Tag Archives: london

21Mar/15

Crane City

London Stories, , , , , ,

Our neighbourhood is in a constant state of change, and the best indicators of where the change is happening are the cranes on the horizon. This picture below is of the proposed Shard/London Bridge. The building on the left of the picture is 1 London Bridge and on the right is St Thomas’ Hospital which sits on top of London Bridge station. The Shard is going to replace London Bridge House, which also sits on top of London Bridge station. Also missing in this picture is Southwark Tower, alongside St Thomas’. Perhaps that’s coming down, too.

Proposed Shard, London Bridge

Proposed Shard, London Bridge

I took this picture, below, one very late summer evening because it shows so clearly the myriad cranes on London’s skyline. The hoop-topped building on the right is Barklays Bank on Bishopsgate and the stainless steel building with little dots of blue on it is Lloyds of London, the insurers. Immediately behind it, in Lime St, is the new Willis Building, a glass tower nicely curved to follow the shape of the street.

View to The City from Holborn

View of The City from Holborn

It must happen from time to time, mustn’t it? A dead crane. This one, below, stopped building work on New Street Square for a day, and closed off both Fetter Lanes and any street to it from Fleet St. Crowds of high-visibility vests and hard hats leaned gloomily against the bars in local pubs and worried about what they were going to do for the rest of the day.

Dead crane, One New Street Square

Dead crane, One New Street Square

 

21Mar/15

Sir Richard Whittington

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There’s a wonderful story about Dick Whittington, isn’t there? The first dramatic presentation of this story was a play in 1606; a poor lad came to London to seek his fortune and was leaving town, deeply disappointed, when his cat talked him into having another go. He stayed, and became mayor three times.

Forget all that! Firstly, it wasn’t the cat that called him back, it was the bells of St Mary le Bow, secondly he was mayor four times and thirdly he was never poor.

The Museum of London (just down the road from us) tells us that Richard was the son of Sir William Whittington of Gloucester who died in the 1350s. The estate went to Richard’s elder brother, so Richard left Gloucester for London.

There he was apprenticed to a mercer and of course joined that guild. It is entirely likely that his father’s estate paid for his apprenticeship and his stake in business.  He became a wealthy merchant dealing in velvet, silk and gold cloth from abroad. Since most of his trade was with the Royal Court, he came to the notice of King Richard II, and Henry IV, to whom he lent large sums of money.

Dick Whittington

Dick Whittington

This lovely picture, above, of the legend, cat and all, is in the window of St Michael Paternoster Royal on College St. To get there, follow Newgate St to Cheapside, right into Queen St, left into Canon St and College Hill is first right. This beautiful church, which hosts the Mission to Sailors, was first built by Whittington and was his own parish church. You can read the blue plaques on College Hill which shows where he lived.

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The steps to becoming mayor, or Lord Mayor as it is these days, are as follows: first be a citizen of the City of London, then a guild member, then a freeman, then an alderman, then be elected Lord Mayor. Henry IV appointed him mayor on the death of Adam Bamme, but he was elected thereafter.

Whittington still lives! His will left a huge sum to be used for charitable works, one of which was an almshouse which is now in Stepney, run by the Whittington Charity. The Mercer’s Company is no longer a trade guild, but is still an important City institution and is given over entirely to managing the charities, including the Whittington Charity, that it administers.

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In the 1400s the office of mayor was the government of the City of London, based in the Guildhall on what is now Gresham St. The Guildhall these days is the seat of the Corporation of the City of London, and the mayor is called the Lord Mayor but both institutions are direct descendents of the Medieval government.

21Mar/15

The Blitz

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On 7 Sept 1940, the Germans started a policy of strategic bombing of non-military targets – first used by the Germans on a small though devastating scale in the Spanish Civil War – and London was the centre of that attack. The campaign lasted 57 consecutive days – all the way until 10 May 1941. We have already seen that this was the night when St Mary le Bow was destroyed by all the nearby burning buildings, but the Holborn area was heavily affected and well into the 1980s there were bomb sites around us. Strategic bombing caused the loss of 40,000 civilian lives in England, of whom 23,000 lived in London.

I put the photo of Christ Church Greyfriars at the head of the page because I have family who were christened and married there, and it is such a sad and poignant reminder of what London lost in those terrible days

Christ Church Greyfriars

Christ Church Greyfriars

The Wren tower has been restored, but the walls on this side of the building were demolished for a road widening scheme. The Pineapple Project hopes to restore the missing walls, but there are no plans to replace the building.

On 7 May 1941, the church of St Andrew Holborn, pictured left and sited on Holborn Circus, was completely gutted by bombing and eventually it was decided to restore the building “brick for brick and stone for stone” to the original Wren design for the largest parish church he built. During its restoration, the old crypt was discovered and hinted at religious observance on this site since the Romans arrived, 2000 years ago.

If you look at the new building going up opposite, called 40 Holborn Viaduct, it was the subject of a very famous Blitz photo; a fire engine is parked next to Prince Albert’s  statue and its crew is fighting the blaze.

St Andrews, Holborn

St Andrews, Holborn

There is much to be known about the effect of the Blitz on Holborn, for which there is plenty of room below, and I’ll continue this story later. In the meantime, look for St Albans Church near the red-brick Prudential building and St Ethelreda’s in Ely Place. St Albans was substantially destroyed and rebuilt and St Ethelreda’s lost its nave. The spirit of London is such that these fine buildings are standing proud again today, in continuous use.

In the end the tactic of strategic bombing was counter-productive. The bombs did not destroy English morale; they may have strengthened it. The time and effort that should have been spent destroying the RAF was dissipated into a huge cushion that could absorb as much military ordinance as the enemy could discharge. The German distraction from the war effort to the bombing of London (and other cities) allowed the British to perfect their radar, re-build their air bases and their air force, and probably prevented the planned invasion of England. Military strategists might like to take note.

St Albans Holborn interior

St Albans Holborn interior

 

21Mar/15

Sir Thomas More

London Stories, , , , , , ,

I’m sure you have heard of Sir Thomas More as part of  your high school English theatre studies, if not from history, in the form of a 1960 Robert Bolt drama and a subsequent 1966 movie starring Paul Scofield, both called “A Man for all Seasons.” He was the Lord Chancellor for Henry VIII. It was not always good to be too close to King Henry because when he annulled his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, and wanted to marry Ann Boleyn, the spotlight fell on Sir Thomas.

Catherine had two girls, Mary and Elizabeth, but Henry considered he needed a male heir. He had Catherine sequestered to a convent in Dunstable (look for the Priory signs all around Dunstable and you’ll realise it was a formidable presence in Dunstable’s past) and held a convocation of bishops in the Blackfriars building, now the site of Sion Hall, next-door to the Old City of London School building, still standing on the bank of the Thames.

Sion House Victoria Embankment Henry Viii Convocation

Sion Hall, Victoria Embankment, site of the last Convocation of Bishops held by Henry VIII.

The convocation could not bring itself to agree to Henry’s actions so he dissolved it and declared himself head of the Church in England. He expected Thomas to declare his right to marry Ann Boleyn, but Thomas said nothing. Henry interpreted Thomas’ “thundering silence” as condemnation of his wish to marry, but Thomas said the legal meaning of silence is assent.

Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas More

The king encouraged Thomas Cromwell to try Sir Thomas in a special court, which duly found him guilty of treason. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but the king commuted this to beheading and his head was set on a pike on London Bridge. His body was buried in the Tower of London. It is said that one of his daughters later claimed the head, and it is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

I found the statue above on the corner of Carey St, off Chancery Lane, and I was interested in the caption which says “Some time Lord High Chancellor of England. Martyred July 5th 1535. The faithful servant both of God and the king.” It looks like a Victorian building and I was intrigued that even 350 years after he was executed, Sir Thomas’ admirers still insist that his actions were those of a true servant of the king.

The stained glass window below is in the church of St Lawrence Jewry, which is in the grounds of the Guildhall in Gresham St. To get there, walk across Holborn Viaduct, down Newgate Street, left into St Martins le Grand and right into Gresham St. Follow it to the Guildhall on your left. The church isn’t always open; you just have to be lucky.

Window in St Lawrence Jewry

Window in St Lawrence Jewry

I have been surprised that nothing of Sir Thomas is mentioned in Lincoln’s Inn, his Alma Mater. I could only inspect the chapel, of course, so perhaps there is some remembrance in the Hall, or the library. This picture of the gardens of Lincoln’s Inn shows the fountain with the Old Buildings behind, that back on to Chancery Lane. They bend the corner and run along Carey St to my right in this picture, to form part of a square.

Lincolns Inn, Old Buildings

Lincolns Inn, Old Buildings

The statue of Sir Thomas, is on a building attached to the back of the Old Buildings, so he has his back to Lincoln’s Inn and is looking at the Royal Courts of Justice. Since this building and the RCJ are both Victorian, perhaps our great-grandparents are reminding us of how government should work.

Sir Thomas More was born in Milk St, off Cheapside, almost opposite St Mary le Bow, and became a lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn. He coined the word Utopia as an island paradise of justice and good. In 1935, More was canonised a saint by both the Catholic Church and the Anglicans and was declared the patron saint of lawyers and statesmen. He gave his life in the firm belief of the separation of church and state. He was indeed, the Faithful Servant.

21Mar/15

Portobello Road

London Stories, , , , , , ,

This isn’t strictly speaking Holborn, either – rather like Camden Lock – but if you take a Central Line Tube to Notting Hill Gate it doesn’t take long to get there. However, it’s much more relaxing to go there on a sunny Saturday and spend a few hours grazing amongst the stalls. It is fun, busy, colourful and there might be bargains in there somewhere.

Portobello Road sign

Portobello Road sign

I wanted to go and see Portobello Road before the developers moved in, put up rents to drive out the existing tenants and demolished all the rather seedy, elderly wooden buildings that line the street, in favour of high-paying multinational company-owned boutiques.

Some think this would be much more in line with the quality of the borough, to have high class, expensive shopping facilities here, but what a loss to London it would be! In spite of how close it is to the Regency mansions that crowd its environs, Portobello Road will never be a Regent Street.

Portobello Rd street stall

Portobello Rd street stall

Quite apart from being a street market, Portobello Road does have real people living there. This house below, one of the multi-coloured cottages near the top of the street, was where George Orwell lived. He was the anti-authoritarian author of “Animal Farm” and “1984”. The market is remarkable for attracting mostly the English – there are very few tourists.

George Orwell memorial

George Orwell memorial

Portobello Road is described in the literature as the biggest antiques street market in the world. When you step out of the Tube station and stand at the top of the street, there are two rows of buildings down a narrow road absolutely filled with people. It’s quite a sight. Julia, surely the name of the beautiful vendor below, was selling scarves.

 The vendor

The vendor

21Mar/15

TheatreLand

London Stories, , , , , ,

The heart of theatre in London is in Shaftesbury Avenue and the streets immediately off it, including Drury Lane. The area these days is marketed as TheatreLand, and even some of the street signs down Drury Lane have this logo on them.

Drury Lane

Drury Lane

Interestingly, there are TheatreLand signs in Leicester Square – it’s partly justified; Mama Mia is there at the Prince of Wales, and Phantom of the Opera plays in Her Majesty’s in Haymarket, but Leicester Square is more famous for cinema than theatre.

In a place such as this, you also get genuine characters. This chap, below, was just leaving The Dancers Shop on Drury Lane and apart from the garb (including the chain mail skirt) and the hair, he was unusual for the chains and clips attached to every square inch of skin on his face, lips and eyebrows. He gave me a great smile and thoroughly enjoyed the attention he was getting from all sorts of people on the street. A little further down the road, there was a huge sign on the New London Theatre advertising the Blue Man Group.

The Dancing Shop

The Dancing Shop

These stage hands were having a break outside the Theatre Royal off Drury Lane. As I talked with them a huge white bus from France pulled up and about 70 well-dressed late-middle-aged people, having a great time on their London Day Out, climbed down and made for the front door of the theatre.

Stage hands

Stage hands

Shaftsbury Avenue was part of the effort to break up the St Giles slum and it gives access from Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus. On the junction with Drury Lane there is the grandiose Shaftsbury Theatre. Surely everyone has heard of this. Originally, it played Victorian music hall, vaudeville and melodramas, but as tastes have changed so has the theatre. Inside, it is a small, even intimate theatre with excellent acoustics. It has always been home to musicals and at the moment it is playing Daddy Cool. This view, below, of the theatre is from High Holborn and to get there all you have to do is leave Holborn Circus heading up Holborn, follow the road and stick to the left hand footpath all the way.

Shaftsbury Theatre

Shaftsbury Theatre

Some of the famous theatres in the area include the Old Vic (A Moon for the Misbegotten) the Theatre Royal (The Producers) The London Palladium (Sound of Music) The Adelphi (Evita) The Lyceum (Lion King) the Dominion in Tottenham Court Rd (We will rock you) The Aldwych (Dirty Dancing) and, of course, the Shaftsbury Theatre.

21Mar/15

London Bridge

London Stories, , , , , ,

From Holborn Circus you can walk, in an hour, to and from each of five of London’s bridges across the Thames – Waterloo, Blackfriars, The Millenium Bridge, Southwark and London Bridge. Of them all, London Bridge is the oldest and the most famous.

London Bridge

London Bridge

If you walk across London Bridge from the City side, and then down the steps on the western side (your right) of the south end of the bridge, you will see the Mudlark pub in front of you. Turn around and you will see that the steps you descended are called Nancy’s Steps, because this is where poor Nancy was murdered by Bill Sykes in “Oliver Twist”. Now walk to your left under the bridge and you will see two set of twin rails buried in the road that tell you where the old London Bridge, and the 1831 John Rennie-built London Bridge, used to sit. If you turn round now and walk past the Mudlark there is a little park on your right which has the last stones left in London of Rennie’s bridge.

The last surviving stones of the 1831 London Bridge.

The last surviving stones of the 1831 London Bridge.

On one of those stones is a stainless steel sheet (below) with an etching of the changing profile of London Bridge through all of its last 1000 years.

Evolution of London Bridge.

Evolution of London Bridge.

You will be familiar with the sight of drawings of London Bridge showing heads stuck on long wooden poles. This was Drawbridge Gate, and Sir Thomas More (the Man for All Seasons) was one of the first to be treated in this way after his execution by Henry VIII.

The stretch of the Thames from London Bridge downstream to Tower Bridge is called the Pool of London. The Customs House, Old Billingsgate Market, the Tower, St Katherine’s Dock, all show that this is part of the historic and financial heart of London.

View across the Thames to the City of London.

View across the Thames to the City of London.

The Romans built the first London Bridge across a wide, shallow river with large swamps on the south bank. It was on their main road from Dover to Chester, through Canterbury and St Albans, often referred to as Watling Street and if you are driving along the A5, then you are following that Roman road. The Roman bridge, and the Saxon bridge after it, was wooden and vulnerable to floods and fire. A stone bridge was built in the 1100s and this 600-year old bridge was finally replaced by the bridge Rennie built in 1831. The bridge you see now, 1960s modern, low-slung and looking as though it was lowered from a helicopter in 5 pieces, replaces the 1831 bridge and it was that bridge which was transported, stone by numbered stone, to Arizona – minus the five stones you can see above.

Story of the Old (1831) London Bridge.

Story of the Old (1831) London Bridge.

21Mar/15

Ludgate

London Stories, , , , ,

I like to go for a walk at lunchtime and recently I have taken to stalking Fleet Street. This rather beautiful statue of Queen Elizabeth I, below, that I found in a little alcove of the church of St Dunstan-in-the-West caught my attention. The carved stone underneath said the statue had been removed from Ludgate and placed here, in Fleet St, in the 1750s. This is the only statue of the queen carved in her lifetime and I have seen the Ermine Portrait of her, in Woburn Abbey, painted at the time of victory over the Spanish Armada, and it seems a good likeness to me.

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Queen Elizabeth I

Ludgate was one of the gates in the old London Wall demolished in the 1760s because it was in the way of City traffic. There is a blue plaque on the wall of St Martins on Ludgate Hill and the gate must have crossed the road there and given entrance to the street leading directly to St Pauls Cathedral. The sight must have been breathtaking; actually, it’s still pretty inspiring.

King Lud

King Lud

Ludgate is named after King Lud, as indeed is the city of London itself. It was named Caerlud (city of Lud in Gaelic) which was corrupted to Caerlindein over time and was Latin-ized to Londinium by the Romans. He was a legendary king in the 70’s BC and was buried on what is now Ludgate Hill. Inside St Dunstan’s is a notice directing you to the three statues of King Lud and his sons, which had been removed from Ludgate when it was demolished. I found them in the church porch immediately below Queen Elizabeth, nicely out of the weather, but still looking fairly hard worn by time.

While we are at St Dunstan’s, cross the road and have a look at its clock. This clock dates from the 1670s and is the first public clock in London to have a minute hand. The two giants that accompany it hit the bells and swivel their heads. Hang around – it’s worth seeing.

St Dunstan's clock

St Dunstan’s clock

You will find the sign indicating the site of the demolished gate, on the wall of St Martin-within-Ludgate on Ludgate Hill, opposite Thameslink City Station

Site of Ludgate demolished 1760

Site of Ludgate demolished 1760

21Mar/15

The Temple

London Stories, , , , , , ,

Ever since a very good friend of mine from Waikato University said his family used to be members of the Knights Templar, I have had an interest, and looked out for mentions of them. Now that I am in Holborn, I have found out that this was a hotbed of Templar activity. You’ll have heard of Temple Underground station, downhill from there on the Embankment; the land it sits on, the gardens and the buildings to its north, are all on what was Templar property and are divided into Outer and Inner Temple, each with its own symbol.

The knighthood of the Templars was founded in Jerusalem in the 1100’s and because their headquarters were next to Solomon’s Temple, they named their land and buildings, in London and in Paris, “Temple.” In the 1300s the order was brutally suppressed and in London everything they owned was seized and sold. Since at least the 1600s there have been legal chambers in these buildings. This is now almost exclusively the domain of Legal London.

Temple Church

Temple Church

On most Wednesday lunchtimes there is an organ recital in the Temple Church, just off Fleet St, which attracts the best organists of London and the world.

The Templar knights are shown here doubled up on a horse because they were individually poor, whilst their order was collectively rich and powerful. This statue is on top of the Millennium Monument alongside the Temple Church.

Templar knights

Templar knights

These grounds of the Inner Temple, below, are a popular place for Fleet St workers to relax during their lunchtime. Many of the buildings are Victorian, but the most famous are Elizabethan. After you have had a quiet look through the Temple Church, see if you can talk your way into a tour of the Great Hall. Look for the Temple Fountain because it’s alongside the Hall.

Grounds of the Inner Temple

Grounds of the Inner Temple

This beautifully carved effigy, below, of an “Unknown knight” of the 13th Century is on the floor in the circular area of the Medieval and unique Temple Church, made famous recently by Dan Brown’s book “The DaVinci Code.”

Effigy of an “Unknown knight”

Effigy of an “Unknown knight”

Here are the symbols for the two great inns of court; Inner Temple,  and Middle Temple.

Inner Temple

Inner Temple

Middle Temple

Middle Temple

This is the Hall of Inner Temple. It’s not easy to get inside to have a look around, but occasionally you might be lucky to arrive there on a visitors day; give it go, I’ve heard the interior is a pretty special sight.

Hall of Inner Temple

Hall of Inner Temple

21Mar/15

St Giles In-the-fields

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St Giles is called In-the-fields because, like St Martins-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square, it was outside the City walls. It must have been a borough in its own right, rather than just a parish, because the street it stands on is called St Giles High Street. One thing I do know; in the 18th and 19th centuries it was the centre of one of the worst slums of London – in a city of slums. The landlords of buildings were allowed to let their rooms by the square foot and by the hour, so they could have a whole collection of people renting space during the daytime and another lot sleeping on those same square feet at night.

If you look up High Holborn, you can see Centrepoint which sits on New Oxford Street, while High Holborn actually swings off to the left. All of that redevelopment was intended to break up the St Giles slum, which was still a festering sore in the early 20th Century.

St Giles-in-the-fields with Centrepoint beyond.

St Giles-in-the-fields with Centrepoint beyond.

John Coleridge Patteson went to New Zealand from here as the first Bishop of Melanesia in the 1860s. He was killed in the Solomon Islands after 10 years in the position and his blood-stained flax blanket hangs in the cathedral in Honiara.

Patteson Memorial

Patteson Memorial

A Tearle family lived in New Compton St in the late 19th Century so you can tell they were very poor; one of them was a taylor’s porter, which I think means he pushed clothes racks around. Nowadays there are few signs of the slum buildings, but the Victorian café, below, on the corner of New Compton Street, gives you a bit of the flavour of the area.

Corner of New Compton St.

Corner of New Compton St.

The drunks, the junkies and the homeless who wander the streets and sleep in the churchyard are the direct descendants of those it has always cared for; the poor and the vulnerable.

The vulnerable, St-Giles-in-the-fields.

The vulnerable, St-Giles-in-the-fields.

Behind the church is a beautiful little garden, called the Phoenix garden, which is loved and cared for entirely by volunteers, like the Copperfield Garden near Union St, where the locals sit and sun themselves in a surprisingly quiet spot and where each plant, bush and tree is chosen from a catalogue of native-only species.

Lunchtime, the Phoenix Garden

Lunchtime, the Phoenix Garden

When you look closely at the blocks of the church, you can see the Victorian grime and soot clinging to the surface, not yet washed away, and still a couple of millimetres thick.

Victorian grime

Victorian grime

This plaque below records a donation by Sir William Cony, who in 1672 gave £50 and asked for the interest from it to be paid “forever” to the poor of the parish, in the form of bread every Sunday, plus eight holy days.

Plaque recording donation by Sir William Cony

Plaque recording donation by Sir William Cony

The rather extravagant memorial to Andrew Marvel, poet and writer. He was good, and I did enjoy his work. You can see here the extent of local affection for him.

Memorial to Andrew Marvel

Memorial to Andrew Marvel

There is also a memorial to John and Charles Wesley, who are remembered as having preached in this church, and used this pulpit below to do so. John Wesley has a statue in the grounds of St Pauls Cathedral and another memorial outside Postmans Park in St Martins le Grand, off Newgate St.

Memorial to John and Charles Wesley

Memorial to John and Charles Wesley