Farringdon

Four unusual London Christmas traditions…2. The Smithfield Meat Auction…

by exploringlondon

Reportedly cancelled for this year, the boisterous Christmas Eve meat auction at Smithfield usually draws a considerable crowd eager to snag a bargain.

The origins of the tradition, which apparently started at least 30 years ago, stems from the fact that most of the market butchers take at least a week off over Christmas, generally not returning to their stalls until the new year.

As a result, they would auction off their remaining stock on Christmas Eve to those keen enough to brave the cold and come out.

There has been a market at Smithfield since the 12th century – the premises was rebuilt in the mid-19th century after being formally established by the 1860 Metropolitan Meat and Poultry Market Act.

London Pub Signs – The Hoop and Grapes, Farringdon…

by exploringlondon

This historic pub in Farringdon bears a common enough name (and it’s not to be confused with the Hoop and Grapes located in Aldgate which we’ll look at in an upcoming post).

PICTURE: Edwardx (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The hoop in the name refers to the metal bands binding together barrels staves and the grapes are obviously a reference to wine. But the ‘hoop’ could be a corruption of hops with the sign possibly once featuring a garland of hops and a bunch of grapes.

The pub, the current sign of which depicts grapes wrapped around a hoop (pictured below), is located in a four storey building first constructed for a vintner in about 1720 as a terraced house and converted to a pub more than a century later in the early 1830s.

Located on ground which one formed part of the St Bride’s Burial Ground, the brick vaults underneath are said to pre-date the rest of the building, having been built as warehouse vaults in the 17th century.

Its location on 80 Farringdon Street means it stood near the Fleet River (now covered) and close by to the former Fleet Prison (largely used as a debtor’s prison before its demolition in 1864).

As a result, it has been claimed that it was one of a number of pubs which hosted so-called ‘Fleet Marriages’, secret ceremonies performed by dodgy clergymen – for a fee – and without an official marriage license. But, as has been pointed out to us, the timing of the passing of the Marriage Act in 1753 outlawing such activities – and this only becoming a pub, according to its Historic England listing, much later – does make this seem unlikely (we’d welcome any further information on this claim).

The location also meant it was popular with printers who worked in nearby Fleet Street (in fact, it was apparently given a special licence to serve such customers at night or in the early morning).

The pub was scheduled for demolition in the early 1990s but saved with a Grade II-listing in 1991.

A rare survivor from an earlier time among the street’s more modern buildings, it is now part of the Shepherd Neame chain and it’s during renovations held after this purchase that burials were uncovered (the remains were moved into the British Museum). This has apparently led to rumours that the pub is haunted.

For more, see www.hoopandgrapes.co.uk.

Sorry for the confusion – We’ve corrected references to grapes in the second paragraph (and amended our comments on the current sign). And we’ve also clarified comments that the pub was used for Fleet Marriages given the timing discrepancy.

London Pub Signs – The Sir John Oldcastle…

by exploringlondon

This Farringdon pub is named after a previous tavern which stood in what had been the grounds of Sir John Oldcastle’s nearby mansion and dated back at least to the mid 17th century. 

Sir John, thought to have been the model for the Shakespearean character Sir John Falstaff, was a leader of the Lollards in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

A trusted friend of Henry, Prince of Wales (later King Henry V), he accompanied the Prince on a military expedition to France 1411 but on returning to England was accused of heresy for his Lollard beliefs and eventually prosecuted.

Imprisoned in the Tower of London, Oldcastle escaped and launched a rebellion against the King but after the rebellion was put down was forced to live in hiding until he was eventually, in 1417, captured and subsequently executed in London.

Housed in a modern building, the pub at 29-35 Farringdon Road, which has a wealth of historical information about the area adorning its walls, is part of the Wetherspoons chain. For more, see www.jdwetherspoon.com/pubs/all-pubs/england/london/the-sir-john-oldcastle-farringdon.

LondonLife – New Elizabeth line roundels installed…

by exploringlondon

 With just 11 months to go until the launch of London’s Elizabeth line, new purple roundels have been rolled out at stations including Tottenham Court Road (above), Farringdon and Custom House (below). They all feature the iconic Johnston typeface, first commissioned in 1913 and designed by Edward Johnston (with updates made in 2016). Construction of the Elizabeth line, being carried out by Crossrail Ltd, has now entered its final stages and the line will go live from December when 10 new state-of-the-art stations, all step-free, will open. The line, which will enable a journey from Paddington to Canary Wharf in just 17 minutes, will initially offer three services: from Paddington (Elizabeth line station) to Abbey Wood via central London; from Paddington (mainline station) to Heathrow (Terminals 2 & 3 and 4); and, from Liverpool Street (mainline station) to Shenfield. The full route, which will run out to Reading in the east, opens in 2019. For more information on the line, see Transport for London’s page here.

PICTURES: Courtesy of Crossrail: top – Monica Wells; below – James O Jenkins.

LondonLife – Hatton Garden inspires Elizabeth Line art…

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The Hatton Garden diamond district is the inspiration behind a new work by artist Simon Periton which will appear inside the new Elizabeth Line station at Farringdon when it opens in December, 2018. A series of giant gems will appear to tumble down and along the walls of the station’s western ticket hall in what has been described as a “huge glazed frieze”. Each ‘gem’ will be created using special paint and then backlit so it shimmers and appears three dimensional. Periton is also creating a work of art for the station’s eastern ticket hall which will see exterior glazing being placed on three sides of the building featuring an intricate pattern reminiscent of the elaborate Victorian-era metalwork of the historic Smithfield Market found opposite. Says the artist: “The feel of each site is very different. The artwork for the Eastern Ticket Hall is visually more organic. Not only does the intricate pattern reflect the elaborate Victorian metalwork of Smithfield Market, it also references fragmented elements of the fauna and flora sold traditionally in the market. The design for this site is printed to emulate etched glass. The artwork design for the Western Ticket Hall is based on a large faceted diamond. A series of these giant gems cascade down and spin around the concourse, animating the space and echoing the movement of commuters. This design will be printed in bright coloured ceramic inks.” The artworks are just a couple of the many being incorporated into the new Elizabeth line stations under the Crossrail Art Programme. For more, see www.crossrail.co.uk/. PICTURES: Courtesy of Crossrail

LondonLife – New Elizabeth line stations on show…

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Whitechapel-station

A new exhibition featuring designs for the 10 new Elizabeth line Underground stations has opened at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Platform for Design: Stations, Art and Public Space provides insights into the design of the new railway – part of the massive Crossrail project, its stations and public spaces which are slated to open in 2018. Each of the new stations will have their own distinct character designed to reflect the environment and heritage of the area in which they are located. The new Elizabeth line station at Paddington, for example, is said to “echo the design legacy of Brunel’s existing terminal building” while the design of the new Farringdon station is inspired by the historic local blacksmith and goldsmith trades and the distinctive architecture of the Barbican. Many of the new stations will also featured permanent, integrated works of art design to create a “line-wide exhibition”. The Elizabeth line runs from Heathrow and Reading in the west across London to Abbey Wood and Shenfield. The exhibition at RIBA at 66 Portland Place in Marylebone runs until 14th June. Admission is free. For more on the exhibition, including the accompanying programme of events, see www.crossrail.co.uk/news/news-and-information-about-crossrail-events.

Bond-Street-station---proposed-ticket-hall-on-Hanover-Square_235994

Tottenham-Court-Road-station---architect_s-impression-of-station-entrance-at-Dean-Street_236015

Farringdon-station---proposed-platform_236035

What’s in a name?…Bleeding Heart Yard

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Bleeding

There’s a couple of different suggestions as to how Bleeding Heart Yard – a small courtyard located in the Farringdon area of the City of London, just north of Ely Place – obtained its rather descriptive – and gory – name.

The more prosaic answer is that it was named after an inn which, from the 16th century, stood on the yard and had a sign showing the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced by five swords.

The more interesting answer, on the other hand, is that the name commemorates the horrible murder of Lady Elizabeth Hatton (of the famed Cecil family), second wife of Sir William Hatton (formerly known as Newport), and, after his death, wife of Sir Edward Coke.

The story goes that her corpse was found here on 27th January, 1626, with the beating heart torn from the body.

A version of the legend – albeit with a slightly different protagonist – appears in a story published in Bentley’s Miscellany in 1837 which told of how the wife of Sir Christopher Hatton (he was actually the uncle of Sir William Hatton), made a somewhat ill-conceived pact with the Devil to secure wealth, position and a mansion in Holborn. The Devil dances with her during the housewarming party at the new home and then tears out her heart, found beating in the yard the next morning.

The yard also features in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit where it is the location of the home of the Plornish family.

What’s in a name?…Farringdon

by exploringlondon

Farringdon is a name that crops up quite a bit in London. As well as Farringdon Road, Farringdon Street and Farringdon Lane, there’s a Tube/overground train station which also bear the name along with two of the 25 wards of the City of London.

These latter are named Farringdon Within and Farringdon Without – a distinction which relates to their placement within and without the City’s walls and dates to the late 14th century.

While the name Farringdon, which can be found elsewhere in England, apparently meant ‘ferny hill’ in Old English, its origins in London apparently relate to two medieval London goldsmiths, William de Faringdon (also spelt de Farindon and various other ways) and his son Nicholas.

Both William and Sir Nicholas were aldermen and Lord Mayors of London in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Sir Nicholas was apparently well favoured by King Edward II – he was several times appointed mayor, a job the king apparently said he could hold for “as long as it pleased him”. He was buried at St Peter-le-Chepe, destroyed in the Great Fire of London.

Interestingly, another well-known alderman of this ward was the radical MP John Wilkes, who was elected while in Newgate Prison.

Farringdon Street, which becomes Farringdon Road, runs along the course of the former Fleet River and dates from the 1730s when the river was arched over.

Where’s London’s oldest…Tube station?

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In this, the year of the 150th anniversary of the creation of what we now know as the London Underground, it’s only fitting that we take a look at the city’s oldest Tube station – Baker Street.

Opened on 10th January, 1863, by the Metropolitan Railway, the Grade II* listed property was designed by John Fowler, the company’s engineer in chief. While some stations on the initial railway – which stretched from Paddington to Farringdon – had platforms located in open cuttings, Baker Street was one of only three initial stations (the other two were at what was then named Gower Street (now Euston Square) and Great Portland Street) which was genuinely located underground, with subterranean platforms covered by brick barrel-vaults and lit by gaslights as well as natural light brought from the surface by “lunettes”.

The station was subsequently extended and further developed and, thanks to the company’s desire to make Baker Street its headquarters and “flagship” station, it underwent a major overhaul in 1911-13 with Charles Walter Clark, another Metropolitan Railway employee, designing a new grand booking hall and concourse featuring a lost property office, “ladies’ room” and a WH Smith bookstall.

Features inside include a cast-iron screen – complete with clock –  installed at the entrance to the lower concourse in 1925 to help control passenger flow during the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, a marble memorial to Metropolitan Railway employees who died in World War I, and, in a nod to the proximity of his fictitious Baker Street residence, large and small Sherlock Holmes silhouettes on tiles located at various places inside (there’s a statue of him outside the station).

For more on the 150th anniversary, see www.tfl.gov.uk/tube150.

Where’s London’s oldest…Catholic church?

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Hidden away to the north-west of the City of a quiet cul-de-sac, the oldest still-in-use Roman Catholic church in London (indeed, in England) is St Etheldreda’s Church in Holborn.

St-EtheldredaLocated in Ely Place, this atmospheric church – named for Etheldreda, seventh century female abbess of Ely – opened as a Roman Catholic Church in 1878, although the building in which it is lodged is much older, indeed a rare survivor from the 13th century. It was built in 1290 by John De Kirkeby, the Bishop of Ely and Treasurer of England during the reign of King Edward I, as a chapel to a residence he constructed on the site.

It and the adjoining palace remained in use by subsequent bishops and other nobles (including John of Gaunt who lived here after his own residence, Savoy Palace , was burnt down during the Peasant’s Revolt) up to and after the Reformation – the first reformer Bishop to use it was Thomas Goodrich, who built the nearby Mitre Tavern. (Worth noting is that the church also has some strong links to Shakespeare – there’s a great article on the church’s website exploring these).

In 1620, the Spanish Ambassador, the Count of Gondomar, moved into Ely Place and the chapel was used once again for Catholic masses (the residence was considered part of Spanish territory) – this was a relatively short-lived development for, thanks to deteriorating relations between England and Spain following a failed match between Prince Charles (later King Charles I) and the Infanta of Spain, the next ambassador was refused permission to live there.

Having escaped destruction in the Great Fire of London, the chapel was requisitioned by Parliament as a prison and hospital during the Civil War and subsequently fell into disuse before in 1772, the property – including the chapel – was sold to the Crown who in turn sold it to a surveyor and builder, Charles Cole.

Cole demolished the palace buildings with the exception of the chapel and had the current Ely Place built with neat rows of Georgian homes, modernising the chapel for the use of residents as an Anglican place of worship. The church attracted few worshippers, however, and in 1820 was taken over by the National Society for the Education of the Poor.

In 1873, the chapel was again to be sold and following a somewhat controversial auction was bought by the Catholic Institute of Charity (aka the Rosminians) and restored under the eye of Father William Lockhart (the Catholic Emancipation Act had been passed in 1829, allowing Catholics to have churches and say mass).

Interestingly, it was during this work that 18 bodies were discovered buried in the crypt – they had died in the ‘Fatal Vespers’ of 1623 when, during a secret meeting of Catholics at the French ambassador’s house in Blackfriars, the floor collapsed and more than 100 were killed. Not able to be buried publicly due to anti-Catholic feeling, they were buried in secret with some of them buried here.

A mass commemorated the completion of the restoration work on 23rd June, 1878, and the church has been in use as a Roman Catholic Church ever since (although years of repairs were needed following significant bomb damage in World War II). Further restoration work was carried out in the 1990s when Flemish tiles from the original cloister were discovered.

These days the church – which features a relic of St Etheldreda contained in a bejewelled cask sitting by the altar – is a quiet oasis in the midst of the bustling city – a great place to take some time out in the midst of a busy day. Also of note is the east window – the work of Joseph Edward Nuttgens, it was completed in 1952 and, like all the other windows, replaced a Victorian window destroyed in the Blitz (look for the image of St Etheldreda) – and the  west window – the work of Charles Blakeman, it is apparently the largest stained glass window in London and depicts a series of English Catholic martyrs.

WHERE: St Etheldreda’s Church, Ely Place (nearest Tube stations are Chancery Lane and Farringdon); WHEN: 8am to 5pm Monday to Saturday; 8am-12.30pm Sunday; COST: Free; WEBSITE: www.stetheldreda.com.

10 of London’s greatest Victorian projects – 9. The Underground…

by exploringlondon

Apologies for the delay in posting this piece – next week we’ll post the final in this series!

The first underground railway system in the world, the London Underground – fondly known as the ‘Tube’ –  is this year celebrating the 150th anniversary of its creation. 

Born out of an idea to link the inner city with the various large rail termini on the outskirts, the first section of what is now the underground system – a six kilometre stretch between Paddington and Farringdon – opened on 9th January, 1863, and was run by the Metropolitan Railway, known less formally as the ‘Met’.

South-Kensington-stationIt was constructed using the ‘cut and cover’ method in which streets were dug up and tracks laid in a trench before being covered by brick-lined tunnels and the street above replaced (the method was later abandoned, apparently due to the disruption it caused to traffic). The first trains were steam-driven locomotives and drew gas-lit wooden carriages behind them (the first journey was re-enacted earlier this year – see our earlier post here. Other events commemorating the 150th included a visit to Baker Street Station by Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and the Duchess of Cambridge).

The idea proved a success – 26,000 people used the new railway every day during the first six months of its operation – and the Metropolitan District Railway opened a new line between Westminster and South Kensington (station is pictured) in December, 1868, while the first Tube tunnel under the Thames, from the Tower of London to Bermondsey, opened in 1880, and what is now the Circle Line was completed in 1884.

In December 1890, the world’s first deep-level electric railway opened, running between King William Street in the City and passing under the Thames to Stockwell. Ten years later the ‘Twopenny Tube’, more formally known as the Central London Railway, opened between Shepherd’s Bush and Bank (it was from this that the use of the word ‘Tube’ to describe the Underground system caught on).

The uniting of the system began the following year with the creation of the Underground Electric Railway Company of London and by World War I, all but the Met were within a single group organisation. The name Underground first appeared on stations in 1908, the same year electric ticket machines were introduced.

In 1933, the Underground came under the control of the London Passenger Transport Board – the same year that Harry Beck’s first diagrammatic map of the underground system appeared.

Stations in the system were used as air raid shelters during World War II – part of the Piccadilly Line was closed and used as a storage site for treasures from the British Museum. Following the war, the organisation running the system went through various name changes until the formation of London Underground in 1985.

The system has since expanded – the Victoria Line was opened in the late 1960s and the Jubilee Line a decade later – and now consists of more than 408 kilometres of railway lines and 275 stations which serve more than three million passengers a day – equating to more than a billion a year, the same as the entire national rail network.

For more on the history of the Underground, see our earlier 10 Questions with London Transport Museum curator Simon Murphy. Poster Art 150 – London Underground’s Greatest Designs runs at the London Transport Museum until October. Admission charge applies. For more (including the many events around the exhibition), see www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/events/events-calendar#posterart150.

For more, check out David Bownes’ Underground: How the Tube Shaped London or Andrew Martin’s Underground, Overground: A Passenger’s History of the Tube.

LondonLife – 14th century burial ground unearthed underneath Charterhouse Square…

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Crossrail---FarringdonA lost London burial ground has been unearthed in Farringdon by archaeologists working on the £14.8 million Crossrail project.

Thirteen adult skeletons, believed to be up to 660 years old, have been discovered lying in two rows 2.5 metres below the ground on the edge of Charterhouse Square.

It is likely based on the depth at which the bodies were buried and other evidence (including pottery found at the site and a similarity between the layout of the bones and those of 14th century plaque victims unearthed at the East Smithfield Burial Ground in the 1980s), that the skeletons were buried here in 1349 during the Black Death.

Historical records suggest that as many as 50,000 people may have been buried here in the three years from the burial ground’s opening in 1348. The burial ground remained in use until the 1500s but has never been located in modern times.

The skeletons are being excavated and taken to the Museum of London Archaeology for laboratory testing.

Crossrail Lead Archaeologist Jay Carver described the discovery as “highly significant”.

“We will be undertaking scientific tests on the skeletons over the coming months to establish their cause of death, whether they were Plague victims from the 14th Century or later London residents, how old they were and perhaps evidence of who they were,” he said.

“However, at this early stage, the depth of burials, the pottery found with the skeletons and the way the skeletons have been set out, all point towards this being part of the  14th century emergency burial ground.”

It is likely more remains will be found according to experts.

Archaeologists working on the Crossrail project have previously uncovered more than 300 burials at the New Cemetery near the site of the Bedlam Hospital at Liverpool Street from the 1500s to 1700s.

For more on Crossrail, see www.crossrail.co.uk.