I Never Knew That About London
Page 13
Across the road from Brooks’s in Park Place is PRATT’S, one of the two surviving small dining clubs that are unique to London, the other being the Beefsteak near Leicester Square. One evening in 1841, the 7th Duke of Beaufort, being bored with his usual haunts, brought some friends here to the house where his steward, Nathaniel Pratt, lived and let rooms. They had a very convivial evening eating and gambling in the kitchen, and it is off the kitchen that club members still like to dine. Pratt’s, now owned by the Duke of Devonshire, is only open in the evening, the Beefsteak at lunch-time, which is convenient for members of both. Fourteen can sit down for supper at Pratt’s in one sitting.
The CARLTON CLUB moved to No. 69 after its premises in Pall Mall were bombed during the Blitz, when Harold Macmillan, Quintin Hogg and others in the building at the time were lucky to survive. The Carlton Club was founded by the Tories in 1832 to discuss future strategy after their hammering at the General Election, and is today still the leading Conservative Club. Tory leaders automatically become life members, and in 1975 Margaret Thatcher was made an honorary man so that she could maintain the tradition. A tradition she did flout was the one that prohibited ladies from using the Grand Staircase, in case gentlemen sitting in ‘Cads Corner’ below might look up their skirts. In 1977 Margaret Thatcher stood on the staircase with Harold Macmillan, welcoming guests to a reception. Fortunately, in those days, there were no cads in the Tory party.
On the other side of the road at No. 28 is BOODLE’S, named after the head waiter of the original Almack club, established in Pall Mall in 1762. It has a famous bow window where a certain old Duke liked to sit ‘watching the damned people get wet’. The club membership tends to be made up of country gentlemen and knights of the shires, and jokers have been known to indulge themselves by calling out in the smoking room, ‘Carriage for Sir John!’ and then sitting back to watch the club empty. Ian Fleming used to lunch at Boodle’s and made it the model for M’s club Blade’s in the James Bond novels.
Boodles
WHITE’S, at No. 37, is THE OLDEST LONDON CLUB and was founded as White’s Chocolate House by Italian Francesco Bianco (Francis White) in 1693. It moved to its present site in 1755. White’s became known as a place for heavy betting – on almost anything. When a man who had collapsed in the street was carried inside, the members bet on whether he was alive or dead and there was much outrage when attempts were made to revive him, lest it upset the odds. A bow window was added in 1811 where Beau Brummell and his chums held court and disported themselves in their finery. The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, walked out of White’s in a huff because he was reprimanded by a member of staff for smoking, a slight that has not discouraged the present Prince of Wales from becoming a member, nor put off Prince William from applying to join the minimum two-year waiting list.
King Street
Going Once, Going Twice
RUNNING THROUGH FROM St James’s Street to St James’s Square is KING STREET, home of Christie’s, one of the world’s two leading art auctioneers, the other being Sotheby’s of Bond Street. Christie’s holds the record for THE MOST EXPENSIVE WORK OF ART SOLD IN BRITAIN, Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr Gachet, which sold at a Christie’s auction for $82.5 million (£40 million) in 1990.
No longer in King Street is the ST JAMES’S THEATRE, which opened in 1835. Two of Oscar Wilde’s plays were premièred there, Lady Windermere’s Fan in 1892 and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh managed the theatre during the 1950s, but it closed in 1957 despite vehement protests, particularly from Vivien Leigh, who had to be forcibly removed from the House of Lords for heckling their lordships during a debate.
St James’s Square
Britannia Rules
ST JAMES’S SQUARE is the showpiece of St James’s, and in the 18th century was the smartest address in London, ringed with grand houses, most of which have since been rebuilt. On the east side, No. 31, NORFOLK HOUSE, served as General Eisenhower’s headquarters in the Second World War. No. 4 was the home of NANCY ASTOR, the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, after which it became the London headquarters of the Free French during the Second World War, and then the home of the Arts Council. THE NAVAL AND MILITARY CLUB have now taken up residence at No. 4.
On the west side, at No. 14, is the LONDON LIBRARY, founded for writers in 1841 by the writer THOMAS CARLYLE, who had become frustrated by the complicated procedures for accessing books at the British Library. Lichfield House, at No. 15, was the home of the beautiful DUCHESS OF RICHMOND, ‘LA BELLE STUART’, who came to England in 1663 as Maid of Honour to Charles II’s wife Queen Catherine. Charles was ‘mighty hot upon her’ and would sneak out to see her, even climbing over garden walls to get at her. It was all to no avail, for she never succumbed but instead eloped from the Court to marry the Duke of Richmond. She became the original model for the figure of BRITANNIA on the coinage and can still be seen on the 50 pence piece.
On the north side, No. 10, CHATHAM HOUSE, was home to three Prime Ministers, William Pitt the Elder (Lord Chatham), Lord Derby and William Gladstone. It now houses the Royal Institute of International Affairs. No. 5 was formerly the LIBYAN PEOPLE’S BUREAU. During a demonstration by dissidents opposed to Colonel Gaddafi, machine-gun shots were fired from the building, killing a police woman, Yvonne Fletcher, who was standing by the railings of the square gardens. The result was the longest siege in London’s history, with British police and troops blockading the building for 11 days, but unable to move in because of diplomatic immunity. The culprits were allowed to leave the country on the day WPC Fletcher was buried. A memorial to her stands on the spot where she was felled.
In the middle of the gardens in St James’s Square is a statue of William III, seated on horseback and portrayed as a Roman general. The back leg of his horse rests upon a representation of the mole hill which caused the King’s fatal accident at Hampton Court in 1702. One front leg is raised, indicating that the rider died while in office, as with the statue of Charles I in Trafalgar Square. When both front legs are shown raised, it means that the rider died in battle, and if all four legs are on the ground, then the rider died of old age.
Well, I never knew this
ABOUT
ST JAMES’S
JERMYN STREET is named after Henry Jermyn, the 1st Earl of St Albans, who laid out St James’s Square in the 17th century. Sir Isaac Newton lived at No. 86 from 1696 until 1710, and the poet Thomas Gray, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Nelson all had lodgings in the street.
At No. 93 Jermyn Street is PAXTON AND WHITFIELD, BRITAIN’S OLDEST CHEESE SHOP, founded in 1742. Stilton cheese was first sold in London here, and Paxton & Whitfield is where the Queen gets her cheeses from.
In 1807 Pall Mall became THE FIRST LONDON STREET TO BE LIT BY GASLIGHT when Friedrich Albrecht Winzer erected 13 gas lamp-posts outside his home next door to Carlton House.
DUKE STREET in St James’s was THE FIRST STREET IN LONDON TO HAVE A PAVEMENT, and the CHEQUERS pub in Duke Street was THE FIRST PUB TO BE BUILT IN LONDON AFTER THE GREAT FIRE.
In the middle of the road, at the bottom of St James’s Street, is what is thought to be THE OLDEST TRAFFIC ISLAND IN ENGLAND, dating from the early 18th century, when this was at the hub of the Royal Court and one of London’s busiest junctions.
HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE in Haymarket was founded by the actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in 1897. In the 19th century it functioned as an opera house, where Bizet’s Carmen and Wagner’s The Ring were given their London premières. Running behind Her Majesty’s, and reflecting the theatre’s operatic past, is the ROYAL OPERA ARCADE, built in 1816 as LONDON’S EARLIEST SHOPPING ARCADE.
At the eastern end of Jermyn Street a flight of steps leads down to the JERMYN STREET THEATRE, THE WEST END’S SMALLEST THEATRE.
WHITEHALL
WHITEHALL – PARLIAMENT SQUARE
The Banqueting House – London’s first purely Renaissance building
Banqueting House
WHITEHALL TAKES ITS name from the huge royal palace of Whitehall, where the Royal Court presided from the time of Henry VIII until William and Mary. The palace burned down in 1698, and the area is now synonymous with the Civil Service and bureaucracy. Many of the biggest government departments line Whitehall, among them the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the Department of Health and the Treasury.
The only surviving component of Whitehall Palace is the Banqueting House, which was designed by Inigo Jones in 1622 as THE FIRST PURE RENAISSANCE BUILDING IN LONDON. Inside is a glorious painted ceiling by RUBENS, showing James I and commissioned by Charles I to celebrate the wise rule of the Stuart Kings. Charles should maybe have studied it more carefully, for his decidedly unwise rule led to his own execution right here. On 30 January 1649 Charles stepped out of the Banqueting House from a first-floor window on to the scaffold erected outside, handed his gloves to Bishop Juxon and declared, ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown …’ When the axe man had done his work, he lifted up the King’s head and cried, ‘Behold the head of a traitor.’
Whitehall Court
More than a Gents
THE ROOF OF the French Renaissance extravaganza that is WHITEHALL COURT provides a goodly portion of the pinnacles and turrets that form the famous view from the bridge in St James’s Park. The Court was built in 1887 and designed by Sir Alfred Waterhouse. Though largely occupied by a hotel and private apartments, it is best known as the home of the NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB. William Gladstone was the first president of the club, whose members must refrain from uttering anti-liberal views. The interior of the club is sumptuous and ornate, particularly the bathrooms, which are so splendid that FE Smith, the 1st Earl of Birkenhead, a Conservative, used to make a point of using them, even though he was not a member. When challenged he is reported to have said, ‘Good heavens! I had no idea it was a club as well as a lavatory!’
During the First World War, Flat 54 at No. 2 Whitehall Court was the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) under Commander Mansfield Cumming RN.
In the Embankment gardens, hard up against the wall of the massive Ministry of Defence building, are some river steps that were built by Christopher Wren as part of a new terrace for Whitehall Palace. The palace burnt down a few years later and these steps were rediscovered during building work in 1939.
Horse Guards
Well Guarded
ON THE WEST side of Whitehall two mounted sentries sit patiently in front of their little stone houses guarding the entrance to HORSE GUARDS, a picturesque guard house designed in Palladian style by William Kent in 1758. Only members of the Royal Family may ride through the arch into Horseguards Parade, London’s largest show space, where Beating the Retreat and Trooping the Colour take place. Horseguards Parade is a good place from which to see the large house that forms the back of No 10 Downing Street, and you can just glimpse the tops of some trees above the high brick wall that surrounds the famous No. 10 garden.
Downing Street
Not What It Seems
BLACK IRON GATES bar the way into DOWNING STREET. Not so long ago you could wander in and have your picture taken outside the door of No. 10 – surely the most famous front door in the world and instantly recognisable, partly because of the distinctively oblique angle of the ‘0’. Public access to Downing Street was suspended in the 1980s due to security concerns during the IRA bombing campaigns. In 1991 terrorists fired a mortar shell from the back of a van parked in Whitehall which exploded in the garden of No. 10 and blew out the windows of the cabinet room where Prime Minister John Major and his Cabinet were meeting.
The first house built on the site of the present No. 10 Downing Street was the home of MP Sir Thomas Knyvet, the man who arrested Guy Fawkes for attempting to blow up Parliament in 1605. After Knyvet’s death the house passed to his niece Elizabeth Hampden, the mother of John Hampden, one of the leading Parliamentarians who opposed Charles I, and aunt of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. Elizabeth lived at Hampden House, as it was then known, through the Civil War, the execution of Charles I at the nearby Banqueting House and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.
In 1682, the second man to graduate from Harvard University, Sir George Downing, built a cul-de-sac of modest, brick terraced houses on the site, which was eventually renamed Downing Street. Sir George wanted to get rich quick and Downing Street turned out to be all style and no substance, with the houses shoddily built on unstable ground and mortar lines drawn on to the facades to look like expensive brick-work. James Boswell took lodgings there in 1762, and a few years later Tobias Smollett tried to establish a medical practice in one of the houses, but to no avail. In 1732 George II bought part of No. 10 and offered it to Sir Robert Walpole as a gift for his services to the country. Walpole accepted it as the office for the First Lord of the Treasury, which is what it technically remains, and this is the title engraved on the brass letterbox of the famous front door. Walpole had No. 10 joined on to a much older and larger private house at the back and hence it is much bigger inside than it appears from the outside, as becomes apparent if you view it from Horse Guards Parade. In fact, No. 10 contains some 160 rooms.
Only Nos. 10, 11 and 12 remain of the original terrace of houses in Downing Street. No. 11 became the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1828. In 1997 Prime Minister Tony Blair moved the Whips office out of No. 12 into the former home of the Privy Council at No. 9, separated from the original terrace by a side road, and installed his powerful and foulmouthed Director of Communications Alastair Campbell in No. 12.
Whitehall Memorials
Men and Women Remembered
STANDING IN THE middle of Whitehall is the CENOTAPH, Britain’s National Memorial to those who died in the two World Wars. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1920 and made from Portland stone. The word Cenotaph comes from the Greek words kenos, meaning empty, and taphos, meaning tomb. Lutyens makes use of the Greek technique of entasis, whereby lines that look straight are in fact very slightly curved, as with Greek columns. On Remembrance Sunday the monarch and other dignitaries lay wreaths at the base of the Cenotaph.
In the middle of Whitehall, close to the Cenotaph, is a 22 ft (6.7m) high bronze memorial commemorating the role of women in World War II. It was unveiled by the Queen in 2005.
Scotland Yard
What’s Going On Here Then?
THE FORMER NEW Scotland Yard buildings are now used by MPs, but for nearly 80 years, from 1890 until 1967, this red-and-white baroque structure by the Thames at Westminster, designed by Norman Shaw, was the celebrated headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. When Sir Robert Peel was casting around for a suitable base for his newly formed Metropolitan Police Force in 1829, he settled on a row of houses in Whitehall Place that had been built on the site of the Scotland Yard behind Whitehall Palace, where Scottish kings were lodged when they came down to London. The headquarters took the name Great Scotland Yard, and then New Scotland Yard when it moved to the purpose-built Norman Shaw building in 1890. In 1967 the police moved to a new building in Vic toria Street, taking the famous name of New Scotland Yard with them.
Westminster Bridge
A Noble View
WESTMINSTER BRIDGE WAS the first bridge built across the Thames in London after London Bridge. For many years the idea had been resisted, both by ferrymen and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was making a tidy profit from the Lambeth horse ferry just up river. They were eventually paid off, and in 1750 the bridge finally opened. The view of the city from here in the early morning inspired William Wordsworth to declare that ‘earth has not anything to show more fair’. James Boswell enjoyed a less poetic experience on the bridge, picking up a ‘strong, jolly young damsel’ in Haymarket and conducting her to the bridge, where ‘the whim of doing it there with the Thames rolling below us amused me much’.
The present bridge was opened in 1862 and was designed to co
mplement the Houses of Parliament. It is painted green in harmony with the green benches in the House of Commons, as Lambeth Bridge is painted red to match the Lords’ benches.
Parliament Square
First Roundabout
PARLIAMENT SQUARE WAS laid out in 1868 by Sir Charles Barry as a dignified approach to the new Houses of Parliament. In 1926 it became BRITAIN’S FIRST OFFICIAL ROUNDABOUT.
Very much in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, ST MARGARET’S CHURCH was founded in the 12th century, with the present building dating largely from the 15th. Since 1614 it has been the parish church of the House of Commons and very fashionable for weddings. Samuel Pepys was married there in 1655, John Milton in 1656, to his second wife Katherine Woodcock, and Sir Winston Churchill to Clementine Hozier in 1908. Somewhere in St Margaret’s lies England’s first printer, WILLIAM CAXTON, who died in 1491 and whose printing press was set up near here in 1470. Sir Walter Raleigh was buried in St Margaret’s in 1618.
The METHODIST CENTRAL HALL was built in 1911 on the site of the old Royal Aquarium. THE VERY FIRST ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS took place here in 1946. In 1958, THE FIRST PUBLIC MEETING OF CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, was held at Central Hall. WILLIAM LLOYD WEBBER, composer father of Andrew and Julian, was Director of Music at the Central Hall and played the organ there.