Newsletter No 80 May 2015_20pp

The 115th Annual General

Meeting of the

London Topographical Society

will be held on Monday 6 July

2015 in the Cadogan Hall at

5 Sloane Terrace, SW1

for details, see pp. i-iv

in the centre of this Newsletter

Contents

2015 publications and our editor ..................p.1

Ann Saunders, an appreciation

by Patrick Frazer ............................................p.2

Rescuing Tallis ..............................................p.3

Notes and News..............................................p.3

Exhibitions and Events ..................................p.3

Bonaparte and the British

by Sheila O’Connell........................................p.4

Paper Peepshows, a special offer

by Ralph Hyde ..............................................p.5

Changing London ..........................................p.6

The Gough Collection in the Bodleian Library

by Bernard Nurse ..........................................p.7

Using Livery Company Records

at Guildhall Library by Dorian Gerhold ........p.10

A Question of Gauge; the Blackwall Tunnel

by David Crawford ......................................p.11

Remembering Dr Salter by Tony Aldous ......p.13

Dancing on the Roof of St Paul’s

by June Swann and Ann Saunders ..............p.15

Circumspice ....................................p.3 and p.15

Reviews........................................................p.16

2015 publications and our Editor

This year’s publications, which will be ready for

collection at the AGM, will be the last to be

produced by our Hon. Editor, Ann Saunders, before

her well-deserved retirement. There will be a

presentation to Ann at the AGM and an

appreciation of her work will be found below. If any

members would like to contribute or to send their

good wishes please write your message on a card

(or sheet of paper not larger than A5) which can be

included in a presentation scrapbook, to reach the

Hon. Treasurer, Roger Cline, Flat 13, 13 Tavistock

Place, London WC1H 9SH, before 6 June.

This is the year for another volume of the Record

which, as seasoned members will know, is

published roughly every five years. Volume 31, (LTS

publication no.176) will be a bumper number. Our

editor has somehow found time to contribute two

essays demonstrating the breadth of her interests –

on the fiasco of the Triumphal Arches prepared for

King James I and VI in 1604, and on Willan’s

Farm, Regent’s Park. A galaxy of distinguished

scholars

offer

contributions

ranging

from

information on the metropolis gleaned from

medieval legal records, to discussion of Henry VII’s

almshouses, Inigo Jones’s ceilings and Roman

baroque in London. There are essays on London

homes of eighteenth century MPs, and stories of

individual sites in the City. Greater London is not

forgotten, with new evidence about the Chiswick

enclosure map, and an account of the Finchley

obelisk to the radical leader Major Cartwright.

Surely something to interest everyone. And there

will be the extra treat of an additional publication,

a facsimile of Richard Morris’s 1830 panorama of

Regents Park, with an illustrated essay placing it in

its historical context, for which we are indebted to

our member Geoffrey Tyack.

Anyone wishing to be reminded of past

publications will find a complete list

on our

website, the section dealing with the Record

includes contents lists for all the past issues.

Observant members may notice some changes to

this Newsletter. Following discussion after the last

AGM, with advice from our helpful printers, we are

experimenting with a paper that is lighter in both

weight and colour, in the hope that it will benefit

illustrations and keep postage costs down. The

material for the AGM is printed on an inset of four

pages in the centre of the Newsletter.

Newsletter

Number 80

May 2015

Ann Saunders – an appreciation

Ann Saunders has been Hon. Editor of the London

Topographical Society for a remarkable 40 years.

During that time she has, through her energy,

enthusiasm

and

commitment,

been

largely

responsible for steering the Society to its current

strong position.

Ann was part of the new team that took over

during and after a very difficult couple of years that

culminated in 1974 with the death of Marjorie

Honeybourne, who had combined the roles of Hon.

Treasurer and Hon. Editor. Ann (who had been only

recently co-opted on to the Council) became Hon.

Editor, joining Peter Jackson (Chairman), Stephen

Marks (Hon. Secretary) and Anthony Cooper (Hon.

Treasurer).

When I rather timidly volunteered to take over the

vacant position of Publications Secretary in 1978, I

found that I had joined the nicest and most

interesting group of people you could hope to meet

and Ann kept a motherly eye on the Council, the

membership and the general wellbeing of the

Society. Going to Ann and Bruce’s house for supper

of shepherd’s pie may not have had quite the social

cachet of Jeffrey Archer’s, but I am sure it was

much more enjoyable.

At the heart of Ann’s achievement, and at the

heart of the Society, are its publications. Since

becoming editor in 1975, Ann has overseen the

publication of nearly 60 books, maps, plans, views

and other items. During that time she has

shouldered a considerable part of authorship as

well, together with Ralph Hyde and Peter Jackson

in particular.

Ann would bring to Council meetings a

cornucopia of ideas for publications, often

stretching for years into the future. Her amazing

range of contacts has not only filled the five-yearly

Record with articles but also come up with exactly

the right person to write the necessary introductory

text for maps and the like. She has also been very

successful at raising funds from City Companies

and other charitable bodies towards the cost of

publications. This has helped make otherwise too-

expensive publications possible, or allowed more

and better illustrations.

Some of the publication projects took many years

to realise, but Ann worked tirelessly to bring them

to fruition, often having to badger authors to meet

agreed deadlines, or source the necessary

illustrations herself. Three projects stand out in my

memory as having required immense tact, patience

and hard work: the LCC Bomb Damage Maps book,

Felix Barker and Peter Jackson’s Pleasures of

London and, most recently, Peter Barber’s London –

A History in Maps.

In principle, the Society concentrates on

publications that would not attract a commercial

publisher. In spite of this, many have proved to be

highly profitable, starting with the Rhinebeck

panorama. Its astonishing overnight success

triggered

a

virtuous

circle of bigger budgets

financing

better

publications, attracting

more

members

and

permitting even more

lavish productions.

Ann’s contribution has

gone far beyond her

editorial

role.

Her

contacts have helped

people the Council with

useful

and

effective

officers. And then there

is

the

AGM,

which

seems to me to encapsulate Ann’s skills and

personality. Over the years she has helped to

identify, and negotiate our way into, a series of

wonderful locations – who can forget St James’s

Palace, Freemasons’ Hall, the Banqueting House or

Mansion House? In my days as Hon. Secretary, she

would always come with me on reconnaissance visits

to possible places to check their seating capacity,

catering possibilities, environment and prices.

But that is nothing to the day itself when many

hundreds of publications have to be delivered by

the printer precisely on time to the chosen location

and distributed to the expectant members. With the

exception of one year, when the vital consignment

was held up by the Customs, Ann’s planning has

always triumphed.

The AGM has surely done more than anything to

turn us from being a just a learned society into

something much more like a happy family. Our

annual get-together is above all about fun, with a

remarkably high proportion of the membership

crammed, as often as not, into an interesting

building with free food and drink, especially lavish

in the days of Joyce and Donald Cumming, as well

as talks and the annual publication(s) to take home

and enjoy. Ann’s regular calls to the membership

for contributions of cakes and other goodies were a

regular feature of the Newsletter until numbers

coming to the AGM started to swamp the ability of

individuals to cope. Nevertheless, the AGM is

always notable for the enthusiastic way in which

members join in to help distribute publications, as

well as food and drink if required.

Ann’s huge contribution to the LTS is just one part

of a long career of scholarly research into London’s

history, going back to the days when, as Ann Cox-

Johnson, she worked at St Marylebone Library. This

and her PhD thesis led to a book on Regent’s Park

(1969), and a study on the Regent’s Park villas.

Revision of London volumes in Arthur Mee’s King’s

England series (1972 and 1975) was followed by her

masterly and monumental Art and Architecture of

London (1984). The City of London has been a

special interest: two books on St Paul’s cathedral

(2001, 2012), joint authorship of The History of the

Merchant Taylors’ Company and contributions as

well as editorial work on the comprehensive LTS

volume on The Royal Exchange (1997).

page 2

Ann was Hon. Editor of the Costume Society from

1967 to 2008. In recognition of her work, she has

been become an honorary fellow of University

College London, was elected a liveryman of the

Worshipful Company of Horners, and, in the 2002

New Year honours, was awarded an MBE as

historian and as Hon. Editor of both societies.

What stands out is that Ann is a warm and kindly

person, who sees the very best in both people and

places. I have been lucky to work with her over

three decades – and the Society is lucky to have

had her as its editor for even longer.

– Patrick Frazer

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

Notes and News

We are sad to report the recent deaths of two of our

members, our Vice President Elspeth Veale, and

Ken Gay, President of Hornsey Historical Society.

There will be obituaries in the November

Newsletter.

Rescuing Tallis LTS members can enjoy their

own well-produced copy of John Tallis’s London

Street Views (1838-40, with later additions), which

we published in 2002, but the condition of the

original editions is another story. Guildhall Library

has one of the finest collections of these, including

some rare ‘variants’; it is believed to be the only

complete collection available in a public library.

Some of the Tallis collection is in original parts

each retaining the original wrapper. Many of these

parts require conservation and stabilisation as well

as improved boxing, and cannot be shown to the

public. The LTS has made a grant to employ a

conservation specialist to carry out the work

necessary. The aim is to achieve a collection that

can be made available to the public for consultation

in the library and be suitable for exhibition. The

progress of the conservation work will be

documented on the website with ‘before’ and ‘after’

images, and we hope to report on progress in a

future Newsletter.

Transforming

Topography

is

the

new

(provisional) name for a website being developed by

the British Library as part of its online learning

programme. A new post of research curator is being

created to work on this, focusing especially on

King George III’s Topographical Collection. (See

British Museum website for more details.)

The Sir John Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn

Fields is completing the refurbishment of its second

floor, returning it from offices to Soane’s original

arrangement, a highly ingenious use of limited

space, with his private suite of bedroom and

bathroom at the back, and his model room in the

front room, all authentically recreated with the help

of detailed contemporary records. Public access will

be possible this summer; for details see the Soane

website (Soane.org). There will be an article on the

subject in the next Newsletter.

Exhibitions and Events

London Squares Weekend. 13-14 June. A

wonderful opportunity to explore the variety of

London’s open spaces, including many not usually

accessible to the public. Tickets £10. See www.

opensquares.com .

London Parks and Gardens Trust. Summer

lecture, Wednesday 24 June, 6.30pm. Twenty-one

years and 150 million. The National Lottery’s

Impact on London Parks and Gardens. The

Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road SE1 7LB.

See also the LPGT website for details of their

guided walks.

Open House London

Weekend of 19 –

20

September 2015. Now in its 23rd consecutive year

of offering free public access to buildings and

places of interest that are normally closed to the

public or that charge for entry.

Since 2011, it has been including engineering as

well as architectural structures, in conjunction

with the Institution of Civil Engineers. In 2014, it

succeeded in opening 865 places to visit. The 2015

programme will be available in August.

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

Circumspice

How well do you know London? Where is this?

Answer on p.15

page 3

Miscellanea

The Guildhall Art Gallery has celebrated fifteen

years in its purpose-built gallery next to Guildhall

with a rehang of its rich collection of Victorian

paintings, a special interest of Sonia Solicari,

principal curator since 2010. These have been

reorganised under themes: Home, Beauty, Faith,

Leisure, Work, Love, Imagination – groupings which

underline their thought-provoking, often sternly

moral messages, and enjoyably demonstrate the

story-telling abilities as well as the artistic skills of

their creators. There is also a section on London

topography; from January to April this was

amplified by a special exhibition celebrating 120

years of Tower Bridge. Early designs, and views of

the bridge under construction contrasted with early

twentieth century paintings by marine artists, who

included the bridge as a stately backdrop to the

then busy shipping scenes in the Pool of London;

more recent works focused on the bridge as an icon

for London, ending with a specially commissioned

work by the Ecuadorian New Expressionist Mentor

Chico. For images see City of London Guildhall

gallery website.

Canaletto: Celebrating Britain 14 March 2015 – 7

June 2015

Not in London, but with much about London.

This exhibition is at Compton Verney Gallery, a

country house in Warwickshire well worth a visit. It

is the first time that these magnificent paintings

and drawings by Canaletto have been brought

together,

including

examples

from

private

collections, to provide an overview of the artist’s

work created during his visit to Britain between

1746 and 1755. Canaletto’s vision of London, with

its emphasis on the Thames, was a significant

influence on later topographical artists; his topical

mid-eighteenth century subjects included the old

and new Horseguards and the brand new

Westminster Bridge.

Sculpture

Victorious,

Tate

Britain

25

February – 25 May 2015

London’s public monuments and Victorian

buildings demonstrate that a desire for both

ornament and personal commemoration played an

important part in the new industrial age. This

display is most enlightening about the new

techniques and materials which helped to make

sculpture a significant ingredient of Victorian art.

The Great Exhibition was an influential catalyst.

Both Gothic and classical styles were disseminated

by means of measuring machines which enabled

speedy reproductions in different sizes, creating a

market for small scale copies. Electroplating made

it possible to simulate bronze (the Magna Carta

barons in the House of Lords are of zinc coated

with a copper solution). The exhibition includes

extraordinary virtuoso works in all manner of

materials, ranging from Minton’s colourful majolica

elephant to the majestic black and white figure of

Dame Alice Owen by George Frampton, from the

school which she founded, created from marble,

alabaster, bronze paint and gilding.

Bonaparte

and

the

British:

prints

and

propaganda in the age of Napoleon. British

Museum,

5

February

–

16

August

2015,

accompanied by a catalogue by Tim Clayton and

Sheila O’Connell (256 pp., 221 colour illustrations),

£25.

Our member Sheila O’Connell, curator of the

Napoleon Exhibition at the British Museum, explains

its special relevance for London.

It may seem strange to be mentioning an

exhibition

about

Napoleon

in

the

London

Topographical Society Newsletter. The Emperor

General never made it to Britain, let alone to

London, although he assembled armies of invasion

on the French coast of the Channel in 1798 and in

1803. But the exhibition – mainly drawn from the

resources of the British Museum’s Department of

Prints and Drawings – isn’t only about Napoleon, it

is also about the London printmakers and

publishers who produced enormous quantities of

visual propaganda to denigrate him and to boost

morale at home.

There are views of London in the exhibition, but

they have no claims to accuracy. The large cheap

etching showing Nelson’s funeral procession

approaching St Paul’s should not be taken as

evidence of the streetscape in January 1806. In

his view of William Bullock’s London Museum,

Piccadilly, George Cruikshank’s concern was not

to give a record of the interior of this fascinating

establishment, but rather to show the London

populace swarming like bees over Napoleon’s

carriage captured after Waterloo. Something

closer to truth is probably to be seen on two

pieces of transfer-printed pottery, both based on

the same print, showing an imaginary scene

where ‘Little Boney’ stands outside the shop of

Samuel William Fores on the corner of Piccadilly

and Sackville Street pointing at a print of Bank of

England displayed in the window and asking a

large armed volunteer if he can have it. It is likely

that the shop bears at least some resemblance to

Fores’s.

If the exhibition does not provide images of

London, its topography is, however, reflected in the

workings of the print trade: Hannah Humphrey

selling sophisticated prints by James Gillray to the

elite from her shop in St James’s Street; Piercy

Roberts and Thomas Tegg selling cheaper products

to a wider market in the City. In the Strand

Rudolph Ackermann’s print-shop window displayed

spectacular transparencies –

painted cloths

illuminated by gas-light. A print in the exhibition

reproduces a transparency celebrating Napoleon’s

defeat at Leipzig in 1813 and another representing

his fall after Waterloo where General Blücher drives

him off as Wellington escorts Louis XVIII to the

French throne.

page 4

page 5

Prints in the exhibition emerge from a thriving

industry and the booming market encouraged

many newcomers. John Brydon of the Looking-

Glass and Print Warehouse, Charing Cross, was a

respected carver and frame-maker, as well as

offering to furnish funerals, but he invested in the

production of a series of fine prints of the battle of

the Nile based on drawings by a naval officer who

was present; Stampa & Son of Leather Lane, also

manufacturers of picture-frames and looking-

glasses, went down market with a number of cheap

mezzotints commemorating the death of Admiral

Nelson at Trafalgar. There were also young men for

whom artistic careers began with Napoleonic

subjects: John Cawse produced lively caricatures

for Fores, and went on to exhibit portraits at the

Royal Academy for 40 years; John Lewis Marks,

who shows a cheery Napoleon sailing to France

from Elba in 1815 accompanied by Death and the

Devil, became a publisher in his own right in Long

Lane, Smithfield. Eventually most successful of all

was Charles Eastlake who became President of the

Royal Academy and the first Director of the

National Gallery: Eastlake’s career got off to a fine

start in late July 1815 when he was among the

crowds who rowed out to see the former emperor

standing on the deck of the Bellerophon

on

Plymouth Sound as he awaited exile to St Helena

(he was not allowed to set foot on shore). The

portrait that Eastlake painted from sketches drawn

on the spot earned him 1,000 guineas and he was,

furthermore, astute enough to publish a print

based on it; the profit allowed him to spend several

years studying and cultivating influential patrons

in Rome.

Paper Peepshows

Ralph Hyde introduces a new book on a fascinating

collection, available as a special offer to members.

Peepshows were introduced in the mid-eighteenth

century by Martin Engelbrecht in Augsburg. They

called for a long wooden cabinet designed for the

purpose, incorporating a viewing lens and

sometimes a mirror. In the 1820s peepshows made

entirely of paper appeared on the scene more or

less at the same moment in Vienna, London and

Paris. The clumsy cabinet was no longer needed.

The new peepshow was equipped with paper

bellows so it could be expanded or contracted in a

trice. Paper peepshows were light; they were

Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), Transparency Exhibited at Ackermann’s Shop on 27 November 1815, published by Rudolph

Ackermann, 27 November 1815. Hand-coloured etching; 281mm x 370mm. © Trustees of the British Museum, 1868,0808.8288 (BM Satires

12621)

comparatively cheap and they fitted neatly into the

pocket.

The format lent itself to a wide variety of subjects:

to coronations and to state visits and funerals, to

pleasure gardens, to trips up river and to the

ceremonial openings of new railways, to distant

views of cities and to tourist landmarks. They were

produced universally. New ones are still appearing

today. As far as London is concerned, dozens were

published of the Thames Tunnel and the Crystal

Palace, but there are also peepshows of St Paul’s

Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Egyptian Hall,

Regent’s Park, the London Missionary Society’s

museum in Blomfield Street, Vauxhall Gardens, the

Adelphi Theatre, Fleet Street, Tobacco Dock, and so

on.

Over the last 40 years, our member Jonathan

Gestetner and his wife Jacqueline have collected

370 of these paper peepshows. Theirs is an

astonishingly

and

uniquely

comprehensive

collection. All have now been painstakingly

catalogued by Ralph Hyde. The resulting profusely

illustrated and fascinating volume, which also tells

the history of paper peepshow phenomenon, will be

appearing at the end of March 2015. Towards the

close of the year the Gestetners’ peepshow

collection will be gifted to the V&A.

This book will be selling for £45. For LTS members

copies are available at a special discounted rate of

£37.50, free p&p in the UK (overseas rates on

request). To order, please write to Antique

Collectors’ Club Ltd, Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham,

Woodbridge IP12 4SD, quoting LTSPEEP.

Bishops’ Tombs at Fulham

If you have ever approached Putney Bridge from

the north (built in the 1880s. replacing an older

timber bridge) you may have looked down on the

churchyard of All Saints Fulham. This was the

church closest to Fulham Palace, the Bishop of

London’s country seat (which can be reached by a

pleasant walk along the riverside). Bishops of

London are known to have been buried in the

churchyard from the fourteenth century onwards;

east of the chancel is fine sequence of Bishops’

chest tombs, ranging in date from the later

seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. These

tombs are now in need of conservation; plans are

afoot to repair them as part of a larger project to

welcome more visitors to the churchyard and raise

awareness of its historic interest.

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

Changing London

The western part of London Wall, laid out after

heavy wartime destruction, used to be one of the

most eloquent examples of the City’s post-war

aspirations: sleek rectangular curtain-walled

towers in a spaced-out march beside a new broad

traffic route, with quite an exhilarating raised

pedestrian walk which took you from Moorgate

station, past an aerial view of the isolated fragment

of the medieval Elsing Spital and battered stretches

of the ancient city wall, to the Museum of London

nestling in the angle of London Wall and Aldersgate

Street. All that changed when the overweening bulk

of Alban Gate (1988-92 by Terry Farrell) straddled

the road way and blocked vistas from all directions.

Since then the 1960s towers have been remodelled

or demolished, much of the area south of the road

rebuilt, and at time of writing there is a vast hole

between Alban Gate and Moorgate, in preparation

for London Wall Place, being developed by

Brookfield Multiplex (architect: Make).

page 6

London Wall, plan for London Wall Place

The deep basement is for a 12 storey tower, to be

completed in 2017, already let to Schroders plc.

The second larger phase, further east, will step up

to 16 storeys, with a series of roof gardens. The

height is less than that of the 1960s towers but the

effect will be of denser buildings. (For more details

on the new buildings see the website London Wall

Place.)

Between the two blocks, at ground level, will be a

new St Alphege Garden, incorporating two ancient

relics. The name recalls a medieval parish church

which lay north of the present London Wall and

disappeared after 1540; a garden was made in its

churchyard in 1872, and remodelled in the 1950s,

beside a fragment of the City Wall. The ruin which

lies further south is the fourteenth-century

crossing tower remaining from the church of Elsing

Spital, founded as a hospital for the blind by

William Elsing in 1331 and later an Augustinian

Priory. After 1540 its church became the parish

church, was rebuilt incorporating the old crossing

tower and renamed St Alphege (or Alphage, sources

differ). The tower alone survived the war, preserved

rather uncomfortably beside the upper walkway.

The new garden is a welcome opportunity to

provide a unified setting for the two ruins.

East and West of the City. The walk from

Moorgate to the Museum of London may remain

only as a memory. The success of the campaign to

preserve the Smithfield General Market (see

Newsletter no.79) is followed by the rumour that

the Museum of London may become a future

occupant. The proposal is welcomed in principle by

the Victorian Society, as it could both secure the

future of the buildings and increase the Museum’s

visitor numbers. If the Museum moved away from

London Wall, it would mark a departure from the

post-war ideal of integrating the new with an

understanding of the past in the heart of the City.

One can imagine Smithfield, together with

neighbouring Clerkenwell, becoming a consciously

preserved ‘historic’ neighbourhood on the eastern

fringe, while elsewhere, the towers of Mammon are

allowed to march relentlessly onwards, encroaching

ever further on Shoreditch and Spitalfields.

Currently debate is focused on the area NE of the

City (in Tower Hamlets and Hackney) around the

site of Bishopsgate Good Yard. A passenger station

was first built here in 1840, replaced by a major

goods station opened in 1881. The site lay semi-

derelict after a fire destroyed the station in 1964,

and was cleared in 2003-4. The remaining

structures are the grand entrance gates and parts of

a long viaduct. A proposal by Hammerson plc and

Ballymore would develop the area with 600,000m2

of offices and 1450 homes, including six towers of

28-55 storeys, drastically changing the character of

the area. Opposition is being spearheaded by the

youthful and energetic East End Preservation

Society, founded 2013 – see their website for more

details (facebook/eastendpsociety).

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

The Gough Collection

in the Bodleian Library:

Illustrated London

Our member Bernard Nurse, formerly Librarian to the

Society of Antiquaries, has been working on the Gough

Collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He provides

a preview of some of the topographical material on

London, which he is preparing for publication.

The collection on British topography which the

antiquary Richard Gough (1735-1809) bequeathed to

Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is one of its

greatest treasures. Gough had the passion “to know

all that related to [his native country’s] topographical

antiquities”; he had the wealth to acquire as much

source material as he wanted; and he had a “zeal to

serve the public” through publications of which

Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (1786,1796)

is probably the best known today. He recognised the

value of visual recording of past monuments and

commissioned the most accurate draughtsmen to

illustrate his publications. Probably only the King

George III’s Topographical Collection, now in the

British Library, exceeds the Gough collection in

importance and extent.

However,

such

varied

material,

including

manuscripts,

drawings,

printed

books

and

engravings, copperplates and tapestry maps

presents immense difficulties of access. Printed

books are on the university’s online library catalogue

(SOLO); the card catalogue of maps has been

digitised and is now available on the library website,

manuscripts are listed in the published and digitised

summary catalogues. Individual prints and drawings

are not easy to trace as they are mostly kept in large

albums or folders with only a nineteenth-century

manuscript list as a general guide or separate lists

by scholars such as Jerome Bertram of images of

church monuments as public catalogues.

The London items form a significant part of the

whole, but one that is often overlooked by

researchers who are more familiar with the rich and

page 7

London Wall, looking east from Alban Gate

increasingly accessible holdings of London libraries

and record offices. As part of its outreach

programme, the Bodleian Library is keen to make

the contents of this collection better known to

scholars and the general reader alike. A large-

format publication featuring about 120 images of

London from the collection and accompanying text

is planned for publication in 2016. Gough knew

London well: his family home was in Enfield, with

another house in the City. Although he complained

about the “spread of our overgrown metropolis”, by

today’s

standards,

the

built

up

area

was

comparatively small in his lifetime, and examples

will be drawn from the present Greater London to

contrast the town and surrounding countryside in

the eighteenth century. A prolific letter writer, most

of Gough’s correspondence concerns antiquarian

research for publications, but occasionally he would

write to a close friend with eye witness accounts of

London events. These included reports of crime in

Enfield, fires in the City and on London Bridge, the

Gordon Riots, the effects of extreme weather

conditions in the 1760s, opening the tomb of

Edward I in Westminster Abbey and providing help

for a parish apprentice misused by his master. It is

proposed to add transcripts of these in an Appendix.

Maps and plans

Gough was particularly interested in collecting maps

and plans. In 1774, he purchased the famous ‘Gough

Map’, named after him, and recently re-dated to

c.1375; it is the earliest to show the whole of Britain

in geographically recognisable form and the first to

show routes and distances between settlements. The

London vignette is the most elaborate of all. One of

the few new publications of a printed map of London

in the first half of the seventeenth century was that

sold by the Dutchman Cornelis Danckerts in

Amsterdam about 1633. In the Gough collection is a

unique version from around 1650, which extends the

map’s coverage further west with manuscript

additions. From 20 years later is the unusual

coloured plan with pictorial elevations of Nevill’s

Court, Fetter Lane, which Dorian Gerhold has

researched for the forthcoming volume of the London

Topographical Record.

Drawings

One unexpected find was a copy from c.1743 of an

unpublished lost colour version of the celebrated

mortuary roll commemorating the burial of Abbot

Islip in 1532. The roll shows the earliest views of the

interior of Westminster Abbey. Also in the Gough

collection, are over 30 drawings of monuments in the

abbey attributed to the artist and poet William Blake,

c.1774-7, when he was apprenticed to the engraver

James Basire. There are numerous other views of

street scenes, country houses and churches etc but

most unfortunately are undated and unsigned. Some

record unusual details such as the notice in

Canonbury warning the public that deadly “mentraps

and spring guns are placed in these grounds”. One of

a Gothic revival cottage in Belsize Park from c.1780

appears very like a section of the rear of the present

Hunter’s Lodge, 5 Belsize Lane, usually dated to the

early nineteenth century. Gough was a great admirer

of the Buck brothers’ painstaking work in recording

historic buildings and acquired several of their

drawings including two for their prospects of

Greenwich and Deptford. The large format proposed

by the Bodleian should enable these and the five City

and Westminster prospects to be reproduced with

reasonable clarity.

Architectural drawings

Among the post-fire architectural drawings are two of

St Mary-le-Bow and a design drawing for the central

pavilion of Robert Hooke’s new Bethlehem Hospital,

page 8

Mr Yates’ house, Belsize Park, Hampstead c.1780.

Gough Maps 18. Fol.15a.

Hearse of Abbot Islip in front of the High Altar, copied from Islip

roll by George Vertue, c.1743. Gough Maps 226.fol.167.

page 9

c.1675. Many of the surviving drawings of Wren’s

assistant at Westminster Abbey, William Dickinson

(c.1671-1725) are in Gough’s collection, including

plans of 1706 of Old Somerset House. Dickinson’s

plans are the earliest surviving to show the whole

palace in detail and are considered very accurate.

Gough also acquired many plans of Charles

Bridgeman, the royal gardener, including some of

Kensington Palace Gardens. Between about 1726 and

1738, he redesigned the gardens there with many of

the features that can still be seen today.

Prints

Most of the engravings can be found in London

collections but some are rare and Gough has made

interesting comments on them. He never travelled

abroad, but had a good command of French and, in

1775, edited anonymously two accounts of visits to

London by Frenchmen, Estienne Perlin (1558) and

Puget de la Serre (1639). The latter included a fine

prospect of Cheapside on the occasion of the Entrée

of Marie de Medicis, re-engraved by Basire for the

publication. Gough could not resist pointing out

that Londoners were not at all pleased to see her

because of her Catholic religion. In his annotated

copy of Dugdale’s History of St Paul’s (1658), Gough

records a visit he visit he made on 19 May 1783

when he notes the location of the only surviving

pre-fire monument, that to John Donne, stored in

St Faith’s chapel with the urn in a separate vault.

He dates Moss’s view of old Somerset House to 1775

just prior to demolition, and says he took it ‘on the

spot from actual measurements’. Among the rarities

are engravings of the state firework displays that

were a feature of late seventeenth-century London.

While there is still much editing to be done, the

finished book should provide lovers of London with

a unique, previously unseen collection of views of

the great city. – Bernard Nurse

Strand front of Somerset House, by William Moss, published 1777. Gough Maps 22.fol.53.

Design for central pavilion of Bethlehem Hospital by Robert

Hooke c.1675. Gough Maps 44. Fol.61 no. 119.

St Pancras Old Church, Camden, c.1779.

Gough Maps 18. Fol. 33a.

Using livery company records at

Guildhall Library

Our member Dorian Gerhold offers some helpful

advice for researchers.

Although most of the former Guildhall Library

manuscripts

have

been

moved

to

London

Metropolitan Archives (LMA), livery company

records remain at Guildhall Library and have to be

consulted there. They contain much topographical

material, but are not easy to use, and the purpose

of this note is to act as a guide. The staff both at

Guildhall Library and LMA are extremely helpful,

but it ought not to be necessary for researchers to

rely so heavily on their advice.

The most important of the records for London

topography are those relating to the companies’

extensive property holdings in London, including

deeds and leases, plans and surveys, rentals and

the many decisions recorded in minute books. In

some cases there are records relating to the trades

concerned, and there is also much information

about Londoners, especially in the companies’

membership and apprenticeship records.

The only livery company records at LMA rather

than Guildhall Library are the relatively few items –

usually maps – which were transferred to the

former

Guildhall

Library

Prints

and

Maps

Department. These may be available online on

Collage (collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk). The online

catalogue indicates whether items are at LMA or

Guildhall Library. Note that some companies have

retained some or all of their records (see pp. iv-v in

City of London livery companies, referred to below).

Items should be ordered at Guildhall Library by

ticket using the old references (e.g. MS 7329/1); do

not use the full, clumsy LMA references. They

cannot be ordered electronically.

Using the online catalogue

The reason why livery company records are not

easy to use is that Guildhall Library has virtually

no finding aids for them other than LMA’s online

catalogue, which has serious flaws. In particular,

the information on documents is scattered across

different fields and different levels of description,

while any search using more than one word will fail

unless all the words are in the same field. For

example, searches within the records of a

particular company cannot be made successfully

by putting the company’s name and another word

or words in the Search Terms box (e.g. ‘Armourers

Bishopsgate’), because the item-level descriptions

rarely include the name of the organisation. Even

within the item-level descriptions, information is

inconsistently divided between ‘Title’ and ‘Scope’, so

simple searches for which more than one word is

entered will often fail to find the relevant items.

Never take ‘No records found’ as indicating that the

records you want do not exist.

The online catalogue is nevertheless immensely

useful, in three main ways:

(1) Accessing full catalogues of individual

collections

(but

note

that

this

function

periodically stops working for long periods, and is

not working at the time of writing). In Simple

Search, entering the name of the Company and

‘minutes’, e.g. ‘Armourers minutes’, will usually

bring up the record for the collection, though not

the minutes themselves. (If that fails, use

Advanced Search, put the name of the Company

in the Title box, e.g. ‘Armourers’ Company’, and

select ‘Collection’ in the Level of Description box.)

Click on the title of the collection, and the next

screen will offer, on the top right-hand side (if it

is working), a red box saying ‘Catalogue’; click on

that and then on ‘View Catalogue PDF’. The result

will be a catalogue similar in form to a printed

catalogue, though without any table of contents.

Catalogues for collections can also be accessed by

clicking on the title of any individual document in

a collection and then on the red ‘Catalogue’ box.

Having been downloaded they can be kept for

future reference or printed. (When the catalogue

function is not working, the alternative is to press

the ‘Level Down’ button at the bottom of the

screen and go laboriously through the various

archival levels.)

(2) Searching within the records of a Company.

First find the reference for the Company’s collection

page 10

Porter’s Key (or Quay) in 1772, from a plan book of the

Fishmongers’ Company’s properties by George Gwilt (Guildhall

Library, MS 21536).  Porter’s Key was on the eastern part of the

present Custom House site, and had been rebuilt by the Company

after a fire in 1715.  (By kind permission of the Fishmongers’

Company.)

(e.g. CLC/L/AB for the Armourers), either by the

same method as above for accessing catalogues or

by going to ‘Browse the archive’, which is offered at

the bottom of the Simple Search screen. (Livery

companies are mostly indexed, bizarrely, under ‘W’

for ‘Worshipful Company’, but the Vintners are

under ‘Vintners’ and the Watermen, not strictly a

livery company, are under ‘Company’.) Then, using

Simple Search, put the reference for the collection

(e.g. CLC/L/AB) in the Reference Code box followed

by an asterisk. You can then put other words, e.g.

‘minute’ (not ‘minutes’) or ‘Bishopsgate’, in the

Search Terms box and the word or words will be

searched for within that Company’s collection. If

you search for more than one word you may still

have a problem, as they will not be found if one is

in ‘Title’ and the other in ‘Scope’. Any plans

transferred to ‘Special Collections’ will also not be

found.

(3) Looking up known Guildhall Library MS

references. In Advanced Search, put in the

Former Reference Code box the old reference in

exactly the following form: the letters ‘MS’,

followed by space, followed by the reference as a

five-figure number with extra noughts at the

beginning if necessary, e.g. ‘MS 07329’. If the

item had further numbers (e.g. MS 7329/1 and

7329/2), ‘MS 07329*’ (i.e. with an asterisk)

should locate all the relevant items; ‘MS 07329’

will sometimes locate them and sometimes locate

some of them and not others; ‘MS 07329/1’ will

not locate anything. The same method can be

used

for

any

former

Guildhall

Library

manuscripts.

Other finding aids

The enquiry counter at Guildhall Library has a

summary list of the livery company records there

(City of London livery companies and related

organisations: a guide to their archives in Guildhall

Library (2010)), giving MS numbers, which can be

looked up in the online catalogue for more detail; it

lists deeds and leases as ‘Muniments of title’ with

no further information except overall dates. For

pre-1666 records, Derek Keene and Vanessa

Harding, A survey of documentary sources for

property holding in London before the Great Fire

(1985) (available on open shelves at L.60.1 at

Guildhall Library) is essential, though some of the

information on the location of records is now out of

date. For a few companies there are detailed

catalogues of records such as deeds, but these have

to be ordered. Examples are those for the Vintners

(MS 33963/1-3), for the Haberdashers’ deeds (MS

1996/63, index) and for part of the Merchant

Taylors’ archive (MS 34102). ‘Ancient deeds’ up to

about the sixteenth century have often been

calendared in detail.

The old typescript catalogues can be consulted on

open shelves at LMA (not at Guildhall Library), but

as items are listed in numerical order, by MS

reference, you need to know the MS references to

make use of them. They sometimes contain a little

more information than the online catalogue. The

old card indexes to the Guildhall Library

manuscript collection can be consulted at LMA, but

have to be ordered. The reference is MSUNCAT

followed by the London classification, e.g. L.42.86

for streets; ask at the enquiry desk at LMA for the

volume containing the London classifications.

Many of the apprenticeship records have been

indexed in a series of volumes edited by Cliff Webb

(series title: London apprentices), and in some cases

(nine companies so far) at www.londonroll.org.

– Dorian Gerhold

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

A Question of Gauge

David Crawford explores the history of the

northbound section of the Blackwall Tunnel, and

discovers how the capacity of the Victorian structure

has been increased by ingenious modern technology.

Weaving sinuously under the Thames, through

difficult subsoil, the northbound bore of the

Blackwall Tunnel is heavily used by traffic on the

busy A102, including single-decker buses on

Transport for London TfL’s route 108. Its ability to

cope as well as it does today, despite the increased

size of today’s vehicles, is an encouraging example

of historic engineering infrastructure still filling an

important role in cross-river travel, with the

support of technology.

Now half of a twin-tunnel crossing, the original

bore was built by the then London County Council

(LCC) between 1892 and 1897 to meet the need for

more Thames crossings east of the City. By 1880,

all road bridges downstream from Chiswick were

toll-free, but the two-fifths of the city’s population

then living east of London Bridge, around the city’s

docklands, remained under-served. (The Greenwich

foot tunnel did not open until 1902.) The Thames

Tunnel, now part of the London Overground rail

network, had afforded a pedestrian crossing from

page 11

A no 58 tram from Victoria terminating in 1950 beside the

southern gatehouse (reproduced with the permission of the

Greenwich Heritage Centre).

1843, but proved too expensive to adapt for horses

and wheeled vehicles. In 1869 it was converted for

the East London Railway. In 1887, therefore, the

Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) Thames

Tunnel (Blackwall) Act enabled the building of a

new crossing, largely to accommodate docks traffic.

The Board’s engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette,

designed a scheme with separate tunnels for

vehicles and pedestrians, but work had yet to start

when the Board was abolished in 1889 in favour of

the new LCC. The chair of its Bridges Committee

was William Bull (later the Rt Hon. Sir William Bull

MP, Bt), who represented Hammersmith. The LCC

then commissioned its own engineer, Alexander

Binnie, to design a single tunnel wide enough for

two lines of vehicles with footpaths for pedestrians.

On opening on 22 May 1897, this became the

largest sub-aqueous tunnel ever built, the central

section 950m long, with a two-lane roadway just

under 4.9m wide flanked by the footpaths (which

have now disappeared).

Construction was by means of an early

combination of two technologies. The first was the

tunnelling shield, originally devised by Sir Marc

Isambard Brunel, and subsequently improved by J.

Henry Greathead for the 1886-90 City and South

London Railway, now part of the Northern Line

tube. The shield was driven forward by hydraulic

jacks and protected workmen who dug their way

forward. The second was a compressed air working

environment, already in use in North America and

introduced while excavation was under way to keep

Thames water from entering and delaying progress.

It presented health risks and Bull, very much a

hands-on politician, insisted on experiencing them

himself against medical advice.

The internal lining was of cast iron ring sections,

faced with glazed tiling on concrete.

At Bull’s suggestion, there was a built-in

subtunnel to carry piping and wiring, and allow

repairs without stopping traffic flows. (At one point

in his career, Bull was a director of electrical

engineers Siemens Bros & Co Ltd, a forerunner of

today’s global Siemens Group.)

Externally stood the two ornate gatehouses, built

as physical gauges of approaching vehicles’ ability

to fit within the tunnel’s headroom. They were not

the first solutions proposed. In his commemorative

album, now in the London Transport Museum

Library, Bull says that Binnie, ‘who like most

engineers I find has little artistic taste’ wanted to

put sections of the metal tunnel lining at the

entrances as gauges for approaching traffic. Bull

rejected the idea as ‘very ugly as they would, at a

distance, have looked like two huge beer barrels’.

Instead, he sketched, on a sheet of blotting paper,

his idea for gatehouses incorporating arches of the

correct height, with accommodation above for the

resident engineer and tunnel supervisor. He gave

the job of developing his design to the LCC’s first

superintending architect, Thomas Blashill.

The Buildings of England London 2: South describes

the southern survivor – of red sandstone, with hipped

roofs – as an ‘ambitious building with steep pavilion

roofs and angle turrets of characteristic Art Nouveau

outline. Pretty and progressive’.

The Survey of London, volumes 43 and 44, Poplar,

Blackwall and Isle of Dogs, pp.640-645, surmised

that ‘the proximity of the East India Dock Gateway

on the north side no doubt inspired Blashill to

compete with it in architectural terms’. As the

illustration shows, the two buildings, the earlier

designed by Ralph Walker, do, while in very

different styles, complement each other quite

neatly. But Blashill’s ‘inspiration’ was his hands-on

employer.

Had modern traffic growth involved drastic

physical changes to the near approaches, the

Grade II-listed Southern Tunnel House, as it’s now

known, might have faced the same fate as its

northern twin. This was demolished in 1958 to

make way for a new southbound-only bore, to

increase overall capacity. Most of the vehicles

initially using the tunnel were dock and railway

vans, and it soon became popular with local

workers on both sides of the river. It was so

successful that, by the time of its completion, the

page 12

Modern technology now effects the necessary pre-gauging

(reproduced with the permission of VMS Ltd).

LCC was already planning a second vehicle

crossing at Rotherhithe, as well as the Greenwich

Foot Tunnel.

But, being designed for predominantly horse-

drawn nineteenth-century traffic, the tunnel was

soon being outgrown by the scale of twentieth-

century motorisation. In 1937, therefore, the LCC

decided to build the larger bore some 245m

downstream, allowing the older one to carry two

exclusively northbound lanes.

It remained, of course, too low for the larger

vehicles that its twin was now handling, and bans

were imposed on those that were overheight. But

these bans were routinely being ignored, resulting

in frequent tunnel closures to enable the diversion

of offending drivers.

In a report dated 30 March 2011, TfL, which now

owns the tunnels, noted that, although violating

vehicles individually ‘take only a few minutes to

remove from the traffic flow, cumulatively they led

to around four days’ worth of unplanned tunnel

closures’. It calculated that, for every minute that

the bore is closed, ‘around 60 vehicles are

prevented from travelling through’, creating queues

on the approach road. On an average day, these

closures could delay up to 750 vehicles. Previous

proposed or executed gauging methods went from

the ‘ugly’ to the ornate. The answer now was high-

tech – the installation of electronic ITS (intelligent

transport systems). This works in two stages. The

first detects all overheight vehicles, directing those

over 4m high away from the tunnel altogether; the

second detects which lane vehicles are in. This is

important because those between 2.8m high and

the maximum allowed are required to drive in the

left-hand lane, to suit the configuration of the bore.

Those heading for the wrong lane are directed to

the correct one. As a result, numbers of overheight

vehicle incidents have fallen from a high of 135 in

one period in 2010, before the installation of the

system, to 26 between 01 and 31 March 2015. The

new electronic gauge is thus helping the Victorian

tunnel to continue to meet modern travel demands.

The overhead vehicle detection system uses

roadside vehicle height detectors, traffic cameras

and variable message signs – of the kind that give

journey

times

or

congestion

warnings

on

motorways – for the early identification and alerting

of non-compliant traffic. It has been installed

without any physical impact on Southern Tunnel

House, through which compliant traffic still flows.

LTS member David Crawford is the author of

British Building Firsts and contributing editor of

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) International

journal. He acknowledges the help of TfL, the

London Transport Museum Library, the Museum of

London Docklands, the Greenwich Heritage Centre

and VMS Ltd in researching this article.

– David Crawford

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

Remembering Dr Salter

Tony Aldous introduces sculptures commemorating

a noteworthy Bermondsey family.

An old man in a panama hat gazes towards the

river, or more probably towards the little girl by the

wall playing with the family cat. The old man looks

less comfortable than he used to, when he was on a

park bench with a back to lean against – but that

bench wasn’t very secure and it was from there

that he was abducted. Dr Alfred Salter – for it is his

statue we are talking about – was, and is, a great

hero in Thamesside Bermondsey. A prize-winning

medical student at Guys, he eschewed a Harley

page 13

The former northern tunnel gatehouse with, right, the former East

India Dock Gatehouse (reproduced with the permission of the

Museum of London Docklands).

The commemorative opening plaque (reproduced with the

permission of TfL).

Street career, choosing instead to work as a poor

man’s doctor in the borough where, as a student,

he had learned how the other half scratched a

living – or failed to.

Quite soon he realised that what afflicted

Bermondsey folk – appalling physical and social

conditions – could not be cured by medicine alone.

He became a borough councillor (first Liberal, then

Labour), a member of the London County Council,

and finally MP. He and his wife Ada, both members

of the Labour controlled borough council, led a

series of pioneering initiatives including a local

health service free at the point of delivery; a huge

campaign of tree planting in the streets which

brought admiring visitors from abroad; and a

programme of replacing slum tenements with

garden suburb style cottage housing; a cluster of

these still exists in nearby Wilson Grove. The

programme was short-lived because both Whitehall

and county hall considered flats ‘more suitable’ for

the poor of Bermondsey. Salter first became MP for

Bermondsey West in 1922. The returning officer

who declared him elected was his wife Ada – mayor

of the borough. He lost the seat a year later, but

regained it in 1924. He then held it until 1945

when he stood down for health reasons. For much

of this time he combined parliamentary duties with

his medical practice; overwork certainly contributed

to breakdown of his health. It has been noted by

his biographer Fenner Brockway that three of

Salter’s guiding and very militant principles –

pacifism, republicanism and teetotalism – were

ones most of his constituents would never have

supported. Nonetheless they voted for him again

and again – for the ‘good old doctor’ and for a good

constituency MP who understood them and talked

their language. At one election his agent, without

telling him, put up posters which urged people to

‘Vote for good old ALF’. By next morning most of

them read ‘Vote for good old ALE’. He was cross

with his agent, but rather enjoyed the joke.

Salter died in 1945, but he was not forgotten. In

1991 a Thames riverside pocket park on

Bermondsey Wall near Cherry Garden Pier gained a

triptych of statues by Diane Gorvin: Salter, his

daughter Joyce, and the family cat. The title: Dr

Salter’s Daydream. The dream is a sad one. Alfred

and Ada Salter not only lived among the

community they served but sent their only

daughter Joyce – known in Bermondsey as ‘the

little ray of sunshine’ – to the local elementary

school. It was there that she caught scarlet fever,

from which she died. So Salter’s dream is one of

happier times past.

The triptych was an immensely popular feature

on the Thamesside walk, and widespread the shock

and resentment when Dr Salter – still dreaming –

was wrenched from his bench by malefactors less

concerned with his politics than his scrap value. A

fund was promptly established to pay not only for

Alfred’s reincarnation but for the addition of the

one person missing from the little group, his wife

Ada. The aim was to reunite them with Joyce and

her cat; they, very properly, had been ‘taken into

care’ by local authority. Despite the extra costs of

security equipment, the £120,000 required was

raised quite quickly: it came from various sources

including contributions by trade unions and

socialist organisations, but also £3,000 from the

mighty Grosvenor Estates which is redeveloping the

nearby Peek Frean biscuit factory site and wished

to show support for local causes. £60,000 was

raised; Southwark Council matched it. The Salter

family was reunited.

page 14

The unveiling of the four statues took place in

November last year, at a new and less vulnerable

site further downstream on Bermondsey Wall.

Speeches included those made by Labour council

leader Peter John and the LibDem MP for

Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Simon Hughes.

Both dwelt on how a gross omission had been made

good by inclusion of a new statue of Ada Salter. She

was, after all, a political force in her own right:

Bermondsey’s first woman Labour mayor; dogged

fighter for the poor of her borough and initiator of

much-needed

social

services;

originator

of

Bermondsey council’s ‘Beautification Committee’

which planted trees in previously barren streets

and created new public open spaces where few had

previously existed. She has her own memorial – a

lakeside flower garden she campaigned for in

Southwark Park is named after her. But it is right

that she should be remembered with her husband

and daughter here in a Thamesside pocket park

she would surely have approved of. As for the

Doctor, he looks a shade bemused. It could just be

that he’s noticed his future security depends on a

CCTV camera fastened to the Angel public house.

– Tony Aldous

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

Dancing on the Roof of St Paul’s

June Swann and Ann Saunders reveal some

surprising activities at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Those sufficiently privileged – and sufficiently

energetic – to ascend to the leaden covered roof of

pre-Fire St Paul’s Cathedral have left a curious

reminder of such expeditions, which we find

recorded in letters and diaries. They chose to have

the outline of their shoes or boots cut round in the

soft lead of the roof. An article by Paula Henderson

in Country Life, 3 January 1985, describes how

Christian IV (1577–1648), King of Denmark from

1588, in England visiting his sister, Anne, James I’s

Queen, went on to the roof of St Paul’s and, “after

surveying the rooftops, hee held his foote still wilest

Edward Soper, keeper of the Steeple, with his knife

cutte the length and bredth thereof in the lead”. Few

years earlier, Thomas Platter, a Swiss physician

visiting England in 1599, wrote: “On the morning of

Sept 21st. I climbed 300 steps to roof, which is

broad, covered with lead so that one may walk

there. Every Sunday many men and women stroll

together”. Another reference appears in Thomas

Dekker’s The Gull’s Horn Booke of 1609, page 38,

regarding going to: “top of Paul’s steeple, Before you

come down again, I would desire you to draw your

knife, and grave your name, or, for want of a name,

the mark which you clap on your sheep, in great

caracters upon the leads, by a number of your

brethren, both citizens and country gentlemen: and

so you shall be sure to have your name lie in a

coffin of lead when your selfe shall be wrapt in a

winding sheet: and indeed the top of Paul’s contains

more names than Stow’s Chronicle”.

On 6 October 1623, the roof of St Paul’s was the

place for great rejoicing. Prince Charles, now heir

apparent since his elder brother Henry had died

unexpectedly, returned home from his ultimately

unsuccessful attempts to gain the hand of the

Catholic Infanta, the eldest daughter of the King of

Spain. London went mad with joy; the roof of St

Paul’s was lit with torches, one for each year of

Charles’s life. Those young enough to scale the

stairs danced on the roof; the prince rode on to his

father in Royston. James ran out to greet his son

and his companion, the Duke of Buckingham; ‘the

sweet boys fell to their knees’, James fell on their

necks ‘and they all wept’. The clergy and choir of

the cathedral sang Psalm 114, ‘When Israel came

out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from among

the barbarous people’. The citizens of London had

no wish for an alliance with Spain, a Catholic

country which, as recently as 1588, had sent the

Armada as an invasion force – there was good

reason to light up the roof with torches and to

dance thereon.

– June Swann and Ann Saunders

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

Circumspice (see p.3)

Not on dry land, but by now a fairly permanent

feature of the London scene, Hammerton’s Ferry

dates from 1908. It links the ‘Surrey’ bank of the

Thames near Ham House with the ‘Middlesex’ bank

near Marble Hill House – quote marks because

both banks are now in Greater London and both in

the borough of Richmond. If you come on foot or by

bike, ferryman Andy Spencer will take you across

for a pound, or 50p extra for your bike. The ferry

runs daily from March to October, but in winter at

weekends only.

Until the twentieth century it seems there was no

opening for a ferry because all the land on the

Surrey side was owned by the Tollemache family

and strictly private. In 1909 the London County

Council acquired Marble Hill House and its

grounds and opened them to the public and a local

man Walter Hammerton began hiring out boats. In

1909, with public rights of way opened up on the

Ham side, he started a regular ferry service, price

one penny per ride. This was too much for the

proprietors of the nearby Twickenham ferry,

William Champion and local grandee Lord Dysart.

In 1913 they took Hammerton to court. He won,

but they appealed – and the Court of Appeal found

in their favour. That might have been the end of the

matter: taking a case to the House of Lords was too

costly

for

Hammerton.

However

a

public

subscription raised the money and the Lords ruled

in Hammerton’s – and the ferry’s – favour.

In 1947, after 39 years of running it, Hammerton

retired. It is now owned by Francis Spencer, with

his son Andy as operator. Hammerton’s original

page 15

clinker-built skiff is now in the National Maritime

Museum. The current ferry Peace of Mind came into

service in 1997. Designed by Twickenham firm

Thanetcraft and built in south Wales, it is petrol-

powered and its hull is aluminium. Andy has

ambitions to become a fully-fledged Thames

Waterman. Currently his boat master’s licence

limits him to skippering vessels carrying 250

passengers. The Peace of Mind carries only 12 – so

that will do him for the time being.

– Tony Aldous

G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G

Reviews

London’s Sailortown 1600-1800. A Social

History of Shadwell and Ratcliff, An Early

Modern London Riverside Suburb

by Derek Morris and Ken Cozens. East London

History Society, 2014. 207pp. 19 figures. 10 tables.

ISBN 978 0 95647 792 7. £12.60.

London’s Sailortown is the latest

in the series by Derek Morris

and Ken Cozens on the social

history of London’s eastern

parishes. Shadwell and Ratcliff

follow Morris’s investigation of

Mile End Old Town in the mid-

eigtheenth century and the

jointly-authored

studies

of

Wapping and Whitechapel in

the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries. The ‘social history’ element of the book’s

title, which perhaps suggests an account of overall

developments over two centuries, is somewhat

misleading.

Instead

what

we

find

is

an

extraordinarily detailed investigation of those who

lived or worked in these two riverside parishes and

the forces that shaped their existence. Local

government, the waterfront and the London docks,

maritime trades and networks, education, religion,

crime and punishment are among the themes

explored. Indeed the central thesis of this study, in

common with its three predecessors, is that

London’s East End, at least before 1800, was not the

desperately poverty-stricken, dark and dangerous

district of popular legend. Rather, it was a hub of

industrial, commercial and community activity, not

lacking in wealthy residents as well as the poor, with

mercantile links stretching across the world. The

‘Sailortown’ of Shadwell and Ratcliff might be

thought to be a local exception but, despite its title,

mariners and those who directly served their needs

feature surprisingly little in the book. As Morris and

Cozens amply demonstrate, there was far more to

London’s so-called sailortown than those who went

to sea.

Immense industry and research skill underpin

what is in effect a compendium of information about

Shadwell and Ratcliff, extending in some instances

to the thirteenth century. Much of what is here was

hitherto unknown. Wills, rate and land tax returns,

parish registers, insurance policies, deeds and a

variety of other primary sources have all been put to

service in the effort to uncover the record of the past.

These sources are the foundation of the many short

biographies scattered throughout the text. For

Morris and Cozens the history of place is people,

their background and connections, even more than

buildings; there are over 450 individuals listed in the

index. The authors do, of course, recognise that such

archival records are silent on many lives, but even so

it is striking how effectively they have been able to

exploit what is available to gain insight into the

society and economy of the two waterfront parishes.

Another merit is discussion of relevant secondary

sources, some fairly recently published and not

always well-known, backed up by endnotes. It is

evident that Morris and Cozens have a good

grounding in the scholarly literature and also have

a sharp eye for what more popular studies may

offer the researcher. Each chapter concludes with

suggestions for further reading.

The strength of London’s Sailortown in terms of

its use of primary and secondary sources can,

however, also create a problem for the reader. As

Professor Jerry White notes in his preface, the

volumes Morris and Cozen have produced, and this

one is no exception, are ‘labours of love’. It is their

passion for their subject that has inspired the long

hours of research in sometimes recalcitrant

sources.

No

doubt

the

same

enthusiasm

encourages them to include at points details which

are seemingly of peripheral relevance to the locality.

They write lightly and well, but the thread of the

argument can be lost and the overall picture

obscured. Perhaps inevitably, given the scope of the

book

and

the

multifarious

interests

and

connections of many of those identified, there is

also some repetition of information.

Reading from cover to cover is in fact probably not

the best way to approach London’s Sailortown, which

is not to say that those who do so will not be rewarded

by nuggets of the unexpected. The book will be an

essential resource for anyone interested in particular

aspects of East End history, such as housing, the role

of women or crime; in investigating particular trades

and occupational groups; in exploring the role of

religious and charitable organisations. Family

historians will no doubt be looking for names, but

should also find valuable contextual information to

illuminate the backgrounds of their East End

forebears. Indeed in many respects this study seems

to have been conceived as a reference work.

Appendices include discussion of methodology,

‘Famous and Notable people’, indexes to people,

subjects, places overseas and in the UK and Ireland,

as also to streets in London and Middlesex, which are

mentioned in the text. There are many tables. Lists in

these include those in the West India business, those

who supplied the Navy Board, jurors, ship chandlers,

glass-makers and cheesemongers – a reflection of the

diverse range of activities to be found in these two

vibrant waterfront parishes.

page 16

London’s Sailortown 1600-1800, A Social History

of Shadwell and Ratcliff is a valuable addition to

the series. Published by the East London History

Society in a large format, though thin on

illustrations, at £12.60 it is undoubtedly a great

bargain. But purchase it soon. Experience with the

other three volumes suggests that demand will

exceed supply, and Shadwell and Ratcliff may soon

be hard to find except on the second-hand market!

– Sarah Palmer

Sarah Palmer is Emeritus Professor of Maritime

History at the University of Greenwich. Her research

focuses particularly on commercial shipping and

port development.

London A History in Paintings & Illustrations

by Stephen Porter. Published by Amberley

Publishing, 2014, 287 pp. Regular price:

£30.00/Special price: £25.00 (publisher’s website)

Amberley Publishing describes the book as a

‘spectacular collection of images from medieval

times to the present’; it is the sole selling point of

the volume on their website. There are over 350

reproductions of images which come from two main

sources – the author and Yale Center for British

Art. I will return to the illustrations credited to the

author, but the latter is welcome because some of

Yale’s material is still little known in this country.

Books on artists’ London sell well – in the 1970s

the extraordinary London 2000 Years of a City and

its People by Felix Barker and Peter Jackson ran into

several editions. Other, more recent titles, have been

out of print for decades: David Piper’s Artists London

(1982), Celina Fox’s Londoners (1987) and the

Barbican Art Gallery’s The Image of London (both

1987), the Museum of London Paintings Catalogue

London in Paint (which I co-wrote with John Hayes,

1996) or Creative Quarters by Kitt Wedd (2001,

repackaged as Artists’ London – Holbein to Hirst). So

this is a good time for a new take on the subject.

Unfortunately, I have found this publication

extremely disappointing, for three reasons: the poor

quality of the reproductions, the astonishing lack of

basic information about the images reproduced and

finally the complete separation of text and images.

The final result is less ‘London A History in Paintings

&c’ and more ‘A History with paintings &c attached’.

Stephen Porter is clearly a competent historian but

not one who seems comfortable with images.

The text, organised chronologically in the first half

of the book and thematically in the second half, is

concise and elegantly written – but rather dry,

despite the nice quotes the author has included to

enliven it. This may be because the text only deals

with big historical events and not the stuff of

everyday life. The text never refers to the images

which are presented bunched up together at the end

of each section, with captions. Not even when the

book focuses on themes such as St Paul’s, Parks

and Pleasure Gardens or Spitalfields, does the main

text ever connect with the illustrations.

The captions are not always helpful. Take the

plague and the Fire of London: there is no attempt

to

differentiate

between

images

which

are

contemporary with the event and images that were

produced decades later (in the case of Philippe de

Loutherbourg’s Great Fire, 130 years later). The

Yale version of the Great Fire is fascinating and

barely known in this country. It is an early

streetscape of London in colour! It gives a vivid

rendering of London houses at a time when most

paintings and prints were panoramic views from

the river, often forcing artists to squash the fabric

of London. Claude de Jongh is an exception: he

painted London in brilliant detail and colour: but

the reproduction of his Westminster riverscape is

dull and it clashes with the gaudily coloured

section from Visscher’s early seventeenth-century

panorama of London which is also out of focus!

But there are real problems with the credits of the

images. For instance, the stunning National Gallery

painting of the Ambassadors by Hans Holbein is

solely credited to Stephen Porter, presumably the

copyright owner of the photograph. The caption

makes no mention of the painting’s actual home,

the technique is omitted and the artist’s name not

indexed. In fact not a single artist is indexed in this

book – an extraordinary omission – and the

technique of the works reproduced is routinely

omitted. This does make a difference; the series of

Cries of London by Paul Sandby are unique works

because they are drawings while Francis Wheatley’s

Cries were popular images because as prints they

were widely distributed. The author includes a

great many of these Cries without ever giving a hint

of why such images exist.

At times captions are awkwardly placed in the sky

of the actual pictures – a final indignity in a book

that never does justice to its subject. Such a pity!

– Mireille Galinou

Catalogue of Paintings in the Collections of the

Society of Antiquaries of London

by Jill A. Franklin, Bernard Nurse and Pamela

Tudor-Craig, 504pp, ISBN 978 1 90940 019 1

Harvey Miller, £200 hardback.

Henry VII stares out quizzically from the front

cover; an intense Richard III is on the back, an

early sixteenth-century work, the earliest known

portrait of this much debated monarch. The price

of this definitive catalogue may confine it to library

use, but it is good to be able to welcome the

publication of this magnificent volume, which has

been many years in the making. It splendidly

amplifies the only previous complete catalogue,

which was made by George Scharf in 1865.

LTS Members will be familiar with the curious

Diptych of Old St Paul’s, created in 1616 as part of

the propaganda for restoring the Cathedral,

published jointly with the LTS in 2004. The

Antiquaries acquired it in 1781, a forerunner to a

picture collection largely assembled in the

page 17

nineteenth century. This was boosted by the

bequest in 1820 of the remarkable collection of

early sixteenth-century portraits made by Thomas

Kerrich, chief librarian to Cambridge University,

who is the subject of an essay by Pamela Tudor-

Craig. The early portraits play a star role but in

addition there are a medley of religious subjects

and icons, some fine portraits of antiquaries

(George Vertue, William Stukely and many others),

and not least, a few topographical views including

two London subjects. The oil painting of Richmond

Palace viewed across the Thames, based on an

etching by Hollar of 1638, may have been

commissioned by Queen Henrietta Maria to

decorate one of her houses. The discussion of the

painting of the Great Fire of London, ascribed to an

anonymous Anglo-Dutch artist, is particularly

intriguing. Conservation work revealed that there

was heavy overpainting, probably in the early

nineteenth century. Originally the picture showed a

daytime view with the rising sun on the right

contrasted to the city lit up by the fire

Overpainting transformed this into a more

melodramatic night-time moonlit scene, in the taste

of the Romantic movement. An introductory essay

by Bernard Nurse on the collection includes details

about its display at different times; a sketch by

George Scharf of the hanging scheme in the former

meeting room of the Royal Society, before the

Society moved to its present premises at Burlington

House, indicates that the Antiquaries then, as now,

were properly proud of their collection.

– Bridget Cherry

Dirty Old London, The Victorian Fight against

Filth by Lee Jackson, Yale University Press, 2014

ISBN 978 0 30019 205 6. HB 293pp, not priced.

Like London buses, after my

review of Peter Hounsell’s book on

Rubbish in the last issue, another

one has appeared, going into the

general subject of Filth in more

exhaustive detail – there are 40

pages of notes and bibliography.

Besides rubbish disposal, Lee

Jackson’s book covers the state of

the streets, sewers, cemeteries

and houses, besides the fight for

public lavatories and personal hygiene.

The main causes of London’s filth were the horse

and the coal fire. When this Society was founded

there were 300,000 horses keeping London moving,

daily depositing 1000 tons of manure on the streets.

As London expanded, it became uneconomic to

transport the manure to the outlying farms.

Crossing sweepers would earn a tip for sweeping

their patch of road, but before going off duty would

sweep everything back to ensure there would be

work to do again on the morrow. Less than 60 years

after the Clean Air Act, we forget how the soot from

coal fires kept our buildings sombre and our

transport dangerous in the frequent smogs.

Recycling is nothing new. Entrepreneurs tried to

persuade the City Corporation to allow street public

lavatories which the promoters would provide free,

hoping to obtain profit from the organic material

which had many uses before the discovery of

synthetic cleaning and treatment products. Street-

level

conveniences

were

subject

to

NIMBY

opposition and it took 30 years before underground

facilities were allowed and then only because the

new tube railways had accustomed people to

subterranean places.

The hope of profit was not the only motive. The

Victorian age produced many social reformers who

founded Societies for Bettering the Conditions of

the Poor, Improving the Conditions of the

Labouring Classes, Superseding the Necessity of

Climbing Boys (to sweep chimneys) and the

Abolition of Burial in Towns. The personal

improvement efforts of Dickens and Octavia Hill are

mentioned but not those of Gladstone, whose

motives might have been suspect.

This is a comprehensive and to my knowledge

accurate survey with a good analysis of how vested

interests governed the improvement policies. It

certainly makes one thankful for living in the

Elizabethan present rather than in the Victorian

past.

– Roger Cline

Vanished City: London’s Lost Neighbourhoods

by Tom Bolton. Strange Attractor Press, London,

2014. ISBN 978 1 90722 229 0. £11.99.

The never-ending search for a fresh approach to

London’s history has thrown up some unlikely

volumes in recent years – crypts, gasworks,

murderers’ houses and faded wall advertisements,

to name but a few. London guide Tom Bolton has

come up with a book on areas of London which

have passed under the public radar over the course

of the last century – not just streets, not even

boroughs, rather ill-defined sections of London

which once enjoyed a vigorous life of their own. He

concentrates rather heavily on the East End –

Ratcliffe, Limehouse, Wellclose and Norton Folgate

– but his range also encompasses such enclaves as

Agar Town, Horselydown, Clare Market and the

White City.

Each chapter is part tour, part history,

interspersed with a scattering of rather bizarre

photographs, including a whole section of out-of-

focus snaps printed, for no obvious reason, in a

bilious green tinge. Bolton has clearly done his

homework, judging by the extensive bibliography at

the end. It is gratifying to note the use of material

from relevant fiction, thus including Iain Sinclair

alongside Stow and the Survey of London for

historical background. But the book lacks any kind

of map, a curious omission for a volume heavily

reliant on local topographical knowledge. It would

be useful to have included small local maps for

each area, such as the appropriate section from the

LTS A-Z of Victorian London.

page 18

Bolton wears his learning lightly, and is never

afraid of a good story – though the origin of

Cripplegate is now thought doubtful, Ned Ward was

not writing anything in 1781, decades after his

death, and the London Dungeon has long since

moved on from Tooley Street. The final chapter on

the White City sits rather oddly with its fellows,

since it only covers the exhibitions and sporting

activities of the last century. Nevertheless it gives

him the opportunity to display his knowledge of

films and pop music related to London, as well as

some quite obscure novels. Bolton has clearly

picked a theme capable of almost endless sequels.

If there is to be a next time, may I put in plea for

historical illustrations and some decent maps. And,

of course, there must be room for the Old Nichol,

Tyburnia and Mesopotamia!

– David Webb

Rebel Footprints, A Guide to Uncovering

London’s Radical History, by David Rosenberg,

Pluto Press, 73 pp. 2015, ISBN 978 0 74533 409 7,

£10.99.

One way of enhancing one’s

understanding

of

London’s

topography is knowledge of what

happened where and in an

election

year

it

seems

particularly

appropriate

to

remember that London has been

the arena for many bitter

political battles. This most

informative book traces the

history of a century of radical

campaigning, from the political reformers of the

1830s to the anti-fascist marchers of the 1930s.

The chapters are ingeniously interleaved with nine

walks through relevant parts of London. Some of

the causes described were national; such as the

fight

for

women’s

suffrage

(the

walk

understandably focuses on Westminster); two

chapters – on Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury –

explore centres of progressive thought and

discussion, and it is interesting to learn how many

radicals lived as well as met in Bloomsbury. But it

was the harsh conditions in industries and the

inner suburbs which often spurred the fight for

political and economic change. This book tells

inspiring stories of the men and women who led

such campaigns, people who had themselves often

risen from extreme poverty and became celebrated

as local heroes. It is not surprising that the east

end features prominently: the striking matchgirls at

Bryant and May’s factory at Bow, the struggles of

the dockers led by Ben Tillett, the exploited

immigrant

workers

in

the

sweatshops

of

Spitalfields, the extraordinary and triumphant

story of the Poplar councillors led by George and

Minnie Lansbury, running the local council from

prison, where they had ended up after refusing to

pay the levy to the LCC. South of the river in

Bermondsey Dr Alfred Salter and his wife Ada,

respectively

MP

and

mayor,

pioneered

improvements in health and living conditions in the

earlier twentieth century (see also the article by

Tony Aldous on p.13). In Battersea there was not

only John Burns, who fought (with some success)

to make his borough, ‘a beacon of municipal

socialism’, but also other less well-known

progressive campaigners: the Barbadian-Irish John

Archer, appointed mayor of Battersea in 1913, the

Indian Shapurji Saklavala, the first Communist

MP, elected 1922, and the eccentric and energetic

Charlotte Despard, who was also involved with

women’s suffrage. The chapters interlock, as events

happened in different places simultaneously; a time

line would have helped to draw things together.

Running heads to each chapter would make the

book much easier to use, but there is a good index

and a selective bibliography.

So what is there to see on the ground? The walks

which follow the chapters are rather disappointing

as armchair reading, as they do not comment on

the physical character of locality or architecture,

and there are only a scatter of illustrations. Strikes

and demonstrations do not leave solid remains. The

author is keenly aware that the changing nature of

London makes it increasingly difficult to imagine

the setting of the stirring events which he so

eloquently describes. The maps indicate sites of

birthplaces and homes, buildings which were used

for radical meetings, some statues and plaques and

the exceptional Cable Street mural. But the great

London industries which created the distinctive

nature of different areas and formed the relentless

framework for so many struggles have almost

entirely disappeared. The towering brick bulk of

Bryant and May is now select housing in the gated

‘Bow Quarter’. In Bermondsey the jam, vinegar and

biscuit factories have gone, only some exteriors of

fur factories remain, and a few reminders of the

leather industry. Battersea is no longer a borough;

its progressive early workers’ housing survives, but

the proud Town Hall is now an Arts Centre. Lack of

interest in architecture has led to some lost

opportunities. In Bloomsbury the walk ends with

the present Mary Ward Centre in Queen Square,

but does not include its remarkably original

purpose-designed building of 1895 by Smith and

Brewer, funded by Passmore Edwards, which

remains in Tavistock Place (not Tavistock Square as

the book has it). Interiors rarely feature, the bee

decoration in Battersea Town hall receives a

mention, but not the remarkable 1930s mural by

Jack Hastings in the Marx Memorial Library on

Clerkenwell Green, which depicts ‘The worker of

the Future upsetting the Economic Chaos of the

Present’ under the watchful eyes of Marx, Lenin

and William Morris. One could suggest other

additions. But the book makes a welcome

contribution to a greater understanding both of the

earlier character of different areas of London and of

the people who fought for improvement.

– Bridget Cherry

page 19

The officers of the

London Topographical Society

Chairman

Mrs Penelope Hunting PhD FSA

40 Smith Street, London SW3 4EP

Tel: 020 7352 8057

Hon. Treasurer

Publications Secretary

Roger Cline MA LLB FSA

Simon Morris MA PhD

Flat 13, 13 Tavistock Place

7 Barnsbury Terrace

London WC1H 9SH

London N1 1JH

Tel. 020 7388 9889

E-mail:

E-mail: roger.cline13@gmail.com

santiagodecompostela@btinternet.com

Hon. Editor

Newsletter Editor

Mrs Ann Saunders MBE PhD FSA

Bridget Cherry OBE FSA

3 Meadway Gate

Bitterley House

London NW11 7LA

Bitterley

Tel. 020 8455 2171

Nr Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 3HJ

From July 2015: Sheila O'Connell

Tel. 01584 890 905

312 Russell Court

E-mail:

Woburn Place

bridgetcherry58@gmail.com

London WC1H 0NG

Hon. Secretary

Membership Secretary

Mike Wicksteed

Dr John Bowman

103 Harestone Valley Road

17 Park Road

Caterham, Surrey CR3 6HR

London W7 1EN

Tel. 01883 337813

Tel. 020 8840 4116

E-mail: mike.wicksteed@btinternet.com

E-mail: j.h.bowman@btinternet.com

Council members: Peter Barber; Ralph Hyde; Robin Michaelson; Sheila O’Connell;

Professor Michael Port; Peter Ross; Denise Silvester-Carr; David Webb;

Rosemary Weinstein; Laurence Worms.

New membership enquiries should be addressed to John Bowman.

Correspondence about existing membership including renewal payments, requests for

standing orders and gift-aid forms and the non-receipt of publications

also any change of address, should be addressed to the Hon. Treasurer, Roger Cline.

Proposals for new publications should be passed, in writing, to the Editor.

Books for review and other material for the Newsletter should be sent to Bridget Cherry.

Registered charity no. 271590

The Society’s website address is: www.topsoc.org

ISSN 1369-7986

The Newsletter is published by the London Topographical Society twice a year, in May and

November, and issued by the Newsletter Editor: Bridget Cherry, Bitterley House, Bitterley,

near Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 3HJ.

Produced and printed by The Ludo Press Ltd, London SW17 0BA.

Tel. 020 8879 1881 www.ludo.co.uk