One of the daughters of my former PhD supervisor was about to get married. As a friend of his family, I was asked to be one of the four ushers at the service, which was to be held at St Giles and St Andrews, better known as ‘Stoke Poges Church’, whose graveyard has been immortalised by the poet Gray in his “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”. The church stands on land that was once owned by William Penn (1644-1718) after whom the American state of Pennsylvania is named.
Stoke Poges Church
As an usher, I was required to wear formal ‘black tie’. So, not possessing such clothes, I had to hire the necessary formal attire. I went to a branch of Moss Brothers, who hire clothing, and was fitted out with all the trimmings, morning suit, trousers, waistcoat, shirt, bow tie, and a top hat, but no cummerbund. Getting a top hat that fitted properly presented great difficulty to the assistant at the clothes hire shop. He looked at my head knowledgeably with an air that suggested to me that he was an experienced clothing fitter. After a moment’s contemplation, he decided that I needed a certain size. The hat he chose by eye was far too small. It wobbled uneasily on the crown of my head. He selected another size. At this stage, I was still impressed that he appeared to be able to judge head size by eye. The next hat was far too large. It slipped right over my ears. I became less impressed with the fellow. Eventually, he found one that almost fitted my head; its rim rested on the tops of my ear lobes. That was the best he could do. I hired this and all the rest of the required ‘gear’.
Just before the wedding, I got dressed in my formal wear at the bride’s parents’ home. I had endless difficulties trying to get dressed in the two-piece waistcoat, which seemed to separate into two separate items whatever I did. One of my fellow ushers managed to get this on to me correctly as well as to fasten my bow tie (another skill I have yet to master). Sadly, I do not possess any pictures of me in this ‘get up’. Then, we set off for the church.
Of the four ushers, two were Christian and two were Jewish. The two Christians were on duty outside the church. The two ushers inside the church were Jewish by birth. I was one of them and the other was Victor, a friend of the bride. Victor, whom I had not seen for several decades, was one of my classmates at primary school in Golders Green back in the 1950s. My duty as usher was to help people find a seat in the church and to hand out leaflets, which I referred to as ‘programmes’ until one lady with a plummy voice told me sternly:
“They’re not programmes, dear; they’re Orders of Service, don’t you know.”
Well, you learn something every day.
About 25 years later, I communicated with Victor, whom I had not seen since the wedding, via the LinkedIn website. We agreed to meet for lunch at an Italian restaurant near London’s Charing Cross Station as Victor was coming up to London from his home on the south coast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes before Victor. When he came through the door, I recognised him. He had aged but was still recognisably Victor, even though his hair which had been red when we were children was no longer that colour. Red hair, or ‘orange’ as I used to call it as a child, fascinated me in my young days. I greeted him, and he shook my hand, saying:
“Hmmm … you are not the person I was expecting to meet.”
I was not sure whether to feel pleased or upset that he had mixed me up with someone else from his past.
A BUILDING ON THE CORNER of Lancaster Road and Basing Street, a few yards east of Portobello Road, looks as if it was once a church. Attached to its brickwork is a plaque commemorating the fact that the building was once used by the reggae artist Bob Marley (Robert Nester Marley:1945-1981). While we were looking at the building, a friendly passer-by stopped and chatted to us, confirming that the building had once been used as a church, but also as a waxworks studio and, maybe, a synagogue for a time.
Whereas many Jewish people used to live near the building before WW2 (www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/Colville%20March%20Newsletter3.pdf), notably in nearby Powis Square, I can find no evidence that there was ever a synagogue where the church-like building stands. A detailed map, surveyed in the 1890s, reveals that this building was a ‘Congregational Chapel’. It was ‘The Lancaster Road Congregational Church Notting Hill’ and is described in “A Book of Metropolitan Churches and Church Enterprise” by William Pepperell, which was published in 1872. The Reverend Pepperell describes the origin of the chapel as follows:
“The foundation-stone of this chapel was laid by Samuel Morley, Esq., M.P., in July, 1865, when, although so recent, the whole of that part of North Kensington in which it is situated was open field, with here and there a dotting of new buildings commenced, and new streets laid out. At the present time the occupied suburbs extend quite a mile beyond it either North or West. The congregation worshipping here first assembled in smaller numbers in Westbourne-hall, where they kept together for between two and three years, always with a view to a separate building as opportunity offered … The form of service is what is understood as Congregational, and the Congregational Hymn-book is used. An organ well suited to the dimensions of the building is efficiently employed by Mr. Charles Wetton, Jun., in aid of the devotional singing, which seems to lose nothing of its congregational life and character by the presence of the instrument.”
The authoritative British-history.ac.uk website confirms the date when the chapel was established and makes no mention of it ever having been used as a synagogue. It does state that the building was designed by James Rankin of St Marylebone and is now used for commercial purposes, its interior having been completely remodelled.
I could not find the chapel marked on a detailed map surveyed in 1914. This is not surprising because in the early part of the 20th century, the chapel became home to the workshop of Gems Waxworks (“Colville Conservation Area Appraisal”, published by RBKC in 2014). It was at this workshop that the model of the serial killer John Christie (1899-1953), who had a flat at 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill (located at where is now Bartle Close and Andrews Square), was prepared (www.golbornelife.co.uk/colvillenewsletter1.pdf) in the 1950s for Madame Tussaud’s exhibition in Baker Street.
By 1970, the former chapel had reincarnated as the ‘Basing Street Studios”, established by Christopher Blackwell, founder of Island Records (began in 1959). In 1970, Led Zeppelin recorded his album “Led Zeppelin IV” at the studios. The same year, Jethro Tull recorded his “Aqualung” album at the same place. At one point in 1973, Bob Marley and the Wailers were using the studios at the same time as the Rolling Stones. Bob Marley lived for a year at the studios in 1977 (www.timeout.com/london/blog/15-places-in-london-with-a-bob-marley-connection-051116). Early in that year he recorded his album “Exodus” there. Before that, in 1973, he recorded his album “Catch a Fire”, also at Basing Street. In addition to the works already mentioned, many other well-known songs and albums, including Queen’s “We are the Champions” and Band Aid’s “Do they know It’s Christmas”, were recorded at these studios.
In 1983, Trevor Horn (born 1949) and Jill Sinclair (1952-2014), of SARM studios, acquired the recording establishment in the former chapel. The plaque on the outside of the building was placed there by the Nubian Jak Community Trust, which is:
“… an African and Caribbean community organisation that provides products and services to the generic population of the UK and internationally” (http://nubianjak.org/).
Their plaque not only celebrates Bob Marley’s use of the former chapel and his fellow musicians Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, but also the memory of Jill Sinclair. When the plaque was unveiled by her widowed husband, he said:
Currently, SARM is based on nearby Ladbroke Grove.
Having seen this building and looked into its history, I feel sure that the Congregationalists who used to sing in the chapel long ago would be pleased to know that the building remained a place of song, even if what was sung there is somewhat different to what they used to sing.
YOU CAN NEVER PREDICT how much traffic you will encounter on the roads in and near London. So, we always allow extra time when making a trip, and often we arrive earlier than we had planned. Such was the case yesterday when we had arranged to meet some friends for a walk in Heartwood Forest, which is close to the village of Sandridge in Hertfordshire. We reached our destination about an hour too early and stopped in Sandridge to get a warm drink and to take a look around. What little remains of old Sandridge is attractive and is worth a visit despite its description in “Hertfordshire, a Shell Guide” by RM Healey:
“Subtopian clutter in a village that has ribboned out to join St Albans.”
We bought coffee in the well-stocked small village shop and heard its owner saying:
“I am still in business despite being surrounded by three Tesco Express supermarkets.”
Now, here is a strange coincidence. After dinner, when I had finally warmed up after our excessively chilled walk in Heartwood Forest, I settled down to continue reading the wonderful biography of John Churchill (1650-1722), the First Duke of Marlborough, by Richard Holmes, and read on page 110:
“On 14 May that year John Churchill was created Baron Churchill of Sandridge in Hertfordshire …”
The year was 1685. Well, I was staggered to read the name of the village, of whose existence I had not previously been aware and which we had just visited by chance earlier that day. I reached for my Shell Guide to Hertfordshire but found no mention of Churchill in the section about Sandridge. Somewhat surprised by this omission, I looked up ‘Sandridge’ in James Thorne’s “Handbook to The Environs of London”, published in 1876. Thorne revealed something about Churchill’s connection with Sandridge.
The manor of Sandridge was given to Sir Ralph Rowlett (before 1513-1571; see: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/rowlett-sir-ralph-1513-71) of Holywell House (St Albans, Hertfordshire), Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire and Master of the Mint of England (in1543), by Henry VII in 1540. When Sir Ralph, who had no heirs, died, it was passed on to his sister Elizabeth, the wife of Ralph Jennings (aka ‘Jenyns’; 1529-1572; http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Jenyns-10). Sir Ralph died in Churchill, Somerset. The Jennings family kept the manor for several generations. When Richard Jennings (c1619-1668) died, he left the manor to his three daughters, Barbara, Frances, and Sarah (1660-1744; the youngest). Sarah was probably born in Water End House, which was built by her grandfather John Jennings (Jenyns) and which I have described elsewhere (https://adam-yamey-writes.com/2020/07/23/why-go-abroad/).
In 1677 or ’78, John Churchill, then a colonel, married Richard’s daughter Sarah Jennings. Then, he purchased the other sisters’ shares in the manor of Sandridge so that he owned the whole property. This permitted him to gain his first aristocratic title, that of ‘Baron Churchill of Sandridge’. As a baron, he was able to sit in the House of Lords. However, his attempt to become an MP for his borough, St Albans, met with failure:
“Churchill acquired one moiety of the Jennings estate by marriage … He thus enjoyed the principal interest at St. Albans, and in 1685 the mayor announced his candidature for the borough. In the event, however, his brother George was elected, perhaps because James II had made known his intention to give him an English peerage.” (https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/churchill-john-ii-1650-1722).
On reflection, it seems a bit strange that we did not notice any obvious indication in Sandridge of the connection of the celebrated John Churchill, ancestor of Sir Winston Churchill, with the village in the manor he acquired. Some months earlier we had visited the village of East Knoyle (in Wiltshire), where the architect Christopher Wren was born in 1632. Despite the fact that Christopher left the village with his family when he was only three years old, visitors to East Knoyle are left in no doubt about its famous connection.
What remains of old Sandridge is attractive, even in the appalling weather conditions that we endured whilst walking around it. The village’s name is derived from ‘Saundruage’ meaning a place of sandy soil worked by bond tenants (i.e., feudal tenants completely subject to a lord or manor to whom they paid dues and services in return for land). The earliest written record of the place is in a document dated 796 AD.
The most fascinating building in the village is the Church of St Leonards. Although its exterior looks in great condition, it contains some structural elements that were put in place in the 10th century. These include Roman bricks found at sites near and in St Albans (Roman ‘Verulamium’). The church was consecrated as ‘St Leonards’ by 1119. Later, the church experienced modifications and enlargements. Sadly, but predictably during this time of pandemic, the church was locked. So, we will have to make another visit to see this interesting building when things ease up. Likewise, the picturesque Queen’s Head pub next to the church was also closed, except for take-away meals.
The Queens Head was built in the 17th century and, maybe, earlier, but has had much later work done to it (https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1102874). The pub sign has the portrait of a woman’s head. The lady depicted has long black hair and is wearing a garment that exposes her neck and upper chest but not her cleavage. One long ringlet of her hair, which ends in a helical coil, is draped over the front of her left shoulder, and her face is looking slightly towards her right. The portrayal on the pub sign resembles that of Queen Anne (reigned 1702-1714) found in many better painted pictures. This might not be accidental on a pub that existed long before Anne was on the throne. For, Lady Sarah Churchill, John’s wife, was a court favourite of Queen Anne. Incidentally, it is one of three pubs in this tiny village.
Once again, a short stop in a small English village has been most rewarding both from the aesthetic viewpoint and also because it has caused me to learn yet more detail about the fascinating history of the country where I live. I am grateful to our friends in Hatfield for giving us an excuse to discover Sandridge, a place so close to London but until yesterday, not on our ‘radar’.
A WHITE STONE BUST depicting a man wearing a jacket and a waistcoat is perched on a pile of books carved in the same material and stands on a marble pedestal in the centre of the open access bookshelves in the public lending library on Hornton Street in London’s Kensington. His face has copious mutton-chop sideburns but neither moustache nor beard. The person depicted is James Heywood (1810-1897), who founded the first public library in Kensington in about 1870. His sculptural portrait in the library was created by Middlesex born James Adams-Acton (1830-1910), some of whose other busts include representations of Emperor Caesar Augustus, John Wesley, and ‘Pharaoh’s daughter’ (www.artuk.org/discover/artists/adams-acton-john-18301910).
Heywood, who was born in Manchester, was a man of many achievements (www.gracesguide.co.uk/James_Heywood). Son of the banker Nathaniel Heywood, James studied at the universities of both Edinburgh and Geneva before joining the family bank at Manchester. On inheriting a large sum from his uncle, he left the bank and matriculated at Trinity College Cambridge in 1829, where he continued to study but did not graduate. In 1838, he was admitted to the Inner Temple in London, where he was called to the Bar but did not practise as a barrister. In that same year, James became a founder member of the Manchester Geological Society. The next year, he was one of the founders of the Manchester Athenaeum, which provided reading rooms and lectures.
“James Heywood, Esq of Trinity College, Cambridge, residing at 17 Cork Street, London, Barrister of the Inner Temple, author of a Report on the Geology of the Coal District of South Lancashire, published in the Transactions of the British Association, & also of a Report on the state of the population in Miles Platting, Manchester, published in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London; a gentleman much attached to science, being desirous of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, we the undersigned, do, from our personal knowledge, recommend him as deserving of that honor, & as likely to be a useful & valuable member.”
So, by 1839, Heywood was residing in London. In addition to his scientific work, he was involved in politics. Between 1847 and 1857 he represented the constituency of Lancaster Northern. He was a member of the Whig/Liberal Party. In 1859, he moved to Kensington (Kensington Palace Gardens), where in about 1870 he established Kensington’s first free public library at Notting Hill Gate. Heywood was a Unitarian. His home in Kensington was close to the current location of a Unitarian church, which was only established on this site in 1887. However, before that, in 1867, the Unitarians began meeting in Kensington at Sir Isaac Newton’s old home, now demolished, in Church Lane. The history of the Kensington Unitarians, found at www.kensington-unitarians.org.uk/images/EssexChurchInKensington_forInternet.pdf reveals that:
“The congregation was growing under the Chairmanship of James Heywood, MA, FRS, MP, ‘one of Kensington’s most distinguished citizens’…”
The church moved to its present site near the Mall Tavern in the 1880s.
The free library, which Heywood created in Kensington and was opened on the 15th of August 1874, was located at ‘106, High Street, Notting Hill”, according to “The Catalogue of Mr James Heywood’s Free Public Library”, published in 1879 (and viewable on Google Books). The ‘High Street’ is now named ‘Notting Hill Gate’. If the numbering was the same then as it is today, then 106 would have been on the north side of the street just west of Pembridge Road, roughly between where Tescos and Mark and Spencers Simply Food stores stand currently. Today, the Notting Hill Gate branch of Kensington’s public libraries stands on the corner of Pembridge Road and Pembridge Square.
Heywood’s library was open seven days a week and before receiving a book, an applicant had to fill in a form with the following wording:
“I REQUEST TO READ
Name of books ….
Date …. Signature of applicant .…”
Reading books in the library was free of charge but borrowing them required a monthly payment of sixpence (2.5 p) and one penny (about 0.5 p) per book borrowed. The catalogue included a very respectable variety of books and periodicals. I was pleased to note that there was a book about Albania, “Travels in Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey” by Lord Broughton, Baron John Cam Hobhouse Broughton (1786-1869), who accompanied Lord Byron on his trip through the Balkans at the beginning of the 19th century.
Given his important contribution to the development of public libraries in Kensington, it is entirely appropriate that James Heywood is commemorated in the main branch of the library system of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is also worth noting that like his pioneering establishment in Notting Hill High Street, the library is not entirely free for borrowers. Although books may be borrowed free of charge, other items including DVDs can only be borrowed after making a payment.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT our current plague, the covid19 pandemic, but an earlier one that occurred occasionally in the 19th century. In many countries today, millions of people live with plague and disease and might even accept it as a part of daily life. Fortunately, until recently this was not the case in the UK. However, in the 19th century when diseases and their transmission were less well understood than currently, living conditions in the UK were considerably less healthy than today, disease was rife, and life expectancy was not great. While walking amongst the picturesque steeply sloping back streets of Hampstead village in North London in late November 2020, we spotted a carved stone plaque high on a wall of a house, currently Heathside Preparatory School, on New End (at the point where the street makes a right angle and becomes north-south instead of east-west).
The plaque reads:
“This building was erected by voluntary contributions for a dispensary and soup kitchen. It was intended as a thank-offering to Almighty God for his special mercy in sparing this parish during the visitation of cholera in the year 1849. The site was purchased in 1850 and the building completed in 1853.
He shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence. Thomas Ainger M.A. incumbent”
As you will discover soon, not everyone in Hampstead was spared from cholera in 1849. One of those, who was afflicted, not in 1849 but five years later, unwittingly made a great contribution to science.
Thomas Ainger (1799-1863), who was born in Whittlesea, Cambridgeshire and studied at Cambridge University, was awarded ‘perpetual curacy’ of St Mary’s Hampstead in 1841, a position he held until his death (http://hampsteadparishchurch.org.uk/data/magazines_2013.php?id=897). He was:
“An energetic parish priest and poor-law guardian; helped to found schools and a dispensary; enlarged his church and promoted the building of new churches in the district around Hampstead.” (https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/).
Today, we can have injections that radically reduce the chances of suffering from cholera, but that was not the case back in 1849, when the mechanism by which the disease spreads was not yet understood. One case of the disease that significantly helped to further knowledge of its spread occurred in Hampstead in 1854.
Dr John Snow (1813-1858), who led the way in hygiene and anaesthesia, suspected that cholera was spread via drinking water. He demonstrated that cases of the disease were clustered around particular water sources. During an outbreak of cholera in 1854 in London’s Soho district, which was centred around a pump in Broad Street, now Broadwick Street, he found that by removing the handle from the pump so that the locals could no longer draw their drinking water from there, the local outbreak of cholera was brought to an end. The pump in Broad Street was only three feet away from a leaking cess pit and its water was contaminated by waste matter (www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/broadstreetpump.html). Snow theorised that the cause of cholera was not as previously thought a ‘miasma’ in the air, but something in drinking water. Now, let Stephanie Snow continue the story (International Journal of Epidemiology, 2002; vol.31: pp 908–911):
“In 1849, the London Medical Gazette had suggested that in regard to Snow’s theory, the experimentum crucis [i.e. critical experiment] would be that the water conveyed to a distant locality where cholera had been hitherto unknown produced the disease in all who used it. One of the cholera victims Snow had traced through his Broad Street investigation was a widow who lived in Hampstead. She had a regular delivery of water from the Broad Street pump as she preferred its taste. Her last delivery was made on 31 August and by 2 September, having drunk the water, she had died from cholera. Snow regarded this as ‘the most conclusive’ of circumstances in proving the connection between the water pump and the cholera outbreak.”
The widow had lived at ‘West End’, which until the 19th century was that name of what is now West Hampstead.
The plaque in New End suggests that Hampstead Parish was ‘spared’ from the cholera in 1849. That was almost true. In that year, Hampstead had 8 deaths from cholera per 10,000, whereas many areas of London reported between 100 and 200 deaths from cholera per 10,000 (www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/publichealth118_387_394_2004.pdf). The rate of cholera fatalities in its area was determined by the location of its drinking water supply. The uppermost rates of deaths from cholera in 1849 were exceedingly high compared with even the highest rates of covid19 infection anywhere in the UK during the second half of 2020.
John Snow had been alerted to the existence of the widow in Hampstead by Reverend Henry Whitehead (1825-1896), a vicar in London’s Soho district, who was at first sceptical of Snow’s theory of the water-borne transmission of cholera (http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/whitehead.html) and favoured the idea that cholera existed as an airborne ‘miasma’. Although Snow and Whitehead differed on their ideas on the transmission of cholera, they decided to work together. Peter Daniell and David Markoff provide more detail (www.choleraandthethames.co.uk/cholera-in-london/cholera-in-soho/) about the widow in Hampstead:
“Whitehead was able to tell Snow about a widow living in Hampstead, who had died of cholera on the … 2nd September [i.e. 1854], and her niece, who lived in Islington, who had succumbed with the same symptoms the following day. Since neither of these women had been near Soho for a long time, it was impossible that they could have contracted the disease through breathing in the polluted air of the area. Intrigued, Dr Snow rode up to Hampstead to interview the widow’s son. He discovered from him that the widow had once lived in Broad Street, and that she had liked the taste of the well-water there so much that she had sent her servant down to Soho every day to bring back a large bottle of it for her by cart. The last bottle of water—which her niece had also drunk from—had been fetched on 31st August, at the very start of the Soho epidemic. This was just the sort of evidence he needed to prove the argument of the miasmatists wrong.”
If we had not noticed the plaque in Hampstead, I doubt that I would have become aware of the West End widow’s role in the unravelling of the method of transmission of cholera. Below the plaque and on the same wall, there is a pink granite object, which looks like a broken drinking fountain. This bears the date ‘1859’, five years after the large outbreak in Soho, and I hope that people did not contract cholera by drinking from it. It was in that year, that Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) began his programme of improving London’s sewerage system. This helped to reduce the out breaks of cholera, but there was at least one more in the East End of London in 1866.
EVERY SCHOOLDAY MORNING between 1965 and 1970, I boarded a single-decker, route 210 bus at Golders Green Station. First, we travelled up North End Road southwards to Jack Straws Castle, near Whitestone Pond. Then rounding the Hampstead war memorial, our direction changed from south to north-east as the bus travelled along the straight Spaniards Road, just a few yards more than half a mile in length. Invariably, the bus slowed down near the Spaniards Inn, where the road narrows because of the presence of a disused, historic tollhouse directly across the road from the inn. During my five years of travelling this route, I never wondered about the history of the Spaniards Inn, the tollhouse, and the area around them. Now, many years after leaving Highgate School, to which I was heading every morning on the 210, my interest in historical matters has been fired up, as has my desire to share that with anyone who has time to read what I write.
Spaniard’s Inn on right, tollhouse on left
Spaniards Road and its eastern continuation beyond the tollhouse, Hampstead Lane, have long comprised an important route connecting Highgate and Hampstead. Spaniards Road, unlike Hampstead Lane, runs level without inclines or declivities. It runs along a ridge between the south and north facing slopes of Hampstead Heath. At its western end near the former Jack Straws Castle pub, it reaches the highest point in Hampstead, about 440 feet above sea level. At its eastern end by the Spaniards Inn, it is three feet lower. East of the inn, Hampstead Lane descends considerably and only begins to rise again within about three hundred yards of the centre of Highgate Village.
The tollhouse, the cause of an almost continuous traffic bottleneck, narrows the road width considerably so that it is only broad enough to admit one vehicle at a time. The tollhouse was built in the 18th century to collect tolls from those passing through the western entrance to the Estates of the Bishops of London, which they owned for almost 1400 years. Because of its tendency to slow the traffic, the idea of demolishing it or moving it a few yards from the road was mooted in the last century. The debate about shifting the tollhouse even reached the House of Lords, where on the 2nd of February 1966, Lord Lindgren (George Lindgren: 1900-1971) suggested:
“My Lords, to move this building two yards would, I think, be a tremendous waste of time, effort and labour. In actual fact, the lorries going by day by day remove the brick, and if we leave it long enough it will not be there.”
Luckily, the small building remains intact and although not particularly attractive, it adds to the charm of the area.
The Spaniards Inn, across the narrow stretch of road from the tollhouse, is believed to have been established in about 1585. It stands on the old boundary between Finchley and Hendon. Today, the Inn is in the Borough of Barnet and the tollhouse is in that of Camden. In former days, the inn marked the entrance to the Estates of the Bishops of London. The building that houses the inn is 17th century brickwork with some wooden weatherboarding, which is best viewed from the pub’s carpark. It is according to the historicengland.org.uk website:
“An altered building, but one that still has great character.”
The origin of the pub’s name is not known for certain. One suggestion is that the building was once owned by a family connected with the Spanish Embassy. Another is that at some stage, the house was taken by a Spaniard and converted to a house of entertainment. Edward Walford, writing in the 1880s, relates that whilst the Spanish Ambassador to King James I (ruler of England from 1603 to 1625) was residing there, he complained:
“…that he and his suite had not seen very much of the sun in England.”
The Spaniards Inn was the scene of an event during the Gordon Riots in mid-1780. The causes of the riots were several, but they included anti-Catholic sentiments following the passing of an act of Parliament passed in 1778, which ‘emancipated’ the Roman Catholics. At that time, Kenwood House, which is just east of the Spaniards Inn was one of the homes of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (1705-1793), an important lawyer, reformer (his reforms included objections to slavery), and politician. He was Lord Chief Justice when the act was passed and just prior to the outbreak of rioting, he had treated a Catholic priest leniently in a court of justice. A group of rioters attacked and burned Mansfield’s home in Bloomsbury Square:
“The furniture, his fine library of books, invaluable manuscripts, containing his lordship’s notes on every important law case for near forty years past … were by the hands of these Goths committed to the flames; Lord and Lady Mansfield with difficulty eluded their rage, by making their escape through a back door … So great was the vengeance with which they menaced him, that, if report may be credited, they had brought a rope with them to have executed him: and his preservation may be properly termed providential.”
Not happy with burning down Mansfield’s London home and its owner’s escape from their clutches, rioters set off towards Kenwood where they planned to destroy his rural retreat. They made their way to the Spaniards Inn, which was then kept by a publican called Giles Thomas. This shrewd fellow was quick to assess the reason for the rabble’s arrival and being a man of quick thinking, he opened his house and his cellars to the mob, offering them unlimited refreshment before they continued to undertake their planned work of devastating Kenwood House. As soon as they began enjoying Thomas’s generous hospitality, the canny publican sent a messenger to a local barracks to raise a detachment of the Horse Guards. At the same time, he arranged for other rabble-rousers to be supplied with liberal amounts of strong ale from the cellars of Kenwood House. A Mr William Wetherell, who was on the spot, encouraged the rioters to adjourn to the Spaniards Inn. By the time that the military arrived, the rioters were in no fit state to either resist the soldiers or to carry out their planned attack on Mansfield’s residence, which was a good thing not only for Mansfield but also for posterity because by 1780, the house had already been worked on by the architect Robert Adam, who had made improvements of great artistic value.
The Spaniards Inn stands amongst a cluster of historic buildings. Its next-door neighbour is a plain building, Erskine House (also once known as ‘Evergreen Hill’). This stands on the site of an earlier house of the same name built in about 1788. It was the home of the lawyer and Whig politician Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain between 1806 and 1807. By all accounts, he was a brilliant man. He was involved in many important trials. One of these that attracted me because of my interest in Indian history was during the impeachment proceedings (in 1785) against Warren Hastings after his time as Governor General of Bengal. Mr Stockdale, a publisher in Piccadilly, issued a pamphlet by John Logan which defended Hastings, and following that was tried for libel expressed against the chief opponents of Hastings, Charles Fox and Edmund Burke. Stockdale was defended successfully by Erskine in a case that helped to pave the way to the passing of the Libel Act 1792, which:
In addition to being involved in many other important cases, Erskine was an animal lover as well as a great wit. For example, when he saw a man on Hampstead Heath hitting his miserable-looking sickly horse violently, so Edward Walford recorded, he admonished the cruel fellow. The latter replied:
“Why, it’s my own; mayn’t I use it as I please?”
Hearing this, Erskine began beating the miscreant with his own stick. When the victim remonstrated and asked him to stop using his stick, Erskine, who could not suppress making a witty remark, said:
“Why, it’s my own; mayn’t I use it as I please?”
Erskine’s former home was located between the Spaniards Inn and a house, which still stands today, Heath End House, which was occupied by Sir William Parry (1790-1855), the Arctic explorer. The sign on its outer gate reads ‘Evergreen Hill’. Later, it was a home of Henrietta Barnett (1851-1936) and her husband Canon Samuel Barnett (1844-1913). Both were deeply involved with the creation of Hampstead Garden Suburb. Although I lived in the ‘highly desirable’ Suburb, I would have much preferred to have lived in the Barnett’s lovely house by the Spaniards Inn. Had I lived there in amongst that historic cluster of houses, maybe I would have walked to school instead of boarding the 210 bus in Golders Green.
I HAVE ALWAYS ENJOYED browsing the shelves and piles of books in second-hand/antiquarian bookshops. During my adolescence in the 1960s, I bought many old travel guidebooks, such as were published before WW2 by the likes of Baedeker, Michelin, Murray, and similar. These items were not highly valued by collectors in the ’60s and were very reasonably priced. This was just as well because my spending power was not great at that time. My self-imposed rule was that I would not buy anything priced over £1 (Sterling). One of my prized purchases in that time was a pre-WW1 Baedeker’s guide to Egypt. I paid six shillings (30 pence) for this already rare edition in the second-hand department of Dillon’s university bookshop, which faces the Engineering Department of University College London. This shop is now a branch of the Waterstones chain of booksellers.
Most of the bookshops that I visited regularly were in or near Hampstead, which in the 1960s had at least eight second-hand booksellers. There was one shop that I visited occasionally on the corner of Fleet and Agincourt Roads. Once I entered it and found a copy of Murray’s Handbook to Northern Germany, which was published in the late 1880s. I was fascinated by this book which described Germany long before it was divided into East and West Germany, which is how it was in the 1960s. It also covered parts of the USSR (e.g. Kaliningrad, once ‘Königsberg’) and of Poland (e.g. Danzig, now ‘Gdansk’) that were formerly parts of the German Empire. I looked inside its cover to discover its price. My heart sank. It was priced at one pound and ten shillings (£1.50). It was well beyond my budget. I could not decide whether I should break my £1 rule … only this once, but I did not. Reluctantly, I left the book behind in the shop. I had never seen a copy of this book before, and as I walked away, I wondered whether I would ever see another.
When on foreign travels with my parents, I went into second-hand bookshops and discovered some treasures, which I could afford. For example, in Madrid, I picked up several Michelin guides that had been published before WW1 when motoring was in its infancy. In Italy, which we visited annually during my childhood, I acquired several guides published before WW2 and during Mussolini’s era by the Touring Club Italia (‘TCI’). Some of these covered places that had been parts of Mussolini’s empire, such as Libya and Somalia. One TCI guide covered Friuli-Venezia Giulia, when large parts of what was to become western Slovenia were under Italian rule and the Adriatic coast as far as Rijeka was also part of Italy. This guide also included the Adriatic town of Zadar in Croatia, which was the Italian enclave, called ‘Zara’, before WW2. One treasure, which was subsidised by my parents, was the TCI guide to Greece, which was published just prior to the Italians’ abortive invasion of Greece. My copy includes notes added by its former owner, an Italian soldier. Interestingly, he had traced his route into northern Greece on the book’s map. From this, it was evident that he had travelled through central Albania before entering Greece.
In the 1980s, I was still avidly collecting old books including travel guidebooks. From 1982, when I had passed my driving test and began owning cars, I used to drive to see friends all over the UK and elsewhere. Often, I visited friends in Cornwall. My route, which tended to avoid motorways, took me through many small towns, all of which I explored with a view to discovering second-hand bookshops. Honiton in Devon used to contain several well-stocked antiquarian booksellers. On one trip I entered one of them at the bottom of a hill at the western end of the town and made an exciting discovery. Yes, you have probably guessed it already. In that shop, I found another copy of the old Murray’s guide to Northern Germany. Nervously, I looked for its price. By now, I had abandoned the idea of limiting my spend to £1, which in the 1980s would have been insufficient to buy any of the old guidebooks that attracted my interest. The volume I found was £7, which was remarkably good value in the 1980s. I snapped it up and paid for it with pleasure.
Nowadays, if I see an out-of-print book that interests me, I seize the opportunity to buy it, if, after checking the price on-line, it is not outrageously costly.
Finally, whilst talking about old guidebooks, I must mention an artwork created for me by the lady who would eventually marry me. Long before we were wed, she knew of my collection of guidebooks and was also a keen amateur potter. One day, she presented me with a wonderful gift. It was a box made of fired clay, which was shaped to look like a row of Baedeker guidebooks. This still occupies a prominent position on one of our many overcrowded bookshelves.
THE GRAND UNION CANAL and its shorter branches link London with Birmingham and other places in the Midlands. For much of its course, it runs vaguely parallel to the route of the M1 motorway, possibly one of the least attractive highways in England. Unlike the motorway, the canal winds its way through picturesque countryside for much of its course. Starting at Brentford (Middlesex) on the River Thames, the canal and the River Brent follow the same course, but they part company at The Fox pub at Hanwell, about two miles (as the crow flies) from the old iron bridge, which carries Brentford High Street over the River Brent. Moving north along the canal from this bifurcation, we soon arrived at something that we did not know about until we walked there with our dear friends from Richmond, who have introduced us to many other fascinating places, which were also new to us.
The bifurcation is about 34 feet above sea-level. From that point, the canal’s route curves leftward changing its direction from northwest to southwest, and in so doing it reaches land that is 86 feet above sea level. This curve is about 700 yards in length. To be able to move vessels between these two altitudes, there is a series of six hand-operated locks, known collectively as the Hanwell Lock Flight, an impressive sight. Each of the six locks enables a craft to negotiate about nine feet of the change in altitude. This is slightly less than the deepest lock on the Grand Union Canal system, which is 11 feet and one inch at Denham Deep Lock.
An old wall, now a protected historical structure, to the east of much of this flight of locks separates the grounds of the former County Lunatic Asylum (‘Hanwell Asylum’) from the canal and its towpath. The wall, formerly that of the Lunatic Asylum, then that of St Bernard’s Hospital, and now that of Ealing Hospital, was probably built in the 1830s (https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1001963). As for the locks, they must have been constructed at the same time as the canal, that is between 1793, when its construction was authorised and 1805, when the section between Brentford and Braunston (in Oxfordshire) was completed. The work on the canal was supervised by William Jessup (1745-1814), who was the Chief Engineer, and James Barnes (c1740-1819), the Resident Engineer. Each lock is separated by a widened part of the canal, a pool where boats could wait before using the next lock on their journey. The pools have small ramps that were used to lead towing horses from the water if they fell into it accidentally as often happened, when they tripped on the towing ropes of barges awaiting the locks.
The wall of the former asylum has small blocked up rectangular openings a few inches above the towpath. These were designed to be opened if the asylum caught fire. Water taken from the canal could then be pumped through these holes and into the asylum precincts. Between Locks numbers 94 and 95, the pool widens slightly next to the wall of the former asylum. The wall has a blocked-up archway, which used to be an entrance to the asylum. Old maps show that this archway led to a small quare dock within the walls of the asylum. The north and east sides of this dock were flanked with the asylum’s mortuary building. To the west of this, there was a burial ground. The dock was used to unload supplies, mainly coal, to the asylum. The asylum grew most of its own food, and any surplus that it produced was loaded on to barges at the dock.
Hanwell Asylum was the first such county establishment to be opened in the county of Middlesex. The second was the better-known one at Colney Hatch (at Friern Barnet), which was opened in 1850. Writing in 1876 in his “Handbook to the Environs of London”, James Thorne describes that the inmates of the asylum were treated in ways far better than they might have been in other such places then and earlier. He wrote that the 1100 women and 650 men confined there ‘enjoyed’ a:
“…a system of entire ‘freedom from restraint on the part of the patients, ample occupation, amusement, and absence of seclusion; with constant kindness of manner and sleepless vigilance on the part of the attendants, and unceasing watchfulness by the superiors’, a system now happily established in all our larger asylums.”
These improvements were introduced under the management of the psychiatrist Dr John Conolly (1794-1866), who qualified in medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1821. In 1828, he was appointed Professor of medical practice at the recently established University College in London (now ‘UCL’). Two years later, he published a book, “Indications of Insanity”, and in 1839 he became Resident Physician at the Hanwell Asylum. There, he introduced the practice of not restraining patients suffering with what was then known as ‘insanity’. Although he was not the first to do this, his actions ensured that humane methods of treatment including ‘non-restraint’ became accepted practice all over the country. In 1856, Conolly published a book on this subject, “The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraints”. Despite this, the patients were locked into the asylum beside the locks.
In 1929, the asylum was renamed as ‘St Bernard’s Hospital’, which it remained until the mid-1970s, when the government redeveloped the site to become part of Ealing Hospital. The former Victorian asylum buildings have become the Ealing Hospital, St. Bernard’s Wing, for psychiatric patients.
We walked along the Grand Union Canal/River Brent towpath from Brentford to the Hanwell Lock Flight, just over three miles. At times, the waterway passes so close to the M4 motorway that you can almost touch the traffic roaring past, yet even when this and modern buildings are nearby, the canal runs along a lovely corridor of greenery, where the occasional water fowl such as ducks, coots, cormorants, swans, and heron can be spotted. As you walk along, it is sometimes difficult to believe that you are winding your way through the sea of suburbia that spreads in all directions from the edges of central London. Once again, I am indebted to our friends from Richmond for opening our eyes to yet more of London’s delightful surprises.
We made our walk during the last week of the November 2020 covid19 ‘lockdown’. On reflection, it seems appropriate that our perambulation took us past locks and a place where unfortunates with mental disorders were once locked-up, or should one say ‘locked-down’?
LITTLE VENICE, near Paddington in London, is a picturesque spot with a large body of water where three waterways meet. The waterways are the part of the Grand Union canal system that links London with Birmingham. Two of the canals that meet at Little Venice are the two sections of the Grand Union Paddington Branch that links Paddington with Brentford. The third is the Regent’s Canal that links Little Venice with Limehouse Basin next to the Thames, 1.6 miles east of Tower Bridge. The body of water where these three waterways meet is triangular with an island in it. The waterways enter the large expanse of water at each of its three corners.
While the area hardly resembles the Italian island of Venice apart from the presence of water, some believe it might have been given its name, Little Venice, by a former local resident, the poet Robert Browning (1812-1889). Others question this, and believe that it was Lord Byron (1788-1824), who associated the name ‘Venice’ with the area (https://hydeparknow.uk/2017/11/11/browning-never-dreamt-up-little-venice/). Apparently, Byron compared the dirtiness of the canals in Venice with those in Paddington:
“There would be nothing to make the canal of Venice more poetical than that of Paddington, were it not for its artificial adjuncts.”
Whatever the origin of its name, Little Venice is now a lovely oasis, favoured by tourists, locals, and waterfowl.
The Regent’s Canal leaves the Little Venice triangle of water by passing beneath the bridge carrying Warwick Road and heads northeast for 475 yards. It is flanked by Blomfield Road, lined with fabulous mansions, on its north side, and Maida Avenue on its south side. Then it enters a 243-yard-long tunnel that begins beneath a café on the Maida Vale section of Edgeware Road, which follows the route of the Roman road, Watling Street. The canal emerges from the tunnel a few yards north east of the eastern end of Aberdeen Street. This street, which has few if any outstanding architectural features, was once the home of the bomber pilot Guy Gibson (1918-1944) who was awarded a Victoria Cross; he was the Leader of the Dambusters Raid in 1943.
The tunnel through which the Regent’s Canal flows is called the ‘Maida Hill Tunnel’. The tunnel was constructed between 1812 and 1816. There are no towpaths in the tunnel, which is narrower than the open-air sections of the canal at either end of it. Therefore, horses could not be used to drag the barges through this subterranean section of the canal. Instead, the barges had to be ‘legged’. Men lay on their backs on planks on top of the barge, and using their raised legs, they pressed their feet against the roof of the tunnel, ‘walked’ them along it, and thus propelled the vessel through the tunnel. This was not without its dangers. For example, in 1825 the planks supporting three men, who were working their way along the roof of the tunnel, accidentally slipped off the top of the barge. One man was seriously injured and the other two were killed.
Much water has flowed through the tunnel since then. Today, pleasure barges, powered by engines, still pass through it. One day, when the pandemic eases up and the weather is better, we hope to take one of the popular cruises from Little Venice to Camden Lock via the Maida Hill Tunnel.
WHEN I ENTERED HIGHGATE School at the age of thirteen, daily attendance of religious activity was obligatory. Highgate School was basically a Church of England establishment, but by 1965, 400 years after the school’s founding, it recognised religious diversity to some extent. I was offered the choice of attending ‘chapel’ (Church of England), or ‘Roman Catholic Circle’, or ‘Jewish Circle’. In those, now far-off days, the options of ‘Hindu Circle’ and ‘Islamic Circle’ or even ‘Witches Circle’ were not available.
A few days ago, I received a facsimile edition of “The Northern Heights of London” by the Quaker William Howitt (1792-1879), published in 1869. In a short section on religious communities in Highgate, I read the following:
“Some years ago there was a Jewish academy in Highgate, conducted by Mr Hyman Hurwitz. It was the only thing of the kind in the kingdom, except one on a small scale in Brighton. It had generally about a hundred pupils, sons of the chief families of the Jews; and there was a synagogue for their use. There was also a school for Jewish young ladies, established by Miss Hurwitz, the sister of Mr Hurwitz.”
Seeing this, which was information I had never seen before, I reached for my copy of “A History of the Jews in England” by Albert Montefiore Hyamson (1875-1954), published in 1928. I bought my copy of this book in a second-hand bookshop in Bangalore (India) for a mere 200 Indian Rupees (currently just over £2). Hyamson, a civil servant and historian, was an ardent advocate of founding a single state for Arabs and Jews in Palestine, an idea that infuriated many Zionists. Regarding Hyman Hurwitz (1770-1844), he wrote in some detail, which I will summarise and add to.
Hurwitz, born in Posen (now ‘Poznan’ in Poland), was a friend of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who is buried in Highgate, where he died. They lived near each other in Highgate:
“Coleridge and Hurwitz were neighbors and friends living in Highgate, London, England. There are fourteen letters from Coleridge discussing the work of both Hurwitz and Coleridge, including publishing and editing. One letter dated 17 May 1825 from Coleridge encloses a note from his nephew John Taylor Coleridge regarding publication of Hurtwitz’s work through Mr. Murray. A theoretical discussion on the history of language by Coleridge is the subject of the 16 September 1829 letter. The correspondence also includes a recommendation from Coleridge to Leonard Horner regarding Hurwitz’s position as Hebrew professor at the new University College, London, dated 27 November 1827.” (https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9954204173503681).
Hurwitz opened The Highgate Academy, a higher school for Jewish boys, in about 1799. Later, on the recommendation of Coleridge, he was appointed the first Professor of Hebrew at University College (London), now UCL, which was founded as a university for Jews, atheists, dissenters, and women, in 1826. Hurwitz’s publications included “Introduction to Hebrew Grammar” (1835), which was the standard grammar for English Jews for many years, and “Hebrew Tales” (1826) as well as “Vindicia Hebraica” (1820).
The school in Highgate was housed in Church House, which I will discuss soon. In 1821, Hurwitz extended the lease on these premises for another seventeen years. Soon after this, he handed over the direction of his school to his assistant Leopold Neumegen (1787-1875), who moved from Highgate to Kew in 1840, where he lived in Gloucester House, and is buried in a Jewish cemetery in Fulham. In 1821 or 1822, Hurwitz moved his home from Highgate to Grenada Cottage in the Old Kent Road (“Marginalia: Camden to Hutton”, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, publ. by Princeton University Press: 1980).
“Coleridge described him as the Luther of Judaism. His eulogies of Hurwitz in his Notebooks and letters were copious from 1816 onwards. The two co-operated in the field of Hebrew learning, each of use to the other as they both well knew. Coleridge relied on Hurwitz for much of his understanding of meanings in the Old Testament, as Hurwitz was authoritative regarding the subtleties of Hebrew, ‘the science of words’ Coleridge’s own phrase. Without his help Coleridge’s vast erudition would have been seriously diminished. And he helped Hurwitz with publication of a least two of his books, one a study of the Hebrew Language, then innovative though ultimately superseded, and the other Hebrew Tales, a best-seller in the 19th century. Coleridge himself contributed three of its many insightful and telling anecdotes. Each of them used the other’s knowledge openly and with attribution.”
So much for the close relationship between a famous poet and a now obscure Jewish scholar. Let us return to Church House in Highgate. Church House is currently number 10 South Grove, next door to the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution, in the heart of Highgate Village. The land on which it stands was once owned by Sir Roger de Cholmeley (c1485-1565), who founded Highgate School in 1565, which I attended between 1965 and 1970. The present building with its red brick façade was built in the early 18th century.
In 1759, the house came into the possession of Sir John Hawkins (1719-1789), a surveyor and lawyer. Following his death, the house was left to his wife, and then to his son, John Sidney Hawkins, who died in 1842. It was from this man that Hurwitz leased Church House at first between 1800 and 1820, and then for a further 17 years as already mentioned (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol17/pt1/pp32-38).
Well, I did not know anything about Hurwitz and his Highgate Jewish school when I was at the older educational establishment not many yards away. I used to pass Church House every Thursday morning when those, including me, who had opted for Chapel rather than Jewish Circle or Roman Catholic Circle, attended a morning service at the Victorian Gothic Church of St Michael not far from it.
Hurwitz was born in what was Prussia a couple of decades before my great-great grandfather Dr Nathan Ginsberg (1814-1890), who was born in the Prussian city of Breslau (now ‘Wrocław’ in Poland). Both men were intellectual giants. Neither of them would have been able to teach in German universities without first converting to Christianity. Both of them founded schools for Jewish children, Hyman in London, and Nathan in the Prussian city of Beuthen (now ‘Bytom’, in Poland). Nathan, my ancestor, started his school because he was unwilling to be baptised in order to be eligible to accept the professorships he was offered in Germany. Hyman established his school in London before Jews were able to teach in English Universities, but fortunately for him the establishment of University College with its willingness to accept Jewish people, allowed him to become a professor. I wonder whether my forefather, Nathan, ever considered trying to become a university teacher at the university in London that opened when he was only twelve years old and about which he must surely have been aware as he grew older.
yamey 