Sometimes, when the weather is nice, I find it great fun to just wander about taking whatever images I fancy, hoping they will eventually build into some kind of coherent whole. For a while now, sunshine has drawn me into looking at subjects in a slightly more abstract way rather than trying to make them tell a story, and this blog is the result.
I am really, really proud of this image. It’s the reflection on the bonnet and windscreen of a car parked in Wood Street. I love the way the nearby building seems to stretch away into infinity …
The Gherkin and part of the tower of St Andrew Undershaft are reflected in the Scalpel skyscraper (EC3M 7BS) …
The poor Gherkin is gradually vanishing behind its more intrusive neighbours …
But it’s still great to visit the restaurant on the roof and just look up …
A mirror sculpture across the road from St Paul’s Cathedral – I waited specially for the red bus …
Stephen Osborne was laid to rest here almost 320 years ago and since then the sunlight has been reflecting off his gravestone in the south aisle of Southwark Cathedral (SE1 9DA). Hundreds of years of footfall have worn down the elaborate family coat of arms but the quality of the stone and the carving mean we still know today the name of the person it commemorates …
Early morning colours, reflections and shadows …
A fiery, dramatic sunset reflection …
These walls alongside London Wall are from the chapel of St Mary Elsing. It was part of a hospital and priory which had been founded by Sir William Elsing early in the 14th century. I can just imagine a hunched medieval monk or nun emerging from the shadows …
If they could look up they’d get a bit of a shock. I like the way the modern building is framed by a six hundred-year-old arch …
Nearby are the lovely red bricks and diamond patterns of the medieval wall, built on top of the original Roman fortification (EC2Y 5DE) …
Now for some more colour.
A lucky shot – red crane and rainbow (a double rainbow, actually, if you look carefully) …
Modern architects seem to be using colour more adventurously …
Offices in Old Bailey –EC4M 7NBView looking up from Sun Street (EC2A). The Georgian terrace house in the foreground and its neighbours are being converted into a hotel.
I like 88 Wood Street, but it’s a bit hemmed in by other buildings (EC2V 7QF) …
This optician on London Wall likes rather wacky window displays (EC2Y 5JA) …
Lady in red on Whitecross Street (EC1Y 8JA). She’s walking past the colourful exterior of the Prior Weston Primary School campus …
Now some very old colours. Crafts people restoring Holborn Viaduct recently discovered layers revealing 150 years of repainting …
Time for some shapes and shadows.
No one does symmetry quite like Mother Nature …
A concrete buttress in a car park resembles the prow of a ship as the sun shines through the grating above …
Practicality combined with aesthetic beauty …
At the corner of Clerkenwell Road and St John Street is the building which once housed the Criterion Hotel (EC1V 4JS). Look up and you will see this lovely, painstakingly created Victorian brick decoration. I don’t know what the frogs represent, or maybe they are toads …
After admiring the magnificent memorials in Southwark Cathedral, I wanted to visit the Cross Bones Graveyard Garden, which has a very different story to tell. It can be found at the junction of Redcross Way and Union Street (SE1 1SD) …
I also wanted to mark the connection between it and the remains of the Bishop of Winchester’s palace on Clink Street (SE1 9DN) …
A plaque outside the garden gives a very brief history …
I found it a very moving place, even though the garden was closed when I visited. I caught a glimpse of several little shrines through the memorial ribbons and other tributes attached to the fence …
Some excavation work by Museum of London archaeologists in the 1990s resulted in the removal of 148 skeletons, over 60% of whom were children under five years of age. Overall it’s estimated that as many as 15,000 souls were buried here until the cemetery was closed in 1853 being ‘completely overcharged with dead’ and ‘inconsistent with due regard for the public health and public decency’.
So what was the connection with the Bishop of Winchester?
As the plaque tells us, in the late medieval period, the local prostitutes were known as ‘Winchester Geese’. They were not licensed by the City of London or Surrey authorities, but by the Bishop of Winchester who owned the surrounding lands, hence their namesake. The earliest known reference to the Graveyard was by John Stow in his Survey of London in 1598 …
I have heard ancient men of good credit report, that these single women were forbidden the rights of the Church, so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial, if they were not reconciled before their death. And therefore there was a plot of ground, called the single woman’s churchyard, appointed for them, far from the parish church.
Stow comments that their churchyard was ‘far from the parish church’. That church, St Saviour’s, became Southwark Cathedral in 1905 and you can just see the top of its tower on the right in my first photo above. Far indeed.
I just had to visit nearby Ayres Street (SE1 1ES) …
It is named after a brave girl who is also commemorated in the Watts Memorial in Postman’s Park …
The picture above shows Alice Ayres as portrayed by the Illustrated London News in 1885 (Copyright the British Library Board). Her commemorative plaque reads as follows and was the first to be installed …
It was 25-year-old Alice’s brave act that prompted Watts to write to the Times newspaper and suggest the creation of a memorial
That would celebrate the sacrifices made by ‘likely to be forgotten heroes’ by collecting ‘…a complete record of the stories of heroism in every-day life’.
Alice threw down a mattress from a burning building and successfully used it to rescue three children …
From The Illustrated Police News 2nd May 1885 Copyright, The British Library Board.
Alice eventually jumped herself but received terrible injuries and died two days later. Incidentally, if her name rings a bell with you it could be because, in the 2004 film Closer, one of the characters, Jane Jones, sees Alice’s memorial and decides to adopt her name.
This imposing building at 47 Union Street dating from 1907 was once known as the ‘Ragged School’, a charity set up to help disadvantaged children (SE1 1SG) …
According to the London Remembers blog, ‘the Work Girls Protection Society was founded in 1875 and began with premises in New Kent Road. It was renamed the St Mary’s Girls’ Club. In 1899 the Club lost the New Kent Road site so they acquired a lease at 85 Union Street, a former tin plate works. They then raised funds, bought the site to the left of the Mission site, and constructed a building there. In 1930 the Girl’s Club merged with the Acland Club to form the co-ed St Mary’s and Acland Club’ …
I couldn’t find out any more about this club and have no idea why the bottom part of the poster has been concealed.
I headed for Southwark Street and wandered east to Borough High Street, adding this ghost sign to my collection along the way …
This building, John Harvard House, caught my eye since its narrowness seems to reflect medieval building plot dimensions …
John Harvard was born in Southwark in 1607 and was baptized in St Saviour’s Church, the present Southwark Cathedral. His mother, Katherine, owned the Queen’s Head Inn, which stood on this site, and left it to John when she died in 1636. In the spring of the following year John and his wife made the voyage to Massachusetts and arrived at Charlestown. John died there of tuberculosis in 1638 and bequeathed to the recently established local college half his fortune and the whole of his library of about 400 books. In 1639 it was renamed Harvard College, first calling itself a university in 1780. John Harvard is commemorated in Southwark today by a library in Borough High Street and by a chapel in the cathedral.
I always enjoy exploring alleys and I investigated two that run off the High Street.
In Chapel Court I came across this building …
The building itself didn’t look all that old but some of the timbers used in its construction did …
One source states that they came from a very old building that was demolished in Essex and were then utilised here in the 1980s.
And finally, Mermaid Court has a fine collection of old bollards …
I really enjoyed my trips south of the River – might even go back again one day!
Incidentally, by way of local news, Mrs Duck was showing off her little family last week. Ahhhh!
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In last week’s blog I wrote about the memorial on Borough High Street to the 344 members of St Saviour’s Parish who lost their lives in the First World War. Next year it will be one hundred years since the memorial was funded by public subscription. The £4,000 raised also allowed a bronze memorial plaque by Sir John Ninian Comper to be erected in the Cathedral. Here it is …
You can read the names on the memorial here. Some families clearly lost more than one member (for example, there are two Pluckroses listed) and a few look like they may have lost three (for example G.Field, F.Field senr, F.Field jnr).
The Cathedral is home to many lavish, elaborate monuments, but the four most simple ones stayed in my mind the longest. The first was this tribute to little 10 year old Susanna Barford who died in 1652 …
A VIRGIN PURE NOT STAIN’D BY CARNALL LUST SUCH GRACE THE KING OF KINGS BESTOWD UPON HER THAT NOW SHEE LIVES WITH HIM A MAID OF HONOUR HER STAGE WAS SHORT HER THREAD WAS QUICKLY SPUNN DRAWNE OUT, AND CUTT GOTT HEAVEN, HER WORKE WAS DONE THIS WORLD TO HER WAS BUT A TRAGED PLAY SHEE CAME AND SAW’T DISLIK’T AND PASS’D AWAY.
The second was where Shakespeare buried his younger brother Edmund, an actor aged just twenty-seven in 1607, at the cost of twenty shillings ‘with a forenoone knell of the great bell.‘
Thirdly, this child’s parents wanted to record the exact duration of her short life …
And finally, an unflinching portrayal of death with a very succinct epitaph …
William Emerson, who ‘lived and died an honest man’ in 1575 aged 92. He is said in some guides to be an ancestor of Ralph Waldo Emerson. You can read more about the Emerson family in the great London Inheritance blog entitled Emerson Stairs, Bankside.
Now something much more flamboyant, a memorial to Joyce, Lady Clerke, paid for by her son William, from her first marriage to James Austin. …
Carved along the bottom on the pediment are the words Vos Estis Dei Agricultura (You are the Agriculture of God). The central section shows standing corn behind which rises a rock on which a golden angel stands, pointing upwards to a golden sunburst on the wall above. Down the rock a stream runs, and a serpent twines itself around the rock. On either side sit life-sized figures of harvesters in attitudes of mourning, wearing smocks and wheaten hats; a rake and pitchfork are propped against their knees. Click here for a more complete description and notes on the symbolism.
This monument shows Alderman Richard Humble, and his two wives Elizabeth and Isabel, kneeling in prayer …
It’s is a typical example of the ‘Southwark School’ of monuments made by a group of Flemish refugee sculptors who lived and worked on Bankside. The area around the Cathedral has a long tradition of accepting refugees into the community. Incidentally, the banner in the background is an art installation by Mark Titchner which declares ‘Please believe these days will pass‘.
A generous epitaph: Had Kings a power to lend their subjects breath, Trehearne thou shouldst not be cast down by death …
So Trehearne, who died in 1618, was obviously a much respected servant of King James I, whose loss was keenly felt.The role of Gentleman Porter to the King was one of great responsibility and honour. It meant that John Trehearne kept the ‘keys of the castle’ and was responsible for opening and closing the gates and for the safe passage of all those that passed through. He and his wife Mary are ‘supported’ by their children …
John Bingham, saddler and Vestryman, was instrumental in founding the parish school. He died in 1625 …
Sir Frederick Wigan was a wealthy hop merchant and the first Treasurer of the newly created Cathedral in 1905 …
You may recall that I wrote about the hop trade in last week’s blog.
Richard Blisse wears a fine full-bottomed wig ..
… a most affectionate husband, his wife Elizabeth, out of a just sense of her loss hath caused this monument to be erected as ye lasting testimony of her love. He died suddenly ye 4th of August and was buried underneath ye 12th of the same month Anno Dom 1703 aetat 67 …
Amongst all the men, there is this cameo of a lady …
Isabella Gilmore (née Morris) oversaw the revival of the Deaconess Order in the Anglican Communion. She served actively in the poorest parishes in South London for almost two decades and was the sister of William Morris.
Incidentally, some time ago two patches of Roman mosaic were discovered in the churchyard and they are now incorporated into the Cathedral floor. See if you can spot them – this is one of them …
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For an expression of grim determination, it would be hard to beat the look on this man’s face …
This is the St Saviour’s War Memorial on Borough High Street, in the former parish of Southwark St Saviour (SE1 1NL). St Saviour’s Church became Southwark Cathedral in 1905 …
An infantryman in battledress advances resolutely through thick mud. He carries a rifle with bayonet attached slung over his shoulder …
Beneath his feet is a Portland Stone pedestal depicting St George doing battle with a dragon.
On the opposite side there is a carving of a mourning woman. Her child is reaching out to a dove …
On the pedestal’s long sides are bronze reliefs.
One with biplanes, to the west …
… and another with battleships, to the east.
The memorial’s sculptor was Philip Lindsey Clark (1889-1977). Having joined up with the Artists’ Rifles in 1914, he had distinguished himself in the First World War having been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for ‘ … conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty when in command of the left flank of the Company of the Battalion’. Despite being severely wounded, he had fought on until relieved two days later. In 1926 he created the Bakers of Widegate Street, details of which can be found in my blog On the Tiles again.
The story of the Artists’ Rifles is a fascinating one, it came as a surprise to me that they had one of the highest casualty rates of the First World War. Click here to read a short History of the Regiment (and watch the last scene from Blackadder – ‘Good luck everyone‘).
Walking along Southwark Street, I came across this magnificent, gently curving building called The Hop Exchange (SE1 1TY) …
This area in Southwark was where the hops from the southern counties, and especially from Kent, were brought to after the autumn picking. After picking, the hops were dried in the oast houses and then packed into large compressed sacks of 6 by 2 feet, called ‘pockets’. These pockets were then transported to Southwark, first by horse and cart, but later by train …
The Hop Exchange was built in 1867 …
You can see the hop pickers at work in the carving contained in the pediment …
Up to the 1960s, many of the poorer London families went to the hop gardens each September for a working-holiday. Not just for the fresh air, but to supplement their all too meagre income …
At 67 Borough High Street you can find the former offices of the hop merchants, or factors as they were usually called, W.H. and H. Le May (SE1 1NF). It is a Grade II listed building with a spectacular frieze on the front depicting hop gatherers and proudly displaying the firm’s name. One may easily assume that the building is constructed of red sandstone, but according to the description on the British Listed Buildings site, it is ‘just’ coloured stucco …
A rather romanticized view of picking …
I am indebted to the London Details blog for much of my research. You can read two of the posts here and here.
These flats, Cromwell Buildings in Redcross Street (SE1 9HR), were constructed in 1864 by Sir Sydney Waterlow, founder of the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, and were modelled after a pair of houses designed by the Prince Regent for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Waterlow set the company up in 1863 with capital of £50,000 and by 1900 it was said to be housing some 30,000 London people …
If you ever find yourself in Highgate, do visit the beautiful Waterlow Park (N6 5HD). It covers 26 acres and was given to the public by Sir Sydney as ‘a garden for the gardenless’ in 1889. Seek out this statue of the great man – it’s the only statue I have ever come across of a man carrying an umbrella. In his left hand you will see he is handing over the key to the garden gates …
Back in Southwark, if you’re feeling thirsty and a bit peckish treat yourself with a visit to the George Inn, the only surviving galleried coaching inn in London (SE1 1NH) …
When I popped in to take a photo this made me smile …
I’ll visit Southwark again when I also go back to the Cathedral.
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Last Saturday I popped in to the wonderful Southwark Cathedral, paid £2 for a photography licence, and walked around entranced.
A few feet from the door is the magnificent Shakespeare Memorial Window, Designed by Christopher Webb, it was created in 1954 to replace another destroyed in enemy action. It shows characters from the Bard’s plays …
The design uses the concept of the Jesse Tree. Prospero in the central light forms the trunk, with Ariel above and Caliban at his feet …
I’m sure you can spot Falstaff …
In the right hand window we find Lady Macbeth ,,,
Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee …
and Hamlet …
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy …
At the base, the last two of the Seven Ages of Man … …
The sixth age slips into the lean and slippered pantaloon, with spectacles on nose … and his big manly voice turning again toward childish treble … Last scene of all, is second childishness … sans teeth, sans eyes sans everything.
All the characters portrayed in the window are identified in this short article.
Below the window is an alabaster sculpture. Made by Henry McCarthy in 1912, it shows the world’s most famous playwright resting outside the Globe Theatre. He usually has a sprig of rosemary in his hand. The aromatic herb rosemary, as Ophelia says to her brother Laertes in Hamlet, is for remembrance; ‘pray, love remember’ …
I was very taken with this remarkably lifelike bust …
This is Lancelot Andrewes (1555 – 25 September 1626), the English bishop and scholar who oversaw the translation of the King James Version of the Bible …
Most importantly, I live in a block of flats named after him.
This effigy of an unknown knight is one of the earliest monumental wooden effigies in England, his mail coat and coif dating him to around 1280. He is believed to be a member of the de Warenne family who were benefactors of the priory …
Thomas Cure was a very important person in Southwark and London. He was the MP locally, and in East Grinstead, as well as the Master Saddler to King Edward VI, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. He founded almshouses for the poor and these stood for nearly 300 years in Park Street, until the new railways forced their move to West Norwood. Eventually they were relocated, in the form of modern sheltered flats, to Purley, Surrey in 2006. Cure died in 1588 and this is a ‘cadaver tomb’, reminding us all of our mortality …
Is there anywhere in the world a more impressive monument to a quack ‘doctor’? Lionel Lockyer never qualified as a doctor (he was originally a tailor and a butcher) but became famous for his miracle pills that he claimed included sunbeams as an ingredient …
His tomb has an amusing inscription which includes the words …
His virtues & his PILLS are soe well known… That envy can’t confine them vnder stone. But they’ll surviue his dust and not expire Till all things else at th’universall fire.
The man himself …
Lionel Lockyer. Line engraving by J. Sturt. Wellcome Library collections.
Following Lockyer’s death in 1672, his pills continued to be sold by his nephew, John Watts, in partnership with Thomas Fyge, an apothecary. The pills were sold wholesale in tins of 50 or 100 at a price of 4 shillings for 100. That equates to about two weeks’ wages for a skilled tradesman.
This is the tomb of John Gower. He was the Poet Laureate to Richard II and Henry IV and his head rests on his three best known books, Vox Clamantis in Latin, Speculum Meditantis in French, and Confessio Amantis in English. He died in 1408 …
I finished my short visit looking at a collection of medieval roof bosses. In 1469 the roof of the priory church collapsed and the stone vaulting was replaced by a carved wooden ceiling. This is one from that ceiling and shows the Devil swallowing Judas Iscariot …
There was, of course, lots more to see at Southwark, so I shall return. I went on to have a wander around the area and will report back on that next week.
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Every now and then I head a short distance out of the City and look in at my favourite store – Hoxton Street Monster Supplies (N1 6PJ). A location hiding a fascinating and important secret which will be revealed later …
You know you are just about to visit somewhere special before you even go through the door. What kind of a place has a dispenser outside offering you free poems?
And what kind of creatures need this guidance to remind them of social distancing?
No need to worry about going in – they have the appropriate licences …
Glancing through the window, some of the merchandise looks decidedly … er … odd …
On the packed shelves inside you will find lots of items that will give pleasure to yourself and any monsters you know (both little and grown up). There are, for example …
Even non-flying reptiles love Dragon Treats but caution is needed with the Guts and Garlic Chutney – as the label warns, it is definitely not suitable for vampires.
Originally made for Banshees, these Banshee Balls have brought soothing relief to humans too …
These days sensible monsters regularly sanitise …
Even if you didn’t enter the shop with a vague sense of unease, you can leave with one …
A notice at the counter gives a clue as to what this very special place is all about …
Behind a secret, cunningly camouflaged door, wonderful things happen (staff will grudgingly show you the door if you promise not to eat them when they emerge from behind the counter).
The shop supports the fantastic work undertaken by my favourite charity, The Ministry of Stories. Co-founded by author Nick Hornby in 2010, the charity’s mission is to develop self-respect and communication skills through innovative writing programmes and one-to-one mentoring. Its clients are children living in under-resourced communities and its work is conducted both in schools and at the dedicated writing centre behind the secret door in the shop.
Do read more on their fascinating website : https://ministryofstories.org/
I have seen some of the results of their work and it has been absolutely extraordinary. They are literally changing children’s lives for the better. If you like what you see maybe you will be kind enough to make a donation – all charities have been finding the last year difficult.
Or, visit the shop and stock up on unusual treats.
Opening times are:
Thursday 1pm-5pm
Friday 1pm-5pm
Saturday 11am-5pm
Closed Sun-Wed
The website will give you much more information : https://www.monstersupplies.org/pages/about-us
‘Hoxton Street Monster Supplies was recently voted ‘No. 1 Kids’ Shop in London’ by Time Out Magazine– which was weird, because we are self-evidently a shop for monsters’.
You’ll see some interesting sights as you walk up Hoxton Street from the junction with Old Street.
A short way along on the left, at the entrance to Hoxton Square, is this piece of street art …
A few yards away is another work by the same artist but I can’t quite make out the signature …
Chivalry is not dead.
Keep walking north and check out this beautiful little garden, created in memory of Khadija Saye who, along with her mother, Mary Mendy, was tragically killed in the Grenfell Tower fire …
I wonder how much longer these old business premises will remain untouched. The firm was run by the wonderfully named Lazarus Lambert until it closed in 2002. ‘JFB 1892’ is etched into the concrete brackets …
I like this retro local business sign. The store stocks ‘actually everything’ …
That’s all for now.
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I must admit I thought I’d visited all the City gardens but I was wrong and had missed one of the most interesting.
In Pancras Lane, just off Queen Street, is the St Pancras Church Garden (EC2R 8JR). I was intrigued straight away by the carving of two devils cooking some poor condemned souls in a pot …
The garden is on the site of St Pancras Church, a late 11th century church destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. The church was never rebuilt, and the site was used first as a burial ground, but then lay basically abandoned until in 2010 the City of London acquired the leasehold of the site in order to turn it into a public garden.
The poetic idea behind the design, by Studio Weave, is that the church has somehow re-emerged, sprouting from the earth in the form of beautifully carved Romanesque wooden benches.
On the right Eve accepts an apple from the serpent – and we know it all turned out badly for her and Adam after that …
City & Guilds of London Art School was commissioned to produce the benches, which were individually carved during Summer 2011 by a team of tutors and students. The students based the design of the benches on historically referenced Romanesque church carvings …
I then headed north to walk around the London Wall Place area, which is looking really nice now that development has been completed. My first stop was St Alphage Gardens (EC2Y 5DE) …
You can see the north side of the wall from the Salters’ Hall garden – now usually open to the public (EC2Y 5DE) …
The St Alphage parish bought the church of the dissolved hospital of St Elsyng Spital in 1536. The tower is still there today just to the south of the wall …
From London Wall to lush green wall at Number 2 London Wall Place (EC2Y 5AU) …
And now a mystery. In the churchyard of St Mary Aldermary are two tombstones several feet apart (EC4M 9BW). One denotes the resting place of ‘Mary, wife of William Couthit. Entered into rest 29th January 1775 aged 43 years.’ William is also there – he died on 18th February 1808 aged 63. Beneath the William and Mary inscriptions are the words ‘Also Elizabeth Couthit …’ with the rest tantalisingly buried.
I have checked out this stone with a really useful resource, the audit of ‘Churchyard Inscriptions’ in City churchyards carried out by a man called Percy C. Rushen in 1910. He describes the stone exactly as it is now but records no date of death for Elizabeth. Here’s the actual page from his audit – the Couthits are recorded about half way down …
Now the mystery.
This is the other stone …
It claims to commemorate ELIZABETH, the wife of William COUTHWAITE, (so at first glance this is a different couple) and also William himself. However, she died on the same day as Mary Couthit (29th January 1775) and her William the same day as William Couthit (18th February 1808). As well as these anomalies, the ages at date of death on the second stone differ by one year. Elizabeth is shown as 42 at death rather than 43 and William as 62 instead of 63. Crucially, this stone does not appear in Rushen’s audit and he was obviously very meticulous.
My theory is that, many years after the Coutits had died, their descendants (now called Couthwaite) had traced their ancestors. Not realising for some reason that there was already a memorial, they erected another one with incorrect information.
In 1910 there were only three headstones and there are only three today. As we know, the Coutit one is still in the churchyard, and the other survivor is the one for Loudonsack and Widders …
The third stone still there is so weathered I couldn’t read it …
The last two words on the top line seem to be ‘…remains of …’ which would rule it out being the Thomas Hill stone mentioned in the audit.
Rushen listed 27 flatstones and there are nine in the churchyard now (all on the path leading to the door) …
One gives a remarkably detailed time of death along with Mrs Schneider’s exact age …
If you get the chance do visit the church. A former medieval church, largely destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, it was rebuilt in 1679-82 by Sir Christopher Wren’s master craftsmen. It is the only surviving late 17th century Gothic church in the City of London and is especially notable for its unique plaster vaulting. Here’s what you see when you look up …
… and finally, a lady duck update.
Last week I published this picture of Ms Duck being pursued by two enthusiastic suitors …
I saw this scene a few days later and it seem she has shaken one of them off!
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In my blog a few weeks ago some of you will remember that I wrote about this pair of doors in Fournier Street …
Much street art is constantly being painted or pasted over. For example, this is what the doors looked like in April 2018 …
I was inspired to go in search of what else had been created nearby and these pictures are the result of my wanderings.
I’ll start in Princelet Street with a work by the famous street artist Stik …
Entitled A Couple Hold Hands in the Street, it shows a woman in a niqab holding hands with a second stick figure. It was painted in 2010 and you can read more about the artist in this fascinating article in Christie’s magazine.
Local people are also very fond of this Hanbury Street bird …
The work is by the Belgian street artist Roa. His intention had been to paint a heron but, after being asked if it was a crane by Bengali people – for whom the crane is a sacred bird – he morphed his bird into a crane to best complement its location on the wall of an Indian restaurant. Read more here about The Return of Roa by The Gentle Author.
To the left of the crane is a bearskin-hatted guardsman break dancing …
Here he is ‘right’ way up …
It’s by the Argentinian painter Martin Ron who is based in Buenos Aires.
There were bound to be a few political points being made …
This made me laugh – could it be Tintin and his dog Snowy doing some clandestine paint spraying? …
The ‘No place for hate’ rabbit pops up a lot …
Layers and layers of street artist paste-ups cover walls …
Picking out individual works is fun and quite absorbing …
I have been trying to identify all the artists but still have some research to do with regard to these distinctive portraits …
Brick Lane looks a bit sad at the moment with the restaurants either closed or open for take-away orders only but the art certainly brightens everything up and I shall be going back to watch it continually develop.
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Writing this blog has led me to research some pretty unusual things and doorknockers must rate highly on the list.
What prompted my interest were the hands I encountered when I was wandering around the elegant houses on Elder, Fournier, Wilkes, Folgate and Princelet Streets. The area is well known as where Huguenot and other master silk weavers set up in business when they fled persecution in the late 17th century. Door knockers shaped as women’s hands proliferate, this one is wearing a bracelet …
Some are older and more worn than others …
These three are emerging from a lacy cuff and all are wearing a ring. In the second two the bracelet surrounds the cuff …
This one is on a door that has become a piece of artwork …
Door knockers are still being manufactured today and researching the origins of their design has been a bit tricky because most of the published history appears on sales sites. Manufacturers may have a bit of a vested interest in making their wares as intriguing as possible.
Anyway, the consensus seems to be that the hand is the Hamsa, or Hand of Fatima, a symbol of protection which originates in Islam (Fatima was a daughter of Mohammed) but has since been adopted by Judaism and Christianity to ward off evil forces.
Incidentally, I only came across one man’s hand but it belonged to a very famous person. Known as a ‘Wellington’, it was invented in 1814 by David Bray, a London ironmonger. His sales pitch was that it represented …
The Hand of our immortal Hero grasping the Wreath of Victory, and the Baton of Field Marshal, as being the highest rank that can be conferred on military fame: the Lion’s face represents British valour overpowering the arms of Tyranny and Usurpation.
Another ‘Wellington’ …
The following are described in catalogues as ‘Doctors door knockers’ since apparently they indicated a doctor’s house where medical assistance could be found in an emergency. One variety has (of course) been named ‘The Watson’ …
Lions are popular, symbolising protection …
This door also has an old-fashioned bell mechanism …
Sphinx versions are available …
Or ladies that are just decorative …
Some doors have seen better days and are untouched as yet by Messrs Farrow & Ball …
I loved this one, I think it represents a dolphin …
I deliberately haven’t specified on what streets these particular knockers can be found so you can have the pleasure of wandering around and finding them yourself. Elder, Fournier, Wilkes, Folgate and Princelet are all close to one another and easy to find. Or keep your eyes open for upcoming walking tours withLook up London.
If you are interested in researching this further just search Google using ‘door knockers’ (make sure you include the word ‘door’!). If you haven’t already had enough of doors have a look at these earlier blogs …
For centuries images of The Last Judgment were commonplace – particularly on church walls and in paintings. This is a typical example by Fra Angelico which is thought to have been painted between 1435 and 1440 …
Jesus sits enthroned in glory calling up the dead for judgment. He is surrounded by Saints and Apostles, his right hand pointing towards Heaven and his left to Hell. On one side people wearing their everyday clothes are led up to Heaven by winged angels …
But things are a bit grim on the bottom right. Demons prod and drag the condemned off to Hell where a horned Satan supervises a variety of terrible punishments. Look closely at the damned and you’ll see at least two monks and a bishop wearing a mitre …
The depictions of the Last Judgment I am going to write about are carved in stone and differ from the Fra Angelico composition in a number of ways. The first is in the narthex of St Mary-at-Hill on Lovat Lane (EC3R 8EE) …
Christ holding a banner stands amidst clouds. Satan, a figure with large claws, is being trampled under his feet.
It most likely dates from the 1670s. Its carver is unknown, but it is known that the prominent City mason Joshua Marshall was responsible for the rebuilding of the church in 1670-74 and his workshop may have produced the relief. Exactly where it was originally positioned is uncertain; most likely it stood over the entrance to the parish burial ground and was brought inside more recently.
In close up …
You can see open coffins as individuals respond to the call.The winged Archangel Michael helps people rise again.
The main difference here from the traditional representations is the absence of Hell, so it’s a more optimistic portrayal. Also, people appear naked or just wrapped in a shroud rather than being differentiated by their clothing. Perhaps this signifies everyone is equal when the last judgment comes.
The second stone is just visible from Holborn Viaduct if you look down the steps of the church of St Andrew Holborn (EC4A 3AF) …
Although a bit more weather-beaten that the St Mary-at-Hill version, the figure of Christ’s head has not been damaged and he gazes serenely down as angels sound trumpets to summon the dead. He’s surrounded by little winged figures or putti …
Open coffins lie amongst the chaos as the angels do their work. Under his feet Christ is crushing a dragon-like creature with a long tail, again probably representing Satan …
People emerge, crawling towards the light …
One of the figures here is clinging to an angel and another holds his hands in prayer or supplication …
Once again, apart from Christ and the angels, everyone is naked and there is no representation of Hell. The stone once stood over the paupers’ cemetery in Shoe Lane and was maybe intended to give some succour and hope to those attending the burial of loved ones. It’s thought that this stone also dates from the 1670s but again the carver is unknown.
I am tempted to assume that, after the horrors of the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, portrayals of the resurrection were represented more positively by removing threats of Hell and damnation.
I’m always looking out for great London blogs and my publication this week was inspired by the Flickering Lamps blogger Caroline who has written on the same subject. Click here for a link to her website.
By way of light relief in our own difficult times, if you have the chance check out the Herd of Hope elephants at Spitalfields Market …
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The black and white pictures in today’s blog are old glass slides and were taken for the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society. They are held at the Bishopsgate Institute.
First up is St Mary-le-Bow, built by Christopher Wren between 1670 and 1680 after its predecessor was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. It was gutted in the Second World War bombing (all that remained was the bell tower and the walls) but was rebuilt between 1956 and 1964. Incidentally, the church’s predecessor witnessed other dramas, apart from the catastrophic Great Fire.
In 1091 the roof blew off and in 1271 the steeple collapsed, in each case killing several parishioners. In 1284 Lawrence Duckett, an alleged murderer, sought sanctuary in the church, but a mob burst in and lynched him. In punishment for this act of sacrilege, sixteen men were hanged, drawn and quartered and one woman was burned at the stake. In 1331 a balcony collapsed during a jousting tournament casting Queen Philippa and her attendants into the street. Wren placed an iron balcony on the tower to celebrate the event. Next time you walk down Cheapside think of jousting horses galloping past and the rattle of knights’ armour.
Here’s the church in 1910 …
And the present day …
St Andrew Undershaft was so called because the maypole alongside it was taller than the church. The pole was set up opposite the church every year until Mayday 1517 when the tradition was suspended after the City apprentices (always a volatile bunch) rioted against foreign workers. Public gatherings on Mayday were therefore to be discouraged and the pole was hung up nearby in the appropriately named Shaft Alley. In 1549 the vicar of St Catharine Cree denounced the maypole as a pagan symbol and got his listeners so agitated they pulled the pole from its moorings, cut it up and burned it.
Here is a picture of the church around 1910 …
The view today, literally in the shadow of the Gherkin …
St Margaret Pattens is another Wren church, completed in 1702. The dedication is to St Margaret of Antioch and ‘pattens’ refers to wooden clog-like footwear which, strapped to the feet of medieval Londoners, enabled them to wade through the debris of the City with minimal damage to their shoes. The artisans who made them worked nearby in Rood Lane and a pair of pattens were on display at the Museum of London Secret Rivers exhibition in 2019 …
Here’s the church in 1920 …
And today …
St Mary Woolnoth is the only remaining complete City church by Wren’s gifted assistant, Nicholas Hawksmoor. It is also the only City church to have survived the Second World War unscathed. Built between 1716 and 1727 its exterior, with its flat topped turrets, is often regarded as being the most original in the City. Definitely worth visiting if only to see the memorial to the reformed slave trader John Newton whose preaching (from the pulpit still in the church) inspired William Wilberforce. You can read more about him and the church here.
This picture was taken around 1920 …
And here’s how it looks today …
St Stephen Walbrook was rebuilt by Wren in 1672-80 and was one of his earliest and largest City churches. The pains taken with the church are perhaps partly explained by the fact that he used to live next door. The beautiful dome was one of the first of its kind in any English church – a forerunner of Wren’s work on St Paul’s Cathedral. It is not known whether the wonderfully named Mr Pollixifen, who lived beside the church, was placated by the beauty of the building having, during its construction, complained bitterly that it was obstructing the light to his property. You can read more about what can be found inside the church here.
In 1917, when this picture was taken, a bookshop abutted the building …
The same view today from outside the Mansion House …
The dome – a Wren masterpiece …
St Alban Wood street was dedicated to the first English martyr who died in the fourth century. By the 17th century the original medieval church was in a very poor state of repair and was demolished and rebuilt in 1634 only to be destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Christopher Wren undertook its second rebuilding which was completed in 1685.
The church was restored in 1858-9 by George Gilbert Scott, who added an apse, and the tower pinnacles were added in the 1890s. It was destroyed on a terrible night, 29 December 1940, when the bombing also claimed another eighteen churches and a number of livery halls. Some of St Alban’s walls survived but they were demolished in 1954 and now nothing remains apart from the tower – not even a little garden to give it some cover from the traffic passing on both sides. I’ve often been told someone lives there but I have never seen any evidence of it.
Here’s the church in its Wood Street setting around 1875 …
And in splendid isolation today …
I think that’s probably enough for the time being. I will return to the ‘then and now’ theme in a future blog. I am indebted to the wonderful little book London’s City Churches by Stephen Millar for the source of much of today’s information. Many thanks also to the Spitalfields Life blog for the old pictures – you can see them and more here.
Finally, some ‘reasons to be cheerful’.
The Magnolia is in bloom at St Giles …
And the wonderful City gardeners have continued to work tirelessly to keep the City looking its best …
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I was going to write about the unusually narrow frontage of some of Fleet Street’s buildings but ended up writing a short history of the area. I found doing the research fascinating and I hope you enjoy reading what I discovered.
The street is, of course, named after the ancient River Fleet that flows from its sources in the hills of Highgate and Hampstead down to the River Thames at Blackfriars. A major river in Roman times, it gradually deteriorated into an open sewer and even as early as 1290 the Carmelite monks of nearby Whitefriars Abbey were complaining to the King of the ‘putrid exhalations of the Fleet’ which overpowered the incense at Mass.
I have found two very early maps showing Fleet Street and the surrounding areas. The first by Braun and Hogenberg (1560/72) …
The street is not named on the map but it is the main road in the middle of the picture running west to east. You’ll see fields, gardens and orchards to the north and south west but the street itself is already lined with buildings. It proved a convenient link between the Court at Westminster and the commercial City as well as being an ideal location for printing with the growing number of legal and teaching establishments nearby. The wonderfully named Wynkyn de Worde, a colleague of William Caxton’s, moved to the Sign of the Sun near Shoe Lane around 1500 and printed approximately 800 works until his death in 1535. Many more printing enterprises were founded as the century progressed.
Also fascinating is the Agas Map from 1561 (as reproduced in 1633). To the east you can see the Fleet as it continues its flow south to the Thames entering it at Bridewell. Also on the Thames, between Bridewell and The Temple, is the Whitefriars Abbey but the monks were no longer there to complain about the smell. They had been thrown out during Henry the Eighth’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 …
The Great Fire in 1666 obliterated two-thirds of the street and its environs but was halted at Fetter Lane to the north and the Temples to the south. The street layout survived the Fire, with rebuilding following the same medieval plots as before, which explains the skinny nature of some of the buildings here in the 21st century. The plot narrowness is very apparent from the 1873 Ordnance Survey Map …
Here are some of the buildings you can see today that have been squeezed in ….
The one on the right was the Kings and Keys pub where the journalists from The Telegraph newspaper next door used to hang out. It closed in 2007.
By the 17th century the area was more urbanised and much of the remaining open space had been developed. To the north the surviving system of alleys and courts came into being, while to the south riverside land was parcelled up into tenements. You can see the growth of developments in the 1676 map by Ogilby and Morgan …
Already a notorious, stinking open sewer, in later years waste from slaughterhouses and tanneries made matters far worse. 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.
The southern end of the Fleet was finally completely covered over in 1766. I must say, however, that this picture of circa 1750 by a follower of Samuel Scott (1702-1772) makes its entrance to the Thames look positively Venetian. You can see the obvious influence of Canaletto …
Guildhall Picture Gallery.
A few buildings survive from the massive rebuilding that took place after the Great Fire.
The Tipperary pub, circa 1667, on its narrow plot …
The rear of The Old Bell Inn, circa 1669 …
Numbers 5 and 6 Crane Court, circa 1670 (but largely reconstructed after a fire in 1971) …
The Cheshire Cheese pub, a merger of two 17th century houses …
The entrance is down the alley on the left of the picture …
The house built in 1700 where Dr Johnson lived from 1748 to 1759, 17 Gough Square …
Incidentally, Dr Johnson’s favourite cat, Hodge, gazes at his old home from across the Square. He’s sitting on his owner’s famous dictionary having just eaten an oyster …
No history of Fleet Street would be complete without mentioning another survivor from the 17th century, St Bride’s church. Built by Christopher Wren between 1671 and 1678, the famous ‘wedding cake’ spire was added 1701-3 and rebuilt after a lightning strike in 1764 …
It’s still known as ‘The Journalists’ Church’. Photo credit : Pinterest.
The entrance to Crane Court has a plaque celebrating the publishing of the first British daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, on 11 March 1702 …
It consisted of a single page with advertisements on the reverse …
It lasted until 1735 when it merged with the Daily Gazetteer.
Over the next century Fleet Street gradually became more and more commercial and in 1855 the repeal of stamp duty resulted in an immediate drop in the price of newspapers. Readership boomed. New printing works opened up and taverns and ‘gin palaces’ flourished of which the Punch Tavern (built 1894-7) is a good example that is still around today. This is an image from Tripadvisor since the pub is closed at the moment …
Here’s how the Street looked just before Punch’s construction started …
Fleet Street in 1893.
There’s a great ten minute documentary on Fleet Street’s newspaper architecture here, especially worth viewing because it takes you into the magnificent Art Deco interior of the Daily Express building. This has been hidden behind curtains since Goldman Sachs took over the building.
‘Read all about it!’ – 7th May 1937, the day after the Hindenberg disaster. That’s the headquarters of The Daily Telegraph in the background …
Photo credit : Getty images.
The 1980s and ’90s saw the dispersal of the newspaper industry to sites in the Docklands and in other parts of London but some of the old signage remains, next door to St Dunstan-in-the-West …
The last journalists left in August 2016 – they worked for the Sunday Post in the office shown in the photograph.
Do pause at the east end of Fleet Street and look up Ludgate Hill. You’ll be enjoying a view that would have been familiar to every denizen of the City since 1710 – the spire of St Martin within Ludgate piercing the sky between the western towers of St Paul’s Cathedral (although the view was obstructed for a while by a railway bridge!) …
I am indebted to the City of London Corporation’s Fleet Street Conservation Area document for many of my sources and will end with a quote from it, written pre-Brexit …
Today, Fleet Street is a vibrant street enhanced by past religious, ceremonial and institutional associations and its links with the newspaper industry, with one of the longest ensembles of pre-war buildings in the City. It is part of the established processional route and the route of the Lord Mayor’s show.
Let’s hope that its full vibrancy will one day return.
I have written about Fleet Street before and here are links to the blogs:
Occasionally, when I feel the dark, heavy hand of doom tapping me on the shoulder (Covid, Lockdowns, Brexit, Trump etc) I cheer myself up by looking back at times past when things looked very grim but from which we eventually recovered. One way I do this is to look at some of the images of the terrifying days of the early 1940s and compare them to the same scene today.
The following Aerofilms photo from before the war shows how St. Paul’s was surrounded by the dense city streets with buildings much closer to the cathedral than they are now. These were not only offices, but also plenty of warehouses with one of the major publishers / book distributors having their office and warehouse just north of St. Paul’s in Paternoster Square. The spires of the city churches still stood clear of their surroundings, but St. Paul’s dominated the area …
Christmas 1940 had been relatively quiet, however on the evening of the 29th December a large bomber force appeared over the City just after 6pm and for just over the next three hours incendiary bombs rained down on the City along with high explosive bombs. This combination caused maximum damage. High explosive bombs would rip buildings apart, exposing their contents to the impact of the incendiaries. During the peak of the raid over 300 incendiary bombs a minute were falling across the City and St. Paul’s quickly became surrounded by a sea of flame, fire crossing over the small streets and debris falling all around. These pictures show what was considered to be the almost miraculous survival of St Paul’s Cathedral …
Two things strike me about the lower photograph. Firstly how dirty the cathedral stonework had become after over 300 years of London pollution. Secondly, two of those shrapnel marks that stand out so clearly against the soot-stained cathedral are still preserved today …
You can see where other scars from the bombing have been repaired.
This aerial view shows how close the Cathedral came to destruction …
Copyright : Popperfoto – Getty Images.
The view today …
As a result of the bombing, many of the narrow alleys nearby dating from medieval times simply disappeared as did Paternoster Row (although the name still lives on) …
Copyright : Guildhall Library.
This picture is entitled ‘Prince Albert raises his hat as Holborn Circus burns behind him‘ …
Copyright : Guildhall Library.
And he is still there in the same jaunty pose, albeit relocated a few yards to the east. You can read more about the statue here …
St Clement Danes was seriously damaged …
Copyright : Associated Press.
But eighty years later Dr Johnson carries on nonchalantly reading his book. He is no longer imprisoned behind railings and has a fully restored church behind him …
The building still bears its Second World War scars …
In the book I consulted for these photographs the good Doctor gets a further mention …
Copyright : Guildhall Library.
Nothing much has changed. The photograph above is looking south from Fleet Street, this is the view today looking north …
St Mary-le-Bow was completely gutted. I was moved by this poignant picture of a service being conducted in the roofless building in 1941 …
Copyright : Popperfoto – Getty Images.
I am pretty sure that the window behind them that gives the unusual view of St Paul’s has now been filled with this beautiful stained glass work by John Hayward. Here the Virgin Mary cradles the church named after her as if it were a child, surrounded by church spires that survived the Blitz …
St Lawrence Jewry was also terribly damaged with only the walls and steeple remaining. This picture was taken on 30th December 1940 …
Copyright : Media Storehouse.
Now fully restored, it contains some of my favourite stained glass by Christopher Webb. In one window an angel holds the roofless, windowless church filled with rubble. In the background St Paul’s is illuminated by flames and searchlights pierce the sky as buildings burn …
In another the angel holds the restored building …
It’s impossible to consider the history of London without referencing some of the great disasters which have befallen it in the past and last year, living in Covid times, I published a piece about the terrible pestilence of 1665 : Samuel Pepys and the Plague – ‘God preserve us all‘.
I’m not making direct comparisons between these past disasters and the current pandemic – just reminding myself that even after terrible events a kind of normality usually returns, although life is never exactly the same as before. What seems to be unchanging, however, is people’s resilience and a spirit of helping others that I find positively uplifting.
I am indebted to the author of this book for some of the wartime photographs. It also contains a fascinating commentary …
I have also used quotations and pictures from from the excellent London Inheritance blog which you can access here.
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Women feature on many City sculptures (often in an allegorical role) and I have been on another sculpture safari to see how many I can identify. I have written about female sculptures twice before and you can find links here and here.
In quite a few cases they are located high up on buildings and so are easily missed.
A good example is this pediment group on what once was the Cripplegate Institute building on Golden Lane (EC1Y 0RR) …
Education is seated in the centre, whilst Art and Science recline at either side. Although the building opened in 1896 the pediment was only added in 1910-11 when the upper stories were modified to provide, among other facilities, a rifle range.
You can read much more about the Institute in the excellent London Inheritance blog which also contains this 1947 photograph highlighting the vast extent of the wartime bomb damage. The Institute building is circled in red …
If you stand outside the Royal Exchange you will be rewarded with two more female figures along with the mysterious Magic Square, but again you have to look up.
The first lady is sited in a pediment above the Bank of England and is known as The Lady of the Bank …
Sculptor Charles Wheeler 1929-1930.
She is seated on a globe and her right hand holds a cloak which billows out to her left. Her left hand holds a temple-like building which contains a miniature relief of the Lady herself and beside her right leg is a cascade of coins. She is a replacement for the original ‘Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’, which resembled Britannia, since it was considered stylistically incompatible with the new building. She is intended to represent ‘the stability and security of the Bank of England’. Inside the wreath on the right is the date of construction in Roman numerals, MCMXXX.
On the corner across Bank junction is the impressive NatWest building and if you look up you will see this (rather grubby) allegorical group …
Sculptor Ernest Gillick – 1931-2.
Britannia rises on a winged seat, flanked by Mercury (representing Commerce) and Truth with his torch. At Britannia’s knees are crouching nude females representing Higher and Lower Mathematics. Higher Mathematics, on the left, holds a carved version of Dürer’s Magic Square, a numerical acrostic whose numbers add up to 34 when added horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Lower mathematics holds a pen and a book whilst beside her two owls sit on piles of books.
The square is not very clear now due to the dirt on the carving so here are the numbers it contains …
Dürer included it in an engraving entitled Melancholia I …
It can be seen in the top right hand corner and you can read more about it here and here.
Nearby in Prince’s Street, on the same building, you can view this elegant lady at street level …
Sculptor Charles Doman – 1931.
Representing Prosperity, she holds a basket with a rich assortment of fruit and corn.
You have to stretch your neck if you want to examine this relief sculpture at 7 Lothbury (EC2R 7HH) …
Sculptor James Redfern – 1866.
It is rather unusual and is intended as a pastiche of a late medieval Venetian palace. A crowned female figure at the centre sits on a padlocked strong-box and writes in a ledger held up for her by a standing woman with a bunch of large keys suspended from her girdle. Other figures include a woman holding a model steam engine and another figure holding a model boat.
It’s a fascinating building and you can read more about it here.
The frieze on the Institute of Chartered Accountants is magnificent and was intended as a grand symbolic depiction of all the areas of human activity which have benefited from the services of accountants (EC2R 7EF). Groups of figures represent the arts, science, crafts, education, commerce, manufactures, agriculture, mining, railways, shipping and India and the Colonies. I have chosen a few with female figures and the first is entitled ‘Crafts’ …
The shield in the tree is inscribed Laborare est Orare – to work is to pray. To the left, two women represent ‘workers in metal’, the one on the left is holding a sword. On the other side of the panel are ‘Pottery’, a woman with a two-handled vase, and ‘Textiles’, a woman with a weaving frame.
Next is ‘Education’ …
The group on the left represents ‘Early Training’. A mother leads her son, who is carrying a cricket bat, towards a schoolmaster wearing a gown and carrying a textbook. On the other side is a student ‘in collegiate dress’ and holding a book, and a ‘College Don’ wearing a mortar-board and gown.
Onward to ‘Manufactures’ …
Behind the allegorical lady, and just about visible, are beehives ‘betokening industry’. The two women on the left represent ‘Fabrics’ – one holds a bolt of cloth and the other a shuttle and a spool of yarn. The two men on the right represent ‘Hardware goods’. The smith has his shirt open and stands next to an anvil. The other is ‘a Sheffield Knife Grinder’ feeling a chisel blade.
Another example is ‘Agriculture’ …
On the left are two men – a sower and a mower. On the other side are two girls – one reaping and the other carrying a basket of fruit.
In my favourite sculpture from the building Lady Justice looks like she has stepped out of her niche in order to upstage the accountants number-crunching away behind her …
She appears frequently in allegorical representations around the City and I have written about them before. If you are interested you can find my blog here.
You can see her again on the Old Bailey behind my final sculpture, the Peace drinking fountain in the Smithfield Rotunda Garden (EC1A 9DY). She is depicted with her right hand raised in a gesture of blessing while her left holds an olive branch …
Sculptors John Birnie Philip and Farmer & Brindley – 1871-3.
The structure was erected by the Corporation’s Market Improvement Committee in 1873 a few years after the armistice between France and Prussia was signed in 1871. The 11m-high fountain originally comprised a huge stone canopy in an eclectic style with four corner figures of Temperance, Hope, Faith and Charity but the structure fell into disrepair and was taken down. The illustration below appeared in The Builder magazine in 1871 …
I thought I’d add some light relief in these difficult times.
Happy Clerkenwell gnomes …
Santa’s elves, with appropriate face coverings, seconded for Covid prevention duty …
An optician on London Wall goes for the ‘minimalist’ window display approach …
And finally, more spooky clothes models to add to the collection …
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I think this picture tells a story. The Gresham grasshopper on the roof of the Royal Exchange is dwarfed by the new monster office block on Bishopsgate and, to a lesser extent, the Cheesegrater. Will these buildings now ever be full?
Outside the Exchange is this handsome chap, sitting without saddle or stirrups, on his fine steed …
Erected in 1844, it is, of course, the Duke of Wellington but the statue was not created to celebrate just his military achievements. On 19th July 1838 the Court of Common Council of the City of London agreed to a contribution of £500 towards its cost in appreciation of his efforts in assisting the passage of the London Bridge Approaches Act 1827. This Act led to the creation of King William Street. The government donated the metal, which is bronze from captured enemy cannon melted down after the Battle of Waterloo …
Not everyone approved. A writer to The Times declared …
…did his Grace ride at Waterloo without a saddle, without boots, without a hat and carrying his own despatches? … Is the charger supposed to be neighing to a blast of trumpets, or whinnying to the mare in the Mansion House?
Nearby is the war memorial to the London Troops …
Standing on either side of the plinth are two soldiers of the London regiments, one middle-aged the other more youthful. It was unveiled on 12 November 1920 …
A leader in The Times was entitled ‘Our London Soldiers’ and extolled the bravery of the men who came …
… from counting-house and shop, from the far-reaching suburbs and the thronged centres … it will serve as a stimulus to the sense of unity and to the sense of duty now growing in our vast and diverse population.
At the bottom of the list of battalions, one in particular caught my eye, the Cyclists …
When visiting the Imperial War Museum I came across a postcard of this splendid recruitment poster from 1912. It is poignant to look at this picture with its pretty village setting and then think of the industrial age war of slaughter, mud and filth, that was soon to follow …
Often described as ‘standing at the back’ of the Royal Exchange, is a statue to a remarkable man – Paul Julius Reuter. The rough-cut granite sculpture by the Oxford-based sculptor Michael Black commemorates the 19th-century pioneer of communications and news delivery. It is a fitting place for the statue because the stone head faces the Royal Exchange which was the reason why Reuter set up his business in the City. He established his offices in 1851 on the opposite side of the walkway to the Royal Exchange – in other words, they were to the east of the Royal Exchange. The stone monument was erected by Reuters to mark the 125th anniversary of the Reuters Foundation. It was unveiled by Edmund L de Rothschild on 18 October 1976 …
The life of Reuter was most interesting. Having started his career as a humble clerk in a bank, he went on to ‘see the future’ of transmitting the news – regardless of whether it was financial or world news. If the ‘modern’ technology of telegraphy – also known then as Telegrams – was not in place, Reuter used carrier pigeons and even canisters floating in the sea to convey news as fast as possible. Such was his ambition to be the first with the news.
Just across the road is another bearded gentleman, studiously studying some plans. James Henry Greathead was a South African engineer (note the hat) who invented what was to become known as the Greathead Shield. He came to be here on Cornhill because a new ventilation shaft was needed for Bank Underground Station and it was decided that he should be honoured on the plinth covering the shaft …
The Shield enabled the London Underground to be constructed at greater depths through the London clay. The miners doing the tunneling, using pneumatic spades and hand shovels, would create a cavity in the earth where the Shield would be inserted to hold back the walls whilst the miners installed cast-iron segments to create a ring. The process would be repeated until a tunnel had formed in the shape of a ‘tube’, which is where we get the nickname for the network today. A plaque on the side of the plinth shows the men at work …
What about this fine fellow dominating the small courtyard outside St Mary-le-Bow (sporting another great beard) …
This is Captain John Smith. A colonial adventurer, Smith was a Citizen and Cordwainer, and set sail from Blackwall to found the colony of Virginia in 1606. Following a period as the prisoner of the native Americans he became head of the settler’s colony before returning to London in 1609-10. He later claimed that during his captivity his life had been saved by ‘Princess’ Pocahontas who pleaded with her father, the paramount Chief, that he be spared execution. Doubt has been cast on this story but early histories did establish that Pocahontas befriended Smith and the Jamestown colony. She often went to the settlement and played games with the boys there. When the colonists were starving, ‘every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought him [Smith] so much provision that saved many of their lives that else for all this had starved with hunger’.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother unveiled the statue on 31st October 1960 and you can watch a Pathe News film of the event here.
Incidentally, Pocahontas went on to marry an Englishman, John Rolfe, visited London, and became quite a celebrity. Sadly she died on the return journey from causes unknown and was buried in St George’s Church Gravesend. Her grave has since been lost.
This is a 1616 portrait engraving of her by Simon de Passe. What a super hat …
She was also commemorated on a 1907 postage stamp, the first native American to be honoured in this way …
Now another adventurous gentleman.
A memorial to Admiral Phillip was originally erected at St Mildred’s Church Bread Street. Although the church was destroyed by enemy action in 1941 the bronze bust was salvaged from its ruins. This modern copy can now be found on the south side of the New Change shopping centre, the original is in St Mary-le-Bow church …
The plaque makes interesting reading …
And now a woman and a man dressed somewhat… er … unconventionally.
Let’s start with this extraordinary statue at 193 Fleet Street now, sadly, rather weathered …
I always thought that it resembled a rather effeminate youth but it is in fact a woman disguised as a pageboy, her name, Kaled, appears just under her right foot.
It is by Giuseppe Grandi, and dates from 1872. The shop owner, George Attenborough, had a niche created specially for it over the front door. Kaled is the page of Count Lara in Bryon’s poetic story of a nobleman who returns to his ancestral lands to restore justice. He antagonises the neighbouring chieftains who attack and kill him. Kaled stays with his master and lover to the end, when it is revealed he is in fact a woman. (Spoiler alert) She goes mad from grief and dies.
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.
Also in the gallery is this David Wynne sculpture of Prince Charles …
He just doesn’t look happy, does he? Maybe he wasn’t too keen on the rather spiky modern version of a coronet that he is wearing here at his 1969 Investiture as Prince of Wales. It was designed by a committee chaired by his auntie Princess Margaret’s husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowdon). The globe and cross at the top was originally intended to be solid gold but the committee concluded that this would be far too heavy. The solution was to use a gold plated ping-pong ball – which is why I always smile at this portrayal of the Prince (and possibly why he doesn’t appear to have ever worn the item again).
Just by way of further light relief I have found another spooky clothes model to add to my collection (see last week’s blog) …
And these ‘eyebrows’ in the Cheapside Sunken Garden made me laugh. Part of the London Festival of Architecture, they entitled Look Up and are by Oli Colman …
Finally, I loved this joyful Hermes shop window at the Royal Exchange …
As is often the case I am grateful to Philip Ward-Jackson for much of the detail about the sculptures. I highly recommend his book Public Sculpture of the City of London, still available at Waterstones.
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I started my walk in Lime Street and just by Lloyd’s is the impressive Asia House. It was built in 1912-13 and designed by George Val Myer when he was only 30. His best known work is the BBC’s Broadcasting House on Portland Place …
What makes it particularly interesting are the human figures. They were carved by John Broad of Doulton Ceramics and are entitled Japanese Man and Woman. He holds a model ship and a scroll …
She holds a fan and a paintbrush. Although she isn’t described anywhere as a Geisha I have just made that assumption because she looks so elegantly traditional and is obviously demonstrating artistic talents …
Beneath the pediment another lady sits enthroned, legs nonchalantly crossed, against a stylised sunburst motif …
Her headgear is very elaborate and she has dragons to her right and left.
The building was originally the premises of Mitsui & Co Ltd, a Tokyo firm described in the 1913 Post Office Directory as ‘steamship owners and general commission merchants, export and import’. The current tenant is the Scor Reinsurance Company.
The new skyscraper on Bishopsgate looms over the Victorian market …
During my walk I came across three examples of the current Sculpture in the City initiative.
Inside the market is The Source by Patrick Tuttofuoco which ‘depicts the artist’s hands as he mimes some words conveyed using a sign language’ …
Opposite Lloyd’s is a sign indicating that you have arrived in Arcadia (Utopia) rather than just the main entrance to the Willis Towers Watson building …
The artist, Leo Fitzmaurice, ‘has substituted the factual information, usually found on these signs, for something more poetic, allowing viewers to enjoy this material, along with the space around it in a new and more open-ended way’.
Nearby in Cullum Street (EC3M 7JJ) is Series Industrial Windows 1 by Marisa Ferreira …
The information notice tells us that ‘the artwork invokes Pierre Nora’s notion of ‘lieux de mémoire’ to reflect the urban landscape as fragment, memory and vision and to question how industrial ruins solicit affective, imaginative and sensual engagements with the past’.
Also in Cullum Street is the unusual Art Nouveau Bolton House. I haven’t been able to find out a lot more about it apart from the architect (A. Selby) and that it’s reportedly named after Prior Bolton who had close connections with St Bartholomew the Great (which I have written about here).
It’s blue and white faience with strong Moorish influences …
The building was completed in 1907, a few years before Art Nouveau went out of fashion.
In the market again, I always smile when I come across Old Tom’s Bar …
Old Tom was a gander from Ostend in Belgium who is said to have arrived in the Capital having followed a female member of his flock who took his fancy! Despite the swift dispatch of the other 34,000 members of his party, somehow Tom miraculously managed to survive the dinner table and became a regular fixture at the market and the surrounding inns, who kept scraps aside for him.
So beloved was Old Tom that he even made it into the Times Newspaper! Below is his obituary, published on 16 April 1835:
In memory of Old Tom the Gander. Obit 19th March, 1835, aetat, 37 years, 9 months, and 6 days.
‘This famous gander, while in stubble, Fed freely, without care or trouble: Grew fat with corn and sitting still, And scarce could cross the barn-door sill: And seldom waddled forth to cool His belly in the neighbouring pool. Transplanted to another scene, He stalk’d in state o’er Calais-green, With full five hundred geese behind, To his superior care consign’d, Whom readily he would engage To lead in march ten miles a-stage. Thus a decoy he lived and died, The chief of geese, the poulterer’s pride.’
Unfortunately, I can find no reliable contemporary picture of him. Despite claims to the contrary, he is not represented, along with a little boy, above the old Midland Bank Building on Poultry. The goose there was a suggestion by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens to commemorate its original market function.
On my way to the Cheesegrater I spotted this reflection of the Gherkin in the glass walls of The Scalpel along with two of the crosses on St Andrew Undershaft’s pinnacles …
Outside the Cheesegrater, this Godlike figure entitled Navigation holds a passenger ship in his left hand and is flanked by a binnacle and a ship’s wheel. Originally owned by the P&O Banking Corporation, he once looked down from the facade of their building at the junction of Leadenhall Street and St Mary Axe. I smiled because he seems to be glancing rather suspiciously at the replica maypole that has been installed next to him …
It references the maypole that once stood nearby outside St Andrew Undershaft (so called because the maypole alongside it was taller than the church). The pole was set up opposite the church every year until Mayday 1517 when the tradition was suspended after the City apprentices (always a volatile bunch) rioted against foreigners. Public gatherings on Mayday were therefore to be discouraged and the pole was hung up nearby in the appropriately named Shaft Alley. In 1549 the vicar of St Catharine Cree denounced the maypole as a pagan symbol and got his listeners so agitated they pulled the pole from its moorings, cut it up and burned it.
Here is a picture of the church around 1910. You can see the Navigation statue on the building on the left …
The area has been brightened up recently with the ventilation exits covered in bold designs …
On a lighthearted note, I am collecting pictures of weird and creepy clothes models. There are these in Lime Street …
To add to these in Eastcheap …
And finally, an old Japanese proverb pasted on to the window of a temporarily closed restaurant …
I hope you have enjoyed today’s blog.
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I do like a good clock story and the City has quite a few of them – from the clock that killed a man to the one mentioned in a famous poem.
I’ll start, however, with this beauty sited alongside St Magnus the Martyr on Lower Thames Street (EC3R 6DN) …
The clock was the gift of the Lord Mayor, Sir Charles Duncombe. The story goes that when he was a young apprentice, and rather poor, he missed an important meeting with his master on London Bridge because he had no way of telling the time. He vowed that, if ever he became rich, he would erect a clock in the vicinity and this magnificent example of the clockmakers’ art was the result. The artisan was Langley Bradley of Fenchurch Street who had worked with Sir Christopher Wren on several projects, including the early clock that adorned St. Paul’s Cathedral. Wren was evidently impressed with Bradley’s work since, in a letter the Lord Chamberlain’s Office in 1711, he went so far as to describe him as ‘a very able artist, very reasonable in his prices’.
In 1709 St Magnus was located at the north side of the ‘old’ London Bridge as this 18th century map illustrates …
You can also see the clock and its proximity to the bridge in this etching by Edward William Cooke entitled Part of Old London-Bridge, St Magnus and the Monument, taken at Low-water, August 15th, 1831.
Some of you may remember the charming neo-gothic Mappin & Webb building that was controversially demolished in 1994 …
It was replaced by Number 1 Poultry, designed by James Stirling and destined to become the youngest City building to be listed as Grade II* …
Prince Charles was unimpressed and said it resembled ‘a 1930s wireless set’.
I prefer it, however, to the Mies van der Rohe skyscraper that was also considered …
If you walk through the new building at street level you’ll see that the old Mappin & Webb clock has been incorporated …
And a wonderful frieze from the old building illustrating royal processions has also been preserved and relocated facing Poultry. Here is a small section …
King Charles II rides past accompanied by his pet spaniels
Now the clock that killed a man. Here it is attached to the Royal Courts of Justice – designed by George Edmund Street, it has been described as ‘exuberant’ …
On 5th November 1954 a clock mechanic, Thomas Manners, was killed when his clothes were caught up in the machinery as he wound up the mechanism. He had been carrying out this task every week since 1937, as well as looking after the 800 or so other clocks in the law court buildings. You can read the press cutting I came across here.
In 1711 Nicholas Hawksmoor was fifty years old yet, although he had already worked with Christopher Wren on St Paul’s Cathedral and for John Vanbrugh on Castle Howard, the buildings that were to make his name were still to come. In that year, an Act of Parliament created the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches to serve the growing population on the fringes of the expanding city.
Nicholas Hawksmoor c1661-1736.
Only twelve of these churches were ever built, but Hawksmoor designed six of them and – miraculously – they have all survived, displaying his unique architectural talent to subsequent generations and permitting his reputation to rise as time has passed. One of them is St Mary Woolnoth.
The outside of the church is very unusual and it has a fine position on the corner of King William Street and Lombard Street, just off the major Bank road junction (EC3V 9AN). The clock is mentioned in a famous poem …
In a corner sits the clock’s mechanism surrounded by a cover on which is etched an extract from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland …
Eliot worked nearby in Lloyds Bank and, having watched the commuters trudge over London Bridge, wrote these cheerful lines …
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
No doubt if you were not at the office by the ‘final stroke of nine’ you were going to be late.
I have always liked this clock at the corner of Fleet Street and Ludgate Circus …
I read somewhere that, during the Blitz, an incendiary device became entangled in the ball at the top and dangled there for hours until it was deactivated. I often have this image in my head of gently swaying ordnance when I walk up Fleet Street.
The building was originally the London headquarters of the Thomas Cook Travel Agency and, since Mr Cook was a keen supporter of the temperance movement, the first floor contained a temperance hotel. The building is adorned with numerous charming cherubs …
‘This is where we’re going on holiday’.
There are dozens of City cherubs and I have written about some of them here.
The Royal Exchange has two ‘twin’ clocks, both exactly the same, one facing Threadneedle Street and one facing Cornhill …
Britannia and Neptune hold a shield that contains an image of Gresham’s original Royal Exchange whilst above Atlas lifts a globe. I have seen it described as a Valentine’s Day clock because of the two red hearts. Ahhhh, sweet!
Here’s Atlas again, straining under his burden in King Street …
The building was once the home of the Atlas Insurance Company.
The clock at the church of St Edmund King and Martyr in Lombard Street sports a delicate, pretty crown (EC3V 9EA) …
This is Throgmorton Street at the turn of the last century, straw hats (or boaters) being clearly in fashion. You’ll find a short history of them here…
The clock on the left is still there (EC2N 2AT) …
You’ll see that Warnford Court was rebuilt in 1884 but, out of interest, I did a bit more research and came across this list of the tenants in 1842 …
Stock brokers, solicitors and merchants mainly but also a hatter, a ‘commercial teacher’, an auctioneer and, strangely, the Danish Consul General’s Office. Interestingly, the Bolivar Mining Association was also located there. The Association was formed to work copper mines at Aroa, Venezuela and were owned for some time by the Bolivar family who leased them to an English company to help finance the war of independence. You can read more here.
Fleet Street has a lot to offer when it comes to clock spotting.
How about this masterpiece …
Installed just after the Great Fire of London in 1671, it was the first clock in London to have a minute hand, with two figures (perhaps representing Gog and Magog) striking the hours and quarters with clubs, turning their heads whilst doing so.
The present version of the clock was installed in 1738 before, in 1828, being moved to the 3rd Marquess of Hertford’s house in Regent’s Park. The Great War saw the Regent’s Park residence housing soldiers blinded from combat. The charity which undertook this went on to name itself after where the clock in the house came from: St Dunstan’s. It was returned to the Church in 1935 by Lord Rothermere to mark the Silver Jubilee of King George V. You can read a lot more about its history here.
If you like the occasional burst of colour, look up at this Art Deco treat, also in Fleet Street outside the old offices of the Daily Telegraph (EC4A 2BB) …
I am really pleased to report that the refurbishment of Bracken House is now complete and we can see again the extraordinary Zodiacal clock on the side of the building that faces Cannon Street (EC3M 9JA).
Here it is in all its glory …
If you look more closely at the centre this is what you will see …
On the gilt bronze sunburst at the centre you can clearly make out the features of Winston Churchill. The building used to be the headquarters of the Financial Times and is named after Brendan Bracken, its chief editor after the war.
During the War Bracken served in Churchill’s wartime cabinet as Minister of Information. George Orwell worked under Bracken on the BBC’s Indian Service and deeply resented wartime censorship and the need to manipulate information. If you like slightly wacky theories, there is one that the sinister ‘Leader’ in Orwell’s novel 1984, Big Brother, was inspired by Bracken, who was customarily referred to as ‘BB’ by his Ministry employees.
The oddly-shaped Blackfriar pub on Queen Victoria Street displays a pretty clock just above the jolly friar’s head …
Unfortunately it hasn’t worked for long time.
This wise old owl looks across the road to the north side of London Bridge, observing the thousands of commuters flowing back and forth every day from London Bridge Station (although not so many lately!). He is perched outside what was once the offices of the Guardian Royal Exchange Insurance Company (later just ‘Guardian’) and was for a while their symbol, presumably signifying wisdom and watchfulness.
Rising from the flames and just about to take off over the City is the legendary Phoenix bird and from 1915 until 1983 this was the headquarters of the Phoenix Assurance Company at 5 King William Street. One can see why the Phoenix legend of rebirth and restoration appealed as a name for an insurer (EC4N 7DA).
The clock shows the name of the present tenants, Daiwa Capital Markets.
Before clocks there were, of course, sundials and there are many fine examples in the City – both old and relatively new.
These are my two favourites …
The Jacobean church of St Katharine Cree in Leadenhall Street was built between 1628 and 1630 and survived the Great Fire of 1666. On the south wall is this wonderful dial, circa 1700, which is described as having ‘gilded embellishments including declining lines, Babylonian/Latin hours and Zodiac signs’. Its Latin motto Non Sine Lumine means Nothing without Light.
And this dial in Fournier Street …
It was once a Protestant church, then a Methodist Chapel, next a Jewish synagogue and is now the Brick Lane Mosque (E1 6QL).
In the late 17th century some 40-50,000 French Protestants, known as Huguenots, fleeing persecution in France, arrived in England with around half settling in Spitalfields. They started a local silk-weaving industry and, incidentally, gave us a new word ‘refugee’ from the French word réfugié, ‘one who seeks sanctuary’. They flourished and established this church in 1743 naming it La Neuve Eglise (The New Church) and installed the sundial we can see today. The Latin motto Umbra sumus translates as ‘we are shadow’, and is taken from Horace’s statement Pulvis et umbra sumus, meaning ‘We are dust and shadow’.
I have written in some detail about sundials in an earlier blog which you can find here.
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PS Long time readers of this blog will recognise some of the above since I have written about clocks before. However, I had to cheat a bit since I took last week off! I hope the additional information I have included has meant that this week’s edition was still enjoyable.
Queen Victoria Street was created in 1871 as an extension to the then new Victoria Embankment and led directly to the Mansion House. The new street was incredibly expensive to build since, obviously, the properties standing in its path had to be purchased before demolition. The cost, over £2,000,000, equates to more than two billion pounds in equivalent value today.
On this extract from the 1847 Reynolds’s Splendid New Map of London a red line has been drawn to show how Queen Victoria Street sliced its way across the City …
This picture gives an idea of the extent of the demolition …
I wanted to try to stand as closely as possible where this picture was taken and, pausing in the street, I looked up and this is what I saw (EC4V 4BQ) …
I climbed some steps and in a grim courtyard outside the gruesome Baynard House is a quite extraordinary sculpture, The Seven Ages of Man by Richard Kindersley (1980) …
At first the infant – mewing and puking in the nurse’s arms …then the whining schoolboy creeping like a snail unwillingly to school … then the lover … then a soldier full of strange oaths …
… and then the justice full of wise saws … then the sixth age …the big manly voice turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound … then second childishness and mere oblivion, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
(Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It Act II Scene vii)
Here is the view from the terrace taken from approximately the same spot as the demolition picture above …
This image and several of the illustrations in today’s blog have been taken from the excellent blog A London Inheritancewhich I wholeheartedly recommend.
By the way, the terrace leads to Blackfriars Station and it’s worth popping in to see this example of the station’s past importance.
The station was badly damaged during the Second World War but the wall displaying a selection of the locations you could catch a train to survived and you can see it today in the ticket hall. It was part of the original façade of the 1886 station (originally known as St Paul’s) and features the names of 54 destinations – each painstakingly carved into separate sandstone blocks …
The letters are gilded in 24 carat gold leaf …
Where shall we buy a ticket to today? Crystal Palace or Marseilles? Westgate-on-Sea or St Petersburg? Tough choices!
Moving westward on the north side of Queen Victoria Street you will find the College of Arms (EC4V 4BT). Founded in 1484, this is where you go to get your family coat of arms designed and granted. As well as this function, the College maintains registers of arms, pedigrees, genealogies, Royal Licences, changes of name, and flags. The officers who run the College have some splendid titles such as Clarenceaux King of Arms, Rouge Dragon Persuivant and various Heralds and Heralds Extraordinary.
The original street plan included the complete demolition of their building but the Heralds objected strongly. As a result Queen Victoria Street merely sliced off the south east and south west wings, requiring remodelling of the two stumps. You can see how the colour of the new brickwork differs from the original in this picture …
This print from 1768 shows the building before the 1871 alterations …
Also on the north side is the 1933 Faraday Building, once one of the major hubs for international and national telephone circuits and operator services (EC4V 4BT) …
Look just above the line of the second set of windows and, in the position associated with a key stone, there are a series of carvings, one above each window, that tell the story of what was state of the art telecommunications at the time the building was constructed.
A bang up to date telephone …
Cables that carried the telephone signal …
An electromagnetic relay …
A Horse Shoe Magnet …
The imposing entrance doors are sadly defaced with signage …
There are two nice places to sit down and rest.
The first I would recommend is the Cleary Garden (EC4V 2AR) …
It is named after Fred Cleary who, during the 1970s, was instrumental in encouraging the planting of trees and the creation of new gardens throughout the square mile. During the blitz, the house which once stood here was destroyed exposing the cellars. A shoemaker called Joe Brandis decided that he would create a garden from the rubble, collecting mud from the river banks and transporting soil from his own garden in Walthamstow to the site. His success was such that on 29th July 1949 Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother visited his handiwork.
My second recommendation, if you seek some refreshment in extraordinary surroundings, is the Black Friar pub (EC4V 4EG) …
The interior is so amazing that I am going to write about it in more detail in a later blog dedicated to pubs. In the meantime, here are a few pictures to give you some idea of what to expect …
You can watch an interesting video about the pub and its history here.
And finally, it’s cute pigeon time. I saw this one dozing off whilst using a spotlight to dry his feathers and warm his bottom. He’s also managing to do this whilst balanced on one leg …
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Sometimes it’s just nice to set out without a specific theme or objective in mind and see what turns up.
Last week I was very lucky almost straight away because I came across these two members of the City of London mounted police perfectly posed outside the Royal Exchange …
The riders and horses are based in Wood Street police station where there is a custom made stable block. The station was built in 1965, when mounted police were a much more common sight, but the officers and horses will be moving out at the end of December and the building converted to accommodation. The ladies told me that they would be temporarily based with the Metropolitan Police in the West End but will still be returning regularly to patrol the City. You can read more about the horses’ training etc. here.
Watching out over a very quiet City …
Now that Autumn is here I try to capture the changing foliage and light whenever I can. Here’s St Giles Cripplegate as seen from the podium …
And here’s a view looking north west from Aldgate …
I paid a visit to the lovely little Goldsmith’s Garden on Gresham Street which used to be the churchyard of St John Zachary (destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666) …
It was fun to encounter this pigeon taking a leisurely shower …
He also meticulously washed under his wings – clearly a bird keen on personal freshness …
A little further along the road at St Anne and St Agnes red bricks meet Autumn leaves …
The Barbican often provides some interesting shadows, colours and reflections …
St Paul’s Cathedral with the Firefighter’s Memorial in the foreground …
I am not a great fan of some of the new City architecture but the colours on these buildings in Old Bailey are rather jolly …
The tower of St Alban in Wood Street, all that remained of Wren’s original church after the Blitz …
Next to St Paul’s is the only surviving part of the Church of St Augustine, also badly damaged in the War and partially rebuilt in 1966 …
Here St Botolph Without Aldgate is framed by trees and some Art in the City …
A closer view …
There is also some really good news in these difficult times. The gardens at Finsbury Circus have been handed back to the City now that the Crossrail work there is finished and the Mayor has launched a competition as to how they might be redesigned. You can find details here. As you can see from my picture, it really is a blank canvas …
Some of the offices on the Circus have worked hard on their flower displays …
These merge nicely with the floral decorated stonework …
Finally, a few quirky items.
Caught in mid-air – Parkour at the Barbican …
… and how on earth did these quad bikes end up in a skip on Beech Street?
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