Symbols & Secrets – Page 130 – Walking the City of London

Dragons and Maidens

On 5th October 2017

Mythical dragons do seem to keep finding themselves guarding pretty, captive maidens who are then rescued by brave heroes who slay the poor old dragon. So I thought I would combine dragons and maidens for this blog, especially since the dragon is a well-known symbol of the City of London.

The first thing I must be clear about is that the City symbol is a dragon not a griffin!

I always used to call them griffins and that is how they are described constantly in guides to London but there are differences between the two.

A griffin (or gryphon) is a legendary creature with the body, tail and back legs of a lion; the head and wings of an eagle; and an eagle’s talons as its front feet. I have only been able to find one in the City and here it is …

*Entrance to Dunster Court, Mincing Lane*

He proudly supports the arms of the Clothworkers Company.

Dragons, on the other hand, have a serpent’s tail, tend to be scaly all over and breathe fire and smoke. Here is the City of London version …

It is made of cast iron and painted in silver with details picked out in red. It holds a shield with the City emblem of the red cross of St George and the short sword of St Paul and nine of them serve as boundary marks around the City. In addition, there are many other dragons all over the City in a variety of poses.

Their original version once graced the 1849 Coal Exchange on Lower Thames Street which was demolished in 1963. The two dragons, however, were relocated to Victoria Embankment in November of that year where they remain to this day and are much bigger than subsequent versions which are about half their size.

*From the Illustrated London News 1879 – you can just make out the dragons on the parapet over the entrance*

Here is an original dragon in his new home on Victoria Embankment…

*That’s the ‘OXO’ building behind him across the Thames*

He looks very sinister in silhouette …

Guarding the boundary between the City of London and Westminster, the Temple Bar Dragon is in a league of its own. It is taller, fiercer, very gothic and is black rather than silver. It would be quite at home in a Harry Potter story and is quite scary – maybe that’s why the Corporation Committee Chairman, having considered the Temple Bar version, chose the less flamboyant Coal Exchange dragons as boundary markers instead.

Another dragon at Temple Bar looks towards Westminster …

This Smithfield beast looks like he is just about to swoop down – perhaps for a meaty lunch …

And these two work hard supporting the roof of Leadenhall Market

And so to maidens – Mercer Maidens to be precise.

The Mercer Company is the first in precedence of the ‘Great Twelve’ livery companies of the City of London and I shall be writing in more detail about the companies in a later blog.

The Mercers’ Maiden symbol is part of the coat of arms of the Company and according to their website she first appears on a seal in 1425. Her precise origins are unknown, and there is no written evidence as to why she was chosen as the Company’s emblem. She is often depicted wearing the fashions of her time since the coat of arms was not granted until 1911 so her appearance often varied.

She was often used to mark buildings belonging to the Company and I have been strolling around the City looking for her.

The inconsistency of design is apparent here with these two maidens only a few feet apart on the same building in Old Jewry.

Here is the Mercer Hall Maiden

And one in Queen Street

And another in Gresham Street, incorporating cornucopia signifying wealth and plenty …

And finally the oldest surviving …

*The earliest surviving maiden, Corbet Court off St Michael’s Alley EC3*

As you can see, she is dated 1669 and was reinstated here after development work in 2004. Serene and beautiful, she must have witnessed much of the rebuilding of the City after the Great Fire of 1666.

Jurassic City

By The City Gent

On 28th September 2017

In Architecture

Over the years much of the City has been built with, and embellished by, many different types of stone. One of the wonderful features of some of these varieties is their tendency to contain evidence of creatures that lived literally eons ago.

Around 250 million years ago, England was submerged beneath a shallow tropical sea. Punctuated with islands and coral reefs, the scene would have looked something like the Caribbean today – which is not so surprising, given that the land mass was located at a much more southerly point on the globe. As the tiny creatures swimming in the sea died, their shells drifted down to the ocean floor. Over hundreds of thousands of years, this layer of shells built up to many feet deep. In time, about 175million years ago, the land was pushed above sea level, leaving a landscape of river deltas. South-west England was covered in a vast, calm lagoon, super-saturated with the mineral calcium carbonate. Tiny circular deposits of it formed around grains of sand, each of which is termed an oolith. After millions of years, these dots fused together into the limestone we see on our buildings today.

Look closely at the elegant limestone facade of the Guildhall Museum and Art Gallery and you will see a great collection of bivalves – oyster shells from the Jurassic period when dinosaurs really did walk the earth.

There are more bivalves in this contemporary seating at the west end of Cheapside:

As visitors walk up the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral they will rarely look down and see these spectacular fossils in the red limestone. These are orthoceras cephalopods, an ancestor to the squid that lived up to 5oo million years ago. Orthoceras could float by filling the chambers of their shells with air and moved by squirting jets of sea water. When they died their shells accumulated on the ocean floor which then was covered by sediments and subsequently over the ages transformed into stone.

Steps leading up to the West door of St Paul’s

When alive

The rings show its stages of growth

And finally, if you are walking past Pizza Express on the corner of Russia Row and Milk Street, pause for a moment to examine the round dura marble pillars that surround it and you will see a very elegant ammonite cross section.

Pillars containing fossils

Ammonites are probably the most widely known fossil and are another cephalopod. They have an attractive spiral form shell and lived in the sea between 240 and 65 million years ago – becoming extinct along with the dinosaurs.

Ammonite in a pillar outside Pizza Express

If you’d like to read more about limestone, there is a great article by Clive Aslet in the Daily Telegraph online archive from which I have drawn much of the above entitled ‘The Stone that built a country’, 20 March 2007.

City Animals 2

By The City Gent

On 14th September 2017

In Animals, Architecture, Art Deco, City Symbols

Animals are everywhere in the City and, after some really nice feedback on my previous City Animals blog, I have decided to put together another selection.

First up is this magnificent leaping fox. It appears on the exquisite Grade II listed Art Deco shopfront of the Fox company, who manufactured and repaired umbrellas. Mr Fox opened his first shop in the City in 1868 but this shop dates from 1935. You can still purchase a classy Fox umbrella if you go to their website, but the shop is now a wine bar.

Fox and Company Limited, ‘Recovers’ and ‘Repairs’, 118 London Wall, EC2

It’s easy to understand why lion heads have been chosen to adorn so many late Victorian and early 20th Century buildings. They are fierce, brave, noble, the king of the beasts and, of course, immediately recognisable as a symbol of Great Britain in the heyday of Empire.

Grrrrr …. just look at those teeth and claws. Entrance to Salisbury House, London Wall

Once surrounded by the throbbing printing presses of Fleet Street newspapers, Gough Square is today a quiet haven off the noisy main road. Now known as Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square was built by one Richard Gough, a City wool merchant, at the end of the seventeenth century. It is the only survivor from a larger development and Dr Johnson lived here from 1748 to 1759 whilst compiling his famous disctionary.

17 Gough Square

Nearby, Johnson’s most famous cat, Hodge, is remembered by this attractive bronze by John Bickley which was unveiled by the Lord Mayor, no less, in 1997. Hodge sits atop a copy of the dictionary and alongside a pair of empty oyster shells. Oysters were very affordable then and Johnson would buy them for Hodge himself. James Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, explained why:

I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature

People occasionally put coins in the shell for luck and every now and then Hodge is given a smart bow tie of pink lawyers’ ribbon.

‘A very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed’, said Johnson

And from a famous cat to mysterious mice. Nibbling a piece of cheese, they add charm to a building in Philpot Lane off Eastcheap and have been described (rather nicely, I think) as London’s smallest sculpture. Even though they have been repainted they are still a bit hard to find – so I am not saying precisely where they are, and hopefully you will enjoy looking for them. One theory is that the builders in 1862 were pestered by mice who persistently ransacked their lunch packs, so they left this little informal tribute. Another is that they commemorate a man who died during the construction of the nearby Monument to the Great Fire. Mice had eaten his lunch, but he accused a fellow worker by mistake, and fell to his death in the fight that followed. As to the true story behind the little rodents, your guess is as good as mine.

The Philpot Lane mice

And now another cat.

Hanging signs were once a major feature of London’s streets and were encouraged by Charles I in order to help people find their way around at a time when many could not read. Needless to say, they became immensely popular with businesses, and proliferated to such an extent that they posed a threat to life and limb in times of storm and windy weather. When, in 1718, one brought about the collapse of an entire building frontage and killed four people it was obvious something had to be done. Nonetheless but it was not until 1762 that businesses were forced to remove them and fix them to shopfronts instead – just as we see today. The Cat and Fiddle sign in Lombard Street harks back to a tavern of that name but was only erected in 1902, along with other replicas, to celebrate the coronation of Edward VII.

At the sign of the ‘Cat-a-Fiddling’ Lombard Street

And finally, this stunning black horse is part of the 2017 ‘Sculpture in the City’ project. It is at the corner of Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street,

‘The Black Horse’ (2015) by Mark Wallinger