Obituary:
Francis Sheppard, Gavin Stamp, Iain Bain.... p.2
Notes and News ............................................ p.3
Exhibitions and Events ................................ p.3
Out and About .............................................. p.4
Circumspice ...................................... p.4 & p.14
Changing London.......................................... p.5
A map of Tudor London
by Caroline Barron and Vanessa Harding...... p.5
‘A Place in the Sun’: topography through
insurance policies by Isobel Watson .............. p.6
Parishes, Wards, Precincts and Liberties. Solving
a topographical puzzle by Ian Doolittle .......... p.9
Preserving London’s Film Heritage at the British
Film Institute by Christopher Trowell .......... p.10
Lots Road power station transformed
by David Crawford ...................................... p.11
Reviews and Bookshop Corner .............. p.14-19
Newsletter
Number 86
May 2018
Contents
Marylebone seen from Centrepoint, with All Saints Margaret Street in the centre. Historic England Archives
page 2
Obituary
Francis Henry Wollaston Sheppard
10 September 1921- 22 January 2018
Between 1954 and his retirement in 1983 Francis
Sheppard produced no fewer than 16 volumes of
The Survey of London, transforming what had
been a sporadic and selective record of London’s
historic buildings, area by area, into a model of
urban topographical writing, rich in content,
authoritative, gracefully composed, beautifully
illustrated, and still an unequalled resource for
anyone interested in London’s history and
architecture. No city in the world can boast an
equivalent to The Survey of London series, which
is now well past its 50th volume. It owes its
modern form and reputation to Sheppard, who
may be fairly claimed to be London’s greatest
topographical writer since John Stow, the
Elizabethan historian.
That Sheppard’s name is not better known is
due to his modesty. Disliking fuss, he was
content to be a tiny cog in the municipal machine
that was the London county council, later the
Greater London council, so long as he was
allowed to get on with the job, aided by a small
team of loyal subordinates. Some mornings he
would bound up the stairs of County Hall, not
waiting for the lift, bolt like a rabbit into his office
and nestle between a fan of papers, hardly
emerging before the next draft chapter had been
completed for the typist in his beetling longhand.
On others he might be found head deep in some
record office or private archive, making the
pinpoint-accurate notes from which his texts were
composed.
His first satisfactory job had been in the West
Sussex county record office in Chichester, where
he acquired a taste for archives and for the
makeup of English townscape, which was as yet
little explored. From 1949 to 1953 he was an
assistant keeper at the London Museum, now the
Museum of London, which moved into Kensington
Palace during Sheppard’s time there. Much later
he wrote a history of the museum, The Treasury
of London’s Past (1991). For his doctorate he
chose to study the voluminous parish records of
Marylebone. The result was published as Local
Government
in
St
Marylebone
1688-1835,
published 1958. Inspired by the Edwardian
scholarship of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, it is a
most readable and lucid study of English local
government.
In the 1950s interest in urban architecture and
planning stopped short at the Victorian period.
Sheppard was aware of the need to go further,
and began to do so in his first volume of the
reanimated Survey, on south Lambeth (1956).
But the LCC’s historic buildings division, with
which he and his colleagues were linked in a
sometimes uneasy relationship, was more
concerned with the threat to Georgian buildings
in the West End, which the researches of the
Survey could help to defend. So the series
concentrated its investigations during the 60s
and 70s on St James’s, Soho, Covent Garden and
Mayfair. The impact of these volumes on
conserving swathes of inner London was most
notable in the case of Covent Garden, where the
Survey’s discoveries helped derail the GLC’s own
destructive plans for the area.
Later Sheppard turned his attention to
Kensington, the area where he had been brought
up. Under the influence of his friend H. J. Dyos, a
pioneer of modern British urban history, the
Survey started to treat areas of London in a
holistic way, drawing urban development,
architecture and social and economic history
together. Northern Kensington, published in
1973, was the first volume to feature this fuller
approach. Despite the demands of the Survey,
Sheppard found time to publish in 1971 a first-
rate history of the Victorian metropolis, London
1808–1870: The Infernal Wen, and after his
retirement the broader London: A History (1998).
During all this time he lived not in London but
in Henley-on-Thames, where he was very active in
civic life, becoming the first secretary of the
Henley Society, serving for ten years as a
councillor, and for a year as mayor.
– Andrew Saint
A longer version of this obituary first appeared in
the Guardian.
Obituary
Iain Bain
Iain Bain, whose death has recently been
announced, was a Vice President of the London
Topographical Society and for many years a
Council Member. He was a distinguished expert
on printing techniques and on the engravings of
Thomas
Bewick,
and
former
Head
of
Publications at the Tate Gallery. There will be an
obituary in the next LTS Record.
Important message to all members
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
which takes effect from 25 May 2018, seeks to bring a
new set of ‘digital rights’ for EU citizens. One of the
enhanced protections relates to an individual’s right
for their personal details not to be used by
organisations without their express consent. You will
therefore find a separate paper in this Newsletter
which sets out the Society’s data privacy policy, what
data the Society holds on its members and how such
data may be used, including the list of members which
is contained in the 5-yearly London Topographical
Record. If you agree to having your name and contact
details listed in the Record, please complete the slip.
Notes and News
This year’s Annual General Meeting will take place at
the Senate House, University of London on Monday
25 June. For details see the insert in this Newsletter.
Members attending the AGM will be able to
collect two LTS publications this year, both devoted
to panoramas: Greg Smith, A ‘Connoisseur’s
Panorama’: Thomas Girtin’s Eidometropolis and
other London Views, c.1796-1802, and Hubert
Pragnell, Pat Hardy and Elain Harwood, The Stone
Gallery Panorama: Lawrence Wright’s view of the
City of London from St Paul’s Cathedral, c.1948-56.
And in addition, members will also be given a copy
of the new Historic Towns Trust’s Atlas Map of
Tudor London c.1520 which the Society has
supported (see p.5).
Thanks to much help from our volunteer
members, steered by Simon Morris, the Parish
Maps project is progressing well, with publication
planned for in 2019. This will be a comprehensive,
thoroughly researched catalogue of over 400 maps
of the civil parishes within the old LCC area
(excluding the City of London) based on research
by the late Ralph Hyde, which has been extensively
updated. Work on St Marylebone and Southwark is
complete;
Islington,
Tower
Hamlets
and
Wandsworth are imminent, and the others should
be ready by the end of July.
Our membership has dropped slightly and now
stands at 1179. Members are reminded that unless
their subscriptions are up to date they will not
receive the Newsletter or qualify for the annual
publications. They also need to fill in the form
enclosed with this Newsletter to satisfy current
Data Protection requirements.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Events and Exhibitions
Two unmissable opportunities to explore aspects of
London, many not usually accessible:
London Open Squares weekend: 9-10 June For
details see opensquares.org
London
Open
House
weekend:
22-23
September For details see opensquares.org
London
Metropolitan
Archives,
40
Northampton St, EC1R 0HB. Forgotten London:
an exhibition of paintings, photographs, maps
and
film
recreating
past
London.
A
demonstration of the range of material available to
the topographer.
21 May-31 October Guildhall Library. The
Worshipful Company of Tylers and Bricklayers – A
Celebration of the 450th anniversary of the
granting of the Tylers and Bricklayers’ Company’s
charter by Elizabeth I in 1568. Highlights include
the Company’s most famous son, the playwright
Ben Jonson, and how the Company was
instrumental in rebuilding the City of London after
the Great Fire.
page 3
Obituary
Gavin Stamp 1948-2017
Gavin Stamp, who died aged 69 on 30 December
2017, was an architectural historian, lecturer,
critic and campaigner whose interest in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries spanned a
wide field, and whose energy was prodigious. He
grew up in South London, which was also where
he spent the last years of his life, and he had a
profound knowledge not only of London’s
buildings but of how they were portrayed at
different times, as was shown in his ground-
breaking book, The Changing Metropolis, earliest
photographs of London 1839-79, published in
1982, while The Great Perspectivists, also 1982,
explored how buildings were depicted in the days
before
computer
visualisations.
Victorian
Buildings in London 1837-87, an illustrated
guide, written together with Colin Amery, 1980,
provided a valuable introduction for readers
keen to understand and explore the great
nineteenth century landmarks of London.
Gavin’s interest in older buildings was originally
fired by his dislike of contemporary architecture,
and also by a desire to champion the neglected –
hence his Ph.D thesis on the little studied George
Gilbert Scott Junior and the late Gothic Revival,
and his campaign, when he was teaching in
Scotland, to raise awareness of the merits of the
Scots architect Alexander ‘Greek’ Thompson. Out
of his research on the Scott family, an enthusiasm
developed also for the next generation: Sir Giles
Gilbert Scott, responsible not only for major works
such as Liverpool Cathedral, but for the familiar
red telephone boxes. Gavin led the campaign for
their preservation, and celebrated them in
Telephone Boxes (Chatto Curiosities,1989). In
addition to his books and articles his witty and
hard-hitting comments as ‘Piloti’ in Private Eye
drew attention to examples of architectural and
planning mismanagement and neglect. From
1983-2007, as chairman of the Thirties Society,
later the Twentieth Century Society, he was in the
forefront of many conservation campaigns, in
London and elsewhere, and as the merits of
twentieth-century architecture became the subject
for debate, he came to appreciate the plurality of
twentieth-century architectural expression both in
Britain and abroad, and the need also to recognise
and defend the best buildings of the later
twentieth century.
He inspired many not only through his writing
but through the memorably energetic walks and
tours which he led for the Victorian Society and
the Twentieth Century Society both in Britain and
abroad. His special enthusiasms also included
railway architecture, power stations, Lutyens, and
the cemeteries of the First World War; his
eloquent short study of the great monument by
Lutyens at Thiepval: The Memorial of the Missing
of the Somme (Wonders of the World, Profile,2006)
was among his most memorable works.
– Bridget Cherry
Out and About
Two memorable examples of public art provide a
polemic on the state of the world today. The Fourth
Plinth at Trafalgar Square is currently home to a
monument defying the destruction in the Middle
East. The powerful statue of Lamassu, the Assyrian
winged bull, is a recreation of the sculpture created
700 BC which guarded the Nergal Gate to the
ancient city of Nineveh. Its glistening surface is
made from flattened date syrup tins, an important
local product before the fighting. The work is by
Michael Rakowitz and forms part of a project to
recreate 7000 lost or destroyed archaeological
artefacts from the Iraq museum. Meanwhile, at St
Pancras Station, Tracey Emin’s 20 metre long
inscription in pink LED writing ‘I want my time
with you’, reaches out in defiance of Brexit with a
message of love to everyone arriving from Europe.
The constant pattern of destruction and
rebuilding in the City can provide unusual glimpses
of hidden buildings. Here is a view of St Mary
Abchurch from Cannon Street, seen beyond a
building site promising improvements to Bank
Station. This atmospheric Wren church is worth
exploring, remarkable for its unique painted dome
over the whole of the nave.
Those of you who are up date with modern
technology may already have discovered a new way
to access information about Londoners while you
are out and about. As you pass selected public
statues you can listen to stories about them on
your phone. The range is wide. Those on offer
include Thomas Coram at Coram’s Fields, John
Wilkes at Fetter Lane, and Dick Whittington’s cat
on
Highgate
Hill.
For
more
details
see
talkingstatueslondon.co.uk And if you want some
inspiration about what to look for beneath your
feet, londonist.com has at time of writing a
fascinating sequence of manhole covers with photos
and text by Laurence Scales. Perhaps you have
some tips on unusual sources of information on
London – let us know.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Circumspice
Who is this young man and where is he sitting?
Answer on p.14.
page 4
The Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square in 2018
St Mary Abchurch seen from Cannon Street
page 5
Changing London
Grosvenor Square is undergoing a major change
with the departure of the American Embassy to
Battersea. The monumental building of 1957-60 by
Eero Saarinen filling the west side of the large
square, with a diagonal grid plan boldly expressed
by its chequered façade, is to be converted to a
hotel by David Chipperfield for Qatari Investment
Authority. Other sides of the square already have a
scatter of hotels among luxury flats, mostly in
earlier twentieth century buildings of an indifferent
neo-Georgian character. Only No.4 remains from
the 1720s development by Sir Richard Grosvenor,
and only a little (for example the Italian Embassy
on the east side) from the bolder Italianate favoured
in the 1860s. But a new focus may be imminent.
The square is no longer compromised by security
measures for the Embassy, and changes are under
discussion as management is returned from the
Royal Parks to the Grosvenor estate. The existing
rather unimpressive layout has its origins in a
post-war Ministry of Works design after wartime
disruptions were removed; the square was
redesigned in honour of F. D. Roosevelt and opened
to the public. The statue of Roosevelt was later
joined by the Eagle Squadron memorial of the
1980s and some other later monuments near the
Embassy.
As we are reminded by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan in
an article in the latest London Gardener (2017), the
square has a distinguished early design history.
Unusually in the eighteenth century, it was from
the first described as a ‘garden’, equally unusual
was the oval form of its layout in 1729, with a
gilded equestrian statue of George I in its centre.
Longstaffe-Gowan suggests that the inspiration for
this could have been the Campidoglio with the
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which the
youthful Sir Richard Grosvenor would have seen on
his grand tour when he visited Rome in 1705-6.
Less comparable to Rome was the creation of a
‘wilderness’ of densely planted trees surrounding
the statue, together with shrubs and hedging. The
garden was walled, and intended only for the local
residents. It is now a public space. Could its early
history inspire an appropriate design for the
twenty-first century?
A Map of Tudor London
Professors Caroline Barron and Vanessa Harding,
Trustees of the Historic Towns Trust, explain the
map from which the illustrations on these pages are
taken.
Members of the London Topographical Society
will,
this
summer,
receive
an
additional
publication: a copy of the folding map of London
c.1520 published by the Historic Towns Trust in
their series of Town and City Historical Maps. The
London map, compiled by Colonel Henry Johns and
published in The Historic Towns Atlas: The City of
London from Prehistoric Times to c.1520 volume
edited by Mary D. Lobel in 1989, was republished
by Old House Books in 2008 as a single folded map
in a neat paper pouch. The map proved very
popular and was twice reprinted but when the
rights reverted to the Historic Towns Trust, the
Trustees decided that it would now be appropriate,
after nearly 30 years, to revise the map before
reprinting it once more. The HTA is a charity with
only limited funds, and the cost of revising and
reprinting the map was estimated to cost about
£12,000.
The
LTS
has
made
a
generous
contribution towards these costs and this has
made the new edition possible. In return for this
help, every LTS member will receive a copy of the
revised map at the AGM in June.
The map has been transformed by Giles Darkes,
the Cartographic Editor of the HTT. The map is
larger, now to the scale of 1:2500, and has been
extended to include, to the north, the house of the
Knights of St John at Clerkenwell and the Hospital
of St Mary at Bishopsgate, and to the south, the
Bridgehead section of Southwark showing the Inn
of the Bishop of Winchester and the Priory of St
Mary Overy. Instead of three colours, there are now
16 so that it is possible to indicate different
categories of structures, such as parish churches
Grosvenor Square looking west
Map of Tudor London: around London Bridge
or company halls. The precincts and buildings of
many of the 30 or so religious houses in London
have been revised in the light of recent
archaeological work published by MOLA. The larger
size has also made it possible to indicate the
hundred or so parish boundaries and to include a
map of the London wards on the reverse, where the
Directory of buildings and streets has also been
extensively revised. Until Colonel Henry Johns
created the map of London in 1520, the only maps
of medieval London were sketch maps. His
pioneering work brought the medieval city into
focus and now, with improved technology and
further research (much of it published by the LTS),
it has been possible to sharpen the focus once
more. It is surely appropriate that a society
dedicated to the topography of London has made
this possible. The Trustees of the HTT are
immensely grateful for this support and hope that
all members of the LTS will derive as much
pleasure from studying the map as those who have
been working on it have had in compiling it. Please
take a look at the HTT website to see what else we
do (www.historictownsatlas.org.uk)
– Caroline Barron and Vanessa Harding
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‘A Place in the Sun’: topography
through insurance policies
Isobel Watson has written several books and
articles about London, including Gentlemen in the
Building Line (1989), about South Hackney. She
has been involved with the Place in the Sun project
since its inception, from 2002, by the former London
Archive Users’ Forum, and co-ordinated the
volunteer effort until 2017. She has throughout
learnt a great deal not only about the material lives
of Londoners from rich to poor, but about the shape
of London itself as well as its outlying villages. She
tackled expanding the project nationwide, in the pre-
1793 registers, with some trepidation, but found this
just as fascinating in its own way, and a unique
window on the industrial revolution.
For the last 15 years, a group of volunteers has
been creating an online index to a run of the
insurance policy registers of the Sun Fire Office, a
large number of which survive and are now at
London Metropolitan Archives. Without a policy
number these are however hard to use. This can be
found via the index, which is unique in being, first,
unselective, and second, fully searchable through
the LMA’s online catalogue; an earlier tranche, no
longer kept up to date, is also on the National
Archives website. This article is intended to remind
London readers of the ready availability of this
growing resource, and to highlight some of its
features.
The Sun Fire Office was founded in 1710, and
LMA holds hundreds of registers, for policies
insuring against fire damage, issued between then
and the 1860s. The run of policies indexed online –
more than 380,000, in over 220 registers – begins
in 1782 and ends in 1842, and is being gradually
added to at both ends of the series. London records
were crucial to the development of the index.
Though it was a London foundation, until 1793 the
Sun’s main series of policy registers was
countrywide; by that time its volume of business
was so great that policies sold outside London
began to be entered in a separate series of
registers. So the project, founded by London
researchers with the aid of a Heritage Lottery grant
for a mere 30 registers, started with the early
nineteenth century, when the focus was London; as
earlier registers came to be included coverage
became national. The pre-1793 registers have
particular strengths in certain areas, notably
page 6
Map of Tudor London: the Tower of London
Policy registers. Each register contains abstracts of an average of
1600 individual policies, in numerical but non-consecutive
batches of 100
Scotland and the industrial north-west, Cornwall,
and Plymouth as well as London: but entries can
be found for places in most counties of Great
Britain.
The index captures certain terms only; it is
emphatically not a transcript. Its focus is naturally
on indexable terms – the mantra is ‘People, places,
businesses, occupations’. Thus it will give any
address mentioned in a policy, and occupants if
they are mentioned; but it won’t refer to chattels
kept at the address (sailing vessels and specific
works of art and literature are an exception, so long
as they are identified by name). Once policies
relating to (say) a person, place, partnership or
profession are identified, recourse has to be had to
the policy abstracts themselves to discover what
was insured, where it was kept, and at what it was
valued. This can reveal much about lifestyles as
well as property: some people insured china and
glass, some plate, others clothes, books, musical
instruments or prints, some even jewels. Warren
Hastings insured only his clothing, for the
astonishing sum of £4,000; a neighbour in Wimpole
Street insured hers for £500, the same value as
was put on a house she owned in Kentish Town.
The menagerist Gilbert Pidcock, based at Exeter
Change, insured the cage in which his rhinoceros
was trundled about the country. With buildings,
their construction materials will be mentioned, also
any notable risks such as stoves; the policy may
even indicate that a building was unfinished, which
can help to establish its date (once it had a roof, a
lease was usually obtainable, so the speculative
builder had something to insure).
The range of individuals insured makes this
possibly one of the most socially inclusive record
sources available, certainly at the period before the
national decennial census or civil registration.
There is royalty at one end, and at the other
laundresses, hucksters and ‘higglers’ each insuring
£50 worth of stock. There are householders in all
the central areas and the early, eastern suburbs
who exercised their trades at home; there were also
a lot of ‘gentlemen’ resident in newer suburbs such
as Walworth and Pentonville who may have
exercised trades or professions elsewhere. The
policy may suggest whether someone owned his
house: if he insured it he is likely to have owned it,
or more likely a long lease of it. If he insured its
contents only, he may well have been there as
tenant for a shorter term, and many insurances are
by lodgers (‘at Mr Handy’s’) for their possessions.
Some estates were insured more or less wholesale
by their owners, others required leaseholders to
insure; thus for example the registers provide a
snapshot of named residents on Mary Bowes’
substantial estate at Shadwell (insured by her
executors), and it has been possible to reconstruct
the occupancy of about a third of the Moneyers’
estate at Hoxton from pre-1841 Sun policies alone.
There are numbers of working women, both single
and married; many worked at home. This is the
inference from policies in which a husband may be
described in the same sentence either by his trade
or as ‘gentleman’, followed by ‘his wife a milliner’
(or laundress, or mantua maker). If the latter, an
adjacent
policy
may
describe
him
as
a
businessman (say a chandler or a dealer in tea)
though at a different address. Women can also be
found exercising trades in building and metal work,
as well as all sorts of retail.
There are policies for Mrs Fitzherbert’s lavishly-
equipped houses; for Wellington at Apsley House;
and for the farmhouse which became the site of
Brighton Pavilion as well as the one which gave its
name to Earls Court. Celebrity-hunters will find the
Adam brothers, Jeremy Bentham, Joseph Grimaldi,
Harriot Mellon, George Morland, Dr Parkinson, and
many others, but the great joy of the registers is the
insight they give into the daily lives of ordinary
Londoners. Sometimes these can be traced
throughout a career, as successive policies mirror
the development of a business and various changes
of address, sometimes ultimately the handing-over
to an heir or the reconstitution of a partnership. The
page 7
Windmill public house, Clapham Common. Licensed premises
were amongst the commonest insurances, and victualler a trade
frequently followed by policyholders. Different descriptions of the
property in successive policies could enable changes in these
premises to be tracked over time. (Document reference Ms
11937/327/502474)
Harriot Mellon, Little Russell Street. This policy illustrates a wider
range of insured chattels than was common, as well as high
values. Sun policy values however seem invariable to have
totalled a multiple of £50. (Document reference Ms 11937/437/795647)
uses of the index are many: recently, for example, it
has been used to corroborate other sources about
the development of straw-hat making. There are
sometimes manuscript amendments to policy
details; these are not indexed, being undated, but
they can prove useful once a policy has been
identified (there is a separate series of registers
recording policy endorsements).
Researchers sometimes note that the records of
different insurers vary in their usefulness depending
on their approach. For descriptions of property as
detailed as conveyances, for example, the Hand in
Hand records (also at LMA, which holds the
country’s premier collection of insurance records)
are superior to the Sun, and, unlike the Sun, its
rudimentary contemporary indexes survive. The
Sun registers usually only give a property’s address,
though sometimes the presence of a neighbouring
fire risk is recorded, and there can in these cases be
information about an adjoining building and what
went on in it. Detail about buildings is usually
limited to construction materials, but this may
enable alterations to be dated. Of course, street
numbers or even names given in the registers may
since have been changed, if the street survived into
the mid-nineteenth century, and even then may
take several forms. The Sun Fire Office was so
London-centric that if a street is not given a named
location, it can, almost without exception, be taken
to have been in London.
Larger sites may be described in detail, at least
before about 1800, when (rather like conveyances
of about the same time) the practice of including a
plan was generally adopted in preference to verbal
description. (Sadly there are very few surviving
plans, bound in a separate volume.) Thus policies
can reveal details of what was constructed at places
for which there may not be equivalent detail
elsewhere, such as large breweries or factories, the
Eagle tavern in the City Road, or the curious art-
and-music resort the Bermondsey Spa.
To search the index, bear in mind that it will spell
a person or place as the register itself does:
Rosoman Street, which skirts the LMA itself, has
perhaps the largest number of variant spellings. If
you
are
looking
for
Eleanor
Betjemann,
greengrocer, you may guess she is, at the very
least, a near relative of Elinor Betjeman, tripe
dealer, at the same address in an earlier register.
Archaic names can be found for places as well as
people, and sometimes different spellings even
within the same policy abstract. If you are looking
for Marylebone, Surrey Street, or a hairdresser,
bear in mind that you might find it useful to search
for Marybone, Surry Street, and hair dressers –
though exceptionally, occupations are indexed by
their modern spelling, as are counties (tailor not
taylor; Surrey not Surry). Make use of wild cards
where available, and if the results of a generalised
search are too many, insurance records can be
winnowed out from the rest by adding the term
‘insured’ into the search. Once you find them, LMA
can for a charge supply a copy of the original
register pages, or better still and without cost,
bring you face to face with the register itself.
Further reading:
https://search.lma.gov.uk
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
P. G. Dixon, The Sun Insurance Office 1710-1960
(OUP, 1960)
H. A. L. Cockerell and Edwin Green, The British
Insurance Business: a guide to its history and
records (Sheffield Academic Press, 1976)
London Metropolitan Archives leaflet no. 48, Fire
Insurance Records, www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-
to-do/london-metropolitan-archives/visitor-infor
mation/Documents/48-fire-insurance-records.pdf
page 8
Forty Hall. Early policies are sometimes reflected in company fire
marks made in lead. As these ceased to be issued in the early
1800s, they are rarely found on London buildings to which they
relate. These, above the main entrance at Forty Hall in Enfield date
from 1718, reflect the financial limits in force at that date,
requiring the insured, Lord Hunsdon, to hold separate policies for
the main building, its outbuildings and its contents
Fire mark 425573. This was not issued for the building on which it
was photographed (113 Clifden Road E5), but for premises in
Shropshire, about a century earlier than the building of Clifden
Road
page 9
Parishes, Wards, Precincts
and Liberties – solving a
topographical puzzle1
Ian Doolittle has been researching the London
property market at the time of the Great Fire. He has
reported on his findings in this Newsletter from time
to time and here brings us up to date with his recent
work. His calendar of the next volume of the Fire
Court decrees is nearly finalised.
London historians have long been frustrated by
the City’s internal divisions. The Square Mile was a
patchwork
of
parishes
and
wards,
whose
boundaries rarely coincided. Add to this the sub-
division of wards by precincts (only sometimes
matching parishes) and the existence of a number
of privileged liberties and you have a recipe for
confusion as well as frustration. I have long been
conscious of this but only recently have I had to
confront the practical consequences.
Readers of the Newsletter may recall that I am
investigating property ownership at the time of the
Great Fire. In the next Record I try to answer the
question ‘Who owned the City of London in 1666?’
For this purpose I need a total number of houses.
The obvious starting point is the magnificent
edition of the London and Middlesex Hearth Tax.2
There are methodological challenges in interpreting
the returns – not least the distinction between
houses and households – but my main obstacle is a
prosaic one. The 1666 returns are incomplete. The
editors provide extracts from the 1662-3 Hearth
Tax returns but acknowledge that, because the
1662-3 lists are by ward and the 1666 ones by
parish, this ‘patching’ does not work very well.3
Was there a way of converting wards into
parishes? Mapping is an answer – readers of LTS’s
A to Z maps will be aware of the parish boundaries
wriggling their way through the wards – but I
blenched at the thought of translating spaces into
buildings! I needed a list of houses but the only
ones I had come across were either by ward or by
parish. I then remembered a later list of ward and
parish houses by John Smart (which I had used for
my thesis long ago). I checked and found that he
did not just break down ward totals into precincts;
he also ‘traced’ parish totals into those precincts.
The result is an interlocking analysis, potentially
just what I needed.
I knew that Smart was a clerk at Guildhall but I
learnt from Professor Beattie that Smart first
compiled his ward lists to support the new Watch
regime in the mid-1730s.4 He revised and expanded
his totals for what became A Short Account of the
Wards, Precincts, Parishes etc. in London in 1742,
but despite getting only what he described,
caustically, as limited assistance from ward
deputies and common councilmen Smart’s figures
seem reliable.5 Certainly they accord pretty well
with other lists and their origin as a means of
payment for a key reform is reassuring too.
The real problem was the gap between 1666 and
1742 (or at best 1735). I reflected however that I
was not really relying on the totals. Smart is of
chief value because he allows you to trace a parish
total into the precinct(s) and vice versa. And in so
far as totals are important it is their relation to one
another that matters. Here I took comfort from
what I currently believe to have been the relative
stability of house numbers within the walls.
Perhaps numbers fell somewhat after the Fire, as
houses were redeveloped, but there was probably
no significant imbalance between parishes/wards,
at least in the central areas. The real changes after
1666 occurred outside the walls and there is
certainly a need to recognise that the differences
within parishes/wards which ‘straddled’ the walls
may have widened.
I was however sufficiently encouraged to see if I
could solve my problems. The results so far are
encouraging. Two examples will indicate how
Smart’s figures can help. The returns for All
Hallows London Wall for 1666 are missing. The
editors provide extracts from 1662-3 for All Hallows
precinct in Broad Street ward. The entries add up
to 234.6 Smart confirms that most of the parish
houses were indeed in that precinct; but he also
lists (in a total of 273) 33 in Aldgate Ward (4th
precinct), 21 in Bishopsgate Within (St Ethelburga
precinct) and 20 in Lime Street (4th precinct). For
Bishopsgate and Lime Street I need to look at those
parts of the 1662-3 returns (which were not
transcribed), but at least I know from Smart what
kind of numbers to expect. For Aldgate I may have
to find a substitute, since parts of that ward are
missing from the 1662-3 records.7 I have identified
all the 1660s assessments in the London
Metropolitan Archives and I hope to be able to fill
the gap and get to an overall total which is
consistent with other sources for the parish.
The second example concerns the Liberty of St
Martin le Grand. The editors skilfully established
that one set of the 1666 totals relates to the
parishes of St Anne Aldersgate, St John Zachary,
St Leonard Foster and St Mary Staining outside the
Liberty, while another relates to the Liberty itself.
They were not however able to differentiate between
the four parishes. Smart helps to untie this knot.
He makes clear that only houses from St Anne and
St Leonard were (partly) in the Liberty;8 and I can
use his totals (54 and 114) to ‘split’ the 1666 total
of 216,9 producing 69/147. Outside the Liberty the
1666 total is 263.10 I have allocated this to the four
parishes according to the ratios represented by
Smart’s totals of 95, 93, 52 and 41. The result is
89, 87, 49 and 38. By this process I get to 158 for
St Anne, 87 for St John, 196 for St Leonard and 38
for St Mary Staining. St Leonard is somewhat
higher than in other (later) lists but other three
totals are reassuringly similar.
Smart will not solve all such problems;11 and care
must be taken not to rely heavily on his figures
outside the City (where he resorted to round
numbers). He also made an obvious mistake with
St Giles Cripplegate. I am ready to be told that
there is an easier and/or more reliable approach;
but in the meantime I shall continue with what I
rashly call my Smart work and present my findings
in the next Record.
– Ian Doolittle
1. I am grateful to Vanessa Harding for her generous help.
2. Eds. Matthew Davies et al., British Record Society,
vols 129-30 (2014).
3. Ibid., 28.
4. J.M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London
1660-1750 (2001), 194-6. Beattie assumes Smart
was a ward deputy by confusing him with John Snart.
5. There is a copy of the first version in the Guildhall
Library: A.4.6 no. 40 (2). The later version in the
Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian has a note that
the work was never printed for sale: 4o. Rawl. 300.
6. London and Middlesex Hearth Tax, 1641(part)-46.
7. Ibid., 287-91 (a painstaking reconstruction of the
returns). There is no transcription after IRN 1733
(ibid., 1813), the relevant place.
8. The editors say a small part of St John Zachary was
covered too: ibid., 270.
9. Ibid. 309.
10. Ibid. 304.
11. He does not provide what might be called a spatial
(or mapping) answer, as J. M. B. Alexander appears
to
have
concluded:
‘The
Economic
and
Social
Structure of the City of London, c.1700’ (London
School of Economics, Ph.D thesis, 1989), 11.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Preserving London’s Film Heritage
at the British Film Institute
Christopher Trowell, BFI Trusts and Foundations
Coordinator reports on progress with the London on
Film project.
In 2016 the London Topographical Society
generously supported the BFI’s London on Film
project,
a
ground-breaking
archival
and
preservation project digitising film material that
captures the changes and hidden histories of the
nation’s capital. As well as supporting the project,
London Topographical Society members also helped
the BFI identify the locations for a number of films,
including the 1983 public information film Cyclist
Turning Right. Society member Graham Hewett
observed that in the early 1980s the two visible bus
route numbers could only be seen together in
Haydons Road, Wimbledon. Thank you to all those
members who contacted us.
The Britain on Film Project
This project was a strand of the BFI’s wider Britain
on Film programme, which has made archive
material from across the UK available for free
through BFI Player. Through this service we have
received over five million views from across the UK
and urban living is a key factor in the most popular
films, with the 1970s construction boom holding
particular fascination. The most watched film in
the project is currently the utopian Milton Keynes:
A Village City (“The most exciting thing going on in
Europe, if not the world”) produced by London
Television Service in 1973. Unearthing regional
stories from across the UK is crucial to the project,
but London holds a unique fascination for
audiences and early filmmakers and London film
material is frequently the most popular on our
video on demand service.
Both the 1936 newsreel The Battle of Cable Street
(part of the Jewish Britain on Film collection) and
documentary short Changing Face of Camberwell
(1963) rank in the project’s most-watched films. The
most popular material supported by the Society
includes the Pathé Frères newsreel of Emily
Davison’s Funeral. For this event in 1913, organised
by the Women’s Social and Political Union, 5,000
suffragettes marched through the streets which
were lined with upwards of 50,000 people. The film
provides views of Hart Street as it approaches
Nicholas Hawksmoor’s St George’s church, and the
short film captures the sadness and political
potency of the occasion. Elsewhere in the collection
audiences have found a perverse pleasure in London
as the ‘City of Dreadful Night’ (Topical Budget 694-
2) where an almost imperceptible Trafalgar Square
is obscured by London smog.
page 10
The funeral of Emily Davison
Topical film poster