Charterhouse
Old Boy Network
CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE IS a delightful mix of Tudor, Georgian and Victorian buildings lying outside the gatehouse of the 14th-century Carthusian Priory of the Salutation of the Mother of God, on the site of LONDON’S BIGGEST PLAGUE PIT. Charterhouse is an English corruption of the French name Chartreuse. In 1611 the property was bought by an Elizabethan merchant adventurer Thomas Sutton, who founded a home here for poor gentlemen and a free school for boys. The school, whose famous alumni include Joseph Addison, founder of the Spectator, John Wesley, founder of Methodism, and the writer William Makepeace Thackeray, moved to Godalming in Surrey in 1872. Lodgings at the hospital here are still kept for decayed gentlemen who fall on hard times. The Charterhouse buildings, which are gorgeous, can be visited by appointment.
On the eastern side of the square is the Art Deco FLORIN COURT, which was used as the residence of Agatha Christie’s Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot in the 1980s television series.
The Clerk’s Well that supplied Charterhouse also gave its name to the district of Clerkenwell.
Ely Place
Oldest Catholic Church
ELY PLACE IS an unexpectedly smart street of Georgian terraced houses guarded by a small gatehouse, just off Holborn Circus. Until 1772 this was the site of the Bishop of Ely’s London palace, and a place well known to William Shakespeare. John of Gaunt lived (and died) here in the 14th century, and this is where, in Richard II, Shakespeare has him talk of ‘This royal throne of Kings, this sceptre’d isle’. In Richard III, Gloucester says to the Bishop of Ely: ‘My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there. I do beseech you, send for some of them.’ There are no gardens and no strawberries now, but there is an interesting old pub called YE OLDE MITRE, down a little alleyway off Ely Place, and there is also ST ETHELDREDA’S CHURCH, THE OLDEST CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND, which was built as a private chapel attached to the palace and is THE ONLY SURVIVING BUILDING IN LONDON FROM THE REIGN OF EDWARD I (1239–1307). It was also, in 1874, THE FIRST PRE-REFORMATION CHURCH IN ENGLAND TO REVERT TO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Holborn West
How it Used to Look
BETWEEN HATTON GARDEN and Leather Lane, until 1972, stood GAMAGES, one of London’s most popular stores where you could find just about anything you wanted to buy. It was founded in 1878 by a draper, Arthur Gamage, who started in a tiny one-room shop where he hung a notice over the door stating ‘Tall Oaks from Little Acorns Grew’. Over the next few years he bought up all the adjoining properties that became available until he had a huge rambling store full of little passageways and nooks and hidden corners where you could get lost for hours of fun and exploration. Gamages also became famous for its mail order catalogues, which were the most comprehensive of their kind. Today Gamages catalogues offer a wonderful insight into the retail world of the 19th and 20th centuries and fetch a tidy sum on the collectors’ market. The store was knocked down in 1972 and replaced by a modern British Telecom building, while in the basement below are the vaults of DE BEERS, THE WORLD’S LARGEST DIAMOND COMPANY.
Two very different buildings dominate Holborn today. One is the rather wonderful, instantly recognisable, red-brick Gothic HOLBORN BARS, built for the Prudential Assurance Company in ‘Waterhouse Slaughterhouse’ style by Sir Alfred Waterhouse in 1897. To wander in and out of the miles of echoing courtyards surrounded by vivid pink terracotta cliffs is a Transylvanian experience. The Prudential moved out in the 1990s, but the complex remains as offices. The site was previously occupied by Furnival’s Inn, where CHARLES DICKENS lived while working for the Morning Chronicle, and where he started on his literary career, writing Pickwick Papers between 1834 and 1837. Tucked away in a corner of one of the piazzas is a memorial bust of Dickens.
Across the road is STAPLE INN, once an Inn of Chancery, hidden behind a glorious black-and-white façade of seven crooked gables, the only substantial 16th-century buildings left in the City. They date from 1545 and are a fine example of what much of the City looked like before the Great Fire of 1666.
Through the arched stone gateway under the houses is the ‘little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles’ as described by Dickens in Edwin Drood. ‘It is one of those nooks the turning into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. Moreover, it is one of those nooks which are legal nooks; and it contains a little Hall, with a little lantern in its roof: to what obstructive purposes devoted, and at whose expense, this history knoweth not.’
Staple Inn has not changed one bit since Dickens wrote those words. The little hall of which he spoke is 16th century, has a glorious hammerbeam roof and sits like a perfect miniature doll’s house tucked into the corner of the larger square. Today it is used by the Institute of Actuaries.
Another Inn of Chancery was BARNARD INN, on the south side of Holborn. Inns of Chancery were preparatory schools for young students and solicitors waiting to join the Inns of Court. Staple Inn and Barnard Inn were associated with Gray’s Inn.
The late 14th-century hall of Barnard Inn is THE OLDEST SURVIVING SECULAR BUILDING IN THE CITY and is now used by THE CITY’S OLDEST COLLEGE, GRESHAM COLLEGE. It was at Gresham College’s Bishopsgate home that the first members of the Royal Society met.
Well, I never knew this
ABOUT
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JOHN BUNYAN (1628–88), the author of England’s first best-seller, The Pilgrim’s Progress, died in COCK LANE from a fever caught by going out into the rain. In medieval times, Cock Lane was the only place in London where prostitution was legal.
The author ANTHONY TROLLOPE used to work at the General Post Office in St Martin-le-Grand, and while there he INVENTED THE PILLAR-BOX.
SADLER’S WELLS, now one of BRITAIN’S LEADING DANCE VENUES, is named after THOMAS SADLER, who discovered a medicinal well in North Clerkenwell and created a garden and ‘musick’ house there in 1683.
The HOLBORN EMPIRE theatre, which stood on the south side of Holborn from 1867 until 1960, gave THE FIRST EVER SHOWING OF A FULL-LENGTH FEATURE FILM, in 1924. It was a melodrama, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, filmed in Kinemacolour, and it lasted for one hour and 40 minutes.
Horologist THOMAS EARNSHAW (1749–1829) had his workshop at No. 120 Holborn, and here invented the MARINE CHRONOMETER, a vital aid to navigation on long voyages. The clock he manufactured for Armagh Observatory was the first to be enclosed in an air-tight case and was reckoned in the 19th century to be the most accurate clock in the world.
HATTON GARDEN is the centre of Britain’s diamond trade. It takes its name from Sir Christopher Hatton, a favourite of Elizabeth I, who was so impressed with his dancing that she made him her Chancellor. Hatton sponsored Sir Francis Drake’s round-the-world voyage, and Drake showed his gratitude by naming his ship the Golden Hind, in honour of Hatton’s family crest.
The façade of STAPLE INN featured on the packaging of Old Holborn Tobacco, which was produced at premises in an alleyway off the north side of Holborn.
At No. 20 Brooke Street, off Holborn, was the studio of WILLIAM FRIESE-GREENE, inventor of the kinematograph, with which he took some of the first ever moving pictures, at Hyde Park Corner in 1888. Although he probably made the first ever movies, he never gave a public demonstration and has hence been rather overshadowed by the likes of Thomas Edison and Augustin Le Prince.
City of Westminster
THE STRAND
THE STRAND – SAVOY – KING’S REACH – EMBANKMENT
Royal Courts of Justice – opened in 1882 with over 1,000 rooms and 3½ miles of corridor
The Strand
Taking Tea
THE STRAND DERIVES its name from the Old English word for shore or river bank. For a long time this was the only link between the City and Westminster and was lined with smart houses and palaces. Disraeli described the Strand as ‘perhaps the finest street in Europe’.<
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The Strand begins at Temple Bar where the western edge of the City is marked by a silver griffin on a plinth in the middle of the road, just outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
In 1706, across the road from the Royal Courts, THOMAS TWINING established a tea business at No. 216 the Strand. In 1717 he opened BRITAIN’S FIRST TEA-ROOM on the premises. The Twinings company still occupies the same address, making it THE OLDEST RATEPAYER IN LONDON. There is no shop front, just a smart door underneath the name Twinings, with no apostrophe. This has been the company logo since 1787, making it THE OLDEST COMPANY LOGO IN CONTINUOUS USE IN THE WORLD.
Island Churches
Oranges and Lemons
TWO CHURCHES OCCUPY island sites in the middle of the Strand. ST CLEMENT DANES was designed by Christopher Wren in 1682, on the site of an older church believed to be the burial place of the Danish king Harold Harefoot. The steeple was added in 1720 by James Gibbs, while the bells featured in the nursery rhyme – ‘“Oranges and lemons,” say the bells of St Clement’s’. The inventor of rugby football, WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS, was the Rector here. In 1958 St Clement’s became the mother church of the Royal Air Force. Outside stand two statues of wartime RAF leaders, Sir Arthur Harris Bt and the 1st Lord Dowding, who led Bomber Command and Fighter Command respectively.
ST MARY-LE-STRAND is the mother church of the ‘WRENS’, the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Built by James Gibbs in 1714, his first public building, it was the first church to be built under the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711. Bonnie Prince Charlie paid a secret visit to St Mary’s in 1750, converting to the Anglican faith in an attempt to boost his claim to the English throne. This upset the Pope, who withdrew his support for the Prince’s campaign. Charles Dickens’s parents were married here in 1809. Beside the church was LONDON’S FIRST HACKNEY CARRIAGE RANK, established in 1634, while on the green in front of the church was a tall maypole. Sir Isaac Newton purchased this in 1718 and had it erected it in Wanstead Park as a stand for Europe’s highest telescope.
St Mary-le-Strand
Somerset House
Riverside Palace
THE ORIGINAL SOMERSET House was THE FIRST RENAISSANCE PALACE IN ENGLAND, and was built on land belonging to the Bishops of Worcester and Chester which was given to the Lord Protector Somerset by Henry VIII at the Dissolution. After Somerset was executed, the palace became the property of the Crown, and in the early 17th century was the setting for grand masques and balls arranged by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones for James I’s Queen, Anne of Denmark.
INIGO JONES had an apartment at Somerset House and died there in 1652. A few years later in 1658, OLIVER CROMWELL lay in state there provoking people to pelt the great gate with mud. It was noted in 1676 that Somerset House was THE FIRST BUILDING IN ENGLAND TO HAVE PARQUET FLOORING.
After the death of Charles II in 1685, his widow Catherine of Braganza took up residence and hosted THE FIRST ITALIAN OPERA TO BE PERFORMED IN ENGLAND.
At the end of the 18th century the palace was demolished and a new Palladian-style building designed by Sir William Chambers was erected for government use, THE FIRST LARGE, PURPOSE-BUILT OFFICE BLOCK EVER BUILT. Over the next 200 years Somerset House played host to a number of government bodies, most famously the Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths where the public could go and examine interesting wills, or pick up a copy of their birth certificate. This office has since moved to the Family Records Centre in Islington. Somerset House still houses government offices and is also home to the galleries of the COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART. In the winter months an ice rink is set up in the courtyard.
Savoy
Seeing the Light
SAVOY, AN AREA between the Strand and the Thames, where the river begins to turn east, takes its name from the Count of Savoy, Henry III’s uncle-in-law, who had land here. It eventually came into the hands of the 1st Duke of Lancaster, who built himself a mansion ‘without equal in England’. King John of France was brought to Savoy as a captive by the Black Prince after the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, and died here in 1364, by which time the palace had been inherited by John of Gaunt.
In 1366 GEOFFREY CHAUCER married PHILLIPA ROET in the Savoy Chapel, and thus the first great English writer became joined by marriage to the Kings and Queens of England. Chaucer’s sister-in-law Katherine became the third wife of John of Gaunt, and their children took the name Beaufort from John’s castle in Anjou. Their great-granddaughter Margaret Beaufort became the mother of the first Tudor king, Henry VII.
John of Gaunt’s palace was badly damaged during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and over the next 100 years fell into disrepair, until John’s great-great-grandson Henry VII had a hospital built on the site. The only survival from the hospital, the remains of which were swept away in 1820 for the construction of Waterloo Bridge, is the SAVOY CHAPEL, which now lies hidden beneath the tall cliffs of the Edwardian edifices that dominate Savoy Place. At the end of the 19th century this was the most fashionable place in London to be married. In 1936 it became the chapel of the Royal Victorian Order and is now a private chapel of the Queen, although it is open to the public at certain times. In 1890 the Savoy Chapel became THE FIRST CHURCH IN BRITAIN TO BE LIT BY ELECTRICITY.
Savoy Hotel
Peach Melba
IN 1881 RICHARD D’Oyly Carte (1844–1901) built the SAVOY THEATRE as a venue for D’Oyly Carte Opera productions of Gilbert and Sullivan. This was THE FIRST PUBLIC BUILDING IN LONDON TO BE LIT BY ELECTRICITY.
Next door, in 1889, D’Oyly Carte opened the SAVOY HOTEL, THE FIRST HOTEL IN BRITAIN TO HAVE ELECTRIC LIGHTS AND LIFTS. The first manager of the Savoy was CÉSAR RITZ and his chef was AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER, from whose name we get the slang to ‘scoff’ your food. Between them they built up a clientele of the rich and famous, sometimes by creating exotic new dishes and naming them after their guests. One example was the Peach Melba, a tribute to the Australian diva of Covent Garden, DAME NELLIE MELBA, who had adopted the name Melba in honour of her home town of Melbourne.
OSCAR WILDE and LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS conducted their affair in rooms 346 and 362 at the Savoy; CLAUDE MONET painted Waterloo Bridge from a hotel balcony; and FRED ASTAIRE danced on the roof with his sister Adele in 1923.
The Savoy Hotel’s oldest resident is a black cat called KASPAR, who makes himself available as a dinner guest whenever a party of 13 sits down to a meal, bringing the number up to 14. He wears a napkin and is served each dish at the same time as the other diners. Kaspar is, apparently, a good listener, although his manner is a bit wooden – he was carved out of wood by the designer Basil Ionides in 1925.
The forecourt of the Savoy Hotel is THE ONLY STREET IN BRITAIN WHERE TRAFFIC DRIVES ON THE RIGHT. This came about because the restricted space in the courtyard made it difficult for coachmen to pull up to the front doors smoothly, without endless manoeuvring, if they kept to the left.
Adelphi
Temple of Health
THE ADELPHI IS a characterless 1930s block that stands on the site of Robert and James Adams’s huge Adelphi project, a grand terrace of houses raised on arches above the riverbank. The Adams brothers lived here (Adelphi is the Greek word for brothers), as did the actor David Garrick.
In 1778 a free-spirited Scottish doctor, JAMES GRAHAM, built an imaginative ‘Temple of Health’ here. It became famous for its electrified ‘Grand Celestial Bed’, which was supported on glass pillars and boasted pink and purple sheets, a dome lined with mirrors, music and a mattress filled with the tail hair of ‘English stallions’. Graham proclaimed from his ‘Celestial Throne’ that, after some technical guidance from him, a night spent in this bed would bring forth children for even the most reticent of couples. To further encourage impure thoughts he hired Emma Lyon, later known as Emma Hamilton, to model as the Goddess of Health. The temple eventually moved to Schomberg House in Pall Mall.
The central terrace of the Adelphi was demolished in 1936 and the new Art Deco block built in its place took forward the name.
A plaque on t
he wall near the stage door of the ADELPHI THEATRE records the events on 16 December 1897 when William Terriss, an actor who appeared regularly at the Adelphi, was knifed to death outside the theatre by an unstable young out-of-work actor called Richard Archer Prince. Terriss is said to haunt the Adelphi.
King’s Reach
Cleaned Up
DOWN BY THE river, the western boundary of the City is marked by two silver dragons and a relief of Queen Victoria, at the spot where she received the City sword in 1900.
On the river front is the KING’S REACH WATERGATE, built as part of Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, which was the fulfilment of a much-needed scheme to bank up the Thames for several miles through central London. For hundreds of years the Thames had been an open sewer, receiving the accumulated detritus and untreated sewage of hundreds of thousands of people from countless drains and tributaries. Then came the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858, when a heat wave caused the festering river to reek unbearably, and it became impossible for Parliament to go about its business except behind closed curtains doused in disinfectant. By 1874 Sir Joseph Bazalgette had built several miles of the Victoria Embankment on the north side of the river, and of the Albert Embankment on the south side, linked to a system of sewers that carried waste off to treatment stations and outfalls further down the Thames estuary. The embankments had the effect of narrowing and deepening the river, causing it to flow faster, which also helped to keep it clean. Along the river, gardens were laid out at intervals on the reclaimed land, ornate cast-iron lamp-posts were erected on top of the granite parapets, and mooring rings were set into the river walls. In 1935 this stretch of the Thames was named KING’S REACH in 1935 in honour of King George V.
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