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 21st 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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