The House by the Thames

by Gillian Tindall

  Yet it would be a mistake to imagine Bankside piled with coal. The middle-class inhabitants who resided there and continued to do so fifteen and twenty years later, including several of the St Saviour’s clergy, would hardly have lived surrounded by mounds of nutty slack. Some owner-occupiers did have attached to their property what a land valuation of the period described as ‘warehouse and yard’: Thomas Horne did at 47, as did his father Anthony at 44. There was another Horne wharf up by the Falcon. What with these, and the laden lighters moored off the Bankside, the whole place probably did smell of coal, that tarry, not unpleasant pungency that has now gone from our cities. But other ‘brass plate’ coal-merchants, including the Sells, seem to have had their discharging depots elsewhere, since most Bankside addresses were not in themselves storehouses but were used as places for the paperwork of negotiations with shipmasters, customers and the lowlier carters who actually delivered the stuff.

  A view9 of about 1820, from the windows of a house on Bankside opposite St Paul’s, shows what is probably the quay in front of Wyatt’s stone-yard a few doors down river from number 49. There are sail-boats meandering in the background, ferries tied up, an ancient-looking wooden pulley on the quay, a few blocks of stone, and some iron rollers. Two men are fiddling with chains on the pulley, another is measuring something. Two barges will soon arrive, each with a crowd of well-dressed people on them, and alongside them is a racing boat manned by a team of red-clad oarsmen. Can this be Doggett’s race, an annual competition for young watermen which had been inaugurated a hundred years before? The measuring man also wears a red cap, and his red jacket is lying near by. A small child – probably, from his hair, a boy, although he wears a dress and a pinafore – is busy with his own play as he kneels beside a block of stone. Although the river is animated, the atmosphere seems almost to belong to a sylvan, pre-industrial world rather than to one in which already the first steamship had made its appearance on London’s river. Looking at it, one can believe that, on a fine Sunday morning when the Bankside workshops were idle, London did then still appear, as it had to Wordsworth twenty years before, ‘Open unto the fields and to the sky – All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.’

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  Vestry minutes make odd reading: subjects arise in them, become obsessive for a season or two and then give way to others. High-minded and sometimes genuinely far-sighted perceptions are expressed alongside others of relentless pettiness (‘This will put up the rates …’). Often it is only when a sudden row explodes that it becomes apparent that what has not been stated in previous minutes is as significant as what has been. There are periodic scandals over the years: this collector of Church rates has died while omitting to hand over the money first; at another time money has been misused to buy port for the Vicar; someone else has published ‘very Slanderous and False representations reflecting on the conduct of your Commissioner of Parish Estates’ – but the overall picture is that things did in the end get done.

  Edward Sells seems to have played a key role for several years in the on-going fuss about the workhouse, whose lease was soon to expire. Should a new one be built? Should an old house be re-used and, if so, where? Could some money from the Newcomen bequest for binding apprentices be used for the workhouse? (Answer from legal advice, No.) Should the existing building be purchased from the trustees of the Winchester Park estate, and if so for how much? … No, no, the trustees were asking too much. It would be better to try to renew the lease. But the suggested rent was also considered too much: the Park estate was being ‘unreasonable’ … The problem was the one encountered by local authorities in every era, including the present one: a district with a large number of poor people has many calls upon its funds and relatively few monied rate-payers to meet them, whereas a wealthy district, which could easily afford a high rate, doesn’t need one.

  A specially appointed sub-committee of four, including Edward Sells, found that, by renting, ‘It is … demonstrable that in 72 years the Parish would have paid the Lessors the Amount the Freehold would have cost.’ Apparently it was not envisaged, in 1805, that the new century would bring such changes to the physical fabric of London and to social structures that long-term predictions about what would be good value were meaningless. This, too, is a problem of every era.

  However, by the next meeting the Committee had evidently reflected further, for they had decided that the rent demanded by the Park estate could be accepted after all – ‘This brought on a debate of considerable length when the Vestry found it necessary to adjourn to a more extensive and roomy part of the Church, when the matter was reason’d and fully argued, till the Question was loudly called for and again read by the Clerk and a show of Hands was made.’10 The verdict was not clear, so they resorted to the Parliamentary system of Yeahs and Nays filing through different doors; however, it was still claimed that ‘several persons gave their votes without clearly understanding’. A subsequent vote went against the proposition, and the various options were looked at all over again.

  Two years later Sells was an auditor, with the others, of the parish accounts. He was also one of four people responsible for a more fundamental report on the workhouse issue. This stated that the workhouse, essentially, was costing too much. The Master, Mr Hey, to whom the running of the place was sub-contracted, was allowed ‘a considerable sum’ in tea and sugar for the inmates, while claiming ‘rags and grease that are the property of the parish’. It was also pointed out that, since Mr Hey was running his own manufacturing business (nature unspecified) in the workhouse, he had an interest in hanging onto healthy, able-bodied inmates. ‘… Your Committee are of the opinion that if any great reduction of the rates is ever to be effected it must be from an increase in the virtues of the poor.’

  It is not clear whether this comment was over-optimistic or, rather, ironic. It was, however, followed up by the radical suggestion that the workhouse should be broken up, with the old and the young separated out from the ‘profligate and vicious’, and that more out-relief for the deserving poor would be a better system. (This humane perception seems to have prevailed till it was overturned by governmental edict in the Poor Law Act of 1834, when St Saviour’s formed a Union with Christchurch parish and shared their workhouse off Upper Ground. Later again, a huge Union House shared with St George’s parish was built.)

  The young children were to be boarded out in small groups in Norwood and Mile End, and Sells became one of the four new voluntary Guardians responsible for their well-being. It is evident from subsequent reports over the years that the quartet took their duties seriously and made regular trips by chaise to see their charges. Indeed, in 1809 they had written expressly of the need for parish officials to ensure they visited ‘at least eight times in the year … We would appeal to their feelings as parents, whether they would think this too often to visit their own children under similar circumstances.’

  Edward Sells had brought up a number of children, of which the eldest were now grown: it was that same year that Edward Perronet, aged twenty-one, became a Freeman of the Watermen’s Company as his father and grandfather had before him. I do not know where he, John, Vincent and others received their schooling, but the Sells family were of the class who, while not of course aspiring to the classical education on offer at schools such as Winchester or Rugby, often sent their boys to board at the small academies that were by then sprinkled round London’s rural fringes. As for younger children, Edward Sells had lived at close quarters with his own in a modest-sized house and obviously knew what he was talking about. The following year, he and his fellows reported of one foster household:

  ‘All the nurse children want shoes and linnen which the Nurse says has been promised for some time by the officers – the woman is very deaf … She is assisted in her care of the children by a hearty young woman who was brought up in the Parish house and is apprenticed to her … she is able, and the children are clean.’ There followed a catalogue of things required, including shifts, shirts, p
in cloths [baby’s napkins], bonnets and bed-linen. But it was concluded that the situation in Norwood was generally good, and that the parish was to be congratulated on the state of ‘these helpless children of indigence’. The one household at Mile End, however – Mile End was then at the stage of ribbon-development out from London – was much less satisfactory; the children were ‘very confin’d’ in a small house and it was doubtful whether the nurse should go on being employed.

  Ten years later most of Southwark’s boarded-out poor children were being taught to read and write by their nurses, and one nurse was specially commended for having her children ‘looking more like tradesmen’s children than paupers’. Since it had been noticed on a previous visit that the children ‘were accustomed to ramble about the Common’, it had been agreed that to keep them occupied the bigger ones should be sent to a local school at the cost of one penny each per week. This had worked well, in that several had now learned their catechism and one had ‘whole chapters of the Bible by heart’. (The Bible was the main reading matter provided at these early National Schools, like the one in the Cross Bones yard in Southwark.) The only inconvenience of the penny-a-week school in Norwood was that the children had caught ringworm from other children from poor families who were not so carefully looked after as the boarded-out children.

  By this time Edward Perronet Sells, then aged thirty-two and a husband and father himself, had been appointed as overseer to the poor in the Clink division. Edward Sells senior’s duties had shifted towards the proposed repair and/ or rebuilding of the dilapidated, part-medieval church, an issue that was to occupy parishioners for several decades.

  The wrangles about the state of St Saviour’s church were redolent of growing Victorian antiquarianism on the one hand and Victorian progressiveness and utilitarianism on the other. In 1817 Edward Sells was in favour of restoration, for he was on the Church Repairs Committee when it emitted the sanguine proposal that ‘we will begin at the Tower and proceed regularly from year to year, until the whole is completed, the Vestry voting such sum of money annually as in their judgement shall appear proper.’ But, needless to say, matters did not proceed as smoothly as that; every repair seemed to reveal that a different part of the church also needed attention, and after a great deal of money had been spent restoring the old Lady Chapel (with its whiff of Popery) the parishioners began to get restless and then vociferous.

  By the 1830s, when London Bridge was being rebuilt, with its approach road much higher and running much closer to the church than the old way to the bridge, there was a question as to whether the church should not be substantially rebuilt at the same time. Some of the suggestions for this in the local paper were less realistic than others – ‘A Church if built on arches might be brought to the level of the road, and we should thus not only improve the comfort and appearance of the building, but possess the additional accommodation of Vaults, and save the Parish the expense of a new Burying ground which will otherwise soon be wanted.’ (This was the Useful Railway Arch theory of architecture – the first railway line was even then making its inexorable way into Southwark, and there were unrealistic hopes of charming little houses to be inserted into each arch of the viaduct).

  A pamphlet war ensued, instigated by two Southwark citizens who realised, too late, that they should have attended parish meetings themselves. Opinions varied from St Saviour’s having been ‘spared from ruin by the more enlightened and civilised portion of the parishioners’ to – ‘Any Parish church which requires the enormous sum of £22,000 for remaining repairs only ought to be taken down. We can have a new building for £15,000 …’ There were elaborately mocking gibes about ‘refined gentlemen’ belonging to ‘the Gothic interest’ perpetually running out of money for ‘St Saviour’s temple’. From this period (November 1831) there has survived11 a letter in particularly beautiful copperplate from one such refined gentleman; it is signed, in the same hand, ‘Edward Perronet Sells, Hon. Sec.’ and headed from Bankside, Southwark. It appears to be a pro-forma begging letter: ‘… Trusting you will feel an interest in so desirable a work as the restoration of the ancient Altar Screen … Committee formed for that purpose …’ Along with it has been saved a list of subscribers who had already sent or promised money, including Mr Pott (he of the big vinegar manufactory), Messrs Barclay and Perkins, and also the Sells – including an otherwise mysterious Edward Sells Esq. of Walthamstow. E. Sells Esq. of Bankside was donating five guineas. Messrs E. P. and V. Sells were giving the same sum each, expressed as ten guineas between them.

  Yet a long report in a local paper of five years later, in 1836, suggests that Edward Sells senior had by this time changed his mind. He was seventy-three that year, and this was probably his last local appearance before retiring to Camberwell. By this time the argument about the state of the church had degenerated into a quarrel about church rates, which had resulted in the Vestry failing to fix a rate at all. Money was owed to the Bishop – at that time the parish was still, for historical reasons, in the diocese of Winchester. There were fears that, if a ruling was sought from a higher authority such as Parliament, Southwark would end up by losing its fervently contested status as an independent borough and would be merged into London – something that did inevitably happen under the Metropolitan Board of Works a generation later.

  It was at a contentious meeting on the question that Mr Sells senior got to his feet. By this time he no longer held any Vestry office but ‘claimed his privilege as an inhabitant to deliver his sentiments’ and wished ‘as an old parishioner’ to save everyone from the political consequences of their own folly. His long speech is the only one quoted extensively in a newspaper report, and one sees that he was by then a local ‘character’ who commanded respect:

  ‘He had taken much pains to save the parishioners from high charges, he had been the first to reduce the rates from one shilling to ninepence, and had paid off a debt of £1000 – (Cheers). They could not do without a rate … Mr Sells was afraid the Bishop would come among them if they did not pay.’ He affirmed that they should not expect members of Dissenting churches to pay rates that went towards the physical fabric of St Saviour’s. (This had long been a bone of contention.) They should not demand money from the poor either – ‘He had now stepped forward with the hope of exciting the charitable portion of the church party to save the poorer inhabitants from the charge – (Hear, hear) – When he looked at the pile of building in which they were assembled, he could not help saying it was a heap of rubbish – (great confusion) – and not a noble structure as they were told it was, which was to stand for ages – (Shame, shame) – nothwithstanding the vast sum which had been expended upon it.’ Here he revealed that the church repairs committee had issued ‘bonds’ with the common seal attached that had nothing to back them – ‘he felt that they were not binding upon the parishioners and the seal was not worth a dump – (Hear, hear) – He was not a man that acted with injustice, for he was always cautious of getting into debt when he knew he had not the means of paying (Cheers)’.

  There followed a little joke about him being prepared, if the Bishop demanded it, to stand in the church in a white sheet for four hours himself, as a penalty for failing to set a rate (Loud laughter). ‘He was friendly to the voluntary system, and when he looked round the neighbourhood and saw the noble institutions, all of which were raised and supported by that system, he defied any man to stand up and say it did not and would not work well.’ [He was here referring to the parochial schools, and to places such as the Surrey Dispensary and the Surrey Refuge for the Destitute, for which subscription recitals of music had been given in the church.] ‘It was the Dissenters who first set this example, and for shame the church party was compelled to follow their steps – (Hear, hear, and laughter) – There was no divine right to compell them to support such a church establishment where bishops were seen rolling in rich equipages with half a dozen powdered lackeys in tawdry liveries at their backs. (Hear, hear) – He should now conclude by opposing the
rate which went to uphold such an unchristian establishment.’

  A lifetime’s experience is evidently rolled up in this peroration. One recognises the tone, as unmistakable then as it was to be in the Labour movement of the following century, charitable but abrasively rational. Evidently, by this time, the faction that wanted to preserve all the old fabric of St Saviour’s had been cast in the classic right-wing role of those who cared more for ‘old stones’ than for the plight of the hungry. One wonders what Edward Perronet Sells, who life’s trajectory suggests a rather different personality and set of priorities, thought of his father’s speech.

  A new committee was formed, to look after ‘purely parochial … not political matters’. The Sells sons were on it. The issue of the rates was eventually brought expensively before the court of the Queen’s Bench, who fixed a rate. In 1838 another proposal for a new church was launched, this time to cost £8000. By the following year the plan had been reduced to the rebuilding of the nave only and, in spite of complaints that there was not enough room in the church as it was, this scheme at last went ahead and is the central portion of the church we see today.

  At the same time a new church, St Peter’s, was built and opened on Bankside on a piece of land donated by Mr Pott, the vinegar manufacturer. At the opening ceremony ‘numerous ladies and gentlemen were entertained to an elegant repast’ in a marquee, while charity school children who had sung songs were ‘regaled with buns and other good things in the ground of Messrs Pott’. Evidently the perceived need for more room for congregations was great, as the population of Southwark grew and grew, though whether large numbers of the new urban working classes ever attended church is another matter.