Tiles By William Godwin Of Lugwardine
There is spot where my eyes fall as I enter the house between the front door and the foot of the stair, where I always felt there was something missing and it was only when I visited Bow Church to admire C R Ashbee’s restoration work that I realised there would once have been floor tiles in my entrance way. It was a notion enforced when I noticed some medieval encaustic tiles at Charterhouse and began to research the possible nature of the missing tiles from my house.
In 1852, William Godwin began creating gothic tiles by the encaustic process century at his factory at Lugwardine in Herefordshire and became one of the leading manufacturers in the nineteenth century, supplying the demand for churches, railway stations, schools, municipal buildings and umpteen suburban villas. Inevitably, some of these tiles have broken over the time and millions have been thrown out as demolition and the desire for modernity have escalated.
So I decided to create a floor with the odd tiles that no-one else wants, bringing together tiles that once belonged to whole floors of matching design, now destroyed, and give them a new home in my house. Oftentimes, I bought broken or chipped ones and paid very little for each one – but I hope you will agree that together their effect is magnificent.
Encaustic tiled floor designed by C R Ashbee for Bow Church using Godwin tiles
Medieval encaustic tiles at the bricked-up entrance to Charterhouse in Smithfield
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At The Monument
Novelist Kate Griffin returns to The Monument, half a century after her first visit
If you lay The Monument on its side to the West, the flame hits the spot in Pudding Lane where the fire broke out in Mr Farriner’s bakery during the early hours of 2nd September, 1666.
One of my earliest London memories is climbing to the top of The Monument with my dad when I was around four years old. I remember clearly pushing through the turnstile and dodging through people’s legs to reach the enticing black marble staircase that spiralled up through the centre of the column.
I could not wait to get to the top and see the view. Once we were up there and my dad lifted me onto his shoulders – so that I was even higher than everyone around us on the narrow stone platform – the thrill was electrifying. Yet I doubt ‘Health & Safety’ would allow that these days, even though the top of The Monument is now securely caged as a protection against pigeons, and a deterrent to potential suicides. (There were a few of those in the past.)
When I was four, I raced up those three hundred and eleven stairs but returning – in the company of photographer Alex Pink – half a century years later, I make the ascent at a much more leisurely pace. In fact, I stop several times and lean against the curved wall of cool Portland stone. Ostensibly, this is to allow an excited party of school children to pass as they loop back down the narrow stairs but, actually, I pause because the muscles in my legs are crying out for mercy and I am beginning to wonder if there could be an oxygen cylinder around the next turn of the stair.
Guide Mandy Thurkle grins as I gasp for breath. “You could say it keeps us fit. There are always two of us here on duty and, between us, we have to go up four times a day to make our regular checks. They say the calories you’ve burned off when you reach the top is the equivalent of a Mars Bar – not that I’m tempted. I’m not that keen on them.” She stands aside in the narrow entrance through the plinth as another party of school children jostles into the little atrium at the foot of the stairwell. There is an ‘ooh’ of excitement as they cluster together and crane their necks to look up at the stone steps coiling above them. “I love working here,” Mandy says, “I love the interaction with the visitors, seeing their reactions and answering their questions – the children’s are usually the best.”
Built to commemorate the rebuilding of the City after the Great Fire of London in 1666, The Monument – still the tallest isolated stone column in the world – attracts more than 220,000 visitors a year. Designed by Robert Hooke under the supervision of Christopher Wren, it was one of the first visitor attractions in London to admit paying entrants. Back in the eighteenth century, early wardens and their families actually lived in the cell-like basement beneath the massive plinth. This room was originally designed to house Hooke’s astronomical observatory – he dreamed of using the new building as a giant telescope while Wren saw it as a useful place to conduct his gravity experiments.
It is easy to imagine those first wardens welcoming a succession of bewigged and patch-faced sightseers eager to view the newly-rising city from the finest vantage point. Once, The Monument was a towering landmark, clearly visible from any angle in the City, now that it is confined by ugly, boxy offices, its former significance is obscured by walls of glass and concrete. In any other great European capital, the little piazza in which it stands would become a destination in itself, flanked by coffee shops or smart boutiques, but these days you come upon this extraordinary building almost accidentally.
French-born Nathalie Rebillon-Lopez, Monument Assistant Exhibition Manager, agrees, “In France, I worked for the equivalent of English Heritage and they would never have allowed a building like this to be hemmed in. There is a rule that development cannot take place within fifty metres of an important site.” She shrugs, “But then, Paris is sometimes like a giant museum. You have to move with the times and things have to change. I often think London is good at that – it is very open to creativity and eclecticism, it is always alive.”
Of course, Nathalie is right but as we speak in the little paved square it is hard not to feel oppressed by the sheer scale of the new ‘Walkie Talkie’ building lumbering ever upwards in the streets beyond. Where The Monument is all about elegant neo-classical balance, the ‘Walkie Talkie’ is a cumbersome affront to the skyline – a visual joke that is not very funny. Monument guide Mandy, who has worked at the building and at its sister attraction Tower Bridge for twenty-three years, shares my misgivings. “I get a little bit upset at the top sometimes,” she confides, “I look down and see all the tiny old churches and their spires completely lost amongst the new buildings and it seems wrong.”
Not surprisingly, given that the Great Fire of London is a component of Key Stage One on the national curriculum, many of The Monument’s visitors today are under ten-years-old. They all receive a certificate on leaving to prove that they have been to the top. “Usually they are very well behaved,” says Nathalie approvingly,“We have to monitor stickers on the walls and things like chewing gum and even the odd bit of graffiti, but generally with those unwelcome additions, adults are more likely to be the offenders!”
The interior of The Monument – all two hundred and two feet of it – is cleaned by a team of regulars who come in three times a week at night when the visitors are gone. They must be the fittest cleaning crew in London! “They use simple mops and buckets to clean the marble stairs from top to bottom,” Nathalie explains, “We have to treat the building very, very gently because it is Grade One listed. We cannot make any changes or alterations without consulting English Heritage – even our turnstile, which we no longer use, is listed.”
When I first visited The Monument back in the sixties, it was black with soot and pollution. Today, after the major conservation work, the creamy Portland stone gleams almost as brightly as the gilded flame at the very top.
“We welcome visitors from all over the world and a surprising number of Londoners come here too,” says Nathalie, “It’s important to people – it’s part of the fabric of the city. It has a good feeling and it’s a very romantic place. For a fee, we allow people to come here after hours and propose with the whole of London spread out below them. Imagine that!” Standing on the viewing platform at the very top of the column, it is not hard to see why that would be appealing. Despite the development taking place in every direction, the view is simply breathtaking. Here at the very heart of old London you can look down on the streets below and still see, quite clearly, the imprint of the ancient, incinerated city that The Monument was built to commemorate.
Once I manage to catch my breath, I ask if people ever give up before they reach the top and the spectacular view. Nathalie laughs, “That’s quite rare. Once they’ve started most people are very determined. Just occasionally we might have a visitor who can’t make it because of vertigo, but we always give them a refund.”
For my money, whether you are a tourist or native, the best four-pounds-fifty you could possibly spend in the City of London is the the entry fee to The Monument. And if you visited regularly you could ditch the gym membership!
“my legs are crying out for mercy”
The view from the top photographed by Alex Pink
The view from the top photographed fifty years ago by Roland Collins
The Monument seen from Billingsgate.
In Pudding Lane
Mandy Thurkle –“You could say it keeps us fit. There are always two of us here on duty and, between us, we have to go up four times a day to make our regular checks.”
Sean Thompson-Patterson, first day of work at The Monument.
The reclining woman on the left is the City ‘injured by fire.’ The beehive at her feet represents the industry that will help to rebuild the City. The winged creature behind her is Time which will help the City to regain her feet again. Charles II stands on the right in a Roman breastplate, putting things to rights. At his feet Envy is disappearing into a hole, while Peace and Plenty float on a cloud above the scene.
Photographs copyright © Alex Pink
The Monument, Fish St Hill, EC3R 6DB . Open daily. Summer (April – September) 9:30am – 6pm. Winter (October -March) 9:30am – 5:30pm.
In The Lavender Fields Of Surrey
Click here to book THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOURS for July
I cannot imagine a more relaxing way to enjoy a sunny English summer afternoon than a walk through a field of lavender. Observe the subtle tones of blue, extending like a mist to the horizon and rippling like the surface of the sea as the wind passes over. Inhale the pungent fragrance carried on the breeze. Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants. Spot the pheasants scuttling away and – if you are as lucky as I was – encounter a red fox stalking the game birds through the forest of lavender. What an astonishing colour contrast his glossy russet pelt made as he disappeared into the haze of blue and green plants.
Lavender has been grown on the Surrey Downs for centuries and sold in summer upon the streets of the capital by itinerant traders. The aromatic properties and medicinal applications of lavender have always been appreciated, with each year’s new crop signalling the arrival of summer in London.
The lavender growing tradition in Surrey is kept alive by Mayfield Lavender in Banstead where visitors may stroll through fields of different varieties and then enjoy lavender ice cream or a cream tea with a lavender scone afterwards, before returning home laden with lavender pillows, soap, honey and oil.
Let me confess, I had given up on lavender – it had become the smell most redolent of sanitary cleaning products. But now I have learnt to distinguish between the different varieties and found a preference for a delicately-fragranced English lavender by the name of Folgate, I have rediscovered it again. My entire house is scented with it and the soporific qualities are evident. At the end of that sunny afternoon, when I returned from my excursion to the lavender fields of Surrey, I sat down in my armchair and did not awake again until supper time.
‘Six bunches a penny, sweet lavender!’ is the cry that invites in the street the purchasers of this cheap and pleasant perfume. A considerable quantity of the shrub is sold to the middling-classes of the inhabitants, who are fond of placing lavender among their linen – the scent of which conquers that of the soap used in washing. – William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders, 1804
‘Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants…’
Thomas Rowlandson’s Characteristic Series of the Lower Orders, 1820
‘Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Lavender – Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Blooming Lavender’ from Luke Clennell’s London Melodies, 1812
‘Spot the pheasants scuttling away…’
From Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Card issued with Grenadier Cigarettes in 1902
WWI veteran selling lavender bags by Julius Mendes Price, 1919
Yardley issued Old English Lavender talcum powder tins from 1913 incorporating Francis Wheatley’s flower seller of 1792
Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Clive Murphy, Oral Historian
Join me for a ramble through two thousand years of culture at the heart of old London followed by tea and cakes freshly baked to a recipe of 1720 served in a three hundred year old house. CLICK HERE TO BOOK
I am delighted to report that one of my late friend Clive Murphy‘s books, A Funny Old Quist (The Memoirs of a Gamekeeper), is to be republish by Eland Books
Above a curry house in Brick Lane lived Clive Murphy (1936-2012) like a wise owl snug in the nest he constructed of books, and lined with pictures, photographs, postcards and cuttings over the nearly fifty years that he occupied his tiny flat. Originally from Dublin, Clive had not a shred of an Irish accent. Instead he revelled in a well-educated vocabulary, a spectacular gift for rhetoric and a dry taste for savouring life’s ironies. He possessed a certain delicious arcane tone that you would recognise if you have heard his fellow-countryman Francis Bacon talking. In fact, Clive was a raconteur of the highest order and I was a willing audience, happy merely to sit at his feet and chuckle appreciatively at his colourful and sometimes raucous observations.
I was especially thrilled to meet Clive because he was a writer after my own heart who made it his business to seek out people and record their stories. At first in Pimlico and then here in Spitalfields through the sixties and seventies, Clive worked as a “modern Mayhew, publishing the lives of ordinary people who had lived through the extraordinary upheavals and social changes of the first three-quarters of the century before they left the stage.” He led me to a bookshelf in his front room and showed me a line of nine books of oral history that he edited, entitled Ordinary Lives, as well as his three novels and six volumes of ribald verse. I was astonished to be confronted with the achievements of this self-effacing man living there in two rooms in such beautiful extravagant chaos.
Naturally, I was immediately curious of Clive’s books of oral history. Each volume is an autobiography of one person recorded and edited by Clive, “ordinary” people whose lives are revealed in the telling to be compelling and extraordinary. They are A Funny Old Quist, memoirs of a gamekeeper, Oiky, memoirs of a pigman, The Good Deeds of a Good Woman, memoirs of an East End hostel dweller, A Stranger in Gloucester, memoirs of an Austrian refugee, Endsleigh, memoirs of a riverkeeper, At the Dog in Dulwich, memoirs of a struggling poet, Four Acres and a Donkey, memoirs of a lavatory attendant, Love, Dears! memoirs of a chorus girl and Born to Sing, memoirs of a Jewish East End mantle presser. The variety of subjects is intriguing and bizarre, and Clive explained his personal vision of creating a social panorama, “to begin with the humblest lavatory attendant and then work my way up in the world until I got to Princess Margaret.”
Much to Clive’s frustration, the project foundered when he got to the middle classes, and he coloured visibly as he explained, “I found the middle classes had an image of themselves they wanted to project and they asked to correct what they had said, afterwards, or they told downright lies, whereas the common people didn’t have an image of themselves and they had a natural gift of language.” I was curious to understand the origin of Clive’s curiosity, and learn how and why he came to edit all these books. And when he told me the story, I discovered the reasons were part of what brought Clive to England in the first place.
“I lived a sheltered life in Dublin in a suburb and qualified as a solicitor before I came to England in 1958. My mother wanted me to be solicitor to Trinity College where her father was Vice-Provost but I had been on two holidays to London and I’d fallen in love with the bright lights. I wanted to see a wider variety of people. So as soon as I qualified I left Dublin, where I had been offered a job as a solicitor at £4 and ten shillings a week, and came to London, where I got a job at once as a liftman at a Lyons Corner House for £8 a week and I have lived here ever since.
I was staying in Pimlico and there was a retired lavatory attendant and his wife who lived down below, and they invited me down for supper. He had such a natural gift for language and a quaint way of expressing himself, so I said ‘Let’s do a book!’ and that was Four Acres and a Donkey. Then I was living in another house and by complete chance there was another retired lavatory attendant, a woman who had once been a chorus girl, so I did another book with her, too, that was Love Dears!
At that time there was an organisation called Space which let out abandoned schools and warehouses to artists. In 1973, I answered their letter in The Times and they found me an empty building, it was the Old St Patrick’s School in Buxton St. I lived in the former headmaster’s study and that’s where I recorded my first East End book. I had nothing but a tea chest, a camp bed and a hurricane lamp. There was no electricity but there was running cold water. Meths drinkers used to sit on the doorstep night and day, and at night they would hammer on the door trying to get in. I was a bit frightened because I had never met meths drinkers before and I was all alone but gradually three artists came to live in the school with me.
Then I had to leave the school house because I was flooded out and, after a stint on Quaker St, I saw an ad in Harry’s Confectioners and moved here to Brick Lane in 1974. The building was owned by a Jewish lady who let the rooms to me and a professor from Rochester University who only came to use his place in vacations, so it was wonderfully quiet. There was a cloth warehouse on the ground floor then which is now the Aladin Restaurant. Every shopfront was a different trade, we had an ironmonger, an electrician and a wine merchant with a sign that said ‘purveyors to the diplomatic service.’ The wine merchant also had a concoction she sold exclusively to the meths drinkers but that wasn’t advertised.
I thought when I came here to Spitalfields I was going to be solely a writer, I had taught at a primary school in Islington but very soon I became a teacher of children with special needs here. Occasionally, I used to go in the middle of the night to buy food from a stall outside Christ Church, Spitalfields called ‘The Silver Gloves.’ I had no money hardly and I used to live off the fruit and veg thrown out by the market onto Brushfield St. But I found it exciting to be here because I found lots of people to interview. I had already written two novels and I was busy recording Alexander Hartog and Beatrice Ali, and I was happy to be learning about them, because I did lead a very restrictive life before I came to England.”
Clive was a poet at heart and there is an unsentimental appreciation of the human condition that runs through all his work. He chose his subjects because he saw the poetry in them when no-one else did and the books, recording the unexpected eloquence of these “ordinary” people telling their stories, bear witness to his compassionate insight.
As a writer writing my own pen portraits, I was curious to ask Clive what he had learnt from all his interviews with such a variety of people. “The gamekeeper said to me, ‘You mean you don’t know how to skin a mole?'” Clive recalled with relish, evoking the gamekeeper in question vividly, before returning to his own voice to explain himself, “I am amazed that we are all stuck in our little worlds – he really thought everyone would know that. It wasn’t just the knowledge that I learnt from people, it was their outlooks and personalities.”
Clive gave me copies of his two East End books and, as we sliced open a box I was delighted to discover “new” copies of books from 1975, beautifully printed in letterpress with fresh unfaded covers and some with a vinyl record inside to allow the reader to hear the voice of the protagonist. I could not wait to go home and read them, and listen.
I will never be able to walk down Brick Lane without thinking of Clive Murphy, who once lived above the Aladin Restaurant, as a beacon of inspiration to me while I am running around Spitalfields pursuing my own interviews.
Clive in his kitchen
At Old Liverpool St Station
Many readers wrote objecting to the first version of the scheme to redevelop Liverpool St Station but now there is a new version all those objections have been discarded. If you want to stop this new proposal for a monster tower of 20 storeys on top of the station, blocking natural light from the concourse, please write a new objection before 4th July.
CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO OBJECT
Yesterday, Spitalfields Life readers crashed the City of London website trying to object, so if you were unsuccessful then please try again today, or write an email or letter.
Let us take a stroll through old Liverpool St Station as it was in the nineteenth century, courtesy of this magnificent gallery of photographs from the Bishopsgate Institute collection. Like a journey through the stomach of whale that swallows humans by the score, did the wondrous behemoth ever appear as awe-inspiringly labyrinthine and majestic as it did then?
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Last Chance To Save Liverpool St Station From The Monster Block
Behold, the twenty storey office block that Network Rail wants to plonk on top of Liverpool St Station. Note the height of Grade II*-listed Great Eastern Hotel in front and observe that this pile is more than twice the height. No amount of terraces with greenery can conceal the bulk of this monster which will block out daylight from the concourse.
Many readers wrote objecting to the first version of this scheme but now there is this new version all those objections have been discarded. If you want to stop this new offence, please write a new objection before 4th July.
You may have seen adverts on social media encouraging people to support improving access and toilets at Liverpool St Station, which lead through to an online form to register support for the new development. Yet it is Network Rail’s responsibility to provide proper access and toilets, and these adverts barely mention the twenty-storey block they want to build.
Unfortunately, the developers have garnered 613 messages of support against 180 objections so far, which is why your objection is imperative.
Please forward this post, and encourage your friends and family to object too.
HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY
You can object in writing online, by email or by letter.
More than one person can object in any household and anyone can object wherever you are in the world but you must include your postal address.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER YOUR OBJECTION ONLINE
If you are objecting by email or letter, address your objection to Tom Sleigh, Chair of the Planning & Transport Committee and quote Planning Application 25/00494/FULEIA.
Say in the opening line of your objection ‘I object’ and if you submit your objection online you must also click the button that indicates you ‘object.’
We suggest the following opening line:
“I object to this application which would cause substantial harm to the significance of nationally important heritage assets. More specifically, I raise objections to:”
Follow in your own words with these legal points for objection.
POINTS FOR OBJECTION
- The substantial harm to the Grade II-listed station through the demolition of the roof of the concourse and its replacement with a new structure, which would also compromise the setting of the 19th century train shed.
- The insertion of large amounts of new retail units in the 19th century train sheds, including the construction of two elevated retail galleries, causing a high level of harm to the special interest and significance of the Grade II-listed heritage asset.
- The impact to the setting of surrounding listed heritage assets. In particular, harm to the significance of the Grade II*-listed hotel – the last continually functioning 19th century hotel in the City – through the construction of a twenty-storey tower over the station concourse.
- The substantial harm the scheme would cause to the Bishopsgate Conservation Area by the imposition of a tall building in an area characterised by low-and medium-scale buildings. This is contrary to the 2015 City Plan which requires the refusal of planning permission for tall buildings in inappropriate areas, such as in Conservation Areas and the St. Paul’s Cathedral Heights area. In addition, the scheme would impact on the setting of numerous designated and undesignated heritage assets in the City and beyond, such as many of the Grade I-listed Christopher Wren City churches and nearby St Botolph’s church.
- Be sure to reference the National Planning Policy Framework, otherwise your objection may be dismissed. Paragraph NPPF 213 states: “Substantial harm to or loss of: a) grade II listed buildings, or grade II registered parks or gardens, should be exceptional.”
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At the public consultation for the first Liverpool St Station scheme only the lower half of the model was shown
Sir John Betjeman led the campaign to save Liverpool St Station in the last century. Photograph by David Sim c.1961
Skilton’s London Life
Tickets available this Saturday 21st June
Now that the summer visitors are here and thronging in the capital’s streets and transport systems, I thought I would send you this fine set of postcards published by Charles Skilton, including my special favourites the escapologist and the pavement artist.
Looking at these monochrome images of the threadbare postwar years, you might easily imagine the photographs were earlier – but Margaret Rutherford in ‘Ring Round the Moon’ at The Globe in Shaftesbury Ave in number nine dates them to 1950. Celebrated in his day as publisher of the Billy Bunter stories, Charles Skilton won posthumous notoriety for his underground pornographic publishing empire, Luxor Press.
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