Fleet Street, which carries on from the end of the Strand to Ludgate Hill, towards St. Paul's Cathedral, was once the home of British Journalism. It is still known as such, even though all the newspapers have moved out to Wapping and elsewhere.
There are still plenty of visual signs to its' history: the old DC Thomson building next door to the church of St. Dunstan with its lovely mosaic lettering
Prince Henry's Room is one of the
few remaining buildings in London that survived the Great Fire of 1666. The
Room is a half-timbered building dating to the 12th century, when it was owned
by the Knights Templar, who also owned nearby Temple Church.
When the Templars were suppressed in
1312 the building passed into the hands of the Knights Hospitaller; the
ancestor of the St Johns Ambulance. When that order, in turn, was disbanded in
1540 there was a tavern on the site.
In 1610 the building was rebuilt as
a tavern named The Prince's Arms. It later passed to the Sotheby family, until
it was sold to the City of London.
The curious name of the building is
the result of an unproven association with Prince Henry, first son of James I
of England. The story was told that the building was rebuilt in 1610 for the
Council of the Duchy of Cornwall and that the first floor rooms formed a
chamber reserved for the Prince.
This association seems supported by
a carved crest of three feathers that can clearly be seen on the front of the
property. However, it seems unlikely that Prince Henry actually had any direct
association with the building, but the name has stuck.
The interior features some original oak panelling and later Jacobean panelling in pine, and a Georgian chimneypiece. The Room is currently closed to the public.
Just off London’s famous Fleet
Street runs a small, unassuming alleyway named Cliffords Inn Passage. In
medieval times it served as the main entrance to Clifford’s Inn of Chancery, an
institution for training barristers. By the 19th century, the passageway
became little more than a small shadowy alleyway off a street filled with
various drinking establishments—precisely the place where those frequenting
such establishments would drunkenly stagger for a pee.
In a time when sewage still filled
the streets and the Thames itself ran with death, urination in a secluded alley
was certainly not surprising. Over time, however, the persistent pummel of
piddle began to take a toll, corroding the brick walls that made up these
alleyways. To prevent further damage, urine deflectors were installed
along the length of Cliffords Inn Passage. There are long strips of metal,
angled to drain the urine into the gutter (or onto the shoes of its source).
Although this effectively combatted
the unsanitary practices of the time, many "gentlemen" were miffed at
the urine deflectors introduction. One reportedly commented in 1809: "In
London a man may sometimes walk a mile before he can meet with a suitable
corner; for so accommodating are the owners of doorways, passages, and angles,
that they seem to have exhausted invention in the ridiculous barricades and
shelves, grooves, and one fixed above another, to conduct the stream into the
shoes of the luckless wight who shall dare to profane the intrenchments."
There’s also a coat of arms above the archway at end of passage.
Despite claims that the cellars of
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese were built in the 13th century for a Carmelite
monastery, it seems more likely that the building was constructed after the
Great Fire of 1666.
The earliest reference to the pub comes from a broadside ballad, ‘The Midwives’
Ghost’, which was published in 1680.
This marked the beginning of a strong literary association for the pub, which
was later patronised by figures including Charles Dickens, W. B. Yeats, and P.
G. Wodehouse.
It's a great gloomy pub dating from
the mid-17th century with a long roster of past literary regulars (e.g., Twain,
Dickens, Conan Doyle).
Agatha Christie sets one of her murder
mysteries, "The Million Dollar Bond Robbery,", with the character
Hercule Poirot dining here. The pub had an African Grey parrot by the name of
'Polly', who presided over the taproom from 1895 to his death at the age of 31.
Polly was known to be a very picky
parrot who would be rude to visitors that he (yes, he) didn't like. He was
known for his foul temper and more vicious tongue. The parrot's antics made him
a bit of a local celebrity.
His death came in 1926, when he died
of exhaustion, imitating the sound of popping champagne corks over
400 times.
His death was mourned all over
London, and his obituary was published in over 200 newspapers. After
his death, Polly was stuffed and continues to reside in the taproom more than
half a century after his demise.
The Daily Express Building, Fleet Street, London - Ellis and Clarke with Sir Owen Williams and Robert Atkinson, 1932. Grade II*. Currently under refurbishment, it is nice to see that the hoardings surrounding the site have been planted as a vertical garden.
It is a grade II listed building, rebuilt in 1928 by Nowell Parr on the site of an earlier pub, for the Style & Winch Brewery. There has been a tavern on this site since the 16th century.
This was a once-common London public house sign depicting the Holy Lamb bearing a cross surmounted by a golden streamer, which is the armorial device of the Middle Temple. It derives from ancient tiles in Temple church, said to have represented an emblem used by the Knights Templar.
St. Dunstan-in-the-West has occupied
a space on Fleet Street since the medieval era.
St. Dunstan was a medieval bishop
who was very popular due to defeating the devil by pinching his nose and
nailing a horseshoe to his hoof, preventing him from entering a place where a
horseshoe was displayed. Thus the horseshoe became a symbol of good luck.
In the early 19th century, St.
Dunstan-in-the-West's original structure was demolished to make space for Fleet
Street to be widened. Before the building came down, the 17th-century clock was
carefully removed from its façade and stored in a mansion in Regent's Park. A
new church was built, and the timepiece and its guardian giants were
reinstated.
Though the church was hit by German bombs during the London Blitz, the damage was relatively minor compared to that suffered by St. Dunstan-in-the-East down the road.
The Guild Church of St Dunstan-in-the-West is in Fleet Street in the City of London. It is dedicated to Dunstan, Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. The church is of medieval origin, although the present building, with an octagonal nave, was constructed in the 1830s to the designs of John Shaw.
Dunstan was one of the foremost saints of Anglo-Saxon England: he was also one of the most venerated before the cult of St Thomas Becket took hold of the popular imagination. He was born in 909 and was taught by Irish monks at Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset, where he developed a reputation as a formidable scholar. He also learnt metalworking, and was later adopted as the patron saint of Goldsmiths. Dunstan became a companion to King Aethelstan’s stepbrothers, Edmund and Eadred, although he was banished after the king died in 939. He then lived at Glastonbury as a hermit, before being appointed Abbot there in 945. He was appointed as the Bishop of Worcester and then the Bishop of London, before being elected Archbishop of Canterbury in 960. Dunstan sought peace with the Danes and promoted monastic living, as well as establishing the library at Canterbury Cathedral, where he was buried in 988. St Dunstan’s feast day is the 19th May and is still celebrated at this church.
Public drinking water fountain on outside wall of St. Dunstan's.
Henry Dacres, d.1538 (the date taken from elsewhere), 'Cetezen and Marchant Taylor and sumtyme Alderman of London'; his wife is Elizabeth Dacres, d.1530 (the date is on the brass as MDC and xxx).
The clock and its giants were a
later addition, installed on the front of the church in 1671. It sticks out
from the front of the church and features faces on both sides, so passers-by
could see the time from either direction. In an alcove behind the clock stand
two giants holding clubs and dressed in gilded animal skins. The figures are
automata, equipped with mechanisms that allow their heads to turn and their
arms to move, striking bells to mark the hour and quarter-hour.
The church of St Bride's is justly
world famous. To enter its doors is to step into 2,000 years of history, which
had begun with the Romans some six centuries before the name of St Bride,
daughter of an Irish prince, even emerged from legend to become associated
forever with the site.
St Brides can claim with some
justification to be one of the oldest sites of worship in Britain. Shortly
after the Roman invasion of 43 AD they erected a building on the site, and
remains of mosaic suggest it was a temple of some kind. In the early 6th century
a small stone church was built here by the Irish abbess St Bride, or perhaps by
some of her followers. This church was rebuilt and enlarged several times over
the next 5 centuries.
The church's location, between the
City of London and Westminster, made St Bride's in important centre, standing
between the centre of government power and the centre of commerce. In 1205 a
gathering of major landowners and church officials called the Curia Regis, a
forerunner of Parliament, met in St Brides to provide advice to King John on
legislation.
In 1501 Wynkyn de Worde set up a
printing press with moveable type in the churchyard of St Brides. Why choose St
Brides for his new printing enterprise? As the centre of London was filled with
wealthy merchants, the area outside the city walls became a haven for clergy.
And since the clergy were the most literate class of society, and the most
likely to buy printed books, De Worde set up his printing business where his
major customers lived; in the Fleet Street area between London and Westminster.
From those humble beginnings, Fleet
Street soon became a literary centre, with poets and playwrights setting up
their own presses in nearby churchyards to compete for business. The link
between St Brides and print journalism was born; a link that still exists
today. as for Wynkyn de Worde, he was buried in St Brides in 1535.
In 1585 a child named Virginia Dare
was born to a pair of English settlers in North Carolina. The Dare's had been
married at St Brides before setting sail to the New World. Near the font is a
small bust of the little girls.
A much more noticeable reminder of the church's link to the American colonies is the oak reredos, a gift from Edward Winslow, who served as governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts three times. Winslow was a leader of the Mayflower voyage of 1620. His parents were married in the church and young Edward served as a Fleet Street apprentice, so he would have known the church very well.
The Great Fire of London hit St Bride's hard. The
church actually had its own fire engine, but it was poorly maintained, and
would have been of little use in any case against the devastating blaze.
The church was completely destroyed,
and parish services had to be held at St Paul's Cathedral. When Sir Christopher
Wren was asked to take on the task of rebuilding London's churches, he decided
that it was unnecessary to rebuild all 87 of them, as the city's population
could not support so many.
The churchwardens wined and dined
Wren in an attempt to convince him that St Bride's should be one of the lucky
ones to be rebuilt. Whether Wren was influenced by the churchwarden's largesse
is unknown, but St Brides was one of the first London churches to be rebuilt,
reopening in 1675 at a total cost of £11,430 5s. 11d. The distinctive
multi-tiered tower, however, was not added until 1703. At 234 feet it had the
highest steeple built by Wren, and that very height meant it was subject to a
lightning strike in 1764. The rebuilt spire is only slightly lower, at 226
feet.
It took nine years for St Bride's to
reappear from the ashes under the inspired direction of Christopher Wren, but
for the next two and a half centuries it was in the shadow of the church's
unmistakeable wedding cake spire that the rise of the British newspaper
industry into the immensely powerful Fourth Estate took place.
There is a romantic story attached
to the steeple of St Brides. The story goes that an apprentice baker named
William Rich fell in love with his master's daughter. When he became a master
baker in his own right he asked for the young woman's hand in marriage, which
her father granted.
Rich wanted to create a very special
wedding cake to celebrate the marriage, which was to take place at St Brides'
church. Casting about for inspiration, he looked up and saw the tiered steeple
of the church. The steeple prompted him to create a wedding cake in tiers, each
tier smaller than the last. From that romantic inspiration came the traditional
tiered wedding cake design used so often today.
The new church was built atop the
remnants of the seven previous churches, including seven different crypts and
two medieval charnel houses which Wren organized into one cohesive
substructure. The crypts regularly welcomed new inhabitants for almost another
two centuries, right up to the 1854 cholera epidemic. Faced with a growing pile
of bodies and worried about spreading the disease further, Parliament ordered
the closing of all London crypts. The ancient crypt beneath St. Bride's was
sealed shut and subsequently forgotten.
In 1940, the Blitz inflicted severe
fire damage on St. Bride's Church, leaving little more than a smoldering shell.
Once efforts to rebuild Wren's design got underway a decade later, the crowded
burial chambers below were unexpectedly rediscovered by preparatory excavations
in 1953. The crypts were found to contain the remains of 227 individually
identified people interred since the 17th century, as well as an estimated 7000
human remains in the more communal charnel house, where bones removed from the cemetery
during the Middle Ages (in order to make room for new burials) were arranged
according to type (skulls with skulls, femurs with femurs, etc.) and laid out
in a checkerboard pattern to an as-yet unknown depth. St. Bride's more recent
bone cache is considered one of the best resources for historic forensics in
Europe.
Recently restored to Christopher Wren's design, this is the "church of the press", so named for its use by newspaper reporters from Fleet Street. This is the eighth church in this location, and remains of the other seven, plus Roman pavement, can be seen in the crypt museum.
In the north east corner of the
church is the Journalists' Altar, originally known as the Hostage Altar. During
the 5 year period from 1986-1991 when journalist John McCarthy was held hostage
in Beirut, candles remained lit at the altar and regular prayer vigils were
held on McCarthy's behalf.
After McCarthy's release the later became used more generally as a memorial table, dedicated to the memories of journalists and staff who have died in the course of their duties around the world. Diarist Samuel Pepys was baptised in St Brides, and his brother Thomas was buried here.
There are two ‘charity scholars’ tucked away in a corner . They originally stood outside St Bride’s Charity School in Bride’s Lane. …
Until well into the 18th century the only source of corpses for medical research was the public hangman and supply was never enough to satisfy demand. As a result, a market arose to satisfy the needs of medical students and doctors and this was filled by the activities of the so-called ‘resurrection men’ or ‘body snatchers’. Some churches built watchtowers for guards to protect the churchyard, but these were by no means always effective – earning between £8 and £14 a body, the snatchers had plenty of cash available for bribery purposes.
One answer was a coffin that would be extremely difficult to open and such an invention was patented by one Edward Bridgman of Goswell Road in 1818. It was made of iron with spring clips on the lid and the coffin on display fulfils the patent …
As a nearby information panel points out, the idea was not popular with the clergy and in 1820 the churchwardens at St Andrew’s Holborn refused churchyard burial to an iron coffin. The body was taken out and buried, which led to a law suit. The judgment was that such coffins could not be refused but, since they took so much longer than wooden ones to disintegrate, much higher fees could be charged. This no doubt contributed to the relatively short time iron coffining was used.
A few facts can be confirmed about
the Knights. A group of pilgrims travelled to Jerusalem in 1119, and some of
them were armed and followed a strict, religiously inspired code. Here's where
the facts get muddy. According to the story, nine among them took vows to
become monks and were trapped in the Temple of Solomon. Or so the story goes...
Named Knights Templar because of the
Temple of Solomon ("templar" meaning of the temple) their group
quickly blossomed as more pilgrims began traveling to Jerusalem from Europe.
Muslim–Christian tensions in Jerusalem rose, and it became very expensive to
protect the Christian pilgrims. Funds were raised from Europe as the Knights
grew in number and prestige.
Back in London, the Knights began to
influence politics. With wealthy friends and their Church in central London,
the Templars became intertwined in the financial and domestic concerns of the
burgeoning English nation. The Master of the Church was an ex officio member
of Parliament: separation of Church and State was more than five hundred years
away.
Medieval architecture meets Wren’s
refurbishments in this inspiring building, the Mother Church of the Common Law.
The Magna Carta exhibit has William Marshal and King John where they would have
debated and agreed clauses of Magna Carta. The round church is modelled on
the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In 1608 King James I gave the
whole area of the Temple to the two societies of lawyers, Inner and Middle
Temple, who have maintained the church beautifully to the present day.
Here are 800 years of history: from the Crusaders in the 12th century, through the turmoil of the Reformation and the founding father of Anglican theology, to some of the most famous church music in London.
As for the church, it served as the
chief place of worship for those involved in the legal profession. The original
round plan, modelled after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, was
amended with the addition of a Norman nave. The oldest parts of the building
date from 1160-1185, with remodelling in 1220-1240.
The Round Church was consecrated in
1185 by the patriarch of Jerusalem. It was designed to recall the holiest place
in the Crusaders’ world: the circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem.
But by the late 1200s, the Crusades weren't going so well, and, with other troubles in France, the clout of the Knights waned. When they eventually fell in 1307, their land was seized by the Crown. King Edward II used the land and buildings for law colleges that developed into the present-day Inns of Court.
The Templars’ order was suppressed
in 1312 and parliament voted its buildings to the order of St John of
Jerusalem, which leased them to students of law. There is some debate about
when, why and even if the college divided itself into two halves. The usual
explanation is that sometime in the late 14th or early 15th century the lawyers
agreed on the split for administrative purposes. Another theory holds that
there were always two separate societies, which later came to be called the
‘Inner Temple’ and ‘Middle Temple’ because the former lay nearer the City,
while the latter occupied the buildings in the middle of the complex.
Most of the medieval buildings were
destroyed in the Great Fire of London, and in three subsequent fires in the
second half of the 17th century, and the Temple was afterwards rebuilt to a
more collegiate plan. The grounds were extended southwards with the
construction of the Victoria Embankment in 1870, when Temple station opened.
The Temple and its church were badly
bomb-damaged during the Second World War. Some structures were afterwards
completely rebuilt as facsimiles of their predecessors, including the Inner
Temple’s Master’s House, which is just about visible through the verdant
gateway in the photograph. Elsewhere, sensitive restoration has preserved the
other-worldly intimacy of the enclave, where the courtyards are still
illuminated by gas lamps.
Law is no longer taught here and
barristers’ chambers occupy most of the buildings. Both the Inner and Middle
Temples offer pre-booked guided tours for groups. Concerts are
regularly organised in the Temple Church and the Inner Temple’s three-acre
garden is normally open to the public from 12.30 to 3.00 each weekday.
Television companies have made
frequent use of the Temple, in productions as diverse as the BBC’s David
Copperfield and ITV’s The Bill.
The column was designed by Ptolemy Dean with a sculpture by Nicola Hicks featuring two knights on a single horse, a symbol of the Templars' original poverty. It is constructed from Purbeck limestone, matching the columns found inside the nearby Temple Church.
Take a close look at the columns
supporting the nave. They lean outward at a marked angle. These are not the
original columns; they were damaged by bombs in the Second World War. These
replacement columns were intentionally angled outward just as the originals had
been. The Round is ringed by a wonderful collection of medieval gargoyles.
Retrace your steps for a moment towards the entry and look down the small set of stairs. These lead to a tiny prison cell, where imprisoned knights were incarcerated.
The more traditional rectangular chancel was added in 1240, by Henry III. Henry originally intended to be buried here, but later changed his mind, and upon his death, his body was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. Henry's young son, however, also named Henry, is buried here.
The stone is technically not true marble but a distinctive, dark-coloured limestone found in Dorset, England. Locally, here in Kent, we have Bethersden Marble, which is a similar rock.
Entering through the south door, you are immediately struck by nine life-sized marble effigies of Knights Templar laid upon the floor of "The Round". The oldest of these effigies dates to 1227 and commemorates Sir Roger de Ros, but the name most familiar to visitors will be that of Sir William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1219), the most famous knight of his era, and advisor to King John and Henry III.
This is the finely carved baptismal font. While it appears ancient, it was actually carved in the 1840s as a replica of an earlier font. The original font it replicates is located at Alphington, Exeter.
William Marshal served five English kings and was instrumental in the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.
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