The 116th Annual General Meeting of the
London Topographical Society will be held on 6
July 2016 at the Great Hall, St Bartholomew’s
Hospital, West Smithfiled, at 5.45pm.
For details see the pull out section in the centre
of this Newsletter.
Contents
Notes and News ............................................ p.1
Catalogue of Parish Maps.............................. p.1
Anniversaries, Exhibitions and Events: ........ p.2
Guildhall Art Gallery, Visscher redrawn;
Unseen City
Capability Brown .......................................... p.2
Circumspice by Tony Aldous ........................ p.3
The London Record Society .......................... p.3
London on Film at the British Film Institute
by Ellen McGuinness and Mark Duguid ........ p.3
Surveying the City, John Britton’s London
Topography 1820-40 by Aileen Reid .............. p.6
Modern Living framed by the glory of gas
by David Crawford ........................................ p.7
The 116th Annual General Meeting:
Agenda, Minutes and Reports .................. p.i-iv
Victuallers of White Street, Southwark
by David Elis-Williams ................................ p.10
Reviews ...................................................... p.13
Bookshop Corner ........................................ p.19
Notes and News
Our
Society
continues
to
flourish
with
membership
of
around
1,200.
Our
next
publication, which will be available for members to
collect at the AGM, is London Plotted, Plans of
London buildings up to 1720,
a fascinating
collection assembled by Dorian Gerhard from a
variety of sources. It includes biographies of the
surveyors involved. Next year’s publication, jointly
with the Bodleian Library, will be London views
from the collection of Richard Gough; edited by
Bernard Nurse (for a preview see Newsletter No.
80). And for the year after ? – see below…
Catalogue of Parish Maps.
Work on the
Catalogue of London Parish Maps up to 1900
compiled in manuscript by the late Ralph Hyde is
proceeding apace. Containing the comprehensive
and meticulous 533 entries that Ralph recorded
some 40 years ago, it needs updating to reflect new
acquisitions and, above all, the advent of the
internet that enables the near-instant interrogation
of catalogues of distant and previously inaccessible
holdings.
A team of 18 members has been convened and
this task well underway. We so far have volunteers
for nearly every parish, who have agreed
individually or in a small team to work through the
listing for that parish, address any queries that
Ralph noted in his manuscript and check holdings
in the relevant local history library, the main
repositories (the British Library, National Archives
and London Metropolitan Archives) and on the
internet for other holdings. In addition Peter Barber
will contribute an introduction and Laurence
Worms will provide biographical notes on the
individual map-makers. Roger Cline has agreed to
act as sub-editor and Simon Morris is acting as
convenor of the group.
We are aiming to complete the revision work by
the end of 2016 and to be ready to produce an
interesting and well-illustrated catalogue for
publication by the Society in 2018. Further
volunteers are welcome, especially those with an
interest in South London and the City. Also – if any
member possesses a London parish map falling
within the scope of the project it would be most
helpful if they could contact Simon Morris (contact
details are on the back of this Newsletter).
Newsletter
Number 82
May 2016
Anniversaries, Exhibitions
and Events
Guildhall Art Gallery: Visscher Redrawn: 1616 –
2016 The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s
death is being commemorated by the display of the
famous 1616 engraving of London by Claes Jansz
Visscher, together with a new pen-and-ink version
by the artist Robin Reynolds. Reynolds’s single
drawing has been arranged to fit the Visscher
landscape, which stretches from Whitehall to St
Katharine’s Dock on four large plates. The new
drawing
includes
ingenious
references
to
Shakespeare’s 37 plays, three major poetic works,
and the sonnets. Until 20 November, part of a
programme of special events and exhibitions
marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s
death. For details see www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/
visscher and www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/shakespeare
400
While at the Guildhall Art Gallery, do not miss
Unseen City,
photographs by the celebrated
photographer Martin Parr, who has been the City of
London’s photographer-in-residence since 2013. A
memorably witty and affectionate record, capturing
the human aspect of the City’s ancient and modern
ceremonies.
Riots in Camden, An historical exhibition is
the current exhibition at Camden Local Studies
and Archives Centre, Theobalds Road (to 11
June). Perhaps it is a pertinent title. Enjoy the
spacious setting on the Library’s 2nd floor while
you can. The Local Studies centre is threatened
with a move to more cramped basement quarters
as part of the infamous cuts affecting libraries
throughout London. In Lambeth there has been
widespread local protest at the proposal to turn
three libraries into health centres, including the
Minet library, which is seeking a new home for its
archives.
Capability Brown in London The latest issue
(Spring
2016)
of
London
Landscapes,
the
Newsletter of the London Parks and Gardens
Trust, well-illustrated with numerous maps,
celebrates the work of the landscape gardener
Capability Brown, born three hundred years ago.
Recent research has identified no less than 42
sites in Greater London where Brown definitely or
possibly worked. An article by Chris Sumner and
Susan Darling draws together the string of
landscapes along the upper reaches of the
Thames: on the north side the Duke of
Northumberland’s Syon Park laid out by Brown in
1754-7, and across the river, Brown’s more
controversial work for the Royal Family in what
was later Kew Gardens. Here he swept away many
of the recent garden buildings erected for Queen
Caroline, and lowered her riverside terrace,
creating a pastoral river landscape linked with
Syon’s water meadows. Other articles throw new
light on sites elsewhere, now largely built over,
where Brown may have worked, including the lost
Fitzroy Farm in Highgate (discussed in London
Landscapes spring 2015), and Ealing Place in
South
Ealing.
An
impressive
number
of
exhibitions and study days are listed as part of
the Capability Brown Festival, including a
conference at Hampton Court on 6-8 June; see
further the website capabilitybrown.org
Open Garden Squares Weekend is on 18-19
June. Once again a wonderful opportunity to visit
220 ’secret, private and little-known’ London
gardens with a single ticket (cost £12). Details at
opensquares.org
Building a City: 350 years after the Great Fire.
A conference organised by the Heritage of
London Trust. Friday 17 June, Westminster City
Hall, 64 Victoria St, London SW1E 6QP. The
morning session is on the Great Fire and its
aftermath; the afternoon session is on Innovations
for London building – looking to the future.
Speakers include Dr Peter Bonfield, Adrian
Tinniswood, Charles Hind, Jon Greenfield, Philip
Davies, Dr Peter Catterall, and many others. For
further information and to book a place visit
www.heritageoflondon.org/
page 2
Detail of Robin Reynolds’ drawing, showing the brand new Tate
Modern extension
Fiona Woolf, Lord Mayor’ from the photograph by Martin Parr
London Record Society:
Please Support Us!
The London Record Society was founded in 1964,
largely on the initiative of William (Bill) Kellaway
who, having worked first at Guildhall Library and
then at the Institute of Historical Research, was
aware of the rich stores of records relating to
London (and not just the City of London) that
needed to be published and accessible (translated
where necessary) for researchers and all those
interested in the history of London.
Since then more than 50 volumes have been
published, ranging in date from the eleventh
century (Westminster Abbey Charters 1066-c.1214)
to the twentieth (The London Diaries of Gladys
Langford 1936-40). A full list of the Society’s
publications can be found on their website. The
volumes can be bought for £35 each but the
Society is urgently seeking new members who pay
an annual subscription of only £18 and receive a
volume (occasionally two volumes) every year. It is
these regular subscriptions that enable the Society
to edit and publish a volume of records every year.
All the editors and officers of the Society give their
work for free. If you would like to help them, and to
receive an annual volume, please contact: the Hon.
Membership Secretary, Dr Penny Tucker, Hewton
Farmhouse, Bere Alston, Devon PL20 7BW or at
MemberSecLRS@aol.com .
London Record Society website gives details of
their recent publications and other activities. This
includes conservation of the research notes – some
made a hundred years ago – for the VCH volumes
on Middlesex. These are now available for
consultation at the London Metropolitan Archives.
See further londonrecordsociety.org.uk .
The Annual General Meeting of the LRS will be
held at 6pm on Tuesday 28 June at Trinity
Congregational Church, St Matthew’s Road,
Brixton, London SW2 1NF (nearest tube, Brixton on
the Victoria Line). It will be followed at 6.45pm by
the launch of the Society’s 51st volume, The
Angels’ Voice. A Magazine for Young Men in Brixton,
London, 1910–1913, a fascinating insight into the
culture of suburban London on the eve of the First
World War. The volume’s editor, Alan Argent, will
talk about the magazine and the lives of the young
men who produced it. His talk will be followed by
wine and other refreshments. ALL ARE WELCOME,
INCLUDING NON-MEMBERS OF THE LONDON
RECORD SOCIETY.
– Caroline Barron
Chair London Record Society
c.barron@rhul.ac.uk
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
London on Film at the
British Film Institute
In 2015 the London Topographical Society awarded
a grant to support the British Film Institute’s (BFI)
film heritage project London on Film. Ellen
McGuinness and Mark Duguid explain the project
and appeal to LTS members for help in identifying
some of the subject matter.
In 2015 the London Topographical Society
awarded a grant to support the British Film
Institute’s (BFI) film heritage project London on
Film. The BFI, a charity governed by Royal
Charter, was established in 1933 to champion
moving image culture in all its richness and
diversity, for the benefit of as wide an audience as
possible, and to create and encourage debate. Our
objectives include expanding education and
learning opportunities and providing access to the
film collections held at the BFI National Archive.
In 2015 we launched London on Film as part of a
wider project, Britain on Film, which aims to make
British film heritage accessible to UK audiences by
digitising films and publishing them on our video-
on-demand platform, BFI Player (http://player.bfi.
org.uk/britain-on-film/). Audiences can navigate
their way through an interactive map, exploring
hundreds of films spanning well over a century and
covering every London borough.
London on Film showcases London’s film and
television heritage to tell a rich and potent story of
the capital’s people and places. Users can visit
locations where they and their families have lived
and worked, while getting a vivid sense of life in a
changing city. It is an accessible and immediate
way to explore London’s social and cultural
heritage – or just reminisce!
page 3
The Newsletter Editor welcomes suggestions from
readers for items in the Newsletter.
The deadline for contributions
to the November Newsletter is 16 October 2016.
For contact details see the back page.
Circumspice
Where is this? For the answer see p.13.
Two films already on BFI Player give a flavour of
the riches to be found:
London Street Scenes –
Trafalgar Square
(1910).
This majestic Edwardian panorama of Trafalgar
Square takes in the National Gallery and St
Martin-in-the-Fields, finishing at the start of the
Strand. Charing Cross Underground Station and
the
pedestrian
underpass
are
seen
under
construction, while the current site of South Africa
House (built in the 1930s) is occupied by a hotel.
Hoxton... Saturday July 3rd, Britannia Theatre
(1920)
A fascinating glimpse of the pull of the music hall
in this film showing crowds outside the Britannia
Theatre and around Shoreditch. On Old St, a no.
43 tram jostles with horse-drawn and motor
vehicles past the London Apprentice pub.
How the films are digitised
Digitising film is skilled, complex and time-
consuming work. The process begins with curators
selecting films for digitisation from the collections
of the BFI National Archive. Technical archivists
then inspect the Archive’s holdings to determine
the best source material for digitisation; we will
often hold several copies of a film, from ‘pre-print’
(e.g. negatives or ‘interpositives’) to finished
projection prints.
The materials are run through specialist scanners
which, in effect, photograph each frame. How long
this takes will depend on the length of the film and
the condition of the materials. Addressing defects
in the source can add considerable time and cost.
The output will be a digital file with a resolution of
1920×1080 pixels, the standard for HDTV.
Finally, a curator will contextualise the film for its
BFI Player audience. The objective is to enrich the
viewer’s experience by highlighting key features,
providing
background
information,
sharing
specialist insights, and placing the film in its
historical context.
Test your London knowledge
We hope that London on Film will engage
Londoners in exploring the history of
their city. And we hope they can teach us
more about the films, too. With this in
mind, we have chosen two films featuring
London locations that BFI curators have
not been able to identify. Can you help?
Both films can be viewed in full, free, on
BFI Player.
A
Quiet
Morning
(1955)
documentary about an ordinary family
Saturday in a (probably north) London
suburb, featuring several unidentified
locations: a large pond; a quiet, well-to-do
suburban street with large Tudorbethan
houses; and a bustling shopping street.
Cyclist Turning Right (1983) This
road safety film features two boys cycling
down an unidentified busy London street,
which
features
a
large
‘Bathroom
Discount Centre’.
If you recognise the locations or have any insight
into these images, or any of the other London films
featured on BFI Player please email Britain-on-
film@bfi.org.uk. Find more films to test your
London knowledge at http://player.bfi.org.uk/
london-enigmas .
The London Topographical Society is also
supporting the production of a London on Film
DVD. This will include films not available online, as
well as providing wider context on the subject with
specially-chosen extras and a detailed booklet. If
you’d be interested in sharing your knowledge with
us to create the DVD, please send an enquiry
email, explaining what you could bring to the
project, to the address above.
The unprecedented reach of this project has also
allowed us to launch our national fundraising
campaign to support the BFI National Archive and
our nation’s film heritage – Film is Fragile. Please
help us to ensure films like these are protected and
available for the public to view by supporting the
campaign.
More
details
at
www.bfi.org.uk/
filmisfragile.
– Ellen McGuinness and Mark Duguid
British Film Institute
page 4
‘A Quiet Morning’: The urban pond – could it be Whitestone pond,
Hampstead?
BFI’s digitised map showing parts of London covered by films
page 5
‘A Quiet Morning’: The suburban street – what may be a church
notice board is just visible in the hedge on the left
‘Cyclist turning right’: The Bathroom Discount Centre – it does not
seem to be the shop of that name now based in Fulham
‘Cyclist turning right’: What looks like an Indian restaurant is
visible next to the bus stop
‘Cyclist turning right’: The bus stop, serving routes 189 and 200
‘Cyclist turning right’: Four views of the same busy road
‘A Quiet Morning’: The suburban street
‘A Quiet Morning’: Next to Blacke & Cook Ltd grocers is the
entrance to ‘1 to 4 — Mansions’ (the first word is lost in shadow)
‘A Quiet Morning’:Another view of the same street with the Capitol
(cinema?) in view
Surveying the City: John Britton’s
London Topography 1820-40
A report of the Research Seminar by Stephen
Daniels, University of Nottingham, at the Paul Mellon
Centre, Bedford Square, 10 February 2016
John Britton (1771-1857) is one of those intriguing
nineteenth-century figures who embody the
transformation from the Georgian to the Victorian
world. He was a learned autodidact, an antiquary,
lecturer and topographer but also a dealer in books
and maps, a popularising publisher, a fixer and
relentless promoter of the Britton brand.
Although Britton was a Wiltshire man, and
published 35 volumes on the Beauties, Antiquities
and Cathedrals of Britain between 1801 and 1835,
he had been living a mildly rackety life in London
since the age of 16. It was on Britton’s ‘reformed
vision of topography’ as it applied to London that
the Mellon Centre’s seminar on 10 February
focused. There can be no more appropriate guide to
this complex figure than Prof. Stephen Daniels,
currently writing a ‘book-length study’ of Britton,
as his previous publications have ranged freely, in
a Britton-like manner, across the disciplinary
boundaries of art history, geography and history.
Despite his prolific output of books, Britton did
not have an easy time of it. The income from his
portfolio career was always precarious as the
Napoleonic Wars left the country in a state of
economic depression. By the same token, it also
allowed him in 1820 to acquire at a favourable
price the delightful little jewel-box of a house, 17
Burton Street, Bloomsbury, designed by Thomas
Cubitt, complete with miniature Stonehenge
(subject of one of Britton’s publications) in the
garden and an octagonal cabinet room inspired by
Nash’s saloon at Corsham Court. This served also
as the commercial showroom for his stock of maps,
prints, books and antiquarian knick-knacks, and
as venue for his literary salons. Britton never
underestimated his intellectual mission: in his first
autobiography (he wrote two) he is depicted at a
desk adorned with busts of Shakespeare and
William Camden. Among his clients was Sir John
Soane and it was Britton who published an
exhaustive catalogue of Soane’s collections,
procured for him the sarcophagus of Seti I and
organised the grand party to unveil it.
The key to Britton’s prolific output was
collaboration with artists, engravers, cartographers
and other writers, most notably with E.W. Brayley,
met when both were teenagers in a Clerkenwell
bookshop, but also with A. C. Pugin, George
Cattermole, Frederick Mackenzie, W. H. Leeds and
many others. Many of these associations ended
fractiously. Britton had a short fuse and financial
precariousness made him shifty and cheese-paring
over money: one engraver took his revenge with a
tiny inscription insinuated into the corner of a
plate: ‘A fine drawing spoilt by John Britton’.
Professor Daniels, while acknowledging Britton’s
trickiness, drew out his thoughtful ambivalence
about London’s exponential growth, the vast and
shape-shifting metropolis and the opposing pulls of
antiquity
and
modernity.
While
Britton’s
publications, especially with A. C. Pugin and
Brayley, provided a bedrock for the Gothic revival
in the mid century, and he was a pioneer in
campaigning for the statutory protection of historic
buildings, his Public Buildings of London (1825,
also with Pugin) was a celebration of metropolitan
improvement, of the benefits of technological
innovation. Nowhere is this ambivalence more
evident than in Britton’s attitude to the railway,
whose arrival in Norfolk he deprecated on
conservationist grounds, yet which he welcomed for
the way it enabled a man to cram more work into a
day. He published his London and Birmingham
Railway after he found the 20-year-old illustrator
John C. Bourne chatting to the men and making
meticulous drawings on the site at Euston.
Britton’s enthusiastic, facty text, coupled with
Bourne’s exquisite awe-struck drawings of this
newest of building types under construction,
depicted
like
the
decayed
remains
of
an
Ozymandias-type civilisation, encapsulate the
complexity of Britton’s outlook on past and present.
The 1830s saw a shift in antiquarian and
topographical publication, as steel engraving made
cheaper publication possible, a development
Britton applauded as diffusing knowledge to a
wider audience, with pamphlet-style publications.
There was to some degree a polarisation of
production with the rise also of luxury limited
editions, paid for by subscription. One Britton
publication that embodied these twin claims of
democracy and luxury was Britton’s Topographical
Survey of St Marylebone, a huge map expensively
engraved on copper by B. R. Davies and published
first in 1834, which Professor Daniels sees as his
most significant London publication. One might
question any claim for the Survey being at the
cutting edge of cartography – there is more on-the-
ground detail to be had from Rocque or Horwood –
but Daniels’ focus is more on Britton’s wider
interest in the map as an expression of the
municipal entity. This was a reformist political as
much as a cartographic celebration of this
‘immense city north of Oxford Street’, with a rental
value greater than Scotland, and yet for far too long
unrepresented
in
parliament,
a
‘colonial
dependency on Westminster’. The new railways
stand out on the map and around the edge are
vignettes of new churches but also the Diorama,
the Pantheon and our own godless college of UCL.
Britton’s career as a topographer was over by
1840 though his contribution was recognised with
a much-needed state pension in 1852. Britton
outlived most of those with whom he had fallen out
to be celebrated by a new generation, especially of
young architects (he was an early supporter of the
Institute of British Architects), such as George
Godwin, editor of The Builder. The questions at the
page 6
end of Prof Daniels’s very well received paper added
fine grain and amusing detail to the Britton story,
of his friendships, and how this ‘sprightly boy with
the wit and wisdom of a man’ used private
theatricals to move up in the world, supplementing
his income as performer, songwriter, actor and
reciter at Philip de Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon.
On one occasion he was booed off stage and
replaced by a performing dog. The only sadness of
the evening was that no publication date is set for
Professor Daniels’s book on Britton. I for one would
subscribe like a shot.
– Aileen Reid
Aileen Reid works for the Survey of London,
Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Modern Living
framed by the glory of gas
David Crawford explores the creation of some
surprising additions to the King’s Cross landscape.
Circular apartment blocks are a rarity. Building
three together in close proximity, on a tight
triangular plan, presents some complex design
challenges. Not the least of these is the risk of some
residents having outward views dominated by the
exteriors of their near neighbours’ homes.
But the format has proved to be an opportunity
as well as a constraint for the new Gasholders
residential complex currently rising on the north
bank of the Regent’s Canal, forming a striking
element within the 27 hectare King’s Cross Central
development (the largest mixed-use scheme within
single ownership to be developed within Central
London for 150 years).
In response to conservation criteria built into the
scheme’s masterplan, the 145 new homes sit within
the Grade II-listed hollow cast iron columns of a
linked ‘Triplet’ of circular guideframes originally
built to contain Victorian gasholders. A fourth
guideframe nearby (originally designated no. 08)
defines the new Gasholder Park open space. The
columns are joined horizontally by elegantly spare
and visually arresting wrought-iron lattice beams.
The Triplet, the only example of its kind in Britain,
was built in 1879-1880, close to King’s Cross
Station – south of its current site – to enable the
enlargement of three existing gasholders, erected
between 1864 and 1867 and designated as nos. 10,
11 and 12 in a once larger array, by making them
telescopic (ie vertically extendable). They could then
accommodate increased volumes of gas without the
need for any additional land. The new apartments
enclosed by the Triplet therefore play their part in
the preservation of some important survivors of
Britain’s Victorian industrial and engineering
history. The Buildings of England London 4: North
described the array in its original location as
‘unequalled as a townscape feature’ and ‘the most
impressive array of gasholder frames anywhere’.
Gasholders first emerged in the early Victorian
period to store town gas, made from coal, as fuel for
lighting streets and buildings prior to the spread of
electricity. The telescopic version invented in 1824,
which needed guideframes to control its operation,
made for greater efficiency.
By the early twentieth century, gasholders were
dominant features of the urban landscape.
Industry historian Brian Sturt comments: “There
were
over
1,000
gas
companies
before
nationalisation [in 1948]. Just about every town
had its own gasworks and the gasometer was the
central
focus.”
But
the
situation
changed
permanently with the early 1960s discovery of
natural gas in the North Sea and the consequent
development of new technology to support its
storage and long-distance distribution.
The original location of the Triplet, south of the
canal, reflected the fact that, by the mid-1850s,
King’s Cross had become a major industrial hub,
thanks to its good freight transport links. The
Regent’s Canal, completed in 1820, led the way,
becoming in turn available as an interchange with
the Great Northern Railway’s London terminus. This
opened in 1852, with nearby coal yards for holding
deliveries of the raw material needed for powering
locomotives as well as for supplying the Pancras
Gasworks. Eventually the largest in London, this had
become operational in 1824. It was built by the
Imperial Gas, Light and Coke Company, founded in
1821 and later amalgamated with the Gas Light and
Coke Company. The Imperial’s first consulting
engineer, Samuel Clegg, decided from the outset that
its works should be built where they could be
supplied with coal by barge, to reduce handling costs.
There was a readily-available site in the canalside
market gardens at St Pancras.
The Triplet was the work of the company’s
superintendent,
John
Clark.
The
unusual
interlinking of the guideframes, each sharing one
page 7
Site map: part of thet King’s Cross Developmenmt Area
column with its neighbours, was a space-saving
decision prompted by the pressure on land in an
area that was becoming increasingly busy. This
feature has contributed greatly to their interest
value for industrial archaeology, and to the case for
their preservation.
The
gasholders
became
an
immediately
identifiable landmark during the neighbourhood’s
industrial heyday, featuring in early photographs of
London, and in films such as the 1955 Ealing black
comedy The Ladykillers, which had scenes using
them as a towering backdrop.
Those that survived into the twenty-first century,
though decommissioned, were dismantled in 2001
to clear the way for running the Channel Tunnel
rail link into the neighbouring St Pancras Station.
Their guideframe components were stored locally
until 2011. Following the collapse of earlier plans
for the area, the 1996 decision to move the link’s
London terminus from Waterloo proved to be the
catalyst for large-scale regeneration of the King’s
Cross area, and for the preservation of the Triplet.
The developers, King’s Cross Central Limited
Partnership – the sole landowner, with mixed-use
scheme specialist Argent acting as asset manager –
see the group as a new landmark, greeting rail
passengers arriving from the Euromainland in a
‘reinvention of their original setting’. Their new role
has emerged within the context of the King’s Cross
Central masterplan, drawn up by architects Allies
and Morrison, and Porphyrios Associates. This
provided for their reconstruction at their new site,
across the Regent’s Canal, once the necessary work
on the foundations had gained clearance from any
historic constraints by Museum of London
Archaeology.
In 2005, King’s Cross Central staged a design
competition for the reuse of the Triplet, which
attracted 80 entries. The winners were architects
Wilkinson Eyre, previously laureates of the Royal
Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize – with
the only submission that featured a residential
solution.
Their scheme, now being realised, is of three
circular ‘drums’ of apartments blocks, each sitting
within one of the triplet guideframes. The drums
are of different heights – 27.5m, 31m and 40.5m –
to suggest the upward and downward movements
of the original gasholders in response to the
volumes of gas contained within them. On top are
roof gardens. The space at the intersection of the
three guideframes forms a sky-lit open courtyard,
with connecting bridge walkways. Each drum, in
turn, has its own internal sky-lit atrium, with the
lift lobbies that serve each floor grouped in areas
that would have allowed the least scope for
attractive external views. The wedge-shaped
apartments widen out from their entrances off the
atria in an internal geometry of spaces expanding
towards the outer face of each drum, with external
windows sited to allow each owner a glimpse, at
least, of a column that they can claim as part of
their view.
Chris Wilkinson, director of Wilkinson Eyre,
comments: “The circular nature of the structures
could seem difficult, but as soon as we began to
explore it we understood its possibilities. A slice
gives you the opportunity for every apartment to
feel expansive. You open the door and the interior
page 8
Shooting a scene for The Ladykillers
Architect’s early notes read (clockwise, from bottom left):
“possible restaurant; one unit pops out; trees; roof garden; link
walkways every 3-4 floors; entrance through courtyard garden”
Architect’s early note reads: “sliding folding perforated screens”
page 9
view opens up before you. Working within a circle
has resulted in really beautiful ideas”.
As the planning of the apartments proceeded, the
ironwork which was to surround them was
despatched, in kit-of-parts form, to Yorkshire-
based specialists Shepley Engineers, who had
previously worked on the restoration of the roof of
St Pancras Station. The two-year-plus restoration
of the columns involved the removal of up to 40
layers of paint, and the repair of cracks, rust and
other flaws. The main technical challenge was to
demonstrate that the guideframes could be re-
erected as a self-supporting, stand-alone structure,
inside which the apartment buildings could be built
without touching the historic ironwork. Wilkinson
Eyre considers the
juxtaposition of heritage
structure and contemporary architecture, with a
physical separation between the two, as an
important aesthetic quality. The proposed structure
was tested for tensile strength and computer-
modelled for its resistance to wind-loading The
results have shown that the reinstallation will not
need any external support from the new buildings.
Morwenna
Hall,
who
is
the
mechanical
engineering team leader with Argent (and also the
great-great-granddaughter of Isambard Kingdom
Brunel), explains that 3D scanning technology was
used to collect geometric data for constructing
accurate digital three-dimensional models of each
column before it was taken down. “If it had a three
degree lean, we’ve put it back just like that on the
new site.” She also discovered that the column
sections had originally been bolted together from
the inside – presumably by young children sent in,
in the same way as others were being sent up to
sweep narrow Victorian chimneys. “We had to work
out a way to put it all back together from the
outside while retaining the aesthetics.” Her
solution, applied to all the guideframes, uses metal
reinforcing collars that are strapped on top of the
original joint lines to secure adjacent sections
together. The collars sit slightly proud but are
painted the same colour, for visual continuity.
Gasholder Park is already open as a grassed
public open space designed by architects Bell
Phillips Associates for use during the day by local
residents, and by pupils at two new schools serving
the growing population of the regeneration zone. At
night and during weekends, it becomes a venue for
events that can accommodate up to 2000 people.
From its southern edge, paths lead down to the
Regent’s Canal towpath. Its realisation responds to
a 2004 Public Realm Strategy, aiming to create a
framework of routes and public spaces ‘for
everyone to enjoy... (with) lots of activities taking
place all year round’.
Not all are happy. ‘GasometerGal’ Sarah
O’Carroll, who is photographing all the country’s
remaining gasholders, feels that the ‘urban majesty’
of
the
group
is
somewhat diminished.
“If they’re not in-situ I
think you lose a sense
of sheer scale. The
integration into housing
and public parks in
King’s Cross shows how
we
can
successfully
preserve and reuse the
structure, but already
no. 08 is being dwarfed
by the new buildings
around it.”
She has a point. Even
the tallest apartment
block
is
nearly
6m
shorter
than
the
Plimsoll
Building
standing 16m away.
– David Crawford
Looking skywards through the central courtyard, where the three
guideframes join
Gasholder Park
VICTUALLERS OF WHITE STREET,
SOUTHWARK
Friars School, Bangor owned land in Southwark
between 1557 and 1895 (Fig. 1), and its archives
from this period are preserved in Gwynedd
Council’s Caernarfon Record Office. These and
London sources provide the background for research
to be published more fully elsewhere.1 This article
by David Elis-Williams is a taster, the story of
victualling houses and their successors on a short
stretch of White Street, over four centuries.
For most of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, part of Long Lane was known as White
Street, and for most of the period considered, two
alleys on the school land ran off the street.
Victuallers were generally established at the
corners of alley and street.
The first mention of the houses dates from the
1560s, when most of the land was divided into
small gardens, with tenements along the west side
and cottages along Long Lane. This was the fringe
of the built-up area: further away from the river
was marsh or open farmland. Local residents were
mostly unskilled working people. The White Hind
was at the corner of the western alley, then known
as White Hind Alley, and was leased to Walter
Bexley up to 1571, together with tenements in the
alley. In the course of a court case in 1577/8,
Maryon Huntingdon, looking back to the 1540s,
said these tenements had been let at a penny a
week. Victuallers were often landlords for more
than just the victualling house itself, and it was
common for the alley behind also to be rented out
by them. The name of White Hind Alley continued
through seventeenth-century leases, although
there is no more mention of the house itself.
At the other end of the property stood the Boar’s
Head. Present in the 1560s rentals, this house
continued for many years. John Sherbrock was
victualler at the Boar’s Head until his death in
1689. The Museum of London have a halfpenny
trade token issued by him, bearing the image of a
Boar’s Head, giving the address of Long Lane:
‘White Street’ had not yet come into use. He may
also be the John Sherbrooke paid for stationing
soldiers in 1679. The Boar’s Head continued into
the early eighteenth century, with Jacob Meares
the victualler in 1709-13.
Another victualling house, the Blue Anchor, kept
by Edward Reighnolds between 1705 and 1713,
was recorded inside Boar’s Head Alley, where many
seamen and their families lived. They must have
been a thirsty lot, as a third house, the Sheers,
opened its doors under Abraham Simpson in 1703.
He was followed in 1708 by William Gore, a nephew
of Walter Gore, who had taken a long lease on all of
the school land, which William was later to inherit.
After his death in 1718 his widow remarried, to
James Clifford, another victualler, who briefly kept
the Sheers. A complex legal case involving the
terms of Walter Gore’s will led to them losing
possession of both the lease and the victualling
house. It passed through Josiah Whiteley, then his
widow, to William Smith and by 1768 was called
the Bull.
The Boar’s Head and the Sheers both fronted on
to the street, now White Street, on opposite corners
of the alley, and co-existed for over a decade. The
Sheers became dominant, and the alley became
Sheers Alley, shown on Rocque’s 1746 map, and
the location given in directories for a Baptist
Meeting House at the end of the alley, established
in 1695 and continued until 1765, when
Methodists took over.
Meanwhile, at the western end, White Hind Alley
had been renamed Bangor Court, although often
appears as New Alley in official records. A new
victualling house, the Fox, had opened at the
former White Hind site. Richard Fendall was a son
of a father of the same name, who farmed at the
Grange in Bermondsey, the family commemorated
in a street name today. The son was established at
the Fox by the 1740s; in 1751, he gave a
testimonial in advertisements for ‘Viper Drops’,
“having been much afflicted with Colics and
Disorders in his bowels, Gripings, Swimmings and
Giddings in the head”. The drops may not have
been all that effective, for he died in 1753, leaving
everything to his widow, Sarah. Living there at the
time of her death in 1765 was James Bues, Sarah
Fendell’s sister’s son, and the Fox transferred to
him. Bues was running the Fox in July 1768
when a fire at the tallow chandlers’ shop across
the alley took down all that side, and damaged the
Fox a little. In the aftermath, the school relet the
area, and Bues took on a lease comprising the Fox
and the whole of the eastern side of the alley.
After Bues’s death, the Fox again passed down
the female line, the lease and the licence together
inherited by his daughter Hannah. Her husband
William Allen was a line and twine spinner who
then established his workshop just behind the
Fox: this seems to have been his business, while
Hannah did the victualling. Also behind the Fox
was a Skittle Yard, providing some recreation for
its customers.
page 10
Fig. 1 Outline of Friars School land and sites of victuallers,
superimposed on present-day map