Staircases Of Old London
Mercers’ Hall, c.1910
It gives me vertigo just to contemplate the staircases of old London – portrayed in these glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute. Yet I cannot resist the foolish desire to climb every one to discover where it leads, scaling each creaking step and experiencing the sinister chill of the landing where the apparition materialises on moonless nights.
In the Mercers’ Hall and the Cutlers’ Hall, the half-light of a century ago glimmers at the top of the stairs eternally. Is someone standing there at the head of the staircase in the shadows? Did everyone that went up come down again? Or are they all still waiting at the top? These depopulated photographs are charged with the presence of those who ascended and descended through the centuries.
While it is tempting to follow on up, there is a certain grandeur to many of these staircases which presents an unspoken challenge – even a threat – to an interloper such as myself, inviting second thoughts. The question is, do you have the right? Not everybody enjoys the privilege of ascending the wide staircase of power to look down upon the rest of us. I suspect many of these places had a narrow stairway round the back, more suitable for the likes of you and I.
But since there is no-one around to stop us, why should we not walk right up the staircase to the top and take a look to see what is there? It cannot do any harm. You go first, I am right behind you.
Cutlers’ Hall, c.1920.
Buckingham Palace, Grand Staircase, c.1910.
4 Catherine Court, Shadwell c.1900.
St Paul’s Cathedral, Dean’s staircase, c.1920.
House of Lords, staircase and corridor, c.1920.
Fishmongers’ Hall, marble staircase, c.1920.
Girdlers’ Hall, c.1920.
Goldsmiths’ Hall, c.1920.
Merchant Taylors’ Hall, c.1920.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Ironmongers’ Hall, c.1910.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Stairs at Wapping, c.1910.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Staircase at the Tower of London, Traitors’ Gate, c.1910.
Hogarth’s “Christ at the Pool of Bethesda” on the staircase at Bart’s Hospital, c.1910.
Lancaster House, c.1910.
2 Arlington St, c.1915.
73 Cheapside, c.1910.
Dowgate stairs, c.1910.
Crutched Friars, 1912.
Grocers’ Hall, c.1910.
Cromwell House Hospital, Highgate Hill, c.1930.
Salters’ Hall, Entrance Hall and Staircase, c.1910.
Holy Trinity Hospital, Greenwich, c.1910.
Salter’s Hall, c.1910.
Skinners’ Hall, c.1910.
1 Horse Guards Avenue, 1932.
Ashburnham House, Westminster, c.1910.
Buckingham Palace, c.1910.
Home House, Portman Sq, c.1910.
St Paul’s Cathedral, Dean’s Staircase, c.1920.
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Watermen’s Stairs In Wapping
Wapping Old Stairs
I need to keep reminding myself of the river. Rarely a week goes by without some purpose to go down there but, if no such reason occurs, I often take a walk simply to pay my respects to the Thames. Even as you descend from the Highway into Wapping, you sense a change of atmosphere when you enter the former marshlands that remain susceptible to fog and mist on winter mornings. Yet the river does not declare itself at first, on account of the long wall of old warehouses that line the shore, blocking the view of the water from Wapping High St.
The feeling here is like being offstage in a great theatre and walking in the shadowy wing space while the bright lights and main events take place nearby. Fortunately, there are alleys leading between the tall warehouses which deliver you to the waterfront staircases where you may gaze upon the vast spectacle of the Thames, like an interloper in the backstage peeping round the scenery at the action. There is a compelling magnetism drawing you down these dark passages, without ever knowing precisely what you will find, since the water level rises and falls by seven metres every day – you may equally discover waves lapping at the foot of the stairs or you may descend onto an expansive beach.
These were once Watermen’s Stairs, where passengers might get picked up or dropped off, seeking transport across or along the Thames. Just as taxi drivers of contemporary London learn the Knowledge, Watermen once knew the all the names and order of the hundreds of stairs that lined the banks of the Thames, of which only a handful survive today.
Arriving in Wapping by crossing the bridge in Old Gravel Lane, a short detour to the east would take me to Shadwell Stairs but instead I go straight to the Prospect of Whitby where a narrow passage to the right leads to Pelican Stairs. Centuries ago, the Prospect was known as the Pelican, giving its name to the stairs which have retained their name irrespective of the changing identity of the pub. These worn stone steps connect to a slippery wooden stair leading to wide beach at low tide where you may enjoy impressive views towards the Isle of Dogs.
West of here is New Crane Stairs and then, at the side of Wapping Station, another passage leads you to Wapping Dock Stairs. Further down the High St, opposite the entrance to Brewhouse Lane, is a passageway leading to a fiercely-guarded pier, known as King Henry’s Stairs – though John Roque’s map of 1746 labels this as the notorious Execution Dock Stairs. Continue west and round the side of the river police station, you discover Wapping Police Stairs in a strategic state of disrepair and beyond, in the park, is Wapping New Stairs.
It is a curious pilgrimage, but when you visit each of these stairs you are visiting another time – when these were the main entry and exit points into Wapping. The highlight is undoubtedly Wapping Old Stairs with its magnificently weathered stone staircase abutting the Town of Ramsgate and offering magnificent views to Tower Bridge from the beach. If you are walking further towards the Tower, Aldermans’ Stairs is worth venturing at low tide when a fragment of ancient stone causeway is revealed, permitting passengers to embark and disembark from vessels without wading through Thames mud.
Shadwell Stairs
Pelican Stairs
Pelican Stairs at night
View into the Prospect of Whitby from Pelican Stairs
New Crane Stairs
Wapping Dock Stairs
Execution Dock Stairs, now known as King Henry’s Stairs
Entrance to Wapping Police Stairs
Wapping Police Stairs
Metropolitan Police Service Warning: These stairs are unsafe!
Wapping New Stairs with Rotherithe Church in the distance
Light in Wapping High St
Wapping Pier Head
Entrance to Wapping Old Stairs
Wapping Old Stairs
Passageway to Wapping Old Stairs at night
Aldermans’ Stairs, St Katharine’s Way
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Jack Sheppard Of Spitalfields
Spitalfields’ most notorious son, Jack Sheppard, was born in Whites Row on 4th March 1702 and christened the very next day at St Dunstan’s in Stepney, just in case his infant soul fled this earth as quickly as it arrived. Unexceptionally for his circumstances and his time, death surrounded him – named for an elder brother that died before his birth, he lost his father and his sister in infancy.
When his mother could not feed him, she gave him to the workhouse in Bishopsgate at the age of six, from where he was indentured to a cane chair maker, until he died too. Eventually at fifteen years old, he was apprenticed to a carpenter in Covent Garden, following his father’s trade, but at age twenty he met Elizabeth Lyon, his partner in crime, at the Black Lion in Drury Lane, a public house frequented by criminals and the infamous Jonathan Wild, known as the “Thief-taker General.”
On the morning of 4th September 1724, at age twenty-two, Jack was to be hung at Tyburn for stealing three rolls of cloth, two silver spoons and a silk handkerchief. But instead of the routine execution of another worthless felon, London awoke to the astonishing news that he had escaped from the death cell at Newgate. With the revelation that this was the third prison break in months by the handsome boyish twenty-two year old Jack Sheppard, he flamed like a comet into the stratosphere of criminality – embodying the role of the charismatic desperado to such superlative effect that his colourful reputation for youthful defiance gleams in the popular imagination two centuries later.
In the Spring, he broke out through the roof of St Giles Roundhouse, tossing tiles at his guards. In the Summer, with his attractive companion Elizabeth, he climbed through a barred window twenty-five feet above the ground to escape from New Bridewell Prison, Clerkenwell. And now he had absconded from Newgate too, using a metal file smuggled in by Elizabeth and fleeing in one of her dresses as disguise. Sheppard was a popular sensation, and everyone was fascinated by the inexplicable mystery of his unique talent for escapology.
On 10th September 1724, Sheppard was rearrested after his break-out from Newgate and returned there to a high security cell in the Stone Castle, where he was handcuffed and fettered, then padlocked in shackles and chained down in a chamber that was barred and locked. Yet with apparent superhuman ability – inspiring the notion that the devil himself came to Sheppard’s assistance – he escaped again a month later and enjoyed a very public fortnight of liberty In London, eluding the authorities in disguise as a dandy and carousing flamboyantly with Elizabeth Lyon, until arrested by Jonathan Wild, buying everyone drinks at midnight at a tavern in Clare Market, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Back in Newgate – now the most celebrated criminal in history – hundreds daily paid four shillings to visit Sheppard in his cell, where he enjoyed a drinking match with Figg the prizefighter and Sir Henry Thornhill painted his execution portrait.
Two hundred thousand people turned out for Jack Sheppard’s hanging on 16th November, just two months since he came to prominence, and copies of his autobiography ghostwritten by Daniel Defoe were sold. Four years later, John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera,” with the character of Macheath modelled upon Sheppard and Peachum based upon his nemesis Jonathan Wild, premiered with spectacular success.
Biographical pamphlets and dramas proliferated, with Henry Ainsworth’s bestseller of 1839 “Jack Sheppard” – for which George Cruikshank drew these pictures – outselling “Oliver Twist.” Taking my cue from William Makepeace Thackeray, who wrote that, “George Cruikshank really created the tale and Mr Ainsworth, as it were, merely put words to it,” I have published these masterly illustrations here as the quintessential visual account of the life of Spitalfields’ greatest rogue.
And what was the secret of his multiple prison breaks?
There was no supernatural intervention. Sheppard had outstanding talent as a carpenter and builder, inherited from his father and grandfather who were both carpenters before him and developed during the six years of his apprenticeship in Covent Garden. With great physical strength and a natural mastery of building materials, he possessed an intimate understanding of the means of construction of every type of lock, bar, window, floor, ceiling and wall – and, in addition to this, twenty-two year old Jack Sheppard had a burning appetite to wrestle whatever joy he could from his time of splendour in the Summer of 1724.
Mrs Sheppard refuses the adoption of her little son Jack
Jack Sheppard exhibits a vindinctive character.
Jack Sheppard committing the robbery in Willesden church.
Jack Sheppard gets drunk and orders his mother off.
Jack Sheppard’s escape from the cage at Willesden.
Mrs Sheppard expostulates with her son.
Jack Sheppard and Blueskin in Mr Wood’s bedroom.
Jack Sheppard in company with Elizabeth Lyon escapes from Clerkenwell Prison.
The audacity of Jack Sheppard.
Jack Sheppard visits his mother in Bedlam.
Jack Sheppard escaping from the condemned cell in Newgate.
The first escape.
Jack Sheppard tricking Shortbolt, the gaoler.
The second escape.
Jonathan Wild seizing Jack Sheppard at his mother’s grave in Willesden.
Jack Sheppard sits for his execution portrait in oils by Sir James Thornhill – accompanied by Figg the prizefighter (to Jack’s right), John Gay, the playwright (to Jacks’s left), while William Hogarth sketches him on the right.
Jack Sheppard’s irons knocked off in the stone hall in Newgate.
Jack Sheppard of Spitalfields (Mezzotint after the Newgate portrait by Sir James Thornhill, 1724) – “Yes sir, I am The Sheppard, and all the gaolers in the town are my flocks, and I cannot stir into the country but they are at my heels baaing after me…”
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So Long, Angela Flanders
Today I publish Kate Griffin’s profile of Angela Flanders as a tribute to a celebrated perfumer who practised in the East End for thirty years and died on 26th April.
Angela Flanders
There is something magical about Angela Flanders‘ secret workshop. Her little room in Bethnal Green is lined with bottles full of scented oils, the contents of each one carefully inscribed in silver ink. It does not take a huge leap of imagination to see Angela as a modern-day alchemist, mixing potions and precious substances together until they are transmuted into something miraculous.
Small and neat with bright grey eyes and an inquisitive – almost academic – spirit, she could easily have been transported back in time into the orbit of Spitalfield’s most famous herbalist Nicholas Culpeper. She referred to her bottles of essential oils as “my library of ingredients.” The air of Angela’s workroom – a private, experimental space – was heady with the scent of flowers, spices and resins from all over the world. If you could capture it in a bottle, you could almost carry the globe in your pocket.
She surveyed the bottles and vials lined up on the shelves behind her. “I don’t think you could call what I do remotely conventional or scientific, I just follow my instincts. Sometimes I spend the whole day here mixing and trying different combinations to see what happens. I always start with the base notes because an old ‘nose’ in France once told me: ‘You wouldn’t build a house from the roof down; you must always start with the foundations’. So that’s what I do”.
“I play with layering separate ingredients here in the workshop, other times I’ll carry the idea of a scent around with me for several days, wondering where to take it. Then something pops into my head – a new ingredient to add to the mix that blends and lifts. Usually those flashes are absolutely right. To be honest, I don’t know why it works, but I think it must be a happy combination of instinct, inspiration and experience.”
She smiled, “I suppose you could relate it to good food? I think it’s a little bit like that programme Ready Steady Cook where people brought a bag full of the most unlikely ingredients to the TV studio and a chef would produce something mouth-watering. Creating perfume is similar – you develop an olfactory palette.”
Angela has been based in Columbia Rd since 1985 and, appropriately, given that London’s best-loved flower market is on her doorstep, for much of that time, she has worked with scent. When she first found her premises – a former shoe shop dating from around 1850 – it had been closed up and forgotten for 25 years. “We had to get a locksmith to let us in,” she recalls, “It was in quite a state. The roof was shot and there was a terrible smell, but it was full of all its original features and I was determined to keep as much as I could. I saw it as somewhere in need of care and attention. I fell in love with it.”
I was fascinated to learn that The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings where I work, was Angela’s first port of call – nearly thirty years ago – when trying to find information about the right things to do to care for her lovely old premises
“The walls were painted a dark blue-grey and I wanted to keep it,” she explains, “I wasn’t sure what to do, but SPAB advised me to leave the paintwork alone and to simply scrub it, wash it down and then wax-polish it. So that’s exactly what I did and it brightened up beautifully.”
Initially, Angela intended to run her own decorative paint business from Columbia Rd. A graduate of Manchester School of Art, she worked in theatre design and as a costume designer at the BBC. Subsequently, she attended courses in Interior Design at the Inchbald School and at Hackney Building College and her plan was to work primarily with furniture. But remember that “terrible smell” mentioned earlier? It was finding something to remedy the problem that set Angela on the perfume trail. She began to buy and then to make her own pot pourri, using essential oils and dried flowers – and people liked what she made.
“It was something that just grew,” she says, “I suppose I loved doing it because I’d always enjoyed making things and transforming things. With the pot pourris I think I was enjoying conjuring up atmospheres for rooms – scents that might suggest the past or a mood. At first I’d go to Spitalfields Market and buy the odd box of flowers and I’d dry them out by hanging them all round this building. Then I went to Covent Garden and bought a few more things from a merchant and within a year the business had expanded so much that I was taking in van-loads of flower deliveries. It was then that I realised that I couldn’t take on any more furniture commissions, because this was clearly the right thing to do.”
The perfume business was a direct result of Angela’s early experiments with essential oils and dried flowers. “I’ve got this theory that if you are on the right path people help you and that certainly happened to me,” Angela confided.
Sometimes assistance came out of the blue. “It was odd,” she said,“One day I was in an antiques shop and I felt myself guided, literally, to the back shelf where there was a book by a nineteenth century perfumer called Septimus Piesse. It’s mainly him holding forth on scent and his opinions and it includes some of his formulas too, one of which I have used. It has become one of my bibles.”
Although she readily admitted that she was entirely self-taught, perfumes by Angela Flanders have won international acclaim. Precious One – a rich floral created to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her daughter Kate’s elegant boutique, Precious in Artillery Passage – wafted off with the award for Best New Independent Fragrance at the annual Fragrance Foundation Awards Ceremony. Known as the Fifis, this is the scent industry equivalent of the Oscars. The decision, based on a blind ‘nosing’ by eminent fragrance writers and journalists was unanimous and Angela was clearly delighted by her success. “We didn’t for a moment think we would win, because we were up against such stiff competition. It was marvellous.”
Intriguingly, since working with scent, she discovered that the East End has a history of perfume manufacture. Essential oil distillers Bush, Boake & Allen traded from premises near Broadway Market and today, the offices of Penhaligons are situated near Artillery Passage, Spitalfields, where Angela’s second shop is situated just along from her daughter’s.
“There’s a strong tradition of perfume making in this part of London. In fact, historically, a lot of the scents made here were sold in the City and in the West End.” She grinned ruefully. “That’s the old story, isn’t it? The West End made its money off the talents of the East End, but it’s always been true. Think of the furniture makers, the gilders and the wood carvers who worked here for generations – all of them making a living as artisan craftsmen. I like to think that’s what I do – make things.”
When Angela moved into Columbia Rd she was in the vanguard of the new wave of small artisan businesses that now make it such a destination. “The flower market had flourished for one hundred and fifty years when we arrived, but it was a very different place then. At the time, as well as me, there was Jones’ Dairy, a deli and the Fred Bare hat shop. But slowly, slowly it took off. Someone once said to me, ‘If you can run a shop in Columbia Road, you can run a shop anywhere.’ I think that’s quite right!”
Angela paused and looks at the glittering bottles surrounding around us in her shop. The colours of the liquids range from pale greens and delicate aqua shades to the deep golden tones of the darker woody fragrances that have become an Angela Flanders signature.
After a moment she nodded and continued. “I also think I’m very lucky because I don’t have to satisfy the concerns of the big companies. I can play, I can have fun and I can make very small amounts of a scent. Being tiny, you can afford to be brave! Very often perfumers are forced to work to a commercial brief and it can be difficult for them. I’m not bound by that – I can explore and I treat myself to that freedom every day. Really, I just pootle along here in Bethnal Green and it’s wonderful.”
Angela Flanders and her daughter, Kate Evans.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Angela Flanders, 96 Columbia Rd (Sunday only, 10am to 3pm) & 4 Artillery Passage (Monday to Friday 11am to 6.30pm)
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An Audience With Viscountess Boudica
The Gentle Author interviews Viscountess Boudica, Trendsetter of Bethnal Green and one of the East End’s most cherished personalities, on 23rd May at 7pm Monday at The Society Club, 3 Cheshire St, E2 6ED. Click here for tickets
This is your chance to meet Viscountess Boudica in person over cocktails at The Society Club as she gives a rare public appearance in Spitalfields, telling her life story to The Gentle Author and answering questions from the audience.
Celebrated for her colourful outfits, her historic collection of domestic appliances, her devotion to seasonal festivals and her phenomenal art work, the Viscountess is also a formidable raconteuse with candid and amusing tales to tell of her astonishing experiences.
Be sure to follow Viscountess Boudica’s blog There’s More To Life Than Heaven & Earth
Take a look at
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween
Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas
Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter
and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
Microcosm Of London, 1809
Billingsgate Market
(click on this plate or any of the others to enlarge and examine the details)
In 1897, Charles Gosse, Archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute, was lucky enough to buy a handsome 1809 edition of Thomas Rowlandson & Augustus Pugin’s ‘Microcosm of London’ from Quaritch booksellers in Piccadilly with just one plate missing, yet it took him until 1939 to track down a replacement to fill the gap and complete his copy – and the single plate cost him more in 1939 than the entire three volumes in 1897. Then the volumes were stolen in the nineteen-eighties but, thankfully, returned to the Bishopsgate years later as part of Operation Bumblebee, tracking art thefts back to their owners – and just waiting on the shelf there for me to come upon them.
Augustus Charles Pugin, the architectural draftsman (and father of Augustus Welby Pugin who designed the Palace of Westminster) had the idea to create a lavish compendium of views of London life but it was the contribution of his collaborator Thomas Rowlandson who brought another dimension, elevating these images above the commonplace. While Pugin created expansive and refined architectural views, Rowlandson peopled them with an idiosyncratic bunch of Londoners who take possession of these spaces and who, in many cases, exist in pitifully unsentimental contrast to the refinement of their architectural surroundings.
How very pleasant it is to be a tourist in the metropolis of 1809, thanks to the magnificent plates of the ‘Microcosm of London.’ Here are the wonders of the capital, so appealingly coloured and so satisfyingly organised within the elegant classical architecture that frames most social activity, while also conveniently ignoring the domestic reality of the greater majority of the populace.
In only a few plates – such as Carlton House and the House of Commons – does Thomas Rowlandson submit to the requirement of peopling these spaces with slim well-dressed aspirational types that we recognise today from those familiar mock-ups used to sell bad architecture to the gullible. Yet the most fascinating plates are those where he has peopled these rationally conceived public spaces with the more characterful and less willowy individuals who illustrate the true diversity of the human form, and he satisfies our voyeuristic tendencies by celebrating the grotesque and the theatrical. In Billingsgate Market, Rowlandson takes a composition worthy of Claude and peoples it with fishwives fighting, revealing affectionate delight in the all-too familiar contrast exemplified by aspirational architecture and the fallibility which makes us human.
While the first impression is of harmony and everyone in their place – whether it be church, masquerade, asylum, theatre, prison or lecture hall – examining these pictures close-up reveals the genius of Thomas Rowlandson which is unable to resist introducing grotesque human drama or adding comic specimens of humanity to these idealised urban visions. Just like an early nineteenth century version of ‘Where’s Wally?’, Rowlandson implicitly invites us to seek the clowns.
Even if in some plates, such as the Drawing Room in St James, he appears to acquiesce to a notion of mannequin-like debutantes, Rowlandson more than makes up for it at the Bank of England where – surprise, surprise – the buffoons take centre stage. Spot the duffer in a stripy waistcoat with a girl on each arm in Vauxhall Gardens, or the dolts all robed up in coats of arms at Herald’s College, or the Masquerade where – as characters from Commedia dell’Arte – the funsters seem most in their element.
Meanwhile at the Post Office, in cubicles not so different from those in call centres of our own day, clerks are at work in identical red uniforms which deny them the individuality that is the vain prerogative of the rich in this vision of London. Equally, at the asylum nobody gets to assert themselves, while the prison inmates are diminished both in size and colour by their environment.
In the ‘Microcosm of London,’ Augustus Pugin portrayed an architect’s fantasy vision of a city of business, of politics, of religion, of education, of entertainment, of punishment and reward, but – thankfully – Thomas Rowlandson populated it with life.
Fire in London – the dreadful fire which took place on 3rd March 1791 at the Albion Mills on the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge. We have selected this from many objects of a similar nature which frequently occur in this great metropolis, because the representation afforded an opportunity of a more picturesque effect, the termination of the bridge in front and St Paul’s in the background contribute interesting parts to a representation which is altogether great and awful.
Pillory, Charing Cross. A place chosen very frequently for this kind of punishment, probably on account of its being so public a situation. An offender thus exposed to public view is thereafter considered infamous. There are certain offences which are supposed to irritate the feelings of the lower classes more than others, in which case a punishment by Pillory becomes very serious.
Guildhall. Examination of a bankrupt before his creditors, Court of King’s Bench Walk. The laws of England, cautious of encouraging prodigality and extravagance allow the benefits of the bankruptcy laws to none but the traders. If a trader is unable to pay his debts it is misfortune and not a fault.
Leaden Hall Market is a large and extensive building of considerable antiquity, purchased by the great Whittington in 1408 and by him presented to the City.
Astley’s Amphitheatre. Mr Rowlandson’s figures are here, as indeed they invariably are, exact delineations of the sort of company who frequent public spectacles of this description. With respect to teaching horses to perform country dances, how far thus accomplishing such an animal renders him more happy or a more valuable member of the horse community is a question I leave to be discussed by the sapient philosophers.
Bartholomew Fair, a spirited representation of this British Saturnalia. To be pleased in their own way, is the object of all. Some hugging, some fighting, others dancing, while many are enjoying the felicity of being borne along with the full stream of the mob.
Bow St Office, giving an accurate representation of this celebrated office at the time of an examination. The police of this country has hitherto been very imperfect, until Henry Fielding, by his abilities, contributed the security of the public, by the detection and prevention of crimes.
Covent Garden Market. The plate represents the bustle of an election for Westminster. The fruit and vegetable market certainly diminishes the beauty and effect of this place as a square, but perhaps the world does not furnish another instance of another metropolis supplied with these articles in equal goodness and profusion.
Christie’s Auction Room. The various effect which the lot – A Venus – has on the company is delineated with great ability and humour. The auctioneer, animated by his subject, seems to be rapidly pouring forth such a string of eloquence as cannot fail to operate on the feelings of his auditors.
The House of Commons is plainly and neatly fitted up, and accommodated with galleries, supported by slender iron capitals adorned with Corinthian capitals, from the ceiling hangs a handsome branch.
Drawing from life at the Royal Academy, Somerset House
The College of Physicians. There is nothing remarkable in the interior of the building except the library and the great hall – which is handsomely represented in this print is a handsome well-proportioned room. The eager disputatious attitude of the figure which is represented as leaning forward in the act of interrogating the candidate, is finely contrasted with two figures on the right hand, one of whom seems to have gathered up his features in supercilious indifference.
Exhibition Room, Somerset House. It would not be easy to find ay other artist, except Mr Rowlandson who was capable of displaying so much separate manner in the delineations placed upon the walls and such an infinite variety of small figures, contrasted with each other in a way so peculiarly happy. To point out any number of figures as peculiarly entitled to attention, would be an insult to the spectator, as very many would necessarily be left out of the catalogue, and everyone of taste will discern them at a glance.
Pass-Room, Bridewell. An interesting and accurate view of this abode of wretchedness. It was provided that paupers, claiming settlement in distant parts of the kingdom should be confined for seven days, prior to being sent of their respective parishes. This is the room apportioned by the magistrate for one class of miserable females.
Royal Cock Pit. It is impossible to examine this picture with any degree of attention, and not enjoy the highest degree of satisfaction at this successful exertion of the artists’ abilities. The regular confusion which this picture exhibits, tells a tale that no combination of words could possibly have done so well.
The Hall, Carlton House. Conceived with classic elegance that does honour to the genius of the late Mr Holland who as the architect, the tout-ensemble is striking and impressive.
The Custom House, in the uppermost of which is a magnificent room running the whole length of the building. On this spot is a busy concourse of nations who pay their tribute towards the support of Great Britain. In front of this building, ships of three hundred and fifty tons burthen can lie and discharge their cargoes.
The Post Office
The Royal Circus
The Great Hall, Bank of England
Dining Room, Asylum
Royal Geographic Society
Drawing Room, St James
St Martin in the Fields
Pantheon Masquerade
King’s Bench Prison
Sadler’s Wells Theatre
Coal Exchange
Herald’s College
Surrey Institution
Fleet Prison
Watercolour Exhibition, Old Bond St
Drury Lane Theatre
Coldbath Prison
Hall and Staircase, British Museum
Common Council Chamber, Guildhall
Vauxhall Gardens
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
A Night On Liverpool St Station
When I was callow and new to London, I once arrived back on a train into Liverpool St Station after the last tube had gone and spent the night there waiting for the first tube next morning. With little money and unaware of the existence of night buses, I passed the long hours possessed by alternating fears of being abducted by a stranger or being arrested by the police for loitering. Liverpool St was quite a different place then, dark and sooty and diabolical – before it was rebuilt in 1990 to become the expansive glasshouse that we all know today – and I had such an intensely terrifying and exciting night then that I can remember it fondly now.
Old Liverpool St Station was both a labyrinth and the beast in the labyrinth too. There were so many tunnels twisting and turning that you felt you were entering the entrails of a monster and when you emerged onto the concourse it was as if you had arrived, like Jonah or Pinocchio, at the enormous ribbed belly.
I was travelling back from spending Saturday night in Cromer and stopped off at Norwich to explore, visiting the castle and studying its collection of watercolours by John Sell Cotman. It was only on the slow stopping-train between Norwich and London on Sunday evening that I realised my mistake and sat anxiously checking my wristwatch at each station, hoping that I would make it back in time. When the train pulled in to Liverpool St, I ran down the platform to the tube entrance only to discover the gates shut, closed early on Sunday night.
I was dressed for summer, and although it had been warm that day, the night was cold and I was ill-equipped for it. If there was a waiting room, in my shameful fear I was too intimidated to enter. Instead, I sat shivering on a bench in my thin white clothes clutching my bag, wide-eyed and timid as a mouse – alone in the centre of the empty dark station and with a wide berth of vacant space around me, so that I could, at least, see any potential threat approaching.
Dividing the station in two were huge ramps where postal lorries rattled up and down all night at great speed, driving right onto the platforms to deliver sacks of mail to the awaiting trains. In spite of the overarching vaulted roof, there was no sense of a single space as there is today, but rather a chaotic railway station criss-crossed by footbridges, extending beyond the corner of visibility with black arches receding indefinitely in the manner of Piranesi.
The night passed without any threat, although when the dawn came I felt as relieved as if I had experienced a spiritual ordeal, comparable to a night in a haunted house in the scary films that I loved so much at that time. It was my own vulnerability as an out-of-towner versus the terror of the unknowable Babylonian city, yet – if I had known then what I knew now – I could simply have walked down to the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market and passed the night in one of the cafes there, safe in the nocturnal cocoon of market life.
Guilty, and eager to preserve the secret of my foolish vigil, I took the first tube to the office in West London where I worked then and changed my clothes in a toilet cubicle, arriving at my desk hours before anyone else.
Only the vaulted roof and the Great Eastern Hotel were kept in the dramatic transformation that created the modern station, sandwiched between new developments, and the dark cathedral where I spent the night is gone. Yet a magnetism constantly draws me back to Liverpool St, not simply to walk through, but to spend time wondering at the epic drama of life in this vast terminus where a flooding current of humanity courses through twice a day – one of the great spectacles of our extraordinary metropolis.
Shortly after my night on the station experience, I got a job at the Bishopsgate Institute – and Liverpool St and Spitalfields became familiar, accessed through the tunnels that extended beyond the station under the road, delivering me directly to my workplace. I noticed the other day that the entrance to the tunnel remains on the Spitalfields side of Bishopsgate, though bricked up now. And I wondered sentimentally, almost longingly, if I could get into it, could I emerge into the old Liverpool St Station, and visit the haunted memory of my own past?
A brick relief of a steam train upon the rear of the Great Eastern Hotel.
Liverpool St Station is built on the site of the Bethlehem Hospital, commonly known as “Bedlam.”
Archive images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
