Pimlico

This Week in London – New V&A East Storehouse opens this weekend; novelist Barbara Pym honoured with a Blue Plaque; and, new children’s mudlarking trail at London Museum Docklands…

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Visitors in the central Weston Collections Hall at V&A East Storehouse, a working store and new visitor attraction from the V&A located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London, opening this Saturday, 31st May. PICTURE: David Parry/PA Media Ass

• The V&A East Storehouse opens to the public for the first time in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park this Saturday. The venue features more than 100 mini-displays centred on the themes of ‘Collecting Stories’, ‘Sourcebook for Design’ and ‘The Working Museum’ and boasting more than 1,500 items from across the V&A’s collections with works by Hew Locke, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Liebskind and Thomas Heatherwick’s London 2012 Olympic cauldron model among those featured. A massive 11-metre-wide stage cloth designed by Pablo Picasso for the Ballets Russes’ 1924 production, Le Train Bleu, will be displayed for first time in more than 10 years while among large scale objects are a section of the now-demolished housing estate, Robin Hood Gardens, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office – the only Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside of the US. Anyone can book access to any object in the storehouse for free via the ‘Order an Object’ process and the venue is also hosting a series of live events including back2back: Archival Bodies, and new programming strand, A Life in the Work of Others – featuring Turner-Prize-winning artist, Jasleen Kaur. Admission to the Storehouse at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, is free. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk/east.

Visitors looking at a two-storey section of Robin Hood Gardens, at V&A East Storehouse, a working store and new visitor attraction from the V&A located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London, opening this Saturday, 31st May. PICTURE: David Parry/PA Media Assignme

• The home where novelist Barbara Pym began writing her celebrated 1952 novel Excellent Women has been given an English Heritage Blue Plaque. Pym lived at the second floor flat at 108 Cambridge Street in Pimlico with her sister Hilary between November 1945 to autumn 1949. It was from a corner room, overlooking Warwick Square and St Gabriel’s Church, that she meticulously recorded her observations, and laid the groundwork for her distinctive literary voice. Her work during this period also included revising the text for her first published novel, Some Tame Gazelle (1950). In March, three more Blue Plaques were unveiled commemorating women: Una Marson (1905–1965), the BBC’s first Black woman producer at The Mansions, Mill Lane in West Hampstead where she lived from at least 1939 to 1943; and, Rhoda Garrett (1841–1882) and Agnes Garrett (1845–1935), at 2 Gower Street in Bloomsbury where they founded Britain’s first female-run interior-decorating business. For more, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/.

• A free family trail inspired by Jessie Burton’s new children’s book, Hidden Treasure, has launched at the London Museum Docklands. Inspired by the tale of two young mudlarks, the trail takes families on a journey around the museum’s galleries to learn more about centuries of life by the river. It’s aimed at children under 12-years-old, who also have free entry into the museum’s mudlarking exhibition, Secrets of the Thames. For more, see www.londonmuseum.org.uk.

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Lost London – Jenny’s Whim…

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This Pimlico establishment consisted of a tavern and attached tea garden which were famous for their interactive wonders.

These included mechanical devices which, when triggered, would cause harlequins or monsters to pop-up in order to give patrons a thrill.

There were also floating models on an adjacent reservoir designed to give the impression of mermaids or great fish rising up out of the water. Other attractions in the garden included its many arbors, a grotto, bowling green and the chance to take part in skittles or duck hunting.

The red brick property, which was located at the end of Ebury Bridge (apparently also referred to as “Jenny’s Whim Bridge”), is said to have been named for an early proprietor or, among other alternative stories, after a famous pyrotechnician from the era of King George I.

While the gardens were popular with the middle classes during the 1700s, this popularity had waned by the turn of the 19th century and by 1804 only the tavern remained. It was demolished in 1865 to make way for an extension of Victoria Station.

PICTURE: Guy Bianco IV/Unsplash

Where’s London’s oldest…surviving cabmen’s shelter?

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More than 60 of these shelters were built at major cab stands around London between 1875 and 1914 in order to allow cabmen to seek refreshment without leaving their vehicle.

The narrow, rectangular, green huts were constructed by the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund – which was established in 1875 by a philanthropically-minded group including the newspaper publisher Sir George Armstrong and the  Earl of Shaftesbury (the group also had the support of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII).

The story goes that it was Sir George who pushed the idea forward after a servant he sent to find a cab in some inclement weather took a long time in returning thanks to the fact the cabbies were all off seeking a hot meal in nearby pubs.

The shelters, which police specified were not allowed to be larger than a horse and cart given their position on a public highway, were initially very simple in design but become more ornamental as time went on (architect Maximilian Clarke, who designed a shelter for Northumberland Avenue which was built in 1882, was a key proponent of this more ornate style).

Most were staffed by attendants who sold food and drink to the cabbies (there were also kitchen facilities for them to cook their own as well as tables to sit at and a variety of reading materials). Drinking and gambling, as well as swearing, were apparently strictly forbidden.

The first of these shelters, which reportedly cost around £200 each, was erected in Acacia Road, St John’s Wood, but that shelter is long gone. Just 13 of the huts now survive and all are Grade II-listed. They have various nicknames assigned to them by London’s cabbies – one on Kensington Road, for example, is apparently known as ‘The All Nations’ thanks to its proximity to the site of the Great Exhibition of 1850, while another at Temple Place is simply known as ‘The Temple’.

As to which is the oldest?

Well, that’s proved a bit of a vexed question. According to listings on the Historic England website, the oldest we could find dated from 1897. They included one located in Hanover Square, another in Russell Square (this having been relocated from its previous position in Leicester Square), and a third in Thurloe Place in South Kensington, opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum.

But there were three for which we could find no details of the date on which they were built. They include one on the Chelsea Embankment near the Albert Bridge, another in St George’s Square in Pimlico, and the final one in Wellington Place in St John’s Wood near Lord’s cricket ground.

Update: According to our cabbie correspondent – see comments below – the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund have said the oldest shelter is that in Kensington Park Road, which they dated to 1877. Historic England have this one listed as dating 1909 – perhaps a rebuild?

Correction: The shelter known as ‘The All Nations’ is in Kensington Road, not Kensington Park Road as originally reported.

PICTURES: Top – The Russell Square shelter (David Nicholls, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0); Below – the Cabmen’s Shelter in Thurloe Place opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington (Amanda Slater, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

10 (more) historic London garden squares…6. St George’s Square…

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This rather long square in Pimlico was laid out in the mid-19th century and is, like the church parish in which it stands (St George Hanover Square), named after the patron saint of England.

Development of the area, owned by the Marquess of Westminster, was underway by 1835 and by the early 1840s, the formal square had been laid out. The construction of homes – and the lay-out of the square itself – was supervised by Thomas Cubitt and the first residents moved in the 1850s.

The north end of the square is home to the Church of St Saviour, designed by Thomas Cundy the Younger and constructed in 1864, which shields the remainder of the square from Lupus Street.

The square, now looked after by the City of Westminster, was apparently popular thanks to its being the only residential square open to the Thames (across Grosvenor Road. Until 1874, it had its own pier for watercraft to pull up to.

Famous residents in the square include Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, who died at number 26 in 1912, author Dorothy L Sayers, albeit briefly, and Nobel laureate and scientist Francis Crick, who lived at number 56 between 1945 and 1947.

The Thames is located opposite the square’s southern end, across Pimlico Gardens. The gardens feature a statue of MP William Huskisson, the first person to be run over and killed by a railway engine. The work of John Gibson, the Grade II-listed statue, which depicts Huskisson in Roman dress, is a copy of one which was originally placed in Huskisson’s mausoleum in St James’s Cemetery. It first stood in Liverpool Customs House but Gibson wasn’t satisfied with the location so it was moved to the office of Lloyds of London in the Royal Exchange and then again to its current location in 1915.

PICTURE: Top – Homes in St George’s Square (James Stringer/licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0); Below – The north of the square looking towards St Saviour Church (Philip Halling/licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)  

 

 

Where’s London’s oldest…(unchanged) bus route?

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London’s oldest unchanged bus route in London is commonly cited as Route 24 which runs over seven miles from Hampstead to Pimlico.

The route was first launched in 1910 but initially stopped at Victoria Station. It was extended to Pimlico just two years later in 1912 and has largely unchanged ever since (apparently with the exception of some minor adjustments due to one-way traffic schemes).

The route, which operates 24 hours a day, does take in some key landmarks of London – among them Trafalgar Square, Horse Guards Parade and Parliament Square. In 2013, Transport for London, said some 28,000 people used the route each day.

In 1965, the double-decker buses on the route – which have always been powered by motors rather than horses – became the first to have front entry. In 1988, it became the first route through central London to be privatised when purchased by Grey-Green (the line is now operated by Metroline).

Mostly recently, in 2013, it became the first route to fully implement the curvaceous new ‘Routemasters’ (while they’ve commonly been called that, the new buses are actually just called the ‘new bus for London’).

PICTURE: One of the new buses on the route in 2014 (Aubrey Morandarte (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0))

Lost London – The Chelsea Bun House…

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Still a favourite at tea rooms across the world, the Chelsea bun – a squarish, sticky spiced fruit bun – owes its origins to Richard Hand’s establishment in what was Jew’s Road and is now Pimlico Road in what is now Pimlico, on the border with Chelsea.

The single storey premises opened early in the 18th century and in the interior Mr Hand, apparently known as “Captain Bun”, kept a curious collection of clocks, models, paintings, statues and other curiosities.

The bun house, known variously as the Old Chelsea Bun House and the Original Chelsea Bun House, was a huge hit, attracting a clientele which included royalty – King George II and Queen Caroline visited with their daughters as did King George III and Queen Charlotte – and also, famously, the political figure and Jonathan Swift, who bought a stale one for a penny in 1711 and recorded that he didn’t like it.

The tradition of eating a hot cross bun on Good Friday lead to huge crowds at the bun house on that day in particular – said to number more than 50,000 some years – and such were that crowds that in 1793, Mrs Hand, following complaints from her neighbours, declared in a public notice that she would only be selling Chelsea buns, and not cross buns, on Good Friday that year.

The house did, however, return to selling hot cross buns on Good Friday – it is said to have sold an enormous 24,000 on Good Friday in 1839 (some sources have out the figure as high as 240,000 but that may have been a misprint).

Despite the success of Good Fridays, according to The London Encyclopaedia, the closure of the nearby Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens in 1804 had impacted the business.

In 1839, following the death of the Hands’ two sons and with no further family member to take over the business, it was closed and the bakery reverted to the Crown. The building was subsequently demolished.

PICTURE: Chelsea buns today. Duncan Hull under licence CC BY 2.0.

Famous Londoners – Dido Elizabeth Belle…

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Having had an extended May Bank Holiday, Exploring London returns with our usual coverage this week…

The subject of the new film Belle, the life of Georgian-era Dido Elizabeth Belle was nothing short of extraordinary.

Belle2Born in 1761, Belle was the illegitimate daughter of Admiral Sir John Lindsay and Maria Belle, an African woman who had apparently been captured from a Spanish ship when Havana was captured from the Spanish in 1762 (Lindsay had captained a ship in the fight).

Baptised at St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, in 1766, Lindsay subsequently sent Dido to live with his uncle William Murray, the Earl of Mansfield – Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Initially residing at the family house in Bloomsbury Square and later at Kenwood House in Hampstead, she was raised alongside her orphaned cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray who was also in the earl’s care.

She spent some 30 years living at the property and while her status remains something of a mystery, it is thought she was treated more as a companion to Lady Murray than a servant – indeed her familiarity with Lady Murray did prove somewhat shocking to some. Her presence in the house also led to some criticism of Lord Mansfield’s judgements in cases related to slavery.

Following the Earl of Mansfield’s death in 1793, Belle – who has acted as his secretary later in his life – was awarded £500 outright and a £100 annuity and had her freedom confirmed in Mansfield’s will. In December that year she married a Frenchman and gentleman’s steward (possibly at Kenwood House), John Davinier, at St George’s Hanover Square, London. The couple are believed to have had at least three sons and lived in Pimlico before Belle’s death in 1804. She was buried in St George’s Fields and her remains were later moved when the area was redeveloped in the mid-20th century.

A turbaned Belle is famously depicted in a portrait with Lady Murray which now hangs in Scone Palace at Perth in Scotland (property of the current Earl of Mansfield). The portrait was formerly attributed to Johann Zoffany but it’s now generally accepted it was not created by him.

Belle, which stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Belle, opens in the UK next month.

LondonLife – A glimpse into some of London’s hidden gardens…

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Eccleston-Square

Thousands turned out for the Open Garden Squares Weekend in London earlier this month when more than 200 of London’s private, hidden, unusual or little known gardens – including those at Eccleston Square in Pimlico, pictured above – threw open their gates to the curious public. Among the highlights of this year’s weekend was the chance to see the gardens at 10 Downing Street (more than 40,000 people applied for the 40 places) which also included a tour of the house. Next year’s event will be held on 14th and 15th June. For more, see www.opensquares.org.

PICTURE: Courtesy of Open Garden Squares Weekend.

What’s in a name?…Pimlico

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Tradition holds that this small triangular area, wedged between Westminster and Chelsea on the north bank of the Thames, takes its name from Ben Pimlico, said to be the 17th century owner of an famous alehouse or tea garden in Hoxton, on the north side of the City, and brewer of a particularly sought-after “nut brown” ale.

The story goes that so popular was his brew that Hoxton Street was then known as the “Pimlico Path”  due to the numbers making their way to his alehouse and that the area of Pimlico somehow adopted this name (although to be fair we should note that it’s also been suggested that the name comes from the Pamlico tribe of American Indians who exported timber to London around the same period).

While references to Pimlico go back to the 17th century, the area was largely uninhabited until the 19th century when it was developed by Victorian planner Thomas Cubitt under contract to the land owner, the Grosvenor family.

Initially in demand among the well-to-do, the fortunes of the area had declined by the end of the nineteenth century before a resurgence of interest took place in the early 20th century.

Among the projects constructed at that time was Dolphin Square (pictured) – with more than 1,200 apartments, it was the largest apartment complex in Europe at the time and has since proved particularly popular among politicians keen to be close to the action in Westminster and Whitehall.

Famous residents of Pimlico have included Winston Churchill, who lived briefly at 33 Eccleston Square between 1908-11.

Worth noting is that there is a racecourse in Maryland in the US known as the Pimlico Race Course which is also named for Ben Pimlico’s tavern.

For a photographic essay of Pimlico, check out Brian Girling’s Pimlico Through Time.