London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers, wherever you are. Here we go. Here’s today’s London fix. It’s October 17th. Special Day.
The day we meet the saint who left her mark on the map. And on the English language.
And why today? Why October 17th? It’s her day, that’s why. Step this way, St Etheldreda. Or St Audrey if you prefer. Ah, yes, St Etheldreda: Queen, nun, founder.
And where are we going to find St Etheldreda? Apart from this podcast that is. It’s classic London, this. This town’s full of surprises — so of course you can pull a saint out of a hat by going to a quiet little lane off Holborn Circus. A quiet little lane where the traffic fades. And where the centuries seem to hold their breath. You almost certainly won’t have guessed so I’m going to turn the card face up. We’re heading to Ely Place. Ely Place – home to London’s oldest Catholic church. And sure enough, that Catholic church is – wait for it – St Ethelreda’s. A Catholic church named for a seventh-century Saxon princess who swapped a crown for a convent. And into the bargain, gave her name to that splendid adjective, tawdry. Well, gave her other name, St Audrey, to the adjective. You can hear it can’t you? It’s a good tale and, yes, I’ll walk you through it in due course.
But hold onto your horses – we’ve first of all got to do a bit more scene setting. Because this London tale isn’t just a matter of saints and shrines and that gem of an adjective. It’s also got bishops with strawberries, Shakespeare lurking in the wings, and a legend that says when you walk through those gates you actually leave London and step into Cambridgeshire.
So, yes, history and mystery. Spiced with my favourite London relic. Forgive me for putting it this way, but you gotta hand it to St Etheldreda – you gotta hand it to her because the good lady’s actual hand – 13 centuries old – is quietly resting there in that forgotten nook off Holborn.
Ok, so off we go. Off we go to East Anglia. And off we go back to the 600s. Back to the 600s to welcome a baby girl – a Saxon princess – into the world. She’s the daughter of King Anna. King Anna. That’s a bump in the road, isn’t it. You can smooth it out by remembering that Anna was the King of East Anglia. The sound reinforces the sense. As always, it’s all in the name.
But what a family to be born into. A family so holy you half expect them to glow in the dark. Several sisters became saints. Etheldreda was sharp, devout, and stubborn as fenland clay. She took a vow of virginity, kept it through two royal marriages (which raised a few royal eyebrows), and when her second husband started pushing his luck, she slipped away and set up her own abbey at Ely.
Ely – the Isle of Eels – a bump of land in the flat fens, surrounded by reeds and water and sky. She ruled there, died there, and sixteen years later they opened her coffin and found her body untouched. Word got round. Miracles followed. Pilgrims came in droves. And, naturally, where pilgrims go, so do souvenir stalls.
They sold “St Audrey’s laces” – ribbons and necklaces in her honour. Cheap and cheerful. Over time, “St Audrey” slurred into “tawdry.” From saintly simplicity to tacky trinket in one glorious linguistic tumble.
From the Fens to Holborn
Fast-forward seven centuries. Let’s swap the Fens for Holborn.
You turn off Holborn Circus into a narrow gated lane called Ely Place – and suddenly you’re in another world. Cobbles. Gas-lamp brackets. A hush that doesn’t belong five seconds from Farringdon Road. Halfway down, glowing like a jewel set in soot, stands St Etheldreda’s Church.
It’s the oldest Catholic church in London still in use – the last surviving scrap of the Bishops of Ely’s medieval palace. This was their London pad – their patch of Cambridgeshire dropped into the capital.
When they came down from the Fens for Parliament or the royal court, they brought cooks, clerks, and yes, baskets of eels.
And Shakespeare had certainly clocked that particular patch on the patchwork quilt of his London and its environs and idiosyncrasies. In Richard III, Gloucester turns to the Bishop of Ely and says, oh so casually:
“My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there.”
Those strawberries grew right here – and so did the scheming that followed. A later Bishop, Cardinal Wolsey, lived in the same palace. Henry VIII gives him his tragic exit on stage. And who knows – maybe the playwright himself wandered this way. The Inns of Court were just round the corner, the playhouses within easy reach. Ely Place sits exactly where Shakespeare’s world of crown and conscience bled into the London streets.
A Corner of Cambridgeshire in London
And here’s where London legend gets involved. The old hands will tell you that when you step through those gates, you’re no longer in London at all – you’re in Cambridgeshire.
There’s some truth in it. For centuries Ely Place was a little law unto itself – a liberty of the Bishops of Ely, run by its own commissioners rather than the City. It even had its own beadles on watch, their top hats gleaming under the lamps.
And then there’s that cracking bit of lore: that London coppers had to ask the beadles’ leave to enter, even if they were in hot pursuit of a thief. Too good a story to spoil by over-checking, though it’s not entirely far-fetched. Ely Place really was a private enclave, walled off from the rest of London. Whether the porters ever actually stopped the Met at the gate, who can say? But it’s a lovely thought – a miniature Cambridgeshire republic holding its line against the big city.
Fire, Faith, and Survival
What else. Well, St Etheldreda’s has been through it all. It went Anglican after the Reformation, slipped quietly Catholic again in the nineteenth century, and took a hammering in the Blitz. The stained glass you see now is a phoenix’s plumage – risen from the ashes.
Down in the crypt – once the bishops’ dining hall – you can still hear music and chatter. Richard II once dined there; these days it’s a string quartet or a wedding party instead of bishops with eel stew.
And tucked away in a side chapel, behind glass and gilt, is that hand – yes, the saint’s actual hand – the last surviving relic of St Etheldreda. Smuggled through the Reformation, hidden for centuries, and finally brought here to Holborn. Small, pale, delicate – and somehow fierce. Thirteen centuries old and still here. London always keeps a souvenir.
During the Second World War, the old porters vanished for good. Bombs smashed the gates, the watch ended, and modern London flowed in. But the street kept its private status – a little self-contained world in the heart of the city, a reminder of when bishops ruled like princes and saints lent their names to the map.
The Saint and the City
Now up in Ely Cathedral today they’ll be holding a Festal Eucharist for the Feast of the Translation of St Etheldreda. And I think we better translate that fancy phrase, the Translation of St Etheldreda. Here’s the tale in the tale.
And yes, adumbrated this before – always wanted to use that word – but it deserves a closer look.
Some 16 years after her death, they opened her coffin and found her body incorrupt. Her remains were then solemnly moved – translated – to a new shrine at Ely Cathedral. And her sainthood confirmed. They translated the remains. And translated her into sainthood. And that did it. It wasn’t just the remains of St Etheldreda that were translated. The good folk of medieval England were translated to it. They flocked to her final resting place. On pilgrimages. It became one of the most famous pilgrimage sites in medieval England.
And let’s us now translate back to St Etheldreda’s in London. Let’s meet up with her on her Day. There she is, standing above the altar, serene, holding a model of Ely Cathedral. The years haven’t dimmed her one bit.
Ely gave her birth, London gave her endurance. The Fens taught her solitude; the capital taught her survival. And somewhere between the two – between eels and incense, between vows and vowels – English picked up the word tawdry.
So next time you’re near Holborn Circus, take the detour. Step through the gate into Ely Place, walk past the cobbles and railings, and slip inside St Etheldreda’s. Feel the hush, see the light through the glass, and remember the woman who turned down crowns and husbands but somehow ended up immortal in our dictionary.
Not a bad legacy – even if her good name, like so much else in London, got delightfully misspelt along the way.
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 £25 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 Jack the 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.