Lost London

by Richard Guard

  Near adjoining to this abbey, called the Minories, on the south side thereof, was some time a farm belonging to said nunnery; at the which farm I myself (in my youth) have fetched many a halfpenny worth of milk, and never had less than three ale-pints for a halfpenny in the summer, nor less than one ale-quart for a halfpenny in the winter, always hot from the cow, as the same was milked and strained.

  Having escaped the Great Fire of 1666 unscathed, Holy Trinity fell into a state of dilapidation but was rebuilt in 1706. Sir Isaac Newton worshipped here when Master of the Mint from 1699 to 1727. The church’s tiny graveyard often overflowed with the dead and was emptied twice, in 1689 and 1763, though no one knows what happened to the bones. In 1852 a rather macabre discovery was made in the crypt when the head of Lady Jane Grey’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, was found. Despite his having been beheaded on Tower Hill in 1554, his head remained well preserved and was displayed in a glass case by the pulpit for some time. Holy Trinity’s long history only came to an end when it was destroyed by enemy bombing during the Second World War.

  Horn Fair

  Charlton

  THIS FAIR, WHICH STARTED FROM CUCKOLD’S Point in Rotherhithe, was always a raucous and drunken affair, as might be expected of a celebration of illicit sexual relations.

  Though disputed, the story of the fair’s origins tells how King John, who reigned from 1199 to 1216, was hunting one day around Blackheath and Shooters Hill. Growing tired, he entered the house of a miller but no one was home except the miller’s lovely young wife. Being a lusty young chap, John successfully set about wooing the lady but they were caught in flagrante by the returning miller.

  Swearing to kill the interloper, the miller drew his dagger and prepared to dispatch the unfortunate king, who was forced to reveal his identity to save his life. To placate the furious miller, John promised him all the land he could see on condition that he forgave his wife. Cuckold’s Point marked the western limit of the miller’s vision.

  The people of the area were keen to tease their new overlord so held a celebration of the event on its anniversary, 18 October, the feast day of St Luke. They started their parade from Cuckold’s Point, marked by a post bearing a pair of horns, and marched to Charlton village, where the real fun began.

  The symbol of the horns had long been associated with those jealous and cheated in love, so the fair-goers all carried, wore or blew horns. Trinkets were sold (all made of horn, of course) and the fair became notorious for its drunken flirtations, with cross-dressing a far from unusual sight. In the early 18 century, Daniel Defoe described the goings-on at Charlton:

  A village famous, or rather infamous for the yearly collected rabble of mad-people, at Horn-Fair; the rudeness of which I cannot but think, is such as ought to be suppressed, and indeed in a civiliz’d well govern’d nation, it may well be said to be unsufferable. The mob indeed at that time take all kinds of liberties, and the women are especially impudent for that day; as if it was a day that justify’d the giving themselves a loose to all manner of indecency and immodesty, without any reproach, or without suffering the censure which such behaviour would deserve at another time.

  Completely at odds with Victorian mores, the fair was suppressed in 1874. A somewhat pale imitation of the original was reintroduced in the 1970s, providing a nice family day out rather than anything more ribald.

  Islington Spa, or the new Tunbridge Wells

  THIS WAS A CHALYBEATE SPRING (I.E. ONE containing much iron) that was discovered in 1683 by a Mr Sadler, surveyor of highways, in the grounds of the music hall he had just opened.

  A pamphlet was written claiming that the waters were holy and had been famed for their healing powers until the knowledge of their properties was lost. Analysis conducted by the eminent scientist, Robert Boyle, showed the waters to be similar to the those at Tunbridge Wells.

  The spa was soon attracting hypochondriacs from across the capital and by 1700 was quite the place to go. George Coleman gave his take on it in his 1776 farce, The Spleen; or, Islington Spa:

  Gout hobbled there; Rheumatism groaned over his ferruginous water; severe coughs went arm-in-arm, chuckling as they hobbled; as for Hypochondria, he cracked jokes, he was in such high spirits at the thought of the new remedy.

  In 1733 the Princesses Amelia and Caroline visited daily to drink the waters, and on their birthdays, as tradition dictated, they were saluted by 21 guns in Spa Fields as they passed. By now the business was attracting 1500 people daily, taking £30 per morning alone. A poem lauding the restorative qualities of the spring was hung in a local lodging house:

  For three times ten years I travell’d the globe,

  Consulted whole tribes of the physical robe;

  Drank the waters of Tunbridge, Bath, Harrogate, Dulwich,

  Spa, Epsom (and all by advice of the College);

  But in vain, till to Islington waters I came,

  To try if my cure would add to their fame.

  In less than six weeks they produc’d a belief

  This would be the place of my long-sought relief;

  Before six weeks more had finished their course,

  Full of spirits and strength, I mounted my horse,

  Gave praise to my God, and rode cheerfully home,

  Overjoy’d with the thoughts of sweet hours to come.

  May Thou, great Jehovah give equal success

  To all who resort to this place for redress!

  To maximize his profits, Sadler put on entertainments – clowns, acrobats, musicians, dancers and the like – before future owners added new facilities in order to expand the scale of performances. The site has provided a home for the arts ever since and today you will find the Sadler’s Wells Theatre here. As for the well, it was enshrined in a flint-and-seashell grotto around 1811 but by 1826 the coffee house constructed next to it had been demolished and the gardens were built over by 1840. The humble surrounding cottages were destroyed during the Second World War and the Spa Green Estate was built in their place, being completed in 1949.

  Jacob’s Island

  Bermondsey

  SOME YEARS AFTER THE INITIAL SERIALIZATION of Oliver Twist in 1837, Dickens was attacked over his portrayal of the site of Bill Sikes’s death, Jacob’s Island.

  Politicians refused to believe that such an awful place existed in their city. In a preface to a new edition of the book, Dickens wrote: ‘In the year 1850 it was publicly declared by an amazed alderman that Jacob’s Island did not exist and had never existed. Jacob’s Island continues to exist (like an ill-bred place as it is) in the year 1867...’

  Standing between the horribly polluted Neckinger River and a man-made ditch built as a mill-run for the medieval Bermondsey Abbey, Jacob’s Island was a south London rookery similar in character to those at St Giles and Summertown. With a population of 7,286 people according to a survey of 1849, it was described in The Morning Chronicle thus:

  On entering the precincts of the pest island, the air has literally the smell of a graveyard, and a feeling of nausea and heaviness comes over any one unaccustomed to imbibe the musty atmosphere. It is not only the nose, but the stomach, that tells how heavily the air is loaded with sulphuretted hydrogen; and as soon as you cross one of the crazy and rotting bridges over the reeking ditch, you know, as surely as if you had chemically tested it, by the black colour of what was once the white-lead paint upon the door-posts and window-sills, that the air is thickly charged with this deadly gas. The inhabitants themselves show in their faces the poisonous influence of the mephitic air they breathe. Either their skins are white, like parchment, telling of the impaired digestion, the languid circulation, and the coldness of the skin peculiar to persons suffering from chronic poisoning, or else their cheeks are flushed hectically, and their eyes are glassy, showing the wasting fever and general decline of the bodily functions.

  The ditches were filled in during the 1850s and many of the buildings were destroyed in a fire that raged for two weeks in 1861.

  Jenny’s
Whim

  Pimlico

  A RED-BRICK AND LATTICE-WORK PUBLIC HOUSE near Ebury Bridge, Pimlico, famed as the haunt of lovers.

  Named after either the original landlady and her fanciful gardens – replete with arbors and alcoves within which the amorous could exchange sweet nothings – or, alternatively, after a famous pyrotechnician from the reign of George I, Jenny’s Whim provided much the same as other pleasure gardens did but with a few added surprises. In Henry Angelo’s Reminiscences, the author recorded that it was ... much frequented from its novelty, being an inducement to allure the curious to it by its amusing deceptions. Here was a large garden; in different parts were recesses; and by treading on a spring – taking you by surprise – up started different figures, some ugly enough to frighten you outright – a harlequin, a Mother Shipton, or some terrific animal.

  Bowling, skittles and even duck-hunting were some of the other diversions available. Judging from an article in The Connoisseur of 15 May 1755, Jenny’s Whim was particularly popular with the middle classes:

  The lower sort of people have their Ranelaghs and their Vauxhalls ... Perrot’s inimitable Grotto may be seen for only calling for a pot of beer; and the royal diversion of duck-hunting may be had into the bargain, together with a decanter of Dorchester, for your sixpence, at Jenny’s Whim.

  Some of the building survived until the 1860s but it was then demolished to make way for railway lines into Victoria Station.

  Jonathan’s Coffee House

  Bank

  OPENED IN 1680 BY JONATHAN MILES, THIS WAS the birth-place of the London Stock Exchange.

  By 1690 there were over 100 companies trading their shares in the city and traders would meet at Jonathan’s (and also at Garraway’s Coffee House) to gather news from other traders and from merchants entering the city via the Thames. At Jonathan’s, the news was written up on boards behind the bar.

  Over time, traders developed a network of runners who would bring them all the latest on returning ships, whether it be tales of disaster and lost hauls or great successes. The runners would also elicit information from the servants of other merchants. When all this information was relayed back to the coffee shop, prices would rise or fall accordingly.

  In 1689, John Castaing, an enterprising Huguenot broker, began writing a weekly list of stock and bullion prices and exchange rates, which he published on Tuesdays and Fridays as a sheet called The Course of Exchange and Other Things. Although there were other lists in circulation, Castaing’s became the premier source of financial information and was printed for the next hundred years.

  When Jonathan’s was burnt down in the Cornhill fire of 1748, it was immediately rebuilt with the support of various brokers and was given the name ‘The Stock Exchange’. Jonathan’s was also the venue for much of the speculative trading in the South Sea Company that led to the financially disastrous Bubble of 1720 which ruined the fortunes of many.

  Kilburn Wells

  ‘THIS HAPPY SPOT IS EQUALLY CELEBRATED FOR its rural situation, extensive prospects, and the acknowledged efficacy of its waters.’

  So read the prospectus for Kilburn Wells and tea-rooms, published on 17 July 1773. Kilburn was an iron-rich chalybeate spring in the grounds of the long vanished Kilburn Abbey. Contained within the Bell Tavern, the spring was fitted with a pump in 1742 so that ‘the politest of companies could come and drink the waters’.

  Mildly purgative, milky in appearance and with a bitter taste, the water was said to contain more carbon dioxide than any other spring in Great Britain. It briefly rivalled Islington Spa in popularity and, ‘being but a morning’s walk from the metropolis’, The Bell provided visitors with breakfast ‘together with the best of wines and other liquors ... the great room being particularly adapted to the use and amusement ... fit for either music, dancing or entertainments’. The Bell was demolished in 1863; a stone plaque on Kilburn High Road and Belsize Road now marking the site.

  King’s Bench Prison

  Borough

  THIS PRISON STOOD ON THE SOUTH-WEST CORNER of Blackman Street and Borough High Street from the time of Richard II (1377–99).

  Originally used to incarcerate those convicted at the travelling court of King’s Bench, it became the debtors’ prison for South London in the 1600s. In 1633 it held nearly 400 inmates with a collective debt of £900,000. Known for its cruelty, extortion, promiscuity and drunkenness, it was closed and moved to new premises in 1758.

  The new prison, built in St George’s Fields, Southwark, had 224 rooms (including eight state apartments) and a high surrounding wall. The regime there was considerably more relaxed, if one had the money to afford it. There were two pubs, a coffee house, thirty gin shops (selling 120 gallons of the spirit a week) and stalls offering meat, vegetables and pretty much anything else that might be wanted. It was described in 1828 as ‘the most desirable place of incarceration in London’. Author Tobias Smollett wrote that the prison:

  ... appears like a neat little regular town, consisting of one street, surrounded by a very high wall, including an open piece of ground, which may be termed a garden, where the prisoners take the air, and amuse themselves with a variety of diversions. There are butchers’ stands, chandlers’ shops, a surgery, a tap-house, well frequented, and a public kitchen, in which provisions are dressed for all the prisoners gratis, at the expense of the publican.

  A freedom of sorts could be purchased on a daily or yearly basis, on a promise to the governor not to travel outside of ‘the rules’ – a-three-mile area surrounding the prison. Income from ‘the rules’ in the early part of the 19th century was earning the governor £2823 each year, to say nothing of his slice of the beer sales – almost another £1000.

  One of the prison’s darkest days occurred when the radical MP John Wilkes was imprisoned here after his trial for seditious libel on 10 May 1768. His supporters massed at the gates, crying ‘no justice, no peace’. Troops opened fire, killing seven and wounding fifteen in what became known as the St George’s Fields Massacre. Imprisonment for debt was abolished in 1869 and afterwards King’s Bench became a military prison until it was demolished in 1880.

  King’s Wardrobe

  Blackfriars

  A 14TH-CENTURY HOUSE GIFTED TO EDWARD III (1327–77) and used to hold all the ceremonial clothes of the king, which had previously been stored at the Tower of London.

  In addition, the Wardrobe contained all the clothes used by the royal family for weddings and coronations, along with state robes for ambassadors, the Prince of Wales, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the King’s Ministers and Knights of the Garter. It was a veritable museum of royal fashions over a 400-year period.

  The building was extended and eventually became so large that it was restricting the income of St Andrew’s-by-the-Wardrobe, so 40 shillings (£2.00) was granted to the rector of St Andrew’s to cover the loss of tithes. When the house was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, a new location for the royal wardrobe was found on Buckingham Street, although by the mid-17th century its significance had declined. James I had allowed the Earl of Dunbar to sell some of the contents and he ‘sold, re-sold, and re-re-re-sold ... gaining vast estates thereby’.

  The last ‘Master of the Great Wardrobe’ was appointed in 1775, but by then the role was merely a sinecure. Wardrobe Place carries the memory of the building into the modern era.

  Kingsway Theatre

  Holborn

  OPENING IN 1882 ON GREAT QUEEN STREET AS the Novelty Theatre, this institution changed hands and names with disconcerting frequency.

  In March 1883 it was known as the Folies-Dramatiques; by 1888 it was the Jodrell; in 1889 it was once again the Novelty; before being renamed as the New Queen’s Theatre in 1890; the Eden Palace of Theatre in 1894; the Great Queen Street Theatre in 1907 and, later the same year, as the Kingsway.

  Intended as a comedy venue, it famously staged the first English production of Ibsen’s (largely laugh-free) A Doll’s House. A notorious event occurred in August 1896 during
a performance of Frank Harvey’s Sins of the Night, when Wilfred Moritz Franks accidentally stabbed Temple E. Crozier while on stage, with fatal consequences.

  Having garnered something of a reputation for being unlucky, the theatre was badly damaged on the night of 10/11 May 1941, the very last night of the Blitz. It never reopened and was demolished in 1956. Much of the site is now occupied by an office block and an extension of Newton Street.

  Leicester House

  Leicester Square

  BUILT IN THE 1630S IN WHAT WAS THEN KNOWN as Leicester Fields, this was for a time one of the biggest houses in London.

  Grand though relatively plain on the outside, it had a magnificent interior and was expensively furnished at the behest of Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester.

  The diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn were both entertained here, Pepys with the French Ambassador, and Evelyn by Anne, Countess of Sunderland. One of the entertainments that night was Richardson ‘the famous fire-eater, who before us devour’d brimstone on glowing coals, chewing and swallowing them downe’.

  After George, Prince of Wales, fought with his father, George I, at the baptismal font during the christening of his son, Frederick, the heir to the throne moved into Leicester House and ran a second court from here for ten years. Indeed, he was proclaimed king in front of its gate when the old king died. Later, the foppish and foolish Frederick would die in the house after being struck in the throat with a cricket ball in 1751.