Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
More Annotations
A complete backup of joneslanglasalle.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of financialexpress.net
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of rockpapershotgun.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
Favourite Annotations
A complete backup of http://webstat.mob.ge/show.php?url=animetv.ge
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://wildlifecarecenter.wordpress.com/about/
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://minuet.biz/ukraine/kiev/8003/ru/
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://www.mundotecnico.info/viewforum.php?f=684
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://www.fakings.com/categoria/rubias.htm
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://thesarkariyojana.in/
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://m.facebook.com/beegcomsl/
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
Text
Walk.
VALE OF HEALTH
The Vale of Health is a really unusual place. A single access road leads down into a cluster of houses, with a large pond to the east, and the whole place surrounded by the rest of Hampstead Heath. The pond is a clue as to why the Vale of Health developed. Originally the area occupied by the Vale of Health was wet and marshy.ST. JAMES GARDENS
They were used as a burial ground for the parish of St. James Piccadilly between 1790 and 1853. In 1887 the majority of the monuments and tombstones were removed and St. James opened as a public garden. The location of St. James Gardens is the green space to the left of Euston Station in the map extract below from the 1940 Bartholomew’s Atlas HORSELYDOWN OLD STAIRS On a Sunday morning in 1947, my father is taking photos along the south bank of the River Thames, in the region of Tower Bridge. I have already covered Pickle Herring Street in a previous post, and for this week, we have walked under Tower Bridge, a short distance along Shad Thames to the area around Horselydown Old Stairs. If we look to the left, just before reaching the stairs, there is a LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s HOPTON STREET ARCHIVES Hopton Street has one further surprise. This is No. 61 Hopton Street, or when it was first built, No. 9 Green Walk and is the oldest building in the area. One of a number of houses built by James Price around 1703. This is the sole survivor and is surrounded on all sides by much later (and much larger) additions to WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES William Maitland was a Scottish merchant who lived in London for a time, returning to Scotland in 1740. The title page from Maitland’s History and Survey of London: Maitland’s book has a large number of prints of major buildings across London and also many City Ward maps. Over the years, the prints and maps from early books are often SAVILLE THEATRE ARCHIVES The Saville Theatre opened in 1931 and according to an introduction to the theatre in one of the early theatre programmes was “built by Messrs Gee, Walker and Slater of 32, St. James’s Street, SW1 from plans of the Architects, Messrs T.P. Bennett and Son, of 41 Bedford Row, WC1 who were also responsible for the whole colour scheme,lighting
BALDWIN'S GARDEN ARCHIVES So perhaps this rather plain London side street was once a pioneer in the work of teacher training. According to A Dictionary of London, published in 1918, the name comes from a Richard Baldwin who was a gardener to Queen Elizabeth the 1st and erected the street in 1589. A LONDON INHERITANCE 1 – New City of London Law Courts. 2 – New headquarter building for the City of London Police. 3 – Public space covering an area slightly larger than the current Salisbury Square. 4 – New commercial / office space with, you may have guessed, space for restaurants, bars or cafes on the ground floor. THE HOUSE THEY LEFT BEHIND The following map is an extract from John Rocque’s 1746 map of London. The location of “The House They Left behind” is highlighted by the red oval. The street was named Ropemakers Fields in 1746, so this is an old street name. If you look to the left and slightly higher from the red oval, there is a space called The RopeWalk.
VALE OF HEALTH
The Vale of Health is a really unusual place. A single access road leads down into a cluster of houses, with a large pond to the east, and the whole place surrounded by the rest of Hampstead Heath. The pond is a clue as to why the Vale of Health developed. Originally the area occupied by the Vale of Health was wet and marshy.ST. JAMES GARDENS
They were used as a burial ground for the parish of St. James Piccadilly between 1790 and 1853. In 1887 the majority of the monuments and tombstones were removed and St. James opened as a public garden. The location of St. James Gardens is the green space to the left of Euston Station in the map extract below from the 1940 Bartholomew’s Atlas HORSELYDOWN OLD STAIRS On a Sunday morning in 1947, my father is taking photos along the south bank of the River Thames, in the region of Tower Bridge. I have already covered Pickle Herring Street in a previous post, and for this week, we have walked under Tower Bridge, a short distance along Shad Thames to the area around Horselydown Old Stairs. If we look to the left, just before reaching the stairs, there is a LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s HOPTON STREET ARCHIVES Hopton Street has one further surprise. This is No. 61 Hopton Street, or when it was first built, No. 9 Green Walk and is the oldest building in the area. One of a number of houses built by James Price around 1703. This is the sole survivor and is surrounded on all sides by much later (and much larger) additions to WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES William Maitland was a Scottish merchant who lived in London for a time, returning to Scotland in 1740. The title page from Maitland’s History and Survey of London: Maitland’s book has a large number of prints of major buildings across London and also many City Ward maps. Over the years, the prints and maps from early books are often SAVILLE THEATRE ARCHIVES The Saville Theatre opened in 1931 and according to an introduction to the theatre in one of the early theatre programmes was “built by Messrs Gee, Walker and Slater of 32, St. James’s Street, SW1 from plans of the Architects, Messrs T.P. Bennett and Son, of 41 Bedford Row, WC1 who were also responsible for the whole colour scheme,lighting
BALDWIN'S GARDEN ARCHIVES So perhaps this rather plain London side street was once a pioneer in the work of teacher training. According to A Dictionary of London, published in 1918, the name comes from a Richard Baldwin who was a gardener to Queen Elizabeth the 1st and erected the street in 1589. WARDROBE PLACE AND ST. ANDREWS HILL Wardrobe Place is so named as up until the Great Fire of 1666, it was the site of the King’s Wardrobe (the storage, administration and expenditure office for the King). The Wardrobe was moved here from the Tower in the 1360s into the mansion owned by LONDON STREETS IN THE 1980S London Streets In The 1980s. The 1980s in London was a decade of considerable change. Long established industries, street scenes, shops and ways of life were being swept away and the often divisive politics of the time were visible painted along the walls. The mid 1980s are only 30 years ago but walking along London’s streets today I still A LONDON INHERITANCE John Shakespeare was a glover, but also traded in wool and corn. He bought the main part of the house which is now the birthplace in 1556. John was married to Mary Arden and their eldest son, William Shakespeare was baptised on the 26th April 1564 (his date of birth is not known but must have been a few days earlier). FOUNTAIN HOUSE AND ST GABRIEL FENCHURCH Fountain House in Fenchurch Street was the first example of podium and tower architecture on the City of London. The form was imported from New York in the 1950s. Behind Fountain House is the burail ground of St Gabriel Fenchurch, which was once a church in the middle of Fenchurch Street, lost in the Great Fire of 1666NINE ELMS ARCHIVES
Nine Elms closed as a passenger station ten years later when the viaduct into Waterloo was built and the London terminus of the railway moved to the first Waterloo Station. Nine Elms then provided space for a Locomotive Works, which closed in 1909 when the works moved to Eastleigh in Hampshire. LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s BUILDING BANKSIDE POWER STATION Construction of the first half of Bankside Power Station took place between 1947 and 1953. This saw the completion of the western half of the building and the central chimney with first power being generated in 1953, and this is the status of Bankside Power Station that my father photographed in the photo at the start of this post. WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES William Maitland was a Scottish merchant who lived in London for a time, returning to Scotland in 1740. The title page from Maitland’s History and Survey of London: Maitland’s book has a large number of prints of major buildings across London and also many City Ward maps. Over the years, the prints and maps from early books are often THE HISTORIC BUILDINGS OF STEPNEY GREEN AND MILE END The Trinity Almshouses were built in 1695 by the Corporation of Trinity House for “28 decayed Masters and Commanders of ships or ye widows of such”. The land for the almshouses was donated by a Captain Henry Mudd and they consist of two rows of cottages either side of a green, with a chapel at the far end of the green. THE PROSPECT OF WHITBY AND SHADWELL BASIN At the far end of my father’s original photo was the Prospect of Whitby which claims to be London’s oldest riverside pub dating from around 1520. The pub was originally called The Pelican and the alley and stairs down to the river at the side of the pub to the right are still named Pelican Stairs. A LONDON INHERITANCE 1 – New City of London Law Courts. 2 – New headquarter building for the City of London Police. 3 – Public space covering an area slightly larger than the current Salisbury Square. 4 – New commercial / office space with, you may have guessed, space for restaurants, bars or cafes on the ground floor. THE HOUSE THEY LEFT BEHIND The following map is an extract from John Rocque’s 1746 map of London. The location of “The House They Left behind” is highlighted by the red oval. The street was named Ropemakers Fields in 1746, so this is an old street name. If you look to the left and slightly higher from the red oval, there is a space called The RopeWalk.
VALE OF HEALTH
The Vale of Health is a really unusual place. A single access road leads down into a cluster of houses, with a large pond to the east, and the whole place surrounded by the rest of Hampstead Heath. The pond is a clue as to why the Vale of Health developed. Originally the area occupied by the Vale of Health was wet and marshy.ST. JAMES GARDENS
They were used as a burial ground for the parish of St. James Piccadilly between 1790 and 1853. In 1887 the majority of the monuments and tombstones were removed and St. James opened as a public garden. The location of St. James Gardens is the green space to the left of Euston Station in the map extract below from the 1940 Bartholomew’s Atlas HORSELYDOWN OLD STAIRS On a Sunday morning in 1947, my father is taking photos along the south bank of the River Thames, in the region of Tower Bridge. I have already covered Pickle Herring Street in a previous post, and for this week, we have walked under Tower Bridge, a short distance along Shad Thames to the area around Horselydown Old Stairs. If we look to the left, just before reaching the stairs, there is a LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s HOPTON STREET ARCHIVES Hopton Street has one further surprise. This is No. 61 Hopton Street, or when it was first built, No. 9 Green Walk and is the oldest building in the area. One of a number of houses built by James Price around 1703. This is the sole survivor and is surrounded on all sides by much later (and much larger) additions to WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES William Maitland was a Scottish merchant who lived in London for a time, returning to Scotland in 1740. The title page from Maitland’s History and Survey of London: Maitland’s book has a large number of prints of major buildings across London and also many City Ward maps. Over the years, the prints and maps from early books are often SAVILLE THEATRE ARCHIVES The Saville Theatre opened in 1931 and according to an introduction to the theatre in one of the early theatre programmes was “built by Messrs Gee, Walker and Slater of 32, St. James’s Street, SW1 from plans of the Architects, Messrs T.P. Bennett and Son, of 41 Bedford Row, WC1 who were also responsible for the whole colour scheme,lighting
BALDWIN'S GARDEN ARCHIVES So perhaps this rather plain London side street was once a pioneer in the work of teacher training. According to A Dictionary of London, published in 1918, the name comes from a Richard Baldwin who was a gardener to Queen Elizabeth the 1st and erected the street in 1589. A LONDON INHERITANCE 1 – New City of London Law Courts. 2 – New headquarter building for the City of London Police. 3 – Public space covering an area slightly larger than the current Salisbury Square. 4 – New commercial / office space with, you may have guessed, space for restaurants, bars or cafes on the ground floor. THE HOUSE THEY LEFT BEHIND The following map is an extract from John Rocque’s 1746 map of London. The location of “The House They Left behind” is highlighted by the red oval. The street was named Ropemakers Fields in 1746, so this is an old street name. If you look to the left and slightly higher from the red oval, there is a space called The RopeWalk.
VALE OF HEALTH
The Vale of Health is a really unusual place. A single access road leads down into a cluster of houses, with a large pond to the east, and the whole place surrounded by the rest of Hampstead Heath. The pond is a clue as to why the Vale of Health developed. Originally the area occupied by the Vale of Health was wet and marshy.ST. JAMES GARDENS
They were used as a burial ground for the parish of St. James Piccadilly between 1790 and 1853. In 1887 the majority of the monuments and tombstones were removed and St. James opened as a public garden. The location of St. James Gardens is the green space to the left of Euston Station in the map extract below from the 1940 Bartholomew’s Atlas HORSELYDOWN OLD STAIRS On a Sunday morning in 1947, my father is taking photos along the south bank of the River Thames, in the region of Tower Bridge. I have already covered Pickle Herring Street in a previous post, and for this week, we have walked under Tower Bridge, a short distance along Shad Thames to the area around Horselydown Old Stairs. If we look to the left, just before reaching the stairs, there is a LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s HOPTON STREET ARCHIVES Hopton Street has one further surprise. This is No. 61 Hopton Street, or when it was first built, No. 9 Green Walk and is the oldest building in the area. One of a number of houses built by James Price around 1703. This is the sole survivor and is surrounded on all sides by much later (and much larger) additions to WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES William Maitland was a Scottish merchant who lived in London for a time, returning to Scotland in 1740. The title page from Maitland’s History and Survey of London: Maitland’s book has a large number of prints of major buildings across London and also many City Ward maps. Over the years, the prints and maps from early books are often SAVILLE THEATRE ARCHIVES The Saville Theatre opened in 1931 and according to an introduction to the theatre in one of the early theatre programmes was “built by Messrs Gee, Walker and Slater of 32, St. James’s Street, SW1 from plans of the Architects, Messrs T.P. Bennett and Son, of 41 Bedford Row, WC1 who were also responsible for the whole colour scheme,lighting
BALDWIN'S GARDEN ARCHIVES So perhaps this rather plain London side street was once a pioneer in the work of teacher training. According to A Dictionary of London, published in 1918, the name comes from a Richard Baldwin who was a gardener to Queen Elizabeth the 1st and erected the street in 1589. WARDROBE PLACE AND ST. ANDREWS HILL Wardrobe Place is so named as up until the Great Fire of 1666, it was the site of the King’s Wardrobe (the storage, administration and expenditure office for the King). The Wardrobe was moved here from the Tower in the 1360s into the mansion owned by LONDON STREETS IN THE 1980S London Streets In The 1980s. The 1980s in London was a decade of considerable change. Long established industries, street scenes, shops and ways of life were being swept away and the often divisive politics of the time were visible painted along the walls. The mid 1980s are only 30 years ago but walking along London’s streets today I still A LONDON INHERITANCE John Shakespeare was a glover, but also traded in wool and corn. He bought the main part of the house which is now the birthplace in 1556. John was married to Mary Arden and their eldest son, William Shakespeare was baptised on the 26th April 1564 (his date of birth is not known but must have been a few days earlier).NINE ELMS ARCHIVES
Nine Elms closed as a passenger station ten years later when the viaduct into Waterloo was built and the London terminus of the railway moved to the first Waterloo Station. Nine Elms then provided space for a Locomotive Works, which closed in 1909 when the works moved to Eastleigh in Hampshire. FOUNTAIN HOUSE AND ST GABRIEL FENCHURCH Fountain House in Fenchurch Street was the first example of podium and tower architecture on the City of London. The form was imported from New York in the 1950s. Behind Fountain House is the burail ground of St Gabriel Fenchurch, which was once a church in the middle of Fenchurch Street, lost in the Great Fire of 1666SHADWELL ARCHIVES
The Shadwell market was sold to the City of London Corporation in 1904, and in less than a decade later the market closed in preparation for the construction of the King Edward VII Memorial Park. In total the Shadwell Fish Market had lasted for less than twenty years. LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES William Maitland was a Scottish merchant who lived in London for a time, returning to Scotland in 1740. The title page from Maitland’s History and Survey of London: Maitland’s book has a large number of prints of major buildings across London and also many City Ward maps. Over the years, the prints and maps from early books are often THE HISTORIC BUILDINGS OF STEPNEY GREEN AND MILE END The Trinity Almshouses were built in 1695 by the Corporation of Trinity House for “28 decayed Masters and Commanders of ships or ye widows of such”. The land for the almshouses was donated by a Captain Henry Mudd and they consist of two rows of cottages either side of a green, with a chapel at the far end of the green. THE PROSPECT OF WHITBY AND SHADWELL BASIN At the far end of my father’s original photo was the Prospect of Whitby which claims to be London’s oldest riverside pub dating from around 1520. The pub was originally called The Pelican and the alley and stairs down to the river at the side of the pub to the right are still named Pelican Stairs. A LONDON INHERITANCE I have no idea of the exact location of the following photo. It is one of my father’s and dates from 1949. Judging by the photos on the strips of negatives that included this photo, it is probably one of a number of Bankside alleys, although there is a chance it is a bitfurther east.
VALE OF HEALTH
Patrick Heren August 23, 2020 at 3:12 pm. Thank you for an excellent account of the origins and character of the Vale of Health. My family lived there from 1970 to 1996, when the house was sold on the death of my father, Louis Heren, former foreign correspondent and deputy editor of The Times, author of “Growing Up Poor In London”. THE HOUSE THEY LEFT BEHIND The following photo is from 1986, and shows the side of a building where the adjacent buildings have obviously been demolished. The building has “The House They Left Behind” painted in bold black letters on a white background, with below the original build date and a restoration date of the year before the photo was taken. HORSELYDOWN OLD STAIRS On a Sunday morning in 1947, my father is taking photos along the south bank of the River Thames, in the region of Tower Bridge. I have already covered Pickle Herring Street in a previous post, and for this week, we have walked under Tower Bridge, a short distance along Shad Thames to the area around Horselydown Old Stairs. If we look to the left, just before reaching the stairs, there is a LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s HOPTON STREET ARCHIVES A couple of week’s ago, my post was on No.49 Bankside, one of the few remaining historic buildings in Bankside, and for this week, I have moved across to the other side of Tate Modern, and found how echoes of London’s long history are still visible today, despite what at first sight, appears to be a very recent landscape.. My photo for this week from my father’s collection was taken in 1950. SAVILLE THEATRE ARCHIVES A couple of weeks ago, I wrote two posts covering a walk around the West End of London to find all the working theatres. There are also a number of buildings that were once theatres but have now taken on adifferent function.
ST. JAMES GARDENS
The rate of change within London is such that streets can take on a very different appearance within a matter of months, however it is unusual for a public park and old burial ground to disappear, however this has been the fate of St. James Gardens. WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES Books have probably been written about London for as long as books have been published. London books cover specific areas and topics, general guides, histories, picture and photo books etc. BALDWIN'S GARDEN ARCHIVES Baldwin’s Gardens is a street that runs between Leather Lane and Gray’s Inn Road. If you take a walk along the street, you may be disappointed that the street does not live up to its name. A LONDON INHERITANCE I have no idea of the exact location of the following photo. It is one of my father’s and dates from 1949. Judging by the photos on the strips of negatives that included this photo, it is probably one of a number of Bankside alleys, although there is a chance it is a bitfurther east.
VALE OF HEALTH
Patrick Heren August 23, 2020 at 3:12 pm. Thank you for an excellent account of the origins and character of the Vale of Health. My family lived there from 1970 to 1996, when the house was sold on the death of my father, Louis Heren, former foreign correspondent and deputy editor of The Times, author of “Growing Up Poor In London”. THE HOUSE THEY LEFT BEHIND The following photo is from 1986, and shows the side of a building where the adjacent buildings have obviously been demolished. The building has “The House They Left Behind” painted in bold black letters on a white background, with below the original build date and a restoration date of the year before the photo was taken. HORSELYDOWN OLD STAIRS On a Sunday morning in 1947, my father is taking photos along the south bank of the River Thames, in the region of Tower Bridge. I have already covered Pickle Herring Street in a previous post, and for this week, we have walked under Tower Bridge, a short distance along Shad Thames to the area around Horselydown Old Stairs. If we look to the left, just before reaching the stairs, there is a LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’s HOPTON STREET ARCHIVES A couple of week’s ago, my post was on No.49 Bankside, one of the few remaining historic buildings in Bankside, and for this week, I have moved across to the other side of Tate Modern, and found how echoes of London’s long history are still visible today, despite what at first sight, appears to be a very recent landscape.. My photo for this week from my father’s collection was taken in 1950. SAVILLE THEATRE ARCHIVES A couple of weeks ago, I wrote two posts covering a walk around the West End of London to find all the working theatres. There are also a number of buildings that were once theatres but have now taken on adifferent function.
ST. JAMES GARDENS
The rate of change within London is such that streets can take on a very different appearance within a matter of months, however it is unusual for a public park and old burial ground to disappear, however this has been the fate of St. James Gardens. WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES Books have probably been written about London for as long as books have been published. London books cover specific areas and topics, general guides, histories, picture and photo books etc. BALDWIN'S GARDEN ARCHIVES Baldwin’s Gardens is a street that runs between Leather Lane and Gray’s Inn Road. If you take a walk along the street, you may be disappointed that the street does not live up to its name. A LONDON INHERITANCE Tower Hill is one of the best places to see remnants from London’s early history. A couple of weeks ago I featured the church of All Hallows by the Tower with the Saxon arch and Roman floor, this week it is the turn of the Roman Wall on Tower Hill. LAST TRAM WEEK IN LONDON 62 years ago this coming week was “Last Tram Week”. The last week of tram services before they were finally withdrawn on the 5th July 1952. From the early 1860s through to 1952, various parts of London had a tram service. Initially pulled by horse, but later replaced by electric trams. The following is my father’sSHADWELL ARCHIVES
When I started this post, it was going to be a brief mid-week post about a bowling green in the King Edward VII Memorial Park, Shadwell, East London, sandwiched between the River Thames and the very busy road that is now called The Highway. LONDON STREETS IN THE 1980S The 1980s in London was a decade of considerable change. Long established industries, street scenes, shops and ways of life were being swept away and the often divisive politics of the time were visible painted along the walls. FOUNTAIN HOUSE AND ST GABRIEL FENCHURCH Fountain House in Fenchurch Street was the first example of podium and tower architecture on the City of London. The form was imported from New York in the 1950s. Behind Fountain House is the burail ground of St Gabriel Fenchurch, which was once a church in the middle of Fenchurch Street, lost in the Great Fire of 1666 WILLIAM MAITLAND ARCHIVES Books have probably been written about London for as long as books have been published. London books cover specific areas and topics, general guides, histories, picture and photo books etc. WARDROBE PLACE AND ST. ANDREWS HILL All to often, walking the City of London it is too easy to get depressed with how much character is being lost. At street level much recent development looks the same. Standard materials, bland architecture and design that could equally be at home in Shanghai, Dubai or New York. Fortunately there are still many places that BUILDING BANKSIDE POWER STATION In 1953, soon after it started operation, my father took the photo below of Bankside Power Station. The photo suffers from a problem I often have when taking a photo of the southern bank of the river from the north on a clear day as the sun is in the south and puts the power station into silhouette. THE PROSPECT OF WHITBY AND SHADWELL BASIN Kirsty December 4, 2016 at 9:10 pm. I too followed this almost same path only a few weeks ago as my forebears lived on The Highway nr St George in the East so I walked down from Aldgate East to Wapping Station and followed the same route as you even climbing down Pelican and New Crane Stairs 🙂 one of my ancestors was born in Old Gravel Lane early 1800’s and they had a shop on The Highway THE HISTORIC BUILDINGS OF STEPNEY GREEN AND MILE END In 1973 the Architects Journal listed sites in the East End of London that were under threat. In this post I track down the sites in Mile End and Stepney Green and discsover some of the history of thesehistoric places.
A LONDON INHERITANCE A PRIVATE HISTORY OF A PUBLIC CITY Menu Skip to content* Home
* About
* Mapping London through Blog Posts THE THAMES FROM CHERRY GARDEN STAIRS7 Replies
Before heading to Cherry Garden Stairs, can I thank you for the response to last week’s post. All eleven walks sold out within the first day, which I really did not expect. I have added an additional five walks as follows: The Lost Streets of the Barbican: * Wednesday 18th August 2021(Sold Out)
* Sunday 22nd August 2021(Sold Out)
* Sunday 5th September 2021(Sold Out)
The Southbank – Marsh, Industry, Culture and the Festival of Britain * Saturday 21st August 2021(Sold Out)
* Saturday 4th September 2021(Sold Out)
All the above walks have now sold out. I will be adding more in the coming months and listing on the blog. A really big thank you to everyone who has booked and supported my walks, very much appreciated. The subject of this week’s post is one of the earliest of my father’s photos as it dates from 1946. The negative is 75 years old and is not in that good a condition. The scanned image needed some processing to get it to the state you see below, and it is still rather grey with poor contrast. The photo is from Cherry Garden Stairs, Bermondsey, looking along the river towards the City, with the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral visible through Tower Bridge. The same view today, with the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in exactly the same place, however a very different river scene (the perspective looks different due to the very different camera and lens combinationsused).
The location of Cherry Garden Stairs is shown in the following map, with the stairs located within the red circle at lower right. The 1946 photo looks along the southbank of the river towards Tower Bridge (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors).
The two photos show a very different scene. In 1946, the river bank was lined by warehouses, wharves and docks, with cranes along the river. A large number of lighters and barges are moored in the river, and directly in front of the camera, which would have been on the foreshore of the river. In the 2021 photo the towers of the City are visible to the right, along with the Shard on the left. There are no more working warehouses, wharves or docks, and traffic on the river is today verydifferent.
The river is though still used to transport construction equipment to a major construction site. In the 2021 there is a large shed on the left bank of the river, with the metal work of a travelling crane extending from the shed to over the river. This is Chambers Wharf, one of the main construction sites for the Thames Tideway Tunnel. Chambers Wharf is one of the project’s main drive sites, with boring machines transported to the site via the river, and lowered by crane down to the point where the machines drive out, creating the tunnel. Chambers Wharf was one of the many wharves between Tower Bridge and Cherry Garden Stairs. The following map is from the 1953 edition of London Wharves and Docks, and the left of the river covers the area from Tower Bridge to Cherry Garden Stairs seen in my father’s photo. The type of goods that these wharves dealt with are (from the top of the left bank of the river): * Coles Upper Wharf: Bulk grain, flour, cereals * Butler’s Wharf: Tea, rubber, colonial produce, bulk grain, freshfruit
* Upper Odessa Wharf: Cereals, non-hazardous chemicals, bagged goods * Adlards Wharf: General and bagged goods, timber * Sterling Wharf: General, strawboards and wood pulp boards * Chambers Wharf and Cold Storage: All types of food including highly perishable refrigerated dairy produce and quick frozen goods * Fountain Dock: Grabable rough goods, coal, granite, ballast andsand
* Fountain Stairs Wharf: General, flour, cased goods * Powells Wharf: Foodstuffs * Farrands and Cherry Garden Wharf: General goods in bags, cases and casks, flour and corn starch Also in the above map is St Saviour’s Dock, which I will save for afuture post.
The list of wharfs does show the considerable range of goods that were being handled in the stretch of the south bank of the river shown inthe 1946 photo.
The following extract from the 1949 edition of the Ordnance Survey map shows Cherry Garden Street in the centre of the map, running up to Cherry Garden Stairs, which are at the lower left of Cherry Garden Pier (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library ofScotland’ ).
A pier at the site seems to date from the later half of the 19th century, and Cherry Garden Pier is still there today, although used by a private company with no public access. One interesting point in the above map, is to the right of the map is the Millpond Estate, a 1930s housing development which can still be seen today. The location of the estate had been the site of a flour mill, mill pond and terrace housing. The mill pond was once part of an extensive irrigation system that ran inland to much larger ponds – lots more to discover around this part of Bermondsey. Cherry Garden Stairs are one of the many old stairs that provided access to the river. The earliest newspaper reference I can find to the stairs dates from the 25th May 1738 when _“Yesterday morning an eminent Shoemaker at Cherry Garden Stairs, Rotherhith, was found drowned in the River Thames”_. The stairs are probably much older than the 1738 reference. Leading back from the location of the stairs (see above map) is a street called Cherry Garden Street. The street is named after a pleasure garden that was here called Cherry Garden. In volume four of the 1912 edition of the History of the County of Surrey in the Victoria County History series, there is reference to a Jacobean style house called Jamaica House which could still be found in Cherry Garden Street until 1860. This house appears to have been part of the gardens as in the same volume, there is a quote from Pepys which reads _“To Jamaica House, where I never was before, together with my wife, and the Mercers and our two maids, and there the girls did run wagers upon the bowling green: a pleasant day and spent but little”_. Jamaica House or Tavern in 1858 (© The Trustees of the BritishMuseum):
Pepys visit is referenced in an article in the Westminster Gazette on the 7th October 1910, which also recalls an inn that was located by the stairs: _“Cherry Garden-street, the scene of yesterday’s big riverside fire, occupies the site and preserves the name of the old Bermondsey ‘Cherry Garden’, once a well-known place of public resort. The Cherry Garden was favourably known to Pepys, who recorded his visit there in his famous diary. At Cherry Garden Stairs there was formerly a celebrated inn known as the Lion and Castle, a name supposed to have been derived from the marriage which took place between the Royal House of Stuart and that of Spain. Close by was the even more famous Jamaica, traditionally supposed to have been the residence of Cromwell”_. Edward Walford in Old and New London (1878) doubts the Lion and Castle name originating from a Stuart / Spanish name and prefers the source to be _“the brand of Spanish arms on the sherry casks, and have been put up by the landlord to indicate the sale of genuine Spanish wines, such as sack, canary and mountain”_. The Lion and Castle pub seems to have been at Cherry Garden Stairs from the late 18th century to some point around the 1860s. It was not shown on the 1895 OS map. It may have been that the stairs were used for river access to the pleasure gardens and that was why they took the name of the gardens. Rocque’s map of London in 1746 shows Cherry Garden Stairs (right on the corner edge of my copy of the map): Thames stairs were so very important for centuries in the life of the river, and for all those who had some connection with the activities carried out on, or alongside the Thames. As well as providing access to and from the river, Thames stairs were a key landmark. There are hundreds of newspaper references to Cherry Garden Stairs during the 18th and 19th centuries. The majority of these are adverts of ships for sale, for lease, or that were about to set out and were advertising for cargo or passengers. For example, the Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser on the 8th May 1818 has the following advert: _“Has only room for a few Tons of Goods, and will be dispatched immediately. For Gibraltar direct. The fine, fast-sailing Brig PRINCE REGENT, Henry Stammers, Commander. lying at Cherry Garden Stairs. burthen 118 tons. For Freight orPassage”_.
Other reports concern accidents, collisions, drowning and bodies pulled from the river near the stairs. Such an incident is recorded in the last newspaper reference to the stairs that I can find, when on the 29th November 1936, Reynold’s Newspaper recorded that a ten year old Bermondsey boy had fallen into the Thames from Cherry Garden Stairs and had drowned. Thames stairs and pubs also seem to be a magnet for crime. For example, there are reports of passengers being rowed across the Thames and then robbed in, or close by the pubs that were often located near the landside of the stairs. The tide was in when I arrived at Cherry Garden Stairs to taken the comparison photo. Access to the foreshore is now via a modern set of metal stairs that run over the embankment wall that was built as part of the walkway / tree lined open space that runs along the river. Difficult to photograph without being on the foreshore, but the stairs can be seen at the end of the wall in the following photo: The walkway to the pier can be seen in the background. I am sure that my father took the original photo from the 1946 version of the stairs, as it was by standing on the stairs that I could get the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in exactly the same position. At this distance from Tower Bridge and the cathedral, even a small change in position changed the orientation of bridge and dome. There is much more to discover in this part of Bermondsey, so it is an area I will be returning to again. alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in The Thamesand tagged
Bermondsey , River
Thames , Thames
Stairs on May 30,
2021
by admin .
A LONDON INHERITANCE WALKS40 Replies
I hope that for this week’s post, you will excuse a bit of selfadvertising.
I have walked London for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are being taken for weekend walks around the city in the late 1960s – not sure it was always what I wanted to do, but those walks left an impression that has lasted. I started scanning my father’s negatives in the late 1990s. It took many years as there were thousands of photos to scan, with family and work commitments being a priority. There were some notes to identify the locations and I did have a few years where he could identify the locations of scanned photos for me, however a large number stillneeded tracing.
The blog was started in 2014 to give me the incentive of going out and finding the locations of these photos dating back to 1946. It was also a means of discovering and learning more of London as a weekly post could cover my father’s photos or other areas of London that I wanted to walk and explore. Looking back through my posts, they tend to focus on a single early photo or place. There are many individual posts that should combine to tell the story of how an area of London has changed, how the history of a place has influenced what we see today, along with the story of those who have lived and worked there. A chance meeting with one of the tutors of the Islington and Clerkenwell Guiding Course at St Giles Clerkenwell during one of the Barbican at 50 events resulted in the idea of using a guided walk as a means of bringing together the story of a place. Stories that I have told in multiple blog posts, and using some of my father’s photos at the sites they were taken from. I passed the course last year, however Covid restrictions delayed any further activity, but did allow the time to develop two guided walks (with more in the pipeline). With restrictions easing, I am really pleased to announce the availability of my first two guided walks. Walks that will focus on a specific area of London. They will discover the history of the area, people who have lived and worked there, how the area has changed and how these changes have resulted in the place we see today. Each walk will have small groups with a maximum of ten people, and will take around 2 hours with between 10 and 12 stops. I will also be using some of my father’s photos, as close as possible to the spot from where they were taken, to illustrate 70years of change.
I look forward to showing you around.The first is:
THE SOUTH BANK – MARSH, INDUSTRY, CULTURE AND THE FESTIVAL OFBRITAIN
In the 70th anniversary year of the Festival of Britain, come and discover the story of the Festival, the main South Bank site, and how a festival which was meant to deliver a post war “tonic for the nation” created a futuristic view of a united country, and how the people of the country were rooted in the land and seas. We will also discover the history of the South Bank of the Thames, from Westminster to Blackfriars Bridges, today one of London’s major tourist destinations, and with the Royal Festival Hall and National Theatre, also a significant cultural centre. Along the South Bank we will discover a story of the tidal river, marsh, a Roman boat, pleasure gardens, industry, housing and crime. The South Bank has been the centre of governance for London, and the area is an example of how wartime plans for the redevelopment of London transformed what was a derelict and neglected place. Lasting around 2 hours, the walk will start by Waterloo Station and end a short distance from Blackfriars Bridge. At the end of the walk, we will have covered almost 2,000 years of history, and walked from a causeway running alongside a tidal marsh, to the South Bank we see today. Dates and links for booking are: * Sunday 27th June 2021(sold out)
* Wednesday 30th June 2021(sold out)
* Sunday 11th July 2021(sold out)
* Wednesday 21st July 2021(sold out)
* Sunday 1st August 2021(sold out)
* Sunday 8th August 2021(sold out)
Extra dates added:
* Saturday 21st August 2021 * Saturday 4th September 2021The second walk is:
THE LOST STREETS OF THE BARBICAN On the evening of the 29th December 1940, one of the most devastating raids on London created fires that destroyed much of the area north of St Paul’s Cathedral and between London Wall, almost to Old Street. The raid destroyed a network of streets that had covered this area of Cripplegate for centuries. Lives, workplaces, homes and buildings were lost. Well-known names such as Shakespeare and Cromwell and their connection with the Barbican and Cripplegate will be discovered, as well as those lost to history such as the woman who sold milk from a half house, and that artisan dining is not a recent invention. Out of wartime destruction, a new London Wall emerged, along with the Barbican and Golden Lane estates that would dominate post-war reconstruction. Destruction of buildings would also reveal structures that had been hidden for many years. On this walk, we will start at London Wall, and walk through the Barbican and Golden Lane estates, discovering the streets, buildings and people that have been lost and what can still be found. We will explore post-war reconstruction, and look at the significant estates that now dominate the area. Lasting just under two hours, by the end of the walk, we will have walked through almost 2,000 years of this unique area of London, the streets of today, and the streets lost to history. Dates and links for booking are: * Saturday 3rd July 2021(sold out)
* Sunday 4th July 2021(sold out)
* Sunday 18th July 2021(sold out)
* Saturday 31st July 2021(sold out)
* Saturday 7th August 2021(sold out)
Extra dates added:
* Wednesday 18th August 2021 * Sunday 22nd August 2021 * Sunday 5th September 2021 I have written a number of post over the last 7 years about the South Bank and surroundings of the Barbican. They are both places I find fascinating, and I really look forward to sharing the story of these historic parts of London with you. I will be adding additional dates and more walks covering new areas in the coming weeks and months. Normal service will be resumed with next week’s post. alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in Events and Ceremonies, London
History and
tagged Guided Walks
on May 23, 2021
by admin .
THREE FUTURE DEMOLITIONS AND RE-DEVELOPMENTS11 Replies
The streets of London always have, and always will change. Buildings can disappear almost overnight and be replaced by a very differentstructure.
I try and photograph buildings and places before any demolition. This can be a challenge given the rate of change, however for today’s post, there are three places I want to focus on which will probably be very different in the years to come. The three locations are shown in the following map (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors) : THE LONDON STUDIOS / LONDON WEEKEND TELEVISION Look across the river from the Embankment by Temple Underground Station, and this is the view: The tall tower was originally known as Kent House, a 24 story tower block, and the most visible part of the old studio complex which also includes a significant area of land around the base of the tower, including the low rise buildings which can just be seen to the left of the tower, above the tree line. Kent House, and the low rise buildings were until 2018, ITV’s London Studios, also known as the Southbank Television Studios. It was here that ITV made Good Morning Britain, Loose Women, Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, the Jonathan Ross Show, along with a considerable number of shows for other channels, such as the Graham Norton Show and Have I Got News For You for the BBC. If you have watched ITV prior to 2018, chances are that you would have seen a programme filmed here on the south bank of the river. The following photo shows the view of Kent House from Waterloo Bridge. The National Theatre is the building to the right. ITV were intending to return to the south bank studios after refurbishment and development, however they made the decision to leave and sell the site, with their programmes such as Good Morning Britain now filmed at the old BBC Television Centre in White City. The story of Kent House and the associated studio buildings dates back to the early 1970s when there were two independent television stations serving London. Thames Television operated from Monday to Friday, and from Friday evening to six on Monday mornings, London Weekend Television (LWT) would broadcast. When LWT started broadcasting in 1968, they only had temporary studios in Wembley, and were in urgent need for custom built studios, which was even more important with the transition from black and white tocolour TV.
LWT identified a block of land near the National Theatre on the south bank and proceeded to build the new studio complex, including Kent House. These opened in 1972 and became the hub for all LWT production. The benefit of a new build was that they became the most technically advanced colour TV studios in Europe at the time of opening. The studio complex faces onto the walkway along the south bank of the river. The tower is at the rear of the complex, facing onto the street Upper Ground, with low rise buildings facing onto the river. Studio buildings extend to the left of the above photo, with the block in the following photo up against the cafes, restaurants and shops at Gabriel’s Wharf which is further to the left. The whole site will soon look very different. ITV sold the studio complex in 2019, including Kent House, to the Japanese real estate company, Mitsubishi Estate, and plans have now been submitted for redevelopment. Kent House and the entire studio complex will be demolished, and replaced by a 26 storey office building to the rear (Kent House has 24 floors), two lower rise blocks of 13 and 6 storeys facing on to theriver.
What is a surprise is that the majority of the complex will be office space, with a capacity for up to 4,000 workers. Based on what normally happens to sites in such a prime location is conversion to apartment blocks, as is happening around the Shell Centre tower further west along the south bank. Whether the plan continues to be for offices after the work at home impact of the pandemic will be interesting tosee.
The proposal also includes plans for some form of open space, the obligatory restaurants and some form of cultural space. The view from Upper Ground: The cafes, restaurants and shops at Gabriel’s Wharf are to the right of the two telephone boxes. Behind them are the low rise studiobuildings.
Plans for the redevelopment of the area are still at an early stage, however Mitsubishi’s partner CO-RE are currently listing a 2026 date for completion of the project. The following photo shows part of one of the old warehouses / offices at 58 Upper Ground, now part of the studio scenery stores. To the left of 58 Upper Ground is the early 1970s studio complex at the base of Kent House: The mock Tudor building is one of the few survivors from before post war redevelopment of the area. ITV left the site in 2018, however the site still offers temporary office and studio space: To the lower left of the Kent House tower, the studio complex can be seen at the rear. This is the western boundary of the studio complex. In the distance can just be seen the half roof of a covered walkway. This was where the audience attending a show would queue for entry. When I worked on the Southbank, it was common to see a long queue of people here in the late afternoon. As shown in the above photo, there are frequently lorries parked around the base of the tower and studio area when the studios are inuse.
The Southbank Conservation Area Statement prepared for Lambeth Council Planning states _“The ITV tower is reasonably attractive but the lower buildings are of little architectural interest and the entrance forecourt is almost cluttered with waiting vehicles and deliverylorries”_.
Personally, I think that this is a danger when looking at something only from a conservation perspective. The lorries at the base do add clutter to the scene, however they are there only because this is a working studio complex, which has added a diversity of activity and a busyness to Upper Ground. The loss of a diverse range of activities when areas are transformed to a mix of expensive apartments, offices, hotels and chain restaurants, cafes and take-ways can really destroy an area. Diversity of activity is essential in keeping a city alive. The following photo shows the base of the tower and the lower levels of the studio complex. I love the way the tower looks as if it has been slotted over the lower levels, with the legs of the tower reaching down along the sides to the ground. A full view of the Kent House tower from Upper Ground: The next site is still on the south of the river, close to London Bridge Station and Tooley Street is:COLECHURCH HOUSE
Colechurch House is a late 1960s office block on a relatively narrow strip of land between Tooley Street and Duke Street Hill. The main office building is lifted above ground level, and includes a walkway which provides access to the taxi waiting area for the station and London Bridge Street. Colechurch House was designed by architect E G Chandler for the City of London. It was named after Peter de Colechurch who was responsible for the first stone London Bridge, the building of which was started in 1176 and completed in 1209. The building and the freehold of the land is owned by Bridge House Estates, and on the 14th October, the City of London Corporation as Trustee of Bridge House Estates released a press statement that property owner CIT had purchased a lease of the building, and would be bringing forward proposals for redevelopment. CIT’s proposals for the complete redevelopment of the site include replacing Colechurch House with a new office building ranging in height from 12 to 22 storeys, with the lowest height part of the building being at the London Bridge / Borough High Street end of the street. The highest part of the building was originally planned to be 32 storeys, however following a consultation process this has now beenreduced to 22.
The new office block will be lifted off the street, with the area at ground level being public open space called the Park, which will be divided into a number of areas – Bridge Gate Square, Old London Bridge Park and St Olaf Square. View of Colechurch House from the elevated walkway. The entrance to the office block is where the two lights can be seen. The planning application was submitted at the end of 2020, a number of issues with the application were raised in a letter dated the 1st March 2021. Consideration of these and a final decision is still to be confirmed, however I expect the demolition and rebuild will go ahead within the next couple of years. Across the river to Fleet Street now, to find the site of a much larger redevelopment: FLEET STREET AND SALISBURY COURT This is probably the larger of the three developments covered in this post, and it covers a significant frontage onto Fleet Street and to the rear within a block bounded by Salisbury Court and WhitefriarsStreet.
The redevelopment is for a new area which has been dubbed the “Justice Quarter” as it will include a number of new buildings that will house functions related to the law. The following map shows the area to be redeveloped, and the new functions that will be located in the development (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors) . 1 – New City of London Law Courts 2 – New headquarter building for the City of London Police 3 – Public space covering an area slightly larger than the currentSalisbury Square
4 – New commercial / office space with, you may have guessed, space for restaurants, bars or cafes on the ground floor The following photos walk through the area, starting from Salisbury Square, which is the green space within rectangle 3 in the above map. This is the view across the square. The building in the background is Fleetbank House, built between 1970 and 1975, a large building that has a lower section to the right, and also runs down Whitefriars Street, which is behind the building. The obelisk in the centre of the square is a memorial to Robert Waithman, Lord Mayor of the City between 1823 and 1824. The memorial states that it was erected by his friends and fellow citizens. To the right of the above photo, is the following brick building, 1Salisbury Square:
The road to the right is Salisbury Court, running up to Fleet Streetat the top.
Both Fleetbank House and 1 Salisbury Court have been granted a certificate of immunity by Historic England. This certificate states that the Secretary of State does not intend to list the buildings for a specific period of time – in the case of these buildings, up toJuly 2025.
If I have understood the proposals correctly, 1 Salisbury Square will be demolished and the area occupied will become part of the larger public space of Salisbury Square. The following photo is a wider view across the square: I am always amused by developers now and future impressions of proposed developments. If you look halfway down this page on the Salisbury Square Development website, there is a
now and future picture where you can scroll between the two. The now part of the photo was taken on a relatively grey day, with people milling about, or hurrying across the square. The proposed computer generated picture, shows the square at dusk, subtle lighting lights up the trees and the ground floor area of the new public space and there is not a cloud to be seen in the sky. Buildings frequently look their best with this form of lighting. This type of comparison is all too common with the proposals for anynew development.
A row of bollards line Salisbury Square: Walking along Salisbury Court, up to Fleet Street. A relatively narrow street, the edge of 1 Salisbury Court is to the left of the photo: 8 Salisbury Court – again if I have understood the proposals correctly, this building will also be demolished, and the land become part of the new public space. To the right of number 8, is a large brick building that covers number 2 to 7 Salisbury Court. This is Greenwood House. The blue plaque states that the first number of the Sunday Times was edited at 4 Salisbury Court by Henry White on October 20th 1822. The building dates from 1878, and was designed by the architectAlexander Peebles.
Between the ground and first floors, the building has some rather ornate terracotta carvings, and the land or building may have once belonged to the Vintners Company, as their arms with the three tuns can be seen on the wall between first floor windows. 2 to 7 Salisbury Court are Grade II listed, however a City of London notice cable tied to the iron railings outside the building state that a number of changes will be made: i) Part demolition of 2-7 Salisbury Court Grade II listed; ii) remodelling at roof level; iii) formation of new facade to south elevation, and part new facadeto west elevation;
iv) replacement fenestration;v) new plant; and
v) associated internal alterations. The two “v” bullets are directly from the notice, the final shouldI suspect be a vi.
Always hard to decode exactly what these planning notices mean, but I suspect it will be a new façade to replace the joining wall where number 8 has been demolished. Possible demolition of the internal structure of the building, with the wall facing Salisbury Court retained as a façade. A new roof and changes to the windows. So some dramatic changes. The view looking down Salisbury Court from the junction with FleetStreet:
On the corner of Salisbury Court and Fleet Street is 80 to 81 Fleet Street. A large corner building that was until recently a Barclays Bank. The building was originally, up to 1930, the home of the DailyChronicle.
This corner building will also be demolished, and will form, along with the entire block along Fleet Street as shown in the above photo, the new City of London Law Courts. The centre block in the following photo is Chronicle House, covering 72-78 Fleet Street. The building dates from 1924 and was designed and built by Hebert, Ellis & Clarke. The building takes its name from being home to the newspaper, the News Chronicle. The building has also been granted immunity from listing by Historic England and the Secretary of State. The following block is on the corner of Fleet Street and Whitefriars Street, and will also be demolished to become part of the Law Courtscomplex.
Walking down Whitefriars Street, and the following building is theHack and Hop pub:
The Hack and Hop was originally the Coach and Horses, a pub that dates back to the mid 19th century. The earliest record I can find of the pub is a newspaper mention in the Morning Advertiser on the 25th November 1850, where there was an advert for a regular Monday evening meeting where a penny subscription would be collected for the London Copper-Plate Printers Benevolent Fund – a reminder of the long history of the area with the printing trade. The buildings along this part of Whitefriars Street, including the Hack and Hop pub will be demolished and replaced by the new headquarters building for the City of London Police. The new building will bring together police functions from a couple of existing buildings which have already been sold – Wood Street and Snow Hill police stations. The new building will have ten floors above ground with space for 1,000 police officers and civilian staff, with three levels below ground for specialist functions and parking. Continuing on down Whitefriars Street, and we see the other side ofFleetbank House:
Fleetbank House will be demolished and replaced with a new office / commercial building, which is described as having a _“lively frontage”_. I suspect this means cafes, bars and restaurants. The view looking up Whitefriars Street, with the grey walls ofFleetbank House.
The end of Fleetbank House in the above photo marks the southern limit of the new re-development of Whietfriars Street. The work to create the so called Justice Quarter will be one of the most significant developments along Fleet Street for a very long time. The area off Fleet Street has a considerable amount of history which will require a dedicated post. Hanging Sword Alley passes through the space from Whitefriars Street to Salisbury Court. There is a memorial to journalist T.P. O’Connor along Fleet Street. Bradbury and Evans, one of Dickens publishers were located here. The Fleet water conduit was here until the Great Fire in 1666. The whole block has a long association with the journalism and the publishing industry, which ended in 2009 when the French Press Agency left 72-78 Fleet Street (Chronicle House). It is hard to avoid getting into a discussion about the good or bad points of any new development, and I have tried to avoid this in the above post, focusing instead on recording what may well disappear inthe coming years.
There is much to consider regarding any change. The buildings lost, the new buildings, what the change brings to the overall area, architecture, impact on wider views, jobs, diversity of activity etc.etc.
There is also the issue of what then happens to the buildings where functions will move from. For example, one of the City of London courts that will move into the new Fleet Street building is the City of London Magistrates Court on the corner of Queen Victoria Street and Walbrook, shown in the following two photos: A building in a very prime location. Development often leads to further development as functions, businesses etc. shuffle their way around the City. Three possible future demolitions and re-developments that will have a significant impact on their local area of London. Further reading on these can be found at: City of London Salisbury Square Development web site City of London Consultation briefing for the Salisbury Squaredevelopment
Save Britain’s Heritage petition to stop the demolition of 72 – 81Fleet Street
Colechurch House development web site Article with artist’s impression of new Colechurch House development Article with artist’s impression of development on south bank replacing Kent House and Studios alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in London Buildingsand tagged
Colechurch House
, Fleet Street
, London Bridge
, Southbank
on May 16, 2021
by admin .
THE STAR – BELGRAVE MEWS WEST11 Replies
This week, I am back to exploring pubs of the 1980s, and unlike the last post on the Narrow Boat in Ladbroke Grove,
today’s pub is still open. This is the Star in Belgrave Mews West: The same view today: Apart from some minor cosmetic changes, and a change of colour for the ground floor of the pub, it has hardly changed in 35 years. There is one minor difference which tells a wider story of how pubs have changed. Go back to the 1986 photo at the top of the post and look at the ground floor window to the left of the pub, and there is an Xpelair fan installed at the top of the window. These were so common in pubs (there is one in the centre of the Horse and Groom Pub, Groom Place, Belgravia from a few weeks ago). They were needed as this was long before the smoking ban came into force in 2007, and pubs were mainly for drinking with a much smaller side line in food. I had a part time job in a pub in the early 1980s and I am sure I was on the equivalent of 20 day sometimes, just by breathing the air. There is also a change at the top of the arch. In 1986 the top was plain, however in 2021 there is a wheatsheaf. The wheatsheaf is the symbol of the Grosvenor Estate, of which the mews are part. The Star is located at the northern end of Belgrave Mews West, which runs between Chesham Place and Halkin Place, just to the west of Belgrave Square. I have highlighted the location of the mews in the following map (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors):
The Star was part of the westward expansion of Belgravia in the 1830s / 1840s, with the development of the Grosvenor Estate. The pub has retained its original name, and the first reference I can find to the pub implies that it opened in 1848, as from the Morning Advertiser on the 13th March 1848, in the column detailing the results of licenceapplications:
_“Star, Belgrave-mews West, Belgrave-square – Mr Woolff appeared for Richard William Ledger, a beer-house-keeper, and applied for a licence on the grounds that there were a great many workmen and servants of the nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood, who required that accommodation which only a licensed house could afford, and that there was no public-house nearer than the Turk’s Head which is distant 400 yards from the petitioner’s. There was no objection – Licence granted”_. The Turk’s Head mentioned in the licence application is still a pub, but is now called the Alfred Tennyson, and can be found at 10 MotcombeStreet, Belgravia.
The Star looks to be in a purpose built pub building, so I am not sure what came first, the building or the licence application? I assume the building was designed with the sole purpose of being a pub. The licence application is also interesting as it clearly identifies the target clientele. You would probably not have found any of the wealthy owners of the large houses around Belgrave Square in the Star, however for their servants, and those working in the area, the Star must have been a welcome escape. The following photo is looking south down Belgrave Mews West. Belgrave Square is to the left and the buildings on the left of the mews back onto the houses in Belgrave Square, which is probably where many of the pubs clientele worked. The Star – currently closed, but opening soon. The Star seems to have been a place where the rich and famous, as well as many of the major criminals of the time met in the 1950s and 1960s. It is the place where members of the gang who carried out the Great Train Robbery met to plan the raid. A description of the pub in the Tatler on the 23rd July 1966 describes the rather colourful landlord at the time: _“The Star, 6 Belgrave Mews West. Pat Kennedy’s voice sounds like gravel-chips being steamrollered. It is heard at full blast any time of day or night, as he holds court in the upstairs bar. Paddy’s, as the pub is known, has seen it all. Name a personality, and he or she has been there. Nuff said”._ Those reported as frequenting the Star included actors Albert Finney, Diana Dors and Peter O’Toole, A couple of months after the above report, in a section on London’s best bars, the Tatler described the Star as _“it attracts fanatical partisans of darts and pin-tables, and creates an illusion of spies and illicitrendezvous”_.
The pub sign features a view of the pub to the side, looking through the arched entrance to the mews, where a coach and horses are waiting. Looking through the arch with the Star to the left: Walking further down the mews and this is the view looking up, with the pub at the far left: The majority of the buildings that line Belgrave Mews West are the type of buildings you would expect to find in such as place. Two storey buildings, many with large entrances on the ground floor which would have once been the stables for the large houses in Belgrave Square. The rear of these buildings face onto a small open space between them and the larger houses on Belgrave Square, allowing easy access when a servant needed to get the horse and carriage round to the front door in Belgrave Square. The difference with Belgrave Mews West is that towards the southern end of the mews there are two embassy buildings. The Austrian Embassy has a very impressive frontage onto Belgrave Square, however to the southern end of the mews, on the left, we can see the Austrian flag above the very plain rear of the embassy. At the far end of the mews, between the arch that mirrors the arch by the Star is the German Embassy which occupies a large area of land between Belgrave Mews West and Chesham Place. View through the southern arch of Belgrave Mews West: The LCC Bomb Damage Maps show that the buildings in the space occupied by the Austrian Embassy in Belgrave Mews West suffered severe damage, and the houses that were along Chesham Place and the mews were damaged beyond repair, so bomb damage probably explains why the original early 19th century buildings have been replaced by more the more recentembassy buildings.
The following photo shows the entrance to Belgrave Mews West from Chesham Place, which passes underneath the German Embassy. I was surprised that it was so easy to walk around the embassy and take photos, however there were plenty of CCTV cameras around. Belgravia has been a preferred location for embassies since the area was first built. In “Knightsbridge and Belgravia” E. Beresford Chancellor (1909) writes about Chesham Place, including that the _“Russian Embassy has been located here since 1852”_. The Star is one of those wonderful pubs that make wandering the side streets so very enjoyable, even more so when the pub reopens on the 17th May. Brilliant to see that the Star is still to be found, and another pub added to the list to revisit when open. alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in London Pubs, London Streets
and tagged
Belgravia on May 9,2021
by admin .
LOST BANKSIDE ALLEYS13 Replies
I have no idea of the exact location of the following photo. It is one of my father’s and dates from 1949. Judging by the photos on the strips of negatives that included this photo, it is probably one of a number of Bankside alleys, although there is a chance it is a bitfurther east.
The photo shows a police officer walking through an alley, probably between warehouses. At the end of the alley, there is one of the typical walkways that were built to connect warehouses on oppositesides of a street.
I love the photo as it captures what must have been a relatively common event – a lone police officer patrolling his beat. Policing has changed considerably in the 72 years since the photo. Budget cuts have reduced police numbers, streets now have CCTV and there is the ongoing threat of terrorism. Along Bankside, there are no warehouses full of goods that would tempt a thieve. The river is quiet and is no longer teeming with barges and lighters, although as the tragic events on London Bridge just a week ago demonstrate, the Thames is still a very dangerous place for anyone who enters the water. The police officer in the photo was probably on his “beat” – a set route around a district that an officer would patrol. They would get to know the streets, the people, activity that was normal, and what was not normal. Being assigned to a beat was the first step in a police officer’s career after training and being posted to a station as a PoliceConstable.
In the book “Fabian of the Yard” (1950) by Superintendent Robert Fabian, he provides an introduction to the activity of “being on abeat”:
_“On the beat, an officer should normally walk the regulation 2.5 m.p.h. – if he is hurrying he is probably after someone or more likely going home to his supper. Properly carried out, patrol duty is not half so dull as you might imagine. The most ordinary looking street can to the practiced eye be of absorbing interest. Each doorway, shadow at a window, hurried footstep or meaningful glance may have a tale to tell”_. (Fabian of the Yard is a fascinating account of London policing and crime between the 1920s and 1940s) Crime was frequently reported after the event, however the benefit of being on the beat, was that anything unusual, and a possible crime, could be investigated as it happened. Detailed newspaper reporting of such events tended to reduce in the 20th century, however in the 19th century, papers were full of long accounts of crimes, often including the conversations that had taken place during an inquest, or the words of the police officers involved. The following three extracts are examples of the type of action that a police officer on the beat would frequently get involved with, when patrolling along the river’s edge. From the Shipping and Mercantile Gazzete on Thursday the 8th February,1877:
_“THEFT FROM A BARGE – At the Southwark Police-court, Joseph Sadler, 22, a returned convict, was charged with being concerned with two others in stealing three pieces of oak timber from a barge on the River Thames, the property of Messrs. Shuter and Co., coopers and stave merchants, Shad Thames. _ _George Barnett, police-sergeant 56M, said that between 10 and 11 on the previous night he was on duty in Bermondsey-wall when he saw the prisoner and two others coming from Eaton’s Wharf. They were each carrying a piece of timber and as soon as they saw him they dropped the timber and ran away. He, however, captured the prisoner, but his companions escaped. He made inquiries, and found that the timber had been stolen from a barge lying off Bermondsey-wall. Mr. William Joseph Littell, of the firm Shuter and Co., identified the three pieces of oak timber as the property of the firm. Mr. Partridge committed the prisoner for trial”._ From the St. James Chronicle, August 1855: _“SOUTHWARK. CHARGE OF BURGLARY – John Richard South, a tall young man, partially dressed in military attire, and who stated himself to belong to the Royal Artillery, was charged with being concerned with another, not in custody, with breaking in to the Watermen’s Arms public-house, Bankside._ _Joseph Alley, police-constable, 30M, said he was on duty shortly before three o’clock that morning in Bankside, and when passing the Waterman’s Arms he heard something breaking inside, which inducedhim to stop._
_Another constable then came up, when they again heard the breaking noise, and saw the reflection of a light inside. Witness immediately directed the other constable to go to the rear of the house, while he knocked on the door for admittance and rang the bell. While doing so he heard a rushing noise inside, and a minute or two afterwards, the landlord came down and opened the street door. Witness entered and passed through, when he saw two men climbing up a shed. He got up after them, and saw the prisoner concealed behind a chimney, and as he came near him he exclaimed ‘It’s all right, I’ll give myself up’. He took the prisoner into custody, but his companion made hisescape”._
From the Morning Post, 2nd July 1833: _“Yesterday two men, named Morrett and Yates, were brought before Mr. Murray, charged on suspicion of drowning a young woman (name unknown), whose body was taken out of the water at Bankside._ _A police sergeant of the M division on proceeding over Blackfriars Bridge on Sunday morning, about four o’clock, saw some persons looking through the balustrades, and heard them exclaim ‘That a woman was in the water’. He looked in the direction of Southwark bridge, and perceiving a splashing in the water at some distance off, he ran round to Bankside, and by the time he arrived saw the body of a young female just brought on shore by a waterman._ _He observed two men standing upon a barge moored at some distance out in the river, and he had been informed that these two men were with this female at the time she was drowned. Acting upon this intelligence he procured a wherry, and immediately went on board the barge, and took them both into custody._ _The accused were examined separately, and Yates made the following statement voluntarily;- he said that he and the other prisoner were brass founders, and worked at a large factory in St Martin’s-lane. On Saturday night after work, they went to the Cart and Horses in Upper St Martin’s-lane which they left at half past eleven o’clock, and then went home together, but did not retire to rest._ _At three o’clock in the morning they left home together with the determination of taking an excursion on the water. On their way to Westminster bridge they met a young female near the Horse Guards, and they spoke to her, and told her they were going to have a pull down the river. She expressed her desire to accompany them; they endeavoured to dissuade her, but when they hired the boat, which was at Mr Lyons, near the bridge, she said she was determined to go with them, and accordingly jumped into the boat along with them._ _They then proceeded down the rive, the tide running that way, and in the course of their progress, run against a chain or warp to which a barge was made fast. This was about midway between the two bridges, and in an attempt to extricate it the wherry heeled over and the female rolled into the river. One of them (Yates) got hold of the barge and saved himself, and rescued Morrett, who was on the point of being drowned, and would inevitably have shared the fate of the female had not Yates grasped him by the collar and pulled him on board thebarge._
_in reply to the Magistrate the accused said he never saw the deceased before; that she appeared to be 18 years of age, and that they were unacquainted with who or what she was. She was dressed in a dark half-mourning dress, and wore a straw bonnet with ribands. The other prisoner gave a similar account of the transaction, and they were ordered to be detained in custody, as there were some mysterious circumstances attending the case”._ The following day an inquest was held and a verdict of accidental death was returned. Much of the critiscm at the inquest seems to have fallen on two other parties, not the two men found on the barge. When the young woman’s body was first found, “two medical men” had been called, but had refused to attend. One of their assistants only arrived an hour later. The proprietor of the boat was criticised for _“letting out a wherry at that hour in the morning without some experienced person to attend to it; and that it was in consequence of this neglect that many casualties occurred in the river”_. A deodand of £5 was levied on the boat. A deodand was a forfeit on an object where it has caused, or been involved with, a person’s death. A scene that a police officer on the beat may have been interested in is shown in the following photo from the same strip of negatives, so around the same bankside area. A quiet alley and some activity around a car in the distance. Again, I cannot identify the location of the alley, there are no features that enable identification, and the area has changed so much in the last 72 years that as far as I can tell, the alley has longdisappeared.
A glance at the 1896 edition of the Ordnance Survey map shows the number of alleys that were once along Bankside (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland’).
In the above extract, Tate Modern now occupies the area on the left, and Southwark Bridge is on the right. From left to right there is: Pike Gardens, leading to White Hind Alley, Moss Alley and Rose Alley, along with narrow streets leading up to the Thames such as Pond Yard and Bear Gardens. These alleys have now dissapeard when you walk along the Thames, however there are traces further in land, such as Rose Alley, which is now a short stretch of narrow street acting as a service road to the building that now blocks the end of the old alley to the Thames. There is one alley part remaining, although this is not named on theabove map.
Underneath the letter I of the word Bankside (running along the street on the Thames embankment), there is a narrow alley with no name. This is Cardinal Cap Alley, with the entrance being found between two buildings just to the west of the Globe Theatre. I wrote a post about Cardinal Cap Alley and No. 49 Bankside back in 2015 as the alley and number 49 have a fascinating history. The alley has been controversially gated off for some years, however looking through the bars of the gate we can see the remains of an oldBankside alley.
Cardinal Cap Alley was open in the 1970s, and the view across to St Paul’s was one of my early photographic attempts, with my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 126 (although the camera did not handle contrast that well, so St Paul’s is only just visible across theriver).
I have no idea whether the police officer in my father’s 1949 photo was walking the regulation 2.5 mph, or as Fabian of the Yard also suggested that he may be hurrying home for his supper. The policing of the river and the land along the river’s edge has changed considerably in the 72 years since the photo was taken, and the majority of Bankside alleys have been replaced with new buildings facing onto the Thames. Both Bankside and the river are today a verydifferent place.
alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in London Photography, London
Streets , The
Thames ,
Uncategorized
and tagged Bankside ,Bankside alleys
on May 2, 2021
by admin .
PORTSMOUTH FROM PORTSDOWN HILL – 1949 AND 202111 Replies
Regular readers will know that as well as London, my father also took very many photos whilst cycling around the country during the late 1940s and early 1950s. For a mid-week post, I am visiting the location of one of those photos, which tells an interesting story of how land has been reclaimed, and the uses to which we have put that land. This is the view of Portsmouth from Portsdown Hill in 1949: The same view in 2021: There are a couple of details that confirm that this is the same view. Both photos have the electricity cables on the right disappearing over the edge of the hill, and in the distance the profile of the Isle ofWight is the same.
The location is important for the rest of the post. The following map is a wider view of the area. The Isle of Wight is lower left, the water is the Solent, the channel leading up to the top left corner is Southampton Water. Portsmouth is the block of land with water on both sides, in the centre of the map (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors).
The following map is an extract from the above map, with the red circle marking the location from where both photos were taken (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors).
Portsmouth can be considered as an island as it is surrounded by water on all sides. Portsmouth Harbour to the west, Langstone Harbour to the east, the Solent to the south, and around the north of the island there is a narrow channel of water. It is not very clear from the above map, but the place from where both photos where taken is on a hill. Portsmouth is generally flat and low lying with a maximum height of 6 metres. Directly behind Portsmouth is a chalk hill, known as Portsdown Hill, running east to west. The height at the location of the photo is 101 metres, so considerably higher than Portsmouth as illustrated in the photos. Portsdown Hill is part of the geologic feature called the PortsdownAnticline.
An anticline forms when the ground has been compressed from two sides, and the compression causes the land to rise and fall. An anticline is the part where the land has risen and a syncline is where the land falls. The following diagram illustrates the concept of an anticlineand syncline.
The sides of an anticline sometimes erode over time, and also become exposed due to human activities, which has happened to the chalk of the Portsdown anticline, which I will show later in the post. The anticline / syncline model explains much about the landscape of this part of southern England, with the hills on the Isle of Wight in the photo being part of the Sandown anticline, the ripples of anticlines and synclines forming the landscape up to Petersfield and Winchester, and further north, the Hog’s Back in Surrey, before flattening out to form the London Basin. Human activity is often very visible with the construction of roads, housing, factories and warehouses, and in the two photos from Portsdown Hill we can see the impact of another form of human activity which has had a considerable impact on the waters of Portsmouth Habour since my father’s 1949 photo. In the 1949 there is a large area of water in the foreground. In the 2021 photo this has disappeared. The following map extract shows the area in 1962. Again, the red circle indicates where the photos weretaken from.
There is a large island (Horsea Island) in the north east part of Portsmouth Harbour (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland’ ). In the 1970s the area of land between Horsea Island and the mainland was reclaimed. The following map shows the reclaimed area. Comparing the above map, with the map of the area in 2021 earlier in the post will show that the reclaimed area has been used for the M27 motorway, the M275 into Portsmouth, construction of Port Solent marina, along with housing, shopping, entertainment and buildings formarine businesses.
One large part of the reclaimed land was used as a landfill area for household waste. The area destined for landfill is shown in the above map highlighted in blue. Even though the decision was made in the 1970s, it is still surprising that such a marine environment would be used for landfill. A number of old landfill sites on the coast are already, or at risk of erosion. This is already happening at an old landfill site on the Thames atEast Tilbury
.
The Portsmouth landfill site closed in 2006, and the site has now been grassed over, although vents can be seen protruding from the ground to vent the gasses from the decaying materials below. I have marked up my father’s 1949 photo with some of the key features, including the area that would become landfill. The masts are part of a navy wireless station that occupied much of Horsea island. The island also had a torpedo testing range, which can still be seen as the long channel of water in the 2021 map earlier inthe post.
The torpedo testing range was the result of earlier human intervention. Horsea Island was originally two islands – Great and Little Horsea. The admiralty purchased the islands in 1885, and they were merged into a single island using chalk excavated from Portsdown Hill. The enlarged island provided the space for the torpedo testing range which was eventually extended to a length of 1,000 yards. The following photo from the same location shows the old landfill site as the large grass mound in the centre of the photo. The Isle of Wight can be seen across the Solent and there is a tower rising to the right of the taller buildings of central Portsmouth. This tower is the Spinnaker Tower located on the Portsmouth Harbour waterfront at Gunwharf Quays. Gunwharf Quays is now a retail and entertainment complex, built on the site of HMS Vernon, an old part of Portsmouth’s naval base, and an area focusing on mine warfare and the development of torpedoes which provides a link with Horsea Island. HMS Vernon was decommissioned in1986.
Construction of Gunwharf Quays started in 1998. It was a complex engineering and construction process as much of the new site would be built over tidal mudflats and one of the largest marine decks in Europe was built to support much of the new building. Construction of the Spinnaker Tower started in late 2001, based on a design chosen from three designs put to a vote by the residents of Portsmouth. The design is intended to emulate the billowing out of a spinnaker sail to reflect Portsmouth’s marine heritage. At the top of the Spinnaker Tower is a viewing gallery, which I visited a number of years ago. The height of the tower provides a spectacular view over the surrounding area. In the following photo, the view is back towards Portsdown Hill and I have marked the site of the 1949 photo with a red arrow. The white of the exposed chalk can be seen just to the right of the arrow, with a much larger area to the left. This is the underlying chalk of Portsdown Hill which has been exposed by both weathering and erosion over time, as well as human quarrying. The Portsmouth naval base as well as the historic dockyard occupy much of the foreground of the photo. The large ship nearest to the camera is HMS Warrior. Built in 1860, HMS Warrior was powered by both steam and sail, and was Britain’s first iron hulled, armoured naval warship. The most technologically advanced ship of her time. Follow up from the funnels of HMS Warrior and HMS Victory can also be seen. The Historic Dockyard is also home to the Mary Rose, the flagship of King Henry VIII, which sank in the Solent in 1545, and raised from the seabed in 1982. Looking in the opposite direction, the Spinnaker Tower provideds a superb view over the Solent and the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. In the above photo, the area to the left of the harbour entrance is called Portsmouth Point, also known as Spice Island. Today, there are a couple of brilliant pubs facing onto the harbour entrance, however in the past, Portsmouth Point / Spice Island had a reputation for drunkness, prostitution and crime, with press gangs roaming the streets. Thomas Rowlandson produced the following satirical print of PortsmouthPoint in 1814.
The view is looking out towards Portsmouth Harbour where numerous ships are moored or with their sails up. General confusion and chaos reigns on the Point with sailors just returned or about to leave (a sailor is saying goodbye to his family in the doorway on the right, whilst in the window above an officer is looking towards the harbour with his telescope). The power station chimney seen in the 1949 photo was just to the left of the above photo, the area is now covered with housing. Portsmouth harbour opens out into the Solent, the water that runs around the north of the Isle of Wight. Although the Isle of Wight is now an island, this was not always the case. The Solent was once part of a large river system that drained part of southern England, including Portsmouth, Langstone and Chichester Harbours, along with Southampton Water. The west of the Isle of Wight was connected to Dorset during the time of the Solent river system, however the land was breached around 7,000 years ago as sea levels rose following the end of the last glacial period and melting of large sheets of ice. There is so much history to be discovered around Portsmouth. In the above photo, there are some round objects visible in the sea to the left of the photo. These are what have become known as Palmerston Forts, or Palmerston Follies: These were built between 1865 and 1880 following a Royal Commision that raised concerns regarding the risk of a French invasion. They were intended to defend Portsmouth from an attack from the east. They were named after Lord Palmerston who was Prime Minister at the time, and who championed the idea of the forts. They became known as Palmerston Follies as they were never used as a French invasion never materialised, and they quickly became outdated following advances inweapons technology.
Three additional land based forts were also built along Portsdown Hill which can still be seen when travelling along the road that runs along the top of the hill. The following print from 1823 shows a view from Portsdown Hill, further to the west of my father’s 1949 photo (© The Trustees of the British Museum). There is a tower like structure in the centre of the print, which can also be seen to the right of the 1949 photo. The tower is the Norman keep of Portchester Castle at the northern end of Portsmouth Harbour. Portchester Castle was originally a Roman fort, built in the 3rd century as one of a number of shore forts to defend the area againstSaxon raids.
The old Roman fort seems to have been occupied from the ending of the Roman period to the Norman conquest, when the site became a Norman castle, with a 12th century keep. The castle continued to be in use and further fortified due to its strategic position, and what seems to have been an almost continuous threat of invasion by the French. Charles I sold the castle to a local landowner in 1632, and for periods during the next two centuries, the castle was rented to the Government as a prison to hold prisoners of war, including during the Napoleonic wars of 1793 to 1815, when the castle was home to thousandsof prisoners.
Portchester Castle is still owned by descendants of the landowner who purchased the castle from Charles I, and is now managed by EnglishHeritage.
Portchester Castle from the air, facing onto Portsmouth Harbour: Some of the prisoners left their mark with graffiti on the castlestone:
The view from Portsdown Hill has changed considerably since 1949, however the view still includes a fascinating sweep of historical and geological time, and there is far more to be discovered than I have been able to cover in a single post. The view tells the story of how the land developed, and what we have done with that land. The 1949 photo was taken by my father on one of his cycling trips out of London, Youth Hostelling with friends from National Service. Other locations I have so far covered on this route along the south ofEngland include:
Chichester Market Cross And The First Fatal Railway Accident Salisbury – Poultry Cross, High Street Gate And Cathedral
and,
Winchester and Stonehenge alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in Cycling Around Britainand
tagged Portsmouth onApril 28, 2021
by admin .
THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF HAY’S WHARF16 Replies
Seventy years ago, this coming Friday, at 5.30 p.m. on the 30th April 1951, Mr. L. Elliott Esq. arrived at No. 1, London Bridge to celebrate three hundred years of Hay’s Wharf. The Lord Mayor would also be attending and there were cocktails and music. The invitation card pictured above opened out to reveal pictures from 1651 and 1951. The following picture shows Hay’s Wharf (with London Bridge on the right) in 1651: The second photo shows the wharfs occupied by the Hay’s Wharf company in 1951, running from London Bridge at top right, along the left side of the river down to Tower Bridge. The edge of the river in 1951 appears to be a hive of activity with numerous barges, lighters and ships moored alongside the wharfs, and working in the river. This was the Hay’s Wharf that the event on the 20th April 1951 was intended to celebrate. Hay’s Wharf has a rather complicated history, with different owners of land, building and rebuilding of wharfs and warehouses, the Hay’s family, partners in the business and how Hay’s took over most of the river frontage between London and Tower Bridges. Today’s post is an attempt to provide an overview of the 300 years of Hay’s Wharf and the Hay’s Wharf company. The year 1651 as the founding of Hay’s Wharf seems to be year when Alexander Hay took over the lease of a brew-house from Robert Houghton, on the site of the current Hay’s Wharf buildings, alongside a small inlet from the river. Running a brew-house may have meant that Hay realised the importance of clean water supplies. Water was being delivered to London by companies such as the New River Company, and by the London Bridge Waterworks, and these companies needed pipes through which to distribute their water. Before a method of joining iron pipes was developed in 1785, water pipes were made from hollowed out tree trunks, and Hay set up a business to bore tree trunks and supply wooden pipes to companies such as the New River Company. This was carried out at the small inlet at Hay’s Wharf, with buildings alongside constructed for the operation of the business. Pipe boring must have been of such a scale that the Bridge House records, record Pipe Borers Wharf as the official name for Hay’sWharf
There is one curious story of Hay’s Wharf during the early years of the 18th century. In 1709, the overall lease for the wharfs and properties close to London Bridge were taken over by Charles Cox who had been the MP for Southwark since 1695. It was from Charles Cox that Hay had an individual lease of the properties that formed Hay’sWharf.
In 1697 the Treaty of Ryswick resulted in the persecution of Lutheran Protestants in parts of what is now Germany. Many of these fled to England as refugees and were granted an allowance of one shilling a day. Following early arrivals from Germany, numbers soon increased as news of the welcome they received in England spread. Numbers became such that there was a public outcry against the number arriving and the grant of a shilling a day. As a result, this grant was soonstopped.
Charles Cox announced that he would give asylum to all who arrived and would cover the cost. His approach to housing new arrivals was to crowd them into buildings at Hay’s Wharf and nearby Bridge House. Conditions grew very insanitary, and the local population were angered by the number of arrivals, and their living conditions so close to theexisting residents.
Despite Charles Cox stating that he would fund the costs, the local Poor Rate had to be increased to £700. Hundreds continued to arrive from Germany, and in desperation Charles Cox sent many to Southern Ireland, where they were not welcomed, and had to return to London. Eventually, arrangements were made to ship the refugees to America, where they were settled in Carolina. It is interesting to wonder how many of those living in America today are descendants of those who travelled to America via the buildings at Hay’s Wharf and BridgeHouse.
Warehousing as a major business started from 1714 when the Customs Authorities allowed goods such as tobacco to be stored in warehouses on payment of a small percentage of the import duty. If the product was then exported, the import duty would be repaid, allowing imported goods meant for export to be stored in warehouses tax free. Previous warehouses had been for the temporary storage of goods and the convenience of merchants, however tax free import followed by export significantly grew warehousing as a business. By 1789, Hay’s Wharf was just one of a number of sufferance wharfs along the south bank of the river. A sufferance wharf is one where goods can be stored until any tax or duty is paid. The following map shows the sufferance wharfs lining the south bank ofthe river in 1789.
Hay’s Wharf was just one of a number that lined the river. From lower left are Chamberlain’s Wharf, Cotton’s Wharf, Hay’s Wharf, Beal’s Wharf, Griffin’s Wharf, Symon’s Wharf, Stanton’s Wharf, Davis Butt & Co Wharf, Hartley’s Wharf, Pearson’s Wharf andHolland’s Wharf.
Hay’s Wharf was used as a place where ships would dock and receive goods and passengers for transport across the country, and abroad. A Hay’s Wharf sailing bill from 1798 provides an indication of how this trade was carried out. The “Sally” would be sailing from Hay’s Wharf to Plymouth and Plymouth Dock, and the ship would be available for twelve working days at Hay’s Wharf to take goods for transport to Plymouth, from where they could then be forwarded to a range of locations in the West Country. As well as taking goods, the Sally would also carry passengers for Plymouth. Throughout the 18th century, the Hay’s Wharf business had passed through the Hay’s family. Francis Theodore Hay would be the last of the family connected with the business. Francis had been apprenticed as a Waterman before taking over the business. He would become Master of the Waterman’s Company and King’s Waterman to George III and George IV. In the early 19th century, Hay’s business was seeing considerable competition. In earlier years the Customs Authority had granted sufferance, or the right to store goods without paying tax, to a limited number of wharf owners, however they now granted sufferance to any owner of land with a frontage on the river. Competition was also coming from the new docks which were being built east of the Tower ofLondon.
Possibly because of this competition, Francis set up his son in a lighter building business, with a property on the river in Rotherhithe. Lighters were smaller, flat bottomed barges which allowed goods to be transferred from a ship, right up to the wharfs lining theriver.
Francis Theodore Hay died in 1838, and was the last of the Hay’s connected with the wharf business. His son carried on running the lighter building business. Francis Theodore Hay: Francis Hay’s interest in the business seems to have been mainly financial, and Alderman John Humphrey (who already had a long association with Hay’s), now became the owner of the business. He would bring in two partners who were influential in the future successof Hay’s Wharf.
Hugh Colin Smith was a member of a family long connected with the City’s banking and commercial world. Arthur Magniac’s family was part of the Jardine, Matheson Company, one of the oldest Merchant Adventurers in China, and it was through Magniac that the tea trade was brought to Hay’s Wharf, with tea clippers from China bringing a high percentage of the tea consumed in London to Hay’s. The trade with China was so successful that Jardine, Matheson referred to Hay’s Wharf as “our wharf in London”. Humphrey, Smith and Magniac entered a fomal partnership in 1861 known as the “Proprietors of Hay’s Wharf”, although Humphrey would only live for another 18 months, however his sons took over their father’s interest in the partnership and Hay’s Wharf entered a period of considerable expansion and progress. For the rest of the 19th century, and the early 20th century, Hay’s Wharf introduced mechanisation, purchased land and wharfs along the river between London and Tower Bridges, invested in new buildings and technologies such as a Cold Store. They also purchased the Pickford’s transport business. It was during the early part of the 20th century that the Hay’s Wharf business was at the peak of its expansion and success. The following painting by Gordon Ellis shows the tea clipper Flying Spur about to enter the dock at Hay’s Wharf on the 29th of September 1862. The ship is bringing the new season’s tea back from Foochow,China.
The site of the original Hay’s Wharf is now the Hay’s Galleria. Seen from across the Thames, two old warehouse buildings surround an open space covered by a glass and metal frame. The central open space was once fully occupied by water, the remains of an old inlet from the river that had been turned into a dock so that ships could moor adjacent to the buildings that would store theircargo.
I cannot confirm the exact date of the current buildings. There are references to construction in 1856, however the 1861 fire, named in the press as the “Great Fire in Tooley Street” caused considerable damage to these buildings. The Morning Post of the 24th June 1861 describes the fire catching in the roof of Hay’s Wharf, tall columns of flame, the top floor blazing and the fire descending to the floor below, with the rest of the floors following. The article described that this was supposed to be a fire proof building, and although it appears to have been considerably damaged by the fire, the fire did take longer to move from floor to floor than in the other warehouses. Hay’s Wharf was repaired / rebuilt soon after, suffered bomb damage in the last war, and considerable restoration and modification at the end of the 20th century, which included the infill of the old centraldock.
The following photo is looking along the interior of Hay’s Wharf, out towards the River Thames. The following photo shows the interior when it was in use as a dock, with water running up to a narrow walkway alongside the building on either side (the walkway was a later addition to the warehouse buildings. When first built the dock ran directly up to the side of the building and to get between the different arches you would have had to walk through the interior). The photo dates from 1921 and the ship in the photo is the Quest, the ship that the explorer Earnest Shackleton used for his final expedition to the Antarctic. Shackleton would suffer a fatal heart attack on the 5th of January 1922 whilst at South Georgia, where hewould be buried.
The view back along the old dock from the river end of Hay’s Wharf: The old entrance to the river can still be seen with the indent on the river wall and walkway: In the late 1920s, the Hay’s Wharf Company decided to build a new head office. This would occupy the site of St Olave’s Church, between Tooley Street and the Thames. To continue a link with the 11th century saint after who the church was dedicated, the new head office would be called St Olaf House. The photo below shows the view of the building from Tooley Street: St Olave’s church just survived the disastrous fire at Tooley Streetin 1843
.
It was rebuilt the following year, however over the coming decades the size of the congregation declined, and in 1908 is was recorded that at one of the rare services at the church there were only five in thecongregation.
The body of the church was eventually demolished with only the tower and graveyard remaining. In 1928, Bermondsey Borough Council proposed selling the church to the Hay’s Wharf Company in order to save public money. A bill was presented in Parliament to enable the sale, which requested permission: _“to sell to Hay’s Wharf the site of the Church of St Olave’s and the churchyard, comprising St Olave’s Garden between Tooley Street and the River, together with the right of demolition of the tower and the right to use the ground as a waiting place for vehicles, with loading bays, and to erect buildings upon it._“ The sale of the churchyard and the tower (a local landmark) was a contentious issue, but finally went ahead. The flagstaff from the tower was given to St George’s Church, Borough High Street and three bells from the tower were given to the Church of St Olave which was then being built in Mitcham. The octagonal Portland stone turret, formerly capping the tower of the church was moved to the Tanner Street, Bermondsey park and children’s playground to form a drinking fountain. The playground was funded with some of the proceeds from the sale of the land. The new head office was designed by H.S. Goodhart-Rendel and opened in1931.
The Tooley Street entrance to the building is recessed under the building, with parking space and vehicle access between the entranceand Tooley Street.
The main entrance has the arms of the Smith, Humphrey and Magniac families above the door, along with the opening date of 1931. These three families were the partners in the company, and responsible for the considerable development and expansion of the company after 1862. A black and gold mosaic of St Olave on the corner of the building: On another corner of the building is recorded that it occupies the site of the church and the legend of St Olave: Along with an award for the offices from the British Council: View of the new Head Office from London Bridge: The same view from London Bridge in 1951: The focal point of the river facing side of the building is a large set of reliefs framing six of the windows: The reliefs were the work of the sculptor Frank Dobson and completed using gilded faience (second time in the last few weeks I have come across this material. Faience is glazed pottery, see also post on Ibex House in the Minories).
The three large panels at the top represent Capital, Labour and Commerce, and the 36 vertical panels represent “The Chain ofDistribution”.
Another example of Frank Dobson’s work can be found on the south bank of the river with “London Pride”, designed for the Festival of Britain, now outside the National Theatre. Another 1951 view from London Bridge showing the head office, and the adjacent wharf (now the London Bridge Hospital). Note the cranes built on a pontoon in the river: As well as the name of the building, the name of the saint and church continues with the name of the alley from Tooley Street to the river to the west of the building – St Olaf Stairs: There are two interesting buildings just to the east of St Olaf House on Tooley Street. The photo below shows Emblem House, now part of London Bridge Hospital. Emblem House was built in 1903 to a design by Charles Stanley Peach. Originally called Colonial House, the building was part of the change from wharfs and warehouses to commercial buildings along this stretchof Tooley Street.
In the photo above, there is a thin, brick built building to the left of Emblem House. This is Denmark House. Built in 1908 to a design by S.D. Adshead, for the Bennet SteamshipCompany.
On the side of the building facing St Olaf House, at the very top of the building, there is a stone model of a steamship, with what looks like a funnel, two lifeboats and cranes at front and rear – possibly one of Bennet’s steamships. After the war, some of the wharfs and warehouses lining the Thames between London and Tower Bridges were empty. Wartime damage and the transfer of trade to the docks east of the river had an impact, however there were still ships being loaded and unloaded at the wharfs owned by Hay’s Wharf. My father took the following photo in 1947 from in front of the Tower of London, looking across to the warehouses on the south bank of the river: A ship is heading towards Tower Bridge, and a second ship is moored up against one of the warehouses, and cranes line the southern bank ofthe river.
This would not last for too much longer, and from the 1950s the business continued to decline. By 1970, the Hay’s Wharf company was seen more as an owner of valuable property than a business running wharfs and warehouses. Following the release of the financial results for the company in 1970, newspaper reports commented that the results were _“the London group owning 25 acres of prime Thames dockland, is almost as interesting as the takeover rumours surrounding the company”_. The Hay’s Wharf Company had announced a profit of £1.2 million, which _“do not take into account the terminal costs on the closure of the Tooley Street wharves and expenditure on properties awaiting development”_. The wharf and warehouse business had effectivelyclosed by 1970.
There were various schemes proposed for redevelopment of the area between Tooley Street and the river during the 1970s and early 1980s. A 1981 scheme for a massive office development was the subject of a public enquiry, and in 1983 the Government gave approval for a scheme proposed by the London Docklands Development Corporation, which included a number of new office blocks, along with retention of a couple of the old warehouses, including Hay’s Wharf. Hay’s Wharf reopened as Hay’s Galleria in 1987, with the old dockfilled in.
View from the north bank of the Thames with Hay’s Wharf on the left, running up to London Bridge on the right. The following photo shows Hay’s Wharf to the right, and the buildings running up to Tower Bridge on the left. The majority of the above two photos was once part of the Hay’s Wharf Company. Today, the area is known as London Bridge City and is ultimately owned by the Kuwaiti Sovereign Wealth Fund. I wonder what Mr. L. Elliott would have thought of what the area would become in the next seventy years, as he clutched his invitation and joined the celebrations of three hundred years of Hay’s Wharf. To research this post, one of the key books I read is a book published to go with the 300 year celebration: _“Three Hundred Years on London River – the Hay’s Wharf Story”_ by Aytoun Ellis. The book is a fascinating account of Hay’s Wharf, the development of this part of the south bank of the river, the families involved, and the commercial and political environment of London during those 300 years. alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in London History, The Thames
and tagged Hay's
Wharf on April 25,
2021
by admin .
NARROW BOAT PUB, LADBROKE GROVE19 Replies
Last week, I featured a pub in Belgravia that is still there. For today’s post, I am in Ladbroke Grove to visit the site of a lost pub. This is the Narrow Boat on Ladbroke Grove, adjacent to the bridge over the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal. This was the Narrow Boat pub in 1986: The pub has disappeared, bridge rebuilt, and the Narrow Boat has been replaced by a block of flats: My father took the 1986 photo, and I have no idea whether including the passing cars in the frame was intentional or accidental. Chauffeur driven cars, and I do not recognise the man sitting in the rear of thecar on the right.
If the passing cars were accidently included in the frame, this was the days of film, so taking another when there was a risk of more traffic in the view was often an inefficient use of film. Very different to today when you can take as many digital photos as needed to get the right view. The Narrow Boat was located on the north east corner of the bridge taking Ladbroke Grove over the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal. I have highlighted the location with the red circle in the following map (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors):
An area I have not written about before (there are so many still to do). The large area of green space to the left of the pub is Kensal Green Cemetary, which is well worth a visit. The Narrow Boat was a relatively recent name for the pub. It had originally been called the Victoria. The name changed in 1977 when the Chiswick brewer’s Fuller, Smith and Turner took over the pub. A news report of the change in ownership records that the name change was in keeping with the pub’s proximity to the Portobello Docks, and the narrow boats that carried goods along the canal. The new landlords of the pub were also new to the pub trade. Wally Sharpe had been a London cab-driver for eleven years and Irene Sharpe had been a civil servant. They had plans to completly refurbish the pub, and for a beer garden and the build of a landing stage on the canal for passing canaltraffic.
Judging from the exterior of the pub just nine years later, I am not sure how many of these plans came through to completion. I suspect that Wally and Irene were just ahead of their time, and a pub with gardens facing onto the Grand Union Canal could now be rather profitable, especially as the area is not particularly well servedwith pubs.
I cannot find the exact date when the pub opened. There are newspaper references to the Victoria pub in the 1890s. In the late 19th century this was on the edges of built London with still many fields to the north and west. Kensal Green Cemetary had opened in 1833, making use of the amount of open space available in the area. The Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal opened in 1801 to provide a link between Paddington Basin and the main Grand Union Canal which connected with Birmingham and much of the rest of the country’scanal network.
The Victoria may not therefore have been opened much earlier than the 1890s, unless it was built to serve those passing on the canal. In the late 1970s, the Marylebone Mercury had a regular beer column and on the 14th September 1979, one of the improvements to London pubs was the fitting of hand pumps in Fullers pubs, with fifty so far being upgraded to return to more traditional ways of serving beer. The Narrow Boat was included in the list of pubs in which the author of the column would enjoy a pint. in the same year, the beer column commented that the Narrow Boat pub had been included in the Campaign for Real Ale’s 1979 edition of theGood Beer Guide.
Earlier mentions of the pub include a report in 1912 into the drowning of an eight year old boy who had been fishing in the canal. Joseph Church, the landlord at the time was one of those trying to rescue the boy and was called as a witness at the inquest. In 1902, the Kilburn Times reported on the trial of a drinker in the Victoria who was charged with disorderly conduct and assaulting a Police Constable. In a strange turn of events, the drinker was found innocent after evidence presented, including from the pub’s landlord, proved that the Police Constable had intimidated and assaulted the drinker. The Police Constable was reported. Apart from that, the Victoria / Narrow Boat appears to have passed a reasonably quite life servicing the locals, workers on the canal, and those from the gas works opposite. The following photo is looking to the west, from the bridge that carries Ladbroke Grove over the canal. Parts of Kensal Green cemetary can just be seen on the right, and the large building in the distance on the left is a Sainsbury’s store. The area on the left was once occupied by a large gas works. The view over the opposite side of the Ladbroke Grove bridge, lookingtowards the east.
There has been, and still is much development in the area. This is St John’s Terrace which originally ran from Harrow Road to the rear of the Narrow Boat. The building that has replaced the pub can be seen at the end of the street. On the corner of St John’s Terrace and Harrow Road is the closed premises of the Tyre and Wheel Company, which has been closed for some time, and I assume is waiting for demolition and probably the build ofnew flats.
Walking back south along Ladbroke Grove, over the bridge and turning into Kensal Road is the boarded up remains of another pub. This was the late 19th century Western Arms. The Western Arms originally had a large single storey ground floor bar running to the right of the three storey block, however this looks to have been recently demolished, The pub was called the Playhouse during its last years as a pub, finally becoming a cocktail bar / performance venue. The old pub occupies a reasonably large corner plot so could easily suffer the same fate at the Narrow Boat, however as the three storey block has so far been left standing there is some hope that this will be retained, and the building retains a similar function to that performed duringits time as a pub.
A short walk along Kensal Road offers other buildings of interest. This is “The Gramophone Works”: The name comes from the building being the home of Saga Records Ltd during the 1960s and 70s. The site was purchased in 1960 by Marcel Rodd, who purchased Saga Records the following year. Saga Records was one of the first companies to reduce the cost of records, to try and break up control of the market by the major music companies. The majority of their music publishing appears to have been classical records, however they also included jazz and West End shows in their catalogue. In 1966 on their Saga EROS label they released the soundtrack to West Side Story by the original English cast. A short distance further along Kensal Road is another closed pub. Again, from the 19th century and with the wonderful original name of “Lads of the Village”. The pub features in a number of interesting news reports. The earliest I can find dates from 1864, so I suspect the pub dates from the 1850s, or very early 1860s. The headline in the 1864 article gives an indication of trouble, and the fact that this area was then a very newdevelopment:
_“Riot at Kensal New Town – Mr Alfred Price, the landlord of the ‘Lads of the Village’ beershop, Kensal New Town, said: Yesterday morning I left my house a little after six o’clock. I closed the house, barricaded and locked the tap-room door which opens into the street. I bolted the bar door, and went out by the front door, which closed with a spring lock. _ _I returned between six and seven o’clock the same morning, after taking a walk. I found the tap-room door broken open, and all these men there. Shay was behind the bar acting as landlord. I had porter and ale on the engine, and he was drawing from it. I saw eight pots of beer filled and a half-gallon can, also full, on the counter. The others were partaking of the beer, and giving it away as well to parties outside and others inside._ _I said ‘How dare you force into my premises and give away my beer’ Shay merely laughed. They continued drawing the beer and drinking it, in spite of me. I saw Foley and Gadstone shortly afterwards, and they partook of the beer. I went for the police at eight o’clock, and returned with a constable. There were about 40 gallons of beer and ale on draught at the time. I find the barrels are drained and the bung of another barrel had been taken out and the contents were wasted”_. Foley was jailed for three months for assaulting a policeman, and the judge ordered a police inspector to investigate further. The name of the pub was frequently abbreviated to just The Village, however not that long ago changed name to Frames, although it did not last long with the new name, closing in 2016, and no indication of when current work will complete, and what the old pub will eventuallybecome.
Returning back up Kensal Road to the location of the Narrow Boat pub and looking across the bridge is a rather unusual structure: This is an old water tower that was originally built in the 1930s to hold 5,000 gallons of water ready to use if parts of the adjacent gasworks caught fire.
The water tower was converted for designer Tom Dixon by the architectural practice SUSD Architects. Building work was completed in 2012, with additional floors added to the water tower to provide a kitchen, two reception rooms, two bathrooms and two bedrooms. There were originally plans to extend accommodation down to ground level, hiding the four concrete legs, however these plans do not seem to have made any further progress since the initial conversion. The building is in a strange location. There must be good views over the surrounding area as there is nothing of similiar or greater heightto block the view.
Access is via the temporary looking scaffold stairs to the side of thetower.
A walk round to the side of the Sainsbury’s car park provides another view of the tower: No idea if anyone is living in the converted water tower at the moment, but it would be a rather interesting place to stay, and look out over the canal, and the streets of Ladbroke Grove, Kensal Greenand Kilburn.
All the locations covered in this post are within a five minute walk of the Ladbroke Grove bridge over the Grand Union Canal. In that short distance, there were once three pubs. One, the Narrow Boat has completely disappeared, and the future does not look good for the remaining two empty buildings. I have many more 1980s London pubs to visit, some remaining, some lost, however I will break these up after two weeks of pubs and return to these again in the coming months – and hopefully when we can goinside.
alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in London Pubsand tagged
Ladbroke Grove ,
London Pubs on April18, 2021
by admin .
HORSE AND GROOM PUB, GROOM PLACE, BELGRAVIA22 Replies
For this week’s post I am in Belgravia, an area of London I have not covered before, however this is a return visit to check on a pub last photographed in 1985. This is the Horse and Groom in Groom Place,Belgravia.
The same pub today, unfortunately closed whilst we are still underCovid restrictions.
The Horse and Groom in Groom Place is one of London’s ‘mews’ pubs. Not on a main street, rather tucked away in one of the small side streets that were designed for servicing the large houses on the main streets, for stabling the horses of their residents, providing (when originally built) lower cost housing and for some small industrial purposes. Chester Street and Chapel Street run from Grosvenor Place to Upper Belgrave Street and Belgrave Square. Groom Place runs between Chester and Chapel Streets. I have highlighted the location in the following map, with a red circle marking the location of the Horse and Groom on the corner of Groom Place (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors):
The green and blue to the right of the above map are the gardens and lake of Buckingham Palace Gardens. This area of London is relatively new, having been built during the early decades of the 19th century. Horwood’s map of 1799 shows some early building along Grosvenor Place, and the first houses in Chapel Street, however the rest is still field (unfortunately this area was on the edge of the page of my copy of Horwood’s map, so only part of the fields are shown). Smith’s New Plan of London dating from 1816 provides a better view of the area (but without the level of detail of Horwood’s map), and shows the Queen’s Gardens (what are now Buckingham Palace Gardens), with Grosvenor Place to the left of the garden with building now along the street and starting to reach into the fields behind. There are some differences with Horwood’s earlier map. The above map shows a pond just below the word “Chapel” which does not appear on the more detailed Horwood map. There were several ponds in the area as Rocque’s map of 1746 show these, and the area was known to have beenpoorly drained.
There is an interesting detail in the above map. look to the left of the open space with the word “Chapel”, and you will see a wavy line running down from Knightsbridge. This was the River Westbourne when it still ran through what remained of the fields of west London, running down from the Serpentine in Hyde Park, which originally used the Westbourne as a water source, before the river became toopolluted.
The ponds and the River Westbourne provide some clues as to the state of the area that would become Belgravia. In Old and New London (1878), Edward Walford writes: _“There was a time, and not so very distant in the lapse of ages, when much of Belgravia, and other parts of the valley bordering upon London was a ‘lagoon of the Thames’; indeed, the clayey swamp in this particular region retained so much water that no one would build there. At length, Mr Thomas Cubitt found the strata to consist of gravel and clay, of inconsiderable depth. _ _The clay he removed and burned into bricks, and by building upon the substratum of gravel, he converted this spot from the most unhealthy to one of the most healthy in the metropolis, in spite of the fact that the surface is but a few feet above the level of the River Thames at high water, during spring-tides”._ Thomas Cubitt started developing Belgravia in 1824 on behalf of the owner of the land, Richard Grosvenor, the 2nd Marquess of Westminster. As well as removing the clay, Harold Clunn in the Face of London (1932) states that the ground level was also made up by the use of the soil excavated to form the St Katherine Docks, however I suspect this was more towards the south of the estate around Pimlico rather than in the area of Groom Place. The land consisted of what had been known as the Five Fields, an area of around 430 acres that stretched from roughly Hyde Park Corner down to Pimlico and Chelsea. The area was once part of the ancient Manor of Ebury, and in 1677 it came into the possession of the Grosvenor family through the marriage of Sir Thomas Grosvenor to Mary Davies who owned Ebury Farm with the associated land. The name Ebury can still be found today with Ebury Street to the south of Belgravia, near Victoria Station, along with the nearby Ebury Square. Ebury Street follows the rough alignment of an old street called the Five Fields, and the original location of Ebury Farm (also called Avery Farm on early maps) was close to Ebury Square and Victoria Coach Station. The name Belgravia comes from the village of Belgrave in Cheshire, which is part of one of the estates owned by the Duke of Westminster. Returning to Groom Place, and where there is a branch leading up to Chapel Street, was, in 1985, L. Binelli, General Store: The General Stores have gone, the crooked corner door has been straightened, a window added to the first floor, and the building is now home to Muse – a restaurant run by the chef Tom Aikens: A bit of detail from the 1985 photo – 1980s corner shops always seemed to have their windows stuffed with the products you could buy in the shop, and frequently a Lyons Maid ice cream sign. Walking up to Chapel Street, and we can see the original name of GroomPlace:
Chapel Place was the name from the time the area was built up until the early 20th century (I cannot find the exact date of the namechange).
Perhaps the name change was to mirror part of the name of the Horse and Groom pub, or to recall one of the jobs that would have been based here. It may have been changed to avoid confusion with another Chapel Place, between Oxford Street and Henrietta Place, which still exists today. The need to avoid confusion with other streets of the same name was a frequent justification for name changes. Given the history of the area, there is one thing I am confused about with the Horse and Groom. Just above the door, the pub advertises _“established 1698”_. This date was not on the original 1985 photo, and given that the area was built during the first decades of the 19th century, 1698 seems a considerable time before this development and was a time when the areawas mainly fields.
The first reference I can find to the Horse and Groom dates from the 15th March 1852, when a rather cryptic paragraph in the Morning Advertiser states _“Horse and Groom, Chapel-place, Belgrave-square. Joseph Prior applied for this licence and Mr Wire appeared in opposition – Licence refused”_. Why Joseph Prior was unsuitable for the licence to run the Horse and Groom and what caused Mr Wire to object is not recorded, but it does confirm that the Horse and Groom was a working pub in 1852, and therefore probably dates to when Chapel Place was constructed. The name of the pub refers to the main activity that took place in ChapelPlace.
We can get an idea of how the area was developing from an advert for the Horse and Groom in the Morning Advertiser on the 18th June 1868: _“HORSE AND GROOM, 3 CHAPEL-PLACE, BELGRAVE-SQUARE, together with the GOODWILL AND BENEFICIAL POSSESSION. The premises are of recent elevation, combining all the requisites for carrying on the excellent full-priced trade this house is noted for. Protected, unopposed, and with the certainty of additional trade, arising from the countless mansions that are now being erected in Grosvenor-place and the vicinity, render this property comparatively speaking matchless”_. Looking down Groom Place from Chester Street: The large building on the left in the above photo was Bryant’s Second-hand Saddlery, Harness and Horse Clothing Depot, established inthe early 1830s.
The following photo shows the full building of the Horse and Groom and answers the question regarding the age of the pub. If you look to the left of the windows on the first floor is writing stating that Shepherd Neame are Britain’s oldest brwery, and that they were established in 1698, so the sign above the door relates to the brewery, not the pub. I can reasonably confidently date the pub to when Chapel Place was built, around the late 1820s / early 1830s. The buildings housing the depot for all things horse related: The following photo is from outside the Horse and Groom, looking back up Groom Place towards Chester Street. I love looking for evidence in the built streets of London remaining from the time before they were built. I have no evidence to confim this, but as shown in the above photo, the central part of Groom Place is in a dip, with the parts of the street going to Chapel and Chester Street rising in height. The early maps show a pond roughly in the area of Groom Place, and perhaps when laying out the streets, the site of an old pond would not be where you want to build the expensive houses, so the smaller houses, and those occupied by stables were built on the site of theold pond.
The price of properties in Groom Place reflect the price of Belgravia in general. There is currently a two floor flat in Groom Place for sale for £2.795 Million. The covered Bentley in the following photo highlights the money you need to live in the area. A final look back along Groom Place from just outside the old BinelliGeneral Store:
Belgravia may not appear too interesting at first glance. Rows of similar terrace houses, foreign embassies, buildings owned offshore as investments and empty for much of the time, however look a bit closer and there are so many interesting little side streets and interesting buildings. The old Five Fields is just below the surface and it is still possible to trace some of the old roads and locations of the Five Fields and Ebury Farm which have transformed into the Belgravia we see today. There is plenty more to explore, including more mewspubs.
Thankfully the Horse and Groom is still there, although redecorated since 1985. It is a really good pub, and although great at any time of year, a visit in the winter and leaving after dark, into Groom Place can, just for a moment, recall what this part of Belgravia may have been like in the 19th century. alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in London Pubsand tagged
Belgravia on April 11,2021
by admin .
THE MINORIES – HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE33 Replies
I have been to the Minories in a previous post when I explored the lost Church of Saint Trinity, or Holy Trinity in the Minories, and when I went to find the pulpit from the church which is now at All Saints’ Church, East Meon in Hampshire.
I wanted to return to explore the street, the abbey after which the street is named, and one of the most architecturally interesting buildings in the city. The following photo is from Aldgate High Street at the northern end of the Minories, looking down the street. The above photo shows what looks like an ordinary London street. Lined by commercial buildings, fast food stores, and the obligatory towers rising in the distance; the Minories has a far more interesting history than the above view suggests. The following ward map from 1755 shows the Minories running down from Whitechapel, just outside the City wall. In the above map, the area of land between the city wall and the Minories was once part of the ditch that ran alongside part of the walls. Look across the map at the top of the Minories, and running to the top left is another reminder of the ditch, the street Houndsditch, the last part of the name can be seen. Being outside the City walls, the area may have been the site of a Roman cemetery, and in 1853 a large Roman Sarcophagus with a lead coffin was found near Trinity Church, just to the right of the street. In the map the street is called The Minories, however today “The” has been dropped and the street name signs now name the street just Minories (I am continuing to use “the” in the post as I suspect it helps the text to flow”. The name derives from the sisterhood of the “Sorores Minores” of the Order of St. Clare. The sisters of the order were known as Minoresses and the book_ “A History of the Minories, London”_, published in 1922 and written by Edward Murray Tomlinson, once Vicar of Holy Trinity Minories, provides some background as to the originsof the order:
_“The Order of the Sorores Minores, to which the abbey of the Minores in London belonged, was founded by St Clara of Assisi in Italy, and claimed Palm Sunday, March 18th 1212, as the date of itsorigin”_.
The Order’s arrival in London, and establishing an abbey outside of the City walls dates back to 1293. It appears that the first members of the Order in the Minories came from another of the Order’s establishments just outside Paris. The land occupied by the 13th century Order can be seen in the following map, enclosed by the red lines to the right of the street (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors).
The land supported a Church, Refectory, Guest House, Friars Hall, and along the right hand wall, a Cemetary and Gardens. The Order received a number of endowments, and rents on properties that had come into their possession, and by 1524 they were receiving171 per annum.
The lists of rents received in 1524 provide an interesting view of the costs of renting in different parts of the city. The following table lists the rents received from Hosyer Lane (now Hosier Lane in WestSmithfield).
The majority of documentation that survives from the Order are mainly those relating to endowments, rents received, legal and religious documents. There is very little that provides any information on day to day life in the Minories. The only time we have a view of the number of sisters who were part of the Order, is at the very end of the Order, when on November 30th 1538, the Abbey buildings and land in the Minories were surrendered to Henry VIII. The Abbess of the Order probably realised what was happening to the religious establishments in the country, and that by surrendering to the King, the members of the Order would be able to receive a pension, and it is the pension list that provides the only view of the numberswithin the Order.
In 1538 there was an Abbess (Elizabeth Salvage) who would receive a pension of £40, along with 24 sisters, ranging in age from 24 to 76, and each receiving a pension of between £1 6s 8d and £3 6s 8d. There were six lay sisters who do not appear to have received a pension – the name of one of the lay sisters was _Julyan Heron the Ideote_, indicative of how even religious establishments treated people who probably had learning difficulties. It appears that the King granted the land and buildings to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and many of the original Abbey buildings were still standing in 1797, when a large fire destroyed many of the remaining buildings of the Abbey. The last religious building on the site was the church of Holy Trinity, which closed as a church at the end of the 19th century, but the church survived as a parish hall until the Second World War when the building suffered severe bomb damage. A wall did remain until final clearance of the area in the late 1950s. The remaining abbey buildings of the Minories in 1796: As well as the name of the street, Minories, a side street also recalls the order. The street in the following photo is St Clare Street, after the Order of St. Clare. It runs through the land of the old abbey, and at the end of the street was the church of HolyTrinity.
The pub on the corner of the Minories and St Clare Street is The Three Lords. The current pub building dates from around 1890, however a pub with the same name has been on the site for much longer. The earliest newspaper reference I could find to The Three Lords dates to the 11th January 1819 when the Evening Mail reported on the arrest of a man for robbery. He was formerly a respectable man with carriage and servants, one of whom in 1819 kept the Three Lords and a pot from the pub was found in the room of the alleged thief. Walk along the Minories today, and apart from the street name, there is nothing to suggest that this was once the site of the Abbey. The street is mainly lined with buildings from the first half of the 20thcentury.
With a mix of different architectural styles and constructionmaterials.
Towards the southern end of the Minories is one of the most architectually fascinating buildings in the city. This is Ibex House: Ibex House was built between 1933 and 1937 and was designed as a “Modernistic” style office block by the architects Fuller, Halland Foulsham.
it is Grade II listed and the Historic England listing provides the following description: _“Continuous horizontal window bands, with metal glazing bars. Vertical emphasis in centre of each facade in form of curved glazing (in main block) and black faiencestrips”_.
“faience” was not a word I had heard before, and the best definition I could find seems to be as a glazed ceramic. Black faience is used for the ground floor and vertical bands, with buff faience used for the horizontal bands on the floors above ground. The ground floor, facing onto the Minories consists of the main entrance, sandwich bar and a pub, the Peacock: The Peacock is a good example of the way developers have integrated a business that was demolished to make way for a new building, in thatnew building.
A pub with the same name had been at the same location since at least the mid 18th century. It was demolished to make way for the Ibex building, and a new version was built as part of the development. An 1823 sale advert for the Peacock provides a good view of the internal facilities of the original pub, from the Morning Advertiser on the 19th May 1823: _“That old-established Free Public House and Liquor Shop, the PEACOCK, the corner of Haydon-street, Minories, in the City of London, comprising five good sleeping rooms, club room, bar, tap, kitchen, and parlour, and good cellar, held on lease for 18 1/4 years, at the low rent of £45 per annum.”_ Newspaper reports that mention the Peacock include the full range of incidents that would be found at any city pub over the last couple of hundred years – thefts, the landlord being fined for allowing drunkenness, betting, sports (boxing seems to have been popular at the Peacock, etc.) however one advert shows how pubs were used as contact points, and tells the story of one individual travelling through London in 1820. From the Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser on the29th May 1820:
_“WANTED, by a PERSON who is 30 years of age, and who has been upwards of three years in the West Indies, a SITUATION to go to any part Abroad, as CLERK in a Store or Warehouse, or in any way he may be able to make himself useful. Address (post paid) for A.B. to be left at the Peacock, in the Minories”_. It would be fascinating to know “A.B’s” story, did he get another job, and where he went to next. On the southern corner of Ibex House is a rather splendid sandwich bar, all glass and chrome: The main entrance to the building looks almost as if you are entering a cinema, rather than an office building: During the first couple of decades, occupants of Ibex House illustrate the wide variety of different businesses that were based in a single London office block, including: * Shell Tankers Ltd – 1957 * Johnston Brothers (agricultural contractors) – 1952 * Associated Lead Manufacturers Ltd – 1950 * Vermoutiers Ltd (producers of “Vamour”, sweet or dry Vermouth)– 1948
* The Royal Alfred Aged Seamen’s Institution – 1948 * Ashwood Timber Industries – 1947 * The Air Ministry department which dealt with family allowances andRAF pay – 1940
* Cookson’s – the Lead Paint People – 1939 * Temple Publicity Services – 1938 The Associated Lead Manufacturers advertised _“Uncle Toby’s Regiment of Lead”_ as their special lead alloy was used widely in the manufacture of toy soldiers. It would not be till 1966 that lead was banned as a material for the production of toys due to the damage that lead could cause to the health of a person. The front of Ibex House is impressive, but we need to walk down the two side streets to see many of the impressive details of the building. Ibex House is designed in the shape of an H, with wide blocks facing to the Minories, and at the very rear of the building, with a slightly thinner block joining the two wider. Walking along Haydon Street we can see the northern aspect of the building (Haydon Street was also the southern boundary of the Abbey of the Order of St Clare / the Minories). The central glazed column contains small rooms on each floor level. There are few sharp corners on the building, mainly on the very upper floors, with curves being the predominant feature. Looking back up towards the Minories: The stepped and curved floors and railing on the upper floors give the impression of being on an ocean liner, rather than a city officeblock:
Curved walls feature across the building, including the corners of the ground floor which are tucked away at the end of the street: Portsoken Street provides the southern boundary of the building: Detail of the projecting canopy roof at the very top of the central,glazed column:
With a small room at each floor level: The design detail includes curved windows in the glazed column that open on a central hinge: Larger room at the top of the glazed column – a perfect location for an office with a view: As well as the main entrance on the Minories, each side street also has an equally impressive central door into the building: Ibex House is a very special building. The view back up the Minories from near the southern end of thestreet:
The sisterhood of the “Sorores Minores” of the Order of St. Clare have left very little to tell us about life in their Abbey, and there are no physical remains of their buildings to be found, just the street names Minories and St Clare Street. Just one of the many religious establishments that were a major part of life in the city from the 12th century onwards. So although we cannot see anything of the abbey, the Minories does give us the architectural splendor of Ibex House to admire as a brilliant example of 1930s design. alondoninheritance.comSHARE THIS:
*
This entry was posted in London Buildings, London
Churches ,
London Streets
and tagged
Minories on April 4,2021
by admin .
POST NAVIGATION
← Older posts
SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG VIA EMAIL Join me as I explore London past and present over the coming months. Enter your e-mail address to receive new posts. Join 15,810 other subscribersEmail Address
Subscribe
SEARCH ALONDONINHERITANCE.COMSearch for:
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER FOR UPDATES WHEN THERE IS A NEW POSTRECENT POSTS
* The Thames from Cherry Garden Stairs * A London Inheritance Walks * Three Future Demolitions and Re-developments * The Star – Belgrave Mews West * Lost Bankside Alleys * Portsmouth from Portsdown Hill – 1949 and 2021 * Three Hundred Years of Hay’s Wharf * Narrow Boat Pub, Ladbroke Grove * Horse and Groom Pub, Groom Place, Belgravia * The Minories – History and Architecture * William Maitland’s History and Survey of London * St John’s Lane – First World War Bombing, Passing Alley andthe Census
* Winchester Palace and the Great Hall, Clink Street * The Willesden Oil Well * Limehouse Cut and Angel Underground StationRECENT COMMENTS
* Russell on The Thames from Cherry Garden Stairs * David Johnson on The Thames from Cherry Garden Stairs * Lorraine Crawford on The Horn Tavern, Sermon Lane And Knightrider Court * Svetlana Nogai on About* Julia on About
ARCHIVES
* May 2021
* April 2021
* March 2021
* February 2021
* January 2021
* December 2020
* November 2020
* October 2020
* September 2020
* August 2020
* July 2020
* June 2020
* May 2020
* April 2020
* March 2020
* February 2020
* January 2020
* December 2019
* November 2019
* October 2019
* September 2019
* August 2019
* July 2019
* June 2019
* May 2019
* April 2019
* March 2019
* February 2019
* January 2019
* December 2018
* November 2018
* October 2018
* September 2018
* August 2018
* July 2018
* June 2018
* May 2018
* April 2018
* March 2018
* February 2018
* January 2018
* December 2017
* November 2017
* October 2017
* September 2017
* August 2017
* July 2017
* June 2017
* May 2017
* April 2017
* March 2017
* February 2017
* January 2017
* December 2016
* November 2016
* October 2016
* September 2016
* August 2016
* July 2016
* June 2016
* May 2016
* April 2016
* March 2016
* February 2016
* January 2016
* December 2015
* November 2015
* October 2015
* September 2015
* August 2015
* July 2015
* June 2015
* May 2015
* April 2015
* March 2015
* February 2015
* January 2015
* December 2014
* November 2014
* October 2014
* September 2014
* August 2014
* July 2014
* June 2014
* May 2014
* April 2014
* March 2014
* February 2014
CATEGORIES
* Cycling Around Britain * Events and Ceremonies* London Books
* London Buildings
* London Canals
* London Characters
* London Churches
* London History
* London Infrastructure* London Journeys
* London Monuments
* London Parks and Gardens * London Photography* London Pubs
* London Streets
* London Transport
* London Villages
* London Vistas
* London Wards
* Out Of London
* Rivers and Streams* The Bombed City
* The Netherlands
* The Thames
* Uncategorized
* Under London
CONTACT
admin@alondoninheritance.com Proudly powered by WordPressDetails
Copyright © 2024 ArchiveBay.com. All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | DMCA | 2021 | Feedback | Advertising | RSS 2.0