by Tim Bradford
Bagnigge Wells (The Water Rats, Gray’s Inn Road)
I have a Boddington’s, which is cold and keggy, like it’s come straight from your fridge. On a day like this, with all the fumes, that’s not such a bad thing. Two Irish girls are behind the bar, two middle-aged men sit at a new brown sofa doing a deal, another one is on his mobile. Bands playing here soon include Flickknife Rickshaw and Triphop Disciples.
The pub was known as the Pindar of Wakefield1 until about fifteen years ago. Marx drank here. Several decades later, so did Lenin (who lived in nearby Percy Circus). I wonder if he sat at the same table. But much more importantly, The Pogues played their first gig here in the early eighties.
There were two Bagnigge wells, discovered (or rediscovered) in 1767. There seems to be some confusion about them because they were so close together, but the official spot for Bagnigge Wells House is 31 King’s Cross Road, a Victorian terrace.
At nearby Calthorpe Community Gardens, I go into the office there and chat to an Australian woman who seems to be in charge. Their lease is up soon and she fears the council may sell the land. I ask her what she knows of Bagnigge Wells. She’s never heard of it. We quickly concoct a plan to relaunch the gardens as New Bagnigge Wells. ‘The council would have to agree to that,’ she laughs. I celebrate by getting a can of Red Stripe from nearby Gray’s Inn Wines and sitting on a wall next to an old bloke. It soon gets the sides of my head throbbing.
Black Mary’s Hole (The Union Tavern, King’s Cross Road/Lloyd Baker Street)
The strange name comes from the fact that:
The well was once owned by the Benedictine nuns of St Mary’s, Clerkenwell, who wore black habits.
There was once a well keeper called Mary who kept a black cow.
One keeper of the well, a Mary Wollaston, was black.
It had been a holy well dedicated to Black Mary, the dark Madonna, who represented the dark side of the moon, and originated from the ancient moon goddess.
There was a basement club owned by a goth called Mary.
Black Mary’s Hole was enclosed in 1687. Smart gardens and a hamlet grew up around it, taking its name, and it became a popular chalybeate healing well, particularly good for curing sore eyes. An estate called Spring Place was built over the gardens in 1815 and the well was turned into a cesspool. It reappeared briefly in 1826 when the footpath above it collapsed and a pump was erected, but it’s all long gone now.
In honour of Black Mary I have a Guinness in the Union Tavern, a few yards from where the well was. Although it’s been done up recently it’s still late high Victorian in style with loads of fantastic mirror work and strange swirly patterns on the ceiling. U2 is on the jukebox. Two people at the bar arguing are about the direction of their company’s sales force. Significantly, one of them is a woman dressed in black. She’s holding a cigarette and blowing smoke everywhere.
Islington Lands (Filthy McNasty’s, Amwell Street)
There’s a real villagey atmosphere round here, though it’s rapidly changing with all the new building work. I settle down into a smashed-up old leather sofa in Filthy’s and enjoy a pint of Guinness. The walls are covered in paintings by one of the bar staff.
Islington Lands was a pond in a field called ‘a famous ducking land’ (Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes). The sport consisted of hunting a duck with dogs, the duck diving when the dogs came close to elude capture. Another mode was to tie an owl upon the duck’s back; the duck dives to escape the burden when, on rising for air, the wretched half-drowned owl shakes itself, and, hooting, frightens the duck ; she, of course, dives again, and replunges the owl into the water. The frequent repetition of this action soon deprived the owl of its sensation, and generally ended in its death, if not that of the duck also.
This was also where witches and scolding wives were ducked. These days people would pay good money for that sort of thrill.
Sadlers Wells (The Stage Door Café, Rosebery Avenue)
There was a holy well here in medieval times famed for its sacred healing powers. The priests belonging to the Priory of Clerkenwell used to attend there, and made the people believe that ‘the virtues of the water proceeded from the efficacy of their prayers.’2 It was stopped up during the Reformation. When a Mr Sadler, who worked on the roads, discovered the well while digging for stones, he decided to profit from it and built a music house around it.
In the theatre I have a chat with Well-Groomed Tessa the Events Manager about the well. It’s still there but covered by a hologram of water. ‘There’s a water gremlin who appears when you put money in,’ she says. I put in 40p but nothing happens apart from a lot of over-acted gurgling. She tells me the well is still active and that they’ve bored down 600 feet lower than the original well. The water is on sale in the café. I pop next door and buy four bottles. It’s kind of salty.
Islington Spa/New Tunbridge Wells (The Shakespeare’s Head, Arlington Way)
I wander up to the Shakespeare’s Head, a local pub with pictures of luvvies from the theatre on the walls. I only recognize Stefan Dennis who used to be in Neighbours. I sit down with a glass of Courage Best and observe a crowd of old geezers at the other end of the pub watching racing on the telly.
I sit for a while on a bench in Spa Gardens and try to imagine how this little patch of green was once part of an impressive area of walks and gardens.
London Spa (O’Hanlons, Tysoe Street)
The horror! The horror! The London Spa is no more. It’s all boarded up with a ‘For Sale’ sign outside. What about the beautiful mirror work? What about the lovely cubicles? What about the (nearly) lucky big screen? What about the lucky barmaid? Nooooooooo. It’s going to be turned into crappy flats, you can tell.
Fuck it. O’Hanlons is across the road on a side street and has been done up recently moving away from rustic country boozer territory and into the ‘trendy shiny bright colours for people who’ve only just started drinking’ zone. Only a few months before I’d seen Chelsea beat Man United at home on the big screen. A sort of miracle, I suppose. A pint of honey ale goes down well but doesn’t make up for my crushing disappointment.
Clerk’s Well (The Betsey Trotwood, Farringdon Road)
One of the earliest writers on London, William Fitzstephen, wrote in his Description of the ancient City of London in 1173
There are, on the North part of London, principal fountains of water, sweet, wholesome, and clear, streaming from among the glistering pebble stones. In this number, Holy Well, Clerken Well, and St Clement’s Well, are of most note, and frequented above the rest, when scholars and the youth of the city take the air abroad in the summer evenings.
The stone Clerk’s Well is still visible in a glass-fronted office on Farringdon Lane, along with a display about the history of the wells. A few yards away is the Betsey, run by a bloke called Steve, whose business success was founded on my thirtieth birthday being held in his pub. The amount of beer my family and friends put away that night set him up for life. I have a pint of Spitfire and a quick chat with Steve, then head off into the evening, feeling healed as a newt.
Faggeswell (The Hope, Cowcross Street)
I don’t know much about Faggeswell, except that it was situated around no. 18 Cowcross Street, close to Smithfield Market. Centuries after the last stand of the Britons, the river once again ran red with blood but rather than spurting from the veins of tattooed shouty longhairs it was the blood of cattle, sheep, pigs, otters, chickens, skylarks and all other beasts that medieval 119 Londoners liked to eat. This area was originally called Smoothfield – large tracts of low-lying meadowlands just outside the city walls. Huge fairs were held here where animals were bought and sold and eventually it became the site of a huge permanent meat market, Smithfield. In the Middle Ages the butchers did their own killing, slicing up animals in the streets facing the river and allowing the blood and offal to slide down into the Fleet. Dead animals, industrial and human waste turned it into a foul sewer. In Ben Jonson’s ‘On the Famous Voyage’, th
e two lunatics who travelled down it described it as eclipsing the four rivers of Hades in foulness. At one stage the river must have seemed split fifty-fifty between water and blood/offal. The Fleet had at one time more meat products floating in it than any other European waterway: ‘It makith a horrible stench and foul sight’ (Ludgate Priory Record, fourteenth century).
Smithfield still has a powerful mystique. Farmers I know in Lincolnshire usually slumber politely (but boredly) while I bang on about London and its charms. But the mention of Smithfield has them sitting bolt upright with eyes shining maniacally. ‘MMMMmmmmmmm, Smithhhhhh fieeeeelllldddddddd.’ Not really sure if that proves anything, but it impresses me.
Various laws and statutes were passed by the City burghers to address the problem but the Fleet had been clogged up for years when, in 1589, the Common Council granted money for it to be cleaned up so that the water could be used for drinking. After the Great Fire Sir Christopher Wren had the bright idea of turning the cesspit stream into a canal to rival the best of Venice. It looked great but it didn’t make any money for its owners. One of the reasons it failed was that the architects hadn’t factored in the rogue Smithfield butchers, who continued to do what they’d always done – throw their carcasses and entrails into the Fleet – and so it once again became a disgusting river of liquid meat and shit by the middle of the eighteenth century, so much so that if a pedestrian fell in he was unlikely to drown but highly likely to be asphyxiated by the fumes. Eventually, in 1765, the Fleet around Smithfield was filled in for good and now it flows underneath the big traffic thoroughfare that is Farringdon Road.
By 1841 the remaining section of the Fleet, to the north of Ludgate Circus, was proving to be such a hazard to public health that the entire central stretch was arched over. Now it is a dark subterranean channel, although the mouth of the canal can be seen at low tide.
St Bride’s Well (The Punch Tavern)
A quick detour to West Smithfield and the beautiful St Bartholomew’s church, one of the few areas to escape the Great Fire and the only sacred building I visit that isn’t a pub. Then I cross the ravine of Farringdon Street.
In the Punch Tavern, all done up like a ritzy Victorian sitting room, 1 buy a pint of murky brown liquid and stand at the bar. I catch the eye of a barman and explain to him that the last time I was in here, my mother left a new copy of an Eric Newby travel compendium on a seat.
‘How long ago was that, sir?’
‘Hmm. Dunno. About five years possibly.’
He says he can’t help. Bah. The food was crap anyway, I mutter.
It’s now the last part of my journey, down onto New Bridge Street at the bottom of Farringdon Street. At one time there were five bridges over the Fleet round here. This is where Fleetway Comics used to be based, the producers of all those classic football annuals and army comics (War Picture Library) in the sixties and seventies.3
Bridewell is an ancient holy well and also the site of the old Bridewell women’s prison, which in turn took the place of a mansion called Baynard’s Castle. It’s just office buildings now. I stagger down to the edge of the Thames, craning to see the tunnel of the old storm drain beneath, but there’s only the lapping high-tide waters.
London Stories 4: The Secret Policeman’s Bar
* * *
Back in 1994 I was out with my mate Dom in Clerkenwell and, after we’d been kicked out at half past twelve from a bar for (I think) dancing on tables, and we both really needed more beer. We stood around near Smithfield market saying ‘beeeeeeeeeeeeer’ loudly to each other and looking very melancholy. Then, as if by magic, a friendly policeman appeared.
‘All right then lads?’
‘Beeeeeeeeeeeeeer!’
‘What seems to be the problem?’
‘We were just out for a beer and all we wanted to do was drink until we couldn’t stand up and it was coming out of our ears but this landlord in the pub we were in, right, chucked us out, right, at half eleven so we went to another bar and they kicked us out at half twelve and we couldn’t have had more than a gallon it’s not like we’re training for the London Marathon or anything it’s not fair don’t they want our money or what?’
This sad tale must have tugged his heart strings. He smiled. ‘I know a place you can go.’
‘Where the cops don’t know?’ I said.
‘Well, actually there’ll probably be quite be a lot of police in there.’ He laughed.
He gave us directions – through the market, left, right down an alleyway, left, on a bit, right, left, left. Turn round three times in the shadow of St Bartholomew’s church, see some steps go down and mention him, PC 9392 (not his real name), to the old man on the door.
Why had he decided to help us? Perhaps it was a set-up. Were we heading into a trap? We didn’t care. At this stage of the night, as long as we could get a pint of Guinness we’d be the fall guys for anything. We staggered off. It appeared that, after Cloth Fair, there was some secret street that only very drunk people could find. You then had to piss in a doorway and walk down a bit further. No sign of anything. Then, just before the end of the street, we saw a glass door. It seemed to be locked up but we gave it a gentle shove and it opened. Sitting in the twilight was a leathery old man, just as PC 9392 had said, perched on a high stool guarding the main entrance. Beyond him was a flight of steps and the faint sound of conversation.
‘Can I help you lads?’
‘PC 9392 sent us.’ I said, expecting him to tell us to fuck off.
‘Right you are.’
We walked down some more steps, then it opened out into a bright room full of cheeseplants. Dotted around the room were small groups of thick-set villainous-looking characters in light grey shiny suits with heavily made-up women in skimpy dresses by their side. It was as if all the extras from all the police dramas ever had been invited to a party.
‘It’s fifty-fifty cops and robbers, I reckon,’ whispered Dom, as we grinned at each other and made our way through the crowd to the bar on the far side of the room, in a confident way as if we’d been there before. People looked at us – blimey, it’s Starsky and Hutch! Dom got to the bar first.
‘Where you from then, lads?’ said the landlord.
‘Who wants to know?’ joshed Dom, in a winning parody of north London TV villain-speak. ‘Two Guinness’ please,’ he said, smiling.
But it was nothing doing.
‘Sorry, lads. I can’t serve you.’
Eh? We stood our ground for a couple of minutes trying to persuade him to change his mind and that we weren’t really north London TV villains, but our lack of Mr Byrite style formal wear had exposed us. We trailed out sadly, refusing to look back in case the bar disappeared for ever, and made our sad way home.
The next day, during my lunch break, I walked up to the area but couldn’t find it. Nothing. No sign of a bar. Just the door to an office or lockup. But, a few months later, completely pissed up, I returned with two other mates and somehow found the bar again. This time it was packed with a fifty-fifty split of coppers and nurses and we posed as off-duty doctors. It’s that most modern of places, a public-sector theme night bar that only exists when you’ve consumed twenty units of alcohol.
1 The Pindar of Wakefield fought Robin Hood and Little John.
2 The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England by Robert Charles Hope
3 Arrrgggh. Achtung! Aieeeeeeeeeee!
6. Invisible Streams
London Stories 5: Triumph of the Wilf
* * *
I was standing on the steps that lead up from the Peabody Estate to Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell, trying to work out whether the sharp stomach pains I was getting were due to the lukewarm seafood salad I’d just eaten or prolonged exposure to football memorabilia, when a bald old man in a long grey raincoat who looked like William Burroughs walked down the steps towards me.
‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing at my green and orange striped Punk Doctors T-shirt. ‘Is it a rugby shirt?’ he said.
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I told him I got it from a German friend of someone I worked with during the Euro 96 football tournament. I’d got it in exchange for one of my highly valuable hand-painted T-shirts that said ‘Gol!’
‘Ah, that was a good ‘un, that Euro 96. Nobby Stiles. Bobby Moore.’
‘No’ I insisted, ‘it was 1996.’
‘That’s right, 1996. We won the World Cup. Bobby Charlton. He was in that plane crash. They was a good team. Duncan Edwards. Frank Swift, he had the biggest hands in football. It was a shame about Bobby Moore.’
He told me his name was Wilf, then made some enquiries as to my reasons for being in the vicinity. As if he was a bouncer for the Bowling Green Road steps.
‘Are you George? Bob’s son.’
‘No,’ I told him, ‘I work on Pear Tree Court.’
‘What, the Guardian?’
‘No, that’s Farringdon Road. Pear Tree Court. It’s just there, about 15 yards away. The Betsey Trotwood pub is at the end of it.’
‘Oh, you’re Steve from the Betsey, are you? Nice beer in there.’
‘No, I’m Tim. I work round the corner, at a football magazine.’
‘So, Vic, it’s your sister that goes out with that black gentleman, isn’t it? Up in Peabody. Got a big car. Better be nice about him, seeing as he’s family.’
I did that ‘looking at watch’ gesture.
‘Course, we have this van here to take us around. But since the coons come in there’s hardly enough room. There’s Asian families that gets houses straight away.’