Symbols & Secrets – Page 59 – Walking the City of London

Fun in the Seething Lane Garden.

On 3rd February 2022

Last Saturday I was once again drawn to the Seething Lane Garden. It was a sunny afternoon and I thought I’d revisit the wonderful carved paving stones that I have reported on before. The garden is much more open than it used to be …

These are the carvings I like best out of the 30 that are laid there..

A scene from a Punch & Judy show …

Trigger warning! They’ve dropped the baby …

A monkey sitting on a pile of books chewing a rolled up document …

A meticulous representation of a flea …

A plague doctor in 17th century PPE. He wouldn’t have known that the rat crouching cheekily at his feet was a carrier of the pestilence …

After his decapitation, the head of poor King Charles I is held up by the executioner …

A very happy lion …

A galleon under full sail …

All the carvings refer to incidents in the life of Samuel Pepys – some of which are recorded in his famous diary. In the examples above, he wrote of visiting a Punch & Judy show, of his pet monkey getting loose and misbehaving, his purchase of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (which contained the flea drawing) and his visit to the zoo to see an old lion called Crowly.

As a schoolboy he witnessed the execution of the King and in 1665 he stayed in London throughout the time of the plague (represented by the doctor). The galleon is the Royal Charles that brought Charles II back to England at the Restoration (and Pepys was on board). Trinitas refers to Trinity House where Pepys was a Master on two occasions.

He was in London during the Great Fire of 1666 and took a boat out on the River Thames to witness the destruction …

Note the piece of furniture floating past.

At the age of 25 he survived an operation to remove a bladder stone ‘the size of a tennis ball’ and this too is represented in the garden …

Pepys is commemorated with a splendid bust by Karin Jonzen (1914-1998), commissioned and erected by The Samuel Pepys Club in 1983 …

The plinth design was part of the recent project and the music carved on it is the tune of Beauty Retire, a song that Pepys wrote. So if you read music you can hear Pepys as well as see his bust …

Pepys was evidently extremely proud of Beauty Retire, for he holds a copy of the song in his most famous portrait by John Hayls, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A copy of the portrait hangs in the Pepys Library …

The paving designs were created by a team of students and alumni of City & Guilds London Art School working under the direction of Alan Lamb of Swan Farm Studios Ltd. Here are some pictures of the sculptors at work.

Tom Ball working on the flea …

Mike Watson working on Pepys’s monogram …

And finally, Alan Lamb working on a theorbo lute, one of many instruments Pepys could play …

Do visit the garden if you have the chance. Another of its interesting features is that it is irrigated by rainwater harvested from the roof of the hotel next door!

I have written two blogs about Pepys in London and also two about this garden. You can find them here:

Samuel Pepys and his ‘own church’.

Samuel Pepys and the Plague – ‘God preserve us all’.

Bladderstones and fleas in the Seething Lane Garden.

Monkeys and lions in Seething Lane.

All of them contain quotes from his famous diary.

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A mystery solved and some things that made me smile.

By The City Gent

On 27th January 2022

In Gardens, Memorials, Quirky

Let’s start with the mystery.

Back in August last year I spoke of a mystery connected to these two gravestones in the old parish churchyard of St Ann Blackfriars in Church Entry (EC4V 5HB) …

My ‘go to’ source of information when it comes to grave markers is the estimable Percy C. Rushen who published this guide in 1910 when he noticed that memorials were disappearing at a worrying rate due to pollution and redevelopment …

So when I came across the last two stones in this graveyard with difficult to read inscriptions I did what I normally do which is to consult Percy’s book in order to see what the full dedication was.

There was, however, a snag. Neither headstone is recorded in Percy’s list for St Ann Blackfriars. Let’s look at them one by one. This is the stone for Thomas Wright …

Fortunately, the book lists people in alphabetical order and, although there isn’t a Wright recorded at St Ann’s, there is one recorded at St Peter, Paul’s Wharf. It’s definitely the same one and reads as follows :

THOMAS WRIGHT, died 29 May 1845, father of the late Mrs Mary Ann Burnet.

The inscription of another stone recorded in the same churchyard reads …

CAROLINE, wife of JAMES BURNET , died 26 July 1830, aged 36.

MARY ANN, his second wife, died 12 April1840, aged 36.

JAMES BURNET, above, died … 1842, aged …3

St Peter, Paul’s Wharf, was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and not rebuilt but obviously its churchyard was still there in 1910. And it was still there in the 1950s as this map shows. I have indicated it in the bottom right hand corner with the other pencil showing the location of Church Entry and St Ann’s burial ground …

This is the present day site of Thomas Wright’s original burial place, now Peter’s Hill and the approach to the Millennium Bridge …

The stone must have been moved some time in the mid-20th century, but the question is, was Thomas moved as well? Have his bones finally come to rest in Church Entry? I have been unable to find out.

This is the headstone alongside Thomas’s …

It reads as follows …

In Memory of MARY ROBERTS wife of David Roberts who died the 14th February 1787 aged 34 years. Also two of their children who died in their infancy … the aforesaid DAVID ROBERTS who died the 25th May 1802, aged 52 years.

The mystery surrounding this stone was that, although there are quite a few people called Roberts recorded in Percy’s memorial list, none of them are called Mary or David. So, assuming, the book is complete (and Percy was obviously very fastidious) I wondered where this marker came from.

As a result of the blog, I was contacted by Leah Earl who had been researching old parish records. She discovered that the burials of David and Mary Roberts are recorded in the burial registers for St Peter, Paul’s Wharf, so the grave marker ought to have been there when Percy was transcribing. Since Percy was so careful I can only imagine that he missed this stone either because it had fallen on its face or it had been hidden behind some stones that had been stacked up.

Here are the two pages from the records.

David Roberts is fourth from the bottom on this page …

In this page you can see the tragic year of 1787 unfolding …

The record states that Mary, David’s wife, was buried on the 18th February and her newborn son, John, ten days later. Another child, Sophia, is buried three months after her mother on 30th May. These must be the two children of theirs who ‘died in infancy’. You’ll see that Mary’s age is given as 34 on the gravestone but 35 in the written record.

There is also a record of an Ann Roberts who died aged four on 22nd November 1787 but presumably she is not the child of David and Mary since she’s not mentioned on the marker.

About one in three children born in 1800 did not make it to their fifth birthday and maternal deaths at birth have been estimated at about five per thousand (although that is probably on the low side). Just by way of comparison, in 2016 to 2018, among the 2.2 million women who gave birth in the UK, 547 died during or up to a year after pregnancy from causes associated with their pregnancy. The 1800 equivalent rate would have meant 11,000 deaths.

If you are interested to know more about maternal mortality, its history and causes, you’ll find this incredibly informative article in The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Most disturbing is how doctors who discovered the underlying cause of many deaths were disbelieved and vilified by the medical profession as a whole, thus allowing unnecessarily high mortality to continue for decades.

Now, on a more cheerful note, here are a few things that made me smile recently.

As I descended the stairs to Mansion House Station from Bow Lane I came across this little oasis of calm tucked away in a corner …

I have no idea what this is all about but it really cheered me up – so nice that it hasn’t been vandalised.

A couple of cars caught my eye …

Lord knows what this was doing parked outside the Linklaters law firm. Maybe the partners were going to a wedding.

And surely this car belongs to an old – school yuppie …

I wouldn’t argue with the sentiment above this door …

And finally, the City is being populated with some cheery new benches. These are in Aldermanbury …

Incidentally, the tree in the background is Cercis siliquastrum. It is also known as the ‘Judas tree’. This comes from the legend that Judas Iscariot, full of shame after his betrayal of Jesus, hanged himself from one of its branches.

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Smithfield stories (some a bit gruesome).

By The City Gent

On 20th January 2022

In Architecture, Memorials, Religion

A few years ago I became intrigued by a particular pub name – the Bishops Finger …

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For a while, this was the signage …

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But, after a bit of research, I realised that this wasn’t a very good representation of what people used to call ‘a bishop’s finger’.

It actually referred to the shape of the hand when giving a blessing. Here is a stained glass representation of Jesus Christ giving the gesture …

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The present day sign gives the clue to its original slang meaning …

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Yes, it’s a finger post indicating directions.

Not to be confused, of course, with the Vulcan Greeting …

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‘Live long and prosper!’

Incidentally, the Bishops Finger name dates from 1981. The pub had been purchased by Shepherd Neame in the 1970s, and the change in name was to name the pub after one of their leading beers. The pub had originally been called the Rutland and had also been the Rutland Hotel.

For centuries Smithfield (or smooth field) was a place of execution where many suffered terribly for their beliefs, one of the most famous being William Wallace, ‘Braveheart’ in the movie of that name. Two plaques commemorate him and his execution. This one is facing the street, its railings often adorned with flowers and Scottish flags …

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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.

The other is quite discreet and you’ll find it on the wall just inside the entrance to the churchyard of St Bartholomew the Great …

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Wallace, manacled, stands upright and proud awaiting what looks like decapitation with an axe, a basket ready to catch his head when the deed is done. The noose that he glances at, however, indicates a different fate and decapitation would have been decidedly merciful. The plaque is, therefore, a little misleading.

Having been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, Wallace was first dragged naked behind a horse from the Tower of London to Smithfield, being jeered and booed by onlookers the whole way. He was hanged but cut down before dead after which the rest of the gruesome sentence was carried out. There is no record of any last words. Parts of his body were sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Perth and Stirling for public display. Wallace’s head, meanwhile, was dipped in tar and set on a spike on London bridge, ‘a grisly reminder of King Edward’s justice’.

No contemporary image of how he looked exists but we do know how Mel Gibson portrayed him …

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There’s a great article in The Scotsman newspaper about Wallace and the myths surrounding him and you can read it here.

Almost adjacent to Wallace’s memorial is the one to Protestant martyrs, erected in 1870 by the Protestant Alliance London. …

A few feet from this spot, more than 60 Protestants were burned at the stake, mainly in the reign of Queen Mary (1553-1558), hence they are known as the Marian Martyrs …

Through Mary’s short reign at least 277 persons were burnt, including five bishops, twenty one clergymen, eight gentlemen, eighty four tradesmen, one hundred husband-men and servants, fifty five women, and four children.

Nearby, the Hand and Shears Pub boasts of offering ‘Last Ales before Newgate Public Executions’. The pub’s name relates to the cloth workers who would gather here ahead of the ancient Bartholomew Fair …

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Here it is in 1952 … …

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Here’s the signage in close up …

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The Justices Licence refers to the Alehouse Act of 1552 which defined in law that it was illegal to sell beer or ale without the consent of the local Justices of the Peace. This was the first time that a licence was required to sell beer and ale and was an attempt to address the drunkenness and disorder that was being caused by the widespread availability of alcohol.

The Act required that each person granted a licence was responsible for maintaining good behavior at their premises and any problems could result in a fine or loss of licence. From the sign it appears that the Hand and Shears was granted a licence in 1552.

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Here’s the pub in 1852, the year the present building dates from …

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Its predecessor in 1811 …

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As is often the case, you’ll find more fascinating detail about the pub and its history in the brilliant London Inheritance blog.

The lovely Sir John Betjeman lived nearby at 43 Cloth Fair …

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Walk into the adjacent Cloth Court and look up. Near Sir John’s blue plaque you’ll see a wonderful Trompe-l’œil painting The Sailor’s Home Coming …

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When the next door neighbours bought Betjeman’s flat, intending to rent it out, they had this window bricked up to give themselves more privacy. However, they found they didn’t like staring at a wall. So they got the mural and stained glass artist Brian Thomas (some of whose work can still be seen in St Paul’s Cathedral) to create the Sailor’s Home Coming Window in order to give them something to look at …

Unfortunately it’s rather difficult to see from the street but it has been described as follows : A happy re-union in which a ruddy faced sailor, freshly returned from his travels, is welcomed back into the bosom of his family. His children hug him enthusiastically, whilst an exotic songbird, perhaps a souvenir of an earlier voyage to some far flung corner of the Globe, wobbles unsteadily over the whole harmonious scene.

Sir John’s old flat is available to rent. You can find more details here.

Live long and prosper!

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