London's 100 Strangest Places E-Book

David Long

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 257

Beschreibung

The bustling metropolis of London is home to scores of unusual and unique places and spaces. In this feast of peculiarities, author David Long guides you off the beaten path and allows you under the skin of the hidden city that is modern-day London, revealing a new side to the capital you thought you knew.

Leseprobe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Since creating a popular weekly trivia-based cartoon strip for The Times, DAVID LONG has written and illustrated many popular and well-reviewed books about London, several of which are published by The History Press. He also writes awardwinning books for children and these have been translated into more than two dozen languages. www.davidlong.info

First published as Tunnels, Towers and Temples in 2007

First published in this form in 2019

This paperback edition first published in 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© David Long, 2007, 2018, 2022

All illustrations © Melissa Turland, 2018, 2022

The right of David Long to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75248 028 2

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction

London Regions

Central London – West

Central London – East

North London

North-west London

West London

South-west London

South-east London

East London

Across London

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy … it is only magnificent.

Henry James (1843–1916)

Dr Johnson advised his companion Boswell, ‘Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey its innumerable little lanes and courts’ – and more than two centuries later his advice is equally valid.

A vibrant, living organism encompassing more than 600 square miles and twenty centuries of human experience and endeavour, London may be home to millions, be visited every year by millions more and be as well documented as any great world city, yet – almost 2,000 years after Rome’s elderly military commander Aulus Plautius first bridged the Thames near Billingsgate – it still keeps its secrets.

Now, this companion volume to London’s 100 Most Extraordinary Buildings lifts the lid on a few of the best, revealing some of the capital’s most curious corners and the history behind them.

From ancient courtyards often hidden from view to the tangle of tunnels which run beneath the streets, it tells the strange stories of some genuine oddities: a street lamp powered by sewer gas; the one street in London where you can legally drive on the wrong side of the road; a Russian tsar working incognito in a vanished naval dockyard; even a Nazi memorial sited among the heroes and adventurers of the British Empire.

Written as much for the inquisitive armchair traveller as for the well-informed London resident, for the first-time traveller or regular visitor, the fact that most of these places are accessible to the public – and often at no charge – means this book provides the best possible start for anyone who wishes to get off the beaten track and under the skin of the hidden city that is modern-day London.

David Long

www.davidlong.info

CORAM’S FIELDS

GUILFORD STREET, WC1

No Unaccompanied Adults

Calling itself ‘seven acres of freedom’, this central London park and playground is unusual in that adults are allowed in only if accompanied by a child. But then perhaps that’s only as it should be, since the park we see today occupies a small part of the 56-acre site acquired by a wealthy seafarer for another famously child-focused enterprise, the Foundling Hospital. There is a relic of the hospital in this pillar by the entrance, a structure which once held a revolving niche containing what old Captain Thomas Coram called his All-Comers Basket. Using this, mothers keen to avoid legal entanglement or moral censure could simply deposit their unwanted infants anonymously, rather than leaving them ‘to die on dunghills’ as the good Captain put it.

It was an inspired idea, but proved too successful for its own good and on the first day of its operation in 1742 a staggering 117 babies were left in precisely this manner. In the next few weeks, another 425 arrived and before long this chaotic (if well-meaning) admissions policy had to be abandoned. Instead, a balloting scheme was introduced to decide who gained entry: a white ball admitted the child once he or she had passed a medical examination; a red ball secured a place on the waiting list; a black ball indicated rejection, meaning alternative arrangements would have to be found elsewhere.

Demand for places continued to outstrip spaces, however, so that new rules were instituted allowing, for example, only one baby per unmarried mother to be admitted, and then only when the child was under 12 months old, had been deserted by its father, and where the mother had been of good character before her ‘fall’.

The expense of running such an establishment was naturally considerable, but the Foundling Hospital was fortunate in that it enjoyed the patronage of a number of high-profile supporters. These included not just Coram’s original committee of twenty-one ladies ‘of Nobility and Distinction’ who petitioned the King for support, but also the artist Hogarth – who became a governor and with other artists contributed a number of valuable portraits – and G.F. Handel who presented an organ to the hospital chapel and raised an incredible £7,000 through his own performances here of his Messiah.

Eventually the hospital went, however, moving to Berkhamsted in 1926 when the valuable site was sold for development. Happily, a new band of benefactors (led by the newspaper proprietor Viscount Rothermere) was able to rescue a small portion of it, and when Theodore Jacobsen’s hospital buildings were cleared away what remained was laid out to give local children somewhere to play. A place, should they so choose, where they could treat their parents to green and grassy pleasures.

NEW RIVER COMPANY

MYDDLETON SQUARE, WC1

London’s Own Aqueduct

Problems with water supply are nothing new. In Elizabeth I’s time, the Thames and its tributaries were already badly polluted, the City still had no sewerage system separate from its water supply, and London generally was evil smelling and clearly very unhealthy.

People were nevertheless still getting their water from open water courses. Some depended on water-bearers to bring what they needed in barrels from the various rivers, while others – generally the richer ones – obtained water from shallow wells which tapped ground water supplies or through primitive pipes known as quills. Even these sources were soon contaminated, however, and in 1606 and 1607 two Acts of Parliament were passed permitting the Commonality of the City of London to run a channel to bring fresh water in from two clean Hertfordshire springs.

The task fell to Hugh Myddleton, a goldsmith and well-heeled entrepreneur, who, despite fierce opposition from those landowners across whose estates the channel would pass, agreed to complete the job in just four years. In fact, he struggled until James I agreed to help out financially – Myddleton was well connected and had dealings with the King as a goldsmith – in return for half the profits.

Four years later water flowed from the villages of Great Amwell and Chadwell into the Round Pond by Sadler’s Wells, arriving via an open channel 10ft wide, 4ft deep and just under 40 miles long. Before long the New River Company had four such reservoirs, each 10ft deep and up to 2 acres in area, with water being piped into the City through wooden pipes. Then as now up to 25 per cent was lost owing to pipe bursts and other leakages, but Myddleton was rewarded for his efforts with a baronetcy.

Unfortunately, the public showed less regard for his work and before long, as noted in a hastily commissioned monograph entitled A Microscopic Examination of the Water Supplies for the Inhabitants of London, the problems of having an open channel were made obvious. The people of London, it said, ‘use it as a resort for bathing in summer and at all times as a receptacle for refuse, animal and vegetable matter’. In short, it was soon as toxic and as disgusting as the Thames water it was meant to replace.

The solution was to import filter beds and filtration works, these being installed at Hornsey and Stoke Newington, which eventually became the London termini of the New River. Closer to town the magnificent headquarters can still be seen on Roseberry Avenue, complete with the lavishly panelled seventeenth-century Oak Room which has been reconstructed within the later building (now apartments). In Claremont Square, there is also one surviving reservoir, railed off and looking for all the world like a prehistoric tumulus.

The course the original river took can still be discerned, however, much of it now landscaped as the New River Walk and turned into public parkland. There is also the evidence of the New River Estate, most of which was sold to Islington Council in the mid 1970s; Colebrook Row and Duncan Terrace, for example, would originally have faced each other across that first channel excavated by Sir Hugh.

ADELPHI

STRAND, WC2

Lottery-Funded Loser

Having grown organically over the centuries (which is to say haphazardly), as a rule elaborate, large-scale planning schemes do not fare well in London – and the fate of the Adam brothers’ imposing riverside Adelphi is no exception.

Concerned that their work had hitherto been on too small a scale, or limited to less prestigious commissions outside London, John, Robert, James and William Adam took a ninety-nine-year lease on a substantial plot of land between the river and the Strand in 1768. Paying the Duke of St Albans £1,200 per annum for it, they set about building a quay and several storeys of warehousing in extensive vaults set back from the river.

Relying on cheap labour from their native Scotland – pipers were brought in to keep the workers happy – they planned a series of streets above; two parallel to the river, two running perpendicular to it, with the centrepiece a royal terrace of eleven four-storey stucco and plastered houses overlooking the Thames.

They quickly ran into difficulties, however. Initially, the Corporation of London blocked the development, claiming all rights over the river bed. Then distance from the fashionable West End proved an issue when it came to attracting the right class of tenant (this despite the high-quality interiors by Angelica Kaufmann and G.B. Cipriani). Finally, they suffered a funding shortfall, when the government declined to rent the massive vaults for storing gunpowder for fear of flooding at high tide.

Fortunately, the brothers were not without influence and a special Act of Parliament in 1773 allowed them to rescue the scheme by holding a lottery. The following year 4,370 tickets were offered at Jonathan’s Coffee House on Cornhill, at a hefty £50 a throw.

Certainly, once completed, the forty-one-bay development was (if only briefly) highly impressive when viewed from the river, with an attractive centre and the façade closed by the projecting terraces in Robert and Adam Street. Admittedly the crisp neo-Classicism and decorated pilasters of the eleven houses did not appeal to the architectural establishment, but the artistic elite liked what it saw immensely and David Garrick, Thomas Hood, John Galsworthy and others subsequently moved in.

By 1870, though, the construction of the Victoria Embankment had cut off the warehouses from the river. These quickly fell into disuse, providing what a contemporary chronicler called a dismal haunt for street thieves, a place where ‘the most abandoned characters pass the night, nestling on foul straw’. Two years later the terrace was cemented over and had its ironwork removed, before eventually it was torn down and replaced by the block we see today. Somewhat inappropriately, this too is called the Adelphi, meaning, of course, ‘brothers’.

Today, sadly, just small fragments of the original remain, including 7 Adam Street, 1–3 Robert Street and 4–6 John Street, alongside the pretty Royal Society of Arts. Some of the vaulting can also be seen from Lower Robert Street, but it is still hard to get a fair impression of the very considerable scope and scale of the brothers’ short-lived achievement.

ASTOR HOUSE

TEMPLE PLACE, WC2

Faked, but with Finesse

Originally the London estate office of William Waldorf Astor – the first Viscount Astor was nicknamed ‘Walled-Orf’ after taking the necessary steps to prevent members of the public strolling through his Cliveden estate – 2 Temple Place these days provides a welcome relief from the brutal presence of the monolithic Howard Hotel nearby.

For Astor, the 1895 building formed an important part of his English Plan, a bid to revert to his European roots after recognising that while his native America was a fine place to do business, ‘why travelled people of independent means should remain there more than a week is not readily to be comprehended’.

To this end, created for one duke, let to another, rebuilt by a third and inherited by a fourth (respectively Buckingham, Gloucester, Sutherland and Westminster), Cliveden was just the ticket. Perfect for an American as hell-bent as Astor on acquiring the titles and trappings of an English toff, it had been designed by Sir Charles Barry and built high above the loveliest stretch of the Thames on the very spot where ‘Rule, Britannia’ was first performed.

Crucially, it was also for sale: the Duke of Westminster already having a seat when he was given Cliveden by his mother-in-law – but being badly in need of money. Astor, of course, had plenty of this – an estimated $175 million from his father – but needed a seat. Accordingly, £250,000 changed hands, giving Westminster the liquidity he required and Astor the great house and its contents. (Later the Duke realised he had left some valuable paintings behind, which Astor promptly returned, though he retained a 200-year-old visitors’ book which he insisted went with the house.)

Other acquisitions rapidly followed as Waldorf and then his son cemented their foundations in London and English society. These included 18 Carlton House Terrace, Hever Castle in Kent, a fleet of horse-drawn carriages controversially painted in the same chocolate-brown livery favoured by the royal family, the Observer newspaper and the influential Pall Mall Gazette. Also, in time, another grand ducal establishment in St James’s Square – now home to the Naval & Military Club, but originally built for the first Duke of Kent – and the 55-carat ‘Sanci’ diamond which at various times had been the property of Charles the Bold, Charles I’s queen, Henrietta Maria, and Louis XIV.

Together with his extensive US holdings, it was a considerable real-estate and business empire, all of which the Astors controlled from this small but robust Portland stone castle with its charming early Elizabethan styling.

Designed by John Loughborough Pearson, its Great Hall and Library were located on the first floor to take advantage of the river views. Astor’s money meant the elaborate detailing continued inside too, with an ornate gallery of ebony columns and silver-gilt panelling, carvings of many literary figures and lavish glazing with ornate stained glass. Finally, and in recognition of a family which had crossed the Atlantic in such triumph, the gilded, beaten-copper weathervane above the roof includes a representation of the Santa Maria, the caravel which carried Christopher Columbus on his pioneering voyage across the same great ocean.

GOODWIN’S COURT

ST MARTIN’S LANE, WC2

Predating Savile Row

It is tempting to think that, in the summer of 1763, Samuel Johnson must have had in mind humble little backwaters like this one when he encouraged his companion Boswell, newly arrived in London, to ‘survey its innumerable little lanes and courts’.

These days very much an accidental discovery for the strolling visitor to Covent Garden, the buildings of Goodwin’s Court are charming rather than architecturally important, intimate rather than impressive. Nevertheless, the short walk from one end to the other gives one a fine impression of another Covent Garden, one far less grand or planned than the Earl of Bedford’s nearby piazza, which was a truly radical innovation for London in its day.

By comparison, to most visitors, Goodwin’s Court must seem positively Dickensian. Although that said, with its blackened timbers, worn steps, comically bulging windows and bowed walls, it actually predates Dickens (even his earliest writings) by well over 130 years. In fact, it makes its first appearance in the rate books in 1690, being described then as a row of tailors.

Having on its south side an intact row of eight narrow, yet desirable, late eighteenth-century shopfronts with two floors of living accommodation provided above, it is certainly wider and considerably more salubrious than nearby, quite nasty Brydges Place (which at its narrowest is barely more than a foot and a half wide). It is nevertheless still rather more of an alleyway than a court, and, as such, is a highly unusual survivor in an area such as Covent Garden, which has seen more than its fair share of reshaping and redevelopment since the Earl’s man, Inigo Jones, was first at work here in the 1630s.

Inevitably much of its charm depends on it being so easy to miss: the entrance from St Martin’s Lane being no more than a doorway off the street with a couple of steps down. As a result, most people simply never stumble upon it, but for those who do it is worth studying in detail.

With working gas lamps outside No. 1 and the attractive clock face over the archway giving on to Bedfordbury, it makes a fine contrast with its self-consciously much grander surroundings. Notice too, the metal plates or ‘fire-marks’ affixed to the buildings, dating from a time before the various privately paid-for groups of watermen and firefighters amalgamated to form the London Fire Engine Establishment. Until this was reformed into the publicly funded London Fire Brigade we know today, at the height of a blaze these plates would have indicated which buildings were insured against fire, thereby encouraging the firemen to concentrate on saving them rather than any adjacent, uninsured properties. It presumably worked, hence Goodwin Court’s happy survival into the twenty-first century.

HOLBORN–KINGSWAY SUBWAY

LANCASTER PLACE, WC2

A Tunnel for Trams

It would be nice to think that the last of London’s 2,500 tramcars might have been accorded the honour of a plinth in the Science Museum. But, in fact, the vehicle in question (E/3-1904) is known to have met a rather more ignominious end after being deliberately rolled over in July 1952 and set alight on an anonymous siding in Charlton.

Such was the sad, low-key end for this enduring mode of transport, one which had carried up to seven million passengers a year before being deemed to have reached the end of the line. Particularly so when one considers that, after being introduced to London almost 100 years earlier by the aptly named George Train, trams had proved sufficiently popular that, when E/3-1904 made her final run from Westminster to Woolwich, many thousands turned out to see her, some even placing pennies on to the tramlines to obtain a small, bent souvenir of the occasion.

Happily, though, while the trams themselves may be gone, and many hundreds of miles of lines pulled up, covered over or converted for telecommunications lines, some traces of the old network still remain.

By far the largest of these is the Holborn–Kingsway Subway of 1908. For the last thirty years, with the addition of a new approach from Waterloo Bridge, it has been used as a traffic underpass linking Waterloo to Holborn. But originally it was a tram tunnel, simple cut-and-cover for most of its length, but deep level where it crossed the Strand. Running along the length of Kingsway as far as Theobald’s Road, it would then have had a flag-waving guard to warn drivers as the trams emerged into daylight on their way to New Cross Gate, Woolwich and Abbey Wood.

By the early 1930s, however, the arched roof had already been replaced by higher steel sections thereby allowing the tunnel to be used by newfangled double-deckers, and it was clear the writing was already on the wall for the trams. At one point, expensive plans were advanced to run them underground – from Bayswater to Aldgate, and from the Holloway Road to the Elephant and Castle – but these were shelved as the more modern and efficient Tube already fulfilled just such a function.

As a result, in London at least, trams quickly passed into history. A year after the destruction of car E/3-1904, the subway was redeployed to store 120 retired buses in case they were needed for the Coronation, and two years after that it served as a railway tunnel in the film Bhowani Junction. A film company then offered to take over the subway to use as a studio, but this was disallowed owing to the fire risk and the subway was closed.

Even so its route can still be traced today simply by following the ironwork running down the centre of Southampton Row. These grilles also guard the entrance to another of the tunnel’s more recent occupants, namely the Greater London Council’s flood control centre, which somewhat paradoxically was sited underground and right above a major sewer. Close by, the old Theobald’s Road tram station is apparently still intact and undisturbed, but is unfortunately not open to visitors.

LINCOLN’S INN

CHANCERY LANE, WC2

Peaceful Now, but a Grisly Past

With fourteenth-century origins, buildings dating back to 1489, and Cromwell, Donne, Thomas More and at least seven prime ministers among its alumni, Lincoln’s Inn may not share Inner and Middle Temples’ romantic Crusader roots, but it remains a fascinating piece of secret, legal London and a delightful place in which to wander.

The name is mysterious, being derived from either the third Earl of Lincoln or Thomas de Lyncoln. Certainly, it is the former’s crest, a lion rampant purpure, which appears on the early sixteenth-century gatehouse. On the other hand, Lyncoln was the King’s Serjeant of Holborn, so he too may have a claim.

What is known is that the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn has been on its present site only since 1422, although it was clearly active elsewhere before 1348. When it moved here, it was to a house owned by the bishops of Chichester, a fact commemorated by local street names such as Chichester Rents and Chancery (or Chancellor) Lane after one of their number, who became Chancellor of England. In 1580, however, the Society purchased the freehold of this property (for £520) so that today one can stroll from the riverside to Camden – that is from Inner Temple to the Law Courts, then through this place to Gray’s Inn – almost without placing a foot outside one or other of the capital’s historic legal enclaves.

Here, as one enters through the red and blue brick gatehouse of 1518, the parallels with an Oxbridge college are obvious. A rich and diverse collection of picturesque buildings, many of them sixteenth- and seventeenth-century houses more recently converted to office use, these are arranged around four loosely connected squares, two of which are nicely enclosed (Old Square and Old Buildings) while New Square and the space before the chapel are more open.

Unusually the latter’s undercroft is open too, for the last 400 years providing somewhere for students and lawyers ‘to walk and talk and confer for their learnings’. The library is also notable, rebuilt by the Hardwicks in 1843 but founded in 1497, making it London’s oldest such institution.

Immediately to the west, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with its 12 acres of lawns and plane trees, is London’s largest square; to one side a plaque commemorates former resident Spencer Perceval (1762–1812), now remembered merely as the only prime minister to have been assassinated. Shot in the Commons by an irate Liverpudlian, his murder was foreseen in a dream nine days earlier by John Williams of Redruth, who was dissuaded from journeying to London to warn the authorities.

Despite the proximity of busy High Holborn and Kingsway, the Fields today are quiet and it is hard to believe this is where, in 1586, many thousands gathered to witness the hanging, drawing and quartering of fourteen Catholic traitors found guilty of plotting to replace Elizabeth with Mary. Also hard to credit is that, in the 1930s, the LCC ordered the lovely gardens to be dug up, excavating 1,430 yards of deep trenches, tunnels and heavily armoured bunkers before lining them with concrete against poisoned-gas attack. What purpose they serve now is unclear, but they are known to survive, although the entrances have been sealed off.

OF ALLEY

YORK PLACE, WC2

Remember My Name

Occupying part of the 7-acre site of one of the great, vanished Strand palaces, York Place commemorates York House which once stood here with its principal façade overlooking extensive gardens running down to the river.

Certainly completed before 1237, this had originally been owned by the bishops of Norwich until the Dissolution in 1536 when Henry VIII conveyed it to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Passing via Mary I to the Archbishop of York, it later became the official residence of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, before finally coming into the possession of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in 1624.

A favourite of James I, Villiers restored the bishops’ old estate which at that time encompassed an incredible fifty houses, ten cottages, four stable blocks and seven interconnecting gardens. He also built the magnificent watergate which still survives, marooned and melancholy in Embankment Gardens. But despite having lavished a fortune on these works – in October 1626 the French ambassador described the results as ‘the most richly fitted up than any other I saw’ – he preferred to live in Whitehall at Wallingford House and used this ancient but grand riverside mansion merely as a place to entertain his guests.

Following his murder in 1628, however, the Duke’s wife removed here but then lost the property during the Civil War. Eventually it was recovered by her son, the second Duke, who married the new owner’s daughter before the Restoration. He too used it only for ceremonial purposes and in 1672, with speculators eyeing the potentially valuable site and his Grace finding himself to be extremely heavily mortgaged, he gave permission for the old house to be torn down and the land developed.

At the time it was not uncommon for landlords to have whole streets and squares named after them, and indeed the practice continues today most obviously in the way the fragile egos of time-serving councillors are shored up using just such a method. Not for the first time, however, Buckingham went a step further. As well as securing £30,000 for the house and gardens, he insisted that the new network of streets and lanes being planned on the site by developer Nicholas Barbon record literally every sound and syllable of his name and title. Thus today we have Buckingham Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street – now part of John Adam Street – and George Street, which was eventually to became York Buildings. Also for a while there was Of Alley, until this too was renamed by somebody clearly lacking a sense of history, and (dare one say it) of humour.

SAVOY COURT

STRAND, WC2

Where it’s Right to be Wrong

Built on a steep slope of riverbank land granted by Henry III to the future Count of Savoy – the annual rent in 1246 was three barbed arrows – Savoy Court is the only public road in London on which motorists are obliged to drive on the wrong side of the road.

It’s tempting to imagine that this is because for a few short years after Count Peter bequeathed it to the monastery of St Bernard in Montjoux, the land on which the road was built was in a sense French territory. But in reality the monastery held it only very briefly as, in 1270, Queen Eleanor paid 300 marks to get it back in order that she could present it to her second son, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster.

Taking a keen interest in royal lands, his brother Edward I was the first English king to commission a national land survey and to map his country. Thereafter, having assessed the precise extent of his domain, he granted Edmund permission to ‘strengthen and fortify’ his mansion on this site, a process continued by his son, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, who spent a mammoth £35,000 between 1345 and 1370, creating a house said at the time to be without equal in England.

Today, although part of the Duchy of Lancaster (see p. 226) and therefore still a personal possession of the reigning monarch, the land on which this princely edifice once stood is now occupied by a variety of large but indifferent office developments whose rents continue to flow into the Privy Purse.

Count Peter has not been forgotten entirely, however. Indeed, it is his likeness in bronze and gilt that stands guard over the grand Strand entrance to the hotel which bears his name. Shield in hand and lance held high, from his lofty perch gazing down on Savoy Court, he too might like to imagine that the cars arriving and departing on the right side of the road do so in his honour. But, sadly, the truth is rather more prosaic and has more to do with the tight angle required to turn in from the Strand than any act of homage to the area’s erstwhile French owner.

SEWER-POWERED GAS LAMP

CARTING LANE, WC2

Progress in Power in One Small Street

Relying on a genuinely sustainable source of power at least a century before that now familiar phrase became current, the delightful-sounding Patent Sewer Ventilating Lantern, which can still be seen in this narrow street running south of the Strand, is sadly the last of its kind remaining.

That at least one of the street lamps in London to draw methane gas from the London sewers down beneath Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s embankment has survived is nevertheless something to celebrate. That it has done so right here is also somewhat ironic, if only because of its close proximity to a Westminster City Council plaque declaring the nearby Savoy Theatre to have been ‘the first public building in the world to be lit throughout by electricity’. After all, that important innovation took place in 1881, which is to say at exactly the time that the now-suddenly-outdated Patent Sewer Ventilating Lantern was itself being installed.