Secrets from the Dark Horizon: A Reader's Companion Guide (The Dark Horizon Trilogy Book 0)

by Duncan Simpson

  Website: www.andaz.com

  The Great Eastern Hotel is a distinguished-looking red-brick building beside Liverpool Street station. Built in 1884 for the Great Eastern Railway Company, the hotel was designed by Charles and Edward Barry (the sons of Charles Barry, senior, who designed and oversaw the building of the Houses of Parliament). The Great Eastern was one of the city’s original railway hotels, designed as a symbol of the rail company’s great power and wealth. The luxurious Great Eastern had such a grand reputation that it had its own train tracks inside Liverpool Street station for the delivery of goods, including sea water for its therapeutic salt-water baths. Following the widespread decline of train travel, the hotel turned into a dusty old relic of times gone by, until in 1990 the designer and restaurateur Terence Conrad bought it back to life with an extravagant makeover. The hotel is now called The Andaz and is part of the Hyatt Hotel Group.

  Secret Fact

  During Conrad’s restoration of the hotel, engineers started to notice a few discrepancies in the blueprints. According to the plans, a large additional antechamber was hidden behind an internal wall. Then, like something out of a Hollywood movie (or a thriller novel!), the incongruous section of wall was removed to reveal a vast and exquisitely decorated Masonic temple. The opulence of the room is breath-taking, as it is decked out in twelve types of Italian marble, complete with a stunning blue dome ceiling with zodiac detailing, and a five-pointed ‘blazed star’. At either end there is a mahogany throne with the Latin inscription Avdi veda tace (Hear, see, keep counsel) overhead.

  The intrigue didn’t stop there, as not long after a second temple was discovered in the basement. This time, the Temple was decorated with Egyptian motifs complete with seating arranged around a marble chequerboard floor.

  Location 23: The Site of St John Horsleydown

  The church of the flaming comet

  (First introduced in The Devil's Architect)

  Address: 175 Tower Bridge Road, London, SE1 2AH

  (Now the headquarters of the London City Mission.)

  Underground: London Bridge (Northern and Jubilee lines)

  St John Horsleydown was built between 1727 and 1733 near the south bank of the River Thames in Fair Street (now known as Tower Bridge Road, just south of the junction with Tooley Street). The church was built as one of the last churches of the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches set up by an Act of Parliament in 1710.

  The church’s design was a joint effort between two architects. John James designed a simple square church body, to which Christopher Wren’s troubled student Nicholas Hawksmoor added an unusual spire. Hawksmoor’s steeple took the form of a tapered column, making it look much taller than it actually was, and was topped by a weathervane depicting a flaming comet.

  The church was severely damaged by a bomb on 20 September 1940 during the London Blitz, but parts of the building remained in use for years afterwards. The church eventually closed in 1968, and the London City Mission (a Christian outreach program) bought the site from the Church Commissioners in 1974 for £37,811. The church’s crypt was emptied of its dead and moved to Brookwood Cemetery and Naismith House.

  Redevelopment of the site by the London City Mission quickly followed. Interestingly, the Mission’s modern red-brick headquarters was built directly on the stone foundations of the original Hawksmoor church.

  Secret Fact

  St John Horsleydown was placed 2,000 cubits from The Monument. This ancient sacred measurement represented the distance from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem (the furthest a Jew was allowed to walk during the Sabbath).

  Location 24: London Wall

  Fragments of the Roman Empire in the heart of London

  (First introduced in The Infinite Fire)

  Address: Tower Hill, London, EC2Y 5AJ

  Underground: Fenchurch Street (Circle & District Lines)

  The old Roman wall of the City of London was built to last. About 2.5 miles long and enclosing an area of roughly 330 acres, the wall was constructed of blocks of Kentish ragstone bound together by an incredibly hard mortar. Horizontal strips of red Roman tiles are incorporated at regular levels up the wall, which gives it a characteristic banded appearance.

  From excavated coin evidence, archaeologists have dated the initial phase of building to between AD 190 and 225. It is suggested that construction was started as a result of political friction between Septimius Severus and Clodius Albinus, with Albinus building the fortification to protect his territory from his rival. However, history tells us that his efforts were in vain, as he was defeated by Severus in AD 197.

  The wall was 6 to 9 feet wide, 18 feet high and topped by a walkway from which Roman soldiers could keep guard and survey the surrounding area. Incorporating a fort (located close to modern-day Wood Street), four gates, more than twenty towers (some probably for catapults or stone-throwing engines) and a defensive ditch, the fortified city of Londinium would have been an imposing spectacle. Work on the wall continued right up until the Roman withdrawal from Britain in AD 410, and this was followed by a long period in which the city seems to have been largely abandoned. Throughout the Medieval ages, the wall was modified and adapted, and many churches and houses were erected against the existing structure. Over successive centuries, the Roman wall became further obscured by new buildings put up to service the rapidly growing population and new railway lines.

  Secret Fact

  Surprisingly well-maintained areas of the Roman wall can still be seen near the Tower of London, the Barbican, and in the districts known as London Wall and Crutched Friar, along with other smaller outcrops throughout the City. These ancient remains bear testament to how generations of builders in search of suitable construction materials were simply unable to dismantle the Roman-built stonework.

  One of the highest remaining stretches of the wall, along with a replica statue of the Emperor Trajan, can be seen in the garden to the east of Tower Hill Underpass. In fact, only the lower 4.4-metre section of the wall is Roman and is easily recognisable by the distinctive courses of red tile running through it. The upper levels are a medieval addition.

  An incongruous section of the wall can also be seen in a subway going to Duke’s Place and onwards into the street known as Bevis Marks. The bottom of the wall is about 4 metres below floor level and is sited just hundreds of yards away from the 41-storey skyscraper lovingly known as the Gherkin in London's primary financial district.

  Location 25: The Minories

  The eagle and the serpent

  (First introduced in The Devil's Architect)

  Address: Minories, London, EC3N 1JL

  Underground: Tower Hill (Circle and District Lines) & Tower Gateway (DLR)

  The name refers to the area formerly housing the Abbey of the Minoresses of St Mary of the Order of St Clare, founded by Edmund Crouchback in 1293. (At the time the nuns were known as Minoresses.) Today a small side-road off the Minories is still named St Clare Street.

  After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, the abbey passed to the King. The chapel of the former nunnery was repurposed and renamed the Church of Holy Trinity. The area was outside the usual jurisdiction of the English bishops, and the order retained the right to marry people without licence. The church was rebuilt in brick in 1706, and Sir Isaac Newton worshipped here whilst Master of Mint from 1699 to 1727. The church’s tiny graveyard often suffered from overcrowding, and the burial ground was emptied on two occasions, in 1689 and 1763. Strangely, there is no record of what happened to the bones.

  In 1852 the head of Lady Jane Grey’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, was found in the crypt of the church. Despite being separated from the body on Tower Hill in 1554, the head remained well preserved and was on display in a glass case by the pulpit for a number of years. Holy Trinity’s long history finally came to an end when it was destroyed by German bombing during the Second World War.

  The Minories area has historically hosted a large Jewish community.

  Secret
Fact

  In September 2013, the Minories was the site of a magnificent Roman discovery. During the last few hours of an archaeological dig in the foundations for a new 16-floor hotel, a 1st-century-AD stone Roman eagle was unearthed.

  Described by archaeologists as one of the best examples of Romano-British sculpture in existence, the two-foot-high carved stone monument portrays a powerful eagle with a writhing serpent in its beak. The statue is made from Cotswold limestone and is believed to symbolise the struggle between good and evil. Unusually the snake is depicted as having a row of sharp teeth.

  The only other example of the eagle and serpent motif from the Roman Empire was found in Jordan in 1937 and is now in the Cincinnati Art Museum, US. The eagle found in the Minories is thought to have been an adornment to an imposing mausoleum, as a Roman burial ground existed just outside the city walls.

  Location 26: Christchurch, Spitalfields

  A church’s grisly past

  (First introduced in The Devil's Architect)

  Address: Commercial Street, London, E1 6LY

  Underground: Liverpool Street (Hammersmith and City, Circle, Metropolitan and Central lines), Aldgate East (Hammersmith and City & District Lines)

  Website: www.ccspitalfields.org

  Christchurch was built as part of the Fifty New Churches Act of 1710, endorsed by Queen Anne, who was eager to ‘bring religion to the godless masses of London’. It is considered by many to be Nicholas Hawksmoor’s architectural masterpiece. Built between 1714 and 1729, its bone white exterior once dominated the landscape but is now somewhat hidden by the chrome and steel of London’s financial district. Like many of Hawksmoor’s London churches, it possesses a strange, overpowering quality that echoes power, both temporal and otherworldly.

  The church site has a dark and grisly past. No area of London was ravaged more by the effects of the plague than the surrounding parishes of Aldgate and Whitechapel. In an attempt to dispose of the bodies, huge pits were dug into which thousands of unfortunate victims were thrown. Hawksmoor’s church was built on one such plague pit.

  Christchurch’s association with death continued into the 19th century, as the dark streets around the church turned into the killing fields of Jack the Ripper. In 1888, five women, all prostitutes, were horrifically murdered in close vicinity to Christchurch. Police witnesses often established the time of events with reference to the well-illuminated church clock.

  Christchurch fell into disrepair. By 1960, it was nearly derelict with services held in the church hall because the roof was declared unsafe. In 1976, an independent charity was formed to restore the building and bring it back to use.

  Secret Fact

  As part of the restoration efforts, the church’s burial vaults were cleared. Between 1984 and 1986, nearly 1,000 bodies were removed from the labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels and cellars beneath the church. At the time, there were serious fears that some of the sealed coffins in the crypt might contain people who had died of bubonic plague or smallpox.

  The site was immediately closed down when the exhumed body of a man clearly displayed the physical signs of smallpox. The vault was sealed for 6 months whilst the body was tested in an American laboratory. The results of the analysis confirmed the smallpox virus was dead and did not present a risk.

  Location 27: St George-in-the-East

  The witness to a grisly murder mystery

  (First introduced in The Devil's Architect)

  Address: 14 Cannon Street Road, London, E1 0BH

  Underground: Shadwell (DLR)

  Website: www.stgeorgeintheeast.withtank.com

  St George-in-the-East is one of six Nicholas Hawksmoor churches built as part of the Fifty New Churches Act of 1710. It is located on Cannon Street Road, between The Highway and Cable Street, in the East End of London. Striking in profile, the white-stoned church projects the usual power and spatial ambiguity characteristic of a Hawksmoor church. With its extraordinary lantern tower and four distinctive ‘pepperpot’ turrets, it casts a powerful silhouette more in keeping with a fortress battlement than a typical Christian place of worship. The lantern is composed of eight supporting columns, each surmounted by a Roman altar design, a favourite theme of Hawksmoor that he also employed at St John Horsleydown.

  During a bombing raid on London's docklands during the Blitz of May 1941, St George-in-the-East was set on fire by a Luftwaffe bomb. The interior of the church was gutted, but the tower, walls and distinctive ‘pepperpot’ turrets survived. The roofless ruin was restored in the 1960’s.

  Secret Fact

  The church bore witness 150 years earlier to a bloody murder mystery that shocked the country to its core. Known as the Ratcliffe Highway murders, the events that took place in 1811 are some of the most shocking and bizarre in London’s history.

  St George-in-the-East is situated just off The Highway, a principal traffic artery into London. By the turn of the 19th century, The Highway had a dark reputation as a centre for criminal activity.

  On 8 December 1811, a draper named Timothy Marr, his wife Celia, their 14-week-old son Timothy, and their shop boy, James Gowan, were brutally murdered at 29 St George's Street. Twelve days later, the publican of the Kings Arms in New Gravel Lane, John Williamson, his wife Elizabeth, and a servant, Bridget Harrington, were also horrifically murdered at home. The sheer savagery and ferocity of the killings—the victims’ skulls had been smashed in and throats slit down to the bone—sent shockwaves through London.

  The police arrested John Williams, a 27-year-old sailor. Whilst being held for questioning, Williams hung himself in his cell. On New Year’s Eve, his corpse was paraded down the Ratcliffe Highway on a cart. The procession passed St George-in-the-East to a makeshift grave at the crossroads between New Road and Cannon Street Road. Once in the grave, a wooden stake was hammered through Williams’s heart.

  Location 28: St Dunstan and All Saints Stepney

  Pinching the Devil’s nose

  (First introduced in The Infinite Fire)

  Address: Stepney High Street, London, E1 0NR

  Underground: Stepney Green (District, Hammersmith & City Lines)

  Website: www.stdunstanstepney.com

  St Dunstan's is an Anglican Church located in Stepney and is one of the largest medieval churches in London, although its origins date back to a much earlier time. There has been a stone church on this site for more than a thousand years, and evidence shows that older wooden churches existed on the location before then.

  In AD 952, the Bishop of London replaced the existing wooden structure with a stone church dedicated to All the Saints. After Dunstan’s canonisation in 1029, the church was rededicated to St Dunstan and All Saints. Dunstan, the former Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London, enjoyed an illustrious career. He is recognised as being a uniting force in bringing rival Saxon, Angles and Dane factions together. There are many legends concerning St Dunstan, particularly about his battling with the devil.

  St Dunstan’s Stepney is one of the most significant medieval churches in London. Most of the present church dates back to the 15th century, with the chancel being earlier (13th century). The chancel contains a thousand-year-old Saxon stone carving of the Crucifixion and the figures of the Virgin Mary and St John. Saxon work is incredibly rare in London and this is one of the few remaining examples. Miraculously the church survived both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz.

  The church’s bells were cast in the famous Whitechapel Bell Foundry and are tuned to C sharp. The ring of the ten bells have been immortalised in the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’:

  ‘When will that be, say the bells of Stepney’.

  Secret Fact

  Dunstan was a talented metalworker and, during his time in Glastonbury Abbey, spent many a day in his forge. His evangelistic mission of spreading the gospel to the South of England was gaining success, and as a result his name was added to the Devil’s hit list.

  Disguised as a beau
tiful young woman, the Devil tried to seduce Dunstan whilst at work at the forge. So the story goes, the woman began to dance around Dunstan in attempt to entice him, but instead of having the desired effect, her billowing skirts revealed the Devil’s hooves underneath. With the plot exposed, St Dunstan took a pair of red-hot tongs from the fire and clamped them onto the end of the Devil’s nose. The Devil screamed with agony and flew away to Tunbridge Wells, where he plunged his head into the cold waters. To this day, the spring water of the well is reddish in colour and slightly sulphurous to taste.

  These events are retold in the old English folk rhyme:

  St Dunstan, as the story goes,

  Once pull'd the devil by the nose

  With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,

  That he was heard three miles or more.

  The Cambridge Location Files

  Location 1: The Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge

  Where Newton’s pocket watch came to rest