I Never Knew That About London

by Christopher Winn

  Hyde Park

  London’s Largest Lung

  HYDE PARK COVERS 340 acres (138 ha) and is THE LARGEST OF LONDON’S ROYAL PARKS.

  In 1822 LONDON’S FIRST NUDE STATUE was erected in the south-east corner of Hyde Park, an 18 ft (5.5 m) high figure of Achilles dedicated to the Duke of Wellington, and cast from cannons captured during his military campaigns. Because it was subscribed for by the ‘country women’ of England, a fig-leaf was swiftly added to spare their blushes, although there have been at least two attempts to remove it, in 1870 and 1961. Those who like their statues to be completely nude, however, should return to Hyde Park Corner, where there is a life-size nude David (of Goliath fame), commemorating the Machine Gun Corps and put up in 1925. Across the road, in the stairwell of Apsley House, there is a nude statue of Napoleon, 11 ft 4 in (3.45 m) high, carved by Antonio Canova. Apparently, Napoleon didn’t like it and the British Government bought it in 1816 to give to Napoleon’s conqueror, the Duke of Wellington.

  When William III moved to Kensington Palace in 1690 he had 300 lanterns hung from the branches of trees along his ‘route du roi’ between the palace and St James’s, to deter highwaymen. ROTTEN ROW, as the English pronounced it, thus became THE FIRST ROAD IN ENGLAND TO BE LIT AT NIGHT.

  Hyde Park was a well-known duelling ground, and in 1712 the 4th Duke of Hamilton and 4th Lord Mohun fought one of the most violent duels ever witnessed, over a property in the north of England. The Duke ran Lord Mohun through, and when he went over to help his opponent, Lord Mohun’s second stabbed the Duke in the stomach. Both the Duke and Lord Mohun died. In 1792 Hyde Park was the venue for the so-called ‘petticoat duel’, when Lady Almeria Braddock and a Mrs Elphinstone squared up after an altercation about Lady Braddock’s age. Honours were even, with Lady Braddock’s hat blown off by a pistol shot and Mrs Elphinstone wounded in the arm during the subsequent sword fight. Mrs Elphinstone eventually apologised and the ladies retired to find some tea.

  In 1851 the park was the site of the GREAT EXHIBITION, housed inside Sir Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, the biggest cast-iron and glass building the world had ever seen, 1,851 ft (564 m) long by 456 ft (139 m) at its widest point and covering 19 acres (7.7 ha). The trees that were growing on the site were incorporated into the building, as were the sparrows roosting in them, who caused a dreadful mess on the carpets. The Duke of Wellington came up with the idea of a sparrowhawk, a notion later copied by former Mayor Ken Livingstone when he wished to rid Trafalgar Square of pigeons. The profits made from the Great Exhibition helped to pay for the museums of South Kensington.

  Royal Albert Hall

  Home of the Proms

  THE ROYAL ALBERT Hall, named after the Prince Consort, who died in 1861, was opened in 1871 by Edward, Prince of Wales, with the words ‘The Queen declares this Hall is now open.’ His mother, Queen Victoria, was too overcome with grief to speak. When the hall first opened the acoustics were so bad that the Albert Hall was said to be the only place where a British composer could be sure of hearing his work twice. The problem was finally solved in 1969, when a series of fibreglass acoustic diffusing discs that look like flying saucers were fixed to the ceiling. The hall possesses THE LARGEST PIPE ORGAN IN BRITAIN and, since 1941, has hosted the BBC Promenade Concerts, or ‘Proms’, founded by Sir Henry Wood and now THE LARGEST FESTIVAL OF CLASSICAL MUSIC IN THE WORLD. The Proms’ original venue, the Queen’s Hall in Langham Place, was destroyed in the Blitz.

  In 1918 Sir Hubert Parry’s choral version of William Blake’s ‘JERUSALEM’ WAS PERFORMED FOR THE FIRST TIME, in the Albert Hall, in celebration of the granting of the vote to women.

  It was in the Albert Hall that THE FIRST SUMO WRESTLING TOURNAMENT EVER TO BE HELD OUTSIDE JAPAN TOOK PLACE and also where, on 15 September 1963, THE BEATLES AND THE ROLLING STONES PERFORMED ON THE SAME BILL FOR THE ONE AND ONLY TIME.

  Across the road is Victorian England’s answer to the Taj Mahal, the ALBERT MEMORIAL. This elaborate monument to Queen Victoria’s undying love for Prince Albert, who died at the young age of 42, was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, an achievement for which he was knighted.

  Kensington Gardens

  A Boy and his Dogs

  IN A LITTLE magical green dell on the west bank of the Long Water in Kensington Gardens is a statue of PETER PAN, made by George Frampton in 1912, which shows the boy who never grew up playing his pipes for animals and fairies. The opening scenes of JM Barrie’s story are set in Kensington Gardens, and this must be one of the few spots in London that hasn’t changed very much since.

  Beside the gardener’s cottage at Victoria Gate on the northern edge of the park is a dogs’ cemetery, created in 1880 by the Duchess of Cambridge for her beloved pet dog. Over the next 35 years some 300 dogs were brought here to be buried in the park where they so enjoyed their walks and games. The cemetery closed for new clients in 1915.

  Marble Arch

  Speak Up

  THE MARBLE ARCH, made of white marble from Michelangelo’s quarry at Carrara, is based on the Arch of Constantine in Rome and was designed by John Nash in 1827 as the main entrance to Buckingham Palace. It was moved here in 1851, not because the arch was too small for carriages to go through, as is often claimed, but because there was no room for it when the palace was enlarged. Only members of the Royal Family and the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery may pass through the central arch.

  Near here, a little way down Bayswater Road and marked by a wall plaque on a modern church, is the site of the TYBURN GALLOWS where, from 1400 until 1783, the most notorious of London’s criminals were strung up before a bloodthirsty crowd.

  Public hangings are a thing of the past, so instead the descendants of the bloodthirsty crowd now heckle the eccentrics, show-offs, orators and budding politicians who get on their soapboxes to harangue the populace at Speaker’s Corner.

  Grosvenor Square

  Stars and Stripes

  GROSVENOR SQUARE IS the second largest square in Central London after Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

  The AMERICAN EMBASSY in Grosvenor Square, opened in 1960, has 600 rooms and is THE LARGEST EMBASSY IN BRITAIN. Fifty yards (45 m) away in Upper Grosvenor Street, the American Democrat, ADLAI STEVENSON, collapsed in the street in July 1965 and died in the ambulance taking him to hospital.

  One of only two 18th-century houses in the square to survive, No. 9 was the home of JOHN ADAMS, signatory of the American Declaration of Independence and first American Ambassador to the Court of St James in 1785. In 1796 he became the second President of the United States.

  Brook Street

  Clubs and Claridge’s

  THE BROOK REFERRED to is the Tyburn or Tybourne.

  No. 69 Brook Street has been the home of London’s leading club for literary folk, the SAVILE, since 1927. The name dates from the 19th century, when the club had premises in Savile Row. The membership is drawn mainly from the arts and has included Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, W.E. Henley, Herbert Spencer, Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Evelyn Waugh, Compton Mackenzie, Frank Muir and Sir Ralph Richardson. The Savile has always been a club that encourages the art of conversation, and Evelyn Waugh in A Handful of Dust, referring to the Savile as the Greville, describes it as having ‘a tradition of garrulity’.

  At No. 57 is London’s most royal hotel, CLARIDGE’S, founded in 1855 by a butler, William Claridge. Royal patronage was assured in 1860 when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert came to see the Empress Eugénie of France, who had made Claridge’s her winter quarters. That same year Baedeker described Claridge’s as ‘the first hotel in London’. In 1893 RICHARD D’OYLY CARTE bought Claridge’s as his second hotel, demolished it and erected a purpose-built hotel in red brick in its place, with all the modern facilities that had made his Savoy Hotel such a success.

  During the Second World War many of Europe’s Royal families found themselves in exile and headed for Claridge’s, including, in 1941, KING PETER OF YUGOSLAVIA, whose son CROWN PRINCE ALEXANDER was born in Suite 212 in July
1945. The Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, declared the room to be part of Yugoslavia for a day, and a handful of Yugoslav earth was put under the bed so that the child could be born on Yugoslav soil. A few days later, Churchill retired to the penthouse at Claridge’s to cheer himself up after his shock election defeat.

  Since the war it has been customary for visiting royalty or heads of state to invite the monarch to dine at Claridge’s in return for her hospitality at Buckingham Palace.

  Today celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay hosts a restaurant at Claridge’s, and a dedicated bar of Claridge’s own soap is kept at the door for him to wash his mouth out with.

  Handel House

  Rock and the Messiah

  JUST DOWN THE street from Claridge’s is London’s most unlikely musical shrine, the home of GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL and … JIMI HENDRIX.

  They didn’t live there together, of course, but what a wonderful musical heritage for a couple of simple Georgian town houses. Hendrix, considered by some to be the greatest ever rock guitarist, lived in the upper rooms of No. 23 in 1969, the year before he died. His blue plaque, placed here in 1997, is the FIRST BLUE PLAQUE EVER AWARDED TO A ROCK STAR BY ENGLISH HERITAGE.

  Next door at No. 25, and also occupying the upper floors of No. 23 where Hendrix lived, is the HANDEL HOUSE MUSEUM, where the early Georgian interiors Handel would have known have been superbly recreated. Handel moved into No. 25 in 1723, the first occupant of the house, and here he entertained royally, feasted hugely and composed his greatest masterpieces, including Messiah, Zadok the Priest and Fireworks Music. He lived here for 36 years, most of his life, and died here in an upstairs room in 1759, making Handel House possibly the most complete and perfect example anywhere in the world of the home of a great classical composer or artist. To sit and ponder in the actual room where he wrote, in surroundings he would have recognised, is an extraordinarily moving experience.

  Handel House

  Albemarle Street

  Street of Invention

  IN 1821, IN a basement laboratory of the ROYAL INSTITUTION at No. 21 Albemarle Street, MICHAEL FARADAY discovered the principle behind the electric motor, ELECTROMAGNETIC ROTATION, which led to the invention of the electric telegraph. Ten years later he discovered ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION here, and so created the electric generator.

  Just along the street in 1876, ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL made THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONE CALL IN ENGLAND, when he rang through from Brown’s Hotel and spoke to the hotel’s manager, Henry Ford, at Ravenscourt Park some 5 miles (8 km) away. BROWN’S, LONDON’S OLDEST OPERATING FIVE-STAR HOTEL, was opened in 1837 by James Brown and his wife Sarah, a maid to Lady Byron. In 1886 THEODORE ROOSEVELT stayed at the hotel and walked to his wedding at St George’s, Hanover Square, and FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT and his wife Eleanor spent their honeymoon at Brown’s in 1905.

  At No. 13 stood the ALBEMARLE CLUB, where Oscar Wilde’s downfall had its origins. It was there that a note was left for him by Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, addressed ‘To Oscar Wilde Posing Somdomite [sic]’. Wilde sued and ended up in Reading Gaol.

  Berkeley Square

  Where a Nightingale Sang

  BERKELEY SQUARE WAS made famous by the 1940s Eric Maschwitz/ Manning Sherwin song ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ and is also renowned for its wonderfully tall 18th-century plane trees. At No. 44 is a William Kent house of 1747 that Nikolaus Pevsner described as ‘the finest terrace house in London’. In 1959 John Aspinall bought it and set up the CLERMONT CLUB, where Lord Lucan was due to meet friends on the night he disappeared in 1974. In the basement is ANNABEL’S, London’s most fashionable night club, opened in the 1960s by Mark Birley and named after his wife, who later married the billionaire and Referendum Party founder Sir James Goldsmith.

  Savile Row

  First Tux and Last Beatle

  SAVILE ROW TAKES its name from Lady Dorothy Savile, wife of the 3rd Earl of Burlington.

  No. 1 Savile Row was home in the 19th century to the Royal Geographical Society, and in 1874 David Livingstone lay in state here before his burial in Westminster Abbey. No. 1 is now occupied by the tailors Gieves & Hawkes who, from their previous premises, had equipped Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley with sun helmets.

  In January 1969 the BEATLES played THEIR LAST EVER GIG on the roof of Apple Records office at No. 3. After 40 minutes the police stopped the performance, following complaints about the noise from neighbouring offices. The Beatles would never play together again.

  The playwright RICHARD BRINDSLEY SHERIDAN lived at No. 14 Savile Row, now occupied by the late SIR HARDY AMIES’S shop. He was appointed dressmaker to the Queen in 1955.

  At No. 15 is one of Savile Row’s oldest tailors, HENRY POOLE & CO., the BIRTHPLACE OF THE ‘TUX’. In 1886, James Potter of Tuxedo Park, New York, paid a visit to London and was invited by the Prince of Wales to spend a weekend at Sandringham. Potter was mightily taken with the short evening coat the Prince was wearing at their informal dinner party, and was delighted to learn that he could have one made up by the Prince’s tailors, Henry Poole & Co., of Savile Row, who had designed the Prince’s original some years earlier. When Potter returned to New York, he proudly wore his new coat at the Tuxedo Park Club and his fellow members soon began to have copies made for themselves, which they adopted as their uniform for club ‘stag’ dinners. Consequently, in America, the dinner-jacket became known as a Tuxedo or ‘Tux’.

  Well, I never knew this

  ABOUT

  MAYFAIR & HYDE PARK

  The GREAT ROOM at the GROSVENOR HOUSE HOTEL is THE BIGGEST HOTEL BANQUETING VENUE IN LONDON.

  The Egyptian igneous rock sculpture over the entrance to SOTHEBY’S in Bond Street dates from 1600 BC and is THE OLDEST MAN-MADE ARTEFACT IN LONDON.

  BURLINGTON ARCADE was built by Lord George Cavendish, later Earl of Burlington, in 1819 and is BRITAIN’S LONGEST SHOPPING ARCADE. It has been patrolled from the beginning by Beadles, the first of whom were recruited from Lord George’s old regiment the 10th Hussars to ensure that his wife and her friends could shop there unmolested. Running, whistling, singing, and the opening of umbrellas are all prohibited. The Beadles make up ENGLAND’S OLDEST POLICE FORCE.

  SAVILE ROW is, of course, known as the last word in bespoke tailoring the world over. In Japan, suits were unknown until the end of the 19th century, after the first Japanese Ambassador to the Court of St James had one made for him in Savile Row in 1870. When he returned home to Japan his new suit was much admired, but there was no Japanese word for it, so they named the garment after the street where it was made, Savile Row. Hence the Japanese word for a suit is sebiro.

  SIR GEORGE CAYLEY (1773–1857), the inventor of the aeroplane, lived at No. 20 Hertford Street in Mayfair.

  QUEEN ELIZABETH II was born at 17 Bruton Street, near Berkeley Square, in 1926.

  The world of music lost two of its finest stars at Flat 12, No. 9 CURZON PLACE in Mayfair, the property of singer Harry Nilsson. MAMA CASS, lead singer of the Mamas and Papas, died there of natural causes in 1974, and four years later KEITH MOON of The Who died of an overdose of pills in the same room.

  Former Prime Minister BENJAMIN DISRAELI died at No. 19 CURZON STREET in 1881.

  In 1952 ‘HYDE PARK CORNER’ was the code word used to inform the Government of the death of King George VI.

  Until 1960, WELLINGTON ARCH at Hyde Park Corner contained THE SECOND SMALLEST POLICE STATION IN LONDON.

  THE SERPENTINE in Hyde Park was formed in 1730 by damming the River Westbourne. In 1816 HARRIET WESTBROOK, pregnant and abandoned by her husband Shelley, met her mysterious death by drowning in the Serpentine, not far from where the road bridge now crosses it.

  THE DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN, by the Serpentine in Hyde Park, closed before it was opened in 2004. It is actually a lovely place, and to sit and cool your feet on hot summer days while watching the water bubbling and tumbling at different speeds through a variety of
channels is surprisingly therapeutic.

  Hidden by trees and marooned in traffic on an inaccessible roundabout at the south end of PARK LANE is one of London’s forgotten statues, put there in quieter days in 1881. LORD BYRON, lost in contemplation, sits with his pen in his hand and his dog beside him, on a marble plinth given by the people of Greece. Byron lived for some time in a terraced house across the road where the Inter-Continental Hotel now stands. Others who had houses on the site were the banker Baron Lionel de Rothschild and Charles Alexandre de Calonne, the French Prime Minister.

  ST JAMES’S

  THE MALL – ST JAMES’S PARK – PALL MALL – ST JAMES’S

  St James’s Palace – a familiar landmark for nearly 500 years

  The Mall

  Anyone for Croquet?

  FROM TRAFALGAR SQUARE, Admiralty Arch provides a noble entrance to London’s grand processional avenue, the Mall. The central gate is only opened for ceremonial occasions.

  Charles II laid out the Mall as somewhere to play ‘paille maille’, a game not unlike a large-scale version of croquet, which he had learned in France during his exile from the Commonwealth. At first the game had been played along Pall Mall, as the name recalls, but Pall Mall was not purpose built and was often choked with traffic which interfered with the game. Over the years, the Mall developed into a fashionable promenade, lending its name to the American shopping mall, originally a shopping street closed to vehicles. When Buckingham Palace became the official royal residence in the time of Queen Victoria, the Mall became a grand approach and in 1911, as a memorial to Victoria, the Mall was widened to become a processional route between Admiralty Arch and the Queen Victoria Memorial, all designed by Sir Aston Webb.