Notes and News ............................................ p.2
Exhibitions: Becontree, Museum of London
Docklands, Garden HIstory Museum.
Exploring London: Brixton Windmill.............. p.3
The Lost London Churches Project
by John Donald ............................................ p.4
Changing London: Public Statues
by Bridget Cherry.......................................... p.4
Retrospice by David Crawford ............ p.5 & p.16
Thomas Becket and London
by Professor Caroline Barron ........................ p.6
On the Trail of Daniel Gould, Clapham
Mapmaker by Mike Tuffrey............................ p.9
Writing about the Greenwich Riverside
by Dr Mary Mills ........................................ p.11
Saving the Coal and Fish offices at King’s Cross
by Dr Nicholas Falk .................................... p.13
Sir Edwin Lutyens and 1920s London
by Ken Gowers ............................................ p.15
Reviews ...................................................... p.17
Contents
Newsletter
Number 93
November 2021
View of the north east end of Clapham Common by J.Powell, 1825, lithograph published by C. Hullmandel. Image courtesy of the Clapham
Society
The view shows how the Surrey village of Clapham was being expanded by fashionable houses with an
outlook onto the Common. The puzzling history of an early nineteenth century map naming the local
residents is discussed on p.9.
page 2
Notes and News
LTS Annual General Meeting 2021
On 31 August 2021 171 members arrived at the
Glaziers’ Hall, close to London Bridge on the south
side of the Thames, for a meeting which had to deal
with two years of the Society’s business. As our
Chairman was unable to be present, official matters
were speedily conducted with good-humoured
efficiency by Simon Morris; two years of reports and
accounts were approved and – a momentous step –
the official retirement of our long-serving Hon.
Treasurer, Roger Cline, was announced. The
meeting was made aware how much the society
was indebted to Roger for his skilful management
of the accounts over 36 years, as well as numerous
other services, including the storage and personal
delivery of the annual publications, and it was
agreed by acclamation that he should be appointed
a Vice-Pesident. The meeting was happy also to
appoint Patrick Frazer, a long serving former Hon.
Secretary, as a Vice-President, to fill the other
vacancy. Anne Ramon was elected as Treasurer
(after working under Roger’s guidance over the last
year to ensure a smooth transition); her skills in
modern technology will be a great asset to the
society. Formal minutes of the 2021 AGM will be
circulated in the May 2022 newsletter.
A novelty was a response to a request at the
previous AGM – Members of the Council were
identified by badges. But, where were the promised
copies of the annual publication? They had been
delayed by traffic chaos caused by the closing of
London Bridge on account of an Extinction
Rebellion demonstration. Happily they arrived
during the course of the meeting and members
could bear away their smartly dust-jacketed copies
of the London Topographical Record vol XXXII (or
several copies if they were delivering for others).
The Record was delayed for a year, hence it had
grown to a substantial size, with ten articles and no
less than eight obituaries, including that of our
former chairman, Ann Sanders. Ann also appears
in the Record as author of a lively account of her
work in the 1950s bomb-damaged Lambeth Palace
Library.
Following the AGM there were two talks; both
with riverside themes. Elizabeth Hallam Smith
described the history of the river approaches to the
Palace of Westminster with numerous enlightening
illustrations to amplify her account in the Record.
John Dallimore, a Past Master of the Glaziers,
introduced us to the history of the Glaziers Livery
Company. Their Hall in Fifoot Street in the City was
destroyed in the Great Fire; the present building is
on the site of an early nineteenth century riverside
warehouse, rebuilt in 1858 by William Cubitt as
Hibernia Wharf and Hibernia Chambers, and
adapted for its present purposes by the Hays Wharf
Company in the 1970s. The entrance is at river
level, far below the approach to the present London
Bridge. The warehouse origins were very clear from
the airy upstairs room which we could visit after
the meeting, which looked directly down onto the
river, cheek by jowl with the bridge of 1967-72
which replaced Rennie’s bridge of 1823-31.
Although south of the river, the building falls
within the bounds of the City’s ’Bridge Without
Ward’ as it abuts London Bridge. The first reference
to the Glaziers’ Company is in 1328; unlike many
other ancient City Companies, it continues to
promote its craft, organising apprenticeships and
competitions, and open to both practitioners and
conservators, as well as carrying out charitable
work. Examples of stained glass were displayed
upstairs, together with a fine array of the
company’s charters. We are indebted to our
secretary Mike Wicksteed for organising this very
successful AGM in such an interesting place.
Next year’s AGM will be held on Tuesday 12
July.
The
venue
will
be
the
splendid
headquarters of the Church of England, Church
House, at the south end of Dean’s Yard across
from Westminster Abbey.
Future Publications
Two books are planned for 2022: John Mackay’s
London journal, a young Scotsman’s experiences of
London in the year 1837-38, edited by David Coke,
with nearly 100 contemporary illustrations,
and Nicholas Barbon 1640-1698 by Frank Kelsall
and Timothy Walker, a biography of the property
developer, financier and economist who played a
key role in the development of London after the
Great Fire.
The view from the upper room of Glaziers Hall (with realistic cut-
out mystery cat).
page 3
A new edition of A-Z of Regency London is under
discussion. The earlier LTS edition made use of
Horwood’s 1813 map. It is proposed that the new
edition should use the 1819 issue, for which Paul
Laxton has offered to write a new introduction
including his recent research.
A note from your Treasurer about
2022 Subscriptions
Please check your Newsletter for enclosures. If you
have received a subscription invoice please make
your payment by one of the methods indicated in
the invoice. Please note that you can save money by
creating a Standing Order, payable 4 January
annually or by completing the standing order form
which appears below the invoice and sending it to
your bank, to arrive before Christmas.
If you have paid your 2021 subscription by
standing order or have paid in advance already to
cover 2022 there will be no invoice enclosed.
Please send any queries to me at email:
topsoc.treasurer@gmail.com or by post to Anne
Ramon, Hon. Treasurer, LTS, 63 Ancaster
Crescent, New Malden, Surrey KT3 6BD.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Out and About
Exhibitions
One hundred years ago: Becontree
The 1920s not only saw the development of grand
building by Lutyens in the City (see p.15) but the
creation of an entirely new community on the
fringes of Greater London, at the time reputed to be
the largest council estate in the world. Becontree
(now in the London Borough of Barking and
Dagenham) was built in 1921-35 by the London
County Council as the most ambitions of its pre-
war housing estates: 17,000 houses laid out on
Garden City principles (with more added later),
many of them designed to cater for those uprooted
through slum clearance. The centenary was
celebrated by a programme of summer festivals and
special events. Becontree Forever is an ambitious
longterm
programme
of
retrofitting
and
improvements to community amenities. There is
also an eighteen month project to catalogue the
area’s historic records held at Valence House, the
local studies centre, which has an excellent website
detailing stories of the estate and its inhabitants
(valencehousecollections.co.uk)
This autumn the RIBA is participating in the
celebrations with an installation in Regents Park
created by POoR Collective with Year-10 students
from Mayesbrook Park School, Becontree: Bringing
Home to the Unknown, and an Exhibition at the
RIBA’s HQ, 66 Portland Place: Lived in Architecture:
Becontree in its hundredth year, devised by Verity-
Jane Keefe, with photographs by Kalpesh Lathigra,
showing how the place has changed and matured
over the last century.
Museum of London Docklands has a new
exhibition: London Port City describes 200 years
of activity on the river from the later eighteenth
century onwards, and a new display Power and
Place, Feeding Black Community, explores
modern food culture and existing legacies around
sugar
and
London’s
involvement
in
the
transatlantic slave trade.
The Garden Museum, Lambeth. Sowing Roots:
Caribbean Garden Heritage in South London is
also concerned with food. This free exhibition is
part of the Garden Museum’s Sowing Roots project,
a first of its kind journey into the history of the
gardening cultures and traditions that Caribbean
people carried with them when they moved to the
UK after World War II; from breadfruit, provision
grounds, and botanical gardens, to chocho, ackee
and the green spaces of South London.
Exploring London
Windpower is a topical subject these days, but it is
not a new invention. Here is a suggestion for an
out-of-the-ordinary London destination. Windmills
were once quite common around the edges of built
up London. But to find a survivor in a Victorian
suburb is a surprise. Go to Blenheim Gardens,
Brixton and you will discover Brixton Windmill,
built in 1816. By the time of the millennium it was
abandoned and derelict, but then a campaigning
group came to the rescue. The Heritage Lottery
Fund enabled the restoration of the tower and the
replacement of cap and sails; the millstones were
connected to electricity, enabling flour milling from
2014, and by its bicentenary it was again a working
mill. Further development included an education
centre, completed 2020 in the midst of COVID-19,
but now starting to function as intended. Guided
tours are available from April to October. There is
an excellent website which describes the history of
the building and its neighbourhood as well as
current activities: brixtonwindmill.org
Bringing Home to the Unknown. Installation at Regents Park.
Photo Credit: Kalpesh Lathigra
Can you recommend an unusual destination
for LTS members? Please send suggestions
and brief descriptions to the Editor.
page 4
The Lost London
Churches Project:
appreciating the City Churches
John Donald explains an ingenious new scheme.
The aim of the Lost London Churches Project is to
promote interest in the ancient church buildings
(both extant and lost) and parishes of the City of
London through a series of 78 collectable cards in
the old ‘cigarette card’ format: a picture of the
church on the front, historical notes on the back.
They
are
available
in
the
city
churches
participating in the project – as you visit you can
collect the card for that church and also a random
pack of five other cards in return for a small
donation.
The loss of the City of London churches happened
in three main waves. First, the Great Fire of 1666
destroyed 87 churches in the centre and west of
the city; 34 were never rebuilt. The second wave
was triggered by the Union of Benefices Act of 1860
which sought to combine parishes and free up
commercial space for the swelling capital of the
British Empire. It proved to be almost as damaging
to the city churches as the Great Fire: a further 26
were lost. Lastly, London suffered badly in the Blitz
in World War 2, which took its toll on these ancient
buildings,
though
most
were
painstakingly
restored.
Although the buildings disappeared, the parishes
remained because they still performed some
administrative functions. So you can still explore
the ecclesiastical history of the City through the
parish boundary markers high up on modern office
buildings if you look hard enough. To encourage
these explorers, a Collector’s Book of parish maps,
an ancient parish guide plan and some free google
map-based walks are also available on the project’s
website at lostlcp.com
For more on the City Churches see the website of
the Friends of the City Churches: London-city-
churches.org.uk and their newsletter Skyline,
which is full of intriguing historical details.
Changing London: Public Statues
Fresh consideration of the legacy of the past is
encouraging re-evaluation of who should be
commemorated.
Public statues are both works of art and acts of
commemoration, playing a significant role in
adding to the character of different areas of
London. The choice of who deserves to be
remembered in this way has changed over the
centuries: in the seventeenth century monarchs
were the chief subjects, in the next century they
were supplemented by public benefactors, the
Victorian period added an emphasis on military
heroes and statesmen, and today the range is yet
wider. It is the benefactor category which has lately
aroused the most intense debate, sparked by the
Black Lives Matter campaign of 2020. Who has
benefitted, and at whose expense? Pursuing this
subject reveals not only that statues can be mobile
but that they can exist in multiple forms.
The problem began to be tackled in 2018 by the
Museum of London Docklands – see museumof
london.org.uk/discover/who-are-monuments-for.
During their Slavery, Culture and Collecting
exhibition of 2018 the figure of Robert Milligan,
standing outside the museum on the quayside of
the West India Docks, was draped in a black cloth.
It had been installed in its new position by the
Sir John Cass, by Jean-Francois Roubiliac. © Stephen C Dickson
(2014) Wikipedia creative commons
page 5
London Dockyards Development Trust in 1997, (it
was formerly near the Royal Docks) after being in
store as the dockyards were redeveloped. Milligan, a
wealthy West Indies merchant and plantation
owner, was a prime mover in the creation of the
Docks (opened 1802). He died in 1809, and in
recognition of his contribution to British trade, the
statue by Richard Westmacott was erected in 1813.
This was six years after the Abolition of the Slave
Trade Act. It took more than a century to recognise
that celebration of a man actively involved in slavery
was inappropriate, and indeed offensive; in 2020
two days after the toppling of the Edward Colston
statue in Bristol, the MiIligan Statue was removed,
with the agreement of the relevant local authorities.
Meanwhile the Commission for Diversity in the
Public Realm, established by the Mayor of London,
drew attention to the statues and institutions
commemorating Sir John Cass. This was a more
complicated matter. Sir John Cass (1660-1718)
gained his wealth through his active involvement in
the Royal African Company (established by Charles
II in 1660), a trading organisation which included
the export of enslaved Africans to the West Indies.
But
Cass
was
commemorated
not
for
his
encouragement of trade but for his educational
benefactions, starting with a school at St Botolph’s
in the City, and developed further, by means of the
Cass Foundation set up in 1748, to provide support
both for individuals and for numerous schools and
universities. However the Cass name was now seen
as an embarrassment; it has been removed from
several university departments and two schools, and
the Cass Foundation has been renamed the Portal
Trust. As for the statues: the original one is a fine
work in lead, by Roubiliac, commissioned in 1751 by
the Sir John Cass Foundation. It was at first
in Aldgate High Street, then from 1869 in Jewry
Street on the Sir John Cass Institute (later London
Metropolitan University), where it was replaced by a
fibreglass replica in 1980. This, and another replica
at East London University, were removed, as was a
bust at St Botolph Aldgate. The original Roubiliac
statue which had been moved to the
Guildhall, was discovered by a
Guildhall working group set up in
October 2020, together with a statue
of William Beckford. Beckford (1709-
70), was another embarassing figure;
twice Lord Mayor, but also active in
the Royal African Company. In
January 2021 the removal of both was
recommended, with the return of the
Cass statue to the Foundation.
However, in the same month the UK
government announced safeguarding
laws for statues. A ‘retain and explain’
policy was advocated, with the
Secretary of State having the final
word should demolition be proposed
by the local authority. However,
sensitivities once aroused do not go
away. In September 2021 it was
announced that the Bank of England had removed
ten ‘slave trader’ works – ten paintings and two
busts which were displayed in the formal ‘parlours’,
the Bank rotunda, and the museum (The Art
Newspaper 6 September 2021). Other examples of
cautious change include the repositioning of the
statue of Sir Hans Sloane by Rysbrack at the British
Museum (21 Aug 20), and the decision at Guy’s
Hospital, following a public enquiry, to provide
information about its donors Sir Robert Clayton and
Thomas Guy, acknowledging their connection with
the slave trade. Guy’s statue in the forecourt is a
notable work of 1732-4 by the Flemish sculptor
Peter Scheemakers
Finally, the interesting case of Sir Robert Geffrye
(1613-1703), a London merchant and Lord Mayor
who invested in the slave trade; and who left his
money to establish the Almshouses in Bethnal
Green, built in 1715, which became a museum in
1910 (initially a museum of furniture and
woodwork, related to the area’s local industries).
Geffrye’s statue adorns the centre of the almshouse
group. (It is a replica of the original, a lead statue by
the Nost workshop, 1723, now at almshouses at
Hook, Hampshire). The museum’s own local enquiry
revealed that c. 75% of those who responded felt
uncomfortable about the statue and would like it
removed. However, the museum, which has no links
with the Geffrye money, and is now renamed
Museum of the Home, has since adopted a policy of
‘explaining and contextualising’. The Guildhall has
recently decided to adopt the same approach (The
Art Newspaper 8 October 2021).
– Bridget Cherry
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Retrospice by David Crawford
What and where was this imposing-looking
building and what replaced it?
Answer on p.16.
Thomas Becket and London
900 years after the birth of Thomas Becket,
Professor Caroline Barron explores how the
topography of London was affected by his
commemoration.
Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury
Cathedral
on
29
December
1170.
This
extraordinary event had a dramatic impact on the
Cathedral and town of Canterbury: a new Trinity
chapel was added at the east end of the cathedral
to which the body of the saint (rapidly canonised in
1173) was translated in 1220. Pilgrims flocked to
the shrine not only from every ‘shires ende’ in
England but also from Europe. The town developed
a thriving trade in food, lodging and souvenirs for
pilgrims to carry home. But Becket’s death also had
an impact, albeit a less dramatic one, on London,
the city of his birth and early career,
Thomas was born in 1120, the son of Gilbert and
Mathilda who had come to London originally from
Rouen. Gilbert was prosperous: he owned a lot of
property especially around Cheapside and he
served as one of the city sheriffs. But in 1133 a fire
in London destroyed much of Gilbert’s property and
his wealth. When he was about twenty Thomas was
employed as a clerk to the then sheriff, Osbert
Huitdeniers (1139-41) and from there he joined the
household of archbishop Theobald (1138-61) and
took minor orders. This was a glittering intellectual
milieu and Thomas began to move in exalted circles
which included the king, Henry II, and members of
his court. In 1155 Henry chose him to be his
chancellor and Thomas entered upon a career as a
royal servant. He enjoyed what was later described
as an ‘extravagant and ostentatious’ lifestyle and
accompanied Henry on his campaigns in France.
When archbishop Theobald died, Henry decided to
appoint Thomas (not yet a priest) as the new
archbishop. Once installed, Thomas defended the
rights and privileges of the Church as fiercely as he
had protected royal interests as chancellor. As a
result of the conflict with the king Thomas went
into self-imposed exile in France in 1164 and when
a compromise between the two strong-willed men
appeared to have been patched up, he returned to
England in 1170. But Thomas’s excommunication
of some royal servants, led to Henry’s exasperated
exclamation of a desire to be rid of the troublesome
archbishop and this led the four knights to take the
king at his word and cross the channel to carry out
his wish, with consequences which have rumbled
down the centuries.
Although the impact of Becket’s death on
Canterbury is obvious (and he is often known as
Thomas of Canterbury) his murder also had a
notable, but less obvious, impact on London. In the
first place Becket’s dramatic death led to the
writing of numerous biographies. One of these, by a
clerk in his household, William FitzStephen, begins
with a remarkable description of Becket’s native
city. William, like Becket, grew up in London and
writes a vivid account of what it was like to be a
young man in twelfth-century London, playing
games on the water, skating on Moorfields, riding
horses in Smithfield, disputing and showing off
with other young scholars and buying food from
fast food shops near the Thames.1 Clearly William
was as keen to write about his native city as he was
to describe the life and murder (which he
witnessed) of Thomas Becket. So one London legacy
of Becket’s murder is a unique description of what
London was like in the twelfth century.
But Becket’s death and subsequent canonization
had a significant impact also on the topography of
London. It is probable that there had been plans to
build a stone bridge across the Thames linking the
city with Southwark, to replace the much-rebuilt
wooden bridge. But Becket’s death seems to have
provided the spur to action, and fund raising and
work on the new stone bridge began in 1176. The
moving spirit was Peter of Colechurch, a chaplain
in the church of St Mary Colechurch in Cheapside,
the parish in which the Becket family lived.
Moreover the chapel on the Bridge was dedicated to
Becket and offerings in the chapel always
contributed to the upkeep of the bridge. When Peter
of Colechurch died in 1205 he was buried in the
chapel. His great work was not, however, completed
until c.1212 (fig 1). The importance of Becket to the
construction of this major enterprise can be seen in
the seal of the Bridge which shows St Thomas
seated above the bridge (fig 2).
Across the river in Southwark the martyrdom of
St Thomas led to the founding of the hospital
dedicated to him within the precincts of the
Augustinian Priory of St Mary Overy. In the 1170s
Gilbert Foliot, the bishop of London, granted an
indulgence to support the hospital’s building
appeal and he specifically stated that the hospital
was being built ‘in honour of God and Blessed
Thomas, Martyr of London’. After a fire in 1212 the
hospital was moved from within the precinct to new
buildings on the east side of the High Street (fig 3).
Along with the hopsitals of St Bartholomew and,
later, St Mary Bishopsgate, the Southwark hospital
dedicated to St Thomas was a very important in
providing for the poor and sick in London.
The death of Thomas also led to the foundation of
another religious house in London: dedicated to the
Order of St Thomas of Acre. The house was
Fig 1. St Thomas’s chapel, London Bridge, depicted by George
Vertue in the early eighteenth century.
page 6
page 7
founded on property in Cheapside which had
belonged to the Becket family (fig 4). In 1227
Thomas of Helles, the grandson of Becket’s sister
Agnes, granted the site of Becket’s birth, to the
Master and Knightly Brothers of the Order of St
Thomas of Acre. This Order had been established
during the course of the Third Crusade (1188-
1192) when Richard I had founded a chapel in Acre
dedicated to St Thomas. The Order followed the
rules of the Teutonic knights although it never
rivalled the other crusading orders of the Templars
and Hospitallers. In fact by the 1320s the order
had severed its links with the Holy Land and the
Cheapside house became a house of Austin canons.
By a process no longer apparent to us, the city
collectively decided to adopt St Thomas as the
patron saint of the city in addition to St Paul. This
dual allegiance can be clearly seen in the
remarkable Common Seal of London engraved early
in the thirteenth century. (fig 5). These were
formative years for the Londoners as they pressed
the Crown for a measure of self-government. They
established a commune in 1190 and, on the eve of
Magna Carta, they won from king John the right to
elect their own mayor. The obverse of the seal
shows St Paul standing above the city; the reverse
shows St Thomas seated above the city with two
groups of Londoners on either side of him: clergy
on one side and laymen on the other. Around the
edge of the seal are engraved the words ‘me que te
peperi ne cesses Toma tueri’: ‘Thomas, do not cease
to protect me who brought you forth’.
Enthusiasm for St Thomas in London seems
perhaps to have waned in the next three centuries.
The chapel on London Bridge was magnificently
rebuilt by Henry Yevele in the late fourteenth
century; the hospital in Southwark was also rebuilt
Fig 4. St Thomas Acre, Cheapside. Map of Medieval London,
Historic Towns Trust
Fig 5. Common Seal of the City of London, reverse showing St
Thomas seated above the City. © Museum of London
Fig 3. St Thomas’s Hospital Southwark, from Horwood’s early
nineteenth century map of London
Fig 2. The Medieval seal of London Bridge, showing St Thomas
seated above the bridge. © London Metropolitan Archives
with a special ward for pregnant women funded by
Richard Whittington, and the house of St Thomas
of Acre became increasingly the headquarters and
company hall of the Mercers’ Company. The
company of Merchant Adventurers (many of whom
were Mercers) was also dedicated to St Thomas, as
was the English Hospital in Rome. But few of the
numerous parish fraternities founded in London in
the later medieval period were dedicated to St
Thomas: St John the Baptist, St Katherine and St
George were much more popular. There were few of
his relics listed in the inventories of parish
churches. The inventory of St Paul’s Cathedral in
the late thirteenth century listed a crozier ‘said to
have belonged to Thomas the Martyr’ and a crystal
vase containing two pieces of his skull and some
hair and clothing. Not a very inspiring collection.
But there were two attempts to breathe life into
the cult of St Thomas in London. In the early
fifteenth century John Carpenter, the learned
common clerk of London, compiled his Liber Albus
describing the customs of London, many of which
he may well have devised himself. He describes the
procession of the mayor, accompanied by the
aldermen, riding to Westminster on 29 October to
swear his oath before the Barons of the Exchequer.
On returning to London it was the custom, following
dinner, for the mayor and aldermen to gather at the
House of St Thomas in Cheapside and from there to
ride to St Paul’s Cathedral where they would
process into the churchyard to say a de profundis at
the tomb where the parents of St Thomas were
buried.2 This ‘ancient ritual’ may well have been
formulated by Carpenter but it demonstrates an
awareness of the London roots of St Thomas.
The problem about St Thomas as a popular saint
was that although his death was dramatic the
issues which had provoked his murder were
complex and unlikely to engage the interest of
ordinary Londoners. The lives (and deaths) of St
John the Baptist or the tortures and sufferings of
St Katherine or St George were more exciting. So,
in the thirteenth century a new life of St Thomas
Becket was devised by Edward Grim. In this
account Gilbert Becket is a crusader who is
captured in Jerusalem by the local Emir. While
Gilbert is in prison the Emir’s daughter falls in love
with him. Gilbert escapes back to England and, in
due course, the Emir’s daughter follows him to
London (the only word she knows is ‘London’), In
Cheapside she is recognised by Gilbert’s servants
who bring her to their master. Gilbert is perplexed
as to what he should do but he consults a
gathering of bishops and the bishop of Chichester
prophesises that she will have a saintly son. So
she, now known as Mathilda, is duly baptised in St
Paul’s, marries Gilbert and gives birth to St
Thomas. This version of Thomas’s story proved very
popular and is found in Middle English verse and
prose collections. We know very little about the
performance of dramatic plays in London in the
medieval period but the surviving accounts of the
Skinners’ Company reveal that that in 1518-19,
when the skinner, Thomas Myrfyn, was mayor of
London, the company paid for a pageant telling the
story of Gilbert Becket and the Emir’s daughter.
The pageant included Gilbert Becket and his clerk,
his prison (carried by six men) and the gaoler and
also the Emir’s daughter who seems by that time to
have become ‘a jewess’.
So this embroidered version of ‘the martyrdom of
St Thomas’ existed alongside the chapels and
hospitals which his death had inspired in London.
Of course all this came to an end when Henry VIII
issued a proclamation in November 1538 ordering
that all images of Becket were to be ‘put down and
avoided out of all churches chapels and other
places’ and all services and festivals were to be
‘erased and put out of all books’. Henry Yevele’s
remarkable chapel on London Bridge was converted
into a dwelling house and then demolished in 1553;
St Thomas’s Hospital quietly changed its dedication
to the apostle of the same name; the word ‘saint’
was neatly crossed through in John Carpenter’s
Liber Albus, the Mercers’ Company bought the
House of St Thomas of Acre from the Court of
Augmentations for nearly £1000; and both the seal
of London Bridge (fig 6) and the city’s Common Seal
were altered: the image of St Thomas was removed
and replaced with the city’s coat of arms. Henry
VIII’s attack on St Thomas was inspired, not by
Protestantism but by the fact that Thomas had
humiliated a king. But in the reign of Edward VI
there followed a much more general attack on all
saints whose miracles were deemed to be
duplicitous and their intercession unnecessary.
But in the twenty-first century it is possible to
honour and remember St Thomas in the city where
he was born nine hundred years ago. There have
been exhibitions dedicated to the saint in the
Museum of London and in the British Museum; the
Mercers have acknowledged their debt to the
Becket family and have funded a Becket website to
be used in schools. A new version of Thomas
page 8
Fig 6. London Bridge Seal after the Reformation. © London
Metropolitan Archives
page 9
Myrfyn’s pageant involving a wide cross section of
the local City of London community, including
livery companies, schools, City workers and
residents, will be performed on 17 and 18 June
2022 in Guildhall Yard – just around the corner
from Becket’s birthplace. This two-day event will
feature a new musical interpretation of Thomas’s
life and legend ‘London’s Turbulent Son’, by
Skinner playwright Emmeline Winterbotham and
Guildhall School composer Vahan Salorian,
culminating in a parade of giant puppets. To
emphasise Becket’s roots as the son of a local
Cheapside merchant, the entertainment is set
amidst a lively Livery Crafts Fair, demonstrating
the evolution of a wide range of City trades from
Becket’s time to the present day as well as the
important contribution of technical trades to the
development of London over the ages.
This new celebration will join together the
multifarious communities of medieval London with
their successors in the twentyfirst century and, like
the festivities which commemorated Becket in
medieval London, the new pageant will demonstrate
that Thomas of London is not forgotten in the city
of his birth.
For more information on The Becket Pageant for
London visit www.becketpageantforlondon.com
Notes
1. An English translation of FitzStephen’s account of
London by Stephen Alsford, can be found printed on
the back of A Map of Medieval London: The City,
Westminster and Southwark (Historic Towns Trust,
2019)
2. Stow (Kingsford edition, i, p. 328) says that Gilbert
Becket was buried in the Pardon churchyard of St
Paul’s. Since St Mary Colechurch did not have a
churchyard, it is possible that Becket’s parents were
buried in the churchyard of St Paul’s.
– Caroline Barron
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
On the trail of Daniel Gould,
Clapham map-maker 1769-1843
Mike Tuffrey, a member of Clapham Society’s local
history group, describes his search for a lost map.
“Trade is shocking bad in London” wrote Daniel
Gould to his younger brother, Robert, in September
of 1815, before enjoining him to “crack a bottle
together” with the mutual friend bearing the letter
from Clapham to Bristol where his mother and
wider family were living. Still, his spirits were good,
he reported, “having more to do in the surveying
this summer than I ever had”.
That summer’s work was most likely making a
remarkable map of the whole of the village of
Clapham, Surrey, detailing all the main houses
around the Common. For the appearance of
Clapham at this time see front cover picture and fig 1.
Sadly only a few rather poor copies of this map
remain available to us today, illegible in parts, the
originals having disappeared from sight over the
last 40 years (fig 2). Where are they now, and why
does Daniel Gould’s map matter?
Clapham
The village was being surveyed at a tumultuous
time. The long Napoleonic wars were only just
ending, the economy was depressed, while at sea
the British navy was stepping up its attempts to
stop the trans-Atlantic trade in slaves. In Clapham,
the main protagonists for and against slavery were
living side-by-side around the Common. On Gould’s
map we find Henry Thornton, son of John Thornton
who had worked so closely with Wilberforce, at
Battersea Rise, while just opposite on north side –
the home of today’s Royal Trinity Hospice – was
George Hibbert, leading promoter of slave holder
interests (fig 1). His family was probably the largest
single beneficiary of the so-called compensation
fund when slavery itself was eventually outlawed in
British jurisdictions two decades later.
Gould was one of the land tax assessors for
Clapham and the 1815 plan was presumably
commissioned by the tax authorities or the parish
itself; he later did surveying work for the vestry.
Land tax records for the period up to 1830 have
survived and so have the census returns for 1801,
1811 and 1821. Laying these lists of names,
household composition and land tenure alongside
Fig 1. Clapham South Side, 1825, by J. Powell, engraved by
C. Hullmandel
Gould’s map allows us a remarkable insight into
who was living where, and how and when they
moved around the village – at least for those
portions that are legible. Its timing neatly fills a gap
in a run of detailed parish maps – John Cary in
1790, Charles Smith in 1800, then H.N. Batten in
1827 and the tithe maps of 1838.
Traces of Gould’s other works show up in the
records. Interestingly he was surveyor to Thomas
Cubitt’s new Clapham Park estate in 1829 and
presumably later too. However the three copies of
the estate plan reproduced by Hermione Hobhouse
in her 1971 book ‘Master Builder’ have disappeared
from sight. We also know he worked on maps for
four large estates in Grenada around 1815,
perhaps through a family connection in Bristol –
and another sign of how entrenched enslavement
was in the economy at the time.
Family
Who was Daniel Gould and how did he arrive in
Clapham? Born in Syston, near Bristol, in 1769,
his father was steward to the Trotman estate there.
In March 1793, he married Esther Shipley at St
Anne’s Syston. Her family were tallow chandlers,
so it’s likely he was apprenticed to them. That was
his stated trade when he and Esther moved to
Clapham soon after the birth of their first child,
another Daniel (1793-1840). They had nine
children in all, and were doing well enough to
support their education and apprenticeships. Son
William (1799-1873) became a prosperous iron
merchant and later returned to Clapham to live in
Crescent Grove. Another son, Robert (1802-74),
was a solicitors’ clerk. (A descendant of his,
Gould’s four times great granddaughter, has done
much of the research cited here). Other sons and
unmarried daughters stayed living in Clapham.
The move to Clapham was
probably
prompted
by
a
maternal
relative,
Robert
Holbin (1748-1813), who was
living there and working as a
carpenter with several leading
builders, well connected with
the local land owners. It’s not
clear how Gould learned his
new profession. We can track
his progress and moves within
the village through snippets in
the
records.
Clearly
well
established by 1841, he had
his portrait painted by local
painter,
William
Tyrrel
Thompson (1806-87) (fig 3).
Daniel died in 1843, and
Esther the following year –
both are buried in the old
parish graveyard.
Missing maps
What do we know of the
whereabouts of the missing 1815 map? At least two
slightly different hand drawn versions did survive.
In 1976 the Clapham Antiquarians organised a
local exhibition1 which included “a photocopy of a
very detailed plan of the parish by Daniel Gould,
1815”. There’s no indication of how they came by it,
although it’s possible that copy is the one now in
page 10
Fig 3. Daniel Gould 1760-1843, portrait by William T. Thompson,
1841. Image courtesy of Margaret Knighton
Fig 2. Daniel Gould’s map of Clapham, 1815. Image courtesy of the Clapham Society