Notes and News ............................................ p.1
Events and Exhibitions ................................ p.2
Architecture of London.
Guildhall Art Gallery .................................... p.2
Mary Beale’s painting-room in Pall Mall ........ p.3
A New Map of Medieval London .................... p.5
Colouring London ........................................ p.6
COLLAGE – The London Picture Archive........ p.7
The work of the Heritage of London Trust...... p.8
Restoring the Palace of Westminster............ p.10
Sir John Soane and the Port of London,
1807-1812 .................................................. p.12
Reviews ...................................................... p.16
Contents
Notes and News
The Society’s Annual General Meeting was held on
2 July 2019 at St Andrew’s Church Holborn.
Minutes and Annual Report will be published in
the May Newsletter. The Officers and Members of
the Council elected are listed on the back page of
this Newsletter. We are delighted to welcome our
new council member, the medieval historian
Caroline Barron, and offer her our congratulations
on her recent OBE. Following the meeting Caroline
gave us some insights into the interesting history
of the parish of St Andrew Holborn, adjacent to the
City but sited west of the river Fleet. She was
followed by our council member Dorian Gerhold,
who described his research on this year’s splendid
publication on Old London Bridge. Congratulations
are due to Dorian for this excellent work, which
has received much favourable publicity, including
several pages in a special Country Life issue on
London.
Newsletter
Number 89
November 2019
Poster for travel by London Tramways 1928
Printed by Waterlow & Sons Ltd. Collage – the London Picture
Archive, image 36923. See p.7-8
page 2
It may seem a hard act to follow, but next year’s
volume on parish maps should be equally
interesting, pulling together much scattered and
often little known material. It is a measure of the
versatility of the society that we publish both work
by dedicated individuals and, as in the case of the
parish maps, information that has been gathered
by
an
enthusiastic
band
of
researchers,
coordinated by Simon Morris (see below for his talk
next February). Thanks to our hard working Editor
Sheila O’Connell, this publication should be ready
for you at our next AGM in 2020, which will take
place in the recently refurbished Great Hall at
King’s College, Strand on 8 July, so ‘Save the
Date’. Details will be in the May Newsletter.
A note from your Treasurer
Please check your Newsletter for enclosures. If you
have received a subscription invoice please make
payment by one of the methods indicated in the
invoice. You can save money by completing the
standing order form which appears below the
invoice and sending it to your bank to arrive before
Christmas. You can of course set up the order using
internet banking, but please include the reference.
If you have paid your 2019 subscription by
standing order or have paid in advance already to
cover 2019 there will be no invoice enclosed.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Events
Over the last six months the City of London has
been celebrating ‘Fantastic Feats’ of architecture
engineering and design (Google ‘fantastic feats’ to
find out more). See also the Guildhall Art gallery
exhibition on architecture (p3) and the review of
the new book on Tower Bridge (p17).
There are plenty of lectures available this winter if
you want to become better informed about various
aspects of London. Here is a selection:
Among the varied subjects covered by the
Gresham College lectures (which you can watch
online if you cannot be present) (Gresham.ac.uk):
Sir Thomas Gresham and the Tudor Court, Dr
Alexandra Gajda, Thurs 14 Nov 6pm, Barnards Inn
Hall.
The City of London: Culture, Creativity and the
Culture Mile. Thurs 9 Jan. 6pm, Old Library
Guildhall. This is the Annual Lord Mayor’s event and
will explore the value of culture to the City of London.
Camden History Society lectures include:
Holborn Viaduct at 150, Lester Hillman Thurs
21 November, 7.30, Holborn library
EH Dixon 1821-84 and North London water
colour landscape topography, Peter Darley, 12
December, 7.30 Burgh House
Camden parish maps 1720-1900, Simon Morris.
Thurs 20 February, 7.30 Burgh House
London Parks and Gardens Trust: lectures at 77
Cowcross St: 9 December: Learning from Vauxhall
Gardens, Christopher Woodward; 13 Jan: Keeping
up the Royal Gardens, Todd Longstaffe Gowan; 10
Feb: Greenwich Park revisited Graham Dear; 9
March: Rediscovering the permanence of place,
Marie Burns.
Exhibitions
William Hogarth and William Blake. Not only did
these two artists share the same first name; both
were born in London in humble circumstances,
both were trained as engravers and both aspired (in
vain) to become serious history painters. But while
Hogarth (1697-1764) enthusiastically depicted the
moral complexities of Georgian London, Blake
(1757-1829) from the generation of the romantic
era, drew on his imagination to create his own
moral world. Their different preoccupations are
demonstrated in two major exhibitions. Hogarth:
Place and Progress, at Sir John Soane’s Museum
(to 5 January) displays the Soane’s own Rake’s
Progress and An Election together with paintings
and engravings of Hogarth series from other
museums and collections never brought together
before, creating a vivid impression of the character
of eighteenth century London. William Blake at
Tate Britain (to 2 February) tells one less about
London but much about how this exceptional artist
and poet reacted to his own time.
Architecture of London. Guildhall Art Gallery
31 May – 1 December
There may be just time to visit this enjoyable and
thought-provoking exhibition of 80 works, largely
drawn from the City’s rich collections. They range
from familiar general views to more intimate
subjects, depicted in a wide variety of styles. The
demolition of Waterloo Bridge in 1935 is an
example in the tradition of careful topographical
recording. Grandeur and celebration, destruction
and chaos, impressions of individual streets and
patterns inspired by modern architecture are all
represented. Although some older works are
included, notably the early seventeenth century
diptych of Old St Pauls loaned by the Society of
Antiquaries (LTS publication no. 163) the
emphasis is on the twentieth century. War time
damage is recorded poetically by Graham
Sutherland and John Piper. ‘Out of the ruins of
The demolition of Waterloo Bridge by Charles Ernest Cundall 1935
Cripplegate’ by David Gilchik, 1962 shows new
buildings arising amidst postwar desolation; David
Sherlock’s view of the same area, 1965, displays
the brave new world of London Wall is now
virtually
unrecognisable.
Atmospheric
views
capture the character of individual streets, such as
Anthony Eyton’s ‘Spitalfields windows’ 1975-6,
which is hung as part of a chronological sequence
of houses, from the eighteenth-century terrace to
the twentieth-century suburban villa. Studies of
the geometrical grids of tower-block housing
provide an alternative approach. The process of
change is demonstrated by a memorable sequence
of photographs by Rachel Whiteread, showing the
demolition of the towers of Clapton Park, while the
haunting film by Catherine Yass, ‘Last Stand’
shows the concrete core of a new tower rising
slowly into the sky, amidst the raucous protests of
wheeling seagulls. What a pity that this exhibition
has no catalogue, with some discussion of the
Gallery’s collection policy; there is not even a
handlist or a selection of postcards. You can
however view all the gallery’s oil paintings on
ArtUK.
Also at the Guildhall Art Gallery, until 8 December,
is an exhibition of archive materials ‘The London
Than Never Was’ an intriguing collection of plans
and drawings of grand schemes that were never built.
Mary Beale’s painting-room
in Pall Mall
Artists, as is noted elsewhere in this issue, have
both lived and worked in London over many
centuries. Penelope Hunting reveals here the career
of Mary Beale, a celebrated portrait painter in the
later seventeenth century. Her biography of Mary
Beale, My Dearest Heart, is published by Unicorn
(2019).
Mary Beale (1633–1699) was one of the first
professional British women artists. Skilled,
determined and industrious, she painted the
portraits of archbishops, earls, politicians, Fellows
of the Royal Society, beautiful women and adorable
children. In one year alone, 1677, she completed
eighty-three portraits at her Pall Mall ‘paynting-
roome’/studio. As a professional woman artist she
was preceded by Joan Carlile (c.1606–1679) whose
portraits date from the 1650s, but Carlile was not
as productive nor as successful as Mary Beale
whose career reached its zenith in the 1670s.
Mary was the only daughter of a Suffolk vicar, the
Reverend John Cradock (1595–1652). After the
death of her mother in 1644 Mary was brought up
by her father who encouraged her interest in art
(Cradock was himself an amateur artist and a
freeman of the Painter-Stainers’ Company).
Following Mary’s marriage to Charles Beale (1631–
1705) in 1652, the couple chose to live in Covent
Garden, the artists’ quarter of London with Sir
Peter Lely’s studio at its centre. The Beales moved
to Hind Court, Fleet Street, when Charles was
appointed Deputy Clerk of the Patents Office in
page 3
Out of the Ruins of Cripplegate by David Gilchik 1962
Broadgate Reflections by Brendan Neiland 1989
Mary Beale, Self portrait, 1672. St Edmundsbury Heritage Service
page 4
1660. There they entertained ‘people of quality’,
many of whom were painted by Mary.
Following Charles’s dismissal from his post in
1664 the Beales abandoned London for Hampshire.
Returning to the capital in 1669 in order to pursue
Mary’s career as a professional portraitist, Charles
rented a recently built house near the sign of The
Golden Ball, Pall Mall, part of the development of
Pell Mell Fields by the Earl of St Albans between
1665 and 1670. The sign of The Golden Ball may
have referred to a perfumer’s shop at the south end
of St James’s Street or to a sign in Golden Lion
Court, nearby. In the aftermath of the Great Fire of
1666, affluent society moved out of the City to the
‘west end’ and Mary Beale’s studio was ideally
located to attract patrons. Likewise, the flower
painter Simon Verelst (1644–1721) lodged in St
James’s Street, and Queen Catherine of Braganza’s
favourite portrait painter, Jacob Huysmans (1633–
1696), was living in St James’s at the time of his
death.
The Beales’ tall brick house (the site is now
numbers 59 to 63 Pall Mall) had a 22 feet frontage
onto the north-west side of the street named Pall
Mall after the game of pell mell played on the
northern fringe of St James’s Park. The house
accommodated Charles and Mary Beale, their two
sons and one or two servants; at the heart of the
household was Mary’s ‘paynting-roome’ where she
worked long hours, six days a week. Closets in the
garret, dining-room and attic were stacked with
frames and stretchers; a laboratory or scullery was
equipped with kettles, pails, grinders and pigs’
bladders for storing paint. This was where Charles
Beale experimented with colours, manufactured oil
paints and prepared canvases for his wife.
Mary Beale’s Pall Mall studio was a magnet for
the British aristocracy, the episcopacy and
neighbours in St James’s. The list of those who
made appointments is a veritable Who’s Who of the
seventeenth century. George Savile, Marquess of
Halifax (1633-1695), a resident of St James’s
Square (Halifax House boasted some 50 rooms and
the luxury of river water piped into the Marquess’s
bathroom), strode along Pall Mall to sit for Mary
Beale in 1677 when Charles Beale noted ‘Lord
Halifax’s face finished’ in three hours. The Hon.
Henry Coventry (1618-1686), who negotiated the
Treaty of Breda with the Dutch in 1667, sought
out Mary Beale and the resulting portrait is at
Longleat House, Wiltshire. Mrs Beale painted
George, Earl of Berkeley FRS (1627-1698), wearing
ermine robes and with his coronet to hand, c.1679;
Berkeley is remembered as one of ‘the immortal
seven’ at The Hague in 1660 to invite King Charles
II to take the throne. Henry Hyde, Earl of
Clarendon (1638-1709), and the Countess, were
personal friends of the Beales and they too posed
for Mary in the 1670s. Another family, the
Lowther/Thynnes,
commissioned
some
30
portraits from her in 1677. The physician Dr
Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), known as the
English Hippocrates, was a neighbour in Pall Mall
who admired Mary’s work; he was painted by her
three times between 1672 and 1688. He loaned
money to Charles Beale and encouraged young
Bartholomew Beale to study medicine. Sydenham’s
associate, the royal apothecary Daniel Malthus
(1651-1717), who lived at the sign of The Pestle
and Mortar, Pall Mall, was painted by Mary ‘on
Account of Kindness and not for profit’ in 1681.
Those who commissioned Mary found her
intelligent, congenial and pious; they often stayed
to
dine
when
the
light
faded,
and
they
recommended her to their contemporaries.
Appointments with Mary Beale were organised by
Charles, who devoted himself to furthering the
career of ‘My Dearest Heart’. His almanacks record
names, dates, expenses and the progress of her
work. Their sons, Bartholomew and Charles,
assisted in the painting-room, completing the
draperies and the decorative ovals that invariably
framed their mother’s head and shoulder portraits.
Fellow artists Thomas Manby, William Moore and
Henry Cooke worked amicably for Mary Beale,
filling in backgrounds; Sarah Curtis was a pupil
and two attractive young women frequented the
painting-room when models were required.
The court painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680)
encouraged Mary Beale, who was privileged to
observe him at work (it was said that Lely first put
a pencil in her hand before she was married). Lely’s
double portrait of Charles and Mary Beale, another
of Mary in a low-cut white dress, Lely’s self portrait,
family portraits by Robert Walker, Thomas Flatman
and by Mary herself, also her copies of paintings by
Rubens, Van Dyck and Correggio hung on the walls
of the Pall Mall house.
In 1672 Lely, accompanied by the artist Richard
‘Dwarf’ Gibson (1605/15–1690, he was just over a
metre tall) visited Mary’s painting-room. Lely
commended her work, ‘Coppyes & those from the life’,
During her most productive years Mary Beale lived near the sign
of The Golden Ball, Pall Mall (1670-1699). The house was close to
no. 169 on William Morgan’s map of 1682. LTS publication 174
(2013)
and he admired the alabaster casts of hands made by
Charles (Mary painted heads and shoulders from life
but hands, arms, draperies and backgrounds were
finished later). Lely was invited to the Pall Mall
painting-room again in 1677 to view Mrs Beale’s latest
portraits: Thomas Belasyse, Earl Fauconberg
(husband of Mary Cromwell, the Lord Protector’s
daughter), Mrs Stillingfleet (wife of the Bishop of
Worcester) and Sir William Turner (a former Lord
Mayor) among them. Lely commented that ‘Mrs Beale
was very much improved in her painting’.
In contrast to the prosperity of the 1670s, in 1681
Charles and Mary Beale were ‘in great want of
money’. This was partly due to a lull in the art
market after Lely’s death. Moreover, the threat of
the accession to the throne of the Roman Catholic
Duke of York, which generated plots and riots,
preoccupied Mary Beale’s circle, with a consequent
decline in the number of her commissions. Another
factor in ‘our low condition’ was extravagance:
Charles’s tailor’s bills, purchases of engraved
pewter plates, furniture, engravings and books, the
cost of entertaining and the consumption of
quantities of cherry brandy left the family with just
2s 6d in the house to see them through to Easter
1681.
The accession to the throne of King William and
Queen Mary in 1689 heralded a more stable,
Protestant era which was to Mary’s advantage.
Daniel Finch (1647–1730), Earl of Nottingham, had
been painted by her, with Lady Finch, in 1677 and,
as Secretary of State to William and Mary, he
influenced
appointments
of
the
clergy.
Archbishops John Tillotson and Thomas Tenison,
bishops Gilbert Burnet, Richard Kidder, Humphrey
Humphreys, Symon Patrick, Edward Stillingfleet
and James Gardiner celebrated their promotions by
having their portraits painted by Mrs Beale. Her
last portraits of the 1690s complete a unique visual
record of the clergy, nobility, politicians, physicians
and intellectuals who occupied centre stage in the
history of the seventeenth century.
Mary Beale died aged 65 and was buried at St
James’s, Piccadilly. After the death of ‘My Dearest
Heart’,
Charles
Beale
lived
with
his
son,
Bartholomew, a physician in Coventry. The younger
son, Charles, was a talented artist whose drawings
are at the British Museum; he died unmarried and
in poverty in Long Acre.
Mrs Beale’s status as a professional artist in
command of a busy studio in Pall Mall for 30 years
deserves recognition. An unpublished catalogue of
her work, compiled in the 1980s, lists around 160
verified oil paintings with another 40 or so
attributed to her. More portraits have been
discovered since and more will undoubtedly come
to light as a result of the current surge of interest
in pioneering women artists.
– Penelope Hunting
Note. Quotations are from Charles Beale’s
almanacks.
A New Map of Medieval London
In 2018 the London Topographical Society
generously supported the publication by the
Historic Towns Trust of a
new
map
of
Tudor
London. This was based
on the map which Colonel
Henry
Johns
had
prepared for the HTT’s
Atlas
of
The
City
of
London
published
in
1989. The Trust has now
published a new Map of
Medieval London (c.1270–
1300) in the same easily-
accessible folding map
format as the map of
Tudor London.
It is surprising how much of London at that early
date it has been possible to show on the map,
which now incorporates archaeological work by
MOLA and documentary research carried out by
several scholars including Martha Carlin, Nick
Holder, David Lewis and Tim Tatton-Brown. The
map highlights the building work being carried on
at a number of the religious houses that circled
London, at St Paul’s Cathedral, at the Tower of
London and at the south-west corner of the city
where the city wall was extended to reach the Fleet
River. By 1300 the new houses of friars were
already having a dramatic impact on the
topography of the city. It has also been possible to
show the route of the new water supply brought in
lead pipes to the house of the Greyfriars which, in
turn, inspired the remarkable new public water
supply, also brought in lead pipes from Tyburn via
Fleet Street to the Great Conduit in Cheapside.
In 1300 the population of London numbered
c.80,000 people but, as this map shows, it was still
a city closely encircled by fields, orchards, marshes
and vineyards. Southwark, so often treated as the
poor relation of London, is shown to be a significant
suburban development with a large monastic
church dedicated to St Mary and now linked to the
city by the fine new stone bridge completed c.1216.
An inset map of the vill of Westminster is also
included which demonstrates the significant urban
development of the manor as the Palace there
became not a royal retreat but, rather, the centre of
a burgeoning civil service.
The back of the map is almost as rich as the
front: apart from a directory listing all the streets
and buildings shown, it includes an inset map of
Lambeth and a remarkable reconstruction of
London Bridge from Dorian Gerhold’s 2019 book
(London Topographical Society publication 182).
The full text of William FitzStephen’s account of the
city in which he and Thomas Becket were both
born, written in the aftermath of Becket’s murder
in 1170, is printed in full in a modern translation.
In this way the map comes to life and it is possible
to locate the young men of medieval London playing
page 5
games from the bridge, buying food in the cook
shops in the lanes running down to the Thames
and racing their horses on the fields at Smithfield
or skating on the ice there in winter. This new map
enables us to understand better why FitzStephen
was so proud of London.
The map, edited by Caroline Barron and Vanessa
Harding and with cartography by Giles Darkes, was
published in October and is available from
bookshops or from on-line retailers.
Published by The Historic Towns Trust
ISBN 978 0 99346 985 5 £9.99
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Colouring London
This brightly coloured image is not a piece of exotic
woven fabric, but as keen topographers will
immediately recognise, a slice of London south of
Euston Road, stamping ground of the Bartlett
Faculty of the Built Environment at University
College London, home also of the Survey of London.
The Survey is collaborating with the Centre for
Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) and other
organisations in promoting and advising on an
inspiring map-based project that is working to
advance understanding of London’s history and
evolution, while contributing to issues relating to
its future
Colouring London is a new crowdsourcing
platform designed to collect information on every
building in the capital, inviting participation from
all. Polly Hudson, a researcher at the Bartlett and
the instigator of Colouring London, has designed
the website to harness information on building age,
characteristics and lifespans. The website provides
a free knowledge exchange platform for data
relating to all the capital’s buildings and
structures. As users contribute data, the footprints
of individual buildings are colour-coded instantly to
build legible maps about the city. In addition to
submitting information, reading and interpreting
the maps, users will be able to download the data.
The website is currently in the early stages of
testing, which makes your involvement and
feedback especially valuable. The Survey’s blog post
offers some guidance on contributing to Colouring
London by mining for data in the Survey of London
series, an essential source for information about
the city’s buildings and places. In the long term,
there are plans for Colouring London to collect,
store and visualise a broad spectrum of data
relating to the built environment, spanning 12
categories such as land use, building type, designer
and constructional details. For the initial testing
phase of the project, a smaller number of categories
have been launched. Belief in the value of recording
historic buildings has been fundamental to the
Survey for over a century and colour coded maps
have been familiar at least from the time of
Booth’s poverty maps, but if you are intrigued by
the
ingenuity
made
possible
by
modern
technology, and would like to get involved, visit
colouringlondon.org
With acknowledgements to the Survey of London’s
website.
page 6
The Colouring London website, showing building age data in Camden
page 7
COLLAGE –
The London Picture Archive
Jeremy Smith, from the London Metropolitan
Archives, explains the history and value of this
exceptional database.
Collage – The London Picture Archive is an image
website for the City of London’s graphic collection
and collection of paintings, representing the
holdings of London Metropolitan Archives and
Guildhall Art Gallery.
In the (astonishing) 20 years of its existence,
Collage has become something of a brand name
with London image seekers. What began as a
treasured
resource
for
professional
picture
researchers has blossomed to become one of
London’s most widely visited image platforms, used
by publishers, historians, students and London
enthusiasts of all kinds.
The Collage database was first made available to
view at the end of the 1990s and had its web
launch in the year 2000. This was a remarkable
step at a time when museum and library collections
were viewed face to face at reading room tables, or
on the walls of the institutions that owned them. In
the early days the Collage development office saw a
steady stream of visitors from peer institutions
asking many questions and eager to enter the field.
Among London’s cultural institutions Collage was
neck and neck with the National Gallery’s
impressive ‘MicroGallery’, which understandably
for a national collection attracted excellent
publicity. But Collage, with at its core the prints
and drawings that were then held at Guildhall
Library, was the much larger database, launching
with more than 20,000 images.
For Collage to have existed at all represents a
massive act of faith by the City of London in the
digital future. The City’s Common Council granted
a substantial sum for the building of Collage,
investing in photographic equipment and scanners
and appointing a team of eight staff. In retrospect
we can see how far-sighted this was, since image
databases are now more or less expected of
national and local government cultural institutions,
in the same way that a working text catalogue ever
was.
‘Early adopters’ as a pioneer such as Collage
might reasonably be termed, are often saddled with
prototype technology that is quickly overtaken by
rivals. While not completely free of problems
Collage has held out very well due to the strength
of its original planning. It has also managed
consistently to increase its offer in terms of sheer
numbers, building up to the current quarter of a
million London pictures that are now accessible
under the Collage banner. Last year Collage users
viewed images more than 2.5 million times.
Why should LTS members get to know Collage?
The real answer to this lies in the collections that
are held at London Metropolitan Archives and
Guildhall Art Gallery. Together they constitute the
biggest collection of images devoted to a single
subject that exists in the world. Or so we believe!
Made up of paintings, drawings, watercolours,
prints, photographs, maps and ephemera and
ranging from c.1450 to modern times Collage
showcases the greatest visual assemblage of
London materials that exists. In recent years we
have added film. There are views of buildings, views
of streets, panoramic views, aerial views, river
views, portraits of Londoners and much more.
These riches can be approached by artist, by street
name, by building, by person, by medium or by
date. The search possibilities are infinitely
flexible and interconnected. And each
result
brings
a
high
quality
and
enlargeable image to your screen.
Collage is a reliable friend for those high
pressure, deadline-punching searches for
illustrations, or can rescue a student
essay, or else can provide many hours of
pleasurable leisure browsing providing
inspiration (sometimes inducing heavy
London nostalgia) in the process.
To help get the best from Collage there
are some suggested subject ‘Galleries’ of
images on a chosen theme, proposed to
you by LMA staff and more than 100
precise subject definitions for browsing.
There is also a ‘London Picture Map’
allowing you to search images relating to a
district just by clicking onto the relevant
portion of a London street plan.
Collage has of course opened our
resources to researchers all over the
world, wherever the internet can be
accessed. This is its greatest achievement.
It puts London and London history vividly
The Shopfront of a Cow Keeper, Golden Lane, Barbican. Watercolour 1835 from
a drawing by George Scharf. Collage – the London Picture Archive, image
320329
onto the desk, laptop or palm of anyone that has
the interest to explore our city. People will come to
it from many different angles and with many
different requirements, but Collage is flexible
enough, we think, to be able to offer up something
for all of them.
Images that are needed for reports or essays or
books or television programmes can be flagged as
‘favourites’ for later review and if need arises can be
purchased direct from the website as digital files, or
as high-quality prints on paper. These can be
passed on to designers, editors, colleagues or tutors
– subject to certain conditions in the case of
commercial uses.
An even larger version of the Collage database
exists for researchers who are able to visit our
archive search rooms in Clerkenwell EC1. Known
as ‘Collage Researcher’ this version includes the
many copyright images that we are not allowed to
publish online.
Collage will continue to develop, and changes are
planned for the year ahead including improved
tools for viewing maps, additional search filters and
more content in the London Picture Map facility.
Plus, as ever, the number of archive collections that
are captured and made available will continue to
rise.
– Jeremy Smith
This Newsletter includes three examples from the
wealth of visual material to be found in Collage –
the London Picture Archive. The travel poster on
page 1, is a reminder of the significant role played
by transport advertising in the twentieth century,
The London Tramways were operated by the
London County Council, the records of which are
held at the London Metropolitan Archives. The
Golden Lane shopfront on p.7 is a watercolour after
a drawing by George Scharf. It was not unusual for
dairymen to keep their livestock in surprising
locations. Finally, the lithograph above of the
Camel House, was one of several views of the zoo
by Scharf. Peter Jackson’s book (1987) about the
artist’s work tells us that the building seen here
was in fact designed (by Decimus Burton) to house
Peruvian Llamas.
The work of the
Heritage of London Trust
London is forever changing. Preserving significant
evidence of the past, both large and small, adds to
the excitement and depth of the urban experience
and to our historical understanding. Dr Nicola
Stacey, Director of the Heritage of London Trust,
explains the important contributions made by HOLT
in this field.
The Heritage of London Trust is just approaching
its 40th Birthday. Over four decades HOLT has
restored 700 historic places across London. The
colour and variety of these places reflects the
astonishing
richness
of
London’s
built
environment: clocks, weathervanes, temples, wells,
gates, bells, schools, libraries, statues, memorials,
spires, heraldry, grottoes, fountains, ruins – so
much of what gives the city its character and tells
stories of its past. As we reach the Spring of 2020,
we take a quick look at a couple of our recent
projects and the ways in which we work today.
London’s landscape continues to change at a fleet
pace. Swathes of the City and outer London
boroughs would be unrecognisable 40 years ago.
Ring roads, business parks and office blocks press
through pre-war housing and shops. The National
Heritage List (England’s listing system) affords
some protection to historic places but vital as it is,
ultimately, the list is just a list. Building
developments absorb their precursors with greater
or lesser success. Some are triumphs, like the
Goldsmith’s Centre for Contemporary Art in New
Cross, the restoration and repurposing of the vast
rusted iron water tanks and laundries of Laurie
Grove’s Victorian public baths to create the chicest
and most evocative new art space in south London.
But others reduce and degrade: a few square feet of
Bermondsey
Abbey’s
ruined
great
church,
excavated in the early 2000s, are hidden beneath
scratched glass in the corner of a Turkish
restaurant in Bermondsey Square. Small, less
prominent sites languish unnoticed – even if they
are listed on the Heritage at Risk Register – as
erosion and corrosion dissolve the stone and iron
that keep them standing.
page 8
Laurie Grove baths’ water tanks, converted to gallery spaces in
2018 – Dr Nicola Stacey, HOLT Director, on site
The Camel House, The London Zoological Gardens, 1828.
Lithograph. Collage – the London Picture Archive, image 304386
page 9
The Heritage of London Trust seeks out these
particular places for support. Half of HOLT’s
projects are initiated by our small team. HOLT
brings together conservators, local and statutory
authorities, community groups and local residents
to look at a site, consider costs, scope and time
frame, get the right people on board and a
restoration project going. Others are brought to us
by the public, conservation officers, Historic
England’s Heritage at Risk team, vicars or local
building trusts. We offer project grants early on and
increasingly provide condition surveys to gather
momentum and drive a project forward. We are
steadfastly unbureaucratic and keep our grant
application process simple. We don’t mind whether
the grant recipient is a charitable trust or a private
business as long as the restoration completes to
agreed conservation standards and provides public
access. We recommend conservation specialists in
all fields. We monitor project progress, visit
frequently, and release grant funding once a project
is completed satisfactorily. And we try wherever
possible to bring together all those involved to
celebrate their very notable successes at the end.
One of the earliest tenets of HOLT’s work was to
engage the public with London’s heritage: through
research, publications, visits and any other means
we have to encourage its appreciation. Over the last
year, we have invited local school children to our
projects to learn about the history of the site and
its conservation. The feedback from these visits has
been tremendous, and we plan to extend our
schools’ programme in 2020.
Sarah Siddons statue, Paddington
Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) was the best-known
tragedienne of her era. Eldest daughter of the
theatre manager Roger Kemble – many of whose
descendants became well-known actors and
actresses in the nineteenth century – she began as
a lady’s maid in Warwickshire, married aged 18
and had seven children, five of whom predeceased
her. She briefly alighted on the London stage in
1774, followed by five years’ work on the provincial
theatre circuit. Returning to London in 1782, she
became the greatest acting sensation of her time.
Expressive and brilliant, her emotional power
captivated Georgian audiences. Her empathetic
performance
of
Lady
Macbeth
reconfigured
understanding of the role. Public interest was
phenomenal; she became a cult figure and feverish
spectators, both men and women, had to be carried
out of the theatre. The Duke of Wellington attended
her receptions and ‘carriages were drawn up before
her door all day long’. She died in 1831 in London
and was interred in St Mary’s Cemetery at
Paddington Green. Over 5,000 people attended her
funeral.
During her lifetime Sarah Siddons was much
illustrated, and she was painted as ‘The Tragic
Muse’ by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1784. In 1897, a
fine white marble statue of Siddons by the French
sculptor Léon-Joseph Chavalliaud (d. 1919) was
unveiled on Paddington Green, based on Reynolds’s
portrait, shortly after its opening as a public park.
The actress sits regally in classical costume, with a
dagger in her right hand and tragic mask under her
chair.
With increasing anti-social behaviour in the park
over recent years, the statue was badly vandalised
in 2011. Her face was partly destroyed. Other parts
of the statue were in poor condition, and historic
repairs in polyester resin had failed. HOLT liaised
with Westminster Council to get match funding for
restoration over summer 2019, led by grant aid
from HOLT. The statue was restored in summer
2019 by a team from London Stone Conservation.
The conservators moulded her lost features first in
a hard wax, using archive images as well as
contemporary portraits of the actress, and carved
new pieces in marble. HOLT brought a local school,
Paddington Academy, to the project to visit the
sculptors at work, find out about conservation and
learn about Siddons’s life and context. Our Patron
HRH The Duke of Gloucester unveiled the restored
statue on a sunny morning in July.
Sir Christopher Wren’s spire, Lewisham
The medieval St Antholin’s Church, once tucked
into the corner of Budge Row and Watling Street in
the City, was rebuilt in 1682 after the Great Fire by
Sir Christopher Wren. The top of the new spire
The statue of Sarah Siddons, Paddington, before restoration
The statue of Sarah Siddons, Paddington, after restoration by
HOLT in 2019
reached 154 feet, laid over a fine polygonal church.
The Portland stone spire was itself octagonal in
plan, divided by horizontal ribs and crowned with
the head of a composite capital, with round shell
architraves at its base. In 1829, its upper part was
damaged in a storm, but it was rescued and sold
for £5 to one of St Antholin’s churchwardens,
Robert Harrild. St Antholin’s survived another 50
years but was demolished altogether in 1875 to
make way for the development of Queen Victoria
Street.
Born in Bermondsey, Robert Harrild (1780-1853)
was a printing pioneer. He developed a new form of
printing machinery, using rollers rather than hand
held leather balls to apply the ink. These new
rollers vastly increased newspaper production and
by 1825 they had been installed in most Fleet
Street offices. Harrild bought Round Hill House in
Sydenham and had the Wren spire transported by
cart to be re-erected on a brick plinth in his
garden. A local benefactor, Harrild became involved
in all aspects of Sydenham life, and one of its
parish Poor Law guardians.
Round Hill House became the Sydenham and
Forest Hill Social Club in the 1930s but was
demolished in the 1960s, replaced by the current
terraced estate. It is now managed by L&Q. The
spire survives on a brick plinth in the centre of the
estate along with a large cedar tree from Mr
Harrild’s garden.
The spire was structurally sound but the
weathervane was corroded and unstable, the
capital’s scrolls badly eroded and thick black
sulphation crust in the architraves. HOLT liaised
with L&Q and Lewisham Council and got a grant
match funded by L&Q. Again, conservators were
London Stone Conservation, who have been
working this autumn to restore the spire, recarve
lost stonework and reinstall and regild the
weathervane. HOLT brought two local schools –
primary and secondary – to the site in October
2019 to learn about the Great Fire of London, Sir
Christopher Wren and his rebuilding of London,
and their local philanthropist, Robert Harrild.
At any one time, HOLT has 40 projects of this
kind across London, usually in at least half of
London’s boroughs. Our projects increasingly
complete in under 18 months from first meeting,
and standalone projects such as these above cost
around £15,000-£20,000. Completely independently
funded, HOLT raises its money from varied
sources. HOLT’s Patrons are offered an interesting
programme of site visits, project launches and
small special events, and HOLT also runs free
public visits throughout the year and an annual
conference at the Society of Antiquaries for anyone
interested in its work. For more information on
becoming a HOLT Patron or on our projects, visit
www.heritageoflondon.org, Heritage of London
Trust, 34 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0DH
or call 020 7099 0559.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Restoring the Palace of
Westminster
Over the last few months political activities within
Westminster have distracted attention from the state
of the buildings, surely the most complicated
complex in the whole of London. Dorian Gerhold
brings us up to date on the practical problems and
the issues that they raise.
One of Britain’s largest building projects, likely to
take until the 2030s and to cost billions of pounds,
is
being
prepared
for
Westminster.
When
completed, hardly any change will be visible from
the street or from the Thames, but one of Britain’s
most historic buildings will have been rescued from
serious threats and given a new lease of life.
That building is the Palace of Westminster, largely
dating from about 1840 to 1870. The Palace’s
problems are not structural, but are instead its
mechanical and electrical services (heating,
ventilation, water, drainage, sewage and electrics),
mostly installed in the late 1940s but in some
cases older, and long overdue for renewal. There is
a mix of ageing systems, often undocumented and
in congested or inaccessible spaces, plus asbestos.
Also, there is not effective fire compartmentation,
the roof leaks and much of the stonework is
deteriorating. There is an increasing risk of a
catastrophic event such as a major fire, a flood of
sewage or a breakdown of an essential service. The
main reason for the backlog of repairs is that major
works can only be carried out when Parliament is
not sitting. A feasibility study concluded in 2012
that ‘If the Palace were not a listed building of the
highest heritage value, its owners would probably
be advised to demolish and rebuild’. The scale of
the building is vast: the roofs cover five acres and
there are about 1100 rooms and 4000 windows.
The growing risks have long been known about,
but there has been a reluctance among MPs to
move out of the building and concern about the
cost of renewal, which will inevitably be seen as
parliamentarians spending money on themselves.
page 10
Pupils from Holy Trinity School, Forest Hill, visit the Wren spire
for a talk by HOLT