In last week’s blog I talked about cruise liners and curves. This week it’s castles, crenellations and concrete (I am familiar with the rule ‘always avoid annoying alliteration’ but I just couldn’t help myself).
‘Barbican’ used to be the name of a street in a bustling commercial area in the ward of Cripplegate. By the end of the 19th century it was the centre of the rag trade and was home to fabric and leather merchants, furriers, glovers and a host of other tradesmen. You can see it on the so-called Agas map of 1633 …
On the 29th December, 1940, at the height of the Second World War, an air raid by the Luftwaffe razed virtually the entire surrounding area to the ground.
The word (from Old French: barbacane) means a fortified outpost or gateway, such as an outer defence to a city or castle, or any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was used for defensive purposes. And it’s easy to spot the architects’ references to that function as you walk around the 35 acre estate.
What about this entrance to the art gallery …
Those steps look formidable, and those crenellations (aka battlements) look like they are there to house a castle’s defenders.
Inside the walls are thick and the gates ready to be clanged shut against intruders …
More battlements look down on the Sculpture Court …
Where you can also spot some slits for archers to use …
Along the highwalk the archers’ reference is even more obvious …
It can also be seen on the extraordinary pyramid-topped entrance on Aldersgate, and even the bridge looks like a defensive structure (I’m thinking World War 2 pill boxes) …
Interesting shadows form at certain times of day …
The architecture responds very well to being photographed in monochrome, for example these crenellations at the top of the towers …
And this vertiginous view …
There are three flats per floor arranged within a triangular plan. Entrances, circulation spaces, lifts and escape stairs are in the centre of the tower.
These classical looking columns appear to support the structure …
The Barbican is the best surviving example of the post-war plan to separate pedestrians and traffic using raised pavements, rather clumsily called ‘pedways’. The plan failed due to a combination of the need to protect listed buildings, lack of coordination and the public’s reluctance to climb away from street level and embrace a new elevated world.
You can observe this part of the highwalk stopping in mid-air, its further progress into the City impeded by the wall of the Museum of London …
The often-derided yellow line was painted to help visitors navigate their way to the Centre …
Gilbert Bridge
It reminds me of a drawbridge over a moat since I saw it from the east end of the estate …
There was a plan at one time to run a road through the development roughly where Gilbert Bridge is now in order to preserve the north-south access lost in the bombing. Needless to say the architects objected and their argument prevailed.
The architecture here is often described as Brutalist, the term being derived from the French béton brut, meaning raw or unfinished concrete. Although the concrete at the Estate was left exposed, it was not unfinished, having been pick-hammered to give it a rough, rusticated appearance implying a sense of monumentality. You can see examples of raw and pick-hammered concrete side by side at the entrance to the Conservatory …
Getting the desired effect was incredibly labour intensive. After the concrete had dried for at least 21 days, workers used handheld pick-hammers or wider bush-hammers to tool the surface and expose the coarse granite aggregate …
We were told that the hammering needed for the entire Estate, including the towers, was carried out by a team of only six men.
Our tour guide not only imparted information about the architecture but also lots about the history of the Estate and the surrounding area. Highly recommended! It’s free and you can book on the website.
Last week I finally went on a Barbican architecture tour and boy was it fascinating, and as an added bonus has given me enough material for two blogs. If you live or work near the estate, or attend performances here, do please have a look and hopefully you will find it interesting enough to make you want to come and explore. The architects were Chamberlin, Powell and Bon and the Barbican was their Utopian vision and masterpiece.
Standing on the terrace by the lake, our attention was drawn to the fact that Defoe House bore a distinct resemblance to a cruise liner bearing down on us …
A comparison that became even more apparent as we viewed the building from the north side …
Do you see what I mean?
In another maritime allusion, the elegantly curved tips of the cantilevered balconies resemble the hull of a ship …
And don’t these ventilation shafts look like classic ocean liner funnels …
The layout of the apartments was designed to maximize the amount of natural light in the rooms that would most benefit from it. Bedrooms, dining rooms and living rooms are therefore positioned along external walls, while kitchens and bathrooms are placed against inner walls.
In 1963 this ran into a technical problem. The London County Council had recently passed bye-laws requiring all kitchens to have windows or equivalent ventilation. Many of the Barbican kitchens did not have ventilation so a deal was struck. Approval was gained when what had previously been called ‘kitchens’ were instead renamed as ‘cooking areas’ and designated part of the living room. You can read the full fascinating story here in Barbican Living.
There is another maritime connection. To make the kitchens as efficient and space-saving as possible, the architects took their cue from the compact design of boats and brought in Brooke Marine, a firm of yacht designers. A full-size mock-up of a kitchen was erected by the Gas Council, Watson House Research Centre, and was tested by going through the motions of preparing several different kinds of meals.
Very good quality hardwood was used for the windows and their surrounds and the wood was painted with clear varnish. The overall effect from a distance is to give a warm honey colour to the buildings …
This fragment of the Roman and Medieval wall survived the Blitz …
Note the barrel vault roofs of the top floor flats, a feature widely employed in Roman architecture …
I noticed these curving stairs complementing one another …
Part of the site was occupied by railway yards before the wartime destruction. The architects have acknowledged this by inverting the curved brick arches that were once a feature of the area and using them to frame the windows …
The architects loved Venice and cited the canals, bridges and pavements of that city as the model for the pedestrian systems of the Barbican, describing it as ‘the best example of a city where foot and service traffic is completely segregated. This segregation,’ they continued, ‘has worked admirably for many centuries and there is no good reason why the principle should not be applied equally effectively in the City of London’.
There is lots of water, interesting reflections and great views, like this one from Gilbert Bridge as you approach the Centre entrance. Note the pretty circular ‘igloos’ covered in their Summer plumage …
And the wooden shutters on Frobisher Crescent look like they belong in more sunny climes …
Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s original plans featured five tower blocks of twenty stories. These designs were rejected by the planning authority, primarily on the grounds that the scheme had insufficient outdoor space. In response, the architects reduced the number of tower blocks to three in order to minimize the buildings’ footprints. At the same time, they more than doubled their height to maintain housing density, making them for many years the tallest residential towers in Europe.
All three tower blocks and the majority of the terrace blocks stand above the podium on piloti, enabling pedestrians to navigate the estate unimpeded by buildings …
Occasionally you can also catch some interesting reflections …
The architects admired, and I believe corresponded with, the Brutalist architect Ernő Goldfinger and liked his idea of separating lifts and services from the main body of buildings. Our guide pointed out this example on the Estate …
Sometimes I think taking images in monochrome works best.
By way of comparison, here is one of Goldfinger’s most celebrated buildings …
Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower in Kensal Town west London – picture copyright ArchDaily
In 1964 the City of London Corporation presented the architects with a revised brief which demanded an expanded theatre and concert hall. The outcome of this was the Barbican Centre, a building which had to be shoehorned into the master plan after construction had already begun.
The theatre, to be used by the Royal Shakespeare Company, required a fly tower to accommodate scenery. The clever solution to disguising this feature above ground was the creation of the second largest conservatory in London after Kew …
Housing over 2,000 species of tropical plants and trees it a great place to visit. Opening times are limited, however, and it is sometimes closed for private events, so it’s best to check the website first to make sure you can get in.
And finally, they might not be exotic, bit I did like the look of these tomatoes that are being cultivated by a resident …
I will be writing more about what I learnt on my tour in next week’s blog, but in the meantime you can find lots more pictures here when I wrote about the Estate and toured the Conservatory in July last year.
If you want to go on a tour (it’s free) here is the link to the website.
I know I shouldn’t encourage graffiti but, as I walked to the Station from Aldgate, I became intrigued by these carrots. The one in the middle looks really frightened – have one of the two on either side of it eaten his green topping? They certainly have scary teeth …
I think the space they look down on was the original site of Aldgate East tube station before it moved to its current location nestling under the Passmore Edwards Library …
Next door is the Whitechapel Gallery with its pretty Tree of Life frieze by Rachel Whiteread which I wrote about in an earlier blog …
Whiteread’s golden leaves.
I am visiting the station to see some fascinating tiles that date from the 1930s. You will see from the pictures that most carry the letter ‘S’. This stands for the artist and craftsman Harold Stabler, who was commissioned by the London Passenger Transport Board in 1936 to design 18 ceramic tiles to decorate new and refurbished underground stations. The first of the tiles were installed at Aldgate East when it was rebuilt in 1938 – this one represents the rearing horse from the coat of arms of the county of Kent …
They are not always easy to spot.
This is a great representation of London Underground’s headquarters at 55 Broadway …
Here is the building itself …
These birds are flying over water, representing the River Thames …
In this representation of the Palace of Westminster, there is a crown, a coronet and a bowler hat representing the Monarch, the Lords and the Commons …
This is from the coat of arms of the County of London …
The winged Griffin was the original symbol of London Transport. I can’t see an ‘S’ so possibly a later reproduction …
St Paul’s Cathedral (I can’t find the ‘S’ on this one either) …
Probably made specifically for St Paul’s Station.
This tile illustrates the coat of arms for the County of Middlesex …
The Crystal Palace …
And here the classic Underground roundel …
There is a more complete selection on the Bethnal Green Underground Station platforms which you can read about here.
Finally, I had to smile sadly when I noticed this optimistic piece of signage when I disembarked the train at Moorgate …
I was thrilled when I finally got around to visiting The Garden at 120 on the roof of 120 Fenchurch Street (EC3M 5BA). The entrance is in Fen Court and before you even get to the lift you can look up and see the digital art installation by Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier on the ceiling. There is also a haunting soundscape as well. It’s a fabulous piece of work (entitled The Call of Things) and you can read more about it here.
The ceiling at the entrance to Fen Court
You don’t have to book a time to visit, just turn up. Visiting times are set out on their website. After airport style bag checks a lift whisks you to the 15th floor where you have a 360 degree view. Here are a few of the images I took on a nice sunny day last week.
You can see the Gherkin in all its glory. A treat now that it is becoming more and more hemmed in by, frankly not very attractive, new buildings …
The Scalpel can be observed just alongside it …
The Walkie Talkie dominates part of the view …
In the distance, Canary Wharf …
and Tower Bridge …
The Shard is framed by the Witch’s Hat (the London Underwriting Centre) and the Walkie Talkie …
Down below a massive development takes place behind some preserved facades …
The roof is, of course, a garden as well as an observation point and the plants will eventually grow to form a pergola …
Many congratulations to insurer Generali and their architects Eric Parry for this stunning development and for making it so accessible.
Let’s not forget, however, the other great free view that can be enjoyed on the roof at One New Change (EC4M 9AF). Interesting views of St Paul’s start in the lift …
And continue on the roof …
The panorama includes the new apartments at Blackfriars, the Oxo Tower, the London Eye, the Unilever Building and the spire of St Augustine with St Faith (now part of St Paul’s Cathedral School) …
Both roofs are usually nowhere near as busy as you might expect.
High up on a tiled pillar in Barbican Underground Station is this poignant memorial …
For many years Pebbles was a favourite of staff and passengers, often sleeping soundly on top of the exit barriers despite the rush hour pandemonium going on around him. Here is a picture from the wonderfully named Purr’n’Fur website, a great source for moggie-related stories …
Clearly he was greatly missed when he died, as the plaque faithfully records, on 26th May 1997. This was doubly sad because he was due to be given a Lifetime Achievement Award. This was sponsored by Spillers Pet Foods and named after Arthur, a cat they used in their advertising who, I seem to remember, ate with his paws. The Certificate that came with the award is also displayed (the co-winner, the aptly named Barbie, was Pebbles’ companion) …
Pebbles’ posthumous award.
As I walked down the stairs to see the plaque I noticed that everything looks sadly tatty. However, just imagine these tiles when they were newly fitted before the War, with their geometric patterns leading you down to the Ticket Office …
And how wonderful, the Office window is still there, although instead of a helpful Ticket Clerk there is a poster. I reckon those lovely brass fittings and the counter date from the early 1930s. The pattern on the tiles continues down here as well – such thoughtful design …
The station, originally called Aldersgate Street, was opened on 23 December 1865 and had a large glazed roof which allowed light down to the platform. Here it is in 1936 …
The roof was removed in 1955 but you can still see the supporting brackets …
John Betjeman wrote about the roof’s dismantling, calling the work Monody on the death of Aldersgate Street Station …
Snow falls in the buffet of Aldersgate station, Soot hangs in the tunnel in clouds of steam. City of London! before the next desecration Let your steepled forest of churches be my theme.
Barbican station holds the unenviable distinction as the scene of the tube network’s first ever passenger disaster. On 16 December 1866 three passengers were killed and a guard was seriously injured when a girder collapsed onto a passenger train in the station. The newspapers reported that service on the line was running again only 30 minutes after the accident.
Look out for the old parish boundary marker dated 1868 on the eastbound platform …
I have written in more detail about boundary markers in an earlier blog which you can find here. If you want to read more about the railways in the area, there is a great blog on the subject called Reconnections with useful maps and interesting pictures.
Onward now to the refurbished Farringdon Station. On climbing the stairs from the platform you can admire the original 19th century roof supports …
Just before exiting through the barriers I spotted some nice old stained glass windows. I had never noticed them before, it just shows what you can come across if you have time to dawdle …
I had as my guide a book by the brilliant Underground historian Antony Badsey-Ellis – Underground Heritage. He tells us that many Metropolitan Railway stations were modernised between 1914 and 1931 and the house style employed at what is now Farringdon Station was by Charles W Clarke …
The only decoration on the friezes was the diamond motif used by the railway …
It’s been reproduced as a heritage sign at Moorgate ..
And here it is again at Aldgate …
In the lobby is a beautifully maintained memorial to the seven people killed at Aldgate in the terrorist attacks on 7 July 2005 …
There is also a plaque commemorating the Queen’s visit in 2010 …
The tiles at Aldgate are very pretty and often include the Metropolitan Railway diamond …
And it’s nice to see some original platform signage from the 1930s (with original roof supports in the background) …
And finally, a ghost station …
You can still see the old entrance to Mark Lane tube station next to the All Bar One, just as Byward Street becomes Tower Hill. It closed on 4 February 1967 and was replaced by the nearby Tower Hill station. The entrance (through the arch on the left of the steps) now leads to a pedestrian subway …
I’m always intrigued by Londoners’ capacity to ignore odd behaviour. For example, I spent a good ten minutes bending over this grating, some of it virtually on my knees, and no one showed the slightest curiosity …
Junction of Greville Street and Saffron Hill (EC1M 3JF)
I was, of course, trying to hear the sound of running water since, directly underneath, runs probably the most famous of London’s ‘lost’ subterranean rivers, the Fleet. Its headwaters are two streams on Hampstead Heath, each of which was dammed into a series of ponds in the 18th century. At the southern edge of the Heath these descend underground as sewers which join in Camden Town. The waters flow four miles from the ponds to the River Thames, just underneath Blackfriars Bridge. Incidentally, it didn’t run down Fleet Street, it merely ran past its eastern, lower end.
This map, showing the route of the Fleet and various other waterways, is on display at the excellent Secret Rivers exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands …
Because of its later reputation, I always had a view that the Fleet where it joined the Thames would be a deeply unpleasant place, so this picture rather surprised me …
This painting (by a follower of Samuel Scott) was obviously influenced by Canaletto, who was based in England until 1755. Looking north across the Thames, it shows the entrance to the Fleet circa 1750 with Bridewell Foot Bridge, the City Wharf and Dock, and Blackfriars Stairs. The Fleet was developed into a canal up to Holborn, lending this view a Venetian appearance. This grand aspect, however, did not last long as the wharves proved unprofitable and Londoners continued to dump their rubbish in the river.
Originally a green river valley, the Fleet River had been gradually transformed into the Fleet Ditch, infamous for being a source of filth, corruption and disease. Observing a flood during a storm in 1710 Jonathan Swift penned the following lines …
Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood, Drown’d Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench’d in Mud, Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.
Pope made this small literary contribution in 1728 …
To where Fleet Ditch, with disemboguing streams, rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to the Thames.
On display at the exhibition is sad little exhibit. Found during excavations of the old river bed, it’s a dog’s collar with the inscription ‘Tom at Ye Greyhound Bucklersbury’. Poor Tom.
There is a reminder in the exhibition of how muddy and dirty the City’s streets were. This pair of wooden pattens date from the 15th century and were used to protect shoes and raise the wearer above the mud. They have a leather hinge to aid walking …
London’s population grew rapidly through the seventeenth century from about 200,000 to about half a million which resulted in a significant rise in the need for coal. This was brought from the north east of the country in barges which offloaded at wharves in the tidal Fleet. Street names that survive today remind us of this …
And the thoroughfare that ended at the canal, so you couldn’t go any further …
The Fleet Valley from Clerkenwell to the Thames housed many of London’s prisons and all manner of vice was practised in the dingy, stinking claustrophobic rookeries (slums). Nor was there much privacy if you had to go to the loo. This medieval oak three-seater toilet seat was found over cesspit in a yard behind buildings that faced on to modern day Ludgate Hill …
This picture tells a story. It’s an 1841 drawing by Antony Crosby of the Fleet River at Holborn Bridge – note the wooden latrine projecting over the ditch on the left …
Holborn Viaduct was built between 1863 and 1869 in order to span the Fleet and provide level access from east to west – a great improvement in an era of horse-drawn traffic. You can see it reaches over a deep valley …
Looking north whilst standing on what was the bank of the old Fleet canal.
When I climbed the stairs to take a picture from above a curious City dragon popped his head up to see what I was doing …
Gradually the entire river was enclosed in Victorian sewer tunnels and it now flows into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge (just below where the banker Roberto Calvi was found hanged in 1982) …
Rivers, such as the Thames and the Walbrook, influenced where the Romans founded Londinium and the Museum of London exhibition also illustrates the fact that our connection to water goes beyond the practical, reaching into the spiritual. While most objects found in London’s rivers are lost items, rubbish or remnants of river-related activities, some cannot be explained so easily. These bear witness to the spiritual importance of rivers.
On display, for example, is this first or second century AD small representation of a river god, possible Neptune, apparently cast or placed into the Walbrook …
And this piece of a marble offering is particularly fascinating …
The inscription has been translated thus:
To the Divinities of the Emperors (and) to the god Mars Camulus. Tiberinius Celerianus, a citizen of the Bellovaci, moritix, of Londoners the first …
It is the first example from the capital to use the word Londiniensi or ‘Londoners’. The language suggests a man who hailed from northern France and probably traded or travelled regularly within that region but whose home seems to have become London.
There seems to be no end to the wonderful paintings to be found at the Guildhall Art Gallery. This one is a representation of a famous Greek myth – the murder by Clytemnestra of her husband Agamemnon. Here she stands, wild-eyed in the Mediterranean sunlight, outside the room where she has committed the deed. In the background behind her we can just make out the outline of a dimly lit body …
‘Clytemnestra’ by John Collier (1882)
Agamemnon had commanded the Greek forces which besieged Troy during the Trojan Wars. Before setting sail for home, he sacrificed their youngest daughter Iphigenia to ensure a favourable wind for his fleet. To make matters worse, he returned with his lover, the prophetess Cassandra, the captured daughter of King Priam of Troy. Enraged and grieving, Clytemnestra and her son murdered them both in revenge
Collier was famous for his close attention to detail. There is light etching on the axe blade and the blood drips and runs authentically. All the little roundels we can see in the picture are different …
One has to say, however, that the more you study the figure the more it looks like a man. There is a pure physical dominance – and look at the muscular arms and large hands gripping the axe handle and holding back the curtain …
Collier brings extraordinary attention to detail in her blood-spattered garments.
It is now thought that Collier took his inspiration from an 1880 performance of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon at Balliol College, Oxford in which Clytemnestra was played by a male student, one Frank Benison.
On a much lighter note, here is a pretty little girl attending her first sermon …
‘My First Sermon’ by John Everett Millais
She obviously knows this is an important occasion in her life and sits with her back straight, eyes attentively focused looking ahead. She is the artist’s 5 year old daughter Effie. On seeing it the Archbishop of Canterbury commented …
… our spirits are touched by the playfulness, the innocence, the purity, and … the piety of childhood
In 1864 the artist produced a sequel entitled ‘My Second Sermon’ …
The Archbishop, Charles Longley, was obviously a rather good sport, and when he saw the later picture commented …
… by the eloquence of her silent slumber, (she has) given us a warning of the evil of lengthy sermons and drowsy discourses. Sorry indeed should I be to disturb that sweet and peaceful slumber, but I beg that when she does awake she may be informed who they are who have pointed the moral of her story, have drawn the true inference from the change that has passed over her since she has heard her “first sermon,” and have resolved to profit by the lecture she has thus delivered to them.
I was reminded of this wonderful drawing of a Victorian congregation who are finding the sermon rather heavy going …
At the far end of the gallery, in a space specially designed for it, you look down on the action-packed painting by John Singleton Copley: ‘Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar 1782’ …
A Spanish attack on Gibraltar was foiled when the Spanish battering ships, also known as floating batteries, were attacked by the British using shot heated up to red hot temperatures (with wry humour, sailors nicknamed them ‘hot potatoes’). I have written about this picture in more detail in an earlier blog which you can find here.
However, there was a detail I missed and really should have pointed out. Fire spread among the Spanish vessels and, as the battle turned in Britain’s favour, an officer called Roger Curtis set out with gunboats on a brave rescue mission which saved almost 350 people. Here is the gallant officer and his men carrying out the rescue, tucked away at the bottom left of the picture. The British flag billows symbolically behind them …
Undoubtedly a very chivalrous act.
A rather distinguished looking man gazes towards a painting of the Grand Opening of Tower Bridge on 30 June 1894 …
He is the architect, Horace Jones, who designed the bridge but sadly died in 1887 before it was completed.
The painting is by William Lionel Wyllie (1851-1931), the most distinguished marine artist of his day …
My eye was immediately drawn to the lady in the light blue dress and the man who looks like her companion sitting on his collapsible chair …
They were obviously important enough to bag a riverside view along with other folk who seem to have packed a wine-accompanied picnic. I know she’s looking through binoculars but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that she was taking a picture with her smartphone.
There are more treasures on display this week including Horace Jones’s original plans (but they don’t photograph very well through glass) …
I really can’t resist views of London that incorporate the river …
The Thames by Moonlight with Southwark Bridge by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)
Today Leeds born Grimshaw is considered one of the greatest painters of the Victorian era, as well as one of the best and most accomplished nightscape, and townscape, artists of all time.
And finally, I paid a quick visit to the Roman Amphitheatre in the basement and took this picture of what is believed to be the opening used to allow wild animals to enter the arena. We can see two slots into which a gate may have been raised and lowered …
If you haven’t done so yet I highly recommend the free guided tours that take place on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays – you can find out more here on their website.
Every now and then I have been featuring City animals in the blog and I am going to to pick out again some of the ones I like best.
There is the grumpy dolphin from The Ship pub in Hart Street (EC3R 7NB) …
He needn’t look so worried – both he and the pub are Grade II listed
What about this splendid animal standing outside Spitalfields Market with Hawksmoor’s 1714 masterpiece, Christ Church, Spitalfields, in the background …
This goat would have got my vote
Wonderfully entitled I Goat, it was hand sculpted by Kenny Hunter and won the Spitalfields Sculpture Prize in 2010 (E1 6AA). The artist commented …
Goats are associated with non-conformity and being independently-minded. That is also true of London, its people and never more so than in Spitalfields.
This honey bee is, appropriately, a keystone over the entrance to Honey Lane which connects Cheapside with Trump Street (EC2V 6DB).
107 Cheapside – a busy bee buzzes up to some fruit and flowers
It is part of the old headquarters of The Sun Life Assurance Society whose Zodiac covered entrance I wrote about in my earlier blog Looking at the Stars. Although the connection to Honey Lane is obvious, it’s possible the insurance company also liked the reputation bees have for industriousness and providing for the future. The name of the lane comes from the bee-keepers who used to live there and it also once led to All Hallows Honey Lane, a medieval church destroyed in the Great Fire.
This little Scottish terrier is called Chippy. He rests now in All Hallows by the Tower at the feet of his master the Reverend ‘Tubby’ Clayton CH MC who became vicar of the Church in 1922 and remained there until 1963. He is best known for his work initially as an army chaplain during the First World War and in particular the establishment of Talbot House, a unique place of rest and sanctuary for British troops. After the war the spirit and intent of Talbot House became expressed through the Toc H movement.
All Clayton’s Scottish Terriers were called Chippy
A wise owl gazes at the commuters as they trek over London Bridge
from his perch on the House of Fraser store opposite the north entrance
to the bridge.
The building used to be the offices of the Guardian Royal Exchange Insurance Company
As you approach the Bank junction from Cheapside look up and you will see two young boys at either end of the grand building that was once the City headquarters of Midland Bank (1935). The are both struggling with a rather angry looking Goose …
The sculptor was William Reid Dick
Why a goose? A clue is the ancient name of the street and the goose was a suggestion by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens to commemorate its original market function. The building is now a private club and restaurant, called The Ned in Sir Edwin’s honour (he would no doubt be chuffed).
This magnificent leaping fox appears on the exquisite Grade II listed Art Deco shopfront of the Fox company, who manufactured and repaired umbrellas. Mr Fox opened his first shop in the City in 1868 but this shop dates from 1935. You can still purchase a classy Fox umbrella if you go to their website, but the shop is now a wine bar.
Fox and Company Limited, ‘Recovers’ and ‘Repairs’, 118 London Wall, EC2Y 5JA
Once surrounded by the throbbing printing presses of Fleet Street newspapers, Gough Square is today a quiet haven off the noisy main road. Now known as Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square was built by one Richard Gough, a City wool merchant, at the end of the seventeenth century. It is the only survivor from a larger development and Dr Johnson lived here from 1748 to 1759 whilst compiling his famous dictionary …
Nearby, Johnson’s most famous cat, Hodge, is remembered by this
attractive bronze by John Bickley which was unveiled by the Lord Mayor,
no less, in 1997. Hodge sits atop a copy of the dictionary and alongside
a pair of empty oyster shells. Oysters were very affordable then and
Johnson would buy them for Hodge himself. James Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, explained why:
I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated
Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters,
lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor
creature
People occasionally put coins in the shell for luck and every now and
then Hodge is given a smart bow tie of pink lawyers’ ribbon.
‘A very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed’, said Johnson
And finally, from a famous cat to mysterious mice. Nibbling a piece of cheese, they add charm to a building in Philpot Lane off Eastcheap and have been described as London’s smallest sculpture. Even though they have been repainted they are still a bit hard to find – so I am not saying precisely where they are, and hopefully you will enjoy looking for them. One theory is that the builders in 1862 were pestered by mice who persistently ransacked their lunch packs, so they left this little informal tribute. Another is that they commemorate a man who died during the construction of the nearby Monument to the Great Fire. Mice had eaten his lunch, but he accused a fellow worker by mistake, and fell to his death in the fight that followed. As to the true story behind the little rodents, your guess is as good as mine.
I have visited Broadgate and its sculptures in an earlier blog and I went back again last weekend to photograph some more.
First up is Rush Hour, a patinated bronze by George Segal (1982) situated in the Broadgate Circle (EC2M 2QS) …
We’ve all been there, haven’t we, heads down, not exactly rushing to get to the office. Or maybe just starting the long slog home on a rainy day (knowing there are train cancellations on our line).
Segal was renowned for casting his figures directly from life – usually friends and family – using plaster bandages to create human scale moulds from which his bronze sculptures could be cast. As a result, all the figures have their eyes closed …
This is Cascade in Exchange Square (EC2A 2EH). It was created by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (whose Chicago office designed much of Broadgate) and Stephen Cox RA (1991) …
‘Energising and restorative, this water cascade creates a natural oasis within Exchange Square. Calmed within the basin, the water develops circles of stillness around the enduring Indian granite stones, placed at measured intervals as if to signify the passage of time. The perfect place to pause and reflect on the day’s events’. Or maybe a place to chill out after a really horrific commute.
On Finsbury Avenue (EC2M 2PA) you will find Bellerophon Taming Pegasus by Jacques Lipchitz (1966) …
A half-size cast of Lipchitz’s final sculpture (which resides in Columbia University, New York), this is a representation of the epic moment in which Greek hero Bellerophon tames the winged horse Pegasus. This tangle seems to balance rather precariously on its pedestal with hooves, wings and tail radiating in all directions. For Lipchitz, this work demonstrated the ultimate dominance of man over nature, stating ‘You observe nature, make conclusions, and from these you make rules’.
On Broadgate Plaza (EC2M 3AB), Ganapathi and Devi (1988) is another work by Stephen Cox. Apart-yet-together, Ganapathi and Devi alludes to sculptural torsos and ancient themes; Devi refers to the female Hindu goddess, while Ganapathi is the Tamil name for Ganesha, the popular elephant god. Fusing power and sensuality, the stones combine historical and contempoary references, from the quarry to the executed forms …
The stone was sourced from the quarries of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, India …
Peering through the entrance to 155 Bishopsgate I spotted this spectacular piece of art (EC2M 3YD) …
It’s The Mechanics Institute II (1991) by William Tillyer. The notes say: ‘A carefully balanced composition of architecture, cloud, sky and foliage, Tillyer represents the notion of man’s presence via geometric patterns while the contrasting colours suggest the force of natural elements (flashes of warm sun, rushes of air currents, dappled blue light and gentle sea tides)’. The foyer is marketed to movie makers looking for locations as ‘a New York style atrium space’ and it certainly looks the part.
I wandered away from Broadgate, a hundred yards or so north up Bishopsgate, and came across Principal Place (EC2A 2BA) along with this interesting work entitled In Anticipation by James Burke (2018). Do have a look at the website.
Meanwhile, back in Broadgate, Venus still gazes skywards …
Old Street really is old – recorded as Ealdestrate in about 1200, and leOldestrete in 1373. I started my walk heading west from Old Street Roundabout (or Silicon Roundabout as it was nicknamed some years ago, due to the nearby cluster of hi-tech businesses).
The Underground Station is now buried beneath the roundabout but was once much more visible …
Old Street station in 1929 (note the tramlines in the foreground). These buildings were demolished in the 1960s. Picture courtesy of the London Transport Museum.
As you leave the present day station you catch a glimpse of the spectacular Leysian Mission building – something for a future blog …
I crossed the road and started my Old Street journey on the south side of the street.
The first building of interest is on the left, what was previously St Luke’s Parochial School …
The foundation stone is now protected behind a perspex sheet (the school moved to new premises in 1972) …
A generous benefactor paid for this extension in 1887 …
‘Erected for 400 children’
Around the door there is some lovely gothic-style woodwork …
Across the road is this striking piece of street art …
‘Stop knife crime’.
It was commissioned by The Flavasum Trust to commemorate the life of a young man, Tom Easton, who died nearby in 2006 as a result of a knife attack. The painter was Ben Eine.
If you are feeling peckish, grab a tasty Turkish Kebab from my pal at number 94 …
Look up for the old Salvation Army Hostel ghost sign …
‘Hostel for working men. Cheap beds and food’.
There is a 19th century pub building on the corner with Whitecross Street. It was once the site of the Jack-a-Newberry Tavern, a notorious brothel …
A plaque on the side commemorates a former resident …
Whitecross Street Market is one of London’s oldest markets, dating back to the 17th century. By the 19th century it was known as the Squalors’ Market, due to associations with poverty and alcohol, but investment in 2008 has made it a thriving daytime street-food market.
I have written about Priss (‘the second best whore in the city’) and Whitecross Street in an earlier blog which you can find here.
On the other side of the road is the now de-consecrated St Luke’s church. It was designed by John James, though the obelisk spire, a most unusual feature for an Anglican church, the west tower and the flanking staircase wings were by Nicholas Hawksmoor …
It was built between 1727-1733 to meet St Giles Without Cripplegate’s booming population.
The weathervane is actually a red-eyed dragon but for some reason locals thought it resembled a louse and nicknamed the church Lousy St Luke’s …
The church was closed in 1964 due to subsidence, but the previously derelict building has now been restored by the London Symphony Orchestra as a beautiful space for performances, rehearsals, recording and educational purposes.
William Caslon the Elder is buried in the churchyard. …
Caslon’s family grave. He died in 1766.
A typefounder, the distinction and legibility of his type secured him the patronage of the leading printers of the day in England and on the continent. His typefaces transformed English type design and first established an English national typographic style. Here is a specimen sheet of his typefaces from 1728. In it’s own way I think it is beautiful …
Caslon’s first workshop was in Helmet Row, next to the church. It has some early 19th century terraced houses, a few of which later had their ground floors converted into shops …
There are more 19th century buildings further to the west but I think the property on the right is more recent …
There is what looks like a livery company crest on one of them but I can’t identify which company …
Number 116 used to be the Margolin Gramophone Company factory …
They manufactured the Dansette record player – a name very familiar to us baby-boomers …
You could even buy a portable one!
Dansette production ended in December 1969, following the introduction of relatively cheap and efficient Japanese and other Far Eastern imported Hi-Fi equipment. Margolin went into liquidation.
At 12 Old Street is the building that once housed The Old Rodney’s Head public house …
The building is for sale at the moment – offers in excess of £6.5 million if you’re interested – EC1V 9BE.
George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney (1718-1792) was a famous
Admiral best known for his victory over the French at the Battle of the
Saintes in 1782 which ended the French threat to Jamaica. The building
dates from 1876 and Rodney still gazes down on Old Street …
Sadly the Hat and Feathers across the road has not reopened after a short time operating as a restaurant …
2 Clerkenwell Road EC1M 5PQ.
British History Online tells us that the building dates from 1860 and the facade – ‘gay without being crude’ – is decorated with classical statues, urns and richly ornate capitals and consoles. There are quite a few ghost pubs in the City and you can read more about them here.
I love this old photograph of tram lines being laid at the same junction …
There are some interesting things to see just off Old Street.
There is the seven storey, eleven foot wide, award-winning narrow house at 125 Golden Lane (it does come with a lift) …
The architect was Jo Hagan of USE Architects (2004)
Further down Golden Lane, turn left into Garrett Street and admire the old Whitbread Brewery stables. I have written about them in an earlier blog which you can find here …
The Gentle Author has also taken a walk down Old Street and some of the pictures here of St Luke’s church are his. He also covers the east end on the other side of the roundabout which I did not. Here is a link.
Take a stroll down Garrett Street (EC1Y 0TY) and you’ll soon be walking past a building that still survives to remind us of the end of two great eras – the age of horse-drawn transport and the once-thriving brewing industry in London. These were the stables custom-built for the dray horses that pulled the Whitbread Brewery wagons. When the brewery’s stables in Chiswell Street became full, Garrett Street was built to take the overflow – 13 horses on the ground floor, 36 on the first floor and over 50 on the top. The building had to be well constructed – a shire horse can weigh up to a ton.
When the horse numbers diminished, part of the third floor was turned into a firing range for the gun club and the windows bricked up
I think these are the original gates, now painted a rather dramatic yellow …
At the rear you can see the individual stables on the ground floor …
The internal stairs reflect the gentle slope underneath that made it easy for the horses to be led to the upper floors …
The first floor stables in 1991 …
Copyright John Sparks
Some of the original features are still visible today …
In 1897, when the Garrett Street stables were built, there were over 50,000 horses transporting people around the city every day – several thousand horse buses (which needed 12 horses per day) and 11,000 Hansom cabs. In addition there were thousands of horse drawn carts and drays, like Whitbread’s, delivering goods around what was then the largest city in the world.
In this 19th century image you are looking east down Cheapside with the statue of Sir Robert Peel in the foreground (along with one of his uniformed ‘Bobbies’) …
The presence of so many horses in the already congested city had major implications for the health of the population. On average each horse would produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure every day plus several pints of urine and this attracted huge numbers of disease-carrying flies. Also, working horses only had a working life of about three years and many collapsed and died in the street. These carcasses had to be disposed of but often the bodies were left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal.
Some working animals led terrible, short, brutal lives, but clearly the Whitbread horses were far better cared for. We should spare a thought, though, for the 118 of their best horses that were commissioned by the Government for service in the battlefields of the First World War – none ever returned.
First World War horses carrying ammunition
In happier times, Whitbread Shires were delivering ale well into the 20th century …
A delivery to the George Inn, Southwark
The brewing business was formed in 1742 when Samuel Whitbread formed a partnership with Godfrey and Thomas Shewell and acquired a small brewery at the junction of Old Street and Upper Whitecross Street and another brewhouse for pale and amber beers in Brick Lane. The entire operation was moved to Chiswell Street in 1750 and was spectacular enough to attract a visit from King George III and Queen Charlotte which this plaque commemorates …
The size of the premises is still impressive today, although the building is now a hotel (EC1A 4SA) …
Viewed from the westViewed from the east
As you walk through the arched entrance you see an impressive mahogany door on the right …
Then you enter the main yard itself with its overhanging gantries …
The old clock is still there …
And there is a weathervane incorporating the old Whitbread hind’s head logo over the 1912 extension, now dwarfed by the Barbican’s Cromwell Tower …
The yard is still cobbled …
Just visible across the road is the appropriately named Sundial Court. Also once part of the Brewery site, the sundial itself is now behind locked security gates but is still visible from the road. It is made of wood, with its motto ‘Such is Life’, dating back to 1771. Around the sides it has the interesting inscription Built 1758, burnt 1773, rebuilt 1774. I have written about it and other City sundials in an earlier blog, We are but shadows.
Adjacent to Sundial Court are the houses used by the Brewery partners …
A plaque on the wall also references the fire of 1773 …
Brewing at Chiswell Street stopped in 1976 and Whitbread stopped brewing beer altogether in 2001, selling all its operations to the Belgian group Interbrew.
A mere ten years after the stables were built, horse traffic was rapidly vanishing from the streets of London to be replaced by motorised vehicles such as this …
A preserved London General Omnibus at the London Transport MuseumCovent Garden
The last horses left the Garrett Street stables on Monday 16th September 1991, heading for their new home on the Whitbread hop farm in Paddock Wood, Kent.
If you want to know more about the fascinating history of the Whitbread Shire horses and their stables there is no better place to look than the website run by John Sparks : http://whitbreadshires.moonfruit.com/#
By the way, whilst doing my research I came across an interesting example of the danger of forecasting. In 1894 The Times newspaper predicted …
In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.
I now always think of this when reading forecasts in today’s press and there was an interesting article on this very subject in the Financial Times which you can read here.
Did you realise that, just off Cannon Street, is the final resting place of Catrin Glyndwr, daughter of Welsh hero Owain Glyndwr? She was captured in 1409 and taken with her children and mother to the Tower of London during her father’s failed fight for the freedom of Wales. A memorial to her, and the suffering of all women and children in war, was erected in the former churchyard of St Swithen where she was buried. It survives as a raised public garden and here is the pretty entrance gate on Oxford Court (EC4N 8AL) …
And this is the memorial …
Unveiled in 2001, it was designed by Nic Stradlyn-John and sculpted by Richard Renshaw
With its inscription …
The garden is a cosy, secluded space with seating where you can enjoy a break from the City hustle and bustle …
The Church itself was demolished as a result of World War II bombing.
St Clement’s Eastcheap isn’t on Eastcheap, for reasons I will go into in a future blog. It’s in the appropriately named St Clement’s Lane (EC4N 7AE). As you look down the Lane from King William Street it’s tucked away on the right …
Just past the church is St Clement’s Court, the narrow alley leading to the churchyard. There is an intriguing plaque on the wall of the adjacent building …
Obradović was a Serbian writer, philosopher, dramatist, librettist, translator, linguist, traveler, polyglot and as the plaque says, the first minister of education of Serbia. Here is a link to his Wikipedia entry. He was honoured in 2007 by a special Serbian stamp …
You enter the churchyard via three steps. City churchyards are frequently higher than street level, evidence of how may bodies were crammed in until graveyards were closed to new burials in the middle of the 19th century …
The churchyard was reduced in size in the 19th century by an extension that was added to the church and all that remains now are a couple of gravestones and two chest tombs …
The inscription on one is just about legible, it reads …
In memory of Mr JOHN POYNDER late of this Parish who departed this life on 11th April 1800 aged 48 years. Also four of his children who died in their infancy.
The narrow alleyway can be traced back to 1520 and St Clement’s Lane is also an old thoroughfare. Here it is on Roques map of 1746 leading then, as it does now, to Lombard Street directly opposite the Church of St Edmund King and Martyr …
The alley was then called Church Court
Here’s another view from King William Street, you can see St Edmund’s in the distance …
The church dates from 1674 having been rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire (although the design was probably by his able assistant Robert Hooke). In 2001 it became the London Centre for Spirituality …
It was a lovely, warm sunny day and, looking at the church architecture, for a moment I had the overwhelming feeling that I was in Italy!
To find the churchyard, now a private garden, head down George Yard adjacent to the church (EC4V 9EA). It closed for burials in 1853 …
One tomb is visible from the street …
It has a fascinating inscription …
Sir HENRY TULSE was a benefactor of the Church of St Dionis Backchurch (formerly adjoining). He was also Grocer, Alderman & Lord Mayor of the City. In his memory this tombstone was restored in 1937 by THE ANCIENT SOCIETY OF COLLEGE YOUTHS during the 300th year of the Society’s foundation. He was also Master of the Society during his Mayoralty 1684.
St Dionis Backchurch was demolished in 1878 and the proceeds of the land sale used to resurrect it as a new church of the same name in Parsons Green. The Ancient Society of College Youths is the premier change ringing society in the City of London, with a national and international membership that promotes excellence in ringing around the world. Sir Henry owned significant estates in South London – you’ll be remembering him as your train trundles through Tulse Hill Station.
St Gabriel Fenchurch was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt but its churchyard remains – now called Fen Court (EC3M 6BA) it’s just off Fenchurch Street. If you are feeling stressed, or just need to take time out, you can use the labyrinth there to walk, meditate and practise mindfulness. It was the idea of The London Centre for Spiritual Direction and you can read more about it here.
The Fen Court labyrinth
Three chest tombs are evidence of it’s earlier burial ground function …
This vault was built in the year 1762 by MRS ANNE COTTESWORTH for a burying place for Herself she being born in this Parish And her nearest relations being buryed in the next Vault
Her family coat of arms is quite sheltered and has survived City pollution well
Also there is the striking Gilt of Cain monument, unveiled by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2008, which commemorates the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807. Fen Court is now in the Parish of St Edmund the King and St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard St, the latter having a strong historical connection with the abolitionist movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Rev John Newton, a slave-trader turned preacher and abolitionist, was rector of St Mary Woolnoth from 1780 to 1807 and I have written about him in an earlier blog St Mary Woolnoth – a lucky survivor.
The granite sculpture is composed of a group of columns surrounding a podium. The podium calls to mind an ecclesiastical pulpit or slave auctioneer’s stance, whilst the columns evoke stems of sugar cane and are positioned to suggest an anonymous crowd. This could be a congregation gathered to listen to a speaker or slaves waiting to be auctioned.
The artwork is the result of a collaboration between sculptor Michael Visocchi and poet Lemn Sissay. Extracts from Lemn Sissay’s poem, Gilt of Cain, are engraved into the granite. The poem skilfully weaves the coded language of the City’s stock exchange trading floor with biblical Old Testament references.
And finally here is another meditation labyrinth …
It’s in one of my favourite places, St Olave Hart Street churchyard in Seething Lane (EC3R 7NB) …
You walk in through the gateway topped with gruesome skulls, two of which are impaled on spikes …
Charles Dickens nicknamed it ‘St Ghastly Grim’
It leads to the secluded, tranquil garden …
The labyrinth is in the corner on the left
This was Samuel Pepys’s local church. He is a hero of mine and I have devoted an earlier blog to him and this church : Samuel Pepys and his ‘own church‘.
In 1655 when he was 22 he had married Elizabeth Michel shortly before
her fifteenth birthday. Although he had many affairs (scrupulously
recorded in his coded diary) he was left distraught by her death from
typhoid fever at the age of 29 in November 1669.
Do go into the church and find the lovely marble monument Pepys commissioned in her memory. High up on the North wall, she gazes directly at Pepys’ memorial portrait bust, their eyes meeting eternally across the nave where they are both buried. When he died in 1703, despite other long-term relationships, his express wish was to be buried next to her.
Take a close look at her sculpture – I am sure it is intended to look like she is animatedly in the middle of a conversation …
As you leave the church, notice how much higher the churchyard ground level is …
It’s a reminder that it is still bloated with the bodies of plague victims, and gardeners still turn up bone fragments. Three hundred and sixty five were buried there including Mary Ramsay, who was widely blamed for bringing the disease to London. We know the number because their names were marked with a ‘p’ in the parish register.
Sorry not to end on a more cheerful note! I have written before about City churchyards and you can find the blog here.
Once upon a time, access by foot to the River Thames was absolutely essential since it was London’s main highway. These ‘Watermen’s Stairs’ were also of great benefit if you were unfortunate enough to fall into the river. A Waterman would usually be nearby plying for hire and might be inclined to rescue you (and the stairs were often adjacent to a public house, where such accidents could be more likely to happen!).
Although wharves and later rudimentary docks began to be used to offload goods, most ships simply moored in lines in the middle of the river and their cargo was rowed to shore and carried up shoreline stairs.
John Rocque’s London Map of 1756 showed literally dozens of such access points and last Sunday I decided to go in search of what was left of them, starting at the east side of the Millennium Bridge. These are the steps leading to the foreshore …
This is the exact spot where the ancient Trig Lane access to the River was located and back in the 1970s redevelopment work revealed a 14th century wharf. Here is a picture of some of the site taken in 1974, now totally covered by riverside office development …
There was some amateur excavation taking place when I visited …
Looking all around you see lots of pieces of pottery, tiles and bricks along with lumps of chalk …
Large chalk beds were once laid down to provide a soft settling place for barges at low tide.
It’s rather a strange feeling standing on the river bed and gazing along the foreshore …
As I walked east I looked back and spotted a sandy beach. You can see the Trig Steps in the distance …
My next stop was the Cousin Lane steps next to Cannon Street railway station …
As is common along the River, you can see the remains of old wharves …
And a barge resting nearby …
I got a distinct feeling that I was trespassing.
These steps at London Bridge are no longer open to the public. Again the remains of old wharves are visible at low tide …
Further along the Thames Walk a capstan reminds us of the days when this part of the river was a major commercial shipping hub …
Looking over the riverside wall, lots more lumps of chalk are clearly visible …
Next on my list was Custom House Stairs – here is how they appear in Roque’s Map of 1746 …
And here they are today …
I encountered lots of oyster shells on my walk, once a very cheap source of food for Londoners …
An old winch still decorates the pedestrian walkway …
As I walked past the Tower I was reminded of pictures I had seen of the beach there that was opened up in July 1934 for the use of people who couldn’t afford to go to the seaside. Apparently 1,500 bargeloads of sand were used to create it …
It was finally closed in 1971 due to river pollution. There is a nice blog about it here.
My final set of stairs were located just past St Katharine Dock along St Katharine’s Way. The entrance is easy to miss since the signage is quite high up …
Here I hesitated …
It’s all a bit slimy and slippery …
When you reach the bottom it’s clear you are definitely below the level of high tide …
The view looking west …
As I looked back up the steps I was reminded of a story in the London Inheritance blog.
On the 24th April 1847, the Illustrated London News reported on arrivals at Alderman’s Stairs …
IRISH IMMIGRATION INTO LONDON – The importation of Irish paupers, so much complained of in Liverpool and Glasgow, begins to wear a threatening aspect in London. On Sunday, the Prussian Eagle, from Cork, and the Limerick, from Dublin, landed 1200 Irish Paupers at Alderman’s Stairs, Lower East Smithfield. The new comers, who were in the most wretched state of distress, were forthwith distributed over the eastern part of the metropolis. The same vessels landed 1200 Irish paupers on Sunday week.
I always find it a bit weird when I see a building being demolished that I remember being built in the first place – especially when it was deemed at the time to be the epitome of modern design. This is what is happening to the Broadgate development at the moment, and when I went to look at progress I thought I would take the opportunity to photograph the nearby sculptures.
I would like to start with my favourite, Barry Flanagan’s Leaping Hare on Crescent Bell (2008) which can be found in the Broadgate Circle (EC2M 2QS) …
The base which contains the bell was difficult to photograph the day I went (intrusive fast food vans) but the magnificent soaring hare is flying free above the distractions. Exuberance and playfulness are features of much of Flanagan’s work but sadly he passed away due to motor neurone disease in 2009 at the age of 68.
Here is another example of his work at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Entitled Thinker on a Rock it substitutes a hare for Rodin’s Thinker. The picture is from the Artcurious blog …
You can’t miss the Broadgate Venus in nearby Exchange Square (EC2A 2EH) …
Patinated bronze by Fernando Botero (1989)
The note on the sculpture website tells us she was ‘specially commissioned for Broadgate. At five tonnes, she is one of Botero’s most voluptuous pieces and her generous curves have made her a long-standing favourite across the neighbourhood. She’s all-encompassing love personified’. I wouldn’t argue with that.
Living in the Appold Street entrance to Exchange Square are The Broad Family …
Basalt stone sculptureby the Catalan sculptor Xavier Corberó(1935-2017)
Notes on the work say that if you look at it long enough the abstract forms slowly-but-surely evolve into a family portrait. Having done this, I can confirm it’s true – there are parents, a child, the family dog and a ball. And two highly polished shoes can be seen peeking out from under the child’s clothes …
More detail from one of the faces …
In nearby Sun Street (EC3M 2PA) is David Batchelor’s Chromorama …
This 20-metre stack of 35 steel boxes faces in all directions and acts as a beacon at the intersection of several streets and pedestrian pathways. It’s also very pretty when illuminated at night.
Out on Bishopsgate is the eye-catching EYE-1 …
Sculptor Bruce MacLean – Painted steel (1993)
Just like The Broad Family, MacLean’s work rewards you if you look long enough at it. You will begin to see the outline of a female face.
There is more sculpture to see in and around Broadgate and I shall return to write about it in a future blog.
In the meantime, next time you are walking through One New Change look towards St Paul’s Cathedral and then take some time to check out this extraordinary work …
Unsurprisingly the work is entitled ‘Nail’
Both comic and provocative, Nail is a 40 foot bronze sculpture, treated as the title implies, to appear like a giant rusty nail. On the one hand, it’s a nostalgic recollection of tools traditionally used by the construction industry. On the other, the rustiness, underscores the uselessness of this once useful object.
The artist, Gavin Turk, has been described as a ‘maverick’ and first gained some notoriety when he failed his MA having offered as his exhibition an English Heritage style blue plaque which read ‘Gavin Turk, sculptor, worked here’.
Of Nail he said …
Partly it’s a tribute to a tiny tool in a development that probably contains no nails at all, but it pins the bottom of the building down to the pavement. Also, I didn’t want to spoil the view and stop sightlines through to the cathedral. And it brings to mind Christ on the cross.
You can read a very interesting interview with the artist in which he discusses Nailhere on his website.
For the first half of the 18th century the river remained London’s main thoroughfare. The watermen’s cry of ‘Oars! Oars!’ as they looked for customers constantly rang out in riverside streets. One Frenchman, who hadn’t quite mastered the language but had heard of London’s immoral reputation, thought this an invitation to try a quite different service.
But things were about to change.
By the mid-1750s the bridge was clearly failing in its purpose to provide an adequate river crossing, but the building of a new bridge nearby was constantly blocked by the strong waterman lobby and riverside businesses. Bridge residents showed their objection to a nearby temporary wooden bridge by persistently trying to burn it down.
But something had to be done, the bridge being …
Narrow, darksome, and dangerous … from the multitude of carriages … with frequent arches of strong timber crossing the street from the tops of houses to keep them together and stop them falling into the river.
Thomas Pennant writing in 1750.
A compromise was reached in 1757 by pulling down all the houses on the bridge as well as the chapel of St Thomas the Martyr. The bones of the cleric who oversaw the earliest building of the bridge in the 12th century, Peter de Colechurch, were interred there and some accounts say that, when they were uncovered, the workmen unceremoniously tossed them into the Thames.
St Thomas’s chapel is commemorated with a stained glass window in St Magnus-the -Martyr church. I like the sleepy monk on the right …
But the bridge continued to be congested and, for a growing port, increasingly seen as an obstacle to trade. The momentum for change was unstoppable and the old bridge was doomed …
Demolition of Old London Bridge as seen from the Southwark side 1832 – Guildhall Art Gallery
Few tears were shed over its destruction. As Bernard Ash writes in his fascinating book The Golden City : ‘This was not a sentimental generation. It looked forward not backward. It saw no picturesqueness in the narrow, inconvenient ways of its forebears or in the narrow, inconvenient and often makeshift things they had built’.
But the river was no longer the highway of London – private carriages and hackney coaches were taking over. As Ash eloquently points out, all the watermen’s traffic had ‘run away on wheels’.
A new bridge designed by the Scottish engineer John Rennie (1761-1821) was decided upon. The work went ahead in 1824 under the supervision of his sons, John Rennie the Younger and George. In order to keep the old bridge open for traffic during construction it was decided that the new one should be on a different alignment, about one hundred feet upstream.
Construction took seven and a half years at a cost of two and a half million pounds and the lives of forty workmen, many perishing in the fast flowing water caused by the continued existence of the old bridge.
The opening (depicted below) was described in The Times as …
the most splendid spectacle that has been witnessed on the Thames for many years.
The opening of London Bridge by William IV on 1st August 1831 by Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867)– Guildhall Art Gallery
The King arrived at about 4pm and the red carpeted stairs where he landed can be seen leading up to the bridge on the far side of the river. A huge pavilion where a sumptuous banquet was held had been erected on the bridge. The royal standard can be seen flying from the pavilion at the north end. The King was accompanied by his wife Adelaide – hence the name of the 1925 Art Deco office block on the north east side of the bridge that you can see today.
Here’s a view of Adelaide House from the Thames path …
London’s growing prosperity led to increased traffic and more congestion problems for the bridge …
London Bridgecirca 1870. Taken from a stereocard in the B E C Howarth-Loomes Collection [Ref BB83/05717B]
By 1896 the bridge was the busiest point in London, and one of its most congested – on average 8,000 pedestrians and 900 vehicles crossed every hour. Subsequent surveys showed that the bridge was sinking an inch every eight years, and by 1924 the east side had sunk some three to four inches lower than the west side. Clearly the bridge would eventually have to be removed and replaced.
The bridge in the 1930s – Adelaide House is on the right
In 1967, to many people’s astonishment, Rennie’s bridge was put up for sale and, to more astonishment, was bought on 18th April 1968 by the Missourian entrepreneur and oilman Robert P McCulloch for $2,460,000. Under no illusion that he had bought Tower Bridge (as some papers mischievously reported) he moved it piece by piece to Lake Havasu City Arizona – all 10,276 granite blocks individually numbered.
The bridge is dedicated in its new home in 1971
I think it looks great …
You can read more about Lake Havasu here along with the 50th anniversary last year of the bridge’s purchase.
The London Bridge we see today was constructed between 1967 and 1972 and opened by Queen Elizabeth on 17th March 1973. I like this nighttime picture …
Now there are security blocks in place as a result of the terrorist attack in June 2017…
I hope you have enjoyed these short histories of the bridges that have been known as ‘London Bridge’. Incidentally, if you do a Google search for ‘London Bridge images’ you will see that, on most American sites, you’ll be shown pictures of Tower Bridge!
When I discovered that, at one time, the London Bridge authorities employed a Keeper of the Heads I was inspired to write about the many reincarnations of London Bridge since the Romans built the first crossing about AD 50. The relationship between the bridges and London is fascinating and so I want to do it justice with two blogs.
There is an artist’s impression of Roman London, including the bridge, on display at the Guildhall Art Gallery …
The picture reflects the fact that the river was very much wider then (about five times what we see today) and consequently much shallower. The bridge was probably built of oak and, being the only fixed crossing below Staines, it became a major contributor to the prosperity of London which soon replaced Colchester as the Roman capital.
The earliest written reference to the bridge (Lundene brigce) appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of AD 984 when mention is made of a woman being taken there to be drowned for witchcraft. From 1176 a new stone bridge was constructed under the leadership of a cleric, Peter of Colechurch, and was to last for well over 600 years.
This painting by Samuel Scott (1702-1772) gives some idea of what the bridge looked like around the middle of the 18th century. People in the houses had a magnificent view and could fish from their windows as the buildings overhung the water by several feet. In the mid-1750s, the naturalist Thomas Pennant also observed that …
People living on the Bridge soon grew deaf to the noise of the falling waters, the clamours of the watermen, or the frequent shrieks of drowning wretches.
Copyright Corporation of London – Guildhall Art Gallery
Do pop into St Magnus-the-Martyr on Lower Thames Street (EC3R 6DN) and have a look at this splendid model of the Bridge (a photo really doesn’t do it justice) …
The bridge was supported by 18 boat-shaped ‘starlings’. These effectively blocked half the river and tidal surges and the build up of waste made the current notoriously uneven. The drop in water level could be as much as eight feet and navigating the arches was known as ‘shooting the bridge’. Wary passengers would alight on one side and be picked up by their boat on the other – assuming their waterman had not drowned, which many of them did, hence the 1670 saying …
London Bridge was made for wise men to pass over, and fools to pass under.
Such was the proliferation of buildings, people crossing the bridge for the first time (which could take an hour) often did not realise they were not in a normal street. At some points it was only twelve feet wide.
I have to mention the heads.
Beheading was a common form of execution at the time and reserved for higher-born individuals since it was swifter and less barbaric than hanging or burning at the stake. Heads also became available when individuals suffered the terrible death of being hanged, drawn and quartered (usually for high treason).
From ‘Visscher’s Panorama‘ 1616
Between 1305 when the first head was placed atop a pike over the Drawbridge Gate, and 1678 when the practice was stopped, there was a near-permanent display of decapitated heads grinning down from their spikes that pedestrians would have passed beneath. There was a plentiful supply, a visitor in 1592 counted 34 ‘heads of persons of distinction’.
The first head to be displayed in this way was the Scottish patriot and rebel William Wallace in 1305 after he had been hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield. The Bridge authorities employed a Keeper of the Heads who maintained security since relatives of the deceased were often desperate to reclaim the head in order that it could be reunited with the body (thereby restoring the immortal soul). When the flesh had rotted away the Keeper usually tossed the skull into the river.
I am indebted to the historian Heidi Nichols for her research – read her full article here.
The width of the river, its slow current, and the obstruction caused by London Bridge all contributed to the river frequently freezing over for two months at a time. This enabled the famous Thames Frost Fairs whose heyday was during the Little Ice Age between the 17th and early 19th Century (although the river had frozen before – Henry VIII travelled the river from Westminster to Greenwich by sleigh in 1536).
This picture, The Thames During the Great Frost of 1739, shows the Frost Fair in the foreground and figures inspecting the incomplete piers of Westminster Bridge on the right. In the distance is a view of the City of London including St Paul’s Cathedral and spires of the City churches …
Painting by Jan Griffier the Younger (1688-1750) at the Guildhall Art Gallery. It was reported that ‘The Thames floated with rocks and shoals of ice; rising everywhere in hillocks and huge rocks of ice and snow‘.
Between 1607 and 1814 there were a total of seven major fairs. There were football pitches, bowling matches, fruit-sellers, shoemakers, barbers… even a pub or two. To keep the shopkeepers warm, there were even fires within their tents. During the four days of the final 1814 Fair an elephant was led across the river below Blackfriars Bridge.
A Frost Fair in full swing (from the Londonistblog) …
The fairs ended as the weather became warmer and their possibility finally eliminated when the old London Bridge was demolished in 1831.
Demolition of Old London Bridge as seen from the Southwark side 1832 – Guildhall Art Gallery
I will write about the bridges that subsequently replaced it next week.
In the meantime, if you visit St Magnus, pause outside for a few minutes. Firstly, you will be standing on the pedestrian approach to the old bridge …
And under the arch you will see this piece of wood …
Two remnants of the medieval bridge sit within the church gardens; originally part of the bridge’s northern archway, these stones now lie unmarked …
My next blog about the bridges will take us up to the present day.
Thank you so much for subscribing to my little publication – especially those of you who have been with me since the very beginning almost two years ago.
For the first anniversary I included things that I had come across that had made me smile and I want to do that again this week. I want as well, however, to include a few items that I thought were interesting but didn’t fit under any broad heading.
One of the great pleasures of doing research is the occasional joy of serendipity. I recently discovered that encouraging people to cycle to work is nothing new and magazines were being published almost 40 years ago which included maps to help cyclists navigate.
I came across this persuasive cover of On your bike! magazine from 1982 …
And now something a bit more surreal, a piece of art that was on display at the Guildhall art Gallery until a few weeks ago …
Marcello Pecchioli’s eye-catching stained glass Alien Priest was part of the Gallery’s ‘Visionary Artists’ exhibition. I like the flying saucers in the background.
Next up is this picture in the Gallery entitled Garden of Eden by Hugh Goldwin Riviere (1860-1956). Painted in 1901, it depicts a young man and girl walking in a misty, wet park with a horse-drawn cab rank in the background.
I like it because to me it’s one of those pictures that immediately gets you making up a back story to the characters. Surely this is an assignation – a secret lovers meeting, he clasping her hand and she gazing lovingly into his face. Then it struck me: Garden of Eden! A place of dangerous temptation and banishment!
Apparently guides point out that this picture is actually about a mismatch between a wealthy woman who has fallen for a man much below her station: note his clumpy shoes, lack of gloves and his rolled up trouser bottoms. Also the way he’s carrying not one but two umbrellas, intertwined like the two lovers. There are tiny raindrops hanging from the black branches. Surely they represent tears to come? Or am I getting completely carried away? Another commentator has said that she is simply a smartly dressed maidservant on her day off, out walking with her beau.
In Cullum Street I was stopped in my tracks by this stunning sculpture by Sarah Lucas entitled Perceval …
Part of the ‘Sculpture in the City’ initiative – EC3M 7JJ
It’s a large-scale replica of a traditional china ornament of the kind that took pride of place on many British mantelpieces forty years ago. Perceval was a knight of the Round Table and apparently there is fertility symbolism in the giant concrete marrows on the cart. You can read more about this work here.
Also for us to admire as part of the Sculpture in the City project is this example entitled Crocodylius Philodendrus by Nancy Rubins at 1 Undershaft (EC3A 6HX). I love it because it’s completely bonkers …
See how many animals you can spot
I keep meaning to spend some time in the Blackfriar pub on Queen Victoria Street recording the brilliant brasses there (EC4V 4EG) but I still haven’t got around to it. So in the meantime, here is the advice on one of them …
‘Don‘t advertise – tell a gossip‘
Don’t forget to look down when crossing the Millennium (‘Wobbly’) Bridge and see if you can spot some of the witty work by the artist Ben Wilson. He has painstakingly painted literally dozens of pieces of discarded chewing gum …
There is a Banksy rat painting in Chiswell Street that has been altered by another artist. Banksy’s piece originally depicted a stencilled ghetto rat holding a placard which read ‘London doesn’t work’ …
Photograph taken by ‘Noodlefish’ 26 August 2006
However, Robbo, Banksy’s rival graffiti artist, reworked the placard by adding his name in red letters. Robbo was known for leaving his mark on many Banksy pieces but I read in the interesting Londonist blog that Robbo died in 2014, bringing the rivalry to an end.
I haven’t been able to find out more about the strange ‘Life is beautiful’ figure next to it.
It is hard to imagine now but many of London’s roads were once paved with wood. However a map of London by Bartholomew’s in 1928 shows clearly the expansive reach of the wooden block road paving method. In the map excerpt below, the yellow roads are all paved with wooden blocks …
Many were destroyed in wartime bombing and many also dug up by local residents for burning as heating. Since they were impregnated with tar they burnt furiously and, of course, made a major contribution to London’s filthy air.
For some people this was an entrepreneurial opportunity. This is Alan Sugar being interviewed for the Daily Express in 2010 about when he noticed old blocks being uncovered when roads were being resurfaced …
The workers showed me the blocks, which were impregnated with tar, and they chucked a couple onto the fire – they burned like a rocket. Bingo! It occurred to me that these discarded wooden blocks could be made into fire-lighting sticks. I could cut them up into bundles of sticks and flog them.
And you can still see a section of wooden road today at the junction of Chequer Street and Bunhill Row EC1 …
Looking over the wall on the Embankment one day I noticed these lions heads with mooring rings …
They were sculpted by Timothy Butler for Bazalgette’s great sewage works in 1868-70 and it is said that, if the lions drink, London will flood.
And to end with, two more items with watery themes that make me smile.
Firstly, a famous satire on the quality of the Metropolitan water supply in 1828. An elderly lady displays her horror and shock on looking at a speck of Thames water through a microscope …
Copyright: British museum
It’s by the artist and caricaturist William Heath (1795-1840) and is entitled Monster Soup commonly called Thames Water being a correct representation of that precious stuff doled out to us! You can read more about the efforts made to get fresh water to Londoners in my blog Philanthropic Fountains.
And finally I always say hello to this miserable dolphin on The Ship pub in Hart Street (EC3R 7NB). I also tell him to cheer up – the pub is a listed building and therefore so is he …
In some respects, parts of the City of today look remarkably like they did decades ago whilst others are changed almost beyond recognition.
I shall start with the entrance to the Guildhall as painted in 1905 and attributed to William Luker Junior (1867-1947). I like the intimate family group with the little girl glancing back at the authentic flapping pigeons …
I felt I just had to write a few words about the painter.
The son of a famous artist who fell on hard times, young William (‘Willie’ to his doting mother) caused consternation when, in 1888 at the age of 21, he made a family servant pregnant. He did the honourable thing and married her, albeit secretly, which caused even more anguish to his poor mum. Records of the period show his new wife to be Margaret Stadowicka, a Polish immigrant eight years his senior. The greater responsibility seems to have prompted him to mature quickly as an artist and he became a very successful painter of animals.
This is the Guildhall entrance today …
The view from Fleet Street to St Paul’s Cathedral was slightly improved by the removal in 1990 of the London Chatham & Dover Railway bridge that used to span Ludgate Hill. Here is the view at the turn of the last century …
This view (from Gillian Tindall’s book A Tunnel Through Time) shows the railway bridge in more detail …
And here is a more recent image. The bridge may have gone but modern buildings do intrude …
This is a photograph of the Wren church of St Alban Wood Street circa 1875 …
Picture taken for the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society and now held at the Bishopsgate Institute.
And here is the view today. Only the church tower remains as the area was devastated by Second World War bombing …
The name Cheapside comes from the old English term for a market (ceapan – ‘to buy’) and the a street with this name was here long before the Great Fire of 1666. Here is a picture taken around 1890 looking east when there were about 11,000 hansom cabs and 500 horse-drawn buses in London. By 1910 they had all virtually disappeared to be replaced by taxis and motor buses …
Picture taken for the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society and now held at the Bishopsgate Institute.
And here is a view from about the same point taken in May 2019 …
Apart from the tower of St Mary-le-Bow, the south side of Cheapside has changed dramatically with the construction of the office and retail space One New Change. On the north side at the junction with Wood Street, however, stands a little treasure …
The shop on the corner in an anonymous drawing from the 1860s
The rebuilding of the City after the Great Fire took over forty years, but the little shop on Cheapside, along with its three neighbours to the west, were some of the earliest new structures to be built as the City recovered. The site is small and each of the shops in the row consists of a single storey above and a box front below.
The plaque in the churchyard attached to the Cheapside shop’s northern wall confirms the age of the building …
This is how the corner looks today …
Copyright Katie at ‘Look up London’
You can read lots more about the little shop and its fascinating immediate surroundings in my earlier blog: A Shop, a Tree and a Poem. And even more here: Hidden Gems.
Some of Fleet Street has hardly changed at all. Here is a view of St Dunstan-in -the-West around 1910 …
Picture taken for the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society and held at the Bishopsgate Institute
And here is a picture taken in May this year. Some of the Journals changed their names – the Dundee Advertiser becoming the Dundee Courier and the Sunday Hours becoming the Sunday Post. The Post has now become famous as the last newspaper to leave Fleet Street. They turned off the lights for the final time on 5th August 2016.
I came across this fascinating picture whilst doing my research. It was published in 1975 in the book The City at War by Ian Grant and Nicholas Maddren. Looking west along Fleet Street towards the Strand, it was taken in 1944 and shows the smoke arising in the distance from a recent hit by a V2 rocket …
The caption in the book reads: ‘Passengers getting off the bus hardly break their stride’.
And finally, I am publishing again this painting by Harold Workman now on display at the Guildhall Art Gallery and entitled Chaos on London Bridge. It was probably painted some time in the 1930s or 1940s …
And here is a picture I found of London Bridge circa 1870 …
Taken from a stereocard in the B E C Howarth-Loomes Collection [Ref BB83/05717B]
I think London Bridge and its history might be worth a blog on its own and I shall explore this idea.
You can find more great ‘Then and Now’ pictures (including some of the above) here on the Spitalfields Life blog.
The Guildhall Art Gallery in Guildhall Yard (EC2V 5AE) is one of my favourite places in the City. The reason for this is that the Gallery’s collection of London paintings opens a window onto unusual, memorable and colourful scenes from the City’s history. Dating from the 17th century onwards, they provide a vivid record of civic events along with street, market and crowd scenes which capture the look and feel of city life. What adds to the enjoyment of a visit is the remains of the Roman Amphitheatre which were discovered during redevelopment in 1987 and are now incorporated into the lower levels of the building.
Here is a selection from the pictures I like best.
And we think congestion is bad now …
‘Chaos on London Bridge’ by Harold Workman (1897-1975)
It has, apparently, not been possible to date this picture. The buses look a bit like the once very familiar ‘RT’ that was introduced to London in 1939/40. Here is a picture of one (note the white roof) …
I can’t really be certain though. If you want to research more about London’s buses this is a great website to start with.
London had become the most important City in the world when Niels Moeller Lund (1863-1916) painted this view from the roof of the Royal Exchange in 1904 …
Entitled The Heart of the Empire, the artist looks down on Bank junction which seethes with the commercial life of a City that felt very secure at the Empire’s focal point. With the Mansion House on the left, the sunlit Victorian buildings draw our eye towards St Paul’s Cathedral and the Empire beyond. I like the flock of pigeons rising in the foreground.
This painting, showing an event on 9th November 1789, captures the pageantry of the City at the time and also the way St Paul’s dominated the skyline …
‘Lord Mayor’s procession by water to Westminster 9 November 1789 ‘ by Richard Paton (1717-1791) and Francis Wheatley (1747-1801)
Paton’s story is interesting since he was brought up in poverty. According to one account, while Paton was begging on Tower Hill, he attracted the attention of Admiral Sir Charles Knowles (died 1777), who happened to be passing that way, and who, taking a fancy to the boy, offered to take him to sea. He was assistant to the ship’s painter on Knowles’ ship, gaining knowledge in both painting and seamanship. The second artist, Francis Wheatley, led an ‘irregular and dissipated’ early life and ended up fleeing to Ireland to escape his creditors. He eventually regained respectability and ended his life a Royal Academician.
Here is a more intimate picture of City pageantry and its participants (with some splendid beards on display) …
‘A civic procession descending Ludgate Hill, London 1879 ‘ by James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902)
Born in France, Tissot was originally called Jean-Jacques, but he took the name James as an expression of his Anglophilia. Following his alleged involvement in the turbulent events of the Paris Commune (1871) he moved to London, where he lived from 1871 to 1882. He was just as successful there as he had been in Paris and lived in some style in fashionable St John’s Wood: in 1874 Edmond de Goncourt wrote sarcastically that he had ‘a studio with a waiting room where, at all times, there is iced champagne at the disposal of visitors, and around the studio, a garden where, all day long, one can see a footman in silk stockings brushing and shining the shrubbery leaves’.
And finally, from pomp and pageantry to everyday hard work in the markets …
Billingsgate Market in 1962 by Ken Howard (born 1932)
Billingsgate Market relocated to Docklands in 1982.
There has been a livestock market at Smithfield for over 800 years …
Smithfield Market in 1968 by Jacqueline Stanley (born 1928)
The London Evening Standard has just reported that Smithfield meat market could now be leaving London. A former oil refinery site in Thurrock, Essex, is on a shortlist of four locations for a vast, new mega-market which could also house Billingsgate fish market and New Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market. The other three potential sites are at Barking power station in Dagenham, Silvertown near City airport in Docklands, and Fairlop in Redbridge. The City of London Corporation wants to amalgamate the three historic markets in a purpose-built facility to free up land for housing.
If you visit the Gallery don’t forget to go downstairs to see the remains of the Roman Amphitheatre …
You can get a sense of the scale of the building even before you enter the Gallery. An 80 metre wide curve of dark stone in Guildhall Yard marks out the area it covered …
In the Gallery there is also an artist’s impression of what the amphitheatre may have looked like …
The west end of Fleet Street belongs to the lawyers. You can leave the noise and bustle of the main roads and enjoy the tranquility of the Inns of Court, where you can still glimpse through the windows book-stuffed rooms and ribbon-bound briefs. I am going to write about The Temple, the area in the vicinity of Temple Church which consists of two of the four Inns of Court – the Inner Temple and Middle Temple. There is map at the end of the blog to help you navigate.
I entered the Middle Temple from Fleet Street through the archway beneath Prince Henry’s Room at number 17, one of the few buildings still around today that survived the Great Fire of 1666 …
Prince Henry’s room above the entrance to the Middle Temple (the doors are closed in this photograph)
Once called the Fountain Tavern, Samuel Pepys visited it on 28 November 1661 and wrote in his diary …
To the Fountain tavern and there stayed till 12 at night, drinking and singing, Mr. Symons and one Mr. Agar singing very well. Then Mr. Gauden, being almost drunk, had the wit to be gone; and so I took leave too.
Sadly you can’t drink or sing there now since it is not open to the public.
As you walk down Middle Temple Lane, look back and you can see the posts that support the 17th century buildings above. I read somewhere that Dr Johnson used to enjoy swinging around these when in an exuberant mood …
On your right as you walk down the Lane is Fountain Court where there is a Mulberry tree planted in 1887 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Jubilee …
Nearby is the 16th Century Middle Temple Hall where Shakespeare’s company first performed Twelfth Night in February 1602.
Go down the steps to the left of the fountain and you can walk alongside Middle Temple Gardens. The giant Triffid-like plant on the right is an Echium …
The Middle Temple has kept a garden, in various forms, for centuries – indeed Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part I, refers to the ‘Temple Garden’ as the location for an argument between York and Lancaster, complete with the plucking of red and white roses, which led to the War of the Roses. There doesn’t seem to be any contemporary evidence for this, however.
The gardens spread out as you walk towards the River Thames and once stretched all the way to the water’s edge before the building of the Embankment in 1870
Retrace your steps and walk through Pump Court to Church Court pausing in Essex Court to admire this old gas lamp …
Not surprisingly, in Church Court you will find the Temple Church after which the area is named. Originally built by the Knights Templar as their English headquarters, it was consecrated on 10th February 1185 by Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It was built in the round to remind worshippers of the Jerusalem Church of the Holy Sepulchre …
Outside the door of each Chambers is a list of the barristers who practise there or are ‘door tenants’ who do not but who have a connection with the Chambers …
Some have accommodation in Chambers – the author John Mortimer practised as a barrister and had rooms here in Dr Johnson’s Buildings.
You will see frequent representations of the symbol of Middle Temple, the Lamb and Flag or Agnus Dei. These two are in different styles, an older one on Plowden Buildings in the distance and a post war 1954 version in the foreground …
Pegasus, the winged horse, is the emblem of the Middle Temple …
If you leave by the Tudor Street Gate and look back you can admire the gate design and see another winged horse …
At first glance, the City of London looks the epitome of the modern business metropolis, with soaring new buildings by important architects and bustling streets, restaurants and bars. On closer inspection, however, it is full of wonderful clues, symbols and (sometimes mysterious) evidence of its past history stretching back almost 2,000 years.
Take a walk with me as I point out some of these features so that you too can enjoy them
Unauthorized use or duplication of these words and pictures without written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Symbols & Secrets with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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