Health and safety was not the same in the 18th century.

To add to the positive images in the drawing, the text at the bottom reads:

Beer, happy Produce of our Isle,

Can sinewy Strength impart,

And wearied with fatique and Toil,

Can chear each manly Heart,

Labour and Art upheld by Thee

Succesfully advance,

We quaff Thy balmy Juice with Glee

And Water leave to France.

Genius of Health, thy grateful Taste

Rivals the Cup of Jove,

And warms each English generous Breast

With Liberty and Love

The next time I am in a London pub I will certainly be thinking of Hogarth’s words to justify the many benefits of a few pints of beer!

Compare the virtues of Beer Street and the Ticket Porter with the depravity of Gin Street:

©Trustees of the British Museum

Gin cursed Fiend with Fury fraught,

Makes human Race a Prey,

It enters by a deadly Draught,

And steals our Life away.

Virtue and Truth driven to Despair,

It’s Rage compels to fly,

But cherishes with bullish Care,

Theft, Murder, Perjury.

Damn’d Cup! that on the Vitals preys,

That liquid Fire contains,

Which Madness to the Heart conveys,

And rolls it thro’ the Veins.

Beer drinkers did not always achieve Hogarth’s high standards. The Old Bailey records include the case of a Mr James Collins who at the age of 67 was sentenced to 5 years of “penal servitude” for unlawfully using counterfeit coin in the Ticket Porter pub.

At 7:30 on the evening of the 5th February 1870 James Collins had bought two glasses of ale and each time paid with a shilling which the barmaid (Ann Hawkins, also the daughter of the licensee of the pub) had found to be “bad”. Ann had asked for the change she had given James Collins back, when he refused she called the police and gave the bad shillings to the constable who attended.

James Collins defence in court was “I was not aware I had any bad money about me; I was very drunk.” Confirmation that the shillings were “bad” was not from any official but from a Pawnbroker from Bishopsgate Street, a Mr John Althon who confirmed to the court that both shillings were “bad”.

Hogarth would not have approved.

As ever when I am looking for the locations of my father’s photos I will take a walk around the area. I found the following on the side of The Olde Wine Shades in Martin Lane and I have no idea what is it. It looks old, and is built into a brick arch behind what looks like a layer of concrete. I could not work out the function it was meant to perform.

Another view from Martin Lane showing the location to the side of The Olde Wine Shades:

Any information as to what this is would be really appreciated.

The Ticket Porter is a long lost London pub, however it provides us with a reminder of one of the many jobs that provided employment to Londoners, and how these jobs were seen within the issues of the day as captured by Hogarth.

alondoninheritance.com

Climbing The Caledonian Park Clock Tower

16 Replies

I have long wanted to see inside the Caledonian Park Clock Tower and the Open House London weekend provided the opportunity to do so, with tours available on the Saturday, so on a warm, sunny afternoon I was in Caledonian Park ready for the climb.

Referring back to yesterday’s post, the Clock Tower from the south. The old Copenhagen House would have been just in front and to the left of the Clock Tower.

At the base of the tower are plaques recording the march in support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the original Copenhagen Fields and House.

Once inside the base of the tower, a spiral staircase provides access to the first floor:

Further up the tower, the first glimpse of the view to come from the top:

Along with the weights that drive the clock.

The clock has not been converted to an electric system, the original mechanical clock is still in place, driven by weights and needing to be wound once a week.

The weights have almost half the height of the tower to fall when the clock is fully wound to provide a reasonably long running period.

On the floor below the clock mechanism is the pendulum. Fully operational with a smooth sweep back and forth. The bottom part of the near vertical wooden steps to climb between floors can just be seen below the pendulum.

On the next floor is the clock mechanism. In place since the original construction of the Clock Tower:

One of the dials recording that the clock was constructed by John Moore & Sons of Clerkenwell in 1856. Founded in 1790, John Moore & Sons operated from Clerkenwell Close for the whole of the 19th century, finally moving to Spencer Street in 1900 where they would remain for a further 20 years, mainly as watch makers. As well as the Caledonian Park Clock Tower, mechanisms manufactured by John Moore & Sons can still be found in many churches including St. Michael, Wood Green, St. Mary the Virgin in Mortlake and Holy Trinity Church in Fareham.

There have been a few restorations of the clock in the intervening 155 years, however it is still essentially the same as when it was first installed.

Other dials record later restorations. John Smith & Sons of Derby in 1993:

On the next floor up is the mechanism that takes the single drive from the clock on the floor below and drives four rods, one to each of the four clock faces on each side of the clock tower. Unfortunately the actual mechanism was hidden within a large wooden box.

One of the clock faces. The rod running from the right drives the clock and the gearing in the middle is the reduction drive so that both the minute and hour hands can be driven from the single drive.

The final set of steps provides access to the viewing gallery around the top of the Clock Tower. Through a small doorway, facing due south and straight into the following view across the whole sweep of central London and to the hills beyond.

Canary Wharf:

The City of London:

St. Paul’s Cathedral on the western edge of the City. When the Clock Tower was originally built. the city horizon would have seemed very flat with the exception of St. Paul’s and the steeples of the City churches.

The chimney of Tate Modern:

The Shell Centre building on the south bank and the London Eye:

The walkway around the Clock Tower is not that wide and the railings around the edge did not seem very high given the height of the Clock Tower.

Moving round to the east, the Olympic Park and the ArcelorMittal Orbit:

And a bit further round, the Arsenal Emirates Stadium:

Alexandra Palace:

Looking to the south west, with the BT Tower in the centre. The area now covered by trees, the block of flats to the right and the sports pitches were all part of the Cattle Market.

The view looking down onto the park. The area occupied by the park, the football pitches and the sports complex were also part of the Cattle Market. Unfortunately I have not been able to find any photos taken from the tower whilst the market was in operation. It must have been an impressive sight on a busy market day.

Above the viewing gallery are the bells, not used having been out of action for many years.

As with the clock, the bells are original. The main bell showing 1856 as the year of manufacture:

It was about 10 to 15 minutes at the top of the tower, it went far too quickly when there was so much to take in, however It was time to climb back down through the doorway, and take one last look at London:

The Caledonian Clock Tower is a fantastic survival from the Metropolitan Cattle Market. Largely unchanged since first built and faithful to James Bunstone Bunning’s original design. It is a Grade II* listed building to recognise the important part the Clock Tower played in London’s commercial and industrial heritage. Long may it survive.

alondoninheritance.com

Caledonian Park – History, Murals And A Fire

30 Replies

Caledonian Park in north London in the Borough of Islington is today a green space in a busy part of London, with few reminders of the areas rich history.

I have much to write about Caledonian Park so I will cover in two posts this weekend. Today some historical background to the area, some lost murals and finding the location of one of my father’s photos. Tomorrow, climbing the Victorian Clock Tower at the heart of the park to see some of the most stunning views of London.

Caledonian Park is a relatively recent name. Taking its name from the nearby Caledonian Road which in turn was named after the Caledonian Asylum which was established nearby in 1815 for the “children of Scottish parents”.

Prior to the considerable expansion of London in the 19th century, the whole area consisted of open fields and went by the name of Copenhagen Fields. There was also a Copenhagen House located within the area of the current park.

The origin of the Copenhagen name is probably down to the use of the house (or possibly the construction of the house) by the Danish Ambassador for use as a rural retreat from the City of London during the Great Plague of 1665.

Copenhagen House became an Inn during the early part of the 18th century and the fields were used for sport, recreation and occasionally as an assembly point for demonstrations, or as Edward Walford described in Old and New London, the fields were “the resort of Cockney lovers, Cockney sportsmen and Cockney agitators”

The following print shows Copenhagen House from the south east in 1783, still a very rural location.

©Trustees of the British Museum

During the last part of the 18th century, Copenhagen Fields was often used as a meeting point for many of the anti-government demonstrations of the time. Old and New London by Walter Thornbury has a description of these meetings:

“In the early days of the French Revolution, when the Tories trembled with fear and rage, the fields near Copenhagen House were the scene of those meetings of the London Corresponding Society, which so alarmed the Government. The most threatening of these was held on October 26, 1795, when Thelwall, and other sympathisers with France and liberty, addressed 40,000, and threw out hints that the mob should surround Westminster on the 29th, when the King would go to the House. The hint was attended to, and on that day the King was shot at, but escaped unhurt.”

The meetings and threats from groups such as the Corresponding Societies led to the Combination Acts of 1799 which legislated against the gathering of men for a common purpose. It was this repression that also contributed to the Cato Street Conspiracy covered in my post which can be found here.

The following is a satirical print from 1795 by James Gillray of a meeting on Copenhagen Fields “summoned by the London Corresponding Society” which was “attended by more than a hundred thousand persons”.

©Trustees of the British Museum

Copenhagen Fields continued to be used for gatherings. In April 1834 there was a meeting in support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who had been sentenced to transportation to Australia for forming a trade union. Walter Thornbury provides the following description: “an immense number of persons of the trades’ unions assembled in the Fields, to form part of a procession of 40,000 men to Whitehall to present an address to his Majesty, signed by 260,000 unionists on behalf of their colleagues who had been convicted at Dorchester for administering illegal oaths”.

The final large meeting to be held in Copenhagen Fields was in 1851 in support of an exiled Hungarian revolutionary leader. The role of this rural location was about to change very dramatically.

Smithfield in the city was originally London’s main cattle market however during the first half of the 19th century the volume of animals passing through the market and the associated activities such as the slaughter houses were getting unmanageable in such a densely populated part of central London.

The City of London Corporation settled on Copenhagen Fields as the appropriate location for London’s main cattle market and purchased Copenhagen House and the surrounding fields in 1852. The site was ideal as it was still mainly open space, close enough to London, and near to a number of the new railway routes into north London.

Copenhagen House was demolished and the construction of the new market, designed by the Corporation of London Architect, James Bunstone Bunning was swiftly underway, opening on the 13th June 1855.

A ground penetrating radar survey of the area commissioned by Islington Council in 2014 identified the location of Copenhagen House as (when viewed from the park to the south of the Clock Tower) just in front and to the left of the Clock Tower.

The sheer scale of the new market was impressive. In total covering seventy five acres and built at a cost of £500,000. There were 13,000 feet of railings to which the larger animals could be tied and 1,800 pens for up to 35,000 sheep.

Market days were Mondays and Thursdays for cattle, sheep and pigs, and Fridays for horses, donkeys and goats. The largest market of the year was held just before Christmas. In the last Christmas market at Smithfield in 1854, the number of animals at the market was 6,100. At the first Christmas market at the new location, numbers had grown to 7,000 and by 1863 had reached 10,300.

The following Aerofilms photo from 1931 shows the scale of the market. The clock tower at the centre of the market is also at the centre of the photo with the central market square along with peripheral buildings in the surrounding streets.

The 1930 edition of Bartholomew’s Handy Reference Atlas of London shows the location and size of the market:

As well as the cattle market, the construction included essential infrastructure to support those working and visiting the market. Four large public houses were built, one on each of the corners of the central square. The following Aerofilms photo from 1928, shows three of the pubs at corners of the main square. The two large buildings to the left of the photo are hotels, also constructed as part of the market facilities

The clock tower is located in the middle, at the base of the clock tower are the branch offices of several banks, railway companies, telegraph companies along with a number of shops.

A 19th century drawing shows the clock tower and the long sheds that covered much of the market:

By the time of the First World War, the cattle market had started to decline and was finally closed in 1939 at the start of the Second World War, with the site then being used by the army.

After the war, the slaughter houses around the market continued to be used up until 1964, when the London County Council and the Borough of Islington purchased the site ready for redevelopment. The Market Housing Estate was built on much of the site, although by the 1980s the physical condition of the estate had started to decline significantly, and the estate had a growing problem with drugs and prostitution. Housing blocks were built up close to the clock tower and there was limited green space with many concrete paved areas surrounding the housing blocks and the clock tower.

A second redevelopment of the area was planned and planning permission granted in 2005. The last of the Market Estate housing blocks was demolished in 2010 and it this latest development which occupies much of the area today.

In 1982 a number of murals illustrating the history of the market were painted on the ground floor exterior of the main Clock Tower building of the original Market Estate. In 1986 my father took some photos of the murals during a walk round Islington. As far as I know, these murals were lost during the later redevelopment of the area.

The introductory mural providing some history of the market:

A scene showing the opening of the market by Prince Albert in 1855. A lavishly decorated marquee hosted a thousand invited guests to mark the opening of the market.

The central clock tower painted on the Clock Tower building of the housing estate:

Other scenes from around the market:

As well as the photos of the murals, almost 40 years earlier in 1948 my father had taken a photo of the aftermath of a fire. I was unsure where this was and I published the photo below a few weeks ago in my post on mystery locations.

One of the messages I had in response to this post (my thanks to Tom Miler), was that the building at the back of the photo looked like one of the pubs at the Caledonian Market.

I took a walk around the periphery of the site trying to work out which of the streets and pubs could be the location of my father’s photo and found the following:

This, I am sure, is the location of my father’s photo. The street is Shearling Way running along the eastern edge of Caledonian Park. I probably should have been a bit further back to take the photo, however the rest of the road was closed and full of cars unloading students into the student accommodation that now occupies the southern end of Shearling Way – an indication of how much the area has changed.

The pub is hidden behind the tree, although it is in the same position and the chimneys are clearly the same and in the right position. The old yards and sheds that had burnt down on the right of the original photo have been replaced by housing.

I was really pleased to find the location of this photo, it is one I thought I would not be able to place in modern day London.

This Aerofilms photo from 1948 shows the pub from the above photo at the top left of the main market square with the road running up to the right. Above the road is the area that was the scene of the fire.

This is another photo of the scene of the fire and the housing in the background can also be seen in the above Aerofilms photo, further confirming the location.

Walking down the street I took the following photo of the pub, the front of the pub has the same features as on the 1948 photo.

The pub was The Lamb, unfortunately, as with the other pubs on the corners of the old cattle market, it is now closed.

To the left of the first half of the street, adjacent to the park, the original market railings are still in place:

A short time after the opening of the Cattle Market, a general or flea market had become established alongside. This market grew considerably and was generally known as the Cally Market, a place where almost anything could be found for sale. By the start of the 20th century, the size of the Cally Market had outgrown the original Cattle Market.

The journalist and author H.V. Morton visited the market for his newspaper articles on London and later consolidated in his book “London” (published in 1925) and wrote the following:

“When I walked into this remarkable once a week junk fair I was deeply touched to think that any living person could need many of the things displayed for sale. For all round me, lying on sacking, were the driftwood and wreckage of a thousand lives: door knobs, perambulators in extremis, bicycle wheels, bell wire, bed knobs, old clothes, awful pictures, broken mirrors, unromantic china goods, gaping false teeth, screws, nuts, bolts and vague pieces of rusty iron, whose mission in life, or whose part and portion of a whole, Time had obliterated.”

The Cally Market was also used during both the first and second world wars for major fund raising events. This poster from the first world war:

Along with the murals, my father took a photo of the Clock Tower in 1986. The original housing blocks that reached up to the clock tower can be seen on either side. The clock tower is surrounded by concrete paving.

This is the same scene in 2015 from roughly the same point (although I should have been more to the left). The old housing blocks have been demolished and the clock tower is now surrounded by green space.

Looking at the above photo, the wooden steps that provide the route up inside the Clock Tower can be seen through the two windows.

Join me for tomorrow’s post as I climb the tower to the viewing gallery at the top for some of the best views across London.

alondoninheritance.com

The Cornhill Water Pump

5 Replies

The City of London appears to be changing by the day with construction sites on every corner, however there are still some locations that have changed remarkably little over the past 70 plus years. This week’s post is about one such location, centred on the Cornhill Water Pump.

Cornhill is one of the streets that meet at the major road junction adjacent to the Bank of England. Originally the location of the north wall of the first Roman settlement, and later at about the centre of the city as Roman London developed from the original settlement.

My father took the following photo of the Cornhill Water Pump in 1948:

This is the view of the pump from the same location, 67 years later in 2015:

I will come on to the history of the pump, but what did surprise me as I was taking the photo is how little has changed. Not just the stonework of the buildings opposite (which have been cleaned in the intervening years), but also the windows, the large lamps either side of the door on the right and the stone decoration on both buildings. The man standing on the right of the 1948 photo could stand in the same position today and (apart from the traffic and the post box) see little change.

The building on the right of the photo was occupied by the Commercial Union Assurance Company, and to the right of this (just out of the photo) is the building originally built for Lloyds Bank.

During construction of the Lloyds Bank building in 1927, the roadway in Cornhill collapsed, with the result that part of the original Commercial Union building also collapsed. The damage was so bad that the Commercial Union building had to be rebuilt. It was completed in 1929 and it is that building we see today.

The collapse of the roadway was put down to the loose condition of the soil due to the Walbrook stream having once flowed across this part of the City down to the Thames.

The following photo from August 1927 shows the collapse of the roadway. It was taken from the main Bank junction looking down Cornhill. The Royal Exchange building is on the left. Note the tripod crane structure occupying the whole of the road at the approximate position of the water pump.

The pump has been restored a couple of times since 1948, the last restoration was a few years ago, when the stone water trough between the pump and the road was also removed. The pump provides some historical background:

The well was discovered much enlarged and this pump erected in the year 1799 by the contributions of the Bank of England, the East India Company, the neighbouring Fire Offices together with the bankers and traders of the Ward of Cornhill

The view of the pump from the pavement. A real shame that it is also used as a prop for traffic signs.

The road facing side of the pump provides an indication of the antiquity of the site:

On this spot a well was first made and a house of correction built thereon by Henry Wallis, Mayor of London in the year 1282

Sir Walter Besant writing in “London – The City” in 1910 refers to the origin of the pump, using the original spelling of the mayor, Henry Wallis: “A conduit built by Henry le Waleys in 1282, and there was a standard for Thames water brought their by the contrivance of one Peter Morris, a Dutchman.”

Besant also refers to several conduits and a spring in the area of Cornhill, but it is not clear whether he is referring to the location of the pump. There were many pumps and wells sunk all over the City, typically shallow and reaching a depth of 30 feet. They would have about 14 foot of water in the winter reducing to 3 foot in the summer.

At some point, the well was covered, as the rediscovery in 1799 was caused by “a sinking of the pavement in front of the Royal Exchange, March 16, 1799” according to Springs, Streams and Spas of London by Alfred Foord. This book was published in 1910 and contains a detailed account of the many water sources across London. It also features the Cornhill pump on the front cover:

Writing in 1910 Foord also states that “The well and pump have been disused for some years past; the water which fills the trough, so much enjoyed by the many horses of passing vehicles, being derived from the New River Company’s mains. The iron case of the pump remains, but deprived of handle and spout. The whole structure would be much better for a coat of paint, which would not only improve its appearance, but would also tend to arrest decay.”

I am sure that 105 years later, Foord would be very pleased with the condition of the pump today.

Continuing the theme of public water supplies, a short distance away from the water pump is a large and ornate drinking fountain:

This was erected in 1911 and unveiled by the then Lord Mayor of London, Sir T. Vezey Strong on the 3rd May 1911. It replaced an earlier drinking fountain from 1859.

The current fountain was built to commemorate the jubilee of the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.

The association, originally called just the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Association, (the Cattle Trough reference was added in 1867 to highlight the need to provide water for the many animals still on the streets of London), were responsible for the provision of a large number of drinking fountains across London. Another survival can be found at the north end of Blackfriars Bridge (see my post which can be found here)

The fountain today, like the pump, is just decorative without a supply of water and therefore unable to fulfil the intended function, however they are both a reminder of the many water fountains, wells, pumps and conduits that helped provide water to the inhabitants of London over the centuries.

The sources I used to research this post are:

London by George Cunningham published in 1927
Springs, Streams And Spas Of London by Alfred Stanley Foord published in 1910
The Face Of London by Harold Clunn published in 1932

alondoninheritance.com

Hole In The Wall Passage And The Cato Street Conspiracy

17 Replies

London always surprises, I thought the search for this location would be simple, but I found a lost passageway and a 19th century plot to murder the government of the country.

This is one of the photos my father took across London just after the last war showing one of the many locations devastated by bombing.

Finding this location should have been easy, the photo provides the name and the borough, however I could not find Hole In The Wall Passage on any of my maps from either before or after the last war.

I found one of the few references to the location of Hole In The Wall Passage in “A Topographical Dictionary of London And Its Environs”, by James Elmes published in 1831:

“Hole in the Wall Passage or Alley, Leather Lane, is about 12 houses on the left hand in Baldwin’s Gardens going from Leather Lane.”

There was also a pub called the Hole In The Wall at 21 Baldwin Gardens during the 18th and 19th centuries. Was the pub named after the passage or the passage named after the pub?

The only reference I can find to Hole In The Wall Passage being shown on a map is from the National Archives where there is a document from the 26th February 1955 covering the following legislation:

Rights of Way: Stopping up of Highways (London) (No. 13) Order, 1955; Statutory Instrument 1955, No. 352; Location: Hole-in-the-Wall Passage, Baldwin’s Place and Verulam Street in the Metropolitan Borough of Holborn in the County of London

which covered the complete closure, or partial stopping up of a number of public spaces in the area. This confirms when Hole In The Wall Passage finally disappeared. Unfortunately, the National Archives record has not been digitised, so it will have to wait for a visit when hopefully I will finally see a map with Hope In The Wall Passage marked.

Despite the fact that Hole In The Wall Passage had almost certainly disappeared, I still wanted to see the location to check if there was any remaining indication that it had been there. I walked down Baldwin’s Gardens from Grays Inn Road only to find the road blocked and rebuilding taking place where Hole In The Wall Passage would have been located.

Hole In The Wall Passage would have been roughly where the middle of the new steel work is located.

Looking back at my father’s original photo, I believe the photo was taken on Hole in The Wall Passage looking towards Baldwin’s Gardens. The mounting of the sign looks temporary and it may have been placed across the passageway to mark the original location. The name sign looks as if it has suffered some damage and may have been the original wall mounted sign.

If you look back at the original photo, you can just see some flats in the background. These are still there. I took the following photo through the fencing surrounding a primary school playground from Baldwin’s Gardens:

I walked down to Dorrington Street which would have been the other end of Hole In The Wall Passage through Leigh Place. This is also a narrow alley and gives an indication of what Hole In The Wall Passage may have looked like:

One of the other references I found for Hole in the Wall Passage was in “London” by George H. Cunningham, published in 1927, which provided a rather sinister reference to the passageway:

“It was here in 1820 that the Cato Street conspiracy was formed to kill Wellington, Canning, Eldon and other Cabinet Ministers. The arms and powder were kept here.”

So what was the Cato Street conspiracy and what part did Hole In The Wall Passage play?

The later part of the 18th century and early part of the 19th century was a time of considerable change in the country. The industrial revolution was now well underway, the Napoleonic wars had finished, people were moving from the countryside to the towns, there was inflation and food shortages.

In the last decade of the 18th century there were riots and destruction of some of the new industrial infrastructure with the government’s response being the Combination Act of 1799 which outlawed the gathering of working men for common purpose. This was followed by the rise of the Luddite movement which started in 1811 and violently put down with show trials and harsh penalties in 1813.

One of the London radicals who protested against the conditions being imposed by government was Arthur Thislewood, and it was Thislewood who led the Cato Street conspirators, so named after their meeting place prior to their attempt to murder many members of the government.

Thislewood had intelligence that the Cabinet were meeting at Lord Harrowby’s home in Grosvenor Square. The plan was to burst into the meeting, murder the Cabinet members, behead them and then parade their heads on spikes through London.

Among the group of almost thirty conspirators there was a spy who passed on details of Thistlewood’s plan. A contingent of police later supported by soldiers stormed the conspirators meeting place in Cato Street, resulting in the arrest of the majority, including one named Tidd who lived in Hole In the Wall Passage.

From “An Authentic History Of The Cato Street Conspiracy” by George Theodore Wilkinson published soon after the trial of the conspirators in 1820:

“The following account of Richard Tidd was given about the period of his arrest. He was about 50 years of age, and lived with his wife and family in a small and miserable dwelling in Hole-in-the-Wall Passage, leading from Baldwin’s Gardens to Dorrington Street. His family consisted of one daughter and two orphan children, whom he had taken under his care.

He had been esteemed among his neighbours, and those who had employed him in his trade, as an industrious sober man, and an excellent workman. He had earned by his own hands forty shillings a week, and very often a greater sum. During the whole course of his life, he was never known to neglect his work, or become inebriated; but with the last week he had been in a drunken state and his family had been at a lost to account for the extraordinary change in his conduct.

On Wednesday night, three men came to Tidd whilst in such a state of drunkenness as scarcely to be able to keep his legs, and forced him away, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties and remonstrances of his wife and family. Nothing was said by the men who took him away, as to their object either to the wife or any one in the house; and during the whole night, and the greater part of the next day, they were in total ignorance of the circumstances since disclosed, and were at a loss to account for the absence of Tidd. In the morning (Thursday), between seven and eight o’clock, two men came to the house, laden with a box of considerable size, and, putting It down on the floor said “they would call in a few minutes for it.” The men refused to answer the interrogatories put to them as to their object in leaving the box, and only repeated, that they would call in a short time, and take it away. Very soon afterwards, two more men came with a large bundle of sticks, some of them of the thickness of a man’s wrist. these were left in a similar manner, and the men also refused to answer any questions, saying only, that they would call again for them in a few minutes. ten minutes had not elapsed before two police-officers entered the house and seized the box and sticks. When opened , the box was discovered to contain a great number of pike-heads, sharpened ready for use. The sticks were also seized, and carried away by the officers. It would appear, from this statement that Tidd was taken by the three men whom we have described to the stable in Cato Street, where he was subsequently apprehended, and carried to Bow Street, together with several others.”

So that is the connection between the Hole In the Wall Passage and the Cato Street Conspiracy.

The book on the Cato Street Conspiracy is a wonderfully dramatic account of the event, the title page gives an indication of what is to come:

The opening paragraphs sets the scene:

“On the morning of Thursday the 24th of February 1820, the metropolis was thrown into the greatest consternation and alarm, by the intelligence, that, in the course of the preceding evening, a most atrocious plot to overturn the government of the country, had been discovered, but which, by the prompt measures directed by the privy council, who remained sitting the greatest part of night, had been happily destroyed by the arrest and dispersion of the conspirators. Before day-light the following proclamation was placarded in all the leading places in and about London ;-

LONDON GAZETTE EXTRAORDINARY

Thursday, February 24, 1820

Whereas Artuhur Thistlewood stands charged with high treason, and also the wilful murder of Richard Smithers, a reward of One Thousand Pounds is hereby offered to any person or persons who shall discover or apprehend, the said Arthur Thistlewood, to be paid by the lords commissioners of his majesty’s treasury; upon his being apprehended and lodged in any of his Majesty’s gaols. And all persons are hereby cautioned upon their allegiance not to receive or harbour the said Arthur Thistlewood, as any person offending herein will be thereby guilty of high treason. “

Later in the book there is an account of the storming of the assembly place of the conspirators in Cato Street:

“The officers, with a resolution and courage which does them honour, considering the desperation and determination of these characters immediately ascended the ladder without securing the persons below. They merely gave directions to those who followed, to keep them secure, and they thought that would be enough, without actually confining them. The first man who went up was a person of the name of Ruthven, he was followed by a man named Ellis: after who came a man named Smithers, who met his death by the hand of Thistlewood.

On Smithers ascending the ladder, either Ings or Davidson hallooed out from below, as a signal for them to be on their guard above, and upon Ruthven ascending the ladder, Thistlewood, who was at a little distance from the landing place, and who was distinctly seen, for there were several lights in the place, receded a few paces, and the police-officers announced who they were, and demanded a surrender. Smithers unfortunately pressed forward in the direction in which Thistlewood had retreated, into one of the small rooms over the coach-house, when Thistlewood drew back his arm, in which there was a sword, and made a thrust at the unfortunate man, Smithers, who received a wound near his heart, and, with only time to exclaim, “Oh God !” he fell a lifeless corpse into the arms of Ellis. Ellis seeing this blow given by Thistlewood, immediately discharged a pistol at him, which missed its aim. Great confusion followed, the lights were struck out; the officers were forced down the ladder, which was so precipitous, being almost perpendicular, that they fell, and many of the party followed them.

Thistlewood, among the rest, came down the ladder; and not satisfied with the blood of one person, he shot at another of the officers as he came down the ladder, and pressed through the stable, cutting at all who attempted to oppose him, and made his escape out into John Street, the military not having yet arrived; and he was seen no more at that time, except with a sword in his hand in the Edgware Road. By the other persons an equally desperate resistance was made.

Conscious of the evil purpose for which they had assembled, they waited not to know on what charge they were about to be apprehended; but instantly made a most desperate resistance. Ings, Davidson and Wilson were particularly desperate, each, I believe, firing at some of the officers or military, who had only come to the ground on hearing the report of the fire-arms and not having been previously directed to the exact spot.

Not withstanding the resistance, however, which they so desperately made, and in which resistance Thistlewood, Tidd, Davidson, Ings and Wilson took a most active part, by attacking the officers and solders, the whole of the conspirators were, at length, fortunately overcome, and eventually eleven of them secured. Not on that night, however, for three out of the eleven for the time escaped, namely Thistlewood, Brunt, and Harrison. The officers, however not only secured on that night the eight men, but various articles of fire-arms, numerous weapons, and certain combustibles.”

The point where the officers storm the meeting place of the conspirators in Cato Street is captured in the following drawing:

The building where the conspirators met and these events took place in Cato Street is still there, now with a blue plaque recording the event:

Cato Street is still a narrow street with entrances at each end through buildings. The entrance to Cato Street from Crawford Place.

The penalty for each of the conspirators was very severe, probably to be expected given their intentions, however I was very surprised that this form of execution was still available in 1820. Again, from the account:

“That you, and each of you, be taken from hence to the gaol from whence you came, and from thence that you will be drawn upon a hurdle to a place of execution, and be there hanged by the neck until you be dead; and that afterwards your heads shall be severed from your bodies, and your bodies shall be divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as his majesty sees fit. And may God of his infinite goodness have mercy on your souls !

The prisoners were then removed from the bar; some of them, particularly Thistlewood, Brunt and Davidson, appearing to be wholly unconcerned at the awful sentence which had been passed upon them, and the whole of them evincing great firmness and resignation.

Tidd complained of the immense weight of his irons.”

The executions was carried out shortly after the trial although some of the sentences were changed.

Only Thistlewood, Brunt, Davidson and Tidd were to be executed, the rest of the conspirators had their death sentence commuted to transportation for life.

The death sentence was also changed so that the part which directed that their bodies be quartered was now removed. The book of the conspiracy provides a detailed account of the executions. Given that my search for the Cato Street Conspiracy started with Tidd, who “lived with his wife and family in a small and miserable dwelling in Hole-in-the-Wall Passage” we can follow his last hour:

“Tidd, who had stood in silence, was now summoned to the scaffold. He shook hands with all but Davidson, who had separated himself from the rest.

Ings again seized Tidd’s hand at the moment he was going out, and exclaimed, with a burst of laughter “Give us your hand, Good-bye !”

A tear stood in Tidd’s eye, and his lips involuntarily muttered, “My wife and –!” Ings proceeded – “Come my old cock-o-wax, keep up your spirits it will be over soon.

Tidd immediately squeezed his hand, and ran towards the stars leading to the scaffold. In his hurry, his foot caught the bottom step, and he stumbled. He recovered himself, however, in an instant, and rushed upon the scaffold, where he was immediately received with three cheers from the crowd, in which he made a slight effort to join.

The applause was evidently occasioned by the bold and fearless manner in which the wretched man advanced to his station. He turned to the crowd who were upon Snow Hill, and bowed to them. He then looked down upon the coffins and smiled, and turning round to the people who were collected in the Old Bailey towards Ludgate Hill bowed to them. Several voices were again heard, and some in the crowed expressed their admiration of Tidd’s conduct.

The rope having been put round his neck, he told the executioner that the knot would be better on the right than the left side, and that the pain of dying might be diminished by the change. he then assisted the executioner, and turned round his head several times for the purpose of fitting the rope to his neck. He afterwards familiarly nodded to some one whom he recognised at a window, with an air of cheerfulness. He also desired that the cap might not be put over his eyes, but said nothing more. He likewise had an orange in his hand, which he continued to suck most heartily. He soon became perfectly calm, and remained so till the last moment of his life.”

Mr Richard Tidd of Hole In The Wall Passage. Drawn at the time of his trial:

I wonder what happened to the family that Tidd left behind? How did they survive and did they still continue living in Hole In The Wall Passage?

I really did not expect to find such a story when I first started researching the location of my father’s original photo. Hole In The Wall Passage has left no trace, but fortunately we can still follow the story of one of the inhabitants.

The sources I used to research this post are:

London by George Cunningham published in 1927
A Topographical Dictionary Of London And Its Environs by James Elmes published in 1831
An Authentic History Of The Cato Street Conspiracy by George Theodore Wilkinson

alondoninheritance.com

London Maps

13 Replies

To help research London’s history, I have a collection of London maps, built up from when my father purchased his first map of London in 1941, along with collecting maps issued to mark special events in the city over the years.

Maps provide not only street plans, they also show how the city has developed, what is important at the time and how the approach to map-making has changed over the centuries.

As well as being functional, many London maps are also a work of art, with some fantastic design being used to also make the map a pleasure to look at and use.

I also find it fascinating to take some of these old maps out when walking London, to try and follow the streets on these maps, to understand the changes and the London we see today.

For this week’s post, I present a sample of the maps I use which I hope you will find of interest.

If you click on any of the following maps on the blog, a much larger version of the map should open.

My first map is a reproduction of the 16th century map of London by Ralph Agas, included in the 1904 book “London In The Time Of The Tudors” by Sir Walter Besant.

The Agas map is the most comprehensive map of London in Tudor times, drawn probably between 1553 and 1559 when the population of London was not more than 100,000. The map is rich in detail and shows a city still bounded by the city walls with mainly fields beyond. There is a single bridge over the Thames leading to the south of the river which was a place of entertainment.

To the west of the city the Fleet River extends a considerable way in land with the Fleet Bridge at the bottom of Ludgate and further upstream a Holburne Bridge over the Fleet.

Although named the Ralph Agas map, there is no certainty that he was the artist who drew the map. Agas was a map-maker, originally from Suffolk where he was also a land-surveyor. Born in the mid 16th century he died in 1621. The period of his birth also being around or slightly before the assumed period when the map was drawn would also argue against Agas being responsible.

Despite the uncertainty of who created the map, it is a superbly detailed view of London from a time when London had yet to expand in any degree beyond the original city walls.

The next map is the Ogilby and Morgan map from 1676. My copy is again from Sir William Besant, but this time from “London In The Time Of The Stuarts”.

This map shows in considerable detail the city rebuilt after the Great Fire which had occurred 10 years earlier. The section shown above is centred on Spittlefields with the Old Artillery Garden to the left below which is Petticoat Lane. The wide street running from bottom to top starts off as Bishops Gate Street Without, then becomes Northern Folgate (note the difference in name from Norton Folgate as it is now), and then becomes Shore Ditch.

John Ogilby was born in 1600, originally from Scotland he moved to London and had an unusual career, first as a dancer, then running a dance school, a theatre and a publisher in Whitefriars which was lost during the Great Fire. It was at the age of 69 that his short career as a map-maker started, although he died in 1676, just before the map was published.

Ogilby worked with William Morgan who drew each house and garden on the map. It is this level of detail which makes the map so interesting.

In the late 17th Century Richard Blome produced a series of maps of the City Wards. These were published with the 1720 edition of John Stows Survey of London. My example below is Tower Street Ward.

Originally published in black and white, many examples were later hand coloured. They provide a detailed view of each individual ward as it appeared at the end of the 17th century.

In the map above, the Customs House is lower right with Billingsgate Dock to the lower left. The church of St. Dunstan’s is to the centre left and Allhallows Barking to the centre right with the Navy Office to the top right.

It is fascinating to walk around the London Wards with these maps, trace the outlines of the wards and see how much remains from the time they were drawn.

A series of Ward maps were also drawn for William Maitland’s History of London published in 1756. My following example is the map of Cordwainer Ward.

Drawn by Benjamin Cole who was an engraver working near Snow Hill. As well as providing a detailed street map, Cole’s maps are also illustrated with pictures of important buildings within the wards (mainly churches) along with the Coat of Arms of prominent inhabitants.

We now move forward to a series of maps published between 1744 and 1746 by John Rocque which covered a very wide area of London, including much that was still mainly agricultural.

Two examples from John Rocque’s map. The first shows London north of London Wall, the street running left to right along the lower part of the following map.

Above London Wall are the Lower and Upper Walks of Moore Fields, with to the left of the Upper Fields is the New Artillery Garden which contains ranks of Artillery Men and Tents.

John Roque was of Huguenot ancestry. He lived in Soho where he practised his career as a surveyor. For the time, his map of London was a massive undertaking. It was not just drawing the streets and ground plans of the buildings, but measuring these as accurately as possible.

The streets were measured with chains or with a surveyor’s wheel, an instrument which can still be seen in use today and consists of a wheel of known circumference on the end of a handle. The distance walked is simply the number of turns of the wheel multiplied by the circumference.

Roque also used a theodolite to measure the angles of street corners (again an instrument still in use today).

The map took nine years to complete and was partly funded by Hogarth.

The following extract shows St. Paul’s Cathedral with to the left the Fleet still running up past Ludgate at the Fleet Bridge, although the name in Roque’s map has now been relegated to Fleet Ditch rather than river. A sign of the decreasing importance of this waterway and that it was probably considered a nuisance rather than an asset to the city.

My next map is from the 19th century and is Cruchley’s New Plan Of London Improved to 1835 and shows the advance of London to the east. The extract shows the Isle of Dogs.

This was at a time when much of East London, north east of Limehouse was unbuilt. The two West India Docks had been built and below these are shown the proposed Collier Docks which was probably a mistake for Cruchley to include as these did not get built, the South Dock and Millwall Dock being constructed instead.

The Lea River is to the top right with Westham Abbey Marsh alongside (note also the “marsh land” just above the East India Dock) which gives an indication of the condition of the land in this area at the time.

The next map comes from the atlas which, although not that old, is my personal favourite. This is Bartholomew’s Reference Atlas of Greater London, this edition published in 1940. It is my favourite as this is the one my father purchased during the war from Foyles in Charing Cross Road. He was about 13 when he got hold of this copy and he had to get a neighbour who was in the Home Guard to purchase the atlas as only those in uniform could purchase maps.

I use the Bartholomew’s Atlas as a reference to compare London as it was just before the last war with the redevelopment after. Significant bomb damage, along with future reconstruction resulted in the loss of many streets. In the above extract, the area between St. Paul’s and Newgate Street (consisting of the area around Paternoster Row and Square) was obliterated by bombing, mainly the fires created by incendiary bombs on the 29th December 1940. These streets were not rebuilt and a whole historic area was lost.

Along with street maps, there are also many maps for special events that have taken place across London. The following map is of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924. A work of art as well as a map, created by Kennedy North in 1923.

As well as providing a plan of the exhibition, the map also shows Motor Bus and Rail routes to the Exhibition, with a ring of stations centred (stations and lines which would form the Circle Line) around Nelson’s Column, described as “The Heart Of The Empire”

The next map shows the locations across London for the 1951 Festival of Britain.

As well as the main site on the South Bank, the map also includes;

– the Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea

– the Exhibitions of Science and Books at Kensington

– the Exhibition of Architecture at Poplar

A functional map, but also with some artistic design with the flags showing the location of the festival sites, the colours, and the border extending around the plan of the South Bank site.

Maps were also produced for many of the major ceremonial events during the first half of the 20th century. The following map was produced jointly by the London Transport Executive and the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for the Coronation of Elizabeth II on Tuesday 2nd June 1953.

The map shows the route of the royal procession, bus and coach routes, entry to viewing points, which stations are open all day and which will be closed until after the procession, or closed all day etc.

The colour coded Processional Route has individual boxes at the bottom of the map to show the best way to get to that part of the procession.

The other side of the map contains detailed written instructions and advise for travelling in London, a map of the London Underground and details of interchange stations.

The map was issued free and shows the degree of planning that went into the event.

I always pick up new editions of the London Underground maps, but in the past there have been maps showing other forms of transport across the city. The following is the Trolleybus and Tram Map of London issued in 1940 by London Transport.

A detailed map showing Trolleybus and Tram routes across central London and also out into the suburbs, also showing Underground and Mainline Rail Stations.

The reverse of the map has a timetable including details of all night trams and trolleybuses.

This is one of my father’s maps and when going through his map collection the following ticket fell out:

His ticket from the Last Tram Week in July 1952. (See the photos he took of the event here).

London is constantly changing and maps provide a snapshot of the city at a point in time. They show how London has expanded out from the original walled city, they show the significant development of the London Docks, they show how transport has been provided across the city and they show how London has marked significant events.

It will be interesting to see how long paper maps continue to be published with the growth in on-line mapping and the easy availability of a map on a smart phone. Whilst they are, I will continue to collect them to keep a record of a changing city.

alondoninheritance.com

London Streets In The 1980s – Part 2

6 Replies

Back in May I published a number of photos we took showing London streets in the 1980s. Judging by the number of page views they were very popular (and can be found here), so for this week’s post, please join me in another walk along the streets of London in 1986.

We will start in East London.

In the mid 1980s, London still had very many independent corner shops selling a wide variety of goods from premises that had not really changed for many years. This is Fowlers Stores in Old Ford Road, off Cambridge Heath Road between Bethnal Green Underground and Cambridge Heath Overground stations.

A general stores in Fordham Street, one of the many side streets between Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road.

Corner shop in Parfett Street, again one of the side streets between Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road.

Hessel Street at the junction with Commercial Road. The wall advertising has long gone and the café has been replaced by the Shalamar Kebab House.

Not sure the exact location, but a side street off Commercial Road.

There was always plenty of colourful graffiti to be found whilst walking round East London in the 1980s.

I like this one as it was obviously important to get the spelling correct:

Back in 1986 Rupert Murdoch was well on his way in building up his reputation as a controversial character. This was the time of the printers strike when News International had built a new printing plant in Wapping and started the move of newspaper publishing out of Fleet Street.

A quick hop across the river to Deptford. Graffiti on the side of a house in Grinstead Road:

Now back to Bethnal Green and the railway arches leading out of Liverpool Street Station, doing what railway arches always seem to do and host car maintenance businesses.

Railway arches alongside Three Colts Lane, Bethnal Green:

This is G.J. Chapman, located at 10 Penton Street, just off the Pentonville Road. The type of general hardware store that had an early morning and evening custom of moving many of their goods for sale out and then back into the shop. Closed I beleive about 20 years ago and now replaced by flats.

Another corner store.

Despite the very poor condition of the building that is home to the Boleyn Pet Stores, the building is still there. Fully repaired although the pet shop has long gone and the last time I passed was a café. The location is on the corner of Bradbury Street and Boleyn Road, Dalston.

Cannot remember where this was, but typical 1980s posters.

Street sign advertising the butchers….

…. and a café. There were many of this type of pavement advertising. I included a number in my previous 1980s street photos post.

The Nobody Inn. A pub in Mildmay Road, Islington. Last time I walked past it was a completely refurbished pub and restaurant with a new name.

An upholstery business on the corner of Alfearn Road and Millfields Road, between Clapton and Hackney. Established 1950, but no longer there.

Allen Road, Stoke Newington / Newington Green. You would not find a scrap metal dealer on this road now, although the building is still there.

Florists in Dalston.

Butchers:

French’s Dairy in Rugby Street, Holborn. The plaque on the wall states that in the rear is the White Conduit (circa 1300), originally part of the water supply to the Greyfriars Monastery in Newgate Street.

The dairy has gone, but the plaque and building are still there.

Whittington Park, Islington.

An old shop front, brightly painted for a furniture business which seems to have gone out of business.

Many of the buildings featured above are still there, but they now provide a very different function and the days of the individual general store, pet shop, dairy etc. are now mostly long gone or disappearing fast as the process of gentrification moves from one London street to the next.

Whilst the streets of London are now in a much better state of repair, they are loosing much of their individuality and colour (but I still enjoy walking them !).

alondoninheritance.com

A 1943 View Of A Redeveloped London

10 Replies

In 1943, although the end of the last war was still two years away, the thoughts of the London County Council were focussed on the post war reconstruction of the city.

London had yet to suffer the barrage of V1 and V2 weapons, but in 1943 the London County Council published the County of London Plan, a far reaching set of proposals for the post-war development of the city.

I find the many plans for London that have been published fascinating to read. They show the challenges of trying to forecast the needs of a city such as London for decades to come. They provide a snapshot of the city at the time, and they demonstrate that time after time, development of London has reverted to ad-hoc rather than grandiose, city wide schemes.

In the forward to the plan, Lord Latham the Leader of the London County Council wrote:

“This is a plan for London. A plan for one of the greatest cities the world has ever known; for the capital of an Empire; for the meeting place of a Commonwealth of Nations. Those who study the Plan may be critical, but they cannot be indifferent.

Our London has much that is lovely and gracious. I do not know that any city can rival its parks and gardens, its squares and terraces. but year by year as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries grew more and more absorbed in first gaining and then holding material prosperity, these spaces were over-laid, and a tide of mean, ugly, unplanned building rose in every London borough and flooded outward over the fields of Middlesex, Surrey, Essex, Kent.

Athens was the glory of Greece, Rome the great capital of a great Empire, a magnet to all travellers. Paris holds the hearts of civilised people all over the world. Russia is passionately proud of Moscow and Leningrad; but the name we have for London is the Great Wen.

It need not be so. Had our seventeenth century forefathers had the faith to follow Wren, not just the history of London, but perhaps the history of the world might have been different.

Faith, however was wanting. It must not be wanting again – no more in our civic, than in our national life. We can have the London we want; the London that people will come from the four corners of the world to see; if only we determine that we will have it; and that no weakness or indifference shall prevent it.”

The 1943 plan provides plenty of detailed analysis of London at the time, with some graphical presentation using techniques I have not seen in any earlier London planning documents.

The following diagram from the report provides a Social and Functional Analysis of London. This divides London into individual communities, identifies the main functions of the central areas, shows town halls, man shopping centres and open spaces.

The City is surrounded by an area of “Mixed General Business and Industry”. Press (Fleet Street) and Law (the Royal Courts of Justice) provide the main interface between the City and the West End, which also contains the University and Government areas of the city.

The darker brown communities are those with a higher proportion of obsolescent properties. (click on any of the following maps to enlarge)

The plan placed considerable importance on community structure within London:

“The social group structure of London is of the utmost importance in the life of the capital. Community grouping helps in no small measure towards the inculcation of local pride, it facilitates control and organisation, and is the means of resolving what would otherwise be interminable aggregations of housing. London is too big to be regarded as a single unit. If approached in this way its problems appear overwhelming and almost insoluble.

The proposal is to emphasise the identity of the existing communities, to increase their degree of segregation, and where necessary to reorganise them as separate and definite entities. The aim would be to provide each community with its own schools, public buildings, shops, open spaces etc. At the same time care would be taken to ensure segregation of the communities was not taken far enough to endanger the sense of interdependence on the adjoining communities or on London as a whole.”

The following map shows a more traditional view of the Communities and Open Spaces within the Greater London area.

The plan identifies a number of issues that divide communities, chief among them the way that railways, mainly on the south of the river have divided local communities with railway viaducts acting as a wall between parts of the same community.

The plan used the following photo of the railway viaducts on the approach to Cannon Street Station and down to Waterloo to illustrate the impact. The report, as with a number of other proposals for the post war development of London, placed considerable importance on moving the over ground railways into tunnels to remove viaducts, bring communities together and to remove rail bridges, such as the one shown leading into Cannon Street Station, from across the Thames.

The Southbank 2

The first sentence in the section on Roads is remarkable, remember this was written in 1943, not 2015:

“The need for improved traffic facilities in and around London has become so acute, that unless drastic measures are taken to relieve a large number of the thoroughfares, crossings and junctions of their present congestion, there will be a grave danger that the whole traffic system, will, before long, be slowed to an intolerable degree.”

The plan also emphasises the dangers resulting from traffic on London roads with in 1937 a total of 57,718 accidents in the Greater London area that involved personal injury.

At the time of planning, the ratio of cars to population was one to twenty two. The plan expects a considerable increase in car usage after the war, stating that the war has “made a vast number of people for the first time mechanically minded, and has given a great impetus to the production of motor vehicles.”

Parking this number of cars was also expected to be a problem. The plan includes the provision of underground car parks and that legislation should be passed that enforces the provision of car parking facilities for all buildings of a certain size.

A new ring road was planned for fast moving traffic. This is shown as the B Ring Road in the following map. Circling the central area of London and with a tunnel under the Thames running from the Isle of Dogs to Deptford. Roads radiating out from the B Ring Road would allow traffic circulating around London to quickly leave to, or arrive from the rest of the country.

The plan also identifies the “cumulative effect of street furniture on the appearance of London and on the convenience of pedestrians and vehicular traffic is very considerable” and recommends the formation of a Panel to provide a degree of control over street furniture, with a preference for embellishing streets with tree-planting and green-swards. With the level of street furniture on the streets today, perhaps a Panel to control this would have been a good outcome.

The provision of more open space was seen as a key component of the future development of London with the standardised provision of space for Londoners.

At the time the plan was written there was a considerable variation in the amount of open space available to Londoners in different boroughs, for example the inhabitants of Woolwich benefited from the availability of 6 acres per 1,000 inhabitants, whilst for those of Shoreditch the amount of open space available was 0.1 acres per 1,000 inhabitants.

The provision of 4 acres of open space for every 1,000 inhabitants across London was adopted as a key strategy for future development.

Examples of how open space could be made available to the public included the use of Holland Park, the grounds of the Hurlingham Club and the Bishops Palace Grounds in Fulham.

Indeed at Hurlingham, after the war, the London County Council made a compulsory purchase of the polo grounds to build the Hurlingham Park recreation grounds, along with the Sullivan Court flats and a school, leaving the Hurlingham Club with the 42 acres retained today.

The plan also states that “The difficulty of finding alternative housing accommodation for people displaced when open spaces are provided in built up areas, has been partly removed through the destruction of many houses by bombing.” I am not sure what the view of those who had lost their homes through bombing would have been, that there was a plan to replace their homes with open space.

The following Open Space Plan shows the proposed new public open space in dark green:

The 1943 plan presents a fascinating view of the industrialisation of London.

The East End of London and the London Docks were well known industrial areas, however every London borough had a significant amount of factories and industrial employment. The report includes a summary of industry for every London borough. I have shown a sample below to indicate the range of factory numbers, employment levels and types of industry across some of the London boroughs.

Borough	Principal industries according to numbers employed	Size of Factories	Factory numbers in 1938	Factory employees in 1938
Bermondsey	Food, engineering, and chemicals, including tanneries	Each of the principal industries has a large number of factories	711	31,058
Bethnal Green	Furniture and clothing	Furniture factories very small, clothing small with a few large premises	1,746	15,945
Finsbury	Clothing, printing and engineering, though appreciable numbers are employed in all other industries	Mostly medium to small, though each industry has a number of large factories and the average size if bigger than in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch or Stepney	2,523	66,556
Islington	Engineering, clothing, furniture and miscellaneous (principally builders’ yards, cardboard boxes and laundries)	Mostly small, though engineering, furniture and miscellaneous each has a number of medium sized factories	1,998	35,649
Stepney	Clothing, food (including breweries and tobacco) and engineering	Mostly small (especially clothing) but each industry has a number of large factories	3,270	58,073
Westminster	Clothing, printing and engineering, though appreciable numbers are employed in all other industries	Mostly small (especially clothing), but each industry has several large factories	4,414	46,528

The plan identifies a trend of decentralisation which had already being happening for a number of decades with the gradual migration of industry from central to outer London and also identifies the improvement in transport facilities as enabling industry to move away from the main residential areas.

Even in 1943 the report identifies the importance of the new industrial estates at Slough, Park Royal, along the Great West Road etc. as the future home for more of London’s industry.

What the plan does not identify is how the Docks would change over the coming decades. The expectation was that the London Docks would continue to provide a key role in both London and the Nation’s global trade.

The following map shows the proposed approach for how industry would be located across the Greater London area. Note the concentration of industrial areas around the Docks and along the Thames.

In addition to planning at the Greater London level, the 1943 report also focussed on a number of specific areas that had suffered extensive bomb damage and were therefore important redevelopment locations.

An example is the redevelopment of Bermondsey. The following plan shows the proposed post-war reconstruction of Bermondsey:

The plan for Bermondsey illustrates how the 1943 plan proposed:

replacing the long runs of railway viaducts with underground rail tunnels thereby avoiding the way the viaducts divided communities
a considerable increase in the amount of public open space
wide through roads to carry traffic efficiently across London
reduced housing density

How far these plans were actually implemented after the war can be judged by comparison with the following 2015 map of Bermondsey. The railway viaducts still remain, cutting across the borough, and the street layout remains largely unchanged. Southward Park provides a large amount of open space, however there is not the amount proposed in 1943 and the large park planned to run adjacent to the Old Kent Road was not constructed.

Another focus for significant redevelopment was the South Bank. Starting from Westminster Bridge and County Hall at the right of the following picture, the plans consisted of:

a Youth centre to the left of County Hall
a new road bridge across the Thames leading to Charing Cross to replace the rail bridge after the railways had been diverted underground
a Theatre between Charing Cross and Waterloo Bridges (which did get built in the form of the Royal Festival Hall)
Government offices running to…..
a new bridge – Temple Bridge – across the Thames from the South Bank to Temple Station, in exactly the same place as the proposed Garden Bridge
offices then running to Blackfriars Bridge
followed by office and flats leading up to a landscaped area around Southwark Cathedral
with public gardens running the length of the Thames embankment

When reading the plan I was really surprised to find that in 1943 there were proposals for a bridge across the river at Temple. Although this would have been more functional than the proposed Garden Bridge, it would still have blocked some of the view from Waterloo Bridge and the South Bank across to St. Paul’s and the City.

The following picture is an artist impression from the 1943 report of the proposed new Charing Cross road bridge:

The 1943 report places considerable importance on the need for housing after the war, claiming that “Of the many aspects of London’s future in so far as replanning is concerned, that of housing must claim first attention.” and that “The provision of new housing accommodation will be a most urgent task to be tackled immediately after the war.” Some things do not change, although in 1943 the plans for housing in central London were very much the provision of affordable housing for Londoners rather than the endless development of luxury apartments we see today.

The 1943 plan proposes a comprehensive housing plan to address the need to improve the housing conditions for Londoners as well as providing the number needed.

The following photo from the 1943 plan shows some of the building commenced prior to the war. This is the White City Housing Estate, Hammersmith. Construction started in 1936 and was suspended in 1939. The plan states that when work recommences, the estate will cover an area of 52 acres and comprise 49, 5 storey blocks with accommodation for 11,000 people.

The White City Stadium can be seen on the left of the photo. Completed in 1908 for the Summer Olympics of the same year, the stadium was demolished in 1985 following which the BBC occupied the site. The BBC are now gradually vacating the site so it will be interesting to see what happens with this significant site in the future. (There is plaque on one of the BBC White City buildings at the point of the finishing line of the 1908 track)

The 1943 plan recommends the development of housing estates and uses the Roehampton Cottage Estate in Wandsworth as an example of the type of estate that should be built, including the preservation of trees which “adds greatly to the attractive lay-out”

The 1943 plan also makes recommendations for greater architectural control and uses the following view of Oxford Street as an example of “the chaos of individual and uncoordinated street development”

The plan recommends “that Panels of architects and planners might be set up to assist the planning authority in the application of a control for street design, similar to those already in operation in other countries, notably in America and Scandinavia. Cornice and first floor levels, as well as the facing materials used, should be more strictly controlled so as to give a sense of continuity and orderliness to the street”.

The 1943 plan is a fascinating read, not only covering London at the time, but also how London could be today if these plans had of been adopted in full. I have only been able to scratch the surface of the report in this week’s post.

Reading the plan it is clear that some issues do not change, for example housing and traffic congestion.

The plan also highlights the difficulty in planning for the future. There is only a very limited reference to “Aerodromes”, beginning with “All the portents indicate that, after the war, there will be a very considerable expansion in air transport for passengers and, perhaps, for freight. Any plan for the future of London must have close regard for these eventualities.”

The plan does seem to rule out the construction of a large airport within the central London area as this would be “inimical to the interests and comfort of large sections of the population to embark on a scheme of this kind” The post war development of Heathrow was not considered in 1943.

In many ways I am pleased that many of the plans for the large scale redevelopment proposed in the 1943 plan did not take place. As with Wren’s plans for the City after the Great Fire, London tends to avoid large scale planning and seems to evolve in a haphazard manner which contributes much to the attraction of the city, although I feel that this is now under threat with the rows of identical towers that seem to be London’s future.

alondoninheritance.com

Mystery Locations

67 Replies

Firstly, a really big thank you to everyone who identified the majority of the sites in this post. The feedback as comments or on Twitter has been fantastic. I have updated the post with details of the location. These are in italics to separate out from my original post. You will see I made one big mistake by assuming a location was in London!

The main theme of my blog is to track down the locations of photos taken by my father across London in the late 1940s and early 1950s, photograph the scenes as they are now, and in the process learn more of London’s history. The majority I have been able to identify and I still have to visit the location as it is today for a large number, however there are also many mystery locations that I have not been able to identify.

Although living in Camden, he took photos across London cycling through the city with his camera.

Many of the photos are easy to identify, my father either wrote the location on the back of a printed copy, the scene is recognisable, or there is a street name, pub name etc. within the photo.

Some I have been able to find through accident. I carry the photos on an iPad whilst walking London and occasionally I have recognised a street scene and am able to check with the copy on the iPad.

However there are a number I cannot place and for this week’s article I am publishing some of these in the hope that a reader may be able to help identify the location or event.

So, to start, the following photo just has “a temporary café on a bomb site” written on the back but unfortunately no further details. I am not exactly sure what the vehicle used to be. It looks to have been something that would have run on rails, but appears to have normal tyres. I like the three wheeler bike with the milk churn, either used for collection or perhaps a delivery service.

The above photo is the corner of Greenfield Road and Commercial Road, E1. Whilst the view in the immediate foreground is now completely different, the buildings along Commercial Road on the right are much the same.

I suspect the following photo was taken in East London, possibly around the Docks judging by other photos on the same strip of negatives. It appears to have been taken from underneath a railway arch. There is a pub on the right, but the grain of the film does not allow the name to be read when zooming in.

Probably all these buildings were demolished over the last 60 years with only the railway arch remaining.

The above view just does not exist anymore. The whole street has disappeared and has now been replaced by a rather desolate view of buildings surrounded by high security fencing. This is Hardinge Street, E1, looking north from under the railway arches.

This photo also appears to have been taken around the Docks and I am sure I recognise the bridge from walking round the area but cannot place the location. Again there is a pub in the distance but the grain of the film does not allow the name to be read.

The above photo I should of known. I knew I had seen the bridge but could not place the location. The pub at the end is the Prospect of Whitby and the photo is looking along Glamis Road. The bridge is over part of the Shadwell Basin. The pub and bridge are still there but the surrounding area has changed considerably.

And again somewhere around the Docks. Given how straight the channel is I suspect it may be the Limehouse Cut, but from limited walking in the area I have not been able to place the photo. I need to walk the area again, however I suspect the buildings have also long gone.

And now for my big mistake. After the war, as well as photographing London, my father took lots of photos around the UK and Holland during cycling trips and National Service. The above photo was on the end of a strip of negatives with photos of East London so I wrongly assumed this was the same area, however it was taken in Chester. Must have been the last photo on the roll of film. See this link, there is a photo towards the end of the page showing almost the same view.

Now three photos of an event I cannot place. Judging from other photos on the same strip of negatives this was either 1949 or 1950. The girl in the background looking at the photographer would probably now be in her early 70s.

The following three photos could be the Pioneer Run from London to Brighton for pre 1915 motorcycles. the event had a Westminster start but the buildings could be around County Hall on the south of the river.

It seems to have been the start of some form of motorbike race. I thought the building in the background could have been the Ministry of Defence building on the Embankment, but on checking the style of the windows, it would appear not.

Same event, but a different building in the background.

This photo appears to show the aftermath of a fire, but I have no idea where. Hoses are still scattered across the street and there appears to be much destruction beyond the wall.

What I like about this photo is the group of boys by the wall in the centre of the photo, also one having climbed to the top of the wall. This fits in with the stories my father told me about being a boy in London during the war and the freedom to explore bomb sites, collect shrapnel, remains of incendiary bombs etc. There were no real restrictions on where you could go and London was an open book to explore.

The following two photos could be around the Caledonian Market estate in Islington, with the building in the background being one of the pubs on the corner of the market.

The scene through the gate of what must have been a really bad fire. Note the man on the right, standing on the roof of his outbuildings surveying the scene.

This photo probably has a cleared bomb site on the left. I wish I could read what was on the signs around the site. It is photos like this that bring home what a grey and desolate place many areas of London must have seemed just after the war. Reconstruction had not started, reminders of wartime damage were still very much in evidence and day to day life was still tough.

Some limited reconstruction had started and this photo shows the framework of a new building, almost certainly on a bomb site which extends into the foreground of the photo. It would be fascinating to know if this building is still there. From other photos on the same strip of negatives I suspect it may be in Holborn.

The following photo was taken looking across towards Harpur Street. The construction work is for new flats which are still there. It is not possible to reproduce the view due to new building, however the following Google Street View shows the flats today and the original buildings along Harpur Street to the right.

Back to another event I cannot place. It must be in one of London’s parks but I cannot identify either the location or the event.

The following photos could be of the Van Horse Parade or the Cart Horse Parade, held in Battersea Park on Easter Monday. The parades merged into the London Harness Horse Parade and although still held on Easter Monday’s, the parade has now moved to Ardingly, West Sussex.

It seemed to be an event with all forms of horse drawn vehicles from the simple…..

….to the more comfortable, but I have no idea of the location or event.

Many photos show streets and alleys which have probably long since been demolished, despite that with some modernisation of facilities they could still be perfectly good homes. I always try to avoid romanticising the past, living conditions and life in general for so many Londoners was very tough but this style of street and home looks far better than many that have been built since.

An empty building, probably through bomb damage, awaiting demolition. The far right of the building with the Union Jack still looks occupied. There were so many buildings like this across London in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Awaiting their fate, but some inhabitants still clinging on.

And finally an unknown street scene. Other photos on the same strip of negatives were taken in Campden Hill Road, Kensington, however I have been unable to locate this street.

The above photo is Tryon Street, off the Kings Road in Chelsea. Still very much the same.

When starting out on this project, I had the probably very unrealistic target to locate all the photos and visit and photograph the current location, learn about the area and understand what aspect of the scene interested my father to photograph these locations.

Although I am making reasonably good progress, any help with the photos shown above would be very gratefully received.

alondoninheritance.com

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Clapham South Deep-Level Shelter

The Ticket Porter – Arthur Street

Climbing The Caledonian Park Clock Tower

Caledonian Park – History, Murals And A Fire

The Cornhill Water Pump

Hole In The Wall Passage And The Cato Street Conspiracy

London Maps

London Streets In The 1980s – Part 2

A 1943 View Of A Redeveloped London

Mystery Locations

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: