Lost London

by Richard Guard

  The property subsequently came into the possession of the naturalist Aston Lever, who housed his vast accumulation of fossils within, and it opened to the public for fourteen years until it was moved to Blackfriars Rotunda in 1788. A keen archer, Lever formed the Toxophilite Society here in 1780.

  Lillie Bridge Grounds

  Earl’s Court

  ON THE SITE OF WHAT IS NOW THE EARL’S COURT Exhibition Centre and a London Underground maintenance depot, there once stood a 120,000-capacity sports stadium.

  Opened in 1867, it was home to the Amateur Athletic Club, which was founded to organize the national athletics championships. A number of world records were set here, including a 4-min. 12¾-sec. mile by Goodall George in August 1886 (a mark that stood for twenty-eight years) and a high jump of 1.89 metres by Marshall Brooks in 1876.

  The second ever FA Cup Final was held at the stadium in 1873, with Wanderers beating Oxford University 2-0. The event, though, was badly attended, attracting a crowd of only 3,000 as it clashed with the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race. The Middlesex County Cricket Club was also based at the ground until 1872 but left because of the poor quality of the turf. Other sports hosted here included wrestling, cycling and boxing, including the very first amateur bouts with prizes presented by John Douglas, the Marquis of Queensberry (author of the sport’s defining Queensberry Rules and bête noire of Oscar Wilde).

  Though famed for its support of amateur sports, the stadium came to a sad end as a result of professionalism. A sprint race between Harry Gent and Harry Hutchens in 1887 had attracted large-scale betting but when the runners’ promoters failed to agree on who should lose, the race was cancelled and the crowd rioted, burning down the grandstand. Falling into ruins, it was closed in 1888.

  Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre

  OPENED ON PORTUGAL STREET IN 1660 BY Sir William d’Avenant.

  This was the first modern theatre in England with both a proscenium arch and moveable scenery. Samuel Pepys recounted a visit on 20 November 1660:

  Mr Shepley and I to the new play-house near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which was formerly Gibbon’s Tennis Court. ... Here I saw for the first time one Moone [Michael Mohun, 1616?–84], who is said to be the best actor in the world, lately come over with the king; and, indeed, it is the finest play-house, I believe, that ever was in England.

  Thomas Betterton, one of the great actors of the age, made his debut here in Hamlet. Pepys was present again, noting: ‘Betterton did the Prince’s part beyond all imagining.’

  Having sworn off plays in favour of hard work and advancement, Pepys was in the locale again in May 1667 and, seeing Charles II’s mistress there, was sorely tempted to break his vows: ‘... but Lord! how it went against my heart to go away from the very door of the Duke’s play-house, and my Lady Castlemayne’s coach, and many great coaches there, to see “The Siege of Rhodes”.’

  By then under the management of Betterton, the Duke’s Company moved out of the theatre in 1674 and the building was once again used as tennis courts until Betterton led a return in 1695. After a ten-year stint, the Company moved on once more in 1705 and the theatre fell into disrepair until it was taken over by Christopher Rich, a lawyer, and his son John Rich, a talented dancer. Having renovated the building and installed seating for 1400, the Riches staged John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, the most successful play of the century. Based loosely on the lives of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wilde, it was the production that was said to have made ‘Gay rich and Rich gay’. The last performances at the theatre were in 1744 and afterwards it was used as an auction house before being demolished to make way for an extension to the Royal College of Surgeons.

  London Bridge

  Some notable decapitated heads displayed thereon

  LONDON BRIDGE HAS LONG BEEN CENTRAL TO LIFE in the capital but one of its more macabre purposes was as a site for the display of traitors’ heads, impaled upon spikes to serve as a warning to others.

  In the late 16th century, Paul Hentzner, a German visitor to the city, made some notes on the bridge: ‘Upon this is built a tower, on whose top the heads of such as have been executed for high treason are placed on iron spikes: we counted above thirty.’ Here is a roll call of a few of the unfortunates from throughout the centuries.

  1305 William Wallace (Scottish rebel)

  1306 Sir Simon Fraser (Scottish rebel)

  1407 Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland

  1408 Lord Bardolf

  1431 A rebel weaver from Abingdon

  1450 Jack Cade and nine of his captains (Kentish rebels)

  1496 Flamock and Joseph (Cornish rebels)

  1500s Several Lollards

  1535 John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester

  1535 Sir Thomas More, former Lord Chancellor

  1540 Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex

  1605 Father Garnet (Gunpowder Plot conspirator)

  London Bridge Waterworks

  THE MANY PILLARS SUPPORTING LONDON BRIDGE caused the waters of the Thames to flow at great speeds. A German engineer, Pieter Morice, thus proposed that a waterwheel be placed in one of the arches to pump water around the city, having seen similar schemes work in his native land.

  Granted a lease for 500 years at 10 shillings (50p) per annum, he built his first waterwheel in 1581 and began pumping water supplies to the city on Christmas Eve of 1582. The success of the scheme enabled him to lease another arch shortly afterwards so that by the time of the Great Fire in 1666, Morice’s descendants were generating an income of over £1000 a year from the business he started.

  However, the enterprise fared badly in the conflagration and had to be rebuilt, reopening for business in 1669. The Morices sold their stake in 1701 and by 1737 a fourth wheel had been added to those already operating. Together they pumped over 100,000 gallons per hour, with supplies to the south of the city aided by the presence of another wheel at Southwark.

  By 1821 it is estimated that 4 million gallons of water were being supplied daily. Although its quality was admittedly foul, if allowed to stand for twenty-four hours it was adjudged to be ‘finer than any other water that could be produced’. However, when the bridge was rebuilt in 1822, its new design precluded the use of waterwheels and responsibility for the city’s water supplies was transferred to the New River Company.

  London Salvage Corps

  BY 1866 IT HAD BECOME CLEAR TO THE CITY’S major insurers that the cost of fire damage could be reduced if goods and furniture (along with any inhabitants, of course) could be more efficiently rescued from burning buildings.

  Therefore, eighteen companies, including Lloyd’s of London, banded together to form the London Salvage Corps.

  Working alongside the Fire Brigade, its personnel attempted to salvage property before it became too seriously damaged by water or smoke. Made up mainly of members recruited from the Royal Navy, it was based in Watling Street and used horse-drawn carriages until 1923, when a variety of red motor tenders were added. When the Corps was disbanded in 1984, its duties were taken over by the London Fire Brigade.

  Lowther Arcade

  The Strand

  ONCE ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS SIGHTS IN London, this was a 210ft glass-covered shopping arcade known especially for its toy shops.

  Built after the 1830 improvement works on the Strand, it was the delight of countless Victorian children.

  In the arcade’s northern part was the Adelaide Gallery, also know as the ‘National Gallery of Practical Science, Blending Instruction with Amusement’. In Sketches of London Life and Character (1849), Albert Smith gave an account of it:

  Clever professors were there, teaching elaborate sciences in lectures of twenty minutes each; fearful engines revolved, and hissed, and quivered, as the fettered steam that formed their entrails grumbled sullenly in its bondage; mice led gasping subaqueous lives in diving-bells; clock-work steamers ticked round and round a basin perpetually, to prove the efficacy of invisible paddles; and on all sides were clever machines which stray visitors were puz
zled to class either as coffee-mills, water-wheels, roasting-jacks, or musical instruments. There were artful snares laid for giving galvanic shocks to the unwary; steam-guns that turned bullets into bad sixpences against the target; and dark microscopic rooms for shaking the principles of teetotalers, by showing the wriggling abominations in a drop of the water which they were supposed daily to gulp down.

  In 1840 the hall was an amusement arcade and by 1852 the Adelaide Gallery was housing the Royal Marionette Theatre. Lowther Arcade itself was demolished in 1904, with Coutts Bank building new premises on the site.

  Lyons Corner Houses

  WITH THEIR DISTINCTIVE GOLD-AND-WHITE shop fronts, this was one of the best-known restaurant chains not only in London but around the country.

  Lyons opened its first teashop at 213 Piccadilly in 1894. However, it was with their massive eateries that they really captured the public’s imagination.

  The Coventry Street Corner House, for instance, was opened in 1909 and had seating for 4500 customers over five floors. Two other restaurants, on Tottenham Court Road and the Strand, could each feed 2500. The company kept prices down by catering on a vast scale, with the Corner Houses offering different menus on different floors, along with bespoke musical accompaniment. Indeed, by 1930 Lyons was employing so many musicians that it had its own Orchestral Department. Meanwhile, ‘Nippies’ – the name given to female serving staff – passed into the popular lexicon, with the name even registered by the company in 1924.

  Founded by Messers Gluckstein, Salmon and Lyons, Lyons teashops spread firstly across London, and then throughout the nation until there were 250 sites. J Lyons and Co Ltd also catered for corporate clients, including Buckingham Palace, the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Association and the Chelsea Flower Show. By 1887 it was the biggest food-manufacturing company in Europe. However, come the 1970s the company had overreached itself financially and was dismantled and sold off, the last Corner House closing its doors in 1977.

  Molly Houses

  LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT THE FULL HISTORY OF Molly Houses, as they were secretive places where homosexuals could meet and enjoy each other’s company, without the risk of prosecution.

  The Buggery Act of 1533 made sodomy a crime punishable by either a fine, the pillory and even death. Old Bailey records from 1726 provide us a small insight into one of the capital’s most famous – Mother Clap’s, on Field Lane, Holborn. Following the execution for sodomy of Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin and George Kedear in May 1726, Margaret Clap was herself brought before the judges, charged with keeping a house in which ‘she procur’d and encourag’d Persons to commit Sodomy’.

  One Samuel Stevens gave the evidence: I found near Men Fifty there, making Love to one another as they call’d it. Sometimes they’d sit in one anothers Laps, use their Hands indecently Dance and make Curtsies and mimick the Language of Women – O Sir! – Pray Sir! – Dear Sir! Lord how can ye serve me so! – Ah ye little dear Toad! Then they’d go by Couples, into a Room on the same Floor to be marry’d as they call’d it. They talk’d all manner of the most vile Obscenity in her Presence, and she appear’d wonderfully pleas’d with it.

  Margaret was found guilty and sentenced to the pillory. It is thought that she died of the injuries she received there. It is sometime assumed that Margaret Clap gave her name to Molly Houses – Molly being a popular shortening of Margaret, but the activities of two of the city’s most fearsome crime bosses a decade earlier would suggest otherwise.

  Before bearing the self proclaimed title of ‘Thief Taker General of England and Ireland’, Jonathan Wild, a failed button maker from Wolverhampton, had been trying to steal the business off his predecessor, one Christopher Hitchin. In 1718 Hitchin published a broadside – a one sheet pamphlet – called A Trout the City of London. This was an attempt to expose Wild for what he really was, an underworld crime boss and receiver of stolen goods, (as was Hitchins himself). The tactic disastrously backfired when Wild countered with An answer to a Late Insolent Libel, the main thrust being that Hitchin frequented Molly Houses and enjoyed the pleasures thereof.

  With Hitchin’s reputation destroyed, Wild went on to enjoy unprecedented power, posing as a saviour for the capital’s crime problem, whilst at the same time running a network of criminals, and even chartering vessels to transport his ill-gotten gains abroad to Holland, where they could be sold. Thankfully he was found out and executed at Tyburn on 24 May 1725.

  Mudlarks

  OF ALL THE DESPERATE JOBS THAT THE LONDON poor pursued in order to eke out a living, among the most depressing was that of the mudlark.

  When the capital was still a thriving port city unloading goods from around the globe, the shoreline of the Thames was a workplace for these pathetic creatures.

  Nearly always young children whose terrible family circumstances had forced them into a truly pitiable state, mudlarks collected goods such as coal, old rope, nails and cloth that had fallen from vessels docked in the Pool of London – the area immediately downstream of London Bridge. Henry Mayhew, in his London Labour and the London Poor (1851), recounted an interview with one of the sorry orphans, describing him thus:

  He was fourteen years old. He had two sisters, one fifteen and the other twelve years old. His father had been dead for 9 years ... He had fallen (in a state of intoxifaction) between two barges ... He [the boy] went into the river, up to his knees, and in searching for the mud often ran pieces of glass and long nails into his feet. Having dressed his wound he would immediately return to the river-side directly.

  Mayhew estimated that almost 300 children made a living in this way.

  Necropolis Railway

  Waterloo

  MASSIVE URBAN EXPANSION DURING THE 1800S had led to horrendous over-crowding in the city’s 200 burial sites.

  This crisis resulted in mass graves, bodies spilling out of the ground, and outbreaks of cholera and typhus. Indeed, so dire was the situation that the government passed the Burial Act of 1851, banning all interments in built-up areas.

  To cope with the huge numbers of burials, Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey was opened in November 1854. At the time it was the largest graveyard in the world, and was connected to London by the Necropolis Railway, which originally ran from a separate platform at Waterloo Station. Waterloo was chosen for its proximity to the Thames and the ease of transporting bodies along the river.

  With its entrance on Westminster Bridge Road, the Necropolis Railway had a variety of waiting rooms for different mourning parties and catered for 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-class funerals. A steam lift raised coffins to the private platform on the first floor. Frederick Engels, one of the fathers of modern communism, made his final journey from the station on 10 August 1895, before being cremated and his ashes scattered at Beachy Head.

  Increased use of Waterloo Station by living commuters led to a new station for the dead being built on the west side of Westminster Bridge Road. It opened in 1902, its entrance still visible at No 188, although the word ‘Necropolis’ has been covered up. The station was bombed during the final stages of the Blitz in April 1941 and by the end of hostilities it was considered economically unviable to re-open the station or the route to Brookwood.

  When the line had first opened, it had been expected that 50,000 of the city’s dead would travel along its tracks each year. After 90 years of service, in fact only just over 200,000 had boarded its trains, the first being a pair of stillborn twins from Borough on 13 November 1854 and the last a Chelsea Pensioner, Edward Irish, who was born in 1868 and died on 11 April 1941.

  Newgate Prison

  Old Bailey

  BUILT ON THE SITE OF TODAY’S OLD BAILEY, Newgate was the city’s principal prison from at far back as the 12th century. Over its long history, it inhabited a variety of buildings that variously fell into ruin or were burnt down by rioters.

  The jail was originally housed in the Newgate, the fifth of London’s gates built during the reign of Stephen or Henry I. In 1423, Richard Whittington, he of the famous c
at and three times the capital’s mayor, left money in his will for the ‘re-edification of Newgate Prison’ but by then it was in one of its periods of ruin. Having subsequently been rebuilt, it burnt down in the Great Fire of London, only to be rebuilt again by 1672 with ‘great magnificence’ externally, though conditions for the inmates inside were as appalling as ever.

  Described as a ‘prototype for hell’ by Henry Fielding, it suffered from a poor water supply, virtually non-existent ventilation and repellant odours. Outbreaks of disease, known as ‘jail fever’, were common. One outbreak in the 1700s swept through the prison and into the neighbouring Old Bailey, to which it was connected by a walkway, killing not only convicts but also judges, barristers and jurors. In total, sixty court officials died, prompting some attempts to improve the air by building a ventilation tower. Two workers died of noxious inhalations during construction, while neighbouring residents complained that they too were now being poisoned, while very little difference was felt in the conditions inside.

  If the sanitation was terrible, then the jail regime to which prisoners were subjected can only be described as fiendish. New arrivals were clapped in irons, the weight of them dependent on how much they could pay the keeper. In general, wealth bought privileges, from beds and bedding to rooms higher up in the building, further away from the stench, filth and misery that constituted daily life on the lower floors.