Author: exploringlondon

10 sites from Shakespearean London – 10: London in Shakespeare’s plays…

by exploringlondon

In this, the final in our series looking at Shakespeare’s London, we take a quick look at some of the plethora of London locations mentioned by the Bard in his historical plays. Some we have already covered, but here are a few more…

Westminster-Abbey• Westminster Abbey (pictured): We’ve already talked about Poet’s Corner but Shakespeare himself makes mention of Westminster Abbey in his plays, notably in Henry VI, Part I, when it’s the scene of Henry V’s funeral. The Jerusalem Chamber, principal room of Cheyneygates, the medieval house of abbots of Westminster is mentioned in Henry IV, Part II.

• The Houses of Parliament: True, the buildings have changed somewhat since Shakespeare’s day but the former Palace of Westminster is the site of scenes in numerous plays including Richard II, Henry IV, Part II and Henry VI, Part III are set. Among rooms mentioned is Westminster Hall which survives today from the original building.

• The Tower of London: As one would expect, this prominent London landmark pops up in several of Shakespeare’s plays including Henry VI, Part I and Richard III where its plays a rather central role – among the events recorded in the latter play are the infamous drowning of Richard III’s elder brother George in a butt of Malmsey wine.

• Ely House: The London residence of the bishops of Ely, this long gone building is mentioned in Richard II (for more on Ely House see our earlier posts on Ye Olde Mitre Tavern here and St Etheldreda’s Church here ).

• The London Stone: Now at 111 Cannon Street, the London Stone originally was located at another location in Cannon Street and its here in Henry VI, Part II, that rebel Jack Cade stops to strike his sword upon the stone (for more on the London Stone, see our earlier post here).

Other London sites mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays include generic “London Streets” (mentioned in a number of plays), “Eastcheap, near the Boar’s Head Tavern” (Henry IV, Part II), the Temple Garden (Henry VI, Part I) and Blackheath (Henry VI, Part II).

LondonLife – Poppies at the Tower of London…

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More than 800,000 ceramic poppies are being “planted” in the moat of the Tower of London to commemorate the centenary of World War I.

The work of ceramic artist Paul Cummins, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red will grow throughout the summer until, by Armistice Day, 888,246 ceramic poppies are ‘planted’ in the dry moat, each one representing a British or colonial military fatality during the war.

The first poppy was planted by Yeoman Warder Crawford Butler back in July (pictured) and the work was officially “unveiled” today – 100 years since the first full day of Britain’s involvement in the war. 

More than 8,000 volunteers will be involved in planting the poppies which can be purchased for £25 with 10 per cent from each poppy plus all net proceeds shared equally among six service charities: the Confederation of Service Charities (COBSEO), Combat Stress, Coming Home, Help for Heroes, Royal British Legion and SSAFA (formerly the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association).

Starting today, the public will also be able to witness the daily twilight reading of a roll of honour featuring the names of 180 serving military killed during the World War I from Tower Hill terrace. The reading will be followed by the bugler playing the Last Post. Members of the public can nominate a name for the roll of honour. 

For more, see poppies.hrp.org.uk. PICTURE: Photo: © Richard Lea-Hair/Historical Royal Palaces

Famous Londoners – Madame Tussaud…

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Famed around the world for her London-based wax museum (and the chain of waxworks which now bears her name), French-born Madame Tussaud is a towering figure of the early 19th century.

Born Anna Maria Grosholtz in Strasbourg on 1st December, 1761, Marie Tussaud’s association with waxworks came early when, her father Joseph having apparently died from wounds sustained in the Seven Years War just before her birth, she accompanied her mother Anna Maria Walder to Berne in Switzerland where her mother took up a position as a housekeeper for a physician and anatomical wax sculptor and portraitist Dr Philippe Curtius.

Madame-TussaudIn 1765, Dr Curtius moved to pre-Revolutionary Paris where he was soon to open a couple of establishments – at the Palais-Royal and the Boulevard du Temple (later consolidated at the latter site) – displaying his works in wax. Marie, whom Dr Curtius brought to Paris with her mother in 1768, started working with him on wax models and in 1777, at the age of just 16, produced her first wax figure, that of philosopher Voltaire. Other early works of Madame Tussaud’s depicted Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin.

The story goes that such was the renown of Tussaud and her “uncle” Dr Curtius, that their social circle came to include members of the Royal Family. Tussaud is widely believed to have been an art tutor to King Louis XVI’s sister Elizabeth and may have even taken up residence at Versailles.

Tussaud recounts that she was arrested during the French Revolution – the story goes that she was imprisoned and eventually released thanks to the intervention of family friend and revolutionary Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois but whether this is true remains a matter of debate.

Tussaud claims she was then forced make death masks of those who ended their life on the scaffold including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat and Robespierre. When Curtius died in 1794, she inherited his wax works and the following year married an engineer Francois Tussaud with whom she had two sons, Joseph and Francois (later known as Francis).

In 1802, Madame Tussaud accepted an invitation to go to London to exhibit her work at the Lyceum Theatre but thanks to the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, she and her four-year-old son Joseph were unable to return to France. Separated from her husband, she subsequently spent the next three decades travelling with her exhibition – which included relics from the Revolution and, like those of Curtius, was being constantly updated to reflect current affairs – around Britain and Ireland.

Her son Francois joined her in 1822 and Tussaud continued travelling until 1835 when she first established a permanent exhibition in Baker Street, London. Known as the Baker Street Bazaar, it apparently contained more than 400 wax figures. In 1846, Punch Magazine is credited with having invented the term ‘Chamber of Horrors’ for the room where the relics of the French Revolution were displayed.

Tussaud wrote her memoirs in 1838, and, in 1842, completed a wax model of herself. She died in her sleep on 16th April, 1850, in London. Her son Francois became chief artist for the exhibition after her retirement – he was succeeded by his son and then grandson. The exhibition moved to its current site in Marylebone Road in 1884.

Now owned by the Merlin Entertainments Group, Madame Tussauds has branches in cities in some 10 countries as well as its London base. Many of her original models still exist and are on display in the London museum along with the exhibition’s oldest attraction – known as ‘Sleeping Beauty’, it dates from 1863 – a breathing likeness of Louis XV’s sleeping mistress Madame du Barry.

For more on Madame Tussauds today, see www.madametussauds.com.

For more on the life of Madame Tussaud, see Kate Berridge’s book, Waxing Mythical: The Life and Legend of Madame Tussaud.

Where is it?…#83…And the answer is…

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Where-is-it--#83

Can you identify where in London this picture was taken and what it’s of ? If you think you can, leave a comment below. We’ll reveal the answer next week. Good luck!

Apologies for the delayed answer – and well done to Janet Homes – this indeed part of the inscription on the plinth of a monument topped by a bust of Baron Paul Julius von Reuter. The work of Michael Black, the granite bust was created in 1976 in commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the Reuters news agency that started at No. 1 Royal Exchange Buildings on 14th October, 1851, close to where the monument stands just outside the east entrance of the Royal Exchange.

This Week in London – St Paul’s marks WWI centenary; Eid at Trafalgar Square; Suffragettes at the NPG; and, early Egypt gallery reopens at the British Museum…

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• An altar frontal created by more than 100 soldiers wounded in World War I will go on display at St Paul’s Cathedral this weekend. Made by 138 soldiers from the UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa, the restored altar frontal was created for the national service of thanksgiving at the end of the war and it forms the centerpiece of the cathedral’s commemoration of its centenary. The altar frontal will be used for the first time during a special service of Eucharist at 6pm this Sunday which will be attended by relatives of the men who made it. It will then be on display until 11th November, 2018, in the cathedral’s north transept. For more see www.stpauls.co.uk/WW1.

• Trafalgar Square will host the annual Eid Festival this Saturday. It will feature stage entertainment including a catwalk show, arts and crafts, exhibitions, calligraphy, henna and face painting as well as a global food festival – including Turkish, Egyptian, Indonesian, Lebanese and Moroccan food – and a Malaysian food market. The free festival runs from noon to 6pm. For more, see www.london.gov.uk/eid.

• A newly acquired portrait of suffragette Christabel Pankhurst has gone on display in the National Portrait Gallery for the first time in 80 years. The portrait, by Ethel Wright, was first shown at an exhibition staged in Kensington in 1909. It is part of a new display, Suffragettes: Deeds not Words, which also features photographs and archive material. It marks 100 years since the campaigners’ “final and most violent” protests which included an attack on paintings in the National Portrait Gallery. The display is on show in Room 31 of the gallery until 10th May next year. For more, see www.npg.org.uk.

• The British Museum has reopened a gallery space dedicated to early Egypt as part of its refurbishment of the Ancient Egyptian galleries. The new Early Egypt gallery focuses on the development of Egypt between 8,500 BC and 3,100 BC – the beginning of the Pyramid Age – and features a redisplay of objects from the museum’s collection as well as materials only acquired recently; these include objects taken from a site in northern Sudan which were donated in 2002. Highlights of the new gallery include a series of female figurines which are among the oldest known Egyptian sculptures in human form, the Gebelein Man – the best preserved example of mummification dating to around  3,500 BC, and the Hunter’s Palette and the Battlefield Palette – two temple objects on which Egyptian rulers recorded their victories. The gallery is in Room 64. Admission is free. For more, see www.britishmuseum.org.

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10 sites from Shakespearean London – 9: Memorialising Shakespeare (part 2)…

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Following on from last week’s post, we look at a couple more London memorials to The Bard,  playwright William Shakespeare…

Shakespeare-Leicester-Square• Leicester Square: Returned to the West End square last year following its restoration (and the square’s redevelopment), this statue of Shakespeare – claimed to be the only outdoor one in London – was designed by architect John Knowles in 1874 when the square was constructed. Now Grade II-listed, it depicts Shakespeare leaning on a pedestal, pointing to a scroll which reads “There is no darkness but ignorance”, a quote from Twelfth Night. An inscription on the plinth upon which Shakespeare stands, refers to the laying out of the square by Albert Grant and doesn’t mention the playwright at all. The statue stands in the middle of a fountain, upgraded  as part of the recent overhaul of the site. PICTURE: Carcharoth/Wikipedia.

• Primrose Hill: Shakespeare’s Tree on Primrose Hill was originally planted in April, 1864, to mark the 300th anniversary of his birth. An estimated 100,000 people marched to the site to watch the tree planting by poet Eliza Cooke and actor Samuel Phelps which was organised by the Workingmen’s Shakespeare Committee – apparently in response to the lacklustre efforts of a government-backed committee to mark the anniversary. The tree stood for 100 years before it died and was replaced with an oak sapling planted in 1964 actress Dame Edith Evans. A plaque which was attached to the tree detailing when it was planted has long since gone but there is talk of some sort of a permanent new memorial on the site.

There are other numerous places in London where Shakespeare – and his works – are remembered in London. One of our favourites is based in Love Lane and recalls the work of John Heminge and Henry Condell is getting Shakespeare’s works out to the world (for more on this, see our previous post here).

In our final post in this series next week, we take a look at some of the key London locations mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

LondonLife – Hampton Court Palace’s royal ‘edible’ gardens…

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Gardens1

Historic Royal Palaces has reopened Hampton Court Palace’s royal kitchen garden, having recreated it according to a plan dating from 1736. The  six acre garden – constructed on the site of King Henry VIII’s tiltyard on the orders of Queen Anne in 1702 – was used to supply the table of monarchs from the early 1700s through to the 1840s. The recreated version showcases rare and heritage varieties of fruit and vegetables including Italian celery, borrage, skirret and swelling parsnips as well as apricots, nectarine and peaches while on site displays showcase some of the techniques used by the royal gardeners. The gardens are open to the public free-of-charge and it’s hoped that as they mature, vegetable growing classes will be held there. The gardens have been opened as part of celebrations marking the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian accession. For more on Hampton Court Palace, see www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/. PICTURES: Courtesy Historic Royal Palaces.

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What’s in a name?…Bond Street…

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Bond-Street

No, the name of the famous Bond Street in Mayfair has nothing to do with James Bond. Rather, the street – in fact, two streets named Old and New Bond Street – takes its name from a 17th century courtier, Sir Thomas Bond.

Bond was the comptroller of the household of Queen Henrietta Maria, then the Queen Mother thanks to being the widow of King Charles I and the mother of King Charles II. He was also something of a land developer – the head of a consortium that purchased Albermarle House from Christopher Monck, the 2nd Duke of Albermarle, in 1683.

The house was promptly demolished and the area redeveloped with what is now Old Bond Street – which runs from Piccadilly to Burlington Gardens – laid out in 1686 and given Sir Thomas’ surname (he’d died the previous year).

AlliesThe northern extension of Old Bond Street (which runs from Burlington Gardens to Oxford Street) – named New Bond Street – was developed in the 1720s. Caroline Taggart, in The Book of London Place Names, says it was residents of Old Bond Street who insisted on the use of ‘new’ in the name, no doubt to differentiate between themselves and the newcomers or, as Taggart suggests, ‘upstarts’.

Traditionally known as a location for art dealers (Sotheby’s auction house – identified by an ancient Egyptian bust of the goddess Sekhmet which sits on the facade – has stood there for more than a century), the street has become increasingly known for its luxury fashion and accessories retailers such as Asprey’s, Chanel, Cartier, Dolce & Gabbana, Bulgari and Tiffany & Co (see the Bond Street Association for more). Other landmark buildings in the street include the home of the Fine Art Society and the Royal Arcade.

Bond Street is also home to US sculptor’s Lawrence Holofcener’s work, Allies (pictured above), depicting former British PM Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D Roosevelt, and at the northern end stands the Bond Street Underground Station which opened in 1900.

Famous residents have included Admiral Horatio Nelson – who stayed at number 147 in 1797-98 while he recovered after losing his arm at Tenerife, eighteenth century satirist Jonathan Swift and politician William Pitt the Elder, as well as twentieth century spy Guy Burgess, who lived at Clifford Chambers before his defection to USSR.

Around Christmas, the street plays host to a rather special display of lights (pictured top).

Books – ‘The Devil in the Marshalsea’…

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The Devil in the Marshalsea, Antonia Hodgson, Hodder & Staughton, 2014

The-Devil-in-the-MarshalseaA murder-mystery set among the desperate and dangerous denizens of London’s Marshalsea Prison in 1727, The Devil in Marshalsea tells the story of lad-about-town Tom Hawkins who is tossed into the notorious prison for debt.

Hawkins’ only chance of escape is to find the killer of one Captain Roberts, who died in the jail before his arrival, and it’s a task that brings him into conflict with, and under the suspicion of, many within the prison walls.

There’s plenty of historical detail and the book delivers an insightful look into what life in Marshalsea would have been like – although as Hodgson points out in an historical note at the start, this is not the Marshalsea of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit – that wasn’t opened until 1800 on a different site while this one was located between Mermaid Court and what is now Newcomen Street in Southwark.

The characters are largely based on actual people – Hodgson goes to the trouble to describe the background to each in some explanatory endnotes – and their stories criss-cross the main narrative.

There’s plenty of twists along the way and the story plunges on at a cracking pace as Hawkins has to confront his worst fears and struggles to discern who is friend and who is foe in a world where everyone appears to be driven by their most base desires.

An enlightening read and, as is the case with a good murder-mystery, hard to put down. A terrific debut.

To buy this book, follow this link The Devil in the Marshalsea.

Treasures of London – Swiss Court…

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Cantonal-treeIn the hubbub of the West End, it’s easy to walk past the colourful monuments of Swiss Court without realising their significance is. 

Located between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, the area was formerly home of the Swiss Centre, completed in the late 1960s as a showcase and trade centre for Switzerland. The centre was demolished in the late Noughties and replaced by the building now housing the W London Hotel and M&M’s World.

It was named Swiss Court on 15th April, 1991 – the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation – by the then Lord Mayor of Westminster, Cr David Avery – and has two monuments commemorating the friendship between Switzerland and the UK.

The first is a “cantonal tree” (pictured) which displays the coats of arms of 26 cantons of Switzerland and was presented as a gift from Switzerland to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in May 1977, “as a token of the friendship that exists between our two countries.”

The second is a glockenspiel featuring 27 bells and 11 moving figures which was originally attached to the front of the Swiss Centre after it was gifted to the City of Westminster by Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 1985.

It was removed when the building was demolished but, following a restoration and update (it’s now wirelessly controlled from Derby), returned to Swiss Court as a freestanding, 10 metre monument in late 2011. It now stands just a couple of metres from the cantonal tree.

This Week in London – ‘Disobedient objects’ at the V&A; war at the Westminster Abbey; and, ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ at the Science Museum…

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• The role of objects as tools of social change will be explored at a new exhibition opening at the V&A on Saturday. Disobedient Objects will feature everything from Chilean folk art textiles that document political violence and a graffiti-writing robot to defaced currency, giant inflatable cobblestones thrown during demonstrations in Barcelona and a video game about the making of mobile phones. Spanning the period from the 1970s to today, it aims to illustrate how political activism has driven creativity with most of the objects on display made by amateurs. Many of the exhibits have been loaned from activist groups around the world. The free exhibition runs at the South Kensington museum until 1st February. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk/disobedientobjects.

• A new exhibition of three large scale works in oil by artist Hughie O’Donoghue has opened in the Westminster Abbey Chapter House. The three works featured in The Measure of All Things exhibition are a reflection on both world wars and influenced by his father’s service in the British Army, his own visits to battlefields and a photo album he found in France depicting a young woman’s holidays in the north of that country in 1903-04. The exhibition, part of the abbey’s efforts to mark the centenary of the start of World War I, is open until 30th November. Admittance with general abbey admission. For more, see www.westminster-abbey.org.

• Reality and fiction come together in a new photographic exhibition which opened at the Science Museum in South Kensington this week. Stranger Than Fiction is the first major UK exhibition by Catalan artist Joan Fontcuberta and is a collaboration between the Science Museum and the National Media Museum in Bradford. The second show to be held in the Science Museum’s Media Space gallery, it features some of Fontcuberta’s best known works including photography, film, dioramas and scientific reports presented through six independent narratives which combine the real and imagined. Runs until 9th November after which it will move to the National Media Museum in Bradford. For more, see www.sciencemuseum.org.uk.

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10 sites from Shakespearean London – 8: Memorialising Shakespeare (part 1)…

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Shakespeare

This week (and next week) as part of our look at Shakespeare’s London, we’re taking a look at a few of the many memorials to William Shakespeare located around London…

• Westminster Abbey: Perhaps the most famous of London’s memorials to Shakespeare can be found in Poet’s Corner, an area of the abbey which has become noted as a burial place and memorial site for writers, playwrights and poets. Designed by William Kent, the memorial statue of Shakespeare was placed here in January, 1741 (there had apparently been some earlier talk of bringing his bones from Stratford-upon-Avon but that idea was squashed). The life-size statue in white marble, sculpted by Peter Scheemakers, was erected by Richard Boyle, the 3rd Earl of Burlington, Dr Richard Mead, Alexander Pope and Tom Martin. The memorial also features the heads of Queen Elizabeth I, King Henry V and King Richard III on the base of a pedestal and shows Shakespeare pointing to a scroll on which are painted a variation of lines taken from The Tempest. A Latin inscription records the date the memorial was created and an English translation of this was added in 1977. For more on the abbey, see www.westminster-abbey.org.

• Guildhall Art Gallery (pictured above): Facing into Guildhall Yard from niches under the loggia of the Guildhall Art Gallery are four larger-than-life busts of historical figures connected with the City of London. As well as one of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, architect Christopher Wren, and diarist Samuel Pepys (along with a full-length statue of Dick Whittington and his famous cat) is a bust depicting Shakespeare. Carved out of Portland stone by sculptor Tim Crawley, the busts were installed in 1999. Much attention was apparently paid to creating a bust which resembled pictures of Shakespeare. Follow this link for more on the gallery.

• Former City of London School: This Thames-side building, dating from the 1880s, features a full length statue of Shakespeare who gazes out over the river. He’s not alone – poet John Milton, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon stand nearby, selected, apparently, to represent various disciplines taught at the school. The statues were the work of John Daymond who depicted Shakespeare flanked by representations of classics and poetry and drawing and music. The school vacated the building on Victoria Embankment  in the 1980s and it’s now occupied by JP Morgan.

We’ll be looking at some more works depicting Shakespeare next week…

London Pub Signs – The Hung, Drawn and Quartered…

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Hung-longThe rather grisly name of this pub (and there’s some debate over whether hanged or hung is grammatically correct) relates to its location close by the former public execution ground of Tower Hill.

While for many Tower Green inside the Tower of London is synonymous with beheadings, only seven people, including Anne Boleyn, were ever actually executed there. Far more people were executed outside the Tower’s walls at nearby Tower Hill, just to the north.

HungSome of the names of those executed here are recorded on a memorial at the site – everyone from Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was beheaded here by an angry mob in 1381, through to Sir Thomas More in 1535 (gracious King Henry VIII commuted his sentence from being hung, drawn and quartered to mere beheading), and Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat, a Jacobite arrested after the Battle of Culloden and the last man to be executed here when his head was lopped off in 1747.

While, as you can see above, many of those executed at Tower Hill were beheaded (and most were of the nobility), there were some executions there which did involve the guilty party being hung, drawn and quartered – a punishment reserved for those being convicted of high treason and also enforced at other sites in London including at Tyburn and Smithfield. Among them was William Collingbourne in 1484 for supporting the cause of Henry Tudor against that of King Richard III.

A plaque on the external wall of the nearby pub quotes a passage from the famous diarist Samuel Pepys after he witnessed an execution in Charing Cross on 13th October, 1660: “I went to see Major General Harrison. Hung drawn and quartered. He was looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition”.

Thomas Harrison fought with Parliament during the Civil War and was among those who signed the death warrant of King Charles I. Found guilty of regicide after the Restoration, he was hung, drawn and quartered (though as Pepys tells us, not here).

The pub, located at 26-27 Great Tower Street, is part of the Fuller’s chain. For more, see www.hung-drawn-and-quartered.co.uk.

Lost London – Baynard’s Castle (part 1)…

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Baynard’s Castle actually refers to two buildings – a Norman fortification demolished in the early 13th century and a later medieval palace located to the east of the original structure. This week we’re looking at the first of those buildings – the Norman fortification.

Castle-BaynardThe first Baynard’s Castle was built in the late 11th century by Ralph Baynard (Baignard) and is believed to have replaced an earlier fortification at the site at the junction of the Thames and the Fleet rivers (the river now emerges into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge).

Baynard (his name may be the origin of the name for Bayswater – Baynard’s Watering place – see our earlier post here), was the sheriff of Essex and a supporter of William the Conqueror.

The castle – which is said to have featured walls and parapets and which is generally said to have been on the waterfront (although some have said it was located inland) – remained in Baynard’s family until the reign of King Henry I when in 1111, his grandson William Baynard apparently forfeited his lands for supporting Henry’s eldest brother and would-be king, Robert Curthose.

It was later passed to the King’s steward Robert Fitz Richard, son of the Earl of Clare, and is known to have been inherited by his grandson, Robert Fitzwalter.

Fitzwalter, however, was a key opponent of King John and as early as 1212 he was in hot water for his part in a conspiracy against the king, although he stated it was because the king tried to seduce his daughter, Matilda the Fair. Either way, he escaped trial by heading to France and John seized the opportunity to raze the castle which he did on 14th January, 1213.

Fitzwalter was later forgiven under an amnesty and went on to play a leading role among the baronial opposition to Kong John – he was among 25 barons charged with enforcing the promises of the Magna Carta of 1215.

The name Baynard’s Castle is remembered in the London ward of Castle Baynard (pictured) which covers the area in which it once stood.

This Week in London – First World War galleries open at IWM; London’s WWI memorials the focus of new exhibition; and, London celebrates the Festival of Archaeology…

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• New galleries dedicated to exploring the history of World War I will open – along with the rest of the refurbished building – at the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth on Saturday. The First World War Galleries span 14 areas displaying everything from shell fragments and lucky charms carried by soldiers to weapons and uniforms, diaries and letters, photographs, art and film. Interactive displays include ‘Life at the Front’ featuring a recreated trench with a Sopwith Camel plane and Mark V tank, and ‘Feeding the Front’ featuring an interactive table of more than four metres long which looks how troops were kept fed. There are also reflective areas in which visitors are encouraged to reflect on some of the most difficult aspects of war. The museum – which features a dramatic new atrium – is also launching the largest exhibition and first major retrospective of British World War I art for almost 100 years. Truth and Memory includes works by some of the UK’s most important artists. Entry to both is free with Truth and Memory running until 8th March. For more, see www.iwm.org.uk.

• London’s memorials to those who died in World War I are the focus of a new exhibition which opened at Wellington Arch near Hyde Park Corner yesterday. The English Heritage exhibition, which has a particular focus on the six memorials cared for by English Heritage but also looks at other memorials, will include designs, statuettes and photographs of the memorials including the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Also featured in We Will Remember Them: London’s Great War Memorials are official documents – including a note of condolence and medals certificates – received by the family of author and broadcaster Jeremy Paxman on the death of his great uncle Private Charles Dickson, who died at Gallipoli in 1915. Runs until 30th November. Admission charge applies. For more see www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/wellington-arch/. Meanwhile, coinciding with the opening of the exhibition has been news that five of London’s key war memorials – including the Edith Cavell Memorial in St Martin’s Place and the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner – have had their heritage listing upgraded.

• In case you missed it, the 24th annual Festival of Archaeology kicked off last weekend and features a range of events across London. Highlights include the chance again to go ‘mudlarking’ on the Thames river bank below the Tower of London and have your finds assessed by archaeologists (this Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 4pm), guided 90 minute walks around Islington and Highbury this weekend with a particular focus on the 1940s, and a look behind the scenes at the London Metropolitan Archives (2pm to 5pm today). The festival continues until 27th July. Check the website for a full program of events – www.archaeologyfestival.org.uk.

10 sites from Shakespearean London – 7. Shakespearean connections in the Elizabethan world – St John’s Gate and Staple Inn…

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Following on from our post last week, we take a look at a couple more of London’s buildings that had some sort of association with William Shakespeare…

St-John's-Gate• St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell (pictured): This former gatehouse into Clerkenwell Priory was at the time of Shakespeare home to the Master of the Revels and where the playwright would have had to have brought his plays for official government approval. Thirty of the Bard’s plays were licensed here and the Master of Revels during all but the final few years of Shakespeare’s career was Edmund Tilney (or Tylney), who served in the post under both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. The gatehouse was later used as a coffee house and pub among other things and is associated with everyone from artist William Hogarth (his father Richard ran the coffee house), Dr Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens. These days, the gatehouse is part of the Museum of the Order of St John (for more on that, see our earlier post here).

• Staple Inn, Holborn: OK, there’s no direct link at all between Shakespeare and this building on High Holborn but it was built during his lifetime – in 1585 – and as such is one of very few surviving examples of buildings of his era. Its name comes from the fact the site where it stands was originally a covered market where wool was weighed and taxed (the word ‘staple’ apparently relates to the duty on wool introduced in 1275). It later became an Inn of Chancery – a medieval school for lawyers which fed students through to the Inns of Court (in this case mostly Gray’s Inn), and it was members of the Society of Staple Inn who built the new building here in the 1580s. The building – which still boasts a grand hall – survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 and, albeit with considerable damage, the Blitz. Since the late 1800s, it has been home to what’s now known as the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. The building, which was restored in the 1990s, is a great example of an Elizabethan-era structure and gives some sense of what Shakespeare’s London was like.

LondonLife – Unearthing Bedlam’s buried past…

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Buried-at-BedlamA team of volunteers are searching through historical records for evidence of people buried at the Bedlam burial ground in the 16th and 17th centuries. The 15 member team are carrying out the work at the London Metropolitan Archives as archaeologists prepare to excavate 3,000 skeletons from the former burial site next year in anticipation of the construction of the new Liverpool Street Crossrail Station – part of the £14.8 billion cross London Crossrail project. About 400 skeletons have already been removed during preliminary works. Located near Bethlem Hospital, the burial ground opened in the 16th century as part of the city’s response to the plague and was the first burial ground in London not associated with a parish church. Among those buried here were Robert Lockyer, a soldier executed under the orders of Oliver Cromwell for leading the Bishopsgate mutiny of 1649, and Leveller John Lilburne. Crossrail are keen to hear from members of the public who may be able to provide further details of burials at Bedlam – if you can help, email bedlamrecords@crossrail.co.uk.

 

A Moment in London’s History – The execution of John Austin, the last person hanged at Tyburn…

by exploringlondon

Tyburn-TreeThe site of public executions for hundreds of years, it’s generally accepted that at about 9am on 3rd November, 1783, John Austin became the last person to be hanged there (for more on the history of executions at Tyburn – and in particular the massive gallows known as the Tyburn Tree – see our previous post here).

Austin had been convicted of being a highwayman – specifically for inflicting “robbery with violence” upon labourer John Spicer, two weeks before during which Austin had attacked Spicer, beating and cutting him, “in a cruel manner”.

As he stood on the cart beneath the gallows (a mobile gallows had been in use since 1759 when the Elizabethan-era Tyburn Tree was dismantled), Austin’s last words were somewhat predictable – he requested that the crowd pray for his “departing soul”, that they would heed his example and that Jesus would have “mercy upon my poor soul”.

His death, it is said, was “hard”. As the cart was moved off, the halter around his neck apparently slipped “to the back part of his head” and instead of his neck being broken, Austin slowly choked to death.

The decision to cease executions at Tyburn (near where Marble Arch now stands) and move them to outside Newgate Prison was apparently due to complaints. These came from both City traders who felt the condemned person’s three mile procession from Newgate to Tyburn disrupted making money and the fashionable who sought to live in the city’s outlying western areas like Marylebone and who didn’t want to see the unruly mob that typically accompanied  outside their front doors. Such groups had long been lobbying for the practice to come to an end.

For more on the history of Tyburn see Robert Bard’s Tyburn: The Story of London’s Gallows.

Treasures of London – Speakers’ Corner…

by exploringlondon

An iconic location in one London’s most well-known Royal Parks, the history of Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner as a site of public oratory dates back to at least the mid 1800s (although thanks to the site being located close to where Tyburn Tree once stood, its arguable that the tradition goes further back, to when condemned prisoners were able to have a final word on the gallows – but for more on the Tyburn Tree, see our previous post here).

Located near Marble Arch on the north-east corner of Hyde Park, the area was the scene of massive protests by the Reform League in the mid 1800s which were aimed at extending the voting franchise to the working class. In 1866, protestors tore up the railings and rioted for three days after they approached the area and found themselves locked out of Hyde Park. They returned en masse the following year in defiance of a government ban but were allowed to protest without intervention.

While there was some opposition to the idea of public protests in the area, in 1872, the passing of the Parks Regulation Act meant the park’s authorities could issue permits for speakers (while it didn’t enshrine the right to speak in law, it did establish the general principle of speaking in parts of the park). The area covered by the act is much larger than Speakers’ Corner but tradition has established that as the site where people gather to speak (and listen).

Anyone can now turn up to address the public at Speakers’ Corner whenever the park is open but tradition has meant most of the speaking happens on a Sunday morning (when you’ll certainly encounter some very regular speakers). The only condition is that the speech be considered “lawful”.

Among the more notable speakers who have attended are Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw and William Morris. The suffragettes also held meetings there in the early 1900s and, in 2003, it was the scene of a massive rally against the taking of military action in Iraq.

Numerous other countries have since adopted the idea and created their own version of a “speakers’ corner” including Australia, Singapore, Canada and the US.

London’s Speakers’ Corner has undergone a makeover in recent months (somewhat controversial to some) and was last month reopened by the Culture Secretary Sajid Javid who described Speakers’ Corner as a “deeply symbolic space that celebrates freedom of speech”.

The refurbishment included new trees and plantings, resurfacing and the installation of railings, designed by Royal Parks landscape architect Ruth Holmes and landscape architects Burns + Nice and carried out by award-winners Bowls and Wyer.

For more, see www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde-park/hyde-park-attractions/speakers-corner.

This Week in London – Virginia Woolf celebrated at NPG; the City of London Festival; and, a new gallery at the V&A…

by exploringlondon

• The life of literary icon Virginia Woolf is being celebrated in a new exhibition which opens at the National Portrait Gallery today. Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision explores her life as novelist, intellectual, campaigner and public figure and features more than 100 works including portraits of Woolf by Bloomsbury Group contemporaries like her sister Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry as well as photographs by Beresford, Ray Man and Beck and McGregor who photographed the intellectual for Vogue. The display also includes works depicting her friends, family and literary peers and archival materials such as extracts from her personal diaries, books printed by Hogarth Press which she founded with husband Leonard Woolf and letters including one written to her sister shortly before her suicide in 1941. Runs until 26th October. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.npg.org.uk.

• The 52nd City of London Festival enters its final week today with numerous music, dance, spoken word and theatre events – many of them free – still on offer across the City. Events this week include a concert focusing on the history of the instrument known as the recorder and that of the office of Recorder of London (as St Sepulchre with Newgate tonight; tickets required), a showcase of musical talent from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (at St Stephen Walbrook at 1.05pm next Tuesday; free), and, the Cart Marking Ceremony, in which vehicles process into Guildhall Yard where they are marked with a red hot iron by the Master Carmen and Lord Mayor (next Wednesday at 10.30am, free). For the full program of events, see www.colf.org. This year’s festival also features the placement of “street guitars” at 12 locations across the Square Mile where you can turn up and have a strum – for locations, see www.colf.org/streetguitars.

• A new gallery of items you might find in your own home has opened at the V&A. Gallery 74 now features items collected as a result of the museum’s “rapid response collecting” approach which sees them acquiring new objects relating to contemporary events and movements in architecture and design. Among the objects on display are a soft toy from IKEA, a pair of jeans from Primark (acquired soon after the Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which 1129 workers were killed – the factory made clothes for a number of western brands including Primark), and the world’s first 3D printed gun, the Liberator, which was designed by Texas law student Cody Wilson. Entry is free. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk.

Send all items of interest for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.