I Never Knew That About London

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I Never Knew That About London Page 7

by Christopher Winn


  There are numerous American connections to St Dunstan’s. In 1596 THOMAS WEST, LORD DE LA WARR, was married in the church to Cecilia Shirley. As owner of the Virginia Company he went on to become THE FIRST GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA, and the state of DELAWARE is named after him. LAWRENCE WASHINGTON, an ancestor of America’s first president, was buried here in 1617, and a few years later two more Washingtons were baptised here, Anne in 1621 and Lawrence in 1622. George Calvert, 1ST LORD BALTIMORE (1580–1632), THE FOUNDER OF MARYLAND, is buried beneath the church, as is DANIEL BROWN, THE FIRST ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN TO BE ORDAINED FOR AMERICA, in 1723.

  Outside, in a niche above the vestry door, is THE ONLY STATUE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH I IN THE CITY, dating from 1586. It is THE OLDEST OUTDOOR STATUE IN LONDON and was brought here when the Ludgate was demolished in 1760. Inside the vestry porch are unique figures of King Lud and his sons, also from the Ludgate.

  St Dunstan’s was taken down in 1830 so that the road could be widened, and rebuilt the following year to a diminished size. The original church clock of 1671, THE FIRST CLOCK IN LONDON TO HAVE THE MINUTES MARKED ON THE DIAL, and THE FIRST CLOCK WITH A DOUBLE FACE, was put back on to the new building in 1935.

  St Bride’s

  Wedding Cake

  ST BRIDE’S FLEET Street, set back from the road in a dark courtyard, is known as the Printer’s Church. Fleet Street’s first printer WYNKYN DE WORDE was buried here in 1535. Samuel Pepys, born nearby in Salisbury Court, was baptised at St Bride’s in 1633.

  A bust by the font commemorates VIRGINIA DARE, THE FIRST ENGLISH CHILD BORN IN AMERICA, in North Carolina in 1587, whose parents were married in St Bride’s. Virginia and her parents disappeared along with the other members of Raleigh’s Lost Colony. Also married here were the parents of EDWARD WINSLOW, one of the leaders of the Pilgrim Fathers and three times Governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

  Bomb damage during the Blitz destroyed much of Wren’s church and opened up the crypt, revealing the remains of a substantial Roman house. The crypt now houses a museum of the area’s history going back to early Roman days.

  Spared in the Blitz was Wren’s glorious layered steeple, at 226 ft (69 m) high THE TALLEST STEEPLE HE EVER BUILT. It once stood at 234 ft (71 m) but was struck by lightning in 1764 and lost 8 ft (2.4 m) off the top. Benjamin Franklin, known for his experiments with electricity, was asked by George III to advise on what type of lightning rod should be placed on the steeple, and they became embroiled in a heated squabble, with Franklin favouring a pointed one and the King wanting one with a blunt end. Fleet Street’s finest fuelled the debate with headlines referring to ‘sharp witted colonists’ and ‘good, honest, blunt King George’.

  WILLIAM RICH, a pastry cook who lived on Ludgate Hill, would gaze at the steeple of St Bride’s every day from his kitchen, and hit upon the idea of modelling a wedding cake on the multi-layered design of the steeple, starting a tradition we still follow today.

  Fleet Prison

  Left and Write

  FARRINGDON STREET WAS built over the River Fleet in 1737, close to LONDON’S FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT PRISON, the FLEET PRISON. John Donne, the poet Dean, was imprisoned there in 1601 for marrying a minor. The author JOHN CLELAND (1710–89) wrote THE FIRST ENGLISH PORNOGRAPHIC NOVEL, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill, while serving time there for being in debt.

  The Fleet Prison was taken down in 1846 and replaced by the CONGREGATIONAL MEMORIAL HALL, erected in 1872. THE LABOUR PARTY WAS FOUNDED HERE on 27 February 1900, during the Trades Union Congress. In 1926 the GENERAL STRIKE was run from here, and later that same year the WORLD’S FIRST TABLE TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP took place in the hall. In 1932 the BRITISH UNION OF FASCISTS, formed that year by Sir Oswald Mosley, held their first rally here. The old hall was knocked down in 1969 and a new hall built which is incorporated into Caroone House, which now stands on the site.

  Well, I never knew this

  ABOUT

  FLEET SREET

  Standing at the corner of Fetter Lane and New Fetter Lane is LONDON’S ONLY CROSS-EYED STATUE, that of the political maverick and commentator JOHN WILKES (1725–97), known for his unsettling squint. John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, was named after him.

  At No. 55a, in 1890, 21-year-old LOUIS ROTHMAN opened a kiosk selling hand-rolled cigarettes to the journalists and media moguls of Fleet Street. Particularly popular were menthol cigarettes, his own invention, and he soon made enough money to move to more prestigious premises in Pall Mall.

  The Rights of Man came into being in J.S. Jordan’s shop at No. 166 Fleet Street, when Thomas Paine’s seminal work was printed there in 1791.

  At No. 1 Fleet Street is CHILD’S BANK, established here in 1671, and Britain’s oldest bank. Child’s is now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, but this office is still run under Child’s sign of the Mary-gold. The bank was portrayed as Tellson’s Bank in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.

  HOARE’S BANK, at No. 37 Fleet Street, is THE LAST REMAINING PRIVATE BANK IN BRITAIN. Founded by goldsmith Richard Hoare in 1672, it was established here in 1690, in THE OLDEST PURPOSE-BUILT BANKING HALL IN BRITAIN. Today Hoare’s is run by the 10th and 11th generations of descendents, and, by tradition, one of the partners has to sleep in the bank overnight.

  On the corner of Fleet Street and White-friars Street a tablet marks the site of Thomas Tompion’s clock shop. THOMAS TOMPION (1639–1713), an apprentice blacksmith from Bedfordshire, was England’s Father Time, the country’s finest watch and clock maker. Hanging in the Octagon Room at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich is one of Tompion’s long pendulum clocks, one of the first ever made, still running after more than 300 years. Thomas Tompion was THE FIRST CLOCK MAKER EVER TO BE BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

  EL VINO, at No. 47 Fleet Street, was a legendary haunt for journalists enjoying gossip and liquid lunches in Fleet Street’s heyday. In those days women customers had to wear skirts and were not allowed to go to the bar, but had to sit and wait to be served. Today El Vino’s is patronised mainly by lawyers from the Temple.

  EC1

  HOLBORN – NEWGATE – SMITHFIELD – CLERKENWELL – CHARTERHOUSE

  Staple Inn – one of the finest examples of 16th-century buildings left in the City

  Holborn East

  First Free Hospital and First Flyover

  PRINCE ALBERT OCCUPIES the middle of HOLBORN CIRCUS, doffing his hat to the City, while to the east stands ST ANDREW’S HOLBORN, first mentioned in 951, and rebuilt in 1690 by Sir Christopher Wren, the LARGEST OF HIS PARISH CHURCHES. MARC BRUNEL, builder of the world’s first underwater tunnel, was married here to MISS SOPHIA KINGDOM in 1799 and BENJAMIN DISRAELI was christened here in 1817, opening the way for him to become the first Jewish-born British Prime Minister.

  In 1827 a parishioner DR WILLIAM MARSDEN found a young girl lying in the churchyard suffering from exposure. He sought desperately for a hospital nearby that would give her treatment, but no one would take her in and she died in agony in his arms. The horror of that experience led Dr Marsden to found the ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL, where the poor could be admitted without question or formalities.

  Designed by William Heywood and opened in 1869, HOLBORN VIADUCT was the first ‘flyover’ in central London and possibly the first relief road, designed to ease traffic congestion between the City and the West End. Built in conjunction with Holborn Circus, it is 1,400 ft (427 m) long and 80 ft (24 m) wide, and spans the valley of the lost Fleet River or Hole Bourne.

  Church of the Holy Sepulchre

  Crusaders

  THE CHURCH OF the Holy Sepulchre-without-Newgate is the largest parish church in the City. Founded in 1137, this church was built at exactly the same distance from Newgate, the north-west gate of the City, as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was from the north-west gate of Jerusalem. It was therefore deemed an appropriate place for Crusaders to depart from, and hence the name.

  A vicar here, JOHN ROGERS, was the first Protestant to be
burned at the stake in the reign of Queen Mary, at Smithfield in 1555. He is buried in the church.

  CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH (1580–1631), the founder of Virginia who was rescued by Pocahontas, is buried in the south-west corner of the church and has a memorial window. He spent the last few years of his life in a house beside the church in Snow Hill.

  SIR HENRY WOOD (1869–1944), founder of the Proms, is buried in the Musicians Chapel of the church. He was baptised and learned to play the organ here. During the Proms the wreath that lies on his tombstone is taken by ‘Promenaders’ to the Albert Hall and placed on his bust.

  Newgate Prison

  Hang ’em

  THE CHURCH OF the Holy Sepulchre stands opposite the site of NEWGATE PRISON and its great bell used to toll as the carts full of prisoners heading for execution at Tyburn paused at the church door so that the condemned could be handed nosegays. Inside the church, in a case by one of the pillars, is a small hand-bell that was rung by a bellman who would walk along the tunnel connecting the church to the prison chanting,

  All you that 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 above have mercy on your souls …

  Newgate Prison was the City’s main prison for 500 years and was originally built with money donated by Dick Whittington. SIR THOMAS MALORY wrote Morte D’Arthur in Newgate while serving time for murder and died here in 1470. In the 19th century public hangings started to take place here and proved to be a popular spectator sport. On 26 May 1868, at Newgate, MICHAEL BARRETT became THE LAST MAN TO BE PUBLICLY HANGED IN BRITAIN, for his involvement in a bungled attempt to rescue two convicted Fenians from Clerkenwell Prison, during which a young boy was injured.

  Postman’s Park

  Unforgotten Heroes

  A STATUE OF Rowland Hill, inventor of the Penny Post, stands outside what was once the National Postal Museum in King Edward Street. The previous post office here replaced an inn called the Bull and Mouth, which was where the first mail coaches used to set out from. On 27 July 1896, GUGLIELMO MARCONI transmitted THE VERY FIRST WIRELESS SIGNALS from the roof of that post office. The Post Office and the Admiralty were Marconi’s first sponsors.

  Across the road, locked in the middle of the huge traffic system, is POSTMAN’S PARK, a small green space in the smoke and gloom of London’s rush. Sheltered by a long arcade along one wall are a collection of ceramic tablets made by Doulton, commemorating people who gave their lives in acts of heroism to help others, but who received no recognition and might otherwise be forgotten.

  They include William Drake, who lost his life saving a woman whose horses were bolting after the pole on her carriage had broken in Hyde Park in 1869; eight-year-old Henry Bristow of Walthamstow, who saved his little sister’s life by tearing off her flaming clothes and caught fire himself in 1890; Alice Ayres, who saved three children from a burning house in Borough at the cost of her own life in 1885; Thomas Simpson, who died of exhaustion after saving many lives from the breaking ice at Highgate Ponds in 1885; and Joseph Andrew Ford, aged 30, from the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, who saved six people from a fire in Gray’s Inn Road but burned to death himself in 1871.

  The memorial was the inspiration of Victorian artist G.F. Watts, who put up the first tablets and encouraged others to do the same.

  Smithfield

  Treated Like Meat

  SMITHFIELD IS LONDON’S largest meat market and the only large wholesale market that has not yet relocated outside the City. In 1305 the Scottish nationalist WILLIAM WALLACE was hanged here and his body then dismembered so that his head could be stuck on a pole above London Bridge.

  In 1381 Wat Tyler brought his rebels here to meet Richard II, but when Tyler moved towards the King, the Lord Mayor of London, fishmonger William Walworth, rode forward and plunged his dagger into Tyler’s neck. Tyler was carried into St Bartholomew’s Hospital by his supporters, but the King’s men dragged him back out and finished the job by beheading him. William Walworth’s dagger is on show in the Fishmongers’ Hall.

  Poet Laureate SIR JOHN BETJEMAN came to live at No. 43 CLOTH FAIR in 1955, attracted by the jumble of medieval streets along which ‘everything could be reached by foot, down alleys and passages’. By 1977, however, the noise and mess of the ever huger refrigerated lorries that trundled along those narrow lanes to deliver carcasses to the market had made life too unpleasant and he had to move.

  At PYE CORNER in Giltspur Street, on the corner of Cock Lane, high up on the wall of a modern office block, there is a small, bright golden figure of a fat boy, which marks where the Great Fire of London stopped in 1666. The fat boy represents gluttony, the sin that was thought to have bought down God’s wrath on the City. Across the street is the 18th-century watch house built to guard the graveyard from body-snatchers hoping to dig up the corpses to sell to the doctors at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

  St Bartholomew’s Hospital

  Oldest Hospital

  FOUNDED IN 1123 by a monk called RAHERE, ST BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL, or ‘Bart’s’, is THE OLDEST HOSPITAL IN LONDON, and THE OLDEST HOSPITAL IN BRITAIN THAT STILL OCCUPIES ITS ORIGINAL SITE. The statue above the gateway to the hospital is THE ONLY STATUE OF HENRY VIII IN LONDON – he agreed to re-found the hospital in 1544 after the Dissolution of St Bartholomew’s Priory.

  On the walls of the grand stairway in the entrance hall are two rare and remarkable murals by WILLIAM HOGARTH, depicting the Good Samaritan and Jesus healing the lame man at Bethesda. Hogarth is better known as a caricaturist, but these superb murals show his genius as a painter of more classical work. Hogarth was born at No. 58 Bartholomew Close and was christened in St Bartholomew’s church next door, and he gave the murals to his local hospital for free. Times when you can see the murals are restricted but they are well worth a special trip.

  INIGO JONES was christened in the hospital chapel of St Bartholomew the Less in 1573.

  St Bartholomew the Great

  Oldest Parish Church

  THE CHURCH OF St Bartholomew the Great is the only surviving part of the Priory founded by Rahere at the same time as the hospital in 1123, and is LONDON’S OLDEST PARISH CHURCH. It is approached through a 13th-century gateway surmounted by a 15th-century half-timbered building to which is fixed a statue of Rahere, who is buried inside the church. Queen Mary sat in this gatehouse drinking wine and eating roast chicken while watching Protestant martyrs being burned alive outside.

  After its rather drab exterior, the amazing beauty of the interior of St Bartholomew the Great comes as a delightful surprise. The church shows the only substantial Norman work left in the City, and the mighty Norman pillars that march around the east end are magnificent, giving St Bartholomew’s a completely different feel from any other City church. The rare and lovely oriel window in the church was built in 1517 by Prior William Bolton. Scenes from Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, The End of the Affair, and the BBC’s Madame Bovary were all filmed in the church, making full use of the unique and atmospheric setting.

  Clerkenwell

  Magazines and Music

  ST JOHN’S GATE is one of the few remains of the Priory of the Knights of St John, who were known as the Knights Hospitallers during the Crusades to the Holy Land. The gate was built in 1504 and has since led a varied life. During the 18th century it performed the role of printing house for THE WORLD’S FIRST MAGAZINE, the GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE, which was founded by Edward Cave in 1731, and to which Dr Johnson contributed articles as well as helping with the editing. The gate now serves as the headquarters and museum of the Protestant Order of St John and of St John’s Ambulance which the Order set up in 1877.

  St John’s Gate

&nbs
p; In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, in a small room above a coal shop in JERUSALEM PASSAGE, some of the greatest musicians of the age would gather on Thurdays to spend musical evenings together and drink coffee. Their host was THOMAS BRITTON (1644–1714), the ‘musical smallcoal man’, who ran his coal shop on the ground floor by day and read chemistry and music in the evening. He founded his music club, free at first and later paid for by subscription, so that ordinary folk could come and hear great music played by great musicians. His star guest was HANDEL, who would play the harpsichord and on more than one occasion treated the club to the first performance of a new composition.

  Britton was killed by a practical joke when one of the club members in jovial mood arranged for a ventriloquist to announce in a solemn voice, as though from a great distance, that Britton would die in a few hours if he did not fall down upon his knees and recite the Lord’s Prayer. As a result of the shock, Britton did fall down, and died a few days later, leaving 1,400 books and 27 good musical instruments.

  Clerkenwell Green

  Trendy Left

  CLERKENWELL GREEN IS a haven of trendy cafés and trees, more akin to a piazza than a London Square, and it seems today an unlikely place to have had such a fiery past. Any number of left-wing protest marches have set off from here, fired by revolutionary rhetoric, including the march addressed by Annie Beasant and William Morris that ended in the original BLOODY SUNDAY at Trafalgar Square in 1887, and THE WORLD’S FIRST MAY DAY MARCH in 1890. May Day marches still leave from here today. At No. 37 a fine 18th-century house plays host to the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY. BRITAIN’S FIRST SOCIALIST PRESS, the TWENTIETH CENTURY PRESS, moved in here in 1892, and LENIN published 17 issues of Iskra here in 1902–3.

 

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