Heraldic shields

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Nonconformists

The unobtrusive entrance to the Moravian burial ground can be found in a quiet corner of Chelsea, on Milman’s Street, more or less on the corner with King’s Road. The Moravians had had their meeting room in the City at Fetter Lane since 1742 and continued to use it till an air raid in World War II destroyed the building. In 1750, the brotherhood bought a large plot of land in Chelsea in order to realise their ideal of a dedicated community which was to have the name “Sharon”, but unfortunately, the money ran out and most of the land had to be sold off again in 1774. What remained is the small site of the burial ground with a few buildings, known as Moravian Close.

Beaufort House, drawn by Kip in 1708 for Britannia Illustrata with Beaufort House in the centre of the picture, Lindsey House bottom left, Gorges House between the two and the stable blocks beyond the main house on the left

The money to buy the large piece of land in Chelsea came from Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, the head of the Brethren of the Moravian Unity (see for more on him here), but as foreigners were not allowed to own land, it was purchased in trust for the Moravians by various wealthy supporters. The occupation of the original plot of land (stretching from the river to King’s Road) had started in 1524 when Sir Thomas More built a house there surrounded by large gardens and orchards. The Moravian burial ground is situated on what used to be the stable blocks in the northwest corner of the estate. After More was found guilty of treason and executed in July 1535, the estate was granted to Sir William Paulet, the first Marquess of Winchester who had been one of the judges in More’s trial. It was inherited by his son John, the second Marquess. It then passed to Gregory Fienness, Lord Dacre, and his wife Anne who left it to Lord Burleigh and hence to his son Sir Robert Cecil.

In 1599 the house was sold to Henry Clinton, second Earl of Lincoln, and then passed to his son-in-law Sir Arthur Gorges who sold it to Lionel Cranfield, the Earl of Middlesex. Cranfield fell out with Charles I and his property was confiscated and granted in 1627 to George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. In the Civil War, the house was seized by Parliament, and although the second Duke of Buckingham regained it, he lost it again through debts. It came into the hands of George Digby whose widow sold it in 1682 to Henry Somerset, Marquess of Worcester, later 5th Duke of Beaufort. The house then became known as Beaufort House. The last owner was Sir Hans Sloane who had the building demolished. In the two centuries between the building of the original house for Sir Thomas More and its destruction by Sir Hans Sloane, the house had been modified and enlarged several times and other houses had been built in the grounds, such as Lindsey House and Gorges House.

The buildings that are now on the Moravian site have been transformed several times. In the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, the larger building in the centre of the row of buildings on the north side of the grounds was used by various other organisations; at one time it was a school. The smaller building on the east side was retained by the Moravians as a chapel for burial ceremonies. On the centre building a plaque can be found commemorating Christian Renatus von Zinzendorf, the son of the founder (more on him here). His burial registration refers to the burial ground in Milman’s Street as “Sharon”.

The burial ground itself is divided into four sections: two squares for single and married sisters and two squares for the single and married brethren. The gravestones lie flat on the ground and only have name and dates of birth and death. The Close is a conservation area and the buildings are Grade II listed. Across from the burial ground a pergola can be seen which was set up by sculptors Ernest and Mary Gillick (see here and here) who leased the site from the Moravians from 1914 to 1964. After they left, the Fetter Lane community who had been using various other chapels after their own was destroyed in 1941, decided to relocate to Moravian Close.

The Gillicks were also responsible for the heraldic shields above the stone bench along the south wall. They represent the former owners from Thomas More to Hans Sloane.

More

More, Paulet, Fiennes

Fiennes, Cecil, Clinton

Clinton, Gorges, Cranfield

Cranfield, Villiers, Digby

Somerset, Sloane

The site is open to visitors on Wednesday afternoons and – at least when I was there – is a very pleasant and quiet green space, away from the hustle and bustle of Chelsea.
—————-
The information on the history of Beaufort House came from the Survey of London, vol. 4, The Parish of Chelsea II (1913) and information on the burial ground from A Feasibility Study for Moravian Close, 281 Kings Road, Chelsea, London (2003).
Website of the Church: www.moravian.org.uk.

Alexander Cruden, the Corrector

Tags

book trade

Looking up in London is always a good idea if one can do so without getting run over and in traffic free streets such as Camden Passage it is very rewarding. Looking over an awning into the street is the face of Alexander Cruden who styled himself “the Corrector”. Next to his face is a plaque which reads:

Alexander Cruden 1699-1770 / Humanist scholar and intellectual / Born Aberdeen Educated Marischal College / Came to London 1719 as tutor Appointed / book seller to Queen Caroline in 1737 / Compiled the Concordance to the Bible / Died here in Camden Passage, November 1st / whom niether infirmity nor neglect could debase Nelson 1811

The mis-spelled quote “whom neither infirmity nor neglect could debase” comes from John Nelson’s History, Topography, and Antiquities of the Parish of St. Mary Islington, in the County of Middlesex (1811)⁽¹⁾ The phrase is frequently said to come from Alexander Chalmers who first wrote the entry on Cruden in 1778 for the Biographia Britannica (vol. 4, pp. 619-624), but it does not appear there. Nor does it appear in The General Biographical Dictionary of 1813 which was revised by A. Chalmers and in which he says in a footnote that his entry on Cruden is the same as that prefixed to the Concordance of 1810. The phrase does appear in the Memoirs attached to later editions of the Concordance, so I think I will give the benefit of the doubt to Nelson and will assume that Chalmers incorporated the phrase without acknowledgement when he enlarged his biography of Cruden in later editions of the latter’s Concordance.

Over the years, much has been written about Cruden and not all of it positive. He was considered, if not completely mad, at least a touch deranged and he spent several spells in various madhouses because those around him did not know how else to stop him behaving like – in their eyes – a lunatic, or, to put a negative slant on the motives of those who had him incarcerated, against their interests. What I can gather from the biographies is that he was considered rather excentric, but as he did no real harm, he certainly should not have been locked up.

portrait used in the 3rd edition of the Concordance to the Bible 1769 (Source: National Portrait Gallery)

But let’s start at the beginning. Alexander Cruden, the son of a merchant, was born in Aberdeen in either 1699 or 1701, depending on who you believe. After attending grammar school and Marischal College, he apparently intended to study for the ministry, but an unhappy love affair and a spell in the mad-house, probably for knowing about the illicit affair of his intended with her own brother, decided him to leave for London. He worked as a private tutor until 1726 when he became a proof reader. A notice in The London Journal of 16 November 1734, states that he was “lately corrector to the Printing Office in Wild-Court”, but now bookseller at the Bible and Anchor under the Royal Exchange. Just a month before this notice, Cruden had obtained the freedom of the City via the Stationers’ Company by redemption, that is, by paying a fine for not following the usual route of a 7-year apprenticeship.⁽²⁾ In the following years, quite a number of advertisements appeared in the newspapers to annouce books that could be bought at Cruden’s, but also one for Doctor Rogers’s Oleum Arthriticum: or, Specifick Oyl for the Gout. The doctor sold the stuff from his house in Stamford, Lincs, and he had agents in all the major towns. Cruden was the only address in London where the miraculous cure for gout could be obtained. These days, we would find it most peculiar if patent medicines were sold in our local bookshop, but certainly up to Victorian times it was quite an accepted sideline.

In 1735, Cruden was given the honourable title of “Bookseller in Ordinary to her Majesty”, that is, to Queen Caroline.⁽³⁾ He replaced a Mr. E. Matthews who had died. Honourable as the title may have been, it probably did not bring many financial rewards and Cruden kept his bookshop running besides embarking on an ambitious project to compile a concordance to the Bible. Apparently he worked on it every morning, attending to business in the afternoon, and at the end of 1737, the publication was announced.

Advertisement in The Daily Post, 10 November 1737

Although the advertisement says “this day is published”, you must not take that too literally, as they still said that in advertisements in December, but it certainly indicates ‘very recently’. The booksellers thought fit to put the year 1738 on the title-page, but that was just a ploy to make sure the book did not appear out of date within a few months. Please note that the volume was “dedicated to Her Most Sacred Majesty”. However, a few days after Cruden presented Queen Caroline with his Concordance, she was taken ill and died shortly afterwards (on the 20th). The advertisement in the paper for Cruden’s work had to be changed rapidly and the one in a paper of 26 November had the phrase “dedicated to her late Sacred Majesty”. Cruden was rather upset about the death of the Queen – not to mention rather put out by not receiving the financial reward he had expected from the queen for his monumental work – and not long afterwards, he gave up bookselling and returned to his former occupation of proof-reading.⁽⁴⁾ He corrected, for instance, Thomas Newton’s edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost for Tonson and Draper who published that work in 1749.⁽⁵⁾

In 1754, Cruden unsuccessfully tried to become an M.P. for London, perhaps an understandable failure considering his antics and spells in madhouses, however unfair these may now seem. His eccentricities were usually considered harmless and amusing rather than threatening, although they were probably highly irritating for the ‘victims’ of his attention. But, he gradually grew in his role as self-appointed Corrector of Morals rather than as Corrector of Books. It is said that he walked around with a sponge in order to wipe out offensive graffiti, especially “No. 45” in use by the supporters of John Wilkes.⁽⁶⁾ The numer 45 was a reference to instalment 45 of The North Briton which appeared in April, 1763, and in which Wilkes wrote an essay mocking the monarchy.⁽⁷⁾

In 1761, the second, and in 1769, the third revised editions of his Concordance were published and it remained the most authoritative of that kind of work until well into the 19th century. 1769 was also the year in which Cruden finally returned to Aberdeen. He stayed up north for about a year and on 10 April 1770 wrote his will before returning to London.⁽⁸⁾ The General Evening Post of 15 May, 1770, reporting on the return of “Mr. Alexander Cruden, Corrector of the People”, said that he speeched in various towns on the way “upon the necessity of Reformation” and “many hundreds of papers were given away in the roads and towns by Mr. Cruden, as he came up in the post-chaise”. Unfortunately, Cruden was not to complete his self-imposed task of reforming the people, as he died on 1 November of that year. He had never married, despite several desperate attempts, and left his property to various relatives and to the City of Aberdeen for the purchase of religious books to be distributed to the poor. Despite his wish to be buried in Aberdeen, his body was interred in the dissenters’ burial-ground at Deadman’s Place, Southwark.

Lloyd’s Evening Post, 2 November 1770

According to London Remembers, the plaque in Camden Passage was unveiled by John Betjeman, but it is not the only plaque for Cruden. His hometown of Aberdeen also honoured its – albeit slightly wayward – son with one quite close to where he was born in Cruden’s Court, off Broad Street, apparently also unveiled by Betjeman.⁽⁹⁾

Source: blueplaqueplaces.co.uk

[Postscript 4 January 2017:] Louis Hemmings has written a poem about Cruden which he thought you might appreciate, see here.

Besides the sources mentioned in the text, information on Cruden can be found in:
– Lionel Alexander Ritchie, ‘Cruden, Alexander (1699–1770)’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
– E. Olivier, The Eccentric Life of Alexander Cruden (1934).
– J. Keay, Alexander the Corrector: the tormented genius who unwrote the bible (2005).
– J. Lim, Alexander Cruden on the website http://www.ebenezeroldhill.org.uk/articles.
– R. Pearsal, “Cruden of the Concordance 1701-1770” in New Blackfriars (1971), pp. 88-90.

——————–
(1) Cruden’s biography pp. 392-400.
(2) The fine was 46s 8d.
(3) London Daily Post, 21 March, 1735 and General Evening Post, 12 April 1735.
(4) The Land Tax records for the Royal Exchange only show his name in 1835 and 1836, apparently sharing the property (their names are bracketed) with Portman Safford, hatter, who took over the whole shop after Cruden left.
(5) Percy Simpson, Proof-Reading in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1935), p. 159-160.
(6) Charles Henry Timperley, Encyclopedia of Literary and Typographical Anecdote (1842), p. 723.
(7) http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/summer03/wilkes.cfm
(8) National Archives, Kew, Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Related Probate Jurisdictions: Will Registers: PROB 11/963/7.
(9) David Toulmin in his A Chiel Among Them: A Scots Miscellany (1982) says “Alexander Cruden had to wait nearly two hundred years for his nameplate in Broad Street, when it was unveiled by Sir John Betjeman, the Poet Laureate, in 1968”.

St. Mary’s clock tower

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parc

The area of the Elephant and Castle Roundabout is probably the last place in London you would go to for a relaxing walk, but perhaps you should reconsider. A little to the south of the shopping centre on the A3, on the opposite side of the road, a small green space can be found called St. Mary’s Churchyard. And yes, it did once belong to a real church, St. Mary’s, Newington Butts, but the church is no longer there as it has been moved to Kennington Park Road (website here).

The history of the church officially starts in the fourteenth century when it is mentioned in a medieval document, but it may be a lot older as there is a church mentioned in the Doomsday Book that may or may not refer to the site of St. Mary’s. The lands around it had belonged to the Manor of Walworth, but the area changed its name to Newington, possibly because of the new houses, or ‘New Town’ that had sprung up on the edge of Walworth. According to John Noorthouck, it “is thought to receive the addition of Butts from the exercise of shooting at butts formerly practised here, and in other parts of the kingdom, to train the young men to archery”, although he does concede that it perhaps derived from the Butts family of Norfolk who had an estate in the area.⁽¹⁾

Horwood 1799 map

According to John Stow, in 1715 the church showed “a sudden rupture in the wall, which put the Congregation, then assembled, into such a general consternation that they all ran out, and many in making their escape, were bruised and trodden under foot, and received great hurt”.⁽²⁾ An investigation was launched and the structure was found “so much decayed in the pillars, walls and beams, and in the roof and foundation” that it was deemed unsafe and not worth the money repairing. The main part of the church was demolished in 1720, leaving just the clock tower standing. A new church, incorporating the old clock tower, was speedily built and opened in March 1721 and enlarged in 1793.

The church in 1866 (Source: Old and New London, vol. 6)

The Newington Butts Road became busier and busier and as the church stood so close to the road, it was considered a public danger. In 1876, the church was demolished and a new one built in Kennington Park Road. The old churchyard became a public garden and a year later, on the site of the old church, a new clock tower was erected which is described by Edward Walford:

This tower is fourteen feet square at the base, and carried up in five stages with buttresses to a height of about a hundred feet. The clock-face is placed at the height of seventy feet. In the lower part of the building the material is Portland stone, the remainder being of Bath stone, and the front to Newington Butts, as well as the two sides, is enriched with carvings in florid Gothic. There is a doorway in the centre of the front, with windows in the upper part. On the left side of the doorway is the following inscription: This tower was built at the expense of Robert Faulconer, Esq., Anno Domini 1877, on the site of the old parish church of St. Mary’s, Newington.⁽³⁾

1893 Ordnance Survey map showing the position of the clock tower

ILN, 6 April 1878

A newspaper report elaborated on Walford’s last remark. According to the Illustrated London News, the new tower had “at the sides of the doorway two handsome panels, filled with polished red granite, on which is the following inscription in engraved and gilded letters: – ‘This clock tower, erected A.D. 1877 by R.S. Faulconer, Esq. formerly a churchwarden of the parish of St. Mary, Newington, probably marks the site of the Saxon church mentioned in the Doomsday Book in connection with Walworth, as it certainly does that of several churches which have been built in succession upon it. The last church upon this site was erected in 1793, and was removed under the authority of an Act of Parliament in 1876, in which year on May 1, the new mother church of St. Mary, Newington, in the Kennington Park-road, was consecrated'”. Now, compare this text with the text on the plaques lying in the plant border near the fence to mark the spot where the tower stood and you will see that the newspaper journalist was not a hundred per cent word perfect, but near enough to make me think we are talking about the same panels. Did they remove them from the clock tower in 1971 when it was demolished after having been a local landmark for almost a hundred years? Or are the ones you see in the churchyard new copies? Granite is a hardy material that can easily survive the century and a half since the tower was first erected and a bit of new gilding will do wonders. Whether original or copy, it is nice to know that a small park on a busy road has a solid connection with the past. The churchyard itself was re-landscaped in 2007 and the restored 1876 railings form a sturdy barrier between a very pleasant green retreat and the hustle and bustle of the Elephant and Castle junction.

(1) J. Noorthouck, A New History of London, including Westminster and Southwark, 1773, p. 691.
(2) J. Stow, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, Borough of Southwark, and Parts Adjacent, ed. R. Seymour, 1735, volume 2, p. 810.
(3) E. Walford, Old and New London, 1878, volume 6, p. 264.

You can read more on the history of the churchyard on the London Gardens Online website here.

Kicked by a horse

Tags

medicine, Postman's Park

When Joseph Boxall, a tallow chandler, and Jane, a tailoress, got married on 8 March 1857, her address was given as 14 Wageners Buildings (also spelled Wagners or Wagoners). They remained at that address as their children (Charles Henry Joseph, Joseph James, Louisa, Amelia, Sarah Anne, Charles Edwin Henry, Elizabeth Mary, James and John Federick) were all baptised from 14 Wageners Buildings at St. Mark’s Goodman’s Fields, and they were still there when the 1881 census was taken. Wageners Buildings could be found on Gower’s Walk. In 1883, the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Company built a goods depot off Commercial Street, obliterating the east side of Gower’s Walk. I do not know whether Wageners Building was on the east side, but in 1891, the Boxall family could be found at 27 Tagg Street, so it is likely that they had to move because of the depot.

1894 Ordance Survey map

For this post we are concerned with daughter Elizabeth Mary, baptised on 15 January 1871. We do not know anything about her youth, but she may have attended the Free School in Gower’s Walk, which also had to relocate to make way for the goods depot. Elizabeth would in the normal course of her life have been unlikely to make the newspapers, but she jumped into the path of a runaway horse which threatened to harm a small child and the injuries she received unfortunately led to her death and an angry letter from the governor of London Hospital.

William J. Nixon, Governor of the hospital wrote to the editor of “Lloyd’s News” that his attention had been drawn to the report in the paper of the inquest into the death of Elizabeth Boxall where the allegation was made that she “was butchered in the London Hospital”. That was, according to Mr. Nixon, not true and he felt obliged to state the case from the point of view of the hospital.

The patient was admitted on the 9th of October last year for “contused thigh”. The history being that she had some time before been kloked by a horse and that the injured limb had been further damaged by a fall occurring on the day she was admitted to the hospital. The examination showed the previously unsuspected presence of cancerous disease. The swelling was full of blood, the thighbone was broken, and its ends destroyed by the disorder, and practically the only chance of stopping the spread of the malady was to perform amputation above the knee; and although the consent of the patient or the friends is always, as a rule, obtained in advance, it was decided, after consultation among those present, that immediate amputation was necessary. The case went on fairly well for some time; but by January 31st last there were evidences of the recurrence of the cancer, and it was deemed essential that the operation of amputation at the hip-joint should be performed. With the consent of the patient and her friends this was done. She then improved, and was sent to Folkestone at the expense of our Samaritan society, in charge of a special attendant. Here, however, symptoms were shown of the cancerous malady spreading to the lungs, and we were required to remove her, as being unsuited for residence in a convalescent home. The patient’s stay at Folkestone lasted from the 24th May to the 11th June. On the father’s return he came, I find, to the hospital, and, at his request, some strengthening medicine was given him for his daughter. We heard no more respecting the case until the account of the inquest appeared in the papers. Had any intimation of the coming inquest reached us the hospital would have been represented. The facts I have stated above would then have been in evidence, and the jury would have been able to form a clear opinion whether there was any ground for imputations of ill-treatment in the hospital, and whether a verdict of “Death from shock” after an operation performed upwards of four months previously, and followed by comparative convalescence, could possibly be a corrrect verdict.⁽¹⁾

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the original report on the inquest that so enraged Mr. Nixon, but if he is correct in saying that the hospital knew nothing of the inquest, it is indeed strange that they were not asked to give evidence at the inquest. Whoever conducted the inquest should at least have given them the opportunity to state their case as they were accused of “butchering” a patient, a serious charge indeed. Poor Elizabeth may have died of cancer even if she had not jumped in front of a horse, but her brave act to save a child has given her a lasting memorial in Postman’s Park.

Postman’s Park

(1) Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper 1 July 1888.

Fire at Wick Road, Hackney

Tags

Postman's Park

On 4 January 1900, an inquest was held into the death of George Stephen Funnell, a 33-year old police constable.⁽¹⁾ Funnell and some colleagues had rushed to the scene of a fire that had broken out on 22 December 1899 at the Elephant and Castle, situated at the corner of Wick Road and Victoria Park Road. Constable Baker testified that when they rushed to the scene of the fire, the barman, William Goodridge, opened the door, causing a draught that spread the fire in all directions. In the house were, besides the barman, the landlord´s wife Mrs. Fowler, and two barmaids, Alice Maryon and Minnie Lewis. P.C. Funnell went through the flames to rescue the women. Funnell was so overcome by the smoke and fire that he fell back into the parlour where he was rescued by his colleagues. Sergeant Danzey said that the other officers were so overcome that they had to go on the sick list and one of them nearly fell into the fire from exhaustion. Mrs Fowler was so badly burnt that she could not attend the inquest.

Funnel died on 2 January in hospital. Dr. Hall of Hackney Infirmary said that Funnell “had been badly burned and that death was due to pneumonia following on partial suffocation and burning”. The verdict was “accidental death”. The policemen were commended for their efforts to save the lives of those within the pub. They were later to receive a bronze medal from the Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire. Just last year, Danzey’s medal turned up at auction (Dix Noonan Webb Ltd, 25 March 2013) as part of a lot of 3 medals. Also included in the lot was a photograph of the five policemen with their medal.

Part of lot 582, auction 25 March 2013 (Source: dnw.co.uk)

So, who was P.C. Funnell? The inquest already told us that he was 33 years old and that his first names were George Stephen. A letter sent to The Times later that month by Henry Seymour Trower of 9, Bryanston Square, tells us that Funnell had a 27-year old wife and two small boys. Trower is appalled at the small yearly pension (£15 and £2 10s for each child) awarded to the widow. Although he realises that it is “presumably as liberal as official considerations permit”, it would not do and he proposes to do something about “this pittance”, so “any subscriptions for the purpose sent to Mr. A.R. Cluer, Worship Street, Police Court, or to me, will be duly acknowledged”.⁽²⁾ How much money was raised by Trower is not known, but it was a kind gesture.

I found a photograph of Funnell and some more information on a website dedicated to the Funnell family, although without exact references and the sources hidden behind a password, so I do not know how reliable the information is, but apparently George’s wife’s name was Jane Lillian and the children were called George Stephen (born 1897) and Lenard A. (born 1898). The England & Wales, FreeBMD Marriage Index gives a George Funnell marrying Jane Lilian Boulton at Gravesend in the latter quarter of 1895 and the England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, gives a George Stephen as born in Hackney in the third quarter of 1896, and Leonard Albert in the early months of 1898, but I have not found the parish records online, so cannot positively state that these are our hero’s boys. If they are, they lived with their widowed mother at 35 Chelmer Road, Hackney at the time of the 1901 census. Ten years later, at the time of the 1911 census, Jane has remarried Henry Arthur Blann, an electric car driver, and the two Funnell boys are living with their three half-siblings at 47 Tankerton Terrace, Mitcham Road, West Croydon.

Photograph of G.S. Funnell (Source: www.funnell.org)

As is usually the case, newspaper reports varied the details of the events surrounding the fire a bit, see here for the News of the World version, but in essence, the stories were the same. George Stephen Funnell lost his life after rescuing three women from a fire. A Postman’s Park plaque well deserved.

Postman’s Park

(1) The Times, 5 January 1900
(2) The Times, 29 January 1900

Ashentree Court and Northcliffe House

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newspapers

Once upon a time, the Whitefriar monks walked the – presumably – shady courtyard in the centre of the Whitefriar monastery site. Judging by the name, the trees planted in the court were ashes, but that is just an assumption. In 1708, Edward Hatton called the Ashentree Court “a pleasant Court on the E. side of White Friars, about the middle”.⁽¹⁾ Apparently, houses had been built in the court after the monks had left, as in 1763, three “old houses” are reported to have fallen down, killing a boy.⁽²⁾

These days, there is not a tree or house in sight, but plenty of shade from all the office buildings around the court. Ashentree Court can be found off Whitefriars Street leading to Magpie Alley which runs to Bouverie Street. The section of the Google Map below shows where the tiles depicting the history of the association of Fleet Street with printing can be found (green line), where the Whitefriars Crypt is (red cross), and where the panels that are the subject of this post (blue line) are.

The metal panels in Ashentree Court depict the history of the newspaper presses at Northcliffe House, situated on the corner of Whitefriars and Tudor Street, just south of Ashentree Court. I apologise for the quality of the photographs; my camera is only a small one and the panels were rather dirty, combined with the poor light conditions … well, what can I say. At least it will give you some idea of what there is to see. More and better photos – with transcriptions of the panels – can be found on Ian’s blog.

The plates not only show the working of the printing presses inside the building, but also the building of Northcliffe House itself in the 1920s. Harold Harmsworth (Viscount Rothermere), the then owner of the Associated Newspapers, had Northcliffe House built and named after his brother Alfred Harmsworth who had become Lord Northcliffe in 1904 and who had started his career as the owner of the Evening News, later also founding the Daily Mail with his brother. Alfred died in 1922. The Times of 20 January 1927 reports on a General Meeting of the Associated Newspapers Ltd. in which the chairman reported the following on the building progress,

As the directors explained in the last annual report, unexpected delays were met with in the construction of the new building […] which, with its new devices and new inventions, will provide the Daily Mail and Weekly Dispatch with the last word in equipment for newspaper production. However, I am glad to be able to say now that the rate of progress has been such that it is hoped to make a start with the printing of part of the Weekly Dispatch at Northcliffe House within the next few weeks. You will be glad to hear also that the greater part of this magnificent building with it wonderful up-to-date machinery had already been paid for out of profits. (hear, hear).

Northcliffe House was designed by Ellis and Clarke, the architects who were a few years later also to design the Daily Express building in Fleet Street. Northcliffe House has been a Grade II listed building since 1988 and the description on the English Heritage site says,

Stone clad steel framed structure. Roof not visible. 4 storeys. Plus attic storey. 7 bays to Tudor Street and 6 bays to Whitefriars St.Corner entrance, square headed, with prominent keystone. First, second and third floors unified by giant order Ionic pilasters with lion head masks to capitals. Almost fully glazed between,the first and second floors linked by continuous mullions to long 3-light windows; metal glazing bars in margin glazing pattern, sub-divided into very small panes. Fluted coved cornice of neo-Egyptian character above third floor. Recessed attic storey. Short polygonal corner tower.⁽³⁾

The Associated Newspapers moved to Kensington High Street in 1989 while the actual printing was by then done at their plant at Surrey Docks, but Northcliffe House, although no longer in use for publishing newspapers, remained as yet another reminder of the newspaper history of the Fleet Street area.⁴ The façade of the building, because of its Grade II listed status, had to be retained when the site was redeveloped in 1999-2001 and still shows the Egyptian-style and lion head details.

You may also like to read the posts on the Daily Express building, the Whitefriars Crypt or on Magpie Alley.

(1) Edward Hatton, A New View of London, Or: An Ample Account of that City(1708) p. 3.
(2) “The Monthly Chronologer” in The London Magazine, Or: Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, volume 32 (1763), p. 275.
(3) English Heritage.
(4) Hugh Pearman, “The New Fleet Street”, Sunday Times, 2 July 1989; and Brian MacArthur, “Fleet Street’s last farewell”, Sunday Times, 6 Aug. 1989.

Fire in Lincoln Court

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housing, Postman's Park

The plaque in Postman’s Park for Ellen Donovan stating that she rushed into a burning house to save the neighbour’s children hides a story of overcrowded and dilapidated houses where London’s poor tried to make the best of their sorry lives. Ellen Donovan lived at 10, Lincoln Court, a narrow street – if you can call it that – between Drury Lane and Great Wild Street in the St. Giles District which was formed of the parishes of St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury (1855-1890). On that fatal Monday, 28 July 1873, at 7.30 pm, a fire broke out at number 7 because someone had carelessly left combustible material too close to the fireplace. The fire spread rapidly to number 8 and subsequently via the roof also to number 9. Initially everyone got out alive, although some were wounded, but when Ellen Donovan appeared on the scene and inquired whether the children had been got out, she was erroneously told they were not and she rushed inside to save them. She went from room to room, but by the time she reached the top floor she could no longer come down, because the staircase had caught fire. The fire brigade tried to save her, but unfortunately, they could not reach her in time.

The next day, George H. Stanton, the incumbent of Trinity, St. Giles, wrote a letter to the editor of The Times which was published on the 30th, mentioning the overcrowded state of the court and the plight of the 24 families left homeless because of the fire. All contributions gladly accepted. That his appeal did not fall on deaf ears, was shown a few days later, when Stanton thanked everyone by name who had given a donation. The sums given ranged from 2s to 20l with a total of over 56l and even some ‘soup tickets’
had been received.⁽¹⁾ The inquest was held on Thursday the 31st at the King’s Head Tavern in Broad Street where Mr. Dickson, the sanitary inspector for the district, stated that the court had 21 houses (each with eight rooms) with 366 inhabitants in total and that the houses were almost entirely of wood. But despite that, he alleged that the houses were “perfectly habitable”.⁽²⁾ You can judge from the illustration below how ‘perfectly habitable’ they were.

Homes of the London Poor from The Builder (1850s) (Source: British Museum)

The three houses that had burnt down were demolished with unexpected health problems as a result. Dr. George Ross, the Medical Officer of Health, wrote in his 1873 report that

At the commencement of September, I was informed of the occurrence of six cases of Typhus Fever – four of these in Lincoln Court, and two in Great Wild Street. This outbreak was so unexpected that further inquiries were immediately instituted, with the view to ascertain the cause. The localisation of the fever led me to believe that the disturbance of filth in the basements of three houses that had been destroyed by fire in Lincoln Court – a disturbance caused by the removal of the old foundations preparatory to rebuilding – had set free poisonous gases which generated the fever.⁽³⁾

We now know that typhoid fever is caused by the Salmonella typhi bacteria and is spread via contaminated food or water. Although Dr. Ross thought the cause was gases emanating from the ruins, he had the right idea that filthy surroundings were the cause, although not in the way he believed. Not long after, in 1875, another Medical Officer of Health, Dr. S.R. Lovett, made an official appeal to the Board of Works to improve the area in which he stated that many of the houses had no ventilation at all and the narrow alleyways made the houses very dark and he called the whole area “a disease-breeding spot”. The result was the Improvement Scheme of 1877 in which the area between Drury Lane, Great Wild Street, Princes Street and Brewer’s Court was to be razed to the ground and rebuilt.

map of the area from the 1877 report

Almost 2,000 people were to be rehoused. Princes Street (now Kemble Street) and the eastern end of Great Wild Street were to be widened to 40 feet. The site was fully cleared in May 1880 and sold to the Peabody Trust for £15,840. The new six-storey buildings were completed in 1881 and according to the report, “all these dwellings must be maintained in perpetuity as working-class dwellings”. The report mentions the gap between the 1,620 new occupants and the almost 2,000 that were moved out of the old buildings, but what happened to these unfortunates who missed out on a new home is not made clear.⁽⁴⁾

Ordnance Survey map of the area (1893) showing the new Peabody Estate

The Peabody building is still there, testament to a chain of events leading from a fire and the death of Ellen Donovan to better housing for the working classes.

Postman’s Park

(1) The Times, 1 August 1873.
(2) Lloyd’s Weekly, 3 August 1873.
(3) Report of the Medical Officer of Health as part of the Annual Report of the Board of Works for the St. Giles District, 1873 (online here)
(4) London County Council, The Housing Question in London. Being an Account of the Housing Work Done by the Metropolitan Board of Works and the London County Council, Between the Years 1855 and 1900, With a Summary of the Acts of Parliament under which they have worked. The relevant pages can be found here.

Wakefield and Toc H

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philanthrophy

At 41 Trinity Square an unusual plaque can be found for one Wakefield. The unusual bit is not that the plaque has a relief bust of Wakefield himself – that is not unique, although not very common, see for instance the memorial for William Vincent – but above the head is a small oil lamp. What does an oil lamp have to do with this Wakefield? And to begin with, who was Wakefield? A separate stone underneath the portrait bust tell us that Viscount Wakefield of Hythe led the Tower Hill restoration and that he gave the house at Trinity Square to the church and the people in 1937. Nice as that gesture obviously is, that is not the whole story.

Viscount Wakefield started life on 12 December 1859 as Charles Cheers Wakefield, the son of a customs official at Liverpool (Cheers was the maiden name of his mother). He was educated at the Liverpool Institute and became an oil broker. In 1899, he set up his own firm which specialised in lubricating oil. And that is why you all know him, although you may not have realised that it was Wakefield who was behind the ubiquitous Castrol motor oil. Castrol was the name chosen because researchers at the Wakefield Company added quite a lot of castor oil to their lubricants.

Old advertisement for Castrol (Source: gracesguide.co.uk)

Wakefield promoted aviation where he could; he supported Alan Cobham and Amy Johnson in their effort to fly to the other end of the Empire and he set up the Wakefield scholarships for Royal Air Force Cadets. But motor-racing was another passion and he financed speed trials at Daytona and Miami; not surprising really for someone in the oil and lubricants business.

But he was also heavily involved in the civic government of London. At various times, he was a member of the Court of Common Council, Sheriff, Alderman, and Master of various Company’s. In 1915 and 1916 he was Lord Mayor of London and in that capacity he visited the troops at the front. His philanthropic interests were varied and included Bridewell, Bethlehem, St. Thomas’s and St. Bart’s Hospitals, the Mental Aftercare Society, the National Children’s Home and Orphanage, but more importantly for this post, he was president of the Tower Hill Improvement Society. This Society, now known as the Tower Hill Trust, had been inspired by the reverend Phillip Byard (‘Tubby’) Clayton, from 1922 until 1962 Vicar of All Hallows by the Tower, who, together with Dr Bertram Ralph Leftwich published Pageant of Tower Hill, “which outlined a scheme to improve Tower Hill by removing from it certain ugly buildings which at that time disfigured it and hampered its use.” “The Trust set about purchasing a number of the buildings about which it was concerned, and these were demolished in order to provide gardens and open public spaces.”⁽¹⁾ Clayton lived next door to Wakefield at 43, Trinity Square (see for his blue plaque here).

In 1937, Wakefield set up the Wakefield (Tower Hill Trinity Square) Trust, known usually simply as the Wakefield Trust (and now amalgamated with the Tetley Trust). Wakefield gave a number of houses in the vicinity of Tower Hill, including his own at 41 Trinity Square, to the Trust to be used “for such charitable purposes as will be most conducive to the development of Tower Hill and Trinity Square as a centre of welfare work or as a centre from which welfare work can be conducted”. Included should be: “a headquarters of Toc H or another suitable charity; a hostel for young men engaged in welfare work clubs for young men and women; and educational or recreational use in connection with any of the above”.⁽²⁾

Toc H had been set up by Tubby Clayton in WW1 while he was the army chaplain in Poperinge, Belgium, which was a busy transfer station for troops on their way to and from the battlefields of Flanders. Clayton was instructed by his senior chaplain, Neville Talbot, to set up some sort of rest house for the troops. He rented a hop merchant’s house and set up a house that was open to men and officers alike. It contained a library, a kitchen, a walled garden and a chapel. Here, the soldiers could forget about the war for a while before returning to their duties. The house was named Talbot House in honour of Gilbert Talbot, the brother of Clayton’s superior, who had been killed earlier in the year. The soldiers quickly shortened the name to TH and then, in radio signallers’ parlance, as Toc H.⁽³⁾ The symbol of the Toc H Movement is the oil lamp known as the Lamp of Maintenance, hence the lamp above Wakefield’s relief bust.

After the war, the house was relinquished to the hop merchant again, but in 1930, with the generous help of Wakefield, it could be bought back and it is now a museum where the military past can be seen from its more peaceful side – if that is not too much of a contradiction.

In 1930, Wakefield was raised to the peerage as Baron Wakefield of Hythe in the County of Kent, and in 1934 he was further honoured when he was made Viscount Wakefield of Hythe. Wakefield died on 15 January, 1941. According to his obituary in The Times, he and his wife, Sarah Francis Graham, had no children and the peerage became extinct, but according to Wikipedia, they had a daughter Freda.
41 Trinity Square, by the way, is a Grade II property for which a building application to add a few doors inside the house has recently been submitted (see here).

——-
Most of the information on Wakefield has come from his obituary in The Times of 16 January 1941. Surprisingly enough, the Times article said that Talbot House in Poperinge was “since destroyed”, but they were obviously wrong as it is still very much there.

(1) http://www.towerhilltrust.org.uk/about-history.php
(2) http://www.wakefieldtrust.org.uk/about-history.php
(3) http://www.toch-uk.org.uk/History.html
(4) http://www.talbothouse.be/en/museum/home and http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/museum-talbot-house-history.htm

See also the entry for Wakefield and Clayton at London Remembers.

Bathing in the Lea

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Postman's Park

The report in The Standard of the bathing accident in Which George Blencowe, one of the Postman’s Park heroes, lost his life first appeared in the 8 September issue where it was said that it took place on Monday evening (that is 6 September) near the old wooden bridge crossing the river Lea near Temple Mills. They named one of the victims as William Sales, 15 years old, from Limehouse who had swum across the river to the Essex shore, but got into difficulties on his way back. Another boy, George Blencowe, 16 years old, from Stratford, saw him struggling and went to his rescue. Unfortunately, he was dragged under by Sales and they both drowned.

The next day, the same paper issued a report on the subsequent inquest. The paper silently corrected several of the facts they had had wrong in the previous report; the boy who got into difficulties transpired to be Walter Sale and only twelve years old. He was the son of John Sale, a greengrocer, and had gone to the river with his friend Stephen Webb. Webb stated at the inquest that when they reached the Back River, Sale said he would go in, but as Webb could not swim, he stayed on the shore to look after the clothes. Blencowe, the son of George Blencowe senior, a fruiterer, had heard the screams for help, took off his coat and boots and swam to the rescue. Webb saw them struggling and disappear.

Stephen Jones, a hammerman, heard the screams from the Walthamstow side of the Lea and swam across the river and ran over a bit of marshland to reach the Back River. He was then told by some bystanders that two boys had gone down and he swam to where they were last seen. He managed to find Sale’s body and brought it back ashore. But when he returned for Blencowe, another man had appeared who, according to Jones “was standing on the boy’s body”. That man, who was later to be found intoxicated, tried to get hold of Jones and fearing that he would be dragged under and being exhausted by that time, Jones returned to the shore. Blencowe’s body was eventually recovered with the help of drags.

The other witnesses of the accident said they could not help because they could not swim. The coroner praised Blencowe for his heroic, albeit unsuccessful and fatal, attempt to save the life of another boy. The coroner also mentioned that it had come to his notice that this was the third person Jones had saved or recovered and that he would make sure that his conduct was brought to the attention of the Royal Humane Society and that he allowed him “with great pleasure” the remuneration he was entitled to receive. The Jury opened a subscription for Jones who said that “he considered it his duty to save a life if he could do so”. Hear, hear.

section of the Lea and its side-channels (Source: Wikipedia)

If the stretch of the river Lea described as the Back River can be identified as what is now called Bow Back River, it lies to the southwest of the Olympic Park. Temple Mills, mentioned in the first newspaper report, however, was a yard belonging to the Great Eastern Railway lying north of the Olympic Park and not besides the Lea. Walthamstow is still further north, but Jones may just have been referring to the east shore of what is now called the Waterworks River. The Wikipedia page on the Bow Back Rivers (note the plural) presents a schematic plan of the river Lea and its – mainly man-made – channels. Now, if the newspaper was wrong on the details of the victim Sale, it may also have been wrong about the name of the Mills; the boys were probably swimming near the City Mills section of the river. But never mind where it was precisely, it remains a dreadful accident and Blencowe fully deserves his place among the heroes of Postman’s Park.

Postman’s Park

Drowned on the Devon coast

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Postman's Park

The wall with the tiles in Postman’s Park abounds with names of people who drowned in trying to save the life of someone else and the following story is of yet another life cut short by a watery death. In this case, very short, as Herbert Maconoghu (variously spelled in the newspaper reports as Maconoghey, Maconoghie or Maconoghue) was only 13 years old when he died trying to save the life of his school friends.

Young Herbert’s parents lived in India and he and his younger brother Frank, like so many of their colonial contemporaries, were sent to school in England. According to the 1881 census, Elizabeth Palmer was the “Lady Principal” of a private school at Neilgherry House on Landsdowne Road, Wimbledon, and she had in her care some twenty boys and girls aged between 5 and 12. Only two of the children were born in England, the rest were all born in India or Ceylon. Herbert and his brother Frank were born in Banda (Uttar Pradesh). Neilgherry House, by the way, was named after the Neilgherry (now usually spelled Nilgiri) hills, part of the Western Ghats mountain chain where the fertile soil prompted the British to start plantations of, for instance, Cinchona from which Peruvian bark could be extracted, a medicine against malaria. The mountain range, also referred to as the Blue Mountains, became a favourite summer retreat of the British because of its gentle climate.

Neilgherry Hills, India (Source: itouchmap.com)

Peruvian bark plantation in the Neilgherry Mountains (Source: Illustrated London News, 1862)

Some of the boys from India could go to family in the summer holidays, but for the seven or eight who could not, the school arranged a few weeks on the North Devon seaside with a governess, Ellen Hardie. Herbert and his schoolmates stayed at Croyde Bay lodging house, belonging to Captain Thomas Heddon. Although the boys had often been to bath where they went in the water that fatal Monday – off Black Rock – there was, on that particular day, according to Heddon, “an exceedingly heavy ground sea running, at a quarter past ten, when the lads went out to bathe, the tide was running out very swiftly”. Charles Binney (10 years old) and Havelock McGeorge (12 years old) were swept out to sea “towards Baggy Point and into a dangerous piece of water known as Glover’s pool”. Maconoghu and another lad, Edward Cornford, went after them to try and save them. Cornford lost sight of the boys and barely managed to get back on shore and was still too ill to attend the inquest a week later, but Maconoghu was swept out to sea with the other two boys.

OS map ±1900

On the Sunday after the tragedy, Heddon was walking along the beach when he saw the body of McGeorge lying near the high water mark. He arranged for the body to be brought to the mortuary at Georgeham. Later that Sunday, one Thomas Staddon saw the body of Maconoghu lying in a deep gully and with the help of a friend, also brought this body to the mortuary. At the time of the inquest, on Tuesday 5 September, the body of Charles Binney had not yet been recovered, but the drowning of McGeorge and Maconoghu was found “accidental”. They were both buried in Georgeham cemetery. Although too late for these unfortunate boys, the accident “caused a great sensation in the neighbourhood, and a general feeling … that some warning should be given visitors against bathing on the beach at certain times, when it is known to be dangerous”. At the inquest, it was reported that “some public-spirited gentlemen” fixed “a notice board on the sands with the object of preventing similar disasters”.

The spot were the Maconoghu plaque hangs originally held a plaque commemorating the death of four workman at the East Ham Sewage Works in 1895. That plaque had incorrectly stated the tragedy as having taken place in 1885 and at the West Ham Sewage Works. This incorrect tile was removed and a new plaque was made by Doulton. It was not put back in its original place, but on another row as it looked better with the other Doulton tiles, rather than as the odd one out amongst the De Morgan tiles. This left a gap in the original De Morgan row, but as De Morgan’s pottery no longer existed, nothing was done about it for some years, until Fred Passenger was located at the Bushey Heath pottery. He had worked at the De Morgan pottery and was able to make one in the same style as the early De Morgan tiles. Maconogue’s tile was put up in April 1931 and was the last one to go up on the Postman’s Park wall.⁽¹⁾

Postman’s Park

– The report of the inquest on which most of the above is based can be found in The North Devon Journal of 7 September 1882.
(1) John Price, Postman’s Park: G.F. Watts’s Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice (2008), pp. 33-34.