The big news is that the Magnolia trees beside St Giles are in bloom – this lasts less than a month so has to be savoured …
The Silk Street beds are looking good …
Some rogue visitors among the Polyanthus (possibly bulbs from last year) …
Must be fun to play amongst the daffodils …
St Giles silhouettes at dusk …
From the St Alphage Highwalk …
Magnolia Stellata …
Another highlight of the week was a guided walk around some of the fenced off areas of Bunhill Burial Ground organised by the Friends of City Gardens. The bunting and brochures were out to greet us …
For a detailed history of Bunhill, do have a look at my February 2022 blog. Relevant to our stroll, however, is the Act of Uniformity of 1663. This established the Church of England as the national church and at the same time created a distinct category of Christian believers who wished to remain outside the national church. These became known as the nonconformists or dissenters and Bunhill became for many of them the burial ground of choice due to its location outside the City boundary and its independence from any Established place of worship.
First stop was the earliest grave with a legible inscription, that of Theophilus Gale MA, an eminent dissenter who died in 1678 …
It is rather tucked away …
Hewas a doctor of divinity, a classical scholar and a learned theologian and philosopher. Gale is held in high regard in America’s Harvard University since, when he died, he left his library to the College, more than doubling its collection of books.
This is the impressive chest tomb of theologian John Owen (1618-1683) …
Bunyan spent more than ten years in prison for his beliefs and on one occasion Owen successfully negotiated his release.
This is the grave of Catherine (née Boucher; 1762 – 1831) the wife of the poet, painter, and engraver William Blake, and a vital presence and assistant throughout his life. Decorations have been laid on it by The William Blake Society …
She was the pretty, illiterate daughter of an unsuccessful market gardener from the farm village of Battersea. Her family name suggests they were Huguenots who had fled religious persecution in France. It was a highly satisfactory marriage. Blake taught Catherine to read and write (a little), to draw, to colour his designs and prints, to help him at the printing press and to see visions as he did. She believed implicitly in his genius and his visions and supported him in everything he did with charming credulity. After his death she lived chiefly for the moments when, she said, he came to sit and talk with her.
William is buried elsewhere in Bunhill, outside the fenced area …
Catherine as drawn by William (circa 1805) …
This lady’s importance is reflected in the inscription on her gravestone …
It differs somewhat from the stone in this image showing John visiting her grave in 1779 …
John Wesley was the founder of Methodism and his chapel and former home are across the road from Bunhill. He could see his mother’s grave from his bedroom on the top floor …
You can read more about my visit to his chapel here.
The large tomb at the centre of the photograph is the last resting place of Thomas Fowell Buxton of the famous Truman Hanbury Buxton brewery …
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet Buxton of Belfield and Runton, was an English Member of Parliament, brewer, passionate abolitionist and social reformer. He married Hannah Gurney, whose sister became Elizabeth Fry, and was a great friend of her brother Joseph John Gurney and the extended Gurney family …
Buxton can be seen on the back of the (last ever) £5 note which commemorated Fry’s work with women prisoners. He is the tall gentleman with glasses standing with the group in Newgate Prison …
The engraving on which the note’s image is based …
It’s entitled Mrs Fry Reading to the Prisoners in Newgate, in the year 1816.
On the way out we passed this rather strange sunken tomb of the Pottenger family …
I have not been able to find out anything about the family but the tomb is Grade II listed. The official record gives the following information: The monument takes the form of a stone chest with a coped lid and moulded base, sunk within a rectangular brick-walled well about three feet deep. (This is said to represent the original ground level within the cemetery). The sides of the chest have incised panels bearing the names of various members of the Pottenger family. The two end panels read, respectively, ‘RICHARD POTTENGER’S Vault 1761’ and ‘The Within are Gone to Rest’.
Bunhill is always wonderful to visit, and we were accompanied for most of the way by the tap-tap-tapping of a resident woodpecker.
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On my recent visit to Abney Park I came across this bench …
Let me quote from one of the published tributes to the Mally Powell who is remembered here: ‘Mally Powell was the singer with the cult glam disco funk band Zip Zip Undo Me. He was the writer of great songs including (Mind Your) Plums and Fist (“She’s back, she’s risen, she’s bent the bars of Holloway Prison”). Dressed in leather, ripped fishnets, sequins, and fake fur, Mally swirled his tail in the face of current trends, avoiding the de-rigueur shoe-gazing of the period, to command the stage like a disco fuelled Iggy Pop’.
Mally in action …
He died in 2013 at the sadly young age of 48. You can see images and hear a performance here and here. Read a full obituary here.
He died in Wales and I have been unable to find out where he is buried but this bench is certainly a form of immortality (I don’t normally Google glam disco funk band singers!).
Now some more about Abney Park itself.
In the early 1800s, London’s rapid population growth proved too much for inner city burial grounds, which were literally overflowing. Parliament passed a bill in 1832 to encourage the establishment of new private cemeteries. Within ten years, seven had been established (later dubbed ‘The Magnificent Seven’ by architectural historian Hugh Meller), one of which was Abney Park.
A modest entrance in Church Street …
The site of Abney Park was formed from the estates of Fleetwood House and Abney House, the latter of which had been the home of renowned non-conformist and hymn writer Isaac Watts. This association quickly made Abney the foremost burial ground for Dissenters – those practising their religion outside the established church. It was founded on these principles, with a non-denominational chapel at its core, and was open to all, regardless of religious conviction. Over 200,000 people are laid to rest here.
Here are some of the other highlights of my visit.
Possibly the most well-known resident of Abney Park is William Booth, English methodist preacher and founder of the Salvation Army …
After a childhood marred by poverty, Booth preached to the sinners of Nottingham with Will Sansom, then moved to London in 1849, finding work as a pawnbroker. In 1851 he left his job and, after years of Methodist evangelical preaching, he founded the East London Christian Mission at Mile End in 1865. After an incident in 1878 the Salvation Army was established. With his wife Catherine, herself a formidable preacher, Booth worked hard to abolish poverty, homelessness and vice, publishing ‘In Darkest England and the Way Out’ in 1890. Operations extended worldwide to include America, France and Australia. Many other Salvationists are buried in this area …
Bostock’s lion …
Frank Bostock was a well-known menagerist responsible for the introduction of many exotic animals to Victorian England. Known as ‘the animal king’, he travelled the world. The Bostock animal arena was a main attraction at Coney Island in the early 1900s. ‘Bostock’s Arena and Jungle’ is recorded as being held at Earls Court in 1908 and then visited principal cities in the UK over the following years. At the time of his death in 1912, Bostock had over a thousand animals in his various shows. He had circus shows and amusement parks in America, Australia, Europe and South Africa. The floral tributes at his funeral took up five carriages.
Bostock and his lions. Brave chap! I think he’s pretending to be nonchalantly reading a newspaper …
PC William Frederick Tyler lost his life in the line of duty …
He was killed on 23 January 1909 by armed criminals while giving chase in what became known as ‘The Tottenham Outrage’. A wages robbery was staged by two left-wing Latvian migrants in Tottenham. The pursuit ended after an estimated 2 hours, after covering 6 miles. Sadly 10 year old Ralph Jocelyn was also fatally struck by the cross-fire. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the joint funeral for PC Tyler and Ralph on 29 January. The grade II listed monument was commissioned by the Metropolitan Police, who also paid for a plot for the Jocelyn family nearby.
The Reverend Henry Richard …
Henry Richard was born in Tregaron, Wales in 1812. After obtaining qualifications for the ministry at Highbury College, he became a Congregational minister. He was known as ‘the Apostle of Peace’, being an advocate for peace and international arbitration. He was also respected for his non-conformist and anti-slavery work. Rev’d Richard was secretary of the Peace Society from 1848-1884 and a Welsh MP from 1868-1888. After his sudden death in 1888 the Richard monument was erected by public subscription in 1891. This grand memorial is Grade II listed.
The only mausoleum permitted by the Abney Park Cemetery Company is that of Dr. Nathaniel Rogers …
Rogers, who died in 1884, was a doctor of medicine known for his philanthropic works. He edited medical books, lectured and sympathised with anti-slavery supporters. Dr Rogers was a Baptist, supporting their meetings, and involvement in the non-denominational London Missionary Society. He made donations to assist with the restoration of the Pulteney Monument at Westminster Abbey, stained glass windows at St Paul’s Cathedral, Abney Park Chapel and the Union Chapel. Twenty years before his death, Rogers designed this Grade II listed mausoleum for himself.
A portrait from his 1847 book Obituaries of eminent persons and private friends …
African-American Eric Walrond is one of the most respected Harlem Renaissance writers …
Born in Guyana, he later moved to New York in the 1920s. His work, including the classic Tropic Death, was influenced by his years growing up in the Caribbean and the slave trade’s legacy. In the 1930s he moved to England and died in London in 1966. This monument was carved by a member of Abney Park’s stone carving group. Walrond is buried in an unmarked public grave in the area behind the headstone.
James Braidwood was a fire-fighter of Scottish descent. He founded the first fire-service in Edinburgh and later became the first director of the London Fire Brigade. By 1830, Braidwood had established principles of fire fighting that were published and are still in use today …
The funeral procession was over one mile long, the hearse was tailed by 15 coaches and representatives of all London Fire Brigades, the Rifle Brigade and the police were present. You can read more about this brave man and the Tooley Street fire in my blog of the same name which you can find here.
Joanna Vassa was the daughter of the man who could claim to be Britain’s first Black activist, Olaudah Equiano alias Gustavus Vassa. Equiano was shipped to England as a slave, served in the navy and obtained his freedom in 1766. He became a writer, Methodist and anti-slavery campaigner, and wrote a groundbreaking autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life Of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, published in 1789 …
Vassa married Susannah Cullen of Soham, Cambridgeshire and they had two daughters. This monument was discovered in the early 1990s in bad condition. After restoration works funded by Abney Park Trust in 2016, it was removed from the English Heritage ‘At Risk’ register.
Abney Park Chapel …
The first foundation stone of the chapel was laid by the then Lord Mayor of London, Sir Chapman Marshall, on 20 May 1840. The architect of the chapel was William Hosking FSA (1800–1861), a professor in Architecture and Civil Engineering, and the first professor of Architecture at Kings College.
Abney Park Chapel is the oldest surviving non-denominational chapel in Europe, and is the only surviving public building by Hosking, then considered a controversial architect. Hosking planned the Chapel to reflect the lack of bias towards any one Christian sect and the cruciform plan adopted the equal arms of the Greek cross, to show the concept of equality before God. It functioned as a funerary chapel – not a place of worship.
The Chapel is the first building known to have been built by John Jay. His varied body of works included building the Victorian clock tower and the city clock of the Houses of Parliament during the 1850s and his body rests nearby …
The rich baroque sarcophagus of white stone with a curved belly, standing on four delightful lion’s paws with elaborately carved filigree at each end, is rumoured to have been sculpted by Jay himself.
It was nice to be accompanied some of the way by a friendly, territorial Robin, a bird believed by some to represent a visit by the spirit of lost loved ones …
Some miscellaneous images.
The War Memorial…
One of the 140 marked graves …
Intriguingly, I discovered two tombstones with musical notes on them and my friend Anne, doyenne of ancestry research, has found out more about the people using census records.
Henry James De Boodt appears to have been a general labourer, GPO worker and builder at various times. His son, however, was a piano tuner, so maybe Henry was a music lover and his son had the talent to decorate the memorial accordingly …
The other stone marks the grave of Gladys St Aubyn Dunn. She had at one time been a governess and at the time of the 1921 census was a music teacher for the Evening Institute. Maybe she chose the musical score herself? The poem is also rather sweet …
I caught a glimpse of an anchor …
… and investigated further …
The inscription tells the sad tale of an only child called Harry, aged just 17, drowned in an accident off the coast of Colombo.
Abney is a wonderful place. It is managed by a Trust and you can donate to its work here. There is also a nice cafe just inside the main entrance.
Incidentally, you’ll find this lion in another of the Magnificent Seven Cemeteries. It’s the tomb of Frank Bostock’s one-time partner George Wombwell …
London’s historic Smithfield meat market is to close for good after the City of London Corporation voted on Tuesday this week to pull out of plans to relocate it to Dagenham.
Smithfield became London’s livestock market in the Middle Ages and animals reared as far away as the Midlands were brought here for sale. In 1174, William Fitzstephen described it as ‘A smooth field where every Friday there is a celebrated rendezvous of fine horses to be sold… [pigs] with deep flanks, and cows and oxen of immense bulk.’ Animals were kept at Smithfield to be rested and fattened up. Once sold, they headed inside the City walls to the Newgate Shambles – the city’s main slaughterhouses – or to Eastcheap, a market in the east of the city.
There follows a brief history of both the market and the area itself and includes an extraordinary Pathé News film that I have discovered about the terrible fire that seriously damaged the market in 1958.
Smithfield was ofen used for public execution and this slate triptych was unveiled by Ken Loach in 2015 and commemorates the Great Rising of 1381 (more commonly known as the Peasants’ Revolt) …
The Revolt was led by Wat Tyler and on June 15th 1381 he had the opportunity to speak directly to the 14-year-old king, Richard II. Accompanying the King was the Lord Mayor of London William Walworth and, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Walworth ran Tyler through with his sword. Badly wounded, Tyler was carried into nearby St Bartholomew’s Hospital but, rather unsportingly, Walworth had him dragged out and decapitated. It was certainly a very dangerous time to be a poll tax protester.
Of the 288 people estimated to have been burnt for heresy during the five year reign of Mary Tudor, forty eight were killed in Smithfield. ‘Bloody Mary’ was the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and the burnings were part of her campaign to reverse the English Reformation.
The ‘Marian Martyrs’ are commemorated with this plaque erected by the Protestant Alliance in 1870 …
The gilding is a little faded in this picture. It reads …
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. The noble army of martyrs praise Thee! Within a few feet of this spot,John Rogers,John Bradford,John Philpot,and other servants of God, suffered death by fire for the faith of Christ, in the years 1555, 1556, 1557
One terrible occasion was on 16 July 1546 when Anne Askew was burnt at the stake along with John Lascelles (a lawyer and Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber), John Hadlam (a tailor from Essex) and John Hemsley (a former Franciscan friar). A great stage was built at Smithfield for the convenience of Chancellor Wriothesley, other members of the Privy Council and City dignitaries, to watch the burning in comfort …
The execution of Anne Askew and her companions – 1563 woodcut from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
Anne herself, having been illegally broken on the rack, was unable to stand, and was chained to the stake in a sitting position. You can read more about this fascinating, brave lady here.
Every burning was different; if the fire ‘caught’, it could be over relatively quickly, but on damp days, or when the wind persisted in blowing the flames away from the body, it could take up to an hour for the condemned person to die, an hour of excruciating agony.
Another famous person who suffered here was William Wallace, ‘Braveheart’ in the movie of that name. This memorial is on West Smithfield, its railings often adorned with flowers and Scottish flags …
Translations from the Latin: I tell you the truth. Freedom is what is best.Sons, never live life like slaves. And the Gaelic: Death and Victory, an old Scottish battle cry.
Smithfield wasn’t all about executions, it also hosted the famous Bartholomew Fair. This annual summer gathering ran for over 700 years. Starting in 1133 as a trade show for buyers and sellers of cloth, the food, drink and sideshows eventually became the main attraction. By the 1600s, London’s most famous fair was pure entertainment – two weeks where crowds gathered for food, drink, puppet shows, wrestlers, a ferris wheel, dancing bears and contortionists …
Many Londoners loved it but the chaos disturbed those who wanted a civilised city and Bartholomew Fair was shut down in 1855.
The market grew throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, as did the noisy procession of animals which made their way there. In Oliver Twist, published 1837–1839, Charles Dickens captured the disorder: ‘It was market morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire… the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs… the shouts, oaths and quarrelling on all sides… rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene.’
The livestock market was closed in the 1850s and construction of a covered market at Smithfield began in 1866. Horace Jones was chosen as the architect of the grand new market and you can read more about him in my blog of 8th August.
His imposing and elegant complex of buildings included the Central Meat Market, General Market and Poultry Market. All were innovatively designed to help business run smoothly in the face of mountains and mountains of meat …
The market flourished but was not lucky enough to escape the traumas of two World Wars. Several hundred Smithfield employees were killed in the 1914-18 war and civilians were caught up in a terrible event towards the end of World War II.
At 11:30 in the morning on 8th March 1945 the market was extremely busy, with long queues formed to buy from a consignment of rabbits that had just been delivered. Many in the queue were women and children. With an explosion that was heard all over London, a V2 rocket landed in a direct hit which also cast victims into railway tunnels beneath – 110 people died and many more were seriously injured …
In the Grand Avenue is a memorial …
The original commemoration of names (above the red granite plinth) is by G Hawkings & Son and was unveiled on 22 July 1921. 212 people are listed.
Between Fame and Victory holding laurel wreaths, the cartouche at the top reads …
1914-1918 Remember with thanksgiving the true and faithful men who in these years of war went forth from this place for God and the right. The names of those who returned not again are here inscribed to be honoured evermore.
The monument was refurbished in 2004/5 and unveiled on 15 June 2005 by the Princess Royal and Lord Mayor Savory. The red granite plinth had been added and refers to lives lost in ‘conflict since the Great War’. On it mention is made of the women and children although the V2 event is not specifically referred to.
‘The latin inscription on the coat of arms translates as ‘Thou hast put all things under his feet, all Sheep and Oxen’ – the motto of the Worshipful Company of Butchers.
Tragedy struck again when two firefighters lost their lives in a terrible blaze at the Union Cold Storage Company which broke out on 23 January in 1958. The fire burned for three days in the centuries-old labyrinth, which ultimately collapsed. According to news reports at the time, when the first fire engines arrived, thick acrid smoke was pouring out of the market’s maze of underground tunnels leading to cold storage rooms.
Trying to reach the source of the fire …
The Pathé News film about the fire is one of the most gripping and frightening I have ever seen. You can watch it here – take particular note of the unsatisfactory breathing apparatus the men had to wear: https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/186863/
Jack Fourt-Wells and Richard Stocking, a Station Officer and a firefighter, headed down into the dense smoke, never to be seen alive again. Once inside the pitch black labyrinth of basement rooms and small passages they searched in vain for the source of the fire but with their breathing apparatus rapidly expiring, were overcome by the thick smoke. Their colleagues found them amongst the frozen meat packets and carcasses, and immediately got them out of the tunnels. Many attempts were made to resuscitate both men but tragically they were pronounced dead at the scene.
After the fire …
Fire Brigade processes and equipment were radically revised as a result of the catastrophe. This article gives much more information – it makes fascinating, and horrifying, reading: Sixty years on from the Smithfield fire.
The report of the V2 rocket attack above mentions railway tunnels.
The market’s most revolutionary feature took advantage of London’s growing railway network. Smithfield was connected to the north, south, east and west. Metropolitan Railway freight trains passed right underneath the market. So Jones designed a massive basement of brick arches and iron girders to receive them. From there, the meat was lifted to the surface by hydraulic lift, or taken up the spiral ramp in the nearby rotunda.
A sketch from the Illustrated London News 1870 showing the arrival of an early meat train …
Anyone standing in the market basement now can watch the trains whizz past …
Smithfield was almost a city within a city – and one with its own hours.
To give customers time to buy and prepare their meat for sale the same day, the market opened at night and workers finished their shifts in the early morning. Many headed to ‘early houses’ – pubs within the market or nearby which opened early for workers.
The market was mostly filled with men. Their work might have seemed grisly to outsiders but it was a tight-knit community, full of tradition, with generations of the same families working in the same place. Until 1996, the market was heavily unionised and there were strict job divisions. You might be a puller-back, a pitcher, a shunter, shopman or bummaree.
By the 1880s, Smithfield was receiving enormous quantities of frozen meat from Argentina, New Zealand and Australia. It was a symbol of Britain’s global influence, with London at the centre. But from 1945, Smithfield gradually became less busy as meat stopped arriving through London’s docks. Britain’s trading relationships changed and supermarkets began placing orders directly with suppliers, cutting out Smithfield’s traders.
Other London Markets, like Billingsgate, Spitalfields and Covent Garden, moved out of central London. Follow this link for some fascinating photographs. Smithfield stayed, but reduced in size.
Here are some images I took last Monday.
The arrival of the Elizabeth Line has revitalised the area with new shops and restaurants popping up all the time …
The entrance to Grand Avenue …
Which remains truly grand …
Apparently, these are the most frequently photographed telephone boxes in London …
But something is clearly going on at the west end of the market …
This is the site chosen for the relocated London Museum.
If you would like to see what the site looked like before the development began here is a link to the London Inheritance blog which is, as usual, full of fascinating facts and images.
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