Located in Bromley Palace Park – once the home of the Bishops of Rochester and now the grounds of the Bromley Civic Centre – is what appears to be the remains of a medieval church or building.
But the “ruins” actually only date from the Victorian era and were created as a folly for the first private owner of the house.
The ruins, which are Grade II-listed, consists of a brick turret which features a rounded arched window in the Norman style with some raised zig-zag decoration above it and an arched arrow squint. The arch rests upon what is believed to actually be early medieval capitals with a late 12th century column on the left.
The folly, located at the south-western corner of the bishop’s palace grounds, was created in about 1865 on the orders of merchant Coles Child, who bought the house in 1845, and may have been created, along with other garden features, by the company of James Pulham.
Tradition says it was constructed from medieval remnants found in the moat of the bishop’s palace.
Famous for his reform of the postal system, Sir Rowland Hill was a national celebrity during the Victorian era.
Born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, on 3rd December, 1795, Rowland was the son of schoolmaster Thomas Wright Hill. Educated in his father’s school, Hill Top, in a Birmingham suburb, it was determined he would follow in his father’s footsteps at an early age and by the age of 12 had become a student teacher and in 1819 helped his family establish new model school, Hazelwood, in Edgbaston near Birmingham. In 1827, he was also involved with his family in establishing another new school, Bruce Castle School, in Tottenham, Middlesex.
Statue of Sir Rowland Hill in London. PICTURE: Julian Osley (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/image cropped)
That same year, Hill married Caroline Pearson, who originally came from Wolverhampton, and together they had four children – three daughters Eleanor, Clara and Louisa and a son Pearson.
In the following years, Hill became involved in campaigns to colonise South Australia and in 1835 he joined the South Australian Colonisation Commission as Secretary, a role which he held until 1839 (interestingly and perhaps not surprisingly given his interest, Hill’s sister Caroline would later emigrate to South Australia with her family).
Hill was in his early 40s when he became interested in reforming the postal system – what to be his life’s great work. In 1837, he published his influential pamphlet, Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability, in which he argued for consistency in the system including pre-payment of standardised charges for sending mail.
Hill believed that if letters were cheap to send, more people – including the poorer classes – would send more and thus the profitability of the system would increase (a thought which proved true). It’s said, although whether it’s true or not is uncertain, that Hill became interested in reforming the postal system after he noticed a young woman who too poor to claim a letter sent to her by her fiancé (at the time it was usually the recipients who paid for the letter’s mailing).
Only three years later, Parliament passed the Penny Postage Act which saw the world’s first official postage stamps – the penny black and the two-penny black – issued. Hill and his family had by then moved to Orme Square in Bayswater (there’s now an English Heritage Blue Plaque on the property).
After the new government of Sir Robert Peel took office in 1841, Hill was dismissed and, joining the London and Brighton Railway as a director in 1843, relocated to Brighton.
But Hill was able to resume his postal reform efforts in 1846 after another change of government saw him appointed Secretary to the Postmaster-General. In 1854, he was appointed Secretary to the Post Office, a job he held until his retirement in 1864 due to ill health.
Hill was knighted in 1860. He spent the last 30 years of his life at Bartram House, Hampstead, and it was there he died 27th August, 1879 (a plaque now marks the house). He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
There are several public statues commemorating Hill include a bronze which, created in 1881, stands in King Edward Street in London (pictured).
Now located just outside St Paul’s Cathedral at the eastern end of Carter Lane Gardens, this Gothic Victorian drinking fountain once stood near the Church of St Lawrence Jewry close by Guildhall.
Designed by architect John Robinson and featuring bronze sculptural work by Joseph Durham, the now Grade II-listed fountain was paid for jointly by the parishes and St Lawrence and St Mary Magdalene.
One of many fountains erected from the 1850s onwards to provide free, clean water to the city’s residents, it features statues of both St Lawrence – holding the grid iron on which tradition holds he was martyred – and of St Mary Magdalene – holding a cross with a skull at her feet – set in two of four niches in an elaborate canopy. The remaining two niches, now empty, are believed to have once held the names of past benefactors of the churches.
Below the canopy is another niche, from the back of which water streams out into a dish when a button is pushed. The water stream brings an extra dimension to a relief carving depicting a scene from the Biblical book of Exodus in which Moses is striking a rock at Horeb to bring forth water while, beside him, a woman holds a cup to the lips of her child.
The fountain was originally installed to the north of St Lawrence Jewry in Church Passage in 1866 and remained there for more than a century until, in 1970, the redevelopment of Guildhall Yard meant it had to be moved. It was dismantled into about 150 pieces and put into storage in a barn in Epping with the idea that it would be re-erected.
An in-depth examination of the UK’s first “railway murder”, Mr Briggs’ Hat also provides a rich series of snapshots of life in Victorian London, from that of the murdered middle class banker Thomas Briggs to the life of German immigrant tailor Franz Muller – the man accused of his murder – and a countless cast of cab drivers, policemen, and court officers.
The scene is set on the first page – the discovery of blood in a train carriage at Hackney Wick Station on the evening of 9th July, 1864 – and from there Colquhoun slowly unfolds the details of the case against an intricate picture of life in London (and briefly, New York) during the latter half of the 19th century.
If you’ve read Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or evenErik Larson’s Thunderstruck (retelling the story of Dr Crippen), you’ll be on familiar ground although this story is perhaps not as compelling as either of those. Yet, like both books, Mr Briggs’ Hat draws back the veil of respectability that shrouds many of the lives of those involved in the story to show the sometimes sordid but always interesting reality beneath.
It also does a good job of conveying just how ‘sensational’ this now largely forgotten story this was when it broke and the hysteria which followed. It can be hard to understand the 19th century mindset from out 21st century viewpoint but Mr Briggs’ Hat makes a good job of it.
As with books of its ilk, it’s easy to forget that this is a real story and that real lives were dramatically affected by the events it describes. But it’s that fact which also draws you in.
, Kate Colquhoun, Abacus, 2012
Exploring London 