The first mention of the Bank of England’s nickname ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ appeared in 1797 as a caption for a cartoon by James Gillray, Britain’s first political cartoonist. It depicts the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, wooing the Bank, personified as an elderly lady sitting on a chest full of gold and wearing a dress made of £1 notes. The caption reads ‘Political Ravishment or The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in Danger’.
On the east side in Bartholomew Street is the BANK OF ENGLAND MUSEUM, which illustrates the work of the Bank and the financial system.
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Of Notes and Coins
Britannia first appeared on the farthing coin in 1672, and she was modelled on ‘La Bella Stuart’, the Duchess of Richmond, who was so beautiful that Charles II clambered over her garden wall to get to her, only to be rebuffed. Britannia now appears on the 50 pence coin.
The Chief Cashier’s signature first appeared on Bank of England banknotes in 1870, and the monarch’s portrait did not appear until 1960. The present Queen is therefore the first monarch to appear on Bank of England banknotes. In 2007 the economist Adam Smith became the first Scotsman to appear on a Bank of England banknote, replacing Sir Edward Elgar on the £20 note.
The £ sign developed from the letter ‘L’, the first letter of the Latin word libra, meaning pound. In pre-decimal coinage a penny was represented by the letter ‘d’, which came from denarius, the equivalent Roman coin.
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Threadneedle Street
God Save the King
THREADNEEDLE STREET TAKES its name either from the three needles on the arms of the needle makers who had premises in the street or from the threads and needles employed by members of the MERCHANT TAYLORS’ COMPANY, who received their charter in 1327, and whose Hall has been in the street since 1347, making it THE OLDEST LIVERY HALL IN THE CITY TO OCCUPY THE SAME SITE. The historian John Stow, map-maker John Speed and Sir Christopher Wren were all members of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. THE NATIONAL ANTHEM was SUNG FOR THE FIRST TIME in the Merchant Taylors’ Hall in 1607, conducted by John Bull. It was first performed publicly at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1745. Nobody knows who wrote the words or the music.
LONDON’S FIRST BUS SERVICE ran between Threadneedle Street and Paddington, via Regent’s Park, on 4 July 1829. Called the Omnibus, it was operated by coach builder George Shillibeer, using a specially designed coach that could carry 20 people and was drawn by three horses. The fare was one shilling (far beyond the reach of the average Londoner) and the 5-mile (8 km) journey took one hour. Hackney carriages, the equivalent of modern-day taxis, had a monopoly over much of central London, which meant that the omnibus could not stop to pick up passengers en route. The rule was scrapped in 1832.
As well as being the home of the Bank of England, Threadneedle Street used to host the London Stock Exchange, but this moved to new premises in Paternoster Square in 2004. The old site is being redeveloped.
On the corner of Bishopsgate was South Sea House, the headquarters of the South Sea Company. Charles Lamb worked here from 1789 till 1792, as a clerk.
St Ethelburga
Smallest Church
ST ETHELBURGA THE Virgin is THE SMALLEST CHURCH IN THE CITY. The present building dates from 1400, although there has been a church on the site since 1180. On 19 April 1607, HENRY HUDSON and his crew took Communion here before setting sail in the Hopewell to search for the North West Passage. In 1609 he discovered the Hudson River, at the mouth of which New York now stands, and in 1611 he sailed into what is now known as Hudson Bay, but got trapped in the ice and never returned. He was cast adrift with his 12-year-old son by a mutinous crew and disappeared into history. The company which bears his name, the Hudson’s Bay Company, was founded in 1670 and had its London headquarters next door to St Ethelburga’s in St Helen’s Place.
Situated just north of where the Great Fire stopped, St Ethelburga’s survived both the Great Fire and the Blitz but was devastated by an IRA bomb in 1993, which killed one person and injured 51 others. At first it was feared that the church was too badly damaged to save, but eventually the simple exterior was restored in its medieval form, and now once more presents an exquisite west face to Bishopsgate. It is indisputably the most beautiful building on the street. Above the rebuilt cupola and bell turret the oldest weathervane in the City, dating from 1671, is still crowned by a cockerel.
The interior of St Ethelburga’s has been re-designed into a modern space for meetings and prayer as a ‘Centre for Reconciliation and Peace’.
The entrance to the church is down a narrow side passage which leads to a delightful garden with a fountain and flower-beds. In the small courtyard beyond, a 16-sided Bedouin tent covered with goat skins has been erected to create, in the midst of all the turmoil, a quiet place of meditation for people of all faiths. It is utterly peaceful inside.
St Ethelburga’s has a history of inter-faith ministry – in 1861 the Rector, JOHN RODWELL, published THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE KORAN.
Bishopsgate
Bedlam
LOOMING OVER BISHOPSGATE is the 52-storey TOWER 42, which at 600 ft (183 m) high was once the TALLEST BUILDING IN THE CITY and, at the time of its completion in 1980, the tallest office block in Europe. Originally called the NatWest Tower, it was built for the National Westminster Bank and, when seen from the air, takes the shape of the bank’s corporate logo of three inter-locking chevrons. NatWest moved out in 1997 and the tower now provides offices for a variety of different enterprises. On the 42nd floor there is a public restaurant, Vertigo 42.
No. 8 Bishopsgate was the headquarters of London’s earliest merchant bank, BARING BROTHERS AND COMPANY, founded in 1762 by John and Francis Baring. They made their reputation by helping to finance the Napoleonic Wars and the Louisiana Purchase, and eventually became so important to the City and the British Government that, in 1890, the Bank of England stepped in to bail them out when Edmund Baring, 1st Lord Revelstoke, lost millions during a reckless venture in Argentina. There was to be no second chance in 1995, however, when Nick Leeson, a young accounts clerk working out of Baring’s Singapore office, lost over £800 million after gambling on the Japanese futures market. Baring’s Bank collapsed and was sold to a Dutch bank for £1.
THE WORLD’S OLDEST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, the BETHLEHEM ROYAL HOSPITAL, was founded just outside Bishopsgate in 1247 as the Priory of St Mary Bethlehem. Within 100 years it had become known for looking after ‘distracted’ patients. When the priory was dissolved in 1547 the hospital was established as a lunatic asylum and then, in 1675, it was moved to a spectacular building in Moorfields, described by John Evelyn as ‘comparing to the Tuileries’. In 1800 the hospital moved south of the river to Lambeth, occupying the building that now houses the Imperial War Museum. The name Bethlehem Royal Hospital became shortened to ‘Bedlam’, now used as a general term for chaos or disorder.
Liverpool Street
The Only Place to Stay
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION, terminus for the Great Eastern Railway and one of the four stations on the Monopoly board, opened on the site of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital in 1874. Liverpool Street itself was named after Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827. The station serves Stansted Airport, East Anglia and the port of Harwich.
In the main concourse there is a large marble memorial to members of the Great Eastern Railway who lost their lives in the First World War. It was unveiled in 1922 by FIELD MARSHAL SIR HENRY WILSON, who was shot dead by two IRA gunmen on his return home from the ceremony.
In the 1980s the station was massively redeveloped as part of the Broadgate Centre, although the Liverpool Street façade was retained.
THE GREAT EASTERN HOTEL, to the east of the station, was designed by Charles Barry, grandson of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, and opened in 1884. For many years it was THE ONLY HOTEL IN THE CITY.
St Giles Cripplegate
Trapped in Concrete
ST GILES C
RIPPLEGATE, dedicated to the patron saint of beggars and cripples, stands among the Barbican towers, trapped in a waste land of concrete, like some great galleon in ice. There has been a church here since 1090, although the medieval-looking building we see today was restored in the 1950s after being virtually destroyed in the Blitz. There is a noble company of men buried here, including JOHN FOXE, author of The Book of Martyrs, laid to rest in 1587, the explorer SIR MARTIN FROBISHER in 1594, map-maker JOHN SPEED in 1629 and JOHN MILTON in 1674. Oliver Cromwell married Elizabeth Bourchier here in August 1620, while still an unknown Huntingdonshire farmer, and Pre-Raphaelite painter WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT (1827–1910) was christened in the church in 1827.
Guildhall
Time is Money
THE PRESENT GUILDHALL of the Corporation of the City of London dates from 1411, the only secular stone structure to survive the Great Fire. It is thought that some sort of hall has existed on this site since the time of Edward the Confessor, as the name suggests the Saxon word ‘gild’, meaning money, and the ‘gild’ hall would be where citizens came to pay their taxes. The Guildhall was badly damaged by fire both in 1940 and 1966, but the lower part of the Great Hall, the porch and the crypt, THE BIGGEST MEDIEVAL CRYPT IN LONDON, survive from the medieval hall. The grand Gothic entrance was added by George Dance Junior in 1788, and the interior of the hall was restored by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1954.
The day-to-day business of the Corporation of London is now administered from a modern block of offices behind the hall, but the Guildhall itself is still used for ceremonial functions such as the annual Lord Mayor’s Dinner in November.
The Great Hall is THE THIRD LARGEST CIVIC HALL IN ENGLAND, after Westminster Hall and the Archbishop’s Hall in Canterbury, and has been the setting for a number of high-profile trials, including those of Lady Jane Grey, Thomas Cranmer and the gunpowder plotter Henry Garnet.
In 1848 FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN gave his last public performance at the Guildhall, in aid of Polish exiles from the Polish rebellion of that year.
The Man Booker Prize award ceremony is held annually at the Guildhall.
Housed in a gallery at the Guildhall is the museum of the WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF CLOCKMAKERS, the OLDEST SURVIVING HOROLOGICAL INSTITUTION IN THE WORLD. THEIR COLLECTION OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES IS THE OLDEST IN THE WORLD.
ST LAWRENCE JEWRY, which makes up one side of the Guildhall yard, is a Wren church rebuilt in the 1950s after bomb damage, and now acts as the chapel of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London.
St Mary Aldermanbury
First Folio
BEHIND THE GUILDHALL is the tiny garden churchyard of ST MARY ALDERMANBURY. The church was bombed during the Blitz and the remains were shipped to Fulton, Missouri, where they were re-erected as a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill, who made his famous ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton in 1946: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.’
Buried somewhere near the site of the altar is the infamous Judge Jeffreys, who had a house nearby, and in 1656 John Milton was married in St Mary’s to his second wife, Catherine Woodcock.
Standing in the middle of the garden is a bronze bust of William Shakespeare fashioned in 1895 by Charles Allen, which commemorates the burial site of JOHN HEMINGE and HENRY CONDELL. They were two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare who saved the works of the greatest English playwright for the world, and produced the priceless FIRST FOLIO of his plays. ‘We have collected them … to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare.’ The writer himself never bothered to save his scripts or have them published, and but for Heminge and Condell, they would most likely have been lost for ever. One of the four plaques attached to the base of the monument tells of their achievement. ‘To their disinterested affection the world owes all that it calls Shakespeare. They alone collected his dramatic writings … They thus merited the gratitude of mankind.’
Nearby, at the junction of Foster Lane and Gresham Street, is the GOLDSMITHS’ HALL. The present imposing building, opened in 1835, is the third on the site. There has been a Goldsmiths’ Hall here since 1339 and the Goldsmiths’ Company was THE FIRST OF ALL THE LIVERY COMPANIES TO HAVE THEIR OWN HALL. Since 1300 the Company has been responsible for testing all the gold and silver in England and, more recently, platinum as well. From the 15th century, London craftsmen were required to bring all their gold and silver items to the hall to be marked, giving rise to the word ‘hallmark’.
Cheapside – North
Market Place
CHEAPSIDE TAKES ITS name from the Saxon word ‘chepe’, meaning market, and was medieval London’s premier market-place. The variety of produce sold in the area can be surmised from the names of the streets running off Cheapside, such as Bread Street, Honey Lane, Milk Street, Poultry.
Cheapside can claim to be the birthplace of an impressive array of distinguished names. ST THOMAS À BECKET was born in a house on the corner of Cheapside and Ironmonger Lane in 1120, the son of a wealthy Norman merchant. He grew up to become Archbishop of Canterbury and was martyred in his own cathedral by four of Henry II’s knights in 1170.
A monastery, the Hospital of St Thomas of Acon, was founded at his birthplace in 1220 and the MERCERS’ COMPANY began to hold their meetings there. When the Company bought the hospital lands at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, part of the deal was that they would maintain a church on the site, and the Mercers’ Company is THE ONLY LIVERY COMPANY TO HAVE ITS OWN PRIVATE CHAPEL. The first Mercers’ Hall was burned down in the Great Fire, and the new hall was used by the Bank of England as its first place of business in 1694. The East India Company also used the hall as their headquarters in the early 18th century. The Cheapside frontage was replaced in 1879 and the old one now graces Swanage Town Hall in Dorset. The present Mercers’ Hall is the third on the site, built in the 1950s after its predecessor was destroyed in the Blitz.
The term mercer derives from the Latin mercis, meaning merchandise, and evolved to refer to anyone who dealt in textiles. The Mercers’ Company is number one in precedence, and prominent mercers have included William Caxton, Sir Thomas More, Dick Whittington, Sir Thomas Gresham, Sir Rowland Hill and Lord Baden Powell.
ST THOMAS MORE (1478–1535), Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor who was executed for failing to sign the Act of Supremacy, was born in Milk Street. While living here he wrote Utopia, a description of an imaginary ideal society, published in 1517. He came up with the ironic name Utopia by blending together two Greek words, ‘Eutopia’ meaning ‘good place’ and ‘Outopia’ meaning ‘no place’. The term Utopia is used today as a description for something unrealistic or unattainable. More moved to Chelsea in 1520. In 2000 More was made patron saint of politicians and statesmen.
The poet ROBERT HERRICK (1591–1674) was born in Cheapside, the son of a goldsmith, and christened in the church of St Vedast in Foster Lane.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old Time is still a flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying
ROBERT HERRICK
The original celebrity cook, MRS BEETON (1836–65), was born Isabella Mayson at No. 24 Milk Street. She married a publisher, Samuel Beeton, in 1856 and is best remembered for writing The Book of Household Management – ‘With a History of the Origin, Properties and Uses of all things connected with Home Life and Comfort’ – which included 100 soup recipes and 200 sauces as well as guidance on running a household, dinner parties and etiquette. It contained illustrations, and the recipes were laid out for the first time in the form we still use today.
In Gutter Lane, the SADDLERS’ HALL is home to one of the two oldest livery companies, the other being the Weavers’ Company. Both have records going back to the mid 12th century, but are thought to have originated in Anglo-Saxon times. The Weavers’ Company charter dates from 1155, making it THE OLDEST EXISTING LIVERY COMPANY CHARTER.
At the corner of Wood
Street and Cheapside there stands a lofty, much cherished plane tree that is featured in a poem by Wordsworth. It soars above the surrounding buildings, which are prohibited from being raised higher and thus robbing the tree of its light. Buried somewhere under Wood Street, where the long-gone church of St Michael stood, is the head of King James IV of Scotland, slain at Flodden Field in 1513.
On the corner of Ironmonger Lane stood the home of JOHN BOYDELL (1719–1804), an engraver and Lord Mayor who made a fortune by being THE FIRST EXPORTER OF ENGLISH PRINTS TO THE CONTINENT. He went bust when the Napoleonic Wars destroyed the market, and paid off his debts by selling his home by lottery – he died in the house before the lottery was drawn.
Well, I never knew this
ABOUT
EC2
There is a long tradition of planting mulberry trees in the garden of the DRAPERS’ HALL on Throgmorton Street, which is maintained to this day. The last tree was planted by the Prince of Wales in 1971. The Drapers’ Company possesses THE OLDEST SURVIVING GRANT OF ARMS TO A CORPORATE BODY IN ENGLAND, issued in 1439.
THOMAS CROMWELL, Henry VIII’s Minister who presided over the Dissolution of the Monasteries, built himself a vast house in Throgmorton Street and peremptorily extended his boundaries on to other people’s property, brooking no argument. The historian John Stow’s father owned a house next door, which Cromwell arranged to have bodily lifted out of the ground and carried 66 ft (20 m) down the road to make room for his extended garden. Even though his property was considerably diminished, Stow’s father had to continue paying the same rent.
I Never Knew That About London Page 4