Six Degrees of London Separation

  IT BURNT DOWN:  6 Degrees of London Separation

On my London sightseeing tours (see www.londoncabtours.co.uk) I play a little game with my guests.  It’s called ‘It Burnt Down’.  During the course of our travels around London we pass by and visit various well known sights which , over the course of their histories have, yup you guessed it, burnt down.  Whenever I ask of a particular edifice “what do you think happened to it?” my tourist companions know there is only one answer.

I thought we’d visit them together on this posting too.  As well as fire, each destination is connected by something else.  Very loosely in some cases, I admit, but the English Civil War has left its mark all over the places we’ll visit (Civil War dates in brackets).

The Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1642)

The Crystal Palace

Between May-October 1851 six milion people visited the Great Exhibition, held in the unique, purpose built, one and only Crystal Palace, opposite the Wellington Barracks in Hyde Park.  Arguably the worlds first great expo it was a roaring success.

The vast glass structure incorporated the trees within the park, and within the trees came the sparrows.  Unfortunately, the sparrows went about their ‘business’ over everything and everybody.  Clearly, guns could not be turned against them – ‘shattering’ consquences would result.  But sparrowhawks could.  Problem solved.

Following the Great Exhibition, the Crystal Palace was  dismantled and reconstructed in a part of Sydenham that came to be known as Crystal Palace.  It was reborn as an amusement park, concert hall, theatre and home of the FA Cup Final, until Wembley Stadium was built in 1923.  On 11th November 1936 what do you think happened to the Crystal Palace?  IT BURNT DOWN.

And the English Civil War connection?  A Parliamentary fort was built at the east end of Hyde Park in 1642 to protect London from Royalist troops, pretty much opposite where Mount Street now meets Park Lane.

Houses of Parliament (1648/1661)

The Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) was built by Edward the Confessor (1042-66) and was a royal palace until the reign of Henry VIII.  Like most grand buildings of old, religious and secular, the Palace was buit in stages over many decades.  Westminster Hall, for example, was built by William Rufus (1087-1100).

For centuries, the House of Commons met wherever room was available.  Following the Dissolution, the Commons found a permanent home in the deconsecrated Chapel of St. Stephen.  The Speaker sat where the alter used to be and so the tradition of bowing to the Speaker was introduced.

In 1834 a decision was made to dispose of three centuries worth of tally sticks, which belonged to the Court of the Exchequer (they had been used for keeping records of accounts).  In what seemed like a sensible idea at the time it was agreed that they would be burnt, in a nice big furnace, in the cellers, directly beneath the House of Lord’s Chamber.  Can you guess what happened to the Houses of Parliament that night?  IT BURNT DOWN (are you getting the hang of it?).

Fortunately, Westminster Hall survived the blaze.  It was here, in December 1648, that King Charles I had been put on trial for High Treason by a victorious Parliament, found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded.  On 30th January 1661 the long dead body of Oliver Cromwell was exhumed (he died in 1658), hanged, and his head stuck atop a spike outside Westminster Hall (until 1685).

Whitehall Palace (1649)

Henry VIII (1509-47) took ownership of Whitehall Palace and expanded it until it became one of the largest royal palaces in Europe.  The tiltyard, better known as Horseguards Parade is his (used for bear baiting and jousting), as was a cockpit, and his beloved indoor tennis courts (which survive in part within the Cabinet Office building).  It was in this one of his fifty five palaces that Henry died in 1547.

Whitehall Palace

James I (1603-25) had Inigo Jones add the majesterial Banqueting House which has a tragic irony, because his son Charles I was beheaded on its balcony on 30th January 1649.  Cromwell died here too, Charles II resided here on his restoration and James II escaped down the Privy Stairs into the Thames in 1688, during the Glorious (or Bloodless) Revolution.

William III & Mary preferred Kensington Palace, which was fortunate, because in 1698 a Dutch laundreymaid had a careless accident and, well, guess what happened to Whitehall Palace?

Winchester Palace (1640′s)

Winchester Palace

No surprises here.  It burnt down in 1814.  Between 1109-1626 it had been the grand London residence of the Bishop of Winchester (landlord of the brothels, taverns, playhouses and cockpits of Southwark).  It’s said that Henry VIII met his fifth wife Catherine Howard whilst visiting the Palace.

During the English Civil War it had been a prison for Royalist prisoners of war.  The Clink prison was originally within the Palace too.  Unfortunately the Palace fell into disrepair after the Restoration and now only the Rose Window of the Great Hall survives, at the far end of Clink Street.

London Bridge (1660)

If there is one thing we know about London Bridge it’s that it fell down.  The nursery rhyme, it’s believed, refers to a battle of 1014, during which King Ethelread and his ally, King Olaf of Norway destroyed the bridge in order to stop Danish invaders crossing into the City.

From 1176 Peter de Colechurch built the great London Bridge that survived for over 600 years.  I’m referring to the one with the buildings ranged across both sides, precariously overhanging the Thames.  Infamous also for the drawbridge gate, displaying the heads of those executed for acting on the impulses of their treasonous hearts.

This newly built wonder of the middle ages suffered its first calamity in July 1212.  A fire that had started on the south side of the river spread across the bridge and via a strong wind reached the City side, trapping many in the middle.  It’s said that 3000 perished on the bridge and in the water.

The newly restored Charles II (1660-85) returned from exile in France and entered the City of London by crossing the great symbol of London, London Bridge itself.

The Great Fire of London (1666)

The answer to the question ‘what happened to the City of London’ during the first week of September 1666 is easy.  IT BURNT DOWN.  The Great Fire started in Pudding Lane in Farryners baking house, it raged for four days, and 87 churches and 13000 houses were subsumed by the flames.

I’ll admit, the Civil War connection here is weak; very weak.  On the base of the Monument to the Great Fire of London is a large frieze.  Standing in full Roman Emperors regalia, slightly to the right of centre, stands Charles II (son of vanquished Civil War victim Charles I) leading the citizens of his desolated capital in the face of the great fires destruction.

Deborah to The River Jordan: 6 Degrees of London Separation

    London has many biblical links – from both Old and New Testaments – reflected in the names of geographic areas, places of worship and many local institutions.  Within six degrees of separation this posting will travel from the prophetess Deborah to the River Jordan drawing its themes solely from the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible).  The New Testament provides very little challenge if we add up repetitions of the names Jesus and Mary and the Saints.

There’s also a kind of theme within a theme in this posting.  Running all the way through, you will find water.  Here, for instance, is Babylon.  The Israelites, during their 50 years of exile in the 6th century BC,  sang of their longing for Zion ‘by the rivers of Babylon’.

From the 12th century London itself had been referred to, in part or whole, as ‘Babylon’.  In medieval London it was used to describe a small – and I am imagining quite unsavoury – area near the London wall.

By the 18th and 19th centuries all London was referred to as both Babylon and Babel – a centre of empire and a city of diverse tongues.  Immigrants, foreign merchants, overseas sailors and refugees would certainly have confounded through their many languages.

By the turn of the 20th century it was merely the East End, ‘the city of dreadful night’, that was most often referred to as a ‘modern Babylon’.  However, we begin this posting properly with two wise women.

Deborah

The Israelite Judge Deborah (12th century BC) was represented as the new Queen Elizabeth during her coronation pageant on 14th January 1559. Deborah herself was from the tribe of Ephraim, a real Judge (in the biblical context) and an advocate of Israelite independence within Canaan.

Queen Elizabeth I. Image courtesy of NPG

Tradition says  Deborah judged wisely for 40 years and as both a Judge, and a saviour of Israel (England’s enemy Spain was represented by Canaan) the coronation pageant embodied the virtues of Deborah within the young Elizabeth.  At the time this may have been more in hope and anticipation than concrete evidence but Queen Elizabeth went on to reign for 44 years, rather successfully.  The London link is clear, but the water?  In 1533 Princess Elizabeth was born to Queen Anne Boleyn within Greenwich Palace, built on the banks of the River Thames.

Jacob’s Island

If you took a boat from Greenwich Palace, and steered it towards central London, just before Tower Bridge on the Surrey side of the River Thames you come to Bermondsey. It’s here, on a stretch of river known as the Upper Pool that the River Neckinger once flowed freely into the Thames.At the mouth of the (now culverted) Neckinger stood St Saviours Dock, used in pre-Dissolution times by the monks of Bermondsey Abbey. By the early nineteenth century the area to it’s immediate east was known as Jacob’s Island.

Jacob's Island, circa 1840. Shown here is Folly Ditch near Mill Street.

Jacob’s Island was a nastier than usual slum, most infamous both for carrying cholera and being a refuge for criminals. The biblical Jacob was father to the twelve Tribes of Israel. Who Jacob was in this London context, no record seems to show. But why was it especially an ‘island’?

At high tide the waters flowed into a ditch – Folly’s Ditch – isolating this tiny Venice of vice from the rest of London, and its forces of law and order. In ‘Oliver Twist’ Charles Dickens placed Bill Sykes’s home and death scene in this squalid bog.

During the latter half of the 19th century the slum was cleared (and drained) and wharves, mills and warehousing rose above the newer residences. Nowadays, these former hives of industry have been converted into homes for the wealthy. But older, local residential streets still remain, one of which goes by the name of Jacob Street.

Noah’s Ark

From the Neckinger, on the south bank of the Thames, to the City and the Walbrook on the north bank would have been no distance at all up until the late 1500′s. By this time the Walbrook had become no more than an unnavigable, polluted ditch and this small river, which originally flowed through Roman Londinium, had more or less ceased to exist.

The Walbrook’s source lay no higher than Shoreditch, before flowing through a hole in London Wall at Moorfields (the wall brook). It found the Thames between today’s Southwark and London Bridge.

Mansion House today - Minus Noahs Ark

Present day street Walbrook lies a few yards east of the Walbrook’s original course, next to Mansion House, official residence of the Lord Mayor of London.  Built by George Dance the Elder between 1739-52 on the site of the old open air Stocks Market, Mansion House was a grand palladian, erm, mansion house in the popular style.

On its roof Dance built, what can only be described as, protuberances; extensions if you like, which were nicknamed ‘The Mayor’s Nest’ and ‘Noah’s Ark’. Dance added them to raise the height of the various public rooms within.

George Dance’s son, George Dance the Younger, removed Noah’s Ark in 1794, when he in turn roofed over the courtyard, creating integral high ceilinged rooms. The ‘Mayor’s Nest’ also eventually went, in 1842.

Temple

Old Temple Church

Half a mile to the west of Walbrook lies Temple. Along Temple’s southern perimeter runs Victoria Embankment.

Until this mid-19th century construct, Temple ran down to the bank of the Thames from its northern boundary at Fleet Street.

The name Temple derives from the lands’ original owners, a French crusade era holy order of knights called ‘Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of The Temple of Solomon’ or more commonly ‘Knights of the Temple of Solomon of Jerusalem’; conveniently shortened to Knights Templar.

Within this compound they built the New Temple Church in 1162 (still standing) and the Great House in 1185.  Answerable only to the Pope they developed great wealth and power by protecting pilgrims en route to The Holy Land and less piously, through banking and property.

The Knights Templar were dissolved in 1312, having been accused of blasphemy, heresy and sodomy.  Temple was given by King Edward II to the Knights Hospitaller (Order of St John of Jerusalem) who in turn leased the land to lawyers.

Henry VIII

Henry VIII seized the land for himself during the Dissolution. James I however returned the land to lawyers creating the Middle Temple and Inner Temple.  Today, lawyers or law students living in Temple are still known as Templars.

Jerusalem Tavern

Running slightly to the east of Temple lay the mouth of the River Fleet (some of it even having been reclaimed for land by the Knights Templar).  Rising in Hampstead Heath the river flowed through Kentish Town, Camden Town, Clerkenwell and Farringdon until it met the north bank of the Thames near today’s Blackfriars Bridge.

Although the river’s source can still (just) be traced, it is now almost fully culverted and out of sight up to its modern day outlet, which also functions as a storm drain.

The Jerusalem Tavern today

One street to the east of where Farringdon Road crosses Clerkenwell Road is Turnmill Street, the name itself a testament to the pre-industrial working methods practiced along this lower stretch of the river. One street further to the east lies Britton Street, and it is in Britton Street that we find the Jerusalem Tavern.  There had been Jerusalem Taverns in Clerkenwell for centuries, due to the presence and influence of the nearby Priory of St John (of Jerusalem).  Britton Street now houses the last remaining Jerusalem Tavern, occupying a building that dates from the streets foundation in the 1720′s. The tavern had previously been a merchants house and a clockmakers.

John Britton

Until 1936 the street was formerly known as Red Lion Street. To distinguish it from other streets of the same name it was re-named after John Britton (1771-1857), the noted antiquarian and geographical writer who had originally been apprenticed to his wine merchant uncle in the street. Britton later recorded his memories of the ‘damp, murky cellars’, presumably the consequences of bad drainage and the seeping waters of the Fleet.

River Jordan

St. Pancras station

Our sixth and final ‘degree’ leads us to where the Fleet now flows under Kings Cross, and meets the eastern end of the Euston Road.  As the Euston Road heads west past St Pancras Station it forms the southern boundary of Somers Town.

Named after the Somers family who had owned the land from the late 1600′s Somers Town is bordered in the north by Crowndale Road and in the west by Euston Station. The construction of London’s northern relief road, the New Road (now the Euston Road) in 1757, created a defined border separating Somers Town from Bloomsbury.

From the late 1700′s Somers Town developed as an urban expansion of the metropolis, attracting the labouring classes, sizable numbers of French escapees from revolutionary France and later Spanish emigres.

The communities of Somers Town acknowledging the wide, roaring demarcation separating them from the more established areas to the south called Euston Road ‘the River Jordan’.

As Somers Town’s inhabitants would have known, the River Jordan of the Hebrew Bible was a boundary crossed by Jacob from Canaan to Haran, a border between Israelite tribes and a crossing for the Israelite armies of Gideon and King David.

The Bible also regarded the River Jordan as something sacred and holy.  For those stuck in the traffic jams of today’s Euston Road, perhaps it’s only profane and blasphemous thoughts that occupy the minds of the trapped motorist.

I hope you have enjoyed traveling around biblical London with me. Please leave any comments or feedback you have regarding this, or any of the other ’6 Degrees of London Separation’ posts.

Jack – London’s Everyman

Jack – London’s Everyman (pt 1)

   Unlike other common names from the past such as ‘Billy’, ‘Harry’, ‘Eddie’ or ‘Tommy’, the name ‘Jack’ has been adopted, appropriated, lent, borrowed or gifted to and by Londoners.  It’s also true to say that Jack was occasionally the real name of the protagonist/originator.  Every ‘Jack’ listed below has a London story to be told.

Jack Cade (1450)

From May-July 1450 Jack Cade led a revolt that overwhelmed London.  Just like the Peasants Revolt of 1381, the forces for change gathered at Blackheath and marched on the City, quickly reaching Southwark.

Henry Vl, a weak and feeble king, was on the throne.  The 100 Years War with France was drawing to an ignominious close and disputes brewing over the succession to a childless King Henry would culminate in the Wars of the Roses.  Within this vacuum of powerlessness Government was corrupt.

Armed and at London Bridge – drawbridge up – Jack Cade and his forces hoped to raise support from Londoners.  King Henry fled and so the City negotiated with the rebels.  With the drawbridge lowered Jack Cade and his men triumphantly entered the City and laid down their terms.

They sought weapons, horses and money but also political reform and the removal of royal advisors they considered evil and corrupt.  One of these advisors, Lord Saye, was taken hostage and killed.  As is sporadically the case in London, riots followed, and with it the deaths of many of those targeted by Cade and his followers.

With the support of many Londoners, Jack Cade was now in the ascendant and he even held public denunciations of the ‘guilty’ (Soviet style) at the Guildhall.  The Common Council of the City were bowed but not down and they plotted his removal.  With their own troops lined against the rebels a battle was fought on London Bridge (the first in London since Boudicca sacked Roman Londinium in 61ad).

In defeat, hundreds of rebels were killed and so too was Jack Cade.  His head, like so many before him, was displayed on a spike on the Drawbridge Gate of London Bridge, scene of his initial triumph and eventual demise.

Spring Heeled Jack (1837-8)

The mystery of Spring Heeled Jack has never been solved.  Allegedly a supernatural and demonic creature, all descriptions of him follow a similar model.  Jack was variously and compositely very tall, and he wore a skin tight ‘costume’ and a cape (very much like that of a policeman’s, or batman).  He was only ever seen after dark.

In possession of superhuman strength, Jack could leap over buildings, walls and railings.  He possessed razor sharp talons, and had a pointed nose and ears.  His eyes were flaming red, like ‘balls of fire’ and he could ‘vomit’ blue flames from his mouth.  But to the touch, he was as cold as a long dead corpse.

Stories of Jack spread by word of mouth – but went unreported to the police or by the press – from September 1837.  He was first seen one night on Barnes Common, leaping over the wall of the cemetery.  In October he was seen twice, around Clapham Common.  On the first occasion he attacked a young woman and tried to rip off her dress.  The next day he leapt in front of a coach and horses and then, in front of the startled onlookers, jumped over a nine foot wall.

In January 1838 Jack came to public notice when a letter published in The Times suggested it was all a prank carried out by wealthy young men.  The letter writer suggested that the entire episode, of attacks and sightings, had been suppressed because of the connections enjoyed by the perpetrators.

Nevertheless, in February a young woman in Bow answered a knock on the door and was confronted by Jack.  He held on to her and attempted to rip her dress off as well.  With the help of her sisters she fought him off.  But he was seen again in Limehouse, when he terrified two sisters out walking, by leaping over a house.

Rumour and hysteria now took over.  Sightings continued, people supposedly died of fright, or had fits and convulsions from the shock of coming face to fiery face with Jack.  Inevitably the ‘attacks’ petered out, although an alleged sighting was made in Peckham in 1872.

Spring Heeled Jack entered folklore, an apparition certainly, sitting somewhere between truth and myth.

Jack the Ripper (1888)

Books by the score and investigations galore have followed in the wake of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888.  I’ll simply list the bare facts:

Murder 1:  Mary Ann Nichols, 31^st August in Bucks Row (now Durwood Street)

Murder 2:  Annie Chapman, 8^th September in Hanbury Street

Murder 3:  Elizabeth Stride, 30^th September in Berners Street (now Henriques Street)

Murder 4:  Catherine Eddowes, 30^th September in Mitre Square

Murder 5:  Mary Kelly, 8^th November in Millers Court, Dorset Street (demolished)

All the victims were horribly mutilated.  The murderer has never been found or even positively identified.  Although the Ripper industry is alive and well, perhaps it should be remembered that the deaths at the centre of this mystery happened to real women, in streets that still stand and where people live today.  Each victim had friends and family that spoke for them and history it may well be, but not that long gone.

Jack-in-the-Green

A Jack-in-the-Green could be seen at many a London May Day celebration, from the late 18^th century until the outbreak of World War l.

Chimney sweeps were central characters in the celebrations, and would often accompany musicians with their shovels and brushes, beating time to the rhythm of the music.  Through the 1700’s their attire gradually changed until they became the Green Men of the May Day festivities, the Jack-in-the-Green, often pairing up with the Queen of the May.

Covered in greenery and leaves and ivy, their faces blackened or made up like a clown, they could also have bells attached to their bodies or beat tambourines.  Quite often, the Jack’s dressed in women’s clothes and in some places they would be covered by a giant wicker frame, reaching eight feet high and dressed top to bottom with leaves.

Passing through the crowds the Jack’s traditionally collected money and generally larked about, a central feature of the parades.  Like much else that disappeared from the old way of life, the Great War seems to have marked the death knell of the Jack-in-the-Green, rather than central heating.

 Jack Spot (1912-96)

Jack Spot was born Jacob Comer in Whitechapel, where he ran with East End Jewish gangs from a young age.  Always ready to use violence to achieve his aims Jack’s rise was swift, and from being a bookies runner he progressed to running his own protection rackets and gambling dens.

The Anglo-Italian Sabini gang, who were bosses of the London underworld prior to World War ll, literally had their empire taken away  - or rather, were taken away from it – when they were interned.  A gap appeared in the market and it required filling.

The West End was where the big money lay and in a short but brutal turf war Jack Spot came up trumps, as it were, when the wealthier gambling clubs of Soho came under his control.

His empire now spread from the East End to the West End and encompassed the usual menagerie of businesses controlled by organised crime.  Police operations did curtail some of his activities and Jack served for a short time in the armed forces.  But by 1943 he had inveigled his way out of uniform and it was business as usual.

After the war he and his main rival Billy Hill set aside their differences and formed a lucrative partnership.  Their organisation derived most of its income from gambling clubs, protection rackets and control of bookies pitches at various racetracks.

Both Spot and Hill were teetotal but otherwise very different characters.  Hill seemed to have preferred anonymity whilst Spot, a big fellow, enjoyed being seen in his bespoke tailored suits, Crombie overcoats and fedora hat.

Inevitably their partnership ended in acrimony and Hill, who seemed to be a slightly sharper tool in the box of criminal strategy, had a hand in manipulating Spots decline.  There was no one great event but more a sequence of face losing ‘business’ and personal disasters (usually involving violence).  Time wise, it all corresponded with betting away from racetracks becoming legalized, and razor blades being pre-fixed by the word ‘safety’.

Jack had liked to hold court in the Cumberland Hotel, following his daily shave in an Edgware Road barber shop, but was eventually declared bankrupt and his family had to leave their smart flat in Hyde Park Mansions.

He lived for many more years, but more on past glories and reputation, rather than crime.

 Jack Regan (1974-8)

Detective Inspector John Albert ‘Jack’ Regan of the Flying Squad (John Thaw) was sorely missed once he left our TV screens, following the final episode of ‘The Sweeney’.  So missed, in fact, that an entire TV programme was built around his persona in the form of Gene Hunt, the much admired copper from ‘Life on Mars’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’.

‘The Sweeney’ was originally borne of an Armchair Theatre single play called ‘Regan’.  So no beating around the bush here, Jack was who it was always about, aided and abetted by his reliable assistant, Detective Sergeant George Hamilton Carter (Dennis Waterman). 

The name itself, ‘The Sweeney’, derives from the cockney rhyming slang Sweeney Todd for Flying Squad.  Members of the Flying Squad were the elite of the Metropolitan Police Force; hard men on the right side of the law chasing hard men on the wrong side of the law.

A lot of cockney and a lot of slang, but not that much swearing, was a feature of the dialogue.  Regan was ‘the Guv’ and he said ‘Shut it’ a lot.  He was divorced and so fancied ‘birds’, ‘tarts’ and all women between, but not ‘slags’, naturally.

In total there were four series, 53 episodes, two films and various Mk1, Mk2 and Mk 3 Ford Consul’s, Cortina’s and Granada’s – usually coloured brown, bronze or silver.  Men’s colours.

Oliver Twist & the Artful Dodger: The Routes of London

Oliver Twist & the Artful Dodgers walk from Islington Turnpike to Fagins Lair

   Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger met in Barnet High Street.  This final stage of their walk to Fagin’s Lair, taken at night, can still be followed – more or less.  ‘Oliver Twist’ was published in 1838, the year after Queen Victoria came to the throne.  Whilst writing his novel, Dickens was observing the last days of Georgian London.  Victorian London was yet to exist.

Islington Turnpike and The Angel

The Islington Turnpike came about after the foundation of the Islington Turnpike Trust in 1716.  Tolls went towards the upkeep of roads within the parish and it stood roughly where White Lion Street now meets the High Street.

The Angel was the last great coaching inn of the Great North Road, approaching the City of London.  If arriving at dusk it was advisable to lodge for the night, for one’s own safety, rather than travel the short distance into the City.  Oliver and the Dodger would have passed the rebuilt Angel (1819).  After the railways had made coaching inn’s a thing of the past it was converted into an hotel.  In 1899 The Angel was rebuilt again as a Lyons Corner House, and since 1981 it’s been the Co-Op Bank.

St. John Street

Mentioned as early as 1170, St John Street was the start of the main route north, out of the City, from Smithfield.  Famously lined by taverns up to The Angel, nowadays the Old Red Lion is the only one remaining, having been rebuilt in 1899 on the site of an inn dating back to 1415.

Rosebery Avenue

Built by the London County Council in 1889 and named in honour of its Chairman (and future Prime Minister) Lord Rosebery, this late Victorian thoroughfare would clearly not have been trodden by Oliver and the Dodger.  Their route south west from St John Street would have been through back alley slums, the likes of which Rosebery Avenue was designed to crush.

However, they would have passed close to the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, founded by Thomas Sadler in 1683, on the site of the old holy well of St John’s Priory.  Sadler’s Wells had really been a music house (Joseph Grimaldi performed there often) and then later a music hall, before being rebuilt in 1931 as the ballet and opera venue we know today.

Exmouth Street (Market)

Oliver and the Dodgers walk would have taken them in the direction of Garnault Street (not yet built) and into Exmouth Street.  Close by would have been the Round Pond, which is where the fresh water, man-made New River terminated.

Sir Hugh Myddleton was able to build the New River, as a conduit to bring fresh water into the City, following an Act of Parliament in 1607.  His company tapped two springs, the Amwell and St Chads Well, over 20 miles away in Hertfordshire.  The water flowed through a man-made channel into the New River Head at Round Pond, from where wooden pipes carried the water into subscriber’s houses.  The New Rivers purpose was permanently abandoned only in 1946.

Exmouth Street already existed, having been named after the Exmouth Arms around 1816.  It only changed its name to Exmouth Market – because of the market – in 1939.

Standing almost opposite Exmouth Street, Oliver and the Dodger would have been aware of Coldbath Fields Prison.  The largest in the country it could house 1800 prisoners, eventually closing in 1877.  The huge area of empty land it stood on later became Mount Pleasant, the vast sorting office for Royal Mail.

Oliver & the Dodgers walk to see Fagin

Farringdon Road (Coppice Row)

Farringdon Road, like Rosebery Avenue, was yet to be constructed (mid 1800’s).  Like Rosebery Avenue, Farringdon Road also served the dual purpose of being a wide, well built connecting road and an excuse to steam-roll over slums.

Nothing wrong with clearing slums I hear you say.  But over 16000 Londoners were displaced in the building of Farringdon Road and in those days nobody bothered to re-house them.  Put simply, these citizens just upped and moved into other overcrowded slum districts.

Coppice Row, Chick Lane and Field Lane were three of the more notorious slums – or rookeries – cleared for the construction of Farringdon Road and the Holborn Viaduct scheme.  Oliver and the Dodger did pass by one imposing, unwelcome edifice that survived demolition until 1883, the Clerkenwell Workhouse.

Bakers Row, Crawford Passage (Little Hockley-in-the-Hole), Herbal Hill (Little Saffron Hill)

Little Hockley-in-the-Hole and Little Saffron Hill disappeared, in the redevelopments of the 1860’s.  The route is now covered by a small area that incorporates Bakers Row, Crawford Passage and Herbal Hill, hugging the west side of Farringdon Road.  Even though we know they were built mainly after the slums were cleared, it’s quiet, narrow streets and dirty brick blocks provides echoes of the environment that we think, in our imagination, must have existed.

Saffron Hill (the Great)

Saffron was actually grown here during the Middle Ages; its use was to hide the taste of bad meat.  The area immediately west of Saffron Hill was dominated from the late 1200’s by the estate of John Kirkby, who built the original chapel of St Etheldreda.  He became the Bishop of Ely and ever since, this small part of Holborn has stayed within the jurisdiction of the bishopric – hence the gates at Ely Place.

Leaseholdership of the land eventually passed through the hands of Sir Christopher Hatton and others.  By the 1700’s the area was regarded as a slum, abutting the dirtiest stretch of the Fleet River, known as the Fleet Ditch.

Field Lane

By the time of ‘Oliver Twist’, Field Lane was an established rookery and centre for the fencing (or resale) of stolen handkerchiefs.  Fagin’s Lair could have been nowhere but here, and so the journey of Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger ends.

Field Lane was one of the streets of ill repute demolished during the Farringdon Road/Holborn Viaduct development, when culverting of this stretch of the Fleet also occurred.  It stood somewhere near the junction of Saffron Hill, Shoe Lane and Charterhouse Street.

Field Lane, however, was a street long tainted by scandal.  During the 1720’s Margaret Clap ran her infamous Mother Clap’s Mollie’s House from Field Lane.  At the time ‘molly’ was slang covering anything from an effeminate man to ‘a sodomite’.  A Molly House – and there were quite a few – served a purpose ranging from private meeting place to full blown brothel.

In February 1726 Mother Clap’s was raided.  Following her trial at the Old Bailey Sessions, where she was convicted of keeping a disorderly house, Margaret Clap was sentenced to three days in the Smithfield pillory and two years in gaol.

Mother Clap never did serve her sentence.  She died of her injuries, sustained in the pillory.  Observing this event through 21^st century goggles, and to put it another way, in 1726 the citizens of London stoned a woman to death for what they considered her lax morality and sinful behaviour.

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Newgate Prison to Tyburn Gallows: The Routes of London

 Newgate Prison to Tyburn Gallows Procession

 

   London’s historic routes are many and varied.  They may be processional or royal, mob-handed or celebratory, perhaps fictional or funereal.  Or in the case of what follows, executional.  This particular London Route follows the notorious Newgate Prison to Tyburn procession; the final journey for those condemned to be hanged. 

Below is merely The London Explorer’s own eye view of that journey, covering aspects of the historic route, but with my own distractions and observations along the way (detailed historic descriptions of the entire procession can be easily found elsewhere).

Newgate Prison

The original gaol was housed within Newgate itself, as far back as the 12th century.  Newgate (previously known as The West Gate) already had a history stretching back to Roman London.  The Prison, however, outlived the Gate, which was pulled down in 1767.

A separate prison – built between Newgate and the Old Bailey Sessions House – had existed in various incarnations since the middle ages and had been both burnt down, during the Great Fire of 1666; and destroyed at the hands of mob rule, during the Gordon Riots of 1780.  Despite all of its re-buildings and ‘improvements’ it had always been a grim, disease ridden establishment and was eventually closed for good in 1880.  The Central Criminal Courts, aka The Old Bailey, was built on its site in 1902.

It was from Newgate Prison that those condemned to hang by the neck (until dead) were taken to their place of execution, the Tyburn Gallows.  Once at Tyburn these, soon to be former, Newgateers would inevitably dance the ’Newgate Hornpipe’ to the sounds of the roaring crowds, who lined the route in its entirety and literally swarmed to Tyburn in the tens of thousands.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre-without-Newgate, Newgate Street

Public hangings at Tyburn were usually carried out on a Monday.  The condemned, in their horse-drawn carts, some using their coffins as seats, would pass the Church immediately on leaving Newgate Prison.  This would not be their first contact with the Church.

Between 1605-1744 they would already have met the Bellman of the Holy Sepulchre.  As the church bells struck midnight on Sunday he would have walked through a tunnel connecting church and prison, eventually reaching the cells holding the condemned.  Ringing his hand-bell before them he would then recite the following:

All you that are in the condemned hold do lie

Prepare you for tomorrow you shall die

Watch all and pray the hour is drawing near

That you before the Almighty must appear

Examine well yourselves, in time repent

That you may not to eternal flames be sent

And when St Sepulchre’s bell tomorrow tolls

The Lord have mercy on your souls.

The Church itself has a pretty impressive history.  The original of 1137 was improved in 1450, but burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666.  Sir Christopher Wren’s master mason rebuilt the church we see today.  In 1633 John Smith had been buried here; that’s the John Smith who in 1607 had been rescued by Pocahontas during his expedition to the New World.  If you hadn’t already guessed, St Sepulchre is also ‘the bells of Old Bailey’ in the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges & Lemons’.

The condemneds route from Newgate to Tyburn

 

Snow Hill

On passing the Church and travelling the short length of Newgate Street, the procession would then head down Snow Hill, where there was a bridge that crossed the Fleet River.  Today Snow Hill is little used because we drive or walk across Holborn Viaduct, which bridges the old valley of The Fleet.  But the Viaduct was not completed until 1869 (the entire building scheme also included Holborn Circus, parts of Charterhouse Street and St Andrews Street).

The only significant building in Snow Hill today is the Police Station, which stands on the site of the old Saracens Head coaching inn.  In 1838 it was from The Saracens Head that Charles Dickens left for Yorkshire, whilst researching ‘Nicholas Nickleby’; and so it was from here that Nicholas Nickleby left for Yorkshire with Wackford Squeers, to take up his position at Dotheboy’s Hall.

Holborn and High Holborn

Once across The Fleet (which is now culverted and covered by Farringdon Street/Road and flows through a pipe into The Thames near Blackfriars Bridge) the unfortunates in their ramshackle carts proceed along the full length of Holborn and High Holborn.

It’s worth remembering that the entire route of this grotesque parade has drawn the crowds.  They line the streets and fill its taverns, they cheer and jeer and gawp and shout as the condemned roll past them.  It’s no coincidence that the entire day was known as Tyburn Fair – a good time had by all.

Holborn and High Holborn nowadays have very few buildings of any architectural merit facing the street.  Impressive as it is, the old Prudential Assurance HQ post-dates the procession.  The original building – of which very little remains – was built by Alfred Waterhouse in 1879 (hence the interior quadrangle being renamed Waterhouse Square) on the site of Furnival’s Inn.

Many Inn’s of Chancery, including Furnival’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, Barnard’s Inn and Staple Inn, would have faced onto Holborn during the period of the procession.  The Inn’s of Chancery were established in the 14^th & 15^th centuries to train, house and carry out the functions of attorneys, who prepared writs for the King’s Courts (basically, solicitors not working within the Inn’s of Court; those who did would be the people we now call barristers – I’m being a bit inexact here, it’s complicated).

It’s these attorneys who basically made the English language what it is today. By shaping and creating uniformity in grammar and spelling they ensured that all Courts and all Inn’s, all attorneys and all judges, all defendants and all litigants came to understand each other.  The establishment of The Law Society ended the individual functions of the Inn’s and by the early 19^th century all had ceased to exist as before.

The Cittie of Yorke pub in High Holborn dates from 1430.  No doubt its patrons would have partaken of the merriment and festivity of the procession.

The Church of St Giles-in-the-Fields, St Giles High Street

This church dedicated to St Giles, the patron saint of outcasts, appropriately marked the halfway point to Tyburn.  Until 1539 the site had been a leper hospital, founded in 1101 by Queen Matilda, the Anglo-Saxon wife of Henry I.  The original Church was built in 1623.

By the time that the procession between Newgate and Tyburn ceased in 1783 St Giles housed the most notorious slums – or rookeries – in all of London.  For believers in psychogeography –  which, as I understand it, is the unconscious emotional and/or pychological impact of places or environments through historic periods of time – case closed: lepers, the condemned, rookeries, arguably one of the sources of The Great Plague, St Giles never stood a chance.

St Giles was actually a parish of contrasts (as TV travel pundits might describe it).  Its church was fine; the engraver of London Wenceslaus Hollar married here as did the actor David Garrick; the martyred Archbishop Oliver Plunkett was buried here and the children of Byron and Shelley were baptised here.

If the condemned of Tyburn Fair were not already comatose through being gifted many a flagon of ale by this point, a bequest going back to Queen Matilda for the parish to provide ‘cups of charity’ translated into more booze being flung their way.  The official drivers of the condemned’s carts were obliged to turn down offers to imbibe, as they were ‘on the wagon’.

Marble Arch as seen with a London Cab Tour

Oxford Street (Tyburn Road)

This final stretch for those about to be hanged (pun intended) had been a route to and from the west since Roman times (the Via Trinovantica).  The Tyburn River flowed across, and now underneath it, at the junction of todays Stratford Place and Davies Street.  Although it was indeed the road to Oxford, it was because Edward Harley, the Earl of Oxford, owned the land to its north side that the name change from Tyburn Road occurred in 1739.  The streets urban development took up most of the 18^th century, which no doubt would have drawn even greater crowds to the Tyburn procession.

For shopaholics Oxford Street isn’t so much a hidden gem as a shiny great gaudy bauble.  Gone but not forgotten, some of the stores past were record shops, such as the original HMV (where EMI producer George Martin first heard The Beatles demo) and Virgin Megastore.  Other buildings along Oxford Street have musical connections too.

The original home of the Marquee Club was at No165 and long time landmark 100 Club continues its tradition for live music, most significantly jazz (and for a short time in the ‘70’s punk rock).  Malcolm McLarens Glitterbest office was at No119 and George Martins Air Studios were above what is now Niketown/Top Shop.  Jimi Hendrix died at the Cumberland Hotel in September 1970.  At the western end of Oxford Street, The Cumberland overlooks Marble Arch.

Marble Arch (Tyburn)

The Marble Arch, which stands yards from the former gallows at Tyburn, famously stood outside Buckingham Palace between 1827-51, when it moved to its present position, allegedly because the royal coaches were too wide to pass through the arch.  This story is also allegedly a load of old rubbish.

The Tyburn Gallows traded in their gory concern from 1196 (disputed) – 1783 (when hangings moved to outside Newgate Prison).  Here’s some Tyburn trivia.

Between 40,000 – 60,000 people were executed here – that’s about 68-102 per year on average.  Doesn’t sound too bad when put like that does it?  Does it?  Yes it does.

Tyburnia – the name given to the surrounding area – no longer used – especially what is now the Hyde Park Estate

Deadly Nevergreen – a nickname, obviously, for the destination, but not the gallows.

Tyburn Tree – the gallows, which were originally a tree, at Tyburn.

The Three Legged Mare – the hanging tree progressed to a gallows and then, in 1571, the notorious triangular gallows (three cross-beams) were erected.  Up to eight victims could be hanged on each side, meaning up to 24 could be dispatched together (very rare).

When actually hanged, the condemned simply stood up in the cart, the noose was placed around their neck and then the horse whipped.  As the horse bolted they would simply be left to hang (until dead, as mentioned before) – none of this modern ‘hangman’s drop’ malarky.  In recognition of the horse’s pivotal role, the gallows became known as the Three Legged Mare – gallows humour exemplar.

Triple Tree – an alternative to the Three Legged Mare

Lord of the Manor of Tyburn – the hangman (no, perhaps this is gallows humour exemplar).  He was allowed to keep the clothes of the executed to sell and also the rope, which he could also sell, for 6d an inch.

Tyburn Check/Tyburn String/Tyburn Piccadill/Tyburn Tiffany – slang for the hangman’s noose and rope

Tyburn Stretch – a hanging

To Preach at Tyburn Cross – to be hanged

To Dance the Tyburn Jig/Newgate Hornpipe – to be hanged

Tyburn Blossom – a budding young criminal (we’ve all known them)

Tyburn Face – to look miserable

Tyburn Collar (aka Newgate Fringe) – a beard worn below the collar

The Tyburn Walk – a pilgrimage held on the 1^st Sunday of every May to commemorate the 105 Catholics martyred at Tyburn.  One hundred yards or so from Marble Arch in Bayswater Road is the Tyburn Convent (est. 1902) home to an enclosed order of Benedictine Nuns.

The Tyburn Ghost 1678 – In the dead of night spirits were seen, one sitting on the cross-beam, its ‘neck awry’.  The gallows inexplicably collapsed.  They were re-built and then it was business as usual.

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’1984′ to Sherlock Holmes: 6 Degrees of London Separation

   There is a literary slant in this posting, as the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (‘1984’) is connected in six London degrees to Sherlock Holmes.

‘1984’

I think we’re more or less agreed that everything in ‘1984’ is horrible, including and especially the dystopian vision that is the capital of Airstrip One:  London. The four ministries from which all state power emanates are – if you can remember – giant pyramids.  Well, the London of 1948, 1984 and today has no pyramids.  But amongst all the architectural repression in ‘1984’, one building from London’s past survives and is projected into this awful futscape (‘future landscape’, I made that one up).  The church of St Martin in the Fields has been converted into Airstrip One’s museum for propaganda displays.

 The Church of St Martin in the Fields

The present church was built by James Gibb between 1722-4, replacing the earlier church of 1543; but the site had long been occupied by previous churches and chapels.  Records go as far back as the early 1100’s, although recent archaeological finds, during the church refurbishment, suggests probable Romano-British and then Anglo-Saxon settlement and burial.

Burials continued through The Plague and into the Victorian vaults.  Many famous Londoners are laid to rest here including Nell Gwynne d1687 (orange seller, actress, royal mistress), William Hogarth d1764 (artist) and Jack Shepherd d1724 (roguish and much loved, but ultimately failed, thief hanged at Tyburn).

Where is the church of St Martin in the Fields?  Facing Trafalgar Square of course.

 

St Martin in the Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London

 Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square commemorates The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  This great naval battle destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte’s French battle fleet, ending much of his overseas imperial ambitions.

The site of the square up to 1830 had been the home of the King’s Mews, where from the late 1200’s the royal hawks and falcons were kept.  The Mews later became the royal stables and so set the pattern for London mews’ being the areas where the wealthy kept their horses stabled.

Commander of the British fleet at Trafalgar was Admiral Horatio Nelson and it is Nelson’s Column (with a seventeen foot statue of Nelson atop) that dominates the Square.

 Viscount Horatio Nelson (1758-1805)

Nelson was a national hero long before Trafalgar.  He’d lost his right eye in action off Corsica in 1794 and his right arm at Santa Cruz in 1797.  The four relief panels around the base of Nelson’s Column (all cast from captured French cannon) celebrate four of his victories: Cape St Vincent, Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafalgar.

At Trafalgar Nelson was shot in the heat of battle and died during the closing moments.  But he’d led a full and pretty colourful life.  He and his mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton, famously shared a home together at 3 Savile Row.

 3 Savile Row

Savile Row is now world famous as the home of traditional English bespoke tailoring.  But when it was laid out in the 1730’s it was a fashionable Mayfair residential street.  Indeed, residents could not get any more fashionable than Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton.

Commerce and tailoring gradually crept in from the mid 1800’s and eventually in 1968 a company called Apple Corp moved it’s offices into 3 Savile Row.  The owners of Apple Corp were a well known British pop group called The Beatles.  They famously played a ‘roof gig’ here on 30^th January 1969.  It was deemed too loud and put a stop to by the police (I guess that today we’d say The Beatles had created ‘noise pollution’).

 The Beatles

The Beatles connections to London are numerous and many – arguably a book all in its own right.  For now, let’s simply connect them to The Royal Albert Hall.  There are two connections actually.  The first is on 18^th April 1963 when they appeared as part of a BBC Light Programme called Swingin Sound ’63.  They performed two songs, ‘From Me To You’ and ‘Twist & Shout’.  Paul met girlfriend Jane Asher here, allegedly.

The second connection concerns a declaration of how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall (from the song ‘A Day In The Life’).  Apparently the answer is 308.

 The Royal Albert Hall

Officially opened in 1869 and named in honour of Queen Victoria’s late husband, Prince Albert.  There are enough statistics to hand about this venue to fill the Albert Hall, never mind the holes.  Let this one bit of information suffice.  The Hall’s notorious echo was discovered as early as its opening ceremony, when the ‘Amen’ of the Bishop of London’s prayer reverberated around the Hall.  Subsequently, the famous saying had it that it was the only place where a British composer could be sure of hearing his work twice.

One week after the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) an event took place at the Albert Hall, which he had arranged himself (before he died).  As well as being a world famous writer Conan Doyle was known to be a keen spiritualist.  The event itself, attended by thousands, was intended to witness nothing less than the resurrection of Conan Doyle himself.    An empty chair on the stage held a reservation card for one Sherlock Holmes.  Speeches and tributes were made, hymns sung.  Neither Conan Doyle or Sherlock Holmes made an appearance.

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