London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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“What’s in a name?” says Juliet to Romeo. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Well, actually, as that young lady and her boyfriend will cruelly, tragically find out, there’s rather a lot in a name.
And to jump from the back of one Shakespeare horse to another – and jump from tragedy to comedy and ultimately to history – let’s go a gallivanting with Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – let’s start to put a girdle round about the earth in 40 minutes – but we won’t go all the way round, we won’t go in for that 40 minute dash – won’t go all 24,901 miles – we’ll just go part way – say 900 miles – from Romeo and Juliet’s Verona to London. And we’ll see what’s in a name – well, a couple of names – when you get to London. Spoiler alert, that short answer “rather a lot” won’t answer for London. The answer for London is a whole lot.
That Kensington Walk of mine, there’s a point on it where I get personal. I say, “I’ve been here 51 years. All my adult life. And I’m here to tell you as a London obsessive – a serious student of this place – London’s not an easy city to figure out. This is not Manhattan with avenues running north and south and streets east and west, everything on a grid pattern. In London, everything is higgledy piggledy. And for good measure, London’s probably the most secretive, the most mysterious of all western cities. For me personally, well, put it this way, I’ve worked really hard over half a century trying to make sense of this place. Figure it out. Over those five decades I’ve happened on to – discovered – fifteen or twenty keys that help to unlock London. They help me to read it, make sense of it.” I then go on to say, “this afternoon, over the course of this Kensington walk I’m going to acquaint you with five or six of those keys. They’re take-aways. They’ll help you to unlock this place. Help you to read it.” Then about a third of the way through the walk – when I get them to that really special mews – I call it the M.C. Escher mews – I say, “primus inter pares – first amongst equals – of my fifteen keys that help to unlock London are place names. Place names are very often an X-ray of the past. You can often get a read of the DNA of a neighbourhood by paying attention to place names.”
Which neatly brings us to this podcast.
We’re going to start by taking two x-rays of central London. We’re going to take a good look at two place names. See what’s in a name. Correction: hear what’s in a name. You know, it’s like holding a sea shell to your ear. You can sort of hear the sea. The sea in this case being the ocean of London’s past.
And look the current that’s swept me round to this promontory is a new walk that’s coming into the London Walks programme. I’m over the moon about it. Not just the walk but part and parcel of the walk – this almost goes without saying – the guide who’s created it. That great Yeats line comes to mind, who can tell the dancer from the dance. The dancer and the dance. They’re fused. You don’t have the one without the other. To cut to the chase, this new walk will be guided by the foremost authority on the territory it covers. How exciting is that. But that’s enough of a sneak preview. I’m not going to say any more just now. We’re going to lift the veil on this new walk tomorrow, Thursday. It’ll be featured in London Calling, the London Walks newsletter, which will go out tomorrow.
But the immediate connection – the London names connection – is that the meeting point for the walk is Green Park Underground Station. The Park exit. And several of the show- stopping marks on the route are in the St James’s district.
So, because of that new walk – which has really caught my imagination – because of that new walk my head’s awash with Green Park and St. James’s. And I thought, sure, why not, let’s do a piece on those place names. Fancy some Hansel footwork? That’s what those place names do for us. Those two London place names make it possible to retrace the path way back. As the great American novelist William Faulkner once said, “the past is never dead; it’s not even past.”
Let’s begin with the name of the area. St James’s. The St James in question is St James the Lesser. He was one of the twelve disciples. He wasn’t less important than St James the Greater. He was younger. Or perhaps smaller, slighter. That nomenclature really strikes home with me. My best American pal is also a David. He’s smaller than I am. So I’m known as Big D and he’s Little D. Cut from the same cloth – nomenclature-wise – as Greater James and Lesser James. Anyway, let’s get Lesser James. That’s surely in order. I mean, after all, he’s given his name to swishest neighbourhood in London. Pretty good pedigree. His mother may have been the Mary who was present at the crucifixion of Jesus and was among the women who anointed his body. If anything, even more tellingly, she was, along with Salome, the first witness of the empty tomb. The two of them went to the tomb at sunrise. They’d brought spices to anoint his body again. They got a pretty special surprise when they came knocking on the door, so to speak. The stone had been rolled away. Could have been grave robbers of course. They went inside. There was a young man in a white robe. That gave them a start. The young man said to them, “don’t be alarmed, you’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here.” Take that how you will, literally, figuratively, historical moment, religious moment, a piece of mythos, it staggers the imagination. Stuns. Be it with disbelief, beyond belief, revealed truth, whatever.
What else do we know about Little J, James the Lesser. He was the first bishop of Jerusalem. And he was martyred. He was stoned and clubbed to death after preaching the Gospel near the Temple in Jerusalem.
Now keep that clubbed to death in mind. That’s going to come into the tale. In the shape of a London connection.
His saint’s day – his feast day – is May 3rd. And while you’re at it, keep that in mind. Another London connection coming.
And – here’s the kicker – he was the patron saint of lepers. Ergo the name of the London neighbourhood in question. Yes, you’ll be puzzling over that. Keep the faith. All will be revealed. But first I’m going to mention in passing that International Leprosy Day was just a couple of weeks ago. January 26th to be precise. But here’s the thing. And this in aid of trying to get it across – spell it out – what an extraordinary, what a special, what a magical place London is. A couple of weeks ago I stopped by one of my two favourite London libraries: the stunningly beautiful library of London University’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. And sure enough, they’ve got an exhibition of the literature of leprosy. And the fight against it. And that’s just one of several thousand rare, exotic blossoms in the London garden of extraordinary exhibitions. Ten minutes after I walked out of that library I was in the British Museum looking at those, huge, ancient Egyptian columns and statue of Ramses II that inspired the greatest sonnet Shelley ever wrote. Only in London. If I were religious I’d be on my knees every night profusely thanking the good lord that I washed up on these shores, that I get to live here.
Now as to the name St James’s. Let’s start by checking in with John Stow, the Elizabethan historian, antiquarian and author of that treasure trove, A Survey of London. So in a single bound we’re back 430 years. Shakespeare’s time. But that’s just the hop. For the skip, compliments of John Stow, we’re back another 600 years. Back to the eleventh century. A thousand years in total. Stow tells us the name derives from an 11th-century asylum dedicated to St James, founded – and here I’m quoting Stow – founded ‘by the citizens of London, before the time of any man’s memory, for fourteen sisters, maidens, that were leprous, living chastely and honestly in divine service.’
And at no little risk of belabouring the obvious, the asylum or hospital was dedicated to St James because he was the patron saint of lepers. The other important point is that one thousand years ago the St Jame’s neighbourhood was well outside of London. A couple of miles outside of London. Way out in the country. For the understandable and yes hard-headed reason that they didn’t want the leper colony – didn’t want that hideous, disfiguring disease anywhere near London. The healthy didn’t want to see lepers, even at a distance, let alone have close dealings with them. Lepers were required to ring bells to announce their presence. They weren’t allowed to enter a church. To this day you can see tell tale slits in the walls of many medieval churches. They were lepers’ slits. Lepers had to stay outside the church but they could look through the slit to see the priest saying the mass.
So, yes, the healthy didn’t want leprosy anywhere near them. It was a form of quarantine. You put the lazar house – as it would have been known – way out in the countryside. A long way from your town. How widespread was the disease hundreds of years ago? It was everywhere. There were an estimated 19,000 leper houses in medieval Europe.
Who footed the bill? How were they maintained? Charity. In the case of the St James’s Lazar House, wealthy merchants in the City of London dipped into their pockets. It was an investment of course. Charity, good deeds were medieval brownie points. They counted in the scales. Helped to shorten the stay in purgatory, grease the skids to heaven come the afterlife.
And there was a sort of royal patronage as well. Edward I for example granted the lazar house the revenues of a fair which was to take place on certain days in May in the nearby fields.
A fair in May. Ring any bells? You got it. Mayfair. There’s something deeply satisfying in the thought – the knowledge – that the names of the two poshest districts in central London – Mayfair and St James – come from a lazar house and its subsidies. And in case you’re wondering, the fair in May – which initially was held more or less on the grounds of the lazar house, eventually migrated to the north side of Piccadilly, to that little nook in Mayfair that’s the odd man out – it’s in an utterly different register – from the rest of W1. Yes, that’s right. Shepherd Market.
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Ok, let’s get into the home stretch here. The hospital for 14 maiden lepers – the lazar house in the fields remained the lazar house in the fields – for hundreds of years.
Fast forward to Henry VIII’s day. His Majesty wants both the fields the lazar house stands in and the site of the lazar house itself. And what Henry VIIIth wants Henry VIIIth gets. Apart from a healthy son, I mean. Anyway, the maiden lepers were moved on. The lazar house was torn down. It’s replaced with a hunting box. And then with a love nest for Henry VIIIth and Anne Boleyn. In due course it’ll be greatly added to and become today’s St James’s Palace. And the grounds – what we know today as Green Park and St James’ Park – Henry VIIIth commandeered all of it – along with today’s Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park and Regent’s Park – commandeered all of it and turned it into a vast hunting ground. Even as I speak I’m looking at the Ogilby & Morgan 1682 map of London and sure enough it shows at least a dozen deer grazing in Green Park. Though in those days it was called St James’s Park. And that name change is another link in the story. Another link in the story that’s down the road a piece.
But let’s get back to St James the Lesser for just a minute. Turns out he was also the patron saint of hatters, of fullers, of pharmacists and of the dying. And all of that is shiver up the spine stuff. It’s London doing its thing. How exquisitely appropriate it is that St James should be the patron saint of hatters. Breathtakingly appropriate because the two finest milliners in the world are right there, in the St James’s neighbourhood. Lock & Co., founded in 1676, is the oldest hat shop in the world. To say nothing of a cornerstone of British craftsmanship. And sure enough, Lock and Co. are just across the street from St James’ Palace. My finest fedora, a navy blue Dauntless, is a Lock & Co. creation. My most recent fedora, another piece of perfection – it’s my grey hat – is from the other classic old St James’s hatters, Bates.
And as for being the patron saint of fullers and pharmacists….
the fuller was a craftsman who played an important role in the medieval cloth trade. Fulling cloth was woven cloth that had been beaten while wet to make it denser and smoother. The fuller used a short club to beat it, to full the cloth. And pharmacists use a club of sorts – a pestle – to crush and grind spices and drugs. Anyway, the point is the finest menswear in the country – perhaps in the world – is to be found in the St James’s district. That’s one point. The other point is how St James the Lesser was martyr’d. Let us remember, he was stoned and beaten to death with clubs. As for his being the patron saint of the dying, well, that one’s easy, the menswear – the hats, the coats, the shirts, the trousers, the belts, even the socks in St James’s are to die for.
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Anyway, I’ve gone on a bit. And I’ve got a couple of fun-to-know wild cards I want to play at the end of this podcast so let’s do a little bit on Green Park, play the two wild cards, and then bid you adieu.
Green Park and St James’ Park are basically one park divided by the Mall. As that old map I mentioned attests to, they were both called St James’ Park. Though to distinguish them, today’s Green Park was called Upper or Little St James’s Park. In fact, it’s the smallest of the royal parks. How did it get the name Green Park? Well, again, as we know from that old map, it, the upper park, was a deer enclosure. The deer kept the grass well-cropped. So it seemed like a green carpet, a great sweep of short green grass. The name “Green Park” followed as a matter of course.
Now speaking of deer munching away in Green Park, as recently as the 1930s, that’s just one lifetime away from us, there were sheep in Green Park. And in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. About a thousand of them. Sheep with all the fixtures and fittings – i.e., a shepherd and sheep dogs. Think about that for a minute. You’re walking west along on Piccadilly in 1939. Piccadilly, one of the busiest thoroughfares in London. Red buses – the galleons of London hurtling by – and to your left, sheep doing their thing in Green Park. The coming of the sheep to the royal parks were one of the signs of spring. And they’d shear the sheep on St James’s the Lesser’s Festival Day, May 3rd. London, I love its interstices, the way they’re all conjoined. The way everything connects up.
Final Green Park factoid for you. You want to know how big the grounds of Buckingham Palace are – the largest private park in London – just take a look at Green Park. It’s almost exactly the same size as the grounds of Buckingham Palace. You look it up I think you’ll find that Green Park is 40 acres and Buckingham Palace’s Garden is 39 acres. That’s fun to know.
Ok, here are the wild cards. 51 years here and I’ve only just found out that up north you ask for fish and chips you’re going to get haddock. Down here in the soft south its cod. Who would have known?
And the other thing that I’ve always found difficult to get my American head around is what country am I in? Where have I made my life? Am I in England? Or Britain? Or the United Kingdom? Those waters are further muddied by the identity question. I haven’t caught up yet with the 2021 census, but in the 2011 census 57.7 percent of the population of England and Wales chose English as their sole identity. While just 19.1 percent associated themselves with a British identity only.
And that’s before you get Scotland and Northern Ireland into the mix.
For half a century I could just about get my head around the thought that this place is three or maybe four countries. England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
But now I learn – from Anthony Barnett – that it’s really five countries. And from here on out I’m going with what Anthony Barnett has taught me, going with it because it adds up, makes no end of sense.
The five countries are: Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England-without-London, and the place I live in, the global metropolis that is Greater London.
That’s London for you. I thought I was living in a city. Turns out that city was playing a fast one on me. It’s really a country. It’s going to be fun trotting that out when people ask me which country I live in. “Which country do I live in? I live in the country best described as ‘the global metropolis that is Greater London.’ How about yourself? Which country do you live in?”
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 London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, 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.
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