Route starts Hyde Park Corner

 

STOP: Duchess of Argyle

LOCATION: 48 Upper Grosvenor Street

 

This is the house where the 1963 "Duchess of Argyll" scandal unfolded.

 

Before she became known as the Duchess of Argyll, Margaret Whigham was the heiress of a Scottish businessman. Famed for her beauty, Margaret was a debutante and had been engaged four times by the age of 19. She married her first husband in 1933 but that marriage broke down, and they divorced in 1947.

 

Then Margaret met Ian Campbell, the Duke of Argyll.

 

They married in 1951. Margaret became an aristocrat and because of her wealth the Duke gained much-needed financial relief from his many gambling debts.  Their marriage was rocky from the start; both had numerous lovers throughout their relationship and distrusted one another immensely.

 

The Duke applied for divorce in 1963 on the grounds of adultery after Margaret stopped paying the bills to help him maintain the crumbling Inveraray Castle. He claimed that Margaret had slept with 88 men. 

 

During the divorce hearing, he presented some compromising Polaroids he had stolen from her, depicting Margaret wearing nothing but a string of pearls, performing a sex act on a man whose head was cropped from the photo. The identity of the lover was never revealed, though rumours ranged from Hollywood actors to politicians, and he became known as the “headless man”.

 

The press seized on the opportunity to splash Margaret’s sex life over the front pages. She became known as the “dirty duchess” and the photographs haunted her for the rest of her life.

 

The judge granted the divorce, condemning Margaret as “a highly sexed woman” who was not “satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite”.

 

Details of the Duke’s infidelities weren’t mentioned at all during the proceedings. Campbell was also not questioned over the theft and display of Margaret’s private photos, which would now be considered revenge porn.

 

Although defiant in the face of the cruel gossip, Margaret never quite recovered from the divorce proceedings. She was ordered by a judge to pay the bulk of her ex-husband’s legal fees, over £1.4 million at today’s prices.

 

Over the decades that followed, her fortune dwindled and she died in a nursing home in 1993 at age 80, with barely any money to her name.

 

The Duke, meanwhile, re-married just four months after his divorce.  He died in 1973, aged 69.

 

The government asked Lord Denning to identify the headless man.  He compared the handwriting on the back of the photos of the five leading ‘suspects’.  This analysis proved that the man in question was Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, but this was not made public.

 

The story was dramatised in the BBC series A Very British Scandal. 

 

STOP: Pantechnicon

LOCATION: Motcombe Street

 

This Grade II-listed building is one of Belgravia’s most famous landmarks - it is the the original Pantechnicon, built in 1834 as a department store, gallery and storage facility, mainly selling carriages and household furniture.   

 

It covers two acres and is in the Greek Revival style with Doric columns facing the street.  

 

It was destroyed by fire in 1874, and rebuilt behind the original facade, which was all that remained.  It continued as a warehouse specialising in art and furniture removals until the 1970s.

 

The name is derived from the Greek ‘pan’, meaning ‘all’ and ‘techne’ meaning ‘art’.  This was where what we know as the modern removals van was first developed.  They had horses of course, but their main van was pretty similar to today’s, and until not that long ago people referred to these vans as ‘pantichnicons’.

 

STOP: Brian Epstein and The Beatles

LOCATION: 24 Chapel Street and Horse & Groom pub, Groom Place 

 

This house is where Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, lived and died.

 

He hosted some epic parties here, including the launch party for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But sadly, in 1967 he was found dead in his bedroom on the first floor having overdosed on barbiturates. He was just 32.

 

The name of the pub makes sense.  It’s in a mews next to what was once Bryant’s Depot where, according to a 19th century advert in the Sporting Chronicle, you could buy ‘horse clothing’. ‘harnesses’ and most appealingly of all ’soiled saddlery’.

 

Despite the sign reading 1698 above the pub door, both buildings (along with many of those in Belgravia) were built around the 1830s.  The year 1698 is the date of the founding of the Shepherd Neame brewery, Britain’s oldest.  We also saw this use of dates by Shepherd Naeme on the pubs ride.

 

The Beatles could often be found in here having meetings with Epstein.

 

The term "mews" originated from the royal falconry houses used to keep falcons during their moulting season.  It is derived from the French word “muer" (to molt). 

 

By the 16th century, the royal mews at Charing Cross had been converted to royal stables for horses, but the name stuck even after the building's function changed and from then on was applied to any row of stables and servant's quarters built behind wealthy Georgian and Victorian townhouses.

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STOP: Lord Lucan

LOCATION: 46 Lower Belgrave Street & Plumbers Arms 

 

Belgravia is one of London’s poshest areas, with properties worth millions of pounds.

 

Owned by the Duke of Westminster (one of the world’s richest people), the land around here came into his family when his ancestor, Sir Thomas Grosvenor, married a 12 year old girl called Mary Davis in 1677. 

 

Along with the child-bride came an area of marshland known as Five Fields – a place teeming with robbers, bandits and highwaymen.

 

In 1824 Richard Grosvenor, the 2nd Marquess of Westminster, employed the master builder Thomas Cubitt to build a square of large terraced houses on the Five Fields marshland. Eaton Square, named after Eaton Hall the family’s country seat in Cheshire, became popular with the royalty, politicians and the rich. 

 

But what happened here?

 

On 7 November 1974 a woman covered in blood ran out of number 46 and into the Plumbers Arms screaming, claiming her husband had murdered their nanny, Sandra Rivett, and attacked her.  Her name was Veronica, otherwise known as Lady Lucan.  And her husband Richard John Bingham, more commonly known as Lord Lucan, was an aristocrat and professional gambler (although not a very good one as he was always skint).

 

Lady Lucan had managed to escape while her husband was cleaning the blood from his hands in the bathroom. Dressed in her nightclothes covered in blood she staggered through the door of the the pub screaming at the drinkers: “Help me! I have just escaped from a murderer. My children, my children. He’s in my house. He’s murdered the nanny. Help me.”  

 

Later that night “Lucky” Lucan called his mother to say there had been a ‘terrible catastrophe’ and he wrote to a friend to say that he was going to ‘lie doggo for a while’. 

 

Later the blood-spattered Ford Corsair he had borrowed was found at the channel port of Newhaven. What was almost certainly the murder weapon (a length of lead piping) was found in the boot. 

 

Despite numerous ‘sightings’ over the years Lord “Lucky” Lucan was never seen again and the incident sparked one of the greatest mysteries to capture the imagination of conspiracy theorists and historians for years.   It is now widely accepted that he probably drowned.

 

STOP: A Well Endowed Statue

LOCATION: 55 Broadway

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55 Broadway opened in 1929 and is Grade 1 listed.  It features a couple of statues on the outer walls by sculptor Jacob Epstein entitled ‘Night’ and ‘Day’.  

 

Quite how these naked human forms embodied night and day is anyone’s guess, but they certainly caused outrage at the time, not just for their nakedness, but in particular for the depiction of a young naked boy with quite a large penis, lying in the arms of a grown man.

 

If that wasn’t bad enough, when it rained water cascaded off the boy’s penis, seemingly urinating over passers-by.

 

Eventually, and reluctantly, Epstein returned to shave 1½ inches from the offending member, which seemed to do the trick.

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STOP: Bull’s Eye Glass

LOCATION: Goodwin’s Court

 

We’ve talked about London’s windows on previous Quite Interesting rides.  This time, we’re focusing on the glass.  

 

Crown glass was an early type of window glass and was one of the most common processes for making window glass until the 19th century. 

 

The process was perfected by French glassmakers in the 1320s, notably around Rouen, but they kept it a trade secret. Crown glass was not made in London until 1678.

 

The glass was blown into a "crown" or hollow globe. This was then transferred from the blowpipe to a punty (a solid rod) and flattened by reheating and spinning out the bowl-shaped piece of glass into a flat disk by centrifugal force. The finished disk can be up to 5 or 6 feet in diameter. The glass was then cut to the size required.

 

The thinnest glass was in a band at the edge of the disk, with the glass becoming thicker and more opaque toward the centre. 

 

Known as a bullseye, the thickest centre area was used for less expensive windows, which is why you often see them in cheaper old buildings like pubs.

 

The early 20th century marked the move away from hand-blown to machine-manufactured glass.

 

STOP: Chess at Simpsons 

LOCATION: Strand

 

If you say Wimbledon you think tennis.  Lords, cricket.  Twickenham, rugby.  But Simpson’s in the Strand?  Well, for a long time this restaurant which opened in 1824 was the hub of chess.

 

In the early 19th century when gentlemen played each other at chess, they often wouldn’t go anywhere except to their favourite coffee house. Matches would be conducted in different locations with young boys running between to relay what had just been played down the road. 

 

Later that century, Simpsons established itself as the premier chess venue, attracting the finest players from around the world, with the results of games played here published in the sports pages of newspapers.

 

Although this history is probably known only to the keenest of chess enthusiasts, there are quite a few clues to be found around the entrance.  The underside of the lamps is a chess board, pawns form the key stones of the door which is surrounded by chequered tiles, the lamps are in the shape of chess pieces, and two fake topiary chess pieces used to stand either side of the door.

 

The original restaurant went under during COVID, but has very recently re-opened as a very upmarket place, part of The Savoy (I think).

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TOILETS LINCOLN’S INN

 

STOP: Victorian Urinal

LOCATION: Star Yard

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This is a Victorian cast-iron urinal. Its official name is the much fancier sounding ‘pissoir’.

 

A pissoir was the French name given to a lightweight structure used as a public urinal on the streets, first introduced in Paris in the 1830s, before spreading to elsewhere in Europe.

 

The first in the UK were installed in Glasgow in 1850 before being set up in other cities. They would once have been found all over London; ideal for men caught short whilst walking about town. 

 

This Grade II listed structure was manufactured in McDowell Steven and Co Ironworks in Glasgow in 1851. It is, dare I say it, rather lovely. In true Victorian style it is functional but also has been designed with a bit of flare.

 

It has a series of patterns on the outside including the royal coat of arms, which is apparently unique to this particular pissoir. 

 

Public toilets such as this were one of a number of measures the Victorians took to try and clean up London in the wake of rapid population expansion.  Others include the urine deflectors we’ve seen on previous rides.

 

Today this one is owned by the large house opposite on a lease from Westminster council and used as storage. The house was on sale for £4.4 million in 2014

 

STOP: Kingsway Telephone Exchange

LOCATION: 39 Furnival Street

 

Hiding in plain sight behind this innocuous looking metal door was the Kingsway Telephone Exchange.  During the Cold War this door led to a top secret government telephone communications centre hidden 30 metres beneath the ground in a mile long tunnel. Originally built during the war as a deep level civilian shelter for about 8,000 people, it was never used, so the government moved in.

 

It also had a ‘D notice’, banning journalists and broadcasters mentioning it even existed.  Fortunately that’s lifted now.

 

At its peak around 200 people worked down below.  It had a staff restaurant, tea bar, games room and a licensed bar - claimed to be the deepest in the UK.

 

There is also an artesian well and there were enough rations to sustain several hundred people for quite a few months.

 

I think the tunnels my be for sale if anyone is interested.

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STOP: Bridewell Palace

LOCATION: New Bridge Street, just after the turn from Tudor Street

 

This is the site of the original Bridewell Palace, built by Henry VIII in 1523.  It is where Henry and Katherine of Aragon lived being ideally placed on the banks of both the Thames and the Fleet.

 

The palace was largely destroyed in the Great Fire of London, but a few physical gateways associated with the site and its later iterations as a prison remain. 

 

The most prominent surviving door is this early 19th-century gatehouse. Its neo-classical Portland stone facade dates from 1802 to serve as the entrance and offices for the Bridewell Prison, which oddly replaced the palace.  

 

The Bridwell House of Correction later became a school, but was largely demolished in the latter half of the 19th century.

 

Above the arched entrance is a relief portrait (the keystone) of King Edward VI (Henry’s son), who gifted the palace to the City of London in 1553.  And there’s a plaque orecording that it stands on the site of Henry’s palace. 

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STOP: The Great Fire

LOCATION: St Pauls Cathedral (stand at the top of Peter's Hill)

 

Normally when people talk about the Great Fire of London (1666), they stand by The Monument, where the fire started, or at Pye Corner, where it ended.

 

We’ve stopped here so I tell you some quite interesting things about the fire that perhaps you didn’t know.   

 

Firstly, the number that died was officially recored as six people. However, it was likely many more than that - after all the fire was huge and many deaths would not have been recorded.  

 

However, between 1676 when it was erected and 1842, seven people died falling from the top of The Monument. After that, an iron cage was built to enclose the gallery and there have been no more deaths since.  So, more people died falling from the monument than from the fire itself!

 

The fire destroyed around 14,000 homes and 87 of the 109 parish churches.  The rebuilding of the city was a massive undertaking needing a huge workforce.  For this reason the first 150 buildings to be rebuilt after the fire were not houses or churches, but were all pubs. They needed somewhere for all the builders, carpenters, bricklayers and workmen to eat, sleep and drink.

 

If you look above the central window of St Pauls you’ll see a relief sculpture of a phoenix, standing on a stone on which is inscribed ‘Resurgum’.  It’s there because Christopher Wren sent his builders out into the remains of the old cathedral which had been destroyed in the fire.  He asked them to bring back a stone to be used to mark the centre point of the rebuild. The stones they collected were laid out and Wren chose a gravestone which read ‘Resurgum’. It literally means ‘resurrection’ or ‘we will rise again, which is quite fitting as London was reborn from the ashes of the burned-out city.

 

Wren asked that this be incorporated into the sculpture of The Phoenix.  The original stone rescued from the earlier cathedral can still be seen inside.

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STOP: The Eagle

LOCATION: City Road (view from junction with Bath Street)

 

The Eagle Tavern sits on City Road which was built as part of the ’New Road’ in 1755. The New Road was designed to move livestock to Smithfield without congesting The City.

 

The first building on this site was the ‘Shepherd and Shepherdess’, which was a tea garden. It was described as being ‘much frequented in the summer-time by tea parties’. No alcohol was served.

 

In 1825, it was turned into a Music Hall and it quickly became a popular haunt – being known to Charles Dickens who included it is one of his earliest works called ‘Sketches by Boz’. The ‘Sketches’ were a series of short stories about London life, first published 1833–36. 

 

The building was made bigger and became the Grecian Theatre. It was a platform for the young Marie Lloyd – a famous Londoner from the music hall era – who was born around here in 1870. 

 

The Eagle was situated in a rough area and Marie’s songs were inspired by the harsh surroundings in which she’d grown up, often reflecting the sadness and trials of working-class life in London.

 

By its later years, the Grecian Theatre had a reputation for over-indulging in ‘booze’ and general raucousness. The surrounding gardens had become a well-known red-light area.

 

In 1884 it was purchased by the Salvation Army. They, of course, were totally opposed to drinking and also to Music Halls. Due to the Eagle’s seedy nature, the Salvation Army thought it would be a good idea to take over the building and put a stop to its other dubious activities. 

 

Of course, the locals did not take kindly to losing their venue for ‘a good night out’. The local Salvation Army was often heckled by those who had attended the theatre in earlier days and occasionally riots broke out, requiring the police to intervene. The grip of the Salvation Army only lasted for 17 years. That building was demolished in 1901 and a new pub was built - this one.

 

So, what about the nursery rhyme? Most children will not realise they are singing about a pub with a long and, at times, dubious history.

 

Up and down the City Road
In and out the Eagle
That’s the way the money goes
Pop! Goes the weasel

 

What does the rhyme mean?  Basically we’re pawning items in order to get money for alcohol and loose-living. The song dates from the 1850s. The ‘weasel’ could refer to a purse made of weasel-skin, which opened and closed with a snap or ‘pop’. Or, more likely ‘pop’ was a slang word for ‘pawn’, and ‘weasel’ being cockney rhyming slang for ‘coat’ (Weasel and stoat).  

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STOP: St Pancras New Church (north elevation)

LOCATION: Duke's Road / Euston Road junction

 

Sculptures of ladies holding up buildings (instead of columns) are called ‘caryatids’.  These ones are interesting and date from the same time as Woburn Walk (next stop).  The design is based on the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis. 

 

St Pancas New Church was the most expensive church built after St Paul’s Cathedral, which is why it’s funny these ladies look a little out of proportion.  The sculptor Charles Rossi spent three years on them, then discovered they were too tall, so he had to remove a section of their midriffs!   They don’t look too bad, but it is noticeable.

 

Each caryatid holds a symbolic extinguished torch or an empty jug, appropriate for their positions above the entrances to the burial vault. They are made of terracotta, constructed in sections around cast-iron columns.

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STOP: Regency Shopping

LOCATION: Woburn Walk

 

This street was designed by architect Thomas Cubitt in 1822 - the same guy that laid out much of Belgravia, and it is one of the finest examples of a Regency shopping street. Its name comes from Woburn Abbey, the main country seat of the Dukes of Bedford, who developed much of Bloomsbury. It is tucked away in this discreet corner so as not to disturb the wealthier residents in the other parts of the estate.  

 

Cubitt designed the street only for pedestrian use, which makes it the first pedestrianised shopping street in the city. The bow-fronted shops and cream buildings are almost perfectly preserved. 

 

The walk shares the same building design with the adjacent Duke's Road, which however was built open to traffic.

 

Wogan Walk appears in series 3 of Bridgerton. They changed the whole street, occupying all 16 shop fronts for filming.

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STOP: Baby Things: Mitten

LOCATION: Brunswick Square

 

Here we have a white children’s mitten. Or, rather, what appears to be a child’s mitten, because this is actually a bronze sculpture by the artist Tracey Emin.

 

Called 'Baby Things: mitten', it was cast in 2010 as part of an exhibition at the Foundling Museum next door.

 

The museum houses the art collection from the Coram Hospital, which used to stand on this site, and which was one of the great philanthropic ventures of the 18th century:  a home for ‘foundlings’, the abandoned and orphaned children of London.

 

The institution, and the present day charity, is named after Thomas Coram, a sailor and shipwright, who seems to have been a thoroughly wonderful human being, working and campaigning throughout his long life for the benefit of others, without thought of gain for himself. 

 

During his time in London in the early 1700s he was shocked by the sight of abandoned infants and babies in the street and began to campaign for a hospital – essentially a children’s home – where they could be cared for.

 

It took many years for this campaign to come to fruition, but in 1739 George III issued a royal charter for the Foundling Hospital, which was initally established in Hatton Garden. Later they moved to Bloomsbury - the first children being admitted here in 1745.

 

Despite patronage from the great and the good, including the artist William Hogarth (who donated paintings) and the composer Handel (who gave charity concerts), demand for places always outstripped capacity to provide for the children. For example, in the years 1750-55, admission was sought for over 2,500 infants, but only 783 of these could be found places. There was a lottery system, with mothers drawing balls from a bag to indicate acceptance, provisional admittance and rejection. 

 

When a government grant was given in 1756 on the condition of ‘general admittance’ (no child refused), 4,000 children a year came into the hospital, which was almost beyond the charity’s ability to cope.

 

The numbers indicate just how much demand there was, and remember, these are children being voluntarily given up by their mothers who are unable to provide for them. In many cases these mothers would leave tokens to identify their child in the hope of later being able to ‘claim’ them back if their situation improved. You can see some of the tokens inside the museum.

 

The hospital is long gone, most of its buildings demolished and the site now the children’s playground of Coram’s Fields.

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STOP: The Head of the Conduit

LOCATION: Long Yard

 

Lamb's Conduit Street takes its name from Lambs Conduit, originally known as the Holborn Conduit. The conduit (in effect a large cistern) was fed by a dam across a tributary of the River Fleet.

 

Lamb's Conduit was named after William Lambe, who in 1564 donated £1,500 (an enormous sum in those days) for the rebuilding of the conduit. 

 

The Conduit also supplied water to the nearby Snow Hill area via a system of pipes. Lambe provided 120 pails to enable poor women to make a living selling the water.

 

The importance of the conduit diminished when the New River opened in 1613 and the conduit was demolished in 1746. This is all that remains of the head of the conduit (built into the wall of a 1950s building).  It reads: "Lamb's Conduit, the property of the City of London. This pump was erected for the benefit of the Publick”.

 

There’s a fountain at the north end of Lamb's Conduit Street on the boundary between the former Metropolitan Boroughs of Holborn and St Pancras, that was built to commemorate the social benefit of the conduit.

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The ride ends at the cafe in Russell Square.