THE RIO CINEMA in London’s Kingsland Road district (in Dalston) is a fine example of a film theatre constructed in the Art Deco style. It was designed by Frank E Bromige, who specialised in designing cinemas in that style, and constructed in 1937 on the site of an earlier Edwardian-style film theatre, which first opened in 1909. The Rio has been showing films ever since then. Since 1976, the Rio has been run successfully, and independently of any cinema chain, as a not-for-profit charity. The cinema’s Art Deco exterior has been faithfully maintained and the interior’s original design has been reconstructed. There are two screens. The largest one, the main auditorium, looks much as it might have done when it was built in the late 1930s. There is a smaller auditorium in the basement. This has a large screen and comfortable raked seating.
Today, the 18th of March 2023, we watched a film in the smaller auditorium. Called “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom”, this film was shot mainly in the tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. It is a beautiful film, beautifully made. Without giving the story away, it is about the experience of a young Bhutanese teacher sent from the capital to teach in a remote village called Lunana. The tiny elementary school in that high altitude settlement surrounded by breathtakingly attractive mountain scenery is the remotest school in the world. The film shows how Lunana impacted on the young teacher and vice-versa.
Apart from having a good story, some humour, and much emotion, the film provides a fascinating view of Bhutan. “Lunana” allows the viewer to realise the spectacular nature of the country’s landscape and rural traditions. What particularly interested me was the depiction of a lifestyle so remote and different from what we are used to here in the west and in many parts of India, even also in the urban areas of Bhutan’s neighbour Sikkim. The subject of global warming is introduced, but in a quite subtle way. The villagers in Lunana are portrayed as being simultaneously innocent, playful, spiritual, and philosophical. Although “Lunana” is a highly enjoyable film and Bhutan is portrayed in an affectionate and appealing way, I felt that the country, which is undoubtedly spectacularly attractive, is not one that I am in a hurry to visit. It is an unusual and unique film, and it was appropriate to have watched it in one of London’s unique individual cinemas.
HAILEYBURY SCHOOL WAS founded by the East India Company (‘EIC’) in Hertfordshire in 1806. It was an institution where young British men heading out to India to become British colonial administrators were given training. It was not the first of such establishments. In 1800, Fort William College (in Fort William, Kolkata) was founded by the Governor General Richard Colley Wellesley (1760-1842) to teach Indian languages, laws, and so on, to young recruits to the EIC. This school continued until it was closed in the 1830s. For various reasons, the EIC decided to open a training school in England – The East India College.
The East India College was first housed in Hertford Castle, where it remained whilst bigger premises, designed by the architect of University College London, William Wilkins (1778-1839), were being built nearby in Haileybury. When it was completed, the college moved from the castle to the new building, where a school has been located ever since then. Teachers at the East India College included well-known people such as Thomas Malthus and the Sanskrit scholar Monier Monier Williams.
It is ironic that one of the former students of the EIC college at Haileybury was Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912). After studying at London’s University College Hospital, he was nominated to the Indian Civil Service. He went out to India in 1849 having passed through the course at the EIC college at Haileybury. After returning to England in 1894, having worked in the Indian Civil Service, he recognised that there was a sense of hopelessness and unrest amongst the Indian population and that the people were held in contempt by their British rulers. To try to remedy the plight of the Indians and to provide a ’safety valve’ for relieving unrest that he perceived in Inda, he founded what soon became the Indian National Congress. Little was he to know that eventually this organisation would play an important role in getting Britain to leave India.
Taking a rather circuitous route from Cambridge to London, we stopped for lunch in Hertford. I wanted to see the castle because I had just read about it and its brief connection with the EIC in an interesting book, “The Colonial Subjugation of India”, by Amar Farooqi. After enjoying a portion of splendid fish and chips, we entered the small park in which the castle is located.
What can be seen today is a well preserved brick building with crenellations and windows in gothic style frames. When viewed face on, the edifice can be seen to consist of a tall central portion flanked by two lower wings. The tall central part, which was constructed in the 15th century was the gatehouse to the castle, which was fell into disuse and was demolished long ago (in the 17th century). The two wings were added during the reign of George III. Today, the so-called castle, erstwhile gatehouse, houses Hertfordshire council offices. We entered the lobby and noticed the gothic revival interior décor within the castle. We will revisit the castle on one of its open days and see some more of the building.
Hertford Castle played a short role in the history of British India and the EIC. The school at Haileybury continued its imperialistic function until 1857/8, when the EIC was wound up after the Indian Mutiny (First Indian War of Independence) of 1857-58. The present school, Haileybury College, a private school with boarding facilities, opened its doors to pupils in 1862 and occupies the old college’s premises.
QUEEN VICTORIA’S SON Prince Alfred (1844-1900) visited India in December 1869. In his honour several schools in India were founded in his name. In the present State of Gujarat, there are at least 3 still in existence. One is in Rajkot, another in Bhavnagar, and one in Bhuj (formerly the capital of the Princely State of Kutch).
Alfred High School in Bhuj
In Bhuj, we have a friend, Pramod Jethi, who is a historian of Kutch. Some of what I am about to relate is based on information kindly provided by him. Much of the rest is gleaned from what my wife’s family have told me.
My wife’s mother’s great grandfather was one Laxmidas Ravji Sapat (aka Sampat), who was born in the mid-19th century, or a bit earlier. Along with Gokaldas Parekh, Laxmidas was one of the first teachers in the Alfred High School in Bhuj (founded by Rao of Cutch, Pragmalji II in 1870). It is likely that he was its headmaster for a time. I have yet to see it, but his portrait hangs in the school. One of my wife’s relatives, also a descendant of Laxmidas, arranged to have it restored a few years ago.
In 1890, Laxmidas left the school. Later, along with his son-in-law, Cullyanji Murarji Thacker, he went to London (UK) to become a barrister. He studied for the Bar at Middle Temple and was called to the Bar on the 27th of June 1900, along with his son-in-law. Mr Thacker, who was my wife’s mother’s grandfather. The two men received financial help for their studies from the Kutch Royal family. Both men were members of the Bhatia community in Kutch. Back at the end of the 19th and the early 20th it would have been unusual for a man and his son-in-law to travel out of India together to study.
Laxmidas, after leaving the Alfred School, became appointed as police chief of Bhuj, then diwan (Prime Minister) of Jaisalmer, and after that Chief Justice of Jodhpur. Apparently, he was very successful in reducing dacoitry in the Kingdom of Kutch and also Jaisalmer.
Recognising that the dacoits robbed because they were impoverished and starving, he helped make arrangements that reduced these poor peoples’ need to steal. It was this success that attracted other rulers of Princely States to offer him employment.
Regarding Jaisalmer, I discovered this quote: “On his retirement, one Laxmi Das Raoji Sapat, who had lately served as Police Commissioner in the Kutch State, was appointed as Dewan of Jaisalmer” This was in 1903.
As for Mr Thacker, he was successful enough to have owned a large house with two separate kitchens (one veg, the other for meat), and to have employed an English governess for my wife’s maternal grandmother, Benabhai, who married the surgeon Haridas Bhatia FRCS (died of septicaemia whilst on duty in 1926).
Incidentally, Benabhai was sent to London to study at the former Bedford College at the same time as her husband was studying for his FRCS. This contrasts with Mahatma Gandhi, who went to study in London, leaving his wife behind in India.
In January 2023, whilst spending a short time in Bhuj, we took a look at the elegant exterior of the city’s Alfred High School, which adjoins the Bhuj Museum. Badly damaged in the earthquake of 2001, the school building has been well restored. A less attractive, newer building was built to enlarge the school. On a future and lengthier visit to Bhuj, we hope to be able to view the portrait of Laxmidas that hangs inside the school.
CALL ME UNINFORMED but until the afternoon of the 22nd of April 2022 when I attended a service in Westminster Abbey, I had thought that Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge was named after someone called Sidney Sussex. Now, I know better.
On the 22nd, we attended choral Evensong in Westminster Abbey. The choir was that of Sidney Sussex College, and they sung well despite the not too brilliant acoustics in the huge church. After the service, a select group of us, consisting mainly of people associated with the College, moved over to a small side chapel behind and north of the High Altar: The Chapel of St Paul. When we were all crowded into the small chapel, already filled with funerary monuments, the choir of Sidney Sussex squeezed in. They sung a short mass, and then the Master of the College laid a floral wreath at the foot of the monument to Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex (c1531-1589). This ceremony, commemorating the founding of Sidney Sussex College, has been performed annually since her death.
Frances Sidney, aunt of the poet Phillip Sidney (1554-1587), was a philanthropist. She had inherited a great deal of money when her husband Thomas Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, Lord Deputy of Ireland and from1557 the 3rd Earl of Sussex, died in 1583. One of her many good deeds is recorded on her colourful stone monument in Westminster Abbey. As per tradition, the Master of Sidney Sussex read out aloud the resumé of Frances’s life as recorded on the monument. The part that is pertinent to the college is as follows:
“…By her last will and testament she instituted a divinitie lectur to be redd in this Collegiate Church and by the same her testament gave also fyve thowsande powndes towards the buildinge of a newe colledge in the Universitie of Cambridge, with sufficient yerelie revenew for the continuall maintenaunce of one Maister, X Fellowes, and XX Schollers, eyther in ye same Colledge or ells in another house in ye said Universitie already builded, comenlie [commonly] called Clare Hall…”
To put it in plainer English, on her death in 1589, she bequeathed £5,000 (worth far more than £ 1 million today) to pay for the building of a new college in the University of Cambridge and to provide an annual revenue sufficient to finance 1 Master, 10 Fellows (i.e., academic teachers) and 20 scholars. The first sentence of the quote states that a “divine lectur” (i.e., prayers) should be said annually in the Abbey. And this is what was being done as we stood assembled in the small chapel. It was a curiously moving occasion especially when the wreath was laid at her monument. Later, one of the clerics who had been present at the ceremony explained to me that not only had Frances Sidney paid for the college, which is named in her memory but also she would have had to pay for the elaborate marble and alabaster monument erected to remember her.
As for the name of the college, Sidney Sussex, this is a shortened version of its full name: The College of the Lady Frances Sidney Sussex.
THE NOBEL PRIZE winning Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was born in Calcutta (Kolkata). Raised in a culturally rich, wealthy household, he began writing poetry when he was eight years old. His family wanted him to join many of his compatriots, who travelled to England to become barristers. By becoming barristers, many Indian men were able to begin on the pathway to wealth and/or political influence both within the British colonial system, or against it.
Tagore was enrolled in a school in Brighton in 1878. Whilst there, he resided in Medina Villas in Hove. His biographers, Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, wrote in their book (published 1996) that one of Rabindranath’s (‘Rabi’s’) nieces:
“…retained fresh memories of Rabi Kaka (Uncle Rabi) in the family house at Medina Villas, between Brighton and Hove, where he settled for several months.”
Tagore wrote:
“Our house at Hove is near the sea. 20/25 houses stand in rows and the name of the complex is Medina Villas. When I first heard that we would be living in Medina Villas, I imagined a lot, such as there are gardens, big big trees, flowers, fruits, open space and lakes etc. After coming to my place I found houses, roads, cars, horses and no sign of Villas” (http://rabitalent.blogspot.com/2017/06/rabindranath-in-england.html).
The school that Tagore attended briefly, for about two months, was in Brighton’s Ship Street, close to the town’s famous ‘Lanes’ and a few feet from the seafront. Recently, a commemorative plaque was attached to the building which housed the school and is now part of a hotel, which used to be its neighbour. The plaque named the educational establishment “Brighton Proprietary School”.
I attended a preparatory school before moving on to a high school, but until I saw the plaque in Brighton I had never heard of proprietary schools. It seems as if they were private schools that were run as businesses, rather than not-for-profit organisations. A note on the National Archives website (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/b1c290ea-4580-4c52-962b-10c0d281ac2a) revealed:
“The school was opened on 18 July 1859 under the title of the Brighton Proprietary Grammar and Commercial School for the Sons of Tradesmen. The proprietors … each had a share in the school and were entitled to take up places there. The education given had a Protestant bias and the first headmaster was the Rev John Griffiths, formerly of Brighton College.”
“After spending a short time in a school in Brighton and Christmas with his family, he was taken away to London by a friend of his elder brother, who felt he was making little progress towards becoming a barrister. There he would stay during most of 1879, with a break to visit Devon, where his sister-in-law had taken a house, and, most probably, time spent with some cousins…”
Fast-forwarding to 1912, Tagore, by then a world-famous cultural figure, visited London. During his stay, he resided in Hampstead’s Vale of Health, as I recount in my book “Beneath a Wide Sky: Hampstead and its Environs” (available from https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09R2WRK92). Here is a brief extract from what I wrote:
“The only vehicular access to the Vale is a winding road leading downhill from East Heath Road. This lane is bordered by dense woodland and by luxuriant banks of stinging nettles in spring and summer. At the bottom of this thoroughfare, there are houses. Most of the expensive cars parked outside them suggest that the Vale is no longer a home for the impoverished. At the bottom end of the road, there two large Victorian buildings whose front doors are framed by gothic-style archways. They have the name ‘Villas on the Heath’. One of them bears a circular blue commemorative plaque, which has leafy creepers growing over it. It states:
“Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941 Indian poet stayed here in 1912.”
I have visited the palatial Jorasanko where Tagore was brought up in Calcutta. The large (by London standards) ‘villa’ in the Vale is tiny in comparison. An article published in a Calcutta newspaper, The Telegraph, on the 13th of September 2009 reported with some accuracy:
‘In Hampstead, north London, regarded as a cultural “village” today for left-wing but arty champagne socialists, there is a plaque to Rabindranath Tagore at 3 Villas on Vale of Heath.’”
I have known about Tagore’s stay in Hampstead for a long time, but it was only during a recent visit to my wife’s relatives in Hove, that we first learned of the plaque commemorating Tagore’s brief educational experience in Brighton.
AFTER OUR HONEYMOON in the south of India, we returned to Bangalore, where we disembarked from an overnight bus from Ernakulam (in Kerala) at about 4 am on the 26th of January 1994. Several hours later and incredibly bleary-eyed, we joined many other residents at a gathering in a courtyard of the apartment block in the city’s southern suburb of Koramangala. Mr Zafar Futehally (1920-2013), a noted naturalist and one of the senior tenants, stood by a flagpole and made a brief speech. Then, the flag of India was raised, and everyone dispersed. It was Republic Day, the significance of which was unknown to me back in 1994, when I made my first visit to India.
Ambedkar in Bangalore
Now, I know that on the 26th of January 1950, two and a half years after India became independent, the Constitution of India came into effect and India became a republic, having briefly been a Dominion since the 15th of August 1947. The Constitution was drafted by a committee that was led by Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956). After leaving school, he was educated at the University of Bombay, then at Columbia University in NYC, and then at the London School of Economics (‘LSE’). While in London, he qualified as a barrister as a member of Gray’s Inn.
Long after 1994, I learned that Ambedkar had lived in a part of London with which I am familiar. He resided in a house near Primrose Hill and Chalk Farm, where the Roundhouse is located. In my recently published book “Beneath a Wide Sky: Hampstead and its Environs”, I wrote:
“Another reformer and patriot lived near Regents Park Road. He was Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956), who championed India’s Dalits (‘untouchables’) and formulated the Constitution of India. Between 1920 and 1922 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and for the Bar, Ambedkar lived in a house at 10 King Henrys Road near Regents Park Road. In 2015, the house was bought by the Government of Maharashtra and was then converted into a memorial to Ambedkar. It is open to the public. Visitors can learn about Ambedkar from the well-captioned photographs on the walls of the rooms that they can wander through. The upper floor contains a re-construction of Ambedkar’s bedroom including a four-poster bed, some of the great man’s books, and an old pair of spectacles, which might have belonged to him. Other rooms contain shelves of books and various memorials to Ambedkar. There is also a commemorative plaque to India’s present Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who inaugurated the memorial house in November 2015. The garden contains statue of Ambedkar clutching a book (the Constitution) in his left hand. A few years ago, neighbours of the Ambedkar house complained about it, concerned that it would attract swarms of tourists.”
Although he could never have met him, Ambedkar’s home in King Henry’s Road was not far from the house in which Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) lived for several years.
The statue portraying Ambedkar statue in the garden of his former London home is typical of those found all over India. Apart from helping to give birth to India’s Constitution, Ambedkar campaigned for the rights of the Dalits (the ‘Untouchables’), as mentioned in the quote above. The Dalits were excluded from the four caste Varna system of Hinduism and considered by many Hindus as the lowest of the low, fit only for menial tasks that members of other castes would not deign to consider doing. Ambedkar, born into a Dalit caste, campaigned actively for the ending of social discrimination against this class of people. Mochis (cobblers/shoe repairers), who handle leather, are often Dalits. The best place to find a mochi is on the pavement beside a road. Sometimes, they sit on the ground surrounded by their tools and footwear awaiting repair. In other cases, they work from little stalls that can be locked up when they are not at work. These stalls often bear images of Ambedkar in honour of the man who did much to help the Dalits. What with the huge numbers of statues of him and of portraits on the stalls of mochis, Ambedkar must rival Gandhi as being one of the most frequently portrayed politicians of modern India.
So, every Republic Day, it is appropriate to celebrate the birth of the republic and the adoption of the Constitution, but we should not forget to raise our hats and flags to Ambedkar, the brilliant man who did far more than father the Constitution.
CAMPDEN STREET IN Kensington is a short thoroughfare running between Kensington Church Street and Campden Hill Road. On it, there is a distinctive building called Byam Shaw House. Until 1990, this edifice with its large centrally placed, north facing window was the Byam Shaw School of Art, which opened in 1910. Named at first as ‘Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art’, after its founders, Rex Vicat Cole (1870-1940) and John Liston Byam Shaw (1872-1919), it soon became known as the Byam Shaw school.
John Liston Byam Shaw is also known as ‘Byam Shaw’. He was born in British India, in Madras (now ‘Chennai’), where his father was registrar of the High Court at Madras. In 1878, the Shaws moved back to England, where they lived in Kensington. At an early age, he showed artistic promise and at the advice of the artist John Everett Millais (1829-1896), he entered an art school in London’s St Johns Wood. As he grew older, Byam’s works attracted less interest and he turned to teaching to earn a living. In 1910, he and Cole founded the art school in Campden Street. Sadly, Byam Shaw died during the great influenza epidemic that followed WW1.
The school in Campden Street has produced several significant artists including Winifred Nicholson (first wife of Ben Nicholson), Bernard Dunstan, Yinka Shonibare, Mona Hatoum, as well as stage designers, stained-glass makers, and actors. The inventor James Dyson also studied there. In 1990, the school moved to larger premises in Archway, and in 2003, the school was absorbed into the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design. Byam Shaw would have been pleased to know that his school produced such fine alumni. Guy Burch, who studied at the school between 1981 and 1984, wrote:
“The innovative independent Art School founded in the early 1900s, Byam Shaw had an open studio policy that suited my inability to fit into categories marked ‘painter’ or ‘sculptor’. Most art schools at the time made you choose one or other with cross-media working tending to be discouraged. Their studios allowed you to move between them. I was in the ‘Image Studio’, and worked on collage, painting and mixed media installations.” (http://www.guyburch.co.uk/?p=4358)
I feel it is a shame that the building in Campden Street, which has now become a block of flats, is without any notice commemorating its former use.
LONG MELFORD IN Suffolk is a village that I have passed through several times. It was only during our most recent visit in August 2021, when we stopped there to see its church and Melford Hall that I realised that the place has a connection with Highgate School (in north London), which I attended between 1965 and 1970.
Melford Hall sits on land that was once owned by the abbots of St Edmundsbury. As with all monastic property, it passed into the hands of King Henry VIII when he ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. The king with an eye to profit rather than the prophets sold the properties he had confiscated to wealthy buyers (nobles, merchants, and lawyers). Melford Hall and its lands were sold to a local lawyer, William Cordell (1522-1581). His father was a personal assistant (‘steward’) to Sir William Clopton, a lawyer and owner of Kentwell Hall at Long Melford. Young Cordell was sent to study law at Lincolns Inn and was called to the Bar at the early age of 22. An active politician during the reigns of Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I and a founder of the Russia Company, William Cordell acquired great wealth. It was he that bought the estate at Long Melford along with its stately home, Melford Hall. In addition, he married Sir William Clopton’s granddaughter, heiress to estates in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
Cordell did not build Melford Hall, but he did modify it in various ways. However, he did build the nearby Hospital of the Holy and Blessed Trinity in 1573. Situated across from the cathedral-like parish church, this was an almshouse for 12 aged men and women. The Great Church of The Holy Trinity stands behind and above the almshouse. It is a superb example of 15th century gothic architecture and is distinguished by having a separate Lady Chapel, which cannot be entered from the church, at its east end. It is one of the only parish churches in the country, which was never part of an abbey, to have such a feature. Within this fine church, Sir William Cordell’s elaborate sculpted tomb can be found in the chancel to the right (south) of the high altar. He died childless.
Amongst other important roles, William Cordell became Recorder of London. He succeeded his acquaintance, another lawyer from Lincolns Inn, Sir Roger Cholmeley (c1485-1565). Sir Roger was the founder of Highgate School during the final months of his life. This is the school I attended many years later.
Thomas Hinde, author of “Highgate School. A History” wrote that after Cholmeley, William Cordell was the school’s greatest early benefactor. Connected with two other educational establishments, St Johns College in Cambridge and Merchants Taylors’ School, Cordell became a Governor of Highgate School in 1576.
When I was at Highgate, it only admitted boys. Some pupils, including me, were day boys, and others were boarders. The boarders lived in one of four houses: School House, The Lodge, Grindal House, and Cordell House. Grindal was named to commemorate Bishop Edmund Grindal (c1519-1583), who helped establish Highgate School and Cordell was named to honour William Cordell. Until We visited Long Melford, I had no idea about the reason for giving Cordell House its name.
Returning to Melford Hall, once the home of William Cordell, it has passed through many generations of the Hyde Parker family, who acquired the hall and its grounds in 1786 from a descendant of both William’s sister and his cousin, Thomas Cordell. In 1890. The Reverend Sir William Hyde Parker (1863-1931) married Ethel Leech (1861-1941) in 1890. Ethel had a cousin, who has become extremely well-known, the children’s author Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). She used to visit the Hyde Parkers at Melford Hall, where she stayed occasionally. She used to draw and sketch many features of the hall and its grounds. We were shown one of the bedrooms in which she used to sleep. Nearby in a glass-fronted display cabinet, you can see a toy duck, wearing the outfit that Beatrix had created for it. This duck was the inspiration for her book “The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck”, which was first published in July 1908.
I had seen photographs of Melford Hall, which made me want to visit it, and I was not disappointed. However, I had not expected to learn that the Hall and the village have connections with both Beatrix Potter and one of the earliest benefactors and governors of the secondary school I attended in Highgate. Our visit to Long Melford certainly broadened our minds, as the popular saying goes. I will leave you with how GK Chesterton, who attended St Paul’s School rather than Highgate, expressed this idea in his “The Shadow of the Shark”:
“They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind.”
FRIEDRICH ENGELS LIVED almost opposite London’s Primrose Hill at number 122 Regents Park Road. A colleague and friend of Karl Marx, he lived between 1870 and just before his death in 1895 in this large house located 360 yards west of the railway lines that run from Euston to places outside London. His residence had been chosen for him by Jenny (1814-1881), wife of Karl Marx. Every Sunday, Engels used to hold an ‘open house’; all visitors were welcome. Liberal amounts of food and drink would be available and there was music and singing. According to Tristram Hunt, a biographer of Engels, the visitors included, for example, leaders of European socialism such as Karl Kautsky, William Morris, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Keir Hardie, Eduard Bernstein, and Henry Hindman. Hindman, who was a mentor and supporter of the Indian freedom fighter Shyamji Krishnavarma, who was active in Highgate between 1905 and 1910, nicknamed Engels ‘The Grand Lama of Regents Park Road’. Amongst visitors from Russia:
“The founders of Russian Marxism, George Plekhanov and Paul Axelrod, considered the visit to his house in Regents Park Road a necessary pilgrimage whenever they were in London. Vera Zasulitch, who lived in London was another regular visitor as indeed was Stepniak, the terrorist author of “Underground Russia”” (note 1)
The congregation of so many socialists at his home attracted the attention of the police, who frequently kept number 122 under surveillance. Lenin, who first visited London in 1902, clearly would have not been able to visit Engels at Primrose Hill.
We visit Regents Park Road on some Saturdays and Sundays when parking is easy and free of charge, but, alas, we were born far too late to have been able to enjoy the stimulating atmosphere that must have reigned in the home of Engels on Sundays. Despite the absence of the great Engels, there is much to enjoy along the road where he lived, even during these restricting times of the covid19 ‘lockdown’. Apart from fresh air in plenty on Primrose Hill, there are interesting food shops and a few places that serve hot drinks to passers-by. One of these, which we favour, is Greenberry Café, which is located near to the railway lines. Almost next to this establishment, there is a building set back from the road. Its red brick façade is topped with a green tiled pediment with white lettering that reads:
Chalk Farm Garage
Proprietors
The Flight Petroleum Co Ltd
The ground floor of this building, which might once have included the workshops of the garage are closed in with modern glazing. Now used as the art gallery of the Freelands Foundation (https://freelandsfoundation.co.uk/about), this used to be a regular local petrol filling station. Flight Petroleum is a company that still exists. It is based in Mississippi (USA). Before becoming a gallery, the former filling station was a branch of the Bibendum company that supplied alcohol not as motor fuel but in the form of wines and spirits.
Almost next to the former garage, a few feet left (i.e, west) of it, there is a curious looking white building, that was not built as a dwelling or a shop. On 19th and early 20th century maps, this is marked as being a ‘chapel’. An extremely detailed (5 feet to the mile) map of 1895 reveals that this chapel was in the grounds of the ‘Boys’ Home Industrial School’. The school’s grounds occupied much of the corner of Regents Park Road and King Henrys Road that meets the former at an acute angle. Where the former garage stands now used to be the entrance to the courtyard around which the school’s buildings were arranged.
I looked at two useful websites, www.childrenshomes.org.uk/EustonBoysIS/ and http://whispersandvoices.blogspot.com/2009/07/boys-home-regents-park-road-london.html, to learn about the school and its history. The school was originally founded by the physician and social reformer George William Bell (1813-1889) as the ‘Home for Unconvicted Destitute Boys’ in 1858 in some houses on Euston Road, where the British library stands currently. Later that year it became a certified ‘Industrial School’, which admitted boys sent by the courts for their protection as well as those who came voluntarily. In 1865, the school had to move because its premises were to be demolished in order to build a railway goods shed.
The school moved to new premises on Regents Park Road, initially a row of three houses. The chapel, one of whose pediments bears the letter ‘T’, was added after the school received a donation from a generous donor and was later superseded by the establishment of the St Marys Church on the northeast corner of Primrose Hill. In 1868, a new school room was built on the northern side of the school’s yard. This was raised on arches, the spaces beneath them being used to store materials such as wood that was used in some of the practical classes taught in the establishment. By the 1890s, the school occupied the buildings that now form the corner of Regents Park and King Henrys Roads.
The boys learnt a variety of skills including carpentry, brushmaking, tailoring, shoemaking, and so on. They were also hired out to local residents, as Edward Walford described (writing in 1882):
“A large quantity of firewood is cut on the premises, and delivered to customers, and several boys are employed by private families in the neighbourhood in cleaning knives and shoes. The amount of industrial work done in the Home is highly satisfactory. The products of the labour of the boys and their teachers —clothes, shoes and boots, brushes of every kind, carpentry and firewood—are sold, and contribute to the general funds of the institution …”
I wonder whether any of these highly productive young boys did jobs for the household of Friedrich Engels, who lived close by. At the same time as they were beavering away, so was Engels. During his residence close to the school, he:
Engels died in 1895. The school closed in 1920. On a map surveyed in 1938, the school’s courtyard still existed, the garage was not yet built, and the chapel was still marked as such. Today, there is no memorial to the school where it used to stand, but Engels’ house is distinguished from its neighbours by a circular plaque. Both the school and Engels were involved in social reform and the welfare of the oppressed, but few today would associate this pleasant road near Primrose Hill with those historical activities.
THE EYES OF MOST VISITORS to Kensington Gore are attracted to the spectacular Royal Albert Hall and, opposite it, the monument to Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort. Immediately to the west of the Royal Albert Hall, there stands the comparatively less impressive twentieth century building housing the Royal College of Art (‘RCA’), designed by H T Cadbury Brown and opened in 1962. Next to this geometric structure of concrete and glass and on its south side, there is an edifice whose appearance is a dramatic contrast to it. The walls of the RCA’s southern neighbour are covered with figurative illustrations, created in the ‘sgraffito’ technique. Bands of ‘putti’ carrying musical instruments, scrolls of paper, or singing, appear to be scurrying across the walls of the building. Maybe this is not surprising because once this place housed The Royal College of Organists (‘RCO’).
Founded in 1864 by the organist Richard Limpus (1824-1875) to promote advanced organ playing, it received its Royal Charter in 1893. The building next to the present RCA and facing the Royal Albert Hall was designed by Lieutenant Henry Hardy Cole (1843-1916) of the Royal Engineers, and the ‘sgraffiti’ decorating it was created by Francis Wallaston Moody (1824-1886).
Lieutenant Cole was a son of Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882), a civil servant who had an extremely important role in organising the Great Exhibition of 1851. His building, erected 1874-75, was originally constructed to house The National Training School for Music. It was paid for by Sir Henry Cole’s friend, music lover, and a fellow member of the Society of the Arts, the developer Charles James Freake (1818-1884), who lived in Cromwell Road (www.londonremembers.com/memorials/sir-c-j-freake).
“Lieutenant Cole had returned in 1871 from India, where he had been Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey, North-West Provinces, and his previous architectural work seems to have been confined mainly to publications on ancient Indian architecture and archaeology, and the preparation of casts for the Indian section of the South Kensington Museum, which he catalogued.”
Consequently:
“He was not left to design the school on his own. It was evolved in consultation with his father and was subjected to criticism by members of the Science and Art Department. A committee of management was appointed in July 1873 …”
Moody was a protégé of Sir Henry and a teacher at the National Art Training School, a forerunner of the RCA.
Between 1883 and 1896, the building was used by the newly founded Royal College of Music, which moved into its new premises south of the Royal Albert Hall in about 1896. The large variety of musical instruments that have been depicted on the building’s walls reflect the place’s first occupants. Between 1896 and 1903, it stood empty. Then it was leased to the RCO for 100 years at a ‘peppercorn’ rent. When it was learnt that after expiry of the lease the rent would be increased considerably, the RCO moved into new accommodation in 1991. Currently, at least in 2018, it is owned by an entrepreneur, Robert Tchenguiz.
The Lieutenant, who designed the RCO building, became the Curator of Ancient Monuments in India. His “First Report Of The Curator Of Ancient Monuments In India” was published in 1882 in Simla. This contains some of his views on dealing with archaeological items and sites. For example, he wrote:
“Experience has shown that the keenest investigators have not always had the greatest respect for the maintenance of monuments. Archaeological research has for its object the elucidation of history, and to an enthusiast the temptation to carry off a proof of an unravelled mystery is undoubtedly great. If there were no such things as photographs, casts, and other means of reproducing archaeological evidence, the removal of original stone records might perhaps be justified …”,
and, regarding the now controversial British possession of some famous sculptures in the British Museum:
“Sometimes, indeed, the removal of ancient remains is necessary for safe custody; and in the case of a foreign country, we are not responsible for the preservation in situ of important buildings. We are not answerable for keeping Grecian marbles in Greece; neither were we concerned for the rights of Egypt when Cleopatra’s Needle left Alexandria for the Thames embankment.”
However, regarding India, the Lieutenant wrote:
“In the case, however, of India—a country which is a British possession—the arguments are different. We are, I submit, responsible for Indian monuments, and that they are preserved in situ, when possible. Moreover, as Mr. Eergusson remarks, Indian sculpture is so essentially a part of the architecture with which it is bound, that it is impossible to appreciate it properly without being able to realise correctly the position for which it was originally designed …”
In order to satisfy the needs of museums in Europe, the lieutenant suggested that perfect replicas of artefacts can be made as is well demonstrated by the superb life-like plaster casts that can be seen in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which were opened in 1873 and established by Sir Henry Cole and the art collector John Charles Robinson (1824-1913). In general, Sir Henry’s son was against moving historical remains from British possessions. To make his point, he wrote:
“The removal, for instance, of Stonehenge to London would, I imagine, provoke considerable excitement in England, and be condemned by a majority in the scientific and artistic world.”
I am not sure that Lieutenant Cole’s views were shared by the American sculptor and collector of antiques George Grey Barnard (1863-1938), who bought and whole cloisters and other architectural items in France and then had them shipped to New York City. There, they were reassembled and displayed in the superb Cloisters Museum at the northern tip of Manhattan.
Looking at the outside of the former RCO building, I could not detect anything that reflected its architect’s experiences in India except, if I stretch my imagination, for the upper storey windows that faintly recall the projecting windows that can be found on ‘havelis’, for example, in Gujarat and Rajasthan. But maybe I am letting my imagination run a little wild.
yamey 