Wells, Somerset – A Cathedral, Water and Swans

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In August 1953, my father was cycling / youth hosteling around Somerset, as part of his post National Service trips with friends around the country. One of the places visited was the City of Wells in Somerset, and this is his photo of Wells Cathedral:

Seventy years later, and the view is the same:

Apart from the loss of a couple of chimneys to the right of the Cathedral, the view has not changed, not really surprising given the age of the building and its significance. The only feature that will confirm the top photo dates from 1953 are the clothes worn by the people at the very bottom of the photo.

There are a couple of minor changes and restorations to the façade. For example, in 1953, some of the niches at the top of the central part of the façade were empty. Today, there is a statue and carved objects in these niches:

Wells is a smallish town in Somerset, not that far to the north of Glastonbury. The town’s status as a City dates back to the medieval period and the importance of the Cathedral. This was formally recognised in 1974 when Queen Elizabeth II confirmed city status on Wells.

Evidence of a Roman settlement at Wells illustrates the long history of the place, and the name provides a clue as to why people would want to settle here, and why the city has such a significant Cathedral.

Wells takes its name from wells that can still be found, wells that seem to provide an almost continuous flow of large amounts of water, and water makes it presence known across the city, including along the High Street and the Market Place where channels of water flow between the road and the pavement:

The Market Place today is today mainly lined with shops and cafes targeting visitors, however there were a large number of locals in the cafes during our visit. The Market Place, with the towers of the Cathedral in the background, does look like the dream location for a tourism advert, but it has not always been so peaceful.

After the Monmouth Rebellion, in 1685, Judge Jeffreys held what were known as the Bloody Assizes in the Market Place and condemned 94 people to death for supporting the Monmouth rebellion. Judge Jeffreys would later be found hiding in Wapping, where he was recognised by someone who had the misfortune to come up before him. See this post for the story.

Even if you have not been to Wells, you may find some of the places in the city familiar. Wells was the location for many of the exterior scenes of the film Hot Fuzz by Edgar Wright (who grew up in Wells) and Simon Pegg.

The Cathedral was digitally removed from the film, but many other locations are recognisable, including the pub, the Crown at Wells (or Sandford as the town was named in the film):

View looking back along the Market Place, close to the entrance to the Cathedral. The board in front of the bin advertises both a Heritage Walk and a Hot Fuzz Location Walk:

There may have been some form of religious establishment on the site of the Cathedral before the first known church to be built close to the current site when around the year 705, Ine, the Saxon King of Wessex built a Minster.

The first documented reference to the Minister dates from 766 when the Minster was recorded as being near the “Great Spring of Wells”, highlighting that the wells have always been a focal point for having both the church and a settlement here.

Wells prospered due to its surrounding agricultural land, the wells, and the growing importance of the church, and in the year 909, Wells became the centre of a new Somerset diocese.

Wells has long had a religious relationship with Bath, and in 1088, King William Rufus granted the estates to Bishop John of Tours, who relocated to Bath, and the church at Wells ceased to be a Cathedral.

Wells was still an important church, and in 1175, construction of the new church commenced. Work on the church continued for the next few centuries, resulting in the magnificent building we see today.

Whilst the front of the church, seen in my father’s and my photos, is really impressive, in the Medieval period it would have been even more so, as it was brightly painted, and some small remaining traces of paint have been found in niches among the statues.

The interior of the Cathedral would also have been brightly painted, however over the years it was painted over, whitewashed, and any remaining traces of paint were lost in the 1840s when the building was vigorously cleaned.

Of the statues on the front of the church, three hundred of what were around 400 of the original medieval statues survive.

The interior of the Cathedral is magnificent, and at the end of the nave there is a scissor shaped structure:

The scissor arches were built between 1338 and 1348 to provide additional support to a high tower and spire that had been built above the Cathedral in 1313.

The weight of the tower caused large cracks to appear in the tower structure, and the scissor arches were the innovative solution to provide additional support.

Dating from around 1390, the Cathedral has what is believed to be the second oldest working clock in the world. The mechanism was replaced in the 19th century, however the dial is the original from the 14th century. The original mechanism is now on display in the Science Museum.

Above the clock face there is a turret, where every quarter hour, jousting knights appear and circle the turret. The same figure of the jousting knight has been knocked down for over 600 years.

To the right of the clock, and high up on the wall, is a figure, dressed in Stuart costume, that strikes the bell at every quarter:

Steps leading up to the Chapter House:

At the top of the stairs is the entrance to the Chapter House, which has a remarkable roof, consisting of thirty two ribs or tiercerons (which give the name of tierceron vault to the structure), which spring from the central pillar:

The Chapter House was completed in 1306, and provided a place for the governing body of the Cathedral (called the Chapter), to meet.

Above each of the seats around the edge of the room are brass plaques which name the “Prebend” which was the farm or estate from where the income came to fund the “Prebendaries” who were the priests who were part of the Chapter.

The Chapter House did have stained glass, however it is believed that these were smashed by Cromwell’s soldiers during the English Civil War.

Interior of the Chapter House:

Wells Cathedral organ:

Seating for the choir, with covered seats at the rear for Cathedral officials:

Wooden door within the Cathedral:

I could not find a date for the door, however the decoration is impressive. The decorative ironwork gives the impression of plants growing across the door:

Many of the floors within the Cathedral would have once been covered with colourful floor tiles, however today, only the following small patch of medieval floor tiles remain:

The Lady Chapel:

The Lady Chapel was ransacked during the English Civil War, when many of the Puritan soldiers thought that the decoration and stained glass of the Lady Chapel was still adhering to the Catholic faith.

In the Cathedral gardens:

There are a number of wells and springs surrounding the Cathedral, and in the following photo I am looking down into one of these in the Cathedral gardens. The sound of running water rises from the darkness of the entrance:

The Bishop’s Palace was the next place in Wells to find the location of one of my father’s photos.

This is the entrance to the Bishop’s Palace, across a moat that surrounds much of the palace:

This is my father’s photo from 1953 showing the moat, a couple of swans and part of the surrounding wall / gatehouse, in which there is an open window:

The open window is the point of interest, as zooming in on this, it is just possible to see a bell mounted on the wall, and a rope hanging down to just above the level of the water:

Swans pulling the bell at Bishop's Palace

The bell is still there today, although in a slightly different position, and the rope had been taken inside the window.

There is a tradition with the swans at wells, which is believed to date back to the 1850s, when a Bishop’s daughter taught the swans to ring the bell for food.

The swans still ring the bell for food, however to stop them doing it at random times throughout the day, the rope hanging from the bell is tucked into the window, until the time for feeding.

Once through the gatehouse, we can see the Bishop’s Palace. The Chapel in the centre, and the walls of the ruined Great Hall on the right:

And what must be one of the most tourist friendly scenes – croquet on the lawn of the Bishop’s Palace, with Wells Cathedral in the background:

Inside the Chapel of the Bishop’s Palace. The Chapel was built between 1275 and 1292 for Bishop Burnell who was Lord Chancellor for Edward I. The Chapel has been used by the Bishop of Bath and Wells for many centuries.

Interior of the Bishop’s Palace:

In the gardens of the Bishop’s Palace, between the palace and the cathedral, we find the main evidence of the wells and springs that gave the city its name and led to the original religious establishment.

The wells and the streams running from the wells have been enclosed, with large gardens around the main wells. Originally, water would have risen from the ground here, and flowed away through a number of streams and marshy land.

There are five large springs that rise through the artificial pond seen in the photos above and below. Four of these springs rise through the sand and gravel at the bottom of the pond. The fifth source of water is at the far end of the pond in the above photo, and is water that is piped from wells beneath the lawns close to the cathedral.

In the photo below is the spring that was once called the Bottomless Well, due to the assumed depth of the well. It has been partly filled and lined with gravel, to prevent the flow of water from undercutting the stone walls of the pond.

The features where the water rises up through the ground at the bottom of the pond are known locally as “pots”, and after periods of heavy rain, the surface can be seen to bubble with the flow of the rising water.

The waters that rise through the ground in Wells originate across the southern side of the Mendip Hills, to the north and east of Wells.

A story of farmers in a hamlet to the east of Wells throwing waste chaff from their corn threshing, into a swallet hole, where a stream sinks into limestone, with the chaff reappearing at the springs in Wells was one of the first demonstrations of where the water was coming from, a distance of three miles.

Later tracing activities would identify eight or nine underground streams that were feeding the springs, with the time taken to travel underground dependent on the amount of rain that had fallen.

An experiment with one of the more remote swallets demonstrated that water would normally take 24 hours to reach Wells, however at times of drought it could take up to a week or more.

When dye has been used to trace the flow of water, the concentration of dye is the same at any of the springs in Wells, from any of the sources of water. This proves that the water from the remote swallets, where streams disappear below the surface, is carried to Wells along a single underground river, where it then rises to form a number of springs.

As the underground river rises in height, it breaks through the surface at different places to form the “pots” where it rises up from the limestone, through marl and finally through the gravel just below the surface.

The average daily output of the springs is about 4 million gallons. This can fluctuate between 40 million gallons after periods of high rainfall and flood, down to 1 million gallons during a drought.

Water is drawn of from the pond through an underground tunnel and a separate sluice, that both feed water into the moat around the Bishops Palace.

Some of the water from the springs is used to feed the streams running along the gutters of the High Street, as seen in one of the photos earlier in the post.

Whilst the springs and water from the springs rose in the land owned by the Bishop, in 1451, Bishop Beckington built a well house and laid lead pipes from the well house into the Market Place to provide water for the inhabitants of Wells.

The 15th century well house in the foreground of the following photo, surrounded by plants:

Part of the moat surrounding the Bishops Palace, with the cathedral in the background:

The above scene creates the impression of a smooth and calm flow of water, however there have been times when the level of rainfall has created some very dramatic conditions at Wells, such as this description of the springs from 1937, when “a torrent bursting up and even heaping sand above its level, making in gardens gaping holes out of which water gushes, at times leaping into the air, overflowing lawns and, with impetuous torrent, doing its best to sap ancient foundations”.

The closest part of the cathedral to the ponds and springs is the Lady Chapel, and there has been concern over the years that the amount of water in the springs after periods of high rainfall, could damage the buildings and undermine the structure.

Pipes take water from the springs closet to the cathedral away to the ponds, but at times in the past, water has been seen to erupt through the lawns.

On a sunny and warn late spring day, the gardens are glorious and the constant presence of water provides a connection with the geology below the ground and the water flowing in from the surrounding countryside.

There was one last place that I wanted to visit, and to find it, we walked to the side of the Cathedral, where there is another clock:

The clock on the exterior of the Cathedral is driven by the same mechanism as drives the clock inside the Cathedral. This clock is believed to have been added around the 14th and 15th centuries, but has been restored a number of times since.

Not far from the clock is Vicars Close, dating from 1348, it is believed to be the oldest, mainly original, medieval residential street in Europe:

The houses were originally built to accommodate vicars, however since the 1660s, some of the houses have been leased out to other residents.

At the end of the street (see above photo), is a chapel. The Chapel, as well as a number of the houses are now used by Wells Cathedral School.

All the houses are Grade I listed.

View from the chapel end of the street, looking back to the Cathedral:

Wells is a really fascinating place to visit. I wish my father had taken more photos of the place in 1953, however the cost and limitations of film at the time, as well as how much could be carried on a bike probably limited the number.

What I like about Wells is it reminds us that towns were usually built at a location due to what was there at the time. Wells was built at this site because of the springs / wells that gave the place its name. Wells that are only there due to the unique geology of this part of Somerset.

You may also be interested in my visit to nearby Glastonbury, which can be found here.

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Paternoster Square – Destruction and Development

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The area to the north of St. Paul’s Cathedral was destroyed during the war, mainly due to the use of incendiary bombs on the night of the 29th of December 1940. The destruction covered ancient streets such as Paternoster Row and Paternoster Square, and the shells of buildings were demolished and removed leaving a wide open space ready for new development.

The site was redeveloped during the 1960s, with the pre-war streets and original architectural styles being ignored, with an office complex built which followed a number of post war City planning themes which I will come on to later in the post.

The 1960s development was not popular, obstructed key views of the cathedral and tended to separate the cathedral from the area to the north. The buildings were not that well maintained and by the late 1980s the area was not an attractive place to work, or walk through, and did nothing to enhance the cathedral just to the south.

In the early 1990s, a proposed Masterplan was published by “Masterplanners” Terry Farrell, Thomas Beeby and John Simpson & Partners, and Design Architects Robert Adam, Paul Gibson, Allan Greenberg, Demetri Porphyrious and Quinlan Terry.

I have a copy of the Masterplan and it is fascinating to compare the original proposals with the site we see today. Not quite so architecturally ornate as the Masterplan, but very similar to what was originally proposed, and (in my view) a significant improvement on the 1960s development.

The following image is from the Masterplan and shows a “View of Paternoster Square looking south-east to the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral”. The image is by Edwin Venn.

As with City developments such as the Barbican and Golden Lane estates, the damage inflicted on the City during the last war created the large area of space which could take a major, transforming development, rather than the simple rebuild of individual buildings.

The following photo is one of my father’s, taken from the Stone Gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral:

The shell of a building at the bottom left is the Chapter House of the Cathedral.

The circular features between what was Paternoster Square and the remains of the Chapter House are the outline of water tanks that were placed on site during the war to provide supplies of water for firefighting.

The following extract from Bartholomew’s 1940 Reference Atlas of Greater London shows the area to the north of the cathedral. In the map, a Paternoster Square can be seen. In the above photo, this is the rectangular feature at top left, with roads on all sides, but not a building in sight.

Map of pre-war St Paul's and Paternoster Row

As well as Paternoster Square, the map shows a network of streets such as Ivy Lane, Three Tuns Passage, Lovells Court and Queens Head Passage.

Running across the area was Paternoster Row, and the following photo from the book, the Queen’s London, published in 1896, shows the view along Paternoster Row, a narrow street but with substantial 19th century City office buildings on either side.

In the following photo, the dense network of streets and buildings to the north of the cathedral can be seen:

Another of my father’s views from the Stone Gallery, looking slightly above the earlier photo, with a bus running along Newgate Street. The Paternoster Square developments would occupy the area to the south of Newgate Street.

The same view today, showing the buildings of the Paternoster Square development:

The area, and street names are of some considerable age. The first written records of the streets date from the 14th century, with Paternosterstrete in 1312 and Paternosterrowe in 1349.

From the early 19th century onwards, the area was home to many publishers, stationers and book sellers. Much of the stock held by these businesses contributed to the fires started on the 29th of December 1940.

Harben’s Dictionary of London references a Richard Russell dwelling there in 1374 and described as a “paternosterer”, and that paternosterers were turners of beads, and gave the street its name.

Harben also states that “A stone wall was found under this street at a depth of 18 feet running towards the centre of St. Paul’s. A few yards from this wall in the direction of St. Martin’s-le-Grand wooden piles were found covered with planks at a depth of 20 feet”, and that under Paternoster Square, “Remains of Roman pavements and tiles were found in 1884”.

W.F. Grimes’ book, about his post war excavations across the City, “The Excavation of Roman and Mediaeval London” records his limited excavations across the area in 1961 to 1962, and that much of the Paternoster area “was not available for examination because the cellars had retained their bomb rubble and the sites around Paternoster Square had become a garage and car parks.”

In the limited excavations that did take place, Grimes found evidence of ditches and post holes, possibly where the wooden piles were found in the 19th century. He concludes that the area was probably occupied by timber framed buildings rather than stone.

The main discovery on the site was a hoard of about 530 coins, “mainly barbarous copies of coins of the Gallic Empire of the late third century A.D.”

The limited excavation took place prior to the 1960s development of the site. This create a dense cluster of office blocks between the cathedral and Newgate Street, which can be seen in the following photo, to the right of the cathedral:

The 1960s development of the site was based on the plans by architect and planner Lord Holford who was commissioned by the City Corporation to advise them on architectural policy, and the development of buildings within the “orbit of the dome of St. Paul’s”.

Lord Holford’s plan for the site followed post-war thinking about the City’s redevelopment. This included the separation of traffic and pedestrians, with vehicles having priority at ground level, and pedestrians moved to elevated walkways.

The original street plans were rejected in favour of a rigid matrix of building blocks, which resulted in a horizontal slab of blocks with the 18-storey office tower Sudbury House being the highest.

Lord Holford’s explanation of his approach to the design of the site was that “there is more to be gained by contrast in design, than from attempts at harmony of scale or character of spacing” (I think this is the design approach used for the current developments between Vauxhall and Battersea Power Station).

Not all of Holford’s ideas were implemented, and many of the buildings were by other architects, so the new development ended up as a rather uninspiring addition to the land north of the cathedral.

The following photo shows the 1960s office block immediately to the right of the old St. Paul’s Chapter House:

In the following photo, the Chapter House is the older building in dark brick behind the tree, and the new lighter red brick building to the right occupied the site of the 1960s office block seen in the above photo:

The following photo shows one of the access ramps that took pedestrians up to the pedestrian area. To the right is the lower vehicle route, with access to car parking:

I may be completely wrong, but I vaguely remember there being a pub on the upper pedestrian area, which had an outside area with a view over the surrounding streets.

The 1960s development took no regard of the views of the cathedral just to the south.

This is the view to the northern entrance to the cathedral, with only a small part visible through a tunnel that takes a pedestrian walkway through an office block:

In the Masterplan, the proposed redevelopment delivers this alternative view of the same part of the cathedral:

And whilst the buildings are less ornate than originally proposed, the view today is much the same as in the Masterplan, also with a café, on the site of the walkway:

The caption to the following illustration reads “St. Paul’s Church Yard will be re-aligned and the Cathedral gardens re-laid and enclosed”:

The gardens were re-laid and enclosed, and new office blocks occupied the space to the north, and whilst these were very different to the 1960s versions, they were not quite as ornate as the Masterplan envisaged:

The objectives of the Masterplan were to:

Restore views of St. Paul’s Cathedral from Paternoster Square at ground level and on the skyline, respecting St. Paul’s Heights and Strategic Views
To create buildings that are in harmony with St. Paul’s Cathedral
To restore the traditional alignment of St. Paul’s Church Yard and the Cathedral Gardens creating an enhanced public space
To re-establish a traditional street pattern and return pedestrian routes into the site to ground level
To create a new, traffic-free, public open space allowing ease of access, especially for the disabled
To follow the City tradition of classical architecture, using traditional materials such as stone, brick, tile, slate and copper
To be flexible enough for key corners, outside the Planning Application site to be integrated at a later date
To create a thriving new business community in the best traditions of City life
To create a much-needed, new shopping area in the heart of the City, with a variety of shops, restaurants and entertainment, linked into St. Paul’s Underground Station
To create new open public spaces for relaxation and enjoyment by office workers, visitors and shoppers alike

It is interesting to compare the development today with these objectives.

There was an intention to follow the City tradition of classical architecture, and this could be seen in the illustrations of the planned buildings, such as the following example showing “the frontage of the new buildings on Newgate Street”:

The frontage along Newgate Street today is comprised of standard office block design, without the classical architecture proposed in the Masterplan.

The title of the following illustration is “A Meeting Place – Paternoster Square will provide a social focus for the City, a place to meet friends and colleagues, to browse or to use the health club”:

This approach can be seen across the Paternoster Square development, but in less ornate settings. Whilst the buildings do not have the same classical architectural styling, they do make use of stone, and there is a considerable amount of brick throughout the site which is a pleasant change from the glass and steel of many other recent City developments:

Whereas today, Paternoster Square is at a single level, in the Masterplan it was intended that there would be steps leading down to a Lower Court, so whilst the plan did away with the upper pedestrian and lower vehicle levels of the 1960s development, it did retain different levels, but for pedestrians. The Lower Court:

The plan was that Paternoster Row would become almost a continuation of Cheapside.

Cheapside was, and to an extent still is, the main shopping space of the City, and the One New Change development has enhanced this, but in the Masterplan, shopping would continue from Cheapside, across the road into Paternoster Row, and the underground station, which today is reached via a separate access point to the edge of the development, would have been integrated into the plan, as shown in the following illustration:

The St. Paul’s Chapter House was reduced to a shell of a building, as shown in my father’s photo, however it was restored and survived the 1960s redevelopment, and was included in the Masterplan, where it can be seen in the centre of the following illustration.

To the left of the Chapter House is a rather ornate three storey gateway into Paternoster Square, which today has been replaced by Temple Bar.

Temple Bar was included as an option in the Masterplan, which is described as “currently in a state of decay in a Hertfordshire Park”.

As mentioned earlier, the central Paternoster Square was intended to be multi-level, and in the following illustration, there is a rather impressive Loggia (an outdoor corridor with a covered roof and open sides), that would have provided a lift down to the Lower Court, would provide shelter, and would mark the access point to the Lower Court:

A key aim of the Masterplan was to bring life back to the area, and one of the ways to do this was via retail, and the plan stated that “Paternoster Square will be established as one of the foremost shopping areas in central London. There will be more than 80 shops, including a quality food hall or department store”.

The approach to retail included a Shopping Avenue, which was a covered route between the Lower Court and St. Paul’s Underground Station:

Shops would also line the new Paternoster Row:

And along the route of the old Ivy Lane, there would be Ivy Lane Arcade “designed in the tradition of famous London arcades. It will attract specialty shops such as jewelers and galleries”:

And shopping around Paternoster Square and Lower Court:

The Paternoster Square estate does have some shopping, but far less than was intended in the original Masterplan. There is no lower court and no covered shopping avenues.

Most of the shops are either restaurants, bars or take away food and coffee shops, aimed at local office workers and at the number of visitors who pass through as part of a visit to the area around St. Paul’s Cathedral.

There are also many other differences. Whilst the overall concept appears the same, the classical building style is now very limited as is the overall decoration across the buildings and ground level pedestrian spaces.

In 1995, the owners of the land commissioned Whitfield Partners to deliver a Masterplan for redevelopment, and it is the outcome of this plan that we see today. Similar in concept, but different in implementation.

The Paternoster Square development today has a large central space, is pedestrianised, and some of the pedestrian walkways do roughly align with some of the original pre-war streets.

The objective of bringing life back to the area has been achieved, and during the day it is generally busy with local workers, visitors and tourists, and on a summer’s afternoon, the bars and restaurants are particularly busy.

The central square features a 23.3 metre tall column, which conceals air vents to the parking space below the square:

The Masterplan by Farrell, Beeby and Simpson included a Loggia which would have provided a lift down to the Lower Court, and mark the access point to the Lower Court.

Whilst the Loggia and Lower Court were not part of the implemented Masterplan, there is a covered way along the northern edge of the square which has similarities to the original Loggia:

In the above photo, two groups of tourists with guides can be seen to the right. Between them is the artwork “The Sheep and Shepherd” by Elisabeth Frink. This came from the earlier Paternoster Square development as it was installed on the north side of the estate in 1975 when it was unveiled by Yehudi Menhuin.

It was moved to the high walk outside the Museum of London in 1997 prior to demolition of the 1960s estate, then returned to Paternoster Square in 2003.

The Sheep and Shepherd stands where Paternoster Square joins to Paternoster Row (which, as far as I can tell is very slightly north of the street’s original alignment).

Looking through the Loggia that was built as part of the new development:

Rather than lots of classical decoration to the buildings, there is a “Noon Mark” on one of the buildings to the north of the square. In strong sunlight, at midday, the shadow indicates roughly the day of the year:

A key point with the development is the height of the buildings. In the 1960s development, there were office blocks that ran both parallel and at right angles to the cathedral and views of the cathedral were limited.

With the new development, building heights are lower and allow views of the cathedral. As can be seen in the following photo from the north west corner of Paternoster Square, the new buildings are just slightly higher than the original Chapter House (the older, dark brick building to the right of the column):

Whilst a number of the walkways do roughly align with the original streets, Paternoster Square is in a different place to the original square, which would have been to the northwest of the current square, to the right of the building in the following photo, which does retain some classical styling at ground level, but is a modern building above:

This is the view from the western end of Paternoster Lane towards the central square. This stretch of walkway is almost exactly on the original route of Paternoster Row:

Sometimes it seems as if all the large sculpture across London’s streets is there to hide an air vent. This is the purpose of the column in the central square and also the purpose of a work of art on the corner where Paternoster Lane meets Ave Maria Lane:

This is a 2002 work by Thomas Heatherwick, and consists of sixty three identical isosceles triangles of stainless steel sheet welded together.

Round to the front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and to the north of the large open space in front of the cathedral is an office block with shops at ground level which follows the alignment of the old street St. Paul’s Churchyard:

The following photo is taken from Cheapside looking towards the cathedral and Paternoster Square development, and may offer a clue as to why the implemented Masterplan is different to the Masterplan of Farrell, Beeby and Simpson:

To the right of the above photo are two sides of an octagonal building. It can be seen in the following extract of the photo of the 1960s estate:

One of the entrances to St. Paul’s Underground Station is just to the right of the building in the photo, and the building is either part above, or extremely close to, the underground station.

I have no evidence to confirm this, however it may be that the estate we see today was down to cost.

Whilst the initial planning permission did not include the octagonal building, the Masterplan did. It would have been demolished and the entrance to St. Paul’s Underground Station would be integrated into one of the new buildings as can be seen in one of the earlier pictures. The proposed lower shopping arcade would also have led into the underground station.

I imagine that anything involving changes to an underground station incur significant extra planning time and costs.

The overall Paternoster estate, whilst aligning with the original Masterplan, does not have the level of classical architecture proposed in the plan, or the split level with the lower court.

All this extra work would have incurred cost, and in so much of the built environment, decisions often come down to cost.

Having said that, compared to the 1960s development, Paternoster Square is a very considerable improvement.

It integrates well with the cathedral to the south, recreates alignments close to some of the original streets, certainly has brought life back into the area from what I recall of the previous development, and is a generally pleasant space to walk through.

Reading the Masterplan though, it is interesting to speculate what might have been, if this plan had been adopted.

You may be interested in the following posts about the area around St. Paul’s:

Post War London from the Stone Gallery, St. Paul’s – The North and West

Post War London from the Stone Gallery, St. Paul’s – The South and East

Operation Textiles – A City Warehouse In Wartime

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Bread Street – A Devastated City Street

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To start this week’s post, I have two photos taken by my father when he was standing where the One New Change development is located today, just to the east of St. Paul’s Cathedral:

The church in the background is St. Mary-le-Bow:

Despite the considerable building activity of recent decades, many of the City of London’s streets still have buildings dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however some streets have absolutely nothing of any age, with all buildings of recent construction.

One of these is one of the streets that should have been in the two photos above, between the photographer and the church, and this street is Bread Street.

Bread Street runs south from Cheapside, just to the east of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It crossed Watling Street and Cannon Street to terminate on Queen Victoria Street,

The upper section of the street is in my father’s two photos, and in the following map extract from the 1951 Ordnance Survey map, I have marked the key features which can be seen in the two photos, and are also shown on the map (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Bread Street is to the right of the red circle, which surrounds a feature marked as a “ruin”, which the photo confirms.

A few buildings still stand around the junction of Friday Street and Cheapside, and St. Mary-le-Bow is marked as a ruin, which the photos confirm where the main body of the church can be seen as an empty shell. The tower of the church is marked by a solid square on the map, confirming that the tower is still standing and survived without significant wartime damage.

In the above map, apart from the ruin, this part of Bread Street is completely empty, as is much of the surrounding land, although as can be seen, many buildings to the right survived, including those along Bow Lane, many of which can still be seen today.

The name of the street does appear to refer to bread. Harben’s Dictionary of London quotes “So called Stow says, of bread in olde times sold for it appeareth by recordes, that in the yeare 1302, the bakers of London were bounden to sell no bread in their shops or houses, but in the market”.

This was a time when one of the main London markets operated in and around Cheapside and the surrounding streets, and there are other streets off Cheapside that still refer to the products sold, such as Milk Street and Honey Lane.

Richard Horwood’s map of 1799 provides an impression of the street at the end of the 18th century. In the following extract, Bread Street is running from the junction with Cheapside at the top of the map (just to the left of the letter P), down to Upper Thames Street, with the last section named Bread Street Hill, referring to the drop in height as the street headed down towards the Thames.

The section of Bread Street in my father’s photos is that between Cheapside and Watling Street.

The map shows that in 1799, the street was lined with individual houses, with some courts and alleys leading off from the street.

Although the area was devastated by wartime bombing, Bread Street had already suffered a number of significant changes.

Continuing south after the junction with Watling Street and in 1799 we came to a junction with Basing Lane and Little Friday Street. Both of these streets were lost when Cannon Street was extended up towards St. Paul’s Churchyard.

The construction of this major road extension in the mid-19th century, along with the construction of Queen Victoria Street, split Bread Street and separated it entirely from Bread Street Hill, which in turn cut-off Bread Street from easy street access to the Thames, and which no doubt was used to transfer the products needed for baking bread.

My father’s photos were taken from near Friday Street, which has disappeared entirely under the One New Change buildings. Bread Street survives, but the bombing shown in the two photos explains why the street is as we see it today. A street without any buildings of any age, with the majority built during the last few decades.

The view looking south along Bread Street from the junction with Cheapside:

One New Change is the large building to the right of the above photo, a building which stands over nearly all of the land seen in the foreground of my father’s photos.

Much of One New Change is a large shopping centre:

Looking south along the street:

Between Bread Street and St. Mary-le-Bow is Bow Bells House, a 215,000 square foot office building, constructed in 2007:

As Bow Bells House dates from 2007, it shows that many of these new buildings are second or third generation buildings after the devastation of war.

On the wall of Bow Bells House is a City of London blue plaque, recording that the poet and statesman John Milton was born in Bread Street in 1608:

Milton’s most well known work is the poem Paradise Lost. He was born in the street to reasonably affluent parents, his father, also John Milton and mother Sarah Jeffrey.

The street that John Milton would have known was lost during the 1666 Great Fire of London, so wartime bombing was the second time in the life of the street that it has been devastated, and put through a complete rebuild.

In the following photo, I have reached the junction with Watling Street:

Looking along Watling Street towards St. Paul’s Cathedral:

Watling Street is perfect example of why some city streets look as they do. In the above photo, I am looking along the final length of Watling Street as it approaches St. Paul’s Cathedral, and as with Bread Street, all the buildings are new.

However, walk a short distance east along Watling Street, and look back towards the cathedral, and this is the view:

Some new buildings, but many pre-war buildings remain, and perhaps this view hints at what Bread Street could have looked like before the war.

It is perhaps hard now to realise just how much whole areas of the City were devastated in the early 1940s, and how the buildings that once lined entire streets disappeared almost overnight.

But it does help explain why many of the City streets are as they are, with some streets lined with pre-war buildings, and others, even different lengths of the same street, consisting of entirely modern buildings.

alondoninheritance.com

Prudential Building and Furnival’s Inn

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A quick advert – if you would like to explore Wapping or the Barbican, there are only a few places left on my upcoming walks:

Wapping – A Seething Mass of Misery on the 10th of June, which can be booked here (One ticket remaining)
~~The Lost Streets of the Barbican on the 11th of June, which can be booked here~~ (Sold out)

All other walks have sold out.

Walk along Holborn and one of the most impressive buildings you will see is the old head office of Prudential Assurance:

The Prudential moved into their new office in 1879, which was quite an achievement given that the company had only been founded 31 years earlier in 1848.

The building exudes Victorian commercial power and was a statement building for the company that was at the time the country’s largest assurance company.

The lower part of the building uses polished granite, with red brick and red terracotta across all upper floors. If you stare at the building long enough the use of polished granite gives the impression that there has been a large flood along Holborn, which has left a tide mark on the building after washing out the red colour from the lower floors.

The building is Grade II* listed and was designed by Alfred Waterhouse with help from his son Paul. After Prudential initially moved into the building, constriction continued as could be expected on a building of this size which extends back from Holborn for some distance. The front range facing onto Holborn was completed between 1897 and 1901.

In the centre of the façade is a tower, with a large arch leading through into inner courtyards around which are further wings of the building:

Alfred Waterhouse was born in 1830 in Liverpool. His father was involved in the cotton trade, working as a cotton broker. The family had quite an influence on the future, with one of his brothers founding an accountancy firm that would eventually become PriceWaterhouse, and a second brother, Theodore, starting a legal company that became Field Fisher Waterhouse (the company has since dropped the Waterhouse name).

After attending a Quaker school in Tottenham, Alfred Waterhouse started work in Manchester where he worked on a number of private residences and public buildings, however he first major commission came when he won a competition for the Assize Courts in Manchester in 1858.

The Assize Courts were badly damaged by wartime bombing, and were condemned by the post-war decision not to rebuild. The Gothic style of Waterhouse’s work was not in fashion with architectural styles of the 1950s and 60s.

The following photo of the Manchester Assize Courts shows what an impressive building it was, and the similarities with the Prudential Building (Attribution: Old stereoscope card, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons):

His other work in Manchester included Strangeways Prison (now just HM Prison Manchester), and Manchester Town Hall, which did survive wartime bombing of the city, and still looks glorious today. Again, the same Gothic style and parallels with the Prudential building can be seen:

Waterhouse moved his architectural practice from Manchester to London in 1865.

He lost out on a competition to design the Law Courts in the Strand, but did win the competition for the Natural History Museum in Kensington, which again follows a similar style to his previous works, although with the museum, at the centre of the wide façade is the main entrance, which has two smaller towers on either side of the central block.

The Natural History Museum also displays a move from Gothic to Romanesque as an architectural style.

The design of the new building was considered such a success by Prudential that they commissioned Alfred Waterhouse and his son Paul to design a further 21 office buildings for the company in cities across the country. Some of these, such as in Southampton, can still be seen.

Waterhouse died in 1905, just a few years after Queen Victoria, and his Gothic designs with large buildings often including central towers have come to be symbolic of a style of Victorian architecture, that ended at the very start of the 20th century.

The Prudential adopted the figure of Prudence in 1848 as the symbol for the company. Prudence was said to have the qualities of memory, intelligence and foresight, enabling a prudent act to consider the past, present and future.

The figure of Prudence can be seen in a niche above the main entrance into the building and was the work of the sculptor Frederick William Pomeroy:

The Prudential Mutual Assurance Investment and Loan Association was founded in 1848 in Hatton Garden, and their target market was the sale of life assurance and the provision of loans to the emerging Victorian middle and industrious classes.

The company advertised the sale of shares in January 1849 to raise capital, and their advert gives an idea of the financial products that were starting to become widely available in the middle of the 19th century:

“The following important new features and advantages in Life Assurance, now introduced by this Association, are earnestly impressed on the attention of the public, particularly of the industrial classes, viz :-

To enable members subscribing for £20 shares, payable by small monthly or quarterly instalments, to securely invest their savings and participate in the whole amount of profits, or in the case of death their representatives to receive the amount of each share in cash.
To enable Members to purchase real or other property, by advances from the Association on such property.
To grant members loans on real or other security.
To create by periodical subscriptions an Accumulating Fund, the profits arising from which to be from time to time divided amongst its members.
To afford an opportunity to a borrower of securing his surety from future payments in case of his (the borrower’s) death.
Life Assurance in a reduced scale for the whole life or term of years, on lives, joint lives, or on survivorship.”

The comment “payable by small monthly or quarterly instalments” is reminder of the method used by the company to collect payments, with the “Man from the Pru” becoming the term for an insurance salesman who calls door to door to collect regular payment for Prudential’s products.

The Man from the Pru was also the title of a 1990 film which was based on the true story of a Prudential employee who was convicted of the murder of his wife.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death, however employees of the Prudential raised several hundred pounds and the case went to appeal and he was found not guilty, mainly due to very flimsy evidence being presented.

Immediatly after being acqutted, he continued his employment with the Prudential.

The “Man from the Pru” operated across the country, and was supported by company offices in multiple towns and cities.

There is a frieze along the façade of the Prudential building, which includes coats of arms of many of the places where the company had an office:

I have been able to identify a few of these arms. In the above photo, the arms of Belfast is at the left, then could be Norwich, although the castle should be above the lion, on the right is Bristol.

In the photo below, Leeds is second from left, then Coventry:

Look up when walking in through the main entrance, and admire the incredible brickwork:

When built, the Prudential building was very advanced for its time. There was hot and cold running water, electric lighting, and to speed the delivery of paperwork across the site, a pnematic tube system was installed, where documents were put into canisters, which were then blown through the tube system to their destination.

Ladies were provided with their own restaurant and library, and had a separate entrance, and were also allowed to leave 15 minutes early to “avoid consorting with men”.

The façade onto Holborn is just part of the Prudential complex as it extends some considerable way back from the street. The size of the building was not just because of the number of workers, but was also to enable storage of the sheer volume of paperwork resulting from insuring almost one third of the UK population at the peek of the Prudential’s size.

Walking through the main entrance and there is a small open space, where we can see a connecting bridge between wings of the complex, with ornate windows above a large arch:

There is a plaque on the wall, recording that Charles Dickens lived here. He lived here between 1833 and 1836 when the site was occupied by Furnival’s Inn, more of which later in the post:

More stunning brickwork in the arch over the entrance to the courtyard at the back of the complex:

The overall Prudential site was expanded and remodeled during the years of their occupation.

Being an information intensive business, their building needed to adjust to changing technology, and methods of recording and storing data.

In the 1930s the interior of the original blocks were rebuilt with large open plan floors in the art deco style in order to accommodate punch card machinery.

There was another major refurbishment in the 1980s which completed by 1993, but by then the Prudential’s days in their Holborn office complex were numbered. Departments had been moving out of central London for a number of years, for example their Industrial Branch administration had moved to Reading in 1965.

In 1999, the Prudential’s Group Head Office relocated to Laurence Pountney Hill.

Since 2019, the Prudential has been focused on Asia and the Far East. The UK businesses were transferred to M&G which today is a completely separate company to the Prudential, although Prudential still retain a head office in London and are quoted on the London Stock Exchange.

The following photo shows the rear courtyard of the complex, now named Waterhouse Square after the original architect of the buildings. The dome in the centre provides natural light to the space below:

But what was on the site before the Prudential building? To discover that, we need to look at the Corporation of London blue plaque to the right of the main entrance from Holborn:

The plaque records that the Prudential building is on the site of Furnival’s Inn, which was demolished in 1897 to make way for the Prudential building.

The name comes from William de Furnival who, around the year 1388, leased part of his lands in Holborn to the Clerks of Chancery, who prepared writs for the King’s Court, assisted by apprentices who received the first stages of their legal training at the Inn.

By the 15th century, the Inns of Chancery had become a type of preparatory school for students, and by 1422, Furnival’s Inn was attached to Lincoln’s Inn, who later in 1548 took on a long term lease.

Furnival’s Inn was described as the equivalent of Eton with Lincoln’s Inn being King’s College at Cambridge. At the end of each year, Lincoln’s Inn would receive students from Furnival’s who had received their training, and reached the standard required to move up, and receive the next stage of their training, along with the greater freedoms that an Inn of Court could offer.

The scale of Funival’s Inn can be seen in the following extract from William Morgan’s 1682 map of London, where the inn can be seen in the centre of the map:

Furnival’s Inn occupied much of the space currently occupied by the old Prudential buiding. The map also includes some of the many legal institutions based in this part of Holborn. Part of Grays Inn can be seen to the left, and below and to the left of Furnival’s Inn is another Inn of Chancery, Staple Inn.

To the right of the map is Ely House which I wrote about in a post a couple of weeks ago.

As with the Prudential building, Furnival’s Inn had a very impressive front onto Holborn. This is from the early 19th century (the following prints are © The Trustees of the British Museum):

This drawing from around 1720 shows the scale of Furnival’s Inn:

As with the Prudential building, Furnival’s Inn had a central entrance from Holborn. Once through this entrance, there is an inner courtyard surrounded by buildings, and behind this courtyard is a garden, again surrounded by buildings.

The following print is from 1804 and shows part of the inner court:

By the 17th century, the Inns of Chancery had begun to turn into societies for the legal profession, and Furnival’s Inn became residential, offices and dining clubs.

Their use as places of training and education for students before they transferred to the Inns of Court had been reducing over time and by the 19th century, Furnival’s Inn had ceased to exist for its original purpose, with only what were classed as “6 ancients and 16 juniors”.

It was dissolved in 1817, and when Lincoln’s Inn did not renew their lease a year later, some of the buildings were sold off and demolished, with apartments and a hotel occupying part of the site.

Parts of the old Furnival’s buildings were still used by those in the legal profession, and there were a number of adverts and articles in the press from solicitors based in the buildings, for example in 1880 a solicitor J.C. Asprey who had an address of 6 Furnival’s Inn was advertising for any claimants to the estate of a deceased resident of Hackney.

Final clearance of the site ready for the Prudential removed the last of the Furnival buildings and name from the site, however the Prudential building retained a similar layout with a large façade along Holborn, with inner courtyards surrounded by buildings.

Whilst the architecture and brickwork of the Prudential building is impressive, the drawings of the interior of Furnival’s Inn show a place which had evolved over time, with buildings that were probably put up at different times and for different purposes, which must have been an interesting place to explore.

The following print is dated 1820, just after the Inn had ceased to function as an inn of Chancery. On the range of buildings to the left, an open arch can be seen which leads through to Holborn, and at the far end on the right is a building which looks as if it could have been a central hall, with a large bay window looking out onto the courtyard.

After the Prudential left the building, work was done to extend at the rear and refresh / build new, along part of the western side of the building. The streets, part of which are pedestrianised, surrounding three sides of the complex are called Waterhouse Square.

The building is now used by multiple companies as office space, but I understand is still owned by the Prudential.

Fascinating to think that, whilst the buildings have changed across the centuries, this part of Holborn has been occupied by the buildings of only two institutions across almost 700 years – Furnival’s Inn and the Prudential.

alondoninheritance.com

Hook New Town – A London County Council Plan

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It is the late 1950s, and you are a resident of the village of Hook in north Hampshire. Surrounded by countryside, London seems some distance away, although the village has a direct railway route to Waterloo, and the A30, then the main road from London to the south west runs through the village.

Although London is roughly 40 miles to the east, decisions made in London, by the London County Council threatened the village of Hook and the surrounding countryside with the imposition of a New Town that would bring thousands of people and dramatically change the whole character of the place.

I have long been fascinated by the impact that London has on the rest of the country. There are many different examples of this, one of which was the post-war move of population from the city to the surrounding counties, and the development of new towns.

The proposals for Hook New Town did not make it through to construction, however they did raise significant concern in the area affected, and they also show L.C.C. thinking about how new towns should develop, and how people would want to live in the second half of the 20th century.

The London County Council were supporters of the New Town movement, and although their plans for Hook did not get implemented, they published their design work in 1961, and in the forward of the book, “The Planning of a New Town”, Isaac Hayward, Leader of the Council, wrote “I believe that Britain still needs more new towns, and the Council publishes this book in the hope that the Hook studies will be useful to those who have the good fortune to be called on to plan them.”

The L.C.C. had been searching for a site for a new town, able to support a population of 100,000 for two years before finally deciding that Hook was the best location and met their key requirements, which were:

Does not have a high agricultural value
Can be adequately drained
Sufficient water for the town could be produced
Excellent road and rail communications
Attractive to industrialists, whom it was hoped, would move out of London to the new town

The last requirement was considered to be the most important.

The search area had been south east of a line drawn between the Wash and the Solent. Above this line, the L.C.C. considered that a town would come under the “pull of Birmingham”, but south would be under the “pull of London”. An interesting example of just how far the L.C.C. believed came under London’s influence.

The following map from the book shows the search area limitations and the location of Hook:

The site also had to take into account the location of other new and expanded towns. The post-war period had seen considerable growth across the south east of the country, mainly driven by the shift of population and industry from London to the surrounding counties.

As well as the criteria listed above, the search also had to ensure that the new town was not too close to other new and expanded towns and would not merge into other centers of population.

The following map from the book shows the new and expanded towns surrounding London, with the new towns of Basildon, Harlow, Welwyn Garden City, Stevenage, Hemel Hempstead, Bracknell and Crawley, all orbiting just outside London’s green belt.

Transport links were also important, but not for commuting into London. Whilst Hook had a good rail connection into London, planning for the new town made clear that it was not intended to be a dormitory town, with large numbers of residents commuting into the city.

Good transport was a requirement to attract industrialists to the new town, and Hook had the benefit of being close to two new proposed motorways.

As well as new towns, post war planning included the web of motorways that now reach out from London. Two proposed at the time of the Hook plan, and shown on the following map were the “South Wales Motorway”, now the M4, and the “Exeter Motorway”, now the M3.

To get an idea of the rural location of Hook, the following map is an extract from a pre-war Bartholomew’s map of Berkshire and Hampshire, and shows Hook circled:

At the time, Hook was a very small village. A couple of old coaching inns which had served traffic on the A30 which ran through the village, and limited development along the line of the A30.

The coming of the railway to Hook had led to some expansion, and the village has seen much larger development in the last few decades, and now has a population of around 8,200.

The L.C.C. plan for Hook covered a 50 year period of development, and the layout of the town after 50 years, with the full population of 100,000, with surrounding industrial zones is shown in the following Master Plan:

The key to the left of the above shows how the site would be used. A central core area, with reducing density of people per acre as you move from the centre. Industrial, green space and lakes surrounding the core.

The plan had a 1950s view of what the future could look like, as the town also had a heliport.

The plan for Hook included some of the ideas from post-war development of the City of London. The plan included the separation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and the central core of the town was to be built on a platform, free of vehicles, but containing under it and on its approaches, provision for the movement and parking of 8,150 vehicles.

To allow pedestrians to walk freely and safely around the town, a system of pedestrian ways was important, and the following map shows the pedestrian system, with footpaths crossing over or under all roads, and converging on the central pedestrian deck which covers the central area road system.

The new town was intended for young families which is illustrated in the design of some of the areas. The following plan shows the concentration of social meeting points on the central pedestrian way, and shows a remarkable number of primary schools, play space and play areas, and a repeated pattern of pubs, churches, clinics, bus stops, light industry and petrol stations, which would replicated in the same pattern across the central pedestrian way.

Where car parking was provided within the residential areas, the intention was to try and hide the cars as much as possible, and as the following drawing shows, car parking would be within a lowered area, with banking and planting helping to keep the roofs of cars below eye level:

The central pedestrian area was elevated above the traffic and parking areas, and included secondary schools, local shopping, entertainment and government zones, a department store, church, library and post office:

The book has a large number of drawings illustrating what Hook New Town would have looked like. and the following drawing shows the central pedestrian deck as seen from the spine road:

The plans for some of the areas were very forward thinking, but it must be very questionable whether these plans were cost effective, and whether any consideration was given to their ongoing cost and maintenance.

For example, the intention was that the pedestrian deck would be traffic free, however there was a recognition that the businesses and institutions on the pedestrian deck would need servicing with delivery of goods, collection of refuse, how would an ambulance get to the pedestrian deck etc.

The planners ideas included the possible use of electric trolleys to provide transport along the pedestrian deck, and to move goods between the service areas at ground level and the pedestrian deck, hoists could be installed in the communal and service areas and operated by “the local authority or some other central management organisation”.

The new town would not have the type of high rise housing that was being built across east London, but would have low rise housing, which would include gardens, off-ground outdoor rooms and pedestrian walkways to separate pedestrians from the streets and parking below:

Upper level gardens and off-ground rooms:

The elevated central pedestrian deck was incredibly ambitious. In the following drawing, the ground level bus stops are shown, with ramps, escalators and lift up to the pedestrian deck:

Once on the deck, there were shopping areas, along with other functions such as the entertainment and government zones, library, and a wide central space which would host a market:

I am not aware of any new town that had such a central pedestrian deck. New towns such as Bracknell and Basildon had central pedestrian areas, with facilities such as shops and council offices, but these were not on fully raised platforms, and transport services such as bus stations would be located at the edge of the pedestrian area.

The book demonstrates the difference in costs for Hook compared to other new towns.

The book identifies the costs for the Hook development of major roads, intersections, distributor roads, bridges, viaducts etc. as £8,707,700, whilst for the same services in an existing new town, the costs would be £3,146,900, so Hook would have cost an additional £5,560,800 – a huge amount which must have been difficult to justify.

The intention with Hook is that the area immediately surrounding the town would offer opportunities for relaxation, sport, hobbies and access to the countryside.

One drawing shows Lakeside Recreation:

And the following drawing shows “Major open space seen against compact housing”, where a couple are relaxing on a small hill, overlooking a football game, with lake and surrounding trees, and the town across the lake:

The book has lots of data covering population size, age distribution, numbers employed, persons per household and mix of households etc.

Where possible, data from other new towns, or national data was used to model what could be applicable for Hook.

Some of the data provides a snapshot of the country in the late 1950s, and also how much aspects of the country would change in the following decades.

One table covers the manufacturing industries that could be attracted to a new town at Hook, with easy access to the planned M3 and M4. These were:

In the following years, many of these industries would be moving overseas to country’s with cheaper production, others would simply become redundant.

To justify the selection of the above industries as possible candidates to move to Hook New Town, the table includes figures to show how many were currently employed in these industries across the country. For example, there were:

9,000 people employed making tents and flags
108,000 people employed making hosiery
17,000 people making corsets
4,000 people making cork stoppers
8,000 people making fountain pens and propelling pencils

The proposals also estimated that when the town was fully built and occupied after 50 years, employment would be split 50 / 50 between manufacturing and service industry jobs.

The London County Council’s proposals for a new town during the 1950s were met with delay and a lack of decision making. The Conservative governments during the 1950s were not really supportive of the New Towns movement, as they required state funding and their development was managed through non-elected Development Corporations.

The L.C.C. approach to various Ministers of Housing and Local Government were met with supportive noises, but no real action that would support the L.C.C. proposals.

A decision of sorts was finally made in August 1957 when the L.C.C. proposal was agreed in principle, however there would be no special funding from the exchequer, and the proposal was subject to agricultural considerations and the general economic environment.

On the 22nd of October 1958 a meeting was held in County Hall between representatives of the London County Council and Hampshire County Council, during which the L.C.C. communicated the decision to Hampshire, without the opportunity for any discussion.

After the decision was made public, it was met by a huge amount of resistance from the residents of Hook, local farmers, landowners, civic groups and local councils. Even within London there was opposition, with the London evening papers asking why Londoners would want to move out to Hampshire, and whether the new towns were forcing those living in London to move out to these new developments.

Hampshire County Council refused any cooperation with the London County Council.

The appropriately named London Road, the old A30, the main street running through Hook today:

The historic importance of the road running through Hook can be understood through the Grade II listed White Hart Hotel:

The listing states that the White Hart is “C18, early C19. Old Coaching Inn, with buildings around a yard: the front (Early C19) of 2 storeys in 2 sections”.

The local newspapers of the time were full of objections to the new town. A few articles mentioned that it was the London County Council’s intention to clear much of Wapping and Hoxton and relocate people to Hook.

There were also alternative suggestions as to were a new town should be located with the Aldershot area proposed due to the significant Army landholdings in the area. It was believed that the Army could release a large proportion of this land, however the Army objected.

The following article is from the local paper with a very long title of Reading Mercury Oxford Gazette Newbury Herald and Berks County Paper, on the 8th of November 1958:

“HOOK NEW TOWN PLAN – That Hook New Town would cover eleven square miles, absorb a seventh of Hartley Wintney Rural District and involve an expenditure of about £7 million for land purchase, were estimates given at a special meeting of the Council. The general feeling was that Aldershot and Farnborough were far more suitable areas for such mammoth development.

The Parish Council, although obvioulsy entirely opposed to the new town plan, accepted a warning from Mt. T. Chapman Mortimer to await further information before formally registering opposition.

It was agreed to write to the Rural Council and say that the new town proposal was viewed with considerable alarm and to ask for further information.

Mr. D. Franklin, chairman, said that in Bracknell New Town area the value of properties had fallen sharply. Houses within the town area were razed to allow for new building and roads.

Mr. A.R. Wright thought the site was not far enough from London. It was ludicrous to put a town as big as Aldershot and Farnborough combined in a position where many of the residents would go daily to work in London and so aggravate the traffic problems in the district, and it was criminal to put 60,000 people on the fringe of Britain’s third ranking airport.

Wapping and Hoxton were the areas which the L.C.C. proposed to clear, said Wing Commander L.H. Cooper and he visualised dockers going up daily to their work.

Hartley Wintney shopkeepers are struggling to keep their businesses going, said Mr. Wright, and the new town would have a superb shopping centre with super-markets. It would be like having Knightsbridge on your doorstep, he said. It could mean many Hartley Wintney traders losing their businesses.”

The above article is typical of the many news reports of the time. There appeared to no one in the area who was in favour of Hook New Town.

The Old White Hart, another of the pubs in Hook on what was the A30 through the village:

Throughout the time that the proposal for Hook New Town was being progressed, Hampshire County Council was trying hard to avoid any involvement.

The Aldershot News reported on the 13th of February 1959 that: “Hook new town not abandoned – The Hook new town project has not been abandoned according to an L.C.C. spokesman, who this week told the Aldershot News that the Council’s Housing Committee is giving careful consideration to the position now that Hampshire County Council has said it cannot consider the establishment of a new town anywhere in the county.”

The Evening News reported on progress on the 10th of December 1959, and commented that: “Investigations have been somewhat delayed at the outset by the unwillingness of Hampshire County Council to join them, the committee added, various details will require further consideration.”

The station at Hook:

Hook is on the mainline into Waterloo Station, which was one of the benefits identified by the L.C.C., as well as the two proposed motorways, the future M3 which would run to the south, and the M4 which would run to the north.

The London County Council’s proposals for Hook New Town finally came to an end in 1960. There was much local opposition, and the county council has simply refused to get involved.

There was still pressure for large amounts of housing in the area around London, and Hampshire County Council, came to an agreement where this could be built, as reported in the Hampshire Telegraph and Post on the 17th of May, 1960: “Three Hampshire Towns May Expand – Proposals for the expansion of three towns in North Hampshire to accommodate overspill population in London received overwhelming support from Hampshire County Council at its meeting in Winchester on Monday.

The proposals envisage the development of Basingstoke to take 50,000 overspill population, the expansion of Andover to take 15,000 overspill and Tadley, near the Aldermaston Atomic Research Establishment, to take about 15,000.”

So Hook survived. It would grow in the following decades, but would not see migrations of people from Wapping and Hoxton. Today, the population of Hook is under a tenth of the level that the L.C.C. planned for the new town.

Emphasis shifted to the continued development of Basingstoke. It would be fascinating to know if, and how many, residents of Wapping and Hoxton did relocate to Basingstoke, or any of the other new towns.

New towns had an extraordinary impact on the villages that they took over. To get an impression of this, we can look at Bracknell, a new town that was developed in Berkshire, not that far from Hook.

The proposal for transforming Bracknell came in the immediate post-war planning for new towns, when the existing market town was identified as a new town in 1949. It would develop over the following decades.

Bracknell, as with Hook, was on a railway line into Waterloo, and was between the proposed M3 and M4 motorways.

The population of Bracknell today is around 118,000 so is probably around the size that Hook would have have achieved.

The town was designed following similar principles to Hook, but the central shopping area was not elevated. Housing was developed in community areas, traffic was directed around the central core, there was plenty of parking, new industrial areas were built around the town to encourage local jobs rather than the town acting as a dormitory for London.

The 1898 Ordnance Survey map shows the central High Street of Bracknell. It had not changed that much by the time it was declared a new town (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Nearly every building along the High Street in the above map was demolished to make way for a new shopping centre at the core of the new town, and as the news report quoted above from the 8th of November 1958 stated “Mr. D. Franklin, chairman, said that in Bracknell New Town area the value of properties had fallen sharply. Houses within the town area were razed to allow for new building and roads”.

In the above map I have circled in red the PH symbol for a pub, which was preserved during construction of the new town, and we can still see the pub today:

The block of flats behind the pub is recent, and was built on the site of a large office block which had been part of the new town development.

To the left of the entrance into the pub is a milestone that confirms that this was on one of the roads between London and Reading:

The milestone confirms 28 miles to London and 11 to Reading, the same distances as shown in the map above:

Walking along the route of the old High Street, now the pedestrian route into the main shopping centre, we come to the pub marked by the blue circle in the above map. The pub is still to be found, with the same name, but surrounded by a very different scene. This is the Bull:

Original new town design for shops at ground level and flats above:

Another building remaining from the original High Street:

View along what was the High Street, now completely transformed:

One of the problems for new towns is the need for constant reinvention. Bracknell was built with a central shopping centre that by the start of the 21st century was looking rather dated.

The shopping centre was also lacking any local character, and was the same as any other mid 20th century shopping centre. Whereas towns with a traditional High Street can evolve, a large shopping centre cannot easily do this, with large amounts of space dedicated to shops.

To try and address this, the central area of Bracknell recently went through a major redevelopment, with large parts of the original new town development demolished and replaced with a new design,

This is the view looking north from the original High Street, looking through into what were the fields behind the High Street. The view is the recent development. replacing the original new town build.

The proposals for Hook show the influence of London on the counties around the city, and in the 1950s the London County Council considered the area south of a line between the Wash and the Solent as within the pull of London.

That description fits the map, where London sits at the centre, with a system of new and expanded towns circling around the central city, and the new towns we see today, such as Bracknell, show what could have become of the area around Hook.

alondoninheritance.com

Shenfield Street, Hoxton at the Coronation

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Before heading to Shenfield Street, a quick advert. I am still working on a couple of new walks for 2023, which should be ready in a couple of months, however I have set some dates for a limited number of my walks exploring Wapping, the Southbank and the Barbican.

If you would like to explore these areas, including the locations of many of my father’s photos, they can be booked here.

For this week’s post, I am in Hoxton, looking at how Shenfield Street was decorated for the Coronation – the 1953 rather than the 2023 Coronation. This is a series of photos of the street taken by my father. One of the photos includes something that enabled much of his photography across London, and wider afield.

This is Shenfield Street, looking west towards the junction with Hoxton Street, on Sunday the 31st of May, 1953, two days before the Coronation on the 2nd of June:

This is the same view today, at the end of April, just over a week before the 2023 Coronation:

The white building at the end of the street in both of the above photos is the White Horse pub. Open at the time of my father’s 1953 photos, but closed in 2023, having closed as a pub in 2013.

In the 70 years since the last Coronation, Shenfield Street has changed beyond recognition. Once a street lined with terrace houses, they have all since been demolished, to be replaced by the Geffrye Estate.

In the following map, Shenfield Street runs across the middle of the map, with Hoxton Street on the left and Kingsland Road on the right. In 1953, Shenfield Street provided a route between the two streets to left and right, but today is blocked for traffic, with only a pedestrian route through as shown by the grey section as the street approaches Hoxton Street (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

Construction of the street seems to have started in the late 18th century, however in 1799 as shown in the following extract from Horwood’s 1799 map of London, it was then called Essex Street, and is shown running across the centre of the following extract from the map:

The map shows that building started from the Kingsland Road end of the street, and the houses then constructed appear to be densely built terrace houses, which I assume are the same houses that were still to be found in 1953.

The name change is interesting. I cannot find the source of the name Essex Street, or when it was changed to Shenfield Street. Essex Street was still in use in 1915, but had changed by 1945, when Shenfield was recorded in the LCC Bomb Damage Maps.

Street names were often changed to avoid confusion when there was another local street with the same name, however the nearest Essex Street seems to have been leading off from the Strand, a distance from Hoxton.

Shenfield was an interesting choice for the new name of the street, as Shenfield is a town in Essex, probably now better known as the eastern end of the Elizabeth Line. So by choosing Shenfield there was a continuation of the Essex connection.

The following map extract is from 1957, and shows Shenfield Street with terrace housing lining the street as in my father’s photos. There is another Essex connection in the map. Towards the right of Shenfield Street, there is a small stub of a street heading north called Tiptree Street. Tiptree is another small town in Essex, some distance towards the northern part of the county, and no connection with Shenfield, so I have no idea why the two streets were given these names (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“).

My father took five photos of Shenfield Street, and I have located the position from where he took each photo, and the direction of view in the 1957 map (the first photo at the top of the post is the lower right photo):

At top left of the above map is a photo that you may recognise as it has been in the header of the home page of the blog since I started in 2014, however I have never been sure of the location. I knew it was around Hoxton, but not exactly where. I will show later how I confirmed the location, that the café decorated for the Coronation was at 27 Shenfield Street, at the junction with Jerrold Street:

The photo is special for me, as it is the only London photo that shows my father’s bike, which is propped up against the wall to the left of the café. The bike took him all over London whilst taking these late 1940s and early 1950s photos, as well as youth hosteling across the country and to Holland.

The café does appear to have been well kept, and the lettering on the windows advertising Breakfasts, Dinners, Teas and Snacks is rather ornate.

Jerrold Street still exists, however at the junction with Shenfield Street, the corner where the café was located has been cut to form an angled entry to Jerrold Street, so in the following photo the café would have been in the roadway and pavement leading back from the drain cover that can be seen in the road:

To the right of the café photo in the above map, is the following view, looking towards where Shenfield Street meets Kingsland Road. The photo was taken from the opposite side of the Jerrold Street junction, and the shop on the immediate right of the photo is at number 25 Shenfield Street:

In the above photo, Tiptree Street is along the street on the left, just after the lamp post, where Tiptree Street runs to the left.

The same view in 2023:

The location of the following photo, and direction of view, is at top right in the above map, it is looking towards the western end of Shenfield Street. The street which is running to the right, immediately in front of the location of the photo is again Tiptree Street:

The same view today, with not so much a street, rather an entrance to the estate leading off to the right, where Tiptree Street was once located:

It was this photo that allowed the location of the café to be identified. I have circled the location of the café in the following copy of the photo:

From the outside, the houses lining Shenfield Street look in a reasonable condition. Although there was significant bomb damage in a number of surrounding streets, Shenfield Street survived relatively unscathed, except for one house that was lost.

In Charles Booths poverty map, at the end of the 19th century, the street was classed as “Poor 18s to 21s a week for a moderate family”. In the following extract from the map, Essex Street as it was at the time of the survey, also has black lines running along the street, which means “Lowest Class, Vicious Semi-Criminal”:

A newspaper report from the 26th September 1922 offers a view of the conditions within the street:

“CROWDED STREET OF DOLE-DRAWERS. Amount Received Exceeds Pre-War Earnings. Every household in Essex Street, Hoxton is in receipt of relief from the Shoreditch Guardians, and the total so received is said to exceed the pre-war earnings of the whole street.

Probably one of the most congested streets in Shoreditch, Essex Street has several houses which are shared by six or seven families, and in one or two instances the number of people in each dwelling reaches 30.

Paper serves for glass in many of the windows.”

So the problem with the houses was not necessarily their construction, rather overcrowding and landlords who probably did not bother which much maintenance.

Another report from August 1939 shows how important it was (and still is), to have green, open space locally available:

“Novelty of Grass – Child Wedged In Railings. Three year old Lillian Turner always likes to visit her grandmother because in the backyard of her L.C.C. flat off Walmer Gardens, Hoxton, there was a patch of grass. She rarely sees grass, for there is none near her own home in Shenfield Street, Hoxton.

While her mother went upstairs to chat with her grandmother yesterday, Lillian ran out to the grass patch. She tried to squeeze through some railings to get to it, but became wedged by the shoulders.

Men passing tried to release her, but were afraid of hurting her and sent for the fire brigade. In a couple of minutes, six firemen with a fire pump and an ambulance arrived, but as they did so, Mrs. Turner managed to release her daughter, unhurt but suffering from shock.”

From the above description, you can understand why post war estate planning, such as the Geffrye Estate which was built following the demolition of the houses along Shenfield Street, included plenty of green space scattered across the estate.

The above two news reports also shrink the period for the name change from Essex to Shenfield Street to between 1922 and 1939.

The following photo is from the lower right position in the above map. Tiptree Street is the street leading off at the right. There is what appears to be an old shop on the corner at number 8, however most of the front of the shop appears bricked up and there is some strange contraption in front of the shop:

Look along the terraces of houses on the right, and half way along there is a light coloured wall. This was an internal wall of a house that was demolished following bomb damage.

The same view in 2023, with what was Tiptree Street on the right, and the location of the old shop was on the patch of grass:

This is the view looking down what was Tiptree Street, today access to the Geffrye Estate without any apparent naming:

Tiptree Street was originally lined with similar terrace houses to those in Shenfield Street. The terrace that was on the left survived the war, however only a single house survived on the right with the rest destroyed by bombing.

The whole area to the north and south of Shenfield Street is now part of the Geffrye Estate, which I again assume was built during the late 1950s / early 1960s. The estate consists of Geffrye Court, Stanway Court and Monteagle Court, as shown in the following estate map:

The name of the estate is interesting, and I am surprised it is still in use. I assume it is named after Sir Robert Geffrye who was twice Master of the Ironmongers Company as well as Lord Mayor of the City of London. Geffrye’s financial bequest enabled the Ironmongers Almshouses to be built, which are on Kingsland Road, just north of where Shenfield Street meets Kingsland Road.

The almshouses were purchased by the London County Council in 1911 to save the green space surrounding the buildings, as this space represented a significant part of the green space in the area.

It then became a museum by the name of the Geffrye Museum, however is now called the Museum of the Home.

Sir Robert Geffrye made some of his money from his involvement in the transatlantic slave trade through his investments in the Royal African Company.

Hackney Council have him as a contested figure in their Review, Rename, Reclaim initiative, and the council supported the Museum of the Home in a consultation as to whether a statue of Geffrye at the museum should be removed. The results of the consultation where that it should, however the museum trust decided to retain the statue.

There does not appear to be any mention on the Council’s Review, Rename, Reclaim web pages about renaming the Geffrye Estate.

Going back to the OS map of the street, and where Shenfield Street meets Kingsland Road, and on the northern corner there was the PH reference for a pub. This was the old Carpenters Arms which was demolished at the same time as the rest of the street in preparation for the construction of the Geffrye Estate. The corner where the pub was located is now an area of green space with a block of flats behind as shown in the following photo:

Shenfield Street today is so very different to 1953. I suspect that there must have been a street party along the street, for the street to be so decorated.

The houses in the 1953 photos look substantial and well built houses, although they were probably poorly maintained and in need of much modernisation. The problem with much of this type of housing was very poor maintenance and over crowding. With some care and updating, they could have been retained and would now form a rather impressive street.

Retaining the street would probably not have achieved the number of individual homes that the Geffrye Estate now provides, or the ability to include green space across the estate, a much needed improvement as green space was so very limited in this area of pre-war Hoxton.

I was planning to use Census data to map who lived in Shenfield Street to each of the houses, as using the OS map, the number of each house is easily identifiable in the photos, although I ran out of time – perhaps I will revisit in a future post.

You may also be interested in a couple of other posts showing Coronation decorations in London in 1953, including Whitecross Street and Ivy Street. Also, this post looked at Coronation Day in London.

alondoninheritance.com

Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Rye House Plot

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The first of my walks “The South Bank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain” for 2023 is now available. Details and booking on this link.

Turn south from Holborn, or east from Kingsway, away from these busy streets, and through some side streets you will find Lincoln’s Inn Fields:

Lincoln’s Inn Fields is a wonderful open space, and was looking good during my visit on a sunny spring day. Immediately to the west of Lincoln’s Inn, after which the space takes its name, it has been an open space for a considerable time.

View looking to the east with the buildings of Lincoln’s Inn on the eastern border:

In the 1561 Agas map of London, the area now occupied by Lincoln’s Inn Fields was still open space. Although it is very difficult to be precise about the location on the Agas map, due to the accuracy of the map, perspective and scale, it is possible to roughly locate the position by comparing with other streets, which I have marked in the following extract with the yellow oval showing the very rough location of what would become Lincoln’s Inn Fields:

The map shows footpaths across the fields, limited building to the north along Holborn, and the building and gardens that then lined the length of the Strand.

The fields were named Cup Field and Purse Field and at the time of the Agas map, they were pasture lands owned by the Crown.

Lincoln’s Inn were concerned about the growth of the city around their buildings and objected to any building on the two fields. In the 1630s, the fields were sold to William Newton of Bedfordshire. He managed to reach an agreement to start the building of houses with Lincoln’s Inn and also secured a royal licence to develop the land.

These agreements included leaving the area that is now Lincoln’s Inn Fields as an open space, to the west of Lincoln’s Inn, and by 1660, Lincoln’s Inn Fields was in existence as an open space, and was surrounded by buildings on three sides:

The map shows that on the north and south sides of the Fields, the streets had not been fully completed with housing lining just part of the boundary.

The map also shows that in 1660 there was an area of open space at the south east corner called Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The west side of the space had started to be developed in 1638, and development of the north and south sides started in 1657 when Sir William Cowper, James Cowper and Robert Henley purchased Cup Field. This was just three years before the date of the above map, which explains the partial development of the north and south sides of the fields.

The new owners also had the open space leveled, grassed over, trees planted, and gravel walks laid out. Again, the outline of these can be seen in the 1660 map, and the design was apparently the work of Inigo Jones.

Although the intention must have been to create a pleasant open space for the owners of the new houses along the edge of the fields, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Lincoln’s Inn Fields did suffer from crime and much anti-social behaviour.

For example, from the Kentish Weekly Post on the 23rd of February 1732: “At night, one Mr. Henshaw, of Gray’s Inn, returning home over Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was attacked by two Street Robbers, who took from him 3 Guineas and a Half, 4 Shillings in Silver, and a Gold Headed Cane; a Light appearing at a Distance, they made off and he had the Fortune to save his Gold Watch.”

The comment about the light appearing at a distance shows just how dark places such as Lincoln’s Inn Fields must have been, without the level of street and general lighting we have now. There would have been no lights across the field, and any lights from the surrounding houses would have been very dim.

Whilst these crimes must have had a terrible impact on the victim, the sentences on those who carried out the crime were often very severe, as indicated by this report from 1733: “George Richardson, John Smithson and Laurence Grace, who were executed at Tyburn on Saturday last, for robbing a Gentleman in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, of his Hat, Wig, and Half a Guineas.”

The same newspaper report also stated that in the same sessions at the Old Bailey which had condemned the three from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Francis Corcher received the death sentence for robbing an Agate Snuff-Box set in Gold, and of a separate robbery of a Gold Watch and 5 shillings in Hyde Park.

The fields were known as “the head-quarters of beggars by day and of robbers at night”, and there were “idle gangs of vagrants” who went by the names of the “Mumpers and Rufflers”.

A number of those convicted of theft were executed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the 17th century.

To try and address the level of crime in the fields, in 1734 the residents applied to Parliament for an Act which would allow them to raise a rate on the residents surrounding the fields, and this would be used to enclose the square, provide keys for the residents only, pay for watchman and a “scavenger” who would ensure the fields and surrounding streets were kept clean.

The railings were put up around the square in 1735.

By 1755, development of the north and south sides had been completed, joining the houses along the west of the fields. To the east of the fields, the land was part of Lincoln’s Inn, and the “Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields” shown in the 1660 map had been built over, as shown in the following parish map:

Today, the streets surrounding the central space also go by the name of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, however back in 1766 they had individual names: Newmans Row, The Arch Row, Portugal Row and Lincoln’s Inn Wall.

Newmans Row remains as a short street from the north east corner of the fields up to the alley that leads to High Holborn.

Lincoln’s Inn Wall describes the wall to the east of the street, separating off Lincoln’s Inn.

The Arch Row and Portugal Row also have interesting stories to tell about their naming, but I will leave these to a future post, as I run out of time within the constraints of a weekly post.

The following map shows the area today, with Holborn to the north, Kingsway to the west and Lincoln’s Inn to the east (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

Walking from the south, into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there is a shelter in the centre of the space:

In the middle of the shelter, there is a plaque on the floor, recording that “Near this spot was beheaded William Lord Russell a lover of Constitutional Liberty 21 July AD 1683”:

Surprising that such an execution took place in Lincoln’s Inn fields, however I have read that in central London, you are never further than around 500 yards from a place of execution. It would be interesting to test this out.

Who was William Lord Russell and why was he executed?

He was born on the 29th of September 1639 as the second son of Sir William Russell, the 5th Earl of Bedford.

He became an MP after standing for the family borough of Tavistock at the general election of 1660. His Parliamentary records state that he was a rather inactive member, only being a member of two committees, one looking at the drainage of the fens, and the other looking at turning the Covent Garden precinct into a parish. He would have had an interest in Covent Garden as his father owned much of the land.

Although he was member for Tavistock, apparently he never visited the town.

William Lord Russell was a Whig – a political party / faction that opposed the principle of absolute monarchy and of Catholic emancipation. Whigs were supporters of the primacy of Parliament.

His work in Parliament did increase, with more activity within various committees and debates, and he also became the member for both Bedfordshire and Hampshire. Even with the election standards of the time, it was rare for a member of Parliament to represent two counties, and he eventually settled for just Bedfordshire.

William Lord Russell (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

It was his views on Catholicism and the Crown that would lead to his death sentence.

Charles II was on the throne, however on his death it was expected that James, the second surviving son of Charles I would become King.

James was a Catholic, and a grouping within the Whigs were strongly opposed that a Catholic could become King, and that as James had a son, it would be the start of a Catholic line of monarchs.

This opposition by the Whigs led to the Rye House plot, which was a plot to murder Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York when they returned from Newmarket to London in March 1683.

The name of the plot comes from the building in which some of the plotters met, and where the King was expected to pass at the time of the attempted assassination. Rye House was near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire. Following the assassination, an uprising in London was planned.

There was very flimsy evidence as to the seriousness of the plot, who was involved, and whether it would have succeeded. Apparently Charles II returned to London earlier than planned which was the story put about to explain the failure of the plot.

Despite limited evidence and whether or not the plotters would have gone through with their plans, Charles II wanted everyone involved with the plot aggressively caught, tried and punished. This seems to have been due to Charles II determination to destroy Whig opposition in revenge following Whig efforts to exclude his brother James from the line of succession.

William Lord Russell was one of those caught up in the conspiracy. He was put on trial, where he would admit only that he had not given information about one of the conspirators, rather than having been an active participant in the plot.

The following print shows the trial of William Lord Russell. He is standing at the witness stand on the right. His wife is at the small table in front of him, taking notes and looking up at her husband (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

Despite his protestations of limited involvement in the plot, and that it does not seemed to have been a well planned activity, he was sentenced to death.

Print from 1796 showing William Lord Russell’s last interview with his family (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

A number of pamphlets were published at the time, about the Rye House Plot, and the fate of the alleged conspirators. One of these graphically shows some of their fates (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

The images at the top show the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who was known to be one of the leading conspirators against a Catholic succession if Charles II died, and the spiritual leader of the Rye House plot. When the king had been ill, Shaftesbury had already convened a number of people sympathetic to the cause to discuss what should be done when the King died, and that an uprising should take place to enable Parliament to make the decision on the succession.

Shaftesbury’s attitudes to Charles II and his brother James led to him fleeing the country to the Netherlands at the end of 1682, however the journey had an impact on his health and he died in Amsterdam on the 21st of January 1683.

At lower left is Arthur, Earl of Essex who committed suicide in the Tower of London by cutting his throat. The two figures are saying that he murdered himself of horrid guilt.

The next panel to the right is showing Thomas Walcott and John Rousee being executed at Tyburn (I cannot tie down the second name to one of those executed at Tyburn). They were sentenced to be hung drawn and quartered, and the lower drawing showing “the heart of a traitor”.

To the right is a drawing showing a mouse and a frog arguing whilst a kite descends on both. The text reads:

“The Frog and Mouse at variance which shall be king. The Kite destroyed both. The Morall. So Factious Men Conspiring do Contend. But Hasten their own Ruin in the End.”

Then there is a drawing of William Lord Russell’s execution at Lincolns Inn Fields, and finally at lower right “September, 9th next to be observed as a day of Thanksgiving throughout all England.”

The drawings show only a small proportion of those executed, imprisoned or exiled in what was a very revengeful approach to sentencing. It took two strokes of the executioners axe to kill William Lord Russell, however perhaps one of the worse examples is that of Elizabeth Gaunt.

Elizabeth and William Gaunt were London Whigs and were active in the dissenting politics of the time. In 1683 she was living in Old Gravel Lane, Wapping.

James Burton was alleged to have been present when the Rye House plot was being discussed. As a result, Burton had been outlawed, and Elizabeth helped him escape to the Netherlands, by providing him with money and a boat from Wapping to Gravesend, from where to took a boat to Amsterdam. You can imagine him sneaking down one of the Thames Stairs in Wapping, late at night, to make his escape.

Burton later returned to the country as part of the Monmouth rebellion. He was captured whilst again trying to escape to the Netherlands, and to avoid a death sentence, he gave evidence that Elizabeth Gaunt had helped him escape following the earlier plot.

Elizabeth Gaunt was tried, and sentenced to death by being burned at the stake at Tyburn. She was burnt to death on the 23rd of October 1685. Such was the vindictiveness against anyone involved, however remotely, in the plot, she was not strangled before being burnt, as was the usual custom.

James Burton was from then on known as someone who would incriminate anyone, even those who helped him, in an attempt to save his own life.

The sentences passed seem to have been to act as a deterrence to would be conspirators, and also to anyone who may help a conspirator.

Elizabeth Gaunt was the last woman to be executed for a political offence (© The Trustees of the British Museum).

Although the Rye House plot failed, the ultimate aim of the conspirators did succeed.

James did become King James II on the death of his brother, Charles II.

James II and his wife, Mary of Modena had a son, confirming fears that the country would have a Catholic line of kings. A group of Protestant Earls, Viscounts and a Bishop invited William of Orange to the country to take the crown. William was married to Mary, the daughter of James II.

This resulted in the Glorious Revolution, where William of Orange and Mary jointly reigned, James II fled to France, the threat of a Catholic succession was removed and England had a Protestant monarch – all the aims of the Rye House conspirators.

And today there is a reminder of the plot with a simple plaque on the floor of the shelter at Lincolns Inn Fields.

Looking along the northern side of the fields – hard to believe that this was the site of a number of executions:

The public were not allowed in the fields after the railings were put up in 1735, however by the middle of the 19th century there was public campaigning to open up the field – this being such a large area of green, open space in a very built-up part of the city.

The London County Council purchased the field in 1894 from the Trust that had been maintaining the fields, and they were opened up to the public. The railings were removed in 1941 due to the need for iron for wartime weapons manufacturing. A real shame as these were over 200 years old.

New railings were installed in the 1990s, and the fields also had a tennis and netball courts and putting green built in the south-western corner. The central shelter was also built, which at times has been used as a bandstand.

A neat row of bins line the path to the shelter:

As befits such a place, there are a couple of 19th century monuments around Lincoln’s Inn Fields, including this drinking fountain, with the following religious message around the upper part of the fountain “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life”:

Along the north of Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the house and now museum of Sir John Soane:

Sir John Soane, who was the architect of the Bank of England, moved into Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1794, having rebuilt the house which he had purchased a couple of years earlier.

He eventually acquired numbers 12 to 14, the three houses in the above photo with the same darker grey brick and architectural style, although Soane added the façade to number 13, the central house which he completed, along with a rebuild in 1813.

Sir John Soane’s house at it appeared in 1836 (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

Soane was a collector, and during his life he amassed a very large collection of sculpture, furniture, antiquities and paintings.

He died in 1837, and following an Act of Parliament he had obtained in 1833, the house and his collection was held in a trust, and opened to the public as a museum, which continues to this day, with many of the exhibits being as organised by Sir John Soane.

Along the western side is Lincoln’s Inn:

With the gateway into this side of Lincoln’s Inn. Both the above and below buildings are not that old, but I will save these for a future post on Lincoln’s Inn.

Another 19th century drinking fountain at the opposite corner of the fields to the first. This one is in memory of Philip Twells, who was a Barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, as well as being the MP for the City of London.

On the south eastern corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields is this fine building. Once the home of the Land Registry, it is now part of the London School of Economics:

Also along the south side of the fields is the building of the Royal College of Surgeons:

The Royal College of Surgeons received their new Royal Charter in 1800, and built their new home in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The building was bombed during the last war and was rebuilt, so is not fully an original.

The following print, dated 1813, shows the view along the southern side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and shows how the post war rebuild of the Royal College of Surgeons building included additional floors at the top of the building (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

The same view today, where the horse and carriage has been replaced by cars, vans and bikes:

Almost all the buildings of Lincoln’s Inn Fields have been rebuilt since the original construction around the fields. There is one building that dates from the very first period of building, and this is Lindsey House, which was built between 1640 and 1641 (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

Lindsey House looks very much the same today:

Lindsey House has been attributed to Inigo Jones, however there is no firm evidence from the time to confirm this, but the style is typical of Jones’ work.

Whilst the exterior has changed little since construction in the mid 17th century, the interior is very different as in 1752 the house was divided in to two, and this work incolved the loss of much of the interior.

I had planned to cover more about the buildings that line Lincoln’s Inn Fields, however, as usual, I ran out of time. It is a lovely place to be on a sunny spring or summer day, and there is much to discover, including the simple plaque on the floor of the shelter, a plaque which hints at the politics and religious conflicts of the 17th century, and how vindictive the state could be to those who it considered a threat.

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Ely Place and St. Etheldreda

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Walter Thornbury’s opening description of Ely Place in Old and New London is a perfect summary: “A little north of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and running parallel to Hatton Garden, stand two rows of houses known as Ely Place. To the public it is one of those unsatisfactory streets which lead nowhere; to the inhabitants it is quiet and pleasant; to the student of Old London it is possessed of all the charms which can be given by five centuries of change and the long residence of the great and noble.”

From St. Andrew’s church, cross the approach to Holborn Viaduct, then across Charterhouse Street, we can see the entrance to Ely Place:

Thornbury’s description hints at the long and complex history of the street and surroundings, and the gatehouse at the entrance to Ely Place confirms that this is not a normal London street.

Much of the street remains lined with houses from the 1770s development of Ely Place, although many have been modified and restored, and there was considerable bomb damage to the area during the last war, however the view still demonstrates what a fine late 18th century London terrace would have looked like:

Along the western side of Ely Place is a curious indentation in the terrace, and here we can see the church of St. Etheldreda, with to the right Audrey House, which according to the Camden Council “Area Appraisal and Management Strategy” is 19th century. I assume late 19th century (Audrey was another version of the name of Etheldreda):

View looking south. The terrace house immediately to the left of the church has a strange ground floor, which I will discover soon:

As Thornbury hinted, Ely Place has a very long history.

In the 13th century, the land appears to have been in the possession of John de Kirkeby, Bishop of Ely, as on his death in 1290, he left the land and nine cottages to his successor Bishops of Ely.

It was normal in the medieval period for important figures in the church to maintain a residence in London. This was so they had somewhere to stay when visiting the city, where they could entertain, and to ensure that although they might be representing places far across the country, they could still have a presence close to the centre of royal and political power.

The Bishops of Ely originally had a house in the City of London, however there seems to have been a falling out with Hugh Bigod who was the Justiciary of England in the mid 13th century, and who tried to deny them access to their property in the Temple. It may have been this event which either gave John de Kirkeby the idea, or he was persuaded, to leave the land following his death to the Bishops.

The Bishops won a legal case to continue use of their City house, but following the bequest of such a large area of land, in the still semi-rural area to the west of the City, it must have seemed a good idea to build a new London home for the Bishops of Ely.

The Bishops than started the development of the land, into a property suitable for use as their London home. A chapel to St. Etheldreda was probably one of the first buildings on the site, along with the bishop’s house. William de Luda, the bishop that followed John de Kirkby purchased some additional land and houses and left these to the Bishops of Ely on his death.

The house and grounds were continuously added to, and developed during the 14th century, and we can get an idea of the size of the place from the so called Agas map from around 1561:

I have marked the streets that formed the boundaries to the Bishop’s land, Holborn to the south (you can see the name Ely Place and St. Andrew’s church just to the right of where I have marked Holborn).

Saffron Hill is to the east, then just a lane winding along the top of the bank down to the River Fleet. Hatton Wall formed the boundary to the north and Leather Lane (identified using its earlier name of Lither Lane) to the west. To confirm locations, I have also marked Fetter Lane in yellow to the south of Holborn.

The house and chapel were in the southern part of the estate, with gardens and extensive grounds up to Hatton Wall.

The quality of the fruit from the gardens must have been well known as Shakespeare has Richard III saying to John Morton, the Bishop of Ely:

“When I was last in Holborn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there
I do beseech you send for some of them.”

Ely House also appears in Richard II, where the dying John of Gaunt includes the following well known lines:

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,”

John of Gaunt did stay in Ely House from 1381 until his death in 1399. His London residence at Savoy Palace had been destroyed during the Peasants Revolt. John of Gaunt was one of those that the leaders of the revolt demanded to be handed over for execution.

Other visitors to Ely House included Henry VII who attended a banquet in 1495 and Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragon, who both attended the final day of a five day “entertainment” in November 1531. A prodigious amount of food was recorded as being consumed during the five days.

The extract from the Agas map shown above dates from around 1561, and the grounds of Ely House would soon start to be developed.

Queen Elizabeth I required that the Bishop of Ely lease part of the grounds to her Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton in 1576.

Hatton started the developed of the land, which included construction of a new house for him in the gardens. The lease would stay in the Hatton family until 1772 when the last Lord Hatton died. It then reverted to the Crown.

In the years of Hatton ownership, Ely House had a varied history. During the Civil War the house was used as a prison for captured Royalists, as well as a hospital for injured soldiers. The Bishops of Ely returned in 1660 to part of the property, but by then much had been developed and was held by the Hatton family.

We can get an idea of the development of the area in the years before the death of the last Lord Hatton from the following extract from a map of St. Andrew’s parish, dated 1755:

We can see a considerably reduced Ely Garden just to the north of Holborn Hill, with Ely House marked, and the chapel just below the word House.

Hatton Street (now Hatton Garden) had been built, and housing and streets had been constructed up towards Hatton Wall at the north, to Leather Lane in the west and Saffron Hill to the east. The banks of the fleet had also been built on by 1755, and the words “The Town Ditch” rather than River Fleet give some idea of the state of the old river by the middle of the 18th century.

The Bishops of Ely finally left the property in 1772, when they were given Ely House in Dover Street. This probably worked well as the above map extract shows, the area was heavily developed, and the house and grounds were in a state of disrepair.

The following print issued in 1810, but probably drawn in the second half of the 1700s is recorded as showing Ely House in London (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

The view of the house in the above print does not look too much like the house shown in the parish map extract, however the following print dated 1772 from Grose’s Antiquities of England and Wales provides a better view as this shows the chapel on the right and house in the background, in the correct orientation as shown in the parish map (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

The parish map implies that there is an open space between the house and chapel, however in the above two prints, the two buildings appear to be connected.

The old chapel on the grounds of Ely House is the only structure remaining from the time when the Bishops of Ely owned the site. Today, recessed slightly from the street, the chapel is now the church of St. Etheldreda.

It is shown in this 1815 print, with the two late 18th century terraces on either side (© The Trustees of the British Museum):

The lower part of the church appears to have changed since the time of the above print. The original entrance looks to have been up some steps from the street and there seems to be two doors through into the church.

Today, if I have understood the layout of the church correctly, the altar would be behind these doors, so the church now has a different entrance, shown in the photo below:

Today, the entrance to St. Etheldreda is through a door into the ground floor of the terrace house on the left of the church. From here, the door leads through to a corridor that runs along part of the south wall of the church:

The church is dedicated to St. Etheldreda, and this dedication can be traced back to the Ely heritage of the church.

An 1825 newspaper description of Etheldreda provides some background:

“This day, October 19th, is the anniversary of St. Etheldreda; she was a Princess of distinguished piety, and daughter of Aunas, King of the East Angles, and Heriswitha, his Queen, and was born in the year 630, at Ixning, a small village in Suffolk; at an early age she made a vow of perpetual chastity, which is recorded she never broke, though she was twice married, first to Thombert, an English Lord, and afterwards to Egfrith, king of Northumberland, in 671. Having lived twelve years with this King, she retired from the world, and devoted herself to God and religious contemplation, erecting an Abbey at Ely, of which she became superior, and where she spent the remainder of her days.”

There appears to have been a bit more to her “retiring from the world”. She had married Egfrith when he was aged 15, but by age 27 he wanted a more normal marital relationship. Egfrith tried to bribe Etheldreda, but she was standing firm and left him, becoming a nun at Coldingham, before going on to found an abbey at Ely.

Ely Cathedral was dedicated to Saints Peter, Etheldreda and Mary in 1109, and the Bishops of Ely carried the dedication to Etheldreda to their chapel in London.

Along the corridor is the entrance to the crypt:

But before looking at the crypt, there is an interesting feature just to the right of the door:

There was an article in a 1926 edition of the Illustrated London News, which discussed the Roman City. The article states that “Equally curious is the fact that digging has revealed only the slightest signs of Christian worship in Roman London, although it is known that there was a Christian community in Londinium, and that it was ruled by a Bishop as early as the third century. The chief ‘clue’ is at St. Etheldreda’s Church, Ely Place. It is a curiously archaic bowl shaped font of limestone of similar form to the two which are preserved at Brecon Cathedral. it was found buried in the undercroft.

Of the St. Etheldreda’s font, Sir Gilbert Scott said ‘You may call the bowl British or Roman, for it is older than the Saxon period’; and some support to this statement is provided by the fact that Roman bricks have been found on the site.”

A quick Google for the Brecon fonts shows these to be Norman, not early Christian, and the main font in the church does look like the Brecon font, so I have no idea whether this feature on the wall is the one referred to in the article, whether the article is right, and whether St. Etheldreda had, or has an early Christian font.

A walk down into the crypt reveals a dimly lit space, presumably with seating laid out for a function such as a marriage:

Niches in the walls with religious symbolism:

The crypt is very different to how it was many years ago. In May 1880, members of the St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society visited St. Etheldreda’s and their description of the church includes some history on the crypt:

“The members of the St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society held their second afternoon gathering for the present summer on Saturday, and inspected the chapel of St. Etheldreda, in Ely-place, Holborn. At the construction of the chapel, which was formerly the private chapel of the Palace of the Bishops of Ely, was fully explained by Mr. John Young (the architect under whom the fabric has recently been renovated throughout), who discoursed on its early history and on the salient points of its chief architectural features, its loft oak roof, its magnificent eastern and western windows, full of geometrical tracery, its lofty side lights, its ancient sculptures, and lastly its undercroft or crypt, which till very lately was filled up with earth and barrels of ale and porter from Messrs. Reid’s brewery close by.

Removing the earth from the crypt, it may be remembered, there were discovered the skeletons of several persons who had been killed 200 years ago by the fall of a chapel in Blackfriars, and were here interred.

The ‘conservative’ restoration of the fabric – in the general plan of the late Sir George Gilbert Scott, had been frequently consulted – was much admired by the ecclesiologists.”

The fall of a chapel in Blackfriars occurred on the afternoon of Sunday 26th of October 1623, when around 300 people had assembled to hear a Catholic sermon by the Jesuit preacher, Robert Drury, at the French ambassador’s residence.

As it was a Catholic sermon, the congregation of people was considered illegal.

The roof of the hall in which the sermon was underway collapsed and around 100 people were killed. Rather than any sympathy, anti-Catholic feeling at the time unleashed a religious riot at the site of the tragedy.

I understand that the skeletons of those who died at Blackfriars, and were buried and subsequently discovered in St. Etheldreda’s were reburied, and still rest in the church.

View from the rear of the crypt:

One of the niches that line the crypt walls:

The church above is a lovely space. I do not know if this is the normal form of lighting, but it added to the impression of the age and history of the church. Very different to the typical brightly lit London church:

St Etheldreda was caught up in the religious changes brought about by Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries.

The mass which had been celebrated by the Bishops of Ely in the Church of St Etheldreda since it was first built in the 13th century, was abolished, and the Book of Common Prayer became the standard for religious services.

Apart from a short period of five years when the Catholic Queen Mary was on the throne, the Catholic service was banned, and anyone participating in, or preaching a Catholic service would be treated as a criminal, with a death sentence often the result.

A special allowance was made in 1620 when the Spanish Ambassador, the Count of Gondomar, moved into Ely Place. Due to his position as Ambassador, and the custom that the ambassadors residence and grounds are considered part of the country they represent, which in the case of Spain was a Catholic country, Catholic services were allowed to be held in St. Etheldreda’s.

When Gondomar was recalled to Spain, his replacement was not allowed to take up residence at Ely Place, and permission for Catholic services was removed.

Detail of the stained glass above the altar:

The church was included in the use of Ely house and grounds as a hospital and prison during the Civil War.

Anti-Catholic feeling can be seen in the treatment of the uncle of Sit Christopher Wren. Matthew Wren was Bishop of Ely and tried to restore the grounds of Ely Place from the Hatton family, however he was reported for his “Popish ways” and imprisoned in the Tower of London. When he was finally released, the land which he had tried to restore had been built over and was very much as shown in the earlier parish map extract.

The change to the way that the State viewed the Catholic faith started in 1829 when the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed. This Act allowed Catholics to have their own churches, and for the Catholic mass.

In 1843, St. Etheldreda’s church opened as a Welsh language church, however the church reverted to the Catholic faith in 1873 when the church was purchased by the Rosminians – a Catholic congregation also called the Institute of Charity.

The church has featured in commemorations of Catholics who had been executed in earlier centuries. In 1912, it was reported that “Several hundreds of ‘the faithful’ marched in procession on Sunday afternoon from Newgate to Tyburn, along the route followed by the Catholic martyrs in a less tolerant age. The pilgrimage is the third of its kind, having been inaugurated three years ago.

Following the Crucifix, which was held aloft by Father Fletcher, came 150 men who marched in front of 190 women, most of whom recited prayers along the route.

The first stop was at the church of St. Etheldreda, the ancient church of the Bishops of Ely at Holborn. Thence the procession, the numbers of which increased with every mile covered, visited in turn the Catholic Church in Kingsway and St. Peter’s, Soho, and finished up at the Convent, near Tyburn.”

A sign today outside the church states that it was returned to the Old Faith in 1874 and that it continues in the care of the Rosiminian Fathers.

View towards the rear of the church:

Side windows of stained glass:

St. Etheldreda’s was badly bombed during the last war. There was significant damage to the roof and all the original stained glass was lost. When one bomb fell, there were people sheltering in the crypt, luckily there were no casualties.

The church was restored over the following years, and officially reopened on the 2nd of July, 1952 as commemorated by a plaque embedded in the wall under the Royal coat of arms:

Walking back outside, and along the corridor there must have once been a café on the other side of this door, with an old Luncheon Vouchers sticker on the door:

Back in Ely Place, and it is officially a dead end, although there is a doorway through to Bleeding Heart Yard, which the general walker is encouraged not to use:

There is some rather wonderful tiling on the blank arches at the end of the street which presumably also records the date when this wall was built:

On the western side of Ely Place is an entrance to Ely Court:

Along the alley is the pub Ye Old Mitre:

The Mitre (a bishops hat) is believed to have been founded in 1546 for the servants at the Bishop of Ely’s house, although the present buildings are later. The Grade II listing of the building states that it is “Circa 1773 with early C20 internal remodelling and late C20 extension at rear”, and that “near entrance glazed in to reveal trunk of what is believed to be a cherry tree, marking the boundary of the properties held by the Bishop of Ely and Sir Christopher Hatton”. There are also stories that Sir Christopher Hatton and Queen Elizabeth I danced around the tree, however I always find such stories somewhat doubtful.

The Mitre seen from further along the alley shows the late 18th century origins in the architectural style of the building:

On the front of the building is a mitre, and I have read some sources that state that this is from the original Ely House, however I can find no early source for this, and it is not stated in the Historic England listing details so I am dubious that it is from the original house:

Again, only a very brief description of a place with so much history, and a church that tells much about the state and country’s attitudes to the Catholic faith over the last five hundred years.

Ely Place was once a part of the church of Ely in London. Many of the rights associated with such a status have been removed over the last couple of hundred years, however it is still a very distinctive place, and the street and St. Etheldreda are well worth a visit.

You may also be interested in my post Ely Cathedral and Oliver Cromwell, when I visited Ely to find the location of some of my father’s photos from 1952.

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The 611 Trolleybus to Highgate

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The following photo shows the junction of South Grove and Highgate High Street. The photo is one of my father’s and was taken in 1948:

The same view, 75 years later, in 2023:

It is remarkable that in 75 years, the buildings have hardly changed. There is now far more traffic, but perhaps the most significant change is the network of cables that were strung across the street in the 1948 photo.

The cables were to provide power for the trolleybuses that once ran up Highgate Hill.

London had both trolleybuses and trams. The key difference is that trams ran on rails, whilst trolleybuses ran on normal pneumatic rubber tyres and did not need tracks running along the road. They were therefore more flexible in movement, within the constraints of the overhead cables which provided the electrical power supply.

The photo was taken where South Grove meets Highgate High Street, and where the layout of the streets and space available provides a turning point for the trolleybuses at the Highgate end of the route.

One of the reasons for using a trolleybus rather than a tram was the steep street that is Highgate Hill. The increase in height from Archway up to the point of the photo is 226 feet in a distance of 0.7 of a mile.

The rubber tyres of a trolleybus provide a much better grip than the metal wheels and tracks of a tram, which may well have had problems trying to maintain grip whilst ascending or descending Highgate Hill.

It was the 611 trolleybus that served Highgate. The route of the 611 was between Highgate and Moorgate, with stops as follows::

Moorgate: Finsbury Square
Highbury Station
Holloway: Nags Head pub
Archway Station
Highgate Hill: Salisbury Road
Highgate Village: South Grove

During Monday to Friday, the 611 ran at a frequency of one every 5 minutes, with one every 4 minutes at peak times. On Sunday’s the longest time between 611 arrivals was 6 minutes, so it was a well served route, and ran from just after 7 in the morning until just after 11 at night.

It is a shame that my father did not take a photo of the 611 arriving and turning at the location of the photo. I do not know why he took the photo. It may have just been the architecture of the buildings and general street scenes, rather than a trolleybus, which would have been a normal sight across London in 1948.

Again, a theme throughout this blog is that it is the normal, everyday things that we take for granted, and are the things that will disappear and are worth a photo.

What did a trolleybus look like? I have not yet found a photo of one whilst scanning my father’s photos, but have found one on the Geograph site. The following photo was taken on the Romford Road at Manor Park, Ilford, and shows “two westbound trolley-buses, the front one being on Route 663”:

As can be seen from the above photo, a London trolleybus looked very much like a normal bus, but with the addition of the booms on the roof which took electrical power from the overhead wires. It was basically an electrically powered bus, and would be considered very environmentally friendly by today’s standards.

The trolleybus did not need the tracks in the street, which was a significant cost advantage for both the original construction and ongoing maintenance.

The trolleybus could move within the constraints of the booms, which rotated on the roof allowing the trolleybus to move around obstructions. Whilst this was a significant benefit in avoiding death and injury to pedestrians, it could also result in problems whilst manoeuvering, as this article from the Holloway Press on the 22nd of February 1952 demonstrates:

“Trolleybus Jammed: The crews of two L.T.E. breakdown vehicles worked for two hours on Saturday evening to free a No. 611 trolleybus which became jammed against scaffolding in Holloway Road, near Ronalds Road.

The crowded trolleybus driven by Mr. Thomas Kenefick of Lambton Road, Upper Holloway, collided with the scaffolding outside Messrs. G. Hopkins and Sons, engineers, after swerving to avoid a boy stepping off the pavement. The force of the impact burst the near-side tyre and smashed paneling on the top deck. Nobody was injured.”

The first London trolleybus service commenced in 1931, and a programme of replacement of trams by trolleybuses began, as they were far more economical and as illustrated by the newspaper article above, were a safer alternative when running along busy streets.

Trolleybuses lasted longer than trams on London’s streets, but from 1954, London Transport started to replace trolleybuses with diesel buses, and the last trolleybus ran on the streets of London on the 8th of May, 1962.

The Illustrated London News reported on the last day of the trolleybus: “The last 100 of the 1700 trolleybuses that once ran in London made their final runs on May 8th, before being honourably discharged. The changeover in South-West London began in 1959. London’s last trolleybus arrived at Fulwell, greeted by a large crowd at midnight.”

The last trolleybus service on the 611 route between Moorgate and Highgate ran on the 19th of July, 1960, after which diesel buses would take passengers up and down Highgate Hill.

In my father’s photo, there is a pub on the corner, as the street disappears down towards Highgate Hill. The pub is the Angel Inn:

The pub has an interesting plaque which states that Graham Chapman of Monty Python’s Flying Circus “Drank here often and copiously”:

The Angel Inn is a very old establishment, although the current building is relatively modern. The photo below shows the frontage of the Angel Inn on Highgate High Street:

There has been a building on the site from at least the fifteenth century, when it was known as the Cornerhouse. From 1610, and probably earlier, it was a coaching inn, and continued in this use for the next few centuries. There is a cobbled yard round the back of the Angel where horses would have been stabled.

The earliest written reference I could find mentioning the Angel was from the Oxford Journal on the 28th of June, 1755, when “On Sunday last, about five o’Clock in the Afternoon, the Roof of the Angel Inn in Highgate was split by the Thunder and Lightning, which was very violent about that Neighbourhood.”

The Angel was completely rebuilt between 1928 and 1930 which explains why this old establishment has such a modern appearance.

The previous version of the Angel was from around 1880, when a new façade had been added to a late Georgian building.

Back to my father’s 1948 photo, and I love enlarging, and looking at the detail of some of these photos. Looking across the street, we find C.G. Willis & Son, General Ironmongers who appear to have an array of pans hanging outside the shop. The shop is now a Cafe Nero:

To the right of the above shop, was Garden Layout Specialists, with a couple of small children in a pram parked outside:

Garden Layout Specialists was an interesting name, and presumably refers to some type of shop selling gardening supplies. The shop is now an estate agents.

As with the above two shops, the 611 trolleybus has disappeared from the streets of Highgate.

Bus route 271 was introduced to replace the 611 trolleybus. The 271 covered much of the same route, starting from Moorgate, and later being extended to Liverpool Street.

The 271 ran until a couple of months ago, when it was replaced by the 21 and 263 routes. These two existing routes were part diverted from their original route to cover for the closed 271. All part of TfL’s gradual reduction in the number of bus routes across the city.

So there are still buses running up and down Highgate Hill, however for some exercise, and a view of some interesting buildings, it is well worth a walk up Highgate Hill.

For more of my father’s photos of Highgate, see this post on Highgate’s pubs, history and architecture.

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1953 – A London Year Book

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Seventy years ago, the Evening News published the London Year Book 1953.

Despite its small size (7 by 4.5 inches), it was packed with information about London. Statistics, stories and facts, then and now photos, lists of events and dates, 192 packed pages on the city. The book claimed to have “10,000 facts and the answers to the many questions on Britain’s capital which are constantly being asked”.

As with 2023, 1953 was also a Coronation year, and in an article looking at the accommodation of Coronation visitors, the following new challenge is identified in estimating the numbers who would visit the city “Circumstances have changed considerably since the last Coronation in 1937. There is an unknown factor in the development of television services, which will take the brilliant panoply of the Coronation procession right into the home.”

Organisers were expecting records to be broken, with more than 150,000 overseas visitors arriving in London for the Coronation. In the same period in 1952, the city had 47,624 visitors from overseas, so 1953 would see at least a trebling in numbers.

As well as the Coronation, there were many other events in London during 1953, and the book included the following London Diary listing with a rather diverse set of events:

The Empire Stadium and Empire Pool were at Wembley, and the Empress Hall was at Earls Court. The football matches listed are only for teams who were in Division 1 (now the Premier League), so in 1953 London only had four teams, Charlton, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham. Today, all these teams are still in the equivalent of Division1 with the exception of Charlton who are now in Division 1 (which in 1953 would have been Division 3).

The Year Book included a large and diverse range of statistics that show London in 1953, and how the city had changed. One of these was a table of population increases and decreases covering London and the surrounding counties, between 1931 and 1951:

London was a smaller entity in 1953 than it is today, boundary changes in the following years would increase the size of the city and take land from some of the surrounding counties, however the table does show some significant changes.

Between 1931 and 1951 the population of London declined by 1 million people. Much of this was due to wartime damage across London. Large areas of residential streets had been bombed and rebuilding was still to come.

Comparison of London with the surrounding counties shows that whilst the population of London decreased significantly, there were large increases in the surrounding counties. Some of these populations would later be taken back within London (for example parts of Essex and Middlesex), however the table really illustrates the impact the war had on the population of the south east of the country.

Another set of statistics shows the number of people killed or injured on the city’s roads:

The figures in the above table show just how dangerous the city’s streets were seventy years ago. In 1951 a total of 665 people were killed and 40,736 injured. Compare with the latest set of figures from Transport for London, and their “Casualties in Greater London during 2021” data release reports that in 2021, 75 people were killed, 3,505 seriously injured and 23,092 slightly injured – a significant reduction over the past 70 years.

This again is across a wider area than 1951, with a higher population and more traffic on the roads. The TfL data release does consider that COVID may have led to a reduction in traffic, however the figures for 2021 were part of an ongoing reduction in deaths and casualties across the city streets.

The Year Book includes a series of “Then and Now” photos, which illustrated how the city had changed. Along with photos under the heading of “Time Marches On….” which illustrated the many aspects of the city that were changing and developing.

The first compares two methods of global transport, with a photo of the Cutty Sark under tow to a berth in Millwall Docks, following a collision on the Thames with a tanker, in 1952. This is compared with the latest form of global travel with the De Haviland Comet, the world’s first jetliner service taking of from London Airport on a flight to Johannesburg.

The excitement of the crowds in the bottom of the photo as they wave off the de Havilland Comet would be short lived. The first production release of the Comet suffered a number of fatal crashes. Design problems and structural issues would be identified and would result in redesigned versions of the aircraft, however by the time they were in production, other aircraft companies such as Boeing had jumped ahead.

The aircraft in the above photo with the registration G-ALYP was one of those that crashed. This happened on a flight back to London from Singapore. Soon after taking off from Rome, the aircraft exploded and debris fell into the Mediterranean, killing all 35 people on board.

Another changing form of transport was the London tram, with the last tram on the 5th of July 1952 being featured. My father also took some photos during “Last Tram Week” which are in this post.

The above photo shows the sealed off entrance from the Embankment to the Kingsway tram subway, which was made redundant following the closure of the tram network.

The majority of the buildings of the Festival of Britain on the Southbank had been demolished by 1953 and the Year Book includes a photo of the site, with the remains of the Dome of Discovery in the background (see this post for photos of the Festival of Britain site before demolition):

The above photo shows parts of the concrete supports to the Dome of Discovery with County Hall in the background. The focus of the photo is on the helicopter landing on the Southbank site, which was the first of a series of tests to enable the site to become a “helidrome”.

The site did become the Waterloo Air Terminal, offering check-in services and coach travel to Heathrow Airport. There was a limited helicopter service for a period offering faster travel to Heathrow (see this post for more on the Waterloo Air Terminal).

Some photos under the “Time Marches On” theme also showed the repair of wartime damage, as with the Temple Church:

And the above photo shows bricklayers at work on the last 20 feet of the 320 foot chimney of the new Bankside Power Station – from the days when most protective headgear in construction work seemed to consist of a flat cap.

Time Marches On also applied to reconciliation with Germany, as in the following photo of the first time that a “top-flight German athletics team” arrived in London since before the war:

And the above photo highlights the return of one of the many London buildings used by the Government during and after the war.

London Transport

Several pages in the London Year Book were devoted to London Transport, with the following introduction to how London’s public transport system had been organised up to 1953:

“London’s transport system was first united under the name London Passenger Transport Board in July 1933, when 170 different undertakings were taken over, including the Metropolitan Railway, the London County Council Tramways, the Central London Railway, and the London General Omnibus Company.

The first regular London bus services was inaugurated in 1829, when George Shillibeer began a service with a single horse-bus running through the streets of London. In 1856 an Anglo-French company, known as the London general Omnibus Company, began operations, an organisation which grew to become the largest of its kind in the world.

L.P.T.B. ran London’s transport until 1st January 1948, when under nationalisation it became the London Transport Executive.

Today, the London transport area is 1,986 square miles, roughly one twenty-fifth of the whole of England. it covers two counties and parts of seven other counties, as well as serving parts of a tenth county. The estimated population of this area is 9,800,000.”

Part of this extensive network, and one that served the counties around London was the coach service, with Green Line providing timetabled services to places around London, as well as sight-seeing and private hire coaches:

The London Year Book includes the passenger journeys made in 1950:

The Year Book appears to have used the term Railways for the Underground network. For comparison, from the last reporting period, from the London Datastore, comparison figures are:

Buses: 1,490,700,000
Underground: 748,300,000

The use of buses shows a considerable drop over 70 years, however the figures come with the caveat that the scope of central buses in 1950 and the bus network today may be very different.

Underground journeys do show an increase of over 100 million, which sounds about right given the enlargement of the underground network over the last 70 years.

The London Year Book includes a number of statistics that show the scale and complexity of the Underground network, including:

106 lifts are maintained at 37 stations
The longest railway station escalator in the world is at Leicester Square Station with a vertical rise of 80.75 feet
The shortest escalator is at Chancery Lane Station with a vertical rise of 15 feet
106 lifts are maintained at 37 stations
The deepest lift shaft ay 181 feet is at Hampstead Station
The shortest lift shaft at 30 feet 6 inches is at Chalk Farm Station
There are 1,150 automatic ticket machines in use which issue 85 per cent of all tickets and use more than 15,000 miles of paper a year

The Year Book identifies a number of “London Transport Records”:

Highest point on the road is a country bus and coach route at Botley Hill, Warlingham, Surrey
Deepest point is in the railway tube 67 yards south of Waterloo Station , where the tunnel is 67 feet below ground
longest continuous tunnel in the world runs from just south of East Finchley Station to Morden Station via Bank on the Northern Line. 17 miles 528 yards in length, it has been in use since 1939
Longest railway journey direct is from Liverpool Street to Aylesbury at 41.8 miles
Longest railway journey changing once is from Epping to Aylesbury at 58.8 miles
Longest Green Line Coach route is the 716 Hitchen to Chertsey at 66 miles
Shortest bus route for Central buses is the 249 which runs from Upminster Station to Corbets Tay at 1.3 miles

What I did find strange was the statement that the deepest point in the tube network is just south of Waterloo Station, where the tunnel is 67 feet below ground, however in the previous statistics it states that the deepest lift shaft at 181 feet is at Hampstead.

I assume the deepest point just south of Waterloo Station is referring to depth below sea level. Hampstead Station is at a height of 351 feet above sea level, with the area around Waterloo Station at around 3 feet above sea level, so the statement about the tunnel south of Waterloo being the deepest is correct, relative to sea level.

There is a list of the longest bus routes on the network:

On summer Sundays: 112 from Palmers Green to Hampton Court (22.3 miles)
On winter Sundays: 59 from West Hampstead to Chipstead Valley (22 miles)
On weekdays: 25 from Victoria to Hornchurch (19.6 miles)
On country buses: 414 from West Croydon to Horsham Station (32.6 miles)

The oldest bus route in 1953 was the one running between Shepherds Bush and Liverpool Street Station. It was founded in 1866 and in 1953 was route 11, this number being in use from 1905. Today route 11 runs between Fulham Town Hall and Appold Street where it terminates two stops after Liverpool Street Station.

The change from Shepherds Bush, first to Hammersmith seems to have happened around 1970, then to Fulham around 1994.

The challenge with full comparisons between 1953 and 2023 are the significant changes to the transport network, as well as where and how people liver and travel.

For the underground network, completely new underground lines would be constructed in the decades after 1953. The war had put a hold on expansion of the network, and the Year Book identifies the sections where work had recommenced and been completed:

Back to some of the photos in the book, and under the “Time Marches On….” category, there is a photo of the figure of Justice above the Central Criminal Court / Old Bailey, to highlight the major restoration of the building:

Which is followed by a photo of the Japanese flag in front of the Japanese Embassy, following the signing of the peace treaty with Japan, and the restoration of relations between the two countries.

The following photo shows a Roman coffin discovered during excavations in Furnival Street, Holborn. The years following the war were a time of significant reconstruction in the City, and although much was discovered, I have always wondered how much archaeology was lost.

The above photo shows a rally of holders of the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Conduct Medal in Horse Guards Parade.

The “Then and Now” theme continues with two photos showing Kingsway. In the top photo, taken in 1905, the Kingsway tram subway had just been completed. By the time of the second photo in 1952, the subway had become redundant and the right side of the street had been developed.

Supplying London with Electricity

The London Year Book includes a few pages on the supply of electricity across London. This was a time when electricity generating stations were operating across London, and the use of coal was one of the major causes of air pollution.

The following table lists the locations of power stations across London, along with their generation capacity in kilowatts:

My grandfather worked in the St. Pancras power station up until 1948.

Note that the Bankside figure is for the original power station on the site, not the power station that was being constructed (see this post on Building Bankside Power Station).

As with the London transport system, the post-war period had seen the consolidation of electricity supply in London, and the Electricity Act of 1947 formed the British Electricity Authority which consisted of fourteen individual electricity boards across the country, with the London Electricity Board serving London.

Bringing together the electricity supply industry was also aimed at standardising electricity supply. The early 1950s was not a time when you could have taken your mobile phone charger (assuming there could have been such a thing), and simply plug it in to any electricity socket in the city.

There were still many non standard electricity supplies, and the Year Book records some figures in the change over of consumers’ supply, with 6,112 consumers having been transferred from Direct Current (DC) supplied to Alternating Current (AC) – the supply type we use today, as well as 1,337 consumers from non-standard to standard AC supplies.

These changes were part of creating the world we take for granted today, where standard electricity supplies resulted in standard appliances, lower costs and easier availbility.

There was still much change to complete however, as the Year Book records there were still 155,998 DC services being provided.

Over the coming decades, all the power stations within London would close down as larger power stations were built along the Thames, out towards the estuary, and London was integrated into the wider country grid. In turn, these stations along the Thames would also close.

Back to “Then and Now”, and two photos showing Marble Arch, the top photo from 1904, and the second showing how the area had been developed by 1953:

Two photos showing Swiss Cottage, showing that the “place has changed surprisingly little during the last sixty years”. The view of Swiss Cottage is a bit different today.

Brompton Road, before and after redevelopment, including the construction of Harrods:

The Post Office and London Telecommunications

Some of the statistics in the London Year Book show numbers and technologies that would change beyond all recognition in the years between 1953 and 2023, for example, in 1953:

Number of telegrams delivered: 5,885,300
Number of telephones: 1,755,919
Number of telephone calls: 1,730,000,000
International (radio) calls: 249,000
Telephonists: 16,117
Number of letters and packets posted: 2,737,394,100
Letters and packets at Christmas: 83,745,200
Number of pillar and other post boxes: 11,688
Number of postmen: 32,195

The telegram has disappeared, there are probably still a high number of telephones, but more mobile phones, with many of the traditional land lines not being used. Although there were sub-sea telephone cables in 1953, radio was still being used to put through international calls, for example from the very tall radio masts that were at Rugby, alongside the M1.

The job of a telephonist is now redundant, and I suspect many of the telephone calls and letters have been replaced by messaging and email applications.

In 1953, the Internet and mobile phone would have been more science fiction than reality.

Many of those telephones would have been installed across the expanding city suburbs, and the following “Then and Now” photo from the London Year Book illustrates how the city had expanded during the first half of the 20th century.

The photo at the top shows the rural area in 1905 that would become Golder’s Green, shown in the lower photo:

Although London was building and expanding at a rapid pace, there was still a reasonable amount of green space across the city, as listed in the following table, although east London was very poorly provided for compared to the rest of the city:

The Airports of London

The Year Book provides some details on the airports and airlines serving London.

At the time, the London Year Book records that British airliners flew the equivalent of five times around the world every day, and during a year carried over a million passengers.

The heaviest traffic was between London and Paris, with during the summer fifteen flights a day on the route. The longest route served by a London airport was to Tokyo. There were sixteen flights a week to New York.

Three airports serviced London.

The main airport was London Airport, the site that would become Heathrow. In 1953 23 airlines used London Airport, carrying around three quarters of a million passengers in a year. London Airport had “long range radar apparatus, which is able to pick up aircraft flying at more than a hundred miles away”.

The central passenger terminals and tunnel between airport and roads were in the plans, but had yet to be constructed.

Northolt was the second of London’s airports, originally the busiest airport in the country, until being overtaken by London Airport, but in 1953 it was still a busy place, as shown by the following photo of Northolt:

The third London airport was at Croydon, which by 1953 was mainly serving charter aircraft, and handling around 9,000 passengers a year.

Back to central London, and the following photo shows the “basket race”, when market porters ran around a track whilst carrying a large number of baskets on their heads.

The following photo is accompanied by the text “The three London buses which made a 12,000 mile tour of America and Canada are seen in this picture after they had arrived back in Britain in August 1952. Large crowds gathered on Horse Guards Parade for a ‘welcome home’ ceremony.”

I suspect that the buses are the ones that were sent to America and Canada to advertise the Festival of Britain. London buses had also be sent across Europe to advertise the Festival.

I covered earlier the power stations across London that generated electricity for the city. There was a more polluting industry that provided energy for London, and the following photo shows hot coke being guided through a retort at the Beckton Gas Works.

Prior to the discovery of natural gas in the North Sea, gas was produced from coal, an incredibly dirty and polluting process.

As with electricity, the production and distribution of gas had been consolidated into the North Thames Gas Board, that as well as serving London, provided for customers out to Bracknell, High Wycombe and Marlow in the west, and Southend and Shoeburyness in the east.

In the year 1950 to 1951, 367,084,958 therms of gas were sold, with 4,528,789 tons of coal being carbonised to produce the gas.

As well as 1,937,155 tons of coke, this process also produced 227,000 tons of tar, 6,500,000 gallons of Benzole and 111,000,000 gallons of ammoniacal liquor – a highly polluting process.

Crime and Policing

The City of London Police had a strength of 616 officers in 1951. They dealt with a range of crimes, and those classed as larcenies (robbery, theft by a servant, theft of motor vehicle, fraud etc.) totaled 2,506 in 1951.

The following table shows the type and numbers of offences against the person and property:

Motoring offences across London were rising rapidly, probably due to increased car ownership. In 1949 there were a total of 77,326 offences, rising to 89,002 in 1951.

Some other statistics from London policing:

There were 138,745 registered aliens across Greater London in 1951
19,820 firearms certificates were issued during 1951
There were 8,038 licensed premises in the ‘off’ and ‘on’ trade
There were 19,727 arrests for drunkenness in 1951
404 men and 14 women were charged with begging. 247 men and 134 women were charged with sleeping out
1,076 persons were recorded as missing during 1951
Police rescued 24 people from drowning, however 83 bodies were recovered including that of one child

The early 1950s were a time when the police used the BBC to broadcast messages and appeals, and in 1951, 172 messages were broadcast on behalf of the Metropolitan Police, of which 84 were successful.

The police were probably involved with maintaining order at football games, and one featured in the Year Book shows “Ditchburn pushes the ball off the head of Souden in the Spurs v. Manchester City match at Tottenham on September 1st, 1951” – although according to the 11v11 website, on September 1st 1951, Spurs were playing Newcastle away, with Newcastle winning 7 – 2, so I have no idea which game is captured in the photo.

The London Year Book included a number of adverts, including one showing the story of Arding & Hobbs at Clapham Junction:

The Civil Service Stores in the Strand:

Although the Civil Service Stores as a business closed many years ago, the building can still be seen. It has been modified a number of times, although the clock is still a feature on the corner of the building:

And an advert for London Stadiums Ltd. who ran greyhound racing at Wandsworth, Park Royal and Charlton Stadiums:

The London Year Book covers far more than I have been able to write about in this post. In the introduction, the editor claims that “we think it will help to solve problems and settle arguments, and believe it will prove of real help to everyone living in, or interested in, the world’s greatest city”.

The intention was that the London Year Book would become an annual publication. As far as I know it was only published in 1953 and 1954.

So much of what is covered in the 1953 London Year Book seems like another world, and London certainly has changed considerably in the last 70 years. Reading through the book, it suddenly occurred to me that years I remember really well and are so familiar are actually closer to 1953 than to 2023.

For example, 1983 was only 30 years after 1953, but is now 40 years ago. In 1983, I was in my 4th year of my first full-time job in London, and;

Blue Monday by New Order, Sweet Dreams by the Eurhythmics and Lets Dance by David Bowie were in the music charts.
The Falklands War was the previous year, and in June 1983 Margaret Thatcher won a large majority, helped by victory in the Falkland’s.
ARPANET (the US Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was configured to use the protocol that would become the Internet, a technology that would transform so much.
The one pound coin was introduced.
The comedy series Blackadder was first shown on TV.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament march in London had over a million people protesting against the deployment of US nuclear cruise missiles in the UK. They would arrive at Greenham Common in November.
An IRA car bomb killed six people when it exploded outside Harrods.

All the above events were much closer to 1953 than they are to today.

As the title above many of the photos in the London Year Book confirms: “Time Marches On…..”

alondoninheritance.com

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

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Paternoster Square – Destruction and Development

Bread Street – A Devastated City Street

Prudential Building and Furnival’s Inn

Hook New Town – A London County Council Plan

Shenfield Street, Hoxton at the Coronation

Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Rye House Plot

Ely Place and St. Etheldreda

The 611 Trolleybus to Highgate

1953 – A London Year Book

London Transport

Supplying London with Electricity

The Post Office and London Telecommunications

The Airports of London

Crime and Policing

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London Transport

Supplying London with Electricity

The Post Office and London Telecommunications

The Airports of London

Crime and Policing

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