London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good afternoon to you. From London. It’s August 19th, 2024.
Today’s pin…news from London, what’s new in London. You gotta like the sound of this one. “A little bit Indiana Jones” is how the head architect put it. Yes, this one’s back at the site of the new London Museum at Smithfield. They were down in the old basement. Hit a wall. Punched a hole through the wall. Nothing there except a pile of rubble and some scurrying rats. Well, so much for first impressions. They cleared the detritus away and HELLO – right in front of them is a huge network of very fine brick vaults. An area bigger than three tennis courts. Covering the story, the Guardian described it as “a labyrinthine forest of carefully handbuilt arches and columns stretching across 800 square metres.” Why were the vaults built there, what were they used for? So far, it’s a mystery. The obvious guess is storage. But storage of what? Fruit? Vegetables? Meat? Textiles? All of the above? And maybe stabling for some of the packhorses. As the head architect, Paul Williams, says: the fascinating thing is the meticulous construction. It’s more than just structural. They used rounded, lighter-coloured bricks on every column edge. That was probably to help porters navigate the underground maze in poor light.” Paul Williams doesn’t pull his punches. He says, “it’s cathedral level building. It’s remarkable.”
Now here’s the thing. Part of the London Museum will be underground. Underground at the same level where London got started. Yes, Londinium. The level of Roman streets. But also the level of passing Thameslink trains – Museum visitors will be able to look out of a subterranean window and see those trains passing – and, here’s the wild card – London’s second most important river. The hidden Fleet River, which burbles along behind thick brick walls, just metres away. The location of the Fleet River of course is an important reason why the Romans located London where they did.
That’s a winning hand. Cue head architect Paul Williams’ money quote: “Everything we do, this whole project, is about imagination. If anything triggers the imagination, it’s trains, it’s the Romans, it’s vaults you can’t find. It’s about hidden treasure, which is so right for the London Museum.”
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Moving on, today’s Random – a little bit more in the way of an advancer for Ann’s next Cat Tails walk. A Feline Take on London History. Goes on September 8th.
What sets me purring is the way history is preserved – and recalled – in language. You know, those tasty comfits, words and phrases.
Here’s a choice one. If you like your history strong and raw that is. The phrase not enough room to swing a cat comes from the British navy. The cat-o-nine-tails. The cat was a short stick with nine knotted ropes tied to the end of it. It was used to flog sailors. Nine of them had a multiplier effect. One lash was nine lashes. One lash would take the skin off the back. Six lashes and the back was raw. A hundred lashes was like being whipped 900 times. 100 lashes with the cat was a death sentence. A horrible death sentence. The seaman died in agony. And, yes, from this episode in British naval history we get the phrase, “there isn’t room to swing a cat.” The deck was so crowded with onlookers and cannons the boatswain’s mate who did the whipping didn’t enough room to draw his arm back properly. Yesterday, this podcast talked about stroking a cat. Well, the boatswain’s mate wielding the cat of nine tails stroked it after a fashion. After each lash he combed the cat. In other words drew each of the bloody ropes apart. If he didn’t comb it the coagulated tails would stick together. And one more visitation of the horror show, the prisoner was forced to make the cat and tie the knots in each of the nine tails. And in case you wanted to know – I somehow hope you didn’t want to know – the cat largely replaced keel hauling as a method of punishment in the Royal Navy. Well, maybe I’ll do keel hauling another day. Tomorrow, though, more on cats. And a parting shot – there’s another phrase that preserves history by the way – the tail end of the cat of nine tails was 1879. That’s when it ended as a form of punishment.
Ok today’s Ongoing. Yesterday I talked about the east-west dichotomy in London. East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. West London being wealthy and posh and bags of money. And East London being poor. And yes I acknowledged that there are pockets of difference that give the lie to that generalisation but by and large it’s the case.
And why is it the case. Has to do with the direction in which the world turns. Because of the direction in which the world turns the winds blow predominantly – sixty, seventy percent of the time – out of the west. That explains so much. In large part it explains the weather here. These British Isles are very far north. You look at a map you’ll see they’re further north than Minneosta, the northernmost of the lower 48 States. But the climate’s very mild. And the keys to the climate are those prevailing westerly and southwesterly winds. And the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream comes hooking up past the southwestern part of this country. Comes from the Caribbean. And up above you’ve got those warm, wet winds. All that Caribbean air. It blankets this country – the southern part of it especially, in warm wet Caribbean air. That’s why when you’ve got a westerly wind it’ll be overcast and it’ll be mild, even warm. Take another look at your map. This country is cantilevered out into the Atlantic. And that’s why the west coast of Scotland, even though it’s hundreds of miles further north, is often warmer and wetter than, say, Suffolk and Norfolk, on the east coast way down in the southern part of this country.
When the wind shifts, when it’s coming out of the east, the sun’s often shining but it’s much much colder. It’s because that east wind is coming out of the ice box of Siberia. All of this also, incidentally, explains why your flight over here, if you’re coming from North American, will usually be quicker and smoother. It’s getting that push from behind. Getting that push from those prevailing westerlies. Whereas going the other way, it’s going to take longer and it’s bumpier. It’s flying into those prevailing westerlies.
Well, that’s the weather. Now how about that social and economic divide that was our jumping-off point for this podcast. What you need to do now is think about sanitation arrangements in bygone London. They were pretty well non-existent. Downwind you could smell London from 20 miles away. All that filth. Human excrement of course. An open sewer running down the middle of every London street. But also animal excrement. And animal carcasses and offal. Effluvia from commercial and industrial practices as well as from living and recently slaughtered creatures.
The stench would have been unbearable. If we were time travellers, got into a time machine that teleported us back to Shakespeare’s Day, as soon as we unscrewed the hatch and opened we’d pass out from the stench.
To cut to the chase, you didn’t want to live downwind from London. And the rich made sure they didn’t. They moved west.
The poor didn’t have that luxury. The stinking part of town – the east – that’s where, of necessity, they had to live.
And as it happens this is the case for most western cities. The wealthy part of town is in the west, the poor live to the east.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature
walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size
walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it,
London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science:
you get what you pay for.
And just as surely,
you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started
we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question:
Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world
you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep
the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you,
not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured –
a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following,
a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases
distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated –
Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa –
both of them CBEs –
are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z,“internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star team of guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors,
a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament,
every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning
one and all. See ya next time.