London's Secret Square Mile E-Book

David Long

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

Seitenzahl: 282

Beschreibung

The streetscape of London's historic square mile has been evolving for centuries, but the City's busy commercial heart still boasts an extensive network of narrow passages and alleyways, secret squares and half-hidden courtyards. Using his wealth of local knowledge, historian David Long guides you through these ancient rights of passage – many dating back to medieval times or earlier – their evocative names recalling old taverns, notable individuals and City traditions. Hidden behind the glass, steel and stone of London's banks and big business, these survivors of modern development bear witness to nearly 2,000 years of British history.

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 award-winning books for children and these have been translated into more than two dozen languages. www.davidlong.info

First published 2011 as Hidden City

First published as London’s Secret Square Mile 2021

This paperback edition first published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© David Long, 2011, 2021, 2023

All illustrations © Melissa Turland, 2021, 2023

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 032 9

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

Foreword by The Rt Hon. The Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Nicholas Lyons

Introduction

Secret City: Street by Street

Appendix I: Street Names Within the Square Mile

Appendix II: The City of London Wards

Appendix III: City of London Parishes

Appendix IV: Built, Burned, Rebuilt, Bombed and Redundant

Appendix V: City Open Spaces

Bibliography

FOREWORD

In the ever-changing tapestry of great cities, few possess the captivating blend of historic charm and architectural advancement quite like the City of London. As we stroll through the historic Square Mile, we are graced with the privilege of witnessing a living testament to the art of fusing preservation with evolution. David Long’s fascinating book explores the hidden squares, secret alleys, and winding passages that weave together the rich fabric of the City.

All great cities must adapt to thrive in the face of shifting times and new challenges. Most recently we saw a City lifeless amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Centuries ago, after the Great Fire of 1666, and later amidst the devastation of the Blitz, there were calls to reconstruct the City anew, discarding the intricate streets that had stood for ages. Yet, each time, the resilient spirit of preservation prevailed, sparing the ancient thoroughfares that still mirror the paths of our medieval forebears. The challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic tested our mettle, yet I find overwhelming pride in the resilience displayed by the City. I can now look outside of the window in Mansion House to see a City rejuvenated, filled with life.

As the 694th Lord Mayor of the City of London, I hold a deep reverence for the City’s heritage and storied history, recognising that preserving our past is essential for forging a brighter future at the heart of the global economy. Indeed, I have worked in the Square Mile for over forty years and have developed an affinity with the City – its rich history, exquisite architecture and considerable cultural offerings.

As we look ahead to confronting the economic and ecological challenges that will shape this century, the City of London’s indomitable spirit will be our guiding light, inspiring us to embrace change and overcome challenges thrown our way.

The Rt Hon. The Lord Mayor

Alderman Nicholas Lyons

Mansion House, August 2023

INTRODUCTION

‘I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphinx’s riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters, and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed, at times, that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terrae incognitae, and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the modern charts of London.’

Thomas De Quincey,Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)

Insulated from the noise, from the seemingly endless development and redevelopment of the historic Square Mile – and above all from the aggressively commercial bustle of the larger streets and traffic-clogged thoroughfares – is a second, almost secret City of London.

Comprising a sometimes bewildering tangle of narrow alleyways, courtyards and unexpected dead-ends, many of them medieval in origin even if they sadly no longer give this impression, this second, secret city is a compact but intriguing place. Dotted with blue plaques and strange statues and memorials to the forgotten, often leading the explorer to little gardens built around Roman remains and derelict or discarded churches, this maze of little cut-throughs, shortcuts and byways conceals many old and even timber-framed buildings which have somehow survived against the odds, and offers walkers the chance to stumble upon some of the most unexpected and charming places to eat and drink in central London.

Above all, though, to appropriate the words of John Clare, one of London’s many biographers, it is somewhere ‘you discover that commonplace traffic, the swinish rush of metal, is happening somewhere else’. Also, to quote Peter Ackroyd, somewhere one begins to understand how the area stretching from Tower to Temple really is ‘made for walking … a city of small streets and sudden vistas, of unexpected alleys and hidden courtyards which cannot be seen from a bus or car’.

Though famously rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, and again and again in the centuries which followed, the basic streetscape of London’s financial heart still reflects its medieval layout – and it is this that best conveys the oft-cited impression of it being truly a city within a city. The old gateways into the bustling medieval settlement may be long gone, the Roman wall has almost entirely (but not quite) disappeared beneath warehouses, offices and apartments, and towering new developments continue to be thrown up and torn down with bewildering rapidity. But stepping behind the modern façades, or squeezing through narrow passages between the vast glass ziggurats of twenty-first-century commerce in search of a favourite Wren church or simply somewhere quieter to sit and think, it is still possible to come upon something ancient or timeless, and to enjoy the precious thrill of discovering somewhere centuries old yet to the beholder all but unknown.

‘I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the City far better. The City seems so much more in earnest; its business, its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, sounds. The City is getting its living – the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West End you may be amused; but in the City you are deeply excited.’

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853)

ABCHURCH YARD, EC4

Documented as long ago as the twelfth century, at which time it was known variously as Abchurch, Abbechurch, Habechirch and Apechurch. Each is almost certainly a corruption of ‘upchurch’, a reference to the rising ground on which the neighbouring church of St Mary Abchurch was built, or to the fact that the church was upriver from the much larger St Mary Overie (now Southwark Cathedral). This last named had been its mother foundation until the patronage was transferred to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, during the reign of Elizabeth I.

What we see now, a small geometrically cobbled yard with circular stonework, was originally the graveyard – to one side of which wartime bombing revealed a fourteenth-century crypt – but in the way of such places it now provides a relatively peaceful spot on Abchurch Lane where office workers can kick off their shoes at lunchtime.

The church itself, with its elegant, shallow, painted dome, is regarded as one of Wren’s prettiest, and also among the most original, even though the fabric sustained severe damage during the aforementioned bombing. The Grinling Gibbons reredos, for example, is particularly magnificent and is the only one in the City with documented proof of its complete authenticity. That said, it took five years to restore after being blown into more than 2,000 pieces during one particular raid. If the church is open, take a look at the churchwardens’ pews too, which were designed to incorporate sword rests and dog kennels beneath the seats – both once common enough features but which nowadays are only very rarely seen.

ADAMS COURT, EC2

Reached through an uninspiring looking archway on Old Broad Street or via a somewhat pompous little courtyard opening off Threadneedle Street, this court takes its name from one Thomas Adams (1586–1668) who lived here in the 1640s when he was Master of the Drapers’ Company. With the company’s hall located in nearby Throgmorton Avenue since the purchase of the site from Henry VII a century earlier, Alderman Adams went on to become Lord Mayor in 1645.

The court meanders into Fountain Court and, with its immaculate little greensward overlooked by the City of London Club, the place provides a perfect refuge from the hubbub of the City. As such it provides a most marked contrast to how it would have been in Thomas Adams’ day when (as a consequence of his support for the Royalist cause during the Civil War) it was to be the scene of his arrest.

His house on the site was ransacked by Roundheads searching for the king, and he himself was locked in the Tower. Unlike so many others, he survived this ordeal, and later helped to restore the monarchy. At the war’s conclusion he was rewarded with a baronetcy.

ADDLE HILL, EC4

Now just a short cul-de-sac off Carter Lane, the hill is thought to mark the location of the home of a Saxon nobleman, its name coming from the Saxon adel, meaning noble or a prince. In medieval times it was more colourfully known as Adhelingestrate or Athelingestrate but, just as Stow noted little of interest in 1598 – ‘In Addle Street or Lane I find no monuments’ – there is little here today to detain the traveller.

Curiously, the similarly named Addle Street, EC2, has a less noble connection, being derived from the Old English word for filth or dung.

ALDERMAN’S WALK, EC2

Shown on many older maps as Dashwood Walk, in the seventeenth century this was a passageway leading to the large house and gardens of Sir Francis Dashwood. A Member of the Common Council of the City, his son succeeded to the title of Baron le Despencer and later served as Chancellor of the Exchequer by which time the name had been changed.

On its southern side the Walk adjoins the churchyard of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, where in 1413 a female hermit subsisted on a pension of 40s a year. Bordering the churchyard at that time was a ditch, described a hundred years or so later – by which time the smell was being blamed on Frenchmen living nearby – as being full of ‘soilage of houses, with other filthiness cast into the ditch … to the danger of impoisoning the whole city’.

St Botolph’s itself is one of four City churches dedicated to this seventh-century patron saint of travellers, and for this reason was positioned hard by the City gates. Three of the four survived the Great Fire, but being generally decrepit this particular one was eventually pulled down and then replaced in 1725 at a cost of £10,400 by a new one designed by George Dance the Elder and his father-in-law James Gould.

One weekend in 1982 a ghost, apparently, in the church carelessly wandered in front of a camera and allowed its owner, Chris Brackley, to take a picture. Unaware of this at the time, Brackley found an image of a woman in old-fashioned clothing standing on the balcony when he developed the picture.

St Botolph’s also once oversaw a charity school for fifty poor boys and girls, and although its two decorative Coade stone figures of charity children have now been removed from the front of the building, the old schoolroom can still be seen in the attractive churchyard to the west of the church.

The poet John Keats was christened here in 1795, as was the actor, benefactor and ‘Master Overseer and Ruler of the Bears, Bulls and Mastiff Dogs’ Edward Alleyn. Sir Paul Pindar, the façade of whose mansion is preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum, was a parishioner. The memorial cross in the churchyard is believed to be the first Great War memorial in the country, having been erected in 1916 following the Battle of Jutland and the death of Lord Kitchener.

AMEN CORNER, EC4

No known connection with the 1960s band of the same name, but more likely derived, as suggested by John Carey in an 1828 edition of the Gentleman’s Magazine, from the words recited by the clergy of the medieval St Paul’s as they marched in a procession through the City:

Let us suppose processioners mustered and marshalled at upper end of Paternoster Row next Cheapside. These commence to march westward, and begin to chant the ‘Paternoster’, continued this the whole length of the street (thence Paternoster Row). On arrival at [the] bottom of the street they enter Ave Maria Lane, at the same time beginning to chant the ‘Salutation of the Virgin’ or ‘Ave Maria’ which continues until reaching Ludgate Hill, and crossing over to Creed Lane. They there commence the chant of the ‘Credo’, which continues until they reach the spot now called Amen Corner, where they sing the concluding Amen.

Several doorways in the court still have old-fashioned link extinguishers from the days when residents would pay so-called link boys to run ahead of them lighting the path with a torch or link. These would be extinguished upon arrival, whereupon the boy would take off in search of another ‘fare’.

AMEN COURT, EC4

Sharing its origins with the aforementioned Amen Corner, Amen Court for many years provided accommodation for the scribes, residentiary canons and minor canons gathered around St Paul’s Cathedral.

Unfortunately, a quite solid-looking, three-storey redbrick gatehouse on Warwick Lane guards the way into this small, secluded enclave with its central but secret garden; admission is only possible by prior application to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral. Alternatively, one might sneak a peep, in which case take a look at the Minor Canons’ House and Nos 1–3 which was once home to the great wit Sydney Smith – Hesketh Pearson’s Smith of Smiths – who was a canon of St Paul’s in the 1830s, and later to R.H. Barham who penned the lngoldsby Legends.

The large wall visible through the main archway, incidentally, conceals a grisly remnant of the old Newgate Gaol, the rest having been swept away during the construction of the Central Criminal Court (or Old Bailey, reached via a pretty garden and the semi-subterranean Warwick Passage). Concealed behind the wall is the narrow passage known as Deadman’s Walk, along which the condemned were taken to their executions. Afterwards many were buried beneath it and today ghost-hunters refer to it as one of the most haunted spots within the Square Mile. Especially popular is the ‘Black Dog of Newgate’, which sounds like a pub but is the name given to a shadowy apparition recorded hereabouts. Apparently on more than one occasion – to the accompanying sensory delights of a hideous smell and the sound of human feet dragging along the cobbles – a large black shape has been observed seething and slithering and slobbering along the top of the wall. For those with a taste for such things its origins are said to lie with a case of cannibalism in the gaol during a famine in the time of Henry II, the victim having adopted canine form before returning to haunt those who had feasted off him.

AMERICA SQUARE, EC3

Actually more of a crescent and sadly now largely obliterated by Fenchurch Street station and its Victorian façade. It was laid out in the 1670s as part of a scheme by George Dance the Elder and named in honour of Britain’s colonial possession, perhaps in the hope of attracting ships’ officers and middle-class merchants with transatlantic connections to move here.

Today its most striking feature is at No. 1, reputedly the first London skyscraper to exploit the ‘air rights’ over open rail tracks by building over the platforms with a new station entrance incorporated into the development. Granite-clad and with a large roof garden and terraces fifteen storeys above street level, the building itself was completed in 1991 in a deliberately 1920s art deco style with an entrance reminiscent of the Chrysler Building in New York.

ANCHOR YARD, EC1

Far larger in the eighteenth century than now, when it would have had an opening wide enough to admit dray carts delivering ale to the popular Anchor Tavern nearby. Today, on this unlovely stretch of Old Street, there is little of interest besides pretty little Wenlake Cottage which fortunately falls within the St Luke’s Conservation Area.

ANGEL COURT, EC2

A modest cut-through from Copthall Avenue to Throgmorton Street, the name comes from the long-gone Angel Tavern although the yard is now better remembered for Birch’s Wine House. Tradition has it that, for more than a century, the soup course was prepared here for the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet at Mansion House, although one wonders why such an establishment was unable to knock up a few gallons of its own …

From the mid 1970s the court was dominated by a twenty-one-storey octagonal tower, expensively shod in purple Dakota marble and formerly the London home of J.P. Morgan. Built on land owned by the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers (see Dunster Court, p. 80), it surrounded an internal courtyard containing two old plaques marked St X B 1796 and 1867 SCS. These are parish markers denoting the boundary between St Stephen Coleman Street and St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange.

ANGEL PASSAGE, EC4

One of only two survivors of the several dozen Angel Alleys, Angel Courts, Angel Passages and Angel Yards which once bore testament to the popularity of this particular name for so many City taverns. Angel Passage is also now a very rare survivor of another sort, of the myriad tiny thoroughfares which as recently as Edwardian times thronged the area between the river and busy Upper Thames Street.

Today, even so, it has little to recommend it: nothing indeed besides (at its southern end) Waterman’s Walk and Oystergate Walk which provide a number of excellent vantage points to see the Thames and its bridges and the dominating tower of Southwark Cathedral.

ANGEL PLACE, SE1

In the rambling preface to his Little Dorrit, Dickens describes:

A certain adjacent Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, [where] I came to Marshalsea Place, the houses in which I recognised, not only as the great block of the former prison … Whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea Gaol; will see its narrow yard to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that the walls were lowered when the place got free; will look upon the rooms in which the debtors lived; will stand among the crowded ghosts of many miserable years.

Later renamed Angel Place, which is a shame as the Marshalsea name is now highly evocative, the Court was once owned by one Richard Fulmerston. He ran the Angel Tavern which contained a room set aside for use as a private prison cell – an unusual facility eventually superseded by a purpose-built gaol – whose inmates were to include the writers Tobias Smollet and John Wilkes. Fulmerston sold it to the Crown for use by the Marshal of the King’s Bench. A former Lord Mayor, John Wilkes is commemorated by a bronze statue on the corner of Fetter Lane and New Fetter Lane, the only cross-eyed statue in the capital, perhaps because, when not being imprisoned, the subject was active as a politician, a polemicist and sometime pornographer.

ARTILLERY LANE, E1

For a long time, the lane led to the sixteenth-century Tasel Close Artillery Yard (see Artillery Passage, p. 23), an area used by gunnery officers of the Tower of London and members of the Honourable Artillery Company from the Dissolution until its sale in 1682.

On the corner of Gun Street a block has been built behind the windowless skeleton of an older, surviving façade, and in the 1700s Dr Johnson was recommending a walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel, promising his friend he would see along the way ‘the greatest series of shops in the world’. While he did not identify these any further, it is possible that he was referring to this place, in particular No. 56, with its Doric columns and twin curved windows an exemplar of Georgian retailing, and No. 58 which, while refronted since Johnson’s day, is still exceedingly handsome.

By the beginning of the twentieth century the area was again terra incognita, however. When the writer Jack London visited England in 1902, he put up at Highgate and contacted the offices of Thomas Cook for information about how to arrange a visit to the East End. Back came the reply that the travel agent was unable to help, its representative admitting he knew nothing of this unexplored quarter of the capital. Left to his own devices the author decided to don a disguise as a sailor and just dive in. Sleeping rough on the streets, the experience was to provide valuable research for his book People of the Abyss.

ARTILLERY PASSAGE, E1

Following the dissolution by Henry VIII of the hospital and priory of St Mary Spital – founded in 1197 in the area we know today as Spitalfields – a portion of the land on which it stood was set aside as somewhere for Fat Hal’s militia or ‘Trained Bands’ to hone and perfect their gunnery skills.

Charged with defending the City during the Tudor period, the Tower Ordnance and the Guild of St George (also known as the Gentlemen of the Artillery Garden, forerunners of today’s Honourable Artillery Company) quickly set to work. Stow, visiting the site while composing his Survey, observed that the ground which had formerly been popular with clothworkers keen ‘to shoot for games at the popingay’ now ‘being inclosed with a brick wall, serveth to be an artillery yard, whereunto the gunners of the Tower do weekly repair, namely, every Thursday; and there levelling certain brass pieces of the great artillery against a butt of earth, made for that purpose, they discharge them for their exercise.’

Despite all this Artillery Passage was still known locally as Tasel Close, the name coming from the prickly teazles which were favoured by Spitalfields’ population of French Huguenot weavers, who used them to comb and prepare their cloth.

Eventually the more martial name was adopted, however, and in time the Honourable Artillery Company moved to the premises they still occupy on City Road. In 1680 the Tower Ordnance too moved on, their practice sessions now considered potentially too injurious to the growing local population. Within two years the artillery yard had been built over, and nothing remains of it now but the names of several local thoroughfares – Gun Street, Artillery Lane and Fort Street – and a bar called Grapeshots.

ASHENTREE COURT, EC4

The Carmelite order of White Friars – so-named because of the white mantle worn over their brown habits – arrived in London from the Holy Land after being driven from Mount Carmel by the Saracens. Swapping the life of hermits for that of mendicants (and so required to live and work among the people) they occupied a large site stretching from Fleet Street down to the river.

Settled here from about 1240 until the Dissolution in 1538, they were traditionally popular with the people of London and as a consequence were largely left alone during the Peasants’ Revolt. For a short while the order even retained a right of sanctuary after the Dissolution, but eventually they were to share the fate of the Black and Grey Friars. Once the instruction went out to ‘pull down to the grounds all the walls of the churches, stepulls, cloysters, fraterys, dorters, chapterhowsys’, nothing above ground remained of the White Friars although, amazingly, their beautiful crypt was somehow to survive beneath the old News of the World building in Bouverie Street (see also Magpie Alley, p. 126, and Britton’s Court, p. 45).

Their name is still commemorated in nearby Carmelite Street and Whitefriars Street, but otherwise we are left only with little Ashentree Court. While it lacks trees today, it stands on the site of one of the priory cloisters so at one time would have been laid out in a quadrangle, somewhere for the friars to walk and think.

AUSTIN FRIARS, EC2

An obvious religious connection, the name is a peculiarly English contraction of the Augustinian foundation which was established in the mid-thirteenth century by the 2nd Earl of Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun, whose ‘begging friars’ rapidly accumulated considerable wealth and property. The Dissolution saw their London properties confiscated by the Crown and given to the recently aggrandised Marquess of Winchester, William Paulet, who enjoyed the house, cloister and gardens for a while before ransacking most of what he found, stripping the lead off the roof timbers and demolishing most of the buildings.

The monuments, too, were sold off for a seemingly paltry £100, but the little chapel of the Friary fortunately remained more or less intact and in 1550 was given by Edward VI to London’s growing population of refugees from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Soon known locally as the Dutch Church – at this time most Londoners didn’t bother discriminating between one northern European and another – it survived the Great Fire but not the Blitz. Accordingly the pathway we see today runs alongside a 1957 rebuilding, but it would once have been the main access point to the original monastic buildings and burial ground.

Austin Friars, entered via a covered way from Throgmorton Street, twists and turns before giving on to Austin Friars Square. This almost certainly occupies the site of one of the old monastery courtyards, and while nothing of this remains – it’s mostly Victorian now – the square itself retains some character with its old-fashioned lamps and ancient stone flags.

BACK ALLEY, EC3

Of no real interest, except as the last survivor of what must once have been hundreds of ‘back alleys’, this one originally gave on to the rear of the houses on Aldgate.

BAKERS’ HALL COURT, EC3

Takes its name from the Worshipful Company whose hall is in nearby Harp Street. The present building forms part of an office development which dates back only to 1963, but the Bakers’ Company can trace its roots back more than 850 years and received its royal charter in 1486. At that time only bakers of white bread were admitted to the livery, with bakers of brown bread forced to wait until 1569 – despite earlier attempts to merge the two – when they were happy to be admitted on an equal footing.

The Bakers’ first hall in Harp Street was converted from the mansion of a fifteenth-century chamberlain, John Chichele, after the company acquired the building in 1506. This was rebuilt after the Great Fire, then again following another fire in 1715, and then once more when the eighteenth-century building was destroyed by enemy action in 1940.

BALL COURT, EC3

One of several charming little relics of eighteenth-century London, this tiny, narrow passage off Cornhill gives on to the wonderful bow-fronted Simpson’s Tavern, a happy survivor of the many old London chophouses which used to throng this part of the City some 200 years ago. Completed in the late seventeenth century, though originally as a pair of dwellings, it was converted into a tavern in 1757 by a wine merchant and spirit seller called Tom Simpson and has no connection with the similarly named establishment on the Strand. Simpson ran the place himself until his death more than half a century later, then in 1808 his successor opened the restaurant where today diners still take pleasure in surroundings which struggle to avoid the description ‘Dickensian’ with their dark oak panelling, undecorated wooden tables and traditional English catering. There’s even a rack for your black ‘topper’ or Muller Cut-down.

BARLEY MOW PASSAGE, EC1

Another alleyway taking its name from a popular public house, the first of which is known to have predated the existing building by at least 250 years. A covered, slightly claustrophobic passageway leading off Long Lane, while walking Barley Mow Passage it is still not hard to imagine the London of John Stow, author of A Survey of London. Observing in 1598 that the area was much built-up ‘with tenements for brokers and tipplers and suchlike’, he also recorded that ‘the rest of Smithfield from Long Lane end to the bars is enclosed with inns and brewhouses’. Most, sadly, have now gone, including the Old Dick Whittington in John Betjeman’s much-loved Cloth Fair. Often described as the oldest licensed premises in London – it was actually a seventeenth-century pub on fifteenth-century foundations – it was finally demolished in 1917.

BARTHOLOMEW PASSAGE, EC1

While the splendid gatehouse facing on to Little Britain is merely much-restored Tudor, St Bartholomew-the-Great is certainly the oldest church in the capital, the last surviving portion of an Augustinian priory founded in 1123 by Rahere, monk, prior and prebendary to St Paul’s, and sometime jongleur or jester at the court of Henry I.

Today, as in previous centuries, it lies at the centre of a web of tiny thoroughfares. To several of these it has given its name, thus commemorating Rahere’s famous promise when taken sick that he would build a hospital ‘yn recreacion of poure men’ if he was fortunate enough to recover. He did so – his hospital is modern day Bart’s, of course – but his priory fared less well, although following its dissolution the central location and its undoubted utility meant some significant portions were spared the usual fate of being pulled down.

Sold to Sir Richard Rich once the monks had been expelled, the nave went but the choir survived and was used for storage and stabling for more than 300 years. Bloody Mary is said to have enjoyed concealing herself in the splendid gatehouse to watch the public executions which she herself had ordered, the gatehouse being later and beautifully restored by Sir Aston Webb (1849–1930).

Besides close associations with many of London’s livery companies, St Bartholomew’s still boasts the second oldest wooden door in London, five of its oldest bells, and the font in which William Hogarth was baptised in 1697. He was born in the Close which in 1725 was briefly home to Benjamin Franklin.

BATH COURT, EC1

It’s hard to believe now, looking at this characterless corner of Roseberry Avenue, but this pleasant-sounding address owes its origins to Walter Baynes, a rich Inner Temple lawyer who acquired a series of fields here in 1697 with a view to developing them for housing. Finding one area to be frequently waterlogged, his investigations revealed a natural spring and he quickly amended his plans for the site. In the hope of persuading paying clients of the spring’s health-giving properties, he set out to make a second fortune by building a bathhouse in what is now Coldbath Square.

Despite this decidedly unenticing name, the enterprise was soon up and running, described at the time as being ‘in fine order for the reception of ladies and gentlemen’ with the water ‘serviceable to persons suffering from nervous disorders and dejected spirits’. On this basis it operated successfully for many years before, in 1794, giving its name to the Coldbath Fields Prison. Mentioned by Coleridge and Southey in The Devil’s Thoughts, this was a house of correction, effectively a county gaol run by local magistrates with most inmates serving short sentences for minor crimes. It was, even so, on occasion used to house more serious felons, most pointedly those accused of playing a role in the celebrated Cato Street Conspiracy who were subsequently removed to the Tower and beheaded. By all accounts it was also more noted than most of its type for the severity of its regime, for the brutality of its warders, and for the use of a treadmill requiring prisoners to climb 8,640ft per six hours every day. It closed in 1877 and was finally torn down in 1889 with the old bath-house disappearing shortly afterwards. Today the Royal Mail’s vast Mount Pleasant Sorting Office covers much of the site.

BEAR ALLEY, EC4

With bear-baiting rapidly becoming a popular pastime among Londoners after its arrival in Southwark from Italy in 1546, the Bear became a fashionable name for taverns. Prior to the Great Fire one such is known to have stood near this spot by the infamous River Fleet (named not for the speed of the flow, but from the Anglo-Saxon fleot meaning ‘a place where boats floated’). It may well have been a popular venue during the heyday of what Pepys characterised as ‘a very rude and nasty pleasure’.

Never one for rude pleasures, Cromwell tried to ban bear-baiting but failed, and it was not finally made illegal until 1835. Along with the bears the tavern too has gone. So too has most of the alley, having been amputated in 1869 to make way for the new Holborn Viaduct.

BEAR GARDENS, SE1

Although Italians are known to have put on a show for King John using imported bears out in Leicestershire, it wasn’t until the mid-sixteenth century when the sport arrived in Bankside that it really began to pull in the punters.

For more than 120 years this stretch of the Thames offered the best spectacles, the most ferocious bears – each one primed by having their teeth filed down before they were tethered – and the biggest mastiffs, which were set loose from their kennels to tear and snap at the more or less defenceless beast. Rival entertainments started up near Clerkenwell Green and on Saffron Hill but eventually public tastes moved on.