Category: Animals

City Animals

On 3rd August 2017

Once I decided to look for animals in the City I started to find them everywhere and here are just a few.

A boar pokes its head out from behind some foliage, sheep stroll past St Paul’s Cathedral and King Charles II’s spaniels are immortalised on one of the City’s most modern buildings.

The Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap was where Shakespeare set the meetings of Sir John Falstaff and Prince Hal in his Henry IV plays. The present building (at numbers 33-35) dates from 1868 and references the Boar’s Head in its design by including a boar peeping out of bushes along with portrait heads of Henry IV and Henry V. The building exterior is extraordinary and I shall write about it in more detail in a future blog. Ian Nairn, the architectural critic, called it ‘the scream you wake on at the end of a nightmare’.

Sheep wander past St Paul’s

In Paternoster Square is a 1975 bronze sculpture by Elisabeth Frink which I particularly like – a ‘naked’ shepherd with a crook in his left hand walks behind a small flock of five sheep. Dame Elisabeth was, anecdotally, very fond of putting large testicles on her sculptures of both men and animals. In fact, her Catalogue Raisonné informs us that she ‘drew testicles on man and beast better than anyone’ and saw them with ‘a fresh, matter-of-fact delight’. It was reported in 1975, however, that the nude figure had been emasculated ‘to avoid any embarrassment in an ecclesiastical setting’. The sculpture is called called ‘Paternoster’. In pre-Reformation times there was a market there for rosary beads (known as Paternosters, after the first words of the Lord’s prayer). The sculpture also references the connection between the area and the Newgate livestock market.

Like many others, I was really sad to witness the demolition of what was usually called the Mappin & Webb building at Bank junction and see it replaced in 1997 by ‘1 Poultry’ by James Stirling. Nonetheless, if you look up at the North side of the building you will see a fascinating survivor of the original building of 1875. In red terracotta it portrays royal progresses and shows visits to the City of (from left to right) Edward VI, Elizabeth I, Charles II and Queen Victoria. Look closely and you will see Charles is accompanied by his faithful spaniels. The incorporation of the panels was part of the listed building consent and we have the planning officer at the time, Tony Tugnutt, to thank for them being placed on Cheapside (where they used to be) rather than over the service entrance as originally suggested. I think they blend in with the new building extremely well.

King Charles II with two of his spaniels – Sculptor Joseph Kremer

When I started work in Queen Victoria Street I always glanced at the Mappin & Webb clock as I left Bank station to see if I had to run to ‘sign in’ on time. Even though the building has disappeared, the clock has been re-sited inside the new building’s rotunda.

The old Mappin & Webb clock

A Dead Camel in Eastcheap…

By The City Gent

On 20th March 2017

In Animals, Architecture, Commerce

For ten years I walked past this building on the way to work but it was almost as long before I looked up and wondered ‘Why is there a camel train carved above a branch of HSBC?’ HSBC have moved on but thankfully the camels (and their dead companion) are still there. They have a story to tell.

Constructed between 1883 and 1885, the building at 20 Eastcheap was once the headquarters of Peek Brothers & Co, dealers in tea, coffee and spices, whose trademark showed three camels bearing different shaped loads being led by a Bedouin Arab. The firm was particularly well known for its ‘Camel’ brand of tea. When Sir Henry Peek (son of one of the original founders) commissioned this building he wanted the panel over the entrance to replicate the trademark, right down to the dried bones of the dead camel lying in the sand in the foreground.

The Peek Brothers letter heading/trademark – Copyright – British Overprint Society – Mark Matlach

He clearly wanted his prestigious building to be enhanced by a suitably eminent sculptor – preferably one with knowledge of camel anatomy.

The sculptor he picked, William Theed, was indeed an extraordinary choice for such a mundane task. Theed was a great favourite of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and his work can be seen on the Albert Memorial where he sculpted the group Africa the central figure being, of course, a camel. The Queen also liked and trusted him so much that she asked him to take her beloved Albert’s death mask when the Prince died tragically young in 1861.

Theed’s masterpiece – ‘Africa’ at the Albert Memorial

Peeks carried on trading under various names until the 1970s. Another branch of the family ensures that the name lives on by way of the biscuit makers Peek Freans.

Theed died in 1891 at the ripe old age of 87. Although his work had become unfashionable towards the end of his life, he still left an estate valued at £41,000 – about £3.5 million in today’s values.