Notes and News ............................................ p.2
Threatened Places ........................................ p.3
Changing London.......................................... p.3
Old into New ................................................ p.4
Purchasing Property in East London in the
early 19th century by Derek Morris .............. p.5
Radical politics in the 1640s:
locating the Whalebone, by Dorian Gerhold .. p.8
A new theatre in the round:
a transformation at the Brunel Museum
by David Crawford ...................................... p.11
Circumspice by Tony Aldous ...................... p.13
Reviews ...................................................... p.14
Bookshop Corner ........................................ p.19
Newsletter
Number 84
May 2017
Contents
The 117th Annual General Meeting of the London
Topographical Society will be held on Thursday 6
July 2017 at Queen Mary College, Mile End Road at
5.45pm. For details see the pull out section in the
centre of this Newsletter.
The illustration above is of this year’s publication,
London Prints and Drawings before 1800
by
Bernard Nurse. (See p.2).
Notes and News
This year’s publication
As members will know, the publication of the
Society’s annual publication is generally timed to
coincide with the AGM. This year’s arrangements
require the following special note from our
treasurer
Roger
Cline,
who
organises
the
distribution.
Because London Prints and Drawings before
1800 is a joint publication with the Bodleian
Library, it is already available for sale to the public.
The book has LTS on the spine and the full Society
name on the title page, so remember your member’s
entitlement to a free copy before you spend £30 on
another copy. Those of you who do not normally
attend the AGM may find you receive the book
before the AGM. You will of course still be entitled to
attend the AGM if you are able to do so but your
name will have already been crossed off the
distribution list. If you cannot attend the AGM but
would like to collect your copy from me, please email
me before the AGM to arrange a convenient time.
This year we are using a courier for deliveries and
the courier would like to have your telephone
number to ensure the delivery can be made when
you are at home. If you will not be attending the
AGM, please telephone or email the Treasurer to
supply your telephone number. If you encounter his
answering machine do give your postcode as well
as your name so we get things right in spite of
having members with similar names.
The book contains over a hundred images of maps,
drawings and prints of London selected by our
member Bernard Nurse from the collection of
Richard Gough (1735-1809). The bulk of Gough’s
extensive library was sold after his death in two
auctions lasting a total of 23 days, but he left to the
University of Oxford “all my manuscripts, printed
books, and pamphlets, prints and drawings, maps,
copperplates relating to British
Topography”.
The
Bodleian
Library
received
over
4,000
volumes and large numbers of
individual maps, prints and
drawings sent in packing cases
from Gough’s house in Enfield.
The wealth of London material in
the collection is little known and
the Society is pleased to be able to
join with the Bodleian Library in
this joint publication.
Bernard Nurse, who will be
speaking about his work on the
book at the AGM, was for many
years the Librarian of the Society
of Antiquaries at Burlington
House. Previously he worked in
the
Southwark
and
Tower
Hamlets’s local history libraries
and in the Guildhall Library.
Stephen Humphreys, 1952-2016. We are sorry
to record the death of Stephen Humphreys, who
died in December 2016. He was a much valued
archivist of Southwark Council from 1979-2010,
and well known for his books on the local area,
including The Story of Rotherhithe, and most
recently, Elephant and Castle: a history, 2010, a
well-researched account of the area in which he
had grown up. He was made a Freeman of the
Borough in 2012.
The British Film Institute. Members will no
doubt be interested to see some of the results of
our grants to the British Film Institute (BFI) to
assist in the preservation and digitisation of some
of the earliest and most interesting images of
London on film. We now have our own area on the
BFI
Player
website,
accessible
at
http://player.bfi.org.uk/collections/the-london-
topographical-society/. Be warned, looking at some
of these carefully restored film clips can become
addictive – and more clips will be added over time.
A further proposal, currently being deliberated by
your Council, is to make a selection of some 40 or
50 of these clips, totalling two or three hours in all,
available on a twin DVD set to be given out free to
members as an additional publication – perhaps in
2019. The archive film, some of it exclusive to the
DVD set, together with a booklet of essays and
contextual material, would chart the changing face
of London from the 1890s onwards. It would
include not only some of the material digitised with
our support and some of the material identified by
our members, but further archive film from the
BFI’s broader Britain on Film project. The films will
be themed by the BFI curators to cover such topics
as (working list) Life on the River, Meet the
Londoners, London on the Move, Lungs of London
(parks and greens), London at Work and London at
Leisure. The price to non-members would be set at
£19.99. Council would welcome any feedback or
comment from members on this proposal.
page 2
Exhibitions
The Londoners, London Metropolitan Archives 6
February – 4 July.
Studied portraits and casual snapshots, from
fifteenth century drawings to recent colour
photographs illustrate countless Londoners as they
went about their business, from labourers to
nightwatchmen, waitresses to wrestlers.
Tunnel, the archaeology of Crossrail. Museum
of Docklands. 10 February – 3 September.
8000 years of human history: Mesolithic tool
makers, Romans with iron-shod horses, victims of
the great Plague – all feature in the discoveries
made during the largest engineering project
underway in Europe.
Threatened Places
The proposal to build a Holocaust memorial in
Victoria Tower Gardens, the small, peaceful park
immediately south of the Houses of Parliament, has
aroused considerable concern – not over the idea of
the memorial, but over its location. The London
Parks and Gardens Trust have written an eloquent
response, pointing out that this area of the World
Heritage site is already designated a ‘zone of
monumental saturation’(!). The proposed memorial,
with an anticipated one million visitors a year,
although largely underground, would drastically
alter the character of the only green space in this
neighbourhood. A petition seeking support for
finding an alternative site, led by Sir Peter
Bazalgette, former chair of the Arts Council, can be
found at change.org/p/Sir Peter Bazalgette .
Harmonsdworth Tithe Barn This Grade I listed
barn, the rare survival of a timber-framed building
on a cathedral scale, built by Winchester College in
the early fifteenth century, would lie only a few
metres away from the northwest runway proposed
for Heathrow Airport. In addition the airport
expansion would involve the total demolition of 21
other listed buildings and destruction or damage to
over 100 archaeological remains. The case for the
airport is to be debated in Parliament toward the
end of this year. Meanwhile take the opportunity to
visit this impressive building on the 2nd and 4th
Sunday of the months, from April-October, 10.00-
5.00.
It
is
managed
by
the
Friends
of
Harmondsworth Barn for English Heritage, and
entry is free.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Changing London
The LTS Council currently meets near Cannon
Street station and so, every few months, can
observe the changes overtaking Walbrook, the
narrow street opposite the station, named from the
river that now lies underground. The east side is
almost entirely taken up by the ‘radiator-grille
architecture’ of ‘The Walbrook’, Foster & Partners’
‘bulbous armadillo-like groundscraper’ (see Alec
Forshaw’s New City). Beyond it, left over from
another era, can be glimpsed the slender profile of
the tower of Wren’s St Stephen Walbrook. The west
side of Walbrook, now nearing completion, is also
by Fosters (after the rejection of an earlier design
by Jean Nouvel), part of the larger redevelopment
site known as Walbrook Square, stretching to
Queen Victoria Street. Facing Walbrook there is an
attempt to break down the bulk by recessing the
lower floors and angling their windows. But for
most pedestrians the aspect that makes for a more
humane environment may not be the architectural
aesthetics but the fact that this is now a pedestrian
Circumspice
What is the subject of this fountain and where is
it? For the answer see p.13.
page 3
street with sandwich and coffee shops housed in
the ground floor of the armadillo.
For a different architectural experience you can
walk up to St Stephen’s and see how the spire is
lightly framed by the ethereal glass tower of
Rothschild’s New Court to the east (by Rem
Koolhaas 2012). The church was built on a tight
site, hence the lack of windows and the rough wall
on the south side, which in the seventeenth century
butted up against a warehouse built after the Great
Fire by the merchant John Pollexfen. His own
mansion lay beyond, surviving into the nineteenth
century. The tiny twentieth century building in
seventeenth century style which now occupies part
of its site once belonged to Peter Palumbo (Baron
Palumbo of Walbrook), enthusiast for modern
architecture and unsuccessful advocate for a glass
tower by Mies van der Rohe opposite the Royal
Exchange. But 50 years ago the City was not yet
ready for such a novelty.
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Old into New
Finding a new use for purpose-designed structures
worthy of preservation can result in some
surprising and ingenious solutions, as David
Crawford demonstrates in an article in this issue.
Converting one museum into another of a different
type might seem rather simpler, but can also be
problematic. An example is the Design Museum.
When established at Shad Thames on the South
Bank in November 1962, the brainchild of Terence
Conran (founder of Habitat in 1964), its location
was still off the beaten track. Fifty years later it had
outgrown its original building, and in November
2016 moved to a new home, the ‘tent in the park’
built in 1957-61 on the edge of Holland Park by
Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall & Partners for
the erstwhile Commonwealth Institute. A useful
little book, The Story of the Design Museum edited
page 4
Design Museum from Holland Park;
Design Museum, the new galleried central stair hall
page 5
by Tom Wilson, provides brief histories of both
organisations (Phaidon 2016, £9.95). Before its
alterations, it was the sweep of the novel hyberbolic
– parabola – roof which was the dominant feature,
spreading tent-like above the different levels which
housed the contributions from the individual
Commonwealth countries. The transformation by
the architect John Pawson has inserted a grand
central staircase hall providing access to the
displays in the upper galleries, from which only
sections of the great roof are visible. Nevertheless it
is good to see a viable solution for this listed
building, even if it is at the expense also of the
original landscaped surrounding. We await with
interest the fate of the West Smithfield market
buildings, about to be transformed by the
competition winners Stanton Williams into a new
home for the Museum of London. An informative
history of these Victorian structures with an
explanation of their innovative ‘Phoenix columns’
can
be
found
on
the
Museum’s
website:
museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/transforming-
smithfield-market .
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Purchasing Property in East
London in the early nineteenth
century: The London Dock
Company in the 1800s
Derek Morris is currently researching the impact of
the building of the London Docks on the riverside
settlements of Wapping and Shadwell. He gives us
here a first sight of the wealth of information that
exists in the archives of the Port of London
Authority.
From the time of the Dissolution of the
Monasteries, if not earlier, to the construction of
HS2, organisations and individuals have needed a
method to estimate the value of a wide range of
properties. This was the problem that the London
Dock Company (hereafter LDC) faced in 1800 with
its proposal to build extensive docks, covering some
20 acres, with the capacity of holding up to 390
ships, on the north bank of the Thames at
Wapping. The proposed site, in close proximity to
the legal quays and the city, meant that the area
already had a well-established community who
were not remotely interested in vacating their
homes
and
business
premises.1
Objectors
calculated that up to 2,000 houses would have to
be demolished, and long-established businesses
along the river’s edge would be displaced or
destroyed. Existing infrastructure in the wider area
would also be affected.
The process can be studied in detail because the
LDC’s estimates of the value of the property that
they were purchasing have survived, together with
the evaluators’ descriptions. They provide a
uniquely detailed picture of the old riverside district
of Shadwell, which, like Wapping, Ratcliff and
Limehouse, was once densely built over with small
houses, though not excessively crowded. The value
of this LDC archive is that, as Peter Guillery has
observed: “Not a splinter of seventeenth-century
Shadwell survives, the heart of the early district
having been displaced by nineteenth-century
extension of the London Docks.”2
The Process of Evaluation
The surviving archives indicate that the evaluation
was well-organised. Every property owner was
invited (using sequentially numbered letters) to
submit their estimate of the value of their property.
The LDC’s evaluators then began the inspection,
recording every detail that affected the value: the
number, location and description of cellars, rooms
and garrets, the state of repair (but not the plan
layout), and details of leases. Then, using the
concept of ‘present value’, the LDC submitted their
offer to the owner. Inevitably the LDC’s evaluation
was lower than that of the owner. The LDC applied
a standard method for evaluating all the property
that they proposed to purchase, thus avoiding any
suggestion of bias. Whilst the LDC applied the
‘years of purchase’ method to the rental streams,
the assessors also took notice of various costs that
A typical evaluation of property in St George-in-the East
Correspondence on a valuation
a property owner could realistically charge against
this income stream, especially payments of land
tax, water and pavement charges.
There was a wide spectrum of property owners:
some had a shared interest in a single property,
others owned a large number of properties,
including the executors of Mary Bowes-Lyon, as
part of her extensive estate in Shadwell was
affected.3 There were complications with the
conflicting interests of mortgagees, freeholders,
copyholders, lease holders and sub-tenants, all
claiming some compensation. In late eighteenth-
century London perhaps only 15 to 20 per cent
owned the freehold of their homes: ‘buy to let’ is not
a new phenomenon. It is not clear if the LDC found
the owner of every property and sometimes several
people claimed to own a particular property. There
were three claims for a house in Gravel Lane.4 Mrs
Paar claimed the freehold of the front part and both
Raine’s Hospital and Charles Bennett claimed the
freehold of the whole.
The property owners who rented their property
out on long leases, aimed to recover from the LDC
the full loss of income. However, the traditional
method of valuing future income streams as a
present capital sum is to multiply the average
expected annual cash-flow by a multiple, known as
‘years’ purchase’: a process of discounting. For
example, in selling to a third party a property
leased to a tenant under a 99 year lease at £100
per annum, a deal might be struck at ‘20 years’
purchase’, which would value the lease at 20 times
£100, i.e., £2000, not £9,900.
The Property Owners’ Evaluations
The archives contain copies of the letters in which
the property owners justified their (usually inflated)
valuations. The well-known John Harriott (of
Thames Marine Police fame) and other trustees of a
‘Soup
House
Charitable
Institution’
at
65
Pennington Street made “a unanimous claim for a
complete re-instalment in the immediate vicinity or
otherwise the advance of £1,800 to enable them to
provide equal accommodation upon any convenient
spot they may perceive”. This letter identifies the
cash flow problems that were met, particularly, as
with the larger establishments it would take time to
locate a new site, and build or adapt an existing
property to their requirements. The LDC was not
concerned with such expenses.5
Mr Matthews, in Lower Turning, Shadwell,
related:
“I beg to state that I carry on the trade of baker
and corn chandler [and] have a lease of six years
unexpired at a rent of £18 per annum. I carry on a
considerable trade depending entirely on the
neighbourhood and [am] totally desolate of a
situation to continue my trade. I have made use of
proper means to ascertain my loss and… [so] I claim
£1,100.”
The LDC evaluated his business on the
assumption (presumably after some discussion) on
his production of 26 sacks of flour per week at 8s
6d per sack, for 40 weeks in a year, giving a yearly
income of £442. After including additional incomes
and various deductions for ‘his own time’ and
wages, the LDC’s final offer was £400 and not the
demanded £1,100.6
Mr Thomas Burgess in response to Notice 202
observed:
“That for a period of 30 years I have been enabled
to support my family with credit to myself, and that
by my present removal I am reduced to the
necessity of embarking in a fresh connection, which
at my time of life, and the present state of things,
renders
my
future
expectations
extremely
precarious…”7
The oblique reference to the war with the French
was in every one’s mind, and the LDC’s Treasury
Committee from time to time reported that building
progress was slow as “labourers [were] being called
away on National Service”.8
Mr Herbert, a ropemaker wrote:
“That it has been a great expense to me making
the ground fit for my trade, and in leaving it, and
the great disappointment my customers will have
that dwelleth near the premises will make it prove
greatly to my disadvantage, it will put me in great
expense, loss of trade and trouble to furnish another
ground.”9
Benjamin Atterton responded to Notice 178 with
the comment:
“That after a deal of fatigue, care and anxiety a
kind providence has enabled me to raise a school of
upwards of 80 scholars, my sole dependence for a
comfortable maintenance is upon this school, …and
that you will allow me a reasonable and just
compensation for the great loss I will sustain
thereby.”10
This is the first time that this school has been
noted in any archive.
page 6
The Shadwell area on Rocque’s map (1750)
Virginia Street
The two main streets in the parish of St George-in-
the-East affected by the docks were Virginia Street,
at its western end, and Broad Street at its eastern
end. Also affected was the south side of Pennington
Street, which was “laid out on the north edge of a
marsh
in
1678-80…
an
unusually
large
development of small houses, each evidentially
comprising three rooms”.11
Examples from Virginia Street illustrate the
evaluation process. The long north-south street is
clearly visible on Rocque’s map. There were some
130 properties, the majority were of the ‘two-room
plan type’ described by Guillery:12 two-up and
two-down, with privies, washrooms, coal sheds,
and ‘summer houses’ in the back yards. The plots
were typically 12-15 feet or so wide and 72 feet
deep. The surveyors also noted if the stairs
extended to the garret, and the status of the
basements. For each property the LDC recorded
the length of the lease, the surviving period and
the rent.
Some typical examples demonstrate the wealth of
the information that has survived, and the wide
variation in state of repair.13
No. 1, Virginia Street. Mrs Sutton’s interest (shop
in her occupation), old brick tenement, ground floor
shop and small room. In a bad state. Rent £6.
No. 36, Virginia Street. Lately been new and
back-fronted but the inside is in an indifferent
state.
No. 42, Virginia Street. The cellars of house being
under water reduced the value of this house.
No. 44, Virginia Street. Indifferent state of repair
but may last the lease without any substantial
repairs. Rent £13-13s-0d.
No. 89, Virginia Street. Public house, cellars,
kitchen, parlour, tap room, wash house, three
rooms first floor, two garrets. Rent £21.
No. 99, Virginia Street. An old brick house with
cellars, front parlour, back parlour, small middle
room, kitchen, stable, washhouse, first floor large
front room, four back rooms, second floor two very
large garrets. Rent £25.
Nos. 101-104, Virginia Street. These houses are
extremely old and much out of repair. The timbers
in many instances, particularly on the ground floor,
are decayed and some of the walls have been
under-pinned. Might stand for 25 years but then
not worth repairing. Rent £12.
No. 116, Virginia Street. Tolerable well-built
house. Rent £16-6s-6d.
Nos. 121, Virginia Street. This two-up and two-
down house had a seven-stall stable, and a carriage
shed, but as in a very bad repair £100 was
deducted from the valuation. Rent £43.
In addition to the public houses in the street,
there were shops, a carpenter’s shop, a slaughter
house, a counting house, and a coal yard.
A study of just one street provides a new insight
into the people and properties affected by the
development of the London Docks.
Still to be studied are the remaining properties
(chapels, industrial premises, taverns and houses)
not covered by this paper. A final question is where
did all the displaced tradesmen and families move
to: did they stay in the local area near their existing
customers and friends or move further away?
– Derek Morris
Notes
1. F. Rule, London’s Docklands: A History of the Lost
Quarter, 2000, p.13
2. P. Guillery, The Small House in Eighteenth Century
London, A Social and Architectural History, 2004,
pp.21, 41, 43, 64. Figures 16, 22, 30, 32, 43
3. D. Morris and K. Cozens, Sailortown, 1600-1800,
2014, pp.9-10
4. MoLD, Port of London Authority Archive, Museum of
London Docklands, PLA/LDC/2/1/1, p.165
5. MoLD, PLA/LDC/2/1/1, p. 172; D. Morris and K.
Cozens, Sailortown, 1600-1800, 2014, pp.164-168
6. MoLD, PLA/LDC/2/1/2, p.117
7. MoLD, PLA/LDC/2/1/1, p.122
8. MoLD, PLA/LDC/1/3/1, p.53, 18 November 1803
9. MoLD, PLA/LDC/2/1/1, p.132
10. MoLD, PLA/LDC/2/1/1, p.152
11. Guillery, p.52
12. Guillery, p.64
13. MoLD, PLA/LDC/2/1/1
page 7
Shadwell after the creation of London Docks, from Horwood’s
map (1819)
Radical politics in the 1640s:
locating the Whalebone
Dorian Gerhold investigates a mysterious meeting
place in the seventeenth-century City.
The Levellers of the 1640s can fairly be described
as Britain’s first political party. They flourished
briefly from 1646 to 1649, following the defeat of
Charles I in the first Civil War, and were strongest
in London and parts of the New Model Army, but
were crushed by Oliver Cromwell and other army
leaders in 1649. Their wide-ranging aims, set out
most clearly in The agreement of the people (1647)
included the sovereignty of the people, a wider
franchise, equality before the law and religious
toleration. They campaigned using petitions,
pamphlets and meetings. The name was a hostile
one used mainly by their enemies, implying that
they sought to reduce everyone to the same level by
confiscating property.1
It is well known that the Levellers’ most important
meeting place was the Whalebone in London. Here,
for example, is the leading Leveller, John Lilburne,
setting out how he had sought to promote the
‘Large Petition’ in 1648:
“As soon as I and some other of my true and
faithfull comrades had caused some thousands of
that petition to be printed, I did the best I could to
set up constant meetings in severall places in
Southwark to promote the petition ... I laboured the
most I could to set up the like meetings in London;
and for that end, diverse cordial, honest, faithful,
and noun substantive [sic] English-men met openly
at the WHALEBONE behind the Exchange, where
by common consent, we chuse out a committee, or
a certaine number of faithful understanding men ...
to withdraw into the next roome, to forme a
method, how to promote it in every ward in the
City, and out-parishes, and also in every county in
the kingdome; and for the more vigorous carrying it
one [sic], we nominated ... two or three treasurers,
and a proportion of collectors, to gather up our
voluntary contributions.”2
Lilburne also stated that the ten or twelve
‘commissioners’ for promoting the petition, of which
he was one, “had their constant meetings on
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the evening
at the Whalebone; and the other three dayes at
Southwark, Wapping, and other places, with their
friends”.3
None of the many writings on the Levellers
identify the site of the Whalebone, and the purpose
of this note is to do so. Richard Overton, another
Leveller leader, wrote a pamphlet in 1649 referring
in its title to ‘the citizens of London usually meeting
at the Whale-bone in Lothbury behind the Royal
Exchange, commonly (though unjustly) styled
Levellers’.4 (The curious reference to ‘behind the
Royal Exchange’, which was several blocks away,
seems to indicate that anything further from the
Thames was ‘behind’.) In May 1649 Henry Ireton
and Arthur Haselrig were said to have ‘imployed
many spies at severall meetings (especially) at the
Whale-bone in Lothbury’, with the aim of having
Lilburne and others hung for treason.5 Fire Court
records discussed below place the Whalebone in St
Margaret Lothbury parish, and in Lothbury in that
parish on Ogilby and Morgan’s map is an alley
called
Whalebone
Court,
almost
opposite
Bartholomew Lane, the street which now abuts
west on the Bank of England (Fig. 1). This fixes the
approximate position.
In 1651 the Whalebone was let by Ozias
Churchman to William Spire for 21 years, and in
about 1664 his widow Ann Spire obtained an
extension of the lease from John Lawson, who had
obtained an interest in the property from Ozias’s
heir, Sir John Churchman.6 William Spire duly
appears in the parish rate lists from 1650 (slightly
before the lease) to 1664, and Ann Spire does so in
1665.7 William Spire was probably the man of that
name described as a citizen and cook in a deed of
1655.8 After the Whalebone was destroyed in the
Great Fire the Fire Court decided that, in return for
rebuilding it (at an estimated cost of £400), Ann
Spire’s term should be extended to 51 years from
1666 and her rent be reduced. The plan made
when Ann Spire had the foundations staked out in
page 8
Fig. 1. Part of Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1676, including
Lothbury and the Royal Exchange. The Whalebone is marked in
red. The alley heading north from the Whalebone was Whalebone
Court
page 9
January 1668 has not survived, but two plans
made in July and August 1667
for Thomas
Singleton, her neighbour to the west and north,
have (Figs. 2 and 3). They clearly relate to the same
property, though the measurements and shape
differ slightly, for reasons which are unclear. The
earlier one describes the site as being in Lothbury
‘behinde the Whalebon’, and indicates that the
Whalebone was on its east side. The later one refers
to Whalebone Court rather than the Whalebone.9
The Whalebone was therefore immediately west of
Whalebone Court, and Ogilby and Morgan’s map
shows that its upper floors continued over the
Court. It was a substantial building, with 12
hearths in 1662/63.10
Knowing that the Whalebone was the property
immediately west of and over Whalebone Court
means that the site can be identified easily on
Ogilby and Morgan’s map (Fig. 1) and on the ward
map of 1858.11 Using the latter the site can be
plotted on later Ordnance Survey maps. It was 40
Lothbury by 1858,12 and now forms part of 41
Lothbury,
an
office
block
which
was
the
headquarters of National Westminster Bank and its
predecessors for most of the twentieth century.13
The Whalebone was directly opposite Bartholomew
Lane, including the site of the main entrance to 41
Lothbury (Fig. 4). Lothbury was widened in the
nineteenth century and the Whalebone’s site
included part of what is now the pavement.
Whalebone Court was still so called in 1813, but
was Bank Chambers by 1835 and had gone by
1873.14
There is no indication in the Fire Court’s decision
of any change in the size of the Whalebone’s plot
after 1651. It is possible that it was more extensive
in the 1640s, as Whalebone Court, which passed
under it, seems to have been created at about that
time15 and the length of the lease obtained by John
Lawson (61 years) indicates a building lease. On
the other hand, the main purpose of Whalebone
Court was apparently to give access to an alley of
houses behind the Lothbury properties, so the
Whalebone may have lost only the space for the
passage, if anything. Though modern writers have
referred to it as an inn or a tavern, it seems to have
been neither of those things; its known occupants
were cooks rather than innholders or vintners.
The Whalebone can be traced back through the
poor rates to 1642. Francis Spire was the occupant
in the crucial years 1647 to 1649. His relationship
to William is unknown, and he does not feature in
the story of the Levellers, so why they chose to use
the Whalebone is unknown. Before him, in 1645-
46, the occupant was ‘Smith the cooke’, who may
have been the same as Walter Smith, the occupant
in 1642-43.16 After 1649 the Whalebone apparently
maintained a radical tradition. In 1662 the plotter
Figs. 2 and 3. Plans of the plot west and north of the Whalebone, drawn on 26 July (left) and 30 August (right) 1669
Thomas Tonge, a Fifth Monarchist, had meetings at
several places, including ‘the Whalebone behind the
Exchange’, and in 1664 it was said that ‘a council
of old Rumping members is held at Mr. Speers’, the
Whalebone, Lothbury’.17 The Cutlers’ Company
used the Whalebone in 1689,18 but that is the last
reference so far found.
– Dorian Gerhold
Notes
1.
See H.N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English
Revolution (1961); Pauline Gregg, Free-born John:
a biography of John Lilburne (1961); Andrew Sharp
(ed.), The English Levellers (1998).
2.
John Lilburne, An impeachment of high treason
against Oliver Cromwell and his son in law Henry
Ireton
Esquires
(1649),
pp.21-22
in
letter
to
Cornelius Holland. Capitalisation is modernised
here and italics removed.
3.
William Haller and Godfrey Davies (eds.), The
Leveller tracts 1647-1653 (1944), pp.98, 100.
4.
Richard Overton, The baiting of the great bull of
Bashan
(1649). There is a similar reference in the
full title of Richard Overton, Overton’s defyance of
the Act of Pardon (1649).
5.
Mercurius Pragmaticus, 8-15 May 1649.
6.
Philip Jones, The Fire Court, vol. 2 (1970), p.11.
7.
Edwin Freshfield (ed.), The vestry minute book of
the parish of St Margaret Lothbury (1887), passim.
Freshfield’s attempt to relate poor rate names to
properties seems to me to be incorrect on the north
side of Lothbury.
8.
LMA, CLA/023/DW/01/329, No. 22. This records
Spire’s purchase of a house formerly belonging to
the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s abutting on one
belonging to Ozias Churchman.
9.
Survey of building sites in the City of London after
the Great Fire of 1666, vol. 1 (LTS No. 103, 1967),
p.44; ibid., vol. 4 (LTS No. 98, 1962), ff. 174, 183.
10.
Matthew Davies et al (eds.), London and Middlesex
1666 hearth tax, British Record Society hearth tax
series, vol. 9 (2014), p.1761.
11.
LMA, COL/WD/03/026.
12.
It was No. 39 in 1835 (Freshfield, Vestry minute
book, plan of 1835).
13.
For the history of the site from 1834 to 1984, see
http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_399724_en.pdf.
14.
Horwood’s map; Freshfield, Vestry minute book,
plan of 1835; OS map of 1873.
15.
Freshfield, Vestry minute book, p.xxxv.
16.
Ibid., passim.
17.
William Hill, A brief narrative of that stupendious
tragedie
(1662), p.31; T.B. Howell, A complete
collection of state trials, vol. 6 (1816), col. 250;
Calendar of state papers domestic, 1663-64, p.566.
18.
Charles Welch, History of the Cutlers’ Company of
London, vol. 2 (1923), p.325.
page 10
Fig. 4. Detail from the Ordnance Survey map of 1873. The Whalebone is marked in red. The green line is the outline of the existing office
block known as 41 Lothbury