Route starts at Hyde Park Corner

 

STOP: Cockpit steps

LOCATION: Birdcage Walk

 

Leading between Birdcage Walk and Old Queen Street is the small passageway of Cockpit Steps, named after it’s rather sinister connection to the age old pastime of cock fighting. The steps themselves are the last remaining parts of the old Royal Cockpit, a venue built in the 18th century for the upper classes to watch and wager on cock fights.  Cockfighting had first become popular in the Tudor times, mainly as a quick and easy way to make money due to the heavy betting and surprisingly thorough regulation that went with the sport.  This Royal cockpit remained popular but was demolished in either 1810 or 1816 (surveys of the time are conflicting).  The curving steps around it remained.

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The rules were remarkably complex, so much so that entire books were written regarding the correct manner in which the fights should take place. At it’s simplest level, the cocks had to be of the same weight and height, with their tails and wings trimmed. 

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Some historians argue that however evil and unpleasant cockfighting was, it nevertheless played a large role in introducing rules and regulations into other sporting arenas. The large sums of money being wagered and the massive popularity of the sport meant that they had no other choice – it needed to be fair and balanced!

 

The cockpits themselves were often dirty, rowdy and rather seedy affairs. Although the Royal Cockpit was geared more towards the upper classes (due to it’s 5 shillings admission charge), most cockpits were places where social classes mixed and had much more of a rough character than this one did. The majority of towns boasted at least one cockpit, and in more rural retreats the gentry were even known to hold matches in their own country houses.

 

For what its worth, Cockpit Steps is supposedly haunted by a headless woman.  The story begins in the late 18th Century when a soldier stationed at Horse Guards murders his wife and beheads her.  While trying to hide the body in the lake, he is caught.  The first report was in 1804 when The Times reported that on 3 January, a sentry with the Coldstream Guards reported sighting a headless lady in a red dress.  The incident ending up being recorded for posterity when he was summoned to testify in front of a magistrate.  Numerous other sightings have been reported.   Even as recently at 1972 the apparition was in the news again when a driver hit a lamp post claiming he swerved to avoid a headless woman in a white blood stained dress.  Surprisingly he was acquitted of dangerous driving!

 

STOP: Necropolis railway

LOCATION: Westminster Bridge Road (Westminster Bridge House)

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London Necropolis railway station was the Waterloo terminus of the London Necropolis railway which opened in 1854 as a reaction to severe overcrowding in London's existing graveyards and cemeteries. It aimed to use the recently developed technology of the railway to move as many burials as possible to the newly built Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.  This location was within easy travelling distance of London, but distant enough for the dead not to pose any risk to public health. There were two locations for the station; the first was in operation from 1854 to 1902, the second from 1902 to 1941.

 

The ornate gates you can see were originally designed for the Great Exhibition.  The station had two platforms.

 

Although it had its own branch line into Brookwood Cemetery, most of the route of the London Necropolis Railway ran on the existing London and South Western Railway.   Consequently, a site was selected in Waterloo near the recently opened Waterloo station.  The building was specifically designed for the use of mourners. It had many private waiting rooms, which could also be used to hold funeral services, and a hydraulic lift to raise coffins to platform level. Existing railway arches were used for the storage of bodies.

 

In 1899 the location of the terminus was blocking the expansion of Waterloo station and the LSWR reached agreement with the owners of the cemetery and the railway: in return for the existing site, the LSWR re-equipped the London Necropolis Railway and supplied it with a new station here on Westminster Bridge Road.  This new building was designed to contrast with other funeral directors' premises by being as attractive as possible. In 1902 the railway moved into the new building, and the earlier station was demolished.

 

In 1941 the station was heavily damaged in an air raid. Much of the building was destroyed and the tracks to the station were rendered unusable. Although some funeral trains continued to run from nearby Waterloo station, the London terminus was never used again. Following the end of the war the London Necropolis Company decided that reopening the London Necropolis Railway was not financially worthwhile, and the surviving part of the station building was sold as office space. This remnant remains intact, and relatively unaltered since its opening.

 

In the first half of the 19th century the population of London more than doubled, from a little under a million people in 1801 to almost two and a half million in 1851. The city's dead had been buried in and around the local churches. With a limited amount of space for burials, the oldest graves were regularly exhumed to free space for new burials.  Despite the rapid growth in population, the amount of land set aside for use as graveyards remained unchanged at approximately 300 acres spread across around 200 small sites.  Even relatively fresh graves had to be exhumed to free up space for new burials, their contents being unearthed and scattered. Decaying corpses contaminated the water supply, and the city suffered regular epidemics of cholera, smallpox, measles and typhoid. A Royal Commission established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds had become so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one.  In 1848–49 a cholera epidemic killed 14,601 people in London and overwhelmed the burial system completely.

 

In the wake of public concerns following the cholera epidemics and the findings of a Royal Commission, the Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis (Burials Act) was passed in 1851. Under the Burials Act, new burials were prohibited in what were then the built-up areas of London.

 

STOP: Ferryman’s seat

LOCATION: River end of Bear Gardens

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Before 1750, London Bridge was the sole means of crossing the Thames in and out of central London. Ferrymen/Watermen, or “Wherrymen” as they were referred to, would shuttle commuters and commodities in confined water taxis, or “wherries.” Stone seats lined the bank used as a perches where the drivers could wait for passengers.

Many of the ferrymen were boisterous patrons of the nearby brothels (called “stews” because they doubled as bath houses), bear-baiting rings (from which the street gets its name), and theatres such as the Rose and Shakespeare’s Globe which were nearby.

 

The seat itself is constructed out of flint. Though its age is undetermined, it’s thought to have ancient origins. 

 

From the middle ages on, the south bank, lying outside the area regulated by the City, tended to be the place of recreation: theatres, brothels and bear-baiting.  The City became even stricter in 1572 when theatres and players were banned entirely from the City.  The seats must have started gathering dust in 1642 when the Puritans closed all theatres.  And brothels and bear-baiting pits as well, we imagine.

 

STOP: King’s Arms 

LOCATION: Newcommen Street

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Newcomen Street forms the southern boundary of St. Saviour's parish on the east side of Borough High Street. The street still retains its narrow 18th century contours and kerbside posts. Like many of the streets and alleys of Southwark it developed from an inn yard, the yard of the Axe, later the Axe and Bottle.  The Axe is first mentioned in Southwark manor records of 1560.

 

In the 17th century, the whole of Axe Yard, now Newcomen Street, came into the hands of two charities, John Marshall's and Mrs. Newcomen's and, with some minor exceptions, have remained in their possession until the present day.

 

John Marshall, gentleman, the founder of Christ Church, lived in Axe Yard during the last few years of his life. He had no children so the bulk of his property, including his his property in Axe Yard, passed to trustees for various charities. In his will he desired his trustees to "finish and perfect the building and furnishing of the house in Axe-yard, wherein he then dwelt" and to see that "the pumps, jacks, cisterns and bedsteads, then in and belonging to the said house" should go with it as heirlooms. The house was to be let to the lecturer of St. Saviour's for twenty-one years, if he so desired, and the rent applied towards providing a residence for the minister of the new church (Christ Church). Marshall's property in Axe Yard comprised the sites of Nos. 6–23 and 46–61 Newcomen Street, all of which still remain in the hands of the trustees of his charity.

 

Mrs. Newcomen, widow of Jonathan Newcomen, a mercer, died in 1675, and was buried in St. Saviour's.  She left her property in trust for "the clothing of poor boys and girls with a suit of linen and woollen once a year, whereof two-thirds . . . [were to] be out of the Borough side, and the other third . . . out of the Clink Liberty . . . and for . . . teaching them to read and write and cast accounts, and for . . . putting forth boys apprentice at 5l a piece, at their age of 14 years." Her property consisted of three buildings in Borough High Street valued at £24 a year, a building near Axe Yard in the tenure of Sarah Marson, rented at £7 a year, the house called the Bottle then divided into three tenements, rented at £10 a year, and a tenement in Axe Yard in the tenure of George Jennings, rented at £7 a year. The bequest was subject to the condition that the rents and profits thereof should be paid to her nephew, Thomas Lant, and to his eldest son (if he had one) for their lives, but should subsequently be vested in the parish. 

 

A rebuilding lease of the Axe and Bottle was granted to George Bannister in 1677, from which it appears that the old building lay on either side of the entrance to the yard, the second storey being over the gateway. The other houses in the Newcomen gift were rebuilt in the 1680's in brick.  An order in the Vestry Minutes in 1704 for the rebuilding one storey higher of "the house blowne downe by the late Storme in Ax and Bottle Yard" suggests that the buildings were very flimsy.

 

No. 65 was among the houses rebuilt in 1765 and incorporated into it was the royal coat of arms in stone removed from the gateway at the southern end of London Bridge. The arms probably dated from 1728 when a new gateway was built to replace the one destroyed by fire in 1725. The arms are those used by George II during the early years of his reign, though the inscription has been altered to "George III." They were reerected on No. 65, the King's Arms, when it was rebuilt. A modern stone panel with the wording "King's Arms, 1890" has been added. 

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This is a finely detailed piece of sculpture and you don't have to look too close to see that the lion and the unicorn are what, in the language of heraldry is known as 'pizzled', a quite common sight on coats of arms until the Victorians arrived and it became considered too rude to show beasts in such a state of 'excitement'.

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This coat of arms was added to Stonegate, at the southern end of Old London Bridge as part of some construction work in 1728. To enable road widening all the buildings on the bridge were demolished around 1760, including Stonegate, but this coat of arms was rescued and re-erected on the pub, of which the current building was erected in 1890. Either the pub was already called the "King's Arms" and wanted the coat of arms because it was a ready-made sign, or, they were so delighted with the acquisition that they renamed the pub in celebration.  

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Nos. 66–69 on the south side of the street are Newcomen property and bear the Mrs. Newcomen mark. No. 67 has a Royal Insurance fire mark. They were built circa 1830. They are three-storey buildings in yellow stock brickwork and have early 19th century shop fronts. They have been in use for commercial purposes ever since they were built. 

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STOP: London Bridge  / Guys hospital

LOCATION: Just off Collingwood Street

(Walk through the arches on the right half way along Collingwood Street)

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The hospital dates from 1721, when it was founded by philanthropist Thomas Guy who had made a fortune from the South Sea Bubble and as a publisher of unlicensed bibles.  It was originally established as a hospital to treat "incurables" discharged from St Thomas’ hospital. Guy had been a Governor and benefactor of St Thomas' and his fellow Governors supported his intention by granting the south-side of St Thomas' Street for a peppercorn rent for 999 years.  Following his death in 1724, Thomas Guy was entombed at the hospital's chapel, which is usually open for visitors.

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The original buildings formed a courtyard facing St Thomas Street, comprising the hall on the east side and the Chapel, Matron's House and Surgeon's House on the west-side. A bequest of £180,000 by William Hunt in 1829, one of the largest charitable bequests in England in historic terms, allowed for a further hundred beds to be provided. Hunt's name was given to the southern expansion of the hospital buildings which took place in 1850. Two inner quadrangles were divided by a cloister.  The east side comprised the care wards and the 'counting house' with the governors 'Burfoot Court Room'. The north-side quadrangle is dominated by a statue of Lord Nuffield who was the chairman of governors for many years and also a major benefactor.

 

The alcove is from the medieval London Bridge and is made of Portland stone. It was purchased by Guy's Hospital for 10 guineas and installed in 1861.   Seats were added and it was used originally as a shelter for convalescents.

 

The bronze statue of poet John Keats is by sculptor Stuart Williamson.  Born in 1795, the Romantic poet trained as a surgeon-apothecary at Guy’s in 1815 and 1816 and lived on nearby St Thomas' Street where his home is marked with a blue plaque. He chose not to practice after qualifying, put off by the gruesome aspects of 19th-century surgery, turning instead to poetry as a full time occupation.

 

STOP: Aldgate pump

LOCATION: Junction of Aldgate High Street and Fenchurch Street

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At the junction of Aldgate High Street, Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street stands an historic water pump. The pump itself dates from 1876, standing slightly west to the site of an ancient well that stood before it. Although it is unclear how long the site has been used as a well, it was first mentioned in John Stow’s 1598 survey of London.  The well is thought to have been dug in King John’s time, around 1199.

 

The pump is perhaps most famous for the Aldgate Pump Epidemic, where several hundred people died as a result of drinking polluted water. At first people started complaining of a foul taste in the water that came out of the fountain.

 

Following an investigation by the Medical Offer of Health for the City it was found that the water that fed the fountain had come all the way from Hampstead in North West London, and during its passage under ground had drained through numerous new graveyards. As the water had passed through the graveyards, the bacteria, germs and calcium from the decaying bodies began to leach into the water supply. The pump was subsequently closed and reconnected to the New River Company’s supply in 1876.

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As a couple of side notes, the pump is also famous for marking the point from which distances were once measured into the counties of Essex and Middlesex. It also marked the symbolic start of the East End, as well as reputedly marking the spot where the last wolf was shot in the City of London (there is a plaque of a wolf head on the pump to signify this 'fact').

 

TOILET STOP (Citizen M hotel Tower Hill)

 

STOP: Wapping Old Stairs 

LOCATION: By Town of Ramsgate pub

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Formerly it was believed that the name Wapping recorded an Anglo-Saxon settlement linked to a personal name Waeppa (as if to say "the settlement of Waeppa's people"). More recent scholarship discounts that theory: the area was marshland, where early settlement was unlikely, and no such personal name has ever been found. It is now thought that the name may derive from wapol, a marsh.

 

Perhaps Wapping's greatest attraction is the Thames foreshore itself, and the venerable public houses that face onto it. A number of the watermen’s stairs, such as Wapping Old Stairs and Pelican Stairs (by the Prospect of Whitby) give public access to a littoral zone (for the Thames is tidal at this point) littered with flotsam, jetsam and fragments of old dock installations. Understandably it is popular with amateur archaeologists and treasure hunters – it is surprisingly easy for even a casual visitor to pick up a centuries-old shard of pottery here. You'll be surprised how readily you'll come across clay pipes, potsherds and other remnants of previous centuries.

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There are no relics, however, from the foreshore's former use as a site of execution for pirates, smugglers and other nautical ne'er-do-wells. Until as late as 1830, malefactors were hanged or gibbeted in the Wapping waters until, famously, three tides had passed over their swollen bodies. The exact site of 'Execution Dock', as it was known, is uncertain, but the waters around Wapping Old Stairs are a good contender. Certainly, the neighbouring pub's cellars were used to house prisoners before transportation to the colonies.

 

Regardless, the timeless atmosphere around this maritime staircase has led to it featuring in a number of TV series and films. Dr Who fans may remember the Stairs from Tom Baker classic The Talons of Weng-Chan.  

 

Wapping's proximity to the river gave it a strong maritime character for centuries, well into the 20th century. It was inhabited by sailors, mastmakers, boat-builders, blockmakers, instrument-makers, victuallers and representatives of all the other trades that supported the seafarer. 

 

STOP: Tobacco Dock

LOCATION: Pennington Street

 

Built in 1811, the massive brick built Tobacco Dock was used, as the name suggests, primarily for storing imported tobacco.  In an interesting, tried-and-tested pairing, the warehouse was also used for wine storage (could make for a great lock-in, we imagine).

 

The surviving structure is just two-fifths of the original Tobacco Dock complex: it really was huge.  The original walls encompassed 70 acres of buildings, quays and jetties; the equivalent of 40 football pitches.  

 

In the 1850s, trading exotic animals in London was a lucrative business.  Charles Jamrach was one of several well-known exotic animal traders working in Victorian east London. In 1857, while being taken to Jamrach's shop, a tiger broke free on Betts Street near Tobacco Dock.  Nine-year-old John Wade saw the big cat, and was fascinated: he tried to stroke the tiger's nose, who promptly swiped the boy across the face, knocking him out, and then picked the kid up by his jacket and carried him off in his jaws.  Jamrach stepped in at this point and "came running up and, thrusting his bare hands into the tiger's throat, forced the beast to let his captive go." The boy survived, and went on to sue Jamrach over the incident.

 

A statue commemorating the event can be found at the entrance to Tobacco Dock.

 

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark  recorded their music video to the song Messages here.

 

When the docklands were redeveloped in the 1980s, Tobacco Dock was earmarked as a new shopping destination, a 'Covent Garden of the East End'.  After a sympathetic £47m modernisation, retaining the building's original Victorian industrial shell, two arcades of shops, spread over two floors, opened in 1989.  Two pirate ships were installed for children to play on after traipsing around the early 90s delights of Next, Monsoon, Our Price and the Body Shop.

 

The old-industrial-building to modern-shopping-centre formula has worked elsewhere all over the city: in Camden, Leadenhall Market, and Hays Galleria. But the timing, transport links and economic downturn meant just six years later, the place was a ghost town.  The empty shopping centre remains as a strange monument to late-80s ambition.

 

The Tobacco Dock pirate ships may be fake, but they are designed and named after real ships.

 

The Three Sisters was a 330-ton trade ship built at the nearby Blackwall Yard in 1788. It travelled to the East and West Indies importing spices, and importantly, tobacco. When Tobacco Dock was a shopping centre, this ship was used to teach kids about piracy, which is why the pair are referred to as 'pirate' ships.

 

The Sealark was an American merchant schooner captured by Britain's HMS Scylla in 1811. The Royal Navy took her into service as a 10-gun schooner. 

 

In 2003, English Heritage placed the Grade I listed Tobacco Dock on the Buildings at Risk register. 

 

2,500 of the soldiers who worked on providing security across the Olympic Games in London used Tobacco Dock as their temporary accommodation.

 

Since 2011, Tobacco Docks has hosted various events including Secret Cinema, Runefest, awards ceremonies, parties and dance events.

 

STOP: Ripper mortuary / Ratcliff Highway

LOCATION: In the gardens of St George in the East

 

St George in the East, an English Baroque church from the early 1700s, was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor.

 

In the churchyard there stands a run down brick shed, the dilapidated appearance of which belies a sinister history that connects it to one of London's most infamous characters.

 

This building, originally a mortuary, was converted to a Nature Study Museum in 1904 and opened to the public as a branch of the Whitechapel Museum.  This was a pioneering effort in an overcrowded inner city area that gave local people the opportunity to have more contact with nature. During the summer months up to 1,000 people a day visited the Museum, mostly groups of local school children.  The exhibits included tanks of live fish and amphibians, stuffed birds and mammals, and displays of butterflies.  Immediately outside the Nature Study Museum was a wild flower garden with a beehive and an aviary.  Several specimen of trees were also planted in the gardens when the Museum was opened.  The Nature Study Museum was closed during the Second World War and, although was originally to have been a temporary closure, it was never re-opened and fell into disrepair.

 

The mortuary that this building formerly served as was built in 1876.  On the 30th September, 1888, Jack the Ripper claimed his third victim, Elizabeth Stride in nearby Berner Street and, since this was the closest mortuary to the scene of the crime, it was to this tiny establishment that her body was brought.  You can't help thinking, as you gaze on this derelict little structure, that the atmosphere inside must have been, to say the least, overwhelming and stifling as the police and witnesses arrived to view the body in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity, in the hope of identifying the victim.

 

STOP: The Ratcliff Murders

LOCATION: Junction of Cable Street and Cannon Street Road

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In late 1811, decades before Jack the Ripper claimed his first victim, London's East End was gripped by a series of murders that caused panic amongst the local population. Seven people were killed, and though a suspect was eventually apprehended, he died before he could be properly questioned, and the murders were never conclusively solved.

 

They occurred in Ratcliffe, a name that has now long disappeared but, in the early 19th century, was one of the many insalubrious pockets of crime along the banks of the River Thames.

 

In the early hours of 8 December 1811, in a small home at 29 Ratcliffe Highway, 24-year-old linen draper and hosier Timothy Marr, his wife Celia, their three-month old son and the shop assistant, a young man by the name of James Gowan, were found dead; the three adults each had their skull caved in with a blunt instrument, while the baby's throat had been cut. A fifth member of the household, Margaret Jewell, had been out on an errand to buy some oysters. 

 

The lack of any suspect, and the apparent absence of any motive, left the authorities with little to work on. The only clues were a carpenter's bloodstained maul left at the scene, marked with the initials 'JP', an unstained chisel, and some bloody footprints. The amateurish nature of the local investigations, headed up by sleuths bankrolled by the church, led to a number of baseless arrests, while the Government offered a reward to help catch the murderer. The case became a huge scandal across London, and the local population was gripped by the fear that, with the crime unsolved, the perpetrator could strike again.

 

Their concerns were soon realised. On 19th December, John Williamson, a publican at The King's Arm on New Gravel Lane, a little further east along Ratcliff Highway, his wife Elizabeth and a servant named Bridget Anna Harrington were murdered during the night.

 

At this point the investigation was widened, with the Bow Street Runners and the River Thames Police lending their assistance. A few days later, a man by the name of John Williams was arrested in connection with the case on some dubious evidence, and sent to Cold Bath Fields prison in Clerkenwell. Williams was a shifty character with a shady back story. He resided at a Wapping pub called the Pear Tree Inn, and rumours abounded that he held a grudge against Timothy Marr from their time at sea together. Having cooled his heels in Clerkenwell for a week or so he was summoned to Shadwell Magistrates on 27 December, but instead of the prisoner, the court was visited by a guard, who had the unfortunate duty of informing all present that Mr. Williams had been found hanging in his cell, having apparently taken his own life.

 

Such was the outpouring of rage and fear in east London, that the Home Secretary ordered Williams' body be paraded through the streets (a common practice at the time; in fact Williams was one of the last to receive such a dubious 'honour'). The corpse was eventually deposited into a hole in the ground at the junction of what is now Cable Street and Cannon Hill Road with a stake driven through the heart. It was disinterred a century later during roadworks, and the skull was placed behind the bar at the Crown & Dolphin pub on the corner, although it has since disappeared.

 

The Ratcliffe Highway murders brought to public attention the limited abilities of London's fragmented police forces, and were one of the factors that led toward the formation of the Met in the years to come. Two hundred years later and Ratcliffe itself has disappeared (although, in another of Google Maps' curious quirks, it's still listed as an area of East London). Yet in a city that often seems fixated on the macabre, the brutal nature of these crimes, and their unsolved nature, has propped the mystery up over the centuries.

 

STOP: Whitechapel Bell Foundry

LOCATION: Plumbers Row

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The Whitechapel Bell Foundry began life in 1570 during the reign of Elizabeth I. It moved to its site on Whitechapel Road in 1739 and traded from the building until closure in 2016.  The Guinness Book of Records lists the foundry, one of only two left in the UK,  as Britain’s oldest manufacturer – having traded continuously for 446 years.

 

In 1752, the foundry cast the Liberty Bell for the city of Philadelphia, which became a symbol of US independence. In 1856, it made Big Ben, although the bell cracked while being tested and was recast in 1858

 

More recently, the Whitechapel team designed the bell used at the start of the 2012 London Olympics but the 23-tonne structure was too big for its furnaces and was cast in the Netherlands. The foundry cast the bells used on the lead barge for the Queen’s Jubilee pageant on the Thames, also in 2012.  Specialist sales – largely church bells and musical handbells – formed the bulk of more recent business.

 

The buildings are Grade II protected, but the buyer is committed to respecting this historic status and bringing the buildings back into good repair.  Whitechapel tower bells will in future be cast by Westley Group Ltd.  The very last tower bell to be cast at the Whitechapel site went to the Museum of London, to which the foundry has donating many artefacts including old machinery, items to provide a display about bell manufacture and items that the foundry has in its possession pertaining to the making of Big Ben. 

 

STOP: The Palm Tree pub

LOCATION: Shortly after leaving Haverfield Road

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The Palm Tree is a remarkable survivor, standing alone in a Blitzed-out street. Inside, too, time has stopped. The same couple, Val and Alf, have presided over the bar for years, and they rarely change a thing. The pub is split into two non-communicating areas. The southern-most gets a mixed crowd of older regulars and younger adventurers in search of a 'traditional East End boozer'. It's here that you'll find regular jazz sessions from the tiny stage area in the corner. The other room is more spacious and tends to accumulate regulars.

 

Charming though the pub is, the beer choice is mediocre and the staff not particularly friendly.  So you don't come to the Palm Tree for great beer or beaming smiles, but for the unique atmosphere of a genuine survivor.

 

It was built in 1935 for Truman’s Brewery, and was grade II listed in 2015. 

 

The pub is stuffed with quirks: a cash-only bar dominated by a till that looks like something from a vintage Fisher Price range; surprisingly expensive drinks that can be most charitably described as “no frills”; and, of course, live jazz performed at weekends with little ceremony by a band with a collective age of around 300.

 

There are no steak nights, no quizzes, no outdoor heaters, no cucumber water, and not a filament bulb in sight. The dim red lighting makes it virtually uninstagrammable. It exudes an authenticity that most property developers would kill for, all without an exposed brick wall in sight. It does not need decor or branding to pay homage to the East End’s cultural heritage or to reference its local roots, quite simply because the pub has barely changed. It’s a time capsule, not a retrofit or a restoration.

 

TOILET STOP (Victoria Park)

 

STOP: Medieval London Bridge

LOCATION: At the far end of Victoria Park (look for the alcove)

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When Old London Bridge was demolished in 1831, it was decided with typical Victorian frugality to sell off some of the old bits and bobs of stonework. Although they were ostensibly part of the medieval bridge, they had largely been added during an 18th-century reconstruction. The best surviving examples are the old stone alcoves.

 

There were originally 14 of these covered domes at the end of the piers. They looked rather like curved stone bus shelters and were so sturdy and useful that four still survive.

 

The one at Guy’s Hospital we saw earlier, two here in Victoria Park and the fourth, somewhat bizarrely, has ended up in the garden of a block of flats in East Sheen. There were originally two alcoves, or ‘porter’s rests’, in East Sheen but one ‘disappeared’ during renovation in the 1930s, as did some balustrading from the Bridge that was used as a wall. Further balustrading was taken to Herne Bay, but this was lost in the storm of 1951.

 

An arch from the bridge was discovered in 1921 during the rebuilding of Adelaide House, but this was deemed too expensive to preserve and was destroyed. One stone, though, survived, and is now preserved in the churchyard of St Magnus the Martyr. 

 

One final bit of the bridge that survives is the coat of arms we saw on the King’s Arms on Newcomen Street. 

 

The current London Bridge replaced a 19th century stone arched bridge, which in turn superseded a 600-year-old stone-built medieval structure. This was preceded by a succession of timber bridges, the first of which was built by the Roman founders of London.

 

The medieval bridge was commissioned by Henry II, with a chapel at the centre dedicated to Thomas Beckett (a popular Londoner).  It was the official start of pilgrimages to Canterbury.

 

Building work stated in 1176 and finished in 1209, in the reign of King John. By 1358 it was already crowded with 138 shops. At least one two-entranced, multi-seated public latrine overhung the bridge parapets and discharged into the river below; so did an unknown number of private latrines reserved for Bridge householders or shopkeepers and bridge officials. 

 

The buildings on London Bridge were a major fire hazard and increased the load on its arches, several of which had to be rebuilt over the centuries. In 1212, perhaps the greatest of the early fires of London broke out on both ends of the bridge simultaneously, trapping many people in the middle. A major fire of 1633 that destroyed the northern third of the bridge formed a firebreak that prevented further damage to the bridge during the Great Fire of London. 

 

By the Tudor era there were some 200 buildings on the bridge. Some stood up to seven storeys high, some overhung the river by seven feet, and some overhung the road, to form a dark tunnel through which all traffic had to pass.  By 1577, the available roadway was just 12 feet wide, divided into two lanes, so that in each direction, carts, wagons, coaches and pedestrians shared a single file lane six feet wide. When the bridge was congested, crossing it could take up to an hour. Those who could afford the fare might prefer to cross by ferry, but the bridge structure had several undesirable effects on river traffic. The narrow arches and wide pier bases restricted the river's tidal ebb and flow, so that in hard winters, the river upstream of the bridge became more susceptible to freezing and impassable by boat.

 

The southern gatehouse became the scene of one of London's most notorious sights — a display of the severed heads of traitors, impaled on pikes, dipped in tar and boiled to preserve them against the elements. The head of William Wallace was the first to appear on the gate, in 1305, starting a tradition that was to continue for another 355 years. In 1598, a German visitor to London counted over 30 heads on the bridge.

 

The practice stopped in 1660, but heads were reported at the site as late as 1772.

 

By 1722 congestion was becoming so serious that the Lord Mayor decreed that "all carts, coaches and other carriages coming out of Southwark into this City do keep all along the west side of the said bridge: and all carts and coaches going out of the City do keep along the east side of the said bridge." This has been suggested as one possible origin for the practice of traffic in Britain driving on the left.

 

From 1758 to 1762, all houses and shops on the bridge were demolished through Act of Parliament. To help improve navigation under the bridge, its two centre arches were replaced by a single wider span. Even so, the basic medieval structure was narrow, increasingly decrepit and evidently long past its useful life.

 

In the mid-19th century the medieval bridge was replaced by the bridge that now resides in Nevada.

 

STOP: Passing Alley

LOCATION: Junction of St John's Lane and Briset Street

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Originally called Pissing Alley, the name was considered too vulgar for the prudish Victorians, so they simply changed the ‘i’ for an ‘a’.

 

There were dozens of open public conveniences around the City. All of these have now either disappeared, or have had their names changed beyond association.

 

Londoners, like New Yorkers, are not afraid to tell it like it is, and many of the city’s street names reflect (or reflected) that forthright quality. Street hygiene centuries ago was not what it could have been, and residents were by no means shy about calling streets by their most noticeable, however unflattering, attributes – such as Dirty Lane, Filth Alley, Pissing Alley, and Stinking Lane.

 

Many of these names have been changed to protect the innocent minds; others have been corrupted over the years and are no longer as obvious as they once were.

 

Maiden Lane in Covent Garden is said to have taken its name from a statue of the Virgin Mary which once stood on the corner of the lane. However, it is more likely that the name actually derives from the ‘middens’ – dung heaps – that once proliferated in the area.

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The most charming theory behind the name of Cloak Lane in the City of London is that it is where Lady Elizabeth Hatton dropped her cloak as she was being carried off by the devil and about to leave her heart in Bleeding Heart Yard.  Sadly, the name, which first appears in the late 17th century (thus, alas, predating Lady Elizabeth), is more likely to have derived from the Latin ‘cloaca’, or sewer.

 

Also in the City of London, Addle Hill derives from the Old English word adela (translated variously as stinking urine or liquid manure).

 

Carting Lane just off Strand was once called Dirty Lane; the name was was changed during the mid 19th century in deference to the residents’ sensibilities.  However, Carting Lane became 'Farting Lane' to many people because of the sewer gas lamp that once stood in the lane – a replica of which is still there.

 

STOP: The Great Fire of London

Location: Pye Corner / Cock Lane

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The Golden Boy of Pye Corner marks the spot where the Great Fire of London was stopped. The statue is made of wood and is covered with gold.  It bears the following small inscription below it:

 

This Boy is in Memmory Put up for the late FIRE of LONDON Occasion'd by the Sin of Gluttony.

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The boy at Pye Corner was erected to commemorate the staying of the great fire which beginning at Pudding Lane was ascribed to the sin of gluttony when not attributed to the papists as on the Monument.  The boy was made prodigiously fat to enforce the moral.   He was originally built into the front of a public-house called The Fortune of War which used to occupy this site and was pulled down in 1910.

 

The Fortune of War was the chief house of call north of the river for resurrectionists in body snatching days years ago.

The landlord used to show the room where on benches round the walls the bodies were placed labelled with the snatchers' names waiting till the surgeons at St Bartholomew's could run round and appraise them.

 

The Great Fire of London broke out in the early hours of Sunday, 2 September 1666 at the bakehouse of Robert Farryner (or Farriner) in Pudding Lane. Aided by high winds, it spread from the Tower of London to Temple Bar and from the Thames to Smithfield.  St Paul’s Cathedral and 87 other churches were destroyed, as were 13,200 houses.

 

In five days the fire consumed 373 acres within the City walls and 63 acres without – yet only six deaths were attributed to it, although many more may have gone unrecorded. The blaze was halted by blowing up houses here at Pye Corner.

 

Pye Corner name may have originated from an inn sign depicting a magpie.

 

Giltspur Street was first recorded with this name in the mid-16th century. It seems likely to derive from the earlier presence of spurriers, whose wares were in demand for the medieval jousting tournaments held at Smithfield and Cheapside.  Cock Lane had a far less reputable history. First recorded around 1200, its name probably signified a lane where fighting cocks were reared and/or sold. In the late Middle Ages Cock Lane was the only place north of the Thames where brothels – or ‘stews’ – were legally sanctioned. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, Falstaff is accused of continually going to Pye Corner “to buy a saddle” – probably an oblique reference to his patronage of the brothels.

 

STOP: Drinking fountain

LOCATION: Junction of Giltspur Street, Holborn Viaduct and Old Bailey (in the wall of the church)

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Standing rather incongruously at the very eastern end of Holborn Viaduct, dug into the railings of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate church, is London’s first ever drinking fountain.

 

Built by the wonderfully named Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association in 1859, the history of this little drinking fountain illustrates how dirty and diseased the water supply once was in London. In fact, by the mid-19th century the water was so polluted that beer was being used as a safer alternative.

 

The reason for the dirty water was a combination of rapid population growth in the 18th and 19th century, along with under-regulated water supply companies. This culminated in a series of cholera outbreaks during the early 19th century, with the Metropolis Water Act being brought in during 1852 in an attempt to improve the dismal water quality in London.

 

This radical piece of legislation made it illegal for water supply companies to obtain domestic water supply from the tidal Thames, notably because this was where the sewage companies often disposed of their untreated waste. Other solutions were to make water filtration compulsory, as well as building a new network of sewers to reduce the need for dumping raw waste into the River Thames.

 

It was around this time that the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was formed. Its two founding members, Samuel Gurney MP and Edward Wakefield, were both keen philanthropists and started the society in 1859.   At its peak this fountain was being used by around 7000 people a day. In fact, the only interruption to the fountain’s service during its 150 year history was during the construction of the Holborn Viaduct during which time it was temporarily relocated.

 

Due to the immense popularity of the fountain, the society built an additional 85 water fountains over the next 6 years. A great deal of these fountains can still be found to this day, including the cattle troughs that were constructed in collaboration with the RSPCA. These were especially important around the live cattle market of Smithfield, where horses, dogs and cattle had often been brought from the surrounding counties. These water troughs became so important that their locations began to be built into maps, and the Victorians often referred to them as filling stations.

 

The society still exists today, albeit under the less grandiose name of the Drinking Fountain Association. It is still involved in building new drinking fountains, as well as restoring and maintaining the existing infrastructure.

 

STOP: Newgate prison

LOCATION: Old Bailey

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Newgate Prison was once the most notorious prison in London. Commissioned in the 12th century by Henry II, it remained in use all the way through to 1902. The prison itself was originally built into a gate on the old Roman wall (hence the name “Newgate”) although it was rebuilt numerous times during its lifespan.

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For over 600 years the prison was renowned for its appalling conditions. It was said that the prison was so dirty and squalid that the floors crunched as you walked due to all the lice and bedbugs. The women’s area was equally as appalling, crowded with half naked women, drunk, sometimes deranged, in leg irons and often with their children in tow.

 

After its final rebuild in 1782 the prison was divided into two sections; a common area for the general public as well as a State area for those who could afford more comfortable accommodation. At the same time as the prison rebuild, the site for London’s public gallows moved from Tyburn over to Newgate Prison. This meant that public executions were now held in the heart of the City of London, drawing large audiences all the way up until public executions were abandoned in 1868.

 

To understand the scale of capital punishment at Newgate Prison, it is said that between 1790 and 1902 over one thousand people were put to death there alone. During the period of public executions, these were carried out outside of Newgate Prison on the Old Bailey Road.

 

The church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate also has a rather ghoulish part to play in the executions. At midnight on the eve of an execution, a bellman would walk along the prison tunnels ringing ‘twelve solemn towels with double strokes’ on his handbell whist chanting....

 

“All you that in the condemned hold do lie, prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die; Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near that you before the Almighty must appear; examine well yourselves, in time repent, that you may not to eternal flames be sent: And when St. Sepulchre’s bell tomorrow tolls, the Lord above have mercy on your souls.”

 

Although Newgate Prison has long gone, the Newgate Execution Bell still exists and is housed in the Church of St Sepulchre.

 

The ride ends at the cafe in Lincoln's Inn Fields