London's Clerkenwell District: Wells, Prisons, Dickens, and Marx

The London neighborhood of Clerkenwell, a short walk to the north of the intersection of Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street, derives its name from the Old English for “clerks’ well” -- clerks in this case meaning clerics/clergy. Medieval monks and nuns from several nearby religious houses drew their water from a well here, along the banks of the now subterranean River Fleet, which runs under Farringdon Street and Road. 

The River Fleet gave its name to Fleet Street and the notorious Fleet Prison for debtors. The prison is long gone, replaced by high rise offices. Hard to say which is worse.

To the west of Farringdon St./Rd, just past Holborn Viaduct runs a narrow lane and area called Saffron Hill. It didn’t get its name from upscale developers. Saffron was once grown here. By the early nineteenth century it had become a derelict area inhabited by the very poor and criminals. Many shops along the street and just off it fenced stolen goods. 

Charles Dickens placed Fagin’s thieves' den in Oliver Twist here, just off Saffron Hill on Field Lane. Alas, or maybe not, there are few reminders of those days left. Saffron Hill ends at Clerkenwell Rd and becomes Herbal Hill, a street descending the other side of the gentle incline.

Near here one can see the well that gave Clerkenwell its name. It's on Farringdon Lane, just east of Farringdon Road. The well is inside a modern office building with a sign on the wall: Clerks’ Well.  You can see it through a plate glass window, much like Christmas displays at Harrods. Visits can be arranged. Maybe you can be drowned in this holy well.

The well is just off Clerkenwell Green, which hasn't been green for three hundred years or so.

Clerkenwell Green is where the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates take Oliver Twist to introduce him to their trade: pick-pocketing. The episode leads to Oliver’s arrest and appearance in court before the snarling magistrate Mr. Fang and his temporary rescue from Fagin by the kindly Mr. Brownlow. (Illustration from Oliver Twist by George Cruikshank)

The courthouse itself is at one corner of the Green. The Old Middlesex Sessions House, is an impressive building. It's a neoclassical structure, opened in 1780. It once had the reputation of being the most severe London court in its sentencing of convicted criminals. Today it's a Masonic Lodge and a tour of the attractive interior, if open, is well worth the time. Its dome is a replica of the Pantheon in Rome. The purpose of the court's elaborate decoration was no doubt to convince those who entered of the sacred majesty of the law. 

Across the Green sits a memorial to someone who denounced that majesty as a tool of the ruling class. The Marx Memorial Library houses a large collection of literature relating to the history of Marxism, socialism, and the British trade union movement. Its building, dating from 1738, once housed the Welsh Charity School.

If you are  thirsty, and I'm sure you are by now, there are several nice pubs nearby. One, the Betsey Trotwood is named for David Copperfield's crusty but goodhearted aunt. It lies just to the north of Clerkenwell Green where Farringdon Lane runs into Farringdon Rd. 

A couple blocks north of the pub, at the intersection of Roseberry Ave, is a large white post office depot with the words “Mount Pleasant” emblazoned across its front. The name has a certain irony. It was once the location of one of London's most feared prisons, the Cold Bath Fields House of Correction, opened in 1794. Londoners nicknamed it “The Bastille, ”or just “The Steel.” It was a most unpleasant place, especially after the governors introduced the notorious treadmill. Of course, we pay to use treadmills today.

Clerkenwell is well worth a visit! But for heaven's sake, don't get caught thieving!

A Georgian Cartoonist's Christmas

According to contemporary cartoonists, Georgian Christmas celebrations were not the scenes of pious, orderly behavior and domestic bliss the Victorians liked to portray. Consider this cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson, from 1804, "Christmas Gambols".

Drunken servants party in the kitchen in less than spiritual fashion. What would their masters think? Perhaps they encouraged such conviviality! Party on ! The mistletoe hanging from the ceiling indicates that the servants are acting in accord with an old Christmas tradition -- up to a point. 

"At Home in the Nursery" by George Cruikshank, 1825, portrays a chaotic Christmas party for children at the home of Master and Mrs. Twoshoes. The children are certainly enjoying themselves! Not quite the pious scene Dickens portrayed of the Cratchit household in A Christmas Carol.

Lewis Walpole's, "A Pleasing Pastime, Christmas Quadrille Party," 1826 shows four gentlemen braving ice skating with hilarious results, probably after tippling a bit too much at the local pub.

"Drawing for a Twelfth Night Cake at St. Anne's Hill," was the work of George Cruikshank's father Isaac.  It portrays an all male celebration at the country house of Charles James Fox in 1799. The image emphasizes Fox's sympathy with revolutionary France, then at war with Britain (liberty caps). Twelfth night celebrations were often rather wild affairs. Like most Georgian celebrations, I suppose.

Placid or Chaotic, Enjoy your Holidays. God Bless Us All, Everyone!

London's Invisible River Fleet

One of London's numerous underground rivers, the River Fleet is perhaps the most famous. The Fleet once ran pure and freely from Highgate and Hampstead down the valley now occupied by New Bridge St., Farringdon St., and Farringdon Rd. before emptying into the Thames.

The Fleet was once called the River of Wells because there were so many wells along its course, some of them holy. It was also surrounded by various religious foundations, monasteries, convents, and friaries. Henry VIII erected Bridewell Palace along its banks, but his son Edward VI gave it to the City of London to serve as a school for boys and a house of correction for women of ill repute. An interesting juxtaposition of functions that. "Bridewell" later became a general house of correction for many types of offenders, and the term became generic for such institutions. 

One reason the royals gave up Bridewell may be the fact that the river had become a foul open sewer, clogged with animal carcasses from nearby Smithfield Market, refuse from tanneries, and the wastes and castoffs of untold numbers of Londoners. 

The noxious miasmas that the Fleet "Ditch" -- as it was often called -- exhaled may be the reason why it was surrounded by prisons, workhouses, and cheap housing. It was a good place for housing if not thinning out the poor and undesirable. Many criminals had their haunts along or near its banks. Dickens placed Fagin's den in nearby Field Lane on Saffron Hill.

The Fleet river/ditch/sewer was gradually covered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today it is almost forgotten, but you can see evidence of it as it flows into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge. Or, you can see the water at its source in Highgate and Hampstead Ponds.

Thames Walks: From the Globe to the Mayflower

My walk took me along the Thames Path on the South Bank. Starting at Blackfriars Station, I quickly passed through Bankside, past the Tate Modern, and soon arrived at the replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. The original Globe was not located here, but somewhere near here. I did not come to see the Globe, however, but a house next to it. 

I had recently read The House by the Thames and the People Who Lived There by Gillian Tindall, a fascinating account of Bankside and its people since medieval times. I have passed the house in question many times before but never took any notice of it. It isn’t a palace, or even a mansion, but a modest residence that has been here since the early 18^th century. After reading Tindall’s book, however, I just had to have a look.

What I was most interested in was this plaque on the front of the house:

None of this was true, as Tindall explains in her book. Wren did live for a time in a house nearby that no longer exists. As for Catherine of Aragon, no evidence exists that she slept here, with or without Henry. The house did not exist in 1502. An inn, perhaps, but as Tindall points out, 16th century princesses didn't stay in common inns. 

The claims about Wren and Catherine were fabricated. the culprit was a mid-twentieth owner of the house, Ludwig Malcolm Munthe. Perhaps he put up the plaque to attract tourists who prefer myth to history or just to make himself feel important. Despite Tindall’s exposure, the plaque remains to mislead those who bother to read it. Munthe’s fabrication may have had a good result, however. Tindall argues that its faux history may have helped save the house from demolition in the late 1940s, the fate of many nearby old buildings.

Moving on, I passed The Clink, a museum named for the Bishop of Winchester’s prison that existed here from the 12^th century to 1781. The Bishop’s Palace was next door, but only part of its foundations remain. A little further on is the Golden Hind, a replica of the ship that Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the world in/on 1577-1580.

Resisting tours, I plowed on past London bridge and the HMS Belfast, a WWII light cruiser, one of only three surviving ships that formed part of the bombardment fleet on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Next, I came to City Hall, which looked like it was about to take off into hyperspace, in stark contrast to the extremely earthbound medieval Tower of London across the river.

Just past these monuments to the past, I arrived at iconic Tower Bridge, which looks medieval, but dates from the 1890s, when neo-gothic was the rage.

I recalled the story that the developers of Lake Havasu City, AZ, who bought the previous London Bridge in the 1970s, actually thought Tower Bridge was London Bridge, and were disappointed to learn they had bought a rather dull neoclassical construction. Maybe the story is apocryphal, but many tourists no doubt think of Tower Bridge as London Bridge. Souvenir shops are full of models of the former, but not the latter.

Passing under Tower Bridge, I entered Bermondsey. The Docklands proper begin here, and for centuries until the 1960s this area would have been chock full of ships coming and going from all points of the globe. The advent of giant container ships ended that world. Just past the Bridge one comes to Butler’s Wharf, a huge Victorian warehouse that has been converted into upscale apartments and restaurants.

At the end of Butler’s Wharf, I came to a muddy inlet of warehouses: St. Savior’s Dock, New Concordia Wharf, and Jacob’s Island Pier. This area was once a notorious slum. It now features luxury flats. 

Readers of Dickens’ Oliver Twist may recall that it is at Jacob's Island that the villainous Bill Sykes meets his well-deserved end, falling from a roof into the mud, still very evident at low tide. Dickens called this area “the filthiest, strangest, and most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London.” It's no longer filthy, at least, and is now rather posh.

After crossing the inlet on a metal pedestrian bridge, I went through and under a building on the waterfront. For a few blocks here, the Thames Path meanders along Bermondsey Wall West. Here, old warehouses, now luxury apartments, generally obscure the river from view. I passed by the location of a huge new Thames super sewer tunnel project, which also obscures the river from view now. Recent discharges of raw sewage into British waters make the need for this project urgent. 

The path soon rejoins the river again at Bermondsey Wall East, near the Angel Pub. I was sorely tempted to enter for a pint, but I resisted and sat for a while on a bench, looking across to Wapping and Execution Dock, where the notorious alleged pirate Captain Kidd was hanged in 1701. A short distance past the Angel I walked through a narrow passage between warehouses (now apartments) linked by overhead bridges (now bedecked with flowering plants). 

Just past these warehouses I entered the historic heart of Rotherhithe and arrived at the quaint and ancient Mayflower Pub. 

The pub, which dates in part from the 17^th century, was later renamed for the famous ship that carried the Pilgrim Fathers (and Mothers/Kids) to Massachusetts in 1620. The ship was from here in Rotherhithe, and several of its owners are buried in St. Mary’s Churchyard across the street. Among them is Christopher Jones, who captained the Mayflower on its voyage to “discover the New World." At least this is what the plaque on the pub’s front claims. Fake News has a long history. 

The plaque reminded me of Munthe’s plaque on the House by the Thames at Bankside: not entirely truthful, but maybe useful. I went inside and discovered the Mayflower pub, enjoying an ale and lunch. Leaving the Mayflower while I could still walk, I soon arrived at the nearby Brunel Museum.

The building was originally an engine house designed by Marc Isambard Brunel, the engineer who designed the Thames Tunnel. Completed in 1843, it was the first tunnel ever built under a navigable river. It connects Rotherhithe with Wapping on the north bank of the river and is @1300 feet (396m) in length. The engine house contained pumps to pump water from the tunnel during construction. 

Today, the museum highlights the careers and engineering projects of Marc Brunel and his more famous son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who completed the tunnel after his father’s death. The Thames Tunnel is used today by London Overground trains.

The Brunel Museum is a charitable project. I would have liked to visit it, but I was running out of time. I made my way to the nearby Rotherhithe Overground Station and so to home. I decided to come back soon and see more of the fascinating Docklands area. 

[See History and Other Stuff: A Curious Walk along the Thames: Rotherhithe, Deptford, and Greenwich (mycandles.blogspot.com)]