Heading home from the Barbican the other evening, I thought I'd take a photo of these tiny Cheapside buildings.  The plaque fixed to the back wall dates them to 1687, but subsequent rebuilding has seen quite a few changes (including a probable reduction in storeys).  However, this little shop is one of the few remaining examples of the 'first sort' of building permitted after the Fire of London.

In the Rebuilding Act of 1667, six men decided on the 'four sorts' of buildings that would make up London's skyline, and they were Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Roger Pratt, Hugh May, Peter Mills and Edward Jerman (a prime bunch of real dullards).  The idea that domestic buildings could be sorted into types was not an entirely new idea, but the impact of the Fire made it possible in a way that had been unthinkable before. 

More than anything, the 'surveyors' wanted to prevent tall, rickety buildings being put along narrow lanes, and low, poor buildings being put back up along London's major thoroughfares.  They weren't entirely successful, as 124-6 show: they are only 15ft square each one, although in theory they could have been up to four storeys high.  This 'sort' was only supposed to front 'by-lanes', and Cheapside hasn't been a by-lane for about eight centuries.  The 'second-sort' front streets, lanes of note, and the Thames.  The 'third sort' fronted 'high and principal streets' and the 'fourth sort' were mansions. 

The idea London could be rebuilt in this way is crazy and marvellous.  The men who made these rules were both more, and less than human and they forgot that builders were sometimes rushing and compromising, using 'Spanished' bricks, sticking windows in at random before moving onto the next site.  They were building domestic housing for people desperate for somewhere to live, not the public monuments which now inform our ideas of the 18thC.  In the City itself, almost 8,000 buildings were put up between 1666 and 1672.  Of course, not all of London was built by cowboys, which is why it still contains some of the most beautiful and desirable housing of any city. 

Nos. 124-6 Cheapside are little more than tiny piece of forgotten flotsam washed up against the hulk of St Paul's but they are remnants of Georgian London all the same.  The next time you find yourself on a bus sweeping down Cheapside, or tottering home after a night out, do give them a wave.

Discussion time again, if you would all be so kind.  There's a lot of toys flying around the sandpit at the moment regarding 'readings of history' in 'Broken Britain' (gah!).  It was to be expected with a change of government (not much of a change, but there we are).  Historians are suddenly labelled right-wing or left-wing, some are even creating a 'socialist reading' of history.  I find all this tiresome, and I think it puts people off history itself.  It's fine as a discussion for a university tutorial/tedious high-brow dinner party, but when coupled with the current discussions on history's place in the National Curriculum, I wonder.  I really do.

Historiography (essentially the-study-of-the-study-of history) now leans more towards social history than political history.  I tend to avoid a political reading of history on the blog because I deal largely with individuals and their personal circumstances.  Part of my work is buildings, and they aren't usually terribly political either.  I am as likely to regard some of William Pitt the Younger's decisions as influenced by a port hangover than right-minded political thinking.  That doesn't mean I'm not aware of the political readings of my part of history, and don't find them useful because I do, as my library card will testify.  They are used to inform my own view.  I make no case for my readings of history being better than that of anyone else (or even as good as, quite frankly), but I try and keep it as human as possible.

In studying the history of London's minority groups, I come across a great deal of fairly heavy agendas.  From those imposing modern 'queer culture' onto the homosexual individuals of 18thC London, to racial and gender issues, some readings are so alarming in their determination to 'see' history in a certain light, there is a danger of losing sight of the basic facts and the humanity of the subjects involved (it's a sorry pass when people start being wholly-defined by being gay, Black, French, Muslim, Jewish and so on).  Earlier this week I was lucky enough to meet up with two of my favourite historians over a drink and we fell into the above discussion.  One summed it up beautifully, if rather simply: 'All these historians talk about power-brokers and so on, as if these guys had some great master-plan, but mostly they didn't. They're just like everybody else - doing the best they can with what they've got'. 

Of course, this debate is infinite, but also infinite in its potential for confusion.  For instance, does being a right-wing historian not only mean emphasis is placed upon the importance of right-wing thinkers and decision-makers, but perhaps also that something like the importance of the immigrant contribution to Britain might be under-played?  See?  Oy vey. 

So lovelies, opinions please: should we strive for a particular reading of history, or for objectivity?  Or is our view of history as wholly individual as each of us, as subjective as our food or clothing preferences?  Is there a place in this modern world for heavily-slanted readings of history, or will they be more dangerous than ever as Britain's diversity grows?  I should very much like to hear what you think.  After all, it's our legacy, innit.

The Museum of London has always had the best collection of London 'stuff' to be found anywhere, as is right and proper.  From Roman objects to 1960s textiles, the breadth of their holdings is astonishing.  Occupying the centre of the roundabout at Aldersgate and London Wall, it appears from the outside to be rather like a bunker.  Before the current refurbishment, this darkness was apparent inside: exhibits were housed in downlit cases full of amazing things with somewhat dry little explanations attached. 

Well no longer.  In a £20 million pound project, the in-house design team deserves not only a solid gold star, but to be recognized as having produced one of the most enjoyable London experiences to be had.  Curator Alex Werner very kindly took the time to show me around the new galleries, and was forced to tolerate far too many 'brilliant's and 'awesome's from me (sorry Alex!).  The Expanding London gallery pertains to my period of interest, from the Great Fire to the Great Exhibition and opens with with a Common Press (actually a very rare type of printing press) from which are flying all types of constantly changing 18thC and 19thC news-sheets.  This is all done by projection but the effect is stunning.  From there, things only become more splendid and fantastic.  Interactive displays that will please adults as well as children require you to answer questions against the clock on subjects such as becoming an apprentice - and no, I didn't get them all right - are combined with pockets of the finest of the museum's holdings: objects, pictures, furniture, even a cell from Newgate prison have all come together to produce a 'real' experience. 

The 'pleasure-garden' section is an interesting combination of the 18thC and the modern, where instead of trying to produce an 'instructive' exhibition, they have created a darkened garden populated by figures in stunning period costume with Philip Treacy head-wear inspired by the Georgian period.  Mirrors, videos, music and garden furniture combine to emulate the experience of being in Vauxhall Gardens at night: fun, louche and very faintly sinister.  In the centre of what is a hugely informative exhibition, this small room is a deft touch, creating a genuine feel for the period and I think it will be one of the stand-out memories many adult visitors will take away.

Slightly out of period for me, but of great interest and brilliantly designed is the room dedicated to Booth's Poverty Map.  The interactive program brings this massive work to life in a very engaging manner.  The cholera-spewing water pump nearby evokes shades of the Golden Square outbreak and is great fun for children, but fails slightly to bring home the importance of Bazalgette's reform of London's waterworks to an older visitor.  The exhibition moves right up to the present day, and asks serious questions of the visitors about how London is to move forward - of course, my favourite part of this was the flowing Thames light-show on the floor that blips and ripples when you stand in it.

Entry to the galleries is through an impressive hall where there are work-stations for searching the museum collections and a cafe (lovely sandwiches and very good tea - thank you).  Through the wonders of technology, above your head anything pertaining to London is streaming in a vast circle, from Bloomberg to weathers to Twitter.  In pride of place just off this hall stands the Lord Mayor's coach, built in 1757 and still a working animal.  It sits alone and serene, looking through vast windows onto the road outside.  For all its lack of technology, this display of the coach somehow represents the whole refurbishment: the Museum of London is no longer gazing inward but looking out at London, and quite rightly showing off.

www.museumoflondon.org.uk

If you have an iPhone, the Museum have created a free app called Street Museum.  I like it very much.

This is not the first summer London has experienced the effects of a distant volcano.  In April 1816, Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia erupted in one of the largest volcanic events of the past ten thousand years.  Clouds of gas, dust and ash were launched into the upper atmosphere and over the next eighteen months, spread out across the globe. 

The result was massive devastation across North America and Europe during the summer of 1816.  Freak snows, crop failure and bizarre heatwaves coupled with falling ash caused riots, fatalities and famine.  The West of England and Ireland experienced heavy rainfall throughout the summer, recording rain on 142 days out of 153.  The average temperature in London was just over 13 degrees C.  The city was subject to rioting by people who could not afford the food being sold at inflated prices.  Ships arrived in June with stories of sea-ice near the Faroes.  The Lake District had snow in July and in September, London's lakes froze. 

From tragedy, came some of the best-known art of the Romantic period.  The spectacular sunsets recorded by Turner at this time are not the work of his imagination: they are the work of the airborne ash.  Byron, in his alpine phase was inspired to write some of his darkest and most heroic poetry, and in deepest Switzerland during endless dark, frozen days and a state of national panic, a young woman named Mary Shelley began to write the story of a creature who could not understand the world around him: Frankenstein.

On the 10th of July 2009, a fire broke out in 76 Dean Street, Soho.  In the news, the mass evacuation of the surrounding area was due to a fire in 'offices'.  Number 76 is indeed commercially-owned, but 'offices' is a poor description of a c.1730 building of significant importance to the fabric of Soho and Georgian London at large.  The house was built by Thomas Richmond and the first occupant was the 7th Earl of Abercorn.  Later, it housed Rundell Bridge & Rundell, the Royal Goldsmith and Jewellers and employers of Paul Storr, before being rented by the Church as a home for children removed from the local workhouses.

The interior was a fine example of a Georgian house (including the mural, featuring a ship in full sail, on the staircase) and many of the fixtures were intact.  The house is described as 'outstanding' in The Survey of London.  Well, outstanding it may be, but after the fire, the company owning the house have been unable or unwilling to protect it from further deterioration.  Westminster has declined to take action to make a compulsory purchase.<Although this appears to have changed according to news of 15th April 2010>  An initial attempt by English Heritage to salvage some of the panelling and the mural have led to many fixtures being collected together, then left exposed to the elements where they continue to deteriorate. 

We must face the fact that 76 Dean Street is now largely lost to us because of a 'faulty air-conditioning system'.  That this building was allowed to pass into modern commercial use is  unfortunate and inappropriate to say the least, but it is happening all over London (see also my personal hobby-horse in 78 Bermondsey Street).  However, the building shouldn't be allowed to deteriorate further.  What can and should be done for this wonderful piece of London fabric remains to be seen, but its plight deserves a wider audience.

The best outcome is that someone with the money and inclination to put this house as right as it can now ever be, will come forward to purchase it.  The worst outcome is that it will be allowed to continue to decline until it is beyond saving, after which the facade will be maintained, but an entirely modern (and cost effective) interior will be installed for more offices.    

So, beloved Georgian Londoners, please 'fan' the Facebook page here (a show of numbers can do nothing but help; it's about awareness, not money or action, that's for bigger fish than me) or use the hashtag #76DeanStreet to raise awareness on the Twitter contraption, feel free to add your thoughts here and please RT the post. 

                       

Click here to download:

Saving_Georgian_London_76_Dean.zip (2897 KB)

Georgian London Q&A sessions almost always include a sight/sound/smell question, so when I was approached by the Dark Skies 2010 campaign to blog on Georgian London at night, it seemed the perfect opportunity for a post on images of the nocturnal city during the 18thC.

The London of three centuries ago was by no means pitched into blackness at night.  Street-lighting had been compulsory since 1417, when every householder had to hang a lantern above their door between dusk and midnight (there's a lot of the claptrap about everybody going to bed as soon as it got dark - if they did, who needed the light to see by and who was going to put it out at midnight?).  After the Great Fire there were comprehensive plans for improvements of London's streets and lighting became a serious business, with shilling fines if you didn't hang out your lantern.  Houses of 'quality' employed lantern-men or lamplighters to take care of it all for them.  Despite all this, there are enough complaints to decipher that only the bigger houses lit up on a regular basis.  It was considered just about enough if every tenth house had a decent lantern outside, to get you from one to the next without breaking your neck on a cracked paving stone.

Contrary to popular opinion, the streets of London weren't filled with ordure.  Any animal or human refuse that was tipped into the streets was collected by the scavengers who filled barrows and took it down to the dungboats moored at little jetties along the river.  They went daily down to the market-gardens to the West at Pimlico and Fulham, where it was used as fertilizer.  Dogs' mess, the curse of the unobservant modern Londoner, did not remain long on the streets: it was a precious commodity known ironically as 'pure'.  Pure was needed for tanning leather and the pure-collectors were paid handsomely by the bucketful as they delivered it to the workshops, mainly in Southwark.  I cannot imagine becoming a pure-collector was top of anyone's career choices, but a valuable contribution to daily life nonetheless.

A better job was that of 'linkboy'.  Freelancers, almost always young boys familiar with their territory, carried lanterns in front of sedan chairs to stop the lead carrier from stumbling, or escorted strangers and tourists to their destination for a small fee.  Link boys were usually dedicated urchins, and street fights regarding 'patches' were not uncommon.  Adolescent male sex-workers sometimes posed as link boys, loitering on the streets with a lantern, but their age (the age when linkboys tended to move onto other jobs) was the giveaway.  The linkboys tended to work the smaller streets where carriages and coaches did not run, but the general street-lighting must have helped the coaching services, which ran through the night all year round, heading off to distant parts of the country, or returning.

Another place where work often ran through the night was the construction site of St Paul's, behind the rough brick walls built for secrecy and patrolled by guard dogs after dark.  During the construction of the cathedral, the black night sky was as important to Christopher Wren as the daylight: the original windows were clear glass, 'for there is nothing to compare to natural light', and Wren originally planned to house a telepscope in the south-west tower, although he was later thwarted by bureaucracy.  Had he succeeded, that telescope would now sit amongst the sodium glare generated by the modern City.  (Incidentally the Blitz, such a desperate tragedy for London, was something of a boon to St Paul's Cathedral.  In December 1940 a massive bomb crashed through the roof just above the north porch.  It hit the black and white tiled floor, detonated and pushed out the east and west walls by almost eight inches, splintered the ugly Victorian porch and blew out every window of the cathedral, destroying the Victorian stained-glass.  The walls were shored up in a couple of days, and the decision was taken to replace all the windows with clear panes, as Wren had originally designed, returning the cathedral to its original calm beauty.)

In the London suburbs, such as Marylebone and Hackney, the main roads were lit by torches, kept burning by local volunteers.  The darkness that fell between each light was the danger area where footpads lurked, prompting for formation of vigilante groups to patrol the areas.  Night-time crime waves hit the city in 1728, in the late 1740s and again in the late 1760s, when it seems likely organised gangs were operating.  Otherwise, London was a relatively safe place even in the dark: girls and women with jobs involving selling milk, flowers, stalling out at markets or laundering/being a day-maid walked the streets before dawn, and there are remarkably few cases involving random attacks on females.  Still, most of those on the streets were men, either those with night-jobs, or rolling home after a session in one of London's many all-night beer-cellars located near the Strand and the theatres of Covent Garden.  One witness at a trial in the Old Bailey, when asked why he was on the street at three in the morning, responded that he had the following day off work and had gone out to fill his boots on account of his 'holiday'. 

On January 28th, 1807 gas-lighting was installed on Pall Mall, and quicky rolled out across the capital, marking the end of darkness for London.  The map above shows a city now perpetually light, shielding us from the night sky with a sodium glow.  It is perhaps, to us, the least obvious symbol of our progress towards an artificial existence.  No doubt Wren would have been disappointed not to see the stars from his beloved cathedral, but did ordinary Georgian Londoners look up at the night sky and marvel at what they saw there, or were they too busy trudging to and from work, hurrying to meet a lover, or to make the dawn coach? 

This blog is a product of my love of history.  I have been astonished by its rapid success and know that many readers of the blog have been previously uninterested in history, but enjoy what they find here.  For me, understanding history and the movement of humanity through time is fundamental to my understanding of life around me.  As Chris Wild, aka @theretronaut so accurately put it during our serious meeting/babble-session last week, 'No one has ever lived in the past.  Everyone has only ever lived now.  Technology may alter our lives, but the fundamental human experience remains the same.'  So, I was thinking about how to express this on the blog, and came up with the Harlot's Progress blogcasts.  Their popularity has been amazing (5000 dowloads in two days).  Hogarth's work is an almost unique combination of real people, real Georgian London, celebrity, comedy and fantasy.  Most of his plates (as opposed to his portraits) are like social train-wrecks, which I think is what makes their appeal so enduring.  However, when using new software and social media, trying to find the 'history' category on the pick-list is often difficult, if not simply absent.  The popularity of the Hogarth blogcasts proves that the interest is out there, and that perhaps it is the popular perception of history that's at fault.

I started thinking about my own love of history, where it came from and what fuels it still, and I thought I'd try and write a post on it.  One thing I can tell you is that it didn't come from: lessons, although it did start in school, sort of.  As a child at little school, everybody got a Christmas present chosen by the vicar's wife; mine was a book.  My ungrateful ten-year old heart sank.  First of all, this was the biggest book I had ever seen.  Second, it wasn't about Narnia. On the back it said it was about King Arthur.  Well, I knew all about that: Arthur didn't exist, it was all made up, even if there had been a king called Arthur or something, once.  And I'd seen that film about Camelot with the girl from the Cosby Show.  But no, it turned out to be about a boy not much older than me living in an Orcadian castle in the Dark Ages.  Then he fell through a hole in time and aged five years in the space of a few minutes.  How cool is that to a ten year old?  Then he went to England and got involved in serious Dark Age politics and wars and fell in love, but she was married and in the end he got his skull smashed in during a battle, took about three weeks to die and I cried.  If you've never read any Gillian Bradshaw I suggest you do so instantly, if not sooner.  (A lot of her stuff is out of print, but you can buy it on the internet)

I decided to read all the historical fiction I could get, related to the history we had to study at the time.  At big school, this meant a serious devotion to Sharon Penman, amongst others.  I read that massive book on Richard IIIrd even though I knew, I bloody well knew he would die in the end.  I was reading a book that cast Richard as a real person, a dark, smart whippet of a man who loved his wife and their son who died young, and also how much he loved the golden brother who continued to let him down.  During this time I was going to lessons that cast Richard as the rancid hunchback who murdered his nephews.  I started to see a difference between the history I was being taught at school, and the human reality of what might have happened 700 years ago.  Let's face it, history isn't like AND gates or cosine, it doesn't fail to 'work' if the numbers don't add up - it just requires that you sit down and think on it some more.  So I did.

When we moved onto Tudor history, Elizabeth Ist became my heroine and she still is.  Forget the stuff about puffed-sleeves, Armadas, ginger wigs and black teeth: when she was fifteen she spoke six languages, played at least two musical instruments proficiently, had an affair with her step-mother's husband, weaseled her way out of a treason charge and whilst in the Tower forged a life-long bond with Robin Dudley that would continue to fascinate people five hundred years later.  My own reading included Derek Wilson's excellent biography of Dudley, as well as Edith Sitwell's books on Henry and Elizabeth.  These books were rooted in fact, but held their subjects in such awe that admiration made them fantastic and enthralling.  (I also read mucky 'biographies' of Catherine the Great during my A-levels.  All in the name of research, obviously. *cough cough*)  Again the line between historical fact and the excitement of fiction became blurred.  Then I got really really bored by the Poor Laws and the Corn Laws and the Chartists, and....sorry I just nodded off there for a second.
 
I read Anglo-Saxon Literature at University (which is history as well, because you can't read one without knowing the other).  One of the best-known A-S poems is The Seafarer.  It focusses on the trauma of social exclusion, bringing the natural world of the Dark Ages vividly to life.  Ezra Pound proclaimed The Seafarer contained 'the English national chemical', and he's right.  Beyond Beowulf, the 'exile' poems, Wulf and Eadwacer (Ed-waht-cher) most people grind to a halt with Anglo-Saxon but one of the best and most neglected is The Ruin.  The Ruin represents the birth of historiography in English literature: an 8thC Anglo-Saxon poet looks at the ruins of the Roman town of Aquae Sulis and wonders about the people who lived there, and their experience of life.  Aquae Sulis is Bath, by the way: a poet sat in Bath over 1000 years ago and wrote an open letter to a people he realised to be unknowable through the separation of time, yet only just beyond his grasp. 

Now that I spend all my time in another century, I don't read a great deal of historical fiction.  Professionally, it's important that I don't look beyond the textual or physical evidence in front of me.  If I draw a conclusion I have to be able to back it up, or at the very least be able to explain why I believe something to be true so sloppy research or risible stereotyping squeak my pips.  The best historical fiction taps into the human experience of the period in which it is set and draws the reader in, trapping them there by making them want to stay.  It can be sex, power, intrigue, war or basic human experience, but it is immediate and tangible.  Recently I've started to revisit some of the books that first got me hooked on history (and some new ones including Caroline Rance's excellent, if gory Kill-Grief, about gin addiction and I'm very much looking forward to Essie Fox's Somnabulist, set in 19thC Whitechapel), but I'd like to hear your suggestions for the books, images, films or stories that have inspired you to learn more about history.  If you write historical fiction I'd love to know which books/films got you hooked and what emphasis you place on historical accuracy when you are writing. 

There is a traditional image that goes along with being interested in history and let's be honest, it's not a good one: packed lunches, sensible shoes, no make-up....I know, I know.  At parties, when people ask me what I do, I lay a small bet with myself (and always win) that they'll say, 'That's interesting'.  They don't mean it.  You can tell by the way their eyes slide towards the exit. 

Today's post is something of a digression, but bear with me if you can.  People often ask why I am so fascinated with the 18th century, and history in general.  There is no one short answer to the question, but if pushed I would say, 'the people' and I use the objects and documents to get to them.