London

Hackney’s open street art

It is Open House this weekend except at Beck Road in Hackney where it is Open Street. The road, consisting of two almost eerily uniform rows of pretty Victorian terrace houses, is bursting alive with art. A core of artists living there permanently – some dating back to when an association helped artists to buy their own houses – have been joined by others from elsewhere who have been gifted temporary studio space by other residents. The result is an artwork in its own right. Every other house has an open door to paintings and installations and there is even a virtual reality room. Other artworks spill over into the street with one hanging from a window.

The result is a vibrant breeze of communal creativity giving a new meaning to street art. Let it speak for itself . . .

Secret London History – London Bridge – the world’s most successful monopoly

An early run of the Doggett’s rowing race
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IN JULY apprentices from the Watermen’s gild race from London Bridge to Cadogan Pier in Chelsea, passing under eleven bridges. It is called Doggett’s and is claimed to be the longest running continuous rowing race ever. There is a fascinating irony because if the watermen had had their way centuries ago there would be no bridges to pass under.
Not to put too fine a point on it they were a key part of what must be one of the most successful monopolies of all time. Together with the City of London and the Church (in the form of the Archbishop of Canterbury) they succeeded in stopping any new bridges being built for over 600 hundred years. Opposition had been going on for centuries before but their power was greatly increased in 1510 when Henry Vlll granted the watermen a monopoly of conveyance on the Thames. This helped them stop any new crossings from being built until 1750 when Westminster Bridge was built. From Roman times until 1750 London had only only one crossing – the famous London Bridge with all those houses built on top. It was the first stone bridge of any size in the world.
All three members of this unholy “ triple alliance“ were united by one thing. Money. The Corporation of London controlled London Bridge and the lucrative tolls extracted from passengers crossing the bridge. The original bridge was such a good investment that it is still earning dividends today. Further upriver at Lambeth Palace the Archbishop had a nice little earner from the fees charged for the horse ferry the Church operated. The road to Lambeth Bridge from Victoria is still called Horseferry Road.
The main losers from a new bridge, would have been the “wherrymen“ who conveyed passengers across the river to the theatres and other entertainments on the south bank and also along the river from Deptford to Westminster. There were estimated to be 20,000 of them in London, a huge proportion of the population which was less than 200,000. The wherrymen were of course right. If new bridges had been built they would undoubtably have lost their jobs.
You can imagine the confusion at the time if you had to catch the attention of thousands of wherrymen often foul-mouthed and badly trained, offering competing fees in order to attract custom. Samuel Pepys couldn’t stand them but they must have been the biggest employers in London by a distance.
Such was the power of the watermen that they even succeeded in stopping Hackney carriages from being used in London for two years during the reign of James l. The equivalent of this cartel today would be if Britain’s biggest union, Unite, joined forces with the City of London and the Church of England to keep cars off the roads. Not even remotely possible.
Watermen still exist today on a greatly reduced scale than before but much more highly trained through a five-year apprenticeship. If you walk down the little travelled thoroughfare of St Mary at Hill in the City of London you could easily pass by without noticing the Watermen’s Hall. Today it is a flourishing gild which, unlike so many livery companies which have little connection to their historic roots, is still intimately involved with the River Thames through activitiies ranging from training programmes to organising events like the Doggett’s race and the annual swan upping ritual which monitors swans along the reach of the Thames.

From this . . .

. . . to this

The sole remaining stanchion

The original Crystal Palace – built in Hyde Park in six months to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 – was the biggest glass building in the world and quite possibly the biggest building of any kind. It was a roaring success visited by 6 million people and made pots of money during its intentionally short life of six months.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Thanks to the entrepreneurial endeavour of Leo Schuster and others it was transported to a new site at Sydenham in south London and enlarged to a size over 50% larger than the original by its formidable architect Sir Joseph Paxton. It was intended to propogate the history of art, sculpture and architecture. This is part of what it looked like inside https://tinyurl.com/ybv7y5z2 and, unlike the original in Hyde Park, which has completely vanished, some of the surrounding infrastructure of its Sydenham reincarnation can still be seen including the sole remaining stanchion from the glass and iron structure (photo above).

If you look at the remains from the parkland in front of the site it is difficult to believe that despite all the vast terracing and statues which fill your vision you can’t actually see the site of the former Crystal Palace itself which is hiding behind a row of trees waiting for a loose pocketed billionaire to rebuild a modern equivalent.

Even so, there are plenty of reminders from the past including a sawn off base of one of the iron stanchions sticking out from a paving slab, the stub of one of the giant water towers (built by Brunel and used by John Logie Baird to demonstrate his new invention of television), sphinx-like lions still guarding the entrance and huge iron gate posts not to mention the custom built railway station which is still in daily use.

Remains of the pump house

And, of course, the dinosaurs. Although some are in need of care and attention they still stand sentinel on their own island, each of them Grade 1 listed surely making it the densest concentration of such top listed buildings anywhere.

But pride of place must go to that stanchion, the only surviving remnant of the building itself. No-one knows whether it was from Hyde Park or Sydenham as they were all made to a set formula with no identifying marks – but there is a better than 50% chance they are the solitary reminder of the mind boggling success of the 1851 Exhibition.

Six million people visited it and it marked the first time, thanks to the railways, that working people from all over the country mixed with the toffs without the social disruption that some had predicted. It made so much money that it helped finance the cultural hub of the museums in South Kensington and the company behind it still makes millions in profits today for creative causes. There has never been anything like it since.

Lion’s eye view of the parkland

Sadly, the replacement at Sydenham was not so successful. Although at its peak it could attract half a million people in a single day there was no way that a vast attraction so far from central London could survive in those days. But its demise came not from financial difficulties but from a devastating 1936 fire which turned into an inferno destroying the entire building (which had a lot of wood in it) though the site still lives on in hope of being restored by a person or persons unknown.

Curious fact – although the Crystal Palace marked the zenith of British industrial pride it was to two Germans that it owed much of its existence. The idea was the brainchild of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s German husband, and the transplanting to Sydenham was thanks to a consortium of eight men of whom the leading light was another German Leo Schuster. Oh, and labour had to be brought in from France to make sure the 900,000 square feet of glass was installed in time. A very British success story.

Much of this was inspired by one of ianbull@btinternet.com‘s fascinating walks across little trampled parts of London. Highly recommended

I also written a piece for OnLondon.co.uk on the traces of the 1851 exhibition that still exist http://www.onlondon.co.uk/vic-keegans-lost-london-55-traces-of-the-great-exhibiton/

Elephant and Castle station

Shakespeare would have had to walk but we can visit the sites of three forgotten Elizabethan theatres – with not a plaque between them – by travelling two stops on the Thameslink line starting from Elephant and Castle and simply looking out of the window.

As the train comes out of the Elephant station – roughly on the site of the recently closed Coronet Theatre on your left – you can see where the Newington Butts playhouse once stood. This is one of the very earliest of the surge of theatres during Elizabeth’s reign.

It is on record that in June, 1594, The Lord Chamberlain’s men gave the earliest performances of Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew, at Newington and an earlier version of Hamlet not written by Shakespeare. Julian Bowsher, the theatre archaeologist, says: “it is probable that Shakespeare acted there, possibly in 1593 and almost certainly in 1594”.

Soon after leaving the Elephant as we are about to enter Blackfriars station we pass on the right a long undistinguished office block which you can almost touch. This is the site of the Swan Theatre, the biggest in Elizabethan times which could hold up to 3,000 people which is at least as big as any West End theatre today. Again no plaque or anything to suggest what it is.

We don’t know whether any of Shakespeare’s plays were performed there but he would certainly have been familiar with it.

It is because of the Swan that we have the only sketch of what an Elizabethan theatre actually looked like. It was drawn by a visiting Dutchman and has become the template for thinking about how other contemporary theatres looked.

The Swan was situated in an ancient estate called Paris Garden which was a “liberty” and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the City. It was a very seedy place. The Swan was situated close to Holland’s Leaguer, the most notorious brothel in the country which even had its own drawbridge to be pulled up when occasion demanded.

In 1597 the Isle of Dogs, by Ben Jonson and Thomas Nash was put on leading to their arrest for staging seditious material. Shakespeare must have lived nearby because in 1596 a restraining order was served on him and others by someone who feared that the person we know today as “gentle” Shakespeare might be putting his life at risk.

Looking towards the railway and the site of the Blackfriars

Very shortly after leaving Blackfriars station on the right – don’t blink or you’ll miss it – is the entrance to a small yard which was the site of the indoor Blackfriars theatre where in his later days Shakespeare’s troupe made most of their money catering for richer audiences all year round. In Staunton, Virginia American Shakespeare lovers have built a replica of the Blackfriars theatre while in London, as with the other two theatres, there is not even a plaque.

Londoners love Shakespeare in performance but until very recently have been curiously neglectful of his heritage. The most famous memorial to him – a replica of the Globe – was only built because of the dogged persistence of an American, Sam Wanamaker.

The Goldman Sachs building, Farringdon Street

GOLDMAN SACHS, the seriously rich US finance group, has just built a huge £1 bn office block on Farringdon Street just south of Holborn Viaduct. What the Goldmen and Goldwomen may not know is that this temple to Mammon has been constructed on almost exactly the same site where the mendicant Dominican monks – or Black Friars – built their first London monastery in 1224. They later (in 1278) moved down the road to a space within the City boundaries by today’s Blackfriars station.

It is tempting to contrast the opulent lifestyle of the Goldman Sachs toffs with the sombre routine of the Dominican monks begging in the streets – but wait. Life is not that simple.

Piers Plowman, the 14th century poet from Malvern, railed against the lifestyle of the Blackfriars monks accusing them of debauchery and luxurious living.

Here’s a sample:

“They live more in lechery and lying than pursuing any good life; instead, they lurk in their cells and win worldly wealth and waste it on sin, wickedness they would not practice if they knew their Creed or believed in Christ.”

Goldman Sachs for their part have not always lived the high life. They have also been mendicants on a scale the Blackfriars monks could only dream about.

In October 2008 during the sub-prime financial crisis amid fears that the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros could trigger a global collapse Goldman received a $10 billion boost (in preferred stock) from the US Treasury. In other words a mega bailout. Goodness knows what the monks of Blackfriars would have done with money like that.

Like the monastery, the Goldman Sachs building is bounded on the east by Shoe Lane, on the south by Stonecutter Street and on the east by Farringdon Street. The only difference is that the monastery actually extended further northwards beyond Plumtree Court to under what is now Holborn Viaduct.

Before Goldman Sachs came along the site in recent times housed a BT telephone exchange with a lovely ceramic mural outside (since removed to the Barbican). Before that it was a street market with a dodgy reputation for watercress. Life goes on.

The statue on the right is of Agriculture on Holborn Viaduct.

The world’s first panorama
LEICESTER SQUARE is not famed for its churches. An exception is Notre Dame de France. Built on the site of the London pad of the Earl of Leicester in the 1630s, it was later the location of the world’s first 360 degree Panorama, the immersive reality of its day. It is in Leicester Street, a lane linking the square with Chinatown. Inside there is a lovely triptych (see below) by the cultural polymath Jean Cocteau barely known to Londoners but more than worth the visit in its own right. It depicts the Annunciation, the Crucifixion and the Assumption in a hauntingly beautiful way. It is the only church that Cocteau was involved with apart from the chapel at Villefranche sur Mer near Nice.
This is a working church – which maintains Christian traditions by allowing rough sleepers to slumber on the pews during the day – but these are not the only reasons why it is worth a visit.
This is the site of the world’s first “panorama”. Indeed the word – from the Greek “pan” (all) and “horama” (view) – was coined especially for it.
Built here by Robert Barker in 1793, it was the first panorama in the world and Barker made a fortune out of charging punters three shillings a visit for a 360 degree immersive experience spanning 250 square metres, the augmented reality of its day. Barker employed cunning uses of perspective to enhance the experience which had to be viewed on the same level so straight lines did not become distorted when looking down. A domed skylight enhanced the experience.
One of his most successful panoramas was a view of London taken from the roof of the Albion Mill in Lambeth.
Visitors moved from one panorama to another up stairs and through a darkened passageway to enhance the experience. They could buy a series of six prints of each panorama as a souvenir – which must be one of the earliest examples of merchandising.
Barker’s invention spawned well over 100 imitations around the world. Every country wanted one.
During the 1860s the Panorama was converted into a church to serve Soho’s growing population of French Catholics. It was designed by a French architect within the circular shell of Barker’s panorama.

The Cocteau mural
The church was bombed during the Second World War and though extensively rebuilt the domed contours of the original building are still apparent. Doubtless there will one day be an app that you can point at the building to view it as it was – augmented reality’s tribute to itself.

The dome

Sergio Verrillo (above), an American from Connecticut, prepares to taste the first draft of freshly barrelled Chardonnay from his new winery under a railway arch in Battersea. His Blackbook is the third winery to open in central London recently as the capital experiences a mini renaissance of one of the worlds oldest professions. A fourth one, Vagabond, is opening imminently opposite the west wall of Giles Gilbert Scott’s Battersea Power Station barely a mile as the crow flies from Blackbook.

Vagabond

Two others – London Cru in West Brompton and Renegade in Bethnal Green are in full swing.

They are all winemakers and they need grapes. All of them use at least some sourced from the UK – in Sergio’s case they all come from Essex – but none thus far from London which has two sizeable (though still small) sources of grapes. The more important is Forty Hall, a ten acre community vineyard in Enfield which was on a roll until two unexpected events happened this year – a late Spring frost and marauding parakeets – which have made a big dent in output though it won’t affect latest releases including a large batch of their 2015 London Sparkling available later this month.

The other source of London grapes, Chateau Tooting, has had a record year with enough fruit to make well over 1000 bottles. Chateau Tooting gathers grapes from gardens and allotments in London which were collected from a central point at the end of September and dispatched to a professional wine maker to produce a surprisingly good rosé.

Sergio Verrillo is in a different league. He expects to produce nearly 4,000 bottles this year with hopes to triple that next year en route to around the 40,000 bottles needed to be viable in the long term. Sergio, who has a background as a sommelier, trained at Britain’s wine college, Plumpton and has worked in vineyards From California to New Zealand to gain experience. He is clearly deadly serious about what he does and has active plans to plant his own vineyard probably in Kent to become the first vertically integrated outfit in London producing wine from his own grapes.

Originally, he had hoped to make sparkling wine as well but the lack of suitable fruit means he will just be producing Chardonnay and Pinot Noir this year.

At first he will be selling to the trade and to individual customers including his growing contacts on social media. He also has hopes to make the winery into a destination for tasting as Renegade has done. Inner city wineries are still a novelty but Sergio points out that there are well over 200 urban wineries in the world. No swinging city should be without one.

This article also appears on my UK wine blog

Victorkeegan.com

The towpath on the way to Brentford

At 11 am on August 1, 1820 something unusual happened when the Regent’s Canal was opened making it possible to travel by boat from Limehouse in the east to Brentford in the west. Suddenly London (well, north of the Thames) technically became an island surrounded by water.

It is not the first time this has happened. The centre of London was an island for hundreds of years when first a monastery, then an Abbey then a royal palace and then Parliament were all built on Thorney Island, the landmass formed by the convergence of the Tyburn river with the Thames at Westminster.

Sadly, the pristine path of the Tyburn has long since been lost. The river still rises in the hills of Hampstead but its waters soon become overwhelmed by less salubrious ourflows from Sir Joseph Bazelgette’s amazing sewer system. However, one section of it still meanders, albeit mixed with sewer water, under The Green Park and the Victoria Palace Theatre and under Vauxhall Bridge Road until it exits a few hundred yards east of Vauxhall Bridge. The other leg turns east around Buckingham Palace towards Thorney Island but is lost amid the sewage.

Thorney Island that was

You can’t amble around Thorney Island anymore but it is possible to walk the Regent’s canal along the towpath which I did recently, a long, tranquil meander along parts of London you would not normally encounter – through the bustling waterside cafés and pubs of Islington, Camden and Paddington to a prolonged country walk where the Regent’s Canal merges with the Grand Union and eventually joins the Brent which empties itself into the Thames at Brentford. For most of the journey it is difficult to believe you are still in one of the most populated places in Europe.

In earlier blogs I have pointed out that it is possible to walk from Trafalgar Square – the acknowledged centre of London – to Islington without actually crossing a road by walking by the Thames path to Limehouse and then using the towpath of the Regent’s canal to get to Islington. It is only because the tunnel which channels the Regent’s Canal under the centre of Islington has no towpath that it is not possible to walk further. Local residents objected to a towpath under the bridge claiming it would have provided an escape route for robbers. Had there been one under the tunnel it would have been possible to walk from Trafalgar Square to Brentford without crossing a road and, who knows, if one turns right at the junction of the Regent’s with the Grand Union maybe as far as Birmingham.

I know of no other capital city where it is possible to walk so far without crossing a road. Transport for London has a statutory duty to promote walking but you seldom if ever hear of plans to build walkways in central London as they have done in New York and Chicago. Maybe we should make a start by utilising the money saved from not building the Garden Bridge.